The battle of the Gays

David Norris has brilliantly maneuvered himself into a near-certainty candidacy for the Presidency in Ireland. Moreover, he will be doing so under a very popular anti-"bailout" banner

His opponent will almost certainly be Gay Mitchell, and journalists are already licking their lips at the possibility for headlines. A Labour party candidate will unfortunately (for them) also be pro-bailout and will lose traction

This is going to be fun!

Of “paiderastia” and paedophilia

So when we were growing up in Ireland of the 70's, we were told to long for a united Ireland - one that would be quite Catholic and Gaelic

In recent years, we were told to rescind all that. Some of us are still deeply confused

There was also the 70's notion that the 26 county state was somehow involved in weakening the moral fiber inculcated by Catholicism. We got over that when we heard what the Catholic Church was really up to between the sheets, and partly as a result of David Norris' brave action against the Irish state, brought in the most liberal age of consent laws possible.

Homosexual sex between an "attractive" adult and 17-years old farmboy is legal in Ireland. They can even proceed to civil union. Unfortunately, as it happens, gays still often end up alone, indeed taking their own lives.

Now, however, we as a nation are asked to distinguish “paiderastia” and paedophilia. Of such cognitive dissonance do backlashes begin


Indeed, those of us confused by the notion of "multiculturalism" and the non-working Nigerian majority in Ireland now have another issue;

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110601/wl_africa_afp/nigeriacrimechildtrafficking_20110601143218

This does not apply solely to Nigerians;

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/wikileaks/kids-in-hse-care-ended-up-working-in-brothels-2665248.html

We now have two very dark scenarios;

1. Nigerian women are forced to become pregnant, and put on a plane to Ireland just before delivery, at which point they give birth to what was a new citizen (up to 2004)

2. Chinese children are trafficked into Ireland, put into HSE care, escape with the aid of their traffickers, and work as sex slaves

Wait until we get some "vivres-avec" from Haiti...

Good Friday, a week early

Ireland got another kick from the admittedly inept Moody's today - but that's not the main story

After all the attempts to prop up the Irish property market, today's Allsop/space auction revealed;

1. Farm land even in relatively central (vis a vis Dublin) Wicklow is less than 8k an acre

2. Attractive 4-beds in Ballsbridge are a max of 550k (and that probably included some estate agents' trickery)


The total loss to the value of Irish real estate from today's auction, including farm land, is well over E100 billion, and perhaps closer to E500 billion

Only the revenue commissioners were party to this information before today - only they have the real price at which property changes hands

End of the Fianna Fail Music scam

After 13 years, we finally got a judgement in US federal court;

http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/4:2009cv03580/228656/68/0.pdf

It is unambiguously in our favour, upholding an earlier default judgmental recommendation

Now to get the scum who perpetrated the crimes in Ireland

A significant debate, at last

Yesterday was possibly the first time in a millennium wherein potentates who could claim future jurisdiction over a sizeable part of the island, including Dublin, debated their plans as Gaeilge. In the history of the Irish "republic", the brief Dukes/Haughey interval 1987-1990 was the only one I can recall with the 2 principal party leaders having any real command of Irish (De Valera/Gubbins/Coll had very little)

We also had 3 dialects; Munster, Galway and Mayo. Had they allowed Pearse Doherty - as they should - that would have comprised Donegal. An opportunity missed; it is noticeable that sinn fein are now free to enunciate the republican narrative to which FF escaped to regroup in the 1980's. That option is therefore now closed off for FF.

As for what they had to say, it is clear that the recent cuts are a done deal, as are NAMA and the ECB/IMF bailout. When pressed, neither Gilmore nor Kenny denied the former. So let's look ahead to 18 months' time, when the "new"government is just as unpopular as the current Cowen-led one

The idea of Ireland as an expression of deep existential urges was most recently expressed in the life and work of the great and tragic Terrence MacSwiney. The 100 million or so people worldwide who identify themselves ethnically as Irish need a place of origin. It is the duty of the Irish state to provide a place that is genuinely culturally Irish; when the crime of paying off debts we never incurred again begins to grate, the national urge will again have to be carefully modulated as it gains in power.

Biffo Cowen; the Mannion's cross roads candidate?

Barack Obama has been a disappointment to many – apart of course from Goldman Sachs, his main campaign contributor. It was a dastardly plot; get hosts of idealistic young people excited about vacuous slogans - “hope”, “change”, “yes, we can” - and then reveal the protagonist as being a conservative of extreme dullness. It has worked brilliantly; feeling left out of the fun, the young people 's parents formed a “Tea party” and will guarantee Republican control of all 3 branches of government from 2012. Barack had the power to disillusion a whole generation and inspire another – to fight against him.

It was perhaps de trop of Barack to put the system in place that saved Goldman and their fellow banksters; they were allowed borrow treasuries at 0% and then invest them at 2% or so – with the treasury department. After a few months, Goldman and their peers did not even obey B's summons to come to DC; it was apparently too cold, and nobody could tell them where the train station was. B. had a New Deal scale chance to introduce a more equitable system, but instead used the resources of the state to destroy working and middle class families and buttress the banksters.

B's true greatness, however, is manifest in his support of BP. Lest we forget, the disaster happened mainly because B had suggested 3 weeks earlier that this kind of drilling was safe! Remarkably, no-one has pointed out that Steve Chu, his energy secretary, was the shill who brought BP to UC Berkeley. Indeed, Chu's scenario was DCU-like; whole labs, funded with public money, assigned to BP with no public access. Tenure in the UC system is a great deal more tenuous than is realized; it is held for each academic in the smallest dept in which one teaches. If that dept is abolished, so is one's tenure.

Not so with Brian Cowen, not so. Those who believe that he was constructed from various parts of farm animals only have part of the truth. That happened only after the soviets ran out of money after constructing his mind; the use of a horse's posterior as the hox genes for the face is too well known to rehearse here (I eschewed the glaring pun). . Their funds already had been well spent on a brilliant plan to take down globalized corporatism, now unfolding.

First of all, allow Anglo-Irish bank to perpetrate a scam that would make Bernie Madoff blush; surely the greatest financial fraud in European history. It is rather piquant that the criminal investigation has stalled due to encrypted files in a country that taught decryption of British SIGINT as part of a DCU undergrad course. Then get the other Irish banks to imitate it (as if they could! - but they did try) with Biffo as finance minister overseeing it with a leer.

The true brilliance of the plot has become clear only in late November, 2010. Surely the sensible thing would be to open the books to Fine Gael, FF's good twin – and equally dependent on an overpaid middle class – and “Labour” whose funds mainly derive from union “dues” paid by civil servants? Posing as an incoherent alcoholic, Cowen knew that he could keep the international financial markets in turmoil by appealing to the atavistic instincts of his party. Remember the 77, boys! And Labour can wait!

So there is NO possibility of a budget passing on December 7, 2010, as the IMF has demanded. Whenever “good sense” (read – world government) is proposed, Biffo can simply wrap the green flag around himself. The fact that very few in FF have any family connections to the “War of independence” or the “Civil War” does not matter - it is their narrative.


I salute the brilliance of the soviets in 1959 as they implanted this specimen in an unsuspecting female somewhere in the Irish midlands

Ps Mannion's cross roads is in Co. Offaly

PPS The prediction about the budget was of course wromg but let's see how the finance bill goes 26 eanair 2011

PPPS I was wrong again - the finance Bill passed, with many FF TDS guaranteeing their own political demise. Immediately, the Irish political landscape fractured into right and left, with FF's new leader "burying the hatchet" with Fine Gael, and Sinn Fein leading the agenda with an anti-IMF line with which Labour will have to keep up. IMO, at least

Ireland; a colony once again

From 2004-7, I had a set of papers accepted at Irish studies conferences, some of which financial considerations stopped me from attending. I also spoke at some of the better American universities during this period on the same subject; what I predicted was the imminent financial, moral, and cultural collapse of the ethnic project we call the “republic of Ireland”. On foot of this, I wrote a book called “Ireland; a colony once again” whose publication has been delayed mainly because of having to deal in my professional life with the fetid, yet gargantuan corruption at the core of the Irish state. En route, I have come to see this state as not just a colonial force directed against the Irish people in the name of various ideas like neoliberalism, but as effectively genocidal.

Both seem radical contentions, unless of course the latter seems simply ridiculous and downright barmy. For a first line of defence, I could perhaps point to the fact that Dublin has been a colonial centre for much of its recent history; first, undoubtedly, for the British and now – with well over 70% of our “native” legislation actually comprised by EU directives – for the neoliberal dispensation authored by the EU, WTO, and other such bodies. One could also point to the theocratic experiment from c. 1935-1970 that we are still recovering from, and the brief flirtation with neoconservatism from 2002to 2004. Yet it is the genocidal idea that attracts me more.

“Genocide” was coined by Lemkin as a term to describe, not necessarily the physical extinction of a people, but wiping away by any means necessary all trace of them from the earth. According to its adoption in international law in 1948, no-one need be killed; the core notion in the term “genocide” is wiping the footprint of a people from the earth. Up to this point in 1948, international law allowed a state treat its people like a farmer treats his chickens. Now there is a really high mountain to climb; I am going to argue that a state whose highest levels consist almost entirely of Irish indigenes are nevertheless actively conniving in the genocide of the Irish.

However, consider the following recent developments;

1.Since 2008, the government's policies have been carefully calibrated to ensure massive emigration (due to unemployment) of the native Irish, while maintaining the failed neoliberal experiment incarnated above all in a disastrously corrupt banking sector.
2.At the same time, massive immigration has been encouraged, with the immigrants receiving many benefits denied to the native Irish.
3.An assault has been performed on sites of enormous archaeological significance like Tara, with the govt showing a willingness to destroy any protectors, both legally and physically.
4.Natural resources are being privatized , as exemplified by shell in Mayo, with the state's armed forces acting as Shell's private army
5.The Irish establishment profit enormously from all these developments; indeed the current minister for transport allowed the the private firm behind the most controversial road development (beside Tara) to share office space with his dept.
6.Historically, revisionism has become de rigeur. Indeed, our foreign-born current President (who learned Spanish at the expense of Gaelic at school) spends a great deal of her time debauching the military projects of the Irish like the anti-Tudor uprising
7.An assault on the musical culture of Ireland culminated in a suspended privatization attempt in the 1990's In the meantime, the government and national broadcaster has adduced boy bands and chick lit as official national culture. Also in the meantime, scam artists are preferred over genuine musical artists, and - exemplified by a recent US federal court case – the Irish state is the only state that allows dissolved companies to continue to steal copyrights, as well as trade openly with the approval of the state's export bodies
8.The major media disproportionately put foreign-born models on their covers to exemplify a changing of the guard

Am I over-reacting? I really hope so. In the meantime, there are indigenous rights declarations (like that of 1993) lodged that the UN to which we are surely entitled to have recourse