Back in 2016, I was embarking on a road towards sobriety after nearly eighteen years of committed alcoholism, homelessness, depression, and, in many ways, desperation. I needed to change. However, I did not know how or where to begin. I started with ‘one day at a time,’ taking small, manageable steps. If I don’t drink … Read more
Are the Eurocrats and their allies most delusional about the topics they profess to find most urgent? Or are they just setting out to delude the rest of us? This was Ursula Von Der Leyen speaking at the 9th Brussels Conference on Syria, on Saint Patrick’s Day last: The agreement between the central authorities and … Read more
In a turbulent period in European history, and beyond, we are delighted to draw on the sage input of the former Irish ambassador to Russia, poet Philip McDonagh, who also worked for a long period on the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland. He explores the possibilities for a lasting, inclusive peace … Read more
In his last great novel The Plot Against America (2004) Philp Roth posited plausible circumstances where President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the great social democrat, could be dislodged by the proto-fascist Charles Lindbergh. Sadly, a failure to understand history bedevils our time. We have sleepwalked into a similar scenario after the last U.S. Presidential election. Now … Read more
In George Orwell’s 1939 novel Coming Up For Air, at the beginning of chapter 4, issue is taken with substandard food products, which do not taste like the product promoted and, indeed, taste like something else: At this moment I bit into one of my frankfurters, and—Christ! I can’t honestly say that I’d expected the … Read more
Beirut, Mar Elias, 26 November, 7pm. Despite the cold wave that hit the city this week (8 degrees Celsius is equivalent to 0 in the Mediterranean), my mother and sister left all the windows and doors open, to prevent the worst. They are – as I type – sitting in my sister’s room in the … Read more
Like most of us, I spent the past week in a state of deep reflection over our collective national fate. Like some of us, I mourned. The American political sphere seems to have reached an anti-zenith, one culminating in some dystopian rhetorical Babel tower built and sustained by hatred. What have I seen in my … Read more
Media coverage of the war currently unfolding in Lebanon describe Hezbollah as an “Iranian-backed” group, and frame the conflict as one between them and Israel. In this reading, little attention is given to Lebanon beyond Hezbollah, nor that Hezbollah, for all its links to Iran, is first and foremost a Lebanese group embedded in Lebanon’s … Read more
There still exists – even today – a yearning, a nostalgia for European solidarity, a solidarity of European culture. Regrettably, solidarity itself no longer exists, except in hearts, in consciences, in the minds of a few great men at the heart of each nation. European consciousness – or what one might call a ‘cultural European … Read more
Recently walking into a garage to pay for diesel, I scanned the news stand, as is my habit, to see if I had missed any of the day’s events. Something did catch my eye, and surprised me. A county Louth paper, the Drogheda Independent, had a headline about the Lourdes Hospital’s, disgraced surgeon Michael Shine. … Read more