Gerry Adams Tells It As It Is

Gerry Adams: The institutions of the State have their backs to the border

“The prevailing sense among the policy makers is to perpetuate the status quo,” the Sinn Féin President has told the MacGill Summer School in the Glenties this evening.

GERRY ADAMS HAS hit out at the institutions of the current Irish State accusing them of having “their backs to border” and has called for debate on a united Ireland, saying the status quo will only be changed when this happens.

“The prevailing sense among the policy makers is to perpetuate the status quo,”the Sinn Féin President has told the MacGill Summer School in the Glenties this evening .

“This will only be changed when a genuine national spirit is recreated to replace the nonsense, popular in some circles, that this State is the nation and that Ireland stops at Dundalk or Lifford.”

In his speech Adams said that the current Irish State is the product of the aftermath of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Civil War four years later.

He claimed that the outcome of the Civil War and partition led to the “native conservative elite” replacing “the old English elite with little real change in the organisation of Irish society”.

He said of the post-Civil War, early Irish State: “Religion was hijacked by mean men who used the gospel not to empower but to control, and narrow moral codes were enforced to subvert the instinctive generosity of our people.

“Women were discriminated against; gay and lesbian citizens were denied equality under the law and all the while scandals like the abuse in the industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries, Bethany Home and the barbaric practice of symphysiotomy were tolerated and encouraged.

“Those who suffered were mostly poor. The arts were censored. Our language undermined. Our culture corroded. Millions fled to England, the USA and Australia. A lesser people would not have survived.

“The system of economic and political apartheid in the north and the scandals of backhanders and brown envelopes, and of the banking and financial institutions and developers in this part of the island, exemplify how the elites held sway.”

He accused the media, academia and “political elites” of being “partitionist”.  ”They have their backs to the border,” he said.

“While they are generally benign, policy makers know little about the north and care even less. Their concern is to protect the interests of the establishment as they understand it,” he added.

Adams also accused the government of shying away from the debate over a united Ireland and implementing the measures contained in the Good Friday Agreement.

He hit out at the government over its failure to more radically reform the Dáil but he did say his party would support the abolition of the Seanad in the forthcoming referendum.

Explaining the rationale for this, Adams said: “Only one per cent of citizens have a vote in Seanad elections while others have multiple votes. That is why Sinn Féin will not support a proposal to retain the present Seanad. We will campaign for its abolition.”

The Louth TD also called for equal rights for people in same sex relationships and for ethnic minorities like Travellers and “those of all creeds and none”.

thejournal.ie 31/07/13

Sinn Féin Mountmellick - Serving The Community

Labour Party Minister Leads The Sell-off of State Company

Colreavy condemns the selloff of Bord Gáis Energy

Deputy Michael Colreavy, Sinn Féin spokesperson for communications, energy and natural resources has condemned government’s plan to sell off Bord Gáis Energy.

Speaking following the publication of legislation by Minister Pat Rabbitte, Deputy Colreavy said:

“The sale of Bord Gáis Energy is a very disappointing move by the government which is following the austerity agenda by the Troika.

“It is worrying to see the privatisation of a state energy company at a time when Ireland is attempting to become more self-sufficient in energy production, especially in the area of renewable energy.

“The entire gas network could be at risk if the current trend of privatisation continues. This would be sure to hamper growth.

“Ireland requires investment in the energy market, rather than the government offloading it to the private sector.

“Bord Gáis is a profitable company and the sale of Bord Gáis Energy is a move which lacks clear foresight from the government.

“It is disappointing to see a Labour minister lead the sell-off of this state company, especially when Labour members voted to reject the sale of any state asset at the last party conference.

“I would encourage Minister Rabbitte to listen to the voice of his own party members and stop the sell-off of Bord Gáis Energy.”

Sinn Féin Mountmellick - Serving The Community

The Drinks Are On Me

California launches ‘Toilet-to-tap’ water purification program

RT 24 July

A sewage treatment plant will soon serve as Santa Clara County’s newest source of water: pre-treated wastewater will soon be used for electrical fountains, fire hydrants, and landscaping, and might eventually replace tap water in residents’ homes.

County officials claim purified sewage is safe to drink, but some residents are deeply disturbed at the prospect of drinking what was once used in toilets.

The new $68 million Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center will open this fall. The plant will purify 8 million gallons of sewage water a day through microfiltration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light, CBS San Francisco reports.

“The state-of-the-art facility will take treated wastewater that would have otherwise been discharged into the San Francisco Bay and purify it,” the purification center writes on its website.

Officials claim that the purified water is cleaner and safer to drink than current bottle or tap water, but Santa Clara County residents have nevertheless recoiled from the idea.

Because of the stigma surrounding the prospect of consuming and bathing in former sewage water, the purified water will not flow into homes – at least, not yet. When the facility opens in the fall, the water will be used for fire hydrants, landscaping and electrical fountains until officials are able to convince the public that the water is safe to drink.

“It takes a long time to educate folks and grasp this concept that this water can be purified to a level that’s cleaner than what we are already drinking,” Marty Grimes of the Santa Clara Valley Water District told CBS. “The reality is that we are able to produce water that is cleaner than all of our other water sources.”

In the hydrology purification process, coagulants such as lime and alum are added to the water to cause particles to clump together. These clumps settle at the bottom of the water-holding tanks, after which the water if filtered out and disinfected with chlorine. Microfiltration ensures that all liquid and gas contaminants are removed, and reverse osmosis ensures that certain molecules and ions are removed. Ultraviolet light is then used to kill any microorganisms that might have survived.

Southern California is prone to droughts, and the new facility will provide a reliable water supply that would be particularly beneficial during long periods without rain.

“With the effects of climate change, population growth and long periods of drought on the horizon, we need to find additional local, sustainable water supplies,” the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center writes on its website.

Although Santa Clara officials have ensured that the purified sewage water is safe to drink, the Santa Clara Valley Water District has previously come under fire for endangering the public by violating state water-pollution laws.

The agency repeatedly spilled hydraulic oil into its reservoirs, and last year faced a lawsuit for potentially damaging the environment and tainting drinking water. The agency brushed aside the allegations, claiming that the spills were small and insignificant.

But as news of the toilet-to-tap purification process spreads, residents might remain skeptical about the claims made by officials who considered hydraulic oil spills no big deal

Sinn Féin Mountmellick - Serving The Community

32nd National Hunger Strike Commemoration

Sinn Féin Mountmellick - Serving The Community

Irish Agricultural Authorities Take Note

Scientists confirm: Pesticides kill America's honey bees

Honey bees are quickly disappearing from the US – a phenomenon that has left scientists baffled. But new research shows that bees exposed to common agricultural chemicals while pollinating US crops are less likely to resist a parasitic infection.

As a result of chemical exposure, honey bees are more likely to succumb to the lethal Nosema ceranae parasite and die from the resulting complications.

Scientists from the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture on Wednesday published a study that linked chemicals, including fungicides, to the mass die-offs. Scientists have long struggled to find the cause behind the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which an estimated 10 million beehives at an average value of $200 each have been lost since 2006.

Last winter, the honey bee population declined by 31.1 percent, with some beekeepers reporting losses of 90 to 100 percent of their bee populations. Scientists are concerned that “Beemageddon” could cause the collapse of the $200 billion agriculture industry, since more than 100 US crops rely on honey bees to pollinate them.

The new findings are key in determining one of the causes of the CCD, but they fail to explain why entire beehives sometimes die at once.

UMD and DOA researchers found that pollen samples in fields ranging from Delaware to Maine contained nine different agricultural chemicals, including fungicides, herbicides, insecticides and miticides. One particular sample even contained 21 different agricultural chemicals. To test their theory, they fed pesticide-ridden pollen samples to healthy bees and then infected them with the parasite. They found that the pesticides hindered the bees’ abilities to resist the infection, thus contributing to their deaths. The fungicide chlorothalonil was particularly damaging, tripling the risks of parasitic infection. 

“We don’t think of fungicides as having a negative effect on bees, because they’re not designed to kill insects,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study’s senior author, said in a news release.

He explained that federal regulations restrict the use of insecticides while pollinators are foraging, but noted that “there are no such restrictions on fungicides, so you’ll often see fungicide applications going on while bees are foraging on the crop. The finding suggests that we have to reconsider that policy.”

Bees are declining at such a fast rate that one bad winter could trigger an agricultural disaster. California’s almond crop would be hit particularly hard, since the state supplies 80 percent of the world’s almonds. Pollinating California’s 760,000 acres of almond fields requires 1.5 million out-of-state bee colonies, which makes up 60 percent of the country’s beehives. The CCD is a major threat to this $4 billion industry.

Entomologists suspect that a number of other factors also contribute to the CCD, including climate change, habitat destructing and handling practices that expose bees to foreign pathogens. But the effect of agricultural chemicals is particularly alarming, especially since the US does not have laws banning the use of the pesticides that are affecting bee health.

“The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to believe,” vanEngelsdorp said. “It’s a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product.”

 RT July 25th

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