IRELAND AT WAR - TIME FOR RESISTANCE

For thousands of years wars have been fought between tribes and peoples and nations.

Young men and women have been sent to their deaths for God and King and Country.

But what is war?  And who is it good for?

War is the plunder of land and people and wealth.  Land for territory, for property and for resources.  People for slavery and production.  Wealth for gold and treasures.

And war is an expensive business.  It takes a lot of resources to create, arm and transport men and machinery in campaigns that last anything from six days to a hundred years.

And who finances these resources?  Banks.

Who are the great powers in the world today?  Not the US, not Russia, not China, but the Central Banks including the Federal Reserve and the Vatican.

Wars are fought by countries but they are fuelled by banks.  So much government spending in the 20th century in military strength was only possible by the borrowing undertaken by nations to arm themselves.  And so much conflict was not only financed by actually instigated by banks to engineer the seizure of wealth and power.

So ... what has this got to do with Ireland?

Well... between 1990 and 2008 Europe enjoyed a phenomenal time of growth, prosperity and wealth creation.  Ireland was at the forefront of that. Out little country was the shining star in the boom.  Across the globe we were hailed as the economic prodigy.  Investment poured into the country.  Immigration soared to provide the manpower for the construction boom.  The IFSC became the international hub for investment funds and financial trading.  The global leaders in new technology set up base here from which to manage worldwide operations.

Everyone prospered.  Low interest rates (cheap money) here and across Europe allowed ordinary people to dream of boundless possibilities: a bigger home ... two homes ... a home abroad ... cars for every member of the family.  Graduates were coming out of college straight into beautiful homes, company cars, two holidays a year.  Older people with pensions were reinvesting their savings into stocks and shares and mostly property. 

The problem for the banks who financed all this growth and productivity was that it did nothing to create real wealth for them.  Interest on loans takes years to recoup and property financed by a bank doesn't grant ownership or title to the property per se.

Claim of ownership could only be made upon the default of payments on financed property.  So how to orchestrate mass default of payments?  Engineer a crash!

It is unquestionable that the people at the centre of the banking and finance understood very well that the system that had been allowed to balloon into a massive bubble of debt based on discounted future revenue rather than existing assets.  The economic boom based on debt guaranteed that the failure of even a small bank or perhaps even just the hint of a possibility of bank collapse would cause enough panic in the money and stock markets that would seriously curtail lines of credit that kept the machine oiled.

What the banks actually managed to do was create the same result within Europe that in other parts of the world might have necessitated war, invasion, "the spreading of democracy" and the overthrow of governments.

What they did was declare war on the people of Europe.  And in so doing, without a single shot being fired or a drop of blood spilt (which would come later), they had plundered the wealth of hundreds of millions of people, seizing their land, their homes, their possessions, their children (in the form of creating debt slaves that would be veritable indentured slaves to the debts their governments and corporate giants had left them) and their treasures.

And in the frontline of this war-without-war: The Irish.

It reminds me of the film Braveheart, when Edward Long Shanks tells his generals "Send in the Irish".

The grunts.  The ignorant peasants.  The idiots that have no idea what is happening to them, cannot understand the reality of it and are so heavily chemically sedated with the fluoride in their water that they haven't the capacity for enough rational thought to begin to fight back.

That's why Ireland was the staging ground for this war.  Paddy was the perfect fall guy for their master stroke.  The political system was so corrupt and the regulation of banking and finance had been allowed to get so loose that when the good times were rolling everybody was so mesmerised with the transition from Barry's tea and batch loaf to cappucinos and croissants that the fairytale seemed like it would never end.

And when it was time to save the banks and bondholders Mario Draghi gave the order: "Send in the Irish". 42% of the total cost of the crash born by Paddy.  The average cost for every European for the crash was  € 192.  If you're reading this you're probably paying € 9,000.  Have another glass of fluoridated water there before they start charging for it .. it'll calm you down.  Which suits them just fine.

So if we're in a war that we didn't start how do we end it?

Well if war is about the seizure of power, resources and wealth what we need is a resistance movement.  Stop paying stupid taxes.  Stop paying your tv licence.  Stop paying parking fines.  Stop accepting the rules of government and judiciary that are not serving you but feeding the corporate beast.  Refuse to pay on-the-spot traffic fines ... they're not about road safety ... they're just about pickpocketing a few more quid from you.  Stop paying all sorts of charges that are not about the provision of public service and all about the transfer of wealth ... like the property tax and the water charge. 

We also seriously need to discuss other options for banking and trade.  There are other systems  of credit and payment that facilitate trade especially on a local or national basis.  Ideally I'd like to see us leave the Euro and Europe, but even if the nation refused to do that we could still introduce a domestic currency that would allow cash and credit to flow without affecting international or government borrowing and spending. 

We might not have the weapons of power (like a for-sale prostitute police force) but if we are to avoid being slaughtered as a nation by poverty, emigration, homelessness and suicide then we need to fight back.

After all ... "IT'S OUR ISLAND!"

2014 Christmas Message to An Taoiseach and Minister for Finance

Dear Scrooge and Grinch,

Well, it's the Friday before Christmas and I thought I'd write you my now annual christmas message to tell you about my year and give you your christmas report card.

I have just checked my bank account and I have a budget of € 77.39 for Christmas 2014.

I haven't bought any presents for my three children yet and I haven't bought any food or drink for the holidays.

That's a very damning snapshot of the real effects of your policies.

In 2014 your government made a big song and dance about giving something back to PAYE workers since we are now "out of the bailout" (whatever that means to you...).  Both of you will be more than €700 better off because of that.  I will be € 430 better off.  Except I won't.

In the previous budget you took € 2,490 more income tax from me because I am a single father.  Penalised for being an unmarried (actually divorced) man with children.  So your government has made me more than TWO THOUSAND EURO WORSE OFF since you came into office.  And that is JUST IN INCOME TAX ... BEFORE I even address other charges and taxes that you have introduced.

In October, Justice Marie Baker of the High Court made a ruling which admonished the Department of Social Protection for judging a single father's entitlement to benefits without due regard for his children, their rights to support in their relationship with their father and his right to be regarded as a man with (semi) dependent children ... not just a single person.

The change to the tax code which resulted in the loss of tax credits and allowances for single fathers in the budget of October 2013 is therefore morally unjust.  It is punitive towards single fathers, creates serious inequality between unmarried fathers and mothers, and by extension creates serious inequality between children of unmarried parents and children of married parents.  It also directly contributes to the despicable phenomenon of Parental Alienation by clearly making a statement to children of separated or unmarried parents that the State regards their parents as unequal, sending a message that single mothers (or primary carers) are more important than single fathers (or secondary carers).

The tax code also now regards me as a single person with no children, which is absolutely and clearly not the case.  The tax code refuses to see me as a father.  When it sees me it does not see my children.  My children have been 'removed' from me.  They are invisible.

Well my children are NOT invisible.  I have joint custody of my children.  The access arrangement means I see them 11 days out of 28.  They have overnight access to me every second weekend.  I have two weeks summer holidays with them.  To remove € 2,000 from my income has a significant, real and drastic effect on my ability to build and enjoy a relationship with them.  This year it will mean they will get very little from me at Christmas time, while you all enjoy unlimited food, drink, presents, excursions, treats and fun with yours.

I did my best to carry the tax increase into 2014 to avoid having to pass it on to my children's mother.  I have always done my utmost to ensure that the breakup of my marriage would not be felt in my children's home. By May it was extremely difficult to continue without some relief so I was forced by your actions to go back to family court ... an experience which must be closest thing to hell on earth.  I presented a proposal to the court which would have allowed me to recoup the extra tax back from the Revenue and leave the maintenance I pay (more than 60% of my wages) untouched.  The proposal would have resulted in a small increase in income tax to my ex but the maintenance payment would remain exactly the same.

The court refused to consider my proposal and in so doing forced me to continue paying income tax on that part of the maintenance paid in respect of my ex.  So the courts (1) refused me my legal entitlement under the tax code to have relief for the amount paid to my ex; (2) ordered that I continue to pay  tax at 41% on income that is my ex's upon which she would only be paying tax at 20%..!; and (3) protected the money that you had taken from me by disallowing my entitlement to claim it back.

I would also note that the reasons and basis upon which the removal of the single parent tax credit was removed have all been clearly debunked in my previous correspondence to the Minister and other members of the Oireachtas.

One of those reasons was that the change has been proposed by the Commission on Taxation.  It is absolutely despicable that this was the ONLY change proposed which was adopted.  It was an easy € 25 million to steal from a minority group with no lobbying power and you know it!  This year you 'removed' the Double Irish provision for multinational companies but this was on a PHASED BASIS.  Why could changes to the tax code for single fathers (one of the groups of people suffering most under austerity) not have been made on a phased basis??  This point is moot anyway because the entire basis for the attack was unfounded and following Justice Baker's ruling is now clearly unlawful.

I'm signing off now because I have more important things to do than waste my breath on you.

I have to plan how I am to bring at least a little bit of joy to my children this Christmas.  There's more to life than money.  at least I hope so.

Paul Madden
The Dissident Drum

Christmas Message 2013
http://emeraldfist.blogspot.ie/2013/12/christmas-letter-to-taoiseach-2013-year.html

Christmas Message 2012
http://emeraldfist.blogspot.ie/2013/01/a-christmas-message-to-taoiseach.html

Christmas Message 2011
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10150532923845791

https://www.facebook.com/284577154921937/photos/a.284967824882870.67808.284577154921937/284967831549536/?type=1&theater

https://www.facebook.com/284577154921937/photos/a.285387558174230.67886.284577154921937/285388304840822/?type=1&theater

It's Not A Banking Crisis - It's Far Worse

DECEMBER 2014 - Another Christmas Another Protest

In November 2011 I made my first stand as a dissident.

The Budget of October 2011 had revealed Fine Gael and Labour to be nothing more than the Fianna Fail B team.  The hope that was given to the Irish people in Kenny's Five Point Plan, the end of crony-riddled political corruption, and Gilmore's rousing "Frankfurt's Way or Labour's Way" speeches was utterly destroyed and I understood that nothing would change.  The Contract for a Better Ireland was not a contract.  It wasn't even a promise ... it was a marketing slogan.  In the song Won;t Get Fooled Again, Pete Townsend wrote the line: "Meet the New Boss ... Same as the Old Boss".  Never a truer word sung.

2011 was a tough year for me, and I suffered badly with despair.  But I managed not to let it consume me.  Instead I got angry.  Angry enough to write a letter (I know! pathetic) to Kenny, telling me I had nothing left to give but the shirt on my back.

So I wrote the letter on a shirt off my back.  I was going to go to the Dáil and fuck it over the railings but in the end I sent it to him .. by registered mail.



Here is what it said: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10150532923845791

In December 2012 I wanted to make another protest at Gangster House so I bought a wreath in Moore St. pinned the names of those who had died during the year ... by suicide (among them Shannon and Erin Gallagher), by betrayal of trust (Savita Halappanavar) and by political neglect (Paul Doyle).  I hung it on the railings of Gangster House and stood in silence for an hour.



I also thought I'd send Kenny another Christmas message but I knew it would be binned so I posted a blog for him.

This was it: http://emeraldfist.blogspot.ie/2013/01/a-christmas-message-to-taoiseach.html

In 2013 I was by then part of the growing active campaigners against austerity and corruption so I didn't do anything specific for Christmas ... the year had been one long march.

This year I want to make another Christmas statement but this time it is not to Kenny and the other members of Fail Eireann.  This year it is to the people.

In 2012 I said
"there are more real measurements of the state of the country (other than the numbers in employment): The number living (and dying) below the poverty line (many of them with jobs); The number of people emigrating in search of a life and a future; And the number of people taking their own lives (many with jobs) because they don't believe they have a future and don't have the possibility of emigrating.

This will be the legacy of Irish governments in the 21st century"

Three years and nine months after Fine Gael and Labour came to power this statement just gets more and more true.

The Abandoned
The EU and the Euro zone are failed projects...for the citizens.  For the rulers they are magnificent triumphs.  The engineered destruction of national sovereignty, national fiscal control and national political independence has left unelected power and corporate influence with absolute control over the lives of European citizens and Irish people in particular.

To argue that the expert minds of international finance did not understand that the banking system would not come to a point of cataclysmic implosion is to ignore the obvious: there was no banking crisis ... everything was designed to play out just as it has.  Now power resides in the hands of central bankers, corporations with more financial clout than entire countries and the unelected elite of EU committees.

In Ireland our budget is signed off in Brussels and Berlin before it is presented to our publicly elected representatives.  Our ability to legislate and administer our domestic affairs is determined by the amount of wiggle room we have in the handcuffs of directives.  Our government is powerless to disobey.  Even today we learn that under threat of conviction in secret courts our government are obliged to allow foreign powers spy on us.

The banks own our homes.  The bondholders own our wages.  And they own the wages of our children not yet left school.  Nobody is protecting the people. 

We have been abandoned.  By our politicians.  By the Eurocrats who told us that Lisbon and all the other treaties would be good for us.  

The Forgotten
The last official statistics for suicide in Ireland are from 2011 ... the year when this government was still preaching a message of hope.  At that time the numbers were recorded at approximately 500 per year, and unofficially the figure was estimated to be closer to 700 ... 2 people every day.

Just a few months ago a cousin of mine was home from England doing a genealogical project on our family.  In her search she visited Mount Jerome cemetery in Dublin.  There she met a man who was a grave digger.  In just 3 days of that week there had been 8 funerals.  6 of them were suicides.  That's two a day ... IN ONE PARISH!

The Betrayed
The Fine Gael/Labour government has also driven the economy further into crisis and now even families with both parents working on the average industrial wage are struggling to survive below the poverty line.  100,000 families are at serious risk of being evicted from their homes by the same banks that the government told us we had to save. 

Homelessness is out of control.  Jonathon Corrie has joined Paul Doyle on the forgotten list.  There are reports of homeless being shipped from Dublin to other towns across the country with one way bus and rail tickets ... all in an effort to keep the streets sanitary for the visiting Troika dignitaries.  The numbers of children living on the streets is increasing and, if it isn't already, Ireland is fast becoming the GHETTO OF EUROPE.

The Lucky Ones
There are 80,000 people leaving the country of their birth every year.  They are the lucky ones.  Economic refugees.  They are the new wild geese.  They have the means and opportunity to search for a life - not a 'better' life .... just a life! - across the globe.  In little over a decade 1 million people will have fled.  They are our young, our educated, our skilled and our most capable.

When the best of us have gone, who will be left to pay the € 80 billion to the bondholders?  Where will the politicians get the money from?  The elderly? The sick?  The unemployed?  The children?

In the United Kingdom, 17% of the population would be 11 million people.  In 10 years.  Gone.

This is not a banking crisis.

It is economic genocide.

On December 10th many thousands of people will come to Gangster House to hold their own protest.  Every one will have their own reason.  The water charges; the property tax; the loss of medical cards; the poor health system; the loss of resources in schools; the bank debt; the emigration of their sons and daughters...

What we are ACTUALLY protesting is the failure of a SYSTEM. 

Not a Taoiseach, not a government, not a party but the ENTIRE POLITICAL SYSTEM.  The legislative system - the administrative system - the judicial system.  Our health system could be fine with better management and less waste.  Our education system could, and has been, excellent given the proper resources.

But our politicians have been NOTHING more than contestants in a game show and their prizes have been the Power, the Privilege, the Pay, the Perks and the Pension. 

Politics should be about the PEOPLE!

New politicians and new parties won't fix anything.  The real power is in our Civil Service ... faceless, unelected, unaccountable, untouchable.

It's time for a reboot.  Time to press Control-Alt-Delete and start again.  100 years after 1916 we have nothing to celebrate.

100 years after 1916 we have not come very far at all.  We are no closer to living in a society of equality, prosperity, possibility and justice than we were in 1914. 

If nothing changes soon we will have nothing to celebrate in 2016. 

Abandon Ship or Mutiny - Setting A New Course

Comparable to Kevin Spacey’s character in American Beauty, who describes his early morning shower as “the highlight of my day”, climbing into bed at night is mine, though not for the same reason.

I always look forward to those final moments before sleep, when the conscious mind falls slient and the subconscious mind begins to wake.

In those few seconds the conscious mind must surrender its power.  All emotions are abandoned including happiness, sadness and fear.  And when the subconscious and the conscious mind pass each other a lot of clarity can be found and there can be moments of clarity and reasoning and understanding.

Last night was such a night.

Spending all my waking time these days thinking about what’s going on in our country my mind is often a chaotic whirlwind of anger, frustration, confusion, bewilderment and indignation.  Every day there seems to be more and more evidence that our government are out of control, a rudderless ship tossed like a cork on a raging sea of political incompetence, administrative chaos, economic ignorance and social destruction.

In my attempts to make sense of what is happening I always try to find perspective by looking at the bigger picture.  Not the bill for water that the government are promising me in January, but the state of the country, how we got here and where we are heading.  I may not be the man at the wheel, but I can be the man in the crow’s nest, observing the crew as they scurry about like rats trying to plug the holes in the ship and looking out to sea to find some hope of dry land so that we can set a steady course and arrive safely on dry land.

Last night one thought came to me very strongly.  Ireland is a third world country.

It seems like a throw-away phrase but with simple analysis it does stand up to scrutiny.

Ireland was a British colony.

During that time the country was destroyed by famine.

It revolted in search of its independence and identity and although the revolt was put down and its heroes executed, the crown granted us a type of independence. 

They gave us our political system – modelled on theirs.

They gave us our judicial system – modelled on theirs.

They allowed us some independence as the Free State but kept us under the rule of the crown … until 1937 members of the Oireachtas had to swear an oath of allegiance to the crown and until 1949 the Queen of England was regarded as the Head of State.

On a couple of occasions the Queen of England paid us a royal visit.  In 2011 Queen Elizabeth popped over to see how we were doing (and some say to collect her copy of the census, held the same year, as her claim on us as subjects).

Our government allowed our oil to be stolen by foreign corporations.

Our government allows the use of Shannon airport as a US airbase.

Our government took our taxes to save Irish, European and American banks.

Our government has promised our future taxes to be handed over to investment companies, hedge funds and traders on Wall Street and London and Tokyo in the form of government bonds, making us debt slaves in bondage to foreign powers.

Our government allows the same banks they saved with our money to throw us out of our homes into the streets, assisted by an English Sheriff.

Our police force operates as a private company available for hire to large private business to protect private property before public safety.

Our civil service is also wracked with corruption.  Many of its mandarins paid salaries even greater than that of our political leader.

Our political leader is a school teacher turned tin-pot dictator, unqualified to lead a country.  He is a willing mindless puppet backed by multi-billionaire businessmen.

Our social and economic policy is handed to us by a foreign, unelected government and all legislation must first be authorised by bankers and bureaucrats.

Our water is not the purified clean water that the rest of Europe enjoys.  It is laced with chemical fluoride and in some parts of the country is unfit for human consumption.

Our healthcare system is under-resourced to the point of implosion.

Our education system is under-resourced to the detriment of our children.

Our media only reports a scripted narrative prepared by government and ignores the reality of life for ordinary citizens.  All dissention is denied a voice.  All truth is censored.

Our political system is wracked with corruption.  Friends and family members are sneaked into positions of authority and given first class seats on the gravy train.

Quangos deliver no benefit to the people while feeding on their misery.

Our President is a puppet, or more accurately a muppet.  He is the missing member of the Waldorf 

Stadtler Higgins comedy trio.

Our farmers, once the engine of our economy, have been handcuffed by regulation, price and quota fixing and the rise of the supermarkets, importing most of what stocks their shelves.

Our small and medium sized business have also been destroyed by red tape and banking corruption while we allow global multi-national corporations use us as an off-shore conduit for profits from tax evasion.

Our church as enjoyed a reign of terror and child abuse with impunity.

Those of us with the possibility of escape have emigrated like refugees to find a better life … indeed to find a life! across the globe.

Some of us with no possibility of escape and no hope are taking our own lives to find peace in some other life.

And this week, in the shadow of our government’s palace, a man was left to die in the street.

Colonisation – famine – imposed government – corporate exploitation – political corruption – cronyism – the rise of the quangos – foreign domination – the theft of our natural resources – exodus – debt slavery – clerical abuse suicide – homelessness – lack of social protection for the poorest – sad, meaningless death.

Jimmy Rabbit wasn’t wrong when he said “Ireland are the blacks of Europe”.  Barely ten years after being hailed as the shining light of capitalism, Ireland is the ghetto of Europe.

We have seen how our government are preparing for the 2016 orgy of false patriotism with images of our oppressors.  Our slaughtered heroes have been forgotten, written out of our history while we are all but encouraged to sing God Save The Queen.

That’s what my uncensored subconscious showed me last night.  It is a sad image.  But it is entirely accurate.

Should we leave Europe?  Yes.  Absolutely.  And we should apply to the African Union to become a member of the African nations because we have more in common with Nigeria than we do with Germany.

Maybe then Bono might think about lobbying for his own people and make Irish poverty history…

So is there dry land anywhere in sight to beach this coffin ship before it sinks?

There is, but it will take a mutiny of the people to set it on its course.

We must act as one to remove the officer class and take control of our own destiny.

No one is protecting us.  No one is helping us.  We must help ourselves and if a peaceful mutiny does 

not succeed then it might take more forceful action to remove the officers and cast them adrift.

It’s 8am.  I rose early to write these words still fresh in my mind.  Tonight I will join the vigil outside Gangster House for the man who was found yesterday.  It will not be my first vigil.

I have not been a dissident for very long … to my shame.  My second act of defiance was in December 2012.  I went to Moore Street and bought a Christmas wreath.  I found a website with the names of victims of suicide who had died in Ireland over the past few years.  I wrote the names of those people and stapled them to the wreath and I hung the wreath on the railings of Gangster House and stood alone silently to honour them, remember them and to shame the people who had abandoned them.

A Garda on duty and one or two passers-by asked me what it was for.  I said simply “it’s for those who didn’t make it”. 

I don’t remember all the names but I remember Shannon and Erin Gallagher, Savita Halappanavar and Paul Doyle, a homeless man who died in a Tesco doorway in Bray.

On December 10^th it would be fitting to remind ourselves and our public representatives of those they have failed, abandoned and forgotten and place wreaths around government buildings. 

And on December 11^th it would be fitting to begin seriously to think about taking control of our lives so that this coffin ship does not become a ghost ship, filled with the crying souls of our children.

Photos: © Kevin E. Campbell  
www.kecampbell.com

Kevin E. Campbell : Dublin Editorial Photographer