Global
Lake Vostok: “Admit it, it sounds just like a thousand horror-movie setups.”
That was the Professor’s not entirely inaccurate comment this time last year, when a Russian team came up just short in their attempt to reach Lake Vostok - the largest sub-glacial freshwater lake on Earth. The project to drill down to the lake, which covers 16 square kilometres and has been sealed under approximately 3,750m of ice in the Antarctic [...] more »
Bill Clinton to host “Invest in Ireland” event in New York
As the BBC reports Former US president Bill Clinton is to host an “Invest in Ireland” discussion in New York on Thursday. Well, he’ll ”attend for the beginning of the event where he will make some opening remarks”. You get the point. *sniff* He used to have such big [economic] ideas for here… The Merrion Street [...] more »
Contested Space Programme: “What’s strange is that we haven’t heard anything about this until now…”
On 22 January, after the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) announced their £2million Peace Walls Programme, I asked about the absence of OFMdFM’s £4million Contested Space Programme – announced in March last year. On 27 January the Northern Ireland Executive Junior Minister, Sinn Féin’s Martina Anderson, launched the Early Years Faces and Spaces – Children’s Shared [...] more »
In praise of… Borgen
For the last five weeks we’ve been watching a compelling Danish poltical drama on BBC Four called Borgen. It was billed as the Danish version of the West Wing, but actually it’s much better than that. At the centre of the action is Sidse Babett Knudsen, cast as Denmark’s first woman Prime Minister. Not unlike [...] more »
$cientology loses appeal against fraud ruling
The Irish Times reports from France, where the inheritors of L Ron Hubbard’s greedy and manipulative anti-science cult of scientology have lost their appeal against a 2009 ruling that “two French branches of the US-based organisation were guilty of “organised fraud” and gave four of its leaders suspended jail sentences of up to two years.” A [...] more »
Odyssey Marine to recover Victory, but lose ‘Black Swan’ treasure
Last seen somewhere off the Irish coast, US company Odyssey Marine Exploration have announced that they have “executed an agreement with the Maritime Heritage Foundation for the financing, archaeological survey and excavation, conservation and exhibit of HMS Victory (1744) and artifacts from the shipwreck site.” That’s Admiral Balchin’s HMS Victory - a 100-gun first-rate ship of [...] more »
Romney up, GOP down, populism ailing?
There’s a good discussion to be had about the tensions between populism and parliamentary politics. If there is a side lesson to taken from the ups and downs of the Republican party, it’s probably buried in here somewhere. As Mike from PoliticalBetting notes, the famous victory of Mitt Romney in Florida (one of the big [...] more »
Florida – All Over?
It looks that way. From Fox News - looks like a landslide for Romney. But can Romney beat Obama? Piles of stuff to read on RealClearPolitics…make up your own mind. more »
Haiti: ‘Baby Doc’ escapes justice for past abuses
Given the Slugger community’s interest in Haiti, I thought it worthwhile to note the regrettable decision by a Haitian court not to charge the country’s former dictator, Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, over allegations of torture and murder. Duvalier returned to Haiti this time last year after 25 years in exile in France. Since then, he has [...] more »
RBS bonus: Obscene or a nice piece of business?
One thing, I think, that is better, or at least more widely, understood in the Republic than in the UK is that the credit crunch is still screwing up almost every other well intentioned effort to get our economies moving again. This is because the banks still haven’t owned up to the extent of their [...] more »
The Creative Class and Northern Ireland
As part of NICVA’s series of masterclasses from its Centre for Economic Empowerment project, there was a morning seminar on the topic of the “creative class” (as popularised by Richard Florida) and its applicability to Northern Ireland. The agenda was to: Explain Richard Florida’s idea of the “creative class” and the link between economic outcomes [...] more »
Newt Gingrich: a space cadet with ideas that are out of this world?
By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American. (Newt Gingrich) It certainly qualifies as a BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal for anyone lucky enough not to be fluent in management speak. An injection of ambition and cash into the state [...] more »
Irish DPP to consider Garland case
Having dismissed, in December last year, the US application for the extradition of former Irish Workers’ Party president, Seán Garland, in the long-running saga of the counterfeit ‘super-dollars’, Dublin High Court has now referred the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions to examine whether he should be charged in Ireland. From the BBC report Giving his reasons [...] more »
Holocaust Memorial Day Belfast
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is promoting everyone to mark the occasion today with local activities as well as individual acts, such as signing a pledge. For me, a particular significance is remembering that Nazism was about state-sponsored, systematic discrimination against entire categories of people — whether Jewish, Polish, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, or anyone [...] more »
Is there an easy way out of Ireland’s debt crisis?
Interesting to watch Enda Kenny talk at Davos today. He seemed relaxed and reasonable, and indeed at one point one of the other speakers noted that others who were in the throws of a debt crisis needed to follow Ireland’s example (of being ‘good little boys’? – Ed). Though Denmark’s new PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt, was [...] more »
Lessons from Northern Ireland: Rise above the fatalism generated by your own “sui generis” conflict…
H/T Mary FitzGerald on Twitter… This is a fairly impressive array of academic, political and government voices which looks at what lessons might be drawn from our much feted Peace Process, recorded in May last year… Most worthy of note are Jonathan Powell (keep hard power on so the insurgents cannot get comfortable, but offer [...] more »
Whisper it quietly (someone’s buying Irish debt)…
Okay, the interest is not great, but it’s well below the 7% from just before Ireland was forced to take shelter in the not so loving arms of the Troika… Dan O’Brien: Yesterday’s bond sale served a dual purpose: to test market demand for Irish Government bonds and to reduce the size of the repayments [...] more »
“Opportunity on Mars – 8 years and counting!”
Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed in Eagle Crater on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time, three weeks after its rover twin, Spirit, had landed halfway around the planet. Opportunity completed its three-month prime mission in April that year, everything else has been bonus, extended missions. Spirit is no longer with us. But Opportunity carries [...] more »
Boston College: A glimpse of the archive…
Let’s keep the dialogue ‘hinged’ this time. With Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre aiming to try to head the US Government off at the pass, the legal battle over each ruling along the way continues in the PSNI/HET’s attempt to access some of the material in the Boston College Belfast Project archive. In the meantime, [...] more »
It’s maybe not his Romeyness, but perhaps it’s his Mittness?
The Daily ShowGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook Somewhat after the fact, but worth it for the crack… more »
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Books
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Against Remembrance – Seminar & Book by David Rieff
Is the best way to overcome the legacy of conflict simply to forget about it? Author and journalist David Rieff spoke on this subject last week in a seminar at the Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS) at Trinity College Dublin. Rieff has recently written a book titled, Against Remembrance (published in Ireland by Liffey [...] read our review »
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“Unionism Decayed 1997-2007″ by David Vance: book review
I initially wrote this when the book was first published three years ago; whilst certain elements of it now sound dated, its basic premise that the period of 1997-2007 was a period of irreversible decay for Northern Irish Unionism can still be argued as a valid opinion. My own feeling is that it did indeed [...] read our review » -
“Good Friday. The death of Irish Republicanism” by Anthony McIntyre: a review
This was a book that I first reviewed at the same time as “Unionism Decayed” back in 2008. Like Vance’s work, it is the author’s portrayal of a defeated political movement or ideal and as a Unionist it was instructional to read an interpretation of the immediate post-Agreement period from the other side of the fence. [...] read our review »
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