Well, this didn't take long. All of about five days in fact.
Earlier this week the body politic got the hairs on it's collective neck doing a spastic right-angled dance when it was announced that the Centre for Public Inquiry (a non-profit body funded by the group known as Atlantic Philanthropies) was being established in order to fund investigative journalists who wanted to probe some of the more nebulous activities of our politicians.
So, was the government going to stand for this? Was it fuck. The Sunday Independent (that ever-faithful mouthpiece of FF spin) ran a front-page headline screaming that the journalist leading the group, one Frank Connolly was the brother of Sinn Fein member Niall Connolly (he of the Colombia 3) and that Frank was being investigated by the Gardai over allegations that he visited Colombia with a senior IRA man a couple of years back. The article also prominently displayed the word 'McCarthyism'. Fascinating that this should find it's way on to the front page of the broadsheets the same week, eh?
Well, smack my ass and call me Mick McCarthy.
I'll give the Government this: their spin-scum are efficient little rottweilers. They managed to get the magic words 'Sinn Fein' 'IRA' and 'watchdog' all into the same article in a matter of days. We can only conclude that Centre for Public Inquiry, which if we understand this properly, are an organisation dedicated to uncovering bribery, corruption and the general scumbaggery that infests Irish politics, must be the most terrifying vista on the political horizon since Sin Fein itself started to garner FF votes. The Government must be really desperate if they are trying to discredit the organisation before it's even started work.
Sounds of gagging
When you bear in mind that Dr. Pat Wallace, the Director of the National Museum, has been gagged from testifying before the Dail over the proposed destruction of Tara to accomadate the construction of another road, because he would have a 'vested interest', you really have to ask yourself who is running the witchhunts in this country.
Oh and in case anyone forgets, that's Ray Burke on the right.
