Has Paddy Cosgrave overstepped the mark?

eightieschewbaccy · 22-10-2023 11:55am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270377#Comment_121270377

Apologies, genuinely misread it as downplaying it. Sorry, bad morning.

yagan · 22-10-2023 11:59am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270409#Comment_121270409

It is weird to find myself in agreement with him on Palestine, but in every other instance the guy is a self centred Ahole.

eightieschewbaccy · 22-10-2023 12:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270422#Comment_121270422

Yep, I think it's a stopped clock scenario. And I'm honestly doubtful of how much he believes in anything he says.

RocketPlan · 22-10-2023 12:14pm

It is so sad to watch the fall of Ireland's Tech Visionary Genius. There are days when I cry over the fact that I don't have an Orts or B.E.S.S. degree from Trinity but then I realise that some people are just my betters.

Ha Fu'kin' Ha!!!

Ardillaun · 22-10-2023 12:37pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270409#Comment_121270409

I wish we could see more of this online. I’m as guilty as anybody of not admitting when I’m wrong. Well done.

Ardillaun · 22-10-2023 12:43pm

As a citizen, I am a little concerned about where these commercial cancellations are headed. You can be sure Xi and other tyrants are watching this closely to figure out how far they can go with such a tactic to silence criticism of their regimes abroad. As a worker, though, I can’t believe how reckless Cosgrave was, just wading into such a controversial area at a horribly inopportune time.

yagan · 22-10-2023 2:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270557#Comment_121270557

I reckon Israeli lobby will be out to trash us too.

Bass Reeves · 22-10-2023 2:05pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270557#Comment_121270557

Paddy Cosgrave is a social media bully. If you disagreed with him he posted some horrible sh!t. He has put up absolute drivel about the government

Allison O Connor was on the BOC show this morning and mentioned this tweet below. It was not the first time he tweeted about her either.

https://twitter.com/paddycosgrave/status/1703452899144069141

he is just another rich man who thinks he is entitled to pontificate to us and we are not allowed to disagree. He is the same as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Bono etc.

As a citizen I am delighted he was cancelled. The only people I feel sorry for are the employees of the web summit

F@@k him he deserved it

Augme · 22-10-2023 2:15pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265820#Comment_121265820

Personally, I find it a bit frightening that people think a sovereign nation should be subservient to multinational corporotions.

Ireland should not make political decisions based on the desires and demands of Intel, Google etc al.

facehugger99 · 22-10-2023 2:27pm

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Bye bye Paddy

A salient lesson in what happens when student union politics meets the real world.

Cluedo Monopoly · 22-10-2023 2:38pm

Paddy Is clearly a dick and he was right to resign. I can't argue with the message but there is a time and a place. It was a stupid move.

I would like to know why the companies actually pulled out of Web Summit. What exactly were their reasons? Did they provide any?

I know the Israel lobby in USA is powerful but were they told to pull out?

eightieschewbaccy · 22-10-2023 2:40pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270849#Comment_121270849

I would say his social media antics have more in common with Musk. He's just a lot smaller fry.

yagan · 22-10-2023 3:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270880#Comment_121270880

I always thought of the web summit as a fossil of the 2000s, the internet being the meeting place now.

Paddys tweet probably had a lot of CEO's asking "wtf are we still sending people to this dinosaur of the noughties?"

It was probably intransigence that had them not cancel sooner.

Spon Farmer · 22-10-2023 3:18pm

Why was there so much of a gap between the comments and all the companies starting to pull out?

Now that the guy is gone won’t they just come back? A lot of people going to lose jobs if they don’t and that will make those companies look bad.

I’m all for free speech but in the real world you don’t have it.

Is the problem that he said something against Israel or that he said anything at all? Because it is bit hypocritical of these companies to support Israel in the first place.

Sorry, how foolish of me. They are Americans… so yes, hypocrites.

22-10-2023 3:34pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270958#Comment_121270958

Alas indeed, Free Speech barely exists in the real world , there’s consequences to it. I disagree with many things Paddy says, but I defend his right to speak out where he sees fit. Politics & commerce is heavily intertwined, and Jews happen to have a ginormous diaspora so by virtue of plain mathematics do hold a lot of power in the world. Speak against at your peril. Ireland too has a diaspora that punches above the weight of our Irish population here.

skimpydoo · 22-10-2023 3:56pm

The Israel lobby can be very dangerous. A good Irish friend of mine who is well known in the tech world, has gotten so much abuse because he dared stand up for children in Gaza and call for a ceasefire.

https://twitter.com/speirin/status/1715861765370614258

JVince · 22-10-2023 4:10pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121269742#Comment_121269742

The issue is he refused to condemn the murder of hundreds of innocent young people at a music festival by Hamas.

They topped this up by a few hundred murdering men, women and children in the same area.

Many Palestinian cheerleaders such as Cosgrave seem to want to ignore this.

Only when he realised it was costing him millions, did he make a bad attempt at an apology.

Snooker Loopy · 22-10-2023 10:08pm

Most oppressed CEO ever.

MrMusician18 · 22-10-2023 10:12pm

Looks like Dave Chappelle has gone and done a paddy now as well.

Only one opinion allowed in America.

mode1990 · 22-10-2023 10:43pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263919#Comment_121263919

He never questioned Israel ! He's been using his soap box to advocate his own opinions most of which were directed at FG/FF and Dublin Hospitality ! Which most attendees & contributor couldn't care less about ! But canyon mouth cosgrave thought he could rattle off his own personal beliefs since after all he was CEO , and hopefully that's the last we hear from him !

mode1990 · 22-10-2023 11:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264675#Comment_121264675

100% , our government is an outlier to the rest of Europe , and associating our historical struggle for independence with that of the Palestinians is just left wing propaganda ! Many Irish nationalists supported the creation of Israel ! Not forgetting the many Jews who were denied landing at Irish ports ! For Boyd Barrett & co. remember Margaret Fitzsimmons a Dalkey native whose throat was cut and limbs cut off , while doing humanitarian work in Iraq ! Had Israels "neighbours " not tried to wipe it off the face of the earth it would be only a quarter of the size it is today !

20silkcut · 23-10-2023 1:01am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121272643#Comment_121272643

The cause of Irish independence was a lot less hopeless than the Palestinian cause. DeValera was able to go to America as an escaped felon ( unperturbed) and raise money for Irish independence and Sinn Fein and the IRA had many friends in America during the troubles much later . It is completely disingenuous to equate the Palestinian cause with Irish independence. They have nothing like the soft/ hard power that nationalists in the north had behind them. Their situation ( while very much rhyming in sympathy with ourselves ) is completely hopeless in my opinion. They don’t even have any solid Arab/ Muslim allies. Egypt had to think about opening its borders. Syria has its own problems. Jordan , Lebanon are woefully weak players in comparison to Israeli allies . The Iranians will drop them like a hot snot with the slightest concession. And encouraging them to keep the struggle going is only causing more death and destruction. The goals of hamas is completely unrealistic and a death wish. Irish people can take a position and virtue signal their support for freedom from oppression but it’s all hot air and meaningless to changing anything on the ground. And as soon as the next big thing happens it will be on to that. And Palestine will be forgotten again.

mode1990 · 23-10-2023 1:14am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121272841#Comment_121272841

I wasn't equating irish independence with Palestine, I was pointing out that it was the left in this country trying to Stoke up support for Hamas using our history as a justification for supporting and legitimising their barbaric activities !

20silkcut · 23-10-2023 1:31am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121272847#Comment_121272847

Wasn’t taking you to task in particular just highlighting the folly of equating the Palestinian to the Irish struggle. Yes Hamas are a murder machine totally devoid of any pragmatism .

Quantum Erasure · 23-10-2023 2:35am

I see Gillian Anderson has put up a clarifying tweet...

I don’t want there to be any misinterpretation - so let me be clear.

ALL lives are valuable. No one life is more or less valuable than another. (1/2)

We must speak up to demand the protection of all innocent civilian lives and we must speak out against terrorism.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

(2/2)

With a lot of people in the replies quoting Paddy Cosgrave back at her

https://twitter.com/GillianA/status/1716158891384275408

Hoboo · 23-10-2023 6:00am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121271150#Comment_121271150

Absolute horseshit, he condemned murder of all civilians on both sides.

Its the fact he didn’t say just Israelis and **** Gaza, that’s the issue for the tech companies.

JVince · 23-10-2023 7:28am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121272938#Comment_121272938

I suggest you check his precise words.

He EVENTUALLY condemned killings on both sides when he realised the amount of money he was losing

Beta Ray Bill · 23-10-2023 8:20am

Oul Paddy has said worse things in the past.

I think this was an escape route seen by Tech companies to not attend the web summit. (Something they've wanted to do for a while now)

Web Summit is basically start ups paying top dollar to speak to venture capital and CEO's of big tech companies. It's just marketing and nothing ever happens at it.

He's made his few bob, he'll be ok. I'd say his 300+ staff are goosed though

Ash.J.Williams · 23-10-2023 8:31am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121270816#Comment_121270816

Ireland have put themselves in a situation where we depend on them

Bass Reeves · 23-10-2023 8:38am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121272841#Comment_121272841

And we had to accept a two state solution/ partition, as did India/Pakistan/Bangladesh. We had politicians that accepted that while not our preferred option we had to accept it

The problem for Palestinians has always been the refusal to accept the two state solution. Even lok at some of there supporters cry ''Palestinian will be free from the border to the sea'' which equates to the elimination of Israel. This is what Paddy Cosgrave and many more like him think the solution should be.

His remarks about Allison O'Connor calling her a partitionist, anti-intellectual and a gombeem showed exactly where he stands on people disagreeing with him but also that he accepts terrorism as a legitimate form of violence

Has Paddy Cosgrave overstepped the mark?

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