What a night we are in for on Friday as all the elements come together for a visceral night’s “entertainment” at the MAC in Belfast. Let’s look at the ingredients. First of all you have one of the greatest poems ever written in Irish, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, translated into English by Pulitzer-prize winning poet …
Author Archives: Robert McMillen
Re-kindling the fire and fury in the Civil Rights-era music of Nina Simone
I don’t know if you can put a primal scream to music but Josette Bushell-Mingo’s show, Nina – A Story about Me and Nina Simone has all the power of a holler against racism, whether it is in her native London or in Simone’s North Carolina or anywhere else in the world. Bushell-Mingo comes from …
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An Ulster-Scots Quiz – I hae stairted sae I wull en..
Okay. I was wrong. I had thought that the long-term strategy of using Ulster Scots as a counter-balance to Irish was dead and buried when the February “agreement” between the DUP and Sinn Féin which promised an Ulster Scots Act as well as a (watered down) Irish language Act was rejected by the people who …
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Ballymurphy: The massacre that foreshadowed Bloody Sunday
It’s beautiful when it happens, seeing a seed develop out of the dark soil to become a beautiful flower. It’s the same with truth. Sometimes it too lies hidden in soil, waiting for the time and the conditions to bloom into something beautiful. That time and those conditions have surely arrived for the families of …
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John Prine at the Ulster Hall
It’s very rare that a song takes up a baseball bat and hits you on the head with it, but that is what happened metaphorically to me sometime in 1971, one eye on my homework and the other watching The Old Grey Whistle Test. Then a song came on that blew me away. The song …
Hitler, Sinn Féin and the association fallacy…
I recently wrote an article in the Irish language online newspaper tuairisc.ie about a false logic called Reductio ad Hitlerum. The term was first coined by the German-born Jewish political philosopher and classicist Leo Strauss in the 1950s – although versions of the phrase go back centuries depending on who the bête noire of the …
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Suibhne Geilt le tuirlingt sa Cheoláras Náisiúnta anocht
Tá Neil Martin iontach sásta leis féin – agus cad chuige nach mbeadh? Beidh an cumadóir Feirsteach ag stiúradh coirme de shaothar úr dá chuid i gcomhair le Ceolfhoireann Shiansach Náisiúnta RTÉ sa Ceoláras Náisiúnta, sa phríomhchathair ar lá éarlamh na hÉireann, anocht, 17 Márta. Anuraidh, d’iarr RTÉ ar Neil saothar a chumadh do Lá …
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Why is the BBC so coy about Nolan?
A lot of people have been talking about the Nolan shows, both on radio and on television, with many asking if the programmes are a force for good or for bad. Is his adversarial style appropriate in a post-conflict society which is in search of a modus vivendi where all citizens can feel cherished? In …
Is BBC NI a propagandist for the Union?
I was taken aback somewhat by a phrase in an article entitled Scottish Six news programme plans are dead, Whitehall insiders confirm in the newspaper Herald Scotland. According to the paper’s UK Political Editor, Michael Settle, these so-called insiders “referred to the draft BBC charter stressing how the corporation must “contribute to the social cohesion …
Heather Humphreys vs Irish Speakers
Sorry, but I don’t recognise the stereotype that “Minister for the Gaeltacht” Heather Humphreys dragged up from the depths of her ignorance when she “warned against fluent Irish speakers lecturing others who lack proficiency.” At the weekend, I judged the Feis at Carn Tóchair in Co Derry where for the past six years I have …