Comedian Joanne McNally tweetz:
“Reading an article in The Guardian about tourism in Essex. Not sure why the journo assumes the Irish tourists have never been out of Ireland before. We’re no longer reliant on an annual coffin ship to the Americas to get out and about.”
FIGHT!
The Guardian writes:
Rania Mustafa Ali, 20, filmed her journey [in 2016] from the ruins of Kobane in Syria to Austria. She is cheated by smugglers, teargassed and beaten at the Macedonian border. She risks drowning in the Mediterranean, travelling in a boat meant to hold 15 people but stuffed with 52. Her footage shows what many refugees face on their perilous journey to Europe.
Escape From Syria was produced and directed by Anders Hammer
Escape From Syria (The Guardian)
Previously: When People Are No Longer Considered People
Meanwhile At The Greece/FYROM Border
UPDATE:
RTE reports:
The Department of Justice has said a further 440 refugees have been cleared to travel from Greece to Ireland, bringing the total to 900.
The Government pledged to take in a total of 4,000 refugees under the Irish Refugee Protection Programme.
However, just half of that number will have arrived by the end of the year.
Ireland has taken in 1,244 refugees to date from countries such as Syria since the programme was announced in 2015.
There are two separate schemes under which refugees come to Ireland.
Under what is known as the resettlement programme, the Government has committed to taking in 1,040 people from Lebanon.
In total, 785 people have arrived so far and the Government says the remaining 255 will arrive by the end of the year.
An article by Paul Wilson in yesterday’s Guardian with the headline, ‘Jürgen Klopp’s prediction comes to pass as Liverpool vanquish Villarreal’
The same article in yesterday’s Irish Times with the headline, ‘Jurgen Klopp, players and fans make it happen at Anfield’, and attributed to the Guardian Service
BaldyMcBalyFace writes:
Why would I pay for an Irish Times service when I can read the same article for free with the Guardian online service?
It was the same last week with the Tiger Woods article, same story but different headline.
This is really annoying when I’m sitting in work bored, looking for something to read to kill the monotony of being a slave to a corporate conglomerate…
Anyone?
Roy Greensalde
Further to the ‘matter‘.
Media analyst Roy Greensalde writes:
Given that IBRC is state-owned, [Catherine] Murphy was suggesting that the Irish people have been subsidising O’Brien’s interest payments on massive loans for no clear reason.
Although I have no idea whether or not her claims are correct, they are protected by parliamentary privilege (as in Britain).
…the extension of the terms of the injunction to cover a parliamentary speech has shocked the Irish media community, not to mention the public.
It had extraordinary effects. For example, RTÉ reporter Philip Boucher Hayes tweeted yesterday afternoon that the Drivetime show was about to play Murphy’s speech, but the piece was not broadcast and his tweet was later deleted.
RTÉ news bulletins mentioned that Murphy had spoken but didn’t quote what she had said or play clips. Online reports quoting Murphy were removed, stating only that Murphy had spoken about O’Brien. Similarly, the Irish Times’s report was silent on what Murphy said but it did provide a link to her speech on the Oireachtas site.
The report on the matter by Ireland’s best-selling daily newspaper, the Irish Independent, said: “Mr O’Brien successfully stopped RTÉ from broadcasting the details which Ms Murphy raised in the Dáil”.
Ireland’s media silenced over MP’s speech about Denis O’Brien (Roy Greenslade, Guardian)
Pic: New Europeans
UPDATE:
Meanwhile…
Dáil should be recalled next week to reassert a basic principle. Dáil speech and the reporting of it protected by absolute privilege
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) May 28, 2015
Under Standing Orders- at request of Taoiseach, Ceann Comhairle may
summon Dáil for an earlier date than that fixed on an adjournment.
— Oireachtas News (@OireachtasNews) May 29, 2015
Emer O’Toole, in The Guardian, writes:
“This year, a suicidal teenage victim of rape and torture (Miss Y) was forced to carry her pregnancy to viability and deliver by C-section. And now we have a clinically dead woman being ventilated and fed for the sake of an insentient foetus, while her heartbroken family takes legal action in order to mourn her.”
“But we mustn’t get emotional. There’s no political appetite for another abortion debate. Kenny has already dealt with this issue. The passing of the protection of life during pregnancy bill last year was very difficult for him and his party. He deserves a pat on the back for legislating at all.”
“If you must discuss this case, do so cooly: in terms, perhaps, of its potential effects on the career prospects of male politicians? Is the ambitious Leo Varadkar, the health minister, using this case opportunistically? What might it mean for the future leadership of Fine Gael? That’s what matters here. Women’s bodies, women’s lives, women’s rights: those are messy, incendiary topics, best avoided.”
“However, you can’t just say “no comment” if you’re the taoiseach. It might look cold. “And so, Kenny, while carefully strapping his knees to the legs of a chair lest they betray some kind of humanity, recommends a careful measure of empathy: “Let anybody put themselves in the position of this family,” he says. And I can’t help but wonder if he can countenance this kind of empathy because it allows him a male subject position.”
“Let anybody put themselves in the position of this family. Then let anybody put themselves in the position of Savita Halappanavar, in pain, miscarrying, at increased risk of septicaemia, denied an abortion. Or of Miss Y, raped, seeking asylum in a country that bureaucratically continues her torture. Or of a woman told her foetus has a fatal abnormality but that she must continue to carry it. Or of a terrified teenage girl waiting for the abortifacient pills she ordered from some dodgy website. Or of a mother-of-two, going through a marriage breakup, who finds she is pregnant. Or of any of the women who contact Mara Clarke’s Abortion Support Network, asking for help to cross the Irish channel, each with their stories, each with their reasons.”
“Women’s experiences are routinely erased from Irish discourse on abortion. Our government and media won’t engage with the reality of living in a body that gets pregnant. When others do, they are dismissed as irrational, emotive: feminine.”
“Objectivity, historian Helen Graham once said, is not an equidistant position between any two points. It is right to be angry and upset in the face of injustice. 2014 has shown us the truth about the contempt for women underlying Kenny’s new legislation.”
“Be angry that a dead woman’s body is being used as an incubator. Be upset that Miss Y was forced to carry her rapist’s child to 24 weeks. These are women’s bodies. These are women’s lives. And that is what matters here.”
A brain-dead Irish woman’s body is being used as an incubator. Be angry (Emer O’Toole, The Guardian)
Previously: How Soon Is Now
‘The Role Of The State Is To Ease The Burden Of People, Not To Add To It’
Pic: Amplifyyourvoice.org
A country by country guide to abortion rights in Europe.
G’wan the Holy See.
Abortion rights around the world – interactive (Guardian)
…The Guardian also understands that a number of Dublin-based journalists are going to allege that their phones have been routinely monitored by gardai.
Since the imposition of the 2005 Garda Siochana Act ,the force has been accused of scanning reporters’ calls to establish if they have been talking to individual gardai. The 2005 Act imposes heavy penalties on Garda officers who brief members of the media.
Ireland’s justice minister faces grilling over Garda bugging scandal (Henry, McDonald, The Guardian)
Thanks Brian Sammon
Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland
Economics correspondent of The Guardian, Phillip Inman, writes about the Croke Park II deal which was declared “dead” by SIPTU president Jack O’Connor, above, yesterday.
“A plan to slash €1bn (£860m) from the public service pay bill over three years has just been rejected by unions, plunging the Fine Gael/Labour government into crisis. The deal was supposed to be sealed by July, but with further negotiations and ballots necessary to get the cuts plan back on track, and with union opposition hardening, the government may be forced to carry out a threatened 7% across-the-board cut in pay.”
“The €1bn in savings is part of the Irish government’s deal with Brussels and the IMF and must be implemented if the government is to comply with rules that govern how much it receives in bailout funds.”
“It was always going to be tough to persuade public sector workers to accept a pay cut when much of Irish society remains unreconstructed from the corrupt boom years and the bankers, property developers and professionals who benefited handsomely before 2008 appear to have gone unpunished.”
“For many public service workers the 7% cut is just the latest attack on their living standards. For some, it will add up to a 25% fall in incomes since 2008.”
“The so-called Croke Park II deal that broke down on Tuesday is more nuanced, but includes pay cuts for all as a central measure.”
…
“It is possible the Irish government will find a fudge that keeps the IMF and Brussels at bay. But it shows the tensions that remain inside the eurozone, which, with its austerity obsession intact, is likely to suffer many more convulsions.”
Cyprus was just for starters – Ireland could provide the main course (The Guardian)
Croke Park II is dead by €300million savings problem remains (Irish Times)
Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland
