Hub Radio 101
Playing Dont Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats.....easssy...
mornin' Irish......Monday is a great day to get ready to get away....
...i did, it was a great weekend...beautiful weather....and you? ...one day if you're up for it....post some pics of the area of Ireland you live in - the countryside.....
G'day Mate, would you happen to have 'I still call Australia Home' by Peter A ?
Find me a song to reflect my mood for my last day of working for a truly Sh1t company...
Love is in the Air......warm and sunny here in the mid-Atlantic....have a good day....
Lets have a song by a good Irish Singer from way back. Gilbert O'Sullivan.
"Alone Again Naturally"
I am unemployed again, hooray...... I can type all day if i like, visit my sick dad in England, walk, swim whatever i like hello world, i have been let out of the horrible workforce for now, i am free as a bird, let me change my avatar to a dove.....Woman who was beaten by Ian Bailey says Bailey is being stitched up.
During a number of civil actions taken by Ian Bailey against a number of newspapers it became clear that Ian Bailey was a man who engaged in domestic violence against his live in partner Miss Jules Thomas. Miss Jules Thomas continues to live with Ian Bailey at her home in CountyCork. Miss Jules Thomas has told a French TV crew that, “I would not stay with a murderer. I am not a stupid woman”. Miss Thomas was speaking about the fact that the French authorities have issued a European arrest warrant for Mr Ian Bailey in relation to the murder of 39 year old French woman Sophie Toscan du Plantier in Cork in 1996.
La femme qui a été battue par Ian Bailey dit que Bailey est piqué en haut.
Pendant un certain nombre de mesures civiles prises par Ian Bailey contre un certain nombre de journaux il est devenu clair qu'Ian Bailey était un homme qui s'est livré à la violence dans la famille contre son vivant dans Mlle de partenaire Jules Thomas. Mlle Jules Thomas continue à vivre avec Ian Bailey à sa maison dans le Liège de Comté. Mlle Jules Thomas a dit à un équipage de TV français que, “je ne resterais pas avec un meurtrier. Je ne suis pas une femme stupide”. Mlle Thomas parlait du fait que les autorités françaises ont délivré un mandat d'arrestation européen pour M. Ian Bailey par rapport au meurtre de femme française de 39 ans Sophie Toscan du Plantier dans le Liège en 1996.
Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Who Done It?
French (English below)
Les Nouveaux Renseignements sur le Meurtre de Sophie
Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Qui Fait Cela ?
Pour ces Rédacteurs en chef populaires qui tenaient souvent la première page pour Ian Baileys insightful et copie exclusive sur les reportages du meurtre brutal de producteur de film de 39 ans Sophie Toscan du Plantier, près de sa résidence secondaire à l'extérieur Schull dans le Liège ouest, le 22 décembre 1996, Ian Bailey est maintenant le persona non grata aux mêmes Rédacteurs en chef.
Gardai croit que Sophie Toscan du Plantier s'enfuyait de son attaquant quand elle a été sauvagement assassinée. On y croit que le soir ou dans la nuit du 22 décembre 1996 Sophie Toscan du Plantier a été dérangée ou surprise par sa maison par son tueur. Une chose est à coup sûr, elle a subi un meurtre brutal et lâche.
Pendant que les tabloïdes ont versé l'insightful d'Ian Bailey et des reportages exclusifs sur le meurtre de Sophie Toscan du Plantier, les Gardai commençaient à trouver le nom d'Ian Bailey apparaissant sur leur radar d'investigation.
English
For those tabloid Editors who often held the front page for Ian Baileys insightful and exclusive copy on the reporting of the brutal murder of 39 year-old film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier, close to her holiday home outside Schull in west Cork, on the 22 December 1996, Ian Bailey is now persona non grata to the same Editors.
Gardai believe that Sophie Toscan du Plantier was running away from her attacker when she was brutally murdered. It is believed that on the evening or in the night of the 22 December 1996 Sophie Toscan du Plantier was disturbed or surprised at her home by her killer. One thing is for certain, she suffered a brutal and cowardly killing.
While the tabloids poured out Ian Bailey’s insightful and exclusive reporting on the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, the Gardai were starting to find Ian Bailey’s name appearing on their investigative radar. Ian Bailey lived in the area where Sophie Toscan du Plantier had lived and where she was so brutally murdered. However, the Gardai had more information than this to identify Ian Bailey as a suspect. This information or ‘evidence’ was not enough to bring charges against Ian Bailey, but it was enough to have him arrested twice within a fourteen month period and subsequently released due to lack of evidence.
Later in 2003 Ian Bailey would bring civil actions against some newspapers for suggesting that he was in fact the murderer of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Some of these newspapers paid damages to Ian Bailey, others were cleared of any wrong doing. During the civil actions Bailey was painted as a very un-pleasant person. Being an un-pleasant and un-civilised person does not make one a murderer. However, this writer can exclusively reveal that Ian Bailey may well be the architect of his own downfall.
Once the lurid tabloids had destined Ian Bailey to that drawer in the filling cabinet marked persona non grata, Ian Bailey was left without a lively hood and therefore an income. It is during this period that Ian Bailey made a new friend. That new friend was one Mr Patrick O Riordan. Mr Patrick O Riordan had lived in England for many years but had returned to Cork following the break down of his marriage. Mr O Riordan had a chip van and he offered his new friend Mr Ian Bailey a job. Mr Ian Bailey and Mr O Riordan became big buddies. Mr Bailey would often travel over to England to stay with Mr O Riordan when he was back in London visiting family.
However, Mr Patrick O Riordan would also soon come to the attention of the Gardai. Mr Patrick O Riordan’s estranged daughter wanted to meet her father as she was soon to get married. So Mr Patrick O Riordan’s daughter flew over from England to meet her father in Cork. On arrival Patrick O Riordan was every thing his daughter had wanted to find, a caring, tall, strong, clean and sober businessman. That evening Patrick O Riordan treated his daughter to a fine dinner and some drinks. Then Mr Patrick O Riordan invited his daughter to stay with him in his BB accommodation and she could use his bed while he would sleep on the floor. However, early next morning Mr Patrick O Riordan would be arrested as he tried to leave the country after his daughter contacted Gardai to say her Father had raped her in his BB room. Mr Patrick O Riordan would be sentenced to ten years for the rape of his daughter. He has since been repatriated to finish his sentence in England.
It was during this close relationship with Mr O Riordan that Ian Bailey allegedly admitted for the first time that he had in fact murdered Sophie du Plantier. The Gardai are aware of this alleged admission, however, at no time did Mr Patrick O Riordan try to use this information to do a deal with the State in relation to his own charging and conviction for rape. No, Patrick O Riordan never disclosed this information until he was in the confidence of a fellow prisoner in Wheatfield Prison. Mr Patrick O Riordan had nothing to gain from this disclosure and never gained anything from this disclosure. So it is a disclosure that holds some very substantial merit as far as this writer is concerned.
Now a European Arrest Warrant has been issued for Ian Bailey. Ian Bailey now in his second year of a law degree was quick to respond to the news of the European Arrest Warrant. Ian Bailey’s solicitor was on the news within hours and saying that Ian Bailey would contest the warrant, which is his legal right to do. The DPP have certainly been unable to bring any charge of murder against Mr Bailey, so is it possible that the French have a strong enough case to pursue such a charge. French law allows the French authorities to investigate the death of their nationals abroad, and this is fair and right.
For this writer Ian Bailey has been the architect of his own down fall. However, that does not mean that this writer wants to see a miscarriage of justice. I think it is important that Ian Bailey travels to France and allows the legal process to take its course. Ian Bailey is well versed in the law and has access to able counsel; he should have no fear of the French authorities if he is an innocent man.
During the civil actions taken by Ian Bailey, Paul Gallagher asked Mr Bailey, “What kind of man are you?” this question can only truly be answered by a full, open and fair hearing. Many aspects of this case including those disclosed here today need to be fully examined. Other matters such as why Maria Farrell who claimed to have seen Mr Bailey close to the scene of the murder of Sophie du Plantier on the night in question, and then admitted that she had not in fact seen him at all, need to be answered. The Attorney General, Mr Paul Gallagher, is studying the merits of the European Extradition Warrant that has been issued for Bailey. This is the same Paul Gallagher who cross examined Mr Bailey during his civil actions against some news papers. I have no doubt that Mr Gallagher’s objectivity will be challenged at some point.
It is neither important nor relevant if the French authorities are simply trying to shift the buck in this matter. What is important is that this brutal and cowardly murder needs to be solved. If clearing Mr Bailey of any wrong doing or finding his guilt has to be done in a French court, so be it. But Mr Bailey does not serve his cause well by fighting this warrant.Dissidents, Provisional IRA and Drug Dealers team up to profit from criminality.
Read the full history of militant republicanism: irishrepublicanarmy-ira.blogspot.com
During the embryonic years of the ‘peace-process’ when Provisional IRA murders and other criminality were viewed as ‘internal-housekeeping’ by the British and Irish Governments entrepreneurial terrorists made fortunes. While the terrorists continue to make vast sums of money from open criminality, the Gardai can now pursue that criminality in a way that they could not as the Government tried and succeeded in corralling Sinn Fein into the democratic process. However, people who would continue to be viewed as PIRA members are continuing to make vast sums of money from criminality. These PIRA members who have not joined any ‘dissident’ group have now teamed up with ‘dissidents’ and other criminal gangs to maximize their profits. Dublin’s north inner city is now home to an alliance of some of Ireland’s most seasoned and ruthless terrorists and drug dealing criminals. On an almost daily basis these terrorists distribute drugs, illegal cigarettes, fuel, counterfeit CDs/DVDs while at the same time planning and carrying out armed robberies where and when possible.
While the Celtic Tiger roared around the country in October 2006 few even blinked at what was a significant Garda raid in the leafy suburb of Rathfarnham in Dublin. The Gardai raided a very fine house that was nestled among the manicured lawns and polished BMWs of the up market Rathfarnham suburb. The house with a market value of at least two million Euro at that time was not the home of a property speculator or banking executive, but was one of the many properties owned by the Officer Commanding the Provisional IRA in Dublin. The OC of the PIRA in Dublin was a close working associate of one of Dublin’s most notorious or now infamous criminals, Christy Griffin. In 2006 a feud had broken out in the north inner city of Dublin, after it emerged that Christy Griffin had been accused of raping his girlfriend’s daughter since she was a toddler.
When the Gardai searched this fine house they were looking for a stash of hand grenades that had been sent from the PIRA in Belfast to a PIRA member in Dublin who was heavily involved in the bloody feud surrounding Griffin. There had been two hand grenade attacks before the Gardai raid on the house, the grenades were traced back to similar devices that had been used in Belfast. During this period and for many years before, the IRA’s commanding officer in Dublin had been involved in large scale high-jackings from the lucrative Dublin Port. The PIRA leader had inside men at Dublin Port and these men would identify large shipments of high value goods that would be easy to dispose of on the black market; cigarettes were a particular favorite as they could be sold in the markets and pubs around Dublin. The IRA Commander and his drug dealing associates were making lots of money, and as early as 2001 the IRA Commander who had no visible means of income bought the house in Rathfarnham for 900,000 Euro. The IRA Commander also bought himself a holiday home in Wexford and this house was close to another house that had just been bought by his sister-in-law. His sister-in-law was living in Wexford with a former PIRA prisoner, all of the members of this closely net group where heavily involved with Sinn Fein.
While this criminal empire headed up by the PIRA Commander in Dublin and the Christy Griffin gang were allowed to operate without constraint as the peace process was finding its feet, their multi-million Euro robberies were starting to cause problems for both the Sinn Fein leadership and the Fianna Fail Government who had lead them into democratic politics. The Gallahers cigarette company had informed the Irish Government that it could no longer transport its cigarettes through south Armagh or Dublin Port due to the high number of PIRA high-jackings. The security services on both sides of the border felt that their hands were tied as any significant move against the IRA could not go ahead without political sanction. However, Michael Mc Dowell who was then Minister for Justice began to make public pronouncements that warned the Sinn Fein leadership that the honey-moon period was over and the State was going to take direct action against PIRA criminality. The Sinn Fein/IRA leadership was forced to close down its Dublin operation, the Provisional IRA Commander continued to maintain his business links with the drug dealers, but he was told that his association with the IRA would be denied if he ever appeared before a court for his criminal activity.
The Dublin PIRA was now able to get even more involved in the drugs trade as they had been disowned by the Sinn Fein/IRA leadership. By now Christy Griffin was charged, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape of his girlfriend’s daughter. Christy had always been someone the PIRA could deny and deny they did, but for those of us who know the truth Christy Griffin was one of the PIRA’s best earners in Dublin. Christy Griffin had been paid hundreds of thousands of Euro by the PIRA in Dublin for his good works on their behalf. The PIRA Commanding officer in Dublin continued and continues to pay money into the Professional IRA/Sinn Fein organization, this money is laundered through a myriad of front businesses. As long as the PIRA in Dublin, along the border and in the north did not stretch their criminal activity to ‘political terrorism’ they could be certain that they could get away with murder and there would be no political sanction against Sinn Fein. The recent murder of 22 year old Paul Quinn in County Monaghan by members of the PIRA shows that their assessment is correct. By association people like drug dealer Christy Griffin enjoyed the fact that the Government were turning a blind eye to organized crime that was associated with the PIRA. Griffin and the IRA Commander in Dublin were career criminals, both had graduated from youthful theft to violent crime, they both enjoyed the terrorizing of innocent people or anyone who got in their way.
Christy Griffin involved many members of his extended family in his crimes. His nephew Colm Griffin was a member of his gang. Colm was an ad hoc intelligence officer who would be supplied with the details of Lorries carrying valuable goods and their movements, he would also received information on banks and post offices that could be easily robbed and the PIRA would supply him with the guns to carry out those robberies. However, in May 2005 Colm Griffin and his associate Eric Hopkins were shot dead as they carried out an armed robbery of a post office in Lusk in north Dublin.
As the feud surrounding Christy Griffin intensified several people were murdered. Thomas ‘tomo’ Byrne was well known within the north inner city, a female relative had been assaulted by the PIRA Commanding Officer, Byrne retaliated by beating the PIRA Commanding Officer and was later shot dead for his act of defiance. The PIRA Commander believed that he had a license to murder and mutilate at will.
This feud had all started with the decision of a then 19 year old women to go to the Gardai and tell them that she had been raped by Christy Griffin from she was eight years old. This decision caused a split in the PIRA that had up until this point protected Christy Griffin and his associates. Those who supported Christy Griffin were simply trying to protect their sourse of income; those who opposed Christy Griffin were simply embarrassed because of their close association with Sinn Fein. The IRA Commander continues to enjoy the life of a wealthy businessman and uses legitimate businesses to launder money for his former PIRA comrades who continue to engage in full-time/front-line criminality including drug dealing. The PIRA Commander has been forced to pay The Criminal Assets Bureau 500,000 Euro but it has made little impact on his criminal earnings, some of which still makes its way to Sinn Fein.
At its height the Christy Griffin feud claimed several lives including Stephen Ledden who was an innocent by-stander in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Gardai have managed to maintain a presence in the hot spots that have been central to the Griffin feud and this has reduced the feud to a smoldering cheek by jowl fist fight. The north inner city remains a dangerous place, yet it also remains a place where a great deal of money can still be made from drug dealing, cigarette smuggling and so forth. Now in 2010 the entrepreneurs among the criminal gangs including the PIRA, dissidents and the traditional drug dealers have joined forces to maximize profits. The PIRA members still manage to siphon off some money to Sinn Fein but keep the bulk for their own luxury; the dissidents are pure criminals who can satisfy their leadership by occasionally getting access to semi-automatic weapons that come in with drug shipments. The drug dealers continue to enjoy licensed protection from the various terrorist groupings. This pattern is being repeated in Limerick, Cork and many other urban centers around the country, however, Dublin remains the real money maker for all concerned.Human Rights - http://northernirelandhumanrightscommis … gspot.com/
Illinois Man Pleads Guilty to Child Pornography Offenses
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:08:37 -0500
Blake Joseph Young, whose last known address was in Bethalto, Illinois, pled guilty to production and possession of child pornography.
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Massachusetts Executive Charged in Illegal Campaign Contribution Scheme
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:04:39 -0500
Boston-based real estate executive Martin Raffol, of Natick, Massachusetts, was charged with engaging in a scheme to conceal illegal campaign contributions made to federal campaign committees. In total, Raffol allegedly caused over $12,000 in illegal campaign contributions to candidates running for federal office, and over $30,000 in illegal contributions to candidates running for state and local office.
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Texas DPS Trooper, Clerk Charged in Identification Document Fraud Ring
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:43:18 -0500
Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) trooper Mark DeArza, DPS clerk Lidia Gutierrez, and alleged broker/middleman Maen Bittar were charged in Houston with conspiring to produce identification documents--Texas driver’s licenses--without lawful authority and without valid supporting documentation from unqualified applicants for a fee.
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Maryland Woman Sentenced for D.C. Medicaid Fraud
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:49:28 -0500
Lois Diane Fant, of Laurel, Maryland, the owner of a now-defunct transportation company, was sentenced to three years of probation and 180 days of home detention for billing D.C. Medicaid for non-existent transportation services. Fant admitted that she submitted false claims to Medicaid for a total loss to the government of $125,000.
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International Sex Trafficking Fugitive Arrives in New York to Face Charges
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:36:51 -0500
Un Sun Brown, who allegedly participated in an international criminal operation that smuggled women from South Korea into the U.S. to work as prostitutes, surrendered in Washington, D.C. after four years as a fugitive and was transported to New York to face charges of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, forced labor, and alien smuggling.
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California Man Pleads Guilty to Bribery, Bid Rigging, and Contracting Fraud
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:41:43 -0500
Clint Gregory, of Sacramento, California, pled guilty to bribery, bid rigging, and fraud in connection with contracts issued by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Gregory admitted that as a result of the fraud, Caltrans incurred a loss of more than $1.2 million.
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Indiana Contractor Sentenced for Fraud Scheme
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:40:57 -0500
Gary V. Crowe, Sr., of Clarksville, Indiana, was sentenced to 18 months in prison following his guilty plea to defrauding the town of Clarksville of more than $446,000. Crowe owned and operated a business known as the Jubilee Oil Company. The fraud arose from Crowe's fraudulent sale of gasoline and diesel fuel from Jubilee Oil to the town of Clarksville.
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Georgia Man and Woman Indicted in $29 Million Ponzi Scheme
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:12:30 -0500
Geoffrey A. Gish, of Marietta, Georgia, and Myra J. Ettenborough, of Roswell, Georgia, were indicted in connection with their operation of a $29 million Ponzi scheme.
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Florida Doctor, Clinic Owner, Five Nurses Guilty in Home Health Care Fraud Scheme
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:03:05 -0500
A medical doctor, a clinic owner, and five nurses, all South Florida residents, pled guilty to their participation in a fraudulent Medicare home health care scheme. Through their scheme, more than $53 million in false claims were submitted to Medicare, of which Medicare paid approximately $31.8 million.
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Acting Capo of Genovese Family Pleads Guilty in New York to Murder Conspiracy
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:50:01 -0500
Anthony Palumbo, a soldier and acting capo in the Genovese organized crime family who operated crews in both Brooklyn, New York and New Jersey, pled guilty in New York to his participation in a conspiracy to commit murder in aid of a racketeering enterprise, based on his involvement in the planned murder of an individual associated with Russian organized crime.
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Retired New Mexico Attorney Pleads Guilty to Child Pornography Charge
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:51:43 -0500
Robert A. Warren, a 70-year-old retired attorney who resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, pled guilty to receipt of child pornography. Forensic examination of Warren's computers and computer media uncovered more than 2600 images and 26 videos of child pornography.Intellectual mouth-pieces and the blurring of Reality
Today 1st Septempber 2010, the Green Party, junior Coalition partners with Fianna Fail will call for the closing down of Anglo Irish Bank, a Bank that has the potential to finally bring down the curtain on Ireland's economic success story during the years now known as the Celtic Tiger. When The Irish Observer said that the Banking crisis would eventually cost 100 Billion, many experts dismissed such figures, however, such figures are no longer dismissed.
Writing in the Irish Times (22nd, May 2010) (Irish Times.com), Prof Kelly, who originally predicted the economic crisis, said the open-ended guarantee of banks’ liabilities and the Nama bailout will leave the Republic with a “a worse ratio of debt to national income than the one that is sinking Greece” by 2012.
For too long the Irish people have been inundated with the wall to wall lies being pushed out by Government spin doctors and other intellectual mouth-pieces about the ‘financial crises in Ireland. These intellectual mouth-pieces are nothing more than begging dogs at their Fianna Fail masters table. Intellectual mouth-pieces who are untouched by the very financial crisis who’s reality they blur with their self serving statistics and tabloid pleasing sound bites.
In America those to the right have tried to suggest that Liberal Democrats held the banks at gun point until they handed over all their cash to the underclass and other undeserving sections of American society who could not wait to get into some real debt. The problem with this right wing theory is the fact that Congress was under the watchful eye of right wing Republican prudence at that time. The lie that the little people were the core cause and beneficiaries of multi-billion dollar fraud and corruption is easily exposed.
To understand Ireland’s financial crisis it is essential to look at the American model. The financial crisis that has dominated political and banking institutions around most of the industrialised world in recent years was and remains of Herculean proportions. When I say most of the industrialised world I mean that countries such as Canada were able to avoid the flaming pits of financial ruin. Canada was able to do a number of things right that both America and Ireland done real bad. Canada limited leverage, Canada protected consumers, and more importantly Canada ensured that unfettered capitalism and greed were not allowed to ride rough shot over the people. Canada unlike Ireland and America regulated the financial institutions rather than simply pay lip service to regulation.
Irish economists Gregory Connor, Thomas Flavin and Brian O ‘Kelly have taken some considered time to look at the realities that brought both the USA and Ireland to their financial knees. From the research of Connor, Flavin and O’Kelly it quickly becomes clear that many of the core causes of America’s financial crisis are not present in the Irish situation. Similarly many of the core causes of Ireland’s financial melt down are not found in the American situation.
After two years of listening to the Government’s spin doctors and intellectual mouth-pieces telling us that our financial crises was simply a mirror image of the American crisis we now establish that this is at best untrue. Ireland was driven into a real estate cul de sac by the Government, the banks and the property speculators. In many cases this triangulation is firmly joined, with even the Irish Prime Minister opening a property portfolio in Ireland and further a field. The mantra of the Fianna Fail government and their cheer leaders was to, “spend, spend, spend, buy, buy, buy”, just as British Prime Minister, Thatcher had done in the 1980s.
Young educated and hard working Irish people were lead into a financial cul de sac from which they would not be able to return. Property prices in Dublin out stripped property prices in many of the Major cities in America, this inflated property market was then meet with a banking crisis not before seen in Ireland. This banking crisis brought on by an inept Government and failed regulatory system of checks and balances. The Government blinded by its own self serving had become nothing more than a performing monkey to the cheap financial lending houses of main land Europe.
The Government now try to blame the ordinary people for the financial crisis, the very people who will for generations pay for this Government’s miserable failures and unending greed. The Irish Government constantly tell the people that they were elected to lead the country, yet they deny that leadership when their boom and bust policies are exposed to reasonable critique. Ireland’s financial crisis was not about ordinary people being greedy; it was not about big financial debt obligations, it was simply the tale of an inept Government being lead by its own self serving and excesses. The Government failed to regulate the finance institutions in a professional and transparent manner, it allowed unprecedented loans to be made to corrupt property speculators, it allowed banks to boost their own books by corrupt and criminal practices and now the same Government is to rob the Irish people once more in order to bail out their banking and property speculator pals.
Ireland had some things in common with the financial crash in America. The authors of the new report point to four main causal similarities.
1. In both countries property experts believed that while property prices were historically high, they would continue to rise. A case of wishful thinking rather than empirical evidence.
2. In both countries there was a wash of cheap money. America was a wash with cheap money from China and in Ireland, Germany and other Euro zone countries provided the cheap capital.
3. It was easy and made easy for big players to take big financial risks. Those who were in charge of the big financial houses knew well that they could do as they pleased. Directors could borrow tens of millions from their own banks without being held in check. Banks could transfer billions between each other to boost their accounts. Bankers knew that even if the shit hit the fan their multi-million Euro bonuses and pension packages would be safe. In America billions of dollars was paid to bankers for their ‘performance’ before their financial institutions went into liquidation.
4. The other main cause was inept Government and their failure to provide financial regulation. This failure was due mainly to what is today described as the relationship within the Golden Circle. This circle or triangulation of corrupt Politicians, Bankers and Property Speculators meant that the very people charged with regulating the financial system were the very worst offenders. A bit like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
In America ideology played a major role in the direction of the economy, in Ireland this would not be the case. In Ireland it was more like a drunk winning the lottery. Ten years of unprecedented wealth in Ireland meant that the greedy got greedier, the haves had more and the have nots continued to have nothing. There was no trickle down economics in Ireland. While in America many politicians believed that ordinary people should own their own homes, politicians aspirations had little or no impact on the incentives offered by lenders. In Ireland the opposite was the case, the lending institutions became reckless as their loan books had government guarantees and first time home buyers and second property investors were woed with incentives and feel good Government encouragement.
While America ignored the lessons of Reaganism and Thatcherism, Ireland simply spent like a drunken sailor on home leave. Ireland was and remains absent of any Financial or political ideology, setting aside domestic sectarianism and historical nationalism. Ireland’s present economic philosophy of cut and burn fiscal rectifism is simply a longer journey up a similar cul de sac as the philosophy of boom and bust. Biffonian Economics can best describe the Irish Government’s present financial naval gazing. As the Irish Prime Minister, Brian Cowen (Biffo) buys time in order to take up a lucrative political posting in Brussels.
It is clear that the Irish Government were the architect of the present financial crisis in Ireland. It is clear that America had similar yet different financial road signs as it drove off into the economic abyss. It is clear from the lessons of both America and Ireland that the Regulators are every bit as important as the regulations. Limiting both leverage and securitisation helped Canada to keep its head above water, yet, if these measures are entrusted to people who are beholding to the wrong doers as was certainly the case in Ireland, then it is not enough. The regulators must have the civic will and statutory power to stand up to the politicians, the bankers and the corrupt speculators.
Consumers must be protected for they are the oil that drives the wheels of free enterprise, financial checks and balances must be over seen by an Independent, professional and able bodied watch dog. We can not return to a time in the not too distant past when those charged with regulation were nothing more than begging dogs at the table of the Golden Circle. We have failed to learn from the failures of Thatcherism and Reganism and if we do not deploy independent and prudent regulators armed with statutory instruments (similar to the Criminal Assets Bureau) we will continue to repeat the mistakes of the past and the present.The chairman of the parole board has criticised the media pursuit of rapist Larry Murphy following his release from prison.
Gordon Holmes says that while Mr Murphy might not be the most deserving of sympathy, prisoners should be entitled to privacy after being released from jail.
He made the remarks on the publication of the parole boards annual report this afternoon.
Mr Holmes said: "When people serve their sentence and get out in accordance with law when sentenced by a judge, then surely they should be given some degree of liberty.
"They should be allowed to lead out their lives."Breaking News:
It’s a morbid tale involving phony death certificates, staged funerals with paid actors, and coffins buried with no bodies, but in the end, it’s just a financial fraud scheme like thousands of others we investigate every year.
Earlier this month in Los Angeles, the fourth and final member of an insurance fraud ring was convicted in federal court. Jean Crump—a former mortuary employee—was found guilty of joining three other women in a scheme to defraud insurance companies by filing $1.2 million in phony life insurance policy claims.
Also victimized were several financial assignment companies, often used by funeral homes and mortuaries to advance cash for funeral expenses in exchange for a portion of the deceased’s life insurance policies.
How the scam worked: In one instance, Crump and/or her co-schemers purchased life insurance policies for “Jim Davis,” naming his supposed “nephew” and “niece” as beneficiaries.
Avoiding Insurance Fraud:
Tips for Consumers
- When buying any kind of insurance, read the policy closely and make sure you’re only paying for coverage that you ordered.
- Be wary if the price of coverage seems way too low, or is sold by telephone or door-to-door.
- Always write your premium check to your insurer, not the agent. And never sign a blank claim form.
- Make sure your insurance company and agent are licensed by checking with your state’s insurance department.
- If you think you may have been a victim of insurance fraud, contact your state insurance department to file a complaint.
– Visit www.naic.org and fill out a form in the Online Fraud Reporting System. (Through this system, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and state regulators encourage consumers to take a proactive role in identifying and reporting insurance fraud.)
Tips from www.InsuranceFraud.org and www.naic.org.
Mr. Davis conveniently had an untimely demise, and the conspirators created false documents, including a death certificate with a doctor’s forged signature, to collect his life insurance. They also prepared grossly inflated bills for different amounts from a mortuary to cover the man’s funeral and burial costs and wired the bills to two different assignment companies.
Both assignment companies paid the mortuary (one nearly $30,000 and the other just over $16,000), but of course the money went right into the hands of the criminals—the mortuary was owned and operated by Lydia Pearce, one of the four charged in the investigation. And an insurance company paid out more than $230,000 in life insurance to Mr. Davis’ so-called nephew.
The criminals went so far as to purchase a burial plot for Mr. Davis and bury him, without a headstone. But despite the extravagant funeral described on paper for the financial assignment companies—including an ornate casket and elaborate floral arrangements—the funeral was a simple affair, attended by several phony family members recruited to play the part of mourners in case anyone was watching.
Each member of the fraud ring brought her own expertise to the table: Crump and Pearce, with their mortuary experience, knew all there was to know about funerals and death documents. Phlebotomist Faye Shilling knew the ins and outs of filing insurance claims, and notary Barbara Ann Lynn used her stamp to make the fake documents look legitimate.
How the scam unraveled. Two insurance companies began looking more closely at the claims and hired an investigator to ask questions. The con artists were so unnerved by this that they had the coffin supposedly holding the remains of Jim Davis unearthed. They filled the casket with a mannequin and cow parts to ensure the proper weight and then sent it to a crematory. Then, they filed phony paperwork stating that he had been cremated and had his ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean.
The FBI’s Los Angeles office eventually became involved. Upon closer inspection of the life insurance policies, death certificates, funeral bills, and financial information of the ring members, our investigators gathered the evidence needed to charge the four women—whose scheme ultimately met its own demise.Gerry Adams an IRA leader
Some will know the name Gerry Adams some will not. In Ireland Gerry Adams is widely viewed as the face of the republican movement. Gerry Adams is the President of Sinn Fein which is the political wing of the republican movement. The IRA is the now ‘decommissioned’ military wing of the republican movement. Gerry Adams has for some strange reason always publicly stated that he was never a member of the IRA. For those of us who were members of the republican movement it is well known that Gerry Adams was a senior member of the IRA in Belfast and that he had a seat at the table of the IRA Army Council. Indeed I can put my hand on my heart and say that in 1984 I was present when Gerry Adams arrived at a venue for a meeting of some of the most senior members of the IRA. I was not a senior member of the IRA but was simply present before the meeting started. Gerry Adams and Brendan ‘Darkie’ Hughes did not leave when the meeting started. I will set out here the reality of Gerry Adams janus-face position in the republican movement.
So it was that the British Army were brought into the north as ‘peace-keepers’. The British army were initially feed and given tea by many grateful Catholics who had suffered so much at the hands of loyalist mobs. Indeed the IRA leadership had initially put in place a no shoot policy in relation to the British Army, this policy was put in place as the British Army were so welcomed initially, however, the IRA had no such policy in relation to Protestants and they continued to murder Protestants at will. Yet as the British army were used to break up no-go areas and were the main body tasked with the Internment of Irish Catholics their role as ‘peace-keeper’ would wear thin quickly. There is no doubt that Internment, the breaking up of no-go areas and the IRA’s own mishaps were insuring that the IRA could not operate at full capacity. It was inability to operate at full capacity that foolishly lead the British and Irish Governments to believe that the IRA could be defeated as the ordinary people turned away from the men of violence. The ordinary people could be bought off with reforms in Stormont and the IRA defeated by isolation and imprisonment, thought the Governments.
The Irish Government under Jack Lynch who had just recovered from the controversy surrounding the supplying of guns to the IRA appeared ready and willing to take on rather than tolerate the IRA. Lynch had been backed into a corner as loyalist terrorists had already moved into the Irish Republic in 1972 and fire bombed hotels in Dublin and the loyalists said they would carry out further attacks if the Irish Government did not stand up to the IRA. The loyalists did return and murder dozens of innocent civilians in Monaghan and Dublin.
At the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis in 1972, the PIRA Chief of Staff, Mac Stiofain was not offering Lynch any hope of compromise when he said there would be no compromise with the British; it was all or nothing, “Brits Out”. Lynch decided it was time to put the Provisionals out of business and he had Mac Stiofain arrested and imprisoned.
In 1973, when Seamus Twomey was arrested Gerry Adams took over as commanding officer of the IRA in Belfast. The Adams leadership was well able to match the body count which occurred under Twomey in 1972 which read, 81 innocent Catholics and 41 innocent Protestants mainly murdered in no warning IRA bomb attacks. In his new book Ed Moloney gives a clear insight into the role played by Adams when Moloney reproduces an interview that he carried out with Brendan ‘Darkie’ Hughes before Brendan died in 2009. Brendan Hughes who was a close friend and comrade of Gerry Adams alleges that Adams was the person who ordered the murder of innocent Mother of ten, Jean Mc Conville, amazon.co.uk/Voices-grave-two-mens-ireland. The sectarian bloodbath was overflowing and the British and Irish Governments were at a loss as to what the next step should be. The sectarian drive of the PIRA and indeed Gerry Adams is best captured by Adams himself in his book A Pathway to Peace http://www.brandonbooks.com/authors.php?authors_id=1
Of all the differences between the Ireland of Tone’s time and the Ireland of today, unquestionably one of the most noticeable – although far from being the most significant – is the changed political attitudes of the mass of Protestants, especially in the North. Instead of forming a cordial union with their fellow Irishmen to run their own country for themselves in their own interests, they find themselves the prisoners of a fossilised, politico-religious sectarianism which is entrenched and institutionalised as an integral part of the imperial administrative system in the six counties[1]
Adams fails to see in his own words the very sectarianism of his own politics in the fact that the deaths of over three thousand mainly innocent people in forty years of republican death and destruction have driven an insurmountable wedge between Protestants and Catholics. Few families in the north’s population of 1.5 million have been left unscathed by both loyalist and republican violence, the deaths of over three thousand, the maiming of tens of thousands, the imprisonment of tens of thousands have left the Protestant community more fundamentally opposed to Irish Unity than the British State could have achieved in another eight hundred years of Imperial rule. Interesting though is that fact that Adams himself would eventually become part of what he described as:
An integral part of the imperial administrative system in the six counties.
While Adams and other members of the republican movement continue to try and attach their brand of republicanism with that of Wolfe Tone there is no link, there is no attachment. Wolfe Tone represented the aspirations of a united Irish people both Protestant and Catholic fighting for a French style Republic free of British Imperialism, modern day militant republicanism does not fall within the shadow of Wolfe Tone’s republic. Adams continues to refer to Wolfe Tone and others as the starters of the unfinished business, as if the work of Wolfe Tone is to be found in the sectarian politics of 20th/21st century Sinn Fein/IRA. In the Sinn Fein document The Evolution of Sinn Fein (1995) this desired linkage to Wolfe Tone and others is made six times, this would not be so noticeable if this were not a one page document.
This attempt by the Adams to claim linage to the old IRA is clearly seen in the re-write of the IRA’s Green Book in 1977. In the 1956 edition of the IRA’s Green Book the authors do not engage in any legitimisation of the armed struggle beyond its historical context of resistance to occupation. The 1977 edition which was written by Gerry Adams and other leading republicans claims direct legitimacy from the members of the second Dail, who transferred their authority to the IRA in 1938 after the takeover of the IRA Army Council by Sean Russell. Antony Mc Antyre a former republican prisoner, now an academic and scholar says that:
The modern republican movement has persistently been the product of BritishState strategies rather than a body which has existed for the sole purpose of completing the unfinished business of uniting Ireland.[2]
Contrary to what Imperialist type motives republicans attribute to the BritishState, it remains in Ireland in response to the Protestant/Unionist demands to remain British. This is a correct analysis and one that was supported in my own research as republicans admit to having recognised that Protestants were the real obstacle to a united Ireland as early as the 1970s. Tugwell states that;
That campaign (IRA violence) would use the international, domestic and economic side effects of armed struggle on the British Government and ‘Public’ to cause the necessary shift from the British state viewing the North of Ireland as an asset to a liability.
Following forty years of sectarian violence resulting in over three thousand deaths, the majority of whom were Northern Irish, the public can now be more clearly defined as being physically and psychologically the British Protestant people of Northern Ireland and psychologically and economically the British people of England, Scotland and Wales. All of whom would eventually see the benefits of a united Ireland unless the sectarian bankruptcy of the republican movement was first realised.
Up until September 1973 an IRA bombing campaign had lasted several months with death and mutilation becoming part of the daily routine for the people of Belfast and Derry. Lynch’s Government had taken a tough line against the men of violence and had initiated a sustained program of anti-terrorist legislation as extreme and as tough as the British response to the men of violence. 1974 began with the Provisionals planting bombs all over the north and in Birmingham (England). The PIRA’s New Year message was;
We look forward with confidence to 1974 as a year which the British rule in Ireland shall be destroyed and the curse of alien power banished from our land for all time.
On the 28th of June the new Northern Ireland elections had returned Twenty-three Official Unionist candidates, twenty-seven loyalist candidates, nineteen SDLP (Catholic), eight Alliance (cross-community) and DUP (loyalist). On Tuesday the 14th of May 1974 at six o’clock in the evening, the Assembly voted forty-four to twenty-eight in favour of Faulkner’s amendment supporting the Sunningdale agreement for reform. The Ulster Workers Council (Protestant/loyalist) announced a province wide strike. The north came to a stand still as Protestants held key positions in all of the utility control centres in the north including electricity and water. Loyalists sent death squads back into the Republic of Ireland once again and on the 17th of May 1974 they exploded bombs in Dublin and Monaghan killing dozens of innocent civilians and injuring hundreds more.
The British Government under Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson were not prepared to break the loyalist strike. Intimidation, food shortages, water shortages and electrical shortages continued, Wilson’s inaction had simply made matters worse. Wilson defending the new Northern Ireland Assembly called the loyalists, “Spongers on the British public”. The strength of the loyalist strike proved too much for the constitutional politicians and when Faulkner asked Secretary of State, Rees to talk with the UWC and Rees refused Faulkner and his loyalist colleagues resigned and Sunningdale fell.
Meanwhile the republican movement was again at war within its own ranks. In 1974 the Official IRA lead by Goulding called the PIRA “Fascists” as more splits began to unfold. Republican uncertainty manifested itself into yet another split; on the 8th of December 1974 Seamus Costello and other uncompromising Official IRA members created the IRSP (INLA) yet another republican splinter group. In 1975 members of the INLA killed a number of their former Official IRA comrades. The INLA while small in number would prove to be a ruthless sectarian killing machine, only out done in number and deed by the PIRA.
In 1974 the Official IRA dropped abstentionism to Westminster and the Northern Ireland convention and were now out of the business of violence, at least on any political level. From the 22nd of December 1974 until the 2nd of January 1975 the PIRA called a cease-fire as they were told that if they showed good will talks with the British could take place. Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said on the 20th of December, no specific undertakings had been given. The IRA extended the cease-fire for two weeks, this writer remembers that cease-fire well, but that hope was not to last. Rees refused to talk directly to the IRA and on the 16th of January the IRA returned to violence, having used the cease-fire to get organised and rearmed.
On the 9th of February 1975 the IRA Army Council announced an indefinite cease-fire following discussions with British officials. Loyalists however continued to kill innocent Catholics and the INLA and Official IRA continued to kill each other. The British Government would not or could not give a declaration of intent to withdraw from Northern Ireland and the PIRA continued to use the threat of violence. The loyalists believed that the IRA cease-fire was simply a ploy by the PIRA to get regrouped and rearmed and that a return to full scale violence was only a matter of time. The PIRA wanted the British Government to become persuaders of the Protestant people of Northern Ireland of the benefits of a united Ireland; this was not going to happen in the short term.
The first four chapters of this book have focused on the regression of the republican movement who were constantly falling back into a politico-sectarian blindness coupled by internal feud and disagreement. Their central focus to this point has been the physical and psychological brutality of the Protestant people of Northern Ireland in order to coerce them into a united Ireland. Loyalists are not faultless; however, a clear distinction must be made between ordinary decent hard working Protestants and the small number of criminals who made up the loyalist murder squads.Good morning,
Millions of our friends and neighbors around the country are looking for work, wondering how they will pay this month’s rent or put food on the table for their families. At a speech in Wisconsin on Monday, the President made clear that turning our economy around is his top priority:
I am going to keep fighting every single day, every single hour, every single minute, to turn this economy around and put people back to work and renew the American Dream, not just for your family, not just for all our families, but for future generations.
At 2:10 p.m. EDT today, President Obama will announce a set of targeted proposals to help our economy continue on a path to recovery during a speech in Cleveland, Ohio. I know many of you have questions about what this Administration is doing to support working families and small businesses who are struggling to get by. So immediately following the President’s remarks, I’ll be hosting a live chat to answer your questions about what we’re doing to help Americans find jobs and to rebuild our economy for the long term.
I’m looking forward to talking with you later today.
Sincerely,
Austan Goolsbee
Council of Economic Advisers}
Bank Employee Pleads Guilty to Role in Bid-Rigging and Fraud Conspiracies
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:58:54 -0500
Douglas Lee Campbell, a former employee of a national bank, pled guilty in New York to his participation in bid-rigging and fraud conspiracies related to contracts for the investment of municipal bond proceeds and other municipal finance contracts.
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Man Charged in New York for Orchestrating Fraudulent Purchase of Corot Painting
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:56:22 -0500
Thomas A. Doyle was arrested on charges filed in New York of orchestrating the fraudulent purchase of "Portrait of a Girl," a painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
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Florida Clinic Owner Pleads Guilty in $23 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:53:42 -0500
Flor Crisologo, a Miami-area resident who owned and operated an HIV infusion clinic, pled guilty to her participation in a $23 million HIV infusion Medicare fraud scheme.
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Kentucky Man Pleads Guilty to Soliciting a Murder for Hire
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:49:12 -0500
Ryan Lynn Dean, of Mackville, Kentucky, admitted soliciting solicited an undercover detective to murder another person in exchange for 10 pounds of marijuana. Dean also requested that the undercover detective cut off a tattoo on the intended victim's leg and give it to Dean to evidence the murder.
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Massachusetts Man Sentenced for Drug Distribution
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:46:32 -0500
Hector David Aulet, of Gardner, Massachusetts, was sentenced to five years in jail for selling crack cocaine and heroin.
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Three Execs Charged in Virginia for Roles in $100 Million Fraud Scheme
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:40:16 -0500
Three principals of a group of businesses that acquired and marketed life settlements to investors were arrested and charged in Richmond, Virginia in an 18-count indictment for their alleged roles in a $100 million fraud scheme with more than 800 victims across the United States and Canada
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Army Veteran Sentenced in Alabama
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:38:00 -0500
Army veteran Skyler Tarquin Smith, of Huntsville, Alabama, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for wearing war medals he did not earn, making false statements to obtain an Army contract, and committing wire fraud to sell a cheap synthetic stone as an expensive diamond.
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Former Pennsylvania Police Officers Face Additional Charges
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:33:20 -0500
A superseding indictment was unsealed against former Philadelphia Police Officers Robert Snyder, James Venziale, and Mark Williams, along with Snyder’s wife, Christal; Angel Ortiz; Zachary Young; and Miguel Santiago, charging an additional count stemming from a drug conspiracy case.
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Indiana Man Sentenced for Bank Fraud
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:29:11 -0500
Robert E. Tolle, Greenwood, Indiana, was sentenced to 22 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges of making fraudulent bank entries.
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Texas Man Indicted on Child Pornography Charges
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:27:11 -0500
Richard Missler, of Carrollton, Texas, was indicted on charges of transportation and possession of child pornography and had previously been indicted on a charge of transportation of child pornography.
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Louisiana Judge Sentenced in Bribery Scheme
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:25:00 -0500
Wayne G. Cresap, a former judge in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to deprive the citizens of St. Bernard Parish of their right to receive his honest services.
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Connecticut Man Charged with Illegal Gun Possession, Counterfeiting Offenses
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:22:49 -0500
Victor Salaman, formerly of New Haven, Connecticut, was charged with one count of possession of a firearm by a previously convicted felon, one count of producing counterfeit U.S. currency, and two counts of selling counterfeit U.S. currency.
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California Man Sentenced for Hate Crime and Mail Fraud
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:01:06 -0500
Eric Clawson, of San Francisco, California, was sentenced to three years and one month in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release for depriving the civil rights of an African-American man when he assaulted the victim in a Chico bar and for an unrelated case of one count of mail fraud.
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North Carolina Man Charged for Giving Bomb-Making Info Targeting Abortion Clinic
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:14:16 -0500
Justin Carl Moose, of Concord, North Carolina, was arrested on charges of providing information related to the making, use, or manufacture of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction to a person Moose believed was planning to bomb a women's health clinic in North Carolina.
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Illinois Man Sentenced in Child Pornography Case
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:09:54 -0500
David Monfre, of Belleville, Illinois, was sentenced to 96 months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of receiving child pornography and one count of transporting child pornography.
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Texas Man Sentenced for Two Bank Robberies
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:46:00 -0500
Roland Johnson, of Dallas, Texas, was sentenced to 74 months in prison for robbing two banks in 10 days.
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Texas Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Oil Field Explosives
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:42:51 -0500
Craig Elroy Knight, of Tyler, Texas pled guilty to stealing explosives from an oil field equipment company.
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Missouri Man Pleads Guilty to Producing Child Pornography
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:33:53 -0500
Respiratory therapist Michael D. Toal, of Kansas City, Missouri, pled guilty to producing pornographic images of an 8-year-old child who was in his care at his house.
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Missouri Man Sentenced for Four Armed Bank Robberies in Two States
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:32:07 -0500
Richard Allan Bratt, of Diamond, Missouri, was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for committing four armed bank robberies in Missouri and Kansas.
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Former CEO of National Lampoon Sentenced in Securities Fraud Case
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:24:49 -0500
Daniel Laikin, the former CEO of National Lampoon, Inc.--a California-based company involved primarily in media projects--was sentenced in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to 45 months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to manipulate the company's stock price. Laikin acknowledged that he intended to cause between $2.5 million and $7 million in losses through the scheme.
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Oklahoma Woman Charged with Stealing Money from Employer
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:21:41 -0500
Shannon Lynn Reed, of Norman, Oklahoma, was charged with five counts of wire fraud in connection with a scheme to steal $118,932.06 from her former employer, Basic Energy Services, Inc., of Midland, Texas.
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Financial Products and Services Company Agent Pleads Guilty in Fraud Conspiracies
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:18:31 -0500
Adrian Scott-Jones, of Morriston, Florida, a former agent of a financial products and services company, pled guilty in New York to his participation in fraud conspiracies related to contracts for the investment of municipal bond proceeds and other municipal finance contracts.
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Ohio Investment Manager Sentenced in $30.4 Million Investment Fraud Scheme
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:15:09 -0500
Investment manager Enrique F. Villalba, of Beachwood, Ohio, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud in connection with his execution of a scheme that defrauded 27 investors of $30.4 million.
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Massachusetts Attorney Charged in Property Mortgage Scam
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:12:37 -0500
Attorney Michael R. Anderson, of Framingham, Massachusetts, was charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering in connection with a multi-year, multi-property mortgage fraud scheme.One of our recent investigations involved the theft of confidential documents pertaining to automobile technology. Another dealt with counterfeit military and commercial airplane parts. And a third case found us working jointly with Chinese authorities to identify multinational groups selling counterfeit software.
All three cases involved the theft of intellectual property, often defined as “creations of the mind”—like designs, inventions, proprietary business information, literature, music, and movies.
It’s serious business. These crimes can cause significant harm—financial and otherwise—to the rightful owners of the property, to the American consumer, and to the U.S. economy by robbing the nation of jobs and tax revenues.
The FBI plays a leading role in investigating intellectual property crime with our many partners. We’re currently working over 400 such cases—many with a global nexus.
Intellectual property crime encompasses many areas, including copyright and trademark infringement, counterfeit goods, and television signal/cable theft. At the FBI, our top priorities are two-fold. First, the theft of trade secrets—which affects not only a company’s bottom line, but also American competitiveness around the world. And second, product infringements that can impact the health and safety of consumers, such as counterfeit parts for aircraft, cars, electronics, and health products.
So far in fiscal year 2010, we’ve opened 35 counterfeit health and safety investigations and 56 theft of trade secret cases. We’ve had investigative successes in both areas—for example:
Theft of trade secrets:
A New York City computer programmer was indicted for stealing proprietary computer code from his old employer and taking it to his new job. More
In California, three individuals pled guilty to conspiring to break the encryption algorithm developed by a satellite TV provider to protect its signal. More
Health and safety infringements:
Two Texas men were sentenced for manufacturing and selling counterfeit pipe couplings used in oil fields. More
The owner of a repair station certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in Florida was sentenced for inspecting and testing certain aircraft parts without authorization. More
We’ve also recently joined forces with the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board on “Operation Fractured Skies,” which focuses specifically on counterfeit parts in commercial and military aircraft.
Working closely with our partners in both public and private sectors is key to our success. Some of the joint efforts we're involved in include:
The U.S. government’s recently announced Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, which will enhance interagency coordination and international enforcement.
The National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Coordination Center, which brings together federal law enforcement agencies charged with investigating these violations—including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customers and Border Protection—and serves as a clearinghouse for complaints and referrals.
The Department of Justice’s Task Force on Intellectual Property Crime, created earlier this year, which strengthens efforts to combat intellectual property crime through close coordination with state and local law enforcement and our global counterparts.
As the Internet and advances in traditional distribution methods allow American businesses, inventors, and artists to market their “products” worldwide, the threat from criminals and criminal organizations who want to profit illegally from their hard work grows. But so does the commitment of law enforcement and governments around the world to find new and effective ways to combat the threat…together.Murder Up Date : http://hubpages.com/hub/Who-Murdered-So … u-Plantier
It has been reported this morning that Larry Murphy has left Ireland to live in Spain.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-Suspected-S … In-Ireland
The 45-year-old served 10 years of a 15-year sentence for the attempted murder and rape of a young businesswoman in 2000.
Today's report said Murphy left Ireland last Tuesday to relocate to the south of Spain.
It is understood gardaí have informed the Spanish police that Murphy is officially ranked as a "high-risk" sex offender
Murphy was required to give gardaí the exact address of where he is living as required by law.
La Guardia Civil is now responsible for monitoring him.
The early release of the sex offender from Arbour Hill prison last month sparked outrage across the country and prompted a major debate over automatic 25% remission for inmates for "good behaviour".Members of the New York-based Bonanno crime family were making millions of dollars in South Florida cashing counterfeit checks, running telemarketing scams, defrauding Medicare, and stealing and selling people’s identities. But when they hooked up with a shady businessman to help them launder all that money, they got more than they bargained for.
The businessman with supposed connections in the banking industry was really one of our undercover agents, and he infiltrated the mafia crew for nearly a year. The evidence he gathered, along with intercepted phone calls and other electronic surveillance, was enough to put the entire 11-member operation out of business and behind bars.
“The mafia has always been in South Florida,” our agent explained. “Each of New York’s five families has crews that operate here. They make a lot of money and send part of it back to the main guys up north.”
The Bonanno family’s criminal enterprise in South Florida—led by Tommy Fiore, the nephew of reputed Bonanno capo Gerry Chili—was wide ranging. In addition to the scams mentioned above, the crew also participated in arson, extortion, drug trafficking, and buying and selling stolen cigarettes, TVs, and other ill-gotten goods.
Operation Money Fish began in the summer of 2008, when our agent—who was known as Dave Stone—met Fiore. The Bonanno crew was manufacturing counterfeit payroll checks from large companies and needed help cashing them. They would copy a legitimate check, change the account numbers and the amount, and get Dave Stone to use his banking connections to turn the bad paper into cash. Dave and the crew then split the profits. (In reality, since we controlled the operation, no businesses were actually defrauded.)
The crew’s most lucrative scam, though, came from “boiler rooms”—bogus telemarketing operations that are rampant in South Florida. A dozen people working the phones out of someone’s condo can generate big profits. A popular pitch now involves the resale of time share properties. The criminal telemarketers claim they will help people resell their time share, or the fee charged will be refunded in full. Unsuspecting victims on the other end of the line—mostly older people unable to sell the properties on their own—send in the $5,000 or $6,000 fee, and that’s the last they ever see of their money. No services are rendered, and none were ever intended to be.
With the overwhelming evidence against them, the Bonanno crew all pled guilty to racketeering and other charges. “It was a good feeling to bring these guys down,” our undercover agent said. “They were getting away with a lot of crimes. There’s no telling how many people they had hurt or swindled before we got involved.”
But “Dave Stone” and his colleagues on the FBI’s organized crime squads understand that while you can disrupt the mafia’s activities in South Florida and elsewhere, it’s only a matter of time before the bosses in New York establish other crews.
“Absolutely they will try to start up again,” the agent said. “The Bonanno family in New York—like the other families—has to have somebody down here making money because the guys at the top don’t do anything. They rely on the crews to support them. But if they do show up again,” he said, “we will be ready.”The funeral of one of the so-called "disappeared" is to take place in Armagh today.
The body of Charlie Armstrong was identified this week, after being found in Co Monaghan six weeks ago.
The 57-year-old went missing on his way to Mass in 1981. His family believe he was abducted and killed by the IRA for resisting a bid to hijack his car.
He will be laid to rest today following funeral Mass at St Patrick's Church in Crossmaglenn.
Mr Armstrong's son Terry said: "It will be the finish of a long time of heartache and not knowing…Thank God, we'll have (in his grave), a place to go."
Read more: http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/char … z0zsHiZ49KCan you play a little street in Singapore by Manhattan Transfer please.
hey irish...what's with all the 'news'?...how about something a lighter....some fun 'shock talk' or some good tunes?...haven't been on this thread in awhile...i might have to change the channel....how about some 'p floyd'?
Sunday morning 9 am - all ireland GAA (football final) today - Down vs Cork -
Biffosdiary.blogspot.com
Sunday 19th September 2010
Dear Diary
Well I'm off to Croke Park today....god bless the GAA.....another free meal and a quiet pint...maybe...skip the pint....don't want those Twitters posting their suggestions of drunkeness.......Premier Lounge for me today.....I hope that Nordy....Adams is not there today......Jesuz I hate talking to them.......I dont have a clue what they are saying.........Adams and his......"Ta Milsun....Hows she goin".....pigeon English.......at least I will get some profiling today.....the people will say I am a real GAA man and that should get me some votes....must get a good seat behind the presentation stand........I suppose that Mc Aleese will be there as well....Jesuz....Nordys....everywhere.....that will all change next year.....might put Birty forward....at least that would keep the media hounds busy......
I will show a positive side to my personality today......Come on Down......I dont like Cork.....too close to Limerick......Rebel County........and us down in Offaly still fighting the republican cause......Mary have you found me black and red socks? Me lying here and my shirt not even ironed yet........Is my driver here yet Mary? Anyway Diary I better get a move on......talk later.....Up Down...ha ha ha! have fun!...hope Mary found those socks too!
Morning fellow hubbers - rain here in the mid Atlantic -
Wednesday 22nd September 2010
Dear Diary - biffosdiary.blogspot.com
Well I launched that big investment in DIT yesterday…..that should get me some votes from the pleebes……..the Bonds sale went well…..although we got screwed on the interest rate……need to keep an eye on the European Union today as they introduce new regulation for the banking sector……I hope it does not affect my property portfolio in Cambridge………Ploughing championships should bring us in a few votes…….I have sent plenty of the cheer leaders down that………that Ivan Yates is down there with the rest of that crowd…..interviewing that Jack O’Connor and other leftie intellectual-mouth-pieces……..the budget is going to be a hard sell….still if we focus on hitting the lower orders it should keep our people well insulated…..let Labour look after their own and we will look after our own……..Sean Fitzpatrick back in court today…….I wish him well Diary……Mary have you found my trousers? Jesuz…..I am the leader of the country….I cant be expected to get my own trousers………Executed or Excused?
The US state of Virginia is today due to carry out its first execution of a woman in nearly a century amid appeals from the European Union and repercussions that reached as far away as Iran.
Teresa Lewis, 41, is scheduled to die by injection at Greensville Correctional Centre in Jarratt for the hired killings of her husband and stepson in October 2002.
To procure the hit men, prosecutors said, she used sex, cash and a promised cut of the insurance benefits the killings would bring her.
The US Supreme Court and Governor Bob McDonnell have declined to intervene, and all her legal appeals have been exhausted, Lewis's attorney said.
In a state with the second busiest death chamber in the US, the case has stirred an unusual amount of attention because of her gender, claims she lacked the intelligence to mastermind the killings and the post-conviction emergence of defence evidence that one of the killers manipulated her.
Lewis's supporters say she is a changed woman, and point to testimonials from former prison chaplains and inmates that Lewis comforted and inspired other inmates with her faith and the hymns and country gospel tunes she sang at Fluvanna Correctional Centre for Women.
In a letter this month to Mr McDonnell, the European Union asked the governor to commute her sentence to life, citing Lewis's mental capacity. She has admitted her role in the killings, but her lawyers have said testing shows she has a low IQ bordering mental disability.
The European Union's ambassador to the US wrote that the EU "considers that the execution of people with mental disorders of all types is contrary to minimum standards of human rights".
Earlier this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Western media of having a double standard in reporting on the Lewis execution.
He compared coverage of the Lewis case to the "heavy propaganda" campaign against the case of an Iranian woman who had been sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery.
"Meanwhile, nobody objects to the case of an American woman who is going to be executed," he was quoted as saying during a speech on Monday to Islamic clerics and other figures in New York.
Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Centre agreed that the death penalty is a human rights issue, but said the Iranian leader is "the wrong messenger".
"The US is, of course, interested in human rights abuses," he said.
Mr McDonnell said he had thoroughly reviewed court records and medical and psychological reports and found no compelling reason to grant clemency to Lewis.
Lewis met Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger in a Wal-Mart store in Pittsylvania County and traded sex and money for weapons for the hired killing of her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis Jr. His son, Julian Lewis, entered the US Army Reserve and had a $250,000 (€187,414) life insurance policy, naming his father as beneficiary.
Both men would have to die for Lewis to collect.
On the night before Halloween in 2002, Shallenberger and Fuller came in and shot both men several times with shotguns.
Lewis's attorneys note that Shallenberger later claimed he was the mastermind and duped Lewis to get some of the insurance money. Shallenberger committed suicide in prison in 2006. He and Fuller were sentenced to life for the killings.
Lewis's execution would be the first of a woman in Virginia since 1912. Texas held the most recent US execution of a woman in 2005.
Out of more than 1,200 people put to death since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, only 11 have been women.
Two men are expected in court this afternoon after they were arrested yesterday as part of a garda investigation over suspected dissident republican activity.
It emerged today that a woman aged in her 20s was arrested in the Wexford area yesterday, a day after nine men were detained during garda raids across in the county and counties Louth and Waterford.
The two men will appear at before a sitting of the Special Criminal Court this afternoon, gardaí said.
Seven other men - also arrested on Friday as part of an ongoing garda investigation into dissident republican activity - remain in custody.
Six men aged between 19 and 71 years were arrested in Co Wexford following the operation. They are being held at Garda stations in Enniscorthy, New, Ross, Wexford and Thomastown, Co Kilkenny under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act 1939.
Another man (27) was arrested in Waterford and is being detained at the Garda station in Waterford city under the same legislation.
Gardaí from specialist units assisted by local gardaí from the South Eastern and Northern Regions were involved in the sweep during which arms, ammunition and suspected bomb components were also seized.
A firearm and ammunition were recovered during the search of a house in Dunleer, Co Louth, where two men (aged 20 and 33) were arrested.
Both men were detained under the provisions of Section 30 Offences Against the State Act and are being detained in Whitehall and Santry Garda stations.
Another house was sealed off in Keelogue, Barntown, Co. Wexford and a number of items which gardaí believe to be the component parts of explosive devices were recovered.
The latest security operation comes only days after it emerged that support for dissident republicans in nationalist areas has been underestimated.
Research carried out by Prof Jonathan Tonge of Liverpool, an author on Irish affairs, found that some 14 per cent of nationalists have expressed sympathy for the reasons behind dissident violence.
British authorities raised the threat level of a dissident republican terror attack from moderate to substantial, the third highest level, meaning such an event is a "strong possibility".
The move followed an MI5 assessment which found that dissidents were continually improving their capabilities and could launch attacks in Britain.Breaking News from Ireland -
Dissident Threat
On Sunday the 3rd of October 2010 theirishobserver.blogspot.com warned the public that Dissident terrorists were about to launch a bombing campaign from their strong holds in Donegal, north Monaghan and Louth. On Monday the 4th October 2010 Dissidents caused wide spread damage when they exploded a one hundred pound bomb in Derry. Yesterday the Gardai in County Louth made significant seizures of Dissident weapons and explosives. The public must remain vigilant; while the Gardai are to be congratulated on yesterday’s success the Dissidents remain determined to cause death and destruction in Northern Ireland and in England.
The Story so Far:
A “significant” dissident republican explosives dump and arms cache has been uncovered by anti-terror gardaí in county Louth.
An improvised mortar, three kilos of TNT, bomb-making equipment and a pipe bomb were found hidden in a wood in Co Louth.
The weapons haul included a general-purpose machine gun, a shotgun and assorted ammunition. The TNT explosives – a powerful explosive commonly used by the military and in mining – were found in the wooded area near Dunleer.
The finds were the second massive blow to suspected factions of the Real IRA in recent days and followed 10 arrests and separate searches over the weekend.
Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy said the discovery was “significant” and added: “This find represents a further step in our determined strategy to target, disrupt and detect the activities of dissident republicans.
“We continue to work closely with our colleagues in the Police Service of Northern Ireland and in the Security Service to thwart the intent of a small group of people who want to inflict violence and pain on communities.”
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern praised the work of detectives, saying: “This was a very significant find at a time when the threat from dissident groups poses dangers for law-abiding people.
“I want to congratulate An Garda Síochána for their detailed work in this area.”
A Garda spokesman said a series of raids were carried out yesterday morning in Co Louth, which straddles the border with Northern Ireland, and its neighbouring county Meath.
It is the second time this year that material for a suspected mortar bomb attack has been uncovered by authorities.
A device suspected of being made into a mortar was uncovered near Dundalk, Co Louth, in May.
The latest major operation, led by the anti-terror Special Detective Unit, followed 10 arrests and explosive seizures at the weekend in a wave of raids in Louth, Waterford and Wexford.
Bomb detonators and a small quantity of Semtex plastic explosive were seized.
Two men were charged in Dublin’s non-jury Special Criminal Court on Sunday night in connection with the anti-dissident operation.
Nicholas Kendall (aged 20) of Row Street, Wexford, was charged with unlawful possession of a semi-automatic pistol, ammunition and a bomb part.
Peter Butterly (aged 33,) of Cortown in Dunleer, Co Louth, was charged with being a member of the IRA.
The eight others included a 24-year-old woman and men aged from 19 to 71.
3rd October 2010 – irishobserver.blogspot.com
Coordinated Bombing Campaign Planned -
Dissident Terrorist groups have pooled their resources to carryout a coordinated bombing and shooting campaign this Autumn and Winter. The Dissident Terrorists will launch bomb attacks from their strong holds in the Irish Republic, namely Donegal, north Monaghan and north Louth in the coming weeks and months. The Dissident Terrorists remain committed to carrying out a bombing campaign in England; this type of spectacular has traditionally been viewed as the life blood of Irish terrorism. Recent successes by the security services on the Island of Ireland have been a set back for the dissidents, however, these groups have been strengthened in recent months by further defections from the Provisional IRA and a significant number of new recruits who have been trained in weapons and explosives. The dissidents have also secured automatic weapons through their relationship with criminal gangs in Cork, Limerick and Dublin. Significant amounts of commercial explosives have not been secured by the dissidents and so they remain dependent on home made explosives.
It is essential that the public remain vigilant and that anyone with any information about the terrorists groups should provide that information to the Gardai or PSNI. It is essential that both the Gardai and the PSNI are given the resources necessary to monitor and where possible apprehend Dissident Terrorists. The border counties on both sides of the Irish border are going to be hot spots in the coming weeks and months for Dissident activity. Due to on going economic criminal activity by the dissident groups in the border areas (for example, smuggling) there is a significant tolerance level of their activity as many local people engage in the selling and buying of illegal goods.Breaking news from Ireland -
Sex criminals continue to weild their power in working class Catholic areas of the north while the political elites sit back in silence. In the latest attack by these criminals three masked men forced their way into a house at Brompton Park, Ardoyne, at about 10pm and shot the man, who is aged in his late 20s. For four decades politico-sectarian-criminals has weilded control in these areas in order to ensure the silence of the women and children that they have raped and abused.
We have already seen with the case of Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams, what these politico-sectarian-criminals are prepared to cover up in order to protect their own criminal empire. Areas controled by politico-sectarian-criminals in the north and in some areas of the Irish Republic, have the highest rates of rape and child sexual abuse in the modern world, as victims are beaten into silence.
These criminal scum know that once they stop weilding their criminal power, a Pandora's Box will open and these low life will be exposed for the criminals that they truely are. Those who support these criminal scum in any way what so ever are as guilty of their crimes as they are. It will be interesting to see how Gerry Adams polls in Louth at the next General Election, perhaps we will finally see what the Irish people think of those people who conceal and facilitate the Rape of Innocence.Absolutely freezing here in Ireland - hope your weather is good - here is Dolly Parton singing.....Blanket on the Ground
So sorry to hear about the big freeze. It is sunny in N.C.
Play a Christmas Song...Female Rapists and the Great cover-up
Few people in Ireland want to accept that women and men commit sexual crimes against children in equal measure. It is no surprise that our people remain in denial having been reared on a daily diet of the Virgin Mary and the good old days when Granny never seen such violence as we have in modern Ireland.
The reality is somewhat different, the HSE has 23,000 Files relating to women who have admitted that they raped and sexually abused children, these files have never been sent to the Gardai as there is no Mandatory Reporting of Child Rape in Ireland. Some women have been prosecuted for raping children and some of those cases remain before the courts, however, 23,000 known female sex offenders will never see the inside of a Court room.
The majority of these rapes and sexual assaults by women have taken place in the family home or have been committed against a child/children known to the offender. We will never hear so called ‘victims’ groups calling for the prosecution of female rapists, mainly because they must remain in denial of the role played by women in the rape of children. It is much easier to paint a picture of the rain coated male hiding in the bushes; than it is to accept that the female relative so eager to babysit for you is actually a sexual predator.
Since the founding of the Irish Free-state and before, women have been leaders in the sexual abuse of children, the facilitation of the sexual abuse of children and the concealment of the sexual abuse of children. When female rapists are reported to social services they are treated as patients rather than criminals, they are offered a few weeks counselling and then returned to the family home to continue as normal.
Women are advised to say they have been victims of domestic abuse, even sexual crime in order to mitigate their crimes; the reality is that they needed no help or assistance in their crimes.
Mothers and Grandmothers have taken pregnant girls as young as 11 years old down to CURA in Dublin and those girls were forced to sign away their babies to the Catholic Church so that their Rapist could never be prosecuted. Women hugging the altar rails in Monaghan Town and Cork City have disposed of their children and grandchildren as if they were unwanted dogs. These women would dare to tell you that they done it for the child’s benefit, in reality these women never done anything for anyone only themselves.
There is no Mandatory Reporting of Child Rape in Ireland; the reason for this Human Rights violation is that the Catholic Church and Fianna Fail are in collusion to continue to conceal the daily rape of children in Ireland. Thousands of known female sex offenders continue to live and work in communities all over Ireland; people continue to allow baby sitters into their homes without realising that on a dusty shelf in the HSE there is a file where these people have admitted sexual crimes against children.
Previous Articles:
In recent years more women are coming before the Courts in Europe charged with sexual criminality. Traditionally men were believed to be the sole perpetrators of sexual crime. However, recent high profile cases show that women without any assistance from men are capable of committing some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Yesterday in Ireland another case came before the courts and here are the details:
A WOMAN charged with 87 counts of indecently assaulting a number of girls may face further charges.
Tullamore Circuit Court was told a jury would be required for the trial of the 61-year-old, who is pleading not guilty to offences that allegedly took place at an Offaly school between 1973 and 1977.
A number of the alleged victims were in the court, as was the defendant.
The book of evidence refers to seven named female victims, with 20 offences each alleged to have been committed against three of them, 10 against two other victims, six against one and one charge against the final victim.
I simply use this case as an example of the latest to appear before the Irish Courts. The correct forensic psychological term for a woman sexually abusing female children is a Homophile. Men who abuse young boys are also Homophiles. Men who abuse young girls are Hetrophiles. Women who abuse Boys are Hetrophiles. People who abuse boys and girls are known as peadophiles.
You may ask why make a distinction; surely they are all scum bags. The answer to that is simple. If we don’t make these very important distinctions then we are giving parents and children the impression that there are certain sections of our society who do not abuse children.
Over 98% of those members of religious orders who abused children the world over were Homophiles. These were men abusing pre-puberty boys. Or women abusing pre-puberty girls as in the case alleged above. If we as a society create the impression that certain people don’t abuse children then we are guilty of facilitating that abuse.
Children can only be protected by vigilance and education. If we fail to educate our society that sexual crime is not the preserve of one group of individuals, then we facilitate sexual crime. For generations Social Services and the Criminal Justice system have dealt with men and women differently when it has come to sexual crime. It was always believed that women were not capable of sexually abusing children.
The reality is that the 14 Health Boards in Ireland show that women are in fact the greater abusers of children. While men are periodically dragged before the courts and paraded in the tabloids, women are more often given counselling or sent off for a few weeks’ holidays having committed the exact same sexual crimes.
Our Political System and Criminal Justice system are dominated by men, and these men appear in most cases to be unable to deliver the laws necessary to address the sexual criminality of women. Indeed in the latest piece of sexual crime legislation introduced in Ireland, a male under the age of 17 years can be charged with rape while a woman cant.
It is this type of blinkered law that facilitates and condones the sexual abuse of many thousands of children and others each year at the hands of women. Of course those so called 'victims' groups that are mainly run by men haters are not going to highlight the sexual criminality that is committed by women.
So we have in Ireland a Moral Quagmire in which the female sex criminal can continue to ply their trade. It is shameful and disgusting to think that our politicians are incapable or unwilling to stand up and be counted, to address the rape of a child by a woman, with equal outrage as that by a man. However, our politicians have been bullied in to silence. They fear that if they openly and honestly address the rape of children by women, they will be lambasted in the lurid tabloids in which they have so much faith.
Yes many of our legislators are at the dictate of the lurid tabloids, the same tabloids that facilitate and promote the sexual objectification of men, women and children with their lurid sex chat lines, their pornography and filth. This tabloid filth facilitates and normalises the rape of men, women and children, yet out legislators sit like baying dogs, as they seek applause from the filth mongers.
The rape and sexual abuse of human beings by other human beings has been about since time began, however, in 2010 there is no excuse for our legislators to facilitate the rape and sexual abuse of men, women and children by failing to address the sea of legislative uncertainty that allows these deviants to swim in their moral quagmire.
Convicted Rapists Will Vote for Fianna Fail (Irish Political Party - presently in Government)
In a letter sent to The Irish Observer a group styling themselves, "The National Association of Convicted Sex Offenders", have stated that they are ensuring that all of their members are registered to vote in prison and will be encouraging their members to vote for Fianna Fail in the forth coming General Election.
The letter signed by former DJ/Journalist, Eamon 'Captain' Cooke, who is presently serving life in Wheatfield Prison for raping children, states that:
"We the members of NACSO pledge our support to Fianna Fail who have consistently opposed calls from those in the 'victims industry' to introduce Mandatory reporting of Child Rape, it is essential that people such as Cardinal Sean Brady, Gerry Adams and other leaders in our country are able to help and assist sex offenders when the opportunity is presented".
"We salute in particular former Minister for Justice, John O Donoghue TD, for ensuring that those members of the religious orders who were accused of sexual crime were given One Billion Euro in order that they could be protected from financial ruin".
When contacted by The Irish Observer today, the Irish Prison Service said that prisoners had the right to register to vote and that they could vote for whomever they desired. The IPS also confirmed that the right for prisoners to vote was achieved by Stephen 'Rossi' Walsh some years ago in a High Court challenge, Walsh is presently serving 13 years in Wheatfield for sexually abusing two children.
Sexual Crime in Ireland
John Muncie (2000) sets the media and public’s attitude to crime, into context, when he tells us that:
Any cursory glance at television programme listings, the contents of mass circulation newspapers or the shelves of fiction in book shops will confirm the extent to which an audience perceives crime not just as a social problem but as a major source of amusement and diversion, the way in which we enjoy violence, humiliation and hurt casts doubt on the universal applicability of harm as always connoting trouble, fear, loss and so on. For participants, too, the pleasure in creating harm, or doing wrong or breaking boundaries is also part of the equation and needs to be thought through (p.225).
Prof. Paul O’Mahony (1996) goes further in addressing the media and crime, when he says:
Sections of the media never tire of reflecting a fearful message of crime back to the public and amplifying it through selective reporting, sensational headlines and frequently inflammatory editorialising. For most part the media rhetoric of fear and moral panic is built on isolated cases taken out of the broader context of crime in Ireland. Traditional barriers of good taste and reticence have been broken down. As the parameters of the permissible have expended some sections of the media have developed a reprehensible, approach which is sensational and voyeuristic. Supposedly factual accounts and purportedly serious analyses and comment are often exaggerated, unsubstantiated by any reliable supporting evidence, and intended to provoke hysterical response (p.167).
This manufacturing of hysterical responses guillotines public and political debate and pushes certain weak politicians towards quick fix and usually harsh and ill considered repressive and punitive legislation, the results of which are more damaging to society in the long term. Brenda O’ Brien says:
I have always said that the media have played a positive role in helping us to come to terms with child abuse, but there is a real danger that they will become intoxicated with their own power (Irish Times. 2002).
This positive/negative role played by the media in relation to child sexual abuse was picked up by Bishop Willie Walsh when he said:
Can I ask the media to be aware of the danger that it might use its power to occupy that oppressive and uncompassionate role which hopefully the Catholic Church has vacated or at least begun to vacate (Irish Times.2002).
Psychotherapist, Marie Keenan said of sex offenders, alleged or real, and the way the media treats them:
They were constructed as non-persons and icons of evil. Labels turn people into nouns and hence the paedophile is born (Irish Times.2002).
Marie Keenan was critical of the media’s role in this demonization and its indifference to families of offenders by the repetition of cases and repeated use of photographs of abusers. In the majority of child sexual abuse cases the victim/s are from the same family as the abuser and in high profile cases lurid reporting by what has become known as Journophiles[1] can have a devastating impact on innocent members of the extended family. However, we must also remember that many of these Journophiles have no interest in the victims in these cases and are simply reporting sensational headlines in order that they can sell the paper back book they will publish from the transcripts of the trial
Certain media reporting can also see grave injustice done to the victims alleged or actual in such cases. In 1994 the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed a conviction which had lead to a fourteen year sentence, because newspaper articles and pictures that were published during the trial period, which named the Defendant, were likely to prejudice the jury against him. In 1994, Mr Justice Kelly find the Star £10,000 for publishing a report that did not reflect what had gone on in Court and was neither ‘fair or true’. This report led to the dismissal of the jury. In 2002 the reporting of a case appearing before Mr Justice, John Neilan at Mullingar District Court, relating to a charge of false imprisonment and sexual assault of a child, Mr Justice Neilan said of an interview with the alleged victim’s family on RTE:
It was outrageous and a nauseating matter (Irish Independent.2002).
In the case of Tim Allen a celebrity Chef and the first person to be ‘sentenced’ as a result of Operation Amethyst [2], the trial Judge said he had to take into account the substantial media coverage surrounding the case. The Tim Allen case caused ‘muted’ outcry as he was given 240 hours of community service and agreed to pay £40,000 to a children’s charity. Mr Allen had paid for and down loaded one thousand pictures of children from as young as five being raped (Irish Times. 2003). These acts of legal and moral courage by members of the judiciary to face down the bullying tactics of certain sections of the media and reactionary politicians are the exception rather than the rule.
What influence can be put upon a jury by even minimal pre-trial publicity is impossible to measure; however, we can be certain that many accused persons have been denied their Constitutional right to a fair trial due to accesses by certain sections of the media. This is particularly the case in provincial towns in the Irish Republic where serious crimes are tried before the Circuit Court. Crawford (1997) reminds us that:
An assertion of community at a local level can be beautifully conciliatory, socially nuanced and constructive but it can also be parochial, intolerant, oppressive and unjust (p.294).
Accesses by the media can impugn a convicted person’s ability to seek and receive rehabilitative care when entering the prison system and can destroy the reputation of an acquitted person. This commitment to a fair trial, as set out in the Irish Constitution, Bunreacht na hEireann, and International conventions, was confirmed by Mrs Justice Denham of the Supreme Court in 1993, when she stated:
Article 40.3 incorporated a right to fairness of procedures which incorporated the requirement of Trial by jury unprejudiced by pre-trial publicity…the right to a fair trial was a fundamental Constitutional right and was superior to the communities right to prosecute (O’Mahony.1996.p.11).
A small number of politicians have not been silent on the matter of accesses by the media, although such disquiet has not been followed through by legislation. The establishment of the Press Complaints Commission is a small step in the right direction, however, when a persons freedom is at stake no stone must be left unturned in order to guarantee a fair trial to an accused person. On the 4th of May, 2001, Donnie Cassidy, the leader of the Senate at that time said:
The rights of citizens were being eroded by some sections of the media and the Oireachtas would have to be courageous in addressing this problem.
Mr Maurice Manning, the Fine Gael Leader of the Seanad responded to Mr Cassidy by saying:
I would like to draw attention to the fact that this very morning one criminal trial cannot go ahead because of the antics of some newspapers yesterday (Irish Times.2001).
In an article in The Irish Times (2003) Fintan O’Toole gave an excellent analysis of the negative role played by some media in the murder trial of Catherine Nevin. O’ Toole concludes this article by saying:
The media industry, which rightly demands that others account for their use of power, has a lot to account for (p.16).
The jury is not the only consideration where the accesses of the media are concerned. In 2001 a Circuit Court Judge, ordered the media from his Court as he sentenced a man found guilty of sexual offences. The judge stated that his reasons for ordering the media from his court was that, he felt the presence of the media would influence his sentencing of the accused man. While this decision by the Circuit Court judge was later over turned by the High Court, it opened up the somewhat muted debate about the effects of popular sentiment and legislative provision for harsher sentences on the actual practice of judicial discretion. However, the muted debate disappeared with the headlines. Even where a judge of the lower courts has banned the publishing of names of persons involved in sexual crime cases in the interest of the victim/s, the High Court has over turned such decisions (Irish Times.2002).
Yet there is a moral schizophrenia in sections of the media when it comes to sexual crime alleged or real. While one can read tabloid headlines such as ‘Sex Beast’ and ‘Sex Monster’ (Stanko.2000) the flick of the front page of the tabloid will bring the reader into a world of intimate, lurid and graphic descriptions of sexual crimes and fantasies. The material to be found on these voyeuristic journeys, is equal to the depths of depravity to be found on deviant sexual websites on the World Wide Web, sites developed and maintained for an ever more voyeuristic public, deviant sexual sub-cultures there in, and the young and the vulnerable. These lurid and voyeuristic accounts of criminals proceedings, sex orientated advertisements and perverted sex chat lines are a clear indication of the moral schizophrenia of those sections of the media, which are high on rhetoric but low on morality.
On a daily basis there are millions of examples of this moral schizophrenia in the media. Staying specifically with the area of child sexual abuse and exploitation, I have looked at the sex orientated adverts in the tabloid press. While the extent of this article is too confined to give the depth of analysis that I would like, I will however, set out some examples. In the Weekly Sport tabloid, sex orientated adverts run alongside distasteful lurid details of sex crimes before the courts, a sample of these sex orientated adverts is:
Young Girls Want to Talk to You 1-2-1
Bored Young Girls Waiting for You to Call
Lively Girls on Line Now
Young Girls Willing to Talk
Sex adverts and selective reporting of sexual crime in The Star (tabloid) follow a similar pattern. However, The Star goes further by using popular children’s movies to lure potential young customers to their sex adverts, Home Alone (a popular children’s movie) and versions thereof. The Joint National Readership Research group have reported that The Star has some 400,000 readers in Ireland each day, on any given day there are up wards of forty sex adverts in The Star, including titles such as:
Bi Girls
Sixth Former
Irish Girls
Hot and Horny
Chat with Girls at Home
Girls looking for Men
Girls at Home
This supply of lurid material that often runs alongside advertisements for children’s summer camps and other sporting activity of interest to children must surely be of concern to those in Irish society who genuinely want to see, sexual crime and the environment that facilitates and normalises it eliminated. It is interesting to note that these perverted sex adverts for sex chat lines are excluded from our advertising standards legislation. The proliferation of child owned mobile phones combined with this easy access to lurid material pose a real danger to community safety.
Who are these lurid advertisements directed towards? If not the weak minded, the vulnerable and the young. The word Girl in the Oxford English Dictionary means, ‘Female Child’. This discourse coupled with the use of child movies as an introduction to sex chat lines, can leave one with no other conclusion than that these sex orientated adverts are aimed at grooming children, those with a distorted sexual script and any one in the community who derives pleasure from the normalisation of sexual deviance, that these adverts portray. While much reporting of a lurid and voyeuristic nature is broadly confined to the tabloids and certain internet sites it is not exclusive to same. Some Broad sheets and visual media outlets have also taped into this marketable commodity especially at times of high profile cases.
Tom Inglis, in his book, Lessons in Irish Sexuality (1998), sets out the findings of his research when he examined the Sunday Independent, for two separate six month periods. The first six months in 1963 and the second in 1993, his analysis indicated that over the thirty-year period, the number of explicit articles and photographs increased from two to thirty-three; the number of indirect items about sex increased from one to forty-four; and the number of direct items increased from eleven to seventy-six. Roger Grafe (2000) found in his research that:
The broad sheets report about three times the actual proportion of violent crime and the tabloids about ten times. The picture of the world one gets from crime news is that it is a very violent place. Inflated perceptions of the level of violence create pressure for something to be done (p.31).
What is most significant about this increased supply of lurid and deviant material by sections of the media is that it has gone unchallenged by the Government and those NGOs, voluntary and community groups who allegedly have the interests of victims at heart. Indeed these very same organisations know well that they will themselves need banner headlines when they seek their next trench of funding from Government. The double standards of some politicians were highlighted with the resignation of Government Minister, Mr Bobby Molloy in 2002, after it was disclosed by the right Hon. Mr Justice O’Sullivan, that Mr Molloy, had phoned him in relation to the sentencing of a man convicted but not yet sentenced for raping his daughter. However, the web of intrigue did not stop there; Under a Freedom of Information request by RTE’s, Good Morning Ireland, the Department of Justice was forced to disclose that the then Minister for Justice, Mr John O’Donoghue, ‘Mr Zero Tolerance’, had exchanged fifteen letters with Mr Molloy about the man convicted of, but not yet sentenced for raping his daughter.
All of the communications focused on the possibility of getting temporary release or bail for the convicted person, an intervention that is both unlawful and un-constitutional. The same Minister for Justice was a regular contributor by way of articles and interviews with the same lurid tabloids. Indeed Mr O’Donoghue would see himself before the District Court when a convicted person sought summonses issued against Mr O’Donoghue in a private criminal prosecution, after it was disclosed under the FOI Act that Mr O’Donoghue had sent an unlawful communication to the DPP in relation to that convicted persons case (Irish Times.2002). And while Mr O’Donoghue was telling the people of Ireland that sexual crime against children would not be tolerated, he and others were signing off on a deal that would see Religious Child Rapists getting bailed out to the tune of hundreds of millions of Euro, at a time when the majority of the 5500 children in the ‘care’ of the State don’t have access to professional help. Mr O’Donoghue resigned from his position as Chair of the Dail in 2009 after it was disclosed that he had spent vast amounts of tax payer’s money on extravagances for himself and his wife, including Gondala rides in Venice, while staying in 900 Euro per night Hotel rooms.
Few politicians or groups are prepared to challenge accesses by the media. Voluntary, community, ‘victims’ groups and others in the ‘victims industry’ depend on media coverage to high light their profile, which in turn helps them to secure funding from Government each year. An unprecedented ‘bogus moral panic’ was created when a ‘victims’ group colluded with the tabloids to gain banner headlines. In 2003 a ‘victims’ group claimed that over the previous five years there had been a substantial increase in drug induced rape and sexual assault cases. In fact the Gardai and the Sexual Assault Unit at the RotundaHospital stated that not one single case of drug induced rape or sexual assault had ever been brought to their attention. Following comprehensive investigation by the Sexual Assault Units around the country, this investigation included toxicology reports on each victim, it was clearly established that the women making such allegations (if they ever did) had simply consumed so much alcohol that they could not remember what they had done the night before. Yet nobody seemed to bat an eye lid when this bogus moral panic was exposed in an RTE 1, Crime Line Report, 26th January, 2003.
The Irish Independent (2002) reported how a 17 year old French youth, claimed to have been driven by a cult horror movie ‘Scream’ to commit the gratuitous murder of a fifteen year old girl. French Justice Minister, Dominique Perben, commenting on the case said:
The Government must quickly come up with a way to avoid this repetition of scenes of violence at the disposition of adolescents. These violent scenes set in motion some particularly fragile adolescents who then play out misdemeanours or crimes.
Sex orientated sites on the internet are an extension of this tabloid supply of deviant material, to an ever more voyeuristic public and particularly those with a distorted sexual script there in. Millions of web pages now provide a wide range of sex orientated pornography and literature. The scales of provision go from curious voyeurism, to the most lurid taste, reaching into the dark recesses of unstable minds. In February, 2001, seven people were convicted in London for their part in the ‘Wonderland Club’ which was the world’s largest known child pornography web site. The ‘Wonderland Club’ internet data base held some 750,000 images, including the rape of babies as young as two months old (Irish Indpendent.2001). It is clear from the many cases coming before the courts in England and Ireland, that the higher socio-economic groupings are the main yet not exclusive users of this new technological deviance, this was clear from Operation Amethyst (Irish Times.2002) and was reinforced by experts in this field who were interviewed on an RTE, Prime Time programme on this subject on the 31st May 2010.
For generations Irish people were constrained by the condemnation of all, but normal marital sexual relations by the Catholic Church, however, following the Ferns, Murphy and Ryan reports into religious child rapists that constraint is laid bare, the constraints of moral and religious teaching for generations, has been sharply lifted by the expose of the Catholic Church and the voyeuristic and lurid material of a newly liberated technological era. One would be a fool to suggest that sexual deviance is not a marketable commodity, however, with that marketing must come responsibility. Tony O’Neil CEO of Palmstories.com one of the biggest providers of porn on the internet and mobile phones says of the industry:
As far as the web is concerned, pornography has always been at the cutting edge technology wise, the industry is worth billions of dollars generating more money than music or movies (Irish Times. 2001).
Emer O’ Kelly told us in the Sunday Independent, that she and other citizens are scourged by sexually explicit pornography, that is sent to them via the internet, into the privacy of their own homes, yet this is not illegal. Supply and demand for lurid and voyeuristic material and sexual stimuli for an evermore voyeuristic public and deviant sub-cultures there in, are growing unhindered, and sections of the media have not been wanting in feeding that demand and exploiting the aquiesants of the Government and others who turn a blind eye to this moral quagmire. Prof. Paul O’ Mahony (1996) says:
Pornographic portrayals of the relations between men and women and adults and children permeate our society. Pornography inevitably plays an important role in forming sexual attitudes and quite possibly, in facilitating and promoting sexual crime (p.219).
ISPCC Chief Executive, Paul Gilligan, reacting to Operation Amethyst, supported this view expressed by O’ Mahony in that pornography can facilitate crime and can be an integral part of sexual criminality when he said:
There is clear evidence from other countries that those in possession of child pornography represent a real risk to children and that those who actively purchase such material represent a greater risk. Some of the biggest paedophile rings and the most compulsive paedophile offenders have been caught on the basis of storing this type of material (Irish Independent.2002).
That said of course, the many thousands of religious child rapists including Homophiles, Hetrophiles and Paedophiles who operated within the Catholic Church would not have had access to such pornographic material in the 1940s/50s/60s and so forth. The ever more voyeuristic public and particularly those with a distorted sexual script there in, as set out in this article, are vulnerable to the detrimental influences of deviant literature and photography and persons outside this profile, who lack countervailing influences, particularly the young, can be taken along on a tide of sexual deviant activity and criminality. The conviction in England in May 2010 of two ten year old boys for the attempted rape of an eight year old girl, begs the question, why are children engaging is such activity, they did not learn it from watching the Telly Tubbies or Bosco.
In a survey published in July, 2002, the National Centre for Technology in Education found that 73% of 8-10 year old children had internet access at home. In an RTE Prime Time investigation aired on the 31st of May 2010, it was shown that 99% of children now have access to the internet at home. The report in 2002 further stated that as many as 25% of children with internet access at home had encountered pornography on the internet. In the Prime Time programme in 2010 this number is much greater and the dangers posed by chat rooms and social networking sites are an ever increasing danger. This normalising of deviant activity by the pornographic web sites, other sections of the media and an acquiescent Government and others have lowered the barriers, and provided a constant stream of images and literature to create and feed unhealthy and grossly unrealistic fantasies. The great disappointment with the Prime Time programme was that it failed to address the role played by the tabloids and other media in normalising and facilitating sexual crime, and rather seemed to suggest that it is only those sites that exchange child pornography or have a cyber contact element that pose the only threat to children, again enforcing the image of the paedophile, homophile or hetrophile as a man in the cyber bushes wearing a rain coat.
What is important to remember about deviance, says Young (1973) is that:
Deviant behaviour….is a meaningful attempt to solve the problems faced by a group or isolated individual – it is not a meaningless pathology (p.42).
Young’s proposition raises the question, why does society prefer to decry rather than confront sexual deviance in an open and constructive forum? May explanations can be offered and some have been put forward in this paper, however, unlike ‘homosexuality’ other sexual sub-cultures particularly those relating to child sexual abuse, cannot be so easily set outside the dominant sexual culture. It is perhaps this fear of examining too closely sexual crime and particularly sexual crime against children (Operation Amethyst, Ferns Report, Murphy Report, Ryan Report) that allows the hard line consensus to square their shoulders and shout ‘hang them’, however, as we have learned in Ireland, it is usually those who shout the loudest that do so to conceal their own crimes.
If the figures, relating to sexual crime in Ireland presented in this article in terms of Operation Amethyst and so forth are even close to the true extent of sexual crime, then one wonders in a population of less than four-million people, what family in the broadest sense is without its own difficulties. The recent revelations by Sinn Fein, President, Gerry Adams that he had known for decades that both his father and Brother Liam were child abusers, exposes the reality of how many dark secrets remain untold in Ireland. However, all is not lost as Brenda O’ Brien reminds us that:
An important Canadian study shows that untreated sex offenders have a 35% recidivism rate, while it is less than 10% for those who are un treated (Irish Times.2002).
When John O’Donoghue TD was Minister for Justice, dozens of convicted sex offenders applied to go on the sex offenders treatment programme at Arbour Hill Prison, the majority were told that there were no facilities to treat them due to lack of funding, this at a time when the Department of Justice spent vast fortunes on expensive trips abroad and squandered tens of millions of Euro on lavish expenses. Many within the hard-line consensus like British Home Secretary, Jack Straw (1997-2001) who introduced ill considered and punitive measures against sexual deviance, found that he had to build the scaffold close to home when his brother was charged with sexual crimes against two young girls in 2000. In July 2001, the Taoiseach’s Office was quick to play down reports that it was the subject of a major investigation by the Director of Equality, into allegations of serious sexual harassment against a former female employee. While some Cabinet Ministers, had in the weeks prior to these allegations against the Taoiseach’s Office been able to illegally comment on certain cases of a sexual nature before the criminal courts, the Taoiseach’s Department had ‘No Comment’ in relation to its own dirty laundry that was being hung out in the public arena.
This hypocrisy is not exclusive to weak politicians, in 2005; The Editor of The Star paid a sex offender who had just been released from prison 400 Euro for photographs of the said sex offender. The said sex offender had asked a friend to take pictures of him as he walked in O’Connell Street on the day he was released from prison, the said sex offender then sold these photographs to The Star for 400 Euro, the following day The Editor of The Star published the photographs claiming that a Star photographer had ‘captured’ the pictures as he seen the said sex offender on O’ Connell Street. The Editor of The Star continues to be a paid guest on many Irish television programmes where he continues to lecture the Irish public on matters of morality and good citizenship.
The vitriol expounded by certain sections of the media for those accused of sexual crime, particularly against children, it is not a new phenomena. In the not too distant past ‘homosexuals’ were the target of the editorial ‘moralists’. In the 1980s and 1990s Ireland’s sexual closet flung open with a vengeance and from this sexual expose, homosexuals were reluctantly ‘accepted’ into the status quo as an oppressed sexual minority, as opposed to a ‘sexually deviant sub-culture’. Such is the strength of the ‘homosexual’ lobby today in the UK and Ireland, that laws have been introduced to reflect a more liberal approach to the gay community. What ‘was’ seen as being seriously criminal by the Governments of the UK and Ireland a few short years ago is today not only ‘tolerated’ but is legislated for. Sexual activity with a child must remain criminal as no child can consent to such activity, however, child protection, community safety and crime prevention cannot be delegated to certain weak politicians and editorial ‘moralists’, whose only motivation respectively is self preservation and gross commercialism.
Cross (1979) quotes Lord Summers, to sum up, attitudes to homosexuality before the prevailing liberalism:
Persons who commit the offences now under consideration seek the habitual gratification of particular perverted lust which not only takes them out of the class of ordinary men gone wrong, but stamps them with the hall-mark of specialised and extraordinary class as much as if they carried on their bodies some physical peculiarity (p.366).
In a more contemporary address of homosexuality, Monsignor, Andrew Baker of the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops said:
Homosexuals may be more familiar with certain patterns and techniques of deception and repression…Nor can a homosexual be genuinely a sign of Christ’s spousal love for the Church…if the homosexual could be healed from such disorder, then he could be considered for admission to the seminary and possibly to Holy Orders, but not while being afflicted with the disorder (Irish Times.2002).
Indeed these words may well have meant something if they were not being uttered by a representative of the Catholic Church, a Church that has concealed the rape of thousands of children across the world at the hands of Homophiles, Hetrophiles and Paedophiles within the Catholic Church. An interesting observation that I make in relation to the current trend by certain sections of the media to burn male sexual deviants, alleged or real, at the stake, while excusing their female counter parts as being mentally ill. Is the fact that a number of journalists who belonged to the once flogged sub-culture of ‘homosexuality’, set aside more than a fair share of column inches to condemn the deviance of recently emerging sexual sub-cultures. Perhaps these individuals unsure of their own membership of their particular group need to vilify others for some form of security and acceptance into an uncertain world. Why do these journalists create the illusion that all religious child rapists were paedophiles when in fact over 95% of them were Homophiles, this misinformation helps to create the illusion that certain sections of society do not rape children, when the evidence is very clearly to the contrary.
However, out of this vilification and recrimination needs to emerge rational and reasoned debate about how to develop best practice in child protection, crime prevention and community safety, how many lives could have been saved if the ‘Gay’ debate had not been left for so long in the hands of the ‘moral’ guardians in the media and politics. The difficulty with the supply of lurid and voyeuristic material in the media and especially that which feeds the habits of those with a distorted sexual script and facilitates sexual crime in general (O’ Mahony.1996), is that it normalises deviance in the minds of people already suffering from a variety of psychological, emotional, moral and social crisis. Many sex offenders come from non-nurturing back grounds; they can’t express their emotions or even ask the questions that could set them free from a life time of mental torture (Casey.1999). A Press Ombudsman is a good start to setting some standard in a runaway media, however, much more needs to be done if another generation are not to be morally bankrupted by those who help normalise and facilitate sexual crime in Ireland.
[1] Journophile is the term used to describe those persons who write or contribute to those media outlets that facilitate and normalise sexual deviance by way of their objectification of men, women and children through the advertising of perverted sex chat lines, pornographic imagery or lurid sexual literature.
[2] Operation Amethyst was an FBI led investigation that identified people all over the world who had accessed, paid for and down loaded child pornography from the internet. 100 people were identified in Ireland including a Circuit Court Judge who would later have the charges against him dropped as the search warrant used to seize his computer was some hours out of date. The Judge in question had been one of the founder members of the now defunct Progressive Democrats, the ‘anti-corruption’ party.Breaking News - Wikileaks -
Documents published by Wikileaks show that the campaign to discredit Human Rights campaigner Vincent Mc Kenna was driven by Dennis Donaldson at Stormont and Owen 'Eoin' Smyth in Monaghan Town. Mc Kenna had exposed the British Government's lies in relation to the Northern Ireland 'peace process' lies now accepted by former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in his auto-biography. Mc Kenna had published a telephone conversation with a Stormont official where it was shown that the British Government were treating the rape, mutilation, torture and murder of Catholics by the IRA as 'internal house-keeping' in order to keep the Sinn Fein/IRA leadership within the peace process.
On the 22nd of January 1981 an IRA active service unit from MonaghanTown and under the leadership of IRA Commander, Jim Lynagh, carried out what most normal people would describe as a cowardly act of double murder. The IRA unit travelled in two vehicles to the picturesque village of Glaslough in CountyMonaghan, from here the IRA unit using a back road, crossed the border into Tynan close to Middletown in CountyArmagh. The IRA unit then held two families hostage and stole their cars. The IRA unit then proceeded to drive to the home (Tynan Abbey) of 86 year old Sir Norman Strong and his 48 year old son James. Sir Norman had been the former Speaker of the Stormont Government but had retired in 1969. His son James was a former Member of Parliament.
The IRA men then forced the front door of the Abbey. Upon hearing the door being forced Sir Norman and his son set off distress flares to alert the police that they were under attack. However, the IRA men continued with their plan. Sir Norman and his son James were summarily executed in the library by Jim Lynagh (shot dead 1987) and another IRA member who remains alive today. The men then planted two incendiary bombs that had been earlier prepared by Lynagh. The incendiaries had been planted in order not only to burn the Abbey but also to help destroy any possible forensic evidence of the gang’s identity. As the IRA gang tried to drive away from the Abbey in the cars they had stolen earlier, they were confronted by members of the RUC (police) who had been alerted by the flares set off minutes earlier by the now dead Sir Norman and his son James. The police car blocked the gangs escape.
Members of the IRA gang opened fire on the police and Lynagh actually jumped up onto the bonnet of one of the Police cars and opened fire at the windscreen, however, the bullet proof glass saved the police officers inside. The gang did not know that the roof was the only part of the car that was not protected against gun fire. The gang were forced to abandon their vehicles and run off into the surrounding fields. The men lead by Lynagh ran through fields and ditches until they found their way to the home of IRA supporter Harry Lavery who lived at Glaslough. Harry then arranged for transport for the men and they were eventually returned to MonaghanTown on the morning of the 23rd of January 1981. In follow up searches over the following days, Gardai detectives raided premises in MonaghanTown and arrested a number of the IRA gang. The men were found hiding in the cellar of the Round House Bar which was owned at that time by Mr Robert Loane, however, Mr Loane’s nephew, Owen Mc Cartan Smyth who worked in the bar for Mr Loane and who constantly tried to ingratiate himself with the IRA, had given the IRA men access to the cellar of his uncle’s bar.
Following these arrests Owen Smyth was warned by Jim Lynagh not to go into the north as he would be arrested for allowing the IRA men to stay in the cellar of his Uncle’s pub. However, Smyth who was described by IRA men in Monaghan as a ‘Walter Mitty’ type character ignored Lynagh’s warning, and Smyth without logical reason drove into the north where he was duly arrested. According to notes taken by an RUC Det. Sgt J. Toner, Owen Smyth had already started talking to them before the police car in which he was being transported had reached Gough Barracks in ArmaghCity. Over the following three days Smyth would fill dozens of pages of statements implicating republicans in Monaghan in various activities including the murders of Sir Norman Strong and his son James.
Smyth had come from a good family, his father was a school teacher and Smyth’s own siblings were teachers and Doctors, however, Owen Smyth had been unable to stay focused on anything for very long and so ended up working in his Uncle’s pub. Smyth was constantly trying to emulate other Monaghan men who were in the IRA such as Lynagh, however, to the IRA Smyth was nothing more than someone whom they could use to get free drinks or some one who would give them somewhere to hide if they were stuck. Smyth talked so much in Gough Barracks that he was eventually charged with counselling and procuring others to carry out the murders of Sir Norman Strong and his son James, he was also charged with IRA membership. While there was nothing to connect Smyth with the murders and he most certainly was not involved in the actual murders, he had talked himself into a hole.
When Smyth entered Crumlin Road Jail he asked to be placed in the Republican, A Wing, of the jail. Smyth told the IRA Intelligence Officer, big Joe (big Joe would be back in jail again in 1984 charged with the murder of Mary Travers), that he had remained silent during his detention. However, Smyth also befriended a young boy from Monaghan when he was in Crumlin Road Jail, and Smyth told this young boy that he had indeed been the brains behind the plan that lead to the murder of Sir Norman and his son James. As Smyth’s trial approached Smyth was forced to admit that he had in fact signed many, many statements. Word was sent to the IRA in Monaghan that Smyth had touted and the IRA had expected as much. When Smyth went before the Courts he denied the charges. The case against Smyth was transferred from Belfast to Dublin so that the trial judge could hear certain evidence. Mr Justice Hamilton in Dublin said Smyth was a liar when he alleged he had not been offered the opportunity of trial in the Republic under the Criminal Jurisdiction Act 1975. Smyth was returned to Belfast where the more serious charges were dropped on a ‘technicality’ and Smyth would serve only a couple of years for IRA membership.
There was serious pressure on Jim Lynagh to take action against Smyth; however, it was thought that in the interests of Sinn Fein in Monaghan such punishment would only back fire. Upon his release Smyth failed to turn up for a party that had been arranged for him in the ClaraInn, at Park Street, MonaghanTown. Smyth was certain that certain individuals whom he had named would take action against him; however, such reprisals were simply in his imagination. It was standard procedure for individuals like Smyth to be allowed to carry on menial tasks for the movement as long as they had not given States evidence against republicans. Normally it was only those touts who had been in the pay of the police who were shot, although it all depended on the merits of each case, if the republican movement had shot every tout and agent in its ranks there would have been a lot of bodies. Even Super-grasses who had retracted their evidence were allowed back into the ranks of the republican movement, Bow Scally, Rab Mc Allister and others were allowed back into the republican A Wing, in Crumlin Road Jail, once they retracted their evidence, although they were never trusted with operational details. Depending on their abilities they could simply be asked to put up posters at election time or they could be nominated to run for Sinn Fein in local council elections, where their minds would be occupied with waste disposal and street cleaning.
In 1984 Jim Lynagh’s brother-in-law Seamus Shannon would face extradition from the IrishRepublic in relation to his alleged role in the murders of Sir Norman Strong and his son James in 1981. Shannon’s extradition was directly linked to statements made against him by Smyth while Smyth was in Gough Barracks. Shannon claimed in the Dublin High Court that the murder of Sir Norman and his son James were political acts; however, the High Court judge stated that:
These crimes are so brutal, cowardly and callous that it would be a distortion of language if they were to be accorded the status of political offence.
While Shannon was extradited, the charges were eventually dismissed, due to lack of evidence. Shannon had plenty to say about Owen Smyth while he was in Crumlin Road Jail, but upon his acquittal Shannon was happy enough to return to the pub that had now been signed over to Smyth and enjoy a free pint.
Three weeks before the summary execution of Jim Lynagh and seven other IRA volunteers at Loughgall it is known that Patrick (Paddy) Kelly had travelled to MonaghanTown to meet Lynagh. Lynagh was not to be found and Kelly went to the Round House Bar to inquire if Lynagh was about. This was a cruel mistake; Kelly was unaware that this would be the first indicator the security forces would have that a major operation was being planned. When two people like Kelly and Lynagh were getting together the security forces knew that something big was going to happen. It is also worth mentioning that many republicans from the north who travelled south had a very naive understanding of how the Gardai operated. This was particularly evident after the IRA cease-fire announcement in 1994 when republicans went to RUC stations in West Belfast and wrote Gardai on them. It is clear that none of these ‘republicans’ had ever been held by the Gardai, under Section 30 of The Offences Against The State Act, if they had, they would have known that the Gardai were just as capable of being heavy handed as the RUC when dealing with IRA members, in fact in my own experience the RUC were much more curtailed by Human Rights and civil liberties legislation than were An Garda Siochana (Irish Police).
However, this would not be an end to Smyth’s lose talk. Smyth would in 1991 face charges of falsely imprisoning, Peter North, of Wattlebridge, Newtownbutler, Co Fermanagh, he was also charged with possessing a gun and explosives with intent to endanger life on November 22nd 1990. The only evidence against Smyth was his own alleged admissions to Gardai. At this point Smyth had been allowed to run for Sinn Fein in the urban elections in Monaghan and his arrest and alleged admissions caused embarrassment for the republican movement in Monaghan, which was and remains one of their few support bases in the Republic.
None of the above suggests that Smyth was not willing to ingratiate himself with the IRA. There is no doubt that he was willing to make himself, his property and his vehicle available to the IRA, however, Smyth like so many other fantasists who attached themselves to the IRA would never have been trusted with the operational details of any IRA operation, this did not mean that he did not have access to information. Unfortunately due to the way the republican movement operates few would have access to the information stated here and so it was that many republicans would have simply assumed that Smyth could have been trusted as he done time for IRA membership. Due to the location of the Bar that was given to Owen Smyth by his Uncle, uninformed republicans would drop into Smyth’s bar and assume it was a safe place and that he was someone with whom inquiries could be made. This would be a cruel mistake.
IRA activists such as Michael Pete Ryan, who was having an affair with the wife of Owen Smyth’s brother (Dr Brian Smyth) Dr Marian Smyth, appeared unable to realise that his open relationship with Dr Smyth was frowned upon by Owen who felt his family was being disgraced, Smyth however never openly confronted Ryan about his affair with Dr Marian Smyth. Pete Ryan’s motor bike would be openly parked outside Dr Smyth’s house each morning and this was a real bone of contention for Owen Smyth. Dr Marian Smyth would have a child (Michael) to Pete Ryan and Pete Ryan would be shot dead by the SAS in 1991. It is believed that someone talked out of shop and Laurence Mc Nally’s car was followed to the border as his friend dropped him off to travel with Ryan and Tony Doris to carry out an attack on a member of the security forces in Tyrone. There is no doubt that lose talk cost lives, however that lose talk had to be collected by someone and passed to their handlers in the security forces.
Smyth continued to get by on lies and half truths and most serious republicans simply ignored his actions. In 1998 Smyth turned up a press conference in New York that was being hosted by Bernadette Mc Kevitt Sands and her 32 County Sovereignty Committee. Bernadette was critical of the peace process and as she spoke the New York Observer recorded the following:
A burly Sinn Fein councillor from MonaghanTown called Owen Smyth, stood up in the audience and said: “I have been imprisoned and there have been four attempts on my life and I continue to support the Adams leadership”.
Of course non of the audience gathered there would have known that the only reason Smyth done time was because he was a tout, and there has never been a single attempt on his life, except those that he has invented or manufactured himself in order to garner publicity for himself. This can be confirmed with Kevin Mc Kenna, now retired to a pub in Smithboro, CountyMonaghan, or any other serious IRA player in Monaghan.
Smyth unable to garner his thirst for publicity through Sinn Fein created a proxy journalist through whom Smyth could exude his petty vindictiveness against those whom he despised because of their personal abilities and what he would have regarded as their success and status. Patrick ‘the dwarf’ Tierney was known in MonaghanTown as a drunk and had been given the menial task of selling An Phoblacht around a small housing estate in MonaghanTown (BelgiumPark). However, Owen Smyth who regularly filled Tierney’s glass free of charge asked Tierney if he would be interested in making some money. Smyth told Tierney that he wanted someone to issue press releases as if they were coming from an independent sourse rather than from Smyth himself. Smyth told Tierney that he could get two ‘journalists’ to propose and second him in order that he might obtain a National Union of Journalist (NUJ) card, and this would allow him to get paid as a freelance journalist. Tierney short of money and intellect agreed and was sworn to secrecy.
Smyth then approached two ‘journalists’ in Monaghan and both being fond of the drink were easy to convince that proposing and seconding Tierney would be helpful to Sinn Fein. Tierney then began to issue Press releases that had been written by Owen Smyth, these press releases were normally issued from the Round House Bar and usually presented Smyth as a man of stature and reliability. Smyth also issued press releases through Tierney to discredit Sinn Fein TD, CO’C, whom Smyth despised because of his status within the republican movement. It was Smyth who informed the media that CO’C was in difficulty with the Department of Social Welfare, having claimed money that he was not entitled to claim.
Tierney was a willing partner in this relationship and could be regularly seen falling drunk out of the Round House bar that was owned and run by Smyth. The Smyth Tierney relationship would reach fever pitch when former IRA member turned anti-terrorist campaigner, Vincent Mc Kenna, faced charges of sexual assault. Smyth despised Mc Kenna as much as he despised CO’C, Mc Kenna had left behind his association with the republican movement in Monaghan and had went on to be educated as a mature student at QueensUniversity in Belfast. Mc Kenna had become a fierce critic of the criminality and sectarianism of Sinn Fein/IRA and was regularly featured on CNN, CBS and other media around the world. It would be Owen Smyth’s sister-in-law, Dr Marian Smyth who would be involved in the claims of sexual assault against Mc Kenna. Mc Kenna’s ex-wife worked as a cleaner for Dr Marian Smyth and Fiona’s fondness of the drink made her an easy target for manipulation. Both Dr Marian Smyth and Owen Smyth meet on many occasions in order to generate further publicity against Mc Kenna. Smyth would go on to claim in the Irish Voice and British Independent that Mc Kenna had never been in the republican movement and was never trusted, this of course was Smyth’s way of trying to conceal the fact that he (Smyth) made dozens of statements against Monaghan Republicans when he was arrested by the RUC.
Before Mc Kenna’s release from prison in My 2005, Owen Smyth issued a press statement through Tierney, the press release invented by Smyth and Tierney stated that a group called ‘Families Against Paedophiles’ in Monaghan were going to kill Mc Kenna upon his release. Tierney was paid thousands of Euro by media outlets all over the country for a story that he and Smyth had invented. Following many years of internal dispute about Smyth’s bizarre behaviour, Smyth was finally gone from the republican movement. However, even Smyth’s former colleagues on Monaghan Urban Council became tired of him. Smyth had asked Sinn Fein members to table a motion:
(a) That Monaghan Town Council supports the call by former Monaghan Town Councillor, Owen Smyth, for an independent inquiry into the circumstances concerning his arrest, detention, charging and the Garda handling of the surrounding incidents in 1991.
The motion was rejected. Smyth even in the face of overwhelming evidence continued to seek out publicity for his Walter Mitty type existence. Indeed Smyth has even placed a short video on You Tube where he claims that he taught Jim Lynagh everything he knew, the same Jim Lynagh that said of Smyth:
“I would not trust him to deliver a pizza”.
By 2008 Smyth was finished, republicans no longer drank in his pub and he was forced to close up shop and sell his pub which is presently being turned into offices. In July 2010 Owen Smyth, the man who regularly claimed to his customers and anyone who would listen to him, that he was unable to go into the north as the Brits were after him, openly attended a funeral in County Tyrone and was ignored by many life long republicans who attended the same funeral.
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