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

http://www.people.ie/news/PN-98.pdf
Peoples News issue no. 98 Date: 26 – 1 – 14
Table of Contents below

THE PEOPLE’S NEWS contains comment on developments in the EU from an Irish and democratic perspective

Back issues of the newsletter are available from the website www.people.ie

The Peoples Movement Blog www.irishreferendum.org
The Peoples Movement Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/peoplesmovementireland?ref=hl ... 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

THE PEOPLE’S NEWS contains comment on developments in the EU from an Irish and democratic perspective ... 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

• Number of people employed: Down by 13 per cent since January 2008.

• Number of people unemployed: Up from 107,000 in January 2008 to 296,300 today.

• Annualised domestic growth rate: –1.2 per cent.

• Net emigration: The number of people leaving the country is higher than the number coming in by 35,000. Gross emigration was more than 80,000 last year alone. In six years it went from the highest net immigration level in Europe to the highest emigration, overtaking the Baltic states and Kosovo. Meanwhile a group of students and other young people in Dublin has launched a campaign called “We’re not leaving” after the Government sent out letters encouraging young people to seek jobs abroad.

• Government deficit as a proportion of GDP: 7.3 per cent.

• Public debt: 121 per cent of GDP in 2013, up from 91 per cent in 2010 and 105 per cent in 2011.

• Household debt: 200 per cent of GDP. There are people living on €50 per week or less after paying their bills. We have had eight austerity budgets since 2008; in the community sector there have been cuts of 35 to 40 per cent.

• Value of assets underpinning household debt: –56 per cent since the crisis began.

•Mortgages in arrears for more than six months: 17 per cent of all mortgages. ... read full story / add a comment

Serbia’s Srdja Popovic is known by many as a leading architect of regime changes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere since the late-1990s, and as one of the co-founders of Otpor!, the U.S.-funded Serbian activist group which overthrew Slobodan Milošević in 2000.

Lesser known, an exclusive Occupy.com investigation reveals that Popovic and the Otpor! offshoot CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) have also maintained close ties with a Goldman Sachs executive and the private intelligence firmStratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.), as well as the U.S. government. Popovic’s wife also worked at Stratfor for a year.

These revelations come in the aftermath of thousands of new emails released by Wikileaks’ “Global Intelligence Files.” The emails reveal Popovic worked closely with Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based private firm that gathers intelligence on geopolitical events and activists forclients ranging from the American Petroleum Institute and Archer Daniels Midland to Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Northrop Grumman, Intel and Coca-Cola. ... read full story / add a comment

Here is one article about true public enemies, not state enemies than enemies of society. Companies and people and their products that are created to build totalitarianism in the time of global capitalism. ... 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

"I write to you to ask your help for the people of Syria. All the people of Syria deserve your attention. Like you, they want the opportunity to live, love and labour in support of their children’s dreams" ... read full story / add a comment

A glossy Shell PR roadshow was disrupted and shut down in Oxford, UK recently in solidarity with the struggles in Rossport and elsewhere. ... 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

More on Saudi involvement in false flag attack. Full text at link.

The August chemical weapons attack in the Syrian capital’s suburbs was done by a Saudi Arabian black operations team, Russian diplomatic sources have told a Russian news agency.“Based on data from a number of sources a picture can be pieced together. The criminal provocation in Eastern Ghouta was done by a black op team that the Saudi’s sent through Jordan and which acted with support of the Liwa Al-Islam group,” a source in the diplomatic circles told Interfax. The attack and its consequences had a huge impact on the Syrian situation, another source said. ... 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

The despotic House of Saud scatters its money around, causing mayhem throughout the Arab World. Money that is stolen from ordinary Saudis by the parasitic royal family. Finian Cunningham explains what is really going on. Full text at link.

If Saudi rulers had more brains, they might be formidably dangerous. Even with lackluster intelligence assets, they are already causing enough havoc and bloodshed across the Middle East and North Africa regions, pouring millions-of-dollars-worth of weaponry into Al Qaeda and other Takfiri networks that are destroying once proud civilizations in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya through nihilistic sectarianism.

And if the Saudi paymasters of terrorism could have it all their way, they would salivate at the chance of extending this destruction to Iran - the Shia power that they fear as their nemesis.

Fortunately, the Saudi rulers’ agenda of covert terrorism - an agenda that serves its Western masters - is not well concealed. This is because “Saudi state intelligence” is something of an oxymoron and leaves a trail of self-incriminating clues wherever it goes ... read full story / add a comment

This won't please the US, they will now have to find some other ruse to didrupt the UN process. Full text at link.

The Syrian government has accepted the ‘essential modalities’ under which the UN was ready to investigate whether chemical weapons had been used in the country, the body has announced, signalling that experts will shortly be travelling to Syria.

"The departure of the team is now imminent," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. “As agreed with the Government of Syria, the team will remain in the country to conduct its activities, including on-site visits, for a period of up to 14 days, extendable upon mutual consent.”

The Secretary-General has expressed his appreciation to the Syrian government for accepting “the modalities essential for cooperation to ensure the proper, safe and efficient conduct of the Mission.”

The statement also reminded that the use of chemical weapons “by any side under any circumstances” would constitute an “outrageous crime.

... 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

Issue 52 of
Red Banner: a magazine of socialist ideas
is out now, €2 / £1.50 from bookshops or the address above. ... read full story / add a comment