Category Archives: Politics

from the Dail to the White House and back via Downing Street and elsewhere.

letterIrish Ambassador to the US Michael Collins (snigger) writes a strongly worded letter to Senators John McCain and Carl Levin.

That’ll show ’em.

Ferrero Rocher though, in fairness.

Via: Dept of Finance IRL

UPDATE:

51DD7090-2791-444E-9239-AB49514F7691_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy10_cw0Senators Levin (left) and McCain respond:

“Records obtained by the subcommittee clearly reflect that, for years, Apple paid Irish tax authorities a nominal rate, far below Ireland’s statutory rate of 12.5 percent, on trading income. Testimony by key Apple executives, including CEO Tim Cook and Head of Tax Operations Phillip Bullock, corroborates that Apple had a special arrangement with the Irish government that, since 2003, resulted in an effective tax rate of 2 percent or less.

Most reasonable people would agree that negotiating special tax arrangements that allow companies to pay little or no income tax meets a common-sense definition of a tax haven.”

 

Ow.

Levin, McCain Statement on Letter from Irish Ambassador to the United States

Previously: They’re On To Us

magdalene_sistersDONOHUEA new booklet The Myths of the Magdalene Laundries has been published by the American Catholic League.

Based on Martin McAleese’s sanitised report into state involvement in the laundries, the booklet claims to examine “the origins of the many myths that have surfaced”.

Bill Donohue (above), president of the American Catholic League, says:

Virtually all the horror stories that have been told—nuns cruelly torturing and sexually abusing “fallen” women—are lies. Worse, Irish officials, such as the current prime minister, Enda Kenny, continue to misinform the public, even in the face of indisputable evidence. Media outlets, the BBC and the New York Times, in particular, refuse to discuss the McAleese Report, leaving the impression that the falsehoods told by Peter Mullan in his propaganda film, “The Magdalene Sisters” (top) offers an accurate picture of what happened.

 

Copies are available to the public for $5 per booklet.

$5 you say?

Will we flock.

Bill Donohue

Lies Of The Magdalene Laundries (CatholicLeague.org)

Via: PJ Coogan

Previously:

 The Magdalene Report:A Conclusion

Result

Sister, Sister

tropes

Parts one and two of the Tropes Vs Women in Video Games series – a Kickstarter funded educational video project exploring one of the most prevalent gender-stereotyping clichés of gaming. Of the just-released episode 2, Anita Sarkeesian sez:

In this installment we look at “dark and edgy” side of the trope in more modern games and how the plot device is often used in conjunction with graphic depictions of violence against women. Over the past decade we’ve seen developers try to spice up the old Damsel in Distress cliche by combining it with other tropes involving victimized women including the disposable woman, the mercy killing and the woman in the refrigerator.

The who in the whatnow?

Certain angry men don’t want you to watch this.

boingboing

File Pics Fianna Fail has put down a motion of no confidence in Minister for Justice Alan Shatter over the garda discretion controversy.

Mr Shatter said his mentioning of the incident involving the Independent TD Mick Wallace was a mistake.
He apologised and said he would not do it again.
Minister Alan Shatter told the Dáil the motion was particularly galling given that one of his biggest jobs on entering office was to reverse Fianna Fáil’s cuts to justice and defence funding.
Addressing claims made by Mattie McGrath TD last Thursday he told the Dáil, “While I can be accused of being a workaholic, I can not be accused of abusing alcohol.”

 

Minister Shatter says FF confidence motion is disingenuous and politically opportunistic (RTE)

(Mark Stedman / Photocall Ireland)

Via: Páraic Gallagher

The Garda report filed on the 2008/9 incident in which Justice Minister Alan Shatter was stopped at a drink-drive checkpoint “has gone missing”.

Don’t worry.

A concerned and informed garda whistleblower has been found..

 

An informed source has revealed the garda who stopped Mr Shatter felt he was not fully co-operative. She was also asked by the then Fine Gael frontbench spokesman: “Don’t you know who I am?
Information made available to the Irish Independent about the incident about five years ago appears to contradict Mr Shatter’s version of events.

Informed sources familiar with the case say that the now Justice Minister:

* Said nothing about being asthmatic, preventing him completing the test.

* Intimated to the garda that it was unconstitutional to stop him as he was coming from the Dail and said: “Check your law book.”

* Appeared not to make a sufficient effort to complete the breath test.

* Drove off without being waved on by the officer.

 


‘Don’t you know who I am?’ What Shatter said to garda (Fionnan Sheahan / Ian Mallon, Irish Independent)

Meanwhile:

And we know what happens to people such as Clare Daly, in similar circumstances.

She winds up handcuffed by the side of the road, taken to a police station and put in a cell. When she gives a urine sample she’s released with the remark: “Come back when you’re sober.”

The details of her alleged “offence” are then leaked and end up in the media. The fact she subsequently passed the drink-driving test with flying colours is beside the point.

Two whistleblowers started this. They misinterpreted and got wrong significant details, but they did us a service in disclosing what’s going on. Four TDs sought to clean up what has become a very, very rotten system.

Clare Daly ended up in handcuffs. Interaction between the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice led to the release of private information about Mick Wallace. Ming Flanagan was publicly skewered for his bad behaviour.

The names of the VIPs and celebrities on whose behalf senior gardai quashed penalty points remain unknown. That’s confidential.

 

Time to wake up and smell the bullshit (Gene Kerrigan, Sunday Independent)

(Photocall Ireland)

10/01/2013 Abortion hearings. Pictured Dr Sean O'D

If the shame and guilt of an abortion doesn’t get you then cancer will or so Dr Seán Ó Domhnaill would want you to believe:

The importance of the fact that US National Cancer Institute researcher Dr Louise Brinton, the chief organiser of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) workshop in 2003 that persuaded women that “abortion is not associated with increased breast cancer risk” (April 2009) has reversed her position and now admits that abortion and oral contraceptives raise breast cancer risks, cannot be over-emphasised.

Dr Brinton’s admission that abortion raises breast cancer risk by 40% is no surprise to those on the anti-abortion side who have repeatedly stated that abortion is bad medicine; that surgical or medical intervention is inappropriate for psycho-social stress that could be better relieved by more compassionate, albeit time-consuming, intervention.

 

We should be willing to give that time, rather than jump to the supposed “quick fix” that leaves one dead and one wounded, the latter physically, psychologically and quite often spiritually. The importance of the spiritual element cannot be ignored in a society such as ours, where women often suffer tremendous spiritual angst as a result of their abortions.

 

The “anniversary reaction”, where women have attempted to take their lives on the anniversary of their abortions, or the anniversaries of the baby’s expected date of delivery, is well-recognised. I have been working in the area of post-abortion counselling since 1998, when I returned from the Channel Islands where I first encountered post-abortion psychological sequelae.

 

The National Cancer Institute concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer. A summary of their findings can be found in the Summary Report: Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer Workshop. The evidence overall still does not support early termination of pregnancy as a cause of breast cancer.

Is breast cancer linked to abortion? (Dr Sean O’Domhnaill, Life Institute)

Abortion, Miscarriage, and Breast Cancer Risk (National Cancer Institute)

Do Abortions Cause Breast Cancer? (Slate)

(Wanderley Massafelli / Photocall Ireland)

5/2/2013 Professor Alan Reilly at Oireachtas Heari (L-R) Ray Ellard, Consumer Director of FSAI, Prof Alan Reilly FSAI Chief Executive.

Can we do NOTHING right?

Many people were annoyed that “the Paddies” uncovered the horse meat scandal that turned out to be a case of massive international food fraud, Ray Ellard, consumer production director of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland said yesterday. He said it was felt, particularly in Britain, that the authority was acting on information, but it was just doing its job.

“There was a massive international food fraud going on and Ireland found it and that’s annoyed a lot of people, that the Paddies found it,” he said. “I’m sorry to say that, but that’s the truth of it.” Mr Ellard and the Food Safety Authority’s chief executive, Prof Alan Reilly, recently encountered hostile questioning from MPs when they met the Westminster committee on the environment, food and rural affairs. MPs repeatedly insisted that the Food Safety Authority was acting on a tip-off when it tested for horse meat and were critical of the fact that no one has yet been prosecuted for their role in the horse meat scandal. Prof Reilly said he was shocked and dismayed at the aggressive nature of the questioning and the political point-scoring.

He said it was a case of “blame the Irish” for uncovering the fraud.

 

Annoyance that ‘the Paddies’ uncovered horse meat scandal, conference told (Alison Healy, Irish Times)

(Mark Stedman / Photocall Ireland)

_224593_golden_virginia300

No more roll-ups?

No more ‘More’?

Taoiseach Enda Kenny received a delegation of senior tobacco industry figures in Government Buildings a fortnight ago, the first time any taoiseach has held formal talks with the industry. The industry figures also called on the Government to reject proposals in a draft EU tobacco directive to ban menthol and roll-your-own products. They also want the Government to reject measures in the draft directive on standardised and plain packaging.

 

Taoiseach conducts formal talks with tobacco industry (Arthur Beesley, Irish Times)

(Laura Hutton / Photocall ireland)