A recent arrest in France and concert in Dublin are connected by events in both countries a half-century earlier.1
The arrest in question by French police was on 16 April of Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, for alleged involvement in the 1982 attack on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in the Marais district of Paris.2
The report of the arrest came less than a week after the Dublin commemoration by concert of another event, also half a century earlier. And strangely, there was a connection between both events.
On 11 April, a concert was held in Vicar Street to commemorate the arrest, torture, framing of three Irish Socialist Republicans and their jailing in 1986.3
Musicians, poets and journalists came together at the event, organised by musician Cormac Breatnach, brother of one of the accused, to commemorate the event and to press for an inquiry into three activists being tortured into making false confessions incriminating themselves.
And into how, despite their retractions and medical evidence of torture, they were then convicted of an event they had not committed. And how the legal system, from the Court of Appeal to the High Court, had all colluded in the injustice.
The trial in Ireland was for the Sallins Mail Train Robbery of 1976. The convicted three were Osgur Breatnach, Nicky Kelly and Brian McNally: Breatnach and Kelly were sentenced in the no-jury Special Criminal Court to 12 years, McNally to nine.
The day before sentence, Nicky Kelly jumped bail but returned nearly two years later when the convictions of Breatnach and McNally were deemed ‘unsafe’ and that their statements had ‘not been made voluntarily’.
However, the State insisted that the time period for registering an appeal had by then been exceeded and it took much campaigning and his own hunger strike before Kelly was finally released, on a Presidential pardon for a crime he had not committed.
A fourth, Mick Plunkett, had stood trial with the three on the same charges but having succeeded in not making a false confession under torture and threats, was finally acquitted. The French connection with the extradition of Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, is Plunkett’s.
Mick Plunkett4 had decided that, despite his escaping the framing, that the Garda Heavy Gang5 would be out to get him and that a departure to other climes might he healthy. Plunkett settled in France but did not give up his politics.
Photo: Joel Robine/ AFP
The Jo Goldenberg restaurant was subjected to a grenade and firearms attack on 9 August 1982, killing six and injuring 22.
On 28 August that year, Plunkett, Mary Reid and Stephen King (not the novelist) were arrested by a special anti-terrorist unit of the Gendarmerie (perhaps Le Gang Lourd, the Heavy Gang a la Francaise!).
The police claimed that all three were part of a terrorist organisation and that leaflets confirming that had been found in their apartment. And also firearms. All the allegations were vigorously denied by the three Irish activists.
Eventually the case against all three fell apart and they were released with, in time, the Gendarmerie admitting that the evidence against them had been ‘planted’ and the special unit was disbanded.6
One of the acts which the French police had claimed for the organisation of which they had falsely claimed membership of Plunkett, Reid and King was the attack on the Jo Goldberg Restaurant — the same incident for which the French Police have now charged Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra.
The French state got Khader Abed by extradition from Occupied Palestine. The State of Israel does not extradite its citizens anywhere but the Palestinian Authority was willing to do the job for France, which last year had officially recognised ‘the State of Palestine.’
end.
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Footnotes
1This story was published recently in the Irish language-only weekly An Páipéar (available in newsagents and online).
Composed of Socialist Republican, Communist and Anarchist contingents, along with independent activists of various tendencies, a broad Revolutionary Bloc marched among other groups and individuals in the annual May Day march in Dublin on May 1st.
Eden Quay, as the march turns off O’Connell Street, heading for Beresford Square, by the tall Liberty Hall building in the left background. (Photo: R.Breeze)
At intervals the banners of the Communist Party of Ireland, the Independent Workers’ Union and flags of the Anti-Imperialist Action contingents could be seen and a number of flags denoting specific groups or campaigns were on show but the Bloc was mainly identifiable by its slogans.
Led in call-and-answer almost non-stop from departure point at the Garden of Remembrance to Beresford Place in front of Liberty Hall,1 slogans called on workers to strike work and fight, to oust imperialist states and NATO from Ireland, for resistance unity, revolution and a socialist republic.
Section of the Revolutionary Bloc, centre image. (Photo: R.Breeze)
It was notable that an Irish Tricolour and a number of Starry Plough flags were visible among the Bloc and indeed one of the chants was against the appropriation of the Tricolour by ‘traitors’. They also called for funding for education and not for big corporations and for a hotel-free city centre.
At least one of the flags was of the Revolutionary Housing League and the march passed an empty building appropriated three years earlier by the RHL who were then evicted by a Garda force of 100 with helicopter and armed unit as backup. The building remains empty to this day.
People in Dublin stopped in the early Friday evening to watch and in the northern reach of O’Connell Street an elderly man stepped off the pavement to march along with the Bloc, though in silence while further along, two teenage girls in school uniform joined the Bloc also.
The Priory Market, Tallaght, Dublin prior to opening (Photo: Supplied by supporter)
Led by a long piper, the various contingents marched into Beresford Place, where a stage had been set up in front of the SIPTU2 headquarters building but most of the Revolutionary Bloc marched past to congregate for a group photo around the nearby monument to James Connolly.
Using the Bloc’s megaphone, one of the group then sang the Be Moderate song (also known as We Only Want the Earth) composed by James Connolly3 and, as the singer informed his listeners, published in the Songs of Freedom songbook by Connolly in New York in 1907.
As most of the Bloc dispersed, speeches were being made from the nearby stage and a group of mostly younger people from Turkey were assembling at the Connolly Monument also for a group photo.
The May Day march and rally in Dublin is traditionally organised by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions. However the participation of union banners was low in numbers and those present mostly of the FÓRSA union.
Section of the march showing FORSA union flags being carried. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Distinct from other European states, the foremost struggle in Ireland for centuries has been on the national question which has entailed less development in the forces devoted to socialism, so that in general May Day does not bring out the numbers one can see in the capitals of the EU and UK.
However, Ireland’s long history of resistance to colonial occupation has entailed a greater history of insurrection than most European states and it has also produced a remarkable number of leaders of labour struggles among the Irish diaspora in Britain, the USA and Australia.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1A highly-visible very tall building on the site of the original Liberty Hall, HQ of the IT&GWU, now of SIPTU.
2One of the largest (possibly the largest) trade unions in Ireland, formed by amalgamation of other unions on the base of the Irish Transport and General Workers union, of which James Connolly had been an officer and for a period, its overall leader.
3James Connolly (5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916), born and raised in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, revolutionary socialist activist-theoretician and Irish Republican, author, journalist, historian, union organiser, executed by the British occupation along with another 15 prominent insurrectionists of the Easter Rising.
Last Saturday (26th April) in Dublin a march took place in support of Irish neutrality and in opposition to Irish Government attempts to remove an obstacle to joining some future imperialist military alliance.
The march was organised by the Irish Anti-War Movement, an organisation that flickers into life on occasion as desired by the leaders of the People Before Profit organisation, although some of its activists are not members of PBP. And not all marching by any means were members of either.
I have a regular commitment on Saturdays elsewhere until 1.30 and it’s at least 1.45 by the time I’m free. I caught up with the march as it began to wheel around Trinity College. At its destination1 I looked around to see how many flags were representative of the Irish nation.
I counted three Irish Tricolours and one other which was also combined with a Palestinian flag. I was carrying a Starry Plough flag (the original version of gold design on a green background).2 A total of four Irish national flags in a march of several hundred amidst lots of Palestinian flags.
The stupidity is almost beyond belief. The march was not organised primarily to express solidarity with Palestine but to call for Irish neutrality and for remaining outside NATO. However, one-sixth of the nation is inside NATO without even the pretence of democratic agreement.
The other five-sixths are what constitutes the Irish State, the one upon which the march was focused, to save the Triple Lock,3 to prevent the Gombeen Government from driving us into NATO or some other military alliance. But apparently to be done without symbolising the Irish nation.
Again, the stupidity stretches credulity. We have passed through a number of years in which the Far-Right and outright fascists, in order to disguise themselves as Irish nationalists, have appropriated primarily the Tricolour but also the Irish Republic flag which was created in 1916.
A situation was permitted to arise whereby to see many Irish Tricolours being carried was to suspect a far-Right event — and usually to have that suspicion confirmed as accurate. This occurred because the broad anti-fascist anti-racist movement in general allowed it to happen.4
The fault is primarily that of the Irish socialist Left and their dislike or distrust of nationalism and their association of the Tricolour with the Irish State. They fail to recognise it as a democratic, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist republican symbol of national sovereignty and resistance.
The design was presented to the Young Ireland movement by revolutionary women in Paris in 1848, the ‘Year of Revolutions’ in Europe. Its colours represent national revolutionary unity (White) between the indigenous Irish (Green) and the descendants of colonial settlers (Orange).
Unlike its presence among racist and homophobic gatherings, the Tricolour was completely appropriate for a march in support of Irish neutrality. But somehow this did not occur to the organisers of the march nor, apparently, to most of the participants.
There would be no need to exclude flags representing the socialist or anarchist movements nor indeed of struggles in other countries but on this march they should have been outnumbered by Irish Tricolour and Starry Plough flags.
The Republican movement, for all its faults, would not have failed in this representation. Sins of omission in politics can be as bad as those of commission and the almost absence of Tricolours on this march epitomises how badly some of the movement in defence of neutrality is being led.
The general absence of the Republican movement from this march, whatever their reasons, is to my mind another part of this problem.
End.
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1Molesworth Street, facing Leinster House, home of the parliament of the Irish State.
2Essentially the original design of the flag of the Irish Citizen Army, a workers’ defence militia during the 1913 Lockout which also fought in the 1916 Rising.
3A measure which does not permit the State to send more than 12 personnel abroad on a military mission unless with 1) a government decision, 2) a majority vote in the Irish Parliament and 3) a UN mandate. Recently leaders of the Coalition Goverment parties have been saying that a vote in the Parliament would not be necessary.
4This is not alone the fault of the PBP but also of the anarchists who did fight the fascists but also of the Republicans who, some notable attacks on the National Party aside, largely ignored the fascist and far-Right protests.
Until very recently it was a widely-held belief that Hezbollah, the main Lebanese Islamic resistance organisation, was finished as a serious threat to western imperialism in Lebanon and to Israeli Zionism.
Such analyses ignored the fact that the organisation’s fighters for nine weeks held back the IOF from advancing into South Lebanon and made the Zionist army pay a very heavy price for even trying to advance – a heavy price in tanks and bulldozers destroyed and in personnel casualties.
2024cartoon by D.Breatnach
All the same, it seemed strange that after doing so and agreeing to the ‘Israeli’ request for ceasefire, they suffered daily violations by the IOF including regular assassinations of people in Lebanon, many or at least some of which were presumably Hezbollah personnel, without a return to war.1
Hezbollah’s statements during that period indicated that they wished to expose the weakness of Lebanon’s Government and their domination by US imperialism. Yes, we might have thought, but day after day, and your people being bombed and members assassinated?
It did look as though not so much their military capabilities but their political leadership had been weakened greatly. Of course, the loss of Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated by the IOF, was grievious, as had been the mayhem of the exploding pagers and cellphones.2
And since despite all that, Hezbollah nevertheless stopped the IOF at their border and made them weep for their losses, it seemed that it was the political leadership that had weakened, rather than their fighting ranks.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese government reported on 26 February more than 15,400 ceasefire violations by Israeli forces, while more than 370 people had been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon since the ceasefire requested by ‘Israel’ began.3
Whatever Hezbollah were waiting for is hard to say for sure. Possibly they were waiting for a Zionist war with Iran, in order to open up a second front against their enemy but if so it is strange that they did not go on the offensive immediately but launched their attack on March 2nd.
Even then, the initial Hezbollah attack seemed performative and Hezbollah quoted the Israeli assassination of Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran and leading Shia Cleric in West Asia as the reason for their offensive, in addition to daily deadly ceasefire truce violations by the IOF.
Hezbollah fired its initial barrage days after the US and ‘Israel’ had attacked Iran. It did seem as though their leadership were hesitant to return to war and perhaps initiated their attack in response to intelligence that the IOF were planning a war against them (which they referenced later).
The official plan of the Zionist is to occupy southern Lebanon to the Litani river as a “buffer zone”. However, this occupation can also be a part of the “Greater Israel” plan, which Netanyahu and a number of Israeli Zionist leaders4 and US Ambassador Mike Huckabee have publicly espoused.5
Hezbollah is fighting two kinds of war with ‘Israel’, one in which they bomb the state as part of the ‘axis of resistance’, against the state’s genocide against Palestinians and its attack on Iran, the other in which they defend Lebanon against ‘Israeli’ invasion and occupation.
In the first, they have clearly coordinated bombardment barrages with Iran6 and, more recently with Yemen.7 Hezbollah fires at targets in northern occupied Palestine, while Iran and Yemen concentrate on southern occupied Palestine.
Hezbollah was at first only firing at the IOF in the north but recently targeted what might be seen as civilian sites, since the IOF are using them, many of which are deserted, as staging and rest areas. However, Hezbollah issued public warnings before they began that stage of bombardment.
The IOF, on the other hand, in keeping with its traditions, has been bombing Lebanese civilians, housing, paramedics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure. And carrying out targeted assassinations.
Hezbollah employs its intelligence, mostly compiled from observation, to bomb areas where IOF personnel and vehicles are gathering, after which it bombs that area (or houses, in the case of these occupied by the IOF), all of which makes it very difficult for the Zionists to organise an invasion.
A picture taken from from the southern Lebanese village of Tayr Harfa, near the border with Israel, shows smoke billowing near an Israeli outpost from rockets fired by Hezbollah on Dec. 15. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
With the Zionist state currently having dominance in the air, the Resistance cannot hold static positions at the border and therefore has to allow the IOF to advance into Lebanon to ambush them there, either with missiles and artillery or at close quarters with light and medium weapons.
The latter can also be dangerous for the fighters for as their positions are revealed, they can then be bombed by the IOF. Even the fighters’ close proximity to the invaders may not restrain the IOF, as the orders of the latter are to kill their own personnel if they are in serious risk of capture.8
That said, it is reported that some of the missiles fired into occupied Palestine, i.e ‘Israel’, have been launched from north of the Litani river. Meanwhile the IOF take propaganda and morale-boosting photos of themselves in Lebanese villages in which they cannot remain.
A feature of the ambushes and battles in Lebanon which differs significantly from Gaza Resistance operations is that Hezbollah target the IOF rescue forces and medical evacuation transports. Considering the targeting of ambulances by the IOF the restraint of the Gaza resistance is strange.
Ambulance struck by ‘Israeli’ drone in Bint Jbeil, S. Lebanon recently.
Sources report nearly 100 Merkava tanks of the IOF hit by Hezbollah missiles, rockets or IEDs and many videos have been posted on social media by Hezbollah. In addition, fortified positions, radar units, artillery batteries, troop transporters and bulldozers have been partially or fully destroyed.
The skies are also gradually getting cleared of Zionist drones too. The number of daily operations by Hezbollah is high, having risen from around 20 per day previously to 30 on 5th April9 and to between 80-90 recently.
According to the northern correspondent of the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Hezbollah has carried out 779 attack waves against Israel between 2 March and 21 March, a tempo that could surpass the number of attack waves recorded in October 2024.10
The figures refer to the number of observed “attack waves,” not the total number of munitions launched.11
TRYING FOR CIVIL WAR AND SUBVERSION
The imperialists tried, through their clients in Lebanese society and armed forces to get the Lebanese national army to disarm Hezbollah. That was never going to happen since Hezbollah is more the real national army and the official armed forces just a poor imitation.
But a civil war, with outside involvement, like the one from 1975 to 1990 with Israeli intervention12 was a possibility. However, now the Lebanese people have seen their government neglect to defend them and the official army retreat from invading IOF, while Hezbollah stopped them hard instead.
As the US leadership and the rest of western imperialism (and their proxies in Western Asia) felt Iran’s restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz bite into their profits, Trump indicated a wish to return to negotiations – to which Iran has responded positively but with caution.
Recalling assassinations of negotiators twice during negotiations, Iran’s caution is more justified than normal. But there is also the issue of dragging the confrontation on by insincere peace talks while the Zionist genocide continues in Palestine and is being exported to Lebanon.
Iran’s 10-point basis for negotiation, including an end to the aggression against Lebanon was accepted by the US and publicised by Pakistan, the intermediaries. But soon was refuted by ‘Israel’ and then by the US; the talks then foundered as the US tried to impose its own terms.
Once again, Iran reiterated that an end to US and ‘Israeli’ aggression in West Asia has to be part of any agreement. Jumping opportunistically on this, Lebanon’s quisling government sought talks on a ceasefire with ‘Israel’ through the offices of US imperialism.13
Though the craven Lebanese regime had no cards to play, a ceasefire in Lebanon seemed to have been agreed,14 which the IOF celebrated with a massive bombing attack on Lebanon, killing 300 people in the hours before the deadline and also another attack after.
Bint Jbeil resists still. D.Breatnach cartoon, April 2026
If the US leadership is not convinced they have lost this war and cannot replay it to win – and if they allow the ‘Israeli’ Zionist leadership to undermine any agreement, then the war will resume, whether including Iran or focused on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
If Hezbollah can hold their ground and prevent a successful IOF invasion into South Lebanon while continuing to respond to Zionist entity attacks and if Iran sticks to its conditions on an end to aggression in West Asia, then the future seems bright for the people of Lebanon.
There will be ongoing internal struggle of course between the mass of people and the neo-colonial clients of imperialism, also with a fascist rump of French ‘Christian’ colonials in Lebanon but, without outside interference, the people can resolve these with positive results.
End.
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APPENDIX
South Lebanon field report from Al-Manar correspondent Samer Haj Ali (17 April 2026):
•Eastern villages axis: From Blida to Mays al-Jabal, the situation remains unchanged.
Enemy forces are refraining from showing themselves west of these towns, as they would be exposed to direct fire from the resistance.
•Al-Hujair axis:
The enemy is mainly positioned in the Taybeh project area.
The situation remains unchanged in Deir Siryan, which the enemy has withdrawn from. The occupation forces attempted to advance from their positions between Al-Qantara and Taybeh toward the town of Al-Qantara once again.
They established an outflanking route reaching the Al-Khazzan area in Al-Qantara. They were met with resistance fire, which destroyed four Merkava tanks and two armored personnel carriers. They failed to reach the Litani River from the direction of Taybeh or Wadi al-Hujair.
•Khiam axis:
The resistance maintains its capability to prevent the enemy from advancing toward the northern neighborhood. The enemy circulated reports claiming progress toward Debbin, but these reports are denied by field sources.
The road from Debbin to Marjayoun and Ebl al-Saqi remains open for civilian movement.
• Arqoub axis:
The enemy has expanded its attacks in recent days, without any change in its ground deployment. Airstrikes targeted some of its villages such as Shebaa, Hebarieh, and Halta, accompanied by simultaneous artillery shelling.
Hezbollah announced 74 operations on 14–15 April against Israeli forces, sites, settlements, and military infrastructure
Border clashes
Heavy fighting intensified across Bint Jbeil, Khiam, Bayyada, Naqoura, Kfar Kila, Mays al-Jabal, Aitaroun, Shamaa, and surrounding axes, with repeated close-range engagements and sustained confrontations against advancing Israeli forces.
A major ambush targeted a paratrooper unit (Battalion 101) near Maroun al-Ras as it advanced toward Bint Jbeil, resulting in casualties and forced evacuation under heavy fire.
Israeli forces were repeatedly struck in troop concentrations, homes used for positioning, and along movement routes, while engineering vehicles, including a D9 bulldozer, were directly hit. Merkava tanks were also targeted by attack drones, with confirmed hits during ongoing clashes.
Drone and air defense operations
Attack drones were extensively deployed against artillery positions, command nodes, troop concentrations, and armored units, including direct strikes on Shraga base (Golani Brigade HQ), Meron air control base, and multiple frontline positions.
Air defense activity was notable, with multiple Hermes 450 drones intercepted over southern Lebanon and along the coast, alongside engagements against Israeli fighter jets and an Apache helicopter forced to withdraw.
Drone strikes also targeted artillery batteries in the Golan and northern front positions, as well as Israeli troop gatherings in Bint Jbeil, Khiam, and Naqoura.
Rocket and missile strikes
Sustained and high-intensity rocket barrages targeted Israeli troop concentrations, military sites, and settlements across the northern front, including Kiryat Shmona, Metula, Misgav Am, Nahariya, Shlomi, Avivim, Yir’on, Dovev, Kfar Giladi, and Manara.
Large-scale, synchronized barrages hit multiple settlements simultaneously, while repeated strikes targeted positions in Bint Jbeil, Khiam, Bayyada, and surrounding areas.
Fire was maintained throughout both days, with dozens of salvos launched in waves, including heavy bombardment of troop concentrations and staging areas.
Strategic military targets
Strikes hit key Israeli military infrastructure, including Shraga base (Golani command), Meron base for air surveillance and operations, Filon base near Rosh Pinna, Liman barracks, and artillery positions across the Golan.
Additional targets included communications infrastructure, newly established artillery sites, and logistics nodes in Karmiel, Maalot-Tarshiha, and other northern areas, alongside continued targeting of command, control, and fire management positions.
4Speaking on an Israeli radio program, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the war on Lebanon “needs to end with a different reality entirely, both with the Hezbollah decision but also with the change of Israel’s borders.” “I say here definitively … in every room and in every discussion, too: the new Israeli border must be the Litani,” he added
12With an estimated 150,000 fatalities, the externally-instigated civil war and ‘Israeli’ occupation gave rise to the creation of Hezbollah in 1982 and it was they who led the expulsion of the Zionist invaders and the collapse of their local fascist collaborators, the South Lebanese Army (sic).
13The Lebanese Government withdrew its army in the face of IOF advances and went against its own laws in recognising ‘Israel’ while seeking a ceasefire from it.
14The US Imperialists and their Zionist proxy want the Government and Army to disarm Hezbollah. While they also know that this is not possible, due to both the superior strength of Hezbollah and reluctance of many, including some senior officers in the Lebanese Army, a civil war would do instead.
The recognised date known as International Working Women’s Day is March 8th and it was commemorated on that date with a march and revolutionary words and symbolism organised by Irish Socialist Republicans in Dublin.
The marchers gathered outside Wynn’s Hotel in Lower Abbey Street, to mark the founding there of the revolutionary Republican military women’s organisation, Cumann na mBan, on 2 April 1914. The organisation, with its own officers, was possibly the first of its kind for women in the world.1
From there the march set off into O’Connell Street, then marching southward to cross the Liffey into D’Olier Street before turning left into Townsend Street, continuing to the statue of Constance Markievicz where the colour party’s flags were lowered in respect.
The march near the start in O’Connell St (photo credit: An Pobal Abú FB page)
Throughout, chants of “Ní Saoirse go Saoirse na mBan”2 and “Britain out of Ireland” reverberated through the streets of Dublin as banners displayed the slogans “coinníonn na mná suas leath na spéire / women hold up half the sky” and “Queers Against Imperialism”.
Markievicz was an active member of Iníní na hÉireann, the Irish Citizen Army and of Cumann na mBan. She was part of the command of the Stephens Green/ College of Surgeons garrison in 1916 and elected MP on an abstentionist ticket in 1918 and Minister of Labour in the First Dáil in 1919.
Continuing along Townsend Street and ending at Elizabeth O’Farrell park where a commemoration was held outside in honour of the role of women in the struggle for national liberation while the colour party took up position inside the park.
(Photo credit: An Pobal Abú FB page)
A woman read a speech on behalf of the AIA, tracing founding of International Women’s Day from when women in Russia in 1917 had led strikes and marches against the Tsar and WW1, later becoming known as the February Revolution, leading later to the October Socialist Revolution.
The speaker went on to speak of the role of women in the Republican struggle, from Cumann na mBan, the Irish Citizen Army and Armagh Gaol Republican prisoners, followed by a woman reading the 1916 Proclamation of Independence and the burning of two green flares.
(photo credit: An Pobal Abú FB page)
A new plaque of the Socialist Republican Mairéad Farrell was unveiled with the laying also of a commemorative wreath during a minute’s silence observed for all revolutionary women and gender oppressed people who gave their lives for national liberation and anti-imperialist struggle.
The Colour Party in Elizabeth O’Farrell Park (Photo: R.Breeze)
At the same time the colour party lowered their flags in respect, during which the command calls in Irish rang out in the area through the silence.
The area in which the Elizabeth O’Farrell and her life-long friend Julia Grenan3 grew up is a south Dublin docklands still largely working class area. It was in a yard in Lombard Street nearby, actually within sight of the park, that the IRB (Fenians) was founded on March 17th 1858.
Laying of the wreath (photo credit: An Pobal Abú FB page)
Elizabeth O’Farrell and Julia Grenan both participated in the 1916 Rising and, along with Winifred Carney, refused to join the earlier evacuation from the burning GPO building on the Friday, later participating in the final evacuation which ended in the central terrace in Moore Street.
When the leadership took the decision to surrender, O’Farrell went out to negotiate under a white flag even though a man had been killed under such a flag earlier in the very street. In 1922, along with almost the entirety of Cumann na mBan and the ICA, she rejected the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
(Photo: R.Breeze)
Many women were interned by the nascent neo-colonial Irish Government.
After the Elizabeth O’Farrell Park event, people gathered again at a recently-occupied social centre in Dublin, to view an exhibition of images in honour of the day and to watch an English-subtitled French-language film about women and the Omani Resistance, followed by a music session.4
Part of exhibition for International Working Women’s Day in the social centre (Photo: R.Breeze)
End.
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Footnotes
1In its early years the organisation worked mainly as an auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers but asserted greater independence at a later stage. It coincided in time with the women in the Irish Citizen Army who shared equal status with male members and indeed in the case of some of them, such as Markievicz and Lynn, actually commanded men. Wynne’s Hotel was also where the decision to found the Irish Volunteers had been taken in 1913.
2Translated as ‘There can be no freedom until women are free.’
3And life partner, many have speculated – certainly they lived together until the end.
4The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived by Heiny Srour
Reprinted from author’s substack 11 March 2026 and reformatted for Rebel Breeze
(Reading time: mins.)
Photo: US Military Base Qatar Under Iranian Attack 2026
On February 28th the Zionist regime of Israel and the USA commenced a lethal bombing campaign against Iran, choosing as their first target a school where more than 168 girls were murdered.
The Western press took its time in questioning the attack and the western governments never really did.
The press “explains” that the school was near a centre of the Revolutionary Guard, but they don’t explain that it was a cultural centre and a clinic and pharmacy all of which enjoy protection under the Geneva Conditions.
They tell us that these places “perhaps explain the attack.”[1] Well no, they don’t. They remain war crimes.
Iran’s response was robust. So robust that the western press and politicians condemned it and asked Iran to not attack the other states of the region (calling the Emirates countries or nations is a bit much).
They never asked the US or its attack dog, Israel, to cease its attacks.
Iranian civilians are less important than investments in Dubai and other places. Iran attacked military bases, radar installations and hotels housing US soldiers who had transferred there given the possibility of an attack on their bases. The counterattacks uncovered some truths.
The first one is that the Arab monarchies of the region are nothing more than US lapdogs and the myths about their economies went up in smoke in seconds. They are not safe places to invest in and less so to live in as shown by the mass of tiktokers crying into the camera.
It is worth pointing out that many of them boasted about not paying taxes and one or other explicitly stated they had set up in the region in order not to pay taxes and now they want their respective governments to spend taxes that they not only didn’t pay but didn’t want to in order to rescue them.
It might be that Dubai and the other monarchies never fully recover.
Another truth that was revealed is the real role of US military bases. The Yanks like to say that it is to protect and defend the countries they are located in against attacks.
That myth also went up in smoke just like the myth of Dubai as a safe place for digital nomads, tiktokers, bankers and even drug traffickers like the Kinahans who have lived there openly for the last number of years.[2] They will all have to think of other places.
The military bases were not capable of defending the monarchies and moreover the US transferred a good part of its military capability to Israel and left them to their fate.
Recently the president of South Korea announced that the USA had transferred part of its defence system to Israel.[3] The presented lamented the situation but explained that there was little he could do, i.e. the USA decides everything.
In the case of Spain, President Sánchez said he would not allow the USA to use the shared military bases in the country to launch attacks on Iran. Trump’s response revealed the real role these bases play and the real authority over them.
He said they didn’t need them, but if they want to, no one is going to tell them no.[4] In many of the military bases, in law, it is the host country that commands and controls the base. The reality is otherwise and Trump showed it.
In others cases, particularly in Japan and some European countries it is the US that has formal control.
The bases are not there to defend the host countries but rather to defend US interests and to act as they see fit. The Arab monarchies have just learnt that lesson the hard way. Spain has yet to, but Trump has warned them that it is in practice he who decides what is done, where and how.
This brings us to the question of military bases in Colombia. Theoretically Colombia has authority over the bases and can limit what is done. In practice it is not so.
The supposedly progressive government of Gustavo Petro never did anything to expel the Yanks from the bases in the country. Nor is he going to do so in the few remaining months of his presidency.
The question is what will the new government that comes into office on August 7th do? For the moment it looks like the next president will be Iván Cepeda from the same political force as Gustavo Petro.
In the midst of tensions between Colombia and the USA Cepeda stated from Madrid that Colombia wasn’t a Yankee colony.[5] When he is president he will have ample time to prove it and can start on August 7th by ordering the north American troops out of the country.
The rest of the countries in the world should do the same.
It is clear that the bases are an extension of the USA and at all times serve it and nobody else.
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Translated by R. Breeze from Spanish-language post in Bultza, Basque Marxist-Leninist Telegram channel, 2 March 2026
(Reading time:4 mins.)
The armed resistance of the Palestinian people—the vast majority of whom are Muslim—has stirred up a kind of “neither-nor” sentiment. The “progressive” left refuses to take sides.
They labelled the acts of armed resistance on October 7, 2023, as terrorism and equated them with the genocidal policies of the State of Israel. Was terrorism that which the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto waged in their guerrilla operations against the Nazi occupation army?
This is not the first time we have heard the hackneyed rhetoric against the Muslim religion. A discourse cloaked in a “progressive” mantle, where they speak of human rights, freedoms, women’s rights, and so on.
Some even compare it to the Franco regime in a display of “intellectualism.” A comparison that cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny of logic. Did the Franco regime confront the greatest empire on the planet? Quite the contrary.
The fact that Francoism and its entire cultural and political apparatus existed was thanks, among other things, to the largest empire in the world today: the United States.
Trump has spoken, on several occasions, about how the Iranian government oppresses its people through Islam, that “the regime of the ayatollahs” must be overthrown, etc. This discourse has also been echoed by several European leaders, including the “progressive” Pedro Sánchez.
A few weeks ago, we heard Gabriel Rufián1—the future leader of the “re-establishment of the Left”—saying that the burka and the hijab should be banned. But there is one aspect they all have in common: they all say this from NATO countries.
Countries that exploit the wealth of every continent, including Muslim countries where religion is not conceived in the same way as it is in imperialist countries. Yet, they say absolutely nothing about the Atlanticist organization. They do not question its crimes.
In addition to discrimination based on religion, there are two more forms: discrimination based on belonging to a culture different from Western culture (imperialism and colonization) and class discrimination.
The “progressive” Left only mobilises when the oppressed are portrayed as victims, not when they gain strength and resist the assaults. In other words, if you are massacred by the empire, they will offer you alms. If you resist, you become the target of their criticism.
We’ve already seen this with the constant denunciations of the Palestinian armed resistance, or the scant impact the resistance of the Shiite armed movement Hezbollah, which has repeatedly halted Israeli Zionism, has had on the Spanish population.
We’ve also seen it when the Shiite movement Ansar Allah fired rockets at the US Sixth Fleet, cutting off the Red Sea and Israeli communications.
In other words, the “progressive” left supports you if you die, not when you fight.
It’s the practical application of putting money into the coffers of the missions. If you’re a sovereign country seeking liberation from imperialist yokes and you fight with all your might, you’re labelled a terrorist and an oppressor.
And the media plays a significant role in this, the same media on which progressives occasionally complain of not being given as much airtime as before.
In the words of the African American leader Malcolm X: Beware of the media; they will make you hate the oppressed and love the oppressor.
In the world of social media, we easily lose our memory. Therefore, it’s necessary to remember that the Algerian separatists of the National Liberation Front were Marxist-Leninists. And this didn’t prevent them from also being Muslim.
The People’s Republic of North Yemen—Muslim—along with the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, supported the anti-fascist armed movements in the Spanish state.
In other words, Islam and anti-imperialist (and anti-fascist) resistance are concepts that have gone hand in hand on numerous occasions.
The USSR itself not only maintained but also promoted madrasas, or Islamic schools, in Muslim-majority territories. Was the USSR—the world’s first secular state—the same as Francoist Spain? But perhaps this doesn’t mean much to the progressive, or the purist of the moment.
In the 1960s, there emerged in Latin America a concept called Liberation Theology. This movement led to the creation of armed groups of Catholic origin whose demands included socialism and social justice.
Movements like the Montoneros in Argentina and the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) emerged from this context. It is important to remember Father Carlos Mugica, the priest and guerrilla leader.
These armed movements caused considerable headaches for Washington’s Operation Condor and all the dictatorships imposed by the School of the Americas—dictatorships that, incidentally, sympathised with and admired Francoism.
Were these guerrilla priests the same as their enemies in the White House and their puppets?
These movements resonated in Spain. This theory spread throughout the Basque Country and the working-class neighbourhoods of major cities like Madrid and Barcelona, as well as regions like Andalusia.
The parishes of Vallecas, Carabanchel, Moratalazo, and Vicálvaro2 became meeting places for numerous anti-Francoist movements and groups, where these same worker-priests were active.
A very recent example is that of Father Diamantino García: one of the founders of the Andalusian Rural Workers’ Union (predecessor of the Andalusian Workers’ Union). Were these worker-priests the same as Francoism?
Fr. Diamentino Garcia Acosta (1943-1995) addressing a worker’s rally.
Let’s remove once and for all the veil that prevents us from seeing the reality of Third World countries. Who are we to tell oppressed countries what to do? Isn’t that just another form of imperialism? Do we fight in the same way they do?
We cannot view the processes of decolonization and liberation of those who are fighting with all their might against the West and its empire through Western eyes.
To paraphrase our Asturian comrades from La Clase Trabayadora:3 we must put an end to the left wing of imperialism and all that it entails. Even in the cultural sphere.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1MP and spokesperson of the Ezquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Catalan Republican Left) in the Spanish Congress, also active in left-social democratic coalition Súmate and the grassroots National Assembly of Catalunya. (R.Breeze)
2Particularly working-class areas of Madrid (R.Breeze)
3Anti-NATO and anti-rearming organisation based in Asturies. (R.Breeze)
The title paraphrases the concluding words of Jane Fonda, actress and veteran anti-war campaigner, speaking yesterday1 at a downtown Los Angeles rally against the USA’s current war against Iran, in reference to current US President Trump’s regime.2
It is slogan the oppressed and exploited around the world might well adopt for ourselves, though Fonda may have meant only the replacement of Trump with a milder representative of US Monopoly Capitalism.
Though a long-time campaigner against US Wars, it is unlikely that Fonda was advocating the overthrow of the capitalist-imperialist system currently in power in most of the states around the world. But we might well invest that meaning in the call amongst ourselves.
History shows us that capitalism exploits our labour power and the fruits of our toil, even as it evolves into monopoly capitalism, squeezing hundreds of its weaker competitors out of business before going to war with other monopoly capitalists and states that resist being dominated.
OUR REGIME DRAGGING US INTO WAR
This is the kind of system in power in Ireland, though our ruling class is, unlike the rest of the European states, a client state. Typically, client states have one master – ours has three: British colonial-imperialism; US imperialism; EU imperialism.
The dominant states of British imperialism and EU imperialism, viz. the UK, France and Germany, issued a joint statement at the outbreak of this war. Not to condemn the US and Israel assassinations and other bombing attacks on a non-aggressing country but instead, the victim of aggression!3
The same states the leaders of which justified Israel genocide against those it oppresed as Israel’s “right to self-defence”, failed to accord the right of the Iranian people to defend themselves through the action of their state against unprovoked Zionist and imperialist attack.
These are the powers to which the Irish ruling neo-colonial class wants Ireland subsumed, to join our exploiters and colonial occupiers, states with a long history of colonial occupation and genocide, including ours, against people who do not threaten us and have never done us any harm.
It is their alliance into which our neo-colonial rulers are attempting to drag us, by lies and deceit and by scaremongering about danger from other states that have never threatened us.
Cartoon by Paul Cobaugh
WHAT THIS WAR AGAINST IRAN IS ABOUT
There must be very few people on this Earth who believe that the aggression against Iran is about restricting the state from developing nuclear weapons. The religious leader of Iran, Khamenei (assassinated by the USA), has long opposed the development of weapons of mass destruction.4
In fact, according to the Omani intermediary at the US-Iran talks on nuclear energy, Iran volunteered not to amass enriched nuclear material, to convert its stock of highly-enriched uranium to fuel, putting it beyond any possible use of weaponisation and submitting to inspections.5
In addition, the intelligence services of the USA and the monitoring by the IAEA6 have never found any evidence of such development.7 But in any cases, who are the USA and Israel, both states with nuclear weapons, to dictate to anyone else what weapons they may or may not have?
The USA is actually the only state in the world that has used atomic weapons against people, not once but twice: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with an estimated death toll through initial explosion of up to 140,000,8 with more dying of subsequent radiation.
Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreed to inspections by the IAEA, whereas Israel refused to sign it or agree to inspections (or indeed to even admit to the well-known fact it has nuclear weapons, the only state in West Asia to possess such).
France and the UK, endorsing the current USA and Israeli war, also have nuclear weapons and the only reason Germany does not have one of its own (though many of the US on its territory) is that its European partners can’t trust it after two wars against them within only four decades.
Israel, the most warlike and expansionist state in the region, also demanded that Iran scrap its ballistic missiles and end its support for resistance organisations. Yet Israel and the USA support subversive organisations around the world, wherever they find their wishes obstructed.
More than that, the resistance organisations are fighting for the freedom of their people and, where they have one, the sovereignty of their state, whereas the terrorist organisations supported by the US and Israel seek fragmentation,9 collapse of independence and sovereign national resistance.
There is too a longer-term purpose in the attack on Iran, as on Venezuela, also recently attacked by the USA, and on Russia, currently in a war as a result of NATO encirclement Eastern Europe. All three are suppliers of oil and gas to China, an opposite poll to the bloc dominated by the USA.
As to Iran’s ballistic missiles, the fate of Syria once the Assad regime was overthrown – and Lebanon currently — illustrates starkly what happens to West Asian states that do not possess strong weapon defences against Israel (and its backer, the USA).
SOLIDARITY AND RESISTANCE
In the face of such naked aggression against a state merely for insisting on its sovereignty, our clearest path is that of solidarity. But also against our own state enlisting us in imperialist wars, making us accomplices and our children burnt offerings to place on the pyres of those wars.
Cartoon by D.Breatnach
Initially that path involves resistance to neo-colonial propaganda and measures of the State to remove the triple-lock from State legislation. But more, we need to remove the RAF from our skies, US military from our airports, UK Navy from our seas and NATO from the Six Counties.
The US and Israel have shown us the future cost of neglecting to undertake these measures. The colonial and gombeen neo-colonial system in Ireland needs to be overthrown. It is over time for REGIME CHANGE HERE!
End.
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As the northern hemisphere turned eastwards and the majority western calendar turned to a new year, it has been customary for people to wish one another a ‘Happy New Year’, not just for the first day of January but for the twelve months to come.
Although the Celtic New Year will not begin until the first of February, and the new year begins with “teacht an Earraigh … tar éis na Féile Brighde”, I have done likewise but with deep feelings of ambivalence.
Because facing us as 2026 progresses is genocide in some parts of the world, growing fascism in some other parts, tighter squeezes on working people, smaller proxy wars and, almost certainly, a larger war, with desperate migrations of people, if surviving death to find racism and exploitation.
Faced with armed occupation and genocide, armed resistance is justified and arguably necessary, even were it not established as a right within the Geneva Convention. But even unarmed and peaceful resistance is being penalised and repressed, including in the ‘Western democracies.’
Support and solidarity organisations are being outlawed, people expressing legitimate opinions against genocide, racism, ethnic cleansing and armed occupation supported by those ‘democracies’ are being hounded in their jobs and private lives, beaten and arrested by police and even shot dead.
But where there is oppression there is also resistance. The struggles against the racist and genocidal entity, though supported in arms, finance and politically by the Western ‘democracies’ have awoken people in those countries to solidarity action in the face of their governments’ opposition.
(Cartoon by D.Breatnach)
Hugely important lessons have been learned: about the nature of the Zionist state, about the collusion of the ‘democracies’ in colonial occupation and genocide, about ‘the independence of the judiciary’ and the ‘free press’, along with the partiality and ineffectiveness of ‘international law’.
And also about the ineffectiveness of liberal opinion and organisations, even in their heartlands of the ‘democracies’, to achieve meaningful change or even stop the repression. And about how the State knows this and reacts most violently against direct solidarity action.
Organic links have become clear between war in Yemen and Somalia, the spread of Islamist jihadism and imperialism, between prison struggles in Palestine, Britain and Ireland, between the troubles of the world and much of their origins among the colonial and imperial powers.
Yes, where there is repression, there is also resistance and our duty lies in feeding that resistance in all the ways that we can, including being visible in protests at their trials and supporting them in jail. And impeding our ruling class’ attempts to tie us to NATO or other military alliance.
So what I wish for is an increase in the militant resistance of the masses and greater unity in struggle, simultaneously with greater disunity among the imperialist states and ruling classes, bringing us closer to the kind of world we need.
I wish that for us all throughout 2026.
End.
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