McGuinness: Not good enough for the morons who destroyed the country

The entry of Martin McGuinness into the presidential election has brought to the surface a unique and particularly virulent form of Irish hypocrisy.

In it’s simplest form this hypocrisy can be expressed in a sentence – McGuinness is good enough for the people of Northern Ireland but ‘his type’ does not measure up to the high standards of political leadership in the Republic.

This view is, of course, pure and utter bullshit propagated by a ruling elite who labour under the delusion that Ireland is a functional democracy when in reality it is nothing more than a banana republic, a failed state that has more in common with a badly run mafia than a modern democratic state.

McGuinness is accepted by the people of Northern Ireland, by the British Government and the British people, by all the peoples and governments of the European Union, by the United Nations, by the United States, indeed by the entire world as a bona fide, hard working and genuine politician who has made a major contribution in bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Only the hypocritical, incompetent morons who destroyed our country are of the view that McGuinness is not a fit person to hold high office.

In order to stop McGuinness at all cost, this campaign is going to have an additional ingredient – a state/government strategy to smear McGuinness at every opportunity.

This strategy will probably include government leaks, the handing over of files to ‘friendly’ journalists and heightened Garda activity against republican supporters.

NAMA: Accountable to nobody

The National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) came into being as a result of a panicked government reaction to the collapse of the economy.

It was given enormous powers and cloaked in a blanket of secrecy laws that would have been the envy of the most ruthless KGB chief.

The organization has not been slow in exercising its power.

The Taoiseach, allegedly the most powerful man in the state, was recently publicly humiliated by the head of NAMA, Frank Daly when he, Enda Kenny, dared to ask questions of the organization.

The Government has now expressed alarm at the latest madcap scheme dreamed up by this all powerful agency which involves manipulating the property market.

The key sentence in the report is:

The agency does not need Government approval for the scheme to proceed.

This is an incredible and extremely dangerous situation.

An all powerful organization that’s accountable to nobody, that operates outside state control; that operates in absolute secrecy, and, most disturbingly of all, that operates within a state where business and political corruption is still endemic.

The future is not bright for the people of Ireland.

Hallelujah: White collar criminals finally jailed

Well Hallelujah, praise the Lord, break out the champagne and let’s party.

The Pensions Board has finally managed, after 50 years of hand wringing, to put a couple of criminal company directors behind bars.

Damien Goff and Francis Goff, directors of Goff Developments Limited, were jailed for five months at Wexford District Court for failing to remit pension contributions to the Construction Workers Pension Scheme between November 2008 and December 2009

This type of theft, principally by construction industry companies, has been going on practically unchallenged for decades.

Over the years hundreds of millions have been robbed from ordinary workers by their employers resulting in untold grief and hardship for workers and their families.

Until now, no effective action was ever taken to put a stop to the widespread and blatant criminality.

Could we be witnessing, for the first time in the history of our failed state, actual law enforcement by a state agency against white collar criminals?

Only time will tell.

Copy to:

Pensions Board

Dana and Senator Norris

As an atheist my views on religion are a million miles away from those of Dana Rosemary Scallon but despite that I admire her as a person and believe she would make a good president.

I admire her because she doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what she is – a conservative Catholic. When defending her church/beliefs she doesn’t come across as a hypocrite or as a loony religious fanatic.

David Norris, on the other hand, has gone down in my estimation in recent years principally because of his hypocritical defence of that corrupt quango, Seanad Eireann.

He has shown himself to be more interested in preserving the rotten system that has destroyed our country than supporting those who want to destroy that system and build a new republic.

The madness of John Waters

According to Irish Times columnist John Waters the electorate’s Monster Loony tendency is coming to the fore in the current presidential election campaign(Irish Times).

Irish people, Waters tells us:

Have lately become politically reckless, perhaps even a little mad.

It’s likely Waters is somewhat tongue in cheek here but his comments on the subject of madness are interesting because, in my opinion, his own sanity is under threat from the disease of religion.

In an article in the Irish Catholic (Sep. 15th) Waters makes the bizarre suggestion that if paedophilia did not exist in the Catholic Church certain sections of the media would now be campaigning to have pedophilia legalised.

They (the media) don’t regard paedophilia as a serious matter at all. If clerical abuse did not exist in the Church, I greatly suspect that we would by now have a campaign to legalise pedophilia from these quarters.

This latest lurch into religious madness stems from the media reaction to the Senator Norris affair. In Waters’ religiously damaged brain the whole matter is a giant conspiracy to do down his beloved Catholic Church.

Waters’ thesis is simple (in every sense of that word).

The media should have treated the (very minor) Norris affair with the same strength and condemnation as they treat the ongoing Catholic Church child abuse holocaust involving the rape and torture of countless thousands of innocent children.

To bolster his insane argument Waters refers to a short-lived and bizarre movement of the 1970s that campaigned for the legalization of paedophilia.

Was it the case that the thrust for acceptance of paedophilia was stymied only by the emergence of the clerical abuse scandals in the Church, which the Left saw as an opportunity to destroy the authority of the Church?

This statement indicates a mind that has begun to lose the ability to reason. It is, quite literally, a mad statement.

I wonder if the Irish Times management have noticed Mr. Waters’ madness?

The real reasons for Fianna Fail's downfall

Ursula Halligan, TV3s political editor, believes that the downfall of Fianna Fail can be traced back to three sources (Irish Examiner).

Organisational failure.

The redundancy of core Republicanism through the Belfast Agreement.

The replacement of local Cumann with candidate-centred machines.

I never cease to be amazed at the ignorance of many journalists regarding the reality of our situation in Ireland.

Here are the real reasons for Fianna Fail’s downfall.

The Irish political system is based on the corrupt practice known as Clientelism.

This simply involves politicians plundering state resources to buy votes from a politically ignorant electorate.

All political parties willingly and without question engaged in this form of corruption but Fianna Fail became the most adept at the practice and therefore became the most powerful political party.

Corruption eventually infected every aspect and level of Irish society but in particular the political and financial sectors.

This corrupt combination, principally led by Fianna Fail, led directly to the building bubble which burst when the global financial crisis hit Ireland.

The global crisis exposed Ireland for what it is, a hopelessly corrupt banana republic.

But the corrupt political system didn’t just destroy Fianna Fail, it has destroyed the country.

The current Fine Gael/Labour coalition is nothing more than the tail end of an unstoppable disintegration of the old corrupt Ireland.

The most worrying aspect of this disintegration is the vacuum being created through the absence of any truly radical leader or party to lead the country out of the corrupt morass into which it has descended.

Pakistan/Ireland: Little difference

Reforming Pakistani politician Imran Khan was interviewed by Pay Kenny today and what he had to say was very interesting when compared to the political situation in Ireland.

For me there was a realisation in the 1990s that unless people who were clean came into politics we were condemned to be ruled by criminals and corruption was the number one issue in the country.

Ireland is still waiting for someone clean to come into politics, someone who will actually dismantle the corrupt system that has destroyed the country.

Pakistan is ahead of Ireland in that corruption is recognised as a major issue that has to be tackled if the country is to progress in any meaningful way.

While individual incidences of political and business corruption are reported and analysed in Ireland there has been no acknowledgement whatsoever of the fact that corruption is at the centre of everything that is rotten in the country.

Pakistani politicians use politics to benefit themselves, to make money out of politics. I decided to form my own party and become an anti-status quo party to bring about genuine democracy as opposed to a kleptocracy.

Ireland is well on the way to becoming a kleptocracy. Rampant theft and fraud within the financial sector, for example, is actively facilitated by politicians and government officials.

Politicians have honed the theft of expenses into a fine art, even managing to enact laws that allow them to legally rob the state.

Nobody is held accountable because both main parties who are responsible for massive corruption take turns in ruling and therefore do not hold each other accountable (paraphrased).

The same situation pertains in Ireland. The interests of all the major parties are dependent on protecting the corrupt system that allows them to gain power and influence.

It is only when a (revolutionary) party or individual smashes that cosy political cartel of corruption that we will see real reform in Ireland.

They (political parties) could not allow institutions that would hold them accountable.

Criminal politicians like Haughey were allowed to live out long corrupt careers without the slightest worry that they might be held to account by any state agency.

No state authority, not even the police; is allowed (or willing) to act independently of the political system when it comes to political or white collar crime.

Corruption and crime is rampant within large sectors of the financial, legal and business sectors in Ireland yet no so called regulatory authority has ever made any serious attempt to root out the criminality.

No bank or bank official, for example, has ever been prosecuted for fraud or corruption despite the theft of countless millions from consumers over the decades.

The reason we have to beg is that the rich don’t pay tax in Pakistan the political leadership doesn’t pay taxes so the entire tax burden falls on the common man so the poor subsidise the rich.

Part of the reason why Ireland has to ‘beg’ from the EU/IMF is because those with power and influence only pay minimum taxes.

Over the decades a privileged golden circle, which still exists, was allowed to grow rich off the fat of the land without making any contribution whatsoever.

I accept that the degree and depth of corruption in Pakistan is more serious but Ireland is on the same road.

It is, essentially, governed under the same principles of greed, corruption and injustice as Pakistan.

Atheist Michael Nugent exposes the absurdity of religious belief

One of the most annoying aspects of any debate on religion is the tendency of believers to wander off into deep theological undergrowth where they find safe refuge from honesty and common sense.

The best method for flushing out believers from this theological undergrowth is to ask short, simple question and then sit back and watch them wriggle on the spit of their own irrationality.

A debate on Today with Pat Kenny between Michael Nugent, Chair of Atheist Ireland and Miguel DeArce, Geneticist and believer provided us with an excellent example how effective this strategy can be.

Towards the end of the debate the question of which animals possessed souls was being discussed when Michael Nugent went in for the kill.

Nugent: Does a cat have a soul?

DeArce: Cats have cat souls.

(Remember; this man is a scientist who lectures in Trinity).

Nugent: Do cats go to heaven?

DeArce: That is a silly question.

Nugent: Why is it a silly question?

DeArce: Because, er, er – What is heaven?

Nugent: You’re the one who says it exists. If you believe it exists; do cats go to it?

DeAcre: To me heaven is the vision of god and a cat would not gain anything from seeing god because he hasn’t got the apparatus intellectually and so forth to enjoy the vision of god.

(At this stage both myself and my cat were on the floor in fits of laughter).

By just focusing on and demanding an answer to a simple question Nugent prevented the discussion from wandering off into the undergrowth of theological definitions of heaven and by so doing he exposed the absolute absurdity of religious belief.

Joe Duffy loses the head

In fairness, Joe Duffy did his very best to hide his contempt for Martin McGuinness on Liveline today but, in the end, he lost the head.

Joe attempted for a short time to remain balanced but it soon became obvious that callers who supported McGuinness were, let’s be kind here, ‘robustly’ challenged by Joe while those opposed to the former IRA man were allowed to make their point without serious interruption.

Joe: If Martin McGuinness committed crimes he should be in prison.

Caller: The Good Friday Agreement dealt with all of that. The UVF prisoners were all let out.

Joe: (Shouting down the caller).

Hang on, Larry Murphy of the Shankill Butchers is not standing for president of Ireland…how would you react if Larry Murphy was to put himself forward and get the support of twenty of our parliamentarians, tell me how you would react.

The caller attempted to respond but Joe became hysterical.

Joe: You’d vomit.

Caller tries again to make a point.

Joe: You’d vomit.

Caller: No Joe, I wouldn’t.

Joe: You would.

I think we can safely say that Martin McGuinness’ entry into the fray has finally launched the election campaign; I think it’s going to be very interesting.

Senator O'Murchu on short visit to Ireland – from Mars

Presidential hopeful Fianna Fail Senator Labhras O’Murchu was interviewed on Today with Pat Kenny.

Some questions and answers.

On what FF did to the country.

I think the jury still has to be out on that in fairness. Maybe it was in some way interpreted at the time of the election that they were being punished.

On the ceding of sovereignty by Fianna Fail to the Troika.

Well, they happened to be in government at the time of the economic chaos which came about not just in Ireland but globally.

Kenny challenged O’Murchu on this.

Ours was home made, we had a building boom, a property bubble which was manufactured by the government which you supported.

I don’t think you can deny that’s an important part but I also that we all have responsibility.

I believe if we all look at the manner in which people made investments, expecting to get a dividend which was really a gamble.

If you look at the way people who had a lot of money and decided to use that just in a superficial way, the manner in which young people were prompted to think only in terms of materialism, I think we all have blame in this one.

So, there you have it. Nothing whatsoever to do with Fianna Fail.

Good luck on your campaign Labhras.