In one of the most disturbing recent Irish government announcements, Mícheál Martin has repeated his administration’s intention to press ahead with legislation to get rid of the triple-lock dealing with Irish military involvement abroad. Designed to protect this country’s neutrality, the triple-lock curtails the unrestricted deployment of Irish troops in […]
Current Affairs
St Patrick’s Day Subservience
It is hardly surprising that many progressive people have become increasingly uneasy about the Sinn Féin leadership’s relationship with the British establishment. Party vice president and Stormont First Minister, Michelle O’Neill, was recently pictured in a close embrace with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, while only last May, along with […]
A Carefully Crafted Story – RTÉ’s Inside Penneys
Fresh off the back of a year of public-private financial blunders, including revelations of Ryan Tubridy’s secret overpayment, UK-based barter account use, undisclosed free-car deals and a Toy Show Musical money-pit scandal, our public-service broadcaster is back with ‘Inside Penneys’. During the summer of 2023, Motive Television / RTÉ production […]
Gaza and the War Addiction of the Imperialist Class
We are in a pivotal moment in the global anti-war movement. Not since the Iraq war and the start of the so-called “global war on terror” have we seen so many people actively engaged in direct action, political education, boycotts and sustained protest. Rarely, if ever, has the racism and […]
Ulster Says No
On 18th January 2024, 150,000 public sector workers joined together in a wave of strikes across the North. The main reason for this strike was pay. Workers were demanding pay increases that match inflation. Public sector workers’ pay has been falling behind inflation for more than a decade: more than […]
NATO killed peace in Ukraine
In early May 2022, Ukrayinska Pravda broke the story that March 2022 peace talks between Ukraine and Russia held in Istanbul were derailed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Right after the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators agreed on the design of a future possible agreement based on the outcome of […]
2024 – A Year for Change
Make the new year a year of resistance of hope and of solidarity. Capitalism is dragging human development backwards. The appalling videos and images of death and suffering coming out of Palestine, in particular from Gaza and the West Bank, have shocked billions of people across the world. Our TV […]
The Triple-Lock, Neutrality, the UN and a Federal EU
The ink is barely dry on the report on Micheál Martin’s shambolic consultative forum where a rogues’ gallery of defence industry-funded “experts” decried the backwardness of the Irish public for having an “emotive attachment in some quarters to the concept of neutrality as part of our national identity.”[1] Martin, not […]
A lumpenproletariat?
What is the nature of those elements now aligned to the anti-immigrant, anti-trans, “nationalistic” and conspiratorial movements seen in Ireland recently? Do such movements mobilise from within particular and consistent segments of the class structure? Are such mobilisations evidence of a risk of far-right elements moving towards mass influence? What […]
The continued dangers of standing up to abusers
The exposé of Russell Brand this month by the Channel 4 documentary “Dispatches,” and the on-line vitriol that followed, was a stark reminder of the continued dangers of standing up to abusers in a post-MeToo society. A number of women and former colleagues were interviewed on their experiences with the […]
BRICS summit strengthens the bloc
The 15th summit of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) was held in South Africa in August under the slogan “Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development, and Inclusive Multilateralism.” More than sixty countries from around the world participated in this summit, which made the momentous decision to […]
The EU and Cuba
The high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, Josef Borrell, visited Cuba on 25–27 May to represent the EU at the third Joint Council of the EU-Cuba Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA), which was set up in 2018. This process, established with the full […]
The Ryan Tubridy scandal: a masterclass in distraction
On 22 June, RTE announced that it had overpaid Ryan Tubridy of the “Late Late Show” by a figure of €345,000. This was done through secretive deals and barter accounts, and resulted in Tubridy earning more than €500,000 each year. The following weeks saw wall-to-wall coverage of the scandal in […]
The challenges facing rural Ireland
The big item of conversation within the farming and rural community is the “Nature Restoration Law,” which is the EU Commission’s plan to restore more than a fifth of the EU member-states’ land and sea area by 2030. This is the first biodiversity law since the “Habitats Directives” in 1992; […]
Lives are ignored while profit is upheld
The recent events of June involving the death of five rich men dominated the media. As all eyes were on the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean those fleeing war, poverty and climate change were ignored as they drowned in the seas crossing to Europe. According to the EU commissioner for home […]
ChatGPT should not be your biggest worry
If you don’t work in tech, most probably you have heard of ChatGPT, and thought that it’s amazing. Actually many who do work in tech would share your amazement—a system that can mimic humans to the extent that, many argue, it can pass the Turing test, the gold standard for […]