The Colombian legislature has once again failed to pass a law legalising euthanasia. Earlier this week a bill proposed by representative Juan Fernando Reyes Kuri needed to reach 85 votes in favour, but fell two votes short. Although Colombia is often described as a country where euthanasia is legal, the actual situation is complicated. In 1997 the country’s […]
Refusing a vaccine developed using stem cell lines derived from abortions may further the common good, lead to greater levels of vaccination, and contribute to defeating Covid-19. This appears counter intuitive but it may be part of a virtuous circle that can end embryonic stem cell research and a return to a normal society. […]
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is an enigma to many in the lands formerly known as the “free West.” However, it would behoove us to take note of his opening remarks in his Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly (comparable to the U.S. State of the Union) on February 15, 2021. He began thus: Colleagues, Russia’s future and historical perspective […]
Reporting by David Mullins and Niamh Uí Bhriain _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ A new report has confirmed that senior Irish doctors are undergoing “international training” in a controversial late-term abortion method known as Dilation and Evacuation, with a view to carrying out such […]
Hardly a day passes without new descriptions of killing and dying — both fictional and factual — invading our consciences, and yet so many of us still choose to postpone consideration of our own death. The practical neglect of the obvious fact of our mortality seems to be a distinctively post-modern and Western phenomenon that […]
The idea that the Covid 19 virus could be eliminated is as daft as the notion that Covid vaccines are useless/harmful/a plot to control the world. Yet the seemingly respectable and knowledgeable people who espouse the former idea appear regularly on TV and in the media, whereas those that believe the latter are shunned. The […]
It never ceases to amaze me that despite all the wealth, experience and tradition of American cinema, it seldom matches the depth and humanity of the best Iranian films. Asghar Farhadi’s family drama A Separation, for instance, won an Oscar in 2012. I can’t think of many films which combine so successfully deep moral issues, intricate […]
The so-called Enlightenment placed man at the center of the universe, edging aside the “God-centered” worldview once prevalent among Western elites. Then came the Industrial Revolution, spawning the age of “Economic Man.” Matters of consequence came to be viewed primarily through the prism of economic impact. That is something that both Karl Marx and the robber barons […]
Back in 2017, Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute sued President Donald Trump for blocking seven of his followers. Apparently they had criticised him, and the thin-skinned owner of the @realDonaldTrump account retaliated by blocking them. This made it impossible for the seven followers to read Trump’s tweets or to respond to them. “Now I […]
Dr. Martin Feeley served as Clinical Director of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group until September 2020, when he resigned after the HSE said his criticisms of lockdown made his position “untenable”. In this piece, he sets out the reasons why, after 15 months, a comparison between the experiences of Ireland and Sweden have served only […]
Responding adequately to the sad news of the Kambala sexual assault petition — the latest spotlight on the sexual assault epidemic — is a sobering challenge for us all. Leading educators in our secondary schools, depressed by the recent revelations and struggling to find solutions, are themselves revisiting calls for better “consent training” for students. But, as others have argued, “consent […]
Since the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising the men and the words that inspired the eventual founding of the Irish Republic are thankfully being given a prominence by at least some people in the public arena – in places such as the voluntarily restored monument of Kilmainham Gaol. There are two facets to Kilmainham […]