Tag Archives: conspiricy theory

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Cost of mother and baby homes compensation scheme will exceed €1bn

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Irish taxpayers are being forced to pay massive a compensation bill — costing each worker an average of €355 — for supposed historic abuse that never happened. Government officials estimate that the compensation scheme will have a final cost €800 million. However, these are probably the same people who estimated that the Ryan Commission would cost €2.5 million, but it ended up costing the taxpayer c. €82 million. A massive under estimation, but it was dwarfed by the final bill.

The Ryan commission investigated abuse at industrial schools, awarded €970 million in compensation, spent a further €176 million on health, housing, educational and counselling services, incurred a legal bill of €192.9 million, while the running of the commission itself cost €82 million, giving a grand total of near one and a half billion Euro (€1.43 billion). Consequently, the cost to every single worker in Ireland was €700 each on average.

The commission of investigation into mother and baby homes stated in its final report that ‘there is no evidence of the sort of gross abuse that occurred in industrial schools’. The Irish, being Irish, chose to ignore the evidence, commission reports and plain old common-sense. The scandal promoters have had the luck of the devil to pursue their agenda for compo at a time, when we have in situ, probably the most inept government in the history of the nation. It seeks to punish the citizens of the country for historical events that never happened. Imagine working hard, paying tax and the government spending it foolishly. Perish such thoughts.

 

 

EJ

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The Mistakes of Catherine Corless

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Catherine Corless has put into the public domain the records of children who died at the Tuam Children’s Home but with significant omissions. Had these relevant details been included it would certainly have removed the potential from the media and others to have added their excitable and incompetent interpretation to state death records.

Corless claimed to have uncovered evidence of neglect and abuse at the Tuam Children’s Home when she found that 796 death certificates — mainly those of infant deaths —  occurred at the home between 1925 and 1961. I have now acquired copies of all the 796 death certificates — plus one, which the registrar missed — and can now put back into the public record the missing information.

Corless admits to not being ‘an historian’ and her lack of skill and erudition are evident in her reporting of the historic deaths at the Tuam Children’s Home. To her credit, she has decried, in public, on several occasions, her media conferred title of ‘historian’, as she has no qualifications to use the title. In the early days of the Tuam scandal the media occasionally referred to Mrs Corless as an ‘amateur historian’ but quickly dropped it use for fear it would take the fire out of the story, and of course the use of the full qualification was to imply expertise to lend fake credibility to their fake news.

Therein lies the kernel of the Tuam scandal. Either there are no historians in Ireland with expertise in historic medicine or such was the level of abuse, hysteria and media censorship that all our competent academic historians were kept silent. There were one or two with no expertise in historic medicine who eventually weighed in on the side of scandal promoters. Alarmingly however, their personal, political agendas combined with Irish self-loathing ran riot in a system devoid of functioning quality control measures.

Care was provided not just to unmarried mothers.

The deaths of 78 children who were born to married parents are recorded as having occurred at the Tuam Children’s home. The institution was officially called St. Mary’s Children’s Home, Tuam. Every single record in the state register either refers to it under its official title or simply as ‘Children’s Home’.  All the genuine historical sources show that the intuition functioned as a refuge for women and children. It had a hospital, and the Bon Secours order were highly regarded order of nurses. The order opened and operated another hospital in Tuam for decades and not one single hint of what was supposed to have happened in the neighbouring institution has been reported by the media.

The Tuam Children’s Home has been renamed anachronistically to a ‘mother and baby home’ to mislead the public and further a 21st century agenda.

The vast majority of mothers gave their occupation as ‘domestic servant’, sometimes abbreviated to ‘domestic’. Three children who died were those of ‘Travellers’. Other occupations include one schoolteacher and one actress. However, the second biggest cohort are recorded as the daughters of farmer’s and labourers.

Children born to married parents also died at the Tuam Children’s Home. Again, the vast majority of fathers were farmers or labourers. Other occupations which appear on the registers include, one mechanic, one hawker, two sons of soldiers, two children of tinsmiths, and three children of factory workers.

Poverty

Poverty remains the most significant factor in high infant mortality rates across the globe today. The occupations of all the mothers and fathers recorded are to cohorts of people most likely to have been living in extreme poverty

All deaths certified by a doctor.

All deaths which occurred at the Tuam Children’s Home were certified by a medical doctor and the details contained of these certificates were duly entered on the state register.

Only four deaths out of the 797 were not marked as being certified by a doctor. These were all due to scribal omissions. When a doctor has not certified a death, registrars are required to record it on the register, usually using the phrase ‘no medical attendant’.  As both of the required phrases are omitted it can only be due to an error on behalf of the person recording the details on the register.

The omissions occurred in the years 1926, 32, 38 and 1954. The first three record that John Shine was the Assistant Registrar acting under John Nohilly, Registrar. The latter occurred under Assistant Registrar Luke J. Fox.

Registrar entries are written in by hand and many different writing styles are observable of the years. These are entries made by various clerks working at the office of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages at Tuam, Co. Galway.

Galway and Mayo County Councils funded the Tuam Children’s Home, but children were there from other counties.

Galway children outnumbered children from Mayo by over two to one. Co. Clare ranked third. Deaths of children form the following counties were also recorded: Co. Sligo, Co. Leitrim, Co. Roscommon, Co. Westmeath and Co. Offaly.

Disappeared Mothers!

According to a group representing former residents of the Tuam home — quoting Catherine Corless as the source —  claim that ‘6 single mothers, aged between 24 and 42, died in the Tuam Home between1925 to 1961 and remain unaccounted for’. They name these women as: Annie O’Donoghue, Mary Curran, Mary Joyce Costelloe, Brigid Reilly, Margaret Henry and Annie Roughneen. The source for this information is not given.

Obviously, the sources used by Catherine Corless do not include the official register where all the other certificates are located, and which she obtained.

Let’s look up the state registers for these disappeared women.

Two women named Anne Donoghue died in the district of Tuam between 1925 and 196. None of these women was of childbearing age. There are no listings for Annie O’Donoghue or any variants of the surname.

Sixteen women named Mary Costello died in the district of Tuam between 1925 and 1961. Three of them were of childbearing age at the time of their death and none are recorded at the children’s home. Mary Costello(e) did not die at the home in Tuam.

Five women named Mary Curran died in the district of Tuam between 1925 and 1967. All aged in their 70s and not of childbearing age.

Seven women named Brigid Reilly died in the district of Tuam between 1925 and 196. One of them died age 32 at the children’s home hospital from measles, oedema of the lungs and pneumonia. Her death was certified by a medical doctor and duly entered on the state register.

One woman named Margaret Henry died in the district of Tuam between 1925 and 1961. She died at the children’s home hospital from nephritis and cardiac failure Her death was certified by a medical doctor and duly entered on the state register.

Two women named Annie Roughneen died in the district of Tuam between 1925 and 1961. Both of them died at the children’s home hospital. Annie aged 42 died of pulmonary tuberculosis. Her daughter also named Annie died 15 days earlier from congenital debility. Both deaths were certified by a medical doctor and duly entered on the state register.

Clearly neither Catherine Corless nor the Tuam group looked up the register and based their opinion that women ‘remain unaccounted for’ not of evidence but on fanciful notions. Moreover, they missed the death certificates of at least three other women.

Catherine Corless accumulated 796 death certificates with the help of an official at the office of the Registrar for Births, deaths and Marriages. The official missed out on at least one death certificate. I can confirm that the total number of death certificates is at least 797.

Thick person certifying deaths!

Journalist and author Allison O’Reilly speaking at an event in October 2019 stated:

The people in the home were signing certificates were former residents. Bina Rabbitte was a former resident of the home. I wouldn’t expect her to be educated. She had no medical experience. So am probably no proper life skills.. she spent her whole life in the home..

The name Bina Rabbitte is recorded as the ‘informant’ on nearly every death certificate from 1939 to 1960. The informant is the person who goes to the registrar’s office to report a death and have it entered on the register. If they present the registrar with a note stating the cause of death along with the recognised signature of a medical doctor, the officials enter the details on the register and use the word ‘certified’ under the column titled ‘Certified Cause of Death and Duration of Illness’.

Bina Rabbitte never certified a single death but O’Reilly’s absence of basic knowledge of state registers is abundantly evident. Moreover, that absence of knowledge and skill is behind many more claims which make use of use the imagination and not evidence.

To the best of my knowledge no one — until now — has gone through Catherine Corless’ 796 death certificates and checked if they were reported accurately and to see if they contain any evidence of abuse. Her published list contains the occasional transcription errors but the biggest error by far was not what she chose to publish, but what she left out. It was perhaps accidental and inept, but our academic historians should have spoken out at the earliest opportunity. That is of course using the assumption that Ireland possesses academic historians with the capability to produce work based on quality analysis.

The human mind detests gaps in knowledge so much that it will fill them in using assumptions. Assumptions are a vital part of human intellectual endeavour but experts — before they become experts — are taught to look hard for evidence and not to lazily rely on assumptions until all evidential trails have been exhausted. Such endeavour is beyond the capability of most people who make assumptions without the knowledge to know were to look for evidence.

From 1925 to 1960, 13,431 illegitimate children died but ten times as many legitimate children died, all from the same causes and diseases. Why have our ‘new historians’ not gone is search of those who killed 132,387 children who were unfortunate enough to be born to married parents during the same period.

A wise person makes their own decisions, an ignorant person follows public opinion.

EJ

 

 

 

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‘History cannot be a dehumanised, reductive, simplistic or self-serving narrative’

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The gross hypocrisy of An Taoiseach Micheál Martin might not be immediately discernible from his the quote below, spoken at an event to launch the 2021 element of the Commemoration of the Centenaries, specifically those events which led to Irish independence.

‘History cannot be a dehumanised, reductive, simplistic or self-serving narrative’ – Micheál Martin 2021

Only a few short weeks ago, the Taoiseach used dehumanisation combined with a simplistic and self-serving historical narrative to castigate Irish women who managed institutions dedicated to the care of unmarried mothers and their children.

Micheál Martin is a former minister for health, thus a person who we would reasonably expect to have at least a basic knowledge of medical statistics and perhaps even an elementary understanding of pathology, aetiology and epidemiology, respectively the study of disease, disease causes, and disease spread.

The Irish government, in its infinite wisdom, chose to appoint a commission of investigation who had no knowledge of science or medicine, to enquire into a scandal, which is chiefly based on the issue of historical high mortality statistics.

The investigation stemmed from false charges that Irish women, during the 20th century, had starved babbies to death, first at the Protestant run Bethany Home and later to all catholic run homes.

Many Irish parliamentarians, eager to have their names entered on parliamentary record, for having the wit to able to see what others needed spearfishing goggles to see, brazenly stood up and declared to the world that ‘marasmus’ was a synonym of starvation.

The reductive insinuation was that these dehumanised Irish women were motivated by a hatred of illegitimate children and so took to offering to the nation a baby disposal service. One so called historian stated unequivocally that ‘the state and church colluded to get rid of an embarrassment to Catholic Ireland’, a false claim, used also to promote a self-serving narrative, based on one cherry-picked and misinterpreted political comment.

Micheál Martin stated in January 2021 that it was ‘deeply distressing to note’ that high infant mortality rates were known to the authorities, but they did nothing about it. He takes this information from the final report of the commission of investigation into mother and baby homes. This comment and finding are the result of a complete lack of knowledge of vintage medicine, aetiology and epidemiology and is based entirely on false assumptions.

It is particularly interesting as the Taoiseach’s comments were made during a tough national lock-down due to the coronavirus pandemic. The legislation which facilitated the lock-down is the seminal 1947 Health Act. One of the prime architects of this legislation was the government’s Chief Medical Advisor, Dr James Deeney. His book, ‘To Care and To Cure’, is essential reading and an authoritative source for the study of Irish medical history. The act combined with the Local Government (Sanitary Services) Act, 1948, mark a turning point in the history of Irish public health, recognising and tackling the causes of disease, and for the first time, they gave the authorities effective powers of enforcement. It is a reminder that the reduction in mortality rates which followed, would have been mostly ineffective if medial solutions alone were pursued.

Deeney records the extraordinary efforts made by many people and organisations to reduce infant mortality rates, often in very challenging circumstances, across every section of the population. Furthermore, the statistics continually revealed that the people most at risk were poor people and poor families. Many charities raised money to help these people, some were supported by local authorities who in turn worked to support poor people and poor families. Infant aid societies provided mothers with clean milk, clothing and other essentials. Mothers were taught good hygiene practices and encouraged to breastfeed their babies. It is beyond the scope of this article to go into more detail, save to say, that there is a whole genre of Irish history dedicated to the subject but was completely ignored by the commission and others.

The role of poverty in causing high infant mortality rates was well noted during the past, is still under study by science and continues to appear with regularity in today’s medical and scientific literature. The issue jumps out from the commission’s report, yet they manage to ignore it completely. An incompetence which points to the self-serving narrative of cultural bias and an exemplar of the Dunning Kruger effect. A cognitive bias where people are sure that wrong conclusions are correct, due to a lack of knowledge of alternative explanations.

The Irish nation should be deeply disappointed that a former minister of health, and a former history teacher, knows so little about health issues, historic or contemporary, as evinced through parroting, is now the leader of the nation.

Persons who proclaim that ‘history cannot be a dehumanised, reductive, simplistic or self-serving narrative’, should have the wit to understand the meaning of their utterances and demonstrate a capability to act in such a way.

Parroting the words of a scriptwriter will not lend to the utterer any credibility.

You can find out how and why the Irish dehumanised women and what caused politicians to write into the political record a reductive, simplistic and self-serving narrative in my new book.

 

EJ

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The Rubberbandits and Blind Wet Fartage!

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Isn’t it amazing how Blindboy, who celebrates or at least draws attention to Limerick’s reputation for criminality, gets miffed when Forbes believes the Rubberbandits! Blind indeed.

The Rubberbandits made their name through lampooning Limerick’s criminal classes using a plastic shopping bag for facial disguise instead of the customary lady’s nylon tights. The net effect is to reinforce the public view of the prominence of criminality within the city. It has become a celebrated part of the city’s culture, so much so, that Limerick city in its bid to become the European City of Culture 2020, enlisted the services of city’s fake and comedic criminals. The bid ultimately failed bid but quite what the European judges thought of what constituted Limerick’s culture is unknown, but it would appear that no other city celebrates is criminal classes with such alacrity as Limerick.

The Rubberbandits might counter with arguments that they are really lampooning the lower classes of Limerick. However, only a tiny proportion of these people might have a need to wear a disguise on occasion. It is also unfair to associate swathes of the population with criminality. Moreover, it should come as no surprise to anyone to see that Limerick has become, unfairly, associated with criminality, a view reinforced by Blindboy Boatclub et al.

Mr Boatclub angrily dismissed an article published by the American Forbes magazine describing it as a ‘wet fart’.  The article concentrated on the negative aspects of Limerick and had the audacity to use the city’s nickname, ‘Stab City’ and went it on to claim that the billionaire Collision bothers were lucky to escape the warzone. The Collision brothers, natives of Limerick city, founded the Stripe Internet payments company which required them to move to Silicon Valley in California and they became billionaires in a very short period of time. Hence, the notion of escaping Stab City.

It was they who were the subject of the article written by an Irishman, Stephen McBride who was born in Dublin but now works in America. Using his local knowledge and filtering it through many Irish cultural biases, he produced yet another expression of national self-loathing. McBride took all the negative commentary about the city and embellished further to a point where the Collision brothers described it is daft and bizarre.

The reality is that Limerick is a lovely city and I visit it regularly, and I recommend visiting to all my friends and acquaintances. California has a murder rate three times higher than Ireland, so one is much safer in Limerick than California.

The debacle is emblematic of a problem in Irish society which largely remains unaware of its malignant effects. In the book I name this set of behaviours,  ‘Clurichaun Syndrome’, which you can see expressed daily through the media where Irish people, of normal intelligence, can think that they can make loathful comments about the Irish nation, and it magically does not apply to them, nor their family and friends.

Blindboy is also blind to clurichaunism and most of his audience think that he is just expressing Irish self-deprecating humour. But there is a lot to suggest that the Rubberbandits, like many of their fellow country people, are unable to rise above the prejudices of their ancestors. William Hazlitt once wrote that ‘prejudice is the child of ignorance’ and I add that her most precious child is Irish ignorance due in no small part to its ability cause real world harm.

Irish children are not allowed to be proud of their country and the achievements of their fellow country men and women. Almost every Irish child is taught that that Irish people, outside of their social circle, are faulty human beings. Of course, it is set of views which are also held by people outside of one’s social circle so that they think you too are nothing more than an ignorant gobhite. Accordingly, people are blind to the fact that their negative prejudices apply to them, so it is like a blind self-loathing. It has many practical implications which have the net effect of taking children out into the back year and shooting them in the foot. Their future prospects are damaged by the fact that they had the misfortune to be born Irish. Many cannot wait to emigrate to get away from the fault human beings in the forlorn hope that the superiority of people from other nations with rub off on them.

Irish people will support English soccer teams in their hundreds of thousands, leaving a few hardcore people to support their own. The result is that Irish children’s prospect of becoming a professional footballer are greatly diminished. It is emblematic of a centuries old problem where Irish investors have a preference for not investing in Ireland.

Many Irish employers have a preference for hiring non-Irish people. Irish universities cannot produce enough talent, with result that all the giant multinational companies with operations in Ireland are staffed by a huge majority of talented individuals from abroad. At the same time, Irish third level graduates have to go abroad to find work. Irish universities are engaged in grade inflation, effectively pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible politicians but not the employers.

The Irish society of the early 21st century is a society in chaos, its identity smashed with false notions of women misogynists and a deeply misogynistic society. A set of historical falsities which the Rubberbandits have keenly promoted and done so using pure Irish ignorance.

You probably would not believe it, but I do like the Rubberbandits, they showed great talent with their song ‘Horse Outside’ and great poetic talent in the Irish language version of ‘I Want to Fight your Father.’

However, as Albert Einstein astutely observed, ‘few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment’, the talent of the Rubberbandits is wasted through promoting myths with no basis in fact. They have deposited many ‘wet farts’ about the Catholic Church and no doubt stored the resultant soiled underwear in a plastic shopping bag. Sometimes it looks like the forgot witch plastic bag was used  to store the said underwear. 😀

EJ

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False History – Understanding the role of Cognitive Biases

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This documentary financed by the Canadian government provides a good overview of the outcomes due to our cognitive biases combined with the democracy of the internet and social media. The one thing the documentary makers neglect to do is explain what a cognitive bias is. It is a systematic error in thinking that impacts one’s choices and judgments. In other words when it comes to information processing the human mind makes mistakes. Most of the mistakes are made in a such systematic way that they are predictable. There is only one big problem, most of us are unaware that we may be processing information which has no bases in reason.  The upshot is that we now live in a democracy of the gullible, but we need to turn the tide of belief in conspiracy theories by teaching critical thinking skills in schools. Enjoy.

Debunked, MABH, Uncategorized

Mother and Baby Homes

It has been called a holocaust, a mass murder of babies, with fantastical tales of abuse that have been imagined by a small, but influential, cabal of the country’s axe grinders. What does it say about Ireland’s historians when the country’s most decorated historian is not a historian! However, the Irish taxpayer, once again, continues to be forced to foot the bill for stupidity. It evinces for the Irish nation the adage, that it is impossible to soar with eagles when ruled by turkeys.  – E. Jordan

A False History

Ireland has been in the grip of major historical scandals in recent times, mostly based on a false interpretation of history. The mother and baby homes scandal which took flight in the world’s media in 2014, is peppered with lurid headlines and claims of murder and abuse and even a holocaust. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that has not stopped some sections of Irish society and politicians from jumping on the bandwagon, adding one spurious claim on top of another. Moreover, while most historians are silent, one or two less prominent academic historians have also chased after and jumped on the bandwagon. When we look for answers, it warrants an investigation into why the quality controls have become dysfunctional in the Irish university system.

Why would people go to the trouble of making up a false history, and what is in it for them?

There are powerful psychological forces at play which will cause us to believe in things which are not true, especially if they can create a sense of social superiority. The easiest way to achieve this is to create and hold views which denigrate other social groups, thereby giving one a sense of superiority, but it is illusory superiority.

Ireland society’s cultural biases and prejudices are so pervasive, and are inculcated from such an early age we hardly notice them. However, on close examination, they are central to answering questions relating to why reason, logic and evidence have been relegated to the doldrums and replaced with excitable nonsense, hysterical machinations and idiotic egocentrism.  The author Eugene Jordan provides a ground-breaking analysis that when combined with the supporting evidence, reveal a fascinating, and disturbing picture of 21st century Irish society.

Irish academic history has suffered a significant embarrassment having being usurped and intellectually outflanked by a woman who freely admits that she is not a historian and has no history qualifications. Yet she, to her credit, now ranks as Ireland’s most decorated historian, standing head and shoulders above all those so-called ‘professional’ historians holding up the universities’ walls. That in itself tells us that the historians are not up to the job, because they missed the holocaust which happened right beneath their very noses. It can also indicate that there is something very rotten at the core of Irish academia—a bold claim backed up in the book robustly with evidence.

The reality is that poor unmarried mothers were subjected to a brutal and austere regime when Ireland was under British rule. However, and to their great credit, immediately after independence, the new Free State government moved to end the brutality of the workhouse system and devised a system which was infinitely better for all the country’s poorer citizens and especially women. This is the correct historical context against which Irish mother and baby homes should be viewed, but Ireland being Ireland, when the commission of investigation was set up it was prevented from looking at the regime which existed under the British.  Why? Because it weakens the case that it was only catholic Ireland which abused women.

The whole conspiracy theory falls apart when two simple questions are asked. What was in it for the women, both protestant and catholic operating these homes to start offering a baby disposal service? Why did infanticide continue when babies could be left at an institution for disposal?

We could then ask, why was the church looking after and rearing unwanted children for nearly 2,000 years and why is it that for the first time in history, are Irish women accused of murdering unwanted children.

The first duty of a historian is to tell the story of past events, set in their correct historical context, but the evidence shows convincingly, that Irish academic historians are very much in neglect of this duty.

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