Jailed for Standing up against Warmongers!

Margaretta D'Arcy is a role model for us all. 
Politicians of all parties in the last three governments facilitated the use of Shannon Airport by US military involved in an illegal invasion and war in Iraq. The country and its peoples were destroyed by this action undertaken purely to secure oilfields for the USA. 
Today Iraq is reduced to a nightmarish Mad Max landscape, controlled by warlords and their religious fundamentalist gangs, millions dead or as refugees; its female, Christian and secular inhabitants without basic human rights. 

Margaretta goes to jail for standing up for human rights, peace and neutrality, the principles supposedly of the Irish state whilst Denis O'Brien, Michael Lowry, Irish bankers, property speculators and corrupt politicians who destroyed our country for their own private gain still walk free and enjoy the riches that they stole from us. No Justice!
President Michael D Higgins participated with Margaretta on many demonstrations against the US war in Iraq and against the American military use of Shannon. 
In the past, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Minister Pat Rabbitte loudly condemned American interference in the affairs of other countries and demanded that Ireland should not be caught up supporting their aggressive imperialistic
So please Mr. President and the Irish government. Have her released now!
 

Mad Max nightmare -Solution to Syria is not more Weapons & Bombings

We are watching a country disintegrating before our eyes. We are witnessing the redrawing of the boundaries of the Middle East along religious lines that has no place for minorities or for justice and tolerance.
The Arab Spring is transforming into an Arab Winter as the dreams of the original female and male protestors of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya are being lost in a tsunami of violence.

A massive population exodus, fanatical religious fundamentalism, ethnic cleansing and genocide are happening due to the actions of countries that talk loudly of peace and democracy but are in fact the warmongers, and arms merchants/manufacturers that are making huge fortunes from this war. 

An Islamist Saudi Arabia, a monarchical Qatar, a theocratic Iran, a resurgent nationalist Russia, a repressive Turkey, a profit hungry EU and a corporate-controlled US are arming the advocates of hate, torture and mass killing. They are creating a nightmare world of Mad Max that is leading to the formation of repressive warlord fiefdoms guarded by private sectarian armies. A relatively modern intact country is been bombed back to the Stone Age. This is what happened across large parts of Iraq after the US invasion. 

The only solution is a total arms embargo on all participants in the conflict and an all party peace conference involving all sides including Iran.

Click here to read my article of three years ago on the Disappearance of the Christians from the Middle East, a community that represented 25% of the region's population less than one hundred uears ago.

Video of Syrian rebel leader eating heart of Syrian Solder Shows Evilness of Islamic Fundamentalism

The video of the leader of the Islamic fundamentalist Omar al-Farouq Brigade cutting out and biting the heart of a Syrian soldier shows that the Syria opposition contains a significant evil force that is a threat to peoples and communities all across the Middle East.
See Independent newspaper article here

My fear is that Western intervention will only encourage these elements as shown in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya with 200,000 deaths, ethnic cleansing, millions of refugees, destruction of minorities, loss of female equality, establishment of warlord fiefdoms, Jewish colonisation of the West Bank and  a rise in Islamic fundamentalism that is built on hate. To hear the comrades of Abu Sakkar cheer his actions with "Allahu akbar (God is great) clearly shows the madness of this religious zealots.
See my previous article on the destruction of the 2,000 year old Christian communities in the Middle East.

Hugo Chavez: Hero of the Revolution

Viva Chavez! La Lucha Continúa!

Yesterday, the world lost a great anti-imperialist and champion of the poor and downtrodden.

Hugo Chavez's legacy of fighting against injustice, poverty and oppression will live on in Venezuela and across the world.
As former US President Jimmy Carter stated, "We came to know a man who expressed a vision to bring profound changes to his country to benefit especially those people who had felt neglected and marginalized.  Although we have not agreed with all of the methods followed by his government, we have never doubted Hugo Chávez’s commitment to improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen... President Chávez will be remembered for his bold assertion of autonomy and independence for Latin American governments and for his formidable communication skills and personal connection with supporters in his country and abroad to whom he gave hope and empowerment.  During his 14-year tenure, Chávez joined other leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean to create new forms of integration.  Venezuelan poverty rates were cut in half, and millions received identification documents for the first time allowing them to participate more effectively in their country’s economic and political life."

Hugo followed in the footsteps of other great heroic Latino revolutionaries such as Simon Bolivar, Augusto Sandino, Che Guevera, Salvador Allende and Daniel Ortega who fought to free their people from colonialism, neo-colonialism, elitism, brutality & poverty.

Chavez has and will continue to be an iconic role model across the continent. His success in standing up to the oil oligarchs, their right-wing political lackeys in the USA and compliant indigenous corrupt wealthy governing elites, inspired progressive democrats in many South American countries to organise and win elections in Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador and elsewhere,

As an Irishman, I see in Chavez and other South American revolutionaries the courageous visionary patriotic spirit that imbued so many Irish rebels from Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet through to Pearse and Connolly in their struggles to free our people from brutal foreign occupation.

La Lucha Continúa

Obama in Ireland. Truly Inspiring Speech. Pity He Displays Political & Morale Cowardice on the Palestinian Queston

"Is feidir linn!"

A truly Inspiring speech by Barack O'Bama that must have put a smile on the faces and a steely determination into the hearts of every person in the the huge crowds that came to see him in Dublin.

"...Ireland, if anyone ever says otherwise, if anybody ever tells you that your problems are too big, or your challenges are too great, that we can't do something, that we shouldn't even try - think about all that we've done together. Remember that whatever hardships the winter may bring, springtime is always just around the corner. And if they keep on arguing with you, just respond with a simple creed: Is féidir linn. Yes, we can

He reminded us that Ireland's centuries-long fight against occupation, tyranny and for the cause of liberty inspired peoples and nations across the world, none more so than in the USA.

"..When we strove to blot out the stain of slavery and advance the rights of man, we found common cause with your struggles against oppression. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and our great abolitionist, forged an unlikely friendship right here in Dublin with your great liberator, Daniel O'Connell...".

He helped us realise as we face the despondency brought about by economic and political crisis of today's Ireland, that the darkest hour is just before the dawn "..Remember that whatever hardships the winter may bring, springtime is always just around the corner. And if they keep on arguing with you, just respond with a simple creed: Is féidir linn. Yes, we can...." .

Sadly Obama in the last few days has failed to live up to his own words, caving into tyranny as he demonstrated political cowardice and dashed the hopes of millions in the Middle East and elsewhere when he backtracked on his public statement of Thursday last when he said that Israel must withdraw from the West Bank to its 1967 borders to allow for a final peace settlement. On Sunday though he stated the 1967 borders are a starting block for negotiations, that land swaps can occur, that Israel is a Jewish state, that USA will block attempts by the Palestinians to secure recognition at the United Nations for an independent Palestine. Obama, as with other US Presidents over the last five decades, is under the powerful and anti-democratic financial and political influence of the US pro-Israeli Jewish lobby

Dying Embers of Middle Eastern Christianity

At a time when Christians across the world celebrate the birth of their founder, a dangerous cocktail mix of Christian, Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism is leading to the near extinction of native Christianity in its birthplace with a mass exodus of frightened Arab and other indigenous Christians fleeing rabid persecution.

At the beginning of the last century, Christians represented a quarter of the population of the Middle East. Their churches dotted the landscapes of what is now Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. When Islam appeared in the region in the seventh century, Arab Christianity was already six hundred years old. Its worldwide influence was profound. They practised the custom of ‘prostration’ now almost exclusively associated with Muslims, and had always used (and still does) the term ‘Allah’ to refer to ‘God’. Egypt's Coptic Christians gave to the early Irish Celtic church its tradition of monasticism. Assyrian Christian scholars translated many of the Greco-Roman and Persian scientific texts into Arabic, thereby helping in the flowering of Islamic civilisation under the Abbasid Caliphate. From the eight until the eleventh century the Nestorians, with their heartland in modern Iraq and Iran were the most influential of all Christian churches with bishoprics stretching as car as southern Arabia and eastern China.

A religious tolerance more or less held in the Middle East for centuries until it began to be replaced about one hundred years ago by hatred and even genocide. This began in World War One when, according to many leading historians, the Ottoman Turks massacred three million Armenians, Assyrian and Pontiac Greeks in World War One because of their faith and ethnicity.

From 2001, the ‘Born-Again Christian’ George Bush unleashed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that he termed a ‘crusade’ which has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Combined with the pro-Zionist views of influential right-wing American Christians, who believe that all of Palestine must become Jewish in preparation for Christ’s return to Earth for the great final battle of ‘Armageddon’ (aka the ‘Rapture’), the response across the Middle East and environs has been the unleashing of a wave of murderous religious extremism. Too often local Christian communitities became an easy and accessible target. Christians now make up less than 6% of the region's population.

Yet as with Russia and China, US foreign policy is driven by an imperial greed that has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, liberty and justice. Its key global allies are bigoted religious authoritarian regimes such as Israel with its campaign of colonisation of Arab lands by foreign Jewish settlers; Saudi Arabia where Christian worship and that of other religions is banned, where school children are taught to hate ‘infidels’ or non-believers, and where conversion from Islam to any other religion (apostasy) is punishable by death; Iraq where a campaign of ethnic cleansing has led to possibly 500,000 Christians fleeing the country since 2004; and an Egypt where religious discrimination is practiced, where churches are bombed; where reports of the kidnapping, rape and forced marriages of young Christian Coptic women to Muslim men are increasing.

The great Irish writer and Protestant cleric Jonathan Swift was correct in his analysis that “We have enough religion to make us hate each other but not enough to make us love one another”.

So surely there is an obvious case for the expulsion of these and other countries from a United Nations with its ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ that includes Article 18 which states “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”?

Sadly the EU and the Irish government will do little of substance to end religious and other types of persecution in countries where they have vested economic interests.

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.

America, Barack Obama & the Gaza Crisis

The following is the text of a letter of mine published recently in the 'Galway Advertiser' newspaper that I wrote in response to a series of letters from 2 writers condemning local anti-war protesters:
(Photos from a recent pro-Palestinian Demonstration in Galway City)

The letters of Messrs McDonogh and Harrison seem to view local anti-war protesters as blinkered anti-American ideologues. The former states that he has not read any articles from “the socialists, lefties and liberals” condemning Islamic terrorists.As a member of this motley crew, I for one have written often condemning Islamic fundamentalism particularly for its attacks on women and non-Muslims. Hence I deplore their recent beheading of the ‘leftie’ Iraqi Kurdish feminist Nahla Hussein for her human rights activism. Sadly similar events are a daily occurrence in a country where a US-backed government legislates that women have less rights than they had under the dictator Saddam and where one of the world’s oldest Christian communities has all but disappeared since the Americans illegally invaded to topple its secular regime and secure control of its oilfields.
So if Mr. McDonogh wants to organise a public protest against terrorism in all its forms including that of the Islamists, I for one will join him. For amongst us Galway ‘lefties’ they are those who previously campaigned on issues such as Soviet invasions, Chinese imperialism, British injustices against the Irish, South African Apartheid…

Proud of American Connections

I worked in the USA, am proud of its historical connections with Ireland, have many American heroes and daily enjoy its technological innovations. But I recognise too that it is successive US regimes and its allies that stand accused of the greatest number of civilian deaths and human rights abuses since the aftermath of WW2.

Afghanistan: World's No. 1 Narcotic State

Hence unlike Mr. Harrison, I am wary of any Irish military involvement into propping up a misogynist Afghani regime supported by warlords and drug barons who have, as a result of the US-led invasion, created the world’s No.1 narcotic state that has brought untold misery to neighbourhoods across Ireland and elsewhere.

"We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser"

Washington promotes the Afghan conflict as a war against international terror and for civilised values. But this reminds me of the WW1 Allies that tricked millions of young men from Ireland and other Imperial dominions into fighting for freedom and democracy when in actual fact they were used as cannon fodder to create a future world order that would attempt to deny Irish Independence, betray pan-Arab nationhood, secure British control over Middle Eastern oilfields and increase white colonisation of Africa.

President Eisenhower Warns Americans of the Power of the Military-Industrial Establishment

In his last address to the nation, President Eisenhower warned the American people to be vigilant of the dangers posed to their liberties by the growing power of the military-arms industrial establishment. This is truer today than it was in 1961. War is big business for corporations linked to the lobbyists, Dick Cheney and others connected to the Bush administration. Trillions of dollars have been paid to them as a result of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel while they appear immune to the recession that is tearing the heart out of the rest of the US economy.
The wave of popular radical movements currently gaining power across Latin America are indeed anti-Washington but primarily because they know that their white, elitist, traditionally repressive regimes were kept in power for decades by the USA in return for access to cheap raw materials.

Will Barack Obama's Presidency Lead To a Benign Change
in American Foreign Policy?

I hope that Barack Obama creates a more benign America. He is to be congratulated for his opposition to the Iraq war and Guantanamo as well as for appointing the world’s greenest and most scientific-savvy administration expected to implement a pro-environmental economic programme to combat climate change and to create millions of sustainable jobs in insulating homes and expanding renewable energies.
for Jewish settlers recently arrived from Europe. In the most densely populated region on Earth, its inhabitants are being used as target testing of sophisticated high-tech US weaponry operated by Israelis. As with the Nazis ‘Iron Fist’ approach, any feeble fight-back by the Palestinians unleashes huge destructive firepower.But I fear that he will do little to tackle one of the greatest threats to world peace, namely the expansionist terrorist state of Israel that acts as the US policeman in the region. Its ongoing land, sea and land blockade of Gaza represents one of the longest sieges in modern history and conjures up images of Nazi occupied Eastern Europe. Walled-in Gaza is the world’s largest ghetto/concentration camp, the majority of its 1.5million population made up of refugee families ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homes in what is now Israel to clear the wayEx-US President Jimmy Carter last year publicly lamented the stranglehold that the Zionist lobby has on all levels of US politics. The signs are that little will change. On the day after he received the Democratic nomination, Obama spoke at the ‘American Israel Public Affairs Committee’, the most powerful of US Zionist groups, to confirm that an undivided Jerusalem will always remain Israeli while calling for the isolation of democratically-elected Hamas. His secretary of state Hilary Clinton has been a long-time fan of Israel. She calls for action against Iran over its nuclear development while deliberately ignoring Israel’s huge stockpile of illegal nuclear weapons.The response from the world to the plight of Gaza is pathetic. To equate the victim with the aggressor is disingenuous. By their unwillingness to stand up to Israel, the Arab League, the US, EU and the Irish government fail to see history repeating itself in that today’s dispossessed Palestinians were the Jews, Armenians, Irish, Amerindians, Chinese, Aborigines and Poles of yesterday. Unlike courageous Jewish and/or Israeli peace movements such as ‘Not In My Name’ and JATO, they do nothing to get to the root cause of the conflict, namely Israel’s failure to implement UN Resolution 242 that includes withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders. Without such a move, there will never be peace between an increasingly militarily aggressive West led by Israel and an increasingly angry hostile militant fundamentalist Muslim world.

The 'Drill Baby Drill' Lady

In many ways it is great to see a young(ish) feisty female running for one of the top jobs in the world, namely the office of the President of the United States of America.
And about time too!
For I recognise women as the great unsung heroes of human history. Whilst 'Man the Hunter' killed the occasional animal, it was his female companion that did the hard work of transforming the carcass into a range of clothes, medicines, shelter and food whilst continuing her daily routine of cleaning, nursing, child-minding, man-minding, fire-minding, food collection and preparation from dawn 'til dusk.
Yet it is only in the last fifty years that women have became leaders of society based on their own merits rather than due to their fact that they were husbands or daughters of powerful men.
So I would normally welcome a woman becoming a leader of political, business or community establishments.

But Sarah Palin is different.
Behind the facade of beauty and femininity, she is an extremely right wing gun-toting Christian fundamentalist conservative who has helped turn Alaska into a glorified oil company where dividends are paid to its small-time shareholders (citizens) as profits are made at the expense of the environment.

Her attitude is that 'what is good for the oil companies is good for the USA and is good for the rest of the world'. The opinions of the latter matter not one iota.

Alaska is one of the last great wildernesses left in the world. But man-made global warming is melting the ice at an alarming rate and rapidly destroying the habitats of some of the planet's most precious creatures. The solitary Polar Bear is one of the great symbol's of global environmentalists. As Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin disagrees with the concept of human-influenced climate change and has led the opposition to the US Interior Department decision to declare polar bears threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The same is true of the Beluga Whales of Alaska's Cook Inlet. Sarah did not want them protected contradicting the scientific evidence that they are declining dramatically. In 1995, they were 653. in 2008, they are only 375 belugas left.

She is proud of portraying herself as gun-loving hunter, preferring to kill God's creatures rather than protect them.
As a Christian evangelical creationist, Sarah anyway gives little credence to Science or scientific evidence.
Thankfully, she has recently lost both battles against the US government in relation to the protection of polar bears and belugas habitats who can breath a sigh of relief tonight.

But let us not forget that Sarah's political drive is primarily fueled by the demands and greed of the oil companies who want to increase offshore oil drilling in the state's waters as well as in the protected Alaska National Park. "Drill Baby Drill!" has become the catchphrase of the crowds that attend her election rallies.

On an international front, her views are those of Bush- 'gung-ho' unilateralist, pro-Israeli and anti-environment.
Like the Islamist fundamentalists, the American Christian right and their Zionist allies believe that a vengeful God is on their side, that the 'ends justifies the means' as they use whatever force is necessary to defeat those whom they consider evil. Which is basically everyone that is not of them.

Georgia: A Pawn in a Game of International Chess played by the 'Big Powers'

Below is the text of a letter of mine that was published in last week's popular Galway Advertiser newspaper:
The Georgian conflict is a dangerous throwback to the days of Empire when little countries were pawns in a game of chess played by the Big Powers.
For rather than the USA use its status as the world’s only superpower as a force for good over the last decade, the Bush Administration’s arrogant gung-ho unilateralism has encouraged the ‘new kids on the block’ of Russia and China to ignore international conventions and use their growing economic and military leverage to promote imperial self-interest. Chinese support of Sudan is only following a time-honoured American tradition of supporting tyrannical regimes in return for cheap oil and raw materials. Han colonisation of Tibet and the crushing of native resistance is analogous to the ongoing US-bankrolled Jewish racist settlements in Palestine. Putin said in 2005 that the break-up of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. Not surprising then that a re-invigorated energy-rich Russia should now be trying to re-establish its influence in the former Soviet Empire. Violent repression in Chechnya, the cutting off of gas supplies to Ukraine, the refusal to co-operate with Britain into investigating the death of political dissident Alexander Litvinenko, the cyber attacks on Estonian websites that ‘coincidentally’ followed the controversy over the re-location of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn and the invasion of Georgia are the flexing of muscles by a publicly supported Kremlin intent on reversing years of national humiliation on the international stage. US policy has only encouraged this ‘Cold War’ re-awakening and Russian fear of encirclement with the Pentagon's decision to site missile systems in Poland and Czech republic and by promoting NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia. So sadly more Russian aggression looks likely to follow possibly over the Crimean region of Ukraine or Transnistria in Moldova both of which have large Russian populations as well as the presence of Russian military bases. But it is hypocritical for the USA to call for the territorial integrity of sovereign states and condemn military build-ups, foreign invasion, the creation of satellite states, outside political interference in the affairs of small nations, the arming of separatist militias and ethnic cleansing when these are the very policies pursued by George Bush. For the neo-cons efforts to turn the 21st into the ‘American Century’ has destabilised the world and slashed hopes of securing collective action to tackle serious global problems such as climate change. The US administration, funded by the oil corporations and the Zionist lobby, regularly ignores or undermines multilateralism in the form of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the Geneva Convention, Kyoto/Bali environmental agreements, conventions on the banning of landmines/cluster bombs and dismantling of nuclear arsenals. Talk of promoting ‘peace, freedom, justice, democracy and sovereignty’ is mere PR window-dressing. The United States supports brutal authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia. The illegal invasion of Iraq led to the deaths of c.one million people, the setting up of internal misogynist Islamic theocratic fiefdoms, ethic cleansing on a massive scale, the virtual annihilation of 2,000 year old Christian communities and the greatest displacement of people since the 1940s with millions of Iraqis forced to flee to Jordan and Syria for protection. The invasion of Afghanistan resulted in warlord-run territories and the creation of the world’s first narcotic state with ever-increasing annual yields of poppy plants bringing untold misery across Europe. US agents snatch suspects off Italian streets and elsewhere to be sent blindfolded and chained to secret torture centres across the world where detainees as young as 14 years are locked up for years in solitary confinement. Threats are made to Iran’s nuclear programme while Israel is allowed to maintain a huge nuclear arsenal, invade Lebanon destroying infrastructure and dropping tens of thousands of US-made anti-personal cluster bombs. International borders are illegally redrawn by its construction of a ‘Security Wall’ on Arab lands. In the USA’s ‘backyard’ of Latin America, efforts by the democratically-elected governments of Venezuela and Bolivia to promote wealth distribution and wrest control of their natural resources from multi-nationals for the benefit of the poor indigenous majority peoples has led to increased US funding for the once all-powerful elitist wealthy white minority groups. In total disregard for Cuban sovereignty, Bush turned the US military base at Guantanamo in Cuba into the world’s most infamous prison torture camp while maintaining the five decades-old economic blockade of the island nation.
In an era when we need genuine co-operation to save the planet from humanity’s past and present mistakes we are being treated to the spectacle of the superpowers playing a game of musical chairs at the bar of a sinking Titanic.
Yours sincerely, Brendan SmithCheck out my previous articles on related topics:
A Jesus in Today's Palestine?
What Have the Anti-War Protesters Ever Done for Galway?
Galway Businesses Glorify Terrorist Bombers
Sights & Sounds of US Bombers Reawakens Fears in Galwegians

Christmas time in Galway- Santa Claus & Christians in Iraq

A snapshot of Galway during Christmas time would not be complete without making reference to the oldest church in the city which is dedicated to St. Nicholas or 'Santa Claus' as he is affectionally known today.
It is an imposing medieval structure that dates from 1320. Like many churches located the seaports of medieval Europe it was named after St. Nicholas, the patron saints of sailors.
According to legend, Christopher Columbus visited the church in 1477. This is not as far-fetched as it might seem as the city had a long maritime trade link with Spain.
Walking around the church, I came across this Celtic Cross memorial dedicated to Galwegians killed fighting in the British military during 1916. A wreath had recently been laid at its base.
This is not unusual as St. Nicholas was a Protestant Church of the ruling establishment and served as a garrison church of the local British Army regiment- the Connaught Rangers. Hence its interior is festooned with battle banners and memorials from the colonial wars of the British Empire.
On closer inspection, I noticed that one name in the roll of honour was that of an Edward Berry son of the local parish rector who was killed in a place called 'Bait Aiesa' in Mesopotamia. The latter is known now as Iraq with the Arabic placename of 'Bait Aiesa' meaning the 'town of Jesus' in English .
At that very moment, I conjurred up in my mind the image of St. Nicholas and the colour 'red' . But not the red of Santa's clothing; rather the colour of blood and associations with enslaved women, religious wars, intolerant fundamentalism and today's conflict in the Middle East.
Why?

Shock!-Santa was born in the hot climate of Turkey, not the frozen Arctic!
The original St. Nicholas was a Christian living in the Greco-Roman city of Myra in what is now Turkey which was, until the 12th century, the heartland of world Christianity. The Muslim Turks only settled in these lands that now bear their name after 1071 when they defeated the Eastern Roman Greek-speaking Empire known as Byzantium.
Nicholas was a kindly man who carried out many charitable acts. According to one famous story, he secretively delivered 3 bags of coin to a poor father that allowed him to provide marriage dowries for his three daughters thus saving them from a life of as prostitution in the city's brothels. Shades of today's enforced slavery of poverty-stricken women primarily from Eastern Europe in the brothels of France, Italy, Germany, Britain etc which to me is one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century and a stain on the hearts of the continent's political leaders.

St. Nicholas' Body Stolen by Christian Pirates
After his death, he was honoured as a saint and his tomb became a famous shrine with a repuation for miraculous cures. But as the Byzantine lands fell to the Turkish invaders in the late 11th century, Italian piractical sailors attacked Myra and stole the saint's bones. They brought the relics to the church in their home port of Norman-controlled Bari allowing the latter to reap the economic benefits of being an imporant centre of Christian pilgrimage. These were the same Normans whose invasion of Celtic Ireland a hundred years later was sanctioned by the Pope and who later founded the city of Galway.

The Death of Christian Communities in Iraq & in the Middle East
Interestingly it was the Turkish invasion of Byzantium that led to the birth of the Crusades when Christians from Western Europe set out on their blood-drench march to liberate Jerusalem from the 'infidel'. As with Israel and Iraq today, there was a temporary Western victory and occupation. But the arrogant Westerners never won the hearts and minds of the local inhabitatants and, within a few years, they were on the defensive. Their greatest protagonist was 'Saledin' born in what is now present-day Iraq and a historical hero of Saddam Hussein.
Unfortunately, the long term legacy from the Crusades was a dramatic reduction in the native Christians populations of the Middle and Near East who suffered increased persecutions from Muslims that associated them with the European invaders purely because of their religion. Sadly this mirrors what is happening today in Palestine and Iraq thanks to the disasterous belligerent policies of Bush and Blair. There is now, particularly in the case of Iraq, a mass exodus of Christian communities that have existed since the dawn of Christianity as they become the targets of Islamic fundamentalists. It is hard to believe that Iraq was once a vibrant centre of Christian religion from where missionaries ventured further east to spead the gospel. Today all this heritage is under threat. Bush talks much of changing the face of the Middle East. His madcap imperialist adventure may indeed do so for we are now witnessing the disappearance from the region of a religion that survived persecution for nearly two thousand years.