BLANK OF IRELAND - THIS WAY OUT

Link: http://www.blankofireland.com/

Do you really have a contract with the banks?

"Who else wants help and guidance through the process of Legally and LAWfully challenging the blank from taking Our Home's, Closing Down Our Businesses, Locking Us Up & Stealing Our Money?
DownloadNow.

Here's the link

A Way Out of this Mess

Link: http://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=22114

I came across this last night, at last someone providing some answers and a way out of the mess Irelands so called leaders have deliberately put our wee country in.

There are many good links here including a full version of the film 'The Pipe'. Take a look for yourself.

The link is here   http://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=22114

Thought provoking stuff indeed!

CARRAIGNAMUC COTTAGE FRUIT AND VEG BOXES NOW AVAILABLE!

Link: http://carraignamuccottage.com/VegBoxSystem/index.php?index

We are delighted to announce we are selling veg boxes packed with chemical free, non GMO goodies.

HAVE A LOOK AT WHATS IN THEM HERE


Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalities

Link: http://www.naturalnews.com/032622_ecoli_bioengineering.html#ixzz1OVa3yqh8

(NaturalNews) Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of e.coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how e.coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply.

This particular e.coli variation is a member of theO104strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance,they must be repeatedly exposed to antibioticsin order to provide the "mutation pressure" that nudges them toward complete drug immunity.

So if you're curious about the origins of such a strain, you can essentially reverse engineer the genetic code of the e.coli and determine fairly accurately which antibiotics it was exposed to during its development. This step has now been done (see below), and when you look at the genetic decoding of this O104 strain now threatening food consumers across the EU, a fascinating picture emerges of how it must have come into existence.

The genetic code reveals the history

When scientists at Germany'sRobert Koch Institutedecoded the genetic makeup of the O104 strain, they found it to be resistant to all the following classes and combinations of antibiotics:

• penicillins
• tetracycline
• nalidixic acid
• trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazol
• cephalosporins
• amoxicillin / clavulanic acid
• piperacillin-sulbactam
• piperacillin-tazobactam

In addition, this O104 strain posses an ability to produce special enzymes that give it what might be called "bacteria superpowers" known technically asESBLs:

"Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamases (ESBLs) are enzymes that can be produced by bacteria making them resistant to cephalosporins e.g. cefuroxime, cefotaxime and ceftazidime - which are the most widely used antibiotics in many hospitals," explains the Health Protection Agency in the UK (http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/Infect...).

On top of that, this O104 strain possesses two genes --TEM-1 and CTX-M-15-- that "have been making doctors shudder since the 1990s," reportsThe Guardian(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...). And why do they make doctors shudder? Because they're so deadly that many people infected with such bacteria experiencecritical organ failureand simply die.

Bioengineering a deadly superbug

So how, exactly, does a bacterial strain come into existence that's resistant toover a dozen antibiotics in eight different drug classesand features two deadly gene mutations plus ESBL enzyme capabilities?

There's really only one way this happens (and only one way) -- you have toexpose this strain of e.colito all eight classes of antibiotics drugs. Usually this isn't done at the same time, of course: You first expose it to penicillin and find the surviving colonies which are resistant to penicillin. You then take those surviving colonies and expose them to tetracycline. The surviving colonies are now resistant to both penicillin and tetracycline. You then expose them to a sulfa drug and collect the surviving colonies from that, and so on. It is a process ofgenetic selectiondone in a laboratory with a desired outcome. This is essentially how somebioweaponsare engineered by the U.S. Army in its laboratory facility in Ft. Detrick, Maryland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...).

Although the actual process is more complicated than this, the upshot is thatcreating a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight classes of antibioticsrequires repeated, sustained expose to those antibiotics. It is virtually impossible to imagine how this could happen all by itself in the natural world. For example, if this bacteria originated in the food (as we've been told), then where did it acquire all this antibiotic resistance given the fact thatantibiotics are not used in vegetables?

When considering the genetic evidence that now confronts us, it is difficult to imagine how this could happen "in the wild." While resistance to a single antibiotic is common, the creation of a strain of e.coli that's resistant toeight different classes of antibiotics-- in combination -- simply defies the laws ofgenetic permutation and combinationin the wild. Simply put, this superbug e.coli strain could not have been created in the wild. And that leaves only one explanation for where it really came from:the lab.

Engineered and then released into the wild

The evidence now points to this deadly strain of e.coli beingengineeredand then either being released into the food supply or somehow escaping from a lab and entering the food supply inadvertently. If you disagree with that conclusion -- and you're certainly welcome to -- then you are forced to conclude that this octobiotic superbug (immune to eight classes of antibiotics) developedrandomly on its own... and that conclusion is far scarier than the "bioengineered" explanation because it means octobiotic superbugs can simply appear anywhere at any time without cause. That would be quite an exotic theory indeed.

My conclusion actually makes more sense: This strain of e.coli was almost certainly engineered and then released into the food supplyfor a specific purpose. What would that purpose be? It's obvious, I hope.

It's allproblem, reaction, solutionat work here. First cause a PROBLEM (a deadly strain of e.coli in the food supply). Then wait for the public REACTION (huge outcry as the population is terrorized by e.coli). In response to that, enact your desired SOLUTION (total control over the global food supply and the outlawing of raw sprouts, raw milk and raw vegetables).

That's what this is all about, of course. The FDA relied on the same phenomenon in the USA when pushing for its recent "Food Safety Modernization Act" which essentially outlaws small family organic farms unless they lick the boots of FDA regulators. The FDA was able to crush farm freedom in America by piggybacking on the widespread fear that followed e.coli outbreaks in the U.S. food supply. When people are afraid, remember, it's not difficult to get them to agree to almost any level of regulatory tyranny. And making people afraid of their food is a simple matter... a few government press releases emailed to the mainstream media news affiliates is all it takes.

First ban the natural medicine, then attack the food supply

Now, remember:All this is happening on the heels of the EU ban on medicinal herbs and nutritional supplements-- a ban that blatantly outlaws nutritional therapies that help keep people healthy and free from disease. Now that all these herbs and supplements are outlawed, the next step is to make people afraid of fresh food, too. That's becausefresh vegetables are medicinal, and as long as the public has the right to buy fresh vegetables, they can always prevent disease.

But if you can make people AFRAID of fresh vegetables -- or even outlaw them altogether -- then you can force the entire population onto a diet ofdead foodsand processed foods that promote degenerative disease and bolster the profits of the powerful drug companies.

It's all part of the same agenda, you see: Keep people sick, deny them access to healing herbs and supplements, then profit from their suffering at the hands of the global drug cartels.

GMOs play a similar role in all this, of course: They're designed to contaminate the food supply with genetic code that causeswidespread infertilityamong human beings. And those who are somehow able to reproduce after exposure to GMOs still suffer from degenerative disease that enriches the drug companies from "treatment."

Do you recall which country was targeted in this recent e.coli scare? Spain. Why Spain? You may recall that leaked cables from Wikileaks revealed thatSpain resisted the introduction of GMOsinto its agricultural system, even as the U.S. government covertly threatened political retaliation for its resistance. This false blaming of Spain for the e.coli deaths is probablyretaliationfor Spain's unwillingness to jump on the GMO bandwagon. (http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_G...)

That's the real story behind the economic devastation of Spain's vegetable farmers. It's one of the subplots being pursued alongside this e.coli superbug scheme.

Food as weapons of war - created by Big Pharma?

By the way, the most likely explanation of where this strain of e.coli was bioengineered is that the drug giants came up with it in their own labs. Who else has access to all the antibiotics and equipment needed to manage the targeted mutations of potentially thousands of e.coli colonies? The drug companies are uniquely positioned to both carry out this plot and profit from it. In other words, they have the meansand the motiveto engage in precisely such actions.

Aside from the drug companies, perhaps only the infectious disease regulators themselves have this kind of laboratory capacity. The CDC, for example, could probably pull this off if they really wanted to.

The proof thatsomebodybioengineered this e.coli strain is written right in the DNA of the bacteria. That'sforensic evidence, and what it reveals cannot be denied. This strain underwent repeated and prolonged exposure to eight different classes of antibiotics, and then it somehow managed to appear in the food supply. How do you get to that if not through a well-planned scheme carried out by rogue scientists? There is no such thing as "spontaneous mutation" into a strain that is resistant to the top eight classes of brand-name antibiotic drugs being sold by Big Pharma today. Such mutations have to be deliberate.

Once again, if you disagree with this assessment, then what you're saying is that NO, it wasn't done deliberately... it happenedaccidentally!And again, I'm saying that's even scarier! Because that means the antibiotic contamination of our world is now at such an extreme level of overkill that a strain of e.coli in the wild can be saturated with eight different classes of antibiotics to the point where it naturally develops into its own deadly superbug. If that's what people believe, then that's almost a scarier theory than the bioengineering explanation!

A new era has begun: Bioweapons in your food

But in either case -- no matter what you believe -- the simple truth is that the world is now facing a new era ofglobal superbug strainsof bacteria that can't be treated with any known pharmaceutical. They can all, of course, be readily killed withcolloidal silver, which is exactly why the FDA and world health regulators have viciously attacked colloidal silver companies all these years: They can't have the public getting its hands on natural antibiotics that really work, you see. That would defeat the whole purpose of making everybody sick in the first place.

In fact, these strains of e.coli superbugs can be quite readily treated with a combination ofnatural full-spectrum antibioticsfrom plants such as garlic, ginger, onions and medicinal herbs. On top of that,probioticscan help balance the flora of the digestive tract and "crowd out" the deadly e.coli that might happen by. A healthy immune system and well-functioning digestive tract can fight off an e.coli superbug infection, but that's yet another fact the medical community doesn't want you to know. They much prefer you to remaina helpless victimlying in the hospital, waiting to die, with no options available to you. That's "modern medicine" for ya. They cause the problems that they claim to treat, and then they won't even treat you with anything that works in the first place.

Nearly all the deaths now attributable to this e.coli outbreak are easily and readily avoidable. These aredeaths of ignorance. But even more, they may also be deaths from a new era of food-based bioweapons unleashed by either a group of mad scientists or an agenda-driven institution that has declared war on the human population.

 



Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/032622_ecoli_bioengineering.html#ixzz1OVaZGGtU

More of the Same? Traitors and Liars Still

Link: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/gene-kerrigan/gene-kerrigan-gilmore-hasnt-a-shred-of-credibility-left-2666664.html

 

Gene Kerrigan: Gilmore hasn't a shred of credibility left

The Labour leader's two-faced approach to a second vote on Lisbon is shocking, writes Gene Kerrigan

Sunday June 05 2011

EAMON Gilmore's reputation was severely damaged last week -- and few seemed to notice or care. Given the further dreadful things about to be done to this country, it's hard to get worked up about the slings and arrows afflicting a here-today-gone-tomorrow politician -- even a Tanaiste.

But what has been revealed about Gilmore is shocking and his reputation was exploded by his own words. His efforts last week to claim he did nothing wrong dug him a deeper hole.

When the Irish Independent began running extracts from US State Department cables, released by Wikileaks, who'd have thought the leader of the Labour Party would feature in dispatches from the US Embassy? There he was, a confidant of Uncle Sam -- caught explaining in private that his "public posture" was the opposite of what he truly believed and intended doing. But it was "politically necessary".

As if that wasn't bad enough, in attempting to exonerate himself, Gilmore tried a further piece of verbal trickery. It will take a few tedious paragraphs to unpick Mr Gilmore's behaviour and it's somewhat distasteful -- but, since the media has been remarkably reticent on this, someone better do it. (Incidentally, had Brian Cowen been caught in a similar cable, would the media have been so forgiving?)

The Lisbon Treaty was defeated at a referendum in June 2008. Some Yes supporters were apoplectic at the result and openly began debating how they might subvert the will of the people. Not Eamon Gilmore.

He took a perfectly clear and admirable public position -- although he supported the treaty, he was respectful of the democratic will.

"It's a clear decision. It's a decision we respect and it's the end of the Lisbon Treaty. The speculation that there will be a second bite at it -- there won't be."

Gilmore continued in public, in the words of one of the secret cables, to lead "calls against a second referendum". In private, according to the cable, he told the embassy that "he fully expects, and would support, holding a second referendum in 2009".

As we all know, in October 2009, a second Lisbon Treaty referendum was successful. And the apparent reasonableness of people like Gilmore was a factor in that. He had respected the democratic decision of the people -- until he deemed the treaty "renegotiated" sufficiently to legitimise another referendum.

Last week, Eamon Gilmore used this argument in an attempt to explain away his words in the US Ambassador's cable.

It was true, he said, "that we could not put the same proposition a second time to the Irish people and of course the same proposition wasn't put a second time to the Irish people.

"What was put to the Irish people in the second referendum was a different, if you like renegotiated, proposition."

Now, some would say there was no real renegotiation. Lucinda Creighton, for instance, Gilmore's fellow minister and treaty supporter, said: "Nothing has changed in the Lisbon Treaty and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise." But that's just her point of view.

Let's accept that Gilmore genuinely believed that the treaty was renegotiated. Let's accept that he was fully entitled to support a new referendum once he believed that the substance of the treaty was changed.

And by October 2009, 15 months after the first referendum, he might have genuinely believed that. But it was just 41 days after the first referendum that the US Ambassador reported that Gilmore "fully expects, and would support, holding a second referendum in 2009".

Just five days earlier, Gilmore had ostentatiously rejected a request to meet Nicholas Sarkozy when the French leader came to Dublin to talk about the treaty.

"That debate is over and the referendum has delivered a result", Gilmore said. (He later met Sarkozy, after promising to deliver some "straight talking". Eamon is big on "straight talking".)

What occurred between the rejection of the Treaty on 12 June, 2008 and his soiree with US diplomats in July 2008 that might have converted Mr Gilmore to support a rerun? Nothing at all. There was no "renegotiation", real or otherwise.

The evidence suggests that from immediately after the treaty was defeated Gilmore was a fully fledged supporter of a second referendum. And he was entitled to that position. Others took that position and stated it plainly.

Gilmore, however, adopted a public position that the US secret cable now shows to have been in his view "politically necessary".

Then, at a later date, he purported to have been converted to support for a second referendum, because of a "renegotiation".

In the face of the Wikileaks revelation, Gilmore suggests still that his mind was changed by "renegotiation" in the months following the first referendum -- this flies in the face of the evidence.

Here's the cable quote, from US Ambassador Thomas Foley: "Gilmore, who has led calls against a second referendum, has told the embassy separately that he fully expects, and would support, holding a second referendum in 2009. He explained his public posture of opposition to a second referendum as 'politically necessary' for the time being."

This is not a diplomat's interpretation, it is reporting Mr Gilmore's views, as the Americans claim that he expressed them.

And last week, Gilmore did not claim that anything in the cable was inaccurate.

There's a point of view that says all of this is academic. The euro is in deep trouble, debt is overwhelming, events may plunge this country into a crisis that will make the past three years seem like the good old days.

In such circumstances, what matter the credibility of the Tanaiste? Another point of view is that Gilmore must not be undermined -- he's following the ECB/IMF austerity agenda and must be shielded.

Throughout this economic crisis, where frankness was needed, we got subterfuge -- from the bankers, from the ECB and from the Government.

Sometimes it was just delusional, sometimes deceptive. No one trusts any one anymore. "Turned the corner", "fully capitalised", "bailout", "our external partners" "renegotiate", "burn the bondholders". Words don't mean what they appear to mean.

Leo Varadkar last week said what is commonplace among economists and politicians here and across Europe -- that the Irish State is unlikely to be able to return to the money markets as scheduled. This is now widely referred to as "Leo's gaffe". The truth is considered a gaffe and Eamon Gilmore's behaviour is effectively endorsed.

Already, we have the decision of Enda Kenny to ignore the Wikileaks revelation; the decision of his cabinet colleagues to do likewise; the decision of all levels of the Labour Party to imitate the worst aspects of Fianna Fail backbenchers, with their silence of the lambs. And the decision of the media to soft-pedal the scandal.

Already, the poisonous cynicism evident in the embassy cable is spreading through the body politic.

And these same people, to whom the truth is a gaffe, glibly justify savage policies by claiming to be "restoring the confidence" of the market, of Europe, of voters -- when all can see their standards in a US embassy cable.

From now until the day he leaves office, anything Eamon Gilmore says can be legitimately discredited with a single sentence: "Ah, yes, Minister, but is that what you're telling the American Embassy?"

At a time when credibility is at a premium, the Tanaiste's is shot.

Originally published in

Well surprise, surprise. We were all conned into voting for yet another bunch of  scheming liars, Gilmore is just one of them, don't think the rest are any different, they aren't. What has been going on now for a long time has been many steps aimed at creating this 'New World Order', they are nearly there. The next step is TOTAL WORLDWIDE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE. Do your own research and find out for yourself, the information is out there.

 

Johann Hari: The IMF itself should be on trial

Link: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/johann-hari-the-imf-itself-should-be-on-trial-2665260.html

Imagine a prominent figure was charged, not with raping a hotel maid, but with starving her, and her family, to death

Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed.

 

So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Khan, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a maid in a New York hotel room is – rightly – big news.

 

But imagine a prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all recognition. But that is left in the silence.

 

To understand this story, you have to reel back to the birth of the IMF. In 1944, the countries that were poised to win the Second World War gathered in a hotel in rural New Hampshire to divvy up the spoils.

 

With a few honorable exceptions, like the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, the negotiators were determined to do one thing. They wanted to build a global financial system that ensured the money and resources of the planet were forever hoovered towards them. They set up a series of institutions designed for that purpose – and so the IMF was delivered into the world.

 

The IMF’s official job sounds simple and attractive. It is supposedly there to ensure poor countries don’t fall into debt, and if they do, to lift them out with loans and economic expertise. It is presented as the poor world’s best friend and guardian. But beyond the rhetoric, the IMF was designed to be dominated by a handful of rich countries – and, more specifically, by their bankers and financial speculators. The IMF works in their interests, every step of the way.

 

Let’s look at how this plays out on the ground. In the 1990s, the small country of Malawi in Southeastern Africa was facing severe economic problems after enduring one of the worst HIV-AIDS epidemics in the world and surviving a horrific dictatorship. They had to ask the IMF for help. If the IMF has acted in its official role, it would have given loans and guided the country to develop in the same way that Britain and the US and every other successful country had developed – by protecting its infant industries, subsidising its farmers, and investing in the education and health of its people.

 

That’s what an institution that was concerned with ordinary people – and accountable to them – would look like. But the IMF did something very different. They said they would only give assistance if Malawi agreed to the ‘structural adjustments’ the IMF demanded. They ordered Malawi to sell off almost everything the state owned to private companies and speculators, and to slash spending on the population. They demanded they stop subsidising fertilizer, even though it was the only thing that made it possible for farmers – most of the population – to grow anything in the country’s feeble and depleted soil. They told them to prioritise giving money to international bankers over giving money to the Malawian people.

 

So when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. They told Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. The Malawian president protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold. The banks were paid.

 

The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawi’s “worst ever famine.” There had been a much worse crop failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people starved to death.

 

At the height of the starvation, the IMF suspended $47m in aid, because the government had ‘slowed’ in implementing the marketeeing ‘reforms’ that had led to the disaster. ActionAid, the leading provider of help on the ground, conducted an autopsy into the famine. They concluded that the IMF “bears responsibility for the disaster.”

 

Then, in the starved wreckage, Malawi did something poor countries are not supposed to do. They told the IMF to get out. Suddenly free to answer to their own people rather than foreign bankers, Malawi disregarded all the IMF’s ‘advice’, and brought back subsidies for the fertiliser, along with a range of other services to ordinary people. Within two years, the country was transformed from being a beggar to being so abundant they were supplying food aid to Uganda and Zimbabwe.

 

The Malawian famine should have been a distant warning cry for you and me. Subordinating the interests of ordinary people to bankers and speculators caused starvation there. Within a few years, it had crashed the global economy for us all.

 

In the history of the IMF, this story isn’t an exception: it is the rule. The organisation takes over poor countries, promising it has medicine that will cure them – and then pours poison down their throats. Whenever I travel across the poor parts of the world I see the scars from IMF ‘structural adjustments’ everywhere, from Peru to Ethiopia. Whole countries have collapsed after being IMF-ed up – most famously Argentina and Thailand in the 1990s.

 

Look at some of the organisation’s greatest hits. In Kenya, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees to see the doctor – so the number of women seeking help or advice on STDs fell by 65 per cent, in one of the countries worst affected by AIDS in the world.

 

In Ghana, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees for going to school – and the number of rural families who could afford to send their kids crashed by two-thirds. In Zambia, the IMF insisted they slash health spending – and the number of babies who died doubled. Amazingly enough, it turns out that shoveling your country’s money to foreign bankers, rather than your own people, isn’t a great development strategy.

 

The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz worked closely with the IMF for over a decade, until he quit and became a whistle-blower. He told me a few years ago: “When the IMF arrives in a country, they are interested in only one thing. How do we make sure the banks and financial institutions are paid?... It is the IMF that keeps the [financial] speculators in business. They’re not interested in development, or what helps a country to get out of poverty.”

 

Some people call the IMF “inconsistent”, because the institution supports huge state-funded bank bailouts in the rich world, while demanding an end to almost all state funding in the poor world. But that’s only an inconsistency if you are thinking about the realm of intellectual ideas, rather than raw economic interests. In every situation, the IMF does what will get more money to bankers and speculators. If rich governments will hand banks money for nothing in “bailouts”, great. If poor countries can be forced to hand banks money in extortionate “repayments”, great. It’s absolutely consistent.

 

Some people claim that Strauss-Khan was a “reformer” who changed the IMF after he took over in 2009. Certainly, there was a shift in rhetoric – but detailed study by Dr Daniela Gabor of the University of the West of England has shown that the substance is business-as-usual.

 

Look, for example, at Hungary. After the 2008 crash, the IMF lauded them for keeping to their original deficit target by slashing public services. The horrified Hungarian people responded by kicking the government out, and choosing a party that promised to make the banks pay for the crisis they had created. They introduced a 0.7 per cent levy on the banks (four times higher than anywhere else). The IMF went crazy. They said this was “highly distortive” for banking activity – unlike the bailouts, of course – and shrieked that it would cause the banks to flee from the country. The IMF shut down their entire Hungary programme to intimidate them.

 

But the collapse predicted by the IMF didn’t happen. Hungary kept on pursuing sensible moderate measures, instead of punishing the population. They imposed taxes on the hugely profitable sectors of retail, energy and telecoms, and took funds from private pensions to pay the deficit. The IMF shrieked at every step, and demanded cuts for ordinary Hungarians instead. It was the same old agenda, with the same old threats. Strauss-Khan did the same in almost all the poor countries where the IMF operated, from El Salvador to Pakistan to Ethiopia, where big cuts in subsidies for ordinary people have been imposed. Plenty have been intimidated into harming their own interests. The US-based think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research found 31 of 41 IMF agreements require ‘pro-cyclical’ macroeconomic policies – pushing them further into recession.

 

It is not only Strauss-Khan who should be on trial. It is the institution he has been running. There’s an inane debate in the press about who should be the next head of the IMF, as if we were discussing who should run the local Milk Board. But if we took the idea of human equality seriously, and remembered all the people who have been impoverished, starved and killed by this institution, we would be discussing the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission – and how to disband the IMF entirely and start again.

 

If Strauss-Khan is guilty, I suspect I know how it happened. He must have mistaken the maid for a poor country in financial trouble. Heads of the IMF have, after all, been allowed to rape them with impunity for years.

Independent News Service

And who welcomed this crowd into Ireland? Yes. the very same politicians that proclaim to serve you. Fine Fail opened the door while the new 'coalition' govt hold it open and the longer it stays that way  the more assets that will be sold off. Ah well, back to the telly.

The West Needs Democracy

Link: http://enochered.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/we-in-the-west-need-democracy

We In The West Need Democracy.

The form of Democracy, which NATO would like to impose on the rebellious people across the Maghreb and the Middle East, is in fact as much of a dictatorship as are the regimes which currently have control.

Western Democracy is an illusion. The people of Europe have never been free. The “Establishment” has always maintained a tight grip on power. The various alternatives which have been proposed, such as Socialism, Communism or indeed Fascism, are all designed to keep ordinary people in a state of servitude.

The history, with which we are presented, was written by people who are determined to maintain their own position in the power structure, which is why they designed the structure of all political philosophies to suit these ends. Despite the beliefs of  working class people, Socialism and Communism are not intended to support their aims and welfare, they are designed to rob the working man allowing him little more than basic needs.

Children in school are conditioned, from an early age, to accept a system of Democracy which involves Political Parties. They are educated to believe that this system is essential in order to properly govern a State. This is the biggest lie of all. Political Groups, of any colour, support the establishment. That is why elections change nothing.  The only satisfactory means of generating change, is to vote into power individuals, who are briefed by the electorate, to carry out the wishes of the electorate. Failure to so do, should result in their recall.

Under the present system, any promise can be made, in order to gain election, only to be dumped later. This is not democracy. This is cynicism. Political Parties, maintain a strict control over the selection of candidates, ensuring that only those who will support the aims of the leadership are chosen.

The measure of the stupidity of this notion lies in the Labour Party in the UK. The name Labour Party, was deliberately chosen to generate an impression of working class values and they carefully maintained a “peaked cap” image. There is a group of people in the midst of the Labour Party, referred to as the “Usual Suspects.” They are supposedly “Real Socialists” and they stand for real Labour Party values. So what is their purpose in a Party, which long ago was exposed as just another tool of the Elite? They are merely a distraction. They achieve nothing except to generate an impression of a Party with true core values. They never speak out clearly to the people. They expose nothing.

The Labour Party was a Socialist Party, operating under a philosophy which was in fact, Communist, which was itself just another form of Fascism or National Socialism or Nazi. The role of the Labour Party was to Nationalise Industries, such as the Railways, Coal Industry, Road Haulage, Gas, Electricity and Water Supply. Public funds were then invested in these Industries to repair superstructure which had been badly maintained during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deliberately provoked war, which was declared to regenerate European economies.

Once these investments had served their purpose and many of these industries making good profits for the public benefit, they were “Privatised” at knock-down prices, back into the hands of the Multi-National Companies. When Blair was voted into office, he called Labour, New Labour. He could well have called it anything he liked, his job was to continue the same policies, which had just destroyed the Conservative Party. He was often referred to as Margaret Thatcher’s true heir. Just as Cameron has claimed that he is “New Labour” now.

Successive governments across Europe have now carried out the same policies of “privatisation” passing control into the hands of a small group of super-rich bankers and industrialists,  the food supply, which can now be traded on Commodity Markets. The water supplies are soon to be traded in the same manner. Privatisation was meant to mean cheaper utility prices, for example, the reality has been a hiking of prices, under what has become a virtual monopoly.

The governments of all member States of the European Union no longer maintain control of the basic necessities of the life of their Citizens. Since the end of World War 2, they have been quietly, under the noses of the people, leading us into a Fascist Union. Our elected leaders are now, no more than agents of the European Commission. Who are themselves agents of the Group of Bankers and Industrialists whom were responsible for the setting up of the Union in the first place.

The Greek Government is under pressure to privatize whatever State holdings which are not already in the hands of the Globalists, who are intent on owning the entire world and they have almost succeeded. These same Globalists have already planned the complete re-arranging of the boundaries of all European Countries. Unbeknown to the people of Europe, and probably unbeknown to themselves, when they signed the Treaty of Lisbon, our Democratically elected leaders had Privatised, We The People. We are all, now controlled by an un-elected Fascist group of Rich Banking Families and Industrialists.

Soon the new regions of Europe will be under the control of un-elected Governors, who will have power over what remains of National Governments, which will be little more than Town Halls. All of these plans are laid out in the Treaty of Lisbon. Even more horrific plans are laid out in Agenda 21, a UN Treaty which has already been signed, placing us all under UN control. The people have been removed completely from decision making. Small businesses are being destroyed, the Multi-Nationals will tolerate no competition. We are all, in fact in grave danger.

Is this the Democracy which they intend to introduce in the Maghreb and the Middle East? Do the young people who are protesting in Spain and Greece understand the depth of the criminality which they are facing? All the leaders of Political Parties have been bought and paid for by the Globalists. Money rules the world and it always will as long as this systems is allowed to continue. A simple rule of thumb that serves well is that politicians always lie. At the moment we are facing a torrent of lies. None of them are for our benefit.

Come on, Ireland

Folk Devils, Folk Angels and the Erosion of Real Discourse in Ireland

Link: http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/05/24/folk-devils-folk-angels-erosion-real-discourse-ireland/

Folk Devils, Folk Angels and the Erosion of Real Discourse in Ireland

The current economic crisis in Ireland has highlighted many of the problems in Irish society that perhaps we all knew were there to a greater or lesser degree. For me the one interesting aspect of the past three years has come in our media. It has been discussed elsewhere (see Gavan Titley’s piece in Look Left) that there exists a crisis in Irish media where he rightly points out that it is not that useful to simply gauge the extent of an ideological consensus. Within our media. This crisis is multi-faceted with a range of issues from ownership to political influence on Ireland’s media that need to be addressed. What I want to consider here is but one part of the wider crisis in Irish media.

I have borrowed part off my title from Stanley Cohen’s seminal sociological study on folk devils. Cohen argued that certain groups are marginalised and demonised in the public mind through media portrayals of them. A process that occurs through how problems are framed and what narratives are given more prominence in media reporting on public issues. Cohen’s arguments are complex but they have stood the test of time and we have seen numerous folk devils created since his books first publication in 1972. In an Irish context the construction of folk devils has increased apace during the financial crisis most notably in relation to public service workers (though not always) and social welfare recipients.

‘Folk angels’

However, we have also seen another phenomenon in Ireland and that is the creation of  ‘folk angels’. If folk devils are all we must fear and loathe then f’olk angels’ are bastions of goodness and wisdom when we need it most. The creation of these ‘folk angels’ is not entirely surprising as it fits well within the current  media narratives of ‘positivity’ and ‘moving forward with hope’. It also gives a ready made narrative for media outlets to discuss issues, on one hand we have the ‘folk devils’ representing the worst of what we are versus the ‘folk angels’ representing the best.

But this sort of simplistic argument has a range of harmful consequences. Firstly, it removes any nuance and reduces complex, multi-layered problems to a cartoonish battle between good and evil. Secondly, it creates an unchallenging, uncritical and unquestioning relationship between powerful stakeholders, the media and the public.

 

There also appears to be a backlash against anyone who dares to question the nature of Irish media, something Professor Kathleen Lynch would be able to attest to after her appearance on Tonight with Vincent Browne on the 14th of February 2011. To be critical of Irish media is not to cast aspersions on the audience nor is it part of some grand leftist conspiracy but this should be a given.

Agenda Setting

Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw noted in their work on agenda-setting in mass media that the classical assertion that the news media tells us what to think was incorrect. Rather they argued that mass media framed what was to be discussed and the parameters for that discussion. Sheena Iyenger refers to what she calls the ‘accessability of information’ stating that the public are capable of making decisions but that they can only do this based on the information that is presented to them-an idea important in the creation of folk angels and devils. Further she suggested that this was particularly the case in the area of public affairs.

Irish Folk Devils and Angels

One of the great ‘folk devils’ of Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980s was the ‘welfare scrounger’. Cohen describes this as the ‘deliberate construction of an atmosphere of distrust’. When considering the Irish context it is interesting to think of Cohen’s assertion that these assumptions were given official credibility. One of the prominent media messages of the current time has been that welfare fraud costs the state anywhere between €2 billion-€3 billion per year a year. This figure was quoted in Fine Gael’s election manifesto and they referenced it to RTE’sPrimetime. When one watches the episode they will see Dr Edward Walsh, former President of the University of Limerick stating “if one in ten of the cases were fraudulently claimed and we spend twenty-two billion this year on welfare, that’s 2.2 billion. I’ve also seen a figure of one in seven welfare claims are fraudulent, if it’s one in seven its getting close to 3 billion”.

It seems incredible that a thirty second sound bite could be influencing government policy but this is the situation we find ourselves in. This is an example of the power of the ‘echo-chamber’ effect we see all too often in Irish media. It also illustrates the unquestioning and uncritical nature of our media where few appear willing or able to dig a little deeper. Although this example throws up numerous questions the answers may not fit with the construction of the welfare folk devil and so are not asked. Here we can see the constraints of the discourse on welfare. What will be discussed will be the apprehension of ‘cheats’. This framing leaves limited room for other debates and discourses which will appear to be coming from the fringes regardless of the amount of people being represented by these views.

Those who generally attempt to discuss the above are liberal politicians, activists and academics. This is a group who have in recent times been constructed as the ‘loony left’ folk devils in Irish public discourse. The branding of dissenting voices as treacherous or radical is not a new phenomenon. British journalist Mark Hollingsworth has written about the negative portrayal of Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone and black youths in the 1980s as these persons clashed with the Thatcherite culture.  Hollingsworth unsurprisingly connects the negative reaction against these dissenting voices to the protection of vested interests in societies upper echelons

In Ireland we have seen the ‘loony left’ narrative become particularly prevalent during the general election and in the weeks afterwards. This narrative contained some key features. Firstly, it allowed for the grouping of all left-wing/liberal or dissenting voices neatly into the ‘loony left’ category which could be dismissed quickly as ‘other‘, ‘radical‘ even ‘dangerous‘. This presentation became normal practice during the election cycle. For example during an episode of RTE’s Frontline in the aftermath of the election Pat Kenny described the United Left Alliance’s Clare Daly and Sinn Fein’s Dessie Ellis as ‘the radical left’. In the previous segment, Mr Kenny interviewed politicians from the neo-liberal/centrist parties without any comment on their ideological beliefs. The limiting power of this narrative cannot be under estimated. It sends a very clear message that any policy or statement coming from the left is ill-considered especially when compared to stability and ‘ideologically-free’ establishment parties. This is a worrying phenomenon as it allows for attack on ‘the left’ without correction or space to reply. This was brought into clear focus when comments by Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes that Sinn Fein were “anti-black” went unchallenged on RTE radio’s Late Debate in the run up to the election.

However, when we need to escape the clutches of our ‘folk devils’ who can we run to? Well, the Irish media have provided space for the creation of some ‘folk angels’. These are people and events presented to us as ‘glimmers of hope’. Similar to ‘folk devils’ we never move past easily digestible descriptions of these people and their actions nor are more searching questions asked. Why would we need to? As sure as the welfare recipient has their hand in my pocket the economist is sheltering me through troubled times and the foreign dignitary is pointing to a better future.

The presentation of economics and economists in Ireland has been fascinating to watch in recent times. Irish media appear to have abandoned the fact that economists are social-scientists. Rather they have turned them into all-knowing, ‘free from ideology’ rock star type figures who we should listen to carefully but dare not question. Unlike our ‘loony left’ folk devils, economists are left free from queries from our media about where they draw their ideas from and what value system underpins these ideas. Their status as ‘folk angels’ is confirmed as our media continuously return to a small circle of people many of whom have been completely wrong before. But why would one expect these analysts to be right all the time, they are after all social scientists drawing conclusions from past events and trends which are not always predictors of future events. What we should have  however is a robust challenging of these ideas and underlying assumptions. It is here that our media fail to respond.  The debate on economics has been so limited in Ireland that it excludes any alternatives other than that proposed by EU/IMF and supported the neo-liberal elite.

In the past week we have seen the development of  a surprising ‘folk angel’ with the media response to the visit of  Queen Elizabeth II. The unquestioning and uncritical nature of many parts of our media were brought into sharp focus with their treatment of the visit. This is not to say the visit was not a historical event with some symbolic significance but our media attached all manner of different meanings to the event while ignoring many important questions. If we go back to the work of McCombs and Shaw on ‘agenda-setting’ we can better understand the limiting of debate on the visit. The entire debate was framed within a context that the visit was ‘good’ with ‘good’ outcomes i.e. increased tourism, political maturity. Those making these claims were never asked to go past the statement of positive effect or to explain how these positive effects would happen. In this narrow frame all that gets discussed is the positive aspect to the visit. Those challenging that consensus can be framed as immature or looking to harm the image of the country. This was exemplified in RTE’s Six-One news coverage of the first day of the visit. Reporters spoke of how”most people were happy” with the visit and, more bizarrely, stated that those remembered in the Garden of Rememberance “would be happy”.  What either of these assertions was based on was never made clear.

This narrow frame offered no room for dissenting voices on the visit. This was illustrated when a reporter stated that not everyone was happy with the visit followed by footage of a gentleman complaining that he had not seen the Queen! No interviews were conducted with those who actually objected to the visit on practical, political or moral grounds. The news broadcast framed ‘the Queen in Ireland’ as the ultimate ‘folk angel’ with talk of a brighter future and ‘political maturity‘. In the rush to create the ‘folk angel’ image media outlets tended to ignore wider complexities and issues such as the restrictions on free movement of citizens, the Dublin-Monaghan bombing anniversary or the daily lives of those in Northern Ireland. These complex problems were replaced with positive, simplistic statements.

Let me conclude by saying this, nothing I have written here should be viewed as an attack on journalism or individual journalists. Far from it. It is however one aspect that has emerged within Ireland’s media crisis. Dr Marie Keenan wrote in a discussion of clerical abuse that in the rush to condemn much gets noticed and much gets missed. In the rush to cannonise some we ignore their faults and the flaws in their arguments. While in the rushing to demonise we exclude important debates and questions.  The social and economic problems facing Ireland are complex and multilayered. Solutions will not be found in an ever narrowing public discourse. It would be my position that diminished public discourse will add further problems as people feel their views unrepresented in wider debates. In the words of John Stuart Mill in ‘On Liberty’ :

“Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil. There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides”

To be fair there's not much to be added to this, if you don't agree with the neo-liberal crap we've been told is the 'proper and correct' way of dealing with the problems we are facing, the chances are you will be labelled as either  a conspiracy theorist or an idiot. Fortunately people are looking away from the state controlled media for the truth and finding it. Answers are being found to help with cancer, to help with running your vehicle on sustainable fuels, answers are there for everything which takes the power and profit away from the very people and corporations that profit from ignorance. To quote a very unfamous song 'Ignorance is their Bliss'.

Well let their 'ignorance' be our bliss. We are the ignorant no more!

Stop GM in Ireland (and everywhere else!)