The Curious Case of Patrick Jameson/Eamonn Murphy #RepealThe8th

September 11, 2016September 11, 2016 ~ jlpagano

This is a mind-boggling sequence of events that further illustrates how the public debate surrounding the upcoming Citizens Assembly and (hopefully) subsequent #RepealThe8th referendum will transpire.

First up we have the undercover work done by the Irish edition of the London Times where they visited the so-called “Women’s Clinic” on Berkeley St not far from the Mater Hospital in Dublin. As the Times is a pay-newspaper, we link instead to the Indo article titled “Secret recordings reveal Dublin pregnancy centre advising women that abortion leads to breast cancer“.

While attending the clinic undercover, the reporter’s mental state was called into question by the counsellor. The reporter was shown also pictures of aborted foetuses and asked if she thought it was fair on the foetus to have an abortion.

Then we have just over half an hour on Joe Duffy’s Liveline show that has to be heard to be believed. In it the director of the clinic, a Patrick Jameson, was afforded the opportunity to present his side of the story.

For the duration of the segment he repeatedly talks over Joe as well as everyone else who dared to come on to speak. H referred to a website abortionbreastcancer.com at least half a dozen times, one which is clearly maintained by a Pro-Life group based in the USA and he goes on to reject anything said by the media (because according to him all members of the NUJ are instructed to be Pro-Choice) and the vast majority of peer-reviewed medical research (because according to him the American Cancer Society is a “corrupt” organization).

To be fair to Joe, he gave the man plenty of time to air his side of the story, such as it was. Basically for half an hour you hear the terms “abortion” and “breast cancer” used several times in close proximity to each other. If nothing else it would almost have you believing there was a link. There’s a decent account of the exchange in this article on The Journal.

When challenged on the issue, he told Duffy: “You can’t handle the truth”. People in Ireland are “being deceived because of the media spin”, he claimed.

One thing the Journal doesn’t touch on, however, is that towards the end of the segment Duffy asks Jameson if he has heard of a gentleman called Eamonn Murphy. Jameson doesn’t even acknowledge that he has been asked the question.

In a follow-up segment the next day, Duffy has a few callers on who seem to think that Jameson himself was actually this Eamonn Murphy, who ran in national and European Elections for organizations that appear to have had numerous guises such as the “Christian Centrist Party”.

Finally, to the reaction of staunch so-called Pro-Life advocate Breda O’Brien, she who loves to bemoan the lack of media coverage from her movement despite her regular columns in the Irish Times.

Yesterday in her piece “The amazing hypocrisy of the pro-abortion lobby“, while rejecting the ludicrous claims of this clinic, she also does an excellent job exaggerating the media response to them while then undervaluing their reaction to reports that medical advice was being given to patients to avail of an “abortion pill” as well as lying to their doctors about having had an abortion.

A couple of years ago, Gemma O’Doherty, one of Ireland’s most courageous and tenacious journalists, broke a story about allegations that Irish Family Planning Association crisis pregnancy counsellors were advising clients to break the law. She heard and viewed tapes of counsellors (procured in a sting operation) advising people how to import the so-called abortion pill via NorthernIreland. The IFPA did not question the veracity of the tapes.

Those pieces of advice amount to “breaking the law” according to O’Brien. While technically true, it hardly qualifies as a counter argument against blatantly deliberate misinformation being given at a premises purporting to be a “clinic”. And what’s more, patients are being advised to lie about their terminations because of the fear of being prosecuted under laws which are currently being challenged by a significant movement among citizens known as #RepealThe8th.

We need a referendum now. We’re not going to get it now. Instead we’re going to get a “Citizens Assembly” to decide whether or not we can have a referendum. The composition of this assembly needs to be put under the closest scrutiny possible.

This is going to be a long, difficult road, with a small, curiously-well-funded minority blocking the path.

A must-read perspective on #AppleTax

September 10, 2016 ~ jlpagano

An article by an Irish Economics expert that fully lays out the #AppleTax situation without towing the government line or simply spelling out what public services can be bought with a sum like €13billion is our kind of article.

Terrence McDonough is a retired professor of economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway and co-editor of Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory for the Twenty-First Century.

His article appears in the American left-wing quarterly Jacobin and is titled “Ireland’s Bad Apples” and puts a very interesting spin on the reaction of our government to the European Commission’s ruling, particularly that of the “Churchillian” Michael Noonan.

It often seemed like Irish politicians believed they should represent Europe to the Irish people rather than represent the Irish people in Europe. But it turns out their cozy relationship with Europe was weaker than their romance with a major American multinational corporation.

Well worth a read. Many thanks to Joan Collins TD for sharing.

Claire Byrne skewers Richard Bruton with question tying #AppleTax to #Right2Water

September 8, 2016September 8, 2016 ~ jlpagano

Earlier today we commented on the general mainstream media and how they fail to provide proper balance and ask the right questions. It is only fair that we also highlight the times we feel they actually DO it.

Many thanks to “FunnyOldWorld” on SoundCloud for posting this snippet from the Claire Byrne Live show this week as she interviewed FIne Gael’s Scapegoat In Chief Richard Bruton…

“Europe is messing with our sovereignty is what you’re saying…”

“Europe is totally messing with our sovereignty…”

” So why didn’t you say that when they asked us to bring in water charges?”

Brilliant. We love you Claire.

Looks like both US Presidential campaigns could be built on “shaky Foundations”

September 7, 2016September 7, 2016 ~ jlpagano

Here at FPP, as things stand right now, our plan is not only to vote for Hillary Clinton but also to keep the pressure on her to come good on hers and the DNC’s pledge to adopt at least some policies from the Progressive platform during her administration.

Or to put it another way, we fully acknowledge that whatever we may say against her opponent, she herself is by no means perfect and her biggest pressure points in this campaign have been the seemingly never-ending amount of State Department emails and the suspicions surrounding The Clinton Foundation.

Naturally Donald Trump has been at pains to attack these pressure points, though rarely by being too specific…either he resorts to name-calling like “Crooked Hillary” or “Hillary Rotten Clinton” or he makes vague references to her alleged “terrible crimes”.

Well on the subject of dodgy dealings by a foundation bearing a candidate’s name, it would appear that he has his own questions to answer, as Rachel Maddow reports in this video from her show, and also in this follow-up blog where Steve Benen notes that the matter has caught the attention of NYT, WaPo and HuffPo.

Trump has been quite candid in his explanations for why he made so many political contributions to so many candidates and office-holders. “I’ve given to everybody,” he boasted earlier this year. “When I want something I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass. “It’s true. They kiss my ass.”…

…So the question in the Bondi controversy is obvious: was his $25,000 contribution an investment to an official he “needed something from”?

What particularly catches our attention is the contribution in the video from the WaPo’s David Fahrenthold who says that Trump stopped giving his own money to charities, even his own, back in 2008, ironically when Barack Obama was elected. Maybe he was too busy paying people to look into the President’s birth certificate? And maybe it helps explain why he won’t show us his tax returns?

If ever a story invited the saying “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”…

Any hope for unity in the Irish Left takes another serious blow

September 6, 2016September 6, 2016 ~ jlpagano

We don’t like the terms “left” and “right” here at FPP but often we have no choice but to use them – especially in anything to do with Irish politics, where there has never been a Taoiseach who could remotely describe themselves as “left” (as hard as Bertie tried).

Basically, the “Irish Left” may be an entity, but it has absolutely no unity. The Labour Party would consider themselves to the forefront, but in recent times they have drawn so close to the “establishment” ranks that they can at best be known as “centrist” now.

Which leaves The Socialist Party. And People Before Profit. And the Anti Austerity Alliance. And the Greens. And Sinn Féin, apparently. And a smattering of independents.

Then there’s the Social Democrats. For the purposes of this post we don’t want to concern ourselves with the circumstances behind Stephen Donnelly leaving the party (though if you are interested you can click here for the Indo’s take). The fact remains that they have been in existence for just over a year and had three quality TDs with a hope of gaining even more down the line. Now already one is gone.

Statement by the Social Democrats regarding the departure of Stephen Donnelly T.D.

Stephen Donnelly T.D. has informed us that he is leaving the Social Democrats.

We are disappointed that he has decided to walk away from the project, we undertook, to establish and build the Party.

The Executive Committee of the Party has reaffirmed its commitment to the vision of a strong economy, fair society and honest politics.

What an absolute shambles. These politicians should be working together not apart. In the Monty Python movie “The Life Of Brian” they made a joke about all the splinter movements like “The People’s Front of Judea” and the “Judean People’s Front”. The left wing of Irish politics is making that joke into a reality, and has done for years.

Until they find a way to come together with the common goal of breaking the Civil War Duopoly, making those two identical parties finally merge and offering a realistic alternative for the Irish people that prioritises things like health, education and housing over the continued widening of the income inequality gap, it will be “Politics As Usual” on this small island.

Exploring the true meaning behind USA’s “Labor Day”

September 5, 2016 ~ jlpagano

You can always count on the good folks at Fair.org and their podcast Counterspin to give you the real story hiding behind the corporate media hype.

In her post ‘Invisibilizing the Workers Who Actually Do the Work’, Janine Jackson offers some history on the closest thing the US has to when we know as a “Bank Holiday”, namely today.

It’s presented by corporate media as, most importantly, a long weekend with a parade—or, more seriously, as a holiday fought for by US trade unions to honor American workers. But the day has more complex origins. A national holiday had been a goal of US labor—several states already celebrated—but Grover Cleveland declared Labor Day in the midst of an attack by federal troops on striking Pullman railway workers, leading many to see it as an attempt to appease workers more than honor them.

Some fascinating stuff there. The post is an edited transcript of the podcast which is well worth a listen.

Oh and another thing…the US Presidential race is meant to crank up another gear after Labor Day – just sayin’

“Secrets of a Global Super Court” : essential reading to understand why we need to #StopTTIP

September 3, 2016 ~ jlpagano

In the ongoing #AppleTax debacle one of the most common themes used by both Apple and the Irish government is that the ruling of the European Commission is essentially an “attack on our sovereignty”. If they truly believe that, they must also surely be unified against the ISDS courts due to be used by the TTIP and other such proposed treaties should they come into effect.

According to reports, resistance from both France and Germany could ensure the TTIP doesn’t go ahead, but still I reckon it’s vitally important that the wider public appreciates just exactly what the proposed treaty entailed because I very much doubt the multinationals corporations are going to give up and not try to force something similar through down the line.

Thanks to the latest episode of the excellent Democracy@Work podcast featuring Richard Wolff, we have discovered a series of articles by Chris Hamby on Buzzfeed which expose exactly what these so-called super-courts are all about, who comprises them, and what kind of rulings they have made in the past.

The series kicks off like this :

Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.

Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.

I urge you to read on. There are four articles in total. The third one is about Sri Lanka but should still be of particular interest to Irish readers.

Inside The Global “Club” That Helps Executives Escape Their Crimes

The Secret Threat That Makes Corporations More Powerful Than Countries

How Big Banks Bled A Tiny Island Nation

How America’s Gift To Trade Treaties Can Come Back To Hammer It

Has an Irish media outlet conducted a similar investigation? A Google search of “ISDS” under the “Country : Ireland” setting produces nothing from national newspapers, if that means anything.