Nightmare in Japan

What’s happening in Japan is really horrendous and seems to be getting worse by the hour.

Those people in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station are real hero’s, All safety systems have failed completely and when we hear that they’re down to calling in water cannon, normally used for crowd control, then it’s likely that the staff are, in effect, dead men walking.

Here’s how nuclear expert John Large explained the situation on RTE News.

The fuel has been taken out of reactor number four and put in a water filled pond for stowage. But the water has evaporated away from the pond because it has no pumps and the fuel has started melting down as well as going critical.

In other words it has started acting like a nuclear reactor again but in this case in an open pool.

The criticality resulted in an enormous burst of energy that has blown its way through the containment of the pool and at the moment they’re trying to maintain more water in that fuel pool to stop further criticality and the fuel fragments being thrown around the site.

So they’ve lost control of about 100 tons of fuel in a fuel pond.

I notice that most of the nuclear power stations are located on the West coast which makes sense as the geographic fault line lies deep in the sea off the East coast. The puzzle is why they built any nuclear power stations on the North East coast at all; perhaps they just didn’t think that an earthquake of such a magnitude would occur.

The inhabitants of Tokyo, only 220 kilometers away, are getting very nervous. Could it be that this major world city of 35 million people is on the brink of abandonment?

The West: Wide faces, wiry hair and big ears

Pat Kenny sent Marie Louise O’Donnell down to Mayo to cover Enda Kenny’s homecoming.

To say that her report was over the top would be an understatement and in the end Pat just fell into an embarrassed silence. One listener called in to inquire if Marie Louise was in love with Enda Kenny.

Certainly, I think many in the West might be considering legal action after Marie Louise described them as wide faced, wiry haired, big eared citizens.

Here’s just a flavour of her report:

I knew I was in the West because I got a seat up on the balcony looking down on the sea of people you had that kind of whiff of human haze of the West of Ireland.

The smell of turf and porridge and tweed and prayer and the clothes and the jackets and the huge mass of people.

And a kind of hue of them like you would get at a big country Mass, all standing around ready for Enda to come in.

And you know you’re in the West as well, they have great wonderful wide faces, sparkly eyes and thick wiry hair and kind of big ears, bright dancing eyes and great Mayo tones and great manners and great strength.

Illegal election posters? We saw nothin

I phoned the environment section of Cork City Council today to inquire what action had been taken against those who had illegally erected election posters all over the city prior to the election.

At the time I was informed that although the city’s litter wardens had not spotted any illegal posters they would keep a sharp look out for any breach of the law and appropriate action would follow.

No, I was informed today, not a single illegal poster was spotted by the ever watchful litter wardens.

Ah well, at least my amazing gift for predicting future events with 100% accuracy is still intact.

In my pre election call I informed the official that no action whatsoever would be taken as a result of the illegal posters and so it has come to pass.

The traitors will be brought to account

Letter in Sunday Independent.

Legislate and punish the guilty

Sir,

The evisceration of the Fianna Fail party is simply not enough. We owe it to ourselves and our future, invested as it is in large measure in our children, to punish those responsible inside the body politic for the annihilation of our economy.

The crime of economic treason dates back to the French Revolution where it was exacted against the Ancien Regime in ways alien to our civilised sensibilities. The idea, therefore, as a law is hardly new.

In April 2010, Eamon Gilmore in the Dail accused Brian Cowen of having committed economic treason in relation to the September 30 bank guarantee.

The Green Party later on that year attempted to have economic treason legally defined and introduced into the Constitution. The proposed bill unsurprisingly got nowhere.

The Government of the 31st Dail must draft such a bill making it retrospective to 1994.

Considering the fiscal, social, and very personal financial ‘holocaust’ that 14 years of mostly Ahern-led government has wreaked upon this nation, such a proposition can hardly be said to be unreasonable.

It is repugnant to the very core of our identity to witness the sight of the lords and ladies of mis-rule scurrying off like members of a defunct Third World regime, while our sons, and daughters, our brightest and the best, are forced to endure coercive emigration. What kind of justice is that? Let us make a good law and use it; let us punish the guilty, and let us use the law of economic treason to do so.

Only then can we at least offer posterity, not to mention ourselves, some validation of our worth as free citizens in a free republic, rather than submit like downtrodden serfs to the power of our overlords.

Pierce Martin

Celbridge, Co Kildare

Mr. Martine is absolutely correct in his assessment of what needs to happen before we can start to build a new republic. The greedy traitors will, in the end, be brought to justice.

I believe this will happen because what has happened to us is not the bog standard incidence of political corruption that has plagued our country for decades, what we have witnessed is the complete destruction of our country.

There is no escape from the pain and suffering to come and that pain and suffering will last for decades.

I just cannot believe that even the docile, politically ignorant Irish people will accept decades of impoverishment while the traitorous bastards who are responsible for our destruction ride off into the sunset with their ill gotten gains.

Cowen: A gombeen right to the end

Letter in today’s Irish Times.

Madam,

It is frankly sickening that the caretaker Taoiseach, a man who did not even offer himself to the electorate and is not now a member of the Oireachtas, should dare to appoint a failed Fianna Fáil election candidate to the Senate (“FF’s Darragh O’Brien appointed to Seanad”, Breaking News, March 3rd). To the bitter end and beyond, they have learned nothing at all.

Yours, etc,

Hugo Brady Brown,

Stratford on Slaney,

Co Wicklow.

RTE journalist attacks media and Atheist Ireland

RTE journalist Damien O’Reilly took the media and Atheist Ireland to task in a recent (Feb.17th) edition of The Irish Catholic.

According to O’Reilly there’s a media conspiracy to damage the church by exaggerating the fall in numbers attending Mass.

It’s a tad extreme says O’Reilly to claim that the church is fighting for survival solely on the basis of church attendance numbers.

O’Reilly should really have a chat with one of the head honcho’s of the church Archbishop Diarmuid Martin who recently claimed that the Catholic Church in Ireland is on the brink of collapse.

On the question of Mass attendance the Archbishop said that it was down to 2% of the Catholic population in some of his parishes.

O’Reilly also attacked as bizarre the campaign by Atheist Ireland which asks citizens to be honest about their religion when filling in the Census form next April.

In a bizarre comment himself O’Reilly says:

I know plenty of people who don’t go to Mass every Sunday, but I wouldn’t for a moment call them heathens.

Atheist Ireland is not calling anybody a heathen but is quite reasonably asking for people to accurately reflect their actual religious beliefs on the Census form (See below for the full text from Atheist Ireland).

Further on in the article O’Reilly declares:

We live in a democracy, and we should be tolerant of all religions and none.

This tolerance, however, does not apply to teachers who are banned from teaching in Catholic schools when they are in conflict with the ethos of the Catholic Church.

Atheist Ireland

Be Honest in the Irish Census on Sunday 10 April. Think before you tick your answer to the religion question, and give an answer that matches your actual religious affiliation. If you still believe in God but you are no longer truly a Roman Catholic, please say so. If you are an atheist or agnostic or humanist and you have no religion, please tick the ‘No Religion’ box.

Atheist Ireland wants to see accurate answers to the question on religion. The last Census showed 3.7 million Roman Catholics (that’s about 87% of the population) and 186,000 people with no religion (that’s about 4% of the population). We believe the true figure for Roman Catholics is much lower than 87%, and the true figure for people with no religion is much higher than 4%.

We believe that this inaccuracy happens because many people tick their childhood religion out of habit, or tick a religion that they don’t really practice, or let somebody else fill in the answer for them. But you won’t write in your childhood home address unless you still live there. So don’t write in your childhood religion unless you still really practice it.

Why is this important?

The Census results are used to predict future demand for State services such as schools and hospitals, and other policies. If we get a falsely very high figure for Roman Catholics, and a falsely very low figure for people with no religion, it makes it more likely that the State will discriminate against people of other religions and nonreligious people when providing these services.

Also, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin says that it “does not make use of baptismal registers for calculating the Catholic population of the Archdiocese of Dublin. It relies solely on the data from the Central Statistics Office, obtained through the census, by which citizens themselves choose to record, or not, their religious affiliation.”

So careless answers to the question of religion will have an impact on the allocation of State resources, and on the political lobbying power of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. If you want a fair future based on accurate statistics, please answer this question honestly.

'We were acting on the best advice' – Not true

Letter in today’s Irish Times

Ministers ignored Finance advice

Madam,

So it turns out that the much vilified Department of Finance was providing, better, clearer and higher quality advice than that provided by so-called external experts. This advice was routinely rejected by Cabinet (Breaking News, March 1st).

Is it not time for the media, across all platforms, to offer humble apologies to the many fine public servants, whose years of training and innate skills were so disgracefully thrashed by so-called journalists and pretentious minor celebrities posing as economists?

Maybe now, finally, the incoming government will begin reforming the system at the very top and clear out all advisers, experts, programme managers and gombeens who infest every Minister’s office in every department, soaking up salaries and expenses and believing they are minor deities.

Let the real experts do their job. The civil service has the training and the skills to provide expert advice to this government; they must be listened to. Their only mission, unlike many others, is to serve the State, which they have done unswervingly, in the face of opprobrium, pay cuts, pension levies and anything else a rotten administration has thrown at them over the years. Enough is enough. – Yours, etc,

JG Lacey,

Lough Atalia Grove,

Renmore,

Galway.

'Ming' Flanagan attacks FF dandelions

I think newly elected TD Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan is going to add some welcome colour and straight talk in the new Dail.

Here’s what he had to say about Fianna Fail (Nine News, 02.30).

I wouldn’t talk to them at all. The election went very bad for them, it’s a shame it didn’t go a little bit worse.

It’s a bit like going out to your back garden and pulling up a dandelion, there’s always a bit of a root left, it’s a shame the Irish people didn’t dig a little deeper.

Captured Irish media: They just don't get it

Our corrupt political system bears full responsibility for the destruction of our country.

Bankers could not have operated their Wild West business operations without the full cooperation of our corrupt political system.

Property developers could not have borrowed billions in unsecured loans without the full cooperation of our corrupt political system.

Regulators could not have ignored what was going on right before their eyes if our political system was not corrupt.

It is our corrupt political system that is directly responsible for the immense suffering and misery inflicted on the Irish people, for the return of mass immigration, for the imposition of severe poverty on this and many generations to come, for the shaming of the nation on the world stage and not least for the many, who in absolute despair, could not deal with the catastrophe and decided to end it all.

Listening to the largely captured Irish media, however, a stranger could be forgiven for thinking that the political system and in particular the Fianna Fail party played no part whatsoever in the destruction of our country and indeed deserves an equality of sympathy for the ‘mysterious’ disease that has been inflicted on the nation.

Veteran journalist Olivia O’Leary.

And there are individual stories, there’s going to be an awful lot of grief in an awful lot of homes today and I suppose you have to feel a bit sorry for that.

No, she’s not talking about the victims of our corrupt political system; she’s talking about the politicians who lost their seats in the election, the guys and girls heading off into happy retirenemt with big fat pensions.

Brendan O’Connor (Sunday Independent).

There is almost something pathetic about the end of the party (Fianna Fail) that was thought to be hardwired into our DNA. For some reason there seems to be little joy in it.

Wrong O’Connor, there’s immense joy in seeing these traitors suffer at least a minimum of inconvenience. If Ireland was a real democracy Fianna Fail would be banned as a political party and its leaders would be on trial for treason.

Terry Prone (Irish Examiner)

Toughest of all, of course, is the situation, today, of those who lost their seats, their livelihood, and in some cases, their self-respect. We have become so furious and cruel a society that the general reaction to their loss is “serves them right”.

It is deeply insulting to the millions of Irish people who are victims of our corrupt political system to witness self-righteous journalists like Prone accuse them of being cruel because they are furious and want justice.

Marian Finucane:

This must be a terrible personal tragedy for him (Brian Cowen’s fall). I mean to see the party he loves so much, to be at the head of Government of a party that you’re so proud of that brings in the IMF, I mean on a personal level that has to be very difficult.

Isn’t it amazing that a politician who has led a privileged life, who has never wanted for anything, who was among the best paid politicians in the world, who is retiring with a fortune at the expense of the people he betrayed can be described as a tragic figure?

Scumbag Ahern caught lying again

I see the scumbag traitor Bertie Ahern has yet again been exposed as a liar.

An independent review of the performance of the Department of Finance over the past decade has found that the Department did warn the Government about the dangers of the economic policy it was following, but that its advice was overruled by the Cabinet.

The scumbag has been telling everybody that if only somebody had told him what was going on he could have taken action.