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ALL American Ambassadors are gone!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
ALL American Ambassadors are gone!

ALL American Ambassadors have been removed from their posts and consequently the USA is right now without ANY representatives outside of the USA. In a very strange and definitely unusual move, Donald Trump informed all US Ambassadors around the world tha they will have to have left their post before he became president.

US Ambassadors are usually political appointments and it is not unusual that they change when a new president takes office, but normally there is a grace period to get things organised, to give the existing ambassadors some time to get back home and to appoint the successors. Not this time! And to make things even more harsh, the order was sent to all ambassadors around the world just two days before Christmas on 23 December.

Kevin O’Malley, the most recent US Ambassador to Ireland, who is an Irish American attorney from St. Louis was in a plane on Inauguration Day to get back to the US as ordered. He was nominated by Barack Obama on 05 June 2014.

Ireland being at the lower end of the priority list for Ambassador appointments (The position was left vacant for nearly 2 years from December 2012 until September 2014!) might have to wait a while to get the next ambassador.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI0IJplzPqg

Dublin, Elsewhere, Odd, Politics, ,

President Higgins’ visual impairment!?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
President Higgins’ visual impairment!?

Visual impairment is no fun in most cases. It is certainly not a choice and impacts the life of every affected person in a HUGE way. “Normal” seeing people expect that they have a field of vision of a good bit more than 180 degrees (including peripheral vision). So, imagine how it would affect you if out of 180 degrees a massive piece of that semi circle was missing. Blacked out or so hazy that you can’t make out what is there.

No severe medical condition regarding his eyesight is known about Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland. But it seems that the piece of that semi circle that he can’t seen can easily hold between 10,000 and 100,000 people. Because that’s the number (10,000-100,000) that were killed by the state in Cuba. At least 78,000 are estimated to have died trying to flee Fidel Castro’s dictatorship. (see www.quora.com/How-many-deaths-was-Fidel-Castro-responsible-for )

Fidel Castro was a brutal dictator in Cuba! Yes, there are some good things that he did in the areas of medicine and education, for example. But any absolutist leader will achieve SOME positive things and wil help SOME people. Even Hitler and Stalin did some positive things.

But how can you completely ignore the oppression of the people of a whole country, the killing of up to 100,000 and the fact that in all Castro’s years in power, he didn’t allow a single free election? How can you be soo blind that you talk of Fidel Castro as a leader “whose view was not only one of freedom for his people but for all of the oppressed and excluded peoples on the planet”. Freedom of his people!?!?!?!? He killed 78,000 who were prepared to risk their lives to get away from that freedom! He did give his people so much freedom that they weren’t allowed to vote once in nearly 50 years? And Fidel Castro the dictator, the oppressor allegedly cared about “all of the oppressed ..on the planet”?

No big problem, if Mr Higgins (or Comrade Higgins) has that opinion. Still wrong, but who cares about his ideology. But it was an absolutely shocking statement by a president of a democratic European country.

Irish, Odd, Politics, President, ,

US Elections – The UN-democratic Democracy!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
US Elections – The UN-democratic Democracy!

Every democratic country tries to adopt a system that is as democratic as possible while at the same time protecting the interests of the ruling parties. We have that in European countries (including Ireland!) and we have the same in the US. But depending if you are on the winning side or on the losing side, some of these un-democratic rules can be particularly upsetting.

Most of us experienced this on Wednesday after the US Presidential election. It all happened in a country geographically far away and we were not even allowed to vote, but to think that it won’t affect us would be a big mistake. So the whole world had a stake or at least a keen interest in the US elections and the shock afterwards was HUGE. I don’t think I saw any non-election related Facebook message on Wednesday or Thursday.

It is bad news that a misogynistic, racist egomaniac who has not the slightest bit of political experience and who has frightening views in nearly every area from the use of nuclear weapons to climate change and from the building of a wall on the Mexican border to his opinion about Russia’s Vladimir Putin will become the new president and many couldn’t understand how the votes could get it so wrong.

But interestingly, the voters didn’t get it THAT wrong. A majority of voters voted for Hillary Clinton. Not a BIG majority but Hillary Clinton got 60,231,953 votes which is 47.7% and Donald Trump got 59,893,663 votes, which is 47.4%. So the difference is only approximately 330,000 votes, but it is a definite majority for Hillary Clinton on what the Americans call, the “popular vote”. The decider, however, is the “electoral vote” and that is a very odd system. The electoral vote was won by Trump with 289 votes versus Clinton’s 228 votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire are not finally counted yet, so another 21 votes have to be distributed.)

So the next president of the biggest democratic nation in the world is NOT the person that got most of the votes in a democratic election, but the person that only came second. ODD!

Have a look at this video clip here if you want to understand more about how the Electoral College concept works.

 

Elections, Elsewhere, Politics, , , , ,

Pay Demands – The start of an unstable and damaging period?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Pay Demands – The start of an unstable and damaging period?

It started all with the LUAS Drivers who demanded a crazy increase in their salaries. They didn’t get what they wanted, but they got an increase. Next were the Dublin Bus Drivers, then the Gardai and in the meantime the TDs got also a nice increase of about 9,000 per year. Then the teachers. And they will all get less than they want, but importantly, they will get SOME increase.

With all this, is it a surprise that suddenly EVERYONE in the public sector wants more money? But is it justified? Or justifiable?On Friday FIVE (!!!) more unions announced that they will be looking for pay increases as the Irish Times reported here.

Many think that some of the pay increase demands are totally out of control, but in other areas it might make more sense. The problem however is that once the unions smell “blood” they will go after pay increases like a bloodhound. Justified or not!

Keep in mind that NOBODY needs a union unless there is a dispute, so it is very much in their interest to create a dispute! It justifies their existence and keep the union bosses in a very well paid job.

Any type of unrest is bad for the competitiveness of a country and damages the reputation. So it is in the interest of Ireland to sort out all unrest as fast as possible. An unstable period would be severely damaging in the context of attracting new investment from abroad. But it also doesn’t make sense to give in all cases. Where the salaries are too low, they should be increased, but where unions demand unjustifiable increases, the government should have the courage to refuse ANY increase.

Economy, Politics, Society, Unions, ,

8th Amendment – Avoidance at all cost?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
8th Amendment – Avoidance at all cost?

The 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution guarantees the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn and makes abortion illegal, but also puts doctors in a very tricky situation if they expect that they can only safe the life of one of the two in disastrous circumstances. The clause was added to the Irish constitution after a referendum in 1983 and many people think that a lot has happened in these 33 years and that the 8th amendment should be repealed (deleted from the constitution.

The supporters of the clause are not overly interested in a referendum because there is the possibility that the opponents will win the referendum. The opponents want to have a referendum as soon as possible to stop the odd situation that women need to travel to the UK to get an abortion that is illegal in Ireland.

So how could we find out what the majority of citizens in Ireland really wants? Let me think? Hmmmm?? Maybe put the head in the sand and pretend that there is no issue? – That seems to be the government’s approach once again! Enda Kenny and his gang are not the most decisive crowd at best of times.

In a true democracy, you would give the citizens a chance to voice their opinion and you would run a referendum if there is evidence that the public opinion could have changed drastically. There is no guarantee that the 8th amendment will be repealed if a referendum happens, but at least we would know then.

Last week the alliance of Anti Austerity Alliance and People Before Profit (AAA-PBP) has asked the government to run a referendum, but that was rejected and the government explains that in the usual way and I will paraphrase VERY VERY freely here:

“We will not ask for the real opinion of the people because we have put in place an artificial structure of a Citizens Assembly that will allow us to delay any decision as long as possible. We gave them loads ot time until half way through 2017 and we hope that they will take that time. Then this Citizen Assembly will come back to us with an opinion. We secretly hope that they will say that no referendum is needed, because then we can blame them. But if they tell us we should hold a referendum, then we will first need to discuss that and at some time later vote on it. Because once the Citizen Assembly comes back with an opinion we will first give that opinion to a Special Oireachtas Committee as this will give us a chance to delay the process further. That Special Oireachtas Committee will be also given six months to decide. So it will be well over a year before we even think about a referendum and we hope that the Irish citizens will have forgotten by then! If the Special Oireachtas Committee ALSO says we should have a referendum then we will CONSIDER to have one and will schedule it for as far away from today as we can. because we are extremely afraid of the outcome and hope that we have won the next election by then so that that referendum will not screw our chances. All in all, we don’t care about the opinion of the Irish Citizens anyway. We only care about our position in power and to maintain that we will do whatever possible to block and delay anything that interfere with our power in the slightest way.”

So with that in mind – and I stress that this is MY interpretation of the situation, but it is based on the government’s official statement as you can find it through this Tweet – there won’t be a referendum for the next 2.5 – 3 years AT LEAST!

In the last 33 years, the opinion in large parts of the population certainly has changed and they have a right to ask for a new vote. Keep in mind that neither side has a guarantee that they will win or lose and that’s not what this opinion here is about. Sure I have an opinion about the 8th amendment, but my opinion is so irrelevant (I am not even allowed to vote in a referendum!) that I just want to focus on the undemocratic-ness of the government’s decision.

We don’t need a Citizens Assembly or a Special Oireachtas Committee! We have clear evidence that there is a ground swell that could indicate that the opinion has changed. That should be enough to ask for the opinion again!

Irish, Justice, Politics, Society, , , ,
 
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