Libertas and Rivada Networks Ltd.

Tech hitches at p.ie this morning

maybe they read this this morning
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0520/1211232308995.html

naoise nunn works for rivada?

still didn't any more description of how all these thousand individual people are funding their campaign.

lostexpectation wrote:

maybe they read this this morning
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0520/1211232308995.html

naoise nunn works for rivada?

still didn't any more description of how all these thousand individual people are funding their campaign.

Quote :

COMPANY CONNECTION: THE MAJORITY of the founders of Libertas, the entity campaigning for a No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum, are employees of a company with links to the US military.

A spokesman for Libertas yesterday confirmed that five of the seven members of the Libertas Institute Ltd are employees of the Galway subsidiary of Rivada Networks LLC, a company registered in Delaware.

However, spokesman John McGuirk said Libertas had "absolutely not" received any funding from Rivada. He said Libertas had to date spent approximately €300,000 and was being financed by donations from supporters.

Rivada Networks LLC provides communications technology to the US military's northern command as well as to the national guard in 16 states in the US, and three US federal bureaus. Galway-based businessman Declan Ganley is the "chairman, chief executive officer and founder" of Rivada Networks LLC, according to its website (Rivada.com).

He is also a member of Libertas Institute Ltd, a Galway-based company limited by guarantee which has seven members. He is the most prominent spokesman for the entity in its campaign against the Lisbon Treaty.

According to Mr McGuirk, Mr Ganley, Naoise Nunn, James O'Reilly, Norrie Keane and Martina Higgins, who are all members of Libertas, are all employees of Galway-based Rivada Networks Ltd. All live in Galway.

Mr O'Reilly is chief operating officer of the Rivada parent company in the US. The two other Libertas members are Mr Ganley's brother, Seán, and Chris Coughlan, an incoming president of the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland and a senior executive at Hewlett-Packard's European Software Centre in Galway.

The directors of Rivada Networks LLC include: John Tackett, who worked with the US air force for 20 years; Admiral James M Loy, a former deputy secretary of Homeland Security in the US; Rear Admiral Robert Duncan, who served with the US coast guard, and Lt Gen Dennis McCarthy, a former marine who retired from the US military in 2005.

Another director, John Kelly, is a former captain in the US air force who "has held high-level security clearances", according to the company's website.

The latest filed accounts for the Irish subsidiary of Rivada are for the 2006 calendar year and state that neither Mr Ganley nor Mr O'Reilly held shares in the US parent company. Mr McGuirk could not say yesterday if this was still the case and referred the question to a spokeswoman for Rivada in the US. No response had been received by late yesterday.

The directors of Libertas Institute Ltd are Declan Ganley and Dr Coughlan. Its financial accounts for the calendar year 2007 state it had no administrative expenses during 2007. The company was incorporated in October 2006.

Asked how the accounts could show no expenses for 2007, Mr McGuirk gave two seemingly conflicting responses. He said all expenses were met with personal cheques from Mr Ganley "and the other directors". When it was queried why this didn't appear in the accounts, Mr McGuirk said it was because "absolutely nothing" had been spent in 2007.

Mr McGuirk said he is the only person employed by Libertas. He said Mr Ganley had to date donated €6,348.69 to the Libertas campaign, the maximum allowable under the law.

He said he did not think it was in the interest of supporters to have their names disclosed as "on several occasions people who supported Libertas have been told by the Government parties that it is not in their interest to do so".

Irish Times - Today.

They must be very busy if they are working for Rivada and running the Libertas campaign.

i didn't realise naoise nunn worked for rivida,what his qualifications PR? i thought he might have met him through levethian(sp?)

somebody mentioned a female libertas speaker?

In fairness, if they all donate €6348.69, they only need 48 donors to get them to €300k.

Also in fairness, Cookiemonster said he donated. I'm sure others did too. Donation in kind is a question I don't know anything about - it that implied in the IT article ?

Huh, looks like the ECB website is down too !

edit : disregard, it's just slow.

I would like to see the objects clauses of the company constitutions of Rivada Networks Ltd, Rivada LLC and Libertas Institute Ltd. Can anyone post them up?

I know there is no suggestion of this, but as an Irish citizen I would like an assurance from the US Government to the Eu or to Ireland that the US Government has no connection or association with Ganley's campaign.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

I would like to see the objects clauses of the company constitutions of Rivada Networks Ltd, Rivada LLC and Libertas Institute Ltd. Can anyone post them up?

I know there is no suggestion of this, but as an Irish citizen I would like an assurance from the US Government to the Eu or to Ireland that the US Government has no connection or association with Ganley's campaign.

Ganley's animus against an EU Constitution is not new, as this 2003 paper to a US "Think Tank" he wrote shows. The sees the Constitution as a "socialist and centrist" exercise. He appears to be very ambitious politically and in business terms and has forged a lot of alliances in the US. I assume his is politically NeoCon and proud of it.

LINK TO GANLEY'S PAPER Europe’s Constitutional Treaty: A Threat to Democracy and How to Avoid It

Ganley, according to BreakingNews.ie has denied any impropriety in relation to the co-location of his employees in Libertas and Rivada Networks Ltd.

Is this security stuff a core earner for Ganley or is it just an incidental element of a communications business?

What's a NeoCon then, and why is KevBarr so keen on linking Ganley with the term ?

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?p=1169055&f=14#p1169055

To see DC and co working for Rivada so directly is certainly disconcerting. Brings it home a bit.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Is this security stuff a core earner for Ganley or is it just an incidental element of a communications business?

Yup.

Ye've all probably seen this already, but anyways...

Article by Chekov Feeney.

Libertas: US Military Contractors Against Lisbon!
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/87311

Quote :

...Declan Ganley and Rivada

Declan Ganley

Amazingly, Declan Ganley actually manages to out-shady McEvaddy, no mean feat.

The potted narrative that one can find about him from the Internet has him showing up in the following 'business situations'

• 
  In 1991 trading Russian Aluminium in Latvia [9].
  
• 
  In 1996 he popped up in Albania, setting up the country's first private finance company, shortly before the economy
  collapsed on the back of pyramid schemes [11].
  
• 
  By 1997, he was apparently the rl=http://www.entrepreneursforgrowth.org/AA8D8/Board/Declan_J_Ganley.aspx]owner of the biggest Forestry holdings in Russia[/url] [10].
  
• 
  in 2004 he got himself into trouble in Iraqi telecoms [12]. In 2007 he attracted some negative attention for paying for trips by officials in the US department of Homeland Security [13].
  

Now what's interesting about these positions is that none of them were in what one might call 'normal market economies'. In fact, it would be fair to refer to them all as being environments where 'gangster capitalism' reigned. One does not prosper in such situations by having smart business plans and efficient production processes. One prospers by having access to decision makers and
having friends in high places within the intelligence and security communities. The fact that "most Russian banks [had] their own private armies" in the 1990s and business takeovers tended to be of the armed variety underlines the point rather well [14].

This brings us on to Ganley's latest venture, Rivada Networks. If his previous career led one to the suspicion that he must be awfully well connected with the intelligence community, Rivada proves it in spectacular fashion.

Rivada Networks provides 'first responder' communications networks to the intelligence community and emergencey services. According to their website blurb, their clients include "USNORTHCOM, the National Guard Bureau, DHS, FEMA, multiple states, and various state and local agencies". Basically, their products promise to allow the various intelligence and emergency services to talk to one another in situations where much of the normal communications infrastructure may have been destroyed or damaged. This falls broadly under the remit of the Department of Homeland Security. It is an extremely sensitive area for a number of reasons. Firstly, it involves carrying confidential data between the various bodies that make up the US Intelligence Community. US intelligence bodies tend to be extraordinarily paranoid about the security of their electronic communications - achieving SIGINT dominance (signals intelligence, i.e. electronic snooping and counter-snooping) is the cornerstone of US intelligence strategy. The US intelligence agencies often refuse to share access to their data even with each other, never mind entrusting it to third parties. If they allow Ganley to carry their inter-agency communications, they must trust him an awful lot....

He seems like a classic disaster-capitalist*/neoliberal. And if he were receiving his contract funding from EU sources rather than via the Pentagon, then he might very well support this treaty!

*(to use Naomi Klein's apt phraseology from "the Shock Doctrine" http://www.naomiklein.org/main )

___
Edit-to-add: (cleaned up quote)

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Is this security stuff a core earner for Ganley or is it just an incidental element of a communications business?

It is Rivada's communications business. The market for emergency networks for state security services is limited to, you know, security services. That's what Rivada does, nothing else at all.

As to whether it's a big earner for Ganley, that's a very interesting question. The following quote from the IT today is interesting:

"neither Mr Ganley nor Mr O'Reilly held shares in the US parent company"

Now, due to the means that accountants and businesspeople employ in the structuring of finances to avoid taxes, it's not exactly definitive. But it does raise interesting questions. If, as his returns state, Ganley doesn't actually own any of Rivada, who does?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

What's a NeoCon then, and why is KevBarr so keen on linking Ganley with the term ?
http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?p=1169055&f=14#p1169055

Well I think a Neocon is basically an American neoliberal. Not that a lot of Democrats are not neoliberal either but I suppose a neocon is a more militaristic flavour.

For the reasons why, I'd suggest you check out David Harvey's "A Brief History of Neoliberalism". It's an eye-opener.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkWWMOzNNrQ

http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts/neoliberalism_2917.jsp

Quote :

..Harvey traces the intellectual roots of neo-liberal thought to the
Austrian political philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (author of The Consititution of Liberty).
It is, Harvey says, a form of utopianism the dangers of which were first identified by Hayek’s contemporary Karl Polyani back in 1944:

“The idea of freedom ‘…degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise’, which means ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property’. But if, as is always the case, ‘no society is possible in which power and compulsion are absent, nor a world in which force has
no function’, then the only way this liberal utopian vision could be sustained is by force, violence and authoritarianism. Liberal or neo-liberal utopianism is doomed, in Polyani’s view to be frustrated by
authoritarianism, or even outright fascism”.

Quote :

He seems like a classic disaster-capitalist*/neoliberal

In "Gone with the Wind" they were called "Carpetbaggers".

Still a good term.

Pax wrote:

He seems like a classic disaster-capitalist*/neoliberal. And if he were receiving his contract funding from EU sources rather than via the Pentagon, then he might very well support this treaty!

And if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle! Whatever about having an argument over issues pertaining to the text of the treaty, this kind of s**** p***** me off.

Hit google, there are a number of speeches where Ganley has spoken passionately about promotion of democracy and more to the point spoken passionately about the need for greater democracy and accountability in the EU, infact we went so far as to set up an organisation to advocate for such.

What has the loss of a commissioner got to do with First responder communications networks in Louisiana? Nothing! What has Ireland's tax rates got to do with it in any of the other states Ganley's company offers it's services? Nothing. What does the charter of human right have to do with it? What does Ireland's voting weight on the council have to do with it? What does the transfer of competencies have to do with Ganley's business interests? Nothing.

He's not lobbying for a different treaty, he's not pushing a alternate agenda, he's not giving you another option. He's telling you why the current option is bad and you're more the welcome as many have to debate the points raised and decided if you agree or disagree. If Libertas is wrong then they're wrong and you vote the other way. The Lisbon treaty is the issue, the provisions within the treaty are the focus of the vote and should be the focus of the debate.

I we were told this evening by Michael Mulcahy that a vote against Lisbon was a vote against Europe. That is, without doubt, abominate bullshit. Similarly to support Libertas's call for a no vote isn't a vote against Europe, libertas are pro Europe that much us undeniable and a no vote isn't a vote for some sort of US dominated pussyass Europe with Ganley and his "disaster-capitalist" pals making out like bandits. It's total rubbish and it shouldn't be part of the debate.

I'm a Yes voter and have no time for Ganley but I thought he got a raw deal from RTE tonight. They really don't like the guy. It was as if they reported the story to highlight the fact that he has contacts with the US military, even if they are benign, but when they cut to him speaking, they only featured his voice for the bits that made him sound like a raving lunatic.

Then, just to get another dig in, DDP reminded us that Labour made him declare that he is tax-resident, just so that there might be a bit of suspicion that he has something to hide.

Of course, Ganly is going to have to swallow this whole. He positioned himself as some sort of mystic, which is always a red rag to a bull when it comes to the inflated egos of RTE. A much larger dose of humilty early on would have given him the teflon coating he now so badly needs.

His media strategy from day 1 has been a disaster. That guy McGuirk appears to be totally at sea; he should start with a local election campaign or something; he appears to have no idea who the media actually works.

cookiemonster wrote:

Hit google, there are a number of speeches where Ganley has spoken passionately about promotion of democracy and more to the point spoken passionately about the need for greater democracy and accountability in the EU, infact we went so far as to set up an organisation to advocate for such.

Speeches that promote abstract stuff that everybody supports, like "democracy", "freedom", "accountability" and so on are completely and utterly worthless in evaluating somebody's beliefs. Mugabe does a particularly empassioned democracy and freedom act, but you can substitute your least favourite dictator of choice for him and you get pretty much the same result.

A much more useful metric is what those people actually do. In your case, the fact that all bar one of the 'members' of your political movement call Ganley 'boss' should give you pause for thought. If he believed in democracy, you would expect that he'd be able to manage at least a fig-leaf of it in his own movement.

cookiemonster wrote:

What has the loss of a commissioner got to do with First responder communications networks in Louisiana? Nothing! What has Ireland's tax rates got to do with it in any of the other states Ganley's company offers it's services? Nothing. What does the charter of human right have to do with it? What does Ireland's voting weight on the council have to do with it? What does the transfer of competencies have to do with Ganley's business interests? Nothing.

They are all (allegedly) part of the a treaty which the US defence community oppose and are the sorts of things that might make people vote against it. They US defence community frequently do shockingly stupid things, but they're definitely not stupid enough to honestly argue their point.

cookiemonster wrote:

He's not lobbying for a different treaty, he's not pushing a alternate agenda, he's not giving you another option. He's telling you why the current option is bad and you're more the welcome as many have to debate the points raised and decided if you agree or disagree. If Libertas is wrong then they're wrong and you vote the other way. The Lisbon treaty is the issue, the provisions within the treaty are the focus of the vote and should be the focus of the debate.

By opposing the treaty, he has, by definition, an alternate agenda. Whether that is a return to the status quo, or some alternative evolution, we can speculate on, but it's an inescapable logical conclusion that he does have an alternate agenda. The fact that he doesn't say what it is should not be a good thing to somebody who is interested in accountability and democracy.

cookiemonster wrote:

I we were told this evening by Michael Mulcahy that a vote against Lisbon was a vote against Europe. That is, without doubt, abominate bullshit.

I completely agree that the pro-treaty parties are being unspeakably dishonest about this treaty, as usual. Virtually every single thing they say on Europe is either:

a) meaningless advocacy of universally popular abstractions (vote yes for the spirit of cooperation!)

or

b) a bare faced lie. (European treaties do not impact upon the sovereignty of national governments).

The whole idea that the vote is for or against 'Europe' is an absurdity. Sub-continents and shared socio-cultural heritage don't care if you support them or not. It's a vote to take the next step in a particular project of European political integration. A project, moreover, whose contours are almost completely unknown to the public and whose basic shape is such that it would be opposed by a large majority of Europe's population if they knew much about it.

The lie that probably irritates me the most is the one about sovereignty. I don't actually give a shit about national sovereignty, but it irks me that the government repeatedly denies the fact that EU treaties such as Lisbon result in a dimunition of national sovereignty. There is just no possible way, in the broad lands of logic, that abrogating 'competencies' (i.e. decision making power) to a paramount supra-national body does not amount to a dimunition of national sovereignty. To even argue against this requires one to engage in semantic absurdities and attempts to redefine the meaning of a well-understood phrase. It's undignified to have to listen to such crap, but I've yet to hear anything but denials of this obvious truth from our politicians. Luckily, my expectations of our politicians are suitably low.

cookiemonster wrote:

Similarly to support Libertas's call for a no vote isn't a vote against
Europe, libertas are pro Europe that much us undeniable and a no vote
isn't a vote for some sort of US dominated pussyass Europe with Ganley
and his "disaster-capitalist" pals making out like bandits. It's total
rubbish and it shouldn't be part of the debate.

It's not "Libertas's call for a no vote" and to claim that no voters are supporting Libertas in any way brings you instantly down to the level of the Yes side in terms of honesty. The Libertas Institute has seven members, five of whom call one of the others 'boss'. There are organisations comprising tens of thousands, with broad and deep roots in Irish society also calling for a no vote, entirely independetly of Libertas.

Indeed, IMHO, by aligning yourself with this organisation, you are actively participating in the dragging of democratic principles further than they have already sunk into the gutter. I mean Fianna Fail may be little more than a club for opportunistic business types, but at least it contains some facility for members to change policy, replace leaders, ignore their instructions and so on. To all appearances, none of this exists in Libertas, an organisation structured according to the dictatorial model of decision making that is embedded in the corporate structure that they have adopted.

Why are you supporting an organisation that is so undemocratic and untransparent that it makes the EU look like Pericles' Athens?

If you think democracy is a good thing, then why are you helping to promote the one anti-EU organisation which amounts to little more than a man with lots money to spend and his employees, an organisation which already receives a ludicrously disproportionate amount of attention based, purely upon the size of its PR and advertising budgets?

Are you really so naive that you can't see that uncritical acceptance of the leadership of an organisation which is singularly undemocratic and based almost entirely on a single man's access to money is not exactly the best plan for somebody who would like more democracy?

lostexpectation
Tool-Master's Apprentice Stage I

Re: Europe - Do the Public Know What they Are Voting For ?
by lostexpectation Today at 1:58 pm

ganley reply http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0521/1211310192985.html
he is a chairman no less, more think-tank con-pretentiousness

according to ganley there is no overlap between libertas and rivida

except a phone number and office.....

http://www.irishelection.com/05/libertas-rivada/

its not about war it about contracts and military ones plum contracts

the fact he doesn't own shares is strange.... where does one look up that info?

by lostexpectation Today at 2:00 pm

nice digging, this simple stuff is what blogs are good for
http://semper-idem.eu/?p=316

I read an article on the Irish Times on Sunday that suggested that various people working on the Libertas campaign are employees of Rivada. It also said that some punter called John McGuirk says that those people work for Rivada and only do Libertas stuff in their spare time. That is patent nonsense. David Cochrane announced on p.ie when he had been employed to work on the Libertas campaign. He was straight up about it. Now McGuirk is saying D Cachrane works for communications company and any Libertas stuff is voluntary work in his spare time. Sounds like pants to me. Rivada would want to review their Libertas Team's and McGuirk's statements.

They may be well advised to stop all speaking separately to the press and making statments that all seem to be contradictory. Is there a captain to the ship at all?

If Rivada that they work for is a subsidiary of a US company, is there any barrier to the firm funding a referendum campaign, does anyone know?

And do we know for sure that Rivada is not an Irish Company - it is based in Galway.

Well there is a US company and an Irish company (subsidiary?). It is not clear which one has been paying some of the Libertas people. One would have to see the cheques and the accounts to be sure. Libertas has to comply with the SIPO regs. I expect that SIPO will go hell for leather after these guys if there are irregularities. Mmclo has a thread on p.ie on it from the SIPO point.

It is an interesting question. There is quite a bit of outrage about a Company making a play to influence the Referendum outcome.

But if I think about it, Corporate donations to Political Parties are a part of the scene, and we maybe aren't as aware as we should be of that influence, as it is less in your face than Mr. Ganley.

The SIPO limit to donations is less than €7,000.00.
If you are a director of a company, I wonder if you are able to donate your personal donation and also donate through your company?

I think I remember on a P.ie thread or here someone mentioning that a Libertas invite had been sent out by Ganley's business office. Donations in kind - time, office space and so on, all count as donations to SIPO.

It is very difficult to see how this all could hang together.