Léargas

  Defend the GPO The Dublin GPO and the streets and laneways around it are forever linked with the Easter Rising of 1916. This is a Battlefield site of major historic and international significance which successive Irish governments have failed to develop properly. Successive promises of investment and planning in Moore St have come to nothing. Succesive governments have reduced the National Monument to four houses leaving the rest of the historic area to be destroyed by a London based developer. In keeping with this shameful approach the Irish government last week published a 10-year plan which will see the General Post Office (GPO) become a mixed-use development. The spin from Government is that the GPO will become a flagship project, including retail and office components with a Designated Activity Company being established. The reality, as we have seen with the Moore St. plan, is that time and time again governments have turned their face against the preservation of ou...

  Ceasefires Now Should we have been surprised by the decision of the US President Donald Trump to attack Iran? No. Shocked maybe but not surprised. The weapons of mass destruction spin, that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq two decades ago, was already in wide usage by some western governments and sections of the media before B 2’s dropped so-called ‘bunker buster’ bombs on Iran. And we all remember what a disaster the Iraq war was for the people of that nation and for world politics. An estimated million Iraqi citizens died. The attack on Iran was an act of aggression against a state that had not attacked the USA. It was in clear breach of international law and it almost certainly broke US domestic and constitutional law. Moreover, two nuclear powers – Israel and the USA – have attacked a nation that does not have nuclear weapons. And applauding in the wings are Britain, France and Germany and others who are colluding in the genocide of the Palestinian people. Presi...

  Stand-Up to Racism In 1972 Catholic families – who had endured three years of sustained sectarian attacks on their homes – fled Annalee St in North Belfast. Last month - fifty-three years later - Catholic homes in Annalee St. were again the target of sectarian attack and families were forced to flee. In the last fortnight we have also witnessed the firebombing of homes in Ballymena, the Larne Leisure Centre and racist attacks in other parts of the North. The images of homes in flames in Ballymena reminded me of similar scenes I first witnessed in Belfast in August 1969. The film footage of that period is of streets ablaze, frightened families hurriedly stacking furniture on lorries or carrying their most precious possessions on their backs. Then it was the racism and sectarianism of the apartheid unionist state attacking nationalist and republican families, killing residents, destroying hundreds of homes and forcing thousands to become refugees in our...

  Jim Fitzpatrick signed Limited Print of Elizabeth O’Farrell.  Regular readers of this column will know that I wholeheartedly support the efforts of the Moore St. Preservation Trust to preserve the 1916 Moore St. Battlefield site in Dublin that is under threat from the developers wrecking ball. This week the Trust -  a not for profit organisation led by Relatives of the Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation – will launch a new limited edition signed print of Elizabeth O’Farrell by the renowned Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick. One hundred prints will be available from Thursday evening at €150 as part of the fundraising efforts of the Trust to raise much needed funds in support of its alternative plan for a cultural and historical quarter in the Moore Street battlefield site. Link Elizabeth O’Farrell, a member of the Cumann na mBan, was one of three women who were present in the GPO throughout Easter week 1916 and who were evacuated to Number 16 Moore St. as the GPO was in...

  Mothers Against Genocide This column makes no apologies for writing so much about the genocide in Palestine and the urgent need for ceasefires and a peace process.  At least 14,000 babies face imminent death from starvation. Over 60,000 Palestinian children, women, men have been killed, including more than 4,000 since Israel ended its ceasefire in March. One especially harrowing example of Israel’s murder machine at work was the deliberate targeting last Friday of the family home of Hamdi and Walaa al-Najjar, two doctors who work at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. As Hamdi was at work nine of her ten children were killed. Her husband and a 10th child was left critically ill. Mothers Against Genocide have stood up against this savagery and for the rights of the Palestinian people. Sue Pentel and Martine McCullough are active in this campaign. Sue has been a political activist all her life. My earliest memory of her is as a member of Women against Imperialism ove...