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Anthony McIntyre    Another cold one but it will not prevent Drogheda Stands With Palestine from doing what it does every Saturday - standing with the Palestinians who have been subjected to genocide at the hands of Israel and its Western backers and arms suppliers for more than two years.

Cold as it is today, it is no where near as cold as the heart of those who believe "there could be a million dead Palestinian children and I would still sleep well in the evening." Although the Israeli ambassador to the UN has denied making this statement her callousness towards the dead children of Gaza obscures any discernible significant difference between what she did say and what she denies saying. Same for the then Israeli Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, who in 2014 called for genocide claiming “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy … including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.” She also called for Palestinian mothers to be killed as they gave birth to “little snakes.”

This is the type of racist supremacism that has endured within Israeli society since its bloody formation. It is why there is a genocide. The colonialist desire to erase Palestinian culture, identity, aspirations to statehood and nationhood have been latent within Israeli society since 1948, often bursting through in extreme violence with a particular focus on murdering children so that the genocidal message that in killing your children we are killing your future is transmitted to the people of Palestine.

With that type of backdrop the reception given by the Irish President to the visit by the Swedish human rights activist Greta Thunberg is to be greatly admired. Ms Thunberg was recently taken hostage by Israeli SS forces when she and others sought to break the Nazi-like siege of Gaza.

The meeting has predictably been met with howls of outrage by the Zionist lobby in Ireland. It zeroed in on Ms Thunberg calling for Palestinian activists to ‘mobilise and escalate’ shortly after the murderous antisemitic attack at Australia's Bondi Beach.The Irish Jewish Representative Council in a statement complained that:

The days since the antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach have been marked by deep concern within our community about safety, inclusion, and the future of Jewish life in Ireland. In this context, we are troubled by the decision of the President of Ireland, a role entrusted with representing the unity of all Irish people, to host a courtesy meeting with Greta Thunberg at Áras an Uachtaráin.Ms Thunberg’s recent public commentary urging people to “mobilise and escalate” which came not long after the antisemitic incident in Bondi Beach, without clear condemnation of the terror attack, is deeply unsettling for many in our community.

When has the The Irish Jewish Representative Council ever spoken out against the mass murder of Palestinians? The type of appalling attack in Australia has been a daily occurrence in Gaza since the onset of the genocide. The incident it resembles most is the IDF murder of Palestinian children playing soccer on a beach in July 2014. Activists should always be endeavouring to mobilise and escalate. It is mass murder they mobilise and escalate against.

The problem with the Zionists is that they seek to exploit every opportunity for advantage. They continually complain that Israel is judged by a different standard to other states who engage in serial human rights abuses. The outspoken condemnation by President Connolly of the Bondi Beach massacre was not enough for them. They want to obliterate any voice of opposition to the genocide.

Of course we should stand firm against antisemitism and attacks on Jewish people. At the same time we should never allow antisemitism to be a cloak of convenience with which to suffocate voices of conscience.

As activists we should congratulate both Greta Thunberg and President Catherine Connolly for the Aras meeting and for not giving into Zionist pressure to pull the stage from beneath their feet so that the world can only hear about one heinous massacre, that of Jewish people but not of another, that of Palestinian people. No quarter should be given to the Zionist sense of entitlement which allows them to claim that the murder of Jews is a crime worse than the murder of Palestinians.

In a brilliant letter in the Irish Times on the 17th of December Brian Ó Éigeartaigh rubbished Zioinst claims of being singled out

Sir, – In querying the “singling out of Israel for judgment by special standards that are not applied to other countries”, David Woods has – perhaps unintentionally – hit the nail on the head (Letters, December 17th).
Benefiting as it does from billions of dollars every year in US military aid, favourable access to EU markets via the Euro-Med Trade Agreement, and a US veto consistently deployed at the UN Security Council to shield it from accountability, the Israeli state is indeed “singled out” with “special standards that are not applied to other countries”.
Unlike many of the nations that Mr Woods accuses of “similar or worse alleged deeds elsewhere”, the Israeli state has never been the subject of economic sanctions or even arms embargoes by the West, despite decades of human rights abuses against the Palestinian people, and despite the defiance of successive Israeli governments of numerous UN resolutions.
It is outrage at precisely this impunity that motivates ordinary people throughout the world – and especially in Ireland due to our historical experience of colonial oppression – to support the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, justice and equality.

On top of Greta Thunberg and Catherine Connolly, Brian Ó Éigeartaigh too is to be congratulated for having searingly and concisely identified the master race mentality.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Greta The Great

Compact ★ Written by Jacob Savage. 
Recommended by Christopher Owens.

For fifteen years I’ve scalped tickets to pay the bills. But in January 2016 I almost managed a real career. I was thirty-one, I’d been in Los Angeles for five years writing scripts. There had been minor successes, a couple of small projects optioned, and I’d recently started writing with my best friend. We were writing constantly, making each other better, building momentum.

Success felt close. Back then it always did.

We’d written a pilot script that a veteran showrunner had agreed, in a very theoretical, very Hollywood sort of way, to “come on” to. That project had fizzled, so we were surprised when an executive emailed us out of the blue to meet. The showrunner explained he’d submitted us for an upcoming writer’s room he was going to run—the exec had loved our pilot and wanted to hire us.

This was it, the moment our careers were supposed to take off. We’d put in our time—I’d been tutoring SATs and reselling tickets to make ends meet while I wrote—and five years seemed par for the course, based on the slightly older guys we knew who’d made it.

Continue @ Compact.

The Lost Generation

Friendly Atheist ★ A sweeping NBC investigation exposed decades of abuse, cover-ups, and indifference inside the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination.

The world’s largest Pentecostal denomination is the Assemblies of God, with 13,000 churches across the United States and roughly 90 million members globally. And as you’d expect from any large religious organization, they’re experts in covering up leaders who are sexual predators.

In a damning report from NBC News, reporters Mike Hixenbaugh and Elizabeth Chuck found that the rot is everywhere:

NBC News identified nearly 200 Assemblies of God pastors, church employees and volunteer leaders accused of sexual abuse over the past half century, based on a nationwide search of lawsuits, criminal records and news archives. Together, they allegedly abused more than 475 people — the overwhelming majority of them children. The allegations stretch into this year, when a 10-year-old girl said in a lawsuit that her pastor groped her during Bible study.

It’s not like the churches were unaware of these predators. Even when they knew of the allegations, they regularly reinstated them to positions of power. They avoided doing thorough background checks or reporting their own to local law enforcement, fearing it would expose them to legal liability and go against the biblical idea of forgiveness.

How The Assemblies Of God Became A Safe Haven For Sexual Predators

Right Wing Watch ✊Written by Kyle Mantyla.


In addition to being a racist and deeply misogynistic far-right pastor, Joel Webbon is theocratic fascist Christian nationalist who has become more virulently antisemitic in recent months, which is saying something given that Webbon has openly proclaimed that he hopes the world will one day learn to "humanize Hitler."

Predictably, Webbon is a big fan of Hitler-loving racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic, Christian nationalist, fascist, white nationalist Nick Fuentes and recently dedicated an episode of his own "Right Response Ministries" podcast to praising Fuentes' recent appearance on "Piers Morgan Uncensored."

During that interview, Morgan grilled Fuentes about his admiration for Hitler and his Holocaust denialism, which Fuentes' smugly and vociferously defended.

On his program, Webbon applauded Fuentes' performance, particularly regarding the Holocaust, which Webbon fumed has been turned into a "false, wicked, satanic religion" that is used to oppress young white men in America.

"That historical event is no mere historical event," Webbon seethed. "It is a religion. It is an ideology. It is a worldview. It is a weaponized bludgeon that has beat generation after generation after generation of white young men into believing they're not allowed to have a future."

The False Religion Of 'Holocaustianity' Must Be 'Ground Into Dust'

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

 

Pastords @ 23

 

A Morning Thought @ 3005

Pádraig Drummond  ✊ They come to you draped in flags and polished medals, imperial armies grinning like bookmakers who already know the result. 

They tell you the world is on fire and that socialism is the match. Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Libya, Venezuela, Afghanistan, pick a decade, pick a graveyard. Wherever working people tried to seize control of land, labour, or dignity, the empire arrived with bombs, advisors, and a dictionary of euphemisms. Different uniforms, same mission: crush anything that smells like collective power.

The British Empire did it with bayonets and hunger, from Ireland to Malaya. The French tried to drown it in Indochina. The Americans napalmed it in Vietnam, strangled it with coups across Latin America, and armed fanatics in Afghanistan to smash a socialist government into rubble. The story never changes. When profits are threatened, ideology becomes a pretext, and the poor are drafted to defend wealth they will never see.

Then comes the sales pitch, slick as a Pentagon press release and twice as cynical, and just as dishonest. Join us. Fight socialism. Fight the people demanding free healthcare, free education, public housing, and control over their own lives. Fight them so the system can remain exactly as it is.

And for your trouble, the empire makes you an offer it claims is impossible for civilians. Free healthcare. Free education. Housing. Food. Training. A pension if you survive intact. A fully socialised system of care, handed out inside the barracks and denied outside the gate. Socialism, but only for those willing to enforce empire at gunpoint.


This is the great confidence trick. Imperial armies do not oppose socialism in practice. They practise it internally with ruthless efficiency. They just restrict it to a disciplined caste whose job is to destroy it everywhere else. The largest military machine on earth functions as a socialist institution while bombing, sanctioning, and destabilising any society that tries to organise along similar lines without permission.

As an Irish mam, the smell of it is all too familiar. Empire has always offered security in exchange for obedience, bread in exchange for silence, and uniforms in place of freedom. It asks the poor to defend the structures that exploit them, and calls it opportunity. It asks you to die for a flag that would never feed your family if you refused.

They do not hate socialism. They weaponise it. They demand it be earned through service, violence, and submission, and insist it never be extended to those on the receiving end of empire’s bombs or blockades.

So when an imperial army asks you to fight socialism, understand what is really being said. Kill the idea for everyone else, and we will let you live it . . .  conditionally. That is not freedom. It is empire, recycling the same lie, written in blood and sold as a career.

⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.

Socialism For The Enforcers, Bullets For Everyone Else

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières 💣 Written by 
Oleksandr Kyselov,

The Trump administration’s proposals for peace in Ukraine sound like a real estate deal, where the United States gets a payoff for handing over Ukrainian land. But with Kyiv’s leverage shrinking, the country may be forced to swallow a grim deal.

On 21 November, Ukrainians found themselves staring at a peace proposal that demanded near-immediate acceptance. The leaked twenty-eight-point peace plan, drafted by Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff [1] and Russian official Kirill Dmitriev [2], reads like a real estate transaction. Russia gets the land, the United States takes its cut, Europe foots the bill, and Ukraine can choose between surrendering now or surrendering later. Under pressure, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, addressed the nation bluntly: “Loss of dignity or of a key partner. Twenty-eight difficult points or an extraordinarily difficult winter.”

Stunned European leaders — taken aback by the initiative’s provisions — scrambled to improvise counterproposals. Amid outrage in the White House over the leak, emergency talks in Geneva produced a revised nineteen-point framework, deferring the hardest questions to future high-level dialogue. Trump declared “tremendous progress” and announced Witkoff’s sixth visit to Moscow this year. 

Continue @ ESSF.

The Imperial Carve-Up Of Ukraine

I Fucking Love Australia ★ Recommended by Paul Harrison. 

Every time something horrific happens, the same idiots crawl out screaming: “That’s it, shut the borders, ban Muslims, stop letting these people in.”

And right on cue, like a taxpayer-funded foghorn of bullshit, here comes Pauline Hanson.

Let’s deal with the logic first, because it collapses immediately.

If you want to ban people based on religion, beliefs, or where they come from, then you don’t just get to point outward. You have to look inward too.

So let’s do that.

Martin Bryant.
Australian.
Anglo-Saxon.
Atheist.
Mass murderer.
So what now, Pauline?
Deport him to where, the moon?

Then there’s Brenton Tarrant.
Australian.
Raised here.
White supremacist.
Walked into mosques in New Zealand and murdered 51 Muslims.
By your own logic, Australia exported one of the worst mass killers on Earth.
So what’s the solution now?
Ban Australians from travelling?
Start revoking citizenship based on vibes?
This is where your whole argument faceplants.

Violence isn’t imported.

It isn’t Muslim.
It isn’t Christian.
It isn’t atheist.
It’s human.

Every country produces monsters. Every race. Every belief system. The difference is whether society limits how much damage one lunatic can do when they snap.

Nobody ever says,

“Well after Martin Bryant, maybe we should ban Anglo-Saxon men.”
Because that would sound insane.

But somehow banning millions of peaceful Muslims is pitched as “common sense”.

Now let’s talk about Pauline Hanson the politician, because this is where the grift really shows.
She’s been in politics for decades. Decades.
Name one policy she’s implemented that helped:
impoverished children
battered women
the unemployed
pensioners
working Australians
You can’t. Because there isn’t one.

Go look at HowTheyVote.org. It’s public. It’s boring. It’s damning.
She votes with the Liberal Party almost every single time.
Against workers.
Against welfare.
Against social services.
Against anything that would materially help struggling Australians.
She’s never fought for wages.
Never fought for housing.
Never fought for healthcare.
Nothing.

She’s not a champion of the battler. She’s a taxpayer-funded grifter who cosplays as an outsider while cashing a senator’s pay cheque.

And incidents like this?
She doesn’t fear them.
She feeds on them.
You can practically see her salivating, finally something she can use to rile up her base, because without fear, she has nothing. No policy. No vision. No solutions.
Just division.

Pauline Hanson doesn’t protect Australia.
She fractures it.
She doesn’t stand for victims.
She weaponises them.
She is a bigoted, racist, divisionary, twisted, wretched crab who survives by dragging society sideways while contributing absolutely nothing of value.
And the most offensive part?
She wraps all of that in the Australian flag and calls it patriotism.
It’s not.
It’s exploitation.

Exploitation Is Not Patriotism

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3004

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 16-December-2025.


US threats against Venezuela are not new. They have been threatening the country for years, sending mercenaries, financing politicians with a dodgy reputation such as Juan Guaidó and imposing a blockade on the country. Nothing has worked for them and Trump remembered the old wildcard of all US governments from the end of the 19th century: drugs. It is the perfect excuse for all types of interference in the internal affairs of any country, but it is not new. Trump’s antics are not copyrighted -  they are plagiarised.

The plagiarism is of previous presidents such as Obama, Clinton and even Theodore Roosevelt (the one who stole Panama from Colombia) under whose mandate the meeting of the Opium Commission was held in Shanghai in 1909. A lot of talk about the evil of drugs and against consumption, but in reality, it was part of a manoeuvre to get into China’s good books to favour their economic interests in exchange for helping them eliminate opium consumption.[1] They were never concerned about consumers’ health. Every attempt and international treaty to limit or prohibit drug consumption always excluded alcohol and tobacco, two drugs produced by large north American and European companies.

Nowadays, despite all the modern campaigns against tobacco consumption, the industry generates mouthwatering profits. Just five companies dominate the world market, the largest being Altria, the owner of companies like Phillip Morris USA. Between 2020 and 2024 this company paid out a total of USD 32 billion in dividends to the shareholders.[2] Something similar happens in the case of alcohol with a global market of more than USD 2,400 billion.[3]

But those drugs, whose markets were not dominated by the USA, were prohibited leaving juicy profits for the Yankee companies with the sale of legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol. But that does not mean that the illegal drugs don’t generate huge profits for north American and European companies in money laundering and the supply of precursor chemicals to make heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs.

It is not surprising that the first attempts to militarise the interdiction of narcotics took place under a republican government. It is not that the democrats are better, but that sometimes they leave the dirty work to the republicans, in this case Reagan and Bush Sr. who militarised the war on drugs both internationally and within the country, particularly on the border with Mexico.[4]

At the end of the 1980s, in the midst of debates on overturning the Posse Comitatus Act[5] and allow for a freer use of the military against the civilian population they ended up recognising the military as the lead agency for the detection and monitoring of drug trafficking towards the USA.[6] Both Bush and Obama sent troops to the Mexican border as part of the war on drugs.[7] In Latin America the USA promoted the militarisation of the war on drugs, financing anti-narcotic units within the military, as was the case in Bolivia. And even in the case of Colombia the first anti-narcotics battalion was agreed to in a meeting between US Secretary of Defence William Cohen and the Colombian Minister for Defence Rodrigo Lloreda. The US provided the funds. When we think of the Colombian conflict, it seems implausible that the Colombian military turned down flat an offer of USD 2.8 million to set up military anti-narcotic units.[8]

The first international anti-narcotics operation where US troops publicly took part was Operation Blast Furnace in Bolivia, 1986. Approximately 160 north American troops in Panama were transferred to Bolivia to supposedly help the Bolivian police destroy laboratories and seize cocaine. It was the first of many joint operations. In 1990, the governments of Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and the US agreed that the armed forces of each country can and should take part in the fight against drugs.

The control of illegal trafficking in drugs is essentially a law enforcement matter. However, because of its magnitude and the different aspects involved, and in keeping with the sovereign interest of each State and its own judicial system, the armed forces in each of the countries, within their own territory and national jurisdictions, may also participate. The Parties may establish bilateral and multilateral understandings for cooperation in accordance with their interests, needs and priorities.[9]

Amongst the military options was aerial interdiction, that initially consisted of the destruction of runways, but in the 1990s Colombia and Peru began a programme of shooting down aeroplanes in mid-flight. The US was worried about the possibility of lawsuits over those acts and for a while suspended the sharing of intelligence with Peru and Colombia.[10] Clinton however, approved a law protecting US military officers involved in such attacks. Between 1995 and 2001, the US military took part in the downing of 14 small planes in Peru, and the Peruvians on their own a further 24. And it is not known how often the Colombians downed planes.[11] But the programme was suspended for a while following an attack on a small plane that was carrying a US evangelical missionary and her infant who were killed in the attack. Later it was renewed with new rules in place.

So, Trump’s attacks on speed boats and fishing boats are the continuation of a drugs policy developed to its logical conclusion. What he is doing is not new and the same doubts about the legality of such actions have always existed regarding the downing of planes. Of course, there is a difference and it is only that Trump’s actions are unilateral and are not carried out in the context of a previously agreed plan. Although, it worth saying that in the case of Colombia, Petro has not taken any of the measures to hand to put a stop to the military actions. The US still has seven military bases in the country and the military and the police not only continue to cooperate with them but rather Petro even boasts about the participation of US intelligence in the bombarding of FARC dissidents and stated on his Twitter account:

There have been twelve bombardments ordered by me and only by me, respecting to the utmost degree human rights. US intelligence is used but under human rights conditions that I myself have adopted.[12]

It should be pointed out that all presidents say they respect human rights, even Uribe did so. Whether they do or not (and they don’t) is another matter.

So, Trump represents a development and at the same time a continuity regarding drugs and the military. He also represents a continuity with all the other presidents of the USA regarding the real interests behind their discourse on drugs. Trump is not interested in drugs. If he was, he wouldn’t have pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández convicted of importing 400 tons of cocaine. Hernández is not the only drug trafficker to have been pardoned by Trump.[13]

If Obama had been interested in drugs he would have taken stern action against HSBC following the scandal of the laundering of USD 881 million. But he did little. He could have suspended their banking licence, he could also have placed the entire board of directors of the bank on the Clinton List, but he didn’t. Instead, the bank paid a fine of USD 1.8 billion and went on as if nothing. It should be said that it was not the first, nor the last time that bank and others launder the proceeds of the sale of illegal drugs. Amongst the banks fined for money laundering are Credit Suisse USD 536 million in 2009; Barclays USD 298 million in 2010; ING USD 619 million in 2012; Standard Chartered USD 330 million in 2012 and another USD 1.1 billion in 2019; BNP Paribas USD 8.9 billion in 2014 and Deutsche Bank USD 258 million in 2015.[14] Clinton himself freed from a jail a lawyer that had laundered money for the Cali Cartel. If it was really about drugs the board of directors of those banks would be in prison and/or on the Clinton List and Clinton would never have freed Harvey Weinig from prison.

If they wanted to solve the drug problem by military means in the US, they could bomb the headquarters, if not the factories of the major pharmaceutical companies in the US. The opiate crisis in the US began with the abuse of legal pharmaceuticals, amongst them fentanyl. The illegal market began with meeting the needs of that abuse, supplying a cheaper product that was easier to obtain. Even so, 125 million prescriptions for opioids are issued in the country and 96% of those who use illegal opiates consume legal ones at least once a year.[15] The problem is Made in USA.

If they wanted to prevent the fabrication of cocaine they could bomb the German hydrochloric acid factories, an essential precursor chemical for making cocaine. But of course, they are not going to do any of that.

As the title of this article indicates, the drugs issue is a wildcard that can be used at any time to do whatever they want. When they invaded Panama, they said that it was because Noriega was a drug trafficker. He may have been, but he was their drug trafficker. What they want is Venezuela’s oil, as in other moments the stability of Colombia in order to take control of the natural resources. When a Yankee president says that he has to intervene in a country because of drugs, he plays with the truth, he plays poker with the future of millions and his wildcard is drugs. The excuse that convinces many.

References

[1] Bewley-Taylor, D.R, (1999). The United States and International Drug Control. 1909-1997, London: Pinter. P-18 – 19.

[2] See.

[3] See.

[4] See History of Joint Task Force North 

[5] A US law that restricted though did not totally prohibit the use of the military against the civilian population in the exercise of a police role. It dates from 1878.

[6] Withers, G. et al (2010) Preach What you Practice: The Separation of Military and Police Roles in the Americas. WOLA. pp. 7-8 

[7] Ibíd. p.9

[8] Ibíd. p.17

[9] Declaration of Cartagena. 

[10] Huskisson, Major D.C. (2004) The Airbridge Denial Program and the Shootdown of Civil Aircraft Under International Law. Magill University. pp. 10-11 https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA425906.pdf

[11] Ibíd. p.14

[12] See.

[13] Complex (04/12/2025) Here’s The Drug Dealers Trump Has Pardoned. Joe Price. 

[14] Investopedia (12/10/2025) HSBC Money Laundering Scandal: A Case Study in Compliance Failures. Marc L. Ross. 

[15] See.

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

The Drugs Wildcard

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