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.