United States – Slugger O'Toole

27 school shootings so far this year in America…

Brian O'Neill on May 25, 2022, 10:59 am

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A North Texas teacher attending the March for Our Lives sister rally in Denton, Texas on March 24th, 2018.

The shooting in Texas of 19 school kids and 2 adults is pretty depressing, even more so when you find out it is actually the 27th school shooting this year alone, and the 200th mass shooting. And the solution? How about arming the teachers? Actual politicians are proposing this. Other suggestions include hiring ex-military to protect schools. Because we all know the solution to gun crime is more guns… Asked on Newsmax about his solution for school shootings, Texas AG …

What is the point of Brandon Lewis?

Brian Walker on February 13, 2022, 3:31 pm

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On the Sunday Morning show on BBC 1, NI Secretary Brandon Lewis let slip that he’d “spent the week in the US”. He also enlightened us that he visited Northern Ireland “most weeks” but didn’t say for how long. His most recent contributions are in written statements urging the DUP to return to the First Minister post immediately and saying that No, he will not call an Assembly election early. These read as if they’re for the record rather to …

The real question for American militants on both sides, but mainly White : do you want to fight or not?

Brian Walker on January 23, 2021, 2:01 pm

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The more urgent question is not what has made America become so polarised but why it hasn’t broken out into continuous ethnic violence. The sight of “America’s burning” in police and race riots and all those weird white guys armed to the teeth add up to a potent threat, if episodes like Charlottesville and the Capitol storming are joined up into continuous action. The US’ s rhetoric of law and order so stoutly professed by Republicans in particular will …

What happened to the Republican Party?

Dan Payne on January 10, 2021, 4:05 pm

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In ten days’ time, despite the best efforts of the Republicans, Joe Biden will be sworn in as America’s next President, and its political system will continue to operate unimpeded – again, despite the Republicans’ best efforts. Yes, the events of Wednesday in Washington DC were shocking, and Donald Trump has been a chief executive like no other, having, over his four years in power, plumbed the depths somewhat as to what an American president could or should be allowed …

RTE’s celebration of John Hume feels like nostalgia for a time that has gone

Brian Walker on August 7, 2018, 8:59 pm

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RTE have just screened a documentary In the Name of Peace; John Hume in America by Maurice Fitzpatrick which the film maker has kindly drawn to my attention. Being in London I cannot access it yet nor have I read his accompanying book. But from the YouTube trail, this is a major celebration of John Hume’s life and work. Anybody who was anybody is in it, led by Clinton and Blair, although Jimmy Carter was not quite so dazzled. As …

Will Northern Ireland now look to the Republic for abortion rights – or Trump’s America?

Brian Walker on May 26, 2018, 8:49 am

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On the face of it, you’d think it’s a non- question. It just couldn’t happen in Northern Ireland where the direction of travel is surely the other way. But in the States, Roe v Wade, the essential abortion law of the whole country, is under unprecedented attack from the conservative evangelical right, coalescing round the Trump coalition. Given the ideological split on the current Supreme Court, with five conservative justices to four liberal ones, President Donald Trump is one Supreme Court …

A cautious welcome for Bombardier’s apparent rescue

Brian Walker on October 17, 2017, 10:58 am

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While the news about Bombardier is very welcome, a note of caution is also due. Boeing is not taking it lying down. Again, though Bombardier are saying that a new C-series production line in Alabama means expansion of C-series production as a whole, there are bound to be fears that Bombardier/Airbus may eventually switch some production to Alabama at the expense of Belfast if sales forecasts don’t materialise. However the Chinese are said to be interested in the project. And …

A modest case for Donald Trump. To be the exception may not be all bad

Brian Walker on January 21, 2017, 10:31 am

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Entirely predictably, a chorus of commentators was affronted that Donald Trump so brutally violated the convention for lofty platitudes or proclaiming change in stately code in his inaugural address. It was so much better in the days of boomer youth. But was it? . JFK for instance, in Ted Sorensen’s imposing words of the famous inaugural of 1961, promised that American would “ pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure …

Flegs and Anthems

Gerry Lynch on February 15, 2015, 10:28 am

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I was interested to note the Union Flag carefully positioned immediately beside Belfast PUP Councillor Julie-Anne Corr Johnson for her interview with BBC NI’s The View recently. “On one hand they tell us the British identity of Northern Ireland citizens is under threat”, she thundered, “whilst at the same time denying British citizens like me access to British laws and British rights.” The openly lesbian Corr Johnson was objecting to the DUP campaign for a ‘religious opt-out’ to equality laws …

Paper trail: from Northern Ireland’s hooded men to CIA’s global torture

Patrick Corrigan on December 9, 2014, 8:09 pm

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In August 1971 the UK authorities arrested and interned hundreds of men in Northern Ireland. Fourteen of them were selected for “special treatment” – torture in a specially-built interrogation centre at a British Army camp. The men were subjected to the soon-to-be infamous “five techniques” of hooding, stress positions, white noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and water – combined with brutal beatings & death threats. Allegations soon emerged of abuse. Amnesty International sent its first ever research mission …

The New York Times hails Game of Thrones boost for Northern Ireland

Brian Walker on July 8, 2013, 4:00 pm

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Great that the New York Times has noticed that Northern Ireland is now suffused with a different sorts of “ intrigue sex and moody landscapes” which is drawing then in rather than keeping them away.. Chronicling a war among dynasties for an Iron Throne in the imaginary land of Westeros, the HBO fantasy series is a cult hit suffused with intrigue, sex and moody landscapes. The latter is making Northern Ireland a magnet for fans who want to visit places like …

American dream and the slow wasting of the US’s public infrastructure…

Mick Fealty on July 17, 2012, 5:08 pm

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At the Telegraph blog, Tim Stanley demonstrates (intentionally, or otherwise) the tensioned US politicians must walk between between a long term collective public interest and the needs of a private entreprise that’s brought life-changing technology to a much wider world. But in the case of the US, this is not simply a government versus private citizen tension. The US is at heart and sole a Whiggish Republic. You have to go north of the 49th parallel to encounter Tory Canada, …

Time to end the war in Afghanistan?

Patrick Corrigan on August 7, 2011, 12:57 pm

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Yesterday was the deadliest day so far for the United States of its 10-year war in Afghanistan, as thirty members of the American special forces were killed when the Taliban shot down a Chinook helicopter. That brings the US death toll since the start of the conflict to over 1,000. The UK has lost over 300. Afghanistan: countless thousands (ISAF / NATO hasn’t cared to count too closely). This year, the projected total cost to the US relating to Afghanistan is …

Wikileaks reminder that Obama’s still Guantánamo gaoler-in-chief

Patrick Corrigan on April 27, 2011, 11:31 pm

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As Ireland readies itself to welcome President Obama to these shores next month, those with an interest in upholding international law have been given reason to recall how he has failed the litmus test of Guantánamo. While the President appears to have forgotten his January 2010 promise to close the internment camp within a year, a new batch of leaked government documents provides a reminder of just how iniquitous the US experiment in unlawful detention has proven. The new document …

US dithering over Libya suggests the moment of overstretch has arrived

Brian Walker on March 16, 2011, 2:16 pm

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Just to lift sights out of the island for a bit, a pre-Paddy’s Day reflection on America that has nothing to do with Ireland. This it will be noted, is in accord with Ireland’s new found modesty about its own importance across the pond. To Europeans, not to mention pro-democracy Arabs, Obama’s silence over Libya is deafening. And yet Americans seem content with that, relieved perhaps that coverage of Gadaffi’s threatened roll-over of the Libyan revolution has been virtually wiped out …