Ireland’s Toxic Culture of Omertà

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

A Whistleblower’s Motive

In a seminal scene at the end of the film Joker (2019) the eponymous character, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is being interviewed by Robert de Niro’s character, the TV talk show host Murray Franklin. The Joker asks: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and … Read more