Letters

British Crimes for Centuries

MAUREEN Kennedy’s letter in last week’s issue disputed previous letter writer Peadar O’Fiach’s claim that the British didn’t cause the Famine cites as genocide the steady exportation of food even as the Irish starved.

True, but her blaming England for genocide doesn’t go nearly far enough. The events she mentions start only with the 1845 crop failure. I’d start the clock a couple of centuries earlier.

Yes, the prime cause was potato blight. But deliberate English colonial policies set the stage for this disaster.

Two centuries of colonial rule — colonies drained of natural resources for the “motherland;” penal laws used to reduce the native Irish-Catholic population to poverty, mere tenants on increasingly smaller plots of what had once been their own land; one-crop subsistence farming; English absentee landlords taking cash crops raised for export as rent from Irish farmers living in near serfdom — created the social conditions in which successive failure of the one food intended for native consumption left them no chance to survive.

Add to that the English policies of not providing any form of relief behind thin charity soup and punitive workhouses for fear of upsetting supply and demand in the marketplace and of encouraging idleness in a population they already considered backward, lazy and inferior to them, and you have a recipe for genocide.

Furthermore, the English viewed the famine as a great God-given opportunity for social engineering in Ireland. One quote from New York City’s Irish Hunger Memorial — either Charles Trevelyan or Lord John Russell — estimates that if only one million Irish die, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

They wanted to clear the land of people their culture considered unproductive users of land that belonged to their country, much as the Indian and his sustenance, the buffalo, were deemed in the way of progress.

As we know, more than that disappeared through death and emigration. How could this not be genocide?

Sadly, similar events still occur today and are often viewed solely as natural disasters without placing them in a sociological/political context. We can ask ourselves, did Hurricane Katrina clear away wealthy neighborhoods?

If the storm had, would those people still be displaced? If the damaged areas are made less vulnerable, will developers repair it for the original residents or build for gentrified waterfront dwellers?

Anne T. Murphy
New York, New York

Don’t Blame the Press

“AHERN blames Times for Trouble,” was the headline on one of Paddy Clancy’s stories in last week’s issue.

Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern is angry at The Irish Times for revealing that he had left himself vulnerable by “his acceptance of money from friends and business acquaintances to bail him out of personal money difficulties.”

It is the duty of a responsible press to make sure every elected leader is adhering to the highest moral standards. When the leader of a democracy whines at the press for exposing his “mistake,” as Ahern called it, then not only is he trying to avoid responsibility for his own lack of judgment, but he is also aiming a kick at one of the props of democratic society.

Canon Sheehan asked in My New Curate, “Why is it considered a greater crime to denounce and correct an evil than commit it?”

Why indeed, Mr. Ahern?

Tom Phelan
Freeport, New York

Save Salmon Fishing

AS a long time reader/subscriber to the Irish Voice, I am writing to express my disappointment, concern and opposition to the Irish government’s decision to ban Salmon drift net fishing.

I am a proud descendant of generations of salmon fishermen who plied their trade for centuries along the fishing villages of the River Suir in Waterford. In fact, many of the current 171 drift net license holders in Waterford are most likely family, friends and neighbors of my parents who emigrated to New York in 1972, and recently returned to move back to Co. Waterford last year to a modern and prosperous Ireland.

As a first generation Irish American, I have many fond memories spending my summers as a teenager fishing the River Suir, as my ancestors did for decades before me. It was a special connection to my family’s heritage and provided insight on the traditions of the past.

Although I am aware of the depleted Irish salmon stocks in Ireland’s rivers, banning Irish traditional maritime heritage is not the answer. I can only hope that drift net fishing will not become a lost “artifact” for future generations.

It is important that Irish children and young adults be exposed to and be able to pass down the traditional aspects of Irish culture, because once this “way of life” is lost, it will be lost forever. It saddens me to think that my own children might never get to experience the simple thrill of catching a salmon in the river, while at the same time learning from Ireland’s past and protecting its future as well.

I ask that the Irish government reconsider its position and develop a plan that protects both the environment and the local fishermen from extinction.

I am writing this on behalf of my now deceased relatives who can no longer voice their opinions and outrage, as their livelihoods that provided for their families and contributed to Ireland’s economy in leaner times, are now being sold out and lost to keep the European Union happy.

Ryan W. Doherty
Tarrytown New York

Good vs. Evil

WITH regard to Robert Schauder’s letter “No End in Sight” in last week’s issue, this letter is a perfect example of the modern day thinking known as relativism.

It’s a philosophy that says there is no objective truth or definition of good or evil. Good or evil is what the subjective thinker says it is. You are an island unto yourself with the ground of objectivity eliminated.

That framework allows Mr. Schauder to declare that I and the Islamic jihadist are equally evil. Here is how it works. The aggressor strikes me because he thinks I am evil, I defend myself because I think he is evil.

In Mr. Schauder’s mind we are both equally evil because good and evil, being only subjective, is equally possessed by both sides.

Anyone who can look with his own two eyes at the evil of 9/11 and then conclude that the victims and their grieving families are equally as evil as the jihadist terrorists is not living on this planet. In fact, mentally he is worse than a man looking in a dark room for a black cat that is not there.

Mr. Schauder, of course, is not alone. He has company in Ward Churchill, the nutty iconoclast professor at the University of Colorado who got fired for promoting such nonsense.

This kind of abstract nonsense devoid of any existential reality is as crazy as the man who thinks he can hang on to the brush when the ladder is taken away.

In concluding, I would like to say I am sorry I disappointed Mr. Schauder in not mentioning the Blessed Virgin Mary in my previous letter, who suffered so much in witnessing the crucifixion of her son and our lord and savior Jesus Christ at the hands of the objective evil of that moment called Roman soldiers.

Open your eyes and take another look, Mr. Schauder. You need to get your first wisdom tooth.

John Rogers
Voorhees, New Jersey