Tag: ireland

Omagh’s mystery hum keeps Tyrone residents awake

Council officials are looking at calling in noise specialists in an attempt to locate a mystery hum disturbing residents of a Co Tyrone town.

People in Omagh have been reporting a persistent low level hum or buzz in the town for several weeks.

Noise officers have been sent out to investigate it and have heard it, but have so far been unable to identify the source.

Senior official at Fermanagh and Omagh council John Boyle told a recent meeting the issue would “not be an easy one to crack”.

He said existing equipment was not sensitive enough to find the source and they would either have to buy new equipment or employ a specialist contractor.

Among the potential culprits being investigated are air-conditioning units or power lines.

The council has been in contact with the company responsible for electricity distribution.

The issue was first raised by Alliance councillor Stephen Donnelly. He said he has received multiple reports from a wide area of the town.

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“We Are Restricting Freedom… For The Common Good”: Irish Green Party Calls For Limiting Free Speech

The Irish Green Party followed many on the left around the world, including our own Democratic Party, this week and came out for censorship and speech controls. Indeed, the party went full Orwellian as its chairwoman Pauline O’Reilly called for “restricting freedom” to protect it.

O’Reilly’s comments are part of the introduction of the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022. We previously discussed this massive assault on free speech.

The legislation that would criminalize “incitement to violence or hatred against” people with “protected characteristics,” as well as “condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.”

Limiting free speech has become an article of faith for many on the left. I have written about my distress (as someone who grew up in a liberal, politically active Democratic family in Chicago) in watching the abandonment of free speech values by the party. Democratic leaders now uniformly call for censorship and speech regulations. President Biden even charged that companies who refused to censor opposing views on social media were “killing people.”  Others have denounced free speech as “a white man’s obsession.”

The anti-free speech movement has become openly Orwellian in claiming to protect freedom by limiting freedom.  It also employs using terms like disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation to obscure their effort to silence those with opposing views. Rather than use “censorship,” they refer to “content moderation.”

That effort was on full display this week in Ireland with this anti-free speech legislation.

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Irish government proposes mass culling of cows to meet radical net zero climate targets

The Irish government would need to set aside a €600 million budget in order to cull 65,000 cows every year for three years in order to meet its climate targets, according to internal reports seen by the Irish Independent.

The newspaper reported that 10 percent of all livestock in Ireland would need to be “displaced” in the coming years in order to comply with the government’s ambitious plans of achieving net zero carbon emissions by no later than 2050 and reducing emissions by 51 percent by 2030.

A mass culling of 200,000 cows over three years could be one way to help the Irish agricultural sector “close the gap” on its emissions targets, according to the briefing paper by the Department of Agriculture.

The plan would see Irish farmers compensated for the loss of their dairy herd, with the report suggesting a budget of €600 million would be required.

Farmers, however, aren’t convinced of the need to resort to such drastic measures and believe that other polluting industries aren’t being required to suffer the same fate.

Pat McCormack, the president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, told Newsweek on Tuesday that the Irish dairy herd isn’t any bigger than it was at the turn of the century.

“Our herd isn’t any larger than it was 25, 30 years ago. Can the same be said for the transport industry, can the same be said for the aviation industry?” he asked.

When asked whether farmers consider the cull of its dairy herd to be reasonable, McCormack replied: “If there is a scheme, it needs to be a voluntary scheme. That’s absolutely critical because there’s no point in culling numbers from an individual who has borrowed on the back of a huge financial commitment on the back of achieving a certain target that’s taken from under him.”

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Irish LGBT City Councilor Resigns After Allegations of Abusing Teen Boy

A young Irish man’s accusations that a Galway City Councilor groomed and sexually abused him since age 16 led to a politician’s resignation.

The alleged victim shared two videos on Twitter accusing Galway, Ireland’s first openly LGBT city councilor, Owen Hanley, of grooming and abusing him, according to a Post Millenial report.

“I am a victim of sexual abuse, catfishing, and underage grooming. Owen Hanley did this to me,” alleged the Twitter account using the name Jaimie Mac Giolla Bháin on New Year’s Day. “Mr. Hanley operated a fake Twitter account under the name Irish Jock, using the handle @leftmuscle. He posed as a teenager and reached out to me on Twitter, knowing who I was from previous engagements in the Social Democrats.”

Bháin described being coaxed into transmitting explicit images of himself over “a long period,” beginning after he turned 16 and continuing until February 2022.

After he discovered Hanley was behind the Twitter account, Bháin said he confronted the councilor with his evidence. Hanley denied the allegations, the alleged victim stated. He added that all traces of the accounts Bháin claimed Hanley operated were erased from Twitter and his profile pictures removed.

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Ireland Considers Enacting A Bill Criminalizing The Possession Of Hateful Material

We recently discussed a troubling conviction in Great Britain of a man for his “toxic ideology.” Now Ireland appears ready to replicate that case a thousand fold. The proposed Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 would criminalize the possession of material deemed hateful.

It is a full frontal assault on speech and associational rights. The law would allow for sweeping authoritarian measures in defining opposing viewpoints hateful. Ireland appears to be picking up the cudgel of speech criminalization from Britain, an abusive power once used against the Irish.

The law is a free speech nightmare.  Even before addressing the crime of possession of harmful material, the law would “provide for an offence of condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.” The crime of condoning, denying or grossly trivailising” criminal conduct would make most autocrats blush. The lack of any meaningful definition invites arbitrary enforcement. The law expressly states the intent to combat “forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.”

What is so striking about the law is how utterly unapologetic it is in the use of criminal law to curtail not just free speech but free thought. It allows for the prosecution of citizens for “preparing or possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics.” That could sweep deeply into not just political but literary expression.

The interest of the Irish in assuming such authoritarian measures is chilling given their own history under British rule, including violent crackdowns on nonviolent protests like “Bloody Sunday.”  Free speech is now in a free fall in Great Britain and Ireland appears eager to follow suit.

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‘No One Wants These Laws’: Ireland to Jail ‘Hate Speech’ Offenders for Up to Five Years

Those who use so-called “hate speech” will soon be jailed for up to five years under new legislation published on Thursday.

Any individual found guilty of using “hate speech” in Ireland will soon find themselves facing up to five years in jail. The country’s Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, has been at the centre of the country’s push towards implementing effective “hate speech” legislation, with her department announcing on Thursday that the first draft of the new laws would soon enter the country’s parliament.

Under the rules as proposed, those found guilty of “any intentional or reckless communication or behaviour that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or persons because they are associated with a protected characteristic” would face up to five years in jail.

What’s more, any individual convicted of such an offence would be branded a “hate criminal”, a label which the minister says is designed to “follow an offender in court, in garda vetting, and so on”.

“[H]ate speech is not about free speech,” McEntee declared in a statement published by her department.

“Hate speech is designed to shut people down, to shut them up, to make them afraid to say who they are and to exclude and isolate them,” she continued. “There is nothing free about that, and there is, frankly, no place for it in our society.”

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Irish Teacher Gets Jail Time After Refusing to Use a Transgender Student’s Preferred Pronouns

A teacher in the Republic of Ireland has been suspended from teaching and later jailed on contempt charges after he refused to address a transgender student by their preferred pronouns.

Enoch Burke was arrested on Monday for violating a court order that barred him from teaching at Wilson’s Hospital School in Westmeath, the news site RTE.ie reported. In addition to being barred from teaching, Burke is not allowed to set foot on the property, per the court order.

Judge Michael Quinn later found Burke guilty of violating the High Court’s mandate. He was then sent to Mountjoy Prison, where he will remain until either he purges his contempt, or the court gives further orders.

The teacher stood by his refusal even when faced with jail time, telling the judge that “it is insanity” that he would be arrested and taken to prison for refusing to violate his Christian beliefs. “I love my school, with its motto Res Non Verba, ‘Actions not words,’ but I am here today because I said I would not call a boy a girl,” Burke told the court.

The saga began when Burke, who teaches politics and German at the school in Multyfarnham, County Westmeath, refused to address a transgender pupil as “they” instead of “he.” He was soon placed on administrative leave by school officials pending the outcome of an investigation and disciplinary process.

Burke refused to stay away from campus, however. He continued to refuse despite an injunction that barred him from teaching or even setting foot on Wilson’s campus.

On Friday, the judge issued an order to arrest Burke after he was found sitting in an empty classroom at the school. He was arrested at the school on Monday and taken directly to court, where he told the judge that he would not comply with the injunction.

“I am a teacher and I don’t want to go to prison,” Burke told the court. “I want to be in my classroom today, that’s where I was this morning when I was arrested.”

“Transgenderism is against my Christian belief. It is contrary to the scriptures, contrary to the ethos of the Church of Ireland and of my school,” he added.

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Monkeypox Outbreak Caused by Climate Change, Professor Claims

Climate change is to blame for the recent outbreak of monkeypox, an Irish professor of epidemiology claims.

After the Republic of Ireland saw its first two monkeypox cases last week, Dublin City University Professor Anthony Staines surmised the zoonotic disease represents a climate change catastrophe.

“Climate change is driving animal populations out of their normal ranges and human populations into areas where animals live,” Prof. Staines said on the NewsTalk program On The Record with Gavan Reilly. 

“There’s a very detailed analysis of about 40 years of data published in [the journal] Nature a few months ago that documents what has happened and predicts what may happen in the future and it’s very much driven now by climate change – and to an extent by human population growth. 

“But climate change is pushing people into cities, it’s pushing animals into closer proximity with people and we’re seeing connections that we never saw before. 

“So this is what living with climate change looks like.” 

The professor’s assertions come as billionaire globalist Bill Gates warned there’s a 50 percent chance the next pandemic could be caused by climate change, or be the result of a man-made virus released by a bioterrorist.

Commenting on whether monkeypox could pose a threat to humanity on par with Covid-19, Gates said “there’s very little chance” it will have a similar impact, but cautioned there’s a potential for it to mutate into a more virulent disease.

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Grandmother Who Violated Mask Mandate to Spend Christmas Behind Bars

An Irish grandmother who violated the nation’s mask mandate is to spend Christmas behind bars after being sentenced to a year in prison.

Margaret Buttimer, a 66-year-old grandmother, will spend this Christmas behind bars after being sentenced to one year in prison for violating Ireland’s mask mandate, with six months of the sentence being suspended.

The grandmother was initially imprisoned last week after breaching her bail terms by going Christmas shopping, having been ordered to stay away from stores.

According to a report by the Irish Examiner, Buttimer was sentenced after being found guilty of not wearing a mask in a restaurant.

The judge presiding over the case made reference to what he called the grandmother’s “absurd selfishness” and “willful disregard of others”.

He also refused to hand down community service to the woman, claiming that it would be contradictory to do so as she was engaging in “persistent community disservice”.

The 66-year-old now has multiple convictions for breaching public health guidelines, having been jailed twice for her actions.

Buttimer had no previous convictions prior to the pandemic, according to the Irish Independent.

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Irish senator proposes vaccine passports should be needed to buy groceries

A Senator in Ireland has said that the government should consider banning those without a vaccine passport from public transportation and supermarkets, in one of the most extreme Covid proposals to date.

“Why not supermarkets? Why not public transport?” Senator Gerry Horkan asked. “I know it is difficult to police some of these things, but really, if you want to participate in society, you need to be vaccinated.”

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