Archive for the ‘Russia’ Category
Elections (USA): Making Sense of Trump’s Victory & the Necessary Resistance – Frieda Afary
Frieda Afary has written an excellent analysis (see below). She shows that the Democratic party candidate Kamala Harris lost 10 million votes compared with Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Trump’s vote totals in 2020 and 2024 were almost identical.
Source :
Elections (USA): Making Sense of Trump’s Victory & the Necessary Resistance (ESSF)
This article analyzes the vote breakdown, the pundits’ views, argues that Trump is a fascist and offers perspectives for the needed anti-fascist resistance.
Donald Trump’s election as president, and the Republican victories nationwide are a catastrophe for progressive forces in the U.S. and around the world. What the November 5, 2024 election showed was that while this country is still divided, there has been a rightward shift nationwide and across all demographic and geographic groups. (Levitt, 2024)
Vote Breakdown:
Let’s take a closer look at the demographic breakdown of the votes. Approximately 72 million voted for Harris and 75 million voted for Trump. Approximately 700,000 voted for Jill Stein and 700,000 voted for Robert Kennedy. This means that Democrats received 10 million fewer votes than in 2020 when Biden received 81 million. Trump received approximately the same number of votes he received in 2020. (U.S. Election Results, 2024)
Read the rest of this entry »9000 Days of Putin’s Régime in the Russian Federation, 1000 Days of War – Protest, The Spire, O’Connell Street, Dublin 1, Sunday November 17 3-5pm
Free Russians Ireland has organised a protest in Dublin :
Link :
Free Russians Ireland – 9000 Days of Putin’s Régime in Russia
Sunday November 17, 15:00 – 17:00
1,000 Days of War, 9,000 Days of Putin’s Regime
Location: The Spire, O’Connell Street, Dublin
Hello everyone!
You’ve probably seen the call to join the big rally in Berlin on November 17.
November 20 will mark 1,000 days since February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since then, cities have been bombed, and over a million civilians have been killed or injured, according to “The Wall Street Journal”.
Our message in Dublin is the same as in London and other cities around the world holding actions: stop the war in Ukraine, withdraw the troops, provide reparations, and free political prisoners!
There are currently around 5,000 political prisoners in Russia, according to OVD-Info, including minors, people with health issues, and those facing ethnic and religious persecution. In the past year alone, over five people have reportedly been killed in prison.
We are taking to the streets this November for an important reason — cold weather is setting in for Ukraine, and its infrastructure has been severely damaged. Together with the London-based Russian Democracy Society, we are raising funds for generators and informing the Irish public about what is happening in Ukraine and Russia and why we demand an end to the war.
Read the rest of this entry »1000 Days since the Russian Invasion of Ukraine – Protest at Embassy of Russia in Ireland, Tuesday November 19 2024, 3 – 4pm, 186 Orwell Road, Dublin 14
Tuesday November 19 2024 marks the 1000th day since the start of the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Putin and his military forces.
To mark the day an event is being held outside the Russian embassy commencing at 3.30pm..
A poster advertising the event is below.
Feel free to circulate it to friends, acquaintances and contacts.
European Left Alliance for People and the Planet (Howie Hawkins Report) – Dispatches from Europe, No. 8, November 6, 2024
Howie Hawkins, Green Party Presidential Candidate in the 2020 USA General Election, reports from Kyiv, Capital City of Ukraine, on a meeting of the European Left Alliance for People and the Planet.
Dispatches from Europe, No. 8, November 6, 2024 – European Left Alliance for People and the Planet
I arrived in Kyiv on the afternoon of November 2 to the sound of air raid sirens. The air raid warnings had been going on all day. They come by phone once you get the Air Alert app, which is one of the first things my hosts had me do. Now my phone screen is covered with air alerts.
By the end of the night of November 2-3, Ukraine had been targeted with 96 drones and 1 air-to-surface missile. Ukrainian air defense units intercepted the missile and 66 of the drones, but between the drones that got through air defenses and debris falling from intercepted drones and missiles, six districts of Kyiv were hit, mostly residential buildings. One explosion woke me up. A large explosion hit a building at one of the campuses of Taras Shevchenko National University.
Read the rest of this entry »Taoiseach Simon Harris Announces Irish General Election on November 29 – Heading to Phoenix Park HQ of President Michael D Higgins to dissolve current Dáil – Support Credible Radical Left Candidates
https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/1108/1479774-end-33-dail-general-election/
Simon Harris confirmed that he’ll travel to Áras an Uachtaráin shortly to ask President Higgins to dissolve the Dáil.
The election is set for Friday 29 November 2024.
A number of radical left candidates against any coalition deal with FFFFGGG have a realistic chance of winning a Dáil seat. [FFFGGG = Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Greens, Gombeens].
One of them is Councillor John Lyons in Dublin Bay North.
Rejecting any coalition deals with FFFGGG and a policy that All refugees Are Welcome should be top priorities for radical left candidates in this general election.
People Before Profit (PBP) candidates also endorse the above policy.
Link :
No Coalition with FF or FG – PBP Conor Reddy
John Meehan, November 7 2024
Santry resident Olga Popova fled Russia before the war against Ukraine – Free Russians Ireland Organise Against Putin’s Régime
Garrett Mullan, an activist in Irish left With Ukraine, interviews Olga Popova (Free Russians Ireland).
This is the latest episode on Garrett’s M1 Podcast.
Santry resident Olga Popova Fled Russia Before the War Against Ukraine
Free Russians Ireland
Open Mind Wind is Olga’s marketing business –Success Stories
Free Russians Ireland- Facebook
Free Russians Ireland Instagram
On the M1 Podcast, Garrett does stories of interest to those who live up and down the M1. Santry resident Olga Popova who fled Russia in 2021. To her 50,000 tiktok followerers, she is an outspoken critic of the war against Ukraine https://m1.radio.ie
Episode 24- Santry resident fled Russia before the war against Ukraine
Olga Popova and her husband moved to Ireland in 2021 before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. They settled in Santry on the northside of Dublin. Her husband was involved in activities protesting against the Russian government and they were prompted to flee after he spent a night in police custody. ‘I was at home with our child, because in Russia, if you go protests you need to be able to run fast’.
Read the rest of this entry »Resolution: The War and the Future of Ukraine and the Left Movement – Author : Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh) [Ukraine]
The resolution below was recently adopted by a left-wing organisation in Ukraine : Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh).
Here is one of many important statements very relevant to the left in Ireland and elsewhere :
The growing contradictions between the centers of capital accumulation in the world capitalist system will not stop even after the complete destruction of Russian imperialist power. The left in Europe and around the world turned out to be helpless and disoriented when the Russian aggression in Ukraine occurred. Unless the international socialist movement realizes mistakes it has made and builds a new, truly internationalist cooperation and coordination, we simply have no chance of preventing the growth of inter-imperialist struggle in the future.
Resolution: The War and the Future of Ukraine and the Left Movement
Категорія: ПОЗИЦІЯ
The people of Ukraine have been facing hard challenges, yet they have proven their ability to fight for the right to decide on their own fate, and their determination to defend the country and to end the war as soon as possible. The authorities and representatives of market-fundamentalist ideology, together with big business, keep pushing through an economic model focused on benefiting a minority at the expense of the welfare of the absolute majority
The people of Ukraine have been facing hard challenges, yet they have proven their ability to fight for the right to decide on their own fate, and their determination to defend the country and to end the war as soon as possible. The authorities and representatives of market-fundamentalist ideology, together with big business, keep pushing through an economic model focused on benefiting a minority at the expense of the welfare of the absolute majority. In this model, workers are completely subservient to the will of their employers, while social and regulatory functions of the state are abolished for the sake of “business needs”, “competition” and “free market”.
Read the rest of this entry »How Much Proof Is Needed? The Case of Vladimir Putin’s Spy Pavel Rubtsov / Pablo Gonzalez
Speculating about the identity of spies is a largely useless activity unless the secret operator has been unmasked. For example in Ireland, examining the profiles of a few high-profile unmaksed British spies – Freddie Scappaticci, Seán O’Callaghan and Denis Donaldson – the vast majority of the people who came across these informers never guessed anything was wrong until the unmasking.
Pavel Rubtsov/Pablo Gonzalez is an unmasked Russian spy. We do not yet know how much damage he did, how many lives he betrayed, how many people lost their lives, how many lives were ruined, because of the services he offered to Putin’s far-right racist régime.
An important sub-plot in this story concerns members of the international anti-Ukrainian left – including the former Irish members of the European Parliament Clare Daly and Mick Wallace – who associated themselves with campaigns for the release of Rubtsov/Gonzalez after he was detained by Polish state security forces who believed (correctly, it transpires) that their prisoner was a Putin spy.
After Rubtsov returned to Russia as part of a prisoner-exchange he was personally greeted by President Vladimir Putin. The case against the Russian spy had become overwhelming, but ex Irish MEP Clare Daly still peddled a false cover-story :
Read the rest of this entry »Anti-Fascists or Conspiracy Theorists? The Truth Behind Pro-Putin Protests in Britain
Far-rightists all over Europe (including Ireland) regularly back Putin’s Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Some on the left identify with these awful politics. Here is a case study from Britain.
We thank our friends in the Ukraine Solidarity for their article
Anti-Fascists or Conspiracy Theorists? The Truth Behind UK Protests
Nearly three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and a decade after the war began, a small band of so-called anti-fascists took to the streets of London and Glasgow to demand “no more British arms to Ukraine.”
We say “so-called”, because the “International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity” demo shared more in common with far-right disinformation merchants and conspiracy theorists than the left-wing workers’ movements that stand with Ukraine against Russian aggression.
The demo was advertised in the Morning Star newspaper, in an advert which demanded “Zelensky must go!”. The optics of a movement that declares itself to be anti-imperialist but calling for regime change in a sovereign state did not seem to matter. This is a group that is happy to parrot Russian disinformation while ignoring Ukrainian voices and lives.
Read the rest of this entry »Free Boris Kagarlitsky – Free All antiwar prisoners in Russia
BORIS KAGARLITSKY
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
On February 13, 2024, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation sentenced prominent Russian socialist, anti-war activist and author Boris Kagarlitsky to five years jail
for ‘justifying terrorism’.
This campaign exists to win his freedom and that of all other antiwar prisoners in Russia.
Free Boris Kagarlitsky – Free All antiwar prisoners in Russia (Web link)
Register for Boris Kagarlitsky Conference (Web Link)
Online Conference – Boris Kagarlitsky and the Challenges of the Left Today
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 