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The Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard

offsite link Alternative Copy of thesaker.is site is available Thu May 25, 2023 14:38 | Ice-Saker-V6bKu3nz
Alternative site: https://thesaker.si/saker-a... Site was created using the downloads provided Regards Herb

offsite link The Saker blog is now frozen Tue Feb 28, 2023 23:55 | The Saker
Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog.? We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below).?

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Public Inquiry
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Public Inquiry >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Promoting Human Rights in Ireland

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

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The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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offsite link Non-Crime Hate Incidents Surge in Half of Police Forces Despite Government Crackdown Mon Dec 23, 2024 17:46 | Will Jones
The number of?non-crime hate incidents?recorded by police has surged in half of Britain's forces despite attempts by the previous Government to crack down on the practice, official data show.
The post Non-Crime Hate Incidents Surge in Half of Police Forces Despite Government Crackdown appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Reeves?s Simplistic Thinking Spawned This Budget from Hell Mon Dec 23, 2024 15:44 | David Craig
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The post Reeves’s Simplistic Thinking Spawned This Budget from Hell appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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British car-buyers are turning away from new vehicles in their droves and keeping their reliable old petrol models going for far longer as Labour's Net Zero war on affordable motors heats up.
The post British Drivers Steering Away From New Cars In Their Droves appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Communist Party of the Irish Republic Statement: The GFA Stains our Hands with the Blood of Innocents

category national | anti-war / imperialism | press release author Monday December 10, 2012 17:00author by CPIR - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachta Report this post to the editors

The Good Friday Agreement was not the making of peace between the peoples of Ireland and Britain. It was the Irish comprador class returning fully into the bloody fold of empire.

In 1940, Marshal Pétain and the Vichy Régime quickly discovered that peace with an occupying imperial power is never the peace of being left alone. It is, in fact, the obligation to join the imperial project of the occupier. And so it is in the Ireland of the Good Friday Agreement.

The GFA was not peace between the peoples of Ireland and Britain. Irish and British people have been on good terms for centuries, often held together by bonds of marriage and personal friendship. The GFA was the spectacle of an official peace between the ruling Irish comprador class and the British ruling class. Not that these two ruling classes were ever at war, but, the particular circumstances of the emergence of the 26 County Free State meant that the Southern statelet was forced to maintain a level of neutrality in International affairs, and to maintain a claim of sovereignty over the six occupied counties of north eastern Ireland. This contradiction was sometimes the source of official tension between Dublin and London. But, more importantly for the Irish comprador class - it found itself at one remove from the loot and spoils of empire.

The GFA changed all that. With the dropping of the international territorial dispute, the Southern comprador class has openly and wholeheartedly joined with the agenda of the Anglo-Zionist empire. Needless to say, the Irish people, as a whole, have been drawn into this obscene collaboration.

One of the first manifestations of Ireland's post GFA role in the imperial order was the renting out of Shannon Airport for the Genocide of the People of Iraq. One million Iraqi people were exterminated in a vicious war of conquest - and the 26 county statelet collected a monthly rent on the slaughter. Nor did it balk at it's territory being used for kidnapping and torture, as "rendition flights" passed, without control, through Shannon. Shannon Airport, that had once been a symbol of pride and progress for the Irish people, has now become a place of shame, a place made unclean by the silver price of innocent blood.

In July, 2008, former Irish Republican, and current Crown Minister, Martin McGuinness, along with Baron Alderdice of Knock, were sent to Iraq to try to convince insurgents to surrender their weapons to the Anglo-Saxon occupation forces. Since then, McGuinness and Adams have traveled the Globe, trying to convince native peoples, such as the Palestinians and the Basques, to lay down their weapons, and join the Anglo-Zionist order. Only this week, we saw the sickening sight of McGuinness kissing the blood soaked war criminal, Hillary Clinton. We could see from his smiles and body language that he is overjoyed to be included in the powerful ranks of the servants of imperial butchery. It may not be called Pax Britannica any more, but, as well we know, the British Empire did not end in 1945 - it's capital just moved to Washington.

The Free State régime has been fully complicit in supporting pro-imperialist terrorism in Libya and Syria. Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eamon Gilmore, has attended "Friends of Syria" meetings, which discuss the imposition of a US puppet régime in Damascus - by the use of terrorist force. The fact that the Syrians themselves voted for a new Constitution, earlier this year, by a margin considerably higher than the support Barack Obama gained in the US Presidential election, is dismissed as irrelevant. On the day that Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi was brutally murdered, along with up to one hundred other unarmed Prisoners of War, RTÉ News held a studio celebration of this war crime. When Enda Kenny was challenged by Joe Higgins on the official support for the murder of defenseless POWs, Kenny passed the challenge off as a joke. The idea that murdering POWs could be regarded as a crime simply seems beyond him. Kenny's party, of course, has a long record of supporting - and carrying out - the murder of unarmed POWs. Last Saturday, the 8th of December, Republicans remembered the executions of four of the most noble patriots any nation has ever been blessed with: Liam Mellows, Rory O'Conner, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett. Today, RTÉ acts as a cheerleader for murderous sectarian gangs in Syria - going so far as to describe suicide bombers, who target civilians, as "activist bombers."

The signing of the GFA has led to the complete collapse of the moral compass of large sections of the Irish people. The time when Irish people were proud of a neutral status in world affairs is now gone. We profit openly and greedily from the bloody crimes of empire. Che Guevara gave a speech to the United Nations in 1964. Éamon de Valera gave a speech to the League of Nations in 1932. Irish people today would be shocked at how similar both speeches are. That any Irish official would deliver such a speech, post GFA, would be unthinkable.

This is where the GFA has brought us - to the point where standing with the Wretched of the Earth, even symbolically, is unthinkable. Instead, we crawl at the heart of imperial darkness.

Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachta
Nollaig 10iú 2012

Related Link: http://soviet.ie/
author by fredpublication date Sat Dec 15, 2012 08:37author address author phone Report this post to the editors

didn't say I approved. Just that people should not be tricked into bringing divisive religion into this and since "officially" there is currently a shared parliament in the six counties, both bits of material should have their time flying over the building. It's not a very important point. Tiocfaidh ar la, but we need to be patient at this juncture. We need to pick our battles. Squabbling over a stupid flag is a bad choice.

author by An Draighneán Donn - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachtapublication date Sat Dec 15, 2012 05:34author address author phone Report this post to the editors

As for the flag of the artificial British state - the kingdom united by terrorist violence - it is a racist, supremacist flag. It is the symbol of the subjugation of the Celtic nations to the Anglo-Saxon. It is also a symbol of racist, imperialist, genocide, all over the world. No decent person should tolerate the Butcher's Apron.

author by An Draighneán Donn - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachtapublication date Sat Dec 15, 2012 05:27author address author phone Report this post to the editors

The British state rules \ misrules the occupied six counties. There is no shared rule with the 26 county comprador free state. Indeed, the comprador statelet has give up all claim to sovereignty over the occupied six counties. Give that the IMF and Germany now rules the free state, it would be no exaggeration to say that the comprador free state has given up any claim to sovereignty over any part of Ireland.

author by fredpublication date Fri Dec 14, 2012 20:38author address author phone Report this post to the editors

"I am a catholic BTW,but i think the taking down of the british flag was not appropriate.The south is full of catholics and catholic support."

Er....what has the british flag got to do with religion??

It's a symbol of the british state. This is however the Island of Ireland. It's only fair to take it down and only have it up part of the time since there is currently shared rule between britain and ireland in that part of the island at the present time. Fair is fair.

Stop bringing stupid religious catholic protestant nonsense into this.

author by An Draighneán Donn - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachtapublication date Fri Dec 14, 2012 14:26author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Read what he wrote. In concrete terms he is against anyone who is backward enough to base their identity on religion. Are you seriously saying that only those "on the side of Catholics" reject sectarianism? We need to be rid of the Carnival of Reaction, as Connolly described the idea of partition. We need a fully secular Workers Republic.

author by truthseekerpublication date Fri Dec 14, 2012 08:18author address author phone Report this post to the editors

"No they dont, nor should the catholics of the south be allowed to have a catholic state of their own.

both should be replaced by a workers republic.

Fuck religion"

YOU say they do not have the right, but they sure want it! So in concrete terms you oppose the protestants and you support the catholics.

author by An Draighneán Donn - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachtapublication date Thu Dec 13, 2012 18:14author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Again, in the Middle East, we see that Israel was one of the only states based on religion. It was an embarrassment to them that the were surrounded by secular Socialist states. The USA and Israel have spent the last thirty years destroying the secular Arab states and replacing them with sectarian cess pits like Israel. Is this the fate we Irish should aspire to? Two backward, corrupt, sectarian states? I think not.

author by An Draighneán Donn - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachtapublication date Thu Dec 13, 2012 17:49author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Any legislation that works to trap a community in a sectarian mindset is not helping that community. We see the attempt to transfer GFA thinking to the Middle East - the result has been to destroy all the progress of the 1950s and 60s, and send the Arab would back into the Dark Ages - and Dark Ages in the European sense - because the Arab people never suffered the Dark Ages - until now...

author by An Draighneán Donn - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachtapublication date Thu Dec 13, 2012 17:45author address author phone Report this post to the editors

...and why should they?

author by milkandsugarpublication date Thu Dec 13, 2012 13:53author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Are we going back to the times where segregation was deeper and more pronounced that it is now?I would rather not go back to that time,but that time exists in peoples heads and they perpetuate the problem.I am a catholic BTW,but i think the taking down of the british flag was not appropriate.The south is full of catholics and catholic support.

author by prisoner supporterpublication date Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:59author address author phone Report this post to the editors

No they dont, nor should the catholics of the south be allowed to have a catholic state of their own.

both should be replaced by a workers republic.

Fuck religion.

author by truthseekerpublication date Thu Dec 13, 2012 09:30author address author phone Report this post to the editors

You speak with forked tongue but always evade the point, the essence.

Do the protestants of the north have a right to their own state yes or no?

author by An Draighneán Donn - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachtapublication date Thu Dec 13, 2012 03:18author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Mike, it may come as a big surprise to you, but we dont give a damn about the results of US presidential elections for the last 100 years. As well you know, if you have any intelligence, which monkey is US president, at any given time, makes no real difference. They follow the orders of their masters - the US ruling class. Obama was only mentioned as he dares to interfere in Syrian affairs - regardless of the fact that he has very little legitimate mandate himself, and regardless of the fact that the population of the US are suffering terribly from the psychotic greed and criminality of the people Obama takes his orders from.

As for the endorsement of the Syrian Constitution by the Syrian people, it is not in any way assured that a new constitution will be accepted. Look at the fate of the EU Constitution. It was rejected every time it was put to the people. The European ruling class were forced to push it through by stealth - without a vote in most states. In Ireland, where there was no option but to hold a vote, the stealth version of the EU Constitution was rejected. Now, you say you are a man that looks into the implication of things. How do you explain that the majority of Syrians endorsed a new constitution, if, as your Hillary Clinton says, most Syrians are against the current Syrian state?

author by Mike Novackpublication date Thu Dec 13, 2012 00:41author address author phone Report this post to the editors

First of all, nothing to do with a "defense of the US".
Second of all, nothing to do with not being a true statement.

Has to do with RELEVANCE. What would be the MEANING. "The fact that the Syrians themselves voted for a new Constitution, earlier this year, by a margin considerably higher than the support Barack Obama gained in the US Presidential election, is dismissed as irrelevant"

Yes, IRRELEVANT because any other result would be gross political mismanagement. On the part of the Syrians as well as those here in the US.

If you choose to put a question before the people like a proposed constitution then you had better win by a wide margin. You ensure that by your choices of what you leave in and what you leave out of the package. You might have wanted to include other things but left those out because they would have cost support. You might have included things you didn't really want to have in there because those were needed to gain necessary support.

If you are selecting a candidate for president your primary concern is "can this person win". Instead of looking at Obama consider the various proposed opponents and ask yourself why the opposing candidate ended up being Romney (and not say Rick Santorum or any of the others with better conservative economic and social credentials). The point here is that name of the game is winning, so the candidate will be selected with that in mind. At least here in the US the only time you see an ideologically pure candidate run (from either end of the spectrum) is when the election is clearly hopeless and it's just a matter of putting up a sacrificial goat.

And sorry if anybody needed the statistics (the last hundred years of election results). I wasn't trying to put something over on anybody, didn't realize that it wasn't well known that US presidential elections are just about always close. If somebody SERIOUSLY doubts that the numbers can be produced.

Point here is that one does sometimes contest elections with your flag nailed to the mast (know you will lose but going to defend your ideology). All I was saying is that US Presidential elections are almost never like that so the candidates will have been selected to be competitive.

This is perhaps of particular relevance to those on the left who have despaired at the failure to be successful here. Much of that failure is insistence on sticking to a model more suited to a European parliamentary context where parties will stick to their ideological positions rather than drifting according to the mood of the people. Heck, it's almost exactly* 100 years ago that the Democrats began moving to become the party on the left.

* Often dated to the Triangle Fire in the aftermath of which the famously corrupt but cleverly oportunistic Tammany Hall machine (New York City) used the outrage to take up a pro worker position. Led to the Democrats gradually pushing the Socialists out to the fringe. At this time (about 100 years ago) the Socialists were getting about 10% of the vote for president (candidate Eugene V Debs). And please, no nonsense like "but these were just socialists, not communists" (it was 100 years ago, we hadn't become that separated yet).

author by An Draighneán Donn - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachtapublication date Wed Dec 12, 2012 18:09author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Mike, the CPIR statement makes a statement of fact, i.e. the majority for the new Syrian Constitution was greater then the majority Obama gained. This statement of fact implies no lack of understanding. The statement could have added that the majority won for the Syrian Constitution is greater than the majority won for the US Constitution - as the people of the USA have never been allowed to vote on "their" Constitution.

author by @ Mike Novackpublication date Wed Dec 12, 2012 15:22author address author phone Report this post to the editors

about many of Mr Novack's comment is that when he is disagreeing with something said on this site, that he usually makes reference to some non-existent "Statistics" which he assures us will negate what ever case the original poster is making.

I also notice that Mr Novack NEVER actually provides any proof for what he says, never himself links to any stats confirming his point, but he always demands that the original poster go and find these stats which Mr Novack assures us will confirm his point of disagreement.

Essentially Mr Novack is demanding that his opponents go and find the proof for Mr Novacks weak arguments. That's not just lazy - that's dishonest

Here''s an original idea Mr Novack - Why don't YOU go and find these stats which you claim will negate the OP's argument?

That way you might look like you actually know what you are talking about ,rather then merely lurking in these forums for things which you might object to, without ever having to provide any sort of evidence for whatever weak counter-arguments you put forward.

I for one am tired of listening to your objections to other peoples arguments without you ever actually doing ANY work whatsoever to back up YOUR weak arguments

If YOU feel that the OP's argument is negated by stats then YOU should go and get off yer arse and find those stats and actually do the work in negating the OP's argument, rather than just bullshitting that some stats somewhere (we are never informed where btw) negate that argument

Time to put up or shut up, Mikey.

author by Mike Novackpublication date Wed Dec 12, 2012 14:40author address author phone Report this post to the editors

"........by a margin considerably higher than the support Barack Obama gained in the US Presidential election..."

A statement like THAT indicates close to total lack of understanding of politics in the US.

Compared to election outcomes elsewhere the margins in the US tend to be miniscule. A victory by 5% is a "landslide". A victory by 10% essentially unheard of. Take a look at past presidential elections. Go back a hundred years if you like. The reason for this is that parties almost always choose to run a candidate that will be competitive rather than the one purest in ideology. It is why Obama's opponent was Romney and not Santorum, Palin, etc.

Victory by a large margin means a gross mistake was made.

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