Free Republic

The Green Party’s Joe O’Brien has accused some fellow TDs of using racism to get elected to the Dáil. Mr. O’Brien said that “some people have used racism to get into this house” and that racism in all forms “needs to be called out”. Speaking during a Dáil debate on racism, he said that “only a couple of weeks ago, a member of this house used it in a parliamentary question to get attention”. He added: “When push comes to shove, there are people in this house who have opposed accommodation for Travelers when it comes to their area.” Labour’s...

Ireland has won a seat for a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council. Ireland competed against Canada and Norway for two seats on the council after ballots were cast and counted at the UN General Assembly in New York. A total of 191 countries voted. Ireland needed a two-thirds majority, or 128 votes, to win and have obtained the the number required. Norway also secured a seat on the council. President Michael D. Higgins has welcomed the result of the vote, saying that Ireland ran a campaign which did not avoid the global issues that are urgent. Mr....

People Before Profit has called on local authorities in Galway to remove monuments, which the party claims glorify slavery and racism. It wants a monument to Christopher Columbus in Galway to be taken down. It is also seeking the removal of a plaque in Tuam honoring Major Richard “Dick” Dowling, who served with the Confederate army in the US. The Columbus monument, close to the Spanish Arch, was erected to mark the quincentenary of his 1492 voyage to America. The explorer is reported to have visited Galway around 1477 and the sculpture references his trip to the west of Ireland....

Until recently, Ireland did not blaze much of a trail when it came to human rights at home. The 20th century saw plenty of shameful treatment of vulnerable people, normalized by a deep and often blind devotion to a religious institution that preached a message of compassion. […] The 21st century has seen some improvements but there is still a long way to go. Recent events in the United States and ensuing Black Lives Matter protests have shifted the focus once again to our State’s reliance on Direct Provision. We are no gold star winners either when it comes to...

The Hague (AFP) - Thousands of protesters rallied in the Dutch and Irish capitals on Monday against the death of a black man during an arrest by police in the United States. Defying coronavirus restrictions, demonstrators in both Amsterdam and Dublin carried signs saying "Black Lives Matter", referring to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. The protests that have roiled US cities for six nights have now spread around the world, with rallies as far afield as London and New Zealand. Around 3,000 protesters packed Dam Square in the centre of Amsterdam, standing close together despite coronavirus social distancing...

Thousands of people have taken part in a rally in Dublin city center in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. People gathered at the GPO on O’Connell Street and marched to the United States Embassy in Ballsbridge protesting over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week. […] The marchers chanted “black lives matter” and called for justice for Mr. Floyd’s family. It comes after two protests took place in Dublin yesterday — one at the US Embassy and another at the US Ambassador’s Residence in the Phoenix Park. Similar protests have taken place...

To a certain type of New Yorker,every Dumpster is a potential treasure chest,right up there with thrift stores and stoop sales. But if the scavenger gods offer only a finite number of prizes, Julie Finch might have claimed one of them. Last month Ms. Finch stood on her toes to peer into the Dumpster outside her building on West 26th Street and found a blue wooden harp distinguished mainly by caked layers of grime and dust and a snarl of broken strings. “It was this old thing with wires going in all directions,” she said.“It didn’t look like anything anybody...

The technology used in an attempt to find out whether a second passage tomb, which may also be aligned with a solstice event, exists at Newgrange had proved its worth during experimentation by a Slovakian team of scientists who visited the Boyne Valley, an Irish archaeologist said this week. Dr Conor Brady, archaeologist and lecturer at Dundalk Institute of Technology, who lives at Slane, said that while there would be no "dramatic announcements" about discovery of a second chamber at Newgrange at this stage, the microgravitational technology used in the experiments had proven valuable to archaeologists and scientists. The possibility...

She has strong Irish heritage on both sides of her family, and now Star Trek actress Kate Mulgrew has said that she plans to set course for Ireland if Donald Trump wins a second term as US president. Mulgrew, who played Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager, told TrekMovie.com, “If Trump gets four more years, I am promising you, I will leave the country. And I will go and live in Ireland. There are very wise people over there. They get it.” […] During the interview with TrekMovie.com, which took place ahead of a cast reunion of Star Trek:Voyager...

Dubliner John Hemingway (100) fought in the Battle of Britain Irishman John Hemingway is now the last of the second World War “Few” who fought in the Battle of Britain still alive. It follows the death in a Yorkshire care home of Flight Lieutenant Terry Clark (101) on the eve of the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day on Thursday. The “Few” were so called by Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill in reference to the 3,000 men from the Royal Air Force (RAF) who repulsed the German Luftwaffe during the summer and autumn of 1940 and prevented...

Today in history, May 18, 1565, one of the most symbolically important military encounters between Islam and Europe began: the Ottoman Turks besieged the tiny island of Malta, in what till then was considered the heaviest bombardment any locale had been subjected to. Around the start of the sixteenth century, Muslim pirates from Algiers began to terrorize the Christian Mediterranean. Like their terrestrial counterparts, they too were indoctrinated in and emboldened by Muhammad's promises: "A campaign by sea is like ten campaigns by land," the prophet had said, "and he who loses his bearings at sea is like one who...

Take the Roman Britain coin, known as a radiate, found in Headbourne Worthy, Hampshire. "On the face of it, it looks a grotty old coin, which it is, I guess," said Lewis. But it helps tell the story of Carausius who declared himself emperor of Britain and northern Gaul between AD286-93, breaking away from the Roman empire. He was assassinated by his treasurer Allectus. The newly found coin is just one from an astonishing variety of nearly 4,000 which were struck during Carausius' reign. Other finds include a pure gold arm ring weighing 300g and dating from the eighth century...

Rory McIlroy already had expressed doubts about any future rounds of golf with President Trump, saying in April 2017 that he’d have to “think twice” about it after receiving a considerable amount of heat for his round with the president two months earlier at Trump’s club in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Researchers are calling on the Irish Government to change recommendations for vitamin D supplements after a study revealed it is likely to reduce serious coronavirus complications. A new publication from Trinity College Dublin highlights the association between vitamin D levels and mortality from Covid-19. Dr Eamon Laird and Professor Rose Anne Kenny from the university’s School of Medicine carried out the work with the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), in collaboration with Professor Jon Rhodes at the University of Liverpool. The authors analysed all European adult population studies, completed since 1999, which measured vitamin D and compared vitamin D...

Pirates based in West Cork made millions from plundering shipping and they almost destroyed trade between Europe and the Americas — but were beloved by locals as they gave them three times the going price for supplies. The extent of the pirate presence in the region and their huge influence is detailed in a new book written by Dr Connie Kelleher, an underwater archaeologist, based in Killarney, who works for the National Monuments Service. Her book, 'The Alliance of Pirates — Ireland and Atlantic Piracy in the Early 17th Century,' describes how West Cork became a magnet for pirates and...

This account from the London Chronicle, June 5, 1766 refers to the disappearance and alleged murder of the informer John Bridge. We’ve visited this case previously, in the form of Father Nicholas Sheehy, who had also been drawn and quartered a few months previous for the Bridge affair; collectively, these cases are pretext for state reprisal against the Irish Whiteboys movement, which opposed large landholders’ moves to consolidate estates, expel tenants, and let people starve while the land that once fed them was shifted towards commercial agriculture.

The Garda Commissioner has said that “we are in uncharted waters” in terms of the long-term impact of the new powers given to Gardaí during the COVID-19 crisis. Drew Harris said that Gardaí had “engaged in more than 10,000 checkpoints” across the country last week. Commissioner Harris was speaking during a public meeting with the Policing Authority, which is overseeing the Garda response to COVID-19. The proceedings are being streamed live online due to the COVID-19 restrictions. Mr. Harris said that the low number of coronavirus-related arrests to date — 76 — illustrated how well the public was complying with...

She debated with Queen Elizabeth I, sat at the head of a prosperous pirate empire, and told the English where to go.Rockfleet Castle, which Grace O’Malley used as a base. Photo from Mikeoem, Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0. If asked to name a pirate from history, many people will mention Blackbeard or Captain William Kidd. If pressed to name a female pirate, they might mention Anne Bonny, who terrorized the Caribbean alongside Captain "Calico" Jack Rackham in the early 18th century. Anne Bonny, however, was far from the only female pirate to terrorize the seas. More than a century before Bonny's...

Ship-sinking monster waves revealed by ESA satellites   Rare photo of a rogue wave     21 July 2004  Once dismissed as a nautical myth, freakish ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-storey apartment blocks have been accepted as a leading cause of large ship sinkings. Results from ESA's ERS satellites helped establish the widespread existence of these 'rogue' waves and are now being used to study their origins.  Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. Rogue waves are believed to be the major...

PARIS (AFP) - European satellites have given confirmation to terrified mariners who describe seeing freak waves as tall as 10-storey buildings, the European Space Agency (ESA) said. "Rogue waves" have been the anecdotal cause behind scores of sinkings of vessels as large as container ships and supertankers over the past two decades. But evidence to support this has been sketchy, and many marine scientists have clung to statistical models that say monstrous deviations from the normal sea state only occur once every thousand years. Testing this promise, ESA tasked two of its Earth-scanning satellites, ERS-1 and ERS-2, to monitor the...