The hashtag #NoThankYou has been trending worldwide all day. Here’s why. The Olympic Games have attracted a new kind of controversy this year as women faced what many of them saw as unfair competition from transgender athletes who were born male. One of those athletes is New Zealand weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard, who at 43 years old, would normally […]
Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly has indicated that pro-life protests outside abortion centres will not be outlawed under new legislation, a move that has been welcomed by pro-life activists. Abortion campaigners had sought to ban peaceful and often prayerful outreaches outside GP offices or hospitals, despite Gardai saying that no issues had arisen. Pro-life groups said […]
A prominent medical journal has published an article arguing that parents should not have “veto power” in decisions around their children wanting to embark on medical treatment to change gender. Writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics last month, bioethics professor Maura Priest (who is a philosopher and not a medical doctor) said that in […]
The broadcasting regulator has found that two programmes broadcast by Newstalk FM breached the Broadcasting Code in relation to impartiality because the presenters expressed their own views and advocated a partisan position on abortion. The Newstalk Breakfast show breached the broadcasting code, when presenter Ciara Kelly expressed strong support for abortion provision, the regulator found. “I would […]
The EU worked to ensure that China was not openly criticised at the recent G7 summit for using slave labour in Xinjiang. “EU leaders blocked efforts to name and shame Beijing for using slave labour,” the Times reports. It says that Mario Draghi, Italy’s prime minister, along with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Ursula von […]
The Financial Times has an interesting piece this week by Ruchir Sharma on the now-familiar theme of how Covid has made the world’s most wealthy people even wealthier. Sharma has spent two decades tracking the fortunes of billionaires, concerned that rising inequality would lead to political instability. He argues that the colossal $9tn – that’s 9 […]
Today, an email somehow found its way into my inbox with some revealing numbers which go some way towards explaining the enormous cost required to ensure the United Nations remains the toothless organisation it has become. The missive came from a Director of Personnel at the UN’s headquarters in New York – the behemoth also operates three additional […]
The 40th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands on hunger strike on May 5, 1981, brought renewed controversy over his legacy. Former H-Block blanketman Anthony McIntyre published a comm (a message written in tiny writing smuggled out of the prison) from Sands regarding his wish to be buried in another location than the Republican […]
Media reporting around the issue of Assisted Suicide tends to focus almost exclusively on personal stories – and often gives the misleading impression that helping a person to end their life is the only alternative to a painful death. As palliative care experts frequently point out (though their expert advice is given scant media coverage) […]
Some of the left in Ireland can see the ‘far right’ everywhere, it seems: it’s their very own conspiracy theory, fueled by a mixture of paranoia, intolerance of anyone with a different opinion, and a strong dislike of religion. All these elements seemed to coalesce perfectly in this stupid-but-nasty tweet from Councillor Anthony Flynn who […]
The banjoist with the British folk rock band, Mumford and Sons, has provoked a wearily-familiar Twitter storm by having the temerity to read a book by American journalist Andy Ngo which exposes the worst behavior of Antifa. Ngo’s book, Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy has become an Amazon bestseller. It’s a well-researched account […]
Last month, it was reported that Bill Gates, the billionaire businessman and activist on climate issues, had been buying farmland in the United States to the extent that he now owns the biggest amount of farm acres in America. Gates, who is one of the richest people in the world, has quietly bought up 242,000 acres of […]