CRIME and anti-social behaviour are blights on the lives of families who are trying to build a future for themselves, their children and generations to come. They also seriously impact on older people who have helped build this country and are entitled to enjoy their 'twilight years' in safety and free from fear and harassment. In this new series, Taking Back Our Communities, An Phoblacht will be taking a look at various places facing up to these challenges. Not all areas are the same, nor are the problems or the possible solutions. That said, we hope that ideas can be picked up or adapted as practical responses that grassroots republican activists can help roll out in their own communities. And we'd like to hear your views and ideas too. This week we hear the views from two city areas at opposite ends of the island: Upper Springfield in west Belfast and Limerick. Free article

BRIAN KEENAN joined the IRA in 1968. In the intervening 40 years he became one of the IRA's foremost strategists and a thorn in the side of British imperialism. Tony Blair's Chief of Staff at 10 Downing Street during the war years described Brian Keenan as "the single biggest threat to the British state". Brian spoke to JIM GIBNEY for the first time publicly about his life as a husband and father of six children, as an IRA activist, his years in jails in England and the influences that shaped his early life. This is the third and final instalment of a feature in which Brian Keenan tells us, in his own words, about how the IRA sustained a heroic guerrilla campaign against one of the most powerful nations in the world for decades until a viable alternative for political progress was presented. And this leading exponent of the most successful IRA campaign since the 1920s has a message for those who cling to armed struggle as a principle rather than a tactic. Free article

THE political obituaries of Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach have been almost unanimous in their bland conclusions. 'He was great for the economy and the North; pity about the dodgy stuff in the early 1990s,' goes the line. There has been no real examination of the political record and of how the policies pursued by Bertie Ahern since he entered politics have impacted on Irish society. Free article

ENDA KENNY is the person with most to lose from the imminent appointment of Brian Cowen as Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach. Kenny's job as Fine Gael leader and entire political career are on the line and the omens do not look good. Free article

FOR JUST three days in March, Lisa 'Squeak' Feeney held the attention of the nation as her tunnel sit-in at Rath Lugh Fort against the planned M3 motorway through the Tara Skryne valley both gripped and divided public opinion on the merits of the motorway and the changing nature of political protest in Ireland. But in the blanket media coverage of the event, it was hard to get a true picture of either Lisa Feeney, the Rath Lugh Direct Action Group which has led the campaign, or what was really happening at the site of the 2,000-year-old promontory fort threatened by the NRA bulldozers. This week, An Phoblacht interviews Lisa Feeney and asks her about the ideas behind the Rath Lugh group, life in their camp and that vital question: which work by Pádraig Pearse was she reading while entombed within the Rath? Free article

Mary Lou McDonald debates with Peter Sutherland at National Forum on Europe Free article

AN PHOBLACHT correspondent SEÁN Ó FLOINN is travelling in South America. He speaks to Tino, a Guatemalan former guerrilla fighter who tells his story of his country's struggle against inequality, military dictatorship and imperialist interference. Free article

Mhothaigh mé riamh na seandaoine ag caint ar chumhacht na gealaí, an chuid is mo den am bheadh siad ag caint faoi dhaoine a mbeadh mearú maith iontu, is é seo na daoine a rachadh ar mire leis an ghealach lán, rachadh cuid acu glan ar mire, cosúil le madaí a mbeadh ocras bocht orthu. Ach in amanna eile chloisfinn iad ag rá go mbeadh rabharta ard ann dá mbeadh gealach lán ann - iomlán geallaigh iomlán rabharta mar a deir an seanrann. Ach déarfainn go bhfuil mé féin ábalta a chur leis an traidisiún seo a bhaineann leis an ghealach, ach an t-am seo baineann seo le hiomlán geallaí agus cóisir mhór. Free article

THE National Football League enters its final stages this weekend with all the major issues of final places, promotion and relegation due to be decided except for Divisions Two and Three where the postponed Dublin v Armagh and Down v Limerick matches are stand-alone fixtures before the last round on Sunday week. Free article

IF you have feelings, prepare to emote. One of the chief casualties of Bertie Ahern's resignation is Sunday Independent columnist and former Workers' Party and Fine Gael guru Eoghan Harris, appointed to the Seanad last summer by Ahern for services rendered. Free article