Ireland's political and cultural magazine
By Joseph de Burca. This week marks the 32nd anniversary of the assassination of the Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane. In 1989 he was shot dead by UDA killers controlled by MI5 in front of his young family at his home. The British government continues to resist a judicial inquiry into the murder despite castigation from […]
By Margaret Urwin. In ‘The Intelligence War against the IRA’, Thomas Leahy, Senior Lecturer in Politics in Cardiff University, challenges the growing dominant narrative that the IRA was brought to the negotiating table in the 1990s because they had been ‘brought to their knees’ by British intelligence. Since the outing of State agents, Stakeknife and […]
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A poem in the pandemic, by Kevin Higgins after Brian Patten Now all the old gods have died or are on life support in the prison infirmary psychiatric wing we have a new name for the absolute: AstraZeneca. Even those who get emotional at dinner parties about the state of the planet know there’s no […]
Kildare Councillors flouted the public interest and perhaps the law in approving the sale of Council land without including its additional actual value to the purchaser as a “ransom strip” – following a valuation by a former Fine Gael Councillor By Fiona McLoughlin Healy. The role of Councillors in disposing of assets is an important […]
By Kevin Higgins Inspired by the apologies of British Labour Party leader Leader Keir Starmer for his party’s “anti-Semitism” and his recent appointment of a former Israeli intelligence officer as Labour’s head of social media. To any white South Africans hurt by the anti-Apartheid movement. To any tobacco plantation owner’s son barred by Emancipation from […]
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Drafters of the US Constitution foresaw violent demagogues, and Presidential Inaugurations have mostly befitted the momentous transfers of power By John Vivian Cooke. Exactly on the stroke of noon on 20 January, Donald Trump will be out of office. There will be no more lies, frauds, outrages, or broken laws from President Trump. His presidency […]
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Having failed to crush, flatten, or close our borders against it, as Winter begins to put its uncouth fingernails all over us there is talk of negotiations. King Virus comes to the table wearing a crown of spikes that fans out to fill the whole room and can’t be removed except on the day of […]