Important! Thank you Richard.
On Thu, Nov 24, 2022 at 1:42 PM Richard Fidler <rfidler@...> wrote:

https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2022/11/for-immediate-withdrawal-of-all-russian.html

For ‘immediate withdrawal of all Russian forces’ from Ukraine, says
Sinn Fein congress
Presse-toi à gauche, trans. Richard Fidler, "Life on the Left", Nov. 24
https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2022/11/for-immediate-withdrawal-of-all-russian.html
. . .
... Sinn Fein, Ireland’s main progressive party, adopted the following
resolution concerning Ukraine at its Ard Fheis (congress) held
November 5, 2022:[1]

This Ard Fheis unequivocally condemns all forms of imperialism and
colonial aggression. ...
. . .
In her final speech of the Ard Fheis, Mary Lou McDonald, the president
of Sinn Fein, stated:
“We stand with Ukraine. We will support you until that day when your
beloved homeland is free from Russia’s war. Russia must end its war.
The journey to peace must start now. Ireland stands on the side
ofinternational law, against those who trample on the rights of
others. Be it Putin’s war or Israeli apartheid.”
# # #

Thanks very much for this Richard. Well-done Sinn-Fein.

Sinn-Fein of course knows something about the struggle against colonialism, so solidarity with Ukraine's resistance to Russian colonialism should be no surprise, yet I keep reading from western lefties who believe they can speak on behalf of "the people" of the Global South of former western colonies (all 5 billion of them, a monolithic mass apparently), claiming they sympathise with Russia or at least not with Ukraine due to the (undeniable) hypocrisy of western governments, their former colonisers.

This is a really weird judgement especially since it is based on (a) the abstention (not rejection) in the UN by an (b) absolute *minority* of South governments on UN resolutions condemning the Russian invasion, and (c) on the even more grotesque assumption that even these abstention votes by a handful of governments represent the views of their people, even though a lot of them are brutally repressive or oligarchic regimes, and so why would anyone (still less any Marxist) assume the people they oppress agree with them?

I'd reckon Sinn Fein's democratic vote by a formerly colonised people might be more representative than abstentions by Modi's violently chauvinist regime in India, China's one-party state carrying out forced assimilation against a million people in Xinjiang, the bloody Iranian mullahs currently gunning down the women-led uprising, the Russian-backed dictatorship in Mali killing people with the aid of Russia's Wagner paramilitary thugs, the Ethiopian regime which over the last year or so has waged its own genocidal war against the people of Tigray, killing upwards of 100,000 people while no-one noticed, its ally the vicious dictatorship in neighbouring Eritrea etc. Oh, for the return of some really basic class analysis as part of "left" discourse.