Europe defending its rights to regulate — ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Not linking to the Guardian article suggesting that there is 'debate' 10 years after Ireland's Gender Recognition Act...looking for a story where there is none. Not every hateful trend gets followed. #TransRights

Greta Thunberg arrested for holding a sign opposing genocide. When peaceful protest is a crime, democracy is in deep trouble. Happening under a Labour Government.

‘And then you have this magic trip of what a story is. …we need these vessels to …hold the parts of ourselves we can’t hold on our own…’ — Jessie Buckley with Paul Mescal in an interview with Brendan O’Connor on @rteone.rte.ie

Greetings from Kyiv! Just wanted to remind the world that this city (oh, this country) stands. Filmed earlier today – from my eyes to yours.

Phenomenal turn out tonight Dec 19 to remember those who died when a group of UVF, UDR and RUC attacked Donnelly’s Bar, S Armagh killing three & injuring many more 50 yrs ago tonight. This was co-ordinated with another bomb attack earlier that evening in Dundalk killing two. This community cares.

Countdown to Chișinău: The Risk of Politicising the ECHR over Migration | by Andrew Forde and Alice Donald

🔴 Attending a memorial service in Iran now means arrest and beating. Over 50 people were detained on December 12 by Iranian plainclothes agents in Mashhad, the second-most-populous city in Iran, including Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi.

‘The prison guards called her a terrorist, even though she’s on remand. She said it feels as if the government is trying to bury them alive and for them to go quietly.’ www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/202...

It's just over 3 weeks since Ireland was found in breach by the ECJ for failing to protect waterbodies from physical damage. The government response? Lower the legal bar for these waterbodies, so the damage can continue, with insufficient justification. Our waterways are not in safe hands.

As it stands, a failure to comply with provisional measures has too few consequences & is easily obscured by exploiting ambiguity in the Court’s orders. Making compliance reports public is a better means to hold states to their commitments and enhance prospects for effectiveness.

‘When I step from the wreck, I am porcelain and pulse. Every edge is lit with its own undoing. What is a vessel if not an argument with emptiness? The air smells of dust and blood-orange light.’

This is a clear example of how children can use tech to protect themselves. It is a terrible indictment of humanity that rather than sanctioning social media companies for failing to protect children’s rights online, the focus is increasingly on prohibition for children.

“My way of resisting is through creating by bringing beauty, strength, and imagination into spaces where control or limitation once existed.”

It is shocking that people have been pushed to take such serious action just to be heard. These events did not happen by accident. They are the result of the government misusing anti-terror laws.

‘Knowing about history can give you the encouragement you need to try to make the world a better place.’ ✨

An illustrated line from the Prayer Of St. Brendan The Navigator, who is said to have travelled from County Kerry in Ireland to America a thousand years before Columbus made his journey. Trust in the darkness. 🌌 Prints available here: www.ciaraioch.com/artprints/p/...

Disgraceful

Money for real restoration: Gone Farmers will be paid for merely not destroying protected habitats, reducing the money available for real action to restore natural areas that provide resilience for farms❗

Scottish PEN supports the international global campaign to free #MarwanBarghouti We condemn his continued imprisonment, his violent mistreatment & denial of legal rights whilst imprisoned. @amnestyuk.bsky.social @irishpen.bsky.social @englishpen.bsky.social www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12...

This should FRIGHTEN everyone in Ireland, North & South…

‘What a terrifying place to be – out there, beyond society?’ www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

‘A four-year-old child is dead. Another child allegedly used to carry out the act. This should have been a turning point.’

The sun went down with a whimper in lines of showers and riddles of light. View from the top of the coast path, South Erradale, over the sea to north Trotternish, Isle of Skye.

‘Trapped in the world’s largest refugee camp, where they are increasingly invisible to the world.’

‘…can ideological fantasy be challenged, and perhaps ruptured, through the imaginative power of fiction itself?’

They are absolutely right. Even when your colleagues are supportive, you are constantly vigilant for what outside forces are going to do.

As #internationallaw is put on pressure, Sophocles’ Antigone is an age-old referent of its material source. And a reminder that you can deny/diminish its effective power as ‘higher law’ but you cannot eliminate its heartbeat. Our sensibility to suffered injustice & calls to ‘Justice herself’

Why when children are ‘invited’ to take part does it continue to sound like some sort of gift? Children & teens have a *right* to take part on matters affecting them; an obligation governments have long assumed.

Driving from Durrus to Ballydehob to see for myself the family farmhouse they burned my grandmother out of a hundred years ago the hedgerow on my right gives way to intermittent flashes of the lovely spangle of the bay we leave behind A poem by Nick Laird: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

And let’s not forget its root intent is to prevent this:

And also the young age / child impact, in this instance the disproportionate affects of the starvation war crime on the fundamental rights of infants fromsaltintears.com/radical-just...

Europe is paying Libya to torture migrants on its behalf

‘…procrastinating towards disaster’ is right. www.irishtimes.com/opinion/edit...

‘Who speaks for those without rights? Tell us who.’

And alas the most terrible things.

It seems to me the evidence of state collusion here and elsewhere is in what the state didn’t do, and hasn’t don’t yet. The killing is one thing, the responsibility to investigate and prosecute another. Delay is active guilt. So was turning a blind eye for two miles in the Armagh countryside.

I don’t know how to find something to write about in the panic of this deadly world. There is more in the news than even my depression can consume. (Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights)

I really hate lots of ‘acting’ in audiobook narration. It’s a book, not a film or a play. Being read to well is so very adequate. Realistic tears, swamping fear, great gouts of accents all spoil it. I don’t read to myself like that. Stop it.

Once a leader on climate action, the EU has given in to the right’s green-bashing. From deforestation to carbon pricing, vital policies are being watered down in the name of ‘competitiveness’. But Europe is shooting itself in the foot. My piece @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Do you really want to eat ‘forever chemicals’ with your breakfast? Then sign this www.environmentalpillar.ie/end-the-toxi... Surely there’s a link @envpillar.bsky.social?

Gardaí are continuing to seek the public's help in tracing 12-year-old Tristan McCabe, who was reported missing in Thurles, Co Tipperary, on 15 November. Anyone with information is asked to contact Thurles Garda Station on 0504 25100 or the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111

Study of ‘forever chemical’ in European foods finds highest level in Irish cereals www.irishtimes.com/health/2025/...

‘To speak of “closing that painful chapter” while advancing a declaration that excludes legitimate Ovaherero and Nama authorities, and absolves Germany of legal responsibility, is to turn memory into ‘TikTok performance’. ‘

The EU is planning a shift away from science in favour of the chemical industry. Instead of rolling back protections we must strengthen them by removing hazardous pesticides. Join us & say End the Toxic Pesticide Era. Write to your Commissioner www.environmentalpillar.ie/end-the-toxic-pesticide-era/

And ‘the right of burial’ is not a new right. The 17th-century jurist Hugo Grotius argued it is an office of humanity owed to all incl enemies ‘whom a state of warfare has not deprived of the rights & nature of men’ (The Rights of War and Peace including the Law of Nature & of Nations (1625)).

Instead of accusing those exercising their rights of ‘weaponising’ the planning system what about: speeding up the administration of justice; & making the planning process more rights-based? To be just & effective it has to be *efficient* as well as informed, accessible, safe & accountable

Meet Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s @commissionerhr.coe.int As we mark 75 years of the European Convention on #HumanRights, find out what the #ECHR means to him, both personally and professionally?

In 20 years, the UN has verified more than 14,000 attacks on schools in conflict zones: approximately two attacks per day over 20 years 1/3