Carola Rackete, a left-wing German Member of the European Parliament (MEP) with a high profile, supports Ukrainian resistance against Russian Imperialism.
Carola Rackete is a consistent anti-imperialist and is also an ecosocialist activist. Here is Carola’s Wikipedia entry :
Rackete participated in several research expeditions to Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and is co-founder of the Antarctic Rights initiative. She also supported the Extinction Rebellion movement and took part in forest protests in Sweden, as well as the occupations of the Hambach Forest and the Dannenrod Forest in Germany. Between 2016 and 2019, she occasionally volunteered for non-governmental sea rescue organisations in the Mediterranean.[2] In June 2019, she was arrested for docking a migrant rescue vessel without authorization in the port of Lampedusa, Italy. The custodial judge considered Rackete’s actions as justified because she had a duty to save lives at sea and ruled that Rackete should not have been arrested. In 2021, the pending investigation was formally dismissed, since the state prosecutor didn‘t see reason to proceed to court.[3]
A newspaper acting as the mouthpiece of Vladimir Putin’s Russian imperialism (Junge Welt) launched a vicious campaign against Carola Rackete, who, as a leftist member of the EU parliament, agreed to a resolution supporting the Ukrainian resistance.
On the night of Friday, September 20, three individuals were arrested in Dublin’s Temple Bar area for public order offences, according to An Garda Síochána. The arrests took place during a block party hosted by Tola Vintage, a popular clothing store, as part of the city’s Culture Night celebrations. The event was held outside the flagship store on Fownes Street, with Tola Vintage having two other locations in the city on College Green and Aungier Street.
The incident, captured on video and widely circulated on social media, has ignited public discourse around policing in Ireland, particularly in relation to the treatment of minority communities.
The footage shows a significant Garda presence at the party, and what started as a celebration quickly escalated into a violent altercation. In the video, multiple gardaí can be seen subduing one man, with witnesses heard shouting, “He’s bleeding.”
Who are ‘the Irish’? History shows we’ve been a mixed bunch for centuries
Introduction :
From the 1800’s to the early 1990’s Ireland was a world champion in one cruel activity – export of its own people. During the Great Hunger [An Gorta Mór in Irish] (Famine) of 1845-49 official figures state the population crashed from 8 million to 6 million : 1 million died and 1 million emigrated. In almost every following decade, the population continued to fall – from 8.2 million in 1841 to 4.2 million in 1961.
People of Irish extraction – the diaspora – are estimated to number 70 million. In 1921 the British imperialist government partitioned Ireland into two states – the republic and the north. The revolution heralded by the 1916 Easter Rising was betrayed.
Today Just over 5 million live in the republic, 2 million reside in the north, and 1.5 million Irish passport holders reside outside Ireland and Britain.
Up to the 1990’s immigration to Ireland existed – in relatively small numbers. The trend then altered significantly.
In the 2020’s the population of Ireland rose to 7 million. This remains below the 1841 figure of 8.2 million – so much for racist claims that Ireland is “full”.
The former Irish international might accept an offer to co-manage Ireland with the Icelander Heimir Hallgrímsson.
Has far-right racist poison infected English sporting journalism again?
That’s like asking if the Pope is a Catholic.
From the Irish Times, September 7 2024
Irish Citizen Lee Carsley Will Not Sing “God Save the King”
Lee Carsley might have thought that an inquiry about anthem-singing at his pre-match press conference on Friday was harmless enough. “I fully respect both anthems and understand how much they mean to both countries,” he said. But he has never joined in on the crooning either as a player for Ireland or as manager of the England under-21s because he is “in a zone at that point”, he wants to focus on the match ahead, being “wary” of his mind “wandering off”.
Grand. Moving along … ooooooh, hold it.
Never mind asking God to save the King, it’s Carsley who needs saving from that section of the English press that lost its tiny mind on hearing his comments. It was the lead story – the lead! – on the front page – the front! – of the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, there was a deluge of incandescent opinion pieces, it featured on the news on BBC Radio and LBC and … you get the drift.
The far-right is on the warpath, highlighting a number of seemingly obscure cultural and political issues. These bigots are 21st century spiritual descendants of the sinister religious orders who created magdalene laundry prisons and torture chambers locking up generations of Irish women and children after the 26 county bit of Ireland became a state in 1922.
We can say with confidence – first they came for the transgender community, then they went after the naked bike-riders. Cork’s 21st century spiritual descendant of the notorious Laois anti-semite bigot Oliver J Flanagan TD (Fine Gael) is Kenneth O’Flynn on the Irish Independence party.
An editorial from the current Belfast Media publication offers a very useful guide to these issues :
A settled and utterly uncontroversial matter until it was identified in far-right focus grouping
‘The Trans question was a settled & utterly uncontroversial matter until it was identified in far-right focus-grouping as a potential goldmine for those who profit from fear & division.’
Survey responses often depend on how the question is framed.
Like me, I am sure many readers are sick and tired of tactics used by many mainstream media organisations to bolster a sinister racist agenda. This is a drum regularly beaten by friends who post at two excellent blogs : Irish Election Projections and the Cedar Lounge Revolution
Sources :
Further demonstration of how dependent issue polling is on the way the question is phrased.
Positive questions about migration (as seen here) yield positive answers, while negative questions (as typically commissioned by newspapers) yield negative ones https://t.co/LPHAnW4fTc
— Irish Election Projections (@irishelectproj) August 29, 2024
A Sinn Féin councillor has resigned from the party, saying he took the decision to do so after being “silenced” by his party on the migration crisis and the recent referendums on family and carers. Long-serving Laois county councillor Aidan Mullins announced his resignation after he was told he would be suspended from the party for three months.
Many people who knew Nell McCafferty could not get to her funeral in St. Columb’s Cathedral, Derry. An alternative was offered on RIP.IE – a live broadcast starting at 12.30pm. When interested viewers tuned in, they were mystified, seeing only a blank screen. The livestream did not start until after 1.00pm, as a priest shared the altar with three men conducting a religious ceremony containing no stories about one of Derry’s most talented writers, Nell McCafferty. At one screening venue a small group of Nell’s fans – including Máirín Johnson who travelled on the legendary Dublin-Belfast contraceptive train with Nell in 1971 – were not impressed. We learned later that Eamonn McCann delivered a eulogy in front of the altar – A report is below. Source : Nell McCafferty “Changed Ireland for the Better”
Eamonn McCann delivers a eulogy for Nell McCafferty, St Columb’s Cathedral Derry, August 23 2024
Nell McCafferty ‘changed Ireland for the better’, mourners at her funeral in Derry’s Bogside told
Campaigning journalist and author, who focused on women’s rights, poverty and social injustice, died on Wednesday aged 80
Nell McCafferty “changed Ireland for the better”, mourners at her funeral have been told.
Delivering an elegy in advance of her funeral Mass in Derry’s Bogside on Friday, the veteran civil rights campaigner and journalist Eamonn McCann said it was “given to very few of us to actually change the world”.
“Nell”, she called her autobiography, and that was how she was known.
Hold the Front Page – Nell has a story – Irish Times August 22 2024
Small, fierce and feisty. That mop of curls, the waft of cigarette smoke, the tongue in cheek smile and her distinctive walk, like a sailor ashore. Everyone soon knew her smoky Derry voice, laconic, challenging, always ready to break into laughter. You never knew what Nell was going to say next. It was often outrageous. She was a character, and she loved to play herself to the hilt. She was also one of the most important Irish journalists of the latter half of the twentieth century. She listened. She paid attention. She told the truth.
She was, wrote her friend, the historian Margaret Mac Curtain, “unequalled in the extraordinary breadth and fearless candour she has brought to bear on controversial subjects.” Her journalistic career started in The Irish Times in 1970, when the paper’s late Northern editor and editor, Fergus Pyle, commissioned her to write about the new bathroom in her family home in Beechwood Street in Derry’s Bogside.
Home was her touchstone. She vaunted her street-cred. She was part of a Bogside aristocracy that included Martin McGuinness, Eamonn McCann, Seamus Deane, Paddy Doherty, John Hume, Dana and Phil Coulter. Her mother was her biggest fan and harshest critic.
McCafferty was born in 1944. Her father, Hugh, was a clerk for the British admiralty by day and a bookie’s clerk at the dog track at night. Her mother, Lily, reared six children. Another daughter died at birth.
Her parents had to work hard to keep poverty at bay. She was fascinated and frightened by the poverty of the tenements where her father was raised. One of his brothers had died as a British soldier at the Somme. Her mother’s parents were Sergeant Duffy, a Catholic RUC man, and his wife Sarah, a Protestant who “turned”.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 