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Fírinne McIntyre ✒ writing in  Being Human.

"Your hair has been destroyed, to prevent you from contacting your ship."

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia is a story that could have turned audiences away. The CEO of a powerful medical company is kidnapped by two conspiracy theorists who believe she is an alien sent to destroy Earth.

The concepts behind its most considerable plot points could leave an audience groaning, shaking their heads as they leave the cinema muttering. If I were to explain the story arc to the layman, I would expect no reply other than, ‘Aw, c’mon. Really?’.

Bugonia could have missed its mark, but it was flawlessly executed. Execution is crucial, and Lanthimos has crafted a clean guillotine. The film borrows its plot from the South Korean film Save The Planet! (2003), and I wonder if I might find its execution as successful under another director.

A noteworthy piece of pre-release hype for Bugonia, including a bald-only preview screening, was that Emma Stone had shaved her iconic red hair, and sported a stubbly scalp for Lanthimos’ newest film - a sharp contrast to the remarkably black and ostentatiously long hair she wore in Poor Things. While the trailer revealed this bald-headed Emma, none of this prepares the viewer for the real-time hair-shaving scene.

Up close on 35mm film, I realised that Stone, a woman subjected to the beauty standards of 2025, had no prior idea what her scalp looks like. Watching felt like intruding. Stone’s performance in this film was beyond words, and without traversing too far into the land of spoilers, I found certain moments hard to watch.

Don, played by Aidan Delbis in his breakout role, was a real example of empathy and of the echo chamber - a character perfectly placed between innocence under manipulation and total complicity. Another hit from the guillotine of perfect execution.

To conclude, if you have seen Bugonia, please Google the children’s show Boohbah. It was the first thing I thought of upon leaving the cinema.

Fírinne McIntyre of synth-pop duo “mischa and the bear”

Bugonia

People And Nature ☭ A Moscow court has sentenced university teacher Aleksandr Nesterenko to three years’ imprisonment, for sharing Ukrainian songs on a social media account. Here is a translation of Nesterenko’s final statement to the court, which was published by Mediazona.


On 19 December, the Liublin district court sentenced Nesterenko, an associate professor in the faculty of philosophy at the Moscow state technical university, to three years, Mediazona stated in its introduction. The 62-year-old lecturer has been in custody since September 2024 because he saved on his page on VKontakte [a Russian language site similar to facebook] a clip of the songs “We are growing” by Voply Vidopliassov [Screams of Vidopliassov, a Ukrainian rock-and-roll band], “We were born at a great time” [a Ukrainian nationalist anthem] and “Bandera is our father, Ukraine our mother” [a Ukrainian song that Nesterenko denies having circulated]. Experts saw in these songs “evidence of incitement to violent actions against Russians, as a group defined by nationality” and “to the destruction of Russians as military opponents”.

To start with, Nesterenko was accused of “inciting hatred or antipathy” [Article 282:2 of the Russian criminal code] and “advocating extremism” [Article 280:2]. But in court the prosecutor said that the first charge was “unnecessary”, and asked that Nesterenko be sent to a prison colony for four years on the second charge. Before sentencing, Nesterenko made a final statement, which we reproduce here in full.

Aleksandr Nesterenko in court

☭     ☭     ☭     ☭

I hope that this statement is my last in this auditorium, but not my last all together. To start with, I wish everyone here a happy Christmas, with hopes of miracles and of changes for the better. About this, there’s [Iosif] Brodsky’s poetry: the stronger is Herod, the more certain the inevitable wonder.[1] We’re putting our hopes on that.

In the late 80s and the 90s, if someone had said that there would be political prisoners in Russia again, that the sentences for saying things would be longer than they are for murder, I would have thought that that person was insane.

But here I am, already in my second year in prison, because, among the 400 or so songs in many of the world’s languages on my VKontakte playlist, are a few in Ukrainian. That was the basis for my arrest on charges of “inciting hatred or antipathy”. This “incitement” was against Russians: the charges passed over the Russian Federation’s many other nationalities in silence, as second-class citizens not even worth a mention. It wasn’t specified who I incited to hatred and antipathy against Russians, but it’s not hard to guess that they had in mind people who speak Ukrainian.

At the last minute, without any explanation, the charges on which I have been held behind bars for two years, as a terrorist and extremist, were dropped. It turned out that the impression created, of a whirlwind of activity on my case by dozens of law enforcement officers, was all in vain. They undertook search operations, prepared expertise and made investigations of my case … instead of defending citizens from actual terrorists. And now I am charged only with advocating extremist activity.

Both songs that are mentioned in the charges – the third one [“Bandera is our father, Ukraine our mother”] is not, and never was, in my playlist – have lyrics written a hundred years ago. They have nothing whatever to do with the Russian Federation, nor with Russians, nor with the current world situation. I am not their author and I didn’t perform them. I didn’t put them on line. No-one has designated them extremist or included them in lists of banned items, and none of the social media channels have blocked them. They are right there, being listened to by other VKontakte users, from whom I took them, to add to my playlist for future study, to follow up on my research interests. Which, in case anyone is interested, are: imagined communities, historical memory, group identities, historical narratives and similar subjects.

In other words, the charges under the relevant Article of the criminal code do not fit with the circumstances of the case. They are unlawful.

What has happened to me, and to other prisoners of conscience, demonstrates clearly this government’s real character. It is based on lies and violence. Its aim is to force us to become sheep, marching to the beat of drums made from our own skins. But in spite of the merciless repression, in Russia there were and there are people who have not renounced their ideals, their truths, because only those truths are worthy of devoting their lives to. And for me it’s a great honour that, by the will of fate, I now stand by side with these wonderful people.

I admit, in full, my guilt, in that to preserve your power, you are ready to commit any crime. I am guilty of not being among those heroes who were thrown into dungeons right at the start, for being faithful to their ideals. Because, unlike them, I, like many of us, had not found for myself the answer to the question, “what can I do?”. Now I know the answer to that, and I hope I have the moral right to say what it is.

First, however banal this sounds: there is no need to be afraid. They want to terrify us, because any power is itself afraid, above all, of its own people. But they can not put half the country in prison. If we all stop being afraid, then no cough will stop us from yelling out the truth: the emperor has no clothes.

Second, no-one can force us to obey criminal orders. We carry them out by our own free will, always finding justifications for our timidity, instead of courageously and honestly doing the duty required by our conscience.

The only way to defy spiritual freedom is to retain freedom in your own soul. Because freedom isn’t external, it is inside us. In detention I have become freer, because in prison you feel more intensely genuine freedom – freedom of the soul.

In conclusion, I would like to mention some beautiful fairy tales, rays of light in the darkness that is swallowing us: Dragon by [the Soviet-era writer Evgeny] Shvarts, The Giant Cockroach by Korney Chukovsky [a children’s poem, published in 1921], Tamara Gabbe’s City of Masters [a cycle of plays, 1943], Tales of Cipollino by Gianni Rodari [Italian children’s stories, 1951] and Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien. I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow these publications were denounced by some Grima Wormtongue [a character of Tolkien’s] or Unter Prishibeev [hero of a story by Anton Chekhov, an army officer who even in civvies interferes in everyone’s business and tells them who is in charge]. I wouldn’t be surprised if these tales were found to advocate extremist activities, and their authors were added to the notorious list of extremists and terrorists, on which I too have been lucky enough to land. [Nesterenko was added to the register of extremists and terrorists in December 2024.]

Finally: we must not forget that, whatever the circumstances, our fate and our future lies only in our hands. It depends on us ourselves, no-one else, what we do with our lives: vegetate, or achieve moral victory. Thank you for your attention.

🔴 Aleksandr Nesterenko’s trial reported by Novaya Gazeta Evropa

🔴 Just published (November 2025): Voices Against Putin’s War: protesters’ defiant speeches in Russian courts. Information here. Readings of courtroom speeches on film here: Try Me For Treason. There will be another reading in London on Thursday 5 February, information here.

[1] Here Aleksandr Nesterenko quoted “December 24, 1971” by Iosif Brodsky, the Nobel-prize-winning Russian-American poet, who wrote a poem each Christmas for many years. The relevant lines are “Herod reigns but the stronger he is, the more sure, the more certain the wonder“ («Знал бы Ирод, что чем он сильней, тем верней, неизбежнее чудо»).

☭ People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitter, whatsapp and telegram. Please follow! Or email peoplenature@protonmail.com, and we’ll add you to our circulation list (2-4 messages per month)

‘Your Power Is Based On Lies And Violence’ 🪶 Three Years For Sharing Ukrainian Songs

Dr John Coulter ✍ Confidence is now the new political buzz word following the coronation of the Ulster Unionist Party’s latest leadership of North Antrim MLA Jon Burrows as leader and Fermanagh South Tyrone MLA Diana Armstrong as deputy leader at an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) at the weekend in a Belfast hotel.

By UUP standards, it was a well-attended and good natured EGM. There certainly was none of the vicious repeated rancour which ripped the party asunder during the David Trimble era between the Yes and No camps over the UUP’s role in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Rather than a defensive pose of ‘what we have, we hold’, the UUP grassroots has put its trust in the supposed Burrows/Armstrong ‘dream team’ and has gone on a ‘we want to take back what we once held’ attack mode.

The clock is ticking and the ‘dream team’ has around 15 months until the May 2027 council and Assembly elections to determine if this new-look Confident Unionism appeals to the electorate in Northern Ireland.

Outgoing leader Mike Nesbitt, who has retained his Stormont Executive Ministerial post of Health in the new leadership, seems to have steadied HMS UUP. There’s certainly no more daft notions of ‘Vote Mike, Get Colum’ which sunk Nesbitt’s first stint as party leader.

Under Nesbitt Mark Two, the UUP has stabilised itself in the opinion polls, has re-written its party rules, put a new staff team in place, and sorted the party’s finances. Effectively, he has created the perception that the posts of leader and deputy leader are no longer poisoned chalices in the UUP.

From the party mood and political temperature of the EGM, the UUP’s days of pussy-footing as a wannabe Alliance Party are over. Part of the UUP’s problem over the past decade is that the party’s didn’t really know what it stood for.

It stumbled from election to election like a thoroughly drunk male pensioner trying to find his way home from a dark, cold night at the pub by staggering and slipping across ice-covered streets.

Whilst most of the folk at the EGM were ‘well on’ in years age-wise, there is a genuine hunger to attract more young people and women into the party, and especially to stand as candidates in 2027. But it will require common sense policies if the UUP is to once again become the natural home of the pro-Union community.

Armstrong becomes the first woman in over a century of the party’s existence to hold the post of deputy leader. She also adds Chief Whip to her portfolio of responsibility.

Her late father, former UUP boss Harry West, established his power base in the party using the pressure group, the West Ulster Unionist Council.

Under his daughter’s reign as deputy leader, expect to see an increasing role for the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council within the party.

The EGM has unveiled a rebranding of the UUP which presents it as dynamic Unionism; urging folk to show a pride in the Union and become the chief champions of Northern Ireland being an integral part of the UK.

Put bluntly, the ‘dream team’ wants the UUP to become the chief cheer leader for Northern Ireland. Security is at the heart of this rebranding.

Burrows has been keen to point out that Northern Ireland is now at its most peaceful for 50 years, so that any meddling with the constitution is merely a leap in the dark.

He wants the UUP to become the party of strategic Unionism, and this means taking ownership of the peace process and slam Sinn Fein for suppressing the good news about Northern Ireland.

Burrows points to the importance of national security; that the organised crime gangs are now globally connected and that Northern Ireland is a central lynchpin in protecting that national security compared to the Republic of Ireland.

Burrows is likewise keen to put an end to the internal bickering which has bedevilled the UUP for decades. During the Trimble era, the No camp on the Belfast Agreement rallied itself around the pressure group Union First, while the Yes camp had its own version, Re:Union.

‘We can’t keep having arguments with ourselves; we must agree to move on’ - a clear warning to those in the UUP ranks who feel Burrows and Armstrong are a political gamble because both were co-opted to Stormont.

But does this mean the new look UUP will be Left-wing, Right-wing, liberal or traditional? It seems none of these terms will apply to the rebranded UUP. Yes, the UUP will need detailed policies which are communicated with the utmost and absolute clarity. Yes, the UUP must listen to its members and the community.

Under the Burrows/Armstrong leadership, it seems the UUP will develop its own team of social media ‘attack dogs’ - with Alliance, Sinn Fein and those who want to rewrite the history of the Troubles firmly in their sights.

Burrows is a firm believer in the power of social media to influence potential members and voters. He is equally clear on the topic of Unionist unity - there will be no single party; no mergers. It’ll be a case of ‘we’ll do Unionist co-operation on our terms!’

Burrows’ message to the DUP is brutally honest - we want to replace you as the biggest Unionist party in Northern Ireland.

As the dozens of delegates at the EGM enjoyed their complementary tea, coffee and scones, the ‘dream team’ left them with plenty to both digest and ponder politically.

For those on the liberal wing of the party, they need to recognise that the past ‘fluffy bunny, snowflake politics’ of sucking up to the Alliance-type voter base is parked.

For those on the Hard Right of the UUP, will they face disciplinary action if they use social media to push a Right-wing agenda.

For the church-going clique, does the perception the UUP supports a ‘pluralist society’ sound alarm bells. After all, the EGM began with the saying of the Ulster Unionist Party Prayer. May 2027 will answer all these queries.
 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

Softly, Softly Is Dead 🪶 Long Live The New Kick Ass UUP !

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3046

Anthony McIntyre 🔖This is Slough House in a post-Brexit world.

The book's title London Rules subliminally communicates this to the reader. Brussels rule is in the past but 'one of the unforeseen consequences of Brexit . . . was that it had elevated to positions of undue prominence any number of nasty little toerags.' Those that missed out on elevation might have made their way to Slough House. On second thoughts, they might even have stayed at Regent's Park.

The building where the slow horses ply their trade is no cleaner than it was in any of the previous books. This is the fifth, and the filth remains. No one can accuse Jackson Lamb of mounting a clean up operation, the dirtiest room of all being his office on the top floor, from which he likes to fart on those below, and which no amount of air freshener or fumigation could make right. Lamb doesn't jettison his persona, it sticks to him like dog poo to a shoe and smells as bad. Profane, flatulent, lover of whiskey and cigarettes, sharp as a razor, he is the alpha male stallion here, brooking neither rival nor alternative opinions.

The slow horses graze around in their Siberian stable, a mere half hour on foot from MI5 Headquarters, banished there for misdemeanours usually explained, although the cause for Lamb's exile is never detailed. Travellers to Slough House were given a one way ticket. 'From Regent's Park to Slough house: ‘a distance that could be walked in thirty minutes, though the return journey was unclockable, because nobody had ever made it.'

Over at Regent's Park, a beleaguered Claude Whelan is first desk at MI5 Headquarters, where trust amongst colleagues is in short supply. He is defending himself against assault from all sides in a world concisely summed up by Lamb: 'Ethical behaviour's like a vajazzle on a nun. Pretty to picture, but who really benefits?' Whelan wants to protect the Prime Minister from ambitious pretenders such as Denis Gimball, a Brexiteer MP who covets the No 10 spot. Gimball is an unsavoury prat but one who is outdone only by his obnoxious wife, a red top columnist who makes a point of going for Whelan. It is difficult to evict the image of Nigel Farage from the mind each time Gimball pops up, which is all too frequent. At one point he assumes the persona of Pat Rabbitte: 'actually, he reflected, he'd have been better off saying it had been an electoral promise. Only infants and idiots expected you to keep those.'

Ricky Lee Jones could have penned a song, Rod Ho's in Love, to stand in for Mick Jagger's Strange Game in the television series. It might have captured the atmospherics better. Roddy Ho, the in-house IT geek, has fallen in love but none of his colleagues can bring themselves to believe that the love is reciprocated. Afterall who could love Ho but himself. So smitten is Roddy that he is oblivious to the very real attempt to kill him. Shirley Dander intervenes to save Ho but her past drug addiction - she is now 62 days clean - persuades Lamb not to be persuaded that Ho was targeted for assassination at all. A second attempt changes his mind.

The attempts on Ho's life are part of a wider web that begins with an attack by armed men in a Derbyshire village, Abbotsfield, leaving twelve people dead. Add to that the mass slaughter of penguins at London Zoo and a bomb placed on a high speed train, it leaves the spooks with a lot of figuring out to do, but the dots are joined once forensics show a link between the second attempt on Ho's life and the Derbyshire incident.

And so the hunt begins. The horses might be slow but the ride is anything but.

Mick Herron, 2018, London Rules. Publisher: Baskerville. ISBN-13: 978-1473657397

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

London Rules

Democracy / / / / / /   For Sale 🔦 Written by Peter Geoghegan and Max Colbert.

Toby Young’s outfit went to court to hide its donors. Today we reveal that funders include US anti-abortion groups, Brexit politicians and Tufton Street insiders.


The Free Speech Union (FSU) has come a long way since its inception in 2020. Founder Toby Young now sits in the House of Lords and FSU spokespeople regularly appear on British media. Even JD Vance has endorsed its argument that the UK is suffering a ‘free speech crisis’.

The FSU has also backed numerous freedom of speech legal challenges. So I was somewhat surprised to learn that last week Young’s organisation had itself obtained a High Court injunction - banning the publication of a list of its donors.

The court order followed the hacking of the organisation’s website earlier this month by the trans rights group Bash Back. On its own website, Bash Back accused the FSU of “purport[ing] to protect free speech” while in reality “work[ing] to protect transphobes, racists, and anti-choice activists,” and published a list of people who had donated £50 or more to the FSU over the past two years.

Who Funds The Free Speech Union?

National Secular Society ★ Written by Keith Porteous Wood.

Despite achieving constitutional separation from the Catholic Church after much 
bloodshed, the French state is still subservient to the Church when it comes to child abuse


The 120th anniversary of France's landmark law codifying the separation of Church and state was commemorated last month. The 1905 law's ideological origin was of course the Revolution of 1789, which sought to end, through the establishment of a republic, the corruption and excessive power of the monarchs, the aristocracy and the Catholic Church.

However, France wasn't the first jurisdiction to make religious freedom a right and forbid state support for religion – the US state of Virginia was. There, the Anglican Church was established just as it was, and still is, in England. Virginia's stance formed the template for the first amendment to the US Constitution in 1789, thanks to visionaries James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, the latter of whom devoted his life to replicating these concepts in other countries, starting with France.

Now, nearly 250 years later, let's examine what has been achieved, and what still needs to be done.

In 1789 after much bloodshed, French citizens managed to form a unicameral National Assembly  . . . 

Continue @ NSS.

France’s Rocky Road To The Separation Of Church And State

Event 📢 Public meeting to discuss climate change.

Venue: Marine Hotel, Sutton.

Date: 4-February-2026

Time: 19.30
 


Sutton Public Meeting 🌞 Climate Change

Friendly Atheist ★ Dr. Kirk Milhoan is the head of the Republican-backed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and he's completely out of his depth.

In a move that will ultimately harm ignorant Americans, the head of the Republican-backed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said this week that vaccines that fight polio and measles ought to be optional, flying in the face of all documented evidence.

The chair of that panel, Dr. Kirk Milhoan, said the right to refuse vaccines was more important than a mandate to protect public health.

In the case of an infectious disease, a personal choice to decline a vaccine may also affect others, including infants who are too young to be vaccinated or people who are immunocompromised. But a person’s right to reject a vaccine supersedes those risks, Dr. Milhoan said.

“If there is no choice, then informed consent is an illusion,” he said. “Without consent it is medical battery.”

To make sense of the decision, it helps to know more about Milhoan and why he’s on this panel at all. He’s an evangelical Christian pastor with a long history of promoting vaccine misinformation, which is why he was appointed to this vaccine advisory panel by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 

Continue @ Friendly Atheist.

Pastor Who Rejects “Established Science” Decided Polio & Measles Vaccines Should Be Optional

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

 

Pastords @ 29

 

A Morning Thought @ 3045

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