Raymond O’Connell dissects Jim Allister’s recent invocation of “alien culture,” tracing the phrase from its science fiction roots to its deployment by creationists and demagogues seeking to scapegoat migrants. Drawing on Voltaire, Hume, Kant and Fanon, the piece asks why the brutalities committed in the name of European civilization remain so conveniently forgotten by those who champion its values today.
When a local attack in Belfast sparks violence echoing the darkest chapters of 1938 Germany, one writer asks whether today’s instigators are any different from Hitler’s Brownshirts. Drawing on David Adams’s searing analysis, this piece dismantles the myths about immigrants, exposes the real sources of violence in Northern Ireland, and names exactly who deserves the blame.
Tony Blair is back with grand pronouncements, urging Britain to reorganise its entire government around artificial intelligence while cosying up to Trump and quietly dismissing net zero targets. But with his institute reportedly bankrolled by hundreds of millions from Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Saudi clients, is this really a vision for national renewal or just a sales pitch dressed up as statecraft?
While Western media insists Russia’s economy is crumbling and Ukraine is turning the tide, the facts on the ground in Kostiantynivka and the numbers in Moscow’s treasury tell a starkly different story. Eoin Ó Murchú dismantles the comfortable narratives sold to Irish readers, exposing the inconvenient truths about NATO expansion, inflated casualty figures, and why neither side is actually ready for peace.
British politics is spiralling through its seventh Prime Minister in a decade, yet the smug myth of Westminster stability still blocks any honest reckoning with the elitist, market captured system driving popular discontent into the arms of the far right. John Molloy argues that Ireland remains chained to this chaos through partition, and asks what a genuine liberation beyond the Stormont gravy train and loyalist supremacy could actually look like.
From rubber bullets and sexual degradation in Israeli detention to violent police assaults upon return home, Global Sumud Flotilla activists are exposing how Western states have woven themselves into the history of Israel’s siege on Gaza. Dianne Kirby writes about the disturbing “Israelisation” of Europe and the Americas, revealing how surveillance tools, security doctrines, and economic dependencies forged in occupied Palestine are now being turned against citizens who dare to stand in solidarity.
Did the CIA poison England’s legendary goalkeeper Gordon Banks to hand Brazil the 1970 World Cup? A new investigation, three years in the making, suggests this once-dismissed conspiracy theory may not be so far-fetched after all and points to a much larger story about the Agency’s hidden hand in international sport.
With Sinn Féin declaring the imminent end of the United Kingdom and unionists eagerly hitching their wagon to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, Northern Ireland’s political class seems to have lost all grip on reality. W. Owl cuts through the wishful thinking on both sides, exposing how Brexit obsession and constitutional fantasies have blinded commentators to what’s really at stake for Ireland.
With Labour haemorrhaging councillors, losing northern strongholds, and trailing Reform in the polls despite a 170-seat majority, whispers of a leadership challenge from Andy Burnham are growing louder. Mike Morrissey dissects how Starmer’s hyper-cautious revival of New Labour has left the party trapped between fiscal orthodoxy and public fury and asks whether the Manchester mayor can offer a way out before Farage buries social democracy for good.
By Mike Morrissey
Behind the glossy Premier League sleeves and pristine Kigali streets lies a $4 billion debt bubble, a 30-year war of plunder in the Congo, and a regime that trades sovereignty for Western applause. This investigation pulls back the curtain on Paul Kagame’s “sportswashing” empire, exposing how “Visit Rwanda” functions as a diplomatic shield for autocracy, mercenary geopolitics, and the quiet machinery of neoliberal imperialism.
By Mohamed Hilali