Fair and Balanced

'The Mail in Ireland will have to have a different slant as compared to the Mail in Britain'. Here my friend and I agreed and from there we discussed what kind of audience he might be writing for in his capacity working for the Daily Mail in Ireland.


For the past ten years and probably before, the Daily Mail has been serving up a diet of fear and loathing for the great British middle classes. Will Self wondered what effect Sars would have on property prices, because that is what Daily Mail readers want to know.

The arrival of the Daily Mail in Ireland has been prepared over a period of a few years. While other papers such as the Dublin Daily News came in and went in and out of business, Associated Press through its Irish arm- Ireland on Sunday- recruited either soon to be unemployed journalists or underpaid journalists.

It is one of the only media outlets that offers journalists a genuine career path hence the good stories from good professionals. While Michael O' Farrell of the Irish Examiner gave much coverage to the GAMA strike, he is one of several journalists to defect to AP succumbing to the allure of a decent career.

The Evening Herald sent a rookie reporter to cover the 2003 wedding in the Mansion House of the two homeless punks Joe and Joanne Neeson. The breaking story made the front pages and tv screens of the national broadcasters. This was followed up by an interview on Eamon Dunphy's Friday night chat show.

The Ireland on Sunday sent a squad of hacks to follow Joe and Joanne around for weeks in Ireland and her family in Manchester until they discovered the Jo did not invite her parents to the wedding. They delivered a splash on this scoop. The story sums up the mean nature of the leading lights in the AP empire. While some papers and yes the lazy journalists gave emphasis to the quirky nature of the wedding, the Mail's hack set out to destroy the good will the original story of two rough sleepers marriage in the Mansion House brought.

It is a case example of the motivations and mindset inside a paper whose history is littered with unsavioury connections including the Mosley fascists in the 1930s, while its screaming headlines aim to ram the Irish government into closing its borders to immigrants and to force existing migrant to speak English and abandon their own cultures if they wish to live here.

Yet the Daily Mail in the 1930s was the only British paper to openly support the German Nazi's while Lord Rothermere considered Hitler and Mussolini to be his friends. It considers itself to be anti- European, anti- immigrant, anti- abortion and pro- family (whatever that means), pro- church, pro- tax cuts.

The Mails front page expose of Stephen Lawrence murderers 'Murderers- if we are wrong let them sue' was shortlisted to one of the five most influential headlines of the 20th century, indicating its role as crucial opinion former.

This lays the basis for the next article in response to the coterie of right wingers employed as opinion formers in right wing newspapers that dominate the media landscape but profess to be a minority in a left wing dominated profession

Paranoia continued

Disembarking from the flight to Riga, my first reflections concerned the composition of those other passengers. Although the flight was full, there were not many other Irish on it, if any at all.

That night I went in search of a good bar where I might get chatting to some locals but unlike Latvians in Dublin there was no need or compulsion for them to learn or attempt English. This language difficulty in Riga set the tone for my whole trip.

However in Latvia, there was the familiarity of places like Ennis, Mayo and Dundalk, whereas in Russia and Ukraine I had to explain the physical location of Ireland a number of times.

Riga is a charming city that escaped much of the destruction of World War two and while appearing like many other European cities, I was pleasantly surprised with a good night out. It is underexplored as compared to stag night disco cities such as Prague and Talinn. Riga is at least on a Monday night a city for locals in the main.

I found a nightclub with a decent crowd in dancing to local pop music. The pleasant surprise was that the young people danced a waltz to the music. This was no 1950s ballroom but downtown in amongst the Riga hotspots. Given the waltzing combined with my lack of Russian and Latvian, dancing with an attractive local beat any conversation in recent months. So it was that I spent the night dancing cheek to cheek falling in and out of love by 3am closing time.

On the train the next day to St Petersburg, I had cause to reflect on the momentus journey I was embarking on. The train was at least fifty years old. Possibly in the last one hundred years, there were only two generations of trains. How many people had clandestinely travelled in and out of Russia in the last one hundred years?

James Connolly's son Roddy on his way to the first congress of the third International or perhaps John S Clarke the Scottish Parliamentarian, Poet and Lion tamer who gave a cure for Lenin's dog at the same congress. How many officials recalled back to Russia for 'discussion' from the front in the Spanish civil war or dissidents in the years up to 1989 travelled this route? No doubt amongst the ordinary passengers over the years, political revolutionaries lurked in the cabins of this and previous trains on this route.

Certainly my attitude was shaped by my understanding of Russia and also by advice from activists in Moscow 'that with the G8 Summit, we just don't know what the state will do'. So in anticipation of linking up with members of our sister party in Russia, I brought some copies of 'The Socialist' from Ireland, for their benefit.

Aware that the soldiers at the border checkpoint might search my bags, though I had thought this unlikely, I separated out any political literature in my bags to the cabin which would be overhead the door where the inspector would stand. Just because I was paranoid, it didn't mean they weren't looking at me. So at the border checkpoint my fears were confirmed. They carried out a thorough search of my bags and rucksack. Luckily there would be no questioning as I had removed any questionable i.e. political, material from the area.

As the train progressed away from the Latvian- Russian border I stepped up on the seat and replaced political newspapers back in my luggage knowing that now I was safe. I arrived in St Petersburg and was greeted by the Secretary of Socialist Resistance (CWI- Russia) who stated that we would have to wait at the station for a further while as the member he had travelled with had been called in for questioning (see previous report on Social Forum). We waited and chatted informally over a beer outside the station. When he was satisfied that there would be no further interuptions to our travels, he negotiated with a a private taxi to take us to Kiro Stadium.

On leaving the Russian Social Forum, a number of journalists from western press asked our group why we were leaving and one persistent US reporter for Associated Press Agency, Jim Heintz asked if he could ask a few more questions. We were making a quick exit from the stadium as some of the activists at the forum had decided on attempting a futile gesture at protesting.

We were keen to make our quick exit to avoid a pointless beating and arrest, so one member brushed Mr Heintz off with 'we late for our train' but he said that he would walk and talk with us.

In the course of the interview, I stated that the forum had been a very interesting experience in that I now realised that Russia was not only a dictatorship but a crazy dictatorship. I was referring to the disproportionate police activity in relation to the Social Forum which was attended by only 500 people, yet at least 3,000 police were involved in surveillance.

The next day in an internet cafe in Moscow, I found that I had been quoted in the Washington Post and other major newspapers. The Russian state's media monitoring unit would no doubt have cut out the artice for record given its content. After checking my email and indulging in a bit of pointless net surfing, forty minutes after being logged in, two police officers entered the cafe.

They walked around and definitely did not appear to be on the lunch break in order to indulge in their own personal interests. These men looked like they had a mission. They took glances at a number of computers. Thinking they could have been looking for me, I rose slowly my face flushed and made an exit out of the cafe having closed down all pages.

I swiftly walked and jogged to a safe distance cursing myself for paranoia at the same time advising myself of the need for that safe distance before sitting in an outdoor cafe drinking an expensive but soothing beer.

Pictures from Russia

This is me with some young activists in Yaroslavl, outside the building where they hold their Friday night film club.














This is the Kremlin as seen from the quay along the Moscow river.














Oh yeah, I met Ms Latvia (Lena) and Ms Norway (Donna) in the bar across the road from my hostel. How could I not put this picture up on the blog.















The famous Potemkin steps in Odessa as seen in the 1926 film 'The Battleship Potemkin' by Sergei Eisenstein.














A scene from the display at the Military museum in Victory Park, Moscow. The picture marks the Russian victory at Stalingrad. Note the disconsolate German soldier at the bottom of the picture. The picture in the museum is 150ft high and 150ft wide and appears in a 3-d format. It was only possible to photograph one section of this display.















A monument at Kiev Military Museum, to those who fought and died in World War Two.














A scene from the crucial Battle of the Kursk on display at Moscow Military Museum.














Mig jets on display at Moscow Military Museum. The Mig flies at 2500km/hr.















Drinking on the street is very normal in Russia and Ukraine. This is Slava opening my bottle.
















An atomic bomb transporter on display in Kiev's Military Museum.















Here I am pictured with the waitress from the Moscow to Kiev train. The man in the picture became a good vodka drinking buddy for a few minutes, hours - I don't know how long, but he seemed nice enough as did my other new friends made on this journey, thanks to vodka.
















Rocket launcher displayed at the outdoor museum at Victory Park, Moscow.














Pictured here are some captured German tanks on display now at Victory Park, Moscow.















Here, I am standing at the edge of the river Volga in Yaroslavl.














A monument built at the end of World War Two to symbolise unity between nations.













Lubianka- KGB/ KSB Headquarters. This building has seen thousands of miserable deaths from before the 1930s purges to recent times.













A scene from the Moscow metro. 4million of the city's 10m people use the metro every day. Trains come every minute.

Democracy in Putin's Russia

The contrast between the protests at the G8 in Edinburgh 2005 and in St Petersburg 2006 could not be more stark. Last year we saw New Labour government ministers turning up at Live8 protests and concerts. This year 1billion Euro has been spent on all aspect of the G8 conference including a very significant security budget.

Protests have been banned. People attending the counter summit have been blockaded into the Kirov Stadium isolated in the west section of the city. Possibly out of spite on the part of authorities, protesters were not able to bring any drink to their own event and all bars in a two mile radius were closed.

Opposition activists had made epic journeys to attend the event from all parts of Russia. I met with the secretary of the Irish Socialist Party's sister organisation at Moscow railway station in St Petersburg. The member he had been travelling with had been called in for questioning. The Russian Social Forum was blockaded into the 50,000 capacity Kirov stadium on the shores of the Gulf of Finland.

Participants had to walk through metal detactor checkpoint to enter the crumbling stadium. There were at least ten police at the checkpoint at all times and others at various points surrounding the stadium. They were armed with cuffs, batons, guns and even grenades. Also on 24 hour patrol at the stadium were the riot police Oxrana who mingled with what were obviously plainclothes police.

Meanwhile, helicopters swooped over the city's glittering domes and spires and frogmen in camouflage dove below boats and hydrofoils plying the nearby Gulf of Finland. Cruises on the city's winding canals and rivers — a popular tourist activity — are banned for the duration of the summit, and the airport was closed to commercial flights for the same period. Even the park where the stadium lies is under tight rein. A complex of amusement rides was shut down through Monday and nearby kiosks and game booths were idle.

St. Petersburg Mayor Valentina Matviyenko made an unexpected visit to the stadium Friday, and characterized the decision to make it available to protesters as a sign of "hospitality." However all marches and demonstrations were banned. No water was available to purchase within two miles as all bars and kiosks were closed.

Ten members of the Socialist Party's sister organisation who had attempted to make the journey to the Social Forum were stopped various points in their journey. Sergie Kozlovski eventually made it from the city of Yaroslavl, 250km north of Moscow, after being arrested five times. Police called to his house before the event and warned him not to go to St Petersburg. Noting his determination they order him off the train and last Wednesday after one hour of discussion. They told him if he stayed on the train the police at the other end would have 'something on him' indicating their willingness to plant offending articles with him.

He got off the train and once he was out of sight he bought a bus ticket to the city of Tver. At Tver he took another chance to get a train ticket as there was a train due. Having successfully boarded the train he sent and SMS message to his comrades declaring he had made it. At the next station he was hauled off the train again. This is an indication that his mobile phone was tapped and his SMS messages monitored.

Another young female member of the Yaroslavl branch was not attending and had no intention of heading to St Petersburg. Nevertheless she was also called in for questioning and in the course of discussion told 'not to do anything wrong'. After that she went to visit her boyfriend in Moscow. Waking up the next day in the boyfriends flat, she found a policeman standing in the kitchen. Obviously used to this sort of surveillance she made him breakfast and he complained that his boss had phoned him at 4am ordering him to go to Moscow to make sure 'she did not do anything wrong'.

Victoria Gromova and Natalia Zvyagina (members from Voronezh) were observing, in their capacity as legal advisers, a demonstration against nuclear waste dumping were arrested and have court cases pending. Several other members of the organisation and dozens more from other organisations including the Other Russia forum convened by Garry Kasparov were harrassed by state forces in the run up to and during G8.

About 800 did register at the Russian Social Forum overall including a number of foreign nationals. They included car workers from Lada and Ford in Samara and Moscow who intend to organise an independent trade union in the plants which employ over 100,000 workers. Also there in significant numbers were organisers of various housing campaigns from Moscow, St Petersburg, Yaroslavl and Perm, which is in the Urals. Under the former Soviet Union, large hostels were built to accommodate workers waiting for accommodation. Now with accommodation being in private ownership the hostel rooms have become home. The developers want to sell them off without making provision for alternative accommodation for thousands of potentially homeless people.

Activists faced further harrassment on the way to their home towns. I spoke to a young doctor from the Ural city of Kirov was forced to pay St Petersburg police a bribe in order to get released before making his 22 hour train journey home. Doctors and other professionals in Russia are paid on average $400 a month. While only 800 attended the forum, police harrassment of activists affected the attendence.

An Irish Racist Party?

One day, one month, one year- how long is it before we see the creation of the Irish National Party? The roots for the basis of an Irish fascist party has been thin for many years. It was not a feature nor a requirement of any section in Ireland. Of course the far left has kept watch on the attempts by people such as David Irving to come and speak in this country. For your information, the historian Irving is now in a Viennese jail on account of his holocaust denial.

Interestingly the watchguards of the Irish anti-fascism AFA have disappeared off the radar. This group formed in the late 1970s to fight fascist trends in Ulster loyalism and the National Front and later were seen disrupting student society meetings where David Irving attempted to speak. Meticulous in their intelligence research on fascist attempts to source a base group in Ireland over they years, they have been like the passenger waiting for a bus for so long that they have given up.

This week the case of the Afghan asylum seekers has polarised public opinion into hostile camps of activists in the small minority and hardened opponents of the asylum seekers in the other. The supporters of the hunger strikers never successfully managed to persuade public opinion that it was either a case of being with Mc Dowell or being against him. This might have been a popular axiom in which to judge the mood.

It turned out that Phil Flynn had not been invited by Bertie Ahern but by Rosanna Flynn as mediator. What a spectacular comeback that would have been for Flynn if he had have resolved the cases of the two big stories of the week, the other being the train drivers dispute. However Bertie's man is not Flynn as suspected but it is Mc Dowell. Those in support of the Minister will be impressed as it has all ended well, whereas the prevailing mood in the last week is that the issue was messy and would end in a mess.

Afterall isn't everything a mess in this country. Our schools are a mess as parents are left camping out for days in tents in a queue for school places just nine miles north of Dublin, while elsewhere schools are closing for lack of numbers. Our health service is a mess. The minister said so when declaring a national emergency. Our transport system is a mess with late trains, buses and cars stuck in gridlock traffic. All very messy. Yet there was something smoothly judicious in how the hunger strike ended.

Gardai secured the area and unlocked the doors and took the men out. No one died and no one was harmed and the government did not give in. The result is that there will be no hunger strikes again by any asylum seekers in Ireland. They all now know that the government have a way of dealing with this method of protest. Asylum seekers wishing to engage in protest are going to have to find other ways. The church, mosque or cathedrals are no longer places of sanctuary in Ireland. What that means theologically is a matter for the churches themselves.

This week was a watershed in Irish politics as it is the first time that racism has been cogently organised into something reflecting more than just the bizarre opinions of a select few. As well as the counter protesters there were random passersby who would exercise their vocal chords hurling abuse at the hunger strike supporters.

Unlike the Kunle case and others in Athlone and Monaghan, there was not widespread public support for the Afghan asylum seekers. Unlike Kunle and others there could even be said that there was more a mood of suspicion than compassion. Recently the BNP had a double page spread on Ireland. It was not about how racially inferior we are but it was a penned piece by their Dublin correspondent evaluating the political scene in Ireland.

The theme of the article was the need for the building of an Irish National Party. They lumped Sinn Fein in with other left and centre parties of the establishment. The formation of an Irish National Party will draw its support from socially excluded elements. Marx called them lumpen proletariat while Jack London called them 'People of the abyss'. Others call them chavs and knacker scum.

At the protest yesterday there was a face I recognised holding up a placard reading 'Send them home'. The standard bearer is a chronic homeless alcoholic who holds me in regard as I made countless attempts to assist him into accommodation and off the drink. These elements were also evident in protest against the 'Love Ulster' march. Not if there is an Irish National Party but when and who will organise them. The picture is ugly and it follows declining turn out and alienation, the bowling alone phenomenon.

Social partnership and social quiescence will be ripped apart in the next period but it is more likely that reactionary and racist politics will feature more prominently rather than the politics of the left. It isn't about personalities, it is history unfolding. What is to be done?

I was robbed!!!

It is quite some time since my last blog. About ten stories enter and leave the other side of my head each day on average. There is for example the interesting disussion on BBC5Live at the moment where the commentator reads out a text. The texter wonders why it is that prisoners get paid for cleaning and doing menial jobs while in custody yet a prisoner who engages in education while in custody receives nothing.

It is quite easy to rant and rave about any subject but there is so much to say and not the space to say it and in the case of a blog, possibly no one to read. All this leads to frustration. One thinks of the bus drive rampage on the Naas Dual Carriageway last Sunday week. While I have sympathy for the family and to the numerous drivers who have had their cars damaged - I will return to this matter shortly- one has to wonder what provoked the former employee of a private bus company to steal a bus and engage in his own version of Speed.

It is great to be working again as it is allowing me to pay for those normal every month expenses out on theft. Last month it was 335 for a new bike following the theft of my bike of the same model. This month it is 1,000euro for crash repairs further to the Nike imprints placed in my now dented Daewoo Nubira.

Since returning to my car and unburdening myself with the disgust, I have encountered quite a casual attitude towards insurance. If only it was so but it is the case that the damage done to my car by vandals in an attempted theft means that it is not the insurance company who takes care of the vehicle. It is the owner of the car. My insurance last year at 1360Euro is threatened with losing its existing no claims bonus of 19% if I claim, and with a further 40% load on top of the standard price. It is cheaper for me to pay out direct.

While I am being drawn towards the hang em and flog em brigade on account of my 5 bicycle thefts, the graffiti outside my apartment block and the 6 repeated thefts of my previous car and the current situation with my present car, retribution of society must also find its way to the insurance companies.

What is the point of insurance if the result of vandalism and theft is that neither the criminal nor the insurance company pays out but the policy holder. This process demonstrates what exists is a fraud. If one does not have their car insured they are fined. This legislation calls into question the legitimacy of insurance companies operation in the field of car insurance.

Public transport conversation

Some reasons for investment in our public transport system:


1. After a Mayo - Dublin gaelic football match at parnell park, we all headed to the bus stop to catch the bus into town. There was a large crowd waiting at the bus stop. The bus pulled up, and there seemed to be a lot of empty seats upstairs, but people getting on the bus just crowded around the driver and the bottom of the stairs. The driver yelled, "I'm not taking any more passengers!" and the bus pulled away. A Dub behind me said "bleedin cultcies, they don't even know there is an upstairs on the buses!"


2. On the bus this morning, a very irate old lady was telling her friend that her sister was staying with her for a few weeks after she had an operation......

Old Lady : "jaysus, I'm like her bleedin' maid, doin' everythin' for her"

Friend : "She sounds like she's treatin ya like an escaped goat"


3. I was getting off the bus one day and I thanked the bus driver as he was letting me off and he replies, "It's alright, I was going this way anyway".
Cheeky b**tard.

4.
I was on the LUAS listening to two young ones talking about their dogs.

'Me dog is a jack russel and he's a little f****r! He bit me on da bleedin' finger once! I wish i had a bleedin' nice dog.'

Her friend replied,

'Do ya know what dog is lovely? That one outta the bleedin' paint add. Eh...what's that dog called...oh yeah...the Durex dog!'

5.
On a bus two teenage girls, one Dub and one American, are observing a boy skate-boarding along.

American Girl: "...we call them side-walks, what do you call them?"
Dub Girl: "Paths"

"...we call them skaters, what do you call them?"
"Feckin Gobshites"

www.overheardindublin.com