IRELAND'S WAKING NIGHTMARE

THE SCENE

The ECB/EU/IMF troika have emptied our Pension Reserve Fund, taken our life's savings; they have ordered that we sell the family silver (the ESB etc.) and give them most of the proceeds; they have coerced us into assuming a debt that isn't ours, blackmailing our weak government into paying failed private bonds - €19bn this year, €55bn for the four years 2012 to 2015 (incl.); under their instructions we are set to destroy €3.1bn on the 31^st of this month, just as we did on the 31^st of March last year, just as we're scheduled to do for 12 years when that figure is educed on a sliding scale until the final payoff of €0.1bn in 2031 - the most odious Promissory Notes, the bill (final total €48bn-€80bn) to bail out just two banks, Anglo Irish and INBS.

THE SMOKESCREEN - RESTRUCTURING

Sometime in the next few weeks someone in our overseer government will announce a 'restructuring' of those Notes - a reduction of the interest rates, an extension of the terms, a ‘holiday’ for a few years, or perhaps a combination of some or all of those. It will be presented as a victory. It is not.

The 'restructuring' is done for one reason, to ensure that the big banks get their blood-money. NOTHING that's been done since this whole mess began has been for the benefit of the people; first-to-last everything has been for the benefit of the banks - European banks, British banks, American banks, banks worldwide. €3.8bn austerity budget this year, €3.5bn in 2013, €3.1bn in 2014, €2bn in 2015, that's €12.4bn (3.8 + 3.5 + 3.1 + 2) of additional cuts and taxes for the year 2015; €3.1bn destroyed every March 31^st, that's an equal €12.4bn for just those four years of our annual Promissory Note payments - our austerity, definitely, but for whose benefit?    

THE GREAT LIE

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” That was Joseph Goebbels, propaganda master of the Third Reich. Since this crisis began we’ve been bombarded with propaganda from Europe and from Leinster House, Fine Gael and Labour this week doing contortions to clap themselves on the back for the great work they’ve done over the last year (easy to bend over backwards when you have no spine), the media cheerleading on the wings. Don't believe it.

We’re told again and again that we are being bailed out by Europe, by the ECB specifically – lies. The truth is, we’re bailing out the banks of Europe and elsewhere, our weak government blackmailed into doing so by the ECB and now acting as their agents in the implementation of that bank bailout. When the ECB rode into town here in November 2010 it was with one agenda and one agenda only, to ensure their banks in Europe were saved and that we, the Irish people, would pick up the tab.

We’re told again and again that all this austerity is for us, part of a great plan to get us back on our feet. It’s not - we will continue to be bled so the big European banks can be saved. Our old-age pensioners and their benefits are the new target of the troika; of all the groups they – apparently – haven’t yet suffered enough, so their free travel/fuel/phone allowances, along with the old-age pension itself, are now in the line of fire. 

We’re told the ‘restructuring’ is for our benefit – lies. Bleeding us dry at this stage when there is still so much more to be had from us? No, that's not part of the ECB plan, but getting every cent of the original principal that forms the basis of the Promissory Notes – THAT’S the plan, thus the ‘restructuring’, and all the lying media propaganda around it.      

THE GREAT TRUTH

Know the truth. What's at stake here is one of the fundamentals of human existence - the age-old battle between right and wrong. In full view of the world, in broad daylight, the ECB is getting away with a crime, the extortion of tens of billions from the Irish people, the forced payment from the public purse of the failed private debts of others. That is wrong. Even if we were Switzerland and could swallow that debt whole without so much as a hiccup, that act would STILL be wrong. But we’re Ireland, and with that act we are being crushed by the ECB, by the EU. At every level, at the most fundamental level especially, it’s wrong, and until that great wrong is righted that is where the focus of every discussion around the bailout of November 2010 should lie. The ECB and its banks were the ones bailed out, Ireland and its people the ones paying the price.

In Ballyhea and Charleville we proclaim that truth, we protest that injustice. Eventually right WILL prevail. This Sunday again, in Ballyhea, 11.30am, we march.

Regards, Diarmuid O’Flynn

THE WAKING NIGHTMARE

THE SCENE

The ECB/EU/IMF troika have taken our life's savings, emptied our Pension Reserve Fund; they have ordered that we sell the family silver (the ESB etc.) and give them most of the proceeds; they have coerced us into assuming a debt that isn't ours, blackmailing our weak government into paying failed private bonds - €19bn this year, €55bn for the four years 2012 to 2015 (incl.); under their instructions we are set to destroy €3.1bn on the 31^st of this month, just as we did on the 31^st of March last year, just as we're scheduled to do for the next nine years when that figure is set to be reduced on a sliding scale for another eight years or so - the most odious Promissory Notes, the bill (final total €48bn-€80bn) to bail out just one bank, Anglo Irish.

THE SMOKESCREEN - RESTRUCTURING

                

Sometime in the next few weeks someone in our overseer government will announce a 'restructuring' of those Notes - a reduction of the interest rates, an extension of the terms, a ‘holiday’ for a few years, or perhaps a combination of some or all of those. It will be presented as a victory. It is not.

               

The 'restructuring' is done for one reason, to ensure that the big banks get their blood-money. NOTHING that's been done since this whole mess began has been for the benefit of the people; first-to-last everything has been for the benefit of the banks - European banks, British banks, American banks, banks worldwide. €3.8bn austerity budget this year, €3.5bn in 2013, €3.1bn in 2014, €2bn in 2015, that's €12.4bn (3.8 + 3.5 + 3.1 + 2) of additional cuts and taxes for the year 2015; €3.1bn destroyed every March 31^st, that's an equal €12.4bn for just those four years of our annual Promissory Note payments - our austerity, definitely, but for whose benefit?

                

The 'restructuring' is not done to alleviate the pain being suffered here in Ireland; we will continue to be bled, the old-age pensioners and their benefits the new target of the troika (of all the groups they – apparently – haven’t yet suffered enough, so their free travel/fuel/phone allowances, along with the old-age pension itself, are now in the line of fire). But bleeding us dry at this stage when there is still so much more to be had from us? No, that's not part of the ECB plan.

THE GREAT LIE

               
You'll hear and read the propaganda from Europe and from Leinster House, Fine Gael and Labour this week clapping themselves on the back for the great work they’ve done over the last year, the media cheerleading on the wings. Don't believe it. A quote: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” That was Joseph Goebbels.

THE GREAT TRUTH

                

Know the truth. What's at stake here is one of the fundamentals of human existence, the battle between right and wrong. In full view of the world, in broad daylight, the ECB is getting away with a crime, the extortion of tens of billions from the Irish people, the forced payment from the public purse of the failed private debts of others. That is wrong. Even if we were Switzerland and could swallow that debt whole without so much as a hiccup, that act would STILL be wrong. But we’re Ireland, and with that act we are being crushed by the ECB, by the EU. At every level, at the most fundamental level especially, it’s wrong, and that's where the focus of every discussion should lie. In Ballyhea and Charleville we proclaim that truth, we protest that injustice. Eventually, right WILL prevail.

Regards, Diarmuid O’Flynn

INTO OUR SECOND YEAR

Sunday last, March 4^th, was a birthday we never wanted to mark, a full year of protest against the extortion by the ECB of tens of billions of euro from the Irish people. Our cause is as just now as it was then.

                

In February 2011 we elected a new coalition government of Fine Gael/Labour, under the premise and with the promise that they would take courage from the people and bring our cause to the ECB/EU/IMF troika. Instead the new coalition took their example from the cowardice of their predecessors and like Fianna Fáil/The Greens, instead of forcing our just cause on the troika they are forcing the cause of the troika on us.

               

The coalition cites legal obligations; we reply - when bad law is made we have a right and a duty to resist that law, we have a right and a duty to change it. Thus did we, the people, resist and thus did we end the discrimination against women, against homosexuals; going back further in history, thus did we change the law denying women the vote, thus did we overturn the penal laws in Ireland, the slavery laws worldwide.

                

They say we have no choice, they warn of the dire consequences if we don’t do as bid. We say, when people are oppressed they have a right - and some of us would say a duty - to resist the oppressor. What the ECB and the EU are doing to us is oppressive; under threat of what will happen if we don’t accept their terms they are combining their financial and political muscle to blackmail and bully the Irish government into paying a debt that is not ours, a debt of tens of billions of euro.

                

Almost in justification of what’s being done, those of us who protest are asked again and again – what else can we do, what will happen to us all if the ECB pulls its funding of our Central Bank? Wrong questions, to the wrong people – do you ask the oppressed to accept their oppression or do you ask the oppressor to stop, do you ask the oppressor to justify legally or morally what they are doing? When the troika last came to town to pat us on the head for being good people and doing what we’re told, Vincent Browne tried to get answers to those questions – he was ignored by the troika, left on his own by his fellow-journalists.

               

A few basic questions for ye: €3.8bn austerity budget for 2012, €3.1bn taken from our exchequer and on March 31^st, destroyed, a single instalment payment on the bank bondholder bailout for one bank – our austerity is for whose benefit? If your neighbour – no matter how big – came into your house, took all your savings (our Pension Reserve Fund), ordered you to sell all your family valuables (ESB, Coillte etc.) and hand over the cash to him, then further, demanded that you give him a percentage of your income for the next 18 years (bank bonds, Promissory Notes), would you agree? If, after a year or so of this penury, and having looked at your circumstances, he allowed you a couple of percentage points off what you had to pay him every week, would you accept that as any sort of victory?

                

Our new overseers, Kenny and company, those carrying out the orders of our new masters the ECB, will present it as such; in the Ballyhea and Charleville protest group we don’t see it like that. This Sunday, March 11^th, 11.30am, we march again, in Charleville this time. Until this injustice is righted, we will continue to march. If you too have had enough, join us.

Regards, Diarmuid O’Flynn

Breaking the chains

February 17th 2012

IRELAND ENSLAVED

                We are an enslaved people, our function to provide funds for the major European and world financial institutions. As slaves, and in common with the people of Greece, another enslaved nation, we have no rights, we have only uses. People wonder why it is that greater production is expected from us than from Greece; it’s because at the moment we are stronger than Greece, at the moment we are healthier. We will be fed just enough to keep us strong enough to keep producing enough; when we’re no longer able to produce enough, we’ll be discarded.

OUR MASTERS

                Our masters are the ECB and the EU, the IMF as lesser partners. Their major interests are their banks, vast edifices which because of their own poor decisions were threatened with collapse. We are being used to provide the funding to try to prevent this from happening.

OUR OVERSEERS

                Our overseers come from among us – Kenny, Gilmore, Noonan, Rabbitte, Varadkar, Sherlock, all the others, they are the ones cracking the whips, they are the ones who will ensure that every last ounce of effort is squeezed from us, and they will draw blood from the recalcitants. Their own motivations vary - fear, cowardice, greed, ignorance, but no matter. They have their orders, they have their whips, and feeling secure in their own elite little group, they flog us and will keep flogging us, getting fatter and fatter themselves in the process.

HOW WE WERE CAPTURED

                The crash of the Irish economy a few years ago left us very suddenly with a huge budget deficit, an annually increasing national sovereign debt. In the years since then, we – the people of Ireland – have been saddled with an additional massive burden, the failed private bank debt. We were never consulted, we weren’t asked; our overseers were weak, badly informed, poorly equipped, succumbed to the threats of our powerful new masters, and gradually, inexorably, that additional burden is being wrapped around our own burden, til eventually the two will become one. When that happens, we are crushed.

HOW WE ARE KEPT COWED

                Threats, lies, misinformation and disinformation, all the classical weapons when you want to subjugate. There is the straight threat from the ECB, the financial bomb going off in Dublin spoken of by Overseer Varadkar – pay up or else; there is the apocalyptic picture painted by the media minions of what will happen if we don’t pay; there is the blatant ignoring of any discussion on the fundamental issue – what right has the ECB to use its financial muscle, what right has the EU powerful pairing of Germany and France to use its political muscle, to force a small and weakened member state to accept a debt that is not its own?

THE PROSPECTS

                The prospects are not good – how do we know? Because we’ve been here before. People aren’t dying in their millions but in so many other respect this is the 1840s all over again. People are going hungry, people are leaving in their hundreds of thousands; just as the food-relief ships coming into Irish harbours then met fully-laden food ships leaving for our then-masters in Britain, so it is that any inward investment is met by billions of euro leaving the Irish economy to feed the institutions in Germany and France, in other such institutions world-wide. €1.25bn paid on January 25^th in one failed bank bond; over €1bn in two failed bank bonds this week; €19bn in failed bank bonds this year; €55bn in failed bank bonds over the coming four years, all bled from the people. One major difference with the 1840s, however; bad as the British government was in its overseeing of the genocide they didn’t actually destroy vast quantities of food – on March 31^st last year, on March 31^st this year, and on March 31^st every year for a decade and more to come, following the instructions of the ECB our own Central Bank will oversee the destruction of 3.1bn of Irish money, real Irish money, the Anglo Promissory Notes.

WHAT WE CAN DO

                We can resist, we can fight, we can overthrow these new masters and their homegrown overseers; that too we know we can do, that too is in our history. Understand this; the €3.8bn austerity Budget 2012 isn’t the end of it, nor will be the €3.5bn austerity Budget mandated for 2013, nor the €3.1bn austerity budget for 2014, the €2bn in 2015. Put those together and the cumulative effect is a total of €12.4bn (3.8 + 3.5 + 3.1 +2) in cuts and taxes in the budget of 2015. Austerity? We ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. And for what? Throw their lies back in their faces; with the billions being paid in those failed private bank bonds, with the destruction of the €3.1bn on one day alone next month, it’s crystal clear that this enforced austerity isn’t to assist us out of the hole we’re in, it’s to enable the payment of those bonds, even if in the process the hole we’re in gets deeper and deeper. 

OUR OWN REFERENDUM

                In Iceland their own overseer government was going to  do exactly as ours has done but their President did what ours didn’t, refused to sign the bill. The people got a referendum, they rejected the lies, threats and misinformation, they voted against their own government, and now, just a couple of years later, Iceland is on the road to recovery. We are on the road to ruin, but we can turn. One of the money-making methods the ECB/EU/IMF have demanded that our overseers implement is a Household Charge. To enable this we are ordered to register by March 31^st; don’t do it. Let this be our referendum, let this be your opportunity to stand and fight – DON’T REGISTER, DON’T PAY. March 31^st is also the date the Promissory Note €3.1bn is due to be destroyed – demand now that this should not happen, march with us in Ballyhea on our weekly Bondholder Bailout Protest on Sunday, March 4^th at 11.30am, the first anniversary of our first protest march. It’s time to break the chains.

Regards

Diarmuid O’Flynn

Ireland united

BALLYHEA MARCH 4^th 2012 – UNITE IN COMMON CAUSE

                On Sunday March 4th we will be having our 52nd weekly march in Ballyhea in protest against the on-going extortion of tens of billions of euro from us, the people of Ireland, by the ECB. To mark the occasion we're inviting anyone and everyone to make your way to Ballyhea on that date and for half an hour, from 11.30am til noon, park whatever differences we may all have and march together.

                We have a single cause - end the bank bondholder bailout. No playing around with the terms - this load is crushing us, remove it. Its imposition was wrong, unjust; it's not just a gross abuse of power by the ECB and the EU, it is a cynical, deliberate and calculated attack on our independence, on our sovereignty.

                It's being done for what, because the ECB's pet financial institutions are too big to fail? Are we, the people of Ireland, not too big to fail? Does the EU not have any responsibility to its people? And where does it all end? Once this bank debt has been fully 'socialised' and we are forced into inevitable sovereign default – well, Greece this week, Ireland next.

                The fallout from the imposition of this bank debt burden affects us all; we should all resist. I wish I had the eloquence to properly articulate just how a critical a period this is in Irish history, but I don’t. All I can do is ask that in the face of this common threat, right left and centre we should unite, all political creeds and none, native and settler - that is our only hope. Join us, Sunday March 4^th at 11.30am, Ballyhea.

Regards

Diarmuid O’Flynn

MARCH 4th - AN OPEN INVITATION

MARCH 4^th 2012 - AN OPEN INVITATION

                When we started marching on the first Sunday in March 2011, it was never our intention that Ballyhea would become the focal point for protest against the bank bondholder bailout – contagion was our big ambition, spread the protest from parish to parish til the whole country was marching.

                Didn’t happen, so now a smaller ambition; Sunday March 4^th is the first anniversary of our first march, and now we DO want to make Ballyhea a focal point for this protest. This is an open invitation to all of you in the media who feel we’re being wronged, to all of you in the arts, to all of you in the world of academia, to all of you amateur and professional in the world of sport (with so many young people leaving, what sporting organisation hasn’t been adversely affected by this?), to all of you in the world of politics, to anyone and to everyone, to join us in Ballyhea on that one day and make this a protest march to remember.

                 With our own Central Bank set to destroy €3.1bn of our money on March 31^st we are reaching a crisis point, a pivotal moment in Irish history. On that one day join us, please, and share this invitation with anyone you think would like to do likewise.

Regards

Diarmuid O’Flynn

Problem solving

PROBLEM SOLVING

                That we have a major problem in the Irish economy at the moment is beyond question. How to solve it? The same way you solve any other problem, using the same basic principles – you go back to the source, then take whatever steps are necessary.

                Leave aside the sloppy introduction of the euro, the easy money that then became available to Irish banks, the lack of oversight here and in Europe on the reckless inter-bank lending; the source of the current Irish problem is the blanket guarantee given to the Irish banks by then Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan. When the mist cleared and the money markets saw the emerging mountain of bank debt that Ireland taken on, on top of its own growing sovereign debt caused by the budget deficit, they did the simple arithmetic and came up with the simple conclusion – couldn't be done. Consequent to that conclusion they raised the rates on Irish government borrowing, eventually forcing us out of the market and into the embrace of the troika. In that embrace we remain.

                Under extreme duress and with seriously deficient information, the government legislated for that guarantee; the situation is now even more serious, we know the full extent of the problem – if we’re to get back into the money markets any time soon the government must now introduce new legislation to right the wrong that was done back then.

                The situation is stark; that bank debt piled on top of our sovereign debt puts us in an unsustainable position, MUST be removed. It is not our debt, was never our debt, will never rightfully be our debt, but is being forced on us by the ECB. If we don’t pay even the unguaranteed bank bonds in the zombie banks, ‘a bomb will go off in Dublin,’ said Minister Leo Varadker. He was speaking metaphorically of course but the threat, also alluded to by many government spokespersons over the last couple of shameful years, is real. That is extortion, ‘the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threat’, the Oxford English dictionary definition.

                When real bombs were going off in Dublin, Belfast and London the discussion didn’t centre around having no choice but to accede to the demands of those who were doing the bombing, it centred around resistance at all costs; within the Irish media, however, what we hear more than anything else is ‘Ah but, what happens if we don’t pay!’

                There should be NO debate, none; in using its financial muscle to extort under threat tens of billions from the Irish exchequer, what the ECB is doing – with the EU and Irish government complicit - is wrong. If there is to be any debate it should be around that fact. We are being forced to pay not just the losses on failed for-profit private inter-bank deals, we are being forced also to pay the profits (the coupons) those bonds would have made, and because we don’t have the money now to pay those bonds, we are being forced into a situation where we have to borrow, assume new loans, on which we have to pay interest.

                This is a crime. It’s happening in full view of the world. The fact that it’s an official major organisation – the ECB – doing this extorting doesn’t make it any less of a crime.

                We should refuse, immediately, to pay a further cent in bank bonds. We should refuse, immediately, to pay a cent on the Promissory Notes. We should introduce and implement, immediately, legislation to undo all the damage that’s been done to our economy. Enough of this false debate; we must start to stand up for ourselves, we must fight back.

Regards

Diarmuid O`Flynn