Archive for the ‘Dublin Governments’ Category
Leaders Questions Mayday; Clare Daly Challenges Enda Kenny on Abortion Bill
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=slFyQDyrcHY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DslFyQDyrcHY
The leader of backward Irish Vatiban (Fine Gael) defends women-hating laws; pregnant women beware!
Deputy Kenny is out of step with popular opinion :
https://tomasoflatharta.com/2013/02/11/pope-benedicts-resignation-brings-end-to-paradoxical-papacy/
What is in the new government bill on abortion? Will it make the current position better or worse?
In 2012 Clare Daly proposed a bill in Dáil Éireann to implement the Supreme Court X Case Judgment of 1992 – later endorsed in two referendums held in 1992 and 2002 – which would have legalised Abortion in Ireland in very limited circumstances.
Now the government has come forward with a new bill – following mass outrage at the death in a Galway hospital of Savita Halappanavar, who was denied an abortion which would probably have saved her life.
https://tomasoflatharta.com/2012/11/21/savitas-law/
The government is also under pressure from the European Court of Human Rights after the A, B, and C cases; the court instructed the Dublin government to legislate on abortion.
It is necessary, at this early stage, to carefully look at the contents of the government bill, and propose alternatives which will take forward the pro-choice cause in Ireland.
The statement below, issued by pro-choice TD’s Clare Daly and Joan Collins, is a contribution to this effort.
Clare Daly TD, Joan Collins TD
Statement – May1, 2013 – immediate release
Needs of despairing women ignored – lives will be put at risk
Expert Group recommendations ignored
Commenting on the government’s draft bill on abortion, Clare Daly TD and Joan Collins TD called for changes to deal with shortcomings in the Bill:
Clare Daly said:
“Today, May Day, when women have fought for their rights as workers, we are still fighting for our rights as women. I welcome the publication of the government’s proposals for minimal legislation on abortion, but it contains restrictions that will continue to put women’s lives at risk.
There are neither medical nor social grounds for requiring the approval of three consultants to agree to abortion for a despairing woman, driven towards suicide because of unwanted pregnancy. A psychiatric emergency is no different to a medical emergency and is treated as such by clinicians. If one of the government’s panel of three says ‘no’, it is up to the woman to push for an appeal to another three. Most women would give up at the possibility of a second refusal and be driven further into despair, or forced overseas – if they can afford it. This must change: no more than two medical practitioners should be required to approve abortion for suicidal women.
Women who cannot face these obstacles, and induce abortion themselves, are threatened with 14 years in prison. They would be branded as criminals if they obtain abortions in Ireland – yet the government is happy to see it done in Liverpool. The ‘chilling factor’ of criminalisation referred to by the European Court of Human Rights has been transferred from doctors to women. This hypocrisy must end: abortion must be decriminalised.”
Joan Collins said:
“The government has ignored Art 6.4.1 of its own Expert Group Report, which said that two doctors was enough to make a clinical decision on the risks to a woman’s life because of physical or mental health condition. They have also ignored the views of the majority, who support legislation for the X case, and organisations including SIPTU, Unite the Union, the National Women’s Council of Ireland and the Union of Students in Ireland – representing hundreds of thousands of people. They have called for no more than two medical practitioners as sufficient to approve abortion.
This Bill is a political compromise with Fine Gael backbenchers and the anti-abortion minority, which will compromise women’s lives rather than meet women’s needs. It also reinforces the distinction between a woman’s life and her health and welfare – where a woman who could be permanently incapacitated by pregnancy cannot get an abortion. The 8th Amendment must be repealed and women’s health needs and choices provided for.
We will be examining this draft Bill in the coming days and will table amendments to remove the unnecessary restrictions contained in it.”
Ireland: What’s left after the ULA? | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Henry Silke on the decline of the ULA.
Could Released Boston Archive Tapes Bring Down the Peace Process Stormont Government?
An RTÉ “This Week” Story contains dramatic warnings :
Link to Transcript :
TRANSCRIPT: Fran McNulty reports on further developments relating to the Boston College Belfast project
Property Tax – New Tactics Needed
What tactics can be used to defeat the property tax? That is a very pressing question because the boycott weapon, used pretty effectively against the bin and house taxes, will not work. No taxpayer can “boycott” tax increases deducted at source from pay by the state.
The SBP notes that:
Self-employed workers will not be able to get tax clearance certificates if they do not pay the new property tax, it has emerged.
This had been the general analysis from those involved in the CAHWT, but it is interesting to see it now confirmed. And it is, naturally, yet another salvo in the on-going campaign the government is waging on the issue – particularly since the first of the 1.6 million letters to householders with estimates of their tax liability are going to be sent out in the next week or so.
In many respects the government has played this quite cleverly, clearly learning from the property ‘charge’ debacle. The room for movement is now extremely circumscribed, at least in terms of refusing payment, given, as the SBP notes…
The tax authority has been granted a range of new powers to secure payment of the new…
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“The Promissory Note Deal – A Three Card Trick” OR “another step forward towards the day when we can finally face forward as a people”
A friend of this blog has unearthed a gem from the Irish Labour Party Presently participating in a coalition government with Fine Gael, under the leadership of Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore :
This is what the Labour Party are sending to their councillors today. I’d like to say its delusional but they are not that this stupid, although they obviously think some of their elected officials are. Fair play to Cian O’Ceallachain for publishing this stuff, going against the grain is never easy no matter how stupid it is…
“Farewell to Anglo!
Last night’s legislation brings an end to Anglo Irish Bank and the Irish Nationwide Building Society. These two institutions, names that will live on in ignominy, are forever associated with the recklessness and greed of a tiny clique that brought this country to the edge of financial ruin. These banks, the people who ran them and the golden circle around them were at the very roots of the crisis that has caused so much distress to the Irish people.In liquidating this institution, we are doing what should have been done on the night of the blanket bank guarantee.
This is another step forward towards the day when we can finally face forward as a people, when the past can finally recede into the distance and when Ireland and the Irish people can see the future that they truly deserve”
Commenting on this one writer suggested
Whoever wrote that is wasted in the Labour Party. Should be out there writing sci-fi
Our Literary Prize Panel agreed unanimously.
Words may fail you, so we present an alternative view from the blog of United Left Alliance TD Joan Collins :
Now you see it, now you don’t. Nobody should be fooled by the government spin on the deal negotiated with the ECB on the debts run up by Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide. Not a cent of the almost €35 billion poured into these two insolvent banks has been written down. This deal seals the fact that these debts have been fully socialised, that is transferred as a burden onto the Irish people.
Web Link :
Promissory Note Deal Is A Three Card Trick
The Irish government fast-tracked a new law through the Dáil, perhaps scared of a legal case taken by David Hall :
Once upon a time a failed private bank, under criminal investigation, got an IOU/promissory note from the State to pay off its bondholders. In 2011, we voted in a government that promised to tackle this blatant injustice. Last week they defended a legal challenge against the promissory notes. Then, hours before the Supreme Court could hear the appeal, in the dead of night, they rammed emergency legislation through the Dail that transfers those debts from the IBRC/Anglo (an institution we own, and with whom we could have negotiated a write-down or even a write-off of the debt) to the European Central Bank (which is legally prohibited from writing down, or writing off any of this debt – even if they wanted to. Which they don’t.)
So the ‘soft’, legally-suspect, promissory note debts, were turned into legally-sound, ‘hard’, non-negotiable, sovereign debt – without a single cent of it being written off.
In other words, the people paid to represent us have shafted us, and our children and grandchildren. But they still call it a ‘deal’ – kind of like an upgrade, to sit closer to the captain on a Slave Ship. Section 17 of the legislation now gives the Minister for Finance unprecedented powers to restructure these promissory notes with the Central Bank – without oversight and without a vote in the Dail. The terms of this ‘deal’ are being discussed now at: http://www.thejournal.ie/promissory-notes-michael-noonan-786949-Feb2013/
From this we will learn about ‘savings’ on the interest we’ll pay on this illegitimate debt, and how much icing sugar they intend to sprinkle over the shit sandwich they’ll be force-feeding us over the next few decades.
A delusional Jellyfish Spineless Labour Party has confused surrender and victory.
Gilmore’s outfit is going down in the opinion polls :
Labour Pains in 2013 Opinion Polls
Labour’s Way is now the Gormley-Green Way –
Any bets on how low the Labour Party and Fine Gael will dip in the next opinion polls and real elections?
We need an anti-coalition and anti-capitalist left which has the backbone for a fight, a physical feature absent from the jellyfish Labour Party.
Legislate for X – No restrictions that make abortion inaccessible – Statement by Clare Daly TD and Joan Collins TD
Clare Daly TD, Joan Collins TD
Statement – 1st February 2013 – immediate release
Legislate for X
No restrictions that make abortion inaccessible
Clare Daly TD and Joan Collins TD today responded to the publication of the Submission to the public hearings of the Committee on Health and Children with regard to the Expert Group Report on abortion:
Clare Daly TD said:
“We welcome the publication of these Submissions. The Minister now has ample evidence from which to proceed. We call for the prompt publication of a draft bill to provide for abortion on grounds of risk to the life of a woman – either by suicide or other reason related to a pregnancy.
We call for the bill to include the statement by the Chief Justice in the X Case Ruling that a risk to the life of a woman arising from pregnancy – be that risk by suicide or otherwise – should not necessarily be ‘immediate or inevitable’ in order for doctors to perform an abortion to remove that risk.”
Joan Collins TD went on:
“We support arguments made in legal Submissions to the Committee that abortion on grounds of fatal foetal abnormality could and should be included in the bill. We also call for trust to be put in the women of Ireland and in their doctors – as was argued in many of the Submissions to the Committee – and for the forthcoming bill not to include restrictions such as to make abortion inaccessible in practise and thereby put women’s lives at risk.”
Clare and Joan both insist that Legislation for X is only the first step. They jointly declared:
“Many of the Submissions illustrate the need for abortion to be made available in Ireland on grounds of risk to health, rape and incest, and fatal foetal abnormality; and when a woman feels that she simply does not wish to proceed with a pregnancy – for whatever reason. We support access to abortion on all of these grounds and will be campaigning for the repeal of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution and the introduction of free, safe, legal abortion in Ireland.”
Web Link :
http://www.claredaly.ie/legislate-for-x/
Bernadette McAliskey’s Speech to the January 2013 Bloody Sunday March for Justice – We Have Got to Get Our Act Together or We Are In for One Hell of a Hiding
Bernadette McAliskey addressing the rally at this year’s Bloody Sunday March For Justice which had the theme ‘End Impunity’. Despite a wet, windy, wintry day around 3500 people braved the elements to march in solidarity with the victims of Bloody Sunday and other injustices
Link to a Video of Bernadette McAliskey’s Speech :
End Impunity! on Vimeo on Vimeo
Some Key Points from the speech :
Is the state of Northern Ireland governed according to the principles of openness, transparency and accountability?
Lawyers and human rights campaigners had to spend a whole day in court to force the Northern Ireland Justice Minister, Alliance Party Leader Mr David Ford, to allow Marian Price spend four hours grieving beside the coffin of her dead sister Dolours.
Nobody read about this because Mr Ford asked the judge to prevent public reporting of the case in the media.
But Bernadette McAliskey is not reporting; she does not work for the media; so she was only telling us :
The judge told Mr Ford that his behaviour was “unlawful, unreasonable, and irrational”.
“We are not supposed to say this” advises McAliskey. Read the rest of this entry »
Dolours Price buried in Belfast – “A Liberator But She Never Managed To Liberate Herself” The Irish Times – Tue, Jan 29, 2013
Dolours Price – “a liberator but she never managed to liberate herself”
Eamonn McCann’s tribute sums up this moving newspaper report – despite having major political differences, Eamonn McCann and Dolours Price remained close friends for forty years.
Bernadette McAliskey was applauded when she told shivering mourners:
“We cannot keep pretending that 40 years of cruel war, of loss, of sacrifice, of prison, of inhumanity, has not affected each and every one of us in heart and soul and spirit.
“We cannot keep pretending that the war did not hurt. It broke our hearts and it broke our bodies, it changed our perspectives and it makes every day hard.”
Carrie Twomey wrote this account of the wake and funeral for Dolours Price
Carrie Twomey : “Rest in Peace”
Clare Daly TD questioned Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore on the imprisonment without trial of Martin Corey and Marian Price in the Dáil recently.
Video Link Here :
Daly points out that Martin Corey has spent almost 3 years in jail without being shown any evidence justifying his incarceration – Gilmore hides behind the fact that the case is subject to an appeal in the Belfast Supreme Court next February. Read the rest of this entry »
The Force Research Unit – How it Began
Great work again – hats off to Ed Moloney and Bob Mitchell
By Ed Moloney and Bob Mitchell
In the wake of the de Silva report on the Pat Finucane assassination there has been a renewed interest, at least on the part of obsessives like ourselves, in the origins of British military intelligence operations in Northern Ireland. By coincidence BBC Panorama also has a documentary in the pipeline, postponed recently for some unexplained reason, on the Military Reaction Force (MRF), the prototype intelligence group established by the British Army’s counter insurgency guru, General Sir Frank Kitson. This fascinating period in the Troubles is being revisited on several fronts and deservedly so.
Some interesting light was shed on this early period in the development of military intelligence units and operations by a document released under the 30 year rule back in 2005. It is a Northern Ireland Office briefing paper prepared for a meeting in April 1974 between British prime minister Harold Wilson…
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Tomás Ó Flatharta 