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Books
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The Irish political journalist’s problem with partial disclosure…
Tweet The nod and wink politics of Ireland’s last two or three decades as practised par excellence by Bertie, Albert and Charlie is ultimately what has the Republic in the stew it’s in. Don’t get me wrong, the effective monitoring of those exercising of power does not demand full disclosure of everything all the time. [...] read our review »
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Total Politics: Top 20 NI Blogs…
Tweet Fair play to Iain, he managed to get over 2,200 people voting in his poll for the top Northern Irish blogs this year… We (just, I imagine) retained our top spot, with Splintered coming straight in at number 2, no doubt his pet subject du jour will have garnered him a lot of fans… [...] read our review »
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The Earl Bishop
Tweet Interesting BBC article on an upcoming presentation and talk [Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Centre, 17 August] by lecturer and broadcaster Stephen Price on the subject of his new book – The Earl Bishop. The 18th Century ”Earl Bishop” was Frederick Augustus Hervey, fourth Earl of Bristol and Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry. Hervey was also [...] read our review »
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Comment on Ruairí Ó Brádaigh dies
on 5 June 2013 at 8:14 pm
He was a war mongering terrorist and supporter of carnage against innocent soldiers, policemen and civilian
[text removed - normal slugger rules on an obit thread for anyone is respect - Mods]
Lover of freedom? Don’t make me laugh. A country that is in thrall to the dictates of a certain church is not a country that loves freedom
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Comment on My Top 14 cross-border co-operators in Ireland
on 31 May 2013 at 11:38 pm
Tochais
what do you mean by bringing the people of the island together? If it means helping Eire wake up from its 90 year slumber and rejoin the UK then yes I play my part.
If you refer to sectarianism then I play my part by not being sectarian and not supporting or partaking in monocultural endevours such as GAA or loyal orders.
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Comment on My Top 14 cross-border co-operators in Ireland
on 29 May 2013 at 11:22 pm
Organising these conferences is a good industry
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Comment on My Top 14 cross-border co-operators in Ireland
on 29 May 2013 at 11:21 pm
This is all very well but its just a bunch of nice middle class people talking to other nice middle class people asking why everyone can’t be nice like them. Is anyone on the ground knocking on doors challenging sectarianism where it lurks?
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Comment on @rustyrockets on #Woolwich
on 29 May 2013 at 6:54 pm
GavBelfast et al
U asked a good question. I refer you to my post higher up the thread. therein lies the answer. Liberals bray at Judeo Christian illiberality and rightly so but ignore illiberality from other sources because historically liberalism was born from Christendom and historically is used to battling against Christian hegemony. They just can’t compute when faced with transgressions from those they regard as fellow oppressed peoples.
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Comment on SDLP reminded of the real politics of #SpadBill by its own retired politicians…
on 28 May 2013 at 10:20 pm
to play devils advocate, why should ex prisoners be stopped from being advisors yet can become FM or DfM in theory, roles which have even more authority and prestige ?
Would such a law breach rehabilitation law if such laws exist?
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Comment on SDLP reminded of the real politics of #SpadBill by its own retired politicians…
on 28 May 2013 at 7:43 pm
why should combatants have a special role? it seems its all about them. A narrow elitist cabal who think they have a god given right to rule and create unmandated murdere and mayhem in the past
time for all ex combatants and warhorses to leave the stage
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Comment on @rustyrockets on #Woolwich
on 28 May 2013 at 7:31 pm
This is a very insightful analysis of why liberalism turns a blind eye to the illiberal ways off the non Judeo Christian world
Link is here but the main thrust is pasted below:
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/04/25/liberalism-and-islam/
“”So what is it about liberalism that makes it so difficult for it to take a clear, critical look at Islam, even while liberals have no problem excoriating Christians for every imaginable historical evil?
I believe I can give at least a partial answer, if we take a big step back from the present scene and view the history of Western liberalism on a larger scale.
Liberalism is an essentially secular movement that began within Christian culture. (In Worshipping the State, I trace it all the way back to Machiavelli in the early 1500s.) Note the two italicized aspects: secular and within.
As secular, liberalism understood itself as embracing this world as the highest good, advocating a self-conscious return to ancient pagan this-worldliness. But this embrace took place within a Christianized culture. Consequently liberalism tended to define itself directly against that which it was (in its own particular historical context) rejecting.
Modern liberalism thereby developed with a deep antagonism toward Christianity, rather than religion in general. It was culturally powerful Christianity that stood in the way of liberal secular progress in the West—not Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Druidism, etc.
And so, radical Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire rallied his fellow secular soldiers with what would become the battle cry of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: écrasez l’infâme, “destroy the infamous thing.” It was a cry directed, not against religion in general, but (as historian Peter Gay rightly notes) “against Christianity itself, against Christian dogma in all its forms, Christian institutions, Christian ethics, and the Christian view of man.”
Liberals therefore tended to approve of anything but Christianity. Deism was fine, or even pantheism. The eminent liberal Rousseau praised Islam and declared Christianity incompatible with good government. Hinduism and Buddhism were exotic and tantalizing among the edge-cutting intelligentsia of the 19th century. Christianity, by contrast, was the religion against which actual liberal progress had to be made.
So, other religions were whitewashed even while Christianity was continually tarred. The tarring was part of the liberal strategy aimed at unseating Christianity from its privileged cultural-legal-moral position in the West. The whitewashing of other religions was part of the strategy too, since elevating them helped deflate the privileged status of Christianity.
And so, for liberalism, nothing could be as bad as Christianity. If something goes wrong, blame Christianity first and all of Western culture that is based upon it.
This view remains integral to liberalism today, and it affects how liberals treat Islam.
That’s why liberals are disposed to interpret the Crusades as the result of Christian aggression, rather than, as it actually was, a response to Islamic aggression. That’s why Christian organizations are regularly maltreated on our liberal college campuses while Islamic student organizations and needs are graciously met. And the liberal media—ever wonder why you didn’t hear last February of the imam of the Arlington, VA mosque calling for Muslims to wage war against the enemies of Allah? Nor should we wonder why, for liberals, contemporary jihadist movements in Islam must be seen as justified reactions to Western policies—chickens coming home to roost. Or when a bomb goes off, that’s why a liberal must hope that it was perpetrated by some fundamentalist patriotic Christian group.
What liberals do not want to do is take a deep, critical look at Islam. To do so just might question some of their most basic assumptions.
“”
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Comment on The struggle for abortion and other reform north and south is far from over
on 4 May 2013 at 2:34 pm
This sorry episode only reinforces my unionism. Asking Ulster to join Eire is like asking Florida to join Guatamala
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Comment on The struggle for abortion and other reform north and south is far from over
on 4 May 2013 at 2:33 pm
Poor old Eire. It thinks its free yet it happy to be a dupe of the Church of Rome and lets its priests and bishops and popes dictate the terms of people’s lives
Where was Salvita’s right to life?
Its time Eire woke up from its Vatican slumber and truly free itself
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Comment on Micheál Martin: Legacy of 1916 is to build rather than to divide the Irish nation…
on 21 April 2013 at 3:18 pm
“The inhumanity of many of their actions”
What, just “many” and not all? Does this slip of the mask, sorry tongue imply that some of their actions were not inhuman according to Mr M Martin?
As for condemning the Provos for lack of support – this is an unsound basis for deciding what is right and wrong. I don’t recall the people who tok over the Dublin GPO (I hope they looted the stamps to make it worth their while) having a lot of support. Also would bombing and shooting innocent people be ok if the Provos did have majority support? If so, then one would have to query the rights and wrongs of Hitler then but I know we won’t
Terrorism is wrong, period. If a majority of the people support terrorism then it merely means that the state would be a terrorist state. Democracy is not just the slavish 50%+1 principle many people dumbly believe it is.
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Comment on Is the proof of Margaret Thatcher’s Northern Ireland policy the prosperity of modern Sinn Fein?
on 10 April 2013 at 9:20 pm
If child murderers in England went on hunger strike and died would the people of England suddenly start to support parties that supported infanticide?
I never bought this theory that Thatchers hard line fanned the flames of Sinn Feins support. The pathetic fact is that many nationalists were itching to vote SF and they jumped on the bandwagon
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 11:08 pm
I am mercurial and always see the other point of view at various times.
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 10:05 pm
Where’s the link to older comments?
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 8:16 pm
thanks Mr Joe
I don’t feel the same about the Tricolour in Eire. I have allegiance to the UK and my flag is the Union but within NI that flag too is sullied by bigotry and murder.
I guess it’s the context where one sees it. I can only speak off my childhood in Tyrone and life in Belfast
many folk have a decent sense of respect for either flag but within NI both are blood stained rags
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 3:10 pm
As an Irish unionist who wants the whole island to return to the UK, the tricolour is the flag of narrow secessionists and the bloodthirst of Pearce.
a flag of poverty, condolences to Germany on Hitlers death, sitting on the fence during WW2, Haughey the Irish Berlosconi, gombeen politics
Ireland deserved better
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 2:36 pm
the original meaning is lost forever. It’s a bloody idiom, soiled with the blood of IRA victims. I can’t look at this flag without images of balaclavas, gun volleys, mono culturalism. The tricolour of an insular state that prefers the soft
Soggy bed of the past than the future because we know the past is there but the future isn’t so well defined. It’s the flag of a country that sees no problem with roman oppression of its souls yet took issue with British rule.
I grew up as a RC and went to a CBS. I know what this flags means to those who love it and the people who loved it made me sick to my stomach for they just supported the murder of Protestants. Any uniform the dead wore when they hit the ground was a bye the bye.
Even if a UI came about, that flag would need to be changed. You can fix a mirror when its broke but you can still see the crack.
The cross of St Patrick is a worthy replacement
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Comment on What will become of the May 2015 UK Parliament if Scotland votes “Yes” on independence?
on 24 March 2013 at 6:05 pm
what if every county in the country wanted “independence” ? Shouldthey get it just because they want it? We would end up in a Passport to Pimlico world of sheer nonsense
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Comment on What will become of the May 2015 UK Parliament if Scotland votes “Yes” on independence?
on 24 March 2013 at 11:59 am
It’s a dogs breakfast and one that was obvious to me a long time ago. Imagine an even bigger mess if Scotland breaks away and joins the EU & the rump UK leaves the EU and possibly ends the freedom of movement of workers/residents from Eire & Scotland
England is quite right wing and its not inconceivable that future governments in a rump UK would be coalitions between Tories & UKIP so an isolationist policy may very well be on the cards
So this is what we have come to? Scotland is not a nation but a region. I never bought the argument that Scotland never votes for the UK government being a reason to break away. I’m sure there are many constituencies in England who remained labour during Thatchers time so should they declare independence?
Devolution is a nonsense and as soon as all this parochial expensive set of toy town assemblies are abolished along with their overblown politicians who are like schoolboys with tinpots on their heads pretending to be generals.
A unitary UK with central government in control is what is needed. No need for local councils. Why do we need them? Can’t we have the Dept of Environment at Westminster organise and decide when bin collections and street cleaning take place.
No region should be let break away otherwise we end up in a mess and an even bigger one as I describe above. Salmond while being clever is only one man. The SNP is his personal vehicle in the same way the SDLP was Humes and the DUP was Paisleys
Lets wait til Salmond retires and we will soon see that there is no one to replace him and the SNP will sink just like the SDLP did. He will be succeeded by a succession of nobodies who will last a year in their posts each.
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Comment on Sinn Fein steps in at the last minute to call an end to the Stopes farce…
on 12 March 2013 at 9:11 pm
Am I the only person here who doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sight and sound of SF and elements of Unionism who protest for the life of the unborn yet dream up all kinds of de post facto elaborate justifications for the murder of over 3000 very much born people?
Just what is SFs rationale here? Scared of frightening the RC horses?
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