Musings On Quinn, O Brien And Ireland's Corporate Coup D'etat

Glad to see some real views are being aired behind the scenes.  (See below)
Cos this is the real deal.
This is the last 30 years of adulation mainly of FF cheer led unbridled capitalism coming home to roost.

Perhaps not that suprising when you have a Taoiseach - and source of state contract - taking the absolute piss out of the State and the law of the land.

You buy the media. And if you can't buy off the odd individual you strut like the legal assassin and try and silence people with court intimidation and deep slimey striped pockets.

Ganley with RTE is just the corner boy version of Denis O-ligarch Brien with Browne and Smith.

Sean Quinn has his gombeen goebbels in John Waters and in Michael Harding's eloquent but bog ignorant support.
Not to mention "Rent A Christian" Father Darcy.


This is where sites like this come into their own, it is essential that we say/repeat what the billionaire bullies are trying to prevent being said.

Quinn is just picking up the robber baron's baton where Lowry and O'Brien left off.

If this shit is not fought now, we are well and truly screwed.

This is commercial coup d'etat type Paddy-style..

The others - the pols - at least have the decency to come and lie to us and seek our support every few years.

We can then get rid of them.

A small compensation given the damage they have done.

But could you imagine what the sorry story would be like if the whole show was in the hands of devious corrupt bullying billionaire gangsters.


"In private, meanwhile, Fine Gael TDs were even more scathing about the former GAA president Mr Kelly, who at one stage was being touted by Mr Kenny's inner circle as a possible presidential candidate.

They noted that "Kelly really let the mask slip, those comments were remarkably naive''.

One source claimed: "There is astonishment that anyone who was a member of Fine Gael would express themselves in that fashion, he sounded like a member of Fianna Fail lite.''

They added that "for some time a lot of Fine Gael figures have felt Kelly is a one-trick pony trading on going to GAA matches but this gombeen green gurrier stuff, poor Sean [Quinn] sure he's one of our own''.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/co...w-3190021.html

Oligarchs are buying media organs to attack state organs, seek immunity and lay down covering fire for their commercial rape and pillage.

If you were to listen to Quinn's PR blitz - which seems to have carefully copied that done by D O-ligarch Brien - you would think employing a village give you moral cover for state pillage.

This is what has Denis O-ligarch Brien threatening Vincent Browne.

Shout it from the fucking roof-tops.

"IT HARDLY matters which of the two oligarchs get control of Independent News and Media, for neither should be allowed to. Not because of any moral turpitude on the part of the oligarchy represented by Denis O’Brien or that represented by the O’Reilly family.

First, Independent News and Media is far too large, and the power it gives to whomever controls it is oppressive. On this island INM owns the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent, the Sunday World, the Evening Herald, the Irish Daily Star, the Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life. It owns 13 local newspapers and also one of the largest newspaper and magazine distribution agencies, Newspread, plus several of the largest print works on the island. It has a strong presence on the internet with independent.ie."

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...314874703.html

John Waters - A Gombeen Goebbels

Back in the simple day there was John Healy.
Penning nostalgie de la bog boue.
Then along came John Waters.
Grabbed a pen and started to lash out shrieked up, dumbed down John.
John Snr though was a worthy foe.
And not devoid of some literary talent.
Although also enthralled by the rural shyster soul,  Healy would never have penned bilge like some of John's gems:
"Katy French was a personification of our fantasies, of our sense of what we were becoming, of how we might unfold ourselves. She was ...perhaps the most spectacular light on the skyline, a meteorite of desire plummeting through the Irish zeitgeist."

John proclaimed that the above was typed through his "tears!"
In the unlikely event of Healy succumbing to such suckerdom, he would have had the
wit to shut the fuck up about it.


But John Junior is a tosser.

                                                                'spelling smug'

Waters is a contradictory, hysterical, attention-seeking personification of all that he noisily derides.
His very existence contradicts all his Barry's Tea Bag conspiracies about the D4 monopoly of the media
He is an elitist.
He is a snob.
Accidents such as place of birth are serious issues to John Boy.
Like most snobs, he is also a boot licker.
An apologist for corruption.
(Provided it comes with the right accent)
He is an idle contrarian - unlike Vincent who is an active and interesting one.
Like most bitter and twisted people he has a big chip on his shoulder.
(Remember one of first big forays into the limelight was his attack on U2. And what was the substance of his attack - who did U2 with Rattle and Hum think they were acting as if they were  global rock stars?
Sure John knew them back in the day; grasshoppers rant knees bitterness etc.

This is from a previous occasion when John's antics came up for discussion.

Quote:

Waters was always an idiot, a Khmer Rouge like culchie who dismissed the supposed pretensions of Dublin 4 and the moral flaws of media land while lauding the duplicity and guile of the peasant as some form of native charm. In his dumb divisive vision, he was blind to the fact that the victims of those he praised for "pulling one over" were ourselves. His 80s In Dublin attack on U2 first revealed his limited inner begrudger. His Dancing at the Crossroads was John Healy for slow learners. Waters made a total fool of himself with his tear stained eulogy to Kathy French as if she was a present day Oscar Wilde.

See the current debate here on John as our national "bean caoineadh"



Back in the day Waters was the monkey to Sean Doherty's organ grinder.

Today he's dancing to Quinn's plaintive tune.

Quinn is not to blame.  He's a visionary and yet he's a dupe.

A victim of vulture finance.  A world where no-one actually makes anything. 

And sure the Quinns were mere small "small fry"
Easily gobbled up by Anglo.

Big bad Anglo. Little boy Quinn.

Sound likes a PR trope.

But we all partied.

Yet the Quinns are the best of the best.

The Kennedys of Cavan.

Sean may have gambled billions. But he only played cards with a tenner.

Great employer too.

And this despite the fact that it is now perfectly clear that Sean ran his sound insurance business, reaping the same potential of Ponzi that Walters takes issue with elsewhere.

Logic? An unnecessary Dublin 4 trifle. A media amuse bouche.

Could you imagine the dung smeared crap we would be subject to if Fitzpatrick wielded a hurl instead of a club and Drumm banged on in thick Corkonian not finest Malahide.

Tea-Baggery is the only system that allows you present arguments riddled with so many holes

Here's Johny with his Barry's Tea Bag Thought.

No logic, no consistency,  no sense.

Just the incoherent cries of culchie court jester seeking attention.

Waters is a Class A fool.

Like that tool Lowry, he is a constant source of national embarrassment.

At least Myers laces his pieces with erudition.

The best John can rise to is "cute out."

A Gombeen Goebbels.

A blight on the intellectual landscape.

A Bungalow Ditz.

Go on John!

You show em up in Dublin.

Celebrity Banisteoir.

Go dance on their ice.

Oh.

One last thing.

All this twirling on ice rinks.

All this Eurovision fawning.

Jesus.

Better be a big big phobe.

Or the boys might call you homo.

Long haired faggot.

'Mammy'

Imagine the horror of that.

SKYPE WITH A TOTAL STRANGER

You're sitting there trying to deal with the onslaught of a recession.

Do you take the bid on the house? 

120,000 less than you paid.

20.000 less than you owe.

Suddenly a big cosmic goldfish globule!

Silence has been Skyped.

Loneliness breached.

It's the GOLDFISH again.

And you don't even feed the fucker.

You don't get these SFX in Beckett silence.

But this ain't a story of analogue ennui.

This is one of digital despair.

Tinged with dishonest possibility.

Ones and zeros.

Cyber-sex.

Beauty or beast.

Come on baby.

Skype me.

We have contact.

We have picture.

Static.

No web-cam on me.

Can I web-cam on you.

On your grandmother's teengage breasts.

Over to you

It's Vanessa Odoru

[19/07/2012 18:06:39] Vanessa Odoru: Hello

Hello indeed. What could Vanessa Odoru possibly want?

[19/07/2012 18:06:43] Vanessa Odoru: Can you add me to be come honest friends

Honestly.

Time to introduce Vanessa: She is female. She is pretty. She is a girl from Potchefstroom city. That's South Africa. Or so we're told. 
Vanessa is on the prowl. 
She's looking for an honest, single man to share the "rean of my life with and stay with forever."

A tall order? Well with Skype you can walk the whole wide world.

Just to find me.

Me here, hungover in a warm, grey, Dublin evening.

She found me! Found me. Found me.

Lotto winning yippee!

[19/07/2012 18:07:19] Kevin Barrington: Why me? Why you?

[19/07/2012 18:08:34] Vanessa Odoru: Oh Dear anthing but if you don't like is ok

Why me?

[19/07/2012 18:14:03] Kevin Barrington: But you don't know me. Why are you sending me a message. Perhaps I boil babies for breakfast, peck at toddlers for lunch, pig out on grannies at night. Maybe you should run along down the highway

[19/07/2012 18:16:48] Vanessa Odoru: Okay My Dear

And with that Vanessa Odoru had come.

And gone.

From my life.

How was it for you?

Vanessa.

Odoru.

BLUES GENES - Boubacar Traoré @ The Unitarian Church

It's said that if you head off looking for the blues' genes you end up somewhere south of Timbucktu. Well the Malian embryo and the Missisippi evolution came together in divine celebration last Saturday in Dublin's Unitarian Church. Mali was represented by Boubacar Traoré who grooves in a similar musical and emotional niche as that of his northern Malian friend and other renowned desert bluesman the late great Ali Farka Toure

Providing soulful heart beats on calabash was Losseni Kone. (In parts of Africa large calabashes are hollowed, dried and used as percussion instruments) The blues was represented by Vincent Bucher who managed to blow the sound of a vast orchestra out of a sole harmonica.

Dublin was granted a glimpse of this African guitar legend ahead of his headlining appearance at the 30th anniversary at WOMAD festival in the UK. A few have trodden a similar Delta to Desert path before with perhaps the best known being Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Toure. The two joined to create desert blues soundscapes of the most exquisite joyful gloom. In more recent years more people have become hip to similar sounds as Tuareg group Tinariwen have toured these shores and Damon Albarn's enthusiasm has highlighted the Timbuktu’s Desert Festival run by promoter, journalist and former Tinariwen manager Andy Morgan. The festival is now threatened by Islam's dour puritanical forces Al Qaeda in the Maghreb who frown on music and poetry and have recently have been destroying Sufi shrines in the area. Various regional players may have a hand in promoting this Al Qaeda branded instability. For a good analysis on the situation, see Andy Morgan's fine in-depth piece here: http://thinkafricapress.com/mali/cau...rn-mali-tuareg But back to Stephen's Green. Instead of rolling desert dunes, Traoré took to the stage/altar against a shimmering stain glass backdrop and carved stone slogans of true Christianity. The Unitarian Church provides the perfect home for such spiritual sounds, as it is hosts one of the few branches of Christianity not to have betrayed its sacred clothes to camouflage rape and pillage. Promoter Gerry Godley and his Improvised Music Company also deserve a mention here for the decidedly un-Tiger timbre to the whole gig. Tickets for the gig, which sold out instantly, were a nigh on mendicant friendly 12 Euro. The church soon filled static reverence and sounds of such grace as to lure the deities out to dance. If one was addicted to complaint, you might posit the idea the audience was almost paralyzed in its reverence - with barely the sound of a foot tap. But then your complaint would have to deal with the applause at the end. A wall of applause that would have made Phil Spector jealous.

I haven't seen such ferocious clapping since it was thrown at Joe Strummer in his first post Clash appearance with the Mescaleros at the Olympia. Wild appreciation laced with a touch punk challenge defied 15 minutes of blaring house lights and led Joe to retake the stage and repeat a number as they had run out of rehearsed songs. But tonight, what the Unitarian Church lacked in punk chaos, it made up in religious communion. And as the crowd spilled out into the still bright night, there was a touch of the mad evangelical to the eye. All in all spellbinding. The sort of event that cleanses the soul of all the despair inflicted by this ill-choreographed Riverdance country of ours. __________________

---

The Irish Times Magazine
14 Jul 2012

Politics.ie - The Men In The Moral Mini Skirts

There's a post below entitled Kept Catholics - 50 Years of the Chieftains.

I posted it on Ireland's two biggest online political discussion forums a few days ago.

http://www.politicalworld.org/showthread.php?t=12261
and
http://www.politics.ie/

You can read the thread on the first link.

I have no idea whether you still can on the second link.

Because after some 500 views, I was informed of the following:

You have been banned for the following reason:
This account has been suspended. 
Contact <info@politics.ie> for more information.
Date the ban will be lifted: Never

So I was granted a lifelong ban for the above rather eloquent reason that I hope is is as comprehensible to you as it is to me.

So I can't see if the post is still there. Nor do I know what the problem with it was.

Given some of the extremist rants that appear on politics.ie, one would be forgiven for thinking that one had fucked with something really important.

But what?

Who knows?

But when one sees what all the idiots have to say on the thread "Dublinistan" on the site run by David Cochrane, a man with dubious morals best known for the abject services he provided to that shyster Delcan Ganley, it's a case of  who the fuck cares.

On arriving on the Irish political scene, Ganley -without the deep pockets that shysters of his ilk such as Rpuert Murdoch and Denis O Brien had - needed cheap adulation.

So to whom did he turn?

Cochrane of course.

Not that David told us this.

No. no.

He kept it silent.

Shame or a condition of payment?

Kiss and can't tell?

Who knows.



But , in the end, I thought it only polite to express my feelings about the gift this enlightened site had bequeathed me.

So here's the letter I wrote:

To the man with the ban.

We all know you are free to do with your (competing) site as you wish.
As you are free to sell your services to the highest bidder should you so choose.
There is nothing new about this.
Or your having done so.
You merely join in a long list of those who have debased journalism by using it to provide camouflage for public relations.
Prostitution,and its media equivalent, is a pretty straightforward affair.
It only becomes problematic when the issue of payment is not clearly outlined in advance.
And when there is ambiguity over the actual range of services on offer.
There is little point in me reiterating all the controversies aroused by your servicing of the needs of your once paymaster, Declan Ganley.
If memory serves it was only when caught in flagrante delicto, that public was told the money on your bed side table was indeed Ganley's.
(Correct me if I am wrong here)
Bar adding further to the corrosion of the perception of both media and politics, the only real problem I had with your site's your moral frivolity was on the odd occasion when your political street walking directly crossed the path of my beliefs.
And when your servicing of your client's needs created what many deemed an unsightly vista.
It is curious, though, how your own ethos seems to embody the moral degeneration that many of the posters on your site attribute - with all the certainty of the hysterical - to immigrants.
"Dublinistan" indeed.

But I digress.

The real purpose of my call is to get you to pass on my thanks to your man Sync.
The ire of fools and the strictures of the blinkered have always provided one of the finest promotional tools around.
Where a moral mini skirt serves your needs, the outrage of the idiot and the bullying of the buffoon serves mine.
And for this I wish to say thanks.
A lifetime ban for a concert review.
That's the sort of accolade most reviewers dream of.
So I just want to avail of the freedom of this civilised space, which curiously had not problem at all with the same words, to say thanks to you, your site and, above all, to Sync's limitations.

Hopefully I can find a way to sneak around your ban so I can avail of your kind services in the future.

Kept Catholics - 50 Years of the Chieftains.

(Thanks Garth)



Just a little caveat here before we go.
I had never seen the Chieftains before.
So I am speaking from a position of total informed ignorance
An ignorance I was relatively happy with until a haphazard offer of a ticket.
So why not?
The Chieftains have been around. And you don't get to stay around for 50 years unless you got something.
They have to have something.

And they do.
But it's bizarre.
And irritating.
Wonderful.
Rousing.
Suspect.
Depressing.

At least I got to to the Grand Canal Theatre.
Cool, deconstructivist, Lost in Translation elegance.
One of those few occasions where chi chi manages to put a bit of effective spin on emptiness.

 Capitalism may have launched the Grand Canal Theatre.
But it has taken socialism to guide it safely back to earth.
And for socialism, just read you.
Tax-payer take a bow.
The Chieftains suggested you give a round of applause to Harry Crosbie.
I suggest you give yourself a clap.
You got a little back.
I know it's a minor compensation.
But the stunning surrounds almost make it feel worth it.
Can't quite say the same about the music.
There's something about the group's sound that seems to endorse and celebrate the very deviant sentimentality which wreaked havoc across the country, slaying prospects and murdering hope but just happened to drop this jewel in the neo-liberal safari park they call the docklands.
Other such kool aid constructs and paeans to hubris like the U2 tower never got to the good side of hallucination.

But back to Paddy Maloney.

Just when you are starting to see what all the fuss is about. 
It's back to fucking Paddy Moloney.
As an artefact of delicate sonic beauty starts to shimmer in front of you, along comes Paddy Moloney.
Hal Roche. Vegas leprechaun. Duffy ringmaster.
Paddy.
Presented with the possibility of beauty, Paddy Maloney opts for buffoonery.

Then sound and fury. And on comes a Marching Pipe band.
All Celtic Kipling.  Stomp and pomp.
We've taken the wild out of these colonial boys.
This is stiff upper lip stuff.
The band, all shorn and sideburned, look like they just came from back a "good crack at the Boer" rather than off a bus from Limerick.
Apparently we are hearing the tales of Paddies out fighting in the Mexican civil war.
This is strange.
It's rousing.
Definitely militaristic.
Might even be a touch of the fascistic.

But then comes the flute.
A feminine counterattack.
No more stomping.
This is the stuff of lightfooted beguile.
All charm and enrapture.
And then the complexity of the fiddle...

And then .....then it's back to Fucking Hal Roach.

Centre stage Maloney starts looking at his watch.
"Don't be losing the run of yourself there boyo!"
For grubby laughs,  Paddy gesticulates at his watch while raising his eyes to heaven.
That's witty Paddy!
Sure why would you want spectral magic when you can have cheap laughs.
And he pulls the same stunt again and again.
But this time it's even more orchestrated, an act of premeditated charlatanism.
An act of articide.
The Chieftain's court jester, a wild Nova Scotian goes "tinker mad" on a violin solo.
And in the middle of the maelstrom, the fiddler's mobile phone rings.
It's Paddy Maloney pretending to make a call.
Jesus. Isn't that great gas!

Why celebrate what you do when you can denigrate it?
But that seems to be the thing with The Chieftains.
There does not seem to be any real reverence for the music.
At the same time there is something faux about their casualness.
They try and pretend that the brilliance slips out by accident.
It's like no one wants to step up and embrace that brilliance.
No-one wants to be a star.
So we are fed upfront distraction.
Young ones leaping.
Click-clacking Peig Astaires.
All with a strong smell of Flatley.

I don't know.
But it all struck me as very "Kept Catholic."


(The above kicked off a little bit of a fuss - you can check it out here)