The palatial home of former developer and Fianna Fáil councillor Ger Killally

A story to illustrate the reality of life in contemporary Ireland. From the Irish Times:

“Gardaí are trying to establish if the complex failed business dealings of a close friend and election running mate of former Taoiseach Brian Cowen was linked to a gun attack on him.

Ger Killally (43) was with his elderly father and two of his four children – aged two and three – when he was ambushed by a gunman as he drove out of his home near Edenderry, Co Offaly, yesterday morning.

The former auctioneer and former Offaly County Council cathaoirleach drove out the electric gates of his large home in the townland of Shean at about 10.40am yesterday and found his silver VW Passat impeded by another vehicle, an 06 D silver Astra saloon carrying at least two men. A man stepped from the other vehicle armed with what gardaí believe was a shotgun.

Mr Killally tried to get away, colliding with a concrete pillar outside his home. He drove up the road for a few hundred metres with the concrete pillar jammed under his car. He then lost control of the vehicle, which hit a hedge and rolled over into a field before correcting itself.

Mr Killally then got out of the car and in an apparently dazed state ran across the field in an effort to get away from his attackers.

Gardaí believe at least two shots, possibly more, were fired during the incident. A shot was discharged by the gunman at the bottom of Mr Killally’s driveway. He then got back into his car driven by an accomplice and pursued Mr Killally’s vehicle, discharging the gun again in the seconds before the vehicle turned over. When the car rolled, the gunman and his accomplice did a U-turn in the road in an effort to see if Mr Killally was still in his vehicle. When they realised he was fleeing across the field they sped from the scene.”

Two decades ago a former politician, his young children and elderly parent being the subject of a gun-ambush outside their home would have caused uproar across Ireland with comparisons to the conflict in the north-east of the country. News-crews and journalists would have descended on the location. Now it is second or third page news. Hardly anyone batters an eyelid and the online Commentariat is filled with cynicism and gloating.

And now this related revelation from the Irish Examiner:

“Former Fianna Fáil Councillor Ger Killally had a quantity of cash in the boot of his car when it was shot at by raiders yesterday, it is understood.”

The only thing Ireland seems to produce these days. aside from the exportation of our young people in their tens of thousands, is political, social and moral degeneracy.

Welcome to the Gathering, Mafialand 2013!

Interesting article on Bloomberg examining the impact of Europe’s economic depression and how that has effected the north-east of Ireland in particular, where of course the added dimension of the continued British Occupation fuels growing political and communal tensions. Among the more important facts are the following:

“After falling to a 30-year low following the accord, the unemployment rate is now back where it was and as high as 27 percent for males in some Belfast neighborhoods, levels last seen before the peace process began.

Between 2005 and 2008, home prices almost doubled. Then they dropped by about 50 percent.

The region has a higher proportion of empty stores …with a 21 percent vacancy rate.

In Belfast, one in four retail units is empty…

About 27 percent of the population is defined as economically inactive, or without a job and not looking for one, labor statistics show.”

Regardless of one’s politics, Left or Right, by any measure this is a crisis in the making with potentially devastating social consequences should it continue for a prolonged period of time (and five years now into a sustained depression all pointers are indicating exactly that). The fact that “Northern Ireland” exists solely on the basis of a huge financial subvention by the government in Britain (leaving aside the military aspects of the Occupation) simply reinforces its status as an artificial colonial entity – the last remnant of the British colony on the island of Ireland. Take away the economic, political and military muscle of Britain and the shoehorned architecture of partition would collapse.

Meanwhile in this part of the country the ongoing economic crisis seems to be finally sparking some signs of dissent amongst Irish voters. Well, excluding the usual 25% of the electorate who seem to regard the EU-ECB-IMF diktat as a golden opportunity to hammer down on the other 75% of the electorate. Crisis? What crisis? Over on the Cedar Lounge Revolution there is an excellent analysis by WorldbyStorm on the latest RedC/SBP poll showing broad public support for Croke Park II and by inference the much maligned Public Sector:

“This is stunning stuff given the media and political disparagement of the PS over the past four or five years. I’m genuinely surprised that the figures are so clearly pitched against the orthodoxy, indeed at a public opinion level it would make one question just what is the orthodoxy any longer. And it suggests that there’s a distinct disconnect between public opinion and the messages being put out on a continual basis by the Sunday Independent, parts of RTÉ, much of the IT – albeit in a lower key fashion, and in the SBP as well as the likes of George Hook, et al.”

On the percentages for party political support (which initially the SBP claimed as a fall for Sinn Féin and a rise for Fine Gael) WbS writes:

“Fine Gael: 28% (NC)

Fianna Fáil:** 25% (up by 1%)

Independents/Other:** 20% (down by 1%)

Sinn Féin: 16% (up by 2%)

Labour: 11% (down by 2%)

Stability for FG. it’s found it’s level. 1 per cent ahead of its 2007 rating. Long gone are the heady days of 36 per cent or even higher. Labour still sliding downwards. Sinn Féin recovering slightly since the previous month – is that indicative of a relationship between the SF and LP vote? Could be. Or it could a shift from Ind/Others which it is worth noting remain at the upper end of the strength throughout the past two years. Though it is entirely possible that the movement is also towards FF which is up marginally.

Pat Leahy makes the case that for both the Labour Party and SF things aren’t absolutely terrible. I wonder about the first – losing over half your representation, perhaps more on some poll projections is pretty grim. And while it is true that the LP is now at its average polling support for much of the 1980s onwards that’s hardly a great achievement. Anything but one would think. Moreover the game isn’t over yet, not by a long way. SF is indeed consolidating. It’s operating at a significantly higher level than 2011. But still, they’ll need to do better again. How they can fashion that outcome remains to be seen.”

And finally from Fine Gael TD Peter Mathews, darling of the right-wing media, a helpful insight on abortion and the view of men in suits thanks to some tough questioning from Vincent Brown (transcript in full over on the Boroadsheet):

“Browne: “Okay, isn’t there something terribly arrogant about us men particularly deciding in the case of women that they have to carry to full termination a baby within their womb irrespective of the consequences to them throughout the rest of their lives of doing so. Isn’t there terrible arrogance in that, involved in that?”

Mathews: “Well, you’re suggesting that arrogance arises in the case of all men. It doesn’t in my case. I have huge respect for my mother who looked after me, you know, through, before my birth ,after my birth, I have huge respect for wife who has borne our children, and I have huge respect for my daughter. And also for all my nieces.”

Browne: “You’re not dealing with the point I’m making, Peter.”

Mathews: “I am, Vincent. Not the way you want me to.”

Browne: “Yes of course you’re not the way I want you to because, you’re not answering the question.”

Mathews: “Truthfully, Vincent.”

Browne: “I think that maybe you haven’t listened. If in the case I have postulated to you somebody else was to say that oh no under no circumstances can your daughter take decisions for herself in circumstances such as that, wouldn’t you be appalled.”

Mathews: “I’m saying Vincent, that the reality is that expectant mothers and fathers, their partners or husbands do make those decisions for themselves, the same way for instance, hold on, men, men, well, men….”

Browne: “But they don’t. Sure the law has intervened they make criminals over them.”

Mathews: “Look, Vincent, men went down the mines and ways, men went into the mines and ways to provide for their family and their health was impaired and they died young. Look, for goodness, life is tough…. Vincent you know that, the ‘The Road Less Travelled’. ‘Life is tough’ that’s the first sentence of it. And it was written by a psychiatrist in 1957.”

Oh, well that is ok then. Life is tough. Women are criminals. Welcome to the Fine Gael socio-economic worldview.

NORAID, San Francisco, USA

One wonders what the people of the United States of America will make of the British media’s barely contained gloating over the recent twin terrorist bomb blasts in the city of Boston? Oh yes, the sentiments were wrapped in some cosy words of sympathy and understanding but through all the woolly camouflage the obvious satisfaction at seeing an “Irish-American city” struck by terror, men, women and children killed or maimed, was all too evident. The British, however irrationally, blame the United States and Irish-Americans in particular for the historic armed struggle of the Irish Republican Army during the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In their view without Irish-American money, guns, explosives and technical knowhow – not to mention political and diplomatic support – the IRA would have succumbed to the British war machine in a matter of months. Without the succour of Irish-America, so runs the myth, Britain would never have been defeated – or at least forced to make a distasteful peace.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the language of the British propaganda machine is couched in the same language of the “International Zionist conspiracy”. If people thought the anti-Semites made hay with the “power of the Israelis lobby” In Congress that is nothing to how the British present the power of the “Irish murder lobby”. For the British news media (and the newspapers in particular) Irish-Americans are: “ignorant”, “bigoted”, “hate-filled”, “fanatical”, “zealous”, “murder-loving”, “terrorist-coddling” and worse of all “English-hating”. But then this simply reflects wider historic British views about the Irish in general and the remnants of the “global Irish conspiracy” that so obsessed British imperial minds in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Of course this bigotry applies to British journalists and commentators from across the political spectrum, Right to Left. But then many of Britain’s chattering classes still bear a grudge for losing the War of Independence (both the Irish and the American one).

Oh well. At least an end to the (full scale) war in the north-east of Ireland has put an end to forty years of British newspaper fantasies of former US Special Forces’ soldiers joining the Irish Republican Army (“Deadly IRA Sniper Is Ex-US Ranger!”), of IRA Volunteers attending secret training courses in Massachusetts run by US Marines (“IRA Trained In American Boot-Camps”) and of Irish-American spies in the FBI and CIA (“FBI Sympathisers Protect IRA Bombers”).

Now we just have the bitter and twisted joy of a bitter and twisted people to contend with.

Related articles

• Boston cop’s heart stopped for 45 min – Irish American hero shot during chase expected to survive (irishcentral.com)
• America’s Most Irish Towns (forbes.com)

Mick Fealty of the Irish news and current affairs blog Slugger O’Toole is looking for crowd-sourced questions to put to Micheál Martin, leader of Fianna Fáil, at this year’s Ard-Fheis. I’ve already offered one suggestion and I’d ask others interested in equal rights for Irish-speakers, FF standing for election in the north-east of the country, the economy north and south, and many other nationally important matters to offer their suggestions at the relevant Google Moderator page (sign in using Google/Gmail to leave a question). Try and keep them short and without obvious point-scoring, and hopefully a few of the tougher ones might get through.

Séamas Ó Sionnaigh: “If elected what policies would Fianna Fáil implement in relation to the rights of Irish-speaking citizens? Do you personally favour a fully bilingual Ireland along the lines of Québec or Catalonia? Will you legislate to create such a state?”

Anti-democracy protest leader and British Unionist militant Willie Frazer poses in front of a British terrorist wall mural, Belfast, Ireland

Though it is called the “Protestant Coalition”.

It only exists to further “the empowerment of the PUL (Protestant Unionist Loyalist) community”.

And it is self-described as an “anti-politics” grouping.

Ahem…

From the News Letter:

“A new political party seemingly born out of the flag protests will be launched on Wednesday.

The party, which the Electoral Commission confirmed has been registered with it, will be called The Protestant Coalition and describes itself as an “anti-politics political party”.

When asked why he was not joining the TUV — who would appear to share many of his political views — Mr Frazer said that there were people in various parties with whom he could agree and the new party would work with parties such as the TUV, UKIP and the PUP.”

What? No mention of the BNP, EDL and NF?

Celebrating 100 years of terrorising the people of Ireland – the British Brown Shirts?

So the (not so) big parade in Belfast commemorating the foundation of the original Ulster Volunteer Force or UVF, the historic terrorist arm of the British Unionist minority in Ireland at the start of the 20th century, has passed off with minimal trouble. Well minimal if you exclude the several incidences of members of the national and international media being shoved into side streets or back into their vehicles by steroid-pumped “stewards”. At a later rally in Craigavon speeches were made, flags were flown, but what exactly was said and what exactly was displayed is under wraps. No journalists were around to witness events. All in all, a good day out for Ireland’s very own version of the ”Golden Dawn”.

A Golden Dawn parade in Athens. Sorry! Wrong group of fascists. I meant a UVF parade in Belfast