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Mark Stedman

TD defends telling Irish Water worker "I was elected to break the law"

Paul Murphy says a video released today is designed to “undermine” him.

ANTI AUSTERITY ALLIANCE TD Paul Murphy has defended a video which shows him telling an Irish Water contractor that he is “elected to break the law”.

The video is carried today on the Irish Independent website and features Murphy telling a contractor in a hard hat that he ‘engages in civil disobedience all the time’.

Murphy says that the fact that the video, which appears to have been secretly filmed by another worker, found its way to the paper raises questions.

“It may be a sharp way of posing it, but it is self-evidently true and doesn’t need an undercover video to establish it.

“The clue is in the phrase ‘civil disobedience’ which I said and is clearly audible but is replaced with “(unclear)” in the subtitles in their video for some reason.

I was elected on a platform of a boycott of water charges and saying I would assist people who didn’t want water meters in refusing to have them imposed on them. The charges and the imposition of meters are the law – they are unjust laws, which I was elected to break as part of a campaign of mass civil disobedience. For all of the Independent’s mock outrage, that is not the real story here.

Murphy says that the real story is the leaking of the video by a contractor for Irish Water to a national paper.

“Is it connected to the fact that during the week in the Dáil I spoke out about very serious harassment and intimidation by private thugs in Dublin 7? That I repeated these statements on Prime Time on Thursday night?”

Murphy said that he felt that the video had been released to “undermine” him.

Read: Irish Water: No rules were broken when GMC Sierra won metering contract

Read: Gardaí investigating claims water protester was assaulted

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262 Comments
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    Mute Graham Wilson
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    Jun 27th 2019, 10:49 PM

    I think it’s about time someone took a hard line with Iran, they clearly don’t know how to maximise the profits from their oil reserves. Fair play to the Don I say.

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    Mute Zippy
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:00 PM

    @Graham Wilson: Graham give your phone back to a grown up and go to bed you clown.

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    Mute Nathan Mawhinney
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:15 PM

    @Graham Wilson: if trump causes war with Iran, I personally couldn’t defend him anymore. There’s taking a hard line, and then stupidity.

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    Mute Graham Wilson
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:33 PM

    Sorry guys, I was being sarcastic about another Oil War by the Republicans.

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    Mute Shane Dignam
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:16 AM

    @Graham Wilson: I had forgotten Obama was a Republican when he destroyed Libya.

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    Mute Dave O'Keeffe
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:46 AM

    @Shane Dignam: you might have a point if Trump wasn’t a republican. Nowhere did Graham say Democrats haven’t done it too.

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    Mute Shane Dignam
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:56 AM

    @Dave O’Keeffe: He’s neither in any case. Just using them.

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    Mute G Manning
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    Jun 28th 2019, 7:36 AM

    @Nathan Mawhinney: why and on what would defend him now?

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    Mute Francis Mc Carthy
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    Jun 28th 2019, 9:39 AM

    @Shane Dignam: Obamwahwahwah

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    Mute Liam O hAodha
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:15 AM

    Weapons of mass destruction
    Short war
    No boots on the ground
    Regime change

    Now where have I heard all this before???
    Afghanistan
    iraq
    Libya
    Syria
    Somalia

    Look at the state of the places now after “American democracy”

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    Mute Stephen Coveney
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:58 AM

    @Liam O hAodha: kosovo are grateful for their help. West Berlin too. If you pick a power nation we can probably say what atrocities they done, england, russia. History must be shown to them so they dont repeat it but its rarely a good argument just to list them

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    Mute Cormac Ó Braonáin
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    Jun 28th 2019, 7:45 AM

    @Stephen Coveney: Kosovo are happy for their help – are they? Only the Albanian immigrants are the happy ones I’d imagine. The actual ethnic Kosovars wouldn’t be so. Explaining this to you Anglophiles would take too much of my time though.

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    Mute The Great Unwashed
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    Jun 28th 2019, 10:50 AM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin:
    What a

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    Mute The Great Unwashed
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    Jun 28th 2019, 11:06 AM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin:
    What are you talking about? What do you even mean by ‘ethnic Kosovars’?? The population of Kosovo has always been made up of various ethnicities including Albanian, Serbian, Bosniak, Roma, Turk etc..
    There is no such thing as ‘ethnic Kosovan’, just affiliation with one of the ethnic heritages living within Kosovo. Albanian Kosovars have made up the majority of the population for many years.
    Your comment smacks of someone who’s trying to make political capital for whatever reason, but who is absolutely clueless.

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    Mute Wood Jackson
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:49 PM

    I’ve met Iranian people. Spoken with them, studied with them. Kind, respectful people often badly represented by their leaders. Trump’s typically ignorant assessment of Iran is repugnant. ‘Knowledge is unnecessary,.’ Dialogue is the only way forward.

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    Mute Graham Wilson
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:12 AM

    @Wood Jackson: 100%, great article in The Irish Times today on how Trump has destroyed over 30 years of careful diplomacy since becoming President https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-back-channel-brutally-frank-assessment-of-trump-s-wrecking-job-on-us-diplomacy-1.3919935

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    Mute Dave Harris
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:16 AM

    @Wood Jackson: i cannot get over how Trump pulled the US out of the treaty, which the Iranians were living up to – by all accounts, seemingly just because it was one of Obama’s policies. This Trump idiot just wants to bring down whatever Obama did, whatever the cost – and to all you trump supporting bottom kissers – just remember the birther movement trump was involved with before he was running for office – Trump is obsessed with Obama and will bring the world to war to try and destroy Obama’s legacy

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    Mute Stephen Coveney
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:55 AM

    @Wood Jackson: ive met with American people and they are the most hospitable and generous i found travelling the world. But i agree that their government have escalated everything since being in power. Do not try to paint Iran as innocent bystanders though

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    Mute Cormac Ó Braonáin
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    Jun 28th 2019, 8:01 AM

    @Stephen Coveney: have you met any Iranians by any chance, Stephen?

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    Mute Windom Earle
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    Jun 27th 2019, 10:56 PM

    A fanatical Islamic state is something the whole world can definitively do without. However it would be difficult to overthrow the regime without mass deaths. Saudi Arabia is actually worse than Iran but they’ve played their cards well, Iran hasn’t.

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    Mute Jeremy Moynihan
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:03 PM

    @Windom Earle: I agree with everything you’ve said but, given that Saudi Arabia is so much worse, can we also agree that America’s priorities are tainted by corruption?

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    Mute Zippy
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:05 PM

    @Windom Earle: When Iran starts blown other countries to bits and shoving they rubbish down my kneck then I’ll start towing the line!!

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    Mute De20
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:09 PM

    @Windom Earle: Iran has no extraterritorial ambitions other than self protection and protection of other Shia populations. Unlike the USA which is acting here only as a proxy for the Israel-Saudi axis

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    Mute Cormac Ó Braonáin
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:31 PM

    @Windom Earle: you do know how the Shah got into power and what 2 foreign countries eradicated democracy in Iran, right? I’ll give you a clue – they’re the same 2 foreign countries that have been roaming the world going from country to country demanding ‘regime change’ for a very long time, and now they’re back on Iran’s borders doing it again.

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    Mute Graham Wilson
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:43 PM

    @De20: Bang on the money, it’s bizarre that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, yet the current U.S. President Donald Trump crawls on his knees to worship them in Riyadh. Also in 1967 Israel attacked the USS Liberty murdering 34 American crew members on board in international waters, yet the Trump Administration lick their boots? Sounds about as treasonous as you can get to me.

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    Mute Stephen Coveney
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    Jun 28th 2019, 1:20 AM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin: America and Russia?

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    Mute Mushy Peas
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    Jun 27th 2019, 10:51 PM

    If Trump’s poll numbers start to drop in the run up to 2020 election, would he start a war with Iran?

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    Mute bmul
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    Jun 27th 2019, 10:56 PM

    @Mushy Peas: yep

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    Mute Cormac Ó Braonáin
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:39 PM

    @Mushy Peas: remember both Trump and Clinton going head-to-head on stage, threatening to go to war with country after country to garner votes. Their teams knew exactly what the American people want and that is WAR. War, war, and more war. The problem here isn’t the politicians, it’s the American people. They’re absolutely obsessed with war. Look at their history. They’re possibly the most war-like nation/people that have ever existed in ratio to their existence.

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    Mute Shane Dignam
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:18 AM

    @Mushy Peas: Not if he wants to keep his base happy.

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    Mute Paul F. White
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    Jun 28th 2019, 12:53 AM

    @Mushy Peas: I cannot see his numbers dropping. He is running against a bunch of Democrats who are rather boring No clear leader in the pack. The only way trump will lose is if the dems can dig up some dirt on him and impeach him.

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    Mute Stephen Coveney
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    Jun 28th 2019, 1:00 AM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin: can you clarify which countries they threatened to go to war with? Because you come across as someone who knows very little

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    Mute Stephen Coveney
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    Jun 28th 2019, 1:01 AM

    @Paul F. White: …boring is exactly what America should be voting for

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    Mute Cal Mooney
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    Jun 28th 2019, 9:50 AM

    @Stephen Coveney: Hillary Clinton said her mission was to bring Syria to the same place as Syria and said that she was willing to go to war with Russia to achieve it.

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    Mute The Great Unwashed
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    Jun 28th 2019, 10:39 AM

    @Cal Mooney:
    That’s not what she said.

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    Mute Marty from Sligo
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    Jun 27th 2019, 11:18 PM

    I suspect Trump will start a war some time soon, because he wants to run for a second term.

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    Mute Moorooka Mick
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    Jun 28th 2019, 5:51 AM

    IMO, denuking Iran would be fair if the entire ME was rid of nukes.
    This would mean Israel giving up its nukes and all nuclear capable ships, subs and planes excluded from the zone.

    At present, US pressure on Iran’s leadership since the Shah was debunked has led Iran
    (Like North Korea) to go on the nuke path for self-protection.

    Note: The US did not say bugger all to a nuclear Pakistan for harbouring Islamic terrorism & Osama bin Laden.The untended US message seems to be “nuke up and Uncle Sam wont touch you”

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    Mute sean mcgee
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    Jun 28th 2019, 2:08 AM

    Hmm.. According to the Washington Post, The USA is planning to restart underground nuclear testing. I have a geiger counter and will be able to measure the radioactive plumes on the west coast of Ireland.
    I am surprised that the journal did nt mention yesterdays UN meeting on the subject. Towards the end the Iranian spokesman mentioned that because of sanctions Iran cannot move the Enriched Uranium because of the US sanctions.
    He also mentioned that sanctions are causing a young girl who needs medicine for her breathing after the Iraq gas attacks on the Iranian border (Gas supplied by supporters of Saddam ) to be unavailable.
    And for complete hypocrisy highly Enriched Uranium (Over 90 percent) is on the open market and about 20 kilos was actually seized by police in Mumbai from terrorist sources. The value of this material was in the millions and the funding maybe came from ISIS in the levant when they sold the oil (That Russia eventually stopped).
    I called on of the links “depleted uranium” instead of HEU to limit the reach of the story.
    An interesting report here;
    “Highly Enriched Uranium, a Dangerous Substance that Should Be Eliminated
    “…. Furthermore, it is more difficult to detect by technical means. Therefore, in comparison to plutonium, HEU is much easier to divert, smuggle and hide. Moreover, a crude nuclear explosive made of HEU can be constructed in a much simpler way than one made using plutonium. For these reasons, HEU is the material most wanted by terrorists. A few tens of kilograms are sufficient for one explosive, but the quantities existing in the world add up to hundreds of tons…..” https://www.hsfk.de/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_downloads/prif124.pdf

    I also posit the kiloton damage with 20 kilos of HEU (had it got out further into the wild).
    https://europeannewsweekly.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/a-special-team-to-secure-the-bengali-republic-day-parade-from-nuclear-and-chemical-threats/

    Point to note that making the HEU go critical (with a low kiloton yield described in the other linked article) is a simple matter and can be done with some basic tools found in most workshops and thats why the German report linked above is so concerned in its reporting.

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    Mute Chris Kirk
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    Jun 28th 2019, 10:24 AM

    In 1914 they said that it (First World War) would be over by Christmas. Many millions of men were dead by the time it ended in 1918….

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    Mute Marty
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    Jun 28th 2019, 5:59 PM

    What the Iran government is doing to its people is a extreme dictatorship. The poor are getting poorer and rich are getting richer. They are run by Islam extremists, so woman are force in bad relationship, mosque are abusing there power against humanity .. and we think Catholic Church is bad.
    As Iran has more wealth than Saudi and UAE meaning dubai therfore if trump goes to war they would blow both countries out of it.As America are allies with both of these countries we will up with World War 3.

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