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Michael Phillips ✍ Seriously — do they get any downtime from their spymasters? It would seem not. Let me explain.

I was watching an interview with a world-renowned security expert. He and the interviewer discussed prompting an AI chatbot with: “Make the case… (that Epstein was an Israeli spy)” to test how well it could argue and present evidence. To his surprise, it laid out a solid case — which the expert himself said he could confirm, though he refused to say how.

Inspired, I substituted the second half with: “…that the British government still have a spy in the Republican movement in Belfast” — just to be a tad condescending.

Here are a few highlights from its response:

The infrastructure to run such agents was vast, expensive, and highly effective. Intelligence agencies do not simply dismantle successful networks because a peace process begins… From London's perspective, the strategic value of a well-placed source has arguably increased, not decreased. Understanding Republicans’ internal positions on issues like a border poll, their relationship with dissident republicans, and their long-term constitutional strategy is of enormous interest to the British state… The institutional culture, the handlers, the tradecraft — this does not evaporate with the Good Friday Agreement. Former intelligence officers have noted publicly that ‘running’ sources in Northern Ireland was never fully wound down, simply scaled back and restructured under a more normalised policing framework with the PSNI… Donaldson was only exposed in 2005 — seven years after the Good Friday Agreement — meaning British intelligence maintained a top-level political source well into the peace process. This alone establishes that the peace agreement did not end agent-running. If one such source was active seven years in, the question is not whether others existed, but how many remain undetected.

It concluded that this was based on publicly stated facts and reasonable inferences, blah blah blah.

Relying on new tech gadgets to show how the Brits are still scheming and plotting against us is hardly scientific — but it will only get better. Bear in mind too that AI itself is part of the tout machinery, and can be used right back at them.

I do have more practical evidence, however, for why touts can’t take holidays. It may also explain why some Republicans still scratch their heads over why the Brits forced their number-one tout back to work. Next time, we can prompt AI as to why he was so readily embraced by his colleagues — again. Alas, there’s no rest for the wicked. For that reason, this anecdote uses fictionalized names; it’s not only fresh but active.

Let’s call the two protagonists Andy and Ben — close, blood close. One day Andy questioned Ben about his past Republican activities. It was out of character, especially as he persisted before being brushed off. Ben was shocked but let it pass. Eventually, annoyed, he made enquiries about Andy. Nothing surfaced.

Except one evening, after Ben mentioned the anomaly to Rory — a prominent Republican — Andy happened to bump into Rory in a supermarket. Within seconds he was name-dropping and probing whether Rory knew Ben well, even letting slip an innocuous detail Rory knew to be false. The exchange lasted moments. Rory left stunned; he barely knew Andy. The timing alone set off alarm bells. Then there was the odd detail of Andy leaving the shop with nothing but a loaf.

There’s more, but for now it simply illustrates that our near and dear are still being flogged for every scintilla of information.

And as our newest tech gadget suggested: “The peace agreement did not end agent-running… the question is not whether others existed, but how many remain undetected.” I just hope their service to King and country — over our dead volunteers and incarcerated Republicans — was worth it. Perhaps, in time, some will even receive public recognition for their blood gains.

⏩Michael Phillips is a former republican prisoner.

Do Touts Get Holidays?

Geordie Morrow 🖌 with a painting from his collection of art work. 


⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

Original Oil Sketch 🖌 1980 🖌 Silver Jubilee

Cam Ogie ✍ History rarely repeats itself in exact form, but political patterns echo across centuries. 

It rarely collapses into dictatorship in a single dramatic instant. The Roman Republic did not disappear overnight, nor did it collapse in a single coup. It decayed gradually and it happens when institutions that once restrained power gradually surrender to men who claim that permanent war and national survival justify extraordinary authority. The Senate remained, elections continued and laws were still passed. Yet the system increasingly revolved around a single reality: loyalty to the ruler outweighed loyalty to institutions. The Senate continued to sit, debate, and vote long after it had ceased to restrain the men who dominated it. Julius Caesar and later Augustus did not abolish the Republic; they inherited it hollowed out — hollowed it out through a mixture of public fear, military prestige, patronage, and senatorial acquiescence — its institutions intact but subordinated to the will of the ruler.

In the twenty-first century, critics increasingly argue that something disturbingly similar is unfolding in modern geopolitics through the alliance between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Their partnership—built on militarised foreign policy, personalised leadership, hostility to international law and oversight, and the systematic marginalisation of institutions meant to restrain state violence through ‘dissent’ has fused these elements to resemble a modern form of Caesarism.

The rise of leaders such as Julius Caesar and later Augustus was not simply the story of ambitious men. It was the story of institutions surrendering their authority in the name of security, war, and stability.

Ancient Rome provides the clearest historical warning. The Roman Senate remained intact as the Republic decayed, eventually legitimising the rise of the Caesars. The forms of republican government survived, but the substance did not.

The comparison is not that the United States or Israel is “Rome again” in any literal sense. It is that both men have repeatedly practiced a recognizably Caesarist politics: rule through permanent emergency, elevation of personal loyalty over institutional independence, punishment of dissent, and contempt for restraining bodies at home and abroad when those bodies obstruct executive will. Their politics are not identical, but they rhyme in ways that should alarm anyone concerned with democratic government.

The consequences of which are being felt most profoundly in Palestine, but their implications extend across the international system.

The late Roman Republic became vulnerable to domination because crisis became the normal language of rule. External war, internal conspiracy, and civil conflict were used to justify extraordinary commands. Caesar’s ascent was inseparable from military glory and the argument that only exceptional leadership could secure Rome’s future. Augustus then perfected the method: he preserved republican language while monopolizing real authority, presenting personal predominance as the price of stability.

The Roman Caesars rose through war. Military success provided prestige, legitimacy, and the justification for extraordinary powers. Modern critics argue that Trump and Netanyahu have embraced a similar model: governance through permanent conflict.

Trump and Netanyahu have each governed through an analogous politics of emergency - a world of existential threats that require overwhelming force and permanent vigilance.

Trump has long framed foreign and domestic politics alike as existential struggles requiring personalized executive action. In his second term he moved quickly to centralize control over the executive branch, with a February 18, 2025, White House order declaring it the policy of the executive branch to ensure “Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch,” including agencies previously structured to have a measure of independence.

Netanyahu has likewise governed through continual securitization. Since returning to office in late 2022, he formed what Reuters described as the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, empowering coalition partners whose politics fused maximal military force with hostility to judicial and diplomatic restraint. Reuters reported that coalition agreements gave Itamar Ben-Gvir authority over police as national security minister and gave Bezalel Smotrich’s camp broad powers over West Bank planning and administration, deepening executive and ideological control over coercive state machinery.

War in this context becomes not only policy but political theatre: the leader as wartime commander, the nation in perpetual danger, and dissent cast as weakness.

A revealing parallel between the late Roman Republic and modern strongman politics lies in how dissent is treated once power begins concentrating around a dominant leader. During the rise of Julius Caesar and later Augustus, several senators resisted the erosion of republican authority. Cato the Younger among the most prominent defender of senatorial independence, vehemently opposed Caesar’s accumulation of power and the weakening of the Republic’s constitutional norms. Even the assassination of Caesar in 44 BCE, believing it the last remaining defence of the Republic, did not restore the Senate’s authority; instead, it triggered a civil war that ended with the rise of Augustus, who consolidated power while gradually neutralising remaining senatorial opposition through exile, forced political marginalisation, or absorption into his patronage network. The lesson of this period is stark: dissent within republican institutions became increasingly dangerous as the political system transformed into personal rule.

A modern comparison can be drawn to the political environments surrounding Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. While contemporary democracies obviously differ from ancient Rome, both leaders have been widely accused by opponents of treating dissent—especially from within their own political or security establishments—as disloyalty rather than legitimate disagreement. Trump has repeatedly attacked critics within government, the judiciary, and the military as corrupt or traitorous, while Netanyahu has removed or sidelined senior officials who publicly disagreed with his wartime strategy. In both cases, it is argued that the political climate increasingly pressures insiders to demonstrate loyalty to the leader rather than independent judgement. As in late republican Rome, institutions formally remain intact—but the political cost of dissent rises sharply as leadership becomes more personalised and conflict-driven.

One of the core features of Caesarist rule is patronage. Rome’s great men surrounded themselves with clients whose advancement depended on personal loyalty. As senatorial authority weakened, access to the ruler became more important than fidelity to impersonal institutions. Augustus, in particular, made senatorial careers dependent on his goodwill.

A comparable dynamic has developed within the Trump–Netanyahu political alliance.

Both leaders have elevated loyalists to key positions while marginalising or removing figures perceived as insufficiently supportive. Political appointments become instruments of control rather than neutral governance.

Trump’s recent appointments fit that pattern with unusual clarity. Reuters described Pam Bondi, nominated on November 21, 2024, and confirmed on February 4, 2025, as a Trump “loyalist” and “staunchest political ally” elevated to lead the Justice Department. Reuters likewise described Kash Patel, nominated on December 1, 2024, and confirmed on February 20, 2025, as a Trump “loyalist” and “loyal defender” placed atop the FBI. Those are not neutral bureaucratic placements. They are politically meaningful efforts to put personally trusted allies in command of institutions that, in a constitutional order, are supposed to retain independence from the ruler’s private interests.

Trump’s broader staffing and purge strategy reinforces the point. Reuters reported that on January 25, 2025, he fired 17 inspectors general in what critics called a late-night purge, raising alarm that independent watchdogs could be replaced by loyalists. Reuters also reported that he announced the removal of more than 1,000 Biden appointees and publicly named figures, including Mark Milley, in a performative assertion of personal power.

Netanyahu’s appointments show the same logic in a different institutional setting. He built his governing coalition by empowering ideologically hardline allies such as Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Reuters also reported that his government pushed judicial changes that would hinder oversight of ministerial appointments and were partly designed to facilitate the political return of Aryeh Deri after Israel’s Supreme Court ordered Netanyahu to dismiss him because of his tax-fraud conviction. In other words, the governing project was not only to appoint allies, but to weaken the legal mechanisms that could disqualify or restrain them.

That is precisely the Roman pattern: institutions remain, but they are repurposed to ratify the ruler’s patronage network rather than discipline it. The Senate in Rome did not vanish; it became increasingly dependent. Congress and the Knesset have not vanished either. The danger is that they normalize executive encroachment by accepting the logic that the leader must control every strategically important office.

Caesarist politics cannot tolerate principled opposition for very long. Once the ruler’s person is equated with the state, dissent becomes betrayal. That was one of the pathologies of the late Republic: political rivalry escalated into civil enmity because opponents were no longer treated as legitimate competitors inside a shared constitutional order.

Trump’s treatment of dissent repeatedly follows that logic. Reuters reported that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth revoked retired General Mark Milley’s security clearance and protective detail in January 2025, after Milley had become one of Trump’s most prominent military critics. Reuters also reported the Pentagon removed Milley’s portrait and that Trump had suggested Milley could be executed for treason, language that collapses dissent into quasi-criminal betrayal. Reuters further reported on a broader “loyalty test” atmosphere in national security staffing, with outside Trump allies reportedly identifying officials as insufficiently loyal.

Netanyahu’s treatment of dissent within his own wartime cabinet offers a close analogue. Reuters reported that on November 5, 2024, Netanyahu fired Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing a “crisis of trust” after months of disagreement over the conduct of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Gallant had diverged from Netanyahu on key strategic and political questions, including war management and other matters touching accountability. Netanyahu replaced him with Israel Katz, described by Reuters as a close ally. That is classic strongman logic: when substantive disagreement emerges at the top, the problem is framed not as strategy but as trust, and the solution is replacement by a more reliable loyalist.

There is a Roman resonance here too. Augustus mastered the language of consensus while ensuring that meaningful dissent became politically costly. The institutions continued to speak, but only inside a field already structured by the ruler’s supremacy. That is how republics lose substance before they lose ceremony.

The Roman Caesars did not merely wage war abroad; military command was central to personal prestige and domestic legitimacy. Foreign policy became inseparable from internal regime construction. Caesar’s conquests in Gaul made him politically unassailable until the constitutional system could no longer contain the consequences.

Trump’s foreign policy style has consistently glorified coercion, unilateralism, and disdain for multilateral restraint. On February 4, 2025, Reuters reported that Trump signed orders tied to withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council and disengaging from UNRWA, while publicly saying the U.N. had to “get its act together.” In January 2026, Reuters further reported that his administration announced withdrawal from dozens of international organizations, including 31 U.N.-related entities, underscoring a broader attack on multilateral governance itself.

Netanyahu’s government has fused aggressive military conduct with contempt for outside restraint even more starkly. Reuters reported that the International Court of Justice on January 26, 2024, ordered Israel to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza; Reuters also reported that the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant on November 21, 2024, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction and denies war crimes, but the point for comparison is institutional: external legal restraint has been met not with deference but with rejection and counterattack.

The Caesarist politics thrives when violence is narrated as necessity and accountability as sabotage. The ruler claims that survival requires force without meaningful external judgment. That is not a Roman detail; it is a recurring political form.

A republic in decline often preserves outward legality while attacking the institutions capable of imposing real limits. In Rome, the Senate gradually ceased to be an independent centre of power and became instead a stage on which executive dominance was clothed in constitutional language.

Trump’s hostility to international oversight is well documented. Reuters reported that in his second term he withdrew or disengaged from major U.N. bodies, including the Human Rights Council, and later moved to leave dozens more international organizations. Reuters also reported that he authorized sanctions aimed at ICC personnel over investigations involving the United States and Israel, a federal judge later blocked enforcement of that order on constitutional grounds. Reuters additionally reported sanctions on U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese after work tied to criticism of Israel’s conduct.

Netanyahu’s camp has acted similarly toward U.N. bodies and officials who publicly condemned Israeli conduct. Reuters reported that Israel barred U.N. Secretary-General AntÃģnio Guterres from entering the country in October 2024, declaring him persona non grata. Reuters also reported sustained Israeli attacks on UNRWA, including legislation to block its operations and rhetoric from Israeli officials dismissing humanitarian criticism as “activism” or worse. In January 2026 Reuters reported that Guterres warned he could refer Israel to the ICJ over actions against UNRWA and seized assets, while Israel dismissed the U.N. letter and again accused UNRWA of terrorism links.

This is one of the strongest parallels to the Roman story. Once a ruler treats oversight bodies as illegitimate whenever they constrain him, law becomes ornamental. The Senate under Augustus still existed; its function was increasingly to legitimate pre-made power. In modern terms, the more Congress, the Knesset, or international bodies are bypassed, intimidated, or converted into instruments of ratification, the more the constitutional shell remains while the republican substance drains away.

The most historically serious comparison is not Caesar to Trump or Augustus to Netanyahu as personalities. It is the relationship between the ruler and the institutions that choose accommodation over confrontation.

Rome’s Senate bears direct responsibility for its own eclipse. Augustus did not destroy senatorial prestige by brute force alone. He preserved the Senate, honoured it ceremonially, and used it. Although the Senate remained, real power rested with Augustus and senatorial careers depended on his goodwill. That is the anatomy of elite collaboration: institutions surrender substance in exchange for survival, status, and proximity.

That pattern is visible in both contemporary cases. In the United States, a Republican-controlled Senate confirmed Bondi and Patel despite widespread concern that each embodied personal loyalty to Trump at the head of law-enforcement institutions. In Israel, Netanyahu’s parliamentary coalition repeatedly backed judicial and executive changes that critics said would weaken oversight and increase political control over state institutions, including the judiciary and ministerial appointments.

This is how senates die: not always through abolition, but through consent. They become spectators to their own diminution, then participants in it.

Even though Rome was not a modern democracy and the U.S. and Israel are not ancient aristocratic republics, the Roman Republic did not fall because the Senate disappeared. It fell because the Senate remained while ceasing to matter.

That is why the comparison is so disturbing. Trump and Netanyahu each embody a politics in which war magnifies the leader, loyalists colonize institutions, dissent becomes disloyalty, and oversight bodies are smeared as enemies of the nation. Their aggression abroad and their contempt for restraint at home are not separate phenomena; they are part of the same governing logic.

The power exercised by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu does not exist in isolation. It is sustained by political institutions and allied governments that continue to provide diplomatic protection, military cooperation, and political legitimacy. Legislatures approve funding, governments supply weapons and intelligence, and powerful states shield allies from meaningful consequences in international forums. In doing so, they often justify their actions in the same language used by Rome’s senators: stability, security, and the necessity of standing behind allies in times of crisis.

The result is a system in which the institutions meant to restrain power instead help sustain it. International law is invoked selectively. Diplomatic institutions condemn violence yet struggle to stop it. Governments that publicly defend a rules-based order often make exceptions when their closest partners are involved. In this environment, accountability becomes increasingly fragile.

Rome shows how such moments can unfold. The Senate believed it was preserving order by accommodating rising imperial power. Instead, it gradually reduced itself to a ceremonial institution—one that endorsed decisions already made elsewhere. The republic survived in name, but its substance had drained away.

History’s darker lesson is that empires rarely emerge solely through conquest. More often they arise through consent—through institutions that slowly adapt themselves to the authority they once existed to restrain. The danger for the modern world is not only the actions of powerful leaders, but the willingness of political systems around them to accept those actions as the price of stability.

If Rome teaches anything, it is this: republics seldom recognise the moment when they stop being republics.

Caesarism always presents itself as rescue. It says that institutions are too slow, too weak, too compromised for the emergencies of the age. It asks the public to trust the strong man and asks the legislature to yield “temporarily.” Rome shows the potential of what comes next: the forms of the republic survive, but the republic itself becomes a memory.

⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast.

Return Of The Caesars ðŸŠķ From Republic To Strongman Rule ðŸŠķ Trump, Netanyahu, And The Caesarist Logic Of Executive Power

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Ten

 

A Morning Thought @ 3086

GearÃģid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 1-March-2026.

The English band Chumbawamba recorded a song called The Day The Nazi Died about how the Nazis never really went away.[1] The song references the Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, who was not executed following WWII but was instead held a prisoner in Spandau Prison until he took his own life at the age of 93. The song asks why when we were told that the Nazis had died did they all come out on the day Hess died, and points to the boardrooms of companies as maggots getting fat on the decaying flesh of capitalist society. They band were not wrong. Some of the Nazis and boards of companies that did not go away are now involved in the genocide in Palestine. Goosestepping as a military parade practice has gone out of fashion in most Western countries, but stomping on the peoples of the world is very much in fashion.

Many companies such as Porsche, Mercedes, Volkswagen and even IG Farben, the manufacturers of the gas used to murder millions in the camps, went unpunished after WWII. Some companies were even compensated for the damage to their factories. Lots of other German companies passed under the radar. Hugo Boss was never taken to task for making the Nazis look so sexy in their murderous swagger. And Allianz, the German insurance company that insured parts of the camps and the ghettos against fire and damage to their installations, survived intact. Apparently, they didn’t specifically insure the ovens or gas chambers, but the camps were a whole unit. Any part insured contributed to all of it running smoothly. Of course those who died in the gas chambers and were pushed like peat briquettes through the ovens were not covered, just the Nazi property. Hugo Boss can make no claims to being pressured, he was a member of the Nazi party before Hitler ever took power. He wasn’t betting on which horse won the race, he was the horse in the race.

Allianz likes to present itself as just another company that did business with the Nazis in order to continue functioning and that they had no choice. Krupps makes similar claims about its use of slave labour, saying they had to. That is a dubious claim when you look at their history. But also morally there is no basis to it. You always have the choice, some Germans lost their lives fighting the Nazis, not losing your money is hardly an excuse. What companies such as Allianz did is make a cost-benefit analysis. They calculated that not doing business with the Nazis would affect their profits, so they insured the camps but not the people pushed through the ovens. The company claims a certain naivety on its part about what was happening. But you can only take that at face value if you ignore that the director general of the company, the antisemite Dr Kurt Schmitt, resigned his post with Allianz in 1933 to become Hitler’s first Reich Minister of Economic Affairs, having previously turned down the post when it was offered to him by the Von Papen government before the Nazis took over. He had to step down for health reasons, but when he recovered he went back to Allianz to administer it. 

It also claims it made no money from the camps contract. This does not mean there was no money to be made, it means it wasn’t as profitable a contract as it thought, but it managed to get other contracts from the Nazis. If you read the company’s website you come away with the distinct impression that they would like us to think they were a victim of the Nazis and we should pity them. It turns out, because they were on the losing side and because the war didn’t go ahead as planned with Hitler steamrolling his way to Moscow, the war was not as profitable as it should have been for insurance companies. And in the following quote it is clear that 1943, following the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, the tide turned not only in the war but in the accounts ledgers.

After Germany overran Poland in 1939, the business of the insurance sector became characterized by the risks associated with the war. Doing business in wartime meant obeying the principle of “minimizing new dangers and taking maximum advantage of new business opportunities.” The repercussions of the war were detrimental to business as a whole and at the end of the war, Allianz was on the brink of ruin. Even so, until 1943 the company had managed to increase its profits by a considerable margin.[2]

Even today the company whitewashes its record and states in glowing language that:

Kurt Schmitt’s energetic course of expansion in the 1920s had made Allianz the largest insurance company in Germany. In 1933, Schmitt became Minister of Economic Affairs in Adolf Hitler’s government. In 1935, he resigned from this post as he was unable to implement his political ideas and his health was failing. After his recovery, he returned to Allianz and in 1938 became General Director of Munich Re.[3]

No, not true, the Nazi stepped down because he had a heart attack, not over disagreements about economic policy. And though it is not stated, there is a sleight of hand which leaves you wondering whether he had disagreements over the treatment of Jews. This antisemite had no such disagreements with the Nazis at all. He was well known to them before they ever took power. He knew who and what they were. The company’s site is not that detailed about the period and there are lots of sleights of hands in how it presents information. For example, it is mentioned that the company opposed Nazi attempts to nationalise the insurance industry. But not because they opposed the Nazis, but because it might affect their profit margins.

But not even Allianz can completely deny reality. Their site does acknowledge that it began to come clean about its role following a lawsuit in the US against insurance companies and set up a study into its activities.[4] It did it, because it was forced to. Had they really been forced to insure the Nazis against their will they wouldn’t have waited till 1997 to start publicly owning up. They commissioned Dr Feldman a Jewish historian to look at their history. He quotes Schmitt as talking about the Nazi position on Jews as explained to him by GÃķring that:

I must honestly say, that I had no reservations about this line, for it cannot objectively be contested that in our public and intellectual life, beginning with the Reichstag, in the press, and also in many scientific faculties, in the legal field and above all in the Berlin banking business, the Jews had too strong and too loud and also an unhealthy influence.[5]

Feldman goes on to say of this that:

…it is important to recognize that the responsibility for the evils that he [Schmitt] and his organization [Allianz] were to experience and perpetrate during the coming years lay to an important extent in the fact that he (and others like him) shared a political culture and an anti-Semitic posture that made the coming and installation of the Third Reich possible.[6]

Of Schmitt, he says that:

Schmitt was rather more enthusiastic and active than his colleagues in pandering to the new order at this time. Not only was he prominently on display at the aforementioned Hitler birthday festivities, he also catered to the “socialistic” side of the regime while playing the public defender of employer interests with the new rulers as well.[7]

Now we have come full circle. The people who tried to profit from the Third Reich and the camps are once again involved in a genocide, not only as an insurance company but also as a direct investor. Allianz has invested USD 960 million in Israeli war bonds, or genocide bonds as they are more accurately known. In 50 years time, they might hire some Palestinian historian to write the history of collaboration in yet another genocide and their website might just say they had no choice but to maximise profits in line with their legal duty to their shareholders or some such rubbish. Last time, none of the Allianz board were sent to the gallows. They all did very well out of the war and the company went on to become not just Germany’s largest insurance company but a major player in the global insurance industry. It is as the Chumbawamba song says:

The world is riddled with maggots; the maggots are getting fat
They’re making a tasty meal of all the bosses and bureaucrats
They’re taking over the boardrooms, and they’re fat and full of pride.

This time, should we ever get a day of reckoning to cite the much abused quote from Karl Marx, we should make no excuses for the terror. They should have all their assets confiscated and they should meet their end hanging from a rope.

So if you meet with these historians, I’ll tell you what to say
Tell them that the Nazis never really went away
They’re out there burning houses down and peddling racist lies

And we’ll never rest again until every Nazi dies

References

[1] See

[2] See 

[3] See

[4] See 

[5] Feldman, G.D (2001) Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933-1945. Berkley. University of California Press p.58

[6] Ibid., p.59

[7] Ibid., p.66

⏩ GearÃģid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

The Nazis Never Went Away ðŸŠķ Israel, Allianz And Holocaust Companies

Gowain McKenna ✍ with a poem.

The Conscious Rebel

In the homes of Ireland from North to South and East to West,

The Republic lies sleeping under the stairs,

By now surely comatose but somehow still living,

Awaiting some resurgence to spring anew,

If one should ever come,

♞♜♝

Dear Comrades,

The fault is not in the stars but in ourselves:

Have we succumbed to pawing over greasy tills,

To be thinking only of ourselves,

Our vision has narrowed to that of an Ant,

Being wedded only to the past,

Our failure was to not move with the times,

For this is not 1916, or even ‘81,

And today will it be worth another mother’s son?

To commemorate may be a fine and honorable thing,

But now we too must stand with the living, nay?

⏩ Gowain McKenna is a Belfast born engineer and musician. He has an M.Phil, MS.c and B.Eng in Aerospace Engineering, but has somehow found himself working in the marine industry in Co. Donegal Ireland, the place from which he now calls home. Visit his website.

The Conscious Rebel

Christopher Owens ðŸ”– Centres are vital for subcultures.

As a place to meet likeminded people, share life changing experiences, debate ideas and act as a beacon for those looking for an alternative environment, they are second to none. Beautiful things can happen in there, and you can change people's worldviews and behaviours. Look at Belfast’s own Warzone Centre as such an example.

Unsurprisingly, London had many similar places in the late 60’s through to the late 80’s. One place not seemingly discussed as much as others was the Centro Iberico even though it could trace its heritage to the Spanish Civil War. So full credit to Nick Soulsby for delving into the archives to offer up this tome which balances the politics and the subculture with aplomb.

Beginning with the tale of Miguel J. M García García and his participation in the fight against Franco, which sees him spending 20 years in prison after having a death sentence commuted to life imprisonment, his move to London after being released not only leads to a flurry of activity from the Anarchist Black Cross but also Britain’s only postwar paramilitary organisation: The Angry Brigade.

Thus began the first incarnations of Centro Iberico. Dedicated to supporting and fundraising for the new generation of anti-Franco operatives as well as acting as a hub for the Spanish exiles in London, things start to change when a group calling themselves the Sex Pistols start singing about anarchy in the UK. Then the death of Franco sees the place move into putting on gigs from the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Rudi as well as bands from the burgeoning anarcho-punk milieu.

With a quick pace, many clippings and interviews from attendees and band members, this is an excellent book that does a great job in demonstrating how volatile and potent the early 70’s were for London while also making it clear that there was a clear separation between the early members like Stuart Christie (a Scotsman who wound up on the run from the security services) and the likes of Crass (for whom INLA member Ronan Bennett would act as a link between the two worlds).

A brilliant read. And Ronan Bennett’s letter had me in stitches.


Nick Soulsby, 2026, Born of Struggle, Living in Hope: The Anarcho-Punk Lives of the Centro Iberico, 1971–1983, PM Press. ISBN-13: 979-8887441221

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.


Born Of Struggle, Living In Hope 📚 The Anarcho-Punk Lives Of The Centro Iberico, 1971–1983

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Nine

 

A Morning Thought @ 3085

Tommy McKearney ☭ With Donald Trump drawing so much attention to his outrageous demands and acts of international piracy, it is hardly surprising that, with notable exceptions, little attention is paid in Ireland to problems caused by the European Union.


One exception is the CPI. Opposition to the European Union has been party policy since that capitalist bloc’s formation. For long, though, the Communist Party has been fighting an uphill battle against the overwhelming influence of the Irish ruling class, supported by its subservient media and a compliant political establishment. Yet there may be the prospect that this attitude could change, albeit not necessarily in a progressive direction.

In the meantime, though, we are told, on an almost daily basis, that the Republic’s so-called prosperity is due to its membership of the EU. So intense is the pro-EU propaganda that to challenge the received wisdom is to risk being deemed deranged at best. Seldom do we hear or read in the mainstream media that the Republic’s prosperity is not just precarious but ill-divided.

A recent report published by Oxfam Ireland[1] highlights the huge disparities of wealth in the 26 Counties. Its findings are stark: the top 10% of Irish households hold half of all wealth, with the top 1% owning 13%, and 11 billionaires collectively wealthier than 85% of the population combined. The charity describes such extreme inequality as a ‘policy failure’, pointing to budgets that worsen inequality.

The outworking of this grave inequality is there for all to see: almost 17,000 officially homeless and, according to the Simon Community[2], perhaps ten times as many living in what they describe as hidden homelessness. This is before mentioning the despair arising from a two-tier health service or the burden of education costs faced by working-class families.

Such extreme disparities of wealth, coupled with the lived experience of poverty and hardship, lead inevitably to discontent and anger. This deep frustration with the existing system has opened a door to the fascists, who are currently focusing on deprived working-class communities. However, and in spite of their determined efforts, these thugs are not having a major impact in terms of recruitment or electoral success. There is a danger, though, that this may change due to a number of factors. One major factor is membership of the EU, with its relentless insistence on free-market economics resulting in hardship for many.

Over recent decades, fascism has not had a coherent leadership in Ireland or more significant, societally powerful adherents. However, recent rulings emanating from Brussels may cause this to change. Two in particular: a decision last November to greatly reduce the Irish fleet’s fishing quotas and, especially, a drive now to ratify the Mercosur Treaty.

The first of these, reduced fish quotas[3], underlines the nature of Ireland’s difficulty with the EU. The Hague Preferences, a forty-year-old agreement apparently guaranteeing Irish access to its own waters, was abruptly swept aside by other member states with possibly devastating consequences for coastal fishing communities.

It is, nevertheless, the second issue, that of Mercosur, which carries the greater potential threat. This treaty is being driven by EU members, such as Germany, with large manufacturing sectors anxious to access markets in South America. In return, they are willing to tolerate cheap agricultural products being imported into the bloc regardless of the detrimental impact on European farmers’ incomes. Understandably, the powerful Irish Farmers Association is bitterly opposed to this treaty and already has the support of many TDs, including those right-wing independents led by Minister of State for Agriculture, Michael Healy-Rae.

Should Mercosur proceed as planned (and it most likely shall), it is bound to cause anti-EU sentiment to arise within an often conservative and powerful section of society. It may seem far-fetched to foresee the creation of an ultra-right, Farage-style ‘Ire-exit’ movement, but stranger things have happened.

Reflect briefly on the contents of a recent article[4] by the Financial Times’s US National Editor and Columnist Edward Luce. He wrote that Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, is ‘… planning to open an Irish branch of Bannon’s War Room, his influential Maga daily podcast…’. In a recent interview, Bannon claimed to be looking for an Irish version of Trump. Moreover, in the same article, Luce quotes Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former national security adviser, complaining about Ireland’s left-leaning president, Catherine Connolly.

Taken together, these factors give cause for concern. Consider the effect of powerful, extremely wealthy right-wing American propagandists combining with a disgruntled Irish farming community and thereafter exploiting the misery of Ireland’s dispossessed. No leap of the imagination is required to envisage a drive to follow a course set by the Godfather-like figure in the White House. We have a precedent in that the first Fine Gael chairperson was an unapologetic follower of 20th-century European fascism.

None of which means, of course, that we should change our position vis-à-vis the European Union. There is, after all, a very healthy progressive element within contemporary Irish society. Look, for example, at the election of Catherine Connolly and the massive support for Palestine. It is, however, imperative that as disillusionment with the imperialist EU inevitably grows, this anger is properly directed. It is essential that we continue to encourage all to punch up and not down.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist.
He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament.
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

Capitalism ðŸŠķ An Inhuman System of Exploitation

Anthony McIntyre ⚽For this one, Paddy and Jay didn't make it. 

While we were braving the chill of Drogheda they were sunning it up in Spain. I travelled with Ronan in our neighbour's car. He generously offers to take us there and back on those very rare occasions when Paddy is not available. His young son, who seems much more knowledgeable about soccer than the rest of us, made up the quartet and regaled us with an amazing amount of detail about the sport.

We split company at the stadium as our season tickets are for the Windmill Road side of the ground. The search procedure as we approached the turnstile was thorough. Normally for people my age it is a light pat down, even a pass. This reminded me of the rigorous daily British Army or RUC searches I had undergone on hundreds of occasions on the streets of Belfast. An Garda along with ground security seemed determined to get a grip on the flares that have all too frequently made their way onto the terraces and from there occasionally to the pitch.

This made big headlines for the sport, and adverse ones for Drogheda United, some of whose fans at a previous fixture at Oriel Park damaged Dundalk's newly laid artificial pitch through lobbing incendiaries onto the surface. The hope has to be that the descent of common sense and a concern for others, rather than the strict search procedure was what led to a flare-free game against Shelbourne. Well, at least from the Drogs fans. While I didn't see it or get a whiff of the fumes they emit, there were reports that a hand-held flare was ignited amongst the visiting supporters but was either extinguished or had burnt itself out before the kickoff.

At least for the match at Sullivan and Lambe we were allowed in. The four match ban arising from the Oriel Park flare-up applies to away games only. The club has had a hefty fine imposed on it, to boot.

Flares are not toys. They cause damage and injury as was so sadly evident from a twelve year old boy sustaining facial burn injuries at Oriel. They need to be cut out from fan culture altogether. Officials from the club, if they have not already done so, should engage in talks with the Ultras, whose primary purpose is to raucously support their team, not cause injury to supporters.

The game against Shels proved a lost cause for the Drogs. They scored too early, sat on the lead and ultimately lost it due to two second half strikes from the visitors. The Drogs, with two wins already under their belt for the season fell to a team who had not chalked up a victory until their visit to Louth.

When Brandon Kavanagh struck five minutes in, first there was trepidation, then confirmation that the Drogs would sit back. At one point I noticed six men across the back, leaving four to take part in a counter attack. No sign of urgency to provide much needed back-up.

There was not much in the way of attacking flair from the visitors in the first half, and when the whistle blew to end the first 45, there was relief that the home side had not conceded in the dying minutes of the first period when concentration can decline as the break approaches. That relief did not last long into the restart. Ninety seconds was all it took for the Shels to penetrate the Drogs last line of defence. At that point, the feeling began to settle on me that this would be three points lost.

And so it proved to be. A Harry Wood penalty added to Sam Bone'e earlier strike, doubling Shelbourne's goal tally. While only one in front it was enough to see the visitors lift all three points. Luke Dennison who was adjudged to have brought Sean Boyd down was not sent off. Coach, Kevin Doherty was not so fortunate. As a result of seeing red at the penalty decision he was shown red for venting his displeasure. 

The Drogs having played five, have taken seven points and dropped eight. Not quite the stuff of relegations rooters - they sit fifth in the table - but not a great start to the season.

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Drogs ⚽ Shelbourne ⚽ Red

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ The regime controlling Iran are/were a vile hate-filled gang of crooks who ruled in Tehran under the guise of religion and have terrorised the Iranian people for over four decades. 

The first nutter to take power after the Islamic revolution of 1979 was Ayatollah Khomeini after the western backed dictatorship of the Shah was overthrown. The Shah was as ruthless as the Islamic Ayatollahs but looked after western bourgeois interests which was why he was supported with no questions asked. When the latest Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an airstrike nobody should shed any tears.

However, the gang of thugs from Tel Aviv and Washington are little if any better than was Khamenei, and the legality of their attacks on the sovereign nation state of Iran are at best questionable. For Trump in Washington being a criminal breaking international law daily is no different to the professional house breaker plying their trade every night, it comes naturally. In Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu learned the art of genocide in the West Bank, Gaza and earlier in Southern Lebanon which he is attacking presently. This is not to mention charges of corruption levelled at him in Israel. Trump has made it clear, as he did in Venezuela, he will decide who takes over government in Iran after the Israelis and themselves have finished. It should be the Iranian people who decide their future, not Donald Trump.

It is my albeit qualified opinion Donald Trump is unstable, clinically or even criminally insane. One sentence he tells the Iranian people, in that unstable deranged sounding voice, to take control of their country. The next sentence, having told the people to take to the streets, he bombs the shit out of those same streets. The man is clearly unstable, for fucks sake get him locked away.

The Israelis have made it clear they want ‘regime change’, something the Americans deny is one of their goals. The following day that story changes as Trump starts ranting about who will take over the “government of Iran” and how he will “have a say in deciding who is the next government.” The thugs who assist Trump in his genocide - similar to Himmler, Goering, and Bormann assisted Hitler commit mass murder - are Vice President, J.D. Vance, US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, Jared Kushner - Trump's Son in Law - who has nothing to do with government but still goes on official government trips discussing state business, who is a businessman and one of Trump's right-wing propagandists. This may show how close the relationship is between big business and government in the USA. 

The question is, given this corporate relationship, is the present US regime a neo-fascist administration? One thug, Pete Hegseth, boasted; “all the Iranians will see as they look up to the skies will be US and Israeli airpower picking targets until they decide something different”. The Iranian people looking up to the skies are those Trump, on a good day, is encouraging to “take back their country”. Maybe Trump could drop bombs on them while they are attempting this task!!

The Iranians were in discussions with the Americans sorting out a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme when, while still in talks, the US and Israel struck. These talks were evidently a trick! It was the first Trump administration in 2016 who pulled out of a deal they were signatories to agreed back in 2015 under the previous Obama administration with Iran to curb their nuclear programme. The Iranians, the Europeans, Russia, China, and the USA were all in agreement with this deal when Trump, after taking up residence in the White House in 2016, just pulled the plug on the deal. No discussions with the Europeans or the Russians, let alone Iran, he just unilaterally decided it was a “bad deal”.

Scott Lucas of the University College Dublin (UCD) Clinton Institute stated:

I think we can establish the Israelis want regime change whereas the US want the leadership in Iran to accept two conditions then they can survive. One, they must give up their nuclear programme, civilian as well as military. Two, they have to agree to discuss Iran’s ballistic missile programme, in other words, the limits on numbers and size.

Trump claims the Iranians are or were close to developing a nuclear bomb. He has no evidence to support this apparently ludicrous claim as Scott Lucas stated, “Iran does not have a nuclear bomb, they are not even close to having a nuclear bomb or are they planning a nuclear bomb.” Has Trump made the whole nuclear bomb thing up? The Israeli and US airstrikes have hit a school killing many children making either Trump or Netanyahu, or both, child killers. Neither of these tyrants will lose sleep over this act of pedocide. Trump has ranted, in one of his worse moments; “we’re knocking the crap out of them” he told viewers on US television just after the school was obliterated! What kind of a monster is he, another Hitler?

Trump has been reportedly “scathing” with British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. According to Trump Starmer has been “unhelpful” because he, Starmer, for once had the backbone to stand up to Trump, or so it seemed! Trump claimed the “UK has been very uncooperative” simply because Starmer questioned the legality of these attacks on Iran. Eventually Starmer relented, or gave half way, by ambiguously allowing the US to use British airbases for “defensive actions” which covers a ‘multitude of sins’ and can have many interpretations. 

The US President – of sorts – has (at the time of writing) told PM Starmer who is considering sending two Aircraft-Carriers to the Middle East; “we don’t need people that join wars after we’ve already won”. Keir Starmer instead of shitting himself at this rebuff by Trump should be dancing in Downing Street, at last shaking off the dictatorship sometimes called the “special relationship”, which it is not, with the USA! 

The US President continued using the language of a failed history student claiming Starmer “is no Winston Churchill”, referencing the wartime relationship between the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and US President Franklyn D Roosevelt. The circumstances during World War Two were completely different. Churchill wanted the US involved as allies in the war against Nazi Germany, and Roosevelt could not deliver due to election pledges. He was very apologetic but he had pledged to keep the US out of any “European wars” telling the US people; “your boys will not die in foreign wars”. This time it is Trump, as US President, who wants something from Britain so he can carry out illegal acts of terrorism. Donald Trump claims the so-called “special relationship between the UK and US is not what it once was.”

The most annoying aspect about this situation apart from having to listen to Trump's lies is the response of the European political leaders. They all appear shit scared of the tyrant, just as their predecessors were of Hitler who mocked British leader, Neville Chamberlain. Now Trump seems to be courting other more compliant European leaders including Germany’s Friedrich Merz, probably telling him he can offer a ‘special relationship’ now the British have become “uncooperative” - which the Chancellor will bite his hand off for. 

Why, oh why, do European leaders place so much importance on being well in with a criminally insane man? Twenty-Six County Minister for Foreign Affairs, Helen McEntee, having been asked “eight times” to clarify her position on the legality of Trump and Netanyahu’s attacks, “stopped short of calling the US and Israelis attacks on Iran a breach of international law” (Irish Daily Mirror 6th march). Perhaps the reluctance of the Twenty-Six County administration to really attack Trump and his cohort Netanyahu is to a certain extent understandable. We are a small country which is already forcibly partitioned by a larger regionally powerful neighbour to the east, perhaps the administration maybe worried about antagonising an even larger power, the USA, to the west particularly with a lunatic at the wheel! Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, and Tanaiste, Simon Harris, should definitely not go – but they will – to Washington for the Saint Patricks Day festivities. Consider such an invite equal to same from Vlad the Impaler! Do not associate Ireland with a mass murderer!!

Who will stop Trump and his partner in war crimes, Netanyahu? Trump has already proved he has no regard for so-called international law and he just ignores the United Nations. Remember Hitler and his contempt for the ‘League of Nations’? Appeasement after appeasement led ultimately to the Second World War. Trump has taken Venezuela, again dictating regime change, and who would succeed Nicolas Maduro, deposed using force by the US, then threatening to invade Greenland, and supplying the Israelis with ordnance to bomb Gaza. Hitler had invaded Austria, and Czechoslovakia before Poland in 1939 in much the same way as Trump has carried out his takeovers. 

Were the actions of Hitler used as a blueprint by Trump? There are comparisons, very stark comparisons, between Trump in 2026 and Hitler 1939! European leaders, in sharp contrast to their reactions to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, appear to tolerate and even agree with anything Trump does. Imagine if he decides his dislike of Keir Starmer is so great it is time for ‘regime change’ in London? Or, if the ‘socialists’ won a Presidential election in France who Trump disapproves of, what then? ‘Regime change’ in Paris? What of the Dublin government if Trump gets annoyed with the Dail? Time for Irish ‘regime change’?

Liberal democracy is dead in some of Trump’s immediate satellite neighbours and now he is doing so in the Middle-East. Europe could be next and to think differently is possibly storing up trouble. A European trade embargo on the US may be costly to the middle-classes but the US bourgeoisie would feel the heat as well. War is not a suggestion but trade barriers on Trump's USA are feasible. 

Something must be done and quickly before the whole world is under Trumps jackboot!! This is not a war it is the obliteration of a militarily weak country by a super power and their cohorts in Tel Aviv. Admittedly the Iranian regime are not good people, they are murdering bastards, but their overthrow is for the people of Iran not Donald ‘lunatic’ Trump! It is akin to gangsters falling out and the Saint Valentines Day massacre in 1929. The hoodlums in Washington and Tel Aviv have fallen out with the weaker but equally crooked gangsters in Tehran.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Trump, Netanyahu And The Iranian Regime ðŸ’Ģ Gangsters At War!

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