The decision by the BBC to remove an episode of the classic 1970s’ sitcom Fawlty Towers from the streaming service UKTV in response to the anti-racism protests sweeping the world has sparked a bitter war of words between supporters and opponents of the move in Britain. The controversy is focused on the well-known 1975 episode […]
via The British Blindspot In The Fawlty Towers Controversy? The Irish Orangutans — AN SIONNACH FIONN
While the journalist and television presenter Piers Morgan has known no end of controversies and scandal in his long media career, of late garnering much criticism for his relationship with Donald Trump, future generations will probably judge him to have been on the right side of history in relation to the Covid-19 crisis in Britain. […]
via Piers Morgan Highlights The Utter Chaos Of The UK’s Covid-19 Response — AN SIONNACH FIONN
Can we hear the awkward movements of a ménage à trois between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party shuffling hesitantly into view? Given yesterday’s Red C poll in the Business Post this may well be the last opportunity for Micheál Martin to consummate his desire to become Taoiseach as his party continues to […]
via The Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Green Party Thruple — AN SIONNACH FIONN
Will the worms of the imperialist invasion and occupation come wriggling out of the can? Will the deal between Dr. Frankenstein (the US imperialists) and the Taliban monster they created help the latter to become a “legitimate” government in the land they helped ruin? Or will they be further exposed through the investigation?
It seemed an unlikely prospect. The International Criminal Court has tended to find itself accused of chasing up the inhumane rogues of Africa rather than those from any other continent. It has also been accused of having an overly burdensome machinery and lethargy more caught up with procedure than substance. Critics fearing a behemoth snatching soldiers from the armed forces of various states could rest easy, at least in part.
Law tends to be a manifestation of power and international law, in particular, tends to be a manifestation of consensus. And the powerful rarely give their consent in matters of trying crimes against humanity when it comes to their own citizens. Qualifications and exemptions abound, often cited with a certain sneer.
This explains the sheer fury and curiosity caused by the decision of the ICC’s Appeals Chamber on March…
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A very interesting summary of activity by a revolutionary group nearly written out of Irish history.
by Mick Healy, in collaboration with several former Saor Eire members
(Mick wrote an article about Saor Eire which appeared on this site in 2011; this is an updated and expanded version of that article, including new material added by former Saor Eire members; the article has been proofed and edited by me – PF)
The 1960s was a time of upheaval and change in conservative Irish society; social attitudes, fashion and music, for instance, all changed dramatically. New social movements reflected the thinking of a new generation that, in particular, wanted more freedom. The huge student-worker protests of May-June 1968 in France, the Vietnamese struggle to remove the US States, its allies and their Vietnamese toadies, the US civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and the national liberation struggles in Latin America and Africa galvanised opposition to the existing order. In Ireland, these events inspired people…
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Glad to add this to the series of articles pointing out the hypocrisy of the (until now) main Irish political parties in criticising SF for its paramilitary history (shared by ALL the main irish parties). Thanks to Sionnach Fionn for this from nine years ago and to Jim Monaghan for bringing it to my attention.
Éamon Gilmore and Proinsias de Rossa flank their then Workers Party boss, Tomás Mac Giolla, a former leader of the Official IRA, 1987. Both became senior members of the Irish Labour Party in the 1990s-2000s
The hijacking of the leadership of the Irish Labour Party by Official Sinn Féin / Official IRASinn Féin the Workers Party / Official IRAthe Workers Party / Official IRA / Group BDemocratic Left in the 1990s is one of the great putsches of Irish political history. The sequence of events are clear enough. By the mid-to-late 1960s the higher echelons of Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army had come under the influence of would-be communist revolutionaries more concerned with liberating the global working classes than the Irish communities in the UK-ruled north-east of Ireland. The fact that the working classes of the world weren’t all that sanguine about the glories of communist liberation and that Irish citizens living in the north of the country were rather more concerned about being…
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Another excellent video essay from the pop-culture commentator Leon Thomas of the YouTube channel Renegade Cut examining how American cinema in the 1980s and ’90s managed to craft a Hollywood version of the Vietnam War that transformed the United States into the chief victim of the conflict rather than the chief perpetrator. Which echoes how […]
via Renegade Cut: Rambo – Hollywood Vietnam — AN SIONNACH FIONN
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson has advised that members of the Brexit party returning from the European Parliament will be quarantined and monitored for 14 days in military facilities. “This is a necessary precaution to protect against the spread of dangerous ideas.”
They have advised the public to remain calm. “These are standard proceedures. The graves have only been prepared as a last resort.”
Penetrating analysis of politicians’ quotations concludes with: “Remember during the independence referendum campaign when Better Together assured Scotland that the only way that this country could protect itself from political extremism and anti-democratic forces was to remain a part of the sensible and moderate UK? Now we know the truth, it’s the UK which is normalising the far right, it’s the UK which threatens democracy. We have a British government which has destroyed the traditional understanding of Scottish Unionism, of Scotland as a voluntary partner in a union of nations, and replaced it with a quasi-fascist conception of a unitary state.”
Colonial Governor Alister Jack was much to our collective intense disappointment not amongst those Tory MPs in Scotland who got his jotters along with Stephen Kerr, Kirstene Hair, whoever it was who was pressed into service as the stunt double for Ross Thomson, and the rest. This means he’s still gracing our airwaves and making the sort of comments that make it even more difficult to comprehend what this clueless creature is doing infesting our public life like an upper class public school boy on a gap year. Last week he was being interviewed on BBC Good Morning Scotland, natch, and was asked what his response was to the statement by Nicola Sturgeon that the UK was a voluntary union of nations.
His reply ought to have been plastered all over the front pages of the press in Scotland. It ought to have elicited a shocked reply and an intensive…
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SHAME: Former SAS chief Andy Whiddett was honoured by the Queen for his services in the North of Ireland – but now he’s banged up in prison.
A SENIOR British Army officer-jailed for a catalogue of child sex crimes-masterminded the murder of three young Irish republicans.
Andrew Whiddett is pictured here with his second wife Lani leaving Croydon Crown Court in London at an earlier hearing on April 23rd.
Andrew Whiddett-banged up for three years and two months after he pleaded guilty to abusing kids abroad-is a former member of the SAS. Lieutenant Colonel Whiddett served several tours of duty in the North of Ireland during the mid-1980s. And he was rewarded with an MBE from the Queen. Whiddett worked undercover in the Bogside and Creggan areas of Derry, which included carrying out close quarter…
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rebelbreeze 