By Chris Fogarty
WHY IRELAND WILL BE FREE. Irish self-respect is beginning to assert itself. Three shining examples of it are the Shell-to-Sea campaign, the Irish Holocaust commemorators vs “Famine” promoters, and the recent Moore Street shrine vs developers event. It’s not that justice has already won these three historic contests; it’s that the Irish have stopped kowtowing to their “betters.” We congratulate the campaigners in all three of these scandals. We diaspora Irish can be proud of the new assertiveness of Ireland’s ordinary people defending against those who have so often sold them out.
SHELL-TO-SEA is the name adopted by Erris, Co. Mayo campaigners against gov’t corruption and foreign usurpation. A Shell gas consortium will loot Ireland’s hydrocarbon patrimony and is threatening and disrupting lives via an impending gas processing facility and high pressure pipeline through their lands near their houses. The proposed exploitation violates national and local property rights as well as ecological and safety standards. The people are right. The entire scheme is odious, probably criminal. Here’s why: Irish gov’t officials knew the magnitude of the off-shore gas deposit. Yet, they sold it as if its existence and size were merely conjectural; at a price typical of an exploration/extraction project with a high risk of dry holes. Thus, complicit officials use garda against locals defending their rights and those of the nation. Instead of arresting the gov’t officials who gave away a vast national treasure to multinationals who will ruin a pristine area, recklessly endangering life with a pipeline under extreme PSI via unstable terrain, the garda have sided with the criminals by attacking and arresting the righteous locals, railroading some into prison and battering others into hospital with injuries. Free people everywhere must salute the people of Erris. Newspapers report that the consortium employs members of the Szekler Legion, violence-prone Romanian paramilitary promoters of neo-fascism and race hatred. They work as security guards throughout the Shell gas empire. It must be Shell, not the Irish gov’t, who hired the Szekler Legion members, as Bolivia’s military shot two of them, Magyarosi Arpak and Tipperaryman Michael Dwyer as mercenaries allegedly participating in a coup d’etat in gas-rich eastern Bolivia a few weeks ago.
IRELAND’S HOLOCAUST, commemorated worldwide on November 3 for the past decade now has a rival. Irish-American newspapers report; “The Irish Government has declared Sunday, May 17 ‘National Famine Memorial Day.’” It claims that “famine’ commemorations were planned for a total of three locations, one each in Co. Cork, Canada, and Chicago. Considering its pro-Loyalist distribution of funds contributed for Ireland, it is no surprise that the American Ireland Fund is involved. What is at stake is the right to the truth of Ireland’s 1845-50 Holocaust.
On the Doolough-to-Louisburg “famine” walk in 1996, human rights advocate John Pilger claimed that it was too soon to write the truth of 1845-50 Ireland; that the publishing establishment would kill such a book. A recent book of “famine” fiction is reported to have prompted Chicago’s “famine” promoters. My regular readers know why Nov. 3 is commemorated. On that date in 1845, Britain’s viceroy in Dublin, Lord Heytesbury, officially started 1) the Holocaust itself, and 2) the Big Lie of “famine” (or “potato famine”). On Nov. 3, 1845, a frantic 22-man delegation of Ireland’s nationalist notables visited Heytesbury to urge an immediate cessation of the Food Removal; that people were beginning to starve. Heytesbury responded by reading from a prepared statement that, a) ignored the Food Removal plea, and b) referred only to potatoes. That official response made the genocide official, and began its cover-up. For the next five years, 5.25 million innocents died while Britain’s 75 food removal reg’ts stripped Ireland of its abundant foods; livestock, grains, poultry and dairy products, vegetables, etc. See my irishholocaust.org to learn which reg’t starved your relatives. Promoters of the May “famine commemoration” lie are adamant. They grossly understate the Holocaust murder toll, they ignore the Food Removal, as they absolutely refuse to acknowledge the 3,000 Holocaust mass graves that dot Ireland’s countryside. Ask “famine” promoters. The historical facts that they cover up can be seen at irishholocaust.org. A public debate could help. I had the fun of debating four “famine” history professors on TV some years ago. They wanted to talk potatoes, not the food removal reality. My colored poster-sized map enraged them. It showed the location of each British reg’t in the Irish district each was assigned to strip of foods. It also shows the locations of a few hundred Holocaust mass graves. I since learned there are about 3,000 of them. None has a truthful marker except two that my wife and I erected (photos in irishholocaust.org). This website has informed millions, literally, but has not shamed the “famine” operatives into silence. They must know that they defame the murdered millions, because covering-up for the 75 reg’ts and their food removal perpetuates Heytesbury’s false scenario: that they died of “terminal stupidity,” fell into a self-laid trap by growing only one, failure-prone, crop, Thus watch future IANs for ads for my book that will be published later this year. I soon make my final trip to Britain’s Public Record Office, the main repository of my primary source material.
IRELAND’S ALAMO. When the 1916 rebels fled Dublin’s General Post Office flames, they ran to the adjacent house on Moore Street to continue fighting. The ORahilly was shot dead enroute. Upon entering, some broke through three party walls between Nos. 14 and 17 Moore St. Upon its designation as a National Monument, Minister Roche stated; “This building is of immense historical significance to the State. This is the site of the last stand of the 1916 leaders; Pearse, Connolly, Plunkett, and MacDermott… Their actions ultimately lit a fire of Irish nationalism that led in a relatively short time to the foundation of the modern Irish State.” Recently, Dublin’s gov’t OK’d a developer’s preliminary plan to partially demolish that National Monument and build commercially thereon. When National Graves Association (NGA, source of Easter lilies) and others objected, an oral hearing was scheduled. Out of the blue, Plan Design Associates (PDA), Ballina, Co. Mayo contacted the NGA, offering to represent them, pro bono publico, at the hearing. PDA promptly completed their study and 20-some page report signed by Michael Conmy. It reveals drastic defects in the developer’s proposal. (For a photocopy, phone me, 312-664-7651.) Before PDA’s Orlagh Cawley started her presentation she suggested, and the Chair announced, a minute of silence in tribute to the rebels, it being the 93rd anniversary day. All stood but one woman. Curious, Cawley asked the sitter’s identity. The sitter’s name and title as a Dublin City Councilor was given by the adjacent woman before both stormed out the door! Is Ireland’s Alamo at the mercy of such Councilors? If that sitter typifies Dublin officialdom, I suggest that the diaspora Irish hire Plan Design Associates to prepare detailed preservation documents for the Moore St. shrine. Their integrity and professionalism are already abundantly demonstrated. They, the NGA, and the people of Erris, are Ireland’s true leaders; not its permanently venal pols. The saviors of Moore St. and the people of Erris are reestablishing Ireland’s moral high-ground. Irish-America salutes them!
