Taoiseach. Year 1994. Gifts (Loans) from friends.

by Michelle Clarke - Social Justice and Ethkcs Wed Dec 20, 2006 18:17

The Moriarity Report is out today minus recommendations:-

'This sort of arrogance portrays a contempt for the electorate which stems from being too long in power and seems to be tipping Ahern into a form of megalomania. Just because Charlie was a snappy dresser and a crook does not mean that Bertie, who is a crappy dresser, is some epitome of probit'

Sometimes it is worth recalling and even reviewing words of earlier times........

These words are well said.........it is time to start becoming aware of human frailties and finding alternaties....

Michelle Clarke

Quotation
The Courage to Change - Marilyn Gustin
'As long as we continue toi focus on the eexternal situations in our lives, the quality of our experiences will stay largely the same'

by Jinx Fri Oct 06, 2006 13:14

I reckon this letter form the Sunday Indo sums the whole thing up in a nut-shell:

Sir - From atop his high-horse of arrogance Bertie Ahern, leader of the Irish government, rounds on the press and tells them that he is keeping to himself the amount of money which he received for his Holy Communion, his Confirmation and his birthdays. Is this surreal or what? Nobody gives a fiddlers what he made from these childhood occasions.

What people want answers to are the questions posed by your always excellent columnist Gene Kerrigan, (Soapbox, SI, 24/9/2006). As Kerrigan points out, this is the man who, as Party Treasurer signed blank cheques for Haughey without demur and who, as Taoiseach, appointed Liam Lawlor to, of all things, the Committee on Ethics. Not to mention his defence of Ray Burke as "an honourable man hounded out of office."

This sort of arrogance portrays a contempt for the electorate which stems from being too long in power and seems to be tipping Ahern into a form of megalomania. Just because Charlie was a snappy dresser and a crook does not mean that Bertie, who is a crappy dresser, is some epitome of probity. One other question which was not on Gene Kerrigan's list, and needs to be asked, is: was anyone who contributed money to Ahern's separation fund appointed to the board of a state company? Confirmation money indeed.

Aidan Sharkey,
Haarlem, The Netherlands

by Jack Rusell - Social Justice and Ethics Thu Oct 05, 2006 21:59

I was scrolling through articles written.

I promise I had no knowledge that Michael O'Leary, Chief Executive, Ryanair, would make a swoop via the Stock Exchange on the same day as our Taoiseach, was left standing alone, without Minister McDowell at his side.......facing more alleged accusations relating to 'corruption' at a personal level.......

An irony no doubt!!!! Fate and Providence perhaps!!!!!!

I can't resist a quotation of Jeff Smurfit senior
'Opportunity comes to pass not to pause'

by Michelle Clarke - Social Justice and Ethics Sun Oct 01, 2006 21:40

They say time is the healer!!!!!!

Someone decided it was time to 'throw the spratt to catch the salmon'

Now it is time for us all to look to deep within and examine our own conscience - who is above reproach?

I cannot remember this period of time (brain injury) so I am taking what you wrote in the only way I can and that is 'in the now'. I add to this pre-accident memory prior to 1993 and leave the rest to intuitive - Professor Wrixon has an interesting programme on the BBC about Memory and has written a book on intuition).

I left ireland in the awful 1980's. My then husband worked in that cut-throat construction industry that saw many have to leave Ireland.

I returned on occasions via Ryanair and progress, the idea of the financial services area similar to the concept of Canary Wharf in London Docks, the tax breaks for housing, all that would provide Ireland with the chance to get up on it's feet again, provide education for the young people and prosperity for what is a very Young Nation state.

There was corruption but then Ireland had real poverty........

Given what you have said about Aerann - the message to the boys in Manchester - the involvement of the Department of Finance, the waiver of possible debts? I am glad Aer Arann exists as I am glad Fr. Horan got Knock Airport up and running against all odds.........We must also admit that the Nation benefitted just as it did in the 1960's from Shannon and the Lemass breaks.

Do we really want to take things so far out of perspective??????

Gandhi:
'Live as if you are going to die tomorrow but learn as if you are going to learn for the rest of your life'

This is wisdom, for a Nation that in 20 years dug itself out of a crater and created the first realistic prospect of a United Ireland.....Worth a thought surely.

Why are we so condemnatory? The mistake ('Portal of Discovery -James Joyce'). Can we not just exercise some wisdom and learn and move forward)'

Michelle Clarke

by Lafcadio Hearn Sat Sep 30, 2006 01:59

At the urging of the owner of Aer Arann some fat cats in Manchester give Bertie, the Minister for Finance, 8 thousnand at a time when Aer Arann is seeking to be bailed out by the Dept. of Finance. Bertie is honest and he is not corrupt. And my name is King Farouk.

by Michelle Clarke - Social Justice Fri Sep 29, 2006 21:29

John.

Thank you for clarifying that the first point related to me.

Yes, I now understand your view about economic policies.

Michelle Clarke

by John Thu Sep 28, 2006 21:43

Michelle,

Only my first post was in reponse to you. My second post was in response to the one from Kevin T. Walsh that preceded it.

The point in my first post was that, although you had a very bad time economically in the 80s, you now advocate the same policies of high tax and high government spending that were such a failure then and the dumping of the low tax and low government spending policies that have brought to an end the economic malaise that affected not only you but hundreds of thousands of others back then. Can you not draw lessons from the different experiences of Ireland now and Ireland back in the 80s when you had to emigrate? Back then we had high tax and government interference in every facet of the economy. The result: you had to emigrate, I had to emigrate, hundreds of thousands had to emigrate. Today we have low tax and much less government interference in the economy. The result: I'm back working in Ireland, you're back in Ireland (not sure if you're working or not) and so are hundreds of thousands of others not to mention hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Now, be honest Michelle. If someone had told you when you had been forced to emigrate back in the early 80s that 20 years later Ireland would have the lowest unemployment in the EU and that 100,000 a year would be coming from abroad to live, would you have believed them? No, you'd have said they were nuts. So would I. So, given the economic transformation in Ireland between then and now, don't you think it beholds us all to try and analyse why Ireland is doing so much better economicall today than it was then so that those days never return.

The point in my second post was to expose the hypocrisy of Kevin T. Walsh who, while making allegations about the integrity of Bertie Ahern, holds up as an example of virtue a man who was for a long time a member of a political party that maintained an armed wing which robbed banks and engaged in fraud of various kinds not just to fund its political activities but for the personal enrichment of its members.

by Michelle Clarke - Social Justice Thu Sep 28, 2006 21:20

John

Michelle here. What point do you want to make about the 1980's? Are you inferring that has the F.G. policies faltered and unemployed went sky high that I took the easy option and emigrated This surely does not mean I needed a doctor to deal with the neurosis........'of being left out of the inner circle within the construction industry'....

Then I notice your last post. What point are you making here?

You talk about the IRA / Sinn Fein and robbing banks.

Yes, now that you mention it, you are right......Bank raids, bombs, people died....

I say to you......now.....

Have we not moved a very long way.......in a very short historic period of time....?

Well done to those Game Players - all of them who got us to the Good Friday Agreement........Let's hope Restorative Justice and Policing remain high on the Political Agenda, for the United Ireland, we have waited so long for.

Quotation chosen especially for you John
History
'As long as someone else controls your hjistory the Truth shall remain just a mystery'
Ben Harper Contemporary, radical US singer songwriter

by John Thu Sep 28, 2006 20:49

I think you'll find that the mass emigration began about 18 months after the Fine Gael/Labour coalition led by Garret Fitzgerald came to power and ended about 18 months after the first Fianna Fail/PD government came to power. A lot of posters here are in urgent need of a history lesson. They like to pretend that Fianna Fail were in government throughout the 1980s. Actually an FG/Lab government was in power from July 81 to March 82 and from October 82 to March 87. It was during this period that the economy totally stagnated, unemployment reached 25 per cent and the high emigration began. Following their departure from office in March 1987, things started to improve resulting in an economic boom from 1989 on and falling unemployment and the ending of emigration from the early 90s on. And the Irish economy hasn't looked back since. Nope, they don't call Bertie Ahern Dom Bertia in Sicily. They've never heard of Bertie Ahern or any other Irish politician in Sicily. They're too busy robbing banks there to have an interest in Irish politics. Talking of robbing banks, quite a lot of Irish banks were robbed in the 1980s by Official Sinn Fein/IRA. And who was a leading member of Official Sinn Fein/IRA back then when all the banks were being robbed? The libel laws prevent me from mentioning his name, but I'll give you a clue: Its one of the politicians you've mentioned in your post as a paragon of virtue. So, you want high taxes? Fine, just as long as you tell the electorate in advance that you'll put taxes up if elected and you don't try to hide from them the fact that by putting them up Ireland will return to the same sort of economy it had in the 80s before they were brought down.

by Michelle Clarke - Social Justice and Ethics Thu Sep 28, 2006 20:37

Can these 'denials' become 'Portals of Discovery' James Joyce deemed mistakes to be so!!!
Denials.....These apply to people, organisations, governments, whole societies.

Definition '...the information is therefore somehow represssed, disavoed, pushed aside or re-interpreted'

or

the else the information 'registers; well enough, but its implciations - cognitive, emotional or moral - are evaded, neutralised or rationalised away....
Taken From interesting book by Stanley Cohen -
States of denial. Knowing about Attrocities and Suffering.

I personally am always ill-at ease at 'hound-dog' personal attacks on people.

People are human not perfect...........and 14 years ago and a leak is about vendetta mentality.

What about where we are at and where we can go..........

Ireland is only a young nation state and serious work has been input over the last number of years to achieve a Unification of Ireland.......

Surely, there is enough War in the world. What about asking is 'the Cost too high'.......

Think of these expressions relating to Denial as quoted in Cohen's book....we all can contextualise and identify with some......

Turning a Blind Eye
Burying your head in the sand
She saw what she wanted to see
He only heard what he wanted to hear
Ignorance is bliss
Living a lie
Conspiracy of silence
Economical with the truth
It's got got nothing to do with me
Don't make waves.......
Being like an Ostrich
Wearing blinkers.....
Averting your gaze

I challenge anyone to say that they are above reproach.

Yes, Accountability, Ethics, Transparency but also compassion, humanity, equity.

A litttle psychology and sociology from a book by Jesuit Fr. John Powell

'If I expose my nakedness as a person to you - Do not make feel shame'

Michelle

by Kevin T. Walsh - Social Justice and Ethics Thu Sep 28, 2006 20:15

I read your reply to Michelle's personalised synopsis of the 1980's. It appears to me that you accuse the lady of being 'ill'. I enjoyed the article myself, it was humorous and the serious points were from within the intellect of people.

You mentioned the 1980's .

When people were mass emigrating, the Fianna Fail mafia of Ireland were busy making plans, producing multi-millionaires and favours thereafter. The 'septic' tiger tanks still flow into Ireland today but it is slowing down, thanks to people who have shown their heads and who have asked for accountability.

No John, Michelle does not need a doctor, the Nation needs a Moral Doctor to look back at our forefathers and the famine and not today's Porche chique (so often bought through corruption of 'Daddy')

You mentioned Fine Gael and Labour and fhe highest taxes during the 1980's but doesn\'t higher taxes, if they were, still provide a better road than the sewer of corruption and brown envelopes. Ray Burke is the first ever Minister of Justice, in the history of the State, imprisoned for tax evasion. Have we not learnt John?

According to your reply it is fine. Bertie Ahern has earned 2 million euros in pay since the loans he received 14 years ago.

McDowell sat like Judas beside Bertie in the Dail yesterday, in total denial of what the PD's stand for. But a couple of hours ago, he has now changed his mind. The question is John - the payment in Manchester to Bertie and the non declaration to revenue.

We live in a country, of a Government, who are bought by Billionaires and land developers and as nation we have lost our sense of Shame and Outrage. And Michelle is correct - she regularly quotes the need for Accountability, transparency and Ethics. Today, Minister McDowell mentioned the word 'Accountability' - now there's a question John.

Was the Manchester whip around a loan for Bertie for a deposit on a flat over Fagan's pub?

Today's papers say he slept in a sleeping bag in St. Lukes during the separation - this surely makes us the laughing stock of Europe. The Sicilian mafia are on valium trying to stop the laughter among their own. They call him the Don Bertia......a true Scilian Chief with the mindset of 'Who framed Roger Rabitt?' So when you are walking down O'Connell Street and see all the buck rabbits in bronze and when Pat Rabbitte in the Dail asked 'You are a man of the people Bertie, in your Mercedes, the tank is filled and you have to put no hand in your pocket - you are a man of Hill 16 Bertie - but you don't fool the rabbits in O'Connell Street'. Now Analyse That!!!! John, the great critic. As Freud said, it is so easy to be a critic but write your own article and be condemned to your own vanity.

Quotation:
Alexander Solzhenisyn (born 1918......)
Russian Dissident who spent 8 years in prison for criticizing Stalin
Finally exiled after writing his book The Gulag Archipeligo

Lies:

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but the Pillar of the State'..............

by PaddyK Thu Sep 28, 2006 13:00

John is enlightened:

"I notice that when deciding to emigrate in the 80s the only places that could offer you employment were Thatcher's Britain and Reagan's America. That tells us all we need to know. "

Wow , they speak English there.

by Tadhg Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:53

I seem to remember Fianna Fail being in power in the 1980's- was i imagining it? And weren't the PD's founded in the 1980's- I thought they had their twentieth anniversary shindig recently, I must have dreamt that too. And shouldn't John really be commenting on the numerous Shell to Sea stories on Indymedia?

There are plenty of them, so he has more than enough opportunitiies to explain why it makes economic sense to give away your natural resources and force a small rural community to live with a giant polluting gas refinery and a dangerous experimental pipeline, destroying any hopes they have for local tourism and preserving their environment.

by John Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:39

You say: "Do many of us really remember the 1980's? I do. I emigrated with my then husband to England." You are like someone who has been ill, gets cured by the doctor, then once cured starts slagging off the doctor and demands to return to the way of living that made you ill in the first place. I remember the 80s. But, unlike you I learned the lessons of the 80s. A Fine Gael/Labour government was in power. Government spending was sky high. Tax rates were sky high. Government borrowing was sky-high. The phone system was publicly-owned and you couldn't make a phone call. Ryanair had yet to be born. Publicly-owned Aer Lingus had a monopoly on flights to and from London and the return flight to London cost 2 months wages. The PDs had yet to be born. Communism was thought to be the wave of the future and most left-wing parties in Ireland urged us to model our economy on those of Romania, Bulgaria and Albania all of which they assured us were destined to be the economic powerhouses of the future. I notice that when deciding to emigrate in the 80s the only places that could offer you employment were Thatcher's Britain and Reagan's America. That tells us all we need to know.

by Not Impressed. Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:49

I had imagined that there might be someting to this article. There isn't. It's just incoherent rambling.

Get a blog, and leave indymedia foor news and news analysis.

by himself Thu Sep 28, 2006 05:02

The answer lies in O'Connell Street. There are 4 large bronze rabbits.

How does the answer to who stole the files lie with these bronze rabbits? There was a simple man like myself convinced these were just odd enough public art displays in the tradition of the flying pigs. Am I to believe there is some deeper meaning at hand?

Awaiting enlightenment...