A GLOBAL TALE

There was a great cartoon doing the rounds a few months ago with the caption: THE WORLD OWES $52 trillion - TO WHOM? For the answer, let's start back a couple of centuries. 

FIRST WORLD (USA/UK and their allies) V THE REST

• 1800: Three times richer 
• 1970: 35 times richer 
• 2013: 80 times richer.

How has this happened? Let’s look at another few numbers, and another question:

THIRD-WORLD AID OR THIRD-WORLD RAID?

Third-World Aid - the stream inward:

• €130bn annual ‘aid’:

Third-World Raid - the flood outward:

• €900bn Tax avoidance schemes by large corporations (‘Trade Mispricing’); 
• €600bn Debt-servicing to rich countries; 
• €500bn Estimated cost of Trade Rules drawn up and enforced by the first-world.

Net flow:

That’s €130bn going in, over €2tn (€2,000,000,000,000) flowing out from poor nations to rich, every year. Now, the picture begins to emerge, why it is the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, all of which leads to this:

DEBT DEFAULT – BUT WHOSE FAULT

You've heard of the ripple effect? That growing wave of debt in nations worldwide is resulting in a veritable tsunami of default. From a study by Ugo Panizza for the IMF in 2008, the following figures emerged.

Number of governments who have defaulted on any debts, including any kind of debt restructuring:

• 1941-1970: 6 
• 1971-2004: 129

Ireland is not a Third-World country, nor remotely near it, and those of us who live and work here should be both appreciative and grateful for the bounty that surrounds us. But we are now sucked into this debt-spiral, caught in this debt-web. True, the €70bn we've paid to 'bail out' our banks doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in a global sense, not when put against the numbers above, but in Irish terms it is a sizeable amount, over half our annual GNP - our contribution to their coffers.

SLIDING SCALE – SLIPPERY SLOPE

Where is the money going? For the answer, let's look at a few very startling facts on global wealth distribution (if you could call it that):

• 1% own 43%; 
• 50% own 1%.

On an individual basis, the richest 300 have the same wealth as the poorest 3bn (3,000,000,000 - more than the combined populations of India, China, USA & Brazil).

STATUS QUO

That's where we are now, in this year of our Lord 2013, that's the world we've made for ourselves, that obscene imbalance between the Haves and Have-Nots, an imbalance accelerating by the day never mind by the year.

This is neither incidental nor accidental; it is planned policy, very deliberate, it is those who are gathering all that wealth to themselves now dictating to those who supposedly make the rules and the laws - our governments.

STATE OF THE NATION

This Sunday Enda Kenny is going on national TV to give his version of The State Of The Nation. He’ll proclaim that we’re ‘EXITING THE BAILOUT!’, that we’re ‘RECLAIMING OUR SOVEREIGNTY!’ and his cheerleaders in the media will begin the spin.

All the people standing by cheered and cried, “Oh, how splendid are the Emperor's new clothes!”

The truth is that we never got a bailout and that we have surrendered our sovereignty indefinitely. 

Banks and bondholders across the globe got the bailout, we were the ones footing that bill. What we got was a bail-in, not a cent of writeoff, debt on debt. We are, in fact, entering the fourth year of that bail-in and for the next four decades (at least) we are debt-enslaved to Europe. 

We will emerge from this but we will do so in spite of this government, not because of them. In fact had they done what they were elected to do nearly three years ago and stood up to the EU/ECB on behalf of the people we would now be very firmly on the path to recovery.

GOVERNMENTS COWED AND COWARD

'We daren’t stand up to the markets – they’re so powerful, so threatening!’ that’s the cry of governments everywhere but of ours especially; ‘We've got to appease them, we have no choice but to impose austerity on you!' 

And so they make good the failed investments of bankers, brokers and financiers, they facilitate the tax avoidance schemes of the various multi-nationals, they refuse to put even a minimal tax on some of the dodgier financial transactions, they strip away employee rights, bending and changing the law to whatever shape is required, and all the while forcing that debt burden onto their own people, cutting and slashing services, piling on regressive stealth taxes.

Appeasing the people isn't a priority of this government nor of the EU/ECB. They have made their choice. 

We too have a choice. Do we accept this, or do we fight back.

At 2pm this Saturday, December 14^th, at the Opera House in Cork, a few of us from Ballyhea and Charleville who have been campaigning for nearly three years will join others who have started that fight-back. Stand up, be counted - join us.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.

NELSON MANDELA AND BALLYHEA

Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill, former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, had a saying for which he gained some renown – ‘All politics is local’.

Nelson Mandela was a living reminder that in fact all politics is also global – such was his influence. We can all get caught up in our own local affairs but meanwhile, on another level, that which affects one affects all. Take, for example, the current austerity being imposed on Ireland.

We know of its effects - mass emigration, mass unemployment, rising depression and suicide rates, rising numbers caught in the poverty trap, cuts across the board in all the vital public services, gradual erosion of decades of gains in employment conditions, increased regressive stealth tax, privatisation of public assets – the list is endless. 

But this austerity isn’t confined to Ireland; in truth it’s not even confined to Europe, nor is it anything new. It’s the result of deliberate policy and planning, the effect of which sees more and more of the world’s riches and assets being concentrated in the hands of a few.

SLIDING SCALE – SLIPPERY SLOPE

A few startling facts on global wealth distribution (if you could call it that), focusing on population and wealth:

Working from the cream to the crème-de-la-crème

• 10% own 85%
• 5% own 71%
• 2% own 51%
• 1% own 43%

Looking at the other end of the scale

• 80% own 6%
• 50% own 1%

On an individual basis

• The richest 300 have the same wealth as the poorest 3bn (3,000,000,000, that’s more than the combined populations of India, China, USA and Brazil);

A WORSENING TREND

• 200 years ago the countries of the so-called first world (Europe, North America, Australasia, Japan) were ‘only’ three times richer than the rest 
• At the end of colonialism in the 1960s they were 35 times richer 
• Today, they are 80 times richer.

THIRD-WORLD AID OR THIRD-WORLD RAID

The stream inward:

• Those ‘rich’ countries ‘give’ €130bn in aid annually to our brothers and sisters in these poorer countries;

The flood outward:

• Large corporations take over €900bn out of those countries annually (tax avoidance schemes called ‘Trade Mispricing’) 
• Poor countries are paying €600bn in debt-servicing to rich countries (South Africa, ironically, caught up in that) on loans already paid off many times over 
• Trade Rules drawn up and enforced by the first-world are estimated to cost these poorer countries over €500bn/annum;

Net flow:

• That’s €130bn going in, over €2tn (€2,000,000,000,000) flowing out from poor nations to rich, every year.

DEBT DEFAULT – BUT WHOSE FAULT

You've heard of the ripple effect? That growing wave of debt in nations worldwide is resulting in a veritable tsunami of default. From a study by Ugo Panizza for the IMF in 2008, the following figures emerged.

Number of governments who have defaulted on any debts, including any kind of debt restructuring:

• 1941-1970: 6 
• 1971-2004: 129

NELSON MANDELA 1918-2013

Nelson Mandela died this week. He was 95, a long life but a life in which he lived every moment, cherished every minute, a life fulfilled. Most of those years Mandela gave to the fight against enslavement, the fight against injustice.

In his speech from the dock at the conclusion of his trial in 1964, before being sentenced to life in prison with hard labour, these were his concluding words: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

How we could do with a Nelson Mandela in Europe today, a Europe in which a new apartheid is being enforced, the separation of the Haves from the Have-Nots.

SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH

Mandela spent 26 years in prison, 18 of those in remote Robben Island. As part of the effort to suppress his cause the apartheid government of South Africa made it illegal to mention either his name or the name of his Party, the ANC. Didn’t work of course as first his own people, then people from around the world, took up the fight on his behalf.

He himself, meanwhile, had never given up the struggle. Even towards the end, after those years of deprivation, in negotiations with the all-white government he was offered his freedom in return for an unequivocal condemnation of the violent means being used at that stage by the ANC; he refused, telling his people “Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.”

We are now prisoners of Europe, debt-slaves for the next 40 years at least.

THE SAYS NO CAMPAIGN

For 145 weeks in Ballyhea we’ve been marching in protest against the imposition of private bank-debt on the Irish people; that’s two years and nine months, a hell of a lot less than the 26 years Mandela spent in jail, a hell of a lot less personally demanding and by God a hell of a lot less dangerous. If he could persevere in the face of all those dangers and hazards, all that loss of liberty, we can surely persevere with our own particular crusade. 

The €69.7bn that we’ve ploughed into our banks is a very immediate contributory factor to this growing wealth imbalance, our enforced little offering to the coffers of the few, the Promissory Notes debt of €31bn the most glaring element of all. Lifting that debt burden, that is our goal.

In our campaign to date we have met our own problems with suppression of the truth, the latest example being the absolute absence of coverage from our national media of the two-evening debate of a Motion seeking bank-debt writeoff, put down by the Technical Group in the Dáil on behalf of the Says No groups from Ballyhea and elsewhere.

We saw first-hand the attitude of our government to any opposition to its policies, to even this simple request, the jeering, sneering frontmen sent out to speak on their behalf; we also saw the disdainful attitude of two prominent RTE journalists to those of us who were gathered outside the Dáil in support of the 36 TDs who were backing our Motion.

VALIDATION

In the pursuance of our goal we don't need to quote the great and the good, the likes of Nobel-prize-winning ecomomists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman who have castigated what's been done to Ireland – a just cause is its own validation. Still, a few words of encouragement never went astray and in the following few lines, Nelson Mandela could have been speaking directly to us:

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” 

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” 

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” 

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.” 

“I am the captain of my soul.” 

“It always seems impossible until it's done.” 

And my new favourite -

“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”

BY THEIR WORKS SHALL YE KNOW THEM

I say now to Enda Kenny, to Michael Noonan, to Eamon Gilmore, to Brendan Howlin, the big four who have taken power unto themselves in this country; all your flowery rhetoric does not - and will never - do honour to the memory of Nelson Mandela. He was a man of action; your current actions do his memory a great dishonour.

One of Mandela’s final causes was the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign. The EU/ECB policy of enforcing austerity on the people while enriching the few, to which our government have shown unbending commitment, flies in the face of that campaign. Far from making poverty history, your policies will make poverty universal for all but yourselves and your fellow elite.

We call on you now to stop fighting your own people on behalf of the EU and the ECB in the cause of the bankers, the financiers, the elite few, and start fighting the EU/ECB in the cause of your own people.

REMOVING THE OBSTACLES TO FAIR GOVERNANCE

ROCK-BREAKING

In days of old when people came across a boulder blocking their progress, when there were no air compressors, jack-hammers, power-drills or any such modern gadgetry, they developed a simple method of ridding themselves of this very solid and seemingly immovable obstacle in their path.

They found the weak point in the boulder, drove in a wedge – several wedges in several weak points, if there was more than one. They excavated around the periphery, built fires in the hollow, let the heat build up, gradually hammered home the wedge(s) until eventually the boulder was reduced to rubble. No explosion, no collateral damage, problem solved.

In our campaign to get the bank-debt burden lifted from the Irish people we have met several such boulders, all the way to Brussels and back. From our experience with the Dáil Technical Group Promissory Note bonds Motion last week, we now know for certain of two such obstacles in front of us right here right now, at home.

FIRST ROCK

The first is our own government. We expected our Motion would be defeated, we did not expect the sneering disdain with which it was dismissed. In an effort (misguided, as it transpired) to make it acceptable to even the two government parties we had confined the Motion to the most obviously odious element of the bank-debt, the Promissory Note bonds; additionally, we had kept the wording as non-confrontational and as simple as possible.

And still it was lost. Not just beaten but, taking their cue from the arrogance with which the four who now rule the roost in this country (Kenny, Noonan, Gilmore & Howlin) treat all challenges, those who had backed it were derided and mocked as fools and simpletons, all 36 TDs plus all those of us who have been campaigning for years.

We know now, without shadow of doubt, this government will not ask for bank-debt writedown, not even on this most odious debt. That's one rock in our path.

SECOND ROCK

On the evening of the final debate a representative gathering from the various Says No groups from Dublin and from around the country met outside the Dáil, a show of solidarity with those inside supporting the motion on our behalf. Every news outlet in the country - radio, TV, newspaper - had been notified. All chose to ignore it.

RTE went one better however - perhaps even two better. On the main Six-One news, anchor Bryan Dobson referred to us as 'those idiots'; at around the same time, another RTE heavyweight, David Davin-Power, made his way through our protest but ignored what was going on. Stopped at a red light, he was approached by one of the organisers and politely asked if he'd have any interest in covering what was happening - "No interest in the world!", his dismissive reply, before stalking off across the road and into the comfort of the Dáil.

That's another rock in our road, our national media.

THE WEAK POINTS

We have already found the weak point in the government's position, the Promissory Note debt. Not a single Fine Gael or Labour Party TD who spoke against the Motion addressed what was being proposed, that we merely ask the ECB allow the Central Bank destroy the €28.1bn in Promissory Note bonds it shortly proposes to begin selling to the markets (very possibly to the same financial institutions bailed out by the original Promissory Notes).

We have driven our first wedge into that rock, now we must keep hammering, working with those TDs.

The national media rock? The weak point there, obviously, is the audience. Two wedges; first we boycott - stop watching, stop listening, stop buying; then we bombard, with e-mails, with letters, on Twitter, on Facebook. We let Bryan Dobson know, we let David Davin-Power know; they are the servants of the people, not the masters.

Then we build our own media, create our own information channels - written, audio, video. We have the technology, right?

TURNING UP THE HEAT

And all the while that we're driving home those wedges, we also keep turning up the heat. And we can – we certainly have enough fuel. 

Far from there being no protest in Ireland against all that's being imposed on us, there is protest everywhere:

• Our campaign against the bank-debt;
• The water charges groups;
• The Home Tax campaign;
• All the various organisations protesting all the cuts to the most vulnerable sectors of our society;
• The debt relief groups;
• The various charity organisations;
• Those fighting to reverse the terrible deals down in the sale of our energy reserves; 
• Etc etc.

Around all the rocks we've all been meeting, we’ve all also been excavating, exposing, lighting our individual fires. Now is the time to pull them all together.

BUILDING A NATIONAL COMMUNITY

We need an umbrella under which we can all gather, a central organisation, a central website; we can all continue with our own focus but above all we need a central ambition and direction, a coordinated drive to force the interests and the needs of the people back to the top of the agenda, no longer subservient to the demands of high finance. We need to force our politicians and our media to do what they’re supposed to do, we need them to fight for us and not against us, we need them to inform us and not fool us.

All of this is going to take time to build but like those wise people of old, we need to have the patience. This will not happen overnight, it won't happen in weeks, maybe won't even happen in months. But we don't just wait. We work, we build our fires, we keep increasing the heat, and we hammer away at those wedges.

NO VIOLENCE

Peacefully, patiently, working in community and in harmony, working especially with a smile on our face and a song in our heart, we’ll get this done.

Know the bounty we’ve been blessed with in this country, the rich soil, the bounteous rivers, lakes and seas, the beauty of the landscape, the wit and humour of the people, the music and culture, and so much more. We’re a nation that should soar, not a nation that will allow itself ever again be crushed underfoot by a new set of money-merchant masters.

Remember the words of Terence McSweeney, later adopted by Ghandi: "It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer."

CLEARING THE FOG ON THE PROMISSORY NOTE DÁIL MOTION

There is some confusion out there on what exactly last week's Motion to the Dáil was about in relation to the remaining Promissory Note bonds now about to be sold off by the Irish Central Bank, confusion especially among those who spoke on the government side, every one of whom went off on 'we are great!' tangents, not one of whom actually addressed the Motion itself.

THE WORDING:

The following motion was moved by Deputy Joan Collins on Tuesday, 26 November 2013:“That Dáil Éireann: calls on the Government: — to immediately lobby the European Central Bank for a one-off exemption from the rules of monetary financing, to allow the Central Bank of Ireland to destroy the €25 billion in sovereign bonds issued in February of this year, in lieu of the remaining promissory notes, plus the €3.06 billion bond also being held by the Central Bank of Ireland in payment for the 2012 promissory note; and — to cease any and all interest payments currently being made on those bonds.”

CLEARING UP SOME OF THE GOVERNMENT MISUNDERSTANDINGS

• The Motion was not seeking unilateral default; it was merely putting it to this government that we should at least ask the ECB to allow the Central Bank destroy the €28.1bn in Promissory Note bonds;
• The Motion was not about the budget deficit over the last four years, the money borrowed to pay the nurses/teachers/guards, the Gov's alternative Troika when they want to defend their actions; not one cent of the Promissory Notes €31bn went towards 'closing our deficit', the gap between what we were taking in and what we were spending;
• The Promissory Notes billions didn’t ease any burden on the Irish people – the opposite is the case, it has added considerably to that burden;
• The Promissory Notes billions was money printed to bail out banks, bankers, bondholders, international institutional investors, the Eurozone, the Euro itself;
• Contrary to government claims, the Promissory Note debt is still intact, every cent of the €25bn that still remained in February of this year to be borrowed and burned, is still there (plus the €3.1bn bond issued to pay the 2012 Promissory Note), will still be borrowed, will still be burned; the actual notes are destroyed, replaced by sovereign bonds – the debt remains, in full;
• The major difference made by Michael Noonan’s February deal is this: where the bulk of the repayments had been over the next ten years, continuing then at a reduced rate for another ten years, now they’ve been spread over 40 with the bulk of that burden being borne by the next generation and the generation after - in simple terms, we are leaving a debt-legacy to our kids, forcing them into debt-slavery to the EU/ECB;
• We are already paying interest on the Promissory Notes debt, upwards of €300m/annum when the interest on the €6bn Prom Notes already paid is added to the interest we’re now paying to Europe on the €25bn that now sits in the Central Bank (this isn’t to mention the additional €1bn we’re losing on interest on the €20bn taken from the Pension Reserve Fund – another story for another day!);
• Making reasonable assumptions on the Euribor rate, economist Karl Whelan has calculated the interest on the €25bn Promissory Notes bonds (this does NOT include the €6bn in Promissory Notes bonds already paid) will ultimately total €47bn; this must then be added to the €25bn principal sum, giving an overall cost of €72bn (possible that €15bn of that reverts to ourselves through the Central Bank - I have to confirm this);
• A question no-one has asked – what if those bonds, when they’re being sold on to the markets, are sold at less than par (as happened with the 2012 bond, which would have cost €3.46bn), how much extra will this then cost us? Even more pertinent, what if those bonds end up in the hands of the very same instititional ‘investors’ that benefited from the original Promissory Notes? How obscene is that, that they profit twice?
• Ultimately this was an ECB decision to solve a European problem;
• Destroying those bonds now would have only a positive impact on the markets; those bonds haven't yet been sold so no bondholder is burned and it has the net effect of reducing Ireland's long-term debt burden;
• In their excuses as to why they won’t ask for debt writeoff the government quotes EU/ECB Articles, Rules and Regulations; these are the very same Articles, Rules and Regulations the EU/ECB itself bent and twisted to allow the €31bn be printed in the first place and that debt imposed on us, so why is our government so strong in fighting us on behalf of the EU/ECB, so weak in fighting the EU/ECB on behalf of its own people?
• Finally, THIS IS NOT OUR DEBT, never was legitimately, never will be legitimately. It's up to us to keep this to the fore.

The EU/ECB would love to see this issue buried; we now know however that no-one would more like to see us disappear than our own Government. Having done their dirty deal in February, it would be such an embarrassment to them now were we to get a writeoff on that debt. And THAT is why they won't even ask, not because they fear being told 'No', but because they fear being told 'Yes'.