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Censorship or not? Maser Art and Dublin City

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Censorship or not? Maser Art and Dublin City

Dublin is never boring and Dublin City regularly gets into hot water and often enough screws up big time. Something emerged again last week that had “Big Screw-up” written all over it, but is it that?

The Background: Street Artist Maser painted a big mural on the wall of the Project Arts Centre in Temple Bar about 4 weeks ago. It was a read heart that had “Repeal the 8th” written in it. To understand that fully, you need to know that it refers to the 8th amendment, which was added to the Irish constitution in 1983 and which says “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

Supporters see it as a clause protecting life, but the flip side is that it makes abortion illegal by constitution. Now, abortion was always illegal based on Irish laws and that amendment wouldn’t have been needed, but the anti-abortion campaigners were worried back then that the other laws wouldn’t be strong enough. At the time 67% of the voters in a referendum were in favour of this amendment.

Many people’s views about abortion have changed, however in the last 33 years and these changed views do support the availability of abortion in Ireland either in a restricted number of situations/scenarios or in every situation. And since the Irish laws haven’t prevented abortions, but made it extremely difficult and emotionally stressful for women in Ireland to get an abortion by travelling to other countries, these laws are useless anyway.

Since 1981, the “Repeal the 8th” campaign has grown and become stronger and the website “The HunReal Issues”, which promotes women’s issues, has commissioned street artist Maser to create this mural in Temple Bar.

Dublin City received 50 complaints and then told the Project Arts Centre that they will have to remove the mural because it is against planning legislation. But it seems that legal situation is not crystal clear.

The Journal.ie writes “A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said that class 12 of schedule two in part one of the Planning and Development Regulations 2001 “exempts the painting of the external part of any building or other structure from requiring planning permission”.” So that means you do NOT have to ask for permission to paint the external part of a building, right? But then the Dublin City folks continued saying “Murals and other artistic designs require planning permission when applied to the external part of any structure.” I might be missing something here and maybe the key is in “painting” vs “mural”, but JUST with that information I can’t see how the law was broken.

What got me at first was that the Project Arts Centre said that they never experienced any planning legislation issues despite the fact that they regularly have murals on the side of the building. If a abortion related mural was treated differently by Dublin City than other murals, that would certainly not be ok.

But then I tried to “test” a few other angles:

What if Dublin City didn’t get any complaints for previous paintings? If they don’t get active UNLESS they get complaints, then the current situation is not censorship. – What if previous murals didn’t contain a political (or commercial) message but were just pieces of art? Then it would be more about an “ad” vs a pretty picture. – And how would I feel if someone put a big promotion on a building of an idea I was opposed to? Anti-abortion murals on house walls maybe? How tolerant would we then be?

And taking all this into consideration, I can see why this specific mural is different than someone painting a pretty flower pot on the side of a building.

The mural is the expression of a free opinion and the expression of opinions has to be protected by our laws, but there are MANY ways to express an opinion and not every way has to be allowed. So, I would have a serious problem if it was made illegal to express “Repeal the 8th”, but I don’t think if one path of expression was declared as not permitted.

And, to be honest, it couldn’t have come better for the Repeal the 8th campaign: Many people (including myself) hadn’t heard anything about this mural before Dublin City stepped in. Best PR ever! ;-)

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Politics, Society, , , ,

Killings in Nice and how NOT to react

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Killings in Nice and how NOT to react

Once again, a mass killing shook our world. Last night somebody drove an articulated truck into a mass of people at the strand promenade in Nice and killed more than 84 people, left 200 injured and some of them still in critical condition. This is a terrible event and it really shocked us. France has declared 3 days of mourning, the USA has topped that and will mourn for the people in France for 4 days and political leaders from all over the world declare their sympathy and solidarity with the people in Nice.

Can anybody remember a similar reaction when just 12 days earlier, 0n 03 July, 292 people were killed by an ISIS truck bomb in Baghdad and 200 got injured? I didn’t read anything about state mournings in the western world. Saying this is NOT criticising France or the US about the reaction to the attack in Nice, but why is it that we measure death so dramatically different?

The driver of the truck was shot by the police, so we will never find out what really was behind this terrible act. But we learned that he rented the truck 2 days earlier and that oddly he had non-working fake guns and fake hand grenades in the back of the truck. We also hear that allegedly he shot on people while he was driving into the viewers of a 14 July fireworks on Bastille Day in Nice, but since the police shot at the truck, it remains to be seen if it was the attackers shots or the police shots that the people heard.

Well BEFORE anything was known about the driver, social media channels and comment-enabled news sites like TheJournal.ie were full of comments from people about these terrible Muslims attacking us. That was BEFORE ANYTHING was known about the attacker. We are very fast making assumptions!?

Unfortunately, however, it turned out that the attacker is indeed from Tunisia and with the name Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, we can also assume that he most likely is Muslim. But French police has confirmed that he was not known to or on the watch list of French intelligence services, but was known to the police in connection with crimes like theft and violence,

No terror organisation claimed responsibility, so it is possible that this was the act of a deranged individual, but because he is most likely Muslim, many still blame the religion.

Nothing justifies killing people but it shouldn’t matter if this is a white deranged person, a black deranged person, a Muslim deranged person, a Christian deranged person or a group of deranged people. It also doesn’t matter if this is the police in the US, who seem to be on a rampage against every black American at the moment or if it is a Tunisian who lives in Nice who indiscriminately kills harmlesss life-enjoying people on what was meant to be a nice night out.

The reaction of many people on Facebook was “when will it stop” or “where is it all going to end” and as brutal as it sounds, but the tough truth is that it will NOT stop!! Since mankind exists, innocent people have been killed by deranged people and that will continue. Does that mean we have to accept it? No! But don’t ask nonsensical questions because the answer will depress you more.

I read another comment where someone suggested that the only way to stop the world from having gone crazy is that every single country needs to close its borders to stop “crazy religious people” from doing their terrorism. The American police that is killing innocent black people or crazy people that do mass shootings in Norway or the USA or anywhere else will NOT be hindered by that. A person that lives for many years in France (independent from his nationality) will also not be influenced by that. Do people even think for a second when they splurge out cr*p?

But governments are not much better it seems! The French government, who had decided to step down the “state of emergency” at the end of July has decided to continue it for another 3 month. Because ONE deranged person did a horrible thing? France also has decided to call in reserve soldiers and to increase the control of the borders. What is that for? This guy in Nice didn’t cross any border! He rented a truck in neighbouring town! How do reserve soldiers and stronger border controls help against that? A state of Emergency is TOTALLY and utterly in effective against this type of attack.

So why do countries things like that? Because they are as helpless as everybody else (but they need to be seen to do SOMETHING). The bottom line is that there is NO defence against attacks of that kind. And while this is a truly tough fact to accept, there is no other option than to accept it.

Is there ANY chance to stop it? It will sound VERY hippy, but the ONLY way to stop attacks and conflicts and killings and terrorism is with LOVE. Very hippy, I know! But only love and acceptance and showing that nothing will be achieved with force and killing has the slightest chance to stop madness.

Elsewhere, Politics, ,

The new government IS a Fine Gael – Fianna Fail coalition!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
The new government IS a Fine Gael – Fianna Fail coalition!

So they made it!! After 70 days finally a new government has been elected when on Friday Enda Kenny (Fine Gael) was re-elected as the Taoiseach.

It is called a “minority government” that is tolerated by Fianna Fail and supported by some of the Independent TDs. When the Taoiseach got elected, the Fianna Fail TDs abstained and therefore a handful of Independents was enough for Enda Kenny to get the majority.

Odd that Micheal Martin didn’t want to be in power since it was offered to him to be part of the government through a coalition. But the reason why Micheal Martin’s Fianna Fail didn’t want to get involved and form a Grand Coalition between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail is because they were worried that the electors would punish them for it in the next elections. In recent elections the smaller coalition partner (i.e. Greens and Labour) was always blamed more for a screw up of the government than the dominating party and Micheal Martin didn’t want to risk that.

So the solution was a to tolerate a minority Fine Gael government. But does that REALLY change the situation?

Is Fianna Fail now NOT part of the government and will they by innocent if Enda Kenny does a bad job?? Actually NOT AT ALL!! This is really a coalition between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, just with the odd configuration that Fianna Fail will not contribute in a positive way in the day to day running of the country.

Why do I call it a coalition? Well, if you sit down with the other party for days and negotiate a “deal” that will last for three years, during which Fianna Fail will support whatever Fine Gael does then you can’t claim anymore that you are innocent! It is like standing next to someone who commits a criminal act and not doing anything. You will NOT get away with your “I had nothing to do with it!” claim.

So this new government is a Grand Coalition, just not by name! And if Enda Kenny screws up and Fianna Fail won’t stop him because they promised to support him for 3 years, then Fianna Fail will also have to be appropriately punished for it! Don’t fall for Micheal Martin’s trick!

Elections, Politics, Society, , , , , , ,

Ireland introduces Free Legal Aid for everybody! – …as it seems

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Ireland introduces Free Legal Aid for everybody! – …as it seems

Some big news: Free Health services for everyone is something the government promised for years, but it didn’t happen. Instead – in a total surprise move – free legal aid for everyone was introduced in April. …we just weren’t told about it yet!

“Free Legal aid” means that the state covers the cost for solicitor/barrister and all other legal cost and this route is available to people with limited financial means to ensure that not only wealthy people can get justice, but that also poor people can defend themselves when they are accused of something.

It is a very fair concept and I don’t think that anybody could have an issue with the concept of it.

The question about “Who can get it?”, however, can be a more controversial one, but it seems that this problem has been removed now because it emerged that a member of the Irish Parliament, who is on a salary of approximately EUR 90,000 per year PLUS significant expenses can get free legal aid and if he can get it, then the majority of people in Ireland (who earn a lot less than him) MUST also be eligible for it. Right?

Anti Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy is accused of falsely imprisoning Tanaiste Joan Burton during a water charges protest in November 2014 and he has applied for free legal aid on the grounds that he can’t afford the court costs. Judge Melanie Greally from the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court has decided that based on his average weekly income, he will get free legal aid! :-O

How can that be the case for someone who has a monthly salary of EUR 4000? Well, Murphy has an agreement with his party that he only gets EUR 1,800 (after tax) per month and that the party can keep the rest.

So the money that arrives in his bank account is genuinely quite low, BUT this is a voluntary arrangement that he has with his party and herein lies the problem!

Imagine if you had a voluntary arrangement with your parents or spouse or a friend to give them more than half of your monthly salary (assuming you were lucky enough to earn 4k), do you you think a judge would also have sympathy with you? I don’t think so!

And even more so in this case, it means that you and I will pay for Paul Murphy’s legal aid (because taxes will pay for it) and his party can continue pocketing his salary, so we are indirectly funding his party! Doesn’t sound right!! We are talking about approximately EUR 50,000!

The Journal.ie reported about this here: www.thejournal.ie/paul-murphy-legal-aid-2740512-Apr2016/

The case he has to defend himself in is somewhat irrelevant in this situation, but if we looked at what he is accused of then it becomes even more questionable if he should receive a cent of tax payers money and it even makes you wonder if he is fit to be a TD: Tanaiste Joan Burton came from an event in a school in Tallaght and was on her way to a church for the rest of the event, when a protest against water charges blocked her car in and “imprisoned” her in her car for about 2 hours.

Protesting is a legal right, but stopping someone’s movements against their will is not. It was a stupid and unjustified action. No serious harm was done to anyone and you could argue that bringing him to court is a bit of an overreaction, but unfortunately there are no other means to penalise someone who misbehaves.

The real bad news is that free legal aid has NOT been introduced for everyone, instead only someone who could afford to pay from his own pocket and who knowingly broke the law, will get the money paid by you and me!

Elections, Justice, Politics, Taxes, ,
 
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