Ten years ago, in a late-night bar, I got into a heated argument with a Libyan Muslim — let’s call him Tariq — about Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Did Rushdie [...]

What is it with medieval maniacs beheading people?  Here we are again, with Taliban lunatics cutting the heads off people for attending a party. What’s that about?  What is wrong [...]

How do you feel about religious-based genital mutilation of children? Horrified, I imagine. The chances are that you recoil at the very notion, and yet such mutilation is legal in [...]

There are parodies, there are wind-ups, and then there are acts of lampoonery so extreme that you have to applaud them for their sheer brass balls.   I know this. [...]

What a huge amount of stuff has happened this year

Words are so dangerous. If you fought the German invasion of France back in the 1940s, people would say you were a member of the Resistance, but if you fought [...]

“It’s great to be in Libya, free Libya” said Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as he declared the end of NATO’s air campaign in Europe, ‘the most successful operation’ in [...]

Islamic law has just been anounced in Libya. Nice one,  NATO.  Well done. We can look forward to the beheadings.

Is there any such thing as a corporate citizen, or is profit the only legitimate motivation for any company operating in Ireland?  If people arrange their lives, move into the [...]

 Ten years ago, New York’s World Trade Center was destroyed by a combination of fire and certainty.  Its destruction ignited fires all over the world, even more certainty, and many [...]