Jeb Bush visit to Dublin: Press Statement

national | anti-war / imperialism | press release

Friday July 21, 2006 13:12

by Fintan Lane - Anti-War Ireland

antiwarireland at gmail dot com

087 1258325

Anti-War Ireland on Bush visit

PRESS STATEMENT, 21/7/06

ANTI-WAR IRELAND CRITICISES BERTIE AHERN MEETING WITH JEB BUSH

Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and brother of the US president, arrived in Dublin this morning. He is to meet the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and will speak at a business function at 12.30pm in the Conrad Hotel at Earlsfort Terrace.

Anti-war activists will stage a protest outside the hotel during the Jeb Bush event.

Anti-War Ireland, which organised the protest at Shannon airport when his brother visited in 2004, believes that Jeb Bush should be left in no doubt about the depth of opposition in Ireland to his support for the war on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dr Fintan Lane, a spokesperson for Anti-War Ireland, said:

"Jeb Bush is a key figure in the US political establishment and has fully supported and encouraged the military actions engaged in by his brother. Consequently, he bears some responsibility for the carnage and death that US imperialism has brought to the Middle East. He is a prominent neo-con and one of the architects of the aggressive and deeply conservative regime that now runs the United States. As far as Anti-War Ireland is concerned, he is as unwelcome as his warmongering brother, George W. Bush."

"Bertie Ahern should have met Jeb Bush only if he intended to use the meeting as an opportunity to express Irish revulsion at US military actions in the Middle East. Anti-War Ireland wants to know if Ahern raised this issue and if he voiced Irish opposition to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Likewise, the US administration is playing a wholly negative role in the ongoing crises in Palestine and Lebanon, and anti-war activists are concerned that Jeb Bush hears Irish opposition to US-backed Israeli aggression. No member of the current US administration should be officially welcomed in this country."

"Anti-war activists turned up outside the Conrad Hotel to make it
clear that opposition to US policy in the Middle East is a global
phenomenon. The US political elite, including Jeb Bush, bear primary responsibility for the daily carnage in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon."

PRESS RELEASE ENDS
To contact Fintan Lane, phone 087 1258325

www.antiwarireland.org

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Comments (12 of 12)

Too bad it's a workday

by Anti-Bushite

Fri Jul 21, 2006 13:15

Too bad this protest against Bush is happening at noon during a workday. Otherwise there would be mobs down there! It will be tough to get people out during work hours in Celtic Tiger Ireland.

A future president?

by anon

Fri Jul 21, 2006 14:52

According to reports on Jeb Bush, while, as a typical politician, he's denying presidential ambitions, he was well pissed off when his bro got the nomination yonks back and he still harbours notions for the Oval Office. He's sharper than Georgie Porgie, so probably more dangerous. If his "law and order" record in Florida is anything to go by, he lacks compassion on a major scale and has no understanding of social deprivation.

lack of geography

by LaLa

Fri Jul 21, 2006 15:46

I'd say he hasn't a fuck which country he's in. He probably thinks he's in England.

Give him credit

by Anonymous

Fri Jul 21, 2006 15:51

It's JEB not dumb George. Jeb is a wee bit brighter than his brother and I'd say his sense of geography is a bit better. Remember what George W. said when he met the Brazilian president who showed him a map of Brazil? "Gee, is it that big?"

Jeb is a nasty bastard. A menace. Hope he leaves soon.

Florida ina phúdal ag SAM?

by Duine

Fri Jul 21, 2006 17:37

Cá bhfuil arm Florida arís ? San Afganastán nó san Iaráic?

Ummm

by Mé Fein

Fri Jul 21, 2006 17:50

Duine,

Florida isn't some independent state - and, anyway, I'll bet my favourite cat that Floridian National Guardsmen and reserves are serving in Iraq. And probably in Afghanistan too.

Florida national Guardsman in Iraq

by Popsiq

Fri Jul 21, 2006 22:24

Yes, indeed they were, they staged out of Jordan for the Ground Invasion where they worked under the aegis of US 5th Special Forces Group(ABN). Where were the Irish Army? oh right, getting buggered all in UNIFIL, Pathetic really. Canada's Army at least has been helping to rid terrorists from the planet, Irelands? begging for sweets from Hezzibollahs, LOL. Irish Soldier to Hezzie "Please for Fucks sake dont kill me" .

Jeb Bush is an idiot from a family of idiot's, yet violent crime has gone down in Florida under his Governorship.

Not too late to protest to the sponsor and the host!

by Coilin

Fri Jul 21, 2006 23:28

Note what it says on the website:
"Meteor are the proud sponsors of The American Chamber of Commerce Business Lunch on 21st of July with guest speaker, Governor Jeb Bush"

You can protest direct to Meteor by:

Email:
info@meteor.ie
...

Fax:
+353 1 430 7013

Post:
Meteor Mobile Communications Ltd.
4030 Kingswood Avenue
Citywest Business Park
Naas Road
Dublin 24
+ 353 1 430 7000

If you have a subscription with Meteor, you can walk into another mobile phone outlet (e.g. Vodafone or O2) and ask them to set up a new subscription for you, while letting you keep your existing phone number.

When you have done this, you can post the Meteor SIM card and packing back to Meteor at the address above - as I have done with two SIM cards I bought from Meteor some weeks ago.

And you can also protest to the American Chamber of Commerce, who hosted the event:

American Chamber of Commerce Ireland
6 Wilton Place,
Dublin 2,
Ireland

Tel 353 1 6616201
Fax 353 1 6616217

Email: info@amcham.ie

Jeb ordered a second purge of "felon" voters

Sat Jul 22, 2006 04:07

I was aware that he had disenfranchised 91,000 voters in 2000 on the pretext that they were felons, but I only just discovered the following in Greg Palast's report re Dubya's speech at the NAACP Convention on Thursday:

[George W.] Bush gloated about his convincing the White Sheets Caucus of the Republican Party to go along with the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. But he forgot to mention the fine print. The Southern GOP only went along with renewing the law on the understanding that the law would never be enforced.

Think I’m kidding? Check this: in July 2004, the US Civil Rights Commission voted to open a civil and criminal investigation of his brother’s Administration in Florida for knowingly conducting a racially-biased scrub of voter rolls. In April 2004, Governor Jeb Bush, of the "family committed to civil rights," personally ordered this new purge of "felons" from voter rolls, despite promising never to repeat the infamous scrub of 2000. The new purge violated a settlement he signed with the, uh, the NAACP.

It also violated the Voting Rights Act. The Civil Rights Commission turned the case over to the US Justice Department which, two years on, has yet to begin the investigation. That’s not to say President Bush did nothing. He swiftly removed every member of the Commission who voted to investigate his brother.

Felons

Sat Jul 22, 2006 06:20

Convicted Felons lose the Right of Voting all through the united states, not just florida. It has been that way for at least 100 years, all this idiot jeb did was enforce laws on the books as he's required to do. If the convicted felons wish to have their rights restored , they do have an avenue of redress. But considering how few registered voters go out & vote anyway, whats the issue?

The Wag Speaks....

by redjade

Sat Jul 22, 2006 21:54

Anti-Bush Protests
I see that some of Ireland's few remaining unemployed protested Jeb Bush's presence/existence/family in town today. It even made the second slot on Sky News Ireland (I know, but there was nothing else on). Pity the speaker, Rory Hearne, didn't get any coverage. His claim that Hamas and Hizbollah deserve support as "national liberation movements" would have been useful to publicise a little more widely as an insight into the scum that are the Irish Anti-War movement and the Ireland Palestine Solidary Campaign.

http://siciliannotes.blogspot.com/2006/07/anti-bush-pro....html

The issue is, they're not felons at all

by Coilín

Sun Jul 23, 2006 04:09

Here are some of the people cheated of the right to vote by Jeb Bush:

Thomas Alvin Cooper ... twenty-eight, was flagged because of a crime for which he will be convicted in the year 2007. According to Florida's elections division, this intrepid time-traveler will cover his tracks by moving to Ohio, adding a middle name, and changing his race.
...
Madison County's elections supervisor Linda Howell refused the purge list after she found her own name on it.
...
Johnny Jackson Jr. ... thirty-two, has never been to Texas, and his mother swears he never had the middle name "Fitzgerald." Neither is there evidence that John Fitzgerald Jackson, felon of Texas, has ever left the Lone Star State. ...
...
Wallace McDonald ... sixty-four, lost his right to vote in 2000, though his sole run-in with the law was a misdemeanor in 1959. (He fell asleep on a bus-stop bench.)
...

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=122&row=1

In the same article, I note in passing:
"Texas is among the thirty five states where ex-felons are permitted to vote ... "

You see that, Popsiq? That's "thirty five states where ex-felons are permitted to vote."

Thirty-five (35) states.

(So where are you from, Popsiq? - Greenland, I guess, with a name like that?)

This article provides some more details and interesting numbers:

GREG PALAST / Journalist who investigated the 2000 electoral fraud in the USA.
El Mundo
Tuesday, November 5, 2002

ISAAC HERNANDEZ. Special for EL MUNDO

...
In his book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast tells how the State of Florida hired a company named DBT for four million dollars to remove felons from the electoral list to keep them from voting. Palast demonstrates how Jeb Bush´s office asked DBT to grow the list to the max, including voters with similar names and born on the same date as the felons.
...
Thousands of people came to the electoral office to vote only to find out that they were felons.
Originally we thought it was 57,000 people that were purged. Now I got the info from DBT that there were 94,000 people in this list. 91,000 were innocent. If those people have voted, Al Gore would most likely have received the 537 votes that he needed to win.
...

Read more here:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=182&row=2

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Jeb Bush visit to Dublin: Press Statement

Comments (12 of 12)