why

"Why do you do it James? You can't win. Nobody beats the IRA. Nobody beats the gangs."
"There was a young man recently in Athy. He was killed for a hundred Euro. With the exception of the Leinster Leader, no newspaper in Ireland touched it. That's why I do it. A woman contacted me from X. She said there's a teenager from the town who has turned his back on drugs but he's told his parents: 'I can't live here, they won't let me live here, you've got to help me move away.' That's in a little town of 900 people with only two families willing to poison their neighbours' children through the drug trade but those two families get to say who lives in the town. That's why I do it. The IRA just last week stabbed, tortured, slashed the face, broke the bones, and tore out the fingernails of businessman Kevin Lunney in order to force Mr Lunney to cede control of his company to IRA Capo Sean Quinn and his odious brood of IRA mafiosi children. That's why I do it."

the story of my quarrel with prime minister leo varadkar

Today They Said

Leo Varadkar: "Irish society inherits a deep shame."

James Healy: "The primary deep shame Irish society inherits is the shame that accrues from you and your slanderous lies Mr Varadkar in attempting to criminalise with false accusations the nuns who ran an orphanage in Tuam a hundred years ago. Your original slander wherewith you and others falsely claimed that nuns had thrown dead babies into a sewerage tank has now been disproven. Yet you still have not retracted or apologised for it. I would suggest that your false accusation against the nuns is part of a pattern in your ongoing attempts to slander the Catholic Church out of existence. Like Chairman Mao you seek to demonise all that came before you, specifically the past generations of Irish Christians, so that the present narcoticised quiescent generation of Irish citizens will not notice the monstrousness of the Ireland you and your ilk have created in their name. The monstrousness of your polity includes your legalisation of the murder of unborn children, your promotion of mutual masturbation between people of the same gender as marriage, your collapse of immigration law, your endorsement of condom culture and contraceptive pill promiscuity, your permitting of health boards to perform mutilating sex change operations which do not work on children and adults, and your surrender of towns, cities and villages to IRA mafia skang gangs. These truly are deep shames Mr Varadkar as opposed to the contrived slanders you have tried to perpetrate against the ancient Church. Irish society does indeed inherit a deep shame Mr Varadkar because you lied when you made the now disproven claim that nuns had thrown baby orphans into a sewerage system and because, in spite of overwhelming evidence as to what you have done, you still won't admit you lied. You and your predecessor as Prime Minister Enda Kenny lied when you sent Judge Yvonne Murphy on an incitement to hatred fishing expedition to slander deceased nuns with this fabricated story about babies being dumped in a sewerage system. And you and former Prime Minister Enda Kenny and Yvonne Muphy still haven't admitted you lied. Even though the established facts of the case now demonstrate incontrovertibly that nuns never buried any babies in any sewerage system, the slander you have contrived is still being perpetrated. You and your so called Minister for Children Catherine Zappone have stood over your lies and your slanders long after they have been utterly debunked. The Daily Mail still hasn't retracted your lies which it sent around the world. The supposed historian Catherine Corless still hasn't retracted her lies which provided the justification for your and Enda Kenny's initial slanderous fishing expedition. Broadcaster Matt Cooper still hasn't retracted the lies he told on his radio programme where he was incredibly still falsely claiming as recently as a month ago that nuns had thrown babies into a sewerage tank. You Mr Varadkar, and Enda Kenny, and Yvonne Murphy, and Catherine Corless and the bankrupt Daily Mail and the near cosmically incompetent Matt Cooper, have simply ignored the truth, the now proven revelation that a County Council (not the nuns) was responsible for reburying babies in an underground chamber which was in any case never used for sewerage, and that all this took place after the County Council acquired the original burial site for a housing development many years after the nuns' orphanage had closed. The only deep shame that Irish society inherits is that some people have acquiesced to your attempts to slander the Catholic Church out of existence."

the waiting

grey light upon sleeping fields
the stillness i have come to love
time and tide cease surcease
peace sits like a glove
shadow sifts like memory

the dog stirs at his chain
and whines and lifts his eyes
for the walk he knows we'll take
though storm clouds steal the skies
and grey light curtains into rain
so waits the world tonight
in darkness and in pain

the world waits for christ

De Ploribus Unum

(inside the Trump presidency, by a source close to the president)

I can't let on in public but the Chinese crisis is definitely worsening.
The restaurants in DC can't do Cantonese Duck properly. They do it like they're from Fujian or somewhere.
It can't go on.
Internal disruptions in my cabinet haven't entirely ceased either since I fired Bolton.
Now Vice President Pence is having trouble taking orders. He brought back Chicken A l'Orange instead of Chicken Chow Mein from the takeaway last night.
It makes you wonder.
How would Abraham Lincoln (honest Abe) have coped with that sort of incompetence?
You want to have seen Bolton's tache when I fired him.
The tache was more offended than he was.
It always had a life of its own.
The Dems are trying to impeach me regardless of the marvellous job we're doing..
It looks like they have the Saturday Night Live strand of government on side but that might not be enough.
Ivanka tells me no one watches Saturday Night Live anymore.
It should be called Saturday Night Dead.
Or more simply The Not Funny Show.
CNN is still implying I'm involved with the Cosa Nostra mafia.
They think I'm some sort of made man or something.
It's all fake news.
They're haters, the lot of them.
If I was in the mafia they'd all be going for a little ride, I can tell you.
And not to Disney World.

autism for beginners

"I agree with you about Attention Deficit Disorder. I've dealt with hundreds of children during the space of twenty years who supposedly had ADHD. And do you know how many I thought really had something? Maybe two. The rest were disrupted by other factors."
"But professionals aren't saying this."
"I'm saying it."
"Okay but you still disagree with me about autism."
"James there's something there. They have something."
"Well some of them have neurological damage from the Mumps Measles Rubella vaccine."
"I agree with you. There I agree with you."
 "I'm a bit surprised you said that. A lot of professionals don't dare say they agree with that one. But what about the other kids who have something we're calling autism. The ones whose supposed distinctive traits we postulate may not have been induced by mass vaccination programmes. I'm saying we're wrongly calling distinctive individuality a symptom. I'm asking whether the semblance of neurological damage can arise from systemic bullying? From our own predispositions to define normalcy in the most convenient way possible for ourselves? From misbehaving parents? From profound psychological aggresivities experienced via the culture? From unknown traumas? From an excessive desire on the part of caregivers to have what they think is a normal child? From authority figures who lack patience? From the absence in the home environment of belief in God? From diagnosticians ticking boxes and labelling indidual, distinctive. unique, talented people autistic. I suggest it can and does. During my twenty years arsing around, I've seen it."
"I've studied this James."
"What if it's not genetically based at all? What if it's not in many cases even real neurological damage? What if it's the distinct uniqueness of each individual human being responding to circumstances we don't know about? What if they've been sent to teach us? To teach us to love. To teach us to step back from careerism. To teach us to make an effort not to be so caught up in what other people think."
"No, James."
"For all your study noble soul and for all your caring and for all your experience, and for your compassionate wisdom and insight, all of which I recognise, I'm still saying you weren't there when the ---- went down."

if i'd been scriptwriter for who dares wins

Scene: Outside the embassy which has been seized by terrorists. Chief Inspector Baines is on a phone connection to the Home Secretary, keeping him updated. Reggie Hadley, ops chief of the SAS is beside him.

Inspector Baines: "Home Secretary my assessment is that if you don't give a green light for us to storm the building. there will be a slaughter here and at the mews. Yes. I'll wait. (To Reggie) He's talking to the Prime Minister... Makes you think doesn't it. If you go in there and kill all the terrorists, the media will smear you and you're damned. If you go in and don't kill the terrorists, and the hostages get killed, you're damned."

Reggie Hadley: "Nature of the beast."

Inspector Baines: "Yes sir, I'm still here. Thank you sir. (To Reggie again.) Over to you."

Reggie Hadley: (Using complicated 1982 era mobile phone apparatus of his own.) "Hereford 4452... Mother? I'm going to be late. Yes we're going in against the terrorists."

Little Old Lady's Voice: "Oh goody."

Reggie Hadley: "Okay Mother. Yes. Pork chops will be fine. I'll heat them up when I get home. See you later Mother... Hereford 4453... All battle copters, Operation Destroy is go."

Cut to helicopters taking off, coolo music, etc etc.


***************


Producer's note: Helicopters have never been referred to as battle copters in any movie except James Healy movies where they're never referred to as anything else.

not while i'm eating

The town's leading advocate of abortion rights, Norm O'Brolchain passed my table seeking lebensraum for his morning coffee.
His handlebar moustache glinted morally in the half light of the cafe.
(It's not a handlebar. It's a Magnum. - Ed note)
I kept my eyes down and he didn't greet me.
Usually his manners are impeccable.
As for my own manners, since the legalistion of the murder of unborn children in Ireland, I am indeed finding it difficult to remain civil towards the Nazis.
Next Hermione Vortle entered the cafe.
She walked over to me.
"Can I talk to you?" she said.
I left her twisting there in the wind for a bit.
"Can I talk to you?" she said again.
I still hadn't looked up.
Now I answered with that discrete diplomacy which has made me what I am.
"Go away," I said. "Leave me alone."
She evaporated.
When she had gone I caught O'Brolchain's eye. He had posited himself at an adjoining table.
His face remained in neutral, politely expressionless but there was a definite trace of bemusement flickering from somewhere in his immortal soul and escaping past the moustache.
"Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump taught me," I told him by way of explanation, "that I prefer an abortionist to a devil worshipper every time."