Open source nutwork
When I said a few weeks ago that the death panel disinformation campaign in America sounded a lot like the FUD cloud being spewed by the No camp here, I didn’t think they’d take it seriously.
While I was on holidays a work colleague texted me to say she had been canvassed by Cóir. The canvasser told her that if Lisbon was passed that she would be put down like a dog. My colleague has cerebral palsy.
So at the GPO yesterday it was not difficult to get a word with Brian T. Hickey a principle spokesman from Cóir. He said that the canvasser should not have said that about being put down but that it was possible that Euthanasia would be introduced because 2 EU countries have it and the European Court could rule that Ireland should have it too. He scrambled a bit as he introduced what I call the Cóir question mark – it might happen because Cóir say it might even if everyone else says it won’t. Further questioned Hickey could not speak to the specific parts of the Lisbon Treaty that protect people with disabilities.
Then there’s the unwelcome influence of UKIP, furthering their national campaign against the EU by sticking their nose into Irish politics – ironically with the assistance of rabid Irish nationalists.
Conservative party Eurosceptics and the UK Independence party are using dubious polling data supplied by militant Irish nationalists associated with a convicted IRA gunrunner in their campaign to kill off the EU’s reform blueprint, the Lisbon treaty.
This cooperation and propagation of successful campaigning tropes between fringe groups would come as no surprise to John “Global Guerrillas” Robb, who’d probably just describe it as a political application of his open source insurgency idea.
