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Joans “Expensive phones”
Comment Has A Deeper Meaning Missed By The Mainstream Media
Posted
on 10/10/2014 by admin
Ah
yes, good old Joan Burton. A woman who many people in Ireland wanted to like, including
me. Here is a woman who prior to being elected was considered by many to be
exactly the type of politician we needed representing us. She sang all the
right notes, even in her personal professional life, Joan has always maintained
a level of professionalism not replicated by many of her party colleagues. Joan
is by trade an accountant. And a damn good accountant too. This led to many
reports suggesting that if elected, Joan would have been given the Ministry of
Finances portfolio. A move many people agreed would be beneficial, seeing as
she would have been the first accountant in decades to manage the portfolio.
Naturally
though, the boys club wouldn’t have any of that. Hence the minister was tasked
with overhauling the social welfare. Making her public enemy number 1 in a lot
of households in a single stroke of a pen. However, her latest comments
regarding protesters and their “expensive phones” is very Mary Antoinette of
her. You see, what the minister did (and social media users were 100% right to
point this out) was highlight a very serious problem of how ministers such as
herself are incredibly far removed from the reality of day to day living in
Ireland. But you already know this and theres no point in this writer joining a
band wagon of (lets all call Joan Burton names). There is after all, a much
more long running serious side to these comments.
If
you’ve been paying attention to the members of the Irish government at all in
2014, you will notice there is one thing each party member on any side of the
isles will agree on. The issue of the public trying to hold them to account. Do
you think Joan is the first to pipe on about how ” protesters are intimidating
families” or why it is “that only poor people (who clearly are not poor because
they have technology) are protesting”? Do you think that Joan is the only
politician to commend the gardai for how they “professionally carry out their
duties” “of protecting lives” while an garda directly disobey the constitution
and break up protests?
The
real poison here is not the protests you see, it’s never been the protests.
Irish people have and will always protest if they believe in something enough.
This was never a problem before. Most protests are never mentioned by state
controlled RTE and Dennis O Brien has actively worked to silence criticism of
the state from his “journalists” writing for his media empire. All of this
meant the public narrative has for a very long time been easily controlled by
the state and its benefactors. After all, how could the public be outraged, if
it knew next to nothing about the events?
This
is the core of what Joan was talking about. Remember when they were elected,
how they spoke of real transparency in Irish politics from now on? Remember how
they said that they would indeed open up the freedom of information acts to
include all state departments? Remember then how they reneged on all of that?
Remember how Brendan Howlin deliberately refused to include Irish Water in the
FOI remits of public inquiry? There is a pattern at play here.
Early
2014 and Dublin Says No campaigner Derek Byrne started a new type of protest in
Ireland. He picked up his camera phone and started recording politicians
replies to questions asked on the street. Answer which he then uploaded to
Youtube so that they may then be shared on social media platforms. Hardly
rocking the boat of the underworld of seedy political life. However, it was
good enough to be noticed by the now literally hundreds of thousands of people
who regularly share Dereks videos. What question did Derek start asking the
politicians? “So tell me minister, you voted in favour of the savage cuts being
imposed on the Irish, can you tell me how exactly austerity is effecting you?” You can click
right here to watch the responses Derek gets.
While
Derek does follow the politicians in open public places, at no point is Derek
impending their right of way or is he intimidating towards the politicians. He
asks his question, gets his usually non answer and then uploads that. Hardly a
criminal mastermind. In fact, Derek has become so popular with Irish people
there are calls for Derek to run in the next elections. And it’s little truths
like what Derek is exposing that terrifies the establishment in Ireland. Noonan
and Kenny were the first to openly object to people filming their move in
public. Quickly followed by Brendan Howlin who actually assaulted Derek on the
streets of Dublin before snapping his fingers to get a garda to
“deal with this muppet will you” . Now sure, you might say the minister tried
to grab the camera, but in a court of law that is assault and if it was the
other way around. You bet your arse Derek would have been arrested for assault.
Then
Pat Rabbitte got in on the conversation regarding members of the public
“filming politicians” when he equated the practise with ” a form of bullying
and intimidation against men and women who are only doing their jobs”. Hw went
on to say that “some of these protesters are deliberately engaged in
a campaign to smear good people by uploading their videos onto the
internet”. Then Pat Rabbitte actually tried to introduce anti bullying legislation
to prevent people from doing the same. This idea was lashed by the public who
noted that the minister wasn’t interested in changing legislation when two
teenage girls committed suicide after enduring months of real bullying online.
And
now Joan Burton is at it. When Joan observed that “all of the protesters I’ve
seen seem to have extremely expensive phones, tablets [and] video cameras”
while adding “There has been the most extensive filming in relation to any of
these actions (protests) that I have ever seen anywhere.” before noting that
“it was clear that all of the material gathered by protesters “particularly
anything which looks controversial, is immediately posted up on Facebook,
Youtube and everything else”. …….
This
is bad for her government as literally millions of people now have access to
information the state broadcaster and Dennis O Brien used to hide from view.
The people themselves have decided to introduce the transparency its government
consistently refuses to give us. Without real and proper videoing of events
nobody in Ireland would have witnessed the savage attacks on students by
Dublins Gardai .. or how the gardai are guilty of crimes at Shell
Ireland .. or how Micheal Noonan laughs at the poor
.. or even how Joan Burton
herself is chased out of shopping centre by the people she still
claims are fully in support of her and her colleagues. A clip I cannot show you
as it was removed by Youtube.
I
predict a new “law” banning protests that film every detail in the future. For
while it is ok for them to spy on us and use every facit of our lives to rule
us, how dare we the unwashed try to do the same. It is not our jobs as citizens
to ask questions or hold politicians to account. Ours is to exist so that they
may succeed. In Ireland, we now jail protesters, be they in their 80’s or in
their front garden. The Irish police force on a daily basis now disregard their
oath and the constitution without so much as asking themselves “is this what I
signed up for?” … and every day more and more Irish media spin is spinning the
lie that protesters are “jobless, feckless, criminal groups of untrust worthy
louts who have nothing better to do than try to disrupt progress” …..
You
decide, are Joans comments really asking about how much a phone cost? Or ws she
really asking what the phone represented?
Truthful
Irish
Alt Ireland Radio
Sinn
Féin Mountmellick – Serving The Community
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