An Irish Palestine solidarity activist momentarily blocked NATO ‘Supreme European Commander’ Alexus Grynkewich’s armed convoy as he left the Dublin US Embassy on Wednesday, escorted by his bodyguards.
The activist was bashed against a wall by Gardaí, arrested and taken to Irishtown Garda station, released on Garda bail to attend court 2nd September.
The protest action appears to have been unplanned and came at the end of a weekly event, an hour of displaying flags and singing songs of resistance in front of the US Embassy’s main entrance organised by singer-musician Jimi Cullen which moved from the Israeli Embassy over a year ago.
A recent one of the weekly Wednesday musical protests at the US Embassy organised by Jimi Cullen (on extreme left of photo), this one on 5th September 2025 (Wk 158)
The event began as usual with a handful of people gathering at their usual spot at the triangular junction of Pembroke Road and Elgin Road. It appears that an RTÉ (national broadcaster) team were noted entering the Embassy from the Elgin Road side which alerted the activists to some unusual Embassy activity.
The activists moved down to direct shouts at the Embassy staff and military, shouts such as “US military out of Shannon!”, “US military baby-killers!” and “Free Palestine!”. A car collecting a leaving official was momentarily blocked by an activist who was removed by Gardaí.
Some time later the event was coming to an end with the usual group singing of An Dord Féinne with the chorus “Óró sé do bheatha ‘bhaile” etc and some of the group dispersed. Those who had not yet left however noticed a convoy of Garda and unmarked vehicles arrive.
It was at that point that Alexus Grynkewich, the NATO supremo, emerged from the Embassy building, escorted by his bodyguards and entered one of the vehicles. Before the convoy could take off, the activist ran in front of it, waving a Palestine flag and was grabbed by Gardaí.
After the activist’s detention and removal to Irishtown Garda Station and other activists attended the station, the activist was charged and bailed in his own recognisance and another activist arrived to give him a lift back to where his car was parked near the US Embassy.
Cartoon on the incident by D.Breatnach
NATO & IRELAND
Alexus Grynkewich is no stranger to US Imperialism/ NATO’s wars in the Levant and in Ukraine and his role in Ireland is to push for Ireland to join NATO and continue facilitating US military flights through Shannon. As far as the Gombeen class is concerned he’s pushing an open door.
Not so with the general Irish population, however, who have made it clear on a number of occasions that they wish the Irish State not to be a part of any external military alliance. The campaign to retain the ‘Triple Lock’1to prevent the Government abandoning official neutrality is ongoing.
While the occupied colony of the Six Counties is part of NATO, the Irish State is not. However it was revealed not long ago that the State has given permission to the Royal Air Force to patrol Irish skies and for many years, US military plains have been observed refuelling at Shannon Airport.
General Alexis Grynkewich, Supreme European Commander NATO (US/EU imperialist military alliance). (Photo source: Wikipedia)
In addition, the Ditch online media has logged planes being permitted to fly towards ‘Israel’ through Irish airspace while carrying weapons-grade material. NATO warships dock at Irish harbours a number of times a year.
Ireland’s current Presidency of the EU seems to be accelerating the State’s slide towards foreign militarisation and has already seen restrictions on the right to protest, with Gardaí closing a part of Dame Street to protest one day and moving protesters from in front of Trinity on another day.
A number of organisations have stated an intention to increase their protests against NATO and US imperialism while some regular broad pro-Palestine groups have indicated they will move their regular protests to outside the US Embassy in solidarity with the arrested activist.
Resistance is often met with State repression but in turn that too often generates more resistance. Voices of broad support for the activist have called for assembly outside the US Embassy at 2pm Wednesday 19th proceeding thereafter to the British Embassy to at 3pm where Jimi Cullen has temporarily relocated.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1Before more than 12 Irish military may be sent on an external mission, it has to be 1) a formal Government Cabinet decision, 2) with Irish Parliamentary approval and 3) on a UN mission.
Reproduced with permission of the author; edited to format for Rebel Breeze.
Just 110 years ago on August 3rd 1916 the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement was executed at Pentonville Prison in England, hung by the neck till dead.
However, it was not the only execution of Roger Casement, he has been executed many, many times, by diverse types ranging from the British State to right wing sections of Irish society and the West Brits that populate the Irish media and Dublin’s chattering classes et al.
Of course when I say executed many times, I am not referring to his physical execution, that only happened once, though the British Empire was an expert in cruelty and came as close as you possibly can to multiple physical executions.
One of its favoured methods was for a long time the sentence of Hung, Drawn and Quartered which entailed being hung till nearly dead, brought down, disembowelled whilst still alive and then decapitated: the pinnacle of British civilisation up until 1870.
But I refer to the assassination of his character which still continues to this day.
Roger Casement portrait, hanged for his revolutionary work in Pentonville Prison, London, on 3rd August 1916. (Image sourced: Internet)
Casement was a British diplomat for much of his life but his activism in Ireland and his later role in the lead up to the 1916 Rising brought him to the attention of the British authorities that he worked for.
He was an internationally recognised figure praised by all and sundry for his work in Congo and also in Latin America for his work on abuses in the rubber industry.
Executing someone who was ostensibly one of their own was not as easy as executing the other leaders of the Rising and so the rumour mill of the Black Diaries was produced to denigrate his character at the time.
In the 1980s, some Republicans of the Sinn Féin variety reclaimed Casement as a gay icon.
Whether Casement was gay or not would be largely irrelevant to a modern Irish audience, but it was not so at the time. Gay sex was illegal and gays were pursued ruthlessly.
Even Alan Turing who played a key role in Britain’s war against the Nazis by cracking their codes was hounded and prosecuted. Were it not for Turing the course of WWII may well have been very different, but not even that could save him.
Casement who rose up against the British Empire could have expected nothing but the worst from the British. However, alongside the allegation based on the forged Black Diaries that he was gay is also the allegation that he was a pederast.
It is beyond the scope of this article to refute all the fabricated allegations against Casement of which there are many, though Angus Mitchell’s updated biography Casement is thorough in refuting the Black Diaries and the campaign against him.[1]
I was struck by the fact that Casement was under watch from German intelligence during his time there and yet they never recorded any of the behaviour Casement’s enemies ascribed to him, including during his period in Germany.
Why so many attempts to assassinate his character? Well, they needed to do so to justify his execution and have stuck to their murderous guns ever since.
But also, there are many myths about the 1916 leaders that portray them as insular, reactionary irredentist nationalists when in fact they were very open to other cultures and had a broad international perspective not only on culture but also on politics.
Casement’s internationalism, his outward looking view is a matter of public record. His stature as one of the great humanitarians of the 19th and 20th centuries is almost unassailable.
That the rebellion against the British Empire in Dublin could be linked to Casement’s work exposing the atrocities of the Belgian state and royal family or his work in South America in also exposing the atrocities of rubber companies cannot be tolerated.
Not by those who believe in the civilising mission of the White Man’s Burden as the reactionary vile poet Rudyard Kipling put it.
Casement is the only leader of the Rising who is both known internationally, and whose writings are available in various languages. His writings about the Amazon rubber industry are rarely out of print in South America.
The attempts to smear him got more “sophisticated” over the years as concerns about him being gay no longer had the same force and so his work is attacked. He has been accused of racism, being in effect an imperialist, despite all evidence and even part of the problem in the rubber industry.
The Murdoch press in 2010 even stated he was no humanitarian, though that particular press group is given to lying as a matter of course, one of the most infamous cases being the accusations they levelled with gay abandon at the Liverpool fans during the Hillsborough disaster.
But the Murdoch press’ accusations are not any less “serious” than some of the “academic” tripe produced by others.[2]
Casement makes for uncomfortable reading for many. You cannot consider his life, his work and the 1916 Rising without taking into account the international context, international politics and empire in all its nauseous rotten elements.
He inspired other anti-colonial leaders and his speech from the dock was such that it was referenced by independence leaders around the world.[3]
“When languishing as a political prisoner in the 1930s, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, commented how ‘it seemed to point out exactly how a subject nation should feel.’”[4]
His base in La Chorrera, Putumayo in modern day Colombia[5] still recalls Casement and they refer to Ireland simply as Roger’s Country.[6]
The debates about Casement are not about Casement per se, but rather his politics and what he did and sought to do in relation to the British Empire’s occupation of his homeland. Some of those who denigrate him would be happy for all of Ireland to become part of the British state again.
Roger Casement statue on Dún Laoghaire waterfront, erected August 2021. (Photo sourced: Internet)
On one level it does not matter whether he was gay, in the modern Ireland it is hardly an issue, his alleged racism and paedophilia would still be an issue however.
All of these are attempts by a state that cannot come to terms with how one of their own (initially), a man of world renown stature could rise up against their putrid empire.
As we go forward, we have not seen the last of the attempted executions of a man whose fame outlives that of all those who opposed him, argued against him, executed him physically, intellectually and ideologically.
As Angus Mitchell has pointed out about forgeries that they need to be controlled as the British did to a point that we cannot be even sure that the partial release in the 1950s and the later releases are the same documents.
The Black Diaries display the same signature. A consensus that was genuinely secure would not need the regular re-litigation it receives, nor the marshalling of reviews to maintain that consensus.
It would also not require the assurance of the Guardian correspondent that the forgery theory has been discredited when he knows full well that is not the case…
A genuine source needs neither secrecy nor maintenance. The Black Diaries have acquired both – concealed in their handling and defended ever since by a consensus that must be continually reasserted. The endless fascination is not evidence that the mystery is deep.
It is evidence that someone, somewhere, is still doing the work of maintaining the mystery and claiming it as history.[7]
What we can be certain of is that Roger Casement stood up to the empire, he fought against it and that his work is as relevant to modern Ireland and indeed the world as it was then and that is the biggest crime that Casement committed.
One we should be proud of on the 110th anniversary of his execution by the British, that led to multiple executions of his legacy at the hands of the British Establishment, West Brits and other apologists for empire.
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NOTES
[1] Mitchell, A. (2026) Casement. Haus Publishing. UK.
[4] Mitchell, A. (1916) 16 Lives: Roger Casement. O Brien. Dublin para 21.108
[5] The Putumayo region in which Casement travelled straddled the borders of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Land borders have changed since then, particularly after the 1932-34 war. His base was then and still is now in Colombia, some of the other parts are in Ecuador and Peru and others have changed between the countries.
As we face the possible escalation of an extended regional war in West Asia it is worthwhile to consider what’s at stake for some of the various ‘players’.
‘Israel’ constantly claims existential threats to its state but Iran has stated the same with regard to attacks upon it by the US and ‘Israel’. The Resistance in Palestine and in Lebanon have also spoken in those terms with regard to themselves.
It might seem that the US is the only major participant in the wars in Western Asia which is not itself threatened existentially. However, in a sense it too is facing a kind of existential threat, the threat to its continuing existence as a superpower.
Dr. Mohamad Hasan Sweidan, one of the panel of regular news updates on YouTube for The Cradle online media regularly states that in reality, all of the principal actors are indeed fighting a threat to their existence, though the weight of threat being of varying degrees for each.
The ‘Israeli’ state
The Zionist state of ‘Israel’ came into being in 1948 as a Zionist-led European settler project to impose itself on the indigenous Palestinian people of all ethnic groups. Supported by the USA, Zionism gathered force since 1945 to the full-blown terror and ethnic cleansing of the 1948 Nakba.1
Despite claims of recovering ancestral lands, the culture of Ashkenazi colonisers and their languages were European, not West Asian, in keeping with their origin. Citizenship was opened to any Jewish person around the world but not to the Arab Palestinians who had been driven out.
The Zionist state is of course completely dependent on western imperialism for its defence and its very he existence. But ‘Israel’ is not content with that alone and in the logic of all settler colonialism, is constantly fighting wars of expansion with its neighbours.2
The location of this settler colony makes it of important political and military value to western imperialism and in particular to the USA superpower. It is a dagger at the throat of West Asian sovereignty, let alone socialism and in the region is totally free of both those dangers internally.
The settler colony is never secure until it has either wiped out the indigenous people or totally broken their resistance and scattered them. Consequently the indigenous people will resist and if they can, logically, aided by their threatened neighbours, will overthrow the occupation.
Therefore the Zionist State is truthfully facing an existential threat.
The Resistance
The Resistance to imperialism and Zionism in West Asia is wide and multi-faceted but for the purpose of this examination we’ll look at sum of the factions inside Palestine, both Islamic and secular factions as one Resistance; and Hizbollah and political allies in Lebanon as another.
Because of its practices, its origins and attitudes to the cultures of West Asia, ‘Israel’ is viewed by Palestinians and most people of the region as an occupier. It has functioned as a proxy of imperialism, particularly the US variety, in the region since it came into being.
Like settler colonies in general, the Zionist state has been expanding its territory since its inception.
It has also waged war on its neighbours for most of its existence: 1948 against Palestinians and Arab states, 1950s-1960s against the Palestinian Resistance; with France and UK against Egypt (Suez) 1956; 1967 against Egypt, Jordan, Syria; 1973 against Egypt and Syria.
And in 1971-1982 in South Lebanon.3 In September 2024 it attacked Lebanon with assassinations and exploding pagers and in December of that year, invaded Syria4 (though it had regularly bombed it previously) and attacked Iran (during peace negotiation) in February 2026.
The Zionist military carried out a great number of major attacks within Palestine including against the West Bank and Gaza in between what the Zionists call ‘mowing the lawn’, i.e. regular assassinations, raids, arrests and imprisonment of hostages.
The attitude of the ‘Israeli’ occupation to the Palestinian resistance is typified in its attitude to Hamas, the political party elected by significant majority across Palestine in 2006: it totally rejects the people’s choice and attempts to eliminate it in Gaza through economic and military means.
In the West Bank the Occupation’s proxy, the Palestine Authority refused to accede to the popular vote and collaborates with the Occupation, even though the even more extreme elements in ‘Israeli’ government and society despise it, regularly denouncing it and calling for its elimination.
The PA represses criticism by Palestinians in the West Bank, jails critics and fighters, sets them up for ‘Israeli’ jailing and has even murdered Resistance fighters.
‘Israel’ and the US are in concert attempting to use elements of the Lebanese Government against Hizbollah and political parties close to or friendly with them, attempting to turn the Lebanese Army to that purpose. Were they to succeed this would result in another Lebanese civil war.
It is a fact that the state of ‘Israel’ has no formal borders, except where its present territory reaches the borders of Egypt and Jordan.5 The ‘Greater Israel’ concept6 and Zionist aspiration exceeds far beyond even those,7 including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and swathes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Many Israeli political leaders including Ze’ev Jabotinsky,8 Menachem Begin9 and Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir10 have openly promoted the ‘Greater Israel’ (sic) concept as an objective and seems to have the support of US foreign policy and the ‘Israeli’ opposition.11
In all ‘peace’ proposals the ‘Israeli’ establishment seeks the ‘disarmament’ of the Lebanese and Palestinian Resistance, while itself remaining the most heavily armed state in the whole of West Asia, the only one with a nuclear weapon and a long history of committing massacres and genocide.
Hizbullah and the Palestine Resistance are therefore indeed facing an existential threat.
Image by D. Breatnach
The USA
The USA is the chief world imperialist power and in order to maintain that position has a number of requirements, among which are that it can direct or at least influence events around most of the world and that its military might is seen as impossible to defend against.
The Warsaw Pact bloc, a former impediment to expansion of US dominance has gone, though the Russian Federation remains. However the rising economic power of China already threatens the world dominance of the US imperialist ruling class.
But it has faced a new threat to its hegemony of West Asia. Although the non-compliant regimes there of Iraq and Syria (and Libya in North Africa) have been overthrown, US influence in Iran12 had been defeated by uprisings and founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.
Despite war against the Republic (1980-’88) by then western-supported Saddam Hussein, the Islamic Republic survived and supplied resistance organisations in Lebanon and in Palestine with weapons.
The US failed to subdue Iran with decades of sanctions or to instigate popular or separatist insurrection against the ruling elite during unprovoked attack in February, having to accept the stability of the Republic and to agree to ceasefire terms, losing much of its mythos of invincibility.
Not only were its military installations in West Asia shown to be vulnerable but they became regular targets in retaliation for US strikes against Iran. Client regimes began to wonder whether they could even afford to have such failed protection US military bases on their soil.
The repercussions of that will extend right around the World.
Iran
The Islamic Republic of Iran came into existence in 1979 in a revolution against the Pahlavi monarchy, its repressive Savak secret police and against Iran’s client status of US imperialism (such that the CIA’s head office for the whole of West Asia was located there).
The revolution found the CIA desperately shredding their spy documents (many of which were later painstakingly stuck back together by the Iranian revolutionaries). The revolutionary leadership and its followers were immediately targeted by imperialism, in particular by the USA.
The imperialists instigated Saddam Hussein (at the time their client) to have Iraq invade Iran in a war which lasted eight years during which 188,015 to 217,489 Iranians were killed (about 70 people per day).13 Hussein used gas attacks14 as well as bullets and explosives.
In addition, US imperialism has imposed sanctions on Iran since 1979, which is to say threatened sanctions on any state prepared to sell to or trade with the Islamic Republic and these have had a heavy negative impact on the population, in particular in the area of health treatment.15
In January 2026 the USA manipulated currency trading and the value of the Iranian rial fell. Protest demonstrations took place which Israeli and US intelligence operatives in places turned into armed attacks on police, government buildings and even some place of religious worship.
The Iranian authorities issued figures of 3,117 killed during the disturbances,16 which included civilians and agents acting under foreign direction, without identifying which was which. A significant number of those killed were State employees, including public security and police.
Sources sympathetic to the West have issued a range of fatal casualty numbers, rising to 36,000. It does not seem possible to separate real figures from propaganda, certainly of Western sources and possibly too of the Iranian State.
However the involvement of agents working for foreign powers to destabilise Iran has been established, not only in results of raids by Iranian State security forces but also in statements by US and ‘Israeli’ authorities17 and in admissions of Starlink-linked devices smuggled into Iran.18
Trump admitted that the US had supplied weapons to Iranian Kurdish pro-independence groups at this time also and complained that the Kurds had failed to use them against the US. Probably Baluchistan separatists were similarly urged to rise but did not do so in any numbers.19
The presence of foreign agents in Iran was also evident not only by intelligence possessed by the aggressors during the following war but also by when drones were launched against targets in Iran from within the country.
‘Israel’ accompanied by the USA,on 28 February, during negotiations, assassinated the religious and political supreme leader, Ali Khamenei and others, along with families and launched air strikes across Iran, including killing 124 schoolgirls with their teachers in a ‘double-tap’ strike.
The USA is too far away for a retaliatory strike but their military assets are distributed around the Gulf and Iran’s response struck those hard, US defences proving inadequate in action. Iran also closed the Strait of Hormuz, cutting the flow of essential gas and oil from the region to the West.
The US was forced to negotiate and to agree to Iranian terms in a Memorandum of Understanding for peace talks, most of which the US has yet to carry out in practice and much of which it has violated. But it is difficult to see what final options it has other than compliance.
The intentions of US imperialism to the Islamic Republic of Iran are irremediably hostile, proven in sanctions, assassinations, war, subversion attempts, rhetoric and threats, wishing the Iranian revolutionary regime overthrown and Iran dismembered, i.e. indeed an existential threat to Iran.
CONCLUSION
The mutual existential threats of antagonists do not usually cancel each other out. Rather, one of the antagonists must fall. Liberal solutions of ‘peace’ between them are illusory and chasing such mirages is not only fruitless but diverts attention from the necessary resolution.
In fact, wars where none of the antagonists feel they can afford to give way are complicated and very hard to resolve.
In the short term, for relative peace in Western Asia, both the US imperialists and the Israeli Zionists need to be severely weakened and those who wish for that relative peace must logically wish success to the struggles of the Islamic Republic of Iran and of the Resistance organisations.
In the medium term, the existence of the state of ‘Israel’ needs to cease and the democratic state of Palestine to come into being with US Imperialism weakened further or overthrown.
The ruling class of the strengthened Iran will need to see how they can manage Iran’s new status and the Resistance organisations how they develop and grow their respective nations as independent and sovereign states.
In the longer term, new threats and new conflicts will emerge throughout the world. As long as capitalism exists, parts of it will grow into monopoly capitalism and that in turn will seek to maximise its profits by venturing abroad in competition and/or in coercion.
End.
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FOOTNOTES& SOURCES
1During the 1948 Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”), approximately 750,000 to one million Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Palestinians were killed.
More than 80% of the Palestinian population living in the territory that became Israel was forced to leave.At least 530 villages and towns were destroyed or depopulated.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency reports that this initial displacement grew into an ongoing crisis, with nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees registered today. Historians and organizations generally estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 Palestinians were killed. Deaths occurred during combat, in dozens of targeted massacres, and from the general violence of the war.
3From 16 to 18 September 1982, the IOF’s proxy, the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, massacred between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias — in the Sabra neighbourhood of Beirut and in the nearby Shatila refugees camp, with the support of the IOF.
4As the Syrian regime collapsed in early December 2024.
14Western media were not interested at the time – Hussein was attacking Iran and was therefore one of ‘the good guys’. Journalists who tried to get western media to cover the wiping out of a Kurdish village Halabja by gas attack in 1982 were getting nowhere. However, many years later, when the Saddam Hussein had switched and started defying the western imperialists, western media suddenly found the story valuable even though years old by then.
As the Irish State holds the Presidency of the European Union now and for six months hence, ministers of EU governments met in Dublin yesterday and today, the latter giving rise to an anti-war and pro-neutrality picket near Dublin Castle.
Since the Irish State’s incumbency of the EU Presidency the Irish State has forbidden demonstrations from Dame Street/ Gt. George’s Street junction to Lord Edward1 Street, along with the display of flags along that stretch.
Demonstrators in favour of the retention of the Irish State’s formal neutrality took up position at the south end of Parliament Street, directly facing City Hall. The Gardaí closed most of the street entrance and had crowd barriers erected across it, which the protesters then lined with their banner.
View of some of the protesters and banner, also of the Starry Plough flag (centre photo) and pedestrianised Parliament Street leading to the river. City Hall is behind the photographer and Dublin Castle behind that again. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The letters on the Green, White and Orange banner read EU WAR MONGERS. NO MORE WAR. LEAVE OUR NEUTRALITY ALONE. Leaflets with the same colours on one side were distributed while the reverse expanded on the main slogan, in particular calling for retention of the Triple Lock.2
Some passing vehicles sounded their horns in solidarity.
The city was busy with pedestrian tourists and others enjoying the sun. The heat bore down on the demonstrators facing into the sun and on the backs of the Gardaí facing them and the demonstrators (some of whom had already picketed the Hatch St. EU office), packed up after an hour.
One flag alone flew over the protesters, the Starry Plough, flag of the Irish Citizen Army, the workers’ militia formed to defend the strikers and locked out workers in Dublin in 1913 and which later took part in the 1916 Rising, their leader, James Connolly,3 being overall Commander.
View of some of the protesters and banner, also of the Starry Plough flag (centre photo) and pedestrianised Parliament Street. City Hall is behind the photographer and Dublin Castle behind that again. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Coincidentally perhaps, City Hall was garrisoned by the Irish Citizen Army during the Rising and a steel plaque on its wall records the names of the Volunteers who fought there and in nearby buildings – half of which are women’s names (the ICA recruited women as well as men).
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1Named after Edward Fitzgerald (1763-4 May 1798), one of the leaders of the United Irishmen, the revolutionary Irish Republican organisation. Often incorrectly referred to as ‘Lord Edward’, he had renounced his title, his sister later saying of him that the only title he aspired to was that of ‘Paddy’. Edward Fitzgerald went into hiding from British occupation forces but remained in the Liberties area, where his hiding place was discovered and he was wounded and arrested, having killed one of his would-be captors and injuring another. He died in jail reportedly of neglect by the authorities of his wounds.
2A provision that no more than 12 Irish State armed forces personnel may be sent on active service anywhere outside the State unless on UN mandate, a decision of the Government and a majority decision of the Irish Parliament. The suspicion is widespread in Irish society that the Irish ruling class wishes to dispense with the ‘Triple Lock’ or even to ignore it in order to commit the Irish State to NATO (or an EU armed force).
3Trade union leader, historian, journalist, revolutionary socialist, one of seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation of Independence. Born Edinburgh (1868), executed by British firing squad on 12 May 1916.
As the Irish State marked the start of its six-month Presidency of the European Union, a protest march calling for Irish neutrality and an end to EU collusion with ‘Israeli’ genocide in Palestine headed for the formal event, closing a principal street to traffic.
Section of the crowd at Central Plaza.(Photo: D.Breatnach)
A Call to Action poster had promoted the protest to take place at the Plaza in Dublin’s south side city centre in front of a multi-story building, formerly HQ of the Central Bank of Ireland. Curiously, the name of no party, campaign or collective convening the protest appeared on the poster.
Groups of various Palestine solidarity or of pro-Irish neutrality nature, anti-war and left-wing nature, along with many individual activists congregated at the Plaza while a group from the weekly broad Dubs for Palestine meeting outside Leinster House1 marched to meet them there.
Some banners among the crowd at Central Plaza. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The ‘Granny Squares for Gaza’ quilt was unrolled, featuring up to 2,900 squares, each one representing 10 Palestinian children killed by the IOF and volunteers, along with its custodians, held it at around waist height.
Soon afterwards, the crowd of several hundred took up the westward traffic side of Dame Street and began to march towards Dublin Castle,2 where the Irish Government was marking the first day of its EU Presidency. However a police line blocked progress at the junction with George St.
After a temporary stand-off, the marchers moved to occupy both sides of Dame street and traffic could no longer proceed westward or eastward along the street. The crowd continued with slogans in solidarity with Palestine, against ‘Israel’, for peace, against war, for warplanes out of Shannon.
Another banner at the Plaza. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Irish State is the second-biggest single importer of ‘Israeli’ exports, next only to the USA. Permitted flights over Irish airspace have been identified carrying war material to ‘Israel’ and US warplanes regularly refuel at Shannon Airport, despite the state’s ‘neutral’ status.
Richard Boyd Barrett of the People Before Profit, which seemed now to be leading the demonstration addressed the crowd informing them that the police had said earlier that they could proceed to the square immediately before City Hall and hold the protest event there.
They had reneged on that which is the reason why traffic was now blocked in the street, Barrett told the crowd and introduced Jimi Cullen to perform for the crowd. Cullen, who has performed at a US Embassy picket for 122 weeks up till then, sang his We Are All Palestinians composition.
Jimi Cullen in full voice. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The crowd joined in the chorus, words with which they have become familiar in chants through many demonstrations.
A police officer approached Barrett requesting to speak to him and both went aside as one of the Dubs for Palestine group took up leading the chants. Barrett returned later to inform the crowd that the police had offered a different route down side streets, which had been rejected.
Cullen then performed his song defending the Irish State’s neutrality status with which the Irish ruling class are trying to dispense, after which Barrett invited the crowd, while the megaphones sounded sirens to lie on the ground in evocation of the many Palestinians being killed by the day.
Also another banner at the Plaza before the march. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
COMMENT
It was good that the capital city saw agitation opposing the Irish State joining military ventures of the EU and USA imperialist alliances and also against Irish collusion in the genocide in Palestine.
Those leading the march were unwise to accept the police assurance that they would allow the march to proceed to just before City Hall. A PBP-led march to protest Hillary Clinton’s 2012 visit to Dublin Castle had been told they could proceed there but were stopped just before City Hall.
Wednesday’s march was stopped even further from the Castle, which is a step further in curtailing protest, ensuring those inside the Castle will not even hear a hint of opposition. The police obstruction could have been bypassed by diverging through side streets but it was not attempted.
Though individual members may have been there, no Irish Republican organisation was notably present which probably accounted to an extent for the very scarce presence of Tricolour flags (and only one Starry Plough). PBP and their followers do not generally fly those flags.
However their absence cannot be attributed to any ambivalence: Irish Republicans are in strong antipathy to the Irish Government and to the institution of the European Union.
Only one of the slogans called from the front of the march referred to the colonial occupation of one-sixth of Ireland, viz. ‘From Ireland to Palestine/ Occupation is a crime!’ but it was from the Dubs and as is usual with PBP, in none of the speeches was there a mention of it.
Not one word of Irish language was spoken through the PA, not even the Saoirse don Phalaistín slogan.
The lie down to conclude the protest. The Gardaí may be seen in the distance blocking any advance of the march towards Dublin Castle or even the square beside City Hall. People are in most cases lying on the quilt of which each square represents 10 Palestinian children killed by ‘Israel’. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
MOVING FORWARD
For the defeat of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism in Ireland, a revolutionary mass movement will be essential. For that in turn, construction of an anti-imperialist broad front is an essential task.
That requires those claiming Irish Republicanism to be present on mobilisations alongside those claiming revolutionary socialism or just anti-imperialism.
If use of the Irish language is to be popularised and the civil rights of Irish speakers in Ireland protected, Gaeilge must be heard in particular among the most progressive sections of society.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1This broad group meets every Wednesday from 12 noon to around 1.00 pm. listening to speeches, songs and poems. Two of their major campaigns are seeking to have the genocide-funding Allianz company kicked out of the Gaelic Athletic Association and, more recently, to prevent the Irish soccer team playing the ‘Israeli’ one.
2For centuries centre of administration and repression of Ireland by the English occupation.
A group mainly of relatives of the deceased are seeking an official inquiry into the Chinook helicopter crash at the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland in 1994 killing 25 intelligence experts and four special forces crew on their way to a conference.
The crash wiped out almost all the top officers in command of intelligence gathering and operations in the occupied Six counties of Ireland from MI5, Army, RUC Special Branch and state Security Service.
Photo of the crashed Chinook helicopter on the Mull of Kintyre 1994. (Photo: Sky News)
The first crash inquiry failed to confirm pilot error which was then overruled by State reviewers who blamed the pilots on the basis of supposition without any evidence. After campaigning by a number of people including families of the deceased pilots, a 2011 inquiry exonerated the pilots.
The current campaign wants to focus on questions as to the reliability of the aircraft but an alternative and darker interpretation developed at the time, alleging that the different departments of British spooks, MI5 and MI6 had a fatal falling out over territory and policy.1
The remit of MI5 is of domestic ‘UK’ matters while that of MI6 is external. However, the Six Counties, though being under the rule of the UK, was also geographically part of a foreign country, Ireland — and the Irish State, just across the border, a government foreign to the UK.
In addition, the Republican armed resistance groups frequently had contacts abroad and many people with connections to other resistance organisations in the world; both parts of Ireland were visited by representatives along with many media agencies in the pursuit of their reporting work.
Whereas a resort to assassination as a result of rivalry or difference in objectives between different arms of a state’s security service is no doubt extreme, the existence of the rivalry itself is quite likely and the stakes in terms of funding, staffing and operational management can be high.
If the rivals are working towards opposing ends, that will raise the stakes much higher. The secrecy of the State’s reaction to the event did nothing to dispel such theories and the mismanaged attempt to blame the pilots only lent added credence to such suspicions and belief.
The fact of the collusion of British secret service with Loyalist murder squads in the 6-Counties colony is well known and has been documented by a number of investigations. Such collusion from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, especially its Special Branch, is well known too.2
Quite a few familiar with the British colonial security forces in the Six Counties believe that there was an ‘inner force’ inside the RUC with the support of MI5 and British Army Intelligence, all colluding with or even managing assassinations and Loyalist sectarian murder gangs.
The British ruling class had set their sights on achieving the cooperation of the Provisionals in a pacification process and MI6 was in favour of this initiative. It is posited that MI5, the Inner Force inside RUC and Army Intelligence opposed this, believing that they could defeat the IRA.
It was the clash of these radically different approaches (albeit with the same ultimate objective of ending Republican armed resistance) that is believed by some to have culminated in the assassination of the anti-pacification section in the Mull of Kintyre crash.
We may never know for certain and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) sealed key files relating to the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash for 100 years, locking them away until 2094
‘HEROES’?
Sorcha Eastwood calls those who died ‘heroes’,3 confirming herself and the Alliance political party she represents as on the side of British colonialism and its violent repression of Irish resistance, repression in the forms of internment, no-jury trials, assassinations and sectarian murders.
Those features are the reality of colonial repression and were very much in evidence in the colonial war of three decades which was approaching an end at the time of the crash.
The leadership of the Provisionals had accepted that although they could not be beaten, nor could they win the war4 and so were ready to participate in a pacification process.
British Intelligence had compromised or recruited elements of that leadership at highest and medium levels and had targeted assassinations of the less malleable individuals.5 The leadership was heading for the process culminating in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Up to 3,500 people had died violent deaths 1969-1994 as the hands of of British military, colonial police, colonial proxies and Irish Republican resistance.
There were no tears shed for the dead at Mull of Kintyre among the subjected population of the colonial entity nor in many quarters of the Irish community at home or abroad and resistance culture soon produced a dark mocking parody to the air of Paul McCartney’s ‘Mull of Kintyre’ song.6
Confirmed assassination and suspicious deaths by aircraft crash are not unknown, among UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s 1961 plane crash on his way to negotiate peace in the Congo,7 General Zia-ul-Haq8 and commander of Russian mercenary force Yevgeni Prigozhin.9
end.
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1What is more often but inaccurately called ‘the Irish peace process’; inaccurate because it was not designed to address the underlying reasons for the conflict and approaching three decades later has not done so. It resulted in The Good Friday Agreement, signed in 1998.
2See for example the Stevens Inquiries, Barron Tribunal, Dirty War by Martin Dillona (1990), also Lethal Allies (2013) by Anne Cadwallader.
4The war against a major imperialist power was concentrated in a territory one-sixth of Ireland and with a population divided along sectarian lines.
5See the cases of Denis Donaldson and Scappaticci (British Intelligence code name Stakeknife) for example and there are well-founded suspicions of a number of others that were never publicly exposed. See also the elimination of Volunteers Jim Lynagh and Padraig McKearney and their unit in the Loughgall Ambush/ Massacre.
6‘Mull of Kintyre, oh Brits falling into the sea’ etc
Outside the German Embassy in Dublin speakers denounced the German State’s repression of Palestine solidarity activists and their treatment as terrorists in solitary confinement in dispersed locations, increasing the visiting difficulties for relatives.
Organised by the broad group Dubs for Palestine, scores of people attended a lunchtime picket of the Embassy on Monday 27th April.1 In addition to the speeches and chants, songs were sung with particular relevance to the occasion and location.
The focus of this rally was in support of a group of five activists that includes a young man formerly of Dún Laoire, Daniel Tatler-Devally and have become known as the Ulm Five. They were alleged to have broken into an Elbit Systems facility in Ulm, Germany and caused damage inside.
Lynn Treacy, of the Devally-Tatler family support grou, speaking outside gates of the German Embassy, Dublin on Ulm Five solidarity rally April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Their action was in protest at the Israeli military systems company and its part in the genocide of Palestinians supported by the German state. One of the speakers was Daniel’s father, Conor Devally while Lynn Treacy, a friend of Daniel’s mother spoke on her behalf too.
Jimi Cullen, accompanied by Dermot outside gates of German Embassy, Dublin on Ulm Five solidarity rally. (Photo: R.Breeze)
The activists are being treated as terrorists, in seven months of solitary confinement, separated and dispersed throughout different jails long distances apart. Their trial is scheduled for separate days over a period from April to July, also causing relatives and friends great difficulty.
Jimi Cullen singing and playing guitar performed his own We Are All Palestinians, developed from the well-known chant on Palestine solidarity demonstrations, accompanied by Dermot Sheehan on drum.
Two prominent members of People Before Profit spoke, Richard Boyd Barrett TD and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, a political and cultural activist and noted singer in the sean-nós style. Raymond Deane, composer and founding member of the IPSC spoke too as did political activist and singer Diarmuid Breatnach.
Richard Boyd Barret speaking at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Ó Ceannabháin spent some time demolishing the discourse that Germany has an excuse for its repression of pro-Palestine solidarity because of alleged guilt due to its perpetration of the Hollocaust. He pointed to its genocidal history in Namibia and its leadership of EU imperialism.
The PBP member and election candidate for a councillor vacancy in DCC told the rally of Germany’s banning not only some Palestinian solidarity chants2 but also the song known as ‘Óró Sé do Bheatha Abhaile’3 which he proceeded to sing, the participants joining the chorus with gusto.
Ó Ceannabháin at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Diarmuid Breatnach pointed out that the German working class had a strong history of struggle and at one time led the world in socialist and social-democratic representation, even recording a vote of 4.8 million votes for the Communist Party in the midst of Nazi repression.
Hans Beimler, a communist trade union activist, Breatnach said, escaped from a Nazi concentration camp, went to Spain to fight in the Anti-Fascist War there and was killed. In his honour Breatnach sang two verses of The Peat Bog Soldiers4 followed by the ballad about Beimler.
Breatnach was accompanied on drum by Dermot Sheehan, a regular attendee at the weekly Wednesday Dubs for Palestine event outside Leinster House, seat of the parliament of the Irish State. An anti-Zionist Jewish activist spoke against Israeli Zionism and its support by Germany.
Naoise Dolan speaking at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Speaking in German, Irish and English, Naoise Dolan, novelist, supporter of Palestine Action who was captured in piracy action by the IOF on the October 2025 Gaza aid flotilla, also spoke to denounce the attitude and actions of the German Government and Berlin police.
Ken Powell of Dubs for Palestine, who had acted as MC throughout, led the rally in chanting slogans of solidarity with Palestine including calling for the freedom of each of the Ulm Five by name before thanking all for their attendance and concluding the event.
end.
Early view of Ulm Five solidarity rally outside German Embassy April 29th as people are still arriving. (Photo: R.Breeze)
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FOOTNOTES
1The day the trial began in Germany but however did not proceed due to the presiding judge refusing to allow the Defence lawyers to sit with their clients and the lawyers’ refusal to proceed under those restrictions
2“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” which they claim is ‘anti-Semitic’; also “Globalise the Intifada.”
3An Dord Féinne is the actual title given by Patrick Pearse in his adaptation of a traditional song in Irish.
4A translation from the German song of the Communists in Nazi concentration camps which was eventually banned by the camp authorities under pain of death.
A recent arrest in France and concert in Dublin are connected by events in both countries a half-century earlier.1
The arrest in question by French police was on 16 April of Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, for alleged involvement in the 1982 attack on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in the Marais district of Paris.2
The report of the arrest came less than a week after the Dublin commemoration by concert of another event, also half a century earlier. And strangely, there was a connection between both events.
On 11 April, a concert was held in Vicar Street to commemorate the arrest, torture, framing of three Irish Socialist Republicans and their jailing in 1986.3
Musicians, poets and journalists came together at the event, organised by musician Cormac Breatnach, brother of one of the accused, to commemorate the event and to press for an inquiry into three activists being tortured into making false confessions incriminating themselves.
And into how, despite their retractions and medical evidence of torture, they were then convicted of an event they had not committed. And how the legal system, from the Court of Appeal to the High Court, had all colluded in the injustice.
The trial in Ireland was for the Sallins Mail Train Robbery of 1976. The convicted three were Osgur Breatnach, Nicky Kelly and Brian McNally: Breatnach and Kelly were sentenced in the no-jury Special Criminal Court to 12 years, McNally to nine.
The day before sentence, Nicky Kelly jumped bail but returned nearly two years later when the convictions of Breatnach and McNally were deemed ‘unsafe’ and that their statements had ‘not been made voluntarily’.
However, the State insisted that the time period for registering an appeal had by then been exceeded and it took much campaigning and his own hunger strike before Kelly was finally released, on a Presidential pardon for a crime he had not committed.
A fourth, Mick Plunkett, had stood trial with the three on the same charges but having succeeded in not making a false confession under torture and threats, was finally acquitted. The French connection with the extradition of Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, is Plunkett’s.
Mick Plunkett4 had decided that, despite his escaping the framing, that the Garda Heavy Gang5 would be out to get him and that a departure to other climes might he healthy. Plunkett settled in France but did not give up his politics.
Photo: Joel Robine/ AFP
The Jo Goldenberg restaurant was subjected to a grenade and firearms attack on 9 August 1982, killing six and injuring 22.
On 28 August that year, Plunkett, Mary Reid and Stephen King (not the novelist) were arrested by a special anti-terrorist unit of the Gendarmerie (perhaps Le Gang Lourd, the Heavy Gang a la Francaise!).
The police claimed that all three were part of a terrorist organisation and that leaflets confirming that had been found in their apartment. And also firearms. All the allegations were vigorously denied by the three Irish activists.
Eventually the case against all three fell apart and they were released with, in time, the Gendarmerie admitting that the evidence against them had been ‘planted’ and the special unit was disbanded.6
One of the acts which the French police had claimed for the organisation of which they had falsely claimed membership of Plunkett, Reid and King was the attack on the Jo Goldberg Restaurant — the same incident for which the French Police have now charged Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra.
The French state got Khader Abed by extradition from Occupied Palestine. The State of Israel does not extradite its citizens anywhere but the Palestinian Authority was willing to do the job for France, which last year had officially recognised ‘the State of Palestine.’
end.
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Footnotes
1This story was published recently in the Irish language-only weekly An Páipéar (available in newsagents and online).
Composed of Socialist Republican, Communist and Anarchist contingents, along with independent activists of various tendencies, a broad Revolutionary Bloc marched among other groups and individuals in the annual May Day march in Dublin on May 1st.
Eden Quay, as the march turns off O’Connell Street, heading for Beresford Square, by the tall Liberty Hall building in the left background. (Photo: R.Breeze)
At intervals the banners of the Communist Party of Ireland, the Independent Workers’ Union and flags of the Anti-Imperialist Action contingents could be seen and a number of flags denoting specific groups or campaigns were on show but the Bloc was mainly identifiable by its slogans.
Led in call-and-answer almost non-stop from departure point at the Garden of Remembrance to Beresford Place in front of Liberty Hall,1 slogans called on workers to strike work and fight, to oust imperialist states and NATO from Ireland, for resistance unity, revolution and a socialist republic.
Section of the Revolutionary Bloc, centre image. (Photo: R.Breeze)
It was notable that an Irish Tricolour and a number of Starry Plough flags were visible among the Bloc and indeed one of the chants was against the appropriation of the Tricolour by ‘traitors’. They also called for funding for education and not for big corporations and for a hotel-free city centre.
At least one of the flags was of the Revolutionary Housing League and the march passed an empty building appropriated three years earlier by the RHL who were then evicted by a Garda force of 100 with helicopter and armed unit as backup. The building remains empty to this day.
People in Dublin stopped in the early Friday evening to watch and in the northern reach of O’Connell Street an elderly man stepped off the pavement to march along with the Bloc, though in silence while further along, two teenage girls in school uniform joined the Bloc also.
The Priory Market, Tallaght, Dublin prior to opening (Photo: Supplied by supporter)
Led by a long piper, the various contingents marched into Beresford Place, where a stage had been set up in front of the SIPTU2 headquarters building but most of the Revolutionary Bloc marched past to congregate for a group photo around the nearby monument to James Connolly.
Using the Bloc’s megaphone, one of the group then sang the Be Moderate song (also known as We Only Want the Earth) composed by James Connolly3 and, as the singer informed his listeners, published in the Songs of Freedom songbook by Connolly in New York in 1907.
As most of the Bloc dispersed, speeches were being made from the nearby stage and a group of mostly younger people from Turkey were assembling at the Connolly Monument also for a group photo.
The May Day march and rally in Dublin is traditionally organised by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions. However the participation of union banners was low in numbers and those present mostly of the FÓRSA union.
Section of the march showing FORSA union flags being carried. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Distinct from other European states, the foremost struggle in Ireland for centuries has been on the national question which has entailed less development in the forces devoted to socialism, so that in general May Day does not bring out the numbers one can see in the capitals of the EU and UK.
However, Ireland’s long history of resistance to colonial occupation has entailed a greater history of insurrection than most European states and it has also produced a remarkable number of leaders of labour struggles among the Irish diaspora in Britain, the USA and Australia.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1A highly-visible very tall building on the site of the original Liberty Hall, HQ of the IT&GWU, now of SIPTU.
2One of the largest (possibly the largest) trade unions in Ireland, formed by amalgamation of other unions on the base of the Irish Transport and General Workers union, of which James Connolly had been an officer and for a period, its overall leader.
3James Connolly (5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916), born and raised in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, revolutionary socialist activist-theoretician and Irish Republican, author, journalist, historian, union organiser, executed by the British occupation along with another 15 prominent insurrectionists of the Easter Rising.
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