Council chief has no mandate for ‘aggressive’ plan to restrict cars in Dublin city
I presume that Owen Keegan, Chief Executive of Dublin City Council, was speaking in a personal capacity when he addressed what this paper reported as “a cycling symposium in Dublin in recent days, attended by a delegation of cycling experts from Amsterdam”. The report did not say who had organised or financed the symposium or […]
I am gobsmacked at the ambivalence of Irish Marxists to Putin
We must be clear on a few things. Ukraine was not, is not, and never could or will be a military threat to the Russian Federation. Likewise, Ukraine is not governed by a Nazi government and is in no need of de-nazification. The excuse used by Putin for invading and annihilating a democratic sovereign state […]
Pressuring Putin the only option on Ukraine tragedy
There is a problem with talk about providing an “off ramp” to Vladimir Putin as his war on Ukraine gets bogged down in murderous annihilation. Clearly he believes either that he can pretend to negotiate with the Ukrainian government while all the while trying to annihilate it or else he believes that he can annexe […]
Restoring historic buildings beats letting them crumble
I have no more words this week left to condemn and abhor the ongoing barbarity, criminality and cynical dishonesty of the Russian war unleashed on Ukraine. It seems almost wrong to write about anything else. But there is another more banal topic which came to mind this week when I opened the latest edition of […]
We must accept severe sanctions if we are to stand for anything
Western democracy is under threat from outside and from within. There is a remarkable symmetry between Putin and Trump. Each is a psychological misfit with strong sociopathic tendencies. Each is part of a kleptocratic campaign to subvert democracy. Each admires the statecraft of the other. Each, I dare to say, merits the adjective “evil”. Trump […]
Ukraine deserves more than feather-duster sanctions
On 26th January, my piece here assumed that Putin probably intended to invade Ukraine and that the only response available to the West was a package of massive, severe and crippling sanctions against Russia. And so it has turned out to be. Any lesser response would by the US, NATO, the EU and Pacific region […]