All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

After the fire, a familiar Irish story: we treat our Travellers as outcasts | Joe Joyce | Comment is free | The Guardian

We Irish like to see ourselves as a touch more moral than other nationalities, an odd legacy of the popular policy of neutrality during the second world war married to an older belief that we are more spiritual and empathetic than the crass materialists to our west and east.We tut-tut about American police shootings of poor African-Americans, Israel’s heavy-handed treatment of Palestinians, Hungary’s inhumane attitude towards Serbian refugees, and get misty-eyed about three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body lying on a Turkish holiday beach.But Tom Connors is not an African-American, a Palestinian, or a Syrian refugee; he’s not someone else’s problem. And we don’t really give enough of a tut about him to face down the visceral hatreds in our midst and treat our own outcasts with decency.

Source: After the fire, a familiar Irish story: we treat our Travellers as outcasts | Joe Joyce | Comment is free | The Guardian

Feminism isn’t dead, despite all the assassination attempts | Laura Bates

3000.jpg?w=300&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10

The proclaiming of the ‘end of feminism’ by the Spectator and others is merely an attempt to deflect blame for problems society has failed to tackle

Feminism is dead. Long live feminism. The front page of the Spectator and a spate of other articles would have us believe the battle is won and we can now “move on”.

I can’t be the only one who thinks this is wonderful news. We highly strung, hand-wringing, over-sensitive, perpetually offended wilting violets can hang up our suffragette-coloured hats, stop combing Twitter in desperate search of minor criticism to weep about and finally stop hating all the men for long enough to get boyfriends. Rejoice!

Continue reading…

rc.img

rc.img

rc.img

a2.img
ach.imga2t.imga2t2.imgmf.gif

Love wins: first Kentucky couple rejected by clerk exchange vows

3832.jpg?w=300&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10

April Miller and Karen Roberts marry on Saturday and have one request for guests – do not mention Kim Davis

April Miller and Karen Roberts stood before a minister on Saturday night, hand-in-hand, and said the two words they fought for months to exchange: “I will”.

The people packed into the room around them jumped into a standing ovation. They all wore matching rainbow buttons that read: #LoveWins.

Continue reading…

rc.img

rc.img

rc.img

a2.img
ach.imga2t.imga2t2.imgmf.gif

Baby rescued from sea by Turkish fishermen after refugee boat capsizes | World news | The Guardian

Muhammad is now in good health and has since been released from a hospital in the provincial capital Izmir after initial treatment in Kusadasi.The rescuers said they helped 15 other people out of the water, adding that most of those floating the water were women crying for help, including one woman who was pregnant. They said that the group had been in the water for about five hours before they were found by the fishermen who then alerted the coastguard.Muhammed was since successfully reunited with his mother, 23-year-old Lorin Halef, who said that the smugglers had promised them a bigger boat than the one they had been forced to take in the end.“They put 30 people on the boat. They had told us that we would be going on a bigger boat. But when we got there, we saw that the boat was small,” Halef told Turkish reporters. “But by then it was too late to do anything. We wanted to go to Greece. We lived through a huge panic. But [the fishermen] saved us, I cannot thank them enough.”She also said that her husband Ihsan was still in Syria.

Source: Baby rescued from sea by Turkish fishermen after refugee boat capsizes | World news | The Guardian

Pope, ending synod, excoriates bishops with ‘closed hearts’ | Reuters

It was the latest in a series of admonitions to bishops by the pontiff, who has stressed since his election in 2013 that the 1.2 billion-member Church should be open to change, side with the poor and rid itself of the pomp and stuffiness that has alienated so many Catholics.In his final address, the pope appeared to criticize ultra-conservatives, saying Church leaders should confront difficult issues “fearlessly, without burying our heads in the sand.”He said the synod had “laid bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families”.He also decried “conspiracy theories” and the “blinkered viewpoints” of some at the gathering, and said the Church could not transmit its message to new generations “at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible”.

Source: Pope, ending synod, excoriates bishops with ‘closed hearts’ | Reuters