March, 2016

The magazine arrived Thursday and, as usual, has got me going. A splendid article on Sir Francis Vane. I knew enough about Vane to write “FORGOTTEN HERO OF 1916 RISING?” a short BLOG posted 26 January. But the article has much more about the man, and all of it to his credit. There’s a piece […]

Since the election, there’s been much talk of the need for Dail reform. I’ve no doubt there are imperfections in the way the Dail operates, but I’m not sure those imperfections deny people their human rights. Still, Fianna Fail grabbed the notion of Dail reform and has been running in circles shouting that there must be radical […]

Is unionism really ready for all the changes heading our way? You wouldn’t believe that was the case when you consider the past performances of some of their politicians in these past months and years .The world is rapidly changing in these past fifteen years since the Twin Towers bombing in New York. Europe and […]

I know little about economics nor do I pretend to. But I think I appreciate fair play, described by our ancestors as Cothrom na Feinne, the code of Fionn MacCumhal and his Merrie Men, and  described amongst (the better sort of) Englishmen as “Cricket.” So when a professed “Concerned Citizen” harangued Sinn Fein’s  Mary-Lou MacDonald […]

Queen’s University are hosting a discussion of the topic ‘Re-imagining Ireland’ on Tues 22 March, with the main speaker the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. They asked me to write a blog for their Mindfields blogsite, so here it is.   To come clean from the start: I don’t like the term ‘Re-imagining Ireland’. It […]

This article on the West’s interference in the Middle East elaborates on some points raised by Donal Kennedy in his guest blog PUTTING A CAT AMONG THE HAWKS? My thanks to Donal for the original blog and for alerting me to this article by Robert Fisk… http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-wests-desire-to-liberate-the-middle-east-remains-as-flawed-as-ever-a6915901.html

Irishmen and Irishwomen who refused to kow-tow to the might of the British Empire have had a bad press in recent decades.The Jesuit Seamus Murphy who teaches in California and encouraged the United States’ destruction of the Iraqi State, the various peddlers of tripe and treason in the IRISH TIMES and the scandalously overpaid Joe […]

Before the recent elections in the south, imagine if you’d sat down a Fianna Fail supporter and said “After this election, you’ll have half the ministerial portfolios in government, Micheál Martin will be Taoiseach half the time, and while you’re on the rise, your traditional political enemies will be on the decline. Oh, and did […]

  Does Mr or Mrs Chimpanzee believe in God? That’s an odd thought, isn’t it? How would you even know what lay behind their inscrutable eyes , deep in the core of the convoluted brain of our nearest and dearest simian cousin, for Dear’s sake? Those kind of ideas might not occur to many as […]

The Irish General Election is over and this piece is aimed equally at all the parties which behaved disgracefully a few years ago with making heroes of Irish citizens who voluntarily joined the Irish Defence Forces, swore an oath of allegiance to Ireland and deserted during the Second World War, when recently liberated Irish territory […]