Archive for June, 2006
Eyeless in Gaza
This article began as a comment in response to Gideon’s excellent reply to an article about Israel’s recent incursion into Gaza. The comment is here and I encourage you to read it. I feel Gideon’s comments about Palestinian avoidable mortality are worth thinking carefully about, especially since I’d been talking to Yaakov about Israel’s choices [...]
The wind that shakes the barley
Gripping his prize for The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which takes its title from an Irish folk song, Loach said: “Our film is about a little step, a very little step, in the British confronting their imperialist history, and if we tell the truth about the past, maybe we [can] tell the truth about [...]
Edges are fun
There’s a DJ who played at some of our parties who had an album called Edges R Fun. I asked him why he’d called it that, and his reponse was to ask me what I thought. Which launched me into this (oversimplified) explanation:
Edges are very interesting, because all life happens at an edge. If you [...]
Swords into Ploughshares
I met Ciaron O’Reilly six years ago, at a demonstration outside the World Economic Forum in Melbourne. He struck me as committed, sensible, passionate. I was moved by the sacrifice of the Ploughshares movement and although I’m not a Christian I have great respect for people who express the best elements of their faith in [...]
Politics mysticism and manipulation
I present this with a certain amount of trepidation, although it’s a topic in which I’ve had an interest for a number of years. If you think, reading it, that it’s unduly contentious, or that I’m being inflammatory, then please bear with me and try to understand my point before taking me to task on [...]
Occupation and Bloody Sunday
When the British Army arrived in Northern Ireland it was welcomed by many Catholics, who believed it would act as a neutral peacekeeping force which could protect them from brutal Protestand mobs such as the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Special Ulster Constabulary. Things began to go wrong, however, with the imposition of the 1971 [...]
Reply to the global warming sceptics
Greenhouse sceptics argue that the proponents of a human cause of global warming have not made a convincing case. They say we need to understand things better and rule out natural causes before we make costly changes to legislation. This attitude is based on bad science, and the consequences are serious.
No one disputes the basic [...]
