Posts Tagged ‘Ireland’
“Israeli basketball player accuses Ireland of anti-Semitism ahead of European qualifier” – Mary Hannigan Report, Irish Times (Updated)
Basketball Ireland says comments were ‘inflammatory and wholly inaccurate’ and has raised them with basketball’s governing body
Unconfirmed reports suggested an Ireland v Israel Basketball match in Lativa, scheduled for February 8 2024, would not go ahead. Unfortunately the match happened, but it was not “business as usual” :
Ten out of Ten to Mary Hannigan for filing this report in the Irish Times :
As if there wasn’t already enough heat surrounding Ireland’s basketball meeting with Israel in Latvia on Thursday evening, the comments of Dor Saar, one of the Israeli squad, have added yet more fuel to the fire.
Speaking to Israel’s official basketball site, which noted that the team isn’t “officially talking about the Irish and their behaviour lately”, Saar, a United States-based student, said: “It’s known that they [Ireland] are quite anti-Semitic, it’s not a secret, so we are expecting an intense game. We need to show that we’re better than them and to win. We speak about it between ourselves, we know that they don’t love us so we will leave everything on the court, as always. And especially in this game.”
Basketball Ireland responded with no little fury to Saar’s comments, branding them, in a statement to the Irish Independent, as “inflammatory and wholly inaccurate”, saying that they had raised her remarks with Fiba, the International Basketball Federation.
Fiba, meanwhile, have said that they will look into online posts by the Israeli federation which featured photos of the Israeli Defence Force’s mixed gender Bardelas battalion, dubbed the Cheetahs, visiting the team in the build-up to the game, one showing an assault weapon lying at the side of the court where they were training.
The Cheetahs include several female soldiers who have been active in Gaza since October. “We are moved by the connection between the Cheetahs unit and the Israel women’s basketball team, which reflects the support of civil society for the IDF,” said Nir Galili, chief executive of the team’s sponsor, Sonol Energy.
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Irish Support for a Patrick’s Day 2024 Boycott of Joe Biden’s White House Shamrock-Drowning Grows
We wish to thank Joe Brolly for posting this image on his twitter feed :
Joe Brolly is tirelessly promoting the cause of the Palestinian people.
Readers familiar with political parties based in the six county state in the north of Ireland may be rubbing their eyes in disbelief – is it really possible that the SDLP is taking a stand on this issue, agreeing with most people on the Irish left, and against the Sinn Féin party? The answer is Yes.
The article below puts a remarkable story in context :
Read the rest of this entry »Sinn Féin Leaders are attending President Joe Biden’s Washington DC White House on Patrick’s Day, March 17 2024 – “drowning of the shamrock” decision has generated an avalanche of hostile left-wing criticism in Ireland
A Patrick’s Day “Drowning of the Shamrock” celebration in Washington DC’s White House, including Irish politicians and the USA President, is a long-established tradition. President Joe Biden is an Irish-American who enjoyed a warm welcome “home” to Mayo and Louth in 2023. Biden’s Irish-American links are very strong and genuine – but many people who welcomed him to Ireland less than a year ago have broken with “Genocide Joe” because of USA political and military support of the Israeli murderous assault on the people of Gaza and Palestine.
An articulate response came from a Derry GAA All-Ireland winner, who is related by marriage to Mr Biden – Joe Brolly’s wife is Laurita Blewitt, a third cousin of Mr Biden.
“President Biden has pledged 14 billion in state of the art weapons of war for Israel to continue to pummel this defenceless population. And 20 trucks of humanitarian aid for Gaza.
https://tomasoflatharta.com/2023/10/24/irish-podcast-host-and-former-gaelic-footballer-joe-brolly-slams-president-joe-biden-over-usa-support-of-israel-a-rogue-state-completely-out-of-control/#more-7255
“I cannot think of anything sicker or more obscene bombing churches, hospitals, indiscriminate slaughter. Israel is a rogue state, completely out of control, as described by many leading Jewish academics and thinkers, acting beyond all norms of morality and anything that we could conceive of as decency and humanity.
“And when Joe Biden goes to Israel and hugs, quite rightly, the parents of those slaughtered children and human beings who lost their lives on 7th October, he doesn’t f***ing go to Palestine and do it and hug the children there and hug the mothers and fathers and tell them that he loves them.
“That alone would bring about a ceasefire. I stand with humanity he should be saying.”
The leaders of Sinn Féin are going to the White House to shake hands with “Genocide Joe” on March 17 2024.
Here is one typical online response :
Read the rest of this entry »Mary Lou McDonald and Pearse Doherty on ‘outreach programme’ to reassure big business, but executives fear wealth tax – IDA boss reveals Sinn Féin plans to woo US firms on corporate tax
Industrial Development Authority (IDA) boss reveals Sinn Féin plans to woo US firms on corporate tax
A daft idea promoted by many political commentators is that if a political party with a left-wing voting base moves to the “centre” (which in this context is a weasel word for “right”) it can win control of a government more easily, and “reassure” the owners of capitalist states at home and abroad. Once the leadership of a political party absorbs this idea, all sorts of radical policies are thrown into the litter bin.
Unfortunately the leadership of the Sinn Féin party is falling into this trap – the left message is : you are in a hole, stop digging.
This Sunday Business Post story shows that significant sectors of the capitalist class understand this dynamic.
Sources :
https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article69361
Mary Lou McDonald and Pearse Doherty on ‘outreach programme’ to reassure big business, but executives fear wealth tax
Sinn Féin has made it clear to top multinationals that it has no issue with Ireland’s corporate tax rate and will not raise it if elected, the new chairman of IDA Ireland has said.
However, Feargal O’Rourke has revealed that the party is determined to hike personal taxes on top earners, in a move that has prompted serious concerns among business leaders.
O’Rourke, the former head of PwC Ireland, said Sinn Féin has “been very much on an outreach programme” with big businesses since the last election to reassure them it will “not rock any boats” should it gain power.
Read the rest of this entry »Racist Scumbags in Ireland Are Burning Unoccupied Buildings – The Hug-a-Thug Policing Strategy of Garda Boss Drew Harris is coming home to roost
A question to Garda Boss Drew Harris : How is the Hug-a-Thug Policing Strategy Playing Out?
In 2023, in his weekly Sunday Independent columns, Gene Kerrigan wrote devastating examinations of Garda Boss Drew Harris’s strategy for dealing with escalating far-right activity in Ireland. November 23 2023 racist riots in Dublin’s city centre prompted this sarcastic Kerrigan twitter comment :
“The classic part of their playbook,” Drew Harris said of the far right, “is an over-response by the authorities. We are not going to fall into that trap.” How’s the hug-a-thug policing strategy playing out, Drew?
Source : The Drew Harris Hug-a-Thug Policing Strategy
Racist riots erupted on Dublin’s streets on November 23 2023. The “hug-a-thug” philosophy of Drew Harris finds its way into this Irish Times report :
Many Garda officers do not accept the disturbances on the night were “far-right riots”, saying the event was more nuanced. They say the trouble was whipped up by a small far-right element before opportunists with no ideology seized the chance to go on a rampage, taking on gardaí and looting shops.
Conor Lally, Crime & Law
How far right-sparked violence dominated the year in policing during 2023, Irish Times December 27 2023
The Irish Far-Right is on an arson roll – its activists are burning unoccupied buildings which are earmarked to house homeless refugees.
Read the rest of this entry »Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin opens the door to coalition with Sinn Féin
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said there would be “huge difficulties” with his party going into government with Sinn Féin, but did not rule out the possibility of such a coalition after the next election.
Irish Times December 26 2023
Fianna Fáil (FF) and Fine Gael (FG), two tweedledum and tweedledee capitalist parties, have controlled every government running the southern 26 county bit of partitioned Ireland since a 1921 Treaty was signed with the former occupying power, Britain. A carnival of reaction followed on both sides of the Irish border.
Faced with a false choice between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the only rational policy for the left was and is : no coalition, on principle, with any right-wing party.
The need for this policy is explained in this interview with Paul Murphy TD (People Before Profit, Dublin South-West) : To all of them we say: rule out coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – interview with Paul Murphy TD after the February 2020 Irish General Election
Read the rest of this entry »The comments of Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald TD on Ukrainian refugees in Ireland are a mistake
I note the statement by Mary Lou Mc Donald TD,leader of Sinn Fein with regards to her view that the position to grant special status to Ukrainians following the Russian invasion in 2022 was a mistake.
At the time her party supported the government position. While party banners were not present, Mary Lou Mc Donald was present for protest outside the Russian Embassy in July to mark 18 months since the invasion.
I think it unfortunate that the Sinn Fein leader has now expressed a sense of regret at the level of support for Ukraine in Ireland. Sinn Féin and others have been loud in the support for Palestine rightly, but like so many have left their attention drift with regards to Ukraine.
Rather than reacting to the menacing activity of far right activity and call for a more robust policing and courts response to the fire attack at a hotel in Galway, the Sinn Fein leader’s comments will embolden the nativist elements.
Read the rest of this entry »A Leon Trotsky, a Chara – A short post(card) and festive greetings
Thanks to Maurice Casey for this story : a postcard from Paul Kirchoff to Leon Trotsky, sent from Ireland in May 1933. Source ; Paul Kirchoff to Leon Trotsky, Dublin, May 23 1933
My final piece of work before I turned on the ‘out of office’ for Christmas was to return to some sources I accessed in the Leon Trotsky papers, now stored in Harvard, and partly digitised.
Among the documents I looked through were postcards sent to Leon Trotsky from Paul Kirchoff, a German revolutionary and anthropologist who spent part of the early 1930s working with the Harvard-Irish study.
One of Kirchoff’s letters to Trotsky from Ireland stood out because it opened with the Irish-language greeting ‘A Chara’, meaning ‘Dear friend’ (more-or-less). It was sent in May 1933 and is otherwise written in German:
I don’t have any deep analysis of this document for you.
Read the rest of this entry »An Immigrant History of a Dublin Street – Reflections: Dublin’s racist mobs smashed the city centre, 23.11.23
From O’Connell Bridge to the Gate Theatre, via Jamaica, Finland, Ukraine and France – Maurice J Casey
Introduction :
Maurice Casey’s article is brilliant.
This article should encourage all Irish revolutionary socialist activists who are anti-racists to examine our connections with the Eastern part of the European continent.
Below Maurice’s article we publish the words of Imelda May’s stunning poem “You Don’t Get to be Racist and Irish”.
An Immigrant History of a Dublin Street – From O’Connell Bridge to the Gate Theatre, via Jamaica, Finland, Ukraine and France
My thoughts are with all those impacted by the attack that took place in Parnell Square, Dublin, on 23 November. You can find some fundraisers to help here.
Irish migration history is traditionally told as a history of emigration outwards. We rarely talk about the history of immigration inwards to Ireland.
Yet a migrant population has existed in Ireland throughout its modern history. And this community’s overlooked story reflects common European migrant experiences: adversity, cultural influence, assimilation, xenophobia, and so on.
In other words, it is the kind of history that defies notions of Irish exceptionalism.
To explain more, let me take you through the immigration history of a single patch of Dublin city centre. Together, we can traverse the same streets associated with the appalling images from last Thursday; from O’Connell Bridge up towards the Gate Theatre.
I’ll try and give those images of the far-right instigated riots, now burned into so many of our anxious minds, a few historical counterpoints.
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Tomás Ó Flatharta 