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SKH Roundup: Irish Unrest and Blockades on Blockades

Protests in Ireland against the fuel prices spiking in part due to the Iranian oil blockade will surely be alleviated when the US starts blockading more oil

Endeavorance

Endeavorance

— 10 min read
SKH Roundup: Irish Unrest and Blockades on Blockades

Irish Unrest

Ireland is no stranger to crisis and unrest. The UK's meddling in Ireland and fracturing of the island has been the root of so many years of strife, becoming the baseline for how the modern population responds to unwelcome governance: forcefully.

Large scale protests erupted in Ireland in response to rising fuel costs as a result of a combination of the US and Israel's war on Iran and Lebanon, as well as local taxation laws on petrol and carbon emissions. As pricing skyrockets and demand drops, pretty much anyone in an industrial sector has made it clear: this is not a sustainable economic moment.

Farmers, truckers and other industrial type folks took their heavy machinery to the streets to blockade roadways and fuel stations in order to bring the government to the table. It has kinda worked, as the Irish Prime Minister announced some cost reduction measures the country plans to take, including a reduction in excise duties extending for a few months, and a delay in a hike on carbon taxes.

It hasn't been quite enough to quell the protests, whose flames are fanned by a plethora of surrounding and historic controversy.

Housing Crisis

Housing in Ireland—like much of the EU—is trending even further into "wildly unaffordable" territory, with homelessness rising. Ireland spent about a decade from the mid 90's to mid 00's building a ton of social housing projects before the financial crisis hit them hard.

The Irish government opted to shift away from socially subsidized housing and more towards profit driven housing akin to the United States. Since then, housing costs have spiked, and despite requirements for private builders to construct affordable housing, the pace of building affordable housing dropped by nearly 90%.

As Fortune reports (from 2024):

Indeed, Ireland is severely lacking in housing stock to accommodate its swelling population. Ireland's central bank says 52,000 homes need to be built in the country every year if supply is to keep up with demand.

Arguably, the government's trend of spending during the "Celtic Tiger" era played in to the economic downfall that then triggered a wave of austerity policy, though it isn't that cut and dry.

Truly, the Irish housing market has become a political and financial battleground. In response to a survey that found about a third of Irish citizens would consider leaving the country due to affordability, the CEO of real estate company RE/MAX had this takeaway:

"Governments have been very slow in permitting for new construction […] Even if a builder wants to build, they have to pay a fortune to get permission to do it."
—Michael Polzler, CEO of RE/MAX

Sure thing, Mike. While I'm sure there's some obnoxious permitting processes going on, I've got a hard time accepting the diagnosis of a housing market's problem from the CEO of a company whose financial incentive is to further manipulate the cost of housing.

The Right Opportunity

There's another angle to this as well: immigration. If you take a look at the ol' planet, you'll notice a handful of massive humanitarian crises around the globe, many of which are directly sparked or maintained by western imperialism. Strange, that.

Turns out humanitarian crises create refugees and migrants. The EU has been absorbing a LOT of refugees. That is undeniable. Ireland being a relatively small country (around 5M population) has seen a relatively high number of migrants by population. It's to the point that Ireland announced further limitations on immigration.

Combine the very real housing crisis in Ireland with the very real influx of refugees and you've got yourself the perfect story to weave: "these damn migrants are causing a housing crisis!"

Right wing groups in Ireland are using this moment to angle for expanded influence over the national discussion. Also, turns out there's a bunch of white nationalist and literal self-described neo nazi groups in Ireland, many of whom are trying to get into government; all of whom have very silly names that try to sound so cool but are just variations of "whites only."

Unfortunately for them, Ireland's electoral system (and the electorate itself) is fairly resilient with regards to not uplifting the most fringe possible stances. The mechanics are a bit complicated but it boils down to, "it takes a minimum percentage of votes from a given geographic location to actually win a seat, and also it is ranked choice voting."

Between the barriers of entry for fringe candidates and a long history of the Irish people having an identity rooted in British meddling, the likelihood of a sudden Nazi wing takeover of Ireland is low. Still, it's 2026, and while governments still matter to some degree, the wild world of 24/7 instantaneous online discourse remains a catalyst for right wing sentiment to flourish unimpeded.

They're Tired

At the end of the day, the people of Ireland are tired. Still working, still fighting, but tired. A recent column in the Irish Times discusses a rise of disaffection among the populace, as people are "emotionally checking out" after a lifetime of nonstop crisis.

I feel like that can go for a lot of places, but having spent the past week reading back up on Irish history… yeah y'all have earned a break.

Some Elections Happened

There's been a bunch of elections. There will be more elections, too. Here's some of them.

Hungary

The headlining election in the past week happened in Hungary, where voters finally ousted Prime Minister Viktor Orban after 16 years in power.

Orban had been working hard to undermine free elections and media in Hungary, consolidating power much like any typical authoritarian asshole would do. He was also the dear darling of US Republicans for some reason.

Conservatives in the US couldn't stop glazing the guy as the Vice President of the United States J.D. Vance actually flew to Hungary to stump for the guy.

Anyway he lost handily. Like real bad. Like real real bad like he got fucking trounced. The people had enough.

Election results of the 2026 Hungarian elections

The new guy, Péter Magyar, is still a conservative, relatively speaking. That said, he is more of the kind of conservative that is like, "hey maybe we have a stable country with a system of checks and balances and maybe we work with our allies around us."

He is far from a leftist, but he is also loudly outspoken about bringing basic working order back to the Hungarian government, which, as he has recently revealed, has apparently been financially contributing to CPAC—the Conservative action movement—for years.

"I believe the state should never have financed them in the first place, it was a crime […] Mixing party financing with government spending from the state budget is, in my view, a criminal offense […]"
—Péter Magyar

Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is sitting pretty as his party now holds a majority in the Canadian parliament.

Several elections along with a slate of MPs changing parties handed Carney the ability to pass legislation without needing to work with another political party.

Carney says this is a good thing to help his Liberal party govern during the Trump regime to their immediate south, and perhaps he has a point. Trump legislates (despite being the executive branch) by tweeting from the toilet, so it can be kinda hard to adapt policy if you have to first form a coalition. Still, coalition governments are how parliaments can—in theory—better represent people.

In theory.

Meanwhile, Stateside

Congressmen from both sides of the aisle resigned within a day of each other following major sexual scandal revelations.

Eric Swalwell before he said he'd not resign and then resigned

Eric Swalwell, a California governor hopeful first denied claims of routine sexual assault and affairs with staffers, only to then drop out of the race for governor and then drop out of congress altogether.

Tony Gonzales before he said he'd not resign and then resigned

On the Republican side, Texas congressman Tony Gonzales resigned after admitting to an affair with a staffer who later died by reported suicide. Gonzales had maintained he would not step down until he did.

Warehouse Fires

What happens when you don't pay employees enough to live? They burn your shit down.

That's just history, baybee.

An employee at a Kimberly-Clark paper products warehouse in California allegedly posted a video online showing them allegedly lighting products on fire within the warehouse while allegedly saying, "all you had to do was pay us enough to live."

Throughout the history of labor movements in the United States and around the world, violence has been the consistent backstop. When the owning class gets so comfortable that they refuse to even negotiate with workers, workers use the one thing they have to force themselves to be heard: direct action.

Now this is far from a one-way street to be sure. It's not like workers have banded together throughout history to bully the poor widdle capitawists. PBS has a wonderful article walking through what they rightly refer to as the "Labor Wars," documenting several moments in history where workers had to fight outright live-fire-ammunition battles against private or even state-sponsored security forces in order to secure something as basic as a living wage.

So back to the fires.

On April 7th, the Kimberly-Clark warehouse went up in flames as the video from inside the warehouse went viral. Since then, the internet has been ablaze with various stories of other warehouses spontaneously combusting, often citing it as proof of class consciousness and a change in the winds regarding modern labor rights movements.

Whether that is the case or we're seeing a short burst of action mixed with confirmation bias and algorithmic amplification remains to be seen.

The April 7th warehouse fire happened, followed by what seems to be a slate of copycat fires. April 8th saw an Amazon warehouse catch fire. April 9th, an auto export warehouse. Then two on April 10th, one in New York and one in the same town as the first fire on the 7th.

Here's what we know about the causes of these fires so far. Allegedly.

This is a non-exhaustive list. As I dig around the internet, I'm finding a mixture of real reporting about the fires alongside a lot of unsourced social media posts just kinda claiming that more fires are happening.

But what about the Workers?

A common response to the warehouse fires from some folks has been to share concern for the workers of the warehouses that burned down. If this is for worker's rights, isn't it a setback that workers would be out of a job?

The answer is, "no," and thinking through that logic a bit further explains why. It's a function of scale: a single warehouse often needs a pretty small staff unless its some kind of major logistics hub. If it's just storage and shipping, we're talking a dozen people maybe. The impact on the company far outweighs the impact on the workers, double so because the whole point is that corporations are underpaying to an unlivable degree meaning the workers are producing far more value than they are compensated for. Often by hundreds or thousands of times.

The two-day weekend and 8-hour workday were a compromise. Workers had to fight to end the standard of 80+ hour and 6-day workweeks. Sunday was only off because of the LORD.

Hundreds if not thousands of workers died at the hands of the national guard and militias while carrying out protests to demand more reasonable labor practices.

I don't want to see bloodshed. Unfortunately, workers in this country are quite literally dying on the job while managers tell their coworkers to "get back to work."

Iran Update

The situation with the US/Israel/Iran/Lebanon war (idk what else to call it) is continuing it's completely unnecessary existence, keeping energy prices high and threatening the energy grid stability of an ever-increasing footprint of countries.

At time of writing, oil futures are still hovering around $100 a barrel, with WTI (US-centric) at about $92/barrel and Brent Crude (Asia/Europe centric) at about $96.

Donald Trump announced that in response to Iran's ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the US would blockade the Strait of Hormuz.

The reality of whats happening is that these "blockades" aren't a line of ships physically preventing movement, but instead are done by tracking maritime vessels including where they made port, what country they are flagged from, and where they are headed. If a ship that is sanctioned or a ship coming from a sanctioned port try to move through an area that the US is "blockading," it will be—presumably—yoinked by the US military.

Iran is doing something similar, forcing ships to hug a route close to Iran's border and pay a toll, otherwise face a blockade of their own.

So now we've got two blockades, each blockading one of two types of ships in the area.

This is a good thing. Wait—no, sorry, I misread my notes. This is actually fuckin' dumb.

Israel's Attacks on Lebanon

Meanwhile, Israel has been pounding southern Lebanon with airstrikes and has been continuously increasing the size of their "evacuation zone" for civilians in the area. As of now, at least 800,000 Lebanese people have been forced from their homes by Israeli aggression.

In addition to hundreds of airstrikes, reports of Israel using white phosphorous in Lebanon have cropped up, which are in-line with prior reports that Israel has been using aerial white phosphorous artillery the last time they were in Lebanon, as well as all over Gaza.

White phosphorous munitions aren't illegal, but the use of aerial white phosphorous explosives indiscriminately over residential neighborhoods is against international humanitarian law. White phosphorous can easily ignite homes, destroy crop fields, and leave persistent danger in areas long after it has been deployed.

While there is technically a ceasefire in place between the US and Iran, between the blockade and Israel's continued strikes, Iran has made it clear that Israel needs to be put in check for talks to continue.

As of now, we're still just watching as a sundowning real estate agent turned reality TV show host tries to navigate a geopolitical situation he doesn't seem to understand while we send a middling venture capitalist bro to try and negotiate terms to end said conflict. Just like in all the bedtime stories my grandpappy used to read me.

Here's the Weather

Source: VentuSky

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