Day and night, gunfire could be heard. There was no public transport. Knocked-out Russian tanks stood raggedly about the streets, while others rumbled continually up and down. Shattered buildings with gaping holes cast grotesque shadows across hundreds of bodies lying in the streets amid the broken glass, empty cartridges and other debris. Occasionally, a van […]

Independent Left condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Putin’s war is an imperialist adventure. We support the demand for complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all of Ukraine.  We support the right of the Ukrainian people to resist the Russian invasion by all means necessary – armed and civil resistance. We defend the right of […]

Novelists have been kind to artificial intelligence in recent times. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 book, Klara and the Sun, Klara is an AI designed to be a child’s companion and she is by far the most compassionate and self-sacrificing character in the book. In the rather darker Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (2019), the […]

Socialists and the Syrian Revolution The Syrian revolution 2011 was a genuine people’s uprising: one that was crushed by the al-Assad regime; a corrupt neo-liberal clique backed by Russian imperialism; and Iranian clerico-military oligarchy. The intervention of the US and its Saudi and Gulf allies also undermined the revolution and bolstered reactionary fundamentalist forces. Socialists […]

The growth of fascism in 2020 was a disturbing development in Irish politics and one that needed a coherent response from the left. Fascists were able to capitalise on discontent at the COVID restrictions and insert themselves into anti-mask protests. At the same time, socialists, appreciating that anti-mask is anti-worker and insisting that the government […]