The Practice Of Being Happy Is the Best Workout; An open letter to a friend I know (Part 1)

We are not all born happy and many have to work at it for a variety of reasons throughout our lifetime. Whatever the cause of our unhappiness it can only be reversed by practicing happiness, and like any workout it takes effort until it becomes as natural as breathing. It starts off by getting rid of the clutter in our lives. 

Clutter is normally the people who make you feel negative about life and yourself. Make a list and make sure you give them the exit door and don't look back. The next step is to ask why you ever took yourself so serious before, why you worried so much what other people thought of you. The reality is, aside from a precious few friends that you think you have, and Facebook does not count, nobody cares about you. Sad but true and when that reality sets in, it can and will become liberating when you accept it. That's when the real workout begins.

It starts off being selective in what you read and what you view and who you hang out with. No more re- run documentaries of the Holocaust for you, no more books about serial killers either! There are better visual and audio aids for self development than this, and anyway, this stuff went on long before you arrived and be still be going on long after you leave this mortal coil. 

If you haven't being physically exercising lately start today. At least a walk and work you way up. If it gets a bit boring put on the music and no sad songs here either. Buy more than a few happy and positive books about anything and everything. Get busy by socialising more or help in a soup kitchen if you can for those less unfortunate, and they are many of them. It just feels good to give too. 

The mind is where it is all at, and what ails you in the moment will pass. A push or two from you will make it pass quicker as well rather than it be an all day affair. If you are not in charge of what and how you think, then you are influenced by things that ultimately do not matter!! 

The mind also shows itself in the physical as well, betraying to others what you are feeling. That is if it could be called a betrayal at all because, for the most part, no one is thinking about these things except 'victimised' you. I know that part hurts but no worse than you have felt before, whether something bad happened to you where you had no choice, or where it did when you had a choice. The latter position will always prove more powerful moving forward in future workouts. But you can bet also that being depressed - that you look it too. This can be turned into a positive as well.

Barry Clifford

( to be continued....)

Smokin’ Joe KO’d by sucker punch reply from heavyweight Honohan

                                                                 Patrick Honohan

There was one light moment at the Oireachtas banking inquiry in an otherwise depressing trawl through Ireland in the dark months of autumn 2008.

When it came to Irish Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins’ turn to question a witness — Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan — Joe pulled out his standard anti-capitalist address.

Wasn’t it the case that the ideology of the government, the banks, the speculators, most of the media, was at the heart of the problem that led to the collapse of the economy?

Wasn’t it all about an ideology involving the greedy pursuit of “super profits” by the banks? Didn’t that result in a regulatory system where the “prevailing spirit is don’t separate the lion from his prey, but let them at it”.

Then the reply that shook everybody awake. “That’s right,” said the governor. Even Joe was stopped in his tracks.

A laugh erupted. “You agree?” Joe asked, incredulously.

“Well, that’s a dramatic way of putting it,” Honohan said. But, by and large, he had no problem with Joe’s analysis of how the profit-crazed banks led the whole country into perdition.

On the third day of the inquiry it was difficult to escape the conclusion that Higgins had been right all along back in those days when he was, as he pointed out himself yesterday, a lonely voice in the Dáil, railing against the “speculators” who were driving up the cost of housing.

Honohan was a lively witness, careful to apply nuance to his utterances, but devoid of the kind of hyperactive caution that financial heads display when they are brought out in public.

He thinks the bank guarantee of September 2008 was a mistake, but an understandable one.

However, he doesn’t buy the peddled wisdom that the guarantee was to blame for the subsequent years of austerity.

“The cost of the austerity measures is much, much bigger than the cost of the guarantee.”

He also debunked the myth that the Troika which took control of the country in November 2010 were to blame for much of the austerity.

“The bailout reduced austerity measures,” he said, although that statement could have done with a little elaboration.

As for the cost of the guarantee, he puts it at around €40 billion and change, with the scope for a little more to be “whittled down” from the original cost of €64 billion.

He is of the opinion that it should have been obvious at the time of the guarantee that Anglo was a busted flush.

The management running the bank should have been removed.

“That would have been more clear had they known what the size of the problem was.

“But all the investment banks that looked at it saw that Anglo’s model was not credible in the market,” he said.

However, had the government moved to shut the thing down, they would have had to withstand a severe going over from our European partners, Honohan added.

How much that option had been explored is something that Brian Cowen, in particular, will be expected to answer when he comes in to give evidence.

The governor was quite open to speculating on the mindset of the bankers who had acted in such a reckless fashion.

These, after all, were supposed to be very brainy boys, who knew their sums.

Honohan confirmed the suspicion of many when he set out his theory.

“The conjecture I’m left with is – in the banks - they might have said ‘gosh this could all go wrong, but if it does there will be a rescue, the State will step in, or Europe will step in’,” said Honohan.

So it went, among those who were regarded as the poster boys for capitalism.

In that regard, smokin’ Joe Higgins can claim that he could see it while many had their heads in the clouds

Michael Clifford

The Pen Is Sill Mightier Than Any Sword

Last Wednesday’s murderous attack at the Paris office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was the work of those who believe that cartoons can be so obnoxious that they justified the slaughter of 17 people, 12 at the magazine itself.

It is clear from the carnage that the perpetrators hoped to silence those responsible for the cartoons that gave offence to millions of Muslims worldwide.

Other critics of extreme Islamism have met the same fate. In November, 2004, the Dutch film maker Theodoor van Gogh was murdered for producing a short film which criticised the treatment of women in Muslim countries.

A year later, cartoons in a Danish newspaper depicting the Prophet Mohammed led to worldwide violent protests, resulting in more than 200 reported deaths, attacks on Danish and other European diplomatic missions and on churches and Christians.

This was not the first assault on Charlie Hebdo. In 2011, the magazine was renamed ‘Charia Hebdo’ for an issue that invited the Prophet Mohammed to be guest editor. Its cover included an image of the prophet with the headline: ‘A thousand lashes if you don’t die laughing.’

Fanatical Islamists did not get the joke and fire-bombed the magazine’s offices. Yet the perpetrators failed to terrify the journalists into submission and the magazine barely skipped a beat, publishing the following week.

This time round, they employed the ‘final solution’ by murdering as many as they could in the hope that extreme violence and terror would prevail.

They have, once again, failed miserably.

Not only is Charlie Hebdo alive and well but the murders have secured its future. It has now been transformed from an obscure magazine — largely unknown even in France — to a worldwide phenomenon ‘liked’ by tens of millions online on social media.

The magazine’s distributors initially planned to print 1m copies of the latest issue put together by survivors of last week’s shootings but said demand from France and abroad forced them to increase that up to fivefold.

The original paper printed 60,000 copies a week, selling 30,000, with the rest left for free in cafes, bars and restaurants around Paris. The latest edition of the journal had a print run of three million.

Yesterday, the paper’s distributors said they would print an extra two million copies of its latest edition to meet demand, after three million copies sold out in France at breakfast time.

You can multiply that by 10 or more, if you take the online interest into account. That’s at least 50m people directly supporting a bunch of obscure journalists bent on exhibiting a peculiar form of Gallic provocation.

It’s as if a scarcely browsed college magazine had suddenly become The New York Times.

The pen has proved mightier than the sword — even the sword of Islam.

The killers have failed doubly. Those who led the murderous crusade against the cartoonists planned to sacrifice themselves and to become martyrs for the Islamist cause. In fact, they have made Christian martyrs out of the journalists they killed.

In cities across Europe and around the world, marchers have taken to the streets to support freedom of speech and to offer condolences to the people of France.

Last weekend in Paris, more than one million people, including 40 world leaders, marched in solidarity and sadness, denouncing the violence, and proclaiming “Je suis Charlie!” and “We are not afraid!”

The reaction to the murders has been the same in many other places. From Boston to Brussels, Dublin to Dresden, tens of thousands gathered in support of Charlie Hebdo.

The sub-text to that is a declaration in favour of freedom of speech, a concept dear to Western hearts but alien to many Muslims.

Salman Rushdie, who is on the al-Qaeda hit list and received death threats over his novel The Satanic Verses, expressed his support for Charlie Hebdo. He told the Guardian newspaper: “I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.”

He may be overstating things a bit. Satire is equally capable of being alienating and infantile.

In any event, freedom of expression is not an untrammelled right, even in the West. It is tempered by laws, convention, commercial interests, reasons of taste and a desire not to cause unnecessary offence.

Censorship is a part of daily life in many parts of the democratic world. On Monday, two political leaders were photo-shopped out of an image of world leaders showing solidarity in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks.

The conservative Israeli daily newspaper HaMevaser, (The Announcer) ran a front-page image of Sunday’s rally in Paris — minus German chancellor Angela Merkel and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.

In the original photo, Merkel was positioned between French president François Hollande and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. But in the printed version, the chancellor was wiped from the record.

Censorship is also part of the criminal law in many jurisdictions. In Ireland, blasphemy and incitement to hatred are unlawful while in Germany overt Holocaust denial can land you in jail.

Censorship has also been employed as a political tool, most notably in Ireland under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act (since repealed) that forbade radio and TV stations from giving voice to — among many others — Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.

The media also exercises restraint and newspapers do not publish everything simply because they can. Good taste, sensitivity and the desire not to be gratuitously offensive all come into play in editorial decision making.

Yet, it is incumbent on us all to defend the right to be obnoxious, even while we may disagree fundamentally with the views expressed.

For historical evidence of that, you need look no further than France itself. The novelist Francois-Marie Aroet — known by his nom de plume Voltaire — was a satirical polemicist famous for his attacks on the Catholic Church and the French establishment.

He was a cartoonist with words and he is remembered and revered not only for his plays, poems, letters and essays but for his wit and his advocacy of freedom of expression.

He knew the dangers of satire, once writing: “Qui plume a, guerre a” — ‘to hold a pen is to be at war’. Yet, he persisted, risking persecution, prison or worse because of his beliefs.

His biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall captured his philosophy best, giving voice to it in this way: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” — a quotation sometimes mistakenly attributed to Voltaire himself.

He was funny and satirical to the end. On his death-bed a priest at his side asked him to renounce Satan. Acutely aware that the end was nigh, Voltaire responded: “Now is not the time for making new enemies.”

Dan Buckley

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Analysis: Ambitious deadline for mother and baby inquiry

Coalition anxious to avoid repeat of decade-long inquiry into industrial schools 

Paul Redmond, spokesman for the Coalition of Mother and Baby Homes Survivors and David Kinsella who grew up in St Patrick’s, at the publication of the terms of reference for the mother and baby homes inquiry. Photograph: Collins

Three years may sound like a long time. But the 36-month deadline for a statutory inquiry into the operation of mother- and-baby homes is likely to be highly ambitious, given the scale of work involved.

The new commission of inquiry isn’t just examining mother-and-baby homes. It will also seek to investigate the complex strands of this dark chapter of Irish life, such as the pathways into these homes from other institutions, living conditions, care arrangements, infant mortality, burial arrangements, vaccine trials, illegal adoptions and social attitudes.

A thorough investigation into even one of these issues is a daunting task.

Take adoption. The inquiry will need to establish the extent to which children’s welfare and best interests were considered in making arrangements for thousands of adoptions in Ireland and abroad; the extent of mothers’ participation in these decisions; and whether children’s parentage was concealed illegally.

Huge numbers

The numbers involved are considerable. It’s estimated that at least 35,000 unmarried mothers spent time in the 14 homes run by religious orders in Ireland during the period.

As for burials, we know that at least 800 infants died at Tuam, Co Galway. But other homes, such as Castlepollard in Co Westmeath, are estimated to hold the remains of up to 3,200 babies.

In the area of vaccine trials, fresh data suggest that at least 3,000 children in 24 residential institutions and up to 40,000 children among the general child population were administered experimental vaccines.

In drawing up the terms of reference for the inquiry, the Government faced a delicate balancing act: ensuring an effective and comprehensive investigation into this dark chapter of Irish social history, but doing so in a timely and cost-effective manner.

The Government is all too well aware of how statutory inquiries have a tendency to expand into ever more complex territory.

The statutory inquiry into the mistreatment of children in reformatories and industrial schools, established in 1999, took much longer and costed far more than anyone ever anticipated.

It was a decade before the inquiry’s Ryan report eventually emerged.

Commission of inquiry

This time, however, there are crucial differences. For one, the inquiry is a commission of inquiry, a form of State investigation that offers a speedier and less costly alternative to a tribunal of inquiry.

In addition, there has been an extensive scoping exercise by Minister for Children Dr James Reilly and his officials to map out relevant issues in advance of setting the terms of reference.

And crucially, the inquiry is to be chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy, who has valuable experience in steering a thorough, focused and much- lauded inquiry into sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

Notwithstanding these factors, there may well be unforeseen legal roadblocks. Issues such as the co-operation of witnesses and accessibility of records are likely to emerge.

Ultimately, however, there is no escaping the need for a thorough inquiry, no matter how long or expensive it proves.

We have precious few reliable details on the precise nature of women’s and children’s experiences inside these homes, or the power structures used by society to confine them.

It is only by piecing together the fragments of their experiences that we can begin to develop a full picture of the complexity of forces that existed to punish women who were deemed to have broken the rules of society.

Carl O Brien

Over 1,600 women died in Magdalene laundries

Over 1,600 women died in Magdalene laundries — over double figure cited by McAleese report

Over 1,600 women died in Magdalene laundries — more than double the figure cited by the McAleese report.

The figures, compiled by Justice For Magdalenes Research (JFMR), are included in a scathing dissection of the McAleese report being prepared by the group — a draft section of which has been seen by the Irish Examiner.

In the lengthy critique of the report’s chapter on deaths, the group states it has so far identified a total of 1,663 who died in Magdalene laundries — almost twice the figure of 879 cited in the McAleese Report.

The JFMR study hits out at a number of the McAleese report’s basic findings, including the fact that it did not include the number of women who died before 1922 and those who died in the care of the religious orders after the laundry closed. JFMR says that some 565 women fall into the former bracket and over 220 women fall into the latter bracket.

The group points out that this figure could be larger but because of how the report presents the figures an exact breakdown is not possible.

JFMR says there are a number of factors contributing to the large gap in the figures, namely that the McAleese Report does not offer a breakdown of various burial sites in either public or convent cemeteries.

As the McAleese Report does not offer any breakdown of the number of women who entered each Magdalene Laundry, JFMR say this makes it impossible to calculate what percentage of women died in each institution. Furthermore, the report addresses laundries run by the Sisters of Mercy separately due to incomplete records.

All of the above complications make it impossible to establish the full extent to which deaths are excluded from the report.

The JFMR study said it had submitted a large amount of information gathered as part of its “Magdalene Names Project” which examines various archives and records — including gravestones, electoral registers, exhumation orders and newspaper archives — to the McAleese report but “all of these submissions were ignored”.

Survivor testimony about death and burials in Magdalene laundries was also submitted to the inquiry but was also ignored. JFMR also hit out at the investigation for “completely ignoring” the issue of unmarked mass graves.

Claire McGettrick of JFMR said the report left more questions than answers about women who died in Magdalene laundries and that the upcoming mother and baby Homes inquiry needed to look at the issue.

In a statement, the Department of Justice said the McAleese Committee no longer exists so could not respond and that it could not comment on research it had not seen.

It said the committee took into consideration the JFM research provided at the time of the inquiry.

It said many of the general allegations made by JFM were “not supported by the facts uncovered by the McAleese Committee” and that an analysis of its oral testimony “was not in fact testimony of persons who had been in the institutions or of persons who had direct knowledge of the facts”.

By Conall Ó Fátharta

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