memo to presidents obama and sarkozi

I sure hope you guys know what you're doing. Anyone who bombs Libya and leaves the Gadaffi's alive, he know notheeng about Tuco.

archy pops a dookie

In a moment of oleaginously fake frankness, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin this week said the following sentence to an admiring coterie of drug using atheistic hedonist journalists: "I might not be the man to lead the Catholic Church through the changes it must face."
Hmmm.
The changes the Catholic Church must face?
Must face?
Really Archy?
You've decided in consultation with a few hoor master atheists that we all must change, have you?
How enlightened and selfless you are!
And you might not be the man to lead us, Archy?
Oh say it ain't so Archy, say it ain't so.
But have you forgotten?
You're not leading us through anything.
You are merely a regional Archbishop who gets improbably laudatory coverage from atheist hedonist druggie journalists within atheistic hedonist druggie newspaper groups.
The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland is Cardinal Sean Brady.
You need to remember that.
Give my regards to your brother the former Soviet agent Seamus Martin who famously spent the Cold War rooting for the Russians and their IRA/Red Brigades/Baader Meinhof/Eta/Sendoro Luminoso/November 17/Robert Mugabe/Sandinista/Chairman Mao/Vietcong/Pie Eye Steen Yun proxies from his position as political editor of The Irish Times.

great moments in sky news reportage

Saif: "Libya is burning. Burning like our love."
Lisa: "Oh Saif! Hold me."

a child is born

the drunk and the drug dealer
from the ashes of their lives
have brought forth this jewel
shining like the centuries
their own and others ruined by what they are
but their blood will know the future
curse them
curse them as they writhe
i am sick of their riddle
a buffoon and a criminal
between them can make a miracle
what idiot tortured destiny is this
how i envy it
envy beyond saying or sensation
for as the child's face lit up with sweetness
never was a smile so like redemption
proof positive there is majesty in the universe
and i must learn to live again

an open letter to tony o'reilly proprietor of independent newspapers

Dear Tony.
I have written to you once or twice before on matters of mutual interest.
You will be aware that the Irish Pharmaceutical Union is currently attempting to compel chemist shops in this country to dispense abortion pills.
As you are the richest man in Ireland, and the owner of ninety percent of Ireland's newspapers, I feel you can make a difference on this issue.
You came into the world, and had a chance to become Ireland's richest man and the owner of ninety percent of Ireland's newspapers, and the husband of HJ Heinz's rather pleasant good natured daughter Snurdelicia, and via that marriage the Managing Director of Heinz Beanz, and after your divorce from Snurdelicia the husband of Greek shipping heiress Christina Ghouliesandros, and via that marriage heir to her millions, you came into the world and had a chance at all this I say, simply and solely because your parents who had conceived you out of wedlock, lived in an Ireland where killing an unborn baby, either in or out of wedlock, was considered an unthinkable barbarism in any circumstances.
That's why you were permitted to exist Tony.
But there are many children in your situation who will be murdered if you now do nothing to help them.
Let people know where you stand.
Let em know Tony.
There are no neutrals in this war.

an open letter to boots pharmacy

So Boots Pharmacy, you think abortions in a pill will push your profits through the roof. I tell you, you and your profits shall be thrust down to hell.

what hath god wrought

the saddest moment in the libyan debacle

A couple of Muslim hardmen took some British soldiers hostage last week in Libya.
The Brits were special forces, SAS, the best of the best.
Their Prime Minister had told them to go into Libya and establish contact with the rebels with a view to helping them.
And now a rebel unit had taken the SAS men captive.
Yes.
Their Prime Minister had sent the SAS into Libya with orders to kill no one, ie with their hands tied behind their backs.
Otherwise there would have been a lot of dead Muslim hardmen lying around.
The Muslim hardmen in question were on the rebel side fighting against the Gadaffi family murderocracy.
But there have been no precise details as to who exactly they were.
I think we should be told.
I think the Libyan people should be told.
I think the Libyan people should be told because a lot of Libyan people have been massacred this past week precisely because these few anonymous Muslim hardmen took British Special Forces hostage, the same Special Forces who had come to help the Libyan people, and who quite rightly decided on being taken hostage that their help was not desired.
Because those Special Forces went home Colonel Gadaffi And Sons And Fighter Jets And Tank Battallions have been up against milling mobs rather than real soldiers.
He's turned tanks and jets loose on the citizenry.
No doubt the Muslim hardmen who shooed away the Brits, are skulking somewhere in a bunker safe and sound with their Iranian provided radios and Al Qaeda membership badges.
But the people are dying.
Just remember this.
The few ego tripping Muslim hardmen who took the Brits hostage on the hillside are as responsible for the ten thousand deaths as Colonel Gadaffi himself.
But who were they?
My analysis runs thusly.
Some of the rebels are Al Qaeda.
Quite a few of the rebels are sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Most of the rebels seem to be ordinary people who want a better life.
The idiot Muslim hardmen who took the British soldiers hostage may be made up of any or all of these.
To be clear.
It was either Al Qaeda, the Iranians, or a particularly gormless branch of the peasantry, who took the British soldiers hostage.
What a fine but brief ego trip these Muslim hardmen had.
Taking seven SAS men hostage.
No one ever quite managed to do that before.
The Brit Prime Minister got his men released with a few phone calls and brought them home.
Yes.
It's been a costly bit of ego tripping for the hardmen Muslims.
A few hours chanting "Allah U Akbar," at British warriors who could have cleaned their clocks in half a second, and then the next ten days watching Gadaffi wipe out the rebel army.
Allah u thick as a plank.
Their countrymen haven't stopped dying since.
As I've pointed out Gadaffi has simply unleashed his tanks and jet fighters on them.
No demonstrators, no matter how just their cause, can stand against a strike jet.
Of course Western countries remain understandably hesitant about intervening since so many Muslim hardmen are obviously so willing to turn our soldiers into targets and/or hostages.
The Russians are playing their usual game of warning against outside intervention as the mayhem unfolds, meaning they've given a green light to Gaddaffi to kill all around him.
The Arab League is busy declaring purely notional No-Fly zones over Libya and then looking expectantly at the Americans and Brits to enforce them.
The same Americans and Brits that this same Arab League so profoundly despises.
Meanwhile Gadaffi and his Murder Incorporated sons continue their massacres like there's no tomorrow.
The irony... is screaming.

in the dark and distant dawn of years

people of the book
you are mine to the harrow
your dying will make the desert bloom
where is your god now

these words
mark them well
sisera
as the stars fell

the real presence

Sitting in the Adoration chapel at Newbridge church.
It's a small plainly furnished room, seating maybe fifteen people.
The communion bread which Catholic teaching insists is really Jesus, rests in a gold monstrance on an elevated plinth before which the faithful kneel or sit.
I am sitting.
There is silence.
My mind drifts.
I am thinking of an idea I have for presenting the gospel story in a theatre production.
I am thinking about the scene where King Herod interrogates Jesus.
I am thinking I could play Herod myself.
He is demanding a miracle.
That's all he wants.
He's heard of Jesus.
He doesn't believe or not believe.
He just wants a bit of sensation.
He reckons he has the power of life or death over his prisoner.
All the power is in his hands.
He is jabbering questions.
Excitedly.
He has waited so long to actually meet this young Gallilean everyone is talking about.
And Jesus doesn't deign to speak to him.
Bear in mind, Jesus did answer questions when being interrogated by Caiphas and Annas the high priests.
Jesus answered questions when the Roman governor Pontious Pilate questioned him.
But he never spoke to Herod.
It was as though Herod who thought himself so important and powerful wasn't worthy of the merest attention.
Herod did not merit the slightest response.
Nothing.
Herod had killed John the Baptist whom he quite liked, merely to impress a girl, and now he wanted to see something spectacular from this other much more famous wonder worker.
And Jesus won't even talk to him.
I'm imagining myself as Herod saying: "Come on. Show us something. Anything We've all heard of you. You fed the multitude on the mountainside, didn't you? Is it true? How did you do that? Oh come on. Just one miracle. Just one wonder. Just one sign, and maybe we'll all worship you."
Yes, I could play this part.
Aprubtly I am propelled from my chair onto my knees.
I find I am sobbing.
I have an awareness that this is not a scene but reality, and that the man Herod sought thusly to humiliate is before me as truly present now as he was in Herod's palace hours before the crucifixion.

7 days of the condor i mean parrot

Day One: My feminist cousin Pauline seems awfully amused about something as I drop into her healthy eating store to acquire some provisions. Shortly she can contain herself no longer. "Cousin Celeste is planning to give you a parrot," she explains. "Her boyfriend bought it for their niece. But Rowena won't have a parrot in the house. Naturally they thought of you. Don't tell them I tipped you off."
Day Two: "Will you take a parrot off my hands?"
The voice was that of cousin Celeste.
She had approached me on Main Street Kilcullen amid the flighty bustle of Spring shoppers.
She seemed to be in some agitation.
"I'd be delighted," I tell her.
I remembered a bit late to try to act surprised by her request.
"What's going on," I said all Laurence Olivier. "Why are you giving me a parrot?"
Celeste was not convinced by my comic stylings.
"How did you know?" she demanded.
"Pauline told me," I blurted.
Celeste nodded biogeneticsciencely.
"You're doing me a big favour taking this thing," she said. "Now I've got to go talk to Pauline."
Day Three: Cousin Paulline's husband Paul phones me. He has the parrot in his car and is wondering would now be a good time to deliver him. I ask what the parrot looks like.
"He is full of rich irridescent hues," answers Paul.
I am a bit worried by this.
Rich irredescent hues could mean he's a South American Blue And Gold Macaw. These are the hardest parrots to care for.
For a start they're the biggest parrot and can live for a hundred years.
They have the loudest shriek in the animal world which they use extensively at first light of dawn and at the going down of dusk.
They also tend to have a lot of anger because their natural habitat is flying above the tree line of the Amazon forest shouting "Raukkkkk," and someone has taken them from there to live in a room in the greyest wettest country in Europe.
Paul arrives at the Chateau De Healy with the parrot.
We smuggle him in to the front room and remove the cover from his cage.
He's not that big.
A glorified budgie really.
He is grey.
Not an African grey.
Just grey.
I looked somewhat bemusedly at Paul.
I'm wondering what happened to multicoloured.
Back in Paul's native country Wales, no doubt they think grey is multicoloured. I could imagine Paul's countrymen regularly emerging from the coal mines and exclaiming: "Thank God for this day. Have you ever seen such rich beautiful irridescent shades of gray!"
I kept this to myself.
Day Five: I have my doubts that South American Blue And Gold Macaws are really the loudest parrots in creation. Our newcomer Parrot McGarret could raise the dead with his morning and evening shrieks.
Day Six: I am in my cousin Rowena's house.
My cousin Rowena's daughter Lisa was the original intended recipient for Parrot McGarret who nixed the idea on account of not wanting a parrot. Lucky for me. That parrot has now become an indispensable part of my life. In fact he has quite literally become part of the furniture at the chateau. I mean he eats the furniture. He loves a bit of armchair topped off with a dollop of curtain. He doesn't just restrict himself to furniture either. He is a parrot of verve and originality. It is clearly one of his greatest joys to settle down at night with a good book, that is to say any book I happen to leave unattended within reach of him which he will promptly masticate like it was cordon bleu parrot food.
But I digress.
My American cousin Brianne is teaching Rowena's daughter Lisa to dance.
Brianne is doing moves taken from the pop music videos of a performer known as Shakira.
Rowena spots what's happening and cries out: "No Shakira in this house."
When the dust clears I ask hopefully: "Does that mean you're going to move Shakira in to live with me!"
Day Seven: ... (That's enough days. - Ed note)