For the past few weeks, a fair few dark situations have presented themselves to me, and each has almost immediately been countered, by a positive force far more powerful. Something or somebody that has appeared out of nowhere helped in ways I could never believe possible.

This time, the darkest time yet, the Angels or guides made a pre-emptive strike half an hour before I learned that my eldest son had been mugged and severely beaten while on holiday in Benidorm.

I was at work in the churchyard, it had been a usual day. It was well after five, and I was getting ready to close the church doors when a bus full of tourists hurtled into the car park. A young tour guide ran up to greet me. Knowing it was out of hours she made her appeal for me to stay open anyway, and introduced herself as Laura. She was a new guide, accompanying a group of Spanish tourists on their way to Donegal. I remember thinking at the time that “Laura” didn’t sound Spanish at all, that quintessential English sounding name, always makes me think of Laura Ashley, a shop my mother used to love .It was probably why her name remained with me.

As the rest of her group wandered through the site, mostly to use the toilets after being confined to the bus since Galway, one of her passengers fell into deep conversation with me about Ireland’s Spanish connections. I told him about one of our Sligo connections, Captain Francisco de Cuéllar, how his ship, La Lavia, went down with two others from the Armada fleet at Streedagh, a beach just up the road, and how he survived to write one of the great accounts not only of his time with the fleet, but of being on the run in Ireland afterwards, wandering half-drowned through Sligo, at the mercy of a country he didn’t understand. I’d asked him if he had read any of his account as it’s still one of the clearest windows we have into what the Armada’s men actually went through once they washed up on this coast, he said he thought he had a book about it back home.

He shared stories of his own before we parted. I passed my details to Laura so that she could call ahead if she came this way again with a tour, and gave the man I’d been talking to, Juan Carlos, a little Yeats booklet as a parting gift. Before the coach had even left the car park, I learned a great deal more about Spain than I wanted to.

My son, holidaying there, had been mugged in Benidorm.

That morning he’d been walking six or seven minutes from his hotel when a man approached him in a way that ‘he said’, read as friendly. Two others were with him, one a heavily pregnant woman. The man reached for my son’s pocket, and that was the moment that in my son’s own words, everything went “from smiling to psychotic” in the space of a breath. He struck my son around the head an estimated ten to twelve times; my son believes, from the mechanics of the punches, that the man had boxing training, he was quick. During the assault the phone he was holding fell to the floor. The first man kicked it across the ground towards the pregnant woman, who picked it up and scurried off. His wallet was never taken, he didn’t fall, which probably accounts for the number of blows to his head.

He made it back to his hotel covered head to toe in blood and asked the receptionist to help him report it. He was told this wasn’t hotel policy. Disorientated and in shock, he wandered into a phone shop to buy a replacement. The Spanish staff there were lovely to him they told him that the hotel, by law, had an obligation to report the attack, and gave him a drink and somewhere to sit while he got his bearings. He repaid their kindness by very possibly buying the most expensive phone in the shop. After a failed attempt to get both medical attention and police assistance, he ended up back in his room, heavily concussed, unable to say how long he’d lost consciousness for.

When he came round he managed to reach his Nana first, and it was she who broke the news of his condition to me, she’d spoken to him on FaceTime, something I couldn’t have faced myself and kept my head. When I rang him it was clear he was still in a bad way.

I stayed on the phone with him as he found his way to hospital. He was in pain, confused, in shock. A mother always imagines the worst, so between calls, with my youngest son’s help, who began making arrangements for me to fly out. I managed to get through to the consulate, who agreed to contact him the following morning. Nobody, anywhere, seemed inclined to encourage the incident being reported as a crime; I was hoping the consulate might help with that, and step in further if the concussion turned out worse than it first appeared - and he needed more important help.

Between calls, I received a message from a number I didn’t recognise. A photograph of a book cover, Los Prisioneros de la Armada Invencible, the accompanying message read as follows:

“Here’s the cover of the book i have at at home. There is a chapter about Francisco de Cuéllar. We had a nice talk.”

It was Juan Carlos, the man I’d met that afternoon in the graveyard.

Skipping every usual convention, I went straight in for the kill: “could I ask for your help please”? He answered assuming the question would be of a literary nature, or about travel. It wasn’t. Would he be able to help with translation if i needed it ? I told the man who I’m sure had just been trying to enjoy his holiday what had happened. In quick succession he proceeded to ask me a series of questions about my son, they were of a medical nature, and about the assault, he concluded the questions with another message;

“I know Benidorm well, is he in La Vila hospital? The publico hospital? I am a doctor / physician and I know the people there”

My eldest had stumbled in to private hospital up the road, but what were the chances?

Just as Francisco de Cuéllar had been helped by the people of Sligo and Leitrim in 1588, this man was ready to go far beyond what was asked of him for my son, a stranger, in Spain. Taken aback by the coincidence, I let myself see something of the divine in it. It softened the blow, a little, for a mother who thought her child’s life might have just been taken from him and her.

I rang the hospital myself as his demeanour seemed to worsen in the waiting room. A man named Michael answered the phone. He told me that my son was with doctors at that very moment, being prioritised for an immediate CT scan, and that he’d been keeping an eye on him, and speaking to him. He already seemed to know everything that had happened. My sons own phone was about to lose charge, so to have the hospital phone answered by someone who told me he was looking after my son was a comfort in itself, he would find him a charger too. But it was his name that undid me a little. Michael after the Archangel, protector and defender against evil, the one called on to stand between the vulnerable and whatever is coming for them. I didn’t need convincing that my son was in a fight. I needed to be told someone was standing over him in it. Hearing that name down a phone line, in a hospital I’d never see, in a country I wasn’t in, did exactly that.

Twelve hours after the assault, a CT scan found no serious damage, a concussion, not the far worse thing I’d spent the night being afraid of.

Even grateful for this, I couldn’t let the hotel’s refusal go. There is no law in Spain that allows a hotel to decline calling the police when a guest has been the victim of a violent crime,the opposite is closer to the truth. Spanish hotels carry a legal duty of care to guests under the Civil Code, Articles 1101 and 1902. Whatever commercial reasoning sat behind that hotel’s policy was in direct contravention of it. The logic isn’t hard to follow, even if it isn’t defensible: a police report, a Guardia Civil car outside the entrance, a write-up that reaches TripAdvisor or a local paper, none of that is good for a resort built entirely on the promise of a safe good time. An establishment whose margin depends on repeat bookings and star ratings has a direct financial incentive to minimise anything that makes the strip look dangerous, and “it’s not our policy” is an easier sentence to say to a concussed twenty-something than “we’d rather this didn’t reach the press.” I can’t put a name to which motive was actually operating at my son’s hotel, that would be asserting something I haven’t verified, but the incentive structure that makes the excuse a plausible one to reach for is well documented across Spain’s coastal resort economy. What I can say factually is this: whatever the hotel told my son, it wasn’t describing an actual legal exemption. There isn’t one.

Once discharged, my son tried to report the assault himself, but he wasn’t steady enough yet to stand in the queue. He said afterwards that people around him were getting genuinely frustrated, and that the line of people trying to report a crime stretched out onto the street. He said he’d come back the next day and get there an hour before the station opened; it gave us time to prepare a statement, one in English, one in Spanish.

The next day the queue was, again, down the street and full of tourists. While he waited, my son helped a man in his sixties who’d had his phone stolen from his hand the night before. The man was distressed because his elderly mother expected a daily call and he had no way to reach her; no one remembers phone numbers any more! My son found some of his relatives through Facebook, let them know what had happened, and helped him cancel his cards, all before the station even opened. “There’s a full-time job that could be had there, Mum,” he told me. He went on to describe others in the queue, a family of six who’d just had their passports and belongings taken between them.

The Guardia Civil were attentive with him, possibly because he had his statements ready, possibly because they could see the state he was in. He went through mugshots and left them with detailed descriptions, though by the end he seemed resigned to the fact that this was procedure rather than the start of an active investigation, given the sheer number of people reporting the same kind of thing that week.

Nothing in my son’s account establishes the nationality, origin, or organisation of the three people involved. But the officer he dealt with clearly had a working sense of the nationalities of the gangs operating distraction thefts in the area, none of them Spanish. Their problems, he implied, are no different to the rest of Europe’s, and policing them comes with much the same challenges. He worked through mugshots, probably knowing it was a fruitless exercise, and sent my son off with a police report.

What is documented, and useful as context rather than identification: in April 2025, a violent robbery in Benidorm led Spain’s Policía Nacional, working with Europol and Romanian police, to dismantle a Romanian organised crime group operating across several provinces including Alicante, running a distraction-theft method known locally as the abrazo cariñoso; the “affectionate hug.” Twenty-one people were arrested. The group was based out of Madrid and ran mobile teams into tourist provinces using safe houses as regional bases. Benidorm’s local press has separately reported broad-daylight muggings of British tourists by young men working in pairs, a pattern consistent in shape, if not confirmed in any specific detail, with what happened to my son. The officer also mentioned a significant number of Moroccan gangs that had been operating in the area over recent months.

I’m not writing this to spoil anyone’s holiday. But it’s clear that this popular strip for young people sustains a working criminal economy built around distraction, theft, and, when a mark resists or notices too soon, physical escalation. The Spanish people my son encountered my son reported were consistently kind to him, but despite their kindness, he said he would never return here again.

Four hundred and thirty-eight years ago, a half-drowned Spanish captain was shipwrecked and found himself being kept alive by people who owed him nothing, in a country whose language he didn’t speak. Cuéllar wrote it down because he thought it worth recording: that strangers had chosen decency when they had every excuse not to, in a country whose own invaders had killed his countrymen. This time the mirror seemed to flip. My son was the stranger, in a country whose language he didn’t speak, at the mercy of whoever happened to be nearby,and for a while it went the other way. The story I shared with the doctor who’d been standing in a Sligo graveyard for no more than ten minutes, seemed far more poinient now. In the days since, Juan has kept in touch, asking after my son between telling me where his next stop is. It’s a strange thing to sit with. I guess sometimes i slip in to fiction by way of dealing with trauma.

Juan/John and Michael are names of particular weight to me; hearing them both that day/ night did more to keep me steady than I can properly account for. But there was a third name threaded through the story: Laura. Where did she fit? I went looking, and found Saint Laura of Cordoba, a ninth-century Spanish widow who entered religious life after her husband’s death and rose to become an abbess during a period of Christian persecution in 9th century. The country was under Moorish rule, Laura was scalded to death for refusing to convert to Islam. She’s remembered for her steadfastness in the face of an ordeal that could easily have broken her, still venerated as a source of strength for anyone trying to hold their nerve when everything says they shouldn’t be able to. Christian or not, it hardly matters. It fit. Laura arrived first, the messenger before the storm, the one who talked me into staying a little longer in the churchyard than I’d planned, who put me in the path of Juan Carlos and, through him, a captain, four hundred years dead. Less than half an hour later, the real news came. Looking back, it feels less like coincidence. Whatever it was, believing in a higher protective power helped navigate through the horror of what happened to my firstborn so I could be of use to him from afar. I can cry now.

He told me the man who attacked him seemed to smile with something like glee at his conquest. Another of the three, it turned out, was believed to having had been carrying a knife. He knows now, in a way he didn’t before, exactly what the world can hold.

What happened to my boy is not rare, and it’s barely counted. He’s alive, the scan came back clean, and I know how fortunate that makes us. That isn’t true for every young traveller this happens to, and it won’t stop being true for as long as a bleeding guest can be turned away from reception with four words, and nobody ever asks why.

He is one of all our sons and daughters, raised, as so many of them were, in relative safety, who will now carry, somewhere at the back of his mind, the knowledge of what that kind of violence looks and feels like up close. There’s an innocence stolen there that doesn’t come back, the easy, carefree belief that the world, mostly, means you no harm. It’s a lesson I tried to teach him long before any of this happened. I only wish it hadn’t taken something so brutal to make it real. I wish even more this lesson didn’t need to be real.

All of us who are raising children, even if they are now adults, know, that they are entering in to an active war. Beyond the experience detailed here, this is a wider battlefield most of our young people are simply unprepared for, however much we think we’ve warned them.

So this is the part that matters, the part I want any parent reading this to actually take with them: don’t wait for your child to learn it the way mine did. However old they are, wherever they’re going, make the pre-emptive strike yourself, to at least help prepare them. Be brutally clear with them, the time they now find themselves in is not conducive with waring headphones in public places, or walking down the street staring in to their black rectangles. They need to get fit, be able to run, and be prepared for this changing time. Teach them to fight, or at least be prepared to defend themselves, and mean it. learn how to remember numbers again, take paper copies of important documents, don’t rely on a device that can be swiped from your hand in a second.

It can not be a coincidence that the NGO/nanny state ideologies responsible for producing a generation of kids encouraged to culture a suicidal empathy for ‘everyone’ , and de-masculinisation of men , comes in conjunction with a time, the first time in our living history invading forces have been invited in; and their crimes actively covered up. The inner side of twisted UN sustainability circle has no doubt this sloganized already, echoing the Georgia Guidestones’ ten principles. Though these stones have been reduced to rubble the over riding message still stands.

My son, he is athletic, clever, tall and strong, but up until two days ago naïve, at least to the fact this could happen to him.

“They actually looked friendly to begin with Mum”

“They always do kid”.

Between tours of the Monastic site, the Church and Churchyard, I sit in a little wooden kiosk. It’s a place of peace and solace that has provided me with much comfort over the past five years, having had to leave two earlier positions in quick succession due to disagreements of a medical nature. Day to day you never know who you’re going to meet, and each day you can guarantee that someone will indeed strike a beautiful chord in you that resonates long after their visit. The past few weeks have been particularly intense; the number of interesting people who have passed by is incredible, matched by the strange occurrences here. To the best of my ability, and when time allows, I try to record these interactions and what I learn on a daily basis, it’s phenomenal. Yesterday was no different, but slightly different all the same.

A tall older man in an anorak presented himself before my little window in the kiosk, looking slightly confused, hovering, as if he was about to ask me what the point of my existence was. “I have to pay?” he said, in a raised German inflection.

I answered him with a smile, “No,” reaching for an information leaflet written in the language that matched his accent, then randomly asked if he was a teacher. He laughed and said, “No, I don’t work in a school.” I went on to say, “I didn’t say a school teacher.” One of the perks of my job is these fun interactions, and the conversations that follow.

Little did he know that today he would be my teacher.

“I do teach things; like sustainability.”

Well, thinking about it, he’d come to a sixth-century monastic site, flanked by mountains that hold stories thousands of years old, a church over two hundred years old, and a tenth-century high cross and round tower; my guess was he’d be right at home here. I said as much to him at the time.

Sustainability. I don’t know what it is about that particular word that irks me so much. Perhaps it’s because it’s been laser-beamed into the modern-day lexicon at the speed of light, manoeuvring through every available institutional wormhole, imprinting itself on paper, billboards, screens, and even clothing, like an infectious disease, all while, simultaneously, this past half-decade, we have witnessed the murder and neglect of our people. A population who who are still being poisoned, our old buildings desecrated, ancient monuments attacked, our stories rewritten, our culture eroded, and more recently cows and calves being shot in broad daylight. The sustainability to me is a Janus word, a single word possessing two entirely contradictory meanings, Its wrapped in barbed wire, it hurts to think too hard about it.

As the slender man went on, he said his work related, broadly, to health and the pharmaceutical industry, and began to speak of the current efforts being made to ensure that air and waste pollution were being kept to a minimum, unlike the efforts being made in the US. He seemed to have a particular grievance with the US that became more evident the more we spoke. He mentioned that the US had just reneged on a major wind farm deal with German contractors in preference for a gas solution. We chewed the cud on fracking and shale gas for a moment, his anorak-covered head bobbing about intentionally, punctuating each point he made about how it adversely affected the environment. I began to mention the deliberate delays on wind farm planning permissions, and how I believed this coordinated with data centres being classified now as critical infrastructure, which, under the LEAP energy directives, would award green energy parks, a.k.a. wind farms, planning permissions by default. The man seemed to know exactly what I was talking about; he was very engaging and seemed to agree with what I was saying. We were only a few minutes into the conversation and already at the deep end.

With that, the heavens opened. Intrigued by what he was saying about his marvellous mission to save planet Earth, one pharmaceutical factory at a time, I invited him to shelter in the little wooden kiosk, which on occasions like this sometimes serves a dual purpose as a confessional box.

He continued to speak in depth about climate change and the planet getting hotter, and how ten thousand deaths in Germany had been attributed to the recent warm weather. He was careful to note that the data on excess mortality had been accumulated from before the pre-COVID era, but ultimately said that most deaths were due to heart failure. I responded, saying that we were experiencing a significant rise in excess mortality in Ireland, particularly in County Waterford, and that we couldn’t attribute it to the heat, so I suggested to him the cause must be the rain.

The conversation then turned to his long career in global health, particularly HIV/AIDS, and how much he knew of the industry’s inner workings. My guess, on his part, is that it was a verbal pre-emptive strike to quash the subtle cross-comparison I had just made. The epitaph of W. B. Yeats flashed through my head as I held this man’s gaze, the spell the poet left cast in stone, just a few metres away from me. Usually I would cut conversations like this dead in their tracks, but having had weeks of the most unusual events sent my way, I’ve had to consciously and closely observe everything and everyone, if just to conserve energy.

The reason I knew this was one of those events was that, just prior to this man’s appearance, prompted by a reel I’d seen earlier on Facebook, I had been researching something that specifically aligned with some of what he was talking about. The man now sitting with me in the wooden box had just been proudly speaking about work he’d done, years earlier, on getting affordable HIV medicine to people who couldn’t otherwise access it in the ‘developing world’; ten minutes after I had been looking up a Dr Robert Wilner, a man who willingly and publicly injected himself with HIV in 1994. The Wikipedia page was still open on my PC.

The German man seemed very proud of that earlier chapter of his work, but went on to explain the complications with pricing elsewhere, particularly in the US, that hampered distribution of treatmentns in wealthier countries. Beyond production, one factor that had a major impact was legal fees. I asked if these were to do with regulation. He responded, “No, lawsuits.”

Really? For adverse effects, I said.

To which he responded, “There are always adverse effects.”

I think it was at this point he became impressed that the woman in the wooden hut in the graveyard knew a fair amount about the regulatory bodies involved in that world. In conclusion to our conversation, he was very clear about one thing: that when it came to production and distribution, the word “ethics” was problematic. We explored this further, dipping into the subject of a more recent, widely used experimental medical product he’d had some considerable involvement with. He proceeded to tell me about his part in its supply and worldwide distribution.

Following on from this, I mentioned an article I’d written a few months ago about the UK’s post-Brexit split from the European Medicines Agency. “That was a terrible loss for Europe,” he said.

“Ah, but had it not been for the regulatory grey space in its aftermath, the UK would not have been able to move as quickly with the experiment as it did?” I said.

“That is likely just a coincidence,” he said.

It turned out he knew a fair amount about people I had previously written about figures from that same regulatory world. I showed him the article I’d written a few months earlier about the regulatory void that saw William Shakespeare (RIP) become the first man to receive the world’s first experimental vaccine.

He recognised the picture of the man in my article and offered a familiar first-name response : “Ian!”,

He acknowledged a former paediatrician and one-time chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), during that “grey area” time. It was a recognition that would have led me to believe they’d once had some kind of warm interaction in a plush boardroom somewhere in Geneva. I mentioned nothing of the darker history attached to that name. It’s a small world, so I guessed he already knew why his friend had been struck off the medical register and added to a register of a completely different kind.

“Is he a nice man?” I said.

He confirmed that, in his opinion, he was.

Continuing from the subject of the experiment, the German man lamented on a particularly stressful year of this decade, and how extensively he’d travelled during it. During that year he was tasked with overseeing the supply and distribution of the world’s largest pharmaceutical rollout, it involved negotiations with all kinds of important people. It seemed ironic, the vast amounts of travel undertaken to ultimately curtail travel for people who weren’t to partake of that particular product. I mentioned this to him.

As the conversation went on, we discussed adverse reactions to the experiment, and he was very blasé, in the same way he’d been when explaining why pricing had been so high for that earlier medicine, due to lawsuits. The latter product was different; there were pre-emptive protections that had been put in place prior to its release. I questioned this further and watched his responses.

“We can only look upon this objectively in fifty years. The information is protected for a reason.”

We discussed those reasons in depth. We spoke about Hitler, JFK, previous medical crimes.

The conclusion jointly agreed upon was that the decision to hide information was to protect the people involved in the decision-making process, in an unprecedented time. He explained that it, too, could do too much damage.

“How do you mean? If a court of law convicted them, you? of manslaughter?” I meant to say murder.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

“I know. For you, it is,” I responded.

I went on to very subtly liken his definition of “complicated” in this context to Dr Victor Frankenstein’s reaction upon seeing the monster he had made. He saw the ugly truth of his work. The dream he’d chased his whole life had now turned into a nightmare, and he was condemned never to shake the despair he now endured, wording it slightly differently to this.

He again agreed and stressed the conflict within his field that made the word “ethics” so problematic. To me, ethics is just another buzzword authenticating a subjective lens cast upon two very simple principles: right and wrong. I explained my theory to him.

He looked at me, nodding his head from side to side.

“Would you like to see another coincidence?” Not giving him time to answer, I moved my mouse and showed him the Wikipedia page for Dr Robert Wilner. “Look what I was looking up before you arrived.”

Strangely, he didn’t seem shocked. He just leaned in over me and said, “Oh, he died of a heart attack in 1995, a year later.” I wondered if he was disappointed it wasn’t recorded as HIV.

Somehow we got back onto the subject of his efforts in sustainability, then data centres. What’s the overall point in, I said? Data centres will be the greatest resource-draining pollutant mankind has ever encountered, literally draining us of water and killing so much wildlife, not to mention the overarching agenda of bio-digital convergence, which is likely part of why so much information in that world you occupy stays sealed. It makes what you said initially about your sustainability efforts look pointless. Can you not see this? Do you think pretending to people that you can change the world will make you feel better when you have full knowledge of what’s happening?

At the time, I didn’t fully register the gravity of what I was saying, or who I might be saying it to. But it became clear that this sidestep into sustainability was a deliberate manoeuvre away from pharmaceuticals, but not because he genuinely believed he could make the world a better place. Underneath the initial bravado he was as dispondant as myself.

Was he on the professional “run”?

In retrospect, I wondered if he was in Ireland not for pleasure but business; one of the many questions I didn’t ask him.

(The Large Energy Users’ Action Plan (LEAP) is a bill that encompasses pharmaceutical companies too, who, under the private wires bill proposals, will be privy to their own energy supply.)

He hung his head; this time shaking it from side to side. He wasn’t disagreeing with me; he appeared to be despairing.

“All we can do is help our children, and hope they are okay,” he said.

I can’t honestly recall how long we were speaking for; it could only have been half an hour, but so much was covered. I’ve just recounted what I can remember in detail. It was one of those strange interactions (and I have many) I’ll never forget.

I’m sure there are many people here who would have been much less gentle in the presence of this man. I’m conflicted as to how civil I actually was myself, especially once I’d pieced together the shape of who he might be, but I got a glimpse of something very interesting.

Some people know, that their time will soon be up, and at least in this instance, it felt as though certain decisions were quietly catching up with him on a very personal level. The neutrality, that cold eye I had trained upon him, actually began to soften, and I still can’t understand why.

I only briefly mentioned a recent contempt of court ruling involving a well-known US public health figure before the man began making his excuses to leave my wooden hut.

We shook hands before he departed, and before I got to ask his name, he, very intentionally gave it to me.

His presence lingered for a good while after he left, a little digging later that evening made it perfectly apparent who I had been speaking to, and why subsequently writing this.

I could have just accidentally interviewed a vampire, or maybe it was the other way round.

A Hantavirus scare newspaper story, coupled with the wrong photo, a six-year-old Covid-19 stock image of coach passengers dressed head to toe in white suits and masks, deployed to manufacture a sense of panic. I raised a complaint about this story. It should have been a clear-cut case of crisis journalism, or at the very least inaccurate reporting. Putting it simply, the picture did not match the story, possibly mine does not either, but I’d argue it’s far more accurate.

I expected the Independent Press Standards Organisation in the UK to address my complaint fairly swiftly. I did not expect it to turn into something close to a metaphysical experience; one that prompted me to further question the fabric of reality itself, or why the Communications Director for the “Independent” commission set up to police the press has such an interesting biography.

The Communications Director in question serves, in his published bio, in prominent past positions for the Vaccines Taskforce, NICE (the body that presides over NHS treatment guidance), and Johnson & Johnson, but he also sits on the board of trustees of a few interesting charities (IPSO, 2024; Science Media Centre, n.d.). The least interesting of them is called the Science Media Centre, whose mandate appears in block capitals on the Charity Commission’s register for England and Wales:

*(Best read in the voice of a Darlek)*

PROMOTE FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC ACCURATE, EVIDENCE-BASED INFORMATION ON SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IN THE MEDIA, PARTICULARLY ON CONTROVERSIAL NEWS STORIES. ACTIVITIES INCLUDE WORKING WITH SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS, SUPPORTING THEM TO ENGAGE WITH THE MEDIA; WORKING WITH JOURNALISTS, PROVIDING THEM WITH INFORMATION ABOUT SCIENCE; SUPPORTING PRESS OFFICERS WORKING ON DIFFICULT SCIENCE NEWS STORIES (Charity Commission for England and Wales, 2025).

It’s a charity that describes itself as serving the ‘humankind’ by disseminating and educating on science, engineering and their related disciplines. So: the Communications Director of a body set up to regulate the press is also a trustee of a charity that acts as an umbrella conduit feeding scientific communications *to* the press. Cosy at best; at worst a conflict of interest that might explain why my little grievance took so long. There is no freely available start date for John Davidson’s appointment at IPSO, but he appears to have held a front-row seat to the dissemination of public health information throughout the pandemic decade (IPSO, 2024; Science Media Centre, n.d.).

This was supposed to be a simple account of how the Daily Mirror ended up retracting a story and explaining an error. My original story has now galloped into something closer to a by-line. Turns out Ireland has an operation serving the same remit, the All-Ireland Science Media Centre. I’m guessing most countries, in preparation for a transhumanist future, have a similar outfit.

The Horsemen

Back in 2020, four white coaches, positioned to collect the first Wuhan evacuees at RAF Brize Norton, delivered an almost biblical piece of narrative-priming at the start of what we’d be told was a worldwide pandemic, the word “Horsemen” emblazoned on the side of those coaches sealing the apocalyptic deal. Coincidence, or lazy foreshadowing of what would become one of the great psychological operations run on the population of this planet, dwarfing, arguably, what happened in 1938 when Orson Welles convinced swathes of America, via CBS radio, that they were under alien attack in his dramatisation of H. G. Wells’s *War of the Worlds*. Contemporary newspapers reported that people ran for the hills in terror, genuinely believing the invasion was real, though historians have since argued the scale of that panic was considerably inflated by the press coverage that followed it (History.com, 2025).

In the case of the Horsemen coaches, stationed beside a military airport, they served as a eventual psychological stage managed precursor to people queuing into vaccination centres the following year, but not before they’d agreed to their own confinement, and that of their elderly relatives in care homes. Science led the way: the elderly and infirm were systematically prescribed midazolam. In England the juxtaposition between panic and sedation was stark, Matt Hancock boasted of having ordered extra supplies of the sedative used to treat Covid-19 patients in care, negotiations for which had taken place before the lockdowns were even implemented.

“A spokesperson from Accord Healthcare, one of five manufacturers of the drug, confirmed it had needed regulatory approval to sell French-labelled midazolam injection supplies to the NHS, having already sold two years’ worth of stock to UK wholesalers at the NHS’s request in March 2020” (The Pharmaceutical Journal, 2020).

The media were handed hundreds of millions of pounds in a UK government spend to keep the public alert to the threat, a relationship examined in more detail below.

For a notable minority, the media bombardment had the opposite of its intended effect. Many switched off, disengaged, and carried on, aware something was deeply wrong. Whether it was the news footage that appeared to show mannequins on hospital ventilators, the rise of the “crisis actor” suspicion, or the fact that two of the most prominent public faces of the bubble rhetoric and social-distancing rules, Neil Ferguson and Matt Hancock, were both exposed as having breached those same rules for extramarital affairs while preaching the “new normal” from behind a podium. (CNN, 2020; Euronews, 2021; PA Media, 2026). For the less devout believers in the new religion, that only deepened the question: was there really a pandemic?

Most people, though, had been sufficiently shellshocked by the initial bombardment that the overt gaslighting barely registered. “I’ve had my vaccine” filters spread across Facebook as people posed bare-armed for medical professionals who injected them with an experimental product, with its myriad of adverse reactions; blood clots, myocarditis, sepsis, and what oncologists are now calling “turbo cancers” . In 2027 even the most devout covidians are noting the consequences with a strange kind of a regret that they are too stunned by to speak freely about.

Trauma, like most trauma, produces the result it was engineered to produce. Between 2020 and now, a collective cognitive dissonance was carefully cultivated. The mainstream press employed something close to a mockingbird approach, punctuating our consciousness with stories designed to be believed rather than examined. The effort was global, and it has taken its toll, on the psyche of those who went along with it, and equally on the psyche of those who suspected, from the outset, that something was amiss.

The result: most people scroll past hundreds of photographs (news stories) a day, without consciously seeing a single one. They absorb the impression, register the emotion, and move on. Modern news has trained us to consume imagery at extraordinary speed,a fast-moving information stream that has battered our amygdalae into an apathy most had no understanding they’d consented to. In this overwhelmed, half-lobotomised state, most of us read the headline, glance at the image, and arrive at a conclusion without further inquiry. We are not reading the story any more. We are reading the picture.

It was precisely because I have spent years paying close attention to images and odd stories that something stopped me in my tracks on 13 May 2025.

The Daily Mirror had just published a piece on a Hantavirus scare involving a British tourist in Italy, the kind of story that runs almost daily in contemporary journalism: infectious disease, uncertainty, public anxiety, filed and forgotten. It wasn’t the words that caught me. It was the photograph.

I recognised it within seconds. I showed my mother, and it was she who spotted the detail that confirmed it: the coach in the image carried the unmistakable white horse emblem of Horseman Coaches, a private coach company burned into my memory from one of the defining moments of the Covid era.

The article concerned Italy. The photograph was taken in England. The story was about Hantavirus, reportedly rat-borne. The image belonged to Covid-19, reportedly bat-borne. Two viruses, two countries, two timelines, one photograph doing service for both. The longer I looked at it, the stranger it seemed that nobody else had noticed, not even in the comments.

The next morning I contacted Horseman Coaches directly. They confirmed they had no operations in Milan and that the image bore no relation to any current commercial activity. Armed with that, I filed a formal complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation, arguing that the photograph manufactured a misleading visual association with a virus that had upended the world, and exposed an entirely uninvolved company to reputational harm in the process. It seemed to me a simple matter of accuracy. It became an education in something considerably more revealing.

IPSO’s first act, on registering my complaint, was to instruct me not to discuss any case they were involved with publicly on social media. Having looked into the organisation, I half expected the usual revolving door of former media executives acting as gatekeepers for old colleagues. What I found was stranger than that.

Two biographies stood out. IPSO’s Chief Executive, Charlotte Dewar, began her career as an editorial assistant at The Guardian, a publication whose name now reads like a small joke at its own expense (IPSO, 2024). More interesting still was John Davidson, IPSO’s Head of Communications, whose published career runs through Johnson & Johnson, the UK Vaccines Taskforce, Genomics England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the Francis Crick Institute and the BBC (IPSO, 2024).

None of that is remarkable on its own, it’s roughly the revolving-door, industry-regulating-itself scenario one might expect in this corrupt world. Communications professionals move between large institutions all the time; that is simply how the profession works. But I couldn’t shake a particular sense of déjà vu, because years earlier I had written an academic thesis on C. S. Lewis’s fictional N.I.C.E., the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments in That Hideous Strength, and its critique of technocratic power. The novel’s central figure is Mark Studdock, a sociologist and communications officer whose value to the Institute lies not in any scientific expertise but in his fluency with language: his ability to legitimise institutional authority, translate contested policy into acceptable public discourse, and manufacture consent while keeping his own hands clean of the consequences. He begins as an ambitious academic and ends as something closer to a communications intermediary for a machine driven by scientism, and one he barely understands.

I am not suggesting equivalence between a novel, its protagonist, and a named individual’s career. Every one of Davidson’s appointments is a legitimate (if questionable) institution with a distinct public function, and a career built across the BBC, NICE, the Vaccines Taskforce, Johnson & Johnson, Genomics England and the Francis Crick Institute implies nothing improper by itself. But the question sits there anyway: the man whose job it is to speak for the Independent Press Standards Organisation was, for a stretch of his career, at the communications helm of both the real-life NICE and the Vaccines Taskforce. The same institutional pairing, not even giving or taking a letter, as the fictional Mark Studdock. A convenient CV for the media to have adjacent to it, given how persistently the official Covid narrative has been challenged since we first heard about a bat in a wet market in Wuhan, in China.

I’m sure Lewis wasn’t predicting a name or a CV. He was describing a function: the professional whose job is to stand between an institution and the public, and make the institution’s chosen version of events sound like consensus. That function doesn’t need a conspiracy to exist. It just needs a job description, and Davidson’s happens to read exactly like that one.

My thesis was titled *The NICE Abolition of Man*, reading *That Hideous Strength* a novel Lewis wrote partly to dramatise his earlier essay *The Abolition of Man*, and partly, I suspect, out of frustration that the essay hadn’t received the recognition he felt it deserved, alongside that essay itself. My argument was that Lewis wasn’t warning primarily against totalitarian politics, but against a civilisation that elevates technique above wisdom and expertise above conscience: scientism dressed as science. At the time it felt like literary criticism. A year after I submitted it, “trust the science” became a piece of everyday vocabulary, and it felt as though Lewis had somehow seen ahead, and took me along for the joyride. Some six years after that, I found myself, quite by accident, corresponding with a press regulator whose Head of Communications had once run communications for the real NICE. The fiction I had spent years taking apart academically was, less than a decade later, unfurling in front of me seemingly by accident.

Back to the Mirror:

I ended up dealing with the legal representatives of Reach plc, the Mirror’s publisher, myself, as IPSO proved to be of little practical help. They checked in now and again with the obligatory “is everything OK” email, but in their role as intermediary they passed on falsehoods supplied to them by the Daily Mirror, most notably that the Mirror had already responded to me directly (it hadn’t), and, later, that a “substantive response” was being prepared. In this back-and-forth spanning two monthss , the Mirror, who never once spoke to me directly, eventually appointed legal representation to answer what was, in the end, a very simple question: why had they chosen a six-year-old photograph to illustrate their Hantavirus article?

I want to be clear that I’m not laying this at IPSO’s door. Everyone I dealt with there was polite and courteous. My expectation, though, was that they would interrogate the substance of my complaint themselves, rather than simply help me find a solicitor to relay a vague, dismissive response to a straightforward question.

The newspaper’s first offer was simply to remove the image. I argued that this was not enough. Removing a misleading photograph doesn’t explain how it came to be published, doesn’t tell readers they were misled, and doesn’t account for the editorial decisions that let the error through in the first place.

So I asked what I considered reasonable questions. Who selected the image, and from which archive? Did anyone know it originated during the Wuhan evacuation? Had anyone tried to verify it was contemporaneous with the story it illustrated? Why had an English coach company become visually attached to a disease outbreak in Italy? And, most importantly, at what point in the editorial chain had accuracy simply stopped mattering?

The answers were revealing for what they didn’t say. IPSO, in its mediating role, carefully explained the available procedure while declining to engage with the substance. “I am not able to offer advice on the validity of your points,” one email read, an honest answer, and in its own way an illuminating one.

The Mirror eventually amended the article, removed the photograph, and published a correction acknowledging the image was unrelated to the Hantavirus story and that it had, in fact, originated during the Covid period. The correction acknowledged the error. It did not explain it, and that distinction matters. Mistakes happen; journalists are human; editors work under pressure, no serious critic expects perfection from a daily news operation. But this particular photo was deliberately sourced, by someone who judged it appropriate, to accompany a story it had nothing to do with. When an error occurs, the public has a legitimate interest not just in knowing it’s been fixed, but in understanding how it happened. Without that, a correction is administration wearing the costume of accountability, an appeasement rather than an admission of wrong- doing.

The outsourcing of judgement to an image, a document, or a source nobody thinks to check, because checking it would slow down a story everyone has already decided to believe, isn’t unique to this case. A coach photograph from a Wuhan evacuation, quietly repurposed for a Milan Hantavirus scare, is a small version of a much older mechanism. Orwell gave that mechanism a name and an office: the Ministry of Truth, whose daily labour was not inventing falsehoods from nothing but adjusting yesterday’s true record to fit today’s required one. A stock photograph swapped from one virus to another is the memory hole in miniature, run not by a totalitarian ministry but by a picture desk on deadline.

There is a further layer here that the mediation correspondence never touched, and it concerns money rather than symbolism.

Between 2020 and 2021, the UK government became, by a wide margin, the country’s largest single advertiser. Public Health England’s ad spend alone rose from a modest baseline to somewhere between £44 million and £80 million in 2020 reported at the time as roughly a 5,000 per cent year-on-year increase (CityAM, 2020). Across the government as a whole, Covid communications spend for 2020 came to more than £184 million, the bulk of it channelled through two agencies, Manning Gottlieb OMD and MullenLowe UK, into television, radio, billboard and, critically for this story, national and regional press (Campaign, 2021). These are exactly the kind of agencies the Vaccines Taskforce and NICE would have had occasion to work alongside. These are the people that convvinced people the goverment was doing every thing to help you.

National newspapers were not incidental beneficiaries of that spend. In April 2020 the government and the newspaper industry launched a formal advertising partnership, “All in, all together,” worth an estimated £35 million, under which every major UK national and regional title ran near-identical government-branded front-page wraps and homepage takeovers (Digiday, 2023). Reach plc, the Mirror’s publisher, was among the industry’s largest players and a direct beneficiary of that arrangement, at a moment when the pandemic had already effectively gutted the commercial advertising market the press normally relied on. The government, in effect, became the industry’s most important client at precisely the moment it most needed one to survive.

That is not, by itself, evidence of any specific editorial instruction. Nobody needs to ring an editor and tell them what to print when the incentive structure already points the same way. A publisher kept financially afloat by a government partnership, reporting on that same government’s public health messaging, is not being bribed in any crude sense, it is simply operating inside a relationship where scepticism carries a cost that credulity does not. A picture desk editor reaching for a stock image that reinforces the prevailing panic is a far smaller, far more forgivable act inside that relationship than a picture desk reaching for one that undermines it.

But, taking in to consideration that IPSO’s own funding model does change things somewhat. The regulator is financed entirely by the publishers it regulates, via the Regulatory Funding Company, with no independent public funding of its own (IPSO, 2026; Regulatory Funding Company, n.d.). A body funded by the industry it mediates for, staffed at communications level by people whose careers run through the public health and pharmaceutical institutions most invested in the pandemic narrative, adjudicating a complaint about a pandemic-era image used to manufacture panic in a non-pandemic story, this is not a conspiracy. It is simply what a conflict of interest looks like.

My complaint was never really about one photograph. It became about the strange ecology of modern crisis reporting, in the aftermath of what feels like the greatest psychological operation ever run on the people of this planet.

There is now something like an acceptance of the perpetual emergency we live through, an almost uninterrupted succession of crises: pandemic, climate, energy, migration, financial, mental health, housing, domestic terror etc. Each arrives with its own visual vocabulary before a single word is written: Killer hornets, ambulances, protective suits, warning tape, floodwater, wildfire, military vehicles, masked faces, graphs, maps, experts behind podiums. The photograph is never neutral. It always seems to prepare the emotional terrain the article will land on. The accompanying words can be just as provoking, this decade has witnessed language change so dramatically; once upon a time police or guards attended a scene, whereas now, they usually swarm or storm, or both.

The camera having long enjoyed a reputation as an instrument of objective truth is redundant. Now we have not only AI-altered and synthetic images to contend with, but the older, quieter tradition of deceptive editorial choices, a picture desk deciding, deadline after deadline, which image will keep the public leaning toward fear rather than away from it.

We are still in the operation of ‘Lets scare them to death’, we did not come out the other side. But, the good news is, at least in That Hidious Strength, eventually, the good guys, with the help of Merlin the magician, win.

This was a little win that unfurled a lot.

“In fighting those who serve devils one always has this on one’s side; their Masters hate them as much as they hate us.” C.S. Lewis That Hideous Strength

In other, unrelated news, Dr Fauchi (who’s name translates to bad energy) is currently in court.

“While he was granted a pre-emptive pardon by former President Joe Biden, protecting him from federal prosecution for his actions between 2014 to 2025, Fauci could still face charges for anything after that date, including in his actions towards the Senate committee. He could also face state or local charges.” (BBC)

References.

Campaign (2021) *Govt spent more than £184m on Covid comms in 2020*. Available at: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/govt-spent-184m-covid-comms-2020/1708695 (Accessed 29 July 2026).

Charity Commission for England and Wales (2025) *Science Media Centre – Charity 1140827*. Available at: https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/5017365/charity-overview (Accessed 29 July 2026).

CityAM (2020) *Public Health England becomes UK’s biggest advertiser during lockdown*. Available at: https://www.cityam.com/public-health-england-becomes-uks-biggest-advertiser-during-lockdown/ (Accessed 29 July 2026).

CNN (2020) *Neil Ferguson, UK coronavirus adviser, resigns after reports his lover visited during lockdown*. Available at: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/uk/neil-ferguson-imperial-coronavirus-sage-gbr-intl (Accessed 29 July 2026).

Digiday (2023) *The government is becoming U.K. news publishers’ most important client*. Available at: https://digiday.com/media/the-government-is-becoming-u-k-news-publishers-most-important-client/ (Accessed 29 July 2026).

Euronews (2021) *UK health secretary resigns after breaching COVID-19 rules with aide*. Available at: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2021/06/26/uk-health-secretary-resigns-after-breaching-covid-19-rules-with-aide (Accessed 29 July 2026).

History.com (2025) *Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio play is broadcast*. Available at: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/october-30/welles-scares-nation (Accessed 29 July 2026).

IPSO (2024) *Our Staff*. Available at: https://www.ipso.co.uk/what-we-do/our-people/our-staff/ (Accessed 29 July 2026).

IPSO (2026) *About IPSO FAQs*. Available at: https://www.ipso.co.uk/what-we-do/about-ipso-faqs/ (Accessed 29 July 2026).

PA Media (2026) *Matt Hancock admits affair with aide damaged public trust in Covid rules*. Available at: https://news.yahoo.com/matt-hancock-admits-affair-aide-191330156.html (Accessed 29 July 2026).

Regulatory Funding Company (n.d.) *Regulatory Funding Company*. Available at: https://regulatoryfunding.co.uk/ (Accessed 29 July 2026).

Science Media Centre (n.d.) *Governance*. Available at: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/about-us/governance/ (Accessed 29 July 2026).

The Pharmaceutical Journal (2020) *Supplies of sedative used for COVID-19 patients diverted from France to avoid potential shortages*. Available at: https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/supplies-of-sedative-used-for-covid-19-patients-diverted-from-france-to-avoid-potential-shortages (Accessed 29 July 2026).

A thwarted drug operation up the road, at an open prison, and, fittingly, I heard about it while casually weeding W.B. Yeats’s grave today.

Some days the universe lightens the mood just when you need it to. There I was, tidying a plot (weeding, an activity that will become relevant), when I had one of the many strange encounters I seem to have at the site where the famous poet is laid to rest.

“He was rather partial to ‘the weed,’” said a well-dressed man, who’d interrupted my work to take the obligatory photo of the famous headstone. I stood back, trying to recall any stories I’d heard about W.B. Yeats and that sweet-smelling plant, but before I could, he’d moved on to another story. I’m not sure what it is about graveyards, but you really do hear the strangest tales in them.

The story’s setting was an open prison up the road, Loughan House, Cavan, one of those low-security places where lads near the end of long sentences spend their days in polytunnels, growing veg for the local shop as part of getting them ready for the outside world.

“For the prisoners, it can be quite difficult to have this level of freedom. They are very much encouraged to make their own decisions, which can be difficult. The transition can be harder for those who have served a longer period of time in closed institutions,” the Assistant Governor indicates.”(eolas, 2018)

According to the well dressed man, prison officers this week allegedly, found plants among the lettuces that were not lettuce. Tall, leafy, distinctly more Amsterdam than Aldi. The kind of plant that, if a prisoner were caught outside with, it might land him in... an open prison. The circularity is what made me laugh. I pictured the scene: condensation dripping off the plastic pollytunnel, an operation in full swing, thwarted by an eagle-eyed officer with a fine sense of smell. “Lads — which one of you is responsible for the marijuana tunnel?”

I’m on knees again as I hear the following words in my head:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

You do hear a lot of stories in graveyards. Most are of memories, hearsay and folklore, and while you listen intently to those who want to tell them, you take most with a pinch of salt, but it is as though the landscape of bones has a way of encouraging honesty, this idea of wanting to pass old stories on before they’re lost forever.

My guess is Yeats himself would have approved of the visitation; if not for the optics, it was his birthday, after all.

I did verify at least one part of the man’s story: the poet was, famously, no stranger to “the Indian hemp.” Paris, the 1890s, a pellet before dinner and another after. He took hashish with mystics and went on to win the Nobel Prize, so clearly it didn’t do him any lasting harm.

Regarding the polytunnel bust at Loughan House, it wouldn’t be the first time this kind of story would make the news. It seemed feasible, at least. Apparently, on Wednesday, the Garda Síochána were quick to attend and shut the operation down. Half-listening as I continued to weed, I recalled a story from back in 2009: a prisoner in an English jail was caught growing a suspiciously potent-looking plant on his windowsill and apparently insisted, with a straight face for the ages, that it was a tomato plant (Guardian, 2009). The “it’s a tomato, boss” defence has probably aged somewhat by now. I am guessing if indeed the guards did turn up to Loughan House for a cannabis plant operation, they were less likely to be duped by stories of exotic tomato plants.

So, did it happen? The man who passed by today seemed to think so, It was only after he left I wondered if the polytunnel owned by the Department of Justice, that allegedly, got weeded rather more dramatically up the road, would make my efforts in a graveyard today seem miniscule. What’s certain: Loughan House is real, its polytunnels are real, and Yeats really did take hashish in Paris and write beautifully about it afterward. Whether the two stories actually met in a Prison polytunnel in Cavan is, like most good Irish stories, beside the point.

This leads me to my final postscript, offered in the spirit of full disclosure: I have spent the entirety of today convinced it was the 13th of June. It is the 12th. It emerges i’m ahead of myself, like the man in the graveyard all along, well-dressed in my certainty, passing on dubious stories of about a poets birth date to anyone who would listen, moving on before the facts could catch me. It seems I have been the one doing the planting, not the weeding afterall.

To be unambiguous: this is satire, built on an unverified rumour, told for a laugh on a poet’s percieved birthday, and is in no way, shape, or form a suggestion that the Department of Justice condones cannabis cultivation to horticultural rehabilitation programmes.

References

Eolas Magazine (2018) Loughan House: “Bringing down barriers.” Available at: https://www.eolasmagazine.ie/loughan-house-bringing-down-barriers/ (Accessed: 12 June 2026).

eolas (2018). Loughan House: ‘Bringing down barriers’. [online] Eolas Magazine. Available at: https://www.eolasmagazine.ie/loughan-house-bringing-down-barriers/.

‌Houlihan, B. (2018) William Butler Yeats and Cannabis. Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@dubhempmuseum/william-butler-yeats-and-cannabis-fa8335789c37 (Accessed: 12 June 2026).

The Guardian (2009) Prisoner’s cannabis plant ‘was a tomato.’ Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/dec/09/prisoner-cannabis-plant-tomato-verne (Accessed: 12 June 2026).

Wikipedia (2026) Loughan House. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loughan_House (Accessed: 12 June 2026).

https://www.eolasmagazine.ie/loughan-house-bringing-down-barriers/

On the night of the 8th of June 2026, a young man from Belfast was brutally attacked on Kinnaird Avenue in north Belfast. This is written the morning after, it’s a struggle now to find the words, or to even document what is happening to this beautiful country, and its people, but what is happening is being allowed to happen, and this morning the whole world can see, in graphic detail.

A Hurley stick was used to help defend someone’s (so far) unnamed son. A young man from Belfast from a barbaric attempted beheading that the mainstream news unanimously, and regardless of jurisdiction are referring to as a stabbing incident.

An ancient wood brandished by legendary men. If the death of these trees following the arrival of diseased saplings in 2012 was deliberate, it was done in an effort to splinter the soul of the people of Ireland. If it wasn’t deliberate it served as an augury of what was to come. Either way, the message is the same.

Irish manuscripts reveal that ash was considered one of the ‘Nobles of the Wood’ during the early Medieval period (c. 400–1100 AD) as it was used to make spear shafts and furniture. Indeed, one Irish clan from the province of Munster, the Dal gCais, cultivated ash and holly especially for their suitability for making weapons as well as domestic structures.” (Cork, 2025)

The hurley stick, which was always made of that tree, would be replaced, thousands of years erased, in a move its governing authority the GAA would endorse.

Early reports state this young man later died in hospital. Had not three men intervened, one carrying and employing the might of a hurley stick, the footage sickening and shocking, visible on social media would have recorded something far more horrific than what is currently in circulation.

Not only was the wood from this tree used as a weapon of war; the tree itself is considered one of the Guardian Trees of Ireland. In this instance, though may not have saved the life of the life of the young man, the man brandishing the symbolic wood of the ash prevented the footage from recording what the attacker clearly intended: a beheading.

There is a moment in the oldest of Irish stories when the hero’s weapon is not described as a weapon at all, but as an extension of the land itself. Setanta, not yet Cú Chulainn, not yet having acquired the name we recognise today, one evening he was walking toward the fortress of Culann with a hurley stick in his hand and a sliotar in the air above him, playing as he went. A normal thing to do as a boy without a care in the world. It was a summers evening. He was not marching to war, he was simply present in his own country, in the way a young man is present today in the town he grew up in. The hound that charged him was enormous, requiring, the old annalists tell us, three chains had to be used to hold its strength, and Setanta killed it with the instrument of a game. One precise strike. The stick was ash. There’s some kind of echo here that I’ve not the will or inclination to explain, I am just trying to look beyond the horror of today.

I wrote about the ash well over a year ago. I noted it then as an augury: not just the death of a tree, but a symbolic warning. A fungal pathogen called Chalara fraxinea, carried on the wind, had by 2012 begun its passage through Ireland’s ash forests. Teagasc would estimate in time that up to ninety percent of the country’s ash trees would succumb.¹ The camán, the hurley, had been carved from that wood for more than three thousand years. That is not a figure of speech. Three thousand years is longer than most nation-states have existed. It is longer than the oldest parliament in continuous operation. And the wood for that instrument, the specific fibrous spring of ash from the bottom metre of the trunk,was facing biological erasure within one generation.

The GAA, in February 2025, voted at congress, by a margin of 97.4 percent, the highest such vote in the organisation’s history,to change the equipment specification rules governing the hurley. Where once it had simply stated a maximum width for the bas, the new rule opened the door to composite and synthetic materials. Pat Daly, the GAA’s Director of Planning and Development, put it plainly: they had gone from discussing self-sufficiency in ash by 2022 to discussing potential total eradication by 2032. A sport that had defined itself through a particular wood, from a particular tree, rooted in particular Irish soil, was now being asked to specify what the hurley was, because it could no longer be assumed.

A sign presented by the land itself, asking whether we were paying attention.

The official PSNI statement, issued that night, read as follows: “Police in north Belfast are currently in attendance at Kinnaird Avenue following the report of a stabbing incident shortly after 10.30pm on Monday 8th June. A man has been arrested in relation to the incident and is in police custody while a second man has been taken to hospital with serious injuries.”³

A stabbing incident. Serious injuries.

Those are the words that were chosen, by a public body, to describe what eyewitnesses described as a man trying to cut another man’s head off, halted by a hurl. The gap between those two descriptions is not a matter of legal caution, or necessity. It is a documented editorial pattern.

The elected representatives who spoke publicly expressed shock and called for a swift investigation. They were careful with their words. So, it seems, was almost everyone else in a position of institutional authority.

But the man who walked into that bloody and brutal attack and swung a hurley, ash or otherwise, and we will return to that question; he had no words. He was simply present. In the way Setanta was present: with the instrument of his culture in his hand, doing the thing that needed doing to stay alive, and realise his destiny .

Any leader who expressing shock right now, and extending platitudes has either been asleep the past few years, is mentally retarded, or is part of a greater plan to see that the people they profess to protect are terrorised on a daily basis. You can’t be in a leadership position while at the same time admitting to being genuinely oblivious to what is going on in the country and countries like France and Sweden. it equates to making a public admission that they are in the wrong job, or under orders..

The media and political response always follows a formula. This is not analysis of motive, or of identity, or of policy. It is a comparison of documented official and media language against documented facts, across a series of cases. Unfortunately these are just some, there are too many now to document. The most recent being of Blanchardstown man Alex Coughlan again, murdered by two non-nationals, who due to their apparent age, are shielded from the public eye. A Report by RTE (May 22nd) documenting the murder opens with the following statement “An appeal has been issued to members of the public not to share video footage of a serious assault which led to the death of a 37-year-old man in Dublin.” It is never about the victim, its always about protecting the perpetrator/s I am primarily pointing to the Irish/UK Government / State/ Establishment whatever they are, they know well what they have invited in. These type of reporting serves a broader purpose and that is to deliberately antagonize.

When you slash a throat in anyone’s estimation it is an attempted beheading, but even in the most blatant of cases this term evades both politicians and journalists. Masking the truth does not subdue an audience, Its goading, and its deliberate.

Examples

Aisling Murphy, Tullamore, January 2022. Initial coverage described the cause of death without specificity. or in The Irish Times case strangulation, why this was mis reported so blatantly has still yet to be established. Court proceedings provided the forensic record: Aisling Murphy, 23, died from eleven stab wounds to the neck, including the severing of her voice box, wounds consistent with a serrated blade.⁵ A further cut was made to her neck. She was left in a ditch at the side of a canal. Jozef Puska, a Slovak national, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life.⁶ He required an interpreter throughout proceedings.

Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee, Sligo, April 2022. Both men were described by the media initially as having died from serious injuries. Court proceedings revealed the following: Aidan Moffitt had been decapitated in his own home, his head placed on a bed, and had suffered forty-two stab wounds. Michael Snee was murdered two days later in a similar way. A third man, Anthony Burke, lost the sight of one eye in an earlier attack by the same perpetrator. Yousef Palani, who had arrived in Ireland under a refugee resettlement programme, was sentenced to life.⁷ He told gardaí he would have continued killing. The Media at the time of the killing insisted he was as Irish as the next person, vigils were held and every effort was made to distance the accused from the idea that this has anything to do with his religion, culture, or its attitude towards his own sexuality.

Masuma Sohrabi, Clifden, Co. Galway, May 2026. Found near an IPAS centre, having sustained what initial reports described as “catastrophic neck injuries.”⁸ She had suffered fatal slash and stab wounds to the neck, the same kind of terminology, that is turning in to code for attempted beheading, or indeed behedding. She was a 31-year-old Iranian mother of two who had previously reported her alleged killer to An Garda Síochána and secured a court order against him for domestic violence.⁹ The Irish Times documented that despite her efforts, the man had continued to have contact with her, potentially in breach of that order. She had come to Ireland specifically for international protection. The system that was processing her presence failed to protect her life.

Riad Bouchaker, Parnell Square, Dublin, November 2023. Three children stabbed outside Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire. In the initial reports immediately after the attack The Irish Times referred to them and “Young People”. A care worker who tried to shield them with her body was also seriously hurt. One child, a five-year-old girl, was critically injured, and remains with life limiting injurys.¹⁰ The trial, which opened at the Central Criminal Court on 8 June 2026; the day evening as the Belfast attack. Bouchaker is a native of Algeria who arrived in Ireland in 2000. After twenty-six years in this country, he has required an Arabic interpreter at every court hearing.¹² Yesterday Bouchaker pleaded not guilty to eight charges, including the attempted murder of the three children.

Kinnaird Avenue, Belfast, 8 June 2026. Eyewitnesses describe an attempted beheading. The PSNI statement describes a stabbing incident and serious injuries.³

Five cases. Five instances where official language, in police statements, initial press reports, or prosecutorial framing, was measurably softer than the violence it was describing. That is not accusation. That is documentation. The reader may decide whether the pattern is policy, instinct, or coincidence. What it is not, across five cases, is random.

The Fianna and the Poets

Before the standing armies of Leinster and Ulster, before the kings had consolidated their petty territories into the semblance of provinces, Ireland had the Fianna. They were not a military force in the modern sense. They were a warrior caste with a specific constitutional function: the defence of Ireland’s borders and the protection of the High King during times of peace. They were drawn from no one clan and owed allegiance to no one province. Their loyalty was to the island itself.

Entry into the Fianna required, among other feats, the ability to stand in a waist-deep pit and deflect nine spears thrown simultaneously, armed only with a shield and a stick. It also required the composition of a lyrical poem. The dual requirement, physical courage and literary intelligence , was not incidental. It was constitutional. The Fianna were guardians who were also readers: readers of terrain, of weather, of omen. When we examine the media today, its becomes clear and gives new context as to why one of the stipulations was to possess the gift of poetry, it’s not the poem itself that was required but the skill to see patterns and be able to reformulate them in a way that they could be used to convey, and decode information.

We are an island. The defence of our borders should be, as the Fianna understood, the simplest of propositions. We have water on every side. The question of who crosses is not complicated by geography. It is made complicated only by institutions, and agendas, that continually ask us to stand down when any mention of borders is made.

The EU Migration Pact, moving through the Dáil this week as the young man from Belfast lay dying on the ground, would permanently transfer Ireland’s sovereign control over immigration policy to Brussels. Anyone who votes for it does so with the full statistical record of what policy failure in this area has produced domestically are voting with the full knowledge of is to come. This makes them accessories to murder, not by default, but by intention.

The enemy in every case above is not reducible to any person’s origin. It is the institutional mechanism that processes people without understanding that we are culturally different to them, houses them without integrating them, and then manages the language around what happens next. The man in the suit who opens the gate and the man who writes the press release that follows: these are the continuity. The violence is the symptom. The language management is the disease.

“The real difficulty is not in the enemy you can see. It is in the ally who tells you what you are seeing is something else.”

Canning Hurleys in Portumna, Co. Galway, one of the country’s oldest hurley-making businesses, closed in March 2022, citing supply chain difficulties. The ash was running out.¹ Eighty percent of the ash planks used for hurley-making over the preceding decade had already been imported.¹ The native tree, Fraxinus excelsior, the common ash, one of Ireland’s few genuinely native species, was being replaced at industrial scale while still standing in the hedgerows.

There is a distinction worth observing between the composite hurley and the ash hurley that transcends sentimentality. The ash hurley has a specific mechanical relationship with the sliotar: a flex, a rebound, a tactile feedback that tells the player through their hands where the ball is going. Professor Dermot Brabazon of DCU, working on the GAA’s standardisation project, noted that any alternative material has to reproduce those conditions, the danger being that a polymer hurley could be made too strong, could injure, could drive the ball beyond the boundaries of the game itself.¹

The boundaries of the game. That phrase contains its own quiet irony.

The ash is dying, but is not dead. Those in the Dáil who vote this week to hand the gate-keeping to Brussels should understand they are being observed not by journalists, but a people who have been reading signs in the land, they are taking notes, and keeping the receipts. There is no opposition/ political or otherwise able to make any headway when it comes to the systematic destruction of this Island, not at the moment. The hope was that a Far Right would emerge, it would of certainly assisted with the digital ID population control plans.

You don’t have to be a psychic to know that their favorite term Far Right will be used as a battering ram against the people once more, by the media and politicians in the coming hours and days, the name of the perpetrator will as usual be forgotten, and no doubt it will come to light that he is suffering from some kind of mental affliction. In other news Doctors in the UK are being urged not to section Black People as it could appear racist. “NHS doctors are under pressure not to section psychotic black patients to avoid appearing racist”Henderson, C. (2026) We are being set up to fight the wrong people.

Closing on a hopeful note, despite morning reports to the contrary the inured man is still alive.

Note: Any reprisal violence against individuals based on origin, faith, or background serves only those who manage these crises for political ends. The people who facilitate institutional failure are not on the streets. They are in offices, wearing suits, and counting on rage being directed anywhere but at them. The Fianna understood this distinction. So should we.

REFERENCES

RTÉ Brainstorm. (2025, July 18). What will the hurley of the future look like? https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/0718/1395000-hurley-hurling-ash-dieback-research-development/

UKNIP. (2026, June 9). Man Arrested After Bystanders Stop Knife Attack in North Belfast. https://uknip.co.uk

Police Service of Northern Ireland. (2026, June 8). Official statement, Kinnaird Avenue. https://www.psni.police.uk/latest-news/man-arrested-north-belfast-following-report-stabbing-incident

RTÉ News. (2026, June 9). Arrest made as man seriously injured in Belfast stabbing. https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2026/0609/1577459-psni-stabbing-belfast/

Irish Times. (2023, October 19). Ashling Murphy died as a result of 11 stab wounds to her neck. https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2023/10/19/

BBC News. (2023, November). Ashling Murphy: Man sentenced to life. https://www.bbc.com

Henderson, C. (2026). Doctors discouraged from sectioning black patients. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/07/doctors-discouraged-from-sectioning-black-patients/ [Accessed 9 Jun. 2026].

‌Ireland Live. (2023, October 23). Serial killer Palani jailed for life. https://www.ireland-live.ie/news/leitrim-live/1330176/

Irish Star / RTÉ. (2026, May 28–29). Autopsy due for Iranian mother found dead in Galway. https://www.irishstar.com/news/ireland-news/autopsy-due-iranian-mom-found-37222492

Irish Times. (2026, May 29). Woman killed in Clifden went to Garda and courts. https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2026/05/29/

Wikipedia. (2023). 2023 Dublin riot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dublin_riot

The Journal. (2026, June 8). Man accused of attempted murder of three children denies all charges. https://www.thejournal.ie

Irish Times. (2026, March 27). Judge rules man fit to stand trial. https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2026/03/27/

Cork, U.C. (2025). Fraxinus excelsior | University College Cork. [online] University College Cork. Available at: https://www.ucc.ie/en/tree-explorers/trees/a-z/fraxinusexcelsior/.

‌

Given what Ireland has been going /gone through, it is entirely forgivable that so many people fell for the man who calls himself The Captain. Last year his self appointed credenials, were the giveaway for me, condensed by the fact he got so many used to the military/sailor address by which to refer to him. To be fair, hope is easily hooked in dark times. And being a fisherman, he knew all about bait, specifically what bait to use on which people. The grievances he spoke about were real: institutional corruption, unchecked immigration policy, political cowardice, An Garda Síochána many communities no longer trust, and an injustice that runs so deep it barely mregisters anymore because it has always been there. People responded because the grievances were genuine.

From various locations in Indonesia, the exile who claims to be the most wanted man in Ireland promised a fleet of wild Gooses, the diaspora, of financiers, with wings, swooping in to the rescue, while Kelly was simultaneously dangling the keys to a kingdom of hidden knowledge. He'd been out in the world, seen things, suffered things, carried a truth so dangerous that speaking it aloud might bring the whole rotten edifice down. Standing on the shore, weather-beaten and righteous. Waiting for people to listen.

Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink.

Coleridge's Ancient Mariner sailed in circles, haunted by the thing he had done and the albatross around his neck. The crew followed him. They had no choice — they were on the same ship. Kelly's audience had a choice. Many of them made it in good faith, and that matters.

A Contradiction in Plain Sight

The real story here is not criminal in the conventional sence, what follows is not an allegation of fraud or corruption. What it is, is an observation about a significant contradiction that sits at the centre of Kieran Kelly's public identity and warrants legitimate scrutiny.

Kelly has presented himself, consistently and loudly, as an opponent of global governance structures, digital identity infrastructure, and the sustainability agenda promoted by international institutions. His company, Ocean Integrity, which he describes on its own website as founded on his personal investment of millions of dollars, operates within that same ecosystem (Ocean Integrity, 2025). That is not a minor irony. It is the entire point.

What ESG Is

Most people hear the term ESG and switch off. Another acronym. Another thing designed to make ordinary people feel like they are missing a meeting they were never invited to, and wouldn’t want to go if they were.

ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. In plain terms, it is a framework used to measure and report corporate behaviour. Companies are increasingly expected to demonstrate to investors, regulators, and financial institutions how they perform against environmental and social targets. The environmental side covers carbon emissions, waste management, and sustainability initiatives. The social side covers workforce practices and community engagement. Governance covers corporate accountability and reporting.

The architects of the UN Sustainability 2030 programme argue, that ESG creates transparency and encourages responsible corporate behaviour (United Nations, 2015). People like me are concerned and also know that it gives scope for unelected institutions and investment funds to shape government policy and corporate behaviour through financial pressure rather than democratic accountability. Whatever side of that debate you occupy, one thing is not in dispute: ESG has become a significant part of the global financial system, and it generates real money for the companies operating inside it.

Where Kelly Sits in All of This

Here is where things become relevant to Kelly's public commentary.

Many ESG reporting frameworks trace their origins to the sustainability agenda promoted through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The UN's seventeen goals cover everything from climate action to digital inclusion and economic development (United Nations, 2015). Without the reporting infrastructure that has grown up around those goals, there would be no meaningful market for carbon credits or plastic offset credits. The demand that funds these markets is ESG-driven. The architecture that makes them legible to corporate buyers is ESG-derived.

Ocean Integrity operates within that world. So does the Digital ID that Kelly warns about.

The United Nations Sustsinability Development Programme has published material explicitly linking digital identity infrastructure to environmental objectives, stating that governments can use digital identity systems to facilitate renewable energy incentives and support sustainability goals (UNDP, 2024). Kelly is aware of this connection he discusses it regularly on his platforms, framing it as something being done to Ireland from the outside. What he has not discussed, at least not publicly, is that his own business sits inside the same framework, I’m just assuming he is aware of this.

The Business Model

According to Ocean Integrity's own materials, the company employs local fishermen/ plastic collectors in Indonesia to remove plastic waste from rivers and coastal environments (Ocean Integrity, 2025). That waste is tracked through a verification process, after which environmental carbon credits are generated and sold to corporations wishing to offset their environmental reporting obligations.

The concept is straightforward enough. Plastic is collected. The collection is verified. A credit is created. That carbon credit enters a market.

The verification is handled by a Barcelona-based blockchain startup called Plastiks, which received a grant of ₳650,000 in Cardano cryptocurrency through something called Project Catalyst Fund (Plastiks, 2023). The credits are certified against methodologies called VM0033 and VM0006, standards set by an organisation called Verra, which makes them eligible for use in corporate sustainability reports.

So: corporations pay Ocean Integrity for certificates that help them satisfy regulatory obligations. A crypto-funded blockchain startup verifies the transaction. And Kelly is now building a product that will allow ordinary members of the public to invest in this carbon cretin process through what are described as impact tokens (Ocean Integrity, 2025).

None of this is, in itself, unusual within the modern environmental carbon credit industry. The question is not whether Ocean Integrity is doing something improper. The question is whether it makes sense to publicly condemn the broader framework while simultaneously deriving income from it.

The Architecture Worth Examining

Kelly's company describes its blockchain system as transparency in action: every kilogram of plastic tracked from collection to certification, every transaction verifiable, immutable, recorded (Ocean Integrity, 2025). The language is reassuring. The mechanism deserves a closer look.

What Ocean Integrity describes on its own website is a system in which behaviour is measured, verified by third parties, recorded on a digital ledger, converted into a score — the credit — and then monetised. Corporations buy carbon credits. Retail investors will buy tokens. Every transaction is tracked.

That architecture; measure, verify, score, monetise, is the same underlying logic that critics, including Kelly himself, identify in social credit systems. The difference is the subject being scored. In Ocean Integrity's system, today it is plastic. The fishermen who collect it are already participants in a geographically tracked, photographed, and digitally logged AI system. The corporations who buy the credits are already linked to verifiable digital records of their environmental compliance.

This is not an accusation. It is a description of how the system works, drawn from Ocean Integrity's own materials.

What the Court Record Says

Here is the only part of this story that requires no interpretation, because a US federal court already did it.

ReSea Project; a Danish ocean cleanup company operating in the same space as Ocean Integrity, brought Kelly before the US District Court for the Western District of Texas. Their case was that Kelly had run a sustained social media campaign of false and damaging claims against them (ReSea Project ApS v. Restoring Integrity to the Oceans, Inc., No. 5:2021cv01132, W.D. Tex.).

Judge Jason K. Pulliam found that Kelly's claims were, in his precise legal language, literally false.

The judge found that Kelly engaged in abusive and sanctionable conduct. When pressed to advance proceedings, Kelly responded, the court recorded, with additional wrongdoing and increasing belligerence. He refused to appear for deposition until the court ordered him to do so. When he did appear, the judge found he lied repeatedly and interfered with attempts to depose other witnesses. Kelly then stopped engaging with the case entirely. A default judgment was entered. He was ordered to pay $577,741 — approximately €494,798 — in damages. He appealed. He lost.

He declined to comment when contacted by The Irish Times (Irish Times, 22 September 2025).

A man who built an entire public identity on exposing other people's dishonesty was found by a US federal judge to have lied under oath, engaged in abusive conduct, and run a campaign of claims that were literally false against a competitor. The irony is so complete it almost becomes its own art form.

The voluntary carbon creditt market, the one Kelly operates within, carries a complicated history that is relevant context here, not as an allegation against Ocean Integrity specifically, but as background any reader deserves to have.

In October 2024, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought its first-ever enforcement actions for fraud in voluntary carbon markets, announcing charges against the former CEO of carbon credit developer CQC Impact Investors LLC for fraud and false reporting relating to voluntary carbon credits (CFTC, 2024). The CFTC described the scheme as involving the manipulation and falsification of data across multiple projects, resulting in the generation of approximately six million fraudulent carbon offsets (Holland & Knight, 2024). These were not marginal actors. CQC had been one of the larger voluntary carbon credit developers operating in the sector.

Public Citizen, in a submission to the CFTC, described the voluntary carbon market as representing decades of misrepresentation and mismanagement (Public Citizen, 2023). Academic reviews have found that fraudulent crediting, inflated baseline assumptions, and unverifiable claims are recurring features across the sector (Calel et al., 2021; Gupta et al., 2025). Carbon Market Watch has documented systemic weaknesses in Verra's own certification processes (Carbon Market Watch, 2023).

To be absolutely clear: none of the above concerns Ocean Integrity specifically. I am not alleging that Ocean Integrity has engaged in any such conduct.

What I am observing, at least what seems undetecable, is that no named corporate clients for Ocean Integrity's credits appear anywhere in the public record , which is, to say the least, notable for a company claiming operations across 58 countries. The millions Kelly states he has personally invested,a former Waterford fisherman who emigrated in the 1990s has no documented source in any publicly available record.

Kelly has, on multiple occasions, publicly stated that those who come after him will face consequences, that retaliation will follow criticism (Irish Times, 26 September 2025). He has said this while explaining that everything he does is motivated by love of Ireland, by grief at what is being done to his country, by a selfless commitment to truth.

A man who loves his country threatening that same country's people with reprisals for disagreeing with him is not a paradox he appears to have noticed. The logic seems to be: I love Ireland, therefore no one in Ireland must question me. That is not the logic of a dissident. It is the logic of every small-time strongman who has ever confused his ego with a national cause.

Women who went to Kelly seeking genuine help, with genuine problems, found themselves on the receiving end of precisely this logic. That is not a footnote. It is a feature.

He prayeth well, who loveth well / Both man and bird and beast.

Coleridge's Mariner was saved by the act of blessing the water creatures he had earlier cursed. His error was not the journey. It was the pride that preceded it, and the cost others paid for it.

The people who followed Kieran Kelly, and many of them are people whose anger is completely warranted, whose concerns about Ireland's direction are legitimate and serious, deserved better than this. They deserved a dissident who was actually outside the system he claimed to oppose.

What Ocean Integrity Says It Does

Let’s start with their own words. From the Ocean Integrity website:

“Every piece of plastic collected by Ocean Integrity is:

• Geo-tagged (location marked)

• Photographed

• Logged with waybills, invoices, and payments

• Verified by independent partners

• Uploaded to the Blockchain”

“This means anyone — donors, partners, even everyday supporters — can scan a QR code and instantly see:

• How much plastic was collected

• Where it came from

• That it was recycled responsibly”

“Blockchain also allows us to:

• Create carbon and plastic credits to help companies offset their footprint

• Launch impact tokens that support ocean cleanup worldwide

• Run the ‘Clean the Ocean with Every Transaction’ movement, where small contributions from coffee shops, airlines, and stadiums fund massive cleanup projects — fully traceable on the Blockchain

Read this carefully. What is being described?

Ocean Integrity How it Works

1. Behaviour is measured — plastic collection, geo-tagged and photographed

2. Behaviour is verified — by “independent partners”

3. Behaviour is recorded — on an immutable digital ledger

4. Behaviour generates a score — carbon and plastic credits

5. The score is monetised — corporations purchase credits; retail investors buy “impact tokens”

6. Participation is tracked at the transaction level — “every transaction” from coffee shops to airlines

This is not merely an environmental reporting system. This is the complete architecture of behavioural scoring and credentialing, applied to ocean plastic as a proof of concept.

II. What a Digital ID Social Credit System Does

Now let’s examine China’s Social Credit System, the framework that Western commentators, including Kelly himself, routinely cite as an example of dystopian digital control.

The system operates on the following logic:

1. Behaviour is measured — financial transactions, social interactions, travel patterns, purchasing history

2. Behaviour is verified — by government agencies and approved third parties

3. Behaviour is recorded — on centralised and distributed digital ledgers

4. Behaviour generates a score — the social credit rating

5. The score determines access — to financial services, travel, housing, employment

6. Participation is tracked at the transaction level — every interaction that touches the digital infrastructure

The architecture is identical. The subject is different. But if Digital ID is fully rolled out, the UN are already preparing for your Carbon Score to be a core component.

References:

Carbon Market Watch (2023) Voluntary carbon market standards: An assessment of Verra's VCS programme. Brussels: Carbon Market Watch. Available at: https://carbonmarketwatch.org (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Calel, R., Chapman, S., Maddison, D. and Mastandrea, M. (2021) 'Do carbon offsets offset carbon?', NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29063. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) (2024) CFTC charges former CEO of carbon credit project developer with fraud involving voluntary carbon credits, 2 October. Available at: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8994-24 (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Gupta, A., Lövbrand, E. and Turnhout, E. (2025) 'Voluntary carbon markets: credibility crises and governance responses', ScienceDirect / Global Environmental Change, 85, pp. 1–12.

Holland & Knight (2024) 'CFTC, DOJ and SEC announce first coordinated action aimed at voluntary carbon market fraud', Insights, 8 October. Available at: https://www.hklaw.com (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Irish Times (2025a) 'Right-wing environmentalist and Trump loyalist behind derogatory Jim Gavin posts', The Irish Times, 22 September. Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Irish Times (2025b) 'Kelly declines to comment on court judgment', The Irish Times, 26 September. Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Ocean Integrity (2025) Why Ocean Integrity exists. Available at: https://oceanintegrity.org/2025/08/28/why-ocean-integrity-exists/ (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Plastiks (2023) Project Catalyst Fund grant — Cardano blockchain verification for plastic credits. Available at: https://plastiks.io (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Public Citizen (2023) Submission to the CFTC on voluntary carbon markets: decades of misrepresentation and mismanagement. Washington, DC: Public Citizen.

ReSea Project ApS v. Restoring Integrity to the Oceans, Inc., No. 5:2021cv01132 (W.D. Tex.). Judge Jason K. Pulliam. Available at: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/61422554/ (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

United Nations (2015) Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations. Available at: https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2024) Why legal identity is crucial to tackling the climate crisis. Available at: https://www.undp.org/blog/why-legal-identity-crucial-tackling-climate-crisis (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Westall, S. (2025) 'One of the most wanted men in Europe explains the crisis — CEO Ocean Integrity Group, Kieran Kelly', Business Game Changers, October. Available at: https://sarahwestall.com (Accessed: 1 June 2025).

Suggested supporting links for Substack footnotes:

Court docket (CourtListener): https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/61422554/resea-project-aps-v-restoring-integrity-to-the-oceans-inc/

CFTC first VCM enforcement actions: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8994-24

UNDP digital identity and climate: https://www.undp.org/blog/why-legal-identity-crucial-tackling-climate-crisis

Ocean Integrity website: https://oceanintegrity.org

Irish Times original coverage (September 2025): https://www.irishtimes.com

Carbon Market Watch Verra assessment: https://carbonmarketwatch.org

There’s a job going at the US Embassy in Dublin. You likely won’t see it on Linkedin, sandwiched between the graduate gender diversity officer and the AI wellness coordinator roles, but it’s there, casually hovering on Facebook like it owns the place..

https://ie.usembassy.gov/jobs/

I open the link with curiosity. Then I read it again. It’s 5am. I’ve had no coffee. The dog is barking, hoping, (now in vain) for a walk. Between flicking the kettle on and taking Jasper out for a wee, less than twenty minutes into a Saturday morning and already regretting that the first thing I did was reach for the phone. It’s a long awaited for day off. I had planned on normal domestic activities.

However, having established that this particular job description was not satire, I gave it a closer read. It deserves a close read, because whoever wrote it either has extraordinary confidence in the public’s inattention, or genuinely doesn’t see the problem.

The role is called an “Emerging Voices Coordinator.” Here is what the job spec actually says the successful candidate will do:

“Design and recommend PD strategies to connect with EV audience sectors to promote an understanding of and support for U.S. policy and dispel inaccurate perceptions.”

Let’s slow down on dispel inaccurate perceptions. In plain English: many Irish people currently hold views about American foreign policy that Washington doesn’t like. Your job is to fix that. Not by changing the policy. By changing the Irish.

The candidate will track “trends in emerging networks through direct engagement, research, polling, and statistical analysis.” They will target “youth, and others who are able to influence Irish attitudes” specifically through “new, often digital, communication networks rather than prominent protocol positions or established institutions.” They must be available to travel throughout Ireland.

This is not a diplomat. Diplomats talk to governments. This person talks to the rest of us ,maps our networks, identifies who we listen to, and nudges us in a more Washington-friendly direction. The embassy is advertising for a domestically embedded, culturally fluent influence operative whose job is to identify who shapes Irish public opinion and make them more favourably disposed toward US foreign policy.

And here is the part that should make you put down your coffee: the preferred candidate is Irish.

There’s a word for that. Several, actually. The polite one is asset. The historical one is informer or spy. The job spec is calling it ‘Coordinator’.

I understand, of course, how the Irish governmentcurrent and former might let this slide without much hand-wringing. Enda Kenny and Leo Varadkar (among others), have spent years facilitating the quiet architecture of Irish-American financial arrangements that the Irish public have not been fully briefed on (to follow). A well-resourced charm offensive aimed at softening public opinion before those chickens come home to roost would be, from their perspective, more of a help rather than a than a hinderance.

Situating this historically, because the United States government has form, this is standard CIA modus operandi.

During the Arab Spring, that flowering of democratic hope that Western media celebrated so enthusiastically, the CIA and State Department had, it later emerged, spent years cultivating exactly these kinds of embedded networks. Digital literacy training programmes, civil society funding, social media strategy workshops aimed at young activists. The infrastructure for “organic” uprising was, in several cases, anything but.

This was influence work dressed as empowerment, and it operated through the same logic now being advertised openly on Irish Facebook: find the emerging voices, map their networks, and make them useful to you.

The brazenness here is, I’ll grant them this much, at least honest,and refeshingly so. NGOs and ESG-funded outfits have been doing quiet domestic influence work in Ireland for years, shaping narrfatives on housing, climate, gender, migration, with less transparency than a classified memo. The US Embassy is at least putting the job spec on the internet. Points for candour should be grandted to them at least.

Imagine, for a moment, if the British Embassy in Dublin put this advertisement out.

“Shaping attitudes; seeking Irish national, fluent in digital networks, to promote understanding of and support for UK history and policy among Irish youth”, The political and media response would be volcanic. There would be Dáil questions and there would be Liveline callers weeping with fury. But the American version sits on Facebook on a Saturday morning and I’ts assumed that this is normal.

Why is this programme aimed at Irish youth? Why does Washington need to influence the next generation of Irish opinion-formers right now, at this particular moment?

Ireland is being positioned as a strategic hub for EU presidency, AI governance, for data infrastructure, for the apparatus of digital surveillance capitalism that Silicon Valley built and wants European legitimacy for. In that context, an Irish public that is sceptical of American foreign policy is an inconvenience. An Irish public particularly a young Irish public, that has already been softened, mapped, and gently shepherded/ indoctrinated toward alignment is an asset. And Ireland’s proposed removal of the triple lock the constitutional mechanism that has kept Irish troops out of foreign military campaigns, is not happening in a vacuum,. Someone wants Irish minds in the room. Possibly those very same brains funneled in to the meat grinder of war. A generation that’s been cultivated to feel warmly about US foreign policy is considerably easier to conscript into its moral architecture.

Working in tourism, I meet Americans every single day. And I am always struck and genuinely moved, by what brings them here. They are not tourists in the ordinary sense. Many are pilgrims. They arrive carrying half-told stories, names on faded documents, a grandmother’s reference to a village they can’t quite place or pronounce. They come to fill in the gaps of inherited histories, to reconcile something that was passed down through generations in fragments,a trauma, a departure, a silence. I remind them sometimes that had their ancestors not left , by choice or by force, our stories may not have survived as well, or at least be told as frequently Those who made that transatlantic journey carried something with them. And their descendants come back to find it, and see to it that there are people here employed to tell the tales they want, and need to hear.

That history is real and that human connection is real. It belongs to the Irish and the Irish diaspora and no one else.

And now Washington wants to use our skulls, our networks, our trusted voices, our young people as instruments of soft power. For what, precisely? You can’t know the end in advance, but you can read the patterns. Money will be involved. Contracts will follow warmth. Warmth will follow narrative. Narrative will follow whoever the Emerging Voices Coordinator decides to befriend this week in a Cork community centre or a Dublin university.

We don’t need it. We already have a full complement of NGO-funded, ESG-laundered propagandists operating in Ireland, several of whom have found comfortable berths in what passes for mainstream media. We will, in time, account for our own treasonous wretches through whatever democratic mechanisms or survive their tenure. That’s a domestic matter.

But the CIA too? On a Saturday morning? Before the coffee?

Jasper, grounds me, he at least is not interested in dispelling inaccurate perceptions. His bark is reminding me of that. We better go for a walk.

Besides, perhaps I’ve been looking at this all wrong.

The job is, after all, still open. And if Washington is determined to have someone embedded in Irish communities, travelling the country, mapping who the young people listen to and what they think well. It would be a shame to leave that to someone who would not treat the job description with the respect it deserves.

Imagine the Emerging Voices Coordinator who turns up to their first day genuinely committed to connecting with Irish youth. Who dutifully maps the emerging networks. Who files their reports with extraordinary accuracy and thoroughness. Who ensures that Washington receives a precise, detailed, and completely unvarnished account of what Irish people particularly young Irish people,actually think about US foreign policy, the war in Gaza, Shannon Airport, the Triple Lock, US Investment companies running our healthcare and housing market, and the general project of being managed by a foreign embassy via Facebook.

That would be, by any measure, a remarkable public service.

The preferred candidate is Irish. The salary is 60.000 EURO with travel expenses on top. The irony is free.

The man overseeing all of this is Ambassador Edward S. Walsh, Before representing American foreign policy interests on this island, Walsh ran a New Jersey construction and real estate development company, chaired a school buildings authority, and spent considerable time on courses owned by the man who appointed him.

He is, in other words, a property developer and a golfing buddy of the sitting President. Which is, historically speaking, exactly how these appointments work.

I’ll not apply for the job myself but when Iwrite to him ill ask the following questions. Specifically, whether the Emerging Voices Coordinator will be filing reports, to whom, and whether the Irish people being mapped as “persons of influence” will be notified accordingly.

I’m sure he’ll clear it up. He is a project manager, after all. This is a project.

Ed Walsh - U.S. Embassy Dublin, 42 Elgin Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4

☎️ +353 1 668 8777

References:

https://ie.usembassy.gov/jobs/

Bensaada, A. (2015) Arabesque$: Enquête sur le rôle des États-Unis dans les révoltes arabes. Cited in Bramhall, S.J. (2015) ‘The Arab Spring: Made in the USA’, Global Research, 25 October. Available at: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-arab-spring-made-in-the-usa/5484950 (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Benz, M. (2025) Quoted in ‘The State Department and USAID were literally obsessed with the idea of social media revolutions like the Arab Spring’, Pravda USA, 5 October. Available at: https://usa.news-pravda.com/usa/2025/10/05/499161.html (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Bernstein, C. (1977) ‘The CIA and the Media’, Rolling Stone, 20 October. Cited in New Paradigm Institute (2025) Disinformation Series 7: Historical Case Studies of U.S. Government Disinformation: Operation Mockingbird (1950s–1970s). Available at: https://newparadigminstitute.org/learn/library/disinformation-series-operation-mockingbird/ (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Bisnow (2025) ‘Can Tech City Dublin Become Europe’s AI Silicon Valley?’, Bisnow, 15 December. Available at: https://www.bisnow.com/dublin/news/commercial-real-estate/can-tech-city-dublin-become-europes-ai-silicon-valley-132351 (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Church Committee (1976) Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. United States Senate. Cited in Decrypted Matrix (2026) ‘Operation Mockingbird: How the CIA Infiltrated American Media During the Cold War’. Available at: https://decryptedmatrix.com/operation-mockingbird-cia-infiltrated-american-media-cold-war/ (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Davis, D. (1979) Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Cited in All That’s Interesting (2024) ‘Operation Mockingbird’. Available at: https://allthatsinteresting.com/operation-mockingbird (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Devex (n.d.) The U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Available at: https://www.devex.com/organizations/the-u-s-middle-east-partnership-initiative-mepi-53746 (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Global Research (2013) ‘US Bankrolled Anti-Morsi Activists’, Global Research, 10 July. Available at: https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-bankrolled-anti-morsi-activists-us-money-trail-to-egyptian-groups-that-pressed-for-presidents-removal/5342377 (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

IDA Ireland (2024) ‘AI in Ireland: Global Tech and Innovation Hub’. Available at: https://www.idaireland.com/latest-news/insights/augmenting-ireland (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

International Peace Bureau (2025) ‘Alarm at Irish Government Plans to Dismantle Ireland’s Triple Lock’, 18 February. Available at: https://ipb.org/alarm-at-irish-government-plans-to-dismantle-irelands-triple-lock/ (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Medium / Trench Art (2016) ‘Arab Spring Activists Relied on Social Media — And America Taught Them How to Use It’, Medium, 3 October. Available at: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/arab-spring-activists-relied-on-social-media-and-america-taught-them-how-to-use-it-3eb5a1bda2d8 (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Oireachtas (2025) Triple Lock Mechanism and Irish Neutrality: Motion [Private Members], Dáil Éireann (34th Dáil), 26 March. Available at: https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2025-03-26/8/ (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

RTÉ Brainstorm (2025) ‘What is Ireland’s “Triple Lock” and why is it in the news again?’, RTÉ, 22 May. Available at: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/0522/1514313-ireland-triple-lock-explainer-legislation-defence-forces-peacekeeping/ (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

RTÉ News (2025) ‘Annual review needed if Triple Lock removed, says expert’, RTÉ, 26 June. Available at: https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0626/1520422-ireland-triple-lock/ (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

TechPolicy.Press (2025) ‘What Ireland’s Data Center Crisis Means for the EU’s AI Sovereignty Plans’, 18 December. Available at: https://www.techpolicy.press/what-irelands-data-center-crisis-means-for-the-eus-ai-sovereignty-plans/ (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Transnational Institute (2025) ‘Alarm at Irish Government Plans to Dismantle Ireland’s Triple Lock’, 13 February. Available at: https://www.tni.org/en/article/alarm-at-irish-government-plans-to-dismantle-irelands-triple-lock (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Transnational Institute (2024) Saving the Triple Lock: The Neutrality Hawks v. The Government of Ireland [Policy Brief]. Available at: https://www.tni.org/files/2024-08/Policy_Brief_Ireland_web.pdf (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

United States Department of State (2009) Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI): U.S. Foreign Assistance Performance Publication FY 2009. Washington, DC: US Department of State. Available at: https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/159225.pdf (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

United States Department of State (2025) Advisory Committee on Public Diplomacy: Official Meeting Minutes, 2 April 2025. Washington, DC: US Department of State. Available at: https://www.state.gov/acpd-official-meeting-minutes-april-2-2025/ (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Wikipedia (2026) ‘Social media’s role in the Arab Spring’. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_Arab_Spring (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Wikipedia (2026) ‘Middle East Partnership Initiative’. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Partnership_Initiative (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Wikipedia (2026) ‘Operation Mockingbird’. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

Wisner, F. (1948) Establishment of the Office of Policy Coordination. CIA/OPC internal directive. Cited in Spartacus Educational (n.d.) ‘Operation Mockingbird’. Available at: https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmockingbird.htm (Accessed: 6 June 2026).

“I’ll be back.” The Terminator, 1984

In 1984, long after the BBC correspondent Eric Blair penned his famous novel under the pseudonym George Orwell, we were given a few clues about what was to come. Skynet, robots taking over, humans being seen surplus to requirements.

Forty years later, the infrastructure to power Skynet (not to be confused with the real Skynet), is in quiet preparation to being built before our very eyes. And the people making the decisions have the nerve to call it a green transition. The Private wires bill has not yet been voted on, but the vote is due.

The Hypothetical Worth Taking Seriously First

It is a freezing January night in the northwest of Ireland. Another storm with a cheerful human name has made landfall . Darkness falls across a small rural town and its villages. The grid has buckled. There isn’t enough electricity to go around. Somewhere in the system, an AI grid management protocol kicks in, allocating power according to algorithmic priority.

On one side: the homes, farms, and small businesses of rural Donegal. People who, in supposedly one of the richest countries in Europe, have grown grimly accustomed to the lights going out when a half-dead tree brings down an overhead power line that should have been replaced years ago. On the other side: the vast, humming server halls of Ireland’s data centre industry, processing government health records, social welfare payments, banking transactions, EU regulatory filings. Their new underground private power lines, separate from the domestic grid entirely, keep the machines running. All of it designed to reassure multinational investors that no matter what the weather does, their operations will be unaffected.

So, who gets the power?

There is no written policy that says data centres would have have priority over the domestic user of electricity. But the question is not paranoid, It is structural. When you build two parallel electricity systems, one for the machines, one for everyone else, and the machine network increasingly underpins how the state itself functions, the answer is already baked into the architecture. We do not even need to speculate about the future. We already have the evidence in front of us, and were gaslit with it daily. Data centres currently pay approximately €0.19 per kilowatt-hour for electricity while Irish households pay €0.36, nearly double (Wattcharger, 2026a). Preferential treatment is not a future risk, its a given, and as usual the people who are forced to deal with the fallout, the lowly Irish taxpayer are a secondary concern. But its ok, because at the same time the TV is emitting positive stories about our our GDP.

The media are doing a great job in raising the issue of the price disparity when it comes to ‘who pays what’, refining in words what people already know. Collectively they feed an insatiable appetite for the obvious, but it also serves another agenda, that of gatekeeping. As the ‘It’s not fair’ chant gains momentum, new laws and directives are being quietly maneuvered through the Dail to make the current situation regarding energy pricing look like a minor inconvenience.

LEAP: What It Is - “LEAP is the government’s strategy to facilitate future investment in energy intensive sectors, while unlocking Ireland’s renewable energy opportunity.”https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-enterprise-tourism-and-employment/publications/leap-large-energy-user-action-plan/

The Large Energy User Action Plan, LEAP - was published on 13 January 2026, arriving weeks after the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) published an updated Large Energy Users Connection Policy in December 2025 (Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, 2026). These documents represent the most significant reorientation of Irish energy policy toward data centres in years, following a four-year moratorium on new connections put in place in 2021 over grid capacity concerns.

Note the word moratorium. It implies the sector paused. It didn’t, particularly, it gained momentum. The number of operational data centres rose from around 70–75 in 2021 to approximately 92 by end of 2024, roughly 20 new facilities becoming operational during the supposed freeze. Today there are 130 data centres in Ireland, 97 of them in Dublin (Data Centre Map, 2026). The moratorium was less a pause than the impression of one, all while the number of Data Centers near enough doubled.

LEAP outlines 17 actions over five years, centred on the creation of Green Energy Parks; designated zones where data centres co-locate with offshore wind, onshore wind, solar, and battery storage (Data Centre Dynamics, 2026a). These parks are projected to become the dominant model post-2030, operating at the scale of hundreds of megawatts. Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said the approach;

“will enable regions across Ireland to attract investment in the next generation of strategic industry” (RTÉ, 2026).

Minister for Climate Darragh O’Brien added that;

“FDI isn’t like a tap, you can’t turn it off for a few years and say we’ll come back to it in five years’ time” (RTÉ, 2026).

That metaphor, Foreign Direct Investment as a tap, is worth sitting with. It implies the government is not in control of the flow. That the multinationals are, and the minister for trade and industry is confidently proclaiming that he is representing them,the corporate investors, not Ireland.

Built into the LEAP framework is the proposed Private Wires legislation: a dedicated, privately funded electricity infrastructure running parallel to and entirely separate from the domestic national grid.

The Private Wires Bill is proposed Irish legislation that allows private developers to build and own their own electricity lines, bypassing the public national grid. Currently, only ESB Networks can own power lines connecting a generator to a customer. Gov.ie

The deeper you go into the policy documents, the more confusing the picture becomes. Each one contains another, like Russian dolls, layered in technical language and green rhetoric, constructing an elaborate justification for why data centres are critical to national infrastructure and how more of them will help Ireland meet its climate targets. This may be the greatest contradiction of all. If large energy users can operate ( in the main) autonomously separate from the national grid, it will attract new large data users to the country.

The Green Energy Contradiction.

At the heart of LEAP is the green energy argument: new large energy users will co-locate with renewables, must meet an 80% renewable threshold, and must align with Ireland’s legally binding climate objectives (Byrne Wallace Shields, 2026). Digital and green, hand in hand a twin transition.

December 2025 CRU connection policy, data centres were permitted to run on fossil fuels for up to six years from connection, after which they must meet the 80% threshold, and even that figure excludes backup generation, which typically runs on fossil gas (ClientEarth, 2026). ClientEarth has launched legal action against the CRU, arguing this risks locking Ireland into decades of increased emissions. Ireland already faces potential EU fines of up to €28 billion for missing climate targets; critics argue LEAP will make this worse, not better (Irish Times, 2026a).

As Jennifer Whitmore of the Social Democrats put it plainly: data centres connected directly to wind farms means they consume all that renewable energy;

“leaving the grid dependent on fossil fuels, with higher prices for residential consumers as a consequence” (Whitmore, 2026).

That is not a fringe concern. It’s basic arithmetic.

Two Wires, Two Worlds: The Private Wires Bill.

Currently, by statute, only ESB Networks can own electricity lines between a generator and a customer in Ireland. The Private Wires Bill, approved for drafting by Cabinet in December 2025 and listed for Spring 2026, would change this entirely (William Fry, 2026). It would allow private actors to build their own lines directly from a renewable source to a data centre, bypassing the national grid (Addleshaw Goddard, 2025).

Minister Darragh O’Brien stated in December 2025:

“The intention is to unlock private investment in Ireland’s electricity infrastructure to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and storage. It is not envisaged at this time that there will be limitations on private wire connections for large energy users” (O’Brien, 2025).

From a data centre operator’s perspective, this is transformative. They get their own supply, on their own timeline, immune to the national grid’s constraints.

Ireland is not doing this alone. The UK and several EU member states and the USA are also moving forward with plans for large energy users to have separate supply from the main grid. China too has implemented an almost identical policy, driven largely by the need to meet the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (Wang, 2026). The language across these bills, in countries with radically different legal systems and political cultures, is strikingly similar. One might call this regulatory harmonisation, but it very much corresponds to the ‘Lockstep’ information phenomenon of early 2020, every country appeared to be acting autonomously as news of the great pandemic reached their shores while implementing the same or similar protocols and language. Build Back Better became as much a universal mantra as term The New Normal.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy has raised serious concerns, arguing that private wires should not be licensed until a full impact assessment is published covering effects on domestic tariffs, national grid financing, and overall system operation (The Journal, 2026a). The committee explicitly noted that a single data centre can consume the same electricity as 250,000 homes (The Journal, 2026a).

There is also the rooftop solar problem. Solar Ireland CEO Ronan Power warned in March 2026 that the bill’s current wording could inadvertently bring rooftop solar installations within a full electricity licensing requirement, potentially slowing domestic solar deployment (PV Magazine, 2026). Legislation designed to help data centres accidentally hobbling homeowners trying to generate their own electricity would be a particular kind of irony, the kind that makes you wonder whether anyone involved has ever met an actual homeowner, and brings into question the current grant system.

Research commissioned by Friends of the Earth Ireland and Beyond Fossil Fuels, published in May 2026, found that between 2015 and 2023, Ireland’s data centre expansion inflated household electricity bills by an estimated total of €715 million — an average of €360 per household (Fearon, 2026; Irish Times, 2026b). The mechanism is not complicated: because data centres consume so much electricity continuously, total demand in the Irish electricity market exceeds the availability of lower-cost renewables more often, forcing the grid to rely on expensive gas-fired generation. The marginal cost of that gas sets the price for everyone (The Journal, 2026b).

If another energy price shock occurs, and given how global volatility is used usually as a justification, this is hardly a remote prospect. Researchers estimate households could face an additional collective cost of €1.6 billion (The Journal, 2026b). The Irish Examiner reported the same research projected an average additional household cost of €600 in such a scenario (Irish Examiner, 2026).

Meanwhile, ESB Networks added €1.75 per month to household bills from October 2025 specifically to fund grid upgrades driven substantially by industrial load growth (Wattcharger, 2026). Heads the data centres win, tails the householder loses.

The industry, inevitably, disputes this characterisation. Maurice Mortell, chair of Digital Infrastructure Ireland, has argued that data centres pay for electricity differently and that the CRU ensures fair cost allocation, pointing to €18 billion of investment in Irish digital infrastructure (Irish Times, 2026b). These are legitimate points. The economic contribution is real. But;

“we’re good for the economy” and “we’re not raising your electricity bills”

are two separate arguments, and the facts suggests there are some inaccuracies in this quote.

In May 2025, Fianna Fáil MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú obtained figures from ESB Networks under Freedom of Information showing a 22% increase in power outages nationally between 2023 and 2024, with 64,754 power cuts recorded in 2024 alone — a 40% increase on 2021 levels (Ní Mhurchú, 2025). Letterkenny recorded a 44% increase in power cuts between 2023 and 2024, rising from 1,564 to 2,258 outages. The Killybegs area saw a 61% rise, from 1,265 to 2,042. Sligo recorded 3,211 power cuts in 2024, up from 1,973 in 2021 (Ní Mhurchú, 2025; Donegal Daily, 2025). As large energy needs increase, so do power cuts.

Among the reasons cited by ESB Networks for this deterioration: bird strikes, weather events, lightning, overhead line refurbishment, overloading, and most troublingly defective equipment (Donegal Daily, 2025). ESB reported a profit of €679 million in 2022 alone (Iambaldish.com, 2025). One might ask where that profit is going, since it is evidently not going to the poles and wires of Killybegs.

This is the context in which we are building new, dedicated electricity infrastructure for data centres. Not upgrading the fraying overhead lines of northwest Donegal. Not replacing the defective equipment causing power cuts in Killybegs every time the wind blows. We are building private, high-capacity underground transmission lines from offshore wind farms directly to server halls, all while the wind that knocks out Donegal’s power will feed the machines that keep Dublin’s data centres running. You genuinely could not make it up.

It is worth situating Ireland within the global picture, because this is not a uniquely Irish problem, though Ireland represents arguably the most extreme version of it.

In China, the “green electricity direct connection” policy mirrors Ireland’s Private Wires framework almost precisely, driven by the need to meet the EU’s CBAM requirements and shield Chinese exports from carbon tariffs (Wang, 2026). China has pledged carbon neutrality by 2060 while ranking number one in global carbon emissions today. As Wang (2026) notes: “When the CBAM adopted by the European Commission becomes fully effective in 2026, it will inevitably affect exports from China and other jurisdictions.” The EU, in effect, is distributing the UN sustainability agenda through the mechanism of tariffs , a form of regulatory imperialism that has the side effect of producing near-identical domestic energy legislation in jurisdictions as different as Ireland and China.

Globally, the IEA projects that electricity consumption from data centres will double to around 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, while AI-specific demand is expected to triple (IEA, 2025b). Electricity demand from AI-focused data centres alone surged 50% in 2025 (IEA, 2026). Ireland’s position is extreme because the concentration is extreme: data centres accounted for 22% of Ireland’s metered electricity consumption in 2024,up from 5% in 2015, and are projected to reach a third of national demand by 2030 (RTÉ, 2026). No other country in Europe faces this particular combination of small grid, high concentration, constrained renewables pipeline, and ageing rural infrastructure all at once.

The Meter in Your Kitchen: Smart Pricing and the Rationing Nobody Named

Here is something that has received far less attention than it deserves, perhaps because it sounds like progress rather than a problem. From 1 June 2026, Ireland’s five major electricity suppliers are legally required to offer dynamic electricity tariffs to all residential customers (Kilowatt.ie, 2025). These are pricing plans where your electricity rate changes every 15 minutes based on wholesale market prices. When there is surplus renewable generation, prices drop. When demand peaks, say, a cold weekday evening in January,, prices can spike to between €0.50 and €0.70 per kWh or higher (Wattcharger, 2026b).

This is being sold as empowerment. Run your dishwasher at 2am, save money, save the planet;

“It’s like having a personal energy assistant,” (Energia, 2026)

one supplier breathlessly explains . What it actually is, structurally, is demand rationing through price signals. The grid cannot supply everyone at peak times, not while the largest consumers have locked in bilateral contracts that insulate them from these price spikes entirely. The solution being offered to households is not more electricity. It is: use less electricity when the system is under strain, or pay a punitive rate for the privilege of doing otherwise.

In the United Kingdom, the National Grid ran its Demand Flexibility Service from 2022, explicitly asking households with smart meters to reduce consumption during specific hours in exchange for bill credits (Wikipedia, 2025). The messaging was friendly, join in, be part of the solution. The underlying mechanics were starker: the grid could not meet demand, the largest industrial users were protected by contract, and the response was to ask domestic customers to ration themselves.

This is what a two-tier system looks like in practice. Not a menacing looking villain announcing that the machines come first. Just a pricing structure that makes using electricity during high-demand periods prohibitively expensive for households while data centres, operating on fixed supply contracts with dedicated infrastructure, face no such constraint. The market makes the decision so that no politician has to.

The Humans the Machines Are Replacing

There is an exquisite irony in the government’s economic case for LEAP that deserves a moment of plain speaking. We are subsidising, through our electricity bills, our grid tariffs, the neglect of rural infrastructure an industry whose primary function is to automate human labour out of existence.

The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report estimated that 40% of employers worldwide intend to reduce their workforce over the next five years due to AI (WEF, 2025, cited in SQ Magazine, 2026). By end of 2026, an estimated 85 million jobs are projected to have been displaced globally by AI and automation (SQ Magazine, 2026), while Goldman Sachs modelling points to around 300 million full-time jobs globally affected by generative AI (ALM Corp, 2026).

Administrative support, data entry, paralegal work, medical transcription, financial processing, these are not abstract categories. They are the jobs people here depend on, as AI systems integrate within existing workforce frameworks, the employees increasingly find themselves literally training their virtual replacements.

The data centres we are building, powering, and subsidising are the physical infrastructure through which that displacement is being processed. We are, in the most literal sense, paying for our own redundancy.

The government will point to 21,000 direct data centre jobs and 180,000 in the broader ICT ecosystem (Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, 2026). Fair enough, as far as it goes. But we are sustaining tens of thousands of jobs in an industry eliminating tens of millions elsewhere. That is not a net positive. That is a conjuring trick.

“Problems of employment and unemployment—to say nothing of the prior urbanization of the post­rural labor force—dominate the relationship between employers, labor, and the market in the industrial society, and the assurance of minimum welfare to the new industrial masses is a source of major concern. In the emerging new society questions relating to the obsolescence of skills, security, vacations, leisure, and profit sharing dominate the relationship, and the psychic well­being of millions of relatively secure but potentially aimless lower­ middle­class blue ­collar workers becomes a growing problem”Zbigniew Brzezinski 1971

And here is the question nobody is asking loudly enough: if AI replaces us in the workforce, we become surplus to economic requirements. So what exactly is the incentive to keep feeding us energy when we no longer have our labour hitched to the taxation system?

The emerging structure of Irish electricity, if LEAP proceeds as planned and the Private Wires Bill passes, will consist of at least two distinct supply arrangements. The first is the national grid, serving homes, small businesses, hospitals, schools, and the general population. The second is a network of private wires connecting renewable generation directly to data centres, bypassing the shared system. These are structurally separate in the sense that data centres will have secured, dedicated supply chains with contractual guarantees that no household consumer will ever have access to.

Under the current framework, when supply is tight, industrial users including data centres already have priority access through their contractual arrangements (Wattcharger, 2026). This is not a conspiracy. It is how electricity markets function when you are a large, predictable, high-value customer with a bilateral contract versus a residential tariff customer with no leverage whatsoever.

Now add the dependency layer. As the IIEA noted in December 2025, data centres in Ireland host HSE health records, process financial system data, manage cloud computing for public bodies, and support the digital infrastructure of the state (IIEA, 2025). If those systems go dark, it is not merely an inconvenience for shareholders. It affects welfare payments, medical records, banking access, and governmental function. That is the definition of critical infrastructure, and in any triage scenario, critical infrastructure takes precedence.

The honest answer to the question “would AI get the power?” is: structurally, architecturally, contractually a definitive YES. Probably long before your lights come back on in Killybegs. Not because anyone made a cruel decision. Because the system was built that way. There is no written policy. There doesn’t need to be. The infrastructure is the policy.

Patrick Brodie, commenting on Ireland’s digital dependency, observed that the country;

“hitched its wagon to the transatlantic investment relationship” (TechPolicy.Press, 2025)

in a bargain that was always about managing the environmental and infrastructural contradictions that came with it . Those contradictions have now concentrated directly in the electricity system, vast public resources mobilised to serve capital-intensive digital infrastructure, even as shortages persist in housing, transport, health, and public services. The private wires bill is designed to attract more investment, and more data centres, consuming more energy whilst the country suffers simultaneously, in what can now only be described as a humanitarian crisis.

History is unambiguous on one point: when conflict breaks out, infrastructure is the first target. Power grids, water systems and financial networks. As in any war, why hit civilian populations when taking out the infrastructure can do far more damage, if rural homes are earmarked to pay the price for privately fed large energy users like data centres this will inadvertently / potentially result in a mass displacement of people. Bombs are not requires, just blackouts and sustained duress on the population. As the concept of the 15 minute city boldly materializes before our very eyes, so do the reasons people may be forced in to these technocratic gulags. Survival.

I am not suggesting this is the intention of the people who designed LEAP. I am suggesting that the architecture they are creating has the capability for domestic terrorism guided by heat seeking UN sustainability goals, all whilst being dressed up as an investment strategy, and solution to climate change. And that the same logic which says data centres must stay online at all costs in a supply crisis is the logic that makes them the most efficient single point of failure in any adversarial scenario.

Infrastructure, once built, is very difficult to dismantle. The architecture being planned right now, in private, with minimal public debate will answer the question of who gets the power long before any future government thinks to ask it.

The Private Wires Bill was listed in the Government Legislation Programme Spring 2026 and Cabinet approved its drafting in December 2025, but as of the date of publication it has not been debated, voted on, or enacted by the Oireachtas. All references to its provisions are based on draft heads, government policy statements, and ministerial announcements. The bill’s final form may differ materially from what is described here.

References:

Addleshaw Goddard (2025) Energy Update: Unlocking Private Wires in Ireland. Available at: https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/en/insights/insights-briefings/2025/energy/energy-update-unlocking-private-wires-in-ireland/ [Accessed 30 May 2026].

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You have never voted for Oracle. You have never been asked if you wanted them here. But they are here they are, inside your hospitals, your prisons, your trains, your electricity grid, government departments and your tax records.

There are moments in history when the machinery of power moves so quietly that most people barely notice the war is already happening. For me, that awareness came in the form of a middle-aged woman just doing her job in 2011. Her name was Elaine. She knocked on my door every second day for around two weeks, tasked with collecting an uncompleted census form. Eventually, probably due to her temporary contract ending, and likely because by the second week I had begun to sound a little too much like Sarah Connor from Terminator 2, she gave up.

That year, the British government had awarded US defense contractor Lockheed Martin the contract to process the information collected by the UK census. The decision resulted in record non-participation, myself included. Following my interactions with the ONS regarding Lockheed Martin and their affiliation with the CIA and mass murder in general, I was likely spared a criminal record, as no action was taken against me. My main argument was simple: the British government was openly soliciting the services of a foreign nation to collate its citizens’ data. As the ONS acknowledged, “369 cases had been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service; of those, 157 prosecutions had been brought to court, with 120 resulting in convictions. Those found guilty face a maximum fine of £1,000 and a criminal record” (Glaister, 2012).

Sure enough, later that year Lockheed Martin announced a massive data breach. As of 2025, the same defense contractor featured in a UN report listing companies considered complicit in the Gaza genocide.

Little did I know back then that the reality was far more insidious. Lockheed Martin was actively collating information worldwide and was, at that time, embedded deep inside the infrastructure of most administrative departments in the United States and beyond. Today, with the help of AI programmers and cloud technologies, they have considerably strengthened capabilities. Palantir and Oracle now serve as their defense partners, supplying military software, hardware, and artificial intelligence to Lockheed Martin, the US government, and an endless list of other agencies.

What happened with Lockheed Martin and the British census was not an anomaly. I’m fairly certain it was a rehearsal.

Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman and the sixth richest person on the planet, is a man whose name most Irish people could not tell you. They should learn it.

Ellison is a prominent supporter of ID4D, a digital identity concept backed by the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the World Bank.

In recent years he has financed former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s efforts to realize an ambition Blair first floated in the late 1990s in the form of national ID cards, now repackaged as a digital version.

As Lighthouse Reports documented in 2025, Blair’s institute, heavily funded by Ellison’s foundation claims it will “directly improve the government’s fiscal position by reducing benefit fraud, improving the efficiency of tax-revenue collection, and helping to better target financial-support payments during crises.” What goes largely unreported is how far that vision extends beyond administrative tidiness and into the architecture of social control.

Ellison, the 81-year-old who was briefly and playfully referred to by President Trump as “the CEO of everything,” held the title of the world’s richest person momentarily in September 2025, before Elon Musk reclaimed it. He invested $130 million in the Tony Blair Institute between 2021 and 2023, with a further $218 million pledged since then. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change lobbies acrossthe largely unelected halls of power in multiple countries, advocating for digital ID systems, healthcare data integration, and the kind of public-private partnerships that tend to benefit the private far more generously than the public.

The connections do not stop there. Data analytics firm Palantir, which runs dual projects with Oracle, partnered in 2025 with Euan Blair’s company Multiverse, with the stated goal of training NHS staff on Palantir’s £330 million Federated Data Platform. The former Prime Minister’s son is growing very wealthy accelerating the adoption of surveillance-adjacent technology within the UK healthcare system. How much Multiverse earned from the arrangement was never publicly disclosed.

Before we get to Ireland, understand what Oracle is and where it comes from. Because the company’s origin story is the context for everything that follows.

Oracle was founded in 1977 on a CIA contract, code-named “Project Oracle,” to build a relational database for intelligence analysis. The CIA was the company’s first customer. Oracle was literally named after that CIA project. (Theredstringwire) That is not ancient history.

As recently as 2025, ex CEO Safra Catz confirmed it publicly on stage, telling the CIA’s Chief Information Officer: “You are our design point; you are our toughest customer and you teach us so much.” The ex CIA’s boss responded by describing the relationship as “a shared mission space.” (The Stack)

“Shared mission space”. Remember that phrase when you read about Oracle’s contract with the Irish Prison Service, and current and proposed contracts with the HSE and other government departments.

Isreali born Catz previously highlighted Ireland as the ideal head of their European operations due to its politically neutral stance. Despite this she did not hold back in making the aligences of The Oracle Corporations clear.

When asked about the protests against Israel organized by employees at Google and Apple, Catz said that “when you connect with Oracle you understand that we are committed to the U.S. and Israel. We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none. This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel then maybe we aren’t the right company for them.” (Clifton, 2025)

Catz new position in oracle has been elevated to executive Vice Chair, working closely with Ellison to manage Oracles global strategy.

If our digital infrastructure, and information is managed by Oracle who’s hierarchy are openly in support of Zionism the result of the vote is hardly surprising. Ireland is as compromised as a past visitor to Epstien’s island.

As tenders are reviewed and quietly signed off upon, the people of Ireland are being ushered sleepwalking into a form of infrastructural dependency that future generations may find almost impossible to reverse

Today, Oracle holds a share of the Pentagon’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability ,a $9 billion contract alongside Amazon, Google, and Microsoft designed to bring cloud computing to US defense across all classification levels. (Nextgov.com)

Oracle is approved to handle US government information at every classification level, including Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information. (FedScoop) This is not a passive technology provider. It is a load-bearing pillar of the American military-intelligence complex. And it is the company now being quietly handed the keys to Irish public life.

Leon Panetta, former Director of the CIA and former US Secretary of Defense, has sat on Oracle’s Board of Directors since 2015. This is not a coincidence of corporate governance. It is a signal of what Oracle is, who it serves, and where its ultimate loyalties lie.

The Commitment to Isreal

Oracle’s relationship with Israel is unusually explicit for a multinational corporation, and unusually personal.

The CEO of the company managing Irish prison records and positioning itself to manage every Irish patient’s health record has declared that her corporation’s commitment to a foreign state is second to none. Not second to its clients. Not second to the countries whose public infrastructure it operates. Second to none.

Larry Ellison’s personal ties to Netanyahu are extensively documented. He “personally asked the ex-prime minister to join the company’s boarde” (Wayt, 2021). Netanyahu and his family subsequently vacationed on Ellison’s private Hawaiian island during Netanyahu’s own criminal prosecution (Times of Israel, 2021). Ellison has been accused of deliberately censoring pro-Palestinian speech across platforms he controls, and in 2026 reached a deal to purchase the US operations of TikTok, a transaction the Times of Israel reported was “supported by major Jewish organisations, including the Jewish Federations of North America, which cited antisemitism on the platform as a reason that change was needed.”

In Israel itself, Oracle’s commitment is not merely diplomatic. It is structural and military. In 2021, Oracle built an underground data centre in Jerusalem at a cost of $319 million, providing cloud services to Israeli clients across defence, government, banking, and infrastructure sectors. (The Times of Israel) The facility sits in a 14,000 square metre bunker, below five parking levels and a 17-storey building in Jerusalem’s Har Hotzvim technology hub, extending over four floors at a depth of 50 metres below ground level. (Data Center Dynamics) In the words of Oracle’s Israel country manager, it “can withstand a rocket direct hit, a missile direct hit or even a car bomb — and the services will keep running with customers not even knowing that something so horrible has happened.” (The Register)

A missile-proof bunker beneath Jerusalem. Built for a state conducting a war. By the company charged with the digital delivery Ireland’s HSE administration, and many other departments.

Before Oracle built that facility, Israeli government and enterprise clients were using cloud services hosted outside Israel including in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Frankfurt. (The Times of Israel) Irish servers. Potentially holding data for Israeli state and defence clients. Before the bunker existed to hold it closer to home.

Palantir: The Silent Partner

Oracle does not operate alone in this ecosystem, and its partner deserves to be named clearly.

Palantir is the US surveillance and AI company that now forms the operational backbone of American military targeting. In March 2026, the Pentagon formally designated Palantir’s Maven AI system as a programme of record across all five US military branches. (Substack) During Operation Epic Fury against Iran, Maven processed 1,000 targets within the first 24 hours. The platform now has more than 20,000 active users, a figure that has quadrupled since March 2024. (Tom’s Hardware) Palantir’s AI runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The two companies, in the words of Palantir’s own executives, are “dedicated to defending Western interests and institutions around the world.”

Palantir has also been linked to aid-tracking systems in Gaza. As one diplomatic source told investigative outlet Drop Site in 2026: “The distinction between death by drone and delivery of aid is being evaporated while we all sit around the same table.”

This is Oracle’s closest strategic partner. And Oracle is inside Ireland’s prisons, and working its way into Ireland’s hospitals.

The Quiet Colonization of Irish Infrastructure

There was no national debate when Oracle was quietly awarded a contract connected to the digitalization of the Irish Prison Service. The Irish Prison Service signed a contract with Oracle EMEA Limited for the supply and licensing of Oracle products, valued at over €700,000. (TED) That procurement directly supports the Prison Service’s broader digital transformation strategy, outlined in the Irish Prison Service Strategy 2023–2027, which aims to digitize prison administration from the moment of committal to the moment of release.

Oracle systems have been embedded inside the Irish state infrastructure since 1998, when the Prison Service first adopted Oracle Financials for accounts and administration. Initially confined to accounts and inventory, the relationship has expanded quietly and continuously ever since. That is how these things work. You invite them in for the filing, twenty years later they own the building, and the information on all the people who have ever been in it.

There been no meaningful public scrutiny in the media ( as far as I am aware of ) surrounding Oracle’s growing proximity to the HSE’s future digital healthcare infrastructure. The HSE selected Oracle to help build Ireland’s National Health Index, a system of Individual Health Identifiers, unique lifelong numbers assigned to every Irish citizen who uses public health services. (Predictive Analytics Today) The Irish government has since approved a business case for a full National Electronic Health Record, with procurement now underway. (Computer Weekly) Oracle is openly positioning itself for that contract. As Oracle Ireland’s country leader put it: “With Oracle, the HSE doesn’t need to start from scratch — it can build off what is already there” (Irish Times, 2025). As usual the mainstream media are commissioned with the soft introductions to nefarious plans the governmental ministers want to execute.

“Build off what is already there”.

The most quietly chilling sentence in Irish public life this year, and almost nobody noticed it. This is the same modus operated by Palantir who offered to digitalize patient records and systems for £1.00 initially as a gesture of good will, this temporary measure secured them a foot firmly in the door when it came to their 330 million pound NHS tender being awarded.

Oracle’s transformation into a healthcare giant accelerated dramatically after its $28.3 billion acquisition of Cerner Corporation in 2022. Cerner systems already operated across major hospitals globally, meaning Oracle instantly inherited access to enormous healthcare data ecosystems spanning multiple countries. It was no longer merely a software company. It had become a healthcare infrastructure company, a cloud company, a data company, an AI company. And increasingly, an apparatus of geopolitical power wearing a corporate badge.

Meanwhile, the familiar choreography of managed inevitability unfolds in the Irish media. Carefully framed “innovation” articles. Industry-sponsored narratives about digital transformation. Soft-conditioning disguised as journalism. The outcomes appear increasingly inevitable long before democratic scrutiny ever begins. The public is informed after the decision, never before.

When the Sanctions Against Israel bill came before the Dáil last week Dr Margaret Connolly, a Sligo physician, and sister of President Catherine Connolly, had just been released from detention after her flotilla to Gaza was intercepted by Israeli forces. Upon her return she did not her feelings back. “I am ashamed of my Irish government,” she said, calling the TDs who voted against the bill “cowards” who chose not to be “on the right side of history.” “Shame on you all” (Wrona and Moloney, 2026).

On the afternoon of her arrest, President Catherine Connolly diplomatically stated that she had not yet received the full details of her sisters detainment , having been occupied with a lunch engagement with the King of England.

“The use of Palantir to track aid deliveries to Gaza is of particular concern to observers. “The distinction between death by drone and delivery of aid is being evaporated while we all sit around the same table,” a source from the diplomatic community who attends CMCC sessions told Drop Site.” (Wittall 2026).

The TDs who voted against that bill may have done so for many reasons. But they did so inside buildings that run on Oracle systems, on behalf of a public whose health records, prison records, and citizen identifiers are being progressively handed to the same corporation. Whether that influenced the vote is impossible to know. That the question is never even raised as a question tells you something about the depth of the sleep.

As Palestinian flags have been raised across this country in solidarity, the Irish political class has simultaneously been facilitating this long-term infrastructural transfer quietly, legally, and with the full blessing of procurement law. Many of the people waving those flags on the bridges have no idea that the institutions surrounding them are being progressively rewired by a corporation that has declared its loyalty to the state responsible for the destruction those flags protest.

Margaret Connolly, the Sligo physician and sister of Catherine Connolly, may eventually find herself working daily through Oracle-managed healthcare systems if Oracle secures long-term integration into Ireland’s Digital for Care 2030 framework. Rather than diplomatic missions abroad her efforts may be better placed highlighting the stealth Israeli occupation of Ireland, if she is sincerely concerned.

There is currently no public evidence that Irish patient data has been transferred to Israel or improperly accessed. But critics argue that misses the point entirely. The issue is not whether a breach has already happened. The issue is structural exposure.

However in 2022 a class action lawsuit was taken against the the company for breeches of data.Oracle was accused of building secret files on five billion people. Not metadata. Not vague digital footprints. Actual dossiers, your name, your home address, your email, what you buy online and in physical shops, where you go in the real world, how much you earn, what you’re interested in, your political views, and a detailed record of everything you do online. Five billion people who never signed a consent form, never saw a tick box, and never had the faintest idea it was happening. This class-action lawsuit had three representatives, including Dr. Johnny Ryan, Senior Fellow of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties

“This claim is backed up by a video on the ICCL website of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison describing how the company’s real-time machine learning system collects this information and confirms the 5 billion profiles stored in the “Oracle Data Cloud.” The profiles are referred to as a “Consumers Identity Graph.”

Commenting on the lawsuit, Dr. Ryan said, “Oracle has violated the privacy of billions of people across the globe. This is a Fortune 500 company on a dangerous mission to track where every person in the world goes, and what they do. We are taking this action to stop Oracle’s surveillance machine.”PCMag UK. (2022).

Modern cloud systems are globally interconnected. Data infrastructure, cybersecurity operations, engineering access, software updates, and backend administrative systems operate across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously, invisibly, and without democratic oversight. Most Irish citizens have no idea where their healthcare metadata is processed, which subcontractors may interact with their records, what foreign legal jurisdictions influence cloud architecture, or how much real sovereignty the Irish State retains once critical infrastructure is outsourced to a corporation with documented ties to foreign intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and foreign military infrastructure.

In theory, governments remain in control. In practice though, multinational cloud corporations increasingly are the infrastructure. The little sovereignty citizens believe they retain may be considerably thinner than it appears, and considerably more dependent on corporate goodwill than any constitution intended.

Oracle’s own defence and intelligence page states plainly: “We started with the US Government as our first customer. Today, 1,000+ public sector organisations and 100% of federal cabinet agencies build, modernise, and innovate with Oracle.”(Theredstringwire)

That is not buried in a classified document. It is a selling point, a pitch, openly published, aimed at governments around the world who are deciding whether to hand Oracle the keys to their own public systems. Irish political leaders have for years been reading those pitches while quietly offering out tenders, hoping we don't notice.

The occupation of the twenty-first century does not announce itself with soldiers. It arrives in the form of a software license, ratified not in a parliament but in a procurement office, enforced not by force but by dependency, that quiet, creeping, and eventually irreversible kind.

Most people, when they hear the word Oracle, think of software. Something abstract. Something that happens in a server room somewhere, far removed from daily life. But pull back the curtain on Irish public infrastructure and what you find is not abstract at all. It is intimate. It is everywhere. If we were in a wartime situation the infrastructure of the country would be first hit, Irish civil servants and politicians who are quietly signing these deals are literally giving away the exact coordinates to our vulnerabilities.

ESB Networks, the body responsible for keeping the lights on in more than 1.7 million Irish homes and businesses ,runs its entire electricity grid management system on Oracle technology, using it to detect faults, manage outages, and coordinate repair crews across all 34 of its area offices nationwide. (MLQ) Your lights come on in the morning because Oracle says they can. Bord na Móna, the semi-state company that has been part of the Irish landscape since 1946, runs its financial operations on Oracle Cloud, with Oracle Consulting embedded directly in the configuration of its systems. (Nextgov.com) Enterprise Ireland, the state agency charged with growing Irish businesses and developing the economy, signed a multi-year Oracle Cloud ERP contract, making it one of the first Irish public sector bodies to migrate its core operations entirely onto Oracle’s platform. (Nextgov.com) Irish Rail — the trains, the timetables, the ticketing, the operational and financial data of the national rail network, runs on Oracle Cloud ERP systems too. (Drugs and Alcohol) The Revenue Commissioners process your taxes through Oracle. Multiple government departments manage their finances, their procurement, and their staff records through Oracle. Local authorities across the country depend on it. The Irish Prison Service has used it since 1998 and just renewed the relationship again. And the HSE is in the process of handing it the health records of every man, woman, and child in the country.

This is not a technology company that does some work for the Irish government. This is a company that has become load-bearing inside the Irish state, quietly, incrementally, contract by contract, over the course of nearly three decades. Remove Oracle from Irish public infrastructure tomorrow and the state would not merely struggle. In several critical areas, it would stop functioning entirely.

In a twisted irony the first casualties of the AI ‘Revolution’ are those who work in the tech industry. Many people who’ve lost their positions claim to have literally programmed their replacements, and in the case of Oracle report on the callous way they were dismissed, many technology/via email.

“Jill is one of up to 30,000 workers who were laid off by Oracle in the last month as the company pivots toward AI, both internally and in the booming business of building AI data centers. Oracle chairman and CTO Larry Ellison believes that AI’s current infrastructure builders will be huge victors in tomorrow’s economy, so Oracle is raising and borrowing billions of dollars to spend on data center projects. The company will be cash flow negative until at least 2030”Chow, 2026)

It’s hard to compute the level of investment one of the world’s most profitable companies is committed to, but it’s evident that it intended to ensure that on the world stage their dominance remains secure. This harsh lesson surely could not have come as a surprise, beyond their contribution in to what they were developing, it must have been clear that may be future ramifications associated with AI replacing humans. Reports state that many recently redundant employees are currently in negotiations with Oracle for a fairer severance package, it will be interesting over the coming months if any of the ex employees are disgruntled enough to speak openly about the internal workings of the organization.

Currently despite the global recent mass world wide redundancies Oracle are recruiting in Ireland for Information Security Engineer.

The job specification reads more like a damage limitation specialist masquerading under the guise of Information Security Engineer, someone you would assume to be tasked with ensuring the safety of your personal data. Thought leadership platforms, and being task to coordinate global responses give a fairly good illustration as to the true nature of The Oracle Corporation that defends itself by saying that european Oracle operations are a separate arm of the parent company.

What makes this even more alarming is that this article has not even begun to examine the wider “digital transformation” strategies being presented to Ireland as revolutionary improvements to public services, when in reality they risk becoming the framework through which multinational corporations such as Oracle and Palantir embed themselves permanently into the functioning of the state. Frameworks are advanced through UN agendas, The World Economic Forum and World Bank initiatives, and lobbying networks are financed by billionaires like Larry Ellison, whose wealth and influence stand to expand enormously from the very systems they promote.

Unless Irish citizens begin forcefully confronting their public representatives over issues of data sovereignty, national autonomy, and democratic accountability, Ireland risks sleepwalking into a future where the essential functions of the state, its infrastructure, public services, financial systems, health records, and even the personal data of its citizens, are effectively controlled not by the Irish people or their elected government, but by unelected multinational corporations whose power, influence, and priorities exist far beyond democratic oversight.

References:

Version 1 (2025) ‘Version 1 named Oracle ERP Cloud partner for Enterprise Ireland’, Version 1 News, 14 May. Available at: https://www.version1.com/news/oracle-cloud-erp-partner-enterprise-ireland/ (Accessed: 25 May 2026).

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AI Business (2024) Oracle and Palantir partner on cloud, data and AI solutions. AI Business. Available at: https://aibusiness.com/ml/oracle-and-palantir-partner-on-cloud-data-and-ai-solutions (Accessed: 23 May 2026).

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Clifton, D. (2025) ‘Oracle CEO Safra Catz on commitment to Israel’, CTech/Calcalist, 8 July. Available at: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3912017,00.html (Accessed: 23 May 2026).

ESB Networks / Silicon Republic (2007) ‘ESB in deal with Oracle to power new housing projects’, Silicon Republic, 14 December. Available at: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/esb-in-deal-with-oracle-to-power-new-housing-projects (Accessed: 25 May 2026).

Glaister, D. (2012) ‘Census non-compliance prosecutions’, The Guardian, London. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com (Accessed: 23 May 2026).

Irish Prison Service (2023) Irish Prison Service Strategy 2023–2027. Dublin: Irish Prison Service. Available at: https://www.irishprisons.ie/wp-content/uploads/documents_pdf/IPS_Service_Strategy-2023-2027-1.pdf (Accessed: 23 May 2026).

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6 months ago · 532 likes · 15 comments · Jonathan Whittall

Introduction; Few companies have managed to appear quite so consistently in the background of modern life as ARUP, one of the main contractors involved with the National Childrens Hospital in Dublin. This engineering and consultancy giant that increasingly resembles the ACME corporation from the old Road Runner cartoons, is somehow involved in absolutely everything, everywhere. Sustainable transport grids, Data centres, ‘10-minute towns, 15 minute cities, Olympic stadiums, the National Children’s Hospital, urban behavioral planning, AI-integrated infrastructure and futuristic regeneration schemes. The company serves as a metaphorical all you can eat buffet for the WEF globalists, and an impact investor class, who are literally all gorging right now from the same troff getting fat in the process.

Beneath all the polished language about convenience, UN driven sustainability, interrogated systems and ‘smart living’ lies systems built around digital governance require digital participation. A world of app-based access, programmable permissions and centralised identification only works if the public agrees to plug themselves into it.

The above may explain why we are currently witnessing the last in a long line of Health ministers attempting to justify delays to the National Children’s Hospital, a project first proposed in 1993. For over thirty years this multi-billion euro project initiated to amalgamate three of Dublin’s children’s hospitals, remains mysteriously without an official opening date.

Jennifer Carroll McNeill recently cited delays due to the main contractor BAM and said in RTE article: “We’ll open it when the time it’s safe, when its right” (Burke2026). The Health Minister addressing EU’s Digital health and pandemic preparedness programme; in an effort to “push forward the European Health Data Space, the EU’s digital health strategy, as part of a broader effort to modernise health service delivery across member states. Additional files expected to progress include the Critical Medicines Act, the WHO Pandemic Agreement annex on pathogen access and benefit-sharing, and reforms to the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, subject to the progress made during the preceding Cyprus presidency.”Maguire, (2026). The statement was made in a response to a parliamentary question posed by Deputy Colm Burke on Ireland’s contribution to the 18-month Trio Presidency programme being developed jointly with Lithuania and Greece.

‌Call it a hunch but I’d say its’s a credible one, that the delays are part down to the stalled roll-out of the digital ID. Though the Main contractor BAM is widely criticized for the continued delays, another company of interest involved is Arup the key design and engineering consultancy for the new National Children’s Hospital. ARUP's involvment focuses on consulting on the build environment, integrating digital tools, data analytics, and automation.

Having recently been involved with a similar project overseas, that took much less time to complete, it is indeed interesting that a previous ARUP project’s completion date coincided with the roll out of a digital identity system.

CUHK Medical Centre, often referred to as Hong Kong’s first fully digitalised smart hospital, took roughly only three to four years for construction and technical setup, with the project gaining momentum in 2017 and opened in 2021. Arup was the project lead on this development.

The aforesaid difference between this, and Ireland’s National Children’s Hospital was that a digital ID mainframe in HK was already in existence. Hong Kong had a well-established, government-backed digital identity system called “iAM Smart” introduced in December 2020. Today it serves as the primary digital ID for residents to access over 1,400 government and commercial services, with over 4 million registered users. Though there were variations of this prior to 2020, ‘iAM Smart’ replaced a previous more basic system; “The primary difference is the shift from managing multiple user names and passwords for different services to using a single digital identity on a personal mobile phone” (iAMSmart). In short the fully digitized Smart Hospital opened a month after iAMSmart was born.

Like I said before, it’s only a hunch, but it seems obvious that a fully digital ‘smart hospital’ would, by design, encourage patient participation in digital systems. After all, these systems only really function at full capacity if patients actively engage with them; through apps, digital IDs, online records and automated check-ins.. As of April 2026, The Health Information act was signed into law. This was previously proposed in 2024 by the then Health Minister Stephen Donnelly.

Originally named the Health Information Bill, this is not a health pass but a legal requirement for all health records to be made in to electronic digital health records. The reason cited for this is that it makes sharing data between providers easier, creating a digital health infrastructure that will increase how efficiently the patient is treated, and hypothetically assist in accessing the correct services quicker. This is how it will be sold to you, and the foreign actors dressed up in the HSE costumes will be the ones charged with encouraging absolute compliance.

In 2019 Paul Gallen Junior a young man with Down Syndrome became the lead star for a publicity campaign launched by the HSE promoting the Digital Health Passport. This was an effort to specifically target people with intellectual disability’s encouraging confidence in a system on the basis that it would reduce healthcare inequalities. This was presented as a joint initiative, the HSE collaborated with the Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland and Ulster University. The Passport which in the space of five years has become accessible to everyone via a HSE portal, was commended by the World Health Organisation in December 2025 as a global Model of Best Practice for disability -Inclusive Healthcare.

Interestingly during yesterday’s ‘Kings’ speech Charles Introduced his support of the Digital ID using the same kind of rhetoric, claiming that the digital ID will ease access to services continually citing the benefits for children, and those with disabilities.

There’s something kind of ironic about calling the below public service announcement Mission Impossible, a freaudian slip?

Rather than just try and introduce the digital health passport as a tool for everyone, they chose the most vulnerable of society to be the way-finders for the rest. Why? (Altogether now in your best Klaus Scwabb Voice) “for deir safety?” I don’t think so. Less than a year after this was shot, and remember this was a cross border campaign, The UK Governments Coronavirus Act 2020 “Removed disabled children’s statutory rights to care, leaving families fighting for support when local authorities provision of care plans were no longer mandatory” (Disabilityrightsuk.org, 2025).

While ARUP was not involved in developing the Vaccine Pass system itself, the company is widely recognised as one of the world’s most influential infrastructure consultancies; heavily involved in smart cities, digital hospitals, data centres and the large-scale systems shaping modern urban life.

The image below shows a cover note attached to a series of directives sent to the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. Beyond simply offering ‘consulting services,’ the tone of the letter suggests ARUP carries significant influence with the body overseeing Ireland’s water and energy systems.

Founded in 1946 by Ove Arup, the company now operates in more than ninety offices worldwide and works extensively with governments, multinational corporations and public-private partnerships designing digitally integrated systems for modern urban life. ARUP itself openly describes data centres as “the backbone of the digital economy” and states that it helps developers build “future-ready data centres” through engineering and digital infrastructure planning. (arup.com).

In 2020, ARUP was commissioned by the Southern Regional Assembly (SRA), a statutory regional planning authority overseeing much of the south of Ireland, to develop what is known as the ‘10 Minute Town’ concept.

On paper, the idea reads like a blueprint for a new kind of Truman Show/ Blade Runner urban reality. According to its own documentation, it imagines communities redesigned as tightly connected systems, where neighbourhoods are mapped, measured, and optimised into more compact and permeable forms. In this model, daily life is reorganised so that everything essential lies within a short walk or cycle: transport links, shops, services, green spaces, and neighbouring districts all stitched together through carefully engineered access routes.

The stated goal is efficiency and sustainability, reducing dependence on private cars and, in turn, lowering carbon emissions. But in its language of mapping human movement, controlling access ( in their words streamlining) , and reshaping how people interact with their environment, it also reads like something closer to an early draft of a managed urban operating system: a city that is continuously recalibrated

emissions”.https://southernassembly.ie/wp-conthttps://southernassembly.ie/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ARUP_-_10_Minute_Towns

Their work spans digital twins, sensor-based infrastructure, smart mobility systems, urban analytics and AI-assisted planning tools. On paper this is presented as efficient urban design, however, questions need to be asked as to why these projects are taking precedence when we have over 17500 in Ireland currently without a home.

An Irish Times article recently published a story about ARUP boss Jerome Frost’s visit to Ireland; It’s difficult to even quantify the money spoken about today, and also quite confusing, considering that by 2030 it is estimated that Ireland national debt will stand at 250 billion euro.

“During a recent visit to Dublin, Frost met Jack Chambers, the Minister charged with delivering the National Development Plan. He feels the Government is determined to untangle the bureaucratic and logistical loops that constantly tie up critical infrastructure development. “It’s a fantastic moment and opportunity for Ireland,” he declares, “€275 billion of investment in the next 10 years in every bit of infrastructure that you can think of.”

To make this a reality, he argues that the Coalition needs to act on the report’s recommendations. This means addressing the planning system alongside prioritising the right projects. It then needs a comprehensive programme of work, so contractors know which projects are coming and when. Finally, it should simplify regulations to ensure that work can get through planning and approval processes quickly.” O’Halloran, B. (2026)

Jerome Frost’s confidence that ARUP will have a piece of the National Development Plan pie, is not comforting, especially considering the fact that the Irish Times failed, likely deliberately, to mention ARUP’S involvement in the National Children’s Hospital.

This is not simply about a delayed hospital. It is part of a much broader transition toward digitally integrated healthcare systems tied into wider EU digital infrastructure frameworks such as the European Health Data Space. Government policy now increasingly revolves around interoperability, electronic health records, digital identity verification and cross-border health data sharing. In ARUP’s own language; “digital architecture”, “ICT infrastructure” and “clinical command centres” (arup.com) making clear how central these systems are becoming to the future model of public services. As for the hospital, It sounds like a Data Centre with wards.

ARUP’s reach stretches far beyond hospitals. The company has also played a major role in the London 2012 Olympic Games. First proposed in 2002, this became a landmark moment in the expansion of smart infrastructure planning and integrated digital urban systems. ARUP was heavily involved in engineering and infrastructure work connected to the Olympic Park and surrounding transport systems, and Jerome Frost was back then, one of the project leads.

Whether people view this as progress, or as the gradual construction of a society where participation in digital systems becomes less and less optional will depend largely on perspective. My personal opinion is that the architecture being built around us corresponds with a dystopian transhumanist agenda, that will be a Utopia for the very few. ARUP are not simply building, they are helping build the digital framework that future cities, healthcare systems, and public life itself will increasingly operate through.

The imagery used during the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony is also worth mentioning because even at that time myself, family members and friends found it deeply strange and unsettling. That imagery has punctuated periods over the past ten years, one prominent period, the roll out of the experimental mRNA ‘Vaccine’, specifically being pushed on children.

Something intuitive made me cross reference ARUP’s involvement in the 2012 Olympics, after learning that of their involvement in the Children’s Hospital. -In a stranger than a Simpsons episode moment I was un-surprised they were connected. I am in no way insinuating that they had any artistic involvement, but the subject matter seems uncanny, probably in the same way we refer back to George Orwell’s 1984 now, and look at it as prophetic.

The ceremony featured hundreds of children in illuminated hospital beds surrounded by dancing nurses during a segment celebrating the NHS and British children’s literature. Giant villain figures including the “Child Catcher” from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Lord Voldemort, Captain Hook and other dark fantasy characters towered over the children as the stadium descended into darkness. Officially the ceremony was intended as a tribute to the NHS, Great Ormond Street Hospital and British storytelling traditions.

Still, regardless of the official explanation, there was something undeniably dark about the imagery itself. Bound up children in hospital beds, looming villainous figures, giant surveillance-like visuals, and an oversized baby dominating the centre of the stadium created a spectacle hard not to described as dystopian and frightening rather than a celebration of the opening of an Olympic Games.

The inclusion of the “Child Catcher” character in particular, a figure associated with forcibly removing children, added another layer of acute weirdness to the performance, especially after the pandemic years, school lock downs, the expansion of digital health systems, vaccine passports, and increasingly centralised healthcare infrastructure.

The show continues, but while it does children in Ireland are being denied healthcare, and it’s likely their parents will do whatever is necessary to help them. And that is why children’s hospital is best placed for encouraging digital ID participation. In Jennifer Carroll McNeil’s own words “We’ll open it when the time it’s safe, when it’s right”. But while there is a continued resistance to signing up to the Digital ID mainframe I personally expect more delays.

https://www.arup.com/

https://www.euractiv.com/news/ireland-sets-health-agenda-for-eu-presidency-with-focus-on-biotech-and-digital-medicine/

Burke, S. (2026). Children’s hospital will open ‘when it’s right’, Minister says. RTE.ie. [online] doi:urn:epic:1569416.

https://www.arup.com/markets/data-centres/

O’Halloran, B. (2026). ‘It’s a fantastic moment for Ireland ... €275bn of investment in the next 10 years’. [online] The Irish Times. Available at:

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/03/06/its-a-fantastic-moment-for-ireland275-billion-of-investment-in-the-next-10-years-in-every-bit-of-infrastructure-you-can-think-of/ [Accessed 14 May 2026].

Disabilityrightsuk.org. (2025). Government removed Disabled children’s rights during the pandemic, Covid-19 Inquiry learns | Disability Rights UK. [online] Available at: https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/government-removed-disabled-children%E2%80%99s-rights-during-pandemic-covid-19-inquiry-learns?srsltid=AfmBOoqqre8-FKXhL4rgz2N1bUHBL_rU1mpc3zkzb-fDT-9-EElRAVAj [Accessed 14 May 2026].

‌

-_No_Appendices.pdfent/uploads/2025/02/ARUP_-_10_Minute_Towns_

I’ve just had an interesting, if short, conversation with a man named Trevor. He works for Horseman Coaches, based in Reading, England.

It followed yesterday’s article in the Daily Mirror, featuring what I believed to be an identical scene from six years ago, when the first evacuees from Wuhan, having been flown to Brize Norton, were picked up by Four Horsemen coach drivers.

Not only was the same scene replicated, but the coach also bore the same logo, that of a the oulined head of a white horse; Horseman Coaches.

Having made Trevor aware of the Daily Mirror article yesterday, which featured one of the company’s coaches assisting in the swoop surrounding a Hantavirus scare, I asked if the company was operating in Milan. To this, a clearly unaware Trevor responded:

“We’re certainly not in Milan. No, that wasn’t our coach, not us.”

He went on to say:

“We’re not doing any of that at the moment.”

He then added:

“It wouldn’t surprise me if they are using a six-year-old picture from six years ago.”

I explained that I was writing a small piece about how The Daily Mirror had potentially contravened journalistic best-practice codes, and concluded the call by asking for his full name, to which Trevor responded:

“I’d rather not say, thank you.”

I can’t say I blame Trevor, to be honest. He probably realised the gravity of the situation. Horseman Coaches were being drawn unwittingly into an arena of propaganda designed to drive the next wave of fear.

The picture is extremely important. It serves as a flashcard, conjuring up past memories and giving unwarranted agency to a new fear. News agencies understand this psychological trick; it is often used in times of warfare.

Most readers will not stop to analyse the wording of an article like barristers in a courtroom. They see a headline, a photograph, a logo, a vehicle, and within seconds their brain creates an association. That is how modern media works. It is immediate, emotional, and lasting.

Which is precisely why accuracy rules exist in the first place.

Under the IPSO Editors’ Code, the standards British newspapers are supposed to follow, publishers are required to “take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images.” Not just text. Images. Captions. Presentation. The entire impression left with the public.

Because history has shown us repeatedly what happens when the media gets that wrong.

If an uninvolved coach company has been visually linked to a Hantavirus scare through the use of the wrong image, then this is not some harmless production error buried deep in the mechanics of a newsroom. It creates a direct public association between that business and disease, contamination, risk, and public fear.

And for a company built on trust, reputation is everything. Parents booking school trips, tour operators organising holidays, and customers arranging transport are not going to investigate the finer details of media law before deciding whether they feel comfortable making a booking. They simply remember what they saw: a coach beside a frightening headline, a brand associated with illness. That is how reputational harm happens in real life.

This is exactly why Clause 1 of the IPSO Code exists. Newspapers are supposed to verify images before publication, particularly in stories involving public safety or health scares. They are expected to confirm identities, context, relevance, and accuracy before visually tying a company to a damaging story. And if they get it wrong, they are expected to correct it promptly and prominently, not quietly hope the internet moves on.

I have tried to contact the author of the article to no avail. Since yesterday afternoon, I have asked The Daily Mirror for a response; silence. My guess is that they are hoping I’ll go away, and I probably will after reporting this to the Independent Press Complaints Commission.

The point is that they lie, and are clearly driven to do so by factors far beyond commercial reasons. We saw in technicolour how all mainstream media outlets subscribed to a greater force than truth, overtly, for at least the past six years.

Anyone who has gone against the multi-billion euro, pound, or dollar narrative in the past has been demonised and discredited. Unfortunately for the mainstream, accountability cannot run in only one direction. If newspapers expect scrutiny standards for politicians, businesses, institutions, and independent media, then those same standards must apply to mainstream journalism itself, especially when innocent people or companies are caught in the crossfire of careless reporting.

When a mistake has the potential to damage livelihoods, undermine trust, and falsely steer public perception, it stops being trivial. At that point, it becomes a question of responsibility.

I really wish it were as simple as that, though. Just as in wartime, when propaganda is at an all-time high, these publications have the potential to steer populations like lemmings towards a cliff edge and to their demise. Whether it is mustering support for another illegal war or inciting mass consent for an experimental vaccine with the potential to cause turbo cancer if you’re lucky, and sudden death if you’re not, hypothetical musings about best-practice codes seem irrelevant now.

The Daily Mirror, and indeed all mainstream publications and outlets, seem yet again to be working in lockstep for another round of World Health Organization-led terror via words and pictures.

“Forcefully” manufacturing consent via headlines like the one above from the Daily Mail yesterday. It’s what Michael Ryan from the WHO announced they may do six years ago, but they could never fully pull it off.

These headlines use deliberately contrived wording, and they are encouraged to do so by psychopaths who want to get people accustomed to the idea of forced detention, and ultimately complete enslavement. Talk of a six-week isolation period, is this why lockdown drills are being force-fed to schools? We know how the Manic Street Preacher song goes, and we’re being given enough clues.

In a completely unrelated story, other images of horses made the news yesterday, white horses showing a reluctance to pulled King Charles’s carriage to the State Opening of Parliament.

Speaking about creating a country for all, and preceded by discussion surrounding special-needs children and education, King Charles said the following:

“My Ministers will also proceed with the introduction of the Digital ID that will modernise how citizens interact with public services.”

This is what it was always about.

Below is an article written about the Horseman coaches of 2020.

Bertie Aherne did the country a great service yesterday by explicitly demonstrating, in a physical and public way, just how the political class of this country has been able to systematically get away with replacing the population of Ireland, while at the same time alienating any dissenting voice as being racist, far-right, Nazi, or in this case, unsympathetic to the plight of Ukrainians forced to flee their country.

Whilst out canvassing with Dublin FF candidate John Stephens, he was delighted to be met with what he thought to be a receptive potential voter as he approached her front door. He was soon brought back down to earth when this articulate and extremely well-informed woman told him of her disappointment regarding the state of Ireland and what successive governments have done to this country.

Having transcribed the conversation, it was evident that in the beginning Aherne was in agreement with most of what she said, or at least he gave the impression that he was. The woman’s concerns were punctuated with “Yeah, yeah.” I’m just assuming that, since that word conventionally means agreement, Bertie Aherne was not being sarcastic and merely placating her.

He agreed to the following points after himself stating, “You think there’s too many coming in?”

Woman;“All these Muslims that have 47 countries” — “Yeah.”

Woman;“All these Africans that have a massive continent” — “Yeah.”

Woman:“We’re only 0.6 percent of the world’s population, and we’ve only been free for a hundred years” — “Yeah.”

Woman:“And we have to give it away (meaning Ireland) to these people with space programmes?” — “Yeah.”

This is further substantiated by the fact that there were two occasions during the interaction where he was able to complete her sentences, fully acknowledging two crucial points.

When the lady stated that “Our taxpayers are paying for the education of the youth, and they are having to leave, and they are meeting their replacements coming in,” he knew exactly what she was going to say and, in unison, said, “Coming in, coming in, yeah.”

At no point during this initial interaction did the woman mention Ukrainians or Polish people. But just as war-ravaged Ukraine was used as a precursor for opening up our hotels, student accommodation, nursing homes, and subsequent building programmes, in this instance Ukrainians were used as an apologetic precursor as he went on to explain his more sincere feelings.

“I think there’s too many coming in. I think we have to take so many. I’ve no problem with the Ukrainians, because in fairness to them, Russia moved in and there’s war in their country. But a lot of the Ukrainians are going back now.”

What Aherne was possibly referring to was the fact that the political landlord class (one and the same), having used the Ukrainians as a Trojan horse to facilitate a warp-speed IPAS resettlement programme in Ireland, believe they have now served their purpose, evidenced by their supports being withdrawn.

If there were so many willingly returning to their country of origin, his friend, Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan, wouldn’t feel obliged to make the following statement:

“I’m very conscious that, having listened to the Ukrainian government figures and the Minister for Home Affairs in Ukraine, they’re very anxious for Ukrainian people to return to Ukraine. And obviously, there are very many people who are Ukrainian in Ireland who will wish to go home. There would need to be a variety of mechanisms in place to facilitate people who want to go back home to Ukraine,” he said in a recent interview with Breaking News.

What O’Callaghan hasn’t publicly announced yet is the amount of money that will be offered to the Ukrainian families currently in the process of being made homeless by the Irish state. However, with Ukrainian financial supports due to cease, it is expected that Ireland will adopt the EU-led return and reintegration programme, which will ensure financial supports are made available to help them on their way.

“We still have a lot of Poles here, but the ones I worry about are the Africans. I agree with you on the Africans. We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places. I think there are too many of them from those places.”

What’s interesting here is that Aherne is pinpointing which race, in the international protection racket world, he has a problem with, without really stipulating as to why. Conversely, he goes on, between coughing, to state that he does not worry about this generation of Muslims, but said that he did raise concerns with his friend, Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan, about the next generation of Muslims, though again he never specified why. He may have been basing his point on the fact that, in the UK over the past couple of decades, studies have been conducted on the subject of second-generation Islamic radicalisation. These studies will have followed events such as the 2017 Manchester Arena suicide bombing by Salman Abedi, where 22 innocent people, including children, died and many more were injured. Closer to home, we have our very own Yusef Palani who, despite being born in Iraq, was embraced by the Irish press as having grown up here and being fully Irish prior to him beheading two men Aidan Moffatt and Michael Snee, in Sligo and blinding another man, who subsequently helped in his arrest.

The conversation was quickly curtailed by him saying, “Anyway, how are you?” to the lady at the door, who continued to tell him how she was.

“Well, I’m worried about my kids, because they are never going to be able to buy a house, and these rich Indians coming in, they are buying up the properties.”

“They’re buying up the properties, yeah,” Aherne said in unison.

The lady continued: “And they want our kids to live in sheds or something?”

The woman went on to state what she viewed as the unacceptable cultural differences between some Islamic cultures and ours, citing female genital mutilation, child brides, cousin marriage, non-consensual sex with virgins, and Sharia law, to which Aherne responded: “Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy, crazy.”

During her final challenge, in which she asked him why he hasn’t spoken up about this and other subjects, including transgenderism, which she says denies women their rightful spaces, and the topic of hate speech, Aherne’s mask slips.

“You’re well educated, you should join a political party.” This condescending shutdown, in lieu of Aherne having no sincere response, was a great demonstration of the surface-level empathy these characters employ to solicit votes. Not only that, but it was a total admission that the Fianna Fáil party he was representing, whilst babysitting the candidate he was accompanying, has no intention whatsoever of acting on these concerns.

When Micheál Martin welcomed Bertie Aherne back into Fianna Fáil after the ex-Taoiseach resigned in 2012 following the publication of the Mahon Tribunal report, he stated: “Bertie Ahern is welcome back in Fianna Fáil because the party does not ‘give life sentences’ to people.” Words I am sure the sitting Taoiseach will regret, as the decision to give his friend of 40 years another jab at political gymnastics has allowed Aherne to achieve what the Mahon Report was less direct in stating: that this man was a bare-faced liar, and indeed a malicious one at that.

Having been made aware by this female constituent that the conversation had been filmed, this man of many “yeahs” proceeded to launch the most insidious attack, one that in fairness should warrant a legal case for defamation. After saying, “God forgive you for not speaking up for the Irish,” this woman went on to mention two recent stabbings, to which his unbelieveable response, as he set his jaw, was: “I’m surprised a woman like you now is against the Ukrainians and the Poles.”

“A woman like me? I didn’t say that.”

“You did. You said you were against the Ukrainians.”

An outright lie, said with such confidence, he had no qualms about it being uttered while looking this woman dead in the eye and smiling at the same time.

Aware of being recorded and that the footage would be appearing on social media, it’s highly likely that the ex-London School of Economics graduate was banking on the fact that the recording had started midway through the conversation. He was able to clearly recount the conversation he cited as having with Jim O’Callaghan, but conveniently forgot that the only person who mentioned the Ukrainians was himself.

Up until the point where he further embarrassed himself, when responding to the woman at the door. She stated that the war was only active in a small portion of Ukraine. He argued with her, saying that was not so, that it was throughout Ukraine and that 29 people had died ( I think this may be a miscalculation). This statement makes little sense, since he had previously stated that many Ukrainians were going home despite the entire country supposedly being an active war zone.

As of May 2026, Russian troops occupy roughly 20% of Ukraine.

It comes as no surprise at all that this man quickly turned on his heels to walk away when asked to comment on all the rapes in Ireland, including the rape of the ten-year-old little Irish girl at Citywest.

“Listen,” he said with his hand on his heart, “I did my best while I was there.”

In many ways, this entire interaction serves as a microcosm of modern Irish politics: agreement behind closed doors, dismissal in public, and deflection when accountability is demanded. What was most revealing was not merely what Bertie Aherne appeared to agree with, but how quickly the conversation pivoted once he realised it was being recorded and could no longer remain within the safe confines of his political theatrical political one-man-show.

For years now, ordinary Irish peoplem, mothers, fathers, workers, taxpayers, and communities watching the rapid transformation of their towns and cities, have attempted to voice concerns about housing, immigration, social cohesion, crime, cultural change, and the future prospects of their children. Rather than engaging honestly with these concerns, the Government and large sections of the media have increasingly resorted to branding dissent with the catch-all label of “far-right.” The term itself, once used to describe genuinely extremist political ideologies, has been so recklessly and deliberately misappropriated that it now functions less as a political definition and more as a blunt instrument designed to silence opposition and undermine public concern.

A mother worried about her daughter’s safety, a father concerned his children will never own a home, or a citizen questioning the scale and speed of demographic change is no longer debated with; they are caricatured, smeared, and socially isolated. The intention is obvious: to make ordinary people fearful of speaking openly by attaching moral shame to legitimate questions. In doing so, the political and media establishment have managed to create an environment where expressing concern for one’s community is treated as more offensive than the issues generating those concerns in the first place.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of this exchange, however, was not the politics, but the manner in which the denial came. To look somebody directly in the eye, knowingly tell a bare-faced lie, and do so while smirking is more than simple dishonesty. It is an expression of contempt. It reflects the confidence of somebody who believes they are beyond accountability, secure in the knowledge that status, reputation, and institutional protection will outweigh truth itself. The smirk is important, because it reveals awareness , an understanding that the falsehood is obvious, yet spoken anyway. It is not merely deception; it is deception coupled with a sociopathic arrogance.

Ultimately, this interaction backfired, showcasing the overt and widening disconnect between the political class and the population they claim to represent. The frustration now being expressed across Ireland is not emerging in a vacuum. It is the product of years of dismissal, censorship by stigma, economic pressure, cultural anxiety, and political doublespeak. And the more those concerns are mocked, misrepresented, or branded “far-right” the more hypocrites and liars need to be held to account.

Many thanks to the brilliant woman who calmly and articulately questioned Bertie Aherne yesterday. In many ways, the interaction was like watching somebody deal with a vampire: calmness, clarity, and sunlight are the things such characters fear most. The carefully managed political image, built on charm, deflection, and ambiguity ,begins to weaken the moment it is confronted by someone unafraid to ask direct questions and insist on direct answers.

What made the exchange so striking was not aggression or shouting, but composure. She remained measured, informed, and persistent, refusing to be intimidated by status or political reputation. And just like the old folklore surrounding vampires, once the mask begins to slip and the reflection no longer matches the image presented to the public, the illusion quickly becomes impossible to maintain.

.

Written a day apart by the editor of the Sligo Champion, Paul Deering; two articles. one about James Conway’s court appearance, framing him as a ‘Far Right Leader’ in the recent fuel protests, and the other about the students of Atlantic Technological University Sligo.

The overarching narrative that unites both stories is the deliberate displacement of people who are unable to avail of accommodation in their homeland. In one article, the author adheres to the clickbait mentality of the public in a misleading headline, and in the other he reports on the internal findings of a report about the lack of accommodation for students in Sligo. Neither article delves very deep; that is another unifying factor.

We know what James Conway was in court for criminal damage; “A promient far right activist and fuel price protester has pleaded guilty to charges of arson and criminal damage:” but no effort was made to establish as to why, just as we are made aware the students lack accommodation but, again, the background as to why this has escalated into such a problem was not mentioned; “Over 60% of ATU Sligo students report that accommodation difficulties have negatively affected their studies or ability to remain enrolled according to a new report.”

This country is scattered with famine graveyards in almost every town. To this day they should be revered as warning signs as to what happens to an indigenous population post-plantation. When the land is redistributed to people not indigenous to it, the resources are taken, the people indigenous to their land either starve, are forced to leave, or both. In previous incarnations of this story, it was always an occupying force, an outside enemy, that committed these crimes against humanity; in present-day Ireland, it’s the homegrown traitors who have taken up the baton, and this includes the architects, those who profit secondarily from this, state-sponsored infrastructure, and a media cabal that works collectively to protect those traitors’ interests.

The famine graveyard in Ballytivnan, Sligo, is just up the road from Benbulben Court, which was purpose-built student accommodation. The British investment company Brava Capital that owns what they once described as a student village, secured a contract in 2022 to temporarily provide housing to the Ukrainian population ‘fleeing war’. In retrospect, it became clear that the women and children who took up the offer of temporary occupation served one purpose: they were the first wave. They served as a Trojan horse to eventually justify repurposing this student accommodation into a full-time International Protection Centre.

Roderic O’Gorman, whose worldwide welcome tweets ensured a continued demand for accommodation, announced the two-year deal in 2024, when the vast complex had stood empty for over a year.

“415 beds will be provided for people seeking refuge in Ireland who are international protection applicants in Benbulben Court in Sligo. The contract with this centre has been signed for a period of two years. The accommodation will be for families of international protection applicants.

Emergency centres providing international protection accommodation have been opened in all parts of the country. There have been over 230 such accommodation locations used since January 2022 across 26 counties. Due to the pressure on accommodation for people applying for international protection, my Department will be providing accommodation for people applying for international protection at this location. This property in Sligo town was submitted to the Department via a Request for Tender (RFT) competition in October 2022. It was evaluated and deemed to meet or exceed all of the qualifying criteria.

The Government has stipulated a 12-month period after which buildings have ceased provision of student accommodation during which they will not be contracted for the purpose of providing accommodation to people applying for international protection. This property has been vacant of students for over 12 months, since May 2023.”

In underhanded moves seen the length and breadth of Ireland, the Government policy endorsed here by the then Minister for Children, Equality, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman, ironically spearheaded a move that justified permanently expelling the youth from purpose-built student accommodation a two-minute walk from campus. There was no prior formal announcement of the takeover, and very little said about why Brava Capital UK, who were given permission to repurpose this provision for students, did so until the Dáil Éireann debate that took place on Tuesday, 22 October 2024, and a record of Mark McSharry asking O’Gorman if he would confirm that the State is paying the property owners for 524 beds and choosing to use just 415. At this stage, the new occupants were only due to move in. Those of us who knew why the huge development stood empty for so long were deemed wrong, far-right, Nazi, fascist, etc.for pointing out the obvious concerns regarding the accommodation crisis. The critical voice that turned out to be correct was villainised for stating the obvious. “We are at the start of the first academic term of 2024 and the appeals for student accommodation continue. Flyers, Facebook posts, reminders of government landlord tax incentives are aired on the radio while Benbulben Court remains empty. Students and their parents, who are frantically looking for accommodation in order to be able to complete or begin their studies, find themselves with nothing, or in less than ideal situations, while doors continue to be opened to strangers. With multiple reports of students deferring for a year due to the impossible task of sourcing a place to live, it seems abhorrent that buildings granted planning applications on the pretext that they were to provide student accommodation remain empty. These buildings in Sligo and all over this land are being banked by the architects of the new plantation.”

In respect to James Conway, I’m not entirely sure of the circumstances surrounding the legal charges he has pleaded guilty to, but it involves a businessman named Declan Hallinan and damage to the his property, specifically the gates of his home at Carrownedin House, Enniscrone, County Sligo .

Just briefly looking in to his dealings Declan Hallinan has built a streamlined pipeline for state capital over the years. If you were to try and define the term ‘Asylum Industrial Complex’, these dealings would serve as an excellent case study of the term. A director of multiple companies, Hallinan, who has a background in civil engineering, has made tens of millions thanks to state contracts granted in the international protection trade. This financial scale is exactly what critics point to when arguing that Hallinan has built a “perfectly legal but highly lucrative” pipeline that converts national policy into massive private wealth.

He utilises Hallquar Construction to physically refit the assets and his company Dromaprop to lock in the international protection contracts, effectively capturing every cent of the process from the first brick laid to the final occupancy check.

The genius of his model lies in the legal fortress he built around it. While local villagers in Dromohir see a lost hotel, Hallinan’s operation sees a class planning exemption. When Leitrim County Council attempted to intervene in the development becoming IPAS accommodation, he didn’t just negotiate; he litigated, using the High Court to prove that his private contracts with the Department of Integration carry more weight than local zoning or public sentiment. Upon reading the article, and between the lines the intention always was for the hotel to become a lucrative haven, for non- tourists from around the world.

This is where naturally the human friction ignites. By funneling state funds through a labyrinth of multiple companies, Hallinan has created a layer of corporate insulation that makes his multimillion operation feel untouchable to the average citizen. Hallinan represents the ultimate insider, a developer who can rewrite the rules of a village from a boardroom in south Sligo. The result is a business that is legally bulletproof but socially combustible, proving that in Hallinan’s world, the most valuable asset isn’t the property itself, but the state-guaranteed revenue stream it generates.

Having written extensively about the banking of accommodation in the midst of a housing crisis, and the lengths of corruption the then Leo Varadkar-led coalition would go to secure an IPAS contract for British investment companies, I am aware of the frustration and anger this has caused. There is a far wider story to explore here, on both counts.

One thing is for sure, and that is James Conway is not scared to point out the obvious: if it’s not clear by now that the government of this country has aligned itself with an agenda to cripple the people it’s obliged to serve, we are halfway to hell already.

The coverage of the James Conway court case in Sligo coincided with Commissioner Justin Kelly surreptitiously announcing he would be seeking retribution for social media posts relating to incidents post-fuel protests. He was particularly pointing out cases of harassment due to the masked force he had commissioned with the job of turning on their own people. During the course of the next few days, a story about a ‘potential’ attack on a Garda station appeared in the news, along with various ambiguous stories about members of the force suffering online abuse. Yet not one specific story to date.

“This is where the identities of our members are outed online and circulated. They go viral. But it goes further than that. It goes to identify members’ private stuff, with regards to their families, where they may live, and indeed, it goes as far as to identifying who their children may be, so to target any public servant in this manner is completely outrageous, and we need tools to deal with this phenomenon.”

Aligning with the overarching narrative that there was a real and present danger following the fuel protests came a headline shared by The Sligo Champion, The Independent, and Crime World:

“Leading Sligo fuel protester admits charges of arson and criminal damage”

This headline would have the average person currently battling the RTÉ mind-rot virus under the impression that the admission came from an act that took place at the fuel protest. Even if the reader wanted to pursue the story further, the articles are conveniently hidden behind paywalls, preventing further enquiry unless a monthly subscription is committed to. The framing of the narrative that these fuel protests were awash with violent disorder is ironic, since the only disorder to have occurred was the pepper-spraying of a fourteen-year-old boy. The assault was instigated by an overzealous member of a masked mob commonly known as the Garda Síochána, with the weapon of choice being the April 2026 subject of a UN report.

“The experts voiced alarm about the purchase and use of so-called ‘double-strength pepper spray’ (SABRE Red Crossfire MK-3 Gel), one of the strongest irritant sprays on the market. They noted with concern that it had allegedly been used against peaceful protestors during a demonstration in October 2025, alongside other excessive means of force, resulting in injuries among several peaceful protestors and at least one protest monitor. The decision to acquire these ‘double-strength’ sprays was allegedly related to the disturbances in Dublin in November 2023.” (OHCHR, 2026)

Framing is how journalists, consciously or unconsciously, structure a story to define the problem, diagnose causes, and suggest solutions. We are exposed to this kind of media influence not just through headline choice, but photos, omission, and story placement. This can sometimes assist the reader with increased understanding of the story, but it also gives the person responsible for the content the ability to morph what should be objective truth into a propaganda piece. You would have to be in a perpetual perception coma to think this isn’t how the mainstream media has operated in the most obvious of manners over the past six years.

When I spoke to the journalist who wrote the initial court report, he was very quick to tell me his account of the court proceedings, the guilty plea, and James Conway’s bail conditions citing a social media ban, the details of which transpired to be inaccurate. James was on social media announcing the birth of his fourth child a couple of days ago, among other posts, and seems to still be walking the streets a free man. Deering, whose bio suggests his background is in court reporting, also managed to get the age of the defendant wrong, 33 instead of 32, possibly to get in the magic number, or just a metaphorical act of making him serve time. This over-eager attempt to align his crime with the fuel protests came to the detriment of two basic truths that would have been clearly presented to him in court. It questions not only the framing but also the writer’s ability to report accurately.

No mention was made of why this family man and farmer would go out of his way to commit criminal damage in the first place. When the journalist realised I knew of James Conway, he also reinforced what seemed an obvious disdain by referring to a trailer on the back of a vehicle he believed to belong to Conway. On that trailer was a sign. In the context of the journalist’s article, this would have made a much better picture, as opposed to the Peaky Blinders-style court mugshot taken surreptitiously of him. But why spoil a good story with a statement that anyone of sound mind would understand to be true—certainly the first and second line:

“YOU ARE THE CARBON REDUCTION!

DEATH TO ALL GLOBALIST

IRISH WEF TRAITORS”

If I were to interpret the sign in relation to what has happened with the student accommodation in Benbulben Court from a historical and active point of view, it would be hard not to agree that it is indeed globalist traitors who gain from the displacement of our people, who have facilitated a replacement of what could have been a buoyant student population in ATU Sligo, which only received university status in the past few years.

A small group of individuals have made decisions that many believe undermine the public good, while vast sums have been directed into an industry where multimillion-pound contracts are awarded to those managing people seeking protection.

(If you point this out you a deemed ‘Far Right’. For those of us who grew up in England, we know this is a complete and lazy distortion of the term.)

At the same time, concerns are being raised about established systems and priorities, as many people in Ireland struggled through this winter with empty oil tanks and overwhelming electricity bills, facing hardship and uncertainty about what lies ahead.

(Hence overwhelming support for the fuel protests. )

James Conway, though he may be a madman, that doesn’t mean he is wrong. Realising the world is run by satanic paedophiles is enough to drive the best of us into madness. Knowing that they are getting away with things makes it worse.

It just seems abundantly clear that the establishment media have either not caught up with what is going on in this country or they refuse to, preferring to keep a sickeningly sycophantic, acquiescing stance in appeasement to a system they believe they will be rewarded by. One thing is for sure though, despite the fact that the below photo posed a certainty to sell papers, they've chosen, for whatever reason not to publish it.

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/sligo/news/leading-sligo-fuel-protester-admits-charges-of-arson-and-criminal-damage/a2044443350.htmly

https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/un-sounds-alarm-over-garda-pepper-spray-and-

tasers#:~:text=UN%20human%20rights%20experts%20have,remain%20unclear%2C%E2%80%9D%20they%20said.

OHCHR. (2026). Ireland: Gardaí less-lethal weapon expansion poses grave human rights risks, warn UN experts. [online] Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/02/ireland-gardai-less-lethal-weapon-expansion-poses-grave-human-rights-risks [Accessed 27 Apr. 2026].

Parallel realities exist within the housing system, one for Irish citizens and another for those accommodated under the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS).

This now is stating the obvious I know, but I write this to keep a record, more than anything else. Nothing seems to be changing in this country, a collective history of forced displacement has not sparked any revolution, and someday I’m sure when we lament on ‘old Ireland’ to our homeless children they will ask how did this all happen?

Recent events across country have brought this plantation perception into sharp focus, raising difficult questions about fairness, governance, and the human cost of policy decisions. While Irish families are stripped of all they own, and wealthy IPAS investors profit from human capital from abroad, we are clearly witnessing a second plantation.

In County Meath, the demolition of a family home marked the end of a 20-year struggle. Despite the emotional appeals of Ms. Murray, who on the radio, expressed a wish that her home might be repurposed for charity rather than destroyed, the order stood. Unable even to retrieve their belongings due to an arrest warrant being issued for contempt of court, she and her partner relied on neighbours and friends in the final hours before the order for demolition to help. The image is stark: a family losing both home and freedom, while still demonstrating a willingness to see others benefit from what remained.

This act of selflessness echoes at full volume a biblical story of King Solomon, who was famed for his wisdom. When two women claimed the same child, Solomon proposed dividing the baby in two. The true mother, driven by love, relinquished her claim to save the child’s life. Her compassion revealed the truth. Today, Ms. Murray’s willingness to give rather than destroy reflects a similar moral clarity, one that stands in contrast to the rigidity and cruelty of the system she faced.

In the face of a dire housing crisis in Ireland Meath county council would rather see this property reduced to rubble. Taking into account the images of homes being burnt to the ground less than two hundred years ago, starving families forced out with nothing, Meath County Councils decision to go ahead with this order is very much playing its part in what can only be described as a spiritual war in technicoulor.

The home being ripped apart in slow motion, captured by a state broadcaster that a few minutes before condemns homes in Isreal being blown up by Iranian missiles. All While a reported 17,000 Irish are homeless.

At the same time, in County Wicklow, Kippure Holiday Village continues to house IPAS applicants despite ongoing legal challenges concerning planning permission for sixty five of properties on the site.

Reports indicate that millions of euro have been paid to operators providing such accommodation, even as legal disputes remain unresolved. The Department has maintained that these planning issues pertain to parts of the site not directly used for IPAS, and that regulatory matters are the responsibility of local authorities. Nevertheless, the optics are difficult to ignore: continued government funding flows alongside unresolved compliance concerns.

In a Dáil debate that took place on the 17th of February this year, Deputy John Brady asked the Minister of Justice Jim O’Callaghan about the future of the IPAS site owned by Quanta Capital in light of the ongoing planning violations, he also requested a full breakdown of costs on an annual basis since it was first used. O’Callaghans response was as follows;

“Kippure Holiday Village will continue to accommodate people seeking international protection until the relevant proceeding are concluded. Any action required as a result of the outcome will be followed up without delay.

Details of contractual arrangements in relation to International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) accommodation centres are treated confidential and commercially sensitive”https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2026-02-17/887/. (n.d.).

‌Further north in Sligo, another story unfolds, this time involving a forign national family repeatedly relocated within the IPAS system. Having recently welcomed a new baby, the family was informed with just one week’s notice that they would be moved from Sligo IPAS accommodation to Wicklow due to overcrowding in their well proportioned two bed apartment. This marks their third relocation, a disruption that challenges the very notion of ‘integration’ as promoted by the Department of Children and Integration. Despite having a child in school, and ‘integrating’ whilst in Sligo, and appealing the decision the family were given a 7 day notice order to move issued by the department of international protection. Their new accommodation is a brand new property, fully furnished, three bedroom property in Kippure Holiday Village, unbeknownst to them already occupied by two other families.

Milligan Court and nearby Benbulben Court IPAS accommodation, once student accommodations, were repurposed during the summer months of 2022 to deal with the Ukranian population arriving in to ireland, they transitioned fully into IPAS housing two years after. While this shift may have addressed immediate humanitarian needs, it also contributed to a dire shortage of student accommodation in Sligo. Currently there are reports of students sleeping in cars in order to complete their studies in the ATU according to a recent article featured in the Irish Independent.

These developments point to a deeper tension. On one hand, Ireland continues to meet its ‘international obligations’ by providing shelter to those seeking protection and silmoustsniosly exploiting them as human capital. On the other, the Irish are being increasingly marginalised within their own housing system, facing strict enforcement, limited flexibility, and long-term insecurity.

On Pearce Road in Sligo in a local B&B, live a family known to me comprising of a mother and her two children. They share one room that they have been living in since last January. They are Irish.

Mel Sutcliffe is the founder of Quanta Capital, that bought the 300 acre estate on 2020, Quanta buys an manages assets on the estate on behalf of the registered owners Goldstein Property Icav. Gript media have reported extensively on the development in the past years citing; “

Cllr. O’Neill previously described the development as “one of the greatest planning scandals to hit the country in a long long time,”

Seven days after Deputy John Brady asked for details of how much money had been given to the IPAS development, The Independent in February reported on a “Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting, where the discussion focused on the intersection of multi-million-euro state payments to the provider and an associated high-profile planning dispute

It was revealed that the company operating the Kippure IPAS centre received approximately €5.6 million in payments between July and September 2025 alone. Total payments to the provider since 2023 were cited by members as exceeding €37 million.

Wicklow County Council has issued demolition orders for 65 dwellings on the site. An Bord Pleanála (and subsequently An Coimisiún Pleanála) upheld the council’s refusal of retention planning permission in December 2025.” (Farrell 2026)

When the Nigerian family arrived to Kippure village this week, they were escorted to a three bedroom home, beautifully furnished. According to the father, the family of five, were allocated one bedroom in this three bedroom home which is already occupied by two other families. Tjis means there are thirteen people in total living in this property. Managed by Seefin Events Unlimited; at roughly 100 euro a day for an adult and 70 euro a day for a child, means they making over 1000 euros a day for this home. This is not International Protection its trafficking, farming, and trading people for profit.

The secrecy and urgency by which this family was moved in to the estate, implies this is not an isolated incident. I would guess that the ‘Holiday Village’, is being allocated residents by the IPAS on the quiet due to the ongoing planning issues and the fact that there is not a adequate sewerage system.

It’s no wonder IPAS accommodation does not permit guests for security reasons, it’s their financial security they are concerned about, witnesses may jepordise profit.

For Mr and Mrs Murray, who have no doubt watched their house being torn down by bulldozers on RTE, this is a further smack in the face. Investment companies are able to circumnavigate planning rules by using foreign nationals as human shields, whilst Meath County Council sends round masked men, bailiffs and guards to evict their son from the family home he grew up in. The son was handed a number for a local bed and breakfast to meet his accomodation needs.

Every day a new story unfolds as this plantation gains pace. The criminals orchastrating it have destroyed this land, and have hypnotised the majority of the population in to scilenceon the pretext it is for the greater good.

Farrell, H.O. (2026). Wicklow holiday village investigated for planning breaches still getting funding for asylum seekers. [online] Irish Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.ie/regionals/wicklow/west-wicklow-news/wicklow-holiday-village-investigated-for-planning-breaches-still-getting-funding-for-asylum-seekers/a587379554.html [Accessed 20 Mar. 2026].

‌Niamh Uí Bhriain (2025). Kippure: IPAS centre with 65 houses loses planning cases - Gript. [online] Gript. Available at: https://gript.ie/kippure-ipas-centre-with-65-houses-loses-planning-cases/ [Accessed 20 Mar. 2026].

‌

https://gript.ie/kippure-ipas-centre-with-65-houses-loses-planning-cases/

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/wicklow/west-wicklow-news/wicklow-holiday-village-investigated-for-planning-breaches-still-getting-funding-for-asylum-seekers/a587379554.html

In a recent poll I conducted, a staggering 100% of the 3 people interviewed stated that If you’ve written a book with the title Is Ireland Neutral? The Many Myths of Irish Neautrality it’s likely you don’t hold a neutral position regarding Irish neutrality.

A further 100% polled stated that If that same person happened to be a journalist it would throw in to question how impartial any articles they composed regarding Irish nuatrality would be.

“If our traditional idea of warfare is changing, should our idea of neutrality change, too? In this timely and thought-provoking examination of a core tenet of Irish society, Conor Gallagher explores the practical and ethical implications of choosing a side. He asks, in the face of aggression, is it right to sit back and do nothing? And is it even possible to be neutral in such an interconnected world?”

However Connor Gallagher, author of the above mentioned book and content creator for the Irish Times seems to avoid such scrutiny.

Primarily reporting on the subject of crime and security that includes the hot topic of defence and Irish neutrality, Gallagher will also be one of two guests speakers on the 19th of March at a talk run by the Dublin based (EU) European Liaison Office. The Subject of the talk is as deliberately ambiguous as the body hosting it; Neutrality in a Changing Europe: Ireland and Austria. The online introduction to the free discussion reads like a passage from Gallaghers manual;

“Ongoing war in Europe, and tensions within the wider Western alliance, have caused EU Member States - including neutrals - to rethink their security and defence policies. Ireland and Austria are among the four remaining EU states not part of a military alliance. Are there lessons to be learnt from each other?

Across the European Union, a network of liaison offices, steering committees, and communication forums exists to connect EU institutions with the public in member states. Officially, these bodies are designed to improve transparency, foster dialogue, and explain EU policy to citizens. Critics such as myself and anyone else not on psycotropic medication, however, argue that these primarily function as opinion-shaping mechanisms, subtly guiding the direction of public debate on contentious political issues. Similar to opinion polls, the debates appear to be public led and generally side step the world of politics.

This is not the first time that Gallagher has been a guest speaker on this subject, he appears everwhere. Shortly after the publication of his book he was invited to speak for the International and European Affairs (IIEA). Describing itself on its website as Irelands Leading Think Tank, the club is very open regarding its modus operandi.

“The IIEA’s role is to identify key European and international trends and priorities, which will inform the work of Ireland’s decision makers and business leaders, and enrich the public debate on Ireland’s role in the EU and on the global stage.

Not confined to EU steering committees and ‘Think Tanks’ Conor Gallagher is that committed to his endeavors to interfere with the soverign position of Irish neautrality that he has also taken to the podcast world;
“In this episode of Basically Stefanie chats to Conor Gallagher, Crime and Security Correspondent of The Irish Times and author of “Is Ireland Neutral?” Conor outlines what NATO is and what are the steps that might be needed if Ireland were to join NATO. They discuss how Ireland and other countries’ protective forces are shifting with the world becoming more and more digital and how to prevent not only physical attacks but cyber attacks, particularly in light of the HSE cyber attack which was the largest cyber attack on a health organisation in the world.”

The fact that he has no military experience, and is clearly geopolitically unaware really dosn’t matter. What does matter is his ability to navigate mainstream media, popular culture and steering groups whilst having the audacity to call himself a journalist.

But NATO is not an abstract concept. It is not a debating society. It is a military alliance with a long and deeply controversial history.

From the bombing campaign during the Yugoslav Wars, which left lasting scars across Serbia and Kosovo, to its role in the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a twenty-year intervention that ended in chaos, NATO’s legacy is far from clean. But this is not mentioned at all, by the leftist pro-war front.

To discuss Irish neutrality without confronting these realities is not analysis, it is omission.

And yet, voices like Gallagher’s are afforded platforms where such context is often softened, reframed, or excluded entirely.

Gallagher believes neutrality is outdated. That modern threats, cyberattacks, disinformation, hybrid warfare, demand new thinking. But new thinking should not mean selective memory. If neutrality is to be questioned, then so too must the alternatives be interrogated with equal, if not greater, intensity.

Instead, what we are witnessing is something else entirely: the slow, deliberate reshaping of public perception, and the circumnavigating of political process. It’s no wonder why Mi-hole Martin feels confident enough to announce that we no longer need referendums to debate such issues, he believes the tracks have been oiled for him by serpents, who like Gallagher are actively protesting for the right for Irelands children to be thrown head first in to the meatgrinders of conflict. It’s like a dystopian non-satirical version of Johnathan Swifts A Modest Proposal;

“I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or broiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or ragout.”

Gallagher’s academic background having a MA in‘Political Communication’ is not incidental here. The field itself overtly studies how media influences public opinion, how narratives are constructed, disseminated, and internalised. In another context, we might call this strategic communication. In less charitable terms, persuasion.

Or if were being entirely truthful propaganda.

Political Communication UCD

Political Communication

Political Communication is a research cluster that studies the dynamic interplay between political information, media, and public opinion, in particular, how political messages are disseminated, received, and interpreted by individuals and society at large. Research in this area analyses the influence on political knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours of various communication channels such as traditional media and social media

This is where the line between journalism and advocacy begins to blur, and in some cases, disappears altogether.

There was a time when journalism was understood to be rooted in objectivity: a discipline committed to reporting facts, not shaping outcomes. That distinction now feels increasingly fragile. Opinion masquerades as analysis. Framing replaces reporting. The agenda is no longer hidden, it is embedded.

Public discourse is guided through a carefully managed ecosystem: opinion columns, panel discussions, think tank events, and polls that present themselves as reflections of public sentiment while subtly manufacturing it. These tools create the illusion of consensus. A “majority view” emerges, not organically, but through repetition and reinforcement.

Ireland, a country historically attuned and traumatised in to to adhering to social perception, “what will people think?” is particularly susceptible to this dynamic. When a viewpoint is presented often enough, loudly enough, and from enough institutional platforms, it begins to feel inevitable.

And inevitability is powerful.

It discourages dissent. It narrows debate. It replaces inquiry with acceptance.

Meanwhile, those who have the audacity challenge dominant narratives often find themselves marginalised, called the most insidious names, cancelled, ostracised, and in some cases imprisoned.

The case of Julian Assange stands as perhaps the most stark example of this reality. Through WikiLeaks, Assange exposed classified material that revealed war crimes, civilian casualties, and the inner illegal workings of military and diplomatic operations, particularly during the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan.

For this, he was not celebrated as an ivestgative journalist. He was pursued and it was hoped (due to his horrendous treatment) he’d die in prison.

Assange spent years confined in the Ecuadorian embassy in London before being arrested and imprisoned in HM Prison Belmarsh. His treatment has been widely condemned by human rights organisations, yet the message it sends is unmistakable: exposing uncomfortable truths can carry a heavier penalty than perpetuating convenient and peddeled narratives.

This is the environment in which modern journalism operates.

I call it the upside down.

On one side, institutional access, media platforms, and speaking engagements. On the other, isolation, prosecution, and imprisonment.

It is within this imbalance that figures like Gallagher operate, not necessarily as villains, but as participants in a system that rewards alignment with an overarching narrative and discourages disruption.

Conor Gallagher is not a permanent member of the Institute of International and European Affairs. He is, however, a recurring guest within these circles. This distinction matters, because it reflects a broader truth: influence does not require formal membership.. Just access .

And access, in modern media ecosystems, is everything.

The question, then, is not whether individuals like Gallagher are entitled to their views. Of course they are. The question is whether those views are being presented under the guise of neutrality, and whether the platforms amplifying them are as impartial as they would like to appear.

Warm fluffy opinion pieces, laced with polls do not amount to journalism, it has far more in common with power than with the truth.

Conor Gallagher hasn’t even the capability of reporting the news on home turf, and his coverage of the horrific murder of Aisling Murphy is testament to that. He made his agenda shaping nature clear in too many stories to mention with regards to Ireland.

The Irish Times - his employer are responsible for not only allowing their paper to be compromised, but for aquiessing to, and promoting a inverted version of journalism.

It can’t be argued that their governance were unaware of this level of impartiality.

While Conor Gallagher is speaking at EU offices about Irish neautrality being outdated, politicians like Helen McEntee are waiting impatiently for that message to become mainstream.

Tickets are free to tomorrow's event. For those who can’t attend, the Irish Times can be purchased in most local shops.

“IT MAY seem strange to some that The Irish Times would ask whether this is what the men of 1916 died for: a bailout from the German chancellor with a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor on the side. There is the shame of it all. Having obtained our political independence from Britain to be the masters of our own affairs, we have now surrendered our sovereignty to the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Their representatives ride into Merrion Street today.” (Business Insider, 2010).

When looking at Ireland today, the opinion piece in the Irish Times referencing the 2010 EU bailout presided over by the then Taoiseach by Brian Cowen seems almost prophetic, yet far less alarming than the reality we face now.

International global investment and asset management companies have very quietly been allowed, with the consent of successive governments, lead us sleepwalking into oligarchic politics. As a result, much of Ireland’s wealth and ownership has been siphoned off and ended up in the hands of people whose faces we will never see and names we will never know.

When the 2009 recruitment freeze in public services was announced by Deputy Mary Wallace, it was decided that the undergraduate nursing degree programme would have its places cut across all thirteen institutions in Ireland. This was on the basis that €5 million in training costs could be saved. The then Minister of State for the Department of Health also cut specialist clinical practice courses (post-registration courses), projecting further savings of millions that year and €8.45 million annually thereafter. She stated: “One statistical characteristic of Ireland is its very large number of practising nurses,” quoting from an OECD public management review that outlined the case for reconfiguring the health service.

Sligo TD Deputy Marc Mac Sharry responded by warning: “In recent times we have needed to recruit from across the world to ensure we have had sufficient nurses at the coalface. We are now complicating this shortage further by not educating our own nurses for the future.” (See the Seanad debate: https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2009-03-10/7/)

Deputy Mary Wallace retired from politics one year later.

Fast forward ten years, and the world of international healthcare recruitment and temporary staffing became a highly profitable venture, while Irish recruitment freezes continued.

“Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the health service spent €390 million on agency staff in 2020 and a further €461.7 million between January and October 2021. A subsequent FOI request showed the HSE spent €619 million on agency staff in 2022.”

Exacerbating (deliberately) an already dire housing crisis, thousands of nursing staff who have come to work in Ireland over the past six years has increased exponentially, with aggressive recruitment drives and incentives.

Meanwhile the same aggressive recruitment drives are targeting Irish medics who, due to a myriad of reasons but pay, conditions and the inability to see a stable future in Ireland. The silver lining in all of this is that the trade of people and skills is big business.

Ann Heraty is the founder of CPL Resources, the largest company providing international healthcare staff to hospitals in Ireland through HSE contracts. Together with her husband, Paul Carroll, they have been greatly rewarded for their role in addressing the Irish healthcare staffing deficit. Nurses and other healthcare professionals have increasingly been sourced from overseas over the past decade, despite ongoing domestic recruitment freezes.

At the height of the pandemic, there was an escalation in new recruits into the nursing workforce, mainly from India, Africa, and the Philippines. As reported by Gript, CPL also won the contract to act as contact tracers for potentially infected asymptomatic individuals during the scandemic. It was almost a foreshadowing the test run of the vaccine passes to come;

“It would appear once again that it is an ill pandemic that blows no one any good. Last month it emerged that one of Ireland’s premier recruitment agencies, CPL Resources, had been given the contract by the Health Services Executive (HSE) to hire contact tracers as well as additional student and graduate nurses.” (Dr Matt Tracey, Gript, November 2020: https://gript.ie/cpls-good-connections-show-its-an-ill-pandemic-that-blows-no-favours/)

The implication being made here is that it was a contract they did not have to tender for.

The couple, who are aunt and uncle to Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, built up the business that Anne started in 1989, acquiring other companies since sold along the way. CPL, Servisource, and Kate Cowhig were three main players in securing HSE contracts to source overseas staff.

Ms Heraty, a native of Co. Longford, co-founded CPL in 1989 at age 29 and became the first female chief executive of an Irish publicly quoted company a decade later when she floated the business. Outsourcing Inc. acquired CPL in January 2021 for almost €318 million in an all-cash deal.

Anne Heraty ranks as the 26th most powerful woman in Ireland according to the Business and Leadership website. She holds many roles in the Irish business world, and both she and her husband serve as striking examples of how Irish taxpayers have helped strengthen a global economy in international healthcare recruitment.

On average, recruitment companies earn between €10,000 and €12,000 per nurse entering the workforce, plus resettlement and administration costs exceeding €5,000 (with accommodation and flight bursaries making up most of it, these are often claimed back in addition). Though no easily available official record details specific numbers, according to the European Journal of Public Health and related data, internationally trained healthcare workers comprised of a significant portion of new entrants in recent years. “In 2021–22, they made up around 71% of new entrants to the medical register and 69% to the nursing register. In terms of outward migration, there is also a consistent pattern of physicians leaving for countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand” (Hanlon, Humphries, 2024).

As of 2024, 54.0% of practising nurses in Ireland obtained their first nursing qualification outside the country (with top source countries including India, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines). After completing an adaptation period, nurses, who often have families, can seek family reunification. Critical Skills Employment Permit holders are entitled to apply for family members to join them immediately.

CPL in 2021 was sold to Outsourcing Inc., a Japanese company that was then ranked as the 10th-largest staffing provider on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Anne Heraty retained a non-executive position on Outsourcing’s global board of directors.

Outsourcing Inc. was subsequently then taken over by Bain Capital Private Equity (a Boston-based firm), with the deal announced in December 2023 and completed in 2024, valued at approximately $1.53 billion.

Bain Capital has an interesting history but that's a rabbit hole for another day, all that’s really relevant here is that it is yet another multinational ACME style firm that is profiteering from the controlled demolition of our social infrastructure, the neglect of our people and sickness itself. But in fairness this is due to the complicity of the people voted in to the Dail allegedly to protect our interests.

This private equity firm was founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney, with start up investments, including $2 million from Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislaine Maxwell), among other interesting foreign and offshore investors who helped seed the initial fund.

Bain Capital currently manages around $185 billion in assets worldwide, boasting investments in various sectors; recent activity in Ireland has involved pursuing or being linked to homecare providers (e.g., through merger notifications involving Fiducia Healthcare/Irish HomeCare and connections to CPL’s operations).

Like many short-term solutions that have justified the sale of our assets, the excuse has often been to fix a self-generated or fictitious issue. But one thing remains constant: the solution never benefits the people of Ireland. A revolving door of human capital is fueling a worldwide multi-billion-euro industry, engineered by government failings and now operating in lockstep with the global investors who profit from it.

A recent programme highlighted the concerns on mainstream TV last week, where TV presenters and their guests were aimlessly curating the possible reasons Irish nurses and doctors were closing to move abroad. As if oblivious to the fact that on their wages these skilled professionals are unable to afford a quality of life deserving of someone having to suffer 12 hour shifts often in the most challenging of professions.

As talk show hosts pontificate about why Irish medics are leaving the country, what they often fail to mention is that these professionals are likely departing for the same reasons people from around the world are prepared to leave their families to come to Ireland: hope for a future, one where they can afford their own home and, perhaps one day (in the case of the Irish), start a family of their own. This global economy is rooted in the economic displacement of people. The mothers and fathers who wave off their children to Australia, the US and New Zealand know that the likelihood is their grandchildren will be known to them only through FaceTime and phone calls.

Remaining on the theme of families, when asked about any potential involvement with her aunt and uncle’s business dealings, Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill was very definitive in her response.

Jennifer Carroll McNeil

“I have no knowledge of either CPLs business nor HSE contracts. Neither I nor my parents or husband own a single share in CPL. I do know that CPL has worked for the HSE and predecessors for about two decades. That’s it.”

3:51 PM · Nov 14, 2020

Nov 14, 2020Ewan MacKenna

Two honest and serious questions for @CarrollJennifer.
1. As equality spokesperson, do you think it’s right for a firm to be paid millions to offer zero-hour contracts to nurses?
2. Do you think it’s right that company doesn’t tender and also belongs to family of government TD?

Nov 14, 2020Ewan MacKenna

“Having worked in the Dail I can assure you in general, not in this case, that is bollocks. Top civil servants and politicians mix, and off the record choose deals. Dail bar and members' restaurant usually where it goes down. But again I asked two questions, no more, no less.”

Jennifer Carroll McNeil

“The persistent allegation of corruption at the core of this is untrue and wrong. I have written to @smcs about it and reported it as ongoing harassment. Not a single political or media person has followed this up since first alleged many weeks ago. It is patently untrue.”

The thread on Twitter/X was slightly cynical. Deputy Carroll MacNeill made her position clear: she felt she had no other option but to report the concerns raised by members of the general public as harassment. This follows a trend employed by many politicians who now assume that scrutiny is, in fact, a potential criminal act.

For the record, I am not in any way implying that she, her husband Hugo McNeil OBE, (ex Goldman Sachs director of the investment branch in Ireland), or her parents had shares in the company, and I hope this controversy didn’t spoil the family Christmas dinner five weeks later.

The question posed to the Health Minister was very clear-cut and was not specifically inquiring about shareholdings. Though most people don’t understand the mechanics and behind-the-scenes networking meetings that help manoeuvre these deals, they are right to question the potential for nepotism and the advantages that can come from “knowing the right people.”

It’s a cultural thing in Ireland to want to help your own, probably an epigenetic memory from the time our ancestors were starved off the land and forced onto foreign soil. “When you get to New York, go and see Billy, his wife is a cousin of Mary and Mary knew your grandad.” Through tenuous connections, people forged new lives and survived, it was accepted this was the norm. This mentality has never left the Irish psyche. Despite the trauma, it is ingrained in us, especially when it comes to family. I currently have a distant cousin living with me here in Sligo. I’d never met him before, but when his Grandad called My Mother to say there was no accommodation for him to finish his studies, it was an instant “he can stay here.” We are sympathetic to the plight of our own, Especially in light of their purpose-built student accommodation having being ‘repurposed’ into IPAS centres, housing their replacements. My cousin will be off to Australia soon.

This mentality is probably why the Irish are so good at forging international connections. In the corporate sector they call it networking, team-building, breakouts and and global advisory boards. These people don’t just meet up to share sandwiches and jokes, they converge to assist one another, build networks, and contemplate how to increase profits. Usually they operate under a shared vision that appears to serve the greater good, but one thing is very clear: there is always money to be made or extracted from that shared vision.

One group famous for its secrecy, and one that probably best supports the concerns raised by Eoin McKenna when he said; “Top civil servants and politicians mix, and off the record choose deals” is the Bilderberg Group. Every year, a select circle of political leaders, CEOs, and policy shapers gather in strict privacy at the annual Bilderberg meeting, a place where headlines end and unfiltered conversation begins. In June 2025, the 71st meeting was held at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, bringing together around 120–150 figures from Europe and North America. Among the three Irish attendees was Anne Heraty who holds a special position on the steering committee.

Founded in May 1954 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Polish politician Józef Retinger, these meetings were initially set up to address growing anti-American sentiment in Europe and strengthen Atlantic relations. The goal was to create a common strategy between nations, contributing to the rise of globalisation and helping to prevent another world war. While early meetings focused on Cold War-era Transatlantic relations, modern meetings focus on fostering a consensus around free-market Western capitalism.

The meetings operate under the Chatham House Rule, meaning participants can use the information gained but cannot attribute it to a specific speaker. No press are allowed, and no minutes or votes are recorded. Due to its secrecy, the group has long been the target of conspiracy theories suggesting it is a “shadow government” or an elite cabal pushing for global tyranny.

In reality, observers generally describe it as a high-level networking, at times lobbying — forum where powerful figures discuss international issues without the constraints of public scrutiny. The Guardian reported on the most recent meeting under the headline:

‘China haunts Bilderberg talks as usual suspects plot world domination’

The corporate oligarchy that was once dismissed as a conspiracy theory is now accepted by mainstream media as something of an open secret. Whether they are manufacturing consent or not, there is a certain contempt for the reporting restrictions upheld by the event.

“What better time for the prospects of world war three to go up a gear than in the middle of a Bilderberg conflab, with nuclear proliferation slated for discussion, and the heads of Nato and MI6, and two of America’s most senior military officers in the room. They’re joined in Stockholm by the CEOs of several major defence suppliers such as Palantir, Thales and Anduril. Even the quietly spoken host of the conference, Marcus Wallenberg, happens to run an arms company. He’s chair of Sweden’s largest defence contractor, Saab.”

“Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of DeepMind, turned up in Stockholm with the 2024 Nobel prize for Chemistry in his back pocket and some rather more optimistic rhetoric about AI, which he thinks will usher in an era of ‘radical abundance’. He thinks of AI as ‘the cavalry’ arriving to save us from ourselves.” (Skelton, 2025)

For someone like Heraty, whose career spans leadership of a major Irish company and positions on banks and national boards like Ibec, this is a seat at a table where global and European business priorities intersect. Joining her from Ireland were;

Jack Chambers, Ireland’s Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Reform and Digitalisation,

Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair - supreme leader of new digital boarding pass.

Paschal Donohoe, previously Minister for Public Expenditure, President of the Eurogroup, and now the ‘Chief Knowledge Officer’ of the World Bank.

“As Chief Knowledge Officer, Mr. Donohoe oversees strategic engagement with governments, civil society, foundations, and philanthropic partners, ensuring that the World Bank Group remains a trusted global platform for proven solutions, policy guidance, and development innovation. His work supports the institution’s mission to deliver practical, scalable, and results-driven knowledge to sovereign and private sector clients alike.” (Paschal Donohoe | World Bank Group, 2025)

Working with Cabinet colleagues, Donohoe was key in engineering the €116bn, 10-year National Development Plan which underpins Project Ireland 2040, a plan aimed at preparing for an Ireland with an additional one million residents and 660,000 more in employment. In his new, somewhat dystopian-sounding role as Chief Knowledge Officer, he can act as a non-governmental and well-known intermediary, free to navigate all sectors. It’s a revolving door, and it’s spinning fast.

In previous years, although the agenda has been made public, the invite-only event has only ever been attended by a handful of Irish representatives. The 2019 Montreux meeting that Paschal Donohoe also attended must have served as a perfect precursor to the 2020 pandemic hoax that introduced social media restrictions on anyone questioning the official narrative.

“On the agenda for the 2019 summit is: ‘What’s Next for Europe?’. Brexit is also up for discussion, as is ‘The Future of Capitalism’, ‘Russia’, ‘China’, ‘The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence’, ‘The Weaponisation of Social Media’, ‘The Importance of Space’ and ‘Cyber Threats.’ Transparency campaigners have long complained about the Bilderberg Conference, which does not publish details of proceedings at its meetings, particularly because politicians such as Mr Donohoe will meet in private with corporate CEOs and industry lobbyists.” (Borno, 2019)

The passage that appeared in the Irish Independent at the time was a perfect foreshadowing of the digital prison being prepared for us over the next five years.

Artificial intelligence isn’t a fringe topic at Bilderberg, it has become a central pillar. The 2024 meeting in Madrid explicitly listed AI and AI safety as key discussion areas, alongside geopolitical and economic challenges. The Digital ID framework would certainly have been on the agenda. Only last week Deputy Jennifer Carroll McNeils’ department under a press release entitled ‘Minister for Health approves publication of HSE’s Capital Plans’ released the HSE Digital for Care Capital plan, ironically citing that the HSE added thousands of staff positions post-2018 amid population growth and service demands.

“The Government has recognised the importance of investing in digital health and has committed significant additional funding and resources for ICT since that time. We have witnessed annual increases in revenue, staffing and ICT capital since 2018, including ringfenced funding specifically for cyber resilience. In 2026, the HSE will continue to focus on delivering digital health programmes, new transformation initiatives, maintain services, enhance digital security, and support innovation. All programmes are aligned with Digital for Care and are contained within corresponding HSE Digital Health Strategic Implementation Roadmap.”https://about.hse.ie/publications/hse-digital-for-care-capital-plan-2026/

The digital health strategic implementation is just one octopus arm of the the digital framework that is closing in to embrace us. The other is in the news every day under the guide of protecting children, another cause the Health Minister is keen to champion. But ultimately the lack of resistance to this is worrying, under the umbrella of climate action it is closing in on our money and our assets. Currently Banks like NatWest and TSB, often in partnership with fintech company Cogo, provide apps that analyze anonymized outgoing transactions, such as clothing, groceries, or travel, these are shamelessly called Carbon footprint trackers with systems in place to offer insights into lower-carbon alternatives or reward customers for green purchasing behaviors. The prequel to your carbon credit/social credit enslavement.

Ann Heraty and her husband Paul Carroll have assumed numerous high-level roles over the years. While chair of Ibec, Anne Heraty announced a working collaboration with the World Economic Forum: “In early 2021 senior representatives from Ibec, Deloitte Ireland, HSBC Ireland, Chartered Accountants Ireland and the Institute of Directors in Ireland formed a working group with the objective of establishing an Irish Chapter of the Climate Governance Initiative, an initiative in collaboration with the World Economic Forum.”

Chapter Zero Ireland was formally established in October 2021 as a company limited by guarantee. It was officially launched in May 2022, with its public debut event featuring high-profile speakers, including (unsurprisingly), the then-Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe. The fact that government ministers are guest speakers at events such as this serves as not just a ministerial endorsement to these ‘forums’, but to the to the conspiracy theorists further endorsement that the people in Davos have their nimble fingers on the strings of the puppets thev’ve chosen perform the show they’ve written.

And just to round it out with that signature sustainable goals ‘I can make money from this’ networking crescendo, Anne now serves as a member of the Global Advisory Council at Venturewave Capital, alongside her former CPL co-founder and husband Paul Carroll (now Director of HireUp, (his referral-based recruitment platform). Both Anne and Paul bring their deep recruitment expertise to this advisory role, offering strategic guidance on scaling-impactful businesses.

At the helm of that same Global Advisory Council sits none other than former Taoiseach Enda Kenny his first major post-office appointment after stepping down in 2017.

“Mr Kenny, a Mayo TD, will be the chairman of an advisory council for a private equity group that will invest in Ireland.

The announcement was made in recent days by Kieran McLoughlin, who was previously president and chief executive of The Ireland Funds, a philanthropic organisation.

In an email Mr McLoughlin told friends he has now been appointed “CEO of VentureWave Capital, an Irish fund manager He said VentureWave Capital, based in Merrion Street, Dublin – near Government Buildings – would be focussed on so-called “impact investing” which aims to “deliver commercial returns to investors through backing socially responsible companies and enterprises”.

“Our potential to support Ireland is reflected in the fact that former taoiseach Enda Kenny has agreed to chair our global advisory council, the first appointment he has accepted since leaving office,” said Mr McLoughlin..Kelly, F. (2019).

Kenny lends his considerable political gravitas and international connections to the firm, helping steer its focus on “impact investing” in tech-driven companies across health, education, food & agriculture, climate, and sustainable finance. The setup is all about proving you can chase strong returns while ticking UN Sustainable Development Goal boxes through “partnership, purpose, and shared ambition”,the kind of polished ethos that sounds noble on paper.

Yet the pattern feels all too familiar: ex-politicians, recruitment tycoons fresh from lucrative exits, and global forum regulars shifting and sliding seamlessly into these impact vehicles — LIFT grooming “positive” young leaders, referral platforms streamlining the modern gig hustle, funds chasing SDG checkboxes, all while championing sustainability and progress. In the end, it quietly accelerates the shift of public services to private hands, monetizes essential sectors, and reframes rising costs, thinner nets, and precarious work as innovative “solutions” we’re meant to applaud.

As Ireland’s next generation ( the one’s left, who’ve probably been born overseas) get ‘future coached’ in upbeat global thinking, you can’t help but smile at the neat symmetry: what’s packaged as enlightened, world-saving advancement is the absolute opposite. The initiatives, NGO’s platitudes, social programmes, action groups all logo’d with that UN multicolor circle are there to guide us into a vortex of technocracy we, nor the generations to come after us will be able to escape from. It’s not the Irish they really want to replace, they are just on the gravy train, it's our memory of what they hope they'll get away with.

Business Insider. (2010). Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-irish-times-asks-was-it-for-this-2010-11 [Accessed 2 Mar. 2026].

Bermingham, D. (2023). HSE spent €15.7m on recruitment firms in 2022. [online] Irish Examiner. Available at: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41200312.html [Accessed 2 Mar. 2026].

Brennan, J. (2021). Anne Heraty steps down from CPL in wake of €110m sale windfall. [online] The Irish Times. Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/anne-heraty-steps-down-from-cpl-in-wake-of-110m-sale-windfall-1.4760466 [Accessed 2 Mar. 2026].

Keane, J. (2024). CPL and its new owner Bain Capital are eyeing a deal in home care services - The Currency. [online] The Currency. Available at: https://thecurrency.news/articles/162750/cpl-and-its-new-owner-bain-capital-are-eyeing-a-deal-in-home-care-services/ [Accessed 2 Mar. 2026].

https://theliberal.ie/irelands-nursing-crisis-deepens-over-6500-funded-posts-vacant-as-irish-trained-nurses-flee-abroad-3-2/#:~:text=Ireland’s%20health%20service%20is%20in,shortage%E2%80%94it’s%20self%2Dinflicted.

H Hanlon, N Humphries, A source and a destination country for migrant healthcare workers: the case of Ireland, European Journal of Public Health, Volume 34, Issue Supplement_3, November 2024, ckae144.267, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckae144.267

Borno, H. (2019) Donohoe and O’Leary set for Bilderberg summit, Irish Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/donohoe-and-oleary-set-for-bilderberg-summit/38157955.html (Accessed: 3 March 2026).

Kelly, F. (2019). Enda Kenny to be adviser to private equity group that will invest in Ireland. [online] The Irish Times. Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/enda-kenny-to-be-adviser-to-private-equity-group-that-will-invest-in-ireland-1.3856287 [Accessed 4 Mar. 2026].

Paschal Donohoe | World Bank Group (2025) Worldbank.org. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/who-we-are/leadership/paschal-donohoe.

Skelton, C. (2025) China haunts Bilderberg talks as usual suspects plot world domination, the Guardian. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/15/bilderberg-hroup (Accessed: 3 March 2026).

https://gript.ie/cpls-good-connections-show-its-an-ill-pandemic-that-blows-no-favours/

https://m.independent.ie/business/irish/cpl-director-carroll-sells-off-343m-shares/26022121.html

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-xpm-2012-jul-19-la-na-bain-creation-20120719-story.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/bain-capitals-most-notable-foreign-founding-investors/260050/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9413564/US-Election-2012-Mitt-Romney-fortune-built-with-help-from-Robert-Maxwell-and-Jack-Lyons.html

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41268133.html#:~:text=IN%20FOCUS:-,%E2%82%AC28m%20spent%20by%20HSE%20on%20outsourcing,throwing%20good%20money%20after%20bad’&text=The%20HSE%20has%20been%20accused,unable%20to%20extract%20the%20data.

https://www.irishinquiry.com/article.html?id=123

https://servisource.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Cpl-Protocol-for-Returning-to-Work-August-2020.pdf

(no date b) https://www.ibec.ie/influencing-for-business/ibec-campaigns/chapter-zero/governance/governance. Available at: https://www.ibec.ie/influencing-for-business/ibec-campaigns/chapter-zero/governance/governance.

“The Irish will never be tamed while the leaves are on the trees” is a proverb attributed to English occupiers of the period, implying that Irish woodland needed to be stripped to deny rebels shelter. While this isn’t a direct quote from a single named politician, it was used by English authorities and chroniclers to justify the deliberate strategy of clearing forests in the 16th century as part of colonial warfare and territorial control.

By the time colonial rule had ended, if it ever truly ended at all, Ireland, a land once dominated by forestry, was left with between 1–2% of native woodland. The forests were cleared and exported to fuel an empire, suppress resistance, and strip the country of the resources required to be self-sufficient.

Even the most rudimentary understanding of the history of Ireland should have had people horrified and up in arms about the fact that, right under our noses, control of our forests was placed into the hands of Gresham House, a UK investment firm which already had commercial interests in Irish social housing and commercial properties at the time.

The Land Development Agency was established in September 2018 as a commercial semi-state body to manage State lands and deliver affordable housing.

“The LDA today outlines its Project Tosaigh (to ‘initiate’) proposal to unlock land with full planning permission that is not being developed by private sector owners due to financing and other constraints, and use it to accelerate the supply of affordable housing”https://lda.ie/news/lda-to-accelerate-delivery-of-new-affordable-homes

It entered negotiations with Gresham House through its Project Tosaigh initiative, This initiative was under the umbrella of the “Housing For All” scheme, vehemently defended by the “we need more land” communists, woolf-whistling the call to what is effectively been established now as a global land grab.

This is one of many private finance initiatives.

The acquisition of the forests came shortly afterwards, while the country was distracted with Covid lockdowns and the threat of imminent death. The CEO of Coillte Ireland, Imelda Hurley (having left her position in China as chief financial officer of PCH International Holdings), took up her position late in 2019. Seemingly, she immediately began the process of seeking overseas investment. The excuse underpinning the decision to sell off the management rights of Irish forestry was EU-driven, with mounting pressure to meet legally binding climate targets. When Gresham House partnered with Coillte Ireland, Imelda Hurley defended the move by saying that:

“Coillte is pleased to work with Gresham House and have ISIF as a cornerstone investor in this important initiative. There is an urgent need for Ireland to meet stretching Climate Action targets and creating new forests is integral to the achievement of these targets.”

This was presented as sufficient justification to revert control over our forestry back into the hands of those who historically stripped the roots of the trees from this land for hundreds of years.

Timeline of Negotiations

July 2020: Coillte issued an “expression of interest” to investment funds across Europe to find a strategic partner to help fund afforestation.

April 2022: Coillte launched its “Forestry Strategic Vision,” explicitly stating it would need private investment to create 100,000 hectares of new forests by 2050.

September 2022: Coillte’s chairperson formally informed the Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue, about the establishment of the fund on 16 September, shortly after it was set up.

January 2023: The partnership between Coillte, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), and Gresham House was publicly announced and launched.

In the YouTube short video below Kev_Collins provides an excellent and entertaining recent historical overview of Irish forestry in the Coillte Effect.

Nicholas Sweetman (one of many opposing voices), chairman of Irish Forest Owners, at the time of the negotiations asked for urgent intervention from the then Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue. In doing so, he raised the following concerns:

“The financial supports for forestry in Ireland are paid from the National Exchequer, and instead of this money going to farmers and staying in the local economy, the forest premia and single farm payments associated with the land acquired for planting will leave the country and go to corporate investors.”

Mr. Sweetman added:

“The question also arises as to who will own any carbon credits arising from these new forests in the future? We could be setting a dangerous precedent whereby carbon sequestered in our forests will be traded for financial gain by foreign investors.” (Irish Forest Owners, 2023)

In an online document entitled Ireland as a Forestry Destination (before its official merger with Coillte), Gresham House Asset Management pitched the strong potential Ireland had as a forestry investment. It went on to cite how, as an investment company, they could benefit from our home-grown housing crisis. As previously stated, they were already involved with Project Tosaigh.

“In line with global timber demand trends, Ireland is forecast to see an increase in construction activity as new houses are built.

This is a function of a growing population, changes in housing preference, and a historic lack of housing supply.

There is political consensus on addressing the housing shortage, with the €4bn ‘Housing for All’ plan pledging to build 300,000 new homes over the next ten years.

Timber demand will be further supported by efforts to decarbonise construction, and the trend towards offsite construction.” (s.bennion@greshamhouse.com, 2023)

Effectively what is being presented here is the opportunity to not only manage Irish timber but then profit from selling it back to us so that shelters can be built for our homeless.

The justification that Coillte Ireland used in its attempt to account for why outside investment was required to tackle afforestation appeared to provide no carbon cure though. Speaking in 2025, Marie Donnelly, Chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council, said:

“What we have seen in the sector is a failure of policy, with schemes to incentivise more planting not delivering the results required.” (Change, 2025)

Just as the EU dictates asylum obligations, EU climate targets were used as justification for the Irish government to partner with international investment companies.

In response to the “Housing For All” discussions, Gresham House then went on to develop another plan. It was a plan to raise capital from Irish credit unions to finance the acquisition and construction by Approved Housing Bodies of new homes for social housing, offering the promise of long-term rewards for the investment of members.

“The pitch from the Gresham House Credit Union Income Fund is that credit unions can invest part of their funding derived from members’ savings and generate an attractive return from a new investment asset class.” (Business Plus, 2022)

An RTÉ article announced excitedly in January 2022 that the deal had been done:

“Specialist asset manager Gresham House Ireland has launched a €100m fund to finance the acquisition and construction by Approved Housing Bodies of new homes for social housing throughout Ireland. This fund will match Approved Housing Bodies, who need long-term loan capital on competitive terms, with credit unions who are looking for an attractive and secure home for their members’ savings.

‘It’s great for credit unions. A year ago they didn’t have a single fund but now we’re the third fund that will give them a very attractive investment opportunity,’ she added.” (RTE News 2022)

The report announced a €100 million fund designed to finance social housing through investments from Irish credit unions had gone ahead. The coverage emphasised community benefit, local savings, and housing need. Yet one defining structural fact received little attention: despite repeated reference to Gresham House Ireland, there was no mention that its direct parent company is Gresham House Asset Management, a UK-based asset management firm operating within the financial system of the United Kingdom.

The subtext of the article was that social housing had been transformed into a yield-generating financial asset. The pooled savings of Irish communities would be channelled into a fund that structures long-term loans to Approved Housing Bodies. In short, local credit unions , for many the only trusted financial institutions, have become part of a UK property investment portfolio.

The critical question is not whether homes are being built,, they are, and that is positive given the housing shortage. The question is who ultimately governs the financial life of those homes over decades, and where the value they generate accumulates. When essential infrastructure is organised primarily through external capital management, the landscape itself is repositioned: not as a shared inheritance, but as a portfolio.

The interests of Gresham House Asset Management are not limited to homes and woodland but extend to commercial properties too. The portfolio is vast and easily accessible online, though according to its website it may not be reproduced, photocopied, or disseminated to any other person without the express prior written consent of Gresham House Asset Management Ireland Limited.https://greshamhouse.com/ie/portfolio/

In a further twist, Gresham House Asset Management was bought out in 2023 by Searchlight Capital Partners L.P. However, the company continues to operate under the Gresham House Ireland name. It is now more difficult to establish ownership structures, as since November 2025 biometric ID is required to access UK Companies House.

Searchlight Capital Partners L.Pis a global private equity firm with significant influence in Property, Infrastructure telecommunications, media, and business services. Founded in 2010 by former partners from Apollo Global Management and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, the firm manages approximately $17–18 billion in assets (AUM) as of early 2026. They specialise in leveraged buyouts, growth capital, and distressed situations, typically taking significant control stakes in middle-market companies.

Founding partner of Searchlight Capital Partners, Eric Zinterhofer, appears in a YouTube interview at around five minutes in, explaining the benefits of private equity. He discusses how he would hypothetically deal with private equity companies that fail to show a return, speaking in terms of objective metrics and risk management in high-valuation environments. One comment he made that I actually understood (at 24:29) was that “history rhymes.”

Founded in 2010, Searchlight is an investment firm dedicated to identifying and developing outstanding global investment opportunities. With a flexible mandate to invest in private equity and debt across:

Communications
Media
Financial Services
Business Services

“Our goal at Searchlight is to be the preeminent business owner and investor in order to generate outstanding returns for our investors.”

The Searchlight private equity funds have an established investment history across a wide range of transaction types in private equity and debt. We provide flexible capital and are willing to embrace complex situations where our resources enhance value for all stakeholders:

• Leveraged buyouts

• Corporate divestitures

• Partnership with companies’ entrepreneurs

• Public-to-private transactions

• Significant minority stakes

• Capital solutions

Searchlight is just of the many companies with a significant stake in the future of Ireland’s social housing stock. The further you look in to the great Irish sell off the deeper down the rabbit hole you go, It would be a full time job to forensically examine the lead up to the globalist gang bang facilitated by traitors charged to protect this country, and its future interests.

Housing for all sounds like a wonderful policy, but like everything presented to us as a solution, its awash with inversion. This initiative does present a potential solution but one that in the long term will see overseas investors with overall control of the Irish social housing stock.

Steven Delaney recently posted a video on Facebook regarding the privatization of Irish Housing stock, explaining how The Housing Alliance, made up of the approved housing bodies will act as the intermediary between private investment companies, and it looks like this will happen across the board unless at some point in the future we remember our history or something radically changes. The March for Justice event which will be taking place next Saturday will hopefully further help establish what is going on with regards to the social housing situation in Ireland.

In a previous article I wrote almost a year to the day, very much resonates with now. At the time of writing I was unaware of the of the Gresham house Deal or that the Forests would be ‘Asset Managed’ thanks to a forward thinking CEO fresh from China, but the foreshadowing is evident. Either through its forests or towns a significant change was taking place, the die back of our native Ash tree serving as an augury.

s.bennion@greshamhouse.com (2023). Ireland as a forestry destination - Gresham House IE. [online] Gresham House IE. Available at: https://greshamhouse.com/ie/news-media/ireland-as-a-forestry-destination/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2026].

https://greshamhouse.com/ie/news-media/ireland-as-a-forestry-destination/

Change, C. (2025). News | PRESS RELEASE: Annual Review 2025 - Agriculture and Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry | Climate Change Advisory Council. [online] Climatecouncil.ie. Available at: https://www.climatecouncil.ie/news/press-release-annual-review-2025---agriculture-and-land-use-land-use-change-and-forestry.html.

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/the-50-most-influential-and-powerful-women-in-business/30262565.html

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2023-01-24/21/#:~:text=Upon%20the%20official%20announcement%20of,raised%20concerns%20about%20its%20implications.

PCH International. (2023). Product Development & Customized Supply Chain. [online] Available at: https://www.pchintl.com/.

Irish Forest Owners. (2023). IFO unhappy with Gresham House investment in Irish forestry - Irish Forest Owners. [online] Available at: https://irishforestowners.com/gresham-house-investment-in-irish-forestry/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2026].

Business Plus. (2022). Credit Unions Urged To Invest In Social Housing. [online] Available at: https://businessplus.ie/ma/credit-unions-urged-to-invest-in-social-housing/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2026].

https://lda.ie/news/lda-to-accelerate-delivery-of-new-affordable-homes

In the past few days it has come to light via various mainstream news sources that Dr. Ian Robert Burton Hudson has been removed from the UK medical register following a hearing before the medical Practicioners Tribunal Service. This timing coincedes coincidentally with the release of the Epstein files as Hudson’s hearing took place between January 27th concluding on February. Having had failed to discose a criminal conviction for two counts of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child back in 2024 he had broken disclosure rules that require all members to immidiately report any criminal convictions. Hudson’s conviction let to a custodial suspended sentance, placement on the sex offenders register, and sexual harm prevention order. The details of the tribunal are yet to be published and I was unable to find any information at the time regarding his arrest or subsequent court hearing in Chelmsford, however what I did unearth was this mans pivotol role in the UK post Brexit. Hudson was a key player in the UK being first to authorise an emergency use vaccine, assistance in its worldwide delivery through the Gates foundation and the introduction of AI in to UK hospitals.

They said Brexit was about taking back control sovereignty, easing illegal immigration.

But in this version of events, it was about stepping outside the reach of the European rules on the production and testing of pharmaceuticals, setting a precedent for the rest of the world to follow, after the UK cut the red tape approving ‘emergency use’ for a ‘safe and effective’ experiment.

The fact there was no emergency, and that the cure was not safe and effective was irrelevant.

The had been set stage was set along with the actors, props and crew and the man pictured above was standing at the centre.

One great advantage to the UK’s Brexit deal was that the UK would have autonomy when it came to regulating new products and drugs that came on to the market. Post Brexit this meant that the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MRHA) acted as a sovereign regulator separating from the EU Medical Devices register. This allowed the UK to pursue independent research and forge independent global collaborations.

This was a tricky transition, presenting trade barriers due to potential problems of non-alignment when it came to regulatory procedures, but then a miracle happened. On January the 31st 2020, perfectly synchronized to the breaking dawn of bat-induced global pandemic, the UK was free from the shackles of the EU to autonomously find the cure to a virus that was killing people, predominantly on the television.

Presiding over the transition was Dr. Ian Hudson, having put everything in place for a new post-Brexit regulatory body he resigned from his long tenure as head of the MHRA in September 2019 to work with The Gates Foundation on a vaccine programme, at the time he cited that his reasons for leaving were professional and personal.

Between 2002 and 2013, Hudson, a former pediatrician, served as the UK delegate to the European Medicine Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), eventually becoming vice-chair.[4] This placed him at the heart of European drug authorisation decisions during a period of increasing regulatory harmonisation.

In September 2013, Hudson was appointed Chief Executive of the MHRA.[5] The agency that oversees medicines licensing, vaccine approval, clinical trials regulation and pharmacovigilance systems such as the Yellow Card scheme. During his tenure, Hudson also sat on the EMA Management Board and chaired the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) from 2016 to 2019.[6] This man was obviously brilliant at his job or was liked by the right people, he got everywhere, and in 2020 appeared on New Year’s Honours List awarded an OBE for services to healthcare.[7]

His leadership in Brexit contingency planning was crucial in intensifying global regulatory convergence, and the early coordination architecture that would become critical during the pandemic.

By the time Britain formally left the EU, the UK’s regulatory system had been shaped for nearly two decades by a man operating at the intersection of national and European structures. Following on from the nefarious collection of perverted mad scientists in Epstein’s collection it occurred to me that a common theme amongst them. It was either an association with either the island dwelling Mossad agent himself, Bill Gates, or both.

Hardly surprising then that in 2019, Hudson joined the ranks of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in an official capacity.

After stepping down as head of the MHRA, Dr. Ian Hudson’s move into the private sector came under the watch of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA). The committee made clear its restrictions regarding the new appointment: no lobbying government officials and no using the insider knowledge he had gained in public office. But ACOBA can only offer advice, it has no real policing. As with many public/private sector pivots it’s often the case that the rules are largely symbolic, leaving the revolving door between government and private interests wide open.

Just months shy of the announcement of the pandemic Hudson accepted the position as Senior Advisor to Integrated Development - monitoring the safety and development of medicines in low or middle income countries. The role was ideal for him, having secured £980,000.00 in funding from the Gates Foundation two years earlier whilst still head of the MHRA. The money was given to MHRA to improve the monitoring of medicines in low and middle income countries, so the new job specification would be pretty familiar to him.

To recap, when Gates made the financial contribution, the 2017 GOV.UK press release stated that the funding was part of a global initiative to supply new vaccines and medicines to countries with no regulatory systems in place for effective safety monitoring. These countries would benefit from an initiative called ‘Project Smart Safety Surveillance’ (also known as Project 3-S). The project was a joint initiative between the World Health Orginisation and the Gates Foundation. It was set up to deliver a three year program to create a robust system to monitor the delivery of medical treatments (Vaccines) . The government document cites that this was vital so that systems to monitor adverse reactions for drugs and vaccines could be monitored.

Its hard to say, but from a laymans perspective it is as though Hudson was working on the same project as he was securing funding for whilst in the position of the head of the MHRA. If so coupled with the timing, this revolving door led to a world of blurred boundaries that had the potential to be taken advantage of and manipulated, critically mid pandemic.

That is just my unqualified opinion.

To the cynical observer recalling the rollout of the experimental mRNA and Oxford Astrazenica COVID vaccines, I am wondering if three years prior to its mainstream introduction had these low income countries been a test ground? The cynicism is fueled by the fact no such regulatory adverse reaction reporting concerns were apparent when most of the people on the planet were propagandized into partaking of an experiment in 2020. Trusting the science implicitly was expected, as media personalities and politicians benefiting from their pharmaceutical share price gains parroted safe and effective - whilst demonizing and encouraging the ostracization of anyone who voiced concerns.

There’s very little material regarding Ian Hudson’s time with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and like other notable but shadowy figures in the scientific world it seems that much information relating to him has been pulled off the web, including a Substack article written last year entitled Ian Hudson OBE - A Distinguished Career in Regulatory Science, even his Wikipedia page is kind to him stating only; “On February 3 2026, Dr Hudson’s name was erased from the UK medical register following a hearing in front of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.”[12]

By 2021 whilst still working as an advisor for the Gates Foundation Hudson took up a role with a company called Sensyne Health as a non-independent executive Director. The clinical AI company welcomed his arrival in a press release with the then Chairman stating that; “Ian’s experience will be a great asset as we build an innovative and world class clinical and artificial intelligence.” It also cited a statement from Ian Hudson acknowledging the importance of AI, post COVID 19 in the management of global health.

Sensyne Health focused on using anonymised NHS data to accelerate drug discovery,[11] and during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sensyne developed AI tools designed to support NHS clinical decision-making:

SYNE-COV: A machine-learning algorithm developed with Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust that analyses electronic health record data (around 60 clinical variables) to predict whether a COVID-19 patient is likely to develop severe disease, need ventilation, or require intensive care. This algorithm received regulatory approval for use in the UK.

SYNE-OPS-1: An operational AI model that used anonymised clinical indicators such as vital signs and lab results to forecast ICU and ventilator demand during pandemic wave.

The Trojan horse called COVID sired variants that helped curate a justification for the National Institute of Healthcare Excellence to introduce its engagement with AI in healthcare. According to the Nationl Institue of Care Excellene (NICE) this happend in a formal, structured way around 2021. Today the NICE website boasts of its collaboration with the same AI company/tool that provides advice to doctors and medics involved in patient care.

“As of 2026, NICE plays a central role in evaluating and guiding the use of AI in UK healthcare, particularly in supporting clinical decision-making for elderly and frail patients. AI technologies are being applied to predictive risk assessments, diagnostic support, and population health management, helping clinicians identify patients at high risk of deterioration, optimise treatment plans, and prioritise care. (NICE, 2026).”

The passage goes on to state that this does not override the disernemt of medical practicioners, however with increasing dependance on AI this is not reassuring especially in light of the euthanasia debate.

Sensyne projects began back in 2021 after striking a deal with 11 NHS trusts, the first was NHS Somerset Foundation Trust which runs mental health and community services. A 2021 BBC article reported there was opposition to the sale/acquisition of 1.1 million patient records at the time, due to concerns that anonymised data could still be used to identify patients. The BBC reported that former IT consultant David Orr who spearheaded the objection said that;

“In my case I’ve got a particular combination of historical health conditions and it wouldn’t take a computer very long to work out that my age range and gender and a couple historical conditions would only be me” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-57568711

On January 2022 the Guardian reported that Sensyne care was in trouble, and that the company the UK government had ploughed millions into on the pretext it would see a return needed urgent outside investment. Its owner Lord Drayson a former Minister for Defense Procurement warned that without further investment the company could face financial ruin. Covering the struggle for the company to survive by 2022 it had a database of 48 million anonymised patient health records, the Guardian stated:

“NHS trusts own 16.2% of the company. In return for providing anonymised patient data, they were given shares in Sensyne as well as a slice of future royalties” https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/14/labour-peers-ai-healthcare-firm-sensyne-warns-cash-is-running-ou

Having suffered substantial losses the company soon restructured under the leadership of Alex Snow and was renamed Arcturis Data ( Arcturis). Continuing the mission of data collection the company website states;

“Our focus is on the curation of enhanced, electronic patient records that are enriched with unstructured molecular and genetic data” [Arcturis.com]

It goes on to say that;

“Our unique data partnerships provide unparalleled coverage of the UK population across all therapeutic areas including oncology, respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic and rare diseases.” [Arcturis.com]

This dataset collecting everything from genetic data to scans, is considered the largest secondary record set outside the NHS and it continues to grow as more trusts establish partnerships. Having left his advisory position with Sensyne in July 2022 Dr Ian Hudson continued to practice as an independent consultant for various health firms and chaired the International Review Panel for clinical trial accreditation.

Determining that Hudson’s charges were at the ‘Upper end of the scale of seriousness’ Hudson’s registration with the GMC was suspended with immediate effect in February, if an appeal is not lodged within 28 days of the ruling Dr Hudson will be erased permanently.

Looking back at the last six years through the lens of Dr. Ian Hudson’s career, it’s hard not to see a deliberate pre and post pandemic narrative arc. Brexit didn’t just redraw international political lines, it created the regulatory freedom for the UK to move faster than anyone else. That freedom, in turn, set the stage for emergency vaccine approvals in the UK and subsequentlyinternationally, the rapid global rollout with Gates Foundation support, and the quiet introduction of AI into hospitals. Hudson may have been removed from the UK medical register, but beyond him the systems he helped shape are still running, still influencing decisions about who gets care, how treatments are monitored, and how data is harvested and deployed. What this story really shows is how power, technology, and global influence can converge under the radar, shaping the future in ways the public barely notices. It leaves a simple but uncomfortable question: when the lines between government, private interests, and advanced technology blur, who is really in control and where does it leave the rest of us?

[1] MHRA, “Regulatory approval of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca,” 30 December 2020:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/regulatory-approval-of-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca

[2] MHRA, “AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and very rare reports of blood clots,” 7 April 2021:https://www.gov.uk/government/news/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-and-very-rare-reports-of-blood-clots

[3] AstraZeneca press statements, 2024: https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases.html

[4] European Medicines Agency, CHMP membership archives:

https://www.ema.europa.eu

[5] MHRA, “Dr Ian Hudson appointed Chief Executive of MHRA,” 2013: https://www.gov.uk/government/news

[6] International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA): https://www.icmra.info

[7] UK Government, New Year Honours List 2020: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-year-honours-list-2020

[8] Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, leadership and staff biographies (archivehttphttps://www.gatesfoundation.org

[9] Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance:

https://www.gavi.org

[10] Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA): https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/advisory-committee-on-business-appointments

[11] Sensyne Health plc, investor announcements:

https://www.londonstockexchange.com

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/14/labour-peers-ai-healthcare-firm-sensyne-warns-cash-is-running-out

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/uk-approves-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-mhra/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15535647/Former-head-drugs-regulator-faces-struck-medical-register.html

Enoch Burke - Hero

While Epstein is apparently (according to the people who compulsively lie to us), no longer alive, the ideological projects he was the architect of, particularly those relating to gender theory, biomedical intervention, and social policy, continue to exert influence across Western institutions. In Ireland, gender ideology has been prioritised within education and healthcare policy at a time when many children face serious disruptions to basic educational provision and medical services over recent years.

On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 3:31 AM, Robert Trivers < > “wrote: bless you Jeffrey it went well enough and i will hit them tomorrow with human evolutionary genetics about which they know even less than self-deception something else”.

Robert Trivers is one of many scientists that Jeffrey Epstein appeared to collect, fund, and maintain close communication with since 2009, in relation to topics such as transgenderism, transhumanism, mRNA development, and human augmentation. The thousands of files pertaining to these often strange interactions point to a considerable cluster of sycophantic scientists who, through their emails, present themselves as eager to do almost anything for money. For many who knew nothing of Epstein until only a few years ago, the Epstein Island story has been framed and effectively stage-managed to ensure that Epstein’s influence in the world of academia is muted. The emails are easily accessible on the U.S. Department of Justice website, but this is an example of one such interaction discussing the potential consequences of hormone therapies.

From: Robert Divers To: Jeffrey Epstein Subject: Trans Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2018 04:52:10 +0000

“it is very simple—i will compare male to female with female to male with greater molecular control over development we are increasingly capable of producing novel phenotypes— more feminine men, by blocking testosterone receptors (or castration) and, at the same time, increasing estrogen production—the one bocks male features, the second encourages female features more masculine women—heavy testosterone dosage—incredible external effects, heavily bearded men, you would never guess they had a female bone in their body first kind—male -> female is 4 times more frequent than female -> male the first is attractive—he is a woman with a cock, so that if your fantasy is to suck a man's dick, otherwise you are completely heterosexual, it would be much nicer if the rest of the organism is female, then you get the best of both worlds so many transsexual women are very attractive and easily make money which in turn they assert promotes their prostitution since they have to pay hefty fees for injections every week, but they are sexually happy,--once you have reached manhood even castration does not prevent the sensation of organism contrast the poor female to male versions, they are unhappy and lonely—they are men with mum-pums, the worst of both worlds if you like smelly masculine men, you want that hard cock that comes with the show—you do not want one of nature's more complex and variable structures, the pum-purn—that is an acquired tasted—and not with a man there are 100's of female Trans videos and websites, i have never seen a male one

BTW we are now pushing the intervention earlier--so you notice your 3-year old son has trans tendencies, so now you intervene with hormones—i would be frightened to do that—but who knows ?”

It is important to bear in mind that Robert Trivers’s work remains widely cited throughout the academic world. In a recent article, Richard Dawkins referred to him as a uniquely brilliant scientist. Trivers is just one of many figures who have been given the funding and influence to shape society through academic papers, institutional authority, and state-backed ideologies that have migrated to the classrooms of primary aged children.

Particularly disturbing is the highlighted paragraph referenced above, where the inclusion of a question mark appears to invite consent from his financial patron for extreme biological interventions involving a child barely 36 months removed from the safety of a mother’s womb.

When David Icke spoke of reptilian shape-shifters years ago, I never imagined that decades later I would be staying up into the early hours researching a self-professed lizard expert whose interests included the molecular control of the human race.

Robert Trivers’s early work on Anolis lizards focused on how behavior shifts under social and environmental pressure—an idea he later extended to humans through his theory of self-deception. Through this theory, Trivers argued that people routinely mislead themselves not by accident, but because self-deception can be adaptive: it helps individuals justify their actions, protect their status, and, crucially, deceive others more effectively.

Across hundreds of emails spanning more than a decade, the two areas of Trivers’s work that Jeffrey Epstein appeared most invested in—self-deception and transgender biology—combined into what could be described as the intellectual ingredients for the Abolition of Man. One of the most confusing aspects of the past decade (not excluding the so-called scamdemic/genocide) has been the distortion of reality itself, and the extent to which even well-meaning people acquiesced to ideas they would otherwise instinctively and morally reject.

For centuries, children were told fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, a didactic warning about predators disguising themselves as something safe and familiar. Within the last decade, however, cultural perception has shifted to the point where refusing to embrace the “wolf” is increasingly framed as immoral. Drag Queen Story Time, now a widely promoted cultural phenomenon in the West, serves as a visual illustration of how far this shift has gone. Those who objected to childless men masquerading as women being imposed upon their children were frequently branded enemies of the state—dismissed as “right-wing,” “homophobic,” and similar labels.

Trivers’s sycophantic relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is evidenced through years of correspondence, which reveal his near-total financial dependence on Epstein. Inappropriate emails were often sent in the early hours of the morning, including statements such as, “I had a dream about you last night, Jeffrey.” This relationship continued until Epstein’s reported death, despite Trivers’s full awareness of Epstein’s criminal history.

In a 2015 interview, Trivers minimized Epstein’s offenses, downplaying the fact that Epstein’s victims were children—a remark that drew significant criticism but did little to diminish Trivers’s standing within academic circles.

“By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous,” he said to Reuters.

Obviously, this stirred a response from his peers, many of whom spoke openly about his association with Epstein. However, his work continues to be cited, and he remains supported by academics, as evidenced by recent comments on his lectures featured on YouTube.

There is much more to be said about this figure, who fits the archetype of the Mad Scientist, except that he is not merely a scientist. He is a sociobiologist, working in a field that extends beyond the confines of biology and into environment and culture.

Epstein’s efforts to bankroll the push for transgenderism may have simply been a means of increasing his personal wealth through pharmaceutical investments. It therefore came as no surprise that when I entered AbbVie into a search engine while reviewing the Epstein files, the company appeared. AbbVie is a key player in the global multibillion-dollar hormone therapy market, and Epstein was, unsurprisingly, heavily invested in the company—at least according to his accountant.

From: Richard Kahn czli Date: Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 2:58 PM Subject: Allergan To: Jeffrey Epstein

You own 10,000 shares in STC at 151.16 Stock up (approx 170 premarket) on potential buyout from Abbvie.. Please advise if we should hold or sell..

There are literally thousands of emails detailing how this man, who had his tentacles in what seems to be every powerful institution in the world, helped shape it with virtually no subject beyond limits. The release of these files serves primarily to illustrate how he and his associates executed their operations. When examined carefully, the emails reveal a scope of influence across subjects so broad that it would make figures such as Alex Jones and David Icke appear conservative by comparison.

The email below, from Jess Ting, thanks Epstein for his efforts in helping to create the first full-spectrum academic program in the United States focused on transgender surgery and care.

“From: Ting, Jess <1 Date: Saturday, 14 May 2016

Subject: documentary and new clinical center To: Jeffrey Epstein

“Hi Jeffrey,

I hope you are well. I have 2 things to tell you about: I) The research you supported with a $50,000 grant has borne fruit. We have submitted a paper for publication summarizing our results. If you would like a outline of the results of the research, we can email one to you, or present to you in person. 2) I have been made surgical director of the brand new transgender surgery program at Mount Sinai. That's right — Mount Sinai, being the progressive place that it is, saw am opportunity and need to take a leadership position in the area of Transgender Health and created the first full-spectrum academic program in the US focused on transgender surgery and care. This was such an interesting and innovative idea, that I thought it would make a good documentary. I pitched the idea to a well-known director and we have started scouting interviews and are in the process of making a fundraising trailer. If I could just be really forward, I was wondering if you would be interested in supporting this documentary? If so, the producer, director and I would love to come and give you the pitch in person. This is an exciting, groundbreaking project — both the center and the documentary — that will do good for the world. I hope you can be a part of it. Best regards,

Jess Ting”

It is clear that Ting believes this work is making the world a better place, to the extent that she wants a documentary made about her efforts and recent promotion. Given that these initiatives are intertwined with Robert Trivers’s work on psychology and self-deception, this outcome comes as little surprise.

https://youtu.be/364Xxvzsk1M?si=Ro98uWHptp0uPL7H

The thousands of emails relating to the subject of gender ideology/traansgenderism and children would take probably months to go through, my aim here is to shine a tiny light on what we all have been wondering for the past decade and more ‘how did this happen and why have so many people fallen for it’ not just in Ireland but across the western world.

The Epstein files are easily accessible here and operate under a keyword search. https://www.justice.gov

/epsteihttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/us/professors-jeffrey-epstein-relationships.html

“Trivers, Robert, ‘Fluctuating Asymmetry and the 2nd : 4th Digit Ratio in Children’, Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers (New York, NY, 2002; online edn, Oxford Academic, 31 Oct. 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195130614.003.0010, accessed 7 Feb. 2026.

Led by COBRA the UK government committee for national emergencies, ministers of all key departments in the UK are currently taking part in the largest pandemic preparedness exercise in the UK, this time it’s not the elderly or vulnerable most at risk, it’s your children. Exercise Pegasus though announced months ago has been running quietly since September, in conjunction with campaigns for childhood vaccination and standard lockdown drills now being implemented in schools as ‘standard precautionary measures’.

Sired by Poseidon and birthed from the bloody neck of the beheaded Medusa, Pegasus, the white winged stallion from Greek mythology, had a special skill: he could traverse both land and sky. It’s likely why, during WWII, he served as an emblem for British paratroopers. Since then, there have been many allusions to this mythical creature, used in government operations and surveillance. In the latter case, Pegasus was a programme developed by the Israeli NSO Group to serve as a Trojan horse capable of circumventing all phone security systems. “This malware provides the attacker full access to the targeted smartphone—its data, images, photographs, and conversations, as well as the camera, microphone, and geolocation.” Although the NSO Group claimed that this software was developed to track terrorist activities, Amnesty International became aware that Pegasus continued to be widely used by authoritarian governments to spy on human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, and heads of state. The full scale of this worldwide infringement of privacy is the subject of an ongoing investigation. interesting, considering the name of the above exercise.

For those who remember Event 201, the joint pandemic-preparedness exercise that took place in October 2019, just a few months before the world shut down, it may be prudent to keep a cursory eye on what the findings and outcomes result from this strange scenario.

“Work is underway on developing a Pandemic Response Plan which will set out national roles and responsibilities, and how the health and social care system will respond to a pandemic occurring now with different routes of transmission. The first of these focuses on response to a respiratory/airborne pandemic.”(GOV.UK)

This Tier 1 national exercise has been taking place between September and November, and in the midst of all this, predictably, pandemic-related news articles are at an all-time high—accompanied by images of men in gas masks holding chickens, and illustrations of proteins with even more spikes than usual. What’s even more interesting is that in September when two more strains of covid were announced they were named after cloud formations Nimbus and Stratus adhering beautifully to the fictional airborne pandemic being played out behind closed doors. According to reports, the new ‘real life’ strains have developed mutations that allow them to bind more easily to human cells, making them highly transmissible and capable of spreading faster than earlier COVID variants. In an article published by The Independent on October 6th, 2025, the main symptom was said to be a difficulty in the throat — particularly affecting speech: Reports that today coincide with hospitals in the UK stating they are preparing for “extraordinary” pressures on the NHS this year.

Exercise Pegasus has taken this to a new level of terror; unlike Covid-19, this scenario presents a virus particularly targeted children. The Telegraph reported yesterday that the exercise was quietly enacted in fictional school “lockdown” settings, revolving around a novel version of EV-D68, a real virus first detected in California. This new virus that causes polio-like paralysis and brain swelling in children. For the purposes of Exercise Pegasus, participants were informed that the virus originated on the fictional island of Musiyana, located somewhere in Southeast Asia.

As part of the pandemic-preparedness exercise, ministers involved in the drill were instructed to “wargame” scenarios such as protests over social distancing. The usual lockdown measures were discussed, but it was reported that particular emphasis was to be on the fallout regarding food shortages. Pigs, being of particular concern as hosts for the virus, presumably exterminated as a result—something that a significant proportion of the population in England might even welcome, and a timely narrative considering recent stories arguing that the sale of bacon should be banned in the UK due to its cancer-causing effects.

“Containment and mitigation” were reported by The Telegraph as being the focus of the exercise, with lockdown simulations in schools forming the main component. The suggestion here is not difficult to decipher: should something like this arise in a school setting, will children be quarantined? One can easily imagine that they have also war-gamed the likelihood that parents will not willingly accept this.

At this stage, it is hard not to imagine that the practical lockdown drills being conducted in schools and the theoretical pandemic-preparedness scenarios are in some way connected. Taxpayers’ money is being channelled into these COBRA-led projects that seem to be circling the children like vultures.

Beyond the obvious obsession with the children, and the subtle discourse informing us they have the power to quarantine them, these exercises prove also to be back door way of introducing new anxieties. Food shortages, a new wave of viruses, and radiation threats, but we know now their principle karmic rule of announcing plans before executing them.

In a recent press release dated the 20th of November from the UK Health and Security Agency the chief executive officer Professor Susan Hopkins outlines the fact that Exercise Pegasus was only one component of a wider range of activities taking place under the umbrella of “Preparedness” exercises; the conclusions of which will by her own admission be passed on to the UKHSA Communications and Behavioral Insights team.

“The delegation met with UKHSA’s Chief Executive and the Chief Medical Officer and discussion focussed on Exercise Pegasus, surveillance and threat detection. Additionally in October, UKHSA hosted European Radiation Protection Week in London and also hosted the fourth meeting of the World Health Organization European Region partnership on poison centres. ”

For those of us who are aware of the remarkable similarity in the pattern of biomarker response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and radiation exposure. It’s interesting to see the laissez-faire mention of Radiation Week in the report. The psychological operations during Covid 19, executed under the guidance of the behavioral insights team is not to be taken lightly and warrants a whole other article.

“As we prepare to refresh our organisational strategy, I am launching a stakeholder survey this winter. The survey will be delivered by Savanta and the work includes quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews designed by UKHSA Communications and the Behavioural Insights and Science Unit.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukhsa-advisory-board-meeting-papers-for-november-2025/ukhsa-advisory-board-chief-executives-report#purpose-of-the-paper

Nothing in this report alludes to the secretive exercises played out in school setting scenarios, but it makes for chilling reading all the same, the focus is on the mRNA vaccine uptake, and the millions being currently invested in production programmes, with no threat put to waste: “The Rabies vaccine demand increased significantly following media coverage of the recent death from rabies on 18 June 2025. In response, UKHSA procured additional vaccine stock” I think we can safely say that Exercise Pegasus has been running in plain sight for a number of weeks and was perfectly time to coincide with a Covid 19 enquiry/ whitewash.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-09-16/debates/25091659000016/PandemicPreparednessExercisePegasus

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-09-16/debates/25091659000016/PandemicPreparednessExercisePegasus

https://www.opensafely.org/approved-projects/192/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukhsa-advisory-board-meeting-papers-for-november-2025/ukhsa-advisory-board-chief-executives-report

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/schools-locked-down-again-in-secret-pandemic-drills/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukhsa-advisory-board-meeting-papers-for-november-2025/ukhsa-advisory-board-chief-executives-report#purpose-of-the-pape