Dick O’Brien notes the odd picture on the front of the Irish Times today. What the hell is he doing pointing a gun at someone? Was the photographer crazy for asking him, or maybe he only put the camera in the line of fire? Always point a gun at the ground, loaded or not.
Interesting that the IT staffers named the JPEG ‘Make my day’, at least O’Dea seems happy with his first cabinet post :-)
For my records:
Exclusion of discrimination on particular grounds in certain employments.
37.—(1) A religious, educational or medical institution which is under the direction or control of a body established for religious purposes or whose objectives include the provision of services in an environment which promotes certain religious values shall not be taken to discriminate against a person for the purposes of this Part or Part II if—
(a) it gives more favourable treatment, on the religion ground, to an employee or a prospective employee over that person where it is reasonable to do so in order to maintain the religious ethos of the institution, or
(b) it takes action which is reasonably necessary to prevent an employee or a prospective employee from undermining the religious ethos of the institution.
In a predictable piece, Ronan Mullen argues that Liz O’Donnell’s speech last week in the Dail amounted to a liberal attack on the Church. After a fairly incoherent argument (even I am guilty of that sometimes) he concludes:
By presenting an outdated notion of a priest-ridden society, in order to exclude the Church from consultation on sensitive social issues, O’Donnell was doing us all a disservice. “Get off the stage and make it easier for us ‘liberals’ to get our point across,” would appear to be her message to the Church.
Now that would be a cosy arrangement.
I’ll nail my colours to the mast here. I am an agnostic humanist, and find the power the Catholic Church continues to have in the Irish State to be regrettable. So I agree completely with O’Donnell, perhaps she should have even been more vocal.
Have a listen(Realplayer) to Vincent Browne last week, November 9th. Browne does a very good job taking apart the position of the priest on the show, who made laughable excuses concerning the lack of action on the part of the Church. In fact, the interview is a demonstration of Browne’s ability to bring in a guest and completely wipe the floor with him.
Father Vincent Twomey of Maynooth wrote an article in the Irish Times the day previously.
He peddles the ‘learning curve’ argument, that Vincent successfully rubbishes. Jim O’Keefe TD, Mark Hennessy, Dan Neville TD and Prof Michael Fitzgerald are on the panel also.
If you have 30 minutes to spare I suggest you listen to the start – at 8.20, and continue to the 38th minute. Vincent grabs onto the idea that the bishops insured their dioceses against claims made by people against the clergy as far back as 1987 up to 1990. From then on Vincent Twomey is on the defensive, and in a way tries to defend the indefensible. By the end this exchange occurs:
Twomey: You took up my statement about the learning curve and took it completely out of context
Browne: Ohhhh really now, explain that now
Twomey: The thing is that…
Browne: Explain…explain how this was taken out of context…
Twomey: Because, because I am trying to, I am trying to explain how…
Browne: I think you are digging a hole now but anyways, go on
Twomey: I’ll stop, I withdraw that remark.
Browne: Ok
For my own records:
Liz O’Donnell:
I wish to preface my remarks with a word of support for those priests who have done no wrong. They deserve our support and sympathy at this difficult time. The majority of priests are living out their Christian message in an exemplary fashion and have our support at this time.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of this report, produced by Mr. Justice Frank Murphy and his colleagues. It is a landmark document in the context of child sexual abuse — abuse which was compounded in its gravity because the actors were members of one of the most trusted groups in our society. The victims, children of all ages, suffered not only the most awful forms of sexual, physical and psychological abuse at the hands of clergy but also suffered the silence, betrayal and inaction on the part of the church who placed the protection of the most vulnerable below the church’s priority of protecting themselves and the church. Child protection came last.
I heard a chilling description of what these abusive clergy did to their victims as the equivalent of eating their souls and destroying their souls. Unlike other forms of ill-treatment, sexual abuse of children by priests, and the subsequent disbelief of their stories if they have the courage to speak out, is uniquely destructive of the individual spirit of a person, that inner place or core. Given the scale and brutality outlined in the report, it is truly remarkable, indeed awesome, to witness the human capacity to heal and even forgive among some victims.
This report, however, is a landmark in another respect. I hope it will change forever the special relationship that has existed for many decades between church and State. This report must be the starting point for the State’s response to all contained in it. But this new beginning cannot happen unless the old relationship ends. The unrelenting deference, which constituted the relations between church and State, must end. It was given for many decades and expected for many decades. This special deference and relationship was extremely influential in terms of outcome, and it must end. Only then can the State act as it should, which is objectively.
The systemic failure outlined in the report means nothing less is acceptable. If the church leadership, the hierarchy, was a cabinet, it would resign en masse or be thrown out of office. However, the church is neither democratic nor accountable. In many ways it is a secret organisation, with its own diplomatic service, civil service, laws and self-regulatory codes, which have all failed the public. Because the church in Ireland was the main interface with God, the Irish people and the State have shown deference personally and collectively over many decades. This veil of deference is the root cause of society’s failure to stop the church’s systemic maladministration and dereliction of duty to protect children as outlined in the report. Because what happened in one diocese is just a microcosm of the situation in all diocese, the findings are damning in their import. The fact is there have been hundreds of crimes of clerical abuse against children which went unpunished. Priests were transferred instead of being exposed. Priests with a propensity to offend were ordained, appointed to curacies, and bishops colluded and covered up these matters.
The mighty church has fallen from grace because of its failure to protect children. The first response of the State must be to state unequivocally that the special relationship is no more and to take steps to demonstrate that disconnect between State and church. From now on, with that veil of deference removed, the State can deal with the church authorities in the same way as it would with any other voluntary or State agency that provides services for children and families. This means no longer accepting the bona fides or the good offices of an admittedly remorseful hierarchy after the event. The track record is such that we cannot accept that the church will be truthful or capable of self-regulation. The late disclosure of files by the church authorities to Ferns shows that the instinct for self-preservation and denial is still rife.
This “no more Mr. Nice Guy” approach by the State means no longer countenancing the unhealthy enmeshing of the church in the secular layers of our society. It means no more consultation between church and State on IVF, abortion services, stem cell research, Ireland’s support for family planning in the Third World, contraception or supports for single mothers, adoption, homosexuality and civil marriage. In a democracy, all views can be articulated but the special relationship must be over. The deference must be over. The cosy phone calls from All Hallows to Government Buildings must end.
This also means, like it or not, looking at the church’s almost universal control of education in this country. Our national school system was established 170 years ago and while it was originally meant to be, to use today’s terminology, mixed religion or multi-denominational, in practice this did not happen and, as a result, virtually all national schools are under the management of one church, the Catholic Church. Despite the State paying the bulk of the building and running costs, the relevant church authorities privately own and control the vast majority of national schools. The bishops are patrons of 95% of national schools. The same institution that has been so found wanting effectively decides who is suitable or not to work in our children’s schools. If our stated commitment to taking all necessary steps to protect children is to be more than just rhetoric, it is imperative that we radically address this issue. Indeed, the investigation into the archdiocese of Dublin should deal with transfers of lay teachers for allegations of child abuse without due regard to child protection.
I would like to turn to the money trail. The question of finances is perhaps a neuralgic issue. Again, in light of the terrible wrongs done to the victims, discussing finances might be seen as unseemly, but I believe money has been the motivating factor in the actions and inaction of the church authorities in this whole affair. Central to the church’s self-serving response over the years has been private financial settlements, without liability, as well as confidentiality deals. If the State is carrying out audits in every diocese, investigations that could uncover scores of previously undiscovered abuse cases, we must also audit the church’s wealth. Given the nature and extent of the wrongdoing of this institution against citizens, the church should be obliged to open up its books. Discovery orders could be made to gain some understanding of the money trail. Such an audit of church assets and wealth is long overdue and, in fact, should have been in place prior to the indemnity deal given to the religious orders.
I note that, true to form, the church has the temerity to claim €100,000 for its legal costs for dealing with the Ferns Inquiry. It is estimated that the church now faces a compensation bill of up to €250 million for clerical sex abuse resulting from existing claims and new claims set to emerge following publication of the Ferns Report. On top of this is the €128 million already paid to victims of abuse in children’s homes run by religious orders.
Going back to the need for separation and objectivity between church and State, sadly, it is difficult to argue that this was the paradigm within which the negotiations on the indemnity deal struck by the Government with the religious orders took place. The cost to the orders was approximately €128 million, while the cost to the State would be a blank cheque, the State covering every lawsuit brought against the congregations for child abuse in reformatories and industrial schools. This is not to understate the share of responsibility the State has for some of the horrors that unfolded in these terrible places. The uncomfortable fact is that, in several cases taken in the courts recently by victims outside the redress scheme, the liability of the State has not been proven. Therefore, the blanket indemnity was over-generous on behalf of the State. Why? All roads lead to the deference of the special relationship. The result was a bad deal for the State and a good deal for the religious orders. Initial estimates of the potential liability were in the region of €250 million. Three or four times that amount may prove closer to reality in terms of liability to the taxpayer.
The special relationship has not served Ireland or its citizens well. It did not serve the victims of abuse well. For example, the implication in the Ferns Report is that complaints of sexual abuse made against priests to the gardaí were not handled appropriately. Some of the complaints were not even recorded in any Garda file. They were not investigated in an appropriate manner due, perhaps, to reluctance by members of the Garda to investigate allegations against members of the Catholic clergy. Again, the deference descended. Undoubtedly progress has been made in terms of the independence of the Garda now vis-à-vis the church and that must continue.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to introduce new legislation as outlined by the Minister. However, legislation alone will not suffice. The law must operate and apply in a context of objectivity and cool detachment. Victims, family members, friends, Ministers, politicians, gardaí, judges and all of us must not be deterred or reluctant to speak out and to act robustly on these matters. I welcome the fact the Government will move to allow for barring orders against persons, including priests, who are a risk to children in order to restrain them from occupying any employment that exposes them to children, and provide for a new criminal offence of failing to protect children from injury, sexual abuse or reckless endangerment.
Account for the success of the seventh-century and early eighth-century Arab conquests in former territories of the Roman Empire; how did Westerners view Islam and the Arabs?
Any recommended websites/books?
Barry McSweeney has moved too. But should he allowed to take any position in government?
In a statement this evening, Mr MacSweeney said he was pleased to accept his new position.
He added it was his intention to work to ensure significant developments in the fields of energy, marine ICT, digital and geo-science.
The Labour Party says many questions are still unanswered, among them the manner in which Barry McSweeney was appointed.
Fine Gael has called it an embarrassing debacle. It says the Government clearly did not check their facts when making the appointment.
Andrew Sullivan has been hired to blog over at Time.com. An interesting development.
Wondering what software to use for your blog? Slashdot link to a review of the top 3, MT, WordPress (which I use) and Textpattern.
More on the Barry McSweeney saga in todays Irish Times:
Mr Martin said before the weekend that a decision might be made within a couple of days, raising expectations that the Cabinet might settle the issue at today’s meeting.
This could not be confirmed yesterday, however.
Dr McSweeney could not be reached for comment.
The Labour Party’s spokeswoman on education and science, Jan O’Sullivan, continued yesterday to press the Minister for details relating to the adviser.
“There are still unanswered questions about Dr McSweeney’s claim that Pacific Western was different” when he received his degree in 1992, Ms O’Sullivan said yesterday.
She wrote to the Minister on November 4th, requesting more information, including details of the research conducted by Dr McSweeney for his PhD. “Neither of these have been clarified to my mind,” she said.
A resignation this week?
There are a number of billboard ads on display around Cork concerning An Post staff grievances with management. The billboards are headlined:
An Post management is not delivering
Forgive me, and correct me if I am wrong, should that not say:
An Post management are not delivering
I would imagine there is more than one manager involved.
Have the Irish Examiner not realised that the ads they show are really annoying? Do they not realise it will drive away readers?
Watch for the Vodafone ’3′ popup ad, right in the middle of the text. Grrrr.
Michael O’Farrell, political reporter at the Irish Examiner, lambasts Barry McSweeney and the Irish Times for failing deal with the hard questions being asked about McSweeney’s qualifications, or lack thereof. He gets it right in my view. Myself and Fiona have been on this story pretty much since it started, but it seems no matter how much media coverage the story gets McSweeney still believes his position to be tenable. Fiona gets a mention at the end of the piece, well deserved praise indeed.
It is not a tenable position for McSweeney by any means. As O’Farrell notes:
Contacted by the Irish Examiner, Ed Walsh agreed to make a statement.
In a few short paragraphs Professor Walsh made it clear that failure to address this issue quickly would quickly see Ireland’s hard-fought-for reputation among researchers world- wide plummet.
“This is not a matter that is improved by delay – it really needs to be addressed fairly promptly otherwise it becomes a cause of international embarrassment to everyone,” he would later tell RTÉ.
Through his intervention Professor Walsh has all but forced the fate of Dr McSweeney who will likely have vacated his office by this time next week.
Professor Walsh chaired the top level International Government Commission of experts which first recommended the establishment of the office of chief scientific adviser.
In addition the former University of Limerick president and chairman of the Science Council is one of Ireland’s most respected academics.
Damning criticism from the very man who is responsible for seeing his job created in the first place now renders Dr McSweeney’s job untenable.
It is a shame that the only academic brave enough to come forward – until now – was Fiona De Londras, from Dublin’s Griffith College.
She, and in turn Ed Walsh displayed the kind of bravery, integrity and force of conviction so lacking in all the other protagonists this scandal has touched this past month.
I spent my Saturday morning travelling to Millstreet to attend the Fine Gael National Conference – curiosity got the best of me and it was the first time to attend a party conference in Ireland. The last time I went to one was in 2003 in Bournemouth for the Labour get together.
To compare, the FG conference was an incredibly somber affair from what I could gather. A one day conference in the middle of nowhere – hardly the same as Fianna Fail ones or the sheer debauchery and alcoholism of the Labour ones in the UK. But I didn’t stay in Millstreet into the evening, so maybe things did liven up a bit after I left.
As I kind of half expected I bumped into someone I knew, namely Richard, who was there covering the event for the Sunday Tribune. He suggested I get a press pass to use the press facilities upstairs, and meet some hacks. Some minutes later I go to the press room – certainly wasn’t something I expected. It was an interesting experience to see many of the faces familiar to me from the telly – RTE and TV3 correspondents – a plethora of laptops and mics. A shortage of tables prompted me to take a table with a bag on it, Ursula Halligan from TV3 was very polite in later saying it was her table, but there would be little problem sharing. She did enquire who I worked for and where I was from – a blogger I replied – attending simply because I was interested. Ursula expressed interest in blogging and my blogs – a very nice woman indeed.
Unfortunately I couldn’t liveblog the event, simply because the Greenglens Arena doesn’t have Wifi, and the press room relied on a dozen dial-up land lines, for which I had no cable.
In the end Richard was driving back up to Dublin, so I bummed a lift in order to go out on the beer in Dublin. Where I managed to bump into Caoimhe in a rather inebriated state (me, not her).
All in all an eventful weekend.
So another article on blogging in today’s Irish Times. Brian Boyd is on the story this time. Now last time an article was published in the Irish Times, and Irish bloggers reacted, many accused critics of the article of navel gazing and elitism. I am not sure, by the way, if this is a staffer article or a freelance contribution.
Incidentally the headline is the first thing I noticed, the sub involved uses the term “web blogs”. First time I’ve seen that.
The overall impression I get from this article is one of rubbishing the entire community of blogs, and the idea of blogs, because of the views expressed by some bloggers. But it does balance out in places. More on that later. Here’s the piece:
Eurabia will be consumed by the fires of jihad – or so suggest some bloggers. Brian Boyd went surfing for far-out views on the French riot and found a parallel world of extremist, right-wing opinions.
‘Cordon the place off, evacuate non-Muslims, and slaughter the rest like livestock.” This was a recent posting on Viking-Observer.blogspot.com, a Scandinavian web log page, in response to an article they carried on last week’s “Muslim riots” in Denmark, which they said were similar to the ones in France.
This posting was swiftly followed up by someone suggesting a “more workable solution”, which was to “cordon the place off, tear-gas the heck out of the place, and ship every identifiable rioter back to the third-world hellhole they or their parents originally came from”.
Another blogger claimed to have a “solution” vis-à-vis Denmark’s Muslim population: “Transportation. Arrange for a poor third-world country like Kirghizstan to set up a giant prison, funded by Denmark, to provide Muslim levels of care. I imagine that Danish immigrant crime would drop as fast as America’s did when we got serious about putting large numbers of our violent and unsocialised Africans in prison.”
Viking Observer first came to the attention of many people when it was mentioned by ex-Guardian journalist Melanie Phillips in one of her own blogs on her own web page (www.melaniephillips.com).
Phillips, once the very personification of bleeding-heart liberalism, now has a different world-view. She was dismayed that the UK media coverage of the French riots had “been sporadic and downplayed, and the disturbances have been portrayed as caused by deprivation and race. The fact that the rioters are Muslim has been mentioned, if at all, only in passing. But in Denmark, as Viking Observer has reported, Muslims have also been rioting for days in Arhus, apparently over the publication of cartoons satirising the Prophet.”
While neither Phillips nor Viking Observer have any control over individual contributions made at the end of a story, what is interesting is how bloggers concentrate around certain internet sites (whether right-wing or left-wing) and express themselves in a manner which no newspaper would countenance.
Web logs – more commonly known as “blogs” – started a few years ago to enable people to keep online diaries. They were (and still are, in many cases) tediously inane events, with people detailing the minutiae of their life for a global web audience.
More recently, and especially since the events of 9/11, they have increasingly become part of national and international debate. Anybody, anywhere with access to a computer can blog – you can use your blog for a personal attack, to preach racial hatred or merely to solve the world’s problems.
Bloggers have a potential worldwide audience of 900 million people. Blogs are hosted usually by Google, Yahoo or Microsoft.
Figures released by Google show that its www.blogger.com website (where people get it all off their chest – politically or otherwise) attracts 15 million visitors a month. To put that in perspective, this is more people than visit the web sites of the New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post combined.
It’s all a bit of a legal minefield, but basically Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are protected from any liability for anything posted on the blogs they host.
“We don’t get involved in adjudicating whether something is libel or slander,” Jason Goldman from Google’s blogging division has been quoted as saying.
Many commentators believe, with apologies to Tom Wolfe, that blogging is the “new journalism” – something which the politically motivated have been quick to exploit.
It is widely believed that political parties and lobbyists now give information to bloggers that wouldn’t be touched by orthodox media for reasons of taste and libel etc. It was bloggers who spread the falsehood that US politician John Kerry had a “secret girlfriend” during the 2004 primaries.
No blogger got sacked or sued for printing the lie.
Victims, like Kerry, of a damaging blog lie, can take defamation cases. But, as David Potts, a Canadian lawyer and world expert on so-called “cyberlibel”, says: “Filing a libel lawsuit, the way you would against a newspaper, is like using 18th century battlefield tactics to counter guerrilla warfare. You’ll accomplish nothing and just get more ridicule.”
Potts advises fighting back with your own blog.
What is most interesting about contemporary political blogging is how it aims to provide an alternative news service, free from what certain bloggers would call “the inherently lefty-liberal bias” of the traditional media (the BBC etc).
It’s almost as if John Berger had re-written his Ways Of Seeing book from a right-wing perspective.
This is evinced in how the Viking Observer covered the French riots story: “The Observer is the Sunday edition of the British left-wing paper, the Guardian, and for this Sunday the paper had opted to include a ‘Focus’ article on the riots. It opens up with victimology at full tilt, assuring us of the innocence of the two youths, then describing how they ran from police despite said innocence.
“We end up with the youths killing themselves when they choose to crawl over a two-metre wall adorned with scull and crossbones, to be electrocuted by the electricity substation behind the walls. The thing gets raised a notch more by the mention of the two devastated families.
“But during all the coverage of the riots, did you ever hear about Jean-Claude Irvoas? The same day that the two youths electrocuted themselves, Mr Irvoas (51) got out of his car to take a photo. Instead, he was set upon by three Arabs and beaten to death while his wife and daughter – both still in the car – could only look on in horror. Nobody rioted for him.”
The blog continues: “But that is not what angers me – that is the treatment the Observer chose to give him. After the victim-worship of the two youths in the top-three paragraphs of the article, Mr Irvoas is stashed in part of the second-last paragraph, but only as a pawn in an evil politicians’ plot to get ‘the intolerant right-wing vote’.
“What brings my blood to near-evaporation state is that neither he nor his family qualify as victims – they are ‘victims’ – hyphenated people who apparently had it coming since they weren’t black or Muslim.”
It was under this story that individual bloggers expressed their own sentiments, as quoted at the top of this article.
Whatever one’s particular take on the causes of the French riots and what action should be taken by the authorities, what is interesting in the blog coverage of the story is how both sides of the political blog divide accuse each other of “linguistic treason”. Some say “riots”, others say “actions of harassment by the police”; some say “delinquents”, others say “youths”; some say “police”, others say “provocateurs”.
It’s a media studies module in itself.
There’s a whole new world of reportage out there. It can be fiery, extremist and inflammatory, or it can be unshackled, uncensored and progressive depending on your own leanings or prejudices.
The words with which Labour politician Nye Bevan used to sign off his speeches seem apposite for the blog community: “This is my truth, now tell me yours.”
Finally able to blog again after a weekend of adventure and mishap. It was eventful to say the least. The server move is finally complete so I am expecting no more downtime for another while at least.