Category Archives: Misc

Margaret Goodwin (centre) with 12 fellow runners who have raced in every Women’s Mini Marathon since its inception 40 years ago

Stop that.

This afternoon.

Iveagh Gardens, Dublin 2.

As the Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon celebrates its 40th anniversary, 13 women (representing counties Dublin, Wicklow, Galway, Kildare and Sligo) who have taken part in the event every year since it began, came together to celebrate the milestone.

The 2022 Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon – a 10km leisurely stroll dash through Dublin City Centre – returns on Sunday June 5.

Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon 2022

Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland

Bolette Soborg, of the Danish health Authority

This afternoon.

Copenhagen, Denmark

Via AFP:

Denmark, which in February lifted all curbs related to the coronavirus pandemic, said today it was suspending its widespread Covid-19 vaccination campaign.

Noting that the epidemic was under control and that vaccination levels were high, the Danish Health Authority said the country was in a “good position”.

“Therefore, we are winding down the mass vaccination programme against Covid-19,” said Bolette Soborg, director of the authority’s department of infectious diseases.

Around 81% of Denmark’s 5.8 million inhabitants have received two doses of the vaccine and 61.6% have also received a booster.

While invitations for vaccinations would no longer be issued after May 15, health officials anticipate that vaccinations would resume after the summer.

“We plan to reopen the vaccination programme in the autumn. This will be preceded by a thorough professional assessment of who and when to vaccinate and with which vaccines,” Soberg said.

Denmark suspends Covid vaccination campaign (i24)

AP

Meanwhile…

Um.

From top: Trans Pride parade in Dublin in 2019; Colette Colfer

I’ve been lecturing on world religions for sixteen years. Prior to this, I worked as a journalist and often wrote articles and made radio programmes about Ireland’s changing religious landscape.

As someone who is hugely interested in religion, I have noticed that as the Catholic Church is declining in importance in Ireland, new belief systems are emerging to take up some of the spaces vacated. One of these in particular – gender identity theory – is rising to prominence and quickly becoming dominant.

Gender identity theory involves the belief that gender is an identity or an internal sense of self that is independent of the physical body. Some suggest that gender identity rather than biological sex should take precedence in matters of law, society, and culture. This theory is used, for example, to justify the argument that biological males who identify as women should compete in the women’s category in sports.

I study religion from what is called a phenomenological perspective. This involves bracketing off my own personal beliefs in order to try to understand religion from the believer’s perspective without judging their claims to truth. The approach can be summed up by the words of Ninian Smart who wrote ‘god is real for Christians, whether he exists or not’.

Over the past twenty years, the phenomenological approach has worked well for me. I have travelled to Pakistan where I visited Islamic madrassas. I’ve stuck pieces of paper into cracks of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, visited the West Bank and Bethlehem, gone on two Holocaust study trips to Auschwitz. I’ve participated in Zen Buddhist retreats and in Hindu festivals. I’ve attended African Pentecostal services in industrial estate warehouses, fasted for Ramadan and broke the fast with Muslims in mosques.

I’ve been to Sabbath services in Dublin synagogues and have meditated at ‘Dzogchen Beara’, the Buddhist retreat centre in west Cork. I’ve stayed with the nuns at Glencairn monastery in County Waterford and participated in a pagan Mayday celebration on the Hill of Tara which involved scattering white rose petals on a pentagram with its lines chalked out on grass. I’ve danced with witches in Clonegal Castle in County Wexford and peered into the holy well in the castle dungeon which, at the time, was a ‘Temple of Isis’. I’ve interviewed members of Atheist Ireland and the Church of Scientology.

People from all these religions and belief systems permitted me to enter their worlds with no compulsion on me to participate or to believe. Yet today, in Ireland, when it comes to gender identity theory, it is becoming difficult to adopt the phenomenological perspective as there is increasing pressure to accept this theory uncritically.

Although there is no concept of the divine in gender identity theory, there are elements that could be considered religious. There are symbols, chants, flags, parades, and ‘holy’ days. There is a belief in what could be termed transubstantiation where the substance of the body is believed to change from one sex to another. A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul.

The idea of a heretic or infidel is also relevant. People and organisations who don’t subscribe to gender identity theory, or who publicly criticise or even question it, have been denounced or ostracised, and products and publications boycotted. Detransitioners, who no longer subscribe to the theory, are akin to apostates.

The theory also involves a moral code and a creed that centers around concepts of equality, diversity, and inclusion. There is a clergy in the form of people from organisations who promote the theory and who give ‘sermons’ in training and workshops. Some people signal their adherence to the theory by using certain words or phrases or by including pronouns (such as ‘he/him’) in email signatures or on online public profiles.

Gender identity theory is increasingly evident in Irish government policies and publications. One questionnaire recently published by the Higher Education Authority of Ireland asked ‘What gender (if any) do you most identify with?’ but had no question about biological sex.

The Central Statistics Office of Ireland advised people filling in the 2022 Census form that they could tick both male and female if they were uncomfortable choosing one.

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service has asked blood donors to tick ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question ‘Your: current gender different from that assigned to you at birth?’ Training and workshops on gender identity have been rolled out through all levels of the education system.

To suggest that gender identity theory is a new religion is not to denigrate the theory. My aim, as a phenomenologist, is to understand the belief and its associated practices without making value statements about its truth.I understand that gender identity is real for people who believe in it.

However, I am concerned by how quickly and deeply this theory is becoming embedded at the government level and what appears to me to be an increasing compulsion to believe.

Colette Colfer is a lecturer in world religions at Waterford Institute of Technology (soon to be the South East Technological University, or SETU). Colette can be followed on twitter @colettecolfer.

RollingNews

Kane Tanaka

Via BBC

A Japanese woman officially certified as the world’s oldest person has died aged 119.

Kane Tanaka was born in 1903, the same year as George Orwell, at a time when Japan was emerging as a global power.

She got married a century ago, and had four children. She spent her later years in a Japanese care home, where she enjoyed board games and chocolate.

With her death, the world’s oldest person is now Lucile Randon, a 118-year-old French nun.

Meanwhile…

122.

In fairness.

Kane Tanaka: Japanese woman certified world’s oldest person dies (BBC)

This morning/afternoon.

RDS, Ballsbridge Dublin 4 Dublin.

Self help gurus, from top: author and philanthropist Sharon Lechter; Entrepreneur and Behavioural Change Expert Eric Edmeade; peak sports performance expert Shaun Edwards; explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and spin doctor and much-admired alleged war criminal Alastair Campbell, kick off the Pendulum Summit and

Shaun Edwards: “Sometimes you need somebody to push you hard”(RTE)

Leah Farrell/RollingNews

From top: Supporters of dissident republican group Saoradh gather in Derry for a parade last Easter Monday in the city; Anthony Sheridan

Hardly a week passes without a sermon from one mainstream media source or another reminding people of the vital role the sector plays in presenting news and current affairs with honesty and integrity.

The Irish Examiner is particularly strident in warning of the dangers posed by non-mainstream news sources. This example from an editorial marking the first anniversary of Marian Finucane’s death in december 2020:.

‘…the need for good journalism have never been more important at a time when fake news and groundless clickbait continue to flood our social media channels.

In the year ahead, accurate news from trusted sources will continue to play a vital role in dispelling the corrosive force of misinformation.’

Unfortunately, for those who place their trust in the Irish Examiner, the ‘corrosive force of misinformation’ is often employed by the paper, particularly against those who pose a threat to the power of the ruling political establishment.

Just last week, the paper published what was, in effect, a fake news story, strongly suggesting that Sinn Féin was responsible for a violent parade by the dissident republican group Saoradh.

Despite the fact that Sinn Féin had nothing whatsoever to do with the parade, the Irish Examiner had no scruples about making a damaging link between the party and the organisers of the parade.

‘If Ms McDonald is serious about having companions on historic travels then Sinn Féin will have to address the law and order contradictions which allow extreme republicans to prematurely present an event which ended with petrol bombs and arrests as a “dignified parade” allied to a tone-deaf refusal to listen to a reasonable request from a family not to march on the anniversary of the murder of a young woman. A murder for which there has still to be a criminal conviction.’

This cheap and obvious attempt to blame Sinn Féin for the parade and subsequent violence was all the more reprehensible for falsely linking the party with the murder of journalist Lyra McKee in 2019.

In a crude attempt to pretend the article was balanced, and not an attack on Sinn Féin, the anonymous author added:

‘Events such as masked parades incrementally take the shine off their [Sinn Fein’s] standing even where they are not seen to be the organisers.’

This manipulation of news stories by the Irish Examiner is not new. An even more odious example occurred just before the 2020 election. Context is vital in understanding this disgraceful example of so-called professional journalism.

Seven days before the election on 8 February an Irish/Times MRBI poll reflected a dramatic rise in support for Sinn Féin over Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

The development sent shock waves through the establishment media. Here, for example, is how the political editor of the Irish Examiner, Daniel McConnell, began an article in response to the poll.

So, just what in the hell is going on?

Three days before the election, on WednesdayFebruary 5, there was an attack on the Glasnevin cemetery memorial wall. The monument commemorates those who died between the Easter Rising in 1916 and the end of the Civil War in 1923, including British soldiers killed in the conflict.

The vandals have never been identified but that did not stop the Irish Examiner from, effectively, blaming Sinn Féin for the attack.

‘It would be utterly wrong to link Sinn Féin to Wednesday night’s attack on Glasnevin cemetery’s memorial wall…

‘…However, it would be wrong too to pretend that strands of this election campaign, especially Sinn Féin’s online echo chambers, have not created an atmosphere if not encouraging such criminality then making it seem ordinary, almost praiseworthy.

In the lead up to this warping of a news story, the author wrote of:

‘The anger, poison and basic dishonesty associated with Sinn Fein supporters on social media.’

Reading this journalistic garbage I can see only one difference between the standards practiced at the Irish Examiner and the anonymous trolls on social media – The trolls don’t preach and pretend they operate from the high moral ground.

Anthony Sheridan is a freelance journalist and blogs at Back Garden Philosophy

Pic: Derry.net

Curry’s staff members Entela Lici (left) and Fiona Rudden

‘sup?

This morning.

Dublin 15.

Currys Ireland have raised €75,000 for Irish charity ‘My Canine Companion’to train up seven service dogs, making a life changing difference to children and their families living with autism. To celebrate the achievement, and mark Autism Awareness Month, the seven puppies in training visited the Currys store in Blanchardstown Retail Park.

Arf.

Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland