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Folks

Heading to Germany next week for a wedding and flying into Berlin SXF. Is the easiest way to get to central berlin on the express train or are the bus/local trains easier/cheaper?

Just saw this article - Unreal stuff ( taking into account its written by Hugh Grant)

http://www.newstatesman.com/newspapers/2011/04/phone-yeah-cameron-murdoch

Folks - Have we any residents of the City by the Bay on here?

Reason being we're heading over that direction in August and I came across this festival that looks interesting http://www.sfoutsidelands.com/news/.

On a scale I was wondering whether it was at the Oxegen side of things(younger drink fueled debauchery) or Electric Picnic (older more mellowed out debauchery).

Story in todays Herlad about Cluxton decking Mcateer at a charity soccer match yesterday. Nice dig
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulwa/5586195371/in/photostream/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfrn0_ij71s

No thread on the Cork game so why not have one about the two All-Ireland champions in HQ on the one night. Looking forward to both games and a blue double

Tipp will not like to lose the first two league games and Cork showed against Kerry that they are still the top team in the country so the Dubs will be up against it.

Also great interview here with David Hickey about a presentation that's due to take place on Sat night
http://m.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2011/0212/1224289636068.html

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/city-news/students-quizzed-over-trinity-ski-trip-chaos-2509358.html

What a shower

Laois' Tom Kelly has been forced to retire from football due to the neck injury he sustained last year.

The centre-back broke a bone in his neck while playing for St Joseph's and although he has recovered from the injury, he has been warned it would be dangerous to continue playing.

Kelly said in The Independent: 'I've been told never to play again because it would be too dangerous. I'm only 31. To think I'll never play football again is tough to swallow.'

Kelly was part of the Laois team that won the Leinster title in 2003, ending a 57-year wait, while he also won an All-Star that year.

He was also part of the Ireland International Rules team from 2003-2006

Jesus that is tough - Best of luck to him

Got this in an email -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nM04G7eIiw&feature=player_embedded#!

Welcome to Ireland 2011

http://www.someecards.com/2011/01/10/craigslist-job-posting-fine-dont-f**king-hire-me

http://us.akinator.com/

A twist on the old 20 questions game

On the day that our country will be sold into bondage I thought this would bring some cheer
http://christmasfm.ie/
All for good causes as well

Anyone out there here about this?
www.claimingourfuture.ie

Could it become something that would positively change the country?

Browne, Kavanagh & Ryall retire from Inter-County Hurling
Written by: Oisin Kearns on 9th September 2010

Three of the Longest serving Hurlers have announced their retirement -Tony Browne from Waterford along with Kilkenny defensive pair of Michael Kavanagh and James Ryall have decided to hang up their boots.

Deise hurler Browne made his championship debut for Waterford in 1992 and went on to win four Munster senior hurling titles, scoring a important goal in the first of those victories for Waterford. He collected the first of his three All Star awards and the Hurler of the Year award in 1998. He joins fellow Deise stall-worth Dan Shanahan into retirement.

Kilkenny hurlers Michael Kavanagh(31) and James Ryall(29) have brought their inter-county careers to a close after last Sunday's All-Ireland final defeat to Tipperary where neither saw any action.

Kavanagh was the right corner-back for Kilkenny four in row, but Ryall has only been used from the bench since the 2006 All-Ireland final.

After stunning playing careers Kavanagh has 7 & Ryall 6 All-Ireland senior medals, with Kavanagh holding the record for the most Leinster medals ever won with the one county, having won 12.

Best of luck to the lads and thanks for the memories. Would have loved to have seen Browne get that elusive celtic cross but like many great players before him it wasn't to be.

With the re-opening of the Dunboyne rail link today, the upgrade of the N3 junction at Blanch/the M50 and the new M3 motorway all coming along this year will 2010 be known as the year that Meath is now really Dublin 29?

Well folks any thoughts on this one yet? After last years damp squib I don't know what to expect. On form Meath will be favourites but form can sometimes mean nothing in these games. Unless Dublin improve 100% from the Wexford game I can only see a Royal victory and it's been nearly 10 years since they beat Dublin in a championship game.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/01/a-detailed-account-of-the_n_596522.html

Folks

Trying to get a club banner organised for a parade - any decent contacts?

Shocking video of a ref being attacked down in Tipp at the weekend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFAyMZWn9Mo

Hopefully the culprit is punished both by the GAA but also by the justice system

Long read but interesting stuff

It's a story that some have chosen to forget. Not down Mexico way, however, where the San Patricios, a battalion of Irish soldiers who switched sides to fight against the US invaders in the war of 1846-1848, are celebrated as heroes. BRIAN BOYD talks to Ry Cooder and Paddy Moloney
IN CLIFDEN, Co Galway, they raise the Mexican flag every September 12th in honour of a local man, John Riley, who was once described as "the most hated man in America". Riley was the leader of the little-known "Batallón de San Patricio" (St Patrick's Battalion) who fought against the US in the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War. The San Patricios (a group numbering in the hundreds – the majority of whom were Irishmen) were particularly reviled by the US forces as they were considered ideological deserters to the Mexican side.

When the US army prevailed, these deserters were ceremoniously hanged in gruesome circumstances. The Mexican government at the time described the nature of their deaths as "a cruel and horrible torment, improper in a civilised age and ironic for a people who aspire to the title of illustrious and humane". A journalist covering the war described the nature of the hangings as a "refinement of cruelty".

The San Patricios are revered to this day in Mexico as the bravest of the brave. The battalion's name adorns many streets and landmarks in the country and their name is inscribed in gold in the Mexican parliament. St Patrick's Day in the country is celebrated, primarily, in honour of the "Irish martyrs". Six years ago, the Mexican government presented a commemorative statue to the Irish government in "perpetual thanks for the bravery, honour and sacrifice" of the San Patricios.

The story has been largely written out of US history – it is said the US military is still ashamed about the brutal manner of their execution. Irish immigrants in the US preferred not to talk about how their countrymen were "traitors" to the US cause. In Ireland, the San Patricios are rarely, if ever, mentioned.

A new album by The Chieftains and Ry Cooder, San Patricio , aims to lift the veil of silence that has descended around these men.With contributions from Liam Neeson, Linda Rondstadt, Clannad's Moya Brennan and a host of big-name Mexican musicians, San Patricio is an exhilarating mix of IrishMexican rhythms and rhymes which explains who the San Patricios were and what they fought for.

"I first came across this story about 25 years ago," says Paddy Moloney of the The Chieftains, sitting with Ry Cooder in Dublin's Clarence Hotel. "I had just been given this honorary doctorate from Trinity College and an academic there asked me to do a musical project about the American civil war. It was while doing research for that that I came across these people called the San Patricios – Irishmen who had deserted to US army to fight for Mexico. This was a story that has never been told in history books – there was a lot of shame associated with what these men did. It's taken me all this time to get around to it and I started by going to Mexico for a month and just digging around looking for information about them."

Ry Cooder, a regular collaborator with The Chieftains and co-producer of the album, gives his take on the significance of the US-Mexican war. "The 1846-1848 war was an act of savagery," he says. "It represented the first time the US invaded a country for territory. This wasn't a so-called 'pre-emptive' attack; it was a sheer land grab. The US took 50 per cent of Mexico's land after winning the war. The US were after the state of California, basically, and they got it. Shortly after the war, there was a gold rush in California which brought great wealth to the area. Coincidence?

"By losing 50 per cent of its land, Mexico was left severely economically disadvantaged, and you can trace the divergence in both countries' economies back to that war. The real story of this war, and by extension the role of the San Patricios in it, isn't told in US history classes. Whereas so many bald-faced lies are taught in our schools about our history: the myths concerning our nationhood and the superstition about our democracy – that every citizen is equal under our law. What Americans call 'democracy' is actually just making the world safe for their business interests."

Paddy Moloney's first point of call when he travelled to Mexico was a place called Churubusco, just outside Mexico City. Churubusco was where the St Patrick's Battalion made its last stand. Within months, the war was over. "There's a convent in Churubusco where this last great battle took place," says Moloney. "You can still see the bullet holes in the walls there. I was amazed to find that every Sunday, a Mexican pipe band plays for the tourists. The pipes they play are Irish pipes in honour of the San Patricios.

"Here was my musical 'in', because the main idea behind the album was to trace the Irish musical influence, via the San Patricios, on Mexican music. I had this march composed for the album and I got this Churubusco pipe band to record it on the spot. Then it all unravelled beautifully for me: I heard this early 20th-century tribute to their famous revolutionary leader, Pancho Villa, and the melody was virtually identical to the Irish rebel song Kevin Barry . Was this learnt from the descendants of the San Patricios who weren't killed in the war and settled in Mexico? The more I travelled and the more I heard, the musical connections between the two countries were becoming very clear and very apparent to me."

"There are still many O'Learys and O'Briens in Mexico," adds Cooder. "You see all these blue-eyed, red-haired people who are directly descended from the San Patricios who survived. Paddy's great input to this album was wandering through the musical landscape of Mexico and really understanding the musical links between the countries, and this is all over the album – Mexican guitars, accordions, bajo sexto and trumpets mingling with uilleann pipes, tin whistles, bodhráns and flutes. And apart from all the Irish musicians on it, you have some amazing Mexican acts such as Los Tigres Del Norte, Los Folkloristas and Lila Downes. We even got the old Beach Boys composer and arranger Van Dyke Parks to be involved."

"After just a month in Mexico, I came back with more material than I could ever use," says Moloney. "And once word got around about this project, a lot of people became very keen to get involved – Liam Neeson, for example, just jumped at the chance.

"And the more time I spent in Mexico talking about the legacy there of the San Patricios, the more I began to understand their story. You have to remember that a lot of the Irish who ended up in the San Patricios would have been people who had just arrived at Ellis Island after leaving Ireland to escape the famine. Apparently what happened was there were US military recruitment officers at Ellis Island. As soon as these men got off the boat, they had a gun put in their hand and they were told to go off and 'kill Mexicans'.

"It so happened that a lot of the people giving these men orders in the US army, the generals, were Protestant, and these Irishmen found themselves, as poor Catholics, being asked to kill poor Mexican Catholics in a war they didn't really understand. This, I believe, was the main reason for the desertion. You will also hear that the Mexican government offered the Irish more money to fight for them and promised them land after the war's end, but how much of that is propaganda I don't know."

For Moloney, San Patricio has been a 25- year "labour of love", from initial conception to the album's release. "I really hope that by telling the San Patricios' story in music, we have gone some way to acknowledging their existence and their untold story," he says.

"Although the backdrop to all of this is a war between the US and Mexico, it really is a typical kind of Irish story: it's about the terrible time we had with the neighbours who came to visit and forgot to go back!"