Irish Famine
Man's inhumanity to man. They said it was God's will when food in
abundance was all about.
God's Blessing ....
Telling it ....
Blight Today ....
Schooled
Overcoming ....
Ghosts ....
Views Of ....
Images Of ....
Trade Hist ....
Diary
Commemoration
On Saturday, November 23, 1996 (one day after the 33rd anniversary of President
Kennedy's assassination in Dallas) I spent six hours listening to speakers who
brought the horrors of England's dastardly deeds to ennoble the assembled
throng and to marvel at the Irish people's resiliency at overcoming.
But wait!
There is still much work to be done to be sure that this genocide is known
far and wide and that such atrocities are never again visited on Irish
people. Dr. Garrett O'Connor MD (Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA) described how
programmed our people are - programmed for silence - like any abused
people might act. It gave me great hope that this gentleman (Irish-born
like myself) understands clearly the effects of trauma on an abused people.
Dr. O'Connor is highly regarded in his field. He knows of the horrors
that were perpertrated and the distortions of truth that continue to be put
forth to this very day by the John Bull neighbor.
There is going to be many more such forums that will educate
us and not having us act like victims who crave silence because of
shame. We tend to act out what they have laid out for us and thereby
reinforce their caricature of us. In Ireland there is great shame and a
reluctance to open up the past. Those green mouthed wretches who tried
grass food alternatives are too much to be reminded of, I would imagine.
They need to learn from Dr. O'Connor how inspiring it is to know that we
are a people who survived and have reasons to explain any debilitating
perceptions that we have of a reality. Reinforced with truth, over time
others, will alter their perceptions to map to ours rather than feeding off
of the belittling make-believe reality that is presented on our behalf by the Sasanach enemy. God's
work must truly be our own, in this life. I don't wish him to say to me when
I get to the other side that I stunk up the place by sitting idly by.
Mechanism
Adapting
Imitation
Identify with Aggressor
Surrender up of Self
It was great day - a day very well spent. Thanks to the
excellent speakers and to Aine Grealy who performed Emcee duties with a
harmonic flair that kept the whole proceedings flowing beautifully.
They are Going! They are Going!
From Seumas Mac Manus' book "The Story of the Irish Race" a piece
from the notes that he referenced:
It was all for the advancement of civilisation, your wise
and human English rulers and friends assured us. Their mouthpiece,
The London Times, which, when the exodus was most pitiful,
screamed with delight in one of its editorials, "They are going!
They are going! The Irish are going with a vengence. Soon a Celt will
be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of "Manhattan" -
this, their mouthpiece comfortably informed the Imperial English
world, "Law has ridden through Ireland: it has been taught with
bayonets, and interpreted with ruin. Townships levelled to the ground,
straggling columns of exiles, workhouses multiplied, and still
crowded, express the determination of the legislature to rescue
Ireland from its slovenly barbarism, and to plant there the
institutions of this more civilised land."
George Berkeley - 100 years earlier
Drawing from the writings of George Berkeley of the 1700s
Giovanni Costigan in his "A History of Modern Ireland"
penned the following:
Berkeley had lived three years in Rhode Island, where he had
owned Negro slaves. Comparing their condition with that of Irish
peasants, he found the latter to be "more destitute savages, and
more abject than negroes. The negroes in our plantation have a
saying: 'If a negro was not a negro, Irishmen would be negro.' And
it may be confirmed with truth," Berkeley added, "that the very
savages of America are better clad and better lodged than the
Irish cottagers throughout the fertile counties of Limerick and
Tipperary."
Costigan continued to describe Edward Gibbon Wakefield's experience
of the early 1800 (a person who was later to become a pioneer in
promoting emigration to Australia). Wakefield saw a poor man's cheek
laid open because the man failed to get out of a gentleman's way.
Arthur Young, of Travels in Ireland fame expressed shock at
the servility of the Irish peasant. He wrote "Landlords of consequence,
have assured me that many of his cottier's would think themselves
honoured to have their wives and daughters sent for to the bed of their
master - a mark of slavery which proves the oppression under which they
must live." Young's comments might have come from a page out of the Old
South.
Muffling the Cry
