I wonder if we are, as novelist Salman Rushdie has written, at the deepest level of our nature, “frontier-crossing beings.” Is it part of an innate desire to step across borders, and by doing so enter into places that can be disorienting or even dangerous? If that is so, are we not wall-builders as well, determined to keep at bay the foreign, the invader, and the … [Read more...] about Good Friday and Us
Irish politics
News: Fresh Talks to
Kick-Start Assembly
Political parties in Northern Ireland are gearing up for September talks in England at Leeds Castle in an effort to restore the dissolved Northern Ireland Assembly. Arms decommissioning, policing, and demilitarization are again expected to top the agenda, and although there is little sign of where a breakthrough can be made, pre-talks overtures from the main parties – the … [Read more...] about News: Fresh Talks to
Kick-Start Assembly
News: Fresh Talks to Kick-Start Assembly
Political parties in Northern Ireland are gearing up for September talks in England at Leeds Castle in an effort to restore the dissolved Northern Ireland Assembly. Arms decommissioning, policing, and demilitarization are again expected to top the agenda, and although there is little sign of where a breakthrough can be made, pre-talks overtures from the main parties – the … [Read more...] about News: Fresh Talks to Kick-Start Assembly
Loyalist Ceasefires
Declared Over
The Northern Secretary John Reid announced recently that he considered the ceasefires of three loyalist groups to be over. The actions of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) were so blatant and persistent that they could no longer be ignored by politicians.
The move came mostly in response to the murder of Northern journalist Martin … [Read more...] about Loyalist Ceasefires
Declared Over
For the Defense
If political power can be judged by how an individual influences society and changes its laws, then there's an arguable case for British defense lawyer Michael Mansfield being one of the most powerful figures on the British stage today. The list of trials and inquiries in which he has played a major role reads like a legal history of the last 20 years, including … [Read more...] about For the Defense