Irene combe

mum, gran, Fifer. proudly supporting Scottish Independence for over 40 years. Now that makes me feel old!

[Irene combe @WeeIrenee]

@bencooper CR2032 is a 3-volt, non-rechargeable lithium coin cell (or button) battery. The name breaks down its code: "CR" indicates lithium manganese dioxide chemistry with a round shape, "20" means it is 20 mm in diameter, and "32" means it is 3.2 mm thick. [1, 2]

[Irene combe @WeeIrenee]

@R0Poem Taken too soon 💔

[Trashcan Sinatras @TheTrashcans]

John Douglas 1963-2026

See statement from the band:

https://t.co/1bzohLNn7K

[Irene combe @WeeIrenee]

@UndisScot Kincardine Bridge. I remember watching it swing open to let a boat sail through back in the day. Long queues of cars on both sides….

[Jimac @jimac1111]

Scottish water to be abused for England's Data centres... Giving them cheap power while our bills remain high to pay a staggering 1 billion to tie into the national grid....get us tae!

[Believe in Scotland @believeinscot]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Don't Let Them Block Our Indyref Mandate.

✍️ Sign our Action-Petition today and all your elected representatives and the Prime Minister will be emailed to tell them to agree to the Scottish Parliament demand for a new independence referendum: https://t.co/njqPicGQDQ

[HOSTIS @hostis_black]

On May 20, Amazon ended support for every Kindle made in 2012 or earlier. The devices can no longer buy, borrow, or download books. Reset one to factory settings and it will never log back in.

The screen still works. The hardware is fine. Amazon reached across the internet and turned a thing you paid for into a brick, on a date they picked, for a reason that benefits them.

The owners bought the devices. They bought the books. They followed every rule. Amazon changed the rules anyway, because the rules were never yours. When you tap "Buy now" on a Kindle book, you are not buying a book. You are renting a license that Amazon can revoke, expire, or strand on a dead device whenever it suits the quarter.

They designed it this way on purpose, and they showed us the blueprint years ago.

In 2009 Amazon reached into thousands of Kindles overnight and deleted, ironically, copies of George Orwell's 1984, a book people had already paid for. They refunded everyone, apologized, and promised never again. We took the promise for what it was worth and watched the door instead.

In February 2025 they shut it. They removed Download and Transfer via USB, the last simple tool that let you pull your own purchases onto your own computer and keep them. Newer Kindle files use a format almost nobody can crack.

They closed the exit, then they started bricking the devices. None of this was a surprise. They proved in 2009 that they could reach into your library and take a book back. Everything since has just been them deciding when.

A copy you cannot hold is a copy you do not own. A library that lives on someone else's server is a library someone else can burn. The cartel rents you access to the words and calls it ownership, and the only reason most people never notice is that the landlord usually lets them stay. May 20 was the eviction notice. It went to 3% of Kindle owners this time. The lease is identical for the other 97%.

Stop buying books you cannot hold. When you do buy from Amazon, strip the DRM the day it arrives and keep a clean file somewhere they cannot reach. Back up everything you already own while you still can. A book on your own drive is yours forever. A book in your Amazon account is yours until a lawyer in Seattle decides otherwise.

And when you want a book the cartel has priced out of reach or locked behind a dying device, the shadow libraries that never expire are one search away. The pirates build libraries that cannot be revoked, because they assume the cartel always will.

The cartel cannot delete what it cannot reach.

[Irene combe @WeeIrenee]

@pforpaddy I used to sing along in the car with my sister on our way home from a Sunday run with mum and dad. Happy memories ( & terrible songs!) 😂

[Sam @SamCKx]

For those who don't know how this works, Reform are supported by the owner of X. All their accounts are centrally run and 1000s of bots are programmed to like their posts as soon as they go out. This is a form of election fraud no one is talking about yet. Rob's account is run from the US. Good local Makerfield boy.

It's all such a grift.

[Irene combe @WeeIrenee]

@ThompsonMorgan hello - I recently contacted your customer care dept about postage that had been charged in my order, even though your offer was for free postage. No answer to date. How do I get a refund?

[Irene combe @WeeIrenee]

@mickbrick54 @Broonpot @Scotpol1314 @DavidSt32197031 @indyscotnews @SovereignBain You have my second vote. Good luck 🤞

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

[Wendy Macaroony @MaggiesMole]

@Peston And here is the standard Sir Keir Starmer set for himself in his NewYear statement 2022.
He must now resign.

[Irene combe @WeeIrenee]

Great thread 😊

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

Those of a certain age in Scotland will need no introduction to McCowan's Highland Toffee. The reassuring sight of the Hielan coo on yer play-piece* meant assured tastiness. But, the bovine symbolism of McCowan's was not accidental. In fact, it was historic acknowledgement.

1.

* Highland cow on your playtime snack

[Republican @RepublicanSons]

Every independence supporter has to share this far and wide

[Irene combe @WeeIrenee]

Beautiful!

[John Pow @Johnpow1]

Reflections on the Forth.

A 4 minute long exposure of the Forth Bridge.

[حيدر | Haydar @chronicalihere]

This is what China has been sitting back and waiting for— America's imperial hubris shooting itself in the foot.

International oil is almost exclusively traded in American dollars; it is what forms the fundamental basis for the US' dollar supremacy.

That will end with the death of the petro-dollar; as the single most pivotal global petroleum transportation choke point is blocked off and holding the world at ransom by bartering that if you want your oil, you have to play by their rules— which will drive the dollar down irreparably.

In order to understand much of the current quagmire with Iran; the importance of oil in the region itself and America's relationship with Israel, we have to go back to 1973.

In 1973, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia cut off all oil supply to the US and other western countries for supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

The United States for the first time played an integral role in arming Israel against the growing socialist aligned, pan-Arab bloc of Egypt and Syria; who had sought to dismantle the fledgling zionist entity for once and for all.

The US saw this as an opportunity to not only deter soviet influence in the region as seen with the likes of Nasser and his vision of a unified Arab world, but consolidating its own position in the region (and globally) through monopolizing oil— by tying it, and backing it, through the dollar.

This bold stance caused mass panic and chaos as it impacted Western states severely; so much so that the UK had to switch to a three day work week to ensure their economic survival.

However, in 1974, Henry Kissinger negotiated an end to the crisis with King Faisal by creating the Petrodollar.

It stipulated that for the Gulf oil producers, in exchange for selling oil exclusively in US dollars (as Nixon removed the gold standard in 1971)— Saudi Arabia and the others, would receive military protection from the United States, against Israel.

That logic of Israel being a legitimate threat was manufactured primarily to convince the Arab states to enter into this agreement; eventually used to also allow the US to build bases in their territories too.

Ignoring the fact that as a unified front, the Arab states would have had nothing to fear of Israel. It had only been because of considerable American assistance that Israel had been able to deter and neutralize Nasser's attack.

The Arab states were subsequently pitted against each other therein, as opposed to collectively focusing on confronting the zionist entity, as previously.

This master stroke from Kissinger resulted in Saudi Arabia becoming solely bound to upholding the interests of American imperialism and corporations (and of Israel by extension). King Faisal was assassinated in 1975.

America's support for Israel's settler colonial project became more unequivocal when the dollar became backed by Saudi oil (and vice versa); as America required a outpost/ mechanism in the region and a foothold into Asia through which it could always consolidate its interests and monopoly over resources.

The fundamental crux of global American hegemony; the monetary supremacy it enjoys, that allows for it to consolidate resources/capital and operate this imperialist apparatus, begins and ends with the strength of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

And why does it enjoy this status? Because it is what the most essential and important resource (oil) on the planet is traded in. The commodity that flows through every facet of every market; that the global economy relies on the most. That is the primary source of America's dominance today; of its total, unrestrained and raw power.

So now you understand why Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz; why its vying for oil going through to be traded in the Yuan and why it has been so adamant to target America's Gulf assets in the region.

It's all interconnected and interdependent; and the only effective way to nullify and dismantle American-Zionist regional hegemony.

[Lisa Mackenzie @lnmackenzie1]

For anyone wanting to contact those standing for the Holyrood election in May, this website is excellent. You type in your postcode and it lists the constituency and regional candidates along with details of how to contact them to ask any questions. https://t.co/zhdhukUxDV

[Sayer Ji @sayerjigmi]

PART 5: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer says "none of us knew" about Epstein's British connections.

The documents say otherwise.

Britain's National Crime Agency ran a classified intelligence operation on Epstein from its Washington embassy — starting January 2020. Starmer spent five years running the institution structurally designed to receive that intelligence.

Then he appointed Mandelson ambassador to the country investigating Epstein.

🔗 https://t.co/bGWstjvWPe

[Meidas_Scotland @MeidasScotland]

Thursday 26th February. Good morning.

Yesterday’s Stonehaven poll caused quite a stir — exciting times! 🔥

Q. Have you ever been asked to take part in a Voting Intentions poll?

Here’s your chance. It’s simple and takes less than 30 seconds.

https://t.co/oLa0U5jaMs

I want to stress this is very basic — no weighting or complex algorithms. I’ll let it run for 30 days, then reset it to zero so we can track trends between now and May’s Holyrood election.

The system works out your current MP, constituency etc behind the scenes from your postcode.

I’ll post a summary of the findings every few weeks.

If you’re 16+ and eligible to vote in Scotland, please take part — and encourage friends, family and anyone else! Target is 1,000+ completions. Let’s do this! 📊 Jim.

#Holyrood2026 #ScotlandDecides #VotingPoll #YESScots #CitizenJournalists