Ronald Reagan, Normandy Speech: Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-Day 6/6/84

Full Text of the speech:

Remarks to Veterans at Pointe du Hoc

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. Read more… »

How is it that there were ‘Haass talks’ in the first instance?

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There have been a number of estimates bandied around in respect of the likely cost of final elements of the Reform of Public Administration, specifically the reduction from twenty-six to eleven local councils. Whatever the current number (and it is in the £millions), it is being politically justified by projected ‘savings’ brought about by a smaller number of Councils and ‘efficiencies’. Read more… »

One way to analyse the 7^th draft from the recent Haass talks would be to look the proposals one by one. This post, however, is a look at some principles that should be viewed as essential to any future proposals, or talks, by anyone with a care for fundamental human rights, and which must be satisfactorily addressed as the basis of any future conversation on any aspect of ‘Parades, Select Commemorations, and Related Protests; Flags and Emblems; and contending with the Past’. Read more… »

This is the basis of a presentation at the Royal Irish Academy, 27 February, at a roundtable hosted by Institute for British Irish Studies at University College Dublin on ‘Community Relations in Northern Ireland after the Flags Protest. Another summary of the presentations was posted on SluggerOToole. Read more… »

This is the third part of a Trilogy of posts based on a submission to The Panel of Parties, more generally named ‘The Haass Talks’. The blog post has the added advantage of being able to link documents and expand on a point here or there by way of detailed explanation that wasn’t possible with a hasty and brief submission written almost upon the submission deadline. Was the submission made with an expectation that it would have any influence? No. It was made because there are things that needed said.

First http://wp.me/phwTD-e7

Secondly http://wp.me/phwTD-ee

Thirdly, matters stemming from the past.

With no coherent sense of purpose in moving forward, our politicians seem to regard the past as safer ground: albeit without an agreed notion of how to define ‘the past’. Read more… »