Tomás Ó Flatharta

Looking at Things from the Left

English Queen Kicks Bucket : Loyal Mass Media Bans Joke: “the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes” – London Forelock-Tugging Mocked

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American Columbia Journalism Review retaliates – reporting the Sky multinational media corporation

removed jokes including a reference to the Queen’s passing as “the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes.”

New York based Irish-American Correspondent Joan McKiernan circulates real news :

These are just some of the things that have been canceled—or stopped, or banned, or discouraged, or quietened, or postponed, or revoked—somewhere in the UK since the Queen died last week, out of respect or to facilitate other people paying theirs. (When the British network Sky rebroadcast the latest episode of Oliver’s US late-night show, it removed jokes including a reference to the Queen’s passing as “the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes.” Sky declined to comment to Deadline about the changes.) Beside those that have affected the media directly, all the cancellations have provided the press with a running storyline this week, alongside a packed calendar of official mourning. They have occasioned much comment on social media, too. A Twitter account called @GrieveWatch has grown in popularity, highlighting not only cancellations but overbaked expressions of public grief. Currently pinned to the top of its feed is a video posted by a prominent right-wing commentator—who once mocked Meghan and Harry for attending a “personal” remembrance event with a photographer present—showing him engaging in some “quiet reflection” outside Buckingham Palace. “The important thing is that you filmed it,” @GrieveWatch wrote.

Correspondent Jon Allsop decided to sacrifice 12 hours of his life – the things some people must do to earn a crust – life is often cruel :

Of course, the packed calendar of official mourning has been themajor storyline this past week across major news organizations. It’s been a huge deal globally, including in the US, with networks dispatching staff to London, cutting into programming to broadcast the latest ceremony, marveling at British “pomp and circumstances” (sic), and lining up plummy-voiced royal commentators straight from British-stereotype central casting. But British news outlets, as is only right and proper, have shown the way.

Yesterday, I settled in at 8am local time with the intention of watching twelve consecutive hours of British TV news coverage; the mourning calendar was relatively empty—King Charles III took the day off—but Britain’s mourning period still had days to run, and I was curious to see if major networks had run out of things to say yet. Reader, I did not quite make it twelve hours, though I gave it my best shot. I started on the BBC, where news from the outside world (the war in Ukraine, the retirement of the tennis great Roger Federer) occasionally punched through, but where the biggest story, to begin with at least, was the real-time progress of a line—soon known to Brits simply as The Queue—that snaked for miles through central London as mourners waited hours for the chance to observe the Queen’s casket lying in state. (The BBC is also livestreaming footage of the casket, “for people who want to pay their respects virtually.”) Reporters queued up themselves to interview people in The Queue. Some particularly intrepid journalists joined it themselves and reported back, including a science correspondent at The Times of London, who was the twenty-second person in line. His boss had decided there was “nothing happening in science,” he wrote. Nothing at all.

Back on the BBC, a reporter was talking to two women who had brought loved ones’ ashes to see the Queen. Half an hour later, the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared on-screen in a high-vis jacket and started to interview people in The Queue as a reporter tried to interview him. At 10:47am or so, the BBC cut away from The Queue for a video interview with a man who edits a newsletter called Our Corgi World. The man batted away concerns that the Queen’s death could tank the popularity of corgis as pets while shoveling treats into his own dogs’ mouths. “Edward, Mungo & Barney, corgis,” the on-screen chyron read. After that, I cut away from the BBC to watch Sky News, which was also interviewing people in The Queue: a woman with a net over her face in tribute to the Queen’s love of horse-riding; a man who was born on the same day as King Charles and claimed he’d received extra milk rations and similar “goodies” from the palace as a result. “There’s been a royal vein through my life from day one,” the man said. If he seemed happy to talk at length, the same couldn’t be said for interviewees in a different, faster-moving section of The Queue, with a reporter having to gallop to keep pace with them as if she were staking out a recalcitrant politician. (Talk about queue anon.)

Marty. Turner, Irish Times, September 17 2022

Reader, if you can bear it, click the source for more :

Source : https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/queen_mourning_media_coverage.php?utm_source=CJR+Daily+News&utm_campaign=7bcb053024-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_11_06_33_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9c93f57676-7bcb053024-174914994&mc_cid=7bcb053024&mc_eid=b33e596e19

“When more than 70,000 demonstrators gathered in Prague on 3rd September, two different stories immediately emerged” – The Art of Telling Stories and A Wake-Up Call for the Left

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In 2022, Previously stable political certainties have been shredded on the European Continent. One example comes from Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic. It is dramatic. The far-right : anti-vaxxers, anti-Ukrainian racists, fans of ultra-racist imperialists Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin – led the demonstrators. Vivek Prokop explores “a wake-up call for the left”

Source : http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article63953

Czechia: the crowd on Wenceslas Square

Sunday 11 September 2022, by  PROKOP Vítek

Czech Republic/Czechia

They say that politics is an art: the art of compromise, the art of getting along with people, but also the art of telling stories. When more than 70,000 demonstrators gathered in Prague on 3rdSeptember, two different stories immediately emerged. According to one story, it was an action by the Russian fifth column, according to the other story, it was a protest by desperate citizens. So what was really happening on Wenceslas Square?

At first glance, it seems that everything important about this “Czech Republic First “protest has already been said. For example, the fact that one of the organizers, Ladislav Vrabel, has big debts, and that the money to organize the protest was sent to a non-transparent account belonging to his wife. Another key organizer, Jiří Havel, has become famous for recommending chlorine dioxide, which is otherwise used as bleach, for the treatment of covid. Both men are members of the anti-globalisation movement “Restart World Freedom,” which was launched by the American investment banker and Donald Trump supporter Catherine Austin Fitts.

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“Monarchy is steeped in the crimes of British colonialism and imperialism” – Statement Issued by PBP Belfast Councillor Matt Collins

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Vincent Doherty reports :

Hear,hear comrades. I remember being at the front of a banned march in Derry in 1977 to mark the Queens visit. Some of those who organised and took part in the march are the same people in Stormont now fawing over the late monarch. Shame on them, shame, shame, shame!

Vincent Doherty

PBP COUNCILLORS STATEMENT ON MONARCHY CORONATION

Today, Belfast City Council will meet for a special meeting to pay tribute to the Queen and welcome the coronation of a new King.

People Before Profit will not participate in these tributes. As a socialist organisation, we view celebration of the monarchy as an inherently political act.

There is no lack of sympathy on our part for any individual who dies, and we are not without respect for those who wish to mourn at this time.

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Support Ukrainian Resistance and Disempower Fossil Capital

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Several left-wing authors co-operate here arguing for support to Ukrainian Resistance against the Russian imperialist invasion. The authors come from several different parts of Europe.

This is the source : http://europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article63931

Thursday 18 August 2022, by BUDRAITSKIS Ilya, DUTCHAK Oksana, ETZBACH Harald, GEHRKE Bernd, GELINSKY Eva, HÜRTGEN Renate, KOWALEWSKI Zbigniew Marcin , LOMONOSOVA Nataliia, PEREKHODA Hanna, PILASH Denis, POPOVYCH Zakhar, SCHMID Philipp, WÄLZ Christoph, WIELGOSZ Przemysław, ZELLER Christian

Similar debates are occurring on the left in Ireland : https://tomasoflatharta.com/2022/08/22/a-strange-policy-is-reviewed-support-ukraines-resistance-against-an-imperialist-russian-invasion-politically-but-oppose-giving-arms-to-the-resisters-a-critique-of-iri/

On June 9, Heino Berg, Thies Gleiss, Jakob Schäfer, Matthias Schindler, Winfried Wolf published a detailed statement in Junge Welt in which they advocated an “anti-militarist defeatism” and the abandonment of Ukraine’s military resistance to the Russian war of occupation. [1] We take her article as an opportunity for a fundamental response about a necessary anti-imperialist ecosocialist perspective committed to global solidarity. We are appalled at the way they bend the reality of war in this article and ultimately argue in favor of Putin’s oligarch regime. Paternalistically, they recommend that the Ukrainian population submit to Russian occupation in order to end the war. The authors make not the slightest reference to socialist, feminist, and anarchist forces in Ukraine and Russia. They argue from a distinctly German perspective. They are not alone in this. Many statements of the old peace movement turn against the “escalation of the West” and “forget” that Russia has already escalated long ago and wants to systematically destroy Ukrainian society. The statement of the five authors ignores anti-imperialist solidarity to such an extent that we consider it appropriate to set our arguments against it.

Reversal of Responsibility

The statement of the authors reads like many contributions from the old peace movement and a one-sided sham anti-imperialist left. Of course, at the beginning of the text they condemn the invasion of Ukraine “without any reservation or relativization.” But afterwards they do exactly that: they relativize the aggression of the Putin oligarchy. Under the title “No Interest in Ceasefire,” they explain in detail why NATO is much worse than Russia and that the West, first and foremost the U.S., does not want an early ceasefire but is primarily using the Ukrainian battlefield to weaken Russia.

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French Lessons for Irish Forelock-Tuggers : “We are a republican country. Why should I pay tribute to a foreign monarch?”

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The Irish élite and its satellites 🛰 are tugging the forelock to the British Monarchy after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. French left-wing politicians are having none of it. The message must spread in Ireland, and other parts of the world. “We are a republican country. Why should I pay tribute to a foreign monarch?”


Several left-wing mayors are defying government orders to fly flags at half-mast for the Queen’s funeral, earning support from French people who say President Macron and the media are lavishing excessive attention on the British monarchy.

Report Source : The Times (England, September 12 2022) Charles Bremmer, Paris.

The row was opened when Yann Galut, mayor of the central city of Bourges, and Patrick Proisy, mayor of Faches-Thumesnil, on the Belgian border, announced that they would disobey the instruction from Élisabeth Borne, the prime minister, that town halls and other public buildings must lower the Tricolour to half-mast next Monday, the day of the funeral.

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Written by tomasoflatharta

Sep 13, 2022 at 10:51 am

Whiteys Mourn an English Queen at Buckingham Palace, London

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Whiteys gathered at a London Palace because the English Queen died..

“Throngs of mourners gathering outside Buckingham Palace on a rainy day saw a rainbow form over the palace. This is being taken as some kind of divine omen rather than a natural phenomenon related to rain. Some are crying & the crowd broke spontaneously into an off-key “God Save the King” even after it was announced she was dead. The whole scene would be touching if it didn’t signify that too many Brits have a dysfunctional relationship with a woman they only knew from her hand-waving on TV. It’s not surprising that as far as the eye can see that crowd is lily white, kind of Tory-like, way too many white people in a single location for anyone else to feel safe.”

Mary Scully

We can all do better than this.

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“Humanity isn’t losing anyone special” – English Queen Kicks Bucket

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Irish-American Activist Mary Scully reports :

Betty Windsor finally kicked the bucket today. She died peacefully in her bed surrounded by her mutant feudal offspring of free-loaders & supremacists. We’ll spare the moment of silence in respect to the millions of human beings who were/are terrorized, brutalized, tortured, dismembered, raped, bombed by agencies of the government which Betty represented for 70 years.

Judging from the crocodile tears on Twitter, many people–& not just Brits–either had a mummy thing going with her or identify with British colonialism in a way they don’t normally admit to. Her death has brought out the worst in them. The chorus of bereavement crescendoes by the hour until now it resembles nothing so much as the braying of jackasses.

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After over 6 months of war Ukrainian workers need to hear our voices of support

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Irish Left With Ukraine (ILWU) distributed this leaflet at an Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) Global Solidarity Summer School.


After over 6 months of war Ukrainian workers need to hear our voices of support

Irish Left with Ukraine are a recently-formed group of trade unionists, socialists and anarchists who have come together to help to amplify voices of support from the Irish Left for Ukrainian workers and trade unionists in their desperate attempts to repel the Russian invasion of their country. We believethere is absolutely no excuse for the savagery, destruction and death that hasbeen unleashed on the people of Ukraine. Claims that Putin is trying to remove fascism or ‘denazify’ Ukraine are palpably false. He is in fact one of the biggest supporters of the far right and it is clear that this is an attempt by Russian imperialism to expand the territory under Russian control.

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“The biggest and most destructive war in Europe since the Second World War. A war waged for more than four months against Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe, by Putin’s Russia, the largest country in Europe!” – Demands that the left should put forward

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The author of this report is Stefan Bekier, a former left opposition activist in Poland against the dictatorship of the “Communist” Party and an activist of Ensemble! in France https://fourth.international/fr/europe/88.

Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article63883

See also : https://blogs.mediapart.fr/stefan-bekier/blog/070922/la-gauche-en-france-doit-sortir-de-son-silence-sur-la-guerre-en-ukraine

The majority of the left in France – we’ll leave aside the sectors that openly support Putin – condemns this war of aggression by Russian imperialism, demands the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. But at the same time, it remains paralysed and voiceless, abandoning the field of defence of Ukraine to Macron, to the bourgeoisie.

A deafening, shocking silence

Presidential and parliamentary elections are traditionally the moment when strategic priorities are debated and compared, including those concerning the international situation. But, for most of the left in France, it is clear that Putin’s Russian war against Ukraine was not part of its strategic priorities during these elections. Probably, to avoid the very important divergences on this issue between the different components of the left-wing coalition Nupes from coming to light during the election campaign and weakening the very promising new alliance. In particular, in relation to the very controversial positions of part of the left on Ukraine and Russia since the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donbass in 2014. So much so that during the elections the subject practically disappeared within the left

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During World War 2 French, Polish and Yugoslav workers did not much care who supplied them with arms – Marxist History Notes in Relation to Ukraine’s 2022 War of National Liberation Against Russian Imperialism

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The Irish uprising is 100 per cent justified. Even if German imperialism tries to profit from it, even if leaders of the national movement link up with German submarines – VI Lenin

https://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1976/xx/trots-ww2.htm?fbclid=IwAR0qN9NhtAiVhh1GHpSI1tWvKN-Pe3aEPHyUc9a4kIzuRWHJaDduMwBhUlU

We are presenting some Marxist history notes in relation to Ukraine’s 2022 war of national liberation against Putin’s Russian imperialist invasion.

The above quotation from the Russian Bolshevik leader VI Lenin – who praised the Easter 1916 Rising in Ireland – is deployed by Ernest Mandel who offered some extremely useful analyses of World War 2, which he suggests was “a combination of five different wars”.

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