Social Items

TPQ
Pádraic Mac Coitir ✒ Like thousands of other Irish Republicans I was on the Garvaghy Road and as I walked around speaking with people, strangers and many that I know we were under no illusion about what has been happening over the past three days.

Two days were spent in a British colonial court and it came as no surprise that the unionists got their way by getting the go ahead for their sectarian march to walk the road we were on today. 

All the talk by Sinn Féin about a 'shared island' was exposed as nothing more than drivel. When many of us warned about the British government protecting and supporting the unionists we were told they would never be allowed. Stormont is nothing more than a super council that is dominated by unionists and their police force will be there to protect them.
 
Hundreds, if not thousands, of peelers were in Portadown and it reminded a lot of us who took to the streets of Garvaghy Road, Crumlin Road, Ormeau Road and other areas years ago. We were battered off those roads and the usual suspects claimed they would put manners on the peelers and what did we see today? Yes, the very same police force.
 
We were there not to hear mealy mouthed platitudes from Sinn Féin but to support the people of Garvaghy Road. Sinn Féin people had bodyguards on a road where nobody was going to attack them and as they spoke it was about themselves as they look forward to elections next year.
 
As sure as I'm writing this they will call on people to join the same force that harass people and they will batter those trying to stop sectarian bigots walk where they should never be allowed. They'll go back to Stormont and sit with unionist scum that want marches down roads where they should never go. They'll meet British politicians that continue to pump billions of pounds into their armies and police forces while people live in fear of more sectarian marches. The hypocrisy isn't lost on many of us. 

I stand with the people of Garvaghy Road as do thousands of others but I don't support Sinn Féin making political mileage out of a dire situation.

Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican
prisoner and current political activist.

Shared Island Drivel

Dr John Coulter ✍ Donald Trump has successfully opened a second front against Russian aggression with the historic signing of the new deal with Greenland and Denmark which will see two new major American bases in the Artic region.

This is the most significant deal involving the region since 1951 just as the original Cold War with the old communist Soviet Union was ramping up.

Russian boss Vladimir Putin had himself sparked a second front with the confrontation with Iran and the United States. Russia, in invading Ukraine, has found itself bogged down in Afghanistan Mark Two.

The Ukrainian conflict has become Russia’s Vietnam, and has descended into a war of attrition as casualties mount. Now with Western military aid, the Ukrainians are fighting back, fuelling speculation that a proxy war has developed between Moscow on one side, and Washington on the other - using Ukraine as the battlefield.

Historically, in terms of conventional wars when Russia was invaded, the Russians always deployed a simple tactic - retreat east towards Siberia as fast as possible and let the severe Russian winter do the rest. The French Emperor, German Kaiser and Nazi tyrant Hitler all learned the same bitter lessons over the centuries.

With the end of the Berlin Wall in Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union and fall of communism, NATO tended to sit on its laurels. Putin’s war in Ukraine is really the ex-KGB boss dipping his military toe in the conflict water; how far can be taunt NATO without the situation deteriorating into a full-blown nuclear World War Three?

Given Putin’s self-styled own triple alliance with China and North Korea, Moscow has worked on the assumption that NATO is either too scared or too ill-prepared for anyone seeking a military conflict with Western powers.

Realistically, Putin’s Ukraine strategy fell apart in the first week when the Russians failed to capture three key northern airports during the initial invasion.

This created a major logistical problem for Russia as it meant transporting supplies by road over long distances - ironically, the same scenario which befell the Nazis in the 1940s when they invaded Russia. The more the Soviets retreated east, the longer it took for the Germans to get much-needed supplies to frontline troops.

In Ukraine, the long supply route left the Russians vulnerable to drone attacks by the Ukrainians. How Putin must have yearned for a short, sharp snap campaign to take all of Ukraine; indeed, how frustrated must the Russian leader have been not to have been able to use his ballistic missiles to end the war in a matter of days.

Again, the Russians had to swallow some bitter reality medicine. They couldn’t use the same brutal tactics as they had deployed in the Russian region of Chechnya where allegations of chemical and biological weapons were used.

The Russians certainly could not afford to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine given how NATO may retaliate.

Trump has effectively called Putin’s bluff with the former’s second front in the Artic region which could seriously threaten Russia’s eastern flank.

If Putin thought he had a problem with Western-made drones striking Russia from Ukraine, what about the potential of US drones hitting Russian targets from the Artic?

In spite of the diplomatic decorum for the cameras at the public signing of the Artic deal, there still remains unease within Denmark and Greenland about Trump’s earlier flamboyant language concerning his desires on expanding American interests in the Artic region.

This has to be set in the context of Trump’s astute tactics of ensuring he usually get what he wants. He wanted to get US bases established and expanded in the Artic region before the Chinese or Russians moved in. So it was a case of ‘dial up the hardline rhetoric’, then give the appearance of pulling back - only to get what you wanted in the first place!

The Artic deal also puts additional pressure on the UK to support Trump’s tactics in the Middle East. And, of course, we should take Trump’s comments on supporting Irish unity with a large pinch of political salt. The real aim is to persuade Southern Ireland to abandon its military neutrality and join NATO as a full member.

With only a few years left on his Presidency, Trump wants his military legacy to be a really strong NATO - and United States - capable of combating any moves territorially by the triple alliance of Putin, China and North Korea - the so-called Axis of Evil.

Could this Axis policy be that China has been allocated the task of mainly cyber war; the North Koreans flashing their ballistic weapons testing, and Russia supplying the territorial provocation?

Ironically, Putin must secretly view the Trump Artic deal as the 1960s Cuban missile crisis in reverse!

Just as the old Soviet Union tried to get ballistic missiles located off the American coast in communist Cuba, so too, has Trump been able to secure a deal which will allow the Americans to base substantial weaponry within easy range of Russia’s eastern borders. Where Russia failed in the 1960s, Trump has succeeded in 2026.

If Trump is really smart militarily, it will not be just drones which are located on the two new planned US Artic bases. He should pack both bases with a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons.

And to really copper fasten this Artic deal, another deal must be on the cards. Bigger runways in Southern Ireland to facilitate American bombers, and Northern Ireland’s shipyards to service US nuclear submarines, warships and aircraft carriers.

Such a policy for the island of Ireland would require massive investment from the White House. Unionists and nationalists alike should now wonder what will be on the political cards for the Americans to gain such a military capacity.

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Dr Coulter has been a journalist since 1978 and is currently a political commentator with GB News.

Tactical Trump Gives Putin A Major Military Migraine

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

Geordie Morrow 🖌 with a painting from his collection of art work.

 
⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

Beano

Merrion Press 🔖 has just published a new book by Dave Hannigan.



The Big Fight
When Ali Conquered Ireland 

Dave Hannigan


The thrilling story of Muhammad Ali’s 1972 visit to Dublin, told through interviews with dozens of those Ali met over the course of those seven unforgettable days.


On a balmy July evening in 1972, to the sound of The Dubliners, Muhammad Ali climbed through the ropes to fight Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at Croke Park. The most famous athlete in the world had somehow been inveigled to Ireland by Butty Sugrue, a charismatic entrepreneur who was ridiculed for trying to do the impossible right up to the moment Ali and his entourage touched down at Dublin Airport. And so began a week of the most glorious mayhem, as ‘the Champ’ charmed the Irish people.
Ali could be found jogging along Wicklow lanes, strolling into The Old Stand pub, chatting with street cleaners, and paying an early morning visit to the GPO to receive a history lesson about the Easter Rising. No matter where he fetched up, wonderful chaos ensued. Traffic stopped. Crowds gathered. The greatest show on earth had come to town. Through interviews with dozens of those Ali met and worked with over the course of those seven unforgettable days, Dave Hannigan has pieced together an enthralling narrative of one of the most unique events in Irish sporting history.

Paperback • €18.99|£17.99 • 256 pages • 226mm x 153mm • 9781785375460

Out Now 📚 Dave Hannigan

Dixie Elliot ✊"The Orange State is gone and it's not coming back." - Mary Lou McDonald 2019.


It has gone nowhere!!
 
The fact that the people of the Garvaghy Road still have to face down bigots who are intent on marching where they are not wanted is proof that the so called GFA had nothing to do with peace and was entirely about appeasement.
 
Appeasing bigots whose culture is based entirely on the hatred of everything Irish, and one of Unionist domination.

Political policing is still very much a fact of life for Nationalists in the North, yet the silence from the so called political representatives, including those who sit on policing boards is damning evidence that we were and continue to be sold lie upon lie.

And what is worst of all is that sectarian division still gets the politicians on both sides elected despite the fact that they have changed nothing for those people who constantly vote for them.
 
The so called political representatives who know that they don't have to do anything but turn up at the polling booths during each election and usher their voters inside like sheep to the slaughter.

The so called political representatives who have been forced to join the residents of the Garvaghy Road in an attempt to prevent something they had told them was a thing of the past.
 
The so called political representatives who insist in telling us that we are in a better place today despite the fact we clearly see that nothing has changed.

Yet they insist on asking what the alternative is.
 
The alternative is to walk away from Stormont where Carson's statue and his sectarian politics still dominates the skyline.

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

The Orange State

Atheist Ireland ★ A recent case at the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that ethical vegan beliefs are protected, under the right to freedom of religion and belief, in the European Convention on Human Rights. 

21-August-2026

There is a parallel with Atheist Ireland’s campaigns to protect the right to freedom of religion or belief in Irish schools.

The case was GK and AS versus Switzerland, and the ruling was on 16 July. It strengthens the impact of an older related case, W versus UK in 1993, which was a decision of the old European Commission of Human Rights, not a judgment of the present Court.

What was the issue in the current case? GK was held in pre-trial detention for almost a year. A.S. was involuntarily detained in a psychiatric hospital. Both repeatedly asked for fully vegan, nutritionally sufficient meals.

The authorities tried to accommodate them, but did not consistently give them vegan food. And neither institution made a formal decision that they could appeal.

Article 9 of the European Convention protects freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including qualifying religious and nonreligious beliefs.

The test of whether a nonreligious conviction can qualify as a protected belief includes whether it reaches a sufficient level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion, and importance. The next test is whether the behaviour in question has a sufficiently close connection with the belief.

What did the European Court conclude? It found that the applicants’ ethical veganism met both these thresholds. The belief was protected, and it was not merely a dietary preference. It flowed directly from their moral opposition to exploiting or harming animals.

And, because GK and AS were dependent on the State for food, the authorities had a positive obligation to deal properly with their request for vegan food. This does not mean that they had to comply with the request, but they had to reasonably balance the right with practical considerations.

The authorities tried to evade that by saying they had not made a decision to appeal against, but the court found that argument too formalistic. Indeed, the court found that, because GK and AS could not appeal the issue domestically, their right to an effective remedy, under Article 13, was also breached.

The judgment reinforces two principles

This judgment reinforces two important human rights principles. One is that that religious and nonreligious beliefs have the same legal protection under human rights law. If someone refuses to eat pork because of their religious beliefs, and someone else refuses to eat any animal products because of their ethical veganism, the authorities must respect both underlying beliefs equally.

Another is the difference between the State’s negative duties (to not unjustifiably interfere) and positive duties (to take reasonable action). It is not always enough for the State simply to allow someone to hold a belief. Sometimes it must take reasonable steps for them to exercise their rights effectively.

In this case, the applicants were deprived of their liberty and dependent upon the State for food. The Court found the authorities had a positive obligation to properly consider their requests and balance their beliefs against practical considerations.

There is a parallel here with Atheist Ireland’s campaign to protect the right to freedom of religion or belief in Irish schools.

In the Louise O’Keeffe child protection case, the Irish State argued her parents had chosen to send her to the school. But the European Court found she had no realistic and acceptable alternative to attending her local school, and few parents had the resources for home schooling or fee-paying schools. She also won on the issue of a lack of an effective remedy.

That case concerned the State’s positive duty to protect children from abuse, rather than freedom of religion or belief. But the underlying issue of compulsory schooling is also relevant to belief rights. The State cannot treat attendance at school as an entirely voluntary choice.

Also, the Convention separately requires the State, in exercising its functions in education, to respect parents’ religious and philosophical convictions.

This does not mean that children (through their parents) can decline to attend any subject inconsistent with their beliefs. The State can make subjects compulsory if the information is conveyed in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner, and the State does not pursue indoctrination.

But broadly speaking the two principles are similar. The more the State controls access to an activity, and the more it removes alternatives, the stronger its duty to take reasonable account of religious or philosophical beliefs.

Atheist Ireland continues to campaign for the right to respect for our philosophical beliefs in the education system.

Keep up with Atheist Ireland.

European Court Win For Vegans Strengthens Legal Recognition For Nonreligious Beliefs Including Atheism

Weekly Worker ☭ Written by Paul Demarty.

He was undoubtedly the tragic victim of an openly racist attack dog and a baying mainstream media. 

However, maintaining that Jason Arday was not guilty of plagiarism is worse than useless. We need the truth about him and, more importantly, the whole neoliberal university system.

There is a general commotion to answer the question, ‘Who killed Jason Arday?’

On one level, this is a bit silly. Though we await confirmation from a coroner or some such authority, it seems abundantly clear that he killed himself. Weeks into a media feeding frenzy, in which public allegations of plagiarism fed into a detailed examination of the spectacular life story he had retailed in his career as a celebrity academic, he had already resigned from his post at Cambridge University, and it had become clear that most of the grandiose claims he had made about his biography were false.

He had not been a non-verbal autist until the age of 11, nor illiterate at 18. He had not played for Crystal Palace, or been a pro snooker player, or run 600 miles in six days, or miraculously recovered from a brain tumour. 

Continue @ Weekly Worker.

Fraudsters, Great And Small

Friendly Atheist ★ Pastor Daimon L. King, twice imprisoned for offenses involving minors, opened a North Carolina GOP campaign rally.

How hard is it to find a conservative Christian pastor who isn’t problematic?

Recently, at a campaign event, North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley had Pastor Daimon L. King deliver the opening prayer. The prayer itself was predictably hypocritical, with King calling for “integrity and honesty” in a room full of voters who don’t care about either one.

But that’s not why the event made news. After the event, the Associated Press’ Brian Slodysko pointed out that King was a registered child sex offender who’s gone to prison two separate times for his crimes.

While there’s no video of the campaign event, Whatley posted a video from the event in which King could be seen giving a double thumbs-up behind Whatley and Dr. Mehmet Oz.

So what did King do that everyone organizing the event decided to ignore?

Some 30 years ago, King was a marching band assistant at a high school outside Raleigh when he was charged with statutory rape and indecent liberties with a 15-year-old student, The News & Observer reported at the time.

Continue @ Friendly Atheist.

GOP Candidate Michael Whatley’s “Integrity” Prayer Was Led By A Registered Sex Offender

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières ★ Kai I analyses the BJP’s latest assault on trans rights in India, situating it within the broader structures of Hindu nationalism, capitalist patriarchy, and the bourgeois family.

On the 30th of March, the Indian parliament passed a bill proposing a series of amendments that redefine the rights and identification of trans Indians. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill removes the right of transgender people to self-identification, reduces prison sentences for sexually assaulting trans women, and subjects the trans community to dehumanising medical exams in exchange for legal protections. This is an attack against one of the largest queer communities in the world – produced by a Hindu nationalist political project that combines capitalist modernisation with a traditionalist family structure. Revolutionaries globally need to stand in solidarity with trans people in India.

The Hindutva government, currently dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has faced sustained criticism for enacting discriminatory laws and inciting violence against ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities in India. This includes the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, which explicitly excludes minorities such as Eelam Tamils and Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan from seeking citizenship following refugee status. 

Continue @ ESSF. 

India 🪶 The BJP’s War On Trans Rights

Right Wing Watch 👀Written by Peter Montgomery.


Dallas megachurch pastor and Christian nationalist Robert Jeffress, a fervent supporter of President Donald Trump, spoke at the Republican midterm convention this week, where he told the crowd that they are in a war against “unseen forces of wickedness.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a war,” he said, slamming the Democratic Party as advocates for sin:

There’s a difference between falling into sin and being an advocate for sin, an advocate for evil. And ladies and gentlemen, the Democrat Party are advocates for evil. They are advocates for sin. And we need to call it that way.

Jeffress demonstrated religious-right leaders’ intolerance for Christians who don’t interpret the Bible the same way they do, demeaning the outspoken Christian faith of Democratic senatorial candidate James Talarico.

“James Talarico believes that Jesus was little more than a wimpy, woke rabbi who roamed the hillside saying sweet things to people,” Jeffress said. He claimed that no “true Christian” could hold Talarico’s views on gender and other topics, saying:

The beliefs of James Talarico are blasphemous. They are evil. And they are not beliefs that any true Christian could support ever.

Continue @ RWW.

MAGA Pastor Robert Jeffress Calls Democrats ‘Advocates for Evil’

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

 

Pastords @ 63

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)