Month: August 2021

Letters

Letter from Galway

In this seemingly never-ending “Decade of Commemorations,” with such highlights as the recent commemoration of partition (!), some things seem to get forgotten (besides truth and common sense)—things close to home and things far away. Close to home, here in Galway, it won’t be the execution of Commandant Liam Mellows […]

Current Affairs Ireland

Brexit and reunification

Five years after the Brexit referendum, its effects on the relationships between the Irish state, Britain and the European Union continue to evolve. As a direct result of Brexit, the issue of Irish reunification has become “respectable” and is no longer confined to Republicans and the Communist Party. However, others […]

History

The true face of fascism

Juvenile and other immature males seem to have a morbid fascination with fascism, or rather with the trappings of fascism: uniforms, flags, marching, and of course shouting and threatening. But they are only trappings. There’s more to fascism than that. In various European countries where “normal” capitalism is collapsing, fascism—the […]

Books

Shuggie Bain | Book Review

■ Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain (New York: Grove Press, 2020) Douglas Stuart won the 2020 Booker Prize for his debut novel, Shuggie Bain, set in his home town, Glasgow, in the 1980s. Like many working-class writers, Stuart found himself doubting the value of his story. “I used to ask myself, […]

Culture Ireland

Laughing at what we are

In what other country would there be web sites offering the equivalent of “funny Irish place-names”?—which in fact are not Irish at all but corruptions. And the great majority of these are not even corruptions in the usual linguistic sense—i.e. changes made over time by the usage of people (in […]

Imperialism Socialism

The war on socialist Cuba

On 11 July the world’s media gleefully reported that there were protests in Cuba. As expected, no context was given, just flippant explanations about shortages leading to “historic unrest.” It is astounding that the media managed to miss the fact that Cuba is in a situation of enduring the effects […]