Kabul attack raises dark memories of Vietnam

From a political and military point of view the recent attack by Taliban insurgents on Kabul was well planned and successful.

For twenty hours a small group of determined insurgents (about 12) held off the combined might of the Afghan army, police and NATO forces.

The insurgents occupied a half built building just behind the American embassy. That nobody realised the danger this reinforced concrete building posed to the embassy is incredible.

The insurgents simply shot the lone security man guarding the building and used the building to fire several RPG rounds into the American compound.

The response of the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, was telling:

Half a dozen RPG rounds from 800 meters away, that isn’t Tet, that’s harassment. If that’s the best they can do I think it is a statement of their weakness.

Although minor in comparison to the Tet Offensive, which effectively marked America’s defeat in the Vietnam War, this attack is anything but mere harassment.

It is a strong indication of what’s going to happen as soon as the last NATO soldier vacates Kabul.

I’ll be surprised if the Taliban are not back in power within a year of NATOs departure.

Jackie Kennedy on the Irish

Jackie Kennedy was right on the button in her description of the Irish.

She described those Irish close to her husband as the Irish Mafia suffering from a persecution complex.

For most of our blighted history we blamed the British for our failures. When our economy collapsed it was Lehman’s fault and our failure to recover from the catastrophe is, apparently, all down to those nasty Germans.

Martin McGuinness for predident

Noel Whelan, barrister, Irish Times columnist and Fianna Fail supporter thinks that Sinn Fein have no chance of winning the presidential election (Today with Pay Kenny, Friday).

RTEs Charlie Bird is of the same mind (Saturday with Charlie Bird, no link).

He (Martin McGuinness) hasn’t got a prayer of being elected.

I think both commentators are being a bit hasty in their predictions, clearly they’ve forgotten the Mary Robinson effect.

In fact, I’m going to put my head on the block and predict McGuinness will win by a sizeable majority.

Continuing decline of Fianna Fail cancer good for Ireland

The problem was simple for Fianna Fail – should they contest the upcoming presidential election and if so who to nominate?

The answer was also simple – nominate Brian Crowley, give him as much support as the party could afford and hope that, at minimum, he would do comparatively well.

Fortunately, the obnoxious and traitorous Fianna Fail party is led by the obnoxious, cowardly and incompetent Michael Martin who, predictably, made a complete fool of himself and his party over the issue.

Martin’s stupidity has added greatly to disunity and resentment within the party.

The continuing disintegration of this cancerous organisation can only be good for the future of Ireland.

Journalist Gavin Sheridan wins major victory over NAMA

Online journalist Gavin Sheridan (my nephew) is to be heartily congratulated for taking on the monolith that is the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) and winning.

The Information Commissioner has ruled that NAMA is subject to freedom of information requests.

This ground breaking decision has come about after a great deal of technical and forensic legal work by Gavin over many months (See full details on Gavin’s blog, The Story).

NAMA is not subject to freedom of information requests in the normal sense but Gavin discovered a loophole in the Soviet style secrecy laws that prevent Irish citizens from knowing what’s going on in NAMA.

As I have said on many occasions, secrecy is the most powerful weapon of a corrupt state and Ireland is the most secretive and most corrupt state in the Western world.

Gavin’s dedicated work is helping to break down that corrosive secrecy and for that the people of Ireland should be grateful.

I include the Irish Examiner report below.

Irish Examiner

Key ruling may leave NAMA open to inquiry

By Claire O’Sullivan

Thursday, September 15, 2011

GREATER transparency around the workings of the highly secretive NAMA is expected after the Information Commissioner ruled that it is subject to freedom of information requests.
Financial experts believe the breakthrough will also help better predict when the property market will bottom out.

In a landmark ruling, the Information Commissioner has decided the agency should be subject to information requests under environmental freedom of information.

Freedom of Information campaigners also believe the decision could leave Anglo Irish Bank open to inquiry.

The ruling emerged after Gavin Sheridan, a Dublin-based online journalist, sought information on the body via the 2007 freedom to environmental information statutory instrument.

NAMA refused to supply the information, saying the refusal was justified on the grounds that it is not a public authority within the meaning of the 2007 regulations

However, Information Commissioner Emily O’Reilly found that the national property company was not justified in its action and she annulled the original refusal, saying it was a public authority within the meaning of the regulations.

It is expected that NAMA will attempt to appeal this latest review. It has up to eight weeks within which to do so.

Professor of finance at Trinity College, Brian Lucey, said the decision was important, as it should allow taxpayers to see “what business NAMA are doing, who they are doing it with and for how much”.

One of the basic problems with NAMA, he said, is its opaque nature.

“This opacity has hugely hampered the information discovery in property. We need such information discovery if we are to get to the true state of property and property prices.

“Secondly, NAMA’s opacity has been a huge liability on the public as they have pretended that they could not be transparent and efficient. The responsibility to be transparent cannot be dodged by a public body like NAMA.”

Birthday Bertie – the people's hero

Ah, poor Bertie, he’s upset by how his 60th birthday celebrations have been portrayed in a negative light.

Bertie’s son in law, Westlife star Nicky Byrne, made an emotional defence of his ‘hard done by’ father in law.

It’s hard for him to watch and read this sort of thing.

It’s hard for him to be in a position now, where he is not at a level to defend himself because he is not in public office any more.

95pc of the public knew his father-in-law was a good guy.

95% – my goodness, that is impressive.

Or could it be that young Nicky is labouring under the same delusion as that of Mrs. Haughey, wife of the criminal and traitor Charlie Haughey, when she said

Everybody hates Charlie Haughey except the people.

Prediction of economic disaster

Just came across this letter that I submitted to the Irish Times on 20th Oct 2004 in response to the then latest scam by AIB.

Madam,

Mr. Buckley of AIB is wide of the mark in likening the current scandal to an iceberg where the vast amount of transactions are genuine but unseen by the general public while the relatively ‘small number of errors’ are emphasized by the media. (RTE News, 20th Oct.).

The stark reality is that AIB is a rogue iceberg rampaging unregulated across the sea that is the Irish economy. The ship of state, captained by a government that steadfastly refuses to heed the many warnings of impending disaster, is steaming full speed ahead on a collision course with this rogue iceberg.

When the inevitable happens, the international economic reputation of Ireland will plunge headlong into the icy depths of global contempt.

Yours etc.,

Anthony Sheridan

Freedom of Information Act will not be re-instated

Secrecy is the most potent weapon of a corrupt state.

The Freedom of Information Act was introduced in 1997 and was in operation until 2003 when the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democratic coalition effectively stripped it of any real relevance.

The reason for this subversion of the Act was simple – It was too effective in exposing corruption.

No corrupt political/administrative system can tolerate an effective freedom of information act without risking exposure.

The current government could have re-instated the original FOI Act literally overnight; it should have been their very first act on assuming power.

That this has not happened after six months in power is a clear indication that this government has no intention of providing citizens with an effective FOI act.

The reason the Fine Gael/Labour will refuse to introduce an effective FOI act is simple – It would be too effective in exposing corruption.

The current administration will, I believe, opt for either of the following strategies.

String out the matter through never-ending committees, reviews, consultations until the next election or introduce a new act with different words but with the same non effectiveness as the current act.

Seamus Dooley of the National Union of Journalists wrote the following letter (Irish Examiner, 16th April 2003) in response to the destruction of the original FOI Act.

You’ve just had one of your rights erased

The final nail has been driven into the Freedom of Information Act.

While it is unfortunate that the President did not refer the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill to the Council of State for examination, her decision to sign the Bill within 24 hours of the early signing motion being presented to Seanad Eireann gives a neat piece of symmetry to this sorry saga.

It is worth reflecting on what happened.

Rumours that plans were afoot to bastardise the Bill emerged in early February.

The NUJ immediately sought and were refused meetings with the Taoiseach, Tanaiste and Minister of State at the Department of Finance.

In time it emerged that a secret review was carried out by a group of secretaries general who did not consult with the Information Commissioner (or anyone else) because they had not been told to do so by the Government.

The Cabinet duly met, accepted the report of the top civil servants and added in other restrictions for good measure.

It was decided not to publish the Bill mid-week but to wait until Friday, February 28.

On Tuesday, March 4, Seanad Eireann was asked to consider the Bill in a bizarre debate during the course of which it emerged that some rural senators had not even received copies of the legislation.

By March 13 the Oireachtas committee on Finance and the Public Service had agreed to hear submissions. The advice of the information Commissioner that sections of the Bill were inoperable was duly noted and ignored. Other submissions were similarly dismissed.

The NUJ was the first body to highlight the dangers inherent in the amendment relation to personal information. We welcome the change of heart by the Minister for Finance following the powerful presentation by Colm O’Gorman to the Oireachtas committee.

What that u-turn proved was that the entire Bill was ill-considered. The Government pressed on nevertheless. With the Taoiseach insisting that the hours spent on the debate during March was in some way compensation for the absence of public consultation on a Bill designed to take away rights conferred on citizens by the Oireachtas only five years ago.

The Taoiseach and Tanaiste have yet to explain how they reconcile the Government’s approach with the commitments to consultation contained in the new Social Partnership Agreement, Sustaining Progress.

The Bill was signed into law on Friday as those gate-keepers of democracy, the Progressive Democrats, met to celebrate their achievements in government.

As they surveyed the ruins of an Act they once supported with such enthusiasm I hope they were proud of their work.

Seamus Dooley
Irish Secretary
National Union of Journalists
Liberty Hall
Dublin 1

Secrecy is the most potent weapon of a corrupt state.

Copy to:
Fine Gael
Labour

Nothing will change until the corrupt political system is destroyed

A caller to today’s Liveline provides us with a good example of the ruthlessness and greed of the banking sector.

The caller, an elderly lady, used her entire life savings to pay €100,000 off her son’s mortgage when he found himself in deep trouble.

The bank, the EBS, must have been rubbing its hands in glee as this part of the mortgage was on a tracker contract and so its payment would save the bank a substantial amount of money.

The woman then asked the EBS to come to an agreement for the rest of the mortgage (€50,000) which was on a fixed contract.

Not a chance lady, if you want to pay this part of the mortgage off we will impose a substantial penalty.

It’s the law she was told, it’s policy she was told.

You do us a favour, we screw you.

The Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton, took time our from her busy schedule organising a no holds barred crackdown on alleged social welfare fraudsters to gently ask the banks to go a bit easy on the increasingly desperate peasants.

I actually would like to see the banks becoming active in reaching out to the citizens who have become embroiled in debt because of the recession, losing their job, losing their business.

The critical thing, said the Minister, is that people should engage with their lender.

We can see from the above example what happens to people when they ‘engage’ with their ruthless lenders.

Fergus Finlay has a good article in today’s Irish Examiner on the mortgage crisis in which he brings up the subject of revolution.

In my opinion the big picture is very simple.

The corrupt political system allowed the banks and others destroy our country.

The corrupt political system continues to protect the banks and others who destroyed our country.

Nothing will change until the people destroy the corrupt political system.

Oxford break

I was in Oxford at the weekend to see an exhibition of treasures recently found in the royal burial tombs and the palace of Aegae, the ancient city of Macedon.

Artefacts in the exhibition included objects from the burial tomb of King Phillip II, father of Alexander the Great.

The exhibition was hosted in the very impressive Ashmolean Museum, the world’s first university museum.

Oxford itself is also a very impressive city with history seeping out of every stone.