Ireland
-
VI We might feel that Palestine represents something of our past; that in Palestine we see the history of vicious European colonisation repeated in the media era. This is not untrue, but Macdara has been unsettled by the idea that in Palestine we see our future: an overwhelmingly asymmetrical relation between elites and the people.…
-
III Macdara will never accept that the massive violence of colonisation can be equalled by any violence perpetrated by an anti-colonial movement. In fact this seems to him to be a matter where clarity may be gained from taking a quantitative approach: compare the victims of any single anti-colonial movement with the numbers of dead…
-
I Living in the American-led Order, one is encouraged to imagine that there is a hardy group of thoughtful powers, clustered together in NATO, who are opposed by rogue entities abroad such as Russia, China, and Iran, not to mention the ragtag gang of proxies and clients that these villains have assembled to goad and…
-
I While it was clearly the correct thing to do, not to mention a demonstration of a minimal ability to engage in diplomacy, the coordinated recognition by Ireland, Norway and Spain of Palestine came with a large serving of self-importance. Why the need for the leaders of all three cretinous Government Parties to stand side…
-
As the Liberal Right continues to promote the Extreme Right in Respectable circles—looking for a local Führer to help them sell more papers and gain more viewers or votes—we find that the killing has started. Josip Štrok and David Družinec were attacked in Clondalkin by extremists on 30 March. Štrok, who was 31 years old,…
-
I Tom Murphy’s Bailegangáire does not exist—town without laughter—but almost any town in Ireland could be called Bailegangaeilge—town without Irish—except that it would be known instead as Ballygongwailga. It surprises and disappoints this writer that the Irish people consent to live in a land of makey-uppy placenames. The worst recent example that your correspondent has…
-
Your correspondent hesitates to comment on current events, preferring to write by the candlelight of Retrospect. Nevertheless recent developments in both parts of the country seem to require better commentary than Macdara has seen from the zombie media, so here are his thoughts. Of the permanent Partionist Party in the twenty-six county state, three wings…
-
I To expand a bit on a recent letter: the Irish Government that collapsed in early 2011, the Government of the 30th Dáil, was notable for a number of reasons. In the first place, its willingness to lie about things that took no more effort to disprove than a look at the day’s news: as…
-
After surveying some of the Giants of the Irish political landscape, and while recognising that he has gestured towards her existence before, Macdara wants to explain why he has chosen Claire Hanna as his next subject. In short, the present writer expects that Hanna, currently a lower-order saint in the Partitionist firmament, might find herself…
-
Your correspondent offers a special edition of Profiles in Scourge: a group profile covering the Martin family, otherwise styled the Green Party. I As a function of the stipulation in Bunreacht na hÉireann that the number of Government Ministers must not exceed fifteen, the State presently finds itself with extraordinary ministerial titles that combine multiple…