Looks like it'll be:

SF 7
DUP 5
SDLP 2
Independent 1 (Alex Easton, former DUP)
Alliance 1
TUV 1
UUP 1

Nine green and eight orange, plus one Alliance

Gaelic games on telly this weekend:

Saturday

• Camogie quarter final Kilkenny vs Dublin 12:30 RTÉ1

• Hurling semifinal: Kilkenny vs Clare 15:00 RTÉ1

Sunday

• Camogie quarter-final Galway v Waterford 1.30pm RTÉ2

• Hurling semi-final Limerick v Cork 4.00pm RTÉ2

If you watch one, Limerick-v-Cork is a banger. Limerick are aiming to be the first team to do 5-in-a-row in the 137-year history of the competition. And if anyone stops them, it'll be Cork (no disrespect to Clare and Kilkenny). Limerick are the one-to-beat, they're the best hurling team that has ever existed it's probably fair to say it, but Corkmen are surprisingly confident and if they do it they'll be heroes.

FIVE FAMILY MEMBERS and a teenager used “medieval violence” to “butcher” father of seven in “an honour killing” during a Co Kerry funeral, carrying out a “biblical atrocity”

43-year-old Mr Thomas Dooley was killed at Rath Cemetery, Rathass, Tralee, Co Kerry on October 5, 2022.

His younger brother, plus four other Dooleys and a teenager (presumably named Dooley; minors can't be named in the press under Irish law), have all pleaded not guilty. They gave a halting-site address.

Counsel said the trial had a combination of the macabre, a provincial tragedy and appalling medieval violence. Ultimately, he commented, it was a biblical atrocity of a case where one brother had killed another brother.

Counsel suggested the motive in the case was ‘reasonably clear’ and submitted it was because of an unhappy end to a childish relationship. Two teenagers were going out together (the daughter of the dead man + the son of one suspect), and the relationship had broken down. He said this had resulted in what some might call “an honour killing”.

He said Bohan had “a myriad of problems; his memory of the incident is hazy, to say the least”.

The defence acknowledged that the presence of a young child at the scene made the incident “particularly unsavoury”.

However, the solicitor submitted that there were no racial undertones.

There is lots of handwringing about how our military is failing, is undersized, is not fit for purpose. A neoliberal fringe is debating should we join NATO for defense.

The government is beefing up military expenditure. This, however, if foolish. Say we get 50 tanks and purchase fighter jets, that's useless against an invader with 400 tanks and 50 fighter jets; we have only wasted money and blood. You don't go toe-to-toe with a larger force: that's the lesson of 1916. ("Armed neutrality, to the extent that it would seriously deter any potential aggressor, is likely beyond our capacity." says a letter in Monday's paper)

A modest proposal

• A people's militia on the model of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution which is organised into small local nuclei with maybe a dozen to a hundred members in each.
• Each nucleus to be an autonomous flying column equipped with at least assault rifles and pistols. Where resources allow, there could also be some specialists: snipers, specialists in explosives, mortars, rocket launchers and probably a guitar. They would keep their weapons at home or in small local arsenals.
• This should include 5-20% of the population. 33-46% of most populations are fit to be in the militia, in the sense that they're not excluded by age or disability.

Training

These people would get training in use of weapons, and in guerrilla tactics.

Look at the Indian Territorial Army – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_Army_(India) – they train on weekends and holidays, putting in 30-60 four-hour days a year, plus one intensive camp a year for 4-14 days.

That is about 200-300 hours a year. For the first three years, they would also have to do about 100 hours socially-useful labour, discussed below.

Gross costs

Arming 20% of our population – a million men and women – with a primary weapon, plus a service pistol (plus perhaps a machete or tomahawk, and possibly some vehicles) is a gross cost (but not a net cost, as we shall see).

For primary weapons, an AK-47 or M-16 cost €700 retail, but can be got for €300. If we train gunsmiths, we can churn out AKs under €100

Service pistols like a Beretta 9M or a SIG Sauer P320 costs something similar. I believe a Glock 19 is the best choice for manufacturability. (The Glock 17 isn't as good a choice for a mixed-gender force.) These probably be got for under €250.

Other weapons would include sniper rifles, mortars, rocket launchers, not for every member, but for one specialist in each flying column. Probably drones now too.

The Worker-Peasant Red Guards in DPRK have sidecar motorcycles, which I feel we should adopt for æsthetics, I mean look how cool this looks:

Arming 20% of Ireland's population with these would cost something like €1.5 billion. For comparison, Ireland's military budget is €1.23 billion FOR ONE YEAR in 2023, set to increase to €1.6 billion. And an AK has a service life of 20-40 years, so it's really nothing.

Paying for it

Marx wrote in his work on the Paris Commune: "The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions – cheap government – a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the standing army and state functionarism" and "in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia".

More relevant is his Demands of the Communist Party of Germany: "Universal arming of the people. In future armies shall at the same time be workers’ armies so that the armed forces will not only consume, as in the past, but produce even more than it costs to maintain them."

The gross cost per cadre might be €1500-2000 worth of equipment. The benefit: they're now organised as a labour force. An hour of labour in this country is worth at least €10, so 200 hours a volunteer-labour recoups the upfront expense.

Cuba's militia does things like blood-donation drives. For the first three years in the service, cadres would do say 100 hours a year socially-useful labour (such as blood-drives, singing rebel ballads at hospices, bottle-feeding runty piglets), and 40 hours per year in subsequent years. The militia is therefore a net benefit to the exchequer.

Simple but worth mentioning: members could also pay fees to cover part of the cost. Maybe, not definitely.

The advantages of decentRAlised defense

• It is a perfect defense against occupation. An invader would be bloodied by flying columns everywhere he goes — ¡En cada barrio, Revolución! — and they'd be armed, trained. An invader would have no centralised targets to strike, no military base or barracks.

• This is more commonsensical than you think. If we ever are invaded again, we are just gonna have to train up our people to do this anyway, so really all I'm saying is that we should preëmptively do the thing that's gonna make an occupation fail, and has before, i.e. ensure a capable guerrilla force.

• It's a question of military doctrine. We can't fight a conventional centralised war against a Great Power, and trying would just get us squashed (like 1916). Instead, we should adopt a military doctrine of decentralisation. This is a military term that comes from the words decent + RA, because we would have a decent 'RA to defend Mother Ireland.

• It's our habit. As you know, Ireland pioneered modern guerrilla warfare. The Irish told Edward Bruce, "It is our custom to pursue and fight, and fight when retreating, and not stand in open hand-to-hand conflict until the other side is defeated." Asymmetric warfare is the only thing that has ever worked in the history of Ireland. Simon Coveney's symmetric military doctrine is dumb.

• "[In 1778] the people began arming themselves and publicly organising Volunteer corps throughout the country. In a short time Ireland possessed an army of some 80,000 citizen soldiers, equipped with all the appurtenances of war; drilled, organised, and in every way equal to any force at the command of a regular Government. All the expenses of the embodiment of this Volunteer army were paid by subscriptions of private individuals. As soon as the first alarm of foreign invasion had passed, the Volunteers turned their attention to home affairs and began formulating certain demands for reform—demands which the Government was not strong enough to resist. Eventually, after a few years' agitation on the Volunteer side, met by intrigue on the part of the Government, the ‘patriot’ party, led by Grattan and Flood, and supported by the moral pressure of a Volunteer review outside the walls of the Parliament House, succeeded in obtaining from the legislature a temporary abandonment of the claim set up by the English Parliament to force laws upon the assembly at College Green. This and the concession of Free Trade (enabling Irish merchants to trade on equal terms with their English rivals) inaugurated what is known in Irish History as Grattan's Parliament."

• Spread useful skill like first aid, mechanical skills, fitness, and the language (the Irish military gives orders in Irish in case you didn't know that).

• As a side-benefit: people training together would make improve their social lives, some would fall in love and get married. I mean, look, you really ought to be outside playing with your friends in the first place.

• Lastly, because this militia – once armed and organised – will inevitably overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

New Irish Medical Journal study into the spread of Mpox in Ireland between May 2022 and May 2023

one of the people infected had 75 sexual partners in the previous 21 days. The median number of sexual partners for those infected was two over the previous 21 days.

Looked at 229 people were infected over these 12 months: 226 male and 3 female. Almost 99% identified as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men.

Just under a third of them were originally from Latin America.

Over 28% were HIV positive, while just over one in ten of those infected were admitted to hospital.

Opponent is a Michael Page. Garry is the favourite. Still undefeated.

I edited a Dublin jersey onto him for lulz

Deer populations have got out of control and are causing danger on the roads as well as being a disease risk for farmers, according to Clare County Councillor Pat Hayes.

National Parks and Wildlife Service data show 2,140 wild deer were culled during the last full culling season in Co Clare, the seventh-highest county deer cull in Ireland, with 44,381 deer culled nationally.

The pact has been in discussion at EU level for the past eight years and the Government announced three months ago that it would be opting in to the pact, which will come into effect in two years’ time.

Under the pact’s rules, there will be tougher border security checks including identification and health checks with the collection of biometric data including fingerprints for anyone above the age of six.

A substantial increase in the number of staff processing applications will now be required along with new processing and accommodation centres.

Migrants will be accommodated in holding centres close to airports and ports, which the Government has insisted will not be detention centres, while asylum seekers’ applications will be processed within a maximum of 12 weeks. Where an application is rejected, asylum seekers will have to be returned forcibly to their home country within the same period. Member states will be required, based on their population size, to take in thousands of migrants from “frontline” countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain, or provide funding instead.

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said, “Those who have a right to international protection must be given that status as quickly as possible. For those who are found not to have a right to international protection, they must return to their home country as quickly as possible.”

Mary Lou McDonald has said the Government’s failure to opt out of any aspect of the pact is a “dangerous erosion” of Irish sovereignty.

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns described individual aspects of the pact as worth opting into but her party had “very serious human rights concerns” with the overall pact which she described as “dangerous”.

Although its location and existence remain unconfirmed, Deputy Crowe said that some believe the former High King of Ireland’s crown has been in the possession of the Vatican for over a millennium.

Crowe suggests forming a team to search for this long-lost artifact, which has been the subject of legend.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin has previously noted that the current status and existence of the crown are uncertain and subject to debate among experts.