- Frightened Albanian wrote:
- I have repeatedly dealt with the points raised by Arnold. They are on a level with the Libertas supporters on various boards. Point out anything that I have missed that is new pls
Sadly the other thread on this issue has, once again in true Stalinesque fashion, disappeared.
- Quote :
- In his review, O’Connell claims EU proceedings were “used as a platform for repeating smears and giving them greater credibility without the slightest application of rational inquiry”.
Ganley has said any funding of his Libertas campaign during the Lisbon treaty referendum was within Irish rules and his party has dismissed the claims relating to US interference as “attacks on the messenger” that are inaccurate and unfounded.
He said a number of US officials stated that the American government did not fund the Libertas campaign or support it in any way, but that politicians in Brussels ignored this in order to continue its “smear campaign”.
Such findings are worrying and reveal the fragile state of the democratic institutions of the European Union and the ease at which the can be abused and undermined by those in power against ordinary individuals who question their wasteful and antidemocratic actions.
In the finding of his report Mr. O’Connell states:
“I believe that Mr. Ganley has been the subject of a sustained and coordinated information campaign intended to destroy his political credibility. The allegations against him were not reasonably substantiated and they served a political purpose. This was to divert the responsibility for the Irish ‘No’ vote on the Lisbon Treaty onto stories about political funding.
From my search for smearing characteristics in the Press cuttings, I conclude that two smears have been applied to Libertas and Mr. Declan Ganley. What I have called the ‘US Funding Smear’ and the ‘Irish Funding Smear’ coalesced into the ‘European Parliament Smear’, where the European Parliament adopted flimsy allegations of wrongdoing, dubious procedures were used and evidence in favour of Mr.Ganley was ignored. At the same time, major institutional mechanisms of the EU were brought to bear on him. “
He investigates the methods which were used to propagate the smears and identifies some worrying instances in which these smears are stated continuously despite statements and information which prove them to be nonsense.
He identifies how suspicion was raised over Libertas funding from American, CIA and Neo-Con sources and done so without any to information to support these allegations.
One of the more interesting things identified by Mr. O’Connell was how those against Ganley were using their own script which has little basis is things which were said by Mr. Ganley themselves.
On 1 June, the Irish Independent ran a story in which Lucinda Creighton talked about a lack of sincerity in the way Libertas was funded (mentioned above). Libertas responded that it was being funded totally by donations, many from big business, who felt the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) had ‘sold them out’. Mr. Ganley stated categorically that Libertas had acted in accordance with electoral funding rules. He insisted that he would not respond to calls to reveal the identity of Libertas donors while the rules allowed him to protect their confidentiality. He said “We have a huge number of business donors who want to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, but we will reveal a list as soon as FF/FG shows theirs." In other words, he challenged the two main political parties to show the transparency they were demanding from Libertas. The article also carried a repeat account of the US Funding Smear and a rebuttal by Mr. McEvaddy to the effect that that the US establishment was in favour of Lisbon .
A statement made by Ganley in an article by Daniel McConnell in the Irish Independent on June 1st responding to the continued repetition of unfounded funding smears from FG’s Lucinda Creighton Mr. Ganley said:
"It's a little rich that people in Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are trying to lecture us about raising money, their records aren't squeaky clean. They set the rules up and we are in total compliance with their rules. We have a huge number of business donors who want to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, but we will reveal a list as soon as FF/FG shows theirs. Given what I have experienced, I'm not willing to expose them to that."
He notes that Stories about Libertas’s compliance with Irish electoral laws in Irish newspapers on 18, 19 and 20 September. And how the day after a radio interview on the 18th by Mr Ganley an article by Fionnan Sheahan reported that The Environment Minister John Mr. Gormley stated that Libertas had acted lawfully under funding rules and also reported the content of Mr. Ganley’s radio interview the day before.
The article went on to say “Until now, Mr Ganley had always maintained Libertas got its funds from small donations and insisted he only gave a donation under the legal limit. But in a dramatic development, while speaking to ‘Today FM’, he finally admitted he was the biggest bankroller of the organisation, loaning Libertas €200,000 -- without any guarantee of getting it back”.
The Independent article from May reported Libertas claimed that its funding came from business. The references to small donations appear to come from the rhetorical imagery of Gay Mitchell. Within the legal terminology of Irish election law, a donation and a loan are different things and a loan is not subject to legal limits.
He comments:
“At the end of this three-day period, Mr. Gormley’s validation of the Libertas position had been reported and forgotten. Dramatic embellishments had been added: non-existent contradictions, non-existent admissions and non-existent burdens of proof. Only the purpose of this flurry of reports must have seemed unclear at the time.”
It seems that this modus operandi has continued on from this incident, unsubstantiated allegations and questions. What is most worrying is where this has continued to happen and when it enters the European Parliament.
But Mr. Ganley is not alone in being on the ********************ty end of the EP’s stick. I opened this blog with an entry on the misfortune of Hans-Martin Tillack. In the case of Mr. Tillack he was arrested by Belgian police after they were contact by OLAF who prompted his investigation based on nothing but rumour.
Once again rumour is the basis of proposed action by the European Parliament. On Monday 22 September the smears are repeared again. This time by Daniel Cohn-Bendit MEP “last weekend the Irish press revealed that there may be a link between those who funded the ‘no’ campaign in Ireland and the Washington Pentagon and the CIA. “In conjunction with EP President Hans-Gert Poettering “We need absolute transparency about the amount of money paid to Libertas, the organisation represented by Declan Ganley, and where the money came from. We learned from the Irish media – and I am repeating here what was reported last week in Ireland – that Mr. Ganley had claimed in the past that the donations came from quite ordinary people and that they were small donations. Now he has admitted that he himself made €200,000 of his own money available to the organization”
Note again the “donation from quite ordinary people” notion again with no mention of businesses at all.
Mr. O’Connell notes:
“It is worth mentioning that the allegation that Libertas accepted finance from the US CIA appears to be a criminal allegation under Irish Law . The European Parliament’s acceptance of a Press report as the basis of a criminal allegation appears disproportionate. This is not a way for an EU institution to treat information about a criminal allegation. Mr. Ganley’s rights are out of sight.”
Mr. Tillack anybody?
Mr. O’Connell also makes reference to actions by Hans-Gert Poettering’s staff which was mentioned in Bruno Waterfield’s blog and in Mark Mardell’s blog.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/bruno_waterfield/blog/2008/09/24/eu_claims_irish_are_cia_stoogeshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2008/10/get_ganley.htmlHe comments how on the 25th September the European Parliament’s ‘Conference of Presidents’ debated whether or not to set up Temporary Committee of Inquiry into the Financing of the Irish referendum campaign and how they had no authority to set up a Temporary Committee of Inquiry on a matter clearly outside the constitutional framework of the EC and EU Treaties and suggest this was done to add some “sham authority” to the smear.
How, despite comments by Mr. John D. Negroponte, US Deputy Secretary of State, attended the Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin on the 17th on November who commented “…absolutely not! I say that on very good authority, not only being Deputy Secretary of State but also being a former Director of National Intelligence. Absolutely not” when asked “Has the government or the Bush administration provided any support either financial, moral or otherwise to Declan Ganley and the Libertas movement?”
And despite the moderator for the evening was Tom Conlan, also a journalist and the security analyst of the Irish Times the comments went unreported.
Mr. O’Connell’s reports extends to cover the litany of smears, all unfounded and executed in a calculated and underhanded manner against Mr. Ganley and Libertas and concludes:
“I conclude that the use of systematic smear campaigns may be debatable morally, but they undermine democracy when public institutions are used to increase their effectiveness.”
Portal 
