Tomás Ó Flatharta

Looking at Things from the Left

Posts Tagged ‘Palestine

Peace between neofascists and war on oppressed peoples – the Trump-Putin Anti-Ukraine Summit in the land of Saudi Arabian Bloodbaths

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Convicted Rapist-President Donald Trump (USA) and wanted international war criminal President Vladimir Putin (Russia) are knifing Ukraine Palestine and Syria, hosted by the Saudi Arabia bloodbath kingdom.

Three sociopathic assassins (Putin, Trump, and Mohammed bin Salman) have form. Barcelona journalist Cristina Mas notes : “This format would have been unthinkable just five years ago, after the murder of journalist and opposition leader Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a crime that prompted condemnation around the world and the cooling of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia”

From the pro-Ukraine left, useful interpretations are circulating.

Links :


Understanding the Implications of US Vice President JD Vance’s Confrontational Speech at the Munich Security Conference – Daniel Tanuro

Extract :

In a highly confrontational speech delivered at the Munich Security Conference opening on 14 February, US Vice President JD Vance declared that the “internal threat” facing Europe was more serious than that posed by Russia and China. He criticised the annulment of a recent election in Romania, the prosecution of an anti-abortion protester in the United Kingdom, and the exclusion of far-right and far-left German politicians from the event itself.

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The FFFGBG (Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Beggar Gombeens) Programme for Government – Racist Devils in the Detail

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A friend has begun vital work – examination of the 2025 FFFGBG Programme for Government, which contains lots of measures these parties did not propose during the recent general election campaign.


Alarming things

The programme for government has a few alarming things in it – (and the government has a few alarming people in it) eg there’s lots of commitment to reduce carbon emissions alongside actions and plans that will directly increase carbon emissions. There’s a bunch of mangled science around the particular characteristics of methane and it’s basically a valentine card to those involved in data center construction.

Shutting people up over Israel’s genocide

It also has a commitment to recognise a particular and highly contested definition of anti- semitism which would help those who want us to shut up about Israel’s genocide and occupation – and which was as far as I can remember not part of any single party or politician’s election platform. It would be very interesting to find out how and from where and on whose request this made it into the programme.

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Written by tomasoflatharta

Jan 30, 2025 at 4:03 pm

Posted in 1921 Treaty Partitioning Ireland, 2004 Referendum Amending Citizenship Definition in Irish Constitution, Adoption, Apartheid, “A Carnival of Reaction” - James Connolly’s Warning About the Partition of Ireland, Beggar-Gombeens (BGs), Catholic Church, Censorship, Child Abuse, Corruption, Direct Provision - Irish Gombeen State Racism, Dublin Governments, Emigration and Immigration, Feminism, FFFGGG Coalition, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Gombeens, Poltroons, History of Ireland, Hope and Courage Collective, Human Rights, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Ireland's Open(ish) Border, Irish General Election February 8 2020, Irish General Election November 29 2024, Israel, Israel Assault on Gaza, October 2023, Legislation in Ireland to Legalise Abortion, Martyn Turner, Cartoonist, Mobilising to Oppose Violence Against Women, Moriarty Tribunal, Mother and Child Scheme, Noël Browne, Seán MacBride, Clann na Poblachta, Racism, Saint Rita’s Nursing Home, Ranelagh, The Irish Times, University Occupations, Israeli Genocide 2025, Vatican, Violence Against Women, Women

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On arming Ukraine and the struggle against Militarism – European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine Declaration

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The European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU) has denounced the Russian invasion
of Ukraine from the very beginning and fully supports the Ukrainian right of self-defence.

The Ukrainian people’s armed resistance is just. It is not taking place as part of military aggression by NATO, the United States or any Western country, but as defence against the declared war aim of Russian president Vladimir Putin: to reconquer the fictitious “Russian world” supposedly lost with the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Since Ukraine’s armed resistance is legitimate, all states that regard themselves as democratic and upholders of law-governed international relations have the responsibility to help the Ukrainian people defeat the Russian invasion.

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Elections (USA): Making Sense of Trump’s Victory & the Necessary Resistance – Frieda Afary

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Frieda Afary has written an excellent analysis (see below). She shows that the Democratic party candidate Kamala Harris lost 10 million votes compared with Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Trump’s vote totals in 2020 and 2024 were almost identical.

Source :
Elections (USA): Making Sense of Trump’s Victory & the Necessary Resistance (ESSF)


This article analyzes the vote breakdown, the pundits’ views, argues that Trump is a fascist and offers perspectives for the needed anti-fascist resistance.

Donald Trump’s election as president, and the Republican victories nationwide are a catastrophe for progressive forces in the U.S. and around the world. What the November 5, 2024 election showed was that while this country is still divided, there has been a rightward shift nationwide and across all demographic and geographic groups. (Levitt, 2024)

Vote Breakdown:

Let’s take a closer look at the demographic breakdown of the votes. Approximately 72 million voted for Harris and 75 million voted for Trump. Approximately 700,000 voted for Jill Stein and 700,000 voted for Robert Kennedy. This means that Democrats received 10 million fewer votes than in 2020 when Biden received 81 million. Trump received approximately the same number of votes he received in 2020. (U.S. Election Results, 2024)

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Taoiseach Simon Harris Announces Irish General Election on November 29 – Heading to Phoenix Park HQ of President Michael D Higgins to dissolve current Dáil – Support Credible Radical Left Candidates

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https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/1108/1479774-end-33-dail-general-election/

Simon Harris confirmed that he’ll travel to Áras an Uachtaráin shortly to ask President Higgins to dissolve the Dáil.

The election is set for Friday 29 November 2024.

A number of radical left candidates against any coalition deal with FFFFGGG have a realistic chance of winning a Dáil seat. [FFFGGG = Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Greens, Gombeens].

One of them is Councillor John Lyons in Dublin Bay North.

Councillor John Lyons (Second left) supports Irish Left With Ukraine (Seen Here Picketing the Dublin Russian Embassy of Vladimir Putin

Rejecting any coalition deals with FFFGGG and a policy that All refugees Are Welcome should be top priorities for radical left candidates in this general election.

People Before Profit (PBP) candidates also endorse the above policy.

Link :


No Coalition with FF or FG – PBP Conor Reddy

John Meehan, November 7 2024

Written by tomasoflatharta

Nov 8, 2024 at 2:22 pm

Posted in 26 County State (Ireland), Anti War Movements, Boris Kagarlitsky, Councillor John Lyons, Direct Provision - Irish Gombeen State Racism, Dublin 7 for All, Dublin Communities Against Racism (DCAR), Dublin Governments, Dublin’s racist mobs hit the city centre, 23.11.23, Elected Left for Ukraine, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Free Russians Ireland, Green Party, History of Ireland, Holly Cairns TD (Cork South West), Hope and Courage Collective, Independent Left (Ireland), International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, Ivana Bacik TD, Labour Party Leader, Labour Party (Ireland), Left Unity, Mary Lou McDonald TD, Micheál Martin TD, Niamh McDonald, Paul Murphy TD Dublin South-West, People Before Profit, Political Prisoners in Russia, President Michael D Higgins, Racism, Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), RISE, Roderick O'Gorman TD, Russia, Show Racism the Red Card, Simon Harris TD, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats (Ireland), Ukraine

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Resolution: The War and the Future of Ukraine and the Left Movement – Author : Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh) [Ukraine]

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The resolution below was recently adopted by a left-wing organisation in Ukraine : Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh).

Here is one of many important statements very relevant to the left in Ireland and elsewhere :

The growing contradictions between the centers of capital accumulation in the world capitalist system will not stop even after the complete destruction of Russian imperialist power. The left in Europe and around the world turned out to be helpless and disoriented when the Russian aggression in Ukraine occurred. Unless the international socialist movement realizes mistakes it has made and builds a new, truly internationalist cooperation and coordination, we simply have no chance of preventing the growth of inter-imperialist struggle in the future.


Resolution: The War and the Future of Ukraine and the Left Movement

Link :
Resolution: The War and the Future of Ukraine and the Left Movement – Author : Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh) [Ukraine]

Категорія: ПОЗИЦІЯ

The people of Ukraine have been facing hard challenges, yet they have proven their ability to fight for the right to decide on their own fate, and their determination to defend the country and to end the war as soon as possible. The authorities and representatives of market-fundamentalist ideology, together with big business, keep pushing through an economic model focused on benefiting a minority at the expense of the welfare of the absolute majority

The people of Ukraine have been facing hard challenges, yet they have proven their ability to fight for the right to decide on their own fate, and their determination to defend the country and to end the war as soon as possible. The authorities and representatives of market-fundamentalist ideology, together with big business, keep pushing through an economic model focused on benefiting a minority at the expense of the welfare of the absolute majority. In this model, workers are completely subservient to the will of their employers, while social and regulatory functions of the state are abolished for the sake of “business needs”, “competition” and “free market”.

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The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election – Grim Presidential Tales from the USA

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Sharon Smith, writing for International Socialism, explores the control wielded by the Democratic Party establishment over the nomination process in her article, “The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election.

Foreword : USA Presidential elections are shit-shows – mud-slinging works.

Readers may know a famous Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) quip about why he called his opponent a pig fucker. Johnson admitted it wasn’t true, but “I want him to have to deny it,” he explained.

Mr Johnson became President of the USA in November 1963, taking over from the assassinated John F Kennedy.

Johnson won an election landslide in 1964 claiming his opponent Barry Goldwater was a fanatical warmonger. By 1968 demonstrators all over the globe were marching against the USA invasion of Vietnam – a favourite chant was :

“Hey, Hey, LBJ

How many kids did you kill today”

Donald Trump (age 78) looked more mentally capable than President Joe Biden (age 82) in a recent TV debate. The New York felon, convicted in a jury trial and fined 86 million dollars for sexually assaulting the writer E Jean Carroll, is now up against a more formidable Democratic party opponent Kamala Harris (age 59). The gloves are off :

“Ms Harris, speaking at a private fundraiser headlined by singer-songwriter James Taylor in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, said much of the rhetoric coming from Mr Trump and his running mate, US Senator JD Vance, was “just plain weird.”

Her use of the word “weird” to describe her opponents was part of a new strategy from Democrats.

The Harris campaign called Mr Trump “old and quite weird” following his appearance on Fox News on Thursday, and at least one supporter showed up outside the event yesterday holding a sign proclaiming “Trump is weird.” – RTÉ News Report


The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election – by Sharon Smith

What the Democratic Party establishment wants, it gets—and that includes its chosen presidential candidate. It had anointed Joe Biden well before the election primary season got underway in early 2024. This is why Biden ran virtually unopposed and predictably won every Democratic primary.

But the path to Biden’s reelection was not as smooth as Democratic Party leaders envisioned, mainly because Biden’s cognitive decline—underway for several years—has accelerated in recent months. Perhaps the leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed they could shield the public from Biden’s decline through the entire election cycle by limiting his time in the public eye. That strategy backfired badly. The Party leadership is entirely to blame for the ensuing chaos. But don’t expect them to change course.

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Biden in the Bardo – Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

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Jeffrey St. Clair writes a fact-stuffed polemic in the online magazine Counterpunch, which is relentless – like witnessing the last hours of an exhausted punch-drunk emperor surrounded by grovelling flunkies.

Till now, I did not know the concept Bardo :

Bardo “is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between

death and rebirth. The concept arose soon after Gautama Buddha‘s death, with a number of

earlier Buddhist schools accepting the existence of such an intermediate state, while other schools rejected it”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo

Thanks to Joan McKiernan for the link.

While we can not be sure which mechanism will be used to remove Joe Biden from his White House job, we can be sure his days as a power-wielding President are over. Expect a shit show next week; Democrats praising new President Kamala Harris; Trump’s coronation at his republican party gets little media attention : and plenty of gruesome gaffes from old man Donald are likely to surface.

July 12 mass media reports showing the world Joe Biden’s mistakes are only the tip of the iceberg :
Biden makes ‘VP Trump’ gaffe amid calls to end campaign

Here is the Jeffrey St. Clair article :


Biden in the Bardo

by Jeffrey St. Clair

Seymour Hersh said Biden isn’t all there. Thomas Friedman and Jane Fonda were reduced to tears. Rob Reiner, who watched the debate with Fonda in LA in the company of Doug Emhoff, the husband of Biden’s VP Kamala Harris, screamed at the TV: “We’ve lost.” One of the party’s top money-bundlers told Politico: “Our only hope is that he bows out, we have a brokered convention or he dies. Otherwise, we are fucking dead.” These were just some of the shock reactions to Joe Biden’s somnambulant performance in his debate against Trump last week in Atlanta. 

Biden’s decrepit appearance, death-rattle voice and baffling answers shouldn’t have been a surprise. He’s 81-years-old and he’s been descending into senescence for years. But most people, including many of his most ardent supporters, hadn’t seen this diminished version of Biden before on extended display. 

Biden doesn’t make many prolonged public appearances anymore. He hasn’t given a full-press conference in nearly a year. He’s been kept on a tight public leash by his staff, restricted to short interactions with the White House press gaggle or prepared remarks fed to him by a teleprompter. Even then he’s seemed halting, confused, and mentally frail.

Carl Bernstein – the Watergate Journalist – describes Biden’s “horror shows”

During an interview with CNN, Carl Bernstein said multiple sources told him there have been at least 15 occasions in the last year and a half “where the president has appeared like he did at that horror show (his debate performance).”

Bernstein said that in the last six months, sources have told him there has been a marked rate in Biden’s cognitive decline.  He says that some of his sources have taken their concerns to Ron Klain in the last year, worried that the President is losing his train of thought and didn’t have the capacity to pick up where he left off.  Bernstein described a fundraiser at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York in June of 2023, where the President became “Very stiff…almost like a kind of rigor mortis.” 

Biden’s staff and family are charged with protecting him. The media isn’t. Most other courtier reporters surely knew what Bernstein had heard. Yet, they’ve largely been complicit in covering up Biden’s accelerating cognitive decline, presumably because of their deep hatred of Trump, whose faculties, such as they are, also seem to be in an advanced state of decay.

As Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times, wrote in Semafor: “It’s clear the best news reporters in Washington have failed in the first duty of journalism: to hold power accountable. It is our duty to poke through White House smoke screens and find out the truth. The Biden White House clearly succeeded in a massive cover-up of the degree of the President’s feebleness and his serious physical decline, which may be simply the result of old age. Shame on the White House press corps for not to have pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the President.”

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British General Election 2024 – Highlights and Lowlights – Loveless Landslide, Sandcastle Majority. Far-Right Hiding in Plain Sight, House of Paisley Falls in Antrim – and a Message of Hope from new MP Shockat Adam, Leicester South

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Let’s start with positive news :

Shockat Adam MP, Leicester South – “This is for the people of Gaza”.

When you listen to this June 25 car-crash interview with former Leicester South Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth, you would be forgiven for thinking he was a member of the far-right racist party, Reform.

Shockat Adam was not alone. Five pro-Gaza independent candidates (including former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North) are members of the new Westminster parliament :

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Written by tomasoflatharta

Jul 6, 2024 at 3:22 pm

Posted in 26 County State (Ireland), Alliance Party, Anti War Movements, Anti-Capitalist Resistance (Britain), Apartheid, “A Carnival of Reaction” - James Connolly’s Warning About the Partition of Ireland, Boris Johnson, Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Brexit - Britain Leaves the EU, Britain, British Empire, British Labour Party, British Tory Party, Channel 4 (Britain), Colum Eastwood MP (Derry), Conservative Party (Tories), Britain, Democratic Unionist Party, Derry, Dublin Governments, England, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Union, FFFGGG Coalition, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Fourth International, Green Party, History of Ireland, Ian Paisley Junior MP, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish News Newspaper (Belfast), Israel, Israel Assault on Gaza, October 2023, Ivana Bacik TD, Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Joe Brolly, John Swinney, Labour Party (Ireland), Left Wing Organisations, Liz Truss, ex British Prime Minister, Migration in Europe, Nigel Farage, Orange Order, Racism, Reform, Reverend Ian Paisley, Rishi Sunak - 3rd 2022 British Prime Minister, Russia, Sammy Wilson MP, Scotland, Scottish Independence, Scottish National party (SNP), Sinn Féin, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP, Sir Keir Starmer, Six County State, Sorcha Eastwood MP, Stormont, Lord Carson’s Tomb

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Birds of a Feather Flock Together – Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Sammy Wilson MP (DUP, East Antrim)

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There is more to this story than initially meets the eye. Much capitalist development is based on Ethnic Cleansing of original populations and the plantation of new non-indigenous populations – it happened in the United States of America (USA) and Australia – naming just two. It did not happen so brutally in Ireland – but British imperialism made a significant effort.

Links :
Plantation of Ulster
Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland – Wikipedia

The Northern province of Ulster was “planted” in the 1600’s, but the native Irish were not completely exterminated. Waves of native Irish emigrated – especially in the 19th century after a misnamed Famine (in reality a “Great Hunger” caused by British Imperialist Policy) drove millions of the native Irish to the four corners of the globe. These emigrants kept alive the idea of Irish freedom, and played a significant role in every attempt to rid Ireland of British rule.

The stubborn Irish “national question” remains on today’s agenda because of the 1922 Anglo-Irish Treaty which divided Ireland into 2 sectarian states. A key feature of extreme Irish Unionism is identification with plantation/ethnic cleansing forms of capitalism – and that goes a long way towards explaining Irish far-right Unionist sympathy for the present day attempted ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Ukraine. We should situate recent pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine statements by the British far-right politician Nigel Farage and Sammy Wilson within this framework :

Nigel Farage Endorses DUP Antrim MP’s Wilson and Paisley, Dumping a different extreme unionist, Jim Allister

Link :


The Russian imperialist occupation of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk is ethnic cleansing capitalism in action – accompanied by child stealing and abuse similar to the behaviour of the Catholic Church in the 26 county bit of Ireland from the 1930’s to the 1990’s.

An excellent Ukrainian blog, Ukr-Taz, covers the story of Putin’s ethnic cleansing dreams in Ukraine, and Donald Trump’s enthusiastic support :

Trump on Putin’s “dream”

29 06 2024

For all that can be said about Thursday’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump — including about the former’s dismal performance and about the boundless creativity of Trump’s fabrications on almost every topic under the sun — Trump’s curious note about Putin’s “dream” stood out to me:

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