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Showing posts with label Irish Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish Times. Show all posts
Irish Times 🔖Almost two decades after the agent known as Stakeknife was outed as an informer, many interviewees for this book still opt for anonymity, as if they don’t trust reports of his death.

Mark Devenport

In the preface to his new book, Stakeknife’s Dirty War, Richard O’Rawe says he had a nodding acquaintance with Freddie Scappaticci when the two men were both IRA internees exercising around the perimeters of their respective ‘cages’ inside Long Kesh jail in the 1970s.

The biographer knew his subject, the man now widely identified as the British army’s ‘golden egg’ inside the IRA, with the codename Stakeknife, but is quick to clarify that “I didn’t know him very well”. “Aren’t I the lucky man, that I didn’t know him better than that?” O’Rawe muses with a chuckle. “There’s some people in life you would love to have had a drink with and while away the hours. But not Scappaticci. If we’d ended up talking at a bar about IRA stuff, then I wonder what he would have reported back? So I’m delighted I barely knew him.”

That lack of personal rapport makes Stakeknife’s Dirty War a very different project for O’Rawe from his previous biography In The Name of the Son . . . 

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Stakeknife 📚 The Inside Story Of IRA double Agent Freddie Scappaticci

Irish Times ✏ Prof Paul Dunlop balances his life as a glaciologist with an intense investigation into the defective blocks that are steadily and irreversibly ruining his family home.  
Recommended by Enda Craig.

Keith Duggan
2-September-2023

“We hate our home,” says Prof Paul Dunlop, and he is speaking for many families scattered across north Donegal. Over the past three years, the Derry man has balanced his professional life as a glaciologist with an intense and often fretful investigation into the defective blocks that are steadily and irreversibly ruining the family home.

He is research director at Ulster University’s school of geography and environmental sciences, based at the Coleraine campus. He lives with his wife Siobhán and children Molly (22) and Oisin (15) in a housing development in Buncrana, where all 49 homes are effectively condemned and will ultimately be demolished. The Dunlops have already had approval in principle for a complete demolition and rebuild. But it is an exhausting process.

The only thing I want to salvage when it is knocked is… we have markings where we mark the height of our kids and have the dates written beside them. In the wood. That is the only thing I want to take out of our house. 
Continue reading @ Irish Times.

‘I Never Thought I Would Be On The Streets Campaigning To Ask The Government To Pay For My Home'

Aoife Moore ✏ The queen’s visit was a roaring success. She stayed for four days, and her programme was heavily oriented towards peace and reconciliation. 


She laid a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance, and she visited Croke Park, site of the first Bloody Sunday massacre in 1920, when British forces opened fire on a GAA match.

On her fourth day, the queen visited Cashel, Co. Tipperary. The town’s Sinn Féin mayor, Michael Browne, met her and shook her hand. Browne had been told by party headquarters to boycott the visit in keeping with party policy, but he disregarded the order.

As Cllr Browne told The Nationalist:

I just said “I welcome you to Cashel your majesty and I hope you enjoy your stay” in Cashel. (. . .) She just said thanks very much. I am glad I met her. I can only see that her visit can do good. You could be protesting all your life. (. . .)  We are in fierce hard economic times and the fact she has come here might encourage more tourists to visit. If the economy is to take off again that is the sort of money we have to get into the country’ (. . .)

For her speech at Dublin Castle, the queen opened with a few words in Irish: ‘A Uachtaráin agus a chairde ‘, she said. At her side, President McAleese – who had suggested some Irish phrases the queen might use but assumed it wouldn’t happen – gasped ‘Wow’, and spontaneous applause erupted among the crowd of 172 guests.

The visit had been a roaring success, and Sinn Féin had missed out on it. In the aftermath, speaking on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, [Gerry] Adams tried to defend the party’s stance, while also hinting at an openness to future engagement:

‘Many people I have spoken to, particularly from the North, have expressed a disappointment that she did not apologise in a more direct and clear way for British involvement in Irish affairs. [. . .]

‘If there is to be more benefit out of this, it will be if it moves beyond these important gestures and remarks’ [. . .].

‘It’s another step in the journey. It was the conditions created by the peace process which allowed this to happen.

‘It’s a page in a book – and we need to write the next page and the next page and keep moving the process on.’

Things moved on very quickly. Later that same year, as Sinn Féin’s candidate for the Irish presidency, Martin McGuinness, said he was prepared to meet all heads of state without exception, including the queen. The party knew it had been out of step with the rest of the island in its boycott of the queen’s visit, and wanted to ensure it wouldn’t happen again.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

What Happened When An IRA Man Met The Widow Of A Police Officer He Had Murdered?

Irish Times ✏ A new book and television documentary claims that the then cardinal Karol Wojtyła was not just aware of priests who sexually abused children – he covered up for them.

Derek Scally 

To the outsider’s eye, the Catholic Church reigns supreme in Poland. On a regular Sunday, Polish church pews are full while queues form, even during Mass, for Confession.

In 2016, the country installed Jesus Christ as King of Poland at a grand ceremony in Krakow. Last year, after three decades of lobbying, Polish bishops secured an almost total ban on abortion.

Nearly two decades after the death of the Polish pope in 2005, and nearly a decade after he was canonised, the face of St John Paul II remains omnipresent in his homeland. But the church he shaped like no other is now in meltdown since, last week, the unthinkable finally happened.

After a steady drip of clerical sexual abuse revelations in recent years, a new book and a television documentary presented claims that, in his 14 years as archbishop of Krakow, the then cardinal Karol Wojtyła was not just aware of priests who sexually abused children – he covered up for them.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Poland In Meltdown Over John Paul II Abuse Cover-Up Allegations

Irish Times ✏ Young voters don’t care about Bertie Ahern. They want to know if they’ll ever own a house.

The time when the white, male, Mass-going, homeowning, traditionally FF-voting public was the dominant voice in Irish society is long past.

When he was asked if he would consider a bid for the Áras in 2025, Bertie Ahern responded in his inimitable oratorical style. “Twenty twenty-five? Jesus that’s a long way off ... I have to stay alive first.”

The question should provide a nice distraction for the next two and a bit years but as far as the Fianna Fáil faithful are concerned, it seems almost moot. His much-vaunted return to the fold so far amounts to him handing over €20 to rejoin the Dublin Central branch – but to read about the party reaction to it, you’d think Oasis had just announced their reunion tour. 

The Fianna Fáil WhatsApp group reportedly lit up with joy at the news that he was coming back to the fold in some form; any form at all. There was talk, Jack Horgan-Jones reports, about a chance for Fianna Fáil to rediscover its lost swagger, reminders “of the days when we truly dominated Irish political life”.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Berties's Back

Irish Times ✏ After nearly 20 years playing the ultimate long-game, can the party leader transform it from one-time political pariahs into a party of government?

Jennifer Bray

Implacable and stubborn, ruthlessly pragmatic, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, who is now five years in the party’s top post, is also described by those who know her as possessing extraordinary stamina and self-belief.

Those who look at her with a more critical eye, however, judge her to be a wily opportunist desperate not to fall foul of the public, someone who talks a big game about change but has yet to prove she can bring it about.

Depending on who you ask, she was either plucked from obscurity and primed for leadership over 20 years, or a canny grafter who has made countless personal sacrifices to stamp her way to the top of the traditionally male-dominated arena of Irish politics.

One person who has watched her at close quarters says she rules Sinn Féin with as much iron discipline as Gerry Adams did before her, always keen to emphasise to anyone who needs reminding, North or South, that she is the boss.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Mary Lou McDonald Faces Her Biggest Challenge Yet, Five Years After Rising To The Top Of Sinn Féin

Irish Times 📰 Seminar hears how communities being targeted by anti-immigration elements are ‘on a knife-edge.’

The situation in some communities where the “far right is gaining a foothold like never before” was “on a knife-edge” and “could go either way”, depending on how the issue was responded to, a seminar this week heard.

The event on Wednesday was hosted by the Far Right Observatory (FRO), a civil society organisation which monitors, analyses and strategises to counter far right activities.

FRO director Niamh McDonald said activists were “whipping up fear and panic” in communities that had “lost trust” in political leaders, institutions and the mainstream media.

“This is time to make tracks on the ground that will lead to the local elections in 2024,” she said. “We can’t fool ourselves about that. They are going to start running candidates in every area. Right now, these situations are on a knife-edge.”

We want to bring the temperature right down, which is in complete opposition to what the far right are doing

Responses to far-right rhetoric should be led by “trusted actors” within communities, Ms McDonald added. 

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Far Right In Ireland ‘Gaining A Foothold Like Never Before’

Irish Times ✒ Patrick Radden Keefe: 'Gerry Adams is sort of similar to the Sacklers, in that he seems to sleep quite well at night.’

Patrick Freyne
2-July-2022

The long-form journalist reflects on a remarkable career investigating, among others, cartel bosses, arms dealers, mass shooters, fraudsters, whistleblowers and the Troubles.

Patrick Radden Keefe is an author who writes in deeply researched detail about a wide variety of dark subjects. His new book, Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks, collects some of his New Yorker journalism and includes stories about cartel bosses such as El Chapo, arms dealers such as Monzer al-Kassar and mass shooters such as Amy Bishop. There are also profiles of banking whistleblowers, reality TV moguls and wine fraudsters. His other books include Say Nothing, which explores the moral haze of the Troubles, and Empire of Pain about how the Sacklers, a family of billionaire art philanthropists, fomented the American opioid crisis with their company Purdue Pharma.

I interview Keefe while he’s participating in the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas in the living room of Borris House. It’s a stately room with a grand piano and ornate furniture.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Sleeping Quite Well At Night

Tommy McKearney ☭ The despicable treatment of Clare Daly and Mick Wallace by the Irish Times in its Easter Saturday edition is more than simply evidence of the wretched state of the Irish mainstream media: it is also a reflection of concerns gripping the 26-County establishment.


The sanctimonious piece by Naomi O’Leary was titled, without any obvious irony, “Stars of state media” by a newspaper based in a state that ruthlessly enforced its Section 31 legislation for decades.

The article in question was printed over a two-page centre spread claiming that the two are “popular figures in media controlled by authoritarian regimes.” The message the reader was expected to take from this was that the pair are tools, knowingly or otherwise, of governments deemed undemocratic by both the Irish Times and Western powers.


Had this article appeared in one of the tabloids pandering to a sensation-seeking readership it would be possible to dismiss it as just another nasty piece of journalism to be binned with the rest of the rubbish. However, this was no run-of-the-mill scribbling hoping to beat the editorial deadline: by the writer’s own admission, the article had entailed ten months of research—considerable time devoted, therefore, to establishing the entirely unremarkable fact that Daly and Wallace are frequently interviewed favourably by Russian, Chinese and Arab broadcasting networks.

Such is the degree of anti-Russian hostility being generated at present that merely reporting that politicians are being interviewed by Moscow media is deemed sufficient to undermine their credibility. Yet this in itself does not explain why this research began months before Russia invaded Ukraine, nor does it explain why China and the Arabic-speaking world are also in the mix.

Whether conscious or not, the underlying rationale for this article lies in the changing dynamic in the global order and in this case the response by the Irish establishment to what is happening. Having spent decades ingratiating and submitting itself to and within the Western capitalist model, Ireland’s ruling caste has no appetite for having its privileged position disrupted or challenged.

Nevertheless, to paraphrase a former British prime minister, the winds of change are blowing, whether they like it or not. The axis of global economic power is shifting, away from the United States and western Europe towards China, Russia, and their allies in the Middle East. For decades the United States has been the leading global economy. Now, however, the latest statistics from the World Bank in Washington show that China’s GDP is—depending on which of two calculations is used—either the largest or second-largest in the world.¹

Worth keeping in mind when reading these reports is that GDP calculations are more than a little subjective, as they measure services as well as manufactured goods. This is more than a matter of semantics. Services, including the financial sector, are often transitory and always vulnerable to erosion, and make up a much greater portion of the American economy than that of China. Consequently, the long-term prospect is that, all else being equal, Beijing will displace Washington as capital of the world’s wealthiest and most industrially productive great power. And all that under the direction of a vibrant Communist Party.

Compounding the capitalist world’s anxiety about losing out economically is China’s foreign policy, exemplified by its “belt and road” project. Described as constructing a 21st-century Silk Road, China is investing abroad in infrastructure that is proving as beneficial to host countries as it is to the benefactor. Implemented for the most part in less-well-off regions, this initiative has, not surprisingly, won support among countries weary of and damaged by the heavy-handed, violent and rapacious exploitation of US-led capitalism.²

Consequently, it is no exaggeration to say that the free-market economic system as defined by the United States, Britain and the EU has not faced such a fundamental challenge to its hegemony since the immediate post-war era, a time when Soviet-style communism was gaining support among working people everywhere. The difference now is that the new kids on the block, namely China, Russia, and their Middle Eastern allies, are not exhausted and depleted by a savage war necessitating decades of basic internal reconstruction rather than high-tech export-led development.

What will not be different, though, is the response from capital to the challenge. As in the past, imperialism will employ the twin strategy of fifth-columnists and open military engagements, coupled with aggressive McCarthy-style propaganda. It is this latter tactic that we are now experiencing, and not just with this latest attempt to vilify Daly and Wallace.

Ireland’s mainstream media are owned or controlled by the ruling establishment and invariably serve the interests of their patrons. As mentioned above, there is nothing new in this assertion. The tendentiously censored coverage of the Northern conflict was a perfect example of this in practice, a situation where the modus operandi was to control and indeed create the narrative in order to control the response. So, rather than identifying the conflict as the result of a failed and repressive state, the Provisionals were deemed the sole culprits, thereby facilitating a selfish “do-nothing” response from Dublin governments.

In the latest manifestation of this narrative-controlling strategy, we can expect more of the same type of treatment inflicted on the two Irish politicians. The stakes are high for the ruling class, and the outlook is uncertain. In common with most free-market economies, Ireland, north and south, is experiencing the damaging impact of inflation, a situation that will last for many months and possibly several years and, as always, inflicting most harm on working-class communities.

Under such circumstances and conditions there is the real possibility that the spectre of a Connolly-inspired solution reinforced by developments in the East will become attractive among a majority of our citizens. In fact as we go to press there are those organising a festival in Dublin to celebrate the life and work of the said James Connolly. Not only that, the organisers have invited Daly and Wallace to speak.

What can one say? Well, it’s simple: a plague on the mainstream media’s McCarthyism, and on to the Workers’ Republic!

1. Caleb Silver, “The top 25 economies in the world,” Investopedia, 3 February 2022 (https://bit.ly/3ELtqLm).

2. See, for example, Ian Neubauer, “In Solomon Islands, Australia’s largesse faces China challenge,” Al Jazeera, 4 April 2022 (tinyurl.com/2hsef22v).

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney 

The Wretched State Of The Irish Media

Matt Treacy ✒ When The Irish Times is being attacked by elements of the NGO liberal left then you tend to sit up and pay attention.


It is not so much really the call by the Trans Writers Union for a boycott of the People’s Daily of the Nice People that is noteworthy, as is the fact that it is being promoted by Uplift Ireland who do carry a bit of clout among the mainstream, as opposed to the Craggy Island faction, of the Woke.

The Trans Writers Union are calling on their “trans comrades, our allies, and anyone disenfranchised with the recent Irish Times editorial decisions” to boycott the Party organ until their demands are met. The demands being that 1) the Times withdraw and apologises for a “conversion therapy” piece; and, 2) that the newspaper adopt a “trans-inclusive editorial line.”

Uplift host all manner of mad petitions so this one is not out of place but it also claims to be “a people powered community of over 340,000.” How they make that out I am not certain as they say they have 773 members. It may be to do with the fact that their niche in the leftie NGO sphere appears to be – apart from using the bulk of their funding to pay their own staff – to collect money from others in NGO land to promote marginal stuff.

They got almost €50,000 from the Soros account according to their last published financial statement, along with another €30,000 from Neo Philanthropy which seems to be a conduit for larger liberal foundations such as Atlantic, Open Society and Ford, and whose main function in the United States is to support the Democratic Party with election funding.

Uplift claims to have received over €214,625 in “member donations” in 2020. That appears very high compared to the paltry amount of membership funding that even the large NGOs claim to receive, so it is possible that some of that is donations from other organisations including other NGOs.

I don’t know because Uplift don’t say other than the amount included donations from 773 members in 2020. That would amount to €277.65 a year for an individual and I doubt there are many similar organisations which have that sort of prosperous or committed individual membership base.

Perhaps some of the members are other organisations, perhaps other NGOs who are recycling monies they themselves receive from the taxpayer? All that really ought to be made clear in the accounts of all such bodies.

All of that is by way of a segue – love that word – into a rather unseemly squabble among certain elements of the liberal left following the horrendous murders of Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee. One part of it seems to be driven by the sort of absurd attack by UCD Professor McAuliffe on the alleged complicity of mainstream feminists in creating the atmosphere that she and other gender ideologues claim contributed to the murders.

None of this is new. Anyone familiar with the history of the totalitarian left from the Jacobins to the Khmer Rouge will know that the terrorists eventually get around to taking down their own. “The wolves devour one another” – usually, unfortunately, not until after they have done the same to their more immediate enemies. So, if the purges are starting now, all the better you might say.

Which brings me to another point. These people are thriving in a mainstream that has encouraged their lunacy.

The Irish Times boycott is one example. More pertinent, however, is that elected politicians including government ministers are contributing to this by their statements which endorse much of the shoddy and malevolent thinking that lies behind it.

One prime example is Minister for Justice Helen McEntee’s statement in the wake of the murders of Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee in which she referred to “incidents that we thought were behind us.”

Really? And the last time anyone was tortured to death and beheaded by someone in Ireland because of their sexuality was when exactly Minister?

This nonsense has now been taken up by others and become the go-to-phrase by some on social media who mindlessly – and yes, that is the right description – repeat McEntee’s claim as though it embodies some sort of unquestioned truth about this country: that there was a time when such horrors were commonplace.

It beggars belief that this needs to be clarified, and for the Minister for Justice no less, but at no time in the history of the Irish state were men beheaded because they were gay. This is not something that happened in the past – but it seems it may be something that is part of our present, yet the policies that are enabling it seem to be escaping scrutiny. Her remark also feeds into the sort of nonsense I have seen where some were criticising the homily given by the priest at the funeral of Aidan Moffitt. Fr. Michael McManus referred to the grief felt by the family and friends of a man who was clearly much loved and much a part of his community, right down to a Roscommon GAA flag being one of the offerings, his participation in local politics as a member of Fine Gael, and his involvement in horse racing.

All things he shared with huge numbers of people in Irish society, yet some people – many of whom loathe probably all of those central parts of Aidan Moffitt’s life – attempt to attribute some of the responsibility for his murder to society in general. We saw the same following the murder of Aisling Murphy.

Did anyone try to stop Aidan Moffitt from taking part in any of those things because he was a gay man? Much less, did anyone in his own community, any Irish person, ever attempt to murder him because of it?

And let’s be frank, the person who carried out his murder and the murder of Michael Snee is no part of our community. Not because of his race or his religion, but because he chose not to be. Which is anyone’s own business except when they become violent enemies of that community.

Perhaps the Minister might reflect then on some of the factors that are contributing to current patterns of violence and social dysfunction, rather than engaging in a mythical ideologization of a past that involved the torture and beheading of gay men by Irish men. It never happened.

If she wishes to lessen the chances of it happening again in the future, then she might take steps that are in her power to prevent it.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Minister McEntee Is Wrong ✑ Irish Society Did Not Behead Men Because They Are Gay

Irish Times ✒ Teaching of sex education has been considered by three ministers, but still an issue.

Marie O'Halloran

There is an urgent need for adequate sex education for young people that is “informed by science, not religion”, the Dáil has heard.

Social Democrats education spokesman Gary Gannon said the issue has “already spanned” three successive education ministers but has not yet been properly addressed.

He was speaking as he introduced his Education (Health, Relationships and Sex Education) Bill which seeks to “ensure that every single student and school that receives State funding will receive the same fact-based health, relationship and sex education regardless of their school’s ethos”.

The Dublin Central TD said the Bill “balances the right of a school to protect its ethos and the right of a child, more importantly, to receive relationship and sex education that is informed by science, not religion”.

He said some schools have programmes that are “biased and not providing objective information, precisely because of religious teaching that places one form of relationship in a hierarchy over others”.

He said the programme created by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference - Flourish - states that “the church’s teaching on marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted, and that puberty is a gift from God. These are not facts. This is preaching.”

Continue reading @ Irish Times.






TD Says ‘Urgent Need’ For All Children To Be ‘Informed By Science, Not Religion’

Irish Times ✒ ‘Stuck forever in that room in Manchester with my trousers round my ankles.’

Mike Harding
It is a cool morning in spring 1955. An envelope flops though the door of our terraced house in Manchester, landing on the cold linoleum of the lobby. My mother, more anxious than me, beats me to it. The envelope has a crest on the back – it is a cardinal’s tasselled hat. When my mother opens it at the kitchen table, it is obvious that she is delighted.

I have passed my 11-Plus and been accepted as a scholarship boy by St Bede’s College, Manchester, at that time one of the best Catholic grammar schools in the North of England. My mother is both proud and glad: proud that I’ve got the place and glad that, as she sees it, I have moved one step further away from the redbrick streets and a job in the local ICI chemical factory, the CWS biscuit factory, or worse.

All the family on my mother’s side are of Irish descent, from Dublin and Tipperary, and almost all of them work in the tailoring trade in Manchester and Liverpool. 

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

School Of Savagery

The Irish Times ➤ The party John Hume led for a quarter of a century struggled to survive his 2004 retirement, but he is still widely recognised as the most constructive figure of “the Troubles”.
By Fionnuala O'Connor
Reconciliation between nationalists and unionists may be as far off as ever, the SDLP an also-ran. Yet the only framework convincingly proposed for a lasting settlement, centred on equality for Irish and British identities through power-sharing with a formal involvement of Britain and the Republic, was substantially Hume’s prescription.

Though his persistence irked some in both capitals, in the judgment of many observers, Hume’s determination that the voice of anti-violence nationalism be heard over the noise of war kept London and Dublin up to the mark. His talent as a lobbyist swung Irish-American opinion-formers against support for the IRA and enlisted them to urge economic investment in Northern Ireland. At crucial moments, Washington influence on British administrations and Northern politicians helped sustain a lasting, if imperfect, peace.

Continue reading @ The Irish Times.

John Hume ➤ Nationalist Leader Who Championed ‘Agreed Ireland’

From the Irish Times ➤ living with populism in Ireland.

By Colm Keena
We should be wary of politicians who benefit from abusive online support bases

It is sometimes said that Ireland has been fortunate in avoiding the type of populist politics that is causing so much damage to other democracies.

But if a populist politician is one who claims to speak on behalf of the people, while relentlessly blaming all society’s ills on a “corrupt political elite”, then we have our fair share of them.

I was prompted to write something about populism after being contacted by someone who was appalled by postings he’d tracked on Facebook, published by people commenting on Irish politics. Most of the commentary was angry, some of it was vicious, and almost all of it chimed with the definition for populism cited above.

Continue reading @ the Irish Times.

Populist Politics In All But Name Is Alive And Well In Ireland

Michael McDowell writing in the Irish Times on the racism driving Donald Trump.

In July, 2017, Donald Trump, newly elected president of the United States, organised a rally of uniformed police officers on Long Island in New York state. His audience were ranged in front of him and a number were seated behind him as he spoke. This was a classical visual format to suggest to television audiences that his uniformed audience were, in effect, supportive of him and his remarks.

Boris Johnson, by the way, unsuccessfully tried a similarly crass visual stunt in the course of the run-up to his 2019 election campaign, addressing police in West Yorkshire – having kept his uniformed trainee police officer audience waiting an hour. It backfired for Johnson.

But not so for Trump, who grossly abused his office (and the police officers’ offices) at Long Island to speak to his own grassroots in nasty, dog-whistle racist terms.

Referring to gang members and to what he termed “criminal aliens”, Trump told his Long Island police audience: “They’re animals.” He said that he had a simple message for them, “We will find you, we will arrest you, we will jail you and we will deport you.”

Continue reading @  Irish Times.

Black Americans Fear The Future And So Should We

From the Irish Times ➤ the United States under Trump has become a laughing stock.

By Fintan O'Toole

Usually, when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

US President Donald Trump has claimed he was being sarcastic and testing the media when he raised the idea that injecting disinfectant or irradiating the body with ultraviolet light might kill coronavirus.

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

Continue reading here.

Donald Trump Has Destroyed The Country He Promised To Make Great Again

From the Irish Times a charge by Mary Lou McDonald that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are striving to lock Sinn Fein out of power while co-opting its policies.

In February we had a general election that produced the most seismic result in the history of the State; shattering the traditional duopoly of the so-called “big two” parties and reshaping the Irish political landscape.

For the first time ever, neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael won the largest share of the popular vote, and for the first time ever the combined forces of political conservatism failed to win a majority of Dáil seats.

Parties that advocated a different vision of how the State might work – in terms of how we provide adequate, affordable housing for our citizens, how our health system functions, how we provide for people’s retirement and how we redistribute wealth – made big gains on the basis of a mandate for real change.

That is what people voted for, and notwithstanding the current crisis brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, the people have cast their verdict and before long the election result must count for something.

The continuation in office of a caretaker government for an indefinite period is neither desirable, practical or constitutionally tenable. More than ever, given the crisis we are in, the country needs a stable government to see us through what is to come and to deliver what people voted for.

Continue reading the Irish Times. 

This Crisis Shows That Sinn Féin Was Right

From the Irish Times, an author in Rome describes what to expect based on her experiences of lockdown.
By Francesca Melandri
The acclaimed Italian novelist Francesca Melandri, who has been under lockdown in Rome for almost three weeks due to the Covid-19 outbreak, has written a letter to fellow Europeans “from your future”, laying out the range of emotions people are likely to go through over the coming weeks. 

I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The epidemic’s charts show us all entwined in a parallel dance.

We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time, just like Wuhan was a few weeks ahead of us. We watch you as you behave just as we did. You hold the same arguments we did until a short time ago, between those who still say “it’s only a flu, why all the fuss?” and those who have already understood.

As we watch you from here, from your future, we know that many of you, as you were told to lock yourselves up into your homes, quoted Orwell, some even Hobbes. But soon you’ll be too busy for that.

First of all, you’ll eat. Not just because it will be one of the few last things that you can still do.

You’ll find dozens of social networking groups with tutorials on how to spend your free time in fruitful ways. You will join them all, then ignore them completely after a few days.

Continue reading @ the Irish Times.

A Letter To Ireland From Italy ➤ This Is What We Know About Your Future

From the Irish Times in December ➤ Not every harmful or undesirable behaviour needs to be legally regulated.
 
By David Thunder
This Friday, the window closes for submissions to the Government’s public consultation on possible improvements to Ireland’s hate speech laws.

The Government has indicated that it intends to strengthen and expand the scope of existing hate-speech legislation, as “one element in a wider suite of measures across all areas of government which are designed to address hatred and intolerance”.

The ostensible motivation behind legal measures against hate speech is laudable. Who, after all, would deny that “threatening, abusive, or insulting conduct. . . intended or likely to stir up hatred”, to use the language of the 1989 Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, is noxious and undesirable?

Yet it does not follow from the fact that a behaviour is harmful or undesirable that it should be legally regulated. There are many forms of socially destructive behaviour that are not regulated by law. For example, we do not legally enforce courtesy, gratitude, sincerity, sobriety or charity.

Read more @ The Irish Times.

Legislation Against Hate Speech Is Ill-Advised And Counter-Productive

From the The Irish Times the Charity that wants would-be TDs to engage with the marginalised and take stand against racism.

By Patsy McGarry

The Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) has called on all general election candidates to agree that the next Dáil and Seanad will be committed to eliminating poverty in Ireland.  

The Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) has called on all general election candidates to agree that the next Dáil and Seanad will be committed to eliminating poverty in Ireland.

The charity is seeking an assurance that the next government will follow the example of the Canadian, Scottish and New Zealand governments by introducing a poverty reduction act, which would make the UN Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating poverty by 2030 legally binding.

It said the next Dáil should commit to eliminating child poverty within five years and to reducing consistent poverty to 2 per cent or less by 2025.

In its ‘Election 2020 Priorities’ document, the SVP also calls for a housing strategy “which seeks to meet 70 per cent of all housing needs through built local authority or approved housing body units by 2030” and a national affordable “cost rental” option for lower income households.

Continue reading @ The Irish Times.

SVP Urges Election Candidates To Commit To Eliminating Poverty

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