Thousands lined the streets of Ennis, western Ireland, to cheer his motorcade as the three-time heavyweight champion visited the home of his great-grandfather Abe Grady.

Fans adorned streets with red, white and blue bunting and flags, while shop windows competed to display the most impressive posters honoring Ali — including one tongue-in-cheek portrait of him appearing ready to knock out an unpopular Irish politician.

Ali, who is 67 and battling Parkinson's disease, fought only once in Ireland, knocking out Alvin Lewis at Dublin's Croke Park on July 19, 1972.

Ali offered a few playful jabs to cameras but made no public comments and steered clear of throngs of autograph-seekers Tuesday, among them hundreds of kids whose schools closed early for the event. Police blocked off roads and kept crowds in line with railings.

Grady settled in Kentucky in the 1860s and married a freed slave. One of their grandchildren, Odessa Lee Grady Clay, gave birth to Ali — then Cassius Clay — in 1942.

Genealogists pinpointed Ali's Irish links in 2002, but Ali had never visited Ennis.

His visit to Ennis Town Hall was broadcast live on big-screen televisions outside, where locals also took in a live concert by traditional musicians, including best-selling accordionist Sharon Shannon.

Ali's wife, Yolanda, said her husband's Irish blood might help explain his legendary ability to bludgeon his opponents with blarney as well as punches. She kept close at Ali's side during the public events, talking to him and steadying him as they walked arm in arm.

"When you look at Muhammad's pugilistic skills and his loquacious ways, I am sure if his great-grandfather was alive, he would swear it came from him," she said. "If he were alive today I bet he would be in every pub talking about it too."

Mayor Frankie Neylon presented Ali with a scroll and proclaimed him Ennis' first "freeman," an honor conveying him special privileges in the County Clare town of 23,000. The mayor said the most valuable privilege would be free parking.

Yolanda Ali said the couple would return to Ireland "now that we know that Muhammad is an Ennisman."

People traveled hundreds of miles from across Ireland to see Ali, among them veteran Irish boxers who sparred with Ali in New York training decades ago.

Former Irish national champ Jim O'Sullivan recalled sparring with Ali and his trainer Angelo Dundee during a U.S. tour by Irish boxers in 1978 — and wished he'd known then that "The Greatest" was "just a Paddy like us."

"We'd have dearly loved to have known he was that wee bit Irish. We'd have given him some stick," O'Sullivan said, using an Irish expression for good-natured ribbing.

Ali was driven through the town to Turnpike Road, where his great-grandfather lived before sailing for America. He met several representatives of the Grady clan, most of them O'Gradys — the O connoting "son of" in the native Irish tongue.

Later, Ali was guest of honor at a fundraising banquet at nearby Dromoland Castle, one of Ireland's premier luxury hotels. He planned to return to the United States on Wednesday. 

Sinn Fein Prepared to Sell It's Soul for Power

On 9.01.09 at www.irishnews.com

The recent decision by Sinn Fein to hold crisis talks on its future role, as a result of electoral failure in the Irish Republic, is testimony to the internal turmoil caused by deepening cracks at all levels of that party.

It comes hot on the heels of rejection on the doorsteps and in the polling booths by the electorate in the south and a constant haemorrhaging of many former friends and colleagues to dissident Provo groups in the north.

In the south, the loss of key seats, the resignations of key councillors and the description of the party by one of its touted rising stars, Kerry-based councillor Toireasa Ferris, as being completely irrelevant to the bulk of people in the Republic is a damning indictment of Sinn Fein’s much vaunted claim to be an all-Ireland party, engaged in building an Ireland of equals.

Sinn Fein’s foolish decision to continue campaigning for a No vote in the forthcoming second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, at a time when a unity of purpose across Europe is crucial if we are to eventually battle out of a world wide recession, underlines Sinn Fein’s total failure to understand even basic level economic realities.

Mr Adams is spectacularly failing to make any real impact in terms of providing any leadership on revitalising Sinn Fein’s fortunes on the political landscape of the Republic and is now an increasingly redundant figurehead, a political liability.

It is exactly for this reason that his increasingly shrill protestations that he has no intention of withdrawing from a front line political role ring hollow.

Sinn Fein has always been prepared to shape, remould and if necessary abandon its so-called core principles in order to continue its political scramble up the greasy pole of power.

Make no mistake, Gerry Adams will be the next sacrifice on the altar of political expediency by Sinn Fein and from the wings will swoop the sharp-suited, chauffeur-driven vulture Conor Murphy.

Elsewhere in the north, Sinn Fein continues to try to con the electorate into believing that, despite all of the above, it does have a coherent package of strategies to deliver a united Ireland that goes beyond vague generalities, wishful thinking and a Marxist pipe dream.

The bottom line in all analysis of Sinn Fein is that it is a movement that is prepared to sell its soul in return for a chance to grasp the levers of power. All that matters to the party strategists is that power, by whatever methods, is captured.

Its cynical pursuit of that selfish, self-centred objective, ‘power at all costs’, is at the heart of its sordid marriage of convenience with the DUP.

Unfortunately having achieved a degree of power Sinn Fein has little idea how to use it for the public good.

Sinn Fein has willingly thrown itself into a squalid axis of self preservation that has pushed the north to the brink of a virtual dictatorship – a counteractive dual dictatorship, which renders each side paralysed and fails to pay even the most cursory lip service to the framework of democracy.

All that matters to Sinn Fein is the ability to force change by whatever means necessary.

Since its inception, the constitution of Sinn Fein has supported the ethos of physical force. It has been used as a reason for the pursuit of a united Ireland by “any means”.

The unambiguous choice of those words is chilling in its clarity. Those words effectively create the space, the rationale and indeed the excuse for orchestrated terror.

The harsh truth is that this ethos continues to feed into the psyche of street violence. It provides the intellectual excuse for the continued targeting of police and army personnel by provo dissidents. It is the remote control mechanism for those that claim justification for the recent murders of a police officer and two young soldiers.

But of course Sinn Fein has never been coy about distorting the truth. The duplicitous double standards, hypocrisy and selective moral indignation displayed by the likes of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly in spewing out carefully rehearsed condemnation rings sickeningly very hollow.

They appear with monotonous regularity on our television screen and radio to criticise those that are, in

effect, their own mirror image when it comes to pulling gun triggers, throwing petrol bombs and setting off explosions.

It is Sinn Fein that has spawned the dissident Provos.

Gerry Kelly tries to sever and sanitise Sinn Fein’s connection and responsibility for these breakaway provo groups by trying to objectively refer to them as ‘micro groups’. He is fooling no-one. They are former provos now ‘provo dissidents’.

The growing number of dissident provos are out rioting on our streets and killing innocent people because, in their eyes, Sinn Fein has failed to deliver on any of its false promises to its supporters.

Sinn Fein, who are experts in street violence, now stand back and express media-cultivated mock horror at the reality of street violence carried out by those who were its former star pupils. Sinn Fein is deceiving no-one.

If we are to move forward there is an urgent need for a proactive agenda to create a shared society in which there is space for all and comfort for all.

The political challenge is for constructive people of goodwill in all parties to set an agenda on the economy, education and health that will create opportunities and benefit every single child, every single worker, every single person in society. In simple language we must create and sustain a shared society.

The economic crisis is likely to get worse before it gets better. We can minimise the pain, we can prepare for the recovery, but it cannot be done in a context of less than full honesty.

We need an honest and total commitment to push forward on the things that we agree on. The sooner we start doing that, the sooner we will start delivering for all people.

The sooner we start, the sooner we will begin to map out the shape and format of a new agreed Ireland in which all of the people on this island feel at home.