PUBLIC MEETINGS
Cork: Wednesday 12th, The Kino, Washington St 7pm.
Speakers: Rola Hamed-O’Neill,( Lecturer and Human Rights Advocate) Dominic Carroll, (Cork Neutrality League) and Robyn al Qassab (Saudi Human Rights Activist) Joe Moore (PBP)
Dublin: Thursday 13th Teachers Club, Parnell Sq West 8pm
Speakers: Richard Boyd Barrett TD, Bhaskar Sunkara(US socialist, editor Jacobin) Robyn al Qassab (Saudi Human Rights activist) Gerry Carroll MLA West Belfast, Leila Shomali (Palestinian activist)
Galway: Friday 14th Áras na nGael, Dominick St 7pm
Speakers: Bhaskar Sunkara(US socialist, editor Jacobin ) Robyn al Qassab (Saudi Human Rights activist) Kieran Allen (UCD lecturer) Denman Rooke (PBP)
Joe Biden is visiting Ireland from April 11th to April 15th presenting himself as a ‘man of peace’ whose country helped broker the Belfast Agreement. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is gushing over his Irish roots.
But while Biden talks of peace in Ireland, he is the Commander-in-Chief of a military machine that, he describes as ‘the arsenal of democracy’. He presents himself as the ‘leader of the free world’, opposing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
People Before Profit condemns Russia’s invasion and we have given support to the Russian anti-war movement. We support the right of Ukrainian to resist an illegal and cruel invasion.
But that does not align us with NATO or Biden because they practice the most outrageous double standards.
Each year, the United States provides $3.3 billion in foreign military financing to Israel and an additional $500 million in missile defence funding. Yet Israel has been involved in an illegal occupation of Palestinian lands for decades. Ninety Palestinians have been killed this year to date.
While Biden arms Ukraine to fight an aggressor there, he arms the aggressor in Palestine.
And it is not just Palestine.
Biden is helping Saudi Arabia stage brutal attacks on Yemen. Their airstrikes have killed 24,000 civilians and they are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths from acute malnutrition caused by an embargo. Yet Biden has supplied Saudi Arabia with $1 billion in weaponry since he’s been in power.
Biden is not a man of peace but another warmonger.
Peace in Ireland was not handed down by a benevolent US. The pressure for peace grew from mass mobilisation by unions and others. The Good Friday Agreement delivered an institutionalised sectarianism where communal parties get a veto. The result is the ongoing obstructionism the DUP is currently using to shore up its electoral base.
Sectarianism will only finally be extinguished when we build a radical new Ireland where all workers gain.
That Ireland will not come about through US intervention or claims that they are ‘giving us jobs’. It will come about through the joint effort of workers fighting for a better life.