outsidein »

• We Need to Draw a Distinction Between Charity and Justice

  March 5, 2010 @ 2:20 pm | by Bryan

   “You need to find a way to sell your ideas to people. Make them want to buy into them.”

  That was the advice given to me in a little Belfast coffee-shop months ago by a lady whose area of expertise is working with troubled youth. Promoting social justice issues for her is akin to selling brand X toothpaste. Idealism is all well and good, she seemed to be saying, but it is pragmatism that moves toothpaste off shop shelves.

  Eamon Delaney’s thoughts on Irish overseas development assistance in these pages reminded me of that conversation. The core of his argument seems to be this: convince me why I should buy into the brand X toothpaste that is overseas development assistance. Given the proclivity of people in the developing world for procreation, given the state’s dire financial circumstances, given also that, most importantly, Ireland has already proved herself as one the world’s most generous nations and benefactor to some of the poorest, most pathetic peoples, what reason can the development sector possibly put forward to justify the continued national purchase of overseas aid?
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• Justice a key issue in debate on migration

  August 5, 2009 @ 12:28 pm | by Bryan

  RUADHÁN MAC Cormaic’s recent articles on migration have brought back to the surface some concerns I have had for a while now. At the heart of these is the question of justice.

  One of Karl Marx’s more provocative statements was: “. . . primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology…
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• Of soaps and politics

  February 12, 2009 @ 12:52 pm | by Bryan

  I REMEMBER Zimbabwe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Around that time, foreign soap operas were introduced on to the local television station. At first, people were gripped. Shows like Australia’s Neighbours , and, from the United States, Santa Barbara , managed to captivate us.

  Inevitably though, these got tiresome. A person can only wait for so many weeks for a door knob to be turned or for the truth about a pregnancy to finally come out. One by one, all but the most die-hard fans fell away by the wayside and the soap craze died.

  Click here to read the rest of this opinion piece.

• Africa’s problems require an informed and radical response

  December 29, 2008 @ 8:00 am | by Bryan

  When I was young, my father enjoyed making fun of us, his children. When in an especially good mood, so good that he could look back on hardship and laugh at it, he would tell us about how good we had it. “When I was your age, we would eat meat only at Christmas,” he would claim. “Presents? What are those? When I was young, you were lucky if you got a new pair of shoes for Christmas,” he would say.

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• A reminder of our obligation to each other

  December 9, 2008 @ 1:17 pm | by Bryan

  I WONDER how many people know what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is, or what it says. I wonder how many feel that human rights are just some fluffy idea concocted by lefties who live beyond the realms of reality. I’m not just talking about the Scrooges who will publicly cry “Humbug!” at any mention of human rights, but also ordinary folk who would not dare publicise their low estimation of the concept.

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• Ripple effect of Obama’s rich inspiration

  November 7, 2008 @ 3:29 pm | by Bryan

  OPINION: A FEW hours after Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, my wife jokingly said to me: “You do realise that he is going to be the president of America don’t you? America, not the rest of the world!”

  I am not American, and Obama’s functional role in the future matters little to me at the moment. What really matters to me are the implications of his election to a continent in desperate need of hope, and to minorities like myself around the world.

  To read the rest, click here.

• What’s wrong with having a Muslim for president?

  October 23, 2008 @ 4:32 pm | by Bryan

  A FEW WEEKS ago, an American friend told me that she wanted her country’s elections to come to a close sooner rather than later.

  I was a little surprised. The elections have been more entertaining than anything else on television all year. They have been better than even the Olympics. They started before the games, and were still a great source of drama months later.

  To read the rest, click here.

• More to Mbeki’s legacy than Aids folly

  September 24, 2008 @ 12:55 pm | by Bryan

  I FEEL FOR retiring president of South Africa Thabo Mbeki. He is in danger of being remembered for all the wrong reasons. The biggest blot on his career is the stance he took on Aids. Mbeki, for reasons best known to himself, chose to endorse the views of some dissident scientists who claimed the primary cause of the disease was not viral. To make matters worse his government’s health policy on Aids was based on that thinking…

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• Zimbabwe deal is cause for cautious optimism

  September 17, 2008 @ 8:38 am | by Bryan

  IT IS difficult to know what to make of the agreement between Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The deal that the two men have struck is very far from being perfect, but who knows? It may help restore sanity to Zimbabwe’s social, economic and political scene.

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• King and Obama

  September 3, 2008 @ 11:48 am | by Bryan

  AARON McGRUDER’s The Boondocks is an animated TV series which takes a satirical look at American culture and race relations from the perspective of an African-American family. In a controversial episode titled Return of the King , Martin Luther King Jr does not die after the assassination attempt in Memphis, but falls into a long coma. He then wakes up in modern-day America and is disgusted by what he sees.

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