Ireland's political and cultural magazine
Hundreds of people line up in a queue as soon as the doors of the van open, each hoping to get a pair of warm trousers. It is a cold November day in Calais, but some of them are wearing just shorts and slippers. In the queue I recognise a Syrian man that I met in […]
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At the end of last September, under the shadow of the glimmering New York skyline overhead, the world celebrated the dawn of a new era. The UN Summit on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) concluded with a massive party in Central Park, graced by the presence of superstars such as Ed Sheerin and Beyonce. The […]
Crossing from Slovakia into Trans-Carpathian Ukraine at the Çop junction, trains from the West halt in deference to the different rail gauges used on the other side. Stalin contrived this to prevent easy entry for invading armies; or escape. Crossing the frontier into the former Soviet Union might instil a little trepidation even into a […]
The Taoiseach got our man at the UN, David Donohue, in to co-chair the process. That looked good and he seemed to do a great job. We need more than rhetoric now though. It would have been better if in addition to signing it he had meant it. There are enough good intentions around to […]
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Everyone I have spoken to says Ibrahim Halawa is a character: a joker who, like many teens, always wanted to be famous. A sad irony that fame has come to him in such awful circumstances: Ibrahim Halawa, along with 492 other protesters, faces the death penalty. Human Rights NGOs Amnesty and Reprieve have both investigated […]
The historic UN Summit on the new Sustainable Development Goals is only weeks away. Everything is all but agreed. The final-outcome document has been in wide circulation since early August and all that remains now is a photo shoot with world leaders and a massive corporate party in Central Park to usher in a new […]
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The political Left, whether social democratic, communist or Trotskyist, has always found the European Union problematic. This is because supranational EU ‘integration’ poses the issue of national independence and national democracy so acutely, something many on the Left find embarrassing. They prefer to concentrate on economic issues, for on political ones like national independence they […]