On the eve of the Iraq war last year I was discussing the upcoming outbreak of hostilities with an English friend of mine. "Did you hear" he asked me "that only 25% of British people are in favour of going to war?" "That's pretty low", I replied. "Too right, that's the 25% who permanently want to go to war, they don't care who it's against." He was exaggerating but still he had a point. The British are undoubtedly a war-like people. A depressingly high number of them like to wallow in nost...
The external url is Avnery's thoughts on the mantra "we have no-one to negotiate with". A fine read. Also I found this Link . It's a collection of his recent articles. It includes the story of how he inadvertantly saved Moshe Dayan's life in 1973: "On the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Israeli newspapers are full of revelations about it. Among them is the disclosure that I saved the life of Moshe Dayan. That surprised me, as it would have surprised Dayan, if h...
The European Union (EU) usually throws up controversies which are impenetrable to all but the most jargonistically proficient. Debates about subsidiarity, arguments over qualified majority voting, disputes over the minutest detail of agricultural policy; the Union's negotiations are often a matter of zero interest to the average European. So it's welcome that at least one aspect of the current debate on the European constitution is accesible to all. I'm referring here to the argument over...
Stubbornness is a valuable attribute to possess. Success in any field is almost impossible without a willingness to persevere through difficult times. Our progress as a species from hunter-gatherers to astronauts would not have been possible if we gave up at the first sign of difficulty. But stubbornness is far from completely positive. It may very often be necessary, but it can also be destructive. Too much stubbornness leads to bitterness and hatred. Martin Luther King encpsulated this ...
There's no other way to describe the turnout in last week's election to the European parliament. In Ireland 58% voted in the South and 51% in the North. Ordinarily, I'd describe these per centages as pathetic but, in light of the figures from some other parts pf the continent, Ireland looks like a star student. Perhaps most shocking of all was the fact that the turnout in the new accession states of the east was actually worse than that in the veteran western states. In Poland, only a fift...
As someone who thinks of himself as left of centre, I naturally hope that this week's European elections see a large number of members returned to Strasbourg under the umbrella of the Party of European Socialists (PES). I certainly hope that one of these new MEPs has a Belfast accent. But strangely, I also hope that as few as possible of the PES' MEPs are members of the British Labour Party. It is sad but true that a meltdown in suport for the Labour Party in this week's poll could actually b...
Not all Americans are grieving this week at the news of the death of their 40th president. For those to the left of the Democratic mainstream, the passing of the Gipper is no reason for sorrow. Indeed some of the people who have written about Reagan this week should quite frankly have waited until the man was buried before having their say. In spite of this, it's fair to say that, as a whole, America feels a sense of loss at the moment. This feeling envelops those who voted for Reagan and...
The great Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, as well as being a writer of some renown, was also a Member of Parliament (MP) in the British House of Commons. Such was the tedious nature of his speeches that his fellow MPs took to calling him "Tea-Bell Burke". When the great man rose to speak, many others in the chamber took this as their cue to retire to the tea-room. It's ironic that a man who in life was known to those around him as someone who would never use one word when ten would do, sho...
There's a scene in Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock" when the "hero" of the piece, Joxer Daly, turns his attention to those republicans who died fighting for Ireland to be free. He is unsymapthetic" "There's no use them wailing when they meet a soldier's fate" he concludes. Reading this ten years ago, I was struck by how true the sentiment sounded in spite of its harshness. Daly was talking about those who died during the War of Independence over eighty years ago but his words seem eq...
In the corner shop the other week I got chatting to the owner. After a while, I remarked that his English was very good. With typical Korean modesty, he refused the complimnet with the explanation: "I worked as an engineer in Saudi Arabia, working with westerners. But that was twenty years ago and I've forgotten a lot." Like most of what he said, this was grammatically perfect. I thought of the shopkeeper on Sunday when news broke of the attack on a compound for foreign workers in the Saud...
The century which ended a few years ago is often refered to as "the American century". For those who speak of the twentieth century in this way, the great narrative of that time was the emergence of the US from being a minor player in 1900 to a position of unquestioned supremacy over the world by the 1990s; standing head and shoulders above Germany, France, Russia and Britain, in whose shadows it once dwelt. This is true but still, if a film were to be made of the past century which could...
It's ten years since the emrgence onto Northern Ireland's (NI) political scene of the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). These two groups, known collectively as "fringe loyalists" gave political representation to the two main unionist paramilitary groups; the UDA and the UVF. Their emergence onto the scene was welcomed by the media and political elite as a positive development, "a breath of fesh air" into the tired old world of unionism. They were very...
I've spent my life living on two islands, Ireland and Taiwan. The idea of getting in a car and driving to another country is, pardon the pun, foreign to me. I regard international travel as having to involve either a boat or a plane. It means crossing a sea which defines my home. Currently I'm living on the Eurasian landmass but I still feel like I'm on an island. As a friend pointed out to me, South Korea is the only continental country in the world out of which it is impossible to drive...
The creative juices haven't been flowing in the past week. It happens to us all I think, sometimes you just can't come up with something to write about. Anyway, I can't let the blog lie idle (especially as I'm perched right on the edge of the top forty, about to fall onto page three of the list of top users). I was thinking of writing something about the Israeli invasion of Rafah but then I read this piece by Uri Avnery Link and I relised that anything I wrote would just be a pale imit...
One thing that really grates with me is when people refer to Northern Ireland (NI) as "Ulster". I don't want to be a pedant, but it's important to note that NI is a state of six counties while Ulster is a province of nine. Sometimes I think that unionists conflate the two terms in an attempt to bestow an historical legitimacy on NI which it doesn't posess. It's important to keep in mind that partition entailed not just the division of Ireland but also the division of Ulster. Cavan, Monagha...