So earlier in the year I published a post called, “Dear America”, pleading with the whole nation to end the Donald Trump joke before it went too far, but the Trump Train kept on choo chooing and now we’re in a world of trouble because we’re running out of tracks.

Since then people have asked me if I’d really vote for a Tyrannosaurus Rex and quite simply the answer is a definite ‘YES’ and here are 10 reasons why:

1. T-Rex loves Mexico
2. T-Rex does not discriminate on grounds of religion
3. People laugh at Donald Trump, no one laughs at T-Rex
4. T-Rex does not believe in Stop & Search
5. T-Rex is pro gun control
6. T-Rex believes in climate change and natural disasters
7. T-Rex does not believe in an arms race or the use of nuclear weapons
8. T-Rex has never been accused of rape
9. T-Rex was not present at 9/11 and didn’t lie about it
10. T-Rex is less violent and has more global appeal

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There’s also a whole host of reasons why you shouldn’t vote for Trump, but no one says them better than Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann)

One day the name Amanda Mellet may be as well known as Rosa Parks for fundamentally changing the landscape of society.

Her story is one many Irish women face, yet a position no woman should be subjected to in modern Ireland.

Amanda was just 21 weeks into her pregnancy when her baby was diagnosed with Edwards’ syndrome, congenital heart defects, and a prognosis of death shortly after birth if not in the womb. Under Irish law Amanda Mallet was denied the option of having an abortion.

Given the limited chance of survival and the increased risk of complications in birth she travelled to Liverpool for a termination on December 2nd, 2011.

Following the anguish of travelling abroad to access health services denied in Ireland Amanda filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee. The Committee found that Ireland’s abortion laws violate the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and called for reform.

The ruling aligned Ireland’s ban on abortion, subjecting a woman carrying a foetus with a fatal abnormality, to “discrimination” and equated the practice to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

So far the Irish government haven’t been very good at listening to UN or EU rulings, but with pressure on the administration to have a referendum to Repeal The 8th there is a chance that the people of Ireland will get to speak up and correct an injustice which seems so transparent to a younger generation.

However one of the key issues which might prevent Ireland from progressing towards greater reform and access to health services is the weight of a conservative majority who may not be as receptive to constitutional change for the sake of something as ‘unholy’ as abortion. 

Ireland, traditionally a catholic stronghold, has a very gloomy past in its understanding of child mortality, historically speaking stillbirths and unbaptised infants were buried outside of church graveyards in unholy burial grounds called Cillíns.

This is significant as an older generation have a very different mentality in how they grasp the miracle of life, the suffering of humanity, and the rural attitude of ‘If you have livestock you must be prepared to have deadstock”.

The older generation accepted the loss of life as one of the hardships they faced and the practice of burying a child in a Cillín was a part of the grieving process whereby a mother would not lament over the graveside of her child and left wondering who they might have become.

The focus therefore became not on the life lost but on the lives of all those who might be. So it’s no surprise that in 1983 the Irish electorate voted by a 2:1 margin in favour of amending the 1937 Constitution to specifically protect the life of the unborn child. A referendum I might add which had the support of both Charles Haughey and Garret Fitzgerald.

The challenge facing Repeal The 8th advocates is to explain the reasons why women should have the right to an abortion, to convince traditional sections of society that the necessity for abortion is not borne out of some millennial desire to use abortion as a form of frivolous contraception. To tell people the story of Amanda Mellet, to prevent Irish women suffering further cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

“I hope the day will soon come when women in Ireland will be able to access the health services they need in our own country, where we can be with our loved ones, with our own medical team, and where we have our own familiar bed to go home and cry in. Subjecting women to so much additional pain and trauma must not continue.” Amanda Mallet
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(Image from www.abortionrightscampaign.ie)

Today I picked up a newspaper that had a three page article on the Brangelina divorce, a story about how cuddling kittens can kill you, NY bomb suspect facing attempted murder charges, and a picture of a double faced calf born in Kentucky.

I couldn’t help thinking to myself; ‘Does the world not know about the War in Syria’
Maybe the world doesn’t care, or maybe people feel like there is nothing we can do, or maybe I’m downplaying the significance of the Brangelina divorce in my own mind to the point where I’ve lost touch with reality.

Assuming I haven’t, I can’t help but feel enormously frightened at the level of political chaos which has unfolded in Syria, where it appears the dominant super powers have decided to unleash their full military force in some sort of cat and mouse game with Assad and the Rebels.

Of course this is a game where the lives of innocent civilians are cast aside as mere causalities of an ongoing civil war, a game which has contributed to one of the most disturbing humanitarian crisis in living memory, a game which is politically engineered to cause conflict instead of peace.
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Meanwhile the west is on red alert for cuddly looking kittens.