Irish Politics, Current Affairs and Magazine Archive - Politico.ie

DILI - Turbulent East Timor may go through its own Watergate, or at least a watershed political moment depending on which version of the 11 February assassination attempt on President Jose Ramos Horta finally emerges as the truth. Conflicting accounts, questionable evidence and reversed recollections continue to cloud an alleged assassination attempt on the president and prime minister that sent a popular rebel leader to an early grave.  
By Simon Roughneen, Asia Times

The government spokesman who said on Tuesday (26 August) that "Nothing whatsoever has been decided" on whether there would be a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was telling some of the truth. Dick Roche was telling more of the truth when he said on Morning Ireland on Tuesday that he believed a second referendum would be held.

Nothing could more graphically expose the political fraud of the “change you can believe in” mantra promoted by the Democrats and their presidential candidate Barack Obama than the reactionary atmosphere surrounding the party's national convention, which kicked off Monday in Denver, Colorado. By Bill Van Auken (from the World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org)

Soldier and historian, Terence O'Reilly, examines  with detachment and compassion why some Irishmen colluded with and even fought for the Nazis writes Fred Johnston

There's nothing new about Irishmen fighting each other. In historical terms it's almost tedious to relate how and when they took up arms on behalf of others, often against their own countrymen. At Culloden Irishman faced Irishman from Jacobite and Government ranks. In the American Civil War there were Irishmen in both Union and Confederate armies. Unsurprisingly, they fought one another in the great boxing-ring of Europe, too, most memorably in the Spanish Civil War. But the Irish relationship with Nazi Germany is, arguably, the most intriguing and murky.

The Press Council of Ireland was launched in January of this year, an event that was celebrated as a "defining moment in Irish journalism" by the Irish Times. Seven months in, however, there is very little evidence of the council's code of practice providing the predicted "impetus to improve journalistic standards into the future". By Chekov Feeney

[Pictured: Press Ombudsman John Horgan] 

An appeal from the environmental health profession for more inspectors to enforce tobacco legislation has been ignored by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

The profession, which was charged with policing the smoking ban without a single additional post is now struggling with a raft of new public health legislation.
Annmarie Part, chairperson of the Environmental Health Officers Association, (EHOA) appealed to the Health Minister Mary Harney for more resources to the profession, in a written submission on the further enactments of the Public Health (Tobacco) Acts last November.

There have been no additional health inspectors appointed to the HSE in the past four years.

“Our profession took on the enforcement of the workplace smoking ban in 2004 without a single additional Environmental Health Officer post. Since then we have been given responsibility for further enactments of legislation enforcement provisions again with no further resources,” the letter, obtained under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, read.