Hey, Enda - is it really such a long way to Tuam?

A beautiful ceremony of rememberance to honour the Tuam Babies
was held in Salthill, Co Galway, last night. 

I met an extraordinary man last night, only he doesn’t really believe he’s so extraordinary.

In recent months, he has found a voice he never realised he had. Now in his 60s, he has learned how to tell his story and speak out against injustice.

He spent much of his childhood in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, a place which is now notorious all over the world.

It took him an awful long time to learn to love and take care of himself.

It’s not easy to care about yourself when you are told you are inferior to others.

When you walk to school in hobnail boots and you are forced to sit apart from the rest of the class.

When you are beaten for the most minor transgressions, not given enough food, and branded with labels like “home baby” and, worse, “illegitimate”, because your mother committed a terrible crime just by bringing you into the world.

It didn't even matter if your mother was raped, or terrified to reveal the identity of the father. That's just the way it was in those days.

It’s not easy to let go of that kind of baggage, especially when you live in a rural community.

Oh, look, there’s your man, the “home baby”. The one who was adopted because his mother, shockingly, never got married, or the one who arrived late and didn’t smell too good at school.

It’s the kind of baggage you carry with you well into adulthood, if you ever manage to shake it off at all.

Like when you go to the dance and the girl who was so friendly last week never wants to look your way or speak to you again. She’s heard the rumours or been warned off, you’ve been branded.

There's no way in the wide world you would ever be allowed darken the door of her family home.

Or when you go to the pub and you realise that nobody else there tonight has been classed as “illegitimate”. You might just feel like drowning your sorrows or, worse, finding a way of permanently ending the pain.

As many did, but we will never know, because the true level of suicide was another thing the Irish State was very good at covering up in those dark days.

He told me what it was like to feel inferior in a rural community in North Galway, to feel that he was not worthy of finding a wife because society had told him all through his youth that he didn't deserve to be loved like everyone else.

Historian Catherine Corless: her tireless research on behalf of
the Tuam Babies has allowed survivors to find their voice

And, yet, in recent months his life has changed.

He has begun to find his voice. The global headlines generated by the “Tuam Babies” scandal have allowed him to talk about his sense of injustice and even do media interviews for the first time.

He wants justice for the 796 and he wants people to listen. He’s full of praise for Catherine Corless, the local historian who first told the world the truth about what happened in that terrible home.

By making it clear that the truth about the "Tuam Babies" was worth fighting for, she made him see the value in his own life.

He says he’s one of the lucky ones, because eventually he was shipped out to a lovely foster home.

His childhood was not all bad, although he can’t say the same for many of his old friends and contemporaries.

In Tuam, he has helped to set up and organize a support group for survivors. They find great comfort from meeting up and talking and healing, and he’s found that he of all people has the gift of being able to express their pain.

He doesn’t want much, he says. Just some recognition that a terrible wrong was done to him and the other children in homes around the country, in the name of the Irish State.

It would help if those in authority would reply to his letters or answer their phones.

For months, since the start of the year, he’s been trying to get the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, to come and visit his little group of survivors down in Tuam.

It wouldn’t be a huge burden on the Taoiseach, the Irish Prime Minister, to take a little detour from the road to Castlebar on his way home some weekend.

Just to sit with the survivors and to hear their stories, the stories they were afraid to tell for most of their adult lives.

But when he rings the phone goes dead. Or a faceless official makes a non-committal promise that he or she will get back in touch. But never does.

He knows the abuse, the denigration, the labelling didn’t happen on the current Taoiseach’s watch, but it was done to him and his friends with the collusion of the Irish State.

It wiped out his self-esteem, to the extent that he could not hold his head high in the local pub, and he just wants to sit in a room with a few other survivors and tell the Taoiseach what that was like.

How he didn’t kill himself or drown himself in drink.

He wants some acknowledgment of the pain that he and others went through and the huge transformation he had to go through to be able to stand and talk to a reporter in a Galway park on a Sunday evening.

His friend had a little sister he never knew about, who may or may not have been buried in a septic tank. He’d love the Taoiseach to come to Tuam and just listen to their honest words.

They are not going to be able to turn back time, but it might help the healing process if the most powerful people in the land sat and listened and acknowledged the hurt caused.

He watched a new scandal erupt in Dublin last week, involving nuns who have been awarded a national hospital despite their refusal to pay adequate compensation to the victims of childhood abuse.

A beautiful ceremony to remember the 'Tuam Babies' took
place at the Circle of Life, Salthill, last night. 

He watched the Taoiseach visit the White House last month and give a wonderful lecture about immigration to US President Donald Trump.

And wondered how he could make his way across the Atlantic to Washington, but not sit in his car and take a short trip down to Tuam.

After more than half a century of pain and needless shame, is that asking too much?



Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Find him on Facebook

Read my earlier blog about Catherine Corless, The Quiet Determination of a Modern Irish Hero, http://ciarantierney.blogspot.ie/2017/04/the-tireless-determination-of-modern.html

Hire a content writer or 'ghost' blogger: http://ciarantierney.com/what-i-offer/ghost-blogging-2/

A letter to Donnie O'Trump

Dear Donald,

(Or Donnie ... as we might call ya out here in the wild wesht of Ireland).

Just a quick note to say I’d only be too delighted to join you at the White House, or the Teach Ban if you’d like to learn a bit of Irish, on St Patrick’s Day.              

With President Obama in the good ole' days

Meself and Fionnuala have the bowl of shamrock ready since November and we’re really thrilled by the chance to meet yourself and Melania on March 16.                        

To be honest with ya, I could do with the break. I’ve had a rough few weeks since a feckin’ do-gooder Garda, a policeman to yourself Donnie, almost brought down the entire Government over a few feckin’ penalty points and nearly cost me my job.

It means even more to me to visit this year than it used to when the O’Bamas were in the White House, because there’s a lot of feckers tryin’ their best to retire me at the moment.

But I won’t give up without a fight. I didn’t become the longest serving TD in Ireland, or make Ireland great again, by pure chance.

It’ll be great to have an oul’ chat, maybe pop up to Trump Tower in the Big Apple, or fly down to Florida for a round of golf.

We’ve a good deal to talk about.

Like the feckin’ fake news media. I’m sick to the teeth of them and I can see they’re giving you a hard time across the water too.

They once accused me of being a racist here in Ireland, because I used the feckin’ ‘n-----‘ word at a private function a few years back.

Imagine, you can’t even tell a joke these days with all the political correctness flying about.

Ireland is like America, it’s gone far too feckin’ PC for my liking. So I have to say I admire your straight talkin’.

They’re always accusing me of making up stuff here in Ireland too, especially when I meet this fella with two pints who always tells me just what I want to hear at functions.

They’re like rats, some of them meejia types. Try  as I might, I could never convince them that I often met this fella with two pints on nights out in Dublin or Castlebar.

I see you are planning to build a big wall, and now they’re even sayin’ you are a racist for trying to keep the oul’ Mexicans and Muslims out.

For putting your own people first?

Well, they’ve been accusing my people, the Blueshirts, of being racists ever since we sided with poor oul’ Franco down in Spain in the 1930s.

You can never do anything right to please these people.  
           

President Trump's ban on refugees has led to calls
for Enda Kenny to boycott the White House this year

We can’t build a wall here around Ireland, although I believe those feckin’ Europeans stopped you from building one around your golf course down in Co Clare.

Feckin’ eejits.

I know you were like a vulture fund when you bought Doonbeg and Ireland was in crisis at the time. But we rolled out the red carpet for you when you visited, remember.

Like you, I only back winners and I knew you’d be a winner even then. I'd like to invite you to Ireland for an official visit as long as all the oul' whingers won't kick up a fuss like they are now in Britian.

We could invent an oul' Irish great-grandfather for ya. I'll tell the world from the Oval Office that there were plenty of O'Trumps about the place when I was growing up in Islandeeeeeedy, outside Castlebar. I'm sure your connections in Russia Today and Fox News would be delighted to spread the mighty story of your hidden Irish roots!

Wouldn't it be a great legacy for me to be remembered as the Taoiseach who brought you - the man who's making America great - to Ireland? Sure, I'd nearly die happy, although I've too good a pension set up to be going anywhere too soon!

Anyway, I might have a few tips for ya for dealing with those troublesome Muslims. We have a mighty system here called Direct Provision.

We can’t keep them out, but we can put them up in oul’ cheap hotels owned by our friends for ten to 15 years. We pay these refugees €19.10 a week to stay out of trouble and the beauty of it is we can then provide plenty of money for our buddies to put them up for years on end. Saves us from actually having to build houses for the buggers!

If you can’t ban the Muslims, maybe you could come up with a Direct Provision system of your own. Mind you, I think you have one for the black lads, at any rate, because most of them seem to be in jail.

We could talk about our rogue police officers, too. Maybe you could give me a few tips about those lads who shoot black lads over in the Shtates.

We have troublesome Gardai here in Ireland too, some of them are never satisfied unless they have somethin’ to complain about.

One or two bad apples and they want to discredit the whole force.

Our lads tend not to shoot people, but they cause a fair amount of damage when they go around accusing their own feckin’ colleagues of being corrupt.

We haven’t found the best way of dealing with them yet, although spreading rumours that they might be child abusers seemed to work for a while. It kept them quiet, until it caused all the bother last month.

I’d love to talk to ya about the oul’ health service as well. I see you are getting rid of that Obamacare and I’d like to know how you are getting on.

Our solution here in Ireland is to make the waiting lists so long that patients generally die before we have to treat them. We tend to save a fortune that way, you know, as most of them don’t need treatment by the time they get to the top of the queues!

And, sure, anyone with a bit of money or a bit of sense can avoid the oul' overcrowded public hospitals. My friends with health problems tend to like flying over to Americay, to places like the Mayo Clinic. 'Tis great for you and great for us!

We’ve a bit of a housing problem at the moment here, too. Mind you, it’s not a problem really, because many of us are landlords, so rising rents go down very well with our core voters.

Homelessness doesn’t really bother Fine Gael voters unless a fella has the temerity to die right outside the Dail, but I love the way you attack the media and I’d like to learn more about spreading the word about “fake news”.

I love the way you keep discrediting the news media so much that nobody believes them any more.

Mind you, I wouldn’t mind an oul’ Fox News or Breitbart to spread the Fine Gael gospel here in Ireland. Especially with that hound Micheal Martin breathing down my back.

Then there’s the oul’ corporation tax and your wonderful multinationals. I was pure disgusted when the European dictators (sorry, authorities) told us Apple owed us €13 billion in unpaid taxes last year.

I can assure you we will fight this to the highest level, to ensure Apple will never have to pay a cent in corporation tax to the Irish authorities.

I want to assure you, Donnie, that the Americans will always be welcome here. You are welcome to pay as little tax as you want for as long as you want.

Your soldiers are welcome to stop off here to buy leprechauns and whiskey on their way to and from the bombing missions in Iraq and Syria.

There's mighty hospitality for the US
troops at 'neutral' Shannon Airport

Never mind the ‘loonie lefties’. They say Ireland is a neutral country, but we know who our true friends are here in Ireland.

And I have to say we are honoured to be the only European country to have US pre-clearance on our soil.

Your immigration people are always welcome and I hear they are becoming so friendly that they are now even helping passengers to remember their passwords and open their Facebook and email accounts before they board the planes these days.

Damn right, you shouldn't let anyone into America if you find out they've ever 'friended' a Muslim or a Mexican on that oul' Facebook.

People say you hate immigrants, like the Irish, but sure how could ya? Didn’t you marry an immigrant yourself!

People say you are surrounded by white supremacists, but there’s nothing wrong with a bit of supremacy. In Mayo, we’ve been trying to be the best footballers in Ireland since 1951. What we’d give for a bit of supremacy in 2017!

So, like I said, we’ll be delighted to make the trip to Washington on St Patrick’s Day. Fionnuala has the green dress ready and all.

I promise I won’t give you a lecture about your own tax returns or raise any tricky questions about the 50,000 ‘undocumented’ Paddies living in the US.                  

Should Irish people boycott the White House
on St Patrick's Day this year?

We say that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter here in Ireland. Well, I'm sure that one man's undocumented migrant is another's illegal immigrant.

And Paddy's Day is not the day for tough questions.

Irish Taoisigh have been bringing the bowl of shamrock to the White House for over 20 years and I’m not going to let a bit of racism, human rights concerns, Muslims, or cranky Irish Americans spoil a good party.

You’re making America great again, just like I’ve made Ireland the best little country in the world to do business in over the past six years.

See you on the 16th,

Love and best wishes,

Kim Jong Kenny,
Taoiseach of the Republic.

(Please note that this blog actually admits to being Fake News)


Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Check out his Facebook page here

More information at http://ciarantierney.com

Find Ciaran on Twitter, @ciarantierney

Bring on the clown

On Saturday, in cities all across the world, people are set to gather to protest against the election of US President Donald Trump.

At first, when I heard about the Galway protest, I decided I would not bother to attend.

I felt it was time to bite the bullet and accept a democratic vote as, after all, more than 62 million Americans voted for the New York businessman and reality TV star.

The 45th President of the USA.

Never mind the fact that Hillary Clinton polled over 64 million votes – I wasn’t a great fan of hers either – Trump was the legitimate winner of the US election.

I felt the Galway march would be organised and attended by the “protest against everything” brigade, the kind of people who condemned An Taoiseach (the Irish Prime Minster) Enda Kenny for congratulating Trump on his election victory in November.

Some of these people are never happy.

Whether they like it or not, they conveniently forget that the tiny Irish economy is over-reliant on American jobs in a globalized world.

They forget or ignore that sometimes in politics it’s important to play the game.

Kenny may have called Trump a racist during the election campaign, but it would be political suicide for an Irish leader to antagonize an incoming US President before he has even taken up office.

The US has always been close to the hearts of Irish people. It was an escape valve during tough times, when the ‘coffin ships’ set sail from Cork or Galway to allow people on one-way trips to flee from persecution and famine.

There are 40 million Irish-Americans and few countries as small as ours have such a big influence at the White House, where the Taoiseach gets to socialise with the President every year on our national holiday.

So I decided I would find something better to do this Saturday afternoon.

And then I began to read the comments on-line in response to the Galway protest, in which people felt free to vent their hatred towards immigrants, Muslims, or liberals.

They defended, and tried to justify, a presidential candidate who mocked a disabled reporter in front of millions of TV viewers. And claimed we had not seen the evidence we had witnessed with our own eyes.

Some of them genuinely believe that this billionaire businessman, whose father famously gave him a “small loan” of a million dollars to give him a start in life, is the answer to America’s problems.

This is a man who tweets with venom when he dislikes a piece of brilliant Alec Baldwin satire on ‘Saturday Night Live’.

Or who takes the time to send out a vitriolic reply to Hollywood actress Meryl Streep after she dares to criticise his views, at a time when he should be focused on putting his new Government together.

If Trump can take such offence when actors express concern about what he’s about to do to their country, how’s he going to behave in the Oval Office if he feels slighted by the Russians or the Chinese?

Presidential? Protests will take place across the globe on Saturday

Unfortunately, he will have access to a lot more damage than the Tweet machine.

To judge by so much bile and hatred on-line in recent weeks, the election of this man seems to have emboldened people who think it’s ok to spread hatred of immigrants, or Muslims, or Mexicans on-line.

It’s scary that 62 million people felt so angry or disillusioned that they voted for a man who boasted about "grabbing" women "by the pussy". Because he was rich and famous, he could act as he pleased.

It’s even scarier that Trump is a buffoon and a liar when it comes to climate change.

He has surrounded himself with people who have a vested interest in fossil fuel industries at a time when the very future of our planet is under threat.

Senior members of his Government have already admitted that short-term gain is more important than the state of our planet over the next 50 years.

The ice cap is melting, the oceans are rising, but Trump wants to reopen the mines and to "make America great" again by building gas-guzzling cars.

We can see it everywhere … global warming is no longer an abstract concept. We can see it in rising temperatures or freak storms, or the terrible air quality in big Asian cities which threatens the health of millions of people.

His treatment of a CNN reporter at a press conference last week brought to mind the way tyrants like Hitler or Stalin went out of their way to suppress and silence a free press in the 20th century.

But who cares what CNN say when you can get updates from Breitbart or Fox News?

This week, I've had people argue with me that Trump is not a racist, a sexist, or Islamophobic. They send me to obscure extreme right wing websites in a bid to discount what I've actually seen with my own eyes.

They'd rather keep the Mexicans out than look at the uneqaul power structures in this desperately unfair world. They'd rather build walls than bridges, when it was the immigrant experience which made America "great" in the first place.

It’s astounding that a property speculator with racist views is now seen as the salvation for so many people who are angry at the state of the world.

The people who pour scorn and venom at "illegal" immigrants see no irony in the fact that their own ancestors, many of them impoverished, set sail for the Americas in search of new and better lives.

Few of the people I have heard ranting about the Islamification of Europe and America seem to have spent much time in the Muslim world, where most people just want to get on with living happy and peaceful lives.

It’s simply absurd to condemn all Muslims – there are 1.6 billon of them across the world. It’s frightening, rather than absurd, that people still voted for Trump after he threatened to tag Muslims in America with special IDs just as Hitler targeted the Jews in 1930s Germany.

By voting for Trump, people chose ignorance over understanding and hatred over love. And I don’t want to live in that kind of world.

Like millions of others, I really hope that Trump will be a success, that he will shock the “lefty liberals”, and that he won’t destroy America and the world.

But he has said too much before and since the November election for people to face the future with anything other than concern or trepidation.

Which is why I feel it’s important to attend the protest against his inauguration on Saturday.

Not because we don’t accept the result of the election, but because Trump’s message of fear, loathing, and division is capable of destroying the entire world.

·         * There are two Galway events taking place on Saturday at 2pm. Check out the Facebook pages for Celebrate Diversity https://www.facebook.com/events/559992617530274/and the Women’s March on Washington Galway https://www.facebook.com/womensmarchgalway/

Check out my Facebook page: Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller

Check out my website: http://ciarantierney.com/

A bluffer's guide to an eventful 2017

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For many people I know, 2016 was a horrible year.

Too many faced job insecurities or even job losses, relationship breakdowns, and financial worries about the future. Many felt they were only a pay cheque away from homelessness, with rents increasing and the prospect of buying a home in Ireland becoming ever more remote for an entire generation.

The crisis in our health service left far too many vulnerable people lying on trollies and all across the globe thousands of people lost their lives in appalling wars.              

The Donald: set to make a big impact in 2017

We saw many of our musical heroes pass away, while the Brexit and Trump votes seemed to suggest that hatred and fear had overcome love and understanding on both sides of the Atlantic.

People began to wake up to the appalling reality of climate change, only to realize that a man who completely denies the reality of pending environmental catastrophe had become the most powerful politician on the planet late in the year.

But the start of January is a time for renewal and change, and perhaps looking forward to a brighter future.

When I used to work in the newspaper business, I often wrote my predictions for the New Year.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s my tongue-in-cheek assessment of what 2017 has in store.

JANUARY
The Irish Times publishes a piece called ‘Why fascism is trendy again’ on the eve of the inauguration of US President Donald Trump in Washington DC. The event itself proves to be something of a damp squid, as Mexicans, Muslims, women, gays, gun-owners and liberals are banned from the ceremony. The only two foreign leaders to attend are from Holland and Northern Ireland, after Trump insists it’s an “orange only” event.

An Taoiseach Enda Kenny: our own wonderful leader

FEBRUARY
With an unprecedented number of patients on trolleys in Ireland’s public hospitals, An Taoiseach Enda Kenny is accused of gross hypocrisy when he takes a private jet to the United States for emergency heart surgery.

However, the emergency is quickly forgotten as a team of surgeons at a highly rated private clinic in New York fail to find his vital organ. Following his release from hospital, an emotional Mr Kenny calls on President Trump to give an amnesty to the “undocumented” Irish in the US who were unable to go home for Christmas.

MARCH
After returning to Ireland, Mr Kenny calls for an immediate clampdown on “illegal” immigration to Ireland. “This might be the best little country in the world to do business in, but our small island hasn’t got room for all these niggers,” he tells a Fine Gael function in his native Castlebar. After a reporter from the Mayo Gazette secretly records his speech, he accuses the media of lacking a sense of humour and promises to sell the Gazette to his close friend, Denis O’Brien.

Trump, meanwhile, pledges $100 billion in military aid to Israel, on his first overseas trip since taking office. “It’s simply inhumane to expect Israelis to live on just 78% of Palestinian land,” he says. “I’m very strong on Israel. I’m so strong on Israel, in fact, that I’m gonna kick the UN out of New York for daring to question their policies. I’m gonna make Israel great again.”

APRIL
Niamh Horan of the Sunday Independent courts controversy by organising a five page “Fascism is Fashionable” feature, with photo shoots of columnists Ian O’Doherty and Brendan O’Connor dressed up in Ku Klux Klan costumes. Controversy rages over the lack of security at Dublin Airport when UK columnist Katie Hopkins disguises herself as a cockroach when flying in for the feature.

Amazingly, security and customs personnel failed to notice any difference and waved Ms Hopkins through without even looking at her passport.

Is this Katie or a cockroach? Who knows?

MAY
Shannon Airport is in the news this month when management celebrate the arrival of the 5 millionth US soldier at the ‘neutral’ facility. A proposed party to welcome the soldier, on his way home from Iraq, has to be cancelled when white phosphorous is released from his plane, causing the deaths of 48 Ryanair passengers on their way to London.

Thankfully, no US soldiers were injured in the accident. And Michael O’Leary was presented with an Irish business innovation award when he managed to have his plane back in the air within four hours of the incident.

JUNE
Billionaire tycoon Denis O’Brien commissions a report which finds that Rupert Murdoch of News International has too much influence on the Irish media. By complete coincidence, Murdoch’s Sunday Times commissions a report which finds that O’Brien has too much influence on the Irish media.

O’Brien buys up every remaining regional newspaper in Ireland, while Murdoch purchases all of the country’s “independent” radio stations. New Minister for Communications Michael Lowry expresses complete satisfaction with both deals.

JULY
The five million Native Americans in the US are baffled when President Trump warns them that they will be deported “along with all the Mexicans and Muslims”. A new “Orange Lives Matter” movement is born in the USA to counteract vicious lies about police brutality and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba begins to fill up with environmental scientists after the phrase “climate change” is banned by the US Congress.

AUGUST
Tax exile Bono becomes Freeman of the City after spending three nights “sleeping out” on Grafton Street in Dublin to raise awareness of homelessness. However, he calls the Gardai when a real live homeless person turns up at his occasional Dalkey home. Later in the month, he’s presented with an award for services to humanity by UN Secretary General Ivanka Trump.

“Every day, the poor people of Africa must thank their lucky stars that they have a brilliant, billionaire Irish singer to speak out on their behalf,” she said at the award ceremony at Trump Tower Two, the new name for the UN HQ in New York. Back home, Ireland becomes the first country in Europe to successfully sue the EU in order to make sure that it did not get money owed to it.

Taoiseach Kenny says he’s delighted he won’t have to take €17 billion in taxes owed by Apple Inc, as it would do “enormous damage” to Ireland’s reputation as a great little country to do business in.

SEPTEMBER
Fears that RTE would have to go into liquidation due to financial difficulties are allayed when TV presenter Ryan Tubridy agrees to take a five per cent pay cut. Mayo win the All-Ireland football final (sorry …. That bit is made up!), no, actually, Dublin and Kilkenny win the football and hurling respectively. Hurling fans all over the country come together to hire Dublin drugs gang the Keenihans to ‘take out’ Kilkenny boss Brian Cody.

RTE are faced by a flood of complaints when crime journalist Paul Williams appears on the ‘Late Late Show’ for the 50th time, but lets his fans down badly by failing to utter the word “scumbag” once during his 45 minute appearance with Ryan Tubridy.

OCTOBER
Gardai issue an apology after a banker is arrested for drunk driving. An Taoiseach Enda Kenny summons the Garda Commissioner to his office to remind her that no banker is to be arrested for any offence, ever. The Government announces that Irish Water is to be revived and advertises for a new CEO, to be paid €400,000 per year. A demonstration against Irish Water attracts 30,000 people to the streets of the capital, but organisers claim that 100,000 took part and Gardai deny that it even happened.

Promises, promises ... but sure they're only promises!

NOVEMBER
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netyanahu, is awarded the highly prestigious Tipperary Peace Prize. Human rights organisations condemn the prize, pointing out that Israeli soldiers have killed 1,500 people so far in 2017. A spokesman for the committee, Alan Kelly, says that this is a big decrease on the 2016 figure.

“And, anyway, sure, he’ll bring a crowd and he’ll give us a bit of publicity,” say Kelly.

Russian jets bomb 85 civilians to death in Syria on the same day as US fighters murder 85 civilians in Iraq. RT provide excellent coverage of the Iraqi deaths, but say those in Syria never happened. Fox News, now allowed 24/7 access to the White House for a new series called ‘The Don Knows Best’, accuse RT of “fake news” and call for the Russian TV channel to be banned from America.

“Unlike all the others, Fox gets it,” says Trump.

DECEMBER
A visit by US President Donald Trump to China turns controversial when the Chinese hosts fail to place a giant mirror in his Shanghai hotel bedroom. Enraged, Trump returns to Washington DC, where he presses the red button to blow the Chinese … and the rest of us … to Armageddon.

So ... that's the coming year for you.

It’s going to be a lot more eventful than 2016.

Happy New Year!


http://ciarantierney.com/

From the archives: An Uncomfortable Truth for Culture Night

An awful shower!

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They are an awful shower, those Europeans.

Imagine, the cheek of them! Telling us Irish that poor oul’ Apple owe us €13 billion plus interest in taxes, at a time when we’re doing our best to lure in the multinationals and bring our young people home from the four corners of the earth.

Over €13 billion in unwelcome taxes? No wonder the country is up in arms. People must be enraged.

They must be ringing their TDs all the way from Cork to Donegal to tell them to fight it all the way to the top Court in Europe.

Have those pesky Europeans no idea how we do things in the land of the stroke, the hand-shake, the wink, and the banana?

Have they no idea how important it is for us to provide "sweeteners" to keep the big boys on board in the greatest little country in the world to do business in?

Taoiseach Enda Kenny: doing his best to fight the unwelcome

€13 billion-plus windfall from the European Commissionn

Some eejits are wondering what €13 billion might do to help us tackle our homelessness crisis or our hospital waiting lists, or at least abolish the deeply unpopular water charges, but this time the European Commission have just gone too far.

They can’t just force us to take tax off one of the biggest corporations in the world.

So the Government is up in arms and rightly so. This is a new Emergency, in the only country on earth which had its own name for World War Two.

Our leaders are off to Brussels, or Strasbourg, or wherever these big decisions are made, to fight tooth and nail for Irish sovereignty.

Funny, there were no Government delegations heading off to Brussels to fight for Irish sovereignty in those far off days following the 'bailout', when the toxic banks were taking almost €9,000 from every man, woman, and child in the country.

There weren’t too many calls, from official circles at any rate, for the Europeans to stop meddling in Irish affairs when the State spent €60 billion to stabilise those toxic bankers.

Figures released three years ago showed that the financial crisis cost Ireland 25% of GDP, but there was no talk of forcing the Europeans to change their minds.

Come to us with a €13 billion windfall, however, after Apple set up a global HQ in Cork, and the Europeans are threatening Irish democracy.

There was no talk of bullying within the EU – and not much solidarity from the Irish – when the Greeks were tied into a bailout which seems set to cripple their economy for decades.

It cost us €60 billion to “bail out” the banks and yet I’ve never met a single person who felt that Anglo Irish Bank should have been saved. The net cost has been estimated at about €43 billion, as the Government is set to recoup some of this sum.

But, in all those dark years of austerity since 2008, we never heard the Government challenging the Europeans or telling them that they had to re-think their financial policies.

There was no point in complaining when the offshore Irish were forced to pay for 42% of Europe's banking debt.

Now they are offering us €13 billion, plus interest, and the nation is up in arms.

Apple: their decision to set up a HQ in Cork could

yet have huge implications for the Irish economy

So … impose water charges, force the low-paid to pay the ‘Universal Social Charge’, or bailout the banks to the tune of €60 billion, and our European masters are only doing their jobs.

Sorry, lads, there's nothing we can do, because the lads out in Brussels said so. And we can't change their opinions on anything.

Vote the wrong way in two European referenda and, instead of accepting the result, the little Irish “pixie-heads” have to vote again until they come up with the “right” result.

Demand a return of some of our fisheries rights, or an explanation as to why we gave away our natural resources in the Atlantic at a knock-down price, and you'll be told these decisions were irreversible.

But tell us we are due €13 billion plus interest in unpaid taxes, and those European bullies are suddenly threatening the very fabric of our democracy.

After years of inertia by our leaders in the face of European bullying, it's great to see Enda Kenny out battling on behalf of the Banana Republic ... standing up for the rights of the poor little Irish in the face of this unwelcome windfall.

An awful shower, indeed, those pesky Europeans!


(find me on twitter, @ciarantierney)

The media, the election, and the politics of fear

Http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

Has there ever been a General Election campaign in Ireland before in which the role of some elements of the mainstream media seemed so clear? Not to report the truth, or to compare policies, but to cheer on the establishment parties and spread an irrational fear of change.

For months now, we’ve been told that this election is giving us a choice between “stability” (voting for the parties who either bankrupt the country or imposed austerity on thousands of us) and “chaos” (God forbid if those upstarts from Sinn Fein or the small left wing parties came within a million miles of power).

Sometimes the mask slips, and you wonder whether Irish democracy is any better than the kind of electioneering you would find in modern day Russia or even North Korea.

Malcolm X had a jaundiced view back in the 1960s

Such as when the nation’s biggest selling newspaper gives over its main story to attacking Sinn Fein policies for three days in a row. That’s not balanced election coverage, that’s naked propaganda.

There is nothing wrong with challenging a party which has a sinister past, especially if they are a rising force on the brink of gaining power for the first time in the Republic.

But where is the investigative journalism into the policies of the Fianna Fail party which caused the economic crash less than a decade ago? Are they really ready to return to power?

And where is the acknowledgement that, by going into power with the DUP and embracing the peace process, Sinn Fein have actually come a long way in the space of a few years?

Where is the analysis of why the Labour Party abandoned their core voters (and all their principles) or why Fine Gael think it’s perfectly acceptable to punish so many for the sins of so few?

The same newspaper sent a representative, a crime reporter, onto the nation’s most popular chat show at the weekend. 

He managed to insult hundreds of thousands of people on Friday night by suggesting that anyone who votes for Sinn Fein is a drug-dealer, a killer, or a thug.

People have a right to be concerned at the prospect of former terrorists going into Government, but blatant scare-mongering is another thing. 

I’m not a Sinn Fein supporter, but I don’t need crime correspondent Paul Williams to ram his views down my throat. A man who has made a lot of money out of crime, by writing about it and spreading fear, Williams’ favourite word seems to be “scumbag” when he talks about drug gangs.

It was hard not to see his Late Late Show appearance as a hatchet-job on Sinn Fein just a week before the election.

On the day after his TV appearance, thousands of people marched through the streets of the capital to protest against austerity. The Right 2 Change march merited just one paragraph, and not a single photo, in one of the nation’s biggest selling Sunday papers the following day.

Six days before the election, thousands of people insisted that austerity was still a big issue. They said that the march was about so much more than Irish Water. But a Rupert Murdoch-owned ‘paper decided their march did not merit any coverage, even though so many of them took over the city centre.

Across the city, another editor was putting together a piece which suggested ten different reasons not to vote for Sinn Fein. Which was fair enough, but you’d be waiting a long time for ten different reasons not to vote for the party which bankrupt the country in the first place.

Sadly, the people who cover politics in Ireland largely move in the same circles as the political masters they write about. They broadly share the same views, seeing nothing wrong with the bank bailout or Ireland’s failure to stand by our Greek cousins when they sought debt relief last year.

To support Syriza in their hour of need would have involved challenging the status quo and an admission that the Irish were wrong. And nobody in the Irish Government wanted that!

So we get “fluffy” pieces from the campaign trail, in which reporters get access to our leaders as long as they play by their rules.

Still marching against Irish Water

So they can spend days on the campaign trail with Enda Kenny or Lucinda Creighton, as long as they never ask a tricky question such as why so many ordinary people had to bail out a tiny group of unsecured bondholders, bankers, and developers. 

Asking those type of questions is not part of the game and will soon get you thrown off the bandwagon.

Asking the Taoiseach why so many people are languishing on hospital trolleys is not part of the accepted script, either, nor is questioning why so many people are put on Job Bridge schemes in order to massage the unemployment figures.

This after all is the “best little country in the world to do business in”, especially for the multinationals who pay so little corporation tax compared to what they’d pay in other countries.

This election is all about the “recovery”, so it’s just not on to ask about the thousands who have been made homeless, the rental crisis, or the mental health crisis which has seen so many young people take their own lives in recent years.

Ask those questions and you will be soon denied access to the great and the good.

So a young lad with a video camera attends a “rally” in support of the Taoiseach in Castlebar, only to be man-handled out of the premises by Gardai because he’s not part of the inner circle. He hasn't learned how to play the game.

The “handlers” choose who gets access to our Prime Minister, so those who want crisp copy for the editors have to play by the rules. No hard questions about policies, when people keep talking about a recovery which seems to be on another planet as far as many of us are concerned.

So we are given “colour pieces” about An Taoiseach singing Bruce Springsteen songs to the faithful, rather than insightful articles which might challenge why his party has imposed such harsh austerity on those who could least afford to pay over the past five years.

The man who is on the verge of leading FG into office for a second term doesn’t like tough debates or probing questions. And his handlers, with the complicity of key elements of the media, ensure that he can get away with banal phrases most of the time.

When he allows the mask to slip, such as when he moans about “whingers” in his native Castlebar, the handlers try their best to ensure he has minimum engagement with those who ask the probing questions. The whole run-up to the election is perfectly scripted and staged.

There’s a good reason why Enda Kenny never appears on Tonight With Vincent Browne, he just can't cope with that kind of questioning. For our media, those kind of questions are reserved for People Before Profit or Sinn Fein, but the Taoiseach is largely left alone.

He is far more comfortable pressing the flesh with little old ladies than answering tough questions. He doesn’t stop for long enough on “walkabouts” for anyone to ask anything that might make him or his party handlers uncomfortable.

His stage-managed tours bring him to “positive” places, rather than the midland towns and city housing estates deep in recession, which have yet to be touched by the recovery.

So he talks about “recovery” and “stability” and anyone who threatens his narrative is seen to support the kind of “chaos” which will ensue if Sinn Fein, People Before Profit, the Social Democrats, or the myriad of independent factions get anywhere near power.

And everyone plays along. Access is granted if the hard questions are avoided. People can write all day about how good he is at pressing the flesh, but they never get to ask a serious question about issues such as homelessness, health care waiting lists, or how schemes like JobBridge are abused.

In this election, though, we should be grateful for social media. The landscape has been transformed. When people see videos of 100,000 people marching through Dublin city centre on Facebook, getting next to no coverage on national television, they begin to ask about pro-Government "spin".

More and more, people are beginning to ask questions about the information they are being fed. 

We see Irish Water protesters being labelled as the "sinister fringe" on the TV news, but the only footage we see of Gardai beating up protesters is away from the mainstream media.

On Facebook or Twitter, you can see photos of thousands upon thousands marching through the streets of the capital to protest against austerity, even if those images rarely end up in the national newspapers or on TV.

You can see the establishment politicians make fools of themselves, by trying to defend the indefensible in unguarded moments on Twitter.

You can find out about the parties’ policies by accessing their websites and avoiding the scare-mongering among some elements of the media.

By all means, question the policies of left wing groups such as PBP-AAA and Sinn Fein. A hung Dail, with so many Independents, is a scary thing. Perhaps they would lead Ireland to ruin. Fianna Fail certainly should know – they led Ireland to ruin only five short years ago.

By presenting voters with a stark choice between “stability” and “chaos”, though, elements of the establishment have gone too far. 

People don’t like to think they are being brainwashed or led a merry dance by those who have hidden agendas or a vested interest in holding onto power.

There is some vile stuff out there on social media, but it’s only there that you get a real taste of the anger running through the housing estates and parts of rural Ireland over the past five years. That anger surfaces at the Right2change protests, but rarely gets a look-in on national TV or our newspapers.

We have so many sources of information in 2016 that people can see right through the “spin”, in a way which would have been unthinkable before the advent of Facebook and Twitter. 

That can only be a good thing, when we’re sometimes faced with the kind of propaganda which would not seem out of place in Russia or Cuba.

A scandal of our own era

How strangely fitting it was that in the week in which our Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, was lobbying on behalf of the undocumented Irish in America an exhibition quietly came to a close in Galway which should put most of our generation to shame. 

As the Irish and the Americans toasted the shamrock, and Taoiseach Kenny made impassioned pleas for the ‘illegals' who are trapped in the USA, it felt strange to witness the last day of an exhibition which challenged the narrative of the Irish as endless victims.

The exhibition, Asylum Archive, ran at the Galway Arts Centre for five weeks. While I don’t know how many people visited over that period, it felt like a stark contrast from the St Patrick’s Day festivities to explore it in the presence of less than half a dozen attendees on Friday afternoon.

Artist Ukase Nedeljkovic examined the direct provision system which has condemned many people in Ireland to years of virtual imprisonment.

He didn't show their faces, but he captured their despair.

As I walked around the exhibition, it got me to thinking that direct provision is a scandal of our own time.

When I was younger, I used to wonder how my parents’ generation could go about their business while women were locked up in Magdalene Laundries and children imprisoned in loathsome industrial schools in towns and cities across Ireland.

Ah, but sure that was a different Ireland, and nobody dared to question the Catholic Church in those days.

Well, in the 21^st century it is awful to think that a form of Apartheid exists in this country, even if for most people it’s “out of sight, out of mind”.

Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Not in the part of Galway I grew up in, though. In recent months, as I’ve recovered from surgery, I have spent a lot of time in the street where I grew up.

Day after day, I have seen a group of about 15 children and two adults make their way along the road. Lucky them, you might think, walking to and from school with such a large group of friends.

Until you learn that they are walking together for a reason. They are all residents of the direct provision centre in Salthill and their daily walk takes them right past a school in a more affluent part of the city. It’s a form of segregation.

The exhibition was heart-breaking. It captured the frustrations of people who cannot work, who live off a tiny allowance, who are stuck in a ‘limbo’ for months and years, cut off from the rest of Irish society.

Many of these asylum seekers suffer from depression, as they wait anxiously to see if they will be deported or allowed to stay.

It doesn't tell us much about the lives and families they left behind. But it makes it clear that they don't fit in with any cozy depiction of 21st century Ireland.

The Taoiseach apologised for the wrongs caused to the victims of the Magdalene Laundries, and rightly so, but his Government has condemned almost 5,000 people to a system which virtually imprisons them for months and even years.

People who left awful lives in their native countries behind don’t have any rights because they don’t have Irish citizenship, just as the undocumented Irish who stayed on ‘illegally’ in America have no rights and are afraid to come home.

They spend day after day in hostels, unable to work, unable to plan for any kind of future in this country.

A harrowing audio told the story of a woman who was deported via Dublin Airport while she was ill.

In another audio clip, Fiona from South Africa said she found the whole system “quite disturbing”. But the system felt familiar, she said, because she grew up under Apartheid.

The system has been described as a form of racism, amid claims that nobody would tolerate it if Irish people were treated the same way as some of the asylum seekers.

The exhibition told a story of a hidden Ireland many of us never get to see, a long way from the leprechaun hats at the parades in town centres or the bowls of shamrock being handed out to the great and the good in the White House on St Patrick’s Day. 

It got me thinking. 

In years to come, will we look back on the direct provision system as a great scandal of our time? Just as young people today cannot believe that single mothers were locked up for years in the Magdalene Laundries.

And nobody did anything about it, because that's just the way things were done.