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Christopher Owens ðŸ”– It’s often said that the mundane shapes us.

The quiet, daily routines and how we handle them reveal a lot about our characters in a way that we don’t recognise. If that is the case, then I’m glad to report that Mike Coles is a busy, self-driven and reflective artist.

Jokingly describing himself as having spent fifty years in the wilderness, Coles is known for running Malicious Damage records which has released records from the likes of Killing Joke, Ski Patrol, Shriekback, The Orb and Headcount as well as being an artist and graphic designer. He’ll be hosting an exhibition in London soon to celebrate 50 years of Malicious Damage.

By contrast, this 70-page hardback (with a title borrowed from Jean Cocteau) slipped out last year to lower fanfare and deserves greater attention.

Described as a “...sneaky and whimsical peep at some of the things the artist does when he’s not doing anything else” in the format of a “...series of self-portraits drawn in late 2024-early 2025, in which the artist followed himself around his home and recorded what he saw” during the day, this is a moving, gently humourous and inspiring read.

With the combination of short stanzas written in the font of a Victorian tract and the pen and ink art that seems to reference German Expressionist art and Aline Kominsky Crumb, Coles depicts his life as one that may be solitary at times but also one where he is free and independent which, in this day and age, is an act of rebellion in itself.



There is an air of sadness that runs throughout: references abound to his late wife Luriko including the poignant line about how “Birthdays are very special to the artist as he gets older. His wife only had 59 so he celebrates for them both every year.” Items in his house remind him of long-gone friends and periods of time that are now written about in history books. Meanwhile, the art does a great job of capturing the home as a place where there are still endless possibilities but occasionally, the space in the room is noticeably bigger.

A tricky thing to accomplish, but Coles hits the mark.

Enough of the wilderness, it’s time for Coles to step forward and garner acclaim.

Michael Coles, 2025, Thirty-Five Drawings by Michael Coles. Privately Published.

⏩ 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”.

Thirty-Five Drawings By Michael Coles

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3105

Kate Rice ✍😔 An educated modern audience can agree that the French resistance was a big factor in defeating Nazi Germany. 

Their campaign fought not only their oppression by the Nazi occupation, but the collaborationist Vichy government. A collection of groups of guerrilla fighters from all different backgrounds operated in underground networks to derail the occupation and publish newspapers, destabilising their occupiers from within. Without them, it’s hard to say the war wouldn’t’ have continued for longer.

The French resistance also killed civilians, informers and collaborators. They forcefully shaved the heads of hundreds of French women who had committed ‘horizontal collaboration’ - sleeping with the enemy. These punishments were enacted with little regard for circumstance: a woman acting under coercion, attempting to protect her family, or surviving sexual violence was treated no differently from a willing participant. Following the liberation of France, many who were accused of collaborating or assisting the Nazi/Vichy regime were executed without trial.

We see the French resistance as one part of a heroic front, because it can be mutually agreed by all that the Nazi party was an evil and genocidal organisation. Apart from the words of some tinfoil hat conspiracists and racists, the world agrees that Hitler’s faction erased the lives of millions, primarily Jewish people killed in concentration camps and labour camps. Nazi ideology sought domination and eradication. Not just Jewish people, but those who did not fit their agenda- homosexuals, people of colour, Romani people, etc. Their list of victims is endless over what is, in the grand scheme of things, a frighteningly short period of time. The defeat of Nazi Germany was thanks to, in part, the actions of freedom fighters and armed civilians. The word ‘terrorist’ is not used to name them.

The IRA is almost always on reflex described as a terrorist organisation. This is despite the fact that its campaign during The Troubles emerged from a context of political exclusion, sectarian violence, and British state control. Like the French Resistance, the IRA used guerrilla tactics, targeted infrastructure, and killed those it believed to be collaborators. Like the Resistance, it also killed civilians - sometimes deliberately, sometimes as a consequence of its methods.

So, where is the line? If civilian deaths are the defining line, then both fall on the same side of it. If the use of fear, violence, and coercion defines terrorism, then again, both qualify. Yet one is mostly condemned, whereas the other is memorialised. This is not because their actions were fundamentally different. It’s because their causes are judged differently - and, crucially, because one aligns more comfortably with dominant political narratives than the other. Why then can it be ignored as long as the cause is worth the cost in the eyes of the majority? Must all oppressed parties gain the favour and approval of a world audience before we can start using terms like ‘necessary evil’ and ‘casualties of war’? Must Winston Churchill smoke a cigar and declare over crackling radio waves that world salvation is worth their sins?

The history of the British Empire and its expansion undermines that. In Ireland, its legacy includes famine and systemic political and cultural suppression. During the 20th century, policies such as internment without trial and documented instances of collusion with loyalist paramilitaries further entrenched division and violence. And that’s just in Ireland - how much suffering was caused elsewhere? Imperial expansion was built on the theft of resource and relic, the reconstruction of societies to fit a British value, and violence to enact control. Despite that, the violence of an empire is rarely described in the same moral language as the violence used to resist it. Is their violence less important because it has existed over centuries instead of just a couple of years? Must we see genocidal rhetoric in pure, undiluted form - gas chambers and camps - before we name them for what they are?

“Terrorism” has come to mean something very specific in the modern imagination: indiscriminate, senseless violence inflicted on civilians - the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert attended primarily by children, a man in a Las Vegas hotel room firing indiscriminately into a crowd. These are acts designed purely to instil fear, absent of any coherent political struggle that most observers are willing to recognise as legitimate.

But when the same word is applied to groups engaged in political warfare, it stops clarifying and starts obscuring. It flattens fundamentally different contexts into a single moral category, allowing state and the public to avoid engaging with the conditions that produce violence in the first place.

The word “terrorism” is applied swiftly and decisively, often without the same scrutiny of context or proportionality. It’s a pattern we can recognise - violence by non state actors is instantly labelled as terrorism, whereas violence by the state is framed as a necessity for defence and security. I don’t see that as a neutral distinction, but as a political one.

None of this justifies the killing of civilians. It does not absolve organisations like the IRA of responsibility for their actions. But if we are willing to accept moral ambiguity in the case of the French Resistance - if we can acknowledge that a just cause can coexist with unjustifiable acts - then we cannot selectively deny that complexity elsewhere. Moral clarity has to come with some measure of consistency.

If the same actions can be condemned in one context and justified in another, then the word “terrorist” does not describe a fixed category of violence. It describes a judgement - one shaped by power, perspective, and, ultimately, whose side the world chooses to be on.

I don’t desire to dictate what people call organisations like the French resistance, or the Irish Republican Army. Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing, and I cannot speak over the voices of those whose lives were brutally impacted by actions committed during the Troubles. I merely mean to ask, by what action can we differentiate between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? Must it be a quick and inhumane extermination for people to take notice? The thousands of children dead by the hands of school shootings would suggest not. The people in power will turn their eyes away whether it’s a violent death or a slow one.

This inconsistency is not an abstract idea on some humanitarian soapbox. It is happening now.

In 1945, the world reached a consensus that the systematic destruction of a people was intolerable. In the 1960s-90s, the conflict in Northern Ireland produced a far more divided opinion. In 2026, the ongoing ending of Palestinian life - widely described by UN experts and human rights organisations as constituting genocide - is largely denied or is met with no outcry at all.

An eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind.

⏩Kate Rice is a peace baby.

Who Gets To Be A Terrorist?

Wales Online ★ Written by Anders Anglesey & Olivia Bridge. Recommended by Gary Robertson.

A woman who leapt from a window in a bid to take her own life after suffering a brutal gang rape has been granted euthanasia by the courts and has given her poignant last words on the matter.

Noelia Castillo Ramos, a 25-year-old woman from Barcelona, was left traumatised with aggravated mental health issues after she was subject to a harrowing sexual assault in 2022.

The young woman even attempted to take her own life, plunging from a fifth-floor window that left her paraplegic and wheelchair-bound due to sustaining a severe spinal cord injury.

Ms Ramos said she simply wanted to "leave in peace" after enduring years of pain and suffering. Now, the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court in Spain has granted her wish.

The decision comes as her parents have desperately trying to intervene for several years to prevent their daughter from making the irreversible decision.

According to them, Ramos suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. She experienced different stages of her life under institutional care, and was "relying on ... the Spanish mental healthcare system" before she was raped.

Continue @ Wales Online.

Final Words Of Gang Rape Victim, Age 25, Before Death By Euthanasia

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ On Thursday 26th March the Irish national team (representing 26 of Irelands 32 counties) were involved in a very important World Cup Play Off football game with Czechia.

The winner, if it were to have been Ireland, would be in the final of the same playoff series against Denmark on Tuesday night 31st March at Lansdowne Road – Aviva Stadium – but, alas, that team was not to be the Irish. Instead the team played in an unimportant, though contractually obligated, friendly against North Macedonia resulting in an almost predictable 0-0 draw. This was despite Troy Parrot putting the ball in the net late in the first half only, wrongly in my view, to be judged offside. Was the game pointless as many would call it? No, it was not. Though not a competitive game in its true sense of the word it gave the manager of the ‘Republic of Ireland’ team a chance to look at unblooded players as each team appeared to have countless substitutes to choose from! The manager, Heimir Hallgrimsson, can see what depth he has in reserve for what to me looks like a project, a work in progress at least I hope it is! Almost 40,000 fans turned up for this game and I would advise patience. Now back to last Thursday.

To many of the Irish fans who made the journey to the historic city of Prague the game was a disaster, which in my view it was not. Disappointing, yes heartbreaking, yes, disaster, no. the lads had done remarkably well to get to the playoffs in the first place against all the odds. The miraculous antics of Troy Parrot played a major but not the only part in getting us there. Parrot must now be rated among the best strikers in European football as his goal tally for club and country continue to rise. But Troy Parrot aside there were another nine outfield players and a goalkeeper involved in surprising the football world by getting us to Prague which, if we are honest, none of us expected! The result, 4-3 to Czechia on penalties, was bitterly disappointing but not a disaster. We went two goals up courtesy of a penalty scored by Troy Parrot and an own goal by the luckless Matej Kovar. The first was skill, the second luck but that’s football! The fans who made the journey, though disappointed and if my own trips abroad are anything to go by with Man Utd, would have had a great piss up and win or lose this was always the case. Firstly, and hopefully, drunkard celebrations but failing that drowning sorrows in alcohol. This was always the case but times and cultures do change. Somehow though I cannot see the ‘Green Army’ drinking cups of tea after the game!

Czechia pulled back to 2-2 after Ireland gave away an unnecessary penalty then the hosts equalised in the 84th minute. It went to a penalty shoot-out, never a great way to settle a game, and Parrott came coolly to score our first. Penalty taking is a skill as this shoot-out proved. Parrott possesses this skill as his first half penalty was evidence of as the keeper guessed the right way but Troy had no fears because he knew he put enough pace on the ball to beat any keeper. That is the skill, knowing how much pace to put on the ball, whether to shoot on the ground or go for one of the uprights, or straight down the middle, they are all calculations the player must work out with only seconds to do so. Many say penalty taking is luck which is clearly untrue as these shoot-outs went to show. After Parrott, Adam Idah then stepped up and again cooly put the ball into the net as did the experienced Robbie Brady. The Irish goalkeeper, Caoimhin Kelleher, then saved giving the ‘Boys in Green’ the advantage which unfortunately was not taken. The first three Irish penalty takers were composed, particularly Troy Parrott, but the last two through no fault of their own were less calm, it appeared to me watching on television. A lesson can be drawn from this experience, practice penalties because such shoot outs are always a possibility! No doubt Parrot, Brady and Idah practice at club level and this was evident as Troy Parrott showed calm in taking both his penalties.

In normal time this was a game of two halves. The first 45 belonged to Ireland while the second, as I expected, went Czechia’s way. The Irish Manager should have, and he may have tried to do this, prepared the lads for a different opposition team coming out for the second half. Czechia came out from the off and went for the jugular not giving Ireland a chance to settle. Ireland should have done the same, the moment they got possession keep the ball and go for the Czechian weak spots. Instead the ‘Boys in Green’ allowed a resurgent Czechia to come at them and as a consequence were on the back foot for most of the second half. I have seen this happen at Old Trafford back in the day, a visiting team have been shite in the first half, so bad they could not be any worse, then in the second half they come out like men possessed! I had a feeling Czechia were going to do just this, they could not be that bad in the second half as they were in the first. They weren’t and managed to equalise the scoreline the jammy fuckers!! 

Once Ryan Manning made his howler and gave away the penalty it was always on the cards an equaliser would come. If anybody were to ask Manning, why? The chances are the lad could not answer, he wouldn’t know, it happens and there is little the player can do to stop it stupid as the action was. It is just something which happens like jumping up for a header then instinctively using the hands to get the ball, totally illegal and can result in sending off a player who commits this offence if in an area which prevents an opponent scoring a goal. It can also be calculated like Diego Maradona with his ‘hand of God’ against England in the 1986 World Cup Quarter Final game. Another calculated handball was that of Thierry Henry against Ireland in 2009 in a World Cup Playoff. Manning’s handball was not a calculated deliberate move, just an unaccountable instinct.

Late in extra time Irish player, Sammie Szmodics, who had only been on the pitch a couple of minutes was knocked out cold by a challenge from Czechia’s Stepan Chaloupek. The scene was worrying but reports later said he had regained consciousness and was under observation. Notably the infernal VAR was present but made no interference to make judgement on the challenge, once again showing the inconsistency of something no sane football fan wants! Get rid of the fucking infernal nuisance!!

Ireland hit the woodwork twice, the first when Nathan Collins hit the crossbar then Jason Molumby, who had a good game, hit the post. This was pure bad luck for the Irish and had these two efforts been an inch lower or to one side the result would have been put to bed. However it was not to be but fans should take the positives out of the game. The first half we dominated and in the second despite Czechia being rejuvenated Ireland for the most part defended well. 

Supporters should perhaps look on this as a project with the European Championships in 2028 our next target to qualify. Seamus Coleman who has been a great asset at 37 years young will probably play no part in the Euros and young blood should be introduced now. This is not the end of this Irish side, their courage and commitment in getting to Prague proved this. To quote Winston Churchill after the allied victory in North Africa in the Second World War; “This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning”. This Irish team have proved beyond doubt their ability to respond and are still young enough to remain moulded together welcoming younger uncapped players threaded into the team over time. Give this manager time and opportunity and this team will, I believe, come good it is a work in progress.
     
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Disaster Or Disappointment? Is This a Work In Progress, A Long-Term Project?

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3104

Jim Duffy ✍ I ran into a friend of mine from UCD this morning who later became a priest. 

He mentioned that his parish is experiencing the exact same phenomenon so many parishes in Ireland, in Britain, in France, across much of Europe, and in parts of Africa, are experiencing - a notable increase in young people attending Mass.
A proportion come from hardline Atheist families, had not been baptised and underwent adult baptism. Tom had never done an adult baptism until two years ago. He did two just last week, one the week before, four around Christmas. He has adult baptisms almost every week.
 
Interestingly, many of the young people at home and abroad are attracted particularly to the Traditional Latin Mass - the Tridentine rite in the version approved by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Tom finds that mindboggling.
 
I am not a regular mass-goer, though I have not completely broken away from Roman Catholicism. I nearly did, drifted back and then away again, then back again over and over. When I go, I too prefer the TLM. I find it far more emotionally connecting, more spiritual, an oasis of calm that touched the senses. In contrast I find the Paul VI Mass bores the pants off me.
 
That reminds me of when a young British historian doing a programme for the BBC and she was doing a piece about the relaunch of the Catholic hierarchy in England by Pope Pius IX. She decided to attend a TLM, as that would have been the mass of the time, and then do a piece to camera afterwards from the church. She had been brought up a Catholic. In the piece to camera she said the TLM had shocked her. It was so intense, so beautiful. She said she had never experienced anything so spiritual. She and her wife now go to the TLM every Sunday.
 
Pope Francis by his own admission hated the TLM. Then again he admitted he could never understand the appeal of ritual and tradition. He imposed severe restrictions on the TLM's availability. It looks like Pope Leo intends to overturn the restrictions of Francis.
 
So why are so many young people now attracted to Catholicism again? In the case of people brought up as Atheists, it may be the tendency of children to rebel against the mindset of their parents, an ancient psychological phenomenon. People who lived in the 1940s lived through an era of want. In the 1950s, as a reaction against that, the 1950s were an era of consumerism, to give their children a good life and all the things they wanted. To their horror then saw their children in the 1960s renounce that consumerism and the life they had led, and adopt the attitudes of the flower power era. That was just typical generational rebellion against their parents. Such a phenomenon has been recorded all through history.
 
The decision of children of Atheist parents to return to religion may be that same phenomenon - of rebelling against the defining characteristics of their parents.
 
But why are other young people attracted suddenly to religion? One reason why religion held sway in the past was because there was a real personal experience of mortality. People lived in extended families. They saw their parents and grandparents die. With high child mortality they saw siblings die, cousins die, school friends die. They experienced frequent pandemics with massive death rates before vaccines became available. They saw people suffer and die with illnesses that future generations were inoculated against.
 
Generations were haunted by the issue of mortality, and in promises of an afterlife religion often gave people some comfort. However as awareness of mortality died, as people moved from extended families to nuclear families, as illnesses were no longer death sentences, and childhood mortality collapsed, people lived more in the present away from the shadow of death. That meant that the appeal of religion declined.
 
Young people are now being confronted more with the issue of mortality than recent generations. There are high rates of youth suicide. The spectre of war has returned and is everywhere, whether with Putin's war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, or now Trump's war in Iran. They live in a world where the fear of war is real again. That brings home the issue of mortality again. So did the experience of the pandemic - a common phenomenon that just dropped from public awareness until Covid hit. (My great-grandparents, I worked out, lived through five pandemics, so it was something they were used to.)

Add to that, liberals have championed the concept of rampant individualism - summed up by the BBC News slogan "the news YOU want, when YOU want it." We live in a society where "we" is less important than "me". That has left many people feeling isolated in an increasingly individualistic society. Religions, in contrast, are more "we" than "me" and have communal religious ceremonies, meetings, etc. So young people may find religion an antidote to the isolation of modern life.
 
They may also found modern culture superficial, empty, devoted to trivia - the latest fashion, the latest trend, the land fad on the net. Religion's analysis may not always be right. Indeed on sexual matters it is often dead wrong. But it does at least try to offer a broader analysis beyond society's superficiality.
 
Throw together, societal isolation, an empty-headed culture, loneliness, and fears of death with wars, and perhaps it was predictable that religion in this context would stage a comeback. Those who were certain that it was dying and irrelevant must be shell-shocked at the fact that churches are filling up again, and that growing numbers of young people are turning up again.
 
But it is happening. Two years ago the entire city of Paris, long a city with little church-going, suddenly found that churches at Easter were packed that they ran out of consecrated hosts for communion all over the city. That had not happened in living memory before. Some parishes that had slashed the number of masses have been increasing the number of masses again. There are also growing inquiries about people joining the priesthood.
 
It is a striking turn-around.

On a separate point: the move from extended families to nuclear families, and then individuals living alone, something championed by liberals, is the number one cause of the massive housing shortage all over Europe and North America. People who in the past would have lived in nuclear or extended families now face societal pressure to live alone but the housing stock that would facilitate that is not there and arguably never will be.
 
The pressure to live alone, and the mocking of those living in collective family homes, has been a cultural disaster.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Religion Making A Comeback

Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 30-March-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Occupied territories courts’ brutality.
⬤ Mr Nobody and his critics.
⬤ Ukraine housing survey.
⬤ Schoolboys tortured to death.
⬤ Russia’s phosphorous munitions.
⬤ Militarisation of Crimean schoolchildren.
⬤ Russia foreign policy analysed.
 High oil prices benefit Russian budget.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Terror behind closed doors: Russia’s abductions, torture and monstrous sentences in occupied Crimea (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 27th)

Russia imposes criminal liability for denying previously unknown ‘genocide of the Soviet people’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 27th)

The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Marlen Mustafayev (Crimea Platform, March 27th)

Russia Leads Crimean Children from School Desk to Combat Contract (Crimea Platform, March 27th)

Melitopol IT specialist sentenced to 20 years after Russians torture out a ‘confession’ to ‘terrorist plans’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 26th)

Another 15 children and teenagers brought back from Russian occupation after fear, threats and pressure (Ukrainska Pravda, March 25th)

Russia brings new 5-year sentence against Crimean political prisoner over 2022 social media post (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 25th)

The price of a few cents: Women in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine are being jailed for tiny payments to Ukraine (The Insider, March 25th)

Weekly Update On The Situation In Temporarily Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, March 24th)

Outcomes of the Third Black Sea Security Conference of the International Crimea Platform (Crimea Platform, March 24th)

Russian judge convicted of war crimes over massive sentence against Ukrainian POW for defending his country (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 24th)

Russia tortures two young Melitopol schoolboys to death, passes long sentences against three other lads (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 23rd)

Russian legislation used as weapon against 74-year-old historian and the truth about the Crimean Tatar Deportation (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 23rd)

News from Ukraine

Housing and Residential Conditions of Ukrainians: Survey Results (Cedos, March 27th)

Professional development and educational needs: the second networking event for journalists from relocated media outlets took place in Kyiv (Zmina, March 20th)

Kyiv Register of Damage Forum on supporting people affected by war (Zmina, March 20th)

War-related news from Russia

‘Total chaos’: Russia’s internet blackout (Meduza, 27 March)

Russian losses in war update (Mediazona, 27 March)

The virtual ruble: Why Russia’s digital currency experiment could strengthen the Kremlin’s authoritarian control (The Insider, March 27th)

How Russian school history books reframe Stalin, Gorbachev and war in Ukraine (Meduza, 24 March)

Analysis and comment

Soaring oil prices will benefit Russian budget, but not fix the economy (Meduza, 26 March)

Phosphorus as a Tactic of War (Tribunal for Putin, March 26th)

Anti-war film: Mr Nobody and his critics (The Russian Reader, 24 March)

Impossible Island: Russia’s foreign policy analysed (Posle.Media, March 18th)

International solidarity

Teachers’ union vote to support Ukraine (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 26 March)

ZMINA brings Ukrainian perspective to Democratic Solidarity dialogue in Bolivia (Zmina, March 23rd)

Upcoming events

Wednesday 15 April, 6.0-7:30 pm. Try Me for Treason: Voices Against Putin's War - Part of the Think Human Festival 2026 Actors will perform extracts from speeches made from the dock by Russian oppositionists who have been tried for sabotage for actions taken against the Russo-Ukrainian war Clerici Building, Clerici Learning Studio, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Oxford.


🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.

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


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

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News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 189

Seamus Kearney ðŸŽ¤ 'When it comes to Ireland we will always get on better with the cowards, the spies, the traitors rather than the brave. Those who stand against us, the brave, we must discredit, dishonour and then destroy' -  A British soldier with the Intelligence Corp.

Freddie Scapatticci was only back in the North a few weeks when he was spotted by the Second-In- Command (Adjutant) of the IRA's Northern Command. He had been walking through the Kennedy Centre in Andersonstown with a former Blanketman when he recognised Scappaticci and was alarmed to see him back in Belfast.

The Adjutant of Northern Command convened an urgent meeting with his OC, who was Director of military operations in the North, and informed him that Scappaticci had returned from the Free State and in his estimate was a British agent. The OC Northern Command didn't seem perturbed, after all he had dined a number of times with Scappaticci in the family home over the years and had placed his full trust in him, dismissing the earlier signals which had come from elements of the South Armagh Brigade, signals which pointed at Scappaticci being untrustworthy.

However, his Adjutant persisted and had deduced through his own gut instinct and careful analysis that Scappaticci was an agent and had no allegiance to the IRA. His OC thought it a hunch and without sound foundation, but agreed to go along with his Adjutant's suspicion on this occasion as he was viewed in high standing within the upper echelons of the IRA. His Adjutant had looked upon Scappaticci and the ISU with a 'fresh pair of eyes', similar to Brendan Hughes, as both had been imprisoned in the H Blocks and when released were able to look at situations and certain people from a different angle from the 'Old Guard'. Both men had come to the same conclusion - Scappaticci and the Internal Security Unit was rotten.

It was therefore left to the Adjutant of Northern Command to find a way to terminate Scappaticci and 'put him out to graze', thereby limiting the damage which had already been done.

In November 1992 a meeting took place in Belfast between the Adjutant and Freddie Scappaticci. On the basis of a technicality, in which Freddie Scappaticci admitted he spoke to detectives in Castlereagh the previous month, he was formerly dismissed from the IRA. He was informed that he had broken General Army Orders (which covers a multitude of sins), by speaking in Castlereagh and was no longer in the IRA. For his part Scappaticci was aggrieved and felt it unfair as he had only spoken to detectives in relation to his fingerprint on a battery of a scanner, but the Adjutant remained rigid on the issue and concluded the meeting.

To say that Stakeknife was furious would be an understatement. After contacting his military handler and telling him the 'bad news', they both were seething and wanted to kill the IRA' s Adjutant.

The reality was that Scappaticci was no longer at the heart of the IRA and was now crestfallen. Where he went next was another story . . . 

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act XII

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3103

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