2019May

The Shadow of Italian Justice

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Nowhere that I have visited has quite the charm of Umbria, Italy’s throbbing green heart, and only land-locked province apart from the Alpine region. Along its horizon, verdant hills culminate in fortified settlements that act as sentinels over fecund valleys, where wheat fields and vineyards have long sustained a saturnine populace. The lumbering waters of … Read more

Bull Moose: Recalling Roe v. Wade in the face of Alabama’s ‘Human Protection Act’

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Earlier this month Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law ‘The Alabama Human Protection Act’ passed by both the Alabama House and Senate entitled. This law, which does not take immediate effect, bans all abortions except: …activities if done with the intent to save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child, remove … Read more

Kilbride

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SINGLE. That’s what my train ticket says. It sticks out in the rain like a young tongue between the teeth of an old machine’s slot. Besotted as I am with the tingle to mingle, naturally I snatch it whispering, ‘Thanks a lot.’ Koreans claim a girl is gold till she’s old. Silver tarnishes on the … Read more

Brown Tide: Five Signs the Irish Government Could Not Give a Shit about the Environment

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Recent Local and European elections witnessed an electoral Green Tide, especially in Dublin, where Ciaran Cuffe topped the European poll. But this week Dubliners are contending with a Brown Tide, of shit, after overspill from the Ringsend Wastewater Plant. It is far from an isolated example of this government’s environmental negligence. What makes it all … Read more

Palestine – To Exist is to Resist

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I have just returned from Hebron in the West Bank, a city where nearly sixty Palestinians have been extra-judicially executed by Israeli forces since the end of September 2015. On my last stint in Hebron, West Bank, while doing check point duty one morning one of my team mates overheard two very small children chatting: … Read more

The Firstborn

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_          I thought that I would read the beginning _                      Of the last gospel, but _                      The book fell open at The beginning of the first, my thoughts misdeeming _                      What I needed to write this poem, _          But the book satisfying them. _          My intention was to write about _                      A father and a … Read more

Freedom of Speech in the Facebook Age

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Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently called for more stringent Internet privacy and election laws saying, ‘We need a more active role for governments and regulators.’[i] In advocating what amounts to censorship, he seems to have at least awoken to the Promethean beast he has summoned. It opens a dangerous vista, however, and is hypocritical for … Read more

Gluttony, Gastronomy, and the Origins of ‘French’ Food

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As French President, François Mitterrand enjoyed his fair share of sumptuous feasts in the haute cuisine tradition. His enduring esteem reflects a wider French anxiety, in an era of Globalisation, expressed by Pascal Ory, as to whether French cuisine will be ‘all that remains when everything else has been forgotten?’[i] Thus, in 1996, for his … Read more