St Patrick's Day in White House is not mere shamrock diplomacy (click here)
THE ANNUAL shamrock ceremony at the White House has become such a familiar fixture in the political calendar that it’s easy to overlook the extraordinary and unlikely nature of today’s events in Washington.
Starting with a bilateral meeting in the morning and ending with a lavish reception this evening, the leader of the most powerful nation on earth will devote much of his working day to one of the smallest countries in Europe – one that is not even a military ally of the United States.
When Brian Cowen meets President Barack Obama in the Oval Office for almost an hour this morning, they will be joined by vice-president Joe Biden, secretary of state Hillary Clinton and national security adviser Jim Jones. After the shamrock ceremony, the Taoiseach and the president will join House speaker Nancy Pelosi for lunch on Capitol Hill, with dozens of congressmen and senators, including chairmen of some of the most powerful committees.
In the evening, the president will host almost 400 people at the most elaborate party the White House has seen since he took office. During the day, Clinton will meet the North’s First Minister and Deputy First Minister and Obama will find time to drop in on a meeting between the Northern leaders and Jones....
The Ireland that Saint Patrick knew (click here)
Andersonstown News Thursday
By Fr Des
We’re celebrating St Patrick again. Maybe this time we should also celebrate not just Patrick but the kind of Ireland he came to.
The Ireland Patrick came to was a highly organised, highly developed people, culturally and otherwise. The Druids were the intellectual elite. Trade was constant with countries to the northeast and in the Mediterranean. Ships of the period were capable of carrying hundreds of people and substantial cargos. Baltinglass in the Wicklow Hills was one of the most important settled trading communities. Highly organised agriculture was going on in what we now call the Ceide Fields in the West. Trading and organised farming had been going on for hundreds of years before Patrick arrived.
When Patrick was captured it must have been by people in ships of a size capable of carrying slaves, equipment, armed warriors. When he eventually escaped from bondage he managed to reach an Irish seaport where a cargo ship was anchored, ready to sail, probably toward France.
Hundreds of years before Patrick, around about 65 BC, there was a massive sea battle involving hundreds of ships, Celtic and Roman, somewhere by the northwest coast of France. The Roman ships were more easily manoeuvred than the heavier ocean-going Celtic vessels and the Celts were defeated by a change in the direction of the wind. That happened a few times in Irish history. Julius Caesar, in his ruthless extension of the Roman Empire, also had to destroy Celtic sea power to enable Romans to invade Britain. Roman forces eventually got up to what we think of as a line dividing England and Scotland and there is reason to suppose they could not progress further by sea because Rathlin Island, standing between Irish-controlled territories in Ireland and Scotland, barred the way.
Interesting stuff and far removed from the simple version of Patrick coming to civilise a rude and unlettered race. Roman citizens, like imperial warriors the world over, always thought they were civilising other peoples.
The people of Ireland before Patrick used their own Ogham writing, and Roman and Greek letters as well. They must have been highly literate otherwise they could not have been a trading nation, which they were.
Main roads before Patrick seem to have been well developed and so did the technical skills to build vast monuments like those at Newgrange and district. The Irish had these building skills before the Egyptians built their pyramids. Travelling through Ireland was a matter of using the main skillfully-laid roads and paying one’s way – a kind of toll charge – through territory where local rulers made a bob or two charging for safe passage.
The laws by which Irish people governed themselves before Patrick’s time were more humane and enlightened than Chinese law systems – we have interesting records of these – or the laws laid down in the Jewish Christian Old Testament which largely mirrored the law system of Hamurabi, a Babylonian lawyer.
Here is an interesting thought. We read in the Old Testament that Abraham was the founder of the Jewish race. He was born about 1500 BC. By that time the Ceide Fields had been organised, the Newgrange Monuments built. When the people of Ireland had already organised agriculture, trade, laws and customs, Abraham had not even been born.
The important question is not whether Patrick came and civilized us, the important question is what effect he had on a people culturally, economically and politically developed already.
And why it happened the way it did.
