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Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 2-February-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Kyiv defies power grid bombing
⬤ Ukraine’s poisoned breadbasket.
⬤ Russia’s military ecology.
⬤ Russia imprisons “terrorist” Lyuba, 19.
⬤ Torture cases.
⬤ Russia attacks healthcare and civilian targets.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Deaths and medical torture through Russia's plunder and closure of hospitals in occupied Kherson oblast (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 30th)

The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Alim Karimov (Crimea Platform, January 30th)

PACE Adopts a New Resolution Addressing Russia’s Crimes in the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine (Crimea Platform, January 29th)

Increasingly absurd charges used for Russia’s monstrous sentences against Ukrainians on occupied territory (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 29th)

The Woman Who Didn’t Break. Part Three (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 28th)

Petra Bayr, Mentor to Political Prisoner Iryna Danylovych, Elected President of PACE (Crimea Platform, January 27th)

Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, January 27th)

Russia fabricates charges to imprison Crimean Tatar activists and as weapon for deportation from their homeland (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 26th)

News from Ukraine

“Everyone in shock”: residents without power, heating and water after bombing (Kyiv Independent, 31 January)

Who set the trap for Ukraine’s “Iron Lady”? (Meduza, 30 January)

Cedos works to strengthen institutional capacity to support Ukraine’s recovery (Cedos, January 30th)

Heated bricks, shared generators, and candles: How Kyiv survives without power and heat (The Insider, January 28th)

Russia guns down more civilians, attacks passenger train while TV propagandists gloat that Ukrainians are freezing (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 28th)

Volunteering in Wartime Ukraine: Interview with Daria Saburova (Posle.Media, January 21st)

War-related news from Russia

Cruel and Unusual (Russian Reader, January 31st)

Count updated: Russia’s losses in Ukraine (Mediazona, 30 January)

Monarchist media oligarch Konstantin Malofeev takes up teaching (Meduza, 30 January)

Savagely tortured ‘Kherson Nine’ sentenced to 155 years in grotesque Russian show trial (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 30th)

Russia’s oil and gas revenues are shrinking (Meduza, 28 January)

Dissidents by chance: The Kremlin has turned to labeling random people in Russia as traitors and terrorists (The Insider, January 27th)

Workers from Bangladesh sought jobs in Russia but instead got sent to combat in Ukraine (AP, January 27th)

Is 19-Year-Old Lyuba Lizunova a Terrorist? (Russian Reader, January 26th)

Memorial plaque to Anna Politkovskaya torn down for fifth time in a week (Meduza, 26 January)

Third staged 'trial' and 28-year sentence against Ukrainian prisoner of war (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 26th)

Russia deploys new high-speed drones that may contain western parts (The Guardian, January 23rd)

Analysis and comment

The Poisoned Breadbasket: Pesticides, Politics, and the Price of Agricultural Success (Commons.com, January 30th)

Ukraine: “Territorial integrity is a fundamental principle that safeguards the sovereignty of states.” — UN Secretary-General (Crimea Platform, January 30th)

Natalia Tikhonova and Zoe Komaroff: Military ecology and Russia’s war machine (Posle.Media, 28 January)

Why Minneapolis reminds me of what I once saw in Ukraine (Kyiv Independent, January 25th)

International solidarity

From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign on twitter, 31 January)

Solidarity from Gaza to Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, Minneapolis, and Leeds (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 28 January)

Demand Russia obeys its own laws and releases blind Ukrainian political prisoner Oleksandr Sizikov! (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 27th)

A Fundraiser for Yuri Dmitriev’s 70th Birthday (Russian Reader, January 26th)

Fundraiser for FPV Chuyka drone detectors (Solidarity Collectives, 24 January)

Upcoming events

Thursday 5th February, 6.30 pm. Try Me For Treason: readings from speeches by anti-war protesters in Russian courts, and discussion. Clore Lecture Theatre, Birkbeck College Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL. REGISTER to attend here.
🔴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.

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News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 181

Christy Walsh ✍ Irish far-left politics likes to present itself as the moral opposition . . . 

. . .  anti‑imperialist without compromise, pro‑uprising by instinct, committed to gender equality, and internationalist by self‑description.

People Before Profit (PBP) gives this posture institutional weight because it holds Dáil seats and helps shape protest culture. On the fringe, Saoradh express the same instincts with fewer euphemisms.

The problem is not that Irish left condemn Western abuses. The problem is the optical defect: sharp moral vision when the oppressor is Western‑aligned, and selective blindness when the oppressor belongs to the anti‑West camp. If you want to see it cleanly, line up what is said about Palestine and Hamas with what is said, or not said with comparable urgency or qualification, about Iran’s repression of popular protest, and about Russia’s imperial war on Ukraine. The pattern looks less like universalism and more like a hierarchy of victims.

Palestine Is Not Hamas, And Liberation Is Not Islamism

Islamism is a political ideology that subordinates individual liberty to clerical authority and treats dissent, minority rights, freedom of conscience and women’s equality as negotiable. Where it governs, it usually collides with basic freedoms. Islamist movements are not synonymous with anti‑colonial liberation movements. Their programme is often theocratic and authoritarian, which places them in conflict with universal human rights, including women’s rights, freedom of belief, and political pluralism. Islamism is the coercive use of religion.

Palestinian self‑determination and a freedom struggle against occupation are legitimate political goals. The rights at stake do not depend on whether Hamas exists. Palestinians have the right to safety, equality, political rights, and an end to collective punishment.

But it is precisely here that much Irish activism commits its first analytical and moral error: collapsing Palestinian liberation into the political project of Hamas and Islamism. Hamas is not ‘Palestinian resistance’ in the abstract. It is an Islamist organisation whose goals are not Palestinian freedom. When the Irish left treats Hamas as the authentic or inevitable expression of Palestinian struggle, it launders an Islamist programme into liberation language and recasts religious extremism as the legitimate voice of Palestinians, including Christian and LGBTQ Gazans. The left silences valid criticism of Islam by adopting terms like “Islamophobia” into their vocabulary.

This is not merely a theoretical point. It goes to the heart of what solidarity is supposed to mean. A consistent pro‑Palestinian position can and should defend Palestinian rights while refusing to romanticise, excuse, or rebrand Islamist human‑rights abuses and atrocities as “resistance”. When activists cannot hold these two thoughts at once, solidarity becomes factional allegiance rather than principle.

Iran: Resistance Versus Repression

A large current in UK and Irish pro‑Palestinian politics frames Hamas as “legitimate resistance” that may fight back by any means necessary. October 7 is often handled as context, blowback, or the inevitable eruption of rage under occupation, rather than as a moral and political line. October 7 started as a well‑planned operation and descended into wanton terrorism because the goal was to spark Muslims around the world to attack Jews. Hamas atrocities are excused by whataboutary even when the victims are innocent Israelis and children.

That is the rhetorical move that matters, because it becomes portable. Once you learn to dissolve agency whenever the actor is in the “anti‑West” camp, you can dissolve almost anything.

Now place beside that rhetoric the Iranian “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising after Mahsa Amini’s death in custody. The protests were overwhelmingly non‑violent. Women, students, and workers marched, chanted, and defied compulsory veiling. Security forces responded with live ammunition, mass arrests, torture allegations, deaths in custody, and executions after flawed trials. If the moral doctrine supports popular struggle against oppression, Iran should have been a natural cause célèbre.

Yet this is where the cross‑eyed pattern appears. Violent Islamist militancy is elevated as “resistance” in Gaza, while non‑violent mass resistance in Iran is treated as secondary, awkward, or far less urgent to mobilise around. Treating armed theocratic violence as emancipatory while downplaying peaceful demonstrators shot in the streets is not a minor inconsistency. It is a collision between professed principles and real allegiances. We saw the left’s pattern of excusing a similar abusive and oppressive regime in Syria.

Support for Islamism differs from support for Palestinian liberation, which is a legitimate struggle. Left support for Hamas involves conscious blindness that sacrifices Gazan civilians to Islamism’s strategic goals. Hamas effectively strapped a suicide belt around the entire Gaza Strip, using Gaza as the fuse for a wider ideological war and not Palestinian freedom. When Irish activism fuses Palestine to Hamas, it does not strengthen Palestinian rights. It strengthens religious extremism and makes solidarity morally incoherent, and Iranian peaceful protest becomes an inconvenient contradiction. Self-determination struggles try to avoid civilian casualties; Hamas’ religious ideological war requires civilian casualties.

Gender Equality With A Blindfold

Irish left discourse advocates for gender equality unless Islamism is involved. Iran is the sharpest mirror because the uprising was triggered by the policing of women’s bodies by the morality police, and women were central to the protests against compulsory religious dress codes and gender oppression. The repression was not subtle or contested. It was a security state enforcing clerical power through violence.

If women’s liberation is a principle, then Iranian women resisting compulsory veiling should have been treated with the same moral clarity that Irish left activism claims for other causes. When gender equality is deployed with full force against one adversary but becomes hesitant or marginal when the oppressor is an anti‑West theocracy, the conclusion is unavoidable. The left overlooks gender inequality and other abuses because it is more committed to “anti‑West” resistance than to universal human rights.

The same point applies to minorities inside Iran. Kurdish, Baluchi, and other communities suffered disproportionately in protest crackdowns and long‑standing discrimination. An Irish left that makes anti‑racism central at home cannot plausibly bracket oppression abroad because the oppressor is useful against the West.

Workers’ Solidarity That Stops At Certain Borders

Irish left mobilisation leans heavily on trade‑union language and symbolism. Protests are dense with “solidarity” rhetoric. Yet Iran again exposes the selectivity. Labour activists and striking workers have faced detentions and harsh repression after protesting. If labour internationalism is real, Iranian workers and teachers facing a theocratic‑security dictatorship should not be an afterthought or expendable when “anti‑West” rhetoric is more important.

The same structural problem appears in how activists frame international law. On Gaza, Irish left rhetoric often invokes universal standards: collective punishment, war crimes, genocide claims, UN conventions, ICC referrals, diplomatic expulsions. Whatever one thinks of the exact legal characterisations, the rhetorical posture is universalist. But a universalist posture cannot coherently become selective when applied to Iran’s killings of protesters, torture in detention, and executions. If human‑rights law is universal, it travels. If it does not travel, it is not a standard. It is a weapon.

Ukraine And Russia, The Second Mirror Of Palestine

The Russia problem mirrors the Iran problem because it arises from the same “anti‑West” lens. In the UK, Stop the War‑style framing has often centred NATO expansion and “blocs,” sometimes sliding into narratives where Western policy becomes the primary culprit and Russia’s agency is contextualised into the background.

Similar impulses appear among the left, including a tendency to treat Ukraine as a proxy rather than a people resisting invasion, and to moralise primarily against NATO rather than Russia. The convenience of the left’s selective cross‑eyed view is stark here because it requires wilful blindness to Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression on a peaceful neighbour. Precisely the "imperialism" the left claims to oppose.

Set beside Palestine, the contradiction is sharp. Irish far‑left discourse demands self‑determination for Palestinians and insists that the dominated have a right to resist domination. Yet parts of the same milieu oppose military aid to Ukraine or frame Ukrainian defence as “escalation”, while treating Russian imperial acts as reactive or secondary. The left does not have a principled anti‑war ethic. It is a selective anti‑West ethic.

The rhetorical technique is also revealing. In Israel‑Palestine discourse, “both sides” framing is attacked as moral evasion because it obscures power and responsibility. The Left justify Russian atrocities as consequence of NATO provocations: Ukraine is an innocent party and not part of NATO. Symmetrical language becomes tolerable precisely where it disregards this unprovoked act of invasion. Invasion means invasion. The outcome is predictable: victims are downgraded whenever the oppressor is not Western‑aligned.

PBP are elected, visible, and influential in street politics. That creates a duty to be precise. PBP explicitly opposed €100 million in non-lethal military-mine sweepers, radar systems and anti-drone jamming devices to protect civilian population centres. When an organisation claims to champion self‑determination, gender equality, and workers’ rights as universal standards, its positions on Ukraine and Iran are not optional side‑issues. They are tests. If the emphasis repeatedly flows toward NATO‑bashing while the moral clarity reserved for Gaza is not sustained toward Russia’s aggression or Iran’s repression, the gap between principle and practice becomes political fact, not internet argument.

Anti‑West atrocities are rebranded as ‘anti‑imperialist blows,’ Islamist terror is dismissed as ‘propaganda’ or explained as difference in culture. Russia’s war framed as part of a “multipolar” resistance to Western power. In that form, the cross‑eyed logic is explicit. If it harms the West, it is resistance. If the West condemns it, it is propaganda. If the victim resists an anti‑West state, the victim’s cause becomes complicated, inconvenient, conditional, or ignored. Human rights are not universal where religious or cultural exceptions might apply. Groups like Saoradh show the endpoint of the same habit: universal human rights replaced by bloc loyalty, immoral support is framed as solidarity.

Viewing Gaza through the lens of the Troubles is emotionally resonant, but it is structurally flawed: the IRA was a secular nationalist movement, whereas Hamas -extremist religious ideology.

Three Explanations Account For The Pattern Of Contradictions

  • First, politics is organised around US‑aligned versus US‑opposed states, with indulgence granted to the latter because they function as counterweights.
  • Second, Islamist movements are miscast as progressive anti‑colonial forces, obscuring their religious extremism and turning critique into betrayal of the “anti‑imperialist” narrative.
  • Third, Palestine/Gaza have close parallels with the Six Counties. But Iran’s internal struggle and Ukraine’s national defence do not fit as neatly into a simple coloniser‑colonised binary, so they receive less activist energy even when state violence is open and lethal.

These explain how the left can sincerely speak universal language while acting in selective ways.

A Hierarchy Of Victims

Hamas uses the legitimate Palestinian liberation struggle to piggyback religious extremism. The left collapses these categories, laundering Islamist ideology into liberation language and miscasting it as progressive anti-colonialism. Iranian women and workers resisting a theocratic police state deserve the same moral clarity routinely claimed elsewhere. Ukrainian civilians resisting annexation deserve the same self-determination principle invoked for Palestine.

Traditional Irish republicanism was always anti-imperialist and committed to self-determination. There is no consistent solidarity in supporting Islamist terror or Russian imperialism alongside it. Palestinian freedom must include freedom from Islamist extremism, liberation means nothing if it installs in Gaza the theocratic repression that Iranian women brave bullets to escape.

If the Irish far left wants to keep claiming moral leadership, the demand is simple. Apply the standard consistently. Condemn Iran’s repression with the same urgency used for Gaza. Treat Russian aggression as aggression, and treat Ukraine’s right to resist as the same principle you insist on elsewhere. If that cannot be done, the rhetoric has been exposed. It is not principled anti-imperialism. It is selective outrage.

For all the West’s faults and hypocrisies, the freedoms that make Irish and British protest politics possible are protected by liberal-democratic law. Those protections are precisely what authoritarian systems, including authoritarian Islamist regimes, suppress. It is morally indefensible for the left to enjoy those rights at home while minimising, excusing, or romanticising Russian and Iranian regimes abroad that crush them for others. The left exercises in Ireland freedoms (protest, speech, organisation) that would be extinguished under the regimes they defend or excuse. The left is not merely inconsistent - it practises moral hypocrisy.

⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

The Cross-Eyed Left 🪶 One Eye Sees What It Wants While The Other Looks Away

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3071

Brendan Curran ✒ with a poem from his expansive body of work.


 The Army Foot Patrol (A Memory) 

An army foot patrol
is walking down the street 
Special rubber on their boots 
so you cannot hear their feet 
 ♞♜♝
They are away off in the distance
but I see them stop and weave
As the hair stands on the back of my neck
and start to heavy breath 
 ♞♜♝
The night silence gets broken
with a noise that can only be one thing 
The high pitched searing engine noise
of the army Saracen 
 ♞♜♝
It slowly drives towards you 
no lights to Avoid being seen 
The steel back doors wide open
painted camouflage olive green 
 ♞♜♝
They stop and question everyone
that is what they do
If you show any resistance at all . . 
it’s an excuse to arrest you 
 ♞♜♝
The put you in the back
and they take you to police station
Then take from the pig *
and start your interrogation 
 ♞♜♝
This can go disastrously 
depends on how it plays
You can turn around immediately
and go the other way 
 ♞♜♝
But the minute they see you turning
 then you’ve got something to hide 
They will abandon what they are doing, 
and soon be at your side 
 ♞♜♝
You have to keep on walking, 
keeping a steady pace 
Trying to avoid glances
….in case one of them knows your face 
 ♞♜♝
Then one of them spots you, 
and asks you what’s your name 
He already knows who you are…
part of the harassment game 
 ♞♜♝
He asks you for you date of birth,
 he knows you wont comply 
He makes you wait for ever and ever, 
as everyone else passes you by 
 ♞♜♝
He asks you where you are coming from, 
and where you are going to? 
But it’s really just a stalling tactic
to see if the police want to arrest you 
 ♞♜♝
The radio operator calls you name
 out across the air waves 
Response a short time later …
”Charlie one” is all it says 
 ♞♜♝
The atmosphere changes intensely, 
all friendliness disappears 
Charlie one means you're
a suspected member of the IRA 
 ♞♜♝
Take everything out of your pockets…
spread your arms and your legs 
Some times they put you up against a building 
with your hands above your head 
 ♞♜♝
The search takes for ever, 
different soldiers are brought over and shown your face
 For future intelligence sightings…
so you get watched every place 
 ♞♜♝
They can’t find anything on you,
 disappointment on their face 
But continue to keep you at the roadside 
invading your personal space 
 ♞♜♝
The radio crackles once more, 
breaking the night silence and it’s cutting breeze 
The radio operator gives the thumbs up…
they have to set you free 

* Pig - large heavenly armoured troop carrier

⏩ Brendan Curran,  Irish conflict poems 2020

The Army Foot Patrol (A Memory)

Right Wing Watch 👀Written by Kyle Mantyla.


Nick Fuentes says that "women are made to be fucked": 

Women are either mothers, whores, or nuns. No other options. There are no female philosophers. There are no female inventors. There are no female generals or billionaires. They are mothers, whores, nuns. End of list. That's what you can be.

Nick Fuentes Says 'Women Are Made To Be Fucked'

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ ‘Wara load of crap’ (my terminology) the Irish Daily Mirror and other pathetic gutter rags print. 

Beaten only by social media in garbage which passes for content the everyday press continues to put our minds at rest by telling us, those gullible enough to believe, that this great society we live in is really one of equality and freedom! It is not!! 

When we were growing up our lives were dominated by bourgeois lies, Parental lies, media lies, educational lies, and governmental lies. Our parents could be forgiven because they too had been brought up on a diet of bullshit and lies by their own parents, our grandparents, and they themselves prior to that. Educational lies tell working-class kids how to be obedient, do as we are told, and how to find a job never mentioning organisations like trade unions. Ruling-class kids are taught how to dictate and be the future ‘captains of industry’ and be tomorrow's masters over the proletariat. 

Some of us were lucky enough to have a trade union activist in our parents who would dilute some of the educational crap by advising always question teachers and future employers and make sure to join a trade union. Our parents would often tell us if we were in trouble tell a policeman, a good bit of advice for children aged five, six, seven, and eight, but as life passes us by it soon appears that these policemen, once considered saviours by the very young, are perhaps not the guardian angels of the pre-adolescents they were once cracked up to be. Some are, or try to be impartial and good at their jobs, and some Gardai and Constables do set out to police without ‘fear nor favour’ but they usually retire at the same rank where they started work, a Garda or a Constable. Others, more corrupt, climb the greasy pole and become ‘Chief Inspectors’, or even ‘Chief Superintendents’ depending how many innocent men they have stitched up. The furthest an honest copper might go; is; ‘Desk Sergeant’. During the 1960s it was reported many ‘senior officers in the Metropolitan Police, were in the pay of either the Krays or the Richardsons’. Some of these officers would during the 1950s have been the men young children would have been encouraged to go to if in trouble. How society changes people!! Bent policemen are to be expected, after all, the system they police, capitalism, is corrupt.

The discrepancies in the law are no more highlighted than in the educational system of both Britain and the Twenty-Six-Counties. if a student in Britain attending a comprehensive school is charged and found guilty of a crime the chances are a borstal term may await. If, on the other hand, a student attending Eton Public School with titled parents commits a similar or worse offence the chances are the student irrespective of evidence will walk free perhaps with an apology. The same applies in the Twenty-Six-Counties; if a student attending BlackRock College commits a crime, is found guilty, that student will either walk free because the parents have money or receive a meaningless fine. On the other hand, if a working-class student from a national school commits the same then a custodial sentence in all probability awaits. These are just some of the legal inequalities within capitalist society before the law.

Ever so often the bourgeoisie and even the British aristocracy will make an example of one of their own thus proving ‘we are all equal before the law’. On this theme of supposed equality before the law the Irish Daily Mirror 20th February could triumphantly headline; “At Last … No One Is Above The Law”, referencing the arrest on his 66th birthday of a fella called Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. It may well be true that the international bourgeoisie, and particularly the US business classes, will sacrifice high fliers like Mountbatten-Windsor and former British Cabinet Minister and Lord, Peter Mandelson arrested on 23rd February, to protect US President Trump. It is true Mountbatten-Windsor and Mandelson had dealings with disgraced pervert and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein, himself a billionaire and best mate of Trump, was found dead in his cell before the case went to trial. Technically Epstein was guilty of nothing but the facts tell us something different, a lot different. Nevertheless the presumption of innocence must be maintained even for people like Epstein. “innocent till proved guilty” is the law and if we ever lose this theoretical cornerstone (supposed equality before the law for everybody rich and poor?) we are on a slippery slope towards Hitlerite laws under Judge Roland Freisler. 

Mountbatten-Windsor is one of the latest big names to be arrested but not, surprisingly, for anything to do with the ‘Epstein Files’ in their sexual capacity. Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on his 66th birthday for ‘Misconduct while in Public Office’ which can carry a life sentence, though this is unlikely as it is a former Prince being charged. Another high-profile man to be sacrificed in the protect Donald campaign is Senator George Mitchell, remember him, the saviour of the Six-Counties with the Good Friday Agreement. Old George has gone from hero to villain almost overnight just for being mentioned in the Epstein files a couple of times. Mountbatten-Windsor, Mandelson, and Mitchell  - the first two definitely having cases to answer it appears, both arrested on suspicion of ‘misconduct in public office’. George Mitchell  may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m surprised the DUP do not want a renegotiation of the Good Friday Agreement on the grounds one of Epstein’s men had something to do with it!! A bit slow there eh lads!!!

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was pictured regularly with a victim of Epstein; Virginia Giuffre who died by suicide so much were her experiences with Epstein and Mountbatten-Windsor and yet, Mountbatten-Windsor’s questioning was about ‘misconduct while in public office.’ The concerns of the British bourgeois security are about him passing on files while in office to Jeffrey Epstein and not about the hell these two put poor Virginia through. British bourgeois security far outweighs the fate of poor Virginia or any other victims of the former Prince and Epstein. 

The fact Epstein committed suicide would suggest guilt just as Virginias death tells us a lot about the trauma suffered by the girl after her experiences with these men. As well as being a former Prince, Mountbatten-Windsor was also the ‘Duke of York’ - another title he was stripped of. He did not even get to the top of the hill let alone march down again! There is a myth going around he is the first Royal to be arrested since the 17th century: referring to Charles I losing his head at the hands of Cromwell ending the Monarchy in England for some years to come as Oliver Cromwell assumed power. The arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor is not the same. The truth is he isn’t even a Royal any more, Mountbatten-Windsor is a member of the Royal Family but not a Royal. If he had been this arrest would not have happened, no chance. This once again disproves the rubbish we are ‘all equal before the law’, as we were taught as children. The British Monarch is above the law and cannot be arrested. Princes and Princesses are very, very difficult to arrest and charge - and if Mountbatten-Windsor had still held the title of Prince Andrew this arrest would not have happened! It would have proved too problematic!! Even as the Duke of York an arrest would have proved very, very difficult but couple that title with that of Prince and forget it!

For the Irish Daily Mirror to claim “At Last …. No One Is Above the Law’ is an insult to anybody’s intelligence. The President of the USA, similar though not quite as watertight as the British Monarch, enjoys certain immunities from prosecution, so long as he/she remains President. This might be Trump's big fear about leaving office and why he may try to suspend presidential elections for the foreseeable future in the US. Either that or do what that other criminal in Israel, Netanyahu, is doing, trying to secure a pardon for himself. Could Trump try that one? The truth appears to me, many big names like George Mitchell, Peter Mandelson, (who is a Homosexual), and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, arrested for passing information to Epstein while he, then Prince Andrew, was the UK's Trade Envoy. He was not arrested for paedophilia or jointly causing Virginia Giuffre to take her own life on 25th April 2025 – a former Royal Paedo, no, never, never? – he, Mountbatten-Windsor could well be part of a high wall of high-flying people to protect President Trump? This is not to say Mountbatten-Windsor should not have been arrested, notably not charged yet, but perhaps the charge sheet should be longer to include sexual offences with his passing on sensitive information to Epstein. As it stands, at the moment, there is not even a charge sheet just a lot of headlines about “no one” been ”above the law”!

As for the headlines in the Irish Daily Mirror: Wara Load of crap to be read and believed by gullible readers and half-wits. This does not prove “at last no one … is above the law” as people are supposed to think. Not at all, it in fact it proves the opposite because anybody else would have been arrested, charged and tried by now and thrown in the Tower!!! Alas the headline in the newspaper, as with many editorials, when it comes to politics are believed by many otherwise normal, sane, people! 

There is no equality in bourgeois law and that is the only certainty.
 
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

“At Last . . . No One Is Above The Law”

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3070

Jim Duffy ✍ An excellent idea at present, given our own lack of personnel and required ships. 

Long-term, as a sovereign state we need to be able to take on that role ourselves. Having Irish personnel embedded on the vessels policing our waters will build up practical experience of immense value to the state - but only if we then hold on to the personnel. We unfortunately cannot told personnel because of a disastrous pension change made by Michael Noonan in the Kenny government. Skilled personnel leave not because they want to, but because they cannot afford to stay under the pension rules. So the private sector snaps them up. Until the pension rule is changed we will continue to lose experienced people in the Defence Forces and the the Gardaí.
 
Peacekeeping millions were another means of building up practical experience, but the aim of Putin and Trump to collapse the UN means they intend to veto all future peacekeeping missions in the Security Council. So traditional style peacekeeping is effectively dead. The UN did make a significant change in peacekeeping at the start of the century. The lack of a UN standing army meant that it took months, sometimes up to a year, for a UN force to be assembled and implement a mission. Faced with the risk of genocides during the gap between the UN Security Council and boots on the ground, Kofi Annan adopted a procedure of asking international bodies with military forces, the African Union, NATO and the EU, to send in forces to implement the UN resolution until the UN peacekeepers could get there. Neutrals all served in these missions at the request of the Secretary-General, and then would transfer to the UN peacekeepers when they arrived.
 
With Putin and Trump determined to veto all missions, one option being reviewed to bypass vetoes is for the UN draft resolution, though vetoed, would be implemented by an international force as a 'draft resolution'. Ireland could not do this, because of the ridiculous Triple Lock as it requires resolution be approved by the Security Council. Every other neutral is perfectly happy to serve in a mission implementing a draft resolution. 

That is the reason the ridiculous Triple Lock needs to be binned. If it is, Ireland would be permanently barred from peacekeeping by Trump and Putin's vetoes. No other neutral has a triple lock. In fact every other neutral thinks it is bonkers. They cannot understand how any sovereign state can give a veto over the use of its armed forces to the US, UK, France, Russia and China on anything. The principle of sovereignty should give the state and nobody else control over its armed forces.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Bin The Triple Lock

Anthony McIntyre ⚽First home game of the new season, and on a chilly February evening we were there for it. 

Our season tickets this time around are for the Windmill Road side of the ground. That way we will always have shelter whereas on the other side where the Ultras gather it can be hit and miss. Arrive too late and the unfortunate fan can end up on the seats not covered by the roof. Not so bad when it is dry no matter how cold it might be. Different when it is raining.

The season tickets are on the phone whereas I liked having the physical card. Each year at the season end I place the by then redundant card in a Liverpool FC neck wallet as a memento. With luck, the hard copy of the ticket will still be available although there have been more than a few grumblings about the quality of service on offer from the club business and merch side of the operation. 

The Drogs had made a good start the previous Friday away to Galway, claiming all thee points after a last minute goal. It was an art they applied to perfection against Dundalk at Oriel Park Friday past when they salvaged a point with a very late equaliser. It means they sit on seven points after three games, a tally they hope to increase this week when they meet Shelbourne at Sullivan and Lambe Park in two days time. Paddy and Jay might not make it for this one, being abroad at the minute and maybe too pressed for time when they arrive back on Friday.

By coincidence I happened to be in Galway where the Drogs sealed their opener but it was on a different day and not for the match. I hope to make more away games this season but with Cork relegated, two visits to Turners Cross are definitely not on the schedule. Always a good place to go and meet up with Joe for a drink and a match. 

On this occasion five of us made the journey by car with Paddy at the wheel. Two of Jay's friends had tagged along. Jay predicted a 3-0 victory for the home team but it was something I never found out until the three predicted points were in the bag, having forgotten to ask him on the way over. He was so engrossed in conversation with his friends that both of us overlooked the traditional Jay prediction. While the margin of victory was a goal short of what he expected he was on the money about who would emerge on top. 

Prior to the kick off against Waterford, there was a minute's applause for Damien Byrne a Drogs legend from the 1970s where he had featured in an FAI Cup final. Within three minutes of the kickoff there was even ore applause, this time very noisy - the Drogs had scored with a Shane Farrell effort. Eight minutes later the home side were on target again, on this occasion finding the net from a Mark Doyle strike. If Waterford made the journey to Leinster with their tails up following a decent draw against Shelbourne in their opening fixture, things didn't work out as anticipated. It takes a formidable side to come back from a two goal deficit inflicted so early in the game. Waterford were not that side. 

While expectations of the claret and blue fans took a spike fuelled by a sense that Waterford might wilt having been stunned twice in quick succession and possibly facing a seven goal Sligo type collapse on an excursion to Sullivan And Lambe, the visitors pulled themselves together and steadied the ship. The scoreline remained the same for the next eighty minutes with Waterford at times seeming the more likely to find the net. Cian Barrett on loan from Shamrock Rovers was unfortunate to see his rasping effort from thirty years crash off the woodwork. Drogheda's main opportunity came from a surging run by substitute Dara Kareem. 

The bulk of the just over 2000 spectators left the ground happy. With a daunting away visit to Oriel Park still a week away, six points from the opening two games was the best that could be expected, which has now increased to seven. That leaves them in second position, behind Bohemians only on goal difference. A fine performance by Drogheda who might have been more dominant had Ryan Brennan been in the midfield and Warren Davis in attack. 

Next up, Shels. And the Dublin sides are never easy.

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Drogs ⚽ Waterford ⚽ Early Strike

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