Never Again – Savita Sought an Abortion in a Galway Hospital – Irish State Said No – 3 Days Later She Died
Months ago ULA TD Clare Daly TD proposed a new law to implement the 1992 Supreme Court Judgment in the X Case. 20 Dail Deputies voted Yes to Clare’s bill – they have nothing to be ashamed about. 111 Deputies, mainly Fine Gael and Labour Government Deputies, voted against the X Case Bill. Shame on them. Time for a new emergency bill – never again.
London conference: New parties of the left
On Saturday 29th September the British group Socialist Resistance organised a very interesting day of discussion in London on the new European, broad, pluralistic, left parties. It was a kind of update of their seminal conference on the same theme held in London in 2000. Minus one or two of the organisations that have since died or shrunk. As is common on the British left there was no cognisance of Ireland or the ULA in the published programme for the day.
It was also a kind of ‘film of the book’ of the uneven but instructive New Parties of the Left: Experiences from Europe (Resistance Books 2011).
Both Tomás and I were at the 2000 meeting but as it was a busy weekend I unfortunately could not travel to this meeting. Never mind, technology has since allowed us to attend meetings without actually going to them and many of the speeches were recorded and put up on the Socialist Resistance website. The actual line up seems to have departed slightly from the advertised billing.
Below is the line up for the day and then the filmed speeches in the rough chronological order in which I think they were delivered.
Des Derwin
New parties of the left
A day of debate organised by London Socialist Resistance
Saturday 29 September, 10:30am – 5pm
With Stathis Kouvelakis (Syriza), Kate Hudson (Respect), Adam Hanieh (author and activist), Sandra Demarcq (NPA – France), Andrew Burgin (CoR), Alan Thornett (Socialist Resistance), Michael Voss (Red Green Alliance – Enheidlisten, Denmark), and Phillipe Nadouce (Front de Gauche).
At ULU, Malet Street, London, WC1
stathis-kouvelakis-on-greece-6376827
kate-hudson-on-new-left-parties-6376775
denmark-s-red-green-alliance-6376835
the-radicalisation-in-the-arab-world-6376840
the-need-for-broad-parties-of-the-left-6376878
Barbara Wilson, SWP member, has died
Those who knew her in the SWM and SWP will be saddened by the news of Barbara Wilson’s death. She was a very nice person. I met her again briefly about two or three years ago at ‘Marxism’ in Dublin. I am amazed to find that she was near her 85th birthday when she died. For a short obituary from Kevin Wingfield:
http://www.swp.ie/content/obituary-barbara-wilson
Des Derwin
ULA Public Meeting Friday 28th September: ABORTION RIGHTS NOW!
To mark International Decriminalisation of Abortion day the United Left Alliance has initiated a public meeting on the struggle over decades to legislate for the X case and to achieve abortion rights in Ireland.
– Psychiatrist Dr Veronica Keane will challenge the idea that a termination does irreparable psychological damage to a woman;
– Independent researcher Pauline Conroy will track the history of Choice activism in Ireland since the 1970s;
– ULA TDs Joan Collins and Clare Daly ULA TD will examine the legislative situation;
– March for Choice organiser Sinead Redmond will outline the reasons for holding Saturday’s eventThe meeting will be chaired by co-convenor of Feminist Open Forum Ailbhe Smyth
Dear Mandela: South Africa today
Louis Proyect, the Unrepentent Marxist, has posted a review of the documenay Dear Mandela
It would be impossible to overstate the importance of “Dear Mandela”, a documentary now showing at the IndieScreen Theater in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn through tomorrow evening. After a decade or more of Hollywood movies like “Invictus” or “In My Country” that can best be described as public relations for the ANC, a fierce documentary directed by Dara Kell, a South African now living in the U.S., and Christopher Nizza, finally catches up with reality–a system of economic apartheid has replaced one based on race.
Just as the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 helped galvanize a movement against racial apartheid, the slaughter of 36 miners in Marikana creates the political context for a new freedom struggle based on class. To understand how South Africa has entered a new terrain of struggle, there is no better introduction than “Dear Mandela”, a film that focuses on the struggle against slum clearance in the name of “development” that took place in the outskirts of Durban.
Receivers at Clery’s in Dublin
A wake up call for anyone who believes government spin that we are making progress out of the recession
There has been speculation “on the street” for over a month about the imminent appointment of receivers to the Clery’’s department store on O’Connell Street and this evening RTE reports that a receiver has indeed been appointed to the company, Guiney and Company Limited, which owns the iconic department store on O’Connell Street.
RTE reports the receivers saying that the store will remain open and it “will be business as usual” but the industry has been that a receivership will allow Clery’s to give notice to the various concessions which operate in the store.
Clery’s has had a long and chequered history, including a period in which it was owned by notorious Dublin businessman William Martin Murphy. It has been in the Guiney family since 1941, survived recessions in the 1950s and 1980s but overplayed its hand in the 2000s when it got into the property development game.
It is…
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Book Launch – Ireland in the World Order, written by Maurice Coakley – Thursday September 20, 7.00pm, Teachers’ Club 36 Parnell Square West, Dublin 1
Invitation to a Dublin launch of a new book :
Ireland in the World Order, written by Maurice Coakley
Maurice Coakley focuses on key elements that contributed to Ireland’s development, examining its bloody and violent incorporation into the British state, its refusal to embrace the Protestant Reformation and failure to industrialise in the 19th century. Coakley considers the crucial question of why Ireland’s national identity has come to rest on a mass movement for independence.
Andy Storey will launch the book
Details :
Thursday September 20, 7.00pm, in the
Teachers’ Club 36 Parnell Square West, Dublin 1
Feel free to bring a friend
Ireland in the World Order examines Ireland’s development from the medieval to the modern era, comparing its unique trajectory with that of England, Scotland and Wales.
Maurice Coakley focuses on key elements that contributed to Ireland’s development, examining its bloody and violent incorporation into the British state, its refusal to embrace the Protestant Reformation and failure to industrialise in the 19th century. Coakley considers the crucial question of why Ireland’s national identity has come to rest on a mass movement for independence.
Cutting through many of the myths – imperialist and nationalist – which have obscured the real reasons for Ireland’s course of development, Ireland in the World Order provides a new perspective for students and academics of Irish history.
About The Author
Maurice Coakley lectures in the Journalism and Media Studies faculty of Griffith College, Dublin.
More information at this link :
Ireland in the World Order – by Maurice Coakley
Murdering South African Miners – and Killing the Truth
Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA Prisoner in Long Kesh, has written a powerful article on the Marikana Platinum Mine Massacre :
Murdering Miners in South Africa – Anthony McIntyre
While ANC leader and South African president Joseph Zuma has called for a commission of inquiry and declared a national week of mourning. Cyril Ramaphosa, once a militant workers’ leader and now a multi-millionaire with shares in the Lonmin mine, has offered to pay for the funerals. Zuma and Ramaphosa are total hypocrites. The massacre of these workers is the perfectly logical outcome of the entire course of the ANC since it won the country’s first democratic elections in 1994 – Shan Van Vocht
Earlier this month at the Marikana platinum mine near Johannesburg armed South African police massacred striking miners who attacked their lines. 34 lives were lost. That’s 20 more than the Irish experienced in a similar massacre in Derry just over 40 years ago and which continues to shape Irish perceptions of the British state’s security trumps rights agenda.
The story has now taken a “bizarre twist”
Frank Lesenyego, a spokesperson for South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority offers this explanation:
Asked to clarify the confusion – after police commissioner Riah Phiyega had earlier confirmed that the miners died after police shot at them with live ammunition – Lesenyego said: “It’s technical but, in legal [terms], when people attack or confront [the police] and a shooting takes place which results in fatalities … suspects arrested, irrespective of whether they shot police members or the police shot them, are charged with murder.”
On August 16, police shot dead 34 striking mineworkers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in North West.
On the same day, the 259 workers were arrested for public violence. Another 78 were admitted to hospital.
You could not make it up.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 