Ireland's political and cultural magazine
Democracy poses a threat to Israeli governments. By Kevin Barrington The theocratic nature of Israel has for too long been concealed behind the empty slogan ‘the Middle East’s only democracy’. The idea of a Jewish state is tolerated and defended by the same ‘progressives’ who shiver at the mention of an Islamic one. And while […]
Silvio Berlusconi matted down the hair-like thing between his tentacles with his fat slimy fingers, removed himself from an Umbrian nineteen-year old, and slithered down in the lapping waters of the bath just run for him by a harem of Tuscan sexworkers. It was very late. The water gurgled gleefully in the Carrara-marbled lavatorium of […]
A journey through the complexity of former Yugoslavia By Frank Shouldice Agnostic Yugoslavs suddenly became Catholic Croatians, Orthodox Serbs or Bosnian Moslems. These differences were masterfully exploited by political leaders clinging to nationalist agendas – most especially by Milosevic in Serbia and Franco Tudjman in Croatia. The train that flits through the backwaters of northern […]
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In the Occupied Territories Israel imposes ‘apartheid’ between Arabs and settlers. Frank Shouldice Trader Jack stands in the doorway of his souvenir shop in Manger Square in Bethlehem. Fifty yards from the Church of the Nativity it’s a prime location for selling knick-knacks and miniature religious crafts. Jack is not Bethlehem’s most famous son but […]
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Global aid to developing countries is less than the $160bn lost annually by them to tax dodging by multinationals. Sorley McCaughey Every year, the world’s poorest countries lose billions of dollars in potential revenue through the tax dodging of unscrupulous multinational companies (MNCs). For example, between 2005 and 2007, Ireland contributed €95million to Mozambique, but […]
The EU uses ‘soft power” aggressively – sometimes to the disadvantage of poor ‘partner countries’ such as those in Africa, the Carribean and the Pacific area Justin Frewen Drawn up in 1997, only a few years after the end of the Cold War, the European Commission’s report, Agenda 2000, manifests the EU’s intention to play […]
When Obama came to power last year, he pledged to close the prison at Guantanamo within one year, by January 2010. Not only did he fail to do that, but he has also maintained a second similar prison in Afghanistan, at Bagram Air Base, near Kabul.