You probably have never heard of Dorothee Soelle but I want you to know about her because I met her a few times in New York and I think she is a woman worth knowing about. Dorothee Soelle was a theologian, born in Cologne Germany in 1929. I met her in New York in 1981 in Fr Daniel Berrigan’s house. Dorothy […]
September, 2016
Little Enda and the big Apple
At first and maybe second glance, it seems crazy. Enda Kenny and his Cabinet have agreed that they’ll appeal against that European Commission ruling which says that the south of Ireland should be given £11 billion in unpaid taxes by Apple. The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, says he’s very confident the ruling will be […]
‘The Dublin media’ by Joe McVeigh
As far as the north was concerned most Dublin – based journalists and commentators did not want to know about discrimination, harassment by the RUC,UDR and British soldiers, closed border roads. They were not interested in what it was like for a person from a working class Nationalist background to live in the six north-eastern […]
‘British Penetration of Irish-American Groups’ by Fr Sean McManus
CAPITOL HILL. Thursday, September 8, 2016—— Recently released British/Northern Ireland Office (NIO) State Papers have caused considerable interest, and have given further insight into how the British Embassy spied on Irish-Americans. The Papers were released the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), and cover the period 1980 to 1989. The Papers were released under the “30/20 rule”— the phased release […]
The Boundary Commission and democracy
Odd, isn’t it, how little attention we pay to the creation of constituencies. In the good old bad old days, nationalists and republicans knew that wards and boundaries were mapped out so that the result would be a unionist majority wherever possible – and even where seemingly impossible, as was the case in Derry, where […]
‘By Any Means or None’ – a review by Thomas Nagel
Does Terrorism Work? A History by Richard English Oxford, 367 pp, £25.00, July, ISBN 978 0 19 960785 3 When I am hit with news of yet another terrorist attack, I often wonder what these people hope to achieve. In a depressingly timely book, Richard English tries to answer that question for a number of important cases, in order […]
‘Mother Teresa’ by Joe McVeigh
In December 1999, at the end of the 20th century, Gallup asked Americans which person they most admired from the last 100 years. Mother Teresa came out on top, and it wasn’t even close – 49 percent named her, with the next closest being Martin Luther King Jr. at 34 percent. When Mother Teresa became “St. Teresa of Calcutta” […]
HALLUCINATING? by Donal Kennedy
I don’t think I was hallucinating, but I would like to think that I was, when I read the leading article in THE IRISH TIMES a few weeks ago concerning Turkey – the country whose capital is Ankara, not part of the Christmas menu. It described Turkey as “our Ally” and I imagine it meant “Ireland’s […]
Letter from a condemned man
Regiee Dunne and Joe O’Sullivan ‘My story’ – a letter from Reggie Dunne to the IRA – is currently on display in Reading Prison as part of an Oscar Wilde exhibition on imprisonment. You can listen to a recording of the story here – https://reducedlistening1.app.box.com/s/259nh7iymoob5cko9o16sgbendupn2f3 Background On 22nd June 1922, Sir Henry Wilson, a […]
That BBC poll (about a border poll)
There are two ways you can look at it. You could take the view – one, I suspect, that many if not most people will take – that the poll undertaken for the BBC shows that the idea of a reunited Ireland is a long, long way off. The figures support such a view. When […]