It’s remarkable what you find on youtube when you are not looking for it. I discovered a series called DE VALERA , IRELAND’S HATED HERO and wrote a BLOG with that title, followed with – “OH, REALLY?” (JANUARY 22 2020). But I didn’t bother to examine it in detail. De Valera had democratic electoral successes […]
EATING AND FIGHTING
It was a blow for Anne when Mickey died, I’ll grant you that. She was in town on a Saturday afternoon choosing hall wallpaper and he was at home watching the television. So the last thing he saw was probably horse-racing. She came into the living-room with four different samples and got him lying dead […]
The ‘Liberal World Order’ Was Built With Blood by Vincent Bevins
This article first appeared in the New York Times If you read the commentary coming out of New York and Washington, or speak with elites in Western Europe, it’s easy to find people panicking about the loss of “American leadership.” From Joe Biden’s campaign pledges to trans-Atlantic think tanks, exhortations to revive American supremacy and contain China are everywhere. […]
What do you expect from a duck but a quack! by Dr. John Coulter
THE BALLYMENA ACCENT Dr John Coulter has been a journalist working in Ireland since 1978. He began his career as a trainee reporter writing a weekly column on the Boys’ Brigade for his local weekly newspaper, the Ballymena Guardian. He worked as a freelance journalist with BBC Northern Ireland before joining the staff of the News […]
BLACKWOODS PROPAGANDA AND A STORY THAT DOESN’T HOLD WATER by Donal Kennedy
In his ZOOM chat with Jude recently, Pat McArt had a story of the IRA burying a man up to his neck on BANNA STRAND near Tralee, facing out to see the tide come in to bury him. The story doesn’t hold water but is a variation of a story put in the Edinburgh published […]
When Joe Biden speaks, I worry.
Official portrait of Vice President Joe Biden in his West Wing Office at the White House, Jan. 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann) This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may […]
LIGHT AND SHADE IN THE SWINGING SIXTIES UNDER OLD LABOUR GOVERNMENT by Donal Kennedy
I saw on the box the other evening a programme presented by Andrew Marr dealing with events from the accession to power by Harold Wilson in 1964 to Bloody Sunday in January 1972. Amongst other things, it recalled how the new Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins found by his desk a fixture showing the names of […]
The shadow of gerrymander
This blog originally appeared as a column in the Andersonstown News T I did a Zoom interview last week with Colm Gildernew MLA (Yes, Virginia, brother of the more famous Michelle G) on the subject of electoral boundaries. I’d talked to him about this subject a couple of years ago, so it was interesting to see how this most sensitive of topics had developed since. […]
Pat and Jude talk about a possible election in the south and What Mary Lou Said…
OK – so here is today’s Zoom chat with Pat. And as promised, we cover two stories: the first is from the satirical magazine ‘The Phoenix’ and suggests that Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael may be stringing Fianna Fáil along, pretending to be keen on coalition while plotting an autum election. The second is from The Irish Examiner, and its report of that by-now famous interview with Mary Lou […]
Enemy Number One: the phone camera?
A great number of regimes throughout the world must curse the day that moving pictures came into being. (No, Virginia, moving statues are a totally different issue.) Think about it. In 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising was celebrated, and a key feature of RTÉ’s coverage was the interviewing of people who had […]