Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Last month the ugly face of capitalism came into the public glare when thirty-nine people froze to death in the back of an Irish juggernaut, having been smuggled into Britain from Viet Nam.
Later on, as November came to a close and the Christmas shopping frenzy was in full swing in the streets, on television and radio and in the newspapers, sixteen people were discovered in the back of another juggernaut, on its way to Rosslare. Mercifully, they were alive.
In 2010 Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning) was working as a US military intelligence analyst when she came across a video of an American helicopter crew calmly massacring Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. So shocked was she that she sent the video to Wikileaks, which published it, thereby exposing the nature of the US military occupation of Iraq.
LAST MONTH a talk was given in Berlin and other European cities by Grassroots Al-Quds, a Palestinian group that is organising civil-society resistance to Israeli occupation. It aims to build an economic base within East Jerusalem to try to liberate occupied Palestinians from their dependence on NGOs and settler-colonialism.
The world in which we live is finite. It does not possess infinite, everlasting resources. And it is fast approaching the point of no return as we face imminent climate catastrophe. If we are to save humanity and protect the world for future generations we have to radically change the […]
In mid-July the British military detained an oil tanker, the Grace I, carrying crude oil from Iran as it was heading to Syria.
Failing to see the irony, the Government and Fianna Fáil voted—on World Refugee Day, of all days!—to send fourteen members of the army’s Ranger Wing (Ireland’s SAS) to war in Mali.
The minister for defence, Paul Kehoe, told the Dáil that the country was a victim of “terrorism,” and we must play our part.
Mali is not just some poor country plagued by “terrorism.” It’s worse: it’s a poor country plagued by imperialism.
Last November a very impressive peace conference was held in Dublin: the First International Conference against US and NATO Bases. The main impetus for this conference came from the peace movement in the United States. Many of the participants showed their seriousness and determination in organising the Embassy Protection Collective […]
Our planet is on the verge of an environmental catastrophe. Billions live in abject poverty; millions more go hungry for want of food or clean drinking water. The gap between rich and poor grows and grows. The wealthiest 1 per cent of people on our planet could fit in a […]
Last month the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces [INF] Treaty, which was concluded with the Soviet Union in 1987. That treaty was the first nuclear disarmament agreement ever to be concluded between the two countries, albeit to the disadvantage of the Soviet Union. It led to the […]
On a wet night in February 1912, Winston Churchill, first lord of the admiralty, addressed a cheering crowd of more than seven thousand nationalists gathered in the old Celtic Park football ground in Belfast. He was there to promote the third Government of Ireland Bill (often called the Home Rule […]
Let’s hear it for the Donald. A round of applause for the great educator. In the face of criticism, ridicule and condemnation, the US president crossed the Atlantic and delivered a virtuoso performance. No other occupant of the Oval Office has visited Europe and provided such a clear and unambiguous […]
The crisis of the capitalist economic system continues to grow, and the imposition of limited tariffs on steel imports etc. by the United States is just another symptom of this deepening crisis. The reaction of the liberal establishment in the European Union shows clearly its weakness in relation to the […]
Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko was credited with killing 309 fascist invaders With the Trump government in the United States turning an already opaque and Kafkaesque machinery of violence against the marginalised into a more overt American fascism, and the rise of the far right throughout Europe, mechanisms of resistance have […]
While speaking recently in Germany, the left-leaning economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis described Ireland as a tax haven, “free-riding” on the rest of Europe. Coincidentally, within a few days of his address to the IFO Institute for Economic Research in Munich1 two of Europe’s most powerful right-wing […]
A number of events in late June must raise serious concerns regarding the direction in which this state and its political establishment are going, and wish to bring us. Firstly there is the appointment of a former deputy chief constable of the PSNI as commissioner of the Garda Síochána. Relatives […]
The European Union’s crisis of legitimacy continues to develop, as do the attempts by those elements that call themselves the “liberal centre”—that is, those political parties and the economic interests they serve that are central to the EU’s further integration and are attempting to use that crisis to mask their […]