Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
This is the fourth in a five-part series on the politics of power. Earlier articles asked what makes rights real, why some prevail over others, and how that hierarchy is reproduced through the state and its institutions. This article follows that machinery beyond the border. In September 2024 the Court […]
In December 2025, representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and Israel signed the Pax Silica declaration, a strategic initiative to secure the global supply chains for advanced information and communication technologies and, in particular, artificial intelligence. Like other prongs of the wide US […]
The Dublin government’s decision to abolish the Triple Lock marks a significant departure from the 26-county state’s traditional policy of military neutrality. Here we see the “extreme centre” at work – imposing technocratic and neoliberal political outcomes over and against popular sentiment while presenting them as the only responsible course […]
Sinéad O’Shea’s documentary All About the Money was screened in Dublin on 26 September as part of the IFI Documentary Festival 2026, followed by a Q&A with O’Shea. Her documentary is a story of Fergie Chambers, in particular following his activities in the period from 2023 to 2025. It premiered […]
A chara, Many seem to believe that China holds the silver bullet for helping the Cuban Revolution, struggling at the moment against the intense and vicious US blockade, and threats of military invasion. This is a simplistic criticism of Beijing that essentially amounts to wanting China to do a deus […]
January 3, 2026, marked a turning point in Venezuela’s contemporary political history. The U.S. military intervention, the bombings of national territory, and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores constituted an open violation of sovereignty and gave way to a new balance of power, in which the United States […]
During his recent visit to Ireland, Donald Trump behaved much as expected. Unwilling to share the limelight, he stole attention from Shane Lowry, winner of the Irish Open, by announcing a lifting of tariffs on Irish whiskey exports to the USA. This populist gesture in Doonbeg was, however, superseded by […]
In the spring of 1920, as the young Soviet Republic struggled for survival amid internal and external siege, Lenin penned “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder. The pamphlet took aim precisely at those West European communists who considered themselves “more Left” than the Bolsheviks. Lenin pointed out that this “Left-wing” infantilism “regards […]
There is a long history of powerful, dominant states practising what we might describe as defining or controlling the narrative. This is done by steering public opinion so that one specific interpretation becomes dominant within society. The objective is to ensure that those in power retain their position by building […]
Football is the global language of ordinary people. It is played on any suitable surface (and many unsuitable surfaces) by working people in every corner of the world. But the World Cup stands above this mass, democratic experience, a political and economic spectacle, a plaything of FIFA, multinational corporations, broadcasters […]
The 22-point ‘manifesto’ of the Epstein class has been floated by Alex Karp, the CEO of the tech giant Palantir—the company that provided the AI system called Movan Smart Systems, which killed 167 children in a girls’ school during the Iran war and helped orchestrate the genocide in Gaza. The […]
St Petersburg (Leningrad), 2026 – If you are considering visiting Russia, let’s cut through the Western media noise: I would genuinely recommend travelling. It is rewarding, eye-opening and surprisingly easy, with one genuine headache: Western bank cards. Before we left, we secured our visa online in under five days – […]
A question for our readers. Is the Trump presidency an aberration in an otherwise properly functioning governmental structure, or is this bizarre regime symptomatic of a deeper malaise? Let us examine the situation. Donald Trump is an obnoxious, unscrupulous, vainglorious, unprincipled thug. He is also a convicted felon who, as […]
Elbridge Colby, the US Under Secretary of War for Policy, took to Twitter in April to celebrate the EU stepping up to the plate, declaring that “NATO must no longer be a paper tiger”. He said: “Germany is now taking the leading role in this. After years of disarmament, Berlin […]
This is the first in a five-part series on the politics of power. It begins by asking what makes rights and freedoms real. Later articles will examine the hierarchy among them, the machinery that sustains it, its international organisation through imperialism and dependency, and how working people can build counter-power. […]
Last month, the Communist Party of Ireland commemorated the 1953 revolutionary assault by El Movimiento 26 de Julio on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba with a solidarity vigil on Ha’penny Bridge, Dublin and a Cuban Film Festival in the New Theatre, Temple Bar. Moncada was not merely a […]