An Sionnach Fionn

11/01/2024

Genocide. It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Apparently...

06/11/2023

versus - a must-watch two-part confrontation between the British presenter and the Egyptian satirist over the war in Gaza

Two weeks ago the exiled Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef took part in a live online debate with Piers Morgan, the conservative British TV presenter, that ignited something of a firestorm on the in…

30/10/2023

When Europeans or Americans ask why the Irish identify or sympathise so much with the Palestinian cause. Because when you know, you know...

22/10/2023

Some thoughts on the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, and the latest bloody chapter in the Palestinian and Israeli conflict

There are relatively few events that could persuade me to leave my voluntary retirement from the intellectual hard graft of political blogging. However, the appalling events in the state of Israel …

21/06/2023

The summer solstice - it's downhill from here on, folks! 😉

21/06/2023

Well, that created some furore on Twitter! 😁 Who woulda thunk that the same people lobbying for Ireland to abandon neutrality and join NATO are the same people who ardently defend the history of Britain's Dirty War in Ireland? It's almost as if there were some sort of political or ideological connection there. Or something... 😉

10/04/2023

General Liam Lynch, Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Member of the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), fatally wounded by rifle fire from soldiers of the Irish National Army (INA) in the Knockmealdown Mountains, died in captivity on the evening of the 10th of April 1923 in nearby Clonmel, aged 30. With his death the defence of the revolutionary Irish Republic effectively collapsed and the imposition of the counter-revolutionary Irish Free State was achieved on behalf of the British-supported Free State regime in Dublin. His body lay in state until his funeral some days later, protected by an honour guard of volunteers from the Cumann na mBan, the republican women's movement.

20/06/2022

Two video lectures from the historian and author Thomas Leahy addressing the UK fan fiction history of the Troubles that has become popular among the hard-right in Brexit Britain...

https://ansionnachfionn.com/2022/06/20/was-the-ira-defeated-or-how-did-the-troubles-end/

Dr Thomas Leahy is a lecturer in British and Irish Politics and Contemporary History at Cardiff University, and the author of The Intelligence War Against the IRA, a carefully sourced study reitera…

11/05/2022

The triad of northern voting blocs - almost but not quite an example of a 40/40/20 rule...

https://ansionnachfionn.com/2022/05/11/stormont-elections-42-pro-union-41-pro-unity-16-other/

A lot of partisan views have been expressed on the results of last week’s regional elections in the north of Ireland. And principally by commentators in the United Kingdom or sympathetic to the UK …

22/08/2021

More illegal opiates are sold to people in the United States of America than any other country in the world - regularly killing more Americans in one year than Islamist violence has killed over the last twenty years...

With the reestablishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in recent days, I thought this would be a useful reminder of one aspect of the wars in Afghanistan, an aspect that has had a far great…

20/08/2021

Ignore the dishonest neoliberal and neoconservative hawks in the US, UK and elsewhere now making common cause and advocating a Forever War in Afghanistan - the end result will still be the same, a year or a hundred years from now

I thought I would post this interesting discussion of recent events in Afghanistan published on the American politics’ podcast, The Realignment. Hosted by centre-right journalists Marshall Ko…

27/06/2021

With the s**t show that is the by-election in Dublin Bay South still gurgling away, casting the main parties – and some of the main candidates – in a less than flattering light, the rea…

24/06/2021

So here we go again. Ten years of successive leaders in the Democratic Unionist Party being hailed by the usual media suspects in Ireland and the United Kingdom as the “moderate” face o…

24/06/2021

At long last, the nightmare is over... :-)

If, like me, you’ve been having a bit of a nightmare with the new so-called block editor when writing and publishing posts on your WordPress hosted blog then I have a (possibly short-lived) s…

08/06/2021

A Morning of the Long Knives....

It seems that Edwin Poots, the new head of the Democratic Unionist Party, is taking no prisoners in his contest with the demoralised followers of the former leader Arlene Foster and her would-be su…

17/05/2021

"Both groups are “warning” of civil unrest by the “people of Northern Ireland” – by which they mean the minority of voters who support an uncompromising version of Brexit – in protest at those aspects of the UK trading and customs arrangements with the European Union that protect the Irish-British peace process. And they are issuing these alarms in such a way as to all but incite the very thing they are supposedly warning against."

As I have noted several times before, when it comes to loyalist violence in the north of Ireland, while British and unionist terrorists may pull the triggers it is British and unionist politicians …

15/05/2021

"...one can’t help but wonder if the speculation that Edwin Poots has no intention of taking up the office of First Minister in the northern executive in order to concentrate on “reforming” the party, leaving the role to one of his deputies, is a sign that the DUP is intent on reducing the status or importance of the cross-community administration at Stormont..."

Following a decade of sympathetic coverage by journalists and commentators pushing the narrative that the Democratic Unionist Party was truly interested in “outreach” to moderate pro-un…

09/05/2021

...Leaving the ever-more urgent constitutional question, also applicable to this country, still to be asked: "If not now, when?"

The largest number of votes submitted in an election for the Scottish parliament and the largest tally of support recorded by pro-independence parties in an election for the Scottish parliament, ye…