Visionaries gave us our greatest gift – the future
THE visionary bravery of John Hume (1937-2020) and David Trimble (1944-2022) has forged a much better future.
Belfast on a sunny day now bears no resemblance to the dreary city of The Troubles and it’s a real joy to take a bus into the city centre in the summer sun.
The absence of security zones, armed soldiers, bomb sites, cordons, checkpoints or helicopters, is very welcome news for locals and tourists alike.
New city centre high-rise buildings, with their clean and shiny lines, contrast with the run down and dirty, or derelict, buildings which littered the city in the past, relics of conflict and post-industrial decay.
A declining city, which once shed or scared away its brightest young people, is now on the tourist trail and hosting cruise ships.
Middle aged or older people, familiar with the grisly 1980s Belfast, cannot help but marvel at the wonderful improvements to be found in the city centre, along the riverfront and into the Titanic Centre zone.
This cleansing from our past defilement reminds me of a Bible promise that is more commonly used in connection with individual and personal spiritual renewal:
‘I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.’
Sabina has a point
IT appears from comment and replies to Mrs Sabina Higgins’s letter on the Ukrainian war situation, that a section of the Irish, and indeed European people, have little concept or understanding of a wider picture and what is really going on between Russia and the United States.
For, in reality, the Ukrainian war is between Russia and the United States with NATO, the UK and the EU locked in as confused allies to do the US’s bidding.
It is an horrific fact that Russia did illegally invade the sovereign state of Ukraine and the invasion has caused enormous fatalities, injury, displacement of population and damage to that country.
Unfortunately, that is what modern warfare is about; fighting is no longer confined to front lines but exposes whole populations to danger, injury and death.
The Ukrainian people are exploited shamefully by the real protagonists and their plight can only be relieved by peace.
The blame game will rage forever, though Russia’s explanations are entirely silenced by a vilifying blanket of demonisation, hatred and revenge, exercised unceasingly by all political and media outlets in the West.
It will matter little who is to blame if this war accelerates to a nuclear conclusion.
The UN Secretary General recently stated that ‘humanity is just one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation; so far we have just been lucky’.
In modern warfare, it is not the innocent or the good who prevail; it is those with the greater power of wholesale destruction and, like it or not, that is Russia.
Putin recently said that ‘there can be no winners of a nuclear war’. Correct. He also said ‘no such war should ever be started’.
But he once said he had no intention of invading Ukraine.
The most important service anyone can pay the human race is to reduce likelihood of the Ukrainian war going nuclear.
Mrs Higgins’s letter was a small step towards acknowledging this salutary fact. Negotiation, difficult and protracted though such attempts may be, is the only way to keep nuclear war at bay.
This is what Mrs Higgins was trying to promote and she should be lauded for doing it.
Her attempt is far more realistic than sadly ignorant, petrified politicians strutting belligerently to impress their peers and cross Atlantic warlords. PÁDRAIC NEARY,
Tubbercurry.
...I HOPE the momentum from Sabina Higgins’s letter is not lost.
The ‘experts’ tell us that the Ukrainian refugees here in Ireland are upset by the letter.
I wonder how many! Is it not the weapons from the US and Europe, supported by the Government, that end up killing their own people? I understand the counter argument as well, but negotiation is the answer. It would be hard to beat Robert Sullivan’s letter in yesterday’s Mail. TOMMY HENEGHAN,
Co. Dublin. ...FOLLOWING weeks of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, led by Turkey and the United Nations, a ship carrying Ukrainian grain has left the port of Odesa for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion.
This internationally brokered deal to unblock Ukraine’s agricultural exports will ease a growing global food crisis, which must surely be welcomed by everyone.
Perhaps Irish mainstream media will now see that the next logical step is to encourage even more negotiations to end this brutal war in Ukraine.
The Peace and Neutrality Alliance has been advocating a ceasefire and UN chaired negotiations since the start of the war, and we warmly welcome the intervention of long-time peace activist Sabina Higgins into this debate. Roger Cole
Chair, Peace and Neutrality Alliance,
Dalkey Business Centre.