Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts

Monday, May 30, 2011

Belfast marks 100th Anniversary of the Titanic







Centenary is commemorated by TITANICa: The Exhibition & The People’s Story

Belfast, May 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Belfast is set to mark the 100th anniversary of the launch of one of the city’s most famous creations – RMS Titanic. On May 31st 1911, Titanic was launched into Belfast Lough by Harland & Wolff – then the largest shipyard in the world. It took three years to build and just 62 seconds to complete the launch.

To mark the occasion, there will be a special slipway event attended by the Lord Mayor of Belfast, dignitaries of Cherbourg and Titanic societies to reflect Belfast’s maritime heritage. There will also be a flare set-off to mark the moment exactly 100 years ago when the Titanic was launched.

With a £7bn investment in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter and interactive visitor centre due to be unveiled in 2012, Tourism Ireland is keen to share the wonderful history of the Titanic through this programme of fantastic events.

On 31st May 2011, The Ulster Folk & Transport Museum is launching TITANICa: The Exhibition to showcase her story. The exhibition, which runs until 31st August 2011, will feature more than 500 original artifacts - some of which have never been seen before - and will explore Titanic and her world. Visitors can discover life on board the vessel through fascinating objects and personal stories that explore the tragic loss of the Titanic in 1912.




An innovative trail will link this exhibition in the Transport Museum to TITANICa: The People’s Story in the outdoor Folk Museum, where visitors will be able to explore a living history experience of Titanic. Discovering people’s daily routines in the period before, during and after Titanic’s maiden voyage, guests will be able to walk the historic streets and journey through the shipyard riveter's home, before visiting the Post Office to compose their own Morse code message sent from Titanic. They can then pop to the printers to get their own Titanic launch ticket before heading on to the Newspaper Room to read publications printed from the time.

A festival of films featuring historic footage of life at the time of Titanic will also be on show in the Picture House. There will be opportunities to dress up in the fashionable costume of the time or just relax and watch the children play traditional games in the park.

Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland, said “No ship has gripped the world’s imagination like RMS Titanic. Her remarkable story begins at her birthplace in Belfast, and we highly recommend visitors to Belfast to discover the story of her creation through this exhibition."

"Drawn by its vibrancy, warmth and charm, increasing numbers from around the world are making Belfast one of the most popular city destinations in Europe, where visitors can discover a thriving cultural scene combined with unique heritage including the story of the Titanic."

For more information, visit www.discoverireland.com


Further media information and rights free photographs, plus an FTP feed are available on the Tourism Ireland Media Room at www.discoverirelandmedia.com, just click on the 'download broadcast footage of themes related to Titanic Belfast' tab


About the RMS TITANIC



Friday, May 20, 2011

Barack Obama is also Irish and the Irish love him



As Queen Elizabeth 2 ends her own first visit to Ireland, President Barack Obama begins his own.


President Barack Obama

He will be one of eight hundred thousand Americans expected to travel to Ireland this year, but his is perhaps the most historic one, because he is actually going back to his ancestral roots. Yes, Barack Obama is also Irish. Most people know him as a native of Honolulu, Hawaii, whose mother Ann Dunham Stanley came from Wichita, Kansas of mostly English descent with the roots of her family tree going as far back as Germany, Wales and of course Ireland where Obama will be welcomed with open arms in Moneygall, County Offaly the birthpace of his great-great-great grandfather Falmouth Kearney (who emigrated to the US in 1850, because of the potato famine). Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, was a descendant of one of Kearney's daughters, Mary Ann Kearney, and Jacob William Dunham. So, the Irish can also claim him and how amusing that would be to his kith and kin from his black African father Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya.

Obama's 24-hour visit to Ireland begins on Monday and will receive the warmest of Irish hospitality when he visits the Emerald Isle where hundreds of thousands of well wishers will line the streets to his ancestral village of Monegall in Co, Offaly where preparations to host him are already in full swing.

“We have huge connections with America and we look forward to deepening those in years to come and giving a warm Irish welcome to all the Americans that come here. There are 40 million people of Irish decent in America and we think they are going to be thrilled that President Obama is coming here and the genealogical connection is an indelible one and we are delighted that president Obama is coming here to discover his roots with us in Ireland,” said Niall Gibbons, CEO Tourism Ireland.

“Well, we traced back nine generations from the president, so we took Megan Smolenyak’s work and we took it back another four generations again, tracing it back to the late 1600s and that’s a real achievement in Irish Genealogy because so many of the records have been destroyed over the previous 300 years. The thing to remember as well, is that the president’s family, they weren’t rich, they weren’t anglo Irish, they were simply a regular family and to be able to trace them back was really quite something,” enthused Fiona Fitzsimons, Genealogist, Eneclann.

“We hope he will come and visit the school house behind me where his ancestors were educated. The ancestral home still stands in the village, that’s another important site, also Templeharry church. So there are three important sites within the area for anyone to come and visit, and of course it wouldn’t be a presidential visit to Ireland without a traditional stop off in the local pub for a pint of Guinness,” said Henry Healy, one of the 28 living Irish relatives of President Obama.
'The place is buzzing,' Majella Hayes, co-owner of Ollie Hayes bar in Moneygall, told the German Press Agency dpa.
'The atmosphere is electric. The bar is full of visitors and locals alike. There's nowhere to park your car in the village. There are hundreds of extra people around,' said Hayes, in whose bar President Obama is expected to sample a pint of Guinness on Monday afternoon. But a source at the White House doubts whether the president will drink it.

'There is a lot of work going on too with telephone lines and the likes being put in. This is not a tourist town, so we're not used to anything like this,' she added.

During his stay President Obama will also visit the capital city of Dublin where a huge celebration rally is planned according to Tourism Ireland.



Photo: The residents of Moneygall is in the grip of Obamania, because later this month Obama will be making a presidential pilgrimage here to discover his Irish roots. Photo: KIM HAUGHTON.



Photo: Dorma Lee Reese poses for a picture at her home in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday, March 16, 2011. Reese, 83, a retired EEG technologist, learned about a year ago that she is a third cousin to President Barack Obama. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson.)

According to Monsters & Critics, souvenir shops are springing up along with an Obama café, residents painting their houses, with one even painting the front of his house in the colours of the US flag. US flags are on display and tourists can buy t-shirts proclaiming 'Is feidir linn,' which means 'Yes, we can,' in Irish and 'What's the crack, Barack?'. There's also high-fibre, low-fat Obama bread on sale in the grocery shop.

Villagers have also been treated to repeated visits from men in dark glasses, making preparations for the stringent security arrangements and a man was quizzed for making death threats.

US president is also scheduled to address a crowd of villagers and visitors and meet the Prime Minister Enda Kenny on Monday morning and later attend a concert in the evening before making a speech at central Dublin's College Green, where former US President Bill Clinton addressed a crowd of tens of thousands in 1995.

About 12 per cent of Americans claim Irish ancestry, and Ireland has welcomed several US presidents to their ancestral homes since the visit of John F Kennedy in 1963.

Monsters & Critics reported that some cynics pointed out that Obama is only 1/32 Irish. But in Moneygall at least, in the words of a song in his honour, 'There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama.'

Barack Obama Is í an Ghaeilge agus an Ghaeilge grá dó sin.


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima


Tuesday, December 7, 2010

When Citizens Revolt: Governor Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa State pelted with stones

Timipre Sylva, Governor of Bayelsa State, Nigeria


Insight

When Citizens Revolt


I

T IS NO longer news that Governor Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa State, Nigeria, was pelted with stones, shoes and packets of pure water on Friday October 22, 2010. The incident occurred while the governor was delivering his formal welcome address to President Goodluck Jonathan and his entourage at the Samson Siasia Stadium, Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital.

Sylva’s ordeal is not without historical antecedents. On Monday December 15, 2008, barely one month to the end of his second tenure as President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush was pelted with a pair of shoes by Muntandar al-Zaidi, a reporter with a Cairo-based television network at a press conference in Baghdad. The incident marked the height of the scandals that had rocked the Bush presidency over the American invasion of Iraq.

In like manner, on Saturday September 4, 2010, an equally scandalous scenario took place in Dublin, Ireland, when former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was pelted with shoes and eggs as he arrived at a bookstore to promote his controversial memoir entitled, A Journey. That was another clear expression of disgust at the unpopular role played by Blair in the Iraqi conflict.

On its part, the Yenagoa missile drama remains a most unique occurrence because it does not have any precedent in Nigerian history. Coming as it did in the month when the state was celebrating its fourteenth birthday anniversary, and in a cardinal year of transition when Nigeria was marking her Golden Jubilee with great pomp and colour, the incident becomes even more significant for all its novelty. Needless to say, it has since gone down in world history as yet another example of what happens when a patient and long-suffering people have had enough.

What makes it all the more shocking is that this unflattering event took place right before the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria. The entire scenario becomes even more painful to contemplate in the light of the fact that the President was on his maiden visit to his home state since becoming helmsman in Nigeria, the first to emerge from the Niger Delta in the 50-year history of the nation.


Since the event, several theories have been bandied about in the popular media, and the debate continues even today on social networking sites such as Facebook. One respondent offered that the citizens of Bayelsa revolted because Sylva’s government has become one of billboards showing nothing but the face of the governor all over the state. On its part, the government of Sylva has given swift reasons as to why it was ridiculed openly, attributing the disgraceful and provocative onslaught to political opponents in the state. The Commissioner for Information has equally given assurance that security agencies are investigating the matter with a view to bringing the culprits to book.

But the plot of the story thickened when Governor Sylva held a press conference on Monday October 25, and laid the blame squarely at the feet of his cabinet members. He announced that some of his commissioners had performed abysmally, a situation that has become manifest in the general perception that his government had practically failed. According to him, the poor performance of his government is attributable to the “attitude problems” of his commissioners, some of whom he condemned as having become “mentally lazy.”

The regrettable incident, he said, was a reaction to the fact that his government lost direction after the re-run elections of April 2008. He also admitted that if his government did not abandon construction of projects following the nullification of the election results that brought him to office, the people of the state would not have had any reason to stone him during the President’s visit. The governor went further to ascribe his non-performance to a sharp drop in allocations accruing to the state from the Federation Account. It is on record, for instance, that in the first six months of 2010 alone, the government of Bayelsa received N49 Billion from the federal allocation, as against N90 Billion and N99 Billion for the neighbouring Delta and Rivers States respectively.

As may be expected, the governor’s statements have only drawn attention to the staggering fortune at the disposal of the governments in the oil producing region, in the light of which their touted achievements amount to very little. Yet, according to Sylva, profligacy is the only thing missing in his administration. Even so, he would be hard put to prove what he did substantially with the cumulative sums that have entered the coffers of the state since he came into office, before the drop in income.

At any rate, we find it gratifying that Governor Timipre Sylva was gracious enough to admit that his administration lost steam in the governance of the state, and willfully abandoned projects that were earning it some measure of credibility. It takes courage to own up to the truth, and Sylva has done so. “I lost momentum after coming back in 2008. It’s not easy,” he said.

If anything, the press conference provided one rare opportunity for the governor to acknowledge in public that his government has failed woefully to deliver the proverbial dividends of democracy that it had so lavishly promised when it came into office on May 29, 2007, advertising itself as a new generation government that had to be taken seriously. It is truly sad that it took so long for the governor to come to this realization.

While we sympathize with Governor Timipre Sylva over the stoning incident and his avowed loss of focus, the reasons he has adduced for his poor performance are debatable. That is why we are obliged to call upon the Sylva government to forgo the pursuit of its perceived enemies, and to concentrate instead on a soul-searching appraisal of its conduct since coming into office. Besides, having publicly identified the problem with his government, the governor should act timely to earn the trust of the electorate if indeed he hopes to return to office in the next dispensation.

Ultimately, the great October showdown demonstrates that the Bayelsa electorate are fully aware of the power of their votes, and are eager to express their discontent with any government that fails to perform, even if it means hauling stones to underscore their frustration. To be sure, President Goodluck Jonathan was suitably embarrassed at the turn of events, but the crowd did well to assure him of their loyalty with a cheerful rendition of solidarity songs when he stood up to speak, a clear indication that his support base is intact at the home front.

In the best tradition of a peace-loving diplomat, President Jonathan called on Bayelsans to have mercy upon Governor Sylva in much the same way that a tolerant father would call his erring children to order in a riotous household. Yet, it is worrisome that Sylva has been presiding over a complacent cabinet for so long, an executive body composed of mentally lazy bureaucrats who have virtually imposed a mentally lazy way of life on the active conscience of the good people of Bayelsa State.

It is truly disturbing that, knowing the kind of cabinet he is burdened with, Sylva has continued to tolerate mediocrity and indolence in his government, and has been compelled by brick-throwing Bayelsans to advertise his shortcomings to the world. It says a great deal about the governor’s sense of propriety and good judgment -- or lack of both -- that he should condone high-level incompetence at the expense of the state and its law-abiding citizens thus far.

When citizens revolt, it can only mean that they are tired of the policies and programmes of a government in which they had placed so much trust. The earlier Governor Timipre Sylva-Sam separates the dons from the dunces in his cabinet, the better for the land and people of Bayelsa State.


QUOTE: When citizens revolt, it can only mean that they are tired of the government in which they had placed so much trust.


~ By Nengi Josef Ilagha


About the Author:
His Royal Majesty Nengi Josef Ilagha Mingi XII, is the Amanyanabo of Nembe Bayelsa State, Nigeria.

Also recommended: Epistle to President Goodluck Jonathan on Niger Delta Matters

Click here for more published works of the author.


© 2010 - Nengi Josef Ilagha Mingi XII. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be copied or reproduced in any format or medium without the prior permission of the author and copyright owner(s).



Thursday, May 13, 2010

Statement by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Micheál Martin, T.D., on the crash of Afriqiyah Airlines flight 8U771

13 May 2010 05:40 Africa/Lagos

Statement by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Micheál Martin, T.D., on the crash of Afriqiyah Airlines flight 8U771


TRIPOLI, May 12, 2010/African Press Organization (APO)/ -- Statement by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Micheál Martin, T.D., on the crash of Afriqiyah Airlines flight 8U771:


I regret to confirm the death of an Irish citizen in the Libyan air crash today. Afriqiyah Airlines flight 8U771 was travelling from Johannesburg when it went down on approach to Tripoli International Airport this morning, Wednesday, 12 May.


Officials from my Department learned this afternoon that an Irishwoman was on the passenger list for this flight. The Irish Ambassador to Libya (who is normally based in Rome) is in Tripoli with another consular official and is in close contact with the authorities in Libya in relation to the tragic loss of this flight. Arrangements are being made to inform the family and my Department is ready to provide all possible assistance at this difficult time.


I would ask that members of the media respect the privacy of the family and friends of the deceased in order that they be given time and space to come to terms with this terrible tragedy.


I would like to extend my sympathies to all those families who have suffered a bereavement in this tragic accident.

Source: Ireland - Ministry of Foreign Affairs