Was I dreaming…

Was I dreaming or what? I seem to remember the politicians promising that the brutal religious orders would be forced to reveal exactly how much money they had hidden away from those who would make them accountable.

That must be about two months ago now and not a word since – to my knowledge

What has to happen…?

Judges won’t take voluntary cuts; politicians won’t take voluntary cuts, while everyone else is taking involuntary cuts right on the kisser.

Politicians of every hue take to the airwaves. From our remove, they’re freakily removed from reality, their soundbites giving new meaning to twitter. The truth is “unpatriotic”. Cuts are “savings”. Shameless political self-preservation is sudden-onset “responsibility”.

Bankrupting bankers are untouchable, the Minister for Finance telling an apoplectic Vincent Browne that these international men of mystery have contracts, you know.

So had the rest of us. This is not Kafka. This is a parish-pump farce. One that reveals a deep, dangerous fracture in Irish life. People listen to the estranged politicians, look at their wreckage of their lives and wonder if they’re living in The Matrix.

This is serious. Deadly serious. We’re not just losing money here. Too often, we’re losing our minds, our lives. Scared parents wander the house at night, watching the children sleeping, wondering how long they’ll be able to keep their job, their head, their home.

Distracted men (usually) are doing away with themselves in sheds, hotels, rivers, lakes. Small, devastating exits. The ultimate personal response to political and financial treason. Yes, we’re still dying for Ireland. And the megabankers are still on the golf course, blind to the fates of mortals. A perverse acquittal granted them by the State.

Miriam O’Callaghan, Irish Times

Parish pump farce? Political and financial treason? State protection for the bankers.

So why aren’t the people on the streets? What has to happen before Irish people realise that they live in a failed political entity?

What has to happen to make them realise that that failed political entity has to be torn down and destroyed before we can start afresh?

Accountants not accountable

Madoff gets 150 years and his accountant has been charged with aiding and abetting fraud and four counts of false audit reports.

In Ireland, to my knowledge, not a single accountant has even been investigated never mind actually charged despite the theft of countless millions in a whole variety of criminal scams over the years.

Meanwhile, Jim Flavin of DCC and Sean Fitzpatrick of Anglo Irish Bank are still walking around free men, still supremely confident that they will never have to suffer the indignity of actually accounting for their activities.

Judges join politicians and bankers in the lifeboats

The ongoing financial crisis continues to strip away the pretence that Ireland is a functioning, democratic country. The judiciary is the latest untouchable elite to be exposed as greedy, self serving and unpatriotic.

In 1959 a Supreme Court ruling held that a tax wouldn’t affect judicial independence if it didn’t discriminate against judges. The pension levy applies to all public servants and therefore does not discriminate against judges.

The judges, with the full cooperation of the political elite, are cynically exploiting the Constitution for their own greedy ends.

Only 19 of the country’s 148 judges have volunteered to make a contribution in lieu of the public service pension levy.

According to Brian Cowen judges have until the end of the year to decide whether to make a contribution and he believes more will do so.

Brian Cowen is wrong. There is no time limit by which the judges have to decide whether to pay up or not. How could there be a time limit if, as we are asked to believe, it is unconstitutional to force judges to pay the levy?

When the politicians were asked to play their part in rescuing the country from financial ruin they steadfastly refused to do so. Instead they jettisoned any pretence of leadership and opted to fight tooth and nail to hold onto every cent they could no matter how bad things get for those they would claim to lead.

Similarly, bankers and senior civil servants who played a leading part in the destruction of our country were allowed to walk away with massive pensions and bonuses.

Judges are just the latest cosseted elite who believe that they should be allowed to retain all their wealth and privileges while the peasants pay the full price.

The analogy with Titanic is apt – As the ship (of state) sinks to its doom all the elites are heading for the lifeboats with their jewels and fur coats while the peasants are locked in steerage and told they must make the ultimate sacrifice so that their betters may survive and prosper.

Italian/Irish corruption

It’s interesting to compare the troubles of Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi with how such scandals are dealt with in Ireland.

Berlusconi was found out by accident in the course of an unrelated corruption investigation. Italy’s Fraud Squad had been investigating corruption concerning contracts for supplying equipment to hospitals.

The Irish Fraud Squad never investigates this type of crime. Yet, I have no doubt whatsoever that such contract corruption is rampant throughout the Irish business and political world.

A chief prosecutor launched an investigation into one Giampaolo Tarantini who is suspected of recruiting young women for Mr. Berlusconi’s parties. Mr. Tarantini is facing a charge of allegedly abetting prostitution.

Ireland doesn’t have chief prosecutors who can independently and courageously decide to launch an investigation into corruption.

Even if we did have such people they would never, in a million years, initiate an investigation that had the potential to damage a politician and in particular a Prime Minister. Irish police do not investigate politicians – full stop.

Italy is generally seen as the most corrupt country in Europe yet they have corruption courts and Italian police do investigate politicians and bring them to justice.

Here in Ireland we have yet to even admit that corruption is a major and extremely damaging aspect of our culture.

Mass cards: Update

I spoke to a very helpful civil servant today in the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs regarding the criminalisation of those who sell Mass cards without the permission of a Catholic bishop.

No commencement orders have yet been made and I am informed that because the Charities Act, 2009 involves the setting up of a new regulatory body it could take between two and three years before it is fully implemented.

The good news is that the particular section dealing with Mass cards could be law within two or three months. I will then be in a position to re-apply to the Bishop of Cloyne for permission to sell Mass cards.

Exposing the lie

The following is a ‘Letter to the Editor’ I came across while doing some research. It was published on 24th February 2003.

A chara,

The current frenzy of intemperate attacks on the religious orders remind me of the ruthless attacks of the Nazi cohorts on the Jewish people in Germany in the 1930s.

Side by side with reports of abuses in industrial schools and orphanages have come reports of good and kind treatment of children too – but little or no prominence is given to such good deeds.

In his book on Artane, Patrick Touher, who spent some years there, said: “I realise that the majority of the Brothers were truly dedicated to our care; of course a few bad eggs emerged as in any institution but I know that on the whole the Brothers were doing their best within limited circumstances in hard times and with frightening numbers.”

Every boy in Artane – the full complement was 900 – was given training to learn a trade – carpenter, shoemaker, tailor, baker, barber, etc., – to fit him for future life.

Artane was practically self-sufficient in producing its own milk, vegetables and bread. The salaries of the Brothers were ploughed into the running expenses of the school, while the State paid a minuscule subsidy to the institution.

The much maligned Magdalen Laundries were there for the same reason – to help pay for food and other necessities. In effect, by their efficient and self-sacrificing work in caring for the neglected children of Ireland, the brothers and nuns saved this country enormous sums of money for decades at a time when Ireland’s economy was very poor indeed.

Is mise,
Rev CON McGILLICUDDY,
Dollymount Grove,
Dublin 3.

Interesting reference to Nazi cohorts since we’ve learned of the ruthless attacks by religious Nazi cohorts on innocent children in Artane and other religious slave labour camps.

Nazi scum

Email to CORI (My full address and contact details included)

To Whom It May Concern:

I could go through and analyse all the excuses put forward by your representative on Morning Ireland (5th report, 4th item) this morning but there’s no point as you must already know that every word she spoke was a lie.

I do however wish to inform you, in case there’s the slightest doubt in your mind; that your organisation and all its supporters are no better than Nazi scum.

In deep anger
Anthony Sheridan

Copy to:

CORI
St Mary’s
Bloomfield Avenue
Donnybrook,
Dublin
Tel:01/6677322
email: website: www.cori.ie

CORI Religious Life Office
Bloomfield Avenue
Dublin 4

CORI Justice Office
St Mary’s
Bloomfield Avenue
Dublin 4
Tel: 01/6677 363
Email: justice@cori.ie

CORI Education Office
Bloomfield Avenue
Dublin 4
Email: education@cori.ie

CORI Healthcare Office
Bloomfield Avenue
Dublin 4
Tel: 01 6677349
Email: healthcare@cori.ie

CORI Pastoral Office
Tel: 01/5053025 or 505 3012
Email: anne.codd@iecon.ie

CORI Northern Ireland Office
511 Ormeau Road
Belfast BT 73GS
Email: corini@btconnect.com
Tel: 028 (048 from ROI) 90694443

CORI Child Safeguarding Office
Fr Paul Murphy, ofm cap, is the Director of the CORI Child Protection Office and may be contacted at childprotection@cori.ie
Tel: 01/6677343/345

Catholic Church forces children to eat shit

Well organised and open paedophile rings, brutal slavery supported and protected by the state, widespread rape and torture, children who had their heads pinned down by sash windows before being brutally raped, children stripped naked and forced to engage in brutal combat as entertainment for visiting priests. Children forced to eat their own shit and in one case lick the shit off the shoe of a priest.

I’m not going to mince my words on this matter.

There is little difference between the Catholic Church and the brutal Nazi regime of the 1930s and 40s. The Irish Catholic Church is guilty of crimes against humanity on the same scale and brutality as that Nazi regime but with one crucial difference.

The Nazi regime was eventually challenged and destroyed; many of its leaders and supporters were brought to justice at the Nuremburg Trials and received just punishment.

In the corrupt state of Ireland the criminals who organised and put into effect the brutal holocaust against children are still strongly defended and protected by the State. The names of the brutal monsters are to be kept secret, none are to face justice.

As always the nation has launched itself into a frenzy of talk and analysis in an effort to avoid facing the brutal truth. Already, the media has moved away from the horror and is now focusing on the completely pointless issue of the outrageous deal done between Bertie Ahern and his beloved Nazi church.

I’m going to return to more aspects of this horror but for now I’m just going to focus on one scum priest who really made my blood boil as I listened to him vomiting out at least five well rehearsed but meaningless apologies in the course of a short interview on RTE News (1st report, 6th item).

Brother Kevin Mullan, Christian Brothers’ provincial leader is the vile piece of shit in question. When it was put to this pathetic excuse for a human that his organisation had fought tooth and nail to keep the names of the guilty secret he replied:

“I think in some senses we did that because of the actual balance we felt was needed to be kept in terms of brothers, their families and so on where perhaps we had doubts about some of the allegations.

But on the other hand, at this stage, we have no interest in protecting people that are perpetrators of abuse. I think that’s a matter that has to be dealt with by the civil authorities and we will co-operate fully in this regard.”

So, after the deal was done, after the report has been published, after the victims have been betrayed, after his scum church has been allowed get away with the heinous crimes – he says that they will fully co-operate.

When it was put to this scum priest that perhaps people might not have much faith in such promises he replied:

“I would say our co-operation with the committee was quite fulsome and the committee may say other things about that but I think we co-operated to the very best of our ability.”

It’s grotesquely fascinating to witness how easily representatives of the scum Catholic Church can vomit out lies in defence of their criminal members.

Christine Buckley, a victim of this Nazi church, was asked for her response to this loathsome creature.

“The Christian Brothers showed nothing but arrogance and the glib behaviour…just reading his facial features…I do not think the Christian Brothers are capable of trying to understand. At every level they have tried to have it their own way. Now that the report is published, he doesn’t mind if people are named and shamed, isn’t that a little bit late for us?”

Too late indeed, Christine. And for so long as this country continues to be ruled by scum like Bertie Ahern and other fanatical Catholics it will always be too late for victims.