A Russian Disinformation Empire in Oak Harbor, Washington – Donbas Devushka Sting takes campists and left-evasionists for a ride
A Russian Disinformation Empire in Oak Harbor, Washington
James Doyle, an Irish correspondent based in Germany, describes a far-right pro Putin sting.
Donbass Devushka claims she’s from Luhansk, Ukraine. In reality she’s a Navy vet born in New Jersey.
The Donbas Devushka Sting : tankies and left-evasionists taken for a ride
James Doyle writes :
Just thought I’d share an interesting development arising from the recent “Pentagon Leaks” that seems to have escaped attention, or (as is more likely) has been ignored by large sections of the western left…
“Donbas Devushka”, one of the Campist/tankie/pro-Putinist “left”‘s favourite sources of “information” and Kremlinist propaganda from inside Ukraine, was a couple of days ago revealed to actually be an American ex-navy Servicewoman (discharged in 2021) and tropical fish shop owner from New Jersey named Sarah Bils. If you’ve been active at all in trying to combat disinformation over the course of this war you’ve no doubt come across this woman or at least people sharing her posts/podcasts and the claims she made on them.
She had been operating a major disinformation network – by her own admission with a staff of at least 15 – across various social media platforms since the Russian invasion began last February, becoming one of the top handful of pro Russian Propagandists across these platforms, all the while posing as a Russian-speaking pro-Palestinian Jewish woman (“Mila Medvedev”) from Lukhansk (she’s never been anywhere near Ukraine or Russia in reality).
Read the rest of this entry »The Man Who Blew the Whistle on the late British IRA Spy Freddie Scappaticci
Ed Moloney has diligently reported on the Steaknife (Freddie Scappaticci) story for many years. Skeletons are falling out of cupboards : Link : http://thebrokenelbow.com/2023/04/11/the-man-who-blew-the-whistle-on-scap/
His name is Ian Hurst although for a long time this former intelligence officer in the British Army’s Force Research Unit (FRU) called himself ‘Martin Ingram’ whenever he met the media. A chirpy Mancunian who served with the FRU in Derry, he broke with the military and gradually emerged in public with secrets to tell, angered by what he believed was the shameful way an agent he ran in the IRA had been treated.
The Derry IRA’s quarter master’s department included in its ranks one Frank Hegarty, whose career in the IRA had been controversial. He had been expelled some years before by Ivor Bell, then the chief of staff, when it was discovered that he had been having an affair with the wife of a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and had failed to tell his superiors. And so it was that eyebrows were raised when the news filtered through that Hegarty was back, a move that had been arranged by Martin McGuinness.
Ian Hurst, pictured in his days as a soldier in the Force Research Unit
Hegarty’s exposure as a spy and death at the hands of the Internal Security Department – the IRA’s spycatchers – led to more internal speculation about McGuinness’ true loyalties. The Belfast-based veteran IRA leader, Brian Keenan was one who did not keep those doubts to himself. The pair had never got on and Keenan blamed McGuinness for facilitating his arrest in Northern Ireland and subsequent deportation to a London court where he received a lengthy sentence for IRA bombings in England in the early 1970’s.
Read the rest of this entry »Delegates Give Standing Ovation to Speakers from the Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine – Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) Conference 2023
Gregor Kerr reports : “Very powerful address to INTO Congress by 2 reps of TU of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine. 2 standing ovations.”. Well done Kateryna Maliuta-Osaulova and Olga Chabaniuk.
Delegates at #INTOCongress23 were moved by the addresses of Kateryna Maliuta-Osaulova and Olha Chabaniuk of the Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine this afternoon, giving them a standing ovation. Delegates heard there is no person in Ukraine who hasn’t felt the effects of war. In education, 3,120 educational institutions have been damaged.
One of the most painful consequences of teaching in the war is seeing the psychological breakdown of children and students, Congress heard.
After the speech, Ukrainian pupils from St Oliver’s NS Killarney, joined INTO President John Driscoll on stage, while guest speakers, Kateryna and Olha displayed the Ukrainian flag. #StandwithUkraine
Link Here : https://www.facebook.com/INTOnews
A “Kerry Babies” Judgment Which Must Be Binned : Three Gardaí Sued Joanne Hayes for “Libel” and Trousered £100,000
As fresh 2023 Irish state investigations continue into the death of a Tralee baby in 1984, we are not hearing the story of Joanne Hayes. Many readers must be wondering – Why?
A huge reason is that three police officers got the book of Joanne Hayes – “My Story” – destroyed. These Gardaí succeeded because of the “discredited” Judge Lynch Tribunal Report.
Today, action is needed on this matter. On a directly related issue, the non-jury Special Criminal Court must be abolished.
The police torturers were connected to the heavy gang which tortured loads of people connected to Irish Republican organisations in the 1970’s and 1980’s. These practices were institutionally protected by the non-jury Special Criminal Court and numerous other state organs and functionaries. This court still exists. Justice sleeps there, and right-wing government parties routinely rubber-stamp a renewal once a year. We need to constantly remind ourselves of Bertolt Brecht’s comment about the root causes of a German Nazi’s rise to power in the 1930’s : concerning capitalist decay “the bitch that bore him is in heat again”. Let’s stop making excuses for the Special Criminal Court. It spread cancer within the police force outwards. Today, the following practical steps are necessary :
1. Immediate Abolition of the Non-Jury Special Criminal Court. 2. Immediate State Investigation of the police torturers in the Joanne Hayes case and the state institutions which facilitated them – up to and including courts, governments, and functionaries. 3. Formal rejection of the Lynch Report, rescinding of the “My Story” libel verdict, compensation for the authors (Joanne Hayes and John Barrett).
The absence of effective action meant in the past – and will mean in the future – that the same system continues – and will continue to generate future “Kerry Babies” Miscarriages of Justice.
We recommend “Kerry Babies II” written by the blogger “The Empiricist” in February 2018.
Source : https://korhomme.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/the-kerry-babies-ii/
Joanne Hayes wrote her account which was published as My Story in 1985. She, her coauthor and the publisher were sued for libel by three Gardaí. She had compared herself to Nicky Kelly. Kelly and others had been arrested in connection with the Sallins Train Robbery in 1976. Kelly had ‘confessed’. During the two trials there was medical evidence of ‘beatings’. The Court felt that these were either self-inflicted or done by the co-accused. Kelly was found guilty on the basis of his ‘confession’, but jumped bail. Subsequently, two of the accused were acquitted on appeal as their statements had been taken under duress. Kelly returned to Ireland in 1980, but was imprisoned, though released ‘on humanitarian grounds’ in 1984.
Because the Tribunal, as noted in paragraph 28 of the Summary, had found no intimidation or abuse, the suggestion that what had happened to Kelly had also happened to Joanne Hayes was libellous. An out of court settlement was reached; damages and costs of £100,000 went to the plaintiffs. Unsold copies of the book were ordered to be pulped.
Russian and Ukrainian activists silenced at Greek MeRA 25 party event – Tankie Politics in Action
A shameful story from Athens – source : https://freedomnews.org.uk/2023/03/10/russian-and-ukrainian-activists-silenced-at-mera25-event/ also : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article65987; also
Russian activist Artem Temirov writes on what he sees as a concerning trend within the Hellenic left to fall into a knee-jerk “anti-imperialism” that is in fact anything but.
Author’s note: A significant part of the Greek Left for a very long time has been plagued by narrow anti-Americanism that has replaced genuine anti-imperialism. As a result of that even supposedly more moderate voices on the Left often fell in the trap of siding, even if in a subtle way, with regimes that supposedly oppose the West, regardless of how authoritarian and oppressive they might be. This has created an increasingly widening gap between this Greek Left current and leftist dissidents that come from countries whose governments are perceived by the former as “anti-imperialist”. It seems that the former are disinterested in listening to those who have come to seek refuge and avoid arrest and torture. There have even been recorded cases of representatives of the more hard-line pro-Putinist Left in Greece physically attacked an Iranian refugee at a public event, because the latter protested the pro-Putinist, pro-Mullah propaganda he was hearing. The case presented below, if much milder in regards the confrontation, represents continuation in this worrying trend of Greek leftists refusing to listen to the voices of those who have lived under the boot of supposed “anti-imperialist” regimes. This comes to indicate an ideological dogmatism, as well as a loss in trust in the abilities of common people to self-organize and initiate from below revolutionary change. In the imaginary of such leftists greater hope for social change is placed not on the potentials of popular self-determination and self-emancipation, but on foreign geopolitical powers. This must be perceived as drastic counter-revolutionary regression towards Stalinist type of thinking that can only nurture authoritarian logics.
Last year, my wife and I arrived in Greece. While I am a Russian citizen, my wife is a citizen of Ukraine. She left Kyiv a week after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and I left Russia a few days later because it became dangerous to stay there with an anti-war position, with both us always holding left-wing and antifascist positions. In Greece, we are living under a temporary protection program for Ukrainian families.
Read the rest of this entry »Two Irish Green Party “Rebels” Plan to Vote for Landlords in Dáil Éireann – Thousands of Tenants Will be Evicted
It seems certain that Green Party “Rebels” Neasa Hourigan TD (Dublin Central) and Patrick Costello TD (Dublin South-Central) will vote with FFFGGG coalition colleagues allowing landlords to evict tenants who will become homeless. A bad housing crisis will become worse.
Here is a quote from Deputy Costello’s website : “Ireland needs quality public housing – we need to build more homes, for all ages and incomes. Yet there is very little building happening, either public or private. This needs to change”.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Threshold paints a grim picture :
Read the rest of this entry »This International Women’s Day, Iranian Feminists Are at the Front Lines
There is much that the global feminist movement can learn from the current women’s struggle in Iran and their vision.
About the author, Frieda Afary :
Frieda Afary is an Iranian American public librarian, translator, writer, activist and author of Socialist Feminism: A New Approach (Pluto Press, 2022). She is also the producer of Iranian Progressives in Translation and socialistfeminism.org. Article Souce : https://truthout.org/articles/this-international-womens-day-iranian-feminists-are-at-the-front-lines/
Frieda Afary is an active supporter of the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU). https://ukraine-solidarity.eu/feminist-news-and-analysis
On International Women’s Day, the world is at a turning point. On the one hand, we are facing the global rise of authoritarianism and fascism. On the other hand, popular uprisings for a democratic existence against authoritarianism and imperialism have been emerging in various parts of the world, with popular resistance persisting from Myanmar to Sudan and from Ukraine to Iran.
Women and trans people in the U.S. have suffered a heavy blow with the U.S. Supreme Court’s repeal of the federal right to an abortion, and the intensifying effort of the Republican right wing to repeal or severely limit abortion rights in various states. At the same time, women in Latin America — specifically in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico — have made some important gains in decriminalizing abortion and expanding reproductive rights as part of a broader social justice movement that involves working-class women, including Indigenous women.
Iran has been on the front lines of active organizing by women who have been leading a popular and mostly youth uprising, which was set off by the September 16 Iranian state police murder of a young Kurdish woman, Zhina Mahsa Amini, for her “improper” hijab. This uprising continues to manifest itself in different ways and faces increasingly brutal state repression. It represents both courage and the effort to articulate specific feminist demands.
Iranian Feminists and Labor Activists Articulate Emancipatory Demands
The latest manifestation of the misogyny that seeks to hold Iranian women back has been the systematic and nationwide poisoning of school girls. Since early December 2022, over 1,000 schoolgirls in over 50 schools around the country have become sick with symptoms of nerve gas poisoning. In the lead-up to today, various teachers’ groups, student groups and women’s groups have issued calls to protest the poisoning and to honor International Women’s Day. Feminist and labor groups have also been issuing various statements of demands to articulate their perspectives for a future democratic Iran. These statements have called for free and equal quality education for women and men at all levels without any gender segregation; women’s equal participation in the social, political and economic sphere; reproductive and abortion rights; divorce and custody rights; banning female genital mutilation, child marriage and polygamy; criminalizing gender violence and sexual harassment; categorizing domestic work as onerous labor requiring better compensation; and legal and health services for incarcerated women.
Read the rest of this entry »Ukraine and Ireland – International Women’s Day 2023, Dublin
An Irish Left With Ukraine contingent attended a Dublin International Women’s March from the Spire (O’Connell Street) to Dáil Éireann in Kildare Street. Free Russians Ireland and Women-Life-Freedom (Iran) were also present at the event, which was called by the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) and the socialist-feminist organization ROSA.
About 700 people – mainly young women from many different parts of the globe – participated.
Ukrainian women and the racist genocidal Russian invasion were barely mentioned by the platform speakers. Here are some photos :
Bertie Ahern – a former taoiseach “who accepted large donations from property developers” – seeks an honour from St. Columb’s School in Derry – Eamonn McCann dissents
Join Eamonn McCann and former St. Columb’s College pupils to say to Bertie Ahern : No thanks.
Eamonn McCann writes :
The source is Eamonn McCann’s facebook page ; https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Eamonn%20Mccann
As former students of St. Columb’s College we are dismayed to learn that the college’s Past Pupils’ Union has invited Bertie Ahern to address its annual dinner.
The former Taoiseach was disgraced when it emerged a decade ago that he had played fast and loose with the truth when required to explain major aspects of his finances.
Read the rest of this entry »“War and an Irish Town” – Joan McKiernan reviews a classic Eamonn McCann study of Derry and Partitioned Ireland
Joan McKiernan is an Irish-American socialist-feminist activist living in New York.
Joan McKiernan
War and an Irish Town
Source : https://againstthecurrent.org/atc223/war-and-an-irish-town/
By Eamonn McCann
First publication Pluto Press, 1974. Chicago: Haymarket Books edition, 2018, $20 paperback.
“‘WE’RE GONNA WALK on this nation, we’re gonna walk on this racist power structure, and we’re gonna say to the whole damned government — “STICK ‘EM UP MOTHERFUCKERS.’”
WITH THIS QUOTE from a film of the Black Panthers, Eamonn McCann, launches the Haymarket edition of his classic study of Derry and the North of Ireland Troubles, War and an Irish Town, taking us back to those heady days when so much change not only seemed possible, but likely to happen.
This is an especially timely reissue when the question of a united Ireland is again on the table.
Those in Derry that 1968 night cheering the Black Panthers’ words shared a common goal: the fight against inequality and repression, whether on the streets of Derry or Chicago where Black activists were “then under murderous assault by the feds and local police forces across the US.”
In those years, from Vietnam to Yugoslavia, Chicago to Mexico and many other places, the world was filled with students, workers, communities fighting back. McCann argues that “Each upsurge of struggle sent out a flurry of sparks which helped ignite struggle elsewhere.”
He situates The Troubles in the North of Ireland in this time of international struggles. Those who were there for those struggles should read this latest edition, with a new introduction by the author, to reconsider what happened and why we did not win. Those who were too young at the time can read about those exciting times and what lessons can be learned for the future.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 