"At this stage, it’s hard to quantify what damage these spills may be causing, but there are fears of an ecological catastrophe, especially if more ships are hit. There are an estimated 75 large oil tankers in the Gulf"
Most read on #RTEBrainstorm: Are you waking up at 3am every night? Here's what may be going on www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...
The payola must be massive
Tomorrow! Palestinian lawyer and human rights defender, Sahar Francis, speaking from the frontline of Palestinian prisoners' rights, Senator Frances Black and Conor O'Neill on the Occupied Territories Bill and Ireland’s legal obligations
Register free ➡️
tinyurl.com/594648w8
#FreeThemAll
This is word for word what the Nazis said about the Jews
What a completely misleading headline. Makes it looks like e-bikes are the problem and not the cars that hit them.
Source: The Guardian
share.google/blDohf8gyN57...
Embattled UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had been wrong to appoint Labour politician Peter Mandelson as UK envoy to Washington, seeking to quell anger over a scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's long-time associate.
Climate Ambassador's Dublin screening also includes a great panel discussion event with Phoebe Duvall, An Taisce Senior Planning and Environment Officer and Eileen Costello Rawat (Stop Kentstown Power Plant campaign). Empowering way to spend Earth Day.
Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have said there is an urgent need for the EU to credibly respond to Israel’s ongoing violations of international law and human rights.
An April 17th letter to Kallas from the foreign ministers of the three countries said the EU can “no longer remain silent or inactive”.
Human rights organisations have long called for the agreement to be suspended in light of Israel’s human rights abuses in Gaza.
“We call on the Union to uphold its moral and political responsibility & to defend the very core values that have underpinned the European project since its foundation.”
UN experts call for immediate suspension of EU-Israel trade agreement as ‘minimum requirement’ under international law 20 April 2026 Press statement from UN
Latest: www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...
Incidentally, the OTB as drafted is not specifically for Israeli enterprises in the oPT, but applies to any illegally occupied territories. So it would apply to Russians in eastern Ukraine for example.
The closing paragraph says more than its plain text:
"The Irish Government has separately committed to pass a national law, the Occupied Territories Bill, which would prohibit the sale of goods from Israeli settlements."
"Suspending the EU-Israel trade deal would require the backing of a large majority of member states, rather than unanimous agreement. That would mean Italy or Germany would most likely need to lift their opposition to such a move to approve the trade sanction."
- Jack Power @irishtimes.com
The EU has been continuing to support Israel economically despite having internal reports confirming Israel is in breach of its agreement with the EU.
Good report by Jack Power on the conflicting currents within the EU member countries over continued support for Israel. Tomorrow is a big day.
From farming to religion, the CSO has compared the 1926 census to the most recent census in 2022.
But what exactly has changed in Ireland over the last century? jrnl.ie/7018245
The grim shanty that he's added (without planning permission) in the back garden because he's turned all the communal space into more bedrooms is a particularly lovely touch.
Over the weekend, hundreds of people took to the streets calling on the Irish government to protect Irish neutrality and Triple lock our future.
Here's what some of those people had to say!
#SpeirGorm
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We need to take #ClimateAction by choosing #climate resilient development pathways (2)
Learn more📖 www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/w...
PL RP Thank you!🩷💚💙
graph from: ' #ClimateChange 2022 - Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability' @ipcc.bsky.social
#EndFossilFuels #SaveOurPlanet #SaveTheEarth #Klima
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," vs "Dude, no way'
Holy. Shit. This is Reid Wiseman's video he took with his iPhone while at the moon 🌙
A number of Aer Lingus flights have been cancelled from its summer schedule due to "mandatory maintenance on aircraft", the airline has said, adding that the "vast majority of customers" are being accommodated on same-day services.
“When history asks us which side we’re on? - on the side of those who know that democracy is not inherited, it is conquered every day. On the side of those who know that without international law there is no peace and without peace there is no progress.”
www.thejournal.ie/president-co...
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Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...
A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.
A society that runs on this stack doesn't stop holding elections, or debating, or running investigations. The forms stay, but what goes is their capacity to constrain power. The arc bends toward simulation, carried out in the language of defending democracy.
The Conversation article on the crackpot pseudoscientific Technocrats movement:
