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Jim Roache's Web Site |
Above you will find our earliest Arms - those of Sir Richard FitzGodebert de Roch(e) - son of Godebert Flendrensis of Pembroke[shire] --- (Pembroch), Wales - reportedly settled there from Flanders by their patron, King Henry I, while Duke de la Roche (Normandy) - c. 1100 AD (if not before). Another version of "the facts" has Godebert born in Roch in AD 1096.
From Flanders - but not necessarily Flemish - any more than later being from Roch would make them Cambro-Norman or Cambro-Flemish. The same applies in Ireland. Six centuries in Ireland never made them Irish - as many an Irish (Gael) will happily take as much time as necessary to make plain, including those of my mother's own family.
We - and it remains to be proven by DNA - might be Anglo-Frisian, Frisian, Saxon or Flemish. Belgae has been ruled out in our case, but not for all Roche families, of whom there are some widely dispersed in Belgium. For now, we are either from the Benelux Confederation and/or NW Europe, prior to arriving in the British Isles.
I have satisfied myself to the extent possible that we are Frisian (NW & W European). Frisians are ethnic Germanic peoples living in coastal regions of what is now the Netherlands and NW Germany, but concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and in Germanic East and North Frisia.
We are tall, big-boned and light-haired and we have a rich history and folklore. Those "de Roch" from Wales might be "ours" (but there is no 100% certain scientific proof). We are getting closer, however, thanks to genetics. We are peaceful and even managed to get along with the Romans for a time, but, when taxes became repressive, we hanged their tax collector and defeated Tiberius at the Battle of Baduhennawood.
The Frisii were known and respected by the Romans, who even wrote about us. Tacitus wrote a treatise on what he decided arbitrarily to be the Germanic peoples in AD 69, describing them, and listing some tribes by name. Of the many tribes he mentioned, the name 'Frisii' is the only one still in use to refer unequivocally to the same ethnic group. But most northern "Frisii" would say they were Saxons.
Certainly the Saxons and Frisians were together and tucked up against the border of Denmark (or if you prefer, the Jutland Peninsula). We can thus safely be considered to have been among those labelled as Vikings, which, as with the Celts, is not a genetic or racial grouping at all, but a convenient label for a diverse number of similar groups - meant by language, religion, location, habits, allegiance, or simple being "other" from those doing the naming.
The surname itself is found all over Europe in many variants and appeared spontaneously over a period of several centuries in at least three haplogroups (distinct branches on the human genome or racial family tree - R1b, I and E3b.). Ironically, while modern genetics knows exactly what we are scientifically, pinpointing which of the different peoples, tribes or nationalities within which to place us has proven to be a challenge.
Taking the bull by the horns, I have done so by process of elimination - running parallel our genetic results with recorded history. DNA is nature's blueprint. Haplogroups are the basis of our genetic and genealogical inheritance, sometimes helping us match males of the same Families or surname/s, and sometimes confirming there is no connection whatsoever.
On a broader scale, however, with a little multi-discipline detective work, one can determine where and when a genetic type appears in history. A Haplogroup and what I call "racial characteristics", combined with a reliable historical timeline, and a high-probability assignment of origin can be made.
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Ro(a)ch(e)s of Avalon |
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FTM - Family - Short Version |
Sections and Pages are linked so that you can move from one to the other in sequence, or you can jump from here to anything of primary interest. Longer pages are divided into chapters. You can read one at a time, return to the top and pick another out of sequence or leave the site. Throughout, you can move around by preference, simply following the links.
Family History is not all musty libraries and genetics labs - it runs much deeper in many people emotionally and psychologically - perhaps because it had to do with survival and natural selection in the past or because we are not an entirely rational species --- sometime a good thing. The poems below, I hope will resonate with some readers:
Sometimes, I feel surreal doing family history and genetics when external events are the way they are right now. For over a decade, I have tried to alert people that what was happening in the West was not going to be something they would much enjoy - even the dumbed-down and numbed-out credit card-armed might have limits, I thought.
I did not find an audience - things seemed to be booming. Well, they crashed - right on schedule and according to plan. Now, we are told the recession is over - happy days are here again! Whatever people are on, I really must give it a try, or is it in the water? Since when isn't debt beyond mathematical possibility of being repaid and annual government operating deficits to the point of near bankruptcy a problem?
One thing I like about the E.U. is their media - The Independent and der Spiegel, for example. They call it as they see it. And looking at the economic mess we are in, they talk about what went wrong - they bell the cat. They even understand that it is not a failure of Capitalism, but is the result of Criminal Actions of Corporatism, using loopholes him regulation and law, that has caused so much trouble; the problem originated in financial services, not in the real economy. What was and is being done is not Professional, it is the complete reverse.
No Professional Manager could 1. believe this BS Theory that has been fed people for three decades and 2. for sure, no professional manager could be party to it. It would be beneath them and everything they stand for - not only ethically and legally reprehensible, but because it is simply bad for business. Any qualified Professional Manager could see where this kind of behaviour would lead and would have done everything possible to stop it.
My god, even Henry Ford knew that his employees and potential customers needed money to buy his products and services. Short-term thinking to any real manager is by definition an absurdity. But Bay Street & Wall Street are not in the real economy - their customers are not buying goods and services.
Finance is a Casino, A Mirage, and those who run "the house" - with a few rare exceptions - are not professional anything; they are organized criminals or unqualified morons chosen to manage new IT technology that really runs the system on automatic pilot baced by out-dated economic theory and mathematical abstractions.
Are you Ready for THIS?
Goldman Sachs - CEO, Lloyd Blankfeinn has his own Vision of Banking.
He told The London Sunday Times:
"Banks have a purpose, and they do "God's work".
Goldman has booked a third-quarter profit of three billion and plans to pay more than $20 Billion USD in bonuses at year end. They have learned nothing from the Recession and are still out of control on your buck. But, hey, if they have God (and I assume "The Family" onside), can choirs of Angels be far behind???
I think it's time to stop them now - they are clearly insane! Here's how:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
When MSNBC finally gets it - we act or turn out the lights!
When did we abandon Common Sense & WHY?
Click, Listen, Return.
Click these links and return: Even though I haven't believed a Government Number since Economics 101 in the early 70's, here's our official debt clock just for fun - I'm betting it's much worse - call me a pessimist if you must - remember this is just federal, not provincial, municipal or personal:
Canadian Debt Clock
U. S. Bankruptcy Clock
Note the clock says $12 trillion - the real number is approaching $120 Trillion - China is not pleased.The Truth is Worse: Social Security and Medicare are NOT Funded. Real Debt is just short of $120 Trillion USD. If government paid a Billion a Day, it would take about 350 Years to pay it all back - provided no new debt was added. Oh, by the way, Unemployment is 30%, not 10! Yes, governments fib! First look at unemployment.
$1 trillion USD - 5 acres of $100 bills stacked 6 feet high. Stack them 120 times and DC will have them paid back in 350 years or so. "U.S. now laughing stock of international finance,The Int'l Forecaster.
Even though it gets tiresome being told by friends that I'm a pessimist, how they can look at these data and still dance the night way is beyond me? Of course, that has happened in every major crisis in modern times, so I suppose I should be flattered by their idiocy. Click on the link below, then the PLAY Icon and check out these unemployment numbers.
U.S. Unemployment
Canada & the U.S. are joined at the hip, and we must deal with the same reality (to scale). Our corrupt financial services system and mounting debt (toxic assets) are out of control. Our Courts are now Corrupt. That will lead to social unrest, a clampdown and politicians with a single option - One World Government.
If the USD has inflated 95% in a century and lost 25% recently; and, if our Central Bank is determined to keep the Loonie at 80% of the USD, our government is therefore happy when we get 60 cents on the USD. Imagine what that does to our cost of living. Within less than a decade, there will be a new world reserve currency to replace the USD, likely tied to gold in some way, and nobody knows what that means for Canada. So we are in this together!
General Rule: USD down, Gold Up; USD up, Gold Down. Just one indicator of the state of the economy - don't live and die by it. However, a gold standard can stop politicians and their functionaries from running the printing presses to the point at which currency becomes worthless. So this one indicator is a very good canary in the US coal mine. That little icon speak volumes.
It boggles the mind to think that for at least three decades educated people could believe cock-eyed economic theory supporting a proposition akin to the belief during the Middle Ages that there was a way to turn lead into gold - same concept - only we used paper. Printing paper produces wealth as long as people believe the impossible - thus Ponzi.
Bill Downey ,
used a very good analogy in a recent article. He says WW III has already begun - a war that will not be fought with guns, but with gold and other physical assets, not paper. If you've never read The Art of War, now might be a good time. If you are a sports fan, you might remember, "the Rumble in the Jungle" when Mohammed Ali defeated George Foreman - or arguably George beat George. So imagine China getting into the ring with the U.S. (with Canada as the cut man). The U.S. come armed with paper stocks, bonds, cash, toxic debt they will never collect, out of control borrowing they can never repay, a gutted industrial economy (shipped to Asia), and they now depend on their major competitors (the BRIC countries) for credit and goods.
In the other corner is China armed with gold & silver; 98% or rare and expessive metals needed for high-end production; enery deals with Russia, Venezuela, Iran and locked in resourse trading deals with Canada and Africa. They have all the industrial capacity they need to (the U.S. gave it to them) because someome genius in Clinton's time decided we shouldn't have to sweat in an information age - we were going high tech - the Chinese could do the sweating and sell us back goods on the cheap.
China has tons of American money, an economy that is doing very well and positioned to simply take what it wants - not alone - while the U.S. has been dancing the night away, its competitiors have been forming alliances and setting things up to systematically dismantle America and remove it from its world throne - in Round 1. This will not be like the last Rumble.
Some of the moves were already completing in training camp - the dollar is no longer used to pay for oil amongst a host of countries. Theoretically, the U.S. still holds the world currency - like they have the Would Heavyweight Champion in Boxing - that world ends at the US border. It is a Myth.
The American Dynasty is over - perhaps someone should phone Washington with the news - they wouldn't believe it of course, but the days of reckoning is nigh. Removal of the USD as world reserve curency is now inevitable - it is simply a matter of options. China has or is preparing to issue bonds backed by Yuan.
When that last punch is thrown, the referee can start the count - fast or slow - makes no difference. Wall Street's creative financial instruments, including its recent heavy involment in the carry trade, will be exposed - America had a glass jaw; all China had to do was wait to land a clean left hook.
I was astounded to read in the Huffington Post, the American (lack of) perspective into what is going on right now. Zachary Karabell wrote: China has catapulted to the forefront of international affairs and is on its way to joining the United States as the alpha and omega of the global economic system. Americans still don't quite get it. China represents the first time in any American's lifetime that the United States is faced with a country that it cannot coerce.
I fear Zach doesn't quite get it. Why would the Chinese (alpha) want to share centre stage with America (omega) - beta maybe, but omega? He has an interesting theory: The level of intertwinement between the two economies has reached the point where they have effectively merged, forming what I've called an economic "superfusion." But that fusion hasn't yet altered political and cultural mindsets.
He's right - if he's talking about Americans. But I think the Chinese mindset is altered alright. A few weeks agi when Guitner told a group of Chinese students that their investments in U.S. dollars, they laughed uproariously. Geitner must have felt like John Stewart. And he's not alone - i don't think most of the U.S. elite has been thinking straight for a very long time.
Karabell writes: The United States remains the world's largest economy -- though the combined income of the European Union is greater. [So it's not the largest then]. But size isn't everything [I'm biting my tongue on that line]. Look at Japan, which is still the world's second largest economy. but whose influence and impact are substantially less. [But he can't see that the same logic now applies to the U.S.?].China may be poor per capita (perhaps $5000 per person relative to nearly $50,000 in the United States), but it is changing rapidly and consuming hungrily - more than any other society in the world [I thought that was America's claim to infamy].
It is THE change factor in the global system. Damn straight - the US is not top banana anymore and the light had better come on in somebody's head really quickly. Even the Federal Reserves interactive maps are frightening - take a look - Point, Click and Return - if you don't have an anxiety attack:
That why the US and other countries in the West who followed them down the paper trail took great pains to keep the price of gold artificially low - that has now been proven by GATA. A rising gold price would have blown their cover. Considering the size of the cartel needed to achieve that for so long, and considering the fact that they now have thrown in the towel and seem no longer care, I am concerned - and I don't "concern" easily.
Possibly something even more sinister was and is at work - the elimination of the middle class and the transfer of real weath to the top. That means - at a minimum - totalitarianism (regional or global) - total power over the rest of us by a few who think they have all the answers. We have seen it before in history. Never works, but invariably makes one hell of a mess of things! And if the US has any friends left besides its corner man (with the UK now the EU) , they are in hiding.
Fred Sheehan seems to have a good handle on it....how this could have become a one-round fight. Quite frankly, I don't have the patience anymore.
Frederick Sheehan has a Blog
Fred's Blog
There is broad agreement that Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, was wrong to have believed that market forces alone would insulate society from excessive risk and criminal behaviour. But Greenspan was wrong for reasons different from those offered by his critics. Neo-liberal theory (borrowed in part from Adam Smith's theory of the invisible hand), says that market forces harness behavior for the common good because people are rational and win-win is a good thing, just as lose-lose is not so good. But when government stepped in to make it win-lose, have eliminated regulation, Greenspan didn't see to grasp what had happened.
The invisible hand, however, requires preconditions - unknown on this planet. The economic models that spawned Greenspan's optimism assumed conditions to exist for which there was compelling evidence that they did not. The discipline of Economics, whith a few individual exceptions, suffers the same weakness. Standard economic models assume people are rational and attentive to costs-benefit analysis, even those that occur in the distant future. In fact, most people have lost the wisdom of their forebearss and focus on penalties and rewards that are immediate and certain. The elites - a creation of Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney - turned out to be greedy, arrogant and self-serving - as soon as there was no cop on the block.
I rememeber laughing out loud when I heard derivative securities being described as ''creative instruments''. I heard the same term used for the cass and carry trade the other day and had a good chuckle at the expense of these people who have destroyed the western economies. Greenspan assumed that prudent concerns about the future would prevent people from taking foolish risks.
Would removing speed limits from the highways have that effect or would people go wild? Even the few with a brain in their heads had to decide between between earning high returns from mortgage-backed securities or moving their money to safer investments and watch their friends and neighbors pass them by...just like on the highway with no limits. Rational human beings - what a concept?! We are simply not that enolved. Relaxed regulation and increased potential for unethical profit confront us with temptations we are ill-equipped to resist. Greenspan's erstwhile faith in the invisible hand notwithstanding, it was never reasonable to have expected market forces to magically protect society from the consequences of turning a bunch of sociopaths loose with other people's money on Wall Street/Bay Street.
Don't take my word for it, ask the Chinese, Russians, Europeans, Muslims, South Americans. The Chinese are now positioned to have us for breakfast - if they feel like it. The Federal Reserve’s policy of keeping interest rates near zero is fueling a wave of speculative capital (the dollar carry trade) that may cause the next global crisis, “I’m scared and leaders should look out,” said Donald Tsang, chief executive of Hong Kong said in Singapore.
“America is doing exactly what Japan did - exactly what the US, IMF and World Bank advised against,” he said., adding that Japan’s zero interest rate policy contributed to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, has overseen a record injection of liquidity into the world’s largest economy and the U.S. dollar has tanked because of it.
“We have a U.S. dollar carry trade at the moment,” Tsang said in a speech to leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. The carry trade is where investors borrow cheaply in one currency and use the funds to invest in other currencies. “Where is the money going -- it’s where the problem’s going to be: Asia,” Tsang said. “You can see asset prices going up, not only in Korea, in Taiwan, in Singapore and in Hong Kong to levels that are incompatible with the economic fundamentals.”
Real estate prices in the city have risen more than 25% this year, prompting the IMFund to warn of a possible bubble. Tsang’s warning may strike a chord elsewhere in Asia, where inflows of capital threaten to create bubbles. Asian central banks this year have increased holdings of U.S. dollar assets, including Treasuries, to keep their currencies from rising and thus making exports more expensive relative to China’s. While China’s holdings of U.S. Treasuries rose 10% this year, Japan’s increased 16% and those in the rest of Asia by 25. The dollar has been hurt by a global recovery that has reduced investor appetite for the currency, and by expectations for the Fed to keep its main rate near a record low into 2010.
“There are indications that the U.S. dollar is now serving as the funding currency for carry trades,” the IMF has said. Ya think! “These trades are contributing to upward pressure on the euro and emerging-economy currencies.” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has reiterated his commitment to a strong dollar policy. “It’s very important to the United States, to the economic health of the United States, that we maintain a strong dollar.” How long will other countries put up with such nonsense? After meeting with his APEC finance minister counterparts in Singapore, he said “we bear a special responsibility” because of the U.S. economy’s global role. Don't look now Tim, but you don't have a global role anymore - except in your dreams!
And the Europeans are left to clean up a mess that they feel the American dropped in their laps. They are not happy. The link below shows what our ''financial creativity'' has wrought for them:
E.U. Interactive Map.
What the Hell are People Thinking?
Corporatism is not Capitalism- We have been attacked by Suits with Computers...not by Professional Managers
Emile Durkeim, father of modern sociology, predicted that Corporations would become the "elementary divisions of the state, fundamental political units. He warned they would efface the distinction between public & private; dissect citizens into discrete functional groups, no longer capable of unified political action. Corporations would, in other world, see to the creation of a new collective reality.
Canadian John Ralston Saul, stated in his book, The Unconscious Society that corporatists are linked by a religious devotion to "the market" and an inability to see government as a justifiable protector of the citizenry. That, plus their inability to see human beings as anything other that (self-) interest-driven made it impossible for them to even conceive of such a society, once created, as an actively organized movement motivated to even think, let alone act, in terms of the public good.
Global trade lies dead, unemployment is rising (over 20% in the US - nuts to government numbers), wages and benefits plummet, consumption (70% of US GDP) and investment fall in the real economy -- share prices zoom upwards and commodity prices follow. The stock market bubble of the last few months (based on nothing but wishful thinking) is the fastest on record. The S&P 500 surged 62% after dropping to a 12-year low 9 months earlier.
In the shadows, another high-risk mug's game plays out, 'the carry trade'. (Currency traders borrow dollars, at the Federal rate of 0.25% and then lend to countries where interest rates (or yields) are higher than they pay here. Sweet -- especially for bankers, because the Fed and Central Banks are keeping interest rates artificially low, and this time round they are not risking their money, they are gambling with yours, sucker!.
And the reward for government loyalty to them is for them to bet against the dollar - they bet it will go down - they bet the ignorant Goldman Sacks Grads will keep interest low. This increases their profit, their spread on any deal. Now here's the really surreal part - it's your money that is lost when they get suckered, and they keep all the profits if they win!
Great for them until either the dollar or the interest rates they the Fed or Central Banks pay rise. Then all hell will break loose. Traders will scramble to repay their "insiders'" loans as rates either interest increases or the dollar/s regain value. Until then, this unregulated 'carry trade' is just another legal scam on your dime. But you either don't know or don't care - right?
The result of this is a global bubble in equities, commodities and other risky assets expanding into a 'monster'. Sadly, some economists are fanning the flames....they just happen to be at Goldman Sacks but heaven forbid I sould sound like a conspiracy nut - after all there is no Mafia and there are no Triads either, right? The usual suspects announced the recession at an end in August. Some in the Goldman "shaft everybody" club even said that this recession was 'just another periodic crisis - saying we have lived through five.
Other economists, who must have sneaked into an occasional MBA Class argued that poor GDP numbers could be explained by formidable headwinds, an over-burdened (in debt to the point of near bankruptcy) consumer coping with a trashed banking system, rising unemployment and falling income were dismissed as talking "baloney" by Goldman.
These PhD-trained academic economist/hookers cheered the recent 3.5% growth in US GDP, even though it was a whitewash, and almost entirely the result of governemnt throwing your money into fixing the damage done by the people now profiting from new scams. Yes the government is still cleaning up the last train wreck and they have moved on to another one.
What I honestly don't get is why you - the public - are not responding. You appear to prefer the lies of the propaganda machine; and not the harsher truth of people who know what is happening and are trying to sound the alarm. I take no pleaure in saying: You will live to regret whatever it is that has you in this child-like trance.
Right now, the olny western leader with ''chops'' is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Speaking to parliament recently Merkel said leading Germany back to growth is her top priority but warned that the nation faces a difficult 2010 as well as its biggest economic challenge since its 1990 reunification. And she didn't stop there; she laid it on the line.
Merkel outlined a five-point government program for the next four year but that recovering from a downturn represented the biggest challenge since reunification in 1990. Merkel warned Germans that they face a tough 2010 (even though the economy was no longer technically in recession). Cutting through all the academic and North American BS, ske said ''The full force of the economic crisis will hit us next year. The problems will become bigger before things can get better."
The worldwide crisis was so deep that it would lead to a fundamental reshuffling among global competitors and fresh rivalry for market share, raw materials, investments and human capital in which established strengths could not be taken for granted any more, she warned. ''Creating growth is the goal. The central question is whether Germany will emerge stronger from this recession", Merkel said.
Germany's federal budget deficit will explode to €86 billion in 2010. And she had the unprecedented courage to admit that she was not at all sure that what Germany (and by inference) other Western coutries are doing will work. IT WON'T - IT CAN'T. That leaves me unsure about whether I should be paranoid because we are being ruled by totalitarian monsters or nervous because we are being ruled by morons. None of this is what capitalism is supposed to be - is it? From bringing ''democracy'' to the world to global warming to globalization - look at what is happening to tens of millions of Americans, Canadians and Europeans struggling to keep their heads above water. Trust me - the rest of the world is watching. The US led them into this mess and they are waiting for the US to lead them out. What they see, they don't like...not any more! The US (or what they call America) is hated worldwide.
I was not at all upset that the kitchen staff of AIG had received a $7,700 bonuses....must less galling than the multi-million-dollar bonuses paid to others at AIG. After all, the kitchen staff works; they produce something. They had no part in driving the economy over a cliff. The Wall Street Journal reported that banks and securities firms will pay employees a record $140 billion – an amount that exceeds the peak in 2007 this year. What for?
Mass insanity at the top was most extreme in the U.S., but the virus also infected Canada. While real incomes of ordinary Canadians stagnated in real dollars for over a quarter century, those of the rich doubled on average from $3.6 million to $8.4 million, according to Statistics Canada. Is there anyone who believes extraordinary pay levels are deserved or necessary...apart from the usual suspects? What could possibly justify this?
Society has traditionally tolerated inequalities generated by the marketplace on the grounds that incentives at the top encourage growth. But how much is enough? CEO pay was less generous (and taxes higher) in the 1950s and '60s – and yet those years saw higher growth. Intuitively, it's always seemed unfair that bankers make more than nurses and teachers, whose contribution to society is more immediately obvious. But that is an argument that goes nowhere. Athletes do well too. The argument is they only have so many productive years; the average CEO lasts about eight. But, the trick, and it is a trick, is that stock options live forever.
So accepting that a certain discrepancy comes with the territory, we are left to wrestle with what is acceptable; what makes sense; and what is insane? Some call the Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney ideas that came out of the University of Chicago neoclassical economic theory. It has dominated western thought and shaped western societies since their time.
So, the argument is that banker's and CEO's high pay reflects thir important role in creating growth that benefits society as a whole. Isn't that what they always did for a more reasonable reward? Of course it is - and at a time when they did a better job!
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently observed that neoclassical theory has been exposed as a complete failure - a major Recession can have that effect! But the near meltdown hasn't shaken those on Wall Street – and Bay Street – who continue to defend what has been going on. It is a bastardization of free-market capitalism in a democracy (or if you prefer, an oligarchy), but it sure as hell worked for them. And there's the rub!
While the world continues to groan under the weight of the financial crisis, financial professionals are collecting hefty bonuses again, as if nothing had happened. Around the world, few in the industry have been held accountable.The international financial elite, it appears, can not only expect to receive vast sums of taxpayer money in the form of bailouts, but it seems to have the courts on its side.
Chancellor Merkel believes that those responsible for the loss of billions in Germany should be brought to account. But, as in Canada, outgoing Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, (SPD), has turned down all calls for a tightening of criminal law when it comes to the financial industry. Federal Prosecutor General Monika Harms also believes that there is no need to amend German criminal law. One wonders what it will take - I expect we'll find out soon.
Criminal authorities lack the necessary expertise and staff, while the financial industry is known for its ability to muster armies of expensive lawyers. It is very difficult to come up with the necessary evidence of intentional misconduct, and the few cases that are heard in court often end in backroom compromises. As Jörg Ziercke, president of the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), noted some time ago, anyone who hopes to penetrate the complex transactions related to packaged and repackaged debt securities and credit default swaps has his work cut out for him.
If even bankers, supervisory board members, rating agencies and the German banking regulator BaFin are having trouble keeping up, how can the BKA's criminal investigators be able to keep their head above water in the sea of evidence? Even with the "current cases associated with the capital market crisis, we are encountering data volumes in the two to three-digit terabyte range," Ziercke complained.
German law has an almost lyrical way of describing such an offender as someone who "in the manner of a gambler, deliberately and contrary to the rules of prudence, assumes an extremely high risk of loss, merely to obtain an extremely doubtful prospect of profit." Depending on how it is interpreted, this characterization could apply to many bankers involved in the global trade in toxic mortgage securities. This will seem familiar to anyone involved in ABCP in Canada - and a bunch of other alphabet soup "instruments" still out there and still finding buyers.
It is hard (if not impossible) to prove intent - that is why the criminal codes are written in such terms in the first place. Even journalists (outside North America) must wrestle with fundamental questions. Is it even possible to bring bankers to account with a term like "breach of trust"? Are criminal codes even applicable to poor decisions and mismanagement?
It is rarely possible to prove intent, which explains why many executives, even those responsible for billions in losses, are acquitted or never taken to court in Canada. Even in Germany, where they have real journalists, the bottom line is, ''In the end, no one is likely to be left with the blame, and the bill will be passed on to taxpayers.'' Our elites, and I use the word advisedly, gained too much power, bought and paid for governments, and eliminated supervision (regulation and law) over their doings. The laws and courts were neutered before this abomination was even rolled out. This, ironically, was made possible by modern technology. They are now global, international and, therefore, outside all jurisdictions, having bought and paid for govrnments and the courts. No surprise.
When I graduated, we were told we were the disciples of a New World Order in which Corporations would rule, and the people who ran them would control all the things that governments and their institutions have mucked up in the past. I remember looking around, and some of my fellow Grads were like converts at a fundamentalist Church Service. They had fire in their eyes. I had never been so saddened.
What I had just heard described was totalitarianism, even fascism. There was no denying that earlier systems of managing society weren't perfect, but totalitarian societies, for all accept those at the top, were a living hell before they imploded. And I am not convinced that human beings have evolved sufficiently to manage such power, free of all control, answerable not to the people, but themselves. You don't need to be a rocket scientist or an historian to know where that leaves the people. How do you like it so far?
In just three decades, this ideology, only partly in place, brought the western world to the brink. They have succeeded in eliminating the Middle Class. And they have engineered a suckers' rally to mop up any money left lying around and are encouraging the blind, deaf and dumb even further into debt by propagandizing them into the absurd belief that the recession has ended. It's a ''set-up''! Bernanke, Geithner and Carney were running the printing presses non-stop - money, money everywhere, except where it should have been; bailout madness (and other tricks in Canada) saved the banks and lost the real economy, the real citizens; and the really bad news is, that was the plan.
Economics is "the Dismal Science"; these guys think it's "Romper Room"....for them it is. The future of the U.S. (even the West) has been jeopardized. They don't care - they have what they think are "safe havens". When the Economic Model we had used for three decades showed its flaws, these ideologues tried to fix it, not change it? They don't want it changed. They believe. So do I! The difference? At the end of this silly game they are playing, they envision Dubai; I see Dresden at the end of WWII. What they are doing will have consequences - shot and long term:
- Dangerous Consequence #1 - Government Collusion
The Fed Rewarded High-Rolling Wall St. Gamblers;
Wall Street Punished Average Savers & Investors!- Dangerous Consequence #2 - Death of the Real Economy
U.S. Treasury Requires Credit;
Crowding Out Nearly All "Real" Businesses!- Dangerous Consequence #3 - Possibiity of Civil Unrest
Wall Street Traders Reap Huge Bonuses;
Workers Face a Terrible Job Market, Wages and Benefits!- Dangerous Consequence #4 - U.S. #1 - Not any more!
Debt Crisis 2008 Has has Morphed Into Dollar Crisis 2009-2010 & Beyond!;
USD Hegemony will end by 2020 - a long time looking forward, a short time looking back!
Federal Reserve Notes (FRN) have been created in the trillions now. This reflects either an ideologically and intellectually bankrupt elite or some form of collusion. Will the Chinese, Japanese and Middle East sit still for this cheap carnival trick? Let the USD fall like a stone and repay at cents on the dollar!?
The people who run the U.S. have overseen the largest transfer of wealth in history - not in foreign aid, but from the middle to the top of the western democracies. They have given free enterprise capitalism a bad name by creatively corrupting it - why? As always - ideology - and usually - as in this case, a profoundly flawed version of it.
This whole charade is about power not money - money is the means, not the end. Whenever this has been attempted in history, the outcome has been dire. Human beings have simply not yet evolved to the point at which they can handle so much power. Unless geneticists have been working at spawning some super race, we are in trouble.
We are clearly at a tipping point in history at which global corporations, because of modern technology, have amassed wealth and power that governments have only in their dreams. They have no limits, no borders, no jurisdictional constraints, and governments are their toodies.
Both the U.S. and E.U. politicians think they have strategic plans for a new world order, but without the ability to reign in the global corporations, they have nothing - just castles in the air. It seems the Middle Kingdom is similarly inclined...but one can never be sure with them.
The fact that they have led the charge again a struggling USD, and are among a group of countries who insist oil trade be in Euros provides some insight into their ambitions. So we have elites in three corners of the world thinking global hegemony, and an end to national sovereignty. They can't run what they now control, and yet they dream of global domination by expansion and unification? The mind boggles.In the past, I had dismissed such thinking as immature, illiterate and stupidly grandiose - bordering on megalomania and sociopathy. However, just as they over-estimated their abilities; I had underestimated their lack of them. If this nonsense is a precursor to any such "Grand Design", it shows just how limited our elites are - clearly once they have used military and police force - to try to perpetrate their dreams - they will end as did Hitler and Mussolini.
First Engineered Recession in History
Best-case scenario: a slow, painful rebuilding period of weak demand and lower standards of living. Worst-case scenario: A global depression.
Taibbi Strikes Again - Where are the other "Journalists"?!
Busy Critizing Taibbi!
In case the Artcle on Rolling Stone's Site or Taibbi Disappears...Click Here!
Corruption Abounds - But Nobody can Claim Ignorance Anymore!
What started with U.S. housing did not stop there. It was like a RETROVIRUS. Securities collapsed. The downward spiral took the global economy with it. In due course, the full extent of speculation (by some) and the losses (by others), became apparent --- trillions. Stock markets collapsed; banks stopped lending, the financial system experienced an unprecedented crisis in confidence. Sheer terror ruled initially. The global financial system was hours away from collapse. The financial crisis left the real economy in shambles, still under-estimated, even though it, not financial services, is the foundation of our whole system."
Business, because of new technologies, now works without supervision, outside national boundaries, therefore, beyond control by any national government. Power and wealth beyond imagining are now in the hands of those who control global corporations (unrestricted by sovereign or jurisdictional considerations). They have the technology and wealth to control governments and hire their own private military and police protection.
There is much talk of a New World Order; New World Architecture; Globalization; the sacrifice of national sovereignty by governments and the new elites will not be Popes or Monarchs, even elected leaders, they will be Masters of these Supranational Organizations. The elites have a feeling of total and utter contempt for the rest of us. This elite has satisfied itself that they have evolved to the point that, unlike any other group of two-legged, obviously limited, creatures can succeed in assuming responsibility of even larger scope and suceed. If only that were true.
I'm sure politicians and others will find this difficult to swallow. But, limited by jurisdiction and resources, as they are, they now face a global juggernaut. It is not fully formed - the EU was it's first regional manifestation - the Mach 1 Version. I suspect the Americas will be next. The Middle Kingdom is already at work - they are using the Chinese currency to support trade (not the USD) throughout the Far East and even in Argentina.
There are no agencies of global scope - UN, BIS, IMF or World Bank - that are other than coffee clatches for these elites. We must try to make peace with these monsters - until we figure out a way to get them in line. If we Professionalize Management, it is akin to ordaining a priest or crowning a prince. Not perfect, but an effort to impose an ethical framework that might be mutually viable. Managers have to live on the planet too; they can't eat money; power is useless if things are completely chaotic.
We, the citizenry, may have to introduce some of the elite to the the notion of ethics - for its sheer practical and pragmatic value. Otherwise, we are left with more of what we have and are experiencing; they can trash the place. Thankfully a new generation seems to possess a more mature and social sensibility than its recent predecessors. I call on the G-20 to make this an agenda item at their next meeting - before it is too late. A magic bullet - certainly not. Ethics is entirely pragmatic; win-win; good business - when properly understood.
The elite can have all that money, be surrounded by police and the military, and if everyone else just backs off like the Russians did in WWII, they may find themselves hungry, having painted themselves into a corner. Whether the masses have the common sense and courage to bring about that state of affairs is a long shot. If not, history has many examples of where we will end up.
Is a Democratic Empire even possible? How can an Imperial Foreign Policy be Democractic? Impossble. So now that technology has made Global Empire possible, and our Elites want it, what is needed, by definition, is a Fascist "New World Order".Democracy Out --- Imperialism In --- Total Control by the Few of the Many. Democracy is no longer Viable. World Empire is - they think. What do you think? How will you Act?
It's Decision Time!
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Our grads have their work cut out for them. Recently in MarketWatch - hardly a left-wing publication, there was an article about "The Death of Capitalism", with dire warnings that the entire capitalist system is on the verge of collapse. It does on to say that Wall St has lost it ethical compass; all sense of ethical responsibility and public obligation. Since 2007, we have all seen loss The loss of all sense of fiduciary duty, ethical responsibility and public obligation.
They continue that warnings are everywhere; business sacked government; greed was legalized, regulatory oversight neutered; and the foibles of human nature ignored. There is something of the historical imperative about all of this - the arrogance, overcinfidence, corruption, decadence, overspending, wars, wealth inequity and class tention. Environmental threats go ignored as do unfunded social entitlements. Success has often made human kind it's own worst enemy.
Collapse seems inevitable. They predict Depression 2 by 2012 and advise that we downsize our expectations and trust nobody. The 1% with 90% of the assets have deluded themselves that thay can barricade themselves behind the military and police and reduce the population of the planet to a more optimal level.
Thus, the green sprouts we need walk on two legs and had better be redy to hit the ground running. They have already been blasted by people with not an idea in their heads. Well if not this - what - I would ask. The young are our last remaining hope to restore sanity - to eliminate nonsense capitalism - and get back to basics. Mock them at you peril - far better you ask what you can do to assist make things right - if there is time.
But now, if I may, I'd like to get back to what really interests me - Family History and Genetics. You can simple point and click on the Site Map to move around.
Courage came to me from the height of the mountain, and with it came the dignity of manhood, and knowledge of the Tree of Life, for now I was a branch, running with the vital blood....and had brought forth sons.
I saw behind me those who had gone; and before me, those who are to come. I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front, to see my son, and his son, and sons upon sons beyond.
And their eyes were my eyes.
As I felt, so they had felt, and were to feel, as then, so now, as tomorrow and forever. Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning and no end.The hand of his father grasped my father's hand, and his hand was in mine, and my son took my right hand, and all, up and down the line that stretched from Time That Was, to Time That Is, and is not yet.
They raised their hands to show the link, and we found that we were one, born of Woman, Son of Man, made in the Image, fashioned in the Womb by of the Universe.
I was of them, they were of me, and in me, and I in all of them.
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It is useless to puzzle yourself any longer over what is utterly illegible; the letters worn past all hope of deciphering a single sentence.
Come away. And thus ends the last effort of poor humanity to perpetuate its cherished sorrows, or to display its pompous boasting, in the sight of posterity.
That old, mossy stone, with its half-shadow of a cherub's face peeping out from the broken outline of a pair of wings; its green and yellow patches of corroded surface, where the long inscription once appeared; and its slanting position, bending forward while it sinks sideways into the soil, that is the sole surviving memento of--what?
It is a memento; it says Remember ; but who or what is to be remembered?
All the wit of all earth's wise ones cannot discover. Nay, though, right under the cherub's chin, we may trace the course of the 'His jacket,' by knowing where it should stand; still no more is communicated than bare existence in that place made known.
It is a grave - its inmate long-tenanted in the silent dwelling - and here our information ceases.
Is it, then, idle and vain so to mark a spot, endeared, perhaps, to some fond breast far beyond all residue the globe contains?
No!
It is comely and befitting our nature so to do, a natural impulse, one among the multitude of unregarded evidences afforded of the doctrine of the mystical revealed to man from earliest times.
They are not only a sepulchre, preserving the human body after death to a pitch of perfection at which modern science can only gaze and wonder, when unrolling from its delicate wrappers the corpse of two or three thousand years' unchanged.
It bespeaks conviction that the spirit would re-animate its earthly tenement, yet in total ignorance of the Power that would gather up the scattered dust and say,
In each family there is one who is called to find the ancestors. They put flesh on their bones and make them live again to tell the family story, and to know that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not just gathering facts but breathing life into all whom have gone before.
We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: ''Tell our story.'' So, we do. And, in finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before and felt at home? I have lost count. How many times have I told my ancestors, ''You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us''? How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I sense ''the old ones'' give birth or marry or die and I do feel afraid - they become real because they were real.
Genealogy goes to who am I and why do I do what I do? It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference, and saying ''I won't let this happen''. The bones here are my bones and the flesh is my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors accomplished - they succeded and failed; they struggled; they survived. How often have I heard hammer ring on anvil and armour and tackle rattle in the dark - not once have I been afraid.
It goes to respect what they were, who they were; their hardships; their losses; their never giving in or giving up, their will to go on and build a life for us. It goes to deep pride - they fought to make and keep us what we are - the best of us at least. It goes to a deep understanding that they were doing it all for us - that we might be born and be who we are; that we might remember them. And so we do - with love and gratitude and pride - recording each fact of their existence because we are them and they are us.
So, as a scribe, I tell the story of my family. It is up to the one called in each generation to answer the call. I had no choice. It was merely inevitable. And so I took my place in a long line of family storytellers. That is why I do family history, and that is what compelled me to do it. I know others will be called in turn to stop, reflect and restore flesh to bone; life to those at rest.
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King Diarmait MacMurchada of Leinster
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Note: Weis-Sheppard's Ancestral Roots, Seventh and later Editions, 1992-99 and Complete Peerage (CP) 10, p. 356, state that Eva/Aoife was the daughter of Diarmait, son of Donnchad MacMurchada and one of his wives, Mor, daughter of Muirchertach Ua Tuathail.
MacMurchada gained a Norman King's off-handed permission, and began recruiting. No Englishmen had the slightest interest. Diarmait soon realized he would have to "up the ante", and he moved on to Wales to find de Clare - knowing a likely target when he saw one.
The Earl, who had not even then been confirmed Earl, was one step from being in Diarmait's shoes. But even Strongbow was not interested in money; he had his mind set on land and land alone, a title and the revenue it might produce. Anything else was simply icing on the cake.
Princess Aoife was none too pleased to be offered up to de Clare, but had no choice. When he died, she wasted no time in advising the man in whom she did have an interest, and her choice of language, showed little love or respect for the Earl.
However, she was the means to make de Clare heir apparent to the Kingship of Leinster, under feudal law [not under Brehon Law]. In fact, as Diarmait well knew, and de Clare may not have known, this arrangement was something that flew in the face of Irish tradition. As presented, it was of irresistible appeal to the Earl who may not have known that Diarmait had set him up. After Diarmait died, a few years after these seminal events, de Clare learned that the Irish could be big on principle and he spent the rest of his life fighting them over succession.
But he had agreed to raise an army and reinstate Diarmait as King of Leinster for life - with himself in direct line of succession - Brehon (Gaelic Irish) Laws notwithstanding. It was the marriage of Irish Princess Aoife (Eva), likely an illegitimate daughter of the King of Leinster, that the dye was cast.
This Cambro-Norman Earl arrived at Waterford in August AD 1170 - he finally showed up a year after his men had landed, and he helped in taking and sacking the town. Were he and his men alone? Hardly. Diarmait's army of several thousand Irishmen, not to mention the "flower and the youth of Wales," were with them.
A political and military alliance, sealed by marriage, a custom of the times, meant there was no turning back --- it was do or die for Diarmait's Irish, Strongbow's mongrel Normans and their Welsh and continental allies. And the rest, as they say, is history - admittedly muddled - but there it is!
Despite the occasional shot across my bow in doing this project, Keating's "History of Ireland", written in AD 1758, by Abbe MacGeoghegan, and translated in AD 1831 by O'Kelly and Dineen in three volumes, ends with an interesting and gratifying comment.
Describing some of the kindly temperaments of the Roches in various parts of the country, he describes them as being rewarded by God for avoiding acts of treachery and performing many good deeds . He suggests their vast holdings and great numbers of descendants thriving in many parts of Ireland were blessings earned . God, however, seems to have later left us to our own devices.
MacGeoghegan had previously (Ch. 34) named five men who did more evil than all the Gaels put together from AD 1169 onward - Richard FitzGilbert de Clare; Robert FitzStephen; Hugh de Lacy; John de Courcy and Henry's man, William FitzAudelm .
He notes that many Roche heiresses, who left Ireland through marriage, could well have made claims against family lands, especially in Wales or Ireland, but they had moved to England, and made no such claims. He singles out for special commendation several family members, including those in the Wexford Branch who endowed the Church with Bergerin Island in Wexford Harbour in remembrance of their father - Rodbert - Adam, David and Henry de Rupe .
To see that honourable, charitable, generous and spiritual instinct recognized even by someone who might begrudge an enemy any type of acknowledgment feels good. I must admit that during my own prolonged visit some years ago, it was quite striking to see what the Roches had contributed to the Republic, not the least of which were their personal contributions and sacrifices to the cause of Irish freedom.
I would be the first to admit this was not, nor could it be, a consensus. But there seems, in general, more that is good associated with the name than many today are willing to acknowledge. Perhaps it is no accident that this was the time (c 1830) that my own pre-Famine ancestors joined the Diaspora. There was little more they could do for the Irish that they had not already done - 1798 and 1803 were really the endgame for us.
An AD 1247 List of Knights includes the names of new ''owners'' of grants promised by Diarmait, and later confirmed with some modifications by Henry II during his visit. Some even refer to that as an Invasion. It was not. Someone had done Henry the "favour" of murdering Thomas a Beckett at Church, trying to read the King's mind and win favour.
They failed, and Henry was in big trouble with Rome. He thought the only way to get back in the Pope's good graces was to do penance in Ireland, bring the Church there within the Roman sphere, and ensure the collection of a property tax, "Peter's Pence" for Rome. His visit worked like a charm...with great support from the Church.
By this time, Henry did not trust the Normans and instead brought an English Army, so they would not be tempted to "go over" to Strongbow. All he did was make a show of force - by virtue of the size of his army. Then the Church and civic officials - under threat by Rome - paid homage to Henry.
Strongbow did likewise, had some of his gains removed to avoid future problem with him, and when done, with the exception of a few trusted officials left behind to keep an eye on things, Henry took his army and left Ireland never to return. The one exception was that he left some to re-populate Dublin simply because Diarmait and his allies had run off or killed off the Danes there.
Cambro-Normans and others left with holding as originally granted by Strongbow were: de Prendregast (Prendergast), de Rupe (Roche) , de Heddon (Hayden), Howel, de London, de Bosco, Chever (Cheevers), Le Brun (Browne), Ketting (Keating), Purcell, de Wythay (Whitty), Cod (Codd), Deverous (Devereux), le Poeur (Power), Synod (Synott or Sinnott), Hey (Hay or Hayes) and FitzHenry [and this is not a full list].
Attitudes became negative towards the "Old English" during and after the Reformation - guilt by association - with those then running England and trying to commit genocide against the Gaels. We had too much self-respect to stay around for that, just as we had too much to engage in the behaviour that led to some of their above-named allies to act in a way that would ensure we would live on in infamy.
John F. Kennedy, visited the John Barry Memorial, Crescent Quay, Wexfordtown - 27 June 1963 (photo below). Kennedy, then President of the United States, saw his ancestral home at Dunganstown near New Ross. His great grandfather had left Co. Wexford in 1848, and settled in Boston. They were Famine Irish. By that time, we were long gone from the same area, but later migrations largely by-passed Newfoundland.
No matter, everything he spoke about and the location from which he sprang resonated of the same distant tradition. Our big weakness is that in important matters, we are too ethical - this can be seen in General Roche's Address of AD 1798. We expect the same from others. Some see this as weakness. It is naive of us to do so, and will always keep us "one down", yet the alternative, living our lives by the rules of the others - is too horrible to contemplate. That has been and continues to be our karmic dilemma.
The key seems to be not to rise too high – where integrity and credibility can be perceived as liabilities – to stay in the middle of the pack, do the right thing and not get found out. So far, it has worked for us on this side of the Atlantic.
The Kennedys are R1b genetically, but that is as far as it goes. We would never try, because we are never so inclined, to affect a relationship with the famous. I once asked, quite seriously, on an online medieval discussion list, why people do that - considering that the morals, ethics and behaviour of such people have often left so much to be desired.
A lady responded, taking grave umbrage, saying I must be either 17 or 71, i.e. childish or senile, to ask such a question. I still consider it valid. What is the attraction? I truly don't understand in most cases. Were I related to someone "worthy" by any reasonable standard, I might feel differently. But most rich, socially prominent and politically powerful people - because of their behaviour - I would not want to be linked with in any way.
I am content to be from a long line of honourable yeomen and lesser knights, who practiced their craft or ran their holdings to make a life for themselves and for the betterment of the community. They would, of course, as one writer has said, willingly leave the plow and take up the sword, when required. That I understand, and people of that sort are good enough [some might say too good] for me.
I would, nevertheless, like as many males of our surname as possible to do a genotest for matches - and I confess that is based on the fact that it would be nice to follow our line further back than paper records can take us. Provided there is some sort of supporting oral or documented data to help verify the findings, it would be worthwhile, no matter who might be hiding in the closet.
It would be a dull and lifeless family that did not have something they might have wanted kept quiet at the time. But these days, who cares? There has never been a better time to have a look backwards - I don't expect many saints in my line - but with luck - there won't be any homicidal maniacs either.
So please do consider it - men of the surname Roache - by any spelling - in any language - and of any race, creed, or colour. If you have hit a brick wall of your own in your family research, DNA testing has helped some find their long-lost roots.
There are several pages and many links on this Site. You will find Family History and a DNA Project, which has added considerably to group history, if not our personal family history. It has developed that our DNA is quite rare in Ireland. Gaps in the written birth, marriage and death records, especially in Ireland, and caused by the Penal Laws and "the troubles", leave us to pin our hopes on science.
But Roches - whether Haplogroup R1b [like us], I or E3b - can all be so ornery that people can be forgiven for thinking we are all related. We have people who have matched genetically - three in one case under R1b - all from Cork - and they don't talk to one another in any way that would be helpful??? Another is in the same haplotype we are, but migrated later and can't seem to grasp that there might be a way to fill in the gaps without doing unnecessary and irrelevant additional DNA tests.
Others have moved and not left contact information. And others, when they try to work together, just can't. One of my techniques - given that I can't possibly remember all the family data of the people I deal with fairly regularly, is to occasionally link 4-6 who appear to have something in common.
Often they fail to see what I see or are simply uncomfortable sharing information. Why someone would do family history and/or DNA testing and behave like that is totally beyond my understanding. All I ask is that they keep me in the loop in case the data will help someone else or match with other information in my files. Then I remember they are Roches, have a good chuckle, and get on with whatever I'm doing.
If you know your family history, you likely take a lot for granted. If you have lost touch with your origins, you know it leaves a "hole in the soul" that can make life more difficult. Some have yet to discover the emotional and psychological value of "ROOTS" - which have biological and behavioural implications - only recently understood and appreciated.
For others, the spelling and meaning of a surname are most important. People feel theirs MUST be "right". Some in my own family "feel" this way - subjectively - rather than through conscious effort, and a variant - no matter how legitimate - can evoke a profoundly negative response.
I would simply ask that such people offer others the courtesy they demand. I know of few, if any, surnames with only one spelling. We are all adults - and supposedly live in a "free" society - so we should be able use the spelling we prefer...without interference from opinionated and emotional relatives or others who happen to share the surname and to think there is only one spelling.
This issue is discussed at length on our Family History page...much of it "tongue in cheek", as I'm doing here. But, I see people who are so close to matching their data, and then back off, that I don't know whether to laugh, cry or ignore it. I think you can guess what my most common reaction is :-)
Being an alpha male - I confess, I am results-oriented. Holding to one spelling can make it impossible to do successful research. There is a simple explanation that summarizes the most commonly accepted (and fiercely defended) spellings in what is now our mother tongue:
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Roache=
My Surname |
Roach=
Fish |
Roche=
Rock |
Roch=
The First - Wales |
De Roch is NOT Norman (it is NOT de la Roche], although often confused with it, because of intermarriage or other associations. Depending on whether spoken in hard or soft Gaelic (P or Q) , (understood or misunderstood) it was associated by the Normans with the surname ROCK (Modern English).
ROCH, common in Wales, even today - Normans heard it with a soft ending and thought "de la Roche"; when they heard it with a hard ending (as in Loch Loman), they translated Roch (k) into French so, again, it was "de la Roche". Irish writers, getting one over on the "invaders", have always written that it meant by, at, near or on a rock. The informed ones know better!
Often any name was based on the towns in or near which people lived. The placename often preceded the surname. It arose spontaneously all over western Europe during two centuries. The three Roachs on our arms some say was a pun on rock. Well, there are other Roche arms that have only lions, in various stances. What does they have to do with rock? Roche (various spellings) was, according to Reitstaps Armorial General, used earlier in France, Poland and Switzerland. With the Diaspora, it is, of course, now used worldwide in one form or another. One spelling - hardly. There are no hard and fast rules for ANY NAME.
I use the ROACHE spelling because it includes ALL English-language variants, English - being the modern "lingua franca" --- RO(A)CH(E) --- inclusive --- I like it. That's all - and that's enough - as it is for you too.
The thing that surprised me was the use of the same name in any of our three haplogroups ... only one includes us . We are R1b1b2g* (NW & W European/British Isles a.k.a Anglo-Frisian) - the asterisk means they have not fully classified us ... but they are satisfied that when the next SNP (snip) is found, it will confirm our placement on the genetic tree as 2g [also named R-U106] for convenience.
We are then most likely to have been located in Northern Germany-Scandinavia - with a possibility of being Saxon, Flemish or Dane (as in Jutes from the Jutland Peninsula) during the last two millenia at least. There is a small probability that we could be from some smaller, but related, tribe located in the same area - from the Danish border to Belgium, the British Isles, and spreading out from there. A surprise was that it is a rare type in Ireland, [our kind of R1b that is], and our first forebears in North America claimed to be from Co Wexford.
It's not about spelling or nebulous genetics; it is the name that is important. But you need to understand that behind that it is something within or beyond nationality, and then a much broader human inheritance. We are all part of the human race - no monkeys, apes, cavemen or little green men from Outer Space!
As for the Myths of Creationism (seven days and voila!) or Evolution with all its gaps and illogical transitions (given enough time, anything can happen) - if you can handle either, and you're an adult, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy should come easily. Why not go the whole nine yards and accept that life is a mystery?!
You can find out how by using the Menu above, and some might like to know there was an ancient Gaelic name similar to ours. There's a story in Celtic Mythology about a raiding party from Connacht (variously spelled) and one from Ulster.
Led by a warlord named Medh, it was under King Conchobhar from the royal centre of Emain Macha. Both sides fielded the best warriors from among their aristocracy. Among Conchobhars fighting men were the likes of Ferghus mac Roich and Conall (Con) Cernach. They were headstrong and young, like the main character, Cu Chulainn.
So we have Roich , but we don't have is the rest of the story. DNA tests have proven we are not Gaels, but there may be Roichs (now Roches).
Over six hundred years, my family may have been in Ireland; I don't like that British notion of "more Irish than the Irish", but I know we did become Hibernicized. You can blame the Irish women who liked the look of a big swaggerin' Frisian. But our family can relax - we are not Gaelic Roich (we just act like it from time to time!!!):
From ancient Rome to the present (possibly because of the crowds at football "matches"), the real nature of the Celts has been hidden by a tangled web of stereotypes. But being a Celt is like being a Viking, an Indian or an Afro-American. These are over-simplified and generic terms that cover a multitude of peoples and/or tribes, often quite different from one another. Just keep that in mind.
On site, there is information about our family matriarchs: Cullen, Allen, Lawlor and McCauley. I was once accused of being a sexist swine for not having done them credit - when I was working on the page as it happens! These ladies certainly contributed to the diversity of our genetic code, and I wanted to do them justice. Other links are more general and will help anyone with an interest in history, as well as information about other surnames.
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The volume is just too high each day. What I can do is offer advice; suggest ideas to put aside (because they will make your search more difficult); and share a few tricks I have picked up over the years. The hard work, you do, as I have done - or you pay professionals to do it - always an option - and one I have used myself with varying degrees of success.
So Relax, Enjoy and Learn.
But please feel free to use your browser's Forward or Back Icons to escape!
Now. a little personal information, so you will know something of the source of the information here....
I had always thought of myself as Irish[-]Canadian . But our great-great grandparents, John Roach(e) and Jane (Culle[i]n) are proving elusive. After all, their forebears likely arrived in Ireland 1167-72; earlier or later --- no time at all in the Irish mind.
Before that, they were likely in Wales - for less than a century (although some stayed longer) - or on the continent - likely wherever Saxons, Flemish, Frisians or Danes had settled.
I am a retired broadcaster and civil servant; and have lived and worked all across Canada. We were promised a "home" in Ireland. It never worked out....just the "blarney'' of an Irish King; the damage compounded by what was done later by Henry VIII; Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell during the reformation.
Now, we are at the four corners of the earth -- with few complaints and no regrets!
Here is forever, a lifetime, and I'll bide awhile.
The struggle for place was hard and wild - but, look closer, you can see my smile?
Olde Ireland
A spectre that haunts; an essence that comforts....
A land of shattered dreams; yet a magical isle.
There lived myth and fable and whimsy!
The dream, like all dreams, held for a time.
Things have all changed now, and for me that's just fine.
Now who would have thought......3 September 2009 - they're Europeans. You nver know what a Gael will do next :-) With one leap to the east, can they leave the "the troubles" behind.Seems it's time to turn the sword into Euros....How can they Not now!? The decent thing is to wish them well, and we'll do that. Here's hoping today's decision works out well for all!
We of the rock, the fish, the lion and the name --- neither recognized nor acknowledged --- wherever we are around the planet were in fact globalists before anyone thought of the name - we were and are everywhere. It has worked well for us; we can only wish the same for the new Europeans.
It will take a little getting used to thinking in those terms of course. But time marches on, and it is best to be resigned and accepting of whatever the Fates hold in store....but ready to deal with the good and the bad. So the European Union it is then!
So be it. We remember.
We'd mourn,
Were she to flounder.
After all is said and done.
Only the Best for Ireland,
Now Our Day is Done!
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Like most countries, we are ruled by the rich, arrogant, cynical and remote. They constantly tell us, and their message is parroted by the media, that Canada is strong. They blame the U.S. for our "Made-in-Canada" problems. If only.....
Is This A Country You Want to Lose by Default?
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But I'd rather NOT!
Some things never change ... they are cyclical ... like us come to think of it ... creating an illusion of change. That's neither negative nor positive; it is simply a fact. To think otherwise is to fly in the face of the history.
There's only one real problem in the universe - it walks upright on two legs - you have to be vigilant, but not paranoid. There were, are and always will be those from the dark side, but their meager doings are utterly futile in the vast sweep of the history.
Life goes on - passing us all by. Don't sweat the small stuff - and it's all small stuff!
A Warning about the Internet
Misuse of the Web provides an excuse for those who want to "protect" to "regulate" and to "control". So knock it off!
Find people of like-mind to protect all that is good online. If we don't, it will be co-opted for nefarious purposes by the powerful, the criminal and the moronic.
Free speech is the lifeblood of democracy. We are now poised to slip into totalitarianism by default. I hoe people wake up before it's too late - but it unlikely.
Rights and privileges are paid for in blood; then squandered and returned to those from whom they were rightly taken in the past. We tried to change the world in the 60s, and failed....because we couldn't change people....even ourselves. Canadians have given up.
In their spare time, they could read a little history. Find me one example where surrender proved was a viable option!
Freedom has been considered ours by divine right. Planet Earth calling! That is not how things work. There is much that needs putting to right in Canada; much that is wrong and unjust; and fixing it won't happen by magic or by itself. It definitely won't happen if the people surrender their power to government.
Remember the old ones - now gone. If we fail to grasp the torch and hold it high, we aren't worthy of the blessings the fates and our forebears won for us. That leaves three options - adult, childish and aggressive:
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What we have - Simply A Miracle |
Global Warming - Beyond Us |
Most Likely - Given Our Nature |
So Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign! Do Something - Anything is better than Nothing!
Presented to James F. Roache in special recognition of his outstanding patience, intelligence, wit and warmth
by [the late] Mary (Roche) Carella, N.Y.
Award was commissioned by
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