Fear & Thought Crime In Modern Ireland

By Charley Brady

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." - H. P. Lovecraft

Damn you, Internet! When I heard that our Beloved Leaders in Government were to be given priority in receiving inoculations for the Swine Flu I was hoping to be the first to say that they were an obvious choice as most of the country believes them to be a shower of swine in any case and therefore likely to be the first casualties.

Sadly, that's already doing the rounds. I guess it was too good to miss.

If I recall correctly, at the end of George Orwell's brilliant fable of power gone wrong and turning into pure oppression, "Animal Farm", the downtrodden creatures on the farm look through the farmer's window from the pig to the man and then back again but already it's impossible to tell which is which.

How appropriate for the times we live in and the way in which our governments represent us.

There's nothing funny about people dying, that's for certain. Yet am I the only one that thinks that this whole blanket coverage of swine flu is just a bit too convenient?

It's certainly taken our eyes and ears from the crooks that have led the world down the tubes to the extent that it is going.

What was it last year? Bird flu or something like that, with the same stuff being trumpeted as that dramatic "breaking news" across the front of the TV screen. Then there was foot and mouth before that. And let's not forget SARS.

Is this latest attempt to put fear into people geared to closing down Mexico for other reasons?

Look at what may be the underlying reasons for this. I just want you to think about this endless litany of fear that is being poured out of every newspaper and television screen. Just think about it. It's designed to keep us in fear and in our place.

I can't help but wonder. I don't doubt the existence of this flu of course, but for crying out loud look at the way it's being presented.

As I write, there are eight people dead in a country the size of Mexico officially of swine flu and the rest are assumed to be sick because of it; one person has been diagnosed in Ireland as having it; two in Scotland; but the way in which some tame presenters are putting it is just plain scare-mongering. As if it were a game.

When things go pear- shaped in the world as it has done with - oh, just for example - lawyers in Ireland boasting that they have had to take on extra staff because they are repossessing so many homes and talking quite happily about it because it's good for business, then you know that we have lost integrity, morals and decency completely.

How can you be happy by destroying people who have fallen on hard times?

So let's take our minds off it and deluge ourselves with another kind of fear.

Can nobody see through this?

Fear and especially fear of the unknown is a wonderful thing when you want to control people.

Keep them perpetually glued to the news, wondering if they should cancel their holiday, wondering what they can buy to prevent themselves from dying.

Buy a mask, buy whatever the pharmaceutical companies are telling you to buy. Threaten tourism and say that industry will suffer.

Show news reports with important looking maps that will convince you that the world is about to end or even, as has happened, have some "academic" coming on to tell you that this may lead to the deaths of millions. Millions.

Do you think that people see the "may"? No, they see "deaths of millions".

It's almost like a new form of advertising.

Before we return to the latest instalment of how our politicians genuinely don't care, just so long as their greedy pig-snouts are stuck in the money trough, let me mention something else.

People never cease to amaze me. I think very little of the kind of weasels who take offence at the slightest word that is perceived to be wrong.

So it was rather humbling, after the piece here a fortnight ago when I used the dreaded word "internment", to discover that people were agreeing with me. As a matter of fact there was only one dissenting voice and that one was mannerly and polite.

I was talking about the completely out-of-control situation here where the police are hampered in doing what they want to do - their job - by the ludicrous laws that look after the gangsters who are continuing to make life a pure misery in so many towns and cities while the victims, the murdered and their families seem to have no come-back and no protection against killers who are sneering at them.

Because of the historical connotations around such a word as "internment" in Ireland I had thought that article would go down like a lead balloon. It was quite the opposite.

I shouldn't underestimate people so much: it seems that a lot of others have had this same idea of last resort and frustration. Even one of the most popular Irish Sunday morning radio shows debated it, with one man quite rightly saying that this has turned into a war between the drug-pushing scum and the men and women who simply wish to be left alone and to try to live a decent life.

As little as I think of the human race, I tend to forget in my anger that there are many good people out there. And these people are worth caring about and fighting for.

That does emphatically NOT include our Foreign Affairs Minister Michael Martin, who is refusing to give up his teaching post even though he'll be getting a pension of €130,000 plus a lump sum of €340,000 once he is, hopefully, booted out. You see, in a country as insane as this he is entitled to hold onto his teaching post for twenty years.

It's amazing how many schoolteachers who don't teach school have rode the system, some even to the extent where they own over ninety properties worldwide.

I guess education is everything, especially if you are a greedy grasper who is asking everyone except themselves to "feel the pain".

Then you have la crème de la crème of creeps, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern. He couldn't be bothered to show up for the Garda Representative Association's conference in Kerry two days ago because he was too busy in Dublin.

It's the first time in 31 years that a Justice Minister has failed to show and is a huge snub to policemen who are under pressure in so many ways at the moment.

He was too busy to travel to Kerry but he sure as hell wasn't too busy to spend €842,533 on travel expenses to places such as East Timor last year. Staggering.

Now, thanks to his new Orwellian thought crime ideas which affect people like me in the most direct and fascist manner it will be a crime to blaspheme even in ways that are meant to be ironic.

I respect and condone those who laugh at secularism and at atheists such as myself. That's part of a free society; but in return I expect to be able to ask questions of and poke fun at Catholic beliefs, mad Muslim beliefs, Scientology, Creationism and what ever you're having yourself.

I don't intend to give up my right to do this so now, in this country's crazy walk down the road to complete censorship, Ahern (to take our minds from his egotistical and profligate spending) says that we will be fined €100,000 for that loose term of "blasphemy".

How does that make us any different to the mullahs who marched, burned effigies and threatened murder in the name of Allah because of a few cartoons in a Danish newspaper?

How is it different to Thatcher in the eighties and her desired wish to eradicate homosexuality even as an ABSTRACT CONCEPT?

Ahern is also giving the police that he snubbed and who have better things to be getting on with the right to raid the homes of those like myself in search of "blasphemous " material.

It'll be interesting to see what the thought police make of my bookshelves where Aleister Crowley sits happily next to four translations of the Bible and where Eliphas Levi snuggles up next to the Koran.

The day that I am forced to give up an inquisitive mind and to read only what the government wants me to read is the day that I will happily go to jail, which is where I'll be going anyway as I don't have the money for Ahern's damned fine.

Article 40 of the Constitution says, "organs of public opinion shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State."

My friend, eighty-year old Frank Carroll and one of the brightest men that I ever met says that the Constitution should be totally amended to suit the changes that have quite naturally came about since it was written.

Shock! Horror! Yet Frank, despite a lifelong involvement with the ghastly Fianna Fail party, has a mind that is still questioning and seeking answers, unlike money-grubbers like Ahern and his tribe of chancers.

I can't let this column end without saying step forward Father Pat Bradley for your Christian values in defending 21-year-old Richard Finn of Rockfield Drive in Dublin after he was sentenced to 12 years for admitting to the repeated rape and oral rape of a young woman in church grounds and filming part of the rapes.

You are an example to us all, Father; as you say he should be given early release, because "the sentence was very long for a lad of his age."

A lad. Some lad all right.

You and your kind are the reason that I never set foot in a church. You speak for him but only speak platitudes for his victim.

Trust me, if this thug had done this to any of mine he wouldn't have to be concerned about where he was going to celebrate his freedom.

To hell with so-called priests like Bradley.

Would you like to give me my fine now, Ahern? I mean, that was blasphemy, wasn't it? Goodnight from me for now and hello to Big Brother.

But I promise you this: I'm not going down without a fight because I will never defend filth like Richard Finn and I will always be against filth like you, Father Pat Bradley.

I'm away from the bat cave for a couple of weeks but hope to see you all when I get back.

Same bat time!

Same bat channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net