Tag: political analysis

COLLUSION & DELUSION IN REPRESSION OF THE PALESTINIANS

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Guerrilla Action, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Middle East, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Song, Song in Struggle, US Imperialism3 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

As smoke rose over the homes and shops of Gaza, an unseasonal October brought sunshine on to the streets of Dublin city centre and the crowds with Palestinian flags outside Leinster House, the home of the parliament of the Irish State.

As the sound of explosions, wailing of ambulances and of people rang around the streets of Gaza, the call-and-answer of solidarity rang out in Kildare Street: In our hundreds, in our millions – We are all Palestinians! From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free!

The Dublin rally was one of a number of Palestine solidarity events organised in Ireland after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas’ military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades on Saturday and the Zionist State’s bombardment of civilian structures and people in Gaza.

Small section of the rally (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The Zionist State, which also controls Palestine’s water supply to Gaza, as well as exit from and entry to the enclave, has cut off water and electrical power as well as barred entry to everything including food, medicine and heating gas.

The Dublin rally was called at very short notice by the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM), a broad front organisation formed by the People Before Profit party around 2003 to oppose the imperialist war against Iraq waged by the Coalition of states led by the USA.1

Section of the solidarity rally earlier (Photo: D.Breatnach)

A branch of the Student’s Union of Ireland also supported the rally, which had a high percentage of Middle Eastern people present, presumably mostly Palestinians. The flags in evidence were mostly national Palestinian, some of the PFLP,2 a couple of Starry Ploughs and one Tricolour.3

Speakers from the Palestinian community, IAWM and PBP condemned the decades of attacks by the Israeli state on the Palestinians in general and on those in the Gaza enclave in particular, going back to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians4 as the Zionist state was founded in 1948.

Starry Plough flag can be seen centre distance next to some PLPF flags (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Richard Boyd-Barret TD (PBP) spoke as did also Ibrahim Halawa from Dublin, who was a prisoner of the Egyptian regime for four years without trial. Halawa said that awareness-raising and education served the ignorant but that action is required from those who know the real situation.

Some of the orators spoke about the right to resistance of the Palestinians, some about being against killing and war (but blaming the Zionist state for causing it), some about the plight of the Palestinian civilians, particularly in Gaza and one referred to the thousands of political prisoners.

Woman carries home-made giant placard spray-painted “Victory to the Palestinians!” (Photo: D.Breatnach)

MIND THE LANGUAGE!

A number of speakers referred to the “International Community” and when one listens to them in context it becomes clear that this imagined “community” is one of capitalism and imperialism.

It is not the community of workers, much less the community of people struggling for freedom. In Ireland, the overwhelming majority of people have over decades seen through the Zionist propaganda and switched from being pro-Israeli State to being pro-Palestinian.

We should take more care with the words we use lest we reinforce capitalist-imperialist dominance in the world of concepts in addition to their dominance over the physical world. Another trap is the term “illegal” and Boyd-Barret used it in reference to Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine.

Banner seen at the rally (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Who makes the international laws by which something is ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’? It is of course the imperialists who do so on the international scale while the capitalists define legality within their states; by their standards the actions of Israeli Zionism are lawful but of Palestinians, illegal.

All the speeches and all the slogans chanted were in English, as were the words on banners. I participated in some Irish conversation near where I was standing but saw only one placard in Irish. The fact that this is normal is part of the problem in this neo-colonial state.

A lone placard in the Irish language seeks “Freedom for Gaza” (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, from an Irish speaking-family from Connemara and himself an Irish speaker, also spoke in English as he introduced the song he was about to sing, in the same language as the lyrics of Patrick Galvin’s Where Is Our James Connolly?

Eoghan is a PBP supporter and a fine singer, particularly in sean-nós5 style and has an amazing range. It was good to hear references to James Connolly at such a rally, something that all too rarely happens, nor is the flag of his Irish Citizen’s Army often seen at internationalist events either.6

CONDEMNATION IN COLLUSION, CONFUSION AND ILLUSION

The imperialist states that united in condemnation of the attack by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, were joined by leaders of neo-colonial states such as the Irish one. Naturally also by parties competing to lead the neo-colonial Executive, such as Sinn Féin.

Media reports noted Mary Lou Mac Donald’s condemnation of Hamas as a change in Sinn Féin policy7. Indeed it is such a change but is generally in line also with the party’s trajectory of presenting itself as a safe pair of hands for management of the neo-colonial state.

Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald and Micheál Martin, leader of Fianna Fáil and currently Tánaiste. (Images sourced: Internet)

Mícheál Martin, Tánaiste (Vice-Premier), who earlier had condemned Hamas, stated that the Government’s position is to support the “two state solution”, more correctly “the two-state illusion” and this, if not already SF’s position on Palestine will no doubt soon be so.

This is the position of all the imperialist and capitalist states, also of social-democratic and liberal groups. It is worth taking a minute to look at this “solution” which in the first place was totally undesirable and which since conceived has been undermined by the Zionists themselves by their colonial expansion.

If it could even be implemented now it would leave the Palestinians with in reality a colonial-type Bantustan-status client of the Israeli Zionist state8, owning less than 40% of their land area and most of their good land and water taken by Zionist settlers.

In addition, their territory would be fragmented, linked by “corridors” through areas of Israeli dominance. In any case, as of 2021, in a poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research most Palestinians were against the two-state solution.9

Since this is not in the least a practicable solution, why does Mícheál Martin and Joe Biden, among many others10 keep saying it’s their preferred solution?

Biden, because it allows US imperialism to pretend that it supports some kind of solution other than total Zionist appropriation and expansion. Mr. Martin? For the same reason or just because his Gombeen class follows the world imperialism leader’s lead.

The only real solution, i.e the only one both just and capable of bringing peace, is the one that we hardly ever see or hear even mentioned: a secular republic with equal citizenship for all, return of refugees and reparations to the dispossessed Palestinians.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The Zionists will not accept the loss of their Zionist empire; US imperialism (and other imperialisms) won’t accept the loss of their only safe strategic foothold in the Middle East – free from the dangers of either Islamic fundamentalist or national liberationist revolution.

US imperialism, now sending an aircraft carrier against the Palestinian people who have neither air force nor navy, is the main financial and political prop supporting the Zionist state. But whatever they thought, I heard no speaker in Dublin call for the necessary defeat of US imperialism.

end.

Scene earlier of the rally as people keep arriving (Photo: D.Breatnach)

FOOTNOTES

1The IAWM seems to have no permanent existence but can be revived in order to organise events such as today’s from time to time. There is nothing wrong with a party creating a broad front on a specific issue but when it is a front of the Party rather than a people’s front, it will of course suffer when the party’s activists, limited in number, are organising on other issues and cannot keep the ‘broad front’ going, much less expand it.

2The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular socialist organisation fighting for Palestinian national liberation; it has consistently been the 2nd-largest of the groups comprising the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

3The Starry Plough was the flag of the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers’ army in the world and usually signifies socialist Irish republicanism. The Plough painted in gold follows the shape of the Ursa Mayor constellation on a green background, the seven stars in white or silver. Another version appeared in the 1930s, the Ursa Mayor shape in white stars on a light blue background.

Obviously people carry Palestinian flags to show solidarity with Palestine but would it not be useful to carry Irish flags at such an event to demonstrate the solidarity of the Irish movements for national liberation and social progress with the corresponding movements in Palestine?

4That figure represented over half the pre-WWII Arab population (Muslim and Christian) of Palestine.

5Literally “old-style”, a traditional style of singing with ornamentation having a number of regional variations, nearly always unaccompanied and solo-voiced.

6James Connolly was a Scottish-Irish socialist revolutionary, writer, journalist, trade union organiser and historian, one of the Seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, Dublin Commandant in the 1916 Rising, one of the 16 executed by British firing squads. He was a co-founder of the Irish Citizen Army to defend the strikers and locked-out workers in 1913 from vicious police attacks, the first workers’ army in the world, which also recruited women, some of whom were officers. The ICA fought alongside other progressive organisations in the Rising.

7And one which cut across the quoted posts of a number of the party’s TDs, including those of Chris Andrews (see Irish Times report in Sources).

8A real irony since Israel is a kind of colony, a state founded by Zionist settlers with imperial support.

9See Wikipedia entry

10Including China – a sad disillusionment for those who somehow still believe it to be a socialist state.

SOURCES

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-09-23/index.html

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2023/10/09/sinn-fein-leader-mary-lou-mcdonald-condemns-hamas-attack-on-israel-as-truly-horrific/

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/eu-reverses-announcement-that-it-was-immediately-suspending-palestinian-aid-1537029.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

COPS, COMMISSIONER AND REPRESSION

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, irish history, Police Violence, Political Analysis, Workers' Struggles1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 9 mins.)

Currently the Garda Representative Association is in a public struggle with the body’s most senior officer and nearly 99% in a high-participation poll of GRA members voted as having no confidence in Drew Harris, the Commissioner.1

The real issue for the GRA (Garda Representative Association) is that they enjoyed the rosters adopted by the Garda Síochána during the Covid pandemic and don’t want to abandon them. Of course not. Four days off after four days on shift must be nice and would we all had that.

But for that, the Gardaí would be required to work 12-hour shifts on their four days on and they are not complaining about that all – they are clamouring to do it. The workers’ movement fought hard for the 8-hours day and in in 1886 Anarchists in Chicago were martyred in that struggle.2

Not so long ago in the West, 12-hours was a usual shift for a worker though for six days (“seventy hours was his weekly chore”).3 There is a well-known close association of fatigue with harmful incidents (as remarked upon by James Connolly)4 — and also with shoddy work.

Most Gardaí working 12-hour shifts will adapt themselves to the long hours by taking care to stretch themselves as little as possible but always being available for short energetic work, i.e evictions, intimidating industrial pickets, batoning protest marches and conducting raids.5

Minister McEntee & Commissioner Drew Harris speaking recently (Photo cred: Niall Carson/ PA)

Justice Minister Helen McEntee says that she will not interfere in the dispute though at the same time expressed support for Harris and mildly criticised the threatened strike action by the GRA. Naturally the ruling class does not want to alienate their first line of physical defence.

But Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty last Thursday attacked the Government and Fine Gael in particular over what he called a “hands off” approach to the dispute by the Justice Minister. According to SF the Gardaí are a service valued and needed by communities.

This benevolent SF attitude to the Gardaí even extends to “specialist groups”.

Doherty and his party leaders now choose to forget that Irish Republicans, including thousands of their own supporters when it was a Republican party, have been spied upon, harassed, threatened, raided, beaten up, framed and perjured against in order to see them jailed.

Sinn Féin’s attitude to the Gardaí is a clear illustration of its change from revolutionary opposition to accommodation with the Gombeen capitalist system — and when in government they will use the Gardaí against any resistance to the system as currently they are using the PSNI.

GARDAI – A LONG REACTIONARY HISTORY

The Gardaí, as the first line of physical defence of the Irish Gombeen class has a long anti-working class, anti-Republican and anti-Left history. The intelligence branch CID worked with the National (sic) Army in identifying Republicans to kidnap, torture and murder.6

ANTI-REPUBLICAN

After the defeat of the Irish Republican Movement by the State forces armed and equipped by British imperialism, the Irish neo-colonial state used the Gardaí to harass Republicans.

Eoin O’Duffy, the second Garda Commissioner (1922-1933) of the Irish State, hounded Irish Republicans and socialists during the Civil War and after, one of the causes of political emigration from Ireland and in 1932 (still in his post) founded the Irish fascist Blueshirt organisation.7

Eoin O’Duffy reviewing his fascist “Blueshirts” in the 1930s – he founded them while still the second Garda Commissioner of the Irish State (1922-1933). (Photo sourced: Internet)

O’Duffy and his Blueshirts attempted to prepare a coup against the De Valera government of Fianna Fáil and after partial suppression by the government, went on to combine with another two reactionary political organisations to form the Fine Gael Party in 1933.8

Ned Broy, appointed third Garda Commissioner (1933-1938) created the Special Branch9 (nicknamed “Broy’s Harriers”10 after a Bray dog hunting pack) to repress the fascist movement. However, he filled the unit with ex-military who had been anti-Republican during the Civil War.

Subsequently, “Broy’s Harriers” also carried out repression against the Republican movement opposed to De Valera and Fianna Fáil.

In the long line of Garda Commissioners that followed, all have presided over repression of the Irish Republican and Left movements, as well as against Travellers and LGBT11 people and even in persecution of people providing contraception prevention.

Some Commissioners have resigned or retired in controversy: Patrick McLaughlin (1978-1983), retired in the wire-tapping scandal and Patrick Callinan (2010-2014`), over the phone-tapping GSOC and penalty points corruption scandal.

Noirin O’Sullivan (2014-’17) during the breath-testing corruption and persecution of Garda whistleblower controversy, resigned the post and disturbingly, walked into a job as Director of Strategic Partnerships for Europe at the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan speaks privately to then Deputy Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan; she succeed him when he resigned in controversy, herself resigning in a separate controversy not long afterwards (Photo cred: Eamonn Farrell in The Journal)

Republican prisoner solidarity pickets are frequently harassed and subject to attempted intimidation and individual activists are followed, stopped and questioned etc.

The no-jury political Special Criminal Court regularly jails Republicans on charges of “membership of an illegal organisation”, sending people to jail largely on the word of a Garda officer at the rank of Superintendent and above, who never reveal their alleged sources.

In 1976, the Irish State tried to smash the Irish Republican Socialist Party by pinning the Sallins Mail Train Robbery on them, though they knew the robbery wasn’t theirs. Forty homes were raided and false confessions beaten out of victims by the special Garda “Heavy Gang” unit.12

Three innocent activists were sentenced to 12 years in jail as a result and some of the special unit went on to frame others with false confessions also, including Joanna Hayes and family in the “Kerry Babies” case, as outlined in the Crimes and Confessions RTÉ series.

The last time the Gardai took unofficial industrial action by phoning in ‘sick’ was during the “blue flu” of 1998, when however their Special Branch remained very active indeed.

Foiling an attempted robbery by a Real IRA unit, the Special Branch Gardaí shot and killed Volunteer Ronan McLoughlin in the back while he was driving away from them. Despite the victim posing no threat to anyone when he was killed, the Gardaí were judged ‘innocent’.13

ANTI-PROGRESSIVE, ANTI-WORKING CLASS

The long-overdue second inquest into the fatalities of the 1981 Stardust Fire is underway as this piece is being written and in 1983, Garda Special Branch raided the launch of Christy Moore’s vinyl LP An Ordinary Man to seize the record after Stardust owners objected to a song in it.14

Over the years of the State the Gardaí have attacked protests and demonstrations, including with particular infamy those of the 1981 Hunger Strikes solidarity march15 and Regain the Streets in 200216 in Dublin and the Corrib Pipeline protests17 against British Petroleum in Mayo.

Gardaí also harassed and assaulted some of the since-famous Dunne’s Stores anti-apartheid strikers and again the more recent Debenhams sacked workers’ pickets.18

Video online of Gardaí using Covid restrictions to harass picketing sacked Debenhams workers. Later they used violence to remove picketers so Debenhams, defaulting on redundancy payments owed to workers, could remove stock from their closed stores.

The Gardaí have on numerous occasions displayed their tolerance of fascists, even to the extent of tolerating abuse from them and flagrant violation of Covid19 regulations.19 Conversely Gardaí have threatened and attacked antifascist counter demonstrators on many occasions.

In February 2016 a mass mobilisation of anti-fascists and anti-racists prevented the fascist islamophobic organisation Pegida from launching itself in Dublin. Gardaí attacked the antifascists and batoned an RTÉ cameraman in the face.

Gardaí threatening antifascists after the latter had been attacked by armed fascists on Custom House Quay and Gardaí had then attacked the antifascists, pushing and shoving them on to Butt Bridge. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

On a number of occasions outside the GPO, Gardaí witnessed fascist assaults on opponents without even taking names of perpetrators but on 22nd August 2020 they went much further in showing their true colours as armed fascist thugs attacked a counter protest on Custom House Quay.

The Gardaí briefly separated the combatants and then the Public Order Unit attacked the unarmed antifascists, threatening them with raised batons and pushing and shoving them away on to Butt Bridge. Later they lied to the media, pretending that no serious violence had occurred.20

Three weeks later, on 12th September, an LGBT activist and a couple of friends were observing a rally of the fascist National Party when they were mobbed, threatened and shoved and one was struck on the head with a wooden club which had a Tricolour wrapped around it.

The Gardaí again lied to the media and said there had been no violent incidents. However video of the attack and of a Garda confronting the victim with blood streaming from her head and waving her away, circulated widely and the Gardaí had to change their story.

Ms Izzy Kamikaze being pushed by Gardaí down Kildare Street after being struck on the head with a club by a fascist (Photo sourced: Internet )

It took the victim to swear out a formal complaint and a month’s delay before the specific wooden club assailant was charged. Last year he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years prison.21

In the face of criticisms about their failure to prevent random violent assaults in Dublin’s city centre this year, the Gardaí claimed that they did not have enough personnel to prevent them. However it seems they can always find huge numbers to repress people’s resistance.

Early in June 2022, 100 Gardaí, including an armed unit and a helicopter, took part in the eviction of two activists of the Revolutionary Housing League, who had taken over for the homeless a large empty property on Eden Quay, Dublin. (That building remains empty at the time of writing).22

Garda vehicles in their eviction operation against a building occupied by the Revolutionary Housing League in Berkely Road 11 July this year (Source: RHL)

In early July this year, a similarly large number of Gardaí with a helicopter in attendance blocked two ends of Berkely Road in Dublin in order to evict four RHA activists holding a three-storey empty building in which they had recently housed some homeless people.23

Gardaí have acted against a number of housing campaign actions, in one documented case sending an armed response unit. While acting against housing activists, they have at the same time permitted illegal evictions without intervening (except against protesting housing activists).24

On yet others, masked Gardaí have colluded with masked thugs to evict housing activists.25

Masked Gardaí working with masked private thugs in carrying out an eviction in Dublin 2018. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Although Gardaí were nearly invisible on the huge anti-extra-water-tax demonstrations, they were present and active on many of the smaller and more local anti-water-privatisation protests opposing the water meter installations for Denis O’Brien’s Uisce Éireann, assaulting and arresting people.

During the long decades of church sexual predation and other abuse by members of (mostly) Catholic Church institutions, complaints to the Gardaí were routinely ignored. Indeed, the Gardaí often seized escaped victims in order to return them to the institutions.26

It is old news that the Gardaí have abused their power against members of the public but less known is that members have done so for sexual advantage or in the course of their personal domestic relationships. Of course this is not surprising since abuse of power reaches everywhere.27

Terence Wheelock’s28 relatives and their supporters are not the only ones accusing the Gardaí of having killed someone in their custody and Vicky Conway (recently deceased) quoted the figure of an annual average of 15 deaths around Garda custody from 2017 to 2021.29

Corruption in the Gardaí has come to light a number of times, including most recently the false reporting of drink-driving checks and the failure to charge a number of people who were actually found to be driving “under the influence”.

In the course of the above a number of whistleblowers within the Gardaí were intimidated, harassed and in one case an attempt was made to frame a prominent one for abuse of a child.30

CURRENT STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE GRA AND THE COMMISSIONER

Irish Republicans have long held a particular enmity towards Drew Harris, given his previous employment as Assistant Commissioner of the colonial gendarmerie in the Six Counties.31 They regularly refer to him as of MI5, the British Intelligence department operating in the UK.

This is understandable and, in fact, it is less natural that other sections of the Irish polity seem to have had no issue with Harris’ provenance. But in fact, the State’s own senior Gardaí have long been in service, and not always indirectly, to British imperialism, witness Edmund Garvey.32

Former Garda Commisioner Edmund Garvey outside the Four Courts 11/10/1978. (Part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection). (Photo by Independent News and Media/Getty Images)

The revolutionary Left, socialist republican or just socialist, have no reason to side with the Garda Representative Association in their campaign for a different roster or against Drew Harris. Nor of course do we owe Harris any support either.

Unlike Sinn Féin, our position should be opposition to all of the State’s repressive institutions.

Chief among those institutions and regularly confronting us in repression or exercising its power against working class communities is the Gardaí Síochána, with its long anti-working class, anti-democratic, anti-Republican and anti-Socialist reactionary history.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023/09/13/huge-majority-of-rank-and-file-gardai-vote-no-confidence-in-garda-commissioner/

2And in that struggle, as is usually the case, the police defended the established capitalist authority and attacked the workers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

3The Larkin Ballad about the 1913 Lockout.

4Competent investigators, for instance, have found that the greatest number of accidents occur at two specific periods of the working day – viz., in the early morning and just before stopping work at evening. In the early morning when the worker is still drowsy from being aroused too early from his slumbers, and has not had time to settle down properly to his routine of watchfulness and alertness, or, as the homely saying has it, “whilst the sleep is still in his bones”, the toll of accidents is always a heavy one.

After 9 a.m. they become less frequent and continue so until an hour after dinner. Then they commence again and go on increasing in frequency as the workers get tired and exhausted, until they rise to the highest number in the hour or half-hour immediately before ceasing work. How often do we hear the exclamation apropos of some accident involving the death of a worker: “He had only just started”, or “he had only ten minutes to go before stopping for the day”? And yet the significance of the fact is lost on most.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/rcoi/index.htm (Chapter V – Belfast and its Problems)

5Especially on Irish Republican homes

6Their centre of operations during the Civil War and for some time afterwards was Oriel House, in Dublin.

7In 1936 the Blueshirts also recruited volunteers for Franco’s fascist-military coup against the elected Popular Front government in Spain.

8https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Gael#:~:text=Fine%20Gael%20was%20founded%20on,the%20legacy%20of%20Michael%20Collins.

9Now known as the Special Detective Unit; however the “Special Branch” name had a history in Britain, where Scotland Yard formed its Special Irish Branch in 1833 to spy on the Fenian movement among the huge Irish diaspora in the cities of Victorian Britain – and several of its members were Irish. Police services in a number of British present and ex-colonies have also carried on the “Special Branch” name, as far apart as the Six Counties colony and the British Bahamas.

10https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamon_Broy

11The latter until homosexuality was de-criminalised.

12https://sallinsinquirynow.ie/

13And McLoughlin’s inquest was delayed for decades.

14 The LP included Moore’s They Never Came Home which alleged that fire exits were chained shut, a matter with which the current inquest is dealing and about which I do not wish to say more at this point. The following account discussing the banning does not mention the Branch raid but I know of it from people who were present: https://theblackpoolsentinel.com/2021/01/11/christy-moore-and-the-stardust-tragedy/

15The marchers were frustrated that they were being prevented from even reaching the British Embassy in Merrion Road, attempted to push through and a battle ensued. Many were injured on both sides but the police baton-charged the whole crowd and even threatened journalists, though most subsequent media reports were either supportive of the Gardaí or blaming both sides; this brief report and photo being the exception: https://www.reportdigital.co.uk/reportage-photo-garda-baton-charging-national-h-blocks-committee-protest—18-jul-image00138214.html

16https://www.rte.ie/archives/category/society/2017/0425/870082-reclaim-the-streets-protest/

17https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/10/shell-pipeline-protests-county-mayo
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30317773.html

18Indeed in one afternoon, uniformed Gardaí hassled the Dunne Stores picketers in Henry Street under Covid19 pandemic regulations, although all were masked and maintaining social distancing, while around the corner the far-Right were demonstrating mask-less and packed together, without the least interference from the Gardaí. A 100 yards or so down the road, the plain-clothes Special Branch (SDU), the political police, were harassing an anti-internment and political prisoner solidarity picket.

19Occasionally Garda patience snapped and one can see the incredulity in the reaction of the Far-Rightists on those occasions, as they had become so used to doing nearly anything they wanted.

20https://rebelbreeze.com/2020/08/31/there-will-be-another-day/

21https://the-beacon.ie/2021/06/21/national-party-member-pleads-guilty-to-assault-on-lgbtqia-activist-izzy-kamikaze/

22https://rebelbreeze.com/2023/07/14/helicopter-and-massive-gardai-numbers-for-what/

23https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/four-arrested-after-building-occupied-27305837

24https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/watchdog-raises-concerns-over-garda-conduct-at-eviction

25https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/garda-chief-under-pressure-after-15145154

26https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_whistleblower_scandal

27https://www.newstalk.com/news/domestic-and-sexual-violent-complaints-against-gardai-on-the-rise-gsoc-1473416#:~

28https://rebelbreeze.com/2023/08/26/protesting-death-of-youth-at-hands-of-garda/

29https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2022/07/15/at-least-228-fatalities-in-or-following-garda-custody-over-past-15-years-figures-show/

30https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30799234.html

31Previously the Royal Ulster Constabulary (and RIC before that), the PSNI is the armed colonial (and sectarian) police force of the UK State.

32Ned Garvey was ‘outed’ as a British Intelligence ‘asset’ (code name ‘Badger’) by disaffected MI6 handler Fred Holroyd. Garvey denied he was an agent for the British but the Barron Report found that that Holroyd had visited Garvey in his office in 1975 and that he had not made his superiors aware of this. The incoming FF government in 1978 sacked Garvey as having no confidence in him but as a result of not following disciplinary procedures Garvey was able to sue the State and retain his pension. While Garvey was Assistant to Patrick Malone, Garda Commissioner during the British Intelligence/ Loyalist Dublin and Monaghan Bombing in 1974 bomb remains were sent to the Six Counties for forensic analysis. No-one was ever even arrested for the bombing, never mind convicted and the widely-suspected British proxy Glennane Gang went on to murder many more, mostly civilians (see Cadwaller, Lethal Allies).

SOURCES

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023/09/13/huge-majority-of-rank-and-file-gardai-vote-no-confidence-in-garda-commissioner/#:~

Helen McEntee and GRA: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mcentee-will-not-direct-gardai-on-when-to-work-amid-roster-dispute-1533439.html

Sinn Féin want McEntee proactive on Garda dispute: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/sinn-fein-condemns-governments-hands-off-approach-on-policing-1532379.html

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/six-gardai-suspended-from-the-force-for-over-four-years-1533424.html

https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/our-history/garda-commissioners-since-1922/

Garda Commissioners

Eoin O’Duffy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoin_O%27Duffy

Ned Broy and “Broy’s Harriers”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamon_Broy

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_whistleblower_scandal

https://www.newstalk.com/news/domestic-and-sexual-violent-complaints-against-gardai-on-the-rise-gsoc-1473416#:~

Gardaí and the Far-Right and Fascists: https://rebelbreeze.com/2020/08/31/there-will-be-another-day/
https://the-beacon.ie/2021/06/21/national-party-member-pleads-guilty-to-assault-on-lgbtqia-activist-izzy-kamikaze/

Gardaí supporting evictions, attacking housing activists: https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/watchdog-raises-concerns-over-garda-conduct-at-eviction
https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/garda-chief-under-pressure-after-15145154
https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/watchdog-raises-concerns-over-garda-conduct-at-eviction
https://rebelbreeze.com/2023/07/14/helicopter-and-massive-gardai-numbers-for-what/

Garda violence at Reclaim the Streets protest: https://www.rte.ie/archives/category/society/2017/0425/870082-reclaim-the-streets-protest/

Garda violence and corruption at Corrib Pipeline struggle: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30317773.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/10/shell-pipeline-protests-county-mayo

PACIFICATION KILLS TOO

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

Diarmuid Breatnach – previously published in the Pensive Quill

(Reading time main text: 6 mins.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PACIFICATION PROCESSES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE OPPOSITION BECAME THE SYSTEM’S GUARDIANS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End.

FOOTNOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9See Sources.

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

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

SOURCES

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

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

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

ANNIVERSARIES AND ALTERNATIVES

On By rebelbreezeIn America Latina, Executions, History commemoration, Imperialism, Latin America, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, South Africa, US ImperialismLeave a comment

News & Views No.9: Chile Coup – Twin Towers – the Legacy Bill

Diarmuid Breatnach (Reading time: 5 mins.)

September 11th is the anniversary of the al Qaeda attack on the new World Trade Center in the USA known as “the Twin Towers” and also of the Pinochet Coup in Chile. The former caused the deaths of 2,996 people and the latter of over 40,000.

These are not happy anniversaries and US Imperialism bears a major portion of the blame for both events.

How so, one might ask? The coup in Chile, probably with CIA help, sure. But the Twin Towers? That was a Muslim jihadist attack AGAINST the USA! Surely we’re not expected to believe that stupid conspiracy theory that the USA ruling class actually staged the attack?

US proxy soldiers, Special forces Afghan National Army, 2021 (Photo sourced: Internet)
Osama Bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011), Saudi-born founder and first general emir of Al Qaeda from 1988 until his assassination. (Photo sourced: Internet)

That is truly a crazy conspiracy theory but the historical truth does indeed involve a conspiracy. In 1997 the government of Afghanistan was socialist which was worrying for the USA, so in partnership with Saudi elements, they funded and even founded Muslim jihadist groups there.

These groups were to be encouraged to overthrow the socialist regime and when the USSR sent troops to support the government, to defeat the Russians too. Which they did.

But forget about fantasy stories of traditional tribesmen with ancient muskets fighting a world power’s army – these were jihadists, fundamentalists, armed with modern automatic weapons and mobile missile launchers including SAMs (Surface to Air Missiles).

Forget too about Rambo-led simple hill people – since the US achieved the overthrow of the socialist regime and invaded Afghanistan alongside their British allies, those jihadist groups have been squabbling over their share of the spoils, often murderously.

In fact, US imperialism is largely responsible for the world pestilence of not only jihadism of the Al Qaeda type, but the even more virulent Islamic State variety (which indicates Mary Wollstonecraft’s story of Frankenstein’s monster to be more prediction than fiction).

Explosion in one of the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001 in Al Qaeda attack. (Photo: Sean Adair/ Reuters)
Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous story; he returns to attack his creator (Image sourced: Internet)

Although US Imperialism had created Al Qaeda and although Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was totally opposed to the jihadist group (and vice versa), US politicians used the attack on the Twin Towers to ‘justify’ the US military invasion of Iraq.

“Sweet are the uses of adversity” indeed when manipulated by US Imperialism for domestic consumption and for world public opinion, also when assisted by British Imperialism’s Labour Government, in particular by lying-through-his-teeth Tony Blair.

The US-led campaign against Iraq resulted in about 1.5 million deaths through economic sanctions alone followed by over 300,000 civilians in the Western military campaign. These figures do not include deaths and injuries of Iraqi military and of the invading allies under the USA and UK.

Nor do those figures include the many deaths, military and civilian, in internal conflicts since the invasion of Iraq which continue to mount.

The deaths resulting from the coup in Chile were overwhelmingly of civilians as the coup was carried out by the Army with little opposition within the military and the civilian population were mostly unarmed.

Most of the deaths occurred in succeeding days and years as the regime rounded up communists, trade union militants and others suspected of having supported Allende’s party, to torture and execute them, including most famously the renowned musician and singer-songwriter Victor Jara.

The anniversaries of both the Pinochet coup and the Twin Towers have been commemorated in various parts of the world with, it appears, the coup being remembered in most of them, not only in Latin America but also in many countries in Europe where Chilean political exiles found refuge.

In the USA, of course, the attack on the Twin Towers was officially commemorated and probably communally too much more so than the coup in Chile.

Another imperialist-generated disaster, the anniversary of which falls only a couple of days after those two, is that of the Oslo Accords, signed on 13th September 1993 and often also known as a stage in “the Palestinian Peace Process”.

At the White House, supervised by Bill Clinton, elected chief of US Imperialism at the time, Yitzak Rabin for the Israeli Zionist state and Yasser Arafat, for the Palestine Liberation Organisation, signed an agreement, as a result of which the PLO would be permitted to run their own statelet.

Oslo Accords, 13 September 1993, Washington: Yasser Arafat of the PLO shakes hands with Yitzak Rabin of the Zionist State under the stewardship of (then) US President Bill Clinton, representing US Imperialism. (Photo: Gary Hershom/ Reuters)

Hailed as a great breakthrough by most media at the time, the PLO, dominated by Arafat’s Al Fatah, got to have limited self-government within the Zionist State, with the borders of any future Palestinian state undefined and no mention of the millions of Palestinian exiles around the world.

Although the increasing encroachment on Palestinian lands by Zionist settlers was temporarily halted, the land already taken and built upon remained in Zionist hands, that issue and others ‘to be discussed later’ but the Palestinians were to give up the armed resistance immediately.

The South African pacification process had begun earlier and, though enfranchisement of non-white South Africans was not to come until 1994, it was clearly on the way. The ANC promoted pacification processes to Al Fatah and both parties promoted them to Provisional Sinn Féin.1

The Palestinian ‘Process’ was controversial among their people from the start and grew more so as it became clear how little the Palestinian cause had gained and how much had been set aside, along with the growing official corruption and nepotism growing among the Al Fatah organisation.

Though the pacification process was widely rejected in Palestine and failed to install a widely-recognised ‘official’ collusive leadership, it did achieve the fragmentation of the Palestinian leadership and helped to ‘justify’ the demonisation of Hamas, winner of the 2006 elections.

ALTERNATIVES

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (sic) is quoted in the media as saying that there is no alternative to the UK’s legacy legislation, which proposes to prevent recourse in law for any crimes committed by its soldiers, colonial police, proxies or Government Ministers.

Secretary of State for the Northern Ireland (sic) colony, Chris Heaton Harris (Photo cred: PA)

The legislation in question is titled The Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill.

All political parties in Ireland on both sides of the British Border have vigorously opposed this legislation and THERE CLEARLY IS AN ALTERNATIVE, which is to abandon it. What the UK’s ‘colonial governor’ of the Six Counties means is: no alternative acceptable to the ruling class.

While we’re on alternatives, all liberation movements had and have the alternatives to embracing pacification processes, which is to maintain the path of resistance upon which they embarked until the day they win that for which their people and fighters have sacrificed their liberty and lives.

Allende and the communists in Chile had the alternative of arming the people and purging the Army but instead chose to put their faith in the ‘loyalty’ of Pinochet, ‘democracy’ and the opinion of the
Western powers.

“The people armed cannot be harmed”, perhaps, rather than “The people united can never be defeated”.2 Allende’s error cost him his life but also the lives of hundreds of thousands of others.

Women on 11th September hold a candlelit commemoration at La Moneda, Santiago, Chile for the victims – in particular of sexual violence – of the Pinochet coup and dictatorship. (Photo: Adriana Thomasa / EFE)

Imperialists have the alternative of respecting the right to self-determination of the peoples of the world and to cease from exploiting, oppressing and repressing them.

But if they did that, they wouldn’t be imperialists, would they? And since they cannot change their nature, they have to be overthrown.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Provisional Sinn Féin signed up to the Irish Pacification Process in 1998 and they and the ANC then moved on to promote a pacification process to the leadership of the Basque movement for independence, which also finally signed up to it without even obtaining release of the political prisoners. By that time the Palestinian Process had shown its empty promise and the Second Intifada (2000-2005) demonstrated its rejection by most Palestinian youth and the elections to the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council were won convincingly by Hamas.

2An alternative slogan to “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” was even then being promoted by a smaller communist group: “El pueblo armado jamás será aplastado!”, i.e ‘The armed people will never be crushed’.

SOURCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/no-one-has-an-alternative-to-the-legacy-bill-says-heaton-harris-1525387.htm

COLONIC TIMES: DEFENDING UKRAINIAN STATE DEMOCRACY

On By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Mass Media Criticism, Political Analysis, SatireLeave a comment

8 September 2023 IrmaPreversky

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

We are very sincere about defending democracy in the Ukrainian state and particularly so since the Russian invasion of February 2022. This is not easy since increasingly some people are doubting that there is democracy at all in Ukraine.

One of the acts of the Ukrainian Government being quoted as ‘anti-democratic’ was the banning of a dozen different political parties. However, surely being banned is no great problem when the due elections have been postponed indefinitely.

Some people have complained about the cancellation but after all, the country is under martial law, as Prime Minister Zelensky says, so it’s not a good time for elections.

(Martial Law is when all civil rights are suspended and the Government can make laws without parliament and jail people without trial if it needs to).

There have been some accusations about censorship and state control of media but some of those allegations are by journalists hostile to the Ukrainian regime, such as Gonzalo Lira who is in jail for posting material critical of the Ukrainian government.

And Natalie Sedletska reported on former premier Poroshenko holidaying in the Maldives with his family while our country was at war. Obviously he should not have done that but really is this the time to report on such things?

Naturally she got into trouble over that with state security, even when Zelensky took over.

So did her agency, the Ukrainian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. You’d think they’d know better, since the US State funds that radio network and everybody knows that the USA is thankfully supporting our fight against Russian occupation.

However, whilst it is true that all mass Ukrainian media is now under state control, not many Ukrainian journalists complain about censorship. And yes, it is illegal to criticise the memory of Ukrainian national heroes – unless they were communist, of course.

Stepan Banderas is a national hero of Ukraine with annual torchlit parades in his honour but he was definitely not Communist. It is true that Banderas killed many Poles and Jews but at the time he was working with German Nazi occupiers of the Ukraine during WWII against the Soviets.

One of the most frequent slanders on Ukrainian democracy is to suggest that the state is fascist, which is ridiculous. It is true that the Azov Battalion and Right Sector militias were – shall we say – extreme nationalists; but they have now been incorporated into the National armed forces.

Another propaganda attack on the Zelensky government regards recruitment for our valiant armed forces, with accusations of people being grabbed off the street – even sick and disabled people – and forced into the army. Well, not nice if true but the Russians have many more soldiers than us …

Thankfully, not many of these allegations reach the public in the West; if they did, it might lead to emotional demands to cease supplying us with weapons. We know we’re going to get a huge bill for aid at some time in the future but right now we desperately need it to keep fighting!

Of course, there are communists in the West (why are they permitted to even be there?) who spread these allegations, especially through social media, although some of the platforms like Face Book, Twitter and even Youtube do their best to block them.

It may be hard to believe, perhaps, but there are also some socialists in the West who work hard to discredit those communists, calling them “Putinistas”, supporting the social media platforms closing them down and even sometimes demanding they do so!

In fact, anyone who publicises those allegations, if not a communist, is surely some kind of fellow-traveller. Even though the Russian Federation is no longer communist.

Thank you for reading. We must all keep on working hard to continue defending democracy in Ukraine under President Zelensky.

End.

NEW POSTAGE STAMP CELEBRATES PARTITION OF IRELAND AND DOMINATION OF COLONIES

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History, Imperialism, Ireland, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time maint text: 7 mins.)

The Irish State has issued a new commemorative stamp to celebrate its joining the League of Nations in 1923 to which its representative referred as commemorating “the significance of Ireland taking our place among our fellow nations.”1

Well, sorry to poop on your party, Gombeen Government and to point out your lie. The truncated Irish State was admitted to the League of Nations, not “Ireland”, of which one-fifth was held in arms by the British occupier – who was one of the founders of the League.

Furthermore, the Gombeen state’s management committee entered the League as the victors in the Civil War – Britain’s proxy war in Ireland – dripping in the blood of those who fought for Ireland’s freedom. But that was not unfitting for the League was full of blood-drenched governments too.

The League was formed in 1920 and though the true government of the Irish nation, the First Dáil,2 applied for membership, its emissaries were not even received. At the Paris Peace Conference, US President Woodrow Wilson did not even reply to the Irish Delegation’s letter.3

Irish nationalist media commentary on the exclusion of Ireland by Lloyd George from the Paris Conference (Image sourced: Internet)

The original permanent members of the League’s Executive Council (it had four non-permanent members too) were Britain, France, Italy and Japan and its languages reflected those of the dominant European and American powers: English and French.

Britain came into the League with its Empire of allegedly independent states: Australia, Canada, India (which incorporated present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh), New Zealand and South Africa.

Map showing empires and colonies in the world in 1920 but there were also areas of influence apart from colonies. (Image sourced: Wikicommons)

PEACE?

Allegedly about peace, the League was formed as a club to discuss the areas of the world owned by the European colonial powers and to create a space where the losers and winners could discuss those lines, over which they had just fought a four-year bloody war.

Henceforth, there would be many, many wars, but mostly of colonial conquest and repression of resistance – but the European powers would not war among themselves, leastways except by finance and diplomacy. Until another 19 years, that is.

In fact, one of the major causes of WWII was the Treaty of Versailles, containing the crushing and humiliating WWI reparations demanded of Germany by the British and French imperialist powers. That Treaty was incorporated into the terms of the League of Nations.

The Big Four that framed the Treaty of Versailles; L-R: Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the U.S. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Ireland would see short armed liberation struggles in the 1930s, 1940s and of three decades from 1969. Hundreds of armed liberation struggles would break out across the rest of the world, in every continent except Antartica. And yes, including Europe.

The League of Nations was a club, chiefly of European colonial powers in which the conquest and suppression of a huge number of other nations was agreed and ratified. It was followed by the hugely-expanded United Nations after the next World War.

The UN has much the same role and of its 193 members, its only binding decisions are made by five Security Council Permanent Members voting without dissent: USA, UK, France, Russia and China. The vast majority of the other states are clients of one or other of those five.

The Irish state joined that earlier League not as one of the colonial powers but as a defeated nation, a neo-colonial client regime, an experiment in native self-government under external colonial control, one to be adopted by the other imperial powers and replicated across the world.

The Irish state joined the United Nations in December 1955 in exactly the same client relationship to its old masters but over time the yearly tribute has been shared among new part-masters, first the USA and then EU imperialism.

Neither the state’s advent to the League of Nations nor to its successor, the United Nations, has anything whatsoever of which to be proud. An opportunity for Irish real independence and world friendship of nations was squandered.

The new stamp should carry a black border in mourning.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Words of Mícheál Martin, the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) of the Irish Government quoted in numerous media reports.

2The First Dáil was founded in January 1919 in defiance of British occupation, based on the results of the UK’s December 1918 General Election results in Ireland which returned 73 MPs of the newly-reconstituted Sinn Féin party out of a total of 101 MPs elected in Ireland. The SF members set about organising an Irish Government and, though declared illegal by the British occupiers shortly afterwards, continued to operate as a government until it split over whether to accept the terms of the British offer in 1921, which led to the Civil War of 1922-1923.

3 See https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/how-the-plea-for-irish-independence-made-its-way-to-paris-1.3742328. Though interestingly, Wilson did reply to the young Ho Chi Minh’s in respect of Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh, while working in Britain, had commented admiringly on the Irish capacity for resistance at the time of Mac Swiney’s funeral march in London from Brixton Jail to Southwark Cathedral). Most of Indochina at the time was a French colonial possession.

SOURCES

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/new-stamp-marks-irelands-admittance-to-league-of-nations-1523570.html

https://www.dfa.ie/about-us/ourhistory/100years/1919-1929/1923/

https://www.dail100.ie/en/long-reads/message-to-the-free-nations-of-the-world/

Text First Dáil Message to the Nations of the Free World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_to_the_Free_Nations_of_the_World#:~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_League_of_Nations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles

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

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

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

1. What is Herri Ekimena?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Is EH Bildu4 being favorable to NATO?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No to NATO – Out of Bardenas!”

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

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

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

SOURCE

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

FOOTNOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANOTHER AFRICAN FRENCH COLONY REBELS

On By rebelbreezeIn Africa, Current Affairs Comment, French Colonialism & Neo-Colonialism, History, Imperialism, National Liberation, Political Analysis2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

News reaches us that military forces in Gabon, yet another colony (say neo-colony) of French imperialism in West Africa, have carried out a coup, deposed the titular President and put him under house arrest.

Actually, some of the reporting called it “an attempted coup” which seems strange: the military in control of its own bases, national broadcastings stations and with the former leadership under arrest seems a lot more than an “attempt”.

Map of African states and cities (By: GISGeography Last Updated: August 9, 2023). Gabon is located on the west coast (down from Cameroun and up from Angola).

Given recent nationalist military coups in a number of former French colonies, a lot of speculation is taking place as to whether this case is a harbinger of future uprisings against French imperialism and also as to whether the new apparently nationalist administration of Gabon has a future.

CENTURIES OF SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICAN RESOURCES

Throughout the 17th, 18th 19th centuries, European colonial powers scrambled for control of African natural resources, including slaves (and slave-like labour after the abolition of slavery). Vast resources of oil, valuable metals, minerals and gem stones are still being extracted from Africa.

Much of Africa was conquered and occupied by French colonialism1 and in most of those countries French is a ‘national’ language of the state and sometimes the only one so recognised. After “independence” France continued to extract natural resources and labour power from the regions.

Recently2 the military of some of those neo-colonies carried out coups and overthrew their France-aligned rulers, accusing them of being effectively administrators of French neo-colonialism. Niger was the most recent in July 2003, Burkina Faso in January 2022 Mali in August 2020.

There have been others too but those three countries border one another and have also declared an alliance against any invasion, such as that threatened by the pro-imperialist alliance of ECOWAS3 of which the dominant member is Nigeria.

NEO-COLONIALISM

There have been historically more than one method of effectively colonising a country. It may be invaded and resistance crushed, the administration (taxation etc) henceforth being managed directly from the invading country or from a government dependent on the invader.

The system may include large-scale settlement of land (as in Ireland and Algeria) but in any case the cities will include enclaves of invader settlers and administrators, charitable, religious and educational institutions, nearly always teaching a curriculum based on the occupiers’ culture.

Deposed President Ali Bongo Ondima in Residence Libreville 30 September 2023 (Photo cred: BTP Advisors to the President via AP)

There were also ‘protectorates’, such as Palestine for example, under British control and accepted so by other powers, without a direct system of colonial occupation or administration.

Ireland had the colonial-settler-parliament system under the British occupation until 1800 when by bribery and self-interest, the Irish Parliament4 dissolved itself and almost immediately joined the United Kingdom, Irish elected MPs then having to attend parliament in Westminster.

In 1921, that system continued for the British colony of the Six Counties but control of the rest of Ireland was exercised a distance through the governments and State departments of the majority section of the Irish national capitalist class, the Gombeens.5

That system was developed by British imperialism throughout its Empire, piece by piece. The French followed but the ruling classes of Belgium, Holland and Portugal were slower to adapt. After WWII, the USA used the system increasingly in Latin America6, Africa and Asia.

GABON HISTORY

Gabon of course has a long history before Africa was ever occupied and settled by European powers. Africa after all is the cradle of humanity.

Bantu migrants settled the area in the early 14th century. In the late 15th century Portuguese explorers and traders arrived in the area and in the 16th century the coast became a centre of the transatlantic slave trade with European slave traders arriving to the region.

France occupied Gabon in 1885, but did not administer it until 1903. In 1910 Gabon became one of the four territories of French Equatorial Africa. On 15 July 1960 France agreed to Gabon becoming an independent state but the reality was that it became one of France’s neo-colonies.

Unexpectedly perhaps, there was a WWII battle there: in November 1940 Free French forces were sent by De Gaul to take the area from the Vichy-loyal administration there. The Battle of Gabon lasted four days and ended in victory for De Gaulle’s forces.

WHERE TO NOW?

Whether Gabon’s neighbours would invade remains to be seen and the country is separated by over 2,000 km distance from Niger, the nearest one of the three Sahel French colonies in rebellion, a shortest distance that traverses the currently hostile major state of ECOWAS, Nigeria.

Crowds celebrating the army coup in Libreville, capital of Gabon, 30 August 2023 (Photo cred: Al Jazeera)

The three Sahel colonies themselves seem somewhat more secure in so far as they can support one another7 and also in so far as the clients of the Western powers are reluctant to take military action against them, a reluctance already demonstrated by the failure of ECOWAS to invade to date.8

Overall, these developments cannot but have given heart to national liberation forces, including revolutionary ones, across Africa and even beyond. French client regimes will be looking over their shoulder but so too will the client regimes of the British and the USA.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1For an indication of how Africa was carved up for exploitation by European powers even in the 1940s, see the map https://omniatlas.com/maps/sub-saharan-africa/19401108/

2Not so recent was Algiers, where the people fought a hard and bitter struggle against the colonists and France and declared independence in 1954. Some other countries also declared independence but were subverted or imperial client regimes came to power in them, often also by coup.

3Economic Community of West African States.

4For most of its history since the Reformation, only Anglican MPs had been admitted to this Parliament and for much of that time too, only Anglicans could vote. Progressive national bourgeoisie such as Grattan and Tone had failed to overturn this exclusiveness and it was that which convinced Wolfe Tone and other United Irishmen that a revolution was necessary. They rose unsuccessfully in 1798 and again in 1803.

5Na Gaimbíní, the Irish capitalist class that arose under British occupation to which it was subservient. Some at least of the wealth accumulated by this class was through gaining control of lands abandoned or having to be sold at a loss by their occupants during the Great Hunger of 1845-1849. The name has now passed on to describe the foreign-dependent client capitalist class of the Irish state, first subservient to British colonialism, then to US imperialism and finally to EU imperialism.

6As we recognise USA dominance of Latin America today through invasions, sponsored coups and financial controls, we are likely to be surprised to find that Latin America was largely a British imperialist preserve through much of the 19th Century and up until WWII, when it had to cede much of it to the USA in exchange for war material support.

7And perhaps be supported by nearby Algeria.

8Despite the deadline the organisation issued for reinstating Niger’s deposed President having long passed.

SOURCES AND USEFUL LINKS

https://www.breakingnews.ie/explained/the-wealthy-dynastic-leader-of-gabon-who-believed-he-could-resist-a-coup-1521039.html

https://omniatlas.com/maps/sub-saharan-africa/19401108/

Gabon history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gabon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gabon

PROTESTING DEATH OF YOUTH AT HANDS OF GARDAÍ

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Police Violence, Political Analysis2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 9 mins.)

Friends and relations of Terence Wheelock and supporters of the campaign for justice for his family rallied outside the GPO Thursday afternoon before marching to Leinster House and on to the Department of Justice.

Terence Wheelock was 20 years of age when he was arrested by Gardaí following a car stealing by others in Dublin and taken to Store Street Garda Station. Subsequently he was removed to hospital in a coma from which he never recovered, dying three months later.

People gathering outside the GPO for the rally and march (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Supporter of the campaign holds a placard (Photo: D. Breatnach)
(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The cause of the coma? A severe beating. Not that it should be relevant but he had nothing to do with the car stealing and has been officially cleared of involvement. On the day of his arrest, Terrence was on his way to buy a paintbrush to decorate his room and stopped to talk to some youths he knew.

Though this occurred 18 years ago the family has not ceased seeking acknowledgement of the Garda crimes and are now insisting on an independent official enquiry.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

MARCH THROUGH CITY CENTRE & THREE RALLIES

Wheelock family supporters, including people from Terence’s north inner city area, socialists, socialist republicans, anarchists and independent activists gathered at the advertised rally point outside the iconic building of the General Post Office on Dublin city centre’s main street.

James O’Toole of Rebel Telly briefly addressed the march supporters outside the GPO before the march set off, speaking about antisocial behaviour in the city and its connection to deprivation of working class areas, a fact admitted by the Gardaí in a report, a copy of which he held aloft.

James O’Toole addressing the rally outside the GPO (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Large printed placards were provided with a variety of texts – one also carrying Terence’s image – and most participants carried one for a group photo and again as they crossed O’Connell Street to march southwards to Leinster House, seat of the Irish Parliament.

Many tourists and shoppers watched with interest, read the placards and listened to the chants of call and reply led by Sammy Wheelock, older brother of Terence: “Say his name!” “Terence Wheelock!” “For justice to be imposed, the guilty must be exposed!” “Guilty:” “Garda!”

“What do we want?” “Justice!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” “No justice!” “No peace!” “Say his name!” “Terence Wheelock!” The driver of an occasional passing car or taxi blew its horn in solidarity as the march crossed O’Connell Bridge and swung around Trinity College.

The march after leaving the GPO (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Outside Leinster House the marchers stopped for a second rally which was addressed by Sammy Wheelock and the slogans were repeated there too. Senator Marie Sherlock addressed the crowd also, promising her support for the campaign.

Cllr Madeleine Johansson, one of a group who recently fought a successful holding action against a mass eviction at Tathony House, also spoke at the rally outside the Dept. of Justice and quoted James Connolly as having stated that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’.

Sammy Wheelock then led the crowd on again chanting slogans in a march up Kildare Street, left at the Shelbourne Hotel and right again, along the buildings facing Stephens Green to the Department of Justice building, where another rally took place.

Supporters of the campaign being addressed by Sammy Wheelock in front of Leinster House. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

GARDA HARASSMENT OF THE FAMILY

Larry Wheelock, another brother of Terence’s, had been the driver of the campaign but died in January last year. Outside the Department of Justice building Sammy read a letter from his widowed mother Esther, who felt unable in recent years to attend the protests.

“When this whole ordeal first happened it left a hole in my heart so big that for me it’s like a window … or a door that won’t close because as his mother I refuse to let it go, our family refuses … my son was stolen from me at such a young age …” Mrs. Wheelock had written.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

For a long time during the campaign for justice, as Sammy told the rally outside the Dept. of Justice Thursday afternoon, the Gardaí harassed the family home by passing at night in vehicles blowing their horns and riding police horses on to the road outside their house.

In addition the Gardaí also stood in the family’s garden and shone lights on to the windows, raided the house and struck their pregnant sister in the stomach, knocking her to the ground, also stopping and searching Trevor’s brothers in the street.

The Gardaí also drove slowly in their vehicles past Trevor’s younger siblings, laughing as they made ‘hanging’ gestures at them through the windows. Despite the harassment and intimidation of the family, they “are not going away”, Sammy said.

Garda vehicles and personnel present while rally held outside the Dept. of Justice (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The initial ‘independent’ Garda investigation into Terence’s death, Sammy told his listeners, was headed by an officer who had spent 15 years of his career stationed at Store Street Garda station and it was no great surprise that he found that Gardaí had committed no wrong in the case.

Due to Terence’s case being in the public eye in 2006 when the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) was set up, it was the first case to be examined by them, Sammy Wheelock told the rally but once again the Gardaí were exonerated.

The Wheelock family believe such investigations, Sammy told the rally, are a case of “friends investigating friends”.

Announcing he was going to deliver a letter to Minister for Justice McEntee, Terence’s brother read its content out to the participants before mounting the steps to deliver the letter by hand to the Department of Justice, stepping inside for a period.

Sammy Wheelock delivering letter addressed to Minister for Justice McEntee to the Dept. of Justice (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Shortly thereafter, Sammy Wheelock once again thanked the participants for their solidarity on that day and in the past and assured them that the campaign for an independent public enquiry would continue.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

DEATHS IN GARDA CUSTODY

There were 34 fatal incidents in 2001 in which people died either in or shortly after Garda custody, official figures show; this represents almost three per month. The statistics also reveal a steady increase in such deaths over the years.

The Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) compiles a database of what are known as Section 102 referrals, which involve situations where the conduct of a member of the Gardaí may have resulted in the death of, or serious harm to, a person.

However, GSOC has not separated referrals for deaths from those of serious harm, meaning the number of people who have died in garda custody is not available.

Vicky Conway, Associate Professor at DCU School of Law and Government, who sadly died prematurely last year, attempted to compile the data on deaths in custody and expressed concern last year that this information is not readily available and broken down into categories.

Three youths from the area hold placards on the steps of the Dept. of Justice (Photo: D.Breatnach)

COMMENT:

The fatal treatment of Terence Wheelock by the Gardaí 18 years ago may or may not be an extreme case but the discriminatory treatment of working-class people is a pattern, of which violence often forms a part, followed by official collusion by ensuring impunity for the Gardaí.

The treatment of the family in their long campaign is a disgrace. It is said also that Terrence’s parents were told that he was in St. James’ hospital, which gave the Gardaí time to get to him first in the Mater and remove his clothes, which have never been produced for forensic tests.

It is of course of great importance to support campaigns to hold the repressive forces of the State to account, as pointed out by Conor Reddy (People Before Profit) to the rally at the Department of Justice building across from Stephens Green.

The message that revolutionaries give in such campaigns is of great importance in reflecting and strengthening the spirit of resistance of the working people, that it may serve them beyond overcoming individual injustices towards achieving justice for the class as a whole.

The reference at the rally outside the GPO by O’Toole to antisocial behaviour in the city, though a live subject at the moment, was inappropriate for the occasion since it could be understood to indicate that Terence had been engaged in such when he was arrested, which was not the case.

Conor Reddy addressing rally outside the Dept. of Justice (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Marie Sherlock, a Labour Party Senator, addressing the rally outside Leinster House, of course put forward the liberal positions of “Garda accountability” and the equivalent of the “few rotten apples in the barrel” analysis of the police force of the Irish State.

While the support of a senator in Leinster House is to be welcomed, revolutionaries have to ensure that social democrats are not permitted to steer campaigns towards unhealthy compromise and that the liberals’ view of the State is countered by the more realistic revolutionary one.

The Gardaí were founded to be a first-line repressive force of the Gombeen Irish State, replacing the repressive police forces of the British occupation, the Dublin Metropolitan Police Force, the Royal Irish Constabulary, Black and Tans and Auxiliary Division.

Their second Commissioner appointed , Eoin Duffy, was the founder of the Blueshirt Nazis in 1932 and the force has amply demonstrated its anti-working class and anti-Irish Republican bias repeatedly since; if the “apple” analogy is to be used, we’d have to say that the orchard itself is rotten!

The death of a teenager is a devastating experience for any family but the importance of this case goes far beyond that of one family as was pointed out by a number of speakers and as is clear from some of the statistics quoted earlier.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Garda violence towards sections of the community followed by impunity cannot be tolerated and must be combatted. In that respect it is sad to note the low number of Irish Republicans in the campaign, though they tend to be the chief political target of Garda repression.

End.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

References & Further information:

https://www.facebook.com/justicefor.terencewheelock

https://www.hotpress.com/film-tv/trailer-released-for-spicebags-first-documentary-the-death-of-terence-wheelock-22971565

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/courtandcrime/arid-40919204.html

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40872935.html

AFRICA – MILITARY COUPS & DEMOCRACY

On By rebelbreezeIn Africa, Current Affairs Comment, France, French Colonialism & Neo-Colonialism, Imperialism, National Liberation, Official Corruption, Political Analysis3 Comments

News & Views No.6 Diarmuid Breatnach (Reading time: 4 mins.)

The media has alerted us to a military coup taking place in an African country most of us won’t even have heard of: Niger.

Apparently Niger had a democratically-elected leader overthrown by the coup and many states, including France and the US, are very concerned about this. Naturally so. Military juntas are surely no fit replacement for democracy.

Map of much of Africa showing Niger in green and surrounding states (Source: Wikipedia)

But it turns out that the USA and France have other reasons to be concerned apart from questions of democracy: both states have military stationed there, the USA including in fact a major military installation producing and operating drones, some of which are armed.

But why are they there? Well, to defend Niger against fundamentalist Muslim jihadists. That’s good, right? Helping the Nigerien people. It’s true that some unkind (and possibly ungrateful) people accuse the US of having given birth to the islamist fundamentalists originally, but, well …

We learned just recently two very strange facts, side by side: 1) Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world and 2) it is the seventh-largest exporter of a highly-valuable material: uranium.

Niger also has gold mines (two years ago 18 people were killed in a mine collapse) but curiously, Niger has no gold reserves at all. France, on the other hand, which has no gold mines whatsoever had 2,437 tonnes of the metal in their reserves at the end of the second quarter of this year.

Uranium is valuable because it is used in the production of nuclear power which, in turn, in many parts of the world, is used to generate electricity. France being one of those countries, where 80% of its uranium comes from … Niger. And 20% of the EU’s electricity likewise.

Hmm. So there might be reasons apart from restoring democracy for France being so upset at the coup, especially when the coup leaders say they want to break with France.

Urban scene in Niger, exact location and date unknown (Source: Internet)

But going back to this country being one of the poorest in the world, at least they must have plenty of generated power, right? Well, no. It turns out that 80% of the people have no electricity supply whatsoever. Democratic government or not, that can’t be right, can it?

Anyway, France has ordered the coup leaders to reinstate the deposed president with a deadline of last Sunday or it would take stern action. The deadline has passed quietly without an invasion or other attack.

Niger was a colony of France and became independent in 1960 so it’s kind of strange that France has such a grip on the country still.

Another five states border Niger including Mali and Burkina Faso, also ex-French colonies, also under recent military coup juntas. Their leaders have said any attack on Niger would be considered an attack on them.

Algeria was also a French colony and fought a very hard liberation struggle for independence, since when it has friendly relations with Russia. Algerian armoured vehicles have moved to the border with Niger, in what will be understood as a warning to other states not to invade.

Chad is another ex-French colony in the region but it made some threatening noises against the military coup leaders in Niger; Senegal too is an ex-French colony loyal to France.

Senegal’s political opposition leader Ousmane Sonko is on hunger strike in jail and his lawyer Juan Branco, extradited from Mauritania is in jail too for defending Sonko but nobody seems to be shouting about Senegal’s lack of democracy – not that we can hear, at least.

The west-friendly (some say neo-colonial) state of Nigeria, the leading state in the pro-western African alliance COWAS has imposed sanctions and threatened to invade Niger if the previous regime is not reinstated. Nigeria is huge and with extremely valuable resources, including oil.

In 1995, in defence of British Petroleum’s operations, Nigeria hanged peaceful environmental activists in the Delta region, the Ogoni Nine. As many as 4 in 10 Nigerians live below the national poverty line with 133 million living in poverty, according to its own national statistics.

Regarding Africa and coups, we Irish have cause to remember the Congo where Irish UN peacekeeping soldiers were killed, after a military uprising in a province against the elected patriot Patrice Lumumba was carried out in support of Belgian mining interests, supported by the USA.

And Uganda’s military rule under Idi Amin was generally OK with the western powers until he began to throw his weight around against the British, who had trained and supported him, so they had to bring him down.

Supporters in Niger of the military coup there demonstrating. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Elsewhere, for example in Latin America, military coups in many countries including Brazil, Chile and Argentina have been supported by the western powers or indeed instigated by them. As in what is now Iran, when the British overthrew the Shah in 1941 to replace him with his son.

Dictatorship from 1965 in Indonesia was widely seen by the western powers as necessary to stop the spread of socialist and national liberation ideas and, as in most such coups, the toll in massacres and torture by the new regime was huge. None such in Niger though, at least so far.

If we were citizens of Niger would we think ourselves better off under a military junta rather than a democratically-elected President? We might initially be more concerned as to whether the riches of our country were to be used to lift us from such poverty.

To give us education, hospitals, medicines, food, work, clean water, refuge from heat, power … or instead extracted and shipped out to some other country.

And what would we think of France, possibly backed by other NATO countries and their client states, coming to invade our land and bring back the old state of affairs?

End.

Niger’s National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane, center, is greeted by supporters as he arrives for rally at the Stade General Seyni Kountche in Niger’s capital city Niamey, on August 6, 2023.(Photo cred.: Rebecca Blackwell, AP)