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Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ The regime controlling Iran are/were a vile hate-filled gang of crooks who ruled in Tehran under the guise of religion and have terrorised the Iranian people for over four decades. 

The first nutter to take power after the Islamic revolution of 1979 was Ayatollah Khomeini after the western backed dictatorship of the Shah was overthrown. The Shah was as ruthless as the Islamic Ayatollahs but looked after western bourgeois interests which was why he was supported with no questions asked. When the latest Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an airstrike nobody should shed any tears.

However, the gang of thugs from Tel Aviv and Washington are little if any better than was Khamenei, and the legality of their attacks on the sovereign nation state of Iran are at best questionable. For Trump in Washington being a criminal breaking international law daily is no different to the professional house breaker plying their trade every night, it comes naturally. In Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu learned the art of genocide in the West Bank, Gaza and earlier in Southern Lebanon which he is attacking presently. This is not to mention charges of corruption levelled at him in Israel. Trump has made it clear, as he did in Venezuela, he will decide who takes over government in Iran after the Israelis and themselves have finished. It should be the Iranian people who decide their future, not Donald Trump.

It is my albeit qualified opinion Donald Trump is unstable, clinically or even criminally insane. One sentence he tells the Iranian people, in that unstable deranged sounding voice, to take control of their country. The next sentence, having told the people to take to the streets, he bombs the shit out of those same streets. The man is clearly unstable, for fucks sake get him locked away.

The Israelis have made it clear they want ‘regime change’, something the Americans deny is one of their goals. The following day that story changes as Trump starts ranting about who will take over the “government of Iran” and how he will “have a say in deciding who is the next government.” The thugs who assist Trump in his genocide - similar to Himmler, Goering, and Bormann assisted Hitler commit mass murder - are Vice President, J.D. Vance, US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, Jared Kushner - Trump's Son in Law - who has nothing to do with government but still goes on official government trips discussing state business, who is a businessman and one of Trump's right-wing propagandists. This may show how close the relationship is between big business and government in the USA. 

The question is, given this corporate relationship, is the present US regime a neo-fascist administration? One thug, Pete Hegseth, boasted; “all the Iranians will see as they look up to the skies will be US and Israeli airpower picking targets until they decide something different”. The Iranian people looking up to the skies are those Trump, on a good day, is encouraging to “take back their country”. Maybe Trump could drop bombs on them while they are attempting this task!!

The Iranians were in discussions with the Americans sorting out a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme when, while still in talks, the US and Israel struck. These talks were evidently a trick! It was the first Trump administration in 2016 who pulled out of a deal they were signatories to agreed back in 2015 under the previous Obama administration with Iran to curb their nuclear programme. The Iranians, the Europeans, Russia, China, and the USA were all in agreement with this deal when Trump, after taking up residence in the White House in 2016, just pulled the plug on the deal. No discussions with the Europeans or the Russians, let alone Iran, he just unilaterally decided it was a “bad deal”.

Scott Lucas of the University College Dublin (UCD) Clinton Institute stated:

I think we can establish the Israelis want regime change whereas the US want the leadership in Iran to accept two conditions then they can survive. One, they must give up their nuclear programme, civilian as well as military. Two, they have to agree to discuss Iran’s ballistic missile programme, in other words, the limits on numbers and size.

Trump claims the Iranians are or were close to developing a nuclear bomb. He has no evidence to support this apparently ludicrous claim as Scott Lucas stated, “Iran does not have a nuclear bomb, they are not even close to having a nuclear bomb or are they planning a nuclear bomb.” Has Trump made the whole nuclear bomb thing up? The Israeli and US airstrikes have hit a school killing many children making either Trump or Netanyahu, or both, child killers. Neither of these tyrants will lose sleep over this act of pedocide. Trump has ranted, in one of his worse moments; “we’re knocking the crap out of them” he told viewers on US television just after the school was obliterated! What kind of a monster is he, another Hitler?

Trump has been reportedly “scathing” with British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. According to Trump Starmer has been “unhelpful” because he, Starmer, for once had the backbone to stand up to Trump, or so it seemed! Trump claimed the “UK has been very uncooperative” simply because Starmer questioned the legality of these attacks on Iran. Eventually Starmer relented, or gave half way, by ambiguously allowing the US to use British airbases for “defensive actions” which covers a ‘multitude of sins’ and can have many interpretations. 

The US President – of sorts – has (at the time of writing) told PM Starmer who is considering sending two Aircraft-Carriers to the Middle East; “we don’t need people that join wars after we’ve already won”. Keir Starmer instead of shitting himself at this rebuff by Trump should be dancing in Downing Street, at last shaking off the dictatorship sometimes called the “special relationship”, which it is not, with the USA! 

The US President continued using the language of a failed history student claiming Starmer “is no Winston Churchill”, referencing the wartime relationship between the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and US President Franklyn D Roosevelt. The circumstances during World War Two were completely different. Churchill wanted the US involved as allies in the war against Nazi Germany, and Roosevelt could not deliver due to election pledges. He was very apologetic but he had pledged to keep the US out of any “European wars” telling the US people; “your boys will not die in foreign wars”. This time it is Trump, as US President, who wants something from Britain so he can carry out illegal acts of terrorism. Donald Trump claims the so-called “special relationship between the UK and US is not what it once was.”

The most annoying aspect about this situation apart from having to listen to Trump's lies is the response of the European political leaders. They all appear shit scared of the tyrant, just as their predecessors were of Hitler who mocked British leader, Neville Chamberlain. Now Trump seems to be courting other more compliant European leaders including Germany’s Friedrich Merz, probably telling him he can offer a ‘special relationship’ now the British have become “uncooperative” - which the Chancellor will bite his hand off for. 

Why, oh why, do European leaders place so much importance on being well in with a criminally insane man? Twenty-Six County Minister for Foreign Affairs, Helen McEntee, having been asked “eight times” to clarify her position on the legality of Trump and Netanyahu’s attacks, “stopped short of calling the US and Israelis attacks on Iran a breach of international law” (Irish Daily Mirror 6th march). Perhaps the reluctance of the Twenty-Six County administration to really attack Trump and his cohort Netanyahu is to a certain extent understandable. We are a small country which is already forcibly partitioned by a larger regionally powerful neighbour to the east, perhaps the administration maybe worried about antagonising an even larger power, the USA, to the west particularly with a lunatic at the wheel! Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, and Tanaiste, Simon Harris, should definitely not go – but they will – to Washington for the Saint Patricks Day festivities. Consider such an invite equal to same from Vlad the Impaler! Do not associate Ireland with a mass murderer!!

Who will stop Trump and his partner in war crimes, Netanyahu? Trump has already proved he has no regard for so-called international law and he just ignores the United Nations. Remember Hitler and his contempt for the ‘League of Nations’? Appeasement after appeasement led ultimately to the Second World War. Trump has taken Venezuela, again dictating regime change, and who would succeed Nicolas Maduro, deposed using force by the US, then threatening to invade Greenland, and supplying the Israelis with ordnance to bomb Gaza. Hitler had invaded Austria, and Czechoslovakia before Poland in 1939 in much the same way as Trump has carried out his takeovers. 

Were the actions of Hitler used as a blueprint by Trump? There are comparisons, very stark comparisons, between Trump in 2026 and Hitler 1939! European leaders, in sharp contrast to their reactions to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, appear to tolerate and even agree with anything Trump does. Imagine if he decides his dislike of Keir Starmer is so great it is time for ‘regime change’ in London? Or, if the ‘socialists’ won a Presidential election in France who Trump disapproves of, what then? ‘Regime change’ in Paris? What of the Dublin government if Trump gets annoyed with the Dail? Time for Irish ‘regime change’?

Liberal democracy is dead in some of Trump’s immediate satellite neighbours and now he is doing so in the Middle-East. Europe could be next and to think differently is possibly storing up trouble. A European trade embargo on the US may be costly to the middle-classes but the US bourgeoisie would feel the heat as well. War is not a suggestion but trade barriers on Trump's USA are feasible. 

Something must be done and quickly before the whole world is under Trumps jackboot!! This is not a war it is the obliteration of a militarily weak country by a super power and their cohorts in Tel Aviv. Admittedly the Iranian regime are not good people, they are murdering bastards, but their overthrow is for the people of Iran not Donald ‘lunatic’ Trump! It is akin to gangsters falling out and the Saint Valentines Day massacre in 1929. The hoodlums in Washington and Tel Aviv have fallen out with the weaker but equally crooked gangsters in Tehran.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Trump, Netanyahu And The Iranian Regime 💣 Gangsters At War!

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3084

Jim Duffy ✍ Absolutely right. They needed to fire a shot across her bow.

They let Higgins away with things at the start, and he got away with murder. He'd make endless statements that were unconstitutional, speeches that contradicted Irish foreign policy, and frequently caused backlashes against Ireland.
 
In Nigeria, Islamist terrorists massacred a large number of Christian worshippers in a church. It made international headlines. The terrorists admitted their responsibility, and that it was motivated by religious hate. The Nigerian government confirmed all that. Higgins issued a statement sympathising, but neglected to mention that it was a religious hate attack carried out by a hard line Islamist terror group. Instead he suggested it was the fault of climate change!!!

There was outrage all over Nigeria at his comment. Christian leaders and Muslim leaders alike called on him to apologise and to call it what it was - a religious hate crime. A Nigerian Catholic archbishop appeared on RTÉ Radio 1's News at One to explain how offensive and hurtful the President's comments were, and called him to apologise.
 
Higgins' response was to stand over his wrong comments, and get angry when challenged on it.
 
When Higgins' letter to the Iranian president was released Higgins stated that he knew for a fact that it was leaked by Israel. He was 100% wrong. It was released by the Iranian Foreign Ministry on its X account. It was open that it had released it. It had nothing to do with Israel.
 
Journalists at a press conference in the UN, where for some reason he headed the Irish delegation at a Gaza conference (Irish presidents never attend UN meetings as they constitutionally are not part of the executive. God knows why the government let him go!) pointed out that he was wrong (Big mistake. Michael D loses it if told he is wrong), and pointed out the Iranian Foreign Ministry, not Israel, released the letter, and if he had checked the Foreign Ministry X account he would see it there.
Michael D completely lost the head, and began shouting, saying he knew for a fact Israel had released it to attack him.
 
The UN session was meant to focus world attention on Gaza, but instead the Irish president shouting at journalists made international headlines - to the fury of the Secretary-General. he ending up telling the government 'don't ever send that arrogant man over here again!'
 
The government was mortified but they had let him run riot for years. The media rarely covered his disasters in foreign affairs (and there were many) as they had a soft spot for him so stayed mum every time he fucked up.
 
So the government is right to slap down Connolly when she made an unconstitutional, ill-timed intervention. They do not want another out-of-control president riding rough-shot over the constitution and intervening in international affairs. 

Higgins did no end of damage to Ireland's international reputation, at various times offending all the Americas, Africa, Asia and the EU with stupid comments. They don't want Connolly to do the same.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Reining In The President

Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 23-February-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ French unions’ solidarity call.
⬤ “Left” conscription paradox.
⬤ Kherson defiant.
⬤ Displaced Ukrainians.
⬤ Under Russian & Israeli bombardment.
⬤ Russia tortures & kills Ukrainian POWs: the evidence.
⬤ Russia abducts Ukrainian children.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Kherson father and daughter abducted, tortured and given huge sentences for trying to escape Russian occupation (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 20th)

Russia’s FSB to receive unlimited power to block access to Internet and mobile phones in occupied Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 20th)

Seven Ukrainian teenagers brought back after abuse and threats in occupied territory (Ukrainska Pravda, February 20th)

The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Seitveli Seitabdiev (Crimea Platform, February 20th)

Russia uses illegal ruling outlawing a different ‘Crimean Tatar Battalion’ for huge sentences against Ukrainian POWs (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 19th)

‘Witness’ changes story to fit prosecution in Russia’s ‘trial’ of 75-year-old Ukrainian political prisoner Volodymyr Ananiev (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 17th)

Crimean seized at Moscow airport faces up to 20-year sentence for donations to Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 16th)

Life Under Occupation (Alter Pravo, January 2026)

News from Ukraine

Frontline city Kherson remains defiant four years after Russia’s invasion (Observer, February 21st)

Russia readmitted to Paralympics after Heraskevych banned for remembering the Ukrainian athletes it killed (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 18th)

ZMINA & “Someone Loves Someone” held Evening of Love and Equality (Zmina, February 17th)

Ex-Energy Minister Arrested Trying to Flee Ukraine (Kyiv Post, February 15th)

War-related news from Russia

Memory replacement: Gulag history museum to be emasculated (Mediazona, 20 February)

Severed ears, executions and a crucified mouse: journalists examine Russian general's messages (Ukrainska Pravda, February 20th)

“The study had nothing to do with treatment”: Russian institute that supplied toxin used on Navalny looked into methods for its detection (The Insider, February 20th)

Suppliers of death: The Insider identifies another 300 companies making purchases on behalf of the Russian military (The Insider, February 18th)

“She fell in love with a Ukrainian soldier. Russia put her on trial for treason” (Meduza, 18 February)

How Russia forces troops in to combat (Meduza, 18 February)

“But Russians are resisting” – Meet Putin’s exiled opponents in Europe (New Eastern Europe, February 16th)

What the Wagner group did: “the Central African Republic supports Trump” (iStories, 14 February)

Analysis and comment

Under both Israeli and Russian bombardment (Labour Hub, February 21st)

“For a just and lasting peace, solidarity with Ukraine’s resistance” – French unions’ call to demonstrate in Paris on 21 February (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, February 20th)

Statement on the Designation of the International Memorial Association as an ‘Undesirable Organization’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 19th)

Ukraine’s Displaced Must Not Be Ignored in Peace Talks (Zois, February 19th)

The Conscription Paradox: Why Western Leftists Who Weaponise Ukrainian Mobilisation Betray the People They Claim to Defend (Red Mole Substack, February 18th)

Research of human rights abuses

Abduction and militarisation of Ukrainian children — a threat to Europe: Onysiia Syniuk spoke on the sidelines of the Munich Conference (Zmina, February 16th)

Human rights organizations call on the government to ensure dignified evacuation and accommodation for people in need of inpatient care (Zmina, February 19th)

International solidarity

Introducing Soya: new fighter (Solidarity Collectives, 22 February)

Appeal for support / sad news from Dnipro (Facebook, February 19th)

Ukraine at the Berlin film festival: Traces (Russian Reader, February 19th)

Upcoming events

Monday February 23rd, 1:15 PM - 2:45 PM Eastern Standard Time (US). Ukraine’s Anti-Imperialist Struggle: on line meeting.

Sunday 1 March, 6.0-8.0pm, Shoty Cafe (upper ground), SW7 3DL. Write letters to Russia’s political prisoners. No knowledge of Russian is required. All materials and guidance will be provided.

Wednesday 4 March, 6–8pm, Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Public Meeting. Wilson Room, Portcullis House, Parliament, 1 Victoria Embankment, London SW1A 2JR. Chair: John McDonnell MP. Speakers include: Mick Antoniw MS / Yuliya Yurchenko, Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine / Yuliia Bond, Ukrainian Association of Wales / Tanya Vyhovsky, Vermont State Senator / Mariia Pastukh, Vsesvit – Ukraine Solidarity Collective / Johanna Baxter MP / Clive Lewis MP / Stephen Russell, TUC International / Mick Whelan, former ASLEF General Secretary 

🔴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:
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To stop it, please reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field.

News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 184

Seamus Kearney 🎤 On his return to Belfast Joe Fenton was arrested by the Internal Security Unit on the 24th February 1989 and taken to a house in the Lenadoon area of West Belfast.

Freddie Scappaticci, prior to lifting Fenton, told his handler that Fenton would probably not survive this interrogation. This second meeting with Scappaticci and Fenton was not a mild affair, and violence ensued throughout his interrogation.

There might have been an attempt to transport Fenton to Dundalk on the orders of Brendan Hughes, who was in Dublin at the time, but all that came to an abrupt end when Fenton told Scappaticci and the former Marine, both men standing together in the bedroom, that the only reason he returned from England was because his handler assured him that his interrogators would protect him as they were on the same team. Little did Fenton realise that he had just signed his own death warrant for sure.

As was standard practice with Stakeknife, if a person being interrogated by him didn't present a threat to his personal position, then he would interrogate and vacate the scene, his particular job completed. On the other hand, if he felt his position was threatened then he would have to eliminate that threat, which in this case meant Joe Fenton couldn't possibly reach Brendan Hughes and tell him about the treachery of the men in charge of the ISU.

Therefore, instead of leaving the scene Freddie Scappaticci allowed his colleague to vacate the house but stayed behind to make sure Joe Fenton kept his secret to himself. He moved into the kitchen and waited for the firearm to arrive.

Having gone back upstairs and grabbing Fenton by the scruff of the neck, both men struggled on the staircase as Scappaticci dragged him into the street. As far as an IRA operation went, this was bizarre and completely unconventional, indicating that Scappaticci had to dispatch Fenton into the afterlife himself for fear he might reveal his secret.

While being force marched toward the Glen Road bus terminus, Fenton suddenly broke free and attempted to escape, but Scappaticci immediately shouted to his armed IRA accomplice to open fire, which he did, hitting him in the back and felling him. With Scapatticci standing over a badly wounded British agent, he ordered the gunman to finish him off with 3 shots to the head. Joe Fenton lay dead, along with his secret about Stakeknife.

After leaving the execution site Scappaticci immediately phoned his handler and briefed him on what had just happened. Speaking on the phone, he explained that he had no choice but to kill Joe Fenton himself, as Fenton had found out that he, Scappaticci, was a British agent, like himself. He felt his cover had been blown. Ten minutes later the RUC received a call about a body lying on the Glen Road.

When the news reached Dublin, Brendan Hughes went apoplectic and immediately enquired as to the reason why Fenton had been shot dead out of hand. The reply from Scappaticci was that there was ' too much Brit activity in the area', which meant Fenton couldn't be transported to Hughes.

Brendan Hughes did not believe this feeble excuse, realised Belfast was rotten, became frightened for his life and resigned from the Army he loved.

The controversy surrounding the execution of Joe Fenton resulted in an IRA Court of Inquiry which took place in Letterkenny, County Donegal, chaired by the Northern Command operations officer. One of the most pressing questions which was raised at the Inquiry was why Fenton was not delivered to Hughes and his staff, which drew attention to Scappaticci and the ISU. The outcome was that new 'checks and balances' would be introduced thereby limiting the authority of the Internal Security Unit to execute so freely. 

Perhaps for the first time, and at Brendan Hughes's persistence, Scappaticci and the ISU were at last coming under some sort of scrutiny.

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act IX

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seven

 

A Morning Thought @ 3083

Gary Robertson ⚽ Let’s get one thing very clear from the outset - emotions run high in derbies.

As football fans we know this and are prepared for it. However, what happened at Ibrox was shameful and somewhat reminiscent of the dark days of the 1980s.
 
Glasgow derbies aren’t just football matches. They are tribal, historical: two sides of a religious divide coming together to battle it out for 90 mins for supremacy. They’re cauldrons of hate, bitterness, religious sectarian bigotry, political and national identities on the line, paramilitary trappings on show,. Those loyal to the crown and the union on one side those opposed to British colonialism and the monarchy on the other.
 
This is somewhat of a simplification but you get the picture - you have two sides who for various reasons hate each other.
 
This isn’t a hundred year “war” but instead one that stretches way back for centuries. Sunday cast light once again on what is an ignored issue in Scottish society: anti-Catholic hate.
 
I make no apologies for using the words “hate” and “hatred” - there’s no other way to describe it.
It’s “acceptable” hatred though. Sing songs about killing Muslims, Jews, Gays or those of different races and you’ll be quite rightly arrested and charged with a hate crime. In the west of Scotland sing songs about killing Catholics and being up to your knees in “Fenian blood” (let’s not argue about this, the majority who sing this have no idea who the Fenians were and most probably think the Irish Republican brotherhood were a forerunner to the Wolfe Tones, an Irish Bee Gees if you like) and at worst you’ll be told to “keep it down” - not stop but lower your voice. It’s “acceptable” to be a religious bigot, and that bigotry runs deep.
 
Now this is a football column and you might wonder when I’m going to get to the game but when Mr McIntyre and TPQ approached me to write about Scottish football I knew somewhere along the line I’d need to talk about these things. Ignoring problems in society doesn’t make them go away. Facing them head on is what’s needed, and it’s time anti-Catholic hatred in Scotland was treated the same way as anti-Muslim hatred or white supremacy. We need to stop pretending that in 2026 this is merely a “football problem”. This is societal, it runs much much deeper, and the scenes at Ibrox whilst shocking and deeply disturbing at the same time were not entirely unpredictable.
 
Tensions already high, seasons on the line, to the victors the spoils to the defeated another year of failure.
 
The match itself was entirely forgettable, two disallowed goals (no Liam Scales wasn’t offside, IMO, but of course you’d expect me to say that - right Steve R?) Extra time that couldn’t separate two poor versions of Glasgow big two and it all came down to who held their nerve in a penalty shoot out. 120 mins of mediocre football and a season defining penalty shootout loomed large.
 
Celtic prevailed and Rangers wilted.
 
Fans in the Broomloan Road stand celebrated enthusiastically, all 7,500 Celtic fans. Some spilled onto the pitch to take photos with their heroes to capture moments on camera for the future - to say I was there when this happened - snapshots for history. This was all way too much for the Rangers fans in the Copeland Road stand who armed with bottles, bars and flares rushed onto the park and toward the celebrating Celts.
 
What ensued will make headlines around the world, not because a poor patched together Celtic side managed to defeat their biggest rivals in their own backyard but because of the scenes of carnage: Celtic staff attacked, grown men dragged off the park, lines of police and stewards, police horses, injured fans and officials and God knows what outside the stadium. We’ve all seen the video, I don’t think I need to dwell on it other than to pray the guy was okay and no lasting damage was done (at the time of writing there’s no further news so I’m hoping he’s fine).

Of course the Scottish media were quick as always to try and suggest that celebrating Celtic fans were to blame for this carnage. In particular, Emma Dodds of Premier Sports who suggested this was bound to happen when you give Celtic their full allocation. TalkSport claiming Celtic fans were ripping the stand apart, attempting to tear down nets and goal posts. And less said about the BBC and STV reporting the better.
 
You’ll struggle to find someone in Scotland who’s impartial enough to admit that the fault for this lies with fans of the Rangers whose hatred spilled over into the scenes we saw. How dare some uppity Tim’s celebrate a victory!
 
In the cold light of day, and as the dust begins to settle, whilst both clubs have questions to ask, we must not pretend this was a “both sides battle” - it wasn’t. Once again the Rangers ultras, the Union Bears, showed they simply can’t handle defeat. This is what happens when behaviour becomes unchecked and normalised.
 
Sunday was a symptom of a much deeper problem and it’s time the Scottish government faced this reality and treated anti-Catholic, anti-Irish hate the way they treat all other forms of discrimination. As long as we keep turning a blind eye to this then these things will continue to happen.
 
Sunday was simply a boiling over of the simmering pan of shame that is Scottish society.
 
I’m looking forward to football filling this column next week but because I don’t talk about it, don’t think, to plagiarise a former IRA chief, “it hasn’t gone away, you know”

Til next time …

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Shame And Blame Game

Raw Story ★ Written by Alexander Willis. Recommended by Christy Walsh.

An explosive allegation against President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein has surfaced in the Justice Department’s recent release of 3.5 million files, including disturbing details about a supposed body allegedly buried at one of Trump’s more than a dozen golf courses.

According to an FBI document released by the DOJ, the agency received a tip in June of 2021 from an individual whose name has been redacted, but is described as an alleged “victim,” a former member of the Sinaloa Cartel, and a close confidant of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

According to the document, the individual was formally interviewed by an FBI agent, and accused Trump of being aware of and having funded “underage sex parties at the Donald Trump Golf course.”

That individual went on to claim that they had “recordings of Trump, Epstein and Maxwell discussing marketing strategies for high profile sex parties,” according to the FBI official who drafted the document, their name also redacted. The individual claimed that in one of the recordings, Trump can be heard stating “he was aware of the underage sex parties.”

Continue @ Raw Story.

‘Buried At The Trump Golf Course’ 🪶 Explosive FBI Interview Unearthed In Epstein Files

Barry Gilheany ✍😔 The aftermath of last month’s parliamentary by-election in the Greater Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton in which Labour came third after Reform UK and the victorious Green candidate, Hannah ‘The Plumber’ Spencer has seen Labour entering into another of its long nights of its soul. 

The first by-election victory for the Green Party was a seismic enough event. It overturned a Labour majority of more than 13,000 votes in a constituency which had been a safe Labour seat since Labour’s wipe out at the hands of the National Government in 1931 in the aftermath of Ramsey MacDonald’s desertion of Labour over cuts to unemployment benefit in that year’s emergency budget. 

This was only the second by election since 1945 in which neither of the Big Two parties of government finished in first or second place. In this respect, the Labour loss was qualitatively different to its defeats in the 1980s to the breakaway Social Democratic Party; to the SNP in Hamilton in 1967 or Govan in 1988 or the usual mid-term kickings that unpopular governments receive. It was a real alarm signal; that Labour’s traditional electoral coalition of manual working class, progressive middle class and BME voters was sundering past the point of no return. The former segment is deemed to be switching to Reform UK, much of the middle segment and the South Asian Muslim portions of the BME electorate have gone over to the Greens in what is now an era of five party politics in England (Labour also faces nationalist challenges in Scotland and Wales.). The issue of migration with all the emotivism of the ‘small boats’ imagery; nativist fears for the safety of ‘our women and girls’ at the hands of male predators from ‘alien’ cultures; sympathy for the plight of migrants and refugees and abhorrence of the racist tenor of migration discourse is a major pivot on which debates on Labour’s hang. It is in this context that the latest migration proposals by the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood need to be understood.

But for the outbreak of the Iran war, the roll out of the Home Secretary’s latest migration policy would arguably have been the top political story coming as it did in the wake of Labour’s chastening defeat in Gorton and Denton. There are five key changes to existing asylum and refugee support. Firstly, under the new rules, those granted refugee protection will have this reviewed every thirty months whereas before refugees were granted five years leave to remain and after that could apply for indefinite leave to remain. Now should their country of origin be no longer deemed as dangerous, the government can return them. These changes have been signed into law by Mahmood without the need for a vote. In practice, many refugees will continue to qualify as such given the intractable nature of conflicts in countries such as Sudan and Eritrea along with the continuing conflicts across the Middle East.[1]

Secondly, on visas, Mahmood has temporarily halted new study visas for students from Cameroon, Sudan, Myanmar, and Afghanistan, as well as skilled worker visas from Afghanistan only on the grounds that the high numbers of arrivals on those visas who went on to claim asylum and the refusal of those countries to take back people whose claims had been rejected. Critics point out that Mahmood has just closed off a set of safe and legal routes for people who come from these four countries where conflict, war and human rights abuses persist. Thirdly, the Home Office is piloting a new scheme in which 150 families of failed asylum seekers resident in hotels will be offered payments of up to £40,000 to return voluntarily to their countries. These families have already been identified, contacted, and have seven days to accept the offer or face forcible removal.[2]

Fourthly, the government is changing the law so that it no longer has a legal duty to provide financial support to asylum seekers, and will now stop payments to anyone working illegally, convicted of a crime or of independent financial means. Provisions have existed for many years granting asylum seekers the right to work if their initial asylum claim has not been determined after twelve months of their own, though Mahmood is now expanding the number of jobs for which they can apply. In practice, however, individual asylum seekers will have to receive permission to work from the Home Office. Finally, Mahmood is doubling the length of time required before many migrants can acquire settlement rights from five to ten years. Refugees and those accessed benefits after being granted limited leave to remain may have to wait twenty years.[3]

In the aftermath of the Gorton and Denton by election defeat, Mahmood’s migration proposals are acting as lightening rod for backbenchers in the PLP and even some on the front bench who are urging Keir Starmer’s government to tack left in order to claim back those progressive voters who, it is feared, are deserting Labour in droves to the Greens and Liberal Democrats and who have been dismayed by the lack of a progressive offer after Gorton and Denton and who were distinctly unimpressed by Starmer’s response in the form of a letter to MPs in which he repeated his “extremist” attack line on Zack Polanksi’s party due to its advocacy of drug liberalisation and withdrawal from NATO while not mentioning anything about the cost of living.[4]

Just as the government’s welfare reform proposals last year galvanised concerned MPs into action, so a similar process is unfolding with migration and asylum. A letter drafted by Tony Vaughan, MP for Folkestone and Hythe (coincidentally or not, an embarkment point for the traffic of small boats across the English Channel) has attracted the signatures of a hundred of his PLP colleagues, says that the proposals undermined the government’s commitment to integration and social cohesion, saying that “we can change our immigration system for the better without forgetting who we are as a Labour Party” and that public confidence in the asylum system would not be restored “by threatening to forcibly remove refugees who have lived here lawfully for 15 to 20 years.” 

In the same vein, for the campaigning MP Stella Creasy, opposition to the proposals represented “True Labour not Blue Labour” (the socially conservative and economically dirigiste faction to which Mahmood belongs and whose most high-profile figure was the departed Svengali Morgan MacSweeney). In her opinion “There’s no ‘fairness’ in repeatedly spending money on asking victims of trafficking and civil war if they are still in that category’ or in ‘keeping Ukrainians, Iranians [and] Afghans alike in a perpetual state of war.’ She also warns of “the inevitable Windrush-style scandal coming that none of us stood on a manifesto to implement.” For Sarah Owen, a leader of the Tribune group of centre-left Labour MPs, the spectre of Trump’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention of children arises with the proposal to deport children and families and that “Moving the goalposts who have upped their lives to work in and for our country is unjustifiable.”[5]

The urgency to court progressive voters through oppositional stances on Mahmood’s asylum and immigration policies is, for their proponents, starkly highlighted by data circulated by senior Labour politicians suggesting that Labour could drop from first to fourth place in London in the forthcoming local government elections in May, losing control of all but two of their councils, with the Greens surging into first place. A new data modelling technique from the data firm Bombe, which correctly predicted the Gorton and Denton by-election result, forecasts that Labour, which holds 21 boroughs in London, could lose flagship authorities such as Hackney and Lambeth to the Greens. Labour is projected to lose more than half its council seats in the Prime Minister’s backyard, Camden, which would fall to no overall control. Labour could be left with an outright majority in only Newham and Redbridge councils. The Greens, if they were to run candidates in every ward, could also take Lewisham, Waltham Forest, and Greenwich, as well as Wandsworth, Hammersmith and Fulham, Hounslow, and Brent. According to the Bombe model, Labour could lose more than half of its council seats in the capital – 741. The Greens would pick up 530, the Tories 77 and the Liberal Democrats 72. Nine boroughs would be no overall control, with Greens the largest party in four, Labour in two and one each for Reform and the Tories. The Lib Dems and Labour would have the same number of seats in Southwark, while the Tories and Greens would be neck-and-neck in Westminster.[6]

This chronicle of carnage foretold represents for Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, an “existential threat” for Labour in May and who warns “If we don’t unite progressives, we risk opening the door to the darkness and division of Reform.” For Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics, this prospective “political earthquake” for Labour is the consequence of the national party having “taken London for granted for years” and summoning “all their efforts on targeting Reform-prone areas” which has led “to this huge flank exposed on their left.” In the words of one Labour source “the dead end of McSweeneyism must be abandoned before it’s too late.” There has to be a thumbs down for those like the departed Chief of Staff “who ridicule Labour values and think we can afford to sacrifice our core vote by mimicking the performative cruelty of Suella Braverman.”[7]

As well as electoral calculus, there is an overwhelming moral imperative for the Hundred to oppose the Mahmood proposals when one considers the explicitly racist history of British immigration policy. For by increasing periods for application for UK citizenship and rights to remain by decades and by preventing family unions for so many categories of migrants, this Labour government seems determined to replicate the “hostile environment” for refugees of Theresa May when she was Home Secretary which created the conditions for the Windrush Scandal. And in relation to the Caribbean, the Home Office is continuing with the policies that have fractured generations of families. Take the case of eight-year-old Lati-Yana Stephanie Brown left destitute in Jamaica after the devastation of Hurricane Melissa in late October. But after her UK-resident parents appealed for the Home Office to speed up her visa application, officials rejected it and Lari-Yana has been left to sleep on the floor of her elderly grandmother’s destroyed home[8].

But the rejection was based on factual errors, according to Lati-Yana’s mother Kerrian Bigby. Correspondence with Dawn Butler, her MP, raised concerns about “misrepresentations” in the decision notice including the claim that Bigby does not have full parental responsibility, which she says is false. The doubling down by the Home Office on this decision speaks to the historical truth and reality that Britain’s immigration system routinely separates children from their parents with little regard for the trauma that follows in its wake.[9]

In Caribbean history, family separation was built into the slavery system. And by the effects of the 1971 Immigration Act which made it harder for “New” Commonwealth citizens to enter the UK and the intergeneration scars caused by the leaving behind of thousands in the Caribbean including the “barrel children,” sustained by love, yet carrying the weight of separation have lasted to this day. The author Nadine White relates how her father never came to terms with his separation from his parents right up to his death at the age of 49.[10]

For the author and journalist George Monbiot, a descendant of East European Jewish refugees, the current discourse and received prejudices around migrants bear more than uncanny echoes of migration policy and debate almost exactly a century ago. For in 1924, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin sought to appease right wing opinion Sir William Joynson-Hicks as home secretary. Having in the words of Martin Pugh in his 2005 book Hurrah for the Blackshirts! “established himself as an unapologetic antisemite,” in post he “raised the hurdle” for immigrants to achieve “naturalisation” (equivalent to indefinite leave to remain) “from five to 10 years, and to 15 years for Russians”. “Russians” tended to mean Jewish refugees, fleeing pogroms and other persecutions. As the historian David Cesarani has noted, the home secretary “issued instructions to immigration to increase their vigilance and never to give the benefit of the doubt to an alien attempting to enter the country.” He visited the ports “to examine the tighter procedures and encourage officials to greater zeal.” While the current incumbent at the Home Office may not be taking quite such a hands-on approach, and while Shabana Mahmood’s pronouncements may lack the explicit nativist prejudices of Joynson-Hicks, there is more than an echo of history in her policies.[11]

The zones of public opinion then, as now, were flooded, Steve Bannon-style of the ordure of paranoia, misinformation, and nativist prejudice around immigrants. The right wing press had for two decades led hues and cries around the “flood” of “aliens” and “undesirables”, code for Jews who were seen as “un-English”, refusing to assimilate, who “leeched” off the state, were threats to “white women”, were blamed for housing shortages and unemployment and put out conspiracies about the creation of a Jewish world order. Fast forward a hundred years and right-wing media spaces are agog with accusations that Muslims and immigrants fail to assimilate; that they are a threat to white womanhood; take jobs and houses from the natives and that Muslims in Britain seek to create an Islamic world order in the form of a global caliphate.[12]

Economic metrics also stack up against the Home Secretary’s new immigration and asylum regime. For new visa restrictions have hit middle-skilled jobs across a wide range of industries faster than domestic training and higher wages can address the problem. A growing number of job vacancies have emerged for butchers, chefs, cancer scientists, deckhands, and sheepshearers. Net migration has fallen by 78% in two years, dropping from a record peak of 944,000 in early 2023 to about 204,000 in the year ending June 2025. A report from Oxford University’s Migration Observatory found little evidence to support the government’s belief that employers would train and rely on domestic staff. It found that labour shortages are driven by poor pay and conditions, not just lack of skills, leaving sectors such as social care in limbo without domestic reform.[13]

Professor Samra Turajlic, director of the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, in referencing the loss of a prospective scientist to her research programme due to the cumulative cost of visa fees, healthcare surcharges and uncertainty over settlement, writes that the proposed changes to indefinite leave to remain are stoking anxiety. The doubling of the waiting period for settlement from five to ten years would affect the majority of internationally recruited researchers at her institute. Arguing that stability is a necessity for long-term scientific success as scientific breakthroughs develop over many years and that it is necessary for UK remaining globally competitive when recruiting international talent, Professor Turajlic emphasises that the current five-year pathway to settlement must be retained for scientists, along with the three-year fast-track route for those on global talent visas.[14]

It is to be hoped that these moral, economic, and political arguments against the Home Secretary’s migration proposals gain greater traction and will reach critical mass within the Parliamentary Labour Party and wider sections of the labour movement. After all, to quote Harold Wilson, the Labour Party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing.

References

[1] Diane Taylor and Kiran Stacey. Asylum system in flux. Refugee status and visa brake applied. The Guardian. 6 March 2026 p.15

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Ben Quinn Analysis. Backbenchers riled over what party says on migration – and what it doesn’t on economy. The Guardian. 6 March 2026 p.15

[5] Kiran Stacey and Diane Taylor. Mahmood mimics Trump with her refugee proposals, say Labour MPs. The Guardian. 6 March 2026 pp. 1 and 14

[6] Pippa Crear. Labour ‘must court progressives to avoid catastrophe. The Guardian. 7 March 2026 p.14

[7] Ibid


[8] Nadine White. Whitehall is still tearing Caribbean families apart. Guardian Opinion. 2 December 2025 p.3

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] George Monbiot. It’s 2026 – time to stop putting new gloss on old bigotries. The Guardian Journal. 5 March 2026 pp.1-2

[12] Ibid, p.2

[13] John Simpson & Catherine Nellan. Immigration revolt against Mahmood’s plans grows. The Observer. 8 March 2026 p.12.

[14] Samra Turajlic. Offer scientists stability or the UK will lose out in economic growth and health. The Observer. 8 March 2026 p.32

⏩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.

Twist Or Turn 🪶 Shabana Mahmood’s Immigration Plans And Labour’s Post Gorton And Denton Existential Crisis

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