Irish Left Review - Joined up thinking for the Irish Left

Where is My Fire Engine, Thieving Gypsy Lady?!

I am can only give you a roundup of the impressive fascism-on-the-march news this week, since it have all been so busy, but you should all be inspire and motivate by seeing some of the most important people in Europe FINALLY doing some moves to promote the escape goating of foreingers, gypsises, Jews, and freemasons.

The big noise in France this week was the diminutive Nicolas Sarkozy, who have had enough of the Roma encampments, with their ambiguous legality, aggressive marketing, bad news begging, cluttering the place up, making people uncomfortable in the street, and wearing burqas. Also for robbing from foreing tourists, thereby taking work from Paris’s bars, bistros and hotels.

After a young Roma was shot in the street in warm blood by a gendarme recently, generations of French-born Romas was involved in rioting for several days, which prompted Sarkozy to announce that French nationality would be strip from people “of foreing origin” who make life-threatening attacks on the police, such as the Roma boy who was shot dead in his life-threatening attack, and all the other French-born foreingers. Oddly, the Catholic Church is out of step on this issue, condemning Sarkozy for his Roma-bashing, but this is presumably because this is a topic where nobody doesn’t not give a shit anyway and it can let the church look like it is sidling up with the poor. In any case, Sarkozy’s policy is distracting people from the shambles that was the French football team in the World Cup, the decline in the number of cheeses, and also it is the silly season, when all the Parisians decamp to their country homes like a nation of migrants, so the papers have nothing better to write about.

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Simon Johnson and Peter Boone are writing in the New York Times‘ Econmix blog about Ireland again.

Johnson is, of course, a former Chief Economist of the IMF, an institution that has largely endorsed Ireland’s austerity measures and suggests more may be needed.

However, Johnson and Boone’s comments are that current government policy isn’t working, and this is largely because of a political reluctance to make the shareholders responsible for creating the crisis pay for it.

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Irish society remains deeply unequal despite massive wealth creation during the Celtic tiger years.   It is estimated that a mere 5% of the population hold 40% of the wealth in Ireland.

Discrimination as experienced by women, Black and minority ethnic people  including Travellers, older people, young people, lesbian, gay and transgendered people, lone parents, carers, people with a disability, people from minority religions, and  people who are  socio economically disadvantaged continues to be a reality. At the height of the boom it was reported that 12.5% of the adult population reported experiencing discrimination.

Women continue to experience widespread pregnancy related discrimination, a significant gender pay gap and under-representation in all political arenas.

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The older one gets the more one tends to grumble and groan loudly to oneself, or so my elders tell me. You groan when you bend over because your back isn’t what it used to be; you grumble at the television because there is rarely anything on worth watching and you don’t agree with anyone anyway; you begin to shout at the newspaper because the world’s in a terrible state; but if you are really lucky a national newspaper will give you a daily outlet for your negativity and you can fill column inches with ill-informed, poisonous attacks on those in society who generally can’t defend themselves.

Of course the vast majority of Irish people, if afforded that privileged opportunity would surely use it for a more uplifting purpose. Kevin Myers unfortunately, is not in the majority. He is the author of an increasingly nasty, prejudices and lazy column in the Irish Independent which caught my eye last week and forced me finally to openly challenge him to a debate.

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I am proud to be among the many Irish and Ireland-based artists from across creative disciplines who have chosen to publicly support the growing campaign of boycott against apartheid Israel. Compared to the imprisoned Palestinian people themselves and to those taking part in flotillas and other perilous anti-apartheid activities in Palestine our contribution and risk may be justly considered small. At most we might lose the chance of lucrative invitations to read, perform or display our works in parts of the US where apartheid Israel’s supporters hold the power of censorship. Departments of foreign affairs and ministries of culture may also not include us among those artists they can rely upon to project a lying image of a harmonious, bon vivant and, above all, harmlessly apolitical intelligentsia. We are sure to be slandered and ridiculed by the hired bullies of the global media empires.

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Wall supports Brand Ireland

Following on recent calls by An Taoiseach Brian Cowen and journalist Enda O’Doherty for Irish writers to ‘do the state some service’ (and leaving aside the fact that the first man to use the expression [see footnote] committed suicide immediately afterwards), I want to say: Good Taoiseach (as Joe Higgins used to put it) I’m your man. I will do the state some service.

I am prepared to step up to the mark, put my shoulder to the wheel, stand up and be counted, in short to put my skills (sic) as a writer to the service of ‘brand Ireland’, as requested. Far be it from me to blow my own trumpet, but I do believe that these important works will capture the spirit of the new Ireland that Mr Cowen advocates.

Accordingly, I would like to advertise the following special offers:

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