Fergal Lenehan

It's so embarrassing for Merz to listen to such a flow of agressive bullsh*t against a fellow EU country with no reaction.

'Slumming in a vision of hell': Why Requiem for a Dream is still so divisive, 25 years after its release Darren Aronofsky's radical drug-addiction drama was highly acclaimed and angrily slated when it came out in 2000. Today, this Hubert Selby Jr adaptation is no less contentious.

For the BBC, I wrote about the divisive legacy of Requiem for a Dream, 25 years on.

www.bbc.com/culture/arti...

Great hurling country.

Ein Foto von ihm. Man sieht ihn seitlich, er dreht den Kopf zum Fotografen hin, hat ein glattes Gesicht, ein kleinen Oberlippenbart und schaut interessiert den Fotografen an.

»Am Tage, da ich meinen Paß verlor, entdeckte ich mit achtundfünfzig Jahren, daß man mit seiner Heimat mehr verliert als einen Fleck umgrenzter Erde.«
Stefan Zweig wurde von den Nazis azsgebürgert
(28. November 1881 - 22./23.
Februar 1942)


Die beiden sitzen beim Wein zusammen

Roth schrieb an Stefan Zweig schon im Jahr 1933 „Inzwischen wird es Ihnen klar sein, daß wir großen Katastrophen zutreiben.. Es ist gelungen, die Barbarei regieren zu lassen. Machen Sie sich keine Illusionen. Die Hölle regiert."
Joseph Roth und Stefan Zweig tauschten Briefe und waren befreundet

Inside the Mind of Trump

🇮🇪 I just concluded my 10-day official visit to #Ireland, where I observed important progress in protecting the environment, but these achievements are at risk.

Press release: www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...
@un-spexperts.bsky.social

I am really, really tired of the generational revisionism as regards the provisional IRA.

Definitely. No one should be on X.

Educate. Evict. Emigrate.

The Irish way

Cover reveal for my new book, A Hosting, to be launched Tuesday, April 21 in Hodges Figgis. Designed for @lilliputpress by the brilliant Niall McCormack using the Louis le Brocquy print The Táin. Army Massing, 1969. Greatness by association.

I see the 'gay' jokes are still happening in schools, my son was told if he didn't get "out of the library, he's gay", to which, given we are particularly tolerant he responded that it'd be perfectly normal if he was anyway. I never heard that crap until at least secondary school in the 90s.

‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September

www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

Yes, it's become a very important issue.

A small German state’s quiet revolt against Microsoft – and what it means for Europe How Schleswig-Holstein is challenging big tech dominance and redefining digital sovereignty

A small German state’s quiet revolt against Microsoft – and what it means for Europe

www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

Growing up in NI during the Troubles involved turning on the news most days with trepidation but i especially remember how the murders of ‘troublesome’ nationalist HR lawyers - inc also Rosemary Nelson - made us feel particularly vulnerable and not only unprotected but targeted by the state.

I've been reading & rereading @ravoon.bsky.social's debut Dirt Rich the last couple of weeks. It's the best new collection I've read in a very long time. It reclaims the techniques of Auden and MacNeice for the 21st century, while mining layers of memory – personal. familial, social – …

‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September Seamus Culleton has been in a detention facility in Texas for nearly five months despite having no criminal record

'Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September

www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

'We're seeing eviction rates not seen in Ireland since the 1850s' The issuing of 5,000 eviction notices in three months last year is quite revealing when viewed against Ireland's historical record

"We are now seeing eviction rates that have not been seen in Ireland since the 1850s."

A damning reality laid bare in this piece of well-researched analysis.

A study at U Mass Amherst finds that Elon Musk manipulated Twitter to bolster the voice of the Neo Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) before the German 2025 parliamentary elections. No surprises here. groups.cs.umass.edu/equate-ml/20...

Ok. You're right. But why stop at cyclists? Let's make pedestrians wear high-vis and helmets too! It's safer right? Actually, let's make absolutely everyone wear high-vis and helmets at all times everywhere (except people in cars obviously!) so people driving cars feel better

5 people told Politico “the planned 🇺🇸🇩🇪 meeting collapsed after State Department officials told the German Embassy in Washington that it was prepared to receive only Christian Democratic and AfD lawmakers, excluding the SPD and the Greens.“

Norbert Röttgen (CDU) rejected that idea. Good on him!

Jesse Owens won 4 Gold Medals in Berlin - 100m, 200m, Long Jump, and 4x100m.

It's tough to feel proud of our country's athletic successes when the current heads of state treat international sport as another opportunity to propagandize.

I always think of Jesse Owens and his legacy post-Berlin.

Of course, we remember him personally embarrassing Hitler's propaganda machine.

Context: this speech is from SIR THOMAS MORE, a history written, as near as scholars can tell, in the early 1600s by 6 or 7 people including Dekker, Heywood, Chettle, Shakespeare, and Munday.

It was never performed, because Jacobean England was a police state and it was banned by the censor.

I don't know what it is about idiots who buy newspapers without understanding why they exist or what their business is, but I think gutting books coverage is some kind of canary in the coalmine. These jackasses don't read books, so they assume no one else does either.

Partys im Außenlager Buchenwald: Dieser Prinz vermietet ein KZ an rechte Rocker In Leipzig war ein Außenlager des KZ Buchenwalds. Der heutige Besitzer vermietet die Immobilie an rechte Rocker. Wann wird sie zum Gedenkort?

Diese starke neue Recherche von Yasemin Said @taz.de zum seit Jahrzehnten von der extremen Rechten genutzten ehemaligen #HASAG- Außenlager des KZ #Buchenwald in #Leipzig zeigt neue, teilweise bizarre Details:

Dazu ein kleiner Thread aus meiner Perspektive.

1/x

‘Both illuminating and wise … The work of a great writer with a deep concern for humanity.’ Eoghan Smith, The Irish Examiner

Delighted to see ESCAPE FROM THE ANTHILL by the singular Hubert Butler reviewed in the Examiner over the weekend 💫

Butler is Ireland’s answer to George Orwell, and his -

Oliver Sears: One man whose family were on Schindler’s List chatted with the son of an SS officer Repair and restoration can only be achieved with meaning by embracing the children and grandchildren of the perpetrators

To commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day this year, I describe the unparalleled experience of dialogue forums with the descendants of Nazis.

The unexpected acts of emotional and historical repair we achieve together forge unbreakable bonds of friendship.

bit.ly/49M5kBq

Anne Frank's family had their German citizenship stripped from them under the Eleventh Decree to the Law on the Citizenship of the Reich in 1941. Since they had never become Dutch citizens, they were officially stateless at this point, lacking what Arendt termed "the right to have rights."

Am old enough to remember when getting a trade deal with India was a justification for leaving the EU