Author: jlpagano

Is Michael O’Leary really Ireland’s trump card when it comes to “fixing the country”? Eh, no.

~ jlpagano

For me, the scariest thing about a Donald Trump rally isn’t so much the rhetoric he spouts, vile and hateful though it usually is.  What is truly frightening is that so many people listening to him actually cheer.

Well, here in Ireland we can rest assured that we don’t have a businessman whom a lot of people think can run the country?  Think again.

Now to be clear…this is NOT a post about the rights and wrongs of the strike currently threatened by workers at Dublin Bus…what we’re looking at here is how it is reported and how certain people react to them.

A trade dispute is between an employer and its workforce.  Therefore, there are two sides.  Yet whenever a strike is threatened in this country, particularly in the area of public services, the “watercooler” discussion invariably surrounds the inconvenience to said publin (which of course is understandable) though with the blame put squarely at the doorstep of the unions.

It is so bad that Michael O’Leary, boss of the 5th best low-cost airline in Europe, feels he can weigh in on the matter with a remarkably simple solution that clearly nobody else has thought of :

“We should be privatising all these useless public services that depend every year on big subsidies from the tax payer because frankly, the tax payer has better things to be spending the money on.”

Ah, the tax payer.  Clearly the person for whom Mr O’Leary toils morning, noon and night.  And look – he called them “useless”, that’s just something you or I would say!  He talks just like us!  Who cares if he never actually backs up his words?

Yet the response from his “man-crush brigade” is always the same.  This is just from one thread on Facebook :

Yippiekia! Gotta love Michael O’Leary

He’d turn this country around that’s for sure

the tail is wagging the dog now…50k+ because its a “responsible” job..next thing we’ll be paying kids in McDonalds 50k not to put glass into the burgers…

It’s always the unions at fault.  Now let’s be clear…I’m not saying they are perfect by any stretch.  But the way things are supposed to work is that the government works for the general public to resolve a dispute between two sides.

Instead, between the government, corporate class and the media, these disputes generally disintergrate into a standoff between public and private sector workers in general discourse.  A fire people like Mr O’Leary are more than happy to stoke.

One thing I will say for him…he is probably smart enough never to actually run for public office.

 

How RTÉ reported #AppleTax on Nine O’Clock News

~ jlpagano

Here at FPP we’re not just concerned with what happens, but also how it is reported by mainstream media.  So here is the first of our “report on reports”.

Overall, our analysis of their coverage of the story seems to be one leaning more heavily toward #TeamAppeal.  While there was a fair amount in favour of the #TeamKeep argument it was presented as more of an afterthought.

The lead report was filed by Tony Connelly.  Basically he laid out the facts surrounding made by the European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager.

Next it was on to the reactions from the Irish Government and Apple itself, as if you could tell the two opinions apart.  Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the ruling was on “tenuous grounds” and that the Irish govt had done “nothing illegal”.  They read a statement from Apple saying the Commission was “rewriting history” and that they had “complied with tax laws”.

The text of the RTE report went on to speak of the “fundamental differences” between the Irish govt and the EU and using words like “sovereignty” and “taxpayers”.

Next up we had “Economic correspondent” Sean Whelan who laid out the amount of tax paid by Apple and how they diverted it into a “Head Office” that didn’t actually exist.  This is precisely what Vestager did in her announcement by the way, only Whelan had some fancy graphics on display behind him as aids.

Now it was time to go to “outside experts”.  First, speaking for #TeamAppeal was Brian Keegan from Chartered Accountants Ireland, who basically said there was no way we should keep  the money.  Then arguing for #TeamKeep was Dr Jim Stewart – the graphic just had “Trinity College” by his name but it wouldn’t have hurt to add that he is Associate Professor in Finance (Business & Administrative Studies) there.

Eventually we get to the reaction of the other Irish parties.  Fianna Fail (who had a soundbite from spokeperson Michael McGrath TD) and Labour (no soundbite) came out on #TeamAppeal.  The other “left-wing” parties are firmly on #TeamKeep and there were soundbites from Pearse Doherty of SF, Richard Boyd Barrett of PBP and Catherine Murphy of the Social Democrats.

The most important reaction will be that of the so-called “Independent Alliance” that is currently propping up the Minority Government along with the “silent partners” Fianna Fáil.  We had a brief soundbite from John Halligan but apparently their opinion would be made known to a Cabinet meeting the following day.

Finally the report went to two more RTE correspondents – David Murphy, who laid out the “morality issue” of the notion of the Irish government denying its own Exchequer and award of such size, and Martina Fitzgerald, who repeated the importance of the Cabinet meeting today.  Not sure if that reportage was a two-person job, but there you go.

Like I said earlier, I got the sense that this report was presented with a leaning more toward the #TeamAppeal side of things, much like Joe Duffy had done on his Liveline show earlier that afternoon on RTE radio.

To provide a bit more balance, perhaps they could have actually spoken to the Commissioner herself, as did American public broadcaster PBS NewsHour :

Any member state can have their own legislation we would never question that – but the thing is you cannot give a specific company a benefit or advantage.which is not open to other companies.

Sounds to me like a reasonable statement from someone with the job title European Commissioner for Competition?

Now to wait and see what happens next.  Paschal Donohoe was on today’s Morning Ireland and said the Dáil would not be brought back early from its recess so we’ll see how this morning’s Cabinet meeting pans out.

A strong case for #TeamKeep made by Fintan O’Toole #AppleTax

~ jlpagano

So just a few hours after that stunning EU ruling, which has effectively done a “Wikileaks” on Irish foreign investment policy over the past few decades, public opinion seems to have quickly evolved into a debate between #TeamKeep and #TeamAppeal.

No doubting what side the national public broadcaster is on.  Joe Duffy had a few dissenting voices in his half-hour’s coverage today but miraculously his supposedly “reliable” text poll produced an impressive 56% support of appealing the ruling by “over 3000” of his listeners.

In general the thrust of the #TeamAppeal argument is that by keeping the money we’d be “penny wise, pound foolish”.  All of a sudden American multinationals will be fleeing the country like there’s no tomorrow and this in turn would doom our futures with all of the jobs and tax revenues that would go with them.

But what I say to that is…I’m sure if there was a national debate on the first of these “sweetheart deals” with Apple when they were made 25 years ago in 1991 (when the Minister of Finance job was held by Albert Reynolds up to November, Charlie Haughey for a week and Bertie Ahern from then on – it was Brian Cowen in 2007) we’d have been told about the importance of the investment in Ireland’s future.

Yet now, when there’s €13billion on offer, we want it to help our schools, we want it to help our hospitals, we want it to help our housing crisis.  Just how sweet a deal for us was that which they made back in 1991?  Where was the real benefit?

But look…I’m not the one to make the case for #TeamKeep.  I’d rather leave that to someone like FIntan O’Toole in the Irish Times :

At the very least, we should not be railroaded into lodging an appeal against the ruling that will define us, for the rest of the world, as the tax-avoider’s crazy little sidekick. We have some big thinking to do – and the cabinet’s job on Wednesday morning is to open up that process of deliberation, not to insist that any democratic decision that Apple does not like is unthinkable.

 

Irish Exchequer wins a Eurobillions jackpot but Minister for Finance wants to tear up the ticket #AppleTax

~ jlpagano

We do our best here at FPP to tread lightly when it comes to economics – it can be a complicated area to say the very least and often all is not as it appears.

But when we read some stories about this topic known as #AppleTax we seemed to think we had the basis of what it was all about, only we couldn’t believe it.

Then in an article titled “Q&A : What exactly is at stake in the Apple Tax issue?” the Irish Times pretty much spelled it out as we saw it…

Ironically, the Government will be appealing a decision that a big company must pay it a load of money.

Luckily, it appears that David McWilliams is on the case to explain things, and we generally give his take a lot of weight on Irish economic matters when of course the governments very much don’t.

While we wait for his take, we’re holding the assumption that this is yet another classic case of #CapitalismGoneMad.

 

A rare rose of a comment among the usual thorns on Journal.ie #RepealThe8th

~ jlpagano

Normally we find scrolling through the comments section on articles in the Journal to be akin to sado-masochism.  But once in a while, there is a rose among the thorns, pun fully intended.

The story in question is about an online petition organized by Saorlaith Ní Shuibhne from Cork which we posted about recently on the recent controversy involving the Rose of Tralee contest and the #RepealThe8th movement.  As it turned out the campaign received over 6000 signatures and the letter was sent in to RTE as promised.

When we looked down through the comments after the article on the Journal we saw the usual Pro Life v Pro Choice exchange, but we also noted that the vast majority of contributions were by men, and we added our own comment to this effect.

But right at the very top there was this comment by Fintan of Laois which we thought was worth a share…

It’s amazing that anyone can turn a hair when an obviously intelligent modern young woman remarks that she’d like to see Irish women having the same rights concerning their own reproductive systems as their sisters in most of the civilised world already enjoy.

Well done to her for highlighting this remaining vestige of the power that a corrupt, discredited and hypocritical religious cult once abused in so many ways in Ireland.

Given that David Quinn and Breda O’Brien, both obnoxious and pathetic in equal measure, devoted their respective weekly columns in the Indo and IT to condemning the young Australian women, it is clear how the Iona “institute” and other far-right, American Evangelical fundamentalist-financed lobby groups would love to see discussion of Ireland’s savage anti-woman legislation smothered.

There can be little doubt that they and their most ardent running dogs are behind the formal complaints, but they are only adding grist to the mill of those who want their odious cult to butt out of medical matters.

There can hardly be a day when Quinn, O’Brien and the other Ionanists wish they had never gotten their solicitors to threaten action over Panti calling them “homophobic” – which is a bit like calling the Pope a Catholic. RTÉ caved in, failed to tell them to take a hike, and gave them nearly €100,000 of your and my money.

But, as the SSM referendum result showed, they may have all that dosh in the bank, but they are still limping badly after shooting themselves in the foot.

Unbelievably, something about these Paul LePage stories stinks more than his racism

~ jlpagano

We have our “tin foil hats” on here at FPP big time.

Paul LePage is the governor of Maine, the state at the northeastern tip of the USA.  He is a Republican with a big capital R.  And he is also a racist with an even bigger capital R.  These things have been well known on a national level for a while.

But what has us scratching our heads is the fact that he seems to have “upped his game” in recent times, as the NY Times reports…

Paul R. LePage, the Republican governor of Maine, faced a torrent of outrage and political pressure on Monday even from some members of his own party, after 48 hours last week in which he threatened a Democratic lawmaker in a profane voice mail message, made sweeping statements about race and ended the week by doubling down and seeming to endorse racial profiling to address the state’s drug crisis.

We won’t beat around the bush…we believe that this has something to do with the recent revamp by Donald Trump of his top advisers.

If there is one thing that Trump has done consistently, then it’s alienating immigrants and African Americans.  Now that the polls have the gap between himself and Hillary widening by the day, while he’ll hardly pick up too many votes on the “left” he surely now has to be mindful of those on the right who won’t be too keen on his reputation as a racist.

So what better way to deflect the attention of the media than to have a known bigoted politician like LePage ramp up the racist rhetoric?  Make sure he achieves  coast-to-coast recognition so that Trump looks moderate by comparison?

Why else would so many examples of his tirades come out over such a short period of time?

It’s not as though LePage had a hope in hell of being re-elected anyway.  So maybe the Trump campaign went to him and said “If you help us with this, we’ll look after you when you move out of the governor’s mansion”.  Perhaps create a new “Secretary of White Supremacy” post in the Trump administration?

Of course this is all pure speculation.  But while we’re not fans of any kind of racism, we could see a smattering of intelligence behind this plan if indeed it is the case.  Perhaps we’ll never know.

 

NFL quarterback takes a stand for #blacklivesmatter by not standing for US anthem before game

~ jlpagano

It is pretty well known that San Francisco is one of, if not the, most liberal cities in the USA.

It is also relatively well known that the NFL’s franchise owners make up arguably the most conservative group in world sport.

So what happens when the two come together?  We may be about to find out.

Democracy Now! has the story…

Colin Kaepernick remained seated while his teammates stood for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” ahead of a match against the Green Bay Packers.

In the interest of full disclosure, the 49ers happen to be the author’s favourite football team.  Do I believe this to be an honourable action by Kaepernick?  In sentiment, definitely.  His heart is most certainly in the right place.

“I’ll continue to sit. I’m going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed. To me, this is something that has to change. And when there’s significant change and I feel like that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent, and this country is representing people the way that it’s supposed to, I’ll stand.”

Do I think it will actually lead to anything being done about race relations among US police?  To use a football term, it’s probably something of a “Hail Mary pass”.

It will be interesting to see how owners, fans & mainstream media react to this “stance”, especially if he proceeds to carry it through the upcoming season.

#StopTTIP movement can work together with anti-TPP activists in the US

~ jlpagano

Thanks to my regular listening to progressive American podcasts (he said, as if there were progressive Irish ones with which to compare) I knew about the TPP about two years before I ever heard of the TTIP which actually affects the place where I live.  The media silence here has been deafening.

It was good to hear the latest episode of Best of the Left which featured segments on the TTP but also included mentions of the #StopTTIP movement in Europe, like the one above from Occupy.com.

In the coming months, those Europeans who have campaigned against TTIP should surely reach out to their American counterparts – even if TTIP is defeated, we still live in a world in which major corporations often have greater power than nation states.  

Only organised movements that cross borders can have any hope of challenging this unaccountable dominance.  From tax justice to climate change, the “protest never achieves anything” brigade have been proved wrong.  Here’s a potential victory to relish and build on.

Next up here from the Irish #StopTTIP movement is a march on September 17.  Unfortunately there is also a #Right2Water march in Dublin the same day…I’d love to know how or why that came about they really do seem like causes that much of the same people would support and thus should have protests on different days.

Anyway…we’ll deal with the water issue in other posts…here’s some info on the #StopTTIP and their Autumn of Action…

STOP CETA! Join us for a day of action on the 17th of September at 2pm at Christ Church.
This will be a solidarity march with Germany and other parts of Europe on the same day ..we hope to meet as a CETA/TTIP block group and join the RIGHT TO WATER march that will be meeting at Heuston Station AND Connolly Station also at 2pm.Bring your STOP CETA/TTIP BANNERS/POSTER or RED BALLOONS WRITE ON THEM STOP CETA.KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR MORE STOP CETA EVENTS OVER THE COMING WEEKS.

We are civil society, grassroots organizations, labour movements, farmer, environmental and social groups from all across Europe, Canada and the U.S. We want to put an end to secretive trade deals like CETA and TTIP, and any that follow; and we want to create an alternative trade policy, one that puts people and planet first and ends corporate impunity.

We are calling, not for a single day of protest, but for an Autumn of Action – because together, our actions will speak louder to those who need to hear us.
Right now – social movements and civil society are fighting against CETA: TTIP through the backdoor.

The process around CETA was EVEN MORE secretive than TTIP. No MEP or politician saw the texts until they were already finalised. CETA is ready to sign and the European Commission and many governments are pushing hard to get it through.

CETA means less democracy in favour of extensive investor rights, it endangers our public services, our small and medium businesses, our workers rights, our environmental and food standards and our planet. The biggest threat is that CETA is a blueprint for TTIP and allows already US corporations to use the ISDS system to sue us for democratic decisions. If CETA is passed it will be hard to oppose TTIP, we need to stand now together to ensure that we do not let our rights get sold off to multinational corporations.

Over the past few years a powerful movement against unfair trade policies has emerged in Europe and beyond. Farmers, judges, local business, trade unions, municipalities and many more stand up against CETA and TTIP.

We protest the way current trade policies profit the few, while the planet and the people suffer.
We reject a trade policy that undermines our hard won labor rights, that forces privatisation of public services and that is dependent on the exploitation of our natural resources and creating the destructive climate change that people across the globe are fighting
We won’t accept a trade system that perpetuates poverty in the global south and produces extreme wealth among the few.
It’s time to face our planetary limits and to share the wealth we can produce between everyone, this is simply impossible with trade agreements giving the opportunity to the most wealthy to win even more.

We therefore stand in solidarity with social movements and civil society in the global south that is fighting for a more just trade system also against our governments and corporations. Just like in Europe people in the Americas, Asia and Africa are going to take action against free trade agreements like TPP (Transpacific Partnership).

Now is the time to act!

This autumn of action will see a massive wave of actions, protest and disobedience in Europe and beyond. This autumn we will show the millions of voices that demand the suspenssion of CETA and TTIP. We are determined to defeat CETA and to win. Stoping CETA opens the space for alternatives. We call on organisations, individuals and alliances to participate by organising autonomous, decentralised actions across Europe. We welcome a diversity of tactics and solidarity actions from across the world that will help inform, engage and mobilise people locally. We will win against CETA because future and current generations deserve it.

Autunm of Action – September to November 2016
#stopCETA and #TTIP

There is also CETA/TTIP. Public Meeting. 
Hosted by Cllr Ray McHugh. With .
MEP Lynn Boylan.and TD Aengus OSnodaigh.
Wednesday 7th September 7/30 pm
Transport Club Clogher Rd.
All Welcome.

 

Nothing wrong with Israel army’s attack on Gaza in 2014, says Israel army

~ jlpagano

Well that’s alright then, isn’t it?

2,200 Palestinians dead as opposed to 73 Israelis.

According to this AP report…

The deadliest incident involved an airstrike in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Aug. 1, 2014, that killed 15 members of the Zoroub family…

…”The attack complied with the principle of proportionality, as at the time the decision to attack was taken it was considered that the collateral damage expected to arise as a result of the attack would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated from it,” (the report from the Israeli military) said.

Why can’t the International Criminal Court investigate, you may ask?

The International Criminal Court has opened a preliminary examination of Israeli conduct in the war, but issued no conclusions. The court can intervene in cases where a country is deemed incapable of conducting a proper investigation.

And why can’t the US do anything?  Well the fact that they don’t “recognise” the ICC is one thing, and another, the fact that no presidential candidate can make a major speech with mentioning the country’s commitment to defend the nation of Israel.

There’s no arguing with the “sovereign nation” vs “terrorist” mindset.  It is pretty much set in stone with every representative of the establishment.  As far as I’m concerned there’s at least an equal amount of blame for both sides but since the weight of corporate media coverage (or lack of it) tends to favour Israel, this can only be redressed by putting a spotlight on the plight of the Palestinian people.

Brianna Parkins and Breda O’Brien write in the Irish Times #RepealThe8th

~ jlpagano

Two pieces well worth reading in the Irish Times.  Both make reference to the #RepealThe8th campaign.  Both involve the “controversy” surrounding comments made by Sydney Rose Brianna Parkins.

The first, by Parkins herself, not only puts her remarks into context but also gives us a wider view of the overall event itself from the point of view of the contestants.

I stand by the festival, but I believe it’s time for it to change. If it doesn’t accept that women who enter will want to have political opinions then it risks being on the wrong side of history.

The second, by Pro-Life campaigner and regular IT columnist Breda O’Brien, does pretty much what every such article does…misdrect using straw people and hypothetical scenarios.

If she had called for the retention of the Eighth Amendment, would media people be queuing up to congratulate her, and to offer her a drink?

Breda DOES know that her regular columns in a national newspaper make her a “media person”, right?

She goes on…

And please don’t say Brianna Parkins just called for a vote. No-one who supports the equal right to life of the unborn child and the mother would call for a vote on the amendment that protects that right.

Nobody who supports democracy would object to the calling of a vote.