July 19 2006 / Jeb Bush Coming To Dublin
I heard from a colleague in the Labour Party that Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush (the brother of George W. Bush) is visiting Dublin in just a few days time. Not being a fan of Jeb Bush and his pro-death penalty stance (also a stance taken by his brother George when he was Governor of Texas), I'm posting about the visit here.
It turns out that Meteor is sponsoring the visit of Jeb Bush to speak at the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland on July 21st. According to the spiel on the website, “a key focus of the Governor's visit to Ireland & the UK in July is the development of the life science's sector in Florida”.
As Jeb Bush is one of the most enthusiastic executing governors in the United States, the use of the term "life sciences" is more than a bit ironic.
Bush talks about deterrence in his article. However, most death penalty proponents concede that executions do NOT deter others from committing murder. In fact, studies show that the murder rate increases slightly after a highly publicized execution. States without the death penalty consistently have lower murder rates - as do countries throughout the world that have abolished the death penalty. Even with recent highly publicized executions, the latest FBI statistics show violent crime on the rise once again. In fact, many murders are not planned, and those who do plan to murder do not plan to be caught.
My colleague spoke with the Media and PR manager of Meteor this morning and she claims that Meteor did not know who the guest speaker at the lunch would be, which I find hard to believe. It's unlikely that a corporate entity such as Meteor - which has Eircom as a parent company - would commit financial backing without knowledge of the event details. The Meteor representative also claimed that the guest speakers of the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland have not yet been confirmed, again this is incorrect, if you look at the website, Bertie Ahern is speaking on Sept. 23rd and Brian Cowen is confirmed for Nov.23rd. The office of Philip Nolan, the CEO of Eircom, was also contacted, where a representative (Philip Nolan was apparently unavailable) - claimed that Eircom has no control over Meteor, a claim which, to me, seems preposterous.
For those who can make it, there is a protest at the Conrad Hotel at 12 Noon this Friday, July 21st, Deputy Lord Mayor, Aodhan O’Riordan will be speaking at it. For those who can’t attend the protest, how about advising people using Meteor to switch network and ask everybody on Meteor to send a text - e.g. using Meteor's free Meteor-to-Meteor text offer - to protest at Meteor's sponsorship of this event. Timing could be important here, so texting should take place at a fixed date and time, namely 12 Noon on Friday - if the message could be spread to many Meteor customers, it might bring the network down for a while.
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