Siubhán O'Connor

"Irish is an ancient language that has shaped our mythology and names ... to conflate it with republicanism is to do it a disservice" An excellent piece by Dr. Rónán Davison-Kernan in today's @News_Letter newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/i…

This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).

Trump’s top two goals in the war: (1) No Iranian nuclear weapon. (2) The Strait of Hormuz is open for business. Just a friendly reminder that we already had both before the war.

@newstart_2024 100%. We’ve been sold a pup. Produce and raise kids, build careers, be endlessly productive — and somehow keep a perfect life ticking along. The expectations are completely unrealistic.

A 40-year-old working mom of two just said what a lot of women are quietly thinking after years in the corporate grind: “I fell for it. Go to college, get the degree, you can have it all — career, kids, the whole thing. I don’t want to do it all anymore. I want to take my kids to school, pick them up, be there when they get home, chaperone field trips, volunteer, go to the gym, clean the house, do laundry, cook dinner… just be home.” She’s blunt: “It’s not worth it. Don’t fall for that sh... Find a way to be with your family.” It’s raw, honest, and hits different when you hear it from someone who’s lived both sides. Moms (and dads) — have you ever reached that point where the “have it all” dream started feeling like a trap? What would your ideal balance actually look like if money or societal pressure wasn’t part of the equation? Your thoughts 👇

@IluminatiEire @mandy_mcauley @belfastgem I don't disagree with you that there are problems with the system. Of course there are. But it's not the system that's murdering women, it's men. So we need to stop looking everywhere else and look there first - at the men who are doing this, and why.

@siubhanoc @mandy_mcauley @belfastgem You are twisting my statements and creating straw-man arguments, please don’t do that. The system the way it is currently set up, protects abusers. I have first hand experience. Abusers are very apt at manipulating our current system, which is a Swiss cheese with loopholes.

A picture of violence: The 30 women killed in NI in more than four years Those accused or convicted include husbands, partners, ex-partners, brothers, sons, a friend and a grandson. At least 21 women attacked or killed in their own home. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

@Goodfellaritz @theparthrastogi Leat we forget, it was 8.30am-6.30pm.. IN THE OFFICE!! Flexibility and Work/Life Balance didn't exist

@theparthrastogi I don’t know where you got your info, but: -8:30a-6:30p was the norm -Average age for marriage was around 27 -Average age for 1st home purchase was around 30. Throw in a recession, housing crisis & 9/11, and you’ll realize this easy life you speak of is concocted in ur head.

Look at the generational difference - 1990s: • Get a university degree • Get a 9–5 job • Suit and tie • Get promoted • Get married at 21 • Buy a house at 25 • 4 kids, 1 dog • Retire at 60 2026: • Survive… Show more

@IluminatiEire @mandy_mcauley @belfastgem So McCullough was faultless? This is all the system's fault? So we shouldn't look at the actual perpetrators, and at the society which produces them?? We should just blame a system which is crumbling under the pressure of having to deal with so many of these violent thugs?

@siubhanoc @mandy_mcauley @belfastgem If the system was working Natalie McNally and countless others would still be alive today. The system is most definitely the problem. How abuse is dealt with in the North is a complete disgrace, social services, the PSNI and judiciary need a complete overhaul. Victims are alone!

@NiecyOKeeffe @dunkingwithfish So true

@dunkingwithfish It tastes so synthetic now.

They can’t *give away* the Cadbury’s eggs in the shops. Especially Tesco. No one wants that palm oil laced shite anymore. They’re getting desperate with the offers, at this stage. “WE’LL GIVE YOU 9 MILLION EGGS FOR €3! PLEASE BUY THEM!!😭😭”

@Aodhanho @mandy_mcauley 😂 ok! Now we're on to abortion! Deflection really is the flavour of the day. Sure come back to me when you're brave enough to come out of hiding and out a face to your nonsense. Until then... #Blocked!

@siubhanoc @mandy_mcauley Oh I don’t care about women being murdered just like you don’t care about the multiple unborn babies murdered every year under the guise of “women’s healthcare” You’re just a hypocrite like the rest of them. You basically hate men.

@Aodhanho @mandy_mcauley Sorry, I must have missed the stats on the number of men murdered by women in NI...please do share!

@siubhanoc @mandy_mcauley I could easily ask the same question of you. Why do women like you hate men so much?

@Aodhanho @mandy_mcauley You know nothing about my position on refugees. It's irrelevant. 25 women are dead because of men who are from here. How about we start there and stop deflecting from the real issue...why do men in NI hate women so much?

@siubhanoc @mandy_mcauley There are 5 murders out of 30 committed by foreigners which is a disproportionate number. No doubt you are one of those “refugees welcome here”. Well congratulations, your idiocy has led to people being murdered.

@RichardJGrant 100%. And these individuals in positions of influence, power and privilege need to be shamed in the same way the convicted murderers are. They are a huge part of the problem.

We have an epidemic of #misogyny in the north of Ireland, and it starts at the top. The casual displays of micro aggression that some MLAs use regularly are examples of it, when Timothy Gaston made his "breathe" comments it was misogyny, he wouldn't say that to a male

@JP_Biz Lots of examples of forecourt prices shooting up last night after the announcement, and ahead of the excise reduction. The Rip-Off Republic is alive and well.

Would be interested to hear what’s happening with diesel prices on forecourts in the Republic this morning. Based on current estimated price in NI if diesel gets down to about €1.97 then it will be cheaper in the Republic than NI.

@Channel4News Pot. Kettle. Black

Israel Economy Minister: Iranian regime are ‘evil people who believe they must rule the world’ channel4.com/news/israel-ec…

@Aodhanho @mandy_mcauley Have you read the article? There are some of foreign origin, but most are from NI.

@mandy_mcauley How many murdered by foreigners?

@IluminatiEire @mandy_mcauley @belfastgem Not true. The Natalie McNally case shows that the system,which is admittedly under huge pressure, is still working. The system is not the problem. The murderers are the problem.

@mandy_mcauley @belfastgem The police and court system are less than useless, they actually enable the abusers/m-worders. It’s a national scandal up there with the Magdalene Laundries, Christian Brothers and Kincora!

@mandy_mcauley Harrowing. 30 women murdered in the 6 counties in 5 yrs — by male partners, relatives & friends. What is wrong with our society that these women’s lives were deemed to be of so little value? Public campaigning cherishing + celebrating our women must start NOW @niexecutive #VAWAG

Robert Mueller died last night. He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving. He had integrity. And tonight the President of the United States said good! I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good. I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word. Good. This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather. That is what is happening. That is what has happened. The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming. America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner. And the church said nothing. Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary. Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him. Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart. JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn. These men are something more painful than monsters. They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again. Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing. Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less. That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him. And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it. When Trump is gone, they will still be here. Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous. That morning is coming. Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say. He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true. He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad. The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it. That is all it needed to be. A man died. His family is broken open with grief. That is all it needed to be. Instead the President said good. And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸 Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

@GlobalIJournal This. This. This. #IranWar‌

🇮🇷🇺🇸 American teenager: “We burned a damn 11 billion dollars in seven days to start a war nobody wanted. And that’s to bomb innocent school children twice!”

@RTELateLateShow Such a beautiful performance @RoisinOmusic — had me and my girls in tears, especially seeing your amazing mum watching on. Pure magic 🥰 Maith thú 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Róisín O with a gorgeous musical tribute to her mum Mary Black 🥹✨ #LateLate