Open the Borders! Let Refugees Enter Europe! Shameful Scenes at Greece-Turkey Border – Huge Anti-Racist Demonstrations in Athens
Brendan Young :
Great to see this demonstration in solidarity with Syrian and other refugees seeking escape from the terrible conditions of the camps in Turkey and Northern Syria. The Irish government should publicly distance itself from the despicable and shameful stance of the president of the European Commission who has praised the current right wing government of Greece as the ‘shield’ of Europe – by physically driving refugees from the border and killing some in the process. Urusla von der Leyen may speak in the name of the ruling bureaucracy of the EU and the governing parties of EU member states and be cheered by racists and neo-nazis, but she evidently does not speak for the ordinary people of Greece and many others across Europe. Open the borders: let refugees into Europe. Provide money to move people out of the overcrowded camps on the Greek Islands – not to further militarise the borders. End the struggle between the poor and the very poor for scarce resources caused by the the austerity which the EU imposed to pay for the bank bailouts, a struggle that is fueling racism and the far right, by lifting the EU restrictions on public spending so as to fund the housing, health and social services needed by both the existing population and migrants.
Dubai ruler organised kidnapping of his children, UK court rules | World news | The Guardian
The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, is an international criminal. Perhaps he will be the next monarch visiting President Michael D Higgins of Ireland in the Phoenix Park. It is time to stop grovelling to Royal Parasites. Read the rest of this entry »
Every state is a battleground – Howie Hawkins, Green Party USA Presidential Candidate in 2020 – Standing on the Ecosocialist Left Against the Democrats and Republicans
Every state is a battleground
— Read on solidarity-us.org/every-state-is-a-battleground/
Howie Hawkins is the Green Party Candidate in the USA 2020 Presidential Election.
He eloquently presents the case against making a “lesser evil” choice between the two wings of one American Capitalist Party – the Republicans and the Democrats. 
FFFGGG Government Emerges in Ireland
A Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green/Gombeen (FFFGGG) Government Emerges – a Treble F Treble G GeeGee is galloping towards the winning post – lots of dosh waiting in the trough for the greedy nags.
Sinn Féin Talking to Fine Gael – and the Social Democrats Offering Coalition With Either Leo Varadkar or Mícheál Matrtin
A useful post from the Cedar Lounge Revolution Blog :
Okay, intriguing that FG are willing to talk to SF. Perhaps the penny has dropped with some that not talking is a bad look for political parties in a democracy. Can FF hold their line in light of this?
But more interesting again is the following from the SDs:
Ms Shortall and Ms Murphy reiterated the party’s position that they would not enter government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, but would consider serving in government with one of the two parties and Sinn Féin.
https://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2020/03/04/an-interesting-distinction/
The ballroom dances are not over! Coalition with FFFG is a one-way ticket into Dante’s Inferno.
Words on Des Bonass (died 26th September 2019), commemorative evening, Teachers Club, 29th February 2020.
Words on Des Bonass (died 26th September 2019), commemorative evening, Teachers Club, 29th February 2020.
Delivered by Des Derwin, on behalf of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions.
Des Bonass, a constant campaigner in a long life of activity in the most stirring and also the most unproductive political times, is missing, just missing, the extraordinary outcome of this month’s general election. The upending of a century of duopoly by Tweedle Fail and Tweedle Gael, a surge for change at the ballot box, the development of a left-right configuration, however confused, and a crisis in mainstream, establishment politics. ‘Who would have thunk it’? An overflow crowd outside a political meeting in Liberty Hall [25th February 2020] addressed in the biting wind by one the speakers who has come out to speak to them too. In the 21st century.
Well, such is the lot of many a life-long political activist. Things happen just after you are gone. But that is not the way we think and its not the way Des would have thought. Because he worked and acted in the here and now; he did what could be done at the time. And because he helped set the present in motion, and a lot of other big steps too in the past. And because we are this evening giving Des his rightful place in whatever is happening now, because of his contribution, and because he would have been no less a part of the big things, and the small less-noticed things, than he ever was. And finally, what is happening this month is – if indeed it keeps up and develops – only a small proportion of the eventual historical events that will be needed, and that will follow, and will probably be missed by most of us here too, to bring about the really momentous social change that Des Bonass stood for, and worked for and carried a clear vision of in his head, throughout his long trade union, republican and socialist life. Read the rest of this entry »
British Royal Vultures Visit Ireland in 2020
James Connolly
Unfortunately Irish President Michael D Higgins is among the grovellers in March 2020!
A correspondent notes : Actually it’s nice that welfare recipients are able to take a brief holiday. I suppose they’ll be sending holiday post cards of Ireland back to Benefits Street. And to think our budget strapped national broadcaster can spend resources reporting on these scroungers. It’s win-win all around.
How should Marxists react to Bernie Sanders becoming the front-runner?
How should Marxists react to Bernie Sanders becoming the front-runner?
How should Marxists react to Bernie Sanders becoming the front-runner?
— Read on louisproyect.org/2020/02/24/how-should-marxists-react-to-bernie-sanders-becoming-the-front-runner/
Louis Proyect looks at the Bernie Sanders phenomenon in the USA, and offers large doses of reality countering a lot of socialist hype. Putting it in local terms, the USA Democratic Party is no better than Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael – it is certainly worse.
I get email from Bernie Sanders every so often. Naturally it is soliciting a donation, which I naturally ignore. What if instead the Sanders apparatus used their database to invite people living in my neighborhood to attend a meeting to discuss how to protect undocumented workers on the Upper East Side from ICE?
Better yet, what if Sanders gets screwed by the DP bosses in a brokered convention and Joe Biden or some other piece of shit gets nominated? Wouldn’t it be about time for him to run as an independent and begin to use his money to create a staff in every major city in the USA that is committed to his democratic socialist principles? I would jump in with both feet even if I, like other leftists, have problems with his willingness to base F-35s in Vermont. As it happens, I also had big problems with Ralph Nader in 2000 but was glad to vote for him as a Green Party candidate since I believe that CLEAN BREAK with the Democratic Party is the key task facing the left.
Instead, it is likely that Sanders will endorse another Democrat if he is cheated out of the nomination. To some extent, this is just a function of an old man not having the psychological and physical reserves to face up to the brutal opposition from the liberal wing of the ruling class that Nader faced in 2004. Probably, the one thing that is not factored into the Jacobin/DSA thinking is the degree to which Sanders is an outlier. Shaped by the same political sea change that turned me into a revolutionary socialist, he decided instead to become an evolutionary socialist in the Eduard Bernstein mold.
I would even be happy to back a party based on Bernstein’s evolutionary socialism in 2020 as long as it had the same kind of class independence that the German social democracy had. Within that party, I would fight for a revolutionary perspective like Luxemburg and even Kautsky did. But within the Democratic Party, I would say “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”, the words Dante written on the walls of Hell before entering it.
The deepening standoff over the Irish Protocol
On 12 February a team from the European Commission met a group of Northern Ireland business organisations at the University of Ulster campus in Belfast.
— Read on www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2020/0229/1118290-brexit-blog-tony-connelly/
It is time for the Irish Radical Left to Get Real about Brexit.
EU Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier Responds to the British Government Attempting to Waive the Rules – Perfidious Albion is playing ancient tricks :
“Barnier is becoming increasingly insistent on making the point,” says one source, “not least to Dublin, that if this thing doesn’t go well there are only two options for Ireland. One is the imposition of a land border, the other is exclusion from the single market.”
Tomás Ó Flatharta 