Guess where a property speculator can get their best return on investment in the whole world? Dublin. It is unbelievable but true. After chaos wracked on Irish society by the Celtic Tiger property boom, the speculators are back.

A global survey by the research company, MSCI, has found that highest profits can be made in Dublin from buying and selling property.

Capitalists generally expect to get a 10 percent rate of return on their investment in industry. If they want more, they shift to riskier areas such as property speculation.

If they chose their city right, they can get a 19 percent rate of return. But last year, Dublin provided the jackpot with a 44 percent rate of return. read full story / add a comment

In this article I explain why I believe it is possible and necessary to advocate for marriage equality while remaining critical of aspects of the institution of marriage itself. read full story / add a comment

How the last days of Israel may play out. read full story / add a comment

The piece deals with how an initiative by R2W should be addressed. It argues for a left alternative to be clearly presented in any initative that is democratic broad and open. read full story / add a comment

The commemoration to come, should be indicative, to those with discernment, of the true nature of the government of this country, those who WOULD take from us, everything that our fore-bearers tried to create.
As we approach the centenary of the 1916, Easter Rising, we look to our government to remind us of the origins of our nationhood, of the goals, so cherished by former generations and their tremendous suffering and triumphs, so that we may, through self-determination forge for ourselves, a destiny that we may be proud of and a bright future for our children. However, if one engages in some reflection on our first century of modern nationhood, and in particular, the last several years, it becomes apparent that the ideals upon which our country is allegedly founded, are all but forgotten, purposefully forsaken, by those whom we entrusted to guard and implement them read full story / add a comment

Suicide is often thought tragedy or failure—but a person can lead an exceedingly relevant and meaningful life and still have it end with suicide. Suicide, although thought taboo and negative consequence, should not be thought especially conclusive to render some final judgment on that dead person’s attitudes about the entirety of his or her life, or personal series of assumed values while living. Esteemed and valuable lives do happen to end with this form of partial self-control over one’s finality. It can at times be practical to circumstances. The vaunted platitude the “value of human life” (as cultural supposition) has had little real open discussion or debate. Irrespective then of all peoples’ personal opinions (even if personal opinions are not often particularly individualist) one should be able to argue that thee ultimate human right of being-hood (and all related rights of existence) is the right to decide for the self whether one even wants to live a human life (especially as related to circumstances one finds the self). This is really the most basic litmus test to freedom as essential criteria as to whether one is truly free or not. read full story / add a comment

The Campaign for the Abolition of Cruel Sports (CACS) has issued this statement, dated April 8th, 2015:

We are alarmed at the news that hares are now EXTINCT on Dublin Bay’s North Bull Island, one of Ireland’s most important nature reserves and coincidentally one that for generations had been almost synonymous with the iconic Irish Hare.
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Whatever one personally thinks of marriage, just like religion, it should be consigned to the private sphere: I). on philosophical grounds; and ii). because State support for marriage directly contributes to inequality of the treatment of families, and directly discriminates against unmarried parents and their children - regardless of whether the parents are 'straight' or same-sex. read full story / add a comment

My Job Bridge software development experiences... read full story / add a comment

A brief, breezy look at the illustrious history Eric Foner read full story / add a comment

We are republishing this very interesting interview between 'The Saker' and Dr. Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan and thereby someone with a key insider view and understanding and who writes compelling and hard hitting articles at his own site. The Saker is a blog that has grown in huge popularity because it has been providing very informative and insightful analysis of the situation in Ukraine and wider picture around it relating to the US empire and has accurately predicted the trajectory of this crisis and has helped counter the widespread propaganda that tries to hide the fact that the Kiev regime is a neo Nazi puppet regime used as a tool of Washington to try and destablize Russia and has explained and given context to how each of the European states and the EU are just vassel states of the US and how this crisis and the sanctions are hurting Europe and are essentially suicidal for its own well-being. The interview covers a number of wide ranging issues but what makes it great is the way it strips away all the pretensions that there is anything democractic at all in how the big game of geo politics is working and gets to the core issues and forces driving it
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Some of what I saw behind the Global Iron Curtain which, in my view, exists between the UN and the rest of humanity. I describe what I consider to be very much of enormous and profound importance hidden from people. read full story / add a comment

when are we going to demand the truth, we could be hours, days, nights awaiting. will we ever get there who benefits. read full story / add a comment

Michael Hudson, interviewed on real news network discusses the class war starting in greece and the panic among the Euro rich and powerful that the rich might actually be taxed for a change rather than crippling the labour force and the poor with endless austerity, and how the finance ministers of currently right wing governments of spain, finland, Portugal, Ireland and germany are determined to make an example of greece to avoid contagion of these dangerous ideas which would likely lead to such governments losing upcoming elections to left wing parties read full story / add a comment

It was bad enough in 1966. I'm glad I'll be at a safe distance when The Circus comes to town next year. read full story / add a comment

“No one deserves to live like this”
A poster I came across on a billboard recently, juxtaposed by the wasteland where one of our block of flats used to sit, where working class families used to live happily, side by side, before they were all socially cleansed from the area, and for what? Already a year has passed since they were pulled down to the ground, and all we have to show for it now is a lousy carpark—desperate!

Currently, there are over 80 unused empty units in Tom Kelly Flats, some of which have been empty for over five years or more, 3 and 4 bedroom flats too. read full story / add a comment

Some of the gifted and highly intelligent victims of the UN's and State's cultural cleansing of individual self-determination may seek accountability. read full story / add a comment

We Americans (conditioned in the Hebrew tradition) have learned to see enemies in Biblical terms as one-sidedly evil as Satan. It takes a mass media of some very sophisticated accomplishment to continually portray people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, several Middle Eastern leaders as Satan. One needs to be somewhat steeped in the Biblical Literature to create such black and white conclusions. This is one legacy the Bible has bequeathed to modern politics—the absolutism of naming enemy in terms of good versus absolute evil. Israel plays a master game of such portrayal of their supposed enemies. The current leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad is the new version of Zionist Satan, but even this casting of totally evil Muslim figure is not good enough—we have a new entity that does the most obviously sensational sins—behead journalists and engage in egregious forms of violation—the ISIS/ ISIL phenomenon that America magically armed and some claim even trained (see in alternative media) and magically uses to create even more authoritarian war powers to an already criminal torture state that Barack Obama has no power to quell. read full story / add a comment

Ethical human rights is firmly based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so removes the UN's 'hidden collectivist agenda' which, in my view, seeks to culturally cleanse the world of individual self-determination. read full story / add a comment

On the day that an alliance of animal welfare and conservation groups protested outside the office of main sponsor of the National Hare Coursing event, independent socialist TD for Dublin North, Clare Daly, confirmed that she was drafting a Bill to abolish the cruel so-called “sport” of hare coursing.

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