Ireland Calling
by John SpainRSS 
Recent Posts
- Young Irish high on drugs and booze and vandalism are a disgrace
- Suffer the little Irish children - the government's regulations failed to protect babies being abused in day care centers
- Ireland: A tax haven for American tech companies like Google, Twitter and Apple but without the sun
- Pro-Life campaigners need to get a grip - Irish women still have no choice over abortion
- Abortion reform Irish style - Women still have no rights over their own bodies, continue to travel to the UK for procedure
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Over the past week we have witnessed the character assassination of an honorable man. It shouldn't happen to anyone in our country, of course.
But it particularly shouldn't happen to this man, who happens to be Taoiseach, (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen, who said the assault on his character marked a new low in Irish politics. He could also have said that it marked a new low in Irish life, in our belief in fairness and justice.
It will probably mean the end of his career. It is a frightening lesson in how an honorable man's reputation can be dragged into the gutter by the Internet, the media and a section of the public in today's anger-filled Ireland.
Suddenly the realization that Ireland's financial crisis is on a scale that is truly scary has gone global.
First it was The New York Times two weekends back with its alarmist headline posing the question – “Can One Bank Bring Down a Country?”
The bank they were talking about, of course, was Anglo Irish, and the country was Ireland.
This week we're going to tell you the sad story of one of Dublin's great institutions, the iconic department store called Arnotts.
But before we get to that (and the two things are related), a word about the hit to Ireland's international financial standing just over a week ago.
You probably read about this. The influential agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Ireland's rating from AA to AA minus, three levels below countries such as Britain, Germany and the U.S. The agency also put us on "negative outlook,” which is agency-speak meaning they think further downgrades are possible.
