Cassandra Voices

Category: Current Affairs

  • Ireland and Palestine: A Crucial Vote Awaits

    Around Ireland and in its online expressions, there is vocal and colourful support for the cause of Palestine. Its flag is draped from windows, hung from gate posts and serves as WhatsApp profile pictures. PLO scarves are again in vogue, while watermelon t-shirts are worn when the weather allows, and charitable fund-raisers on behalf of Gaza seem to have people cycling the length and breadth of the country. Members of Ireland’s small Jewish community have complained of anger being directed against them, unfairly, over the conduct of Israel. Pro-Palestinian advocates are, however, invariably, committed anti-racists: the kind of people who showed up for Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion. It is not a Populist movement built on resentment against ‘an enemy within’ – an outlook characterising antisemitism of the past in Ireland and elsewhere – but an aspiration, however naively expressed, for a better world, and an identification which can be traced back to the Irish people’s historic experience of colonialism.

    Solidarity with Palestine is identified with leading artistic figures such as the globally renowned author of Normal People Sally Rooney, who has declined to have her books translated into Hebrew. It is a cultural phenomenon as much as political agitation. Numerous musical acts – notably Northern Irish rap group Kneecap – have courted cancellation and even potential criminal prosecution in the U.K. for drawing attention to the cause. It is also, admittedly, a well-received form of protest, within Ireland at least, garnering social media likes and real-world approval. It does not risk the wrath of the community – as was the case with dissent from the Covid consensus – or police jackboots, as we see descending in other European countries, and the U.S..

    Ireland’s octogenarian poet-President Michael D. O’Higgins has been an outspoken critic of Israel over the treatment of Gaza in particular. Despite occupying a largely ceremonial role, his stance has conferred legitimacy on expressions of rage on this issue. Referred to affectionately as ‘Michael D.’, his emphasis on human rights, social justice and the arts transcends ordinary politics, but a commitment to military neutrality – including in response to the War in Ukraine – has created tensions with the centre-right Irish government. This government under Micheál Martin as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) is also a vocal critic of Israel on the international stage, joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel earlier this year. There is evident, nonetheless, among the Irish government an underlying anxiety to avoid a serious rupture with a significant trading partner, and especially that country’s sponsor the United States. Ireland remains, remarkably, Israel’s second biggest trading partner.

    Members of the Irish government may well care about innocent Palestinian civilians caught in the crosshairs, and having famine inflicted on them. A more cynical, and arguably realistic, view would be that political expediency is paramount in the Irish government’s response.

    A low corporation tax rate regime and other incentives over the past fifty years have attracted a raft of large U.S. companies, particularly from the tech, and pharmaceutical sectors, to Ireland, along with other investment of various kinds, predatory or otherwise. Donald Trump even owns a golf club, Doonbeg, in the west of Ireland. Since the Financial Crisis, Foreign Direct Investment has delivered consistently high economic growth and near full employment, but the attendant spiralling cost of housing, in particular, has eroded support for the parties in government. Recent decades have also witnessed unprecedented immigration into a state which, for most of its history, has been ethnically homogenous, save for the North, which remains part of the United Kingdom. There, sectarian tensions between Catholics and Protestants generated a bitter, low-intensity thirty-year conflict that ended after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Opposing factions adopted different sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – still evident in murals on buildings across the province – thereby conflating Irish Republicanism with the cause of Palestine.

    U.S. companies in Ireland also have ties to Israel – notably Intel which employs almost five thousand in Ireland and approximately ten thousand in Israel. Importantly, Israel wields even greater clout in Washington than Ireland, despite an Irish diaspora in the U.S. of over thirty million dwarfing the five million Jewish-Americans – some of whom are leading critics of Israel.

    Irish government politicians often characterise Irish sovereignty as severely circumscribed by dint of our being a ‘small, open economy,’ susceptible to global shocks. As a result, government politicians tend to bend over backwards on behalf of Irish-based U.S. companies. Thus, former Taoiseach Enda Kenny is alleged to have told Facebook executives in 2013 that he would use Ireland’s presidency of the E.U. to lobby member states over data privacy laws. Although we rarely hear of such exchanges, doubtless they occur. Ireland’s strained relations with Israel – which last year removed its Irish embassy describing Ireland as ‘the most extreme country against Israel internationally’ – is surely discussed, given major tech companies’ evident (as we will see) allegiance to Israel. Presumably Irish government officials stress their vulnerability on this issue to the left-wing opposition, especially Sinn Fein, which emerged as a serious threat to a long-standing political duopoly in the 2020 General Election.

    Representatives of U.S. and other capital surely recognise that their interests are best served by the two parties of the centre-right – compelled to coalesce in the wake of the Financial Crash – retaining power. This probably explains the leeway given to the Irish government in criticising Israel on the global stage, including joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in January 2025. A red line would appear to be drawn, however, under any serious interruption of trade with Israel, including the transport of munitions to that country over Irish aerospace, or the use by the U.S. military of Shannon Airport as a stopover.

    A looming threat to the status quo emerged prior to the 2024 General Election when, under pressure from the opposition, the government parties agreed to adopt an Occupied Territories Bill. This bill – a version of which was previously approved by the Dáil but never brought into law – purports to place an embargo on trade with the Occupied Territories. In its current form it will not, however, apply to services. If passed, it is unlikely to amount to anything more than a symbolic gesture. It is, nonetheless, causing disquiet in Washington.

    It’s also notable that in January 2025 the Irish government adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism, which according to Israeli and international civil society organisations has been used ‘to muzzle legitimate speech and activism by critics of Israel’s human rights record and advocates for Palestinian rights’. This definition was used to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, and could have serious repercussions in the context of recent ‘hate speech’ legislation.

    In recent times, Irish government policy tends to inform, or is perhaps informed by, the content and tone of legacy media. This includes the so-called ‘paper of record’ the Irish Times, which dominates the cultural space in a similar way to the New York Times in the U.S.. The government cannot, however, easily regulate what is being said on social media platforms. As the Israeli response unfolded after the October 7 attacks, Ireland’s canny neoliberal handlers would have observed the mounting fury being expressed, often by otherwise apolitical people, on platforms such as Instagram. This also became apparent in widely attended public protests. The Irish government’s faltering embrace of the cause of Palestine might be interpreted as a form of controlled opposition, wherein they stand as a placeholder for genuine supporters of Palestine. Such controlled opposition of a relatively malleable proxy (Ireland) may also, at times, act as a useful counterweight to the U.S. in its dealings with its Israeli ally.

    A developing fracture within Irish nationalism associated with the advent of multiculturalism should also be noted. A nascent nativist movement departs from traditional Irish Republicanism, sympathetic to the cause of Palestine. The emergence of what is often simplistically labelled a ‘far right’ – mainly drawing support from deprived urban areas and others on the margins – is undoubtedly inspired by other Populist movements around the world. Such movements have tended to be anti-Muslim and pro-Israeli – an influential U.K. actor Tommy Robinson is an active supporter of Israel; albeit, recent criticism of the U.S.’s unwavering support for Israel from leading MAGA figures likely exerts an influence over Irish fellow travellers. Nevertheless, support for Palestine is certainly still evident in Dublin’s working class districts, where Palestinian flags are often unfurled.

    ‘our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed’

    A Shot Across the Bows

    ‘In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence;’ so said Bono on October 8 at a concert in Los Vegas, before adding menacingly: ‘But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed … So sing with us… and those beautiful kids at that music festival,’ he continued, before launching into ‘Pride (In the Name of Love).’

    Bono would subsequently receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Biden. His apparent endorsement of Israel’s response to Hamas’s brutal (but far, far less impactful) attack on Israeli civilians formed part of a global propaganda wave providing cover for Israel’s actions. In the wake of October 7, dissent from the somewhat disingenuous proposition that ‘Israeli had a right to defend itself’ became almost impossible for anyone in a position of influence, including in Ireland. This became a carte blanche to attack Gaza, and elsewhere, amidst disinformation and exaggeration.

    On October 13, the founder of Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave, one of Ireland’s leading businessmen and a prominent critic of the Irish government, wrote on Twitter/X: ‘War crimes are war crimes, even when committed by allies,’ referring to Israel’s airstrikes and blockade of the Gaza Strip, which the U.N. had warned could lead to mass starvation of the 2.3 million people living there. Cosgrave followed up with a message condemning the Hamas attack. In response to criticism from leading technology figures and investors, he posted a statement on the Web Summit blog apologizing and clarifying his position. ‘I unreservedly condemn Hamas’ evil, disgusting and monstrous October 7 attack. I also call for the unconditional release of all hostages,’ he wrote. ‘I unequivocally support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself … I also believe that, in defending itself, Israel should adhere to international law and the Geneva Conventions — i..e, not commit war crimes.’

    The apology was insufficient to sway major sponsors and headliners who announced they would boycott the Web Summit event. These included tech heavyweights Meta, Google, Intel, Siemens and Amazon, all with Irish operations. ‘Unfortunately, my personal comments have become a distraction from the event, and our team, our sponsors, our start-ups and the people who attend,’ Cosgrave said in a resignation statement; ‘I sincerely apologise again for any hurt I have caused.’ Cosgrave’s maverick opposition could not be controlled, unlike, arguably, the Irish government. Nor did Cosgrave have friends within the Irish political establishment to plead his case. His immediate resignation probably saved his company, and he would return as CEO six months later.

    In the wake of October 7, the Irish government seemed prepared to be going along with the U.S. position and that of the E.U., under Ursula von der Leyen, which projected an image of the Israeli flag over European buildings in solidarity. Tánaiste (deputy-prime minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs, currently Taoiseach, Micheál Martin visited Israel the following month. In response to a request from Alon Davidi, the mayor of Sderot a town near the border with Gaza, to support Israel Martin responded: ‘I’m here to see this firsthand and to listen; to seek to understand the trauma that your community has gone through and not just in horrific events over the seventh but as you said for over two decades, if not three decades, in terms of rockets.’

    He then set out the Irish government’s position: ‘Ireland is unequivocal in its condemnation of the Hamas attack and will give no quarter to that form of terrorism. We are explicit in our public statements in condemning without condition the unconscionable attacks on children, on women and on innocent civilians.’ Martin added that Ireland’s long-standing support for a two-state solution should not be equated with support for Hamas and ‘absolutely’ affirmed Israel’s right to exist – ‘in case that is in question.’ He noted that Irish-Israeli citizen Kim Damti had been murdered by Hamas and Emily Hand taken hostage in Gaza. Martin said he did not believe that a military solution would create a safe environment for future generations: ‘We may have to disagree on that – and I respect where you’re coming from – but our sense is that there’s a real danger that you will radicalise opinion of future generations even more.’

    Martin’s approach was calculated, recognizing historic Irish support for the Palestinian cause, while making sure to be seen to be on Israel’s side. In response, left-wing opponents described it as a propaganda tour. Since then, Martin has been a prominent critic of Israel on the international stage, somehow reconciling this with his government permitting munitions to pass through Irish aerospace, and for Israel to remain a major trading partner.

    Martin appears to have another, more important, agenda, which would, in all likelihood, be supported by U.S. interests in Ireland. In the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war he sought to align Ireland more closely with the rest of the West, seemingly endeavouring to abandon a policy of neutrality that emerged during World War II and which continued over the course the Cold War, when Ireland remained outside NATO. Despite consistent opposition among the population to any change, Martin’s government has pushed forward with proposals to end the so-called Triple Lock, requiring the approval of the U.N. Security Council, a decision by Government and a vote in the Dáil (the legislative assembly) before Ireland commits a substantial number of troops to peace-keeping operations.

    White House Criticism

    In 2000, a prominent government Minister is believed to have described Ireland as being closer to Boston than Berlin. In some respects, this remains the case. Government services are generally poorly resourced relative to other European countries, while apartment-living is uncommon and the private motor car is generally relied on ahead of public transport. On the issue of Palestine, however, unlike the U.S., the Irish population has been relatively consistent in its opposition to Israeli incursions, and supportive of a two-state solution, however remote, and indeed unsatisfactory, this outcome now appears.

    There are, however, a few political outliers on this issue, one of whom seemed to be former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Back in 2017, hawk-eyed Irish activists observed the then Taoiseach’s online interaction with Barry Williams, who they considered Ireland’s most ardent supporter of Israel and ran the group Irish4Israel. Then, in 2019 Varadkar replied to a letter from ten members of the U.S. Congress by noting his opposition to an Occupied Territories Bill ‘on both political and legal grounds.’

    Furthermore, in early 2024 speaking once again as Taoiseach, Varadkar expressed caution about accusing Israel of genocide based on the spurious consideration that millions of Jewish people were victims of it in the past. He said the government wouldn’t use the term unless it was ‘absolutely convinced’ that genocide was occurring. Responding to the question of whether Ireland would join South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about the Israeli state’s treatment of people in Gaza he said: ‘I would be a little bit uncomfortable about accusing Israel, a Jewish state, of Genocide given the fact that six million Jews – over half the population of Jews in Europe – were killed.’ Adding, ‘I would just think we need to be a little bit careful about using words like that unless we’re absolutely convinced that they’re the appropriate ones.’

    The dial seemed to have moved considerably, however, by the time of Varadkar’s last major public appearance as Taoiseach in the White House on St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, 2024. This occurred just days before he announced his surprise resignation, after his government suffered damaging defeats in two referendums on references to family and women in the constitution. In a speech that was well-received in Ireland, and which seemed unusually provocative given where it took place, Varadkar said:

    Mr President, as you know, the Irish people are deeply troubled about the catastrophe that’s unfolding before our eyes in Gaza. When I travel the world, leaders often ask me why the Irish have so much empathy for the Palestinian people. The answer is simple: we see our history in their eyes. A story of displacement and dispossession, a national identity questioned and denied, forced emigration, discrimination, and now – hunger.

    Adding:

    The people of Gaza desperately need food, medicine and shelter. Most especially they need the bombs to stop. This has to stop. On both sides. The hostages brought home. And humanitarian relief allowed in.

    A looming General Election perhaps explained the unusual force of the criticism. Indeed, the issue of Palestine did not become a significant electoral issue once the ruling parties agreed to introduce their own Occupied Territories Bill. Perhaps the U.S. Democratic leadership, with close ties to the Irish political establishment, recognised the political ramifications of his speech and even green-lighted his words. External criticism, moreover, might have been useful for the Biden administration in its own dealing with the Israelis, given student protests then occurring across the U.S., and their own unpreparedness to criticise Israel with the Republicans emphasising unwavering support. Meanwhile, Varadkar could sail into the political sunset with the approval of Ireland’s many Palestinian activists ringing in his ears, and in a good position to take up future political roles.

    President Donald Trump with Taoiseach Micheál Martin.

    St. Patrick’s Day 2025          

    The issue of Palestine did not figure prominently before Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s visit to the Trump White House in 2025. The concern at that time was over the new President’s tariffs wreaking havoc on the Irish economy, by forcing U.S. firms to transfer their operations to the U.S..

    At one point, however, a reporter inquired of Martin whether he planned to discuss Trump’s previous plans to expel Palestinians from Gaza. At this, Trump jumped in, responding with a denial. ‘Nobody’s expelling any Palestinians,’ he replied. Palestinians were again brought up by Trump as he reminisced about his recent speech to a joint session of Congress. The term ‘Palestinian’ was used in a bizarre fashion to insult his rivals in the Democratic Party. He described Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader as a Palestinian: ‘as far as I’m concerned. You know, he’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore: He’s a Palestinian.’

    Martin, nonetheless, in contrast to Varadkar’s outspoken comments the previous year, lauded Trump for his approach to securing a peace agreement. After Trump was asked about the St Patrick’s Day boycott, the Taoiseach interjected ‘to pay tribute to the president on the peace initiatives’ in Gaza and elsewhere. It’s clear from these exchanges that Martin and his advisors were unwilling to risk any loss of influence for the sake of Palestine. Perhaps Trump also recognised that those in power in Ireland were prepared to serve U.S. interests and were, in effect, “controlling” popular Irish solidarity with Palestine.

    President Michael D. Higgins.

    A Looming Presidential Election

    In a recent opinion piece for Ireland’s so-called ‘paper of record’, the Irish Times, regular columnist Finn McRedmond (incidentally as a student in Cambridge she wrote an article revealing how she had voted for David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2015) wrote:

    Irish foreign policy is in a strange place right now. We are, as has long been the case, totally impotent on matters of global politics – with no real army to speak of, outside of Nato, militaristically neutral and never even close the so-called grown-ups table when the future of Europe is at stake. (Did that invite to the White House with Friedrich Merz, Giorgia Meloni, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Rutte get lost in the post?)

    But simultaneously, there are plenty of members of the Irish establishment who – in full cognisance of this basic reality – believe that the world is somehow willing to listen to Ireland’s lectures on affairs of international morality.

    The main object of McRedmond’s ire was, unsurprisingly, President Michael D. Higgins. She complained bitterly that he had bent ‘the shape and contours of the office [the Presidency] to his whims, professing to the world on behalf of the nation as though he speaks for us all.’ O’Higgins’ fourteen-year tenure comes to an end later this year, and McRedmond expressed concern that another left-wing candidate Catherine Connolly – the natural heir to Michael D. Higgins – could win the election this November. McRedmond professed herself:

    anxious to learn that Catherine Connolly is a contender of relative significance. She has recently said Irish people should resist a “trend towards imperialism” in the European Union, as the bloc is becoming “increasingly militarised under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen and the European People’s Party”; that the EU has “lost its moral compass”; and that “the US, England and France are deeply entrenched in an arms industry which causes bloodshed across the world.

    McRedmond’s own rise to prominence as a regular columnist for the Irish Times might be traced to an influential father’s acting as CEO to a commercial body – An Post the postal service – owned by the state, and political views inspired more by her time in Peterhouse College, Cambridge than the Falls Road in West Belfast.

    Her piece articulates an anxiety within the Irish establishment, a section of which she castigates, that a figure similar in her outlook to Michael D. could win the presidency. While overcoming most Irish people’s reluctance to abandon neutrality – another Irish Times columnist recently described it as ‘absurd and complacent’ – and even joining NATO, appears to be the primary objective, popular Irish opposition to Isreal and attention to Gaza remains a serious inconvenience. Apart from placing the Irish government in a difficult position vis-à-vis U.S. investors, unwavering U.S., E.U. and U.K. support of Israel undermines the West’s claim to moral leadership in supporting Ukraine against Russia. Most Irish supporters of Palestine are now opposed to Ireland entering any military alliance – and are increasingly hesitant about a militaristic E.U. – in any way supportive of Israel.

    Under the Irish Constitution, the President occupies a largely ceremonial position, similar to that of the monarch in the U.K.. Despite a lack of executive or legislative function, an individual, such as Michael D. Higgins – and Mary Robinson before him – may still use the platform to bring about cultural change, and legitimate outrage. Thus, what are controversial positions on Israel elsewhere in Europe and the U.S. have become the norm in Ireland. This makes it politically expedient for government politicians to represent these viewpoints. If a less radical candidate wins the forthcoming election, as seems more than likely, the heat could be taken out of criticism of Israel in Ireland. Indeed, it is possible the change to the definition of antisemitism could, in time, lead to criminal prosecutions for ‘hate speech’ under new laws, supposedly designed to counter racism.

    The plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation may seem remote from an Irish Presidential election that is likely to see a turnout below fifty percent, but Ireland’s popular support for Palestine could easily be blunted in the absence of a legitimating figure in that office. This could have the effect of altering the tone, and content, of Palestine’s most consistent advocate in Europe on the international stage. The Irish government’s adoption of the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism, continued permission for Irish aerospace to be used for transporting munitions, and ongoing trading ties between the two countries, do not point to genuine conviction on the part of the Irish government on this issue.

    Members of the Irish government are given to portraying the country as fragile and dependent, but this ignores the significant ‘soft power’ at its disposal. It is, by most measures, an extremely wealthy country, with an enormous government surplus, and commercial banks in a far better state than before the Crash. Moreover, the country’s geographic position on the edge of Europe insulates it from Europe’s historic zones of conflict, including the current one in Ukraine. Contrary to media scaremongering, Russia has no designs on Ireland. There is also a vast Irish diaspora around the world to call on, particularly in the U.S.. Donald Trump even referred to the importance of this constituency in the aforementioned White House meeting with Martin. It explains why any Irish Taoiseach is warmly welcomed on St. Patrick’s Day, no matter which President occupies the White House. Ireland’s outspoken opposition to Israel will, however, be easier to control if a less steadfast individual wins the forthcoming Presidential election.

    This article was originally published in South African magazine Herri.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • I Have a Dream

    There is a hidden global superpower that dominates all our lives. It does not reside inside any government building or military base, but instead, rests snug as a bug within each and every one of us – the brain. In centuries past, it was widely believed that human consciousness was located somewhere between the heart and the gut. This medieval mindset meant people’s everyday awareness of life, and their surrounding relationships were a lot more visceral and emotional than our own. However, with the Age of Enlightenment the old world of deep feeling awareness was transformed into a more detached and reasoned approach to human cognizance. Over the years, neuroscientists have slowly revealed how the brain reigns supreme over every function of the human body, and all our everyday interactions with the world outside. It is both a living matrix of layered complexity, and a biochemical organ through which consciousness has become both self-reflective and ordered. As a result, our brain is viewed by many as the most fascinating and complex structure in the known universe.

    Sadly, the brain also harbours the greatest everyday threat to all humanity. This threat comes from something that is often far more insidious and widespread than inequality, poverty and even climate disaster – our dreams. Not long ago, dreams were primary seen by psychoanalysts as the early alarm bells of emotional and psychological tensions which, left unchecked, could fester into a multitude of mental health disorders such as neurosis, psychosis, phobias etc.

    Today, however, neuroscientists and psychologists have discarded this psycho-drama interpretation of dreams, preferring instead to see them as the unintended outcome of the brain simply undertaking much needed housekeeping while we sleep. Dreams emerge as a direct result of the brain recharging important memories that would otherwise be wiped clean by time. It is the arbitrariness of these memories being triggered that shape the ensuing drama of our dreams. Unfortunately, alongside the recharging of memories comes the unleashing of various electro-chemical and emotional reactions tied up with them.

    Upon waking, these emotional and electrochemical disturbances permeate our everyday existence. This process can be both positive and sublime as witnessed in the form of the mysterious muse who, darkly veiled, imbues life and inspiration into poetry, literature, music and art.

    In addition, there are the eureka moments experienced by scientists, mathematicians and various pioneers who following months and even years of grappling with a problem suddenly, after a peaceful sleep, experience the realisation of something that was always knowingly obvious. On a more intimate level, there is the heightened sexual arousal felt by millions of people as they emerge from their dreams drowsy, half asleep and half awake, delicately exploring the sensual surge towards climax. Lastly, and most significant of all, there is the emotional, psychological and social impact of dreams on our everyday wellbeing and relationship with others. How often have you heard someone claim that they are not a morning person, but instead are grumpy, bad tempered and full of resentment? It is these negative moods and feelings that become engrained within a person’s sense of being, as well as their everyday relationship with the world around them.

    In essence, dreams are not the play ground of wishful illusions or the expression of deep seated mental health disorders, but accidents caused by one of our brain’s basic functions – the maintenance of important memories that could aid our survival. Amongst all its sublime riches, by randomly triggering our memories in the form of dreams, the brain sets in motion a flurry of biochemical reactions that linger and become the breeding ground for all sorts of social, emotional and psychological problems. It could be that dreams rather than money are the root of all evil..

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • It’s All Academic: Bad Ideas Bloom

    A few years ago, I had occasion to walk regularly past the university in Galway. My journeys took me across the Salmon Weir Bridge, which had narrow footpaths and has since been relieved by a new footbridge, and up past the cathedral and the university. Often, I found myself walking against the current of students coming from the university. The various encounters along the way were sometimes surprisingly hostile. Many of the students seemed fired up with startling aggressive intent. Their demeanour reminded me of us as kids pouring out of the cinemas having watched a Bruce Lee movie, flexing fledgling muscles, feeling ready to take on the world.

    Naturally, I wondered: is it just me or is this a thing? On one occasion, when a young black woman glared at me on sight, for no apparent reason, a paraphrase of Ali G’s line popped into my mind, “Is it cuz I’s white?” That made me smile, for a while anyway, until I realized there was likely more than a grain of truth in it.

    I had attended that university as a mature student, took an arts degree, majored in English and sociology/politics (soc ‘n’ pol) and I do recall feeling similarly fired up at the time about the injustices of capitalism and so on, leaving me inclined to glower at men in suits. Was I now the man in the suit?

    I read up on what was being disseminated in the universities that was causing students in England and across the West to tear down statues and demand reparations for slavery, among other outraged activities. Back in the 70s and 80s, this same type of young person would be forming bands or theatre troupes, annoying no one, but neighbours and critics. What has changed?

    Pilgrims Going to Church by George Henry Boughton (1867).

    The New Puritans

    I came across a very helpful book by Andrew Doyle called The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World, which pretty much laid out the entire state of play: woke ideology filling the place that religion used to occupy and becoming a pseudo-religion itself.  It seemed that I, as a “white hetero male with colonialist tendencies,” as a student might put it, was actually the new framed culprit for everything wrong with the world. A kind of latter-day elder of Zion, guilty of everything, with an innate desire to colonise as a result of an innate desire for violent expression and appropriation. In a word, I’m “bad”, and not in a good way, as in rapper “cool”. And not even salvageable. To put it religiously, I’m beyond redemption.

    This idea of the “white hetero male”, as being “violent” likely stemmed from a confusion of terms, where male competitiveness was equated with “aggression”, which then brought the word “violent” into the word family, to be used for effect in argumentative debate, because everyone responds to scare stories and everyone loves a villain to make themselves look “good” in comparison. And what is a lecture after all but a kind of performance, the students filling the lecture theatres of the western world being the audiences. From this perspective the idea of the violent white male is a kind of pulp fiction, designed to thrill, while giving the freshers something to shoot at.

    But as philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris puts it, there usually aren’t that many bad people around at any one time. Maybe only 1% or so of people are psychopaths and sadists in any one historical moment. More often there are bad ideas that good people act upon with good intentions and usually disastrous consequences.

    And it seems from what I’ve learned from Doyle’s book and other sources, that Western universities have been disseminating some very bad ideas for a long while now, among them the idea that all white men are innately violent and all their works corrupt and deserving of destruction. But they don’t call it “destruction”. They call it “dismantling”. Meaning, I suppose, polite destruction.

    “No, Marie Antoinette, we’re not chopping off your head, silly girl, we’re simply dismantling you.”

    Then as if things weren’t complicated enough, meaning itself is regarded as a “construction” to facilitate patriarchal power, and that definitions of anything you care to name are totally subjective. Meaning, everything has many meanings. As many meanings as there are people. Which means that nothing has any real meaning, only subjective interpretation. Which means that everything is meaningless and ultimately the best yarn wins.

    All these bad ideas then became cornerstones of black studies, leading to the conclusion of the increasingly discredited doctrine of Critical Race Theory, which itself is racist, and often proudly so – “Now it’s our turn!” – that “violent” white people owe people of colour big time, with, apparently, justified hell to pay. A belief system which is perhaps even inspiring the killing of white farmers in South Africa.

    Incidentally, the “Now it’s our turn” idea also comes from feminism, and was used by some feminists to justify abuses of power when they gained authority over others, conveniently failing to recognize that far from creating equality Heaven on Earth, many of them seemed instead quite determined to create the same old same old, with themselves in the seats of power. Proving, at least, that power and ambition still have very definite meanings.

    Compulsory

    When I started in university in the early 1990s, one of the things that struck me as odd at the time was that gender studies was compulsory. The last time I’d been in “school”, Irish language was compulsory and eventually people saw that this was a bad idea because it created a system of inequality, favouring some and side-lining others. Now here I was, back in “school”, and the university, which I understood as being a place of free-thinking, had a compulsory subject. It all seemed a bit “off” to me.

    I asked some people I knew who worked in education about the oddity of having a compulsory subject in the free-thinking university, and both just looked back at me and said absolutely nothing, immovably shtum, although both exuded the vibe that this was some kind of unmentionable thing and that I would be best off saying no more about it, which I duly did, obediently attending the various compulsory gender studies lectures and seminars, to no great advantage.

    “To put it clearly, girls: white men are bad, but white women are good. We’re their first victims. And there’s hell to pay”

    Ironically, feminists also appear to have placed themselves in the role of white saviour to the Third World. Now heading up NGOs and helpfully inviting millions to “deserved better lives” in the likes of Newtownmountkennedy, they continue the task of identifying “bad” people, most of whom, oddly enough, come wrapped in white skin with male genitalia, making them easy to spot.

    “Look! A violent colonialist misogynist! Get him!”

    On top of all that, those radicalised students emerging from Western universities appear to believe that anyone who disagrees with them, on even the most trivial point, is actually evil, if not in direct league with Satan, and possibly psychically and spiritually contagious, justifying physical reprimand, as was demonstrated recently in Limerick when student Jamie O’Mahoney waved an Israeli flag during a pro-Palestine meeting. It’s little wonder then that these unfortunate students, at the receiving end of an education seemingly designed to make enemies of their fellow countrymen, now appear to have so much in common with radical Islam.

    Friedrich Nietzsche

    Theory to Practise

    Well-intentioned theory, as was so strikingly demonstrated by the Nazi misreading of Nietzsche, doesn’t always bloom beautifully into reality. For instance, one of the current real-world consequences of the teachings of comfortable academics serenely creating theoretical paper models in ivy-decked tenure, is mass immigration. The thinking and moral lesson being that male white Europe owes reparations to the Third World for colonialist crimes committed in previous centuries. This idea is partly driven by another text called The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, which was a big ideas source in my university time.

    The ensuing academic-influenced invitation to the actual wretched of the Earth has resulted in, among other perplexities, the village of Dundrum in County Tipperary, with a population of 200 or so, being joined by almost 300 male strays – sans WAGs – from the Third World who no one quite knows, least of all our government, with locals being labelled criminally racist by the apostles of the global equality agenda for even questioning this more than extraordinary imposition. If there was any real social justice, those migrants would be housed in the universities. Chickens coming home to roost and all that.

    “Now girls, listen up! I want you to give a big feminist ‘Hey there’ to your new exotic boyfriends.”

    John Rawls

    The Pot is Black

    If the Humanities become selectively humane, as appears to be happening, it’s no longer the Humanities. It’s something else entirely. And the particular slant of “humanities” that is becoming evident in universities across the West seems more than a little racist and sexist, the very things it claims to be attempting to eradicate, itself apparently unwittingly succumbing to malignant Freudian projection on a grand scale.

    Referencing political philosopher John Rawls’ book A Theory of Justice, Thomas Sowell, economist and historian writes in his 2010 book “Intellectuals and Society”:

    Justice is the first virtue of institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory, however elegant and economical, must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise, laws and institutions, no matter how efficient and well-arranged, must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.

    The way things are going, we may one day see a social movement demanding reparations from the universities.

  • Guantanamo Founded on U.S. Occupation

    A week after U.S. Democrat Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defence demanding a halt to the use of Guantanamo as a detention facility, CBS obtained internal government records exposing the Trump administration’s accelerating transfer of detainees. Departing from the earlier policy of only holding migrants from South America pending deportation, the U.S. is now also detaining migrants from Africa, Asia and Europe at Guantanamo.

    This confirms earlier speculations in June that the U.S. would be expanding Guantanamo facility to detain thousands of migrants.

    In response legal efforts have intensified to stop the U.S. government from sending detained migrants to Guantanamo. It has been argued that ‘the government has never before used a detention facility outside of the United States to detain noncitizens for immigration purposes.’ The issue of the U.S. illegal occupation of Guantanamo is not only marginalised, but silenced. Yet, it is the historical U.S. aggression against Cuba that provides the foundations for Guantanamo’s notoriety.

    What Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described as ‘the frontlines of the war against America’s southern border,’ has been U.S.-occupied territory in Cuba since 1903.

    U.S. Occupation

    U.S. intervention in Cuba’s War of Independence against Spain was the first step in denying the people their political autonomy. The Treaty of Paris (1898) forced Spain to relinquish Cuba and supposedly guaranteed the island’s independence. The Platt Amendment (1901), however, established eight conditions restricted Cuban independence, while giving the U.S. the right to intervene in its affairs, ostensibly to defend Cuban independence. The Platt Amendment’s eight clauses were included in a permanent treaty between both countries that was signed in 1903.

    Notably, Article 1 of the Platt Amendment states, ‘The Government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or other compact with any foreign power or powers which will impair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba, nor in any manner authorize or permit any foreign power of powers to obtain by colonization or for military or naval purposes, or otherwise, lodgment in or control over any portion of said island.’

    The U.S., however, excluded itself from the stipulations in Article I. Article IV states ‘All acts of the United States in Cuba during its military occupancy thereof are ratified and validated, and all lawful rights acquired thereunder shall be maintained and protected.’

    Writing to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, U.S. Chief of Staff Leonard Wood said: ‘Of course, Cuba has been left with little or no independence by the Platt Amendment… The island will gradually become Americanised, and in due time we shall have one of the richest and most desirable possessions anywhere in the world.’

    The Platt Amendment also required Cuba to sell or lease lands for coaling or naval stations, under the guise of enabling the U.S. to maintain Cuban independence.

    In February 1903, the U.S. and Cuba signed an agreement for the lease of Guantanamo, supposedly for the sole use ‘as coaling and naval stations only, and for no other purpose.’ The agreement gave the U.S. complete jurisdiction over the stipulated areas. The lease for Guantanamo was set at $2,000 to be paid annually in gold. In 1934, the Treaty of Reciprocity replaced the Platt Amendment and the 1903 Permanent Treaty, except for clauses relating to Guantanamo. The Treaty of Reciprocity explicitly stated that until the U.S. decides to abandon Guantanamo, or both countries reach an agreement, the U.S. ‘shall continue to have the territorial extent which it now occupies.’ By 1952, Guantanamo’s naval station had expanded to include a training centre, besides a naval station, naval air station, and a Marine Corps and warehouse base.

    Fidel Castro on a visit to Washington.

    U.S. Imperialist Aggression

    Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1,1959. On March 5, 1959, Fidel demanded that the U.S. relinquishe its occupation of Guantanamo. In protest against the U.S. illegal occupation of Cuban territory, the Cuban revolutionary government stopped cashing the lease cheques after 1960. In that same year, the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Cuba.

    A 1962 declassified memorandum states that if Cuba had to ‘denounce and repudiate’ the agreements upon which the U.S. holds the Guantanamo base, the U.S. ‘would be justified in resisting with force,’ given that no termination date was agreed upon.

    By that time, the U.S. had already attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro. In 1961, the U.S. authorised the Bay of Pigs Invasion – a counterrevolutionary attack planned during the Eisenhower administration and caried out under President J. F. Kennedy – in which a group of Cuban exiles trained by the C.I.A. attempted to infiltrate Cuba. They were defeated by the Cuban revolutionary forces within seventy-two hours. The defeat prompted Kennedy to launch the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and in 1962, and the U.S. imposed its long-standing blockade on Cuba.

    Between 1961 and 1962, Cuba recorded at least three attacks by U.S. soldiers against Cuban civilians in Guantanamo. Manuel Prieto Gomez was interrogated and physically tortured at the military base for allegedly stealing documents relating to the naval base pay roll. Gomez, who named Rear Admiral F. W. Fenno as his interrogator and torturer, said he was targeted for openly supporting Fidel Castro. Ruben Lopez Sabariego, who also supported the revolution and who worked at the base, was detained and murdered. His body was buried in a shallow grave at the naval base. Rodolfo Rosell Salas, a Cuban fisherman, was found dead in his boat in Guantanamo territory, his body showing signs of severe torture.

    These first three murders were followed by other instances of U.S. forces killing Cubans in Guantanamo. In 1976, the Cuban constitution declared the earlier treaties regarding Guantanamo null and illegal, since they were signed under unequal conditions that diminished Cuba’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

    The U.S. also used Guantanamo as a training base for foreign intervention in South America. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter announced the U.S. would conduct military manoeuvres in Guantanamo, reported in the press in 1980 as Operation Solid Shield 80, which included the transportation of an additional 1,200 U.S. Marines. Further plans and drills for military intervention in South America took place in 1982 under Operation Ocean Venture 82, which included a simulation of invading Puerto Rico. Two years later, the Pentagon sent a report to Congress, detailing a plan to spend $43.4 million to improve Guantanamo, as well as upgrading military installations in South America by 1988. In 1987, the U.S. announced Operation Solid Shield 87, which consisted of a practice response to a hypothetical assistance call from Honduras in case of an invasion from Nicaragua – as well as a response to a Cuban reaction in case of such a scenario.

    Protesters at Ft. Huachuca against the US policy of endorsing torture.

    Violations of international Law

    Besides the aggression against Cuba, the U.S. began using Guantanamo as a detention facility in the 1970s, when it intercepted boats carrying Haitians. Those on board were sent to Guantanamo for detention and processing. The situation was repeated in 1991, when the U.S. backed the Haitian Army to overthrow the democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

    Using Guantanamo as a detention base rested on the ambiguous conditions under which the territory was leased. The U.S. retained jurisdiction over Guantanamo while Cuba retained sovereignty. The U.S. government has argued, however, that U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction over Guantanamo since it does not hold sovereignty over the territory.

    Since the onset of the so-called War on Terror, Cuban territory has been exploited by the U.S., which committed atrocious acts of torture. These were linked to further violations of international law such as the extraordinary rendition of alleged terror suspects, which made Guantanamo a black site for C.I.A. enhanced interrogation techniques.

    Several European countries participated in the C.I.A.’s extraordinary rendition flights. Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the U.K. refused to cooperate during investigations carried out by rapporteur Giovanni Fava. The report states that the C.I.A. operated 1,245 flights within European airspace to U.S. bases in Europe, some of which were linked to extraordinary rendition and also to Guantanamo.

    While President G. W. Bush publicly defended Guantanamo’s use in the C.I.A.’s extraordinary rendition program in 2010, Barack Obama had announced his intention to close the detention facility within a year – a statement he reneged upon four months after suspending the trials.

    Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez has regularly criticised U.S. intervention in Cuba, including the use of Guantanamo as a detention and torture site. It only gains symbolic political momentum, however, when it comes to the illegal U.S. blockade against Cuba. Regarding Guantanamo and the Western front against migration, Cuba’s right to reclaim its territory is overshadowed by both well-meaning and ill-intentioned policies. Human rights organisations are calling for the detention facilities to be closed, but ending the U.S. illegal occupation of Guantanamo is central to closing the detention facilities, an occupation which Cuba has denounced since the revolution.

    As Fidel Castro wrote, ‘The U.S. base at Guantanamo was necessary in order to humiliate and to carry out the dirty deeds that take place there. If we must await the downfall of the system, we will wait … Cuba will always be waiting in a state of combat readiness.’

    Feature Image: A tent facility at a disused NSGB air terminal used to hold Haitian migrants

  • Charity, Privatisation and Body Counts

    The common denominator between charities and private service providers is that they all live off public money on the basis of serving “victims” of one stripe or another, the raw material of these particular “industries”. But a victim helped and eventually “cured” is no use to this business model. To make it viable you need more “victims” coming onstream at a steady rate. But fixing the victims or the circumstances creating them is not part of the business model, since to actually fix the problems is to put yourself out of business. Raise awareness by all means, but please, don’t go fixing things. Broken is best. It’s broke, we’re fixed. It’s fixed, we’re broke.

    Private Concerns

    While it might be said, and often is, that privatisation is a “good”, promising efficiency and so on, there are of course problems. But then, there are problems with everything, life being what it is, so it wouldn’t be unusual for privatisation to also have problems.

    “In fact, it would be downright unnatural if privatisation didn’t have problems.”

    “Yes minister, but that isn’t the question. The question is: is privatisation better than public ownership?”

    The problem with the privatisation of services is the profit motive. It stands to reason that a private company entrusted with a service, any service, is going to rig the system to maximise profits. This means cutting and cutting and cutting, while valiantly keeping up appearances. This explains the awful food served in private prisons and direct provision, for instance, primped to appear as normal as possible for as cheap as possible while carefully managing not to descend to clear and present pig swill; while the company directors, healthy on profits, hang out in sun resorts, beaming around the beaches with great white shark’s teeth and the latest in designer shades.

    More Bodies

    I once worked in RTE and there was some kind of to-do between workers and management. Inevitably us writers got involved, because there’s none so militant as a writer, it’s almost a lifestyle thing, but management swiftly solved that small problem with a genius move: they hired more writers, lots of writers, flooding the writer’s pool with more writers than anyone could ever use, smothering the original small militant group of writers with grateful newbies. This tactic crossed my mind recently when our manifestly unpopular government kept our borders open to the entire third world and their grandmothers despite cries of dissent and distress from towns and villages far and wide.

    What do you do with disgruntled voters?

    “Get more voters! Grateful ones!”

    The problem with this short-term solution to a long-term problem is that some newbie from Mumbai or Kabul is not really going to give a damn about Fine Gael versus Fianna Fail versus the Shinners. When you dangle power like that to the hungry world don’t expect gratitude translated into neat generous voting patterns. You put power up for grabs like that and not only have you given your country away, you’ve given yourself away too, opening enticing opportunities for the thoroughly ruthless.

    Win-Win

    In 2017 a private prison company in Torrance County, New Mexico, threatened to sue the county on account of disappointing returns and close the damn prison, costing the county two hundred jobs. The private company demanded two hundred extra prisoners pronto, “Or we’ll see y’all in court!”

    Don’t you just love the symmetry of those numbers? Two hundred prisoners: Two hundred jobs.  As Paul Simon once wrote, “When times are mysterious, serious numbers will always be heard.”

    I lost track of the story after that. It was all pending. Maybe Obama sorted it out before turning out the lights, took some prisoners from elsewhere and sent them down there to Torrance to keep the private company in business and the country out of the courthouse.

    Or maybe that’s where the blind-eye to illegal immigration comes in. Just let a few hundred thousand South Americans steal over the border and impress upon your police force the urgent need for many arrests in a hurry to ward off a potential corporate suing tsunami. Keep the system oiled with more bodies.

    Business Plans

    What does a charity need most of all besides funding? It needs someone or something to be charitable towards. What’s say, a homeless charity without homeless people? Well, jobless would be one word that might spring to mind, maybe even homeless. Homeless charities and the people who work in them need homeless people. Arguably, they need homeless people far more than homeless people need them.

    Like privatisation of services, there is profit in charitable causes, which may go some way towards explaining the existence of over 30,000 NGOs in Ireland, nearly a thousand of which came into existence since 2020, according to Benefacts legacy. It’s boom time in charitable work and it’s not difficult to imagine the CEOs of charitable NGOs also hanging out in sun resorts, beaming around the beaches with great white shark’s teeth and the latest in designer shades.

    So it may be that mass immigration is little more than a few bad management plans gone awry. A result of unpopular political parties seeking grateful voters who’ll work for peanuts and act as infantry should the Russians invade, (you can never have too much cannon fodder), and poverty industry entrepreneurs spreading their nets wider to catch more “victims” to expand their businesses, based as they are on a kind of economic cannibalism. Because in the end, charity, like politics, war and orgies, all comes down to body counts. The more the merrier.

    Feature Image: U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1988.

  • Turkey, Journalism and Erdoğan

    The following is a Q and A between Luke Sheehan and Deniz Güngör.

    Can you summarize the political crisis in Turkey? 

    First, I must say that in Turkey, a person must have a university diploma to be eligible to run for president. After the main opposition CHP’s Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu announced his presidential candidacy, judicial operations were launched. First, İmamoğlu’s diploma was annulled, then he was detained on March 19 and subsequently arrested. Following this, a series of protest demonstrations were organized in Saraçhane, where the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality building is located.

    What is happening in Istanbul? What is the atmosphere like now? 

    The protests ended due to the interjection of the Ramadan holiday. However, it is safe to say that all these developments have awakened the social opposition. Turkey had not witnessed such large-scale, nearly nationwide protests since the 2013 Gezi Park resistance. Even though the protests have ended, the smallest decision from the government drives the opposition back to the streets.

    Recount the key moments of the last few months in your own experience? 

    One of the most critical moments of the last few months was the police violence during the Saraçhane protests on March 23. After a rally organized by the CHP in Saraçhane, the police attacked demonstrators and journalists near the Bozdoğan Aqueduct with pepper spray, plastic bullets, and batons. (The reason the protesters tried to push through the police stationed at the Bozdoğan Aqueduct was that they wanted to march to Taksim Square. The government has been banning all protests at Taksim Square since the Gezi Park resistance due to fear of its symbolic significance.) Many people were injured, including me. A police officer sprayed pepper gas directly into my face and kicked me in the stomach. Since that day, 301 university students and young people have been arrested and sent to prison. Most of them have now been released, but some are still imprisoned despite serious health issues. Calls for their release continue on social media.

    How would you recount İmamoğlu’s path in politics? How did he come to represent a threat to Erdoğan? 

    Before becoming the mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, İmamoğlu was the mayor of the Beylikdüzü district in Istanbul. He was hardly known before becoming the metropolitan mayor. Until the 2019 elections, Istanbul was governed by Erdoğan’s party, the AKP. Erdoğan once said, “Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey.” For this reason, Istanbul holds great significance for them. When İmamoğlu narrowly defeated the AKP’s candidate Binali Yıldırım in 2019, he first caught Erdoğan’s attention. The election was annulled, and İmamoğlu was subjected to many provocations. However, in the re-run election in June 2019, İmamoğlu was elected mayor by a landslide. After CHP took over Istanbul, corruption under the AKP administration was exposed. Religious cults embedded within the municipality were removed, and a policy of social municipalism was adopted. Projects like municipal daycare centers and public canteens (designed to support the people suffering under the economic crisis) were developed. Despite all the AKP propaganda, İmamoğlu was re-elected in the 2024 local elections. 

    Since 2019, a large portion of society has expressed the desire to see İmamoğlu as president. This made him a target for Erdoğan. The AKP regime is terrified of losing power, especially since people still demand answers about the $128 billion that went missing from the Central Bank. If the AKP loses power, they know it won’t end well for them.

    Compared to previous flare ups and crises [Gezi Park protests 2013], what is different about these events? Apart from factual differences, how does it feel different? 

    The Gezi Park resistance began as a movement to protect Gezi Park, and the police violence and deaths deepened it. But Saraçhane is a direct response to political maneuvers, increasing repression, arrests, and is directly against Erdoğan. It still is. The protests found expression in universities through academic boycotts, and people from all walks of life took to the streets. The Saraçhane protests were a stand against Erdoğan and his Islamist, authoritarian policies.

    How is journalism functioning in this environment?

    The police try to prevent journalists from recording as much as possible. Their goal is to keep the torture they inflict from being documented. Often, journalists are detained together with protesters, surrounded by police.

    Your colleagues were detained in February, can you describe what happened? Was that business as usual for journalists in Turkey?

    Every month in Turkey, journalists are detained or prosecuted for the news they report or for their social media posts. This has become one of the regime’s mechanisms of repression and has sadly become normalized. It’s now rare to find a journalist who doesn’t have at least one lawsuit filed against them. In February, detentions were carried out after BirGün reported on a visit by Sabah newspaper to Istanbul’s Chief Public Prosecutor, Akın Gürlek, in his office. Sabah had also reported on the same visit.

    Uğur Koç, Berkant Gültekin, and Yaşar Gökdemir were taken to Istanbul Police Headquarters in Vatan in the evening to give statements and were initially denied access to their lawyers. None of the three were summoned; they were directly taken from their homes. After their statements at the police station were completed around noon, they were referred to the Istanbul Courthouse in Çağlayan. Berkant Gültekin was released after giving his statement to the prosecutor. Uğur Koç and Yaşar Gökdemir were also released by the court with judicial control measures. All they did was report a visit already published by Sabah.

    How is the violence being applied in the response to protest? Is it different to the past?

    Unfortunately, tactics like reverse handcuffing and pepper spray have become normalized forms of police brutality in Turkish protests.

    Can you single out a story of an ordinary family and how they have been affected?

    On April 8, university student Esila Ayık was arrested in Istanbul’s Kadıköy district for holding a sign that read “Dictator Erdoğan” at the Kadıköy Dayanışma Stage, accused of “insulting the president.” Ayık suffers from chronic heart and kidney disease. She has collapsed in prison and been hospitalized multiple times. Despite all these health problems, she has not been released. Her father repeatedly pleads, “Please release my daughter,” but Esila remains imprisoned.

    Do the pro-Imamoglu people feel a connection to any citizens elsewhere locked in some kind of struggle?

    Honestly, I don’t think so. People in Turkey see the struggle here as unique and particular to their own circumstances.

    You are 25. You have lived almost your whole life under the government of one leader. What does that feel like for your generation? Do you feel like Turkey can be called a democracy?

    Unfortunately, I have lived my entire life under the Erdoğan regime. From the moment he came to power, he embraced an Islamist political identity and had ties with the Gülen movement. However, after the 2016 coup attempt, he pretended those ties never existed and started accusing dissidents of being linked to FETÖ (Fetullahist Terrorist Organization). After the state of emergency was declared in 2016, repression increased, freedoms were restricted, and the economic crisis deepened. I believe this has especially impacted my generation and the ones after me. The generation before us wasn’t afraid to take to the streets to demand their rights. But until the Saraçhane protests, people were silenced by fear — “What if I get arrested, detained, what if I can’t find a job in the future?” Even something as simple as going to the cinema has become unaffordable for young people. Going out for a drink or to the theater has become a luxury. Most of us are unemployed university graduates. People no longer trust the election results, nor the judiciary. So no, as long as Erdoğan’s regime continues, it is not possible to talk about democracy in Turkey.

    If you could summarize the current situation with a metaphor, what would it be?

    The wall of fear the dictator built over 23 years had already cracked — now it’s crumbling.

    Images all copyright © BirGün

    Deniz Güngör graduated in 2023 from the Department of Journalism at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Anadolu University in Eskişehir Turkey. Since 2021, Deniz has been working at BirGün Newspaper. She was awarded in the 65th Turkey Journalism Achievement Awards organized by the Turkish Journalists’ Association (TGC) for her interview “The Hope We Carry Is Our Reason to Live”, and again in the 66th TGC Awards for her news report titled “Unauthorized Surgery at a Private Hospital: They Lied to the Judiciary”.

  • Name-Calling and the Fall of the West

    The cultural commentator Konstantin Kisin said recently in a podcast that the left had destroyed language. For instance, the lazy use of the words “nazi” and “fascist” to condemn someone who holds differing views has only succeeded in draining those words of meaning. If everyone is a fascist then no one is; and what then do we call an actual fascist?

    But the distortion of language by the left goes far deeper than this and is, paradoxically, far simpler. Its roots appear to be in simple name-calling, a favourite weapon of both young girls and perhaps not surprisingly, radical feminists who gave us terms like male chauvinist “pigs”, casually de-humanising men while charging them with a “crime” of sorts. When I was a young man a favourite feminist darling of the left in Ireland was Nell McCafferty, a whiskey swigging ladette who made jokes about house-training men and so on, cheered on by her lesbian and misandrist supporters.

    By the way, the word “misandrist” is one that gets downplayed a lot in the culture. I once had a windows spell-checker that didn’t recognize the word. For those unfamiliar with the term, a misandrist is a woman who despises men, the dark sister of misogynist. A prime example was that loon Valerie Solanas who shot Andy Warhol, she a CEO for the Society for Cutting Up Men or SCUM. We don’t hear a whole lot about her in the culture, and yet, there she is, as large as life, living proof that even feminists can be toxic.

    Andy Warhol and his dachshund Archie Warhol, 1973.

    SCUM

    It was Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and recipient of oodles of leftist insult and yet still standing, though admittedly prone to bursting into tears every now and then, who explained the difference between male and female aggression and how it is expressed. Feminist propagandists have gone a long way in persuading the culture that the female is devoid of aggression, that violence is strictly a male preserve, except for the occasional regrettable anomaly like the CEO of SCUM, who, feminists would argue, was so hurt by men that she was kind of infected by their innate violence, and so, the shooting of Andy Warhol and all violence of women against men is actually men’s fault, the women in question being “victims” of male violence responding in like for like form, the only language men understand.

    Jordan Peterson explained that while male aggression is generally expressed overtly, female aggression is more indirect, expressing itself in the form of relational aggression: speaking badly of someone, destroying their social links, setting out to inflict reputational damage and destruction, achieved for the most part through simple name-calling.

    “If you don’t vote me on to the board I’ll tell everyone you’re a nazi.”

    “Okay, I’ll vote for you, but just this once. And please, tell everyone I’m ‘nice’.”

    “I might. If you pretend really hard to be nice. You being an aggressive man an’ all.”

    King’s College London graduands with VivienneWestwood-designed academic dress.

    Homo Placidus

    There tends to be a more placid kind of man occupying the faculties of universities and they were a pushover for the aggressive feminists seeking power in the academy, the very workshop of language and thought. We all know what happened next, they took lots of seats of power in the academy and in publishing and in the media and, with postmodernism, succeeding in drenching reality in endless question marks: did it even exist, or is it just something some selfish man made to please himself? Which brings us more or less to today… except, that is, for one important factor which is often overlooked. Because in faraway places, people with an interest in taking power in the west noted that name-calling worked as a weapon for seizing power. It was a peculiar, almost comical Achilles heel of the western male. He could be toppled by calling him a pejorative name. How very interesting…

    The late Christoper Hitchens was probably the first to notice the danger. In 2011 he warned of a term that had been deliberately created to take advantage of this western weakness. A term that would have the effect of silencing dissent while delivering power to gleeful enemies of the west. The term was “Islamophobia”, a brilliant construction with in-built gaslighting. “There’s nothing wrong with Islam, you simply have a phobia.”

    Christopher Hitchens.

    Barbarians

    Hitchens said at the time “…this is very urgent business ladies and gentlemen. I beseech you, resist it while you still can, before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing. You will be told you can’t complain because you’re Islamophobic. The term is already being introduced into the culture as if it was an accusation of race hatred or bigotry, whereas it’s only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion …”

    Hitchens went on to show how the use of the term will open the way to power by silencing objections. And it works like a charm. But even so, it still needs help, and this help comes from those already holding cultural power and influence. Hitchens, finishing with a plea, describes how the power of the west will be taken:

    “…the barbarians never take a city till someone holds the gates open for them and it’s your own preachers who will do it for you and your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you. Resist. Resist it while you can.”

    It’s difficult not to believe sometimes now, especially when some girl is raped or some man gets his head lopped off, that our own elites and the liberal left, as well-intentioned as they may be, have inadvertently fallen into the role of gate-openers for the barbarian hordes, to put our current civilisational situation in a Romanesque context.

    What an ironic historical twist this could turn out to be. That the men of the west, helpfully agreeable in the feminist cause, inadvertently created the conditions for the takeover of the west by men whose main power gesture is the subjugation of women.

    Feature Image: Ipanemah Corella

  • Kneecapped at Coachella

    Kneecap caused a stir at Coachella this year—though you wouldn’t know it from the official festival footage. The Belfast rap trio opened their set with a searing visual: a burning police car, references to British imperialism, American complicity in Palestine, and a general tone of “we’re not here to play nice.” The response? Censorship. The land of the free doesn’t want freedom with a pulse.

    Now the Metropolitan Police are investigating them. For what, exactly? Performing a politically charged rap set in California? The timing is transparent. This isn’t just about bad vibes—it’s a coordinated attempt to silence a group that refused to dilute its politics for a global stage.

    It’s a tale as old as time. An artist speaks plainly and suddenly everyone forgets their free speech talking points. Protest is fine, apparently, as long as it’s vague, aesthetic, and monetizable. Hashtags are fine, but don’t actually use your platform to say something real.

    Let’s be honest, Kneecap was never a good fit for Coachella’s algorithm-optimized playlist of “vibe music for brand partnerships.” This is a festival that sells an illusion of bohemianism and alternative living: surface-level aesthetic progressivism, but just inoffensive enough for corporate sponsors.

    Real politics, especially the messy kind grounded in colonial trauma, don’t do numbers on TikTok.

    So, when Kneecap dared to connect U.S. foreign policy to real-world consequences in Gaza, or referenced the British state’s still-rotting legacy in the North, it wasn’t just disruptive. It was unprofitable, and Coachella was never going to protect art that costs money.

    Philip Anschutz, the billionaire owner of AEG and founder of Coachella, himself keeps a little black book full of far-right sponsors. He’s spent years quietly funding conservative and far-right causes, including anti-LGBTQ+, climate denialist, and anti-union organisations. When this became public in 2017, there was outcry, but no real reckoning, just a vague statement about “reviewing donations”,  then back to business as usual.

    It’s a real-time contradiction: we sell rebellion, but the money is filthy lucre. So, when an act like Kneecap turns up and delivers a protest that isn’t product-tested, the machine grinds to a halt.

    The hypocrisy is unreal. People will invoke “free speech” to defend actual ideological fascists on YouTube, but feel uneasy as soon as someone mentions the IRA or shouts “Tibet” in Shanghai.

    Björk did just that in 2008, ending her song “Declare Independence” with a cry of “Tibet! Tibet!” at a concert in Shanghai. Chinese authorities were livid. Western media downplayed it. Promoters distanced themselves. Her remaining tour dates in the region were effectively cancelled. It was a single, spontaneous act of solidarity, and it cost her.

    Sinead O’Connor tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992, declaring, “Fight the real enemy,” in protest of abuse within the Catholic Church. She was vilified. Media outlets called her insane, radio stations boycotted her. Joe Pesci threatened to hit her during the very next episode of SNL. Madonna, herself no stranger to co-opting Catholic imagery or controversy in general, mocked her. The crowd at Madison Square Garden booed her offstage at a Bob Dylan tribute show. It took twenty odd years for the world to admit she was right, but she didn’t live to hear an apology.

    The problem isn’t just the festivals or the corporations. Green Day are another perfect example. They made a half-hearted nod to genocide and fascist governments during their set, altering a lyric or two. Fair play to them, I suppose, but it was so blatantly performative. “We stand with humanity,” Billie Joe said, He probably later stood at the bar with his mate, Mark Zuckerberg, too.

    Dissent is just content, now. Discourse is clickbait, and anything that can’t be simplified into a slogan or sold on a t-shirt is “too much.” But protest isn’t a playlist. It’s not supposed to make you comfortable. It’s supposed to make you act.

    If the music industry actually cared about free speech, it would protect artists like Kneecap. Instead, it gives us curated rebellion. Safety pins in ears. “Resist” T-shirts made in sweatshops. Festival stages that erase the parts of performances that weren’t “brand-aligned.”

    Kneecap didn’t ask for permission. They didn’t try to fit in.

    But let’s be honest. They’re not martyrs either. They’ve since walked back their most controversial comments, stating that they do not support Hamas or Hezbollah. It’s not betrayal as much as it is survival, however. They have a career to protect, fans to answer to, and possibly legal consequences on the table.

    There’s a case currently before the U.K. High Court to remove Hamas from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations. They could’ve used this moment to say, “Actually, let’s have that conversation” but they didn’t, and perhaps they couldn’t.

    After the fallout, Kneecap didn’t apologise. They didn’t roll out a PR strategy. They posted a defiant message: “We will not be silenced.” It’s not clean, it’s not simple, but it’s real, and in a culture obsessed with diet dissent, that’s rare enough to be worth defending.

    Thankfully, several of their peers have. Following the decision to drop the trio from Cornwall’s Eden Project festival this summer, more than 40 music acts signed an open letter in support of their unwavering stance. Those included come as no great surprise, given their public support for progressive causes.

    Art is inherently political. The fact that one act has not spoken but shouted their truth to power, with the endorsement of so many, some luminary and legendary, is not just worth defending. It’s worth celebrating.

  • Fearful Times, and Canada

    On Tuesday last I had an email from the Chancellor of UMass Lowell, where I sometimes teach:

    “I am sorry to let you know that this changed over the weekend. As part of the university’s proactive effort to support and inform our international students, the International Students & Scholars Office (ISSO) has been regularly monitoring the federal database used to monitor and track international students. On Saturday, the university discovered that federal authorities had revoked the visa and terminated the immigration status of a UMass Lowell undergraduate student.”

    It seems U.S. politics are circling the drain. The U.S. Constitution, I had thought, was designed to prevent the ‘Mad King’ phenomenon, but it turns out that that depended on everyone–executive, legislators, judiciary–playing by rules which, it seems, aren’t rules after all, only habits and customs.

    The U.S. has done irreparable harm to its power in the world.

    Some Canadians are inclined to jeer at the U.S. and its embarrassment on the world stage. That could become a dangerous habit. Instead let’s be honest and clear-sighted on the strengths and vulnerabilities within our own system of government and our own societal & cultural norms. We need to support leaders who understand Canada’s position within the world and have strategies to strengthen it as the rules of global trade are rewritten. Alliances, military and (is in trade agreements) economic, are not love-fests, but strategic partnerships.

    I am uncomfortable when some Canadians get all teary–the other side of jeering–about how much and how blindly they have ‘loved’ the U.S.. The goal of any Canadian government must be to strengthen Canada’s position in the world, with the understanding that no economy or society in a smart, fluid, and connected world is or should be “independent”, and that a system that works to benefit of all players is best for us. (The devil is in the details, of course.)

    I admire Prime Minister Mark Carney–the little I know of him– (three Co. Mayo grandparents!)–but he is a new type of Canadian PM: an internationally-minded elitist technocrat. Effective leadership in our decentralized democratic confederation will also demand other, quite different skills. PM Carney is the man of the hour now, though, which is his good fortune and, I hope, Canada’s. Like WSC in 1940, the man is meeting the moment, perhaps.

    I respect the measured, sensible language that Prime Minister Carney and Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly use.  They accept that the U.S. “Administration” (I think “Régime”, with its suggestion of autocracy, ossification, and damage, is a better noun) can cause immense trouble. They accept the necessity of accommodation, but in their speeches and interviews they have maintained a firm tone and offered clear warnings that somethings are not negotiable.

    A good relationship with the U.S. will always be in Canada’s interest. At certain times such may not be possible, but we should work to keep those breaks as short as possible, while maintaining a clear awareness of our own interests, and being willing to sometimes pay a price for standing firm…

    Right now, many smart people in the U.S. – undergraduates on student visas, scientists and researchers working at the highest levels – are feeling vulnerable. Canada ought to be reaching out to these victimized people with offers not just of asylum, but of freedom–to study, learn, research, contribute (and freedom to protest Israel’s project in Gaza, though that might be as career-threatening in Canada as in U.S.). Intellectual immigrants would give an invaluable, game-changing boost to the knowledge base and skill set of the nation. Just like the thousands of émigré Hungarians who sparked up Montreal and Toronto starting in the 1950s, and other waves of immigrants before and after that…

    To offer people in flight from the U.S. educational and research ecosystems place to land, Canada needs to commit to developing the quality, scale, and scope of research in Canadian universities, which have been, for most of our history, second-rate.  It will be hard to beat the Chinese in this area, but we can try. (The multitude of Chinese students and graduate students I’ve encountered as Harvard and UCLA this year–suggests that U.S. schools are still a powerful draw globally … up until January 2025, anyway). Many faculty, researchers and students in U.S. schools and institutions feel furious, scared, and – rightly – vulnerable. Canadian schools and institutions should be making offers, backed with serious support for studies and research. As an editor and writing coach, I work with tenured faculty in the highest reaches of Ivy League acclaim and renown who feel censored, threatened, and sickened by the atmosphere. Their world-renowned institutions are poisoned by fear.

    Can Canada make an all-out effort to scoop international research and teaching talent from U.S. universities? That will require the federal govt stepping in and up. Canada’s universities are for the most part significantly underfunded. And there are aspects of the U.S. university system, particularly the great public schools like U of Michigan, UTA, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, UMass, U of Wisconsin, UVA, OSU, etc. that Canadians ought to take a closer look at. (Beyond the NCAA football and basketball seasons!) These are large public research institutions with global reach. Asking Canadian undergraduates to pay more, while offering them ready access to scholarships and loans might be step one in improving the landscape for scholarship and research in Canada. I can’t think it’s a bad thing to ask people to invest more deeply in their own education. And I’ll shut up now.

    Feature Image: Thomas K. 

     

  • Exit through the Vestry

    Vestry 

    /ˈvɛstri/                                         

    Noun

    • a room or building attached to a church, used as an office and for changing into ceremonial vestments.
    • a real estate investment trust (REIT), incorporated in the Republic of Ireland.

    There comes a moment when you discover a person the trajectory of whose business affairs appears to embody the rotten nature of Irish housing. Such people are often perceived as visionaries of the real estate market, top of their class in producing a return on investment through a system that permits widespread human suffering. One such visionary is Richard Moyles, director and largest shareholder of The Vestry General Partner DAC, one of Ireland’s most powerful landlords. Moyles is also a director of Be Lettings, the letting agent Vestry uses to manage its tenancies and properties. Characters like Moyles are endemic in our communities. We are told that their investments are what make the world spin. Sure, only for them, wouldn’t it all be so much worse? Or, as the American President laughed with the Taoiseach on the subject of the Housing Crisis, “It’s a good problem to have.” In this piece, I push against this narrative – with Richard Moyles as a touchstone, and paint a picture at the iceberg’s tip. This is not, however, Richard’s story. It’s the story of a mother and her young son with nowhere to go; the same story as thousands of other tenants whose lives are determined by the decisions of men and women like him.

    Jen has lived in an apartment in Dublin 1 for a decade, becoming Vestry’s tenant when the group acquired the property in 2021. Her son, Danny (aged 5), has known no other home. Vestry bought the apartment from Grant Thornton for €325,700, after the previous landlord went into receivership and Grant Thornton took control of the property. “The landlords were changing like socks,” Jen told me over the phone. She received a letter through the door, explaining that the property had changed hands, and that she would now be Vestry’s tenant. “No one asked me”, she said, “if they want to sell the apartment, I should be the first person they asked.” Vestry’s control over the property immediately made Jen and Danny’s situation insecure. Under the previous owner, Jen had signed a lease until January 2026. Vestry were under no legal obligation, however, to honour this agreement. “The law is on their side,” Jen said.

    Jen’s case is among the fifteen disputes between Vestry and their tenants that have come before the Residential Tenancy Board over the last six months. Her story is quite typical of many of those before the RTB – the landlord wants to sell, and the tenant, caught in the tempest of the housing crisis, cannot leave. Jen told me that Dublin City Council offered to buy the property under the tenant-in-situ scheme. Vestry, however, declined the offer which would have secured a “market rate” purchase for Vestry and a home for Jen and Danny. A win-win scenario, one would have thought. “My main issue is that there is no transparency between government bodies, landlords, and tenants. I don’t understand why it [the DCC offer] was so secret.” A representative from Be Lettings told Jen that they were looking for between €350,000 and €375,000 for the apartment. When Jen asked the DCC worker charged with acquisitions under the tenant-in-situ scheme what offer was made to Vestry, she was looked at “like (she) had two heads.”

    When I went to visit Jen and Danny, accompanied by members of the Mountjoy-Dorset branch of the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), Danny’s energy and curiosity was infectious. Jen and the CATU members decided to knock on every door in the apartment building, with Danny’s exuberant voice echoing through the stairwells as his mother pleaded her case to her neighbours. He showed us his favourite book, Torben Kuhlmann’s Lindbergh – The Tale of the Flying Mouse. The book tells the story of what Danny described as a “genius mouse”, who is forced to flee Germany after the humans create a labyrinth of mouse traps, leaving himself and his friends on the run. The similarity between Danny and the little mouse was, frankly, striking. Surplus to Vestry’s requirements, little Danny and his mother must now make their way in a city filled with the sorrow and stress of displacement.

    One of the CATU members pointed to a leaflet poking out from under the door of one of Jen’s downstairs neighbours. He had left it there a couple of weeks previously. “Well, there’s no one in that house”, the member remarked. How could it be that this woman could be facing homelessness, while a perfectly suitable house seemingly lay vacant, right under where they slept? Such is the effect of a political economy whereby a basic human right, housing, is treated as a speculative asset for men like Moyles to gamble with.

    CATU are currently representing a number of Vestry tenants who are facing eviction by the investment trust. “⁠It’s typical that our members are being put at risk of homelessness due to no fault of their own. It’s also typical that private landlords are prioritising their shareholder profits at the expense of housing insecurity for our members and other tenants,” Lily Palmer, communications officer for CATU Mountjoy-Dorset told me. In response to the evictions, and fearing that Vestry may be carrying out mass, citywide evictions, CATU Mountjoy-Dorset have purchased a dedicated phone for Vestry tenants to contact them, should they want representation from the Tenant’s Union, called the “Vestry Hotline”.

    In 2023, The Ditch reported that Vestry controlled more than 850 homes in the Irish rental market, posting more than €20 million in profit. Company records show that Moyles is the company’s largest single shareholder, through an investment firm wholly owned by him, called Apsone Investments Ltd. Mr Moyles keeps good company with his fellow shareholders, a who’s who of property moguls. Let’s take Silk Shadow Ltd, who control 10% of Vestry. Silk Shadow is owned by property power couple Hilary and Christy Dowling . In 2011, Newlyn Homes Limited, which controls 100% of Silk Shadow had €22 million of its loans transferred to the National Management Asset Agency (NAMA). Christy is also a co-director of Vestry and Beo Ventures Ltd, along with Robert Kehoe and Andrew Gunne. Andrew Gunne, incidentally, was previously a director of Focus Ireland, a charity apparently tasked with alleviating the humanitarian crisis of homelessness. The Vestry group reveals a complex web of companies, all with their fingers in the Irish home market, or indeed, the Irish homeless market.

    Moyles, along with Vestry co-director, Robert Kehoe, are directors of Be Lettings. Be Lettings describe themselves as “a leading residential letting and management business with a nationwide portfolio of houses and apartments”. In at least one case Be Lettings has sold properties to Vestry itself. One effect of such ‘house flipping’ is rampant inflation in the housing market. For example, a 3-bed, 2-bathroom, semi-detached house in Dublin 15 was bought in November 2019 for €287,500.00. In January of 2025, the same property was sold to Moyles’ Vestry by Moyles’ Be Lettings for €400,050.00. Land registry documents show Vestry is this property’s current owner. It was surely no coincidence that Be Lettings facilitated the sale, allowing Moyles to benefit through his shareholdings both from the sale of the property, and from its future tenancies. According to Vestry’s accounts this home, and Jen’s, are listed as a security for a company called Situs Asset Management Limited. This means that should Vestry fall into financial trouble, the home can be seized by Sistus, with little recourse or security from homelessness for whatever tenant may be renting the property.

    Moyles currently has a case before An Bord Pleanála, which was lodged in October of 2024. The case concerns an application for a fire safety certificate for a property he leases at 21 Denmark Street, Dublin 1. The case file reads “for material change of use from flats/bedsits to B&B rooms with other material alterations”. This is precisely what Dublin does not need: more B&Bs at the expense of permanent residences.

    When I visited the property it was clear that work was ongoing in the building. Stacks of rubbish were piled high next to it, and the door was bolted shut with two heavy padlocks. This property – a listed building built in c.1790 – is not owned by Vestry, Moyles, or other associated entities. The building’s Land Registry file shows that it is currently held under a leasehold from a company by the name of Dubres Strategies Limited. This company is not registered in Ireland, but Malta, according to leaked documents found in the Paradise Papers. The Paradise Papers is a global investigation into the offshore activities of some of the world’s most powerful people and companies, led by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. A man named Rodney Lee Berger is Dubres Strategies Limited’s director. He and Corinne Hilary Berger are directors of Dubres Capital Limited, a company incorporated in the Republic of Ireland, with an address at 13 North Great George’s Street, a stone’s throw from the property at 21 Denmark Street.

    Vestry’s purchase of Jen’s apartment was not the first time Moyles had cause to deal with Grant Thornton, in their capacity as receivers. In 2011, when Moyles was a director of Shelbourne Development (Europe) Limited, The Bank of Scotland appointed Grant Thornton as receiver. According to the receiver’s abstract submitted to the Companies Registry Office, dated 18/12/2019, Grant Thornton collated receipts of €33,511,913. In 2014, National Asset Loan Management Limited appointed Mazars as receivers to Moyles’ Shelbourne Properties Limited. Remarkably, this is a different entity to Shelbourne Development (Europe) Limited. According to the receiver’s abstract presented by Mazars, they took control of €23,975,661.56 of assets associated with the former company. It’s strange how the same man can be a supporting character in the downfall of one property giant, dust himself off, and appear on the other side of the ledger, purchasing a stressed asset from the very same receiver who had previously confiscated his holdings. As Mac from the 2005 comedy TV series ‘It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia’ put it: “I’m playing both sides, so I always come out on top!”

    Artist’s impression of the ‘Chicago Spire’.

    Moyles shared his directorship in both companies with Garrett Kelleher, who tried to sue NAMA for $1.2billion in a U.S. court, after his Anglo-Irish Bank-funded “Chicago Spire” vanity project failed to get off the ground. In 2009, prior the  resignation of Chris O’Connell as the head of Shelbourne Development (Europe) Ltd, O’Connell told the Irish Times: “In the short term it’s (referring to the establishment of NAMA) going to mean uncertainty for developers, bankers and investors alike, but it’s the key to the resurrection of this market over the next decade and it’s going to generate significant business opportunities at a number of different levels,”. And indeed, the offloading of bad loans from the bankers’ books by NAMA has created significant business opportunities. It could certainly be argued that this mechanism has allowed Moyles, Kelleher, Dowling and the crew to continue their honest work as lowly property moguls.

    “He doesn’t want to leave”, Jen told me, “he has his swimming lessons here, he has his little pals, his little life is going to be disrupted”. We must confront Jen and Danny’s reality, and the reality for some 15,286 people currently in homeless accommodation in this “Republic”, 4,653 of whom are children, with countless more contending with crippling rents, inflated high prices and insecure tenancies. If this is a “good problem to have”, who is it good for? Certainly not those people, and certainly not those paying exorbitant rent for mouldy studios. Is the problem housing supply, that “Ireland is Full”, or something else entirely? When we start asking the right questions we may start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Once we establish, as a basic cultural norm, that little Danny’s right to a roof should take precedence over Moyles’ right to make money from that roof, then, we might start excavating what is rotten about Irish housing. Until then, the carousel of real estate investment will keep turning, and little Danny and his mother will remain on the sidelines, not knowing what comes next.