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Maryam Namazie ✊ The right to blasphemy, a cornerstone of free expression and democratic societies, is a universal human right and demand.

It is not limited to or dependant on one’s ‘identity’ or lottery of birth. In fact, it matters most to those living under totalitarian and theocratic states.

In many countries under the hold of theocrats, like Iran and Afghanistan, being a woman in and of itself is an act of blasphemy, our bodies, hair, eyes, voices. Sitting in the front of the bus reserved for men in a system of sex apartheid: blasphemy. Refusing to wear the compulsory veil or laughing out loud: blasphemy. Being an atheist, gay, apostate or ex-Muslim: blasphemy. Opposing a religious state or the rule of clerics: blasphemy. Celebrating 1 May or 8 March: blasphemy…

The struggle to blaspheme is a struggle for the right to be fully human.

The Haymarket Affair (where a number of workers were killed and four executed in Chicago in 1886 for protesting for an eight-hour day) has become a symbol of the international struggle for workers’ rights with May Day marked worldwide. Likewise, the attack on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, ten years ago, has become a symbol of the international struggle for the right to free expression and is marked worldwide.

Thank you Charlie for poking fun at Gods, masters and prophets. On this tragic anniversary, we honour you and all our fallen who have challenged the sacred and taboo and changed the world one blasphemy at a time.

#thankyouCharlie

#RireDeDieu

See Inna Shevchenko piece in Charlie Hebdo.

Thank You Charlie Hebdo

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

Barry Gilheany ✍ By the time this article is published Donald Trump will have been inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States. 

The prospect of the return to the White House of a figure who in any other modern democracy or moment in time would have been disqualified from office and possibly incarcerated for his multiple legal infractions, including most importantly the range of offences relating to his attempts to thwart the result of the 2020 Presidential elections in which he was the certified loser, fills liberals and democrats with horror and dread. 

Having lived in a collective state of suspended animation since his election on 6th November due to the transitional period between administrations, the reality is now upon us. How then do progressives deal with what pessimists’ view as the prospect of the definitive end of the long durĂ©e of the hegemony of Western liberal democracy?

So, to invert FDR’s famous aphorism is everything about Trump to fear? Fear is what Trump and his capricious, shape shifting ally (of transactional convenience?) Elon Musk smell in an anxious world. For both men are bullies. Bullies enjoy keeping their prey on tenterhooks; their pathological will to power is about freezing their victims into existential fear and crippling impotence. Trump knows that US allies’ nerves are jangling as his inauguration may well presage the consignment of the liberal, internationalist post-war global settlement to history. Musk similarly is revelling in his ability to misinform, provoke and incite without rebuke or sanction as we have seen in his outrageous interventions in British politics over child sexual abuse and his support for the far right, anti-Islam agitator Tommy Robinson and of the far right AfD party in Germany.[1]

The atmosphere of foreboding about Trump’s second administration is thickened by some of the outlandish ideas, even by his standards, that he has floated. Is he serious about seizing control of the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, of forcing an Anschluss with Canada and to annex Greenland in defiance of international law and military logic? Does he seriously envisage creating an American imperium in the manner of President Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the 20th century with the conquests of the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and all that? But are these id type gestures merely performative? For example, Trump’s promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico never actually came to fruition. The value of surprise and threats has always been part of his transactional modus operandi.[2] It is possible to view his “All Hell to Pay” warning about the Israeli hostages in Gaza and its role as a catalyst in the achievement of the ceasefire in that light.

But, unlike first time around, Trump has full control of the levers of power and is surrounded by a circle of devotees, a Praetorian Guard of loyalists not by competent adults in the room. His reaction to the Los Angeles wildfire inferno in which he resorts to playground bully taunts like “Gavin Newscum,” the Governor of California offers a disturbing portent of things to come and a reminder of his career of verbal thuggery. Matthew Ancona cautions that while the opening pages of this Presidency will not read “This American carnage” rather “Morning in America” or the “dawn of America’s golden age”, he will draw on his reserves of narcissism and deceit as well as a fiendishly skilful narration of an “American folklore of national exceptionalism, of westward conquest, of the red state frontier rather than the liberal coasts”.[3]. To take one example of compliance by a democracy gatekeeper to the MAGA agenda, consider the rays of positivity emitted by John Thune, the new Senate majority leader, to Trump’s prospective appointee as FBI Director, Kash Patel.

For Patel is a nominee who has never concealed his ambition to turn the bureau into an arm of MAGA and Trump’s score-settling. In his book Government Gangsters (2023), Patel enumerated an explicit list of “Deep State” targets and “corrupt actors of the first order”. Yet, in an interview with the NBC’s Meet the Press on 5th January, the supposedly impartial Thune praised Patel for grasping that the FBI is “in need of reform and needs a good makeover”. He then added that the Senate would “get the president his people as possible in the key positions where he wants them.”[4] Considering the pedigree of other Trump’s nominees such as the antivaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr as Health Secretary; the “Private Pike” but rabid Christian dispensationalist Pete Hegseth as Defence Secretary and the former Assad friendly and possible Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, it is not hard to imagine the United States becoming a banana republic with untold nuclear weapons capacity or as a state where the supposed leader of the “free world” has fallen into the hands of a latter-day Quisling fascist regime.

But a challenging reality for a liberal constituency horrified and disgusted by the dawning of Trump 2.0 is that such a consensus is not shared, at least universally, outside the “West.” For the main players on the new geopolitical stage are non-western states and on that stage Trump’s US is likely to behave more like other transactional great powers like Russia or China rather than older traditional democratic powers like Germany, France, and Sweden. A 24-country poll recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations in collaboration with the Europe in a Changing World research project at Oxford University; the third that has been undertaken since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine revealed a number of uncomfortable findings for liberal thinkers.

For starters, many people in the world beyond Europe welcome Trump’s return, believing that it will be good for their country, for world peace and especially for achieving peace in Ukraine and the Middle East. Majorities believe these things in India and Saudi Arabia, as do majorities or pluralities – depending on the question put - in China, Brazil, South Africa, and Russia. In fact, Europe, and South Korea (dependent, like Europe, on its security for the US) stand almost alone in the degree of their worry about the impact of Trump.[5]

As established in earlier surveys, many countries, including China, India, and Turkey, continue to regard Putin’s Russia as an entirely acceptable international partner, despite its egregiously aggressive and imperialist war in Ukraine. Majorities or pluralities in those countries also think Russia will have more global influence, despite its much vaunted “strategic defeat” (in Western imagining at any rate) in Ukraine. Majorities in almost every country surveyed also say China will be stronger and even in the US; where a clear opinion is expressed, there is a 50:50 split. Drilling further down into the survey findings, one finds that taking the average across nine EU member states surveyed, only 22% of Europeans say they regard the US as an “ally”; a further 51% say they see US as a “necessary partner” but within European responses to Trump there is a significant divide with respondents in South Eastern Europe countries (Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania) much more favourable to Trump.

But before reflecting on what the liberal democratic response to a new Trumpian World Order should be; it is worth critiquing the order whose passing is being mourned and celebrated in equal measure; the “liberal international order” (ILO) or the rules based international order that has structured global relations and conduct since 1945. According to its champions, the LIO origins lie in the architecture of multinational treaties and institutions created after the Second World War, from NATO to the World Bank to the UN and EU, that aimed to bind nations and prevent another global conflict.[6] The threat posed by Trump to this order was expressed most starkly in 2018, a year into Trump’s first presidency, by G John Ikenberry, a leading liberal internationalist who declared “For the first time since the 1930s, the United States has elected a President who is actively hostile to liberal internationalism. In his opinion, America would no longer provide “the hegemonic leadership” essential for “fostering cooperation and championing ‘free world’ values.”[7]

But for Kenan Malik, the LIO is a “slippery beast” whose meaning shifted across time to suit contemporary interests of the American hegemon. He notes the absence of the term “liberal internationalism” in the first three decades after the end of the Second World War since the aims of the new treaties and institutions were to cement US power on its side in the Cold War; to contain Soviet expansion and to manage the transition from the world of empires to one of sovereign states under the watchful eye of the US hegemon. The concept of “liberal internationalism” only came into vogue with the trauma of the US defeat in Vietnam and the entry of the language or rules and rights into the parlance of international relations.[8] 

The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989-91 and the apparent End of History triumph of liberal democracy ushered in a cogent representation of the LIO through the expansion of the EU and NATO to incorporate the nascent democracies of the former Soviet bloc; the spread of democracy in many parts of the “developing world”, “Third World” or “Global South”; the creation of free trade zones such as the EU Single Market and NAFTA (North America Free Trade Association); judicial innovations such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and ad hoc courts such as the Rwanda and Former Yugoslavia Tribunals to create transnational remits for the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity (including the crime of genocide). Active liberal internationalism found expression in the UN Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine promulgated in 2005 to give retrospective justification to the “humanitarian interventions” in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and East Timor at the turn of the millennium. This type of muscular international liberalism suffered terminal reputational damage due to the disastrous outcomes of interventions in Iraq and Libya and the human rights abuses associated with the Global war on Terror launched by President George W. Bush.

In truth there was nothing “liberal” about the Cold War arrangements that saw the United States willingly underwriting authoritarianism in its client or ally states from Latin America, to South East Asia, Saudi Arabia and the Congo, all the while proclaiming its support (and surreptitiously aiding) for the cause of liberty and democracy in the USSR and its vassal states. More recently, the commitment of past recent US administrations to the rule of law and international justice has looked hollow to many outside Western spheres of influence with the opposition of departed President Joe Biden and other top officials of his administration to the arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu issued by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza while vigorously (and rightfully) supporting a similar warrant for Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine. The refusal of the US to be a signatory to the ICC in order to stymie any possible prosecution of US service personnel for such crimes.

Thus, the ILO rested on quite illiberal foundations. Its economic aim was to keep the world safe for global free markets, not through the pursuit of laissez-faire policies but as Malik opines through quoting the historian Quinn Slobodian by “designing institutions … to inoculate capitalism against the threat of democracy” and establishing “rules set by supranational bodies beyond the reach of any electorate.” He writes that this constitutes the project of neoliberalism, conceived by the work of economists like Friedrich von Hayek in the 1930s and transmitted through the institutions and mechanisms of the ILO.[9]

So the election of Trump 2.0 is an even more emphatic reaction to globalisation and the liberal international order particularly its perceived effects in the deindustrialisation and deskilling of America’s former manufacturing heartlands and the emasculation of its workforce, thanks to, in the view of Trumpites, the deleterious workings of NAFTA such as cheap Chinese imports and the outsourcing of jobs to the Global South. Parallel to this American economic carnage, has been, in the Trumpian universe, has been the other major downside of globalisation – open borders and immigration, particularly the “invasion” of undocumented migrants south of the Rio Grande and elsewhere. Whither then, the idealised American story of the melting pot of migrants seeking a better life and the route to the summit of the hill for their descendants as Trump also seeks to remove or deny US citizenship to residents not born in the US; setting up a direct challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

But yet for all the talk of Trump as the great disruptor who will drain the Washington swamp and take a swing to its elite consensus; there is something very familiar to the radical order which is set to transform America. It will perhaps be the most oligarchic and plutocratic Presidency in the history of the United States. At least thirteen billionaires are set to have government posts under a Trump Presidency, with his expected cabinet worth at least $7bn, double that of his first administration, and a jaw dropping sixty times more than the net worth of the Biden administration. 

What Joe Biden has, with grim foreboding, termed the “tech industrial complex” is set to take shape and mark its imprint on the second Trump cabinet with the arrivals from Silicon Valley. These figures include the venture capitalist David Sacks who is slated to be “AI and crypto tsar" and of course Elon Musk, set to head the advisory “department of government efficiency,” walking in the footsteps of the PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Expecting to flank Trump at his inauguration is the CEO of Tik Tok, Shou Zi Chew[10], banned and unbanned in the US in the flicker of an eye. Mark Zuckerberg, chair of Meta, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI have each donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration committee. The tech venture capitalist Marc Andreesen and close collaborator of Musk has been assisting the transition team in Mar-a-Lago.[11]

But yet for all the talk of Trump as the great disruptor who will drain the Washington swamp and take a swing to its elite consensus; there is something very familiar to the radical order which is set to transform America. It will perhaps be the most oligarchic and plutocratic Presidency in the history of the United States. At least thirteen billionaires are set to have government posts under a Trump Presidency, with his expected cabinet worth at least $7bn, double that of his first administration, and a jaw dropping sixty times more than the net worth of the Biden administration. What Joe Biden has, with grim foreboding, termed the “tech industrial complex” is set to take shape and mark its imprint on the second Trump cabinet with the arrivals from Silicon Valley. These figures include the venture capitalist David Sacks who is slated to be “AI and crypto tsar and of course Elon Musk, set to head the advisory “department of government efficiency,” walking in the footsteps of the PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Expecting to flank Trump at his inauguration is the CEO of Tik Tok, Shou Zi Chew[12], banned and unbanned in the US in the flicker of an eye. Mark Zuckerberg, chair of Meta, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI have each donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration committee. The tech venture capitalist Marc Andreesen and close collaborator of Musk has been assisting the transition team in Mar-a-Lago.[13]

In a brief odyssey into the history of American oligarchy, Matthew D’Ancona recalls that in 1896, the mighty cartel of JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller engineered the election of President William McKinley. After his assassination in 1901, McKinley was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt (namechecked in approval by Trump in his second inauguration speech) who, in contrast, railed against “the men of swollen fortune” and pledged that “America must not be “the civilisation of a mere plutocracy, a banking-house, Wall Street-syndicate civilisation.”[14]

Replace “Silicon Valley” for “Wall Street” and observe Roosevelt’s dystopia made real in Musk’s hyper-capitalist ascendancy. For not only is he one of the federal government’s biggest contractors, he will now have sweeping power over its budget (which he and fellow techno-plutocrat and anti-woke crusader Vivek Ramaswamy plan to reduce by “at least $2tn”) and huge influence over the regulatory and procurement regimen that determine his own businesses’ fortunes. Since the election, his personal fortune has shot up by 70% to $450bn.[15]

While this putative symbiosis between the tech bros and government looks like the standard operating process for the convergence of corporate and political power throughout the 20th century in America, some at the periphery of the tech-industrial complex hint at more radical forms of governance such as withdrawing from the state itself. Some such as the venture capitalist Balaj Srinivasan have even conjectured the creation of new private polities or “network states.” In 2009, Thiel spoke aloud about the fragmentation of the world map into thousands of new nations. Add to these fantasies, Musk’s resurrection of the idea of the company town in Texas and speculating at length about flights to Mars with a select few companions and one can deduce divisions in the Trump world between these “citizens of nowhere” and MAGA nationalists. Not for nothing has nativist nationalist Steve Bannon declared hostilities on Musk and other tech giants. Bannon’s calls in 2016 for and end to open borders, decoupling from China and the breakup of Big Tech are far from the language of the Silicon Valley libertarian right.[16]

Such divisions came into the open over the H-1B scheme which allows skilled workers to work for three years in the US and is valorised by the tech sector. For Bannon, the scheme represents a total negation of American First ideology:

a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and pay them less.

One wonders will these workers figure in the “largest deportation” in history.

So, Trump 2.0 is now upon us. It represents a definite swing to the styles of authoritarian, populist and personalised government seen in dictatorships and pseudo-democracies. Many scholars of democracy and democratic theory have pessimistic prognoses for the health and even the future of democracy in Trump’s second term. The best optimistic scenario for the failure of the Trumpian project may be the malignant narcissism of The Donald which feeds his need for adulation and positive reinforcement of self-esteem and leads him to dismiss any negative or bad news as “fake news.” This will to please may negate his will to power particularly if the divisions between the tech bros and the MAGA nationalists become acute. Like any other regimes, it is “Events, Dear Boy, Events” and their contingency that will determine the future of Trump world and its successors.

References

[1] Martin Kettle There’s a bully on the loose, but Musk will only win if we let him. Guardian 9th January 2025.

[2] Ibid

[3] Matthew d'Ancona The King of Manifest Destiny. Donald Trump is back. And so are long-buried American fantasies of national exceptionalism and conquest. The New European 16-22 January 2025.

[4] Ibid

[5] Timothy Garton Ash in a Trumpian world order, liberal states must adapt fast. Guardian Journal 15th January 2025.

[6] Kenan Malik Despite the eulogies, the postwar order did little for peace – and fuelled the rise of populism. The Observer Comment & Analysis p.54.

[7] Ibid

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid

[10] Quinn Slobodian The tech bros have a front seat, but they will want more. Guardian Opinion 18th January 2025.

[11] Matthew D’ancona Puppet Regime. America voted for Donald Trump. But in just over two weeks’ time, they will be getting Elon Musk. The New European January 2-8, 2025, pp. 12-13.

[12] Quinn Slobodian The tech bros have a front seat, but they will want more. Guardian. Opinion 18th January 2025

[13] Matthew D’ancona, Puppet Regime. America voted for Donald Trump. But in just over two weeks’ time, they will be getting Elon Musk. The New European January 2-8, 2025, pp. 12-13.

[14] Ibid

[15] Ibid

[16] Slobodian, Guardian 18th January 2025
 
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

It’s Happening đŸª¶ Trump 2.0 And The End Of The Liberal Order?

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 2401

Dixie Elliot ✍ I just sat through a tedious hour-long podcast called 'Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning'.

I honestly never heard of Dion Fanning before nor had I heard of their sidekick in the podcast, Timothy O'Grady, until I read his Belfast Media article about Say Nothing just over a week ago, which says everything about that fella and where his loyalties lie.

Listening to 'The Great Leader's' three spin doctors harmonising perfectly, as they ridiculed The Dark, the Price Sisters, as well as Anthony McIntyre, his wife Carrie, and Ed Moloney, was like listening to The Muppet's 'Mah Na Mah Na' song.

You know the one; 'Mah Na Mah Na... Do doo be-do-do.' So repetitive you know what's coming next.

As expected, Joe Brolly just had to bring the first hunger strike into it. He claimed that Father Meagher told Brendan 'The Dark' Hughes and the other men that the granting of political status was more or less imminent and that he was going to collect the document at the airport.

Then The Dark ended the hunger strike to save Sean McKenna's life and the Brits reneged on the offer.
That's the first time I heard that one.

Brolly said that Raymond McCartney, who is a good friend of his, had told him that. To emphasise their good friendship, Joe added that he had made McCartney a millionaire. What he meant was that because he represented McCartney in a UK Supreme Court case for a miscarriage of justice he received, what the media at the time said, was a 'substantial compensation claim.'

Thanks to good old Joe we now know that substantial compensation claim was a million pounds or more. So much for client confidentiality!!

I said several times that if anyone attempted to use that first hunger strike to smear the reputation of one of our bravest leaders, Brendan Hughes, I would not hesitate to put it right. I've already done so a few times.

Raymond McCartney, never had any intention of dying on that hunger strike. I know that because I was with his cousin, the late Sa Gallagher, when he asked McCartney was he seriously willing to die when they met up in the wing canteen at the beginning of it.

McCartney said straight out that he had no intention of dying, which shocked us. I was sharing a cell at that time with Jake Jackson and when I told him what McCartney had told Sa, Jake said, "I can't believe that not only has he just told us that (the leadership in the blocks) but he's telling everyone else it as well."

The myth that The Dark took the Brits at their word regarding an acceptable offer to end the hunger strike is quite easy to dispel.

It's a fact that Bobby Sands came back to our wing that night after visiting the men in the prison hospital and told us straight out that we had got nothing. He kept repeating it in Irish while walking past the cell doors, "nĂ­ fhuairemar feic... nĂ­ fhuaitemar feic..."

That is well documented, including in Bobby's biography, Nothing But An Unfinished Song.
Why would he tell desperate men that if the Brits had made an offer? He could have told us to wait and see what would come of the offer.

Then there is the evidence in the comm Bobby wrote out to Adams that very night, telling him that they would be embarking on another hunger strike.

In this comm he referred to "the boys breaking' and 'our desperate attempts to salvage something."
There was no mention of Father Meagher, a document or even The Dark ending the hunger strike to save Sean McKenna"s life. If you read the comm (see screenshots below) you'll see that what Bobby wrote and told Adams that very night is totally different to what Joe Brolly's millionaire friend Raymond McCartney told him.



'The boys broke' - meaning that as Sean McKenna was nearing death three of them told The Dark that they were coming off it, Raymond McCartney being one of them.

The three spin doctors also threw the usual 'problems with alcohol and mental health' into the toxic mix. "Brendan being very very damaged by his life and everything that happened," said Brolly.
"As for Raymond," he added. "look at him now, here he is."

Brendan Hughes spent the final years of his life living in a small flat he called his cell, with his principles intact.

As for the Joe Brolly made millionaire, Raymond McCartney, he sold any principles he might have had for a political career and money.

Joe Brolly also said:

When the GFA was signed it was a triumphant occasion. Everyone was out on the streets, they were in cars, they were tooting the horns as though it was some vast celebration. And it was, we see the reality of that today, the north is entirely transformed . . . 

What Brolly was in actual fact referring to was the stage-managed 'Victory Parade' on the Falls Road after the 1994 Ceasefire, which the Sinn FĂ©iners arranged in order to sell defeat as a victory. You wouldn't expect someone, with the sharp mind of a barrister, to get those two events; which were separated by four years, mixed up.

So how could anyone take what he says seriously?

Thirty years after that 'Victory Parade' the victory is put back, yet again, until 2030. The North is certainly not transformed. The politicians still get elected solely on what side of the sectarian divide they come from and not what they do for the betterment of the people they are supposed to represent.
Sinn FĂ©in might well now be the largest party on this island but they are powerless to change anything, never mind get a poll/referendum on Irish Unity.

They can't even get a referendum on the prefix 'London' which has been imposed on Derry by a royal charter since 1613. A referendum which would undoubtedly and overwhelmingly remove that prefix which bollixes like Gregory Campbell still use to mock us.

You'd think that the largest party in Ireland which now refers to the repugnant British Royals as 'Friends of our Peace Process' would manage to get their regal friends to get rid of that prefix for them.
Ah but they can't because the Unionists would be outraged and threaten to bring violence on to the streets.

That's why they keep putting the time for a poll/ referendum on a United Ireland forward. 

When those Sinn FĂ©in spin doctors such as Joe Brolly, Dion Fanning and Timothy O'Grady accuses the likes of myself and other Republicans of being left behind, I think to myself, how the hell can we be left behind by those who are going nowhere anyway?

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

Tedious Tim

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

Dr John Coulter ✍ With a new coalition government - without Sinn Fein - about to be formed in Dublin’s Leinster House, the ruling Fianna FĂ¡il/Fine Gael partnership will be trying to buy Irish Unity by pumping its so-called cash surplus into Northern Ireland.

Naturally, many in the Unionist community will be up in arms and urging organisations not to yield to the Dublin temptation of accepting Leinster House ‘bribes’.

The new Dublin coalition government will spin the view that the republic is now akin to ‘England’s Green and Pleasant Land’, and here’s the financial chequebook to prove it.

On one hand, the FF/FG cash incentive is a propaganda ploy to derail any Sinn Fein moves to call for a border poll. Its tantamount to the split in nationalism between the so-called constitutional republicanism of the coalition, and the more hardline republican approach of Sinn Fein.

In terms of this mythical border poll, while Sinn Fein was looking to its electoral success in Northern Ireland at council, Assembly and Westminster levels to trigger such a referendum, Southern nationalists in the FF/FG coalition are looking to cash handouts for Northern Ireland as their tactic.

As a radical Right-wing Unionist, I take the view that Unionism should use republican ideology against itself. There is a saying that republicans are quite happy to accept the half crown, but not to recognise the Crown!

I’m off a vintage age-wise who can recall the words of the late former First Minister, Dr Ian Paisley, who when he was campaigning for the 1979 European elections, said that he was going to the European Parliament to milk the European cow!

This is a theme I have explored in an earlier column on The Pensive Quill.

Whilst I know in modern day Unionism, the so-called Donaldson Deal was politically oversold to encourage the DUP to go back into Stormont, there is a similar danger in me urging Unionism to bleed the South of all these cash incentives for Northern Ireland.

Instead of Unionism viewing Southern cash aid as ‘sell out Ulster’ finance, Unionism should view any money from the Southern Ireland administration as reparations for all the genocide and ethnic cleansing inflicted on the pro-Union community from republican terror gangs based in the 26 counties.

Taking the history of the Troubles, how many people were murdered, maimed or attacked - especially in the border counties of Northern Ireland - only to see those republican death gangs skitter away off to the supposed political safety of the Irish Republic?

What serious efforts did the South’s security forces and intelligence community really do to apprehend republican terrorists?

How many terrorists would have been caught, and lives saved, if the Dublin government had allowed ‘hot pursuit’ tactics by the British security forces, especially the elite SAS, to chase republican terror gangs throughout the 26 counties?

What about the sectarian slaughter of the 10 Protestant workmen at Kingsmills in January 1976 by the Provisional IRA in South Armagh using the cover name of the South Armagh Republican Action Force? How many of the republican terror gang which carried out this ethnic cleansing could have been caught if the SAS had been granted access to the Irish Republic?

The previous year, in September 1975, the Provos had carried out the Tullyvallen Orange Hall massacre in which five Orangemen were murdered - also claimed in the name of the so-called South Armagh Republican Action Force.

My late father, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, was a senior Orange chaplain and he was invited one year to preach at the Tullyvallen Massacre memorial service. I accompanied my dad to the service and was allowed to sit at the lodge table and see the bullet scores and marks on that table.

It was a very eerie feeling to be in that chair knowing one of the occupants had been murdered. Again, could the gunmen have been apprehended if the SAS had been allowed ‘hot pursuit’ into the Republic?

As well as the IRA’s South Armagh Brigade, another notorious death squad was its East Tyrone Brigade, led at one time by former Monaghan Sinn Fein councillor Jim Lynagh, who was one of eight members of that terror gang shot dead by the SAS at Loughgall in Co Armagh in May 1987.

I’ll set aside the debate on whether the Good Friday Agreement would ever have become a reality if Lynagh and his gang had lived and gone on to form a breakaway republican terror gang contrary to the direction of the Sinn Fein peace process.

I also recall my dad being told that once when he was preaching in his home county of Tyrone, Lynagh turned up outside the church just as the service was supposed to finish. However, the service had concluded earlier and dad had left. Security sources told my dad he was the target of Lynagh’s visit.

So the solution to Southern cash is simple - its reparations for the atrocities which were planned in the Republic and how the 26 counties was used as a launching pad for that genocide of the pro-Union border community.

Such financial reparations by the Republic also opens up the debate if loyalist and republican terrorists or their spokespeople should receive compensation because of their alleged roles in the conflict.

The blunt answer is No! Why should you receive compensation for taking the law into your own hands? You either believe in the democratic process and you don’t. Likewise, such a debate also opens the can of worms around legacy payments and what defines a victim.

In the meantime, the new coalition government in Southern Ireland can ensure it ring fences a sizeable chunk of this cash to helping the victims and families who had to endure republican terror’s genocide of the pro-Union community along the border. Put your money where your mouth is, Dublin!

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

Pro-Union Community Should Take Eire Cash As Reparations For Terror Campaign

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

 


A Morning Thought @ 2400

Damian Tomas O'hAirt ✏ It can only be a welcomed sign that the Occupied Six Counties is witnessing a breath of fresh air into the Irish language — along with hip hop music, Irish culture and the not so subtle ‘Kneecap’ with their social rebellion status: while pontificating, every word of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom.

A trio of Irish language enthusiasts: namely ‘Kneecap’ has been entrusted by youthful Ireland to revolutionise a sleepy soul by bringing a new spirit to Gaeilge. Music has always been an important part of the Irish cultural landscape. For many generations, music has been the medium through which stories of war, religion, mythological creatures and resistance have been shared. Irish revolutionary PĂ¡draig Pearse was famously quoted as saying, “tĂ­r gan teanga, tĂ­r gan anam” or “a country without a language is a country without a soul."

According to linguistic sources one indigenous language dies every 40 days. 

A long way from their early endeavours of having a communal squat. When everyone would go out until 2am, then pile back and bring out instruments and play Irish music, dancing till 6am. MDMA and Guinness. According to Mo Chara and MĂ³glaĂ­ Bap they started doing this while hanging out in their teens. Nowadays ‘Kneecap’ has made a popular decision to utilise a genre: hip hop, which has been the voice of Black resistance to oppression in the United States.

I do believe it’s vitally important to provide a voice for the Irish youth and Kneecap's attitude to unpopular British societal constructs has earned them the respect of politically aware Gen Z fans. 

What we do know is that Gaeilge is the language of the Irish rebellion. Many times during the past four hundred years the people have asserted it in arms. 

Therefore, let’s not misunderstand cosplay coupled with pseudo-republicanism; as being a method of getting the Brits out of Ireland. 

That is a more complex task! 

Meanwhile, the parents of politically aware Gen Z fans vividly recall the, oppression, murder, collusion, and hunger. Collectively these methods shaped Britain's colonialism in the Occupied Six Counties that has also plagued the Irish people throughout history. These tactics were ruthlessly employed by the British regime in an attempt to crush the indomitable spirit of the Irish nation. 

I personally welcome the insurgent nature behind using creative mediums to reaffirm the Irish language. But let’s be clear, only as the primary means of enhancing communication in ‘the Republic’ sought after from the rebellion of 1916. 

In addition, this should go along with teaching Irish history in such a way,  as it will foster a pride in our cultural heritage and a sense of rights and responsibilities in our people as citizens of that Republic. 

Whilst ascertaining our indigenous Irish language rights; others residing in the Occupied Six Counties may not confer with aforesaid heritage—they will push back highlighting Kneecap's responsibilities.

You cannot present as cultural class chavs cosplaying in Republican chic, whilst rapping about consuming large quantities of ketamine, cocaine, acid, and MDMA. These actions don’t sit well with socialist principles that are so intertwined to the Republican cause. This type of doctrine pokes the eyes of many Irish Nationalist and Republican persons and is particularly antagonistic and hurtful. Especially to the people who continue to suffer the loss of a loved one, little by little from the scourge of drugs. 

We need to remember that if Kneecap proclaims: ‘every word of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom’. This is what their loyal politically aware Gen Z fans will ascribe to. In addition, to consuming copious amounts of drugs. 

The recent Kneecap movie takes place in 2019 in West Belfast. It has been described by a British film critic as having an allure in:

its frenetic, drug-fuelled pace. The style of the storytelling – and the superhuman number of drugs being snorted, chomped and smoked by the trio and their friends. 

Society understands drugs are deemed to be part of youth culture. But on the contrary, so is addiction; which slithers alongside waiting for an unspecified victim. Young people have reported that drugs are something that we don't talk about because it’s a big taboo subject in Ireland you therefore can’t really speak about. Meanwhile, Kneecap claim they are, creating a dialogue here for people to talk about these things. 

We have to be real about the cause of Irish freedom: which is to achieve a 32 County all-Ireland Sovereign Independent State, namely ‘the Republic’. I recognise Kneecap’s is working-class Belfast; but they’re self-proclaimed “lowlife scum”. And we don’t need some utopia where everyone is living like it’s the “Second Summer of Love”. 

Kneecap have claimed people who are outraged don’t want to see what they actually stand for. They conceptualise themselves as activists rather than dissidents. 

As you might be able to tell, drugs play quite a part in Kneecap’s world. They even have invented Irish words for them, because the language didn’t have them. “Snaois” is coke, “capaillĂ­n” is ketamine. Tattooed across MĂ³glaĂ­ Bap’s chest is 3CAG, the title of their 2018 album. It stands for “3 chonsan agus guta”, the Irish for “three consonants and a vowel”, meaning MDMA - the acronym for a very powerful drug. 

The lads have hit the limelight and have been well received with an ever-growing youthful fan base. They have also been giving extensive interview coverage in the media. Mo Chara has been clear that rave, rebel songs and great tunes all still central to what Kneecap are about. Kneecap was born of the need to represent that identity, says MĂ³glaĂ­ Bap.

(We were part of) . . .  this weird first group of young people in an urban setting in Belfast to really speak Irish together socially …  sharing the words and the youth culture, and taking recreational drugs, and all that melded together.

⏩ Keep up with Damian Tomas O'hAirt on DTH.  

Cosplay Republicanism

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Five Hundred

Atheist Ireland ✏ The Department of Education recently released new figures on second level schools. 

14-January-2025

Media reports last week incorrectly reported that most students are educated in multi-denominational schools. In fact:



  • The vast majority of students (74%) are educated in denominational or interdenominational schools. The High Court has referred to inter-denominational schools as denominational.
  • The balance of students (26%) are educated in multi-denominational schools. A WRC case has found that these colleges can have a Christian ethos if that is part of their tradition. Of the 211 multi-denominational schools, only 21 are under the patronage of Educate Together.
  • There are no non-denominational schools with a secular ethos. No schools deliver education in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner. The vast majority discriminate on the grounds of religion.


Here are the figures, followed by details of the ethos of the various types of ETB schools and colleges.



ETB Community Schools and ETB designated Community Colleges

ETB Community Schools and ETB designated Community Colleges are listed in the Departments figures as interdenominational.

The High Court referred to Community and Comprehensive schools as denominational. (Campaign to Separate Church and State case 1996). Comprehensive schools are listed in the Departments figures as denominational.

The Supreme Court found that if parent sent their children to Community schools they can expect them to be influenced by the religious ethos of the school. These ETB Community Schools are managed by religious bodies under the Deeds of Trust for these schools. The state funds a Chaplain in the schools to assist parents with the religious formation of their children. These Chaplains are mainly Catholic.

In the figures released by the Department of Education most of the ETB designated Community Colleges are also listed as interdenominational. These are managed by the ETBs but with a religious representatives on the Board. They come under the Model Agreement. As far as we are aware they are all Catholic. The state also pays for a Catholic chaplain in the designated Community Colleges to assist catholic parents with the religious formation of their children.

These schools are not an alternative to denominational schools, they are just more of the same.

ETB non designated Community Colleges

The Department of Education figures show that 111,088 students are educated in multi-denominational schools. The vast majority of these are under the patronage of the ETBs and managed by them. Of the 211 multi-denominational schools, only 21 are under the patronage of Educate Together,

They are referred to as non designated Community Colleges. A WRC case a few years ago found that these colleges can have a Christian ethos if that is part of their tradition. Recent research also shows that many of these ETBs are Catholic in nature. They are certainly not secular in any way, as revealed in the research report “That’s how it works here – The place of religion in publicly managed second-level schools in Ireland”.

The vast majority of second level schools (this includes the ETB multi-denominational schools), teach religious education as a subject. If students exercise their right to not attend, no other subject is offered and they are left sitting in the religion class. They get less points in their Junior and Leaving Certificate for exercising a Constitutional right.

All second level schools are obliged under Section 15 of the Education Act 1998 to uphold the ethos of the Patron. Schools are not legally obliged to ensure that any education and teaching with regard to religion and beliefs is delivered in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner. This is a General Principal of the European Court of Human Rights.

ETB non-designated Community Colleges are not an alternative to denominational schools, they are just more of the same and they disrespect the philosophical convictions of students from atheist and secular backgrounds. They simply ignore our Constitutional and human rights.

All students at second level are educated in denominational, interdenominational or multi-denominational schools, on a take it or leave it basis. There are no non-denominational schools in Ireland with a secular ethos. None of the schools deliver education and teaching in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner and the vast majority of them discriminate on the grounds of religion.

The majority of students are not educated in multi-denominational schools, even if they were, these schools are not suitable for students from atheist and secular backgrounds because they discriminate on religious grounds and undermine our Constitutional and human rights.

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Most Irish Second Level Schools Are Catholic Or Interdenominational

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