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Anthony McIntyre ☠ Yesterday Israel launched an attack on Iran. 

Drogheda Stands With Palestine 7-June-2025

It reportedly killed a number of top nuclear scientists and military leaders, drawing comparisons with last year's attack which effectively decapitated the leadership of Hezbollah. 

That a power that can strike with such lethal accuracy opts in Gaza to murder desperate men, women and children, famished by starvation as they assemble for food, underscores the genocidal intent Israel's Kapo leadership has crafted for Gaza. The deluded alone can seriously believe that if Hamas rather than the civilian population of Gaza was the target, the Kapos could not have gone about their business in the way they have conducted themselves in Iran or Lebanon, horrible as it is. Gazacide is not a strike against a military opponent but a very deliberate genocidal policy against an unarmed civilian population.

In the midst of this wilfully inflicted death and devastation, the society in which we live watched on earlier this week as the Michael Lowry Cabal that governs us shamefully backed the Israeli genocide over attempts to call time on it. 85 to 71 was the outcome of the vote. Sadly for the Gazans subjected to mass murder the Crooks Cabal voted down a cross party motion calling for a ban on the Central Bank of Ireland facilitating the sale of Israeli bonds. These bonds in the words of The Journal:

provide economic support to Israel while it conducts military operations in Gaza. and Ireland’s Central Bank currently approves the sale of these bonds in EU markets . . . The Central Bank estimated that Israel has raised between €100mn and €130mn from their sale.

That is €130 million towards genocide.

We can hardly expect the banking industry to do the ethical thing. That would be too much of a break with tradition for the bandit bankers where profit before people is the moving spirit. They are unelected and unaccountable to anyone we can trust. If we thought our government might be compelled to behave as something other than a posse of performative pricks, this week's vote has dispelled the myth.

Taosiseach Micheal Martin while calling the genocide by its name nevertheless decided to materially back the Israeli policy with his refusal to block the sales of Israeli war bonds. Taking cover behind legalese the Taoiseach has insisted that the Lowry anchored coalition cannot instruct the Central Bank to desist from selling the bonds as the bank is ostensibly independent under the law. That has not yet stopped a government bailout as the government robbed the poor to pay the rich. And as Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald had earlier pointed out:

We have over 20 pages of independent, robust legal opinion clearly stating that the bill is compliant with Irish law, European law and international law.

What more does the government need? Cojones.

In a week where even the bishops of Ireland have called for leaders to show courage, the government proved determined to do no such thing.

A piece in the Irish Examiner might explain why:

Last weekend, Al Jazeera reported a list of Israel’s largest trading partners. Most members of the top 10 were not surprising. In 2024, the USA was by far the most significant, alongside prominent allies the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. China features in third place. However, Israel’s second most significant trading partner shocked many observers: its most ‘vocal’ European critic, Ireland.

Not many in the Dublin government would claim to be evangelical Christians, but they could easily outbid the bible bashers in the hypocrisy stakes.

The rain in Drogheda today is even worse than last Saturday. Yet if we don't go out on West Street in less than half an hour's time, and stand in it for the purpose of expressing solidarity with those facing a metal rain, against which no umbrella is of the slightest use, we will only encourage our execrable government to carry on pretending and performing. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

The 85 Charlatan Club

 

A Morning Thought @ 2680

 

A Morning Thought @ 2679

Christopher Owens ðŸ”– Dublin in 2025 is ripe material for writers of all genres.


The promise of the War of Independence morphing into the destruction of the Civil War and the ensuring fallout. The tectonic societal changes to Irish society over the last 50 years. The transition from a vaguely neutral country into an EU superstate. The cowardice when it comes to the North. The Celtic Tiger and the two-decade long hangover. Mass immigration. Populism.

All too often, however, writers tend to focus on the young urban professionals who are nowhere near as interesting as they seem and put them in unexciting but relatable scenarios (living in a shit flat share, hating your job, lesbian/gay/straight relationships, dealing with the disapproval of your parents). The end result is usually a bland soup of nothingness

Sadly, this applies to In the Movie of Her Life.

Mainly known as an author of young adult fiction, Dublin based writer, and contributor to the Irish Times, Claire Hennessy makes her debut writing adult fiction with this collection of short stories. While there certainly are notable moments, most of the book is dreary and ridden with cliches.

Many of the aforementioned tropes can be found throughout the short stories and the end result is apathy. The characters are often unlikeable (even ones that are meant to be “good”), for the most part there are no real stakes at risk in the stories and some have the germ of an interesting scenario but aren’t developed any further.

And yet, there are moments that slap: ‘It Wasn’t the Suit’ details the pining’s a teacher nearing thirty has for a Leaving Cert pupil who has gotten his ginger girlfriend pregnant. This segment was heartwarming:

I’d stated going to Pilates…I wasn’t fat, but somehow in the last few years it had happened: everyone my age had started…I thought about the redhead every time I lifted a tired leg in the air or gracelessly rocked back and forth on the mat. I was supposed to be focusing on my breathing, but it did the job. Stretch. Hold. Up. Down. Out.

I love this paragraph because the vulnerability, the determination and the honesty from the narrator is all too evident. She’s in a situation that has rendered her a hopeless romantic. But she knows all too well that it’s a non-starter so there’s a stoicism in the writing.

Likewise, ‘Tonight’ is a moving tale about a single mother trying to have a good night out while struggling to come to terms that her daughter now identifies as a boy. Throughout, we feel Mia’s uneasiness at her unfamiliar late-night circumstances, how torn she is at trying to be a supportive parent but also not being convinced that this will end well. It’s quite moving.

More stories along these lines next time please.

Claire Hennessy, 2025, In the Movie of Her Life. Doire Press. ISBN-13: 978-1915877024

⏩ 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”.

In The Movie Of Her Life

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

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 11-June-2025.


The race riots in Ballymena have shocked some, but are not one bit surprising, not only because we have already had racial disturbances in the north of Ireland with loyalist paramilitaries kicking in people’s doors and moving them out, but because on the one hand Ballymena is a sectarian cesspit and on the other hand the riots fit right in with the logic of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA)

The GFA brought an end to the IRA’s armed campaign, its partial dissolution and disarming (no one believes that a rump muscle squad was not left standing). It also saw Sinn Féin sign up to an agreement which divided the population along sectarian lines. The text does not say Catholic or Protestant, but uses the euphemism of nationalist or unionist. As an agreement that claimed to bring an end to sectarian tensions, it could hardly say it was going to divvy up political power and the public purse along sectarian lines, but that is what it did. As everyone knows, votes in the make-believe parliament of Stormont only count if the representatives are declared to be Catholics or Protestants. There must be an overall majority and a majority within each community i.e. there must be sectarian agreement.

The public purse is shared out on the basis of a sectarian headcount as are public services. The result of course is that public housing is also shared out on a sectarian basis and when the administration slips up and allocates a house to a Catholic in what is considered a Protestant area, then the masked thugs of unionism, the loyalists of the UDA and UVF are on hand to forcibly move people out. Most housing estates are 90% Protestant (in the broad sense) or Catholic. This is not an accident it is policy.

…the position of the DUP and SF whilst in office, since 2007, has not seriously got to grips with any of this; their agreed policy positions as first expressed in the Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration and then in what remains the leading policy document Together: Building a United Community, have been framed within the consociational political logic that accepts the existence of the sectarian divide, and believes that it is best addressed through seeking to maintain the ‘Unionist’ and ‘Nationalist’ communities in a state of equilibrium whilst upholding a spirit of mutual accommodation, co-existence and tolerance. Amongst much else, this has meant that ideas around mixed housing or integrated education have been held back in favour of promoting a limited number of shared neighbourhood projects, shared spaces plans and shared post-primary education sites.[1]

All this happens because the GFA says there are two communities, two cultures and that they shall be respected and maintained as such and all decisions must have the approval of the “leaders” of both communities, lest those communities influence be diluted. Of course, by leaders they not only mean elected politicians but the thugs and boot boys from the UDA and UVF. In May, less than two weeks before the Ballymena riots there were attacks in north Belfast in an attempt to “cleanse” the Clanmill estate of Catholics.[2] It is not past history.

Once you accept the nonsense of sectarian communities and people living in areas according to their religion, it is not much of a push to demand that they also be separated on the basis of other classifications such as nationalities, non-Christian religions and cultures. The unionists in Ballymena know this very well. They have a particularly nasty history of sectarianism. Many will have forgotten the disgusting spectacle of Harryville Catholic Church, where loyalists organised pickets to prevent Catholics going to mass. Harryville was a 98% Protestant neighbourhood, but had a Catholic church in it. The sectarian pickets led by DUP stalwarts saw up to 1000 people and up to 22 Loyalist Marching Bands on occasions turning up to prevent Catholics going to mass, hurling insults and abuse at them. Harryville was Protestant and no Catholics should be there was the logic. The pickets began in September 1996 and went on up till May 1998. The Catholic Church at the centre of the sectarian assault has since closed. It is no accident that this cesspool is also at the centre of racial tensions now.

The god-fearing bible thumping thugs of Ballymena claim to be motivated by sexual assaults allegedly carried out by two migrants. You may think their concern for women’s safety is touching, but you would have to ignore the record of loyalist paramilitaries on women’s rights and also that the head of the DUP, Jeffrey Donaldson, the party most of Ballymena votes for, was accused of sexually abusing, over a long period, two women without so much as a rock from the hellfire and brimstone gang. Emma Little-Pengelly, the Deputy First Minister got her seat at Stormont as Donaldson’s replacement following his decision not to take his seat there but to continue as an MP at the British parliament in London. There is no explanation for it, other than naked racism from the naked sectarians.

If you believe in and accept the logic of the GFA that there are two communities in the North and that they shall be separated forever on that basis, and that no other basis, such as social-class is to be countenanced then you are following the same logic as the Ballymena thugs. Sectarianism and racism go hand in hand, they are not distinct. and a system that shares out position, power and privilege on the basis of religion will eventually get around to doing it on the basis of race. The KKK wasn’t just anti-black it was also a sectarian organisation that detested Catholics and Jews. Loyalists share a similar political perspective and just like the official backing for Jim Crow in the southern United States, sectarianism is official in the North.

Sectarianism is not just a question of ‘religious bigotry, the promotion of one’s religion or religious background at the expense of the alternative’; it is a system. In truth, sectarianism is best interpreted as constituting an intersecting self-perpetuating matrix of social closure around land, housing, education and employment, based on the categorical markers of Protestant and Catholic that result in inequality and social injustice. This is a system centred on an interlinked and mutually reinforcing pattern of exclusion, one that results in cumulative advantage for Protestant people and disadvantage for Catholic people. It is, to be clear, a dehumanising system. And the key point to be made is that Protestant people and Catholic people still confront unequal life chances as a result of how the positional structure of society has been and continues to be overdetermined by the systemic pattern of categorical exclusion.[3]

Protestantism and Catholicism are religious fantasies, they are no basis for anything. Catholic and Protestant workers have a common interest, that of their class. They are working class and have a class enemy. That common interest extends to migrants; they are also workers. Migrants have common class interests with Protestant and Catholic workers and a common enemy. The GFA explicitly discounts this common cause and ruling out unity with migrants is the logical conclusion. Those who condemn the racist riots and intimidation in Ballymena, but support the logic of the GFA must deal with their massive and glaring contradiction: they already support division in society.

Migrants represent a challenge to the sectarianism of the North and the underlying logic of the peace process. If there are only two communities that must be kept apart, then new communities must also be separated. It is at such moments that the reactionary nature of the GFA can be seen. Opposition to racism means opposition to the sectarian set up and the GFA. Let’s not pretend that the racism in Ballymena is something distinct from the sectarianism, it is not. They are flip sides of the same coin and they are fomented by the same system and institutional set up i.e. the Good Friday Agreement and all its inherent sectarian and reactionary elements.

Working class unity means Catholic and Protestant workers side by side with migrant workers. The GFA means each should stick to their ghettoes.

References

[1] Taylor, R. (2024) Systemic sectarianism in Northern Ireland. Race & Class. Vol 66, Issue 4 pp 55-70.

[2] BBC (28/05/2025) NI leaders condemn sectarian attacks on homes. 

[3] Taylor, R. (2024) op.cit.

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

Ballymena Race Riots 🪶 The Good Friday Agreement In Action

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Six Hundred And Eighty Eight

Brandon Sullivan ✍ The murders of Karen McKeown and William Nixon in 1982 have stuck in my mind ever since I learned about them.

The two victims, completely different from each other except it seems, their membership of the Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist community. In Ms McKeown’s case, her faith was an important part of her life and she worked at a church, teaching children about the bible. I could not find many details about the life of William Nixon, but I do know he was retired, and had no links to the security forces or loyalist paramilitaries. They were murdered in random, sectarian attacks, as were Edward McMaster, Marius O'Neill and Paul McCrory, Michael Fay, and many others of that era, I did not come much closer in finding out who murdered Ms McKeown and Mr Nixon, but I found a chronology of related incidents which I found intriguing. As ever, my hope is that respectful debate will follow.

The Murderer And The Mechanic

1982 was a violent year in Northern Ireland. Whilst the last few years of the 1970s had seen a marked decrease in political murder and violence, the early 1980s were times of extreme political tension and conflict. Republican hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981 had convulsed society, casting a shadow into the next year. The summer of 1982 saw the release of Lennie Murphy, and an attendant increase in murder. The killings continued, some of them linked to Murphy from beyond the grave.

A funeral took place in Belfast in late November 1982 for Michael Fay. The Protestant Action Force had said he was one of three Catholic men who were to die to "avenge Lennie Murphy." The murdered man, a 25-year-old, was buried following a service at St. Colmcille's church. The church was and is a beautiful ornate stone building with an imposing roof and long windows, no doubt built to accommodate the spiritual needs of Catholics from all over Ireland who went to Belfast in search of work at various points, when all of Ireland was under British rule. The church and its parish are in East Belfast, an area synonymous with the pillars of unionism and loyalism. Catholics were in a minority in Belfast in the 1980s, and in fact until a few years ago. In East Belfast, Catholics were a much smaller minority, living amongst, as one Belfast wit put it, "acres of Prods." Fay's workplace was on Gilnahirk Road, close to particularly tough loyalist estates such as the Braniel. It's possible that Michael felt a degree of safety in such a potentially dangerous situation because of his friendly relationships with members of the unionist community. One man with whom Michael socialised was his workmate, Billy Giles. Like Michael, Billy was a mechanic. In the early 1980s, home entertainment had been revolutionised with the advent of video cassettes, and Michael and Billy would have a cup of tea together at Billy's house in Kilmorey Gardens, in the Tullycarnet area of East Belfast, and watch a film, rented from one of the new video libraries which had sprung up.

Michael Fay lived with his family in a house on Brae Grove, Ballygowan, a pleasant street of terraced houses many miles from the paramilitary hotspots of North and West Belfast. His widow had believed he was going to visit their 14-month-old daughter, who was sick in hospital. Instead, on his way there, he was abducted by two armed men who drove him in his car to a garage. One of the armed men was Billy Giles. The garage, in the Tullcarnet area, was rented by Giles and was to be the venue for the sectarian murder of Michael Fay. Giles shot Michael through the head twice, and then, with his accomplice William Wright, placed the dead body into the boot of his car, and left it on Mountregan Avenue, Dundonald. Last seen alive at 15:30 on a Friday, it was one hour short of a full day before the RUC, accompanied by Michael Fay's brother, opened the abandoned car and discovered the murdered man.

The statement released by the organisation responsible for murdering Michael may have claimed it was directly linked to a desire to avenge Lennie Murphy, but it was a very different murder that radicalised Billy Giles, in his own words "turning him into a killer." That murder, of a 20-year-old Sunday School teacher named Karen McKeown, is one of a number that this article will reexamine, identifying a trail of violent actions that claimed innocent lives and ultimately concluded with a suicide, 25 years later.

“Take on a Strandman, and you take on the Strand” – The Catholic Defence League.

In December 1977, Magill published an excellent article written by Kevin Myers about the Short Strand. Among many fascinating observations on the area, he had this to say:

The letters CDL mean little to most people in Belfast. They evoke small response from Strand people when you mention them, but that is not from ignorance. Probably the best equipped and most secret organisation in the Short Strand is the CDL The Catholic Defence League - which does not lose guns or personnel, and waits for the day of the great conflagration. That that conflagration seems to be receding does not seem to lower the CDL's guard. They encourage silence about their existence, but they are there, awaiting the fateful day. While some Strand residents' dream of freedom from the centre to the sea, others remember where they live, in a tiny enclave surrounded by a vast Protestant population.

On the 8th of November, 1979, loyalist gunmen shot dead two Short Strand men, Marius O'Neill and Paul McCrory, both aged 23. In his Magill article, Myers had written that "if you take on a Strandman, be prepared to take on the Strand." Within two hours of the O'Neill and McCrory murders, two members of the CDL had taken weapons from an arms dump, scaled a wall of the Sirocco works nearby, opened up a security guard's hut and shot dead the Protestant civilian Edward McMaster. The CDL members later convicted of involvement in the attack (Noel Halfpenny and James Burns), in keeping with an agreement between the CDL and the IRA, served their jail terms on IRA wings.

Shortly after the Magill article was published, Kevin Myers received a phone call from an IRA member who told him the IRA wanted to talk to him and that he should attend a pub in the Clonard area at a specified time and date. This Myers did, went into a back room and was confronted by a then IRA Belfast Brigade staff member, who later became an elected Sinn Fein representative and a household name. Let's call him P. O'Neill. He informed Myers that his article had damaged "the cause" and demanded to know his source. Myers informed P. O'Neill that "your cause is not my cause" and that, of course, he wouldn't reveal his source. The meeting went on for some time, with Myers describing it as the closest thing to a court martial that he had experienced.

Murder Begets Murder: The Logic of Sectarian Gunmen

On the 24th of September 1982, 28-year-old Stephen Andrew Crowe spent the day drinking in various bars in Sandy Row. Later, he was given a Smith & Wesson revolver supposedly to "store." Instead, Crowe "found himself" in the Short Strand, where he burst into a house at random and shot at a 21-year-old male inhabitant. The man was hit three times, but Crowe missed the man's girlfriend who was sitting with him. The man survived. Crowe later went to the Markets area where he opened fire at a group of people, missing all of them. He was sentenced to 15 years at his trial in 1983, where he was described as an alcoholic who had been drinking since the age of 12. Crowe had previously been charged with armed robbery – using a revolver, and other theft charges.

Crowe was arrested hours after the shootings, remanded, and later tried and convicted. But it appears that for some men with access to guns, the arrest was not enough. The "reprisal" shootings carried out were among the most wanton and vicious of the entire conflict, made even worse by the fact that no convictions followed.

A man, or men, armed with INLA weapons, previously used to attempt to murder a DUP man, Billy Dickinson, just over three weeks earlier, shot dead 68-year-old civilian Billy Nixon and shot and fatally wounded 20-year-old Karen McKeown. The murder of Ms McKeown was particularly squalid and brutal. She walked out of the church where she had been attending a service, was approached from behind and shot in the neck, the gun a matter of inches from her. She survived for three weeks before succumbing to her injuries. As far as I am aware, nobody has ever been arrested for these murders. In all of the killings and events that I have looked into, the absence of information has never been greater. The INLA, for their part, denied any part in the double murder, and said that they did not target people because of their religion but individuals who were behind such sectarian attacks and actively promoted them" were targets (Belfast Telegraph, 01/10/82).

So who killed Karen McKeown and Billy Nixon? An obvious answer is the INLA. After all the weapons were INLA, and they had a unit operating in East Belfast in 1982 who in addition to the attempt on Billy Dickinson, had shot dead the former highly influential loyalist leader, John McKeague.

But could it have been the CDL using INLA guns? Or CDL members who had an affiliation with the INLA? Murdering a female barely out of her teens was unusual, but not entirely unique, to republican paramilitaries. 17-year-old Heather Thompson was shot dead in the mid-1970s. But the IRA hadn't carried out an overtly sectarian murder for some time, and the INLA were still a year away from Darkley. Could it have been a case of men and women from the Strand being attacked, and therefore CDL members attacked men and women from the Protestant community?

One challenge to my theorising that the CDL was involved comes from the then INLA member Gerard Steenson, who was imprisoned on the words of a supergrass. A "comm" he sent to comrades on the outside had this to say about the murderers of Ms McKeown and Mr Nixon:

Do the current INLA L/S (leadership) have the potential to further the movements' aims? No. Even worse, they permit Darkley and murder old men, and Sunday school teachers.

Steenson’s comms from inside prison are highly articulate, the work of man who appears to abhor sectarian murders, and contrary to “Doctor Death” persona in the media, he was a man capable of sober political reflection.

The Aftermath: From Revenge to Ruin

In 1997, the BBC broadcast three seminal series on the Troubles, Provos, Loyalists, and Brits. Groundbreaking at the time, the presenter Peter Taylor interviewed those who had "stained Northern Ireland with blood" with shocking results. An especially memorable interview was with UVF member Billy Giles. As previously discussed, Giles had committed a sectarian murder in 1982, for which he was convicted and served a life sentence. The murder of Michael Fay was condemned in strong terms across the political spectrum, and his funeral was an ecumenical affair, with more than 40 Protestant clergy attending the Catholic service. Amidst the commendable demonstration of faith and unity at the funeral, however, was the haunting sight of the now widowed Mary Fay sobbing "I don't want him to go away."

Again, as we have seen, an organisation calling itself the Protestant Action Force put out a statement claiming they were responsible for killing Michael Fay. But what drove Giles to kill was the murder of Karen McKeown, as he admitted himself in Taylor's documentary. He also said this, about becoming a murderer:

When it happened, it felt to me that, that somebody had reached down inside me and ripped, ripped my insides out. That's what it felt like. It felt as if somebody had just put their hand down in through my head and just ripped the inside out of me, and I was empty - I felt empty.

You hear a bang and it's too late. You hear the bang and that's it. It's too late then, you've went, you've went somewhere you've never been before and it's not a very nice place and you can't, you can't stop it, it's too late then … (1) never felt a whole person again. Never felt, never felt like that again. So I lost something that day I don't think I'll ever get back.

A year after that interview, Billy Giles took his own life. A chain of events that started in 1982 with a drunk, Stephen Crowe, shooting at civilians, ended with deaths, bereaved families, heartbroken partners, and decades in jail.

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

Sectarian Murder In 1982 🪶 When Revenge Ruled Belfast

 

A Morning Thought @ 2678

 

A Morning Thought @ 2677

TPQ ⚈ A page for those who hate so that they are kept at a distance from those who do not. 

Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men.
For though the bastard is dead, 
the bitch that bore him is again in heat - Bertolt Brecht

Nationalists Ireland, or Natsis for short, every so often make an appearance on TPQ where neither they nor their warped sense of superiority coupled to their belief in eugenics make for intellectual stimulation. 

They believe in their own splendid sense of isolation, at times venting the deranged view that nationalism is in the DNA, a biological imperative by which we must all be driven and to which we must conform. They are welcome to their splendid isolation and not be compelled to have their superior genes diluted by the untermenschen or via contact with people of foreign origin. 

They claim to be on a mission to protect the women of Ireland while strangely believing that women are not in danger from the clerics of the Catholic Church. Nor do they seem to get that many women want protected from the Natsis rather than immigrants. 

They delude themselves that Ireland is not a crime-free zone because of immigrants; that Hutch and Kinahan are African names, that Larry Murphy is of Romanian origin; that racist riots are not criminal but rather the outpourings of ordinary people venting their frustration. 

Their faces firmly set against cultural integration, we will accede to their wish and not integrate with them. The Natsis can have their own place on this blog where they can reinforce the superior gene pool.

Natsis

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Six Hundred And Eighty Seven

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Most of us will have read or heard the story of the legendary battle between alpha Greek warrior Achilles and the Trojan Prince, Hector, during the mythical Trojan Wars.

It invokes images of the apex fighter, Achilles, chasing Hector around the walls of Troy the ancient city which is the background of the fabled Trojan Wars, a city supposedly under siege for ten years. The story, fascinating as it is, is at best a legend and at worst a load of bollocks though there are Bronze Age findings to strongly suggest such a city as Troy did perhaps once exist. The rest about a wooden horse containing Greek soldiers is not perhaps so factual. The epic battle between Achilles and Hector who, getting a little tired of being chased round the walls of the city, turned to fight his tormentor and lost fatally. That was the end of this fantastic though totally imagined tale but what happened on Friday 6th June in the USA is not so fanciful. Here two titans of the modern age did verbal battle over the internet then the media of the world!

People of various time zones some perhaps just awakening could have been forgiven for thinking the end of the world had arrived as newscasters and reporters transmitted the verbal battle between US President, Donald Trump, and his former best ‘buddy’ and world’s richest man, Elon Musk. The world’s most powerful man and biggest bullshitter and the planet's largest parasite and wealthiest man on earth had a lover’s tiff of no small magnitude. Both were taking lumps out of each other but who will win this potentially dangerous battle of the giants should it continue? Remember when Trump was first elected? These two cowboys were on stage with Musk performing the now infamous Nazi salute on stage followed by him enacting a macabre act waving a chainsaw in the air as a gesture of how he was going to cut tens of thousands of public service jobs. All this with the Presidents approval and support as he encouraged Musk with the cry; “go on Elon give it to em” which should show the level of lunacy possessed by both men. Could anybody imagine in the 26 County Dail, ridiculous as it sometimes appears, Micheal Martin giving a Nazi salute? No, definitely not, it just would not happen. Imagine Pearse Doherty of Sinn Fein waving a chain saw switched on shouting obscenities across to government benches? Again, it just would not happen but this is not Ireland, Britain, Spain, Germany or any other relatively stable country – as far as stability can be perceived and judged within capitalism – it is the barmy USA. When this mega argument was transmitted across the globe people could initially have been forgiven thinking the world had stopped revolving on its axis (something else which does not really exist, it is imaginary for those who think it is real) so much was the magnitude of the reporting.

After the break newscaster Sharon Tobin spoke to Associate Editor for the Washington Post, Jean Jordan, about the raging row between the two so-called ‘heavyweights’ beginning by asking in a matter-of-fact kind of way; “it looks like a very childish row what’s the significance?” The Associate Editor replied “For one thing Elon Musk has 220 million followers which Trump used during his election campaign”. This is to mean Musk has a huge following on his account, Twitter I understand, which was of great assistance to Trump during his election campaign in 2024. “The significance of having the world’s most powerful man against the world’s richest man” bears much significance. “Musk can do some damage to Trump” - the two men have done something which should not be encouraged according to Jean Jordan who noted; “how they have entwined their business and political interests.” With Musk taunting the President “without me you would never have been elected” suggests to the electorate how bent and corrupt the US Electoral College system of voting really is. The US electorate do not vote for the candidate standing for the presidency, they vote for an elector who then casts a number of votes given to him/her for their preferred presidential candidate. Did Musk’s money influence any of these electors? Is such a thing possible? Well, it has happened in the past what are termed “faithless electors” have changed their votes to the other candidate. “Usually, faithless electors act alone, although on occasion a faithless elector has attempted to induce other electors to change their votes in concert.” Though these occurrences are rare and were usually recorded late 19th early 20th centuries. The fact remains it can happen. For example, so many hundreds of thousands vote for the elector to vote candidate A, only for this elector, possibly through financial inducement, change to candidate B. Is this what Musk meant when he stated; “without me you would never have been elected”? The remonstration continued over last weekend and beyond and brought into question Musk’s ability, should he choose, to leave the US Astronauts stranded in space to die as the argument took a sinister twist! Jean Jordan pointed out, and this is very important regarding Musk: “he has the only space vehicle which can go up and bring back our Astronauts back from the space station.” Elon Musk has apparently suggested the use of his space vehicles could be denied! Would Musk really use his wealth and arguments with the President to sabotage the Astronauts? Even if he implies this surely it amounts to treason? So we could have one corrupt President and one blackmailing billionaire fighting it out!

The United States are the most vociferous opponents of other countries interfering with elections held outside their own jurisdiction but what about interference in elections held in the US. Was the 2024 election influenced by Musk’s financial might? Were the scales weighted in Trumps favour over Kamala Harris? Is this what Musk meant by his comments about Trump “never have been elected” without his influence? Sharon Tobin asked of Musk; “he does seem to have endless resources can he make it difficult for Trump”? Mary Jordan replied; “he can make it extremely difficult for Trump.” Was this a reference to Musk’s wealth? 

Over in London, England, the Mountbatten-Windsor family who reside in a 775-room detached house situated in the City of Westminster are also getting a little hot under the collar over this tiff between Trump and Musk! Apparently, Elon Musk is implying he may reveal the list of ‘powerful names’ on the Epstein Files. Jefferey Epstein was the paedophile who committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking offences and was a friend of President Trumps. Trump “is one of the powerful names on the dossier” (Irish Daily Mirror Saturday 7th June 2025 P.4) claims Musk and has hinted he may publish the full list of these names. Musk claims “dozens of powerful men are named, including the Duke of York” (ibid). For the readers who are unaccustomed with the pecking order of Britain’s Royal Family, who live in the aforementioned detached house with 775 rooms, the Duke of York is the King of England’s brother, Prince Andrew. Its ‘squeaky bum time’ for the Mountbatten-Windsor family as Musk could open a huge can of worms, a very fitting word for the kind of person on the ‘Epstein Files’. One insider said:

if Elon is willing to drop Trump, no one is safe, not even royalty. While he had close ties to the Trump administration, Musk had eyes and ears everywhere. He knows exactly who was connected to Epstein. No one could do more damage to Trump than Elon right now and the President’s aides know it (ibid).

It must be imagined the ‘damage limitation’ squad at Buck House will be on red alert and perhaps even the ‘assassination lads’ could be called in if the danger of Randy Andy’s involvement with Epstein becoming of major public interest increases? Britain’s Prince Andrew has “denied any wrongdoing during his friendship with Epstein” (ibid).

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the whole issue is the apathetic attitudes of the people on the streets in the US. They appear indifferent to the whole affair, claiming in many instances “the rift is inevitable between these two men” as the arguments continue. Elon Musk who supported what is termed; “Trumps Beautiful Bill” now terms it a “disgusting abomination”. The capitalist class of the USA are at loggerheads as to whether this Presidential Bill is good or bad, they cannot make their minds up. Much depends on whether you are a Trump or Musk supporter and then begs the question - now Musk is no longer part of the US government having left his post last week as his position was only temporary for about three months - what does governing the country have to do with him? Answer: he is the wealthiest man on the planet and the government are there to serve his, and his class’s interests! Who else could Musk do damage to? Who else could be on the list, Bejamin Netanyahu perhaps? What about Vladimir Putin, he was and remains a mate of Trump's - could he be on the Epstein list?

As we started with Achilles chasing Hector around the walls of the mythical ancient city of Troy, we can now envisage the younger Elon Musk chasing Donald Trump around the White House Rose Garden. Eventually Hector stopped, turned and faced Achilles to fight him face to face, and lost. The question in the White House battle of the giants is – who is chasing who and what could the outcome be for the rest of the planet? Perhaps Trump will go down as the US President of uncontrollable madness, possibly in the same league as Britain’s mad King, George III! 

What of Elon Musk? Perhaps the CIA for once doing something for the good could place Musk on one of his own rockets to Mars, one way, he could be the first coloniser of the Red Planet!

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Achilles Versus Hector 21st Century Style

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