STEVEN KING asks “why is the MV Saoirse and its assorted passengers heading for Gaza and not the Syrian coast?”

I READ with growing dismay Steven King’s analysis of the Arab Spring (Opinion, June 22).

STEVEN KING (Feb 16) talks about Sinn Féin actually “burning the banking bondholders“, given their track record.

STEVEN KING’S advocacy of a coalition of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is a dangerous proposition (Feb 9).

ON the day after the budget, the worst in the life of one little state.

IN his column (November 10), Steven King defended Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi by saying “over-zealous magistrates have only managed to find against him on one relatively minor perjury charge”.

IN his column headlined ‘Where’s the Irish Mandela to lead us back into the Commonwealth?’ (September 29), Steven King performs a welcome volte-face in his apparent admiration for Nelson Mandela.

YOUR columnist Steven King (October 6) recently advocated rejoining the British Commonwealth.

I WONDER if your columnist Steven King has any idea of just how offensive was his column (October 6) on the US Tea Party?

IN his column headlined ‘Can the Belfast peacemaker walk on water once more – in Jerusalem? (September 1), Steven King suggests that Hamas wants to turn Palestine into a Muslim state. I am not sure if that is the case.

YOUR letters page on June 9 made for interesting reading. On the one hand we had the words of a 10-year-old girl who believed she could make the world a better place.

STEVEN KING’S column on the Gaza flotilla activists (June 9) was a shameful outpouring.

EARLY yesterday morning relatives and supporters of the 14 civil rights protestors murdered in Derry on Bloody Sunday marched from Rossville Street, the British army paratroopers’ 1972 killing ground, to the city’s Guildhall, symbolically ending the banned march that was so savagely suppressed nearly four decades ago.

YOUR columnist Steven King (May 26) writes that “regime change is then perhaps the only strategy that will deny Iran a nuclear bomb”. The alternative regime he has in mind is one led by the Green movement which, he says, merits our wholehearted support.

TWO of the great, heartrending yet uplifting, public displays of emotional honesty in recent years were John McCarthy’s radio interview after his five-year ordeal as a hostage in the Lebanon came to an end and Nuala O Faolain describing her feelings about her impending death. After Monday night’s performance by politician Michael Noonan, we can add a third name to that list.

YOUR columnist Steven King’s self-proclaimed pro-Americanism must be of a very shallow kind indeed if it can be undermined by the results of a single poll on which he largely based his column and which he later admitted was flawed in its methodolgy and execution (‘America’s political wingnuts create an ugly mood of fear and loathing’, April 14).

YOUR columnist Steven King, in his strident critique of our political institutions (March 17), basks in the luxury of moral selectivity in his perpetual search for perceived political inadequacies in the Republic.

YOUR columnist Steven King (March 3) must be one of the few people in the world who doubts Israel’s responsibility for the extrajudicial killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

IT was good to read some sense about the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh affair (Steven King, March 3).

IN his column (March 3), Steven King attempts to justify the assassination of Mahmoud Mabhouh — ” a man who lived by terrorism”.

WHEN will you give us some balance as far as your weekly columnists are concerned.

THE column by Steven King (March 3) was a master class in the art of airbrushing Israel’s role in the Middle East conflict. His one-eyed analysis omitted several important points.

TOMMY WALSH will make his competitive debut in the AFL tomorrow, with St Kilda naming him in their squad for the NAB Cup opener against Collingwood and head coach Ross Lyon promising a likely substitute’s role because he has “surpassed expectations”.

I THOUGHT Steven King’s column on the subject of the hijab (February 10) was a very reasoned and well structured piece that treated the subject with respect.

THE column by Steven King on child corporal punishment (January 6) is a prime example of irresponsible and sensational journalism.

STEVEN King’s version of recent political history in Northern Ireland, on the circumstances surrounding the resignation from office of former prime minister Terence O’Neill is at variance with fact (‘North needs an election to purge system on the brink of breakdown’, November 25)

LIKE most people from one of the minority faiths, I intended to maintain a discrete silence on the revelations about child rape and the surrounding cover-up documented in Judge Yvonne Murphy’s report last week, except to relate one anecdote.

I BELIEVE I have read enough of Steven King’s opinions to last me for quite some time.

IN his excellent column reflecting on the “noughties” (November 18), Steven King reflects on the changes that happened during the past 10 years.

NOTING the inaccuracies in Steven King’s column on Radovan Karadzic and the Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s (October 28), I feel compelled to outline a few historical facts.

WRITING about the Karadzic trial Steven King (October 28), brings to light an apparently contrived definition of genocide used by the UN. That’s about it.

HOW easy it is for columnists like Steven King (September 2) to render a harsh judgement on the likes of Senator Ted Kennedy while their own personal stuff isn’t on the front pages. Cute.

HERE is what the late Senator Ted Kennedy said in the days before the vote to give George Bush the authority to invade Iraq: “It is wrong for Congress to declare war against Iraq now before we have exhausted the alternatives. And it is wrong to divert our attention now from the greater and more immediate threat of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaida terrorism.

ALLOW me as the Presbyterian minister in Cork to make some comments on Steven King’s stimulating account of John Calvin (August 19).

YOUR editorial (‘Ireland can’t dodge the big issues forever’, August 5) shattered my hopes.

IN his column (June 10), Steven King made a number of valid points in relation to the recent elections.

IN his column (May 13), Steven King highlighted how the world, and in particular the media, tends to focus on the more “fashionable” Israeli-Palestine conflict over the numerous others ongoing and desperate conflicts elsewhere.

IN his column (May 13), Steven King highlighted how the world, and in particular the media, tend to focus on the more ‘fashionable’ Israeli-Palestine conflict over the numerous other ongoing and desperate conflicts elsewhere. This emphasises a characteristic of the international community that has been a bone of contention for GOAL for years.

YOUR columnist Steven King (May 6) shouldn’t worry too much about the proposed blasphemy law.

IN his letter (January 23) Martin Stern accuses me of having incorrectly asserted that Hamas was not responsible for breaking the recent ceasefire that resulted in the bloody Israeli assault on Gaza.

I’M afraid Steven King (January 21) reaches the wrong conclusion when he faults the political parties for the fact that membership is getting older and fewer in number.

IN her letter (January 14), Miriam Cotton claimed Steven King’s column (January 7) on Israeli actions in Gaza embodied an astounding “distortion of fact and history”.

HAVING read Steven King’s column (January 7), I can only conclude he has never been to the occupied Palestinian territories and conducted his research by visiting Israeli websites.

YOUR columnist Steven King’s defence of the Israeli actions in Gaza is an interesting exercise in intellectual acrobatics (January 7).