Category: Media coverage

Olivia O’Leary’s disgusting ‘journalism’

I recently wrote a tongue in cheek article in response to one of the many black propaganda articles in Independent Newspapers which are obviously part of a wider media campaign to stop Sinn Fein achieving power.

Sunday Independent ‘journalist’ Eilis O’Hanlon was writing about the misuse of Twitter and Facebook but, in common with all establishment journalists, she just couldn’t help slipping into a rant about the activities of the great evil stalking the land.

My tongue in cheek article featured a recipe for cup cakes midway through which the writer slips into a rant against Sinn Fein in which it is claimed the IRA sent Gerry Adams back to 1939 in a time machine where he threatened Hitler with all kinds of sinister things if he didn’t invade Poland.

While writing the article I thought, maybe a bit strong using Hitler as a vehicle to get my point across but then I thought, sure what the hell, it’s obvious I’m doing tongue in cheek.

But, incredibly, I listened to establishment ‘journalist’ Olivia O’Leary deliver an essay yesterday (RTE Drivetime) in which she uses the same angle as I did with the crucial difference that she wasn’t doing tongue in cheek, she was deadly serious.

Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops and O’Leary obviously thought the event would serve as a great opportunity to link the Holocaust with Sinn Fein.

Her approach was deeply insulting to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust; it was ‘journalism’ at its most crude.

Right in the middle of her essay as she speaks of the horrors of the Nazi death camps she suddenly switches to what the republicans/Sinn Fein did during the Northern Ireland conflict. She selects one victim of the IRA and exploits his death and the suffering of his family to promote her propaganda agenda.

She makes no mention of any other organisation, political party or terrorist group involved in the NI conflict.

It’s blatantly obvious that she’s spouting propaganda, as she makes no attempt whatsoever to compare the Holocaust and the NI conflict by placing the events in any kind of context.

Indeed, to make any connection with the most horrific human outrage in history and the dirty little NI war, bad as it was for those directly involved, is in itself pathetic.

She ends by conflating Sinn Fein’s politics and past with the Holocaust. While rightly warning that the Holocaust must never be forgotten she also warns that people of her generation must defend the values of Irish democracy by making sure the youth of today never forget the role Sinn Fein played in the NI conflict.

As an introduction to her essay O’Leary recalled how she asked a really stupid question (her words) during the 1980 visit to Ireland of the then president of West Germany.

Still clearly embarrassed by the memory O’Leary admitted:

I didn’t do my job as a journalist properly.

Well, she’s still not doing her job as a journalist properly.

Her deliberate exploitation of the victims of the Holocaust as a propaganda device to attack Sinn Fein is disgusting in the extreme.

Copy to:
Drivetime
Olivia O’Leary

Government and media launch major propaganda campaign against water protesters

Yesterday, the Government in cooperation with its many friends in the media, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Irish Water, launched its first major propaganda campaign of 2015 aimed at defeating those who are refusing to pay water charges.

The message was simple: The water is poisoned, the infrastructure is about to collapse any minute with dire consequences for ‘customers’. The only thing that will prevent the greatest catastrophe since the famine is – investment, lots and lots of investment.

One million homes at significant risk from contaminated drinking water

screamed the Irish Independent headline.

And just in case readers didn’t get the fear message, there’s a picture of two lovely children brushing their teeth, great to get the emotions going.

Other dire warnings included: health risk to babies, e-coli, cryptosporidium, lead poisoning, endless water notices, risk to thousands of jobs.

‘Customers’ were warned that if they wanted a modern water system they would have to pay for it. €500 million per year for ten years – minimum.

Also in the Independent (partly owned by Denis O’Brien) John Tierney, Managing Director of Irish Water, was afforded an article all of his own in which he made this dire revelation:

There are now people in Ireland who cannot drink their water because it will make them ill.

His solution: Slap a bill for €2.3 billion on ‘customers’ to pay up or risk getting sick.

We want to become an organisation trusted by people to deliver every time they turn on their tap.

What he means is, of course – trusted to deliver a bill every time a ‘customer’ turns on a tap?

To be fair to Newstalk’s (fully owned by Denis O’Brien) Breakfast presenters, Ivan Yates and Brendan Donoghue, they didn’t even bother with balance.

They got stuck in right away – 20,000 on boiled water notices, nearly one million at risk. They interviewed a spokesperson from EPA asking him comfortable, leading questions that were very helpful to Irish Water.

Again we had all the dire warnings that the sky was about to fall in unless Irish Water ‘customers’ stumped up a couple of billion. At the end of the piece, in case ‘customers’ still weren’t on song, Ivan Yates hammered home the message:

There’s no avoiding the fact if we want to retain our water quality for almost a million people very significant investment needs to take place.

RTE also played its part in the Government’s propaganda campaign.

Here’s part of the written introduction on the Sean O’Rourke website to an interview with Head of Asset Management at Irish Water Jerry Grant.

In the face of opposition to water charges, the response from government and from Irish Water has remained steady. If we want to ensure a sustainable and clean supply of water into the future, charging for water is the way forward.

In fairness to RTE, this clear and dramatic abandonment of balance in favour of supporting Government policy is courageous. At least listeners now know where the national broadcaster stands on the question of water tax.

On RTE’s Late Debate presenter Cormac O’hEadhra nearly had a heart attack at the sheer horror of what was revealed in the EPA report.

Funny, all this hysteria, because Irish citizens (as opposed to customers) have been aware for decades that the water system is Third World standard, at best.

They know they’re being poisoned, they know political incompetence and corruption is at the root of the problem, they know major investment is required.

They also know, and this is where they depart from the position of the Government and its friends in the media, that this time they are not going to be screwed because of the greed and corruption of politicians.

Copy to:

Dept. of Environment
Irish Water
Environmental Protection Agency
RTE
Newstalk
Irish Independent

Haughey: A political gangster, pure and simple

The vast bulk of comment and opinion expressed in response to the current RTE Haughey drama can be described as delusional drivel.

But even delusional drivel can serve a purpose and in this case it serves a very valuable purpose.

It tells us in very clear terms that the current ruling elite and large sections of the media are still frozen in the warped mindset of the Haughey era that enabled him to engage in a decades long career of criminality and betrayal.

In order to differentiate between the drivel and the brutal reality of what Haughey was and what he represented it will be useful to spell out exactly the true nature of this particular individual.

Haughey was a political gangster, pure and simple. He possessed just one talent – the ability to see an opening for profit when it was presented to him.

And that’s what happened when he decided to get involved in politics in the 1950s. Ireland had finally decided to abandon it’s decades long policy of isolation and in particular its idiotic economic war with the UK.

Haughey and his cronies (the men in mohair suits) recognised the opportunities presented by the progressive economic and industrial policies introduced by Lemass.

Ireland could have gone down another road at the time if the criminal had been stopped but tragically for Ireland and its people, he won out and began to infect the governance of the country with the disease of corruption.

For the rest of his career he plundered the resources of the State without fear of ever being brought to account. The diseased culture he created is still alive and thriving today.

Personally he was an obnoxious individual who betrayed his wife and family, a man who robbed the fund collected to save the life of his best friend, a man who threatened and bullied anybody who stood in his way, a man without principle, courage or morals.

But most of all he was a man who inflicted massive damage on his country and its people while all the time fraudulently posing as a man of the people, a great statesman.

In a functional democracy such political scumbags quickly find themselves behind bars. In Ireland he was protected and assisted by all State agencies in his criminality and honoured with a state funeral when he died.

He is still admired by a disturbingly large number of people, particularly those of the ruling elite and their supporters in the media.

We only have to observe the response to the current drama to see how successful the traitor was in corrupting the judgement, principles and integrity of so many people.

I’ll be writing about a number of those responses in the next while.

Sinn Fein and half-baked Irish Independent journalists

Did anyone see that great recipe for banana cup cakes in the Irish Independent recently?

Here it is:

Preheat oven to 180°C, 160°C fan, Gas mark 4.

Weigh your eggs. Note the weight and measure the same amount of Flora, sugar and flour. Place all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon 2–3 minutes until well mixed. Place dessertspoons of the mixture in 10 paper cases or greased bun tins.

And we can now reveal that Adolf Hitler was a leading member of Sinn Fein. A reliable source has provided absolute proof to this newspaper that Hitler’s decision to go to war was triggered after the IRA sent Gerry Adams back in a time machine to 1939 where he threatened Hitler with all kinds of sinister things if he didn’t invade Poland.

Bake for around 20 minutes until soft and springy to touch. Cool on a wire tray.

Mix icing ingredients together and then spread or pipe over the cakes. Decorate with banana chips or popping candy.

Ah no, I’m only joking but here’s a similar article baked (or, more accurately, half-baked) earlier by Sunday Independent ‘journalist’ Eilis O’Hanlon.

Essentially, the article is about the misuse of Twitter and Facebook but, in common with all Independent Newspaper journalists, Ms. O’Hanlon just can’t help engaging in a rant against the evil Sinn Fein party.

Midway through the article Ms. O’Hanlon loses the run of herself as sinister Sinn Fein invades her thoughts.

Far too much of it, however, was cruelly organised by supporters of Sinn Fein/IRA, which, like the hard left in general, have a social media presence hugely out of proportion to its actual support in the country, which it uses to intimidate opponents into silence.

Consider it a lesson in what life will be like if they ever do get an actual, as opposed to a Twitter, majority.

A spokesman for Independent Newspapers denied that their journalists are injected with a mind-altering concoction that triggers an automatic Sinn Fein rant when writing articles, even articles about cup cakes 🙂

RTE: Who to censor, who not

On Wednesday 5 November last, during a discussion on the RTE current affairs programme Late Debate, Labour Senator John Whelan stated that Bord Gais had made their pitch to establish Irish Water under false pretences.

The presenter of the show immediately distanced RTE from the allegations made by Senator Whelan. RTE felt the allegations were so serious that an editorial decision was taken to delete the relevant section from the podcast of the programme.

On today’s Morning Ireland the mother of Paul Quinn, who was brutally murdered in 2007, alleged that Sinn Fein’s Conor Murphy knows who murdered her son. The presenter of the show immediately distanced RTE from the allegations made by Mrs. Quinn.

Then, at the end of the show the following message was broadcast:

We (RTE) just want to make it clear that she (Mrs. Quinn) was speaking in a personal capacity and Morning Ireland does not in any way endorse her views.

The allegation made by Mrs. Quinn are infinitely more serious than those made by Senator Whelan.

It will be interesting therefore to see if her allegations are censored in the same manner.

Irish Times censors RTE censored programme

I see the Irish Times took up my story surrounding the dramatic revelation by Labour Senator John Wilson that Bord Gais had made their pitch to establish Irish Water under false pretences.

Bizarrely, however, the Irish Times took the same line as RTE and, effectively, censored the principal allegation made by Senator Whelan.

Here’ s the exact charge made by the Senator against Bord Gais.

No, what I’m saying is this. Bord Gais through the process of New Era and the line minister at the time made a pitch to establish Irish Water and I believe they did so under false pretences and they haven’t delivered.

Here’s how the Irish Times reported his allegations.

“No, what I’m saying is this: Bord Gáis through the process of New Era and the line minister at the time made a pitch to establish Irish Water . . . and they haven’t delivered.”

Leaving out the words; ‘under false pretences’ strips the report of any relevance, it effectively kills the story.

So much for the ‘paper of record’.

Note:
The Irish Times, in common with many mainstream media outlets, still finds it difficult to credit bloggers and other social media sources with stories.

Fionnan Sheahan: An 'Independent' and 'enlightened' journalist

During the pro government love-in on the Marian Finucane Show last Sunday Fionnan Sheahan, political editor of ‘Independent’ Newspapers did, like so many other establishment journalists, allow that the great unwashed do have a right to protest.

But, his generous concession to the masses came with a dire warning.

It would be a shame if recent events such as we saw here would tarnish everybody who decides to take to the streets.

The pro government panel all muttered in solemn agreement. And I’m sure I could hear a distant murmur from the listening peasantry recognizing the wisdom and charity of this fine Irish ‘Independent’ journalist.

Somebody said to be recently, the great seer went on:

It takes a lot to get Paddy out on the streets but when he gets out there you can’t get him off again.

The pro government panel all dutifully laughed at the humorous wisdom of this great national philosopher.

I see outside Leinster House on a weekly basis groups of people from all parts of the country coming up taking up their protests and you have to say, more power to them and it’s only right and proper that they be allowed to do that.

This generous and unsought sentiment, I must admit, brought me to the edge of tears – ‘it’s only right and proper that they be allowed to do that.’

My God, I thought, the Irish peasantry is so lucky to have such an enlightened journalist recognise their democratic rights.

And, it must be remembered, this weekly engagement with the peasantry outside Leinster House probably occurs when the journalist is on his way to meet the Great Leader and his hard working fellow politicians as they beaver away protecting the democratic rights of the sadly, ignorant and unappreciative masses.

It’s no easy thing to mix in such exalted circles while at the same time retaining an understanding of the coarser feelings of the common citizenry.

I think our problem here is, you’re seeing fringe elements now attaching themselves to legitimate people.

The pro government panel all murmured in agreement at this warning to the ‘legitimate’ people of Ireland – whoever they are.

And, to be fair to this most unbiased of journalists, he does clearly take ownership of his views when he states ‘I think our problem is.

The ‘our’ he speaks of is, of course, those on the pro government panel, the government and wider body politic (excluding certain sinister elements, naturally) and his bosses at ‘Independent’ Newspapers.

RTE: A Government broadcaster

Panel on Marian Finucane’s Sunday’s show.

Gerard Craughwell, Independent Senator: Generally spoke in opposition of Sinn Fein politics and anti-water chargers protesters.

Stephen Kinsella, Economist: Generally spoke in opposition of Sinn Fein politics and anti-water chargers protesters.

Suzanne Lynch, Irish Times correspondent: Generally spoke in opposition of Sinn Fein politics and anti-water chargers protesters.

John Walshe, former special advisor to Education Minister: Generally spoke in opposition of Sinn Fein politics and anti-water chargers protesters.

Fionnan Sheahan, political editor Independent Newspapers: Generally spoke in opposition of Sinn Fein politics and anti-water chargers protesters.

In addition to the panel Ms. Finucane interviewed:

Katherine Zappone, Independent Senator: Criticised the anti-water charges protesters.

Joan Burton, Tanaiste and Minister for Social Protection: Strongly critical of water protesters. Was permitted to ramble on without any serious challenge by a mostly sympathetic Finucane.

Minister Burton even managed to repeat Kenny’s insulting advice to the peasants – To save water; you must turn off the tap when washing your teeth.

Conclusion:

RTE is not a national broadcaster; it’s a Government broadcaster.

Marian Finucane's misplaced anger

Marian Finucane was very angry.

I’m sickened she said, absolutely sickened.

So what triggered this uncharacteristic bout of high emotion from this most conservative, establishment journalist?

Was it the mayhem and murder in the Middle East? Was it the horrifying spread of the Ebola virus? Was it even the latest incidence of political or business corruption here in Ireland?

No, none of these. What sickened Ms. Finucane was the political maneuvering of various UK political parties in response to the Scottish independence referendum.

This from a journalist who rarely bats an eyelid when reporting on the ever present, cynical, lying, corrupt, self-serving, traitorous behaviour of our home grown politicians.

This from a journalist who regularly interviews these gangsters while treating them with the utmost respect.

What we are witnessing here is a uniquely Irish mindset.

If ‘sickening’ events happen in Ireland there is endless analysis/talk/waffle and whatever you’re having yourself. All the ins and outs, all the angles, all the possible responses/solutions and resolutions are discussed in never ending circles.

There is just one simple but unbreakable rule – you must never, ever, ever actually face or talk about reality.

The truth must never be actually acknowledged. To do so would be truly sickening, there would be journalists/politicians/officials and commentators gagging all over the place.

On the other hand, when ‘sickening’ events occur outside Ireland our commentariat can instantly recognise/assess and analyse the matter without the slightest hint of waffle or denial.

For example, later on during the same programme Ms. Finucane was shocked to hear that a FIFA report into corruption was to be kept secret.

She could see instantly that secrecy surrounding such a powerful and rich organisation could not be healthy.

But when reporting on Irish politics/business affairs she seems to be blissfully ignorant of the fact that Ireland is the most secretively governed state in the Western world.

Just days ago, for example, we learned that the Dept. of Justice refused to give any details whatsoever about mult-million euro contracts set up by the Reception and Integration Agency last year. Millions of euro’s and we’re told to take a hike, it’s none of our business, just keep paying the taxes.

She was even more shocked (perhaps even sickened) to learn that FIFA is a registered charity. What?….A billion dollar organisation is registered as a charity.

Again, Ms. Finucane instantly realised that such an arrangement could, at the very least, be somewhat dodgy.

But, again, her surprise suggests that she’s unaware that the charity industry in Ireland is, for the most part, a well greased mechanism for massive tax evasion and fraud. She must also be unaware that the industry, which is worth over 8 billion per annum, much of it taxpayers’ money, is practically unregulated.

Paisley's death tips RTE over the edge of obsession

Did you wake up Saturday morning worrying about how the UK Orange Order was coping with the prospect of an independent Scotland?

No, neither did I but RTE insisted on informing us that a UK Orange Order parade was taking place in Edinburgh in support of the NO vote.

How many Irish citizens even know, or care, that a UK Orange Order exists?

It’s all part of RTEs chronic obsession with all things Northern Ireland.

When Paisley died Friday morning, RTE went into meltdown. Even though they’ve been preparing for his death for years they still panicked.

At 1250, regular transmissions on radio one were suspended. They simply couldn’t wait another ten minutes for the scheduled news broadcast.

It’s been pretty much RTE Paisley radio since then.

The entire One O’Clock news, Liveline, Drivetime. Six One News, Nine News – all effectively dedications in honour of a man whose greatest talent was his ability to fill others with such hatred that they willingly went out and brutally murdered fellow humans in the name of his particular god and country.

The RTE Paisley show continued on the Marian Finucane Show Saturday morning with at least one scheduled item cancelled in order to tell the nation, yet again, what a great man the bigot was.

No prizes will be awarded for guessing the content of RTEs This Week programme later today.

So what about Paisley’s home country, how did the UK media react to his passing?

Channel 4: No mention whatsoever in the headlines. May have been mentioned later but clearly the event was not seen as earthshaking.

ITV: Paisley’s death was the third item on the evening news.

BBC 4: His death was the fourth, and last, item on the headlines.