I’m wary of anything I read in THE TIMES. Hardly surprising, for it paid a forger in an attempt to implicate Parnell in assassination, employed Sir Harold Evans and Sir Simon Jenkins as editor, had the execrable Michael Gove as a regular columnist and is owned by Rupert Murdoch. But yesterday (July 7) I […]
July, 2016
OFFICIAL SECRETS AND OFFICIAL LIES by Donal Kennedy
While plotting with France and Russia to destroy Germany, the British Establishment echoed the Boy Scout motto -“Be Prepared.” General Baden Powell, hero of the squalid British war on South Africa, prepared youth to be fit for the next Imperial adventure, and Government measures to improve public health made no secret of the fact that they […]
Why did Dallas snipers kill five police officers?
Sometimes news stories come so quickly one after the other that, as a news consumer, you’re in danger of suffering the emotional equivalent of the bends. A current example. Yesterday I watched that extraordinary live Periscope broadcast by a black woman, first in her car and then in the back of a police vehicle. In […]
Providing the petrol for slaughter
Picture the scene. I’m in a room with, let’s say, ten friends. (Yes, Virginia, that may stretch your imagination but I’m talking hypothetical here. Of course I don’t have ten friends). So we’re sitting there conversing when in rushes a red-eyed , wild-looking man. “Help me!” he shouts. So myself and friends enquire how we […]
THE LITTLE WORLD BEFORE THE 1916 RISING AND THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME by Donal Kennedy
My mother who used live in Dublin city as a child, used spend some of her summers in Howth and recalled “keeping nix” whilst her brother Jack and John “Darkie” Rourke “boxed the fox.” Jack, aged 16, was badly wounded in 1916, by a German shell off Jutland, whilst “Darkie” played a man’s part […]
‘Brexit Negotiations’ by Jessica McGrann
All very hush hush on the first phase of the negotiations taking place which will involve Cameron and similar EU stooges to test the waters before real negotiations begin later in the year when there is a PM to talk to and activate article 50. In the mean time I thought I would put together […]
‘Reading the Chilcot Report. Sort of.’
So – what do you think of the Chilcot Report? No, let me retract that – what do you think of what other people have said about the Chilcot Report? Because I know that you haven’t read it. And neither have I. And I’ve no plans to do so. And neither do you. That’s because […]
Chilcot speaks out: MPs tremble
Not so long ago I was the focus of widespread anger (and abuse) for suggesting that the Boys’ Brigade might have a military element to it. More recently Jeremy Corbyn was hauled over the coals for saying that, as Jews should not be held responsible for the actions of Israel, Muslims should not be held […]
ARCHBISHOPS UNITE IN TRITE APPEAL by Donal Kennedy
THE IRISH TIMES has a regular feature headed “Rite and Reason” which, at its best is trite, but generally merits the description “Tripe and Treason”. For instance, it parades Seamus Murphy SJ and other corner-boys, to sneer at Connolly and Pearse and to bear false witness to the innocence of Daniel O’Connell, who shot one […]
BREXIT: who will feel the pain?
Would the UK leaving the EU be good for the south of Ireland? It depends on who you ask. Some experts will say that of course it will: foreign direct investment will be attracted to the south because it will then be the only English-speaking EU state, with Britain’s departure. The south of Ireland would […]