Climate and environmental changes are having noticeable effects on Ireland's rivers, lakes and fish stocks, according to the Central Fisheries Board. CFB Chief Executive Dr Ciaran Byrne also said that rivers were bound to be affected by building work close to them.
Scientific and research staff at the CFB have been dealing with increasing reports of unusual fish species turning up on the Irish coast, possibly due to warming of the oceans. It is also now investigating changes in the movements of fish in the rivers.
RTÉ News
The Erris Inshore Fisherman's Association are objecting to plans by Shell Ireland to locate a pipe that will discharge treated water into their fishing grounds in Broadhaven Bay. They claim it would harm shellfish and other marine life in the bay.
RTÉ News
Predictable sort of story, not unlike the recent news about the Irish hare, yet the sense of it never seems to sink in. Human beings don't exist in a world designed specificially around them or for the purposes of their rampant exploitation. Such actions have such consequences because each aspect of our existence is interlinked with our surroundings. Our survival therefore is tied up inextricably with the survival of everything within our ecosystem. If we ruin our environment and destroy all other species in it to make ourselves a fat pile of money, it won't be worth much.
Over the past week over 50 Post Boxes across the North have been painted back to their rightful shade of Green.
“Activists have been engaged in the greening of post boxes across the north in the previous week, to assert proudly and very visibly that we live in Ireland, and our post boxes should be green.”
Ógra Shinn Féin blog
When the Irish free state took over administration of the twenty six counties (and so too the running of the postal service) they went around painting Royal Mail post boxes green, neglecting to remove the symbolism of the british crown moulded into the box itself. The greening of the post-boxes became synonymous with dressing up the paraphenalia and substance of the british establishment in the aspirations/facade of Irish republicanism, mirroring much of what the free state itself achieved.
For most of Irish society the british core has never been removed and reshaped into something more fundamentally Irish - despite its green dress up (care to object? observe just whose language we are communicating in). As Sinn Féin absorbs into the political life of the british state, now dancing to it's tune spiritually and ideologically, history is repeating itself - in sometimes comically literal ways.
by Conchobhair Ó Scannlain
In an era that pursues the temporal and worships the whims of the individual, that which is eternal is reviled, and the obligation of tribal identity and ancestral responsibility is feared.
Modern society has devalued heritage and done what it can to demonise nationalism, particularly through playing to insecurities and manipulating the crowd's fears of mass-extermination. Functional and spiritually satisfying art fades, as traditional values are mocked and labelled 'defeated' in the blind parcosm of the modern. Tribal and national unity degenerates, as national identity is portrayed as ridiculous and ignorant. Nations and resources fail, but the failures trumpet their victory over evil even as they grow sickly and bloated and as the soil turns to barren dust beneath their feet. The author's only suggestion would be to halt this process as immediately and thoroughly as possible through a fervid embrace of traditional custom.
For the Gaels of Ireland, this means regaelicisation.
Read Genetic Memory here.
The number of cases of racial discrimination in the workplace referred to the Equality Tribunal reached 307 last year, an increase of over 100% on the previous year.
The tribunal's annual report published today also shows a 65% increase in the number of cases of discrimination against those with a disability in accessing services compared to 2006.
RTÉ News
"Oh shit, pluralism doesn't work! We didnt see that coming back when we had enough money to please everybody!". Long-term foresight of the multicultural project showing itself to be lacking.
David McWilliams, one of the few honest and insightful Irish economy journalists, predicting precisely this months before the illusion around the economic boom shattered:
via
PCSCZ
The Irish arm of social networking site Bebo, has been accused of racism and 'glorifying terrorism.' Calls for a controversial quiz to be removed from the site came this week when Northern Ireland's Culture Minister described its content as "offensive."
The application featured a series of 15 questions to which three potential multiple choice answers were attached.
While many questions were simple in their connotations asking, 'Who was Brian Boru?', 'How many counties are there in Ireland?' or 'What is the Irish language?' many more were deemed highly unsuitable.
One such question asked, 'Why is the Queen important to Ireland?' with one of the three answer options being, 'She is not important and should be shot'. Another such question queried who was Earl Mountbatten with one potential answer being, 'an easy target.'
Those who reached a top score in the quiz were rewarded with the tag of "A True Son of Eire" which was accompanied by a picture depicting what many believed to look like a republican terrorist.
Bebo has since removed the 'How Irish Are You?' questionnaire which had been taken by over 50,000 users since it was originally posted on the networking site.
Herald.ie
Insensitive jokes are great.
The Ulster Wildlife Trust has warned that the Irish hare could face extinction unless action is taken to check the spread of an invader from Europe.
The trust said new research showed that thousands of European hares - known locally as the brown hare - were now present in mid-Ulster and west Tyrone.
Dr Neil Reid of Queen's University Belfast, who carried out the study, said that when the European species had been introduced into other countries - such as Sweden - it generally out-competed and interbred with native hares causing their extinction.
"Our concern is that if the current situation is left unchecked, in 25 years' time we could be talking about the European and Irish hares, rather than grey and red squirrels," he said.
Irish Times
Threatened with extinction by an invasive, overbreeding foreign species? Hmm... the situation of our hares and our people/culture are all too obviously similar in their plight. Discussing that though would violate taboos on what is considered polite discussion in public. Reality should win out over our quest to maintain social appearances, but it doesnt.
See also at Hibernia Girl.
Europe should consider sharing vast amounts of intelligence and information on its citizens with the US to establish a "Euro-Atlantic area of cooperation" to combat terrorism, according to a high-level confidential report on future security.
The 27 members of the EU should also pool intelligence on terrorism, develop joint video-surveillance and unmanned drone aircraft, start networks of anti-terrorism centres, and boost the role and powers of an intelligence-coordinating body in Brussels, said senior officials.
The Guardian
The only way this bureaucratically bloated civil-servants wet dream can operate at all is to control and monitor obsessively every minute action and thought of the people it has jurisdiction over. Totalitarian paranoia of this sort is a symptom of a state that has failed; that does not have consesus with society over its direction and that does not reflect the realities of life in it.
If we rule ourselves and by our own cultural values we dont need any of the brave new world/1984 disutopian system. Support nationalism.
The security services are picking up more suspicious activity from Northern Ireland's dissident republicans than from any other radical group in the UK, the Guardian has learned.
Up to 60% of all the security services' electronic intercepts - phonetaps and other covert technical operations - have come from dissidents, despite the threat posed by hundreds of suspected Islamist extremists on the mainland.
MI5 is directing its attention to a hardcore of republicans, fearing they are determined to destabilise the peace process.
Sir Hugh Orde, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, has separately confirmed that the dissident threat is the highest since he took office.
The Guardian
The UK's war on terror hype has always claimed foremost to be out to get Al Qaeda (who, tangentially, I would guess had little to no presence in the UK prior to the start of their crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan). Seems though, unsurprisingly, that the primary target is and has probably always been Irish republicans who oppose the "official" republican line of Sinn Féin.
Like the new design? Still working out a few issues, but overall it's a much nicer, cleaner and more professional appearance. All credit to Corrupt's design team.
The new design incorporates our news blog into the framework of this site. Our page at nihilisten.com therefore is now defunct. Update your favourites/links.
Whatever happened to Iris Robinson? Within a few years she has been transformed from her husband Peter’s greatest asset and a formidable political force in her own right into his Achilles heel and an unguided missile who has party handlers pulling their hair out in despair.
“She has been digging this hole for about a month,” a senior British Conservative source said shortly after his party announced plans to merge with the Ulster Unionists.
On the face of it, the DUP, who have nine MPs to the UUP’s one, would seem a more tempting partner, but the image projected by MPs such as Robinson is just not British enough. Her grandstanding to the religious right is seen as alien and contrary to Britain’s image as a modern, multicultural and largely secular state.
the Times
Could it be that she is less british and more...Irish? Robinson has been drawing attention in the UK media lately for her outspoken opposition to abortion, hybrid human/animal embryos and homosexuality. She has also criticised the loss of core traditional values in society. As wacky as she can come across some times she is not altogether completely insane, or at all abhorrent.
The north has been in a world of its own politically for the last 50 years. What unionists have long equated with being "british" is a million miles away from what the political currents within britain itself stand for. The process of political normalisation in the north is bringing it back down to planet earth, and what unionists are seeing is that the britain they have defended and identified with is in fact fundamentally at odds with their own beliefs and values. And in spite of their long-held suspicion of catholics (the very reason for their clutching so strongly to the bosom of britain) they actually find their values reflected much better and more broadly in Ireland than in britain.
