Author: Anthony

Lessons from Liberia

It is reported in today’s Irish Times (20th June, sub required) that the Auditor General of Liberia has strongly attacked its president for the non accountability of millions of dollars. A number of comparisons can be made with this scandal and the situation in Ireland.

Liberia is one of the most corrupt countries in the world but with help from the international community it is making a serious attempt to fight the disease. Here in Ireland, we have yet to even admit that we are seriously infected.

The matter was taboo during the election because it was judged too risky to attack Bertie Ahern on his personal finances. Neither can we expect much action from the new arrivals in government. Green Party TD Ciaran Cuffe has already made his party’s position crystal clear;

“The Green Party is not the moral guardian of Fianna Fail or anybody else.”

Liberia’s Auditor General is paid by the international community, obviously to ensure an independent and objective voice in the fight against corruption.

Ireland is badly in need of such an arrangement. An investigation into the non accountability of millions, secretly paid to independent TDs to buy their political support, would be a priority.

JWT – New frontiers?

Joe Walsh Tours (JWT) is an old and well established Irish tour company. The company has carried millions of people to exotic and distant destinations all over the globe.
But now there’s a new JWT, a JWT that will travel to the ultimate destination, the edge of the known universe.

In a joint venture between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency, the James Webb Telescope will replace the Hubble space telescope which has given long and valuable service to science.

Hubble has been able to see galaxies approximately 13 billion light years away but JWT will see much further, almost back to the Big Bang and the beginning of everything. Unlike Hubble, which operates from a position very close to earth, JWT will be placed an amazing one million miles out in space.

Another fascinating job for the new telescope will be the search for and study of exoplanets. These are planets outside our solar system which could provide us with the first evidence of extraterrestrial life. Currently, these planets are detected by the way their orbits dim the light of their stars but JWT should be able to see them directly.

So, how long before the Irish JWT is organizing tours to new planets discovered by the space JWT?

Oh Mary

Mary Harney and Joint Honorary Treasurer of the Progressive Democrats, Paul Mackay, were taking a stroll on the beach.

They were discussing Paul’s worry that the PDs were getting too close to Fianna Fail. Suddenly, Paul spotted a very bright and shiny object on the sand.

Wow, I’ve never seen anything like it before, what is it Mary?

You have seen it before, Paul; it’s a lump of integrity.

Integrity? But it couldn’t be Mary, it’s bright and clean, nothing like the lacklustre integrity we have back at party headquarters.

That’s because our integrity is not real, it’s made from recycled brown paper envelopes.

But.., but why Mary.., Why?

Well, Paul, it’s simple. When we decided to board the Fianna Fail boat ten years ago it was already overloaded with developers contracts, jobs for the boys, promises to ‘friends’ etc. Our heavy integrity would have sunk the whole operation so we dumped the lot overboard; I suppose that’s one of the pieces that washed up.

Anyway, we could hardly go public on what we had done so we created a new lightweight type of integrity, specifically designed to keep the boat afloat. It was made up of an endless supply of brown paper envelopes from Fianna Fail headquarters. You have to admit, it fooled you for ten years and, until recently, most other Irish citizens.

Oh Mary, Mary, how could you? You mean it’s all true? Haughey was really corrupt and not a patriot to his fingertips? Bertie really does have questions to answer? Dick Roche is not leaving office to work on the streets of Calcutta. Oh Mary, please, don’t tell me that Martin Cullen is not really my fairy godmother. How could you betray me like this?

Pull yourself together Paul, the Great One is pleased with our performance, that’s why we’re back in power. And the really good news is that from now on we don’t have to bother with all that integrity stuff.

The Green’s have arrived with truckloads of it; I think they made it from a combination of recycled Green policy papers, muck from the Tara/Skryne valley and the tears of all those eejits who voted for change.

C’mon, I have a health business.., er, health department to run…

Roche secures Ruairi Quinn's defection to Fianna Fail?

“In a vindictive farewell Dick Roche signed the go ahead for the M3 before being tossed out of office.”

This was how Rodney Rice introduced Saturday View. I agree with his comments but judging from other reactions it would seem that Dick Roche’s action has put him in line for sainthood.

The ex minister was interviewed on Today with Tom McGurk (Fri. 15th June) where he informed the nation of what a great minister he had been.

I’m a great man for making decisions; I made the decision on nitrates when others feared to act.

My colleagues agree that I put together a very effective programme on environment.

The second Nice Treaty referendum was a very complex and badly written document. I broke it down into its component parts so that ordinary people (the peasants, so to speak) could understand it. I could have ignored the very negative views on the ‘no’ side but I chose to deal with them up front.

I’m very pleased that there are only three lines in the policy document on local government reform that weren’t written by my hand (Did he go through the whole document to check?).

I did great work on the EU Constitution.

I drove the civil servants in my dept very hard but they responded very well. (Obviously, these civil servants were an unruly rabble when Roche became minister).

I did John Gormley some service by not passing the buck to him.

(Echoes of Haughey there).

Tom McGurk was very impressed, he sounded like a schoolgirl who had just met her favourite film star. He was on the verge of breaking down in an uncontrolled giggle of admiration. He didn’t ask for the great man’s autograph on air but I suspect he was favoured afterwards.

Later on things became even more surreal when Labour TD Ruairi Quinn was being interviewed and made comment on the Roche interview.

“Any citizen of this Republic listening to that dialogue this morning, there are very few countries in the world that I can envisage where you would have that open frank exchange between an office holder and interviewer and the rest of the Republic and I just thought it was wonderful radio. I’m very proud of this county.”

I fully expected him to break out with a rendition of Amhran na bhFiann and announce his defection to Fianna Fail.

It has to be election fatigue, it just has to be….

Fianna Fail, natural home for person of no reputation

I couldn’t agree more with Bertie Ahern’s view that Beverly Flynn’s natural home is within the Fianna Fail party.

She’s a woman that actively encouraged tax evasion while a senior client manager at National Irish Bank. In an attempt to save her reputation she sued RTE but the Chief Justice declared that “she had not reputation to lose.”

She’s the daughter of Padraig Flynn, the man who allegedly pocketed £50,000 he received from developer Tom Gilmartin but which was meant for the Fianna Fail party. It is believed that at least some of this money ended up in a bogus non-resident account.

Tax evasion, dodgy financial dealings, illegal offshore accounts – Yes, Fianna Fail is the natural home for a person of no reputation like Beverly Flynn.

Bunny rabbits supping with the devil

There’s an image that flashes in my mind every time I hear Green Party spokespersons struggling to adapt to life on Planet Bertie.

Mr. Bunny Rabbit, out for his nightly stroll, is suddenly blinded by two very bright lights bearing down on him and he thinks; ‘I wonder what’s going to happen next?

The story so far…

On the M3:

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned during these negotiations, when a project is underway and it may not, in the public mind seem like a difficulty to stop it, but when you start looking at the legality of it, the contractual arrangements, the work that’s being done and the momentum that’s built up, it becomes very, very difficult to stop that train in its tracks.”

(Green TD, Trevor Sargent, Tonight with Vincent Browne, Wed. 13th June).

So, if only the Green’s had known about the legal and contractual arrangements already in place regarding Tara they would have been happy to drop their long and passionate campaign to stop a major motorway running through the Tara/Skryne valley

On Shannon:

“It’s probably more difficult than the M3 situation because you’re not only dealing with a situation that is ongoing but also with a situation that is internationally complex and probably requires a number of governments to be involved in resolving it, but we did get some movements on renditions.”

(Trevor Sargent: Link as above).

So, not much comfort for the countless thousands dying in Iraq but Trevor did add that they got a great deal on home insulation.

On Corruption:

“The Green Party is not the moral guardian of Fianna Fail or anybody else.”

(Green TD, Ciaran Cuffe).

That’s clear enough, Bertie can rest easy.

On their own members:

“It did surprise me the amount of ‘Save Tara’, ‘Vote no’ posters that were outside the Mansion House on Wednesday as if us not participating in government, that our moral purity would shine from the hills and suddenly get a sea change. That was never going to happen.”

(Green TD, Paul Gogarty).

So, keep quiet and forget all that campaigning, educating, lobbying, protesting stuff. The only way to get change is to er…sup with the devil?

Haughey and coalition gobshites

The subject of Fianna Fail in coalition came up on Saturday View.

Sean Haughey suggested that leading Fianna Fail into coalition will be seen as an important aspect of his (corrupt) father’s legacy. Apparently, we are supposed to believe that the corrupt Haughey acted in the higher national interest, which is exactly what the criminal claimed at the time.

The reality, as always with Haughey, was very different.

In 1989, after yet another failed election, Haughey had to choose between going to the country again or abandoning the Fianna Fail core ‘value’ on coalition. He knew that if he failed again he would be finished in politics.

Given that power was always his primary objective he had no problem doing what was necessary in his own interests. He completely bypassed his cabinet on the matter, calling them “a crowd of gobshites.” Some legacy

Fatal compromise

It hardly needs to be said that being in government is the place to be. It’s the only place where a political party has any hope of getting its policies implemented.

It is also true that a small party like the Greens, negotiating from a position of weakness, could not hope to have all or even the greater part of their policies accepted.

Having said that, however, I think the Greens have made a major mistake.

Yes, they have been waiting 25 years for this opportunity, yes, it would have been very difficult to wait another five years, yes they would have lost credibility as a serious political party if they were seen as uncompromising. But at what price will power come?

They will now serve in a government intent on committing the greatest act of environmental vandalism in Irish history, the building of the M3 through the historic and immensely important Tara-Skryne valley.

They will also be complicit in Mary Harney’s co-location of hospitals. This scheme, which will cost taxpayers countless millions, will, I believe, be seen in years to come as the most disastrous health policy since the savage health cuts made in the 1980s by Charlie Haughey.

Co-location will, I believe, be seen as the moment when Ireland took the American road to health care. Those with money will receive first class care while those without will just have to make do.

The Green’s have argued that they are doing what many of their colleagues have already successfully done in other European countries – joining mainstream politics in order to advance their policies.

But Ireland is not like other European countries, it is a country that suffers to an enormous degree from corruption and there are only two ways of dealing with this corrosive disease – meet it head on and eradicate it or pretend it doesn’t exist with all the damaging consequences that that entails.

The Progressive Democrats, under Mary Harney, quickly realised that if they wanted to stay in power in a state that is intrinsically corrupt they had to compromise on their principles and integrity. In the end, they did this with remarkable ease and are now indistinguishable from Fianna Fail in every aspect but name.

The Greens will have to do the same; they will have to pretend that the raging elephant of corruption is not in the room. Indeed, they have already begun to slot comfortably into the scheme of things. Corporate donations and all other serious reforms for tackling corruption in public life are off the table.

Their spokespersons are already mouthing the tired mantra favoured by Fianna Fail:

“We will have to wait for the tribunal to report.” Or, “These are all matters for the tribunal and it behoves us all to blah blah blah.”

Ciaran Cuffe, speaking on Tonight with Vincent Browne, was crystal clear on the Green’s new policy on corruption and issues of standards in public life.

“The Green Party is not the moral guardian of Fianna Fail or anybody else.”

The bottom line is that the Green’s will have to be as ruthless as the PDs in abandoning their core values in order to savour the few crumbs contemptuously thrown to them by Fianna Fail.

The general consensus seems to be that this government will last the full term of five years. I disagree. I don’t believe the general membership of the Green party have it in them to live cheek by jowl with the most corrupt political party in the county without tearing themselves apart.

I will be surprised if the present arrangement survives its first year.

Balderdash and lies

Edward Horgan, in a letter to the Irish Times, echoes my views on the remarks of President McAleese in Belgium at the weekend.

Balderdash is how he describes her dangerous sentimentality, a sentimentality that ignores the brutal reality of war and thereby helps to build up the ranks of cannon fodder for future conflict.

People of influence like McAleese have an obligation to lead using the truth as their principal weapon.

Rudyard Kipling pithily sums up the matter.

“If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.”

Or in this instance, because our President lied.

Edward Horgan’s letter is worth reproducing in full.

Madam, – The colourful first World War commemoration ceremonies at Islandbridge in Dublin and at Messines in Belgium are truly sad when we examine the false heroism attributed to those who died in the most useless and wasteful of wars.
President McAleese spoke of the Irishmen from different traditions “who had a common cause . . . a goodness, a graciousness, a kindness, a love, a cherishing of one another. . .it is a shared memory and we need such shared memories”.
Balderdash. Most of the Irish soldiers who fought and died in that war were conned into joining up by Redmond, Carson and the Lloyd Georges of this world. The “shared memories” or myths that our President tells us we need would be better replaced by some home truths. The lies that fooled people into fighting in Flanders included fighting to “defend small nations” such as Belgium (but don’t mention the Congo). This was the “war to end all wars”, a war of liberty against tyranny.
Such lies have reappeared in recent times to justify the Iraq war – weapons of mass destruction, a war against terror, bringing freedom, peace and democracy to the Middle East. Tony Blair lied that the war in Afghanistan was partly to cut off the supply of drugs to the West. These wars, like the first World War, brought only death, more tyranny, torture of prisoners and crimes against humanity.
Most of the Irish soldiers who were lost in the first World War died miserably, not honourably. They went, scared, “over the top” because they would have been court-martialled and shot if they refused. The President fails to mention all the young German soldiers who were needlessly killed by Irish young soldiers. The youngest Irish “soldier” recorded as killed in action was a 12-year-old bandsman from Waterford. Surely that was child abuse, not heroism. Those who survived by deserting were the wise ones, and there were few heroes.
In order to get men in large numbers to do stupid and morally reprehensible things, you first have to find ways of getting them to switch off their minds. Imagined or invented shared memories, flags, bugles, pipers and uniforms are essential parts of this process of turning men into military morons. When war memorials are being called “peace parks”, the dogs of war are being trained for unleashing. Lest we forget, again. – Yours, etc,
EDWARD HORGAN, (Commandant, ret’d)

Rumble in the jungle

“Two of the biggest beasts in the Irish business jungle are likely to come face to face at the AGM in Belfast on Wednesday.”

This is how Sean O’Rourke (5th item)described the growing conflict between Denis O’Brien and Tony O’Reilly on the Independent News & Media battlefield.

Giant beasts battling it out in the jungle are wont to cause a lot of shaking and rumbling; who knows what might fall out of the trees.

This battle should be worth watching.