Belfast Blogs.com

Next time you open up the Indo and see a vomit-inducing hagiographic puff-piece about His Royal Highness 'Sir' Tony O'Reilly, remember this.Or when you wince as the Irish Times lectures you like a prissy maiden aunt about how you should vote in a referendum, remember this.Or when you peruse the rows of red top tabloids and sneer at the garish pictures of scantily clad starlets and schlock headlines in a superior manner, remember this.Freedom of the press is a privilege we enjoy. With it comes things we are interested in hearing and happy to be informed about. With it also comes lectures, preposterous opinions, spin, fluff, puff and outright nonsense on all too many occasions.But that's the point of diversity of opinion and press freedom. It permits all sorts of truths to be told, in a...

The overtly, embarrassingly pro-Israel Democratic party candidate is dead.Long live, erm, the other embarrassingly pro-Israel Democratic party candidate?No sooner has Zion's biggest fan, Clinton II, finally fallen as a candidate for POTUS, than the actual candidate-elect, a black sunnovaMuslim, goes and offers Israel a united Jerusalem as their capital.Now, for those whose eyes glaze over at the mere thought of the mess that is the Middle East, I'll keep this microscopically brief:East Jerusalem has been Arab, both Christian and Muslim flavours, for well over a thousand years. Israel conquered it in 1967 and won't give it back even though the whole world keeps telling them too, even America.Instead, they built a ruddy big wall around it and are building a ring of settlements around East...

Another eye-opening visual comparison from Fionn MacCool from Politics.ie. This one reveals the direct similarities between the Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1940 and the Israeli apartheid wall running through the West Bank today....

Fionn Mac Cool, a poster on Ireland's leading political discussion forum politics.ie as opposed to the mythical giant whose causeway is being privatised by the DUP, made the following eye-opening pictorial comparison between Ireland and Israel.I think the pictures say it all really....

Okay, they wouldn't let me near Heather Graham, so I'm back.I see some foot-dragging going on in Israel over the Arab League plan for a lasting peace settlement in the region.Beleaguered Israeli leader Ehud Olmert, who faces a lot of criticism at home for losing a war with Hizbollah last summer, is quite right to describe the plan as revolutionary, even though it amounts to pretty much what the Arabs offered in 2002.The difference between then and now is that in 2002, the intifada was at its height, whereas now there's an elected Palestinian government.The deal on the table for Israel is simple, as most good deals are. Return to the 1967 borders (ie keep the land you stole in 1948, but not the extra land you've been stealing since) and you get normal relations with all your Arab...

I'm getting well annoyed by continual attempts by various lobbies to redefine aspects of the English language to suit themselves and their narrow agendas.The latest stunt comes from those obesity-peddlars McDonald's, who are apparently so miffed at the usage of the word 'McJob' that they want to change it.Of course they want to change it. The word, which has been current for decades, is understood to mean a crappy, low paying job with few decent conditions and little security in an appalling fast food or other menial environment.Which is extremely apt, since those are exactly the sort of jobs generally on offer in McOutlets.But Guardian writer Brian Whitaker has uncovered an attempt by the corporation to redefine the word, as it is apparently insulting to restaurant staff. No it isn't....

Congratulations to the delegation of Irish bishops who yesterday called on the EU and Ireland to review their ties to the apartheid state of Israel, after concluding that the Zionist regime had turned Gaza into little more than a large prison for the indigenous Palestinian population.I hope that when they address their concerns to An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, they will be listened to. I hope also that their meeting with Ahern will result in a severing of trading ties with the regime, which was accurately described by the Bishops as conducting an injustice upon the Palestinian people.Injustice is a very mild word for stealing someone else's homes, systematically killing them and herding them into large open air prisons behind huge walls (see above and here), harrassing them as they try to...

I've been thinking all week about the Iranian conference on the holocaust, and all sorts of things are disturbing me about it.Obviously, there are the initial concerns about holocaust denial in general. Western media coverage has been vociferous in its condemnation of the motley crew of white supremacists, rogue rabbis, neo-Nazis and other dubious types who gathered in Tehran to 're-examine' the holocaust.I share the concern that so many varied interests would seek to deny the mass murder of millions of people. It is certainly deeply worrying to see so many bizarre fellow travellers gathered together with the intention of casting doubt on the historical veracity of the holocaust.But there are plenty of other things to get concerned about in relation to this conference. The first would be...

It's not been a great week for world peace so far, when all's said and done.On the down side, mass-murdering rightist nuthouse General Pinochet kicked the bucket without ever going on trial for overthrowing the Allende regime and subsequently 'disappearing' tens of thousands of people during his reign of terror.Ethiopia's former psycho leader Mengistu Haile Mariam was found guilty of committing genocide during his 'red terror' regime that led to mass famine in the country. But since he's hiding out in Zimbabwe with his old pal Mugabe, there's little chance of him facing prosecution either.Then, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert let slip the Middle East's worst-kept secret - the weapons of mass destruction reside in the Negev Desert under IDF control, not in Iraq at all.And while mass...