Ireland: So on Saturday last, Pat Kenny, the host of the Late Late Show (Ireland’s longest-running chat show) had Aileen O’Carroll on to talk about the Dublin Grassroots Network’s planned May Day march.
The Gardai have been doing their damnedest to block the march, gaining power to deploy armed police, and in turn, the PR big guns have been deployed in force to get scare stories printed, with the tabloid journos utilizing their considerable wiles in the process.
So, it’s culminated in an appearance on the Late Late for Aileen. By all accounts, it went very well.
Apparently, another great moment of reported hilarity was a lengthy discussion between Pat Kenny, the tabloid journalist, and a ‘security expert’ as to whether there would be ‘agent provocateurs’ present. It seems all agreed there might just be. One wonders if they thought to look up the word beforehand:
Agents provocateurs are also used in the investigation of political crimes. Here, it has been claimed that the provocateurs deliberately seek to incite ineffective radical acts, in order to foster public disdain for the political group being investigated; and to worsen the punishments its members are liable for. Within the United States the COINTELPRO program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had FBI agents posing as political radicals in order to disrupt the activities of political groups the U.S. government found unacceptably radical. The activities of agents provocateurs against political dissidents in Imperial Russia was one of the grievances that led to the Russian Revolution.