June, 2020

7,831 PETITION SIGNERS — GOING FOR OVER 9,000  ONWARDS IN SOLIDARITY AND UNITY—IN SISTERHOOD AND BROTHERHOOD                   And rejecting all “carefully fostered” past artificial divisions in Ireland Because of the dedication, caring, and solidarity of almost 8,000 Signers, we can now aim at getting 9,000 Signers… Please help to make that possible.  I am counting on […]

THE TIMES today  (2nd June) has an Editorial excoriating Russian, Chinese and Iranian propaganda. Enough to make a Persian cat laugh. It’s no time to Pussy-Foot about THE TIMES, the love-child of the Smotherer of Parliaments and the Father of Lies. On 20th April  it reported that a poll conducted by the Henry Jackson Society […]

Black America – decent America – is hurting. The contemptuous and contemptible killing of George Floyd  in Minneapolis was just the latest in a long, long series of police attacks on black people. Before George Floyd the US police attacked and killed black people like Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Malice Green, –  the list goes […]

I sent the letter underneath to a friend after hearing a radio play on BBC Radio 4 in 2016  I heard the crudest broadcast assassination of the historical record on BBC Radio 4 recently. It was a radio play produced in its Belfast studio and set in Dublin in 1940. The Irish Defence Forces, Gardai […]

OK – read this: “It is a tragedy that when gunfire was being heard in the streets of the City of Belfast, and when people were being mown down by that gunfire, no personnel of the British Army were available to give the people who were being slaughtered any protection whatsoever” That’s from the maiden […]

 I don’t know if you caught that Ryan Tubridy interview with  President Michael D Higgins the other day, but it raised a number of important issues – not least, should a socialist who’s being  paid  €249,000 a year ( multiply that by 14) be lecturing on the  need for all those ‘frontline’ workers to be paid properly? And which job in the chain is more. vital – the doctor who works with the patient or the hospital worker who makes sure the ward is clean and free of infection? Very difficult question – which is why Pat and I disagree at various stages. Bainigi sult as….

Wuhan disaster of 1931 – Maynooth Mission to China/Columban Mission: Wuhan = Hanyang/Hankow/Wuchan https://www.historyireland.com/volume-25/misean-sa-tsin-china-mission/ ” …Perhaps more interesting are the conclusions of Chinese historian Shan Yuwu, who researched the Columban archives. He notes how the Irish missionaries hated colonialism and concludes that the Columbans deeply sympathised with the Chinese people. Every year from 1920 onwards, […]

There are two ways of looking at what has happened in Ireland over the last 100 years since Partition. There is “the  official” way -that those who supported the Treaty and Partition were doing what they believed was best for the country, that they believed they had a mandate and they believed that they were acting within […]

On RTE’s Brendan O’Connor Sunday Show on RTE radio yesterday – he’s the replacement for the late Marian Finucane who died back in January – they did a sequence of ‘most memorable television moments’ and were clearly delighted with the massive response. As only to be expected, the iconic Late Late Show featured at the […]

Randall Stephen Hall Announcing the release of a new album for 2020. Songs from the Long Grass. Eight studio tracks and three live bonus tracks. This new release marks his fourth album since 2010. “Stephen Stiofán” grew up in North Belfast at the height of  The Troubles. He has a distinct interest in culture, language […]