March, 2022

Reading that Sinn Fein has deleted from its website thousands of statements  from its spokespersons uttered these past twenty years, I asked a friend if this Orwellian episode had been sanctioned by an Ard Fheis, or a  British or EU Army Council.  He suggested it arose from the fear that American,or Irish-American contributions to its […]

Perhaps in the words of that greatest of Englishmen, Tom Paine, I was but a “Summer Soldier and a Sunshine Patriot” when I volunteered to serve the National Colours in the part-time, territorial Forsa Cosanta Aitiil. Most citizens or subjects, East or West of THE IRON CURTAIN had no choice, or rather the choice of […]

  I may be wrong. But I have not seen in THE IRISH TIMES any condemnation of attacks made on the Russian Embassy and staff. The Crazy Trucking Stuntman  should be an embarrassment to Ireland and his exploit considered a scandal. “EMBASSYGATE”  I understand that Irish Establishment figures are keen to welcome the Colonel-in-Chief of […]

    A British Ofiicer, HUGH POLLARD, wounded in the First World War, wrote a story of Russian Troops travelling by train from Scotland  to help Britain in her war on Germany.  It was utter nonsense but printed as a news item in the prestigious NEW YORK TIMES,.   His next coup was the invention of […]

  Should the south of Ireland remain neutral? After all, Putin clearly respects only force, so shouldn’t Ireland get in there and support the West?  It’s generally presumed that Leo Varadkar will leave Irish politics sometime after the next election. The assumption has been that he’d be succeeded by Simon Coveney. But big Phil Hogan […]

        The contemptible and hysterical propaganda against all persons, matter and things Russian, and Vladimir Putin in particular, has historical precedents. It worked in the past against other nations and their leaders and it bears out Abraham Lincoln’s observation that you can fool all of the people some of the time.  Vladimir […]

  I’ve been an avid reader of all sorts of papers for at least 70 years. Originally I read only newspapers published in Dublin, with the exception of THE IRISH TIMES. But Radio Eireann only came on the air on weekdays at 5 PM and I was  familiar with the BBC from birth.  From about 1953 […]

 I remember when Sinn Fein’s UNITED IRISHMAN would not print the words “Talbot Street” but referred to “Sean Treacy Street.”  They reasonably hoped that the patriot killed by enemy gunfire there would be officially commemorated where he fell. Since that day in 1920, thousands of Irish people, militant resistance fighters and non-militants alike, men, women and […]

‘Misguided quixotism’ – that’s what Libby Purves, veteran BBC broadcaster, calls it. She’s talking about the way the BBC is going back over old episodes of shows like Dad’s Army and Steptoe and Son and editing out any politically incorrect bits. ““It’s actually refreshing to be made to cringe: it shows how far we have […]

  Some of my contemporaries may remember  reading pamphlets by the Catholic Truth Society. I may have read some, but only one of them stands out in my mind -“THE DEVIL AT DANCES.”  It has a young man declaring that he would never marry a girl who danced THE TANGO. He had himself danced THE […]