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Books
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Debating the Churches’ Role in the Peace in Northern Ireland
This morning’s Sunday Sequence featured a substantial debate (about 35 minutes into the recorded programme) on a new book,Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press 2011), written by sociologists John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney. The debate was framed in an opening vignette by presenter William Crawley in uncompromising terms, [...] read our review » -
Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work
A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan [...] read our review »
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Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on
A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in [...] read our review »
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Comment on Trevor Sargent resigns from Irish Government
on 24 February 2010 at 12:22 am
If this is as dirty as it looks….it could be the beginning of the end of a far from beautiful relationship between FF and the Greens…
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Comment on Towards a Sinn Fein First Minister – how we got here
on 4 February 2010 at 5:50 am
Michael, the revised mechanism may be messy, but in the eyes of the ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ in whose image both the GFA and the StAA were created, the logic of the revision is consistent and inexorable. It has been stated many times now that we did not inherit a democracy from the ‘Peace Process’ but a transformation of the conflict….and this explains why the political class will continue to drift apart from the concerns, passions and identities of an up and coming generation for whom politics is best left to those who wish to make a spectacle of themselves.
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Comment on SWOTing the parties: Threats to the SDLP…
on 3 February 2010 at 5:01 pm
a. A widening of investigations into political interference in the planning process.
b. Ageing leadership
c. Poor internal communications and organisation
d. Poor definition of political objectives
e. The continuing threat from the probable organisation of Fianna Fail in Northern Ireland
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Comment on Identifying the 14 ahead of an apostolic departure?
on 3 February 2010 at 4:32 pm
I wonder if Gerry and Martin have taken PR aside at Hillsborough to share a lesson or two from the life and times of Michael Collins, who also had a little local difficulty after returning from negotiations.
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Comment on “He asked Mr Poots to ‘detail any representations’”
on 3 February 2010 at 4:34 am
The Greens are planning to use the Robinson issue to press for much greater transparency on donations to all political parties here. About time too!
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Comment on Can Peter Robinson please come to the Diary Room..?
on 2 February 2010 at 10:17 pm
With a reported 60/40 split over the ‘big deal’ it is becoming clear why the hapless Peter Robinson was allowed to hang on to the FM and Leadership roles…
Just long enough for him to scrape through or go down with a deal the party cannot swallow, and make room for a transition at the top.
Adams, meanwhile, is turning into a real liability with his badly timed comments on ‘staging post’….what a gift to the nay sayers!
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Comment on TUV public meeting in East Belfast tomorrow night…
on 28 January 2010 at 10:32 pm
If ever there was an opportunity for supporters of the GFA and the StAA to send a signal to the TUV it’s tomorrow evening, inside and outside that organge hall. The headline tomorrow evening should read: ‘TUV Meeting Disrupted by Calls for Reason and Tolerance’
Vance and the rest get away with so much because too much politics has been reduced to a spectacle. And as Guy Debord observed, ‘the spectacle is the guardian of sleep’.
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Comment on Widgery: “Where is your patriotism…”
on 18 January 2010 at 5:56 am
Tragically, hundreds of hours of secretly recorded conversations involving top politicians from Britain and Ireland, and security personnel, were destroyed in Derry in the early hours of Operation Motorman. Some of the material would undoubtedly have shaped the historical record.
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Comment on “We have to close that vacuum..”
on 13 January 2010 at 8:25 am
To suggest that a ‘political vacuum’ would only emerge if SF walked away from the institutions is inaccurate. Further delays in delivering on P&J (which has a totemic significance within the Republican community) have the potential to play into the hands of nihilists in the so called dissident margins. The British and Irish Governments spotted unprecedented leverage to push Robinson & the DUP towards a deal the moment he staged the sham pre-emptive armchair strike last week.
Robinson and his cohorts might have gone full-time into the insulation business ahead of the Spotlight programme, but we all know that leaders who hang around for too long (whether SF or DUP) leave a long trail of opportunities for the Masters of the Black Arts to collect IOUs.
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Comment on Sinn Fein were part of the choreography – the pace quickens
on 12 January 2010 at 6:23 pm
A wounded leader limping towards the Exit door of history is the perfect fall guy to deliver P&J on behalf of the British/Irish Governments, while permitting the DUP backwoodsmen to distance themselves from the decision.
The mysterious confidence of the Pro Consul last week regarding progress on P&J suggests that this crisis was identified as an opportunity by the masters of the dark arts a long time ago.
The emotional smokescreen thrown up around Iris Robinson, and the resulting soap opera, has disguised a series of power plays by both Governments (aligned with SF’s insistence that progress must be imminent).
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