kilcullen easter

the lambing time

evanescent leaves

provincial poets stitching worn out rhymes

into patchwork quilted semaphores of praise

all of these

mist like matting on muddy fields

old men rejoicing in campaniles

all of these

everything that breathes is on its knees

for the coming of the lord

peace

elegia pro nostra aetate

(celebrating 1916 with the Heelers Diaries)

The days of childhood.
A fourteen year old me and my little brother are receiving extra home schooling in Irish from a teacher called Gearoid O'Brolcain.
He is a youthful cultured Gaelic scholar, hugely influenced by 1960's hippy culture, with a great kindness for young people.
My parents are desperate that I should somehow learn Irish because in those days the language could open up career opportunities in Ireland.
Mr O'Brolcain is doing his best.
He proffers a text book.
I look at the name of the author.
Sean MacMathuna.
"I think it's disgraceful," sez I repeating a one liner I'd heard somewhere, "that we have to study books written by these ruddy IRA Republicans."
(Interestingly, in Ireland unlike in America, the word Republican tends to designate supporters of the IRA terrorist mafia.)
Mr O'Brolcain trembles.
Presently it becomes clear he's trembling a bit more than teachers normally tremble in my presence.
I've scored a direct hit for some reason.
"My father," he says after mastering himself with some effort, "was a ruddy Republican. My father died for Ireland."
It was a Kodak moment.
My little brother across the table watched wide eyed,
"I'm sorry," I said. "Obviously I didn't know your father. I didn't mean to disrespect him. I'm sorry."
And then because I could never quit while I was ahead, I had to ask.
"How did he die?"
A dreamy look came over Mr O'Brolcain's face.
"He was out on manoeuvres with the Volunteers," he murmured. "His health broke. And he died."
Well.
It's not what one expects
I'd briefly had pictures of a stark heroic figure throwing himself in front of a machine gun nest about to open fire on Padraic Pearse, with a cry of :"Hasta la vista, Brits."
Afterwards the little brother who would one day become Doctor Barn told me I'd been doing very well up to that moment.
I'd made my trademark blunder.
I'd somewhat endeavoured to undo the damage.
But the notion that catching the Flu could amount to dying for Ireland now proved a little too much for me.
With the best will in the world I could not control my facial features whose contortions and redness accompanied by barely suppressed splutters of guilty mirth (all the more irrepressible because I was so appalled by my own behaviour) quickly became near cosmically more disrespectful than my previous throwaway verbal disparagements.
Extra Irish tuition ceased for me not long after.
In our short time together Mr O'Brolcain did give me two things.
He gave me a lifelong ability and ease in the Irish language.
And he gave me one of those mortifying moments of childhood which have come to characterise the whole of my adult life.

the greatness of america

The Americans have delayed an IRA gunrunner, who styles himself Martin Ferris, for a few hours at an airport.
The deliberate inconveniencing of a mafioso comes just a day after security men deliberately inconvenienced IRA capo Gerry Adams when he tried to gatecrash a Saint Patrick's Day ceremony at the White House.
I think rather well of the Americans in these matters.
Ferris is an elected parliamentarian in Ireland for the IRA's proxy political front Sinn Fein.
In the 1980's he liaised with Whitey Bolger's Boston based IRA skang gang to import guns to Ireland.
One likes to picture him Ferris the airport in a showboating tantrum trying to intimidate the Americans.
I can almost hear him getting progressively more apoplectic with each sentence.
"I am a respected gun runner. I deal my drugs to the best people. My militias have taken over towns and villages across Ireland. We're the go to people for trafficking Al Qaeda Muslims into the West. I know Whitey Bolger. You Americans are making a big mistake. We own you. Nobody, but nobody, -----s with the Rah."

where the lilies bloom

(celebrating the 1916 Rising with the Heeles Diaries)

"Lisa played Countess Markiewicz in her school's 1916 pageant," said the neighbour.
"How did she interpret the scene where Connie anxious to get the killing underway, murdered the unarmed policeman Constable Lahiffe at the gates of Stephens Green," sez I.
"That wasn't in it," said she.
"Ah," sez I.
By which I meant ooooh aahhhhhh.

today they said

Gerry Adams: "I had an official invitation to the White House."

James Healy: "Oh you mean the one sent to you by your official IRA infiltrator in the State Department or your official IRA front organisation the self styled Irish National Caucus? File your complaint with Whitey Bulger, Skang."

dillettante revolutionaries

(celebrating hundred years of the 1916 Rising with the Heelers Diaries)

Here's to you Pearse

Your dream not mine

And yet the thought for which you died

Has turned life's water into wine

The words are those of the poet George Russell.

He never took any active part in any active revolution.

But he admired the gunmen of 1916 because,,, they made life interesting.

I always found his position opprobrious.

But I like the poem.

the story of my quarrel with ann coulter sean hannity laura ingraham and mark steyn

These are the contemporary commentators I have most admired.
Ann Coulter for her robust and splendid loose cannon style espousal of high principles.
Sean Hannity for his brusque decency.
Laura Ingraham for her unmatched intellectual, spiritual and moral insight.
Mark Steyn as the master of modern prose in English language journalistic advocacy, a man whose orginality of thought (when he's not plagiarising me) is matched only by his courage.
Oddly enough I rate Hannity slightly higher than the others (though the others have greater pretentions to cerebrality) because in a particular instance he went bald headed trying to prevent a murder that was unfolding in plain sight before the eyes of the world.
A woman called Terry Schiavo had been left in a coma by an unknown assailant (not that unknown, high probability it was her husband). The husband was seeking a court order to prevent her family from feeding or caring for her. The family loved her and wanted nothing more than to care for her. The family had high hopes she might fully recover with such care. And people often do recover in such circumstances. But in any event, they just wanted to love her unconditionally as long as God allowed her to live. The husband's lies in claiming she was unresponsive to external stimuli were proven to be lies by footage of her smiling and reacting to her family. Whether she was responsive or not there was no excuse for a judge to let her husband murder her through the enforced withdrawal of care and feeding. But a Judge granted the order forbidding any care or feeding for Terry Schiavo.
Her estranged husband as I hinted above, is believed by the family and by some investigators to have feared that Terry Schiavo might otherwise have lived long enough to recover the power of speech and tell investigators whether or not it was her husband who had beaten her into a coma in the first place.
Remember.
Her family at the time, loved her and were willing to look after her.
Her husband (a husband in name only) secured what amounted to a judicial execution order from the courts and Terry Schiavo was starved to death in a Florida hospital with doctors and police officers looking on to make sure none of her family attempted to feed her.
I say it again.
Terry Schiavo was murdered before the eyes of the world by her husband, by a Florida Judge, and by the hospital staff and police officers who betrayed their oaths to defend life, in order to let her die.
Monstrous isn't it.
But Hannity was the one who cut through all the obscurantist pseudo justificatons at the time, threw probity to the wind, and live on air urged Governor Jeb Bush or then President George Bush, to simply charge downtown to the hospital and issue an executive order that Terry Schiavo be fed and handed over to her family that loved her.
It didn't happen.
But it might have.
And Hannity made the play like no one else did.
So. in spite of his lack of certain stylistic flourishes, I'll always rate him higher than the rest.
Now to the present.
All four of these commentators whom I most admire are at this moment effectively endorsing the candidacy of Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee in the forthcoming American presidential elections.
Many of you will be aware that Donald Trump is claiming that President George Bush lied to bring about the Iraq War.
You will also know that I consider Mr Trump's claims about Mr Bush to be utterly false and malicious and a measure of the vacuous shamelessness of Mr Trump himself rather than a comment with any salient applicability to President Bush.
I would point out that Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Mark Steyn for the past ten years have argued loud and long to justify President Bush's direct actions against Saddam Hussein's murderocracy in Iraq.
Some of you will know that I have advocated similarly, to wit that it doesn't matter whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or not, that in any case the evidence more than bears out the fact that he did in fact have them, and that his removal from office and the removal of his sons Uday and Qusay amounts in itself to a complete justification for the intervention
By an odd twist for once I agree with the late great ultra leftist commentator Christopher Hitchens in regard to Saddam's Iraq. Mr Hitchens wrote that there were four justifications for intervention by the international community against a rogue dictatorship and that Saddam had fulfilled all four: (1) Adventurist wars against his neighbours; (2) Possession of chemical weapons and failure to account for their whereabouts as required by treaty, along with development of a clandestine nuclear weapons programme; (3) Exterminations of large segments of his own populace including the actual use of chemical weapons against the Marsh Arabs and against the Kurds. (4) Proven direct sponsorship of international terrorist actions and organisations including, in my own analysis, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and their various franchises.
It is also worth pointing out that in the immediate aftermath of  the liberation of Iraq as the official record states, the Libyan regime of Muammar Qadaffi contacted the United Nations through diplomatic channels, announced that it had been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme (ie one that no one knew about) and requested assistance in ending that programme.
So if President Bush had not taken action against Saddam's murderocracy in Iraq, we might now be facing not just Saddam Hussein with nukes, but Muammar Qadaffi with nukes as well.
That would have been a yewwwwj problem as Donald Trump might say.
Hilarious no.
I see no honorable possibility of accomodating Donald Trump's mischievous opportunism in any proper assessment of this matter.
I do not understand how Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Mark Steyn, can acquiesce to Trump's grotesque mendacious misrepresentation of reality unless they themselves admit to being utterly wrong in their analysis of the Iraq war and to having themselves deliberately lied in order to bring the war about.
This is a zero sum game.
The potential betrayals are legion.
If Mr Trump's allegation about President Bush is crassly wrong as I inist it is, then it is a contemptuous mockery of the very America Mr Trump wishes to manipulate into voting for him. It is a contemptuous mockery of our greatest war time President, George W Bush. It is a contemptuous mockery of all those heroes who have died for us in Iraq, Afghanistan and in every war zone of what is now a world wide Jihad against humanity.
And of course it is a contemptuous mockery of all of us who have in any way stood against the Jihadis of Arabia in this age of satanic islamic expansionism.
Listen Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Mark Steyn.
You don't abandon principle just because we're in a new election cycle and you like the cut of some pirate's jib.
If you acquiesce to Trump's lie, you are a part of it.
Do what you will.

happy saint patrick's day

The Crunch Question

Question: Why did Gerry Adams attempt to gatecrash the White House tonight for the traditional Saint Patrick's Day eve presentation of shamrock to American President Barack Obama and why wasn't he let in?

Answer: Gerry Adams attempted to gatecrash the traditional celebration of the presentation of shamrock to the American President on the eve of Saint Patrick's day, because Gerry Adams' political party Sinn Fein, a front for the international IRA terrorist mafia, has just won 22 seats in the Irish parliament and Gerry Adams sees himself as now being on the cusp of power in our country and is desperate to make himself acceptable to the broad constituency of decent people who would normally reject a terrorist mafioso murderer for their prime minister out of hand. Gerry Adams has a reasonable expectation that in a few years time, image problems with the murders he's commited and his ongoing leadership of the IRA terrorist mafia notwithstanding, he might actually attain the venerable and high office of Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland. Getting photographed with the American President this evening would have helped to create the illusion that Gerry Adams is a respected political figure. So that's what was in it for Gerry Adams. Hence the attempted gatecrashing. The reason President Barack Obama didn't allow Gerry Adams' gatecrashing to succeed at the White House is because President Obama is now in the final year of his Presidency and is concerned about his legacy. President Obama had no intention of allowing himself to be photographed with the leader of the IRA's parliamentary front organisation Sinn Fein, given that the IRA terrorist mafia has direct links to Al Qaeda, the Farc, the Zetas, MS13, Cosa Nostra, the Chinese Triads, the Russian Mafia, the devil worshipping Nigerian Mafias et al. (Particularly Al. I hate him.) Knowing that the IRA has links to every major criminal combine on the planet, and knowing that Gerry Adams is himself a murdering terrorist mafioso, President Obama made a measured and deliberate and discerning and wise decision not to be photographed with Gerry Adams. President Obama was also aware that Gerry Adams' IRA terrorist mafia was behind the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank, a bank owned by the IRA and which the IRA looted through illegal billion dollar loans to its fake businessmen proxies, a bank whose collapse put Ireland in the third world overnight. President Obama was further aware that the IRA had financed its front organisation Sinn Fein through the Northern Bank robbery in 1995, and through ongoing bank robberies, people trafficking, drug dealing, extortion and murder, since the 1990s. So tonight when Gerry Adams arrived at the White House to try and gatecrash the presentation of shamrock, President Obama had his security team detain him at the door for more than an hour as they "checked" his ID. Eventually Gerry Adams left the White House in high dudgeon. I find the whole thing simply hilarious. My life on you Barack. By the way Gerry Adams' underlings in Belfast murdered Robert McCartney in a pub for far less of an imagined indignity than happened to Gerry Adams at the White House this evening. Perhaps I've misjudged President Obama. And Happy Saint Patrick's Day everyone. Except you Adams. I want you out of my country. And take your skang gangs and your jihadis with you. You snakes aren't Irish.

trousers unfree shall never be at peace

(celebrating the Easter Rising with the Heelers Diaries)

Wandered into Vivian Clarke's Menswear Shop in the South Kildare skang hamlet of Newbridge.
"Clarke," sez I, "if you give me a trousers today, I'll gladly pay you Monday."
"Alright," sez he warily.
"And give me a loan of twenty quid as well and I'll give you that back when I'm paying for the trousers."
"Okay," sez he still wary.
I go a rummaging in the trews.
"No, no, not those," he cries in some alarm, "they won't fit you."
"What size do you think I am?"
"You're bigger than those anyway."
"I'm a thirty one, I want to be a thirty one," I say all Seinfeld.
He produces a measuring tape and girds the Heelers bell.
"So what size am I?"
"You don't want to know."
"I do want to know. That's why I'm asking you."
"You're a thirty eight."
"Thirty eight inch leg?"
"Thirty eight inch waist."
"Noooooooo."
As per our usual arrangement, the no was like the aiiiiieeeeaaaaaaaaaiiiiiaaa soundtrack from The Good The Bad And The Ugly.
Nothing daunted I again reach for the same trousers on the rack.
He tries to interpose himself between me and ye trews.
My efforts to get a svelte pair are causing him such distress that I desist.
He hands me a pair of clown trousers.
"These will fit you," he says.
I nod and, as his attention wanders, grab a couple of 34's off the shelf.
"Split the difference," I explain heading to the changing room. "Thirty eight indeed. Are you sure you know how to use that measuring tape?"
I emerge in one of the 34's, grab a 20 spot, and head for the door.
"See you Monday," he calls after me.
"You will," sez I.
But I didn't say which Monday.

an open letter to the irish broadcasters rte and tg4 regarding the latest murder in northern ireland

When you people uncritically glamourise hundred year old murders in your 1916 themed fare, you cause new murders today.
I would ask you to consider your position.

the little drummer boy

My doubts that the Irish courts system would be capable of trying IRA corporate embezzler David Drumm for his part in the IRA's systemic burglarisation of its own bank  Anglo Irish Bank (where Drumm was Chief Executive) via billion dollar loans to IRA proxies posing as businessmen, have been borne out almost immediately after Drumm's return to Ireland.
The entire nation of Ireland's was placed in the third world as various corrupt governments looted the treasury to cover up Drumm's burglarisation of Anglo Irish Bank.
Drumm had been held in custody for three months in the United States while he attempted to delay extradition proceedings to Ireland,
Because the American Judge held him in custody, Drumm abandoned his showboating attempts to delay justice and returned to Ireland.
He didn't like being in prison.
So he came back.
And an Irish Judge immediately released him on bail.
Two days after his return to Ireland, Judge Michael Walsh set David Drumm free.
Judge Michael Walsh released David Drumm on bail in spite of a direct appeal from the investigating police officer that he not be released on bail.
Judge Michael Walsh released David Drumm on bail in spite of a further direct appeal from a representative of the Department of Public Prosecutions that he not be released on bail.
As a citizen I contend that the fact that Judge Michael Walsh released David Drumm on bail in these circumstances raises serious concerns about the motivations and jurisprudence of Judge Michael Walsh.
In other news Judge George Bermingham has overturned the convictions of two of David Drumm's management accomplices in the burglarisation of Anglo Irish Bank.
As a citizen I contend that Judge George Bermingham's quashing of the guilty verdicts of Drumm's IRA accomplices in the bankrupting of the Republic of Ireland, raises serious questions about the bona fides of Judge George Bermingham.
Everything is coming up Rah.
We should fire them and elect our Judiciary from now on.

old and wise

(celebrating 1916 with the Heelers Diaries)

An elderly priest hobbling across the quad at Newbridge College.
A 15 year old version of me watching his progress.
A bustling ball of robes breezes up behind me.
"Shouldn't yew be in yer class Jaaames?" he intones in rich Dublinese. "Whorr are yew doin hangin round here?"
It was Father Eddie Conway a well liked priest of youthful mien and character.
"I was wondering who that is?" I said pointing to the elderly priest. "He doesn't teach here, does he?"
Eddie shook his head.
"No, he's in retoyerament," quoth he. "But you know sumtin. That ould guy was in the GPO when Padraig Pearse and the lads walked in on Easter Monday 1916 and read the Proclamation."
"No way."
"Yes way."
"We've got to ask him about it."
"We've all taught o dat. We all want to know worr he saw. But he won't even talk abour ih. He tinks it's beher to lerr it rest. He won't talk. Not to us. And sairtinly not to you Joymes. Now gerr along to class."

the bhoys of the ould brigade

(celebrating the spirit of 1916 with the Heelers Diaries)

The neighbour's kid was in.
"Everyone at school has relatives who were involved in the 1916 Rising," says she.
"I doubt it," sez me.
"What do you mean?" says she.
"Listen kid," sez me, "if everyone who says they had relatives fighting in 1916, really did have relatives who were fighting in 1916, Padraig Pearse would have had a standing army of three million, not 300."

the immortals

in berneys pub at closing time

lord byron swigs his pint

and tries again

to chat up claire o'brien

but getting nowhere shakes his head

and makes a move on mary shelley instead

doubt me if you must bold traveller

but know you this

tonight the splendid moon

and balmy wind

with their touch

and with their kiss

in truth and to my mind

have rendered cold kildare

florentine

state of the nation

(the Rah Men cometh)

Ireland today...

1. IRA mafia beancounter David Drumm has returned to Ireland to face trial for the manner in which he helped the IRA to loot the IRA owned Anglo Irish Bank where he was Chief Executive, through billion dollar loans to IRA fronts posing as businessmen. Irish courts are unlikely to be able to try or convict or sentence him to anything meaningful for the crime he committed, ie putting Ireland in the third world overnight in order to facilitate the IRA's burglarisation of its own bank. After collapsing the Irish economy single handedly Drumm fled with his progeny and moll to America using IRA rat lines and mob connections to secure entry visas and work in Boston. The only real sentence Drumm will serve is the few months during which a genuinely insightful and courageous American Judge remanded him in custody while Drumm was frivolously challenging extradition proceedings to Ireland. The Americans' insistence on holding Drumm in jail pending extradition led to Drumm abandoning his showboating attempts to delay the process further. So the little Drummer boy has come home. Oh joy.

2. Judge Adrian Hardiman has died. His most famous clients were the IRA mafia parliamentary proxies Sinn Fein who memorably applauded him during one famous court appearance. Hardiman's associations with the IRA did not prevent him being appointed to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Ireland. His marriage to now retired air hostess Yvonne Murphy was no impediment to Yvonne Murphy being appointed to the Circuit Court from which she is also now retired.

3. A group of mobsters have announced that their skang gang (my words not theirs) will henceforth be called The New IRA (their words not mine), The main mafia groupings in Ireland are all IRA skang gangs. The Kinahan mob is styled the Real IRA. The Hutch mob style themselves the Continuity IRA. Collectively we might call all of them Scum Sucking IRA but that would be to libel single celled protozoan creatures which you find at the bottom of ponds.

4. Ireland's police force has announced an offensive against the Kinahan mob this week trumpeting the seizure of fifteen souped up luxury automobiles. Yes. The Irish cops are gloating about the arrest of motor cars. Seriously though. they're doing a marvellous job.

5. Ireland is preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, a rebellion which laid waste the city of Dublin without the consent of the people of Dublin of course, and which led directly in 1919, 1920 and 1921 to the all out blood letting of the War of Independence this time laying waste much of the land of Ireland, again without the consent of the people of Ireland, and resulting in the partition of our country for the first time in recorded history, which in turn led to the even greater blood letting of the Civil War from 1921 to 1923, as per usual waged with no one's consent at all, which in turn led to the present day enslavement of Ireland by IRA mafia skang gangs (the principle of consent is meaningless to them) dealing in drugs, prostitution, people trafficking, child abuse (no less than 31 known IRA members are currently facing police investigation in child abuse cases according to the Irish Independent newspaper while ample evidence is emerging of IRA links to the abduction, rape, torture and murder of children and adults in Ireland over the past forty years, cf satanist Lorcan Bale's crucifixion of a child in Dublin in 1973, the disappearance of Philip Kearins in 1986, the disappearance of Annie McCarrick in 1993 (which former investigating officer Alan Bailey has asserted may have been perpetrated by an IRA hitman though I have suggested that that particular case is more likely to have involved serial killer Larry Murphy and his family coven), the Roscommon House of Horrors case in 2004, etc, all of which has led to what is before our eyes, the collapse of Irish civilisation into a culture of terror, viciousness and conformist self worshipping abortionist euthanasist servitude. Ireland's state controlled leftist television station RTE and its adjunct the Irish language TG4 continue to uncritically glorify the violence of the 1916 Rising. Their twee romanticising of mayhem and bloodshed is surely contributing to the current reinvention of IRA mobsters as freedom fighters. Your children will pay for this in blood, and drug addiction, and homelessness, and depravity. The lights are going out all over Ireland. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.