Belfast Blogs.com

The election of Barack Obama marks not only the triumph of celebrity politics, but also a potentially dangerous return to leadership cults of personality.Anyone who travelled in Russia in the 20th century would be familiar with cult of personality politics - the stern statues of an exorting Lenin everywhere, his name and those of his peers scrawled across the streetnames in every town like graffiti.But today, as Putin and Medvedev offer up their own tributes to that old genocidal maniac Stalin, some personality cults are in a resurgence.In China, even today, the Mao cult remains vibrant beyond words. The days of the cultural revolution when kids would beat their elders to death with Mao's little red book while chanting his name are still in living memory.But the fact that his odious,...

I think so, on balance.Are they making a shite of their own neighbourhood? Yes.Is the violence largely conducted by kids buzzing on cheap alcohol? Of course.Is street violence going to solve the problems facing their community? No chance.So why do I think they're right to riot in Finglas? Because I don't see what other option they have.I remember rioting as a kid. That was in Belfast, during the Troubles. We went out to throw rocks and molotovs at the RUC.There were political justifications, of course. The hunger strikes. The oppression. The fact that we were second class citizens in our own land.But primarily, we rioted because we had no amenities, and nothing else to do, and were fed up of a system that rubbed our nose in the shit all the time, a system that treated us like animals. If...

As if the ongoing housing market collapse wasn't enough, now the government have the following little problem of rising unemployment to contend with.Most concerning is the fact that these jobs are being lost in the services sector, the area we were supposed to excel in after abandoning our manufacturing base and most of our agriculture to elsewhere.There is now a sizeable segment within Fianna Fail who appear to be unhappy at the prospect of having to clean up the economic mess they themselves created. For them, the smarter move would have been to lose the last election, and then cast Fine Gael and Labour as a bust coalition once again.Thanks to the hubris of Bertie and his unshakeable desire for a third term, they're now stuck with having to deal with falling house prices and rising...

Sorry for the delays in updates. I've been busy.So, obviously, is Tony Blair.It's over 940 days now since our Tone promised to resign. That's nearly three years of lies, war and deceipt from 'New Labour.'Rumour has it he's going to go before the likely-to-be-disastrous Scottish election results.And about time too.Try not to cry on your way out the door, there's a good......

I suppose I am a little tardy rolling out my predictions a fortnight into the new year, but I really did want to chew them over first. Last thing I need is to have you all on my back come December going ner-ner-ner-ner-ner! at me for getting it all wrong.So here are my predictions for 2007, carefully considered and guaranteed to come true or your money back.* Get down to the bookies now!Mystic JC gazes into his crystal ball and sees:The NI elections will see a bump in the SDLP vote, but not enough to overhaul Sinn Fein. Both parties will hail their performances as a success. The UUP will similarly close on the DUP and both parties again will claim public support for their strategies. Ian Paisley will then find further nit-picking reasons not to enter power-sharing, and the whole process...

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...

Teflon Tone is, apparently 'sorry' about Britain's role in the slave trade. I wasn't actually aware that the UK was still trading in slaves. They're not? So why apologise now, two centuries after the evil practice was abandoned?This stunt is reminiscent of his apology to Ireland for Britain's fault during the Irish potato famine, which was delivered on the 150th anniversary of the Great Hunger back in 1997.On the one hand, it's sort of nice that Tony at least recognises that these were great wrongs. On the other, his predeliction for looking up anniversaries of horrors to apologise for smacks of PR nonsense.By apologising for things that happened generations before his birth, he can give the impression of being a compassionate leader, a Christian soul moved by the sins of his...