Trump’s disturbing National Security Strategy should be required reading
Because European governments and, to a greater or lesser extent European mainstream media, are playing a rather supine diplomatic game with the Trump administration, the raw import of the Trump administration’s recently promulgated National Security Strategy document has probably passed most European citizens by. But it is available online in all its crudity and menace […]
Trump isn’t a peace maker, he’s a piece taker
When the Netflix bid for part of Warner Bros business hit the headlines, I wondered why Donald Trump warned of problems with the takeover bid. On Monday, it emerged that Paramount Studios was launching a competing hostile bid financed by a consortium of various parties, sourced in the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Trump’s […]
Sinn Féin should study its own political history before demanding Herzog Park be renamed
On January 5th, 1976, members of an active service unit of the IRA stopped a minibus at Kingsmill, near Whitecross in South Armagh. They sorted out the occupants, all textile workers, by religion on the roadside. They let the sole Catholic, Richard Hughes, walk away, and they cut down the 11 Protestants in a hail of automatic gunfire. […]
Should we re-roof the Rock of Cashel?
During the summer, I had occasion to travel to Portumna to collect some boating equipment with a family member. Our business done, I suggested that we should call into Portumna Castle. It would be my first visit for more than 20 years. The castle was a fortified residence of Richard Burke, Fourth Earl of Clanrickard and Lord […]
Britain’s asylum shake-up poses big problems for Ireland
The British home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood of 15 years, a barrister, a former secretary of state for justice and former lord chancellor. Her family background is Kashmiri Muslim, and her parents were migrants to the UK. She is regarded as being on the more conservative wing of the current Labour Party. She is […]
Ireland badly needs to face up to the minimum responsibilities entailed in our independence
Now that Catherine Connolly is our 10th president, her role under Article 13.4 of the Constitution as supreme command of the Defence Forces comes into sharper focus. Although she has been sceptical and critical in relation to increased defence spending by Nato states, the plain fact is that Ireland’s Defence Forces has been allowed to atrophy over the last 40 years […]