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The Saker

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Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
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offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
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For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

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Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

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Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

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ULA must take itself seriously

category national | anti-capitalism | other press author Friday December 02, 2011 12:38author by Anne McShane Report this post to the editors

Anne McShane argues that the United Left Alliance must take a lead

Anne McShane writes about the cutbacks, the DCTU march and the inadequacies of the fughtback campaign to date. On November 26 2,000 demonstrators marched in Dublin against the December 5-6 budget. This budget marks year two of a four-year plan to slash public spending and raise taxes - all part of stringency measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund/European Central Bank 2010 bailout.

The numbers on this year’s demonstration were tiny compared to last November. Then a mass demonstration was organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. An estimated 150,000 braved snow and ice to show their opposition to the strategy of draconian austerity. Militant speeches were given by the president of ICTU, Jack O’Connor, and its secretary, David Begg. Both pledged their active and wholehearted resistance to the IMF/ECB deal and vowed to defeat it.

Now things are very different as far as the union bureaucrats are concerned. Last year a Fianna Fáil/Green government was in power. Deeply unpopular because of the banking bailouts and political corruption, it was teetering on the verge of collapse and an election was imminent. Labour Party leaders were promising to stand up for the ordinary people and to resist all cuts if they were elected. It was clear that they would enter government with the rightwing Fine Gael, but Eamonn Gilmore, the Labour leader, promised that his party would protect the poor. ICTU leaders urged the working class to vote Labour.

In the midst of this period of working class suffering, overseen by Labour and Fine Gael, the ICTU still supports Gilmore and co. Eugene McGlone, the new ICTU president, speaking at Saturday’s demonstration, bemoaned the government’s short-sightedness and its failure to appreciate that austerity policies do not work. He appealed to their sense of fairness and decency and proposed the adoption of the ICTU’s pre-budget submission which is “based on reality, not pie-eyes schemes”.[http://du103w.dub103.mail.live.com/mail/RteFrame_16.0.1877.0920.html?dl=dl#2] This document proposes various measures for economic growth with very modest suggestions for an increase in corporation tax. It aims to rehabilitate Irish capitalism in the middle of an unprecedented world depression. Not that the government will take much notice of the ICTU’s appeal. The demonstration on Saturday was originally to be a United Left Alliance event. But, worried at the lack of union support, the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party created yet another campaign - the Alliance Against Austerity - and pulled in Dublin Council of Trade Unions (DCTU) and some sections of Sinn Féin. This was all done without any involvement or input from the ordinary membership. We were left in the dark for weeks as to whether a demonstration would even take place and there was very little work done to build it.

This decision to go for a broader campaign did not leave the ULA in a better situation politically, as the rally was dominated by the likes of McGlone. The DCTU did not mobilise significant forces and the march was made up mainly of the left, particularly the ULA and its constituent parts. But the ULA had no speaker in the main rally. And, to add insult to injury, when the speeches were finally over, DCTU vice-chair Mick O’Reilly announced that the main event was now over and would be followed by a ULA assembly. Anybody who wanted to stay for that could. He and his comrades folded up their banners and left, making it clear that they wanted no further part of this gathering. This caused confusion and a lot of the crowd understandably thought it was all over and left.

There followed what was meant to be an open mike session. The chair announced people should contact the organisers and give their names to take part - everybody would have their say. In fact it was almost completely orchestrated and dominated by the SWP. Although a couple of Socialist Party members spoke, including MEP Paul Murphy, the other contributors were in the main SWP - or any ‘Joe Soaps’ they thought would not say anything controversial. Names were carefully filtered under the supervision of SWP leader Kieran Allen....

 

Related Link: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004640
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