Blarney Business Park: For This We Suffer?

If you think about the straightforward human need for decent, basic necessities – housing, education, healthcare and a means to earn your way in the world – then a visit to the Blarney Business Park is the sort of thing that is likely to make you weep.

Somewhere, a while ago now, some bunch of businessmen egged on by other local businessmen and assorted land developers, got the demented idea that the village of Blarney (located a few miles outside of Cork) needed its very own business park.  And so it came to pass …

You might imagine then that the construction of Blarney Business Park was part of some grand plan to meet some vital human need – after all isn’t it often said that that is exactly what the ‘free market’ excels at. You know, matching demand to supply and supply to demand and so on and so forth?  Oh ha, ha, ha!   You’re surely joking.

Not only is Blarney Business Park today just about devoid of life,  it is also in competition with a rash of other business park ventures located near its pew on the edge of the Cork-Mallow road.   Yes, there’s NorthPoint at Blackpool keenly looking for tenants – only a few kms away.  And also close by is Gateway Business Park who are offering loads and loads of ‘office space’, ‘warehouse space’ and other various ‘turnkey solutions’ to anyone who will venture in their gate.

Yes, one has to wonder?  What were those fine businessmen that conjured the Blarney Business Park into existence actually thinking?  What imaginary hole in the marketplace were they desperate to plug when they turned the sod for this gigantic waste of an effort?

[Of course, the truth is BBP was all about making a fast buck.  Let's not doubt that for one moment.   The developers wanted to cash in on a perceived ever-enlarging economic expansion.  They were motivated only by greed for more profits.  But importantly - and this is key - these profit-zombies also had access to the cash, credit and wherewithal to make their plan realizable.  Human needs were never a factor in their skewed calculations. ]

It was developed and built by Bowen Construction, as far as I can tell.  Bowen was a one time major Irish building company that is now in receivership.  A recent Irish Times profile declared that Bowen were “established in 1968  [... and] grew to become one of the largest building and civil engineering contractors in the State with offices in Cork, Dublin, Belfast, Limerick and Waterford”.   Now Bowen are under the control of NAMA.  Which means what, dear reader?

Well, what NAMA means is that the plain people of Ireland are picking up the tab.  And how? Via wage cuts, pension cuts, cuts in resources to education, cuts in hospital services, ward closures.  And so on.

Look closely at the above photo and you will see something interesting.  Laughable too.  The canvas backdrop decorating this empty showroom, depicts what? No doubt it was installed to entice and stimulate those would be entrepreneurs whom it was imagined were out there and ready to flock to Blarney Business Park.

Your eyes are not deceiving you: it’s a vista straight from idyllic rural Ireland.   A narrow boreen somewhere out there in west Cork or Kerry, or Clare or somewhere like that.   Oh how wonderful it looks.  And what a thoughtful, original and appropriate inclusion too.  They really did think of everything didn’t they – those business men who conceived of Blarney Business Park.  Truly, no stone was left unturned.

The “Drone Bomber” Arrives To A Warm Welcome From Our Glorious Leaders

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Hamid Mir, Editor with Geo News in Islamabad (Pakistan) recorded that there were 34 drone attacks in the Pakistan region between 2004 -2008.  Between 2008 and March 2009 the  number rose dramatically and there were 46 drone attacks alone in that 15 month period.  [Note, as confirmed in reports below, the number of drone attacks has risen further and sharply under Obama's first office term.  See in particular this Google Map of the attacks]

Mir points out that there 80 drone attacks during the entire period referred to above.  In all of these attacks 513 people were killed.  Having checked all the records Mir has ascertained that of all these casualties only 14 were actually of alleged terrorists (names confirmed by US Defense Dept Press Releases). The remainder, 499 people, were all civilians.

Hamid Mir investigated 11 individual incidents of drone bombings.  In two of these, he found that two ‘low-level’ Taliban activists had been killed.  In the remaining 9 attacks only civilians were killed.  As he states in the second of the two you tube clips below this is violation Article 3 of the UN Human Rights Charter – among many other violations contrary to the conduct of war.

Today, our glorious leaders, will warmly welcome the Commander In Chief of the US armed forced responsible for these atrocities.

And Hamid Mir on Drone attacks in Pakistan.

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Victory for Liberty: Obama not coming to Cork

Quick take: Obama’s proposed visit to Cork to honour the memory of Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist,  has been cancelled after it emerged that the conditions and abuse suffered by prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre (currently endorsed by Obama) were in many cases comparable to the horrendous conditions suffered by slaves in the United States.  Unconfirmed reports suggest that Douglass’s  statue – soon to be unveiled in Cork – refused to have anything to do with proceedings if Obama was to attend.

>>>> For those with time, read on >>>>>

It nearly happened and to think that the fine city of Cork actually had four US senators on its side too!  Imagine: four real millionaires were flying the flag for Cork, but Obama’s visit is not to happen afterall.  Heart breaking news, of course, for Cork’s La-Di-Da community and the Lord Mayor but a victory for truth and liberty nonetheless.

Readers will be wondering why the old liar was going to go to Cork in the first place?  Well, it’s an interesting story. Obama’s proposed stop off here had to do with a plan by University College Cork to honour the memory of Frederick Douglass, the  former black slave and abolitionist, who wrote the ground-breaking autobiography Narrative Of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave.  This book, published in 1846, was one of a number at that time to record in words the life and experiences of African slaves in the United States.  As such it played a seminal role in opening up knowledge and condemnation of slavery and what it entailed.  Later in his life, Douglass visited Ireland (and Cork itself) during our Famine and wrote warmly about his experiences and the welcome he received here.  [Not wanting to be ironic but us Irish know quite a lot about slavery and so we all got on famously.]

In remembrance of this connection (and fittingly too) UCC  will, in May, officially launch a human rights lecture series – part of which will entail the unveiling of a statue on campus in honour of Frederick Douglass.   Hence the Obama visit connection.  Apparently Obama credits Douglass as a inspirational figure in his own life – for his moral stand, courage and outspokenness [yes Barack you sure could learn a lot from Frederick alright].  But also, of course, Obama likes to place himself beside Douglass and his important position as an African American who escaped slavery and fought for liberty.

So Cork, Obama, Douglass – it was on the cards, it seems.

However then things started to go askew.  Good old fashioned nervousness entered the fray and following close scrutiny of the record books, distressing parallels between what Douglas fought against AND what Obama is standing up for, emerged.

If you read Douglass’s main work, the above named book, and you examine what he records, then one thing becomes very clear: Douglass had a huge and uncompromising committment to human liberty.  Douglass too, of course, knew what he was taking about.  He had been a slave and he had witnessed the lives of slaves.  Douglass saw the ugliness of servitude first hand.   Take this passage from Narrative …  (By the way Douglass’s account is scattered with accounts like this below.  In Narrative …. he paints a violent picture of the abuses and random violence that slaves were subjected to on a whim.)  Here is one:

“I used to be in Mrs Hamilton’s house nearly everyday.  Mrs Hamilton used to sit in a large chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy cowskin always by her side, and scarce an  hour passed during the day but was marked by the blood of one of these slaves.  The girls seldom passed by her without her saying ‘Move faster, you black gip’ at the same time giving them a blow with the cowskin over the head or shoulders, often drawing the blood.”  (p 80  Penguin Classic edition.)

Now take a look at something that Obama has recently stood over with his Administration’s defence of the prosecutions/ information gleaned from interrogations carried out at Guantanamo Bay.  I picked this at random: an account of the circumstance of Martin Mubanga incarceration there.

“Martin Mubanga‘s … hands were shackled in rigid, metal cuffs attached to a body belt; another set of chains ran to his ankles, severely restricting his ability to move his legs. Trussed in this fashion, he was lying on the interrogation booth floor. The seemingly interminable questioning had already lasted for hours. ‘I needed the toilet,’ Mubanga said, ‘and I asked the interrogator to let me go. But he just said, “you’ll go when I say so”. I told him he had five minutes to get me to the toilet or I was going to go on the floor. He left the room … I squirmed across the floor and did it in the corner, trying to minimise the mess. I suppose he was watching through a one-way mirror or the CCTV camera. He comes back with a mop and dips it in the pool of urine. Then he starts covering me with my own waste, like he’s using a big paintbrush, working methodically, beginning with my feet and ankles and working his way up my legs. All the while he’s racially abusing me, cussing me: “Oh, the poor little negro, the poor little nigger.” He seemed to think it was funny.’ (From How I entered the hellish world of Guantanamo Bay.  See more about Martin Mubanga’s story here.)

Parallels, right?  But the thing is – and initially this got lost in the heat – Douglass was against these abuses.  Against.   Whereas Obama, now he is for them.  He has defended and kept open the atrocious Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre despite his election promise and plenty of other guff about human rights and so on.

So something was wrong , right?  Actually it got worse.  Incredibly.  When I was looking into the Obama thingy and his coming to Cork, I also discovered: apparently, as a youth Frederick Douglass was enslaved on a plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, called Mount Misery.  This aptly named place was then owned by Edward Covey, a notorious “slave breaker.”  It was, reports say, a place where brutality and beatings were very common.  Now guess who owns some of that the Mount Misery property today?  No, it’s not Obama.  It’s Donald Rumsfeld.  Yes, the former Secretary of Defense (key architect of the U.S. military’s program of torture carried forth at Gitmo) now actually owns part of the Mount Misery estate.

No wonder then that the statue/ memorial to Douglass (soon to be unveiled here in Cork) stared to behave strangely – making noises and shaking and so on, and so forth.  Sheer indignation and anger at the hypocrisy and downright slight to the great exponent of liberty was the cause.  So no Obama for Cork, afterall, but a small if not unimportant victory for truth and liberty all the same.

Related Articles:

• “Sometimes You Are Most Disgusted with Those Who Seem to Be on Your Side” (slog.thestranger.com)
• Frederick Douglass’s Irish Liberty
• Obama invited to Cork 

From X to ABC – Ireland and abortion

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The claims of the ABC women were opposed by the Irish government from the outset.  Not just opposed though.  The Irish government fought these women tooth and nail all the way along the road to this judgement.  It is not an overstatement to say that vast sums of money were spent on legal fees and on employing the best legal advocates for their grand effort to defeat these women!  Apparently the Irish attorney general himself took a personal interest in attempting to win this case for the Irish government.

Surprised?  Don’t be.  Never forget the outrageous  actions of the Irish government back in 1992 when they prevented a young Irish teenager from leaving the country of Ireland.  Can you believe they actually tried to do that?  Well, they did.  The girl in question was at the centre of the infamous X-Case.  She became pregnant following a rape and sought to have an abortion.  What happened?  The Irish government tried to stop her leaving the state.  Widespread protests and condemnation saw the Irish government reversing its stand and the girl subsequently left Irish jurisdiction.

What has come to light in the cases of A,B and C is the very traumatic and difficult situation the many women find themselves in.  The case of Michelle Harte has just been highlighted and is well worth taking a closer look at.  Even though her life was in serious danger the so-called ‘ethics’ committee at Cork University Hospital barred her from having a termination.  Though seriously ill she had to make immediate plans to get to London in England to have the procedure performed there.  Michelle Harte has now come forward and spoken out about her situation.  It is a brave and admirable stand.  But also a vital stand. In reality only real cases that bring the realities that women face into the full light of public scrutiny can make a difference.  This has been the hard and difficult lesson for each small step of progress made here in Ireland – in all of those cases, X, C, D and ABC.

More women and more families affected by the draconian situation in this country must do the same.  As long as there is silence, the Irish government and its conservative Catholic allies can get away with their shenanigans.  They thrive on the silence and only when that silence is broken do we see their real behavior and approach: it is vindictive, uncaring and contemptuous of women’s lives.

By the way, the photo here is from a protest I attended back in 1992 in New York in solidarity with the X-Case girl.  Good to see the anger, good to see solidarity –  I remember it even now.

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Repost Ireland: The poor die and the rich shall have fun!

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This contribution, published on Thursday on Indymedia Ireland, cannot be surpassed for its acute observation of what is now happening in Ireland.  The author of the report, Sean Mallory, explains,

RTE‘s Joe Duffy for once and unknowingly had his finger on the pulse when he accidentally illustrated the differing effects of the recession in a 7 minute clip.

Sean goes on to explain the content of the clip:

It opens with a woman talking about the tragic death of Slovakian man Stefan Adami who committed suicide from despair at his economic situation. When he was cut off his benefit, he and his wife were stuck in what sounds like a Dickensian situation.

The key point however comes near the end of the clip.  In an advertisement for another show on the radio station, RTE’s John Murray eggs on

“…Chris De Burgh‘s daughter Rosanna Davison (socialite) talks about her famed trip to Marrakech with Johnny Ronan (failed developer & co-owner of Treasury Holdings). Davison does not seem to be aware/care that she went in a private jet owned by Ronan when he owed the Irish tax payer €896 million through Nama. Perversely she relishes in the gossip, egged on by an RTE presenter. “

The original report on Indymedia is here.  The full sound clip from the Joe Duffy show is here.  Take a listen.

Anti-Shell Oil Activist in Jail … Solidarity

This video by Dave Donnellan is an excellent update on the ongoing resistance to the Shell Oil robbery currently underway off the coast of Co. Mayo.  Pat O’Donnell is now in Castlerea Prison serving a long sentence for challenging  the heavy hand of the police. What did he do?  Well, as you will see from the video clip, very little.  Take a look and find out more about Shell’s grand larceny Irish style!

Bloodshed and ‘Togetherness’ in Afghanistan

Commander Fire Now and Apologise Later Growing Up

A brief post: the war in Afghanistan.  Only last week (Feb 14th) NATO slaughtered a slew of civilians in a mis-aimed missile attack.  Children, men and women were blown to bits as they traveled along a road going about their business.  On the RTE news I heard the atrocity reported as a ‘set back’.   This Orwellian description was rejoined by a brief sound-bite interview with the US commander there – whose name I can’t recall but let’s for the purpose of this post call him Commander Fire Now and Apologise Later.  Commander Fire Now and Apologise Later informed us that the NATO campaign was still on track despite the murderous mistake that had been made.

All just spin – let’s face it.  Because it has now emerged that in the past week at least 60 (yes, 60!) more civilians have been slaughtered in various mistakes made by NATO troops.   When these atrocities happen it often takes quite a while for the details to filter out – so it may well be in a number of months from now that we get the full facts on these war crimes.   But as an example of the sort of thing that is now happening as a routine, check out this news article on a murderous NATO attack in December.

Anyway the point I want to get to is this.  We are not hearing much about this brutal war that is being conducted in Afghanistan.  It has grown bigger and bigger and more and more Afghanis are suffering (in order to ‘free’ them, of course.)

But for an interesting look into what is going on and why, and how the media side of ‘spinning’ this war is being conducted, see the current, excellent article from Media Lens entitled “War As PR – Operation Moshtarak, Meaning “Together”.  Media Lens is a small dedicated media analysis organisation who have done sterling work over the last number of years examining and reporting on the bias of the corporate media.  At the end of the Media Lens article there are various suggestions on what you can do with regard to the way in which the Afghanistan war is being reported.  None of these actions in their own right are going to change a whole lot but nevertheless it is vital that we make ourselves aware of the lies and slant that are being used to justify and brush over these crimes.  Read the article – inoculate yourself.

Lonely Planet’s Cork and Cowen’s Head Taking Off

One good cut (in time saves nine ...)!

The biggest gimmick of last week must have been Lonely Planet’s inclusion of Cork in its ten best destinations for 2010. Oh come off it like, as we say around here. What sort of a langerated idea is this?  Or to put it another way, ‘Do you think like we came down in the last shower?’

Marketing by Lonely Planet, I think.  Not that the ‘tourish (sic) industry’ didn’t dine out on it for a few days and clap themselves on the back.  It was just what they needed: ‘Oh come here, really do, so we can RIP you off big big time.’

But anyway, none of this is to take away from the fact that we are special down here in Cork. Everyone knows that.  Any by way of an example, here is what I have to offer up –  take a gawk.  Isn’t that something?  I took the photo on the huge ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ march against the cuts that passed through ‘pana’ on Friday afternoon last. Now  that WAS something to see.  And pride of place for me goes to this great placard which got to the nub of the matter.  Surely like.

One good cut!  Now that’s the spirit of the Rebel County…

Worse than Bernie Madoff – Shell’s Robbery in Ireland

More cutbacks in the public services are planned.   Already hospitals have been hit by ward closures, and procedures have been axed; in schools up and down the country, cuts are being made that will have long lasting effects on many young children and their families.  Why?  Supposedly to pay for the financial mess that successive governments have made of this country.

But consider this.  The Irish State has given to Shell Oil a vast volume of gas off Ireland’s west coast.  For free!   Shell walk off with a vast resources and meanwhile the general public suffer cut after cut.   Is this worse than “Bernie” Madoff.  For sure it is.

Take a look at the above satirical video – which goes through the murky business that is at the heart of this gas robbery.

There is ongoing resistance to what the Government and Shell are doing in Mayo.  Keep up with the latest info at the Shell 2 Sea site or at the WSM news page.

the hand of god …

Latest story on my web site ties in with the horrendous details revealed by the recently published Ryan Report.  I wrote the story back in the late 90s after meeting a friend of mine from school.  We both ended up taking about our school days and about the fear we felt.  I would go further now …  one of the important things about the release of the Ryan Report is that it allows us all to be more honest about that period and what we were subjected to.  It is not an easy place to go back to – that has to be said.  But what I would say now is that it was not fear that I felt but rather terror – I was scared out of my wits so much of the time.  So the story comes from that.

But now since publication of the report I think of how lucky I was.  I was in secondary school when I suffered at the hands at the Christian Brothers but at least I could get away at the end of the school day.  At least.  I shudder now to think of those who encountered the Christian Brothers and the nuns and were at their mercy 24/7.

Today so many have marched in Dublin in solidarity with those who have suffered.  It is great to see.  Something at least.

To the story…