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What you want to say… Open Thread, 3rd October 2012 October 3, 2012

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. doctorfive - October 3, 2012
2. CL - October 3, 2012

Death of Barry Commoner.
‘Dr. Commoner’s overarching concern was not ecology as such but rather a radical ideal of social justice in which everything was indeed connected to everything else. Like some other left-leaning dissenters of his time, he believed that environmental pollution, war, and racial and sexual inequality needed to be addressed as related issues of a central problem.’
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/us/barry-commoner-dies-at-95.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0

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3. irishelectionliterature - October 3, 2012

Documentary on tonight at 9.30 on TG4 …
Paddy Don Patricio, real name Patrick O Connell, the Dublin man history almost forgot. A former Belfast Celtic player, who later captained Man Utd during the first world war, his career culminated in him saving FC Barcelona from extinction as it’s club manager during the Spanish Civil War.
http://www.tg4.ie/en/programmes/anamnocht.html

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4. doctorfive - October 3, 2012
5. carigeen - October 3, 2012

The protestant church in my home village was just across the valley.

In the 1960′s at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon a small black car would make it’s way up
to it, the bell would ring and three elderly people would walk up to
the church. As the years went by the three became two and then the
bell rang no more. The church roof fell in and now the ruins are
floodlight to give a bit of architectural interest to an otherwise
undistinguished village.

I did not realise it at the time but I was watching the end act to a
tragedy. In the 1880s there was a sizable minority protestant
community , like their neighbours small farmers and
craftsmen. They were reasonably well organised, had a church, a
school and a full time rector. The church was built by the
beautifully-named Board of First Fruits in the 1820′s. The rectory is
now a neighours house and the remains of the school is a barn.

They were liked, respected and trusted by their neighbours, at least
there are no stories of conflict that have been preserved. Marriages
took place reasonably regularly with the convention being that boys
were raised in the father’s religion, girls in the mother’s.

The Vatican issued the Ne Temere decree on marriage in 1908. In itself
it was fairly innoccous, introducing the requirement that marriages be
recorded, witnessed and performed by a priest that knew the parties
getting married.

However the RC hierarchy in Ireland was not content with a 90%
majority in the population , they wanted 100%. They immediately
started to use Ne Temere in what could be characterised as a colonial
war against the protestant population. The RC church refused to marry
people unless the protestant partner gave a written promise to bring
up the children as catholics.

The protestant communities in Ulster had the numbers not to be
seriously affected by this. Similarly the protestant middle-classes in
the towns had the education, money and contacts to import wives from
Belfast when the time came. The small farmers and craftspeople of the
west had neither the numbers or the money and they were eliminated in
two generations.

Young protestant adults faced a very difficult choice, celibacy,
emigration or conversion and took the various options in about equal
numbers. There were quite a few catholic families with protestant
names, like the Powells, when I was growing up. I have difficulty in
believing that these people suddenly came to the consideration that
transubstantiation was true and consubstantiation false!

There was also a ban on catholics attending non-catholic services. In
the 1950′s one of the Broder brothers died and there were not enough
men left in the family to carry his coffin from the church. DMt father,
with remarkable courage, broke the ban to carry his old friends
coffin. He was told that this was a mortal sin and refused absolution
locally. He had to cycle a total of 30 miles to make his confession
directly to the bishop. Theft, drunkenness, wife and child abuse could
of course be forgiven locally!

Seamus Heaney wrote about it in
Clearances In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984:
……
A cobble thrown a hundred years ago
Keeps coming at me, the first stone
Aimed at a great-grandmother’s turncoat brow.
The pony jerks and the riot’s on.
She’s couched low in the trap
Running the gauntlet that first Sunday
Down the brae to Mass at a panicked gallop.
He whips on through the town to cries of ‘Lundy!’

Call her ‘The Convert.’ ‘The Exogamous Bride.’
Anyhow, it is a genre piece
Inherited on my mother’s side
And mine to dispose with now she’s gone.
Instead of silver and Victorian lace
the exonerating, exonerated stone.

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Dr. X - October 3, 2012

A good post, thanks. We really need proper research on this question (real research, not Eoghan Harris’ brainfarts).

In Bandon, all the girls in my mum’s class were told that they were banned from going to the wedding of the Earl of Bandon’s daughter, but they all went anyway. But that was Bandon – and as you say, the position of western protestants may well have been different.

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Michael Carley - October 3, 2012

It’s worth digging out Austin Clarke’s poem about the funeral of Douglas Hyde

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EamonnCork - October 3, 2012

There’s a new book out on Hyde being removed as patron of the GAA because, in his role as President of Ireland, he attended a soccer match. It sounds interesting.

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Michael Carley - October 3, 2012

Didn’t Dev go to rugby matches?

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Dr. X - October 3, 2012

He also had a keen interest in theoretical physics, once besting Fred Hoyle in a UCD debate on the origins of the universe (really).

Michael Carley - October 3, 2012

Was this when Hoyle came over to get the Big Fella to pay for a new telescope?

Dr. X - October 3, 2012

I hadn’t heard that, but you may well be right. I was told the story by someone who saw the debate itself, and he claims that he and his mates – at that time callow medical students, not physicists, mind – concluded that Dev had got the better of the fight on that occasion.

crocodileshoes - October 3, 2012

Dev played full back for Blackrock College, I believe, and said: ‘for Irishmen there is no football game to match rugby and if all our young men played rugby not only would we beat England and Wales, but France and the whole lot of them put together’ (1957)

6. FergusD - October 3, 2012

DEv, I take it, wasn’t arguing for the BIg Bang (Hoyle had an alternative theory – the everlasting universe?). Divine creation?

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Dr. X - October 3, 2012

I don’t think the Church has any big beef with the big bang. It`s entirely consistent with “fiat lux” after all.

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fergusD - October 3, 2012

Ha ha!! Yeah, I suppose so. Actually christianity (or most of it) can adapt to almost any theory of the origin of the universe as they can say “God made it so”, even if it was only to kick start the Big Bang or make the singularity (or whatever) that exploded. But still, was Dev arguing about such theories?

Googling I found something else of interest. de Valera tried to get Schroedinger (he of the cat) to visit Ireland! So Collins got Lenin over and Dev got one of the greatest physicists over!

Dev has gone up in my estimation I have to say.

http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/einstein-de-valera-and-the-institutes-for-advanced-study/

“The speaker then explained how during the war the Irish premier Eamon de Valera, a former mathematician, decided a similar institute would be of benefit in Ireland. Due to economic constraints, it was settled that the institute would deal with theoretical physics (as there were great advances being made in this field and it required no expensive equipment) and with Celtic studies (also not very expensive and of national interest). On the advice of Einstein, de Valera approached Schroedinger, the father of wave mechanics, to persuade him to come to Ireland to direct the institute.

This part of the story was well-known to an Irish audience but the speaker gave a very nice sketch of the history – Schroedinger did come in 1940 and spent many years at the Dublin IAS, followed by other prestigious theoreticians such as Heitler, Lanzcos and Synge. The institute became a great success internationally, attracting regular visits by famous physicists such as Paul Dirac. Indeed, some nice slides concerning Dirac’s visits were shown, not least a menu demonstrating the attraction of Ireland during wartime. Another slide showed a comment by Dirac, expressing surprise that the Irish Prime Minister had time to sit through a whole mathematics conference! All in all, it was a lovely overview of the history of the Dublin IAS and included a nice reference to Lochlainn’s work (it turns out Goddard collaborated quite a bit with Lochlainn in the early days of supersymmetry) “

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Jim Monaghan - October 3, 2012

There is a reference to the Schroedinger stay in a recent book. Seemingly his agnostic stand upset th Catholic right. I think UCCs O’Rahilly was particiularly upset. They stopped some of his stuff being published.

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Starkadder - October 4, 2012

Was the recent book the Don O’Leary one on
“Irish Catholicism and Science”? I’ve read part of
that-it was about O’Rahilly’s clash with
H.G. Wells over the role of the CC in
Ireland.

7. Miceal - October 3, 2012

Is there anyone on here that knew the late Liam Kelly?
I’m working on a piece about him and any input would be greatly appreciated. I know I asked about Joe Christle on here a while ago but there has been a lot more feedback and info about Kelly, as he covered a good bit of ground in both the US and Ireland. His story is really unlike any other and deserves to be told – it also has a lot of lessons for us today.
My e-mail is spiritoffreedom69@rocketmail.com if you’d care to e-mail
GRMA in advance!

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8. Laim Smullen - October 4, 2012

Laim Smullen
Trinitys studnet union wants to leave USI and finds anti fees protests
embrassing, so is there a class issue among studnets as regards the the fees issue?
Because Young fine gael are leding the campain to Disaffiliation from
USI in not just trinity but UCD also
http://www.collegetribune.ie/index.php/2012/09/yfg-to-support-campaign-for-disaffiliation/
https://twitter.com/tcdusiYES
https://twitter.com/TcdVoteNo
http://usi.ie/about-usi/voteno/
http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=8399“>The USI Debate and Why I Oppose
http://twitter.com/#!/RonanBurtenshaw

The trinitys studnet union want USI to “come round to a loan
system” and here are its fruits of its success.
http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=11176
Jack Leahy
News Editor
Trinity College Dublin Provost Dr. Patrick Prendergast and Bank of Ireland Chief Executive Officer RICHIE BOUCHER today formally announced a loan scheme for current and new undergraduate students of the College.
Not only that your bank account goes into arrears if not payed off 5 years after graduation if you can’t make repayments. it not income
contingent.
post grade loan system.
http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=11558

http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=10625
http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=11511#comments
http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=11176
http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=11427
http://free-education.info/student-loans-students-difficulty-is-bank-of-irelands-opportunity/
http://free-education.info/angry-students-slam-debt-incursion-scheme/
Yet they Wouldn’t talk about our irish tax funded third level institutions giving away in intellectual property
http://dublinopinion.com/2011/07/31/acid-for-blood/

Interesting Ferdinand Von Prondzynski has come out against students loan
Systems while strongly supporting fees for those who can afford to pay.
http://universitydiary.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/give-us-a-loan/#comments

Please post this (IMPORTANT) but not if its the same text.

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Michael Carley - October 4, 2012

That wouldn’t be a class issue: there is no particular reason to believe that Trinity students have a different class makeup to another university’s.

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9. neilcaff - October 4, 2012

Interview in the South African press today with Mametlwe Sibei from the Democratic Socialist Movement, the sister party of the Socialist Party, explaining how the recent miners struggle could be the spring board to a new mass workers party:

http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-10-04-wildcat-strike-movement-may-birth-new-political-party

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LeftAtTheCross - October 4, 2012

“”…struggle could be the spring board to a new mass workers party”

Sounds a somewhat familiar formula.

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neilcaff - October 5, 2012

Anglo-American Platinum have today sacked 12,000 striking miners

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19848915

The epicentre of the dispute for Amplats is in Rustenburg which is where developments in the article I posted above are taking place.
Clearly South African mine bosses are taking a less light hearted view of the potential of the struggle in the mines than you LATC.

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Mark P - October 5, 2012

Ah now, Neil, he was only engaged in a bit of light hearted ribbing.

Another mainstream South African paper has pretty lengthy coverage of the Democratic Socialist Movement’s role in supporting the strikers. Do you know if this is being somewhat exaggerated by the SA press? I know that the DSM are indeed involved, but I’m surprised by the amount of attention they’ve received.

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-10-05-00-frustrated-miners-drive-onslaught

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neilcaff - October 5, 2012

Yeah I know, I was going to put a smiley face on the end but thought it might be a bit out of place in the same paragraph as 12,000 workers getting the sack.

10. Starkadder - October 4, 2012

W. J. McCormack has a new history
book out, ” Dublin 1916: The French Connection”. I was
looking through it in Easons and apparently McCormack
argues in the book that French right-wing thought was
an influence on Pearse and others. The blurb from
Amazon:


In this book, Bill McCormack demonstrates, with much supporting detail, that the French influence on the Irish Revolution was indeed profound. However, it was not the French Revolutionary tradition that influenced Ireland but rather that Catholic, royalist, anti-republican tradition in France which was very strong throughout the 19th Century ….The events before during and after Easter 1916 were therefore part of a reaction against modernism and secularism. Yet by a semantic irony, it came to be called republican. It was never republican in any sense that a continental European would understand. It was, in fact, informed by a reactionary clericalism that sat very comfortably with the actual nature of Irish society.

I remember McCormack being hostile to Sinn Fein, but this new
book seems to be far more critical of Irish nationalism than
McCormack has been before (I remember him criticising
“The New Left Review”, claiming it was ignoring the
conlflict in Northern Ireland).

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Joe - October 5, 2012

Sounds like my kind of book. Thanks Starkadder.

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11. Northside Socialist - October 4, 2012

Apologies if this has already been noted on this site…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/01/eric-hobsbawm?intcmp=239

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12. Northside Socialist - October 4, 2012

http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.ie/2012/10/eric-hobsbawm-rip.html

“Marx remains the essential base of any adequate study of history, because—so far—he alone has attempted to formulate a methodological approach to history as a whole, and to envisage and explain the entire process of human social evolution. In this respect he is superior to Max Weber, his only real rival as a theoretical influence on historians, and in many respects an important supplement and corrective. A history based on Marx is conceivable without Weberian additions, but Weberian history is inconceivable except insofar as it takes Marx, or at least the Marxist Fragestellung, as its starting-point. If we wish to answer the great question of all history—namely, how, why and through what processes humanity evolved from cave-man to cosmic travellers, wielders of nuclear force and genetic engineers—we can only do so by asking Marx’s type of questions if not accepting all his answers. The same is true if we wish to answer the second great question implicit in the first: that is, why this evolution has not been even and unilinear, but extraordinarily uneven and combined. The only alternative answers which have been suggested are in terms of biological evolution (e.g., sociobiology), but these are plainly inadequate. Marx did not say the last word—far from it—but he did say the first word, and we are still obliged to continue the discourse he inaugurated…I would like to look forward to a time when nobody asks whether authors are Marxist or not, because Marxists could then be satisfied with the transformation of history achieved through Marx’s ideas. But we are far from such a utopian condition: the ideological and political, class and liberation struggles of the twentieth century are such that it is even unthinkable. For the foreseeable future, we shall have to defend Marx and Marxism in and out of history, against those who attack them on political and ideological grounds. In doing so, we shall also defend history, and man’s capacity to understand how the world has come to be what it is today, and how mankind can advance to a better future.”

Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Marx and History’, New Left Review I/143 (Jan-Feb 1984)

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13. Starkadder - October 5, 2012

Enda Kenny on the cover of “Time” magazine:

The article, written by Europe editor Catherine Mayer, discusses Enda Kenny’s rebuilding of the Irish economy and “what the rest of Europe can learn from him”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1005/breaking25.html

You may commence laughing now.

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RosencrantzisDead - October 5, 2012

I liked this little bit best:

“While I was in Dublin I spoke to the ESRI [Economic and Social Research Institute], and one view they gave on the current outflow of young people is that it’s not necessarily a bad thing for Ireland. These people go abroad and gain experience but the moment the economy begins to recover they’ll come back again like homing pigeons bringing new skills with them. They also bring links from abroad, and given that Ireland’s such an open economy and relies so much on its trading routes, that’s not a bad thing. What worries me about Ireland, and what would circumscribe anything that Enda Kenny or any other politician could do, is that the euro-zone crisis is horribly interconnected. How well things turn out for Ireland will affect all of us and not just the Irish people. We will just have to wait and see what happens unfortunately.”

That is a big proviso especially when you consider that we cannot return to the way things were before the crash.

Also:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1005/central-bank-economic-forecast-business.html

Hmm…economic management. Hmm…

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14. LeftAtTheCross - October 5, 2012

October 5 is World Teachers Day.

“World Teachers’ Day, held annually on October 5th since 1994 – when it was created by UNESCO – celebrates teachers worldwide. Its aim is to mobilise support for teachers and to ensure that the needs of future generations will continue to be met by teachers.”

http://www.5oct.org/2012/index.php/en/

Maybe of interest or anyone who is, or has family or friends, working in education.

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CMK - October 5, 2012

Newstalk celebrated by playing Van Halen’s ‘Hot for Teacher’. Cracking song, but, still, hardly appropriate but all part, no doubt, of the great project of running teachers down.

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Starkadder - October 5, 2012

Across the pond, Hollywood is joining in with running
teachers down as well:


Won’t Back Down is a button-pushing crowd-pleaser that demonizes teacher unions as the domain of timid souls more interested in protecting their turf and financial interests than in steering children to bright futures. Given how the film lionizes rebel schools and the plucky single parents pushing for progress at all costs, it’s an inspirational teacher movie for a post-Waiting For Superman era. (It’s probably no coincidence the film comes from Walden Media, the same company behind Davis Guggenheim’s controversial documentary about charter schools.)
http://www.avclub.com/articles/wont-back-down,85479/

Bit surprised to see Maggie Gyllenhaal in this movie-she’s
one of Hollywood’s most outspoken lefties.

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CMK - October 5, 2012

Irish teacher’s pay among worst hit by crisis. Que massive chorus from Independent newspapers’s journos: ‘oh no it’s not!!!’.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1005/breaking63.html

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15. sonofstan - October 6, 2012

Claiming our Future has an internship opportunity through the JobBridge scheme for a Project Leader (Social Media).

Aimed at those for whom the correct punctuation would be ‘Claiming: our Future’

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dmfod - October 8, 2012

Sure what better way to promote Claiming our Future’s ‘core values’ of ‘equality’ and ‘solidarity’ than by using slave labour? I shouldn’t really be surprised nobody in that astroturf NGO-Labour formation saw the irony in this, given NGOs’ years of experience in exploiting unpaid interns in the name of social justice since long before the JobBridge scheme – but even so this really takes the biscuit.

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Mark P - October 8, 2012

My first thought on seeing sonofstan’s post was that you were going to explode with a strange mixture of glee and rage when you saw it.

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16. soubresauts - October 8, 2012

English blogger John Ward has interesting comments on lefties (actually he has interesting comments on many things):
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/at-the-end-of-the-day-200/

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17. Anonist - January 20, 2013

Boring techie question:

CLR is one of the (if not the) best Irish political discussion site for some years. But I do wish some of the technology was not so hit-and-miss.

I repeatedly try to comment on this site through my IP anonymiser and WordPress discards the comment.

Can someone please check and clarify which IP-addresses this WordPress site or WordPress as a whole discards.

Thanking you all.

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Anonist - January 20, 2013

Or is it browser-sensitive. Or keyword sensitive or what?

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WorldbyStorm - January 20, 2013

Thanks anonist, I genuinely don’t know. It is possible if you have an heap of links in a comment that it will discard it. This happens to a lot of people who comment. I’ll go look, I wonder is it possible that the IP anonymiser itself is causing problems and WordPress defaults to thinking it’s spam?

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Anonist - January 20, 2013

Thanks WBS and a peaceful Sunday morning to you.

It’s quite possible that a lot of spam comes from anonymiser IPs and they are automatically blocked. Also my comments tend to be link-heavy so that might be a problem.

No biggy but some clarification would help more than just me.

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Anonist - January 20, 2013

I reckon it’s the IP-addresses – just posted something that got rejected from the anonymiser.

That’s a difficult one because IP-blocking is one way of reducing spam.

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ejh - January 20, 2013

You’ve not used a different email address or something? I had that problem.

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Anonist - January 20, 2013

Thanks EJH – I checked that – it’s definitely IP-address range blocking that’s the problem.

I’ll have to think of other ways around it.

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18. ejh - May 10, 2013

Twitter tells me that the Lounge’s account has been suspended. Is there a problem?

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Economic Refugee - May 10, 2013

It seems to be the case. I wonder why?

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WorldbyStorm - May 10, 2013

Genuinely puzzled by this. Can’t think that there’s been any post that would cause that. Weird.

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