WITH about as much clout as a ten-year bottle of whisky, Independent News and Media’s International “Advisory Board” is meeting in Cape Town to deflect growing criticism of the group as a whole. Pitted against mounting calls for a media tribunal that will address issues of public accountability, there are still unanswered questions raised by a damaging report tabled last year which labeled, chief executive O’Reilly nothing more than a crony capitalist.
“Sir Anthony O’Reilly” has become extraordinarily adept at lording it over the masses, driving content, interfering with editorials, pushing the Irish Model and feathering his own nest in the process. The man has staged rampant mergers and acquisitions that blur the line separating media from business, sport, entertainment, advertising and public relations with the resulting loss in respect for the press as a whole. Independent hacks in their slavish obedience to higher authority, failed to note criticism of the company, one actually praised the IAB for being an O’Reilly brainchild “formed 13 years ago to provide the group’s executives with intellectual soundings on the world scene.” Okay, so a 13-year bottle of Mulroney.
Eager to dip into the Canadian and Irish Whisky fortune behind the Irish Model was Sean Johnson, the class idiot who has created a masterful symbiosis between the Mandela legacy and the Rhodes club, with the usual problems associated with alcoholism. Board-members most likely to gain from group ventures into property and the petroleum industry are Ivor Roberts, career diplomat and former British Ambassador, to Ireland.
Brian Mulroney, the man at the centre of a storm in Canada has no doubt been handpicked to assuage criticism that the O’Reilly business relationship with Lowy Mays, Blackwater (Halliburton) and the Republican party, is a case of taking Anglo-American and Irish relations a bit too far?
With so much testosterone floating around one could be forgiven for thinking well-known Blairite, Baroness Margaret Jay, former leader of the British House of Lords was a man. But DNA tests will no doubt reveal the truth, Jay is a 100% neo-colonial of the old school.
I would also be neglecting my duty to inform readers that Andrew Young, a token democrat from the Carter years, is not related to Barak Obama or anything to do with the 21st Century and represents what hacks might refer to as the O’Reilly time-warp factor. All of this is just a cover-up for problems affecting the actual INM board, an infamous double-act which is still populated by corporate sponsors drawn from industry and no surprise, the Bank of Ireland is a major stakeholder. No cheers then for the B-team of former political has-beens who are merely supporting an exclusive clique of industry heavies who think they can buy political favours, entrench their class position and do away with democracy and freedom in the process.
Bets are therefore most definitely on: Is the O’Reilly proprietorship drawing to a close as minority board members O’Brien & CO motion for a more modern and forward thinking approach that does not reproduce the political folly of the past? This blog will keep you posted.
NOTE: Unlike the United Kingdom, South Africa is a democracy, not a hereditary fiefdom. Our House of Traditional Leaders does not preside over legislation, except where such legislation affects traditional rulership. South Africa is also a Republic not a Monarchy.
Breaking News: Brian Mulroney Corruption Scandal, visit The Size Issue