Jim Cusack, the new Freddie Starr, ate my hamster

national | arts and media | other press Monday April 24, 2006 17:01 by Sindo Watch

Indymedia, The Village and Chekov Feeny all getting to the Sindo

Is Ciaran Byrne another nom de plume for Brendan O'Connor?

Jim Cusack, the new Freddie Starr, ate my hamster

VINCENT Browne has been joined at his Village Idiot HQ by Scott Millar, a journalist handed his P45 last year by the Sunday Times, and Chekov Feeney, a self-styled "anarchist" who helps run Indymedia.ie.

The site is a regular publisher of fanatical attacks on those who don't share its range of extreme left-wing opinions. Chekov has now brought his student union views on world affairs to Vincent's even barmier publication.

Indymedia and Village's current hate figure is our own Jim Cusack. Rather hilariously, Browne has given Feeney the job of reviewing the papers, while neglecting to disclose his (Feeney's) various links with assorted nutters and his one-eyed dislike of Cusack.

Browne has also asked Millar to "review" Cusack's work, in pieces then rewritten by Browne himself. Who cares, one might wonder, nobody reads it.

But a Sunday Independent reader points out that it's the Village Idiots who have now found themselves being lampooned on a new blog spot at www.indymediairelandwatch.blogspot.com.

Here's a flavour under the heading 'Jim Cusack ate my hamster': - "Kevin/Chekov (I know that annoys someone) Feeney, head honcho at Indymedia Ireland . . . is writing for Vincent Browne's ludicrous Village magazine - that piece of leftist, cretino-liberalist, pseudo-conscientious, vanity headwank tripe piling up on the shelves of Spar and students' union shops throughout Ireland. Village Idiot contributors include SWP newspaper editor and Trinners boy Rory Hearne worrying about deprivation in Knackaragua, motor-mouthed yank Harry 'former-Microsoft/former Irish Times/former Irish Anti-War Movement' Browne bellyaching about his former employers in D'Olier Street, John 'Where's My Batman Outfit?' Waters, and a bunch of other 'luvvies' from the same old tiresome Irish media celeb clique . . . helping out the opera-loving Vincenzo.

"The Village magazine looks like it was knocked together by Vincent Browne in the early hours of the morning and was proofread by Shane MacGowan (tip: spellchecking utilities will get confused by the similarity of 'heroine' and 'heroin' - you need to look at the screen). The average Irish student magazine would leave it in the half-penny place."

Chekov Feeney's column is called "Newspaper Watch". He castigates security correspondent Jim Cusack of the Sunday Independent over Cusack's "elaborate tale" about the Denis Donaldson murder, and the lack of proof therein. Similar swipes are taken at the Irish Times and the Irish Independent.

So let's take a look at what Feeney's own little operation, Indymedia.ie, had to say about the matter - with the Indymedia Ireland story, "Denis Donaldson shot dead": "The murder of Denis Donaldson demonstrates yet again that the criminal mafia of Sinn Fein/IRA has not gone away. Denis Donaldson was a piece of shit - the British would have had all the justification in the world to knock him off years ago - but they had greater justification to use him instead as an asset to disrupt the IRA's terror campaign.

"The dogs in the street know that Sinn Fein/IRA killed him in revenge for his collaboration."

The folks at www.indymediairelandwatch.blogspot.com say they are devoted to the "monitoring and analysis of the agitprop blustering of Ireland's wannabe radicals and 'activists': Indymedia Ireland, that 'coalition' of middle-class anarchists, altermundistas, jihadistas, hypocrites . . . and other 'concerned' buffoons".

We couldn't have put it better ourselves.

Ciaran Byrne