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What you want to say – 15 July 2020 July 15, 2020

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. Pangurbán - July 15, 2020

Neasa hourican is on Sarah Carey saying the Apple decision is a good day for Ireland

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Joe - July 15, 2020

Wrap the green jersey ’round me boys.

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WorldbyStorm - July 15, 2020

I didn’t expect that ruling tbh.

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ar scáth a chéile - July 15, 2020

how does she figure that ?

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Wiki Man Dave - July 15, 2020

Yes what is the reasoning?

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CL - July 15, 2020

What’s good for Apple is good for Ireland; Ireland’s economic model is based on attracting inward investment from MNCs.
The ruling means that Ireland remains a safe haven for all kinds of capital.

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CL - July 15, 2020

There’s been some discussion recently about altering the Irish flag to accommodate broader interests; the FT displays a possible alternative here with the tri-colour incorporating the Apple logo.

“The ruling hands a big legal victory to Apple and reduces the prospect of opening up other low-tax arrangements for multinationals around the EU to state aid scrutiny by Brussels. …
The case is highly sensitive for Ireland, a global hub for hundreds of multinationals attracted by its low 12.5 per cent corporate tax rate and EU market access. 
With the country in sharp recession due to coronavirus, a negative ruling from the EU’s general court in Luxembourg would have been a big setback to a newly installed government that is struggling to overcome the health and economic challenges posed by Covid-19….

There was anxiety in Dublin that a negative decision from the Luxembourg court would further undermine tax certainty, by potentially opening up other Irish multinational tax rulings to state aid scrutiny by Brussels.”
https://www.ft.com/content/1c38fdc1-c4b3-4835-919d-df51698f18c4

The decision affirms the role of Ireland’s ruling class as a loyal friend to corporate capitalist power. It will have a knock-on, encouraging effect on vulture funds and other exploiters, affecting detrimentally efforts to solve Ireland’s housing and health care crises.

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2. tafkaGW - July 15, 2020

Feck.

Now it has to go the upper European court with another couple of years for Apple, assisted by the government of the RoI, to continue to perform daylight robbery on the people of Europe.

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tafkaGW - July 15, 2020

BTW – this is all over the German papers. Half of the time the RoI makes the front page here, it has to do with facilitating corporate tax theft from Europe.

Not a good look, even in the limited view of the government, you would think. But I guess they go where their masters drive them.

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3. Paddy Healy - July 15, 2020

AS Number of New Covid Cases rises
Experts Seek immediate and Decisive Action to Crush Virus Here
Irish Examiner, Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Eoin English and Daniel McConnell
Several leading public health, science and medical experts have urged the Government to take ‘immediate and decisive’ action to crush the coronavirus here.
Several leading public health, science and medical experts have urged the Government to take “immediate and decisive” action to crush the coronavirus here amid fears the country is facing a second wave of Covid-19.
Their call for a Zero-Covid Island status comes ahead of today’s Cabinet meeting which will consider advice from NPHET in advance of phase 4 of the easing of Covid-19 restrictions next Monday.
The reopening of pubs is in doubt after senior government ministers expressed serious doubt last night that the country will move to phase 4, indicating that the Cabinet will adopt a “very cautious” approach.
They told the Irish Examiner that an increase in the reproduction rate of the coronavirus in recent days, tied to concerns about large public gatherings, are “weighing heavily on minds”.
In their joint statement last night, the health experts set out a suite of measures they say the government should introduce to crush the virus.
“Unless we take action, at best we will have reduced economic activity and continuing disruption to our lives because of social distancing, and at worst a second surge of infections,” they said.
“Israel shows us how bad this can get. We can instead choose to follow New Zealand, to control Covid-19, drive it to zero, and open back up. It’s really our choice.
“A Zero-Covid Island is our only viable exit strategy from the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic, which may otherwise last for years or indefinitely.”
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) reported 32 confirmed cases of Covid-19 yesterday – the single highest daily figure since June 13. No new deaths were reported.
Ryanair has urged the government to remove all travel restrictions between Ireland and the EU, and said it plans to cancel up to 1,000 flights between Ireland and the UK during August and September because of the ongoing travel restrictions. That decision would cut by 200,000 the number of passengers going through Cork, Shannon, Knock and Kerry airports, the airline said.
But travel restrictions must be part of the Zero-Covid strategy, the experts said.
In a statement signed by experts including Dr Claire Buckley, of UCC’s School of Public Health, Prof Patrick Cunningham, former chief scientific advisor to the government, Prof Sam McConkey, president of the Infectious Disease Society of Ireland, Prof of Public Health, Ivan Perry, of UCC, Dr Tomás Ryan, Associate Professor at Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, and independent international experts, including Prof Gabriel Scally, Prof Martin McKee, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Prof Michael Baker, Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago, in Wellington, New Zealand, they urged the government to take a strategic decision to deliberately push towards a Zero-Covid island.

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WorldbyStorm - July 15, 2020

I think that’s a pretty sensible approach actually. International travel is a dead duck for quite some time. And if there’s any hope of a real reopening of the economy and the society (which are not quite the same things) then it is essential to minimise to zero the numbers of cases.

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tafkaGW - July 15, 2020

A ‘Covid-free island’ would be a great thing.

Unfortunately said island is divided into two jurisdictions, with open borders between the two and an open border between NI and the island to the east.

Furthermore one of the jurisdictions is ‘very relaxed’ about continuing to kill off large numbers of people living there.

An invidious situation.

But at least air travel in and out should be stopped apart from emergency cases. The planet as well as our health demands it.

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CL - July 15, 2020

Free movement of people between the ‘two islands’ will cause unnecessary deaths in the one to the west.

” In one of the world’s worst affected countries, much of the focus has been on government mismanagement. Johnson’s inexperienced cabinet, selected for fealty to Brexit over anything else, has proved inept and out of its depth. With the Downing Street inner circle dominated by hardliners of the Vote Leave campaign, the response to the crisis was botched and negligently slow—the Brexit preoccupation diverting resources from pandemic planning…..
But the serial mismanagement of the crisis, as disastrous as it’s been, conceals a deeper failing, one driven by ideology….
Britain’s public health sector, a cash-strapped, eroded, but functioning network comprising the National Health Service (NHS), general-practice clinics, and local authority health officials, has been repeatedly sidelined in favor of outsourced alternatives…
Early in the pandemic, the WHO chief, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had said, “Our key message is: test, test, test”—but Britain did not heed this advice….
Coupled with rolling back the welfare state through a handout of pandemic contracts to the private sector, this bonfire of regulations represents an extension of Thatcherism, a chance to finish what she started….
as one Scottish National Party member gloomily predicted in Parliament in early June: “It’s going to be misery heaped on misery as Covid and Brexit appear like the twin horsemen of the economic apocalypse, trampling over any prospect of a recovery.”
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/07/08/the-pro-privatization-shock-therapy-of-the-uks-covid-response/

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Joe - July 15, 2020

The Common Travel Area between the UK and the RoI. A sensible and mutually beneficial arrangement down the years. Very few people in Ireland, afaik, ever objected to it or thought it wasn’t a good idea.
Time for a re-evaluation now?

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tafkaGW - July 15, 2020

Certainly for the duration of the Covid19 pandemic if there continues to be such a marked difference in

a) government competence or even interest in dealing with the virus
b) the rate of infection

I hope the the UK does not appear on the green list of countries with unrestricted travel simply because of the Common Travel Area.

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Joe - July 15, 2020

How do we deal with the land border though?

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WorldbyStorm - July 15, 2020

So far infections cross border appear not to be a significant issue – and of course like Scotland Wales, NI has a different regime to England measures wise so perhaps just perhaps it’s not a massive problem

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CL - July 15, 2020

“We are experiencing the sharpest decline in per capita income since 1870.
Between 70 and 100 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty.
Some 265 million people could face acute food insecurity by year’s end – double the number at risk before the crisis.
And the impacts of this pandemic are falling disproportionately on the most vulnerable.
At a time when we desperately need to leap ahead, COVID-19 could set us back years and even decades, leaving countries with massive fiscal and growth challenges.”-António Guterres,
Secretary-General of the United Nations.
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2020-07-14/remarks-ministerial-segment-of-hlpf-sustainable-development-and-high-level-segment-of-ecosoc

“Tentative signs of recovery in Ireland’s economy means it is likely to shrink by 9% this year if further stringent measures to contain the coronavirus are avoided but almost 14% if they are reimposed, the country’s central bank said on Friday.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ireland-economy-cenbank/irish-2020-gdp-may-fall-by-14-in-virus-second-wave-central-bank-idUSKBN2433FD

Without a massive redistribution of income everywhere what is the likely political outcome of this devastation?

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4. tafkaGW - July 15, 2020

The ‘centre-right’ (i.e. extremist neolib and cut from the same cloth as the greenwashed Fx govt. in the RoI) government of Greece is taking a more definite line on the 6000 UK tourists about to descend on them:

The leading Greek daily, Protothema, wrote:

The result of the mass testing … will determine if Greek borders remain open or not to Britain. If the number and percentage of those found to be positive is low, and is limited to less than 30 to 40 cases, then with constant inspections and epidemiological oversight, the British tourist market will remain open.

If not the centre right government would not hesitate to shut the borders again “calculating that the cost of the risk of the coronavirus spreading is much more important than any benefits to tourism in a year that is considered largely lost.”

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WorldbyStorm - July 15, 2020

Here’s a telling one. The Irish Times Coronavirus podcast, which to my ears was far too much ‘woe is us, the awful lockdown’ is ending today… just as other places are going back into lockdown. The drumbeat from the IT regarding the ‘need’ to ‘go back to normal’ is quite something.

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tafkaGW - July 16, 2020

I’m sure that the ‘paper of record’s advertisers are making it quite clear to the editorial staff that this can’t go on.

Profits are evaporating, don’t you know.

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WorldbyStorm - July 16, 2020

That’s all too likely to be the case.

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EWI - July 16, 2020

Look at the ‘special features’ (both State commissions and advertorials on behalf of the likes of the Chamber of Commerce) and the property section for who pays that particular piper for the more far-right FG elements.

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5. Pangurbán - July 15, 2020

The full ECJ judgement at this link, a bit of a head wrecker, but some interesting observations at 349, 479, and 507,

The commission did not exceed its competence

Some of the decisions of the Irish tax authorities are described as “regrettable” not a phrase lightly used by courts

Commission failed to prove to an adequate standard

Hmmm

“ Beidh lá eile ag an bpaorach” nó ag an coimisiún?

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=17848B4F05F6F576A01490903E481AC8?text=&docid=228621&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=9709252

T

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6. Alibaba - July 15, 2020

Promotions for Dara Calleary, Jack Chambers and Seán Fleming have one thing in common: more jobs for the boys.

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sonofstan - July 15, 2020

Toe-curling piece on Drivetime from Ballina about how ‘proud’ Mayo was that they now had a minister, and how the taoiseach would be welcome after all. I can’t believe this is anything other than a semi-fiction that RTE collude in.

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WorldbyStorm - July 16, 2020

That’s an interesting dynamic you point to. I find it difficult to believe as well.

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Fergal - July 16, 2020

Snap… it was dreadful stuff… I mean fuck it here’s a place that had a Taoiseach for five or six years!!!

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WorldbyStorm - July 16, 2020

Incredible that that just went down the memory hole on the part of RTÉ. I mean you got to wonder.

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7. Tomboktu - July 16, 2020

Boy, doesn’t Stephen Donnelly patronise us when he’s on the radio talking about the response to Covid.

“We’re doing very well” <head pat>.

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Fergal - July 16, 2020

Heard this too! Somebody must have told Donnelly that you’re so smart but remember to to give the great unwashed a compliment every now and then

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WorldbyStorm - July 16, 2020

+1

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tafkaGW - July 16, 2020

Ah Irish ‘talk radio’. Do I miss it?

Not in the slightest.

In fact the only time I’ve tuned in to RTE from foreign climes has been during the election and attempting to catch the odd sports commentary. Usually without success.

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8. Joe - July 16, 2020

Been trying to find the exchange we had on Orange parades and stuff. I see Newton Emerson has a piece on all that in today’s IT. Behind a paywall but worth the €2.30 I’d say…

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9. sonofstan - July 16, 2020

“Rent increases and evictions ban extension draws ire from property owners”

Because no one who reads the IT could possibly be a renter.

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10. Alibaba - July 17, 2020

Here comes Imelda May’s new poem:  You Don’t Get To Be Racist And Irish

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0605/1145651-you-dont-get-to-be-racist-and-irish-imelda-mays-stunning-poem/

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11. Paddy Healy - July 17, 2020

NOW IS THE TIME TO SET UP NEW MAJOR STATE-OWNED MODERN INDUSTRIES in IRELAND!
Proposing to Significantly INCREASE TAX on MULTINATIONAL PROFITS AS A “STAND ALONE” PROPOSAL TO FUND PUBLIC SERVICES PLAYS into the HANDS of GOVERNMENT. Workers in Multinational companies would be driven to support FF/FG
The Government Merely Replies that to Increase Corporation Profits Tax Would Lead to The Departure of Multinational companies and the loss of huge numbers of Jobs. Revenue from PAYE would decrease and spending on social welfare would increase.
THAT IS TRUE unless the change took place in a planned way and Replacement Jobs were Provided by the State. Otherwise, workers in these companies and small businesses dependant on their buying power would be alienated and driven to support the government and the multi-nationals.
Successive governments have made the Irish people grossly dependent on international multinational companies located here. This has placed the Irish people in grave danger and has eliminated all economic sovereignty

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12. Tomboktu - July 17, 2020

The Department of Enterprise etc building at 23 Kildare Street was the first major government building constructed after independence.

https://dbei.gov.ie/en/News-And-Events/Department-News/2017/October/13102017b.html

The architect was a JR Boyd Barrett. Question: was he any relation?

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13. Paddy Healy - July 18, 2020

No Emigration “Safety Valve” from coming recession!
“Socially, since the Famine, emigration drained the young and those most likely to be belligerent away. This time there will be no emigration. Covid is a cordon around the island. That makes for a political pressure cooker with no safety valve.”-Irish Examiner, 18/07/2020

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14. CL - July 18, 2020

A view from the right;

“This is what the revolution looks like….
the revolution is winning. The 1960s never ended, they just paved the way for today.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-revolution-is-winning/

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15. Paddy Healy - July 18, 2020

Use of Shannon “Transit Point” is crucial to US Military Operations- John Bolton Former US Security Adviser to Trump

Bolton is aware of the role Shannon Airport plays in US military adventures. He says he has stopped in Shannon about eight times during the Trump presidency, meeting American troops who were passing through. He sees the controversial arrangement as an important element of the US-Irish relationship.
“I think it is important because time and distance are critical factors in any kind of military operation and to be able to use it as a transit point is critical.”
He also believes that Ireland has benefitted from NATO, at very little cost. “I mean the defence of the West during the cold war, against the Soviet threat in particular. I think it’s worth Ireland considering the benefits it gets from NATO without being a member”.
“Nobody begrudges the benefits that fall to Ireland” from NATO, says Bolton, but adds portentously: “I hope that it’s appreciated”. Suzanne Lynch, Irish Times 11/07/2020

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16. Joe - July 18, 2020

Sounds good from the UN Sec Gen.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/18/un-chief-slams-myths-delusions-and-falsehoods-around-inequality

He said the pandemic was exposing “fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all. The fiction that unpaid care work is not work, the delusion that we live in a post-racist world, the myth that we are all in the same boat.”

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17. EWI - July 18, 2020

For days, federal agents in unmarked cars have reportedly been snatching Portland protesters off the streets. On Thursday, video emerged of federal agents clad in camouflage fatigues and unspecified “police” patches apprehending one such demonstrator and placing him in an unmarked vehicle. Social media lit up with speculation about the intentions—and the identity—of these agents. A memo consisting of internal talking points for the federal agency responsible for the arrest, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and obtained exclusively by The Nation provides some answers—and raises even more questions.

The deliberate corruption of the State and use of extralegal force is one of the hallmarks of a move towards fascist dictatorship. The Trump regime now have several ‘federal’ police forces – and not just the notoriously brutal ICE – operating outside the law in various American cities. What happens in November if Trump decides that he doesn’t want to be removed from office?

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/border-patrol-portland-arrest/

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EWI - July 18, 2020

(The irony that all these nakedly political anti-immigrant police forces, funded to the gills by Obama and the Democrats in past years, have now been turned loose on internal dissenters shouldn’t be lost on anyone)

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CL - July 18, 2020

“Under the direction of the Trump administration, militarized federal agents have flaunted court orders protecting the rights of protesters, used sharpshooters to deliberately maim people, and deployed indiscriminate weapons of war — including sonic weapons and dangerous tear gas formulations.”
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-federal-response-portland-protests

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sonofstan - July 18, 2020

Mayor of Portland and Governor of Oregon both demanding federal agents be withdrawn, the state’s attorney general filing suit agaist Trump.

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WorldbyStorm - July 19, 2020

It’s COINTELPRO stuff genuinely scary

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CL - July 19, 2020

COINTELPRO was mostly a covert, infiltration operation,-with the occasional ‘extrajudicial’ execution.
The use of federal troops in Oregon is an open policy response of the Trump admin. to the unrest.

“Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf continued to denounce protests in Portland on Friday morning,….
Earlier in the day, he posted multiple photos of uniformed officers with a caption commending them for their service. It read, “Our men and women in uniform are patriots. We will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch.”….

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden gave his rebuttal shortly after Wolf’s tweet to the Associated Press. In tweets of his own, Wyden said the protection of Americans is not this administration’s priority.
“Paramilitary assaults at the direction of Donald Trump and Chad Wolf are nothing more than a catalyst for violence. This administration has no real interest in protecting Americans. Our country needs lasting, peaceful solutions that bubble up from the community,” Wyden wrote.
https://www.koin.com/news/protests/dhs-chief-will-never-surrender-to-violent-extremists-in-portland/

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CL - July 19, 2020

“Wolf oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose responsibilities you’d think he might be preoccupied with during a global pandemic. But Wolf works for a man whose strategy is to ignore mounting death tolls in favor of attacking the political left. So for July 4, with COVID-19 cases skyrocketing, Wolf wrote a piece in the conservative Federalist decrying the “violent mob” targeting statues of George Washington, one of America’s “exceptionally virtuous” Founding Fathers. It read like inane right-wing virtue signaling, except that it was written by an acting Cabinet secretary on a day when 589 Americans died from COVID-19.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/how-chad-wolf-became-donald-trumps-new-made-for-tv-enforcer/

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CL - July 19, 2020

-Trump declined to say whether he would accept the results of the November presidential election. “I have to see,” he said. “I’m not just going to say yes.”-
https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/

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CL - July 20, 2020

President Trump on Monday signaled he may order federal agents to be deployed to Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia and other major cities as he threatens to crack down further on unrest across the country…..

Trump… argued that federal agents in Portland had done a “fantastic job” and claimed the Democratic leaders in the cities he named were unwilling to act to deter further violence.

“The governor and the mayor and the senators out there, they’re afraid of these people,” Trump said. “That’s the reason they don’t want us to help them. They’re afraid. I really believe they’re actually maybe even physically afraid of these people — because what they’re doing is incredible.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/508138-trump-signals-he-will-send-federal-agents-to-major-cities

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18. Paddy Healy - July 18, 2020

Dr De Brun resigned as a government nominee on Medical Council Tweet by Dr Marcus De Brun “On 21/3/2020 Nursing Home residents were booted off the waiting list for tests. GP’s were instructed NOT to seek tests for them and to assume that if one resident at the Nursing home has Covid, then ‘they all have it’.(and therefore did not need testing-PH)
They were treated like livestock”-Dr De Brun

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Liberius - July 19, 2020

I can’t provide links as his twitter account is now gone but he has been fairly relentless in pushing stuff like “herd immunity” & more recently the non-wearing of masks; along with sharing platforms with all manner of far-right cranks. As much as we should take seriously the failings of this state with nursing home I don’t think we should be doing that by putting booster rockets under cranks like De Brun, don’t see how it helps.

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Paddy Healy - July 19, 2020

Thanks for that Liberius. I was unaware thar Dr De Brun had expressed such views. I have now posted the following on facebook:
Some far-right sources are advocating reliance on “herd-immunity” to eventually end the pandemic and opposing compulsion to wear masks.
I am totally opposed to such views and advise all to ignore such advice

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19. Paddy Healy - July 19, 2020

Poll: Fine Gael sees support rise since Govt formed
In comparison to May 24 Poll
FG 38 +4 SF 26 -1 FF 12 -1 Gn 5 -3 Lab 4 NC SD 3 SPBP 3
Opinion Poll FF remains at Half Sinn Féin Poll
Leo Varadkar’s party is up four points to 38% – almost double what it had in the general election, in the ‘Ireland Thinks for The Mail on Sunday’ poll out today.
SUNDAY, JULY 19, 2020 – Irish Examiner
Fine Gael has seen a surge in popularity in the first big poll since the Government was formed.
Leo Varadkar’s party is up four points to 38% – almost double what it had in the general election, in the ‘Ireland Thinks for The Mail on Sunday’ poll out today.
Sinn Fein is down one to 26%, and Fianna Fail have also dropped one to 12%.
The Green Party’s on 5% – down three – while Labour’s unchanged on 4% and the Social Democrats stay static on 3% alongside Solidarity People Before Profit.
The poll was conducted on Friday and Saturday this week.
From Irish Examiner 19/07/2020

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20. Alibaba - July 19, 2020

‘Mary Lou McDonald has said that any person landing on the island of Ireland should be subjected to mandatory quarantine.  …. Ms McDonald called for a more comprehensive system of monitoring people arriving into Ireland and said assuming that the current “good faith” system is honoured is misguided and dangerous.’

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0719/1154223-coronavirus-ireland/

Fair dues but the devil is in the proverbial detail of what exactly is required. I’m more persuaded for an element of compulsion needed in addressing coronavirus. This is unlike previously when I took the view that airport travel would go down anyway and land/sea travel mattered for emergency supplies and because of the importance of recognising civil liberties. My thing was to give prominence to testing and tracking and no mixed messages. Yet given the current loosening up of restrictions and the fact that experts tell us that Covid-19 cases are mounting daily and a second wave is virtually impossible to avoid, I support more extensive regulation. Make non-essential travel out of the question and impose fines, penalties and possible imprisonment for those who enable it. Inevitably, more support and facilities are required for those who deal with enforcement.

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21. roddy - July 20, 2020

John Connors apologising for recent behaviour and appears to have mental issues.Always thought it strange to see someone from a discriminated against community allied with those who would in reality hate him.

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Joe - July 20, 2020

I read it. A very articulate and complete apology. He says he’s going off all online forums and stuff as as step in getting his head right. Good luck to him.

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CL - July 20, 2020
22. sonofstan - July 21, 2020
WorldbyStorm - July 21, 2020

We’re number one, we’re number one!

I guess it’s the old old story, far away hills greener, etc, etc.

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sonofstan - July 21, 2020

De Tocqueville on America in the 1830s:

All free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is not displayed by all in the same manner. The Americans in their intercourse with strangers appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of praise. The most slender eulogium is acceptable to them; the most exalted seldom contents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort praise, and if you resist their entreaties they fall to praising themselves.

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CL - July 21, 2020

““If you wish to know what the spirit of conquest, religious hatred, combined with all the abuses of aristocracy without any of its advantages, can produce, come to Ireland”.-de Tocqueville

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23. CL - July 21, 2020

“On Friday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, tweeted about what’s happening in Portland: “Trump and his storm troopers must be stopped.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020.07/20/opinion/portland-protests-trump.html

“Capitalism is crumbling, it’s contradictions are becoming more and more apparent, and the world seems to be sliding right, closer and closer to fascism.”
Today, it is beside the point to compare developments in the United States to the situation in Germany in the early 1930s; we are already seeing the outlines of 21st-century fascism, or else of civil war.”
https://mronline.org/2020/07/20/solidarity-with-the-people-in-the-streets-of-portland/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=solidarity-with-the-people-in-the-streets-of-portland

“There are those who would like to see the establishment of an authoritarian state that despises minorities and immigrants, hates women and the poor, and in mid-pandemic, values money and profit over human life. …
There are those, Trump and Barr among them, who would like to see our freedoms replaced by unflagging obedience to the needs of corporations and billionaires.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/20/trump-shock-troops-portland-doomed

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24. Michael Carley - July 21, 2020
EWI - July 21, 2020

A paternalistic pat on the head by the liberals of the Guardian.

The current 26-county state is also not the ‘Irish Republic’ (demolished by Fine Gael’s forebears) but the Republic of Ireland, a different and inferior beast.

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