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Jim Duffy ✍ People who wonder why countries across Eastern Europe and Asia are so fearful of Russia, and see it as untrustworthy and prone to break every deal it makes, need to understand what those countries have gone through over the centuries at the hand of Russia. 

Poland was subject to at least Nineteen attacks by Russia. Finland was attacked through its history by Russia over Thirty times.
 
Some were full wars. Some were violent attacks on border communities. The place where the President of Finland's grandparents were from, and where his father was born, is now occupied by Russia as a result of the second of the wars it waged against Finland during World War II. 

Russia was one of the countries that wiped Poland off the map and they seized its territory. Ukraine lost up to 5 million to the Holodomor, the man-made famine that results from Stalin's brutal collectivisation between 1932 and 1933.
 
Modern day Russia like in the past when it illegally seizes territory expels the native population and replaces them by Russian planters. Russia did just that since 2014 in Crimea - which is why neighbouring states have zero sympathy for the Russian planters in Crimea left without electricity, petrol or food. They are glad too see them flee the houses they illegally occupied and stole from natives and flee back to Russia where they came from.
 
It is no longer countries in Eastern Europe and in Asia, including Japan, despise Russia, do not trust it, and look on Putin apologists and useful idiots in the west with disgust. They have every reason to despise a country whose entire history has been built on attack, subjugating and annexing its neighbour. It is the ultimate neighbour from hell.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Neighbour From Hell

Fenian Memorial Committee Of America And Irish National Graves Association    will be unveiling a monument to the Catalpa Rescue. 

Venue: Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. 

Date: 19-September-2026.

Time:1300.

Catalpa Rescue Monument Unveiling

Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig ★ Minister Thomas Byrne, commenting on his meeting on Wednesday, 12 August . . . 

 . . . the Minister of State for Defence, (more like minister of war) said:

I welcomed the opportunity to meet with General Grynkewich in Dublin today.
Ireland’s engagement with NATO through Partnership for Peace has provided our Defences Forces with valuable opportunities since 1999 for useful and pragmatic collaboration, in our contribution to peacekeeping globally, and in adherence with our policy of military neutrality.

Thomas Byrne calls all of this ‘pragmatic collaboration’ and ‘adherence with our policy of neutrality’. It’s amazing how ‘intellectual gymnastics’ are used by the ruling class to justify anything . . . anything at all . . . and continue the ‘ruling by fooling’.
 
So, NATO and PESCO are being sold to us as a ‘Partnership for Peace’!! Just incredible. Escalating military spending, wars, genocides and their consequences for civilians, around the world, is called a ‘Partnership for Peace’!! It is hard to believe that Thomas Byrne, who also met with Europe’s war mongers, masquerading as ministers of defence, at the Gleann na Draoithe resort or any normal person, would believe that nonsense.They don’t even believe their own yarns. And we, the decent people of Ireland, don’t believe a word of it either.

Helen McEntee, ostensibly, the minister of foreign affairs, more like the minister of ‘foreign wars’, now says, that military spending is up to 43%, from a tiny figure of 2 to 5% before this. The latter figure more in keeping with what is supposed to be a neutral state. But those figures notwithstanding, Helen wants to increase the spending on military hardware and preparations for war, to an even higher percentage; to be nearer nearer 60%.

This compares with a measly 9% spending on housing by the Irish government and only 11% on public health care. Infrastructure spending is a tiny 5%. And, depending on how it’s measured, there is only a 2.8% to 5.8% spend on education. Even government spending on ‘social protection’, known as benefits, is only 22% . . .  approximately half of the present military budget. For those who are old and pension age, the government can manage only a 27% budget. For Helen McEntee and her ilk, spending on the provision of war and death, comes far ahead of spending on the provisions of life.

Here i Dún na nGall the two sitting TD’s Pat (The Cope) Gallagher and Charlie McConnelogue are totally silent on all of this spending of millions upon millions, on war preparations, weapons of death And the on-going destruction of our neutrality and sovereignty. Why? Do they not realise that hundreds upon hundreds of families i Dún na nGall need to put food on their table and warm their homes. There is a bypass needed i LeitirCeanainn. Could this money be more usefully spent on that? Could this money, that is being spent on weapons of death and wars, be spent on our destroyed fishing fleet, thanks to the EU, with the connivance of Fianna Fail et al? This money, destined for wars, should be spent on the collapsing homes, due to defective blocks, all over Dún na nGall further afield i Éireann? I call on them to answer these questions and state their position clearly on this imperialist military spending, in what is supposed to be a neutral and sovereign country.

We are not fooled by the safe sounding Words of “defence”, “security” and “peace” that are used all the time, to hide the fact that it is wars, deaths and genocides that they are talking about here . . .  nothing else. What does their talk about “defence” ,“security” and “peace” really mean? Who will profit from the manufacturing and selling of these weapons of death?

It means the spending of billions, even trillions, on weapons of death; to kill maim an injure civilians in their hundreds of thousands, around the world. It means the recruiting of our sons, daughters and grandchildren to fight and die in foreign wars; at the behest of imperialism and capitalism, no more and no less. And it means, the diversion of funding away from social issues such as housing health and even our infrastructure here; in other words the material necessities of life, necessary for people to live in comfort and happiness. Does living not count for more than dying? We need to Always remember, that, the minority who are the ruling class, care little for the majority, the poor and working poor; and they will continue to exploit them in any way they can If we continue to allow it.

It is long past the time that the people of Ireland put a stop to the moves by the ruling class, to make our country a target for war. Sionainn 'warport' should be immediately closed down. Like Countess
Markievicz did all those years ago, we must organise against the conscription of our children into the NATO/European army through the 'slight of hand' tricks of "security", "defence" and "peace". It is none of the above.


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

Weapons Of War

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Ninety Four

 

Hate Theology @ 16

 

A Morning Thought @ 3266

Gary Robertson ⚽“It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine” sang REM.

The song itself isn’t literally about the end of the world but it rather sums up how I’m feeling having watched Celtic crumble again away from home. This time to Rangers.
 
This wasn’t heroic failure, this wasn’t “well they left everything on the pitch but just came up short” - no, this was hands up, white flag waving surrender and yet somewhere in the back of the mind of every Celtic fan we have to think “we saw this coming.”
 
Celtic haven’t been a great watch this season. Yes yours truly has been guilty of overhyping the team at times but as poor as Rangers have been, Celtic weren’t a great deal better.
 
Having themselves crashed out of Europe, humiliated by LASK in Austria and demoted to the Europa League, other than a 3-0 drubbing of Aberdeen (a very very poor Aberdeen side (who’ll probably beat us at Pittodrie)) Celtic have scraped by on 1 goal victories. 1-0 v newly promoted St Johnstone 2-1 v Falkirk, 2-1 v St Mirren. Eventually the luck was bound to run out, and so it did spectacularly on Sunday.
 
There was no fluke about this victory either, Rangers wanted it more and Celtic fans are left in the cold grey dawn of a miserable Monday to reflect.
 
So let’s reflect. Starting line up. Sam Johnstone in goal. An on loan keeper who’s chucked in to what is potentially the biggest game he’s ever likely to play in. Clearly nervous, making mistakes from early on his nervousness seemed to permeate throughout the team. Austin Trusty regular centre back benched but ready to come on as a substitute if needed yet never did. Tounekti who must have, by now, played his last game for Celtic, along with McGregor in midfield, who seemed to have forgotten which team he played for as pass after pass landed at the feet of a Rangers player. Nygren who looked decidedly uninterested whilst Høgh and Durán receiving little to no service and when Høgh did finally find the ball at his feet managed to fall over it or slip.
 
I cannot for the life of me understand why you’d go out and buy attacking players then nullify that attack by being unable to get the ball to them in the first place. Our midfield were awful, our defence nervous and our attack missing in action.
 
Where Rangers got their tactics spot on Celtic had no plan b to counter them.
 
Every position Rangers were better, every attack they looked dangerous. The same obviously cannot be said for Celtic.
 
So how can “I feel fine” about this?
 
Simple really. We got what we deserved.
 
If Celtic had turned up won by a solitary goal we’d be ignoring the facts and instead celebrating another Glasgow Derby victory.
 
Good teams will run all over this Rangers team and that’s worrying from a Celtic perspective. We are bereft of quality players in midfield, in defence and most definitely between the sticks. Many have said this for weeks and I’ve been guilty of burying my head in the sand, hoping that the fragility of this team wouldn’t be exposed. We knew it was there, but some of us tried hard to pretend it was a temporary glitch and things would click into place. We’ve rode our luck on numerous occasions and when teams have found our Achilles heel they’ve brutally exploited it. LASK did it, Rangers did it and no doubt others will too.
 
Martin O’Neill and his back room staff must also take their share of the blame. There was a look of “I don’t know what to do” on Martin’s face. Panic substitutions, too little and too late. Why Tounekti starts before Hassan is head scratchingly bizarre. Surely you play your strongest available eleven from the start and make individual substitutions as players tire or to change formation? But not Celtic. For some reason Martin et al decide to play with weak links and then pray it wouldn’t blow up in their face.
 
It was evident from the tenth minute that Rangers were the side likely to win this match. As early as the tenth minute. The biggest surprise being it took to the 23rd minute to expose Celtic's weaknesses. At half time with the score 1-0 to the home side I fully expected a change of shape, defence solidified and Tounekti hooked. Only one of these things actually happened. Instead we played with the same formation and created very very little. When Rangers added a second on 59 mins a third looked inevitable. And so it transpired as Rangers' hero of the hour Dan Neill powered home his second and the Rangers had their victory and their new idol.
 
So were there any positives for Celtic fans? Yes two perhaps. We might never see Johnstone or Tounekti in Celtic shirts again.
 
The fear is this may only be the beginning. We have Europa League football to endure this Thursday before facing Rangers again at home next Sunday.
 
Both on and off the pitch serious questions need to be asked from the board to the management down to the team.
 
Celtic faced a blue tsunami on Sunday and were ill prepared for what they were about to face and it showed.
 
Battered, bruised and bullied, swept away by a team who simply wanted it more. A team with a point to prove.
 
So as I sit here reflecting I have to congratulate both the Rangers team and management for what was a fully deserved win. For as bad as Celtic were Rangers somehow managed to make them look worse.
A week is a long time in football but is it long enough? I guess next weekend will tell us much much more.

So that’s it from me this week. I can’t sugar coat this, putting a ribbon on dog shit doesn’t make it anything other than dog shit with a bow on top.

Enjoy your week, whatever you're doing, do it safely, be happy (if possible) and be well.

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Ineffective, Useless And Embarrassing

Barry Gilheany ✍Call it the hand of history. A transformative moment. 

A once in a multi-generational shift in British foreign policy (since 1946 if one seeks more precision). But something profoundly changed when Ed Miliband took to the despatch box in the House of Commons on Tuesday 8th September 2026 to announce to MPs a ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank; designated the settlers as “terrorists”; their activities as “ethnic cleansing” and formally adopted on behalf of the UK government the International Court of Justice (ICJ) 2024 judgement that the entirety of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal. 

In so doing, he offered the strongest ever condemnation of an Israeli government by a British government with words and actions motivated by the one to midnight situation of the two-state solution created by Israel’s plan to construct the E1 settlement block which would cut the West Bank and so deal the terminal blow to any hopes of a contiguous Palestinian state as well as the egregious violence of the settlers. 

To show that Britain meant business over these measures, Miliband announced that it had forged a coalition of ten Western nations led by France and Canada to implement the sanctions. His speech and Andy Burnham’s mea culpa for the slowness of Labour to react under Starmer to the humanitarian catastrophe of Gaza and his acknowledgment in a Guardian article that UK governments had been reluctant for far too long to back words with actions, ‘fearful of being accused of being anti-Israel’[1] (or, worse still, of being antisemitic). Labour ministers, MPs and supporters will hope that the decisive shift signalled last week will lance the boil within the Labour movement over Palestine that has existed since Keir Starmer’s response to an interviewer on LBC in the days after the October 7 attacks in which he suggested that Israel had the right to cut off water and electricity to Gaza which led to a haemorrhaging of Labour votes and seats to the Green Party and “pro Gaza” Independent Muslim candidates in certain inner city constituencies and local authority areas. (Starmer did move to clarify his words but to little avail; the damage could not be undone). Pointedly Miliband told MPs: 

I’ll say this very bluntly we should have acted earlier. And it has taken the new prime minister to come in and recognise the gravity of the situation.[2]

As Ed Miliband commenced his address, his hands were notably shaking as he began with his declaration of support “as a proud Jew” for the existence of that State of Israel as the sanctuary, life-raft nation that gave refuge to his grandmother who had lost forty-five relatives in the Holocaust. But he also referenced his mother Marion Kozak who had grown up in Israel and who had a life-long dedication to  the Palestinian cause. It is a reminder of the inter-generational trauma that is a legacy of the Shoah/Holocaust and of the scabs that relativisation of it or inappropriate comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany can open. His excoriation of the scourge of antisemitism was the perfect rejoinder to the despicable accusation by Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel and settler champion, that Labour is gripped by ‘Jew hatred’ and he identified as a “category error”, the lazy equation of Israel with the current Likud-led government, as many on the right and the far-left do by default, arguing : “Holding Jewish people responsible for the actions of the Israeli government is antisemitism, plain and simple.”[3] 

His assertion that Palestinian self-determination is the only viable route to lasting security for Israel and explicit rejection of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign lays out ideological and ethical territory for those of us who are neither Israel First or Palestine First; who reject the weaponisation of antisemitism and philosemitism in support of one or the other; whose support for Palestinian rights and justice is based on universalist and humanist principles and is not predicated on antizionist and anti-Western “ campist” positions. 

The BDS position on including actors such as Standing Together, a joint Israeli-Palestinian anti-occupation and peace group, which help Palestinian farmers to harvest their olive groves in the West Bank in the face of settler intimidation and who campaign against the Gaza war, within its scope on the basis that it recognises the legitimacy of the State of Israel, is antithetical to genuine peace and a two state solution. Likewise boycotting the Israeli film industry which has produced such brave documentary makers as Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szar whose documentary NAZA which shows the methodology behind the mass killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza by the IDF and which won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival last week and who had previously worked with Palestinian film makers on the film No Other Land in 2024 showing the terrorism of the West Bank settlers is similarly self-destructive and counter-productive.

His stopping short of using the G-word, of describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide preferring to wait until the final deliberations of the ICJ will have disappointed many in the pro-Palestinian movement but he recognised the “gravity of saying that there is “ethnic cleansing, forced displacement of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists” and that “too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye” to them with “even some members of it” making statements and taken actions in support of these crimes. It was truly a step change in British foreign policy and diplomacy.


The UK government is committed to enacting:

  • An import ban on goods from illegal settlements from illegal settlements.
  • A sanctions regime against providing services such as construction or financing for Israeli settlements and a ban on advertising them in the UK.
  • Personal sanctions against key individuals accused of promoting settler violence.
  • A new ban for arms licenses and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation."[4]

The presence of only ten Tory MPs for the statement probably contributed to the consensus across the benches in the Commons but an indication of how much opinion has swung towards real action on the West Bank was sounded by the veteran Tory MP and Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh who in backing the sanctions declared that:

I am proud to say as the longest surviving member of the Conservative Friends of Israel that I absolutely and fully support what he (Miliband) is doing today because it is about standing up for freedom, for morality and justice for all people in the world.[5]

A statement of universalist principles for humanity could scarcely be more impeccably made.

Taking a polar opposite position was Sir Edward’s party leader Kemi Badenoch who wrote in the Jewish Chronicle that the government was desperate to win back Islamists and that Jews would no longer feel safe in Britain.[6] This was of a par of Benjamin Netanyahu’s absurd and populist grandstanding forecast of an Islamic Republic of Great Britian armed with nuclear weapons. The UK’s chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who comes from the Orthodox tradition in Judaism, condemned the sanctions as “a dark day for British Jews”, accusing the government of ignoring the Jewish community’s concerns and warning that the sanctions could fuel antisemitism and increase violence against British Jews.[7] Taking a similar sanctions = antisemitism default stance, the Israeli government announced the closure of the British Consulate in East Jerusalem; removed British representatives from the International Gaza Support Centre in southern Israel and denied twelve mainly left wing, pro-Palestinian “awkward squad” MPs entry into Israel. The view from Shiloh, a religious settlement north of Jerusalem home to around 6,000 of the West Bank’s more than 700,000 settlers is that “the British are fed lies and don’t’ know what is going on here” and that Britain’s stance is symptomatic of a surge in antisemitism in Europe: 

We are going back to the time of the Holocaust, we’re in the 1930s. We cannot travel to Europe any more because of the antisemitism. At the same time we are treated like kings in Dubai.

By contrast praise for “the huge impact in symbolic meaning “for the British move came from Yaser Allkam, foreign relations of the well-off municipality with a large Palestinian-American population near Shiloh.[8] Symbolism can and does matter.

However this automatic reduction of criticism of Israeli policies to antisemitism has increasingly become a busted flush not least because of the plurality of Jewish (and Zionist) representative opinions. While no robust data exists on whether British Jews support sanctions on Israeli settlements specifically, there is a spectrum of dissent from the Chief Rabbi’s condemnation of the sanctions from across British Judaism. Jonathan Wittenberg, a senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism witnessed “with my own eyes” the effects of settler violence in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair while Miliband was delivering his speech. For him what is occurring in the West Bank “is a Chillul Hashem, a violation of God’s name of the worst order” and that there was an imperative to “speak out…out of deep concern for what is human and just… for the sake of Israel and Judaism.” Endorsing the sanctions as “the UK’s commitment to a two-state solution”, Rabbi Alexandra Wright from the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London, and co-chair of the British Friends of Rabbis for Human Rights, stated that:

The Anglo-Jewish community is committed to a Jewish state that is founded, not on oppression and violence, but, in the words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, ‘on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel. 

Jeremy Gordon, the rabbi of New London Synagogue who in his advocacy for sanctions, justified call for action on the grounds that:

the playbook of these settlers is predicated on the notion that they will be appeased or ignored, and that well-meaning Jews the world overlook their illegal and criminal actions.[9]

The sanctions were also welcomed by prominent Israelis from the security, political and cultural elite. A joint statement signed by the former prime minister Ehud Olmert, the former commander of the military Dan Halutz, the ex-ministers Yuli Tamir and Roni Bar-On, the former ambassador Yoram Ben-Zeev and UK-born Prof David Harel, the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities said “This decision is precisely what the State of Israel should have received in order to remove the disgrace of Jewish terrorism from the face of the country” and pointedly stated that “sanctions (are being imposed) against Jewish terrorists, and not against the legitimacy of the State of Israel”. They further emphasised that “There is no basis to the (Israeli) government’s response to impose sanctions against Jewish terrorists is an expression of antisemitism”. Support for the sanctions also from a Zionist perspective came from Nadav Tamir, executive director of J Street Israel and previously one of Israel’s top diplomats in the US, who said: 

Any move to prevent annexation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the West Bank (and Gaza) are serving the long-term interests of the Zionist vision of Israel as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people.[10]

The shift in gear from the timidity of the Starmer administration which stricken by fear of being seen as anti-Israel resisted calls from within the Foreign Office and the Labour Party to ban trade with West Bank settlements[11] is a refreshing assertion of true Labour internationalist and emancipatory values. Cynics may point to the upcoming by-election in the Holborn and St Pancras seat vacated by the former Prime Minister which the Greens who harvested a lot of Labour votes shed by disillusionment over Gaza is contesting though its eco-populist leader Zach Polanski as a motive for the introduction of the sanctions. But such cynicism can be refuted by pointing to the work which Ed Miliband undertook over the summer to build a coalition of the willing to implement the measures. 

Fears have also been expressed that the measures could tilt the balance in favour of Netanyahu’s far right coalition in the Israeli general elections on the basis that it will galvanise his base and further entrench the laager mentality in a nation in which nearly three-quarters of Jewish Israelis favour a partial or total annexation of the West Bank according to a recent poll for the Jewish People Policy Institute and in which all the leading election candidates oppose a Palestinian state. But while acknowledging that since the attacks of October 7th 2023, Israel has become much more inward-looking and has a “nobody likes us, we don’t care” attitude to the rest of the world, the political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin says that the UK move will not affect the outcomes significantly since domestic issues will be of greater salience and that the bombshell revelations concerning Netanyahu’s failure to act on warnings from the UAE of an imminent Hamas attack on Israel can hardly enhance his prospects.[12] More fundamentally, as Ed Miliband said in the Commons, British foreign policy cannot be outsourced abroad.

The urgency of the meaningful sanctions is starkly emphasised by the Eliminationist Project report authored by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem shared with the Guardian in advance of publication which claims that Israel is working towards the systematic “elimination” of the conditions that sustain Palestinian collective life in the occupied West Bank; an assault “governed by a coherent organising logic” which comprises five “interwoven domains of action”: violence and intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, and ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover. The process bears the imprimatur of Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right minister with broad powers over civilian matters in the West Bank, who sketched out the “blueprint” for the project in 2017 and who in September 2025 promised to use every means possible:

to prevent the danger of a Palestinian state, including bringing about the collapse of the Palestinian Authority . . .  through economic strangulation.[13] 

The clock may well have moved to thirty seconds before midnight.

References

[1] Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Kiran Stacey UK condemns ‘ethnic cleansing by Israeli terrorists’ in West Bank. The Guardian. 9 September 2026 p.8

[2] Ibid

[3] Patrick Wintour. Analysis, With the two-state solution on life-support, Miliband has taken a risk. The Guardian 9 September 2026 p.9

[4] Pippa Crear et al, Guardian 9 September 2026 p1, p.8

[5] Ibid, p.8

[6] John Crace, Rare oasis of calm in Commons as Labour makes break with the past over Palestine Sketch. The Guardian 9 September 2026 p.9

[7] Jewish News, 8 September 2026.

[8] Ben Lynfield, On land obtained by force: Israel’s newly sanctioned settlers cry foul in Britain. The Observer, 13 September 2026 p.27.

[9] Many leading UK rabbis back sanctions in effort to curb settler violence. The Guardian 10 September 2026 p.6.

[10] Emma Graham-Harrison, ‘It’s a good beginning. Ex-PM among Israelis to hail intervention. The Guardian 10 September 2026 p.7

[11] Isabel Coles, Keir Starmer resisted pressure to ban trade with West Bank.The Observer. 13 September 2026 p.26

[12] Ibid

[13] Quique Kirshenbaum and Peter Beaumont ,Israel ‘attacking every aspect of Palestinian life in West Bank, The Guardian. 14 September 2026 pp.20-21

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

What A Moment In Time 🪶 Ed Miliband And Andy Burnham Shift The Dial On Israel-Palestine

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Ninety Three

 

A Morning Thought @ 3265

Packy Carty ✒ The 2021 census numbers tell only half the story, and it's the least interesting half.

Break the 2021 figures down by age instead of blending every generation into one number, and the picture changes. Among over-65s, nearly 60% come from a Protestant background. Among under-15s, that collapses to 32.5%. The crossover sits around age 60 — below it, the state's founding arithmetic has already inverted; above it, what's left is a shrinking, ageing remainder still large enough to drag the headline census figure down to a modest plurality.

That's population momentum at work, not a hidden fertility advantage — the old myth about Catholic families simply outbreeding Protestant ones has been dead for thirty years, and conceding that only strengthens the point. A population still of childbearing age produces more births relative to its size than one that has largely aged past it, regardless of family size, because one group can still reproduce and the other, increasingly, cannot. The North records roughly 21,000 births and 17,000 deaths a year. Because the over-65s skew so heavily Protestant, that cohort alone accounts for something like 10,500 to 11,000 of those deaths, against only 6,300 births into the same background — a net organic decline running into the thousands every year, mechanically, before anyone emigrates or changes their mind about anything.

The generation replacing them isn't drifting toward some neutral middle ground as it grows up either. It is being raised inside a state that still sorts its people from birth across every line of daily life — schooling, housing, and social relationships. Over 90% of children attend segregated schools, an educational system Peter Robinson himself, as First Minister, famously called "a benign form of apartheid." Most go through childhood and adolescence without any meaningful contact or relationships with the other community until adulthood, by which time national identity has already solidified. Long before this generation ever sees a ballot paper, it has been sorted by neighbourhood, schooled in isolation, and shaped by GAA clubs, the Irish language, music, history and a cultural infrastructure built specifically to keep that identity intact. By the time it reaches eighteen, it isn't undecided. It's already Irish.

Unionist commentators point to the 2022 Assembly election, noting that even as a nationalist First Minister took office, the combined unionist bloc still held 37 seats to nationalism's 35. Fair enough — that's the actual number, and no piece built on this argument should pretend otherwise. But a state engineered in 1921 specifically to make that gap unbridgeable now has to fight to hold it at two seats, and it's worth being clear about why that's happened: not because any party has cracked some new political formula, but because the population underneath the whole system has shifted, and whichever party happens to occupy the nationalist ground was always going to be the one left standing to collect it. That party currently is Sinn Féin, and it now sits as the largest single political party in the Assembly, in local government, and at Westminster simultaneously — not because its politics have earned that position, but because the demographic tide described above was always going to wash up somewhere, and it happens to be the vehicle sitting closest to shore. It holds outright control of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, is the largest party on Derry City and Strabane, and dominates Mid Ulster. None of that required a single vote to be won by argument. Partition's founding premise didn't need every seat in the North to end. It only needed the automatic guarantee behind it to go, and that guarantee is already gone regardless of who's currently placed to benefit from its absence.

Demography doesn't translate seamlessly into voting intentions in a standard democracy, and this piece isn't claiming otherwise. But the Northern State was never built as a standard western democracy — it was engineered as a sectarian construct, with identity socialised from nursery school onward inside segregated systems built to produce exactly the outcome they're now producing. The youth cohorts maturing into the electorate every year are drawn overwhelmingly from backgrounds that state was never designed to include as equals. The 37-seat unionist total at Stormont isn't a floor to build back from. Given the age-band data above, it's closer to the ceiling.

Run the political trajectory forward alongside the actuarial math and the destination is hard to argue with. Unionism is moving toward becoming an explicit, permanent political minority inside the six counties — the fate partition was built to impose on nationalists, coming full circle onto the people who designed it. That doesn't have to be the end of the story. A million unionist voters trapped forever on the losing side of a shrinking six-county headcount stay trapped. The same million voters inside an all-Ireland state of over seven million, under proportional representation, where blocs a fraction of that size already decide who governs, become something else — a vote worth courting rather than a minority to be managed. A senior UUP figure has already said as much: unionist TDs could hold the balance of power in a future Dáil. A former Fine Gael Taoiseach has already floated dissolving Stormont into an integrated all-island cabinet with guaranteed unionist seats. That's not republican wishful thinking. That's the establishment on the other side of the border already doing the sum.

The state promised unionism permanent dominance and can no longer deliver it by design. What comes after that isn't extinction. It's the same choice nationalism was handed in 1921, just facing the other way — a permanent minority inside a shrinking fortress, or a seat at a bigger table where the numbers actually work. The population data says that choice is arriving whether anyone plans for it or not.

⏩ Packy Carty is an East Tyrone Socialist Republican. 

The Demographic Slow Cooker

People And Nature ☭ The Russian political prisoner Andrei Trofimov has appeared on a video link to a court hearing on Thursday, after four months’ loss of contact.

28-August-2026



His supporters, who fear he was being mistreated in the notorious IK-9 prison in Petrozavodsk, Karelia, north-western Russia, are relieved – but he is not out of danger.

Andrei Trofimov. Photo from
supporters’ telegram channel

The court heard a claim that prison staff had prevented Trofimov meeting his lawyer. The hearing was adjourned and will continue on 15 September. The court ordered that materials be passed to Trofimov for him to study.

At the start of the hearing, Trofimov read a poem, for his friends, that said:


My friends, I’ll get back from prison.
The age of the mad sultan is finite.
Shame will forever haunt
The idiot who raised a sword against our union.

Human rights organisations had reported last month that lawyers had gone three times to the prison and were not able to meet Trofimov.

At Thursday’s hearing, according to a report by Sota Vision, Trofimov said that on one occasion he had been told that a lawyer had arrived, but not the lawyer’s name, which had made him suspicious. He had asked to be told about visits in advance, in writing, but no letters had reached him.

One of Trofimov’s lawyers, Roman Masalev, and a representative of the prison authorities, also addressed the court.

Trofimov, who is known to his friends as an energetic correspondent, also told the court that he had received no letters since the end of April. Some letters that arrived in March were passed to him only on 3rd July, without either paper to write replies or the censor’s approval.

He said he had made five written complaints to the prison authorities about correspondence being blocked.

The court also heard that Trofimov’s brother had tried unsuccessfully to arrange a visit. The prison representative claimed that, as Andrei was being held in a punishment cell (PKT), there were no visiting rights.

Trofimov, 59, has been a civil society activist since the 1980s, and in 2022 protested publicly against the all-out invasion of Ukraine.

In 2023, Trofimov was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for “incitement to extremism” and “discrediting the Russian army”, due to social media posts he wrote opposing the war in Ukraine. The court stated that he had completed an application form for the Freedom of Russia Legion, and convicted him of preparation to participate in an unlawful armed formation.

Trofimov’s statement to the closed court hearing, ending “Glory to Ukraine. Putin is a dickhead!” was published outside Russia. This resulted in a further trial, at which he was convicted of incitement to terrorism and three years were added to his sentence.

It is not easy, from outside Russia, to help Trofimov – but his supporters are asking us all to draw public attention to his case.

We are preparing an open letter, which we will publish in September. If you wish to sign it and/or help circulate it, please contact the Ukraine Information Group at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.

🔴 More in English about Andrei Trofimov’s case here. Sota Vision’s report and video from court is here.

🔴 More on People & Nature about political prisoners in Russia here.

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Political Prisoner Andrei Trofimov Has Appeared In Court, But Is Not Out Of Danger

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