Social Items

TPQ

Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔  285-October-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Ivanka ‘Hayka’ Kutsenko killed.
⬤ Miners’ union and union federation appeals over Russian attacks.
⬤ Evidence of Russian torture/ Oleshky under seige.
⬤ Widespread Russian attacks on civilians.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Russia sentences Yalta musician to 22 years for latest claim of a ‘Ukrainian terrorist plot’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, October 2nd)

Melitopol woman sentenced to 13 years for unwavering loyalty to Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, October 2nd)

Russia: A Menu of Death in Ukraine’s Small Towns (Centre for European Policy Analysis, October 1st)

Four years in total isolation after Russia abducts and tortures young Mariupol woman Iryna Navalna (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, September 30th)

Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, September 29th)

Russia throws dying Crimean Tatar political prisoner into a punishment cell (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, September 29th)

Crimean sentenced to 20 years on a ‘confession’ she signed after Russian FSB threatened to imprison her underage son (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, September 28th)

Progress of the war

Russia striking bridges across the Dnipro for the first time (Meduza, 4 October)

Drone attacks disrupt power supply near Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant (Kyiv Independent, 3 Oct)

The winter war: Ukraine is prepping for another season of Russian attacks before the cold sets in (The Insider, October 3rd)

A Time to Reap: Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi (Centre for European Policy Analysis, October 2nd)

New York Times claims Russia plans to cripple Ukraine power grid (Meduza, 2 October)

“Do you know what the Oleshki morgue is?” – what a humanitarian disaster looks like (New Eastern Europe, October 2nd)

Ukraine strikes defence plants, oil facilities in Russia (Kyiv Independent 28 Sept)

News from Ukraine

Ivanka ‘Hayka’ Kutsenko was killed (Solidarity Collectives, 2 October) / Interview with ‘Hayka’ (Solidarity Collectives, 2 October) / Tributes from ‘Hayka’s comrades on facebook here and here

US-Ukraine fund signs first mineral deal worth $30 million (Zn.ua, 3 October)

Natalia escaped from Oleshky with her 84-year-old mother (Babel, September 29th)

Zelensky staffer’s associates get property worth $1 million (Kyiv Independent, 29 Sept)

Over 70% of Ukrainians hold Zelensky responsible for corruption amongst his allies (Kyiv Independent, 28 Sept)

War-related news from Russia

‘They are waiting for me to die’: political prisoner, released due to cancer, is locked up again (Mediazona, 2 October)

A useful ritual: Why authoritarian regimes still need elections — and why Russia’s model is weakening (The Insider, October 1st)

Enough for two more years of war: Russia’s economy just won’t slip into recession (Ukrainska Pravda, 30 Sept)

Comment and analysis

Miners’ Union Appeals over Intensified Russian Attacks on Ukrainian Workers and Trade Unions (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, October 2nd)

Appeal to international labour movement (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, 30 September)

Research of human rights abuses

Russia’s methodical use of starvation in Oleshky (Kyiv Independent, 1 Oct)

Religious Terror in the Temporarily Occupied Territories (International Partnership for Human Rights, September 2026)

Also not to be missed

The Everywhere War: sub-threshold warfare tracker (Sahaidachnyi Security Centre, October)
🔴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.

The bulletin is also stored on line here.

To receive the bulletin regularly, send your email to:
2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
To stop it, please reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field.

News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 215

Humanists UK ★ Reform UK has unveiled plans for a new ‘patriotic curriculum’ explicitly rooted in Christianity.

Its education spokesperson, Suella Braverman, says every school would be required to sing Christian hymns on a regular basis. She has said the requirement would be backed by law and guidance, that Reform would look at using Ofsted to check compliance, and that ‘there will be consequences’ for those that do not.

This should concern everyone who believes children deserve an education that respects their freedom of thought.

Schools should educate children, not impose religion on them

In 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that exclusively Christian Religious Education and collective worship in Northern Ireland amounted to ‘indoctrination’. And in England, the courts have said that schools have a duty to give equal respect in education to religious and non-religious beliefs, including humanism.

But what Reform UK is proposing is the opposite of this: Christianity for every child, or else! That is exactly the kind of fusion of religion, national identity, and political power that we should be guarding against.

Britain’s schools serve children from every religion and belief background, including huge numbers who are non-religious. 

Continue @ Humanists UK.

Keep Christian Nationalism Out Of Our Schools

Merrion Press 🔖 has published a new book by Alan Bradley.




Unmasking Samantha Cookes
The Many Lives of a Serial Fraudster

Alan Bradley



‘Lies? Yes, everyone lies. I’ve lied ever since I could remember. It’s the only thing I do well, and I think we should all play to our strengths, don’t you?’

Unmasking Samantha Cookes is the chilling true story of a master manipulator who spent more than a decade reinventing herself across the UK and Ireland with an arsenal of false identities. Once known to millions as ‘Carrie Jade Williams’, she slipped seamlessly from au pair and nanny to therapist, psychologist, terminally ill author and online ‘sickfluencer’. Each persona carefully crafted. Each lie more audacious than the last. And each one designed to gain trust – and exploit it.

What started with the tragic death of a baby soon became a trail of fraud, deception and shattered lives. Every reinvention brought new victims, until her most audacious lie, a fabricated terminal illness, triggered a TikTok reckoning.

Drawing on exclusive evidence and firsthand accounts, Unmasking Samantha Cookes pulls back the curtain on a mastermind of deception hiding in plain sight, and reveals just how easily trust can be weaponised, with an unsettling question at its core: how well do we really know the people we trust with our children?

Paperback • €18.99|£17.99 • 304pages • 226mm x 153mm • 9781785375934

From the maker of BAD NANNY - the acclaimed documentary seen on RTÉ & BBC

‘At last, the full story – with startling new revelations – of Samantha Cookes, aka Carrie Jade Williams, whose trail of deception and duplicity took more than a decade to unravel.  Bradley’s unmasking of Cookes is sharp, gripping and impossible to ignore.’

NICOLA TALLANT

Order your copy

About The Author

Alan Bradley is an award-winning Irish director, actor and writer working across documentary, television drama and advertising. He won the Young Director Award for Documentary at Cannes 2024 and is the youngest director to hold a prime-time RTÉ One documentary slot. Named a Broadcast Hotshot 2025, he has directed critically acclaimed films including Patrick: A Young Traveller Lost, Anorexia: My Family and Me and the hit RTÉ/BBC series Bad Nanny.

Out Now 📚 Alan Bradley

Right Wing Watch 👀 Written by Kyle Mantyla.


Radical right-wing anti-choice activist Seth Gruber recently spoke at Calvary Tucson Church, where he argued that women who have abortions should face the death penalty.

Gruber, founder of the White Rose Resistance, has consistently been a leading voice among anti-choice activists demanding prosecution for women who obtain abortions and made the case during his recent conversation with Calvary Tuscon pastor Robert Furrow that potential penalties for doing so should include the death penalty.

Furrow declared that the only way to completely end abortion is to outlaw the practice and to prosecute women who have them but dismissed as "hypothetical" claims that women would be imprisoned as a result.

Gruber, for his part, made no such effort to downplay the ramifications of this position.

"You want to know what the role of the state is according to Paul in Romans?" Gruber said.

They're to be a terror to those who do evil. Do you know that's in Romans 13? What's the role of the state? To be a terror to those who do evil. Basically to be a deterrent.

Paul says the state does not bear the sword in vain," he continued. 

Continue @ RWW

Anti-Choice Activist Seth Gruber Advocates The Death Penalty For Women Who Get Abortions

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

 


Pastords @ 65

 

A Morning Thought @ 3290

Tommy McKearney ☭ There is a long history of powerful, dominant states practising what we might describe as defining or controlling the narrative.

4-September-2026.

This is done by steering public opinion so that one specific interpretation becomes dominant within society. The objective is to ensure that those in power retain their position by building a consensus among the wider population that their rulers are justified in doing whatever they do.


In the modern world, this is usually carried out through control of the mass media and, more recently, via social media. We are well aware of the overwhelming influence in this latter field of a handful of reactionary super-rich billionaires personified by Elon Musk. Less well known perhaps are state actors working at an official level, such as those EU operators shaping coercive legislation through what they like to call the ‘European Democracy Shield’. Under the pretext of defending democracy, they are perverting the very concept through manipulation of the truth.

However, and no matter how sophisticated technology has become, there has long been – and continues to exist – a more basic yet equally powerful tool utilised by the ruling class to control the narrative: the teaching of history.

For centuries past, and still practised today, is how Britain taught the history of its empire. Never was there a proper exposé of the leading role played by Britain in the slave trade and the wealth thus generated that facilitated the UK’s industrialisation. While not perhaps as common today as in past decades, schoolchildren were for long taught that empire was about bringing parliamentary democracy, modernisation and Christian civilisation to the dark continents – telling a false tale of the white man’s burden rather than the truth of his merciless violence in pursuit of profit.

And now in the USA, successor to the British empire, there is a battle being waged to impose a version of history that overlooks the evils of slavery and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. Last month, a report[1] released from the White House criticised the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for recording the fact that George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin owned slaves. While last year, Trump condemned that institution, disingenuously claiming, “everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was [sic] and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been”.

Of course, this strategy is not confined to the leaders of mighty empires. At the beginning of last month, Paul Givan, the DUP’s Minister of Education in the Stormont Assembly, announced the launch of a new curriculum for schools in the North. Most noteworthy among the proposals was a resolution to make the history of Northern Ireland,[2] including the period of the Troubles, compulsory in all publicly funded schools – including Catholic, controlled, and integrated establishments. While details of how this is to be implemented are to be finalised by 30 September, Minister Givan is determined to have his proposal rolled out.

It goes without saying, nonetheless, that teaching the history of our disputed Six Counties is not without its issues. For starters, there are the many idiosyncrasies of the minister himself. For example, while a member of Lisburn Council, he was instrumental in having a direction sent to post-primary schools in the district insisting on the teaching of a creationist alternative to evolution. More controversial still was his trip to Israel in 2025 when, as Minister for Education, he visited Ofek School in occupied East Jerusalem, sparking criticism from, among a host of others, the teachers’ trade union, the INTO.

It is difficult, therefore, to imagine how such an ideologically driven member of the DUP would or could oversee the delivery of a balanced, objective history of the Six Counties. Adding to this problem are the demands from other unionist parties. UUP leader Jon Burrows has warned against “revisionism”, while the TUV’s spokesperson said that paramilitary victims must be put at the centre of the content.

In short, a rigid adherence to the old narrative promoted not only by unionism but by successive British governments – that the North’s problem was essentially a law and order issue. An interpretation of history that controls the narrative in favour of unionism and Britain’s deep state while spinning the myth of ‘our grand wee country’.

As in the British context or that in the USA, this is a situation that satisfies the political objectives of a certain section of society but does nothing to advance wider understanding – the type of understanding necessary for the promotion of progressive dialogue and action.

In reality, there is nothing wrong with teaching history, but it must not be left in the hands of dyed-in-the-wool imperialists, whether that be Donald Trump or the DUP’s Minister for Education. An accurate assessment of the reality that is a failed political entity is essential. That, and not the damaging impact arising from embellishing a rotten borough through dishonestly controlling the narrative.

References

[1] Trump wants museums to be less ‘woke’ on slavery. Joe Miller. FT, 22/08/2026.
[2] The Troubles to become a required part of the curriculum for all Northern Irish schools. By Adam Kula. Newsletter, 03/08/2026. 
Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist.
He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament.
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney



Manufacturing Your Consent

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

Pastel


⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

And l Need You More Than Ever

Pádraig Drummond ✊ The National Party’s presence at Garvaghy Road must be answered plainly and without equivocation.


The courage of the residents and of the thousands who stood with them through the night is not in question, and no organisation has the right to borrow it. What is in question is the attempt by a far-right organisation to take a community's resistance to sectarian domination and set it in the service of racial nationalism, a doctrine which has nothing to do with the people of that road and nothing to do with the Republic.

The language of the National Party is the language of blood. It speaks of "our people", "our fathers", the "Irish race" and the "racial soul" of Ireland, and it warns of racial "deracination" as if the Irish nation were a biological stock in need of protection from human beings born elsewhere. This is the vocabulary of the European far right of the last century, translated into Irish and wrapped in the tricolour. It is not a development of the Irish republican tradition. It is a repudiation of it, and it should be named as fascism so that no one is left in doubt about what is being offered to the Irish people.

The Republic proclaimed at Easter 1916 guaranteed religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and pledged to cherish all the children of the nation equally. Tone set out the republican aim as the union of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter under the common name of Irishman, and he made no test of ancestry. The Irish nation is a political community founded on the sovereignty of the people, and no one becomes more or less Irish by the colour of their skin, the birthplace of their grandparents or the supposed purity of their descent. Those who say otherwise are not defending the Republic. They are preparing its betrayal.

There is more in common between the National Party and the Orange Order than either would admit. The Orange Order claims an inherited entitlement to march through communities that do not want it, and the National Party claims an inherited entitlement to decide who belongs to the Irish nation. The flags differ and the historical narratives are opposed, but both elevate inherited identity above the equality of the people who actually live on this island. Ethno-nationalism is the same poison whether it marches beneath the Union Jack or hides behind the Irish tricolour, and the republican answer to both is the same.

Imperialism and racism are not separate evils to be opposed on different days. Imperialism teaches that one people may claim authority over another, and racism teaches that one group of human beings possesses a greater worth and a greater right of belonging than another. Fascism is the attempt to turn both ideas into an organised political creed with a leader, a uniform and an enemy. The British claim to sovereignty in Ireland, partition and the six-county state were built on the first idea, and the National Party now seeks to build a movement on the second. We oppose both, and we regard anyone who opposes only one of them as unserious about freedom.

It is to be noted that the National Party gave no public notice of its presence on Garvaghy Road. Had it arrived openly under its own banner and demanded recognition as the voice of the mobilisation, it would have been told very quickly that it was not wanted. Having failed to do so, it now seeks to write itself into the history of an event after the fact. That is a political fraud, and it must be exposed as one. The more than fifteen thousand who came did so in solidarity with a community and not to enlist in a racial crusade, and they came from every tradition within nationalism and republicanism.

We must be honest with ourselves as well. Opposition to an Orange march does not make a person a republican, and opposition to British rule does not make a person an anti-fascist. There were people in the wider mobilisation over the weekend whose politics are ethno-nationalism masquerading as republicanism, and their presence should neither be ignored nor romanticised. Republicans have a duty to challenge such elements openly, in their own ranks and at their own gatherings, and to deny them the cover of our flag.

Let the position of traditional Irish Republicanism be stated clearly. We oppose the Orange Order because it is an institution of sectarian supremacy, and not because of the religion of its members. We oppose racism and fascism for the same reason, because no one is entitled to dominate another on the strength of inherited identity. We welcome every person who lives and works on this island, regardless of where they were born, as part of the people in whom sovereignty rests, and we reject any claim that Ireland belongs to a race or a bloodline.

The National Party may speak of its "war" and of the "Irish race", and we say to them that the Republic does not belong to a racial caste. The struggle for national freedom cannot be separated from the struggle against every form of oppression, including the oppression of those who have come here seeking work, safety and a home. An Ireland freed from British rule but poisoned by racial hatred would not be the Ireland for which generations of republicans suffered and died. It would be a lesser thing, and it would be a betrayal of everything they stood for.

Garvaghy Road belongs to its residents, and the solidarity shown there belongs to all who came in good faith. The republican tradition belongs to those who hold to freedom and equality, and the tricolour belongs to an Ireland of equals that has yet to be built. The road to that Republic runs through equality, solidarity and national self-determination, and it does not run through racial purity. The fifteen thousand have given their answer, and it is now the duty of the wider nationalist and republican community to make that answer heard and to see that fascism, racism and imperialism are met with one united resistance.

⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.

The Language Of The National Party Is The Language Of Blood

Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig ★ The 'carnival' before, during and after the government i mBaile Átha Cliath's budget is a deliberate distraction from the reality of the majority, the working class, trying to survive the onslaught of rising prices as a result of exploitation, inequality, greed and imperialist wars. 

The Free State is also subject to EU economic governance frameworks (such as the Stability and Growth Pact and the European Semester). The government i mBaile Átha Cliath submits a Draft Budgetary Plan to the European Commission before hand. So, the EU calls the shots and the people of the 26 counties can suck it up. 

And very briefly here are some of the 'crumbs' we are going to get. 

• Total Package: €8.65 billion total (€7bn public spending, €1.65bn tax measures). 
• Social Welfare: €10 weekly increase across general social welfare rates. 
• Disability Payment: New €500 long-term disability cost payment. 
• Fuel Allowance: Weekly rate up by €5; single pensioner threshold raised. 
• Childcare: Fees capped at €550 per month. 

Overall, there will be €1.65 billion in tax cuts and €7 billion in public spending. Key measures raise the standard tax cut-off point by €2,500, increase social welfare by €10 weekly, raise the minimum wage, extend fuel excise cuts, and allocate a record €29 billion to health. We should be aware that €1.4 billion will be spent in 2026 on military issues, for war and death; and €1.6 billion in 2027. This is our tax money. 

Why are we increasing our military spend to assist Yankee and EU war mongering under false pretences? And it's being used as a further justification for ending our neutrality and sovereignty. Fianna Fáil agus Fine Geal have made houses a commodity for the wealthy and now our young can't afford to own a house. The housing crisis and homeless problem all economically engineered in the interest of the wealthy. We have astronomical rents and mortgage repayments, on top of a housing crisis. A crisis driven by the absence of public housing and the promotion of building houses for private financial gain. Our health services are a shambles, in spite of all the 'budgets' that have ever been. Why? Again, because large sections of our health service are modelled on profit not care. The public health sector is deliberately underfunded. We have the most expensive electricity prices in Europe so we can supply the corporate data centres, they should be subsidising our electricity. 

The needs of the capitalist corporations are being fed first and our people are feeding off the scraps Multinationals and large private businesses reap the rewards of low taxation and cheap loans; in other words 'corporate socialism'. But the majority, the poor and working poor pay for it all. Look at your local area. Do you see the benefits of the now EU controlled ruling class budgets? Do you think you will see a massive change in 2027, 2028 and beyond? The evidence since the origins of the state would seriously suggest not. 

The wealth created in the 26 counties alone by workers, in any one year, is astronomical. Workers never avail of the wealth they create. They get a pittance in comparison. It is long past time for change, real change where the working class have full access to the wealth they create and it's distribution. Bourgeois budgets can never 'cut it'. 

Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig 
is an independent councillor on Donegal County Council.

Budget Crumbs

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3289

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)