Conversation With My Insurance Company’s Automated Machine

irishonlineradio Nominated in Seven Categories for Blog Awards Ireland 2013.

irishonlineradio

This Blog http://irishonlineradio.wordpress.com/ has been nominated in seven categories for the Blog Awards Ireland 2013.  The Blog is on the longlist in the following categories:  News/Current Affairs Blog, Blog of a Journalist, Political Blog, Podcast Blog, Newcomer Blog, Best Designed Blog and Mobile Compatible Blog categories.  Many thanks to everyone who nominated the site.  The shortlist in all categories will be announced on the 8th of September on http://www.blogawardsireland.com/.  The category Best Blog post will be put up on the http://www.blogawardsireland.com/ website in the next week or so, if one of my Blog posts makes that shortlist I’d appreciate it if you could vote for the post as it is a public vote.  Kind Regards, John.

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The Guts by Roddy Doyle

Jimmy Rabbitte is back.The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids … and bowel cancer. He isnt dying, he thinks, but he might be.Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments Outspan, whose own illness is probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as gorgeous as ever. He is reunited with his long-lost brother and learns to play the trumpetThis warm, funny novel is about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life. It climaxes in one of the great passages in Roddy Doyles fiction: four middle-aged men at Irelands hottest rock festival watching Jimmys son Marvins band Moanin at Midnight pretending to be Bulgarian and playing a song called Im Going to Hell that apparently hasnt been heard since 1932.

Ghostboat starring David Jason

Ghostboat is a 2006 British television film based on a novel by George E. Simpson and Neal R. Burger starring David Jason — a fantasy tale of His Majesty’s Submarine Scorpion reappearing 38 years after it vanished. The crew has disappeared, but the vessel is otherwise unchanged and has not aged in the intervening years. In the Cold War year 1981, a Royal Navy crew along with the sole survivor of the original voyage is given the mission of retracing the last days of the boat prior to its 1943 disappearance. A supernatural influence takes hold of vessel and most of the crew, and they find themselves fighting World War II enemies

Ulrike Meinhof

Ulrike Meinhof was born on October 7th 1934 to Ingeborg and Werner Meinhof in Oldenburg, Northern Germany. Her family on her father’s side was known for producing Protestant theologians. However, Dr. Werner Meinhof himself became a curator of the Jena Municipal Museum. Ingeborg’s side of the family had its roots in Hesse. Ulrike’s maternal grandfather was a cobbler’s son working as a teacher and school inspector before the Nazis prohibited him from doing so in 1933 on the grounds of his Socialist convictions.
The Meinhofs’ were a typical German bourgeois family. The parents with their two daughters, Ulrike and the four-year older Weinke, lived in an ivy-covered house in a middle-class residential area in Jena.

 

Childhood influences

As the influence of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) and Hitler expanded in Germany, the family turned away from this domination and changed their affiliation from the Protestant Church, which had fallen in line with the ideologies of the time, to a small parish called the “Hessian Dissent.” It had its origins under Bismarck after the founding of the German Reich, objected to all state control over the church, and was a gathering point for church opposition to the Nazi regime.
Ulrike’s and Weinke’s childhood was overshadowed by the sudden death of their father in 1940. After the death of her husband, Ingeborg received a grant that allowed her to continue her studies in art history that she had discontinued because of her marriage.
Soon, Renate Riemeck – a nineteen year-old, clever, and dynamic history, German and art history student – moved in with the family. Hence, the girls had two mothers.
Both women opposed the Nazis, had loose contact with a resistance group in the Zeiss optical works in Jena, and listened to BBC news during the war, albeit it was strictly prohibited. Meanwhile, they passed their first state examinations.
After the war ended in 1945, Jena was occupied by the Americans who later withdrew in accordance with the Yalta agreement to then leave the area subjected to Soviet rule. As a result, the family immigrated west to Oldenburg where Ingeborg Meinhof and Renate Riemeck took their second state examinations and qualified as teachers. Both had also joined the SPD (Social Democratic Party) in 1945.
The city was overflowing with immigrants from the East and the only school that was willing to take Ulrike was the Roman Catholic School of Our Lady. The legacy of this school to Ulrike was a deep fascination with the Catholic belief during her childhood and youth.

 

A young woman searching for an identity

The same year Ingeborg Meinhof died of an infection that she had contracted after a cancer operation leaving Ulrike behind as an orphan at the age of 15. Renate Riemeck stayed with the two girls and seemed to have had an enormous influence on Ulrike who copied the only fourteen-year older foster mother. For example, Renate Riemeck wore trousers and had her hair cut short and so did Ulrike. Renate Riemeck published academic books and acquired the status of a professor at the Wilburg Institute of Education. At that time, Ulrike attended the Philippinium in Weiburg, a grammar school with the highest academic standards. She was known as a popular, very intelligent, and charismatic student. Her charm impressed teachers and classmates alike. In her free time, she read many books from classics to modern literature which deeply shaped her opinion and worldview.
On the one hand, Ulrike was a role model middle-class young woman and on the other hand, she cultivated rather atypical interests such as smoking the pipe as well as self-rolled cigarettes and danced boogie-woogie all night long. In contrast to what was expected of a well-behaved girl, she was not afraid to voice her opinion in school on issues concerning unjust treatments of students. She contradicted teachers publicly and passionately, which almost caused her to become expelled from school.
Expressing and living out her political interests was an essential part of her life. Ulrike was not only part of the student government and a member of the Europe movement but she also showed an interest in journalism and worked as a co-editor for her school’s magazine.

 

Political activism against nuclear armament

At the age of 20, following her graduation from grammar school after the successful completion of the Abitur examinations, Ulrike attended the University of Marburg on a grant from the Study Foundation of the German People (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). She started studying psychology and education and was involved in a movement of the young Protestants that worked towards incorporating more elements of the Catholic belief into the Protestant liturgy.
In 1957, Ulrike transferred to the University of Münster, where she was later elected spokeswoman of the Socialist German Student’s Union (SDS) that protested by forming an anti-atomic death committee. This topic was very delicate in Germany at the time. On April 12th, the Göttinger Declaration was published in which 18 West German atomic scientists expressed their disagreement with any nuclear armament of the Federal Republic of Germany. The scientist and Nobel Prize Winners were not the only ones that believed Germany could best protect itself and promote stability for the region and the world if it voluntarily abstained from the possession of nuclear arms. Albert Schweizer called for a halt on nuclear arm tests. These concerns sparked the activism of many young people. Trade unionists and intellectuals supported the student movement. Ulrike Meinhof became very active in the anti-nuclear armament movement: as a journalist, she published articles on the nuclear issue in a variety of student newspapers; as an activist, she helped to organize demonstrations, petitions, and a boycott of lectures.
In 1955, Renate Riemeck left the SPD because she did not agree with the rearmament of West Germany which she saw as a step towards the intensification of the Cold War. Renate Riemeck opposed Konrad Adenauer’s plans to obtain nuclear weapons and actively supported the German-Polish reconciliation through the recognition of the disputed Oder-Neisse boarder. Her attitudes conflicted with those of her employer, the Land North Rhine-Westphalia, and she consequently resigned her professorship when she was elected to the committee of the German Peace Union (Deutsche Friedensunion).
According to Stefan Aust, Ulrike Meinhof entered the political arena in May 1958 when she made a speech to 5000 neatly dressed students after a silent march through Münster. Ulrike Meinhof, with her Sophie Scholl style haircut, came across as a self-confident young peace activist and thus, caught the attention of the editorial office of the left-wing student newspaper Konkret that was devoted to the anti-nuclear movement.
In 1958, Ulrike Meinhof joined the banned Communist Party (KPD). However, she had not studied the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Luxemburg and was only familiar with the neo-Marxism of the student movement.

Ulrike Meinhof’s childhood experiences nourished her aspiration to become a politically active journalist concerned with achieving social justice.

In 1968, Germany was a divided country, not only East versus West but even more so parents versus their offspring. The generation of ‘68 is famous world wide. Many young people in Germany, in the US, and elsewhere joined the hippy movement with their communal, nomadic lifestyle. They listened to The House of Rising Sun by the Animals, read The Catcher of the Rye by J.D. Salinger or Steppenwolf by H. Hesse, celebrated sexual freedom, and the complete liberation from the establishment. They expressed their desire for change by renouncing consumerism, the influence of big corporations, the inhumane Vietnam War from 1964 to 1975, and by criticizing Western middle class values.
Particularly at German universities, young students felt constricted by a life of the bourgeoisie and became part of the German student movement. They demanded global justice and dreamed of world peace. The Third World should be freed of its bonds that restricted it in a new imperialistic epoch, the standard of living should rise worldwide, and many envisioned a socialist future of equal distribution of property. This generation rejected decision making-processes and the existing unequal balance of wealth and social justice. They felt that the economic wealth of the nation following the German Wirtschaftswunder of the 1950s led to an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor instead of improving the standard of living of the working class.
The student movement confronted the older generation who had taken part in WWII after which they resumed their respective positions too easily. It was crucial for the young people to confront Germany’s and their parents’ ‘fascist’ past as well as rebel and question authoritarianism and hypocrisy of family, society, and government alike.
Other issues of concern were the increasingly controlled mass media (protest in front of the Axel Springer Verlag). It was the student movement’s main concern to change the working of society for more democracy, whereas the media portrayed the movement as anti-democratic – a threat to the status quo.
The German student movement followed more than a century of conservatism among most German students and demonstrated a noteworthy shift towards the left and the radicalization of student politics.
A wave of protests swept Germany. They were fueled by violent confrontations of protesters versus police and were encouraged by contemporary protest movements in the world. They protested against war, US imperialism, fascist tendencies of West German politics, especially the police, and the rule of the capital.

Several key incidents that shaped the mutual experiences of the 1968 generation were:
• The traumatic death of Benno Ohnesorg, a student, who was shot dead by the police during a 1967 demonstration against a visit by the Shah of Iran.
• The demonstrations against the Axel Springer publishing empire that was targeted in the fight for the freedom of the press and to emphasize the role of the newspaper in shaping the public opinion with a campaign of hate against the students and minorities. The 1968 Springer demonstrations were the first mass protests in the Federal Republic of Germany. These protests lost much public sympathy after 17 Springer workers were injured in a series of bombings by the Baader-Meinhof group in 1972.

For more information please read the BBC article Full circle for German revolutionaries that reflects on the generation of 1968 and comments on people such as Joschka Fischer who has transformed from a young left-wing radical to an extremely popular German Foreign Minister. It gives a broad overview about the events in Germany that influenced the extra-parliamentary leftist movement in Germany at the time and explains the climate that led to the formation of the Baader-Meinhof-Group. It also stresses that this generation understood itself as the first generation that promoted the values of free speech and free expression and thus, laid the foundations for a true German democracy.

In the German newspaper, Die Zeit, Fantasie, die keine war, a very critical reflection by Karl Heinz Bohrer, writes about the generation of ‘68, their relationship with violence, the interrelations between the APO and the RAF, and the position of revolutionaries of ‘68 within society today.

On December 27th in 1961, Ulrike Meinhof married Klaus Rainer Röhl, a communist by conviction and the founder of konkret. She gave birth to twin girls, Regine and Bettina, on September 21, 1962.
In 1968, she divorced Klaus Rainer Röhl and claimed the girls. In 1970, she moved to Berlin. During this time, she became involved with more radical individuals. After she helped Andreas Baader escape from prison, she had to go underground. Her children disappeared the same day after school. The father searched for them via Interpol, but in vain. While Ulrike Meinhof was educated at a Palestinian terrorist camp in Jordan, the group developed the plan to ultimately bring the children to a Palestinian orphanage camp.
To prevent the father from contacting his children, Ulrike Meinhof organized their escape. The twins stayed with a friend in Berlin for a few days until two women drove them south and crossed the boarder into France illegally on foot. Another woman received the children in France and continued towards Italy where they crossed the boarder by driving over a still closed pass street. Sicily was the end of the journey. The women returned to Germany, leaving the children with a girl named Hanna for several weeks during which the children played on the beach, studied their school books, and played hide and seek games. After Hanna returned to Berlin, the girls stayed behind in huts close to Mount Etna where four German Hippies looked after them.
Stefan Aust, the author of the most comprehensive book about the RAF, flew down to Sicily to fly the children home safe before they could be claimed by another member of the group. Although the children had no papers with them, Stefan Aust managed to bring them back to Hamburg to reunite them with their father. The following night, he was warned by a friend that he would be killed by the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

At times, Ulrike Meinhof showed remorse and signs of weakness because she missed her children, but group pressure, a mixture of threats and accusations proved to be successful, and Ulrike Meinhof surrendered to the fact that she could not be a terrorist and a mother. She abandoned her children for what she believed to be a political fight against the imperialistic state seeking justice in the world. The greater plan demands personal sacrifices.
This decision is telling about Ulrike Meinhof’s personality. As much as she was the brain of the group and voice to the outside world, she was weak and submissive on a personal level to Baader and Ensslin. She was nervous and tended to engage in harsh self-criticism.

Nowadays, Regine lives in Berlin secluded from the public eye.
Bettina is a freelancing journalist who lives in Hamburg. She has published several articles on the Baader-Meinhof group and has written a long essay about Ulrike Meinhof and the debate about her brain. “The dignity of the dead Ulrike Meinhof. The madhouse republic? Is the German Terrorism imaginable without the media? Or: The story of Ulrike Meinhof’s medical brain diagnosis that was suppressed for 26 years”

 

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Nelson Mandela’s health is critical but improving, South African president Jacob Zuma says

George Moore and Edward Martyn unsung heros of the Abbey

The Irish National Theatre was created in 1904 as a successor to the Irish Literary Theatre. The Abbey Theatre is their venue. The National Theatre was founded by William Butler Yeats and Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory with help from Edward Martyn, George Moore,  and the Fay brothers. Lady Augusta Gregory and W.B. Yeats saw the creation from birth to success, Edward Martyn helped with the Irish Literary Theatre but did not continue with the pair when they moved on to the National Theatre project, and the Fay brothers left before the real success of the theatre.

The Inception of the Irish National Theatre

During the late nineteenth century various political groups began questioning and even opposing the British rule, challenging all Irish citizens to decide what they stood for—the monarchy or Ireland. As more Irish citizens, primarily located in the southern regions, became more aware of the negative influence the English were having on their homeland a resistance commenced. In realizing that all the forms of art were wholly British, “…the most unpopular [being] music hall frolics which, as a reviewer complained to the United Irishman, ‘sought to make women unthinking dolls’ instead of ‘intelligent comrades’” (Ward 55) people began questioning their options. W.B. Yeats, one of Ireland’s greatest writers, had always dreamt of “…establishing an Irish theatre which would both form a new identity for Irish people and provide the impetus for a new generation of Irish writers” (Ward 55). Though Michael West takes some liberties it can be argued that the character Willy Hayes is not only based on W.G. Fay but also loosely based on W.B. Yeats, portraying an artist who truly believes in his vision and desperately wants to start a national theatre despite all the set backs he encounters. His love for Eva St. John, based on the Daughters of Erin’s founder Maud Gonne, is also an ode to Yeats who was genuinely in love with Gonne though his love was unrequited. Nevertheless, after watching a performance of The Red Hugh which was put on by the Daughters of Erin Yeats said “…his head [was] on fire, wanting to hear his own plays spoken with a Dublin Accent” (Ward 56). Spurring Yeats to write Kathleen ni Houlihan which was staged during 1902 in St. Theresa’s Hall by the Irish National Theatre Company (Ward 56). The show was a hit, packing the theatre each night with spectators from all ranges of class as well as locations. “The impetus provided by the Inghinidhe na hEireann led to the creation of a professional theatre group, out of which came the Abbey Theatre” (Ward 57). Though the Abbey Theatre could not have been acquired without the aid of Annie Horniman or Lady Gregory it is impossible to exclude the influence that Gonne and the Daughters of Erin had on the creation of Irish theatre, having some even make careers out of acting. The Abbey theatre as well as the Irish National Theatre Company greatly shaped Irish theatre changing the way citizen’s viewed and connected with art, while creating a sense of nationalistic pride by finally producing plays for the Irish by the Irish.
-Shana Pereira

Credit to http://natalieharrower.com/dublinbylamplight/theatre/ahistorical-figures-in-the-theatre/

George Moore (1852-1933)

George Augustus Moore (1852-1933) was born at Moore Hall, County Mayo, the eldest son of a Nationalist MP, landowner and racehorse trainer. His education was hampered by poor health and a disinclination to study, and he was eventually expelled for “idleness and general worthlessness”. His love of literature was inspired by the novels of Sir Walter Scott and early exposure to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret. His father’s death when he was eighteen gave him sufficient funds to enjoy a bohemian life in Paris, and he immersed himself in the new aesthetic doctrines of Impressionism and Naturalism.

After failing as an artist, Moore returned to England and turned his hand to literature. His first novel, A Modern Lover (1885), owed a clear debt to Zola and established Moore as an exciting new voice. Unfortunately, it was so exciting that the novel was actually banned by the all-powerful circulating libraries. Its successor, A Mummer’s Wife (1885), caused further controversy with its frank portrayal of a woman’s sexuality, and was also banned. This marked the beginning of a war of attrition with the libraries: Moore lambasted them in his pamphlet Literature at Nurse for stocking popular romantic fiction whilst ignoring serious fiction. A Drama in Muslin (1886) and A Mere Accident (1887) also proved popular with the reading public, but not with Mrs Grundy. Moore is perhaps best known for Esther Waters (1894), a moving story of a single mother whose love for her child helps her triumph over adversity.

At the turn of the century Moore moved back to Ireland, partly in protest against the Boer War. He worked with W B Yeats and Lady Gregory in the Irish Literary Revival and in founding the Abbey Theatre. Moore made a concerted effort to define himself as an Irish writer, revising some of his earlier fiction. However, he returned to London in 1911 after relations with his compatriots became strained. During the remaining 23 years of his life he became recognised as a Grand Old Man of Literature, although still retained his power to shock, especially with The Brook Kerith (1916), a novelisation of the Gospels.

Moore never married, but he had a long-standing affair with John Oliver Hobbes (Mrs Craigie), who he met when she was going through a divorce. He was also rumoured to be the father of the publisher and art patron Nancy Cunard, having been romantically linked with her mother, Lady Maud Cunard.

Moore died in London in 1933 after contracting uraeria. He left a fortune of £80,000, and his ashes were interred in the view of the ruins of his ancestral home, Moore Hall, destroyed during the Irish Civil War.

George Moore’s short story Albert Nobbs has recently been made into a major film, starring Glenn Close (2011)

(http://www.victoriansecrets.co.uk/authors/george-moore/)

Edward Martyn, (born Jan. 30, 1859, Tulira, County Galway, Ire.—died Dec. 5, 1923, Tulira), Irish dramatist who with William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory formed the Irish Literary Theatre (1899), which was part of the nationalist revival of interest in Ireland’s Gaelic literary history.

Martyn’s admiration of the craftsmanship and intellectualism of Ibsen caused him to emulate continental drama and to advocate its production.

During its three-year existence, the Irish Literary Theatre presented plays by Yeats, George Moore, and Martyn (The Heather Field and Maeve; both 1899), among others, in order to develop a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature. After the theatre closed, Martyn broke with the mainstream of Irish Revivalism, which led to the Abbey Theatre, because of personal conflicts and his dislike of “peasant plays” and “Celtic twilight romanticism.” In 1914 Martyn helped found the Irish Theatre in Dublin to produce “nonpeasant” plays, Irish-language plays, and great continental dramas. The aims of both theatres were successfully realized in the Gate Theatre (established 1928).

In addition to his dramatic writing and related activities, Martyn was an ardent Catholic and nationalist. He established the Palestrina Choir in Dublin, was president of Sinn Fein from 1904 to 1908, and promoted various educational movements.

• Martyn used his great wealth to benefit Irish culture. His activities and sponsorships included:

  funding and direction of St. Brendan’s Cathedral, Loughrea

• co-founder and endowing of the Feis Ceoil
• president of Na hAisteoirí, the Irish-language drama group
• sponsored and guided An Túr Gloine, Ireland’s first stained-glass workshop

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Dublin Tenement Experience, Henrietta Street.

Come Here To Me!

The rise and demise of Dublin is a story you can tell better on Henrietta Street than anywhere else in the city. In the eighteenth century, it was a street of the so-called ‘Second City of the Empire’, home to many sedan chair owners and members of the ruling elite, but in-time it came to define the extreme and grotesque poverty of inner-city Dublin, synonymous with overcrowded tenement life. The 1911 Census shows a street where general labourers made up a sizeable percentage of residents, those who found themselves caught up in the precarious working environment of the day.

Now, 14 Henrietta Street is about to open its doors. This is thanks to the ‘Dublin Tenement Experience: Living The Lockout’ project, a collaborative effort by the Irish Heritage Trust, Dublin City Council and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

By opening 14 Henrietta Street to the public from early July…

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The Abbey Theatre 1916 memorial.

Come Here To Me!

I came across this last night at The Abbey, having gone to see Translations. Excellent if you’re wondering. You’re running out of the on that one. The memorial seems to be a replacement to the plaque which was to be found at the Abbey for many years. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who knows just how long this memorial has been in place.

There are seven names to be found on the memorial, including Sean Connolly, the first casualty of the republican side during the uprising.

Undoubtedly, there are names missing from the memorial. Writing in the Dublin Historical Record in 1999, James Wren noted that: ‘Although Edward Keegan’s name does not appear on the Abbey Theatre’s 1916 plaque he was an early member of the National Players and as a Volunteer he fought in the 1916 Rising’.

Sean Connolly on the plaque is a character we’ve…

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