Alastair McKinstry

@amckinstry.bsky.social

1259 Followers 740 Following

Climate Scientist, #GreenParty, #IFUT.ie branch chair in University of Galway. #Galway #ConnemaraGreenway. Sé/é/He/him. Also at @amckinstry@mastodon.ie and matrix: @alastair:mckinstry.ie

Dear Americans, since the White House press secretary is attacking me today, I wanted to tell you this:

Our two people are intimately linked by History, the blood we shed and the passion for freedom we share, a passion symbolized by this Statue that was offered to the United States by France to honor your glorious Revolution.

As the press secretary for this shameful Administration said: without your nation, France would have "spoken German." In my case, it goes further: I would simply not be here if hundreds of thousands of young Americans had not landed on our beaches in Normandy. Our gratitude to these heroes and their sacrifices is therefore eternal.

But the America of these heroes fought against tyrants, it did not flatter them. It was the enemy of fascism, not the friend of Putin. It helped the resistance and didn't attack Zelensky. It celebrated science and didn't fire researchers for using banned words. It welcomed the persecuted and didn't target them. It was far, so far from what your current President does, says, and embodies.

This America, faithful to the wonderful words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, your America, is worth so much more than the betrayal of Ukraine and Europe, xenophobia, or obscurantism. We all in Europe love this nation to which we know we owe so much. It will rise again. You will rise again. We are counting on you.

And it is precisely because I am petrified by Trump's betrayal that I said yesterday in a rally that we could symbolically take back the Statue of Liberty if your government despised everything it symbolizes in your eyes, ours, and those of the world. It was a wake up call.

No one, of course, will come and steal the Statue of Liberty. The statue is yours. But what it embodies belongs to everyone. And if the free world no longer interests your government, then we will take up the torch, here in Europe.

Until we meet again in the fight for freedom and dignity, we will be the continuators of our shared history and …

List of hubs in Galway where emergency services are available.

Cartoon by Martyn Turner in the Irish Times. Election posters are blowing away. in the wind but the commentator says "A couple will stay the course": "Global warming won't go away unless we do something", "The rich will get richer the poor will get poorer unless someone does something"