Villagers: Letters to the Editor 2006-08-03
Apologists for the Israeli government claim the ongoing slaughter of Lebanese civilians and attacks on ambulances, hospitals, sewage and water works are for their own good. And it's all for the cause of peace. Do they really mean a piece of Lebanon, a piece of Syria and a large piece of Palestine?
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Arms to Israel came through Shannon
Unauthorised Israeli air force plans have come through Shannon and aircraft carrying munitions for Israel have also gone through the airport. By Colin Murphy
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Looking to the Futures
The RHA begins its series of solo exhibitions by Futures artists with a strong show by Stephen Brandes
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John Carthy death: A tale of blunder, negligence and cover-up
The scene commander at Abbeylara, Superintendent Joe Shelly, deliberately concealed information damaging to the Garda in a way that contributed directly to the death of John Carthy, according to the Barr tribunal report. It claims Joe Shelly did not pass on to Garda negotiators the history of bad relations between John Carthy and the local gardaí and that this failure hopelessly compromised the attempts to resolve the stand-off with John Carthy. By Frank Connolly
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Birds: Spotted Flycatcher
 A widespread but declining species in Ireland, the Spotted Flycatcher is strictly a summer visitor, arriving in May and departing for southern Africa in September. A small bird, just 15cm in length, about the same size as a sparrow, it nevertheless has quite a stocky build, making it appear somewhat larger.
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Bookseller of Kabul
One can forget that, in non-fiction, the action keeps going when the book ends. Two years ago the world clutched Norwegian Asne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul in delight.
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Guerrilla journalism
Want to understand how Bush manipulated his way into power and now fights an unjust war? Or who officially spies on citizens for the White House? Or how much oil is really left and where is it? Greg Palast's 'Armed Madhouse' unearths the ugly truth about America today.
By Michael McCaughan
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The Awful Tale of Agatha Bilk
The problem with Agatha Bilk is that she is a pyromaniac. After setting fire to her school and almost killing a group of her schoolmates, Agatha is sent to the Tread Quietly Clinic for Interesting Children where she meets other children with problems, not as serious as her own but none the less highly dysfunctional in their effects and not receiving very much help from the doctors/ brothers Tim and Alan Humphrey who run the clinic.
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Badlands
Steven Green served for a few months in the terrible "Triangle of Death", south of Baghdad. Foot patrols. House raids. Roadside bombs. An Apocalypse Now in a Humvee. There is no way that we can yet know the particular horror of that one evening, but a US Army report states that Green and four other members of his company got drunk, went out into the town of Mahmudiya, camouflaged in dark clothing, kicked down a door, burst into a home, went to the bedroom, killed a mother, a father, a young girl, and then raped another child at gunpoint. Afterwards they tried to burn the girl's body to destroy evidence. They went back to their barracks under a code of silence, the stars still out over Mahmudiya.
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Fetch, heel, stall
Oops, they did it again. That pesky microphone problem that plagued George W Bush and Tony Blair in St Petersburg struck again at their White House news conference on 28 July. The president told technicians to make sure his real thoughts would not be overheard this time, but somehow someone forgot to turn off the feed to my office. As a public service, I'd like to reprint the candid under-their-breath mutterings they exchanged in between their public utterances.
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Port Tunnel
As the Port Tunnel stutters to conclusion amidst ongoing controversy over the exclusion of "super-trucks", new research by Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum, has revealed that Dublin port in the 13th century was struggling with its own infrastructural challenges.
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Mobile phones
So, here's the dilemma. You like your Nokia phone, but have recently found yourself leering at your colleague's BlackBerry. (Those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, see the box below.) You want to do the BlackBerry email thing, but don't want to desert your familiar Nokia. Well, the new Nokia E61 could be a solution.
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The rich and the powerful
The Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway races has nothing to do with VIP access it is a reminder to party members who keeps the Fianna Fáil ship afloat. By Scott Miller at the Galway races
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Sectarian rhetoric
On 28 July a year ago, the leadership of the Irish Republican Army formally ordered an end to its armed campaign. All IRA units were ordered to dump arms. They were directed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. "Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever" the IRA leadership declared. The IRA also authorised its representative to engage with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use as quickly as possible. Two independent witnesses from the Protestant and Catholic churches were invited to testify to this.
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Meejit on "scoops"
Usually a journalist likes having a story to him or herself. If it's of sufficient potential interest, it's a "scoop".
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Harris's hypocritical balancing act
Writing in the Sunday Business Post on 16 July, Pat Leahy claimed that, according to "senior government sources", relations between Fianna Fáil and Tony O'Reilly were "non-existent" after the government had failed to respond adequately to lobbying by Independent Newspapers executives. However, Leahy took pains to point out that "there is no evidence or suggestion that the editorial coverage or reporting in any of the group's newspapers was or is affected by corporate relations". Nevertheless, several recent editorial decisions have, by coincidence no doubt, targeted Fianna Fáil.
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Lady Luck
Nina Carberry is considered one of Ireland's most promising horse racers due to her physical strength, her racing brain and her soft touch with the fillies. She races in this week's Galway Races. Profile by John Byrne
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They really aren't the best of friends, as Éanna Ní Lamhna explains