There is one part of the world where a small democracy is routinely threatened and harassed by a dictatorship fifty times its size. I’m speaking of the situation on the Taiwan Strait where an island of 23 million is confronted by a country of 1.3 billion. Taiwan has all the trappings of a state; a flag, an anthemn, an army, a president and a parliament. Yet, thanks to Beijing’s “one China” dogma, the rest of the world refuses to accept that Taiwan exists. China cuts ties with any country whi...
If we are to believe Senator John Kerry’s version of events, he was duped into voting for the Iraq war by nefarious White House lies about Saddam’s WMD capability. The 61 year old veteran politician was led a merry dance with tales of mushroom clouds and nerve gas. Now, like a freshly deflowered teenager, he’s discovered that his suitor lied to get him into bed. There weren’t any WMD after all! Oh, George, how could you?! John Kerry claims that he was one of the people who actually believed t...
The resilience of homophobia is striking, particularly in “traditional” societies like Northern Ireland. Many people here who would never dream of uttering a bad word about those of another race or religion gladly bandy around words like “poof” and “fag”. These terms are still considered acceptable insults for someone whose behaviour fails to live up to some standard of “masculinity”. Homophobia is considered a harmless prejudice, just a bit of banter. It’s obvious that anti-semitism, bigot...
Dr. Rev. Ian Paisley: MLA, MP, leader of the DUP, founder of the Free Presbyterian Church and, come May, ex-MEP. Today the seventy-seven year old announced that he will not seek re-election to the Strasbourg parliament. It is the first indication that he has accepted he can’t go on forever. For the rest of us, this fact has been obvious for some time. The great frame slumps ever forward and the once booming voice is now reedy and weak. Where once he relished confrontation now he avoids it, leavi...
Are the new top dogs of Northern Ireland politics really so different? On the surface the answer is: “yes, of course”. Sinn Fein stands for a united Ireland while the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) believes in the maintenance of the Union at all costs. Ideologically they are as different as chalk and cheese but, on other levels, they look like two peas in a pod. The first striking similarity is the discipline which both parties display. Both the DUP and Sinn Fein brook no dissent in a way un...
It’s a truism of Northern Irish politics that, whenever the political process breaks down, the paramilitaries step in to fill the vacuum. With this in mind, it has been a pleasant surprise that the current impasse has not been accompanied by the rattle of paramilitary guns. Ten people were killed by paramilitaries last year. That’s ten too many but, compared to other peace process years, the number is low. Intimidation and punishment attacks continue as ever but no group has tried to “take the w...
The Hutton report into the suicide of British weapons expert David Kelly is to be published in the coming weeks. Already the media and political elite inside the Westminster bubble are frothing at the mouth with excitement. Will Hutton call Blair a liar? Is Hoon finished? Should Gilligan start looking for alternative employment? All very interesting of course. I, myself will be following events closely. However we should not lose sight of the main issue. This time last year Blair was engaged ...
Monday, 10th November,2003 Arrive in Beijing at 2:30 p.m. and promptly make the first of many mistakes. Accept the offer of a hotel room from the bright young man behind the left-luggage counter. It is, he assures me, “close” to the Forbidden City. I later discover that “close” translates as a one hour walk. The Hua Feng Hotel isn’t too bad in the end complete with surly staff and toilets which flush at least four times out of ten. In the evening I go for a stroll in the vague direction o...
On Saturday night two Chinese families and an African family were viciously assaulted in south Belfast. This is the latest in a long line of attacks on Belfast’s tiny non-white population. Worst of all, two of those injured at the weekend were heavily pregnant women, one due to give birth on Christmas Day. Even with our long history of savage violence, the deliberate targeting of pregnant women represents a new low. Returning home after two years away I was struck by the higher number of bla...
For the Christian population of the Palestinian city of Bethlehem there is little to be merry about this yuletide. Once a booming tourist-driven success, the city has been in a slump since the start of the intifada three years ago. Tourism has all but evaporated and with it the jobs on which many had depended. Israel controls all entry and exit points in to the city often forcing people to wait for hours to pass. It’s little wonder that so many, both Christian and Muslim, are emigrating. It’...
Next year sees the tenth anniversary of Tony Blair’s election as leader of the British Labour Party. For most of this time his position has been unassailable. Taking over a party which had lost four elections in a row, Blair systematically gutted Labour’s core principles in order to win power. Many in the party who were unhappy about this chose to remain silent, such was their desire to win power. It was hard to criticise their silence as Labour won a landslide victory in 1997 followed by an unp...
Even for those of us who opposed, and continue to oppose, the war in Iraq, it's impossible not to take some pleasure at the sight of the Butcher of Baghdad paraded in front of the cameras. Looking like Karl Marx after a few too many, this is an ignominious end for a man who once terrified millions. The hawks have been cock-a-hoop over Saddam's capture. I say let them have their day in the sun. It's been nothing but bad news for them for the past few months. Each good day is followed by dozen...
More than three years into the second intifada, is it possible to view the uprising as anything other than a disaster for the Palestinian people? Thousands dead, tens of thousands injured and imprisoned, homes and fields destroyed, the PA smashed, rampant unemployment and emigration. Was all this sacrifice in vain? Sadly, it seems that it was. The prospect of a Palestinian state, never bright, seems dimmer than at any time since the Algiers conference of 1988. This is not to say that the pre-...
With their WMD argument hanging by the loosest of threads, the hawks have tried to focus attention on the nature of the regime which their illegal war in Iraq overthrew. "O.K.". goes the argument, "we made up all that stuff about WMD, but look, we got rid of the bad guy so alls well that ends well." The problem with this is that Bush and Blair refuse to accept the logic of their own argument. There are many repressive regimes in the world, why not overthrow them? If, as the hawks claim, it's...