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Kate Rice ✍😔 A while ago, I read a short book. 

It was the select writings of Mr. Brendan Hughes. His own writing, extracts from interviews - the honest words of a complex man. I read these pieces, and then I read the extracts of his interview for the Belfast Project that have been made available. 

Today, I pre-ordered a bunch of Easter lilies to lay down in memory of Brendan Hughes and those who suffered and died during such a harrowing time in the history of Northern Ireland. The kind woman in the florist offered to tie the flowers with ribbons of green, white and orange. For a moment, I hesitated. I am English. My paternal side has lived in Ulster for as many generations as I can count. My maternal grandfather moved away from the Falls Road in the early 1960s. My maternal great-grandmother, a daughter of County Tyrone. Those beautiful six counties have always been in my blood, even if not by birth. I am the daughter of an Ulster man, yet to many - I am not a daughter of Ireland. 

If I have inherited anything, it is uncertainty. In that negative space, there is a lack of identity. No claim can be made that won’t be contested by a louder voice. Brendan Hughes spoke honestly about his dissonance, though his was far different from mine. One particular writing of his has stuck with me, long after reading it:

To my friends who ask why I speak out, this is the reason. A love of people, a love of justice, a love of truth - and a hatred of power that gives privilege to the few and abuse to the many.

This reflects, for me, a care for the principles of an every day man - a desire for fairness, betterment for ordinary lives, and attention to truth. Even in a world where many would compromise their principles for personal gain, Brendan Hughes reflected on conscience and responsibility in ways that have stayed with me. 

I have heard it said that Brendan would have taken no pride in the murals and celebrations in his name. While I cannot and do not condone the violence of the time, especially the deaths of civilians, these reflections help me understand how systemic oppression can drive people toward choices that may seem alien to a modern audience. 

In his writing, Mr Hughes spoke of a young British soldier he had encountered in Leeson Street. He aimed his weapon, but in such close proximity all he could see was a “mere child, so frightened, out of his own country.” Out of all things Mr. Hughes wrote, it is the ending of this particular piece I often think of:

You came here at the direction of your leaders to invade our country. I had more reason to end your life than you ever had to take mine. I do not know you yet I know you so well. The two of us, working class guys thrown in against each other so that others could benefit. You were English and I was Irish - hardly reasons to kill each other. Farewell British soldier. May you and your children live happy lives. I would like to see you again - but not in uniform.

I often think of him by his window in Divis Flats. I think of his recognition that all those who suffered were the son’s and daughters of somebody - a truth easily forgotten when death tolls are announced with great regularity and in flashing colours, civilian and fighter alike. 

On the 16th, I will lay lilies in reflection, to acknowledge a man who wrestled with conscience, and to remember the many lives affected and ended by a complex and tragic history. A man who expressed, in his own words, a desire for a better and fairer world for ordinary people. A son, for better or worse, of Ireland. 

I do not know if I can claim to be a daughter of Ireland, though I am a daughter of many things. A daughter of an Ulster man. A daughter of truth. A daughter of diaspora. On the 16th, I will lay those lilies as a daughter of hope, that such pain will not be felt again.

⏩Kate Rice is a peace baby.

Lilies For Brendan

Event ðŸ“¢ Frank Stagg will be commemorated fifty years after he died on hunger strike in an English prison in 1976.

Host: National Independent Republican Committee.

Assembly Point: Humbert Monument, Ballina.

Date: 15 February, 2026.

Time: 1330.

Main Speaker: Gerald Lynch, brother of Kevin Lynch who died on hunger strike in the H Blocks in 1981.


Frank Stagg 50th Anniversary Commemoration

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ responds to Robin Livingstone's open letter to Gavin Robinson.

Dear Robin,

On 10 February 2026 you issued a public statement, via your solicitor, addressed to Gavin Robinson MP, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.

I too have lost someone close to me in violent and unexpected circumstances. I too have lived with the hurt and heartbreak you describe. It is beyond crass for any politician, from any party, to tell bereaved families to “move on”.

Like you, I do not wish to know who killed my family member. I do not want them imprisoned, nor punished. I stopped searching for the truth—an fhírinne—not because I do not want it, but because it would reopen a period of mourning I could no longer endure. I made no promises over a coffin. I do not share the binding commitment to justice that you describe.

Where we diverge is here.

In your letter to Mr Robinson, you range far beyond grief, moving into political challenge and moral instruction. You claim that right, and I accept it. I now claim the same latitude in responding to you.
You have been, at various times, Chief Executive, Editor, and part-owner of the Belfast Media Group. Have you reflected on your own conduct during those years? Have you considered the impact—human, not abstract—of the articles you wrote as Squinter, as Robin Livingstone, or as staff reporter? Do any of those ghosts return to you at night?

Did you, or your paper, ever apologise directly to the families of Stakeknife for the macabre article you authored, which compounded their grief? Did your paper ever apologise to the families of those killed by the IRA as informers, when it carried statements that forced those families to absorb their loss in isolation?

When my own relative was killed, your paper—like many others—participated in that same grim choreography. It hurt.

This is where grief, truth, and justice collide, and where clarity dissolves. None of us—myself included—emerges innocent. The difference is this: I am at peace with the ghosts that come to my door. I own them. I have apologised where apology was owed. I try, consciously, not to repeat what I once did.
So, I return your challenge.

The next time, If you—or one of your journalists—charges off, felon-setting, or into language that brings harm to innocent people, will you pause? Will you consider the hurt that your words might bring or the grief you may be amplifying? Will you recognise that words outlive publication, that they bruise long after headlines fade?

Your sales may dip if you do. But your paper already fishes in shallow waters. If you wish your paper to escape its own macabre past, you will need deeper waters and a larger catch.

And in that sense, it is maybe you who most needs to move on.

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

Dear Robin

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3058

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 12-February-2026.
Camilo Torres addressing a public meeting
After 60 years it was announced that they had finally found the remains of the revolutionary priest Camilo Torres, fallen in combat on February 15th 1966 in the ranks of the guerrilla group, the ELN. The state disappeared his body and the strange aspect of it all is that it was the ELN itself that announced it and not the state that disappeared him.

The discovery gave some impetus to the debate on the ELN’s actions, the political and moral positions of Camilo Torres and whether the priest would agree with the today’s ELN or not and whether he would be a militant of an ELN of this nature or in opposition to the said group. This last point seems to be what most excites the social democrats, ex-members of the ELN currently given over to the liberalism of the former right-wing president Juan Manuel Santos and other “pretty” expressions of the Colombian bourgeoise. But this is the least important point. However, it falls to me to deal with it, even if only to dismiss it as a relevant debate.

Joe Broderick has a footnote in the history of Colombia as the author of the great biography of Camilo, an historic book due to its content and the time in which it was written. It is an excellent book, but being a good writer does not make Broderick a political analyst of the reality of Colombia and yet that is what they have turned him into, partly because his current positions coincide with the Zeitgeist. He coincides with Petro’s positions, those of his party the Historic Pact, and of more than one ex-militant of the ELN who live off the tale of their former armed militancy and the current opposition to the ELN. Of course, they have the right to change their opinion and even to criticise all that they see wrong with armed organisations and no doubt there will be issues on which we will say they are right, as a stopped watch tells the right time twice a day and even the greatest drunkard eventually hits the bullseye after numerous attempts.

Broderick, in addition to placing in doubt that the remains found are those of Camilo stated in his interview with El Espectador that the guerrilla movement in Colombia was a failure,[1] and he has a point in the sense that no guerrilla group took power or came even close. This is down to many factors such as the political and military errors of the insurgencies as well as the repression of the mass movement and the bloodbath from the right-wing paramilitary groups. We should never forget that many of the current champagne socialists used to describe the paramilitaries as the state’s loose cannon and they even published reports that argued that. We are where we are not only because of the insurgencies’ mistakes but also due to the murderous strategies of all of Colombia’s presidents, without exceptions. There is not a single president since the founding of the ELN that does not have innocent blood on his hands and I include Petro in that. And as much as the champagne socialists might wish to think so, the paramilitaries did not go away. They are still around. As the priest Javier Giraldo s.j. explains:

The impunity of the most horrendous crimes such as massacres, executions, disappearances and others of such severity is solved today though the strategy of ANONYMINITY, but the daily paramilitary crimes have found another widespread solution for their impunity, which is the INSTITUTIONAL AND PR ADJUSTMENT TO THEIR MODUS OPERANDI.[2]

If they tell you that it doesn’t exist, or is something else, well then that’s the way it is. When it comes to discussing what Camilo would have done or what way forward now, the champagne socialists describe a country that seems more like Switzerland than Colombia.

Broderick also states that both Camilo and the Cura Pérez, the first commander of the ELN for many years would be horrified in the face of what the ELN is now and said that what must be done is to hunt them down and finish them off and we have to wage war.[3] Of course, Broderick is not offering up either of his two sons nor grandchildren for this war. The war is easier in his study room in Bogotá, but not so much in the countryside nor the working-class neighbourhoods where the insurgencies had some influence in other times. And this is the central point of the attempts by intellectuals to differentiate between the ELN of Camilo’s time (and the Cura Pérez in the strange case of Broderick) and the ELN today. It is not about a discussion on the path the left should follow but rather a justification for the path they want the state to go down with the support of those who once upon a time took up arms against the state.

It is nothing new, a number of former ELN militants such as Lucho Celis, Carlos Arturo Velandia amongst others and academics such as Carlos Medina Gallego have pushed for non-negotiated solution with the ELN. In the case of Medina Gallego, he was ahead of Broderick and in 2019 asked for the escalation of the war against the ELN.[4] It would seem that the experts on the ELN want to get their pension over the bodies and bones of the ELN. Both neither he nor the other ELN experts are particularly innovative in that. In fact, they got there quite late. Before them, various leaders of the M-19 guerrillas backed a war not only against the guerrillas but even against their own demobilised comrades from M-19. Rosemberg Pabón, the commander of the storming of the Dominican Embassy and the taking of multiple hostages and Everth Bustamante joined the ranks of the extreme right and were members of Uribe’s Democratic Centre, the party of the false positives, of the drug traffickers and the handover of the country to foreign capital. A pretty path awaits our experts on the ELN.

But going back to the issue of Camilo, both Broderick as much as Medina Gallego are right, as is also Antonio García the first commander of the ELN. They will all find something in life to back their position. Historic figures lend themselves to be interpreted or re-signified. Though the ELN has something in their favour, other than the clumsiness of the others: Camilo was not a pacificist. Whether Camilo would be in the ELN or not, is pure speculation as many guerrillas have renounced their past, whilst others from that period have reaffirmed it. But Camilo fell in combat and we can’t know with full certainty what he would have done. But we know what he did: he was a social leader and furthermore he rose up in arms against the state. It is worth asking why he did it, what was the country like back then and what is it like now. There are various factors and I don’t aim to come up with an exhaustive list, at the end of the day I am not writing a doctoral thesis, I will leave that to the well-financed favoured “children” of the Colombian bourgeoise such as Medina Gallego and Alejo Vargas.

Photo: GOL, a damaged monument marking
the spot where Camilo fell in combat.
When Camilo joined the ELN he was convinced that there was no democratic and peaceful solution to the country’s problems. Poverty was rampant and an agrarian reform was urgently needed. The country was dominated by an oligarchy that concentrated power and the wealth of the nation in a small number of hands from a small number of families. The US military directly interfered in the country and moreover played a key role in the bombings of peasants and the setting up of paramilitary groups.

Any similarity to the current moment is not coincidental, though there are clear differences between the two periods.

Of course, as has happened the world over, poverty has decreased or at least the most abhorrent manifestations of it have. Social indicators have improved. But there continues to be a lot of poverty in Colombia and the gap between the poorest and the richest is still problematic. The Gini is situated in 54.8[5]with the richest 1% of the population having 17.9% of income and the poorest 40% getting just 10.3% of income.[6]

As for land, it is accepted by one and all that the concentration of land ownership is today greater than it was in the 1960s. In 2017, Oxfam published a report on the concentration of land. According to the study, 1% of the UPA (Agricultural Production Units) amass 73,78% of the productive land of the country.[7] This figure does not include indigenous lands. If we look at the UPAs over 2,000 hectares in size, we find that they “represent 0.1 percent of the total (2,362 holdings); on average they are 17,195 hectares in size and occupy almost 60 percent of the total area included in the census (40.6 million hectares, or 58.72 percent).”[8]

In Camilo’s day access to health was precarious due to a lack of coverage and today it is precarious because it is a private business dominated by foreign capital, mainly Spanish, such as the Keralty Group. It is worth pointing out that Petro’s reform is not about imposing free state medical care but rather about reforming the private medicine that the state finances.

Regarding US military interference, the situation today is worse than in the 1960s. The US has control of seven military bases in Colombia and mercenary companies are contractors with the state and their operations enjoy complete impunity within the country. Now after Petro’s prostration before Trump, the future looks dark. No sooner had the meeting finished, to keep Trump happy, the bombardments of Catatumbo and Nariño began.

Lastly, there is the question of democracy in Colombia. You can vote in Colombia as you could in Camilo’s time, though the elections change little and votes are still bought with money or at gun point. The “democracy” can be seen in the murders of social leaders and also of demobilised guerrillas. According to the NGO, Indepaz, in 2025 187 social leaders were murdered and in 2024 another 173, whilst 39 demobilised members of the FARC were murdered in 2025 and 31 in 2024.[9] So much democracy!

Not even the right to protest exists. The social explosion of 2021 was violently repressed with the police murdering more than 80 people, imprisoning the youths of the Frontline (Primera Línea) who responded to the state violence suffering all types of abuse, including sexual abuse and many ended up in jail where they languished whilst the champagne socialists discussed the year and variety of their wines, bought through their high salaries and more than one theft of public funds. This movement which was not pacific, answered the state’s bullets with rocks, the gases with masks, the batons with shields and made Petro’s election possible, who once in power betrayed them.

In such a situation what would a reincarnated Camilo do? Camilo was above all a fighter, I don’t know whether he would fight in the mountains or in the social movements, whether he would be in the ELN or in social movements. In life he did both. He was a social leader and he rose up in arms against the state. What I think can be said is that he would be part of the struggle. He wouldn’t join the champagne socialists in their coffee houses and bars in sterile debates and to borrow Broderick’s phrase he would be horrified by… the poverty, US interference, the lack of democracy, the corruption in Petro’s government, the nepotism, the lukewarm measures that don’t change anything and in no way would he see Petro purring on Trump’s lap in Washington as the culmination of his dreams and hopes for the Colombian people.

References

[1] El Espectador.

[2] Giraldo J. (2024) La delincuencia paramilitar.

[3] El Espectador.

[4] Verdad Abierta (22/07/2019) “El Eln, con la guerra a las espaldas”: Carlos Medina Gallego.

[5] Gini measures inequality with 0 representing absolute equality in income and 100 absolute inequality.

[6] World Bank (2026) Human Development Report 2025. World Bank. p.285

[7] All figures are taken from Oxfam (2017) A Snapshot Of Inequality What The Latest Agricultural Census Reveals About Land Distribution In Colombia, Oxfam.

[8] Ibíd. P. 15

[9] See.

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

In Defence Of Camilo Torres, The Guerrilla Priest

Defiance News ★ Written by Miles Taylor. Recommended by Christy Walsh.

Exclusive: This week district attorneys are gathering in the nation's capital to talk about prosecuting law-breaking federal agents.

This week, something unusual is happening in the nation’s capital. Local prosecutors from across the United States are flying to Washington, D.C. for an emergency meeting about a simple idea that shouldn’t be controversial: No federal agent is above the law. Yet the Trump administration will undoubtedly be furious to know the gathering is taking place, as the organizers are readying efforts to hold its agents accountable for misconduct.

The closed-door session marks the first in-person meeting of the Fight Against Federal Overreach project — FAFO — a new coalition of locally elected district attorneys and prosecutors who are collaborating on how to respond when federal officers violate state criminal law or trample constitutional rights in their communities.

News of the group’s launch was revealed by The New York Times less than a week ago. Yet the speed at which participants are coming together shows how urgent the situation has become. Indeed, new videos have surfaced almost daily of ICE agents and DHS officers breaking protocol, intimidating American citizens . . . 

Continue @ Defiance News.

America's Prosecutors Are Coming To D.C. With A Message For Trump: F-A-F-O

Christopher Owens ðŸ”– with an excerpt from his new book due for publication on 28-February -2026. Order from Amazon.

You have to wait around for happy accidents.

Just the other day, I got a booking from Aer Lingus. Some flights had to be diverted to Dublin Airport and so they needed a taxi to take two people up to Belfast. Nice one, as that normally works out at €400 and, as it was being paid for by the airline, I could take my time and the passengers wouldn’t be overtly annoyed as they weren’t footing the bill.

Parking outside Terminal 1 at the beginning of spring isn’t the worst way to spend your day but it can be suffocating: the endless rows of traffic, buses breaking down all the time and the endless spillage of people from vehicles and the terminal. All of them bustling and hustling to get to an idealised situation: holiday or home. The construction work adds a layer of restrained chaos: a few diversions but no one complains as we all know that, when it’s ready, we’ll stand back and feel a sense of ownership as we saw the new terminal being built from the ground up. The concrete acting as a kind of bonding secret between those who saw it and those who built it.

And then the church as well, sitting in the middle with that weird looking concrete pillar that says ‘God is Love’ in gold metal, highlighting just how fucking grey the whole church and surrounding area is. When your view is obscured by the glass bus shelter/waiting area, you’d swear that it was a bus station thus making the golden slogan seem like some sort of strapline for a moribund bus company. Very much a relic from a different time in Irish history but it does no harm to be reminded of these things I suppose. Apparently there’s been a rise in attendance since the housing crisis. Suppose it’s nice to think that someone might be concerned about not being able to get on the property ladder.

That day, I’d already done about five journeys into Dublin itself. It was a spring day, one of those days where you really notice just how much you missed the sunshine during the winter. The sky was cloudy but the spots where light blue were evident, wow.

In Drumcondra, there were moments where I could hear the birds chirping away while bustling in the freshly blooming ash and sycamore trees. It’s hard to describe but weather like that does something to me that cannot be matched by anything. Indeed, it’s amazing just how much we underrate the sunshine. I suppose it’s a kind of defence mechanism: we’re normally guaranteed mizzly rain that (quite literally) renders our hopes damp squibs so when sunshine penetrates our gloomy psyche, we’re not equipped to absorb such beauty.

Driving in that weather with tourists who seemed genuinely excited to be in Ireland adds that little spring in the step as well. They mightn’t necessarily converse with you, but it would be evident from their hand gestures and blasting jigs from their phones that they’re happy to be in Ireland. They think they’re indulging in some good humoured stereotyping and always have a look on their mugs that suggest they’ve never once considered the possibility that an Irish person might find such antics punchable offences.

So maybe it’s no bad thing that they don’t converse much. Besides, what really makes this job worth it is seeing the creeping realisation on the faces of tourists as we travel from the airport to Dublin city centre itself. All too often they’ve built up their own visions of what the place is like and you can either disabuse them of said notions or play up to it a little. It all depends on the route one takes from the airport: if I was to drive through Drumcondra, it would certainly reinforce the more positive perceptions: Georgian buildings, luscious foliage, Croke Park, James Joyce, Samantha Mumba. Whereas if I went through the tunnel, the giddy optimism turns into a kind of existential nightmare as the endless rows of sodium lights and dingy concrete make them wonder if this was what Diana experienced a few minutes before the crash.

📚📚📚📚📚

Being given this job from Aer Lingus was a nice way to wind up the day and meant I didn’t have to come in for a few days. Unfortunately, the job was at 11pm. Although on a good day it would take about 90 to 100 minutes to get to and from Belfast, I had been told by one of the drivers that part of the journey was closed off due to roadworks.

Driving up the motorway at that time of night is always something of an adventure for me and it’s all to do with the lights, believe it or not. We all know there’s something almost primordial in the act of travelling at night as we scour the surroundings for immediate danger and the variety of lights (be they traffic, headlights, LED) and the various patterns can make the whole thing somewhat psychedelic.

It helps to be a seasoned veteran otherwise, as I previously said with some tourists, the endless lights will drive you mad.

Also when we move into the cities with their underpasses, advertising spaces, skyscrapers and apartment blocks, the whole thing can be a sensory overload as you struggle to contemplate why people have their apartment lights on at 2am and whether such lighting is indictive of a dead city trying to mask that it’s dead or whether it’s merely a spectacle for night time folk to ensure that their primordial feelings of travelling at night are justified.

Pity that I got two miserable Nordie cunts who said fuck all the whole journey.

Christopher Owens, 2026, Soviet Hotel Dressing Gown. Down by Law Books, 2026, ISBN 9798245132884

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Soviet Hotel Dressing Gown Excerpt

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3057

Dixie Elliot ✊When you are free to think for yourself you will always find the truth, no matter how hard others try to conceal it.

It was an honour to be in the Rathmor Centre last night as our comrade Séamus Kearney told of his life's journey.
 
A journey during which death as an IRA volunteer was a risk he willingly took in pursuit of Irish freedom.
 
The years of captivity within the concrete walls of the hell known as the H-Blocks.
 
Of finding out that his young brother, Michael was executed as an informer.
 
How he refused to let it break him and so he struggled on with his comrades, the Blanketmen and Women of the H-Blocks and Armagh Gaol until the very end when the selfless sacrifice of ten brave men brought about victory.
 
Even after he walked through the gates of Long Kesh, Seamus was still not free. Not while the innocence or guilt of his brother Michael needed to be proven. Not while the burden of his mother's plea to find the truth hung heavy on his shoulders.
 
His journey was a difficult one with many hurdles placed in his way.
 
But he overcame them and finally dragged the truth of his brother's innocence from those who had tried hard to conceal it.

Seamus gave Michael back his honour as an IRA volunteer and in doing so he also freed his gentle mother's soul so that she could die in peace.
 
But as he was to discover, those who finally told Seamus the truth about his brother's innocence still lied about the traitor Scappaticci who had taken his young life at the behest of his British handlers.
 
'He was innocent until proven guilty' they had told him, even though Volunteer Michael Kearney was denied the chance to prove his own innocence before three bullets took his young life.
 
This so called innocent man, Scappaticci, whom they had so rigorously defended finally proved his own guilt when he let his handlers spirit him away.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Dragging Truth From Concealment

Belfast Telegraph ★ Written by Sam McBride.

31-January-2026

Stormont is a broken, hapless administration whose rambling incoherence is excruciating

This year MLAs have spent just nine minutes debating legislation in the assembly chamber — yet could find time to discuss everything from the traitors tv show to Donald Trump and 'blue Monday'

Few U-turns in Stormont's history have been both as sudden and significant.

Last Thursday, John O'Dowd's Department of Finance announced the outcome of 'Reval 2026' - a revaluation of business properties across Northern Ireland to decide how much each should pay in rates, the local property tax jointly controlled by Stormont and councils.

On Monday, O'Dowd stoutly defended the policy from criticism. He lambasted MLAs who queued up to question him and insisted he was standing over the policy.

Just 72 hours later, he abandoned this approach. It was a humiliating reversal of a major government policy, and has additional significance because it came from Sinn Féin's most capable Stormont minister.

What happened this week is significant in itself. But its far greater significance lies in what it reveals about the Executive.

Things in the Executive are bad, and they're getting worse.

Continue @ Bel Tel.

It Can't Go On Like This

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ As the Twenty-Six-County administration led by Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, and Tanaiste, Simon Harris, prepare for their joint attempt to curry favour with US President Donald Trump they appear to have conveniently forgotten the atrocities committed by the US under this man.

As the bowl of traditional shamrock is prepared to be handed over to Trump, the bodies of countless Palestinians killed during US sanctioned Israeli bombings, during what Trump calls a ‘ceasefire’ brokered by him, are conveniently forgotten. 

Despite the fact that last year Donald Trump insulted the two leaders of Irish constitutional politics by not inviting them for the customary lunch at the White House they appear hell bent on giving him the chance to repeat the belittling. Last year Trump invited former Mixed Martial Arts and fellow rapist, Conor McGregor, to luncheon with him. No doubt the two perverts had much to discuss, and it will be interesting to see who he invites this year. 

Let’s get one thing straight, as far as Ireland is concerned, Trump is not Joe Biden who really absorbed the Saint Patricks Day celebrations, neither is he Barack Obama who also enjoyed the festivities, as did Bill Clinton. No, Trump only likes celebrating himself and bombing smaller defenceless countries like Venezuela whose oil he will half inch (pinch, steal). More recently the administration led by Donald Trump in the US has stooped to new depths when on Trumps social media site an image of former President, Barrack Obama, and his wife, Michelle, superimposed as ‘apes’ was uploaded for the world to see. This act really shows the administration up for what it is, racist, imperialist, dictatorial and above all else, immoral. Yet the leaders of the Twenty-Six-County government insist on visiting him even though Trump has no interest in the audience at all! It is called going through the motions!!

The depiction of the former President and his First Lady as ‘apes’ is as racist as anything Adolf Hitler used to describe Jewish people back in the days of the Nazi regime. Would the two Irish political leaders, knowing the persecution suffered by socialists, communists, trade unionists and, above all, Jewish people have visited Hitler in Berlin? Would they have used trade and ‘jobs’ to placate or even cultivate the tyrant? A hypothetical question and one which of course cannot be answered but the point is the similarities between Trump and Hitler. The difference between the two is one of extremities but principally they are pretty similar, both are/were power crazy, racist, narcissists, and bullies. Who knows how far Trump would go but for the, albeit inadequate, checks and balances in the US which Hitler in Germany dismantled when they got in his way. On that subject has it gone unnoticed the said checks and balances in the USA are being gradually eroded by the Trump administration? 

The Trump government has, on home soil, overseen their Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), agents gun down unarmed protestors in Minneapolis. These protestors were guilty of nothing more than voicing their opposition to Tumps racist immigration laws. Apparently, such protests are no longer tolerated in Trumps USA. The Trump administration tried to claim one gunned down protestor, ICU Nurse Alex Pretti, was armed and dangerous! This was, of course, rubbish as are most of Trump's claims, but much of the media and social media swallowed this dollop of bullshit. Some in the media did speak out and I expect these people to suffer Trump's wrath in the future. It turned out the Nurse was carrying a mobile phone and not a gun at all. Can anybody tell me the difference between the actions of ICE with Presidential approval in Minneapolis and the actions of the Iranian Government who also gunned down and killed protestors in Tehran? Perhaps again the only difference was the numbers killed but principally those actions of the religious nutters in Tehran and those of Trump's mob are the same.

Trump's illegal bombing of Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro should have been enough to cancel the visit. After all, would Martin and Haris have visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow after the invasion of neighbouring Ukraine? No, of course not, so why visit the racist white supremacist Trump? The images of Barack and Michelle Obama were disgusting and insulting to the offended couple and, I would imagine, the majority of US citizens! Micheal Martin regularly uses US investment in Ireland and ‘jobs’ as a cover to hide behind for going on this trip. Does he seriously believe, or expect us to believe, that by refusing to go to the US this year Irish jobs would be put in jeopardy? Does Martin really believe these jobs depend on him being ‘well in’ with the US president whoever that may be? What nonsense and an insult to people’s intelligence. US companies are not remotely interested in An Taoiseach’s relationship with the President; all they are concerned with is profit, and profit on profit at that. They come to the Twenty-Six-Counties because they do not have to pay high wages, weak trade unions barely worthy of the name, and very low corporation tax. These are the principle reasons these firms come to our shores and has nothing to do with Micheal Martin going to Washington, or not!

The main opposition party in the Dail, Sinn Fein, have finally come off the fence and stated they would not be attending this year’s events in Washington. Party leader, Mary Lou McDonald, and Michelle O’Neill, leader of the party in the Six Counties, announced “they will not attend St. Patricks Day events at the White House this year”. Mary Lou went on to state; “this is a principled stance in response to the call for the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza.” These atrocities of the Trump gang and their partner in war crimes, Benjamin Netanyahu, were going on last year but Sinn Fein still attended the festivities! Why then and not now? Would it not have been more convincing to mention other wrongdoings of Trump, the bombing of Venezuela, the uploading of racist images, instead of just the Palestinian cause? The plight of the Palestinian people is terrible but has never been used by Sinn Fein in other years as a reason not to attend and looks a pretty weak excuse given the fact last year the same could have, and should have been said. Or could this be more about playing to a world audience? An audience increasing in size behind the plight of the Palestinians, could this be the real reason, a bit of political mileage and credibility perhaps?

All things considered, neither government or opposition should be attending the US festivities this year as the US President sinks to new depths. They should not have gone last year and the Conor McGregor experience over the lunch should also have told both Micheal Martin and Simon Harris something -  Trump treats them with contempt!
 
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Would Martin And Harris Have Visited Hitler?

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