Ruarai

It’s a shame that religious fascism is no laughing matter, as its latest murderous incarnation, as reported by the Irish Times, reveals:  “A popular Somali comedian and playwright who mocked Islamist militants for brainwashing children and killing civilians has been shot dead.” I say shame because engaging the causes and culprits of this malignant menace with somber and measured tones of curiosity and fear only denudes us of the one anecdote fascism cannot survive contact with: the ironic mind. Reading …

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What has this news about London finally preparing the way for an all-island approach to corporate tax rates got to do with loyalists marching in circles outside a chapel in north Belfast? Precisely because the two have no relationship, it’s a question that loyalists need to address. Though many north Belfast residents will see nothing amusing about a bunch of uniformed marchers congregating outside their chapel while playing anti-Catholic songs, the pictures of grown men parading around in tiny circles …

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Over at the Spectator they’re covering Romney’s speech (7/11) to the NAACP as “Romney’s pitch for the new America.” What nonsense. In an extraordinarily lazy piece, Alex Massie doesn’t even bother to mention how this supposed “pitch” was received by the audience. Romney was booed. In a mangled piece of analysis the Spectator at one point suggests – rightly – that “when it comes to votes Romney wasn’t really looking for black votes…Romney’s speech was looking for white votes”, only …

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I rarely watch television news or, save the football, anything much at all on the small screen. But if anyone can find me 5 minutes of TV more interesting than the following interview with Futurist Ray Kurzweil, my gratitude will match my surprise. A taster: the next wave of your immune system boosters could be micro-computers – nanobots – many times more powerful than today’s smartphones yet many times smaller; small enough to swim through your blood vessels and, upon …

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The Daily Dish features a contender for best public safety campaign ever. RuaraiStrategic Communications Consultant, located in Washington, D.C.

Here they are, according to TIME magazine. 1 Stormont Estate 2 The Cathedral Quarter 3 Political Tours 4 The Titanic Quarter 5 Murals 6 The Causeway Coastal Route 7 The Queen’s Quarter 8 Victoria Square Competition time: What should have been on this list? Bonus marks for ‘attractions’ that have sweet F.A to do with the conflict. RuaraiStrategic Communications Consultant, located in Washington, D.C.

Who decided that McGuninness would meet the Queen? According to an especially shrill Alex Kane op ed, “They had no choice in the matter”. Look, I assume the Queen had a say in this meeting but who had the final say on whether McGuinness would meet her? McGuinness and Sinn Fein did. Yet from Alex Kane’s boyish response you’d think Nationalists are dancing to a unionist flute. The reality of the Queen-McGuinness meeting, like all significant political developments in Ireland since …

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Alex Massie’s criticism of Ed Miliband’s take on Britishness raises a question Irish unionists ought to be well placed to answer. If Britishness is no longer defined so much by institutions as by “culture”, what then is this Britishness of which unionists speak? And if Britishness can’t be adequately defined isn’t it already redundant? And if Britishness is conceptually redundant, has the U.K. any positive, coherent long-term purpose? According to Massie, Miliband inadequately understands Britishness as effectively “… England and a couple …

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If the already unlikely prospect of a united Ireland was all but extinguished by the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent ever-spiraling legitimacy crisis, might these same phenomena be laying the basis for Irish reunification – albeit back within a U.K. context? Consider the Republic’s current trajectory in the Europe envisioned by its dominant actor, Angela Merkel: “We need more Europe, we need not only a monetary union, but we also need a so-called fiscal union, in other words more joint …

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Price of buying the English Premier League? North of one billion sterling and a fustian pact with a strengthened autocracy. The European Champions’ League? Around $2.8Bn and shelter for a dodgy oligarch. Witnessing the end of a decades long wait to see Ballymena’s Saturday morning league Division One Championship head north? Priceless… er, hospitalization actually. Sporting clichés about ‘laying it on the line’ may be overused but one elated Ballymena-based Division One coach took it to a whole new literal …

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Obama’s endorsement was fittingly understated. Rather than making a great speech, he depicted a scene millions of American parents will relate to: The simple inability to challenge their kids’ assumption that their school friends’ gay parents should be treated differently. Watch here, it’s well worth the 2 minutes. Howard Kurtz cuts to the electoral significance: “At the risk of resorting to hyperbole, this is a political earthquake that shakes the landscape by putting a divisive culture-war issue front and center.” …

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Credit to Londoners. Faced with the bigot, they’ve elected the Tory. For anyone who still considers the leftism defined by internationalism, solidarity and anti-racism as refuge of honor, there’s nothing ironic about welcoming the victory of Tory Boris Johnson. The truth is: the choice could not have been simpler. The blue corner offered voters a candidate the goofish company of whom holds less appeal than entrapment on the inside of an Underground restroom festooned by a backed-up toilet bowl and an unopenable …

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Considering taking the government’s advice on stock-piling fuel? Consider this: “This is our Thatcher moment. In order to defeat the coming miners’ strike, she stockpiled coal. When the strike came, she weathered it, and the Labour Party, tarred by the strike, was humiliated. In order to defeat the coming fuel drivers’ strike, we want supplies of petrol stockpiled. Then, if the strike comes, we will weather it, and Labour, in hock to the Unite union, will be blamed.” Tory Charles …

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Controversial – but Kenny could not have been clearer. During yesterday’s visit to Beijing, Ireland’s Taoiseach Enda Kenny laid bare his government’s support for China’s position on quashing Tibetan independence in stark terms: “Ireland has always fully followed a one-China policy”. For those not familiar with China’s “one-China” policy, this is the frame used by the CCP to justify it’s repression of independence movements. As comments like Kenny’s indicate, this framing technique is in many respects much more effective than …

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Obamacare: Is the Affordable Healthcare Act’s (AHA) “mandate” that all adult citizens must purchase private health insurance constitutional? This week all eyes are on the US Supreme Court’s live deliberations. Regrettably, the court’s contemporary stature is diminished to such an extent that its ruling will be viewed less as an ideologically transcendent legal ruling and more as the predictable outworking of a body whose judges who are seen to serve rather than check their political allies. Whatever the Court’s ruling, this …

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So Goldman Sachs considers its clients a bunch of “muppets”. “Anit-capitalist” types will, of course, have a field day with any smoking guns that help make their case. But the rest of us should be furious with a firm that exploits the systems and norms we all rely on for basic and essential day-to-day financial services. In Goldman’s case however, ‘exploits’ doesn’t begin to do justice to a toxic culture of rapacious greed, moral bankruptcy and ruthless cynicism. At least, …

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So suggests Rush Limbaugh: A professional political gas pipe without peer. America’s reigning Shock Jock supreme, Limbaugh’s enormous national political influence is feared by Republicans, loathed by Democrats, and adored by his daily audience of over 20 million listeners. If Rush Limbaugh is not the de facto leader of today’s GOP, who is? The power and importance of his daily noise is best captured by the silence it generates. When Rush, the single Republican with the largest loyal following in …

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When indeed? Leading Catholic conservative, advocate of gay marriage and center-right Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan –he’s an interesting guy, well worth a read – is fed up with the Cafeteria Catholicism of the Church’s hierarchy. While the Church is insatiably keen to interfere in affairs of state that intimately affect the lives, health and rights of non-Catholics on questions of abortion, gay marriage and even contraception – with prominent US bishops eagerly denouncing leading Catholic Democrats as unworthy of receiving communion …

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