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Fírinne McIntyre ✒ writing in  Being Human.

★★ for Jacobi Jupe’s performance, and ★ for the witchiness (and the sound design was great).

The impact of Hamnet hinges entirely on its ‘reveal’ - which is, in fact, revealed in its synopsis, and tends to be common knowledge if one has studied Shakespeare. If you are going to tell a story that is commonly known, you must be able to make it interesting, and I personally felt that Hamnet failed in this. I felt little connection to the characters, and from the ‘reveal’ onward, everything played out as one would expect, except for some moments of hit-or-miss cheese.

This suggests, to me, that the film’s impact is entirely dependent on the viewer knowing nothing of Shakespeare’s biography, which isn’t a very reliable hinge. I think of Titanic - everyone knows that this boat sinks, and James Cameron made one of the best films of the 90s.

The first half of Hamnet was great - the family dynamics, the strange but instant connection between Jesse and Paul’s characters, the witchiness of it all - it had set itself up to be amongst my favourites. The film seems to abandon all of its exposition from the first half in favour of its big reveal and neglects any further development. It felt to me like two separate films, and not in the Lynchian way that I enjoy.

A highlight is Jacobi Jupe’s performance. Having studied acting for a short period, I marvelled as I watched each thought of the character cross the actor’s face before speaking. Jupe seems naturally capable of something that takes years of study, and I felt like I had witnessed something special. Given the slew of nominations at the time of release, I went in with the expectation that Buckley would bring me this feeling - thanks to Jupe, I did not leave entirely disappointed.

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

Hamnet

Byline Times ★ Written by Nafeez Ahmed. Recommended by Barry Gilheany. 

The media’s coverage of the academic’s life was fuelled by the campaign of an established far-right network

Jason Arday, a 41-year-old academic who resigned as Cambridge’s Professor of Sociology of Education, was found dead on Friday following intense scrutiny of many aspects of his qualifications and personal life by the majority of the established press.

His coordinated targeting by an explicitly anti-black race science network did not come out of nowhere, Byline Times can reveal.

Backed by the pro-Trump Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, this network has spent a decade penetrating Cambridge University before reaching Reform UK, Restore Britain, and the pan-European far-right.

This phase of the campaign against Jason Arday began when academic and anti-black racist Nathan Cofnas raised claims of plagiarism in Arday’s work in a Substack post last month.

The story it fuelled was then dissected in more than 200 articles across the majority of the British press in the weeks that followed, both in print and online.

It was striking that many of these articles did not acknowledge that the central accusations were being made by a man who believes that inherited racial differences make black people less intelligent . . .

Continue @ Byline Times.

The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network That Penetrated Cambridge University And Targeted Jason Arday

Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 24-August-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Surviving war in Crimea/.
⬤ Occupied territories: Ukrainians lose homes.
⬤ Report: Russian attempts to legitimise occupation.
⬤ Ukraine cultural policy.
⬤  Russia torture evidence.
⬤ Myths about Ukraine rebutted.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Mariupol homes only for Russians, Ukrainians to lose even ‘compensation homes' for those Russia bombed (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, August 21st)

Russians abduct former teacher from occupied Kherson oblast and torture her husband (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, August 21st)

‘I don’t think beyond tomorrow’: surviving the war in occupied Crimea (Meduza, 21 August)

Donetsk teenager forced to ‘repent’ and sentenced to 12 years for ‘spying for Ukraine’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, August 20th)

Health condition of political prisoner Lenur Halilov worsening (Crimea Platform, August 20th)

Appaz Kurtamet’s Birthday: 5th Year Behind Bars (Crimea Platform, August 19th)

Russians abducted 71-year-old Serhiy Yeriomenko and sentenced him to 13.5 years for his defence of Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, August 18th)

Death is Russia’s only limit in torment of Crimean Tatar political prisoner Tofik Abdulgaziev and his family (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, August 17th)

Ukrainian Baptist pastor faces deportation from occupied Luhansk oblast for refusal to take Russian citizenship (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, August 17th)

Life Under Occupation (Alter Pravo, July 2026)

News from Ukraine

Russian forces continue to target Ukrainian workplaces and workers (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, August 23rd)

Fahrenheit 451: Russia destroyed one-third of the books printed in Ukraine in 2026 (Ukrainska Pravda, August 22nd)

‘Double strike’ attack on Kriviy Rih shopping mall (Meduza, 21 August)

Drop the charges against Maksym Shumakov (South London Socialist, August 21st)

Creative Crisis: Cultural policy, precarity and European integration (Commons.com.ua, 18 August)

Degeneration of power: How Zelensky topped out & gov’t machinery bottomed out (zn.UA, 17 Aug)

‘The FSB is blackmailing me’: how the Russian secret services tried to recruit a volunteer through his son (Ukrainska Pravda, 17 August)

A 27-year-old communist from Pervomaisk was convicted of treason (Intent, August 11th)

War-related news from Russia

How men in Penza region are being abducted and sent to war (Meduza, 21 August)

Vote with your ruble: Russian stock market rejects Putin’s official optimism (The Insider, August 17th)

Politician Lev Shlosberg sentenced to 11 years following a defiant stand in Pskov court (Mediazona, August 17th)

Alexander Skobov: ‘I am the accuser here’(free-skobov.now/en/, March 2025)

Comment and analysis

Fourteen claims that circulate, and what the evidence shows (Anti Capitalist Resistance, August 20th)

Excellent response by Findlay Young, convenor, SNP Ukraine Solidarity Caucus in The National to Stop the War (Facebook, August 20th)

Shouldn't the left be against the military? (Facebook, August 17th)

The price is not high enough (International Politics and Society, August 11th)

By hook or by crook: Russia’s Attempts to Promote the Legitimisation of the Temporarily Occupied Territories (Alter Pravo, July 2026)

The empire keeps striking back (The Radical, July 6th)

Research of human rights abuses

Legal Assessment of an FPV Drone Attack (Tribunal for Putin, August 20th)

The search by Ukrainians for their relatives in Russian captivity (Mediazona, 19 August)

Filip Siman Case (Tribunal for Putin, August 17th)

Over 16,000 civilians detained by Russia during the war in Ukraine are still held, UN estimates (AP, August 11th)

Voislav Torden Case (Tribunal for Putin, August 10th)

Upcoming events

Thursday 27 August, 5.45pm. Free The Zaporizhia 15 – Ukrainian trade unionists speak in London. UNISON national office, 130 Euston Road, London, NW1 2AY (ground floor). Eyewitness reports by Khrystyna Levchenko, union representative at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and Ivanna Khrapko, Deputy Chair of the State Employees’ Union of Ukraine. Register here

Saturday 29 August, 2.0-4.0pm, in London. Screening of “Akishina. Speak Not Silence” (documentary about Marina Akishina, artist and theatre director, in Russian, with English subtitles) and Q&A with the Director, Maria Sandler. At Theatreship, South Quay Plaza, London E14 9SH. Organised by the Russian Democratic Society. Buy tickets here
🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.

We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.


We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.

The bulletin is also stored on line here.

To receive the bulletin regularly, send your email to:
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News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 209

Irish Republicans    will commemorate IRA Chief of Staff Maurice Moss Twomey in Cork next weekend.

Venue: Clondulane Community Hall, Clondulane, Fermoy, Co Cork.

Date: 6-September-2026.

Time:1400.

Guest Speaker: Dr Brian Hanley.




Maurice Moss Twomey National Commemoration

Séamus Fitzsimons ★ Writing In Medium. Recommended by John Crawley. 

Why Sinn Féin Is Betting the Republic on a Mechanism the British Have Already Told Us They Won’t Use

How a party that once fought to remove the British built its entire strategy on a clause the British wrote, the British control, and the British have now told us in writing they have no intention of ever using.

Sinn Féin tell people freedom is coming. Not through struggle, not through building anything, but through a box on a ballot paper that a British Secretary of State may, at their own discretion, one day decide to print.

They call it the border poll. They talk about it the way the old movement used to talk about the Republic itself, as though it were inevitable, as though history were doing the work for them. Nobody in that leadership will tell you the plain truth of the thing: this mechanism has never once delivered what they are promising. Not here, not anywhere, not ever. And the people holding the pen have already told us why.

Continue @ Medium.

The Poll That Will Never Come

Atheist Ireland ★ There is a Constitutional and legal right for any child to not attend religious instruction in state-funded schools. Respecting this right is a Constitutional condition of state aid to all schools.

21-July-2026

The Department of Education has no Guidelines on how this right is to be processed, and given practical application on the ground, in schools. Children are left sitting in the religion class and no other subject is offered.

The Department of Education, schools and the WRC treat this Constitutional right as an administrative issue. A Workplace Relations Commission case under the Equal Status Act is a good example of this.

A student, who was non-religious, did not want to participate in religion classes. She attended her only local publicly funded school. The parents had no alternative other than to send all of their children to this school.

Her parent exercised the Constitutional (Art44.2.4) and statutory right (S.30.2(e) Education Act 1998) for the child not to attend religious instruction.

The school refused to allow her to participate in alternative classes while religion classes were taking place. The parent complained to the WRC that, because of this, she was receiving an inferior education.

Astonishingly, the WRC accepted the school’s argument that providing alternative classes for students who opted out of religion might potentially cause chaos within the school.

It also suggested that offering another subject to a child who opted out of religion could potentially discriminate against students who attended religious classes, because those students would not receive the same extra tuition.

The WRC stated that:

However, what could potentially be considered discriminatory would be if the Respondent offered extra tuition in a different subject to a student who opted out of religion but refused to provide additional tuition to a student who chose to attend religious classes on the grounds of their belief.
This difference in treatment based on students’ choices regarding religious education could raise concerns of discrimination under the Equal Status Act as the Respondent’s representative correctly highlighted.
Specifically, if the Respondent allowed C to participate in additional history classes due to her decision not to study religion, then it could be argued that E has a valid claim of discrimination because she chose to study religion but was not given the same opportunity for extra history classes.

This reasoning illustrates the problem. The child who opts out is not seeking an advantage. She is seeking equal access to education during the school day, while exercising a right grounded in freedom of conscience and belief.

Instead, the child was left sitting in the religion class and no supervision was even provided outside the religion class. The WRC did not view this as discrimination.

Providing meaningful alternative instruction would remedy a disadvantage, not create an advantage.

This case shows the disrespect that the Department of Education, the WRC and schools have for the Constitutional rights of parents and their children. Our Constitutional rights are treated as an administrative issue, and when we complain it is viewed as seeking an advantage.

⏩ Follow Atheist Ireland on X @atheistie

WRC Treats Protecting Constitutional Rights In School As An Administrative Issue And As Seeking An Advantage

Dixie Elliot ✊This lot Andersonstown Regeneration Committee wouldn't know what a 'genuine Republican' is.


Definitely not the former enemies of the British Crown who now parade themselves before the eyes of the world as being amongst it's most loyal subjects.

Anyway, they refer to The Dark as a 'Boston College Tout'.
 
A Republican leader who led from the front. The reason they hate Brendan Hughes is because the Kenova Report has proven him right in what he told Adams after the quick killing of the tout Joe Fenton.
 
He told Adams that 'Belfast was rotten' and Adams accused him of being paranoid.
 
Fuck me was The Dark right!
 
These same pathetic clowns probably sit around a table with real touts given what we now know.
 
In 2003 Adams, McGuinness, Morrison and Gerry Kelly came out in defence of the tout, Scappaticci, who was killing touts with other touts like John Joe Magee. They claimed he was an innocent man.

What about the innocent volunteers, like Michael Kearney, who were branded as touts and murdered by Scappaticci and Magee?

How the hell did a former member of the British Special Boat Service, Magee, end up in the IRA's ISU? 

Then in 2016 Morrison said in an interview with the Irish News that Scappaticci was stood down under a cloud of suspicion in 1990.
 
So why were they defending him in 2003, claiming he was an innocent man?
 
According to the Kenova Report Scappaticci sent word to his handlers that the net was closing in on the tout Joe Fenton. Not only that, but twenty other sources told the intelligence services that Fenton was highly likely to be shot.
 
Those twenty had to have been in high enough positions to have known that.
 
No ordinary volunteer would have known it.
 
And then there's 'the great leader' Gerry Adams sending an email to the Garda Commissioner fingering three of his colleagues who had remained loyal to him for the killing of the screw Brian Stack.
 
Surely that was touting?

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Who's Afraid Of The Dark?

Friendly Atheist ★ The televangelist claims an "inter-dimensional device" stole her eggs for decades. Don't bother looking for evidence.

Ask any author you know what it’s like to promote a new book, and you’ll inevitably hear stories about how tough it is to break through all the chaos of the news. You’ll try anything to get people to pay attention to your book during that short period of time around when it’s published, but unless you’re already famous or have great connections, it’s rough.

In the case of convicted criminal-turned-Christian evangelist Katie Souza, she has a brilliant marketing plan to convince the most ignorant religious people to buy her new book about how aliens are engaged in “spiritual warfare ministry”: Just tell everyone that aliens stole her eggs in order to create half-alien-half-human hybrids.

Just as the Bible foretold.

I was visited when I was a young girl and… aliens… alien beings implanted an inter-dimensional device in me that harvested my eggs over my lifetime. ‘Cause eggs—you get hundreds of thousands of eggs when… you’re born with hundreds of thousands of eggs if you’re a female. But they don’t mature until you ovulate . . . 

Christian Televangelist Katie Souza Claims Aliens Stole Her Eggs And Made A Hybrid Baby

Packy Carty ✒ Andy Burnham’s announcement that a border poll is “off the table” — while not surprising — further underscores the undemocratic nature of British rule in Ireland and the denial of Irish national self-determination by yet the latest British Prime Minister, whose government ironically has yet to be approved by a British general election.


 
However, this latest dismissal cannot hide the material reality that the artificially constructed Northern Irish state is on borrowed time.

Contrived to maintain a permanent unionist majority, the inversion of that majority remains the most subversive force the status quo has ever known.

Unionism, in its intransigent desperation, pushed all-in on Brexit in the hope that the rising tide could be stopped through the imposition of a hard border. Instead, the imposition of the sea border rocked Unionism to its core and revealed Whitehall's true hand. They set the North outside their sovereign referendum and, for the first time in British history, signed an international treaty conceding that Northern Ireland is not, apparently, as British as Finchley!

This decision, more than any other, exposes the British position as a long, slow disengagement — effectively conceding the Provisionals’ "declaration of intent to withdraw."
 
Burnham won't be the Prime Minister who makes that final call, and he knew it when he brushed aside the question. For while the new majority has already been born, it still has a decade to mature.

⏩ Packy Carty is an East Tyrone Socialist Republican. 

On Borrowed Time

Right Wing Watch 👀Written by Peter Montgomery.


“They Just Made Prayer Illegal” reads the dishonest subject line of emails send by Intercessors for America to its prayer warriors on Friday and Saturday. 

The Friday email urges people to sign a petition to “stop making prayer illegal.” The truth is that nobody “just made prayer illegal.” But IFA leaders don’t let truth get in the way of politically useful fearmongering. Here's what IFA President David Kubal wrote in his Friday email:

New Jersey just signed the ‘shield law bill’ that criminalizes prayer outside of abortion clinics statewide. This chilling eradication of the First Amendment for believers is now happening in New Jersey--it could be coming to a state near you.

The false claim about a law recently signed by New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill to protect access to health care facilities is a classic example of the religious right’s go-to strategy of stoking conservative Christian fear and anger with claims of religious persecution.

What the New Jersey law actually prohibits is threats, intimidation, and physical obstruction of access to clinics. IFA’s newsletter article published on Saturday is more nuanced than its action-alert email. The newsletter article is headlined “Did New Jersey Ban Pro-Life Prayer?” and quotes from an Epoch Times article 

Continue @ RWW.

Trump’s Prayer Warriors Lie About New Jersey Shield Law

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Seventy Seven

 

Pastords @ 59

 

A Morning Thought @ 3249

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