In Ali Smith’s near future novel Gliff, truth tellers are branded “unverifiable” and erased by the state, while a whistleblower mother, two haunting parables, and a horse named Gliff carry the flickering hope of resistance. Jenny Farrell explores how Smith transforms surveillance, complicity, and redemption into one of the most urgent dystopian works of our decade, ending with a challenge that places the reader directly on the horse riding north.

Irish progressives cheered Keir Starmer’s resignation, but Eoin Ó Murchú writes for Unity that his successor Andy Burnham represents nothing more than continuity Starmerism dressed up in friendlier rhetoric. From his Blairite economic advisers and Labour Friends of Israel background to his promises of increased military spending and market reassurance, Burnham is a threat to Irish unity, neutrality, and working class interests in both Ireland and Britain.

Israel has transformed atrocity into spectacle, from paid binocular viewings of Gaza’s destruction to newly legislated public executions of Palestinians broadcast as state sanctioned entertainment. Dianne Kirby examines how this descent into dehumanisation exposes not only the collapse of Israeli democracy but the complicity of a western world that continues to grant impunity even as global opinion turns.

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.