Social Items

TPQ

MERRY XMAS 2025 TO ALL OUR READERS @ THE PENSIVE QUILL 

By Dixie Elliot
CHRISTMAS IS NOT A TIME TO BE LISTENING TO THE HATE THEOLOGY OF THE  PASTORDS AND THEIR THREATS OF HELL.
CHRISTMAS IS THE SEASON OF LOVE, NOT HATE.

TAKE TO THE BEER NOT THE BIBLE.
INDULGE IN BOOZE NOT BILE.
 GOD IS NOT GREAT  -  WHISKEY IS

PEACE TO PALESTINE & FREEDOM FROM JUDEO-NAZISM
BE GAY - DON'T PRAY

Merry Xmas 2025

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ In April last year, word came through to me that a relative through marriage had died in Peamount Hospital. To me she was always known as Aunt Cecilia.

Cecilia Conway

When in prison Cecilia Conway would exchange letters with me. She and her husband Matt each Christmas would send me a card. I always found her correspondence strongly supportive, the demeanour she conveyed warm. Empathy was not a trait lacking from her character.

Upon release I met both her and Matt while a guest at a Republican Sinn Fein Ard Fheis. The late Ruairi O'Bradaigh introduced me to them. While I was not drawn to that brand of politics, I knew it to be genuinely held. Republican Sinn Fein whatever its limitations was never a fertile ground for career politics to grow. The path trodden was a bumpy one, littered with setbacks, frustrations, with nothing hurting quite so much as the feeling of betrayal so often visited on the camp by those who craved constitutionalizing and gagged for gravy from the aptly named train.

As a couple their joint fidelity to a sense of republicanism that had had more principle than potential, led them to part ways with Sinn Fein once the 1986 Ard Fheis approved what was for the Conways a cardinal sin. To their mind the purgatory of political isolation was easier for them to adjust to than the hell of partitionist assemblies. A former member of Sinn Fein this morning described with a large dose of humour how the careerists would knock lumps out of each other while jostling in the queue to get jobs in Stormont. That was not for the Conways. Republican Sinn Fein seemed the natural home for both. 

On the morning of Cecelia's funeral I headed out to New Abbey Cemetery, Kilcullen. A Saturday, it was a beautiful sunny day which clashes with my false memory of graveyards as being cold places on the day of interment. At Kildare train station I was fortunate to get picked up by Des Dalton. Together we headed to the church and short journey to the cemetery. Cecelia was given a republican send off, fitting for a volunteer in Cumann na mBban.

At 87 Cecilia had lived a long life. Matt  Born in Dundalk it was through her husband Matt, who predeceased her by 8 years, that she became involved in republican political activism. Domiciled in England the couple returned to Ireland in 1968 and immediately immersed themselves in the republican project

It was through her activism in the campaign groups around the prison issues including the H-Block Armagh days that she entered my life. 

They remained committed to the republican vision and as expected:

They took the Republican side when Goulding and co betrayed the Republic in 1969/70 and were extremely active, especially around the Border areas throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Both were involved in Sinn Féin in those years and set up the Kilcullen Cumann.
In November 1986 when the Movement was once more betrayed by Gerry Adams and Co Cecilia was again to the fore and she and Matt were among those who regrouped as Republican Sinn Féin in the West County Hotel.

Myself and Des, her long-term comrade, left the cemetery, knowing that we had observed the ground being nourished by enveloping her remains. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Cecilia Conway

Pádraic Mac Coitir ✒ It's great to see some Irish journalists like Colin Sheridan speak out about the despicable stance the hierarchy of the GAA led by that liberal Jarlath Burns.


For months many GAA members, including current and former players take to the streets and standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinian people. Gaels against Genocide regularly take part in marches and rallies as well as writing to newspapers calling on the GAA to stop using Allianz insurance. This article explains why they could, and should, stop.

I'm a member of the GAA for years and as I got older and understood the recent politics of it I stopped supporting the hierarchy. They welcomed with open arms the British queen to Croke Park, they allowed rugby to be played there and they advertise jobs for the PSNI in their greedy pursuit for more money.

I read the watery statement from Burns about why they are going to continue their link with Allianz. Look how long it took the hierarchy to issue a statement on Gaza whereas they couldn't get statements out about the nazi regime in Ukraine quickly enough. They had Ukrainian children bringing trophies on to the pitch before All Ireland finals but wouldn't dream of letting Palestinian kids do the same.

For years many critics of the GAA referred to them as the Grab All Association and it's very apt in this situation. Shame on Burns and the rest of them.
 
Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican
prisoner and current political activist.

Grab All Association

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ The bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, that gang of international criminals whose actions are perfectly legal under bourgeois law, that is they are allowed to legally rob working class people of their fruits produced by ‘labour power’ on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. 

The ruling-class, called so because whoever we elect into government these people will always own the wealth created by the proletariat, these are the people we call “employers” and “bankers”. The people who have ‘pulled themselves up by their own boot strings’ and made a success out of life. Roughly translated this means; those people who are cunning enough not to do any work at all and get thousands of others to work for them! Irrespective of who sits in the various parliaments around the so-called ‘free world’ these people will still own ninety percent of the wealth created by the ‘labour power’ of the neo-proletariat*. 

It should be pointed out this parasitical class are the minority on this planet yet they cause most climatic damage and in the process of exploitation accumulate huge sums of wealth by creating absolutely nothing. They have inventors to develop their products after they in the Board Room have decided to enter a process called ‘diversification’, meaning their ‘science departments’ invent new products or develop and upgrade older ones for the market to be sold at exorbitant prices in their shops and multi-stores or online. Their customers are generally the working-class who have produced the products in the first place. 

Today the bourgeoisie need fewer and fewer workers to produce goods and services because Artificial Intelligence (AI) once again owned by and for the general benefit of the capitalist class will do the jobs of thousands of workers who will now be denied the right to make a living. There is nothing wrong with new technology the question is, as always has been, who owns it and for whose benefit? Who owns the means of production, distribution, and exchange? The same argument which has prevailed since the industrial revolution and the days of Richard Arckwright, John Kay, inventor of the Flying Shuttle in Textiles, and other pioneers of their day. In those days the developing bourgeoisie had a progressive role to play in the development of industry, though exploitation was at a high level particularly of women and child labour, whereas today the capitalist class are loafers who invent fuck all. That is done by inventors in their employment!

Occasionally members of the bourgeois class attend a building called a church. They attend this establishment to perform a ritual called prayer where they, either collectively or as individuals, go through this performance to thank the ‘superior being’ called God for all the wealth he has bestowed on them over the previous year. They actually do believe, or do a good job of pretending to do so, it is God's will they be allowed to rob people of the fruits of their labour for the whole of the worker's life. They then pray to this God to make them even richer by increasing profits for the coming year, an increase as great as possible on the previous twelve months. Finally they say a quick prayer, if time permits, for the poor many of whose poverty they, the bourgeoisie and their system, are greatly responsible for. These sickening people then leave this Church pretending to like each other but in reality, the sight of one another they cannot stand, and return home to a huge feast. This time of year these bandits pray even harder to the ‘Almighty’ for their firms and the system in the coming year.

Tomorrow is Christmas Day, another day of prayer for many bourgeoisie hypocrites and another invention of the capitalist-class, and is a time of year our friends the employing classes increase their profits enormously while the working-class, in many instances, go into debt for the coming year. The goods sold in the shops, again owned by the bourgeoisie, are over-priced because they know full well people will go into debt in order to purchase them. Today kids will no longer settle for a stocking present and one major present reasonably priced to save the parents debt. No, today, it has to be state of the arts computers fully programmed with the latest ‘Eye Phone’ with all the internet and social media apps attached as stocking presents. 

Many working-class people will be in debt for the coming months of the new year in order their children are not disappointed at Christmas. This is perfectly understandable given the nature of modern society and the appetite for consumer goods. And the bourgeoisie? They get even wealthier selling these goods created by working-class ‘labour power’ somewhere on the planet! And what of the coming year 2026? Never fear the bourgeoisie are here to help yet again!! They can offer people savings clubs for next Christmas, 2026. On 16th December I could not believe my eyes and ears on television as offers of savings clubs for next Christmas were advertised. They have not even got all your money for this year and the are touting to increase profits already for next Christmas. This they would call ‘profit projection’, worked out on how much they have managed to steal this Christmas and how much, through their special savings schemes, they can con out of people for next Christmas. 

Here is the next con; money saved in these clubs cannot be spent wherever the saver wishes, no, no, don’t be fucking stupid, the money so diligently saved over the year must be spent in specific stores often receiving vouchers, not cash: the capitalists bank this accumulating interest, and hampers for that particular retailer. Unlike regular banks where a person can at least draw their money and spend it as the please these clubs limit the saver to the stores owned by individual capitalists who also run the scheme! Stuffed again just like the proverbial turkey many will eat at the table on the 25th December! But never fear our lovely gang of international brigands will start picking your pockets nice and early ensuring your entire life is one of debt, misery and need.

The irony is if all these pitfalls were to be pointed out to the victims of these robber barons the explainer would be called a ‘Scrooge’ or a ‘killjoy’ for wrecking these victim’s illusionary party. Deep down people know this exploitation is happening but refuse to lift a finger to stop it, perhaps it’s just easier to carry on with a lifetime of debt! 

Oh well, old Ebeneezer here has had his say, not that anybody will listen after all what is the point life will go on as will exploitation and legalised robbery.

Merry Christmas everybody on this uplifting note!

*Neo-Proletariat – the modern working-class who are employed by the modern transnational bourgeoisie in the high-tech industries of today which have replaced the old heavy industries and Fordist production line. The fact remains these people are still the proletariat of today selling their ‘labour power’ to an employer for a monetary wage.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Merry Christmas From The Bourgeoisie!!

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3008

Michael Phillips ✍ Ever since the PIRA stood down thirty years ago, various groups have tried to claim they are the natural evolution destined to continue the armed struggle. 

Nothing new there, supposedly. But times are changing—fast. The pace of military advancement is no longer just frightening; it’s alien. More on that shortly.

While some at home remain trapped in the past conflict, cleverly updating their messaging for the digital age and boosting their hype and marketing, their military thinking is still—well—pure 90s.

Take the recent emergence of the far-right New Republican Movement. You could almost hear the confused murmurs and head-scratching as people tried to work out whether this new armed group was masquerading as Republicans with extremist aims. I was quizzed on the breaking news and asked whether they had any connection to the old—or new—IRA. I had no idea, so I reached out home for answers. The replies were swift: their motives are purely racist.

The episode underlines how a Monty Python–esque reality is unfolding before our eyes. Leaving aside, for the moment, that this group claims to be “protecting Irishness,” releasing a Provo-style video and going viral for their efforts, it still exposes how delusional—and amateurish—such military posturing has become. And for a whole host of reasons, now more than ever.

Once, after I got out of prison, I was approached by the Real IRA. They wanted a meeting. I made enquiries about their motives and was promptly advised to avoid them like leprosy. They were in a recruitment phase, I was told, and heavily infiltrated by the Brits. Come to think of it, that advice came wrapped in a thick layer of irony. Either way, I avoided the intermediary until they eventually gave up.

The formation of the Real IRA, Continuity IRA, Saoradh and the 32 County Sovereignty Movement was a gift to the British, and they jumped in with both feet. It allowed them to shape military and political narratives from the outset. If you want evidence, just look at the results—or the lack of them. A quick, if lazy, glance at their Wikipedia pages is enough to grasp their failure to deliver on stated objectives. Internal feuding and endless splintering have always sabotaged even well-intentioned movements. Funny how that happens.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu writes:

Just as water, which carries a boat from bank to bank, may also be the means of sinking it, so reliance on spies, while producing great results, is oft-times the cause of utter destruction.

He goes on to describe five classes of spies: local, inward, converted, doomed and surviving. Considering the damage the Brits inflicted on IRA 1.0, imagine what they were able to do with these fledgling offshoots. As for any future claim to being the true heirs of the cause, it wouldn’t be shocking if British spymasters themselves were the entrepreneurs behind them. Divide and conquer.

Western states are now ramping up investment in their war machines. Partly this stems from Trump’s whining that the US carries everyone else, and his threats to pull American resources if allies didn’t pay more. Governments reluctantly opened their cheque books. The EU alone is projected to increase spending by 11% between 2024-2025. There’s also a relatively new addition to the war industry: quantum technologies. I had to look it up. This is the “alien” part I mentioned earlier. We can barely imagine what’s being developed—except to say Marjorie Taylor Greene may not have been exaggerating that much when she ranted about “Jewish space lasers.”

About a year ago, Ukrainian forces released footage of a small homemade drone effectively “capturing” a Russian soldier. The video follows him as he’s guided away by instructions relayed from the drone via its operator. Other clips showed soldiers who failed to grasp their predicament—likely their first encounter with this hovering menace—being killed by grenades dropped from above. I mention this because the three masked interlopers in the New Republican Movement video are going to need to seriously up their game if they believe they’re protecting anyone.

Back in the day, the Provos struggled to smuggle in a handful of handguns and AK-47s. And while merely possessing the capacity for violence was often enough to force negotiations, future conflicts won’t be fought with twentieth-century paraphernalia. Nobody fears the schoolyard bully anymore. Today’s real threats are the bespectacled nerds hunched over laptops—in bedrooms or modern glass towers—designing malware, drones and AI systems capable of doing far worse.

⏩Michael Phillips is a former republican prisoner.

Quantum Nightmares

Anthony McIntyre  ☠  At no time in my political odyssey did I ever consider that commemorating British war dead was a worthwhile republican objective.

It simply never crossed the republican conversational or ideational radar. Had it been suggested during the blanket protest or in prison, its sponsor would at the very least have been whispered about and referred to in terms less than flattering.

The IRA, for its part, would have regarded the suggestion as loathsome, preferring instead to bomb the 1987 commemoration in Enniskillen in what has become known as the Poppy Day massacre. While commemorating British war dead rather than killing those who do so is much less harmful, infinitely more humane, politically it can hardly be regarded as a republican strategic advance, more a step backward.

Michelle O'Neill justified her decision last month to lay a wreath at a British war dead commemoration on Remembrance Sunday with the dubious assertion that 'while we may not agree on everything, we must find common ground in respecting each other’s traditions and perspectives.' That is a sure indication of just how much the British state logic has succeeded in having Sinn Fein buy into the internal conflict model so reviled by republicans during the armed struggle.

Even in the context of an internal conflict model, there is no common ground here. O'Neill hails from Tyrone where republican hallowed ground is considered swampland by the British state and political unionism. Not once has a British official or Unionist politician offered to attended the grave of Martin Hurson who died on hunger strike in 1981.

It is obfuscating for O'Neill to claim she is the North's First Minister for all without explaining that the office of First Minister is so restricted in scope, so structurally constructed from a partisan and partitionist blueprint that it generates a situational logic whereby she feels compelled to find common ground with the British and unionism. At the same time, the British and unionism are freed from any structural constraints which might lead them to to find any common ground with her. She will go to their hallowed ground because she feels she has to. They will not come to hers because they feel they do not have to. Many suspect that it is only a matter of time before she, or whoever eventually replaces her, will not visit her own hallowed ground either.

People are entitled to commemorate whoever they choose. Were Michelle O'Neill to attend British war dead commemorations as a private individual, odd as it might seem, there would be insufficient in it to allow a critique to gain much traction. As, however, she attends such commemorations as the leader of a political tendency to pay unreciprocated homage, she is all too easily depicted as the slave that kneels to kiss its chains. 

Sinn Fein might wish to spin that it is following the strategy of Rudi Dutschke who contemplated a long march through the institutions. But the purpose of that long march is to capture the institutions, not be captured by them.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Disparity Of Esteem

Barry Gilheany ✍ Pax Trumpiana has been laid bare in the recent US National Security Strategy (NSS). 

Instead of explicitly identifying fellow superpowers Russia and China as potential threats to US strategic interests or indeed the other members of the BRICS club further into the future, it is Europe that attracts US ire. 

The NSS, a 29 page document which looks to be a definitive statement of foreign policy for Trump 2.0 and beyond, warns that economic stagnation, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates” and, above all, migration, raise “the stark prospect of civilisational erasure.”[1] What was more than implicitly suggested by VP JD Vance’s tirades against attacks on free speech and “wokeness” at the Munich Security Conference in January this year, becomes explicit by the NSS worries that soon some European countries “will become majority non-European”. In other words, spot the native White Christian in London, Paris, Berlin, Dublin or indeed in any European capital or major city. In case of any remaining doubt, consider Trump’s recent ramblings, but no less vicious for that, about why the US only takes people from “shithole countries” .like Somalia, and his pleading as to: “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden … from Denmark?”.[2] So the Great Replacement Theory has moved from the margins of far right philosophical crankery to US policy.

But these are not merely rhetorical aspirations. In language reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s support for the counter-revolutionary Contra forces in Nicaragua in the 1980s and of George W. Bush’s neoconservatives’ ambitions for regime change in Iraq in the 2000s, the NSS makes explicit to support the “resistance” to civilisational decline. The “resistance” in question is far-right parties like the National Rally in France, the AfD in Germany, Reform UK[3] as well as bolstering the position of far-right nationalist outlier governments such as those of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Roberto Fico in Slovakia. In a few sentencers, the NSS trashes the ideas and values that have underpinned transatlantic cooperation since the Atlantic Charter by supporting forces fundamentally hostile to liberal democracy to undermine the US’s erstwhile allies.

Familiar but disturbing noises have accompanied the publication of NSS. The Kremlin loaded obsequies on it, calling it an “encouraging” change of policy that largely aligns with Russian thinking. “The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision” was the response of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. Welcoming indications for the Trump administration “in favour of dialogue and good relations,” almost on MAGA cue, he warned that the supposed US “Deep State” could attempt to sabotage Trump’s vision.[4]

Elon Musk, no doubt smarting from the $120m (£90m) fine levied on his X social media bully pulpit, proclaimed his belief that the EU bloc should be “abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries”, The US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, took aim at “the unelected, undemocratic and unrepresentative” EU which he deemed to be undermining US security”[5] . At this point, at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious (but not to the wilfully blind Eurosceptics who brought the rolling disaster that is Brexit), that that the EU is an association of 27 liberal democracies (with the exceptions of the illiberal refuseniks of Hungary and Slovakia) which elects national representatives to the European Parliament and whose duly elected governments nominate their countries' members of the European Commission and Council of Ministers. Lesson over!

For the generations who protested against America’s wars in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s; against its support for blood stained Latin American dictatorships and counter insurgencies and deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in the 1980s; and the invasion of Iraq and the its Global War of Terror in the 2000s, the idea of US disengagement from global security arrangements sounds like, at least to its temporally and ideologically trapped fringe fanatics, the ideal wet dream. And the first sentence of NSS pays some inverse obeisance to that desire:

After the end of the cold war, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the world was in the best interests of our country” But it is then followed by this bald statement of naked Trumpian transactionalism “Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.[6]

That sentence may be music to the ears of the nationalist far-right and Stalinist far-left but, for Paul Mason, it is shorthand for the whole NSS document’s central premise of the Putin-Xi Jinping vision of a “multipolar world” in which the US sphere of influence is the Americas and the Western Pacific and Europe is the battleground between three powers.[7] The demise of the rules based post 1945 international order may be welcomed by its detractors on the American isolationist right and on the anti-Atlanticist left who point to the numerous foreign policy inconsistencies and hypocrisies committed in the name of the West. However, the end of this order ushers in the following US strategic objectives:

  • An enhanced Monroe or “Donroe” Doctrine for the 21st century in which the US will claim the right to order the “Western Hemisphere” - i.e. the Americas, Caribbean, and the Western Pacific - to guarantee US security and access to critical minerals and reduce narcotraffic. This is already being played out in Trump’s sabre rattling over Venezuela and its attacks on small boats allegedly carrying narcotics in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific which have led to the deaths of at least 87 people; operations that defy any sort of legal criteria and which in relation to the double tap attack on the first boat on 2 September in which US forces hit its target once, then twice killing two survivors look to amount to wanton murder if, according to the Washington Post, the defence secretary had issued a verbal command to “kill them all”.[8]
  • To preserve freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific and secure US access to critical materials, while countering Chinese influence.
  • To prevent Iran dominating the Middle East while opting out of military commitments that keep the US “bogged down” in the region in forever wars.
  • To ensure that US technology and tech standards “drive the world forward” (euphemism for dominance)

And finally, the real NSS mission statement:

We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilisational self-confidence and western identity. [9]

In other words, the restoration of Judeo-Chistian supremacy or even the promotion of a Christian nationalism to a European continent in which the identity of individual nation-states has been squashed by a smorgasbord of immigration, multicultural cosmopolitanism and a gender ideology that collapses the essential differences between the sexes and their social roles.

The strategy goes on to sketch an entente cordiale with Vladimir Putin’s Russia which roughly aligns with Putin’s list of desiderata:

  • “A predisposition to non-intervention” – America stays out of conflicts wherever possible (except in its own backyard.
  • “Primacy of nations” – transnational institutions to be disregarded and rendered impotent to the point where international law doesn’t work.
  • “A readjustment of military presence” away from theatres whose importance to US national security.

America intends to “manage” European relations with Russia:

both to establish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.

In the context of Ukraine, NSS proclaims:

a core interest of the US to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilise European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and re-establish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.[10]

Behind these seemingly laudable objectives and pious hopes for peace, reconciliation and reconstruction after the war in Ukraine ends lies this sting in the tail; this disinformation speak that has been spewed out by every Putinist apologist on the European far right and Stalinist left since the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022:

The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.11]

It is not necessary to launch into a comprehensive rebuttal of the chutzpah that that statement is riddled with in order to strip away the real contempt for European values that the entire NSS drips with. Suffice to say, that a government that has systematically ripping up every democratic safeguard, guardrail and convention pursuant to Project 2025 since coming to power is the least qualified US administration in history to lecture any other nation about democratic deficits, never mind its historic (historic being the poignantly operative word here) European allies. The real burning question for Europe is how to deal with this very public stab in the front.

Europe: What Is To Be Done

It should have been obvious if not from JD Vance’s “enemy within” speech at Munich, but certainly from Trump’s excruciatingly public dressing down of President Zelelensky in the White House that the Atlantic Alliance is sundered. It is certainly glaringly obvious to analysts such as Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, who sees political meddling in Europe to back far-right nationalists was now “a core part of America’s national strategy” and has warned that “In a fragmented political landscape” where “a 1% to 2% shift can change elections”, it could work.[12]

Minna Alander of the Centre for European Policy Analysis opined that the policy document was “actually useful” as “it codifies in policy, in black and white, what has been evident all year long: Trump and his people are openly hostile to Europe.” He gores onto to warn that Europe’s leaders “cannot ignore or explain away the fact anymore” and that “any hope for things to go back to the old normal looks increasingly ludicrous.” For “Europe needs to finally seize the initiative and stop wasting time trying to manage Trump.”[13]

But have all of Europe’s leaders got the memo?

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer may have received it but appears utterly hamstrung to act on it. Starmer prides himself on solidarity with Zelenskyy but keeps shtum over Trump’s expression of solidarity with Trump. The PM knows that the defence of Ukraine necessitates the combination of Europe’s military assets but was put off by the entry fee to the major £130bn European rearmament effort causing the collapse of the deal which the UK government had wished to join.[14]

Starmer’s refusal to rejoin the EU’s Customs Union on the grounds that it would supposedly unravel the US trade deal negotiated earlier this year (and possibly to avoid attracting the ire of the Brexit voters in the Red Wall which are not coming back to Labour in any case and who may be experiencing buyer’s remorse) is another example of choosing the erstwhile “special relationship” with the US over that with Europe even though every signal from across the Atlantic indicates that the era of unconditional positive regard from Washington DC is over.[15] Starmer may well believe that his ‘adult in the room’ role as intermediary between the America of Donald Trump and Europe is a judicious one justifying the cringing spectacle of a second State visit by Trump to Britain but may well be rapidly running out of sync with the development of the Strongman era in international relations.

Mark Rutte, head of NATO, may be experiencing a similar bout of cognitive dissonance when warning that “Russia has brought war back to Europe” while remaining utterly silent on the switch by “Daddy” across the Atlantic from friend to foe. [16]

In a week when the new head of MI6, Blaise Metrewell, said that Britain was caught in “a space between peace and war” and described Russia as “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist, seeking to subjugate Ukraine and NATO”; it seems unfortunate, at the very least, that in relation to one of Russia’s hybrid war weapons, the cultivation and spread of disinformation, that Keir Starmer’s raid last year on the overseas aid budget has led to a 40% cut in funds for countering these nefarious activities in the Western Balkans. The cut was made to the Integrated Security Fund (ISF) which is designed to tackle the highest priority threats to the UK’s national security at home. Starmer recently described the Western Balkan region, encompassing Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia, as “Europe’s crucible – the place where the security of our continent is put to the test. Last year’s ISF funds were used in part to counter and respond to malicious cyber-attacks in the region and to bolster democratic institutions and independent media. The cut in government funding appears to have be a consequence of Starmer’s policy to reduce Official Development Assistance (ODA) for low and middle-income countries with the amount of ODA committed to the Western Balkans under the ISF reduced from £31.9m to £17m for 2025-26.[17]

In the words of Shelagh Daley, the policy team lead at Saferworld, an NGO that runs programmes in the Western Balkans, these cuts appear to represent “a deprioritisation of work on conflict prevention and peace building, even as conflict has increased globally, societies have become more divided, and basic freedoms are being curtailed. Furthermore, she states that:

it doesn’t seem coherent or strategic to be pulling away from programming that aims to address the causes of conflict and fragility when the risks to global security are so high.[18]

Europe Stands Alone

At this critical and transformative moment in European history, the old Polish rallying cry Nico o nas bez nas (nothing about us without us) must ring loud and clear across Europe. As the hopes that Trump will eventually get tough on Russia dissipate in the 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine that is a Russian-American imperial and commercial at the expense of both Ukraine and Europe (just as the Palestinians were not even an after-thought in Trump’s 20-point real estate “peace plan” for Gaza), Timothy Garton Ash poses two follow on questions. First can Europe, together with democratically aligned countries like Canada, cooperate sufficiently to strengthen Ukraine and weaken Russia? Secondly, will it.[19] The answers are of existential importance for European democracy and international rule of law.

A good start was made with the agreement at the summit of EU leaders last week to borrow cash to loan 105bn Euro to Ukraine to fund its defence against Russia for the next two years albeit not with frozen Russian assets due to the opposition of a few member states, most prominent of them being Belgium where the bulk of the assets are held. Most US military essentials can still be purchased as for Trump, profit is superior to any ideological principle. Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Canada recently agreed to purchase another $1bn of US weapons for Ukraine. Should Trump cut the supply of US intelligence to Ukraine again in order to force it into a surrender agreement with Russia, it would be a major blow, but Ukrainian and European intelligence can already replenish some of the gaps.[20]

With a bold domestic reset in Ukraine involving maybe the creation of a genuine government of national unity and the rooting out of corruption and the dawning of more adverse economic conditions in Russia such as soaring inflation, interest rates above 16% and, crucially, the decline in the price of crude oil due to the damage inflicted on over a third of Russia’s oil refineries by long-range Ukrainian attacks, a possible scenario could emerge in 2026 and 2027 whereby negative messages from his generals and the central bank could push Putin towards a long-term truce with Zelenskyy.[21]

It would be at this stage that Europe faces a further challenge. If by 2030 Russia has succeeded in occupying and russifying an area of Ukraine larger than Portugal and Slovenia combined and can privately boast that rump Ukraine is a dysfunctional and demoralised unit, then Russia will have won. If by 2030, Ukraine remains largely sovereign capable of deterring any future Russian aggression; has a healthily functioning economy, democracy and civil society and is on track for EU membership, then Ukraine will have triumphed.[22]

Set against the intellectual pessimism around the myth of Russian invincibility; learned helplessness after eight decades of dependence on the US blanket for security; the procedural slowness of the EU; national egoisms and acute competition for public money in indebted states with gerontocratic population profiles among other obstacles to European cooperation, Garton Ash issues a rallying cry for optimism of will. The one thing that can convert “Europe” into “Europe can.” Not the Nietzschean Will to Power and not the Roussean General Will. Not the “can” of “can do” codology. But the courage to embark on a once in a generation collective effort before short-term party-political or parochial national considerations. Yes, Europe can if it wills it.[23]

Greetings of the Season to All Quillers.

References

[1] Jonathan Freedland, Donald Trump is pursuing regime change in Europe. Guardian Journal 13 December 2025 pp.1-2

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Shaun Walker, Kremlin hails Trump’s security plan as aligned with Russian thinking, Guardian 8 December 2025 p.14

[5] Jon Henley, US-EU relations. Threats to interfere in European elections ‘unacceptable.’ Guardian 9 December 2025 p.5

[6] Paul Mason, Trump’s declaration of war on Europe. The New World. Issue 463 11 December 2025 pp.10-11

[7] Ibid, p.10

[8] Jonathan Freedland, What words are left to describe Trump’s global rampage? The Guardian Journal. 6 December 2025 pp.1-2

[9] Mason, op cit

[10] Ibid, p.11

[11] Ibid

[12] Henley, op cit

[13] Ibid

[14] Freedland, 13 December op cit

[15] Ibid

[16] Ibid

[17] Daniel Boffey, UK slashes overseas aid for countering Russian aggression. The Guardian 20 December 2025 p.4

[18] Ibid

[19] Timothy Garton Ash, Only Europe can possibly save Ukraine now. But will it? Guardian Opinion 6 December 2025 p.4

[20] Ibid

[21] Ibid

[22] Ibid

[23] Ibid

⏩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.

Threats To Democracy 🪶 Be Careful What You Have Wished For 🪶 The US National Security Strategy And Europe

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3007

Cam Ogie ✍ The core issue raised by the GAA’s continued relationship with Allianz is not contractual complexity, administrative inconvenience, or hypothetical sponsor anxiety. 

It is whether an organisation that claims ethical leadership can justify maintaining financial ties—direct or indirect—to structures implicated in mass human suffering. On that question, no economic argument can outweigh the moral gravity of genocide.

Genocide is not a matter of political interpretation or corporate inconvenience. It is an absolute moral wrong. To invoke insurance logistics, asset inventories, or sponsorship markets as mitigating factors is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of ethical responsibility. History does not judge institutions by how smoothly they maintained operations during atrocities; it judges whether they acted when action carried cost.

The argument that the GAA only deals with “Allianz Ireland” rather than the wider Allianz group is not a moral firewall—it is a legal abstraction. Corporate subsidiaries exist precisely to allow parent companies to benefit from global legitimacy while dispersing accountability. When a parent company is identified by a UN Special Rapporteur as complicit in violations of international law, claiming ethical innocence through organisational compartmentalisation is not prudence; it is moral evasion.

To say “everyone is entangled somewhere” is not a defence—it is an admission of a broken ethical framework. If moral action is abandoned the moment, it becomes inconvenient, then ethics cease to have meaning. The suggestion that disengagement would make the GAA “toxic” to sponsors implies that moral consistency is itself a liability. That should alarm, not reassure, the membership.

Equally troubling is the attempt to reframe the consequences of ethical action as harm to clubs. This reverses responsibility. Clubs are not endangered by moral leadership; they are endangered by decisions that prioritise financial continuity over human life. To suggest that standing against genocide would burden grassroots volunteers is to weaponise the very communities whose values the GAA claims to represent.

Statements of solidarity, humanitarian donations, and expressions of concern are not substitutes for ethical alignment. Condemning suffering while maintaining business-as-usual relationships with entities implicated in that suffering creates a moral contradiction. One cannot oppose injustice rhetorically while materially enabling the systems that sustain it.

The GAA has previously demonstrated that it can draw ethical red lines—on gambling, alcohol, and other forms of sponsorship. That proves capacity, not constraint. The refusal to apply the same standard here is therefore a choice, not an inevitability.

The question is not whether disengagement would be difficult. The question is whether an organisation rooted in community, history, and collective values is willing to accept discomfort in defence of human dignity. If genocide is not the point at which financial risk becomes acceptable, then the language of ethics has been reduced to branding.

Moral leadership is not measured by how carefully risk is mitigated, but by whether institutions are willing to act when mitigation is impossible. On this issue, neutrality is not caution. It is complicity.

⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast. 

Not A Moral Firewall

Anthony McIntyre  ☠  Last week's theocratic fascist attack on Bondi Beach was simply sheer unalloyed savagery. 

There is nothing that can justify it, not genocide in Gaza, not land theft in the West Bank, not anything. Fifteen people slain in Australia's Bloody Sunday when an armed father and son, reportedly driven by the hate theology of Isis, opened fire on a gathering of more than a thousand people who were celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

Irish people, with the cultural memory of Bloody Sunday deeply ingrained in the collective psyche, will have few difficulties readily identifying with the victims of the slaughter. The two killers, the type that get recruited to the British Army's Parachute Regiment, displayed the same callousness that visited the streets of Derry in January 1972. They arrived with one purpose - massacring an unarmed civilian population.

While antisemitism is often used as a muzzle to stifle criticism of Israeli genocidal actions, Bondi Beach was an authentic antisemitic hate crime. Activists campaigning for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza are best advised to identify only with the victims, and offer no mitigating circumstances for those who killed them. Nor should they consider assuming the same hypocrisy that All Soul's Church in Belfast has finetuned, which can offer thoughts and prayers for ten-year-old Matilda, killed at Bondi, but only silence for five-year-old Hind Rajab, murdered by the IDF in a 'planned execution.'  As Albert Camus insisted, the role of the thinking person 'cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.'

When four Palestinian children were murdered by the IDF on a Gazan beach in July 2014 as they played soccer, and nine others were massacred a week earlier while they watched the World Cup clash between Argentina and the Netherlands in the Fun Time Beach café, campaigners for a Free Palestine were infuriated at this Bondi Beach-type slaughter. It is incumbent on the same activists to be as repulsed by the beach murder of Matilda as they were at the beach murders of those Palestinian children.

Antisemitism is as vile as Israeli racism towards Palestinians. Both are a corrosive blight that should be rejected in equal measure. Jews have every right to be protected from the appalling effects of antisemitic hatred.  

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Bondi Beach

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)