USAID, Friend or Foe?

On February 18, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Political Analysis, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Feb 7 (Reading time: 7 mins.)

NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes

Trump’s decision to suspend funding of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) provoked the ire of many liberals.

Trump took the decision for all the wrong reasons; he is not very intelligent nor is he analytical and is incapable of understanding the big picture — and the liberals who were horrified and criticised his actions also did so for all the wrong reasons.

They came out in defence of the agency stating that all the dictators in the world will be happy,[1] ignoring that USAID has throughout its history financed projects for dictatorial or authoritarian regimes.

They even went as far as the stupidity of saying that Elon Musk wanted this as vengeance against USAID for its role in defeating Apartheid.[2] Nothing could be further from the truth.

What little role it played in the country was to ensure that capitalism would be safe, but it did not bring an end to Apartheid.

The US government and all its agencies supported the racist regime, just like they supported the new “black” capitalism as an integral part of the usual “white” capitalism, as capitalism really doesn’t have a colour.

So, what is the agency? And what role does it play in the world? These are questions that have prefabricated answers from those who have remained silent in the face of many of the US’ barbarities. There are exceptions of course.

Mehdi Hasan is a journalist who is now famous worldwide for his positions on the genocide in Gaza, but in general, all those who answer those two questions positively, answer questions on the role of the US positively, even in the case of Palestine.

Firstly, we should be clear about how the agency defines itself and how it has been seen by successive US governments. In 2002, George Bush described foreign aid as the third pillar of US national security, along with defence and diplomacy.[3]

The same document Foreign Aid in the National Interest explains various lines of work of the agency such as financing the “development” of agriculture etc. They demand changes and reforms in the countries they “help”, just as does the World Bank.

When they clash with governments that are not given to implement the reforms they seek, they bluntly state that they will give funds to functionaries, ministers and others in the country to promote their agenda for change.

That is even if at that precise moment the beneficiaries of the programmes have no political power to implement such changes.[4] They play the long game. They openly state that they have to finance NGOs that promote “democracy”.[5]

This is what is nowadays called Colour Revolutions i.e. where through an NGO a situation of instability is generated in a country against a government or regime, whether it be democratic or authoritarian.

What is important is whether its economic and foreign policy coincide with Washington’s interests or not.

Colombia, for example, has always been a recipient of USAID’s programmes despite the murders of journalists, social leaders, opposition politicians, such as the Patriotic Union, trade unionists etc.

Not in the worst years of the bloodbath was it proposed to limit the aid or even pressure the government to introduce democratic reforms. Colombia has always served US interests.

In the case of Colombia, the negative impacts of the supposed North American aid can be clearly seen. In 1961, Kennedy announced a new programme for Latin America, the Alliance for Progress and he also set up USAID.

As part of that programme wheat was donated to certain countries, amongst them Colombia, but it was no favour. In 1961 there were 160,000 hectares of wheat in the country with a crop of 142,100 tonnes.

The following year the area sown fell to 150,000 hectares and so it went every year until in 2023 there were barely 3,000 hectares of wheat with a crop of 9,354 tonnes. They collapsed the production of a basic crop in the Colombian diet.

In reality, USAID is prohibited by law from financing crops and other economic activities that compete with US companies. They were always going to collapse wheat production.

They did similar things in other parts of the world, collapsing local markets, though they always say that it is not their intention.

Biden and Harris announced a new USAID pilot programme to supply emergency food and it consisted of sending one billion in food to 18 countries, all of them in Africa with the exceptions of Haiti, Yemen and Bangladesh.

Amongst the products to be exported were “wheat, rice, sorghum, lentils, chickpeas, dry peas, vegetable oil, cornmeal, navy beans, pinto beans and kidney beans – commodities that align with traditional USAID international food assistance programming.” [6]

It is nothing more than a subsidy to the cereal sector in the US dominated by just four large companies (Cargill, Cenex Harvest States, Archer Daniels Midland ([ADM] and General Mills), who get rid of their surpluses this way.

Looking at the list one sees that it includes countries with high levels of food insecurity, but they are not the worst in the world. Five of them are amongst the top ten countries with people suffering food insecurity in terms of absolute numbers of people suffering food insecurity.

In terms of percentages, just three of them are in the top ten countries with a percentage in excess of 30%. Afghanistan was not selected by the USA as they are no longer interested in the country, despite 46% of the population suffering from food insecurity, i.e. 19.9 million people.

Neither did they select Syria with 55% where they were only interested in replacing the Ba’athist regime with ISIS, which they achieved this year.

The causes of this insecurity are varied. In twelve countries it was due to weather extremes, affecting 56.8 million people and in another 27 countries economic shocks affecting 83.9 million people. And lastly 117.1 million people affected by conflicts in 19 countries.

It is worth pointing out that two of those countries were Syria and Ukraine, both of them conflicts in which the USA and Europe play a deciding role, not just in the start of the conflict but also in its course and duration.[7]

In the case of Ukraine the war had a dramatic effect on the price and supply of cereals in many parts.

USAID’s initial work consisted of economic aid programmes that included promoting US companies and so-called free enterprise. Later in the 2000s it allied itself more closely with US companies, giving them contracts to benefit themselves and not the countries.

Dupont, one of the companies that most pollutes water in the US, won a contract to supply drinking water to Ethiopia! The jokes write themselves.

An opportunity is never lost for multinational capital. Before the war with Iraq had even begun, USAID was signing contracts for the reconstruction of the country once the war was over.

One of the beneficiaries was Bechtel, a company that drummed up public support for the war and obtained one billion in contracts after the war.[8] USAID is an arm of the US government and its policies and contacts always favour their interests and never anyone else’s.

As for the threat that this represents to freedom of the press and expression etc. the mainstream press has raised an outcry.

It is true that for the moment the USA will have to look to another agency to help foment discontent and carry out the so-called Colour Revolutions and other coups d’etat. The CIA will have to finance those organisations directly and not through USAID as they have done up till now.

It has to be said that many of the regimes overthrown were not a bit progressive but neither were those who replaced them. The US supported them because they were useful to their interests, and nothing more.

Assad in Syria was replaced by Jolani from ISIS and in the ex-soviet republics, all of those governments have dubious human rights records. USAID never financed opposition groups, nor alternative press in Colombia despite its human rights record.

It never financed those that sought to overthrow the dictator Pinochet in Chile, nor in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, nor currently in Milei’s Argentina.

Now, various NGOs around the world, including Colombia, weep. They are organisations that are only interested in their own slice of the cake. We lose nothing with them. The sooner they go bankrupt the better.

They will say that there are good projects that USAID finances and they are right. Of course there are.

The soft power of a country cannot be 100% Machiavellian, not everything is absolute greed and power. In order for the US soft power to work there must be modicum of projects that are good in and of themselves or at least not as evidently open to criticism. That is what it is about.

These projects serve to generate an atmosphere conducive to US activities and give it the right to opine on internal policies and present itself as a friend of the government — or the people when it wants to carry out a coup d’etat.

Neither Trump nor Musk understand this. They are not intelligent people; their abilities have always been to take advantage of what others build.

Thus, they have no ability to think about what soft power means as a tool of real domination in other countries, nor as a means to justify the hard power of a coup or colour revolution. The closure of USAID is an own goal of imperialism.

Elon Musk stated in Twitter that the agency was a nest of anti-American Marxist vipers. The Indian Marxist Vijay Prashad replied that Marxists such as him detested USAID as it was a nest of liberal imperialists. Prashad is right, so the answer to the headline question of this article is clear.

USAID is the foe, and no one on the left should mourn its passing. Good riddance. And those who mourn it, run to get your thirty pieces of silver whilst they are still signing cheques.

End.

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

NOTES

[1] The Guardian (06/02/2025) Authoritarian regimes around the world cheer dismantling of USAid. Joseph Gedeon. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/authoritarian-usaid-elon-musk
[2] The Ink (03/02/2025) USAID fought Apartheid. Musk is killing it.
The.Ink
USAID fought apartheid. Musk is killing it
As we speak, an unelected billionaire, born in South Africa, is staging an unconstitutional coup in the United States, shutting down an agency that happened to fight the apartheid regime he and his family thrived under as rich whites…
Read more
14 days ago · 222 likes · 29 comments · The Ink

[3] USAID (2002) Foreign Aid in the National Interest. USAID. Washington D.C. pIV https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-S18-PURL-LPS46120/pdf/GOVPUB-S18-PURL-LPS46120.pdf
[4] Ibíd., P.51
[5] Ibíd., P.44
[6] USDA (18/04/2024) USDA, USAID Deploy $1 Billion for Emergency Food Assistance. https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2024/04/18/usda-usaid-deploy-1-billion-emergency-food-assistance
[7] Statistics taken from Global Report on Food Crises 2023, https://www.fsinplatform.org/report/global-report-food-crises-2023/
[8] Current Affairs (10/03/2021) Aid for Profit: The Dark History of USAID. Saheli Khastagir. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/03/aid-for-profit-the-dark-history-of-usaid

“A March Travelling into the Future … a Beacon of Resistance”

On February 7, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Censorship & Witch-hunting, Civil Rights, Current Event Report, Genocide, History commemoration, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Massacres, Peace Process, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Resistance ArtLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 6 mins.)

Thousands of marchers with flags, banners and three marching bands retraced the route of the anti-internment march in 1972 that ended in the infamous Derry Bloody Sunday¹, a massacre of unarmed civilians by the British Parachute Regiment.

The nearest Sunday to the date of the original march, which this year fell on February 2^nd has been chosen annually for the commemorative march over the 53 years since the massacre. People travel from different parts of Ireland and indeed from beyond in order to attend.

*Section of the march coming down from the Creggan.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The colour party (bearing the flags) traditionally precedes the marching band. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Derry is not well served by public transport from other parts of Ireland and there is no train station there.

There is a bus service from Dublin from the Translink company of the occupied colony but one would need to catch it at seven in the morning and then hang around in Derry for 3.5 hours waiting for the march to start. For this reason, many travel to Derry by car.

Equally, many others who would attend were the public transport available, stay home but an estimated over 7,000 participated in this year’s march. The theme this year was Palestine, once again as was last year’s too.

The day of the massacre

The original march was a protest against the introduction in August 1971 of internment without trial in the occupied colony. Almost immediately afterward the Parachute Regiment had massacred 11 people protesting against it in Ballymurphy, Belfast.²

*Ballymurphy campaign banner in the Creggan awaiting start of march with Kate Nash centre*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The 1972 march, along with many others, had been banned by the sectarian colonial administration. The Civil Rights campaigners knew that their legitimate demands³ were being obstructed by use of the Special Powers⁴ of the statelet and that they could win nothing if they were to acquiesce.

After the previous massacres it took considerable courage to march that day but perhaps they thought that with an advertised march, in daylight, with many film cameras covering, the Paras were unlikely to open fire. In any case, they decided to risk it.

At 4.10pm the first shots were fired by the Paras⁵ without warning and by around 20 minutes later they had killed 13 men and youths and wounded another 13, one of whom would die weeks later. According to the Saville Inquiry in 2010, they had fired over 100 rounds.

Not one of their targets was armed.

To justify the slaughter, the British Army claimed that they were fired upon and returned fire, killing IRA fighters. The British Government, in particular through Home Affairs Minister Reginald Maudling, repeated the lies as did the British media.

Bernadette (then) Devlin⁶ MP, a survivor, was prevented from speaking in the Westminster Parliament and she walked up to Maudling and slapped his face. In Dublin a general strike took place with schools closing and a huge crowd burned the British Embassy down.

In London, a giant march reached Trafalgar Square as its end was still leaving Hyde Park. In Whitehall the police prevented them from laying the symbolic coffins outside No.10 and in the scuffles the ‘coffins’ were eventually thrown at the police or knocked to the ground.

And a number of construction sites in Britain went on strike also.

The judicial response varied wildly. Coroner Hubert O’Neill, an ex-British Army major, presiding on the inquests in 1973, called it “Sheer unadulterated murder” whereas Lord Chief Justice Widgery in the ‘inquiry’ he led ignored all the local evidence and accepted the British Army’s lies.⁷

“The last Bloody Sunday march”

Provisional Sinn Féin organised and managed the annual march for many years but in January 2011 Martin McGuinness announced that year’s march would be the last, because of the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron’s public apology to the relatives of the 14 killed in Derry.

The apology followed quickly on the verdict of the Saville Inquiry⁸ which totally refuted the statements at the time by representatives of the Army and of the Political and Judicial establishments: the victims had been unarmed and the Army had not been “returning fire”.

*One side of one of the marching band drums* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Section of the march about half-way along its length*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Despite the UK State’s acknowledgement that they had no excuse for the massacre, not one of those who planned, organised or carried out the atrocity had been charged, never mind convicted, nor had those who conspired to cover up the facts. To this day, only a low-level soldier has faced charges.

Nor had there been government admissions of wrongdoing in the other massacres by the Paras intended to crush the resistance to the repressive internment measure, at Ballymurphy and Springhill.

A number of relatives and survivors of the original march declined to have the annual march cancelled, among them Kate Nash and Bernadette McAlliskey. Kate Nash’s brother William was shot dead on Bloody Sunday and her father, William, was wounded trying to save his son.

Bernadette McAlliskey was a survivor of the massacre and also survived nearly a decade later an assassination attempt in her home, being struck by nine bullets of a Loyalist murder gang. Despite opposition by and denunciation from SF, volunteers have kept the march going every year.

Each year different themes have also been incorporated into the Bloody Sunday March for Justice, including ones in Ireland, such as the framed Craigavon Two prisoners but also ones from beyond, e.g. the resistance of the Broadwater Farm housing estate in London to Metropolitan Police attack.

*Section of the march in Creggan waiting to start, showing the Palestinian national flag and the Irish Tricolour in close proximity.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Big drums of one of the marching bands getting a workout in the Creggan while waiting for the march to start*. *‘Saoirse go deo’ = Freedom for ever*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Since 2011 Sinn Féin have boycotted the march but also sought to mobilise public opinion against it, claiming that relatives of the victims didn’t want the march to continue. The truth is that some hadn’t wanted it even when SF were running it, some didn’t afterwards but some did.

Such an atrocity has of course huge personal impact on relatives of victims but its impact is also much wider on a society and beyond, historically and politically. That historical memory ‘belongs’ to the people of Derry but also to the people of the world (as do others such as Sharpeville SA).

Those in power in society are aware of that and the media outside of Derry gives little or no coverage to the annual march while promoting other events there of lesser numbers and significance.

The ‘Derry Peoples Museum’ ignores the march in its Bloody Sunday commemorative program.

This year’s march

Sunday just past was one of sunshine and little wind, as it was on the day of the Derry massacre. But regular marchers remember other Bloody Sunday commemoration days of pouring non-stop rain, of squalls, of snow and sleet, of wet clothes, socks and freezing fingers and toes.

The march starts in the afternoon at the Creggan (An Chreagáin) and winds down to just below the Derry Walls, then up a long slope again before eventually ending down at Free Derry Corner⁹, the destination of the original march, where speakers address the crowd from a sheltered stage.

*Marchers underway, led by people carrying 14 crosses to represent the unarmed civilians murdered by the Paras on that day 53 years before.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*The band members are itching to go up in the Creggan.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The sides of residential blocks in this area are also painted in giant murals to represent scenes from the civil rights and armed resistance period while nearby stands a monument to the martyrs of Bloody Sunday 1972 but also another to the 10 H-Blocks’ martyrs of the Hungers Strikes of 1981.

In this area, one needs to be blind not to be at least peripherally aware of the icons of proud struggle and of loss, of sacrifice.

Eamon McCann and Farah Koutteineh addressed the rally at the end of the march. McCann, a journalist and member of the People Before Profit political party is a survivor of the massacre. He is an early supporter of the Bloody Sunday March for Justice at which he has spoken on occasion.

Farah Koutteineh is a Palestinian journalist who was herself the news when in December 2023 she and a few other Palestinians were ejected from a Sinn Féin-organised meeting in Belfast being addressed by the Palestinian Ambassador as a representative of the Palestinian Authority.

Koutteineh had been denouncing the Palestine Authority’s collusion with Israel when she and the other Palestinians were hustled out to applause from many of the attendance. Not surprisingly from the Derry platform on Sunday she too drew applause in criticising SF’s position on Palestine.¹⁰

Speaking to this reporter after the march, Kate Nash said: “There is no chance the march will be ended. It will go forward into the future, a beacon of resistance against the injustices and crimes of states around the world.

“There are millions of us … people come from around the world to commemorate this massacre with us.”

end.

Series of images from the march (Photoa by D.Breatnach)

Footnotes:

1There have been a number of Bloody Sundays in the history of Ireland under colonialism and therefore the location and year are often incorporated into the name for clarity as to which is being discussed.

2There was substantial State interference with inquests during the period of the 30-years’ war in the Six Counties (and in some cases in the Irish state also), in order to avoid inquest juries finding the state armed forces culpable of homicide unjustified in law. The original inquest in 1972 on the Ballymurphy massacre recorded an ‘open verdict’ but a 2021 reopened inquest found the British Army killings “unjustifiable”. Even after the Derry massacre, in July of that year, the Paras again killed five unarmed people and injured two in the Springhill area of Belfast and again an ‘open verdict’ was recorded into the fatalities which included three teenagers and a priest.

3The demands were all of rights that were in existence in the rest of the UK, including an ending to discrimination in allocation of housing and employment and general enfranchisement.

4The Special Powers (Northern Ireland) Act 1922 gave legal powers to the authorities similar to martial law. Allegedly temporary, as is often the case the Act kept getting renewed until made permanent and its repeal was one of the demands of the Civil Rights campaign. The Act was finally repealed in 1973.

5There was a unit of other British Army soldiers stationed on the Derry Walls with special rifles and there has been speculation that some of the shots might have been fired by them but this has never been confirmed to date.

6Now McAlliskey then Devlin, she had been a candidate for the People’s Democracy party of the time, the youngest MP elected.

7And that was the ‘official record’ until the Saville verdict 38 years later. A clever contemporary lampooning of Widgery and playing on a soap powder advert, with excellent alliteration, had it that “Nothing washes whiter than Widgery White!”

8Although the Saville Inquiry delivered its verdict in June 2010, it had been set up in 1998, taking an inordinately long time (and a bonanza in legal fees for judge, barristers, lawyers and clerks) to reach a verdict already obvious to all the nationalist people of the Six Counties, most of the Irish people and probably millions around the world. The date of its setting up so near to that of the Good Friday Agreement suggests that its creation (and eventual verdict) was part of the ‘sweeteners’ of the Pacification Process and the Good Friday Agreement.

9A reconstruction of the iconic gable end of a small local authority house in the Bogside area of Derry which had been painted in 1967, during the Civil Rights resistance period, with giant letters proclaiming: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY. The house was demolished during redevelopment of the area but the gable end was reconstructed as a monument to the resistance of the people of the city.

10Sinn Féin support the corrupt and collaborationist Palestine Authority and its backing political party Fatah and also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with (then) President Joe Biden while the US was supplying the Zionist genocide with weapons, money and political backing.

3The demands were all of rights that were in existence in the rest of the UK, including an ending to discrimination in allocation of housing and employment and general enfranchisement.

6Now McAlliskey then Devlin, she had been a candidate for the People’s Democracy party of the time, the youngest MP elected.

Useful links:

“SOLIDARITY WITH THE RESISTANCE” AND “DOWN WITH COLLABORATION OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY!”

On January 29, 2025February 23, 2026 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Zionism1 Comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

A large Palestine solidarity march once again in Dublin included a Resistance Bloc, part of which also broke away to picket the Palestinian Authority’s Embassy, where collaboration and collusion were denounced in three languages.¹

*A section of the march has arrived in Molesworth Street in view of Leinster House but others are still arriving.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

As Israel freed 200 of their Palestinian prisoners Saturday in exchange for four female Israeli Occupation Army soldiers, Dublin City Centre rang again to shouts of Palestinian solidarity and some banners of the Resistance Bloc saluted the Resistance and denounced the Palestine Authority.

The Resistance Bloc was organised by a broad front of organisations: Action on Palestine, Saoirse Don Phalaistín and Queer Intifada and was also supported by independent activists.

There had not been a major Palestine solidarity march in Dublin since 7th December, though they had been held pretty regularly every two or three weeks throughout the previous year. On Saturday, as Netanyahu stopped blocking it, the ceasefire and prisoners transfer agreement finally went ahead.

The Agreement is in three phases, each including prisoners of each side to be exchanged but also the removal of the IOF from Gaza in matched stages and the return of Gaza residents to the South also including the delivery of food, fuel and medicine. But they return to a rubble wasteland.

THE PA AND OSLO

The PA is a product of what was called the Palestinian Peace (more correctly called Pacification) Process and since it failed spectacularly to pacify the Palestinian people is more usually now called the Oslo Accords, from which the PA was established in 1994.

*Reading a statement in Arabic outside the PA Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

The Oslo Accords is one of a wave of imperialist pacification processes or agreements of the last decade of the 20^th Century and in particular one of interrelated processes in three distinct regions: in chronological order South Africa, Palestine and Ireland.

The ANC² of South Africa recommended it to the Fatah³ of the Palestinians; then Fatah and the ANC recommended to the Provisionals⁴ in Ireland. In no case was what they had fought for achieved, with the exception of universal suffrage in South Africa.⁵

*Banner Dublin Footballers for Gaza on the main march to Leinster House* (Photo: *R.Breeze*) (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

*On the main march to Leinster House* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Later, the ANC and Sinn Féin would also recommend it to the liberation movements of the Basque Country, Colombia and the Kurds of Turkey, always with disastrous results for the movements in fragmentation, confusion, collusion with imperialism and disarming in the face of repression.

The Palestinian Embassies represent in fact the PA and this is the case in Ireland too. Despite th. PA’s long history of treachery to the Palestinian people and their struggle, including repression of the Resistance, it is being officially “recognised” as the representation of the Palestine people.

Not only the traditional State Government parties of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil uphold the PA but so also does the major oppositional party, the former Republican party of Sinn Féin. This is also the case with the major political parties in the EU, UK and US.

These also support the ‘two-state solution’ (sic) which would see the indigenous Palestinian people get less than 20% of their country, with the least water resources under the eyes and guns of the Israeli State. In any case it is considered unworkable by most experts and serious commentators.

*“Smash the chains of Zionism”* *banner* *on the main march to Leinster House* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

*Howth Stands With Palestine banner* *on the main march to Leinster House* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

In a recent statement on the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterrez, also promoted the ‘solution’ of splitting Palestine into two states as a way towards peace. The PA too upholds that same plan.

Major Palestine solidarity organisations like the IPSC in Ireland have no formal position on the PA or the Two-State plan. Standing on the base of Palestine solidarity, ‘neutrality’ on the question is not excusable, even on a kind of basis of ‘it’s up to the Palestinians and not for us to intervene’.

The PA is an imperialist creation against the Palestine struggle; for years it has been periodically attacking the Resistance and has now stepped up that aspect in its 6-week siege of Jenin in the West Bank and even military assaults on the Resistance groups in collusion with the IOF.

True solidarity with the struggle of a people also entails solidarity with their resistance, whether in non-violent or violent form and it also entails opposition to individuals and organisations that are colluding with the enemy; the PA should be publicly denounced by the solidarity movement.

THE MARCH IN DUBLIN

In Dublin on Saturday any fears that much support would have dropped away⁶ disappeared as large numbers marched through the city centre, some having come from Kerry or Limerick. Not far from the front marched the Resistance Bloc which had assembled earlier outside the Rotunda.

Flying the national flag of Palestine, the Starry Plough and flags of Palestinian Resistance factions Hamas and Islamic Jihad, along with the national flag of Syria, the bloc marched behind banners upholding the Resistance and denouncing the PA.

*Placard and flags outside the PA Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

*Banners, flags and statement reading outside the PA Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

The usual chants of Palestine solidarity marches could be heard from the Bloc in call-and-answer but also included From Ireland to Palestine – Occupation is a crime! Saoirse don – Phalaistín! Resistance is an obligation – In the face of occupation!

Soon after the main march reached its destination, much of the Resistance Bloc marched away to Leeson Street Lower and soon after crossing the bridge over the Grand Canal into Leeson Street Upper, crossed the road to assemble in front of the “Palestine Embassy”.

*One of the placards outside the PA Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

*Reading translation of the statement in English outside the PA Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

The breakaway march was closely followed by a number of Irish police patrol cars and a Public Order Unit Van which remained at the PA Embassy until the event concluded.

One of the organisers then presented a man to read a statement in Arabic, the translation of which she followed to read in English, which pointed to happiness at the freeing of Palestinian prisoners in the exchange with the Resistance – but sadness at the collusion of the PA with the Occupier.

*A protester holds a placard denouncing the PA outside their Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

*Section of the crowd outside the PA Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

The speech declared that Palestinians have been striving for over a century to achieve their independence and freedom in their struggle against Israeli occupation. This has cost hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives and displaced nearly nine million Palestinians around the world.

Later: Given the current circumstances, Palestinians must resist the Israeli occupation and simultaneously confront the Palestinian Authority, which acts as an agent in killing and besieging Palestinians to defend Israel. The speech concluded in thanking the Irish people for their solidarity.

*One of the banners outside the PA Embassy* *bears a slogan but also the name of one of the organising groups* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

*Another view of the crowd outside the PA Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Another man spoke in part-Irish and part-English, congratulating people on having publicly confronted the PA with its collusion. This had only been done twice before in Ireland, once in Belfast when the “Palestinian Ambassador” had been addressing a Sinn Féin meeting.

There had been another outside the “Embassy” in Dublin some months earlier by a small gathering supporting a picket called by the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign. He drew parallels between the PA and the treason to the Irish resistance that had led to Partition and a subservient state.

*Next to the PA Embassy* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Underlining the parallel in song, he sang verses of the Take It⁷ Down From the Mast ballad (against the Irish State during the Civil War 1922-1923), adapting a verse to call on the PA to Take it down from the mast Palestinian traitors ….. for you’ve (they’ve) brought on it nothing but shame.”

The picket concluded with thanks to the attendance and after a period of shouting slogans including There is only one solution – Intifada Revolution! From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free! Shame on you PA – Shame, shame, shame!

End.

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FOOTNOTES

1Arabic, English and Irish.

2African National Congress

3The major secular Palestinian national liberation organisation at the time.

4Provisional IRA with its corresponding party, Sinn Féin, the major Irish national liberation organisation at the time.

5But no other social or economic progress; in addition, fragmentation of the movement and enlisting of the former liberation fighters as ‘enforcers’ of the imperialist agreement.

6Due to a possible but mistaken attitude of “the war’s over”.

7A reference to the Irish Tricolour: Take it down from the mast Irish traitors/ It’s the flag we Republicans claim/ It can never belong to Free Staters/ For you’ve brought on it nothing but shame. “The Free State” was the name adopted by those who agreed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, including Partition.

USEFUL LINKS

@actionforpalireland

@saoirsephalastin

@queerintifada.ireland

Swiss Zionist Censors Arrest Palestinian Journalist

On January 27, 2025January 27, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Censorship & Witch-hunting, Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Internationalist Solidarity, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Prisoners, Zionism1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

Swiss police have arrested and detained Palestinian journalist and Executive Director of the popular Electronic Intifada website. According to reports he was interrogated for an hour at the airport after his arrival and released but arrested a day later.

Abunimah was due to give a series of talks in Switzerland and that fact, in addition to his journalistic work in writing for and organising weekly podcasts from the Electronic Intifada website give the context for his arrest which is simply pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist censorship.

The EI (Electronic Intifada) carries articles from its reporters inside Gaza and the weekly podcasts on YouTube provide analysis and discussion, along with interviews with commentators, writers and activists. Military expert Jon Elmer gives a roundup covering actions of the Resistance.

On a personal note, the weekly EI podcasts on Wednesday (now Thursday) evenings on YouTube became not only compulsory watching for me but also emotional therapy in the midst of the Zionist genocide in Gaza.

*Ali Abunimah* (Image cred: *Al Jazeera screengrab*)

Abunimah is a US citizen of Palestinian descent, fluent in Arabic, English and conversant with Hebrew. Founded in 2001, the EI website associate editors are Maureen Clare Murphy, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Michael Brown, David Cronin, Tamara Nassar and Asa Winstanley.

The site’s editors are no strangers to attempted and actual repression: Germany banned Abunimah from entering last year, while UK police raided Asa Winstanley’s home and confiscated his computer equipment, which they are still holding weeks later but without charging him.¹

Palestinian solidarity activists in Switzerland have protested Abunimah’s detetion.

The UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, called Abunimah’s arrest “shocking news” and urged his release while Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories bemoaned the European “toxic … climate” for free speech.

When free speech in one area of discourse is attacked, freedom of speech on all subjects is endangered so even those who are not very supportive of Palestine should protest Abunimah’s arrest in this blatant act of censorship and repression.

End.

Footnotes:

1 Winstanley is a member of the weekly broadcasting team as well as an author of articles on the site.

Sources:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/27/un-experts-slam-palestinian-journalist-ali-abunimahs-arrest-in-switzerland

https://electronicintifada.net/content/eis-ali-abunimah-arrested-switzerland/50333

Who are the political prisoners in Colombia?

On January 25, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Colombia, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, Human Rights, Imperialism, Ireland, Political Analysis, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

(Article originally written for the Political Prisoners Collective Asociación Arrakala)

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh January 19 2025 (Reading time: 6 mins.)

NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes

Who and what is a political prisoner is controversial, though it shouldn’t be. Once upon a time we all knew or recognised a political prisoner. It was obvious, evident.

But two centuries of legislative changes, the work of the press and more than one NGO seeking to please its master i.e. those who finance it, has disfigured the political prisoner and its corollary outside, the rebel, the dissident, the activist.

Before trying to vindicate the figure of the political prisoner we should be clear that the prison itself has not been a constant in history.

There have always been places of reclusion, but they were transitory, provisional, where the prisoner was held whilst they awaited their sentence, be it execution, or exile, the confiscation of assets or in the case to debtors’ prison, the payment of the debt or the taxes owed.

The idea of a prison as somewhere you serve a term of a number of years as a prisoner according to the gravity of the crime is novel. It is about 250 years old.

The seriousness of the crime and the proportionality of the sentence are not obvious. In many jurisdictions a bank robbery is more serious than the rape of a woman.

Historically, crimes against property were more severely punished than crimes against the person. There are exceptions to that but in general, in all judicial systems crimes against property are more severely punished.

Of course, murder usually carries a stiff sentence, but countries with long sentences or even life sentences usually consider such sentences for crimes against property and other crimes. In the USA that possibility exists in various states.

In a number of countries the crimes punishable by death include, blasphemy, adultery, prostitution, spying, bribery, corruption, drug trafficking, homosexuality.

Political crimes are also severely punished with harsh sentences and the death penalty, depending on the country. Such punishment for political crimes only disappeared where it was abolished for all crimes.

Political crimes

Margaret Thatcher the British prime minister (1979-1990) once declared that there was no political crime, only criminal offences. She said in relation to IRA and INLA militants in prison in Ireland that political murder, political attacks nor any political violence existed.

With this she aimed to ignore not just the long history of such crimes in national laws in many countries but also International Humanitarian Law.

The preamble to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes rebellion as the last legitimate resort in the face of human rights abuses.

“Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind… if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”[1]

The Geneva Conventions, the basis of IHL in common article 3 to the four conventions reads “In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions…”[2]

And goes on to explain the provisions that apply. With this the Geneva Conventions acknowledge the existence of organised and armed rebellion against a state as something more than criminality. Otherwise, it wouldn’t attempt to govern the behaviour of the parties to the conflict.

Though it is worth pointing out that the IHL never clearly defined what was an internal armed conflict nor a war of national liberation. However, it is clear that it can’t be reduced to mere violence.

There are those that raise high the figure of Prisoner of Conscience, not just as the highest expression of a political prisoner but as the only one. According to Amnesty International such a prisoner is in jail for their ideas without having used or advocated violence.

It is an absurd definition. For years they praised Mandela as a prisoner of conscience, but Nelson Mandela led an organisation with an armed wing and ended up in jail for conspiracy to overthrow the state. He was no pacifist.

The definition Amnesty uses can be summarised as They who opine but do not act are political prisoners, those who think but do not apply their thinking are political prisoners.

This excludes great figures from Colombian history such as Policarpa or José Antonio Galán who were executed following their capture. According to this definition José Martí was a political prisoner when he wrote, but a criminal when he returned to Cuba to free it.

But this is not correct, a political prisoner may be a person who never even raised a rock, not to mention a rifle. They may even be pacifists. It is not necessarily a person linked to armed groups, though neither does it exclude them.

There are various types of political prisoners in Colombia.

· There are the militants of guerrilla groups, the majority of them in prison for armed actions, though there are those who played a political role in such groups, what the courts refer to as ideologues.

· There are also those who are victims of frame ups, the majority of them militants of one or other unarmed Left group, social organisation, trade union etc. The state imprisons them through frame-ups in order to limit their political work.

· Then there are those who are prisoners for things related to their political activity i.e. people who in the midst of protests, strikes, occupations of buildings break some law and are arrested, such as those who carry out pickets that are not permitted.

Amongst this group there are also the youths of the Frontline of the National Strike. Yes, throwing a stone is a crime in and of itself but these youths threw stones in response to state violence during the protests.

But, what distinguishes political prisoner from a common prisoner? Brandishing weapons or throwing stones is done by lots of people from narcos to drunks on a Saturday night. Pablo Escobar attacked the state with weapons and car bombs, but he was never a political prisoner.

He was always a criminal.

The first point is the political prisoner is captured in the struggle for a better world.

They seek changes in society that benefit a broad section of the population when their struggle is national in character or large group when the struggle is local or in the neighbourhood with specific demands.

So, a right-wing paramilitary could never be a political prisoner because they seek the status quo, or even a worsening of the conditions of the people.

A political prisoner acts altruistically, seeking no personal benefit though they may end up benefiting from the changes they seek for peasants, youths or neighbours because they are from that community.

But they never seek personal benefit for themselves but rather for society or a particular group in society. Once again neither the paramilitaries, nor the narcos or the Uribistas could ever be political prisoners because what they seek is always for their own personal benefit or small powerful group.

So a guerrilla may be a political prisoner, as may be the youths from the National Strike and similar protests. The environmentalist that blocks the entry of a mining company’s machinery is also one, even if they commit a crime such as damaging or destroying the company’s installations.

In 1976 eighty intellectuals and figures from the world of culture met in Algiers and proclaimed the Algiers Declaration – Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples. The document is entirely political and does not have the force of law but was and continues to be a moral reference point.

In Article 28 it states:

Any people whose fundamental rights are seriously disregarded has the right to enforce them, specially by political or trade union struggle and even, in the last resort by the use the force.[3]

Political prisoners are those who comply with this article.

Though the methods used, whether they are violent or pacific may have some influence, they do not determine who are political prisoners.

Of course, in the case of guerrillas, a war crime may wrest credibility from their status as a political prisoner, but in general the use or not of violence is not what determines who is a political prisoner.

It is the demands and the selfless commitment of the militant to the cause that defines whether they are political prisoners or not. Those who deny this are the ones who benefit from the capitalist system.

Their denial is nothing more than publicity and public relations for Julio Mario Santodomingo, Juan Manuel Santos, Gustavo Petro and the large NGOs. Colombia is full of political prisoners and those who deny this also deny the reality of capitalism in the country.

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

NOTES

[1] UN (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/eng.pdf

[2] See https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gci-1949/article-3?activeTab=1949GCs-APs-and-commentaries

[3] See Declaration of Algiers https://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/algiers-charter/?lang=en

Policing Palestine Solidarity

On January 18, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Britain, British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Journalism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, US ImperialismLeave a comment

By Nicki Jameson 13 January 2025 (Reading time: 12 mins.)

(NB: An unconnected article with very similar title about the Irish organisation IPSC, rather than the English one as this is, was published on this blog in December 2023)

The below speech was delivered by Nicki Jameson at a Revolutionary Communist Group public meeting in London on 12 December 2024 titled ‘Defend the right to defend Palestine: fight back against state repression and media lies’. It is reprinted here from its publication in the RCG’s Fight Racism Fight Imperialism newspaper with permission and reformatted by RB for publication.

The genocidal Zionist onslaught which followed the 7 October 2023 Al Aqsa Flood operation caused a crisis for the imperialist ruling class. In both the US and Britain this was reflected in election results, for example.

Whatever now happens in the aftermath of this week’s events in Syria, and what splits in the solidarity movement this may lead to, it remains the case that international support for the resilient Palestinian struggle is widespread and not diminishing.

In this context, the British government, both under the previous Conservative administration and now under Labour, has sought to contain and limit the effectiveness of the protest movement.

It does not want to be seen to ban protests entirely, but it has aimed to render them impotent and tokenistic.

While it would, of course deny this, the role of the national Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is to facilitate this limitation.

It does this by ensuring that anger against the Zionist genocide is channelled into ‘safe’ slogans such as the demand for a ceasefire, and formulaic A to B marches, organised on terms dictated by the police, culminating with a passive crowd listening to anodyne speeches from the usual suspects.

Contained as they are, that PSC marches nonetheless constitute a regular expression of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle by a significant section of the British public is way too much for some in the political establishment.

And also for the vocal cohort of Zionists whose angry social media presence is used to decry ‘hate marches’ and demand greater policing and more arrests.

The police themselves vacillate between different approaches, dependent on the whims of the Home Secretary of the moment and Zionist political pressure.

Palestine protests

The very first protests in early October 2023 after the AAF operation were lightly policed. On 9 October we stood directly outside the Israeli embassy with no conditions or attempt to prevent the demo.

Within a very short period of time this had changed dramatically and the then weekly protests organised by PSC were subject to heavy policing.

Zionist keyboard warriors on twitter began immediately to play a role in fingering people, posting video footage of alleged crimes, with the demand that people be arrested. The police duly obliged.

While total overall arrest figures seem hard to track down, between October 2023 and March 2024 there were 305 arrests under the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Brocks – the policing operation related to Palestine protests in London.

This included 89 far-right counter protesters arrested on Remembrance Day, when – riled up by then Home Secretary Suella Braverman – they came to ‘defend the cenotaph’ from a non-existent attack.

During this period eight people were arrested on FRFI contingents in London. Their experience is fairly typical of those targeted at the time.

London police making an arrest on Palestine solidarity march 13 January 2024 (Photo cred: FRFI)

In the main they were profiled by Zionists on twitter, who flagged up to the compliant police that the comrades either had placards bearing the words ‘Victory to the Intifada’ or were using that slogan.

A young person was also arrested on the spurious pretext that he was wearing a symbol of a proscribed organisation, although the PFLP is not in fact proscribed in this country. He was subsequently de-arrested but not before those who came to his aid were also swept up.

Of this eight, only one person was charged. This was subsequently thrown out of court. Of the others, all but one have been definitively told they will not be charged.

A ninth comrade, arrested in a dawn-raid on their home remains on bail under the Terrorism Act in relation to a speech made 15 months ago.

It was clear from police interviews, that the cops in Operation Brocks had no idea what Intifada actually meant and had been given a script by their political masters.

We take the exoneration of those arrested to mean that VICTORY TO THE INTIFADA, a call for solidarity with the uprisings of Palestinians against Zionist oppression, is entirely legitimate and in no way criminal.

Spurious arrests continue to take place, using the now tried and tested process of Zionist twitter posts highlighting the offensive words or item, prompting either immediate arrest or the publishing of a police ‘wanted’ notice.

Following the lack of any prosecution for slogans such as ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘Victory to the Intifada’, the most common ‘crime’ is comparison of Israeli genocide to the Nazi holocaust.

Although no-one has been successfully prosecuted along these lines, Zionists continue to claim it is an anti-Semitic hate crime.

Many of these arrests are farcical.

People will remember the arrest, charging, trial and not guilty verdict of Marieha Hussain, who had depicted Conservative politicians Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts on a homemade placard she took to a protest on 11 November 2023.

In May 2024, four activists from Camden Friends of Palestine were arrested under the Terrorism Act for holding a banner depicting a dove flying through the Israeli apartheid wall.

Police claimed that as the banner depicted ‘a clear blue sky with no clouds’ and there had been similar weather on 7 October, this showed obvious support for Hamas. After 3 months on bail they were told that there would be no charges.

A tremendous amount of police time and money is being spent on this process with what would appear to be no tangible reward in terms of convictions or imprisonment.

However, what simply looking at the charge or conviction rates fails to show is the way these arrests are used as harassment and interference both in people’s ability to protest and their everyday lives.

Those described here have had bail conditions which specified variously that they could not enter the borough of Westminster, could not enter university premises other than for study and must surrender their passports and not leave the country.

Arrestees from the CPGB-ML were banned for the duration of their bail from attending protests and distributing literature. People flagged for arrest by Zionist twitter have also been reported to their employers, professional bodies and universities in an attempt to ruin their ability to work or study.

While most early arrests were under Public Order police powers, there is increasing use of the Terrorism Act (TA) 2003 to criminalise solidarity with Palestine, targeting both protesters on the streets and what people say on line.

Journalists and youtubers, such as Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson and Asa Winstanley have been subject to arrests and house raids.

The TA was brought in by the last Labour government at a time when Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions.

On 27 November, the Met Police used the TA to raid the premises of the Kurdish Community Centre in Haringey, north London, arresting six people and placing the centre under siege.

Anti-Zionist blogger/activist Tony Greenstein will be in court next week on a charge under section 12 of the TA, for responding over a year ago to a Zionist tweet accusing him of being a Hamas supporter with the words: ‘I support the Palestinians, that is enough and I support Hamas against the Israeli army.’

*Anti-imperialist Jewish and Palestine Solidarity activist Tony Greenstein, who is being persecuted by the British police.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

The aim is to create a climate of fear in which people become scared to attend even the most peaceful and routine of protests, where we censor our own slogans, placards and behaviour in order to evade the eyes of the on-line harassers and the police.

Palestine Action and Elbit

Alongside all this has run another process in which the brave participants show no fear in the way they exercise their solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Palestine Action was set up in 2020 by activists who were frustrated by the PSC’s lack of direct action to enforce BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

Since then it has primarily targeted the British operation of Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems, as well as other companies collaborating with Elbit or are otherwise implicated in the arming of the Zionist war machine or sale of its ‘battle tested’ technology to other countries’ militaries.

*Daily Stop Arming Genocide banner outside Houses of Parliament, Westminster, London.* (Source photo: *Internet*)

Palestine Action’s tactics mainly consist of occupations, blockades and drenching premises in red paint to symbolise the blood on the hands of these profiteering companies.

Until recently, although a lot of these actions led to arrests, very few Palestine Action activists ended up behind bars. This has changed since Keir Starmer’s Labour government came to power. There are currently 18 Palestine Action activists in prison in England, along with 2 in Scotland.

One of the Scottish prisoners is the last of the group known as the Thales 5, who were convicted of occupying the roof of the Glasgow premises of French company Thales in 2022. Thales was working with Elbit to produce Watchkeeper drones for the British military.

The prisoners in England have not been convicted and are all held on remand, having been refused bail by the courts. The majority were arrested in relation to actions against the Filton arms factory in Bristol. Ten people were remanded in August and a further eight in November.

Although none have been charged with terrorism offences, the TA was used to effect their arrests, allowing the police more powers to detain pre-charge, raid homes and generally act in a heavy-handed manner.

In the latest arrests in November, flatmates and families were evicted from their homes, sometimes for several days while the police searched premises. In one raid, the mother and younger brother of the person arrested were both handcuffed, despite not being accused of any offence.

In prison, those on remand for pro-Palestine direct action have come in for special scrutiny and additional intrusive measures on top of those which all prisoners are forced to deal with.

The six women detained in Bronzefield prison in August were all allocated to separate wings and deliberately prevented from associating with one another. Their mail has been heavily censored.

Four male prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs, although not subject to the same separation regime, have also had their correspondence held up, censored and returned to sender, with supporters being served with notices to the effect that no communication between them is permitted.

FRFI successfully appealed against such a notice in relation to our sending the paper to the prisoners, although the prison claims it still has a right to withhold the paper or other publications if the censors decide they are ‘inappropriate for a prison setting’.

The purpose of all this is clearly to scare those it is directly targeting it and to deter others from coming forward to join Palestine Action’s activities.

As Palestine Action carries out more actions against Elbit, including repeatedly blockading the UAV Engines site at Shenstone in the Midlands, which manufactures engines for Elbit, it is clear that the repression is not succeeding.

*Palestine solidarity demonstration Downing Street 14 December 2024.* (Source photo: *Internet*)

Kitson methodology

General Sir Frank Edward Kitson died on 2 January 2024, aged 97, after a long and illustrious career as a dedicated servant of British imperialism.

In addition to the litany of his war crimes, he will be remembered for authoring the text book Low Intensity Operations – Subversion, Insurgency and Peace-keeping (1971), a manual for dealing with subversive and recalcitrant populations, both at home and abroad.

Kitson’s work continues to form a central plank of British strategy for policing dissent and his disciples are clearly leading policing operations against pro-Palestine protesters.

In Kitson’s book, he details how ‘psychological operations’ should be used to isolate ‘subversives’ from the people while building links with and strengthening support for moderate elements who do not oppose the state but disagree on certain policies.

This technique was used both abroad in Britain’s colonies, and at home to police, for example, the Irish solidarity movement of the 1970s-80s.

Today’s ‘moderates’ take the form of the PSC, Stop the War and similar organisations. PSC marches are negotiated with the police, with strict conditions imposed on the protests.

The PSC has provided no support for people arrested on its demonstrations, citing the low arrest rates as proof of how respectable their protests are, while distancing itself from those who have been targeted.

While the PSC opposes Zionist massacres of the Palestinian people, it does not support the resistance of those under attack.

Consequently it does not complain when the British police uses Terrorism Act powers to criminalise people for supporting the right of Palestinians to resist their oppressors through armed struggle.

This treachery puts the PSC on the wrong side of international law – oppressed nations successfully fought for the right to self-defence by means of armed struggle to be enshrined in UN resolutions in 1974 and 1982.

Fighting back, building solidarity

For some of us, the culture around supporting our arrested comrades was drilled into us many years ago. A whole new generation has had to learn these lessons.

It is positive to see that, although the PSC and such organisations continue not to want to get their hands dirty with supporting anyone targeted by the police, a different attitude is also widespread and ‘arrestee support’, prison solidarity letter-writing etc are common currency among activists.

At the same time there is an element of this solidarity which is depoliticised. For example, the provision of a constant presence at a police station to monitor things and be there when arrestees are released is a good thing and the support organisations which provide this do an invaluable job.

However, when we have comrades under arrest, we want to do more than legal monitoring and instead turn the police station into a focus for protest. The same with courts and prisons.

It’s very positive to see Palestine Action, the SOAS encampment and others also doing this to great effect, thus ensuring that the focus is not just on the Israeli companies who are their principle targets, but also on the British criminal justice machinery which is being marshalled against those who take a stand.

Our task, as always, here in the belly of the imperialist beast, remains to protest against the British government and British corporations’ complicity in the Zionist genocide.

And to show unconditional solidarity with those who fight back against the Zionist war machine by whatever means are at their disposal.

Supporting the resistance and opposing the British state cannot fail to bring us into conflict with that same state and we must continue to stand alongside everyone who is criminalised for their solidarity.

End.

SOURCE

Policing Palestine solidarity

ISRAEL AND USA TRY TO DETERMINE INTERNAL LEBANESE POLITICS

On January 14, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, French Colonialism & Neo-Colonialism, Imperialism, Middle East, National Liberation, Political Analysis, US Imperialism, ZionismLeave a comment

Qassam Muaddi (Reprinted from Mondoweiss 12/ 11/ 2024) with current introduction by Diarmuid Breatnach)

(Reading time: 7 mins.)

INTRODUCTION:

Imperialist and Zionist intervention in Lebanon continues after the recent war as it did before, although the IOF failed thoroughly in its attempted invasion before the truce (if we can call it that, with near 500 recorded IOF ceasefire violations to date).

The USA’s envoy Hochstein’s claims the IOF will pull out at the fast approaching 60-day date stipulated in the ceasefire agreement.

Apart from decoupling Hezbollah from active support for the Resistance in Gaza, where the genocidal war may continue and possibly even intensify, the war against Lebanese sovereignty will continue, albeit in the shadows.

When the victorious powers in the imperialist World War I sat down to divide up the spoils, chiefly between the UK and France, the latter’s share included what is now Lebanon and Syria. The present constitution of the Lebanese state bears an unmistakeable French imprint.

The ‘international’ negotiators of the ceasefire sought by Israel therefore, France and USA, were the old French colonial imperialists of the region and their new supplanters, the US imperialists.¹ These will continue their efforts to bring Lebanon firmly under imperialist control.

And ‘Israel’ will assist them in particular through its intelligence services: recall Netanyahu’s public attempt on 8^th October to encourage political forces hostile to Hezbollah in Lebanon to rise up against the Resistance while simultaneously the IOF bombed Lebanese civilians!

The cavalier attitude of the head of Lebanon’s army, Josef Aoun, towards the Lebanese parliament last November seemed an early indication of this shadows war and, considering the importance of the Army in Lebanese politics, may bode ill for the future.²

*New President of Lebanon, Michel Aoun (incorrectly elected while still head of the Army), reviewing troops as formal inauguration procedure.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

In his first speech as the new Secretary General of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem said that the US Ambassador to Lebanon had been meeting leaders of Lebanese political parties opposed to Hezbollah.

According to Qassem, the Ambassador was trying to convince them that Hezbollah’s collapse in the face of Israel’s offensive was imminent, urging the Lebanese parties to oppose Hezbollah.

Two weeks earlier, a group of anti-Hezbollah parties gathered in the town of Maarab in Mount Lebanon, the headquarters of the “Lebanese Forces” — a far-right Christian party headed by its chairman, Samir Geagea.

The parties in attendance issued a joint statement that indirectly blamed Iran for pushing Lebanon into a war it had no stake in, hijacking the decision of peace and war in Lebanon, and recruiting Lebanese citizens and using them as soldiers and “human shields.”

The latter phrase was a veiled reference to Hezbollah, its social support base, and the people of southern Lebanon in general. The parties in Maarab also called for the election of a new president to the country.

Heading the meeting was Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian known for his brutal suppression of Palestinian and Lebanese adversaries, including Christian rivals, during the Lebanese Civil War that took place between 1975 and 1989.

*Samir Geagea, Lebanese anti-Hezbollah politician, photographed in days of membership of the fascist Christian Lebanese militia, proxy of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

He is also known for his collaboration with Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon after 1982 and for having spent 12 years in a Syrian prison on charges of collaboration with Israel.

Geagea has also been openly voicing his will to run for the Presidency of Lebanon, which under the Lebanese constitution must be held by a Christian Maronite. The president’s chair has been vacant for two years now, as the opposing political forces have failed to agree on a candidate.

The president in Lebanon is elected by the parliament and thus needs a degree of consensus between represented parties, which has been absent since the latest president, Michel Aoun, finished his term in October 2022.

*Former Lebanon President Michel Aoun, ally of Hezbollah*. (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Michel Aoun was an ally of Hezbollah and represented an important trend of Christian community support for the resistance group in Lebanese politics since 2008.

During his presidency, Hezbollah’s adversaries in Lebanon, like Geagea, continued to accuse the resistance group of taking over the state, especially during the height of the Syrian Civil War, in which Hezbollah was actively involved in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad.

After Michel Aoun’s presidency, several political parties were unwilling to accept a president close to Hezbollah and its allies, entailing a vacancy to the recent election when Hezbollah’s preferred candidate Frangieh pulled out of the contest and endorsed Josef Aoun⁴‘s successful candidacy.

Diarmuid Breatnach

Why the Lebanese presidency is important for Israel

When Israel began its offensive on Lebanon with the exploding pager and electronics attacks in mid-September, some Lebanese politicians seemed to have sensed that the influential role of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics was approaching its end.

Calls to elect a new president increased, as the U.S. envoy, Amos Hochstein, brought his plan for a ceasefire.

Hochstein’s proposal included the retreat of Hezbollah’s fighting units north of the Litani River, essentially clearing Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south, and deploying more Lebanese army forces along the provisional border between Israel and Lebanon.

*Plotting on the dining terrace: US Ambassador Lebanon Dorothy Shea and White House Adviser Amos Hochstein in Beirut on 30 August 2023.* (Photo cred: *Cradle @ amos hochstein*)

Hochstein’s plan, however, included another component — he called for electing a new president for Lebanon, even considering it a priority before a ceasefire with Israel.

The president in Lebanon is also the commander-in-chief of the army, which is why many army chiefs of staff were elected to the presidency in the past.

Historically, the president’s relationship with the army’s command influenced the role played by the armed forces, and this relationship has been especially crucial in the case of Hezbollah.

In the last years of Hezbollah’s guerrilla campaign against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon between 1998 and 2000, the Lebanese army played a role in covering safe routes for Hezbollah’s fighters in and out of the occupied area and in holding key positions.

This support by the army to Hezbollah’s resistance was the result of the direction and influence of the country’s President, Emile Lahoud, who had served as Chief of Staff of the army a few years earlier and refused to obey orders to clash with and disarm Hezbollah’s fighters.

The position of the Lebanese president, his influence on the army’s performance, and his relationship with the resistance have always been at the heart of Israeli and U.S. attempts to intervene in Lebanese politics.

It is not the first time that the U.S. and Israel have pressured for the election of a new Lebanese president as it is under Israeli attack. The presidency ploy is a worn U.S. tool for attempting to change Lebanon’s political landscape and to make it more Israel-friendly.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied its capital, Beirut, after the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Lebanese parliament met to elect a new president — quite literally, under the watchful eye of Israeli tanks.

The parliament building was non-functional, and the Lebanese representatives had to meet with an incomplete quorum in the building of the military school to elect Bashir Gemayel as president.

Gemayel was the leader of the far-right anti-Palestinian Phalange party, or Kataeb. The Phalangists had helped Israel plan the invasion of Lebanon and fought on Israel’s side in the 1982 war.

Pierre Gemayel, strong man of the fascist Lebanese Christian sector and ally of Israel, elected by inquorate parliament literally under Israeli tank guns, whose assassination halted the slide towards Lebanese alliance with (under) Israel. (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Gemayel had travelled to Israel several times to meet with Israeli leaders and committed to signing a peace treaty with Israel as soon as he became president.

Gemayel was the strongman of the anti-Palestinian Lebanese Right, and he was the only leader with enough support and force to carry out Israel’s strategy in Lebanon.

His assassination 22 days after his election and before he was sworn in was one of the most devastating blows to Israel’s plans to bring Lebanon under Israeli influence.

In revenge for Gemayel’s death, the Phalangist militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in the periphery of Beirut under Israeli cover. There, they committed the now infamous Sabra and Shatilla Massacre, slaughtering between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees.³

Following the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1989, the parties who had fought against each other entered into a power-sharing arrangement.

Meanwhile, the nascent Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah — which started as an offshoot of the Shiite Amal militia during an episode of violence called the War of the Camps — increased its popularity and political influence.

This influence grew exponentially after Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Lebanese south, which marked the first victory of an Arab resistance force against Israeli occupation.

By the beginning of the 2000s, Hezbollah had become a political party that ran for elections, secured parliamentary representation, and forged alliances with other Lebanese forces.

Political divisions in Lebanon began to appear once again on both sides of the question of the resistance, often attributed by its antagonists to Syrian, and later Iranian, influence in the region.

The identity of Lebanon’s president became a central issue again, especially after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, during which Emile Lahoud’s presidency provided strong political support for Hezbollah. Lahoud finished his term the following year amid strong political division.

The state of fragmentation in Lebanese politics was so endemic that the president’s chair remained vacant for an entire year. The crisis was partially resolved with the election of the army’s chief of staff, Michael Suleiman, in 2008, who remained neutral.

Forty-two years after the first election of a Lebanese president at the behest of Israel, not much has changed. Lebanon is again under attack, and the resistance continues to be a central point of division over the future of the country and its position in the broader region.

Although Hezbollah insists that its resistance is tied to the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, both Israel and the U.S. continue to look for ways to neutralize Lebanon through internal divisions and political disagreements.

As Israeli army officials begin to voice their demands to end the war — a war that was hitting a wall in the villages and mountains of southern Lebanon — it seems that Hezbollah’s adversaries continue to bet on Israel’s military capacity to bring about a “day after Hezbollah.”

Perhaps more confidently than Israel itself.

Qassam Muaddi

FOOTNOTES:

1 The condemnation by the USA of the UK/ France/ Israel attack on Nasser’s Egypt in 1956 was clearly an admonition that the old colonial rulers of the Middle East (and of much of the World) now had to give way to the new ruler – US imperialism — and the old ways of gunboats and invasion had to be replaced by suborning the local middle classes and control through finance and trade. Of course as time went on the USA too resorted to invasions and gunboats (or at least aircraft carriers). — DB

2 See https://thecradle.co/articles/beirut-in-the-dark-about-lebanese-armys-deployment-plan-for-south-lebanon-report

3 16–18 September 1982, its anniversary is not long past – RB.

4 ¹Not a close relation of Michel Aoun.

SOURCES:

Naim Qassem’s first speech as leader Hezbollah, November 2025: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/hezbollahs-new-leader-made-first-speech-today-this-is-what-he-said/

Israel ceasefire violations: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/-lebanon-reports-4-more-israeli-violations-of-cease-fire-deal/3448885

Hezbollah’s preferred candidate Frangieh endorsed Josef Aoun: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/lebanese-parliament-tries-for-12th-time-to-elect-new-president-1715733.html²Hezbollah’s preferred candidate Frangieh endorsed Josef Aoun: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/lebanese-parliament-tries-for-12th-time-to-elect-new-president-1715733.html

LUIGI MANGIONE, UNDERSTANDING HIS POPULARITY

On January 7, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Police Violence, Political Analysis, USALeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 30 December

(Reading time: 6 mins.)
NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes

Luigi Mangione’s killing of Brian Thompson has resulted in a plethora of memes on Facebook celebrating to some degree the demise of the unlamented CEO.

Some of them are very funny, full of wit, others express outrage at the nature of the US health system and others openly call for more such killings and Facebook has not suppressed them, which says a lot.

Facebook is run and owned by a right-wing extremist, Mark Zuckerberg. But he is no idiot and probably hopes to ride out this particular storm, rather than suppress it. But he is mistaken as Mangione has struck a nerve. This is not going away.

Some so-called progressives have also sought to soften the impact of Mangione’s actions.

There are of course criticisms from the Left about how such actions don’t solve problems, the CEO is replaced and the machinery rolls on, and these are valid, but there are others who seek to wrest any agency or legitimacy from him.

Munya Chawawa, the British comedian and rapper released a musical video questioning how he was treated by the Police and saying he would have got different treatment if he were black.[1]

Yes, generally the cops are quick to kill blacks, especially those they think have actually killed someone, though they did in fact arrest the black DC Snipers (also known as the Beltway Snipers) who had murdered ten innocent civilians.[2]

In fact, it is not that US cops don’t kill whites, they do, it is just that not at the same rate as blacks. Half of those killed by US cops are white, but blacks are killed at more than double the rate of whites despite making up only 14% of the population.[3]

And yes, he is handsome and it helps, and again the memes have gone into overdrive. His arrest and mugshots have been compared to even scenes from one of the innumerable Superman films. Though I prefer the Che Guevara comparison.

He is no Che, as Che set out to overthrow a state and had a programme for change and is the main person behind the remarkable success story that still is, despite everything, the Cuban health system, but the striking mugshot images do help.

*Photos (internet) Mugshot of Luigi Mangione and bottom Che Guevara mugshot in Mexican jail.*

However, Chawawa missed the point altogether and questioning police violence is not something you would automatilaccly associate him with.

But the idea that the cops act with benevolence towards those who shoot CEOs if they are white is nothing short of identitarian rubbish. He is not the only one though.

There are many others from all sorts of liberal backgrounds who recoil in horror that someone might lash out, but shrug their shoulders every day when people die having been refused medical care.

Most people in the US have understood and identify with Mangione’s actions, not out of some idea that he might change the system, but out of their own frustration at how the system works. The plethora of memes on Facebook bears testament to this fact.

The killing of the CEO is extremely popular regardless of how effective a strategy it is.

Another comedian, this time from the US Josh Johnson, understood something that many liberals and chic rappers like Chawawa could not is that Mangione struck a chord.

Though Johnson unlike Chawawa is from the US and understands the US healthcare system. He mentioned the fact that many CEOs are eliminating their Linkedin accounts and that the media went into overdrive on how devastating it all was.

“I’m not gonna lie, this is how you can tell the news is owned by billionaires because the news was like, uh, ‘this devastating, terrifying, harrowing attack in New York’, and I’m not saying… look a murder did take place… I’m not saying it couldn’t have been listed as those things, I’m just saying ‘you’re the news!’

You play horrific stuff all the time. You’re the same news that when those pagers were going off in the Middle East, exploding, you were like ‘check this out!’”[4]

The same media pundits who were horrified, express no such horror as Israel carries out its genocide, they don’t even question it and yet we are expected to take their statements on Thompson and the sanctity of life at face value.

Johnson then made a point about the system and how it didn’t care about anything other than money, not even about Brian Thompson. The meeting Brian Thompson was going to when he was shot went ahead as planned, and on time.

Capitalism doesn’t miss a heartbeat when there is money at stake. All the fake outpouring of grief from the corporate world and the media is to be measured against that fact. Nothing stopped their ruthless pursuit of profit, not even the killing of one of their own.

It has brought to mind the film John Q starring Denzel Washington. It is a bit late to review a film some 22 years after its release, but it is more relevant now than when it was released.

The film deals with the father of a child who is taken to hospital only to find that the surgeons can’t operate on him as his insurance doesn’t cover what is needed.

It also turns out that the child’s condition could have been detected earlier, but the US health system missed it. Never was the film John Q so relevant. In his manifesto, he could just have said, Do you want to know why? Watch John Q. That would have been enough.

Films don’t exist in a void. When you see lots of films where the government is corrupt, or the CIA and FBI is in cahoots with big business, it indicates that a lot of people accept the basic premise of the film.

The same goes for dramas like John Q which was the highest grossing film for the President’s Day weekend release and took a total of US $71 million in the US and US $ 102.2 million world-wide.

Though it was not based on the real incident, in Canada (not the US), where Henry Masuka took the ER staff hostage in 1999 demanding immediate treatment for his son and was later killed by the cops exiting from the hospital, carrying an unloaded pellet gun.

In the film most of the public are sympathetic to John Q as are most sympathetic to Luigi Mangione in real life. The difference of course is that John Q managed to force them to operate on his son, making one small change at an individual level.

Mangione has made no changes at all, but he has reignited a debate on the issue and once again put not only the nature of the health system in the spotlight, but also the police and judicial system.

With various social media posts pointing out the huge effort put into finding him as opposed to arresting the billionaires who raped underage girls on Epstein’s island.

One of capitalism’s greatest successes in the late 20th and early 21st century is not how high the Dow Jones Index is at, or any of the other roulette tables known as stock exchanges.

Rather it isthat it has destroyed many collective organisations, co-opted others or through social partnership brought on board to one degree or another all the potential opposition movements and organisations.

Trade unions frequently fall into all three categories, social and environmental movements also and of course the huge deluge of NGOs that abound in all areas of social and economic life.

The organisations a Luigi Mangione type figure would have turned to decades ago are now part of the problem, implementing government policy, refusing to challenge the state as their salaries depend on government largesse and patronage and making sure their “clients” i.e. the poor, don’t step outside of the structures.

So, it is no surprise that Mangione would lash out the way he did, nor is it a surprise that he is so popular. The success of capitalism in convincing people there is no possibility of organised opposition is such that individual acts go viral.

Those liberals who wail against his actions are the same ones who make sure there is no collective response.

What is needed is not so much more killings but more people with Mangione’s resolve organising to brush not only the Thompsons of the world aside but also the co-opted organisations paid to keep them in check.

It is as Leon Trotsky once said “Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a manoeuvre, a blow with an agreement.”[5]

More relevant to Mangione is the killing of a Nazi diplomat in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan,[6] whose actions were used by the Nazis as a pretext for Kristallnacht.

Trotsky commented “A single isolated hero cannot replace the masses. But we understand only too clearly the inevitability of such convulsive acts of despair and vengeance. All our emotions, all our sympathies are with the self-sacrificing avengers…”[7]

So let us wish Mangione well in his trial.

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

[1] See https://www.instagram.com/munyachawawa/reel/DDwz9k5I78i/

[2] Washington Post (01/10/2022) D.C. sniper attacks: A timeline of the violence and victims https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/01/timeline-dc-sniper-attacks/

[3] Washington Post (18/12/2024) Police shootings database 2015-2024 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

[4] See

[5] Leon Trotsky (1932) What Next? Part III. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1932-ger/next03.htm

[6] Jacobin (09/11/2021) The Boy Who Shot a Nazi: An Interview with Joseph Matthews. https://jacobin.com/2021/11/herschel-grynszpan-kristallnacht-jewish-nazi-germany-joseph-matthews-interview

[7] Leon Trotsky (1939) For Grynszpan. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/xx/grnszpan.htm

PADDY HILL, THE BIRMINGHAM SIX AND THE CRAIGAVON TWO

On January 4, 2025January 22, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Britain, British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Diaspora, irish history, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

There were also others: the Guildford Four, Maguire Seven and Judith Ward, all innocent and all convicted in separate cases, mostly in 1974, in the same year that the Prevention of Terrorism Act was passed to silence the Irish community.

Yet others continue being framed, including the Craigavon Two.

*Paddy Hill in 2017 outside the Dublin court where the Jobstown case was being tried* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

The agitation for civil rights for the community of Catholic background in the British colony of the Six Counties in Ireland began in the last years of the 1960s and very soon people in Britain were marching in solidarity with those facing violent colonial repression in the Six Counties.

The Irish were the most numerous and longest-established migrant community in Britain and had become active in many social, trade union and political circles with the potential to educate and strongly affect the host community.¹ This was a problem for the British ruling class.

The jailing of so many people, in many cases obviously innocent, hundreds of arrests, thousands of detentions and interrogations with desertion by much of the British liberal and Left sector terrorised the Irish community so that many stepped away from solidarity campaigning.

That repression muted the Irish community’s solidarity actions until the 1981 Hunger Strikes brought them out again in thousands.

After his release in March 1991 Paddy Hill founded Mojo to campaign for framed innocent people and supported the campaign to free the Graigavon Two, another case that bears many of the hallmarks of a frame-up for political reasons, as famous barrister Michael Mansfield² commented:

“There is nothing more particular about it (the Craigavon Two case) than in all the other miscarriages and the same features appear in all these things.”³

PSNI Constable Steven Carroll was shot dead by an AK47 bullet on 9^th March 2009 in Craigavon, Armagh while responding to a fake crime call, the “dissident” group the Continuity IRA claiming responsibility.⁴ The arrests of John Paul Wooton and Brendan McConville followed.

Political cases in the Six Counties almost invariably are tried by the no-jury Diplock Court and the judge there refused both men bail. This might seem normal except that they did not go to trial until three years later – and kept in jail throughout the period.

Shortly before the eventual trial a man approached the PSNI saying he had seen McConville near the scene and on the evening of the killing of the Constable. This man was the only witness for the PSNI Prosecution but his partner, with him on the evening in question, refused to confirm his tale.

The night was raining and dark and the eyesight of the alleged witness was exposed as weak by the Defence. The coat he alleged McConville to be wearing was a different type, length and colour to that which the Prosecution was alleging McConville had been wearing on the night in question.

This ‘witness’ was also described by his father as having ‘a Walter Mitty character’ and the PSNI admitted paying him as an informant. An AK47 was recovered near the scene of the killing and the one fingerprint recovered from it did not match those of either Wooton or McConville.

Craigavon Two

There was no evidence against either man of having even handled the weapon never mind fired it, no evidence placing either at the scene apart from the dubious testimony placing one of them nearby. Incredibly, it might seem, nevertheless they were found guilty on 12^th May 2012.

McConville was sentenced to 25 years and Wooton to ten. Their appeal two years after conviction in May 2014 was unsuccessful and in fact the Prosecution used it to add another four years to Wooton’s sentence.

*Paddy Hill of the Birmgham Six and Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four, both sadly deceased, both innocent but served long years in jail, both supported the campaign of the Craigavon Two.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Paddy Hill was not the only former framed prisoner to support the campaign to free the Craigavon Two. Gerry Conlon was asked to examine the case and became a convinced and dedicated campaigner for the men, speaking out about it as late as a week before his untimely death.⁵

Paddy Hill and the rest of the Birmingham Six were framed by the British system and served 18 years in jail. In May this year McConville and Wooton will have reached their 16^th in jail. For how much longer will they and their close ones be tortured?

End.

Footnotes

1The Irish diaspora in Britain had provided the British working class with its anthem (The Red Flag), its classic novel (The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists) and two leaders of its first mass movement, the Chartists (Fergus O’ Connor and Bronterre O’Brien) and had also formed a strng section of the First International Workingmen’s Association led by Marx and Engels. In 1974 people of Irish background were estimated to form up to 10% of the population of some British cities.

2Mansfield led the appeal cases of the Birmingham Six and of the Guildford Four.

3Quoted in the campaign petition https://www.change.org/p/ccrc-the-craigavon-2-deserve-justice-now

4The same organisation had claimed the killing of two British soldiers at the Massarene Barracks, also in Co. Armagh, only days previously.

521 June 2014, a few months after his 60^th birthday.

Further information and petition

Click to access JFC2FINAL.pdf

Petition: https://www.change.org/p/ccrc-the-craigavon-2-deserve-justice-now

FRAME-UP OF THE CRAIGAVON TWO HIGHLIGHTED ACROSS IRELAND

The Public Health of a Nation and a Private Vengeance

On December 19, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Political Analysis, Public Health, social commentary, USALeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 10 December 2024

(Reading time: 6 mins.)
NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes

The murder of Brian Thompson the CEO of United Healthcare has sent shock waves throughout the US, if the media are to be believed.

There is consternation in some quarters that the motive for the murder may be that he was the CEO of a health insurance company.

*United Healthcare logo and late CEO Brian Thompson* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

This was evidenced by the message left behind of Delay, Defend, Depose on the shell casings, a reference to the tactics employed by insurance companies so as not to pay out on medical claims.

The right-wing media are understandably concerned that it is not a one-off and that others may take similar action against high-ranking insurance employees.

Some have even used the occasion to question, to a degree, the US private health care system, a system the Irish one is a pale copy of but intent on emulating as much as possible.

The company Thompson headed up is worth around US $550 billion, which is no small change. In the first nine months of 2024 it paid out US $9.6 billion to shareholders on total revenues of US $100.8 billion.[1]

Despite the company’s name alluding to health care, that is not how it makes its money. Its money is the result of people paying for a private health care plan and then either not claiming or being denied coverage for medical procedures from the routine to vital lifesaving procedures.

Health insurance companies are not in the business of curing, they don’t even provide health care, they are merely intermediaries between the surgeon’s scalpel and the patient, capable of inflicting a deeper cut than the sharpest instrument in the hands of the most skilled medical professional.

With all the finesse of a drunken mugger with a blunt pen knife. It is in the sickness and death business through non-payment.

Every year almost 650,000 people in the US are forced into bankruptcy by medical bills, representing over 60% of all personal bankruptcies. Nearly 80% of those who go bankrupt had medical insurance![2]

A recent report found that over 20 million people in the US owe at least US $220 billion in medical debt with the majority of that comprising of debts in excess of US $ 10,000 amongst just 2.9 million people.[3]

Some of the debt arises from the so-called deductibles, the point at which insurance kicks in, which has been on the rise for years, with in some cases people having to pay US $3,700 before the insurance company pays a penny.[4]

And then 20% of claims are denied, though depending on the company that may range from as low as 2% to 49%.[5]

United Healthcare logo (Photo sourced: Internet)

There is no way of looking at this, other than to conclude that health insurance companies are leeches, sucking the blood of the aged, the infirm and those who fall ill, for whatever reason.

In order to force people to pay health insurance the human cost of not doing so must be dramatic, traumatic, life threatening and unbearable. The threat of death or ill health is the whip with which they force people into line.

Thompson’s murder has touched a number of nerves. His company, the media and politicians expressed their sorrow and even rage at the killing. But as the BBC reported unofficial USA had a different reaction.

But online many people, including United Healthcare customers and users of other insurance services, reacted differently.

Those reactions ranged from acerbic jokes (one common quip was “thoughts and prior authorisations”, a play on the phrase “thoughts and prayers”) to commentary on the number of insurance claims rejected by UnitedHealthcare and other firms.

At the extreme end, critics of the industry pointedly said they had no pity for Thompson. Some even celebrated his death.

The online anger seemed to bridge the political divide.

Animosity was expressed from avowed socialists to right-wing activists suspicious of the so-called “deep state” and corporate power. It also came from ordinary people sharing stories about insurance firms denying their claims for medical treatments.[6]

Facebook is full of memes, celebrating, joking or otherwise supporting the killing. More than a reflection of some well thought out support for the murder, this is people lashing out at a system that condemns them to misery. It is a weapon of mass destruction.

Whilst many people with health insurance are frequently denied coverage for medically necessary interventions, there are others who have no health insurance at all. They simply can’t afford it or are not eligible.

Another report finds that as “many as 44,789 Americans of working age die each year because they lack health insurance, more than the number who die annually from kidney disease.”[7] That is nearly the same amount as soldiers who died throughout the entire Vietnam war.

So, given the nature of the system and the US $10 million that Thompson, vampire like, earned per year, it is very easy to have no sympathy for him. He was one of those grey men, that moved pieces of paper. He was like Eichmann, the banality of evil.

A man who never deliberately shot anyone or even gave an order to kill anyone, but nevertheless was responsible for a system that saw thousands die every year. The insurance companies are not idle bystanders simply taking advantage of a broken system.

The system is not broken, it works the way they intend it to work. Every year insurance companies spend millions on lobbying. In 2023, US $ 159 million was spent and in the first three quarters of 2024, US $117 million was spent on lobbying. [8]

US $10.7 million of that came from United Healthcare in 2023[9] and a further US $5.8 million reported in the first three quarters of 2024.[10] In the 2019-2020 election cycle, Thompson’s company donated US $ 4,285,464 to the Democrats and the Republicans. [11]

So, neither Thompson nor his fellow CEOs are innocent bystanders just doing a job, or making a buck as they like to say in the US. They are active participants in a system that relies on people falling ill and not being covered by their companies.

Death and disease are the lifeblood of the insurance industry, but only when people like Thompson do not pay out. Were they to payout for everyone and everything that US $9.8 billion dividend would be quickly whittled down.

It is easy not to feel any sympathy for Thompson, it is even easier perhaps to feel some sympathy and even empathy with the killer, if indeed his motive was related to a denial of coverage.

But knocking off CEOs of insurance companies won’t solve the problem; $9.8 billion dividends can take a hit and pay for increased security. The CEO will be replaced and at 10 million per year, there will be no shortage of candidates.

All it does is give some personal satisfaction to the killer and perhaps a sense of schadenfreude to the rest of us, as desperate times produce desperate reactions in many, reactions that in other times we might not have had.

Voting for the Democrats won’t solve it either. The insurance industry remained profitable and continued to not pay out under Obamacare as it did not challenge the private health industry or the insurance industry.

Turning your back on such politicians would be a first step and that includes Bernie Sanders who despite all his bluster would also fudge the issue.

Desperate times, desperate situations, desperate individual solutions that ultimately do not solve the problem, but give some people a sense that at least one of them got a taste of their own medicine. As The Guardian reported:

Though his survivors include a widow and two sons aged 16 and 19, Thompson’s death elicited a grim schadenfreude from many in the US who had been mistreated by the country’s rapacious health insurance industry. A private funeral for Thompson was planned for Monday.[12]

A private funeral, as there is unlikely to be some mass outpouring of public grief, but rather the unsightly spectacle of public anger was always a possibility at what in the end will be a moment of deep despair and grief for the family.

Though it should never be forgotten that deep despair and grief was the cut and thrust of how he made his money, his bread and butter. He and his family became rich through the deliberate inflicted anguish and misery on others.

But the only thing that will really give insurance companies a taste of their own medicine is the abolition of private health care and private insurance in all its forms, not just in medicine. And then putting the CEOs on trial for crimes against humanity.

Those thousands who die every year without insurance, those who suffer or die due to denial of coverage are not simple administrative situations. They are like the acts of Eichmann, the bureaucratic acts of grey men, who though never pulling a trigger, cause the deaths of millions.

Thompson’s epithet on his tombstone should read, Here Lies a Depraved Criminal. Loved by the Shareholders, Not Missed or Mourned by Many Others.

Thanks for reading Gearóid’s Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it. NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

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[1] See United Health Group Third Quarter Reports 2024 https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/content/dam/UHG/PDF/investors/2024/UNH-Q3-2024-Release.pdf

[2] Public Citizen (n/d) Medicare-for-All Prevents Medical Bankruptcies. https://www.citizen.org/article/medicare-for-all-prevents-medical-bankruptcies/

[3] Rakshit, S. et al. (2024) The burden of medical debt in the United States. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/#Share%20of%20adults%20who%20have%20medical%20debt,%20by%20health%20status%20and%20disability%20status,%202021

[4] CBS News (09/12/2024) Americans are paying more than ever for health insurance. Denials add to their pain. Aimee Pichi. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/health-insurance-costs-inflation-denials-luigi-mangione-united-healthcare/

[5] Ibíd.,

[6] BBC (07/12/2024) Killing of insurance CEO reveals simmering anger at US health system. Mike Wendling & Madeline Halpert. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2eeeep0npo

[7] PNHP (17/09/2024) Lack of Insurance to Blame for Almost 45,000 Deaths: Study. https://pnhp.org/news/lack-of-insurance-to-blame-for-almost-45000-deaths-study/#:~:text=As%20many%20as%2044%2C789%20Americans,to%20expand%20health%20insurance%20coverage.

[8] See https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying?cycle=2024&ind=F09

[9] See https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2023&id=D000000348

[10] See https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2024&id=D000000348

[11] See https://www.opensecrets.org/industries//indus?ind=H&cycle=2020

[12] The Guardian (10/12/2024) Suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting charged with murder by New York prosecutors. Edward Helmore. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/09/brian-thompson-shooting-suspect-mayor