Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

2024 Elections In Other Countries.

Taiwan


Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party returned an historic third Presidential victory in a blow to the People's Republic of China.

The party regards Taiwan as de facto independent, which it should be.  President Biden, following the election, stated the US didn't support Taiwanese independence, which it very much should.

January 14, 2024.

Hungary


The President of Hungary, Katalin Novák, age 46, has resigned due to a scandal involving the pardoning of an accomplice in a child sexual abuse case.

February 11, 2024.

Ireland


I had a post on the Irish referendum to amend its constitution, and was frankly way off 

Blog Mirror: On marriage, family, and the Irish constitutional referendum.

The referendum failed massively.  Actually two proposals, the one that sought to expand the definition of family from a relationship founded on marriage to include other durable relationships, failed 67.7% to 32.3%.  The one to replace language surrounding a woman's duties in the home with a clause recognizing the role of family members in the provision of care was rejected 73.9% to 26.1%.

This deserves its own thread.

March 10, 2014

Russia


Putin.  Gee, what a surprise.

March 18, 2024.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

St. Patrick's Day

A Celtic cross in a local cemetery, marking the grave of a very Irish, and Irish Catholic, figure.

Recently I ran this item: 

Lex Anteinternet: The Obituary: Mira qué bonita era by Julio Romero de Torres, 1895.  Depiction of a wake in Spain. I didn't have him as a teacher in high school, but I...

One of the things this oituary noted was:

"One more St. Patrick’s day craic for you, Dad."

That's nice, but what does that mean?

From Wikipedia:

Craic (/kræk/ KRAK) or crack is a term for news, gossip, fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation, particularly prominent in Ireland.It is often used with the definite article – the craic– as in the expression "What's the craic?" (meaning "How are you?" or "What's happening?"). The word has an unusual history; the Scots and English crack was borrowed into Irish as craic in the mid-20th century and the Irish spelling was then reborrowed into English. Under either spelling, the term has attracted popularity and significance in Ireland.

A relative who kn3w the decedent well told me that in later years he really got into "being Irish" and had big St. Patrick's Day parties.

But is that Irish?

Not really.  That's hosting a party.

Granted, it's hosting a party in honor of the Saint, sort of. Or perhaps in honor of Ireland, sort of.  And there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.  After all, "holidays" comes from "holy days", which were "feasts".   There are, by my recollection, some feast days even during Lent, and for that matter, it's often noted, but somewhat debated, that Sundays during Lent aren't technically part of it (although this post isn't on that topic, perhaps I'll address that elsewhere.

And St. Philip Neri tells us, moreover,  "Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life; wherefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits."

So, no problem, right?

Well, perhaps, as long as we're not missing the point.

The Irish everywhere honor this day, and some of that involves revelry.  Traditionally it was a day that events like Steeple Chases were conducted, sports being closely associated, actually, with religious holidays on the British Isles.  But the day is also often marked by the devout going to Mass, and as the recent Irish election shows, the Irish are more deeply Catholic than some recent pundits might suggest.

Perhaps it might be best, really, to compare the day to the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in North America, which is widely observed by devout Catholics, and not only in Mexican American communities.

So, I guess, a purely bacchanalian event, which is so common in the US, doesn't really observe the holiday, but something else, and that risks dishonoring the day itself.  Beyond that, it's interesting how some in North America become particularly "Irish" on this day, when in fact the root of the day, and the person it honors, would import a different type of conduct entirely to some extent, if that was not appreciated.  Indeed, with many, St. Patrick would suggest confession and repentance.

Am I being too crabby?  

Probably, but we strive for authenticity in our lives and desire it.  That's so often at war with our own personal desires which often, quite frankly, aren't authentic.  Things aren't easy.

Wednesday, March 17, 1909. John Redmond appeals to the readers of the Rocky Mountain News.

 


Colorado had a substantial Irish  and Irish American population, both of which were represented by my father's grandparents, who at that time lived in Victor, near Leadville.  Redmond was a major Irish figure who was working diligently towards Irish self rule, something that would come flying apart due to World War One.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, March 16, 1909. A serious Congress.

Tuesday, March 17, 1824. Irish in Savannah and Old Glory

Savannah, Georgia held its first St. Patrick's Day parade on this day in 1824.

We don't tend to think of the Irish immigrating to the American South, but there were some, although the story is complicated by the conflation of the Irish with the Scots Irish, the latter group actually being a Scottish Protestant population imported by the United Kingdom with the intent to create a sort of Protestant wall in Ulster.  The actual Irish were a massively unpopular "race" in the United States at this point in time.

The original Old Glory.

The name "Old Glory" was applied to the U.S. flag for the first time, with that coming from Cpt. William Driver, a commercial captain who received it from his mother and local women of Salem, Massachusetts.  The name was applied to the individual flag.

Driver was an interesting character and had originally gone to sea at age 13 as a cabin boy.  On an 1831 expedition to the South Pacific, his ship was the only one out of six that survived the trip, and his ship escorted 65 descendants of the Bounty survivors back to Pitcairn Island.  He retired from sailing in 1837 and became a salesman. During the Civil War, he remained loyal to the Union while living in Nashville.

It remained in his family's possession until 1922, when it was donated to the Smithsonian.

The Anglo Dutch Treaty was entered into resolving issues that had arisen due to a prior treaty in 1814.

Last prior:

Thursday, March 11, 1824. Bureau of Indian Affairs formed.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Tuesday, March 14, 1944. Isolating Ireland


Winston Churchill told the House of Commons that the Allies intended to completely isolate Ireland to prevent military secrets leaking to the Axis, thereby hinting that the Ulster border would soon be closed.

Sir William Davison (by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the refusal by the Government of Eire of the American request supported by Great Britain that Axis Consular and Diplomatic representatives should be removed from Eire having regard to the serious danger to the Allies in connection with the forthcoming invasion of Europe in having a centre of espionage within the British Isles, he is satisfied that the steps recently taken to minimise the danger are adequate, and if not what other measures the Government have in view.

The Prime Minister: The initiative in this matter was taken by the United States, because of the danger to the American Armed Forces from the presence of Axis missions in Dublin. His Majesty's Government were, however, of course, consulted throughout by the United States Government, and gave the American approach full support. We have for some time past taken a number of measures to minimise the dangers arising from the substantial disservice to the Allied cause involved in the retention by Mr. de Valera's Government of the German Minister and the Japanese Consul with their staffs in Dublin. The time has now come when these measures must be strengthened, and the restrictions on travel to Ireland announced in the Press yesterday are the first step in the policy designed to isolate Great Britain from Southern Ireland and also to isolate Southern Ireland from the outer world during the critical period which is now approaching.

I need scarcely say how painful it is to us to take such measures in view of the large numbers of Irishmen who are fighting so bravely in our Armed Forces and the many deeds of personal heroism which they have kept alive the martial honour of the Irish race. No one, I think, can reproach us with precipitancy. No nation in the world would have been so patient. In view however of the fact that both British and British Dominion lives and the lives of the soldiers of our Allies 37are imperilled, we are bound to do our utmost to obtain effective security for the forthcoming operations.

There is also the future to consider. If a catastrophe were to occur to the Allied armies which could be traced to the retention of the German and Japanese representatives in Dublin, a gulf would be opened between Great Britain on the one hand and Southern Ireland on the other which even generations would not bridge. His Majesty's Government would also be held accountable by the people of the United States if it could be shown that we had in any way failed to do everything in our power to safeguard their troops.

§Sir W. Davison: May I ask the Prime Minister whether he does not think it essential that the frontier between Ulster and Eire should be closed, in view of the activities of the I.R.A., who have declared war on Great Britain and have riot long ago been apprehended with papers giving particulars of the American Forces at present in Ulster and certain plans of their operations?

The Prime Minister: I prefer to confine myself to a statement in general terms today. All necessary measures, within the limits which I have described, will, of course, be taken as they are deemed to be necessary.

Mr. Vernon Bartlett: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether this decision was taken after prior consultation with the other Dominions, because that would seem to be really important to bring home to the Irish people?

The Prime Minister: Complete unity on that prevails throughout the British Commonwealth, as far as I know.

Sir Ronald Ross: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that the chief emphasis in the United States' note to the Government of Eire was on the dangers to United States' bases in Northern Ireland, and that it was chiefly, or largely, to protect them from espionage that this request was made? Is he not further aware that nothing that has been done up to the present has had the slightest effect to that end, and that while censorship is still applied between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, there is no censorship between Northern Ireland and Eire?

The Prime Minister: As I say, all these matters are receiving constant and vigilant attention.

Professor Savory: I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the retention of these accredited representatives of the Axis Powers in Dublin is consistent with membership of the British Commonwealth of Nations?

The Prime Minister: The whole question of the position of Southern Ireland is anomalous from various points of view, and I can conceive that high legal authorities might have very great difficulty in defining the exact relationship which prevails. At any rate, I shall not attempt to do so at the end of Questions.

:Captain Strickland: In deciding the limits of the prohibition on travel between Northern Ireland and this country, would the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the position of British soldiers serving in Ireland but due for leave? Will it be possible to make any concession to see that those soldiers are permitted to come back to this country?

The Prime Minister: I must leave the administration of the Act to the Ministers responsible. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will answer questions on the subject in detail.

Mr. Gallacher: I would not like to say anything that would make more difficult a very difficult situation, but I would like to ask if it is not possible, in any further approaches to Eire, to suggest that the question of partition will be a subject for discussion when peace is being decided.

The Prime Minister: I could hardly think of a more ill-conceived approach to the unity of Ireland.

 


Primary elections for the 1944 races began in the U.S.  Wilkie and Roosevelt took top position in their respective races in New Hampshire.

The 17th Indian Division began a withdrawal in India.  The 20th Indian Division had already started its retreat.

The Red Army continued to take ground in its southern offensive.


Last prior:

Monday, March 13, 1944. Bougainville counterattack.


Sunday, March 10, 2024

Friday, March 10, 1944. Soviets say no to Finns.

The Soviets rejected a Finnish reply to armistice terms requesting further guarantees.

Ireland rejected a U.S. request that it expel Axis diplomats.


An award winning Irish army boxing team was photographed on the same day.

The Red Army made major advances on the Ukrainian front.

The Political Committee of National Liberation, Πολιτική Επιτροπή Εθνικής Απελευθέρωσης was formed.  Often called the "Mountain Government", the communist body was opposed to collaborationist in Athens and the royal government in exile.

American forces captured Talasea on New Britain.  On Bougainville, the Japanese took Hill 260 but lost ground to an American counterattacks elsewhere.


PT Boats at Bougainville, March 10, 1944.

The Japanese attacked rear positions of the British 17th Indian Division in Burma.

U-343, U-450, U-625 and U-8459 were lost in the Atlantic.

The Fighting Seabees, which is a pretty bad movie in my view, was released.

Last prior:

Thursday, March 9, 1944. Bombing of Tallinn.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Blog Mirror: On marriage, family, and the Irish constitutional referendum.

Ireland, somewhat like Canada some years ago, is in its bratty teenager years and as part of that it likes to go behind the bleachers, smoke cigarettes, make out, and complain about its parents.  In the case of Ireland, the parents are its former English overlords and the Catholic Church.  In the case of Canada, it's its deeply conservative English and French heritage, the latter of which is deeply Catholic and which doesn't exist without it, and the former of which was deeply Anglican.  

Hence, in the case of Ireland, this:

On marriage, family, and the Irish constitutional referendum

I have no doubt the referendum will pass, and in the case of the “life within the home" language in regard to women, it ought to, in my view.  And frankly, the DeValera constitution's lashing Ireland to the Church was a mistake in the first place, one which the Church tried to prevent.

The thing is, however, that the modern world to which the Irish now aspire is frankly bloody and barbaric.  It's made people weird, and unhappy.  The Irish constitution notwithstanding, the strong connection to the existential that the Irish had, and to a large degree still do, made Ireland one of the very few democratic nations that was able to remain grounded and not teeter between the radical left and right.  The US, which has a different heritage, was able to as well, but that's now floundering badly.  Ireland, from the outside, isn't doing well either, and is starting to have the appearance as all bratty teenagers do who try to keep that status too long, as looking worn and tired.

I hate to pick too much on Canada, which has the massive misfortune of living next to the US right now. As I said the other day on Twitter, living in Canada right now must be like living in an upstairs apartment where the downstairs neighbors are having a large drug and alcohol fueled argument at a family reunion, and their couch is on fire.  Indeed, Canada seems to have passed through its bratty stage, which arrived with Trudeau I, and which may be argued to have ended during the COVID pandemic.  Right now, rather than poking its heritage in the eye, it seems to be taking on the role of the worried 30-year-old who has been saddled with caring for its clearly senile and always somewhat combative uncle, Uncle Sam.  

Je me souviens.

Friday, February 2, 2024

Saturday, February 2, 1924. Wilson lingers, gun battle at Lysite.

Wilson's lingering passing was the major headline, but the gun battle at Lysite caught my eye.


Gun battle at Lysite?

Lysite and Lost Cabin

Lysite and Lost Cabin, in the distance.

Well, why not?

Locals schools were about to be named for Presidents, including one that I went to.

Wilson did fall into a coma that evening.

Albert B. Fall, 2/2/24.


Fall refused to testify.


Alexei Rykov took over for the dead Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, and Felix Dzerzhinsky became the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy.

And, yes, Rykov fell from grace under Stalin, was arrested in 1938, and killed in 1941.


Dzerzhinsky, a Pole, would save Stalin the trouble by dying of a heart attack in 1926.  He got to remain a Soviet hero that way.

Weekly magazines were out.


Three generations of an Irish family posed for a photographer beside their lodgings at Alexander Street, Waterford.



Sunday, January 14, 2024

The Obituary

Mira qué bonita era by Julio Romero de Torres, 1895.  Depiction of a wake in Spain.

I didn't have him as a teacher in high school, but I certainly knew of him.1  Somehow or another, I also knew that a student that was in school with us, and who my cousins knew, was not only his daughter, but also one of his students.  Apparently that was awkward. 

I don't do a good job of keeping track of former teachers.  I probably couldn't tell you where a single one of them was, even the ones I really liked, let alone those I only sort of knew by association.  In his case, there was our classmate, whom I also didn't know (she was a couple of years ahead of me), but he was also known to our parents.  Without knowing for sure, in looking at it, I think that must have been because he was from a Catholic family here in town.

My classmate died the year before last.  She was 62.

I read his obituary as he was so well known locally.  And then I recalled there were bits and pieces of his story I'd picked up over the years.

His wife was also a teacher.

Sometime after I left high school, the couple apparently civilly divorced.2   He remarried, and apparently to an apparently significantly younger women whom I take was also a teacher.  According to the obit, they had a child after he retired, who would now be about 31.  He would have been about 56 when she was born.  I can dimly recall my parents and my father's siblings talking about this as well, mostly in a somewhat bemused manner, given the difficulties of raising an infant, in their view, when you are that old.

When my classmate died, her mother was mentioned in the obituary.  Indeed, her obituary characterizes both of her parents as loving, and contains praise of them.

His obituary mentioned both of his daughters by his first marriage, and then goes on about his second.  His wife, the mother of my classmate, isn't mentioned at all.  The obituary is profuse on his latter "marriage", calling that individual, named in the obituary, the "love of his life" amongst other things.

Of course, the dead don't write their obituaries.  If they did, who knows how they'd read?  We might all fear how they'd be penned.  I've read plenty where a "first" and "second" spouse are mentioned.  This one is profuse on his love of one woman that he had children by and which the civil law would regard as his wife, but totally silent as to his wife who was the mother of my classmate. My classmate's obituary mentions her, and kindly, using the Americanism "step" to describe her as her "stepmother", which is polite, but the second "wife" of a divorced person isn't anything, relationship wise, to a child of the "first" marriage at all.3    Children, of a later marriage of any kind are, of course, as they're related by blood, i.e., genetically. Of course, children born out of wedlock to an illicit partner, to which I am in no way comparing this situation other than to note it, are "half" siblings as well.4 

It must be a later child of the second union that wrote the obituary, as it concluded with the funeral details, those being an apparently civil funeral, followed by an "Irish wake", the latter something not really understood by Americans.  A real wake comes before, not after, the ceremony, and the body of the deceased is present. Indeed, the body is key to the wake, and the dead's family and friends do not allow the body to be left alone.  Prayer for the dead is a feature of it, but there is also food and drink and even courting, which in part has to do with the fact that life goes on, but in part because in more natural societies people live much closer to death than they do in our false one.

Everywhere, real wakes have much diminished.5

But then, so has our understanding of, and appreciation of the metaphysical and the existential, and as most people do not dwell deeply on those topics, and the culture has drifted many of those who drift with it bear no fault for having done so.

There's no Irish wakes without prayer, the deceased, and a sense of the next world having stepped into this one.  In our age, however, we expect this world and how we define it to step into the next one.

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion,

et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.

Exaudi orationem meam,

ad te omnis caro veniet.

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.6

Footnotes:

1.  In no small part because he was a well put together athletic man who drew hall monitor duty, but didn't seem to care for it much.  Indeed, if you went by him in the hall, when he had it, he didn't bother to ask you where you were going.

2.  I'll admit that this entry disregards the topic of Catholic annulment. Did they obtain one?  No idea.

To add to that, do I know anything whatsoever about the circumstances of their "divorce" and what brought it about, including who brought it about.  No I don't.

3.  The etymology of the prefix "step" goes back to the 8th Century and denoted an orphan.  It was later extended in Old English to connote a remarriage of a widow.

Some "step" parents, it might be noted, particularly in the case of an early death of an actual parent, or an abandonment by one of them, really step up to the plate and become effectively de facto parents.

The Pogues song Body of an American gives a good description of Irish wakes and how they can be.  The movie Road To Perdition, however, gives a very good depiction of a traditional wake, complete with the body iced.

4.  Again, as the fraud of civil divorce is so widely recognized as real in the Western World, I am in no way comparing the children of illicit affairs to the children of later contracted civil marriages.

5.  I've been to a real wake once, for a deceased second cousin, and it was horrific.  My father, who was 1/2 Irish, and 1/2 Westphalian by descent, but whose family did not retain any Irish customs, detested them.

6.       Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,

and let light perpetual shine upon them.

Thou art worthy to praised, O God, in Zion,

and to thee shall prayer be offered in Jerusalem.

Hear my prayer,

for to thee shall all flesh come.

Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,

and let light perpetual shine upon them.

 Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Wednesday, August 15, 1923. The toll of the explosion.


The papers reported followup information on the Kemmerer mine disaster.

At the same time, De Valera made the front page of the Casper page for his arrest.

De Valera, like other Irish Republican leaders, had come out of hiding and many of them were being arrested.  He was campaigning for a position in the Dail, oddly enough, but under the abstentionism thesis in which people were elected and refused to take office.  It's a policy I've frankly never grasped and De Valera was soon to abandon it.

Tidal waves killed over 300 people on the west coast of Korea.

The first U.S. Navy Reserve air station was founded near Boston.

A KKK rally was broken up in Steubenville, Ohio by a crowed that reacted to their presence in a hotel violently.

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Thursday, August 9, 1923. The Third Dáil dissolves, Berlin shopkeepers strike, Casper mournes.

Wyatt Earp, Los Angeles, California, August 9, 1923.  He would have been about 75 years of age at the time this photo was taken.  Again, while people are probably tired of this theme, it's interesting to note that at age 75 he looks more fit than Harding did at 20 years his junior.

The Third Dáil, which had been in session since September 9, 1922, as the Provisional Parliament of Southern Ireland, was dissolved by King George V at the request of Prime Minister W. T. Cosgrave. 

Elections were scheduled for August 27.

Berlin shopkeepers went on strike in an attempt to force Wilhelm Cuno from office.

The nation was still in mourning for the late President Harding.


Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Wednesday, August 8, 1923. Warren G. Harding's funeral.

Warren G.  Harding's state funeral occured.





 




And once again, I can't help but note that Harding was far younger than the two ancient front-runners for next year's Presidential election.  The odds of the winner dying in office, whomever he is, are better than his living through his term.

The Garda Síochána, "Guardians of the Peace", the Irish state police, were formed.

Monday, July 31, 2023

Tuesday, July 31, 1923. Monitoring Harding

The nation was tracking President Hardin's health:


The Tribune was optimistic on that score.  And it was also anticipating the upcoming county rodeo.

Harding's speech planned for that day was delivered as a written statement.

The High Court of Justice in Ireland ruled that a state of war in that country was over and 13,000 prisoners were entitled to release. They were not, as the following day the Public Safety Act of 1923 was enacted, causing their ongoing internment.

Parliament passed the bill sponsored by Lady Astor prohibiting the sale of alcohol to anyone under 18 years of age.

Friday, July 28, 2023

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor passes, an unfortunate icon for her times.

Sinéad O'Connor had, by the time of her death, eschewed her name and an additional one, as she traveled through a world that celebrates narcissism and which treats mental disturbance as self-expression.  

Her cause of death has not been revealed yet, but if it turns out not to be suicide, I'll be amazed.

O'Connor is going to be celebrated as a musical genius and a cultural beacon.  I've listened very little to her music, which I don't care for at all, but what she really was, was a really screwed up personality that had been crying for help in a world that instead just urges "self-expression".  In a way, although their personalities and music, etc., were very different, she's the Irish Michael Jackson, the American pop artist who went from fame to weirdness to an early death.  The public is unlikely to turn on O'Connor, however, as unlike Jackson who did a deep dive into cultural weirdness, O'Connor did a deep dive into rejecting Western Culture, and the cutting edge of Western Culture loves rejecting Western Culture, making our culture unique in that fashion.

Her name was taken from Sinéad de Valera, the wife of the Irish revolutionary leader and the mother of her attending physician.  Her parents divorced, which was unusual for Irish Catholic couples and her father, at least, remarried and moved to the United States.  That shows fairly clearly her family had fractured. She lived with her father and stepmother for a time and then returned to Ireland, by which time she'd take up shoplifting and ended up in the Magdaline Asylum, which, like most things in Ireland at the time and many things now, was run by a Catholic religious order.  She actually did very well there developing her talents, but not too surprisingly chaffed under the discipline.

A lot of O'Connor's musical career was used to turn attention on herself, which has proven in the post Madonna music world to be a good vehicle towards success.  Early on, in 1992, on Saturday Night Live, she tore up a photograph of St. Pope John Paul II ostensibly in protest of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, but which is more symbolic of the childish Irish temper tantrums that were just then starting to really develop.  The act was so shocking at the time that even Madonna criticized it.

By that time she'd already identified as a lesbian, when that was shocking, although she later retreated from that claim. At some point in the 1990s she was ordained by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is not in communion with Rome, an apparent "Independent Catholic Church" which is in no way in communion with Rome.  She announced at that time that she wanted to be known as Mother Bernadette Mary.

In 2018, she converted to Islam, an ironic but perhaps predictable conversion as it is somewhat shocking for somebody who claimed earlier to be retaining Catholic beliefs.  The irony, of course, is not only that she was Irish and self-proclaimed type of Catholic, but joining a religion that is generally hostile to female equality.  Following that, she became a critic of Christian and Jewish theologians and called non Muslims "disgusting", from which she also retreated.

She was married at least once, and had four children, one of whom recently committed suicide.

The problem with being shocking and in despair is that the attention you get from being shocking is pretty temporary, and so goes the relief as well.

O'Connor stands out in the end as somebody who needed help and didn't get it.  There are a lot of people in that category.  With a strong-willed personality, and her world set upside down early on, she might not have accepted the help anyway had it really been offered.  But celebrating the public descent of a tortured soul isn't really doing her a retroactive justice, and it didn't help while she lived.

She also stands, however, for something additional.  Jackson stood for a long held American negative trait of rising people to great heights based on something superficial, and then destroying them.  O'Connor, however, stands for the destruction of Western Society following World War Two, but in a time delayed way as she was Irish, and Ireland's entry into modern Western Society was delayed by at least 40 years.  Prior to the Second World War a person's departure from the culture would not have been openly celebrated even if known, and it would have been somewhat arrested so that the individual self-destruction was less likely to be so open.  And rescue from that destruction was a real possibility, with individuals such as C. S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde and Whitaker Chambers providing diverse examples of the same.  Following 1968, however, hope for rescue started to become fleeting and open attack on the culture became a liberal virtue.

Now that she has died, she'll be celebrated and her many strange paths and failings turned into personal triumphs.  In the end, however, it's clear she was grasping for the existential and metaphysical in a world that is hostile to both and would prefer to find all expression in as self-centered.  Her conversion to Islam, which is openly hostile to those concepts, probably best expressed that desperate search, as misguided as the path she took was.

That's the modern way, however.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, 

and let perpetual light shine upon her. 

May she rest in peace. 

Friday, July 7, 2023

Female agrarian resisters and. . . time traveling Saoirse-Monica Jackson?

 


This photo, which I found on Twitter, reportedly depicts Annie, Sarah, and Honoria O Halloran and their mother Harriet, who were at least briefly famous for resisting the authorities in an agrarian landlord tenant dispute in Ireland.  You can find copies of this photo all over the net, and there are some very good colorized versions of it.

Here's my super mature comment, however.  Sarah in this photo looks so much like Saoirse-Monica Jackson it isn't funny.

Seriously.  In her role as Erin Quinn that facial expression and appearance. . . uncanny.

Thursday, July 6, 2023

Western angst and spinning history.

I don't know if it was the anniversary of the raid, or what, but my Twitter feed for some reason picked up a link to a story about a large raid by the Barbary Pirates on the coast of Ireland.  In 1631 the pirates raided Baltimore, Ireland, in the County of Cork.  The town was not large, but between 100 and 300 of its inhabitants were abducted.  Only two made it back to Ireland, in part because the English government had just enacted a law which forbid paying ransom, which was often the goal of such raids.

The article that was linked in was scholarly, and noted that what would have occured is that, for the most part, children would have been separated from their parents and everyone sold into slavery when it became obvious that they would not be ransomed.  The male slavery would have been of the grueling work variety.  Women would have largely been sold as sex slaves, which the articles like to call "concubines".  

The reason that I note this here is that the author, again it was a scholarly article, felt compelled to blame the raids on the Spanish expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula.  That process has commenced in 1492, and it was completed, effectively, in 1614.  The entire period wasn't a peaceful one, and in the Mediterranean various nations raided each other.

The final stages of the story are more complicated, in Spain, than might at first be imagined, as by the 1600s the "Moriscos" weren't actually Muslim, but rather Spanish descendants of Berbers and Arabs who were Catholic, but who retained Berber/Arab ancestry. Some claim they were "crypto Islamic", but more likely they were Catholics who retained some folk connection to their ancestor's prior religion.  Indeed, it'd be worth noting that Islam itself has a murky origin connection with Christianity, and this may have been confusing at the street level.  Anyhow, the last stages of this seem to be an ethnic spat, but it did have the effect of expelling Moriscos to North Africa, where they were absorbed ultimately into the local population, or to distribute them across Spain where the same thing occured.

Anyhow, blaming the Baltimore, and other Barbary Pirate, raids on this event is stretching it.  I suppose you could argue that the general belligerency of the Mediterranean contributed to the raiding atmosphere, and both sides did that, but that traces back to the rise of Islam in the first place, which was spread by the sword.  That this process went on, in one fashion or another, for a thousand years, and in some cases to this very day, does not mean that much except that the long arch of history and the fact that events play out over decades or centuries is the rule, and only seems to be odd to us, as we're used to everything occurring rapidly.

Anyhow, the author claimed that the children were treated with "utmost kindness".  Really?  Separating them from their parents, sending their fathers off to early grueling slave induced deaths and selling their mothers as sex slaves?  And then they'd end up slaves themselves, with boys often ending up enslaved soldiers and girls. . . sex slaves.

What BS.

The same author claimed that the women were sold into "concubinage", which is sex slavery in this context, and lived lives of "relative luxury", as if this weird image of the Playboy ethos had the women looking forward to this life of chattel status while they still retained their desirability.  The reality of it is that they had value as they were exotic, and bought for their physical attributes alone.

Why this story has to be spun in this fashion is really remarkable. We're supposed to feel some guilt for the story of the kidnappers and slavers, and even look kindly upon some of the grossest examples of slavery that are around.

None of this is to excuse Western conduct, whatever might be sought to be excused. Slavery was common amongst all Mediterranean societies, Christian and Islamic, but what played out with the Barbary pirates was not.  They engaged in slave raids, and forced sex slave status of captured women was endorsed by the Koran, although frankly probably not really in the form that was practiced here (it likely applied to women captured as a result of warfare, not that this makes it a lot better).  Putting a gloss on any kind of slavery, moreover, is bizarre.  When people attempt to do that, as many once did and a few still try to do, in regard to American slavery, we're rightly appalled.  This isn't any better.

The West has had a hard time reconciling an imperial past with its democratic values, and one way it tries to cope with it is by making Westerners always be the baddies.  The story of empire is a complicated one, but the 100 to 300 inhabitants of Baltimore didn't have much to do with it, and neither, really, did the Barbary pirates. Slavery was always bad and this sort of slavery gross.  Kidnapping people is always bad.  There are always bad people.  The Barbary Pirates don't need to be portrayed as if they're Captain Morocco, or something, in a Marvel movie.

Friday, June 23, 2023

Wednesday, June 23, 1943. Arrests in France, Elections in Ireland.

The "Prosper" network of SOE agents in France, including French woman Andrée Borrel, Francis Suttill, and Gilbert were arrested by the Gestapo after being betrayed by an informer.

Borrel.
 

They'd be executed on July 6, 1944.  Execution would have been legal under the norms of war of the day, as they were spies, but the method was bizarre in that they were rendered unconscious through injection and then burned alive.

As previously noted, the SOE, which frankly was quite amateurish in Europe, had been penetrated by the Germans.

Sarah Sundin reports:

Today in World War II History—June 23, 1943: President Roosevelt establishes American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (“Monuments Men”).

She also notes that the coal strike in Appalachia was settled, but that President Roosevelt threatened to conscript the miners if it occurred again. 

In Ireland's general election t Fianna Fáil, led by Éamon de Valera, failed to gain a majority but was able to form a minority government.

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Thursday, May 24, 1923. The IRA ordered to lay down its weapons.

Éamon de Valera and Frank Aiken ordered IRA volunteers to lay down their arms and return home, causing an "official" end to their rebellion against the Irish Free State. 

Chief of Staff Frank Aiken's order, recalled in history as the Dump Arms Order, read:

Comrades — The arms with which we fought the enemies of our country are to be dumped. The foreign and domestic enemies of the Republic have for the moment prevailed. But our enemies have not won. Neither tortures nor firing squads, nor a slavish press can crush the desire for independence out of the hearts of those who fought for the Republic or out of the hearts of our people. Our enemies have demanded our arms. Our answer is, 'We took up arms to free our country, and we'll keep them until we see an honourable way of reaching our objective without arms'. There is a trying time ahead for the faithful soldiers of Ireland. But the willing sacrifices of our dead comrades will give us the courage to face it in the knowledge that these sacrifices have ensured the ultimate victory of our cause. Their examples and their prayers will help us to be like them, faithful to our ideals unto death.

De Valera's order stated:

Soldiers of liberty! Legion of the rear guard! The republic can no longer be sustained successfully by your arms. Further sacrifices on your part would now be in vain. The continuance of the struggle in arms is unwise in the national interest," and added, "You have saved the nation's honor and left the road open to independence. Laying aside your arms now is an act of patriotism as exalted and pure as your valor in taking them up

Ireland would come, in fact, to have very strict gun control, something that reflected Irish independence having come about through an armed Irish minority and the ongoing fear that an armed Irish element would oppose the government. 

The ethos of the IRA at the time can perhaps best be summarized by the statement of Liam Lynch, a general of the IRA,, who stated:

We have declared for an Irish Republic.

We will live by no other law.

Be that as it may, the IRA's fight against the Irish Free State was a dishonorable affair, and one tinged with radicalism.  Asserting a fight for liberation and democracy, it was in the end undeniably sectarian in ignoring the wishes, no matter how despised, of Ulster protestants who did not wish to leave the United Kingdom and the majority of southern Irish who were content with the Free State.

It was also naive to think that it could force British separation of Ulster through fighting the Free State.

The San Pedro Maritime Strike in San Francisco came to an end.

The French government resigned, and then unresigned, over the Senates decision not to put Communist Marcel Cachin, a member, on trial.