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 31st of this month, just as we did on the 31st 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 31st, 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
