Notes, commentary & analysis from within the captured neoliberal state. Empathy is genetically hardwired. Inequality isn't. Views are definitely personal.
1/ THREAD Over the course of the past 48 hours many of us have witnessed individuals and groups of the far right try to exploit the brutal murder of
#AislingMurphy
to further their own political goals.
A Weddell seal vocalizing while sleeping in Antarctica 💭 Weddells have a wide vocal repertoire, typically making such vocalizations underwater in social interactions.
Rare occasion captured by
@johnbozinov
Only in Ireland. Getting bus from Cork to Dublin and driver pulls into the side of the road. Wonder whats going on. Driver tells us hes stopping to feed a horse, and that the owner has been neglecting for several months.
Pure sound!
As the ICJ case is today brought by South Africa against Israel for its genocide in Gaza, it feels kinda personally and politically relevant to the small part of Ireland I grew up in.
Two names.
Majella O'Hare and
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh
A 🧵
Dorel Giurca 53, died of Covid19 on May 8th. He had been earning €10.80 an hour as a cleaner in St James’s Hospital in Dublin.
His wife Mirela who has Covid-19 said from her hospital bed "I don't know how I will live without him"
Dorel died keeping people safe for €10.80ph
Majella O'Hare was 12 years old, when she was shot in the back and murdered by a British paratrooper as she walked to confession in the church next to St Malachy's primary school.
The paras tried to blame the IRA, and threatened and intimidate those who went to aid Majella
Then, as in Israel now, the British had a well-oiled propaganda machine ready to roll out chaos-making introduce confusion & establish cover-up.
To date, Majella’s family and community have never got justice. Yet the truth of what happened was known and documented as we’ll see
And that truth-telling has played a part in the trajectory of someone playing a key role in the case against Israel.
Irish-Palestinian solidarity isn't just about the long arc of occupation and domination.
It's about recognising injustice through living with injustice.
It evokes some unfamiliar sensations to know that the life of Majella O'Hare played a specific part in the life choices of a barrister now working to halt the Israeli genocide in Gaza on a significant global stage. ♥️♥️♥️
#FreePalestine
#NoJusticeNoPeace
These are pages from a pamphlet written on witness testimonies from witnesses on the day Majella was murdered.
Including family and neighbours, some visiting the graves of relatives also murdered by state backed militia.
👇👇
But this really hit home.
“I often think about my mother’s response. Her words struck a very profound chord. And I’ve hung on to that pamphlet over all these years. It’s now framed above my work desk as a reminder of what brought me here.”
Walked through town. Every pub I passed had a crowd. Not too many 9 euro dinners on the go either.
When the shit show returns, remember IBEC and the alcohol lobby pushed for this.
There's Paddy 'dressed up' as a slave, whilst his mates 'dress up' as 'Ethiopians'. For a laugh cos casual racism is funny as f**k.
#suemepaddy
Streisand Effect much?
#IBelieveHer
A
@newstalk
journalist tweeting racist stereotypes, hours after Sunak was anointed British PM.
Miles of columns on Irish women's team for singing a song when they clearly not being intentionally offensive. Murphy deliberately downloaded and tweeted this.
Will there be silence?
These photos are from Raymond Murray's 'State Violence' which is based upon a collection of numerous pamphlets of testimony after British army shootings very often involving the murder of innocent young kids, women and men. It's hard to overstate the value of that work.
But we both had spotted, like many, that Irish human rights lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh was working on advising the South African case underway in the ICJ.
It was through our conversation they sent me this article.
It that mentioned Majella O'Hare
A few paragraphs stuck out
"I was 12 years old myself when I found a pamphlet about Majella O’Hare in one of my mother’s bookcases. I read it from cover to cover. I read about how she died in the arms of her father after he heard the shot and went running to her."
There's something quite specific about growing up in a place where you know in your inner being that the state can kill you and for the most part - and despite the endless campaigning that comes later - that that's just the way of the world.
With the mass sacking of workers across all of the tech/Comms sector amid record wealth hoarding by tech owners and investors, it's almost like yoga and beanbags and bottomless coffee aren't much of a replacement for active trade unionism after all.
Raymond, and people like him who carried out similar work bearing witness, listening to people, deciding not to look away from what was being inflicted in small communities in the face of propaganda is no small thing.
Telling the truth matters. These pamphlets matter
I was about 9 or 10 when I came across an original copy in our wee coal house shed. I read it cover to cover, at first in childish awe that it mentioned my school, my village, and the graveyard I visited my grandparent's grave. Then confusion, rage, sadness and fear. I cried.
Majella's family and many others in our community, thinking also of the Reavey family, have never got justice.
And yet through the bravery and humanity of people like Raymond Murray, a witness bearer and testimony collector, the truth of Majella's death is known.
After many many times quizzing my dad about what happened that day, and nearly a decade after he died himself, I found out I was a toddler in the car at the time. I have no memory of that. In fairness to my dad, he never told me that while he was alive. He was a good man.
Reading the description of someone close enough to my age being shot by soldiers at my school on a road I walked on passing Majella's memorial was utterly jarring. While it filled in details of something you knew happened, it was also other worldly.
As I was reading the pamphlet, a printed name stopped me. It was my dad's name. This was telling me my dad drove onto the scene within minutes of the shooting, andthe car was stopped by the paras and words were exchanged, before he and my mum were ordered to drive away.
That is incidental to the thread though. How I came to be talking about the pamphlet in the last week was with my sibling who is active in Palestinian solidarity in Berlin. (a whole other thread needed for that context)
But we both has spotted
A group of vigilante men demanding entry to a bus so that they can determine who can travel or live in area should resonate with anyone with ounce of history abt this island.
A minister pushing out responses like this on Twitter, first giving the impression of insight, then correcting that they don't know, and then just deleting the tweets without any comment, is not good practice.
Anti mask protestors on the Luas just now.
Hassling passengers who ask them to put on a mask, abusing women and shouting homophobic slurs
Led by Graham Casey and Alan Sweeney, regulars at far right hate feats.
Police monitored them from their demo, allowed free reign on Luas
Sherlock: Debate me
Harris: *silence
Sherlock: Debate me
Harris: *silence*
Sherlock: Debate me
Harris: *silence*
Sherlock: Debate me
Harris: alright
Sherlock: *runs for the hills*
#rtept
#8thref
#Together4Yes
Look, racist organisers need militant community responses.
Fuck them out of your pub
Fuck them out if your fitness clubs
Fuck them out if your GAA club
Fuck them out of mass
Fuck them out of the TV studios and radio panels.
Full solidarity with Martin Kenny.
"We were the Good Friday Agreement generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the spoils of peace. The spoils just never seemed to reach us"
Incredibly sad and deepest condolences to friends, family and peers.
RIP Lrya McKee
"No surrender to the IRA. Fuck the IRA. English to my dying day"
I could be wrong in this but hear me out.
Maybe Brexit wasn't just about fishing rights and GDPR....
#BrexitCelebration
#BrexitParty
#LateLate
People will get tested for social welfare at the airports so Covid 19 payments can be cut.
But there is no testing of Covid19 at the airports.
Says it all
This is what 'intelligence-led' policing & 'not making a martyr of anyone' looks like
This is what letting tech companies fill people's eyes with bigotry & hate looks like
It's what letting the same men organise hate for years without consequence looks like.
We deserve better
All Irish bands have pulled out of SXSW.
It's a no brainer that an Irish minister for arts should not break an Irish artists boycott.
It's akin to breaking a national artist's picket line.
Update: ALL Irish bands have now cancelled their official SXSW performances this week.
That makes 12 Irish & Northern Irish acts to cancel.
In lieu of the planned Irish showcases, the artists will make a joint statement at the Velveeta Room at 8pm on…
The Irish state was very happy to use a compulsory purchase order to push though a pipeline for Royal Dutch Shell (and give them the gas for free)
But it won't use a CPO to build a hospital to provide proper maternity healthcare.
Just do it.
A Muslim child and her cousin where attacked in Dundrum. The 14 year old was wearing an hijab and she had it ripped from her head whilst being beaten, kicked and having eggs thown at her.
Days after Gemma oD called for people to 'burn every hijab you see'
Sunday Independent poll on preference on Irish unity has three choices.
- A united Ireland within the Commonwealth (e.g. Canada, Australia, New Zealand)
-The status quo
- Not sure
A united independent republic isn't offered as an option?
The National Party got politely but firmly ran out of Phibsboro this evening after locals made it clear that the community doesn't take kindly to fascists spreading hate.
The despondent canvassers headed for the garda station as passers-by told the NP losers to jog on home.
Today is the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 9th of November 1938, when Nazis organised anti-Jewish pogroms.
The 'Ireland is full' brigade arranged a demo today at the Dail.
Multiple speakers shouting about 'the Jews'.
Justin Barrett dressed in an SS overcoat.
#Irexit
movement is orchestrated by
Ex British soldiers
Ex BNP spokepeople
Ex UKIP spokespeople
Ex Nigel Farage advisors
British anti semites
British white nationalists
They can wrap a tricolor on it, but cut the skin of
#irexit
it'll bleed British right wing red white & blue.
Gemma O Doherty likely to get less than 4% of the vote in Fingal. Given the abysmal low turn out this adds another impressive failure to a political career, notable for its impressive failures.
More NB, the result is a clear rejection of her politics of hate, division and lies!
In a story on Irish people voting in the UK elections, 20 out of 23 people interviewed stated they won't be voting Boris or the Conservatives.
This is how the Irish Times headlines the piece.
Media orgs are part of their own demise when they run garbage politics like this
Far right Twitter accounts using the vicious stabbing in
#Carrigaline
should be understood for what it is.
The NP, Croft and multitude faceless Twitter crew actually *want* a 'race war' based on the import of US far right ideas. It's part of their strategy. Don't fall for it.
Looking forward to David Quinn's piece tomorrow.
Especially given how Russian oligarchs money has long flowed into the network of Christian fundamentalist and far right hate groups
Including the Iona institute, who Quinn runs
#Ukraine
The fact the Cheltenham isn't cancelled shows the deep power that betting organisations like Paddy Power have.
Parasites on society, willing to facilitate wider sickness and death so long as money cash profit rolls in
Philip Dwyer telling a TG4
team in Mullingar today, that it wasn't himself filmed racially abusing a taxi driver in Dublin.
Alongside the footage of Philip Dwyer racially abusing a taxi driver in Dublin.
Imagine being a white supremacist in Ireland and thinking you were the edgy and radical ones, and not actually part of the same white supremacist colonial movement that occupied this country for 800 years because 'memes.'
Fuck off.
ExBritish soldier Rowan Croft on a livestream tonight has called for a militia to murder politicians in Ireland.
He called for militia and 'defence forces' to murder SF members and the wider 'republican movement' and 'People Before Profit.' In his stream he commended Gript Media
These three men abusing passengers in Luas, calling women ugly and firing slurs at passengers.
Utter scumbags, who try to intimidate anyone standing up to them.
'patriots' me bollix
Today marks the 75th anniversary of La Liberazione - defeat of fascism & the Nazi occupation of Italy on April 25, 1945.
We are all indebted to the partisan movements who took the fight to fascists.
#NeverForget
#25aprile
#festadellaliberazione
#BellaCiao
"The venue’s deal with Three Ireland will see its iconic frontage overhauled and painted grey"
Could you get a more on point description of late capitalism's extractive relationship with 'culture' in the capital
Stellar reporting from Gript. A series of cars, buses & a luas all mysteriously exploded into flames. No mention of the bigoted mobs who travelled into the city centre to riot. No mention of the main men - all known to Gript's team - who called the mob onto the street tonight.
1/ This is the BBC News Special broadcast on Sunday, 30th Jan 1972.
It is 11mins long so I've had to split it over several tweets
Part one
#BloodySunday50
✖️Entire Human Rights Team
✖️Entire Curation team
✖️Entire Ethics, Transparency, & Accountability team
✖️Head Public policy
✖️Moderation and dis/misinfo teams.
#TwitterLayoffs
seems less random once you zoom out a bit.
All big key teams that brought needed friction to chaos.
Context on the people here. Dee Wall/Dolores Webster who has made multiple calls for violence against politicians including stamping on the head of the president
Andy Heasman, a violent trad Catholic involved in hate campaigns against trans and queer people.
Context matters
In the last four hours there has been no hate fuelled disinformation pumped out by Facebook *and* Zuckerberg losses $7,000,000,000 in personal wealth in that time.
Makes ya think.....
#facebookdown