North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?
US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty
Anti-Empire >>
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite
UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent
Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent
Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy
We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy
This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed.
The Saker >>
GDP Growth? No, We?re Already in a Recession Thu Oct 23, 2025 13:00 | David Craig
The economy supposedly grew by 0.1% in August. But David Craig isn't buying it. Once you take out all the extra spending on illegal immigrants and benefits the actual productive economy is already deeply in recession.
The post GDP Growth? No, We’re Already in a Recession appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Trump?s Sanctions Put Him on ?Warpath? with Russia, Says Medvedev Thu Oct 23, 2025 11:10 | Will Jones
Donald Trump has put the US on the "warpath" with Moscow with his decision to impose sanctions and?cancel a peace summit, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said.
The post Trump’s Sanctions Put Him on “Warpath” with Russia, Says Medvedev appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The Covid Inquiry is Determined to Repeat School Closures Thu Oct 23, 2025 09:00 | Molly Kingsley
Covid school closures, everyone now agrees, were an unmitigated disaster. Everyone, it seems, except the Covid Inquiry, which this week proved it is determined to repeat them, says Molly Kingsley.
The post The Covid Inquiry is Determined to Repeat School Closures appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
We?ve Heard Ed Miliband?s ?Green Jobs? Promise Before Thu Oct 23, 2025 07:00 | Ben Pile
Ed Miliband has promised 400,000 'green jobs' by 2030. There's just one problem, says Ben Pile: in 2009 he promised the same number by 2017. Where are they? The only 'green jobs' are the ones adding to our energy bills.
The post We’ve Heard Ed Miliband’s ‘Green Jobs’ Promise Before appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
News Round-Up Thu Oct 23, 2025 01:05 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en
Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en
The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en
Voltaire Network >>
international |
anti-capitalism |
other press
Tuesday January 15, 2008 22:28
by Cathal Lalor
printable version
Digg this
del.icio.us
Furl
Reddit
Technorati
Facebook
Gab
Twitter
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (16 of 16)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16Kieran Allen's recent book, The Corporate Takeover of Ireland, documents the extent and effects of neoliberalism in Ireland.
But we'll be first when mary harney completes her run down and privatisation of the health services and water charges come in and the ESB is privatised.
then at last, first in the world at something I-R-E-L-A-N-D
we need to let our current managers stay on in order to win the title though!
Give bertie a chance to address his handlers in the US
"we are the CHAMPIONS!"
It’s not a coincidence that the places with the greatest economic freedom are also those with the greatest prosperity and living standards. It is the freer countries that migrants flock to not the ones towards the bottom of the index of freedom – they are the ones people flock from. Also people should stop following Will Hutton and using the term neo liberalism as one of abuse. In fact liberalism is opposed to concentrations of ownership and influence. Thus a liberal government is a sound regulator of business including dealing with trusts and cartels if they threaten to appear. By the same token they are also tough on crime. Organized crime should be dealt with severely by a liberal government that by definition should value and uphold the rule of law. Incidentally Hong Kong and Singapore are not dictatorships but are atypical city States or zones. One cannot infer too much from them except that the market system is a very transformative agent for innovation and for success in markets and wealth creation.
businesses have the most "freedom" when they
(a)pay no taxes,
(b)have the cheapest labour force possible,ideally unpaid slave labour , long hours, no protections(and no pesky unions)
(c)have no worries about polluting the environment whenever it suits them,
(d)no limits on what types of research experiments they can perform
(e)have as much as possible of their expenses and infrastructure ("externalities")paid by the state
(f)full control of media
(g)full access to state police force to "enforce" for them
seems to me these "ideal" conditions do not serve the good of the local population and are nearest to being achieved in a corrupt police state or a dictatorship. Nazi germany would have been a big business wet dream. oh wait...it was!!
Y'know, the kind of set up Ron paul wants!
You have it wrong. Business freedom is largely about freedom from excessive bureaucracy. For instance until recently it could take two or three years and much expense to set up a company in India. The result was this most entrepreneurial people exported their business people all over the world but the India itself remained mired in gross poverty. In Ireland a company can now be set up in a day or two at minimal expense by international standards and it is easy to find out about tax and other compliance requirements. In fact the most competitive countries are not low tax or low wage ones; as regards wages including for ordinary people there are among the highest in the world. They also have proper regulation on the environment – their records are very good – the point is that regulation is reasonable and not capricious. The worst environmental records are held by China, Russia and the former Soviet Block. The situation as regards a police state, control of the media and research limits is also the opposite of that you portray. A modern economy can only thrive in conditions of reasonable political freedom. That is why Syria, for all its talk on the subject, will never become a player in the software design market.
read the fucking newspaper sceptic. Companies are leaving ireland as fast as their greedy little legs can carry them. and software is a terrible example. I actually worked in software and watched my whole department get outsourced to india (including my own job) because they could write software adequately (its not exactly rocket science!) and the wages were much cheaper and the labour laws were lax etc etc..
So don't bullshit me. I watched it happen. You are a nasty little propagandist rat!
Companies are mobile. We get inward investment but after some years they leave - what matters is the value they have added while they are here. Nationally the policy is to replace the ones that leave with other ones higher up the value chain and by and large we have been successful at doing this. The country is vastly richer for having inward investment but we cannot insist that they stay forever. That’s life - the old gives way to the new. Nothing about the outsourcing of your software department in any way invalidates what I wrote nor the wisdom of having a foreign investment policy or a degree of business freedom. What would you recommend instead? In the 1950s we had hardly any foreign industry or trade outside of primary agricultural products but the country was a poverty basket case as a result.
Feudal, great link to Chomsky.
Paul libertarianism would be a nightmare, and as Chomsky says, if ever implemented would implode. The difference between Paul's crackpotism and neoliberalism is merely that we have yet to experience the full brunt of state-imposed neoliberalism. As the neolib project advances towards the ideal, Paulite, utopian abstraction, state repression will also grow.
"AER LINGUS NOT RENEWING CONTRACTS WITH SR TECHNICS"
The whole idea of having a contract is that you can choose to renew or
not at the end of the term or to re-tender. It does not say a whole lot for this firm if it cannot get business from Aer Lingus. It may be uncompetitive anyway. It has no prior right to the Aer Lingus business - it has to compete. If it can't it should go to the wall. Besides what is wrong with Aer Lingus doing more work in-house? This site is normally opposed to outsourcing. This is a reversal of outsourcing.
O'LEARY
O'Leary was dabbling in the Shannon controversy for his own amusement
and to embarrass the Government. The latter were wise not to treat with
him.
NURSES
Irish nurses are actually well paid by international standards and they
have their own staffing hierarchy. A director of nursing would be a very
well paid person indeed out earning all but the highest paid civil
servants. Top level civil servants are hard working and very qualified
people. They should not be denigrated glibly.
mary harney is working on the medical service.
Water / waste / power will follow.
most third world countries follow his model.
We'll be back there soon. (many of us never left)
corrupt government (at least there will be less of them!)
citizens can go to hell,
no public services worth talking about.
those that exist cherry picked and overpriced by private enterprise.
long hours
lousy conditions
low wages
abject poverty and squalor
the rise of religion again.
nice rosy future, you'll agree.
Enjoy one last credit spree, a bottle of bubbly and a spin in the gas guzzler and get the teeth done folks
Remember Chile! The neoliberalism disease has spread and now infests universities worldwide. It has also come to Ireland:
http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/15172
Perhaps they will soon have a special day to honour Charles Trevelyan.
Thanks for that anti-pinocchio :)
another interesting ron paul article here
http://www.counterpunch.org/sharon01162008.html
worth a read!
This is not to say I like the other candidates much either.
It seems the US voters have as little choice as we do.
So much for freedom and democracy.
Might as well have a benign dictator!
I propose joe higgins :)
http://www.gnn.tv/threads/28811/Noam_Chomsky_on
For 30 years an intensified class war has been waged by the rich against the working class. Its ideology is neoliberalism and its institutional expression is found in the various 'think tanks' that have proliferated like weeds. These propaganda institutes in Ireland are The Open Republic Institute and Libertas. Declan Ganley, the main mover behind these proclaims the virtues of 'free competition'. His minions, Paul MacDonnell and Constantin Gurdgiev advocate the privatisation of E.S.B. and R.T.E.
But the board of Ganley's company Rivada is like a 'who's who' of the military industrial complex.
http://www.rivada.com/about/keypersonnel/declanjganley.htm
Rivada is part of the war and and anti-terrorism industry, not exactly a paragon of 'free competition'. Its profits come not from the 'free market' but from the U.S taxpayer.
The latest addition to Ganley's stable of 'free marketeers' is David Cochrane of politics.ie., now part of the Libertas right-wing campaign against the Lisbon treaty.
David Harvey has advocated that its time for the oppressed to fight back in this class war.
http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenu...=9655
In Ireland, exposing what Ganley and his hirelings really stand for, is essential to the fight-back.
'For thee but not for me'--
Declan Ganley the man behind the right-wing propaganda outfit, Libertas, is an ideological believer in the free market, but not in the virtues of competition when it comes to his business affairs. "We're a hybrid of Vodaphone and Lockheed Martin-a telco plus defence contractor" he says.
http://cnbceb.com/2006/03/01/cover_story/
The U.S defence industry is parasitical on the productive sector of the U.S economy. Ganley's business plan,-put retreads from the military and from homeland security on your board and secure government contracts-is typical of the merchants of death.
When Ganley's hirelings preach the virtues of the 'free market' they should be questioned about Ganley's involvement int he U.S military-industrial complex.
The propaganda of the Heritage Foundation and their index claims that the freer the economy the more wealth is created. But when countries of similar economic development are compared this claim is shown to be nonsense. The 'Index', in short is a propaganda tool used to push a right-wing economic agenda.
http://www.counterpunch.org/weissman01252008.html
Likewise with Ganley's Libertas: Its purpose is propaganda.
Neo-liberalism can be seen as an attempt to return to the economic doctrines of the 18th and 19th centuries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism