For months now we have been reading and hearing European political leaders decry the manner in which the perfidious ratings agencies (Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch) have continued to downgrade the ailing Eurozone economies. On the 13th of July, last,   the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble expressed his bewilderment and inability to “decipher” the [...]

On the 12th of January 2010, Haiti was devastated by an earthquake which struck some 10 miles Southwest of the capital Port-au-Prince. Recording 7.0 on the Richter scale, it left 220,000 people dead, over 300,000 more injured. Haiti’s already inadequate  infrastructure was also severely affected as the earthquake damaged or destroyed as many as 250,000 [...]

For over two centuries, the patronage of primary education schools in Ireland has been almost exclusively the sole preserve of the Christian churches. While this may have been justified in the past as merely representative of the religious beliefs of the Irish population, this argument no longer holds true. Irish society has undergone momentous changes, [...]

“… one in five Irish women who have ever been in a relationship experience physical, emotional, financial or sexual abuse.” (Margaret Martin, Director Women’s Aid)
The recent launch of the annual statistics report for 2010 by Women’s Aid on domestic violence serves once more to highlight the continuing abuse inflicted on so many women in Ireland [...]

In the first part of this piece, we looked at how political and economic neo-liberalism became embedded in the UN’s approach to peace-building. In this part we will examine some of the primary characteristics of this ‘neo-imperial’ form of Peace-building.

Formal Sovereignty
As the law professor Anthony Anghie argues,
Many imperial projects sought to create what might [...]

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, a new form of
“international peace operation emerged as the dominant security activity of the United Nations: missions aimed at helping war-torn countries make the transition from a fragile ceasefire to a stable peace, or what became known as “post-conflict peacebuilding.”[i] [...]

As the West pummels and pounds yet another country, this time Libya, purportedly to rescue its people, it is worth revisiting (albeit briefly) the concept of ‘just war’, which has led to concepts such as humanitarian intervention.
The rise of christianity
When the Roman Emperor Constantius died in York on the 25th July 306, his troops declared [...]

The Economic Costs of Health
The swingeing cuts in health funding that have been - and continue to be - implemented over the past couple of years have seriously debilitated the public health service. Its overall prognosis continues to decline as does the outlook for those of us obliged to avail of its failing facilities. Even [...]

The land is my backbone. I only stand straight, happy, proud and not ashamed about my colour because I still have land. The land is the art. I can paint, dance, create and sing as my ancestors did before me. My people recorded these things about our land this way, so that I and all [...]

Darwin Day
Saturday next, the 12th of February, will mark the 202nd anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and 152 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species. Every year organisations around the world celebrate this day by commemorating the works and life of Darwin. However, Darwin Day is also an occasion for highlighting the [...]