Roger O'Keeffe

Roger O'Keeffe

@rogerokeeffe.bsky.social

Shooting the breeze on Irish, EU and world affairs, history, language(s). #speirgorm A bit of a pedant, advocate of colonic irrigation of sentences. Location: 🇺🇸 shitshow to the left of us< 🇮🇪 > 🇬🇧 shitshow to the right

1.3K followers1.3K following7.2K posts

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Seeing as the Irish Left seem to want to tell the Lebanese they’re effectively Israeli proxys and can go f*ck themselves, I read this and see what an actual neutral country can do when given the latitude. Right or wrong? Better than nothing anyway. #SpeirGorm thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2...

thestrategybridge.orgTrigger-Happy, Autonomous, and Disobedient: Nordbat 2 and Mission Command in BosniaIn late 1993, a reinforced Swedish-Danish-Norwegian mechanized battalion (Nordbat 2) deployed to Bosnia as part of an ongoing UN peacekeeping mission.&nbsp;The battalion was under Swedish command, and...

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Given the time of year, I thought for this week's edition of our Monument Monday newsletter we might visit one of the places that always comes to mind when we think of haunted and cursed places in Ireland – the infamous Hellfire Club on Montpelier Hill in the Dublin Mountains.
 #Ireland #SpéirGhorm

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Replying to @brunodias.dev

The mobilization itself was already not something I ever expected to see, but to actually win? Hell, to double the winning margin from the 2022 runoff? Genuinely surreal. Maybe child raping billionaires *don't* have to run the world with a shit-eating grin. Maybe that can stop.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Just remember Meta’s role in elections; platforms can and do put their thumbs on democracy’s scale—especially when it benefits them.

Josh Sternberg@joshsternberg.com

And just yesterday: Meta restricted Brazilian president's Insta accounts during the election while "recommending the profile of challenger Senator Flavio Bolsonaro." What's it going to take people to get off Meta products? www.reuters.com/world/americ...

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Bolsonaro-friendly mayors appear to be sabotaging public transport on Election Day. Buses aren’t running in Lula-friendly areas, flights and ferries mysteriously canceled. Traffic lights have gone out and people’s power cut in Salvador, indigenous people’s travel restricted

Rafa Sales Ross@rafiews.com

We are watching a coup d’état attempt unfold in real time in Brazil. I’m consumed by desperation.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Netflix has 16,000 employees. If they kept half of that profit and paid the rest out equally to everyone, they could give each worker a $426,000 bonus this year and still pocket $6,825,000,000. Instead they fired 1000 people.

Fight For A Union@fightforaunion.bsky.social

Netflix cleared $13.65 billion in net income this year. Up 33%. So naturally they’re celebrating by laying off 1,000 people. 6% of their workers that built those profits. All to save a little extra cash for shareholders. Apparently $13.65 billion isn’t enough for these ghouls.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

While Ireland is at risk from the impending bursting of the AI bubble, it has not benefitted much from AI's growth. The investment happening here is producing little that can be taxed, and few jobs. It's virtually all cost and no benefit to us as a country. www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

irishtimes.comWas that a stock market wobble, or the start of something more serious?Markets becoming nervous about the scale of borrowing by ‘hyperscalers’

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Pendientes de arcilla polimérica: amasa, corta, hornea a baja temperatura y crea piezas únicas con efecto mármol o terrazo sin necesitar horno de cerámica.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Reform UK's Suella Braverman claims massive taxpayer-funded water bill at home equal to 18 baths a day Claim to have used 1,504 litres of water daily at her £1.2million four-bedroom pad in a five-month period. Reform have promised benefit cuts for the disabled, old, sick, poor, unfortunate.

mirror.co.ukSuella Braverman claims huge taxpayer-funded water bill equal to 18 baths a dayEXCLUSIVE: Benefits-bashing Reform UK MP Suella Braverman claimed &#xA3;45,000 in parliamentary expenses towards her utility bills, newly-emerged files show - leaving the taxpayer on the hook

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

25 October 1913. Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was born in Bad Godesberg, Germany. He was an SS and Gestapo official, known as the “Butcher of Lyon” for having tortured Jewish and French resistance prisoners during WW2. After the war, US intelligence aided his escape to Bolivia.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

23 October 1943 | A transport of 1,035 Jews deported from Rome arrived at Auschwitz. After the selection 149 men & 47 women were registered in the camp. The remaining 839 people were murdered in gas chambers. Mario, Mara Cesira & Sandro Sonnino among them.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

"This could have been an email." Aragorn whispers. "He ALWAYS pulls this shit in 'Any Other Business" Boromir replies, quietly. "It's why Faramir marked himself as busy when the invite went out."

The Shire-Reckoning@shire-reckoning.bsky.social

Elrond tells the long story of the One Ring, from its forging in the Mountain of Fire, to its betrayal of Isildur at the Gladden Fields. Frodo is startled to learn that Elrond himself marched with Gil-Galad in the Last Alliance against Sauron, more than three thousand years ago.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

When the fuck will somebody stand up for the people of Palestine? Where the fuck is Europe? Paralysed by past guilt? That guilt is exactly why they need to step the fuck up in the face of another genocide.

You can ignore whatever Met Éireann and Accuweather and even Carlow Weather are telling you, #speirgorm. We've just put the winter duvet on the bed, so I can confidently predict a sustained period of unseasonably mild weather before the end of next week. 😆

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Replying to @moviessilently.bsky.social

I was souring on the service by then, it was really only good when it was literally just people renting out their existing guest cottage, but the person I was traveling with was deluded into thinking it was cheaper because Airbnb got to hide their fees at the time, while hotels had to disclose.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Take a moment to remember what we promised Brexit would deliver: a well-funded NHS, less immigration, more jobs, flourishing businesses with no red tape, easy to get on the housing ladder, boom time for farming, fishing and steel industries... I do hope you're enjoying it.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

Replying to @sundaedivine.lol

I had ketamine & propofol in ER & wife said I: - was making fun of why I was in the ER - wanted to hire the nurse bec I thought she was hot - asked doctor why she looked so young - asked my wife to apologize to everyone for me I lost 90mins of memory. Can't imagine what it does to a trillionaire.

#speirgorm

Joe Noonan@joenoonan.bsky.social

That Great Britain and the United States denied entry to hundreds of European Jews fleeing Nazi Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is an indelible and notorious stain on their moral record. Visa denial during an ongoing genocide is no less evidently racist and no less unconscionable.

Roger O'Keeffe reposted

The pfoducers plan to put it online soon, because no cinema in Israel is willing to show it. They're not interested in making money out of it, but deserve to be paid for their work, so go and see it while it's still in cinemas and boost the viewership figures so that... bsky.app/profile/roge...

Roger O'Keeffe@rogerokeeffe.bsky.social

Just been to see #Naza, and agree on its understated tone: questions gently guiding witnesses towards answers which some but not all are willing to give. Indeed it isn't always sure if witnesses are being ironic or still trying to come to terms with what they have done, and emptily... 1/