Partially fuelled, no doubt, by US and Saudi money and weapons supplied for the fight in Syria, ISIS, a branch of Al Qaeda has routed the Iraqi military in a series of offences across the country, taking control of significant parts of the country. These are the exact same people fighting for freedom and democracy with US and Saudi backing just across the border in Syria. The staggering cynicism of US policy in the middle east and the blatant doublespeak of their media is laid bare by these recent events in Iraq in the last few days. In an article posted to WSWS, Bill van Auken picks through the wreckage ... read full story / add a comment

PEOPLES NEWS – Issue 103 hot off the Press!
Table of Contents below

This fortnightly journal contains comment on developments in the EU from an Irish and democratic perspective

Back issues of the newsletter are available from the website http://www.people.ie/english5.html

The Peoples Movement Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/peoplesmovementireland?ref=hl
Go on give us a like! ... read full story / add a comment

THE PEOPLES NEWS contains comment on developments in the EU from an Irish and democratic perspective

Back issues of the newsletter are available from the website http://www.people.ie/english5.html

The Peoples Movement Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/peoplesmovementireland?ref=hl
... read full story / add a comment

broadsheet.ie have put together a great timelline for the activities of Irish water thus far. It makes for very interesting reading. That is, If you are into reading about how our lords and masters and their capitalist friends are taking us for a ride at our own expense and the loss of what should be very basic state run services that should never be run as for profit services. After reading this expect it to be your blood and not the kettle that is boiling! ... read full story / add a comment

Its worth pointing out that Roberts is an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy, so hes hardly a loony leftie. He is however a Democrat in the real meaning of the word. KM

Reality on the ground in Ukraine contradicts the incompetent and immoral Obama regime’s portrait of Ukrainian democracy on the march. To the extent that government exists in post-coup Ukraine, it is laws dictated by gun and threat wielding thugs of the neo-Nazi, Russophobic, ultra-nationalist, right-wing parties. Watch the video of the armed thug, Aleksandr Muzychko, who boosts of killing Russian soldiers in Chechnya, dictating to the Rovno regional parliament a grant of apartments to families of protesters. http://rt.com/news/radical-opposition-intimidating-tech...-882/

Read about the neo-nazis intimidating the Central Election Commission in order to secure rule and personnel changes in order to favor the ultra-right in the forthcoming elections. Thug Aleksandr Shevchenko informed the CEC that armed activists will remain in CEC offices in order to make certain that the election is not rigged against the neo-nazis. What he means, of course, is the armed thugs will make sure the neo-nazis win. If the neo-nazis don’t win, the chances are high that they will take power regardless. ... read full story / add a comment

Fascist elements are among the protesters in Kiev. They are armed and are shooting at police. They are using the cover of protesters to advance a fascist coup.

Violent clashes between police and protesters yesterday in Kiev mark an escalation of the campaign by the pro-Western opposition to oust Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The opposition, backed by the United States and German governments, aims to install a far-right regime committed to integrating Ukraine within the European Union and implementing its demands for austerity measures.

Bloody street-fighting erupted when opposition protesters marched on parliament, demanding it pass a planned law to decrease Yanukovych’s powers. When the vote went against them, the opposition supporters attacked the headquarters of the ruling Party of the Regions. Clashes between police and protesters erupted and spread throughout the city. ... read full story / add a comment

Stephen Donnelly, in an aticle in the independent has highlighted the government's complete lack of interest in the 13,000 mortgage holders from Irish Nationwide. In an excellent article he bares the reality of how current government's neo liberal ideology takes precedence over the suffering of families in mortgage arrears and how foreign vulture capitalists are allowed to get a large discount on these houses but the families actually living in them and supporting the local economy are prevented from getting the option of such a discount ... read full story / add a comment

US state dept diplomat Nuland "mutt" and Geoff are caught out nicely, in a hacked and leaked phone call. In what is probably the most brazen feat of brass necked hypocrisy I've ever seen, the mainstream media have tried to make it about how awful the russians are for spying on them. And this after the Snowden revelations!! "Fuck the EU" they say. But by far the worst thing about this is how they treat this uprising they are stoking with the aid of far right fascist thugs trained by NATO on the Russian border, like it's just some sort of a chess game.
And of course the EU don't care much about the insult because they are all on exactly the same page, as the second part of the transcript clearly illustrates. Read on.... ... read full story / add a comment

Asheville Fm radio, based in western North Carolina, aired a fascinating interview with an anarcho-syndicalist named Denys, from the Autonomous Worker’s Union in Ukraine. In the interview, Denys debunks many of the myths surrounding the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and explains motives behind the stories and propaganda being circulated around the protests.

Why is the Free Association Agreement with the EU (which would mostly benefit the ultra-rich oligarchs of Ukraine) deliberately being
construed as actual integration? Ukrainian leaders backed off from signing it at the last minute. Meanwhile, Russia is trying to pull
Ukraine into her Customs Union by offering Kyiv a deal for promised purchases of billions of euro of Ukrainian products, and a 30 percent
discount on Russian Natural Gas.

Denys explains that when the protests broke, the political class of Ukraine was taken by surprise. However, the opposition, a coalition
leaning towards far-right (with fascist Svoboda being the most visible of them all) quickly regrouped and turned the street into their PR
machine. The opposition had massive demonstrations in their plans, as fascist Svobodas leader declared in an interview in March 2013. Evidence emerged of the opposition leaders plans to overthrow the current government with the financial and political support of Germany’s
conservative Angela Merkel, the EU leaders from Brussels, and with visible support of the United States, whose envoy, conservative John
McCain was the guest star of the Euromaidan.

... read full story / add a comment

This report is republished from the WSM site and covers the recent local uprising in the city of Burgos -north of Madrid, in Spain. There has been no press coverage about it but it concerns the case very similar to Turkey last year, where people were so fed up with local politicians and developers that they finally snapped on the latest effort to rip them off. The protest has now spread to over 45 cities in Spain. We should be learning lessons from these people and doing likewise given the recent scandals here and the ongoing austerity and other burdens placed on people in Ireland and which has brought many people to almost breaking point.

Just over a week ago, if you were thinking of cities in Spain most likely to host the start of a proletarian uprising, Burgos would have come pretty much at the bottom of the list. A sleepy, socially conservative, traditionally ultra-Catholic city in the Northern Castille plain, Burgos was up until now mostly known for its Cathedral and other mediaeval real estate and a local sausage uncannily reminiscent of Clonakilty black pudding. But since the initial clashes between police and protestors in the working class district of Gamonal on the night of Friday 10th January, Burgos has seen nights of continual rioting, a veritable military occupation by riot police, and solidarity demonstrations this week around 46 cities in Spain, including two successive nights of demos in the capital Madrid, resulting in clashes with the police, arrests and injuries. All this supposedly over a plan to redevelop the main road through Gamonal into a tree-lined Boulevard. ... read full story / add a comment

Luke Ming Flanagan had done his research. He knew that the word ‘piss’ was not a banned word within the rarified and sensitive environs of Dail Eireann. He had checked out the Consumer Act in order to bolster his political point.

He then planned and carried out a very clever and effective political stunt to guarantee maximum publicity.

Flanagan wanted to highlight the fact that the Government was planning to charge people for the ‘privilege’ of drinking contaminated water. ... read full story / add a comment

The plan for a huge number of wind turbines is not just running into trouble. It seems it could turn out to be a bit of a white elephant. The drive is coming from the UK because the population density is so high they are running into continual problems with objections and as a result they are unable to meet their own promised obligations for the percentage of renewable energy. But they have done a deal with the Irish government to use the 'empty' midlands of Ireland to build thousands of wind turbines and transfer the power by cable to the UK.

To many these seems like corporate colonialism and the though of all the billions in investment with the chance to then quickly sell complete wind farms on has all the worst kinds of people involved and the Irish government and their friends have been so eager to get hands on this that the Irish government has incredibly not even carried out a Cost Benefit Analysis of the whole thing.

With wind farms if the site is not windy enough and too many turbines are put on the site, it can result in a situation where they do not meet the targets for power output and hence revenue and it can result in the venture not covering its costs properly -i.e. making a loss. This has happened quite a bit in the interior locations of various countries as the strongest and most consistent wind generally occurs on coastal sites. And Colm McCarthy, the ‘Bord Snip’ economist, has already described the drive to build wind farms all over Ireland as another potential ‘Nama’. ... read full story / add a comment

There is a new squat in Dublin up in Grangegorman where all the DITs will be moving in the next few years. It has been setup by a group of political squatters. They now face eviction from the row of empty, unused, rotting houses in Lower Grangegorman and they are asking people to come and help resist.

- 300,000 empty houses in Ireland, 5,000 people homeless --

The WSM caught up with them for an interview last week to find out more.... ... read full story / add a comment

A new report by Human Rights Watch once again confirms that Hellfire rockets lack selectivity and exterminate women and children more often than they hit Al-Qaeda associates. Last month the UN urged the US to reveal data on civilian drone casualties.

The prominent human rights organization has released a detailed 102-page report on the US drone attacks and airstrikes in Yemen against militants of the Al-Qaeda wing in the country simultaneously with another human rights organization Amnesty International issuing a report on US drone strikes in Pakistan.

Basically, the HRW report has maintained an already widely-known fact that civilians die too often in reported ‘surgical’ strikes which is unacceptable even by the ‘law of war. ... ... read full story / add a comment

Mother Agnes continues her investigations into the fake viseos. Full text at link.

A new version of a study produced by Mother Agnes, a catholic nun, pointing to a number of fabricated videos used as evidence of complicity by the Assad government in a recent chemical attack is in the works, she told RT. The report by the Christian nun, Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib, mother superior of St. James Monastery in Qara, Syria, has alleged that many videos featuring supposed victims of the chemical weapons attack in the Syrian village of Guta in August were in fact staged and scripted. The question for the nun now revolves around the “humanitarian” question of what happened to the children featured in the video. “Those children are the children of whom? From where did you get them? Why are you using them and manipulating them?” ... read full story / add a comment

Critique started in May 1973. It was announced at the first national conference at Imperial College, a conference addressed among others by Ernest Mandel, Ralph Miliband and Hillel Ticktin. Some 500 people attended. The first issue had a print run of 2500 which quickly sold out. The issues of the 70s used to sell around 4-5000 copies very largely in bookshops in the UK, the Continent of Europe and the USA. As the USSR began to mutate the focus of the journal changed to a critique of capitalism. Throughout its focus remained on political economy and the need to reinvigorate Marxism given its Stalinist degradation.

As the first Virtual Special Issue of Critique, we have selected articles which have either formed the basis of the work of the journal or which complement it. In the first instance Critique sought to develop a more credible modern Marxist theory of the USSR and of the Cold War. With that it needed to update the theory of a socialist/Communist society. In turn, the journal turned to a critique of existing Marxist theory of capitalism and so to the question of decline and to finance capitalism. ... read full story / add a comment

Interesting and thought provoking post from the excellent zero hedge site making some interesting points about what being poor in the US entails and how the poor are hit disproportionately hard by the way our capitalist blood sucking institutions operate in today's society. Although the article is US centric, much of it also applies here in our society which has been largely colonised and diseased by american society and its "values" or lack therof ... read full story / add a comment

A seemingly minor issue to the Turkish government at least has sparked huge protests in Istanbul and in other cities in Turkey where plans to remove a city public park and replace it with a shopping mall has triggered in the space of 24 hours has triggered the protests. It seems everywhere people are fed up with the arrogance of politicians and their corrupt moneyed backers.

The Erdoğan government’s dictatorial approach to town planning has awakened a sleeping giant. In the space of 24 hours a simple protest over a park’s future has become a nationwide rebellion against authoritarian government, violent police and creeping Islamisation of a famously secular society. rabble’s men on the ground ... read full story / add a comment

Full text at link.

The following is an interview with Adel Omar, from the foreign bureau of the Syrian Communist Party-Bakdash. The interview was conducted following an international peace conference held in Istanbul and Antakya, Turkey, April 25-28 and was published in the May issue of the Communist Party of Turkey’s monthly publication. The translation from Turkish is by Liberation News.

Can you describe the position of the Syrian Communist Party toward the imperialist aggression against Syria?

First and foremost, as the Syrian Communist Party, we believe that the course of events in Syria is neither a revolution nor a civil war. It is very clear that what has been taking place in Syria has been in accordance with the imperialist plans. It is not possible for us to define a process where NATO has been involved as a revolution. Besides, it is not the case that different sectors of the people of Syria are fighting one another. On the contrary, our people are resisting the imperialist forces together.

It is true that the people of Syria have demands and needs that need to be met, but the way to achieve this is not through destroying everything that belongs to the state of Syria. At the moment, our country is under attack, and achieving unity among the people to defend our homeland is what needs to be done first. At this point, we think it is especially crucial for the government to respond to the demands and the needs of the people. In order to be able to establish a solid resistance front against the imperialist attack, we believe a top priority for the government is to provide for the basic needs of the people, including food and medicine. Only then can the struggle of the people against imperialism be unrelenting. ... read full story / add a comment

Well respected activist and contributor to indymedia was shot and injured by the Israeli military while filming a protest in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank in Palestine on good Friday. He is ok but sustained a nasty injury to his arm. ... read full story / add a comment