Senator Ross joins Public Inquiry?

Hallelujah, Independent Senator Shane Ross has finally come around to Public Inquiry’s core philosophy – that Ireland is an intrinsically corrupt country.

Speaking on The Saturday Night Show, Ross said that Ireland is a country run by cronies for the benefit of cronies.

Significantly, he also (rightly) claims that a Fine Gael/Labour government will make little difference because they operate within the same (corrupt) system.

This is important because most people/commentators/politicians seem to believe that a FG/Lab coalition will introduce radial reform – they won’t.

Accepting that the situation was extremely serious Ross promises to work on three main reforms.

An end to cronyism.

Renegotiate the IMF deal and burn the bond holders.

Reform the political system.

I genuinely wish him well.

Cowen: The Mad Hatter

From an Alice in Wonderland website:

Although she understands the meanings of each individual word he (The Mad Hatter) uses, Alice is often unable to find meaning in a statement as a whole.

Cowen on recent events.

If he had any other dealings with Sean Fitzpatrick (Six One News)

From facts within my own knowledge I didn’t have any other dealings.

On denying he asked NTMA’s Michael Somers to intervene on behalf of Anglo Irish Bank (Six One News)

I suppose the best way of deciding whether it happened or not is to know whether I did (pause) and I didn’t.

The continuing destruction of the Fianna Fail cancer

I hope Cowen is successful in his pathetic attempt to remain in power. It will cause more conflict and self destruction within Fianna Fail and that can only be good for Ireland.

It doesn’t matter who succeeds the traitor because all front runners, Martin, Hanafin and Lenihan are all members of the most corrupt political party in the country, they’re all strong supporters of the traitor/mafia ward boss Bertie Ahern and they all admire the criminal Haughey.

Not one of them has even the slightest notion of what the word/concept corruption means in an Irish context and will therefore behave in exactly the same manner as their predecessors triggering, hopefully, the ultimate destruction of Fianna Fail.

The destruction of the cancer that is Fianna Fail would be of greater benefit to the people of Ireland than any amount of political reform.

What are the chances…?

Brian Cowen is leader of the most corrupt political party in the country. His party and all other political parties operate within a deeply corrupt political system.

That system has corrupted whole sections of the civil and public service and most of the financial sector. The disease has seriously damaged the democratic process to the point where draconian laws are casually introduced without the slightest objection.

It has disempowered the media to such an extent that they are willing to talk endlessly about any subject under the sun so long as it doesn’t concern the principal reason for our destruction as a nation – the complete and utter corruption of our political system.

Against this background, what are the chances that a politician will emerge from the rot with the vision to realise that he/she is part of a diseased political system and with the courage to lead his/her party and the country out of the swamp of corruption and into the fresh air of normal/functional democracy?

Cowen: A lying traitor

Brian Cowen is a liar.

This needs to be clearly stated to bypass the mountain of bullshit that has been spewing from political and media sources over the last few days.

I’m not going to compromise my intelligence by analysing Cowen’s statements or motives; he’s a liar, end of story.

I am, however, going to express an opinion about the now infamous golf meeting.

In my opinion Cowen met with this cabal of businessmen to sell his country down the river.

In other words, Cowen is not just a liar, he’s also a traitor.

David McWilliams on stupid Bertie

From the Attic Archives.

Irish Times, Friday January 30th 2004.

Broadcaster wrote Ahern speeches.

The broadcaster David McWilliams has said that he wrote magazine articles under a pseudonym in the 1990s criticising the then finance minister, Mr. Bertie Ahern, for whom he was writing speeches at the time.

McWilliams said in an interview with Hot Press magazine that he wrote speeches for Mr. Ahern for three years when he was working in the Central Bank.

“Bertie was the minister for finance and wouldn’t have been very well versed in the intricacies of exchange rates and so forth, so we used to prime him on appropriate governmental reaction to economic events,” he said.

McWilliams said that he wrote a series of articles for Business & Finance magazine at that time using the pseudonym Jock Rosen.

“So I was writing speeches for Bertie on Wednesday and criticising him on a Friday in Business & Finance.”

McWillimans presents a radio show on NewsTalk 106 and he is host of TV3s Agenda programme. He said that many powerful institutions were made of sand “and that’s something my time in the Central Bank taught me.”

The people who are supposed to be in control aren’t in control, and this is the beauty of all sorts of powerful institutions which flex their muscles publicly,” he said

“I mean, I really did observe that at a certain point we could more or less have written anything, and it would have been read out. Fortunately I’m not that devious.”

This article tells us a number of things.

McWilliams, as early as 2004, was on the ball about what was happening in Ireland. He was aware that powerful institutions were made of sand and were not in control.

He was also having great fun showing up Ahern for what he is – an idiot willing to read out anything handed to him no matter how ridiculous.

Labour Party: Change but no change

The Labour Party has just published a paper on political reform. On electoral reform the document tells us

An informed debate will spell out the pros and cons of each of the major electoral systems and then decide on the system best suited to Ireland, to put to the people for their decision.

Sounds just dandy. An in-depth, open and honest debate before deciding which electoral system was best for Ireland.

When Brendan Howlin TD, the author of the document, was asked why there was no mention of a list system or any more adventurous proposals he replied.

I think that the Irish public is adverse to that; I think they want to know who will represent them.

I don’t think they will leave that to political parties to decide and they vote simply for a party, I think that is dangerous.

I think that it would be a concern that the parties, a narrow group of people in political parties would determine the make up of our parliament.

On that narrow matter of how members of the Dail are to be elected we are not proscriptive because we actually haven’t been convinced that there is an alternative system out there that is by definition better than the system we have.

This makes the Labour Party’s real intentions crystal clear.

They are going to engage in a great deal of talking but in the end there will be no change to the present (corrupt) electoral system.

Why am I not surprised?

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Labour Party

Israeli vulture 'spy' detained

The Saudi Arabian authorities have ‘detained’ a vulture on suspicion that he’s an Israeli spy.

In December, the governor of Egypt’s South Sinai province, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha, suggested that the Israeli’s also had a hand in a string of deadly shark attacks off the coast of the Sharm el-Sheikh resort.

Is it sun stroke or what?

Ireland enters the Mugabesque sphere

Letter in today’s Irish Times.

Madam,

The sweeping powers now held by the Minister for Finance seem to be similar to those held by the Eastern German regime of Eric Honecker.

Since the passing of laws to legally transform private debt into public debt and to have the related court hearings held before only certain legal personnel, excluding any independent media to represent the taxpayers interest, one can only shudder at the totalitarian implications for our future.

These powers contain things unheard of in a western democracy including that any one who leaks any information is subject to a serious jail sentence.

All of this is none other than summary censorship on public matters, (we own these banks), and whistleblower prevention extraordinaire.

This moved by an un-mandated government and endorsed by the now autumnal Green Party.

Hiding behind the fig-leaf of the mooted abolition of the Seanad, TV and radio have been remarkably quiet about all of this and the implications of this legal enshrining of banker interests above those of the public are swept away with the crumbs of the Christmas turkey and pudding.

Yours, etc,

Eileen O’Sullivan,
Vevay Road,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.

A nation rarely goes corrupt overnight; it’s usually a slow process over many years.

Bit by bit freedoms are restricted, state secrecy becomes the norm, the media begins to die as an effective guardian of free speech and citizens begin to accept the abnormal and dysfunctional as normal and acceptable.

The situation has become so serious that only revolutionary steps by a new government will prevent Ireland from moving into what an Irish Examiner editorial described as a Mugabesque sphere.

Given that the entire body politic operates within a corrupt system this is unlikely to happen.

Haughey: Still seen as a man of style by Irish journalists

It would be great to start off 2011 on an optimistic note but unfortunately our situation is as dire as ever and getting worse at an ever increasing pace.

An ineffective, uninformed and, at times, lazy, media play no small part in our continuing descent into chaos.

RTE in particular, as the national broadcaster, exhibits a disturbing lack of awareness of whom and what lies at the core of the catastrophe currently engulfing the nation.

Three recent interviews will make the point. The first occurred on 30th December on Morning Ireland.

Rachael English discusses with Irish Times journalists David McCullagh and Deaglán de Bréadún the newly released papers for 1980 from the National Archive.

Haughey’s criminally irresponsible spending at the time was treated in a light hearted manner as if there was no direct connection between the criminal’s behaviour and the ultimate destruction of our country.

Charlie had style as we all know; you have to give it to him.

said Deaglán de Bréadún.

Wrong, Haughey was nothing more than a low life scumbag, a criminal who robbed and plundered his way through a long career of corruption with very little challenge from the media.

Later in the discussion de Bréadún said there was a general kind of suspicion about Haughey’s lifestyle but that we had to wait until the Ben Dunne business before he was finally caught out.

Again, de Bréadún is wrong. The British government, for example, knew exactly what kind of low grade politician they were dealing with.

In April 1980, just four months after Haughey gained power; the British ambassador in Dublin made the following accurate assessment of the man (criminal) now in charge of Ireland’s fate.

His primary characteristic seems to be one of calculating and ruthless ambition. He has become pretty sophisticated and would like to be more so. His present fortune is derived in part from property speculation undertaken while he was Minister for Finance.

This is very strong language for a senior diplomat to put in writing in assessing the Prime Minister of a friendly state. The message translates as follows.

Haughey is a low grade, ruthless politician with high ambitions who made his money under murky circumstances.

Fast forward 30 years to a nation disastrously infected by Haughey’s legacy – the disease of corruption, and we still have journalists incapable of calling a spade a spade, who continue to praise this ruthless criminal as a man of style.

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Morning Ireland