Finding the Truth in Netanyahu’s Speeches

My article below appeared as a letter in a recent edition of the Galway Advertiser:
One could agree with the sentiments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he says that an air, sea and naval blockade is necessary to “…prevent militants
groups from getting weapons… whose only goal (is) to hit civilians and kill as many… women, children, old people…Under international law and under common sense and common decency, (there is a need to) interdict this weaponry and to inspect the ships that might be transporting them.”

Likewise Netanyahu could be correct in his analysis that allowing an aggressive Middle East state to obtain nuclear weapons “…threatens …world peace in a way that very few events could possibly threaten it. (This) nuclear challenge represents a ‘hinge of history’ and ‘Western civilization’ will have failed if (a Middle East state) is allowed to develop nuclear weapons…”

So it is time for the United Nations, supported by the Big Four Powers, to confiscate Israel’s nuclear arsenal and put in place a cordon to finally end the flow of 90 billons of dollars in US military and financial aid that has gone into the country since 1976 which has provided the IDF with the F16s, Apache helicopters and Sparrow/Sidewinder missiles necessary to kill thousands of civilians in its neighbouring states and facilitate the colonial occupation and settlement by racist fundamentalist settlers of Arab lands. Cromwell would gladly approve of a policy that has overtones of “To Hell or To Connacht”. Today the 1.5million civilians in the densely populated over-sized concentration camp known as Gaza can look out from bombed-out tenement buildings across the security walls onto the fertile fields and clean tidy settlements of what was, until only a few decades ago, their family lands.

Netanyahu talks of the ‘Jewish State’. But even in biblical times, the ‘Holy Land’ was never a land of Jews alone who were in fact only one of many indigenous peoples which included Canaanites, Amorites, Philistines and Samaritans. Jerusalem itself was a Jebusite city until conquered by a Jewish army under King David.

The Jewish people in Europe were almost wiped out 70 years ago by a regime that wanted to remove them from lands in Eastern Europe that it laid claim too based on racist myths. The Jews were forced from their homes, that were then given to German colonists (as with many other indigenous peoples in Eastern Europe), and herded into concentration camps where movement of food and other supplies was tightly controlled. Any individual resistance to this blockade led to a brutal armed response onto the entire population.
Ironic then that we see today’s descendants of that Holocaust behave like Nazis of old. They arbitrarily dictate what goes into Gaza and what doesn’t. Allowing canned meat but not canned fruit; allowing mineral water but not fruit juices. Banning computers, school books and cement is reminiscent of Hitler’s ideology of denying education and other basic human rights to ‘inferior’ races.

Europe should follow the example of the activists of the ‘Rachel Corrie’ ship (named after a female American peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer when she acted as a human shield protecting a Palestinian home from demolition) to ensure that history does not repeat itself. We owe it to the memories of the victims of the attempted genocides of the Jews, Armenian Christians, Kurds and Muslim Bosnians in the Europe-Middle Eastern region during modern times.

Cycling Across Beautiful Rural Landscapes of the city of Galway

Every cloud has a silver lining. The sudden but inevitable demise of the building boom-based Celtic Tiger has meant that the greedy property speculators and so-called 'developers', supported by friends amongst the political and civil service hierarchy, thankfully did not have the time required to bulldoze all of the Irish countryside and cover it with tarmac and concrete! Hence there is still much to enjoy in our famed natural heritage even in the urban sprawl suburbia of Galway city.So once again, I am organising, as a joint Galway City Council/ Galway City Community Forum venture, a cycle tour of the stunning beautiful rural countryside of Galway City as part of Ireland's National Cycle Week.
Entitled 'Off the Beaten Path' it will commence at 11am sharp on Sunday June 20th from the Centra Foodstore on Bóthar na Choiste, Headford Road.

The event will be a 4 hour leisurely cycle stroll through some of the most interesting historical scenic landscapes on the east side of the city. It will I hope be a journey of discovery for many of its participants.We will ignore the hustle and bustle of housing estates, shopping centres and highways.Instead we will travel along secondary roads to enjoy the sights and sounds of an increasingly threatened but none-the-less vibrant countryside dominated by small farms and natural features such as lakes and bogs.Commencing on Bóthar na Choiste (Irish = Coach Road), I will bring participants through townlands whose ancient names reflect the respect that Irish people once had for Nature -Ballinfoile (Town of the ridge), Ballindooley (Town of the black lake), Killoughter (High Wood), Menlo (Small Lake), Coolough (Hollow at the base of the cliff)...

We will journey over hills, along botharins, past abandoned farm buildings, ruined castles, karst outcrops, bogs, lakes, dykes, turloughs and meadows.
We will stop off in Menlo to enjoy a picnic along the banks of the River Corrib.
To liven the journey up, I will recount tales of headless horsemen, ancient battles, haunted ruins, tragic drownings, lost gardens and of the great forests and the once proud wolves that once roamed the area.

Though I have ongoing battles with City Hall over a myriad of community and environmental issues, nevertheless I can only heap praise on the city officials who contributed to the success of this event, particularly Cathy Joyce.
So I hope that Galwegians will take to their bicycles on Sun June 20th and enjoy the remaining vestiges of our once glorious natural environment, with its rich native flora and fauna

Will the International Community Ever Stand up to the Terrorist Aggressor State known as Israel?

Protests in Galway against armed Israeli attack on naval humanitarian aid convoy.
Location was the Liam Mellows statue at Eyre Square

Th
is week’s armed pirate attack in international waters by the Israeli military on a peaceful flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza, resulting in the deaths of civilian passengers and the hijacking of ships and their occupants, is another demonstration of the terrorism that is a key characteristic of the Israeli state.

In the last few days, Israel has arrogantly dismissed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed by 189 states to make the Middle East a ‘Nuclear Free Zone’; in the last few weeks, it has vowed to continue expanding illegal Jewish colonial settlements on Arab lands; in the last few months it has been shown to have stolen international passports (including Irish) to provide cover for assassins sent to kill an opponent in another country; in the last few years, it has invaded Gaza and Lebanon killing thousands of innocent civilians, deliberately obliterating urban areas, transport/government infrastructure and covering agricultural lands with anti-personnel cluster bombs; in the last three years it has organised an illegal air, sea and land blockade of Gaza that represents the longest siege in modern times; in the last decade it has built a huge fortified wall on Arab lands in order to confine Arabs into nothing more than large concentration camps; in the last few decades it has built up an illegal nuclear weaponry arsenal; consistently defied UN resolutions; introduced racists laws against Arabs; and has invaded, occupied and settled Arab lands with racist Jewish colonial settlers brought in from Europe and beyond, ensuring in the process that any indigenous peoples left are stripped of their personal/national dignity by denying them control of their own roads, food and water supplies.

What more evil does Israel have to do before the western political community has the courage to take on the powerful Zionist financial and political lobby in the USA, Britain and elsewhere, as exposed by that fine elder statesman ex-US President Jimmy Carter, and put an end to the aggression and expansionism of a state that is a central cause of instability in the Middle East and the world?

The Irish government should be praised for unequivocally condemning Israeli piratical action and calling for an end to the illegal siege of Gaza. But surely, Ireland should now go further by expelling the Israeli ambassador and calling for a EU trade boycott of Israel? Likewise it should demand the sacking of the European taxpayer-funded 'Middle East Peace' envoy Tony Blair, who is distrusted in the region from his term as British Prime Minister, who spends so much of his time on the lucrative US lecture circuit or by acting as a high paid consultant to financial institutions/corporations whilst seeming to go AWOL when Israel launches one of its regular terrorist campaigns against unarmed civilians. Sadly he lacks the moral conviction of those brave Jews and Israelis such as the ‘Rabbis For Palestine’ who took part in demonstrations this week in London and elsewhere against the Israeli state murder machine.

Ireland’s Only Computer Museum Exhibition Opens in NUI Galway

I finally got my wish! I coordinated the opening of what is probably Ireland’s only historical exhibition, dedicated to the development of communications and computer technologies, at the National University of Ireland Galway. The museum is appropriately located at my workplace -the on-campus Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), which is the world’s largest Institute researching the next generation of the World Wide Web.The exhibition represents a collaboration between NUI Galway and the multi-sectoral ‘eGalway’ group of the Galway City Development Board. Under the chairpersonship of Dr. Chris Coughlan of Hewlett-Packard, representatives of GMIT, NUIG, Galway City Council, state agencies and the local business sector collected an intriguing array of vintage computers, telephones, microprocessors, data storage devices and other memorabilia that collectively illustrate how improvements in communications have dramatically impacted on society throughout the centuries.

This unique science heritage facility, which will be open for one month, tells the fascinating story of key moments in the history of communications. Yet it is designed to be more than just a tribute to the past and a collection of historical artefacts. For it has a central tenet of inspiring today’s youth to consider careers as scientists and engineers by highlighting the importance of ‘innovation’ to human progress and the crucial but oftentimes overlooked contributions of young people and of Ireland to advances in global communications technologies.

For instance, the invention of ‘Radio’ had a very strong Irish input. It was also avidly embraced by young people worldwide and spawned the birth of ‘Teenage Culture’ during the Jazz Age. This association has only increased over the decades leading to today’s digital world where many of the significant inventions in modern technology, from the personal computers to Google, Facebook and YouTube, have been created by innovators in the late teens to late twenties age bracket.

Chris Coughlan says, “a key aspect are the exhibits on IT companies that established significant manufacturing and research operations in Ireland and worked with the Irish third-level educational sector such as Verbatim in Limerick and Apple in Cork. Being based in Galway, we have of course given a special prominence to the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) who became in 1971 one of the first such multi-national entity to establish an export manufacturing operation in this country and in many ways heralded a major shift in Irish economic development. From its Galway plant, DEC provided a range of mini-computers and software that became the backbone of many industrial and engineering plants across Europe. Its presence here acted as a catalyst for numerous other US high-tech and business companies to follow suit by establishing their primary European operations in Ireland.”


There are also exhibits on the development of the portable computer, the printer and the microprocessor. Equipment on display include DEC Vax, Digital Rainbow, Apple 11, Apple Macintosh, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Vic-20, BBC and the Sinclair ZX81


There is one section of the museum though that should be very popular with all those that consider themselves ‘Young at Heart’, namely the computers that allow users to play the legendary video games of the late 1970s, including ‘Pacman’, ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’!

I hope British People kick arrogant & anti-people Brown & Labour from Government

I really hope that the British Labour Party is given a trouncing at the general elections. They long ago betrayed so many of their fundamental principles & are now the embodiment of the saying that "power corrupts".
Brown/Blair presided over a corrupt Parliament where many Labour MPs became paid lobbyists for vested interests, fiddled their expenses, refused to scrap the outdated Trident nuclear submarines missile service costing the taxpayers billions of euro, backed an illegal colonial war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents. Britain has huge debts, manufacturing has all but disappeared & endemic poverty has only increased. Endemic employment has worsened. Brown's two-face approach to Gillian Duffy in Rochdale portrayed his arrogance & contempt for the public, particularly core Labour supporters. She made clear that she was a veteran Labour supporter & asked him perfectly reasonable questions about the economy, jobs & emigration. He smilingly praised her for her community ethos & but was caught angrily demeaning her off camera. Brown is an arch-hypocrite. Then he brings in war criminal Tony Blair to shore up his campaign. The sun-tanned Blair is supposed to be EU & International Peace Envoy to the Middle East. Is he ever there? He has done nothing constructive that helps the downtrodden Palestinian people. He seems to spend his time on the lucrative US lecture tour circuit or undertaking paid consultancy work across Asia. I am writing to the Irish Foreign Minister asking for his sacking.

Gerry Ryan RIP


Yes, he could be arrogant, bias, opinionated & egotistical. But Gerry Ryan will be sorely missed. He was my car companion for years beween 9.00 & 9.40am on most mornings when I was travelling to country schools. I enjoyed his verbal attacks on the greed and powerlust of many politicans, developers, church leaders etc. He gave a national platform for ordinary people to raise issues that would otherwise not get an airing thereby providing an important public service. On a personal note, 2 weeks ago, his RTE2 show provided info on my DERI lectures for parents/teachers on 'Counteracting Cyberbullying'. I was interviewed by him once- he was sarcastic and bombastic. But I enjoyed it!

Yesterday morning I listened to what I didn't realise was to be his last show as he started off with a witty review of the daily papers followed by a piece on parents slapping their children, not a topic that would be considered 'acceptable' by most other media shows. But it sparked a wonderful thought-provoking debate from callers who seemed to be mainly young mothers.
The programme was mad, funny, irreverent, subversive, sarcastic, silly, serious, disrespectful, educational... In other words, the usual mix for a Gerry Ryan show

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam

Trees Run Out at Galway City's first Community Planting since 2006!

I hope that yesterday’s enthusiastic public support of the first community planting of trees in a a city woodland since 2006 will encourage Galway City Council to re-introduce annual environmental and leisure events programmes for local parks and woodlands aimed at all age groups, schools and neighbourhood associations.

Even though the public planting of trees in Terryland Forest Park of March 28th was mainly promoted over two days by word of mouth, radio and by online social networking, so many people turned up that all stocks of trees ran out after 90 minutes rather than the 4hour period allocated for the plantings! So sadly, hundreds of volunteers never actually got the opportunity to plant trees on the day.

Still it was a great success which much credit having to go to Sharon Carroll (Environment Education Officer) & to Stephen Walsh of and his staff of the parks section of Galway City Council.

The residents of Galway City have yet again shown that they want to play an active part in the protection, preservation and enjoyment of our local beautiful natural landscapes. So City Hall should build on the excellent work that they undertook in organising Sunday’s event in conjunction with community campaigners and re-introduce a year- long programme of trees and hedgerow plantings, nature studies, outdoor arts classes and courses on such traditional crafts as coppicing and drystone walling.

Lost Hobby of Stamp Collection Returns to Galway!

I am hoping to revive the almost extinct hobby of Stamp Collecting in Galway city by hosting a meeting on the subject at 7.30pm this Wed (March 24) in the Menlo Park
Hotel. Everyone is welcome to attend.
A work colleague (Doug Foxvog) last year got me to dust down my old stamp albums that I last used when I was 12yrs old! As a child, it was a great way to get to learn about the politics, culture, geography & wildlife of countries across the globe. In spite of the Internet, states still produce fantastic thematic collections. So if you are in Galway, come along on Wed night to see some

great collections and maybe swap a few stamps with other enthusiasts

Stamp Collecting was a hobby that was once particularly popular with children across the world.Today’s youth tend to collect and trade soccer and cartoon hero cards. But for most of the 20th century, stamp collecting was probably the most popular hobby for children in Europe and America. Stamp swapping through the medium of international clubs connected people from so many nations. The pastime had a high educational value. For by viewing the images portrayed on stamps, collectors had a unique opportunity to become aware of the geography, history, biodiversity, politics and culture associated with far-distant places that, in the period before cheap international travel, they would probably never have had an opportunity to visit in their lifetimes.

By studying the differences in these stamp images as they changed over many decades, collectors also became acutely aware of how the status and values of countries could radically alter when for instance an African colony became independent. Or when once seemingly invincible empires such as that of the Habsburg or Russia broke up into numerous small nation states. Obviously the importance of stamps has declined internationally in modern times as traditional letter posting is being dramatically reduced by email and digital technology. But stamp collection is still a very interesting and intriguing endeavour as moscountries still produced annually a wide range of thematic stamps.At Wednesday's get-together, we will have on display a highly valuabl
e selection of vintage selections from the mid-nineteenth century when stamps were first produced as well as specialised collections on technology and wildlife.
Doug Foxvog, one of Ireland’s leading stamp collectors, will also be present. So anyone interested in reviving this almost lost hobby should attend. If possible, we would ask people to bring along their old albums, no matter how small, and be prepared to haggle, swap and trade! Further information can be obtained by emailing at speediecelt@gmail.com

St. Patrick & St. Paddy's Day Festival -Not Irish After All!!


Great swathes of the world turn green on March 17th as people anywhere that have some ancestral roots to the Emerald Isle nosily celebrate St. Patrick's Day, the great festival of the Irish.

Yet, as with St. Patrick himself, so many of the traditions associated with our national holiday owe their existence to people and places far beyond our green shamrock shores.

Click here to find out more about this startling revelation from one of my previous articles!

For instance....
Famous Ballad 'Dirty Old Town' - Not an Irish Song!


Dirty Old Town is a song synonymous with Irish Pub Ballads, with most people believing that its title refers to Dublin.
Actually, it was written by Ewan MacColl, an Englishman of Scottish ancestry, about the grimy old industrial town of Salford near Manchester!
Click here to hear Pogues' brilliant version of Dirty Old Town.

Ireland's Forty Shades of Green - Invented by an American Rock 'n' Roller!

Forty Shades of Green has all the hallmarks of a story penned by an Irish emigrant fondly reminiscing about memories of the lover, the landscapes and the people that he left behind in rural Ireland.
In fact it was written by the Man in Black- Johnny Cash, the legendary American Rock 'n' Roll & Country star.  Every line in the song feels like part of an authentic television documentary on Ireland. So I have nothing but admiration for the man who could write such beautiful emotional lyrics about a country that was not his own. Who cares if it is sentimental. As an emigrant myself in times gone past, I can empathise with the feelings expressed.
Click here to hear a fine version song by his daughter Rosanne Cash

Advance Pitshop Finally Remove the Litter from their Premises!

Good News! City council responded to my complaint on Advance Pitstop to inform me that they served notice on the Dublin-based owners (see last blog article).
Good News No. 2! Advance Pitstop has actually cleaned up the mass of litter that lay at the front of it premises.
Sad News! The place still looks grubby. Broken Walls, rusty railing & still some litter around its grounds.
So we will continue to monitor this premises.

Expose the Business Polluters Part 1- Advance Pitstop

Front of Advance Pitshop, Headford Road, Galway city

While hundreds of ordinary residents are now volunteering their time and effort to take part in the monthly clean-up of Galway city's public parks and woodlands under the auspices of City Hall's Glan Suas Gaillimh that was inspired by Friends of the Friends campaigners, certain property developers and business owners are destroying the attractiveness of Galway city by a callous disregard for the upkeep of their properties.

It is time for the council to take action under the power invested in it by the 1990 Derelict Sites Act that allows prosecution of their owners and in fact to take over their properties if they fail to comply with the regulations.

Irresponsible Absentee Landlords Destroying Neighbourhoods
Yet it is not only abandoned buildings that need immediate attention for the sake of beautifying our city. The Celtic Tiger stimulated a massive upsurge in the sale of rented accommodation. Many of these absentee owners saw their new properties purely as investment opportunities, as a source of rental revenue and cared little for their upkeep. One of thousands of badly maintained rented houses in Galway City

The inevitable result was that there are thousands of rented houses in Galway housing estates with badly maintained exteriors contributing to serious lowering of community moral amongst local residents. For why cut your lawn and paint your wooden fence when the house next door has a pampas-like front garden and woodwork that is rotting away!
This situation will get worse as so thousands of rented accommodation lie empty as the downturn in the economy leads to an return of Eastern Europe workers (i.e. former tenants) to their homelands

But even prominent city centre commercial properties can have a dirty, grimy, derelict look.
One example is Advance Pitstop on the Headford Road adjacent to Aldi and Lidl.
The owner(s) lets his perimeter wall crumble, the pathetic looking puny shrubbery is almost permanently covered with discarded bottles and cans. and the rusty railings have not seen a a coat of fresh paint for years.
Starting now with Advance Pitstop, I am going to publicly report every week a business that is allowing its property to become an eyesore.

Latear in the year, I hope to start a community campaign to get City Hall to introduce bye-laws to secure a minimum standard of upkeep on all commercial premises and rented properties.
It is critical that developers are not allowed to undermine the attractiveness of the city for tourist and resident alike.
Photo shows the rusty railings, broken wall and litter covered shrubbery that forms the front of Advance Pitstop
on the Headford Road
Galway City

St. Brigit & the Remarkable Power of Women in Celtic Ireland

Today is the first day of Spring, the season of birth and re-birth that follows the harsh cold barren months of Winter. In Ireland, it is dedicated to a female, St. Brigit (or Bridget, Brigid, Bride), the country's most famous native born saint. Her name also has a strong affinity with a Celtic deity associated with fertility and symbolised by 'fire', the element that offered humankind protection from the natural deadly forces of winter.
Brigit is second only in the Irish saints' calendar to St. Patrick who was born in Roman Britain.
The fact that Brigit was female is quite significant as the early Celtic Church in Ireland was unique in contemporary Christian Europe in giving considerable recognition to the role of women. Irish society was not as patriarchal as their Roman, Greek or Germanic neighbours.
According to the historian Dáibhí Ó Cróinín in his book 'Early Medieval Ireland', a woman could divorce her husband for a variety of reasons (including if he failed to satisfy her sexual needs!), could own and inherit property and was treated as an individual in her own right with inherent protections under Celtic law. Women fought on the battlefield as warriors until this was banned by the church.

Celtic female influence extended as far as Iceland....
Even outside Ireland, the influence of Irish women at this time (5-7th century) was felt- St. Ives in Cornwall is called after an Irish female saint (a.k.a. Eva or Aoife), St. Grimonia & St. Proba lived in France (Gaul) in the 4th century, St. Dardaloch in Pavia, Itay (c.300ad) and the nunnery in Austria made famous in the film and musical 'The Sound of Music' was probably founded by an Irish female missionary (Erintrude).
In Iceland the hero of one of the great Icelandic Sagas is the Irish female slave Melkorka, a stong willed woman who refused to be coerced by humiliation, rape and brutality. In fact it has been noted by some that the status of women in Iceland (where I lived for a number of years), which was higher than in Scandinavian societies, possibly owed its origins to the impact exerted by the high number of Irish women living amongst the country's early Viking settlements- they were brought to the country as slaves and wives from the Viking towns of Ireland. It has been said that it was their influence that persuaded many of their pagan husbands to vote in favour of the country's adoption of Christianity at the famous 'Althingi' (parliament) of 1000AD.
This independent-minded spirit must have left a lasting legacy as Icelandic women were amongst the most successful in securing equal rights for women's during the course of the 20th century.

Female Celtic Warriors
Celtic mythology provides ample evidence of the power of women in pre-Christian Ireland. The country itself -Éire ('Ire(land)' in English)- is named after a goddess; the names of most of the great rivers with their life-giving waters are associated with nymphs, goddesses and female animals; the Celtic God of War (Morrigan)- the most masculine of activities- is female. Some of the most powerful Celtic rulers were women such as Queen Maeve and Queen Boadicea. (Bó = Cow in Irish)
The fiercest and most macho hero in Celtic mythology is 'Cuchulainn'. Yet he was actually totally female-dominated(!):
  • trained in martial arts and weaponry by Scathach
  • first defeated in battle by Aoife
  • protected by the War Goddess Morrigan
  • kept on the 'straight and narrow' (most of the time!) by his strong-willed wife Emer
  • nursed back to health from near fatal battle wounds by his mistress Niamh
  • and killed by the army of Queen Maeve
High Status of Brigit in Celtic Church & pagan associations
Brigit was also a powerful Celtic goddess of fertility associated with the birth of animals and symbolised by fire. Hence her links with one of the four great pagan festivals of the seasons- the Spring Festival of 'Imbolc' which occurs in February and the time of 'lambing'.
It is therefore quite possible that St. Brigit was originally a high priestess of the pagan goddess Brigit who converted along with her female followers to Christianity during the time of St. Patrick.
According to legend St. Brigit was the daughter of Dubhthach, an Irish chief, and one of his 'Picttish' (from modern Scotland) slaves. She was made a bishop by St. Mel (whom the actor Mel Gibson was named after) and founded one of the most famous Irish monasteries beside an Oak tree on the plains of Magh Liffe thereafter known as 'Cill Dara' or Kildare- 'the Church of the Oak Tree'.
In the Celtic pagan religion, trees were considered sacred, none more so than oak trees which were prime locations for spiritual worship.
The monastery also was the repository of a 'holy flame', another clue to its possible pagan origins as a temple of Druid priestesses in a sacred woodland. It also has striking similarities to the story of the 'Vestal Virgins' of Ancient Rome whose primary task was to maintain the sacred fire of Vesta, the goddess of the 'hearth'.
Under Bridget's leadership as Abbess and bishop, Cill Dara became a great place of spiritual learning and of the arts/crafts particularly metal work and illumination. For centuries thereafter, each succeeding Abbess of Kildare took the name of 'Brigit' and was regarded as a person of immense stature thoughout Ireland with the monastery being second only to Armagh in its ecclesiastical importance.

Rape of Brigit & decline in the status of Women in Irish society
But over time, the importance of women in society was reduced as Viking raids, wars and the growing influence of the patrician 'male only' Vatican took its toll. The death knell came in 1132 when it seems troops of the King of Leinster Dermot MacMurrough sacked the monastery, raped the abbess Brigit, carried her off and forcibly had her married to one of his followers. As is the case throughout the history of humanity, 'rape' is used as the ultimate weapon against female independence and the physical symbol of man's power over womankind.
McMurrough is the same man who invited the British Normans to Ireland to aid him in his wars; they of course soon decided to conquer the country for themselves staying in the process for over 800years.

Traditional St. Brigit's Cross, still made by children in schools  all across Ireland on February 1st

Galway Community Campaigners Win Fight Against Road Development in Forest!


Big Victory for Galway Community Campaign But Demands for an Investigation into the Abandonment of the Headford Road Framework Plan
As spokesperson of community environmental campaign group the Friends of the Terryland Forest,  I called this week for an investigation into the abandonment of the Headford Road Framework Plan almost two years after its completion.

The recent decision of all bar two Galway city councillors(Fianna Fáil's Michael Crowe voted against; his brother Ollie Crowe abstained) to support Councillor Derek Nolan’s motion to axe a new road through the Terryland Forest Park from the Galway City Development Plan was to be applauded and represented a great victory for local democracy.

The almost unanimous vote of City Council lined up our local elected representatives alongside Galway West TDs from all political parties, the 10,000 people who signed the petition against the road and all those organisations and individuals who did likewise in early 2008 when the Headford Road Framework Plan was unveiled. Its public consultation process represented the largest involvement of citizens with the planning and development  process since the controversy over proposals to build a regional waste incinerator in Galway ten years ago.

But we are shocked that city officials had decided, after sitting on the report for the last few years,  to ‘bin’ an exercise that attracted such high local input.  Many groups and individuals had invested considerable time and effort into making submissions to the Headford Road Framework Plan. Hence its abandonment makes a mockery of public consultation and a considerable waste of taxpayers’ monies as a team of high-powered consultants were hired to bring the report to fruition.

Most people were and are in agreement with the need to regenerate the 76 acres along the Headford Road that contains a number of derelict sites, an unattractive streetscape,  a anti-cycling/anti-pedestrian transport artery and underutilised parks. But they felt that local authority officials’ determination to build a road through the developing forest was a betrayal of the thousands of citizens of all ages who enthusiastically heeded the call of City Hall to plant trees in Terryland Forest Park ten years ago when they were being promised that this new green zone was to become a “People’s Park”catering for older people, schools, colleges and arts groups as well as a proposed ‘ecological corridor’ linking the lower Dyke Road area to Castlegar village. It is also the case that building in a flood plain in a time of global climate change and rising water levels is contrary to Irish government’s recommendations to local authorities.

Likewise,  many experts felt that constructing a new link road that would bring traffic towards Woodquay along a widened Dyke Road from a Quincentennial Bridge equipped with traffic lights would only worsen traffic congestion in the city.

We are requesting councillors to ensure that the Headford Road Framework Plan is published and that the expenditure outlay be made known.  Otherwise ordinary people’s confidence in any future public consultation process undertaken by Galway city council will be seriously undermined.

Britain's Iraqi War Tribunal- Another Political Whitewash!

It was obvious from today's appearance of Tony Blair at the British Tribunal into the Iraqi War, that its members were his friends & allies, as well as some being open supporters of the war & of Israel (who wanted Saddam toppled). They asked no difficult questions & listened often in silence to his long well-rehearsed replies. Blair played a crucial part in securing the peace process in Northern Ireland during the late 1990s. But he deserves to be tried as an international war criminal in The Hague for his role in the death of 100,000s Iraqis, the forced exile of millions, the use of WMDs...
The British 'old boys' network lives on!

City Hall Needs to Formally Abandon Forest Road Plan

Winter Wonderland in Terryland Forest Park

My favourite local community environmental group, the Friends of the Forest, has called on Galway City Council to learn from the lessons of the recent flooding experienced in county Galway by publicly abandoning the controversial proposal to build a road through the low-lying Terryland Forest Park and to finally publish the long-overdue Headford Road Framework Plan with its accompanying 2008 public consultations findings.

We have been lobbying for the publication of the Headford Road Framework Plan since the spring of 2008 when we presented a petition with over 10,000 names against the recommendations of city officials to construct a major link road through the Terryland Forest Park with a corresponding widening of the Dyke Road that would signal the destruction of one of the city’s last great natural heritage areas. Yet nearly two years on we are astonished that this report, carried out with significant taxpayers monies, has still not been released.

We agreed wholeheartedly with the original brief given to the consultants to provide a blueprint for the sustainable retail and public space development of a major 76 acres area of the city that urgently requires urban regeneration due to the presence of prominent derelict sites, a series of unaesthetic buildings, under-utilised parklands, and a anti-pedestrian/anti-cycling transport artery dominated by car traffic.

But it would be a travesty of the public consultation process as well as undermining the concept of local democracy if officials publish the report with the new road element still included as was alluded to last autumn. For, based on the size of our petition and the content of the majority of the submissions made to the report in 2008, it is obvious that the local population are against this road construction. It also goes against the council’s own policies on ecological corridors and protection of natural heritage areas and will only worsen the traffic situation by encouraging even more cars into an already congested city centre.

Furthermore, the recent disastrous flooding experienced in Galway county provides ample evidence of the inherent dangers of building houses and roads in floodplains. In response to the flooding of the summer of 2008, the Minister of the Environment John Gormley instructed local authorities in Ireland that no significant developments should be undertaken in floodplains.

This proposed road is situated in the Terryland River valley, in a wetland area and lies below the level of the River Corrib which is only held back by the presence of man-made barriers along the Dyke Road. With rising water levels a symptom of global climate change, it would be irresponsible to proceed with this construction.

In fact the locality’s wetlands should be enhanced as they act as Nature’s sponge by absorbing floodwaters thereby providing a natural defence for the city’s populated areas.

We are calling on the council to now provide a map of the city’s floodplains so that we can plan for the inevitable future floodings.

In the meantime, our group will continue to campaign for greater protection of our natural heritage areas, their increased use as outdoor classrooms, the return of community tree planting and monthly clean-ups of forests through the excellent Gaillimh Suas Glan initiative.