Podcasts about irish parliament

Democracy is at the heart of the EU's and Member States' political foundations. Yet in an increasingly volatile global landscape— marked by the rise of authoritarianism, foreign interference, and disinformation— it cannot be taken for granted. The digital public sphere is particularly vulnerable to manipulation: recently, we have seen influencers being paid to promote certain political candidates and AI-generated fake news flooding social media platforms. Beyond external threats, there is a growing sense of disengagement among citizens from democratic participation. How can the EU address these challenges? One of the European Commission's priorities for 2025 is the European Democracy Shield, which is envisaged as a tool to combat digital propaganda, develop media literacy and support free and independent media and civil society. In his address to the IIEA, Michael McGrath, Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection, speaks about the European Commission's plans to protect European democracy, in particular, through the European Democracy Shield.  About the Speaker: Michael McGrath assumed the role of EU Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection on 1 December 2024, as a member of the European Commission under the leadership of President Ursula von der Leyen. Commissioner McGrath has specific responsibility for upholding the rule of law, protecting democracy and fundamental rights, tackling disinformation, improving criminal justice cooperation and strengthening the rights of victims of crime. His broad portfolio also includes improving EU competitiveness through the reform of company law and civil law. He has responsibility for consumer protection policy and for ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation across the EU. Prior to his appointment, Commissioner McGrath served as Ireland's Minister for Finance from 2022 to 2024, as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform from 2020 to 2022, and was an elected member of the Irish Parliament from 2007 to 2024.

Sign up to Nebula to watch 'What to Follow: USA" and get 40% off an annual subscription with our link: http://nebula.tv/wtf?ref=tldrnewsglobalWelcome to the TLDR News Daily BriefingIn today's episode, we run through why the Irish parliament erupted into chaos before appointing the new PM. Also, we discuss the ongoing Israeli raids in the West Bank; Trump urges Putin to end the war in Ukraine; & The Sun pays out ‘substantial damages'.

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,And pass both tropics and behold the poles,When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,And unacquainted still with our own souls.Today's poem is Davies' lengthy meditation on what man can know and what he could stand to learn. Happy reading.Poet and lawyer Sir John Davies was born in Wiltshire and educated at Winchester College and Queen's College, Oxford, though historians disagree about whether he graduated. In 1588, he enrolled in the Middle Temple, where he studied with John Donne, and was called to the bar in 1595. In addition to his legal study, Davies wrote poetry, notably Orchestra, or, A Poeme of Dancing (1596). Davies's other works include a series of epigrams drawn from his youthful misadventures; Nosce teipsum (1594), a poetic treatise on the immortality of the soul; and Hymnes of Astraea in Acrosticke Verse (1599),an acrostic poem spelling the words Elisabetha Regina. Davies also contributed poetic dialogues to Francis Davison's Poetical Rhapsody(1602). His Collected Poems appeared in 1622. It is thought that Davies accompanied King James to Scotland after Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603. Eventually knighted by the king, Davies was made solicitor general for Ireland and emerged as a champion of legal reform in Ireland. He attempted to lay the grounds for a strong civil society, albeit one that benefited England and English rule in all cases. Davies helped cement pro-English property laws and advocated the expulsion of Catholic priests to shore up Protestantism. He was appointed speaker in the Irish Parliament in 1613 and presided over the first Protestant majority. He returned to England and served in the Parliament of 1621. Charles I appointed Davies lord chief justice in 1626, but he died just before officially taking office. John Donne gave his funeral oration. Davies was buried in St. Martin-in-the-Fields.-bio via Poetry Foundation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn't go to waste. We're releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here's a preview of this week's premium episode with Brid Smith, a TD or Member of Parliament in the Irish Parliament in Dublin. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.Support the show

Although Simon Harris reportedly describes himself as an 'accidental politician', he has managed to make a career out of it. His interest in politics was sparked at the age of 15 when he set up a support group in his local town to campaign for better secondary education for autistic people after he saw his parents struggle to get help for his younger brother. From then on his path was set. After a brief dalliance with Fianna Fail he joined the youth wing of the Fine Gael party at 17. He gave up his degree studies in year three of a four year course to work as an assistant to the then leader of the opposition in the Irish Parliament. By the age of 24 he was elected to parliament with the nickname 'Baby of the Dail' and was a junior minister by the age of 27. Since then he's held two further ministerial posts. Now, after the shock resignation of former Taioseach, Leo Varadkar in late March, he was elected unopposed as leader of the Fine Gael party and now is expected to be confirmed as the new Taoiseach when the parliament returns after the Easter break. With a new nickname, 'The Tik Tok Taoiseach' because of his use of social media he's on track to break another record, set by his predecessor as the youngest Taoiseach in history to date. Kate Lamble finds out what makes him tick outside of Tik Tok and his rapid rise to the top job in Irish politics. PRESENTER: Kate LambleCONTRIBUTORSFrances Fitzgerald, MEP, Dublin, IrelandCouncillor Ray McAdam, Fine GaelAlice O'Donnell, Triple A Alliance Jennifer O'Leary, BBC Ireland Correspondent Fionnan Sheahan, Ireland Editor, The Irish Independent PRODUCTION TEAMProducers: Julie Ball & Madeleine Drury Researcher: Jay Gardner Editor: Tom Bigwood Production Co-ordinators: Katie Morrison & Sabine Schereck Sound: Nigel Appleton

Last week the Irish people delivered a blow to the corrupt Irish government.  They voted an overwhelming No to a referendum that would have redefined family and women.  The proposed referenda altering the nation's constitution enjoyed the support of Ireland's elites, but the attempt to embed woke values in it has backfired. The Government asked voters to remove the word 'mother' from the Constitution and they answered with a resounding No.  They also rejected by a huge margin the attempt to foist the extremely nebulous term "durable relationships" on the Constitution. The government worked in conjunction with every political party and legacy media outlet to tell and coerce the people into accepting these changes. The people refused.  John Waters returns to Hearts of Oak to analyse why this referendum was proposed and what the rejection means, not only for the government but for the people of Ireland. John Waters is an Irish Thinker, Talker, and Writer. From the life of the spirit of society to the infinite reach of rock ‘n' roll; from the puzzle of the human ‘I' to the true nature of money; from the attempted murder of fatherhood to the slow death of the novel, he speaks and writes about the meaning of life in the modern world. He began part-time work as a journalist in 1981, with Hot Press, Ireland's leading rock ‘n' roll magazine and went full-time in 1984, when he moved from the Wild West to the capital, Dublin. As a journalist, magazine editor and columnist, he specialised from the start in raising unpopular issues of public importance, including the psychic cost of colonialism and the denial of rights to fathers under what is called family 'law'. He was a columnist with The Irish Times for 24 years when being Ireland's premier newspaper still meant something. He left in 2014 when this had come to mean diddly-squat, and drew the blinds fully on Irish journalism a year later. Since then, his articles have appeared in publications such as First Things, frontpagemag.com, The Spectator, and The Spectator USA. He has published ten books, the latest, Give Us Back the Bad Roads (2018), being a reflection on the cultural disintegration of Ireland since 1990, in the form of a letter to his late father. Connect with John... SUBSTACK              johnwaters.substack.com/ WEBSITE:                anti-corruptionireland.com/ Recorded 18.3.24 Connect with Hearts of Oak... WEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/ PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/ SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/ *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on X https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20  TRANSCRIPT (Hearts of Oak)   And it's wonderful to have John Waters join us once again from Ireland. John, thanks so much for your time today. (John Waters) Thank you, Peter.  Pleasure to be with you.  Great to have you on. It was ages ago, goodness, talking about immigration.  That was a good 18 months ago. Always good to have you on.  And people can follow you, on your Substack, johnwaters.substack.com. That's where they can get all your writings. You've got one of your latest ones, I think, Beware the Ides of March, part one.  Do you just want to mention that to give people a flavour of what they can find on  your Substack? Yeah, it's a short series.  I don't know.  I think it's going to be probably two, maybe three articles. I have several other things that are kind of related to it. It's really the story of what happened, what has been happening since four years ago really, as opposed to what they told us, what happened, what we've been talking about. It's essentially, this was not about your health.  It was about your wealth, and that's the message so I go through that in terms of its meanings. And in the first part which has just gone up last night; it's really about  the the way that the the predator class the richest of the rich in the world are  essentially. Coming to the end of their three-card trick which has been around now for 50 years. Which is the money systems that emerge after the untethering of currencies from the gold standard. And that's essentially been a balloon that's been expanding, expanding, expanding,  and it's about to blow.  They're trying to control that explosion. But essentially, their mission is to ensure that, not a drop of their wealth is spilt in  whatever happens, right? And that everybody else will lose everything, pretty much. They don't care about that.  In fact, that's part of their wish. And so it's that really what I'm kind of talking about and how that started. We now know that the beginnings of what is called COVID were nothing to do with a virus. There was a bulletin issued by Black Rock on the 15th of August 2019, Assumption  Day in the Christian calendar, which is the day that the body of our Blessed Virgin was assumed and received into heaven. But, the word assumption has lots of other meanings. I think there was a lot of that at play on that particular day when they were assuming the right to dictate to the world what its future should be. That was really the start of it. And then the COVID lockdowns and all of that flowed  inexorably. There's a lot of stuff we could go into, but we won't.  I don't think about vaccines and all the rest of it.  They're part of that story. But the central part was that this was completely fabricated and completely  engineered and it was a fundamental attack on human freedom in the west particularly. And has been largely successful so far but, now as I think we're going to talk about it, in Ireland there's beginning to be that little bit of a pushback. I'm hopeful now. Well, obviously I've really enjoyed your your writings on Substack. I don't have the patience for the writing, but you are a writer a journalist and that is  your bread and butter. People obviously can support you financially on Substack if they want to do that after reading your writings. Let's go into Ireland: we saw this referendum and it's interesting. We'll get into some of the comments on it, but really there were two parts of this  referendum and it was focusing on family and the woman's position or the mother's position. Do you want to just let us know how this referendum came about? OK, well, first of all, you've got to see it in its context, which is in a series of attacks  on the Irish Constitution going back. Going back, you could say 30 years.  It depends in the context of the European Union and the various referendums that we had about that, the Nice Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, in which the Irish people were  basically told when they voted ‘no', that's the wrong answer. You're going to have to think again, and you're going to have to vote again. And they did, and it passed, because they were just bullied into doing it.  In the past decade or so, a dozen years, we've had three critical referendums  which attacked, the Irish Constitution which has a series of fundamental rights  articles right in the centre of it, articles 40 to 44. That's been informally called by judges over the years: the Irish Bill of Rights, which  is all the personal fundamental rights, all the rights that derive essentially from  natural law in the greater number of them. That, in other words, they're inalienable, imprescriptible, they are antecedent. They're not generated by the Constitution or indeed by the people. Certainly not by the government or anybody else. So, now there was an attack on Article 41 in 2012, which was purportedly to put in  children's rights into the Constitution. That was completely bogus because it was a successful attempt attempt to transfer  parental rights to the state. That's what it was when you look closely at it.  And I was fighting all these referendums. Then in 2015, we had the so-called gay marriage or the marriage referendum. Which essentially, people don't really get this; they talk about Ireland having legalised  gay marriage. No, no, we didn't. That's not what we did.  We actually destroyed marriage by putting gay marriage as an equivalent concept in  our constitution. And then there was the infamous Eighth Amendment referendum in 2018, which was  to take out an amendment which had been put in some 40 years before, 30 years before, in 1983, to guarantee, to, as it were, copper fasten the right to life of the  unborn child. And there's a very subtle point that needs to be made about this, not very subtle really, but legally it is, which is that this was an unlawful referendum because this was one of those inalienable, imprescriptible rights. Even though the article in which it was couched on was only introduced in 1983, and all it was, was a kind of a reminder, that these rights exist, because these rights already exist as unenumerated rights. And as a result of that the referendum was actually unlawful and should never have taken place, because the Irish people had no right to vote down the rights of a section of its own population. Which was the unborn children waiting to emerge into the world to live their lives in  peace and whatever would come their way in that life. But nevertheless, to have a law, to have essentially an illegal, unlawful law, quote unquote, created that prevented them from even entering this world. It seemed to me to be the greatest abomination that has ever happened in our country. So, this was a continuation of this.  There are different theories about what it was about. There were two amendments, as you said, Peter. The second one that you mentioned was the mother in the home. And this was a guarantee to women, to mothers, that they would be protected from  having to go out, if they wished, to go out into the workplace and work. And if they wanted to mind their children, then the state would take care of them. It's not specific, but nevertheless, it placed on the state a burden of responsibility to  give women this choice. Now, of course, the government and its allies, its proxies, try to say that it's really an  attack on women, that it says there are places in the home, this kind of caricaturing of  the wording and so on. In fact, it's nonsense because there's another article, Article 45, which explicitly  mentions the right of women to have occupations in the public domain and to go and work and earn a living for themselves. So, this was a complete caricature. And I think people understood that. The other one then was a redefinition of the family, which is Article 41. Again, all of this is 41, which defines the family, always has, as being based on  marriage. That has been the source of some dissension over the years, some controversy,  because more and more families were outside marriage, as it were. There were small F families, as it were, rather than a big F family, as arises in the  Constitution. And they claimed to be sorting this out.  But of course, they weren't sorting it out at all. When you actually catalogued the various categories of family who might theoretically benefit from such a change, none of them were benefiting at all. I went through this microscopically in the course of the campaign several times on videos and so on.  So, really what it was, was to leverage the progressive vote, I think. That was one object, to get people excited again. They were getting nostalgic for 2015 and 2018 because they were becoming more and more popular.  That was certainly one aspect. But, there were other aspects, which is that they were introducing into the  constitution, or supposedly, that along with marriage, that also would be included  something called durable relationships. And they refused or were unable to define what this meant. The result of it is that there were all kinds of proposals and suggestions that it might  well mean, for example, polygamy, that it might mean the word appear durable  appears in European law in the context of immigration. There was a very strong suspicion, which the government was unable to convincingly deny, that this was a measure that they needed to bring in in order to make way for  what they call family reunification, so that if one person gets into Ireland, they can  then apply to have their entire families brought in after them. That's already happening, by the way, without this. They say that something like an average of 20 people will follow anybody who gets in  and gets citizenship of Ireland. They bring something like an average of 20 people with them afterwards. So this was another aspect of it.  There were many, many theories posited about it. But one thing for sure was that the government was lying literally every day about it, trying to present this progressive veneer. And more and more, what was really I think staggering in the end in a certain sense,  was that the people not alone saw it in a marginal way, they saw it in an overwhelming way, this was the start, I mean I don't think a single person, myself included predicted that we would have a 70-30 or whatever it was roughly, 3-1 result. For now, I mean, that was really miraculous and I've said to people that it was actually a kind of loaves and fishes that it was greater than the sum of all its parts, greater than anything that we thought was possible. It was like a miracle that all of the votes just keep tumbling out, tumbling out, no, no, no, no, no. And I've been saying that that no actually represents much more than what it might  technically read as a response to the wording that was on the ballot paper, that it was  really, I think, the expression of something that we hadn't even suspected was there,  Because for four years now, the Irish people have labored under this tyranny of, you  know, really abuse of power by the government, by the police force, by the courts. And a real tyranny that is really, I think, looks like it's getting its feet under the table  for quite a long haul. And accompanied by that, there was what I call this concept, this climate of mutism,  whereby people weren't able any longer to discuss certain things in public for fear  that they would get into trouble, because this was very frequently happening. I mean, since the marriage referendum of 2015, Before that, for about a year, the LGBTgoons went on the streets and ensured that everybody got the message that we weren't allowed to talk about things that they had an interest in. And anybody who did was absolutely eviscerated, myself included, and was cancelled  or demonised or whatever. That has had a huge effect on Irish culture, a culture that used to be very  argumentative and garrulous, has now become almost paranoid, and kind of, you have this kind of culture of humming and hawing. If you get involved in a conversation with somebody and you say something that is  even maybe two or three steps removed from a controversial issue, they will immediately know it and clam up. This has been happening now in our culture right across the country. When you think about it, I've been saying in the last week that actually for all its  limitations, locations, the polling booth, that corner of the room in which the votes are being cast with the little table and the pencil and a little bit of a curtain in some  instances, but even not, there's a kind of a metaphorical curtain. And that became the one place in Ireland that you could overcome your mutism, that  you could put your mark on that paper and do it convincingly and in a firm hand. And I think that's really the meaning of it, that it was a no, no, no, no, no to just about everything that this government and its proxies have been trying to push over on  Ireland for the last few years, including the mass immigration, essential replacement  of the Irish population, including the vaccines, which really have killed now in Ireland something like 20,000 people over the past three years. I would say a conservative enough estimate not to mention the injuries of people; the many people who are ill now as a result of this and then of course we  have the utterly corrupt media refusing to discuss any of this and to put out all kinds  of misdirection concerning. John, can I just say, there's an interesting line in one of the articles on this. It said the scale of rejection spelled humiliation for the government, but also  opposition parties and advocacy groups who had united to support a yes, yes vote.  Tell us about that.  It's not just the government, well the government is made up obviously of the three  parties, the unholy alliance, of Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael and, sorry, what was the  other? The Green Party.  Sorry, the Greens.  The Green Party are a fairly traditional element in Irish politics, not so much in the ideology, but in the idea of the small party, because they're They're the tail that wags the dog. They have all the ideological ideas.  The main parties have virtually no ideology whatsoever. Like they've been just catch-all parties for a century or whatever their  existence has been. But yes, that idea, you see, what we've noticed increasingly over the last, say, 10, 15  years, particularly I think since 2011, we had an election that year, which I think was a critical moment in Irish life, when in fact everything seemed to change. We didn't notice it at the time, but moving on from that, it became clear that  something radical had happened in the ruins of Irish culture, as it were, both  spellings actually. And so, as we moved out from that, it became clear that really there was no  opposition anymore. That all the parties were just different shades or different functions within a singular  Ideology. Like the so-called left parties were, it's not that they would be stating the thing. They would sort of, they would become almost like the military wing of the  mainstream parties, enforcing their diktats on the streets. If people went to protest about something outside the Houses of Parliament, the  Leinster House, these people would up and mount a counter protest against them  and call them all kinds of names. Like Nazis and white supremacists, all this nonsense, which has no place in Irish  culture whatsoever. It is a kind of a uni-party, as they say, is the recent term for it. But, my own belief is that actually this is a somewhat distraction in the sense that we  shouldn't anymore be looking at individual parties because, in fact, all of them are  captured from outside. And the World Economic Forum is basically dictating pretty much everything that  everybody thinks now. I mean, our so-called Taoiseach, God help us, I hate to call him that because it's  an honourable title. It's a sacred title to me.  And to have this appalling creep going swaggering around claiming that title for  himself, it seems it's one of the great obscenities of of modern Ireland. But he, Brad Kerr. He is a member of the World Economic Forum.  So is Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil. They've been switching over the Taoiseach role for the last four years. Yeah, because that's quite strange. I mean, many of our viewers will not be from  Ireland and will be surprised at the confusion system you have where they just swap every so often, because the three of them are in cahoots. That's the completely new thing.  That's never happened before. But what it's about, you see, those two parties are the Civil War parties. Civil War back in 1922. Those parties grew out of it, and they became almost equivalent in popularity. They represented in some ways the divide of that Civil War. And for the best part of 100 years, they were like the main, they were the yin and yang. They were the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the political system. And gradually, in the last 30, 40 years, the capacity of either of those parties to win  an overall majority has dwindled and basically disappeared, evaporated. So now they need smaller parties. And that's been true for about 30 years. And as I say, what actually happens then is that the smaller party, no matter how  small, if it's big enough to actually make the difference numerically, then it has the  power to take over certain areas of policy in which the big parties have no interest  whatsoever. And that's how you get things like migration, because they don't care about that. That's how you get social welfare policies, all that kind of stuff. This is kind of what's happened in the last, particularly since 2020, where there was a  complete unanimity. I could name, with the fingers of one hand, the people in the parliament, a total of over200 people in between the two houses, that who actually have stood up and actually in in any way acquitted themselves decently in the last four years. The rest have just been nodding donkeys and going along with this great tyranny against the Irish people and the contempt that Radcliffe and his cronies show for the Irish  people. Literally, almost like to the point of handing out straws and saying, suck it up, suck it  up, suck it up. And this is where we are now, that our democracy has been taken away, for sure. I mean, that last week was a really a bit of a boost but that was only  because they couldn't fix that. It was a referendum and they couldn't possibly predict what the turnout would be in  order to ready up the votes in advance but I have no doubt that they would be trying to rectify that they're giving votes now to in local elections which we have to every  immigrant who comes into Ireland so by the time that the Irish people get to the polls it'll all be over. These are people who don't even know how to spell the name of the country they're in many cases and this This is what's happening. The contempt these people have shown for our country is beyond belief. It is dizzying. It is nauseating. But the Irish people are told to shut up.  And of course, the media, without which none of this will be possible, by the way. I mean, if we had decent, honest media, they would be calling the government out  every day. But they're not. And so it remains to be seen now what effect this will have. I don't have any confidence that it's going to put any manners on this government  because they are beyond arrogant, beyond traitorous, beyond redemption in my view. But at the same time, there is a possibility that in the next elections, we have three  elections coming up now in the next year, in the next few months, actually, I would say,almost certainly. Well, we know for sure there's the European elections, European Parliament elections, and the local local elections are happening in June. Then there's a very strong probability that the general election will take place  sometime in the autumn because it has to happen before this time next year. And of course, the longer they leave it, the less flexibility and wiggle room they'll have in order because, events, dear boy, events can take over and they don't want to do, they don't like events, you know. I think what will be very interesting then is will something emerge in these elections, which would, if you like, will be a kind of an equivalent to that no box on toilet paper  in the form of independence, perhaps, or in the form of some form of new movement,  some actual spontaneous voice of the Irish people might well be something that could happen. I hope so. And I feel so as well. I think that this is the moment that it happened before, Peter, back in 2011, when  there was the really appalling events that happened in the wake of the economic  meltdown, when the troika of the IMF, the World Bank and the European  Commission, three entities, arrived as a kind of a coalition or a coalition. A kind of a joint policing visitation, shall we say, to basically take possession of Irish  economic sovereignty. And that was a great humiliation, a moment of extraordinary sorrow and grief and  rage in the Irish people. And that moment, I think, if you lit a match in Ireland at that time, the whole place  would have gone up. But, what happened then was a bogus movement started and pretended that it was  going to go and lead an alternative movement against these cretins, these cretinous  thugs and traitors who are the mainstream parties. And instead, then at the very last minute, they blocked the hallway, as Bob Dylan said, they stood in the doorway, they blocked up the hall, and nobody could go  through until the very last moment when they stepped aside. said they weren't going to run, and ushered in Mr. Enda Kenny, who became  possibly the greatest destroyer in Irish history since Oliver Cromwell. Yeah. When I grew up in the 80s with Gareth Fitzgerald and Charles Hawkey back  Fianna Gael, Fianna Fáil, there did seem to be a choice. And now it seems to be that there isn't really a choice for the voters and they've  come together. Is that a fair assessment of where Ireland are? Yes, 100%, Peter.  But, I think it's very important to, whereas we can go into the whole walk thing, as  these parties are now, fixated with woke, contaminated with it. They're saturated with this nonsense and really assiduously pushing it. But I always remind people that none of this is spontaneous, that woke is not a  spontaneous, naturalistic movement from the people or even any people. Of course, there are people pushing it, but they're just useful idiots. This has been, this is top-down, manipulation of an orchestration of our  democracies.  And it's happening everywhere now. These massive multibillionaires pumping money into this, into basically  destructive political elements, Antifa, the LGBT goons, and so on and so on. Terrorist groups, essentially. Let's not mess around. They're terrorist groups. And using these to batter down the democratic structures of Western countries. That's what's happening. And you see, the people that we are looking at who are the puppets. They're the quokka-wodgers, I call them. That's the name for them, actually, the quokka-wodgers, people who are simply like  wooden puppets of the puppet masters. They're filling space, placeholders. They're indistinguishable.  It doesn't matter.  I mean, rotating the role of Taoiseach is irrelevant because essentially, you  could just have a showroom dummy sitting on the chair for the full four years. It doesn't matter who it is, except the only difference it makes is that the quality of the dribble that emerges from the mouths of Martin and Varadkar is somewhat variegated  in the sense that, Varadkar is capable of saying the most disgusting things because  he has no knowledge of Ireland.  He's half Irish. He's an Irish mother and an Indian father. He has no love for Ireland whatsoever. He did a speech there the other day, apparently in America, where he was saying that  St. Patrick was a single male immigrant. Nobody, I think, at the meeting where he said it, had the temerity to point out to him  that actually St.Patrick was a victim of people traffickers. And that's exactly what's happening now.  He's their principal ally in the destruction of Ireland. Well, how does that fit? Because interesting comment about Varadkar's background,  his parents Indian.  We, of course, here in the UK and England, it's the same with Sunak. And then in Wales, you've just got the new first minister. I think was born in Zambia, I think, Africa. And then, of course, you've got in Scotland and in London, Pakistani heritage. You kind of look around.  And I think my issue is not necessarily that you've got that different background. My issue is the lack of integration and understanding of what it means to be this  culture and this community and a lack of understanding. I think that's where Varadkar seems to have torn up the rule book and what it means to be Irish and wants to rewrite it. Oh, well, they're actively saying now that really there's no such thing as Irish culture  and that, the people who live in Ireland, those people have been here for hundreds or maybe thousands of years. That they have no particular claim on this territory. Trade. This is something that the great Irish patriot, Wulff Tone, mourned about. He said, this country of ours is no sandbag. It's an ancient land honoured into antiquity by its valor, its piety, and its suffering. That's forgotten.  People like Varadkar don't know the first thing about this and care less. They're like Trudeau in Canada, a completely vacant space, empty-headed. Narcissists, egomaniacs psychopaths. They are. And they are and traitors like they are really doing things now. I did a stream last week; there was somebody in America in Utah, and I was saying  in the headline, I found myself saying this that what is happening cannot  possibly be happening. That's really the way all of us feel now that this is like just something surreal real, that is beyond comprehension, because it wasn't possible for us to forget, to predict. That a person could be elected into the office of Taoiseach, who would be  automatically a traitor, who would have no love for Ireland. It seemed to be axiomatic that in order to get there, you wanted to care, you had to  care and love Ireland. These people have no love for Ireland.  They are absolutely the enemies of Ireland now. You mentioned the two other referendums that happened or in effect on same-sex marriage and life or the lack of sanctity of life and those went through this this  hasn't. Does that mean there is a growing resentment with the government. Is it a growing opposition and desire for conservative values where kind of is that  coming from I know it's probably difficult to analyze it because this just happened a  week ago but what are your thoughts on that? It's difficult.  It's difficult because there are different explanations going around. I can only tell you what I believe, and it's based on just observation over a long time. I believe that it is. I've been saying,  for the last two years about Ireland in this context. That the Irishman, Paddy, as he's called, and we don't mind him being called that. You can imagine him sitting in the pub, in a beautiful sunny evening. The shadows of the setting sun coming across the bar. Oh, I'm dreaming that. I can have this picture in my mind, John. And he's got a dazzle, as we say, a dashing of beer, and he's sticking it away. And then there's a couple of young fellas there, and they start messing, pushing  around and maybe having a go at some of the women in the bar or whatever. And Paddy will sit there for a long time, and he'll sort of have a disapproving look  but he won't say anything, but there will be a moment and I call it: the kick the chair  moment. When he will just reef the chair from under him and he will get up and he'll get one of those guys and he'll have him slapped up against the wall and he will tell him the odds. That's the moment I think we've arrived at, that all of the contempt all of the hatred,  these people go on about introducing hate speech law there is nobody in Ireland that  is more hateful than the government towards its own people. 100 percent.  The most hateful government, I think, in the world at this point. They are abysmal.  They're appalling. So, this is the moment when I think people took that in. They took it in. They took it in.  We suck it up. OK. But then one day they said, no, no more. And that's what happened on Friday week, last Friday, Friday week. That's what happened because, you can push people so far. A lot of this has to do with Ireland's kind of inheritance of post-colonial self-hatred, whereby they can convince us that we're white supremacists, even though we  have no history of slavery or anything like that, except being slaves ourselves, our  ancestors being slaves. But there is, as Franz Fallon wrote about many years ago, back in the 50s, the  pathologies that infect a country that's been colonized are such as to weaken them in  a terrible way in the face of the possibility of independence, that they cannot stand  up for themselves. And you can see this now. I mean, all over Irish culture now on magazines, on hoardings, in television  advertisements, there's nothing but black faces. You would swear that Ireland was an African country. This is part of the gaslighting, that attack that has been mounted against the Irish  people. And people, Irish people, you see genuinely because they don't. They don't understand what's happening because the word racist is a kind of a spell  word, which is used, I call it like a, like it's like a cattle prod, and as soon as you say something, and a big space opens up around you because nobody wants to  be near somebody who's a racist. But in fact, we need to begin to understand that these are just words and sticks and  stones and so on. If we allow this to happen it means that we will lose our metaphysical home that our  children and our grandchildren will be homeless in the world that's what's going to  happen, because it's already clear from a lot of these people who are coming in that  they're shouting the odds and saying that basically Irish people just better get up and  leave their own country, because they're not welcome anymore. These are outsiders who've been here a wet weekend. They're being trained in this you asked me. I forgot to mention this thing Ireland has something like 35,000 NGOs 35,000  Wow  And and these people, in other words they're non-governmental organization. what's a non-government at mental organization? That's a government which works that's in organization which works for the government, but pretends not to. Ireland has been governed now to non-government mental organizations  and these people are bringing in these foreigners and they're training them. They're coaching them how to attack the Irish people, how to make a claim on Ireland. I read an article somebody sent me last week where some guy who came here from  Chechnya, and he was saying how great it was that you could come to Ireland and  become Irish within hours. Whereas, you could never become Japanese or Chinese, which, of course, is true. I mean, if I went to Japan, I think it would take about 10,000 years before a relation of mine might be Japanese. And rightly so. Rightly so.  There's nothing racist about that.  That's just the way things are. That's every country, including the African countries, want to uphold their own  ethnicity, integrity and nationhood. Why the hell can Ireland not do the same? It seems we can't.  And our own government telling us and our own media is telling us that we can't. Some background, there were 160 members in the Dáil of the Irish Parliament and  the government is 80. I was quite surprised at that, because you talk about a government wanting extra seats to get a bigger majority, but it seems though you look who's the opposition and you've got Sinn Féin and they are even more captured by the woke agenda than anyone. So you kind of look; it's kind of the government are rubbing it in people's  noses, because they don't actually need a majority or a big majority, because  everyone else seems to be fitting into this agenda. Yeah, that's a really important point, Peter.  It's really important because, you see, what happened in 2020 is really instructive. We had an election in 2020 in February.  I actually ran myself. The only time in my life I've ever run for an election because things were looking so  bad. I ran in the worst constituency in Ireland, actually, Dundee, which is the only  constituency which voted yes in this referendum. So, that'll just show you how demoralised I was, let's say. But, what happened then was that the government, outgoing government, was  basically hammered. Varadkar for government were hammered. There was a standoff for for several months when there was negotiations and then  something happened that was totally, not likely but each of the parties Fianna  Gael, and Fianna Fáil, in the previous election and for years, and decades,  before that has said that they would never ever ever coalesce with the other. Then they did. What we had then was from from from February through until late June of that year: we had Radcliffe running a kind of a caretaker government in the period when the  most draconian and radical and unprecedented laws were introduced into Irish  society. Nothing like them ever before, the COVID laws.  And then in July, Martin, they went into coalition then, and we had Martin, Fianna  Fáil and Fianna Gael in coalition doing the same thing, implementing the same  policies without question. And anybody who did question, as I did, and others, we got hammered and treated  like dirt in the courts, in the media, you name it. That's the thing; those parties, they know that no matter what happens, they can rig up the arithmetic. That there's nothing for further. There's nowhere as things stand unless you get a huge tranche of independents who  have the power to nullify whatever power these small parties will have. But you see, one of the factors involved here now, they don't have a this election for  the general election where they'll be able to get immigrants and Ukrainians and all these people to vote. But that's probably in a very short order, possibly by the next general election, they  will have organised that. And means that increasingly, just as in terms of the birth rate, Ireland is  already being overtaken. The population is already beginning to be, you know, you can see that the incoming  population is growing at a much faster rate than the Irish population, in the  indigenous population because we have European demographics. We had very briefly, some time ago. Surges after John Paul visited in 79 and so on. We had much higher birth rates than the rest of Europe, but not anymore. And so essentially what we're looking at right across Europe is a replacement  of population. Intimidation and the way you can really know this is that they've decided that  the word replacement is a hate word and and when they say that you're over the target because, whenever something becomes dead obvious they make  it quasi-illegal they make it into a crime. I've seen that. Can I ask it's it's weird because there's a positive and a negative I see. The negative is that there doesn't seem to be a vocal opposition to what is happening or a grouping that is standing for family, for the rights of women,  a pro-women party. And so there doesn't seem to be that on one side. But yet, on the other side, the people have rejected what they were told to vote  for, not only by the politicians, by every political party, but also by the media. Everything was telling them to do one thing and they've done something else  and yes, I mean that rebelliousness, I love, but I'm wondering in the  middle of that, there a group movement that can appear to begin to stand up,  because Ireland doesn't really have a populist movement; like we're seeing in  every European country. Except Britain and Ireland. We're left on the sidelines.  Yeah, yeah. Really there was never be this is ironic given that that Edmund Burke was an  Irishman. There's been no real conservative party. I mean, they've been called, Fine Gael and Fine Fáil were called conservative parties,  but they had no philosophy whatsoever. When Hardy came to Hardy, they switched to the woke side. There's no intellectual, interesting party that puts forward family-related policies, say like Viktor Orban does in Hungary or anything like that. It's purely a kind of reactive opposition. That's very, very dismaying because, we desperately need. One of the problems I think here, Peter, is ironically, that is a residual effect of the war against the Catholic Church, which has succeeded in, particularly the clerical abuse  scandals, have succeeded in making people very wary of speaking about, what you  might call Catholic issues, whether that's expressed in family or abortion or whatever. So, those issues tend to be leveraged by the leftist and liberal parties to actually agitate people so as they actually will go against whatever the church is recommending. That's been the pattern going right back in the last, certainly in the last decade or so,  that that was very strong in the referendums. You see that this is a real problem because, if you go on the media in Ireland, if you  would go on, if you would be let on, on the national broadcaster now, you would be  harangued and harassed if you were proposing. Nobody would say: “OK, well, what do you got to say?” And then: ”OK, well, I don't agree with that," but here's my position.” And that's gone. You're just harangued and you're sneered at, not necessarily just by the opposition  that's in the studio, but by the presenter, probably foremost among them. That's the way that these things have gone now. And you have all these newspapers campaigning, activists. They purport to be, I guess, in the referendum recently, they purported to be covering  it. But in fact, they were fighting for the yes side. And this has been the standard approach like that. They tell all these lies. I mean, like there's a very important lie that I want to just call out, which is the Tune  Babies Hooks lie, which happened about 10 years ago. Where there was allegations made that 800 babies had been killed by nuns in Tum and buried in a septic tank. There's been a commission of inquiry that has spent 10 years investigating this and  they have not found one skeleton, one bone of a child in a septic tank. Yet, the news has not gone around the world anything like to the extent that the first  story went round. And people still out there that I meet think it is absolutely gospel truth that nuns  killed 800 children and buried their bodies in a septic tank. That is a complete and utter lie. And they have failed after 10 years of trying.  And yet that issue was used, was leveraged in the 2018 referendum to defeat the voice of the church, to nullify what the church was saying on the abortion question, because the implication was, well, they don't care about children. This is what goes on in Ireland.  It is obscene.  It's utterly obscene. And one feels, distraught in the face of it. Grease stricken to see what has become possible in our beautiful country. Yeah, well the media or the virus and we've seen that time and time again. John I really do appreciate coming on. When I saw that result I was so happy, especially seeing the depression on Varadkar's  face that even brought more joy. I'd seen them pull back, and of course, they haven't given up, and they will come back I'm sure they will try and mix this type of thing part of their their manifesto  moving forward. But, it is a moment to celebrate, I think, in the pushback. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing it, John.  Thank you very much, Peter. Nice to talk to you

Furious farmers drive their protests home to European Union leaders. And more demonstrations are planned in their revolt against high costs, EU climate change policies, food imports and support for Ukraine. So what political impact could their action have? In this episode: Michael Fitzmaurice, Independent member, Irish Parliament. Francisco Guerreiro, Independent Member, European Parliament. Pieter Cleppe, European Policy Analyst. Host:  Adrian Finighan Connect with us:@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube

Shownotes and Transcript Ivor Cummins, maybe better known to many of us as The Fat Emperor, has challenged the Covid narrative from the very beginning.   He joins us today to discuss a new tyranny happening not only in Ireland but across the whole of Europe. Compelled speech.  Ireland's new "Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences" Bill has been waiting for approval in the Senate since the summer.  This biggest curtailment of free speech was set to quickly pass until scrutiny from free speech champions stalled it.  Ivor goes through the bill and the expected consequences.  Ivor Cummins BE(Chem) CEng MIEI  completed a Biochemical Engineering degree in 1990. He has since spent 30 years in corporate technical leadership positions. His career specialty has been leading large worldwide teams in complex problem-solving activity.   Since 2012 Ivor has been intensively researching the root causes of modern chronic disease. A particular focus has been on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. He shares his research insights at public speaking engagements around the world, revealing the key nutritional and lifestyle interventions which will deliver excellent health and personal productivity. He has recently presented at the British Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (BACPR) and also at the Irish National Institute of Preventative Cardiology (NIPC) annual conferences.  Ivor's 2018 book “Eat Rich, Live Long” (co-authored with preventative medicine expert Jeffry Gerber MD, FAAFP), details the conclusions of their shared research: https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Rich-Live-Long-Mastering/dp/1628602732/ Interview recorded 12.12.23  Connect with Ivor... X                           https://x.com/FatEmperor?s=20 WEBSITE              https://thefatemperor.com/ PODCASTS          https://thefatemperor.com/podcasts/ Connect with Hearts of Oak... WEBSITE              https://heartsofoak.org/ PODCASTS          https://heartsofoak.podbean.com/ SOCIAL MEDIA    https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ TRANSCRIPTS    https://heartsofoak.substack.com/ Support Hearts of Oak by purchasing one of our fancy T-Shirts....  SHOP                  https://heartsofoak.org/shop/  *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and X https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20  Transcript (Hearts of Oak) Today, I'm delighted to have Ivor Cummins with us, The Fat Emperor. Ivor, thanks so much for your time today. (Ivor Cummins) No worries, Peter. Always good to chat about real truth and accuracy and avoid misinformation, shall we say. Which is fast and thick and furious and being thrown at us from every angle. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching your different videos. I know recently you've done Dr Pierre Kory, who we had on, you've obviously been on TNT Radio, I saw I think recently with Darren Denslow who's been on with us quite a number of times and I think your title on that was Technical Manager, Biochemical Engineer and Technologist and obviously you've got your background in biochemical engineering and probably over the last couple of years you've been very vocal on pushing back against the COVID tyranny and then it's much wider. I think from 2012 you've been researching the root causes of modern chronic disease, focusing on cardiovascular and I'm sure that over the last three years a lot has been added to that, that you weren't expecting. But maybe you just take a moment and introduce yourself before we get on to what is happening in Ireland and the criminalization of speech. Yeah absolutely, so briefly I did biochemical engineering, I graduated in 1990, I spent five years in medical device and development of dialysis units and all that kind of stuff. So I got a lot of medical exposure there at the time, but then the next 20 years, plus I was on the high volume kind of, uh, electro fluidic devices. And it was great because it's extremely complex when you have around 10 sites around the whole world, making products, uh, billions, ultimately of complex devices, the slightest problem or the most subtle problems, it can become huge, you can lose millions of dollars overnight. So I was the master problem solver. Ultimately, I ran large teams on the most complex problems, multi factor. And I did that for 10 or 15 years, 20 years. And I was also a manager as well of teams of up to 20 engineers, directly people managing them, that was great experience. So, I just got this vast experience in complex problem solving and people management and essentially a form of politics, corporate politics, which was also very useful. And what we're seeing since COVID started, coming ultimately from Rockefeller Brothers Fund in the 50s, right through Club of Rome, Trilateral Commission, Council of Foreign Relations, UN, the EU, I'm beginning to view those as a complex problem solver as almost synonymous. So they're all so interconnected and countless NGOs and corporates and the World Economic Forum that people find it hard to believe. Well, how could this be orchestrated? Who could possibly organize it? And it's actually quite simple. It's a long game plan for a global governance structure. And it's funded by the people at the top and the most powerful political people and the US State Department has an interest. And they're all working for around half century or more since the Second World War towards a very tight, well-controlled global government. And yeah, it's not that hard to orchestrate, because all the right people are doing it. And they're doing it like we did things, corporate style. It's very structured. It's full of lovely language. It's got lovely goals that sound great. It's obviously highly sinister under the hood. But yeah, it's not that complex. But most people don't have the corporate experience to be able to decode something like this, find all the players and just see the whole picture. And that's the problem. Just like people have no knowledge of virology or epidemiology, you know, or immunology. So you can fool the people with ease. And that's the challenge we've been seeing. And that's what I jumped into in March, 2020, because I could see pretty quickly, I have five children, I could see where it was going, it wasn't hard. And I just knew that this is kind of the battle of our generation, there's no question about that. And if we lose, we'll have a China-style society in the West, and that's pretty much the outcome. Yeah, and I respect those views. I think Naomi Wolf actually mentioned that from day one, whenever it was announced shutting down Broadway, then her and her husband left New York immediately. Others has taken a little bit longer to see through. You're hoping for the best in institutions, in society, in media. I think we've realized there is no best there. But what has been then your last three and a half year because that's a world away from a background in the biochemistry, the research. What you're doing now is so different. So I mean let us know that change and what that has been like for you personally. Yes, it's certainly been interesting, but you live in interesting times. So 2012, 13 up to 2020, when COVID hit, I was deeply involved in biomedical and metabolic research, and I was going all over the world speaking. A wealthy Irish entrepreneur was funding me to travel all over the world to conferences, medical and nutritional, and to explain to people how what caused heart disease, Alzheimer's, most of the solid tumour cancers that cause the most death, and all of these modern chronic diseases go back to the devil's triad. So very simple, I named it that. It's sugar, refined grains, refined carbohydrates, and vegetable oils, seed oils. And that's what makes up most processed foods, which is around 60% of everyone's calories. So essentially, were poisoning the population for nearly a century now. So I was lecturing on all of that and on insulin resistance, which is the big thing you measure, because that's the target you have to get down low, and then you're pretty much okay. But then when COVID hit, I had been so involved in the corruption of the statin kind of industry, the cholesterol-lowering nonsense. I'd been involved in a lot of drug corruption, and also back in the 90s, I'd actually been directly involved, not personally doing things, but older engineers were doing things completely against the rules. And it was common practice, you know, in biomedical manufacture. And I'm sure that never changed. So I had all this experience in the corporate corruption. I had all the experience in my own corporate roles in the last 15 years, again, in the corporate politics and corruption. And I had all the medical and biomedical knowledge now and metabolic. So when COVID hit, I was on stage in Denver, big room and giving a talk and then I came down and Trump was shutting down the country and I said what the hell is going on? And my wife had said previously, she had said should we get masks? Now she's a first class honours engineer and she's aware of a lot of my work but she assumed COVID was a big deal and I just smiled and this was early March I think and I said not at all sure. I saw the Diamond Princess data and you could see from who died and who didn't that it was going to be a bad flu equivalent. I mean, there's no question about that. The ship had shared AC. They were crammed together. They got 25% positivity. It was an extreme maximiser of infection. So you see the end result. And a few people in their late 70s and late 80s passed away. That was it. So we knew. But when they shut the airports, I said okay they're gonna pull a swine flu and they're gonna pull a big swine flu, a scam. And got back to Ireland and after that I just started interviewing immunologists, virologists, epidemiologist because when I will call something constantly I check with my massive network and my massive network of specialist in all the medical fields grew rapidly because a lot of people out there who are seeing that this is crazy. And so within a few months, I knew not only everything you needed to know about COVID, the mortality impact, the lockdown ineffectiveness, mask ineffectiveness, seasonality, I cracked the whole lot with the help of my network. And I began to explain it in layperson's terms. And that's when I began to get smashed, put in the newspapers, and censored. Even though I didn't talk any anti-vax, any crazy stuff, everything I said was referenced to government data. I was very careful. But in September, my viral video shot up to millions of views, half an hour, just me with slides, just explaining all the factors in COVID, just what it was. And the New York Times did a half-page article on me. It's like, whoa, a half-page hit piece on an Irish engineer. But at that stage, I knew that this was a total orchestrated scam. There was no question. So it didn't actually surprise me that the New York Times devoted half a page to an Irish engineer because the system and the media particularly were owned. And my video had corporate CEOs. They actually said it in the article. A leader in the COVID scam in the US, I forget his name, said, I have people from major companies, CEOs, coming to me asking, is this Irish guy right? So it shocked them. Just truth. Just truth. That's all it was. Well I think we learned people are hungry for information and that information is becoming, can be more difficult to access. But I want to go, I mean, I'd love to pick you up on that, on the. Fascinating. I know your book, Eat Rich Live Long, is available. Links are in the description and people can get a hold of that. And that health is a hot topic, but I want to talk to you about Ireland and the restrictions on speech. I mean Ireland has had incitement to hatred, hate speech laws for I think it was 89 or 90 was introduced, the UK has had it across Europe, but what is happening in Ireland at the moment with this new piece of legislation has really woken a lot of people up. I mean I saw an article in Newsweek magazine a couple of days ago and they were saying this cannot go ahead, this is Orwellian hate speech. Do you want to just let us know what exactly has been proposed in Ireland? Yeah, well, for sure, you're absolutely right, Peter, to refer to the 1989 Hate Speech Act, because that was actually very good legislation. It is still 100% perfect legislation for what they claim may be a problem, because it is quite powerful. It's been used, I believe, 50 times plus. And if you go out and make hate speech that could cause injury or cause hatred towards people or minorities, yada, yada, yada, they can go after you. No problem. So the law is there. It's perfectly functional. Needs no upgrade. What they brought out, it seems to be, I don't know, a Soros, an NGO coming down from the UN, maybe using Ireland as a test case for the most extreme madness that they're willing to try out in the test bed of Ireland. But what's in it is just lunatic. Now, people listening, they know it's terrible and it's great to hear Newsweek featured it. And it is, of course, Orwellian. But the extent to which it's insane, I can't even believe the bad guys want this or wrote this. So essentially, there's layers of madness. One is that they don't define hate speech really at all. And Michael McDowell, the former Attorney General in Ireland, was fantastic in the Irish Parliament questioning the Justice Minister on this point, it's not defined. And he said, I've heard the reason discussed for not defining hate speech was it could make it more difficult to convict people. And he said, that's the point. It should be difficult to convict in these kinds of matters, so it should be defined, so you get the right guy. So that's one point, It's not defined. There's around 10 groups, arbitrary, that they've listed out, like traveling people, and trans, and sexual, and gender, all this nonsense, none of whom has a problem anymore with hate speech. There is no far right in Ireland worth a toss. None of these groups have any real issue, right? So that's the other layer, not defining. And the other thing is that they've put in that a single guard, based on someone whispering in his ear, can get a local, very low-level court warrant and come into your house and take everything, anything and everything. It's like, wow. It can be diaries, it can be phones, it can be computers. They could take them for weeks, I would guess. And if you don't give a PIN number, that's also listed as an offence. If you say, I don't know the PIN for that, it's an old phone, that's an offence with six months in prison potentially and a big fine. That's another insanity. And when they take it, if they find anything under the undefined hate speech kind of thing, right, they can say, well, okay, that's private. You wrote this down. You could write a diary and you could say, oh, I hate this group and I don't like that group and I think they should be thrown out. Whatever you want, which you're entitled to. Of course, you're entitled to write that stuff. I wouldn't agree with it, but if you believe that, go ahead. Keep it to yourself. It is up to you to prove to a judge that you would never in the future have shared that. So it's guilty until proven innocent has been put in this. It is thought crime. It is 1984. It is minority report. Remember the movie with Tom Cruise? They see that you will commit a crime in the future using futuristic technology and they come and arrest you. It's like that but much worse because your private writings, memes, God knows what's on your computer from stuff you've downloaded or had sent to you. You have to prove you would not in the future share that. I mean, it is just beyond notes, hopefully, you know, well, you know already. It's just insane. I keep using the word insane for this because I'm blown away, even me after three years of COVID. People need to understand that. It is insane. There's no other word. Has this come in, I mean, the UK have obviously got the online safety bill. That's another issue. And then the EU passed a bill, proposed a bill, which now passed just days later. But this, you're right, it's difficult to understand when legislation exists to tackle a so-called crime or injustice. And that's already there and everyone says that can be used and there's no issue with it being used. And then something else is brought in place, supposedly to correct a problem that isn't addressed and yet it is. And it is this confusion, I guess, and of course, we don't have the media reporting this or asking why. It's simply, well, are you for hate? I'm not for hate, therefore you want this bill. I mean, talk to us about the pushback on this and has it been scrutinized at all? Yeah, there's no scrutiny at all. I mean, basically, we know now, and it's not even controversial, I think, recently a TD or an MEP, an Irish MEP was asked, oh, what do you think of coming back to Ireland, back to Irish politics and the Dáil? And he said, well, no, and he casually let a cat out of the bag. And he said in the interview on record, he said people don't realize that over 70% of legislation comes from Europe, down to Ireland. So he said, to be honest, I'm better off over here, because that's where the control is. He didn't say control, but he said the first piece. And that's it. So essentially, I would say this is the simple way to view it now. Over the last couple of decades, increasingly, and now it's largely complete, when people go into politics, first of all, people got to remember the skill that brings you into politics is the opposite of technical, mathematical, logical. You go in there with so-called people skills. You know the type, right? So they go in there and they're kind of useless technically. Anyone can fool them, even though they're cunning. Anyone can fool them technically. And with legal matters, will fool them. So the people that go into politics now, especially in Ireland, we're like a vassal state of EU, UN, WEF. You know, we're really bad. That's why we had the longest lockdown in Europe. So they go in anyway and they quickly find out, political people find out where the power is. Like a lady said years ago about Washington, when you go into the Senate in Washington, an old guy said to her, you got to lean to the green. And he didn't mean environmentalism, he meant the dollar, you got to lean to the big guys, the money, the lobbyists, if you want to be successful. So in Ireland, they go in, they quickly find out it's all about the EU and keeping the big boys happy, and the UN and the WEF. And if you get invited to Davos, oh my God, that's the pinnacle of Irish political success. So you get the idea. So when it came to the Dáil, this legislation, they all just said, oh yeah, yeah, great. Oh, hate, love. Oh, we're all lovey-dovey. Oh, trans, you know, Ukraine, all this stuff. So all the politicians just signed it off. Didn't even read it. If they read page 10 and 11 and they had a brain, they'd say, oh my god, but they didn't. You know they didn't read it. They were all told it's great and they all signed it. And then when it was coming up to the Senate and then it would go to the President, then people began to get wind of it and began to talk about it. And then it became a problem. And then Elon Musk began to talk about it and said, what the hell's going on in Ireland? And then they started and saying, oh, he's right wing, he's an anti-Semite. There are politicians judging Elon Musk. It's like an ant judging God. It's just crazy. So also, I think it was someone connected to Trump, not Trump himself, made comments on how crazy it was. And then he did a big article, oh, Trump. Trump doesn't want it, because they know people think Trump's bad. It was propaganda to the power of 10, because they wanted it true and the media wanted it true. You know, the media all wanted it true. So luckily the Senate actually, it didn't go past and it got delayed. You know, that's all they could do. They delayed it. And then shockingly based on the stabbings of some poor children, actually migrant children, I believe. They used the anger in the public from the gross, excessive, uncontrolled migration in the last year or two. There's anger. 75% of Irish people or more in a Red Sea official poll said immigration has gone way too far, uncontrolled. It needs to be pulled back in control. So the majority in the country believes that. But the anger that's there in the country, smaller percentage of people are very angry. and a bunch of hoodlums caused a riot. They smashed windows, burned buses. They didn't beat anyone up and they didn't go after any migrants. They did a smash and grab spree on the back of public sentiment. And with the children being stabbed, it was an opportunity, it's happened before. Nothing to do with far right, nothing to do with political ideology. It was opportunistic from a bunch of hoodlums in hoodies. And the video showed that. and the government actually used that problem that they caused, right? They then tried to flip truth upside down and use the problem to ram the insane law through. You couldn't make it up unless you knew how loathsome, low-life's our politicians are and how utterly controlled they are from the NGOs and all the other groups up top. It is just shocking, right? Well, I want to go down the Irish politics side, but you need a catalyst in the UK, the catalyst for the online safety bill was the stabbing and murder of David Amess MP and that immediately everyone came out and said we need this online safety bill. Even with that individual was possibly radicalised in his local mosque but that's a conversation you weren't allowed to have so we'll just focus on. We've seen the issue there in Ireland and the government have not wasted the opportunity to jump on that. I was even looking at that and thinking, is this contrived? I mean, governments need a catalyst to push forward. And if something happens, they can point and say, look, we told you so. This is why it's needed. And everyone comes together. I mean, what were your thoughts on how that happened? And has that been the main catalyst or have other things happened to push it forward? Yeah, there was talk of, you know, there's always talk of kind of false flag and don't get me wrong, there's a ton of false flag and there's a ton of Hegelian kind of mechanisms that have been used since all of human history, problem, reaction, solution. You create a problem, essentially, you then use propaganda to get a big reaction to it. And then you come in with your pre ordained solution and everyone goes, yeah, we'll take it. So COVID's a classic example of that. A lab created gain-of-function virus. It comes out. They see that it's got a little bit of pathology to it or pathological effect. It's going to kill older people mainly. And they big it up. And then they say they have a solution, the vaccine. So there's a lot of that. This one here, I really think, because I'm a logic and data guy and I go on probabilities. That's the centre of my universe. The overwhelming probability, I would say, that guy has not worked, I believe, in 20 years since he came here, the person who did the stabbing, and probably has all kinds of issues. And I think they've even referred in some articles to some of that indirectly. They don't want to identify him. I think that was just a happening. And we saw it earlier, a girl was stabbed by, again, a migrant who had issues. And even locally in my area, a similar thing occurred a few years ago, a very tragic case with a family. So these things happen, you know, when migrants come to places, sometimes they're under pressure, they don't have the language, they develop issues. So I think that just did kind of happen. But the exploiting of it, well, like I said, is just criminal. And the reason it blew up, if that was a very rare occurrence and it just happened, and it wasn't after a year or two of increasing public discomfort, like the poll said, they know that the towns around Ireland, little towns, are getting stuffed with migrants. And they can see they're young males mainly. They're not women and children from Ukraine, come on. I mean, down in South East Wexford, there was a nursing home being built for a community of 1,200. And a couple of weeks ago, it transpired that suddenly it's not being built. It's being built in a different direction for 170 young male migrants, young male migrants, unmarried. And they're looking at bringing it up to 400 over time. Now, a thousand people marched and of course the media all sniffed and sneered at them like they're far right. It's their community. It's insane. I mean, the numbers that came in in the last six or 12 months is like 100k and the graph of the numbers coming in went through the roof. And O'Gorman, I think the minister last year, he did this, it's on the record, sent out a tweet, not in Ukrainian. In Ukrainian, Georgian, and African languages. And he basically said, Ireland's open. You'll have a house within four months. We get you a phone. We get you loads of money. Whatever. I don't know what was in it. But it was translated into all African languages and everything. So he's on the record. They want to flood the zone. And the reasons for that go back to the Pan-European Union in the 30s and speeches in 2009, I think, by, who was that CEO of Goldman Sachs who became a big UN guy, not Robinson, forget his name, an Irish guy originally. He gave a huge speech and he said it outright. We have to destroy nationalism. We have to destroy sovereignty in the EU countries. We have to break it down. And the mechanism, the best mechanism for that, besides pouring US junk television in, right? And phones, you know, the best thing is flood in very different people, ideally young males, and blend the country into a blob so we can get a big blob in Europe without any national identities. So they're actually destroying diversity because we had all these countries that you could freely travel to and see their culture. and then you come back home and you talk about it, that's actually diversity. They're all peaceful, all lovely, but they want to end diversity. They just want to make a blob because a blob can easily be translated into a super state or a China-style society. Very hard to do it when you've got identifiable nationalities in Europe. It's so simple, isn't it? This is a hundred-year-old brainstorm strategy that's clearly being deployed recently. Big scale. That's it, no racism. In fact, last thing I'll say, sorry I'm on a rant here, it's morning time, but Peter, the last thing I'd say, and this is so important for people to know and understand, The people who are using minorities from other countries as cattle, literally using them as pawns in their chess game to get their globalist Europe and globalist West, they are the ultimate racists because they have absolute scorn and contempt for poor people from all over the world that they're forcing into countries and creating difficult situations where there may be, you know, certain amounts of racism stoked and provoked, you know, like a hornet's nest, keep shoving in people, they don't have accommodation, our homeless can't get accommodation, they've ignored them for decades, and now they're shoving in hundreds of thousands with, we already have an accommodation problem, what's going to happen? But the people driving this, they are the racists. I am the opposite of racist, my record is clear, they'd love to call me one, but they can't because I have a full record on social media and forever. Absolutely the opposite. In fact, I've often shared anti-racial movies and films on my Twitter, like Kenneth Branagh, 2001 conspiracy, it's called, about Wannsee in Germany in 1942 or three. I'm clearly an anti-racist. They hate that. But that said, I know racists when I see them and the people driving the policy are racists. And of course there's nothing you can say or push back if you're called names which is this legislation about offending and finding offense and if someone has been offended you cannot prove that in a court that, you cannot prove your feelings in court and of course when someone calls you whatever, racist, xenophobe, Islamophobe, the list goes on, you can argue and you can push back but it's already been decided by whatever individual has said. They have decided and therefore you are because they have spoken. And that declaration of speech, you know, truth goes out the window. It's the issue on pronouns. If someone wants to use a pronoun then they define that person who is a man, is a woman and that must be true. And that kind of removal of truth, not only in this legislation but I guess across Europe for all the hate speech which is simply if someone finds offense then it is decided that a crime has been committed. It's beyond absurdity but also it's very malign and clever. So the people I refer to are driving this as a geopolitical crucial strategy this is not small stuff, that's why it's getting so much funding and backing. it's very important for broader globalist. Kind of government desires and to make ultimately, we won't get into detail, the intention is to translate the UN into the world government or for the West. The UN is being built and built and built and we can see the insanity coming from Guterres, the head of the UN. We're now global boiling. We're no longer warming, all nonsense. The UN is being teed up. So there's a lot put into this thing and hate speech because it is important because free speech increasingly could cause a real problem for basically plans that have been grown beautifully for 70 or 80 years since post-World War II. So, you know, too big to fail. They can't let all of the plans of geopolitical, you know, structure and infrastructure that have been built for a half century, they can't let it fail because people all start becoming aware of it and talking about it, that's why there's this extreme kind of insane zeal to get in the laws, because they're important, and people need to realize that. And you say you can call. Yeah, once you call someone a racist, the judge is going to roll over. That's the sick thing. We saw in COVID, several people brought very good cases, and they assigned a lower-level judge to check if the cases were appropriate to bring forward in the system. I didn't realize they could do this. They did. So there were mask challenges and other challenges. This judge, she went in and looked at everyone. No, I don't think that's, no, that's not required. One judge threw them all out before they even got in the system. So you know what will happen. If the government don't like someone, they'll try to nail them on this law, and the judge will be in the pocket. The judges now are no longer really independent. We saw that in COVID. They know where the wind's blowing, and they do their job. A lot of them are appointed. So that's institutional corruption gone crazy. And another one I just thought when you were talking, Peter, there was a communist activist, a very significant person. I can't remember his name, but back in America before the McCarthy era, when America was big, there were a lot of activists who wanted America to go communisto or fascististo. And one of them was caught with, not emails at that time, but circulars to all their activists. And he said to them, and he was right, very clever. he said always call our detractors, our opponents, always call them a fascist. Now he said be careful, don't call someone a fascist if it can blow back on you. In other words, don't always do it, but whenever you can, call them a fascist. And he said if we keep repeating this on an individual, after a while the people will largely just come to believe it's true. And he said, it's the most dirty word and the dirty label you can put in someone right now. So use it. And you can see now that that advice was excellent, but it turned out it all failed in America until recently. Now they've got Biden and all the rest. They're getting, they're getting to communism. But yeah, exactly that. They know that racism is powerful. if you can make it even stick a bit and get your media to keep repeating it, people will assume, well that's the racist guy. I mean, it's shocking, it's criminal, but this is the game they play. Yeah, you talked about the 70 year. I mean, I'm still blown away having grown up in Dublin, Limerick, first like nine years of my life. It was rough, but actually it was conservative as a country. You had Fianna Gael, Fianna Fáil, polar opposites in theory. Now they're all together, the union party. Has this been sped up simply with the bailout after the financial crash, with Europe then calling the shots? Because if you look at Italy and Greece, they've kind of held on to their identity. And Ireland has always been known for a strong identity. That seems to have gone out the window. Obviously, COVID has sped things up, and that's part of it. But is it the crash? Is it that Ireland is now beholden to Europe because of that or talk to us about that because the collapse in Irish society has been unbelievable. Yeah, I think it's not so much the bailout more as the symptom of the problem. I mean the fact that Ireland kowtowed and the EU, the EU flooded the zone with money. They told Ireland flood the zone and the little Irish went off and they flooded the zone for the EU overlords and it suited them because there's money everywhere and everyone was happy. And then the piper came to be paid, and they went with cap in hand, and they gave away all our money to the bondholders. So I think Ireland back then was just a biatch, really. It wasn't that they got them then, they'd already got them. So I think it's been many decades, Ireland, maybe partially because of the history of the British rule, the Irish became culturally doff the cap to the big man. They might grumble, but they doff the cap. So Ireland, over the last 30 or 40 years, we saw it with all the referendums. They were rammed through or run several times to get through. The Irish intelligentsia, politicos, Europe was the big boy. And they dropped to their knees for Europe all the way. And then they took in the corporations, did the double dutch, the tax thing. They're allowing them to get away with 1% effective tax rate. So they played the kind of beggar to the American corporations. And I think over 50% of our GDP now is biotech and pharma. So we're just kind of biatches for the pharma sector. So you can see Ireland has made itself into a kind of a rent boy on the global market. Let's be honest. It's sad, but that's the way it is. But people are waking up to that and begin to realize, my God, our whole echelon of politicians are actually, by definition, essentially traitors. Because we're voting for them and they're immediately giving their allegiance straight up the chain to forces outside the country. So they're actually technically traitors. So I think that's kind of what happened to Ireland and it showed in the longest lockdown in Europe, it shows in the hate speech laws, a test bed for this craziness. It shows in every interview when you see these goons we have up the top. It's just disgusting, like, right? And was that the total question about why Ireland? Did I miss something there?  No, it's just, I find it curious, having grown up there, first nine, ten years of my life, and just seeing that collapse, and you kind of think, that's not the Ireland that I knew growing up, and then you realise it's not. It's changed beyond all recognition, with no media pushback, no political pushback, And then if you don't have Fine Gael or Fianna fail, you've got Sinn Féin, you're thinking, hmm, could this thing get worse? Okay, I'll tell you something about Sinn Féin. I mean, Sinn Féin during COVID, the government did the most insane, crazy-ass, unscientific, damaging, nonsensical measures, the worst in Europe almost. And Sinn Féin were screaming at them to do more. I mean, I'm not joking. They were literally screaming at the government, saying, you're not keeping us safe. And it was the same in all the issues. So Sinn Féin are an unmitigated disaster. They're the opposite of opposition. So they play this pantomime. And I think there's a hashtag, politics is panto. And it's so true nowadays. It's a fricking pantomime. And Sinn Féin go up and argue with the government, and the government argue back with Sinn Féin. It's all a joke. It's all a club. At the end of the day, they are all aligned with each other, really, at the Dáil bar and behind the scenes. And the reason that they're all aligned, this is the important thing, I've said it already, they all understand there's big power structures in the world, and we kow tow to them. Therefore, there's no point arguing amongst each other except as a pantomime for our voters. That's it. I mean, it sounds kind of conspiracy theory. It's basic geopolitics. Now that we have a world structure of World Economic Forum, UN, EU, and I mean, recently Professor Werner, who invented quantitative easing in 95, I interviewed him. He's an expert in central banking and all the political. He worked for the Japanese government during their financial challenges as a direct advisor, chief advisor. Learned Japanese, fluent German, fluent English, master's, PhDs from Oxford. Brilliant man. But he told me something that I actually didn't realize. He said, you know the European Parliament has no real power. It's a talk shop. The European Commission decides the laws, the Commission. And the Commission are essentially not elected. And he said, you know what other region in the last 100 years had that exact structure, and they've almost taken it from them? Soviet Union. They have a parliament, people aren't too aware, and they have a Politburo, a commission, and it's the same structure. The parliament, you let them all talk and pretend that they've got some control, but the party decides. He said, essentially, and he said, one or two or a couple of Russian historians, have noted this in the early 2000s, academically, that fascinatingly, Europe is recreating the Soviet model. And people don't know that. And of course, under that model, the EU Commission, who are diplomatic immunity, no army or police can enter their grounds under any condition, a bit like central banks, they decide, the parliament then, And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, everyone, blah, blah, gets very high salaries, tax-free. All the people from the countries go over there and suck on the teat of Europe. They have a great time, meals for everyone, best of steaks. And they go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's that. And then the countries, of course, they just doff the cap increasingly. You look at Hungary, they say, we don't want to do this. And if you go against Europe, they take the whole European media, and they feckin' bury you. They bury you in accusations of far-right, nationalistic. They take away all the EU money. They cause you pain. So this is what we have. We have a new Soviet structure that wants to become a Chinese social credit-style full totalitarian structure. It's just what it wants. The organism of the geopolitical top strata in Europe, they want the full power. It's just natural, it's in the DNA now of the whole structure, it's not any one individual or one bad guy. Yeah, it's driven primarily from the late 50s by Rockefeller Brothers Fund and all the other bad guys and NGOs and CFR and all these groups and the Club of Rome, they're all pushing one way and that's it, it's simple guys, it's not a big conspiracy theory, it's just geopolitics has gone the wrong way for us. And a lot of bad guys have ended at the top. That's all. Happened in Rome. Jesus!  Yeah, and you see pushback across Europe with the rise of populist parties. Ireland and the UK sadly are sitting on their backsides with now, but that's a whole lot. I just want to just finish off on where you think this, the bill will go. It's been, what my understanding was, been in the Senate since maybe July, so and it was passed up. It's been sitting there now with more scrutiny. Where does it go? Because the police obviously will have to be sent out to police all these tweets which I thought they could do under the legislation but this is darker. Is there a way of turning it around so we just accuse everyone on the left of hurtful comments and the police must investigate? I mean is there requirement for an investigation. I'm just thinking of how you push back because this is going to pass through. I can't see any way it stopped. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure, Peter. Yes, they say we need a true by Christmas and all this talk, but they're not divulging what's actually happening. So I'm not sure what's actually happening on the ground mind you a very senior politician secretly met with me and a team of doctors, surgeons and businessmen back in September 2020. Very senior I obviously won't name in private and pretty much told us that most the politicians knew most of what I was sharing about COVID but he said, no everyone knows you don't talk about it and you support the narrative. So there's that level of institutional corruption, and I'm sure now there's similar stuff going on. A lot of the senators will have found out from their bloody daughters from social media how insane this is, but they'll know, shit, this is important. It comes from the big boys up top. We can't let them down. So I don't know exactly what's going on. I'm still hoping absolutely that with the focus on it, that they'll have to hold back their nonsense about these riots being a reason to bring in this insane law. I presume they're thinking, hmm, that's not washing. So I hope it's not inevitable. If it does happen, we got a massive problem. There's no question about that, because once it's in, it is a tool for tyranny waiting there like a nuclear weapon. sitting there on the statute of books with no place there, a criminal law, criminal in its very drafting. Criminal in its drafting, that's how bad it is. It's bad, but I guess, yeah, possibly be able to use it against itself. But you know, the judiciary and all of these bent politicians will be striving to throw out any cases involving it for leftists or nut jobs. And they'll be hyper trying to influence judges and police to use it on the people the government doesn't like. God, it's very sinister, isn't it? It's literally a tool of government to suppress people who don't agree with the government, which is treason in my mind. I mean, it might not be the exact definition. I don't care. It's treason. Well, we're all following this closely and praying and hoping that actually it is stopped. Ivor, great to have you on. Obviously, people can find you @FatEmperor on Twitter and thefatemperor.com. They can see all the videos, interviews up there on the website. Really appreciate your time today. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much, Peter. And if people are wondering, I'm down south in an undisclosed location, but that's me fox there. I picked it up. It's from an old country estate in Wexford that was stripped. Guy had it for 10 years, got it for 200 euro. Beautiful case, probably 100 years old plus. So anyway, bit of trivia.  That's probably a hate crime against foxes. But anyway, we'll leave it there. Thanks, Ivor. Good luck, Peter. Bye now.

The West has united in backing Israel since Saturday's armed attack by Hamas. And western governments have avoided criticising the intensive Israeli bombing of Gaza. So how is western policy towards Israel and Palestine over decades, affecting the situation today?  Presenter: James Bays  Guests: Abdullah Al-Arian, associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar. He is a specialist on U.S. Middle East policy.  Maria Luisa Fantappie, head of the Middle East and Africa program for the Italian think tank, Instituto Affari Internazionali. Richard Boyd Barrett, a member of the Irish Parliament with the People Before Profit Party.

The running sore of British relations with Ireland was running still and just as sore. This time another Balfour, Gerald as opposed to his brother Arthur, but like him a nephew of the Prime Minister Salisbury who nepotistically appointed him, was pursuing a policy designed to address some Irish grievances, rather than simply tighten repression. That was made easier by the reduction in unrest and even of Home Rule fervour in Ireland, together with the loss of the iconic leader Parnell. Balfour felt it was legitimate to reward a quieter Ireland with concessions, while at the same time, it also helped reconcile the Irish to British power and even to undermine still further the demand for Home Rule. That, in turn, weakened the Liberals' and Irish Nationalists' position, since they were firmly committed to seeing an Irish Parliament recreated. Balfour would always claim, however, that these political advantages, while welcome, were never his main aim. Abroad, Britain sent a joint Anglo-Egyptian force out from Egypt to reconquer Sudan. That would complete the uninterrupted sting of British holdings or controlled territories across the whole continent of Africa, from South to North. It would also provide the opportunity, at the Battle of Omdurman, for a young lieutenant, Winston Churchill, to take part in the last significant cavalry charge in British history. Illustration: The Charge of the 21st Lancers by Edward Matthew Hale, a key moment in the Battle of Omdurman, and in the military history of then Lieutenant Winston Churchill. Public Domain. Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Former President Donald Trump said it was 'great to be home' as he touched down in Scotland. Trump visited his golf properties and attended a ceremony at his at his Aberdeenshire resort to break ground on a new course. UK correspondent Enda Brady says Trump's Scottish connection comes from his mother's side of the family and notes Joe Biden addressed the Irish Parliament the same way. Enda Brady says reception to Trump's arrival was mixed, but his golf courses have created a lot of jobs. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Smart 7 is a daily podcast that gives you everything you need to know in 7 minutes, at 7 am, 7 days a week... With over 12 million downloads and consistently charting, including as No. 1 News Podcast on Spotify, we're a trusted source for people every day. If you're enjoying it, please follow, share, or even post a review, it all helps... Today's episode includes the following:https://twitter.com/i/status/1646461066665181184 https://twitter.com/i/status/1646385225172234242 https://twitter.com/i/status/1646422642482716673 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-documentshttps://twitter.com/i/status/1646578951337148417 https://twitter.com/i/status/1646436963249975296 https://twitter.com/i/status/1646527822788431874 https://twitter.com/i/status/1646436813081567234 https://twitter.com/i/status/1646626494813224960 https://youtu.be/zAPifwlWBP0 https://youtu.be/pVN8SzDRVgo In Ireland? Why not try our Ireland Edition? Contact us over @TheSmart7pod or visit www.thesmart7.com Presented by Jamie East, written by Liam Thompson, researched by Lucie Lewis and produced by Daft Doris. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our news wrap Thursday, President Biden played up the shared history and values of Ireland and the United States on the second day of his visit there, the White House announced DACA recipients can apply for Medicaid and health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act and former President Trump gave a second deposition in New York in a lawsuit over his business practices. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Attorney General Garland announces arrest in the Pentagon classified document leak case, interview with Washington Post's Drew Harwell about the leak & social media (6), President Biden addresses Irish Parliament, calls for Sen. Feinstein to resign due to ill health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The names of Jameson, Roe, and Powers all have a special place in the history of the success of the Irish whiskey industry. But none of them had the power and influence in the 18th century to take their whiskey around the world. It took an Undertaker.   This week, we'll meet that man who almost ruined Irish whiskey's reputation, while also setting it on a path to the massive success it would enjoy in the 19th century. Plus, I'll share my experience on my first day in Belfast at the McConnell's Sherry Cask whiskey launch.

CEO and co-founder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, Bill Browder who will be the subject of a hearing next Tuesday at the Oireachtas Justice committee of the Irish Parliament joined Kieran Cuddihy on the show.

Irish Prime Minister An Taoiseach Micheál Martin has served as An Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland from 2020 to 2022 and as leader of the Fianna Fáil political party since 2011. As a member of the Irish Parliament, he has been the Teachtaí Dála (TD) (member of parliament) for Cork City South Central since 1989. Prior to this, he was elected to Cork City Council in 1985 and served as Lord Mayor of Cork from 1992 to 1993. Previous to being An Taoiseach, he served as Leader of the Opposition from 2011 to 2020 and held previous ministries including Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, Minister for Health and Children, and Minister for Education and Science. During his time as Minister for Health, Micheál Martin exhibited tremendous leadership and delivered unprecedented health impacts by introducing a ban on tobacco smoking in all Irish workplaces. This made Ireland the first country in the world to introduce a full workplace smoking ban. Born in Cork City, Martin initially worked as a schoolteacher before entering politics. Today, he leads in an era of unprecedented global challenges. We look forward to hearing how influences in his own life have prepared him for such leadership governance.Today, Micheál joins me to share his story and discuss how it has impacted him. He talks about what was behind his ban on smoking in workplaces, noting the power of prevention and the importance of thinking long-term. He discusses the experience of leading during the COVID crisis and talks about his parents, sharing the important ways they influenced him. He notes the importance of enjoying yourself and discusses the power of self-confidence, talking about why it's different from arrogance. He emphasises the value of a broad perspective and talks about the importance of family, community, and leaving the world a better place than you found it.The post An Taoiseach Micheál Martin: Life is Short; Value it – This Can Inform How We Approach Issues appeared first on Mark Rowe.

Irish Prime Minister An Taoiseach Micheál Martin has served as An Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland since June 2020 and as leader of the Fianna Fáil political party since 2011. As a member of the Irish Parliament, he has been the Teachtaí Dála (TD) (member of parliament) for Cork City South Central since 1989. Prior to this, he was elected to Cork City Council in 1985 and served as Lord Mayor of Cork from 1992 to 1993. Previous to being An Taoiseach, he served as Leader of the Opposition from 2011 to 2020 and held previous ministries including Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, Minister for Health and Children, and Minister for Education and Science. During his time as Minister for Health, Micheál Martin exhibited tremendous leadership and delivered unprecedented health impacts by introducing a ban on tobacco smoking in all Irish workplaces. This made Ireland the first country in the world to introduce a full workplace smoking ban. Born in Cork City, Martin initially worked as a schoolteacher before entering politics. Today, he leads in an era of unprecedented global challenges. We look forward to hearing how influences in his own life have prepared him for such leadership governance. Today, Micheál joins me to share his story and discuss how it has impacted him. He talks about what was behind his ban on smoking in workplaces, noting the power of prevention and the importance of thinking long-term. He discusses the experience of leading during the COVID crisis and talks about his parents, sharing the important ways they influenced him. He notes the importance of enjoying yourself and discusses the power of self-confidence, talking about why it's different from arrogance. He emphasises the value of a broad perspective and talks about the importance of family, community, and leaving the world a better place than you found it. “I'm big on prevention. It's just something that's in me. If you can avoid something happening, well, why not take the steps to avoid that happening?”– An Taoiseach Micheál Martin “The immediate crisis is just that: it's an immediate crisis. It's something that, in the fullness of time, you will get over.”– An Taoiseach Micheál Martin “The reading, the walking, the music are very important: to lose yourself in some other space from your workspace[.]”– An Taoiseach Micheál Martin This week on In the Doctor's Chair The workplace smoking ban The power of thinking long-term Leading during the COVID Crisis The importance of enjoying yourself The importance of self-confidence Confidence vs arrogance Thoughts on parenting The power of taking a walk   In the Doctor's Chair Thanks for listening to In the Doctor's Chair, the show where you'll hear conversations that share life lessons, health habits, and leadership practices that focus on positive psychology, lifestyle medicine, and ways for you to live with more vitality. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. For more resources to help you to live with more vitality, please visit my website. Apple Podcasts I TuneIn I Google Play I Stitcher I Spotify The post An Taoiseach Micheál Martin: Life is Short; Value it – This Can Inform How We Approach Issues appeared first on Mark Rowe.

Irish Prime Minister An Taoiseach Micheál Martin has served as An Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland since June 2020 and as leader of the Fianna Fáil political party since 2011. As a member of the Irish Parliament, he has been the Teachtaí Dála (TD) (member of parliament) for Cork City South Central since 1989. Prior to this, he was elected to Cork City Council in 1985 and served as Lord Mayor of Cork from 1992 to 1993. Previous to being An Taoiseach, he served as Leader of the Opposition from 2011 to 2020 and held previous ministries including Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, Minister for Health and Children, and Minister for Education and Science. During his time as Minister for Health, Micheál Martin exhibited tremendous leadership and delivered unprecedented health impacts by introducing a ban on tobacco smoking in all Irish workplaces. This made Ireland the first country in the world to introduce a full workplace smoking ban. Born in Cork City, Martin initially worked as a schoolteacher before entering politics. Today, he leads in an era of an unprecedented global challenge. We hear how influences in his own life have prepared him for such leadership governance. Today, Micheál joins us to share his story and discuss how it has impacted him. He talks about what was behind his ban on smoking in workplaces, noting the power of prevention and the importance of thinking long-term. He discusses the experience of leading during the COVID crisis and talks about his parents, sharing the important ways they influenced him. He notes the importance of enjoying yourself and discusses the power of self-confidence, talking about why it's different from arrogance. He emphasises the value of a broad perspective and talks about the importance of family, community, and leaving the world a better place than you found it. “I'm big on prevention. It's just something that's in me. If you can avoid something happening, well, why not take the steps to avoid that happening?” - An Taoiseach Micheál Martin “The immediate crisis is just that: it's an immediate crisis. It's something that, in the fullness of time, you will get over.” - An Taoiseach Micheál Martin “The reading, the walking, the music are very important: to lose yourself in some other space from your workspace[.]” - An Taoiseach Micheál Martin This week on In the Doctor's Chair The workplace smoking ban The power of thinking long-term Leading during the COVID Crisis The importance of enjoying yourself The importance of self-confidence Confidence vs arrogance Thoughts on parenting The power of taking a walk In the Doctor's Chair Thanks for listening to In the Doctor's Chair, the show where you'll hear conversations that share life lessons, health habits, and leadership practices that focus on positive psychology, lifestyle medicine, and ways for you to live with more vitality. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. For more resources to help you to live with more vitality, please visit my website. Apple Podcasts I TuneIn I Google Play I Stitcher I Spotify

With the Republic of Ireland in the EU and Northern Ireland not, what's causing friction is the movement of goods between the two post-Brexit. The UK says it wants a deal that was negotiated on that change, and if it's not then it could put the whole matter into dispute. And that, it's feared, could put the Northern Ireland peace agreement at risk. GUESTS: Neale Richmond Member of Irish Parliament for Fine Gael Steve McCabe Senior fellow at Centre for Brexit Studies Robert Oulds Director of the Bruges Group Roundtable is a discussion program with an edge. Broadcast out of London and presented by David Foster, it's about bringing people to the table, listening to every opinion, and analysing every point of view. From fierce debate to reflective thinking, Roundtable discussions offer a different perspective on the issues that matter to you. Watch it every weekday at 15:30 GMT on TRT World.

Mary Lou McDonald is a TD Teachta Dála  (Member of the Irish Parliament) for the Dublin Central Constituency. She was elected leader of Sinn Féin by the political party membership in 2018 and is the first woman to lead the opposition in the Dáil (Irish Parliament). Following her election to the Dáil in 2011 Mary Lou was Sinn Féin's Spokesperson for Public Expenditure and Reform and on her re-election in 2016 Sinn Féin's All-Ireland Spokesperson for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. She was a member of the Public Accounts Committee between 2011 and 2017. She was an MEP for Dublin from 2004 to 2009 and during her time in the European Parliament, Mary Lou was a prominent member of the Employment and Social Affairs committee and Civil Liberties committee. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, the University of Limerick, and Dublin City University she studied English Literature, European Integration Studies, and Human Resource Management. Today, Mary Lou joins me to discuss managing stress and the importance of self-care in a dynamic political life. We talk about the importance of movement, mindful practice, and meditation. We discuss how changing the world starts with changing yourself on the inside, and we note the importance of investing in yourself today for a better long-term future, thus enabling yourself to live with more vitality. “You cannot be thrown from the highs to the lows in accordance with what people think about you.”– Mary Lou McDonald “[A new day is] not a dress rehearsal. Live it. Go for it. Grasp it. Enjoy it.”– Mary Lou McDonald This week on In the Doctor's Chair The power and possibility of the future The need for self-care The importance of perspective The benefits of meditation Mary Lou's take on women in leadership Why you don't have to be perfect Mary Lou's three keys to resilience In the Doctor's Chair Thanks for listening to In the Doctor's Chair, the show where you'll hear conversations that share life lessons, health habits, and leadership practices that focus on positive psychology, lifestyle medicine, and ways for you to live with more vitality. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. For more resources to help you to live with more vitality, please visit my website. Apple Podcasts I TuneIn I Google Play I Stitcher I Spotify The post Mary Lou McDonald TD ‘Investing in Yourself Today for a Better Future' appeared first on Mark Rowe.

Mary Lou McDonald is a TD Teachta Dála  (Member of the Irish Parliament) for the Dublin Central Constituency. She was elected leader of Sinn Féin by the political party membership in 2018 and is the first woman to lead the opposition in the Dáil (Irish Parliament). Following her election to the Dáil in 2011 Mary Lou was Sinn Féin's Spokesperson for Public Expenditure and Reform and on her re-election in 2016 Sinn Féin's All-Ireland Spokesperson for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. She was a member of the Public Accounts Committee between 2011 and 2017. She was an MEP for Dublin from 2004 to 2009 and during her time in the European Parliament, Mary Lou was a prominent member of the Employment and Social Affairs committee and Civil Liberties committee. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, the University of Limerick, and Dublin City University she studied English Literature, European Integration Studies, and Human Resource Management. Today, Mary Lou joins me to discuss managing stress and the importance of self-care in a dynamic political life. We talk about the importance of movement, mindful practice, and meditation. We discuss how changing the world starts with changing yourself on the inside, and we note the importance of investing in yourself today for a better long-term future, thus enabling yourself to live with more vitality. “You cannot be thrown from the highs to the lows in accordance with what people think about you.”– Mary Lou McDonald “[A new day is] not a dress rehearsal. Live it. Go for it. Grasp it. Enjoy it.”– Mary Lou McDonald This week on In the Doctor's Chair The power and possibility of the future The need for self-care The importance of perspective The benefits of meditation Mary Lou's take on women in leadership Why you don't have to be perfect Mary Lou's three keys to resilience In the Doctor's Chair Thanks for listening to In the Doctor's Chair, the show where you'll hear conversations that share life lessons, health habits, and leadership practices that focus on positive psychology, lifestyle medicine, and ways for you to live with more vitality. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. For more resources to help you to live with more vitality, please visit my website. Apple Podcasts I TuneIn I Google Play I Stitcher I Spotify The post Mary Lou McDonald TD ‘Investing in Yourself Today for a Better Future' appeared first on Mark Rowe.

Mary Lou McDonald is a TD Teachta Dála  (Member of the Irish Parliament) for the Dublin Central Constituency. She was elected leader of Sinn Féin by the political party membership in 2018 and is the f

Mary Lou McDonald is a TD Teachta Dála  (Member of the Irish Parliament) for the Dublin Central Constituency. She was elected leader of Sinn Féin by the political party membership in 2018 and is the first woman to lead the opposition in the Dáil (Irish Parliament). Following her election to the Dáil in 2011 Mary Lou was Sinn Féin's Spokesperson for Public Expenditure and Reform and on her re-election in 2016 Sinn Féin's All-Ireland Spokesperson for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. She was a member of the Public Accounts Committee between 2011 and 2017. She was an MEP for Dublin from 2004 to 2009 and during her time in the European Parliament Mary Lou was a prominent member of the Employment and Social Affairs committee and Civil Liberties committee. Educated in Trinity College, Dublin, the University of Limerick and Dublin City University she studied English Literature, European Integration Studies and Human Resource Management. Today, Mary Lou joins me to discuss managing stress and the importance of self-care in a dynamic political life. We talk about the importance of movement, mindful practice, and meditation. We discuss how changing the world starts with changing yourself on the inside, and we note the importance of investing in yourself today for a better long-term future, thus enabling yourself to live with more vitality. “You cannot be thrown from the highs to the lows in accordance with what people think about you.” - Mary Lou McDonald “[A new day is] not a dress rehearsal. Live it. Go for it. Grasp it. Enjoy it.” - Mary Lou McDonald This week on In the Doctor's Chair The power and possibility of the future The need for self-care The importance of perspective The benefits of meditation Mary Lou's take on women in leadership Why you don't have to be perfect Mary Lou's three keys to resilience In the Doctor's Chair Thanks for listening to In the Doctor's Chair, the show where you'll hear conversations that share life lessons, health habits, and leadership practices that focus on positive psychology, lifestyle medicine, and ways for you to live with more vitality. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. For more resources to help you to live with more vitality, please visit my website. Apple Podcasts I TuneIn I Google Play I Stitcher I Spotify

In this episode of “A look into the Crystal Ball on the Future of Trade,” hear Lucinda Creighton, CEO of VULCAN CONSULTING LTD., and Rob Heron, Partner at EY Belfast, discuss the post-Brexit landscape of Northern Ireland (NI), as well as, the associated challenges/opportunities for businesses under the Northern Ireland Protocol. EY and Vulcan Consulting our both members of the EACCNY. Enjoy!Lucinda Creighton, CEO, VULCAN CONSULTINGLucinda Creighton is a former Irish Minister for European Affairs and CEO of Vulcan Consulting Ltd. She was a member of the Irish Parliament for nine years.  As Minister for European Affairs Lucinda ran Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2013, and represented the EU in initial trade talks with the United States, leading to the formal start of TTIP negotiations in 2013. From 2012 to 2014 she also served as Vice President of the European People's Party – the largest political party in Europe. Lucinda is an advisory board member of the International Republican Institute and the European Council on Foreign Relations. By training, she is a barrister and qualified as a New York attorney.Rob Heron, Partner at EY BelfastAs a Tax Partner based in EY's Belfast office, Rob leads a team of 80 tax professionals delivering tax advice to a wide range of companies, partnerships and high net worth individuals.His broad experience includes advising on group re-organizations, raising finance, debt restructuring, international tax structuring as well as acquisitions and disposals.Rob's clients range from fast-growing entrepreneurial businesses to large multinationals and household names. His clients operate across a number of sectors, including retail, manufacturing, technology and construction, with a particular focus on the agri-food industry.Leading the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Programme in Northern Ireland, Rob has advised a large number of entrepreneurial businesses in the province and as EY's Brexit lead in Northern Ireland, he has played a crucial role in advising a range of clients on the implications of the UK leaving the EU.Rob holds a degree in Agricultural Economics from Queen's University Belfast.

On this week's show the Blind Guys get political as we are delighted to be joined by Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration & Youth: Roderic O'Gorman. We talk about how life has changed for him since the Irish general election at the beginning of 2020. We chat about improving the lives of people living with disabilities, and after our chat we learn about a very important vote that took place in the Dáil (our Irish Parliament) during our chat with Minister O'Gorman. Jan is worried about his house being flooded due to global warming, but Stuart and Óran remind him that he can find sanctuary here in Ireland, all he needs to do is grab hold of that Zipline we installed earlier this year between Jan's house and Stuart's apartment. The guys are still arguing about Clodagh's new email jingle, but Stuart much like Maggie Thatcher, he's not for turning. We have email messages from Jade (of Ulysses fame), Gary in Cape Town, and from Saleem in Dublin. We talk briefly about Windows 11 and of course, the show would not be complete if we didn't talk about Stuart's counter top dishwasher. So sit back, cool the jets, and chill out for an hour - let Blind Guys Chat help you relax as if you were in a bath full of puppies. Huh....?

Palestinian theater artist Amir Abualrob got an unexpected welcome when he landed at the Dublin airport in Ireland two years ago. Abualrob was stopped at border control — an Irish customs official asked how long he was planning to stay. Abualrob said he produced documents proving he had the right to stay for 15 days. The official asked if he had any interest in staying longer. Abualrob said he'd love to, and with that, the official added an extra five days to his visa and waved him through, adding: “Welcome to Ireland.”Nine months after arriving in Ireland, Abualrob was granted refugee status.When the Irish Parliament (Dail) voted unanimously to condemn the building of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories last month, calling it a “de facto annexation,” Abualrob said he was overjoyed. He'd heard about Ireland's strong support for Palestinians while growing up at the Jenin refugee camp in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. Related: 'Apartheid' is used to describe Israel's control over Palestinians“You know, that's an honor. Honestly, as Palestinians in this country, we are respected and to do this action, I felt so proud.”The vote in the Irish Parliament came about following a motion by Sinn Féin party lawmaker John Brady. The Irish member of Parliament said his motion reflected the “concern of the Irish people at the plight of the Palestinian people.” “The memory and the consequence of colonization lives in the very marrow of our bones."John Brady, Sinn Fein  party lawmaker, Ireland“The memory and the consequence of colonization lives in the very marrow of our bones,” Brady said. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said the unanimous vote was a “clear signal of the depth of feeling across Ireland.”The following day, the Irish tricolor was raised above city hall in Ramallah, in the West Bank.Related: Biden is 'no savior' for Palestinians, should hold Israel 'to account' In this Friday, Sept. 27, 2019 file photo, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney leaves EU headquarters in Brussels. Ireland's parliament has on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, passed a motion describing Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories as “de facto annexation'' — some of the strongest language ever offered by a European Union nation on the issue.  Credit: Virginia Mayo/AP Seeds of supportIrish support for Palestinians wasn't always so steadfast. Up until the 1930s, there was a certain amount of sympathy in Ireland for the Zionist movement, aimed at the establishment of a Jewish state. Rory Miller, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, said Irish support for the Zionist cause was “primarily and overwhelmingly because it was seen as a similar battle to remove British colonialism as was going on in Ireland.” Both sides recognized the other as dispossessed. In the late 1930s, Irish sympathies began to shift. Miller, also the author of “Ireland and the Palestine Question 1948-2004,” said when most of the Zionist movement endorsed the British proposal for partition of the Palestinian territories in the late 1930s, it changed Ireland's thinking.  For Irish leaders, partition was an absolute anathema, he said.  “Now, you have the Zionists on the same side as the British, and the Arab inhabitants of Palestine were now seen as the victims of this colonialist struggle." Then-Prime Minister Eamon De Valera denounced the proposed partition as cruel and unjust — and a reminder of Ireland's own division by the British.  A line of vehicles, stretching for almost a mile, waits to pass through a road block on the main road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, Feb. 6, 1947. The road block is manned by members of the Royal Irish Fusiliers.  Credit: Archives/AP The Catholic Church played a part, too. Miller said the church did not accept Israel's control over Jerusalem once it was declared an independent state in 1948, and the Irish government fell in line with that perspective. But it was after the 1967 war when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza that Irish support for Palestinians really intensified. From the late 1970s, Irish troops were deployed in the region as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force. Related: The blockade on Gaza hampers life and reconstructionVincent Durac, associate professor of Middle East studies at University College Dublin, said with tens of thousands of Irish men and women serving as soldiers in the area, in particular on the border with Israel, their experience influenced opinion back home. The view appears to be largely pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian, Durac said.Irish political party Sinn Féin has long been an outspoken defender of the Palestinian cause. The left-wing party, once shunned for its ties with the Irish Republican Army, now holds considerable sway in mainstream politics. In the 2020 Irish general election, the party won the popular vote and the second-highest number of seats in Parliament. Durac said he suspects Sinn Féin's popularity may have influenced the centrist ruling coalition to support the motion condemning Israel. But not everyone in Ireland agrees with the government's position. 'Unbalanced, one-sided'Former Minister of Justice Alan Shatter, who is Jewish, said the political debate around the issue was “toxic” and passing the motion was “a sad day” for the Irish Parliament. “It's disappointing that the Irish government opted into allowing Sinn Fein to prescribe Irish foreign policy when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it's disappointing that the Irish government took an entirely unbalanced, one-sided approach.”Former Minister of Justice Alan Shatter“It's disappointing that the Irish government opted into allowing Sinn Féin to prescribe Irish foreign policy when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it's disappointing that the Irish government took an entirely unbalanced, one-sided approach.”Shatter, who is now retired, said with no Jewish lawmakers in Irish Parliament today, it gives members free rein to say what they like and he views some recent comments as anti-Semitic. Shatter said he understands why governments would criticize Israeli tactics and, at times, he has done so himself. But some political statements made by Irish lawmakers were unacceptable, he said.  “You even had members of the Dail referencing Israel as replicating the conduct of Nazi Germany. This is rhetoric that you expect in the Iranian Parliament. You don't expect it in the Irish Parliament.” Ireland has a small Jewish community with less than 3,000 people. The former justice minister said many have been rattled by the government's position on Israel. Reports of incidents of anti-Semitism have risen in Europe since violence erupted in the Gaza strip in May. Shatter said he's not aware of any physical attacks against Ireland's Jewish community but worries that comments made in Parliament could stoke anti-Semitic behavior.“The sort of rhetoric may sound smart to catch a news headline, but it's dangerous. It's damaging. And my concern is that one day, it's going to result in some tragedy in Ireland.”Not far enoughFor others in Ireland, the government motion condemning Israeli settlements didn't go far enough. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign wants the government to enact the Occupied Territories Bill that would ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. Aisling Micklethwaite, the vice-chair of the campaign, said this would show the Irish government is serious about the motion it passed. Sinn Féin has also called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Ireland. Professor Durac at University College Dublin said this is not going to happen without EU consensus, and it is highly unlikely EU member states would agree to it. Former Justice Shatter said Israel was somewhat taken aback by Ireland's parliamentary motion. But he also said that “Israelis regard Ireland as the state in Europe which is most hostile to Israel.” The Irish motion may have little actual impact but it is symbolic. “The fact that you have an EU member that is making these statements publicly on a political level that has good connections and good influence in Washington is not to be dismissed."Rory Miller, professor of government, Georgetown University, Qatar“The fact that you have an EU member that is making these statements publicly on a political level that has good connections and good influence in Washington is not to be dismissed,” Miller said.Abualrob, the Palestinian theater artist in Dublin, said the past few months have been tough. Watching the outbreak of violence in the region in May was heartbreaking, he said. Related: A Palestinian becomes Spanish after proving Sephardic originHis family, who still lives just outside the West Bank town of Jenin, were not personally affected, but he still worries and would like to return home one day. “I really miss Palestine because, you know, all my memories, everything that I belong to, it's there.”But for now, Abualrob said he's content to live in a place that makes him feel welcome.

Nick is joined by RTE and Racing TV broadcaster Jane Mangan to discuss the day's latest national and international racing news. In the wake of the Jim Bolger allegations of high level doping made on this podcast last week, Nick and Jane lead with the news that the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament) has agreed to enquire into the situation and will question representatives of HRI, the IHRB and the Dept of Agriculture. They have also invited Jim Bolger to attend. Nick and Jane also discuss the putative 5-Day Cheltenham Festival, while Jane picks out highlights from Ascot and gives her views on the upcoming Irish Derby. In this week's Weatherbys Bloodstock segment, Nick talks to Bret Jones of Airdrie Stud, one of the most historic horse farms in Kentucky.

Nick is joined by RTE and Racing TV broadcaster Jane Mangan to discuss the day's latest national and international racing news. In the wake of the Jim Bolger allegations of high level doping made on this podcast last week, Nick and Jane lead with the news that the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament) has agreed to enquire into the situation and will question representatives of HRI, the IHRB and the Dept of Agriculture. They have also invited Jim Bolger to attend. Nick and Jane also discuss the putative 5-Day Cheltenham Festival, while Jane picks out highlights from Ascot and gives her views on the upcoming Irish Derby. In this week's Weatherbys Bloodstock segment, Nick talks to Bret Jones of Airdrie Stud, one of the most historic horse farms in Kentucky.

Jess & Jamal discuss the Irish Parliament’s motion condemning the “de facto annexation” of Palestinian land by Israel. They also talk about the recent denunciation of the French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian by Benjamin Netanyahu for saying the word Apartheid. Arabic Violin Virtuoso Georges Lamman and renowned Latino Guitarist Gabriel Navia talk about their musical collaboration and perform a gift to Palestine.

Israel is stepping up its ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people, brazenly disregarding international law and routinely committing war crimes. We discuss what the international response should be with: Richard Boyd Barrett, Kerry-Anne Mendoza and Max Blumenthal.Richard famously spoke the truth to the Israeli ambassador in committee at the Irish Parliament.Max is the son of Sidney Blumenthal, former aide to President Bill Clinton, he started Grayzone in 2019 to talk more openly about the situation in the middle East.Resistance TV is a weekly show hosted by Chris Williamson the former Labour MP, Derby Council Leader and the founder of Resist Movement for a People's Party. With a socialist take on things we look at areas of concern for the left wing, Anti Racism, Anti Imperialism, MMT, Injustice, Britain's role in foreign affairs, 21st century Socialism, Alternative Media and more…Live Wednesday's on all our Social Media at 7pm and audio Podcast on Friday'sJoin Resist here www.resistmovement.org.ukSupport us with a donation here paypal.me/festivalofresistanceFollow Chris on Twitter @DerbyChrisW

Join us for a conversation about the global struggle for abortion rights featuring lessons from Argentina and Ireland. In recent years, global movements for abortion rights have made incredible breakthroughs. In late 2020, feminists in Argentina won their decades-long fight to legalize abortion. In 2018, Ireland's victorious movement to repeal the 8th amendment led to a historic referendum vote that marked an enormous shift in public support for safe, legal abortion. In the decades following the landmark 1973 Roe V. Wade decision, the abortion rights movement in the United States has endured a wave of setbacks and sustained conservative backlash. Following years of clinic closures and restrictive state laws, an estimated 11 million people seeking abortion in the US now live more than one hour's drive from an abortion clinic. Abortion activists fear that the political landscape is heading toward a “post-Roe America”. What lessons can we learn from the global struggle to inspire us to build a fighting movement in the U.S. to defend Roe and assure abortion access to all who need one? ———————————————————————— Speakers: Clare Daly is an independent member of the European Parliament elected from Dublin Ireland, former member of the Irish Parliament and mover of multiple pieces of legislation for Abortion Rights in Ireland, and long standing activist on the issue. Sarah Leonard is the publisher of Lux, and a member of its editorial collective. She is a contributing editor to Dissent and The Nation. Camila Valle is an editor, translator, and writer in New York. She is a member of NYC for Abortion Rights. ———————————————————————— This event is being sponsored by Lux Magazine, Chicago for Abortion Rights, Chicago Abortion Fund, Chicago DSA Socialist Feminist Working Group and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/q-d84uG_i7E Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Has the threat to infrastructure from hackers demanding money been underestimated? Plus, a Facebook moderator tells the Irish Parliament of the toll the work is taking on her mental health. And we chat to an engineer trying to develop affordable autonomous driving tech for Indian cities. Presented by Rory Cellan-Jones, with BBC cybersecurity reporter Joe Tidy. Produced by Jat Gill. (Image: Valve representing an oil pipeline, with cryptocurrency tokens. Credit: Getty Images).

In this paper, Madison starts off defining the rules and standard for the House of Representatives. He illustrates that the Representatives shall be reliant and dependent on the people themselves. He also defends the provision of biennial elections (two year terms) and cites many examples to support his argument including the British Parliament, Irish Parliament, and the local government's of the British Colonies before the revolution. Please like, share, and subscribe You have criticisms, recommendations, or topics for new videos: thefederalistfiles@gmail.com Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCrPbNN9i70MoE83sjtJpthQ Catch this podcast on apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-federalist-files/id1536517953 Amazon Audible: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K58GZBT/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp_xKo6FbB9R92PF?fbclid=IwAR1hCwYa9X8iYViGGpX8Ph7qDxgd8SLAbBcAIqYJQNH2aPcPJcgGANgp89g Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0hpUFhzr8AXqXLKl6daQKq iheart radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-federalist-files-73615284/ Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/Thefederalistfiles Support our veterans: https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org Follow on parler: @MichaelDeMato Follow on Twitter: @michael_demato Facebook: Michael DeMato Facebook Page: The federalist files #conservative #conservatism #rumble #thefederalistfiles #federalistpapers #federalism #liberal #liberalism #republican #democrat #GOP #podcast #podcaster #2A #constitution #freedom #liberty #politics #government #federalgovernment #patriot #usa #libertarian #rightwing #federalist52 #Jamesmadison

We are very grateful to Yes Kirkintilloch, Lenzie and The Villages for sharing their excellent panel discussion An Independent Scotland in the World.  In this fascinating discussion, Ruth Wishart chairs an international panel consisting of Ellen Hoffer (EU citizens for Independence),  Anthony Salamone (Political analyst and MD of European Merchants),  Neale richmond TD (Fine Gael European Affairs spokesperson and member of the Irish Parliament) , alan Bisset (Scottish poet and activist). This external perspective gives an interesting and valuable dimension to the discussions - well worth a listen

Surprise! While we continue to prepare Season 5, we've decided to make last month's Halfpint episode freely available to all our listeners. In this edition, Tim builds on our recent Season 4 finale by delving deeper into the colonial Irish Parliament around the time of the Act of Union of 1801. If you haven't heard that Season 4 finale yet, you can go back and listen to it here: Part 1: https://www.theirishpassport.com/podcast/destructive-unionism-part-1-the-history/ Part 2: https://www.theirishpassport.com/podcast/destructive-unionism-part-2-the-current-day/ We make Halfpint extra content as a thank you to our Patreon supporters, who keep the podcast running. If you would like to support us too, and gain access to our full back catalogue of extra content along the way, you can become a supporter of the Irish Passport Podcast today at www.patreon.com/theirishpassport This episode features music from Peter Rudenko: Stay 17; Sublime Melody; and Iced Spring Theme, from the album Inner Mechanics.

In December 1759, a 'mob' of some three thousand people made their way from the Coombe to College Green. Some of them proceeded to enter the Irish Parliament, demanding that politicians swear an oath and even occupying the throne of the House of Lords.  But what influenced them to do it, and what became -or should become  of the College Green parliament? TCB is on Twitter: @3CastlesBurning www.patreon.com/threecastlesburning

Vera Twomey is perhaps one of the most recognisable 'Cannabis Voices' featured in the podcast series so far, thanks to her determined and very public fight with the Irish government to get legal access to medical cannabis for her daughter Ava.Ava has Dravet Syndrome, a rare and catastrophic type of epilepsy that pharmaceutical drugs have no answer for. Before cannabis, Ava was having hundreds of violent seizures a week and was being regularly rushed to hospital. Like many parents of children with epilepsy, Vera came across the stories of children like Charlotte Figi who had found CBD and cannabis could control their seizures where pharmaceutical drugs had failed. And so began her very public battle with the Irish government to get Ava legal access to medical cannabis . Exasperated with the Irish Health Minister's empty promises, Vera took dramatic action. With no preparation (or even a pair of trainers) she decided to walk 200 miles in protest from her home in County Cork the Irish Parliament in Dublin. By now, the whole of Ireland were supporting Ava, and yet the government still refused to grant her a prescription. And so Vera, Ava and the rest of the family moved to Holland where they joined other families living in exile as medical cannabis refugees.Under the care of a Dutch pediatric neurologist, Ava's seizures were successfully controlled by a combination of CBD oil and THC oil.Thankfully, this was enough for the Irish government to give Ava her prescription and the family could finally return home.As anyone who's read her book 'For Ava' will know, Vera does not pull any punches when it comes to expressing her disdain for the treatment she and her family have received from the Irish government. But it's that fury that has got Ava her prescription and changed the hearts and minds of the Irish people towards medical cannabis. Be prepared for tears of emotion, tears of frustration and tears of joy in one of the most moving and inspirational podcasts of the series so far.If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to this podcast.ResourcesFor Ava by Vera Twomey Twitter: @veras1Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vera.twomeyInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/twomeyvera/Footage from Vera's walk to Dublin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPwu4u3V7RE&t=1980shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB_tTRtN4xY&t=57sVera's speech at the Water demonstration Vera's acceptance speech at the Irish People of the Year AwardsSupport the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/marybiles71)

Hour 1 Guest: Sean O'Driscoll, CEO, iNUA Hospitality, Owning & Managing Hotels in Ireland, Based in County Cork, Ireland. www.iNUAhospitality.ie Hour 2 Guests: Arnie Weissman, Editor-in-Chief, Travel Weekly Magazine, www.TravelWeekly.com, Based in Secaucus, NJ, USA. www.TravelWeekly.com Elaina Fitzgerald Kane, President of Irish Hotel Federation & Marketing Director of Fitzgerald's Woodland House Hotel &Spa, Adare, County Limerick, Ireland, www.Woodlands-Hotel.ie Hour 3 Guest: Eamon O'Cuiv, TD, Member of Irish Parliament, Grandson of former President of Ireland from 1959-1973, Based in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, www.EamonOCuiv.ie

Exit first met Tom Curran in 2008 when he attended our initial Irish workshop at the Seomra Spraoi anarchist collective in Dublin (because no other booked venue would host the public meeting and workshop): such was the controversy surrounding assisted suicide/ assisted dying in Ireland. Fast forward a decade, and Tom has become the legitimate face of the Irish right to die movement. A director of Exit International, Tom's commitment stems from the experience of his late partner, Marie Flemming who died in 2013 after suffering for many years from MS. In recent weeks, the Irish Parliament has voted to progress a Dying with Dignity Bill concerning assisted suicide to the committee stage. Listen to Tom's journey over the past decade and his instrumental role in pushing for a law for people with a 'life-limiting' condition.

This episode of the "EACCNY Brexit Musings" series explores the impact of the Northern Irish Protocol on the Withdrawal Agreement and delves deeper into the various outcomes and consequences of Brexit. Our speaker today is Lucinda Creighton, CEO of Vulcan Consulting; who is accompanied by her colleague, Scott McCulloch.Lucinda Creighton is CEO of Vulcan Consulting Ltd and is a former Irish Minister for European Affairs and Member of the Irish Parliament. As Minister for European Affairs she represented Ireland in key negotiations on Ireland's EU/IMF bailout, leading to a reduction in interest rates and the extension of Ireland's repayment schedules. She has extensive knowledge of the EU bureaucratic infrastructure and regulatory systems. As CEO of Vulcan Consulting, she works closely with CEOs and senior management teams to assist them in understanding and navigating the political, policy and decision-making environment in Europe, Ireland and across the E.U. She has an extensive network across Europe having also previously served as Vice President of the European People's Party (EPP).Scott McCulloch is a Senior Account Executive at Vulcan Consulting. He positions clients operating in the security and digital sectors on EU regulatory and governmental affairs. Before joining Vulcan Consulting, Scott worked for the public affairs team of a global public relations firm in Brussels where he gained experience monitoring EU political and regulatory developments in digital and financial services policy. He has practical institutional experience having worked as a parliamentary assistant for a prominent Scottish MEP. Before embarking on a career in public affairs Scott worked as a litigation lawyer in Scotland.

After the Peace of Berwick, parliaments meet in England and Ireland. The Irish Parliament goes off without a hitch. The English... not so much. Listen to Agoraphobia here: https://pod.link/1068901505 Check out the podcast website: https://www.paxbritannica.info Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PodBritannica/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BritannicaPax Patreon: https://Patreon.com/PaxBritannica For this episode, I found the following publications particularly useful: Adams, Goodare, Scotland in the Age of Two Revolutions Russell, C The Causes of the English Civil War Kishlansky, M, Monarchy Transformed Macinnes, Allan, The British Revolution, 1629-1660 Harris, T. Rebellion  Keynon, Ohlmeyer, The Civil Wars James Miller, ‘The Scottish mercenary as a migrant labourer in Europe, 1550-1650’, in Erik-Jan Zürcher (ed), Fighting for a Living Book Subtitle: A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500-2000 Smith, David, The Stuart Parliaments, 1603-1689 Alexia Grosjean, Steve Murdoch, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish generals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 Steve Murdoch (ed), Scotland and the Thirty Years' War Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to episode 3. Thanks in advance for listening. This is a chat I had with Vicky Phelan in September 2020, as she was working on getting the Dying with Dignity Bill passed in the Dáil (The Irish Parliament)the Bill is, as we go to press, at stage 2 of being passed. Vicky was incredibly warm and also very frank about her cancer diagnosis and subsequent difficulties. We talked hurling, Cancer, Death and the band Bros, and I loved it! Hope you do too. You can email me at keithwalshpod@gmail.com.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-keith-walsh-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The EU's second highest court says Apple will not have to pay a record sum in back taxes. Both the tech giant and Ireland which was to receive the payment have welcomed the news, and we find out why from Neale Richmond, Member of the Irish Parliament for the governing Fine Gael party. And we hear more on the implications for global tax policy from Tove Ryding, tax co-ordinator at the European Network on Debt and Development. Also in the programme, the BBC's Faarea Masud reports on the significant financial implications for Saudi Arabia that this year's Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca has been scaled back to just 10,000 attendees, when normally around two million people would make the journey. Plus, as gyms, indoor swimming pools and leisure centres in England prepare to reopen next week, the BBC's Sarah Corker reports on the precautions being undertaken, and concerns among the businesses involved that they may never be profitable again.

Today we are speaking to Sean Lemass, founder and MD of SDL Exhibitions, one of Ireland's leading event organisers for over 40 years. Their nationally recognised events include The Ideal Home Show and The Irish Motorbike and Scooter Show.As you may have gathered from his name, Sean hails from a political family and was the first grandchild of Sean F Lemass, Taoiseach from 1959 to 1966, and a leader who is widely regarded as a father of modern Ireland. Sean's own father and mother were also members of the Irish Parliament, with his mother, Eileen Lemass, later become a MEP from 1984-1989. Sean is a keen sailor and participated in yacht racing and cruising, in both Irish waters and the Mediterranean. Wife to Ruth, father of 2 and grandfather to 3, I'm delighted to welcome Sean to Shut the Front Door today. Shut The Front Door is produced by @venturamarketing.ie | www.venturaMarketing.ie.Email the podcast: shutthefrontdoor@ventura.ie

It's 41 years this Sunday that Olive Morris died. She was a Black British feminist and civil rights campaigner. A couple of weeks ago, Google marked what would have been her 68th birthday with a drawing of her on its header. So who was Olive Morris and who are some of the other Black British female activists from the past who we should know about? We talk to Angelina Osborne, a researcher and lecturer, and Olivette Otele who's a professor specialising in Black female history. Eileen Flynn is the first Traveller to be made a Senator in the Irish Parliament. The Irish PM, or Taoiseach, can nominate a handful of people to work in the Upper House and a couple of weeks ago Eileen was one of them. She says it’s an historic moment, especially for Travellers who are so marginalized and stigmatized in Irish society. She talks to us from her home in Donegal. All week we’ve been looking at women and gaming. We've explored how gaming has changed and how it can improve some people's mental health. The UK gaming industry is worth billions and the video games sector makes up more than half of the UK’s entire entertainment market. Women are 50% of those who play and those over 40 are among the fastest growing group of people that play on their smartphones. But the number of women working in the industry is much lower and today we hear from them. Photo Credit: Lambeth Council

On this day in 1264, the first recorded session of an Irish Parliament sat in Castledermot, Co Kildare. Produced and presented by Brian Byrne for Kilcullen Diary. Some of the content: The event had been called to determine if the Archbishop Fulk de Sandeford had the rights to hold court and dispense justice. He was in contention with the then lord of Ireland, Prince Edward, son of Henry III. The Castledermot Parliament is accepted as the original of a line of such institutions in this country from Norman times to the 19th century. The south Kildare town was at the time an important centre in the Normans' settlement of Ireland, as well having a strong religious presence. Because the Irish government records dating back to the 12th century were destroyed in 1922 in a Civil War explosion at the Four Courts, there's no official record remaining of that Castledermot meeting. But fortunately, the Archbishop de Sandeford had his own chronicler at the event, and this report ended up in the so-called Black Book of Christchurch. The precise location of that first Parliament in Castledermot is not known. But a subsequent established Parliament House is said to have been built on the site now occupied by a pub in the town.

Born in Dublin's Fishamble Street in 1746, but resident for most of his life in Tinnehinch, near Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, Henry Grattan was the most noted, and certainly the most eloquent, of the eighteenth-century opposition ‘patriots' in the Irish Parliament.  To mark the bicentenary of his passing and to reassess his often misunderstood legacy, listen to History Ireland editor Tommy Graham in discussion with David Dickson, Patrick Geoghegan, Sylvie Kleinman and Tim Murtagh.  Find our more at: https://www.historyireland.com/ 

King James II On this episode of the show we were joined by Dr. Pádraig Lenihan of NUI Galway to discuss the 1689 Irish Parliament. The Patriot, or Jacobite, Parliament was called by King James II during the 1689 to 1691 war in Ireland. It was the first Irish Parliament called since 1666 and held only one session, from 7 May 1689 to 20 July 1689. We discussed the grievances felt by the Catholic population over land ownership and penal laws; the role of James' Lord Deputy, the Earl of Tyrconnell; the key pieces of legislation passed by the parliament and how it was remembered by nationalists and unionists in Ireland. Intro / Outro music “Sliabh” from Aislinn. Licensed under creative commons from the free music archive.

Steve Blitz, Chief U.S Economist at TS Lombard, on central banks and the Fed QE plan. Marian Harkin, Irish Parliament member and former member of the European Parliament, on how Ireland is managing the coronavirus crisis, and European stimulus. Max Nisen, Bloomberg Opinion health care columnist, on the U.S. coronavirus failure. Scott Soshnick, Bloomberg sports columnist, discusses the near-shutdown of U.S. sports.

In the debut episode of I4C Trouble, MEPs Daly & Wallace discuss their previous eight years of work in the Irish Parliament, the move to Brussels and their experience so far of the European Parliament. The failures of mainstream political reporting are a serious problem for the public's understanding of what's going on at the centre of power. But what can be done about it? Kindly presented by Damien Thomson, political adviser to the GUE/NGL group.

Dan Ives, Equity Analyst at Wedbush Securities, discusses why the China trade deal removes $160 billion dark cloud from tech stocks. Marian Harkin, former member of the European Parliament and of the Irish Parliament, on what Boris Johnson's election means for Brexit and the EU. Lindsey Piegza, Chief Economist at Stifel, on red flags in the U.S. economy. Kit Konolige, Senior Industrials and Utilities Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, on PG&E sinking after California rejects restructuring proposal. Hosted by Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney

Citizens’ forum The Irish Citizens’ Assembly was formed in response to the severe social and economic crisis caused by the global financial meltdown of 2008. A group of political scientists, led by Jane Suiter and David Farrell, advocated for citizens to be included in debates about the necessary political reforms to address the failures of the executive. Deliberative mini publics innovate democracy by engaging citizens in constructive dialogue about the issues facing society. While many in parliament assumed citizens would always favor more spending and lower taxes, it turned out that voters who were presented with detailed information came to develop nuanced policy positions. After listening to presentations by experts, they actually favored higher taxes in certain areas and reached complex compromises about government spending. By doing so, they proved to lawmakers and skeptics that ordinary Irish citizens could be trusted with vital policy work. The case of abortion rights The first Citizens’ Assembly considered the issue of overturning the ban on abortion in the Irish constitution. Over the course of five weekend-long sessions, everyday citizens heard arguments from impartial experts, medical professionals, as well as activists on both sides. At the end of their deliberations, they produced a series of recommendations, which were sent to the Irish Parliament in June 2017. 64% of the Citizens’ Assembly participants recommended that abortion be legalized. In turn, Parliament put the question of legalizing abortion to the Irish public in a nationwide referendum in May 2018. It passed with 66% of the vote. The result indicates that the counsel of the Citizens’ Assembly was an accurate and meaningful representation of the Irish electorate. Since then the Assembly has given policy recommendations on issues such as how the state can make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change and how to respond to the challenges and opportunities of an aging population. Ireland is a Beacon for Democracy The Assembly has strengthened trust and communication on both sides of the democratic equation – citizens and politicians – and has bolstered the legitimacy of democracy at a time when democracies around the world are under attack. Through the innovation of using citizens’ assemblies, the Irish experience is showing a path to overcome the problems of democracy in decline. Politicians learned about the willingness and capacity of everyday people to make serious, nuanced policy choices for the good of the country. The Assembly has led many in Parliament to consider the advice of constituents in a new way, and to seek advice from their voters. Conversely, Irish citizens see the Assembly as a way to augment their democracy beyond voting. Other countries have noticed this. At the launch of Scotland’s Citizens’ Assembly earlier this year, the constitutional minister for the Scottish government praised Ireland’s success as an example to follow. Find out more: David Farrell and Jane Suiter have been collaborating in research focused on Irish citizens’ assemblies for over 10 years. During the economic crisis of 2008-2009, they led a group of political scientists who proposed that citizens should be brought into the heart of debates over constitutional and political reform. This culminated in the establishment of We the Citizens – Ireland’s first national citizens’ assembly. In 2012 the Irish government established the Convention on the Constitution: David and Jane led the academic advisory group. This was followed, in 2016, by the Irish Citizens’ Assembly: David and Jane secured Irish Research Council funding to provide research leadership. David Farrell is Head of the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin. He is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is formerly the research leader of the Irish Citizens' Assembly and currently a member of the Stewarding Group of the Scottish Citizens’ Assembly. Jane Suiter is Director of the Institute for Future Media and Journalism at Dublin City University as well as an Associate Professor in the School of Communications. She helped found the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016-2018) and the Irish Constitutional Convention (2012-2014). She is also a founding member of We the Citizens (2011), Ireland’s first deliberative experiment. The Irish Citizens’ Assembly is an exercise in deliberative democracy, placing the citizen at the heart of important legal and policy issues facing Irish society. With the benefit of expert, impartial, and factual advice, 100 citizen members have considered the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution (on abortion); making Ireland a leader in tackling climate change; challenges and opportunities of an aging population; manner in which referenda are held; and fixed term parliaments. US-based deliberative democracy projects mentioned in the episode are: James Fishkin, Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University Kevin Esterling and his work with online town halls. He wrote Politics with the People, Building a Directly Representative Democracy. Citizens’ Initiative Review in Oregon You can follow David on Twitter @dfarrell_ucd, Jane @JaneSuit, and The Citizens’ Assembly @CitizAssembly.

Inspired by real life events, a new film ‘Love Sonia' is the story of a young girl from a small village in India who finds herself caught up in the global sex trafficking industry. One of the stars of the film is Freida Pinto. She joins Jenni to discuss. The first leader of the Women's Equality Party is standing down. Sophie Walker has been doing the job since 2015. In 2017 her party published a manifesto full of feminist policies from which she openly invited all the mainstream parties to steal. She has said repeatedly that she wants to change the way we do politics. And yesterday, she sought to change it saying that “sometimes in order to lead, you have to get out of the way”. She explains what she meant and why she's decided to go now. Basma Khalifa was born in Saudi Arabia, but grew up in Northern Ireland before moving to London as a stylist. In a new BBC 3 documentary, she explores whether it's a place she could consider living in again. Basma and Director Jessica Kelly discuss their experience. An Irish couple say they've been denied an abortion in an Irish hospital even though their unborn baby had a fatal foetal abnormality. They were told by doctors to wait for a miscarriage. Their situation has been brought up in the Irish Parliament, with their consent, and it's raising questions about whether Irish hospitals are ready, or willing, to implement the new law on abortion. There was a referendum last Spring in which the Irish people voted 66.4% in favour of Repealing the Eighth Amendment, which was a law restricting access to abortion. We hear the facts. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Sophie Walker Interviewed Guest: Freida Pinto Interviewed Guest: Basma Khalifa Interviewed Guest: Jessica Kelly Interviewed Guest: Dr Peter Boylan

New film ‘The Favourite' set in 18th century England features a frail and irascible Queen Anne played by Olivia Coleman whose attention and affection is being sought by her political adviser Lady Sarah Churchill (Duchess of Marlborough) and ruthless chambermaid Abigail. It is a story of sexual politics and power games, starring Olivia Coleman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone. Jenni talks to screenwriter Deborah Davis.Abortion will be legal in the Republic of Ireland from the first day of January 2019. A bill to legalise abortion services passed all stages of the Irish Parliament last week, but given the tight time frame, how will this work in practice? Jenni is joined by Ellen Coyne, Senior Ireland Reporter at The Times and Dr Peter Boylan, consultant obstetrician and former master of the National Maternity Hospital.In May we heard from 25 year old Samantha Jury-Dada who, concerned by the surge in knife crime in London, was going to several parts of the US to find out how young women and girls associated with gangs are supported. She's back and tells Jenni what she found out and how that information will help her forge better support for young women at risk here in the UK.Gillian Monks is the author of ‘Merry Midwinter: How to rediscover the Magic of the Christmas Season' and she joins Jenni to discuss the history and significance of Winter Solstice celebrations. She'll be sharing some simple tactics on how to shut out Christmas stress and remember the spirit of the season.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Laura NorthedgeInterviewed Guest: Deborah Davis Interviewed Guest: Ellen Coyne Interviewed Guest: Dr Peter Boylan Interviewed Guest: Samantha Jury-Dada Interviewed Guest: Gillian Monks

Jo Spain's crime thrillers are Irish best sellers. Her quietly charismatic lead detective Tom Reynolds is called upon to explore dark secrets of Ireland's past - secrets that still haunt life in the green isle today. Hi there, I'm your host Jenny Wheeler and today Jo talks about why she loves writing crime and which actor she'd pick to play Tom in an upcoming TV series. Six things you'll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Why Jo "counts minutes like other women count calories" The secret to best selling crime The actor she'd like to play Tom Reynolds The challenge of "Why Dunnits" The writers she admires most And the one thing she did that brought success Where to find Jo Spain:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoSpainAuthor/  Twitter  @SpainJoanne What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: And now, here's Jo. Hello there Jo and welcome to the show, its great to have you with us. Jo: Hi Jenny, thanks for inviting me on. Jenny: Beginning at the beginning . . . .Was there a "Once Upon A Time" moment when you realised you had to write fiction or your life would somehow be incomplete? Was there a catalyst? Jo Spain, author. Jo: Yes, there certainly was a catalyst. I've read my entire life, so I've always enjoyed novels and I never thought that writing one was something that ordinary people did. I was working in a job in the Irish Parliament, and my job involved writing all the time; but writing speeches and legislation, bills, things like that. And there was a moment when I was going back to work after taking maternity leave following the birth of one of my children where I thought to myself "I spend all day every day writing, but it's not the kind of writing I like to do, in an ideal scenario and a dream job. I've loved crime fiction since I was very small, and reading it and watching it on TV. I definitely just thought "I'm going to give this is a go and write something I enjoy writing". It all kicked off from there. Jenny: Fantastic: You've so far published three books with Detective Tom Reynolds in the role of lead investigator, with a fourth in the series due out later this year.  They are all very much bedded in Irish social history and the first, With Our Blessing, tackled the controversial way the Catholic church handled the so-called Magdalene Laundries in the 60s and 70's  . . .with brutal treatment of young unmarried women who went to them seeking help in pregnancy  . .. Can you tell us a bit about the “set up” for that book?  It had personal connection for you I understand, With Our Blessing, Jo Spain Jo: I always knew I was going to write books that had some kind of social or cultural background, because I'm very interested in current affairs and history, - and giving books a little more depth. At the time in Ireland, the Magdalene Laundries and Mother & Baby  homes were really making the headlines. The Irish Prime Minister, the Taoiseach, had apologised to women who'd been through the system, and there was an awful lot being unveiled. So I thought this would make a very interesting back drop to my first novel. I was in the middle of researching that and it dawned on me - my father who passed away in 1995 had been adopted. He'd never known where he was adopted from or anything, he had a very strong sense of why he'd been adopted- his mother couldn't manage him and didn't want him. He really had a chip on his shoulder about it. But I was putting the dates together with the research I was doing, and it occurred to me he'd been born in the 1950s in Ireland. There was no way he hadn't come through this system. I rang up the health department here and being adopted, one of the notorious secrets is that you have no rights to any information. And that's worse again, when you're the grandchild of a woman who's given away her baby.

Associate editor Julia Yost talks with Senator Rónán Mullen of the Irish Parliament about the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution. The Eighth Amendment, which guarantees the legal protection of unborn human life, is currently threatened by a repeal campaign. Learn about George Soros’s scheme to interfere in the affairs of a small Catholic country—and learn what Americans can do to help the pro-life cause in Ireland (hint: cherishlifeireland.org). Then, Julia gets editor Rusty Reno’s take on recent developments in Church, politics, sports, and fashion.

This week on What's the Story? Podcast we change gears and welcome our first Politician to our ranks. Richard Boyd Barrett is TD (Member of Irish Parliament) for the constituency of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown located in South Dublin. After over a decade of political campaigning, Richard was elected to Dáil Éireann in the 2011 general election and has become one of the most prominent voices amongst the anti government opposition. He is a member of the People Before Profit party and is also one of the 16 TDs that make up the Dáil Technical Group. We spoke to Richard about growing up in his constituency, playing football for every team in the borough and how he came to get involved with politics and campaigns. Having grown up in a relatively affluent area and attending one of Ireland's most elite private schools, its been a long road to campaigning for social justice; a road that brought Richard to London, Israel and back again. It was in Israel in the late eighties that Richard was exposed to politics in a way that would inspire him to get involved upon his return to Ireland. We heard all about his early days in the Socialist Workers Party and his involvement in campaigns from Save our Seafront and opposing the water charges. Danny admits he didn't vote for Richard in the last election while Mero proudly admits he did, Danny then does his best to question things like social housing, welfare and opposition to Ireland's low corporation tax rate. All of this and we hear about Lindsey's adventures with BJJ and her upcoming MMA debut, Mero has pink eye, Toblerone banter and Danny continues to spread the word of secret messages within company logos. You can check out all our previous chapters with guests including Paul Stenson, Paul Howard, Tony McGregor, Pat Flynn, Cian Cowley Saskia Tidey and many more by searching WTSpod on iTunes, Stitcher, Podbean and all podcast outlets on Android. Rate, review, subscribe and let us know what you think! Tweet us on @WTSpod and stay tuned for more great guests 

Full of references to Irishmen who fought in the American War of Independence, President Kennedy championed the important role of small nations in the pursuit of world peace.

Dr John Bergin (QUB) - The legislative work of James II's Irish parliament of 1689.

This episode of CS is titled Results.Now that we've taken a look at some of the movements and luminaries of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, it's time for a review of the results and their impact on The Church.Once we embark in the next Era of Church History, we'll find ourselves in the weeds of so many movements we're going to have to back up and take it in an even more summary form than we have. Turns out, the warning Roman Catholics sounded when Protestants split off turned out to be true. They warned if Luther and other Reformers left the Mother Church, they'd commence a fragmenting that would never end. They foretold that anyone with their own idea of the way things ought to be would run off to start their own group, that would become another church, then a movement of churches and eventually a denomination. The hundreds of denominations and tens of thousands of independent churches today are testimony to that fragmenting.The problem for us here with CS is this – There's no way we can chronicle all the many directions the Church went in that fragmenting. We'll need to stand back to only mark the broad strokes.Though the Enlightenment heavyweight John Locke was an active advocate of religious tolerance, he made it clear tolerance didn't apply to Catholics. The fear in England of a Catholic-Jacobite conspiracy, valid it turned out, moved Locke and the Anglican clergy to be wary of granting Catholics the full spectrum of civil rights. On the contrary, the English were at one point so paranoid of Rome's attempt to seize the throne, a 1699 statute made the saying of a Latin mass a crime.Many Roman Church apologists were talented writers and challenged Anglican teachings. In 1665, Bishop Tillotson answered John Sergeant's treatise titled Sure Footing in Christianity, or Rational Discourses on the Rule of Faith. Sergeant worried some Protestants might convert to Catholicism for political reasons. His anxiety grew in 1685 when the Roman Catholic Duke of York, James II, became king. King James's Declaration of Indulgences removed restrictions blocking Catholics from serving in the government.The arrival of William III and the Glorious Revolution ended James' efforts to return England to the Catholic fold. He was allowed to leave England for France at the end of 1688. Then in 1714, with the Peace of Utrecht ending the War of the Spanish Succession, France's King Louis XIV, promised he'd no longer back the Stuart claim to England's throne.During the 18th C, Catholics in England were a minority. At the dawn of the century, there were only two convents in England, with a whopping 25 nuns. By 1770, the number of Catholics still only numbered some 80,000. They lacked civil and political rights and were considered social outsiders. The Marriage Act of 1753 disallowed any wedding not conducted according to the Anglican rite, excepting Quakers and Jews.This is not to say all English Protestants were intolerant of Roman Catholics. Some of the upper classes appreciated varied aspects of Roman culture. They owned art produced by Catholic artists and thought making the continental Grand Tour a vital part of proper education. One of the chief stops on that Tour was, of course, Rome.Still, anti-Catholic feelings on the part of the common people were seen in the Gordon Riots of 1780. When the 1699 statute banning the Mass was removed, a mob burned down Catholic homes and churches. Catholics didn't receive full civil liberty until the Emancipation Act of 1829.While Anglicans, Baptists, and Catholics sniped at each other, they all agreed Deism represented a serious threat to the Christian Faith. England proved to be Deism's most fertile soil.In 1645, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Father of English Deism, proposed five articles as the basis of his rationalist religion.1) God exists;2) We are obliged to revere God;3) Worship consists of a practical morality;4) We should repent of sin;5) A future divine judgment awaits all people based on how they've lived.Charles Blount published several works that furthered the Deist cause in England. John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious in 1696 opened the floodgates of Deistic literature. Contemporaries of John Locke viewed his The Reasonableness of Christianity as preparing the way for Toland's explicitly Deist work. Locke tried to blunt the accusation by saying while Toland was a friend, his ideas were his own and had no connection to his own.The first half of the 18th C saw an onslaught of literature from Deists that seemed to batter Anglicans into a corner and make the Gospel seem insipid. So much so that in 1722 Daniel Defoe complained that “no age, since the founding and forming the Christian Church was ever like, in openly avowed atheism, blasphemies, and heresies, to the age we now live in.” When Montesquieu visited England in 1729 he wrote “There is no religion, and the subject if mentioned, excites nothing but laughter.” The Baron certainly over-stated the case since other evidence indicates religious discussion was far from rare. But in his circle of contacts, the place theological discussion had once played was now greatly diminished.Eventually, in response to this wave of Deist literature, Christian apologists embarked on a campaign to address a number of -isms that had risen to silence the Faith. They dealt with Deism, Atheism, a resurgent Arianism, Socinianism, and Unitarianism. Their task was complicated by the fact many of their Deist opponents claimed to be proponents of the “true” teachings of the Christian faith.Richard Bentley observed that the claims of Deists attacked the very heart of the Christian faith. He summarized Deist ideas like this – “They say that the soul is material, Christianity a cheat, Scripture a falsehood, hell a fable, heaven a dream, our life without providence, and our death without hope, such are the items of the glorious gospel of these Deist evangelists.”A number of Deists argued that God, Who they referred to as the Architect of the Universe, does not providentially involve Himself in His creation. Rather, He established fixed laws to govern the way the world runs. Since the laws are fixed, no biblical miracles could have taken place. So, the Bible is filled with errors and nonsense, a premise deists like Anthony Collins claimed was confirmed by critics like Spinoza. Prophetic pointers to a Messiah in the Old Testament could not have been fulfilled by Christ since prophecy would violate the fixed law of time.Deists maintained that salvation is NOT an issue of believing the Gospel. Rather, God requires all peoples to follow rationally construed moral laws regarding what's right and wrong. Since a measure of reason is given to everyone, God is fair, they contended, in holding everyone accountable to the same rational, moral standards.The astute listener may note that that sounds close to what some scientists advocate today. We hear much about the growing number of once atheist scientists coming to a faith in God. That report is true, but we need to qualify the “god” many of them are coming to faith in. It's a god of the small ‘g', not a capital “G” as in the God of the Bible. The god of many recent scientist converts is more akin to the Watchmaker deity of the Deists than the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and The Apostle Paul.Deists believed what they called “natural religion” underlying all religion. We learn of this religion, not from the special revelation of Scripture. We learn it from, as Immanuel Kant would say “the starry heavens above, and the moral law within.”Christian apologists unleashed scores of books in an anti-deist counterattack. One of the most effective was Jacques Abbadie's Treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion. Published in 1684, it was one of the earliest and most widely circulated apologetics for the truthfulness of the Christian faith based on “facts.” Abbadie was a Protestant pastor in London. He countered Deist arguments against the resurrection and alleged discrepancies in Scripture. The points he made remain some of the most potent apologetics today. He pointed out the public nature of Christ's appearances after the resurrection. The change in the disciples' attitudes, from trembling in fear to confidence in the truthfulness and power of The Gospel as evidenced by their preaching and willingness to die for the Faith. In the 18th C, Abbadie's work was found in the libraries of more French nobles than the best-selling works of Bossuet or Pascal.You may remember a couple of episodes back, our brief coverage of the work of the skeptic David Hume. Hume attacked the concept of “cause and effect,” claiming it was only an unsubstantiated presupposition allowing for it that made cause and effect a rule. Hume's criticism turned those who bought his ideas into inveterate critics unable to come to conclusions about anything. John Wesley described Hume as “the most insolent despiser of truth and virtue that ever appeared in the world, an avowed enemy to God and man, and to all that is sacred and valuable upon earth.”The Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid developed an erudite response to Hume's skepticism. In his An Essay on Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, published in 1764, Reid critiqued Hume's theory: “The theory of ideas, like the Trojan horse, had a specious appearance both of innocence and beauty; but if those philosophers had known, that it carried in its belly death and destruction to all science and common sense, they would not have broken down their walls to give it admittance.” Hume's principles, Reid showed, led to absurd conclusions.While Skepticism and Deism gained many adherents early on, and Christianity struggled for a while as it adjusted to the new challenge, it eventually produced a plethora of responses that regained a good measure of the intellectual ground. This period can be said to be the breeding ground for today's apologetic culture and the core of its philosophical stream.In 1790, Edmund Burke rejoiced that Christian apologists had largely won out over the Deists.At the dawning of the 18th C, the Scottish clans with their rough and tumble culture and the warlike tradition continued to reign over a good part of the Scottish Highlands, which accounts for about a third of the total area. In contrast, the capital of Edinburgh was a small city of no more than 35,000 crowded into dirty tenements, stacked one above another.By the Act of Union of 1707, Scotland and England became one. The Scottish Parliament was dissolved and merged with the English. Scots were given 45 members in the House of Commons. But tension remained between north and south.In the Patronage Act of 1712, the English Crown claimed the right to choose Scottish pastors; an apparent end-run by the Anglican Church of England around the rights of Presbyterian Scotland. Seceder Presbyterians refused to honor the pastors appointed by England. They started their own independent churches.Then, in 1742 the Cambuslang Revival swept Scotland. For four months, the church in Cambuslang, a few miles from Glasgow, witnessed large numbers of people attending prayer meetings and showing great fervency in their devotion to God. In June, George Whitefield visited and preached several times. In August, meetings saw as many as 40,000. The pastor of the church wrote, “People sat unwearied till two in the morning to hear sermons, disregarding the weather. You could scarcely walk a yard, but you must tread upon some, either rejoicing in God for mercies received, or crying out for more. Thousands and thousands have I seen, melted down under the word and power of God.”Whitefield then preached to large crowds in Edinburgh and other cities. Other centers of revival popped up.In the second half of the 18th C, Scotland gained a reputation as a center for the Enlightenment under such men as David Hume, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Francis Hutchison. Voltaire wrote that “today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening.”An interesting development took place in Scotland at that time, maybe born by a weariness of the internecine conflict endemic to Scottish history. A cultured “literati” in Edinburgh participated in different clubs, but all aimed at striking some kind of balance where people of different persuasions could hold discourse without feeling the need to come to blows. They sought enlightened ways to improve society and agriculture. In the inaugural edition of the Edinburgh Review, 1755, the editor encouraged Scots “to a more eager pursuit of learning themselves, and to do honor to their country.”Evangelicals like Edinburgh pastors John Erskine and Robert Walker hoped to reform society using some of the new ideas of Enlightenment thinkers. They embarked on a campaign to safeguard and expand civil liberties. But unlike more moderate members of the Church of Scotland, they believed conversion to personal faith in Christ was a prerequisite for reform. Erskine appreciated George Whitefield and edited and published a number of Jonathan Edwards' works.In Ireland, the Glorious Revolution was not at all “glorious” for Catholics. On July 1, 1690, the armies of the Protestant King William III defeated the forces of the Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne and seized Dublin. In 1691, Jacobites in Ireland either fled or surrendered. The Banishment Act of 1697 ordered all Catholic clergy to leave Ireland or risk execution. Poverty and illiteracy made life miserable for large numbers of Irish Catholics.English restrictions on Ireland were brutal. Power resided in the hands of a small group of wealthy Anglican elite of the official Church of Ireland. Even Scottish Presbyterians who had settled in Ulster were excluded from civil and military roles. And the Irish had to pay the cost of quartering English troops to keep the peace.Not to be denied, some Catholic priests donned secular clothes so as to continue to minister to their spiritual charges without putting them in danger.In the last decades of the 18th Century the Irish population grew rapidly. Methodists numbered some 14,000 in 1790 and allied with other Protestants who'd come over from England, settled the north of the Island. Protestants in Ireland, whatever their stripe, typically held fierce anti-Catholic sentiments, just as Catholics were hostile toward Protestants.In 1778 the Catholic Relief Act allowed Catholics to buy and inherit land. In 1782 the Irish Parliament gained independence, and laws against Catholics were changed. But the English monarchy managed to maintain its authority and put down the Irish Rebellion of 1798.The upshot is this à The Gospel faced a withering barrage from some of the most potent of Enlightenment critics, skeptics, and foes. The Church was slow to respond, which allowed the ideas of rationalism to poison the well of much Western philosophical thought. The challenge was eventually answered, not only with an eloquent reply but by the stirring of the Holy Spirit Who brought winds of revival for which the most elite skeptic had no comeback.Christianity was tested in the British Isles during the 18th C, but it passed the test.