Why are FF making a comeback?

Once a vampire has a stake driven through its heart, it should die or so the old adage goes in folklore. Fianna Fail are like that vampire, the last election saw them completely slaughtered only for recent polls to show a remarkable comeback from the dead. The proverbial stake to the heart in the last elections did not completely kill of the "Publican party", they regrouped under the dark recesses of their rocks and came back together to come back stronger than ever. Two opinion polls confirmed that they are now the most popular party in Ireland 27%, followed by Fine Gael on 25% (Source:http://www.thejournal.ie/fianna-fail-back-in-top-in-new-opinion-poll-798735-Feb2013/). There is very little in terms of explanation as to why the party that contributed to the collapse of the country financially and socially has resurged in popularity. Irish people are glutton for punishment in these years and tend to vote along dynastical lines and those of their family whose opinions still appear to come from civil war era lines. Another factor may be that people do not see an alternative to the status quo in place at the moment. The ULA were a real alternative but beset by infighting aided a less than glorious fall from grace for the movement. Sinn Fein are gaining at the expense of the other parties but have hit a ceiling in terms of popularity, not everyone subscribes to their brand of populsit Republican politics. Fianna Fail are going to be massive at the next election but give them enough rope and they should hang themselves..

The Wonderful Nature of Randomness

Randomness contributes to life beautifully. Human beings in their very nature are scared of change, fearing that changes may upset the routines we have built little by little over life and which rule how we live our life. Every year or month we adjust things slightly to accommodate our life and we never really change anything drastically for fear of upsetting the ying and yang that exists in our perfect harmonious little lives, but why dont we change these things? In the last year that is how life changed for me, I added some major doses of randomness and met some new people and did some new courses and its resulted in life being more wholesome. Throw caution to the wind, let new worlds collide and live your life as its hurtling through.

Some thoughts for a sunny afternoon... :)

Maggie Meme II

The Sexual Repression of the Irish People...

"Lock them up and dont let them see the cold light of day" more than likely was a thought that ran through the head of the nuns as they threw single mothers back into their rooms after a long day at the laundry working tirelessley to make a quick bucks for the holy orders that ran such kips. Single mothers were placed in these institutions becasue they had a child outside of marriage, children were given up for adoption or sent into some industrial school and the mothers looked upon with disgrace, daring to have sex outside of marriage. Even at that, it was not only single mothers whom were sent but women whom may have been single but seen to have been too beautiful for how she may tempt man to "partake of her flesh". Women from society of all types were sent against their will to the laundries.The last of these institutions only closed in 1996, closing its doors never again to be opened thankfully. Ireland however has still held itself back all these years, the closing of the last Magdalene laundry marked a deliniation in the role of Irish society perhaps not frowing upon the sexual being that is inside all of us but to think it was a complete deliniation is far from the truth.

The Ryan report unmasked the level at which child abuse was prevalent all through the schools run by the Irish church and to what extent the abuse was perpetrated. Priests, most of whom were placed under an obligation to stay celibate, were shown to have been abusing children to satiate some sort of urge they had which can be attributed partially to the twisting of norms at the time at what was accepted and what was not. Sexually you only had sex to procreate and sex for any other reason was seen as a sin except in households where the wife was expected to grit her teeth, spread her legs and think of Ireland in what became a societal norm and not seen as it should have been, an abuse of womens rights , a violation of her own body.

Donal Fallons article recently on thejournal.ie on the rise to prominence of the Irish sex shop (http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/sex-...06612-Dec2012/) illustrates in paralells the acceptance gradually of the rise of the acceptance of some aspects of our sexuality and the decline in catholic faith as the 90's came and went so did more sex shops to the point they are now a feature very much of the Irish landscape. When Peter Stringfellow opened his strip club in the mid 2000's, the old dears of the Legion of Mary (LOM) sought to close down the establishment for lap dances (http://www.irishexaminerusa.com/mt/2...in_dublin.html)

Ireland however is still trapped in a mire of sexual repression. Speaking to a friend last night from Boston he told me he was amazed at a recent trip to a gay sauna where men would only 'play' with him in the dark room, they would not give him the time of day but in the dark anything was fair game, sex with the lights off common enough Im sure with Irish people ashamed at the thoughts of making love. Typically the Irish male is at complete odds with the Irish female in the bedroom, the woman likes to be held while the Irish man upholds the stereotype of being masculine and being afraid to cuddle, show me an Irish man who wears his heart on his sleeve and I will buy you a pint (perhaps). Where does this come from this cold heart? A mix of Catholic guilt, pressure to conform to male steretypes and a lack of emotion from parents perhaps all conspire to create this cold shameful sexual Irish being.

Abortion and homosexuality aside, issues discussed to death on the corridors of PW Ireland, lets face it, is sexually repressed. Our youth are only now being thought about contracception, years after Nell Mc Cafferty and others went on the pill train and young men could not buy condoms in the Virgin Megastore on Aston Quay. Online young men are afraid to come out to express their sexual preference as are young lesbians. Cast of your shackles Ireland, we are but a nation economically screwed, morale is low and we have no money to spend but we do have one and other Ireland.

Make love, not war!

Dying Water Veterans Letter to Bush and Cheney

Before any person considers joining the US military, their family should ensure they read the following letter penned by dying Iraq war veteran Tomas Young. Tomas was in Sadr City in Iraq when insurgents shot at them and a bullet entered Young's spine and left him paralysed. He does not believe he has any quality of life and so has written a letter to both Bush and Cheney in a remarkable open hearted letter. The letter dwells on the feelings he has and how his life, at 33 is ending having being lied to and treated like dirt found at the bottom of someone's shoe. The letter is profound, came across it on rabble..
http://rabble.ie/2013/03/20/dying-veterans-letter-to-bush-and-cheney/

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

—Tomas Young    
 

More background on Tomas Young and what happened to him can be found here:http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...oung_20130310/

Rapa Nui

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/...502181420.html


Easter Island in the Pacific is one of the remotest locations in the world yet sees throngs of tourists ever year. Chile, who occupy own the island have encouraged Chileans to settle on the island with tax incentives. The Rapa Nui, the original inhabitants of the island have seen this imperialist take over by Chile as threatening their existence. Only recently they elected a king and are taking the fight to the courts to have Chile leave the islands so as they can govern themselves. There is some division on the island though, some of the Rapa Nui welcome the Chileans as they subsidise their lifestyle and have improved the quality of life while others beg to differ.

Lets support the Big Guys...

A lot of focus lately on the need to shift weight and the cut back on obesity etc. People are well aware of the dangers of being over weight, the chance of cancer, heart diseases, diabetes etc but can we not just look on the bright side of being chunky in a world obsessed by skinny size zero models and a focus on judging a book by its cover. There is a lot of emphasis on the negative side of being a big person but how about we look at the positives? There is no way I want to be skinny, I do want to be healthy and live long but in the mean time can we not all embrace the big person that gets sidelines by society? When a big person walks into a room, they have presence and personality wise will often be the type of person who are funny or chatty, to make up for what society determines are not good looks. Big people are built for comfort, not for speed we can be cuddled up to and will often be seen as protective as we dont get tackled because of our size.

So come on , give it up for the big lads and women, we are not going away....

Ethnic Tensions in Mynamar

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/wo...ref=world&_r=0

New York Times reports on the growing racial tension between the Burman, whom make up the vast majority of Mynamar and the other minorities which live in Mynamar. A case in point is the Kachin people whom are predominantly christian and live in the foothills of the Himalayas, their language is banned in schools and there has been some religious persecution. Rival tensions are mounting but some ethnic groups are coming together to fight the Burman and may be arming themselves. At the same time though, Buddhist monks and others are striving for peace. I'd be fearful that things could get nasty very quickly and then spill over but it wouldnt be covered by the worlds media.

Should doctors religious views be vetted before they are hired?

Because of the recent case of Savita should religious views be vetted of doctors be vetted to ensure that it would have no impact on the care given to a patient? Every doctor takes a hippocratic oath to work ethically and ensure that there is top care given to a patient but in some cases could religious belief affect the judgement taken?

Just a random thought....

Tatcher is gone...

Place in hell for the aul gee bag...Satan get your pitchfork sharpened...