Thursday, March 29, 2007

Northern Ireland: Road to the Future or Cul-de-Sac?

The agreement between Gerry Adam’s Sinn Féin and Ian Paisley’s DUP to accept the configuration of Devolution Government in Northern Ireland within the UK as decreed by the British Government’s legislation, although delayed by five weeks to conciliate some of Paisley’s more hard-line supporters, is welcome if it is a prelude to the normalisation of politics in the area after 30 years of sectarian conflict and violence which has disfigured all aspects of life there.

It will take some time for the hatreds aroused by the killings, shootings, bombings which were characteristic of the conflict to ease down and allow some kind of objective consideration of the political realities to emerge and, hopefully, a re-alignment of political forces onto the common European model of Left/ Right division which reflects the real class interests of the population.
Unfortunately, the type of government structure now to be established has the propensity to formalise the sectarian Catholic/Protestant division which is the main cause of the conflict, whereas the real need for the people is to dump these sectarian divisions and modernise the political system for better representation of their own interests. There is an opportunity here for those representing the Labour interest, mainly the SDLP led by Mark Durkan, but also the Labour Party in the Republic of Ireland, to focus on re-vitalising labour politics on the whole island and offering, to the people in Northern Ireland in particular, a modern, democratic, socialist alternative to the sterile futility of Catholic/Protestant turf wars.

Backward

Paisley’s DUP, one of the most backward political forces in Europe, doesn’t have anything to offer the people of Northern Ireland in the long-term. Motivated by sectarian religious hatred of catholics based on 17th century English politics and conflict with Catholic France and Spain, the DUP are stuck in a time-warp of their own making and have no logical way out of it without undermining their entire basis for existing. The Union of Britain and Ireland, an expedient of the ruling elite of England for complete domination of the islands, lasted only 120 years and was sundered by the achievement of sovereign independence by the greater part of Ireland in 1921. The detachment of the six counties of Northern Ireland was a crime against Irish democracy by the Imperialist Government in London in their own interests of maintaining domination of Ireland for political and strategic reasons.

Turnaround

These interests no longer have the same import as 100 years ago, but, the DUP and others of the same ilk continue to cling to the past as if the 20th century never happened. It is a supreme irony that as Ian Paisley shuffles into office as First Minister in a devolved government of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, the people of Scotland will sound the death-knell of the British Union a few days later as the Scottish National Party sweeps to power in Edinburgh with an agenda for full independence for Scotland as soon as it can be effected. Recent polls taken in England show that more than 60% of the English also favour Scottish independence, a remarkable turnaround in a relatively short time and a portent of where the future of British politics might lie. Sooner, rather than later, there will be no Union for the Unionists of Northern Ireland to cling to.

Rather than waiting for the political earthquake to happen, Labour politicians in Ireland as a whole should take the initiative now and act to expand, develop and consolidate the Labour interest throughout the island.

FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 29 Márta/March 2007.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Prosperity Denied; the True Face of PD Hypocrisy;

Frank McNamara, the former musical director of RTÉ’s “Late, Late, Show” announced himself as a candidate for the “Progressive Democrats” in the forthcoming General Election here and went on RTÉ Radio’s “Joe Duffy Show” today to get himself some free publicity. He didn’t fare too well as several ‘phone callers ripped to shreds his mealy mouthed apologia for the the PD’s ten years in office with Fianna Fáil in coalition and he didn’t even know the rate of the Old Age Pension when challenged by one caller. Rejecting the charge that he was being a “parachute candidate” McKnowNothing revealed he was a PD supporter for the past ten years. He won’t mind then sharing responsibility for the mess the FF/PD Coalition are leaving behind them as they leave office.

It can be seen from the regular outbursts of PD Fuhrer Michael McDowell in the Dáil and elsewhere, with a pretence of “debating” the “issues” while deliberately obscuring the real issues of the capitalist exploitation economy which the PD Party adheres to like barnacles on the bottom of a boat, there is one PD policy for their business cronies and financial backers and another for general consumption by the electorate.

The meaningless shibboleth “the PD’s believe that if people work hard and honestly they are entitled to the fruits of their labour, that is not a question of greed, it is a question of justice” is manifestly untrue since, if people who worked hard could really enjoy “the fruits of their labour”, the entire capitalist system would immediately collapse. The system only continues to exist by denying the people who work hard the larger part of the “fruits of their labour” by using economic coercion to force wages to the absolute tolerable minimum, given the balance of political forces at any particular time in its history, and expropriating the major part of produced value to itself.

Bundles of paper and piles of metal stored in bank vaults do not produce anything; only human labour can do that. Therein lies the source of capitalist wealth and “prosperity” – robbery of the working majority’s real output value for the immoral and unjust enrichment of the few.

The PD’s spout a lot of slogans, most of them borrowed, ironically, from historic socialism but, the people on the hospital trollies, dying in ambulances, living in the poverty ghettos in every urban area of the state, lacking the child-care facilities, stuck on congested roads and under-funded public transport, children attending Dickensian school buildings, the thousands who are still unemployed; they all experience the reality of PD/FF “justice and prosperity”.

Those of us who remember “Sweatshop” Harney’s “Hong Kong” speech a few years ago are not fooled by the sham “reforms” of herself and her proto-fascist party. The “reforms” which in the years of so-called “social partnership” have secured a massive transfer of income from the wage workers to the pockets of the speculators, “developers”, finance capitalists and other stalwarts of the PD Party. “Sweatshop” Harney had to move constituency because she was found out as a political fraud by the people of Dublin South West and she was in danger of losing her seat.

Ms Blarney’s perennial boasts of lowering taxes on incomes will sound hollow to those forced to live on minimum wages or average industrial wages. The so-called “standard” rate of 20% grabs one fifth of relatively small earned incomes compared with the 12.5% of the vastly greater unearned income from capital gains. Only a slight rise in wages or having to work on Sundays brings the average worker into the 41% tax band, the same rate as millionaires like “Sir” Tony “Bean Baron” O’Reilly and Michael O’Leery who are the beneficiaries of Ms Blarney’s reduced capital gains tax regime. On top of that, the average wage-earner has to suffer continuous rises in PD/FF stealth taxes in ESB charges, public transport fare rises, TV license, restrictions on medical card eligibility, increases in GP visit charges and prescriptions and a long list of others. The Government’s own statistics show up Ms Blarney’s thesis as spurious. In 1997, when Ms Blarney returned to office, the share of wages in the value of gross industrial production was 9.4%. In 2002, when Ms Blarney’s first five year term ended, the figure was reduced to 7%. This means that, by comparison, a net amount of 25% of the wages share had been transferred to Ms Blarney’s friends in the corporate sector and all the gains of productivity in those five years had gone to them too (CSO – Census of Industrial Production 1997-2002). And that was before the Government took it’s tax cut and the affect of Government ordered price rises. So much for Ms Blarney’s “lowering” of taxes on wage-earners.

The overall PD push is corporatist, anti-social and heavily biased in favour of profit-taking and asset-stripping in the name of “economic development” for the minority of those with sufficient capital resources to engage in these activities on a large scale. Reckless of the social consequences of a rampaging market-fetishism, the PD party are the first cousins of ENRON and the Buckfush economic plunderers of state treasuries and public assets for private gain. Ms Blarney delivers “real change” alright; she robs the wallets of the wage workers and delivers her loot to her corporate friends.

The PD Party stands today, as it has since its foundation, as an obsessive right-wing party facilitating and favouring, let’s not put a tooth in it, the organisers of exploitation and slave-labour on a global scale. No doubt the cheerleaders of South Frederick St were on their feet recently applauding their in pectoris member in Brussels, the redoubtable Mr McCreepy, who continues to spout the same nonsense as Mr McDo-little and Ms Blarney. They ought to open their history books now and then and contemplate the fate of another exploiting elite whose arrogance and ignorance of reality came to a swift and peremptory end at the foot of the guillotine, in Paris, in 1793.



FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 27 Márta/March 2007.

Friday, March 23, 2007

LEBANON WAR WAS PLANNED IN ADVANCE:

Irish people were shocked by the savagery of the Israeli assault on the people of Lebanon during the aggression of last July 2006 and the spinelessness of our Government’s response to it. Only when the USA had withdrawn its threat to veto any UN Security Council ceasefire resolution did Irish Foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern, begin to publicly support the demands of Lebanon and several European countries for an immediate end to the Israeli aggression.

The Irish Government stayed dumb as the US cynically manoeuvred to prevent any UN attempts to bring a halt to the Israeli aggression thus tacitly supporting the criminal moves of the Washington Warlords who were supplying Israel with the weapons to continue its war against Lebanon.
On Saturday, 04 Samhain/November, 2006, Ibrahim Al-Musawi, a leading member and spokesman for the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance visited Dublin and spoke to an overflow meeting at the Royal Dublin Hotel in O’Connell St. The meeting was organised by the “Stop Bush Campaign”, a coalition of Irish anti-war groups and political party affiliates which intends to make the Irish Government’s logistical aid to the US Military by allowing their aircraft to land at Shannon Airport, Co Clare, an election issue in the Republic’s next general election due in May, 2007.

The large attendance heard Mr Al-Musawi describe the appalling conditions of the civilian population of south Beirut and the south of Lebanon during the Israeli aggression earlier in the year. Mr Al–Musawi denied the description by Western media and Government leaders of his movement as a terrorist organisation and stated that Hezbollah was a popular resistance movement with both political structure and military defence capabilities which had a legitimate right under the UN Charter to resist the Israeli aggression and the continued occupation of Lebanese territory by Israel.

LONG-TERM PLAN

It is quite clear, as events have unfolded, that Israel’s Nazi-blitzkrieg on the civilian population of Lebanon was no spontaneous outbreak prompted by a minor action of the militant Hezbollah resistance (itself a result of the previous invasions of Lebanon by Israeli forces) but, a long planned and mapped out assault in keeping with the Buckfush regime’s strategic interests in the oil-rich Middle East. The programmed assaults on Lebanese infrastructure and assets could not have been done on a whim of local commanders but, must have been the result of careful planning and forethought and completed some considerable time before, something which should have been apparent to any objective observers. Condasleeza Rice’s deliberate stalling tactics in preventing the UN Security Council from taking immediate action against the Israeli aggression and the continued delivery of specialist US weaponry to Israel in support of that aggression are further damning evidence of Washington’s warmongering and imperialist policies, despite the grandiose “peace” rhetoric which emanated from Ms Rice and her employer, Buckfush.

CONDASLEEZA, HIT-WOMAN

The brass-faced hypocrisy of Condasleeza Rice in turning up in Lebanon during the Israeli blitz-krieg to shed crocodile tears for the people suffering daily assault from bombs and missiles supplied by her government showed the depth of cynicism which characterises the infamous Buckfush regime in Washington and its globe-trotting hit-woman, an official who isn’t embarrassed by lying in public. Ms Rice has used her academic qualifications as a shield to cover up her falsehoods and as a weapon against her critics when found out. She lied to the US Congress about the prior knowledge she had, as National Security Adviser to Buckfush, about the presence of the Saudi hijackers in the USA prior to the 9/11 atrocity in New York; she lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, a concept now dumped by the regime but, only after the bloody invasion of Iraq cost thousands of lives and continues to wreak bloody mayhem in that tortured country. A bloodshed which disturbs not Ms Rice’s regular round of cocktail parties and her impromptu piano recitals.

The appalling outrage, towards the end of the latest aggression, of the deliberate targeting of a UN observer post which had been in the same location for more than twenty years, and thus its position well known to the Israeli Army, resulting in the death of several personnel, again undermined the lies of Ms Rice and her Israeli allies that this aggression was some form of self-defence action by Israel.

PRE-PLANNED AGGRESSION

And now, it has been publicly admitted by besieged Israeli premier Oilschmertz, in evidence to the Winograd Committee, which was set up to investigate the Israeli government’s tactics during the war on Lebanon, that the War was planned at least four months before the capture by Hezbollah on 12/07/06 of two Israeli military from a border post. Oilschmertz, trying to spread the blame for the failure of the aggression to achieve its aims, for which he was being accused by then Chief of Staff, Dan Halutzination, and other military leaders, admitted that he had been planning the War since January 2006 and detailed planning had begun in March, 2006. It also emerges that, since Oilschmertz only took up office as Acting Premier on 04/01/06 following the collapse into coma of previous incumbent, indicted war criminal Shitron, and his first meeting to discuss attacking Lebanon was on 08/01/06, there must have been a previous longer-standing Israeli blueprint for an aggressive war against its neighbours already in place by the military. This revelation, of course, contradicts the military contention that Oilschmertz was keeping them uninformed of the planning of the War.

The story which is emerging now shows a planned aggression against Lebanon which the Zionist aggressors and their masters, the Washington War Hawks, expected to last only a few days, a week at most. Then, a provocation would have been staged on the Syrian border and the attack would be extended to Syria knocking out Syria’s military capability as stage one of a following attack against Syrian ally, Iran, thus consolidating US Imperialism’s occupation of oil-rich Iraq and the Zionist occupation of Palestine while neutralising the main opposition forces to their schemes for continued domination of the oil-producing region of the Middle East. With continuing threats being made against Iran, it can be seen that the usurper Buckfush regime and its nuclear-armed Zionist ally, Israel, are the most reckless and ruthless menaces to world peace since Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Reich, ready to risk WW3, and the disaster that would be for the whole of humanity, for their own selfish interests.

FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 22 Márta/March 2007.


Tuesday, March 20, 2007

KHALID SHAIIK MOHAMMED confesses to causing
Big Bang which started The Universe and…..


Every other disaster since then, including WW1 and WW2 and all terrorist attacks in the USA, the September 11th 2001 attacks on the WTC in New York, the bombings in London and Madrid, the blowing up of Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin in 1966. Ya don’t believe a word of it? Neither do I, and neither does the rest of the world, I’ll bet.

The idea that this man, held prisoner in a secret location for three years and then transferred to the illegal Guantánamo Bay Torture Camp, illegally established in Cuba against the will of the Cuban government and people, it should be said, could now be trusted to tell anything like the truth given the opportunities the American military had to torture, pressurise and psychologically manipulate him over those years to make him say anything they liked.

We have seen before now people held by regimes like Saudi Arabia making false confessions to murder and other crimes which were the subject of international condemnation for the methods used to extract these “confessions”, all of which were retracted at a later stage. The EU is currently in dispute with Libya over the trial of several Bulgarian doctors and nurses accused of deliberately transmitting AIDS virus to Libyan children on the basis of false confessions extracted by Libyan Police. The EU has, quite rightly, condemned these trials and the methods used to set them up.

We are now asked to believe that Shakedown Mohammed, also designated by the Pentagon as Ol’ Sam Bin Lid’s No. 2 man in the world of Al Qaeda terrorism has voluntarily confessed to all the crimes he is accused of, and others he was not accused of, and nothing untoward was done to extract these “confessions”? Yeah, right. They always forget to mention that Ol’ Sam bin Lid was their No. 1 man in Afghanistan up until at least June 2001 when he was spotted meeting CIA agents in Saudi Arabia only two months before the September 11th attacks on New York. What does that tell us about the type of people we are dealing with here? The same people who were caught out lying about phantom weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are the ones who want us to believe that they knew nothing about the perpetrators of the September 11th 2001 attacks on New York, when they were still engaged in meeting the one they subsequently nominated as leader of the plot only a couple of months before it happened!

The usurper Buckfush regime, as mendacious a bunch of traitors as ever got hold of the levers of power in any democratic country, are now floundering in the disastrous results of their failed schemes for world domination. The American people are realising in ever increasing numbers how they were conned by this renegade clique of self-serving plunderers of the national treasury and war criminals who sent thousands of young Americans to their deaths in a futile war of aggression, and as Hollywood actor Martin Sheen said at one of last weekend’s massive anti-war demonstrations throughout the USA; “They should be in the Federal Penitentiary; the whole lot of them”, a sentiment echoed right across the country.

FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 20 Márta/March 2007.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

CURSE OF THE BAGHDAD MUMMY’S TOMB:


The Curse of the Baghdad Mummy’s Tomb seems to have fallen on those politicians who started the “War on Terror” and all that goes with it; the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; the Guantanamo Torture Camp and the abuse of prisoners and detainees there and in Iraq; the CIA Kidnappings and so-called “rendition” flights; the daily slaughter of civilians in both countries; the lies and deceptions perpetrated on the public about non-existent weapons of mass-destruction and the continuing suspicions of the authorship of the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York; the scandalous misuse of power to force through repressive legislation on the people of the USA and Britain under the guise of “anti-terrorism”;


BUCKFUSH & CHENEYSHITE:

Buckfush and his cronies lost the mid-term elections and their control of the Washington power centres in Senate and House of Representatives, as the military situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan deteriorated and it gets worse day by day. Buckfush poll ratings are now the lowest of any President in history.

Cheneyshite nearly got his come-uppance at the end of February, in Afghanistan, when a Taliban bomb near-missed him and his entourage on a fleeting visit. It would have been a supreme irony if the bomb had been one of those supplied to the Taliban by Cheneyshite and his Halliburton arms company when Ol’ Sam Bin Lid was their main man in Afghanistan up unitil June 2001. Cheneyshite is now only one step from the guillotine as his former top aide, “Scooter” Libby, was convicted by jury this week for Perjury and Obstruction of Justice with a possible 25 years in jail as prospect. As “Scooter” scoots to the Pen, can arms-dealer Cheneyshite be far behind? After all, “Scooter” didn’t scoot on his ownio; he must have gotten a starting push from someone and all the fingers of fate point towards Cheneyshite like compasses to the North Pole.

Portents of Doom must now be haunting the nightmares of the rest of the Neo-Con cabal which planned the war in Iraq and the “New World Order”; Bremerprick; Wolfspits and Eagleburgercrap; as time runs out for them and their protectors in the Whitewash House….
..tick-tock...tick-tock… tick-tock…..tick-tock….


BLAIRSCHMUCK:

Blairschmuck is in the deep shit-pits now as the noose tightens around him in the Friggers of the Yard Special Investigation into the “Cash for Favours” scandal which alleges handing out Lordships and appointments to quangos in return for donations to the Brit Labour Party. Blairschmuck’s Runner-in-Chief, Lord (Cashbags) Levy, has already been arrested and questioned by the Friggers and is likely to be dragged back to the dungeons as a result of the discovery of a shock e-mail revealing more of the Downing Street efforts to cover up the trails which might lead to Princess Tony’s private boudoir in said Downing Street. Lord Cashbags is now crying “anti-semitism” in the Brit media, referring to his Jewishness and his other job as post-boy between Blairschmuck and besieged Israeli premier Oilschmerz.

Even more worrying for Blairschmuck is the re-emergence of questions on the Mysterious Death of Dr David Kelly, the government scientist and weapons expert on chemical and biological warfare who allegedly committed suicide in the aftermath of the “Dirty Dossier” scandal which Blairschmuck’s No 1 practitioner of the Black Arts of media manipulation, Alastair Bungle, cooked up to help Blairschmuck fool the British Parliament into thinking that nuclear missiles from Irag would be raining down on London in 45 minutes if the Brit/Yank invasion didn’t go ahead forthwith. People will remember that when the BBC fingered Bungle as the author of said dossier, he ran amok, in an unprecedented display of arrogance, petulance and dour pique, barging into the studios of Channel 4 News and demanding to be allowed his own political broadcast to attack the BBC reports.

Downing Street then launched a shoal of demented piranhas from the Labour “We Love Tony” back-bench squad to savage anyone in the media who dared to question the Messianic Leader’s credibility. Headed by “Shadowman” Peter(sacked three times) Manhandlesohn, the piranhas got short shrift from the media and the whole thing backfired badly on the Blairschmuck clique.

Worse was to come, though, when Dr David Kelly, blamed for leaking the truth about the dodgy dossier to the BBC, was found dead in a field near his home and a subsequent inquiry declared “suicide”, to the horror of his family and the general public which didn’t believe a word of it. However, Alastair Bungle had to be shipped out of Dowdy Street for good, although he still has a buddy in the Irish media where Pat Kenny has regularly invited him on his RTÉ (Irish National Radio) morning talk-show to continue to spit venom against his enemies, especially the BBC. Shadowman Manhandlesohn had to be shipped over to Brussels where he is still ensconced as EU Trade Commissioner.

Shadowman has learned no new tricks, however, and everyone is on to his propaganda style of denying everything and substituting his own prepared diatribe of all opposition to his ideas.

But, with Blairschmuck now in irreversible decline, Shadowman has only this week come out of his lair snarling and attacking his former master accusing him of making too many “concessions” to Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland peace process. What “concessions” would they be now? An honest Police Force publicly accountable, non-sectarian and impartial enforcers of the law? Equal rights and opportunities for all people living in Northern Ireland? Free and fair elections without gerrymandering and vote riggging? An end to British state-terrorism and murder through the medium of Mi5 spooks and their hirelings? It beggars belief that this despicable parasite, who never did an honest days work in his life would have the brass neck to make such comments when he was the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when these gross abuses of human rights were taking place there.

Blairschmuck will leave office in a few months with all this hanging like a cloud over his tattered and shattered reputation and more serious repercussions still a possibility if the several cases of war crimes against Iraqi civilians eventually get into court. Irish right-wing monthly MAGILL tried out a whitewash on Blairschmuck’s career in their current issue and conjured up a laughable list of “friends” whom, it claims, will save the People’s Princess from going on trial.

According to McShrill, people like Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic, and José Ramos-Horta, Foreign Minister of East Timor, will leap to the defence of Princess Tony because of a speech he made in Chicago in 1999 backing Clinton’s threats to intervene in Kosovo where Albanian residents were in rebellion against the Federal Yugoslav government in Belgrade. When that intervention turned out to be massive NATO/US bombing of Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities and towns on mostly civilian targets including hospitals, schools and public transport buses and trains and even the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, it was condemned worldwide including by Mr Havel and Mr Horta. Not much hope in that quarter now for Blairschmuck trying to avoid the hand of Justice.


BALONISCONI

Former Italian Prime Git, Slitherio Spagghetti-Balonisconi has fallen foul of the Curse big-time, as well. Relations with his wife broke down shortly after the Iraq invasion and the glamour-puss Signora, former model, Veronica Lario, was soon stumping the country undermining Hubby’s
career with her own anti-war campaign. The Signora had open-door access to all except Hubby’s TV and Newspapers throughout Italy and neighbouring France and Switzerland, where gleeful tabloid editors were only too glad of the opportunity to heap embarrassment on Slitherio. In a situation resembling some of the grotty soap-operas on Balonisconi’s TV stations, the Signora sent one of her children to a private school where one of the professors, a left-wing Marxist, was supposedly the latest object of the estranged Signora’s interests.

In one of his monumental gaffes, Balonisconi, at an EU Council meeting, made a loud remark that the Danish Prime Minister was better looking than the Marxist Professor. Having just before antagonised the entire German nation by calling one of their MEP’s a “nazi camp-guard”, all infernodamante broke loose and Balonisconi has since remained box-office poison everywhere except in Rancho Buckfush, in fly-infested Texas, and of course, Dowdy Street, thanks to Blairschmuck and Missy Cherie getting free use of the Balonisconi homestead for their regular Italian holidays.

Last year, finally, it was arrividerchhe Roma for Balonisconi and his party as they lost the general election and were replaced by a Centre-Left coalition led by Romano Prodi. This meant that Balonisconi could then be brought to court on outstanding charges and in fact, his trial begins in Milan this week on charges of corruption and obstruction of Justice. In a bizarre twist, one of his co-defendants is David Mills, the estranged husband of a minister in Blairschmuck’s own government, Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell. Mills is being charged with perjury in regard to a previous court hearing investigating Slitherio’s media deals and both could face up to 8 years in jail if convicted.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

WHEN DINOSAURS FART …….

…… the whole world trembles, or, so they would like us to believe. A corporate dust-up which started in Britain last November between Sir Dickhead Bransonpickle, owner of the “Virgin” Group of media and transport outfits (the name “Virgin” being merely titular, you understand, and not indicating any bodily or spiritual integrity of the intacta kind!) and Not-Sir Rupertbiteyera$$ Morlock, owner of Newslies Corporation, The London Slimes newspaper, The Daily Smutsun, and other renowned organs of truth and justice throughout the world, rumbles on in the corporate world of Meeja.

The Clash of the Tightwads arose out of Bransonpickle’s attempt to acquire ailing Brit TV broadcaster, ITV, to add to his media interests, which include NTL, the cable operator. Morlock then sideswiped Bransonpickle by grabbing a 17.9% stake in ITV before you could say virgo intacta and effectively blocked the rival bid for ITV. Bransonpickle cried foul and called in the regulators, as he usually does when outmaneuvered, whinging that it would be bad for British democracy if Morlock, who also owns BSkyB, got more control of British media. If anyone believes that either of these two are in love with democracy, they must be too fond of idiot juice. Morlock, who uses his media Empire to intimidate governments and individual politicians by the threat of negative publicity in his vulgar sleazerags is undoubtedly the bigger threat to democracy, though.

Although Morlock might have been smirking over his rival’s discomfort, he was soon in hot water himself because of the unprecedented furore which broke out at his Fox News conglomerate in the US, which had signed up former US Footballer and Movie star, O. J. Simpson, for a TV special and book launch for Simpson’s extreme-bad-taste concoction on how he might have killed his wife “If’n he did it” so to speak, although acquitted of charges at the original trial of the case years ago. Forced to publicly apologise and scrap the whole deal at a loss of millions, while still paying Simpson’s fees, Morlock didn’t quite know how to deal with the slaves’ revolt in his empire, but, expect some nasty crucifixions soon.

In the latest round of this Dinosaur Bullfight, Virgiana Non-Intacta has scrubbed BSkyB channels off its NTL cable service in Britain claiming overcharging by the Morlock outfit. Morlock’s BSkyB television is now subject to investigation by Britain’s Office of Fair Trading in the matter of the purchase of the ITV shares.

Just one more example of the ones who scream loudest about free-market “competition” seeking to gain monopoly control at every opportunity, and exposing the lies of the free-market ideologues here, in Britain and the EU that privatisation and de-regulation lead to “more” competition. No matter how much claptrap is written and spoken about “competition”; capitalism, by its very nature, is impelled towards monopoly in every business cycle. Each bunch of shareholders wants to dominate the market and realise the greatest profit for themselves. Only the much maligned “state intervention in the economy” prevents this from going to the extreme. Ironically, it is the USA, the citadel of global capitalism, which has the tightest legislation against monopolism and cartel trading.

So, both “free market” and the alleged commitment to “competition” as a characterisation of current capitalism are propaganda myths intended to cover up the real situation. The so-called “free market” is dominated by monopolies who “compete”, not for fair distribution or consumer benefit, but, a cut-throat struggle to gain total monopoly positions for themselves, owners and shareholders. The fact that state legislation exists to curtail this struggle and limit its negative effects; asset stripping, money laundering, global scale accounting swindles, capital transfers to avoid taxation regimes which the monopolies abhor, proves that governments are aware of this innate impulse of the capitalist economy but, prefer to obscure the reality by rhetorical shibboleths about “free market” and “competition”.

FearFeasaMacLéinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 01 Márta/March 2007.
CELTIC TIGER SHITS ITS PANTS:

Celtic Tigerites got the fright of their lives Tuesday when €4 billion was wiped off share values on the Irish Stock Exchange following a sudden and unexpected 9% drop in the Chinese stock market because of rumours that the Beijing Government was about to introduce a capital gains tax on foreign investments in the Chinese economy. European and US exchanges experienced the same phenomenon which spread like falling dominoes across the world stock market system wiping out all first quarter gains of 2007 for the majority of market leaders.

The shock wave will gain more significance here as Special Savings Accounts (SSIAs) due to mature 28th FEB will have their valuations based on that day’s market closing figures. Thus, equity based accounts invested only in Irish stocks would lose more than €1000 from their totals compared with, say, the December figure of €30,000 if yesterday’s 3.5% fall is repeated today, or, even worsens.

This financial tsunami from Asia exposes the fact that the so-called “Celtic Tiger” is a wobbly-legged animal at best, more Giraffe than Tiger, over-dependent on foreign investment continuing at a rate which, in the longer term, is unsustainable and with severe weaknesses in internal structures which are becoming ever more apparent in the past six months or so. Foreign investment from the US which is the largest contributor to the CT basket of foreign investment, could be curtailed in the not too distant future if the US Democrats, now back in control of the US Congress, were to proceed with moves to “repeal tax giveaways that encourage companies to move jobs overseas”. Combined with pressure from a rising Euro on international exchange rates on Irish export prices, this move would severely impact the growth possibilities for CT investment prospects. Even without this looming threat, CT employment levels have been suffering from high profile closures and re-locations of US multi-nationals to low-wage economies in China and east Asian centers in the last six months.

The internal market is heavily dependent on construction both for employment and for public revenues as the Government tax take is high in this sector compared with others. The type of construction, tending towards the luxury end of the market with massive investment in single tenant or young couples without children occupancy is wasteful and ephemeral as broader family development is not catered for and the neglect of social housing programmes for the past ten years of FF/PD neo-liberalism has increased the areas of ghettoisation in towns and cities resulting in worsening crime, drug addiction and related social problems with concomitant increased public expenditure on control mechanisms. The investment in infrastructure projects, while positive in several aspects, as the country was severely lacking in modern transport and communications, has only been sufficient to “catch-up” with the omissions of the 70’s and 80’s and has not provided adequate leeway for the increased economic activity and population growth of this century.
The continuing prejudice against investment in public transport, both in the national rail network which has only received replacement financing for scrap assets, and the lack of integrated transport systems for the largest cities and towns, inhibits local economic growth and local investment which are urgently necessary to offset any losses to the vagaries of the international financial markets which are now descending rapidly upon us.


The incompetence of the FF/PD government in deliberately preventing the link-up of the two LUAS tramlines in the centre of Dublin, only to be now forced to agree to doing it four years later at treble the cost is one example of the lack of vision and inadequacy of this clapped-out government which, hopefully, will be dismissed from office in the coming General Election in a few months time. Government failures to implement its own National Spatial Plan, tackle the country’s heavy dependence on imported energy, provide an efficient, accessible and decent health service, channel outcomes from investment in education and research into commercially viable local industries and export leaders, bode ill for the future of the so-called "Tiger " economy. .
FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 01 Márta/March 2007.

UN COURT INDICTS ITSELF:

The International Court of Justice has delivered its verdict on a case brought by Bosnia-Herzegovina since 1993 against Serbia (accusing it of genocide during the Yugoslav Civil War of 1991-5) deciding that Serbia was not guilty of systematic genocide but was guilty of “failing to prevent” a genocidal act at Srebrenica, a town occupied mainly by Muslims where 8,000 men were segregated and then murdered by Bosnian Serb troops under the command of General Radko Mladic when his troops captured the town towards the end of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mladic has subsequently been indicted as a war-criminal by another court, the International War-Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, and is reportedly hiding out in Serbia currently.

So, what is wrong with this verdict? In the first place the wrong country was on trial. The remnant of the Yugoslav Federative Socialist Republic consisting of two members; Serbia and Montenegro; continued to exist until after the end of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. So, Serbia, on its own could not be responsible for anything being done or not done in the context of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in which it was not a party. Further, the authority in charge of Srebrenica at the time of the massacre was The United Nations itself which had declared the town a United Nations Safe Haven and had decided that a battalion of Dutch troops was sufficient force to implement this declaration(in hindsight; of course, a bad mistake. It would have had a different outcome if Irish troops had been sent there). It was therefore the authority-in-charge, the United Nations which failed to prevent the act of genocide. The Court itself declares that the massacre was carried out by “some members of the Bosnian Serb Army, but without instructions from or effective control by Serbia”. Ludicrous then, that Serbia, still a member of Federal Yugoslavia, should intervene in a civil war in a neighbouring territory where the UN had established a massive military presence and had ordered other countries not to intervene?

This verdict exposes the contradictions and the utter hypocrisy of the way the dominant powers on the UN Security Council and the leaders of the European Union handled the break-up of former Yugoslavia and the subsequent tragic and brutal civil war which resulted. All preventable, if both the UN Charter and the rules of the European Union and International Law had been followed to the letter by those sworn to uphold such statutes in the interests of regional and world peace which they are designed to effect.

Breakup

When the Federative Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia began a process of internal dissension and dispute between the individual members and there was local failure to agree on the continuation of the State, a dissolution by agreement could have been proposed and facilitated by the EU to which two of the Yugoslav territories, Slovenia and Croatia, had expressed aspirations for membership. Instead, inspired by Cold-War prejudice and former Imperialist hegemony in these two areas, both Austrian Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, and German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, conspired to interfere and offer support to the more militant of the dissidents and illegally supply them with arms. In effect, supporting rebellion against another UN member; Federal Yugoslavia. Buoyed and emboldened by this support, the dissidents proceeded to unilateral declarations of independence which were immediately recognised, contrary to International Law and the EU Common Foreign Policy by Germany and Austria. In the case of Slovenia, the ethnic majority was Slovene but, in Croatia, over a million Serbs were inhabiting their ancestral lands there and were not in favour of quitting the Federation.

Boundaries

It should be noted that the boundaries of “Croatia” and the other divisions of Yugoslavia were completely arbitrary lines decided by edict of Josip Bros Tito, the wartime and subsequent leader of Socialist Yugoslavia, and not internationally recognised boundaries. Nevertheless, the rights of the Serbs under International and European law were abridged and trampled upon by both the EU and the UN. Deprived of their legitimate and internationally recognised Yugoslav citizenship overnight and without any consultation or agreement and perceiving their lives and property under threat by a new, militant, and neo-fascist jurisdiction in Zagreb they had little option but rebel in legitimate defence of their interests.

Bosnia

The situation was tragically compounded soon after in Bosnia-Herzegovina in April, 1992, where the misguided and deluded leaders of the so-called “Muslim” faction, a designation which had no meaning in Socialist Yugoslavia, self-declared “Independence” in Sarajevo, ignoring the fact that they had little influence or control outside the half of the city which their hastily-established militias had occupied. Faced with a fait-accompli in Sarajevo and a detaching of three of its federation members with the collusion and direct political and military support of leading members of the EU, the Yugoslav leaders in Belgrade, the federal capital, withdrew the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) from Bosnia-Herzegovina at the same time de-mobbing all JNA personnel who were of Bosnian origin, a decision precipitated and impelled by the stupidity and self-serving bungling of the German and Austrian Governments and then the so-called “International Community” meaning NATO including the USA, which supported it.

Those de-mobbed, upwards of 20,000, were immediately available to form the Bosnian Serb Army and had access to large stores of equipment stored in arsenals all over the country as part of the defence strategy of Socialist Yugoslavia during the Cold War. Thus, the unilateral declaration of independence in Sarajevo by one political faction was inevitably going to be bitterly contested. To use the words of the International Court judgement in the current case “the scale of this event might have been surmised” and the bloody, brutal and tragic civil war might have been prevented. But, no, the so-called “International Community” continued its unwarranted interference and despite a UN ban on supplying weapons to the factions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Clinton Government in Washington incited, colluded and facilitated the importation of 4,000 “Mujahadeen” jihadists and their armaments from various Muslim countries to join the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Clinton and later, Buckfush, regimes in Washington have continued to use this disgraceful and illegal intervention as propaganda to ingratiate themselves with the leaders of Muslim countries as “defenders of Muslims in Europe” shamelessly promoting their own selfish interests at the expense of peace in Europe.

NATO

Unfortunately, no lessons have been learned by the NATO/EU bunglers who are still involved in the aftermath of the tragedies of the Yugoslav Civil War where they still occupy the Serbian province of Kosovo-Mitrovica supposedly under UN supervision and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, former leader of the British Liberal Party, Paddy Ashdown, functions as UN “Gauleiter” ruling by diktat over the fractious multi-ethnic compromise government established by the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 in terms dictated by NATO/EU interests based, once again, on denying the Serbian population their national rights. In both areas, the NATO/EU bunglers are still playing a dangerous game of pandering to extremist factions as in Kosovo-Mitrovica where former Albanian KLA terrorist leader has been appointed “Prime Minister” of the separated province and is pushing for “independence” and a separate state for the ethnic Albanian inhabitants. There is no justification whatsoever for detaching this territory from Serbia and forming a second Albanian state in the Balkans when the Republic of Albania already exists as a recognised and sovereign member of the United Nations.

Kosovo

Such a development would likely re-ignite the flames of ethnic hatred and clashes of the recent civil wars and produce another disaster in the heart of Europe and would be an unprecedented act of violation of the sovereign rights of a UN member, Serbia, and the UN Charter itself, with untold consequences for the future of peace and stability in Europe. As it is, UN occupied Kosovo-Mitrovica has become, according to INTERPOL, the international police organization, the centre of money laundering, drug importation, people-trafficking, kidnapping, sex-slavery and child prostitution operations for the whole of Europe organized by the Albanian and Russian Mafias and gangster muscle and hit-men supplied by the KLA Albanian terrorist organization. When the NATO/EU occupation was established they immediately expelled the Serbian Police force from Kosovo leaving the area free for criminal and gangster activity which has continued to grow to this day. Only half the promised 5000 NATO/EU police has ever arrived and is totally inadequate and bereft of local knowledge in dealing with the well-organised Mafias and criminal families based there. 40,000 NATO/EU troops, including a transport battalion from Ireland, maintain only a temporary ceasefire between Serb and Albanian communities absorbed in mutual hatred and recrimination and even this fragile status quo is now threatened by extremely stupid and insane proposals for “independence” for this divided and fractured and lawless territory which has been created by misguided and blundering NATO/EU policies.

FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 28Feabhra/February 2007.