No negotiating with people who

Byline: Dr Mark Dooley

STUPID isnt a strong enoughwordforit.Iam talking of the fatuous utterancesmadebythe unfortunatelynamedJan Younghusband . Miss YounghusbandisexecutiveproducerofthefilmHunger,which wasscreenedattheCannesFilm Festivallastweek.It focuses on the final six weeks in the life of IRA terrorist Bobby Sands.

AndwhatexactlydidMissYounghus-band say that was so offensive to my poor, tenderears?Well,foronething,itisbad enoughthatsheandthefilmsdirector SteveMcQueen,decidedtoaddtheir vapid voices to the already-bloated Bobby Sandstributebrigade.Itisbadenough that this pair of avant-garde artistes would riskopeningtheoldboilsofhateinthe North just to satisfy their puffed-up egos. Butnothingcanexcuseormitigatethe rationale for the movie, as outlined by Ms Younghusband at Cannes.

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Hunger, she intoned, tries to explore the mentality of those who seeself-sacrifice as a legitimate tool to secure their aims, such asthe7/7suicidebombers.Youlookat suicidebombers,shecontinued,and wonder what it is that drives them to kill themselvesintheirattempttomakethe world better. This is a very contemporary issue, destroying your body forsomething you believe in.Had she stopped there, I could possibly have dismissed her comments as theusual postmodern prattling you expect from the loonyluvviesatCannes.Butshedidnt stopthere.Ohno,MissYounghusband wasonaroll,mostlikelyintoxicatedby thesightofsomanylargemicrophones beingshovedinthedirectionofheroral cavity.ResemblingJimmyCarteron hashish,shestaredatthegatheringand piouslyexclaimed:Welookatterrorists andwethink:Arenttheyhorrible,they areblowingusup.Butwehavetoask: What is our role in that? We are not without responsibility. Wheretobegin?Whatdoyouactually say to a woman who thinks that the Maze Prison was a forerunner of AbuGhraib and Guantanamo Bay? How do you respond to people who believe that thebody as site of political warfare, is becoming a more familiar phenomenon. Itis the final act of desperation;your own body is

your last resource for protest?

Inanidealworld,oneinwhichImade the law, you would say absolutely nothing. Instead, you would have themsummarily sentencedforcrimesagainstcommon sense.Alas,themethodsoftheautocrat are not available to ed hardy me. I am but a lowly columnist constrained by thedecencies of democracy. And so I cannot condemn the likes of Miss Younghusbandto the fate she certainly deserves. Rather, I must take the muchmoretediousrouteofexplaining why I think such people are, to put it most politely, dangerous anddelusional. So here goes.

No, Miss Younghusband, you do not look at suicide bombers and wonder what it isthat drives them to kill themselves in their attempt to make the world better.The last time I checked, the principal objective of the suicide bomber is toblow to smithereensasmanybystandersashe can. The last thing on his mind is making theworldbetter,unlessyoubelievefear, terrorand blood-drenched streets is a panacea for global unhappiness.

And no, destroying your body for something you believe in is not a contemporaryissue.ItwasusedtoassassinateCzar Alexander II of Russia in 1881, and again bytheJapanesekamikazepilotsduring theSecondWorldWar,beforebeing adopted as a weapon of choice by the IraniansduringtheIran-Iraqconflictinthe 1980s.Buthereisthething:nomatter where or when it is used, suicide bombing is the most craven anddisgusting form of warfareimaginable,andanyonewho thinks it is either noble or politically expedient needs some serious help.

Soyes,MissYounghusband,terrorists are horrible, and they carry all responsib
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This is a sacred space. I won'

Byline: Jenny Friel

FOR SEVERAL moments Patricia Burke-Brogan's eyes blinked furiously as they adjusted to the dim light of the large room she had just entered. As she became accustomed to the murky greyness she could make out several of the huge washing machines that were lined up against the walls.

The room with its concrete floors and condensation-soaked walls was engulfed in steam. With a start she realised that in amongst the fog there were several dozen women standing silently, staring at her.

'It seemed like they just appeared, out of nowhere,' she recalls. 'Young women, some middleaged, others quite old. All dressed in shapeless worn-out overalls with white aprons, on their feet they wore black laced-up shoes and thick black stockings. I think the thing that struck me most was the claustrophobia of the place, it was pure horror like something out of Dante's Inferno or what you might Replica Cheap Bottega Veneta Handbags Handbags imagine purgatory to be.'

It was 1961 and Patricia had just entered the Magdalene laundry in the heart of Galway city. But unlike the 100 or so women incarcerated there, she did not find herself in the laundry because she was an unmarried mother or woman of ill-repute. Nor, like some of those dumped there, was she a servant girl who had been raped by her master, or a girl who had been abused by her family or the local priest. She was not there because she was deemed too flirtatious or because she was so beautiful that it was thought 'she would get herself into trouble.' No, in fact Patricia was a novice nun sent to the Galway laundry to 'fill in'. 'I wasn't told what to expect, I was just brought into the place and given a bundle of keys,' she explains. 'I was there to oversee them, I was told never to talk to any of them, except about business. I was told to make sure that they worked.'

She spent just a week at the Magdalene laundry in Forster Court, just a stone's throw from Eyre Square. But what she witnessed there affected her so deeply that almost 50 years later she is still campaigning to honour the memories of those forgotten women. In the late Eighties she wrote a play, Eclipsed, which she believes was the first time their story was made public. It was pro-duced for the first time in 1992 and so far there have been 85 different productions of the play staged all over the world.

Last year she was involved in the erection of a memorial statue at the spot where the Tissot Watches laundry once stood, a verse from one of her poems was etched into its base. But now, just over a year after it was unveiled, it appears the sculpture is to be taken down.

A fortnight ago, there was widespread condemnation when Galway City Council announced plans to remove the statue so that a bus lane could be built in its place. Fine Gael Councillor Padraig Conneely, who oversaw the placement of the statue last year when he was Mayor of Galway, called on the council to show the poignant tribute 'more respect than shoving it off somewhere else'.

And a spokesman for the survivor advocacy group Justice For Magdalenes said that to remove the statue from full view on a public thoroughfare would be to 'bleach clean society's complicity in the abuses meted out to women and young girls in these institutions'.

Galway City Council says the move is just temporary to allow for the widening of a bus corridor and that the statue will be replaced, albeit in a different location. Patricia, however, is fearful that the memorial will not be re-erected and that the women of the Magdalene laundry will be for
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Things SIMI to be picking up

THE SIMI has released sales figures for the year so far and the news must be a relief to those in the motor industry - 74,000 new cars have been registered so far which, while well short of the heady numbers the trade was achieving a decade ago, is still 20,000 more than last year.

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Up to the end of July the Ford Focus remained Ireland's best seller followed by the Volkswagen Golf, Ford Fiesta, Nissan Qashqai, Renault Megane, Toyota Avensis, Renault Clio, Skoda Octavia, Volkswagen Polo and Toyota Corolla.

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