Month: November 2015

A terrible piece of political history was aired on Ken Rudin’s US political podcast, noting the coincidence of dates of events this month with the murder/suicide of 900  of Jim Jones People’s Temple cult (a weird mixture of Christianity and a sort of gloss of Marxism) members – the figure is almost inconceivable – in Guyana at Jonestown which took place in November 1978 on foot of the murder of California Democrat Congressman Leo Ryan by other cult members following a fact finding mission.

The link above is well worth a read, as regards the background to the People’s Temple, and its political and other interactions in west coast politics in the early to mid-1970s. And then there’s the instruction from Jones that PT funds should be donated to the CPSU. In a strange way it’s not that difficult to see how left wing thought, of a profoundly distorted kind – indeed near enough polar opposite to the intent of the original philosophy, might manifest in such an hostile environment as the US for its more orthodox forms.

If accurate doesn’t this speak of a massive change? A piece on Baptism…

The priest, valiantly, explains how the sacrament of baptism is the most basic of all and the very basis for the Christian way of life.
“It’s like a day out at the movies,” says one less-than-impressed member of the congregation. “You’d wonder if some of the families have ever been in a church before.”
They’re sentiments Fr Gerry O’Connor is familiar with.

He’s a priest in Cherry Orchard parish, a working class area where regular mass attendance is as low as 2 per cent of the Catholic population.

2 per cent. That’s an incredible change across three or four decades. Kilbarrack in the 1980s certainly saw much much higher attendances than that.

Labour TDs clearly getting antsy about the election… This from late last week…

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Wall said: “People say things in the spur of the moment, maybe with the best intentions in the world, but you should think before you speak”.

“We have a lot of young candidates – both already elected and new, and it is important the senior members of the party think before they speak and make sure what we are saying is the reality of the situation,” he said.

Of course this ‘speaking’ would have had nothing to do with this. Would it?

Still, can’t see silence as a credible strategy between now and Election 2016.

How interesting. Last week:

Tánaiste and Labour Party leader Joan Burton has said she is not aware of any internal party analysis which shows the party could lose over 20 seats at the next general election, as the most recent opinion poll showed the party on just 7 per cent support.

This evening:

Tánaiste Joan Burton has deplored the leak of internal Labour party analysis which claimed the party could lose up to 20 seats.

And provided this sort of explanation as to how the two statements could tally…

Speaking today, Ms Burton insisted she has not seen the contents of the internal party analysis.
She said: “All of the time every TD in their own constituency is constantly assessing their own position, they are looking at how the opposition are doing.
“The parties as a whole are doing that continuously but that is entirely different to suggestions that there was some kind of survey which had those outcomes. That is not so.”

Can this be correct that Tim Pat Coogan, of all people, was denied a US visa some years back? I missed the story at the time, but from Irish Central 2013:

Tim Pat Coogan is an iconic figure in Irish journalism and a well known historian. He has had a long absence from this side of the Atlantic, but made a welcome appearance around New York last week.

Chances are you have read his definitive works on Eamon de Valera or Michael Collins, but his new book on the Great Hunger entitled ‘The Famine Plot’ may be his best yet, laying out in scalding terms the British government’s responsibility for Europe’s greatest tragedy before the Holocaust.

Incredibly, earlier this year he had been denied a visa to promote his new book by an American Embassy factotum, whose knowledge of Irish history and current affairs must have matched that of a toddler.

After intervention by powerful friends such as Senator Charles Schumer in New York, justice was done and Coogan made his long awaited trip across the Atlantic.

What on earth would be the cause of that?