The Irish people are foremost amongst Western nations in
terms of popular sympathy with the Palestinians. Yet this is not reflected in
the official polices of the Irish government.
The record of the Irish government on the genocide in Gaza has been
abysmal. There have been no moves on the
level of diplomacy, trade or international law.
The expulsion of the Israeli ambassador; the imposition of trade
sanctions and support for the genocide case against Israel in the ICJ are the bare
minimum we should have expected. Yet there’s been nothing even approaching
this. (read more)
Censorship
when it raises its ugly head, does so in a similar fashion to its past
incarnations, though with new twists and turns that perhaps take us by
surprise. However, it should come as no
surprise to see that voices on Palestine are being shut down, though the recent
German police assault on an international conference in Berlin was a major
escalation in government attempts to criminalise those critical of the
genocidal regime that holds sway in Tel Aviv and the white supremacist
philosophy that is Zionism. (read more)
I
accepted that the review itself was of value in raising a number of important
issues and restricted my complaint to a slanderous obfuscation by the book's
author, accepted by the reviewer, that claimed that my organisation, Peoples
Democracy, had advocated a theory of Unionist workers as Colons. Micheál
grudgingly accepts my point, but goes on to make the case again. Did not Michael
Farrell, in a pamphlet, The Battle
for Algeria, sail close to the wind, he asks? (read more)
The anointing of Simon Harris as the new Taoiseach was a decision taken by a deeply
unpopular party and was not the result of the balance of forces resulting from
a general election. The south of Ireland
has a parliamentary system, which means that it is parliament and not the
people who chose the leader, though the only eligible candidates are those who
have been elected to this parliament by the people. None of this formal democracy actually comes
across as democratic. (read more)
Pity poor Dr Hilary Cass, the eminent paediatrician charged
with managing an independent review of NHS gender services for young people,
whose final report was published this week. Given the hair-trigger
sensibilities of interested parties, she seems to have been unable to state
unambiguously that now-popular treatments for young people confused or
distressed by their sexed bodies are blatant quackery. (read more)
A recently finalised agreement on public sector pay in January had ICTU
spokespeople describing the talks as "difficult". In bureaucratic terms this means a bad deal. In a telling phrase the officials said that: "the new agreement, valued at 10.25% over 2.5 years, represented
the “absolute maximum achievable” through negotiations at this time." The idea that there might be some mode of advance
other than negotiations no longer occurs to the union bureaucracy. (read more)
The 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in April 2023 was met with jubilation and celebration in Belfast. Past and present taoisigh (Irish government leaders), British prime ministers, US presidents and a raft of academics were brought together by the local universities and media in an extended celebration.Yet all is not well. If the decay of the agreement is of concern, the universal failure of academia, of the press, the trade unions and political parties to acknowledge such decay is astounding. John McAnulty provides that missing critique and suggests how Ireland will move beyond this historic inflection to fulfill the revolutionary implications of its initial struggle for freedom.
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10 April 2023
25 Years On: in the debris of the Good Friday Agreement
The 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement is being
marked by assemblies of the great and the good. Joe Biden rushes through the
North, avoiding attention to the barren political landscape. On RTE television
the ghost of Bertie Ahern dominates, while the high point will be the upcoming visit
of Bill and Hilary Clinton and Tony Blair to a celebration at Queens
University.
No-one will remark on the unsavoury character of
these saints of peace. Even less will anyone notice that the fine mansion that
they built is now in ruins. (read more)
Defend a woman’s right to tell
the truth - 20/10/21
People before Profit student
society calls for ‘no-platforming’ of feminists and LGB rights activists -
25/03/21
Puberty Blockers: An
unregulated live experiment on children - 17/04/21
Vulnerable children being seen
at Gender Clinics - 06/03/21
On the Reactionary Roots of
Queer Theory - 28/02/21
A new front in human
liberation, or a medical scandal in the making? - 09/01/21
Amnesty International Ireland opposes the right to free speech -
06/11/20
Gender Identity Ideology, the Trans Rights
Movement, and
homophobia - 27/09/20
Socialism, Feminism and transgender politics -
07/09/20
All COVERAGE
Socialist Democracy Statement on Coronavirus pandemic - 28/03/20
The promise and reality of vaccination -28/03/21
Herd immunity - myth and reality - 30/11/20
Coronavirus pandemic - a deepening health and economic crisis - 28/07/20
Protest, class conflict and Covid 19 - 06/05/20
Unionism’s silent shift on the pandemic
- 16/05/20
Ideology and Science - 05/05/20
Big Pharma in Ireland - 24/04/20
Europe and the pandemic - 09/04/20
All COVERAGE
Rayner O’Connor Lysaght Presente!
Tributes from
International
Viewpoint
Irish
Labour History Society
Socialist
Voice
Sráid
Marx
Emancipation,
Liberation & Self-determination
Workers
Liberty
Irish
Republican Marxist History Project
The
Pensive Quill
Irish
Left Archive
Obituray from the Irish Independent
A selection of writings by Rayner can be found online at:
Socialist Democracy
Arguments for a Workers' Republic
The Encyclopedia of Trotskyism
Red Mole Rising
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