AOH Home of the Brooklyn Irish
Baile na nGael
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Posted by Jim on June 25, 2018
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Posted by Jim on
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Posted by Jim on
The Fox the Birds and the Poets.
Geneticists, working out of Trinity College in Dublin, have discovered that the Irish gene pool is the least diluted in all of Europe, and perhaps the world. They have also found that the Irish traveling people (*tinkers) are purely Irish and date back to the nomadic hunter gatherers who inhabited Ireland beginning at the end of the last ice-age, prior to the arrival of our first named visitor, Cessair. The earth shattering discovery of the Fox P2 gene, which is high in the Irish DNA, has been found to control the ability to absorb and internalize information, then, after formulating, express it using the voice. This gene is also present in songbirds and serves to remind us that despite what the naysayers and begrudgers have said about us down through the centuries, we Irish truly are, a race apart, there’s no-one else like us, period.
*The word ‘tinker’ is short for tinsmith, denoting the ability to work with all metals including gold and silver.
In the age when the Maigue, flowing broad from the Shannon, winding slow through the sloping place of Crom Dubh, right there, right on that spot, it all changed forever. For it was there that the Long-ships carrying the sons of Thor along its’ looped course, stopped below the fastness sited high above the grassed banks, and sent the Linnet skyward from the heather, in frightful flight. And it was there, right on that spot, where O’Donovan parleyed, swore fealty and ruled in safety with the invasive Dane. And it was there that O’Connor encircled the ramparts at Rathmore, burned the enclosures and routed the pretenders.
And it was there that the Norman puppet masters, with their Welsh and Flemish bowmen in tow, installed the Geraldines to rule in lieu. And it was there that Red Hugh, after the night time march across the frozen bogs, en-route to meet the Spaniard, met first with the Countess from Kildare. And it was there too that the hedge masters of Kilmallock gathered and birthed the written and spoken native tongue. Thus, it was that the Fil Na Maigue rhyme was infused with life’s breath and it was then, right then, on that very spot, in that very place, that the Limerick was born.
The Birth of the Limerick
The two founders of the Maigue Poets in Croom were Sean O’ Tuama and his friend Andrias MacRaith. Both men grew up together in Kilmallock, Co. Limerick. O’Tuama went on to become a publican. After the two men had a falling out they began castigating each other in rhyme. Below are believed to be the first two Limericks ever written and predate Edward Lear by one hundred years.
O’Tuama wrote:
“I sell the best Brandy and Sherry
to make all my customers merry.
But at times their finances
run short as it chances.
And then I feel sad, very, very.”
MacCraith replied:
“O’Tuama, you boast yourself handy,
At selling good ale and bright Brandy,
But the fact is your liquor
makes everyone sicker
I tell you this, I, your good friend Andy.”
Dedicated to the Maigue Poets of Croom.
Posted by Jim on June 24, 2018
The British Crown Forces are refusing to release documents relating to
top loyalist paramilitary Robin ‘The Jackal’ Jackson, a former British
soldier linked to the Miami Showband massacre and other suspected acts
of collusion.
Three members of the popular band were taken from their tour bus and
shot dead on a country road after a gig in Banbridge, County Down in
July 1975. Jackson, who died in 1998, had been linked by fingerprints to
one of the murder weapons used in the massacre. He had been a member of
the British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).
Victims of the attack are suing both the British Ministry of Defence and
PSNI police over suspected collaboration between serving soldiers and
the UVF paramilitary killers.
A British government minister is to decide whether to grant requests by
the British Army and PSNI for ‘Public Interest Immunity’ (PII) orders to
suppress the material on Jackson and related collusion within the UDR.
Military chiefs defending the legal action have claimed documents on the
soldiers involved have also been destroyed. The lawyer representing survivors
and relatives of murdered group members said he had been told material
on vetting and training UDR soldiers linked to the atrocity had been
destroyed more than a decade ago, but had been given no other
explanation.
The band had been travelling in their van to Dublin when a fake British
army patrol made up of UDR soldiers and UVF members stopped them at a
bogus checkpoint outside Newry. Band members were made to line up at the
side of the road while attempts were made to hide a bomb on the van.
The device exploded prematurely, killing some of the would-be bombers.
Their accomplices then opened fire on the band, murdering lead singer
Fran O’Toole, guitarist Tony Geraghty and trumpeter Brian McCoy. Two
other band members, Des McAlea and Stephen Travers, were also injured
but survived.
Survivor Stephen Travers said of the development: “The only response
from British authorities to the charge of murdering three members of the
Miami Showband and the attempted murder of two others is to run and hide
behind a PII cert. Any British minister who grants them this cert will
be complicit in the crime.”
He added: “Until the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern
Ireland stops hiding the files on Robin Jackson, the mass-murderer and
butcher of my band-mates, I will have no option but to view them both as
two sides of the same coin.”
Posted by Jim on
This week in 1897, James Connolly was arrested and detained for
organising a series of protests in Dublin over Queen Victoria’s diamond
jubilee, soem of which resulted in riots.
James Connolly called the Jubilee a “feast of flunkyism” and wrote:
“Join your voice with ours in protesting against the base assumption
that we owe to this empire any other debt than that of hatred of all its
plundering institutions.”
One march was held across the city, with a mock coffin draped in a black
cloth with the words British Empire embroidered on it. Maud Gonne
organised the production of a series of black flags, on which were
written statistics of the famines/starvations, evictions and other
social disasters that had taken place in Ireland during the long reign
of Queen Victoria.
The coffin was eventually thrown into the River Liffey, with Connolly
reportedly shouting as it entered the water, “Here goes the coffin of
the British Empire.”
The following is a speech delivered by Connolly, as transcribed by the
James Connolly Society in 1997.
———————————————————————
“The great appear great to us, only because we are on our knees: LET US
RISE.”
Fellow Workers,
The loyal subjects of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland,
Empress of India, etc., celebrate this year the longest reign on record.
Already the air is laden with rumours of preparations for a wholesale
manufacture of sham ‘popular rejoicings’ at this glorious (?)
commemoration.
Home Rule orators and Nationalist Lord Mayors, Whig politicians and
Parnellite pressmen, have ere now lent their prestige and influence to
the attempt to arouse public interest in the sickening details of this
Feast of Flunkeyism. It is time then that some organised party in
Ireland – other than those in whose mouths Patriotism means Compromise,
and Freedom, High Dividends – should speak out bravely and honestly the
sentiments awakened in the breast of every lover of freedom by this
ghastly farce now being played out before our eyes. Hence the Irish
Socialist Republican Party – which, from its inception, has never
hesitated to proclaim its unswerving hostility to the British Crown, and
to the political and social order of which in these islands that Crown
is but the symbol – takes this opportunity of hurling at the heads of
all the courtly mummers who grovel at the shrine of royalty the contempt
and hatred of the Irish Revolutionary Democracy. We, at least, are not
loyal men; we confess to having more respect and honour for the
raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any,
even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers,
adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England.
During this glorious reign Ireland has seen 1,225,000 of her children
die of famine, starved to death whilst the produce of her soil and their
labour was eaten up by a vulture aristocracy, enforcing their rents by
the bayonets of a hired assassin army in the pay of the -best of the
English Queens’; the eviction of 3,668,000, a multitude greater than the
entire population of Switzerland; and the reluctant emigration of
4,186,000 of our kindred, a greater host than the entire people of
Greece. At the present moment 78 percent of our wage-earners receive
less than #1 per week, our streets are thronged by starving crowds of
the unemployed, cattle graze on our tenantless farms and around the
ruins of our battered homesteads, our ports are crowded with departing
emigrants, and our poorhouses are full of paupers. Such are the
constituent elements out of which we are bade to construct a National
Festival of rejoicing!
Working-class of Ireland: We appeal to you not to allow your opinions to
be misrepresented on this occasion. Join your voice with ours in
protesting against the base assumption that we owe to this Empire any
other debt than that of hatred of all its plundering institutions. Let
this year be indeed a memorable one as marking the date when the Irish
workers at last flung off that slavish dependence on the lead of ‘the
gentry,’ which has paralysed the arm of every soldier of freedom in the
past.
The Irish landlords, now as ever the enemy’s garrison, instinctively
support every institution which, like monarchy, degrades the manhood of
the people and weakens the moral fibre of the oppressed; the
middle-class, absorbed in the pursuit of gold, have pawned their souls
for the prostitute glories of commercialism and remain openly or
secretly hostile to every movement which would imperil the sanctity of
their dividends. The working class alone have nothing to hope for save
in a revolutionary reconstruction of society; they, and they alone, are
capable of that revolutionary initiative which, with all the political
and economic development of the time to aid it, can carry us forward
into the promised land of perfect Freedom, the reward of the age-long
travail of the people.
To you, workers of Ireland, we address ourselves. AGITATE in the
workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers
to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims. EDUCATE, that
the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity
under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists
or landlords form an integral part. ORGANISE, that a solid, compact and
intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you
may seize the reins of political power whenever possible and, by
intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of
action for the revolutionary forces of the future. Let the ‘canting, fed
classes’ bow the knee as they may, be you true to your own manhood, and
to the cause of freedom, whose hope is in you, and, pressing unweariedly
onward in pursuit of the high destiny to which the Socialist Republic
invites you, let the words which the poet puts into the mouth of Mazeppa
console you amid the orgies of the tyrants of today:
But time at last makes all things even,
And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
That could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient hate and vigil long,
Of those who treasure up a wrong.