REPUBLICANS, IRISH REPUBLICANS AND SOCIALISM

On September 2, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Imperialism, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

I wish to briefly clear up what I believe to be some confusion about the terminology in the title, basing not so much on opinion but relying in the main on fact as illustrated by history.

I will attempt to show thereby that Republicanism and Irish Republicanism are different things ideologically and that socialism is different from both of them.

Republicanism entered the world as a political aspiration and, after revolutions in Britain, France and the USA, practised as a system of Government. It proclaimed electoral democracy for its citizens (at first men but later women) – but quite clearly the bourgeois class ruled society.

*George Washington, Republican, being presented with the flag of the early American Republic.* (Image sourced: *Internet*)

It was a democratic bourgeois (essentially capitalist) ideology characterised by individual choice,¹ opposition to feudalism and monarchy and separation of church and state. It was not essentially socialist nor even anti-colonial, as we can clearly see from its early examples.²

Republican government was overthrown in Britain (English and Scottish administrations), the monarchy restored and in time a kind of compromise monarchy-democratic system evolved. The republican system in France and the USA remained and is with us to this day.

*Painting of Oliver Cromwell, an English Republican whose name became part of a curse in Ireland (including for Irish Republicans!).*
(Image sourced: *Internet*)

Irish Republicanism also developed as a bourgeois ideology (drawing on English, French and US Republican thinking)³ but it was clearly also in favour of Irish sovereignty and therefore against the colonialisation of Ireland.⁴ Once measures of reform were blocked it became revolutionary.

This gave rise to the revolutionary organisations of the United Irishmen of the 1790s and early 1800s and the Young Irelanders of the middle of the 19^th Century; also of the Irish Republican Brotherhood of the later 19th.

The IRB or Fenians however had a strong working class character and were admitted to the First International Workingmen’s Association, the first international socialist organisation. However, Irish Republicanism remained a bourgeois ideology albeit democratic and revolutionary.

Socialism

The ideology of socialism has a long pedigree but was made more concrete under and in opposition to capitalist society. It found development on a scientific ideological and organisational basis particularly with the work of two German migrants to Britain, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

This ideology emphasises communal over individual ownership of the means of production, distribution and use/ consumption and sees the socialist state as a stage on the way to communist society. Its mantra is: From each according to their ability, to each according to their contribution.⁵

In terms of implementation the Paris Commune of 1871 was the first socialist capture of a city and the October Socialist Revolution of 1917⁶ in Russia the first time a country was taken by socialists.⁷

Irish Republican ideology continued into the early decades of the 20^th Century with its military organisation first the Irish Volunteers of the 1916 Rising and later, the Irish Republican Army of the War of Independence, whose leadership split over the English offer of autonomy with partition.

Ireland had been kept under-industrialised by colonialism but socialist political organisation was developing slowly in some urban areas. In 1896 Connolly and others founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Dublin and in 1912 he and Larkin also the Irish Labour Party.

In 1911 Larkin had founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.

The employers strove to break the ITGWU and implemented a Lockout of union members or supporters in 1913; attacks on the workers by the Dublin Metropolitan Police led to the defensive creation of the Irish Citizen Army – the first workers’ army in the world.⁸

Some Irish Republican leaders and followers sympathised with the strikers and some did not but the Republican movement did not mobilise in their support with the exception of a number of members of Iníní⁹ na hÉireann, which would later split between the ICA and Cumann na mBan.

In 1916 the IRB organised an insurrection with the participation of its Irish Republican military forces of the Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBan and Na Fianna Éireann united with the Socialist force of the Irish Citizen Army (including women members).¹⁰

The War of Independence 1919-1921 was led by the Irish Republican movement with some support, particularly in intelligence and arms smuggling, by the Irish Citizen Army.

The Civil War 1922-23¹¹ followed the British offer of autonomy with partition, as the leadership of the Irish Republican movement, including a section of the IRA split. The ICA had lost its leadership but did not join the neo-colonial side and in subsequent years faded organisationally.

The main opposition leadership to the State returned to being nationalist in the shape of Sinn Féin and the Anti-Treaty IRA, both of which split again with a substantial number joining the De Valera-led Fianna Fáil, which would soon show itself to be also neo-colonial in outlook and practice.

In this period a Socialist current grew within the Irish Republican movement, responding to international and domestic events including the growth of fascism. The short-lived Republican Congress attempted to combine the Socialist and Irish Republican currents in one broad front.

The Irish Republican movement leadership and substantial sections of its membership was however socially conservative and largely dominated by Catholic Church influence. The IRA responded to the Republican Congress with a new anti-communist rule and the expulsion of Congress members.

*Frank Ryan, IRA and International Brigades, Socialist* (Image sourced: *Internet*)

This sad part of the history of the Irish Republican movement illustrates very clearly the separate nature of Irish Republican and Socialist organisation. The IRA of the 1930s were Irish Republicans but anti-socialist and those who joined Congress had begun as Republicans but were now socialists.

Or Socialist Republicans perhaps but with the emphasis on socialism. Henceforth other variants would exist, of Republicans who were socially conservative, or liberal, or socialist-influenced … but Irish Republicans first and foremost.

Such an ideology would allow them later to unite to focus on a war against the colonial occupation of one-sixth of the nation but to largely neglect the social, economic and cultural issues arising from a socially conservative neo-colonial regime affecting the majority of the Irish population.¹²

There may be a tragic illustration of the difference between revolutionary Irish Socialism and revolutionary Irish Republicanism in the last of the Dublin 1916 executions, on 12^th May, of the socialist James Connolly and of the Irish Republican Brotherhood organiser Seán Mac Diarmada.

Connolly was one of the leaders of the ITGWU and its Irish Citizen Army which had fought the bitter eight months against the Lockout to smash the union. Mac Diarmada is reported opposing the workers’ action, believing that Irish manufacture and trade would lose out to English competition.¹³

CONCLUSION

There are Irish Republicans who are revolutionary socialists and Irish Republicans who are not. There are also some revolutionary Irish socialists who are not strictly speaking Irish Republicans. All can and should join in the struggle against British colonialism and other imperialism.

A sovereign Irish Republic on a united 32 Counties would be a great progressive step, for democracy and against imperialism and colonialism. It would not, however, be socialist just because it was Irish Republican, even if it adopted some socialist measures.

A socialist Ireland would be one in which the working class ruled and its measures would include socialisation of all productive enterprises including factories, agricultural and construction enterprises and distribution centres, i.e any which employed workers not of the owner’s family.

And socialisation of all transport and communication networks and social and health services in addition to financial services.¹⁴

If it did all the above the regime in Ireland would be socialist and would not even need to call itself ‘Republican’.¹⁵ If it were not socialist then it would be capitalist and the struggle for socialism would need to confront the Irish state which would in turn seek to repress the socialist struggle.

Republicanism and Irish Republicanism are different things and socialism is different from both of them.

If people wish a socialist society they should not expect Irish Republicans to present them with that but will instead need to educate, organise and lead their own revolutionary socialist forces while simultaneously participating in the broad anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1And property, of course.

2English Republicanism did not in general envisage the right of Ireland to self-determination, nor France agree with the national rights of the Breton and Basque nations, nor of the colonies abroad for independence; nor the USA of the rights of the Indigenous not to have European settlers occupy their land.

3Largely adopted by sections of business and professional classes of the Occupation, i.e settlers and descendants of settlers.

4Many Irish Republicans were historically able to collude in English settler colonialism in Australia and early colonial occupation of America, as well as later USA settler colonialism into lands still held by the Indigenous Americans.

5However, in communist society, it was understood that the second half of that slogan would be ‘to each according to their needs.’

6The earlier February Revolution had been a workers’ strike and bourgeois uprising against war and the absolutist power of the Tsar. Incidentally it had been only the second revolution against world war, as the 1916 Rising in Ireland had been the first.

7I am not discussing its development or degeneration here, which would take us away from the central topic of discussion.

8Most armies chiefly recruit from the working class but the ICA was specifically for as well as of the workers.

9Modern spelling, meaning: ‘Daughters’.

10That they were distinct forces is clear in their development and leadership but in the membership the differences would not always be so clear-cut. The Constitution of the ICA was Irish nationalist but required all members to be trade union members and people chose an organisation to join on the basis of family and social circle loyalties.

11Also described as ‘the counter-revolution’.

12And eventually lose that always unwinnable war.

13 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/the-sean-mac-diarmada-papers-this-blood-was-not-shed-in-vain-1.2524097 However Brian Feeney in the 16 Lives series is quoted as stating the opposite, which is true of Mac Diarmada’s mentor Thomas Clarke. I have not seen Feeney’s evidence for Mac Diarmada’s sympathies.

14Though transport and communication services have been socialised by capitalist states, the majority of financial services are rarely socialised.

15Though it could do so, of course and probably would.

SUPERIORITY ENTITLEMENT COMPLEX AND RACIST IDEOLOGY

On August 31, 2025August 31, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Sovereignty, Political Analysis, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 3 mins.)

A video clip of Tom Barrack, US Ambassador to Turkiye giving a press conference in Lebanon, in which he accused the journalists of ‘animalistic’ behaviour and threatened to be ‘out of there’ if they continued has led to much criticism.

I’d imagine Tom Barrack was tired and his patience thereby more easily stretched – I know myself how that can be. But in that circumstance, his diplomatic training stalled and out slipped his real inner attitude to the people to whom he had been sent as ambassador – the Arabs.

The journalists accepted it meekly but according to reports, the Lebanese Press Editors Syndicate called on US envoy Tom Barrack and the US State Department to issue a public apology to the Lebanese media. Some Lebanese politicians and ordinary civilians reacted even more angrily.

Lebanese in the south held a protest rally and scrawled on the ground in large letters that “Barrack is animal” and reportedly had baskets of tomatoes ready to throw at this man who is not only the USA’s Ambassador to Turkiye but is in fact also their envoy to much of the region.

*Protest at Barrack’s comments in southern Lebanon where he had been intending to go but then cancelled his visit.* (Photo sourced: *Online*)

As a result Barrack had to cancel trips to other Lebanese regions. Most media reporting and criticism has focused on Barrack’s description of the reporters’ behaviour as ‘animalistic’ but his following words were actually more insulting and had wider implication.

“This is the problem with what’s happening in the region,” he said. In other words, the allegedly “animalistic behaviour” of the reporters was symptomatic of the Lebanese in general, in Barrack’s opinion and further, one can reasonably speculate Barrack meant, of the wider Arab world.

Of course in Barrack’s mind the USA is the epitome of civilisation, the standard by which to judge all others. A European settler colony of 250 years built on genocide of the indigenous inhabitants through massacres, disease, starvation, ethnic cleansing and racist culturecide.

The USA built up an extensive agricultural plantation system maintained on slave labour, both kidnapped and imported and also raised domestically.

The colony expanded aggressively to the lands colonised by other settlers, such as the Spanish, French and the Mexican Empire, bringing legalised slavery to lands where it had been abolished, then declared the whole southern sub-continent a sphere of influence for itself alone.

This epitome or high point of civilisation is $1.8 trillion in a debt¹ that rises annually, has among the highest prisoner per population ratio in the world,² one of the highest ratios of murders³ and of number of fatal gunshot incidents per population and of regular massacres by lone gunmen.

Most of the citizens of this state will be unaware of these facts: surveys have revealed time and again the low level of geographical, political and historical awareness of even high school students in the USA.⁴

*Tom Barrack (centre, next to US Ambassador to Lebanon) in meeting with President Lebanon, Joseph Aoun in June 2025.* (Photo: *Reuters*)

So where does this attitude of superiority in an ambassador of this state come from? The USA became a world power after WWI through its industrial and military power, its oil and gas reserves and possession of the Atom Bomb. Might is not only right but the right – the right to decide!

The right to decide for others whether and how they should live. And inevitably with that must accompany the attitude of the unfitness of others to make those decisions for themselves. Not just ‘manifest destiny’ for the USA but to decide the destiny of the rest of the world.

Of course, there are categories among the unfitting and, since the settler colony was of Europeans, all other ethnic groups are even less fitted, in the US imperialist mentality. Hence the attitude toward Arabs, which annoyingly are sitting on even more oil and gas reserves than are the US.

The contribution to this attitude by the despised themselves is not to be underestimated. The ruling elites of nearly all Middle Eastern/ Eurasian states, by their servile and self-interested complicity, have contributed to the superior feeling of the rulers of the USA exhibited by Tom Barrack.

The behaviour Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Foreign Minister Joe Rajijehplays to the feeling of USA superiority. While Israeli planes bomb their land daily, drones assassinate people, troops invade, on what are they focused? Why on what the US wants, the disarming of Hezbollah!⁵

The first report on the Barrack meeting with Aoun from the Lebanese Presidential Office was of glowing servility and did not mention Barrack’s insulting behaviour,⁶ while a second statement reacting to the outrage apologised on Barrack’s behalf without mentioning him by name.⁷

Everybody who has played the servile yet threatening ‘nigger’, the drunken and dangerous ‘paddy’, has justified the superior attitude. All who abandoned their language and aped their conquerors did so too. But it is a process that can be reversed – at least by and for the subjugated.

You’ll be able to recognise those reversing the process by their descriptions in the western mass media – they will be the ‘militants’, ‘diehards’, ‘extremists’ and even the ‘terrorists’. They will usually also be described as ‘proxies’ of some state to which the Imperial West is opposed.⁸

End.

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APPENDIX

Tom Barrak is the son of Lebanese immigrants to the USA and has built his career initially around law, then property and other investments and politics, as a political and business fixer for high-level Saudi and US interests.

He has never been mistaken for a friend of the people, as opposed to of ruling circles, whether in the US or in the Middle East.

Whether a sense of shame at his origins and wanting to aspire to the values of the modern USA or his sense of entitlement as a US Government official is the cause of his attitude to the Arab Middle East world is unknown.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2020/04/24/why-kids-know-even-less-about-history-now-and-why-it-matters/ and https://thepigeonpress.org/american-students-flunk-geography/ along with many other sources.

5The US-backed Israelis, whose daily violations of the Lebanon-Israel truce (guaranteed by the US!) have reached thousands, want areas of South Lebanon for permanent occupation and want the Lebanese Government to resettle their populations, according to reports of recent talks.

6President Joseph Aoun received a US delegation, which included Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Representative Joe Wilson, in the presence of US envoy Tom Barrack, Ms. Morgan Ortagus, and US Ambassador to Lebanon Lisa Johnson.

The meeting reviewed the situation in Lebanon and the region, as well as the outcomes of the delegation’s tour, in addition to the talks held by Envoy Barrack and Ms. Ortagus in Israel and Syria.

During the meeting, President Aoun renewed his gratitude to the US administration and Congress for their continued attention to Lebanon and their commitment to assist it, in line with the directives of US President Donald Trump.

He was also briefed by the delegation members on the results of their visit to Damascus, expressing great satisfaction with what they conveyed regarding Syria’s readiness to establish the best possible relations with Lebanon. He emphasized that this reflects a shared will and desire between the two countries.

President Aoun also reaffirmed Lebanon’s readiness to immediately address outstanding bilateral issues in a spirit of brotherhood, cooperation, good neighborliness, and the historic ties between both peoples, stressing Lebanon’s full support for the unity and territorial integrity of Syria. (Reported by The Cradle)

7The Presidency of the Republic regrets “the words that were inadvertently spoken from its podium by one of its guests today. It emphasizes its absolute respect for human dignity in general, and wishes to reaffirm its full appreciation for all journalists and accredited media correspondents in particular, extending to them its greetings for their efforts and dedication in carrying out their professional and national duties.”

8An old trope to rob the opponents of their own motivation and legitimacy. The insurgents of 1798 and 1803 in Ireland were described by the British as agents of France; the insurgents of 1916 as agents of Germany.

SOURCES

https://t.me/thecradlemedia/41608

“Smash Landlords and Vultures – Universal Social Housing Now!”

On August 19, 2025August 19, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Housing Struggle, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Political Analysis, Socialist Revolution, SongLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The Irish socialist Republican group Anti-Imperialist Action today issued a call to revolution centred around a need for universal social housing to resolve the chronic housing crisis in Ireland (and in particular in Dublin).

This housing crisis has at January’s count left nearly 15,300 living on the streets or in emergency accommodation¹ with another unknown number in inappropriate accommodation such as sofa-surfing with friends and relatives or in IPAS centres for refugees.

Rampant property speculation has made a handful of bankers and speculators very rich and along with the social misery of thousands, facilitated the demolition of buildings of historical and architectural importance and their replacement by usually unsightly glass and concrete.²

Well, so what of AIA’s call? Different organisations make various calls at different times but do they have any effect? However, this one has some important distinctions, one of which is that this organisation actively practised its preaching when it called for the occupation of empty properties.

In May 2022 the AIA founded a sub-group called Revolutionary Housing League that occupied empty buildings in Dublin, refused to comply with court orders³ to evacuate or, in court, to agree to bail conditions that they would desist from further building occupations.

*‘James Connolly House’ in occupation by the RHL in May/ June 2022.* Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The first building targeted on May 1^st was a former Seamen’s Institute building on Eden Quay, renamed Connolly House, metres from O’Connell Bridge, empty for years since the Salvation Army, a religion-based charity NGO, had lost government funding for its youth homeless accommodation project.

On the morning of June 9^th 2022 over a hundred Gardaí, with an armed unit on standby and a helicopter overhead, stormed the building⁴ and arrested the only occupants, two RHL supporters. In court later that day, they were bailed without making any promise not to re-occupy buildings.⁵

It seemed that the State was sensitive to the dangers of creating martyrs around the housing crisis.

Instead, RHL renewed its call for mass action across the country to occupy empty buildings. And went on to occupy other buildings, including Ionad Sean Heuston near the eponymous Bridge and another in Belvidere Road, eviction here also including massive police forces and helicopter.

Seen from the north bank of the Liffey, the Starry Plough flag flying high over the ‘Ionad Sean Heuston’ occupied building. The Heuston train station is behind the photographer while the Bridge is out of frame to the right. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Success for the RHA’s campaign depended on, if not a mass, at least a substantial take-up of its call to occupy empty buildings backed by civil disobedience to the courts. Neither happened and the AIA was far too small to carry the campaign on its own and so suspended it.

It is worth noting that though many organisations and individuals had agitated around housing, including the high-media-profile occupation of Apollo House in December 2016, backed by noted individuals,⁶ none had initiated the steps advocated by RHA/ AIA.

*‘Homes Not Hostels’ banner on Tara Street side of occupied Apollo House in December 2016 or January 2017. The building was later demolished and numbers of homeless people continued to rise.*
(Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Amongst a general lack of social condition agitation among the post-GFA⁷ Irish Republican movement, only the socialist-Republican éirigí organisation had militantly taken up the housing struggle while calling for universal social housing — but it had not led a campaign of occupations.

The electoral left and some anarchists had occupied some empty buildings but had either left when threatened by the State or been evicted by security thugs backed up by Gardaí, without a follow-up of further occupations. Nor had they contextualised housing occupations as part of revolution.

So the record of AIA is stand-alone among the Republican and Socialist Left so far and therefore, one might speculate, failed to inspire a mass movement.

I am not ashamed to say that I supported AIA’s campaign although I did not take part myself in any of the occupations. However I did not view it as an immediate cause for revolution, nor do I now. The Irish gombeen⁸ State, I believe, can survive the supply of universal social housing.

The ‘rack-renting’ landlords, both big and small, cannot. But the Gombeen class, closely linked to the landlords and speculators will ditch them if they are confronted – not with the suffering of the masses, about which they care not, nor protests – but with the real alternative of social revolution.

The State has access to the means to fund such a campaign of new housing construction and of renovation/ repurposing of existing empty buildings⁹ by local municipal authorities.

In such a radical change of the Irish neo-colonial capitalist system, people would have more disposable income and purchasing would increase dramatically, stimulating production and expansion of goods and services and raising people’s living standards (and expectations).

Property speculation would be hugely reduced in scope but would continue – in hotels and office blocks, for example and big projects such as transport networks. And possibly in sale of land to State and local authorities for housing projects.

So, essentially a reformist project, not revolutionary at all, right? No, not at all necessarily. Reformist projects fought for with revolutionary intent and energy, teach the masses their potential when they unite in struggle. It also tests their leaders before their eyes, in their experience.

I see universal social housing therefore as a social necessity for the mass of people living on the streets, in hotel-rooms, sofa-surfing, in insecure and inappropriate housing, facing eviction from debt-mortgaged housing (the cost of which has already been paid several times over).

Universal social housing is a social necessity and an urgent one and it is an objective for which all true humanity in Ireland should strive. Revolutionaries should fight for it, pointing towards the evils of the capitalist system and the need for its replacement by a socialist system.

The struggle should be fought relying on the strength and capacity of the working people and will need to embody civil disobedience and sacrifice, while at the same the movement needs to safeguard capacity for other struggles such as against fascism, imperialism and colonialism.

In that context therefore, I think we should unreservedly support the call of the AIA’s statement today and the headline of this article.

End

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

Anti-Imperialist Action statement on Telegram 19/08/2025

Homelessness statistics:https://www.focusireland.ie/press-release/homeless-figures-increase-to-a-record-high-of-15286-as-focus-Ireland-urge-government-to-prioritise-new-social-housing-for-vulnerable-families/

Empty property statistics: https://www.socialjustice.ie/article/vacancy-and-dereliction-ireland

APPENDIX

Text of Anti-Imperialist Action statement 19/08/2025:

Housing is a key part of the Republican struggle for National Liberation and Socialist Revolution in Ireland.

Housing is one of the key pressure points in the class struggle in Ireland today, due to the artificial housing crisis created by those in power, designed at driving up profits for landlords and imperialist housing vultures.

Since the days of Tone, Irish Republicans have recognised that land and housing are completely tied to the fight for freedom, and today it is by showing the Republican struggle will solve the land and housing issue once and for all, to the benefit of the working class, that Republicans can mobilise our class to join the fight.

There should be no doubt about the Republican position on housing. The 1916 Proclamation stated that ‘the ownership of Ireland by the People of Ireland’. The Democratic Programme placed public right above private property and stated, It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision … to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter’.

Landlords and foreign imperialist housing vultures have no place in the Republican vision of a Free Ireland, where homes would be provided by the Republic to all Citizens.

AIA advocates a system of Universal Social Housing as the Republican Housing System that guarantees all citizens a home, and rents based on ability to pay. This system is the death knell for landlords and vultures and it is why the garrison class resists it.

AIA has played a leading roll in the militant housing direct actions of recent years and will continue to do so.

If you want to fight the landlords and vultures and work to bring about the conditions for a Republican system of Universal Social Housing, then join AIA!

Raise the cry of the working class: Smash Landlords and Vultures – Universal Social Housing Now!

1 https://www.focusireland.ie/press-release/homeless-figures-increase-to-a-record-high-of-15286-as-focus-Ireland-urge-government-to-prioritise-new-social-housing-for-vulnerable-families/

2Taking history tour groups around Dublin I often comment that Dublin has suffered three period of architectural devastation, all in the last century: 1) the British artillery bombardment during the 1916 Rising; 2) the Irish neo-colonial State’s bombardment during its Civil War; 3) the property speculators’ rampage from the 1970s onwards.
Pete St. John, in his song Dublin In the Rare Aul’ Times:

“Fare thee well, sweet Anna Liffey,

I can no longer stay

And watch the new glass cages

Spring up along the quays …”

3In one of which I was wrongfully named myself since no evidence of my presence had been provided by the landlords to the court – merely an article by me describing the occupation of ‘Sean Heuston House’ reproducing some photographs taken inside. See https://rebelbreeze.com/2022/09/22/concert-in-occupied-building-murals-pickets-and-court-cases-the-revolutionary-housing-league-spreads-the-fight/

4 https://www.facebook.com/JamesConnollyHouse/videos/2172514896242639

5I passed by this building recently which, three years later, appeared to be still empty.

6The occupiers eventually agreed to leave under a mixture of threat and promises and the building was demolished.

7The Good Friday Agreements of 1999, the Irish instalment of the imperialist pacification process, following South Africa’s and Palestine’s versions, later to visit Colombia and Turkish Kurdistan.

8From the Irish word gaimbín, first applied to the hustlers opportunistically buying up Irish land in the midst of the disaster of the Great Starvation (1845-1849) but now applied to the Irish comprador or foreign-dependent native capitalist class.

9 https://www.socialjustice.ie/article/vacancy-and-dereliction-ireland

US Imperialism Tries to Disarm Two Countries’ Resistance Forces

On August 18, 2025August 19, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 10 mins.)

US Imperialism is currently meeting resistance in two Middle Eastern/ West Asian states as, through pressure on their governments, it tries to disarm the guerrilla organisations.

People in most Western states are familiar with political binaries of Right and Left but in many parts of the world, though that exists, the dominant binary is sovereignist or clientist¹, the former placing national interests above all and the latter aligning with the interests of imperial powers.

LEBANON

This country is known as the heartland of Hezbollah but many may not be aware that this resistance movement is fairly new in historical terms, coming into existence as it did in opposition to the ‘Israeli’ occupation of 1982 and instrumental in forcing total IOF withdrawal by 2000.

Hezbollah has been described more recently as “a state within a state”, with its Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc political representation and its Jihad Council army. It works in alliance with the Amal Party, also majority Shia and the Free Patriotic Movement (mostly Christian).²

Lebanon had been earlier occupied by French colonialism and its colonial elite was typically among the Catholic Christian sect known as Maronites,³ as were half the population then, the reason why the Constitution (National Pact of 1943) gives half the seats to Christian candidates.

However no population census has been carried out since 1932 and many believe that a census today would not justify half the Parliament seats allocated to Christian representatives, even in a sectarian Constitution. The others sects are Muslim (Shia and Sunni) and Druze.

This has been the case in Lebanon which, outside of the Civil War of 1975-1990, has been governed in a balance of these forces, with the recent former President, though a Maronite, sympathetic to the country’s sovereign interests and therefore also to Hezbollah and the Amal party.

On the clientist side (but proclaiming Lebanese ‘independence’) are the remains after its 2016 dissolution of “the March 14 Alliance,” consisting now of the Lebanese Forces party, with the largest parliamentary representation⁴ and of the Ketaeb, the fascist Phalangist party of the Civil War.

The main political representation of the Druze community, the Progressive Socialist Party, has supported one bloc or the other at various times.

The Lebanese Constitution (National Pact) stipulates that the President must be a Maronite but cannot be a serving member of the military. On 9^th January, Josef Aoun was elected President of the Government, for which he had to give up his position of Commander of the Armed Forces.

His election and cabinet choices were not good news for the sovereignists since the USA, as in many countries had been penetrating the armed forces through weaponry and recruitment grants and Aoun was considered their proxy – a description which his conduct has done nothing to refute.

Josef Aoun (centre right) in discussion with US Envoy Tom Barrack (middle left).

On 5^th August the Lebanese Parliament began to discuss the question of who is entitled to bear arms with a clear intention to follow the US lead that it should be the State only.⁵ Many in the West would perhaps think this a normal position but only Hezbollah fighters have defended Lebanon.

Since the ‘Israeli’ armed forces attacked Lebanon on 1^st October 2024,⁶ not once has the Lebanese Army fought them. Hezbollah fought the IOF to a standstill in the south of Lebanon, also bombing troop concentrations in northern ‘Israel’⁷ in support of Gaza and causing large settler evacuations.

The IOF had to beg for a ceasefire, to which Hezbollah and the Lebanese Government (also US, France …) agreed and which the IOF, true to form, has violated since thousands of times in bombing flights, drone assassinations, invasion of Lebanese land and kidnapping of Lebanese civilians.⁸

Hezbollah and Amal’s representatives walked out of the Government disarmament discussions, accusing their reigning opposition of failing to stand up to US threats and seeking to disarm the Resistance while at the same time failing to confront ‘Israeli’ occupation and ceasefire violations.

*Hezbollah parade 2024, Beirut, Lebanon.* (Image sourced: *Internet*)

The Government went ahead and tasked the Army with preparing a plan – not to defend Lebanon against the occupation and constant attacks by the IOF but instead to disarm Hezbollah.

No observer thinks the Government or Lebanese Army are capable of disarming Hezbollah and serious commentators view this move by US proxies as seeking to delegitimise the Lebanese Resistance and blame them for the attacks of the IOF upon targets in Lebanon.

Hezbollah in fact is the only force that has fought the Zionist occupation⁹of 1982 after the PLO left, also during later IOF invasions of 1993 and 1996. Josef Aoun is widely believed to have asked Hezbollah to defend Lebanon’s western border with Syria against infiltration from ISIS.¹⁰

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi commented on the reason for trying to disarm Hezbollah “is that it has shown its capability on the battlefield”, and “that the positions of the party and its Secretary-General are strong showing the Resistance’s steadfastness in the face of pressures.”¹¹

The Lebanese Foreign Minister accused Araghchi of “violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty,”¹² which might have been considered fair comment, were it not for the fact of Lebanon’s government’s acting under admitted US pressure and toleration of ‘Israeli’ bombing and assassinations.

This kind of dialogue continued up to very recently as Ali Larijani, Iran’s Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Council visited the country but he pointed out in public statements that interference in Lebanon’s internal affairs is not by them but rather by others in an overseas faraway office.

Nightly protest demonstrations,¹³ including huge motorcades have been carried out in many areas since the Government’s decision, mostly by young people, often flying Hezbollah flags.

An opinion poll taken between 27 July and 4 August 2025 indicates that 76% wouldn’t trust diplomacy with ‘Israel’, 71.7% don’t believe the Lebanese Army is capable of defending the country against ‘Israel’ and 58% don’t think Hezbollah should surrender its weapons at this point.¹⁴

On Saturday, the Lebanese army said an explosion at a weapons depot near the Israeli border killed six soldiers as troops were sent to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure in the area as part of a disarmament plan; the Government is now mourning them but blaming Hezbollah.

However, observers note that people in the south are angry that the Government never had a word to say about all the Lebanese civilians killed by the IOF since October 24 or about the Hezbollah fighters that fell fighting the ‘Israeli’ invasion then.

IRAQ

The position in Iraq is very different, although the USA is also keen to restrict arms to the State there only. The US armed forces have a base in Iraq and in addition, control its air space.¹⁵ However, the resolve of the Iraqi Government is different to that of Lebanon’s.¹⁶

US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce criticised the recent visit of Ali Larijani, Iran’s Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Council and the signing of a joint security pact between Iraq and Iran. Iraq’s Embassy in New York replied that they are a sovereign state.¹⁷

Let us recall for a moment that Iraq was ruled by the Sadam Hussein regime, first a client of the US when it went to war with the Islamic Republic of Iran 1980-1988 but an enemy when, in pursuit of his own policies in 1990, his armed forces invaded Kuwait, a US client state.

In order to justify their regime-change war of 2003, political leaders of both the USA and the UK lied to their populations claiming that Iraq held WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) which were an imminent threat. The subsequent war overthrew Hussein but destroyed the country for years.

The US occupation was widely criticised even by sources within the imperialist camp for its absence of an integrated governing policy and structure to replace the Hussein regime, with jihadist and Kurdish warlords ruling different areas and at times in conflict with one another.

Until the US forces agreed to pull out in 2011,¹⁸ the US proxy Iraqi administration and armed forces, along with the armed forces of the US itself faced constant attacks from both Iraqi national resistance organisations and Islamic jihadists, including by roadside bombs and suicide bombers.

The independent or citizen armed forces¹⁹ mostly came into existence during the war against the ISIS invasion of Iraq in 2014, being instrumental not only in defence of Baghdad but also in taking the war to the sectarian jihadists at a time when much of the Iraqi armed forces were failing.

Most of the media commentary on those Popular Mobilisation Forces characterises them as proxies of Iran and raises fears about their integration into the state armed forces without being under direct control of the military command, instead answerable only to the President.

While such media raises concerns about dangers to Iraq’s sovereignty from the militias, the same media sees no problem with the USA control of Iraq’s airspace, of foreign troops installed on their land past the date they agreed to leave, and openly pressuring Iraq on how to deal with the militias.

With regard to the call that all armed forces should be unified under the State, that generally suits the USA since they often arm, train and educate the armed forces in countries where they have influence, not to mention actual military bases.

The position of Western powers that only the State should have weapons is hypocritical given their history of supporting armed insurrection to topple regimes they consider unfriendly, also with regard to the right for citizens to bear arms in the USA’s own Constitution.

The hypocrisy of the USA and Western powers is exposed not only in that but also by the fact that they sponsored Muslim fundamentalist terrorist forces to overthrow secular regimes such as Assad’s in Syria, including supporting a prominent former ISIS commander to take over that state.

The multitude of militias under the self-proclaimed current President of Syria, Al Julani, former second-in command of the Nusra Front,²⁰ have been massacring Alawites, Druze and Christians but despite some murmurs of concern Macron welcomed Julani to the Elysée Palace in Paris.

For the US and the Western imperialists then, the real issue is not about a need for one effective central military command or state sovereignty, but rather about whether or not all the armed forces within the State are under a command over which the imperialists can exercise control.

And even more so, whether the guerrilla groups or at least their commanders are orientated towards the western powers or instead towards an oppositional centre, whether that be a state such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, or an internal force in favour of national sovereignty and anti-imperialism.

End.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

Lebanon: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/07/us-pushes-lebanon-towards-dangerous-course-of-disarming-hezbollah

https://thecradle.co/articles/damascus-requests-russian-patrols-in-south-syria-to-limit-israeli-incursions-report

Iraq: https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2025/04/07/iraqi-militias-considering-to-disarm-ahead-of-us-iran-talks-sources-say/

https://thecradle.co/articles-id/32447

US pressure on Iraq re popular resistance forces: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2025/04/02/iraq-wrestles-with-us-pressure-over-iran-backed-militias/

1I do not think these handy short descriptive terms exist in English but I am going to employ them nevertheless.

2Known as “the March 8^th Alliance.”

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maronites

4According to the National Pact sectarian allocation of seats between the various religious communities. However, as noted, there has not been a census since 1932 and many suspect that the Christian community no longer has dominance in numbers.

5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/07/us-pushes-lebanon-towards-dangerous-course-of-disarming-hezbollah

6For the sixth time.

7In solidarity with the people of Gaza.

8In April, the most recent reference I was able to find, The Cradle quoted Lebanon’s Information Minister stating the occurrence since the 27 November 2024 ceasefire signing of 2,740 such violations by ‘Israel’ https://thecradle.co/articles/nearly-200-killed-in-2740-israeli-violations-of-ceasefire-with-lebanon

9And the main force that drove the Zionist occupation out in 2006.

10Hezbollah is reputed to have refused, not surprisingly, while the current Lebanese regime is following US dictates (which is the major cause of the presence of ISIS in Syria) and demanding the disarmament of the Resistance.

11Reported by The Cradle on its Telegram Updates.

12Ibid: “The recent statements made by Iranian Foreign Minister Mr. Abbas Araghchi, in which he addressed internal Lebanese matters that do not concern the Islamic Republic in any way, are rejected and condemned. They constitute a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, unity, and stability, and are considered interference in its internal affairs and sovereign decisions.

Relations between states can only be built on the basis of mutual respect, equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and full adherence to the decisions of legitimate constitutional institutions. It is completely unacceptable for these relations to be exploited to encourage or support internal parties outside the framework of the Lebanese state and its institutions, and at its expense.”

13 https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2025/08/11/hezbollah-doubles-down-on-rejecting-lebanons-impossible-disarmament-plan/

14 https://thecradle.co/articles/majority-of-lebanese-oppose-hezbollah-disarmament-say-army-incapable-of-confronting-israel

15Over the protests of the Iraq Government, the US used its airspace from which to bomb Iran in the recent attack.

16Though one might not think so from the predominance of current media headlines announcing government and resistance groups’ alleged acquiescence.

17‘Iraq is a fully sovereign state and has the right to conclude agreements according to its constitution and laws, without being subject to any country’s policies‘. Details of the agreement remain unknown.

18But have yet to actually do so.

19This excludes the Kurdish peshmerga who fought ISIS mostly to defend their areas and many with a desire to create an independent Kurdish authority there.

202016 description of Al Nusra Front by pro-western publication: https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2016/11/al-nusra-is-stronger-than-ever.html

OASIS, MANCHESTER & THE FENIANS

On August 17, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Britain, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Diaspora, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in Struggle, Workers' Struggles2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The Oasis rock band are performing on 16 and 17 August in Croke Park, the Gaelic sports stadium in Dublin, to a sold out capacity of 82,300. Brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher are the two leading members of the band.

Oasis-marked t-shirts and caps are being sold from stalls in the city and posters announcing the forthcoming concerts adorned shop windows and lampposts but how many fans know the Gallaghers’ background?

*Liam and Noel Gallagher* of Oasis (Source imag: *Internet*)

Liam and Noel were born in Manchester to Irish migrant parents but their mother Peggy split from her abusive husband and moved elsewhere in Manchester, taking the kids with her. Liam dedicated Stand by Me to her on Saturday night and gave a shout-out to her her birthplace in Co. Mayo.¹

Ireland fed the British ‘industrial revolution’ and the Irish have a long association with Manchester. In 1845 the city’s factories were already attracting Irish workers and its farms probably also agricultural workers to replace English labourers deserting the farms for the factories.

Friedrich Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England,² published in 1845 (the first year of the Great Hunger) and mentioned the Irish migrants not too favourably. He was writing mostly about Salford, the subject of Ewan McColl’s Dirty Old Town,³ just outside the city then.

By the time Engels’ book was published, the Great Starvation was gearing up. Uncomplimentary references to the Jews can also be found in that work but whatever about that ethnic minority,⁴ Engels changed his mind radically about the Irish in Britain and came to admire them greatly.

Instrumental in learning about the Irish for Engels were two Irish sisters living in Manchester, Lizzie and Mary Burns, illiterate but intelligent and militant mill workers. Mary and Friedrich became life partners and, after her death, Friedrich became Lizzie’s partner thereafter.

The Irish, as the natives and diaspora of what is often referred to as “England’s first colony” were of considerable interest to the revolutionary partnership of Engels and Karl Marx and more so still as the Fenian movement, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, spread throughout Britain.⁵

*Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, leading theoreticians and activists of the revolutionary socialist movement.* (Source: *Workers Liberty*)

A largely proletarian movement, the Fenians were admitted to the First International Workingmen’s Association⁶; no doubt the Irish struggle against British domination greatly influenced the political opinions of Marx and Engels in relation to nations under colonialist rule by capitalist states.

The struggle spilled over from Ireland into the Irish diaspora, particularly that in North America, Australia and Britain. In Australia the Fenians’ role seems to have been mostly in facilitating and escaping British jails there⁷ while in America, they invaded the British colony of Canada.⁸

The charge of the Fenians (wearing green uniforms) under Colonel John O’Neill at the Battle of Ridgeway, near Niagara, Canada West, on June 2, 1866. In reality, the Fenians had their own green flags but wore a very mixed bag of Union and Confederate uniforms (if they still had them, or parts of them left over from the Civil War), or civilian garb, with strips of green as arm or hat bands to distinguish themselves. (library and archives canada, c-18737)

In Britain itself, the Fenians went to war against the ruling class with dynamite. To spy on them, Scotland Yard created the Irish Special Branch which evolved into the Special Branch, the political police in Britain and in any colony the British had since then.⁹

The activities of the US Fenians intersected with those of Britain-based Fenians when two of the former, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, American Civil War veterans, were arrested in England. On their prison van’s journey to jail it was ambushed¹⁰ and both officers spirited away.

*Artists’ impression of the rescue of the Fenian prisoners.*
(Image source: *Internet*)

Unfortunately and entirely unintentionally, Constable Brett was killed during the breakout. Refusing to hand over the keys from inside the wagon, he was bending to look through the keyhole when in order to release the prisoners one of the Fenians fired at the lock, the bullet entering Brett’s brain.¹¹

The British police swept vengefully through the Irish quarters of Manchester and Salford arresting at least 28 people but eventually sending five for trial on ‘murder’ charges. Three were hanged, all innocent of intentional killing and at least two probably not even present at the scene.

As sentence of death was passed upon them, all five cried “God save Ireland!” Although the sentences on two were commuted, Timothy Sullivan used those words for his ballad about The Manchester Martyrs, as the executed three became known among the Irish at home and abroad.

The song travelled quickly and became an unofficial national anthem of Ireland and the Irish until it was decisively supplantedafter the 1916 Rising by Peadar Kearney’s The Soldiers Song (latertranslated: Amhrán na bhFiann).¹² A memorial to the three was erected in Mostyn Cemetery.

*Artist’s impression of the trial of the five convicted including the three Manchester Martyrs.*
(Image source: *Internet*)

Manchester continued to be a destination for Irish migrants, for factories still, including motor car production but also post-WW2 reconstruction and motorway building.

Manchester United FC, along with a number of other British soccer teams, recruited Irish players and Irishman Liam Whelan was one of the eight players killed in the Munich air crash of 1958. Another 30 Irish have played for the club at one time or another, some quite famous.¹³

The city is one of a number of British cities that has a name in the Irish language; Mancunians would probably be delighted to know that their city’s name in Irish is Manchuin.

From the late 1960s to late 1990s the city was host to an active branch of the Troops Out Movement in solidarity with Ireland, also from 1980s to an active branch of the Irish in Britain Representation Group; the Special Branch was active in monitoring and, from time to time, harassing their activists.

The Provisional IRA bombed the city in 1996 as part of its campaign against the British State and — despite a 90-minute warning — 212 were injured.

Today Manchester, alongside South Asian ethnic influences, continues its Irish ethnic presence with Irish traditional cultural activities¹⁴ and no doubt the sons and daughters of Manchester’s Irish diaspora will continue to contribute to other sport and artistic culture in Britain and in the world.

Footnotes

1 https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/oasis-review-the-band-were-great-the-service-was-not-1793012.html

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_Class_in_England

3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11BuatTuXk here performed by The Pogues

4Given that Marx, a German Jew, became his closest political comrade and writing partner, it’s likely he changed his bias against Jews also.

5 https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/fenians.htm and Introduction to https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/030639688202400204

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_Association

7For example, the escape on board The Catalpa https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2023/11/01/the-greatest-escape-frank-mcnally-on-one-mans-mission-to-make-a-movie-about-the-catalpa-rescue/

8 https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-fenian-invasion-canada Unlike many other accounts easily available this one gives a reasonable assessment of the rationale for the invasion, including its potential and the reasons of its ultimate failure, the interests of the ruling class of the USA, which the Irish Republican movement should have learned from forever afterwards – but failed to do.

9Often referred to simply as ‘the Branch’ or ‘Branchmen’ (though the organisation of course also recruits women).

10The location, by an arch under a railway bridge, is still unofficially known as “Fenian Arch.”

11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

13For example, George Best and Roy Keane.

14Manchester has a Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann club (for Irish traditional music) and informal music sessions, also an Irish dancing school https://www.facebook.com/profile.php; Gaelic Athletic Association clubs including St Brendan’s, St Peter’s, Oisín, and St. Lawrence’s.

Sources

The Fenian Ambush: https://ballymacoda.ie

The ballad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

The First International and Fenians: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/fenians.htm

The Saturday concert in Croke Park: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/oasis-review-the-band-were-great-the-service-was-not-1793012.html

A MOTHER’S HEART – A Review.

On August 5, 2025August 5, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, History, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Palestine, Political Analysis, Song, Women1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time:4 mins.)

On August 1st singer Mary Black released A Mother’s Heart for Palestine, a soundtrack and video.¹ The title and music built on the 1992 track by Mary Black and Eleanor McEvoy, A Woman’s Heart (title of album also).²

The voices are beautiful and the adaptations of the Arab women particularly so. Or at least, they affected me even more deeply.

Like actions by Mothers Against Genocide,³ the recording seeks to transverse borders in the mind, to represent Palestinians as humans, as human as ourselves, through the image of the mother, which almost all of us have had and which many women are or have been.

It is worth thinking about this a bit further. The image of the mother is a powerful one in all cultures for at least biological evolutionary reasons. The future of the human species depends on productive motherhood and in all cultures, in that capacity at least, pregnant women are protected.

The image is also overlain by personal affect, of ourselves nurtured (in most cases) by a mother or ourselves as a mother, nurturing in turn.

The image of the mother is also manipulated by all degrees of the Right, whether to uphold clerical control, to counter assertion of reproductive rights, or to deny the right of lesbian (and gay) sexuality. And ‘to protect ‘our women’’ from imagined migrant assault (or indeed intermarriage).

In Christian religious iconography, the Mother as Madonna is particularly prevalent and she is always passive, whether depicted serene or suffering.

*A detail from the Madonna and child painting by Duccio, late 13th Century* (Image sourced: *on line*)

The mother image is also employed by imperialists to send us to war and was crudely used for example in the UK (of which Ireland was then a part) in a WWI poster depicting a mother and child telling the man to go and fight (for them, of course – not for the imperialists, mar dhea!).

WW1 recruitment poster for Britain (Image sourced: *on line*)

*A particularly offensive recruitment poster for the British Army in WW1 given that Ireland was under British occupation and only six decades after a British genocide of Irish people through starvation*. (Image sourced: *on line*)

But in nearly all cases it is a passive representation of womanhood and is combined in the Mothers Heart video with images of sorrow – naturally, about all the children killed or starving, soon to die — which is also a passive emotion.

Many of the visual representations of Palestinian women are in domestic roles assigned to women around the world: food preparation, washing and drying clothes and of course child care.

Mothers are uniquely women but women are also more than mothers. Slightly more than one-half the human race, they are also workers,⁴ cultural producers, thinkers, leaders — and fighters. Even in revolutionary iconography we rarely see the woman, never mind mother, represented armed.

This is despite the 1970s images of a Mozambican or Vietnamese woman carrying a gun and a child. Or the famous staged INLA photo of a skirted woman in the Six Counties aiming an automatic rifle. Such images are very much exceptions to the rule.⁵

Poster promoting the Mozambique People’s Liberation Army. (Image sourced: *on line*)

*Poster from the Vietnam War.* (Image sourced: *on line*)

The music video shows Palestinian women, among their domestic roles, lamenting, speaking on mobile phones, presumably worried about relatives, carrying belongings, on the move, displaced. The lyrics also are of lament.

As complete counterpoint in the Arab world we have only one image that I know of, which is Leila Khaled with an automatic rifle, because her society too insists on a largely passive role for women, even though their position in that society otherwise seems very influential.

The women shown in the video accompanying the music and lyrics are apparently Arab, Arab-Irish and mostly Irish. On the Palestine solidarity marches here my impression is that born women are the majority over born males and many have taken militant action, for which some are facing prosecution.

Women, in particular Arab women, often lead these marches, calling out the chants for others to respond.

Newsreels show Palestinian and other Arab women abroad marching, shouting slogans, clenched fists in the air. I have seen them denouncing ‘Israeli’ soldiers for invasion and occupation, for mistreatment of children, for demolition of houses, one slapping an armed Israeli soldier in the face.

In our own history (as distinct from mythology and legend) we had few female figures of armed action and Pearse mythologised Gráinne Ní Mháille⁶ in song to epitomise resistance when he had her represent the nation. But compare that to his poem The Mother!

In recent years Markievicz, Skinnider⁷ and to a degree Farrell⁸ have part-emerged from history’s shadows bearing weapons but there is still a long way to go in changing the image of women (through all their biological phases) in the struggle.

This song for all that it affects me emotionally does not do that nor is it expected to and, more to the point, I fear will be used to reinforce passivity in the assigned role of women in struggles — fortitude and solidarity in suffering no doubt, but passivity none the less.

It seems to me that social democrats and liberals perpetuate the mother aspect of the woman manipulatively in order to promote pacifism and much as I appreciate this cultural production, it will be used in that way.

While enjoying cultural productions visually, in sound or in print, we need also to be aware of the social packages they carry and their effects upon us, intended or otherwise.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.mary-black.net/

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman%27s_Heart_(compilation_album)

3Whose official stamp is also on the video.

4Industrial, agricultural, municipal, health services, technical and scientific services.

5There was some coverage of armed Kurdish women in Syria fighting ISIS (I wrote about some myself) but it is now clear that was in the context of NATO coordination in the war to overthrow the non-western aligned regime.

6A 17^th Century female chief of the Uí Máille clan in Mayo who led attacks on her enemies by land and sea. Pearse adapted the ancient bride-welcoming song to bid her welcome with armed warriors to reclaim her land and disperse the English occupiers.

7Both Markievicz (nee Gore-Booth) and Skinnider were members of the Irish Citizen Army and both carried and fired weapons in the 1916 Rising.

8Though unarmed, she was part of an Active Service Unit of the IRA when she and her two comrades were gunned down in the British colony of Gibraltar on 6^th March 1988.

SOURCE

https://www.mary-black.net/

1 https://www.mary-black.net/

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman%27s_Heart_(compilation_album)

3Whose official stamp is also on the video.

4Industrial, agricultural, municipal, health services, technical and scientific services.

7Both Markievicz (nee Gore-Booth) and Skinnider were members of the Irish Citizen Army and both carried and fired weapons in the 1916 Rising.

8Though unarmed, she was part of an Active Service Unit of the IRA when she and her two comrades were gunned down in the British colony of Gibraltar on 6^th March 1988.

THE GIDEON CHARIOTS ARE HEADING FOR A CRASH

On August 4, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

Even as European imperialists and imperialist client Arab states try to save the Zionist state with a proposal to disarm the Palestinian Resistance and put the quisling Palestine Authority in charge of Gaza,¹ many Israeli Zionists are signalling that it’s too late.

Middle East Spectator reports that six hundred members of the ‘Commanders for Israel’s Security’ (CIS) have written a letter to President Trump urging him to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war in Gaza due to Israel’s ‘desperate situation’ regarding ‘global legitimacy’.

The MES source is The Jerusalem Post. The ‘Commanders’ consists of former senior officials from the IDF, Mossad, and Shin Bet, which is to say the ‘Israeli’ armed forces, external and internal state intelligence services.

On the popular free-to-air Channel 12 TV, ex-general Noam Tibbon complained that ‘Israel’ was facing international isolation through its starvation of Gaza while its unsuccessful “Gideon Chariots”² military campaign has resulted in the deaths of 50 of its soldiers.

Actually the Zionist army’s deaths are almost certainly under-reported³ as are the 6,145 wounded stated by the IOF, in comparison to the Defense Ministry’s Rehabilitation Division reported 18,500 soldiers and other security forces wounded with varying severity.⁴

In addition, seven of its soldiers took their own lives during July this year. Seventeen IOF suicides were recorded in 2023 and twenty-one in 2024 with another 17 already this year. Those figures do not include reservists taking their lives in periods after military duty.⁵

The IOF’s losses in damaged tanks, armoured bulldozers and personnel carriers are also high. Despite this situation, the Zionist State is also carrying out military operations in Syria and Lebanon and its leaders talk about resuming its war with Iran, which had disastrous results for ‘Israel’.

Palestinian Resistance operations of various factions occur every day, while every second day or so ‘Israeli’ media reports “a security incident” in Gaza, their coded description for a Resistance operation resulting in the death of at least one IOF soldier.

In addition to the armed resistance of Palestinians particularly in Gaza putting a strain on the armed Zionist Occupation, it has strained also the relationship between the latter and the Government coalition led by Netanyahu, as discussed on Zionist Army radio and reported by The Cradle.

IOF Army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir is quoted as saying that the Zionist army lacks clear strategic direction from the Government and that it favours a deal with Hamas allowing it to return to Gaza’s periphery as before October 8^th and to ‘exhaust’ Gaza.⁶

As a practical alternative the IOF could occupy the whole of Gaza, which Zamir says can be done in a period of months but the ‘clearing’ of the Resistance above and below ground (in the tunnels) would take years and though he left it unsaid, would drain the IOF to cracking point.

The Resistance is fighting a long war of attrition. While the IOF can and does kill civilians in thousands it cannot operate with impunity on the ground against the Resistance fighters, despite its high technology and drones, both for surveillance and attack, in addition to artillery and air cover.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/turkiye-eu-arab-league-16-countries-endorse-new-york-declaration-supporting-2-state-solution/3646558

2IOF Codeword for the military operation since they broke the ceasefire agreement in March this year and restored the genocidal blockade, along with bombing of residential areas and ethnic cleansing of whole districts.

3(390 soldiers reported in January since launch of its ground operation in Gaza, with 61 of those individuals falling in the last months of 2023). https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2025/01/israel-takes-stock-of-military-casualties-over-a-year-of-war.php

4 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/at-least-18-500-israeli-soldiers-injured-since-outbreak-of-gaza-war-media/3643460

5 https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-suicides-tied-to-combat-trauma-internal-probes-said-to-reveal/

6What this term entails is not clear but could be a return to the conditions of constant power cuts, restriction on food entry to the minimum and heavy restrictions on entry and departure, along with regular raids in force to capture or kill Palestinians.

SOURCES

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/ex-israeli-general-says-gaza-starvation-campaign-isolated–i

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/at-least-18-500-israeli-soldiers-injured-since-outbreak-of-gaza-war-media/3643460

https://thecradle.co/articles/tensions-between-israeli-army-chief-government-reach-their-peak-report

FROM EYESORE TO EYE-CHARMING GARDEN IN INNER CITY DUBLIN

On August 1, 2025August 3, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Environmental, History, Ireland, irish historyLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

How does a rat-ridden eyesore become a charming garden? And how does a sheet-metal fabricator-welder who knew nothing about gardening become its creator? The answers are: slowly, learning as he goes along and with support in the community.

In a little housing cul-de-sac or ‘turning’ as we used to call them, in a Dublin inner-city southside dockland, there was a disused area overgrown with brambles harbouring rats. Its only attractive feature was a big beech tree (Feá) left there when the area was cleared for housing construction.

But Jimmy saw something else there. In the eye of his mind, he saw a garden, a place of calm and beauty. The vision nagged at him until he began to clear the brambles and other undergrowth. And then to plug the rat-runs inside the brick back wall.

Though he was no stranger to the area, living as he does in the Markievicz flats, the neighbours might have been wary at first of what he was doing. But before long, they were bringing him cups of tea and biscuits, commenting approvingly on progress.

*Flower bed in the garden* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

“… in vacant or in pensive mood,
they flash upon that inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude …“
*Jimmy Browne, creator of the garden, caught in a moment of reflection.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

NOW AND FUTURE

Trees are valuable oxygenators and carbon-sequestrators, absorbing CO2 in the environment, as well as attractive but the big beech tree was shading the whole garden, restricting many other plants from growing. Sadly it had to go and two of its sections provide nice features in the garden.

Flowering shrubs and perennial flowers now grow in borders around an attractive brick floor. To those Jimmy has added other features of stone, metal posts and a garden bench.

Among the many that Jimmy acknowledges helping him is Shane Daly of the Windjammer, Leo for garden bench donation and Christy Barry who transported materials Jimmy collected to the garden.

*Younger Rowan trees in the garden.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The beech has been replaced by some Rowan trees, also known as Mountain Ash (Caorthainn), some in full berry flush when I visited the garden with local man Christian, who introduced me to Jimmy. I hoped Jimmy would install a pond that frogs or newts might breed in, attracting also damselflies.

The garden is attractive now and safe for children to visit but Jimmy has plans for a rockery, a fountain, a small shelter from rain showers over a seat and bird nest boxes, for tits for example. The Blackbird and robin are sure to nest in trees there in time, sending their songs into the area.

*Section of beech trunk, now the stand for a table.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

FROM DERRY TO DUBLIN

Jimmy Browne is from Derry and came to Dublin in the 1970s, “on the hop” he says and indeed there were many from the Catholic areas that did the same in those years, whether temporarily or permanently. Coincidentally, the area around the garden has a strong political history too.

Around the corner, next to the Windjammer pub, is a plaque commemorating the founding of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in a wood yard there on St. Patrick’s Day, 1858, its counterpart in the USA being formed on the same day, soon to be known as “Fenians” which was adopted here too.

Almost facing the open end of Lombard Close is a little park with a monument, both dedicated to Elizabeth O’Farrell, of the 1916 Rising GPO Garrison, who took part in the occupation of Moore Street, where she had the dangerous responsibility of negotiating the surrender.

She grew up in that area as did nearby also her childhood friend, comrade and later lifelong house partner Julia Grennan, who also fought in the Rising and was there in Moore Street at the end also.

By strange coincidence, both Jimmy’s employers in Dublin, before he set up his own fabrication/ welding shop, had his own family name: Browne’s Foundry and Brownes Brothers.

*Older Rowan trees in the garden* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Contrary to the drive for profits that dominates our society, a great many people contribute their physical and mental energy not only to their immediate family and friends but to the community at large. The garden is a benefit to the 19 homes in the Close and 40 others in attached streets.

Jimmy is not being paid to do this work. But he is being rewarded and not only by cups of tea and biscuits. He enjoys the feeling of creation, of making things from his mind come to life, of keeping busy in retirement, of feeling contentment. And of knowing his work is appreciated in the area.

End.

*View of the garden from the outside:* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Plaque to the birth-place of the Ireland section of the Fenians in Lombard Street, Dublin. (Photo sourced: eadingthesigns.weebly.comblog).

*Garden bench* – *suigh síos and relax* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

THANK YOU, DENIS O’BRIEN!

On July 31, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Capitalism, Cartoon, Cartoon comment, Imperialism, Ireland, National Liberation, NATO, SatireLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

No, I’m not being sarcastic – I am quite serious. Thank you for making it clear that you support the Irish State joining the imperialist alliance of NATO.¹ I take it that opinion is at least widespread among your social class.

After all you are among the biggest of the native Irish monopoly capitalists, right? Number eight of the eleven richest people in Ireland.²

From the statements and actions of politicians I had assumed your Gombeen neo-colonial class was of that opinion but I suppose there was always a slim chance that the politicians were out on a limb, going it alone, not representing their bosses … but sure now you’ve confirmed it yourself.

I see you’re concerned about the defence of Ireland. That’s really good – so am I. Hold on, you just mean the Irish state – the 26 Counties? Oh, of course, that’s right, the Six Counties are already in NATO. They didn’t get to vote on that, did they? But we will here, of course.

Wait now, didn’t Mícheál Martin say he didn’t believe it would have to be voted on? And isn’t the Government now trying to get rid of the Triple Lock stopping us sending many soldiers anywhere without approval of the government, a majority vote in Leinster House and a UN mandate?³

The Government and majority vote shouldn’t be a problem for you, should it? You’ve got a comfortable majority in Leinster House on abiding by the Western Imperialist stance. Ah you have, Denis, you have – sure isn’t the Irish State the biggest customer of Israel, next to the USA?

Getting a UN mandate might be a bit trickier, especially these days. After all, a lot of UN members have been at the sharp end of NATO, or that of the USA, or UK, or France – which is all pretty much the same thing. The Security Council would work if Russia or China didn’t veto it.

Anyway, back to defending Ireland. We should really discuss what that means. Defending our physical lives and homes? A lot of our homes belong to the banks and vulture funds so I’m thinking maybe THEY should defend them.

Or maybe defending our natural resources and public infrastructures, i.e the ones that our governments for decades have been giving away to native and foreign monopoly capitalists. I think you’ve benefited from a bit of that yourself, Denis. Ah you have, you know you have.

Many of those foreign monopoly capitalists taking over our industry come from NATO countries too, as it happens.

Defending our physical lives? The thing I find hardest to understand, however, Denis, is how you think we’d be safer within NATO, of which the UK is a major part. I mean, since Britain invaded us in 1169 it has caused wars in Ireland, famines, genocide, linguicide, sectarianism and division.

You could say that’s in the past but it’s not, is it though? And they do say that the best predictor of future behaviour is previous behaviour, after all.

I know you’re concerned about the undersea cables. I’m not just worried about the UK in NATO – the top boss of NATO is the USA. And their record is more of sabotaging undersea pipes than protecting cables! I know, I know … no concrete evidence. But who else had motive, opportunity and capability?

Now, you want to see the Irish armed services expanded. But I can’t see why we have to be a part of NATO to do that. And if, as part of NATO, our armed services go to war, will you be ok with your grandchildren Meghan, Catherine, Denis, Michael, Kevin, and Patrick risking being killed?

Of course, I do know that big capitalists generally ensure that it’s the lower classes they send to the battlefield while they guarantee safe positions for their own family. I think you’d want to emulate John Redmond,⁴ whose son joined the army of a foreign King and Country but didn’t die for it.

Unlike the 35,000 other Irish who were killed in the British Army in WWI, not to mention the Irish wounded and permanently disabled, for which figures apparently do not exist.

However, I have to say, credit where credit is due: I did think the account of your visit to Venezuela was interesting and how the officer in charge of the President’s Office there was impressed by Ireland’s solidarity with Palestine and other stands, probably in support of underdeveloped countries.⁵

Thanks for that, it was very interesting – and heart-warming, to be honest. But I wonder, would the Venezuelan diplomat have been as friendly to you, Denis, if the Irish State, your point of origin, had been a member of NATO, practising imperialist wars and supporting genocide?

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.businesspost.ie/uncategorized/denis-obrien-ireland-should-join-nato-and-end-security-complacency/

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irish_billionaires_by_net_worth

3 https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41275612.html

4In 1914 John Redmond was leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, representing the native Irish colonial capitalist class. He not only delivered thousands of Irish to the British Army for WWI but also supported the suppression of the 1916 Rising.

5O’Brien charted his own experience in subsea communications cables, starting with an Esat Telecom funded cable between Land’s End and Wexford in the late 1990s, and several projects in the Carribean, including the $75 million (€64 million) Deep Blue One cable in Trinidad which was completed last year.

O’Brien recalled how – due to a “cock up” – the cable had been designed to run through contested waters between Venezuela and Guyana.

“When the Venezuelan government got wind that our cable laying ship was about to start they sent us a cease and desist letter,” he said. O’Brien explained how he then flew to Venezuela to meet Jorge Elieser Marquez who was in charge of office of the presidency to “fall on his sword” and apologise.

“He graciously accepted my apology but then to my surprise he started to talk about Ireland and how we had supported the Palestinians, like Venezuela, in their quest for a two-state solution in Gaza,” he said.

“For some reason, he knew everything about Ireland and our principled stand over many decades – dating back as far as when Brian Lenihan senior was minister for foreign affairs.

O’Brien credited Ireland’s position on Palestine as part of what eventually led him to strike a deal with the Venezuelan government and complete the cable. https://www.businesspost.ie/uncategorized/denis-obrien-ireland-should-join-nato-and-end-security-complacency/

SOURCES

https://www.businesspost.ie/uncategorized/denis-obrien-ireland-should-join-nato-and-end-security-complacency/

USA GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY DEFEATED

On July 30, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Cartoon, Creative writing, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Middle East, Satire, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: One minute)

(23/ 07/ 2025: Continuing conversation on the control deck of the USS Fitzgerald, a destroyer of the US Navy in the Sea of Oman, off the coast of Iran.)

…. Sir, that course takes us into Iranian waters.

That’s right son. We’re the US Navy. We go where we like. Stay on course.

Yes sir, steady on course.

Sir, an Iranian helicopter is buzzing us, wanting us to turn back.

Signal the pilot to move off or we’ll shoot him down.

Yes, sir. Signalling.

Sir, he continues buzzing us.

Signal the pilot we’re a destroyer of the US Navy. He should move off or we’ll shoot him down.

Yes, sir. Signalling.

Sir, he continues buzzing us, says we’re heading for Iranian national waters and ordering us to turn away.

Warn the god-damn pilot again. We’ll shoot the fucker down.

Yes s …
Sir, message received from the Iranian shore.

What does it say?

Sir, message reads “Your ship is in the cross hairs of our missile battery. Stop threatening our airforce pilot. Turn around and leave Iranian territorial waters. Repeat. You are in the cross hairs of our missile battery. Desist and turn away from our territorial waters forthwith.”

Sir? …

Sir?

Change course away towards international waters. Full speed.

Sir? Away from …

Yes! NOW, goddamn you! Back to international waters!

Yessir. Changing course now, sir.

End.

The idea for the cartoon was a good one, showing the confident sailing towards Iran and then the sharp turn away after warnings. The panels would have probably worked best in black and white: The blue in No.1 overwhelmed the overall image and in No.2, trying for a lighter touch, still did not work all that well. (Cartoon: *D.Breatnach*)

SOURCE: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/24/iranian-helicopter-confronts-us-warship-approaching-territorial-waters