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Gary Robertson ⚽As I’ve stated many times before I’m no fan of international matches so the prospect of watching Scotland line up against Slovenia on Saturday hardly filled me with joy.
 
According to UEFA Scotland are ranked 19th and Slovenia 26th so it looked, for those interested, a perfect opportunity for the Pocognoli era to hit the ground running.
 
Instead what we saw, yes I endured it, for research purposes you understand, was another display of mediocre football.
 
Simply put, both sides were rubbish. The highlight, yes highlight, was seeing Billy Gilmour back in a Scotland top. Otherwise it was same old, same old. Missed chances, poor defending and misplaced passes. Just when you thought maybe a game of football might break out the footballing Gods decided that was enough excitement and the game quickly descended back into the realms of that most descriptive of Scottish words “pish.”
 
The only consolation being at least we are spared another episode of east end soap opera Janefield Street.
 
Martin O’Neill, at time of writing, is still the main character but as time goes by he’s slowly morphing from loveable rebel into villainous defender of the cabal. He must be asking himself if the scripts he’s working with are worth the aggravation. There will be no Bobby Ewing moment for Martin, it wasn’t a dream dude. Celtic really are that bad.
 
So bad in fact, as therapy I’ve found myself watching highlights of matches from yesteryear online and trying to remain positive. Indeed it would be unfair of me not to mention the positive vibes I received in a comment from Steve R. Honestly the last person I expected to put a virtual arm around me and tell me it will get better. It’s amazing the difference a few kind words can make.
 
There was however some Scottish football at the weekend. The Scottish challenge cup - The KDM evolution trophy as it’s known this year.
 
A chance for Premier League “big boys” B teams to compete against established teams from the lower divisions. With names such as Galafairydean Rovers from Galashiels in the Scottish Borders and Clachnacuddin of Inverness it’s the perfect opportunity for fringe players from Rangers, Celtic etc to get some much needed game time. This was all too evident for Hearts who’s B team suffered a soul destroying 14-0 defeat at the hands of Ross County at the Global Energy Stadium. True it didn’t help that Hearts played much of the match with ten men due to Flockhart seeing red for the Jambos in the 34th minute. However, even by then Hearts looked miles off it and were already 4-0 down.
 
A score line like that can rip the fighting spirit out of any player and I hope these lads realise that strange things happen in football and not to become too disheartened. Sure it’s not good but it’s part of a learning experience and you can take the lesson and work on what needs to improve.
 
Other B teams fared slightly better.
 
Celtic drawing 3-3 with the aforementioned Clachnacuddin, Rangers going down 4-2 to Queen of the South at Palmerston Park in Dumfries, Dundee United losing out narrowly to Forfar 2-1, Bonnyrigg Rose, a Midlothian team based 8 miles outside Edinburgh to the south east managed to put 3 past Motherwell with no reply, Hibernian falling to a 2-1 defeat at Galabank the home of Annan, Hamilton overcoming Kilmarnock's B team 3-0, Dundee losing out 1-0 in a Friday night showdown with Spartans.
 
Indeed the only Premiership second side that managed a win this weekend were St Mirren who overcame Cumbernauld Colts 4-2. So it’s hats off to them for a fine performance.
 
Friday also saw four Scottish Championship matches with the highlight being Stenhousemuir who overcame Ayr United to extend their lead at the top of the table to eight points after second placed Raith Rovers were defeated 2-0 by third placed Livingston. It’s early in the season but building a lead in the league can be crucial even at this stage, and Stenny are going about their business with professionalism.
 
Sunday saw the first women’s Glasgow Derby of the season, with both teams on fifteen points this looked on paper at least a tasty fixture.
 
For both sets of fans it’s showed however the pendulum of power is slowing swinging in the direction of Rangers.
 
After the men’s team having disappointed us for weeks it was a chance for the fans to find something to smile about. However it was not to be and a 5-2 rout by a rampant Rangers side reminded us that things aren’t ribbons and roses at Paradise and the disease that has swept through the men’s team- loseritus has infiltrated the ladies squad too.
 
Winning is a good habit to have, losing can also be habit forming and I hope for Celtic women this is just a blip and winning ways will be restored soon.
 
As for the men’s team I still maintain surgery is needed and fast. But that’s a story for another day.
So there you have it, another weekend in the wonderful world of Scottish football.
 
I enjoy writing these pieces as it’s nice just to switch off for a while from what’s going on in the world around us. When Anthony McIntyre asked me if I’d be interested in writing for the blog I’ll admit I was excited, humbled and rather nervous all at the same time. I mean I couldn’t say no, opportunities like this don’t come around every day. And a chance to bring fans closer to their respective teams and what’s happening both on and off the park is both a privilege and excellent therapy. I try to keep the swearing to a minimum, otherwise some weeks you might end up with a string of expletives followed by “Celtic” but I write as I think, and yes sometimes the odd one will creep into conversation. It happens, it’s football it’s one of those things.
 
Anyway whatever you’re doing do it well, stay safe and be happy.

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Soap Operas

Seamus Kearney 🎤 I met my old comrade Breandán Mac Cionnaith, on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown last night.


He welcomed me with open arms and we reminisced briefly about our time in the H Blocks in the Autumn of 1982.

His determination for justice then, matched his determination for justice now, which I found absolutely admirable and awe inspiring.

I have never been driven by bland politics and squabbling over the crumbs from a colonial table, but have always been ignited and inspired by raw passion and grit determination. That is why the four years on the Blanket Protest in the H Blocks has always been the bedrock of my strength and my guideline into the future and all it holds.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with men and women who still possess the Republican fighting spirit and an unquenchable desire for justice is heartening and still leaves me humble in their presence.

Despite standing on the Garvaghy Road all night and being soaked to the skin, the dawn finally appeared and the pangs of hunger appeared with it. A solitary sausage roll was presented to me and I shared it with the man next to me, the sense of comradeship emerging again as it was many years ago when we shared meagre food rations during the Blanket Protest.


The catastrophic decision made by the Parades Commission and further exacerbated by the PSNI, has not been lost on those of us who linked arms as the dawn broke through on a precarious political landscape, but the strategic initiative and moral argument had now gone to those of us who persevered throughout the night. We were off our knees and were not going back down on them again. The simple question still resounded as the morning rain persisted: Why march down a road where you're not welcome?

However the bigger question was now starring us all in the face: Where do we go from standing on this crossroads?

Despite the growing realisation that we had somehow crossed another Rubicon, the lesson I have taken away from Garvaghy Road is that a people together can never be torn apart, especially with a vision for a future that can never be reversed.

As my comrade Bobby Sands said ' Never Give Up, Never Despair, Never Lose Hope'.

Onwards to the Republic.

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

No Going Back

Barry Gilheany ✍In what to many in the field regard as an overdue development, the UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced last week the creation of a new-disinformation agency. 

In his words the National Centre for Information Defence is to counteract:

… an insidious campaign that reaches into people’s homes and twists what they feel about their own country and community – creating a narrative of decline, stoking division and sowing despair.[1] 

Although the sowing of disinformation and the telling of tall gates has long been the MO of espionage agencies of all states be they the CIA or KGB, particularly during the Cold War and in the course of counter-insurgency campaigns with Col Frank Kitson’s Low Intensity Operations - a standard operating manual during the Mau Mau era in Kenya and later transferred to Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, there is a widespread consensus that the terrain and nature of today’s information conflicts are totally different from the analogue eras. 

In this age of super-connectivity and instant messaging, tech savvy bad actors be they hostile, aggrandising states like Russia, China or Iran or networks of conspiracists be they far-right ethno-nationalist influencers; anti-vaccination activists or climate denialists are ahead of the game and are having a corrosive effect on the democratic process and institutions across the Western world. Shocks to liberal democracy such as the vote for Brexit and the first election of Donald Trump as US President have been attributed to the losing side in both to multiple disruptions to the electoral processes by Russian origin “bots” and the nefarious data harvesting operation of the research firm Cambridge Analytica; the rapid spread of false narratives around alleged Muslim of immigrant culpability in events such as the Stockport Taylor Swift child massacre generated Britain’s worst race riots in generation and the lies spread by antivaxxers about the safety of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic and their narratives around lockdown and other virus suppression measures being part of a globalist, Great Reset agenda which had unquantifiable impacts on death and infection rates provide an indisputable rationale to tackle such floods at their source at an institutional level.

Experts in decrying the futility in chasing in a needle in a haystack manner isolated examples of disinformation, identify the “infrastructure” and the “sophisticated ecosystem which exists to exacerbate provokable users for one reason or another” in the words of Sophie Williams-Dunning, cyber analyst at the Royal United Services (Rusi) thinktank” have welcomed going after the networks as a step in the right direction. For Williams-Dunning, this ecosphere encompasses not just the ubiquitous Russian bot but far-right influencers who immediately exploit such social flashpoints as the Stockport and Belfast riots and the protests outside migrants’ accommodation as well as grifters looking to monetise on such conflictual situations by producing captivating content riffing on disruption (sometimes the same person as with Steven Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson). Accompanying Burnham’s measure will be, rightfully so, a debate about free speech and the appropriate levels of governmental intervention. Williams-Dunning forecasts that malign networks will amplify these free-speech concerns, no matter how cynical the methods.

The mission of this centre is thus to mobilise “trusted voices across civil society” to confront the messy reality of how people consume news: fragmented feeds, algorithmic bundles and emergent deepfakes. Deleting and disrupting hostile state activity does sit uneasily at the frontier between national security and freedom of expression; between the democratic imperatives of the state and the often changing and the security necessities, not just in the area of national defence but also food, health and environmental security in an era of science hostile narratives spread by bad actors such as climate change deniers and antivaccination activists who then seek to monetise their lies and misinformation in the manner of the Dirty Dozen wellness woo snake entrepreneurs such as Dr Mercola who the Centre for Countering Digital Hate identified as being responsible for up to 85% of disinformation content at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2021. So a successful centre must thread that needle; aggressively countering malign influences with protecting civil liberties.[2]

The UK government has not yet published a launch date, budget, location, or complete governance structure. Initial reporting suggests that the centre will bring together intelligence agencies, law enforcement bodies and technology companies including social media platforms to coordinate responses to foreign information attacks. Its proposed remit will include identifying the state or proxy responsible for initiating campaigns using manipulated narratives and then disrupting the digital infrastructures used to spread them.[3]

The initiative followed the National Security (State Threats) Act, 2026 which strengthened the Government’s ability to degrade and disrupt organisations involved in hostile activities on behalf of foreign powers. Official guidance defines state threats as harmful overt or covert actions by foreign governments which fall short of direct armed conflict but beyond peaceful diplomacy. The Government lists espionage, sabotage, disinformation, cyber operations, and political interference, especially in the electoral process. In this context, Andy Burnham did reference alleged Russian interference in the 2019 UK General Election.[4]

The legislation introduced proscription style powers against state linked organisations and offences concerning support for designated bodies. The new centre is intended to address the information and coordination side of the threat rather than replacing those criminal powers. Further government announcements will be needed to establish which department will be acceptable for the centre; how intelligence will be shared with technology companies and what independent oversight will apply.[5]

For now the PM has set the objectives and has tasked security chiefs to develop the organisation. He has stated his desire for Britain to use its presidency of the G20 in 2027 to pursue common international principles and standards for advanced AI unlike the dangerously laissez-fair approach of Donald Trump with whom Britain will nevertheless deepen their practical defence and AI partnership proving that the two governments can cooperate on military technology (for now maybe) while disagreeing about wider international regulation.[6]

The Right to Truth and the NCID

As has already been alluded to, the design and implementation of this new body has to balance national security needs and the integrity of democratic processes with safeguarding an overarching principle of liberal democracies, freedom of expression and from arbitrary acts of censorship. The NCID must be undergirded by a “right to truth” which should supersede what has traditionally been the unquestioned liberal norm – free speech. In formulating his right to truth principles, Geoff Mulgan starts out by critiquing how the liberal tradition of freedom of expression or speech has prioritised that value over the right to truth. He starts out by pointing out how this approach to speech assumes that free and fair competition in the “marketplace of ideas” will ensure that truth triumphs over lies. However just as other liberal nostrums over the neutrality of markets have been shown to have feet of clay due to the emergence of aggrandising monopolies and oligopolies, so Gresham’s Law which says that bad money drives out good money out of circulation (crypto currency may well be a contemporary example), so “flooding the zone with shit” as propounded by Alt-Right guru Steve Bannon makes it harder to distinguish fact from falsehood and so perverting the entire raison d’etre of free speech.[7]

The 17th century French mathematician Blaize Pascal wrote “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” Fast forward to the first two decades of the 21st century, and we find the very idea of the universality of truth hollowed out by tech behemoths such as Meta and X; the long reach of falsehood factories such as Russia’ s Internet Research Agency; the “anything goes” literary dogmas of postmodernism and poststructuralism and the amplification of conspiracy theories through cyberspace which would have been laughed out of court in the analogue age. For truth is dependent on a never- ending process of discovery bolstered by laws and institutions. All other civil liberties implicitly rely on some right to truth. Mulgan cites the example the right to a fair trial by jury having little meaning unless judges ensure that juries have the best possible information.[8]

Historically the right to truth is expressed in human rights discourse as the right of victims of war crimes or state repressions and other gross violations of human rights to the truth of how loved ones died and to appropriate recompense. Mulgan reframes this right not to be lied to or knowingly misled by powerful and influential organisations. He advocates that the right should be added as a protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and should balance the US Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. He stresses that there must be a high bar for invoking this right, to account for differences of opinion and should be enforced by courts, not governments or “Ministries of Truth” (which certain media outlets like the Daily Mail are styling the NCID as).[9]

The right to truth should be grounded on the perennial precept of treating others as one would like to be treated by them. Mulgan identifies four areas of public life which should be guided by it. The first is the law, consumer protection laws which prohibit misleading and false claims in advertising and marketing should be extended to political communications. The industrial scale of Donald Trump’s lies and the egregiously false claims peddled by the Brexit camp during the EU referendum such as the weekly £350m sum allegedly paid to Brussels to be then used to fund the NHS; the claim that 75 million Turks would be able to come to the UK in the event of an impossible Turkish accession to the EU and Nigel Farage’s Breaking Point anti-refugee poster would be punished under this remit.[10]

Second, media non-profit news outlets and public service broadcasting providers which full the role of commitment to truth must be strengthened. Thirdly, regulation could force powerful information providers to become purveyors of truth. As examples of good practice, in June 2024, the European Commission released a preliminary finding that Elon Musk’s X platform deceives users by letting anyone pay for a verified account and was therefore in breach of the Digital Services Act. As a result, X could face fines of up to 6% of global revenue. Germany’s Network Enforcement Act of 2017 requires platforms with more than two million users to remove “clearly illegal” content.

Fourth, independent electoral commissions need powers to fact-check and correct false claims and block the most damaging misinformation and deepfakes in the run-up to elections when the vulnerability of truth to the risk of interference is at its most acute and the stakes for democracy are at their highest. Lastly, tech pioneers such as Factiverse and Fullfact in the UK are developing new tools combining artificial and collective intelligence to spot and access misinformation.[11]

Although, the proposal for an NICD is in its infancy, there can be doubt about the “epistemological crisis” facing Western democracies that Barack Obama warned of in November 2020 and which has heightened since then.[12] A possible vision for Burnham’s proposed information resilience department would be a multi-agency integration of the elements sketched out above by Geoff Mulgan into a stand-alone body with specified executive functions. First in its crosshairs should be the power and influence of Elon Musk who as the world’s richest person and owner of X has been the greatest superspreader of hate speech relating to immigration, multiculturalism and open support for far-right parties like Restore UK and the German AfD; the latter designated by German intelligence services as a threat to democracy and national security. For it is the truth that sets one free and protects one’s freedom.

References

[1] Dan Milmo and Robert Booth. Attacks on information PM’s plan to stem tide of falsehoods. The Guardian. 24 September 2026 p10.

[2] Defending Democracy. Britain’s National Centre for Information Defence against AI-driven Disinformation. 23 September 2026.

[3] Charlotte Mercer. Burnham announces new UK centre to combat hostile state disinformation. Ayes to the Right. 23 September 2026

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid

[7] Geoff Mulgan. Right to Truth Project Syndicate. 14 August 2024

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] Russian disinformation. A strategy of resilience has to recognise the complicity of domestic extremists. The Guardian Editorial 24 September 2026

⏩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.

Burnham Declares War On Disinformation

Kate Yo ✍Tuesday 28/9/26: listening to the news the Garvaghy Rd spokesman that he had met with the Secretary of State and that it was constructive and friendly. Later that evening at after 10.5 the Spokesperson took to the megaphone to update the people on Garvaghy. This is the gist of what he said taken from the video made by the 1916 Societies.

The mediator was to be someone from outside Britain and Ireland someone with experience, perhaps the one used before from South Africa. An independent mediator. The British came back and wanted to bring ourselves the Orange Order and the British together to decide on the mediator. We responded this evening to say that's not how mediation works. Those involved in a dispute don't appoint a mediator. Look at it this way, the British pick one, the Orange Order pick one, and we pick one. That's not the way to do it. The British government should go out and recruit a mediator without the help of ourselves, or the Orange Order. Someone with no connection to here, outside Britain and Ireland and therefore completely independent, and independent in any decision they reach.

I reckon what the British are trying to do is line this up that we are going to be seen as the unreasonable ones, because I'm sure there's been more discussion between the British and the Orange Order than there has been with us. So over the next couple of days there'll be more exchanges between us and the government. But I bet that the British government already has its game plan in place. It's to make us be the unreasonable ones and to make the Orange Order look good. And it goes beyond Garvaghy Road because the Brit's know that the political process is already in crisis and that they need to be seen to give something to Unionism. For the DUP, UU, and TUV, and are using the process to make us the sacrificial lamb.

They are also doing this so that anything that happens on Sunday will be seen to be our fault. Now the British might think they are being smart but us telling youse the night will ensure that the move that the Brits are trying to make, at least youse will see it and understand it. It will not come as a shock. So the next couple of days we are going to have to try everything to try and avoid the Brits and their latest ploy. But I think that they have already decided on their game plan, just like Mo Mowlam did away back in the 90's. They've got their game plan and they are working out how to deliver that game plan and it's looking like Orange feet on Garvaghy Road. It's not the end of it because Orange feet on this road is not acceptable to this community. It will also not be acceptable to nationalist communities right across the north.

If the British government want to go down that road of wrecking the peace process let it be on their head. Because they already know what the result of a march on Garvaghy Road will be: people in Derry, Belfast, South Armagh and Dungiven. What they are trying to do is that the blame falls on us. I also believe that no announcement will be made until Saturday. And there is a reason for that, because you know yourself that there's damn all on TV except sport. The news programmes as you know are five minutes of news and a half hour of sport. Newspapers that are printed for Sunday go to print on Saturday afternoon. So once they make their decision and release it publicly the newspapers will have already been printed and the TVv will not be able to carry much about it. They have the whole thing timed out to a T.

Our defence here will be the support and the reaction of the six counties and probably beyond. As long as we stand united, as long as people are prepared to make this stand the Brits still have a big problem. One thing they will not be able to do is prevent what before here because this time round we know what to expect. We know there will be a battle, and the British know this time we learned lessons from the past, from almost 30 years ago. We are determined that this injustice will not go unopposed. So there's still a couple of days left to convince them.

This afternoon I was also speaking to two people from the Irish government and was telling them about our fears. All the nationalist political parties are behind us in this. As I say there's major repercussions for the British government if they go ahead with what appears to be their strategy. I am hoping that the Dublin government and the nationalist political parties here will make it known to the British government and the Secretary of State. that either this is a proper process or that there'll be major repercussions. Because nationalist parties will pull out of Stormont. But I'm not advocating any of that. That's up to them, to do it because there'll be major repercussions than the British realise.

I know it's not a good note, it doesn't sound good but believe me over the next number of days we are going to convince the British government that this is not about politics but this is about justice for this community and we have no intention of going back.

⏩Kate Yo is a Belfast book lover.

Mediation Policy Exposed 🪶No Going Back

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3278

Packy Carty ✒ Whenever the mathematical reality of the Northern States demographic momentum and material inversion is laid bare, establishment commentators retreat to a single, comforting sanctuary: 

the growth of the Alliance Party. "People are moving beyond tribalism," the refrain goes. "The middle ground is taking over."

It is a convenient fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. The rise of the "neither" designation is not the birth of a new, post-constitutional identity. The party currently occupying that ground is Alliance, but what actually sits underneath it is a class alliance, not a resolved one — sections of the middle classes and the urban petite bourgeoisie on both sides of the sectarian divide, holding together for as long as their shared interests in stability, property, and professional advancement outweigh the pull of their separate national loyalties. It is not a homogeneous bloc waiting to be wooed wholesale by either side.

Start with the party's own voters. The University of Liverpool's 2024 general election survey found 68.1% of people who actually vote Alliance want to remain in the UK, against 31.2% who back Irish unity — on the electorate's face, a party that leans towards the status quo. But look past the voters to the people who've actually joined the party, and the picture changes completely. Research commissioned for the book The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland – Beyond Unionism and Nationalism found 38.1% of Alliance members support Irish unity, 27.6% want to remain in the UK, and 30.1% are undecided. Two surveys of the same party, pointing in different directions, is not evidence of a coherent political philosophy. It's evidence of a coalition of convenience — voters parking a decision they haven't made behind a party that isn't asking them to make it, and a membership already split three ways underneath. This piece isn't claiming that bloc will swing to a united Ireland on polling day. It's pointing out there is no "it" to swing at all — only a community raised, like every other, inside the sectarian structures of the northern state, whose eventual choice will follow the same two forces already at work everywhere else on this island: the community it was reared in, and which outcome actually serves it's material interests better.

Its growth has been built on a coalition of convenience, drawing middle-class professionals and younger voters who have temporarily parked the border question to focus on everyday governance. But when a border poll is triggered, the nature of material self-interest changes instantly. The question ceases to be "who fixes the potholes today?" and becomes "which state guarantees your healthcare, your real wages, your pension, and your children's access to the world's largest single market?" As established, the material balance of that calculation has already inverted toward the South.

The Alliance leadership knows this balance cannot hold. Naomi Long's shift toward suggesting the party might "step back" from a border poll campaign and treat it as a matter of individual conscience, with representatives free to vote as they wish, is a real retreat from her own 2022 position that Alliance would "undoubtedly" take a side eventually — an admission of structural vulnerability, not confident neutrality. Former Alliance leader John Alderdice put it more bluntly still: sitting on the fence is "not politically realistic," he argued, pointing to what he called an "almost inexorable trajectory towards a united Ireland." A party with genuinely no guidance to give on the single largest constitutional question in its country's history isn't rising above the divide. It's postponing the moment it has to pick a side of it.

The structural fault lines are already visible, and they run in both directions at once. When Carole Howard defected to the UUP, the word she reached for was "now" — she said she could "now openly and comfortably express" pro-Union views she evidently hadn't felt free to voice inside Alliance, a defection the party itself called "an act of bad faith." Months earlier, former councillor David Rossiter had walked the other way, resigning from the party in October 2024 because he could "no longer support a party that has not embraced the possibility of a new Ireland." Rossiter didn't just leave quietly. He pointed directly at the same membership poll cited above and accused his own former leadership of sitting on it deliberately, telling the Irish News he assumed the party "took a strategic decision not to engage further in order to protect their unionist leaning voter base" — happy, in his words, to take nationalist votes in swing seats without ever reciprocating by acknowledging what a third of its own members actually wanted. One defector leaving because the party wouldn't let her say she was pro-Union. Another leaving because it wouldn't act on how pro-unity a third of its own membership actually was. That's not a coherent centre. That's a fault line with people falling off both sides of it.

Perhaps the most tragic exposure of this internal contradiction was the experience of Anna Lo. From an Alliance perspective a progressive, pro-European, anti-sectarian figure who ought to have represented their permanent future of "civic" politics in the North, Lo was hounded out of political life by loyalist intimidation after daring to describe a united Ireland as economically logical. Her exit was the canary in the coal mine: it proved that when the constitutional pressure ratchets up, the polite veneer of "neither" vanishes, and the underlying state mechanics reassert themselves.

When the border poll is eventually called, that class alliance comes apart. Alliance will not navigate the referendum as a neutral mediator, nor will it successfully convince its own divided membership to look the other way. The party will splinter along the same fault line running through the rest of the North — its pro-Union wing drifting back to the UUP or DUP to defend the status quo, its progressive and younger cohorts moving toward the material logic already laid out in my second article.

The "middle ground" is not a new political tribe destined to anchor the 1921 settlement forever. It is a cross-sectarian arrangement of convenience among people who share a class position but not a nation, raised the same way as everyone else in this artificial statelet and watching the same clock. Anna Lo's departure was their warning. The actuarial and material numbers already established are what's still ticking. The only remaining question is whether Alliance breaks apart before the referendum begins or during the count.

⏩ Packy Carty is an East Tyrone Socialist Republican. 

The Non-Aligned Of Brigadoon

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ And then came the cry from the crowd: “SS RUC.”

In a throwback to the mid-1990s, Sinn Féin supporters and others have today, resurrected one of the war cries synonymous with the most turbulent years of the northern conflict.

There is a contradiction here that must not be lost. When Michelle O’Neill returns to work as the First Minister for All, she will do so accompanied by the same PSNI close-protection officers who were being denounced by her party on the Garvaghy Road today. Her protection officers were probably earning a bit of overtime sitting in armoured vehicles nearby while the old “SS RUC” refrain rang out once again.

It wasn’t just the chant that brought me back to the flashpoints of Belfast, the Ormeau Road, the Springfield Road and elsewhere, where I had once rioted with many others against the imposition of Orange marches. The faces on the picket line remained remarkably familiar too. Old, jaded IRA and Sinn Féin men and women who had once fought the RUC on the streets were there again, wider of girth and greyer of hair, but occupying ground, that to the outsider, seemed strangely unchanged. But something fundamental had changed. Their purpose today was to police the peace rather than encourage resistance.

That Michelle and company have been blindsided once again, this time by a loyalist activist, says something about the depth of strategic thinking within the party. A young loyalist previously mocked and dismissed by Sinn Féin has succeeded in making himself the focal point for nationalist and republican anger and blame.

Jamie Bryson is not old enough to remember the Troubles or to have experienced at first hand the violence and disorder unleashed around Drumcree and the other marching flashpoints of the 1980s and 1990s. Yet he has become the pantomime villain to Sinn Féin’s Cinderella: a convenient malevolent character upon whom an altogether more complicated plot can be pinned.

Because the truth is considerably harder to take, particularly for those of us who wanted to give the Good Friday Agreement a fair wind. Jamie Bryson, Stephen Nolan and Carla Lockhart did not invent sectarianism, it has never gone away and that is because the Good Friday Agreement has failed.

It has failed because, primarily, its architecture was designed to end a war rather than to build a peace.
We all assumed back in 98 that the ending of conflict marked the arrival of peace. We were wrong, ending a war is not the same thing as building a peace.

The GFA has not failed because its institutions were inherently incapable of functioning, nor because one community was uniquely responsible for frustrating its promise. It failed because it mandated the continuation of the war by other means, it embedded sectarianism into the fabric of Government and it failed because it gave us the illusion of power sharing without the need to give anything.

The deeper failure has been the spectacular absence of political leadership across the spectrum in the years since 1998. We created institutions incapable of managing our political disagreements and failed to confront the social conditions that continued to reproduce them.

Nearly three decades after the Agreement, sectarianism remains embedded in too much of our political and social life. We have not confronted sectarianism, racism and xenophobia. Culture and identity remain things to be defended against the other rather than shared with them. Human rights have too often become another weapon in the constitutional argument: embraced when useful and disregarded when they protect the rights of those with whom we disagree.

And there is another dynamic to what is happening on the Garvaghy Road today, and it is clear that Breandán Mac Cionnaith is alive to it. The people of the Garvaghy Road, and the Orange march itself, are proxies in a much wider political battle.

Once again, an issue involving rights, culture and competing identities is being drawn almost effortlessly into the old constitutional divide. The language coming from Sinn Féin and the DUP does little to suggest that they see political advantage in lowering the temperature. The institutions, that Sinn Fein signed up to, the police and the parades commission were supposed to provide a means of resolving these disputes, they merely brushed them under the rug.

For Sinn Féin there is an additional political context. Its abysmal record as the largest party in the Executive will inevitably be tested at the next Assembly election. Delivery on what was promised, what was achieved and what was not, should have dictated how people voted. But Garvaghy will change the debate into an election that everyone knows how to fight.

Today marks the beginning of next year's election campaign and indicates that, once again, it will be fought primarily along tribal lines rather than on the delivery of manifesto commitments. Unionism will be told that its culture and rights are under attack. Nationalism will be told that the old Orange state is reasserting itself. Each side will have its villain, its grievance and its call to the tribe.
We did not dismantle the battlefield. We built Stormont on top of it.

⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.

If You Choose The Wrong Path, Then Don’t Complain That You’re Not On The Right One

Pádraic Mac Coitir ✒ Like thousands of other Irish Republicans I was on the Garvaghy Road and as I walked around speaking with people, strangers and many that I know we were under no illusion about what has been happening over the past three days.

Two days were spent in a British colonial court and it came as no surprise that the unionists got their way by getting the go ahead for their sectarian march to walk the road we were on today. 

All the talk by Sinn Féin about a 'shared island' was exposed as nothing more than drivel. When many of us warned about the British government protecting and supporting the unionists we were told they would never be allowed. Stormont is nothing more than a super council that is dominated by unionists and their police force will be there to protect them.
 
Hundreds, if not thousands, of peelers were in Portadown and it reminded a lot of us who took to the streets of Garvaghy Road, Crumlin Road, Ormeau Road and other areas years ago. We were battered off those roads and the usual suspects claimed they would put manners on the peelers and what did we see today? Yes, the very same police force.
 
We were there not to hear mealy mouthed platitudes from Sinn Féin but to support the people of Garvaghy Road. Sinn Féin people had bodyguards on a road where nobody was going to attack them and as they spoke it was about themselves as they look forward to elections next year.
 
As sure as I'm writing this they will call on people to join the same force that harass people and they will batter those trying to stop sectarian bigots walk where they should never be allowed. They'll go back to Stormont and sit with unionist scum that want marches down roads where they should never go. They'll meet British politicians that continue to pump billions of pounds into their armies and police forces while people live in fear of more sectarian marches. The hypocrisy isn't lost on many of us. 

I stand with the people of Garvaghy Road as do thousands of others but I don't support Sinn Féin making political mileage out of a dire situation.

Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican
prisoner and current political activist.

Shared Island Drivel

Dr John Coulter ✍ Donald Trump has successfully opened a second front against Russian aggression with the historic signing of the new deal with Greenland and Denmark which will see two new major American bases in the Artic region.

This is the most significant deal involving the region since 1951 just as the original Cold War with the old communist Soviet Union was ramping up.

Russian boss Vladimir Putin had himself sparked a second front with the confrontation with Iran and the United States. Russia, in invading Ukraine, has found itself bogged down in Afghanistan Mark Two.

The Ukrainian conflict has become Russia’s Vietnam, and has descended into a war of attrition as casualties mount. Now with Western military aid, the Ukrainians are fighting back, fuelling speculation that a proxy war has developed between Moscow on one side, and Washington on the other - using Ukraine as the battlefield.

Historically, in terms of conventional wars when Russia was invaded, the Russians always deployed a simple tactic - retreat east towards Siberia as fast as possible and let the severe Russian winter do the rest. The French Emperor, German Kaiser and Nazi tyrant Hitler all learned the same bitter lessons over the centuries.

With the end of the Berlin Wall in Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union and fall of communism, NATO tended to sit on its laurels. Putin’s war in Ukraine is really the ex-KGB boss dipping his military toe in the conflict water; how far can be taunt NATO without the situation deteriorating into a full-blown nuclear World War Three?

Given Putin’s self-styled own triple alliance with China and North Korea, Moscow has worked on the assumption that NATO is either too scared or too ill-prepared for anyone seeking a military conflict with Western powers.

Realistically, Putin’s Ukraine strategy fell apart in the first week when the Russians failed to capture three key northern airports during the initial invasion.

This created a major logistical problem for Russia as it meant transporting supplies by road over long distances - ironically, the same scenario which befell the Nazis in the 1940s when they invaded Russia. The more the Soviets retreated east, the longer it took for the Germans to get much-needed supplies to frontline troops.

In Ukraine, the long supply route left the Russians vulnerable to drone attacks by the Ukrainians. How Putin must have yearned for a short, sharp snap campaign to take all of Ukraine; indeed, how frustrated must the Russian leader have been not to have been able to use his ballistic missiles to end the war in a matter of days.

Again, the Russians had to swallow some bitter reality medicine. They couldn’t use the same brutal tactics as they had deployed in the Russian region of Chechnya where allegations of chemical and biological weapons were used.

The Russians certainly could not afford to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine given how NATO may retaliate.

Trump has effectively called Putin’s bluff with the former’s second front in the Artic region which could seriously threaten Russia’s eastern flank.

If Putin thought he had a problem with Western-made drones striking Russia from Ukraine, what about the potential of US drones hitting Russian targets from the Artic?

In spite of the diplomatic decorum for the cameras at the public signing of the Artic deal, there still remains unease within Denmark and Greenland about Trump’s earlier flamboyant language concerning his desires on expanding American interests in the Artic region.

This has to be set in the context of Trump’s astute tactics of ensuring he usually get what he wants. He wanted to get US bases established and expanded in the Artic region before the Chinese or Russians moved in. So it was a case of ‘dial up the hardline rhetoric’, then give the appearance of pulling back - only to get what you wanted in the first place!

The Artic deal also puts additional pressure on the UK to support Trump’s tactics in the Middle East. And, of course, we should take Trump’s comments on supporting Irish unity with a large pinch of political salt. The real aim is to persuade Southern Ireland to abandon its military neutrality and join NATO as a full member.

With only a few years left on his Presidency, Trump wants his military legacy to be a really strong NATO - and United States - capable of combating any moves territorially by the triple alliance of Putin, China and North Korea - the so-called Axis of Evil.

Could this Axis policy be that China has been allocated the task of mainly cyber war; the North Koreans flashing their ballistic weapons testing, and Russia supplying the territorial provocation?

Ironically, Putin must secretly view the Trump Artic deal as the 1960s Cuban missile crisis in reverse!

Just as the old Soviet Union tried to get ballistic missiles located off the American coast in communist Cuba, so too, has Trump been able to secure a deal which will allow the Americans to base substantial weaponry within easy range of Russia’s eastern borders. Where Russia failed in the 1960s, Trump has succeeded in 2026.

If Trump is really smart militarily, it will not be just drones which are located on the two new planned US Artic bases. He should pack both bases with a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons.

And to really copper fasten this Artic deal, another deal must be on the cards. Bigger runways in Southern Ireland to facilitate American bombers, and Northern Ireland’s shipyards to service US nuclear submarines, warships and aircraft carriers.

Such a policy for the island of Ireland would require massive investment from the White House. Unionists and nationalists alike should now wonder what will be on the political cards for the Americans to gain such a military capacity.

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Dr Coulter has been a journalist since 1978 and is currently a political commentator with GB News.

Tactical Trump Gives Putin A Major Military Migraine

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Six

Geordie Morrow 🖌 with a painting from his collection of art work.

 
⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

Beano

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