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Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed. The Saker >>
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony
Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony
Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony
RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony
Waiting for SIPO Anthony Public Inquiry >>
Parse failure for http://humanrights.ie/feed/. Last Retry Tuesday October 07, 2025 00:15
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Misrepresenting the People
international |
politics / elections |
opinion/analysis
Monday November 28, 2016 22:05 by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin - Artist

The recent article League of Nationalists in The Economist (19-11-2016, pps. 51-54) sets out to answer the question: “All around the world, nationalists are gaining ground. Why?” Despite noting that “many countries are shifting from the universal, civic nationalism towards the blood-and-soil, ethnic sort”, the authors agree that “comparisons with the 1930s are fatuous.”
The authors also argue that “as positive patriotism warps into negative nationalism, solidarity is mutating into distrust of minorities”. It could also be argued that, with the election of Trump, negative nationalism [Bushism] is warping into positive patriotism [Trumpism] as Americans demand that their multinational corporations be held accountable for their evasion of their responsibilities to the state which they managed through the creation of tariff free areas [in the past state income consisted of up to 90% of tariffs], export of jobs [outsourcing] and tax reductions [in Ireland their taxes had been reduced to as little as 2%].
According to the article:
“Many westerners, particularly older ones, liked their countries as they were and never asked for the immigration that turned Europe more Muslim and America less white and Protestant. They object to their discomfort being dismissed as racism.”
They liked their countries as they were before when their countries were less indebted, less involved in military activities abroad and basic services did not roll from crisis to crisis. After all, it was not their decision to be re-designated ‘consumer’ rather than ‘citizen’.
They also write:
“Western voters aged 60 and over – the most national cohort – have lived through a faster cultural and economic overhaul than any previous generation, and seem to have had enough.”
It is true they have had enough. They have seen university fees and taxes going up and social services going down. They have seen through immigration as mainly facilitating military adventurism abroad. They are long in the tooth enough to know that there is no real democracy in the EU. They want to wrest control of their society back into their own hands for their future and the future of their naive iphone obsessed children. Maybe for the first time in their lives they have made a political decision that was actually in accordance with all the realisations they have had over the years but never acted upon.
They do “dislike the balkanisation of their countries into identity groups” as they grew up with concepts like that of the ‘citizen’ where all were equal before the state in the social contract of rights and responsibilities.
These ‘nationalists’ are contrasted with liberals whose “two sources of identity: being a good global citizen (who cares about climate change and sweatshops in Bangladesh) and belonging to an identity group that has nothing to do with the nation (Hispanic, gay, Buddhist, etc).” Liberals stress non-nationalist identities and welcoming in immigrants. This is laudatory except they do this without questioning why the immigrants are coming in and doing something about it or else they support the wars of dominance that result in the mass migrations of their victims to safe havens away from the ‘dictators’. The liberal dislike of any state control makes them easy prey to those who really couldn’t care less if Bashar al-Assad, for example, is a ‘dictator’ or not, but, rather whose geopolitical side he is dictating on.
Some populist leaders supporting Brexit tend to emphasise the objectives of ordinary people but studiously avoid the agenda of the 1%. They avoid discussing the geopolitical alignments and re-alignments of their political masters, their agendas for global domination, their constant creation of new free trade areas, their endless sourcing out to the cheapest labour costs in the world, their unceasing seeking out of the lowest taxation on their profits and their control of the media and the banks everywhere.
These populists misrepresent people as having narrow concerns like the future of their pensions or racist fears of immigrants ‘taking our jobs’. They seek to rile up anger to gain support for narrow right-wing ends. For the liberals any questioning of the weakness of the state is perceived to be a movement towards ‘fascism’. However, they miss the point. Unlike the liberals, the working class is not afraid of a strong state. People want a state that protects their jobs, strong borders that keep out criminals, and decent health and education systems that their taxes are supposed to be paying for. The vote for Trump proves that ordinary people are very well aware of the negative sides of neo-liberalism. Trump has talked about bringing jobs home, controlling immigration, investment in infrastructure and creating a stronger pro-people state and the people supported him. The people are also well aware that the liberal cry that ‘governments can’t do anything about growth’ is a sleight of hand when it is no secret that neo-liberals are doing their damnedest to reduce the power of the state in the first place.
The Economist article sub-heading ‘Nations once again’ refers to the poem A Nation Once Again by the Irish poet Thomas Davis who calls on the Irish people to throw off colonialism and take control of their own destiny. However, the article makes a jump from the nationalism, ‘controlling one’s destiny’, referred to in the sub-heading to a ‘better question’: “what turns civic nationalism into the exclusive sort?”. To want jobs and better services at home and an end to meddling in other people’s countries and economies is anathema to the freedom of the neo-liberal elites to do whatever they like around the world maximizing profits and monopolizing control of world markets.
Sure, Brexit and the Trump election are good examples of passive politics, of people sitting back, casting a vote and hoping for the best, or at least better. There is nothing new in this, it may even be a case of ‘we pretend to vote and you pretend to lead’. In the past the dangers of passive politics were pointed out by various writers such as James Connolly who wrote: “If the national movement of our day is not merely to re-enact the old sad tragedies of our past history, it must show itself capable of rising to the exigencies of the moment.”[1] Frantz Fanon also pointed this out in The Wretched of the Earth:
“We have seen […] that nationalism, that magnificent song that made the people rise against their oppressors, stops short, falters and dies away on the day that independence is proclaimed. Nationalism is not a political doctrine, nor a programme. If you really want your country to avoid regression, or at best halts and uncertainties, a rapid step must be taken from national consciousness to political and social consciousness.”[2]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was aware of the dangers of passive politics. He advocated a more proactive approach of continual political activity. He wrote, (notwithstanding the existence of slavery at the time), “[a]mong the Greeks, whatever the people had to do, they did themselves; they were constantly assembled in the market place.”[3]
It is likely that Trump will disappoint his supporters given the limitations of his new position but the possibilities for change signaled by Trump should give people hope and make them realise that only by getting out on the streets and showing their strength in numbers, choosing their own representatives and leaders and demanding change will anything progress.
[1] P. Beresford Ellis, ed., James Connolly: Selected Writings (Middlesex: Pellican, 1973) 121.
[2] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin, 1990) 163.
[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right [1762] (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1998) 45.
Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist who has exhibited widely around Ireland. His work consists of paintings based on cityscapes of Dublin, Irish history and geopolitical themes (http://gaelart.net/). His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country at http://gaelart.blogspot.ie/.
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