Ireland's political and cultural magazine
No one who had the misfortune to serve in the Garda during Larry Wren’s bible thumping Reign of Terror as Garda Commissioner, 1983 – 1987, is in the least bit surprised by the Medieval cruelty meted out to former Garda Majella Moynihan by Wren and his lackies when she was a young recruit. Majella Moynihan Wren […]
Lyra McKee’s book ‘Angels With Blue Faces’ is the result of a five-year investigation into what Robert Bradford MP was digging into before he was murdered. It is quite possible that she uncovered one of – if not – the most putrid British Intelligence dirty-tricks operations of the entire Troubles. If not for her, the […]
EXPOSING THE MOST SINISTER AND HITHERTO SUPPRESSED SCANDAL OF THE TROUBLES Lyra McKee’s book on the murder of Robert Bradford MP is to be published shortly. Copies of it can be pre-booked by visiting the website of her publishers, Excalibur. The book is called ‘Angels with Blue Faces’. Those interested would be well advised to […]
The British Establishment transformed itself into a lightning conductor to harness the visceral anger generated by the senseless killing of Lyra McKee in Derry on 18 April. It then redirected that energy as a debilitating shock into the heart of the New IRA. No less a figure than Britain’s PM Theresa May turned up for […]
Lyra McKee’s book on the assassination of Robert Bradford MP is to be released within a matter of weeks. The book will explore the deeply sinister links between the slaying of Bradford and the Kincora Boys Home scandal. Village readers will be familiar with the scandal on account of the reports we have been publishing […]
ON FEBRUARY 12, a criminal trial of twelve Catalan independence leaders, ten of them elected representatives, commenced before the Spanish Supreme Court. Though it is dressed up as a judicial process clearly it has political motivations and implications. It is clear there are systemic problems with the Spanish legal system. Village interviewed Olivier Peter, a […]
IRISH AGRICULTURAL policy over the past decade has generated unsustainable levels of dairy and beef production. The national herd is approaching 8 million in number and each cow produces 2 tonnes of harmful emissions per year. Industrial-scale farming has resulted in serious climate and national food-security issues which now must be addressed by incentivising the […]
WE NEED to think big and green about energy in our efforts to contain carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. Renewable energy should be generated where there is capacity (e.g. Ireland – wind, wave, tidal; Spain – thermal, Iceland – geothermal). The challenge faced by Europe and Ireland especially is how to increase the share […]
ON 10 January 2016, Carles Puigdemont, a journalist and the mayor since 2011 of the city of Girona, northeast of Barcelona, was sworn in as the President of Catalonia. In assuming office he made abundantly clear that his foremost priority would be arranging a poll on self-determination, characterising his approach a few months later as […]
I HAVE KNOWN Ciaran Collins for several years. Days before we first met at a political meeting in Dublin, Ciaran had attended the funeral of Michael Lutton in Lurgan, Co Armagh. Lutton was a member of the Continuity IRA (CIRA) who died on 1 November 2010 and received a military funeral. I had never heard […]
IN MID-MARCH, following civil actions, the suspects for the 1998 Omagh bombing, which perpetrated the worst loss of life of the whole Northern Ireland troubles were bankrupted, one of them on his deatbbed. Focus was on the murderers not the victims or the security forces. However, there are still questions about prior knowledge the security […]
THE TRUTH is that the world is laughing at the UK’s discomfiture over Brexit. The world will be mildly discommoded by whatever happens but it be will be amply compensated by the comedy of the UK’s stupidity made possible by ignorance of history and economics. For a long time much of the world really didn’t […]
ON FEBRUARY 26th Mick Wallace and I attended a rally addressed by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. It closed an International People’s Assembly which had taken place in Caracas that week, with over 450 community and trade union delegates from all over the world. Fresh from the Government’s defeat of Opposition attempts to break through the […]
THE SCATHING criticism by a human rights working group of the United Nations of the Government’s failure to meet its obligation to deliver affordable, public housing will not surprise those experiencing the unrelenting rise in homelessness and the cost of rental accommodation. What is new in the letter written by Surya Deva, chief rapporteur of […]
GEORGE MCLOUGHLIN made a Protected Disclosure in 2015 – when he was employed as a labour inspector with the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation (DJEI) – concerning what he perceived to be a culture of deference to non-compliant employers in the management of the National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) (subsequently the inspection services of […]
LEFT-WING MEANS favouring equality over unfettered freedom, redistribution of resources over property rights. If you’re on the left you’ll appreciate planning, taxation, minority rights and nationalisation. If you don’t maybe you’re anti-Establishment or anti-intellectual, or post-Left-and-Right or Fianna Fáil or just confused. Maybe a Trump figure or the gilets jaunes or the New Land League […]
RECAP OF PART ONE In Part One of this story, Alan Kerr described how he was sexually abused by three men at Williamson House, a Belfast Corporation Welfare Department care home in Belfast, in the 1970s. He was only six years of age when he was first raped. One of his abusers was Eric Witchell, […]
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THE RIGHT to Private Property and private ownership of goods tends to divide the Right from the Left. In Locke and Hobbes, it is the central human right as it has always been from a Whig-Liberal or indeed a Neo-Liberal perspective. From a Marxist perspective it is an unqualified evil and even those who accept […]
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THROUGHOUT ITS 20-year history, the Euro has been depicted as a crucial element of the development of the European Union. It was supposed to strengthen the European economy, bring EU Member States closer together and increase EU citizens’ prosperity. Yet, after the economic crisis in 2008/09 experienced by southern Member States and Ireland, the reputation […]
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