The number of teenage girls addicted to heroin has surged, although the overall number of adolescent addicts in Ireland has fallen.
A new study has found that female teenage addicts looking for treatment now outnumber their male counterparts.
Meanwhile, a separate study carried out by Trinity College Dublin has found that regular cannabis smokers have poorer short and long-term memory than the rest of the population.
The study, which is published in the ‘Irish Journal of Psychiatric Medicine’, reveals that teenage heroin dependency has fallen to a tenth of what it was in the 90s. However, female teenage addicts have increased significantly with the report’s authors believing that sexist attitudes to drug-taking have been largely eroded.
"The idea that it was okay for guys to go off getting drunk and off their heads but not for girls has a similar basis in the drug-taking community," Bobby Smyth said. "That has changed now and those sexist attitudes have diminished."
As well as a gender change in the number of referrals to clinics, recent years have also seen a geographic change with half of all referrals now outside traditional "heroin hotspots" in Dublin.
"Previously, there was a ratio of four males to one female; for addicts in their 30s it’s about three to one, in their 20s about two to one, and now 50:50 for teenagers," Mr Smyth added.
The findings of the cannabis study included results from MRI scans, indicating smokers had considerably lower levels of activity in areas of the brain used during face recognition.
"Cannabis users were significantly worse with respect to learning and short and long-term memory performance," scientists at the university’s department of psychology said.
Some 35 cannabis smokers were recruited from the general public for the study. All participants had consumed cannabis five to seven days a week for the past two years.
They were shown a series of pictures of faces bearing names before later being shown the faces in a random order and being asked to name them. Non-smokers were able to recall 80pc of names, compared with just over 50pc for cannabis users.
The Irish Government has further disgraced it’s self today when it was revealed they have been propping up Zimbabwe’s dictator Mugabe with public money to the sum of €578,000,000,000 ($904 billion dollars).
The wishes of the public and the wishes of individuals controlling the now rouge Irish Government was also further separated last March when it was caught investing taxpayers money, through the National Pension Reserve Fund, in 6 U.S companies that makes profits from the lucrative war industry: Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Alliant Techsystems, L-3 Communications, and France’s Thales.
The Irish Tribunes reports:
More than half a billion euro has been invested on behalf of the Irish taxpayer in Zimbabwe-based companies, despite calls by the government last week for further sanctions against Robert Mugabe’s “illegitimate” regime.
The Sunday Tribune has learned that the State’s National Pension Reserve Fund (NPRF) has invested over €578m in a variety of Zimbabwe-based companies.
The NPRF was set up in April 2001 to invest money on behalf of the state in order to meet the costs of social welfare and public service pensions in the future.
According to the non-government organisation, Progressio, the NPRF has invested in shares in 14 companies operating in the country. (Read more…)
Udaras na Gaeltachta is pushing ahead with proposals to transform Ireland’s wind- and rain-swept islands into tax havens for businesses and residents.
"We don’t imagine it will result in any mass exodus from the mainland," Padraig O hAolain, Udaras chief executive said yesterday.
"The islands we are talking about here aren’t the Bahamas or the Caymans, and we know that.
"But we do believe that there would be an attraction for businesses on the mainland to, perhaps, set up a subsidiary on the islands, and we think a residency of six months on the islands is not an unreasonable condition."
The plans, submitted to the Commission on Taxation three weeks ago, are aimed at injecting new economic life into the islands by offering major tax incentives, and are focused on smaller business owners.
The proposals would allow individual residents to earn up to €100,000 before paying tax and would include a range businesses. (Read more…)
Kathy Sinnott, Irish MEP for Munster is opposed to a series of amendments this week in Strasbourg to the European Telecommunications Directive designed to give the EU control over citizen’s internet usage. The proposed amendments could force internet service providers to turn over information on customers and monitor their internet usage. It could also force software makers to include spyware in their products to allow not only governments but also corporations to monitor citizen’s activities whether or not they are suspected of unlawful behaviour.
Kathy Sinnott MEP said “I am a great proponent of net neutrality. The reason the internet is what it is today, is that no-one owns it and no company or government has as yet taken control over it. These amendments being pressed by some MEP’s seek to move Europe closer to the Chinese internet model where usage is monitored and where an individual goes online can be curtailed. This will give vast control over our lives to governments and in some cases corporations. I believe that law enforcement agencies should be allowed to pursue specific targets (eg. child pornography, terrorism) but monitoring the entire populace is not the way to go about it. These intrusions into our privacy would be unacceptable and I will be urging my colleagues to vote down all such amendments on July 7th.”
If these amendments pass they will come before the European Parliament for debate and vote in September or October 09. If you are interested in being updated please let Kathy Sinnott know. Please lobby your MEPs on the IMCO and ITRE Committees and pass on (Email list).
Kathy is Democracy co president of the Independence/Democracy Group in the European Parliament.
For further information, questions or comments, please contact Kathy on:
Members of the TaraWatch campaign group are delivering a petition to UNESCO today in their latest effort to halt the construction of the M3 motorway in the historic Tara-Skryne valley.
The group is due to present the petition to the world heritage organisation during a trip to Quebec aimed at gaining international support for their campaign.
The revelations that the people of Derry City are to be petitioned in order to put pressure on Anti Agreement Republican Separatists to disband is disingenuous in the extreme and smacks not only of political opportunism but also no small measure of desperation.
It is clear that those behind this political stunt are using the understandable anger in the community at the murder of Emmet Sheils to further their own political objectives, namely an end to opposition to support for the RUC/PSNI and the British Administration in Stormont.
The 32 County Sovereignty Movement will not be deflected from our political work by such ill conceived political posturing nor will any other Anti Agreement Republican groupings.
Those who have sought to ferment community tensions by deliberately and falsely attributing blame for the murder of Emmet Sheils will be exposed for what they are as will their cynical use of his death for their own narrow agenda. Republicans will not be intimidated from upholding the Republican position and the 32 County Sovereignty Movement are resolute in our intention to continue our work in Derry City and across the nation.
The 32 County Sovereignty Movement are attracting disillusioned and disenfranchised Republicans right across Ireland and further a field as are other Republican organisations and the cynical manipulation of this tragic event illustrates how low Pro State Nationalists will go to undermine this growth, they will fail.
We note also the presence of the so called Deputy First Minister in Iraq. Just recently the same Minister greeted the US President to the Six Counties without a whimper of protest from him against the occupation and wholesale slaughter in that country. This reluctance to petition for protest against these blatant injustices is at least consistent with their equal reluctance to petition for protest against other high profile murders here because they do not afford him the same opportunity for cheap political kudos
The Irish Resistance Movement will not be forced to disband and anyone endeavouring to do so is not only naïve but is also acting in a dangerous manner. Attempts to foster a civil war mentality will also fail as all previous attempts have done.
The 32 County Sovereignty Movement have this pledge to make to Republicans, While the British Occupation remains so too will Irish Resistance to that Occupation.
A new dictionary of Gaelic will be as important as "great art collections" held by national galleries, a university figure has said.
Strathclyde’s Boyd Robertson, convener of the Faclair na Gaidhlig project steering group, commented ahead of the launch of a business plan for it.
The aim is to produce a dictionary on a par with the Scottish National and Oxford English dictionaries.
Four universities and Gaelic college Sabhal Mor Ostaig on Skye are involved.
Minister for Culture Linda Fabiani said the Scottish Government was also supporting the project.
Mr Robertson, a reader in Gaelic at Strathclyde, said: "The production of Faclair na Gaidhlig is a long cherished aspiration of the Gaelic community and is a project that will enhance the status of the language and help to secure its future.
"It will give Gaelic a vital linguistic and cultural resource which other minority languages across Europe already enjoy, and it will provide Scotland with a national asset of comparable importance to the great art collections that adorn our major galleries."
The project also involves the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow.
Ms Fabiani welcomed the launch of the business plan which will allow the project to progress further.
She said: "This government is committed to ensuring a successful future for Gaelic in Scotland.
"This historical dictionary will be a valuable resource not only to the general public but to the education, arts and broadcasting communities."
By K. Thompson This explains the history and circumstances that led to the formation of this once great patriotic Catholic organisation led by EoinO’Duffy. The Blueshirt movement sent representatives to the international fascist convention that were held in Montreux and an interesting photograph in the booklet depicts O’Duffy with Vidkund Quisling, leader of the Norwegian Nasjonal Samling and Romanian Iron Guard members. Support from the Catholic Church was forthcoming and the poet W.B. Yeats wrote a marching song for them. 700 Blueshirts went to Spain to fight there against the communist forces, but twice that number would have gone had there been further transport for them. The Irish leader Michael Collins was venerated as a hero by the Blueshirts and the IRA their deadly enemies. In the sometimes complex world of Irish political parties and rivalries this booklet is a clear guide.
ARCHAEOLOGISTS working on excavations for the controversial M3 motorway feared they would be “sacked, blacklisted or bullied out of their profession” for not supporting the building of the chosen route, it was claimed last Thursday. Speaking at a debate on the motorway near Tara at the sixth World Archaeological Congress at UCD, Maggie Ronayne, a lecturer in the department of archaeology at NUI, Galway, said pressure was put on site directors and field teams by archaeologists employed by the National Roads Authority (NRA).
“Lip service was paid to archaeology, but archaeologists were used to destroy our heritage,” said Ms Ronayne. “From the point of view of archaeology, the route chosen by the NRA was the least desirable, and other routes were not properly considered because they were not profitable for developers.” Ms Ronayne, who recently claimed that reports submitted to the NRA had been altered, said the building of the motorway posed serious ethical questions for archaeologists worldwide. She would be asking congress to pass a resolution calling for the rerouting of the M3. She said the Minister for the Environment’s decision to support the nomination of the Hill of Tara as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) world heritage site, given the construction of the motorway, could have serious implications for other world sites.
A number of organisations, including the NRA, the campaign group TaraWatch, and the Department of the Environment’s chief archaeologist, Brian Duffy, spoke at the debate. While many speakers expressed their opposition to the motorway, it was acknowledged that there had been benefits associated with it. These included the discovery of a number of archaeological finds such as the Lismullin monument. According to Mary Deevy, a senior archaeologist with the NRA, some €30 million had been spent on archaeology research related to the Hill of Tara since work began on the motorway. Mr Duffy said it was impossible to consider building a major road anywhere in the country without it having an impact. Laura Grealish of TaraWatch called on the congress to pass a resolution demanding a stop to work on the M3 in its present route. “It wouldn’t be legally binding but it would send out a powerful message. I think it would make Ireland the embarrassment of the global archaeological community.”
Welsh and Scottish Gaelic will soon be echoing around the European Union’s corridors of power under an agreement that Britain is about to sign with its EU partners. The deal, which could be rubber-stamped as early as Tuesday, will mean that individuals will be able to write to the EU’s Council of Ministers in either language - and that the Council, where governments take political and legislative decisions, will have to reply in the same tongue.
British representatives may also use the languages in official Council meetings. Once the agreement is formalised, Britain will negotiate similar arrangements with the European Commission, the European Ombudsman - which handles complaints - and other EU organisations involving parliamentary, regional and business representatives.
The move gives 580,000 Welsh and 60,000 Gaelic speakers the same rights as millions of other citizens to communicate in their native language with Brussels institutions, whose decisions increasingly affect their daily lives.
A spokesman for the British Government said: “This is great news for those British citizens that speak our regional languages and demonstrates that the Government does deliver for the regions in Brussels. We believe this is also an important part of bringing our citizens closer to the EU.”
The expense involved in providing translators and interpreters will be met by the Scottish and Welsh administrations. Costs are likely to be low, since few expect major use to be made of the new linguistic opportunities. The interpreters of existing EU languages will not suddenly have to brush up on their Gaelic and Welsh. Whether they are Spanish, Greek or Finnish, they will need only to tune in to the English booth, take the interpretation from the original on relay - as they do for certain other lesser-known languages - and translate from that.
Wales, which asked the Foreign Office to negotiate the agreement last year, is prepared to take advantage of the new rules. It has already set up the necessary administration, and with Welsh routinely used in the Assembly - and spoken by one person in five in the Principality - it has a good supply of translators and interpreters.
Scotland is not so far advanced. The Government still has to sort out the practicalities of the agreement, such as getting correspondence in Gaelic translated into a language spoken in Brussels. Despite efforts to promote the language, Gaelic does not enjoy the strength of Welsh and the chances of a Scottish minister addressing his EU counterparts in Gaelic are slim.
Kenneth Murray, the chief executive of Bòrd na Gàidhlig - the Gaelic Development Agency - welcomed the deal but acknowledged the problems: “There are some excellent interpreters and translators of Gaelic in Scotland but we need many more.”
The status that Welsh and Gaelic will enjoy are based on the same arrangements that Spain’s regional languages - Basque, Catalan and Galician - have had with EU institutions since 2005.
Ironically, the agreement will be endorsed as the EU presidency is held by France, a country with a history of trying to suppress its regional languages. Nor is there any chance of Breton being given similar recognition, since to achieve it, the EU insists that the language is recognised in the country’s constitution.
A public petition urging an end to all dissident republican activity in Derry is to be launched in the city next week.
It’s also emerged that moves are in the offing to engage the leaderships of various dissident groups in talks aimed at convincing them to end their armed campaigns.
The move is in direct response to the recent murder of Emmett Sheils, the 22 year old pizza delivery man gunned down in the Creggan Estate last week.
Among those signing up to the petition is Bogside/Brandywell community worker Tony Doherty who says the appeal has already received the support of a number of local republicans, including Seamus Heaney, whose brother, Denis, an IRA volunteer, was shot dead by the SAS in 1978, and Michael English, who lost two sons, both IRA members, during the Troubles. The three men are just part of a larger group drawn from across the city.
Mr. Doherty - whose father Patrick was among those murdered on Bloody Sunday - told the ‘Journal’ last night: "It is clear from events surrounding the murder of Emmett Sheils last week that the city has been plunged to a very low point. It is also clear to many in Derry that there is a need for people to work together to respond creatively to ensure that these tragic and futile events are never repeated."
Mr Doherty says it’s crucial that young people across Derry don’t get caught up in what he branded a "phoney" war.
"We cannot, as a society, stand idly by and allow young people to be manipulated, to get injured, killed or to end up in prison with families torn apart. The people of this city have come through several decades of terrible loss, hurt and hardship and, because of this, we must not allow our young people to engage in a phoney ‘war of liberation’ which has no support, focus, structure or direction and, as a result, will only cause pointless hardship and a further descent into criminality and gang warfare."
The Bogside community worker says the murder of Emmett Sheils has focused people’s minds on finding a way to bring the campaigns of armed groups to an end.
"This is a time for cool heads and careful thinking," he added. "We are genuinely at a fork in the road. Several people in the city, some of whom have suffered personal loss during the conflict, are actively considering how the legacy of the Emmett Sheils murder can turn everyone on to the road of dialogue, respect, and social justice regardless of ideology or political perspective," he said.
Every now and then as time approaches for a new entry here… every now and then I just don’t know what to say. So I sit here and I think about it and it isn’t very long before my thoughts return, as they always do, to 9/11 and the prima facie evidence of both Zionist involvement in the act and the cover-up in the aftermath.
The terror State of Israel has had its hand in so many things; told so many lies, caused so many deaths that it has taken on a surreal appearance in my mind. Hardly does a day go by when I don’t learn of some new horror that they brought forth upon the planet. Hardly a day goes by when another new lie, or chorus of lies, does not whip across the landscape like rabid bats; routinely and persistently infecting the population with mind parasites of disinformation. We find out that it was Israel that shoehorned Idi Amin into power. We have found that the Entebbe Hollywood rescue was staged. We know now that Israel deliberately bombed the U.S.S. Liberty and that it was no mistake.
We’re told that it was Arabs that instigated the Six Day War and Yom Kippur conflict and then we find that the facts tell a different story altogether. We are told that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. The facts tell a different story. The deeper you look the more the story changes. It turns out that Hamas was originally an Israeli creation. I guess that one got away from them. When we look for Al Qaeda cells; a hard job because there is no Al Qaeda, we find that the only one that ever got exposed was a Mossad operation. (Read more…)
The total immersion policy, as practiced throughout the length and breadth of the country by the majority of Gaelscoileanna, is under threat as a result of circular 0044/2007 issued by the Department of Education and Science last year.
The circular obliges All-Irish schools to teach 2.5 hours of English every week from the beginning of the second term in the junior infants class, at the latest, which contradicts international best practice concerning total immersion education.
This prevents schools from implementing early total immersion, a system in which English is not taught for a year or two until the child is capable of doing schoolwork and of communicating in school through Irish.
This decision contradicts international best practice concerning total immersion, as well as the Department of Education’s own immersion education policy, and disregarded the recommendations of the Minister’s advisers, NCCA & COGG, in regards to conducting research on various models before the drafting of any policy.
There is no research to suggest that the total immersion system is not successful or that the competency in English of children in Gaelscoileanna is compromised. Rather, there is compelling evidence to the contrary indicating that, not only do children succeed in the total immersion system and do well in both Irish and English, but that they actually attain higher standards in English than the national average.
Regretfully, the 0044/2007 circular prevents a more comprehensive scientific programme of research where the excellent results and the high standard of the system would be even more obvious.
Conradh na Gaeilge in conjunction with Gaelscoileanna Teoranta on behalf of the schools, the parents, the researchers and the Irish language sector, demand that:
circular 0044/2007 be withdrawn immediately, and
the recommendations of the NCCA be fully accepted and that all the recommendations of the NCCA be implemented immediately to establish a comprehensive programme of native in-depth research on all matters pertaining to language and literacy in primary Gaelscoileanna.
Help us to impress the importance of giving Gaelscoileanna the choice to practise total immersion education on Minister O’Keeffe and Support the Gaelscoil choice!
The US Congress has approved a 170 million dollar increase in security assistance to Israel as part of its new 10-year, 30 billion dollar defense aid commitment to the Jewish state.
The money for Israel was part of a larger supplemental spending bill that included 162 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legislation gained final approval in a 92-6 Senate vote late Thursday.
America’s pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, welcomed the congressional action, saying it would increase US aid to Israel to 2.55 billion dollars in fiscal year 2009, up from 2.38 billion dollars this year.
“The US commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge is the cornerstone of American policy in the region,” AIPAC said in a statement Friday.
“This year’s package holds heightened significance for US security interests, as the US and Israel face new challenges from Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons as well as the growing influence of radical anti-western forces to Israel’s south in Gaza and to the north in Lebanon.”
The package was unveiled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on July 30 as part of a new military pact with US allies in the Middle East in a bid to “counter the negative influences” of militant groups Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah as well as arch enemies Iran and Syria.
The aid includes a 20 billion dollar weapons package for Saudi Arabia, a 13 billion dollar package for Egypt, and reportedly arms deals worth at least 20 billion dollars for other Gulf states.
The military aid to Israel reflected an increase in value of more than 25 percent, Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said, describing the package as a considerable improvement and very important element for national security.
THE island of Ireland is in the best position in Europe to be a GM-crop-free region, Environment Minister John Gormley told his EU counterparts in Paris.
He supports a French drive to create GMO-free regions throughout the EU, and to introduce rules to make legalising genetically engineered crops more difficult.
The proposals are likely to bring the EU into conflict with the US whose biotech companies dominate the GM world market. Only one GM crop, Bt Maize, can be legally grown in the EU The ministers agreed to set up a committee made up of civil servants representing the member states to study the whole issue of GM and report back before the end of the year.
France, which has taken over the EU presidency, wants more scientific evidence on the safety of GM for human health and the environment. They also want to extend the studies carried out by the European Food Safety Agency to look at how growing GM crops affects peoples lives and livelihoods and to take into account the fact that 70% of EU citizens do not want GM food
Mr Gormley, speaking after the Paris meeting, said it would be sensible to have completely GM-free regions in Europe but this would be more difficult for some areas as bees and the wind spread GM seeds and contaminate non-GM crops.
It would be practically impossible to isolate GM crops in Ireland, where there are small farms, without them contaminating neighbouring areas. For this reason he believed the whole island should be a GMO-free zone and this was part of the programme for Government. It also made sense economically as Ireland exported its agricultural produce and marketed it as being from a clean, green island. Most consumers and Europe’s supermarket chains were not buying GM. “Ireland has a quality food image. This unique selling point would be threatened should GM crops be sown in Ireland,” he said
Head of GM-free Ireland, Michael O’Callaghan, welcomed the move and said so far a big number of regions in Ireland have declared themselves GM-free.
He said it was important for the whole country to be GM-free as it’s virtually impossible to prevent contamination. GM companies have sued farmers in countries such as Canada when their crops were found to include GM from seed that had blown onto their land.
Mr O’Callaghan said all GM seed should be banned here. It is imported as animal feed stuff.
All GM must be verified by EFSA as safe before it can be grown in the EU but several EU countries including France and Austria have banned all GM.
The number of teenage girls addicted to heroin has surged, although the overall number of adolescent addicts in Ireland has fallen. 
by Gabriel O’Hara
Kathy Sinnott, Irish MEP for Munster is opposed to a series of amendments this week in Strasbourg to the European Telecommunications Directive designed to give the EU control over citizen’s internet usage. The proposed amendments could force internet service providers to turn over information on customers and monitor their internet usage. It could also force software makers to include spyware in their products to allow not only governments but also corporations to monitor citizen’s activities whether or not they are suspected of unlawful behaviour.
Members of the TaraWatch campaign group are delivering a petition to 
The revelations that the people of Derry City are to be petitioned in order to put pressure on Anti Agreement Republican Separatists to disband is disingenuous in the extreme and smacks not only of political opportunism but also no small measure of desperation.
A new dictionary of Gaelic will be as important as "great art collections" held by national galleries, a university figure has said. 
ARCHAEOLOGISTS working on excavations for the controversial M3 motorway feared they would be “sacked, blacklisted or bullied out of their profession” for not supporting the building of the chosen route, it was claimed last Thursday. Speaking at a debate on the motorway near Tara at the sixth World Archaeological Congress at UCD, Maggie Ronayne, a lecturer in the department of archaeology at NUI, Galway, said pressure was put on site directors and field teams by archaeologists employed by the National Roads Authority (NRA).
Welsh and Scottish Gaelic will soon be echoing around the European Union’s corridors of power under an agreement that Britain is about to sign with its EU partners. The deal, which could be rubber-stamped as early as Tuesday, will mean that individuals will be able to write to the EU’s Council of Ministers in either language - and that the Council, where governments take political and legislative decisions, will have to reply in the same tongue. 
A public petition urging an end to all dissident republican activity in Derry is to be launched in the city next week.
By Les Visible
The total immersion policy, as practiced throughout the length and breadth of the country by the majority of Gaelscoileanna, is under threat as a result of circular 0044/2007 issued by the Department of Education and Science last year.
The US Congress has approved a 170 million dollar increase in security assistance to Israel as part of its new 10-year, 30 billion dollar defense aid commitment to the Jewish state.
THE island of Ireland is in the best position in Europe to be a GM-crop-free region, Environment Minister John Gormley told his EU counterparts in Paris.