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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70983492016-07-23T13:18:04.802-04:00Kirby firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-76200946728405596452016-06-30T17:52:00.001-04:002016-07-16T17:39:18.046-04:00The complexities of greenhouse gasesA table of global sources of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O, also abbreviated as NOx) – is reportedly no longer readily available from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here it is as reproduced by the US Energy Information Administration in the December 2004 report, "Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2003".

The table shows that human (anthropogenic) CO₂ emissions in the 1990s were less than 3% of the total, ie, 97% of CO₂ emissions were natural, although more than half of the human emissions exceeded the amount that could be naturally absorbed. For the other greenhouse gases, human CH₄ emissions were 50% greater than natural CH₄, representing 60% of the total, and only 6% of the human emissions exceeded what could be naturally absorbed. Human N₂O emissions represented about 55% of that total, and 55% exceeded what could be absorbed.

One thing that the table does not indicate is the different greenhouse effect levels of the three gases. CH₄ has 20 times the greenhouse effect of CO₂, N₂O 300 times. Therefore, the annual increase in greenhouse gases by effect is about 88% due to CO₂, 3% to CH₄, and 9% to N₂O.

Combining that information with what the table indicates, to halt the annual increases in these greenhouse gases, humans would have to reduce CO₂ emissions to 51% of the level specified here for the 1990s, N₂O to 25%, and CH₄ to 94%.

If the annual increase in greenhouse effect were to be halted by reducing CO₂ alone, humans would have to reduce emissions to less than 43% of their 1990s level. If, however, human CH₄ emissions were halved (relatively easy to achieve by, eg, reducing animal agriculture and capturing leakage at natural gas wells), human CO₂ emissions would have to be reduced to 58% of their 1990s level.

Another important consideration is the very different half-lives of these greenhouse gases. Most strikingly, CO₂ persists for centuries, even millennia, in the atmosphere, whereas CH₄ persists for only about 10 years. In other words, changes to CO₂ emissions would not have an effect for hundreds of years, but the effect of changes to CH₄ emissions would be relatively immediate. (N₂O lasts about 100 years.) (It may well be that the climate change effects we are experiencing today are due to coal burning in the 19th century, which at the time was mitigated by the cooling effect of soot.)

In summary, halting the increase of greenhouse gas emissions remains a formidable challenge, let alone that of reducing their levels in the atmosphere. But N₂O and CH₄ are easy targets for reduction that must not be ignored, particularly because their reduction would have a much more immediate effect than reduction of CO₂.email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-18088214620984030112016-06-29T22:14:00.000-04:002016-06-29T22:14:57.228-04:00Letter from Bakari Sellers to Democratic National Committee, June 21, 2016Excerpts (emphases added). Complete PDF available at: http://d1u7i8c4jvis7m.cloudfront.net/Bakari-Sellers-Letter-to-DNC-on-Israel-Platform-Statement.pdf

Every four years we come together as a collective and give our most thoughtful consideration to the ideals and values that define what it means to be a Democrat. In 2016, we do so at an especially critical time in our nation. Never before have the differences between the major parties been perceived to be so stark; so clearly a choice between hope and fear. ...

United States foreign policy in the Middle East is a critical issue our Party must address. Instability is mounting in that already volatile region. Repressive ideologies are on the rise. If the tide is to be reversed cooperation with our allies is imperative. We have no better ally than the state of Israel. ...

When it comes to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, our platforms and our candidates have always been clear. The 2012 platform rightly supported "peace between Israelis and Palestinians ... producing two states for two peoples," while reiterating that there could be "no lasting peace unless Israel's security concerns are met." ... As the Secretary has said, "... America has an important role to play in supporting peace efforts and as president, ... I would vigorously oppose any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution. including by the U.N. Security Council." And, as the Party supports a negotiated peace settlement. it has long included, as it did in the 2012 Platform, a long established policy and reality, "Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel."

On Iran, ... we must do all we can to ensure Iran lives up to its obligations while confronting Iran's malign activities in the region. As Secretary Clinton recently stated, "Tehran's fingerprints are on every conflict across the Middle East from Syria to Lebanon to Yemen ..." She has been clear, that the U.S. "must also continue to enforce existing sanctions and impose additional sanctions as needed on Iran ... for their sponsorship of terrorism, illegal arms transfers, human rights violations and other illicit behaviors ..."

[A]nti-Semitism has been on the rise and it has taken a new form — the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS. ...

It is for all the aforementioned reasons, best stated by Secretary Clinton herself, that I join the attached signatories [60 as yet unrevealed African-American politicians], all lifelong Democrats, in asking that unwavering support of the state of Israel be clearly articulated in the 2016 Democratic Party platform.

Again, thank you for your service and leadership. It is an inspiration to us all.

Sincerely,

Bakari Sellersemail@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-21966927844398692502016-06-11T11:05:00.002-04:002016-06-11T17:00:29.926-04:00How to steal an election, Democratic Party edition"Election Fraud Watch 2016" has been documenting the reports of "irregularities" throughout the Democratic Party primaries and caucuses.

This information is not about the schedule and various rules established by the Democratic National Committee seemingly meant to reduce the chances of an outsider gaining ground. It is about how even with those inherent advantages, Hillary Clinton had to cheat to fend off the insurgent campaign of Bernie Sanders.

February's posts are dominated by Nevada, where Harry Reid instructed casino union bosses the night before the caucus to make sure their members were given time to vote for Hillary. And Nevada arises again during its state convention in May, where Bernie now had more delegates, so the Party decertified more than enough of them to give Hillary the edge and then, just to make sure, made their count while people were still in line to get in and ignored motions for a recount, increasingly shredding Robert's rules of order throughout the day until the chair, Roberta Lange, closed the convention on her own, fled, and called on law enforcement to clear the hall.

March's posts are dominated by Arizona.

April brings in reports about Massachusetts (where former President Bill Clinton literally blocked people from voting at two precincts in Boston), Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois.

May's reports include Maryland and Kentucky and more about Illinois and Nevada.

And June's posts add reports about Puerto Rico and California.

Common "problems": severe reduction of polling places, missing and incorrect voter registrations, and incorrect recording of votes. In California, 30% of the votes (>2.5 million) have yet to be counted at all.

There are several articles about the pattern of discrepancy between the usually fairly accurate exit polls and the official results in several states: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

The writer also links to many other general reports, including:

"Voters report suspicious irregularities in three different primary states" (April 26, by Nathan Wellman)

"Election fraud mega edition" (May 7, by Nina Illingworth)

"Hillary wins the lottery" (May 12, by Richard Charnin)

firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-6256332581121719412016-06-08T16:24:00.000-04:002016-06-08T16:28:02.322-04:00Why is choice desirable for health care, but not for K–12 education?Here are some comments in reply to a comment posted at a campaign press release published at Vermont Digger concerning school choice in Vermont.

If public schools are the foundation of a civil society, then shouldn't private schools be banned? Or is freedom of choice – another foundation of civil society – to be available only for the rich? Furthermore, it is disingenuous in the extreme to equate most private schools, particularly in Vermont and neighboring communities, with for-profit schools preying on a very real need in failing urban school systems. Traditionally, private schools are not run for profit, and school choice in Vermont makes many of them as "free and open to all" as public schools. In fact, school choice makes public schools more open to all as well. Not just for the sake of civil society, but more importantly for the sake of every child's unique and immediate education needs and interests, such opportunity needs to be expanded, not curtailed.

Finally, the commenter's comparison with health care couldn't be further off. Again, most hospitals and clinics are not for-profit. And school choice is analogous to single-payer, which is both more progressive and more efficient than for-profit insurance, which limits choice and drives up costs.
email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-62042803473703900582016-06-07T12:07:00.000-04:002016-06-07T12:07:25.449-04:00My Struggle, Book Five
Some weeks later Mom visited us, we went to Gullfoss and Geysir and Thingvellir with her one day, another down to the south coast, where the sand was black and there were immense solitary rocks standing in the sea.

We went to an art museum together, the walls and floor were completely white, and with the sun flooding in through large skylights the light inside was almost aflame. Through the windows I could see the sea, blue with white crests of waves and breakers, a large white-clad mountain rose in the distance. In these surroundings, in the bright white room on the edge of the world, the art was lost.

Was art only an inner phenomenon? Something that moved within us and between us, all that which we couldn't see but marked us, indeed, which was us? Was this the function of landscape painting, portraits, sculptures, to draw the external world, so essentially alien to us, into our inner world?

When Mom went home I accompanied her to Keflavik Airport and said my good-byes there, on the way back I read Stephen Hero by James Joyce, the first book I had bought by him and quite evidently his weakest, it was also unfinished and not meant for publication, but there was something to learn from it, too, how he slowly transformed the autobiographical element, which was obvious here, into something else in Ulysses. Stephen Dedalus was a strong young character, summoned home to Dublin by his father's telegram, "Mother dying come home," but in the novel, Ulysses, that is, this arrogant brilliant young man was perhaps first and foremost a place where things happened. In Stephen Hero he was a person, distinct from the world around him, In Ulysses the world flowed through him and the story, Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Shakespeare, everything moved through him and the same was true of Bloom, except that in him it wasn't the highest and the best that was in motion, that flowed, but rather the town with its people and phenomena, advertising slogans and newspaper articles, he thought about what everyone else thought about, he was Everyman. There was, however, another level above them, namely the place from where they were observed, which was the language, and all the insights and prejudices the various forms of language embraced, almost in secret.

But in Stephen Hero there was none of this, there was just the character, Stephen, in other words, Joyce, set apart from the world, which was described but never integrated. This development culminated, from what I could infer, in his final book, Finnegans Wake, which I had bought but hadn't read, where the characters had disappeared in the language, which lived its own everyman life.

I jumped off the bus at the stop between the university and the landmark building Perlan and walked the last part home through the embassy district. It was raining and misty, I felt empty, like a nobody, as a consequence of saying good-bye perhaps. In the apartment Gunvor was huddled up in the armchair reading with with a cup of tea on the table beside her.

I hung up my coat and went in.

"What are you reading?" I said.

About the famine in Ireland," she said. "The Great Famine."

—Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle, Book Five (Min kamp 5 [2010], translated by Don Bartlett)email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-57805880360858865132016-05-24T17:20:00.000-04:002016-05-24T17:20:02.912-04:00Dodd-Frank's part in the destruction of the middle class"Stagnant Pay Slowing Area House Sales" (Valley News, May 22) misses another culprit: Dodd-Frank.

On July 15, 2015, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen testified to the Senate Banking Committee: "Demand for housing is still being restrained by limited availability of mortgage loans to many potential homebuyers." [link]

Dodd-Frank tightened the rules on mortgage lending, but the real cause of the 2008 crash was the ever-more-complex bundling of loans to feed the speculative exuberance of investors. Dodd-Frank, as far as I've been able to determine, did nothing to protect the housing market from profiteering investors. Indeed, in 2013, the New York Times reported that the same games had resumed. [link] It seems clear that the main purpose of Dodd-Frank was to protect speculators by limiting the risk that expanding homeownership necessarily entails. In other words, it made it much harder for most people to buy a home for themselves.

This is particularly true for the self-employed, independent contractors, contingent workers, and freelancers, who are projected to represent 40% of the workforce by 2020, if they don't already. At the beginning of 2014, real estate attorney Shari Olefson, quoted by Yahoo Finance, said that "about 20% of people who have mortgages right now will not be able to get qualified mortgages" and that "more people will be pushed into the rental market" (again, benefiting investors – and Dodd-Frank's tightened rules do not apply to loans for rental properties). [link]

Census Bureau data show homeownership continuing to plummet in every region of the U.S. since a peak in 2004, most dramatically for those under the age of 45. Since housing prices have also plummeted, that indicates a much deeper change than stagnant pay, which has been that way for most Americans since 1965 and slowly declining since 1999.

email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-31326268254295725082016-05-22T13:51:00.001-04:002016-05-22T13:55:19.443-04:00Clinton: more and more unfavorableFrom a memo to superdelegates, Hillary Clinton campaign, May 27, 2008:

Because our country's electorate is relatively divided along party lines, presidential candidates who are competitive and have been in the public arena for a period of time typically have higher unfavorable ratings.

For example, Hillary and Senator Obama have comparable unfavorable ratings – in the most recent Newsweek poll of national registered voters, 43% are unfavorable to Hillary and 40% are unfavorable to Senator Obama. Senator McCain has similar unfavorable ratings – 40% are unfavorable to him in that same poll.

As might be expected, Senator Obama's unfavorable numbers have steadily risen over the last two years – in a May 2006 Newsweek poll, 10% said they were unfavorable towards him. By July 2007, that number had risen to 19%; 8 months later it was at 28%, and in the two most recent Newsweek polls, conducted in April and May of this year, his unfavorable rating is at 40% – 4 times higher than it was two years ago. Hillary's unfavorable rating has remained relatively steady (according to the same Newsweek polls, in May 2006, her unfavorable rating was 45% – it is now 43%). Similarly, Senator McCain's unfavorable ratings have likewise remained relatively unchanged (according to the same Newsweek polls, in March 2008 his unfavorable rating was 35%; 41% in April 2008, and 40% in May 2008; Newsweek did not record unfavorable ratings before March 2008 for Senator McCain).

More importantly, candidates' unfavorable ratings do not indicate they are too polarizing to win the Presidency; to the contrary, these ratings reflect the divisions in our country between our parties as candidates become known and associated with the Democratic or Republican Party.
That was a nice try to put the entire blame on partisanship, but there is a clear trend in 2016 that argues against Clinton:

It looks even worse over the long term, since Clinton left the Department of State after 2012:

In stark contrast, as Bernie Sanders became more widely known, his favorable rating steadily increased:

Even Donald Trump is trending better than Clinton:

firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-41885518721837664402016-04-25T11:03:00.002-04:002016-07-15T10:42:37.855-04:00Why Bernie Sanders is the best bet for winning the PresidencyHere's why Bernie Sanders is the best bet for the Democrats winning the Presidency in November (besides the high — and always growing — negative ratings of Hillary Clinton (in contrast to Sanders's always growing favorable ratings), the numerous and consistent polls showing Sanders doing much better than she against Trump, particularly in crucial swing states, and Clinton's extensive baggage of ethical lapses, harmful decisions, and even criminal behavior that become increasingly exposed).

Remember that the Presidency is determined by winner-takes-all electors from each state and the District of Columbia. (Only Maine and Nebraska choose electors more proportionally.) (Also remember, regarding the results reported below, that the DNC and the Clinton machine cheated – superdelegate bullying, lying, voter suppression, limiting voting sites, disrupting voting, not counting votes – which got increasingly worse as Sanders' effort to overwhelm the odds with honesty and turnout continued to succeed.)

In the 10 "blue" states that have voted so far, Sanders has won the votes by an average of 60–40. All 5 states in tomorrow's primary are "blue". [Update: With Clinton winning 4 of those 5 states, Sanders' average is now 55%–45%.] The remaining "blue" states are Oregon (May 17 [update: still 55%–45%]) and California and New Jersey. The District of Columbia, also "blue", votes on June 14 (update, July 7: 52%–48%).

In the 2 "light blue" states (where the Republican presidential candidate won 1 of the last 4 elections) that have voted so far, Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders has won the votes by an average of 56–44. Adding them to the above, Sanders has won 59%–42% (pardon the rounding errors) of the votes [update: 55%–45%]. The only "light blue" state yet to vote is New Mexico (June 7 [update: 52%–48%]).

In the 6 "purple" states (which went for the Republican and Democrat twice each) that have voted so far, Clinton has won the votes by an average of 57–41. Adding them to the above, Sanders has still won an average of 53%–46% of each state's votes [update: 50%–50%].

Only 1 of the 2 "light red" states (where the Republican candidate won 3 of the last 4 elections) has voted so far, North Carolina, where Clinton won the votes 55%–41%. Adding it to the above, Sanders has still won the votes in each state by an average of 51–48. The "light red" state yet to vote is Indiana (May 3). [Update: With Sanders winning Indiana 53%–48%, he has still won the votes in all of the above states by an average of 51–48 (update: 49%–50%).]

In the "red" states, Clinton has won the votes in each so far by an average of only 52–46 [update, May 11: 51–46]. Taking out the Dixie (former Confederacy) states, Sanders has won an average of 62%–36% of each "red" state's votes [update, May 11: 61%–36%; June 7: 58%–38%], suggesting the possibility of a nascent "prairie populism" that could give Democrats a chance to win some of those states. All of the Dixie states have voted, and the "red" ones — the only block where Clinton has been consistently strong, and the source of her delegate lead — are very unlikely to go "blue". The remaining "red" states are West Virginia (May 10 [update: Sanders won 51%–35% (local candidate Paul Farrell got 9%)]), Kentucky (May 17 [update: 46%–47%), and Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota (June 7 [update: 51%–45%, 64%–26%, and 49%–51%, respectively).

At the Democratic Party Convention (July 25–28), 2,384 delegates are required for nomination as the party's candidate. With 715 "super" delegates available, who are not bound by the results of the primaries and caucuses, a minimum of 1,669 "pledged" delegates (those assigned by the results of the primaries and caucuses) is needed to be a viable candidate for the nomination. Sanders crossed that threshold on June 7.

Unfortunately, not just for the Party but more importantly for the country as a whole, the Democratic establishment (ie, those superdelegates), long in the thrall of the Reaganite DLC, would probably rather lose than turn the Party over to a progressive populist who might actually steer the country into a better direction than they have done.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016#Schedule_and_results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#/media/File:Red_state,_blue_state.svgemail@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-44010069681549556942016-04-17T12:14:00.001-04:002016-05-22T13:57:46.979-04:00New York Times' transparent spin of Sanders visit to VaticanNewsdiffs.org [link] has archived 6 versions of the New York Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/politics/bernie-sanders-pope-francis-vatican.html. The first was archived at 6:48 a.m. (EST), April 16, and the sixth at 9:56 p.m. the same day. If anyone linked to the original story when it first appeared, the link is now pointing to a completely different one (compare them below).

The first change, recorded at 11:43, began with the title, changing it from "Bernie Sanders Met With Pope Francis, Campaign Says" to "Sanders Says He Met With Pope, Discussing a 'Moral Economy' and Climate Change" (no humanizing first names, but also no campaign).

And although more reporting by Jim Yardley (now listed as co-author) was added to Yamiche Alcindor's original, other parts were removed. Notably, the original quoted Jeffrey Sachs in describing the brief meeting, and that was almost completely replaced by the Pope's description of what is now called an "encounter".

In the version recorded at 3:03 p.m., the title was changed again, to "Sanders Briefly Meets Pope at Vatican After Uncertainty Over a Visit" – hinting at the new article to come that will play up a sense of desperate political maneuvering and downplay the actual purpose of the visit, ie, the conference on social and economic justice to commemorate John Paul II's 1991 encyclical "Centesimus Annus".

Here are the original article and the completely different one – now by Jason Horowitz as first author – recorded at 9:56 p.m. Besides the issue of obvious bias in presenting Sanders' trip to the Vatican in as petty a light as possible, it is contemptible that the latter version replaces – without any notice about, let alone a link to – previous versions.

Bernie Sanders Met With Pope Francis, Campaign Says
By YAMICHE ALCINDOR

VATICAN CITY — Senator Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate, met briefly with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Saturday morning before the pontiff's trip to Greece, a spokesman for the senator's campaign said.

"The senator and the pope met this morning as the pope was departing for Greece — the goal is to highlight the refugee crisis that affects this part of the world, and all over the world. They talked about that," said the spokesman, Michael Briggs.

The meeting lasted about five minutes, said the economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, an adviser to the Sanders campaign, who said he had been present. Mr. Sachs said the pope had thanked Mr. Sanders, who arrived Friday at the Vatican for a conference on social and economic issues, "for coming to the meeting and for coming to speak about the moral economy."

The senator's wife, Jane Sanders, and Msgr. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, who organized the conference, were also present at the brief meeting, Mr. Sachs said. Mr. Briggs said no photographs were taken, in accordance with rules at the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican City guesthouse where the meeting took place and Francis lives.

The Vermont senator had hoped to meet with the pope during his short trip to Rome, for which he interrupted his campaigning for the New York primary on Tuesday. But as recently as Friday it appeared unlikely to happen, after the pope sent a note saying he would not be able to attend the conference because of his trip to the Greek island of Lesbos.

Mr. Sanders confirmed in an interview with The Associated Press that the meeting had taken place. "It was a real honor for me, for my wife and I to spend some time with him," he said. "I think he is one of the extraordinary figures not only in the world today but in modern world history."

Politically, a trip to Rome without a meeting with Francis would have been a blunder, Costas Panagopoulos, a political-science professor at Fordham University who is currently teaching at Yale, had said Friday. "The point is to make sure you are going to get an audience with the pope," he said. "Anything short of an actual visit will probably be a mistake."

Mr. Sachs, who spoke with a Reuters reporter as journalists traveling with the pope in Greece listened on a speaker phone, said the meeting was "absolutely not political."

"This is a senator who for decades has been speaking about the moral economy," he said of Mr. Sanders.

Jim Yardley contributed reporting from Mytilene, Greece.	 	Bernie Sanders Meets With Pope Francis
By JASON HOROWITZ and YAMICHE ALCINDOR

VATICAN CITY — For a while, Senator Bernie Sanders's Roman holiday seemed less than it was cracked up to be.

Immediately after his campaign announced that he would leave the United States for a "high-level meeting" at the Vatican, questions arose about the wisdom of the trip. The critical New York primary was just days away. One official of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which hosted the conference Mr. Sanders would attend, even suggested he had fished for the invitation.

Most critically, there seemed to be little chance that Mr. Sanders would meet the Vatican resident whose name he frequently invokes. Pope Francis, it turned out, would not be visiting the conference of the academy, an in-house think tank of the Vatican.

Politically, a trip to Rome without a meeting with Francis would have been a blunder, Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Fordham University who is teaching at Yale, had said on Friday. "The point is to make sure you are going to get an audience with the pope," he said. "Anything short of an actual visit will probably be a mistake."

Mr. Sanders continued to hold out hope. "I certainly would be delighted and proud if I had the opportunity to meet with him," he said before leaving New York.

He also had two things going for him: his host, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, an Argentine who is the chancellor of the academy and happens to be close to Francis, and his hotel room, also close to the pope. Mr. Sanders was to stay in a second-floor room at Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican guesthouse where Francis keeps his residence.

"So it won't be difficult to find the pope," the bishop said last week, seeming to hint at something.

On Thursday, the day before the conference, a Vatican spokesman appeared to end all speculation, saying, "There won't be a meeting with the Holy Father."

Bishop Sánchez Sorondo dismissed the statement as "Roman gossip."

But final word, it seemed, came Friday afternoon in the form of a handwritten letter from the pope apologizing to conference attendees for his absence.

"I will keep them all in my prayers and good wishes, and send them my heartfelt thanks for their participation," he wrote. "May the Lord bless you. Fraternally, Franciscus."

Around 5:30 p.m. Friday, the conference's business ended and Mr. Sanders made an appointment for dinner at the Casa Santa Marta with his foreign policy adviser, Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and a fellow conference participant.

Mr. Sanders and his wife, Jane, sat with Mr. Sachs and his wife, Sonia, for a soup and buffet dinner, where they were joined by Bishop Sánchez Sorondo and Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, the pope's right-hand man and one of the Vatican's top power players.

"It was a wide-ranging conversation," Mr. Sachs said. "It was about issues of the church and its history, about Honduras and foreign policy."
Clinton vs. Sanders vs. Trump: Who Is the True New Yorker?

But the most important words occurred in the middle of dinner, when a personal secretary for Francis arrived with the news Mr. Sanders had been hoping for, Mr. Sachs said.

If Mr. Sanders were in the foyer of the Casa Santa Marta at 6 a.m. the next day, he would be able to speak briefly with Francis as the pope headed to the airport for his Saturday trip to Greece, where the pope would be addressing the migrant crisis.

So early Saturday morning, Mr. Sanders stood in the marble foyer, which looks out onto a large cobblestone drive just inside the Vatican walls. Joining him were his wife, Mr. Sachs and his wife and Bishop Sánchez Sorondo, the senator's de facto Vatican fixer.

The pope, speaking to reporters on his plane later in the day, described the meeting. "This morning when I was leaving, Senator Sanders was there," he said, adding, "He knew I was leaving at that time, and he had the courtesy to greet me."

No photos of the encounter were permitted, but Mr. Sachs said the senator was delighted all the same. He was beaming as he left the guesthouse, and celebrated the informal audience with a victory lap of sorts in St. Peter's Basilica along with Mr. Sachs and the bishop, passing Bernini's Baldacchino, a monumental bronze canopy over the papal altar, and Michelangelo's Pietà.

Aware that his every statement is parsed for deeper meaning, Francis said he was simply being polite, not political.

"I shook his hand and nothing more," he said. "If someone thinks that greeting someone means getting involved in politics," he added, laughing, "I recommend that he find a psychiatrist!"

But the candidate was excited to talk about his coveted souvenir.

"I conveyed to him my great admiration for the extraordinary work that he is doing all over the world in demanding that morality be part of our economy," Mr. Sanders told reporters aboard the plane as it rushed him back to the campaign in New York.

Jim Yardley contributed reporting from Mytilene, Greece.
firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-4449881375460919492016-04-09T12:32:00.000-04:002016-04-09T12:35:01.004-04:00More 1916 portraits by David Rooney
Winifred Carney.

♣

Francis Sheehy-Skeffington.

♣

Michael Collins.

♣

Éamon De Valera.

♣
email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-26935674815478336562016-04-09T11:44:00.000-04:002016-06-13T12:08:32.211-04:00Chronology of the 1916 Rising and associated events

From 1916 Portraits and Lives, edited by Lawrence William White and James Quinn

1907

NOVEMBER

Thomas J. Clarke returns to Ireland from America and helps to invigorate the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)

1909

16 AUGUST

Constance Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson found Na Fianna Éireann

10 DECEMBER

H. H. Asquith, the Liberal prime minister, promises 'self-government' for Ireland

1910

JANUARY

UK general election: Liberal party fails to win an overall majority and requires the support of John Redmond's 70-strong Irish Parliamentary Party to govern

26 JULY

James Connolly returns to Ireland from America

DECEMBER

Another UK general election; Liberals still the largest party with Irish Parliamentary Party holding the balance of power

1912

9 APRIL

At a unionist demonstration at Balmoral, near Belfast, Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative party, pledges the support of British unionists to Ulster unionist resistance to home rule

11 APRIL

Asquith introduces home rule bill in House of Commons

28 SEPTEMBER

Unionists throughout Ulster sign the Solemn League and Covenant to resist home rule

1913

16 JANUARY

Third reading of home rule bill carried in House of Commons

30 JANUARY

Home rule bill defeated in House of Lords

31 JANUARY

Ulster Volunteer Force founded

15 JULY

After passing in the Commons, home rule bill again defeated in the Lords

26 AUGUST

Tram workers of James Larkin's Irish Transport and General Workers Union go on strike – a general lockout of union members follows

19 NOVEMBER

Irish Citizen Army founded by trade unionists in Dublin

25 NOVEMBER

Irish Volunteers formed at meeting in Dublin, presided over by Eoin MacNeill

1914

20 MARCH

'Curragh mutiny' – General Hubert Gough and most of his officers in the 3rd Cavalry Brigade announce their unwillingness to enforce home rule on Ulster

2 APRIL

Cumann na mBan founded as women's auxiliary to Irish Volunteers

24–25 APRIL

Ulster Volunteer Force gun-running: large quantity of rifles landed at Larne, Donaghadee and Bangor

25 MAY

Home rule bill passes through Commons for third time

28 JUNE

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Slav nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia

10 JULY

Ulster unionist provisional government meets in Belfast

21–24 JULY

Government, nationalists and unionists fail to reach agreement on the status of Ulster at Buckingham Palace conference

26 JULY

Rifles for Irish Volunteers landed at Howth; British troops who failed to disarm Volunteers fire on a crowd at Bachelor's Walk, Dublin, killing four and wounding thirty

1 AUGUST

More rifles for Irish Volunteers landed at Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow

4 AUGUST

UK declares war on Germany after German invasion of Belgium

9 SEPTEMBER

At a conference in Dublin, militant nationalists (mostly IRB) discuss mounting an insurrection during the war

18 SEPTEMBER

Government of Ireland act, 1914, suspends the introduction of home rule for the duration of the war

20 SEPTEMBER

At Woodenbridge, Co. Wicklow, John Redmond encourages Irish Volunteers to join the British army

24 SEPTEMBER

Eoin MacNeill and other Volunteer leaders repudiate Redmond's leadership; Volunteers split, the majority forming Redmond's 'National Volunteers'

OCTOBER

Volunteer minority, still calling themselves the Irish Volunteers, re-organise with Eoin MacNeill as chief of staff, Patrick Pearse as director of military organisation, Joseph Mary Plunkett as director of military operations, and Thomas MacDonagh as director of training

Sir Roger Casement travels to Berlin to seek German help for an Irish insurrection against British rule

1915

MAY

IRB creates a military committee of Pearse, Plunkett and Éamonn Ceannt to begin planning for an armed insurrection

1 AUGUST

Pearse gives stirring graveside oration at the funeral of Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa warning that 'Ireland unfree shall never be at peace' [link]

DECEMBER

IRB military council of Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Pearse, Plunkett and Ceannt formed

1916

JANUARY

IRB supreme council gives approval for armed insurrection

19–22 JANUARY

James Connolly confers with IRB military council and is co-opted into their plans (Thomas MacDonagh co-opted in April)

3 APRIL

Pearse issues orders to Volunteers throughout Ireland for manoeuvres beginning on Easter Sunday (23 April)

20 APRIL

A trawler, the Aud, arrives in Tralee Bay with German arms for the Irish Volunteers and is arrested by a British patrol ship

21 APRIL

Sir Roger Casement lands from a German submarine at Banna Strand, Co. Kerry, and is arrested

22 APRIL

Eoin MacNeill, of the Irish Volunteers, learns of planned insurrection and countermands orders for Easter Sunday manoeuvres

23 APRIL

Military council meets at Liberty Hall and decides to go ahead with insurrection on Easter Monday (24 April); a revolutionary proclamation is signed by the seven members of the council

24 APRIL

GPO and several other buildings in Dublin seized by Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army

An attack on Dublin Castle by a Citizen Army unit is repulsed; the unit briefly holds City Hall until overwhelmed later that day

25 APRIL

British army reinforcements arrive in Dublin and surround insurgent positions; martial law declared in Dublin

Citizen Army force in St Stephen's Green comes under heavy fire and withdraws to College of Surgeons

26 APRIL

Liberty Hall destroyed and GPO damaged by British shelling

Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and two other prisoners summarily executed at Portobello barracks on orders of Captain J. C. Bowen-Colthurst [link]

Wexford Volunteers take over Enniscorthy

Heavy fighting as British troops advance on insurgent positions around the Four Courts and the South Dublin Union

Unable to hold the Mendicity Institute on Usher's Island, the small Volunteer garrison under Seán Heuston surrenders

26–27 APRIL

British army reinforcements advancing on Mount Street bridge suffer heavy casualties at the hands of Volunteers from Éamon de Valera's 3rd battalion

28 APRIL

Volunteers in north County Dublin under Thomas Ashe and Richard Mulcahy seize Ashbourne Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks and ambush an RIC patrol sent to re-take it

GPO on fire; insurgents evacuate building and set up their headquarters in 16 Moore Street

29 APRIL

Pearse and Connolly agree to unconditional surrender, and send orders to other insurgent posts to do likewise

30 APRIL

Final surrenders of rebel commandants in Dublin end the rising; 64 insurgents, 132 crown forces and about 230 civilians killed

2–9 MAY

Courts martial of 187 leading insurgents; 88 sentenced to death, with 73 commuted to various terms of imprisonment. Over 400 insurgents sent to Britain to be interned; over 3,000 other suspects also arrested, of whom about half are interned

2 MAY

Gun battle ensues between Kent family and RIC at Bawnard House, Castlelyons, near Fermoy, Co. Cork, when Kents resist arrest

3 MAY

Executions of Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh

4–12 MAY

Executions of remaining insurgents; Connolly and Mac Diarmada the last to be shot

3 AUGUST

Found guilty of treason, Roger Casement is hanged in Pentonville jail, London

22 DECEMBER

Release from Frongoch camp and Reading jail of remaining untried Irish political prisoners; convicted insurgents remain imprisoned [their trades]

1917

16 JUNE

Remaining 120 Irish prisoners, including Eoin MacNeill, de Valera and Markievicz, released from British jails

25 SEPTEMBER

Thomas Ashe dies in Mountjoy jail after forced feeding

26 OCTOBER

De Valera elected president of Sinn Féin

1918

18 APRIL

A broad front of Irish nationalists oppose conscription at Mansion House conference

17–18 MAY

'German plot' arrests of Sinn Féin leaders

11 NOVEMBER

Great War ends

14–28 DECEMBER

General election: Sinn Féin wins 73 of 105 Irish seats [manifesto]

1919

21 JANUARY

First meeting of Dáil Éireann at Mansion House, Dublin, declares independence

Irish Volunteer attack on RIC at Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary kills two policemen and marks the beginning of the war of independence [link]

1920

23 DECEMBER

Government of Ireland Act, 1920, provides for two subordinate Irish parliaments, one for six Ulster counties, the other for the remainder of the country

1921

22 JUNE

George V opens Northern Ireland parliament in Belfast

9 JULY

Truce ends Irish war of independence

6 DECEMBER

Anglo–Irish treaty signed by British government and Sinn Féin delegates in London [link]

1922

7 JANUARY

Dáil Éireann approves Anglo–Irish treaty by 64 votes to 57 [Constans de Markievics against the treaty]

14 JANUARY

Irish Free State provisional government elected by protreaty representatives; Michael Collins elected chairman

28 JUNE

Free State troops attack antitreaty forces in Four Courts, beginning the civil war

20 JULY

Limerick and Waterford taken by Free State troops (Cork taken 11 August)

12 AUGUST

Arthur Griffith, president of Dáil Éireann, dies of cerebral haemorrhage

22 AUGUST

Michael Collins killed in ambush at Béal na Bláth, Co. Cork

17 NOVEMBER

First of 77 executions of anti-treatyites by Free State government (last on 2 May 1923) [link]

6 DECEMBER

Formal establishment of Irish Free State with W. T. Cosgrave as president of the executive council

1923

24 MAY

De Valera orders anti-treatyites to cease armed operations, ending the civil war
email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-38086366361040102782016-04-07T17:17:00.000-04:002016-04-07T17:17:01.548-04:00Changing EverythingSteven Gorelick writes at Counterpunch:

Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies, massive demonstrations, legislative fiat or some other strategy, but the goal is generally the same: replace dirty fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. Such a transition is often given a significance that goes well beyond its immediate impact on greenhouse gas emissions: it would somehow make our exploitative relationship to Nature more environmentally sound, our relationship to each other more socially equitable. In part this is because the fossil fuel corporations – symbolized by the remorseless Koch brothers – will be a relic of the past, replaced by 'green' corporations and entrepreneurs that display none of their predecessors' ruthlessness and greed.

Maybe, but I have my doubts. Here in Vermont, for example, a renewable energy conference last year was titled, "Creating Prosperity and Opportunity Confronting Climate Change". The event attracted venture capitalists, asset management companies, lawyers that represent renewable energy developers, and even a "brandthropologist" offering advice on "how to evolve Brand Vermont" in light of the climate crisis. The keynote speaker was Jigar Shah, author of Creating Climate Wealth, who pumped up the assembled crowd by telling them that switching to renewables "represents the largest wealth creation opportunity of our generation." He added that government has a role in making that opportunity real: "policies that incentivize resource efficiency can mean scalable profits for businesses." If Shah is correct, the profit motive – in less polite company it might be called 'greed' – will still be around in a renewable energy future.

But at least the renewable energy corporations will be far more socially responsible than their fossil fuel predecessors. Not if you ask the Zapotec communities in Mexico's Oaxaca state, who will tell you that a renewable energy corporation can be just as ruthless as a fossil fuel one. Oaxaca is already home to 21 wind projects and 1,600 massive turbines, with more planned. While the indigenous population must live with the wind turbines on their communal lands, the electricity goes to distant urban areas and industries. Local people say they have been intimidated and deceived by the wind corporations: according to one indigenous leader, "They threaten us, they insult us, they spy on us, they block our roads. We don't want any more wind turbines." People have filed grievances with the government (which has actively promoted the wind projects) and have physically blocked access to development sites.

It seems that a transition to renewable energy might not be as transformative as some people hope. Or to put it more bluntly, renewable energy changes nothing about corporate capitalism.

Which brings me to the new film, This Changes Everything, based on Naomi Klein's best-selling book and directed by her husband, Avi Lewis. I saw the film recently at a screening hosted by local climate activists and renewable energy developers, and was at first hopeful that the film would go even further than the book in, as Klein puts it, "connecting the dots between the carbon in the air and the economic system that put it there."

But by film's end one is left with the impression that a transition from fossil fuels to renewables is pretty much all that's needed – not only to address climate change but to transform the economy and solve all the other problems we face. As the camera tracks skyward to reveal banks of solar panels in China or soars above 450-foot tall wind turbines in Germany, the message seems to be that fully committing to these technologies will change everything. This is surprising, since Klein's book flatly contradicts this way of thinking:

"Over the past decade," she wrote, "many boosters of green capitalism have tried to gloss over the clashes between market logic and ecological limits by touting the wonders of green tech…. They paint a picture of a world that can function pretty much as it does now, but in which our power will come from renewable energy and all of our various gadgets and vehicles will become so much more energy-efficient that we can consume away without worrying about the impact." Instead, she says, we need "consume less, right away. [But] Policies based on encouraging people to consume less are far more difficult for our current political class to embrace than policies that are about encouraging people to consume green. Consuming green just means substituting one power source for another, or one model of consumer goods for a more efficient one. The reason we have placed all of our eggs in the green tech and green efficiency basket is precisely because these changes are safely within market logic."

Overall, Klein's book is far better at "connecting the dots" than the film. The book explains how free trade treaties have led to a huge spike in emissions, and Klein argues that these agreements need to be renegotiated in ways that will curb both emissions and corporate power. Among other things, she says, "long-haul transport will need to be rationed, reserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally." She explicitly calls for "sensible relocalization" of the economy, as well as reduced consumption and "managed degrowth" in the rich countries of the North – notions likely to curdle the blood of capitalists everywhere. She endorses government incentives for local and seasonal food, as well as land management policies that discourage sprawl and encourage low-energy, local forms of agriculture.

I don't buy everything about Klein's arguments: they rest heavily on unquestioned assumptions about the course of 'development' in the global South, and focus too much on scaling up government and not enough on scaling down business. The "everything" that will change sometimes seems limited to the ideological pendulum: after decades of pointing towards the neoliberal, free-market right, she believes it must swing back to the left because climate change demands a huge expansion of government planning and support.

Nonetheless, many of the specific steps outlined in the book do have the potential to shift our economic system in important ways. Those steps, however, are given no space at all in the film. The focus is almost entirely on transitioning to renewables, which turns the film into what is essentially an informercial for industrial wind and solar.

The film starts well, debunking the notion that climate change is a product of human nature – of our innate greed and short-sightedness. Instead, Klein says, the problem lies in a "story" we've told ourselves for the past 400 years: that Nature is ours to tame, conquer, and extract riches from. In that way, Klein says, "Mother Nature became the mother lode."

After a gut-wrenching segment on the environmental disaster known as the Alberta tar sands, the film centers on examples of "Blockadia" – a term coined by activists to describe local direct action against extractive industries. There is the Cree community in Alberta fighting the expansion of tar sands development; villagers in India blocking construction of a coal-fired power plant that would eliminate traditional fishing livelihoods; a community on Greece's Halkidiki Peninsula battling their government and the police to stop an open pit gold mine that would destroy a cherished mountain; and a small-scale goat farmer in Montana joining hands with the local Cheyenne community to oppose a bevy of fossil fuel projects, including a tar sands pipeline, a shale oil project, and a new coal mine.

Klein implies that climate change underlies and connects these geographically diverse protests. But that's partly an artifact of the examples Klein chose, and partly a misreading of the protestors' motives: what has really driven these communities to resist is not climate change, but a deeply-felt desire to maintain their traditional way of life and to protect land that is sacred to them. A woman in Halkidiki expresses it this way: "we are one with this mountain; we won't survive without it." At its heart, the threat that all of these communities face doesn't stem from fossil fuels, but from a voracious economic system that will sacrifice them and the land they cherish for the sake of profit and growth.

The choice of Halkidiki as an example actually undermines Klein's construct, since the proposed mine has nothing directly to do with fossil fuels. It does, however, have everything to do with a global economy that runs on growth, corporate profit, and – as Greece knows only too well – debt. So it is with all the other examples in the film.

Klein's narrative would have been derailed if she profiled the indigenous Zapotec communities of Oaxaca as a Blockadia example: they fit the bill in every respect other than the fact that it's renewable energy corporations, not fossil fuel corporations, they are trying to block. Similarly, Klein's argument would have suffered if she visited villagers in India who are threatened not by a coal-fired power plant, but by one of India's regulation-free corporate enclaves known as "special economic zones". These, too, have sparked protests and police violence against villagers: in Nandigram in West Bengal, 14 villagers were killed trying to keep their way of life from being eliminated, their lands turned into another outpost of an expanding global economy.

And while the tar sands region is undeniably an ecological disaster, it bears many similarities to the huge toxic lake on what was once pastureland in Baotou, on the edge of China's Gobi Desert. The area is the source of nearly two-thirds of the world's rare earth metals – used in almost every high-tech gadget (as well as in the magnets needed for electric cars and industrial wind turbines). The mine tailings and effluent from the many factories processing these metals have created an environmental disaster of truly monumental proportions: the BBC describes it as "the worst place on earth". A significant shrinking of global consumer demand would help reduce Baotou's toxic lake, but it's hard to see how a shift to renewable energy would.

Too often, climate change has been used as a Trojan horse to enable corporate interests to despoil local environments or override the concerns of local communities. Klein acknowledges this in her book: by viewing climate change only on a global scale, she writes, we end up ignoring "people with attachments to particular pieces of land with very different ideas about what constitutes a 'solution'. This chronic forgetfulness is the thread that unites so many fateful policy errors of recent years … [including] when policymakers ram through industrial-scale wind farms and sprawling… solar arrays without local participation or consent." But this warning is conspicuously absent from the film.

Klein's premise is that climate change is the one issue that can unite people globally for economic change, but there's a more strategic way to look at it. What we face is not only a climate crisis but literally hundreds of potentially devastating crises: there's the widening gap between rich and poor, islands of plastic in the oceans, depleted topsoil and groundwater, a rise in fundamentalism and terror, growing piles of toxic and nuclear waste, the gutting of local communities and economies, the erosion of democracy, the epidemic of depression, and many more. Few of these can be easily linked to climate change, but all of them can be traced back to the global economy.

This point is made by Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder of Local Futures, who explains how a scaling-down of the corporate-led global economy and a strengthening of diverse, localized economies would simultaneously address all of the most serious problems we face – including climate change. For this reason, what Norberg-Hodge calls 'big picture activism' has the potential to unite climate change activists, small farmers, peace advocates, environmentalists, social justice groups, labor unions, indigenous rights activists, main street business owners, and many more under a single banner. If all these groups connect the dots to see the corporate-led economy as a root cause of the problems they face, it could give rise to a global movement powerful enough to halt the corporate juggernaut.

And that really could change everything.

Also see: : Oaxaca on this blog, and "Exploitation and destruction: some things to know about industrial wind power"
email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-48682886765183549582016-03-26T19:34:00.001-04:002016-04-09T11:09:10.616-04:00The Rebel

I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow,

That have no treasure but hope,.

No riches laid up but a memory

Of an Ancient glory.

My mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,

I am of the blood of serfs;

The children with whom I have played, the men and women with whom I have eaten,

Have had masters over them, have been under the lash of masters,

And, though gentle, have served churls;

The hands that have touched mine, the dear hands whose touch is familiar to me,

Have worn shameful manacles, have been bitten at the wrist by manacles,

Have grown hard with the manacles and the task-work of strangers,

I am flesh of the flesh of these lowly, I am bone of their bone,

I that have never submitted;

I that have a soul greater than the souls of my people's masters,

I that have vision and prophecy and the gift of fiery speech,

I that have spoken with God on the top of His holy hill.

And because I am of the people, I understand the people,

I am sorrowful with their sorrow, I am hungry with their desire:

My heart has been heavy with the grief of mothers,

My eyes have been wet with the tears of children,

I have yearned with old wistful men,

And laughed or cursed with young men;

Their shame is my shame, and I have reddened for it,

Reddened for that they have served, they who should be free,

Reddened for that they have gone in want, while others have been full,

Reddened for that they have walked in fear of lawyers and of their jailors

With their writs of summons and their handcuffs,

Men mean and cruel!

I could have borne stripes on my body rather than this shame of my people.

And now I speak, being full of vision;

I speak to my people, and I speak in my people's name to the masters ofmy people.

I say to my people that they are holy, that they are august, despite their chains.

That they are greater than those that hold them, and stronger and purer,

That they have but need of courage, and to call on the name of their God,

God the unforgctting, the dear God that loves the peoples

For whom He died naked, suffering shame.

And I say to my people's masters: Beware,

Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people.

Who shall take what ye would not give. Did ye think to conquer the people,

Or that Law is stronger than life and than men's desire to be free?

We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held.

Ye that have bullied and bribed, tyrants, hypocrites, liars!

—Pádraig Pearse

email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-36770183177150667802016-03-26T19:33:00.001-04:002016-04-09T11:09:10.598-04:00The Fool

Since the wise men have not spoken, I speak that am only a fool;

A fool that hath loved his folly,

Yea, more than the wise men their books or their counting houses, or their quiet homes,

Or their fame in men's mouths;

A fool that in all his days hath done never a prudent thing,

Never hath counted the cost, nor recked if another reaped

The fruit of his mighty sowing, content to scatter the seed;

A fool that is unrepentant, and that soon at the end of all

Shall laugh in his lonely heart as the ripe ears fall to the reaping-hooks

And the poor are filled that were empty,

Tho' he go hungry.

I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my youth

In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil.

Was it folly or grace? Not men shall iudge me, but God.

I have squandered the splendid years:

Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again,

Aye, fling them from me!

For this I have heard in my heart, that a man shall scatter, not hoard,

Shall do the deed of to-day, nor take thought of to-morrow's teen,

Shall not bargain or huxter with God; or was it a jest of Christ's

And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word?

The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen, long faces,

And said, "This man is a fool," and others have said, "He blasphemeth;"

And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life

In the world of time and space among the bulks of actual things,

To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart could hold.

O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?

What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell

In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?

Lord, I have staked my soul, I have staked the lives of my kin

On the truth of Thy dreadful word. Do not remember my failures,

But remember this my faith.

And so I speak.

Yea, ere my hot youth pass, I speak to my people and say:

Ye shall be foolish as I; ye shall scatter, not save;

Ye shall venture your all, lest ye lose what is more than all;

Ye shall call for a miracle, taking Christ at His word.

And for this I will answer, O people, answer here and hereafter,

O people that I have loved shall we not answer together?

—Pádraig Pearse

firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-2826365590240952632016-03-12T18:14:00.000-05:002016-04-09T18:55:49.432-04:006 Women: 1916 Uprising portraits by David Rooney
Kathleen Lynn (1874–1955), a clergyman's daughter from Co. Mayo, was a medical doctor devoted to services for the poor, a woman's suffragist and separatist. Chief medical officer of the Irish Citizen Army, during the Easter Rising she supervised a first-aid station in Dublin City Hall until t he garrison's surrender. In 1919 she established St Ultan's Hospital for Infants, and in the 1930s pioneered BCG inoculations against tuberculosis.
♣

Constance Markievicz (1868–1927) was born in London, the daughter of Sir Henry Gore-Booth of Lissadell, Co. Sligo. Breaking with her Ascendancy background. she joined Sinn Féin and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and co-founded Na Fianna Éireann in 1909. During Easter week she served as second-in-command of the Irish Citizen Army garrison in the College of Surgeons. Her death sentence was commuted and she was released from prison in June 1917. The first woman to be elected a Westminster MP in 1918, she was minister for labour in the Dáil cabinet (1919–21).
♣

Helena Molony (1883–1967) was a grocer's daughter from Dublin's north city-centre market district. Active in the feminist and separatist movements, she was an Abbey Theatre actress, trade union official, secretary of the Irish Citizen Army women's group, and manager of the Liberty Hall women workers' co·operative which made uniforms and equipment in preparation for the Easter Rising. She served in the ICA City Hall garrison that surrendered on the evening of Easter Monday, and was interned in England until December 1916.
♣

Elizabeth O'Farrell (1884–1957) was born in Dublin and worked as a midwife at Holles Street hospital. A committed trade unionist. she was also involved in nationalist and suffragist organisations. She served in the GPO during Easter week. delivering Pearse's offer of surrender to British forces, and his surrender order to other insurgent garrisons. After the Easter Rising, she remained a dedicated republican activist.
♣

Mary Perolz (1874–1950) was born in Market Alley, Limerick city and raised in Tralee and Cork city, where her father worked on the Cork Examiner. Prominent in Cumann na mBan and the Irish Citizen Army, she was dispatched as a courier carrying the remobilisation orders from Patrick Pearse to the Cork city Volunteers. Elected acting president for the Irish Women Workers' Union in 1917. she remained an outspoken champion of the rights of women in industry and the labour movement.
♣

Margaret Skinnider (1893–1971) was a Glasgow-born mathematics teacher of Co. Monaghan extraction. Joining the lrish Citizen Army on a Dublin visit, she returned to assist in preparations for the Easter Rising. During Easter week she cycled around Dublin carrying dispatches and also took sniper duty in military uniform in the College of Surgeons. Critically wounded in a sortie, she was the most serious female casualty among the rebels, and recovered after seven weeks in hospital.
♣

Illustrations by David Rooney, from 1916: Portraits and Lives (Royal Irish Academy).

Also see:  "Eight Women of the Easter Rising" by Sadhbh Walshe, New York Times, March 16, 2016
firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-57355320945331207442016-02-25T22:11:00.000-05:002016-04-09T19:08:59.051-04:0016 lives: portraits of the 1916 uprising martyrs by David Rooney
Pádraig Pearse

Thomas Clarke

Thomas MacDonagh

Joseph Plunkett

Ned Daly

Willie Pearse

Michael O'Hanrahan

John MacBride

Éamonn Ceannt

Michael Malliin

Con Colbert

Seán Heuston

Thomas Kent

Seán MacDiarmada

James Connolly

Roger Casement
firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-65041698258338117022016-02-23T11:17:00.000-05:002016-05-22T13:57:46.995-04:00Hillary Clinton's donorsBesides the $125 million taken in by both Clintons for speeches since leaving the White House, including $2.9 milliion by Hillary for 12 speeches at financial firms since leaving the Department of State, and besides the many multi-million-dollar donors to the the Clinton Foundation whose business was affected by Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State (which apparent bribery is currently being investigated by the State Department, while her running the department out of her basement is being investigated by the FBI and Congress), the simple (ignoring the PACs and SuperPACs) funding of Hillary's current campaign for the Democratic nomination for President is revealing.

According to Open Secrets, at the time of this writing, the proportions of donations to all of the presidential primary candidates from individuals working for various industries that have gone to Clinton are:

54% of all donations from casinos/gambling, 19 times as much as Sanders

35% of all donations from commercial banks, 25 times as much as Sanders

46% of all donations from computer/internet, 4 times as much as Sanders

60% of all donations from education, 5 times as much as Sanders

34% of all donations from health professionals, 7 times as much as Sanders

45% of all donations from health services/HMOs, 9 times as much as Sanders

28% of all donations from hedge funds and private equity, 141 times as much as Sanders

43% of all donations from hospitals/nursing homes, 7 times as much as Sanders

22% of all donations from insurance, 13 times as much as Sanders

62% of all donations from lawyers/law firms, 33 times as much as Sanders

45% of all donations from of donations from lobbyists, 173 times as much as Sanders

11% of all donations from oil and gas (one of the only categories where Clinton is not the top recipient), 16 times as much as Sanders

35% of all donations from pharmaceuticals/health products, 8 times as much as Sanders

31% of all donations from real estate, 20 times as much as Sanders

33% of all donations from securities and investment, 53 times as much as Sanders

38% of all donations from telephone utilities, 11 times as much as Sanders

9% of all donations from tobacco (the other category where Clinton is not the top recipient), none to Sanders

71% of all donations from TV/movies/music, 9 times as much as Sanders

Also according to Open Secrets, 71% of individuals' donations to the Bernie Sanders campaign are less than $200, whereas for the Hillary Clinton campaign only 17% of individuals' donations are less than $email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-33122952564649064862016-02-13T15:33:00.004-05:002016-03-30T17:40:40.326-04:00CAILL: loseCaillim, vl. cailleadh, cailleamh, cailleamhain(t), caill, caillt, p.a. caillte, v. tr. and intr., I lose, spend; I forget; I fail; with ar, neglect, fail disappoint, deceive; in pass., I die, perish, am ruined; do cailleadh é, he died; does not mean "die" in Don.; impers., caillfidh ar a neart, his strength will fail; ba dhóbair cailleamhaint ar a lúth, his limb-power nearly failed; ná caill orm, do not fail me; do chaill a chluasa, his ears failed (Fil.); c. le, I am a loser by, I spend on; chaillis é ná rabhais istigh, you lost a great treat by being out; chailleas é, I lost a good opportunity; c. mo náire, I lose my shame; cailleadh an tsolais, night fall (U.); cailleachaim (rare).

Caillseach, -sighe, -cha, f., an earwig; al. gaillseach.

Caillte, p.a., lost, drenched, ruined, destroyed, dead; very bad, as ba ch. an mhaise agat é, it ill became you to do, etc.; beart ch.. a very mean act; (O'N. also has caillte, dead); táim c. le, I am a loser by; táim c., I am lost, ruined; tá púnt c. agam le, I am a pound at a loss by, I have spent a pound on.

Caillteoir, -ora, -rí, m., a loser, a spender, a spoiler; a waster of time.

—Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla, 1927, by Patrick Dinneenfirstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-27658271511766515682016-01-22T16:32:00.001-05:002016-05-22T13:57:46.965-04:00Bernie Sanders: abortionFrom the Bernie Sanders campaign:

The Supreme Court guaranteed a woman's right to choose in the Roe v. Wade decision 43 years ago today. This was a tremendous step to protect women's health and to affirm their control of their own bodies.

Unfortunately, since the Roe v. Wade decision, extreme right-wing politicians in states have made it more and more difficult for women to actually access abortion care, aided in many cases by the federal Hyde Amendment and other anti-abortion policies. Nearly a quarter of these restrictions have come in the last five years. This is unacceptable.

The extreme right-wing works tirelessly to make it more difficult for women to access reproductive health care. Republicans in office work to shut down clinics while extremists terrorize health care providers and their patients. Making women travel hundreds of miles, wait weeks for an appointment and face harassment at the clinic door is a national disgrace.

So today, on the anniversary of this important Supreme Court decision, we must affirm not only the right to have an abortion, but we must protect the right to access a doctor or clinic who can perform that procedure.

Add your name to mine if you agree we must expand access to reproductive health care and protect Roe v. Wade.

We are not going back to the days when women had to risk their lives to end an unwanted pregnancy. The decision about abortion must remain a decision for a woman and her doctor to make, not the government.

We are not going to allow the extreme right-wing to defund Planned Parenthood, we are going to expand it. Planned Parenthood provides vital healthcare services for millions of people, who rely on its clinics every year for affordable, quality health care services including cancer prevention, STI and HIV testing and general primary health care services. The current attempt to malign Planned Parenthood is part of a long-term smear campaign by people who want to deny women in this country the right to control their own bodies.

We are not going back to the days when women did not have full access to birth control. Incredibly, almost all of the Republicans in Congress are in favor of giving any employer who provides health insurance, or any insurance company, the ability to deny coverage for contraception or any other kind of procedure if the employer had a "moral" objection to it. That is unacceptable.

Under my administration, we will protect and expand the fundamental rights of women to control their own bodies. I promise to only nominate Supreme Court Justices who support Roe v. Wade. Our Medicare-for-all plan would cover reproductive health care, including abortion, because all health care is a right, not a privilege. And I would work to repeal the federal Hyde Amendment, which currently restricts the federal government from spending any money on abortion care. That is wrong, and it will be abolished when I am president.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sandersfirstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-10498181863492623482016-01-09T15:06:00.001-05:002016-05-22T13:57:46.952-04:00Bernie Sanders: gun violenceFrom the Bernie Sanders campaign:

Here is the very sad truth: it is very difficult for the American people to keep up with the mass shootings we seem to see every day in the news. Yesterday, San Bernardino. Last week, Colorado Springs. Last month, Colorado Springs again. Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Isla Vista, Virginia Tech, Navy Yard, Roseburg, and far too many others.

The crisis of gun violence has reached epidemic levels in this country to the point that we are averaging more than one mass shooting per day. Now, I am going to tell you something that most candidates wouldn't say: I am not sure there is a magical answer to how we end gun violence in America. But I do know that while thoughts and prayers are important, they are insufficient and it is long past time for action.

That's why I want to talk to you today about a few concrete actions we should take as a country that will save lives.

We can expand background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. This is an idea that over 80% of Americans agree with, even a majority of gun owners.

& 3. We can renew the assault weapons ban and end the sale of high capacity magazines — military-style tools created for the purpose of killing people as efficiently as possible.

Since 2004, over 2,000 people on the FBI's terrorist watch list have legally purchased guns in the United States. Let's close the "terror gap" and make sure known foreign and domestic terrorists are included on prohibited purchaser lists.

We can close loopholes in our laws that allow perpetrators of stalking and dating violence to buy guns. In the United States, the intended targets of a majority of our mass shootings are intimate partners or family members, and over 60% of victims are women and children. Indeed, a woman is five times more likely to die in a domestic violence incident when a gun is present.

We should close the loophole that allows prohibited purchasers to buy a gun without a completed background check after a three-day waiting period expires. Earlier this year, Dylann Roof shot and killed nine of our fellow Americans while they prayed in a historic church, simply because of the color of their skin. This act of terror was possible because of loopholes in our background check laws. Congress should act to ensure the standard for ALL gun purchases is a completed background check. No check — no sale.

It's time to pass federal gun trafficking laws. I support Kirsten Gillibrand's Hadiya Pendleton and Nyasia Pryear-Yard Gun Trafficking & Crime Prevention Act of 2015, which would "make gun trafficking a federal crime and provide tools to law enforcement to get illegal guns off the streets and away from criminal networks and street gangs."

It's time to strengthen penalties for straw purchasers who buy guns from licensed dealers on behalf of a prohibited purchaser.

We must authorize resources for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study and research the causes and effects of gun violence in the United States of America.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are over 21,000 firearm suicides every year in the United States. It's time we expand and improve our mental health capabilities in this country so that people who need care can get care when they need it, regardless of their level of income.

Add your name in support of these commonsense measures Congress can take to make our communities safer from gun violence.

Earlier today [Dec. 3, 2015], the U.S. Senate voted against non-binding legislation to expand background checks, close the "terror gap," and improve our mental health systems. I voted for all three, although each of them came up short.

They failed for the same reason the bipartisan Manchin-Toomey legislation failed in 2013, just months after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School: because of the financial political power of a gun lobby that has bought candidates and elections for the better part of the last several decades.

In 2014 alone, the gun lobby spent over $30 million on political advertising and lobbying to influence legislators in Congress and state capitals across the country. And just last month, it was reported that the Koch brothers made a $5 million contribution to the NRA.

Americans of all political stripes agree. It's time to address the all too common scene of our neighbors being killed. It's time to pass a common sense package of gun safety legislation.

With your help, that's what we'll do when I'm president.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sandersemail@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-55449855964592436892016-01-05T16:32:00.002-05:002016-05-22T13:57:46.990-04:00Bernie Sanders: Wall StreetFrom the Bernie Sanders campaign:

[complete speech as prepared]
Greed, fraud, dishonesty, and arrogance: these are the words that best describe the reality of Wall Street today.

We can no longer tolerate an economy and a political system that have been rigged by Wall Street to benefit the wealthiest Americans in this country at the expense of everyone else. While President Obama deserves credit for getting this economy back on track after the Wall Street crash, the reality is there is a lot of unfinished business.

That's why today in New York City I announced my plan for taking on Wall Street. We must break up the banks, end their casino-style gambling, and fundamentally change the approach of the financial industry to focus on helping the American people.

When I am president, we will reform Wall Street and our financial system to make it work for all Americans. I want to tell you about what I will do, then ask you to add your name to endorse our plan.

Add Your Name
To those on Wall Street, let me be very clear. Greed is not good. In fact, the greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the fabric of our nation. And here is a promise I will make as president: If Wall Street does not end its greed, we will end it for them.

As most people know, in the 1990s and later, financial interests spent billions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to force through Congress the deregulation of Wall Street, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and the weakening of consumer protection laws.

They paid this money to show the American people all that they could do with that freedom. Well, they sure showed the American people. In 2008, the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street nearly destroyed the U.S. and global economy. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, and their life savings.

Meanwhile, the American middle class continues to disappear, poverty is increasing, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider by the day. But the American people are catching on. They also know that a handful of people on Wall Street have extraordinary power over the economic and political life of our country.

We must act now to change that. Our goal must be to create a financial system and an economy that works for all Americans, not just a handful of billionaires.

There are eight points to my plan, and I want to go through each of them here because I think it's important for our campaign to discuss specific policies with our supporters. Some of this may seem a little in the weeds, but I trust our supporters to be able to handle this kind of policy discussion.

Here's my plan for what I will do with Wall Street when I am president:

Break up huge financial institutions in the first year of my administration. Within the first 100 days of my administration, I will require the Secretary of the Treasury to establish a "Too Big to Fail" list of commercial banks, shadow banks, and insurance companies whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk to the U.S. economy without a taxpayer bailout. Within one year, my administration will break these institutions up so that they no longer pose a grave threat to the economy.

Reinstate a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act to clearly separate traditional banking from risky investment banking and insurance services. It is not enough to tell Wall Street to "cut it out," propose a few new rules and slap on some fines. Under my administration, financial institutions will no longer be too big to fail or too big to manage. Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial instruments. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

End too-big-to-jail. We live in a country today that has an economy that is rigged, a campaign finance system which is corrupt, and a criminal justice system which often does not dispense justice. The average American sees kids being arrested and sometimes even jailed for possessing marijuana. But when it comes to Wall Street executives — some of the most wealthy and powerful people in this country whose illegal behavior hurt millions of Americans — somehow nothing happens to them. No jail time. No police record. No justice.

Not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. That will change under my administration. "Equal Justice Under Law" will not just be words engraved on the entrance of the Supreme Court. It will be the standard that applies to Wall Street and all Americans.

Establish a tax on Wall Street to discourage reckless gambling and encourage productive investments in the job-creating economy. We will use the revenue from this tax to make public colleges and universities tuition free. During the financial crisis, the middle class of this country bailed out Wall Street. Now, it's Wall Street's turn to help the middle class.

Cap Credit Card Interest Rates and ATM Fees. We have got to stop financial institutions from ripping off the American people by charging sky-high interest rates and outrageous fees. In my view, it is unacceptable that Americans are paying a $4 or $5 fee each time they go to the ATM. And it is unacceptable that millions of Americans are paying credit card interest rates of 20 or 30 percent.

The Bible has a term for this practice. It's called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for sinners who charged people usurious interest rates. Today, we don't need the hellfire and the pitchforks, we don't need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.

We need to cap interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans at 15 percent. I would also cap ATM fees at $2.

Allow Post Offices to Offer Banking Services. We also need to give Americans affordable banking options. The reality is that, unbelievably, millions of low-income Americans live in communities where there are no normal banking services. Today, if you live in a low-income community and you need to cash a check or get a loan to pay for a car repair or a medical emergency, where do you go? You go to a payday lender who could charge an interest rate of over 300 percent and trap you into a vicious cycle of debt. That is unacceptable.

We need to stop payday lenders from ripping off millions of Americans. Post offices exist in almost every community in our country. One important way to provide decent banking opportunities for low-income communities is to allow the U.S. Postal Service to engage in basic banking services, and that's what I will fight for.

Reform Credit Rating Agencies. We cannot have a safe and sound financial system if we cannot trust the credit agencies to accurately rate financial products. The only way we can restore that trust is to make sure credit rating agencies cannot make a profit from Wall Street. Under my administration, we will turn for-profit credit rating agencies into non-profit institutions, independent from Wall Street. No longer will Wall Street be able to pick and choose which credit agency will rate their products.

Reform the Federal Reserve. We need to structurally reform the Federal Reserve to make it a more democratic institution responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans, not just the billionaires on Wall Street. It is unacceptable that the Federal Reserve has been hijacked by the very bankers it is in charge of regulating. When Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the Federal Reserve acted with a fierce sense of urgency to save the financial system. We need the Fed to act with the same boldness to combat the unemployment crisis and fulfill its full employment mandate.

So my message to you is straightforward: I'll rein in Wall Street's reckless behavior so they can't crash our economy again.

Will Wall Street like me? No. Will they begin to play by the rules if I'm president? You better believe it.
firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-51640256310439241432015-12-23T13:30:00.000-05:002016-05-22T13:57:46.985-04:00Bernie Sanders: single-payer health careFrom the Bernie Sanders campaign:

I want to talk with you about one of the very real differences between Secretary Clinton and me that surfaced during last weekend's debate, and that is our approach to health care in this country.

I was, and all progressives should be, deeply disappointed in some of her attacks on a Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care system. The health insurance lobbyists and big pharmaceutical companies try to make "national health care" sound scary. It is not.

In fact, a large single-payer system already exists in the United States. It's called Medicare and the people enrolled give it high marks. More importantly, it has succeeded in providing near-universal coverage to Americans over age 65 in a very cost-effective manner.

So I want to go over some facts with you and ask that you take action on this important issue:

Right now, because of the gains made under the Affordable Care Act, 17 million people have health care who did not before the law was passed. This is a good start, and something we should be proud of. But we can do better.

The truth is, it is a national disgrace that the United States is the only major country that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. Today, 29 million of our sisters and brothers are without care. Not only are deductibles rising, but the cost of prescription drugs is skyrocketing as well. There is a major crisis in primary health care in the United States.

So I start my approach to health care from two very simple premises:

1. Health care must be recognized as a right, not a privilege -- every man, woman and child in our country should be able to access quality care regardless of their income.

2. We must create a national system to provide care for every single American in the most cost-effective way possible.

I expected to take some heat on these fundamental beliefs during a general election, but since it is already happening in the Democratic primary, I want to address some of the critiques made by Secretary Clinton and Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal directly:

Under my plan, we will lower the cost of health care for the average family making $50,000 a year by nearly $5,000 a year. It is unfair to say simply how much more a program will cost without letting people know we are doing away with the cost of private insurance and that the middle class will be paying substantially less for health care under a single-payer system than Hillary Clinton's program. Attacking the cost of the plan without acknowledging the bottom-line savings is the way Republicans have attacked this idea for decades. Taking that approach in a Democratic Primary undermines the hard work of so many who have fought to guarantee health care as a right in this country, and it hurts our prospects for achieving that goal in the near future. I hope that it stops.

Let me also be clear that a Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care system will expand employment by lifting a major financial weight off of the businesses burdened by employee health expenses. And for the millions of Americans who are currently in jobs they don't like but must stay put because of health care access, they would be free to explore more productive opportunities as they desire.

So, what is stopping us from guaranteeing free, quality health care as a basic fundamental right for all Americans? I believe the answer ties into campaign finance reform.

The truth is, the insurance companies and the drug companies are bribing the United States Congress.

Now, I don't go around asking millionaires and billionaires for money. You know that. I don't think I'm going to get a whole lot of contributions from the health care and pharmaceutical industries. I don't like to kick a man when he is down, but when some bad actors have tried to contribute to our campaign, like the pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli who jacked up the price of a life saving drug for AIDS patients, I donated his contribution to an AIDS clinic in Washington, D.C.

Secretary Clinton, on the other hand, has received millions of dollars from the health care and pharmaceutical industries, a number that is sure to rise as time goes on. Since 1998, there are no industries that have spent more money to influence legislators than these two. Billions of dollars! An absolutely obscene amount of money. And in this election cycle alone, Secretary Clinton has raised more money from the health care industry than did the top 3 Republicans -- combined.

Now, and let's not be naive about this, maybe they are dumb and don't know what they are going to get? But I don't think that's the case, and I don't believe you do either.

So, what can we do about it?

Changing the health care laws in this country in such a way that guarantees health care as a right and not a privilege will require nothing short of a political revolution. That's what this campaign is about and it is work we must continue long after I am elected the next President of the United States.

And because of the success we have enjoyed so far, I am more convinced today than ever before that universal quality health care as a right for all Americans will eventually become the law of the land.

It is the only way forward.

BernieSanders.comemail@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-83824661462083955032015-12-18T15:08:00.000-05:002016-02-08T12:19:37.765-05:00"Frightfulness"Oxford English Dictionary: frightfulness … 2. b. Used during the War of 1914–18 to render G. schrecklichkeit, implying a deliberate policy of terrorizing the enemy (esp. non-combatants) as a military resource.

From The Irish Republic, by Dorothy Macardle (1937, 1938, 1951):

[Note:  These excerpts describing the frightfulness of the English war against the Irish Republic (declared by Dáil Éireann, representing a sweeping majority of the people, on January 21, 1919) are only illustrative and by no means exhaustive, and they do not include the pogroms in Ulster, particularly in Belfast and Derry, to drive Catholics out of their jobs, businesses, and homes (which did not abate after the truce and increased after approval of the free state treaty and partition).]

[Also see:  Ireland in Insurrection, by Hugh Martin (1921).]

* * * * *
A new phase of the hostilities opened in September in County Cork. Here the Volunteers were well led and well armed. Liam Lynch was Commandant of the Cork Number Two Brigade. In Fermoy, on the 7th [1919], with men of his brigade, he attacked a British military party on its way to Church and a soldier was killed. On the following day about two hundred British Regulars were let loose on the town and sacked and looted shops, doing damage estimated at about £3,000.

* * * * *
Dublin Castle employed both troops and police during the autumn [of 1919] in a campaign of incessant activity designed to make life impossible for a population resistant to British rule. They were employed to suppress or break up all the innumerable activities which Dublin Castle had proclaimed. They dispersed meetings, markets and fairs; classes in the Irish language; concerts were "seditious" recitations or national songs might be expected to be part of the programme; exhibitions of Irish produce; sittings of the Commission of Inquiry on Industrial Resources which had been organised by the Dáil; hurling matches or other games which had been organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association. They combined in searching a raiding private houses. They visited printing-presses and dismantled the machinery. They carried out searches for persons suspected of Republican sympathies, and if such persons were were found in possession of Republican literature, conveyed them in armed lorries to jail, where they were detained without charge or trial for an indefinite time, or tried by stipendiary magistrates of courts martial.

On September 5th John O'Sheehan of Roscommon was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for singing The Felons of Our Land. On September 26th P. O'Keeffe, member of Dáil Éireann for North cork, received a sentence of two years for a seditious speech. Numbers of of Republicans were sentenced to two years' imprisonment for reading at meetings the manifesto of Sinn Féin.

Every day had its tale of aggression, only a small fraction which was reported in the censored Press. A typical day – October 27th – showed ten houses raided in county Tipperary; a Cork man arrested for having his possession a copy of the prospectus of the Dáil Éireann Loan; a County Meath man sentenced by court martial to twelve months' imprisonment for being in possession of a revolver, ammunition and seditious documents; a farmers' meeting suppressed by police and military accompanied by tanks.

The next day's list showed the machinery of the Southern Star dismantled; a Cork man sentenced for possession of seditious literature; a hurling match stopped by police and military at Limerick; a boy of fourteen short and seriously wounded by soldiers in county Mayo. On the following day Miss Brigid O'Mullane was sentenced to two months' imprisonment, charged with incitement; a priest was deported, a many sentenced by court martial. On September 20th all Republican Papers were suppressed.

The number of raids on private houses reported in the censored Press during the nine months ending on September 30th was 5,588. … The troops which had sacked Fermoy in September were removed to Cork. There, on November 10th, the soldiers sacked and looted nearly every shop in the principal street of the city. Similar destruction by the military took place in Kinsale and Athlone.

The number of raids on private houses carried out by Crown forces during the years 1917, 1918 and 1919 was computed to amount to 12,589.

Within two weeks in October twenty-two journals which carried notices of the Dáil Loan were suppressed.

On November 25th a Proclamation was issued by which Sinn Féin, the Volunteers, Cumann na mBan and the Gaelic League were suppressed in twenty-seven counties. On the same day Noel Lemass was sentenced to one year's imprisonment with hard labour for being in possession of arms. Five days earlier F. Leonard, a Unionist of Enniskillen, for the same offence had been fined 2s. 6d.

* * * * *
The British régime of suppression was now intensified. Thurles in County Tipperary was a scene of violent police reprisals on January 20th. Outside the town on that morning a constable was shot dead. During the night, police and military rushed through the town, smashing windows, firing shots into houses and throwing hand-grenades into the premises of the local newspaper. They "shot up" about ten houses, including the houses of four newly elected councillors. …

During the month of January over one thousand raids by the Crown forces and two hundred and twenty arrests of Republicans were reported by the daily Press. In the four weeks of February raids numbered over four thousand and arrests two hundred and ninety-six. …

"Frightfulness" was now a definite feature of the British policy; another feature was a systematic attack on the economic life of the country, and particularly on all branches of the reconstructive efforts organised by Dáil Éireann and Sinn Féin. …

An effective blow had been struck at the economic life of the countryside by the suppression of fairs and markets in places under military law. … People coming to market with their produce were turned back. In February an old farmer, Thomas Caplis, on his way to the cattle fair at Nenagh, was arrested, charged with illegal assembly, and sentenced to one month's imprisonment. …

The unofficial reprisals by police and military in the form of sabotage continued unchecked. Thurles was shot up again on March 1st and on March 7th. On March 12th, in Cork, houses were wrecked by troops. …

Two days after the murder of Tomás Mac Curtáin [Lord Mayor of Cork] soldiers in Dublin shot a young man and a a girl, killing both. On March 29th, in Thurles, J. McCarthy was murdered by police in his own home, and on the 30th, T. Dwyer of The Ragg, County Tipperary, was murdered in his bed by police.

* * * * *
In the late spring [1920] Ireland was full of troops. … The troops and police … tore through the streets and roads of Ireland in armoured cars and lorries, which sometimes carried machine guns; the men were in a savage condition of nervousness, expecting an ambush at every corner. They carried rifles at the ready and sometimes shot recklessly at people on the roads. …

Already, between January and June, besides the armed Volunteers who had fallen in combat thirteen unarmed people had be killed by indiscriminate firing by the Crown forces, five had been deliberately killed by them, and one hundred and seventy-two persons wounded. Fifteen reprisals on towns and villages had been carried out in these six months. ([footnote] January 22nd: Thurles, County Tipperary, sacked by troops. February 27th: three houses in Dublin wrecked by troops. March 1st: Thurles, County Tipperary, partially wrecked by troops. March 7th: several houses in Thurles, County Tipperary, wrecked by troops. March 12th: many houses in Cork City wrecked by police. March 22nd: many shop windows in Dublin wrecked by troops. April 17th: Bouladuff, County Tipperary, shot up by police. April 26th: Kilcommon, County Tipperary, partially wrecked by police. April 27th: many houses in Limerick City shot up by police. May 1st: Limerick City shot up by police. May 13th: houses at Thurles, County Tipperary, fired and bombed by police. May 15th: houses at Bantry, County cork, wrecked by police. May 18th: Limerick city shot up by police. May 19th: Kilcommon, County Tipperary, shot up by police. May 28th: Kilmallock, County Limerick, sacked by police.)

* * * * *
Between June 23rd and 28th acts of destruction by police occurred in Bantry, Limerick, Newcastlewest and Kilcommon. On July 1st, in Limerick City, newspaper offices were wrecked and fired by police. On July 3rd police shot up Union Hall, County Cork. Between July 6th and 22nd they bombed and wrecked houses in county Limerick and Arklow, shops and houses in Tralee, County Kerry, Ballagh, County Roscommon and Leap, County Cork. They fired into houses in Ballina, Galbally and cork City, wrecked a creamery at Emly and a National Foresters' Hall at Enniscorthy. On July 20th the town of Tuam in county Galway was savagely sacked by drunken constables.

* * * * *
Less "haphazard" was the sabotage of Irish industrial life carried on during the Summer. Creameries had been wrecked during April; others were destroyed during July; now the destruction of the co-operative creameries, mills and bacon factories was systematised; two were burned down on August 6th, one on the 10th, others on the 16th and 17th. On August 22nd, one of the largest creameries in Ireland, that at Knocklong in County Limerick, was destroyed by bombs which were thrown into the engine-room by men of the R.I.C. …

[T]he police as well as the troops became increasingly reckless and savage. If, when raiding for a marked Republican, they failed to find him, they sometimes shot his father or brother instead. At Bantry, in August, a hunchback boy was murdered in this way.

In Hospital, County Limerick, on the night of August 14th soldiers came to the house of a man of forty named Patrick Lynch, ordered him to go with them and killed him the Fair Green. They "wanted" another Lynch, it was believed.

On the 27th, Seán and Batt Buckley, young volunteers, were captured in their home by Cameron Highlanders, guided by a policeman. They were handcuffed, placed on the floor of a lorry and driven along the road to Cork. When in the lorry both were shot, Seán fatally. "Shot while attempting to escape," was the official formula used to cover the murders of arrested men. …

The Regulations made by the British Administration in Ireland under the new [Restoration of Order in Ireland] Act were promulgated on August 21st. They relieved the military forces in Ireland of almost all the restraints of law. … The British preparations for the final phase of the reconquest of Ireland were almost complete: the Irish nation had been outlawed; members of the Government's forces had been indemnified in advance for excesses against Republicans; their campaign of terror had been categorically legalised.

On September 3rd, coroners' inquests were abolished in ten counties and replaced by secret military courts of inquiry. With the following three weeks eighteen murders of unarmed persons were traced to the forces of the Crown.

* * * * *
The military conflict was growing more violent, and especially in the west. During September ambushes and reprisals were frequent; villages were "shot up"; houses of Republicans were destroyed by police and soldiers, there were fatalities on both sides.

… On September 20th, men of the Constabulary, Military, and Black and Tans wrecked houses in Carrick-on-Shannon and in Tuam. On the same night it was the turn of Drumshambo and Galway City, and Tuam was attacked again. On the 22nd, in County Clare, shops and houses were wrecked and ricks set on fire; Lahinch, Ennistymon, and Miltown-Malbay suffered reprisals and three young men were murdered. On the same night John Lynch of Kilmallock, a member of the Limerick County Council and Director of Elections for Sinn Féin, was murdered by military in his room in a Dublin hotel. …

Twenty-five houses in the village [of Balbriggan] were destroyed that night [of September 20th] and the smaller [hosiery] factory burnt out. The people fled to the country and lay hiding in ditches and barns. … Within the week following the sack of Balbriggan, destruction of the same kind was carried out by the police in the south, the midlands and the west. In Trim, a small market town in County Meath, Auxiliaries did damage estimated at £50,000. In Mallow, County Cork, as a reprisal for a successful attack on the barracks, military wrecked the Town Hall, did damage to the value of £200,000, and shot and wounded two men. In towns and villages in almost every county of Ireland now, people whose homes had been deliberately wrecked by the Crown forces were living in stables and barns.

* * * * *
On the day on which Kevin Barry was hanged in Dublin [November 1st, 1920] Ellen Quinn was shot dead in County Galway by police. She was sitting on her garden wall in Kiltartan with a child in her arms when they came tearing past in a lorry and fired. The only investigation made was a military inquiry at which the firing was found to have been "a precautionary measure."

On the following day Thomas Wall of Tralee was killed by Crown forces; on the 4th John and Tom O'Brien of Nenagh were killed. … On the 5th the Crown forces killed Miss O'Connell and Michael Maguire of Ardfert; on the 6th William Mulcahy of Cork; on the 8th John Cantillon and Michael Brosnan in County Kerry; on the 10th Christopher Lucy of Cork and Frank Hoffman in County Kerry; on the 12th P. McMahon, J. Walsh and John Herlihy of Ballymacelligott. On the 13th, in Dublin, Annie O'Neill, aged eight, was killed when shots were fired from a lorry into a group standing in a gateway. A week later the body of another of their victims, Father Michael Griffin, was found in a Galway bog.

In the Intelligence Room of Dublin Castle ill-treatment and even torture of prisoners was being resorted to in the effort to secure information. …

Seventeen Irishmen were murdered in October … The number of Irish men and women killed by Crown forces during the month of November, other than the Volunteers killed in action, was thirty-three.

Among the operations conducted by the British forces in Ireland during November was the sacking of Granard in County Longford by men who arrived in eleven lorries with bombs and petrol and set four shops ablaze, and of Tralee in County Kerry where uniformed men came out of the police barracks armed with crowbars and hatchets, rifles and revolvers and supplies of petrol, and attacked the home of Republicans.

* * * * *
In Cork city on the following night [December 11th] fires broke out. They broke out first in Patrick Street, the principal business street of the city. On after another the shops blazed up. Later in the night, across the river, about a quarter of a mile away, the City Hall burst into flames. This hall, the centre of the Municipal Government, and the Free Library adjacent to it were completely demolished. The Fire Brigade was impotent against the terrific conflagration. Two members of the Brigade were wounded by bullets while at work. The damage done in that one night was estimated as between two and three million pounds. The streets were full, all night, of military and police.

On the following morning what had been the main thoroughfare of the city was nothing but a scene of wreckage and smouldering debris. Thousands of people had been thrown out of work. …

On the 14th a Proclamation was issued by the British Military Authorities in the counties under Martial Law to the effect that after December 27th any person convicted by a Military Court of certain offences would be liable to suffer death. The offences included the possession of arms, ammunition of explosives; wearing Irish Volunteer uniform or "clothing likely to deceive" and "harbouring and aiding or abetting" rebels – an offence with which nearly every member of nearly every family in Munster was chargeable at this time. …

On December 26th police broke into a dance hall at Bruff, County Limerick, and killed five young men and wounded seventeen.

The number of unarmed persons killed by Crown Forces in Ireland during the twelve months of 1920 reached two hundred and three; this included six women and twelve children under seventeen years of age. Sixty-nine were persons deliberately killed in the streets or their own homes; thirty-six were men killed while in custody; the rest were victims of indiscriminate firing by the Military and Police.

* * * * *
On New Year's Day, 1921, seven householders in Midleton, Co Cork, received notice from the British Military authorities that in one hour's time their houses would be destroyed. They had permission to remove valuable but not furniture. An ambush had been carried out in the neighbourhood and the inhabitants, it was officially stated, had "neglected to give information to the military and police."

… By a proclamation of January 3rd [Major-General Strickland, Military Governor of Cork], commanded the people to refuse food and shelter, aid and comfort, to the Irish Volunteers, and to report to the British authorities any person suspected of being in possession of arms. Citizens failing to obey were to be prosecuted by Court Martial or "dealt with summarily." An attitude of neutrality, the Proclamation stated, "is inconsistent with loyalty and will render the person liable under the order."

The first execution under the new ordinance took place on February 1st, when Cornelius Murphy, charged with being in possession of a revolver and seven rounds of ammunition. was shot. His brother was arrested for failing to inform against him. … Internment camps, capable of holding thousands of prisoners, were set up at Ballykinlar, Gormanston and elsewhere. …

On February 28th, John Allen and five other young Irishmen, sentenced by Court Martial for possession of arms, were executed by shooting in Cork. …

Outside the Martial Law areas, also, executions continued. On March 14th, in Dublin, six Republican prisoners were hanged.

* * * * *
At Clonmult in County Cork, in February, a party of fifteen Volunteers was surrounded in a cottage by Auxiliaries and troops. They resisted, firing from windows, for about two hours, until the thatch was set ablaze. A military officer then called on them to surrender, promising that they would be properly treated, and the fifteen men came out, unarmed, with their hands up. The Auxiliaries fell on them, "like wild beasts," one Volunteer said afterwards, killed nine of them, wounded five and tore from the dead and wounded watches, pens, religious medals, shouting and cursing the whole time. … Six of the Volunteers who had survived the surrender at Clonmult were court martialled and sentenced to death.

… In Limerick, in one night during Curfew hours, three of the leading citizens were killed – George Clancy, the Mayor; the former Mayor, Michael O'Callahan, and Joseph O'Donoghue.

… On April 25th Thomas Traynor was hanged in Mountjoy, and on the 28th four Volunteers, Patrick Sullivan, Patrick Roynane, Thomas Mulcahy and Maurice Moore, were executed by shooting in Cork. Patrick Casey was executed in Cork on the 2nd May and Dan O'Brien on the 16th.

* * * * *
The British Military, on the plea that a state of war was raging in Ireland, were hanging and shooting their prisoners. … Thomas Keane was shot in Limerick on June 4th. On June 7th, Edward Foley and Patrick Maher, charged with the shooting of a sergeant at Knocklong in May, 1919, were hanged.

Twenty-four Irish Volunteers were executed between November and June. In the first half of the year – between January and June, 1921 – Republicans killed, untried, while in custody were believed to number one hundred and thirty-one, and the people killed by indiscriminate firing to include seventeen children, five women and sixteen men.

The total number killed on the Irish side since the first meeting of Dáil Éireann in January, 1919, including civilians and volunteers, was estimated at about seven hundred. ([footnote] Between January 1st, 1919, and July 12th, 1921, 752 killed and 866 wounded. Estimate probably below the actual figure as numerous casualties were never reported.)

The unequal combat was rendered more unequal by the difference between the attitude to prisoners on the two sides. More than eight hundred members of the British Forces, captured by the I.R.A. between January, 1919, and June, 1921, were released unhurt; but, while the Volunteers, proud of their cause and eager to show themselves its worthy soldiers, were scrupulous in their treatment of captured combatants, no such ideal hampered the British Auxiliaries. An example of the difference which impressed English as well as Irish observers was the case of Commandant Seán McKeon.

Commandant McKeon, whose columns were active in County Longford, received a warning that he was to be shot at sight. On January 7th he saw police closing round Miss Martin's cottage where he was living. In order to avert a fight in the house he rushed out, firing. there was an exchange of shots; District Inspector McGrath of the R.I.C. was fatally shot and Seán McKeon escaped. The Police seized five women as hostages and burned the cottage.

On February 2nd McKeon ambushed a reprisal party in lorries near Ballinalee; after a fight lasting three quarters of an hour, in which two Auxiliaries and a District Inspector of Police were killed, the surviving fifteen, of whom eight were wounded, surrendered and laid down their arms. The uninjured prisoners were released and given one of the captured lorries in order that they might convey their wounded comrades to hospital.

A month later, Commandant McKeon was captured and handcuffed; attempting to escape he was shot and wounded; he was recaptured and beaten with rifle butts. While in prison he was elected a member of Dáil Éireann for Longford and Westmeath. On June 14th he was charged before a Field General Court Martial in Dublin with the murder of District Inspector McGrath and sentenced to be hanged.

* * * * *<name id=freestate>
Truce: July 11, 1921

"Free State" treaty (with partition and loyalty to King):

 Signed, under threat of immediate and merciless war of "re-conquest" and without consultation with Dublin: December 6, 1921

 Ratified by U.K. Parliament: December 16

 Approved (narrowly) by Dáil Éireann: January 7th, 1922

Constance (Countess) Markiewicz:  "It is the capitalists' interests in England and Ireland that are pushing this Treaty to block the march of the working people in England and Ireland."

January 14, 1922:  Southern Parliament (remainder of Dáil Éireann for 26 counties) approves treaty, selects a Provisional Government for transfer of British Powers; Provisional Government starts usurping powers and funds of Dáil Éireann and the Republic as well, including the abolition of Republican courts on July 25 in Dublin and on October 27 in the rest of the country

July 28:  Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, at bidding and with support of English, attack the Republican Army in Dublin

August 11:  Last Republican-controlled town taken

August 12:  Arthur Griffith dies

August 22:  Michael Collins killed

October 25:  Republican Army and Éamon de Valera form a new Dáil Éireann; Free State constitution passed by Provisional Government

September 27:  Army Emergency Powers enacted by the Provisional Government to allow its forces to operate without law

October 10:  Irish Bishops condemn anti-Treaty Republicans, denying them communion

October 15:  Military Courts begin: all acts of rebellion against the Treaty, including possession of arms or ammunition, punishable by death

November 17:  Executions begin; continuing through May 2, 1923, they totaled 77, 55 of them before January 31, 1923

December 5:  U.K. approves Free State constitution

December 6:  Irish Free State established, neither treaty nor constitution having been put before voters

December 7:  Northern Ireland removes itself from the Free State, and thwarts a Boundary Commission

<name id=March1923>March 1923:  "The number of military prisoners in jails and internment camps in the Free State was estimated now as about twelve thousand. As a result of prolonged hardship and confinement the majority were in a low state of health. The practice of interrogating prisoners to the accompaniment of severe beating, kicking, and other forms of punishment was generally practised. Guards frequently fired into the prisoners' cells and compounds. Mary Comerford was fired at and wounded in Mountjoy Prisons; Patrick Mulrennan was mortally wounded by an officer in Costume Barrack in Athlone [October 6, 1922], and eight men were killed in this way. The sufferings of men and women from cold, malnutrition, insanitary conditions and the lack of medical appliances increased with the overcrowding of the prisons and camps. … In the early morning of March 7th nine prisoners, one with a broken arm, another with a broken wrist, were taken in a lorry from Tralee prison to Ballyseed Cross, where a log with a mine beside it lay on the road. There the hands of each prisoner were tied behind him and each was tied by the arms and legs to the man on either side. A rope was passed around the nine men, holding htem in a ring, their backs to the mine which was in the centre. The soldiers then moved away and exploded the mine. … On the same day five prisoners were taken from Killarney prison to Countess Bridge where a mine had been placed against a barricade of stones. There the soldiers exploded the mine and then threw bombs. … At Cahirciveen on March 12th five prisoners were killed in the same way …"

April 30, 1923:  (7 years to the day after the final surrender ending the Easter Rising in Dublin) Republicans cease military actions, but Free State government continues activity against them, demanding surrender of arms and keeping loyalty oath to deny them political participation

May 1923:  "[T]he defeat of the Republicans was a victory for England, not for Ireland; the leaders who had achieved it had defeated their own cherished ends. They, too, had desired the Republic; they had agreed to the Treaty only for fear that refusal would bring another war on Ireland, and, in consenting, had brought war on Ireland themselves … they had accomplished for the English what the English might have failed to accomplish for themselves."

August 15:  De Valera arrested at campaign appearance, held in solitary confinement until July 16, 1924

August 27:  Despite many still in prison, the rest threatened with arrest, and their campaign activities violently suppressed and sabotaged, Republicans (including de Valera) win 44 of 153 seats in Dáil, pro-treaty party (now called Cumann na nGaedheal) 63 – but Republicans barred by oath; Republicans up to 48 seats by March 11, 1924

October:  Republican prisoners, including 10 members of Dáil, start hunger strikes

January 16, 1924:  Free State government renews power to keep Republicans imprisoned without trial

April 3:  Treasonable Offences Act passed with only 30 out of 153 votes, joining and joined by other laws to exclude Republicans from public life – reminiscent of 18th-century Penal Laws

November:  Boundary Commission keeps nationalist areas of Ulster (Tyrone, Fermanagh, southern Down and Antrim, Derry City) in Northern Ireland, adds parts of Donegal to surround border towns

December 3:  Free State executives submit to partition and debt payments – passed by House of Commons November 8, House of Lords and Northern Parliament November 9, Free State Dáil December 10; "We have been burgled and we have bribed the burglar" (Maurice Moore)

March 1926:  After failing to persuade Sinn Féin Republicans to work within the Free State Dáil, de Valera forms Fianna Fáil, which also becomes much more centrist

June 9, 1927:  Fianna Fáil wins 44 seats in Dáil, Cumann na nGaedheal 47, Labour 22; Fianna Fáil deputies sit but refuse oath

July 10:  After murder of Minister of Justice Kevin O'Higgins, Fianna Fáil forced to take oath

February 1932:  Fianna Fáil wins 72 seats in Dáil, Cumann na nGaedheal 57 – remains largest party until 2011

March 7, 1932:  De Valera becomes Prime Minister

September 1933:  Cumann na nGaedheal absorbs National Centre Party and far-right Blueshirts to form Fine Gael

July 1, 1937:  Voters approve new Constitution, which takes effect December 29

April 18, 1949:  (Easter Monday) Ireland becomes a firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-83774215388324953572015-12-17T13:04:00.000-05:002015-12-23T12:18:15.349-05:00Executed Republicans, Ireland, 1916–1923<name id=1916>
1916
(by English)

Dublin
May 3rd
P. H. Pearse
Tom Clarke
Thomas MacDonagh
May 4th
Joseph Plunkett
Edward Daly
William Pearse
Michael O'Hanrahan
May 5th
John MacBride
May 8th
Eamon Kent [Ceannt]
Michael Mallin
Con. Colbert
Sean Heuston
May 12th
Sean MacDermott [MacDiarmada]
James Connolly

Cork, May 9th
Thomas Kent

Pentonville Prison (London), August 3rd.
Roger Casement (hanged)
<name id=independence>
1920–21
(by English)

Kevin Barry, hanged in Dublin, November 1st, 1920.
Cornelius Murphy, shot in Cork, February 1st, 1921.
Thomas O'Brien, shot in Cork, February 28th, 1921.
Daniel O'Callaghan, shot in Cork, February 28th, 1921.
John Lyons, shot in Cork, February 28th, 1921.
Timothy McCarthy, shot in Cork, February 28th, 1921.
Patrick O'Mahony, shot in Cork, February 28th, 1921.
John Allen, shot in Cork, February 28th, 1921.
Thomas Whelan, hanged in Dublin, March 14th, 1921.
Patrick Moran, hanged in Dublin, March 14th, 1921.
Thomas Bryan, hanged in Dublin, March 14th, 1921.
Patrick Doyle, hanged in Dublin, March 14th, 1921.
Frank Flood, hanged in Dublin, March 14th, 1921.
Bernard Ryan, hanged in Dublin, March 14th, 1921.
Thomas Traynor, hanged in Dublin, April 26th, 1921.
Patrick Sullivan, shot in Cork, April 28th, 1921.
Maurice Moore, shot in Cork, April 28th, 1921.
Patrick Ronayne, shot in Cork, April 28th, 1921.
Thomas Mulcahy, shot in Cork, April 28th, 1921.
Patrick Casey, shot in Cork, May rnd, 1921.
Daniel O'Brien, shot in Cork, May 17th 1921.
Thomas Keane, shot in Limerick, June 4th, 1921.
Edward Foley, hanged in Dublin, June 7th, 1921.
Patrick Maher, hanged in Dublin, June 7th, 1921.
<name id=freestate>
1922-1923
(by pro–UK treaty Irish; this list does not include those murdered after capture)

Dublin
November 17th
James Fisher
Peter Cassidy
Richard Twohig
John Gaffney
November 24th
Erskine Childers
November, 30th
Jos. Spooner
Patrick Farrelly
John Murphy
December 8th
Rory O'Connor
Liam Mellows
Joseph McKelvey
Richard Barrett
December 19th
Stephen White
Joseph Johnston
Patrick Mangan
Patrick Nolan
Brian Moore
James O'Connor
Patrick Bagnel

Kilkenny, December 29th
John Phelan
John Murphy

Dublin, January 8th
Leo Dowling
Sylvester Heaney
Laurence Sheehy
Anthony O'Reilly
Terence Brady

Dundalk, January 13th
Thomas McKeown
John McNulty
Thomas Murray

Roscrea, January 15th
Fredrick Burke
Patrick Russell
Martin O'Shea
Patrick MacNamara

Carlow, January 15th
James Lillis

January 20th, 1923
Tralee
James Daly
John Clifford
Michael Brosnan
James Hanlon
Limerick
Cornelius McMahon
Patrick Hennessy
Athlone
Thomas Hughes
Michael Walsh
Herbert Collins
Stephen Joyce
Martin Burke

Dundalk, January 22nd, 1923
James Melia
Thomas Lennon
Joseph Ferguson

Waterford, January 25th, 1923
Michael Fitzgerald
Patrick O'Reilly

Birr, January 26th, 1923
Patrick Cunningham
William Conroy
Colum Kelly

Portlaoighse, January 27th, 1923
Patrick Geraghty
Joseph Byrne

Maryborough, February 26th, 1923
Thomas Gibson

March 13th, 1923
Dublin
James O'Rourke
Cork
William Healy
Wexford
James Pearle
Patrick Hogan
John Creane,

Drumboe, March 14th, 1923
Tim O'Sullivan
Charles Daly
John Larkin
Dan Enright

Tuam, April 11th, 1923
James O'Malley
Frank Cunnane
Michael Monaghan
John Newell
John Maguire
Michael Nolan

Tralee, April 25th, 1923
Edward Greaney
Reginald Hathaway
James Mcinerney

Ennis
April 26th, 1923
Patrick Mahoney
May 2nd, 1923
Chris Quinn
William Shaughnessy

[Source: The Irish Republic: A Documented Chronicle of the Anglo-Irish Conflict and the Prtitioning of Ireland, with a Detailed Account of the Period 1916–1923. Dorothy Macardle. 1937 & 1938 (Victor Gollancz), 1951 (Irish Press).]firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7098349.post-54471236256149614522015-12-12T12:40:00.000-05:002015-12-12T12:40:34.639-05:00Sinn Féin Manifesto, General Election, December 1918
[The manifesto of Sinn Féin, prepared for the general election of December 1918, censored by Dublin Castle.]

GENERAL ELECTION
==========
Manifesto to the Irish People

The coming General Election is fraught with vital possibilities for the future of our nation. Ireland is faced with the question whether this generation wills it that she is to march out into the full sunlight of freedom, or is to remain in the shadow of a base imperialism that has brought and ever will bring in its train naught but evil for our race.

Sinn Féin gives Ireland the opportunity of vindicating her honour and pursuing with renewed confidence the path of national salvation by rallying to the flag of the Irish Republic.

Sinn Féin aims at securing the establishment of that Republic.

1. By withdrawing the Irish Representation from the British Parliament and by denying the right and opposing the will of the British Government or any other foreign Government to legislate for Ireland.

2. By making use of any and every means available to render impotent the power of England to hold Ireland in subjection by military force or otherwise.

3. By the establishment of a constituent assembly comprising persons chosen by Irish constituencies as the supreme national authority to speak and act in the name of the Irish people, and to develop Ireland's social, political and industrial life, for the welfare of the whole people of Ireland.

4. By appealing to the Peace Conference for the establishment of Ireland as an Independent Nation. At that conference the future of the Nations of the world will be settled on the principle of government by consent of the governed. Ireland's claim to the application of that principle in her favour is not based on any accidental situation arising from the war. It is older than many if not all of the present belligerents. It is based on our unbroken tradition of nationhood, on a unity in a national name which has never been challenged, on our possession of a distinctive national culture and social order, on the moral courage and dignity of our people in the face of alien aggression, on the fact that in nearly every generation, and five times within the past 120 years our people have challenged in arms the right of England to rule this country. On these incontrovertible facts is based the claim that our people have beyond question established the right to be accorded all the power of a free nation.

Sinn Féin stands less for a political party than for the Nation; it represents the old tradition of nationhood handed on from dead generations; it stands by the Proclamation of the Provisional Government of Easter, 1916, reasserting the inalienable right of the Irish Nation to sovereign independence, reaffirming the determination of the Irish people to achieve it, and guaranteeing within the independent Nation equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens.

Believing that the time has arrived when Ireland's voice for the principle of untrammelled National self-determination should be heard above every interest of party or class, Sinn Féin will oppose at the Polls every individual candidate who does not accept this principle.

The policy of our opponents stands condemned on any test, whether of principle or expediency. The right of a nation to sovereign independence rests upon immutable natural law and cannot be made the subject of a compromise. Any attempt to barter away the sacred and inviolate rights of nationhood begins in dishonour and is bound to end in disaster. The enforced exodus of millions of our people, the decay of our industrial life, the ever-increasing financial plunder of our country, the whittling down of the demand for the "Repeal of the Union," voiced by the first Irish Leader to plead in the Hall of the Conqueror to that of Home Rule on the Statute Book, and finally the contemplated mutilation of our country by partition, are some of the ghastly results of a policy that leads to national ruin.

Those who have endeavoured to harness the people of Ireland to England's war-chariot, ignoring the fact that only a freely-elected Government in a free Ireland has power to decide for Ireland the question of peace and war, have forfeited the right to speak for the Irish people. The green flag turned red in the hands of the Leaders, but that shame is not to be laid at the doors of the Irish people unless they continue a policy of sending their representatives to an alien and hostile assembly, whose powerful influence has been sufficient to destroy the integrity and sap the independence of their representatives. Ireland must repudiate the men who, in a supreme crisis for the nation, attempted to sell her birthright for the vague promises of English Ministers, and who showed their incompetence by failing to have even these promises fulfilled.

The present Irish members of the English Parliament constitute an obstacle to be removed from the path that leads to the Peace Conference. By declaring their will to accept the status of a province instead of boldly taking their stand upon the right of the nation they supply England with the only subterfuge at her disposal for obscuring the issue in the eyes of the world. By their persistent endeavours to induce the young manhood of Ireland to don the uniform of our seven-century old oppressor, and place their lives at the disposal of the military machine that holds our Nation in bondage, they endeavour to barter away and even to use against itself the one great asset still left to our Nation after the havoc of the centuries.

Sinn Féin goes to the polls handicapped by all the arts and contrivances that a powerful and unscrupulous enemy can use against us. Conscious of the power of Sinn Féin to secure the freedom of Ireland the British Government would destroy it. Sinn Féin, however, goes to the polls confident that the people of this ancient nation will be true to the old cause and will vote for the men who stand by the principles of Tone, Emmet, Mitchel, Pearse and Connolly, the men who disdain to whine to the enemy for favours, the men who hold that Ireland must be as free as England or Holland, Switzerland or France, and whose demand is that the only status befitting this ancient realm is the status of a free nation.

Issued by the Standing Committee of Sinn Féin.
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