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Ireland 1916. The Sisterhood of the Easter Rising

Posted by: on: May 1, 2016

The Sisterhood of the Easter Rising

By SADHBH WALSHE. MARCH 16, 2016

AROUND 12:45 p.m. on April 29, 1916, Nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell left 15 Moore Street in Dublin to deliver the surrender message that would end the Easter Rising.

Inside the house, where the division of Irish rebels under the command of Padraig Pearse had retreated, her comrades in arms watched her walk away through the bullet-riddled streets, fearing she would be shot down.

But as she neared the British military outpost, the firing eased and Ms. O’Farrell accomplished her mission without injury.

Constance Markievicz was second in command at the rebels’ St. Stephen’s Green outpost in Dublin. National Library of Ireland

Ms. O’Farrell’s act of bravery has become one of the iconic moments of the Rising, not so much for the act itself, but for how it was documented.

In a photo of the surrender taken later with Pearse and two British officers, only Ms. O’Farrell’s boots were visible. When the photo was first published in a British newspaper, even the boots had disappeared.

Ms. O’Farrell claimed later that she deliberately stepped out of sight. But rightly or wrongly, “that photo” has come to symbolize the airbrushing — or “Eire-brushing,” as some have said — of women out of Ireland’s history.

Now, as the centenary celebrations of the Easter Rising get underway, a determined effort is being made to reinsert the lost stories of female heroism into the male-dominated narrative of the struggle for Irish independence. As these stories come into focus, the doctored image could be said to represent something more that has consequences to this day: the removal of women from a public role in the republic they helped bring into being.

Aside from a few stars like Constance Markievicz, who was second in command at the rebels’ St. Stephen’s Green outpost in Dublin, or the schoolteacher turned sniper Margaret Skinnider, most of the estimated 260 women who took part in the 1916 insurrection never found their way into the history books.

In recent decades, several historians, mostly women, have worked to change that. Among them, as part of a government-funded commemorative effort, Mary McAuliffe and Liz Gillis have unearthed a wealth of information on the 77 women who were imprisoned for their role in the uprising.

The picture emerging from this research is one of women who were not just committed nationalists willing to die for Ireland, but also longtime campaigners for social justice who had been fighting inequality on many fronts: land reform, labor battles and women’s suffrage.

These women wanted a fairer society in which they would have an equal say. In 1916, they had reason to believe that the republic they chose to fight for was the surest means to that end.

According to the historian Margaret Ward, Ireland “did something quite unique in 1916” to advance equality “that wouldn’t have happened without the efforts of the women before the Rising.” On a speaking tour in 1917, Ireland’s foremost suffragist, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, told audiences that “it is the only instance I know of in history when men fighting for freedom voluntarily included women.”

The progressive leanings of the Rising’s leaders were evident in the language of the Proclamation of an Irish Republic read aloud by Pearse on the steps of the General Post Office. Addressed to “Irishmen and Irishwomen,” it guaranteed “equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens.” At a time when women in most of the world had yet to secure the right to vote, this guarantee was no trivial thing.

It took six days for British troops to quell the rebellion. Sixteen rebel leaders were executed soon after, among them Pearse and the movement’s greatest champion of equality, the socialist leader James Connolly. It would take six more years and much more bloodshed before Ireland won limited independence in the form of the Free State, in 26 of the country’s 32 counties.

Although activism by women expanded rapidly during this tumultuous period, with membership of Cumann na mBan, the Irish nationalist women’s paramilitary organization, growing from between 650 and 1,700 in 1916 to as many as 21,000 in 1921, they were not rewarded for their efforts.

The equal rights language of the Proclamation did make its way into the 1922 Constitution, and Irish women over 21 achieved full voting rights that year. But with the progressives dead, the Free State government, heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, began rolling back these rights almost as swiftly as Elizabeth O’Farrell’s boots were erased from that photo.

Laws in 1924 and 1927 largely excluded women from sitting on juries. In 1932, a marriage ban was introduced that forced women who worked as teachers or civil servants to retire upon marriage. The 1935 Conditions of Employment Act limited women’s ability to work in industry.

But it was the 1937 Constitution, drafted under Prime Minister Eamon De Valera’s leadership, that sealed women’s fate for decades. As commander of the Boland’s Mill outpost in 1916, De Valera had been the only leader to refuse women’s participation in the Rising. Now with Article 41 of the Constitution, which reads “by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved,” he closed the door on women’s progress in a more definitive way.

So, it is not surprising that just as Ireland is reckoning with the erasure of its first wave of feminism, a new one is surging, propelled in part by the commemorations. In November, when the Abbey, the national theater of Ireland, released its centenary lineup of plays, all but one of which were written by men, an “Estrogen Rising” erupted. The ensuing furor highlighted women’s underrepresentation in Irish theater, film, media and politics.

Even before that, reproductive rights activists struck a new note of militancy when they chained themselves last April to the pillars of the General Post Office to protest a 1983 constitutional amendment that equates the right to life of the unborn with the right to life of the mother. Dressed as suffragists, these women read out a revised version of the proclamation declaring the “right of all people in Ireland to ownership of their own bodies.”

In the same streets where Elizabeth O’Farrell walked through gunfire almost a century ago, these modern-day activists forged a link between their struggles and the unfulfilled hopes of sisters from another era. What women did for Ireland, and what Ireland has since done for women, deserve a fuller accounting.

Sadhbh Walshe, a journalist and former TV writer, is currently working on a play about the women of 1916.

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Liquidity is meant for the Internal market. Competitiveness is for External market?

Posted by: on: April 16, 2014

Liquidity is meant for the Internal market. Competitiveness is for External market?

Should the level of “Life-Style” be the same among the competitive and the challenged productive states within a Union?

This is not a fair condition to impose on States that managed to sacrifice and work hard for better life conditions.

States in financial crisis must have ready lists of 4 categories of enterprises:

1. The public institutions that are critical in the smooth transmission of liquidity to the various economic sectors

2. The mixed State/Private entities that have locations in many regions of the State and employ many citizens

3. The nationwide private companies

4. The medium and small productive companies that serve their local provinces

It is well know that medium and small productive companies constitute 70% of State production that cater for the internal market needs.

Any shortage in liquidity in these small private companies  and employment hit the roof and the citizens experience shortages in most commodities.

Giving priority to the local economies in the distribution (infusion) of liquidity is the first step in preventing mass unemployment.

There are public economic sectors that cater to the general public needs, such as energy, water and transportation… and the stabilization of these functional sectors in matter of maintenance is another urgent priority.

Before the internal market is reinvigorated and underway, it is of no use planning for the export sections to external markets in order to get the influx of “hard currencies”

Stability and security are the basis for a shift toward State development.

Having the autonomy to print money in period of liquidity shortage is the key for stabilizing the internal market.

The disadvantage resides in the society structure that favor the oligarchy and wealth disparity that eliminate the benefit of printing more money.

The crisis in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy have demonstrated that it is a priority that a State has to reform its public service institutions to discard redundant and politically influenced service appointments.

Without a drastic realization that the political structure should be reformed, and for actually feel the pain associated with uneven equal rights to jobs and opportunities in the institutions, all the remaining reforms will be within the “patching” process.

The crisis in Greece was deep rooted because it lacked the two preconditions: Lousy political structure and not having the right to print money.

Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy had political structures that could remedy to the “unfairly” political conditions and to reform the system within the single Euro currency.

The EU has learned the lesson:

1. First, the State that asks to join the union zone must demonstrate that it is serious to undertake political reforms and the structure be designed to react in timely manners to situations of political reforms.

Many States have been included based on historical and ideological “myths” that didn’t match their current unstable realities.

The EU dominant responsibility is to gradually transform the States who applied to join the union into politically viable structure.

The States in waiting must acknowledge that it takes time to achieve stable and valid political structure.

How a poor and unstable State can become competitive in the external market? This is an impossible condition to withhold liquidity infusion that is meant to support local companies.

The “productively challenged States” in the Euro zone should not expect the same level of life-style as the most competitive among them.

And equal rights in life-style is not an equitable and sustainable demand on State basis.

 

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St. Patrick’s Day Weekend: Being a White in Philly…

Posted by: on: April 6, 2014

 St. Patrick’s Day Weekend: And being a White in Philly…

As j.n. salters walked down 15th Street in Center City this past Saturday night, amidst drunken white girls in green mini skirts and green heels with green bows in their hair, and belligerent white boys wearing green beaded necklaces and funny-shaped glasses yelling and chasing after the girls…

She I could not help but think, this is what it actually means to be white in Philadelphia.

j.n. salters,  black feminist writer and PhD candidate, posted this March 18, 2014 on The Blog:

Being White in Philly St. Patrick’s Day Weekend

In February 2013, Philadelphia Magazine published the now-infamous article “Being White in Philly: Whites, race, class, and the things that never get said,” in which author Robert Huber asked select, anonymous white from Philadelphia to share their “race story” (in other words, their individual feelings about black people).

According to Huber:

[E]veryone might have a race story, but few whites risk the third-rail danger of speaking publicly about race, given the long, troubled history of race relations in this country and even more so in this city. Race is only talked about in a sanitized form, when it’s talked about at all, with actual thoughts and feelings buried, which only ups the ante. Race remains the elephant in the room, even on the absurd level of who holds the door to enter a convenience store.

In keeping with Huber’s purported aim to get rid of the elephant in the room, I offer some of the thoughts that crossed my mind Saturday night as I passed a young blond girl in a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” T-shirt peeing on the sidewalk while a redheaded boy with freckles pinched her.

You cannot be fucking serious. But, of course you’re serious.

You’re white in Center City.

As I continued to make my way down the shit show covered in shamrocks, I asked myself, what if all these people outside were black?

If we are to go by recent Philadelphia policies and legislation — many of which disproportionately target people of color (e.g., stop and frisk, “zero tolerance” policies, curfew ordinances, voter ID laws) — I am almost certain that had these been masses of drunken black teenagers and young adults decked in matching colors, they would have been deemed gang members, looters, flash mobsters, and subsequently stopped and frisked, beaten, and/or arrested.

I am thinking about the Philadelphia “flash mobs” that garnered much media attention in the summers of 2010 and 2011, during which the media created a moral panic around black youth, violence and crime organized via social media sites after hundreds of black kids spontaneously appeared on South Street in downtown Philadelphia.

Newspaper headlines read “Black-mob violence flooding Philadelphia” and “Another Flash Mob Rocks South Street: In the ‘Tsunami,’ chants of ‘Burn the City!‘” — the menacing language reminiscent of the alleged “wilding” that, most infamously, was purportedly behind the 1989 vicious rape-beating of the “Central Park jogger” in Manhattan.

Though some Philadelphia teens did engage in acts of vandalism, the majority were nonviolent kids just hanging out, some watching break-dancing performances.

Nevertheless, Philadelphia mayor, Michael Nutter, imposed a stiffer curfew for people under 18 and delivered a Bill Cosby Pound-Cake-esque lecture from a pulpit at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in which he told black youth: “You have damaged your own race,” and instructed them to “Pull your pants up and buy a belt.”

In addition, social-media networks were monitored with assistance from the FBI, news crews and Philadelphia police flooded the streets, and dozens of people were arrested.

Thus, as I watched the white mobs in green on Saturday night, I was struck by the lack of law enforcement. I can personally recall several family cookouts, block parties, birthday parties and informal gatherings of black and brown family members and friends in which multiple men and women in uniform and police cars and even police dogs showed up.

How over 100 drunk people could be loitering on a major street and not one police officer be noticeably present was astonishing. It was also a reminder of the kind of society that we live in.

To most of America, more than one Black/Latino standing next to each other wearing the same color equals gang, threat, flash mob. Not drink specials, themed parties, and excused belligerence.

You call it St. Patrick’s Day

I call it white privilege — or being white in Philadelphia and America.

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Israel spreading Christmas Message of Hate in Ireland…

Posted by: on: December 21, 2012

Israel spreading Christmas Message of Hate in Ireland.

Over the past few weeks, Israel in Ireland facebook page has been launching sustained attacks and libels against everyone from Amnesty International to the Irish charity Trocaire.

The page delivers this fantasy idea that Jesus was and is pro-Israel, and that Palestinians are anti Christian and that Jews aren’t safe in Bethlehem.

Abureesh posted on De. 17, 2012″

“I’m in the process of writing a full analysis of how the Israeli MFA handles it’s social media in the Republic of Ireland, especially after the attempt to categorize activists as Sexual Deviants earlier this year.

Today I spotted this on the Israel in Ireland‘s facebook page and had to share it with the public so they can see what the Israeli MFA passes for legitimate social media propaganda these days.

Over the past few weeks, I have witnessed the Israel in Ireland facebook page launch sustained attacks and libels against everyone from Amnesty International to the Irish charity Trocaire.

How they do this is usually through a mixture of obfuscation and disinformation designed to suggest that Amnesty International for example are hypocritical and do nothing for other situations such as the crisis in Syria.

For any MFA or Foreign office to use such flagrant language in an attempt to obfuscate from their own human rights abuses is utterly repulsive in my opinion.

Attacking human rights NGO’s such as Amnesty International using the terrible situation in Syria as an excuse, not only demeans the very real humanitarian situation those people face but also undermines true human rights activism.

I wont say I’m sorry to burst Israel in Ireland’s bubble by pointing out that I’ve personally witnessed Amnesty International in Northern Ireland and further afield organize scores of events, write articles, raise funds and provide direct on the ground coverage & reports on the situation in Syria.

I think it’s pathetic that what in essence is the foreign face of a country is not only attacking NGO’s but using one human rights abuse to distract from another.
The question we should ask is when will Israel in Ireland organize an event or rally to help the people in Syria instead of attacking legitimate human rights groups?

Regardless of the information being put out having mostly no substance the hundreds of page fans delight at having the opportunity to bash an NGO here and there or libel the entire Palestinian people as hostile enemies and brutal terrorists.

Getting back to the post that happened today and its attempt to justify occupation and brutalization of innocent civilians by use of sectarian logic I think the image provided above speaks volumes. Attempting to gain Christian support for Israel’s occupation and military presence in the occupied territory of the West Bank through an entirely false narrative that relies upon religious sectarianism which in my view is immoral, insulting, entirely reprehensible and duplicitous.

Instead of sending out a Christmas message of Peace,Israel in Ireland has opted for this single mission: to sully this time of year by suggesting all Palestinians are hostile enemies.

Despite how obviously disgusting the FB update is, we should also recognise that in some ways it is highly effective as it delivers this fantasy idea that Jesus was and is pro-Israel, that Palestinians are anti Christian and that Jews aren’t safe in Bethlehem.

Let us not forget that it is Israeli law that prohibits Israeli Jews from traveling into Bethlehem not the other way around.

Four key areas this type of propaganda covers:

1. It categorizes Christian figures in a specifically Jewish manner which may or may not be true (it opens the door for anti-Semitic comments to flow back thus is self-justifying)

2. It attempts to justify the ‘Security’ presence of the IDF in occupied territory

3. It categorizes all Palestinians as hostile people which is a libelous and racist thing to say.

4. It makes people link biblical Israel to today’s Israel. Thus putting out the idea the entire area is Israeli and shall remain that way for eternity.

Let me finish just by saying directly to Israel’s MFA that racism of this callibre won’t work in Ireland

Note 1: Merry Christmas message: http://abureesh.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/israel-in-irelands-christmas-message-of-hate/

Note 2: This entry was posted in Middle East by Gary Spedding. Bookmark the permalink

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Culture transmission: The priest, the warrior, and the peasant

Posted by: on: August 23, 2009

The priest, the warrior, and the peasant; (August 22, 2009)

Another alternative title could be more realistic and comprehensive such as “Elder, male, and female” but it is not catchy enough.

George Dumezil, a French researcher who can speak over 20 languages, says “The first 10 languages are the hardest to learn; the remaining languages come pretty easy because it is the same routine and same thing”.

George Dumezil wrote the trilogy “Myth and Epic” that describes the mythologies in Ireland, Iceland, Scandinavia, Germany, Roman, Greek, Ossetia (Caucasus region), and then links all these mythologies to their hierarchical transmission from the Indian Mahabharata and Bhagavat mythology.

Dumezil calls this unifying mythology “The Indo-European mythology” and end up with a summary that this mythology is based on 3 fundamentals the Priesthood, Warrior, and Peasant classes with their respective Gods.

After over 40 years of detailed research to reach this common sense conclusion is a monstrous let down.

Da! This classification of society is common to all cultures and civilizations and going pretty strong nowadays. (The main Gods in all civilizations were of Justice, War, and Fecundity. The all-encompassing unifying God was barely worshiped by the people because not symbolizing their trade or class).

The Romans had the (Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus). The Scandinavian counties had Odinn reigning over the Val-Holl of (Porr, Mimir, and Odrerir) and  Ases was their unifying God. The Germans had Wotan reigning over their Walhalla.  In the Near East mythology we had (Shamsh, Baal, and Ashtarout); El or Allah in the Arab Peninsula was their unifying God.  In the Nile civilization we had Amon (Sun), Osiris, and Isis.

The major let down is this conventional direction of researchers of thinking top down or hierarchically.  Well, after the Scandinavian got their mythology from Ossetia that got their mythology from Northern India, then from whom did the Indian receive their mythology?  If there are any written records that go many thousands of years in antiquity (not probable) we might discover that mythology transmission is no longer hierarchical but cyclical.

Adopting the easy hierarchical line of reasoning is basically wrong. It is the wrong logic to consider: simply because it stick to the conventional that the King/Priesthood classes are the transmitters of culture and civilization. The Priesthood class is mainly the conservative maintainer of the status quo and barely the transmitter of much anything.

A more realistic and promising line of reasoning is to consider that it is the warrior classes that transmitted rituals, myths, and customs.

It is the soldiers and sub officers who were in direct and daily contact with the conquered people: they are the ones who interrogated prisoners, facilitated trade and communication, and learned by osmosis the new culture and civilization of the subjugated people.  The soldiers and sub officers returned to their hometowns and villages and disseminated their story telling testimonies and accounts of their war period.

The dissemination was quick because most soldiers were mercenaries from the neighboring countries to the powerful Kingdom. Once the war was over, the soldiers were disbanded to return mainly to their families and spread the news of alternative rituals, myths, customs, and techniques of the conquered culture.

Since frequent communication of central government of Empires with their neighboring vassal countries was not sustained, it stands to reason that the peasant classes managed to occasionally change their traditions before the government realized the changes.

When central government is strong then either of two possibilities was activated:

1.  If the mercenary warriors sided with the peasants then the King/Priesthood was defeated and the newer traditions and mythologies took roots.

2.  If the King/Priesthood vanquished then many varieties of sects and cults mushroomed in the neighboring kingdom.

Empires come and go, but the tank sources for mercenaries were constant.

These warriors came from mountain chain regions and high plateaus or desert regions.  In “Indo-European civilization” the mercenaries flocked from the Turkish Anatole Plateau and its extension in the Caucasus of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ossetia, Chechnya, Albania, and Romania.  The people were known as Cherkessk, Kurd, Tatar, Parthian, Scythe, and so on.  The other sources of mercenaries came from Central Asia such as Turkmenistan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, and Mongolia.

The main central EMPIRE was Persia that extended many times from coastal Turkey to all of Afghanistan and part of Pakistan.

Babylon and later Assyria empires were counties of current Iran that moved the Capitals to their provinces as central power weakened in Persia. The same is true for the Hittite Empire in Anatolia that expanded to Egypt and signed the first recorded peace treaty with Egypt after the battle of Caddish. The Hittite aided the Greek by all means to defeat the Empire of Troy: Troy was a major handicap to extending to the coast and building a navy.

The urban centers in plains, rich with major water resources and large river,s hires mercenaries to defend or expand empires. The Near East region was constituted of City-States) that hired mercenaries for the war effort to defend the cities. A City-State was the center for Priesthood/learning class and peasant/skilled artisans class (the bread basket).  Empires that could not maintain autochthonous soldiers as majority of their armies vanished in no times.

When studying civilizations and their continuity we should never dismiss the main factor: climate.

There are the cold, mild, and hot weather civilizations. Within these 3 categories there are the plain and mountain region people. Talking about “indo-European” languages or civilizations is stretching the imagination a tad too far and forcing issues.

It is not with the antiques written records of the elite class that civilizations and dissemination of culture can be described and comprehended, but with archeological finds of daily living, rituals, and customs within homogeneous climatic regions.

Note 1: I had the topic from “Smell of the Time” (Odeur du temps) by Jean d’Ormesson who published three articles on George Dumezil. I didn’t read “Myth and Epic” and hope that d’Ormesson did.

Notes 2:  The nomadic desert Jewish tribes could not invent but one God “Yahwa”; Jehovah ended up to be their warrior God. When the Jews of Moses got in contact with the Canaanites in Palestine, Yahwa was set aside during peaceful period to be resurrected during war period and his statues and temples moved closer to God Baal in order for the Jews to be hired as mercenaries.

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