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Showing posts with label Christy Walsh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christy Walsh. Show all posts
Christy Walsh ✍ Four legacy mechanisms:

  • Closed Material Procedures (CMPs),
  • the ‘secret Legacy Act working group’
  • the Victims’ Payments Board
  • the ‘absurd lawful force’ exemption

These are framed in neutral legal language. However, the mask slips when you look at who is harmed, who is targeted and who is protected.

All four operate in areas where nationalist victims and Families are overwhelmingly represented.

All four restrict accountability for State conduct.

All four protect and reduce accountability of the security forces.

All four systematically block nationalist victims from truth, remedy, or justice.

The question is not whether this is the intention. The question is how long will it be allowed to continue?

CMPs in Collusion Cases

In civil proceedings where security forces are alleged to have colluded with loyalist murder gangs, CMPs are used to hide evidence of collusion. Only a judge and lawyers appointed by the State can see the secret evidence. One of the government appointed lawyers, called ‘special advocates’ will liaise with victims’ Families and their legal representatives - as a substitute for being excluded from access to the evidence and the courtroom.

On 25 November 2024, CMPs were used in a secret trial in the cases of Brian Frizzell, Katrina Rennie, Eileen Duffy, and Alan Lundy. On arrival, the Families and their lawyers were instructed to leave the secret hearing. The Families are seeking damages for alleged security force collusion in the murders of their relatives. The excluded lawyers representing the victims’ Families predict the outcome will affect “scores, if not hundreds”[1] of legacy cases involving collusion. Over 18 months later, judgment is still pending.

Section 6 of the Justice and Security Act 2013 is being used unlawfully against the Families. Unlawfully is not rhetorical but statutory interpretation. Section 6(11) “relevant civil proceedings means any proceedings (other than proceedings in a criminal cause or matter).” No Government Department; i.e. Department of Justice (DoJ) or Ministry of Defence; or State agencies - Prosecution or Police Services, could apply for CMPs in the mid-Ulster series of murder cases because they all involve ‘criminal cause’ allegations of collusion in murder. The judge improperly issued the CMPs on his own motion revealed at para.3 of his judgment.[2]

CMPs are not lawfully available in civil cases because they concern alleged collusion in murder, they have criminal-law issues at their core. A two part test establishes if a civil case involves criminal cause:

1) could the underlying civil proceedings afterwards place any person in jeopardy of criminal proceedings or accountability?

2) is an investigation and potential prosecution a possible and foreseeable outcome?

Even a civil finding of collusion could:

  • trigger disciplinary proceedings against security force members,
  • support a referral to the United Nations or European Court of Human Rights, or
  • inform a future application to quash the Legacy Act as incompatible with Article 2 ECHR (right to life).

Note: The Legacy Act’s prohibition on prosecutions is under challenge as a violation of Article 2 ECHR (the State’s duty to investigate suspicious deaths). So CMPs can still not be lawfully issued based on a statute that may be struck down.

Before the Frizzell and Lundy trials took place on 25 November 2024, the judge ruled out any possibility of any respondent being held criminally liable for collusion in the murders - declared a mistrial: the outcome was effectively decided before the trial. The 18-month pending judgment is predicted to affect “scores, if not hundreds of cases” - that means evidence of collusion could be kept hidden from scores or hundreds of other murder cases.

The Secret Legacy Act Working Group: The Culprits Write the Law

In 2020, a secret Northern Ireland Office working group[3] met to shape the legacy framework. Documents were marked “Official Secret” and “not for circulation to membership.”

Who was in the room

  • George Hamilton: former Detective Chief Inspector and Detective Superintendent of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
  • Madeleine Alessandri: UK Deputy National Security Advisor.
  • Chloe Squire: Home Office Director of National Security.
  • And other national security officials drawn from institutions alleged to have colluded with loyalist murder gangs.

Victims’ Families and NGOs were excluded. The media was excluded. The public was excluded.

What they produced

Their recommendations shaped the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. The Act closed over 1,100 cases brought by bereaved Families. Minutes show a plan to close cases where “securing a criminal justice outcome isn’t possible” and move Families to “information recovery”. not investigation, not accountability.

The law was written by the very people who may have helped with or participated in alleged collusion. At minimum, security forces protected security forces. Nationalist Families seeking truth about collusion were offered a process designed to divert them and shut down access to accountability.

The Victims’ Payments Board: Structurally a Front for the State

The Victims’ Payments Board (VPB) is presented as an independent body. That is a lie masquerading as an impartial body.


  • The DoJ controls applications, staffing, investigations, and all administration and infrastructure of the VPB.
  • Lawyers on VPB investigative panels deciding cases of security force abuse are government lawyers and/or prosecutors and are not impartial decision-makers.
  • The State has positioned its own lawyers to sit as adjudicators deciding whether nationalist victims of conflict-related injuries caused by the security forces qualify for payments.
  • The VPB (part-time) lawyers are quasi-anonymous: identified only by a first initial and surname, with no Mr/Ms titles and no indication of their true status as (full-time) Crown prosecutors or government lawyers in the Departmental Solicitors Office. This deprives applicants of the ability to raise conflict-of-interest challenges.
  • The VPB is a DoJ tribunal

The VPB is not independent. It is a rigged adjudicative arm of the DoJ.

State Violence Is Exempt From the Victims’ Pension Scheme

On 19 May 2026, the Court ruled anyone accidentally injured by the security forces was not injured in “a “Troubles-related incident” for the purposes of the scheme”.

Victims of security force violence are only victims if they can prove the security forces were acting unlawfully.

The Court laid it out in paragraph 36 of its judgment:

“A contrary interpretation would lead to the absurd consequence that any person injured as a result of the use of lawful force or even the accidental use of force during the period of the Troubles could potentially be eligible for a victims’ payment.” [4]

What is absurd

  • A civilian accidentally shot by a soldier during crossfire → not a “Troubles-related incident”.
  • A bystander struck by a plastic bullet during a lawful public order operation → not a “Troubles-related incident”.
  • Psychological disablement caused by the security forces → not a “Troubles-related incident”.

Security forces have broad legal powers. Most of their actions can be called ‘lawful’. The ‘unlawful force’ rule is an almost complete exemption for State violence. Nationalist victims have been disproportionately subjected to security force operations and systematically excluded

The Pattern Is Not A Coincidence; It Is Anti-Nationalist

Four mechanisms. Different institutions. Different decision-makers. Different legal texts.

Yet the same outcomes:

Nationalist Families seeking truth about security force involvement in alleged collusion in murder of their loved ones face the unlawful use of CMPs.
Bereaved Families seeking investigation face the security forces writing their own immunity.
Nationalist victims of injuries caused by the security forces are dismissed as “absurd” because security force accidents causing serious injuries are not “Troubles-related” incidents.
The Court’s “absurd” rule, anyone injured by lawful security force operations do not count as a “Troubles-related incident”.

The four mechanisms are tightly linked: CMPs hide evidence of collusion; the secret Legacy Act working group wrote immunity into law; the DoJ controls the VPB; the VPB embeds State lawyers as gatekeepers to protect against accountability; and the pension scheme ‘absurd’ exemption completes the circle by denying State violence causes Troubles‑related injuries. Each reinforces the others, and the common personnel (security veterans, prosecutors, government lawyers) suggests networked impunity rather than four isolated defects.

Nationalists are kept out of justice. This is not coincidence. It is not institutional culture. It is not groupthink. The Courts are instrumentally at the heart of it.

It is anti-nationalist justice, a system designed not to discover truth or provide remedy, but to protect the security forces and State institutions from accountability.

What You Can Do

1. Share this article.

2. Ask elected officials why CMPs are being unlawfully used in civil cases that may involve members of the security forces colluding in murder?

3. Demand the full publication of the secret Legacy Act working group minutes.

4. Demand the VPB be made independent from the DoJ.

5. Call for the courts to reverse its ‘absurd unlawful force’ requirement for Nationalist victims of injuries caused by the security forces in ‘Troubles-related incidents’.

References

[1] KRW Press Release.

[2] Judgement On Frizzell Intervention.

[3] The secret group linked to security services that helped shape the Legacy Act.

⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

Anti-Nationalist Justice 🪶 Nationalist Victims Are Targeted in a Rigged Legacy System

Christy Walsh ✍ Step 1: Arrest a man in possession of a bomb at 1:35pm. Use the Parachute Regiment to keep custody of the bomb.

Step 2: Wait 15 minute.

Step 3: Arrest a second man at 1:50pm for possession of the same bomb.

Step 4: Secretly release Mr F and convict the second man. (Mr F was identified in undisclosed police files as a "known top IRA man").

Step 5: When the second man discovers undisclosed police files revealing the truth, construct a new version 35 years later: "joint enterprise and sequential possession".

This is not a how-to guide. It is the account that a High Court judgment, delivered in Belfast on 19th May 2026, asks us to accept as having occurred on Suffolk Road in 1991.

The Facts

At 1:35pm on 5th June 1991 a man identified as Mr F was arrested in possession of a coffee-jar bomb on Suffolk Road, Belfast. The Jar was placed on a wall, and soldiers took up cover positions.

I arrived at the scene at 1:50pm and was arrested by the soldiers. I testified under oath in 1992 that the bomb was already sitting on a nearby wall when I was stopped. The soldiers denied being in crouched cover positions when I arrived.

In 2008, I recovered undisclosed police and forensic files that Mr F had been caught in “possession of an explosive device (namely a blast bomb)”, signed by Detective Superintendent, Derek Martindale on 5th June 1991.

In March 2010, with no evidential basis, the Court accepted Mr F was arrested at 3:35pm in a follow-up operation. The prosecution told the Court that the time of Mr F's arrest, hours later, made no difference to my alleged possession.

In a Judgment in December 2025, the Court finally acknowledged the truth - contemporaneous police files confirmed Mr F was caught in possession of the coffee-jar bomb at 1:35pm, 15 minutes before I arrived at the scene.

On 19th May 2026, the Court reaffirmed that Mr F had possession of the bomb at 1:35pm on 5th June 1991. But the narrative about me has now changed after 35 years. The Court concluded in its judgment that Mr F and I were in "joint enterprise and sequential possession".

Because it is raised in the judgment for the first time, I was not given any opportunity to put up a defence. I did not, and do not, know Mr F. I only discovered his existence while going through files in the NI Forensic Science Laboratory on 2nd February 2008.

The Judgment fails to answer a crucial detail - how did Mr F transfer the bomb to me while he and the bomb were already in custody for a full 15 minutes before I arrived at the scene?

The Court’s solution: "Joint enterprise and sequential possession". But that requires Mr F and I knew each other and came into contact to make the exchange.

The Judgment creates this absurdity, for the bomb in Mr F's possession to 'sequentially' pass into my possession 15 minutes later - members of the Parachute Regiment were the conduit.

Paradoxically, the Court’s reasoning now corroborates my own evidence in 1992: that the device was already sitting on the wall when I arrived at the scene.

One Man, One Bomb

The Crown prosecution's case from 1991 until 19th May 2026 was that I acted alone. No prosecutor, no respondent, and no court in thirty-five years of proceedings ever advanced a case of "joint enterprise and sequential possession" between me and anyone else.

I had no opportunity to answer a case I did not know was being constructed against me, because it was created in my absence for the first time in the Judgment itself, after the hearing had closed.

On 7th December 1992, I was wrongfully convicted of possession of an explosive device. On 16th March 2010, the Court of Appeal found my conviction unsafe. On 19th May 2026, the Court denied me victim status by finding me implicitly guilty of two entirely different charges that were never prosecuted, namely, 1) joint enterprise and 2) sequential possession of an explosive device - involving a 'top IRA man' who was never charged, tried or convicted, despite his identity and possession being known at least 15 minutes before I arrived at the scene.

⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

15 Minute Conduit 🪶 How to Transfer a Coffee-Jar Bomb

Christy Walsh ✍ Did Gerry A dodge a bullet because of courtroom technicalities on costs? Does the legacy of an IRA icon pick up his £400K legal bills?

Background of the Case

Whenever Gerry Adams steps into a courtroom, the air thickens with a peculiar brand of legal gymnastics.

The case was brought by John Clark, a victim of the 1973 Old Bailey bombing in London; Jonathan Ganesh, a 1996 London Docklands bombing victim; and Barry Laycock, a victim of the 1996 Arndale shopping centre bombing in Manchester. On the surface, it was a quest for truth.

£1 for the Open Secret

The claimants played a clever hand, or so they thought. By asking for a mere £1 in ‘vindicatory’ damages, they attempted to strip the case of monetary motive and dress it in the robes of a ‘Truth Commission’. They weren't looking for a payout; they were looking for a judicial stamp on the open secret of Adams' IRA leadership.

But in the English High Court, 'truth' is an expensive commodity, and the gatekeepers are the statutes of limitation. Adams' defence was predictable: the clock had run out. Why sue in 2022 for the sins of 1973? The claimants argued that Adams' own ‘fraudulent concealment’ of his IRA membership made earlier litigation impossible. It was a bold move - asking a judge to ignore the calendar because the defendant is a world-class escape artist.

The Costs Trap: Justice by Intimidation

The narrative collapse didn't happen because the evidence was found wanting; it happened because of something called Qualified One-Way Costs Shifting (QOCS). Under normal circumstances, QOCS are a shield that makes justice accessible for those who cannot afford high legal costs.

Adams' lawyers argued to breach the claimants' QOCS protection by alleging 'abuse of process' - and Justice Swift hinted they might succeed. If the judge formally ruled it an ‘abuse’, the cost-protection would vanish instantly. The victims weren't just looking at losing a pound; they were looking at a £400,000 bill from Adams' top-tier London legal team (see Joshua Rozenberg's analysis[1]).

Faced with the prospect of losing their homes to pay for the defence of the man they were accusing, the claimants did what any rational person would do: they folded.

The ‘No Order’ Paradox

The case ended on a "no order as to costs" basis. Adams spins this as a vindication. It is anything but. It was a tactical retreat. Adams got to walk away without the ‘IRA Leader’ tag being legally glued to his lapel, and the victims walked away without a debt that would haunt their grandchildren.

But Adams' lawyers didn't work for free. Adams' defence was elite, expensive, and extensive. If he cannot recover those costs from the men who sued him, who is footing the bill?

The Shadow of the Trust

This brings us back to a perennial Pensive Quill question: The Bobby Sands Trust (BST). Adams remains a permanent trustee of the BST, an entity that continues to guard the copyrights of a hunger striker with the tenacity of a corporate conglomerate. As documented here since 2016, the Trust operates in a financial vacuum - no published accounts, no transparency, and a ‘half-secret’ status that would make a Cayman Islands banker blush.

Is it a leap too far to wonder if the royalties from One Day in My Life - written by a man who died for the IRA - are being used to pay the legal fees of a man who swears he was never in the IRA? If the BST is acting as Adams' financial bodyguard, then Bobby Sands's legacy has been effectively weaponized to protect a man who denies any role in the IRA and the history of the struggle.

Neither side left with what they wanted. Intimidating financial costs keeps secrets classified and money hidden. The only thing 'firmly under wraps' is the truth: "Was Gerry A in the Ra?"

*For background on the Bobby Sands Trust see earlier coverage here: 


References


⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

Classified 🪶"Was Gerry A In The Ra?" 🪶 Alleged IRA Ties Remain Firmly Under Wraps

Christy Walsh 🔖 I have spent years building an argument: that the British learned to use institutions to conduct violence while keeping their hands clean. 

 I did not expect to be finishing the manuscript while watching that argument play out in real time.

I am writing a historical fiction thriller, The Belfast Doctrine. The novel grows out of decades of research into how the British state managed the conflict in the North of Ireland -not simply the street violence or the bombings, but how the institutions are set up. What began as a piece of historical fiction is now uncomfortably contemporary.

The argument behind the fiction is straightforward, if uncomfortable: Britain developed a model of warfare in which operational violence could be outsourced to proxies, deniability could be built into legal and civic structures, and the directing hand of the state could remain insulated from accountability even when events on the ground became impossible to defend.

I did not expect to be watching elements of that logic play out over the Middle East while I was still editing the final chapters.

What interests me is not a simple claim that one conflict is the same as another. It is that certain strategic principles travel. They reappear in changed form, under different flags, in different regions, and under different ideologies. The names change. The architecture does not.

What the doctrine is

The Belfast Doctrine is not simply about the use of proxies. States have always used proxies. What made the North of Ireland model distinctive was the sophistication of the surrounding system -the degree to which violence could be embedded within structures that also legitimised, explained, or obscured it. Security forces. Legal frameworks. Intelligence channels. Civic bodies. Community intermediaries. The violence was real. The fingerprints were managed.

That is the doctrine as I understand it. It is not just a method of coercion. It is a method of plausible deniability.

It remains one of the most adaptable models ever developed by a Western democracy for how weaker states can challenge stronger ones through irregular tactics.

Enter Professor Malik Karz

An important character in The Belfast Doctrine is a strategist called Professor Malik Karz. He is not there to lecture the reader. He is there to embody an idea. The principle he works by is simple: minimum input for maximum effect.

You do not need to destroy your enemy directly. It’s not about winning outright -but stretching US and Israeli resources until they begin to fail.

The most accessible historical illustration remains Sarajevo in June 1914. One assassination did not ‘cause’ the First World War by itself. The structural tensions were already there. But one act, at precisely the right pressure point, unlocked a chain reaction that produced four years of industrialised slaughter and the collapse of empires.

Karz understands that logic. What he does with it is the engine of the novel.

I questioned: what if Britain wasn't trying to solve instability but learning how to weaponise it within acceptable levels of violence?

Pressure Points in the Present War

That question feels uncomfortably current because the present Iran war has exposed, in stark form, the strategic power of pressure points. The US/Israeli assault that began on 28th February 2026 has produced exactly the indirect escalation that weaker actors seek when they cannot win a conventional contest on equal terms.

The first pressure point is cost asymmetry. Iran need not defeat Western and Israeli air defence systems outright. It only has to force them to use exponentially more expensive rockets intercepting comparatively inexpensive Iranian drones.

The second pressure point is the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption passes through the strait per day, making it one of the world’s most consequential energy chokepoints. Iran is using the oil route itself as a strategic lever against materially stronger opponents.

The third pressure point is regional spillover. Iran does not need every action to be decisive. It needs enough simultaneous strain -on shipping, on energy, on allied air defence, on neighbouring states’ political calculations, diplomacy -to widen the field of crisis and raise the cost of escalation for everyone else. That is precisely the concern highlighted by current analysis of Turkey’s position: Ankara spent months trying to avert a wider war and now finds itself pulled toward one anyway.

The doctrine's fourth pressure point is distributed violence through regional proxies - forces that share ideological alignment and strategic direction while maintaining operational separation, creating the same plausible deniability that characterized earlier institutional models. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping have disrupted global trade routes and forced expensive Western naval deployments, at a cost to Iran of nothing beyond training, weapons transfers, and ideological alignment.

This is what minimum-input strategy looks like at scale. The object is not victory in the old sense. But pressure on the whole system.

From Belfast to the Gulf

There is another layer to this that makes the comparison with the North of Ireland more than superficial.

In the late 1970s the IRA shifted away from older, more easily penetrated military style structures and toward smaller Active Service Units. The strategic logic was plain enough: a flatter, more cellular organisation could survive arrests, infiltration, and disruption better than a single exposed hierarchy. Strategic direction remained central, but operational knowledge became more compartmentalised.

Analysts now describe Iran’s wartime “mosaic defense” in similar structural terms. With senior Iranian leadership decimated, local IRGC commanders have been given more latitude to continue operations under decentralised conditions. That is the resilience advantage of cellular design. It allows a system to keep functioning after the command layer has been hit.

But decentralisation has a second function too, and it matters.

Missiles that crossed into Turkish airspace and were intercepted by NATO defences are the kind of escalation that decentralised command structures can produce, where local units may act independently while the state keeps diplomatic ambiguity about intent. Turkey says NATO has now intercepted multiple Iranian missiles, while Iran has denied targeting Turkey directly. That is precisely why decentralised violence is so useful: it can generate pressure, danger, and political effect even when deniability remains contested.

Systems built on dispersed command can create a zone of plausible deniability around escalation. The state may benefit from the consequences whether or not every act was centrally ordered.

The doctrine travels. The discipline does not.

That is the distinction that matters. A cellular structure built slowly through organisational learning is one thing. A decentralised wartime system activated under decapitation pressure is another. The architecture may look similar. The quality of control is not.

Who Still Benefits?

What the current conflict illustrates, with uncomfortable clarity, is that the Belfast Doctrine and the minimum-input principle are not separate ideas. They are two layers of the same architecture. One manages deniability. The other manages effect. Add a resilient IRA-style cellular structure and the system can continue functioning even after its visible leadership is attacked.

That is why the present moment feels less like news to me than recognition.

The architects of such systems are rarely exposed in full. Individual outrages may be investigated. Particular operations may be condemned. But the deeper institutional design -the structure that makes deniable coercion sustainable -is seldom named in public, let alone dismantled.

That is the question the book asks. Not how the doctrine works. But who is still protected by it. And why.

There's one twist my novel never imagined: what happens when a powerful state turns the Belfast Doctrine logic inward on its own national security interests? The Trump administration has decimated every sector of its own national security infrastructure and interests, from sacking all its experienced generals to gutting the FBI counter-terrorism, intelligence, cyber, and critical incident response units. The FBI has also reassigned between 25 and 45 percent of its agents who handle counter-terrorism to immigration control. With national counter-terrorism capacity dismantled against adversaries using cellular structures, the ASU logic of the Belfast Doctrine, the detection of ‘sleeper cells and lone wolves’ becomes a matter of luck rather than capability. Through self-sabotage the US has made itself more susceptible to minimum-input disruption than at any point since those structures were constructed post 9/11.

⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

The Belfast Doctrine 📚 Writing The Book While The World Enacts It

Christy Walsh ✍ Irish far-left politics likes to present itself as the moral opposition . . . 

. . .  anti‑imperialist without compromise, pro‑uprising by instinct, committed to gender equality, and internationalist by self‑description.

People Before Profit (PBP) gives this posture institutional weight because it holds Dáil seats and helps shape protest culture. On the fringe, Saoradh express the same instincts with fewer euphemisms.

The problem is not that Irish left condemn Western abuses. The problem is the optical defect: sharp moral vision when the oppressor is Western‑aligned, and selective blindness when the oppressor belongs to the anti‑West camp. If you want to see it cleanly, line up what is said about Palestine and Hamas with what is said, or not said with comparable urgency or qualification, about Iran’s repression of popular protest, and about Russia’s imperial war on Ukraine. The pattern looks less like universalism and more like a hierarchy of victims.

Palestine Is Not Hamas, And Liberation Is Not Islamism

Islamism is a political ideology that subordinates individual liberty to clerical authority and treats dissent, minority rights, freedom of conscience and women’s equality as negotiable. Where it governs, it usually collides with basic freedoms. Islamist movements are not synonymous with anti‑colonial liberation movements. Their programme is often theocratic and authoritarian, which places them in conflict with universal human rights, including women’s rights, freedom of belief, and political pluralism. Islamism is the coercive use of religion.

Palestinian self‑determination and a freedom struggle against occupation are legitimate political goals. The rights at stake do not depend on whether Hamas exists. Palestinians have the right to safety, equality, political rights, and an end to collective punishment.

But it is precisely here that much Irish activism commits its first analytical and moral error: collapsing Palestinian liberation into the political project of Hamas and Islamism. Hamas is not ‘Palestinian resistance’ in the abstract. It is an Islamist organisation whose goals are not Palestinian freedom. When the Irish left treats Hamas as the authentic or inevitable expression of Palestinian struggle, it launders an Islamist programme into liberation language and recasts religious extremism as the legitimate voice of Palestinians, including Christian and LGBTQ Gazans. The left silences valid criticism of Islam by adopting terms like “Islamophobia” into their vocabulary.

This is not merely a theoretical point. It goes to the heart of what solidarity is supposed to mean. A consistent pro‑Palestinian position can and should defend Palestinian rights while refusing to romanticise, excuse, or rebrand Islamist human‑rights abuses and atrocities as “resistance”. When activists cannot hold these two thoughts at once, solidarity becomes factional allegiance rather than principle.

Iran: Resistance Versus Repression

A large current in UK and Irish pro‑Palestinian politics frames Hamas as “legitimate resistance” that may fight back by any means necessary. October 7 is often handled as context, blowback, or the inevitable eruption of rage under occupation, rather than as a moral and political line. October 7 started as a well‑planned operation and descended into wanton terrorism because the goal was to spark Muslims around the world to attack Jews. Hamas atrocities are excused by whataboutary even when the victims are innocent Israelis and children.

That is the rhetorical move that matters, because it becomes portable. Once you learn to dissolve agency whenever the actor is in the “anti‑West” camp, you can dissolve almost anything.

Now place beside that rhetoric the Iranian “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising after Mahsa Amini’s death in custody. The protests were overwhelmingly non‑violent. Women, students, and workers marched, chanted, and defied compulsory veiling. Security forces responded with live ammunition, mass arrests, torture allegations, deaths in custody, and executions after flawed trials. If the moral doctrine supports popular struggle against oppression, Iran should have been a natural cause célèbre.

Yet this is where the cross‑eyed pattern appears. Violent Islamist militancy is elevated as “resistance” in Gaza, while non‑violent mass resistance in Iran is treated as secondary, awkward, or far less urgent to mobilise around. Treating armed theocratic violence as emancipatory while downplaying peaceful demonstrators shot in the streets is not a minor inconsistency. It is a collision between professed principles and real allegiances. We saw the left’s pattern of excusing a similar abusive and oppressive regime in Syria.

Support for Islamism differs from support for Palestinian liberation, which is a legitimate struggle. Left support for Hamas involves conscious blindness that sacrifices Gazan civilians to Islamism’s strategic goals. Hamas effectively strapped a suicide belt around the entire Gaza Strip, using Gaza as the fuse for a wider ideological war and not Palestinian freedom. When Irish activism fuses Palestine to Hamas, it does not strengthen Palestinian rights. It strengthens religious extremism and makes solidarity morally incoherent, and Iranian peaceful protest becomes an inconvenient contradiction. Self-determination struggles try to avoid civilian casualties; Hamas’ religious ideological war requires civilian casualties.

Gender Equality With A Blindfold

Irish left discourse advocates for gender equality unless Islamism is involved. Iran is the sharpest mirror because the uprising was triggered by the policing of women’s bodies by the morality police, and women were central to the protests against compulsory religious dress codes and gender oppression. The repression was not subtle or contested. It was a security state enforcing clerical power through violence.

If women’s liberation is a principle, then Iranian women resisting compulsory veiling should have been treated with the same moral clarity that Irish left activism claims for other causes. When gender equality is deployed with full force against one adversary but becomes hesitant or marginal when the oppressor is an anti‑West theocracy, the conclusion is unavoidable. The left overlooks gender inequality and other abuses because it is more committed to “anti‑West” resistance than to universal human rights.

The same point applies to minorities inside Iran. Kurdish, Baluchi, and other communities suffered disproportionately in protest crackdowns and long‑standing discrimination. An Irish left that makes anti‑racism central at home cannot plausibly bracket oppression abroad because the oppressor is useful against the West.

Workers’ Solidarity That Stops At Certain Borders

Irish left mobilisation leans heavily on trade‑union language and symbolism. Protests are dense with “solidarity” rhetoric. Yet Iran again exposes the selectivity. Labour activists and striking workers have faced detentions and harsh repression after protesting. If labour internationalism is real, Iranian workers and teachers facing a theocratic‑security dictatorship should not be an afterthought or expendable when “anti‑West” rhetoric is more important.

The same structural problem appears in how activists frame international law. On Gaza, Irish left rhetoric often invokes universal standards: collective punishment, war crimes, genocide claims, UN conventions, ICC referrals, diplomatic expulsions. Whatever one thinks of the exact legal characterisations, the rhetorical posture is universalist. But a universalist posture cannot coherently become selective when applied to Iran’s killings of protesters, torture in detention, and executions. If human‑rights law is universal, it travels. If it does not travel, it is not a standard. It is a weapon.

Ukraine And Russia, The Second Mirror Of Palestine

The Russia problem mirrors the Iran problem because it arises from the same “anti‑West” lens. In the UK, Stop the War‑style framing has often centred NATO expansion and “blocs,” sometimes sliding into narratives where Western policy becomes the primary culprit and Russia’s agency is contextualised into the background.

Similar impulses appear among the left, including a tendency to treat Ukraine as a proxy rather than a people resisting invasion, and to moralise primarily against NATO rather than Russia. The convenience of the left’s selective cross‑eyed view is stark here because it requires wilful blindness to Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression on a peaceful neighbour. Precisely the "imperialism" the left claims to oppose.

Set beside Palestine, the contradiction is sharp. Irish far‑left discourse demands self‑determination for Palestinians and insists that the dominated have a right to resist domination. Yet parts of the same milieu oppose military aid to Ukraine or frame Ukrainian defence as “escalation”, while treating Russian imperial acts as reactive or secondary. The left does not have a principled anti‑war ethic. It is a selective anti‑West ethic.

The rhetorical technique is also revealing. In Israel‑Palestine discourse, “both sides” framing is attacked as moral evasion because it obscures power and responsibility. The Left justify Russian atrocities as consequence of NATO provocations: Ukraine is an innocent party and not part of NATO. Symmetrical language becomes tolerable precisely where it disregards this unprovoked act of invasion. Invasion means invasion. The outcome is predictable: victims are downgraded whenever the oppressor is not Western‑aligned.

PBP are elected, visible, and influential in street politics. That creates a duty to be precise. PBP explicitly opposed €100 million in non-lethal military-mine sweepers, radar systems and anti-drone jamming devices to protect civilian population centres. When an organisation claims to champion self‑determination, gender equality, and workers’ rights as universal standards, its positions on Ukraine and Iran are not optional side‑issues. They are tests. If the emphasis repeatedly flows toward NATO‑bashing while the moral clarity reserved for Gaza is not sustained toward Russia’s aggression or Iran’s repression, the gap between principle and practice becomes political fact, not internet argument.

Anti‑West atrocities are rebranded as ‘anti‑imperialist blows,’ Islamist terror is dismissed as ‘propaganda’ or explained as difference in culture. Russia’s war framed as part of a “multipolar” resistance to Western power. In that form, the cross‑eyed logic is explicit. If it harms the West, it is resistance. If the West condemns it, it is propaganda. If the victim resists an anti‑West state, the victim’s cause becomes complicated, inconvenient, conditional, or ignored. Human rights are not universal where religious or cultural exceptions might apply. Groups like Saoradh show the endpoint of the same habit: universal human rights replaced by bloc loyalty, immoral support is framed as solidarity.

Viewing Gaza through the lens of the Troubles is emotionally resonant, but it is structurally flawed: the IRA was a secular nationalist movement, whereas Hamas -extremist religious ideology.

Three Explanations Account For The Pattern Of Contradictions

  • First, politics is organised around US‑aligned versus US‑opposed states, with indulgence granted to the latter because they function as counterweights.
  • Second, Islamist movements are miscast as progressive anti‑colonial forces, obscuring their religious extremism and turning critique into betrayal of the “anti‑imperialist” narrative.
  • Third, Palestine/Gaza have close parallels with the Six Counties. But Iran’s internal struggle and Ukraine’s national defence do not fit as neatly into a simple coloniser‑colonised binary, so they receive less activist energy even when state violence is open and lethal.

These explain how the left can sincerely speak universal language while acting in selective ways.

A Hierarchy Of Victims

Hamas uses the legitimate Palestinian liberation struggle to piggyback religious extremism. The left collapses these categories, laundering Islamist ideology into liberation language and miscasting it as progressive anti-colonialism. Iranian women and workers resisting a theocratic police state deserve the same moral clarity routinely claimed elsewhere. Ukrainian civilians resisting annexation deserve the same self-determination principle invoked for Palestine.

Traditional Irish republicanism was always anti-imperialist and committed to self-determination. There is no consistent solidarity in supporting Islamist terror or Russian imperialism alongside it. Palestinian freedom must include freedom from Islamist extremism, liberation means nothing if it installs in Gaza the theocratic repression that Iranian women brave bullets to escape.

If the Irish far left wants to keep claiming moral leadership, the demand is simple. Apply the standard consistently. Condemn Iran’s repression with the same urgency used for Gaza. Treat Russian aggression as aggression, and treat Ukraine’s right to resist as the same principle you insist on elsewhere. If that cannot be done, the rhetoric has been exposed. It is not principled anti-imperialism. It is selective outrage.

For all the West’s faults and hypocrisies, the freedoms that make Irish and British protest politics possible are protected by liberal-democratic law. Those protections are precisely what authoritarian systems, including authoritarian Islamist regimes, suppress. It is morally indefensible for the left to enjoy those rights at home while minimising, excusing, or romanticising Russian and Iranian regimes abroad that crush them for others. The left exercises in Ireland freedoms (protest, speech, organisation) that would be extinguished under the regimes they defend or excuse. The left is not merely inconsistent - it practises moral hypocrisy.

⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

The Cross-Eyed Left 🪶 One Eye Sees What It Wants While The Other Looks Away

Christy Walsh ✍ For over 25 years, people in the 6 counties were told that the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement created a new human-rights architecture, one with safeguards, oversight, and independent bodies capable of holding the State to account. At the centre of this architecture sits the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), created to monitor discrimination, investigate abuses, and act whenever rights are threatened.

But in practice, the NIHRC has become something very different. It has evolved into a silent witness, a facilitator, of systemic discrimination against Nationalists. This article is an exposé of what it actually does behind closed doors; betrayal.

The Watchdog That Will Not Watch 

Under the GFA, the NIHRC’s legal duty is clear: monitor human-rights compliance, investigate abuses, and intervene when rights are at risk. In reality, the Commission routinely refuses to act even when presented with:

  • unlawful secret-evidence procedures
  • judicial decisions obtained through deceit,· prosecutorial misconduct
  • Department of Justice control over supposedly independent bodies
  • And discrimination affecting potentially thousands of Nationalists

The pattern is unmistakable. The NIHRC betrays those who believed in it

A Catalogue of Refusals

Over the last three years, the Commission was repeatedly presented with evidence of serious institutional wrongdoing affecting Nationalist families. Each time, the response was refusal, indifference, and silence.

1. Prosecutorial Misconduct Ignored

The Department of Justice refused to exercise its statutory power of referral of indelible evidence of prosecutorial misconduct to the Criminal Justice Inspectorate. The NIHRC was told. It washed its hands and refused to act.

2. Judgments Obtained by Deceit

Courts accepted that State agents misled the court. But because the deceit was “directed at the court, not the victim,” the courts treated it as non-actionable. The NIHRC raised no concern.

3. Unlawful Closed Material Procedures

In the Frizzell and Lundy cases, the High Court secretly imposed Closed Material Procedures (CMPs) without legal authority. Hundreds of Nationalist Legacy Families may be affected. This isn't just my analysis. KRW Law quantified 'scores if not hundreds of cases.' I told the NIHRC. They still refused to investigate. When the Commission won't act even when mainstream lawyers quantify the potential number of case affected, you have to ask: what would it take?

4. Victims’ Pensions Board (VPB) Capture by the DoJ

The VPB doesn't just 'rely' on the Department of Justice, it is the Department of Justice. The Board has zero independent staff. No offices. No control over its own files. DOJ civil servants prepare the case summaries. DOJ contracts the medical assessor. And when you challenge them? DOJ lawyers appear for the Board. You're fighting the DOJ judged by the DOJ, in a system run by the DOJ. The NIHRC knows this. It just won't say it out loud.

The Email That Exposed the Problem

On 24th November 2025, the NIHRC finally responded to a request to observe the VPB judicial review. Its reply: “We are not in a position to observe the hearing… We will consider the implications of any judgment when handed down.” 

This sentence reveals the real problem. The Commission is only watching after the court may have filtered, reframed, and sanitised the reality of the hearing—whether that judgment is legitimate or not. This is not monitoring. This is delegating oversight to the very institutions being monitored.

 

The Judgment Laundering Problem

 

The NIHRC’s (24 November 2025) practice of declining observation while stating that it will “consider the implications of any judgment” represents a structural departure from Paris Principles standards.  The Paris Principles are the international rules that say a human rights commission must be independent.  The NIHRC's own practices, refusing to observe hearings, only reading judgments, breach those rules.  It's not just failing; it's failing to meet the basic standard for its own existence.

 

The Commission’s model replaces independent monitoring with reliance on judicial summaries of proceedings, producing a four-stage cycle:

 

Stage 1: Unobserved hearings: Procedural dynamics that reveal inequality of arms occur without independent scrutiny.  Oral submissions, judicial questioning and institutional behaviour that may show structural bias remain undocumented except in the court’s own selective record.

 

Stage 2: Filtered records: Written judgments provide the court’s interpretation of proceedings, not a full transcript.  Judgments summarise and frame issues through judicial priorities, omitting exchanges that may reveal procedural imbalance.  This is normal legal practice but creates a filtered record.

 

Stage 3: Secondary reliance: NIHRC assessment focuses on the judgment rather than the underlying process.  Treating the judgment as the authoritative record prevents identification of avoided arguments, downplayed evidence or procedural disparities that may have arisen.

 

Stage 4: Circular validation: Because NIHRC commentary relies exclusively on judgments, judicial reasoning becomes the sole measure of human-rights compliance.  This eliminates external accountability and reinforces the perspectives of the institutions being monitored.

 

This is not oversight.  It is judgment laundering.  An oversight body that relies on judicial summaries becomes part of the system it is supposed to scrutinise.

 

Institutional Learning Through Suppression

 

This did not happen by accident. First, the system learned that it could rely on “transferred deceit”: wrongdoing directed at the court, not the victim, was treated as non-actionable. Then the Supreme Court confirmed this was “not a point of principle or practice of general public importance”. Think about that. The UK Supreme Court looked at prosecutorial misconduct and judgments obtained by deceit and said they weren't 'of public importance.' That's when the NIHRC should have roared. Instead, silence. And now we have secret hearings in criminal cases.

 

Next, institutions learned they could use unlawful secret hearings, because no one would intervene.  Finally, they learned they could capture the VPB entirely.

 

At every stage, the NIHRC watched, did nothing, and the system adapted.  It did not just fail to prevent discrimination — it facilitated the conditions in which discrimination could evolve.  That is not oversight.  That is institutional R&D for inequality. 


Internal Memos: The Smoking Gun

On 4 October 2006, an internal NIHRC memo, never intended for public view, revealed that the Commission held a “watching brief” over a wrongful-conviction case because it had concerns. Those concerns were never investigated. Never disclosed. Never acted on.

On 26 September 2008, another internal memo, the Commission became concerned the suppression of the same case might be exposed: “Damage limitations might be what we're facing here”.

The memos prove the Commission knew there were problems, chose institutional silence, and feared they might be exposed. The pattern remains unchanged today.

The Human Impact: Thousands of Nationalist Victims Exposed

This failure of oversight is not an abstract institutional problem. It has real human consequences. The VPB estimates about 50,000 people suffered conflict-related injuries. Nationalist victims with permanent conflict-related injuries caused by the state count in the thousands. The judicial review on 16 December 2025 will test whether this systemic bias can still be challenged, or if it has become permanent.


CMPs: Secret Justice, No Oversight 

When the High Court imposed unlawful CMPs in the Frizzell and Lundy cases, excluding families from key evidence they should have been entitled to, the NIHRC was informed.

Its response: No interest. No intervention. No observation.

Without external monitoring, secret hearings become unchallengeable.

The Result: A Human-Rights System that Works Only for the State


The NIHRC’s refusal to:


·       investigate,

·       intervene,

·       observe, or

·       monitor


means the entire human-rights architecture created by the Good Friday Agreement has been hollowed out.  Systemic discrimination becomes more embedded and harder to fix.  Nationalists are left with:

 

·       no oversight,

·       no watchdog,

·       no accountability mechanism,

·       and no institutional support when the State acts improperly.

 

This is not a failure of one case or one person.  This is structural, systemic, and deeply political.

 

What Comes Next

 

So what now? First, the NIHRC must attend the 16 December hearing, not to 'consider the judgment' later, but to fulfill its statutory duty of independent monitoring in real time. Second, the Commission must explain why it ignored prosecutorial misconduct, transferred deceit, CMPs and VPB capture. Third, we need to ask whether a body that has learned to be silent can ever learn to speak for us again. If not, it's time to ask what comes after the NIHRC, because the NIHRC is not fit for purpose.

The Commission's own practices are so far from the Paris Principles that international bodies like the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) and European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI) might reconsider whether the NIHRC still deserves its 'A' status accreditation.

⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

NIHRC 🪶 Silent Witness To Systemic Discrimination Against Nationalists

Christy Walsh ✍ Promised independence, delivered State control.

The Troubles left thousands with conflict related injuries.  Four years ago Parliament promised these victims a pension through the Victims’ Payments Board (VPB).  Many still wait.  The VPB was meant to be independent.  It operates as a branch of the Department of Justice (DoJ).  The evidence, official documents and victims’ own stories, tell the same tale.

The State Controls the Process

The law says the VPB must be impartial and independent.  In reality, the Department of Justice supplies every resource: staff, offices, IT systems and the finance team that pays the bills.  Every email carries the header “DOJ VPB,” and their address is a DOJ post box (PO Box 2305), signalling to victims that the same department they may be accusing is handling their claim from day one.  Government officials log, screen, and summarise applications before any “independent” panel sees them, giving the Department an early opportunity to select decision-makers and shape the outcome.

Government Lawyers Serve Multiple Roles

The Departmental Solicitor’s Office, Crown Solicitor’s Office and Public Prosecution Service ordinarily defend the government in court.  Those same offices now advise the Victims’ Payments Board on claims, represent it in appeals and recommend the part-time judges who decide those appeals.  Government lawyers owe their duty to the State, not to victims of the Conflict.  The outcome is a closed loop in which the State advises itself, defends itself and then selects the person who judges its actions, breaching the first rule of natural justice and destroying public confidence that the process is fair.

Decisions Repeat Government Defences

When paramilitaries are blamed, rulings stick to medical evidence and awards are processed quickly.  When police or soldiers are implicated, the VPB repeats earlier government talking points: such as “proper procedures followed”, “reasonable force used”, and “no evidence of wrongdoing”.  By recycling old defences, the Board shields the State from accountability instead of scrutinising its actions.

A Hierarchy of Victims

Paramilitary related applications are settled with minimal extra evidence and shorter timelines.  State-related applications face heavier documentation requirements, longer delays, and a higher rejection rate, often on the catch-all ground of “lawful authority”.  Even when the pension is granted, the wording is changed or the amount reduced so the decision avoids any admission of State fault or collusion.  The 2020 Regulations allow no such two-tier system, yet victims experience it every day.

A System That Judges Itself

A basic principle of justice is that no one should be judge in their own cause.  The VPB relies on the DoJ for money, staff, and legal advice, making genuine independence impossible.  Government lawyers must act in the interests of their client not victims of the State.  For victims, the result is the appearance of bias and the reality of it.

Justice Requires Reform 

To follow UK law and the European Convention on Human Rights, the VPB must:

 

  • Operate under its own budget and staff, independent from the DoJ; 
  • Bar DSO, CSO, and other government lawyers from advising or adjudicating in cases involving State-caused injuries; 
  • Appoint and publicly name VPB decision-makers through a transparent, independent process; and 
  • Submit every decision to an external ombudsman empowered to investigate complaints and publish findings.

 

Until these changes are made, the Victims’ Payments Board will remain a State proxy judging injuries caused by the State. 

⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

State Proxy 🪶The Victims’ Payments Board

Christy Walsh ✍ I have discovered serious structural defects in the Victims' Payments Board (VPB), the body responsible for compensating victims of Troubles-related injuries. 

It is run from top to bottom by the Department of Justice (DoJ). That means when the state injures you, the state alone gets to decide if it is responsible; one set of rules for victims of paramilitaries, another for victims of the state itself.

The VPB operates as an administrative arm of the DoJ, creating a fundamental conflict where the state effectively decides if victim’s injuries were caused by state actions. Or, where applications are successful, applicants may still suffer because the DoJ’s control or influence over medical assessments might result in injuries being undervalued. Applicants are assessed by UK health and wellbeing contractor Capita under contract to the DoJ and not VPB. But it is much worse:
 
  • All applications and evidence pipelines are controlled, or, "received and initially processed by DoJ staff acting as the Secretariat to the Board" with financial interest in denying claims.
  • Cases are assigned to VPB decision-makers who also double up as DOJ lawyers or Crown Prosecutors.
  • VPB uses DoJ email systems and infrastructure confirming it is embedded within the DOJ.
  • The VPB uses DOJ offices in Belfast city centre to meet with applicants.
  • Victims are not allowed to know the identity or professional bio of VPB decision-makers.

In my case, they first assigned a Crown Prosecutor, M Hardy, as decision-maker. Out of suspicion, I asked if M Hardy was former prosecutor Mark Hardy. Mr Hardy recused himself and someone called E Grier was appointed. The VPB refused to identify E Grier or provide summary of her professional bio. Several weeks after E Grier refused my application, I learned that E Grier is a practicing DoJ barrister called Ms Elaine Grier.

The State controls evidence, influences medical assessments, DoJ staff run the VPB and government lawyers are the decision-makers then it creates a double standard in how victims of paramilitaries and victims of the state are treated.

As an extension of the DoJ, VPB decisions my breach Article 6 of the ECHR by denying fair process to victims of state abuse. The cynical treatment of victims of state abuse, who have sought justice for decades, amounts to degrading treatment and breach of Article 3 of the Convention.

Justice must be independent. The VPB must be separate from the Department of Justice so that victims of state abuse get the same fair treatment as victims of paramilitaries. When the state controls the body judging its own alleged wrongdoing, justice cannot be served.

These matters and more form part of a judicial review against the VPB’s lack of impartiality toward victims of conflict-related injuries caused by the state and security forces.

Re: Walsh v.  Victims' Payments Board [2025] NIQB
Court Reference: JRO HJR 25/066799/01

⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

Exposing The Victims’ Payments Board As An Extension Of The State

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