Into double figures

May 3rd 2011

BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST – INTO DOUBLE FIGURES

THIS COMING SUNDAY IN BALLYHEA, 10.30am, we will be holding our tenth protest march against the deal that was struck on our behalf on November 28^th last year.

To reiterate our aim: Last November the ECB came to Ireland ostensibly to bailout the country, but in reality their mission was to bail out the bondholders, who we believe (though it’s near impossible to get details of who these bondholders are/were) were mainly German and French banks.  Under extreme pressure from the ECB our then government signed off on a deal that transferred tens of billions of private bank/bondholder debt to the Irish people. 

Regardless of who the bondholders are, regardless of whether or not we can afford the repayments (and we can’t), this was a foul deed, an act of blatant imperialism, a burden imposed on a weakened but still sovereign nation by an inordinately powerful few.  We demand that the deal of November 2010 should be revisited and the bank/bondholder debt terms reversed, those bondholders then to be dealt with as they should have been in the first place, made to suffer their own losses.

That’s it; that’s our protest, that’s our cause.  That foul, unfair, unjust deed must be undone, that burden – the burden of others - lifted from our shoulders.  Then and only then, will we satisfied, then and only then can we again prosper.  Join our protest, sign our online petition.

http://www.petitiononline.com/isntbb11/petition.html

Regards,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

March updates - 7th, 8th & 9th

May 3rd 2011

BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST - THE MARCH CONTINUES

Our seventh march was held on a Saturday evening, April 16^th at 8.15pm, to facilitate those who couldn't make the regular time of 11.45am on Sunday.  A good crowd but numbers were down on the Sunday march, so it was decided to try something different again – 10.30am on the Sunday morning, giving people time to a) go to 11am Mass, should they desire, and b) time then to arrange the rest of their day, including underage GAA training/matches etc.

Our eighth march then was held on April 24^th, Easter Sunday and again we had a good crowd, numbers up slightly on the Saturday march, certainly in excess of 60.  For the first time we had flags, the national flag, on the grounds that in the week that was in it, the 95^th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, if that can’t unite us, nothing can.

Our ninth march took place last Sunday, May 1^st, and again we had the tricolour, which will now become the only flag allowed on the march.  Again numbers were strong, but we have lost one family or regular marchers, Páidí O'Connell and his clan emigrated to the US for a year due to the downturn in the economy – we all wish them well.

Our tenth march will go ahead this Sunday, 10.30am, and this will now become the regular time every week.  Please join us.  The news on the economic front gets worse and worse, the pie-in-the-sky predictions by our politicians again proving false.  The advice of a series of respected economists is this; if we continue on the current path we will default, sovereign default, but there is still €35bn in bonds to be argued over – fight.

Regards,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

On-line petition

http://www.petitiononline.com/isntbb11/petition.html

In the decade of the so-called Celtic Tiger Irish banks borrowed billions, poured them into the property market, created a bubble of such enormity that when it burst, it destroyed the entire Irish economy, including the banks themselves.  When those who had been foolish enough and reckless enough to lend those billions to those banks came looking to cash in their bonds there was precious little left, at which point the normal rules of economics should have kicked in – the bondholders cut and run, negotiate their losses and move on to the next likely investment.

In September 2008 came the first intervention, a weak and ill-advised government panicked into a blanket bank guarantee; on November 28^th 2010 the second intervention, that guarantee copper-fastened in a deal which will go down in history as one of the most dastardly deeds ever done in the name of the Irish people - under duress from the ECB, the then Irish Government signed a deal under which the private debts between the Irish banks and their various bondholders were transferred, in full, to the Irish people.

Immoral, unjust, unconscionable – this was all of that and more.  It was an unprecedented interference with the normal workings of the money markets, a decision that smacked more of empire than of community, a decision mandated by the ECB to protect the bondholders at the expense of the already seriously impacted Irish people.  Threatened with withdrawal of all support, the then Irish government was basically blackmailed into signing the deal; the Irish people were never consulted, were simply saddled with a debt they had never themselves accrued.

We petition now for this deal to be undone; we petition for those bondholders to be treated now as they should have been treated then, with whatever consequences they have to suffer; at the very least, we petition for a referendum on this deal, that the Irish people may themselves decide whether or not it’s acceptable that they should now be saddled with this debt.

An Easter prayer for Ieland 2011

Where the Mind Is Without Fear
by Rabindranath Tagore

---

Where the heart is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by
          narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depths of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
          dreary desert sands of dead habit 
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening
          thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Your €25,000 present

THE BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST

YOUR €25,000 GIFT

So, you go into your local bank one Monday morning, finish discussions with the manager on your mounting financial problems, are just about to leave when he announces – ‘Oh yes, I’ve transferred €25,000 of debt from another man’s account over to you, €25,000 of that debt for your partner also, and as a bonus, a further €25,000 for each of your children; you have two kids, so that will be €100,000 in all – I’ll give you five years.  And by the way, because it now puts you in the high-risk category, you'll have to be charged additional interest on all of that debt.  Hope you don’t mind.’

Mad scenario, right?  If you're Irish, that - in essence - is exactly what was done to you by your own government on November 29^th last year; you woke up to a debt you didn’t have when you went to bed on the night of the 28^th.  €100bn is a conservative estimate of the bank/bondholder bailout; about 4m people in this proud Republic (I'm still proud anyway), that’s about €25,000 each. 

You're okay with that?  You're willing to assume a debt that was never yours, assume that debt also for each of your children?  You're willing to see that money paid to billionaire bondholders whose bonds would all otherwise have been treated as such failed bonds have always been treated in the cut-throat world of the money-markets?  You're happy to have the new dictators of Europe, the ECB, decree that you - regardless of how carefully you conducted your affairs through the last decade - should now have to pay €25,000, at the ECB’s penal interest rate, to these bondholders?

If you're not, if you've had enough of being told how this is YOUR fault, if you've had enough of being cut, cut, then cut again, if you believe in people-power - the ultimate form of democracy - then march with us. 

In Ballyhea this Sunday, April 24^th 2011 at 10am, and every Sunday thereafter until we get that deal reversed, we walk.  Join us, join us, join us.

Renewing the Rising

BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST

WEEK 8, EASTER SUNDAY MORNING, 10am – THE RISING RENEWED

Early on the morning of Easter Monday, April 24^th 1916, in the cause of independence and in the face of what seemed insurmountable odds, a small group of men and women took their courage in their hands and challenged an old empire, the British Empire.

Early this Easter Sunday morning, April 24^th, on the 95^th anniversary of that auspicious day in Irish history, again in the cause of freedom and independence and again in the face of what seems insurmountable odds, a small group of men and women again take to the streets to challenge an empire, this time a new empire, the German/Franco Empire formerly known as the European Union.

In April 1916 and in the bloody years that followed, independence was won but it was hard won, many good lives lost before the old empire loosened its grip.

In November 2010 much of that freedom and independence was conceded, and softly conceded, an inept and feeble government bullied, browbeaten and blackmailed into accepting a deal which puts us firmly in the clutches of this new empire, and which could enslave this country for generations.

UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING, CLEARLY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY:

·     1) When the ECB came to Dublin last November they came with an agenda but it wasn’t to bail out Ireland – it was to bail out the German and French banks who are the holders of failed bonds not just in this country, but right across Europe.

2)·  2) When the ECB insisted that those bondholders would have to be paid in full they interfered in the natural order of the financial markets, they flew in the face of the most fundamental law of economics – bad investment means loss.

·     3) When the ECB went on to dictate to the then Irish government that this bondholder debt should be assumed – in full – by us, the Irish people, this wasn’t just an act of gross injustice, it was immoral, illegal, and unsustainable.

·         4) This additional yoke around our necks will break this country, and when that break comes (probably within three years), those bonds will all have been paid, that debt will be all our own, and we will be left with the worst possible scenario – sovereign default.

Our new masters came back to us last week, patted us on the heads for the fine job we’re doing in meeting their new guidelines.  They believe this is all over, headed back to Frankfurt content on a job well done.  In Ballyhea, we say no, we say never, and until such time as the message gets across, we will continue to say no, never.  This fight isn’t just ours, however, it’s yours, it’s everyone’s.  Take courage - join us, while there’s still time.