LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Cork’s LeisureWorld ‘may’ advise pool management

EDITOR – Regarding the recent article about the exciting news of the funding that secures the immediate future of Baltimore’s Wild Atlantic Pool and Fitness Centre, we would like to clarify that there will be no change to the existing community ownership and management and no partnership with LeisureWorld has been agreed. 

The Wild Atlantic Pool and Fitness Centre is in receipt of funding from Cork Sports Partnership (CSP) through the Sport Ireland Covid-19 Return to Sport fund.  

This is part of a government package to support the recovery of the sports sector following the public health crisis and will ensure the centre can continue to make a significant contribution to the public health & fitness. The future collaboration is with the Cork Sports Partnership. 

Once the way forward is agreed, we would look to expertise from the industry, which may include LeisureWorld, but as an advisor only. 

Separately, plans are afoot to work with Cork and Kerry Community Healthcare to tailor our services to the needs of the community. 

The challenges being faced by the pool had been made public through various means. Holly Cairns TD and Michael Collins TD both raised the issue in the Dáil and Christopher O’Sullivan TD met with Committee members and arranged an online meeting with the Minister of State for Sport. 

In addition to thanking them all for their support, I would like to reiterate the comment in the Star article that thanks go also to the community, as none of this would be possible without their amazing support. 

Sekeeta Crowley,

Wild Atlantic Pool,

Baltimore.

Assange’s case is a warning to potential whistleblowers

EDITOR – It is noticeable how biased a recent letter is towards protecting authorities which commit war crimes and in acceptance of the charges of espionage against Assange.

Your writer quoted the Belmarsh enquiry as her source to remind ‘us’ of the risks of revealing the ‘hidden government actions.’ The world does not revolve around such US warnings and they certainly do not apply to ‘us.’ 

We do not, however, need reminding of the power of the security agencies to inflict retribution on those challenging their might such as the whistleblowers Assange and Snowden who have suffered dire consequences. Assange has been jailed as US authorities seek his extradition, so he can be disappeared into a maximum-security prison for the rest of his life.

The narrative that Assange recklessly published unredacted documents in 2011 is itself a dishonest smear, and the unredacted files were actually published elsewhere as the result of a real password being recklessly published in a book by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.

Assange took extraordinary measures to try and minimise the damage that was done by those reporters but wound up getting thrown under the bus and blamed for their actions anyway. There has never been any operative or employee killed as a result of the disclosures. The FBI informant Sigudur Thordarson  whose information played a key part in the US indictment against Assange has now admitted that he fabricated the evidence, saying that he made up the allegation that Assange asked him to hack a government computer.

It is worth remembering that Julian Assange’s transparency organisation Wikileaks only subsequently published dossiers, not only revealing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a huge global hacking programme by the CIA.

US prosecutors did not include in their indictment the WikiLeaks’ shocking video of collateral murder footage which shows an Apache helicopter mowing down 11 civilians – including two Reuters journalists – in Baghdad. Clearly the US doesn’t want its ‘war crimes’ given more public exposure.

 Julian Assange’s case represents a warning to all would-be whistleblowers, journalists and defending lawyers, that security authorities will do anything to shut down any exposure of their war crimes, crimes against humanity or illegal undercover destabilising activity.

The case of Julian Assange as portrayed is indeed not a straightforward case. It is a case of a journalist punished for exposing what we all need to know – the truth.

Bob Storey, 

Raheen, 

Skibbereen.

Killowen is author’s birthplace

EDITOR – I was interested in the article about the author Elizabeth Meade in the Star recently. I have some clarifications. She was not born in Bandon, but rather Killowen. Killowen is five miles from Bandon, only three miles from Enniskeane.

If her date of birth was 1844, and the family moved to Templetrine when she was 12, she had many childhood memories in Killowen, as well as her second home. According to your article, Killowen church is privately owned and thus ‘unavailable’.

Public access into the building is denied because the Council has decreed this for safety reasons because of the busy road. However, a number of burials take place in the old graveyard surrounding the church building. Private purchase of the building was the only preventing the demolition of it – even though it is a listed building. I believe there is a plaque to Elizabeth’s father in an interior wall of Ballymoney church, near Ballineen. I doubt if it is ‘available’ as a large area of the roof has collapsed. 

Rosemary Dickson,

Ballineen.

Bandon River needs its salmon

EDITOR – It is high time for the Inland Fisheries to restock the Bandon river where salmon are nearly extinct on the most beautiful river in West Cork. They could do this with hatcheries and a restocking programme in some of our rivers. The salmon season will be reopening soon with the cost of a licence and no fish to catch on our rivers. 

Noel Harrington, 

Kinsale.