April, 2017

Take Action to Break the Silence, 50 Years Since Dr. MLK’s ‘Beyond Vietnam’ Speech Mary Hladky, Military Families Speak Out March 30, 2017 United for Peace & Justice Beginning this week, on April 4, peace-loving people around the country are participating in actions honoring Dr. King and readings of this speech, in a campaign to […]

You always know things are going pretty well for Sinn Féin when the commentators start reaching for wild comparisons and re-sketching the past as a disaster area for militant republicans. One of the wildest comparisons I’ve heard recently was to compare the late Martin McGuinness with Princess Di. It makes the mind stretch and creak […]

Children of the Famine by Greg Daly March 23, 2017 Greg Daly explores the historical roots of the mentality that created Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home Peasants at a workhouse gate during the famine (This article first appeared in The Irish Catholic  on 23 March 2017) History and commemoration are, as President Higgins observed in a […]

  Catherine Corless, the woman from Tuam, who researched and published the facts about the ‘secret burial place’ of up to 800 babies near the Bon Secours Mother and Child home in Tuam is a brave woman. She was determined to make known the truth about the horrific deaths of the children and the secret […]

  An Sionnach Fionn blogs at  https://ansionnachfionn.com/ April 3, 2017 Current Affairs, History, Irish Republican, Military, Politics 4 comments I have argued in several recent articles that the United Kingdom’s continued inability to accept the unvarnished history of the Irish-British Troubles, the decades-long conflict in the UK-administered north-east of Ireland, poses a serious threat to ongoing […]

“People die for love, for peace, for an idea. And people kill for those reasons too.” – Old Chinese Proverb The name of this article is controversial, so let me begin by stating that I do not support violence being used for political ends in the current Irish context – it will neither achieve Irish […]

I note where that Venerable Organ (VO) The Irish News has finally got a response to a question. After eight months the Department of the Environment has conceded that the lighting of a Twelfth bonfire by Paul Givan near Augher, Co Tyrone, was, “in essence an offence”. They don’t say whether it is a legal […]

  There is growing prima facie (that’s Latin for a quick gawk, Joxer) evidence that the capital of the Free Southern Stateen, Lapdog –sur- Liffey is actually based on the fictional hillbilly town of Dogpatch, USA. And just as the cartoonist Al Capp was the motivational spirit behind the original so also his Oirish cousin, […]

There are two thoughts pressing on my thinking this morning, both the product of articles I’ve read online. One was in The Guardian and made no reference to our NE Nest (NEN). The other was from today’s Sindo and focuses exclusively on our NEN. Tempted though I am to tackle both here, I’ll confine my […]

You’ve sometimes got to laugh at the the wee grunty sounds that issue from the mouths of us humans . For the vast empty deserts of radio , if there is no new political news, the programmers and presenters panic as to what to discuss.Today , because of the inertia in setting up a local […]