A vaxxed and vexxed nation grows restless....

Recent backlashes against criticisms of Liveline callers and Independent TDs are rising in volume

The murmurings of discontent in the Irish population are becoming increasingly palpable and hard to ignore. The backlash over comments made by Darragh O’Brien, the Irish FF Minister for Enchanted Developments and Invisible Housing, towards Independent TD Carol Nolan last week was merely the latest example of this simmering unhappiness. Apparently, announcing that the Irish government may authorize the funding and development of 12 run-down cottages is pause for celebration while berating Carol Nolan for raising legitimate concerns on the additional pressure unlimited inward migration is causing on Irish housing, homes and families is eh….some type of what ?

Racism?

Try and book an Irish hotel or B&B this summer and see if maybe she has a point minister.

Curiously, if you google Darragh O’Brien in Google News you won’t find a trace of the Carol Nolan incident or his soliquoy of outraged indignation. I mean the temerity of Deputy Nolan to question him in this manner whatever was she thinking eh...

Interestingly, Marc McSharry was out fairly sharpish on social media to give O’Brien a not so subtle rap on the knuckles. When this happens, generally, it points to a disquiet amongst grass-root Fianna Fail supporters and their own party. Regardless of the fact that McSharry is theoretically an Independent. He’s very much closer to the die-hard element of FF as opposed to the hair-dyed elites of FF, FG or the Greens.

I will come back to why another big tech platform is important before the end of this little ditty. But for the moment just note Google News is not how I gather information about the strange and desperate goings-on of Ireland’s inhabitants of Wisteria Lane.

Now, before we look inward for answers and possible sources for Ireland’s rising discontent, I want to look outward and talk about one country that we don’t converse too much about in Ireland although they’re probably the second largest ethnic group living here, after the Poles, for over a generation. Lithuania. The reason for zoning in on Lithuania is a simple one, for what we will find, I believe, is a clear example of when globalism and virtue-signaling lets you down at the very moment you need the support of the former the most. And there should be a lesson in that for Ireland.

I wrote previously, in my Great Irish Reset piece, about Vladimir Putin possessing the skills of a decent chess player. I may have undersold his abilities a touch in this arena but sure the fullness of time will reveal all. On the off-chance you are relying solely on RTE News for information I am sorry to be the one to break the news to you that Russia is very clearly winning the war against Ukraine at the moment.

The reason that Lithuania is relevant at present is that Russia, as many will know, has a jigsaw piece of its federation and land-mass separated from the mothership. As the Bull McCabe understood it’s all about the land Tadhg. This piece of land is called The Kalingrad Oblast.

This sliver of territory gives the Russian Federation access to the Baltic sea at a pivotal spot. Crucially though, it can only be accessed over-land, by dear old Vladimir, by travelling through neighboring countries. The easiest access route for Russia to Kalingrad has always been through the state of Lithuania.

In the fall-out during the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia and Lithuania, negotiated unimpeded rail access to this key piece of land. This anomaly has operated more or less without incident since Lithuania joined the European Union. However, in the raft of recent sanctions against Russia, and its goods and services, by the European Union this important access agreement was overlooked, forgotten or simply ignored. The Lithuanian government have started implementing EU sanctions on this territory to the full letter of the supposed EU law. Affecting much if not all of the land-based activity on this key transport line.

It should go without saying that how you view the world is entirely dependent on where precisely your feet are planted on it. Obviously, the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are at heightened states of worry and awareness as they watch the enfolding war and drama play out in Ukraine. So, in terms of supporting the war effort these three countries are to the forefront and all-in. They worry about a very serious and relevant question.

Which one of us might be next?

In 2012 or 2013, I had a very, very interesting conversation with a Lithuanian academic working for a university in Vilnius. He and some colleagues from his university and indeed a number of other European institutions went to Moscow for some kind of software conference. On one of the nights, post the conference events, all attendees were invited out for drinks with their Russian counterparts. You can guess the deal. Vodka and more vodka. It didn’t take long for the Russian and Lithuanian PHD level Brainiacs to start bickering with one another. The subject needless to say wasn’t over differing software development strategies. But rather geo-politics. Anyway, for a finish, a few of the Russians were laughing at Lithuanian pride in their newly found independence. One of the Russians merely began twisting his clawed and outstretched palm back and forth. The signal was clear:

“ All we need to do is turn off the gas….”

I remember the anger and outrage of the person that told me that story. I, myself thought he was a bit melodramatic and his concern over the significance of it - a bit over the top. And yet and yet….

His anger was directed at the educated class of Russian. His worry was that if the intellectual class thought like that what hope for the opinion of the rest of the country and most specifically Putin and the ruling elites. Incidentally, at the same conference another Russian confided in him that approximately 500,000 people had died of famine and starvation in Russia the previous year and that Putin had such a tight control on information - catastrophes like that were entirely blanketed and obscured from the outside world. Very revelatory if in anyway close to a truth. I relay this anecdote, and I remind one and all, that it is only an anecdote, merely to highlight how real the Russia threat is to people from the Baltic countries. Even before the invasion of Ukraine. They have more immediate concerns than the price of a litre of diesel.

So, my opinion, is that Putin views Lithuania as the weakest link in the European Union chain. And is aggressively starting to sabre rattle. Curiously, the EU Commission and related non-elected agencies are pressuring not Russia but Lithuania to ease restrictions on this near blockade of the land-bridge. There is much argument revolving around what constitutes a sanctioned good. The end result is that Lithuania’s stance is drastically slowing down the transport of goods into Kalingrad. The reason for the EU’s cowering is as simple as it is unsurprising. Putin might well use this impasse as an excuse to invade Lithuania. And the EU will be powerless to stop him. The Lithuanians though, as you can see from the statement below, are not for the turning on their approach to the Russian Bear.

This is a very interesting but highly dangerous situation. Is Putin merely applying pressure to extricate maximum benefit from a negotiated Ukraine settlement or is he actually making his open moves towards reclaiming even more old world Soviet territory. We’ll soon find out I guess.

I believe the Lithuanian government’s brazenness and boldness comes not from their EU membership but from their NATO membership. I sincerely hope they are not believing every sweet whisper in their ear from the Biden administration in that regard. It very much remains to be seen whether this confident defiance is based on firm foundations.

Lithuania was invited to join NATO in November 2002 along with 6 other countries. In one of life’s quirks of fate I happened to be in Vilnius, Lithuania in November 2002 when George W. Bush arrived there to formally announce Lithuania’s invitation. In reality, what he really was attempting to achieve on that whistle-stop European tour was a successful coalition building exercise. For his proposed but as yet unannounced war in Iraq. A war that would kick-off the following year.

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Obviously, what the seven countries above share is a very significant history as part of / or influenced by, the old Soviet Union. The significance of expanding NATO to include these seven countries at that time cannot be ignored in light of today’s world. It will be revelatory to see if NATO will actually start a military campaign if indeed one of these seven is targeted by Russia in the coming months. How strong is the NATO commitment? - As I have outlined above the most likely target is Lithuania if this is Putin’s true intent.

The day before George W’s arrival in Vilnius in 2002, I was in an Irish bar in the old town drinking outrageously priced Guinness. On a side-note to any potential backpackers out there: stay away from Irish pubs abroad if you’re on a budget. Anyway, back to the story. One should remember that this was a mere 14 months months after 9/11 and the temperature of travelling in that period was one filled with fear. I quite accidently got to see first hand the security operation involved with the visit of a President of the United States. And lest we forget a deeply unpopular one. It was an extremely odd environment in which to be back-packing around Europe. Post 9/11 but pre the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Nervousness and fear abounded everywhere.

Now, you might equally note that it was quite odd for an Irishman to be in Vilnius in 2002. Especially, as this was an era before the expansion of the European Union to include Lithuania and the other nine countries that joined in 2004. I guess, and not to put too fine a point on it, drink was taken when the decision to go was made. For those with a case of selective amnesia, in 2001, Ireland voted against expanding the EU to include these mainly Eastern European bloc countries. I got into a heated discussion one night over the wrongness of this referendum result in the midst of sharing a barrel of porter with a few acquaintances.

“ Sure what the fuck do you know about Eastern Europe… You haven’t even been to one of those countries….“

The comment stung for indeed it was true. So a drunken commitment was made to visit as many of these countries as I could before Christmas of 2002. Now, the only reason I was able to grandly announce tours of Eastern Europe at the drop of a hat was due to the fact I had taken a voluntary redundancy package two or three weeks previously and had the guts of 28 grand sitting in a bank account crying itself to sleep at night. Begging to breathe it was.

So with about five thousand in cash, no credit card and two passports I hit the road. And let me tell you one thing I learned - the Irish passport was almost as unpopular as the American one in the countries I did manage to visit on that trip. We mightn’t have known much about them but the rejected countries most assuredly seemed to know all about us and our decision to exclude them. So it was then, that within a few weeks I was sitting abroad in Vilnius drinking terrible Guinness in this Irish pub with some class of colonel from the US military. He was a most enlightening chap altogether if a touch arrogant. A paraphrasing of it went something like this:

“ Look, Iraq is a done deal we’re just building our coalition of partners “

Ah yes, do you remember that wonderful “ coalition of the willing “ business of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of that Bush administration of nation-building war-mongers. I seem to recall offering the opinion that French support looked shaky at best. I hadn’t the balls to offer my true feelings - that the whole proposed enterprise was bonkers though. He offered the following assessment of the French and I’ve never forgotten it.

“ Don’t worry about the French, they’re what we like to refer to as foul-weather friends. They’ll be there “

I don’t remember much else about the conversation today other than to point out the obvious: He was wrong about the French. In the end they didn’t offer direct military support and US hysteria over the French decision involved attempts at re-naming French fries to freedom fries. It’s funny to recount now, but finding anyone that supported that war-effort is much like locating people who voted No to that expansion of the EU - thin on the ground. Although, to be fair if I’d known what the the European Union was going to turn into at such a rapid pace I might have thought twice and emigrated to Alaska.

I suppose what is relevant here is the sense of relief and strength that NATO membership gave to former Soviet-Bloc countries like Lithuania. Fledgling democracies completely dependent on Russian gas and trade relationships. The decision by Lithuania to ignore EU pleas for leniency puts into crystal clear focus the hypocrisy, weakness and fecklessness of the EU’s photo-op war policies. Tough for the cameras yet anything but behind the scenes. Putin seems laser-focused on exploiting this weak chain-link between the EU and Lithuania and it’s dual membership of the European Union and NATO. The EU look like they will cave to the Russian demands and gloss over the bananas nature of allowing the most sanctioned nation on earth sending choo-choo trains full of supplies thru a European Union state to its territory on the Baltic sea.

The next question the Lithuanians must ask themselves:

How strong is the NATO alliance?

In 2002, the might of US military was not in doubt. Two decades on I am not so sure about that anymore. Chinese strength has risen immeasurably and Russia is not nearly as weak as it was in 2002 after its disastrous flirtation with western capitalism. Very pertinent as well, is the fresh in the memory, fall-out from the disastrous US evacuation of Afghanistan in Chinese and Russian minds. The West as a collective is significantly weaker than it was twenty years ago and most of that weakness is due to flesh-eating from within. Russia and China seem determined to test that theory at any rate.

Would the US , UK et al be bold enough to send in troops to die on Lithuanian soil?

Are they indeed foul-weather friends ?

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I suppose the link back to Ireland relates to the dangers of virtue-signaling. At some point you will be required to reveal your virtue. And who owns your virtue. The people who elected you or the symbol taking pride of place in your Twitter profile. Irish politicians are increasingly running out of Irish road on their empty global virtue-signaling.

RTE and Joe Duffy found this out recently when they were squeezed between a rock and hard place. The volcano of Irish public opinion started spitting out hot lava. At a base level we had a national broadcaster and government almost afraid to stand up and protect the rights of women. It seems to be a mighty curious thing to be confused about doesn’t it?

The aftermath of that episode played out exactly as I feared it might. RTE and the mainstream media are back to overloading the public with reams and reams of LBGTQI and Pride content. There is a Joe Rogan analogy to be made here. When global and extreme progressive forces aligned to try and cancel his podcast they didn’t altogether fail. To my mind, he’s retreated from the battle-front and we have been treated to about 40 different flavors of comedian as guests over the last five months. RTE seem to be following the same Rogan path.

What the Irish public want is a national, nuanced debate on the role of transgender ideology in Irish society, law and school literature. The elite classes are behaving as if this subject might be quickly forgotten if everybody just keeps their heads down for a few weeks and so allow radically progressive social change to proceed as normal behind closed doors. We are in the most unusual situation of living in country where the two centre and centre right political parties behave almost exactly like hyper progressive liberals of the Gavin Newsom and Justin Trudeau variety. However, as Senator Garret Ahern found out the other day Tipperary ain’t quite California just yet.

Mattie McGrath the Independent did an interview with Claire Byrne last week. He also made a couple of further comments in the Dail questioning our open-ended immigration policy towards Ukraine. Virtue-signaling Ireland thought they were back on solid ground again after the Joe Duffy inconvenient incident of the week before. They most certainly were not. Fine Gael Senator Garret Ahern was quick out of the blocks with the below tweet.

Rule of thumb: When your tweet has as many comments as it does likes - you’re generally in trouble. The Senator was soon engulfed with outraged Tipperary people and many others besides. Whatever about preferring 1,000 Ukrainians over Mattie McGrath, I’d say the good Senator would struggle to rustle up 1,000 votes in the next general election with empty and vacuous tweets like this erupting out of his phone. Of course, there is nearly always a delicious irony to these things when you scratch a little below the surface.

Senator Ahearn owes his position in the Irish Seanad due to selection from the Administrative Panel as opposed to the seismic number of votes he’s raking in from the Tipperary electorate. Mattie McGrath on the other hand only managed to rustle up nearly 10,000 1st preference votes in the last General Election as an independent politician. Again, for the god awful stupid, lets recap why Mattie McGrath keeps getting elected election after election. He is one of the few politicians with an ability to regularly and successfully check the pulse of his electorate. And to make sure that he keeps his tractor between the hedgerows of what is acceptable to them and represent what is bothering them. It’s not rocket science and yet it’s not many politicians that possess the ability. He isn’t out there dreaming about clocking up air miles on the government jet so as to have his picture taken in Davos. Now let’s remind ourselves of how Senator Ahearn took possession of a taxpayer funded salary in April 2020. In his current gig it was through this archaic process of electing senators from an “ administrative panel “

The Administrative Panel is defined in Article 18.7.1º(v) as "Public Administration and social services, including voluntary social activities".[1] The Seanad returning officer maintains a list of nominating bodies for each of the five panels.[2] Candidates may be nominated either by four members of the Oireachtas or by a nominating body.[3][4] The electorate consists of city and county councillors and current members of the Oireachtas. As the Seanad election takes place after the election to the Dáil, the Oireachtas members are the members of the incoming Dáil and the outgoing Seanad.[5] Seven senators are elected on the Administrative Panel, at least three of whom must have been nominated by Oireachtas members and at least three must have been nominated by nominating bodies

An electorate of insiders and nominating bodies. Is it any big surprise that the virtue signaling outrage and out-of-touchness of the above tweet comes from a representative of one of the most undemocratic methods of selecting public representatives?

I suppose ‘tis easier to fall out of touch when there is ne’er a chance you’ll be relying on everyday constituents of the Irish voting electorate to keep your job. As I watched Carol Nolan speak in the Dail and represent the thoughts and worries of many of the plain people of Ireland, I couldn’t help but notice the slight shake in her hand as she spoke. A slight trembling as she read from her notes. Both she and Senator Keoghan have encountered vicious opposition from within our representative bodies anytime they open their mouths. It has been at times ferocious and fearsome and laced with indignation and no little condescension. They needn’t worry though. Empty vessels make the most noise is a proverb for a reason. The ordinary people of Ireland are restless and worried on a number of fronts. And these worries are not restricted to an unvaccinated class of citizen anymore methinks. Those two women in particular are on the right track as is Mattie McGrath. And as the Lithuanians are learning about their EU partners, when virtue signaling globalists, Irish and European, are put to the pin of their collar, 99 times out of 100, they emerge sucking their thumbs. The Irish electorate and Lithuanian politicians are running out of patience with them as recent developments have revealed. Crying for more of our help while beating their chests in temper with empty virtuousness isn’t cutting the mustard anymore.

Unfortunately Vladimir Putin knows that too. And he ain’t nobody’s idea of Mommy.

P.S. I promised to come back to a point about big tech I made at the beginning of this piece. There is a curious update in Wikipedia about Ireland and NATO’s relationship. Wikipedia have suddenly started quoting recent opinion polls that show a sharp rise in Irish favorability towards joining NATO. Interesting update to put on a Wikipedia page.

The globalists want us in NATO. Your guess is as good as mine as to the reason why.

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