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Christopher Owens ðŸ”– has just completed reading a potboiler. 


A writer returns to his college town, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor. But after he drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device – a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess.
What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate our memories, and a moving exploration of the relationships that make us who we are.

I know. Who farted, right?

Universally hailed on its release earlier this year (even winning the Orwell Prize for Fiction), this 145-page book has been sitting on my shelf for most of the year. It’s cover ever so slightly reminiscent of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the combination of mounting praise and HAL trying to hypnotise me into reading the book finally broke my resistance.

And you know what, it’s ok.

Split into three parts (an interview between the narrator and his old mentor, Thomas; an argument with a curator after the narrator reveals he didn’t record the interview; and a conversation with Thomas’s son Max) the book skips along at a steady pace but with little weight (at least not until the end) nor with any particularly engaging characters. The end result is a collection of vaguely interesting ideas that never quite come together in a meaningful sense but you recognise the author’s intent and still go along with it.

Take this excerpt for example:

The man in the old-fashioned hat came by to check the tickets. I enlarged the little QR code and he scanned it. Then I put my earbuds in and began to listen to a talk, recorded in Paris in 1973, that Thomas gave about translation. I took a photo of the win-try, postindustrial landscape through my masked reflection as the train picked up speed, and then I checked and deleted the photo and shut my eyes and faced the past. My mentor paused, fifty-one years ago, and poured water into a glass. Someone in the audience coughed twice.
I was in Paris. (I don’t know how else the recording influenced the dream.) I was getting Eva from what must have been her school. I stood outside a tall and ornate wrought-iron fence, waiting for the gates to open. There were other parents and caregivers around, whispering to each other or into their phones. I don’t speak French, but it was clear that people were anxious. The wind was picking up. I heard sirens in the distance. I looked at my phone, but there were no alerts.

As you can probably guess, technology and our ambivalent relationship to it are a driving theme. While you can appreciate the ambition and the very skilled prose that does a lot of the heavy lifting, it ultimately feels like it has nothing to say while suggesting otherwise.

Such contradictions could be fascinating but in this case it’s akin to a potboiler.

Ben Lerner, 2026, Transcription, Granta Press. ISBN-13: 978-1803513805

⏩ 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”.

Transcription

Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.


Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Twenty Four

 

Religious Derangement Syndrome @ 20

 

A Morning Thought @ 3295

People And Nature ☭ Written by Simon Pirani.

7-September-2026

What, really, have socialists learned from the Russian war on Ukraine? Has it changed our understanding of the way that imperialism works? Tell us we were right all along?

Reflecting on the first four years since the invasion, Oleksandr Kyselov, a Ukrainian socialist based in Sweden, wrote in February that Ukrainians found themselves “trying to safeguard our future free from foreign dictates, and simultaneously sacrificing any chances to actually have one”.

Subjected to polarising propaganda, exposed to the attacks by Russian ‘liberators’ on our homes and core infrastructure, watching arrogant sticky-fingered moralising elites surprisingly exempt from ‘common duty’, learning about a striking dependence of our ability to fight back on the political expediencies abroad, we may find out that a fragile ‘least unjust peace’ is the best we can get.

And still, even seeing all of this, too many of the European left are busy stretching familiar old frameworks over a changed world. As if continuing to hope that, should they just deny, condemn, and denounce loudly enough, selectively pontificating about internationalism while reinforcing the borders of their national units, they will be spared the new reality of the world.

This reinforced my scepticism about “the left” as a category. Its historic failure to consider, or draw lessons from, the tragedy of the Syrian revolution, emptied the term of much meaning. That’s how I saw it nine years ago, anyway – and Ukraine has made things worse.

Demonstrators outside a court in Moscow, where Lidia Moniava, founder of a children’s hospice,
was on trial for social media posts about the war. Photo from Bereg

This, in turn, raises another question. What about those sections of the “left” claiming to be Marxists? Can we seriously use the term “Marxist” to describe people who, during the largest military conflict of our lifetimes in Europe, have – as Kyselov puts it – kept denying, condemning and denouncing, in the hope of being “spared the new reality”?

I do not have a comprehensive answer to that. But here’s a contribution: comments on a lengthy article about “geopolitical fractures and the Marxist critique of imperialism” by Alex Callinicos, a well-known Marxist writer. I read it, hoping to find the theoretical underpinnings of the political stance of the Socialist Workers Party, of which Callinicos is a member, on the war. The SWP recognises Ukrainians’ right to resist the Russian invasion in words, but opposes it in practice (see Feature 5 below); since 2022, it has called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, but did not do so during the eight years (2014-22) that they propped up the tinpot Donbass dictatorships.

Callinicos deals with imperialism as a global phenomenon, referring as examples to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine. My comments focus only on Ukraine, and what that tells us about imperialism generally. Five features of his analysis stood out for me.

Feature 1. Callinicos dissolves the particular in to the general.

Callinicos writes:

February 2022 [i.e. the all-out invasion of Ukraine] marked another, more threatening step-change in this conflict [between the western powers on one side and China-Russia on the other], with the outbreak of a major war on the European continent and the polarisation of the state system resulting from the mobilisation of [‘liberal internationalist’ scholar G. John] Ikenberry’s ‘global West’ behind Ukraine and China’s support for Russia. Rather than treat this fracturing of the international system as a series of discrete events, it is better to understand it as a developing global process of confrontation among the main imperialist powers. (My emphasis, SP.)

This is important, methodologically, in my view.

Surely the “global process of confrontation” is actually made up of “a series of discrete events”. Surely, our understanding of any global process has to be rooted in a convincing analysis of its parts. Instead of this, Callinicos proceeds from his understanding of the global process – a clash of imperialist camps – and, where the parts don’t fit, presents a flawed and inaccurate view of them.

Feature 2. Callinicos imagines an “expansion of Russian power” that does not accord with reality.

Callinicos sees Russia not as a declining empire, or as a subimperialist power with aspects of dependence on global capital, but as a would-be great power. He approvingly quotes Sergey Radchenko, who writes that “even though the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, its successor, Russia, still eyed a position of prominence in the global order”, and goes on to claim that Putin:

[…] used Russia’s position in the global economy as one of the main energy producers to rebuild its military power and geopolitical influence externally.

Callinicos then surveys the activities of the Russian armed forces and the Wagner group in the Middle East and Africa, and asks, “What made possible this expansion of Russian power into MENA and beyond?” Answer: two “interconnected determinants”: (1) Russia exploited a gap left by the Obama administration’s efforts, after defeat in Iraq, to reduce US involvement in the Middle East; (2) regional powers based in the Middle East (Israel, Saudi Arabia and others) have become more self-assertive “with the emergence of new centres of capital accumulation in the region”; “global energy production adds a further dimension to these interstate manoeuvres”; and “Russia figures as an important partner to Saudi Arabia in the OPEC+ cartel”.

This creates the impression that over the past two decades Russian imperialism has become stronger. In reality, the opposite is true.

First: Russia’s position as a big energy producer is in many respects a source of weakness, not strength. In the early 2000s, Russia consolidated its position in the global economy as a highly dependent exporter of oil, gas and metals. Low oil prices in the 1990s exacerbated the post-Soviet economic crisis; in 2000-08, Russian capitalism strengthened as those prices rose, but the 2008 crash, and falling prices, exposed its extreme vulnerability.

Azerbaijan and its oil had been lost to Russia in the 1990s; in the 2000s it was replaced as the economically dominant power in central Asia by China and the western powers. And it was losing ground to the European powers in Belarus, the Baltic states, and of course Ukraine. The Russian elite was well aware of this and obsessed throughout the 2000s about the dangers of dependence on oil revenues and the need to diversify the economy. That did not happen.

It could be argued that Russia’s dependence on commodities revenues was a key factor that eroded its “great power” status. To suggest, as Callinicos does, that its status as an energy producer enhanced that status is mistaken.

Second: as for Russia’s military adventures in the Middle East and Africa, look how they ended. Bashar al-Assad’s regime was toppled in Syria, in large part because Russia was unable and/or unwilling to provide the military support needed to protect him.

Putin faced the Maidan uprising in Ukraine in 2014 as the leader not of a power gaining in economic or political strength, but of a weakening power that had to compensate for its subordinate position in the global economy, and the fragility of its social base at home, by ramping up nationalist rhetoric and shifting towards a more authoritarian method of rule.

It is noteworthy that Rob Ferguson, another writer in SWP publications, does not share Callinicos’s eccentric view of Russian power. In 2022, he concluded, in an analytical article – with a measure of understatement, but still – that “Russia’s energy and raw material base was still insufficient to overcome the vast disparity in economic and military power with NATO – as well as China”. This, Ferguson argued, “intensified the pressure on the Russian state to demarcate its regional hegemony, putting the question of the states along the Eurasian faultline at the fore of Russia’s concerns”.[1]

Feature 3. Callinicos imagines western military support for Ukraine as a cause, not an effect.

Proceeding from the general (“global process of confrontation”) to the particular (“a discrete series of events”), Callinicos presents a version of one aspect of these events – western military support for Ukraine – that does not bear serious scrutiny. Referring to the all-out invasion of 2022, he writes:

The war itself thus represented a radicalisation of the global struggle that was already developing between Washington, Beijing and Moscow.

He then qualifies that statement, in three sentences that I deal with below (Feature 4), where he acknowledges that “traditional Great Russian nationalism” may have played a part in causing the war, but hastily insisting that it is “no simple struggle for self-determination”. And then he writes:

The US and other Western powers were heavily involved in training and supporting the Ukrainian military from 2014-15 onwards.

Then he quotes newspaper articles detailing cooperation between the Ukrainian intelligence services and the CIA in gathering intelligence on Russia. And then:

The massive surge in weapons supplies to Ukraine by the NATO powers and closely aligned states such as Australia must be seen in this context. From the Western side, the Ukraine conflict has been a proxy war waged to weaken and drain a potential challenger, an inter-imperialist conflict in the kind of terms that Lenin and Luxemburg characterised in the first world war.

This is playing ducks and drakes with reality. Its inclusion in a theoretical article shows how shaky its foundations are.


For a start, the intelligence operations referred to are only one part of a larger picture. From 2014 Ukraine was fighting a war, the prosecution of which required not just intelligence but heavy weapons. It received utterly negligible supplies of these from the western powers until 2022. As the chart shows, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute registered US arms exports to Ukraine as zero until 2015. Note that the chart, sourced from SIPRI’s database, measures exports with the institute’s standard method, the trend-indicator value (TIV).[2] In 2015 US arms supplies to Ukraine were 4 TIVs, compared e.g. with 92 TIVs to Greece and 112 TIVs to Norway. In 2021, when all those CIA agents referred to were well aware of the Russian troop build-up on Ukraine’s border, US arms exports to Ukraine remained negligible: 20 TIVs compared with 39 TIVs to Canada and 139 TIVs to Singapore.

The graph shows US arms exports to Ukraine, with those to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Singapore included for comparison. The table shows the top 20 recipients of US arms exports in 1993-2025; even including three years of war (2022-25), Ukraine only gets to 16th place.


The negligible level of western arms supply to Ukraine between 2014 and 2021, when it was fighting a defensive war against a larger aggressor, was preceded by more than two decades during which (1) in 1994 the US helped to convince Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal, (2) NATO accepted eastern European countries into membership, and (3) NATO forces in Europe were substantially reduced from cold war levels (the number of US tanks in Germany fell from 5000 in 1990 to zero in 2013).

Callinicos says the US and UK are “training and supporting the Ukrainian military”, without saying that this “support” included starving Ukraine of weapons supplies. He refers to a “massive surge in weapons supplies”, but omits that this was a reaction to the 2022 invasion. Cause and effect are reversed. Such game-playing does not deserve to be taken seriously.

Feature 4. Callinicos refers only once, and in passing, to the social dynamics in Ukraine, and in Russia, during the period under discussion.

Having stated that the 2022 invasion was a “radicalisation of the global struggle”, the next three sentences read:

Pace the [“realist” scholars John] Mearsheimer and [Sebastian] Rosato, the Russian invasion seems [“seems”!] not to have been simply an instrumentally rational response to NATO expansion and Ukraine’s increasingly close alignment with the US, but arises also from an ideological investment, certainly on Putin’s part, in traditional Great Russian nationalism that denies Ukraine a distinct identity. The assertion of that identity informed the Ukrainian national mobilisation that helped to block and push back the initial advance on Kyiv. But this war is no simple struggle for self-determination.

This is the only reference to the Kremlin’s nationalism, and the only reference to Ukrainian society, in the entire article of 12,500+ words.

Callinicos does not even discuss the idea that the social turbulence reflected in the Maidan – from socially progressive, to pro-European, to outright reactionary – needs examining. Nor the social dynamics in Russia that have pushed the elite towards an authoritarian, near-fascist style of rule, and – in the view of many Marxist writers – towards all-out war.

Callinicos acknowledges that Ukraine’s assertion of “a distinct identity” “informed the national mobilisation”, but does not comment on what the significance of that might be, either historically or in the twenty-first century. He writes that the war is “no simple struggle for self-determination” (not many wars are “simple”), but only to return to his erroneous portrayal of the extent of western involvement.

This is where dissolving the particular into the general (see Feature 1 above) becomes a problem.

Would you look at Brexit as part of the “developing global process of confrontation among the main imperialist powers”, without also considering the social dynamics in the UK – the advance of neo-liberalism, the surge of right-wing populism, the travails of the labour movement, the effects of de-industrialisation and dependence on financial and service industries?

Would you look at the Malvinas war as part of the “developing global process of confrontation among the main imperialist powers”, without also considering the class struggles in Thatcher’s Britain and Galtieri’s Argentina?

What, then, is the credibility of an “analysis” of the Russian war on Ukraine that starts from a preconception about the “global process of confrontation”, and fails to mention the class struggle and other forms of social change in either Russia or Ukraine?

This approach says something about the development of Marxism, in my view. The stated aim of Callinicos’s article is to show how the Marxist critique of imperialism “can encompass empirically aspects of the present conjuncture that liberalism and realism are unable to account for”. He does not explain why the social forces at work in Ukraine, and in Russia, should not be treated as one of these aspects.

This not only holes his argument below the water-line in the ways I have mentioned. It also misses an important opportunity to engage with the body of serious Marxist scholarship – by Ilya Matveev (Russia), Daria Saburova (Ukraine), Yassin al-Haj Saleh (Syria), Kavita Krishnan and Rohini Hensman (India)[3] and many others – who see these social forces, and the Kremlin’s reaction to them, as central to the causes of the Russian war.

It would be a cheap shot to criticise Callinicos or anyone else for something they have not written, and that is not my point. Rather, that the reluctance to engage with other Marxists can only obstruct the development of Marxism as a living body of ideas.

Feature 5. Callinicos separates analysis from politics.

Of course many Marxists working in universities have in recent decades increasingly detached analysis of politically urgent issues from political commentary that might inform the labour movement and social movements. So this is a much wider problem that one for Callinicos alone. But in his article, published by a non-academic socialist journal, he takes this to an extreme.

The SWP, of which Callinicos is a member, (i) between 2014 and 2022, made no call for the withdrawal of Russian troops, and raised no challenge to those “lefts” who vigorously supported the Russian-backed tinpot dictatorships in the Donbas,[4] (ii) condemned the Russian invasion of 2022, but, along with post-Stalinists, portrayed NATO expansion as its primary cause, (iii) acknowledged the right of Ukrainians to defend themselves from invasion in words, but opposed it in practice, and (iv) supported calls in the UK labour movement to end arms supplies to Ukraine.

A drone workshop. Photo from Solidarity Collectives

It is worth considering what the SWP actually means by the Ukrainian people’s “right to resist the invasion”, as a statement by the international network they belong to put it, since this is combined with a demand on western governments for “no arms shipments to Ukraine!”

How are people to resist an invasion, without arms from western governments? Some people favour arms provided by civil society (inevitably a tiny supply compared to what the state provides). And so Ukrainians living abroad, and civil society groups, have raised millions of euros to support civil defence (drone factories, medical supplies, etc). Trade unionists and e.g. anarchist groups participate – but the SWP does not.[5]

For some SWP members, the “right to resist the invasion” does not even extend as far as the right to ask for weapons, let alone to receive them.

For example, SWP members worked hard but unsuccessfully to defeat a resolution passed by the National Education Union conference in April last year, supporting not the export of arms to Ukraine by the UK government but “the right of Ukraine to self-defence and to resist Putin’s occupation, including the right to seek arms to defend itself”.

Similarly, when the Universities and Colleges Union conference decided in 2024 to endorse an appeal by the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine to western governments to send military aid, SWP members sought through conference procedure to block that call from being heard.[6]

Of what does the “right to resist the invasion” consist, if not of the right to ask for weapons, be it from western governments, Ukrainians abroad, or anyone else? This is not just about politics, but about socialist morality.

Callinicos does not comment on this in his article. Its function, rather, is to provide these damaging, and I would say immoral, politics, with a “theoretical” justification: the fragile, general assertions about the “global process of confrontation”, the false picture of Russian imperialism, the reversal of cause and effect, and the blank spot where society should be.

In my view, the development of Marxism as a meaningful approach to the problems that capitalism is throwing at us in the twenty-first century will mean rejecting this kind of imposition of political dogma on to analysis – what Kyselov calls “stretching familiar old frameworks over a changed world”. 7 September 2026

🔴 Thanks to Links journal for reposting this article.

References

[1] Robert Ferguson, “Imperialism, war and the Eurasian faultline”, International Socialism 175, June 2022

[2] SIPRI has over decades of research developed the TIV as a common unit, “based on the known unit production costs of a core set of weapons and intended to represent the transfer of military resources rather than the financial value of the transfer”. There is a full explanation here

[3] See, for example, Ilya Matveev, “The War in Ukraine and Russian Capital: from military-economic to full military imperialism” (Alameda Institute, 2023) and “Between Political and Economic Imperialism: Russia’s Shifting Global Strategy” (Journal of Labour and Society, 2021); Daria Saburova, Travailleuses de la résistance. Les classes populaires ukrainiennes face à la guerre (Autonomies, 2024); Yassin al-Haj Saleh, “Why Ukraine is a Syrian Cause” (Dawn, 2022); Kavita Krishnan, “Our indifference to Ukraine did harm to our struggle in India”, Commons, 2023; Rohini Hensman, Indefensible: Democracy, Counterrevolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism (Haymarket, 2018)

[4] In 2014, Eamonn McCann, for many years a leading figure in the SWP’s sister organisation in Ireland, argued that, with regard to Ukraine, “If we have to take sides […] Ireland should side with the Russians”. For the SWP’s newspaper, war crimes by Russia and its allies, e.g. the shooting down of the MH17 civilian aircraft, were to be blamed on “imperialist rivalry” (see also here and here).

[5] I expressed my own view of these difficult issues e.g. here

[6] For those interested in trade unions’ arcane conference procedures, see motion 29 (moved by pro-Ukrainian activists) and amendment 29A (moved by SWP members) here

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Russian Empire, Social Dynamics And Where Marxism Goes From Here

The Guardian 📰 Written by Jonathan Freedland. Recommended by Barry Gilheany.

2-October-2026

The resolution shows little understanding of what Zionism is, who Jews are or how antisemitism works.

Tomorrow I will be in synagogue to say Kaddish, the traditional mourner’s prayer, in memory of my father who died eight years ago this week. If I were a member of the Green party, I would have reason to believe that that simple act could soon see me expelled as a racist.

It sounds hyperbolic, but the warning comes from Green party activists opposed to a resolution declaring that Zionism is racism, which will be debated at the party conference this weekend. The motion, which if passed would instantly become party policy, holds that Zionism should be “treated as any other form of racism”. On that logic, given that the Greens do not admit members of self-described racist organisations, they could not tolerate members of self-described Zionist organisations – a category that includes almost every synagogue, or synagogue movement, in Britain and indeed the world. Which is why saying Kaddish could lead to expulsion.

All this sounds arcane, but the Greens are no longer a fringe party.

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

The Green Party’s Anti-Zionism Motion Is Yet Another Attempt To Tell Jews How We Should Think

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Residents on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown breathed a sigh of relief as the British Secretary of State for “Northern Ireland”, Chris Bryant, overturned the Parades Commission decision which allowed the contentious Orange Order march to walk down the nationalist enclave.

The Secretary of State said, referencing the PSNI (RUC):

the chief constable advised it would not be possible to enable the procession to happen without a major intervention which would carry unacceptable risk of serious injury, disorder and a wider contagion effect across Northern Ireland. 

On this advice the Six-Counties Secretary decided to ban the Drumcree Parade, a decision which was announced on the evening of Friday 9th October much to the relief of the long- suffering residents on Garvaghy Road. Spokesperson for the residents, Breandán Mac Cionnaith, has called on the residents not to show signs of “triumphalism” reminding them this was not “cause for celebration” but time for “building bridges” with their neighbours. This measured response from Breandán was and continues to be in sharp contrast to the language used by the Orange Order’s chosen spokesperson, Jamie Bryson, who called the residents - who had conducted their affairs in a dignified manner - “a rabble”, and an unruly “mob”. 

It was, of course, the correct decision by Chris Bryant but it still leaves a few issues unanswered like why after 28 years did the ‘Parades Commission fly in the face of every previous year since the signing of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ which had prohibited the parade only to allow it this year? What was their thinking? After 28 years refusing the Orangemen’s requests to march down Garvaghy Road why this year the reversal? Why after all these years of relative peace did a bunch of supposed educated people decide to allow something which they knew, or at least must have strongly suspected, would shatter such peace? Surely, they were more than a little aware that their decision would cause resentment and lead to physical resistance which, of course, it did; fortunately not on the scale of the late 1990s. 

Did the people who constitute this commission have any feelings at all for the Quinn family who lost three little boys, Richard, Mark, and Jason, when loyalist arsonists burnt out their home on 12th July 1998? What about the memory of Robert Hamill who was kicked to death by loyalists while the RUC reportedly looked on in April 1997, did they not consider his family? The Garvaghy resident’s original solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, was murdered by loyalists: did she count for nothing to the Parades Commission? All together twenty deaths related to the Garvaghy Road stand-off occurred, and the Parades Commission evidently did not even consider the feelings of families related to the deceased.

It must have felt to the residents of the Garvaghy Road like the bad old days had returned to their hitherto tranquil lives as the Orangemen massed ready to walk unwelcome through their area. It must have been akin to a Jewish community in 1920s Germany negatively experiencing a marching band and supporters of the Nazi Party walking through their locality! Or a BNP parade being given permission to march through Brixton, the British Movement through Bradford, or the NF through Moss Side, Manchester. Admittedly the Parades Commission did insert conditions on the march stating no instruments, no banners, and no more than 35 people to be in attendance. All the same the fact the Orange Order even if only two of them were walking, not as Protestants but as the Orange Order, symbolises the Orangemen’s perception of supremacy which was supposed to be consigned to the dustbin of history. 

So on 9th October the ‘Secretary of State’ overturned the decision and ‘banned’ the march. On 9th October, RTEs The Late, Late Show, the First Minister, Michelle O’Neil, was a guest on the show and appeared shortly after Chris Bryant’s decision had been made public. Of course she was pleased, emphasising her pleasure in her praise of the decision for “common sense”. 

In coming to this only logical decision he could, even on PSNI (RUC) advice, Chris Bryant has reemphasised who is really in charge of affairs in the Six-Counties and at the end of the day it is neither the Orange Order, Sinn Fein, nor the Garvaghy residents, it is the British government which is one facet of the British state which must remain a bone of contention! 

The Orangemen’s appeal against Bryant’s decision which they immediately set in motion is to another arm of the British state, the Judiciary. On Saturday 10th October the Orangemen launched an appeal to the High Court in Belfast as a matter of urgency, only to be told “it was urgent” but did not “constitute an immediate weekend emergency requiring an out of hours decision” – the hearing was adjourned until Monday 12th October. At this hearing another adjournment of the Orange Orders Judicial Review until 19th October was ruled by Mr Justice Scoffield. On this date the name of PSNI (RUC) Chief Constable, Mr Jon Boutcher, along with Chris Bryant will be added as a second respondent thus widening the Orangemen’s judicial review . In a separate application for a judicial review this time by the residents of the Garvaghy Road of the Parades Commission’s original decision to allow the condensed march was rejected by Chief Justice Siobhan Keegan who held that the “challenge did not have a reasonable chance of success”.

The caveat in welcoming Chris Bryant’s decision, and this includes the Taoiseach Micheal Martin, is by de-facto this recognises and accepts British rule in the Six-Counties. It could be argued this has been accepted by various Twenty-Six County governments since partition and the Treaty of 1922 but now it can be reasonably taken that Sinn Fein also accept the ‘Kings writ’ runs in the North of Ireland. Many republicans would not unreasonably say “we told you this years ago”. Sinn Fein apparently now do accept British rule in the Six-Counties and still call themselves ‘Republicans’. Gerry Adams, former President of Sinn Fein, once said in AP/RN, of Fianna Fail who also call themselves since 1971 ‘The Republican Party’, “Fianna Fail are our first cousins”. Well Gerry, the family genes are certainly evident here in the family tree. Perhaps Chris Bryant could be invited to the next Sinn Fein Ard Fheis to give a little chat about why there will never be a border poll, to a rendition of 'For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.' Am I being a killjoy? No, not at all, I’m delighted for the residents that this nightmare not of their making is hopefully over though that is unfortunately not guaranteed. I’m just looking at the bigger picture who makes the rules for that corner of Ireland and because of their presence possible ramifications.

For many years the British side have tried to paint the ‘troubles’ in the Six-Counties as a sectarian conflict, and equally throughout those years occasions have occurred refuting this misconception. In the 1930s the British maintained any problems in “Northern Ireland” were down to religious persuasion and divides, a hugely erroneous perception. In 1932 poverty and unemployment hit the area and huge solidarity marches, much to the annoyance of the British and both churches, known as the ‘Outdoor Relief Scheme’ uniting Protestant and Catholic working-class people were on the streets. The Garvaghy Road stand off has once again proved this flawed premise to be a lie and will continue to be a falsehood while the British remain. Over 1,000 signatures in solidarity with the Garvaghy residents was signed and petitioned by the Protestant community of Portadown. This also stands as testimony the Orange Order do not represent the Protestant community as they would have the world believe they do.
 
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Garvaghy Road, A Sense of Relief . . . But

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Twenty Three

 

A Morning Thought @ 3294

 

A Morning Thought @ 3293

Kate Rice ✍ The name Michael Montgomery is well-known in the city of Derry. 



In 1973, Michael Montgomery became Derry's first Republican Clubs councillor under the new local-government system - he was deeply involved in his community, often found helping with housing and advocating for the rights of the working-class people of the city. Michael Montgomery was also a Hooded Man.

For those perhaps unaware, the Hooded Men were a group of 14 men unfairly removed from their homes and interned without trial under circumstances that we would consider utterly inhuman. I do not seek to repeat the details of what terrible things were done to these men, for the sake of their loved ones who may read this and do not need to be reminded of the cruelty that was inflicted on these men without justifiable cause. Without detailing, their case has been acknowledged by organisations such as Amnesty International and The Law Society of Ireland, and investigated for the disgraceful handling of these men, using methods we now call the Five Techniques of sensory deprivation.

If I were to talk purely about what was done to these men, I would write for pages for there is no simple way to describe the injustice of it. But today I would like to write instead about Michael Montgomery.

Michael was a husband, and a father. The family of five were deeply woven into the culture of Derry and Michael was greatly respected for the care and effort he put in for the constituents of the city. Michael was fond of James Connolly, and he was a socialist. He was deeply fond of his children, and supported his daughter Fiona’s education in catering college. His children have spoken of their memories of constant visitors to their door, seeking Michael’s assistance in some matter or other.

He was trusted. He was respected. The family lived in Creggan. In 1971, their house was raided and Michael Montgomery was dragged into the street. He was kicked in the groin. The armed men taking him pointed their weapons at his children. One of his children, Deirdre, remembers chasing the Saracen down the street, demanding Michael’s return, and hiding her baby sister in an electric box out of fear of the men taking her father. Thus began Michael's experience as one of the Hooded Men. He was among those taken to the special interrogation centre in August 1971, where the five techniques were used. His wife and children were told he had been killed. Michael himself was led to believe his family had been killed. They did not see him until weeks later in Crumlin Gaol, broken and hurting from the treatment he had been subjected to.

Despite being elected as a councilman in 1973, Michael could not recover from what was done to him. According to daughter Fiona in an interview with the Bloody Sunday Trust Interviews, he startled at the sound of the hoover, at the sound of the washing machine, at the sound of the newspaper. He cried downstairs alone while his children slept upstairs. His marriage fell apart. Michael Montgomery died from a heart attack in 1984 at just 48 years of age, permanently altered by what he had experienced.

I write about Michael Montgomery today, because I am lucky enough to know and love his daughter Deirdré as though she was a member of my own family. I have heard her experiences, her fright. Her memories of that day and how the cruelty her father was subjected to was not always restrained just to him. I write about Michael Montgomery today because he should be remembered. He should be thought about, and known and respected. None of those men should rest forgotten. As a child, Deirdré wrote a poem about her father which I have inserted below.

Creggan Derry Aug. 9th 1971 we were put to bed. So late my cousin shoved us up the stairs, we thought she had a date.

We were laughing, singing lying in the bed when at the door it wasn't her, a man with a gun instead!

"Get to sleep now yous'ns and be quiet here tonight"

Little did we know we would be awake before the light, men in uniforms standing over us with guns?

My father being dragged down

the stairs, them kicking him in the groin. My grandfather cursing for upsetting us "they're to blame!"

My cousin Betty roaring "don't touch her she's a wane", the soldier with the gun there sticking in my face.

"Why is this man in my house this is not his place!"

Then my da went missing, ten days we didn't know, we got a call then after that the Crum we had to go.

So to Belfast we made the trek, my mother then and me, we saw my father sitting there Oh god this could not be!

For he was bent and broken, his eyes still glistened, though we were all okay, and he was glad to know.

They'd told him they had killed us an accident you see.

You've nothing left now Michael one of us you'll have thank.

God thank you he's an Irish man so brave and yet so true, he knew his fight for Ireland and continue is what he'd do!

Two screws came to grab a hold of me to stop me crying sore, my daddy's standing hurting when another one comes through the door.

I am only 8 years old why are they doing this to me?

I don't want their medicine in just upset.

Can't they see today its decade's later children going to see their dads . . .  and it is no different today from the visits that I had!

We still love to see our daddy's. But the hassle is so great.

God let the day come when they smile to see him walking freely through the gate!


It has been my great honour to learn about Michael Montgomery, and my great horror to learn of what happened to him and those 13 men who suffered with him. I would ask you to please join me in remembering this husband, father and good man.


I am the betting horse,

Lay on your whip and your blinkers;

Lash my back and cover my eyes

Run me ragged on your circle track

And raise your golden trophy.

I am the victor who returns,

my home unadorned,

my foals searching for comfort

my earned rest and a finish line.

my bed untouched and mine alone,

and you must return your trophy eventually - KR.

⏩Kate Rice is a peace baby.

In Loving Memory Of Michael Montgomery

Jim Duffy ✍ Very revealing.


 It shows how extensive the campaign of Russian disinformation is. All the posts that lash states, democracies, and promote the far right fringe (and some far left fringe), have dried up. So have posts championing the AfD, Reform, and spreading smears against Ukraine and Zelenskyy. 

On Threads, the extreme pro-Trump posting, along with calls for Obama to be executed, has suddenly gone quiet. Trump was obviously using the Russian data centres to post hate of his opponents, only to lose that when the Russian data centres were blown up. The personalised hate directed at Irish politicians has suddenly largely disappeared also.
 
Russian misinformation and disinformation is all about destabilising states by generating discord and hate. It knows the usual useful idiots will swallow the posts hook, line and sinker and believe vast numbers share their opinions when they are actually on the fringe. 

A lot of the hard line pro-triple lock posts have also disappeared. Ukraine in bombing the data centres perhaps unintentionally has revealed the extent of Russian misinformation and disinformation taking countries, including Ireland. 

Well done, Ukraine. 
Slava Ukraini!

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Russian Misinformation And Disinformation

Anthony McIntyre ☠  Yesterday the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African jurist, Navi Pillay.

The reason for the choice of Pillay came in the words of Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee:

This year's laureate has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted . . . The system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack . . . towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.

Little is left to the imagination as to who is the first among equals in this rogues gallery. Ms Pillay pointedly referred to her role heading the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel's behaviour in Gaza, stating: 'The last thing I did is the delivery of the report on Gaza, naming what's happening there as genocide."

Within hours Donald Trump, furious at not getting a peace prize for waging wars, ordered sanctions against the International Criminal Court. Trump might feel he has a point. In 1973 the prize was awarded to another US war criminal, Henry Kissinger. Horrible Henry was responsible for more war crimes than any other Western leader in the post World War 2 era. Think Vietnam, Cambodia, Cyprus, Argentina, Indonesia, Chile, Laos, Bangladesh, East Timor. He has been at the scene of every crime against humanity, his finger prints on every napalm bomb, torture chamber or assassination. Two members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee resigned in protest at the decision to bestow the peace prize on the US War criminal. Kissinger himself declined to turn up to receive his prize for fear of anti-war protests.

One writer at the time said that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize". And when an international criminal clown sanctions the International Criminal Court as punishment for not awarding him the prize the same type of sentiment is easily echoed.


Consider for a moment who nominated Trump for the prize - the most bellicose state in the Middle East, a country that has bombed as many nations as Kissinger did. Netanyahu nominating Trump for a peace prize has the same moral worth as the paedophile priest Brendan Smyth nominating Jimmy Saville for a child protection award.

While Trump gave off a hissy fit, a deeper reason comes to the fore and which was articulated by US Secretary of State, the Zionist Marco Rubio:

President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans . . .That is ‌why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court.. . . We ⁠will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.

The Trump regime intends to punish companies that provide services to the ICC.

US sanctions typically bar all US-based companies from any work with a sanctioned organization, forcing banks to shut accounts, ⁠insurers to end ​coverage and software companies to halt cooperation.
 
The Court which has a membership of 125 nation states has described the Trump administration action as an 'assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order' and called on its 125 member states to take action to defend it:

The court cannot stand alone. Its fate now rests also in the hands of the states that created it . . . This is not just about defending a single institution, but about safeguarding the international order grounded upon the rule of law . . . History will judge this moment.

The Nobel Prize Committee has referred to the huge contribution to peace made by the work of the ICC.

An international legal system in which war criminals are held to account and the victims of abuse see justice served is a precondition for a peaceful world.

Contrast this with the bellicose perspective of a genocide enabling state like the US, of which it has been said: "We inhabit a world where The fastest way to get on the president’s sanctions list is to put a war criminal on yours."

As we gather on West Street today as members of Drogheda Stands With Palestine, on the third anniversary of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, we are under no illusion as to what this is about: the unconstrained, unchallenged power to perpetrate crimes against humanity and avoid being held to account. We stand with the 85-year-old South African judge and against the 80-year-old US war criminal. 
 
⏩Follow on Bluesky.

International Criminal Clown Sanctions International Criminal Court

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