The Irish Independent reports that the spread of swine flu

here has accelerated dramatically with 500 people infected in the past week.
The pace at which people are being infected was underlined as two victims fight for their lives in intensive care.
The surge in cases suggests the prevalence of the flu is much more widespread than official figures have previously shown.
Although 276 cases have been officially confirmed through swabs and laboratory tests, GPs have now recorded hundreds of people showing symptoms of the disease in just the past seven days.
As concern grew over the impending scale of the problem, a 30-year-old Slovakian man remained critically ill in St James's Hospital, where he has been treated since Friday after becoming seriously ill in his Dublin home.

the departure of the latest Dublin City Council member

SINN FÉIN’S operations in the Republic have suffered another blow with the departure of the latest Dublin City Council member from the party’s ranks.
So far, it is not known which party Cllr Louise Minihan will join on the city council, or whether she will sit as an Independent. She had been co-opted in 2002 to fill the Ballyfermot/Drimnagh seat vacated by Tony Smithers.
However, Ms Minihan does have ties with others who quit Sinn Féin in recent months and years to form Éirígí, arguing that Sinn Féin has abandoned its socialist republican roots.
Last night, Dublin South Central TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh sharply criticised Cllr Minihan, pointing out that she had been happy under the party’s flag in the June local elections.
“She had an opportunity to run as an Independent but chose not to do so. She should now return the seat to Sinn Féin so that we can continue to represent the people of Ballyfermot, Chapelizod, Drimnagh and Inchicore as we were elected to do,” he said.
The haemorrhage of Sinn Féin councillors is a serious worry for many members of the party. Cllr Killian Forde is now the only Sinn Féin councillor in Dublin elected in 2004 to still represent the party.
Early this month, Dublin councillor Christy Burke left, saying he had resigned in protest at what he described as a lack of support from the party during his Dublin Central byelection campaign. However, relations between Mr Burke, the Cabra-based, 25-year council veteran, and the party have been cool for some time, party sources told The Irish Times .
Confirming that she will remain on the city council, Ms Minihan said she “no longer” believed that Sinn Féin remained committed to its stated objective “of ending British rule in Ireland and the establishment of an Irish democratic socialist republic”.
Rejecting Sinn Féin’s demands to return the council seat, she said: “It would be hypocritical of me to hand over my seat to a party I no longer support or believe in.
“I know from speaking to people in my constituency that many of them voted for me on the basis of the politics I promote and my track record of community activism.”

Irish Times

A report into clerical child abuse in Dublin

A report into clerical child abuse in Dublin released later today will "shock and horrify" the whole of Ireland, a leading figure in the Catholic church has admitted.
The Dublin Diocese Commission will name up to 15 priests they say were guilty of abusing children in the Irish capital over a 35-year-period.
Up to 450 victims have also been identified by the commission which will present the report to the Irish justice minister Dermot Ahern.
The Irish government now has to decide whether it should publicly name the clergy identified in the report.
"The report will shock and horrify Ireland," according to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who played a key role in setting up the investigation and is seen by the Vatican as someone determined to reform the image of the Catholic church in Ireland.
It will name 15 priests, 11 of whom have been convicted through the Irish courts and four who are already well known.
The report was established in March 2006 and examined child sex abuse allegations against 46 priests and how each case was handled by 19 Dublin bishops between 1975 and 2004.
Part of the report will heavily criticise a so-called power culture among the Dublin bishops who have been accused of not taking the allegations seriously.
Ahern is understood to be preparing to hand over the report to the Republic's attorney general for legal advice.
The report deals with three men currently facing court cases and in two instances these men have served sentences in connection with child abuse, while a third has pleaded guilty to the latest charges against him. The men are not likely to go on trial until April next year.
In order to avoid prejudicing the cases the attorney general Paul Gallagher may publish the report but give the three men in question pseudonyms.
Of the 19 bishops investigated in the report, seven are deceased.
The Guarian.co.uk

The examiner wrongly said

Muslims declare Jihad in Chicago; Obama, Lawmakers prefer targeting Americans

(The following article is based on reports obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police.)
A group obsessed with creating a Caliphate based on Muslim religious law -- Sharia Law -- in the United States and other nations is holding their first US conference today in Chicago.
According to Diane Macedo, news writer for FoxNews.com, the group -- Hizb ut-Tahrir -- is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of Al Qaeda and Iraq's onetime terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for decades, wrote Macedo.
Today's conference is titled, "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam," and it's being held at the Hilton Hotel in a suburb of Chicago. The shocking part of this story is that the majority of US lawmakers are silent about this gathering of avowed enemies of the US Constitution and American values, yet they are voicing their outrage over a CIA proposal to "terminate" terrorist leaders overseas.
The Obama Administration and most of the news media are remaining silent regarding this latest development and the US Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder is busy investigating US intelligence officers and strategists.
When Leon Panetta, the Director of Central Intelligence, revealed to the House Intelligence Committee that former Vice President Dick Cheney had directed the agency not to inform Congress about the plan to train teams to kill Al Qaeda leaders abroad, Democrats jumped at the chance to display their outrage.
Nevermind the fact that the House of Representatives and the Senate have more leaks than the Somali "navy," and so it's understandable for Cheney and the CIA to distrust US lawmakers with secret and critical information, these lawmakers should be attempting to strengthen US anti-terrorism capabilities rather than indulging in their cheap, anti-American dramatics.
US government and other security and terrorism experts have reported that Islamic extremism is on the rise worldwide and that the spread of Islamic extremism is the preeminent threat facing the United States. In addition, various sources allege that Saudi Arabia is one source that has supported and funded the spread of Islamic extremism globally.The intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the US Agency for International Development are implementing various efforts to identify, monitor, and counter the support and funding of the global propagation of Islamic extremism. The intelligence agencies and DOD are carrying out identification and monitoring efforts, primarily in counterintelligence and force protection.According to reports, the State Department and USAID are carrying out efforts to counter the global propagation of Islamic extremism, with State's efforts focused primarily on traditional diplomacy, counterterrorism, and public diplomacy and USAID's efforts focused on development programs to diminish underlying conditions of extremism.The General Accountability Office routinely prepare classified reports to be subsequently released with a more complete description of US efforts to address the global spread of Islamic extremism. A number of sources have reported that Saudi private entities and individuals, as well as sources from other countries, are allegedly financing or supporting Islamic extremism.For example, a Treasury official testified before Congress that Saudi Arabia-based and -funded organizations remain a key source for the promotion of ideologies used by terrorists and violent extremists around the world to justify their agenda. However, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the Commission found no persuasive evidence that the Saudi government knowingly supported al Qaeda.The government agencies also told GAO staff that Islamic extremism is being propagated by sources in countries other than Saudi Arabia, such as Iran, Kuwait, and Syria. The agencies are still examining Saudi Arabia's relationship, and that of other sources in other countries, to Islamic extremism.The Saudi government has announced and, in some cases, undertaken some reform efforts to address Islamic extremism. For example, the government is undertaking educational and religious reforms, including revising textbooks and conducting a 3-year enlightenment program, to purge extremism and intolerance from religious education.
However, US agencies do not know the extent of the Saudi government's efforts to limit the activities of Saudi sources that have allegedly propagated Islamic extremism outside of Saudi Arabia.Sources: General Accounting Office, US Department of State, US Department of Defense, National Security Institute, National Association of Chiefs of Police Terrorism Committee

Irish exchange student dies after jump from pier

July 19, 2009
A 22-year-old exchange student from Ireland died Saturday, two days after jumping off a pier at North Avenue Beach while intoxicated, authorities said.
Keith O’Reilly, of Dublin, Ireland, was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital at 6:22 p.m., according to a Cook County Medical Examiner’s office spokesman.
An autopsy Sunday found O'Reilly died of anoxic encephalopathy — or brain damage — and cervical spinal injuries from a dive in shallow water. Alcohol intoxication was also listed as a cause of death, which was classified as an accident, the medical examiner's office said.
O'Reilly apparently dove into shallow water off a pier at North Avenue Beach about 4:10 a.m. Thursday, police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli said.
A woman, who police described as a "colleague," jumped into the water to pull him out. The woman called 911 and emergency crews initially took the man to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition, Mirabelli said.
Authorities said O'Reilly, an exchange student, jumped off the pier while intoxicated and fractured his neck.

Chicago Sun Times

Moon walking, capitalistic competition

Today is the 40th anniversary of man’s first walk on the moon. On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out of the spaceship Apollo 11 and planted the American flag on the moon’s rocky face. Strange that US pop star Michael "MJ" Jackson passed away almost to the month of Armstrong’s moon walking anniversary — MJ having danced his last signature "moonwalk" to close an astronomic 40-year career.
Was "moon-walking" MJ an eerie closure to Armstrong’s historic first "dance" on the moon? (The thin atmosphere on the moon made Armstrong bounce his steps, as in a dance.) Perhaps MJ represented the tragic-comic capture of Americans in laissez-faire competition that ruled US society in the last 40 years until the present recession from the overdrive of wealth- and power-seeking. And yes, putting the first man on the moon was all about competition.
A space race froze the Cold War between the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It started in the late 1950s when the USSR launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, and soon after, the United States launched Explorer I, the first US satellite. Nearly 50 unmanned probes from both countries explored the lunar-earth system. The competition between the countries soon expanded to other planets, including Venus and Mars. On April 12, 1961, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in Vostok 1, became the first person to orbit the earth. The US bested this with Armstrong’s moonwalk, claiming history for the first man on the moon as American.
The first joint flight of the US and Soviet space programs in 1975 was seen as a symbol of the policy of détente (easing of tension) and the end to the space race. US and Soviet involvement in civil wars such as the Vietnam and Cambodian wars and the Libyan war had taxed economies heavily, on top of the oil crises and overheated demand that forced the US recessions in 1973-75. Two more recessions in 1980 and 1982 weakened the US economy. About this time, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev was grappling with economic restructuring through his radical Perestroika, which allowed some sort of consultation and cooperation with the people — a deviation of style and concept from the autocratic party rule in the USSR. And then in December 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved.
Add communist China’s slow "conversion" (after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976) of limited capitalistic competition to the interesting chopsuey of the emerging global economy — and leadership in space was soon forgotten by world powers. Instead, the development of nuclear weapons and the feared "weapons of mass destruction" became the new emotional crutches of the less economically progressive nations still caught in religious and ideological issues and trying to intimidate the unconcerned others. The new, borderless world economy has paradoxically encouraged jealous economic borders with the relentless competition for a new array of opportunities on a limited planet earth. Should some big nation think of going into space again?
Economics and its underlying principle of "management of scarce resources" has become the homogenous ideology that has transcended cultures and religions. The indifference of the oil-rich countries to the crests and troughs of economic booms and busts underlines the "scarce resource" measure of the real power of some countries over the rest of the world. The culture of greed is fed by the wealth of those who exploit others — for truly, what makes one rich is taken from another made poorer. Do we then wonder why there is so much plunder and theft, so much dishonesty and deviousness, in business and politics, permeating even social and family relationships? A chilling thought is that terrorism has become an economic weapon more than an ideological doxology to some groups unable to compete in the scramble for those elusive "scarce resources."
When liberal capitalism was not yet as pervasive over countries, much thought was given to competition laws or "anti-trust" regulations. This was to control over-expanded ownership of business and volume control of goods that thwarted fair competition among businesses and price-gouged the public. In the US, the Sherman Act of way back 1890 limited cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most anti-trust litigation by the US federal government.
However, in the course of time, anti-trust laws have relaxed, allowing monopolies as long as they do not make consumers worse off in the long run, particularly in pricing and quality. Thus Microsoft was acquitted from its 1998 anti-trust case concerning the merger of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. And so other giant firms thrived in the American Nobel economist Milton Friedman’s laissez-faire of profit-justified competition. Alas, how many greedy corporate scams have happened, competing for corporate and even personal profit?
On July 30, 2002, US President George Bush signed into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a response to the corporate scams that shattered America in the early years of the new millennium and to address the failure of good governance in business. Other countries followed America’s "act of contrition" and set up Corporate Governance Laws and Codes of Corporate Ethics. The world has since been looking up to corporate leaders (and governments as regulator) to temper the competition that has stretched supply-demand curves for businesses and stressed volatility in markets. Yet in 2009 the world is in a recession because of that devil, Greed.
Many might not be able to relate to the 40th anniversary of the first man walking on the moon in the face of what might not seem to have been the "giant leap forward" that Neil Armstrong predicted to come from his "one small step." But the cynics are outnumbered by believers in the innate goodness of man that will always endeavor to correct unfortunate mistakes.
Good corporate governance is again in the special consciousness of business as transparency and adequate controls are refined in new world and local accounting rules and regulations. The powers of Securities and Exchange Commissions and other regulators in many countries have been tightened, learning from the lessons of past scams and corporate crimes. In the Philippine Congress, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile filed Senate Bill 3197, also known as "The Competition Act of 2009," that will define and prohibit business cartels, monopolies, monopoly power or abuse of market power through price fixing and price discrimination, bid rigging, limitation and control of markets, agreement to limit and or control markets, and tie-in arrangements.
ahcylagan@yahoo.com

Picture of the stone: subhan Allah

Salam Alaikum

Attached is a picture of a stone that has the shape of a right hand with the index finger upright as if to indicate - la ilaha illa Allah, and the other remaining fingers are folded in. See the image for yourself. The amazing thing is - the stone is on mount Croagh Patrick in Westport, Co. Mayo, upon which hundreds of thousands of Christians climb the mountain annually bare footed in faith that their sins be forgiven. The mountain is more than 700 metres high. We climbed it for the craic and we spotted the stone on our way down, just after having performed salah on the mountain. As we tried to pick the stone to take it with us, we couldn't as the stone was thoroughly embedded into the soil. Subhan Allah.... wa la illaha illa Allah. Indeed there is no one worthy of worship except Allah.

Wassalam Alaikum

LORRAINE ABOUGNAH

Criticism of Afghan War Is on the Rise in Britain

The latest losses are the heaviest British forces have suffered in any comparable period since the 1982 Falklands war. With the Defense Ministry’s announcement of eight soldiers’ deaths on Friday, Britain’s toll in Afghanistan is now 184 killed, five more than its total losses in Iraq, where Britain’s combat commitment ended this spring.
The deaths have generated grim images that have led the nightly television news, of slate-gray transport aircraft carrying coffins landing at a military air base in Wiltshire and being driven slowly in hearses past crowds lining the high street in Wootton Bassett, a nearby town. When five coffins passed down the street on Friday, on their way to a mortuary in Oxford, women wailed.
Britain’s casualties are far lower than those suffered by American forces, who have lost 732 troops in Afghanistan and 4,322 in Iraq, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that monitors the military losses in both wars.
But with Britain’s far smaller population and troop deployments, the latest deaths — from a force of 9,000 that makes Britain’s the second-largest troop presence in Afghanistan after the United States’ — have been as much of a shock here as the heavy American troop losses in Iraq at the height of that conflict were in the United States.
Partly because of Britain’s 19th-century history of catastrophic military ventures in Afghanistan, when it sought to secure the outer defenses of British imperial rule in India, the government faces an uphill task in rallying public opinion to the current conflict.
So far, however, the reaction in Britain has not run to the kind of popular groundswell for withdrawal that President George W. Bush faced when the war in Iraq worsened after his re-election in 2004.
Like Mr. Bush, and now President Obama, Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, has argued that Britain has to fight on in Afghanistan as a way of preventing terrorist attacks at home. The Conservatives, the main opposition party, have so far agreed.
But Mr. Brown is facing an outcry from those who say the government must answer for the growing number of soldiers killed because of what they describe as an underfinanced defense budget, $55 billion this year. Critics say that the insufficient budget has led to a failure to deploy enough troops and to equip them with enough helicopters and enough blast-resistant armored vehicles.
Many British soldiers have been killed by roadside bombs, which critics say have taken an unacceptably high toll because the troops have had to track down the Taliban in vehicles, instead of going into combat aboard helicopters.
There have been recriminations, too, about the British troops’ reliance for transportation on aging, poorly protected Land Rovers from the time of Britain’s military involvement in Northern Ireland.
The criticism has come from the opposition leaders in Parliament and retired British commanders who oversaw earlier stages of the Afghan conflict. American generals, too, have spoken privately about the mismatch between Britain’s military commitments and the British forces’ manpower and equipment.
The Americans say this situation has often contributed to decisions by British commanders in the field to back off from confrontations with the Taliban, or yield ground the British forces have lost soldiers in gaining.
But perhaps the most damaging recriminations have come from the families of the dead.
“They continue to allow the army to operate in those ridiculous tin- can Land Rovers when they should have been equipped three years ago with American Humvees,” Tony Phillipson, father of a 29-year-old army captain killed in 2006, told the BBC on Friday. “The Afghan Army has 4,500 Humvees. Why haven’t our soldiers got them?”
Last week, the political consensus fragmented when Nick Clegg, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, used a House of Commons speech to say the government should either finance the war properly, giving the troops the force numbers and equipment they need, or withdraw. “We can’t give them the worst of both worlds — put them in harm’s way, but not give them the backing they need,” he said.
It has been an open secret at Whitehall for years that top generals have been frustrated by being ordered to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as handle overseas peacekeeping commitments, with a budget that is one of the lowest among leading Western nations, at 2.5 per cent of Britain’s gross domestic product.
With 110,000 regular soldiers, the army is only a fraction of its historic size, yet, critics say, it faces demands more suited to the days when Britain was still a major power.
Gen. Charles Guthrie, who led British forces as chief of the defense staff until 2001, said on Friday that Mr. Brown’s rejection of the army’s request for 2,000 more troops in Helmand Province this spring — a request that was strongly backed by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American allied commander in Iraq and Afghanistan — was one reason more soldiers were dying.
“It is time for Gordon Brown to put his money where his mouth is,” General Guthrie said. “We have to get serious about this conflict if we’re going to do it.”
Speaking at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Italy on Friday, Mr. Brown said the increase in British casualties during an offensive in Helmand, where Taliban fighters have concentrated a



American troop strength in Afghanistan gets into high gear, Britain’s involvement in the war has come under the fiercest criticism yet at home as a result of a steep increase in British casualties, including the deaths of 15 soldiers in the past 10 days.
summer offensive of their own, was part of a mission that aimed at breaking “a chain of terror” that ran from southern Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain, and contributed to the transit bombings in London in 2005. “Britons today are safer because of the courageous sacrifice of British soldiers in Afghanistan,” he said.
But his faltering voice as he predicted further casualties reflected a political reality he could not avoid. Although Mr. Brown voted for Britain’s involvement in Iraq in 2003, when he was chancellor of the Exchequer, he made no secret in following years of his profound discomfort with the war, and he moved decisively after he succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister in 2007 to lay down a schedule for British withdrawal, which will be completed later this month.
But like Mr. Obama, a vigorous opponent of the Iraq war during the Bush years who has become a proponent of a more vigorous American military commitment in Afghanistan, Mr. Brown has made the Afghan conflict his own. On Friday, as often before, he made an unequivocal commitment to staying the course. “We knew from the start that defeating the insurgency in Helmand would be a hard and dangerous job, but it’s a vital one,” he said.

Galway man dies in NY accident

An Irishman died following an accident in New York yesterday.
Brian Forde, who was in his mid 20s, was originally from the Athenry area of Co Galway.
According to local reports his death was a result of a building site accident.
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The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed the death and is providing consular assistance to family in Ireland.
Mr Forde's is the third death of an Irish citizen in the US in recent weeks.
In mid-June, Ann Coleman who was originally from Abbeyknockmoy near Tuam and her husband Joe O'Connell, originally from north Kerry, were killed in a road accident in Iowa.
The couple lived in Madison, Wisconsin and are survived by their three children aged 15, 13 and 10, who were not seriously injured in the crash.

Blasphemy law is silly, dangerous and unjust

OPINION: Instead of passing an anachronistic and medieval blasphemy law, we should be building a secular Ireland, writes MICHAEL NUGENT
WHY HAS Dermot Ahern, in 2009, made blasphemy a crime punishable by a fine of €25,000? When this anachronistic part of the now Defamation Act is signed into law (it passed through the Oireachtas last night but only on the casting vote of the chair of the Seanad), Atheist Ireland will quickly test it by publishing a blasphemous statement. People need protection from harm, but ideas and beliefs should always be open to challenge.
The new law is both silly and dangerous.
It is silly because it revives a medieval religious crime in a modern pluralist republic. And it is dangerous because it incentivises religious outrage, by making it the first trigger for defining blasphemy.
The problematic behaviour here is the outrage, not the expression of different beliefs. Instead of incentivising outrage, we should be educating people to respond in a more healthy manner than outrage when somebody expresses a belief that they find insulting.
The law also discriminates against atheist citizens by protecting the fundamental beliefs of religious people only. Why should religious beliefs be protected by law in ways that scientific or political or other secular beliefs are not?
Here’s the background. The Constitution says that blasphemy is an offence that shall be punishable by law. That law currently resides in the 1961 Defamation Act. Because he was repealing this Act, Ahern said he had to pass a new blasphemy law to avoid leaving “a void”.
But this “void” was already there. In 1999, the Supreme Court found that the 1961 law was unenforceable because it did not define blasphemy. In effect, we have never had an enforceable blasphemy law under the 1937 Constitution.
After several retreats, Ahern claimed both that he had to propose this law in order to respect the Constitution, and also that he was amending it to “make it virtually impossible to get a successful prosecution”. How is that respecting the Constitution?
This type of “nod and wink” politics brings our laws, and our legislature, into disrepute. In practice, we cannot be certain how our courts will interpret unnecessary laws, as we discovered after the abortion referendum.
Also, the matter might be taken out of our hands. In 2005, the Greek courts found a book of cartoons to be blasphemous, and issued a European arrest warrant for the Austrian cartoonist who drew them. This can be done if the same crime exists in both jurisdictions.
Instead, we should remove the blasphemy reference from the Constitution by referendum. Many independent bodies have advised this, including the Council of Europe in a report last year co-written by the director general of the Irish Attorney General.
We could do this on October 2nd, the same day as the Lisbon referendum. It could be the first step towards gradually building an ethical and secular Ireland. We should be removing all of the 1930s religious references from the Constitution, not legislating to enforce them.
The preamble to our Constitution states that all authority of the State comes from a specific god called the Most Holy Trinity. It also humbly acknowledges all of the obligations of the people of the State to a specific god called Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Up to a quarter of a million Irish atheists cannot become President or a judge unless they take a religious oath. These religious declarations are contrary to Ireland’s obligations under the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The Constitution also states that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. This is much more than an assertion of the right of citizens to worship this god. It is an assertion of the right of this god to be publicly worshipped by citizens.
Our parliament recognises the rights of this god by praying to it every day. This prayer explicitly asks this god to direct the actions of our parliamentarians, so that their every word and work may always begin from and be happily ended by Christ Our Lord.
Atheist Ireland is an advocacy group that campaigns for an ethical and secular Ireland, where the State does not support or fund or give special treatment to any religion. As well as a secular Constitution, we want to see a secular education system.
Most primary schools in the Republic of Ireland are privately run denominational schools with a religion-integrated curriculum. This denies most children access to a secular education. It also affects teachers who are not religious.
We are also launching a campaign encouraging people to read the Bible and other sacred books. Objectively reading the Bible is one of the strongest arguments for rejecting the idea of gods as intervening creators or moral guides.
We will be holding our first annual general meeting from 2pm to 5pm this Saturday, in Wynn’s Hotel in Dublin. Members of the public are invited, if you want to help our campaign to repeal the blasphemy law and to build an ethical and secular Ireland.
Michael Nugent was involved recently in setting up Atheist Ireland – www.atheist.ie
Irish Times

Irish Aid worker live and in good health

KHARTOUM (AFP) — Two aid workers kidnapped in Darfur last week have been located and are in good health, Sudanese officials told AFP on Wednesday.

"They are in good health, they are safe," a senior official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Gunmen kidnapped Irish national Sharon Commins and Ugandan Hilda Kawuki from the office of the Irish aid group Goal in the North Darfur city of Kutum last Friday night.

A Sudanese guard was also seized but later released.

The location of the two women is now known, Abdel Baqi Gilani, state minister for humanitarian affairs told AFP without providing further details. He also said the kidnap was not politically motivated.

"They are bandits, they do it to make money. It is an irresponsible act. They came here to help us," he said of the two aid workers.

The kidnapping was the third of foreign aid workers since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant on March 4 for Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir for alleged war crimes in Darfur.

Senior officials from both Ireland and Uganda arrived in Darfur on Monday to try to obtain the release of the two women.

"We are at the same point as Friday... We are trying to know who did it," said president and founder of Goal John O'Shea by phone from Dublin, declining to comment on the location of the women.

Following the March arrest warrant for Beshir, Sudan expelled 13 foreign non-governmental organisations from Darfur -- a decision vehemently criticised by the United Nations. Khartoum later allowed Western aid bodies in once again.

The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government and its militia allies.

The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes since the conflict broke out. Sudan puts the death toll at 10,000.

Travel teaches us how to live with Muslims

Jet-lagged and unable to sleep, I awake a few minutes before 5 a.m. and step onto the balcony of my room overlooking Istanbul. Suddenly the colored lights atop minarets all over the city go on, and the voices of a dozen muezzins are heard from loudspeakers resounding all about me. It is the morning call to prayer, a strangely beautiful sound, repeated at four other times throughout the day.
Later, my wife and I board an electric trolley (1 1/2 Turkish lira — about a dollar — per person) to the Sultanahmet district, which houses the Blue Mosque, Aghia Sophia (a Roman Catholic cathedral converted into a mosque, then converted into a museum by the country's early-20th-century president, the secular-minded Ataturk), Topkapi Palace (home of the sultans and their harem-confined concubines) and the stupefying Grand Bazaar of shops extending seemingly for miles.
On the smooth-as-silk, four-car trolley, more modern than any I have ever ridden, we take our seats behind three young women dressed in brightly colored head scarves. One of them speaks a bit of English, and my wife conducts a lively conversation about Istanbul and our respective families, with everyone laughing and smiling.
Also on the trolley: a modern group of young women of Istanbul in totally chic, western dress mixing easily with the others in their traditional Muslim cloaks. As we move along, we glance at the passing sidewalks filled with a variety of people, the majority in gowns and suits as modern as in London or Paris, but with a healthy number of head-scarved women and an occasional ultra-traditional female in head-to-foot black chadors, leaving only a small space for their noses and eyes. Everyone mixes and mingles, and conducts their daily routines in relaxed fashion, showing total tolerance for each other.
Later in the day, I pass the jogging track of an in-city park where young women in shorts and other modern running gear, their hair in ponytails, are exercising alongside other equally athletic young women in head scarves and long dresses.
It is now late in the afternoon. After a strenuous day of mosque- and museum-hopping, my wife and I pass an alleyway on which we see a large Turkish sign with the smaller words "Turkish baths" underneath. We enter the most un-touristic establishment in all the city, where only sign language indicates to the surprised proprietors that we Yanks are each eager to experience these intensely local treatments (40 lira, about $25, per person).
I get undressed and am conducted into a searingly hot steam room where I am soon drenched in sweat and made to endure the heat for nearly half an hour. I am then rubbed down with what is close to sandpaper, then doused with buckets of cold, tepid and hot water in succession, then covered with soap. And then I undergo the most painful massage of my life, the masseur's thumbs digging deep into every muscle I possess. And after a final wash, I am wrapped into a towel and escorted to a reception room where I meet my also towel-draped wife, who has had everything except the steam treatment. We are each served a tiny glass of heavily sweetened Turkish tea. The proprietors of the steam bath beam at us, who probably are the first tourists they have ever served.
For the entire day we have been in a Muslim world, a part of it (namely Turkey) a tolerant land set on a course of modernity by its former military ruler, Ataturk. We are going to have to learn to live with that world, to deal with them as equals, to react to them with tolerance and sensitivity for their beliefs and their struggles. We cannot patronize or dominate them, as we have sometimes have in the past.

The Wichita Eagle

Father Ted creators back challenge to the blasphemy bill

The creators of the Father Ted television series have denounced Ireland's proposed blasphemy laws as "insanity" and pledged to support a campaign to repeal them.
Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan backed moves by a group of Irish secularists to challenge the bill against blasphemy introduced in the Dáil last week. Atheist Ireland said this weekend that it will publish a statement blaspheming all the major religions in Ireland, including Christianity and Islam. The group said it would be a calculated challenge to the law.
Under the Irish constitution, the state is obliged to have blasphemy laws. The bill going through the Dáil would amend the Defamation Act of 1961, which includes blasphemy as a crime. To abolish blasphemy laws, the government would have to hold a referendum to amend the constitution. The duo, who wrote a host of other TV comedies such as Big Train, described the blasphemy law contained in the new bill covering defamation in Ireland as "a return to the Middle Ages".
Linehan told the Observer that the justice minister Dermot Ahern, who introduced the bill, should be challenged to define what he meant by blasphemy. "This is insanity. Please, Mr Ahern, define the things we can't say, please! Can we say, 'Jesus is gay'? Or can we ask, 'Is God in a biscuit?' Could he tell us what it means? It is just insanity. After all, there are things contained in the holy books of one religion that are blasphemy to another religion. The logic behind this comes from Alice in Wonderland." He said the Irish blasphemy law was part of a trend in the west where freedom of expression was being attacked "to placate the craziest people on earth".
Linehan said that technically, under the new bill, certain scenes from Father Ted could be deemed blasphemous. "In Ted we kind of generally avoided central tenets of belief, because it was not what the show was about. It was about a very bad priest who didn't think about religion a lot. Writers should not be looking over their shoulders. If you are writing a satire today, the Irish government are making it harder to do that."
Mathews said the bill "hardly seems necessary in the Ireland of the 21st century ... It's a pity that law hadn't been introduced when we were writing Father Ted, because it would have given us a great storyline. The best attitude to this nonsense is to laugh at it and send it up. There is no popular clamour for it in Ireland, so I wonder why Dermot Ahern has brought it in the first place."
Michael Nugent, of Atheist Ireland, who has also written comedy with Mathews, said the bill was silly and dangerous. "It is silly because it revives a medieval religious law in a modern pluralist republic, and it makes Ireland seem like a backward country. People need protection. Ideas do not. Ideas should always be open to criticism and ridicule. If the law is passed, we will be immediately testing it by publishing a blasphemous statement."
Nugent pointed out that in 1909 George Bernard Shaw had a play banned for blasphemy. "He defended himself by saying he deliberately wrote immoral and heretical plays in order to challenge the public to reconsider its morals. Exactly 100 years later, we will be doing the same thing: deliberately publishing a blasphemous statement, in order to challenge the government to reconsider this absurd law."
Mathews said he supported Nugent's stance on publishing blasphemy and predicted a Life of Brian-style fate for his old friend. "Ideally I'd like to see Mick stoned to death for the crime of blasphemy. It would be tough to see him go, but I would be turning up to the stoning just for the sheer fun of it," he said. Mathews may be about to get into trouble himself - not over blasphemy but his new take on the Irish famine. His latest film, to be released in August, stars Fr Dougal, aka Ardal O'Hanlon, from Father Ted, and is set in a famine theme park in the Republic that includes a cafe for tourists. O'Hanlon, playing a drifter who gets a job in the theme park, has to dress up as a starving Irish peasant from the 1840s.
Atheist Ireland meanwhile said it would finalise plans for a blasphemous statement at its annual meeting, which is open to the public, in Wynns Hotel in Dublin next Saturday. Under the new law, anyone found guilty of blasphemy in the wider Defamation Act can be fined up to €25,000 (£21,400).

Henry McDonald.

UPDATE:Irish Grocery Prices Fell 2% Jan-May-Competition Authority

DUBLIN (Dow Jones)--Ireland's Competition Authority said Tuesday grocery prices fell over 2% between January and May due to more competition in the sector, and asked the government to help suppliers compete with U.K. counterparts.
It said suppliers offering better value have contributed to cheaper grocery prices in the U.K. province of Northern Ireland and said Irish clothing retailers find it difficult to find alternative suppliers or to renegotiate prices.

WSJ

Nuclear weapons: the only solution

Whether in the Korean peninsula, in unstable Pakistan, or in the volatile Middle East, the risk of military or terrorist nuclear attacks is escalating daily. Yet one of the most real chances to rid the world of nuclear weapons is happening and will be won or lost far from the headlines. Next week in Moscow, Presidents Medvedev and Obama could make history by agreeing to reduce their nuclear arsenals and set the world´s course towards a nuclear-free world. A group of highly influential figures (1) called Global Zero has presented a four-step plan to achieve that goal and, though it seems incredible, they are successfully persuading the nuclear powers that the world is more secure without nukes.What's needed now is a massive surge of people power urging the US and Russia to take these bold steps to achieve global zero. Click below to sign the petition and help deliver a deafening call to action. Global Zero leaders will hand it over to Presidents Obama and Medvedev:http://www.avaaz.org/en/time_to_global_zero

Irish Air France victim is found

The body of one of the Irish doctors killed in the Air France crash last month has been found.
The Irish Department for Foreign Affairs said that the remains of Dr Jane Deasy from Dublin had been identified.
The remains of her friends Eithne Walls from Ballygowan, County Down and Aisling Butler, from Roscrea, County Tipperary have not been located.
Air France Flight 447 was flying from from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
All 228 people on board the Airbus 330 were killed but just 51 bodies have been found.
The Brazilian military has ended its search for bodies.
An Irish official is liaising with the Brazilian authorities with regard to the repatriation of Dr Deasy's remains.
Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin said: "I reiterate my sincerest condolences to Dr. Deasy's family, and to all those who lost loved ones in this terrible tragedy."
The plane's black boxes have not been found and are expected to stop emitting signals on 2 July.