2. Take back our natural resources
In North West Mayo, Shell are enjoying the protection of the Irish State as they erect and develop a refinery for our offshore gas that has been given to Shell for nothing.
I want the next Government to take back these natural resources from Shell and use the wealth to get us out of our economic crisis.
Is it fair and right that we should do this? Of course it is. The Fianna Fáil Government reversed a law that had been in place to facilitate the giving away of the gas. A Fianna Fáil minister gave it away for nothing . We don't know if he himself was paid a price. Why should the people of any country be deprived of the benefits of the wealth of the country because of the action of one suspect politician? Why should a suspect company like Shell benefit from such a shady deal to the detriment of the nation?
Is it possible to to do this? Yes it is. A new Government can stand up to Shell and take back the ill-gotten goods. They can use the State's human resources - resources which up to now have been used to guarantee Shell's ownership of part of Mayo and its offshore - to take over that area in the name of the State, evict Shell non-violently and compensate them for work done.
Take back our resources in our name. Don't compound and copper-fasten the errors of Fianna Fáil.
Friday, 18 February 2011
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
The Irish Elections - My List of wants: No 1. Stop the corruption in the Irish Courts
No 1 Stop the deep-seated corruption in the Courts, the Judicial system and the Judiciary.
It has been my fate to have seen some of this corruption taking place in court rooms that I have visited as a human rights activist over the past four years. When this corrupt system gets its stranglehold on a victim it doesn't let go. It chokes the victim mercilessly to death.
What happened to the McBrearty family and Frank Shortt in the 1990s is happening now in Dublin to other people to my certain knowledge.
Any Government worth its salt must stop it NOW.
I have placed this at the top of my list because it is a hidden and sinister corruption in one of the two most powerful pillars of the State, namely the Judiciary, the judicial system and all its adjuncts.
I want the next Government and every candidate who stands for election to promise that when the State through its agents, the Garda Síochána, is found to have fraudulently prosecuted an innocent citizen, the same State will not use all of its immense power in the courts to further aggravate the damage it has already done to that innocent citizen or twist the knife within the wound it has so unjustly inflicted on that citizen.
That is what is happening in the Irish judicial system at present. The courts, the Courts Service, the Garda Síochána, members of the legal profession have been used to save the face of the perpetrators of the injustice and relentlessly hammer the innocent citizen who would dare to use the same courts to try to get justice or compensation for the criminal wrongdoing which the State has perpetrated.
All of this is carried out in the name of the tax-payers and the Irish people whom the State represents.
The State prosecutors and their helpers within the courts system are getting away with serious wrongdoing. The judges do not prevent the wrongdoing. They did not prevent it in the McBrearty and Frank Shortt cases. Only a brave woman whistleblower stopped the rot. Without her the judicial system would have continued to fail the wronged McBrearty family and the wronged Frank Shortt. They and their families would be carrying the weight of the criminal framing inflicted on them to this day, if they had managed to live.
A Judicial Council with teeth must be set up immediately to monitor the judiciary and prevent corruption. A forum other than the courts must be set up to deal speedily with the wrongdoings of the courts themselves. Judges should not be selected through patronage however well disguised but elected on merit. Before election they should be knowledgeable, not just in law and logic which should be taken for granted, but also and above all in ethics.
At present, the ethics dimension is apparently lacking, big time, within the judicial system.
I would like a change in the Constitution to allow the people to elect the judges from a panel of candidates put forward by a cluster of citizens, say 100 or so, who have nominated them, as election candidates are nominated.
It has been my fate to have seen some of this corruption taking place in court rooms that I have visited as a human rights activist over the past four years. When this corrupt system gets its stranglehold on a victim it doesn't let go. It chokes the victim mercilessly to death.
What happened to the McBrearty family and Frank Shortt in the 1990s is happening now in Dublin to other people to my certain knowledge.
Any Government worth its salt must stop it NOW.
I have placed this at the top of my list because it is a hidden and sinister corruption in one of the two most powerful pillars of the State, namely the Judiciary, the judicial system and all its adjuncts.
I want the next Government and every candidate who stands for election to promise that when the State through its agents, the Garda Síochána, is found to have fraudulently prosecuted an innocent citizen, the same State will not use all of its immense power in the courts to further aggravate the damage it has already done to that innocent citizen or twist the knife within the wound it has so unjustly inflicted on that citizen.
That is what is happening in the Irish judicial system at present. The courts, the Courts Service, the Garda Síochána, members of the legal profession have been used to save the face of the perpetrators of the injustice and relentlessly hammer the innocent citizen who would dare to use the same courts to try to get justice or compensation for the criminal wrongdoing which the State has perpetrated.
All of this is carried out in the name of the tax-payers and the Irish people whom the State represents.
The State prosecutors and their helpers within the courts system are getting away with serious wrongdoing. The judges do not prevent the wrongdoing. They did not prevent it in the McBrearty and Frank Shortt cases. Only a brave woman whistleblower stopped the rot. Without her the judicial system would have continued to fail the wronged McBrearty family and the wronged Frank Shortt. They and their families would be carrying the weight of the criminal framing inflicted on them to this day, if they had managed to live.
A Judicial Council with teeth must be set up immediately to monitor the judiciary and prevent corruption. A forum other than the courts must be set up to deal speedily with the wrongdoings of the courts themselves. Judges should not be selected through patronage however well disguised but elected on merit. Before election they should be knowledgeable, not just in law and logic which should be taken for granted, but also and above all in ethics.
At present, the ethics dimension is apparently lacking, big time, within the judicial system.
I would like a change in the Constitution to allow the people to elect the judges from a panel of candidates put forward by a cluster of citizens, say 100 or so, who have nominated them, as election candidates are nominated.
Friday, 11 February 2011
The Irish Elections - What I want from the next Government
The canvassers have not got anywhere near me and I can't talk to them face to face so I am telling them here and now what I want from the newly elected.
My list will not be the expected one. "Job creation" will not be the top priority because everyone knows this already.
The deep malaise that has blighted our little country had been festering for many years.
There was corruption in almost every level of government, local government, administration, planning, agencies of the State, the Judiciary and its own agencies. There was also gross inefficiency and arrogance. And there were false promises on Europe not just from Fianna Fáil but also from Fine Gael and the Labour party..
All of these have contributed in spades to our present impasse.
I want to see an end to this corruption, inefficiency, arrogance and deceit at the same time as I want to see better conditions of living for all of us.
In the following pages I will outline what I want to say at the door to the canvassers
My list will not be the expected one. "Job creation" will not be the top priority because everyone knows this already.
The deep malaise that has blighted our little country had been festering for many years.
There was corruption in almost every level of government, local government, administration, planning, agencies of the State, the Judiciary and its own agencies. There was also gross inefficiency and arrogance. And there were false promises on Europe not just from Fianna Fáil but also from Fine Gael and the Labour party..
All of these have contributed in spades to our present impasse.
I want to see an end to this corruption, inefficiency, arrogance and deceit at the same time as I want to see better conditions of living for all of us.
In the following pages I will outline what I want to say at the door to the canvassers
Thursday, 3 February 2011
The Irish Elections
The 30th Dáil ended with a whimper and a long drawn-out groan.
It drew its last breath on the first day of February, St Brigid's Day, the first of Spring.
The fear expressed on this site at the beginning of the tenure of the Government in place was not just realised, it was surpassed outlandishly.
The Fianna Fáil/Green Party Government bowed to the Banks' demands, rewarded their corruption by bailing them out, brought in the EU and IMF so handing over the fiscal command of our nation to our new masters in the most abject manner.
We are no longer a sovereign nation.
Brian Cowen resigned as leader of Fianna Fáil under internal pressure. He named a day for the elections for 12 March 2011. But when he tried to make new Ministers in his last days of Government the Green Party were outraged and he had to move the date forward to 25 February 2011. He remains Taoiseach although Micheál Martin is the new leader of the party.
A new Finance Bill has been passed into law putting enormous burdens on the poorer and more vulnerable strands of our society - even the blind have been hammered.
The ultra-rich will remain ultra rich when they have paid what to them is a miserable pittance.
Support in the polls for both Fianna Fáil and the Green Party has shrunk significantly. The pundits as of today are forecasting a Fine Gael/Labour Party coalition with Fine Gael having the most seats.
The same pundits are forecasting that Enda Kenny will be the next Taoisech although for a while they were betting on the Labour leader Eamon Gilmore.
Latest state of the parties:
Fine Gael 33%
Labour 24%
Fianna Fáil 15%
Sinn Féin 12%
Green Party 01%
It drew its last breath on the first day of February, St Brigid's Day, the first of Spring.
The fear expressed on this site at the beginning of the tenure of the Government in place was not just realised, it was surpassed outlandishly.
The Fianna Fáil/Green Party Government bowed to the Banks' demands, rewarded their corruption by bailing them out, brought in the EU and IMF so handing over the fiscal command of our nation to our new masters in the most abject manner.
We are no longer a sovereign nation.
Brian Cowen resigned as leader of Fianna Fáil under internal pressure. He named a day for the elections for 12 March 2011. But when he tried to make new Ministers in his last days of Government the Green Party were outraged and he had to move the date forward to 25 February 2011. He remains Taoiseach although Micheál Martin is the new leader of the party.
A new Finance Bill has been passed into law putting enormous burdens on the poorer and more vulnerable strands of our society - even the blind have been hammered.
The ultra-rich will remain ultra rich when they have paid what to them is a miserable pittance.
Support in the polls for both Fianna Fáil and the Green Party has shrunk significantly. The pundits as of today are forecasting a Fine Gael/Labour Party coalition with Fine Gael having the most seats.
The same pundits are forecasting that Enda Kenny will be the next Taoisech although for a while they were betting on the Labour leader Eamon Gilmore.
Latest state of the parties:
Fine Gael 33%
Labour 24%
Fianna Fáil 15%
Sinn Féin 12%
Green Party 01%
Monday, 11 October 2010
Mairead stands up to Israel
Mairead Maguire Nobel Peace Laureate is home safely after her most recent visit to Israel. She had arrived there for a Nobel women's Initiative intended to support people working in Israel and the Occupied Territories, for human rights and justice, - especially women's groups, . But human rights and justice issues are not popular with the Israeli government, particularly where the rights of Palestinians are concerned.
So, having arrived at Ben Gurion airport, she was detained in the airport's detention centre where she was held in solitary confinement for seven days. Earlier, Israeli security guards had attempted to put her on a KLM plane to deport her but, after she reused to comply and sat quietly beside the plane, the pilot refused to allow the guards to force her on to it.
Her lawyer appealed in the District court and in the Supreme court but the appeal was lost.
Not before Mairead made it clear to the court that she loved both Israelis and Palestinians,and she appealed to the Israeli Government "to end Apartheid and Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people'.
As the "peace talks" stall and stall and stall, Israel continue to defy US President Obama and all of his "peacemakers", continues to violate human rights of Palestinians, continues its illegal occupation of Palestine, continues to besiege Gaza with absolute impunity.
But last week, one woman's voice was raised within Israel, the voice of Mairead Maguire, making a call for justice that world leaders have been afraid to make
So, having arrived at Ben Gurion airport, she was detained in the airport's detention centre where she was held in solitary confinement for seven days. Earlier, Israeli security guards had attempted to put her on a KLM plane to deport her but, after she reused to comply and sat quietly beside the plane, the pilot refused to allow the guards to force her on to it.
Her lawyer appealed in the District court and in the Supreme court but the appeal was lost.
Not before Mairead made it clear to the court that she loved both Israelis and Palestinians,and she appealed to the Israeli Government "to end Apartheid and Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people'.
As the "peace talks" stall and stall and stall, Israel continue to defy US President Obama and all of his "peacemakers", continues to violate human rights of Palestinians, continues its illegal occupation of Palestine, continues to besiege Gaza with absolute impunity.
But last week, one woman's voice was raised within Israel, the voice of Mairead Maguire, making a call for justice that world leaders have been afraid to make
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