The RUC/PSNI despite considerable anger are still not prosecuting the Adams case and stand accused of being involved in wholesale child abuse, following revelation that a thirteen-year-old boy from the Ardoyne area was
"blackmailed by the
discredited force into working as a low level informer against his own
community,"
The family have been in contact with a reputable human
rights lawyer and have also contacted both the Irish and British
governments with a view to getting the child's case raised at the
European Court of Human Rights."
"But I also hold the very strong view that republicans need to lead by
example."
Quote - Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams the master of vacuous soundbites has himself generated
more than a few recently
"Gerry Adams is a Liar " more than 20 publications have said thia.
"As a Catholic, albeit one who has much difficulty with many of the
religion's tenets, I am shocked and ashamed by this particular cover-up."
"While I sympathise to a certain extent with sincere Catholics who
refuse to acknowledge the perverted crimes of so many you should be aware
that your wilful ignorance of these criminal acts puts yet more
children at risk even now. There comes a point where deliberate
refusal to see the facts makes an accomplice of even the most decent
of people.
My faith and the sanctity of a child's innocence come first for me."
"They were assisted by the " GARDA "police force of Ireland:' to rape,
terrorise, and destroy innocent children's lives:
What they have done in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ who died on
the cross to save us all, is beyond words.
Sorry if i hurt your feelings, but the truth is a hard pill to swallow."
"The arrogance is astounding. would Jesus think this was
representative of his church or would he condemn them. By their fruits
you shall know them Jesus says anyone who causes a child to sin it
would be better if he had never been born."
Their management style is dogmatic, autocratic and keep mouth shut and
do as you are told; 'we are not here to answer your questions, so
don't accuse us of anything, we are whiter than white. This style of
management went out with Noah's Ark, in their eyes they are
accountable to no-one.
"As a Roman Catholic and as an American..I'm deeply ashamed at the
bowing and grovelling being shown to this horrible man. He gave a
speech the other day "apologizing" for the abuse..as if he hadn't had
such a part in protecting the abuser. A large spittle hung
in the right corner of his lying, duplicitous mouth. He is the devil
incarnate in patent leather gucci."
" Catholics and Republicans who close their eyes to this awful tragedy
are doing their beliefs no good. Reform it and fix it. Expose
the demons before nothing is left. Sadly"
Gerry Adams facilitated this cover-up and endangered children for
decades by not fulfilling his responsibilities, to ensure the
protection of children in West Belfast and Muirhevnamor, places that
republican law was applied equally to all and allowing his brother to
be beyond the reach of parents who entrusted Adams with leadership
responsibilities, that included the protection of their children.
Failure to report suspected abuse is against the law and harms
children. Every state has laws that require responsible citizens to
report suspected child abuse to the appropriate law enforcement agency
or child protective service. In Adams case the IRA. When
circumstances suggest a reasonable suspicion that a child could be a
victim of abuse, a report is required. It is not the job of the
"mandatory reporter" to investigate the facts in these cases. The law
simply directs them to file a report with a law enforcement agency or
child protective service whenever facts might suggest a reasonable
suspicion of abuse.
Mandatory reporters are not permitted to pick and choose which cases
they will report based on their personal opinion. Those who may feel
that there is nothing wrong with adult-child sex cannot simply pretend
child rape is merely consensual sex. By law, an underage girl cannot
consent to sex. Nor does the law allow a mandatory reporter to decide
whether or not a report should be filed based on the statements of the
child, because cover stories are often concocted to cover up cases of
abuse.
Failure to comply with child abuse reporting laws is a criminal
offense and it is also a felony to assist in perpetrating the ongoing
abuse of a child. If an elected official facilitates child abuse by
their failure to report, the victim and/or her parents may be able to
recover damages against them."
"Given his choice to turn a blind eye to known sexual abuse, the
operator could be targeted not only for obstructing justice by
covering up the crimes, but perhaps even as an ongoing accomplice to
them."
Rev Thomas Doyle, a US Air Force chaplain in Germany and a specialist
in Church law, has said, ‘There are too many authenticated reports of
victims having been seriously intimidated into silence to assert that
such intimidation is the exception and not the norm.’
"And so Adams has visited the sins of the father upon the whole of
Ireland and more particularly republicanism?"
In 1999 in Ireland, there was an attempt to prosecute a newspaper for a cartoon mocking the church, but the judge said that he could not prosecute, because there was no definition of what legally constituted blasphemy.
Well now there is. The Irish Government has just passed one that protects the Catholic Church and the high and mighty, from blogs like this. The law concerns itself with what might or might not cause "outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of [a] religion" (note, not just Catholics, Sinn Fein, Nuns, priests, everyone except atheists it seems. This blog would probably be deemed illegal in a court of irish law. Sinn Fein's deputy first minister for the Queen in Ireland also wants dissident journalists gagged. There has been several journalists already assasinated recently in Ireland.
As Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland pointed out:
"The proposed law does not protect religious belief; it incentivises outrage and it criminalises free speech. Under this proposed law, if a person expresses one belief about gods, and other people think that this insults a different belief about gods, then these people can become outraged, and this outrage can make it illegal for the first person to express his or her beliefs."
So Irish law has now enshrined that the taking of offence is more important than free speech or expression. If something might cause a motivated group of say paedophile Catholics to be "outraged", then it is illegal, with a fine of up to €25,000 payable immediately or a long prison sentence.
A prosecution can be brought with ease and the punitive nature of the fine is not legislation, that is simply served to tie up a few loose ends. Again like the decades of torture and child abuse that happened in Ireland without complaint from either mothers or fathers hardly anybody cares in a culture of cruelty. People like Sinead o'Connor will be persecuted and prosecuted under the new Fianna Fail , Green party legislation.
Recently I blogged a petition about decades of violence, incarceration of my mother, electro-shock, etc of the 30 people with humanity and nature left in them, who signed just a couple of them are Irish from hundred who read these blogs.
After the demise of the Celtic church the Roman Catholic church asked the British to govern Ireland in return for huge property deals. The Roman Catholic church and the British raped, plundered and pillaged Ireland. They have now left a culture of mostly slave minded gombeens who generally have no compassion for their neighbours and children.
As always it falls to a very few heroic people to sacrifice their lives to challenge these outrageous crimes. Just a few hundred families are now left to preserve the soul of a once famed compassionate people.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
The great only appear great because we are on our knees.
Let us rise.- Connolly - Eirigi !
It is worth remembering that both the influence of Connolly and the part that Labour played in the Irish National Revolution ensured that the Democratic Programme of the Irish Republic, agreed at the first sitting of the first D·il (Irish Parliament) on January 21st 1919, read:
We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland...we declare that the nation's sovereignty extends ..[to] all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, ... declare it is the duty of the Nation that every citizen shall have opportunity to spend his or her strength and faculties in the service of the people. In return for willing service, we, in the name of the Republic, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the Nation's labour...
It shall also devolve upon the National Government to seek ... a standard of Social and Industrial Legislation with a view to a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour...
We declare and we desire our country to be ruled in accordance with the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Justice for all...
If this seems radical the draft democratic programme was more so. It included the passage:
It shall be the purpose of the Government to encourage the organisation of the people/citizens into Trade Unions and Co-operative Societies with a view to the control and administration of the industries by the workers engaged in those industries.18
These passages from one of the founding documents of the Irish Republic give an indication of the revolutionary intentions of many republican activists during the Irish National Revolution, a revolution that involved widespread working class militancy with Soviets being declared in Cork and Limerick and workers frequently seizing their workplaces. All this when 5 years previously the seeds of a socialist movement scarcely existed in Ireland!
This shows how close Ireland came to the Social Revolution that Connolly dreamed of and gave his life for. This revolution can't be achieved by means of a lobby, or a parliament or a coup d'etat. This revolution will only be achieved when the ordinary people of the world, us, the working class, get up off our knees and take back what is rightfully ours; namely, everything.
(1) Evict the corrupt Fianna Fáil/Green Party/Progressive Democrat Government!
(2) Stop the bail out of the banks. Let them go bankrupt and let the depositors secure what they can of their savings. The duty is on government to protect the small investors.
(3) Jail those who got us into this situation. That includes bankers and property sharks irrespective of which of them is a relative or a friend of a politician.
(4) Instead of bailing out banks invest the money in productive industry under either public or communal management.
(5) Purchase the property on the bank books at minimal cost or seize it outright and give it to local authorities to meet housing need.
(6) Announce a national emergency and get communities to organise now for food security and to agree carbon descent planning.
(7) Nationalise the Corrib and all carbon reserves and invest heavily in Wind Energy production units along the northwest coast.
(8) Employ unemployed construction workers in building canteens in all Irish schools and infrastructure to deal with the coming environmental crisis.
(9) Harmonise VAT on an all-Ireland level to prevent distortions in the national economy – this will be likely revenue neutral.
(10) Raise a wealth tax to pay for any shortfall in public finances and plan towards paying off the national debt altogether.
Does this appear eminently sensible? It is. It's not an explicitly marxist solution but that is not what is needed right now and cannot be promoted among the people. The reason that even the left are not proposing this minimum programme is their innate right opportunism, their adaption to neoliberalist economic theory and their cooptation within the structures of power.
“There is no doubt whatsoever about who Fianna Fáil and the Greens are serving with this rotten Bill. It is a bailout for the greediest and the most corrupt in Irish society – the bankers and the speculators whose boundless avarice has devastated the Irish economy.
“Throughout the Celtic Tigers years, Fianna Fáil-led Governments pampered this elite group. They allowed them to benefit from massive tax breaks at unknown cost to the State. They allowed them to determine the State’s housing policy – a policy which was no policy but to let the market drive everything. And boy did that market drive. It drove property prices to unreal and unsustainable levels.
“It drove a frenzy of greed for profitable property, inducing many who could not afford to do so, to borrow to buy in the grossly inflated market. It drove debt to levels previously unknown in this country. It was fuelled by cheap loans supplied by a banking system corrupted by the culture of greed that saw massive salaries, bonuses and perks lavished at all senior levels in the financial institutions. And finally the locomotive was driven into a wall and we are now left to deal with the train wreck that is the Irish economy.
“Who are the biggest losers in all of this? Not the bankers and the property speculators who did the crime because they will never do the time. Not the politicians who facilitated them because no-one in Fianna Fáil or the PDs and now the Green Party ever admit any responsibility for anything and they are never made to pay the price for their disastrous policies and disastrous management.
“No, the real losers in all of this are over 400,000 unemployed people in this State, they are the families saddled with massive mortgages, many of whom are being evicted from their homes, they are the people who never had the chance of a decent home during the Celtic Tiger years, they are the weaker sections of the community who are about to be punished most by the savage Budget cuts now in preparation.”
“Nationalisation is preferable to repeated recapitalisation, which is excessively costly for the taxpayer yet leaves the government with no real say over how those banks are run. It also deals with any potential losses that could be incurred by the taxpayer, having left the banks in private lands and bought the bad loans off their balance sheets.
“If recapitalisation of a state bank or the nationalised banks is required this could be funded through national bonds which (unlike bank bonds) would be guaranteed. EBS, Irish Nationwide and Irish Life and Permanent must be examined to see if they can function with recapitalisation and the State taking a stake alone or need to have their business wound up and/or transferred to the other two banks.” ENDS
I want to begin by urging the Fianna Fáil/Green Government to do its duty to the people and to make a commitment here and now that if this legislation is passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas it will support a Petition to the President under Article 27 of the Constitution to put the NAMA Bill before the people in a referendum.
by the Houses of the Oireachtas if it “contains a proposal of such national importance that the will of the people thereon ought to be ascertained”. If ever there was such a Bill then this is definitely it.
So here now is the real challenge to Fianna Fáil backbenchers and the Green Party. If the Government will not put this Bill to the people and if you, the backbenchers and the Greens, are as exercised as you claim to be about this Bill then go to the country – either in a referendum on NAMA or pull the plug on this disgraceful, discredited and bankrupt Government and allow the people to vote in a General Election.
The people are watching this debate and they are watching how those they elect are serving them – or if they are serving them at all.
But there is no doubt whatsoever about who Fianna Fáil and the Greens are serving with this rotten Bill. It is a bailout for the greediest and the most corrupt in Irish society – the bankers and the speculators whose boundless avarice has devastated the Irish economy.
Throughout the Celtic Tigers years, Fianna Fáil-led Governments pampered this elite group. They allowed them to benefit from massive tax breaks at unknown cost to the State. They allowed them to determine the State’s housing policy – a policy which was no policy but to let the market drive everything. And boy did that market drive. It drove property prices to unreal and unsustainable levels.
It drove a frenzy of greed for profitable property, inducing many who could not afford to do so, to borrow to buy in the grossly inflated market. It drove debt to levels previously unknown in this country.
It was fuelled by cheap loans supplied by a banking system corrupted by the culture of greed that saw massive salaries, bonuses and perks lavished at all senior levels in the financial institutions.
And finally the locomotive was driven into a wall and we are now left to deal with the train wreck that is the Irish economy.
Who are the biggest losers in all of this? Not the bankers and the property speculators who did the crime because they will never do the time. Not the politicians who facilitated them because no-one in Fianna Fáil or the PDs and now the Green Party ever admit any responsibility for anything and they are never made to pay the price for their disastrous policies and disastrous management.
We said that ultimately the banks should be nationalised so that the Irish people would be the true beneficiaries. We also proposed an increase in Corporation Tax for Irish retail banks with resulting tax funds earmarked for community and local development projects in the most disadvantaged areas throughout the State.
Of course, instead of this, we saw bank profits continuing to soar, a belated, limited and short-lived bank levy, successive banking scandals which ripped off the customers and the taxpayers and, as we now know, collusion between the banks and the property speculators as they inflated the property bubble.
Now the same corporate criminals are to be bailed out by this Government using the people’s money. That’s what NAMA is in a nutshell. It is supposed to address the crisis caused by a corrupt system but NAMA itself may well turn out to be the source of the next decade’s tribunals.
Higher taxes are coming, something the establishment parties have railed against for years - but they won't be to pay for better public services. They will be disappearing into the NAMA black hole created by a Government refusing to take the obvious step of nationalisation to address the banking problem.
The basic concept of NAMA is flawed and this legislation to introduce it is flawed through and through.
The focus point for most commentators has been the price NAMA will pay for toxic loans it transfers from the banks onto the taxpayers' balance sheet. This is the argument around what discount NAMA should get on the €77 billion worth of bad loans on the banks' balance sheets.
Will the Minister advise the House how much of that €77 billion was used in the actual purchase of sites and land banks and employed in actual development works? In other words how much of this €77 billion is accrued unpaid interest?
The legislation says that for these loans NAMA will not pay current market value - what would be repaid to the banks if the properties the loans are on were sold immediately. Instead it will come up with estimates based on 'long-term economic value'. The moves by ACC Bank against the developer Liam Carroll have actually done the Irish taxpayer a huge service. After being dragged to the courts, Carroll had to admit that if forced to repay his loans he would only be able to repay a quarter of their worth. That is based on the fire sale of his properties at their current market value.
Whatever price is paid for the bad loans, risk will transfer from shareholders and creditors to the taxpayer. This transfer of risk creates a real danger of 'moral hazard' in the future - that is, the banks engaging in risky lending behaviour because there are no consequences.
NAMA is incapable of meeting the twin objectives of achieving the best value for the taxpayer and exposing the taxpayer to the least risk possible. The debt to which NAMA is exposing the taxpayer is €54 billion - a third of our GDP, and that’s before we re-capitalise. And make no mistake about it these financial institutions will need to be recapitalized.
The Irish taxpayers’ expense far exceeds the bank-related debt taken on by Sweden in its bad loan management in the '90s - 8% of its GDP. This will have implications for our sovereign credit rating - we have already been downgraded by several ratings agencies - and will incur increased debt servicing costs, potentially in the region of billions annually.
This legislation contains numerous problems. These include a reliance on the banks acting in 'good faith' to give all the information on the loans to NAMA. The Minister for Finance is to have sole power to appoint NAMA board members. NAMA will be empowered to 'work with developers' to finish projects, potentially lending them taxpayers' money to do so. NAMA will also have compulsory purchase order powers to help developers complete projects if there are so-called 'ransom strips' or contested land in the way. Power is given to the Minister for Finance to overturn 'independent' valuations of loans made by NAMA.
And then there are the operational concerns. NAMA won't have the expertise to reclaim debts, as it is not used to working in this sphere and the staff it recruits may still be loyal to their former bank employers. There is the prospect of developers’ loans being nursed for decades while ordinary loan-holders are forced to pay back their debts or face repossession. NAMA will be another huge Government cost at a time when other organisations of significant public importance are being amalgamated or abolished. As for the notion that a levy will be introduced on the banks if NAMA makes a shortfall - we don't know how a 'shortfall' will be defined, much less what the levy would be.
The Government has put forward NAMA as an alternative to nationalisation but almost all commentators are agreed that even after NAMA, nationalisation might still be the outcome. That is because even after the loans are taken off the books of the banks, there is nothing to guarantee against more loans becoming impaired as interest rates increase. Further liquidity problems may arise, so the State will go down the route of equity capital shares that may be so large that banks are nationalised by proxy.
The Government claims that cleaning out the banks via NAMA will bring about a return to normal bank practice and lending. We are told we need NAMA for the economy to return to normal and anybody anti-NAMA is either politically and economically naïve, anti-patriotic, or both. But this rests on the assumption that private bankers are committed to restoring our economy through providing credit and that they will place this above the interests of bank shareholders. Will banks lend when they manage to get their hands on cash via the NAMA-issued transfer bonds?
A code of conduct for banks covered under the State guarantee scheme on lending to small and medium enterprises was published by the Financial Regulator last February and took effect in March - but SMEs say the banks continue to deny loans and credit.
It's not certain what 'normal' is when it comes to banks' lending practices, but it is certain that banks do not fulfill the role of public investment. Historically banks lend too much and too easily in booms and lend too little and too cautiously in recessions.
The Department of Finance's Guide to NAMA exposes the fundamentally flawed thinking behind NAMA. Frequently Asked Question no. 2 reads: "How can you justify this further bail-out of the banks for assets and not prevent banks from increasing mortgage rates?"
The answer:
"It is true that the banks in most instances will not be paid the current market value but will be paid a price which is in accordance with the long-term economic value of each asset. With regard to mortgage rates, the interest rates reflect commercial market realities as banks must pay more to access funds in wholesale retail markets. The Government has no role to play in the commercial day-to-day operation of banks here and believes that it is important that the banking sector has a market presence and operates within market discipline and constraints."
Surely if banks were operating in normal market conditions with discipline and constraints they would not be under a blanket state guarantee and in the middle of shifting all their bad loans off their books onto the taxpayers' heads at a bargain price for themselves?
One of the most incredible aspects of NAMA is that it is outsourcing the property management aspect to private development firms. Had it been used as a property management company, the State could have used land seized on defaulted loans for vital infrastructure, social housing provision or tourism development.
We now have the crazy situation where people throughout the country are sitting in homes and business premises in negative equity, and worse, are being evicted as their property is repossessed. The property managed by NAMA should be available to local authorities to house people evicted as a result of banks moving against them. However, the NAMA-owned property, paid for by taxpayers, is to be managed by private development companies - tenders have already been put out to attract such companies. This revelation is highly suspicious and will lead many to believe that the taxpayer is again being deceived and robbed by the Government, banks and developers.
Nationalisation is preferable to repeated recapitalisation, which is excessively costly for the taxpayer yet leaves the government with no real say over how those banks are run. It also deals with any potential losses that could be incurred by the taxpayer, having left the banks in private lands and bought the bad loans off their balance sheets.
If recapitalisation of a state bank or the nationalised banks is required this could be funded through national bonds which (unlike bank bonds) would be guaranteed. EBS, Irish Nationwide and Irish Life and Permanent must be examined to see if they can function with recapitalisation and the State taking a stake alone or need to have their business wound up and/or transferred to the other two banks.
The issue of ordinary bank shareholders is a sensitive matter. While many of these shareholders benefited quite well during the boom period for the banks, many reinvested dividends in order to secure their future and have lost much of their pensions. However, the interests of the taxpayer/public shareholders cannot be held hostage to the interests of private shareholders. The most appropriate way to protect vulnerable shareholders/pensioners is to ensure that no cuts take place to State pensions or other social protections and that the State pension is increased. In doing so you protect equally those who have lost life savings through risky investments and those who never had the money to make investments or build up a private pension in the first place.
We believe that the Public Accounts Committee should be tasked with carrying out a full investigation of malpractice in the Irish banking system over the last decade. Its findings should inform better regulation of the banking sector. Malpractice and even criminality by the banks led to this crisis. Yet there have been no arrests, no fines, no admissions or findings of guilt. All those responsible must be investigated and prosecuted where the evidence warrants.
The Minister for Justice must disclose to the Dáil if there are current investigations being undertaken by either Gardaà or the Criminal Asset Bureau and the public must be kept informed of criminal proceedings being taken against those guilty of corporate malpractice. Those at the highest level of the banks over the last number of years and suspected of culpability in mismanagement and fraud must be removed from their positions and new management installed in the nationalised banks.
Other measures should include:
Whistleblowers legislation to cover workers in the financial services and banking sectors.
Intensify regulation of the banking sector and make it independent.
Enhance the role of credit unions through reform of legislation to allow them to expand their work as community-based not-for-profit services supporting social and economic development.
Legislate for the right to a bank account, as has been done in the Netherlands, France and other states, to enable people without a bank account to open an account at a financial institution of their choice.
Enable An Post to provide basic banking services, including a basic bank account. Basic bank accounts are simple, low cost, 'no frills' current accounts designed for those who are financially excluded.
Provide greater support to MABS to deal with the increase in personal debt and those seeking help in addressing personal financial crises.
Emergency action on banking is required. But it is emergency action to rescue the peoples' economy, not a rescue for the bankers and developers who have devastated it. Providing fresh capital is only part of the solution. Even more important is providing new leadership at the banks, leadership which puts the public interest first. We need a banking system that serves the people.
NAMA has nothing to do with improving Irish society. The ultimate point of it is to socialize debt and privatize profit. This Bill should be rejected. This Government should be rejected. Let the people have their say.
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