Tag: Anti-imperialism

AFTER A 12-DAY WAR – HOW DOES THE BALANCE LOOK?

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Middle East, Political Analysis, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins)

Both the USA and its proxy Israel carried out an unprovoked attack on Iran, both attacking nuclear facilities and Israel, as per their playbook, bombing civilians and their public facilities.

Iran targeted every category in Israel (generally not civilians) matching those the IOF bombed in Iran, assassinations excepted. And replied to the USA’s attack by hitting their most forward base in a Middle Eastern state, Al-Udeid in Qatar.1

The objectives of the US and of Israel were ostensibly to wreck Iran’s nuclear program. But more than that, to achieve a change of regime to one amenable to the western powers, such as is the case with most of the Middle Eastern regimes.

The regime change was to take place internally by subversion, terrorism and uprisings as it was fighting bombing by Israel.

Neither the US nor Israel achieved those listed objectives.

Iran’s objectives were to maintain its sovereignty and independence in general and, because of the US and Israeli public focus, defend its sovereignty with regard to uranium enrichment to improve its nuclear energy and by-products.

Iran achieved those objectives,2 at least for the time being and it will probably now leave the IAEA with justification3 so western powers will know very little of what is going one with Iran’s nuclear program, which is to Iran’s benefit.

Iran however also wanted the lifting of sanctions and it has not achieved that.

Once the Israeli attack started, Iran’s objectives were a) to recover from the initial external and internal assaults and assassinations; b) defend the state from internal subversion and terrorism and from Israeli bombing; b) strike back at Israel and punish it so thoroughly as to prevent repetition.

Iran successfully and quickly recovered from internal assaults and assassinations; b) put up a strong defence but was unable to down enemy planes other than drones, which was not a success;4 c) punished Israel very severely, to an extent that will become clearer as time goes on.

Scene of Iranian missile damage in ‘Israel’, June 2025 (Photo sourced: Telegram)

But the level of Iran’s attack was not enough to ensure Israel will never attack it again and the Zionist entity’s political and military leadership is probably even now concentrating on how to rebuild itself to strike again.

Once the USA attacked, Iran had to show that it was capable of eliminating US bases across the region and would do so if attacked again. The strike on its evacuated Al-Udeid base in Qatar was largely symbolic but in fact proved Iran’s point and willingness to go that far if necessary.

In that, Iran was resoundingly successful. No other state has attacked a Middle Eastern US base, albeit warned and evacuated at the time, without serious repercussion.

This conflict ended overall as a draw but with the preponderance of success on Iran’s side.

It is more difficult to assess the political wins and losses but in so far as there is any change in the overall political situation one would have to say it has shifted in Iran’s favour.

One process of assessment is to investigate what the antagonists think:

  • Iran is celebrating nationally before turning to the funerals of their martyrs, in particular state funerals of victims of assassinations;
  • Israel is full of recriminations against its leadership but also against the US5 for not going further and imposing a ceasefire;
  • The USA leadership seems divided but opinion is increasingly mounting that Trump is mistaken in his assessment of ‘obliteration’ of Iran’s enriched uranium production sites.

Another measure is the relative financial expenditure and loss.

  • Although this picture is far from clear from either side we know of over 39,000 insurance claims in Israel so far6and the state spent $5 Billion in the first week of the war.7

They lost a prominent military science development site and lost or sustained damage to military and military intelligence sites too but it will be some time before the true level or even approximation will escape Israeli military censorship.

Israel also lost presumably a great deal of its Mossad-run sabotage and terrorist network in Iran which exposed itself as part of Israel’s attack, much of which is now under interrogation, on trial or already executed.

  • U.S. spending on aid for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere in the region between Oct. 7, 2023 – Oct. 7, 2024 was calculated at over $17.9 billion; spending on related U.S. operations in the region at over $4.86 billion.8
  • Iran produces missiles much more cheaply than Israeli munitions and has greater productive capacity; its greatest loss was the human cost (the disparity in civilian deaths shows who was really targeting civilians) and it lost a lot of scientists through Israeli assassinations.

On the political-psychological level, an extremely important one:

  • Iran emerged as a strong state with popular support in defence of sovereignty that cannot easily be defeated. Internally this has led to greater unity, at least for the moment.

Externally, Russia and China will see it not only worthwhile but important to support Iran and possibly even to part-arm them (which Pakistan too may do).

Iran’s western-friendly neighbours will be wondering whether US airbases brings them greater security or the opposite and also whether any alliance with Israel is a good idea, even though pushed by the USA and other Western powers.

Israel has seen its image of military superiority and even invincibility destroyed, internally by its war in Gaza and externally by its recent war with Iran and this process will increase as those from other areas view the damage in ‘Tel Aviv’ for example.

For a decade the state has been seeing a steady exodus of dual-nationality Israelis, particularly among its technocrat population and during this war mass evacuations by boat and land after the Israeli State closed its airports.10

The degradation of the IOF through mental fatigue, injuries and deaths (totalling more than 10,000 since their Gaza offensive), along with damaged armour, will continue in a deeply divided body politic.11

  • The USA’s population will continue to see protests not only against the wars in the Middle East and genocide in Palestine but also against the increasing decrees and police repressing free speech and the right to organise and participate in protests.
  • Western capitalist companies will continue to reduce or even end their investment in – or relationships with – the Israeli state,12 pushed in part by targeted protests and probably more largely by doubts about how financially safe Israel really is, even in the mid-term.

IN CONCLUSION

Iran is the overall winner, Israel definitely the big loser and the USA somewhat also (not forgetting that any Israeli loss is ultimately one for the US also). But the Zionazis will rearm and increase spying, sabotage and probably covert assassination operations in Iran.

Iran will rearm also, possibly even in nuclear terms and will intensify its intelligence war against subversion and spying and always viewing future attacks on it as inevitable.

The US will continue to view Iran as its primary adversary in the Middle East, in terms of its sovereignty and military capabilities.

Also viewing Iran as a necessary obstacle to remove before its future full confrontation with China, a state financially and economically already ahead of the US and a strong proponent of a multi-polar world against the existing unipolar version with the US as its head.

The world geopolitically-militarily will not be a better place as the result of the outcome of this 12-day war and may even be worse for it – after all, Israel and the US were permitted by the rest of the western alliance to bomb nuclear installations while continuing to support genocide in Gaza.

But with the weakening of US Imperialism and Israeli Zionism, it will offer opportunities for reversing damaged sovereignty, for anti-imperialist revolutions and for social progress.

End.

FOOTNOTES & SOURCES

1https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjxdgjpd48o

2https://thecradle.co/articles/european-intel-says-irans-enriched-uranium-survived-us-attacks

3https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/irans-parliament-approves-bill-to-suspend-cooperation-with-iaea

https://thecradle.co/articles/russian-fm-warns-new-iaea-inspections-of-iran-can-lead-to-sensitive-leaks

4Sharmine Narwani on the Cradle podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK8tYo3jdIk pointed out that none of the many Israeli photos taken from the air over central Iran could be ascertained as typically originating from IOF planes and were instead likely taken from drones. This raised the possibility that all the air-launched missiles of the IOF were all from airspace outside Iran (and we know that the Iraqi Government complained about the US violation of its airspace by opening it to the IOF). This also seems to answer a question that was bothering me: What happened in this war to the sophisticated radar that allegedly caused enemy planes to veer away from Iranian airspace in the attack last year, with some leaks alleged from pilots claiming that the Iranians were able to ‘see’ and target the latest stealth fighter planes. However ‘seeing’ fighters is not the same as ‘targeting’ them and may not even be possible at all with US B2 bombers – see interesting short presentation from this hostile source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz6cd9tHiyM No doubt scientists are working on the problem and technology will develop further so that stealth bombers may be detected and fighters and bombers targeted, with US technology developing technology to confuse the targeting and so on … and on.

5Including reported tweets and comments calling for Israel to bomb the US!

6https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-receives-nearly-39-000-compensation-claims-for-damages-caused-by-iranian-missiles/3611868 and https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-multi-billion-shekel-price-tag-iran-war

7“The David’s Sling system, used to intercept short- and long-range threats, costs around $700,000 per activation when firing its minimum of two interceptors.” https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/12billion-a-month-the-cost-of-israels-daily-strikes-and-defence-against-iran-war-at-a-premium/articleshow/121979978.cms

8Costs of War

9https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/world/middleeast/gulf-states-iran-attack-us-qatar-base.html

10Even before the retaliation by Iran https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/over-550000-israelis-flee-country-amid-gaza-war-data-shows-18176225 and during the war reported leaving by sea and land, after Israel closed airports https://www.newarab.com/news/israelis-quietly-flee-europe-yacht-escape-iran-missiles

11https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/over-10-000-israeli-soldiers-killed-or-wounded-in-gaza-war-says-military-officer/3587606

12The largest European consumers’ cooperative with 2,700,000 members (Wikipedia) joins boycott of Israeli products European retailers drop Israeli goods in solidarity with Gaza – TRT Global

The feminist call to war

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, US Imperialism, WomenLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 24 June

Reprinted in full from G.Ó.L’s substack and formatted for the Rebel Breeze blog.

Feminism used to be associated with pacifist anti-militarist movements, but times have changed and now there are feminists who call for war, whilst they still continue to blame all wars on men. It is an enormous contradiction.

For the last two years Gaza has lived under a siege and a genocide, supported by some sectors of feminism and in the midst of the conflict with Iran, once again feminist voices come out with a clamour for war. The reason is their supposed rush to free the women of Iran.

Four female political prisoners in Evin prison in Tehran (before it was bombed by Israel), conscious of the cynicism of some feminist groups in the West issued a communiqué denouncing the war and those who support it.

They stated that Israel wanted a submissive and weak Middle East and they opted to continue their own struggle against the government in Tehran without allying themselves with Yankee imperialism.

Our liberation…from the dictatorship ruling the country is possible through the struggle of the masses and by resorting to social forces – not by clinging to foreign powers or placing hopes in them.

The powers that have always brought destruction to the countries of the region through exploitation and colonisation, by inciting wars and killing in pursuit of greater benefits, will have no way out for us except for new destruction and exploitation.[1]

The four women are pro-Kurdish and also women detained in the protests following the death of Masha Amini at the hands of the Morality Police in 2022. One of them fought against ISIS in Syria. They are not coffee house feminists.

Women ‘of colour’ probably of the Combahee Collective with banner in what seems to be a general women’s liberation demonstration in the early 1970s. (Photo sourced: Internet)

They branded as traitors those Iranian who have called for war, amongst them the son of the despotic Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah imposed by the USA in 1953 following the CIA coup.

He ruled with an iron hand murdering and torturing the opposition, both the Left and Right, men and women. His son wants to go back to robbing the country’s coffers.

Traitors to Iran and traitors to the peoples of the Middle East and traitors to the people’s years of freedom-seeking struggles against oppression will know that their betrayal and disdain will be recorded in the memory of the Iranian people and in history.

Future generations will remember with shame those who stand on the corpses of defenceless people and trample them.[2]

Whilst these women who did actually rise up against the regime are opposed to the war, in the West there are those bourgeois feminists who in between their macchiatos ask for more attacks on Iran, in order to “free” the women.

They only think of Iran when a US president or the Nazis in Tel Aviv want to attack the country. They believe that the sexual predator who acts as US president is going to fight for the women. Maybe the way he did in Syria by installing ISIS.

One of the first to invoke the repression of women was none other than Netanyahu,[3] a man who has bombed maternity hospitals in Gaza killing women and children all around.

The US said something similar about Afghanistan and various bourgeois feminists came out to justify the war, deliberately ignoring that without US support the Taliban would never have existed.

It was Jimmy Carter and then Reagan who started to finance the troglodytes of the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban i.e. the bourgeois feminists too.

I should clarify that many of those feminists are not bourgeois in the sense of their social class, they have no capital, they are not rich, though there is no lack of those who are.

They are bourgeois in an ideological sense, although they use terms such as liberal, radical, separatist etc., but what unites them is their defence of capitalism and the bourgeoisie.

You could say right wing feminists but many of them like to present themselves as progressive when they are bourgeois, or in the case of the less wealthy ones, acolytes of the bourgeoisie.

Hillary Clinton, a bourgeois feminist (both in the ideological sense and also in terms of her bank balance) who has her hands stained with the blood of women in Libya and other parts is one of the spokeswomen for bourgeois feminism.

Much though they may shout, down with patriarchy! Their favourite slogan is Long Live Capitalism and Imperialism! This includes feminist intellectuals like Julie Bindel.

They kept silent about the genocide in Gaza and now believe that whoever criticises the war against Iran supports the regime. I suppose this includes the political prisoners who don’t sip macchiatos in their cells.

Bindel writing in The Sun said that those who criticise the war support Iran and the oppression of women. She repeated the usual lies about October 7th, mixed with some truths about Iran with the aim of supporting the war.[4] Bindel has kept silent about the massacres of women in Gaza.

She doesn’t support the women of Iran, but rather the West. It is worth pointing out that the owner of the paper, where she writes, has supported reactionary governments around the world, including in Great Britain where Bindel lives.

It is a misogynist, homophobic paper that frequently runs campaigns against the poor and migrants. Bindel is not alone, Kelly Jay Keen shares videos of the son of the Shah, perhaps to indicate that she supports the monarchy.[5]

The bourgeois feminists, like all of the bourgeoise in practice see other cultures as inferior ones. They use the same imperialist language to justify wars as did Rudyard Kipling, the author of the infamous poem The White Man’s Burden. They boast about the White Woman’s Burden.

It should be remembered that Kipling wrote that poem to seek and to justify the US invasion of the Philippines.

Take up the White Man’s burden
The savage wars of peace
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Then they say that men are to blame for wars and not their dear capitalist system. Over and again the bourgeois feminists call for war.

But if they want wars and invasions, well why not ask for the US to be invaded, where women are pursued fleeing from one state to another to obtain an abortion, or where access to sex education is restricted and deficient as is access to contraceptives,[6] where women earn less than men and are under-represented in a wide range of fields.

Afghanistan is a country where women are more repressed than in any other part of the world. Throughout the conflict the US financed the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban.

They had the option of supporting organisations such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a women’s organisation that opposed the Islamists and also the Russians and later the US invasion.[7] 

No, between one macchiato and another our dear bourgeois feminists let the men in the Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton support the Taliban troglodytes.

They said the same in Iraq. I am sure more than one reader is asking themselves what Iraq has to do with it all. It was a secular country, that promoted women’s education and participation.

However, one of the reasons bandied about by Bush was that he was rescuing and defending women and he compared their situation to that of Afghanistan, despite Saddam promoting women’s education.[8] 

In fact, under Saddam, 30% of faculty staff were women, trained in Europe and the USA with full funding from the government. It is no longer like that, in fact there is no intellectual world in Iraq, the bombs the bourgeois feminists asked for, put paid to that.[9] 

In the US the bourgeois feminists paid to go to universities, but Iraq promoted women as a state policy, something the Yanks have never done. In Britain, just 31% of the lecturers were women.

Iraq almost beat them, but in-between macchiatos the bourgeois feminists called for a war to improve the situation of women in Iraq and of course their investment portfolios.

Now the drums of war are beating again and the bourgeois feminists once more give themselves over to the war, despite believing that wars are a male product rather than a capitalist one.

They are not going to analyse their own participation, whilst a refugee from one of their wars prepares another macchiato for them.

As the female political prisoners in Evin said, it will be the Iranian people and the Iranian women who will free Iran and the Iranian women and not the bourgeois with the macchiatos, wine and caviar.

They are just as much the enemy of the women of Iran as the male bourgeois and are as deserving of our contempt.

There is no lack of Iranian voices asking for war and not just the son of the despot Pahlevi. Masih Alinejad is an exiled journalist. She took part in the movement against the obligatory use of head coverings in Iran and other things.

So far so good, unlike others she has fought against the oppression of women in the country.

But in exile, she turned out to be a Zionist and in the first Trump government met with the hawk Mike Pompeo and also worked at the official US propaganda radio station, Voice of America, transmitting programmes in Farsi.

Masih Alinejad & Jake Sullivan, Intelligence Adviser to US President Biden 2021 2025. (Source: Wikipedia)

Now she criticises Netanyahu, but not for bombing Iran and killing civilians but because of his bad timing. She believes he should have waited for protests against the government and attacked at that time. Of course the bombs were not going to fall on her, safe in New York.

Those feminists who keep silent about the genocide in Gaza do not seek the liberation of women in Iran, but rather a geopolitical reorganisation of the region and the victory of Zionism.

But that slogan doesn’t sound too good and you can easier convince the dozy in the world by talking about the rights of women in Iran. Meanwhile they have little to say about why their governments installed and recognised the Islamists from ISIS in Syria.

It is an exercise in public relations rather than real concern for the future of women in Iran. At the end of the day bourgeois feminists defend the bourgeoisie more than they defend women.

End.

NOTES

[1] Middle East Eye (19/06/2025) Iran: Jailed women activists issue letter condemning Israeli attacks. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jailed-female-activists-iran-issue-letter-condemning-israeli-attacks

[2] Ibíd.,

[3] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/ab68f07d-68ef-4e79-9561-0c8062663882?j=eyJ1IjoiMzBqYW1wIn0.0Y_uIvVCiPFxQqpA0lVO04u7LmUWrBGajjuhH6mjvNk

[4] The Sun (23/06/2025) Stupid ignorant lefties who support Iran when it stones women for adultery are mad and immoral. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35536772/support-iran-death-cult-opinion-julie-bindel/

[5] See https://x.com/Mylovanov/status/1937201198370549828

[6] The Guardian (23/01/2025) As Trump returns, state lawmakers pursue bills that would treat abortion as homicide. Carter Sherman. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/23/abortion-homicide-bills

[7] See http://www.rawa.org/index.php

[8] The New Arab (22/10/2021) Colonial feminism and the un-liberation of women in Iraq. Jyhene Kebsi. https://www.newarab.com/opinion/colonial-feminism-and-un-liberation-women-iraq

[9] Al Jazeera (01/10/2013) The Destruction of Iraq’s Intellectuals. Matthew Schweitzer. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2013/10/1/the-destruction-of-iraqs-intellectuals

UNPROVOKED, UNJUSTIFIED IMPERIALIST-ZIONIST ATTACK

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Mass Media Criticism, Middle East, Political Analysis, US Imperialism, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

On Friday the ‘Israeli’ state launched an unprovoked and unjustified attack on Iran. Apart from any any liking or disliking of either attacker or attacked, this is a fact. And if this be acceptable, then it can happen to any country.

Of course, in this century and in the last it has already happened to many countries – and in general, it is imperialist states or their proxies who have been responsible. Also in the case of ‘Israel’ in Lebanon and Syria while practising genocide in Gaza.

The western mass media could not deny that Iran’s attack is retaliation to an attack by ‘Israel’, nor could they just omit that context in their reports. So instead, they called the Israeli attack a ‘pre-emptive’ strike,1 which usually means that one had to act first as was just about to be attacked.

But no, that is completely misleading; any time Iran has attacked ‘Israel’ it’s been in retaliation to an ‘Israel’ attack on them first. And in fact the Zionist regime was overdue a retaliation due to their attack on Iran in October last year.

There are many regimes around the world of which I do not approve and some which I detest but that does not give me or others justification for attacking their countries. Stopping genocide does provide justification and, according to international law, actual obligation but only Yemen acted.

Iranian retaliatory missiles striking Haifa (‘Tel Aviv’) 14th or 15th June 2025. (Image sourced: Online)

The ‘Israeli’ ‘justification’ for their attack is that Iran posed a threat to their state. This was based on the often-stated belief of the Iranian authorities that the Zionist settler colony is a threat to the whole Middle East and should be eliminated. But is an expression of an opinion a real threat?

It is not, unless followed by action (such as for example the genocidal and racist statements of Israeli Government ministers as the IOF carries out their wishes in practice).

And in fact the Zionists have themselves verified the correctness of the opinions of the Iranian authorities by their history since 1948 (and for some time before that too). But how was this alleged threat to be carried out? By Iran developing nuclear weapons, claimed the Zionists.

Netanyahu has been claiming over ten years, against all the evidence, that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, despite numerous Iranian denials and official inspections. The Western powers are apparently also very concerned about the possible development of nuclear weapons by Iran.

Wait a minute! France, UK and the USA are concerned about Iran possibly having nuclear weapons some day? All of those are nuclear weapon-holding states! What gives them the right to decide who should and who should not have nuclear weapons?

We could ask too what gives the Israeli State, which has secret nuclear weapons, such a right?

Yes, the Zionist State has had nuclear weapons since the 1960s, although it keeps it secret and its nuclear weaponry is not open to any inspection. Israeli peace activist whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear scientist, confirmed this to the British press in 1986.2

Vanunu was lured to Italy by Mossad, drugged, kidnapped and flown to the Zionist state where he was tried in secret. He has spent 18 years in jail, 11 of them in solitary confinement (despite there not being any such sentence in the ‘Israeli’ penal code) and is not permitted to leave the country.

Leaders of the USA have expressed the fear that Iran may one day develop nuclear weapons and attack Israel with them. This worry is being expressed by the only state that has used nuclear weapons to attack another state – and did it not once, but twice!

In August 1944 US bombers exploded atomic bombs over two cities of Japan, with which the US was at war. One study estimates the number of dead, mostly civilians at 199,0003 but many continued to die from radiation poisoning in following years.

ALTHOUGH IRAN HAS THE RIGHT TO DEVELOP NUCLEAR WEAPONS – THEY WEREN’T DOING SO

Not only was there no evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, and that they repeated many times that they were not and a number of observers and investigators had confirmed their statements – but the Supreme Leader of Iran had issued a fatwa4 against such development!

Trump in his many statements seemed to confuse the terms enrichment with nuclear weapon, using them alternately. Now we can see that it was never about nuclear weapons: it was the enrichment that the western allies wished to stop, in order to cripple Iran’s nuclear energy development.

What we are seeing in this conflict is international bullying in which threats, economic sanctions, assassinations, bombing and war (not to mention genocide) are fine with the western powers as long as they (or their proxies) are committing them.

This is the alliance that the Irish gombeen ruling class wants us to join, either through an imperialist EU ‘defence’ (sic) force or through NATO. And the supreme irony is that they will use the very wars they start as ‘evidence’ of the need for us to join them!

As I write, Iran is hitting back, completely justifiably. A number of waves of missiles so far, striking Zionist regime buildings and military establishments. Of course, it is not a sneak attack and most of leaders and ‘Tel Aviv’ residents are in bomb shelters.

The Zionists cannot be paid back in their own preferred coin of leadership assassination. At the moment, it’s not certain where war criminal and child-murderer Netanyahu is but he did visit one of the sites hit by Iran from where he poured out further threats.

So far, Iran has not attacked US bases in West Asia although the US is clearly complicit in the attack on Iran, for which no further evidence is required than that the missiles came through Iraq’s totally USA-controlled air space. And Trump has been boasting about US involvement too.

Recent news is that the Genocidal State has asked for help from its allies in its defence against just retribution and that the UK responded positively. The western imperialist bloc is about to reveal its collusion with the genocidal state even more openly than recently.

What will happen next? How will the rest of the world act over the coming months? It is hard to predict but we can definitely say that the world is in a different place from now on.

WHERE DO WE STAND?

So far the population of most of Ireland has managed not to be recruited into the western imperialist bloc but the government of the Irish state continues to be complicit and the six-county colony is under UK occupation — and therefore officially part of US/ NATO.

Simon Harris, Tánaiste, Irish Government Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and for Defence was reported today saying that “Iran has consistently been a danger to the world.”5

Er … Iran? Not the aggressor (and genocider) Israel, which attacked Iran first, also attacking Syria and Lebanon and in the past Jordan, Libya and Egypt?

Not the USA (201 military actions in 153 countries after WW2)? Not the UK or France, colonial masters and currently major imperialist states?

I suspect that some socialists will find it difficult to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran; they found it impossible to do so with the people in the secular regimes of Libya and Syria – and Iran is a theocracy with many social regulations to which they would be strongly opposed.

On the other hand, Iran is being attacked by imperialist-backed Zionism because of its insistence on sovereignty and support for anti-imperialist struggles in West Asia. Apart from the Ansarallah regime of Yemen, Iran is the only state to stand up to Zionism in the region.

For genuine anti-imperialists and anti-Zionists then, for all democratic people, our stance and demand is clear: HANDS OFF IRAN!

End.

Footnotes

1Even this ‘background explanatory’ piece, which starts off recounting a decades-long list of ‘Israeli’ sabotage and assassination operations against Iran, later turns to defend ‘Israel’ by referring to the Hamas-led 7th October breakout and tenuously connecting Iran to that operation through their solidarity with Hamas. For context of that solidarity the journal would need to go back to all the attacks on the Palestinians by ‘Israel’ but of course it does not do. https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/timeline-of-tensions-and-hostilities-between-israel-and-iran-1773045.html

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

3https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/med/med_chp10.html

4A religious and legal injunction according to Muslim law.

5https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/harris-says-world-on-brink-of-extraordinary-destabilisation-1773627.html

WE FOUGHT THEM FOR 800 YEARS BUT WE ARE STILL NOT FREE

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, History, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4mins.)

I was jarred recently hearing the Irish actor and Palestine solidarity activist Liam Cunningham mention “700 years of British occupation”.1 And I have heard others not from Ireland speak admiringly of the “Irish freedom struggle of 700 years.”

Quite a few of those from other countries who quoted the “freedom” after “700 years” did so admiringly and may not be well acquainted with our nation’s history.

Liam Cunningham in Italy with two of the humanitarian activists about to sail on the Mayleen’s expedition to Gaza.

The foreign occupation of Ireland is normally dated from the Norman invasion of 1169 (although we could add to it the foreign occupation of Dublin by the Vikings from roughly 853 AD to 1170 AD).

I’m aware that I can be somewhat challenged in mathematics but after checking and re-checking I find that 856 years have elapsed since 1169, which means that the British-based occupation of Ireland has continued for well in excess of the 700 years quoted by Cunningham and others.

The Pale or walled city of Dublin under British Norman/ English occupation (Source image: https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/dublin/short_history/map_1.html)

So where did the “700” years figure come from? It occurred to me that in some people’s heads this might be based on the creation of the Irish State and an assumption that was the point at which we threw off the British colonial yoke. Well, even then it would be 752 years but o.k, that might be it.

So, all of Ireland was occupied for centuries, then after numerous uprisings, in 1921 the British ceded 26 counties to Irish State control. But Ireland has 32 counties – what happened to the missing six counties? Well, we know, they remained occupied.

The Irish State in 1921 abandoned the people of the Six Counties, in particular the 34%+ who were of Catholic background; abandoned them to institutional sectarian religious discrimination in housing, employment and representation — and to repression.2

And in fact, the fairly recent 30 Years War was precisely about that occupation. Inevitably, the people rose up against their repression and oppression. The Irish State formally claimed those Six Counties but took no steps to regain them and cooperated with the colonial forces.3

Clearly we can’t change history but we can choose not to collude with injustice. We can refuse to conceive of Ireland as missing six counties, as only four-fifths of its actual landmass. We used to have a word for the thinking that had a Six-County blind spot – we called it ‘partitionist’.

In other words, an attitude that agreed with, colluded with or merely accepted the partition of the Irish Nation.

The Irish State that was born in 1921 was dominated by a capitalist ruling class which was pro-British and socially conservative, even beyond the social conservatism of Britain. And the social conservatism of the colonial Six County regime was even more extreme.

The agreement to abandon the Six Counties was a good indication of the servile nature of the ruling class of the Irish State which became even more evident as the State developed — and even under a later government of former opponents of the State, the Sinn Féin split of Fianna Fáil.

The Irish economy was neither developed nor diversified. Emigration continued unchecked as it had for centuries under British rule and. Irish State obeisance in turn switched to the USA and then to the EU. Currently the Irish ruling class is trying to eliminate any Irish State neutrality.

In 1845 Ireland was able to feed over 8 million but today in 2025 cannot even feed a little over 7 million in (over 5.3 million in the Irish state, nearly 2 million in the Six Counties). Yes, we must import food in order to eat.

Most large companies and banks within the state are foreign-owned, including such national brands and flagships as Aer Lingus, Guinness (including Harp and Hop House lagers and Smithwicks ale), Jameson and Paddy’s whiskeys,4Erin Foods, our telecommunication system5.

Most financial institutions within the state such as insurance companies in health, life, accident, motors, travel are also foreign-owned, including the now ironically-named Irish Life. The health, transport and mail systems and infrastructures are increasingly penetrated by foreign companies.

Foreign-owned hotels, housing apartment and office blocks are the rule and growing while vulture companies gobble up the properties of people who already paid the construction costs of their homes.

In economic policies and in foreign political policy it is clear that the Irish State remains close to the major Western Powers. Responding to popular feeling over the genocide in Gaza, its political leaders may posture a little away from the pack but in effect?

The Irish State imports productsfrom the Israeli State (US$4.15 Billion in 2024),6 allows genocidal state munitions through the State’s ‘neutral’ air space, US munitions and personnel through Shannon International Airport while maintaining all normal links with the Zionist state.

What we believe and say is important

In his interview with The Group Chat Cunningham, with the agreement of the panel, stated that no state was fulfilling its legal duty to practically oppose genocide. This was an unjustified slur on Yemen, which has shut down Israeli inward or outward Red Sea traffic and hit the state itself.7

It is very interesting that even among the many condemnations of Israel by media commentators and politicians we rarely hear acknowledgement, never mind commendation of the anti-genocidal action and sacrifice of the Ansarallah state and the Yemeni people.

Perhaps the contrast is too painful.

However, in an interview during a Palestine solidarity march in Dublin8 Cunningham referred to 800 years. Was that a slip of the tongue, or were the references to 700 centuries instead the slips? Interestingly he also referred to foreign vulture funds and landlords in the same interview.

Liam Cunningham speaking about the seizure by the ‘Israeli’ navy of the humanitarian mission ship Mayleen. (Source photo: The Irish Star)

It is important that an actor in a popular drama series speaks up for Palestine and also for the Irish people and Cunningham has been doing so for years.

What we say and how we recall history is also important because they have an impact on the present and on the future. On what we aspire to. On how we act and think, on how those around us act and think.

Ireland is partitioned between a colonial ruling class and an Irish foreign-dependent ruling class. We fought the Viking occupation for 300 years and the British occupation for well over 800 years – and we are still fighting it. Without sovereignty we cannot develop our economy.

Without sovereignty we will be dragged into imperial and colonial conflicts but never to our historical and traditional place – on the side of the Resistance.

End.

NOTES

1A number of times but in particular in interview on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znTKPzXLfrI and on 21.17 minutes in the Empire Files interview

2It also abandoned the Protestant majority, including many descendants of the United Irishmen particularly in Antrim, to a sectarian, bigoted, racist and colonial ideology that helped maintain them for decades with the worst housing and lowest wages in the UK of which they were part.

3In 1998 it abandoned even the formality of that claim https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65184915

4And Bushmills in the colonial statelet.

5https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/03/16/french-billionaire-niel-inches-closer-to-full-ownership-of-eir/#:~:text=NJJ%20Boru%2C%20a%20company%20controlled,private%20equity%20firm%20Anchorage%20Capital

6https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/imports/israel and https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/2025/06/08/despite-the-politics-ireland-is-israels-second-biggest-export-market-for-goods/

7Also in the Empire Files interview.

8On 24th April https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/game-of-thrones-liam-cunningham-gaza-b2534126.html

SOURCES

The Group Chat interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znTKPzXLfrI

The Empire Files interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojQGOD3vywU

CHANGING THE STARRY PLOUGH COLOUR AND SEAN O’CASEY

On By rebelbreezeIn History, Imperialism, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Resistance Art, Socialist Revolution, Workers' Struggles2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

For many years the Starry Plough flag in Ireland, associated with socialist Irish Republicanism, was the form of the Ursa Mayor1 constellation in white or silver stars on a blue background, from the time of the Republican Congress (1934-’36).

Somewhat later a different design including an actual plough following the stars and shape of Ursa Mayor on a green background began to be seen. But which was the original? And how, when and why did the other version come into existence?

It is not disputed that the Starry Plough was designed for the Irish Citizen Army, nor that it came to be designed in 1914, as the ICA was reorganising following the defeat of the Dublin workers in the 1913 Lockout. Whatever its colour, that was clearly the original.

It is beyond dispute that the Starry Plough was raised above Clery’s building, across the road from the GPO, during the 1916 Rising. It survived the burning of the building even though one witness spoke of a melted glass stream from its windows running across O’Connell (then Sackville) Street.

The flag disappeared thereafter. A British officer claimed to have taken it as a trophy. If there was more than one copy of that flag at the time, no-one has spoken of it.

When the Republican Congress was founded in 1934 the need for its own flag was felt. The Starry Plough of the ICA seemed appropriate and former members of the ICA were consulted as to the original design and colour and it appears that memories diverged on that issue.

Some remembered the background colour as green, some as blue. Prominent in the latter group was playwright Sean O’Casey, who had been Secretary of the ICA for a brief period in 1914 and presumably was present when the flag design was approved.

Whether or not, between April 1914 and April 1916, surely the flag had been paraded through the Dublin streets on a number of occasions and in any case it had flown over Clery’s in O’Connell Street for five or six days.

Nevertheless when the former members of the ICA were consulted in the 1930s there appeared to be uncertainty about the background colour – was it green or blue? Possibly the majority remembered it as blue or perhaps the opinion of O’Casey, who insisted on blue, was taken as the most valid.

In May 2022 former IRSP comrades of former leading IRSP activist Mick Plunkett stretch the blue Starry Plough version over the coffin containing the remains of the latter. During the 1970s-to the 2000 the blue version of the flag had been particularly associated with the IRSP.(Source photo: Seamus Costello Memorial Committee FB page).

So the flag of the Republican Congress was made a plain blue background with the shape of Ursa Mayor outlined in white or silver stars (and no actual plough design). That design was flown in Irish Republican colour parties from the 1960s at least and adopted too by the Irish Labour Party.2

A problem for the claim that the original was blue arose in the 1950s when an ex-British Army officer offered the Irish National Museum what he claimed to have been the Starry Plough which he said he had removed from the ruin of Clery’s. The background colour was green.

O’Casey was contacted by the NMI and insisted it could not be the original, maintaining that had been blue. To bear this out, he submitted a watercolour of what he claimed was Megahey’s (original artist) design work, in which the background was blue but did include a plough.3

The watercolour submitted by O’Casey which he claimed was the original design of the man who designed the flag, William Magahey. (Copied from article about the conservation of the original flag in History Ireland).

There was no way to prove the provenance of the watercolour. Nor was it impossible that a change of mind had led from a blue background on a design artwork to green on the produced flag. But O’Casey insisted that not only the artwork but the finished product had been blue.

Well then, why not investigate the artefact, the one claimed to be that which had been taken back to England by the British officer?

The original flag in the possession of the NMI back to front prior to conservation work. (Copied from article about the conservation of the original flag in History Ireland).

The NMI curator invited former members of the ICA only4 to view the artefact and although distressed at the state in which they saw it they confirmed that it matched their recollection. For the curator it seems that was the clincher and he then authorised its purchase in 1956.5

Around 2012 (the article does not give a date) an NMI curator charged with preserving the artefact set out to carry out modern method analysis of the material and its construction, paint and the more than 50 holes in it corresponding to .303 machine gun bullet impacts.6

The original Starry Plough flag in correct orientation (Photo sourced: NMI on line)

Former ICA members had remembered a golden edging on the flag, traces of which were indeed found on the green specimen. It all checked out. A clever hoax? Possibly, but for an eventual price of £150, a relatively small amount even back in 1954?

The ICA members viewing the artefact believed it was the original, the British Officer testified as to his having taken it and also produced an Irish Times account by himself dated 11 May 1916.7 The NMI tests all pointed to the conclusion that it was the original flag – and the background was green.

But O’Casey was adamant that it had been blue. And what about the blue watercolour, allegedly the artist’s design?

It’s possible that between the design outline and manufacture, a change in the desired background colour had taken place. But not only colour – the plough design on the watercolour is very different from that on what we must now conclude was the original flag.

We have no evidence to verify that the watercolour was the original designer’s. O’Casey might have painted it himself, from his mistaken memory, for example. Or is it possible that he falsified its origin in order to convince the NMI that the flag had been blue and not green?

Any such effort would not have been about an aesthetical judgement in favour of one colour over another but rather about removing the colour associated with nationalism.

O’Casey resigned from the ICA in a dispute8 about allying with nationalism but more tellingly, he disagreed after the fact with Connolly throwing himself and his forces into an uprising against colonialism9 – a nationalist rather than socialist uprising, as O’Casey would have seen it.

Connolly’s thesis was that the advance towards socialism was not possible in a colony such as Ireland without allying the socialist forces with the most progressive and revolutionary national bourgeois forces, i.e the IRB and the Irish Volunteers.10 O’Casey could not agree with that.

In Innisfallen Fare Thee Well (1949)11 he wrote: “The Easter Rising had pulled down a dark curtain of eternal separation between him and his best friends: and the few that had remained  alive and delightful, now lay deep, with convivial virtues, under the smoking rubblement of the Civil War.”

The symbolism of the original green, the colour of Irish Republicanism since the United Irishmen of the late 18th Century would have been anathema to the later O’Casey. Was he indulging in revisionist wishful thinking?

Or perhaps trying to ensure that in any future conflicts, the Irish Republican and Socialist trends would be kept firmly separate?

Two green Starry Ploughs on view among other flags carried by a section of marchers at the Bloody Sunday massacre commemoration March for Justice in Derry in January 2025. The one in centre of photo is a mass-produced reproduction whereas to the left one can see part of a quilted sewn individual one. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

There are others who strive to ensure the exact opposite, who as Connolly did, see in the combination of those two strands Ireland’s only chance for freedom from colonialism, neo-colonialism and an advance towards a socialist society.

For them, the original design and colours of the Starry Plough is their flag and its entire symbolism points the way forward.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1In the USA this constellation is commonly referred to as “the Big Dipper”.

2Rarely used by the Irish Labour Party nowadays. It was popular with the Irish Republican Socialist Party for decades but nowadays a version in white stars on a black panel on a red flag is flown by the organisation.

3https://historyireland.com/citizen-armys-starry-plough-flag/

4Ibid: O’Casey appears not to have been invited, which suggests that the accuracy of his stated recollection was doubted.

5Ibid.

6Ibid.

7‘The rebels, on taking possession of the Imperial Hotel in Sackville Street, hoisted their flag over the building, and there it remained intact on one of the ridges of the front wall while the entire contents of the premises were being consumed by fire. At great personal risk the flag was eventually brought down by second Lieutenant T.A. Williams of the 9th Reserve Cavalry, Kildare Barracks, assisted by Inspector Barrett, Dublin Metropolitan Police.’ https://historyireland.com/citizen-armys-starry-plough-flag/

8https://www.dib.ie/biography/ocasey-sean-a6553 O’Casey objected to the enrolment of Constance Markievicz in the Irish Citizen Army because she was also a member of Cumann na mBan, which had been set up as a female auxiliary organisation to the Irish Volunteers. O’Casey proposed that membership of the ICA precluded joint membership with any Irish nationalist organisation. Having had his motion defeated, O’Casey resigned from the ICA in July 2014.

9‘[Connolly’s] speeches and his writings had long indicated his new trend of thought, and his actions now proclaimed trumpet-tongued that the appeal of Caitlin Ní hUllacháin—“If anyone would give me help, he must give me himself, he must give me all”—was in his ears a louder cry than the appeal of the Internationale, which years of contemplative thought had almost written in letters of fire upon his broad and noble soul. Liberty Hall was now no longer the headquarters of the Irish Labour movement, but the centre of Irish National disaffection.’ https://historyireland.com/sean-ocaseys-battle-of-words-with-the-volunteers/

10And of course Cumann na mBan.

11The third volume of O’Casey’s autobiography, published in 1949.

SOURCES

Blue or Green?

The Starry Plough (Green or Blue?)

Click to access lawlor.pdf

https://siptu.medium.com/unfurling-of-the-starry-plough-61ef310f8afa

National Museum curator on provenance and tests: https://historyireland.com/citizen-armys-starry-plough-flag/

O’Casey’s separation from Connolly: https://historyireland.com/sean-ocaseys-battle-of-words-with-the-volunteers/

O’Casey and the reality of the Dublin working class

The Palestine Struggle in Cartoons – April/ May

On By rebelbreezeIn Cartoon, Current Affairs Comment, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Massacres, NATO, Palestine, Political Analysis, USA, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

Like many others through much of the genocidal attack on Gaza since October last 2022, I’ve been attending pickets, demonstrations and vigils organised by others. I’ve also written some reports on those events and analyses of the solidarity movement.

But in addition, I’ve been drawing cartoon comments in a sketch book, most unpublished and I thought I would publish a selection here.


One of the poorest states in the world, Ansarallah is the only one to uphold its duty to prevent genocide, which it does by putting heavy pressure on the Zionist state’s economy through maritime blockade. For this, the UK and USA rain missiles and bombs down upon it. But it does not yield.
This one is at least as much placard as it is cartoon but I never got around to making the placard.
Ansarallah escalates to attack the ‘Israeli’ state directly, then again in response to Zionist airforce bombing of Yemen.
The USA Navy sends two aircraft carriers to assist the genocidal state by attacking Yemen. Ansarallah attacks the US Navy, forcing the retreat first of one aircraft carrier followed by capitulation of the US which offers Ansarallah to end attacks on Yemen if they end attacks on US Navy. The deal makes no provision for defence of the Zionist state and is accepted by Ansarallah.
Facing some of the most heavily armed forces in the world but somehow, it’s always the national liberation forces that must disarm. For the sake of peace, of course.
The physical war against the Palestinians by the Zionist State was armed by a number of western imperialist states but also ideologically by the whole western media. In the face of real and ongoing genocide the WMM reported propaganda, repeated lies and framed its reports in the Zionists’ terms of reference – while courageous journalists reporting from the actual killing grounds were picked off by the IOF.
The western imperialists promote the two-states solution (sic) and a Palestine colony of Israel as a ‘Palestinian State’. This would be run by Zionist proxies such as the Palestinian Authority with its Fatah boss, Mahmoud Abbas, who recently publicly insulted the national resistance fighters of Hamas, calling them ‘sons of dogs’.

“RECOGNITION OF THE PALESTINIAN STATE” IS A TRAP

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The declared preparedness of a number of states, including the Irish one, to give formal recognition to the State of Palestine is widely seen as a step in favour of the Palestinian people and generally opposed by the Israeli state.

So on that basis many people who support the Palestinians may think that recognition of the State of Palestine is a good thing. How can it be otherwise? And yet …

Recognition of the Palestinian State is predicated upon the “two-state solution” (sic), in which the Zionists and the Palestinians supposedly get to live in separate states as neighbours, everybody happy. Except that the Zionists get most of the land and water while the indigenous get the least.

Effectively “Recognition of the Palestinian State” as advocated is to agree to

  • Zionists occupying 80% of Palestinian land
  • Palestinians getting 20% of their land
  • With least water
  • Forever under Zionist surveillance
  • and Zionist guns.
Area in pink shows territory notionally available to the “Palestinian State” in a “two-state” proposal; however the Zionist state is not in agreement and nor are many Palestinians. (Image: BBC)

In any case, Zionism is a colonial settler project and inherently expansionist; even in the unlikely situation that the two-state proposal were accepted by Zionists and Palestinians, the Zionists would always be looking to expand as even now they are extending further into Syria.

Currently the ‘State of Palestine’ is represented by the Palestinian National Authority,1 widely seen as the Israeli occupation’s proxy, run by Mahmoud Abbas and backed by the Fatah party. Its police force attacks solidarity demonstrations, arrests and even kills resistance fighters and critics.

The PA was created as part of the Oslo pacification process2 and supposed to hold elections every five years thereafter. The first elections3 saw the Fatah party elected to govern the West Bank and Gaza. But as the Second Intifada4 erupted against Oslo, the popularity of Fatah plummeted.

The Fatah administration was widely considered corrupt, repressive, violent and collusive with the Occupation.

The next elections, in 2006 saw Hamas win most seats across both areas. But Fatah would not accept the popular verdict and in 2017 Hamas removed them in Gaza after a brief struggle5 but however did not do so in the West Bank. Abbas has not held another election since.

At a special conference allegedly of the PLO (which was attended by none of its organisations apart from Abbas’ lackeys), Abbas called the leading organisation of the Palestine national resistance, Hamas, “Sons of Dogs.” (Cartoon: D.Breatnach)

The PA kept the grants it was getting from other states including those intended for the administration of Gaza, western powers cut off funding, Israel and Arab states initiated punitive economic sanctions against Gaza and Israel began a siege with periodic massacres.

In the West Bank, the PA’s security forces have suppressed demonstrations in solidarity with the Resistance and also against the PA’s brutality. They have jailed Resistance activists and fighters, including killing a number of them. This year they began and then colluded in the siege of Jenin.

Recognising the State of Palestine means supporting this corrupt and brutal Israeli State proxy and also accepting 80% of the land of Palestine going to the Zionist colonial occupation which, with the ‘two state proposal’ is also the policy of the PA.

There may be some, including probably some Palestinians, who think to accept it would be better than nothing, especially if it stops the genocide. But genocide is the basic program of the colonial invader: to take the land, the indigenous must be enslaved and if not enslaved, removed.

How else is a colonial minority to rule in security? The other option is not to rule but to share, in a democratic secular state of Palestine with equal rights for all of whatever background. Yes, but that is not ‘the Palestinian State’ being promoted.

The Zionists say they are in an existential fight and in a sense they are right. The Palestinians are in a fight for their life as a people too. A huge difference is that the Zionists have the option to stop being racist colonial occupiers oppressing the indigenous people.

For a few years also the PA has been mooted as the ‘Palestinian’ governing force for Gaza to replace the elected choice of the people, Hamas, with a proxy of the Occupation. This has been suggested by envoys of the US and also more recently by Egypt (although opposed by ‘Israel’).

This would find favour with some Arab client states and all of the European imperialist states who can’t see any other way of stability for the Middle East in particular and for their exploitation of the world in general. Without that ‘peace’ their whole imperialist world could be endangered.

The option of a democratic, secular all-Palestine state is not going to be supported by the imperialists because such a state would encourage the masses of Arab states to carry out their own revolutions. However it is the option for all democratic and revolutionary people to support.

To support ‘the Palestine State’ is to encourage the continuation of colonialism, genocide and ethnic cleansing, enable the current specific Zionist plan for Palestine and to support the US imperialist and Egyptian proxy plan to have Gaza run by the traitorous Palestine Authority.

End.

Sources:

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

Notes:

1Usually referred to just as The Palestinian Authority.

2With South Africa’s, this was the beginning of a wave of imperialist pacification processes starting in the 1990s that went around the word wherever national liberation struggles had strong popular support. Those who had succumbed to it were used to encourage others to do so too: the ANC and Fatah attended annual congresses of Sinn Féin to recommend it to Irish Republicans; Sinn Féin and S. Africans in turn ‘sold’ it to the Basques and to the FARC in Columbia; there were attempts to get the Kurds in Turkey, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and some of the Philippines fighters to accept it. Wherever the process took hold the resistance split first between those who would collaborate and those who would not but the latter also fragmented further. None of the movements that embraced the process won anything more than the partial release of prisoners, with the exception of S. Africa where the people won universal suffrage (but also experienced increased imperialist exploitation and poverty).

3The first legislative elections were held in 1996, won by Fatah; the next in 2006, won by Hamas; there have been none since.

4In 2000, against the Zionist Occupation, the collusion and corruption of Fatah, against denial of the right of return to the refugees.

5Represented in most Western mass media and online history sources as “Hamas seized power in Gaza”.

Trump, Ramaphosa and White Power

On By rebelbreezeIn Africa, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Police Violence, Political Analysis, South Africa, Trade unions, Uncategorized, US Imperialism1 Comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (reprinted intact from his substack and reformatted for Rebel Breeze)

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Once more Trump has acted like the lunatic he is and ambushed the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, stating that the country was undergoing a real genocide of whites.

Many have commented on the effrontery of Trump to talk of a fictitious genocide of whites in South Africa, whilst his main ally Israel is carrying out one in real time every day on the news shows.

Trump used images from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country more than 4,500 kilometres away, to show that they were killing whites in South Africa.

Trump also lied about the land question in the country, accusing the government of stealing the whites’ lands when the reality is that the whites continue to be the owners of the greatest part of the land in the country.

It is worth saying that Ramaphosa defended himself partially, and only partially as behind the new legislation on the matter there is the hidden failure of the peace process when it comes to resolving the land question.

When the Apartheid regime was ended, the country was one of the most unequal on the planet and the whites were the owners of the greatest part of the agricultural lands. Around 60,000 whites were the owners of 86% of all the agricultural lands, some 82 million hectares.[1] 

The agrarian reform proposed by the ANC in its White Paper of 1997 was a market-driven reform, i.e. the voluntary sale and purchase with some help from the government without the government being a buyer.[2] Blacks could also ask for the restitution of lands stolen by racist laws since 1913.

A whole land bureaucracy was set up, not unlike what Colombia has, Land Claims Courts where all those who registered could make their case with three possible outcomes, the restitution of the land, the handover of alternative land or a financial compensation.

In 1992, the ANC had put forward a document in which they argued for the expropriation of lands and other non-land market mechanisms. But by 1997 they had accepted neoliberal discourse and adopted the land market as the cornerstone of their policy.[3]

Initially the ANC government had proposed handing over 30% of the agricultural lands held by whites to blacks within five years. But they kept postponing it.

By March 2011, they had handed over 6.27 million hectares, and of that 45% was not agrarian reform, properly speaking, but rather land restitution.[4] The government didn’t just fail regarding land, but on everything. Inequality rose since the fall of Apartheid.

The Gini[5] rose following the end of Apartheid in 1994 and now is situated in 0,67 making it the most unequal country on the planet in terms of income, where just 3,500 people own 15% of all the wealth of the country.[6] 

SA President Ramaphosa looks on while US President ambushes him publicly with alleged ‘evidence’ of persecution of white people in S. Africa (Photo cred: Kevin Lamarque Reuters)

There is also a high concentration of land. “Currently 72% of farms and agricultural holdings are owned by white individuals, who make up 7.3% of the population, while black Africans, constituting 81.4% of the population, own only 4% of the land.”[7]

The whites continue to be the owners of the land, the black middle class through Black Economic Empowerment programmes reached agreements with those whites and the companies in the agricultural sector to integrate themselves into the neoliberal economy.

This is the so-called ‘white capitalism’ and South Africa became a leading country in the agribusiness sector of the continent. In 2015, of the 10 largest agribusiness companies on the continent, eight were South African.[8]

Ramaphosa himself is an excellent example of the new South African businessmen, the former fighters against capitalism who now profit from the blood and sweat of those who were once the grassroots militants of the organisations they led.

Between 1994 and 1998 he acquired a portfolio of more than 40 million Rand[9] (some 8 million dollars at the time) and ended up as an extremely wealthy man (some 700 million dollars) thanks to his controversial investments and acquisitions in the mining sector.

Ramaphosa is also the owner of the McDonalds franchise in the country. The former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers became a magnate in the sector.

In 2013 the Police murdered 34 miners in the midst of a strike at Lonmin, one of the companies where he was a director, being the owner of 9.1% of the company. [10] 

South African police move forward to kill more striking miners at Lonmin 2012 while in background other police stand over miners killed already(Photo cred: Sephiwe Lebeko/ Reuters)

And just like in the times of Apartheid, the Farlam Commission, those charged with investigating the Marikana Massacre found nobody guilty. Nobody! Blood is washed from the hands of a black capitalist just as easy from those of a white capitalist.

When he took over the presidency of the country, there hadn’t been any great advances made regarding agrarian reform there. The failure to meet the promises of the transition and the political programme of the ANC cost them electoral support.

So much so that they now govern the black masses with the support of a white party, the Democratic Alliance, a right-wing party that strongly opposes any expropriation of land without compensation and in practice is opposed to any great change in land policy.

It is in this context that Ramaphosa launched his new campaign and new land law. The ANC say they want to implement the Freedom Charter, but it is not so. Mandela himself had discounted that in his speech to Davos.[11] 

He didn’t explicitly refer to the document but he never again spoke of the nationalisation of resources such as mines and land.

Ramaphosa’s law proposes various measures that already exist in almost all capitalist countries, the expropriation of property with compensation for public purposes or where there is a public interest i.e. the compulsory purchase or as they say in the USA, the heart of capitalism, eminent domain.

These norms exist in almost the entire world. As is the case in many capitalist countries, it also includes elements to reduce the amount of compensation or not pay it.

It is another thing to believe that Ramaphosa aims to do what the ANC never wanted to since the first government. He does not want to fight with so-called white capitalism as he knows that so-called black capitalism is the same thing and one depends on the other.

What Ramaphosa is about is a public relations manoeuvre to strengthen a weakened and discredited ANC. There will almost certainly be more such initiatives. But the ghosts of Marikana tell us that this traitor has no intention of doing anything for the black masses.

Trump talks of a genocide that only exists in the sick mind of Elon Musk and of a land theft that Ramaphosa does not want. If he steals the whites’ lands, who will he sip cognac with then? White power is still in control of South Africa.

It dominates the economy in alliance with the not so new black bourgeoisie, the black apparatchiks that control the scaffolding of the state, and the growing presence of foreign capital.

We all recognise Trump as the enemy and idiot that he is. The problem is that sometimes we acknowledge those he attacks as friends when in reality they are the same enemies, except some are more intelligent, cultured and refined.

Ramaphosa when he was a trade union leader said “There is no such thing as the liberal bourgeois. They are all the same. They use fascist methods to destroy workers’ lives.”[12]

Workers’ blood is washed from the hands of all the capitalists, blacks, whites, Russians, Arabs or Yanks: Ramaphosa in Marikana or Trump everywhere. The whites in South Africa, the Elon Musks have no reason to fear their friend Ramaphosa, despite the stupidities from Trump.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

[1] Lahiff, E. & Li, G. (2012) Land Redistribution in South Africa: A Critical Review. WB.p.3 https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/28ccc35a-31cd-58ba8d0e-1b65b74b275c/content

[2] Ibíd., p.5

[3] Ibíd., p.8

[4] Ibíd., p.9

[5] The Gini is a measure of inequality where 0 = absolute equality and 1 = absolute inequality.

[6] Valodia, I (2023) South Africa can’t crack the inequality curse. Why and what can be done. https://actsa.org/the-facts-land-reform-in-south-africa/

[7] Actsa (19/02/2025) The Facts: Land Reform in South Africa. https://actsa.org/the-facts-land-reform-in-south-africa/

[8] See ACB (2015) Africa an El Dorado for South Africa’s Agribusiness Giants. https://safsc.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/SA-Agribusiness.pdf

[9] Bond, Patrick (2000) Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa, London & South Africa, Pluto Press and UNP, End Note No. 7, Chapter 2 page 266.

[10] The documentary Miners Shot Down can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch

[11] See https://www.weforum.org/stories/2013/12/nelson-mandelas-address-to-davos-1992/

[12] Cited in Miners Shot Down.

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/

TO BE LIKE BONO OR KNEECAP?

On By rebelbreezeIn Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Song, ZionismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

NB: Edited by Rebel Breeze for formatting purposes

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

Kneecap, the Belfast Irish language rap group, have found themselves at the centre of what is an artificially contrived furore dreamt up by people with little sense of real moral outrage.

The basics of the story are well known. They finished off their act at the Coachella event projecting pro-Palestinian statements. Given the band’s history and well-known politics, it could hardly have come as a surprise. Perhaps it was more that the fans welcomed it that upset some.

They were denounced by the non-entity known as Sharon Osbourne, a reality star famous for being the wife of Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne and also the mother of another reality star, her daughter Kelly Osbourne.

Kelly to her credit did carve out a brief musical career on the back of her reality tv exposure.

Sharon as part of the wider Zionist attempt to silence all those who criticise the genocide called for their visas to be cancelled, which in effect happened following the decision by their promoter and sponsor to drop them.

She also called for them to be more like Bono. Kneecap responded with a humorously devastating comeback that they would rather be Rangers fans than emulate Bono.

Bono still has some credibility in certain parts, mainly where they haven’t a clue about the man’s actual politics and obviously amongst the clueless, witless, gutless glitterati like Sharon Osbourne. But what would it mean to be like Bono?

Is he actually some sort of reasonable counterweight to Kneecap?

Well, first of all, in relation to Palestine, Bono is a Zionist, so even before the genocide began, he, unlike them, was already on the wrong side of history. Not for the first time, mind you. Bono has a habit of cropping up where he is not wanted like an ugly cold sore (my apologies to the virus).

He has, as Harry Browne, the author of The Frontman: Bono in the name of power, pointed out dedicated a lifetime to the service of imperialism and was rewarded with a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Genocide Joe.[1] 

I am sure it will go well on his mantle piece alongside his KBE (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), for which he was fulsome in his praise of Her Majesty’s Ambassador, as he put it, and grinned like a cheshire cat during the ceremony.[2] 

The claims made by Blair and others about Bono’s achievements were exaggerated, of course. But he is, if nothing, an equal opportunities imperialist and will get around to doing his bit for the others.

The idea that Kneecap would prostrate themselves before the British king is laughable and they wouldn’t be the first artists to reject one, were the Brits ever to mistakenly consider them for it.

The late black poet Benjamin Zephaniah was offered the lesser award of OBE (Order of the British Empire) by the same Tony Blair. He turned it down stating:

I get angry when I hear that word “empire”; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised…

Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire…

If they want to give me one of these empire things, why can’t they give me one for my work in animal rights? Why can’t they give me one for my struggle against racism? What about giving me one for all the letters I write to innocent people in prisons who have been framed? I may just consider accepting some kind of award for my services on behalf of the millions of people who have stood up against the war in Iraq. It’s such hard work – much harder than writing poems.[3]

He also referred to his brother’s death in police custody and to Lizzie II as Mrs Queen, not Her Majesty. A display of dignity.

He pointed out that those who accept such awards, the Queen’s Shilling, though he didn’t use that archaic military expression for those who enlist in the British armed forces to put down uppity types in the colonies, always sell out.

However, calling Bono a sell-out, presumes he was ever anything other than a fan of empire. He tied his mast to the pro-British politics of the Irish chattering classes in the 1980s.

His song Sunday Bloody Sunday was always introduced with the line This is not a rebel song, lest someone think Bono actually had something interesting to say.

The song is quite vacuous though clear in saying he “won’t join the battle cry,” i.e. denounce those who had massacred 14 people on the streets of Derry. The British army is not mentioned once in the song.

You wouldn’t know who had done what, but you know not to point the finger “Cause tonight we can be as one”. John Lennon on the other hand, shortly after the massacre did not hold back.

Is there any one among you
Dare to blame it on the kids?
Not a soldier boy was bleeding
When they nailed the coffin lids![4]

Bono couldn’t bring himself to condemn the British army for a televised massacre, so it comes as no surprise that he has little to say about a live-streamed genocide.

He hobknobbed with neoliberals such as Jeffrey Sachs, various presidents of the World Bank, promoted pharmaceutical companies in Africa and of course was on the side of Bush in the Iraq War, at least in practice and helped whitewash the reputations of many of those involved.

He hedged his bets a bit on Iraq, not wanting to seem too hawkish, saying the war was justified but the US should get UN backing for it. He then went on to endorse Clinton and Blair time and again. Jim Kerr from the Scottish band Simple Minds put it succinctly at the time.

How can Bono, having graced concert stages for over two decades, draped in the white flag of peace and screaming ‘No More War’ [sic] at the top of his lungs contemplate praising and back slapping Tony Blair? … I can’t believe that anyone could fail to identify that no matter what gesture Blair may make towards African debt relief, his slippery hands are currently dripping in the fresh warm blood of Iraqi men, women and children.[5]

Bono of course, could and did, and wined and dined with such hawks as Senator McCain. There were no depths to which he would not plummet, which brings us to Palestine.

Shortly after October 7th he endorsed the Zionist genocide by changing the lyrics of his song about Martin Luther King, Pride (In the name of love)[6]to “Early morning, Oct 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky… Stars of David, they took your life but they could not take your pride.”[7] 

As part of the introduction to the reworked song he state “our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence… But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed.” Not at the Zionist occupiers was the answer. Roger Waters lambasted him for it.[8]

Not only that, he was criticised by Irish singer Mary Coughlan for his links to Israeli companies.[9] He did not fly out to Gaza as he had done in Ukraine, nor did he have much to say.

When he eventually did mention Gaza, he was always careful to lay the blame on Hamas for starting it all, ignoring history since the Nakba in 1948.

A good example of that is his piece in The Atlantic after receiving his Medal of Freedom from Genocide Joe.[10] An exercise in saying nothing, whilst attempting to sound profound, something Ireland’s most famous poisonous dwarf never pulls off.

Kneecap on the other hand have been clear from the word go about their support for the Palestinian cause. It didn’t take a genocide for them to take note. They have consistently been on the side of the oppressed, in this case the Palestinians, against the oppressor the Zionists.

So, Sharon Osbourne should probably stick to what she knows best, which is precious little.

As for Bono, as Harry Browne points out, perhaps nothing sums him up quite so succinctly as a piece of graffiti in Dublin that appeared following the scandal when they moved one of their companies to the Netherlands for tax purposes, “Bono is a poxbottle”.

We need more like Kneecap who stand with the oppressed, and a lot less of Bono and the likes who can’t condemn the powerful ever.

At best you can expect some “We are all guilty type” of fudge, which was the preferred slogan of the Irish trade union bureaucracy when the British or their proxies in the UVF or UDA ever did anything, coming as no surprise that they have also done next to nothing on Palestine other than issue the occasional banal statements.

I fully expect them to turn up with Bono somewhere to chastise Kneecap.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

[1] Rebel News (07/01/2025) This Song is not a Rebel Song. Harry Browne. https://rebelnews.ie/2025/01/07/bono-this-song-is-not-a-rebel-song/

[2] U2 (29/03/2007) A Knighthood for Bono.  https://www.u2.com/news/title/a_knighthood_for_bono_2110/

[3] The Guardian (27/11/2023) ‘Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought’. Benjamin Zephaniah. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/27/poetry.monarchy

[4] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/de82dedc-5090-458f-9212-e894fa53ed21

[5] Browne, H. (2013) Bono The Frontman: In the name of power. London. Verso. Para 8.116

[6] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/9b7d1452-8d25-4992-8f18-9e29589b6ce4

[8] The Independent (21/02/2024) Roger Waters brands Bono ‘disgusting’ over Israel speech. Kevin E G Perry. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/roger-waters-bono-israel-gaza-b2498979.html

[9] The Sunday World (13/05/2024) Mary Coughlan ‘lost all respect’ for Bono over alleged links to Israeli companies. Eugene Masterson. https://www.sundayworld.com/showbiz/irish-showbiz/mary-coughlan-lost-all-respect-for-bono-over-alleged-links-to-israeli-companies/a2101784646.html

[10] The Atlantic (04/01/2025) The Gorgeous Unglamorous Work of Freedom. Bono. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/the-gorgeous-unglamorous-work-of-freedom/681212/

[7] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6sD5Lnh4YY

[8] The Independent (21/02/2024) Roger Waters brands Bono ‘disgusting’ over Israel speech. Kevin E G Perry. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/roger-waters-bono-israel-gaza-b2498979.html

[9] The Sunday World (13/05/2024) Mary Coughlan ‘lost all respect’ for Bono over alleged links to Israeli companies. Eugene Masterson. https://www.sundayworld.com/showbiz/irish-showbiz/mary-coughlan-lost-all-respect-for-bono-over-alleged-links-to-israeli-companies/a2101784646.html

[10] The Atlantic (04/01/2025) The Gorgeous Unglamorous Work of Freedom. Bono. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/the-gorgeous-unglamorous-work-of-freedom/681212/