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August 7th 2011
BREAD N’ WATER 7-DAY FAST – FINAL DAY
Today is the last day of the 7-day bread n’ water fast, a symbolic protest against the penal on-going ECB-dictated bank bondholder bailout. In a few minutes I’ll be heading for Croke Park to cover the All-Ireland semi-final, and thank God for the diversion, it will make this final day pass easily enough.
As anticipated, as feared, the fast has been in vain, and as with everything else attempted in an effort to highlight the massive injustice being visited on the Irish people on a weekly basis with the relentless payment of these bank bonds, it has registered not even a ripple in the national media.
It’s been a depressing six months of protest, a soul-destroying six months. Over the next few months, as the budget 2012 proposals are firmed up, we’ll have broadcast to us all the proposed cuts, the closures, the new taxes, reports of the protests being organised against same here, there, everywhere. What we won’t read about, the bond being paid by Bank of Ireland this Monday, €200,000,000; the bonds being paid this month, €444,260,916; the bonds being paid next month, €4,299,705,436; the bonds being paid next year, €20bn; the bonds being paid to the end of 2015, €60bn.
The media are meant to be the eyes and ears of the people – where are they? Reams of coverage of the Cloyne Diocese report, but what of this scandal, this bank robbery with a twist, the ECB robbing – under threat – billions from an already-suffering people? And robbery is what it is, nothing less. This is not our debt, was never our debt; neither this government nor the last WANTED to pay it, but were forced to do so by the bullying bungling ECB – ‘A nod is as good as a wink’, in the colourful words of Minister Michael Noonan.
When this day is over, for my own sake and for the sake of my family I have no option but to step back. It has reduced me physically (10lbs of mostly excess fat), but even more so, it has cost me emotionally. Depressing, soul-destroying? I've had the black dog for company for many months now. Cuts to the fuel/phone/electricity subsidies for the elderly and the poor, Autism programmes closed down, Special Needs Education hammered, hospital beds closed, operations deferred – the poorest, the neediest, the sick, all hit for the sake of millions, while billions are borrowed to pay bank bonds, and we don’t bat an eyelid in protest. As a civilised and supposedly caring society, how do we justify this? Watching this, knowing it’s happening, knowing also we’re letting it happen – it’s destroying me.
I'm taking a break from it for a while, so this will be the last annoying mail from me for the foreseeable future. Wasted my time, and if you even bothered to read any of these missives, wasted yours. Hopefully someone with a bit more stamina will now take up this fight.
Yours sincerely,
Diarmuid O'Flynn.
