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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-11650593

I found this site browsing on the BBC, looks quite interesting

http://www.1641.tcd.ie/index.php

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11159256

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11058975

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-10899786

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-10810758

"We don't need noone to tell us what's right or wrong." - Paul Weller

Discuss

Mods, can my display name be changed to ardmachaabu?  This is at hardstation's request, just so you know 

La Boca in Belfast city centre, can't say a good word about the place.  Went for the second time during the week and again the food was awful, the mrs wasn't impressed either.  Her food arrived cold and it was tasteless

Needless to say we won't be back

What restaurant would you not recommend to anyone and why?

... wee Marty lobbying on behalf of Derry/Londonderry to become UK City of Culture 2013 

You couldn't make it up if you tried

From the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/10334795.stm

Can we have it, please?

... you came into close contact with someone who murdered a loved one and you knew that if you were to continue visiting the same place would mean seeing this person on a regular basis and to have to be civil to them.

What would you do and why?

On Saturday night there will be a GAA talkback night in Seán Mac Diarmada GAA Club house, Falls Road, Guests include Jarlath Burns, Joe Brolly, Paddy Cunningham and Ulster ladies President Hugh Devenney, Free entry and starts at 7:30pm!

Donations are welcome, all proceeds go to the youth development fund of the club

Dear Friend,
How are you? I hope all is well with your family, friends and pets. I hope this urgent mail meets you in a perfect condition. We have no time to waste regarding the information I am about to tell you, it is an urgent and serious matter.
My name is Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, senior data analyst here at the CERN institute based here in Geneva CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world's largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works.  You may have seen on the news that, in recent days, our Large Hadron Collider machine has been colliding high-speed beams of energy in order to explore new physics and understand how the universe began. CERN have been adamant that this is safe, however I KNOW THE TRUTH.
The truth is that this experiment that CERN are conducting is extremely dangerous, and could cause global disaster.  This experiment has a 95% of causing a black hole, thus swallowing a large area of the planet. The scientists do not want you to know this as they know it will cause panic. However, I can help you.
I am arranging for a number of selected people to be evacuated to a safe location on an island in the South Pacific via aeroplane. You have been selected from random to take part in this evacuation, thus continuing the survival of the human race.
Please, if you are interested, email me back immediately with the following information:


Full name:
Age:
Contact number:
Country:
Email address:


Please send all emails to our official email box below,

euronuclear.research@rescueteam.com OR euronuclear.research@hotmail.com 



Regards, and God bless.
Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth

For years I really respected them especially when Hume was at the helm.  Since Durkan gave up the leadership I think they have went into terminal decline and as there isn't much of an SDLP youth wing I would say they are a spent political force at this stage.  That doesn't mean they will lose Westminster seats though, I think there are a hardcore of people who will never vote for shinners who would vote SDLP now.  Unless some kind of middle ground politics starts to become the order of the day the SDLP will disappear while the extremists on the nationalist side will benefit ultimately

Soccer or football?

For me, it will always be football.  I lost interest in soccer nearly 30 years ago after a very brief flirtation with supporting Leeds and I only followed them because my da did.  Soccer bores me and there is nothing I would rather do as a hobby than support Armagh, I attended my first inter county game way back in 1975/6 at the Athletic Grounds and have been addicted to Armagh ever since.

So, which would you prefer and why?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8599404.stm

Anyone watching it at the moment?

The hate and the quake

Published on: 1/17/2010.

BY SIR HILARY BECKLES

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES is in the process of conceiving how best to deliver a major conference on the theme Rethinking And Rebuilding Haiti.
I am very keen to provide an input into this exercise because for too long there has been a popular perception that somehow the Haitian nation-building project, launched on January 1, 1804, has failed on account of mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption.
Buried beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda, out of both Western Europe and the United States, is the evidence which shows that Haiti's independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy.
The evidence is striking, especially in the context of France.
The Haitians fought for their freedom and won, as did the Americans fifty years earlier. The Americans declared their independence and crafted an extraordinary constitution that set out a clear message about the value of humanity and the right to freedom, justice, and liberty.
In the midst of this brilliant discourse, they chose to retain slavery as the basis of the new nation state. The founding fathers therefore could not see beyond race, as the free state was built on a slavery foundation.
The water was poisoned in the well; the Americans went back to the battlefield a century later to resolve the fact that slavery and freedom could not comfortably co-exist in the same place.
The French, also, declared freedom, fraternity and equality as the new philosophies of their national transformation and gave the modern world a tremendous progressive boost by so doing.
They abolished slavery, but Napoleon Bonaparte could not imagine the republic without slavery and targeted the Haitians for a new, more intense regime of slavery. The British agreed, as did the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese.
All were linked in communion over the 500 000 Blacks in Haiti, the most populous and prosperous Caribbean colony.
As the jewel of the Caribbean, they all wanted to get their hands on it. With a massive slave base, the English, French and Dutch salivated over owning it - and the people.
The people won a ten-year war, the bloodiest in modern history, and declared their independence. Every other country in the Americas was based on slavery.
Haiti was freedom, and proceeded to place in its 1805 Independence Constitution that any person of African descent who arrived on its shores would be declared free, and a citizen of the republic.
For the first time since slavery had commenced, Blacks were the subjects of mass freedom and citizenship in a nation.
The French refused to recognise Haiti's independence and declared it an illegal pariah state. The Americans, whom the Haitians looked to in solidarity as their mentor in independence, refused to recognise them, and offered solidarity instead to the French. The British, who were negotiating with the French to obtain the ownership title to Haiti, also moved in solidarity, as did every other nation-state the Western world.
Haiti was isolated at birth - ostracised and denied access to world trade, finance, and institutional development. It was the most vicious example of national strangulation recorded in modern history.
The Cubans, at least, have had Russia, China, and Vietnam. The Haitians were alone from inception. The crumbling began.
Then came 1825; the moment of full truth. The republic is celebrating its 21st anniversary. There is national euphoria in the streets of Port-au-Prince.
The economy is bankrupt; the political leadership isolated. The cabinet took the decision that the state of affairs could not continue.
The country had to find a way to be inserted back into the world economy. The French government was invited to a summit.
Officials arrived and told the Haitian government that they were willing to recognise the country as a sovereign nation but it would have to pay compensation and reparation in exchange. The Haitians, with backs to the wall, agreed to pay the French.
The French government sent a team of accountants and actuaries into Haiti in order to place a value on all lands, all physical assets, the 500 000 citizens were who formerly enslaved, animals, and all other commercial properties and services.
The sums amounted to 150 million gold francs. Haiti was told to pay this reparation to France in return for national recognition.
The Haitian government agreed; payments began immediately. Members of the Cabinet were also valued because they had been enslaved people before independence.
Thus began the systematic destruction of the Republic of Haiti. The French government bled the nation and rendered it a failed state. It was a merciless exploitation that was designed and guaranteed to collapse the Haitian economy and society.
Haiti was forced to pay this sum until 1922 when the last instalment was made. During the long 19th century, the payment to France amounted to up to 70 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings.
Jamaica today pays up to 70 per cent in order to service its international and domestic debt. Haiti was crushed by this debt payment. It descended into financial and social chaos.
The republic did not stand a chance. France was enriched and it took pleasure from the fact that having been defeated by Haitians on the battlefield, it had won on the field of finance. In the years when the coffee crops failed, or the sugar yield was down, the Haitian government borrowed on the French money market at double the going interest rate in order to repay the French government.
When the Americans invaded the country in the early 20th century, one of the reasons offered was to assist the French in collecting its reparations.
The collapse of the Haitian nation resides at the feet of France and America, especially. These two nations betrayed, failed, and destroyed the dream that was Haiti; crushed to dust in an effort to destroy the flower of freedom and the seed of justice.
Haiti did not fail. It was destroyed by two of the most powerful nations on earth, both of which continue to have a primary interest in its current condition.
The sudden quake has come in the aftermath of summers of hate. In many ways the quake has been less destructive than the hate.
Human life was snuffed out by the quake, while the hate has been a long and inhumane suffocation - a crime against humanity.
During the 2001 UN Conference on Race in Durban, South Africa, strong representation was made to the French government to repay the 150 million francs.
The value of this amount was estimated by financial actuaries as US$21 billion. This sum of capital could rebuild Haiti and place it in a position to re-engage the modern world. It was illegally extracted from the Haitian people and should be repaid.
It is stolen wealth. In so doing, France could discharge its moral obligation to the Haitian people.
For a nation that prides itself in the celebration of modern diplomacy, France, in order to exist with the moral authority of this diplomacy in this post-modern world, should do the just and legal thing.
Such an act at the outset of this century would open the door for a sophisticated interface of past and present, and set the Haitian nation free at last.

Sir Hilary Beckles is pro-vice-chancellor and Principal of the Cave Hill Campus, UWI.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8398895.stm

I have respected him for quite a while but it really must have taken an enormous amount of strength to do what he did in meeting Adams