"There is not a page [St. Augustine] has written on which his powerful personality, not to say his temperament, does not reveal itself. In both the eulogistic and dyslogistic senses of the word, Augustine is a man of desires. From infancy and throughout his whole life he sought happiness and even absolute happiness - that is to say, beatitude, the possession of a perfect good that was beyond all fear of loss. Two means were required for the acquisition of this end: love, which is nothing less than the very movement of the soul towards the Good, and knowledge, since the supreme Good, being Truth, cannot fill the soul of man with joy except by fully revealing itself to his intellect." - Étienne Gilson, The Idea of Philosophy in St. Augustine and in St. Thomas Aquinas

Garda stabber and IS supporter, Abdullah Khan (24), is “not willing to engage” with pre-sanction reports ordered by the Special Criminal Court and will be sentenced in October.

Ireland is no country for a young professional on €65k. Gross salary looks decent on paper. After the taxman is finished with you, it isn’t. Here’s the 2026 reality for a single PAYE worker: • €44,000 taxed at 20% • The next €21,000 taxed at 40% • €4,000 in standard credits knocked off
→ €13,200 income tax Then USC piles on (no credits, no mercy): • 0.5% / 2% / 3% bands
→ ≈ €1,483 Then employee PRSI at the blended ~4.24% rate → ≈ €2,754 Total deductions: ~€17,440 Take-home: ~€47,560 (€3,963 a month) That is an effective rate of roughly 27%. Not the highest in Europe, but the marginal rate on every euro above €44k is already approaching 47% once you add USC + PRSI. The 40% band starts far too early for a single person in a high-cost country, and freezing the bands and credits while wages rise is pure fiscal drag. Now look at what that net pay actually buys you. Average rent for a one-bed in Dublin routinely eats €1,800–€2,500+. Even outside the capital you’re looking at serious money. After rent, utilities, transport, groceries and the 23% VAT on almost everything, what’s left for saving, a pension, or any kind of buffer? A lot of the online rage focuses only on the tax rates. That’s incomplete. The real killer is the combination: 1. Early entry into the higher tax band 2. USC acting as a second progressive tax with zero relief 3. Housing supply that has been deliberately constrained for years €65k should be a solid professional wage. In Ireland in 2026 it is the salary at which you start to realise you may never comfortably own a home, start a family, or feel financially secure without a second income or parental help. The taxes are progressive and transparent on paper. The outcome for young single workers in the cities is still punishing. Until housing supply is fixed, every discussion about “tax cuts for the middle” is secondary.

Drawing on Ortega y Gasset’s distinction: the stance of Mass man is ‘life owes me’. The stance of Select man is ‘I owe life’. Authenticity: set your own non-mimetic standards. The crowd is untruth.

Zack Polanski has posted to his 713k Instagram followers a photo of a man in a T-shirt calling for the beheading of Nigel Farage. To do this just 2 weeks after our friend Ann was murdered is staggering. Polanski is inciting murder. It must be treated as such by the police.

There is great confusion about what Decolonization and indeed Colonization means. The fact is: it means very little except 'a culture or mindset you dont like.' For whatever reason. And that usually means: the West. Since the West decolonized long ago, it really means the Western liberal democracies. It is a smart criticism because it means nothing, and hence it is hard to disagree with nothing and furthermore since the West itself is embroiled in a mix of moral fuddlement, political paralysis and cultural self hatred, you can be sure that Western leaders are very embarrassed by the very use of the word and many in the West will actually agree - even though they are not sure what they are agreeing with. it is a very useful rhetorical tool because Westerns are always going to be worried to answer in any meaningful way other than guilt and shame; and it is a growing industry - perfect for endless conferences. Like this one. The reality of empires and colonies is something else entirely. In early modern times, the Ottoman Turks conquered colonized enslaved exploited murdered and forcefully converted millions and ruled a vast tricontinental empire for four centuries; the Western powers led by Spain Portugal France and Britain later joined by Italy Germany Belgium also conquered colonized enslaved exploited murdered and converted using missionaries huge empires across the continents. The Iberians lost much of their empires first; the Ottoman sultanate-caliphate started to decolonize with the Greek war of independence in 1820s and totally disintegrated in 1918; the British and French decolonized between 1940s and Sixties. You could argue the Americans and Soviets comported themselves like anti-imperial imperialists during the Cold War and after - and indeed today's America toys at times with neo-tsarist expansionism - Greenland etc . Thats it - noone in the Legacy Powers Britain or France etc seems keen on colonizing anything now; there are almost no colonizations left to decolonize - though many love to denounce their own country's past which is for some a most enjoyable enriching and virtuous pastime. But in real life, empire and colonization are happening, often perpetrated by the very proponents of antiWest rhetoric. Russia is attempting to retake its limotrophic empire in Ukraine right now the old -fashioned way: by conquest and killing; a phalanx of Middle East neo-imperial powers are engaged in tournaments of power in failing states like Somalia, Libya and benighted Sudan; Iran established an informal empire across Iraq Syria Lebanon Yemen in its Six Armies strategy - its final destiny as yet undecided on the battlefield of the Third Gulf War; and Turkish leaders now regularly and openly declare their wish to reassert Ottomanist power in former Ottoman vilayets Syria Lebanon Israel, and former Ottoman cities Damascus Beirut Jerusalem.... So imperialism and colonialism just mean: other people, but never you.

Ireland's Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan has refused to change a law that prevents the media from identifying someone as an asylum seeker, even if that person has been charged with or convicted of a serious crime. O'Callaghan defended Section 26 of the International Protection Act, saying he and his department are "legally obliged" to keep the identities of asylum applicants confidential because revealing their status could endanger relatives or friends in their country of origin. Under Irish law, journalists cannot publish information that would identify someone as an asylum applicant without that person's consent.