Category: Basque Country

THE TRUMP GAZA PLAN AND IRELAND PACIFICATION

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, History, Imperialism, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Kurdistan, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, South Africa, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4mins.)

It was great to see the Irish pacification process being referenced with regard to the Trump plan for Gaza1 because that is exactly what the latter is: a plan to pacify the Resistance while ensuring it gets none of what it fought for.2

In other words, exactly like the Irish pacification process.

(Cartoon by D.Breatnach)

Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad grew out of previous Palestinian pacification processes. The Madrid Conference (1991) and the Oslo Agreement (1993) were imperialist/ Zionist attempts to pacify the wide-scale militant Palestinian resistance period of the First Intifada.3

Fatah at that time was the leading group in numbers and influence in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (from which Islamic groups were excluded) but also in Palestinian society in general. But Fatah had agreed to recognise ‘Israel’ and also the two-state solution (sic).

In the Oslo Agreement, furthermore, the question of the return to their homeland of the refugees was left aside. It appears that the Fatah leadership had lost faith in the eventual victory of their people’s struggle and had decided to get what they could by using the struggle to bargain.

The Oslo Agreement: US Imperialism’s President Clinton oversees Yitzak Rabin, Premier of Zionist state of ‘Israel’ shaking hands with Yasser Arafat of Fatah, then leader of the PLO.

What Fatah got was Palestinian Authority control in the first elections (1996), with internal control over/ management of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza, but not of the Palestinians in Jerusalem (captured by ‘Israel’ in 1967): a far cry from a free Palestine.4

In the Algiers conference of 1988 Fatah had won majority agreement to recognise ‘Israel’ and to accept the two-state solution5 (sic), i.e. embodying a Palestinian state on 20% of Palestinian land, under the eyes and guns of their Zionist neighbour).

Fatah’s rule became known for corruption and nepotism, which then had to be protected and defended from the Palestinian masses, leading to authoritarian, repressive and often arbitrary rule. And repression of the Resistance, along with direct collusion with the ‘Israeli’ State.

Continuing ‘Israeli’ repression and settlement expansion in turn led to the Second Intifada; Fatah lost to Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006 followed by defeat of Fatah’s attempted coup in Gaza in 2007 (but the West Bank remaining under unelected Fatah control).

Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has refused to announce elections since, sitting in unelected control of the PA’s office in the West Bank, collecting the various international grants, presiding over corruption,6 repressing Palestinian resistance of deed or word and colluding with the ‘Israeli’ Occupation.

US Imperialism’s then Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine, soon after the start of the accelerated Zionist genocide in Gaza, December 2023

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IRISH CONNECTION?

Starting with Palestine and South Africa in 1991, an imperialist pacification process spread to Ireland, Basque Country, Kurdish Turkey, Colombia, India, Philippines, Sri Lanka. With some variations the drive has been the same: to give up revolution and join the system.

One of the features of this process was the apparent need of a recognised leader to sell it to the resistance support base and to front it for the world: Arafat (Palestine), Mandela (S. Africa), Adams/McGuinness (Ireland), Ocalan (Turkish Kurdistan), Otegi (Basque Country).

The Provisional IRA was by far the major organisation in the Irish Republican resistance; it gave up armed struggle in return for vague promises and the release of its prisoners under licence.7 Another organisation complied also even as new ‘dissident’ fighters were being jailed.

Nearly 30 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Ireland is no nearer the Provisional IRA’s declared aims Irish reunification, independence and sovereignty. The Sinn Féin party helps run the colony8 and is attempting to become part of the neo-colony’s government.

Sinn Féin representatives Tina Black (Mayor of Belfast) and Michelle O’Neill, First Minister of the British colony, laying a wreath at the British War Memorial in Belfast, July 2022 (Cred: Liam McBurney/ PA Wire)

Neither the Spanish, French nor Turkish states were interested in other than crushing the Basque and Kurdish resistance and the corresponding movements disabled themselves without getting anything in exchange other than continued repression.9

The resistance movements in parts of India and Philippines continue to resist but in Sri Lanka was wiped out.10

One feature of the spread was the contagion-like way in which leaders of one infected resistance sought to entice others to follow suit: S. Africa and Palestine to Ireland; S. Africa and Ireland to Basque Country; Ireland to Colombia (where only the FARC but not the ELN accepted it).

In only one iteration of the pacification processes was there a partial achievement of the stated aims of the resistance: South Africa got national enfranchisement but the economy remained under imperialist extractive control and its working people under repression.11

In the course of giving up armed struggle, allegedly just changing the methods, the leaders gave up what they had fought for, the very reason for which they had first come into the struggle. Of course, they could still shout the slogans, just not make them real in any way.

The Irish version (and the Basque one) decommissioned their weapons, which makes it very relevant to the Trump Plan for the Palestinian Resistance, particularly Hamas and PIJ. No resistance movement should even discuss giving up their weapons until the defeat of the enemy.

(Image sourced: Internet)

It will be interesting to see what positions the former parties of Irish and Basque resistance, Sinn Féin and EH Bildu12 and their supporters take on this US/ ‘Israeli’ plan for the Palestinian Resistance.

One of the features of the pacification process was the apparent need of a recognised leader to sell it to the resistance support base and to front it to the world: Arafat (Palestine), Mandela (S. Africa), Adams/McGuinness (Ireland), Ocalan (Turkish Kurdistan), Otegi (Basque Country).

Who will the imperialists find to play this role in Palestine?13

End.

NB: If you found this article of interest, why not register with Rebel Breeze for free, so that you will be notified by email of subsequent articles. You can de-register any time you wish.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

Referencing the Irish pacification process in Gaza context: https://apnews.com/article/gaza-northern-ireland-peace-process

The Palestinian Authority: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/11/what-is-the-palestinian-authority-and-how-is-it-viewed-by-palestinians

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-palestinian-authority-failed-its-people

1https://apnews.com/article/gaza-northern-ireland-peace-process

2Trump 20-point plan: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles

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

4“This mirrors Israel’s post-Oslo approach to the occupied West Bank in pacifying the population through economic incentives, avoiding political concessions, and entrenching structural dependence. This model, often dubbed “economic peace,” has transformed the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a subcontractor of occupation – flush with foreign funds, but powerless to deliver sovereignty.” https://thecradle.co/articles-id/34757

5https://ejil.org/pdfs/1/1/1136.pdf

6Which is why the imperialists and their servants keep alluding to the need for a “reformed Palestinian Authority” e.g. https://israelpolicyforum.org/blueprint-for-reforming-the-palestinian-authority

7Those released under licence could be returned to jail (and a number were) at the decision of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland without trial, hearing or details of why the individual was considered to be ‘a threat to public safety.’

8Its representative, Michelle O’Neill, is currently First Minister of the colony’s government. In the Irish State, the party has 33 TDs (MPs), only two behind the party with next largest representation, Fianna Fáil. They Party has abandoned its opposition to the repressive legislation of the State, welcomed British Royal visits to both parts of Ireland, supports recruitment to the colonial gendarmerie and its leader refused to rule out coalition with the neo-colonial political parties of membership of the British Commonwealth. https://www.thejournal.ie/mar-lou-mcdonald-commonwealth-4561600-Mar2019/

9The Basque leadership abandoned armed struggle unilaterally at the time without gaining even the end of dispersal of their jailed fighters throughout the state. The Turkish Kurdish PKK tried to make progress through political electoral means only under continuing repression. But their Syrian version of armed Kurdish forces got a new lease of life with the vulnerability of the Assad regime in Syria but ended up as a NATO proxy in the latter’s war for regime change. The PKK in Turkey very recently agreed to disarm while their Syrian part remains in difficult relationship with the new (formerly ISIS) regime in Syria and some other ISIS elements under Turkish influence.

10https://www.vice.com/en/article/death-of-a-tiger-0000710-v22n8/

11See The Marikana Massacre of striking miners by the ANC Government’s police.

12Both parties support the Two-State proposal for Palestine.

13Some liberal and social-democratic sections seem to have fixed on Marwan Marghouti in this role, which of course is no reason not to support his release on human rights grounds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6IgjlHaaIs

PKK FINALLY SWALLOWS THE PACIFICATION PILL

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Ireland, Kurdistan, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, South Africa, Trade unionsLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The Kurdish group, the PKK announced on Monday that it has disbanded its armed organisation of the last nearly 50 years.1 The change was carried out on instruction or request of their leader Abdullah Ocalan who’s been in a Turkish jail since 1999.

Supporters in Dusseldorf November last year defy German ban to demonstrate and call for release from Turkish jail of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK (Photo credit: AP)

The marxist-leninist PKK set up its armed organisation in 1978 to resist the Turkish state repression of the Kurdish independence movement. The Kurdish area is of huge strategic importance, encompassing parts of what are now Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Azerbaijan.

The population of Kurdistan is estimated at between 30 and 45 million, with up to another two million in its diaspora. The PKK waged armed struggle in Turkey until 1999 then again as the YPG and SDF in Syria, against the Assad regime and against ISIS.

PERSONAL CONNECTION

I was for a time in London myself active in solidarity with the Kurdish national liberation struggle and, as a result, part of a trade union delegation to Turkish Kurdistan around 1991/92, organised through a Kurdish community centre in North London.

The trade union activists participating were required to raise the money for the flights from their union organisations and I was successful in obtaining the necessary funds through the Lewisham Nalgo/ Unison local government branch and through the Nalgo/ Unison Irish Workers Group.2

Our delegation flew to Istanbul and from there to Batman province where the driver, supplied by the Petro-Is trade union took the three of us and our interpreter and photographer to many parts in the region, including to the border with Syria and seeing the oil being smuggled across the Iraq border.

Evidence of the ongoing war between the PKK and the Turkish State was plentiful, including Turkish gendarmerie checkpoints, bullet-riddled walls in towns and a shell hole in the wall of my bedroom in one hotel in which we stayed.

Much worse was the visit to an outlying village house burned by German flame-throwing tank of the Turkish Army and viewing the photos of the children immolated inside.

Turkish secret police visited our driver’s house while he was away, commented to staff of one hotel that we were not tourists (declaring ourselves a trade union delegation would have been asking for trouble) and on our last day kept driving past us and even followed us on to the plane.

Even then I was very concerned at what seemed to me like near deification of Ocalan. Years later, in Bilbao as part of a panel of speakers on national liberation struggles, off the platform the speakers on the Irish, Palestinian and Kurdish resistance discussed issues in the liberation movements.

The Palestinian and I became concerned by the almost violent agreement of the Kurd with everything that Ocalan did or said. We had to abandon all attempts to discuss and debate with him.

PACIFICATION PROCESSES

Pacification processes of various types have been around for centuries but a particular wave of them began to be deployed in the early 1990s, starting with South Africa and Palestine,3 then spreading to Ireland, the Basque Country and Colombia, each affected subject infecting in turn the next.

Typically the subject was told they had to disarm and disband their armed organisation, after which they would be accepted into the system and could organise politically for admission to the ruling political circles through the standard electoral process.

Portraits of eight martyrs of the YPG announced fallen in battle in Afrin against ISIS (note two are female) December 2019 (Source: YPG media)

Of course each subject would have to renounce even the idea of armed struggle or revolution. And would be required to control their own fighters and denounce their dissidents.

It is somewhat surprising that it has taken this long for imperialism to land the PKK fish since Ocalan swallowed the baited hook back in the late 1990s. The war in Syria I suppose extended their armed organisation’s life for a while beyond that which it would have had if confined to Turkey alone.

But their role in Syria in the YPG, whether it began as an independent Kurdish national liberation struggle or not, soon degenerated into leading a US/NATO proxy force, the SDF.4

This March the SDF agreed to integrate into the imperialist proxies’ army of ISIS types led by Ahmad al Shaara (i.e the ‘former’ ISIS leader Jolani), currently being embraced by imperialist leaders while his forces continue to carry out sectarian murders of Syrian Alawites and Druzes.

More recent reports have them, while agreeing to disarmament in Turkey, refusing it in Syria, which makes sense from a self-preservation stance alone, given the nature of the new state’s forces.

We can imagine the imperialist-driven virtual “Pacification Express” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as it left South Africa and Oslo-Palestine, calling on Ireland and from there to the Basque Country and outward bound to Colombia. Turkish Kurdistan was one of the planned stops.

In not one of the areas of national liberation struggle passed through by the Pacification Express did the liberation organisation win that for which they had declared they were fighting, or indeed anything apart from in some cases the freeing of political prisoners.5

In S. Africa they did at least get ‘majority rule’, so that the leadership of the liberation organisations could form a corrupt imperialist-serving government.6 The Irish travelling on that Express got their prisoners freed but the Kurds and Basques on board did not receive even that.

Supporters YPG and other militias and parties protest threats from Turkey in Afrin, Aleppo province, north Syria 18 Jan 2018 (Source: YPG Press Office/AP)

Whoever the leaders of the Kurds are now, they claim that they continue on the track to democracy and Kurdish national liberation.

Of course they do. The passengers on the Pacification Express always declare that sovereignty and self-determination are the train’s destinations, even if it shows no sign of heading there. And that some of the stations passed on the way are quite clearly on another line completely.

end.

Footnotes

1https://apnews.com/article/turkey-kurdish-militants-disarm-9f4347a04cba48ceb509d2e82023a19e

2This was one of the self-organised groups of NALGO (National Association of Local Government Officers), now subsumed into UNISON but which the union’s leadership refused to recognise and worked to undermine. I had been a founding member. The union leadership tried to get us to change our founding principle of self-determination for the whole of Ireland and when we refused, they worked against us.

3The ‘Oslo process’ which set up the Palestine Authority and the popular rejection of which led to the Second Intifada.

4Even though some anarchist groupings and at least one Irish socialist Republican group refused to see this and focused instead exclusively on the YPG’s anti-ISIS fighting and their federal administration of ‘liberated’ Rojava.

5But not in Turkey or in the Basque Country, nor of the ELN in Colombia.

6As Bishop Tutu, who supported the Process said of Mandela’s ANC: “They stopped the gravy train long enough to get on it.”

Sources

https://apnews.com/article/turkey-kurdish-militants-disarm-9f4347a04cba48ceb509d2e82023a19e

https://thekurdishproject.org/kurdish-ypg-to-lead-new-syrian-democratic-forces/

IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE, THOUSANDS MARCH IN BASQUE CITIES

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Euskal Herria, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Thousands marched recently in two cities of the Basque Country, Bilbo and Iruña/ Pamplona,1 respectively the capitals of the Bizkaia and Nafarroa2 provinces, in solidarity with the Palestinian people and with their Resistance.

And almost immediately posters could be seen calling for the same on the 11th November, but in four Basque cities, including a city in one of the provinces on the French state’s side.3

“Well that’s great but sure we do that here every second week or so,” some might say. But they’d be wrong. The marches organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, while calling for solidarity with the Palestinians and BDS4 of the ‘Israeli’ state and businesses, do not support the Resistance.

The rally stage at the end of the march in Bilbao, on the east bank of the Nervion river. Banner exalting the Resistance in the centre facing the crowd, banner to the left calling for solidarity with the Resistance and another to the right calling for struggle against ‘Israel’. (Photo cred: Resumen Latinamericano)

Nor do the marches organised by the main Palestine solidarity organisations in England or in Scotland. It might be pleaded that in the UK at least, people could be arrested for declaring support for a number of Palestinian resistance organisations that are on the EU “terrorist” list.5

The leadership of the Basque Patriotic Left6 does not support the resistance either, preferring to draw the Palestinians and Basques together as victims under a Gernika-Gaza initiative and even criticising the resistance along with the Zionists in a “both sides” kind of analysis.

But no law exists in these countries forbidding expression of “solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance.” The organisers of those campaign organisations don’t declare for the Resistance because a) they don’t support it or b) wish to remain tolerated by the upholders of the status quo.

View of section of the crowd, giving an idea of its size, the largest Palestine solidarity demonstration in the Basque Country since the present phase of Zionist genocide began on 8th October last year. (Photo cred: Resumen Latinamericano).

IT MATTERS

Well, ok, but does it really matter? Yes, it does and it matters a lot, for the Palestinians, for others struggling against imperialism elsewhere around the world – and for us. Not supporting the Resistance leaves open the question of, for example, the Palestinian Authority.

This Vichy-like organisation headed by a corrupt Quisling sends its security force to intimidate and beat up critics and demonstrators, to arrest them and also Resistance fighters (including invading hospitals to chase down the wounded) and removes defences against IOF invasion.

The PA, despite its widely-acknowledge corruption and the contempt in which it is held by broad Palestinian society, is formally recognised as the ‘representative of the Palestinian people’ by the western imperialists and by many social-democratic parties in Europe.

It is an offence against the Palestinian people and internationalist solidarity to accept the PA as any kind of representation of the heroic Palestinian people – or even to leave the question open. Furthermore, such a stance leaves the door open to all kinds of traitors and confusion.

In our own struggles, we need to be clear who are our enemies and friends. To accept treasonous agencies as representatives of struggling people contaminates our own attitudes in struggle, confuses and undermines our thinking, clouding our vision.

A woman holds high a placard calling to “Free Palestine” and to “Boycott Israel.” (Photo sourced: Internet)

BEING CLEAR AND MAKING IT CLEAR

We need to be clear – and to make it clear – that we support the Palestinian resistance in all its forms: popular, armed, trade unionist, cultural, artistic … and that we abhor collaboration and collusion with the enemy.

We can do that – and it has been done on occasion – by mobilising all who agree on a demo behind a banner celebrating the Palestinian Resistance. But how much better, if like the Basques today in Bilbao and in Iruña/ Pamplona, the whole demonstration marched behind that kind of slogan!

It might be thought that the demonstrations on 5th October would gather less than the safer Gernika-Gaza group of the official leadership of the Left Basque Patriotic movement (Otegi & co.) and other liberals but this was not the case in Bilbo anyway, on the biggest solidarity demonstration since October last year.

Advance posters for the solidarity march. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Two Palestinian Resistance factions, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine sent messages of thanks to the organisers and the demonstrators.

The demonstration and its theme were covered widely in Basque, Spanish, European and Latin American media, usually with photos.

Addressing the rally after the march in Bilbo on 5th October, a speaker listed the many crimes of the Zionist State and was loudly cheered when she said that only the abolition of that state could bring that career of genocidal crimes to an end.

The cheers grew louder still as she called for solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and all others fighting against imperialism and Zionism. And continued as she went on to call for a break with all states and political parties that support the Zionist State.7

The cheers might even have reached EH Bildu’s office and the leadership of the Gernika-Gaza group.

The march on its way to the rally across the river pauses on the way for photos. The long banner calls for “Support for the Palestinian Resistance” but also ” Oppose Israel and its accomplices.”(Photo cred: Boltxe)

End.

FOOTNOTES

1A number of places with Basque toponymics, under Spanish colonialism, were given Spanish names.

2Also known as ‘Navarre’ and ‘Navarra’.

3There are seven provinces in the Basque Country, three on the French side of the Border (Iparralde, ‘the North Country’) and four on the Spanish side (Hegoalde, ‘the South Country’).

4Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

5https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror-groups-or-organisations–2/proscribed-terrorist-groups-or-organisations-accessible-version There is actually no universally agreed definition of ‘terrorism’ neither in objectives nor in actions but if we were to accept “use of violence to achieve a political end” then we’d had to include the chief actors fitting that definition in the world – the western imperialist states, in particular the USA and the UK!

6That was the broad movement of legal and banned organisations of revolutionary Left and independentist outlook, the movement now reformist, much reduced and fragmented under the leadership of Arnaldo Otegi and the EH Bildu party.

7That clearly includes the conservative Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) currently in coalition government in the Basque Autonomous Regional Government.

SOURCES

Orga­ni­za­cio­nes de la resis­ten­cia pales­ti­na envían men­sa­jes de soli­da­ri­dad a mani­fes­ta­ción cele­bra­da en Bil­bao el 5 de octubre
Palestina. Exigen en todo el mundo el cese del genocidio israelí / Miles de manifestantes en numerosos países apoyan la Resistencia al ocupante sionista

DAY OF THE PATRIOT SOLDIER

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Executions, Guerrilla Action, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in Struggle, Spanish StateLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

In the Basque Country the Day of the Patriot Soldier is commemorated on two different dates: by the Basque Nationalist Party on October 28th and by the Patriotic Left on September 27th. Each date marks different events but each is anti-fascist in character.

On October 28th one of the many atrocities of the Spanish Civil War/ Anti-Fascist War was enacted by the Spanish fascist military when they executed 42 captured Basque soldiers of the Eusko Gudarastea, a Basque antifascist militia opposing the military-fascist coup of Franco and another three generals.

Section of the crowd at the Gudari Eguna commemoration in Arrigorriaga, Bizkaia province, southern Basque Country. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

This atrocity occurred in 1937, when that war had another two years to run. The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) was then the main political party in that part of the Basque Country1 and many of its politicians and administrative officials were executed by the Franco regime too.

Commemoration of the PNV´s Day of the Patriotic Soldier (Gudari Eguna) was carried out clandestinely during the four decades of the fascist Franco regime but was permitted in the post-Franco arrangement in the Spanish State, when the PNV were legalised.

The PNV became the dominant force politically in the two provinces that had declared for the Spanish Republic, which was the largest part of the Basque Autonomous Region. Nafarroa however was given a separate autonomous government which split the nation administratively in at least four.2

A DIFFERENT DATE TO COMMEMORATE

However in the 1960s a large part of the PNV´s youth wing had become disenchanted with the party and, entering into alliance with a Basque socialist movement, formed ETA, a mainly political organisation but, existing under a fascist-military regime, inclined also towards armed resistance.

The platform at the Gudari Eguna commemoration organised by Jarki with the event’s speaker/ chairperson addressing the participants. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

ETA grew in support and in actions, military but not only, the Left Patriotic movement (Izquierda Abertzale) widening to fight on a number of fronts, linguistic, social, trade unionist and political with the armed section carrying out many actions.

The last political executions of the Franco regime were in 1975 of two members of ETA and three of FRAP3; the two Basques were Juan “Txiki” Paredes4 and Angel Otaegui. All five, despite huge international solidarity mobilisations and appeals for clemency, were shot by firing squads.

Today, the Patriotic Left´s Gudari Eguna is commemorated by different groups and not all together. As has occurred in Ireland, the accommodation of the leadership of the Basque Patriotic Left to the Spanish electoral system and abandonment of armed struggle has resulted in fragmentation.

A protest in Arrigorriaga I passed by on my way to the Gudari Eguna commemoration. I did not stop to enquire as to the purpose; I had made an error on the journey, was late and in a hurry. From the arrows design I understand these to be the Sare group doing their last Friday of the month picket in solidarity with the prisoners. ‘Giltzak’ means ‘keys’ as the graphic banner design shows and so the aim is probably to have them all leave jail. That is also the aim of the ‘dissident’ group Amnestia but they seek complete amnesty for the political prisoners whereas Etxerat, Sare and EH Bildu normally refrain from even calling them ‘political prisoners’ since, according to the Spanish State, that amounts to ‘supporting terrorism.’ (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The political party EH Bildu commemorated the executions but so did the dissenting Jarki and Tinko/Amnistia and the historical memory organisation, Ahaztuak. They did not do so together nor, naturally with the PNV on the different date.

In Arrigorriaga Jarki organised their event in the birthplace and home of Argala, nom-de-guerre of José Miguel Beñaran Ordeñana, a theoretician and activist of great importance in the development of ETA and assassinated by the state-sponsored GAL terrorists.

The attendance at the event listened to the event’s MC addressing them, after which a group of youth carrying flaming torches came on stage. The MC ended her talk with calls for a free and socialist Basque Country, after each which the audience chanted “Gora!” (‘Up!’).

She then led them in singing the Eusko Gudariak with clenched fist in the air, followed by introducing the Internationale in Basque, the revolutionary socialist song that emerged from the Paris Commune of 1871, the audience joining in (though not everyone as well-versed as with the previous song).

I sang the chorus in French, the only language other than English in which I know the chorus, sadly.

HISTORICAL MEMORY & THE MARTYRS

The martyrs of the people´s struggles around the world are remembered organically and kept close to their hearts by the people from which they came, at least for a few generations. Initiatives of conserving and transmitting historical memory keep those commemorations going further.

Section of the crowd at the commemoration of Gudari Eguna, organised by the Jarki organisation. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

In Ireland we know that commemorating the risings of the United Irishmen (1798 and 1803) fed into the struggles of the Young Irelanders a half-century later, their memory in turn contributing to the Fenians which again became part of the history of future generations and of several armed struggles.

Counter-movements, recognising the potency of historical memory, try to appropriate it and adapt it to their political program or to diminish its importance and even deny it. Both those counter-currents can be seen in many parts of the world, including in Ireland and in the Basque Country

However, the ongoing revolutionary streams and their commemorations will always be closest to the real meaning of those events in the historical memory of the people, in the real social and political meaning of martyrdom.

Patrick Pearse remarked on this process in his famous oration over the grave of O´Donovan Rosa: Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.

Footnotes:

1The Basque Country is composed of seven provinces, four on the Spanish state´s side of its northern border and three on the French state´s side. The Anti-Fascist War split the southern Basque Country with principally two provinces, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia, taking the side of the Spanish Republic, which at the last minute granted them national autonomy. Nafarroa (Navarre) mostly took the fascist-military side and murdered around 3,000 antifascists and Alava province took that side too.

2Two separate autonomous regions in the Spanish state and the provinces on the French side in different French regional administrative areas.

3Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriota (Revolutionary Anti-Fascist & Patriotic Front); the three were: José Luis Sánchez-Bravo Sollas, José Humberto Baena Alonso and Ramón García Sanz. 

4According to his brother who, despite being misdirected arrived as Paredes was being shot by the Guardia Civil, who were shooting at different parts of his body, Txiki Paredes continued to sing Eusko Gudariak (‘Soldiers of the Basque Country’) until he finally died.

Sources:

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudari_Eguna

Important Call for a United Resistance Front

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History, History commemoration, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Republicanism, NATO, Peace Process, Political Analysis, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time article: 3 mins.)

Earlier this month there was an oration delivered at the grave of Wolfe Tone1 which contained some important elements which deserve inspection and discussion.

– The path to rebuild our struggle is the development of an Anti Imperialist Broad Front – said the speaker. – A United Front of Revolutionary republicans, working in cooperation to advance our common republican objectives and to achieve a common republican programme.

Looking around us at the parties and groups in the socialist and republican spectrum, the ostensibly revolutionary varieties, we see that for many of them, building up their own organisation takes precedence over anything else, including revolution – for them the revolution IS their party.

Speaker giving oration at Wolfe Tone’s grave in front of the monument, faced by colour party. (Photo: RSM)

The call given in this oration runs counter to that kind of thinking. “But we’ve heard all that about ‘unity’ before,” a reader might say. Yes we have and often “unity” meant only “unity” around that particular party or, even more often, around this or that leadership.

There is nothing of that to be found in this address “recognising and respectful of the autonomy and independence of the groups and independents involved”. “Hmmm,” the reader might say “but is it a genuine intention?” Given our experience, it’s a valid and important question.

The most dependable test is in the practice. The speaker of the oration at its annual Wolfe Town Commemoration2 was representing the Socialist Republican Movement organisation (more often manifested publicy in recent years in the form of the Anti-Imperialist Action broad group3)

As an independent revolutionary activist for many years I have often participated in AIA’s actions and at times they have supported actions of which I had been part of organising. I have found that their practice matches their words and there is no truer test.

The speaker followed with practical suggestions for the implementation of the broad front: Trust and co-operation must be developed … through activism and the development of National Republican Campaigns that can be taken up by all Republican groups and independents …

There are many campaigns that could be developed from support for POWs to opposing internment and extradition, environmental campaigns such as (overcoming) the unacceptable situation at Lough Neagh, to campaigns that oppose the British and NATO presence in Ireland.

One of the banners in the crowd at the event in Bodenstown. (Photo: RSM)

Such a Republican Broad Front would be a fitting tribute to our Patriot Dead, the speaker added, to martyrs like Cathal Brugha,4 who gave his all in fighting for the sovereign, Independent Irish Republic and gave his life on this day in 1922 as a hero in the war in defence of the Republic.

In many of the pleas for unity of the fragmented resistance in Ireland, individuals have called for a conference to form a united front, others called for a unity document of principles around which to unite while in at least one case, two distinct organisations merged.

I have for years spoken out against such endeavours and advocated as a first step unity in practice. If organisations and individuals are not capable of that step, what kind of unity can they achieve around discussion of documents? Unity in practice also helps to break down distrust.

The speaker at the Wolfe Tone commemoration takes the same line, presumably speaking for the SRM when he does so and one supposes that this will continue to be the approach of the AIA in campaigns such as against internment, in solidarity with political prisoners5 or with Palestine.6

The above piece discussed two elements of the oration given by the SRM earlier this month which I believe to be of great revolutionary importance and in need of application in Ireland, one in advocating a principle and the other in suggesting avenues for practical application.

Later I will be taking a look at some other elements in that talk (the text of which, as published by the SRM, I attach as an appendix).

Beirimís bua.

(Image sourced: Internet)

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Wolfe Tone, born into settler stock and of the Establishment Anglican congregation, was a leading figure in the formation of the revolutionary republican organisation The Society of United Irishmen, seeking “to unite Catholic, Protestant (i.e Anglican) and Dissenter” (i.e the other sects, Presbyterian, Methodist, Unitarian, Quaker etc.) to “break the connection with England. In 1798, the year of the Unitedmen uprising, the first of many Irish Republican uprisings and campaigns, Tone was captured by the British Navy on a French warship and, despite his French officer rank, tried and sentenced to death.

Tone died in jail some months before his brother Matthew was taken prisoner during the surrender at Ballinamuck (Baile na Muc) in Co. Longford of another French expedition to Ireland, late and too small, at the tail end of the Rising that year. Also ignoring his officer POW status, he was hanged in Dublin and his body reputedly thrown into the mass grave at Croppies’ Acre in Dublin city.

2Since even earlier than Thomas Davis’ (1814-1845) song In Bodenstown Churchyard, Irish Republican organisations and individuals have been making the pilgrimage to that grave in County Meath, at times with thousands in attendance.

3Also for an intense time as the Revolutionary Housing League in its attempt to spark a movement of occupation of empty properties to overcome the widely-acknowledged housing crisis in Ireland.

4Cathal Brugha (nee Burgess), son of a mixed Catholic-Protestant marriage, was a leading figure in Irish nationalist movement and in Republican rebellion in the last decades of the 19th and early decades of the 20th Centuries, learned Irish as a member of the Gaelic League, member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (which he later left, considering it undemocratic), officer in the Irish Volunteer, 2nd in command in the South Dublin Union in 1916 served as Minister for Defence in the revolutionary government from 1919 to 1922, Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann in January 1919 and its first president from January 1to April 1919, Chief of Staff of the IRAfrom 1917 to 1918. He served as a TD (electe parliamentary representative) from 1918 to 1922. He was mortally wounded by Irish Government troops in the early days of the Irish Civil War.

5Both on their own and for example in support of the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign.

6Both on their own and for example as part of the Saoirse Don Phalaistín broad front.

APPENDIX

The following is the text of the main oration of which some sections are discussed in the preceding article and more to be discussed anon. It was delivered at the annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration at Bodenstown, organised by the Revolutionary Irish Socialist Republican Movement on Sunday July 7, 2024 and published on its Telegram page.

A Chairde is a chomrádaithe,

Táimid anseo i relig bodenstown ag uaimh ár n-athair, Wolfe Tone agus táimid ag rá go bhfuil an gluaisteacht a bhunaigh sé fós beo, agus tá sé ag fás arís.

Wolfe Tone is the father of Irish Republicanism. We come here each year not just for commemoration, but like Pearse, Connolly, Mellows and Costello before us, we come because we believe that the ideas and the vision that Tone put forward of a free independent Ireland is as relevant today as they were in the 1790s and because we believe that by remaining true to the teachings of Wolfe Tone we can build a revolutionary movement that will successfully free our country. Maybe not today, but our freedom is inevitable.

Tone’s most important belief was that we must ‘break the connection with England’ by any means necessary. It is for this reason that he established revolutionary military-political organisation the United Irishmen in 1791 and led a mass armed uprising in 1798 against British Rule in Ireland.

Tone was also clear that the revolutionary struggle could only be successful if it was based on the masses of the Irish People, stating that, ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.

And in these two simple quotes from Wolfe Tone, we have two of the most important teachings for the Revolutionary Republican Movement today. Firstly, that Republicans must work as a priority for National Liberation by any means we decide necessary.

That we must break the connection with England and defeat all forms of Imperialism in Ireland to establish a sovereign, Independent, Irish Republic.

And secondly, we learn from Tone that the fight for our Republic is a class struggle and that the driving force of that struggle will be the working class fighting for their own liberation.

These are two key teachings that when deviated from lead to compromise and the selling out of our revolution.

It is the duty of all of us here today and of all Republicans across Ireland, to ensure that the struggle for national liberation is kept at the fore of our revolutionary republican objectives and that we work tirelessly to achieve it and to ensure that our movement remains centred on and driven by the working class.

Some other key points laid down by Tone include that Republicanism is Anti Imperialist and it is Internationalist. Our struggle in Ireland is part of a wider international struggle of oppressed people against occupation, colonialism and imperialism.

Tone understood this when he looked to Revolutionary France to support the 1798 uprising. Today, Republicans must fight our struggle while also supporting Liberation struggles around the world in the belief that every blow struck against imperialism brings our victory closer.

So from Palestine to the Philippines and from India to the Basque Country, and everywhere people take a stand against NATO, the Revolutionary Republican movement must raise our cries in solidarity. The tide of revolution is rising in the world and there is much to be optimistic about.

But as revolutionaries we also have to be realistic. Since the time of Wolfe Tone the tide of revolutionary Republicanism has ebbed and flowed.

After the days of Tone and Emmet and the final defeat of the United Irishmen in 1805, Republicanism was reduced to an ember, spoken about in quiet corners until the birth of Young Ireland and the uprisings of 1848 and 1849 when revolutionaries such as Thomas Davis, Fintan Lalor, James Stephens and John O’Mahony would carry forward the vision of Tone, take up the hard work of rebuilding the Republican Movement and become the spark that would renew the Revolutionary fire, giving birth to Fenianism and the struggle that has carried us until today.

And today, we are 26 years on from the surrender of 1998, a surrender that had a devastating effect on the movement. Later this month it will be 19 years since the Provisionals ended their armed campaign.

These two great betrayals have led to the situation where the movement is fractured and split.

The revolutionary forces, though active, are scattered and there is mistrust between Republicans, whether in different groups or independents across Ireland, and this mistrust and division is exploited by our enemies.

It is a situation that all Republicans want to reverse and one of the revolutionary priorities in this phase of our struggle to overcome.

Comrades, like the revolutionary republicans after the defeat of the United Irishmen and Young Ireland, we find ourselves with the hard and gruelling task of rebuilding and reasserting the revolutionary republican struggle.

And the path to rebuild our struggle is the development of an Anti Imperialist Broad Front. A United Front of Revolutionary republicans, recognising and respectful of the autonomy and independence of the groups and independents involved, working in cooperation to advance our common republican objectives and to achieve a common republican programme. This is what our enemies most fear.

But again, this will not just happen overnight.

Trust and co-operation must be developed and we assert that this will be best achieved through activism and the development of National Republican Campaigns that can be taken up by all Republican groups and independents in a unity of purpose, that shows the real and forgotten strength of the Republican Movement.

There are many campaigns that could be developed from support for POWs to opposing internment and extradition, environmental campaigns such as the unacceptable situation at Lough Neagh, to campaigns that oppose the British and NATO presence in Ireland.

Such a Republican Broad Front would be a fitting tribute to our Patriot Dead, to martyrs like Cathal Brugha, who gave his all in fighting for the sovereign, Independent Irish Republic and gave his life on this day in 1922 as a hero in the war in defence of the Republic.

Over the last seven years we have put down a solid foundation as a movement. We have reasserted Irish Socialist Republicanism as the driving force of Revolution in Ireland.

We have recruited a new generation of republicans not damaged by the 1998 surrender who are now working with more experienced republicans to drive the struggle on.

While we can be happy with these achievements, the Republic needs more from each and every one of us and we all need to ask what we as individuals can do to carry the struggle forward.

Now is the time to move to the next phase of development in our revolutionary struggle, unsurprisingly by taking it back to Tone. Now is the time to strengthen and embed ourselves in the people of no property and to engage in systematic Republican Community work across the country.

In doing so, we would do well to return to Seamus Costello and the oration that he delivered from this spot in 1966, signalling the rise of Socialist Republicanism within the Movement. Costello outlined how it was the duty of all republicans to be active in our community.

How we should be involved in community groups, trade unions, tenants and residents associations, sporting, cultural and educational organisations and how we must take and assert our revolutionary republican position within them.

This is a task for all revolutionary republicans. Look at the groups in your area and see which ones your involvement in would advance the strengthening of Socialist Republicanism in your community.

Where no such groups exist, establish them. Where help is needed reach out to us as we have experienced comrades who excel in this area that would be happy to help in this work.

To conclude the comrades, this is a brief outline of our tasks in the time ahead.

While these plans will be deepened with discussion and debate within the movement, no one should leave this graveyard thinking there is no work for them to do, and the responsibility is on you to come forward and volunteer instead of waiting for others to come and ask you.

Our work is to free Ireland and our people by any means necessary to establish the 32 county All Ireland Socialist Republic, sovereign, independent, Gaelic and free, and we will not be stopped.

Redouble your efforts comrades, onwards to the Republic of 1916.

Beir Bua,

Tiocfaidh Ár Lá

ANTI-IMPERIALIST ACTION HOLDS DUBLIN 1916 RISING COMMEMORATION

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, British imperialism, Cultural Comment, Current Event Report, Dublin Lockout 1913, History commemoration, Housing, Housing Struggle, Imperialism, Ireland, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, NATO, Political Analysis, Song, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

Easter is the time of year in Ireland for Easter Egg hunts and/or for attendance at religious services but for the Republican movement it is one of commemoration of the Easter Rising and its martyrs, with parades and speeches.

The commemoration parade proceeding along Phibsboro and approaching the Cross Guns canal bridge. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

Easter Monday in Dublin saw one of those commemorations organised by the Socialist Republican organisation Anti-Imperialist Action at the Citizen Army plot in the St. Paul’s section of the famous Glasnevin Cemetery at the Republican Struggle Monument1.

Participants rallied near the Phibsboro Shopping Centre to march from there to the Cemetery, a distance of around two kilometres, over the “Cross Guns” bridge over the Royal Canal, then passing the main entrance to the Glasnevin Cemetery on the right before turning left for St. Paul’s.

Garda POU van parked extremely dangerously, hiding left turn from view of eastbound traffic, as they chat with other Gardaí and a ‘Branch man. As is said, “one rule for the people …!”
In the laneway between houses visible in the background, a cameraman lurked taking photos. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

In a marked departure from the previous year, the State’s political police, plainclothes Gardaí of the “Special Branch”2 did not approach the participants to attempt to intimidate them and gather intelligence, demanding their names and addresses under the Offences Against the State Act.3

That had been followed up by a raid on the home of one of the leading activists. Sunday’s police behaviour was an even greater difference from Saturday’s, when a different Republican group, Saoradh, had their Easter Rising commemoration in Dublin’s city centre.

Around 300 police, including many in riot cop uniform (Public Order Unit) had harassed the participants demanding names, addresses and other information, attempting to intimidate them. At least seven police vans had been in attendance also to the bemusement of onlookers.4

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

LOCAL 1916 HISTORY

The Phibsboro/ Glasnevin area also figured in the 1916 Rising, with an insurgent barricade in Phibsboro and a Fianna youth, Sean Healy, mortally wounded at the crossroads by a British artillery shell fragment (a plaque on the ground at the SW corner commemorates his death.

Earlier, Irish Volunteers had guarded the canal bridge briefly; these were seen by the dozen Volunteers that marched along the canal from Maynooth, slept in Glasnevin Cemetery and got into the headquarters garrison at the General Post Office on Tuesday.

Later British soldiers set up a barricade on the Bridge preventing even foot traffic across and shooting dead a deaf and dumb man who could not hear their challenge.

EYE IN THE SKY? (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

PARADE THROUGH STREETS TO CEMETERY

The parade from Phibsboro on Sunday was led by the Glasgow Republican Flute band (formerly the Garngad RFB, which is where most of them are based) playing the airs of known Republican ballads, muted to regular tocks on their drums as they entered the housing estate.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

Also leading was the colour party dressed in white shirts, black trousers, jackets, berets and sunglasses, carrying the traditional flags for Republican colour parties: the Tricolour, Starry Plough, Sunburst, followed by the flags of the four provinces of Ireland: Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster.

Over the marchers the flags of the Tricolour and the Starry Plough, flag of the Irish Citizen Army flew in the breeze while those of the Basque nation, Palestine and of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine lent an international flavour to the commemoration of the Irish Rising.

There was some beeping of passing traffic and cheering from bystanders at the entrance to the laneway that leads to the bridge across the railway tracks to the St. Paul’s section of the graveyard. The marchers filed in and proceeded to the monument.

The Chair of the proceedings welcomed the attendance before reading from the 1916 Proclamation of Independence and calling a singer to step forward. Revolutionary activist Diarmuid Breatnach introduced the two songs he was going to sing as emphasising the role of the working class in the Rising.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

“The decision to go ahead with the Rising on Easter Monday was taken in Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the working class at the time,” he reminded the gathering, “which is also where the Proclamation of Independence was printed.”

He sang the “Jim Larkin Ballad”:
In Dublin City in 1913,
the boss was rich and the poor were slaves;
The women working, the children hungry,
till on came Larkin like a might wave …

Diarmuid Breatnach singing (Photo: Donated by participant)

Pausing to focus on a different key, the singer followed the ballad with Patrick Galvin’s Where Is Our James Connolly?

After applause, floral tributes were laid on behalf of Anti-Imperialism Action Ireland and of Dublin Republicans Against Fascism.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
(Photo: Donated by participant)

The chairperson asked for a minute’s silence in honour of those men and women who had given their lives in the struggle for freedom in Ireland. The colour party lowered their flags slowly in homage to the fallen, raising them again slowly to signify the continuation of the struggle.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

John Heaney, Republican ex-prisoner from Armagh was called to give the oration for the event, which he dedicated to all those men and women who had opened their doors and their homes to fighters in the struggle, whether the latter were in hiding or just resting – his audience applauded.

The speaker also congratulated on those who came forward to carry on the struggle, youth, women and stated he was proud to see the traditions of struggle being upheld in the process to achieve the Republic for which so many gave their lives.

The speaker, John Heaney delivering his oration. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

The marching band then played the air of Amhrán na bhFiann/ The Soldiers’ Song, verse and chorus and the formal part of the event came to an end. Band members lined up in front of the Monument for photos and a little later played the air of “Black Is the Colour” on whistles, to general applause.

SECOND 1916 COMMEMORATION FOR AIA THIS EASTER

This was the second 1916 Rising Commemoration to be attended by Anti-Imperialist Action as they had also participated in another organised by the Seamus Costello Memorial Committee in Bray on the previous day.

AIA is a young organisation, founded by socialist Republicans unhappy with the direction of the Republican organisation of which they had been members but now containing many young people.

AIA gave rise to the Revolutionary Housing League that occupied empty buildings in a campaign against homelessness and called for a general occupation campaign across the state. A number of court cases against them followed but sadly their lead was not followed.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

AIA have also been very active against NATO, picketing promotional meetings and a number have been charged following a demonstration against a visiting British Navy ship in Dublin last November.5 They have also been active as part of the Saoirse don Phalaistín activist group.

Following the event in Glasnevin, many of the participants relaxed at a social evening in a different part of the city where many songs of struggle were sung.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

OTHER EASTER COMMEMORATIONS

Other Easter Rising commemorations have been held around this time, for example: Lasair Dhearg held one in Belfast on Easter Monday, while Independent Dublin Republicans held theirs in the capital, marching from Liberty Hall to the GPO, then to Moore Street to lay a floral tribute.

On Monday too the Derry 1916 Memorial Committee held an event in its city.6

Former revolutionary Republican party Sinn Féin held theirs in Arbour Hill7 cemetery on Sunday; a large part of their President’s address was devoted to justification of support for the EU and a plea to support the party whenever the state’s general elections are held (this year or next)8.

End.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

Anti-Imperialist Action: https://t.me/aiaireland

Lasair Dhearg commemoration: https://www.facebook.com/LasairDhearg/

Derry commemoration: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/petrol-bombs-thrown-at-media-during-dissident-parade-in-derry/a1835461558.html?

Sinn Féin commemoration: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mary-lou-mcdonald-makes-election-plea-at-1916-event-1608211.html

1My name for the Monument in the St. Paul’s part of Glasnevin Cemetery which stands in recognition of six periods of Irish Republican-led insurrectionary activity in Ireland: 1798-1916.

2Now officially the Special Detective Unit, they were previously known as the “Special Branch”, a name they inherited from the British occupation which had set up a political intelligence unit, the Irish Special Branch, to spy on and disrupt the Fenian movement among the Irish diaspora in British cities. Most political activists in Ireland continue to call them “the Special Branch” or simply “the Branch”. Their equivalent in Britain today and in a number of its colonies and former colonies continues to officially bear the name “Special Branch”.

3As amended in 1972 after a British Intelligence bombing killing two public transport workers in Dublin but blamed on the IRA; the amendment also permitted the setting up of no-jury Special Courts which are in existence to this day.

4In the context of assaults on persons in the city centre there have been regular complaints in the media and in the Parliament about the lack of Gardaí visibly patrolling the area.

5 https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/irish-activists-shout-at-british-naval-vessel-in-dublin

6https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/petrol-bombs-thrown-at-media-during-dissident-parade-in-derry/a1835461558.html?

7Where the 14 Dublin 1916 executed were buried, now a national monument in a former prison and church graveyard around the back of the former military barracks and now National Museum of Collins Barracks

8https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mary-lou-mcdonald-makes-election-plea-at-1916-event-1608211.html

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS AND POLITICAL PRISONER SOLIDARITY

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Among Christmas shopping crowds in Dublin’s city centre, the calls for freedom of political prisoners rang out, while the Irish, Palestinian and Basque flags fluttered in the wind among festive lights and projected light-show.

The Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign was holding its annual political prisoner solidarity picket in the busy O’Connell street, supported by socialist Republican groups and independent activists.

View of picket line looking southward. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

December is a traditional month in Ireland for focus on Republican prisoners. However, the IAIC campaign has always made a point of remembering political prisoners elsewhere too, with Palestinian and Basque flags erected on its regular pickets.

This year the Campaign had especially requested Palestinian flags and these were present, both the national flag and that of the Peoples Front for the Liberation Palestine, fluttering alongside Basque flags and the green-and-gold Starry Plough.1

In addition, one of the IAIC’s banner displayed a large copy of an image depicting a Palestinian’s arm extended through prison bars to grasp the hand of an Irish Republican prisoner’s hand also from nearby bars, from the original by political cartoonist Carlos Latuf,.

A black banner had been rigged with lights to spell “Saoirse”, the Irish word for “freedom” and the picketers set up in a line with other banners and flags facing the GPO building.2

Political prisoners sometimes have their family visits cancelled as a punishment and during the Covid pandemic prevention period it was used as an excuse to prevent Republican prisoners’ family visits. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

SHOUTS

A speaker using a megaphone informed passers-by that internment without trial had not ceased in Ireland and that Republicans were being charged and then refused bail by non-jury courts on both sides of the British Border, spending two years in jail regardless of their trials’ outcomes.

All the Republican prisoners, the IAIC speaker said, had been convicted in non-jury special courts. Palestinians were also being convicted in special courts, he said, military courts and many were in jail – in “administrative detention”, i.e interned without ever having been convicted or tried.

Over 3,000 had been arrested in Israeli Army raids since October 7th,3 the speaker said through the megaphone, bringing the overall number of Palestinians in jail to over 7,000.4

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

The recent exchange of prisoners between the Zionist state and the Palestinian resistance had resulted in liberty for 240 Palestinians, of which 1075 were children and 68 women.

There was regular chanting from the picket line including: “From Ireland to Palestine – Free all political prisoners!” “When there is occupation – Resistance is an obligation!” and “Free political prisoners – Free them now!”

At one point some kind of religious procession was briefly enacted in front of the GPO building and an elderly woman in apparent religious garb approached the picketers shouting something at them which they largely ignored, maintaining their solidarity slogans.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

In addition to interested people taking photos or filming video of the protest on their devices, some approached the participants to ask questions and to receive a leaflet, after which a number actually joined the protest line for a while (some until the end).

Occasional passing traffic also sounded their horns in solidarity.

The pavement in front of the GPO showing shoppers and people queuing for food distribution. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

STATEMENT

As the end of the event’s allocated period approached, a representative of the IAIC asked the participants to gather around and spoke about how resistance brings repression and oppression brings resistance, resistance being the “crime” for which political activists are jailed.

The participants were thanked for their support, whether independents or activists of Ireland Anti-Imperialist Action and Saoirse Don Phalaistín organisations.

The event ended with the acapella singing of “The H-Block Song” by Diarmuid Breatnach, in an adaptation of the original air to the lyrics of what is “still a good song” he said, composed by a man who, along with his party, “no longer supported Republican prisoners”.6

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

The lyrics recall the struggle of Republican prisoners in the late 1970s against the removal of their ‘Special Category’ political status, which began with refusal to wear prisoner uniform. The struggle escalated to the “no-wash protests” and to hunger strikes in 1980 with ten martyrs in 1981.

As the protesters collected their flags and wrapped up their banners, the nature of current Irish society was underlined by the queues forming up across the road for free food being distributed by charitable organisations.

Early view of picketers, looking northward. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

INDEPENDENT AND OPEN DEMOCRATIC ORGANISATION

The IAIC is “an independent organisation and open democratic organisation” of ten years’ existence and although it has held events for specific cases such as the framed Craigavon Two,7 its main activity has been regular public pickets in Dublin to highlight ongoing internment in Ireland.

The Campaign group encourages participation by democratic people in its regular pickets, regardless of political organisation affiliation or none and, according to one of the organisers, expects to hold its next one in Dublin in January or February.

The IAIC expects also to take part again in the annual Bloody Sunday Commemoration march in Derry on Sunday 29th January 2024.

end.

Unintentionally impressionistic image, photo taken from the east side of O’Connell Street (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

APPENDIX: ANNIVERSARY OF HANGING OF IRISH REPUBLICAN

Though not mentioned in the discourse, the above event took place within days of the anniversary of the British colonial execution of an Irishman in revenge for his killing of an ex-Republican who had turned informer.

James Carey, in the midst of a ‘witness protection program’ provided as a reward for his betrayal of his comrades in giving evidence in court to ensure the jailing of some and hanging of five others, was killed in a gunfight with Pat O’Donnell.

Carey had been a leading member of the National Invincibles’ (a split from the Fenians) cell in Dublin, and had given the signal for the fatal stabbing of British Under-Secretary Burke and Chief Secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish in Phoenix Park on 6th May 1882.

However, Carey turned “Queen’s Evidence” to testify ensuring the conviction of his former colleagues and even gloated in court at their fate. His reward, but for O’Donnell, would have been a new life with pension under an assumed name with wife and children in the South African colony.

O’Donnell was an independent Republican from the Irish-speaking Gweedore area in Donegal but had been to the USA, where he had cousins who were prominent in the “Molly Maguires”, an Irish-led resistance organisation among miners in the USA.

O’Donnell was hanged on 17th December 1883 but is commemorated in the satirical song “Monto” and also in the serious “Ballad of Pat O’Donnell”. His home town of Gweedore also holds a monument in his honour.

end.

FOOTNOTES

1Flag of the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers’ army in the world, founded to protect workers from the police during the Dublin Lockout/ Strike of 1913.

2The General Post Office, iconic building on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, which was the HQ of the leadership of the 1916 Rising, left a shell by fire from British artillery bombardment but rebuilt later.

3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_detentions_in_the_2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war

4https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-many-palestinians-detention-and-available-swap

575% had not been convicted of any crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_exchange_of_Israeli_hostages_for_Palestinian_prisoners

6Francis Brolly (1938-1920) of Provisional Sinn Féin, composed the song which was released in 1976. PSF abandoned the struggle in the imperialist-promoted pacification process towards the end of the last century and most of their prisoners were released under licence. However those who made public their disagreement with the colonial occupation and the pacification process were on occasion returned to jail while new “dissidents” were charged and refused bail in special no-jury courts, with tacit support of the PSF.

7Quoted from the FB page at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063166633467

PACIFICATION KILLS TOO

On By rebelbreezeIn Africa, Basque Country, Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, History, Housing Struggle, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, National Liberation, peace processes, Political Analysis, South Africa, Sud Africa1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach – previously published in the Pensive Quill

(Reading time main text: 6 mins.)

At the end of last month, in Johannesburg, South Africa, over 76 residents perished in a fire sweeping through one of a number of “illegal” buildings, home to some of the city’s poor who are desperate for somewhere to live.

How is this possible we may ask. Didn’t the South African people win their struggle after many years of sacrifice? Didn’t Mandela and the ANC lead them to victory in 1994?

The huge South African majority people fought a long and hard struggle against the domination and exploitation of a European settler minority and institutional racism. But they also fought against capitalist exploitation and imperialist plunder of their rich natural resources.

Some of the results of the Sharpeville Massacre, 1960 after South African police opened fire without warning at unarmed black people protesting the pass (apartheid) laws. In total, 69 people were killed and more than 180 people were injured, mostly shot in the back as they fled the violence. A later report would state over 700 bullets had been fired, all by police. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Despite the riches of those natural resources in gems, precious metals and minerals,1 most non-white Africans2 in South Africa lived in abject poverty with poor health care, scarce or non-existent infrastructures and services, including education and training.

In the decades leading up to the fall of the formal apartheid system, that struggle was led by the ‘triple alliance’ of the (banned) African National Congress,3 the National Union of Mineworkers (of S.A.) and the (banned) Communist Party of South Africa.

Township in South African photographed in 2018, over 20 years after enfranchisement and ANC government (Photo credit: Andrea Lindner/ Getty Images)

Their struggles defeated the apartheid system and in April 1994 all residents of South Africa were enfranchised. National elections brought 1990, was elected President of the country.

Yet shortly after that great change, it was noted that the living standards of the mass of people were even lower than before, that the settler capitalists continued to reap their profits and that imperialism had actually intensified their penetration of the South African economy.5

Today approximately 55.5 percent (30.3 million people) of the S.A population is living in poverty at the national upper poverty line (~ZAR 992) while a total of 13.8 million people (25 percent) are experiencing food poverty. Municipal services to the huge ‘townships’ are unreliable at best.

Almost one in every three of work-available people is unemployed and only 95% of the population have basic literacy, which means that one in 20 doesn’t have it.

It is in that context that we can begin to understand hundreds of people living in an “illegal” building without even a fire escape, obliged to take the risk of such accommodation, in a land that continues to be rich in great wealth which however, never comes near the mass of people.

PACIFICATION PROCESSES

In the 1990s a number of people began to promote processes to resolve a number of long-ongoing conflicts around the world, mostly where imperialism or colonial settlers were oppressing the people of a country. The promoters called them “peace processes”.

Palestine was the first of those in which a “peace process” was introduced and South Africa was next in 1994, followed by Ireland in 1998. As it took root in one country, former resistance activists went from there to other conflicts to encourage people there to embrace the process too.

In fact the progress of this process seemed like the US imperialist ‘dominoes’ theory, only in reverse: rather than ‘communism’ in one country influencing people in another to go the same way, capitulation in one country was used to infect the next.

Palestinian and South African delegates attended Sinn Féin congresses to promote their ‘peace process’ to the party’s membership; subsequently SF delegates in turn joined South African ones in selling the process to the Basque national liberation movement.6

Arnaldo Otegi (centre photo) foremost of the Basque movement’s ‘official leadership’ and EH Bildu party in 2019 – the banner behind asks for “one further step” in Castilian (Spanish) and “yes” in Euskera (Basque). (Photo cred: EFE)

Some movements declined to imbibe the process wine but those that drank it found their movements split, their leaderships increasingly accommodated to their people’s exploiters and nowhere at all were any of the movement’s principal objectives achieved.

Except, that is, in South Africa, where at least the people were enfranchised. But the right to vote is intended to help shape the polity for improvement and that has not happened in South Africa. The ANC, NUM and CPSA of the ‘triple alliance’ have become part of the system instead.

THE OPPOSITION BECAME THE SYSTEM’S GUARDIANS

Western imperialism recognised the vulnerability and isolation of the minority settler regime, convincing its leadership to concede mass enfranchisement rather than suffer revolution. And in order to prevent the mass going ‘too far’, they brought the resistance leaders into the deal.

Bishop Tutu7 once remarked that “The ANC stopped the gravy train just long enough to get on it”, which angered his friend, Nelson Mandela. But when forty striking miners were murdered by police of the ANC Government with NUM collusion in 2012, Mandela did not condemn them.

The kopje or hillock at Marikana, near the Lonmin mine, South Africa, where the striking miners were massacred by police of the ANC government in 2012. Over a decade later, plans for a memorial park have still not borne fruit. (Photo sourced: Internet)

This corruption did not grow overnight. Jacob Zuma,8 while President of the ANC, has been formally accused of rape, indicted a number of times and eventually convicted of financial corruption. Winnie, Mandela’s ex-wife led a clique accused of political corruption and murder.

Cyril Ramaphosa, now President, was a millionaire even during the apartheid regime while General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers and, because the striking mineworkers in 2012 were rejecting the NUM as corrupt, is widely believed to have organised the massacre.

There should have been many signs of this corruption in the ANC prior to entering government – and there were.

The ANC ran concentration camps notably in Angola, Zambia, Tanzania and Uganda where they punished and even killed “dissidents”.9 And in South Africa perhaps they had their own ‘Steak Knife’10 to organise “Pirelli necklacing”11 for alleged informers.

Mandela knew about the camps and the “necklacing” but did not condemn them, possibly out of mistaken solidarity or ‘the greater good’ theory, as acted upon by some of the solidarity movement abroad.

Ronnie Kasrills, a senior member of the Communist Party of SA and formerly on the ANC’s National Executive Council, who now criticises the pacification process, claims they were concentrating on the political process and took their eye off the economic one.

And no doubt many at home and abroad thought all this could be sorted out once the domination of the white settler regime was broken and African majority had the vote. But political plants grown in contaminated soil do not grow healthy fruit.

And so we come to 76 or more poverty-stricken dead and well over a hundred injured by fire in a building owned by the City, which is run by a black South-African administration that doesn’t care, in a state run by a corrupt black South African government in partnership with the settler class.

Plastic-shrouded bodies of some of the 76 fatal victims of the fire in the housing block in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo cred: Jerome Delay/AP )

Armed resistance campaigns, uprisings and revolutions kill but they have in their favour that they are striving for a better world. Pacification processes kill without any chance of achieving a substantial improvement.

Pacification processes murder dreams but kill physically too: in massacres and avoidable disasters but also by overwork, ill-health, work injury, despair, substance abuse, suicide, and the many ways in which the capitalist-imperialist system causes misery wherever it lives.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1South Africa holds the world’s largest reported reserves of gold, platinum group metals, chrome ore and manganese ore, and the second-largest reserves of zirconium, vanadium and titanium. In 2021, South Africa’s diamond production amounted to 9.7 million carats, an increase on the previous year’s 8.5 million carats. The country ranked fifth among the world’s largest diamond producers by volume.

2The racialcategories introduced by the Apartheid regime remain ingrained in South African society with South Africans officially continuing to classify themselves, and each other, as belonging to one of the four defined race groups (Blacks, Whites, Coloureds and Indians).

3Banned by the South African settler government from 1960 until early 1990; now a mass party in government.

4The ANC is still in government at the time of writing, without a break since 1994.

5See The Shock Doctrine – the rise of disaster capitalism by Naomi Klein (2007).

6Palestine faded as a promoter of the pacification process since it had failed spectacularly there, its mass rejection resulting in the resistance upsurge of the Second Intifada followed by the fall of Al Fatah and the Palestinian Authority from their leadership position and the huge turn to the Islamist Hamas by a society generally voting along political rather than religious lines.

The Spanish ruling class was interested only in crushing the Basque resistance and made little attempt to sweeten the surrender of the leadership (Arnaldo Otegi and company) who nevertheless capitulated. Other areas where the process landed or attempted to do so were Colombia, Sri Lanka, Turkey (Kurdish national liberation movement), India, Phillipines (both latter agrarian movements). Only in Colombia was it adopted by both the rulers and the resistance and proved a disaster for the latter.

7A Christian bishop and campaigner for most of his life against the rule of the settler minority.

8South African politician who served as the fourth President of South Africa from 2009 to 2018. Zuma was a former anti-apartheid activist, member of the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe, and president of the ANC from 2007 to 2017.

9See Sources.

10MI5 codename for senior Provisional IRA member Freddie Scappaticci who led the guerrilla organisation’s internal security department, which tortured and executed alleged informers.

11A car tyre, doused in flammable fuel, was placed over the terrified victim while still alive and set alight, often in front of a crowd.

SOURCES

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/01/grief-and-anger-in-wake-of-deadly-johannesburg-blaze

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/factbox-what-are-johannesburgs-hijacked-buildings-and-why-do-people-live-there-2-1521491.html

ANC concentration camps: https://www.amnesty.org/es/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/afr530271992en.pdf

BASQUES AGAINST NATO AND EU – Interview with Herri Ekimena organisation.

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Anti-War, Basque Country, Current Affairs Comment, Euskal Herria, Imperialism, Mass Media Criticism, National Liberation, NATO, Political Analysis, Spanish State, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Oscar DíazTranslation from Castilian Spanish by D.Breatnach
(Reading time main piece: 10 mins.)

1. What is Herri Ekimena?

Herri Ekimena is an initiative that emerged in March 2022. A series of organizations began to get together due to concern about the offensive of Atlanticist imperialism in Ukraine, in addition to the blatant manipulation of the media to get us to support their war strategy.

We also observed that, in a context of capitalist crisis and with the excuse of the war against Russia, economic measures were being imposed that resulted in greater impoverishment of the working class.

That is why we took to the streets at that time with the slogan “NATO and the EU condemn us to war and misery”, to turn the official discourse around a little and point to these two organizations as the main ones responsible for the increase in international tensions, as well as for the oppression of the working classes of the imperialist bloc itself.

Also in the month of June of that 2022 we called a demonstration in Bilbo, “against the imperialism of NATO and the EU” and calling for the end of the Russophobia that is still being promoted.

In parallel to the NATO summit that was held in Madrid, we also carried out a 48-hour poster campaign in Gernika, a city with great anti-fascist symbolism that the Ukrainian Nazis tried to appropriate, citing it in a speech before the Spanish Parliament by Zelensky himself.

After a short break, we resumed the fight in the streets at the end of the year, with the “Free Euskal Herria out of NATO and the EU” campaign. In March we held a massive demonstration in Bilbo, together with Askapena1 and the Bardenas Ya2 collective.

View of demonstration against NATO and war in Bilbao, June 2022. (Photo source: Bultza Herri Ekimena)

This demonstration was exciting to us as we saw that the work that had been done was already bearing fruit and that the anti-imperialist spirit that has historically characterized Euskal Herria was projected in the streets.

We are currently in a restructuring process in order to be more effective, and give new impetus to the anti-imperialist struggle in the streets, which is where this game is truly played.

2. Why combine anti-fascist and anti-imperialist slogans?

The imperialist offensive, which has to do with the systemic crisis of capitalism and the rise of new economic powers, is being accompanied by a general reduction of rights and freedoms.

Those in power fear popular revolts, like those that have been taking place in the French State in recent months.

In Euskal Herria we know well what emergency laws or illegal practices are employed to put an end to dissent, but these types of measures are spreading and becoming normalized throughout Europe. Concentration camps for migrants, deportations without any type of legal guarantee, electronic anklet tags are also normalized…

And also in the case of the countries bordering Russia, imperialism is responsible for waving old supremacist and anti-Slavic flags, such as is happening in Ukraine or Poland.

We see therefore that capitalism, in its most decadent phase, has little scruple when it comes to reactivating liberticidal policies or inciting openly Nazi military and paramilitary shock forces.

So in effect, we believe that the anti-imperialist struggle and the anti-fascist struggle are inseparable parts of the same struggle for our rights and freedoms.

3. A few years ago one could see Donbass flags in the stands of Atlethic3. Why mix football and politics?

Through various institutions, including football clubs, they want to force down our throats the supposed “depoliticization of public spaces.” It is false, because they are the first to try to control absolutely all areas of our lives that we may become submissive and uncritical people.

The media bombardment is constant, generating false debates among humble people about insecurity, occupying empty properties… They thus try to legitimize, by action or omission, measures of social control and police repression that are very, very worrying.

So when someone puts a poster on the street to denounce any injustice, or puts up a banner, or paints graffiti… They are calling into question that false normality that they want to impose on us.

Banner displayed by Athletic Bilbao FC fans during a match. The text is difficult to see in its entirety but in general it is clearly in solidarity with the Donbas region against attack from the Kiev administration.

It is sad — but this situation also reflects the weakness of the system in terms of political legitimacy. Who explicitly supports them? Who is not fed up with everything that is happening? So they are afraid of the flame that starts a prairie fire.

Sports venues do not escape this logic of imposing false normality, even if the laws have to be twisted or passed directly through the triumphal arch.

A Donetsk flag, for example, ruins their photo and calls into question the story that people agree with what they do. So they impose fines of €3,000 just for displaying the flag of a People’s Republic.

Let’s hope that in not many years we will be able to analyze all this as the blows of a dying regime, but for now it is up to us to organize the response and popular solidarity. Repression should not be normalized, nor should people who step forward feel alone.

4. Is EH Bildu4 being favorable to NATO?

We do not believe that the social base of EH Bildu is in favor of NATO. That is, if we asked EH Bildu voters if they were in favor of NATO, surely 99% would say no. The problem is that, for its leaders, opposing Atlanticist imperialism is not currently on the list of priorities.

Regarding the issue of the war in Ukraine, Arnaldo Otegi5 has openly positioned himself in favor of Ukrainian “sovereignty” and against the Russian “occupation.” Is Ukraine now a sovereign state? Or is it rather a puppet of NATO in its offensive against Russia?

Doesn’t Russia have the right to defend itself from NATO attacks? What about the thousands of people killed in Donbass since 2014? Should Russia have been obliged to watch this genocide impassively?

Have the self-determination processes in Donetsk, in Lugansk, in Crimea … not been practical exercises of sovereignty? In this context, we can say that the speech of some EH Bildu leaders has favored and continues to favor the interests of NATO.

Their support for the State Budget deserves special mention, which includes a 25% increase in military spending. A measure imposed precisely by NATO to approach 2% of GDP in 2029, which is truly outrageous.

So… perhaps it is harsh to say that EH Bildu is in favor of NATO so let us put it another way: What is EH Bildu doing to make Euskal Herria break with NATO? What teaching are they carrying out among their social base and at a public level to create a truly anti-imperialist consciousness?

Very little or nothing, we believe, that is the reality.

5. Will it be possible to continue to see reliable information about Ukraine in the Basque Country and the Spanish state now that military juntas have been formed in African countries that have expelled French embassies? They are very different countries and thousands of kilometers away…

The events that are taking place in the SAHEL area are complex processes, and surely have many sides that make it difficult for us to equate them with the decolonization processes that we have known historically.

But we would be committing a mistake if, due to these supposed “imperfections” with respect to the theoretical manual, we stopped supporting countries that are fighting for nothing less than to expel their occupiers (since those are true occupiers who try to impose themselves by force of weapons thousands of kilometers from their borders) and also to gain control of their enormous natural resources.

How can it be that in extraordinarily rich countries, like Niger or Gabon, the majority of the population survives in absolute poverty? We will have to carefully observe all these processes, but in anti-imperialist Euskal Herria we can only rejoice and tell them that they are not alone.

In this land that, to a degree, also knows what it is to fight against armed occupiers and various collaborators, we know very well that solidarity is the love between people.

Regarding the quality of the information that we are able to receive in Euskal Herria or in the Spanish state, we believe that right now it is below minimum.

It is pathetic to see how, every time an event occurs that could undermine the hegemony of Atlantic imperialism, the mainstream media wait to receive instructions before even reporting the event.

The control of capital over the big media is a reality, so we must promote and support alternative means of information and communication. And also to fight openly in the streets, so that they have no choice but to report our demands.

6. Couldn’t the creation of a multipolar world be dangerous on a war level?

Yes, in fact it already is. We had been talking for years about the end of Yankee hegemony and the economic rise of countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the so-called BRICS.

Perhaps we thought that this change of orientation of world hegemony was going to be a calm process, without any surprises…

But nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that Yankee imperialism is mortally injured (which we believe it is), the truth is that it seems willing to kill as it dies.

Currently it has restructured NATO in a few months, has de facto absorbed the European Union and is reconfiguring its alliance policy on a global scale. It is increasingly easier to identify “which side” the different states are on, which can be the prelude to a conflict on a planetary scale.

We have been able to verify this recently with Morocco. NATO and the EU buy Morocco and abandon the Sahara to its fate.6 What should the Sahrawis do if Algeria, Russia or China offer them help to win their rights and survive as a people?

Of course there may be geopolitical interests in this aid from emerging powers, but it is necessary to analyze whether the agreements, commercial exchanges, donations and aid are produced with mutual respect for sovereignty and benefit the currently oppressed nations.

Of course, from a revolutionary point of view we have to be exacting, and not give a blank cheque to these emerging powers.

In this entire process of multipolarity, whether we like it or not, which is already making its mark upon world geopolitics, there is a class struggle that we must not ignore.

But this critical stance cannot lead us to fall into ninism and evade our own historical responsibility: to combat Atlanticist imperialism from the very heart of the beast.

7. You say “Euskal Herria free from NATO.” And what about the rest of the Spanish state?

We say Euskal Herria should be free outside NATO, but also outside the EU. We believe that this contribution is important, since for many years consideration of leaving the EU has been a kind of taboo, also in Euskal Herria.

Some thought that the EU might even support a possible independence process in Euskal Herria, just as was thought in Catalonia.

“A Free Basque Country out of NATO and the EU”.

But the EU has definitively been revealed as a capitalist lobby, as an instrument at the service of elites with a more than dubious past, even with regard to their support for Nazism.

Úrsula von der Leyen, Josep Borrell… are faithful representatives of the EU of Capital, authoritarian and totally committed to the interests of the US. That is why we say that neither the nation nor as a class have a future within the EU.

We make this statement from Euskal Herria, which is our area of struggle. But of course it extends to the entire Spanish State, as well as to the French State and all the peoples of Europe.

A future in freedom is not possible belonging to these criminal organizations, neither in Euskal Herria nor anywhere else.

8. What do you think of the military administration by Margarita Robles of the PSOE/UP government?7

Margarita Robles is a pit bull of Spanish politics, a woman who knows perfectly the ins and outs of the State from the offices to the sewers. Not for nothing has she been in positions of power for more than 30 years, originally in the shadow of Belloch, later of Rubalcaba…

At first it may have been surprising to see her at the head of a Ministry like the Defense Ministry, she who comes from the judiciary and who, even in relation to the conflict between Euskal Herria and the Spanish State, had adopted a dialogue profile at certain times.

We are missing a lot of information (I wish that we in Herri Ekimena knew what was going on in the Ministry of Defense, haha), but Margarita Robles is probably dedicating herself to doing in the Spanish military what she also did in her day in the Ministry of Justice and Interior.

That was to send the most archaic elements to the refrigerator in a non-traumatic way to perfectly adapt to the current standards and guidelines of NATO and the EU. Change a minimum so that everything remains absolutely the same.

Can anyone imagine Spanish generals standing up for Spanish national sovereignty in the face of Atlanticist imposition? This could happen in the French State, in fact it would not be unreasonable for something like this to happen.

In the Spanish State it is much more unlikely, but it is the responsibility of politicians like Mrs. Robles that nothing should deviate from the script written by Washington and Brussels.

In this regard, it is worth highlighting the role of the PSOE in what has been the process of integration of the Spanish State into imperialist structures. In addition to Felipe González, we could mention Javier Solana (who became Secretary General of NATO), Josep Borrell8…

Whether it is a matter of affinity, or a matter of pragmatism, the truth is that it appears that the PSOE generates a lot more trust among the imperialist powers than any other political party at the level of the State.

9. There were elections this past July 23, 2023. Did any of the political forces propose the departure of NATO from the Spanish state?

We are not aware that this was the case. As we have said before, this government is responsible for the largest increase in military spending in history, and faithfully complies with NATO and EU mandates.

“No to NATO – Out of Bardenas!”

Vice President Yolanda Díaz has publicly supported sending weapons to Ukraine and, as far as we know, no party that supports the government has opposed these shipments as a matter of principle.

We remember that these are weapons that are being used by Nazi soldiers to bomb and murder, not alone Russian soldiers but also the civilian population of Donbass. So we have to organize and fight in the streets, because if we don’t, things will remain exactly the same or worse.

This is the reason for existence of Herri Ekimena, to activate the popular struggle against the imperialism of NATO and the EU. We are working at it and, if all goes well, there will be good news in this regard in the coming weeks.

SOURCE

http://oscar-elbloquedeleste.blogspot.com/

FOOTNOTES

1Askapena was the internationalist solidarity arm of the broad Basque national liberation organisation but split from it many years ago in concern at the deviation from the path of resistance by the leadership under Arnaldo Otegi.

2Bardenas Ya is an organisation campaiging against the military installation in Bardenas, Nafarroa (Navarre).

3Athletic Bilbao FC, whose fans and many of its players have a strong anti-fascist and pro-Basque independence tradition.

4EH Bildu is the political party of the current compliant ‘official’ leadership of the Basque national movement, replacing the Herri Batasuna of the past.

5Leader of EH Bildu who has led the party into what many consider its collaborationist current stance.

6Western Sahara was a Spanish colonial possession and it abandoned it without decolonisation, which allowed Morocco and Mauritania to invade and occupy it against the wishes of the Saharawi people. As a result of the national liberation struggle of the Polisario Front, Mauritania withdrew but Morocco remained in occupation and carrying out repression against the resistance. Shortly before Trump’s departure from the USA’s presidency, he agreed to endorse Moroccan defiance of the UN-recognised Sahawarwi resistance to occupation in exchange for Morocco reversing its long anti-Zionist policy and formally recognising the Zionist occupation of Palestine, which the Moroccan Kingdom has done.

7The recent coalition Government of the Spanish State, the social-democratic PSOE with the Left-social democratic alliance of Unidas Podemos. Currently, the PSOE is endeavouring to form a government in coalition with a somewhat reconfigured Left-social democratic coalition called Sumar.

8All three have been PSOE politicians, Felipe González a prime minister and widely believed head of the GAL anti-Basque terrorist gang. Borrell was President of the European Parliament (2004-2007) and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Spanish Government from 2018 to 2019. He attacked Catalan self-determination which he characterised as part of a disease, despite his own Catalan origin and he is now the Foreign Minister of the European Union.

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE PRISONER – DUBLIN

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Palestine, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: mins.)

Socialist republicans and communists gathered on a traffic island in Dublin’s city centre to mark the International Day of the Prisoner. They flew flags to represent prisoners in Ireland (‘Starry Plough’), the Basque Country and Palestine.

They also displayed a number of placards.

(Photo: IAIC).

The choice of location, apart from being passed by road traffic in three directions, was because of the presence there of the Universal Links on Human Rights memorial sculpture with an eternal flame, commissioned by the Amnesty International organisation.

A plaque near the sculpture bears the following words: “The candle burns not for us but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison. Who were tortured. Who were kidnapped. Who disappeared. That is what the candle is for.”

Plaque in the ground on the approach to the sculpture. (Photo: IAIC).

Somewhat ironically, one of the placards carried the words: “Amnesty International, do Irish Republican prisoners not have human rights too?” Irish Republicans have long complained that the organisation in question does not raise any issues with regard to Irish political prisoners.

Some have indicated as a possible reason or part-reason the location of the head office of Amnesty International being based in London, capital city of the occupying power. Its interventions on Ireland even during three decades of war in the colony have been very few indeed.

Other placards displayed referred to political prisoners from the liberation wars in India and in the Philippines, the innocent Craigavon Two still in jail and ongoing internment through refusal of bail to Republicansappearing before the no-jury special courts in both administrations.

Some leaflets were distributed about ongoing internment in Ireland through long remands in custody of Republican activists. Between convicted and awaiting trial there are close to 50 political prisoners in jails in Ireland between both administrations.

The Universal Links sculpture by Tony O’Malley (welding by Jim O’Connor) commissioned by Amnesty International. (Photo: IAIC)

The Zionist Israeli state holds 5,000 political prisoners (almost all Palestinian), of which over 1,132 are not even charged (‘administrative detention’). There are 33 female Palestinian political prisoners and 160 child prisoners. Philippines has 803 political prisoners.

The Spanish and French states hold between them around 170 Basque political prisoners.

The event to mark International Day of the Prisoner was organised by the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign and a spokesperson gave a short explanation on video of the reason for the event with the human rights sculpture in the background.

End.

Some of the flags displayed (Photo: IAIC).
Passer-by in conversation with a leafleter. (Photo: IAIC).
(Photo: IAIC).