NASA’s Terra Satellite Sees a Snow-Covered Ireland; Emerald Isle Swathed in White

NASA’s Terra Satellite Sees a Snow-Covered Ireland;

Emerald Isle Swathed in White*

Infowars Ireland

January 1, 2011

The Mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. are not the only areas dealing with holiday snowfall. Ireland was recently swathed in white on December 22, 2010. When NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured a true-color image of the snow. The overnight arrival of 15 cm (6 in) of snow at the Dublin airport forced its closure. Combined with the closure of the City of Derry airport, travel became quite difficult.

The Emerald Isle was swathed in white on December 22, 2010, when the MODIS instrument aboard the Terra satellite passed overhead, capturing this true-color image.

Credit: NASA Goddard/MODIS Rapid Response Team, Jeff Schmaltz

MODIS images are created by the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The MODIS instrument flies onboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites.

Ireland enjoys a “temperate ocean climate” (Cfb) based on the Koopen climate classification system. Such climates normally enjoy cool, cloud-covered summers and mild winters. Ireland’s climate is also moderated by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, which flows off the western shore. Snow commonly falls only in the highest elevations; dustings may occur elsewhere a few times each year. Significant accumulations anywhere in the country are rare.

The winter of 2009-2010 was unusually cold and snowy. Called “The Big Freeze” by the British media, it brought widespread transportation problems, school closings, power failures and twenty five deaths. A low of -22.3°C (-8.1°F) was recorded on January 8, 2010, making it the coldest winter since 1978/79.

Although it has just begun, the winter of 2010-2011 threatens to be just as challenging. The earliest widespread snowfall since 1993 occurred on November 24, primarily affecting Great Britain and Scotland. Two days later snow began to cover Ireland, and the continuing severe weather has taken a toll. It has disrupted air, road and rail travel, closed schools and businesses, and caused power outages. Livestock and horses have had difficulty finding grass to eat, some relying on volunteer feeding efforts for survival. Local temperature records were broken, including a new record low for Northern Ireland of -18.7°C (-2°F) at Castlederg on December 23. As of that date, 20 deaths had been attributed to the winter weather and associated hazards.

Sources and contacts:
nanopatentsandinnovations.blogspot.com

For more information and additional MODIS images, visit:

http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/showall.php

Jeff Schmaltz
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.


http://info-wars.org/2011/01/01/nasas-terra-satellite-sees-a-snow-covered-ireland-emerald-isle-swathed-in-white/

“Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?”

The Crisis of the Euro: “Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?”*

Anthony Coughlan

The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre

August 4th, 2011

“The member states whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole. The granting of any required financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality.”

- Amendment to Article 136 of the EU Treaties (TFEU) which was decided on by the 27 EU Member States at the March European Council summit and which licensed the 17 Eurozone States to sign the European Stability Mechanism Treaty on yesterday week, 11 July.

This ESM Treaty would establish a permanent EU bailout fund from 2013. The ESM Treaty and the Art.136 EU Treaty amendment which authorises it now go around for ratification by the Member States. The Government has decided not to put it to referendum here even though it means more power to the EU. The ESM Treaty can be downloaded from the internet.

The Irish Coalition Government, supported by Fianna Fail, intends in the autumn to get the Oireachtas to approve the decision to make the above amendment to the EU Treaties and then to ratify the consequential ESM Treaty for the 17 Eurozone countries.

They do not intend to hold a constitutional referendum, even though the wording of the Art.136 TFEU amendment and the ESM Treaty that derives from it would formally subordinate Ireland’s interests to those of “the stability of the euro area as a whole” … Even though there are no Treaty limits laid down as regards the “strict conditionality” which can be imposed on recipients of financial bailouts from the permanent ESM Fund envisaged … And even though Ireland will be required to contribute some €11 billion in paid-up and callable capital and guarantees once this Fund is set up in 2013.

The Irish Government thereby hopes to circumvent the 1987 Crotty judgement of the Supreme Court that new EU Treaties which extend the scope and powers of the EU and entail further surrenders of Irish sovereignty to Brussels/Frankfort, can only be made if the Irish people agree to them in a constitutional referendum. It is only the sovereign people themselves can decide on further significant surrenders of sovereignty to the EU – not our politicians or our TDs and Senators.

On 12 July Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said on RTE that were it not for Spain and Italy he would have been “euphoric” about what happened at the meeting of EU Finance Ministers the day before, when they spoke about the possibility of lowering the penal 6% interest rate being charged for the giant EU/IMF loan that was pushed on Dublin last November.

That was a bit like saying “Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?” The reason Minister Noonan was (almost) euphoric was because (as he said) the euro crisis is no longer about Ireland, Greece or Portugal but about core Europe.

The ultra-Europhiles in Ireland’s Establishment do not care what happens to Ireland, the euro or the EU, as long as they are not blamed.

The lack of self-confidence on the part of Ireland’s “Federalistas” is astonishing.

The powers-that-be bang on about the loss of Irish “economic sovereignty”, but they all want to have the euro debt federalized so that they can brandish an interest rate reduction on the current EU/IMF loan as a superlative political achievement.

Federalizing the debt means the end of the State’s 12.5% Corporation Profits Tax, which is crucial for attracting foreign investment in the Irish economy, and a lot more besides, as Berlin takes over permanently Ireland’s detailed budget decision-taking under the permanent EMS Treaty.

The Irish State is caught between a rock and a hard place, so far as Ireland’s “Federalistas” are concerned. It is bye-bye euro or bye-bye to what is left of Irish sovereignty.

On 16 July the Irish Times called for an EU fiscal and political union in its lead editorial. “This has always been the project’s ultimate end-point,” it stated.

But there was no mention of that being the “ultimate end-point” as Ireland’s paper of record championed passionately and uncritically every step of EU integration down the decades.

What a catastrophe the Eurofanaticism of Ireland’s “Federalistas” has brought down upon the Irish people:

* Pushing us in 1999 to join a monetary union with an area with which we did only one-third of our trade…

* Leading us to adopt totally unsuitable low interest rates in the early 2000s because these suited Germany at the time, so making our “Celtic Tiger” boom “boomier”, as Bertie Ahern put it, and inflating the property bubble…

* And since 2008 turning us into debt peons of the European Central Bank, whose Jean-Claude Trichet told Messrs Cowen and Lenihan at the time of the infamous blanket bank guarantee of 29 September 2008 that Anglo-Irish Bank must on no account be let go bust and that the foreign creditors/bondholders of the Irish banks must be paid every cent in full.

Which EU country had the highest economic growth rate last year? It was Sweden, at 5.5% . . . In the EU but happily outside the Eurozone. Its people sensibly rejected Eurozone membership in 2003 in a referendum vote of 56% to 44%, even though most of that country’s politicians supported abolishing the Swedish kroner at the time.

Angela Merkel now has to find a way of telling her own people that Germany is about to achieve the ambitions for which they fought and lost two World Wars, but that it will cost them money.

She also has to find a way of saying that without the rest of us noticing! And the other Heads of Government have to find a way of telling their electorates that the price of a continuing Eurozone of 17 is permanent German hegemony plus an austerity economic regime with all that that entails.

The only longterm solution of the current crisis is either federalizing the euro sovereign debt or the break-up of the Eurozone of 17. There are now likely to be moves to try to federalize some of the debts. There will be developments pointing to Trichet’s hoped-for EU Finance Ministry and much else besides, but one wishes that the proponents of the EU developing into a United States of Europe would ask themselves what happens after that. Such a logical end-point of the “great EU integration project” would not be the end of European history.

* Do the Euro-federalists really think that the many peoples of the EU would submit to effective German-French economic rule for the indefinite future?

* Do they really believe that they can institute a European democracy without a European “demos”? …

* Or that the latter can somehow be artificially created? …

* Or that people will submit indefinitely to administration by Brussels-Frankfurt technocrats, fronting for Berlin, no matter how benevolent these regard their own intentions?

These quite unrealistic assumptions have been subscribed to by the EU integrationists from the start. These people are now being exposed for the arrogant blunderers and fantasists they are, but millions are suffering terribly, and will suffer further, as they seek to impose ever more austerity on the PIIGS countries in the hope of saving their grand euro-currency “project”.

History has many examples of failed currency unions even though they were also fiscal and political unions.

The Irish State left the British monetary union after a century of membership. An independent Irish currency was seen by successive generations of Irish nationalists as an indispensable part of an independent Irish State.

Where now is the USSR rouble, the Yugoslav dinar, the Czechoslovak crown or the Austro-Hungarian thaler – all currencies of multinational federations that were monetary, fiscal and political unions for three-quarters of a century or longer, and all now vanished into history along with their creators?

Europe is a Europe of the Nations and the States or it is nothing, as Charles De Gaulle once said. That statement of democratic principle of course is internationalism, not nationalism. We need to adopt it as part of the ABC of political realism in face of the current crisis.

Democrats need to work towards a Europe of independent democratic cooperating Nation States, and abandon the fantasy of turning the EU into a world power under effective Franco-German hegemony, with the elites of small countries like Ireland serving as their well-paid local acolytes.

Anthony Coughlan
Director The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre

* Url:http://www.nationalplatform.org/2011/08/the-crisis-of-the-euro-apart-from-that-mrs-lincoln-did-you-enjoy-the-play/

Ireland rating slashed as its misery grows

Ireland rating slashed as its misery grows*

Thursday 7th October 2010, 1:53am

Ireland’s economic turmoil continued yesterday as Fitch cut its credit rating.

The news came a day after Moody’s said it was considering downgrading Ireland, driving up the nation’s borrowing costs.

The decision heaps further pressure on a government saddled with a debt pile set to hit a staggering €155bn (£136bn) this year – equivalent to £100,000 for each of the country’s 1.5m households.

As well as cutting Ireland to A+ from AA-, Fitch put its rating on a negative outlook, also pointing to uncertainty over the country’s wavering economic recovery.

Fitch said: “The downgrade of Ireland reflects the exceptional and greater-than-expected fiscal cost associated with the government’s recapitalisation of the Irish banks, especially Anglo Irish Bank. The negative outlook reflects the uncertainty regarding the timing and strength of economic recovery and medium-term fiscal consolidation effort.”

The Irish financial regulator yesterday warned of more bad news as the country’s property market continues to unravel. The government last week revealed it could cost up to €50bn to bail out economy.

* Url:http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/ireland-rating-slashed-its-misery-grows

Irish bonds cut to junk status on bail-out worries

Irish bonds cut to junk status on bail-out worries*

Ireland's beleaguered economy has suffered another blow after its credit rating was cut to junk status on fears that it will need further bail-outs.

By Philip Aldrick and Amanda Andrews

12 Jul 2011

Ireland's rating was lowered to Ba1 from Baa3 on Tuesday night. Photo: AP

The country joins Portugal and Greece to become the third euro-area nation to be reduced to non-investment grade. The downgrade by Moody's came as it emerged European leaders will hold an emergency summit on Friday in an effort to contain fallout from the sovereign debt crisis sweeping the Continent.

Ireland's rating was lowered to Ba1 from Baa3 on Tuesday night. The country, which had a top Aaa rating just over two years ago, lost its investment status after the once booming property market imploded, causing banking collapses requiring huge bail-outs that saw the country's debt surge.

Moody's said that reason for the downgrade was a growing possibility that once the current €85bn European Union/ International Monetary Fund rescue package ends in 2013, Ireland is likely to need further bail-outs before it can return to the bond market.

The European Commission said it "regrets" Moody's decision to downgrade, adding it "contrasts very much with the recent data, which support a return to GDP growth this year, and the determined implementation of the [austerity] programme by Dublin".

Moody's had previously cut Ireland's credit rating two levels on April 15 to the lowest investment grade.

The developments for Ireland came on a second day of turmoil across the Continent during which Italian and Spanish bond yields hit record euro-era highs before suspected interventions by the European Central Bank (ECB) settled nerves, and European ministers admitted an orderly default on Greek debt is actively being considered.

Markets tumbled for a third consecutive day, although deep early losses were later pared back by moves to stop bond vigilantes targeting Spain and Italy.

George Osborne, who is not expected at Friday's meeting, urged Europe to step up its efforts after yesterday's meeting of finance ministers, saying: "The time has come for decisive action to address the crisis in the eurozone and prevent market uncertainty doing real damage to the world economy."

In a concerted effort to allay concerns, Italy pledged to speed up plans for €40bn of austerity measures, the euro group committed to ease the terms of rescue packages for Greece, Ireland and Portugal, and traders said the ECB had gone into the markets and bought peripheral nation's sovereign debt.

Despite their efforts, the euro slumped 0.4pc to $1.3986 and a record low against the Swiss franc as investors fled to safe havens. The FTSE 100 fell 1pc , Germany's DAX lost 0.8pc and France's CAC 40 eased 1pc.

The desperate measures were taken after the bond markets turned their sights on Spain and Italy, which Capital Economics warned "could mark the beginning of the end for the single currency union". Italy faces a key test at a bond auction on Thursday and Spain faces a similar test the following week.

On Tuesday morning, at the height of the panic, 10-year yields almost touched 6pc. Spain’s followed Italy’s up to 6.2pc. Both were euro-era records. In response, Mr Berlusconi accelerated plans to approve the €40bn budget cuts. Yields later dropped back to close down 12 points at 5.56pc for Italy and down 17 points at 5.81pc for Spain.

Italy’s action came as the Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager said an orderly default for Greece “is not excluded any more”. EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn added that the €440bn European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the area’s rescue fund, may buy back sovereign debt in the secondary market – a proposal backed by Mr Osborne.

Greek and Irish ministers also welcomed the euro group’s commitment to ease the terms of the original bail-outs.

* Url:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8633665/Irish-bonds-cut-to-junk-status-on-bail-out-worries.html

Solidarity Greetings for the International Republican Socialist Network to our Sisters and Brothers in Kenya on the Occasion of African Liberation Day

Solidarity Greetings for the International Republican Socialist Network to our Sisters and Brothers in Kenya on the Occasion of African Liberation Day

Thu, May 26, 2011

Comrades, Sisters and Brothers,

The comrades of the International Republican Socialist Network send greetings of their deepest solidarity to our sisters and brothers in Kenya on the occasion of African Liberation Day 2011. The IRSN is an organization arising from the struggle for a united, 32-county, Irish workers' republic, which is seeking to build support for a republican socialist strategy in many nations where a fight for national liberation is joined to a struggle for socialism: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Catalonia, Euzkadi, Puerto Rico, and Quebec. Since the time of our founding, we have proclaimed the Pan-Africanist Socialist strategy as the way forward for the masses of the African continent and Africans throughout the globe and we embrace all Pan-Africanist Socialist as our comrades. Your struggle is our struggle; your victory will be our victory.

Today we see the imperialist powers of the world emersed in crisis and chaos and, like an injured predatory beast, they are striking out will all of their violence in an attempt to keep themselves alive and keep those they have dominated and exploited for so long in fear. Right now we are seeing this in the vicious assault they have launched against the people of Libya, who have for so long been a torch in the darkness for the oppressed of the world. The imperialists always seek to smother the light of truth and to hide the reality that there is an alternative to continued exploitation and poverty, but more than this, they are terrified of the Libyan proposals to create a new African currency based on gold, because they know that it would provide a means for Africa to reverse its history of exploitation and enable the people of Africa to use their own mineral resources to empower themselves, rather than to enrich the imperialists.

We stand in defense of the people of Libya and the revolution they launched in 1969 and we call upon all those who are opposed to exploitation and oppression to come to the defense of Libya and insist that the imperialist slaughter ends immediately. We have no doubt that the people of Libya will never allow themselves to again be brought under the heel of imperialist oppression, but they are fighting against the massed array of imperialist militarism and they must be defended.

Imperialism's crisis is the opportunity of the oppressed. We have been recently cheered by the strong showing gained by republican socialist candidates in Ireland and the tremendous victory for the forces of Scottish independence in the elections just held in those nations. We are encouraged by the uprising of the people of Spain against capitalist oppression and we are awed by the courage and tenacity displayed by the Libyan masses fighting to defend their homeland from imperialist invasion. When the working masses become conscious of their own interests as a class, there is nothing in the world that can defeat them.

We salute yet another African Liberation Day and bask in its proud tradition and we say to our comrades in Kenya, know that we stand with you in the fight for a United Socialist Africa and that we embrace you warmly as our sisters and brothers. Forward ever, comrades. Backwards never!

Adh mor,

Peter Urban
Comrade, International Republican Socialist Network

The continued British presence in Ireland has no more legitimacy than those who oppose it with arms.

The continued British presence in Ireland

has no more legitimacy than those who oppose it with arms.*

There has been a great deal of hand ringing and talk of moral values since the death of Constable Ronan Kerr of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who was killed after an armed Irish republican group placed a bomb under his car, which was parked outside his house in Omagh, County Tyrone. Understandably, Matt Baggott, the Chief Constable of the British police force in Ireland lauded his dead officer, and kept to a time-honored script which is played out whenever a member of the British armed forces lose their lives whilst serving the crown.

No complaint there, it is what senior officers do when one of their number fall in the line of duty, however it was the politicians who outdid themselves and it was not only the British Prime Minister, his Viceroy in Ireland and the Unionists who got in on the act. Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness elbowed his way to the front in an attempt to paint himself as a loyal servant of the British crown. Mr McGuinness addressing a Sinn Fein meeting in South Belfast shortly after the death of PC Kerr, all but claimed the dead police officer as one of his own when he said:

“I went down to see Nuala within hours of her son being killed and it was very obvious from being in that household that many of the family circle were Sinn Fein voters. And I would go so far as to say that Ronan Kerr voted for Sinn Fein, and joined the police because he wanted to be part of change and wanted to support the peace process.”

Such cringing subservience did not go unnoticed by the British establishment, and shortly after McGuinness had spoken the Secretary of State for NI, Owen Patterson, was on his feet in the Westminster parliament congratulating McGuinness on his behavior, as the hear hear’s of his fellow MP’s echoed around the parliamentary chamber:

“The leadership was evident again when the First [Peter Robinson of the DUP]and Deputy First Ministers (Martin McGuinness) and the Justice Minister stood as one with the Chief Constable to reiterate their determination that these terrorists will never succeed. They all called for the active support of the PSNI.”

I do not believe I am being unfair here when I write Mr McGuinness’s behavior was identical to the unionists who swear allegiance to the English monarch, it is difficult not to conclude he has evolved into a loyal servant of the British crown and more importantly, it seems Tory politicians like Owen Patterson regard him as such.

This raises questions about the legitimacy of the six county statelet and whether it is legitimate under international law for Irish republicans to use armed struggle to remove the border and complete the Irish national revolution. Under international law, the right of national liberation movements to use armed force is controversial. On occasions, the UN General Council has endorsed the right to armed struggle, For example it supported a resolution giving the Palestinians the right to use 'all means' to throw off their Israeli oppressors and today under the pretext of a UN resolution, the USA, UK, France and their NATO allies are giving military and economic aid to their north African ‘rebel friends’ with a clear aim of overthrowing by force of arms the Gaddafi regime in Libya.

Undoubtedly a large number of UN affiliates maintain liberation movements have the legitimate right to use armed force to secure the right of people to self-determination. As far as Ireland is concerned, the first question we need to ask is does the British presence in six counties of Ireland fall into this category. The British government clearly believes it does not, but given their track record, few rational people would take their word. Indeed, when it comes to this matter, there our few governments who have such a long and appalling record of abusing peoples human rights. From their original occupation of Ireland, through to the British Empire and on to Iraq and Afghanistan, the British government has plundered its way around the world leaving famine, mass migration, death and economic destruction in its wake and many claim it continues to do so to this day.

Ireland, by force of arms, has been occupied by the English and then the British State for hundreds of years, its record there is one of brutality, neglect and deviousness. Thus when making a judgement about what is legitimate or not, it would be foolish and negligent as some deem to do today, just to consider the situation in Ireland since the signing of the GFA. One must look at the whole picture and take into account how the six county statelet came into being after the British withdrew from the 26 counties which make up today's Republic of Ireland. Did NI become a geographic and political entity due to a democratic decision of the Irish people; or was it brought into being after British governmental threats of a dreadful and terrifying war.

Sadly the latter is the case, and just because these threats were made in 1922 does not nullify this fact. They can only be nullified when the Irish people are given an all Ireland referendum on whether the island of Ireland should become a single unified state. Until this occurs the border will continue to be contentious and without legitimacy. (The all Ireland ballots which took place in the two separate Irish political entities and centered on the GFA, were clearly lost opportunities as sadly they did not fall into this category.)

However the legitimacy of the border and those who oppose it by using armed struggle is not the only question. Armed republican groups do not operate in a vacuum, but amongst those they wish to liberate and unlike in 1916-22, and 1969-2004, there is not a sizable section of Irish people who support the use of violence to remove the border, this is as true in the North as it is in the South.

For those who currently engage in armed struggle to dismiss this by claiming so what, it has always been so, will just not do. It may be true that at times previous generations of republican insurgents were unable to claim a degree of majority support, but there was a good reason for this, as the scale of the hardships or harsh oppression the insurgents and general population faced during previous Republican insurgencies were incomparable to what the British inflict on the nationalist people of the North today.

Indeed if we are being honest, the overwhelming majority of those who live in the six counties today, face no greater oppressive state forces than those who live in the rest of the UK. The six counties cannot be regarded as a society which is suffering under the iron heel of a tyrants boot. Having said this, it does not make the situation correct simply because the tyrant has replaced his boot with a smart Gucci shoe, as the change of footwear still allows the writ of the UK State to run in six counties of Ireland without a shred of democratic legitimacy.

But for Republicans to engage in arm struggle simply because they can, would be a sign of hopelessness and a negation of their revolutionary traditions. For without a degree of mass support, all an armed campaign can achieve is to lay a blood stained marker in the sod, which proclaims the continued presence of the British State in Ireland is wrong. As much as some Republicans may welcomed this, It is difficult to see how this alone can justify the negativity which flows from engaging in armed struggle. The lives of volunteers wasted either from premature death or years of imprisonment, and the inevitable collateral damage any military campaign inflicts on its host communities. Along with the death and maiming of people like PC Kerr, whose only real crime is they represent a public manifestation of the British government in Ireland, and provide a comparatively easy target in comparison with those who actually govern the northern Statelet at a local level.

It seems to me it is a tad hypocritical for armed republicans to target this group of public servants, when senior members of the Stormont administration like Martin McGuinness live without sanction in nationalist communities. Just to be clear, in no way am I suggesting senior members of SF should be targeted, I am simply pointing out one of the many contradictions in the strategy of groups like the RIRA, CIRA and Óglaigh na hÉireann.

As I mentioned above, the only justifiable reason to continue the arm struggle as far as I can see is to keep the beacon of reunification alive, it is about as clear a statement as one could get that some Republicans refuse to turn their backs on eight hundred years of struggle. Whilst this may be a powerful argument, it takes a leap of faith to justify the use of armed struggle as it is difficult to see how targeting minor servants of the British State in Ireland like the police, can produce constructive change when thirty years of the most determined armed struggle could not.

Even those who want no truck with the GFA, cannot honestly claim the six counties is the oppressive society it once was. True, like the British police elsewhere in the UK, the PSNI is still obsessed with the enemy within; and can behave in a heavy handed manner, but in truth when it comes to dealing with public order situations, its manner of policing is little different from similar police forces in the EU’s metropolitan areas.

The public manifestation of Mi5 in the north is far more worrying as it now has the full remit for counter terrorism throughout the six counties which cannot but further embed the north east of Ireland within the UK State.

Nevertheless, despite this and the English crowns provocative visit to the South, there are, north and south, viable political avenues open to all Republicans through which they can advance their cause and just because the Provos also claim this, does not make it any less so. The Stormont assembly is crying out for a left-republican opposition which is mandated to expose the mockney and sectarian parliament’s shortcomings from the inside whilst working for its abolition.

I realize such participation is a problematical subject for Republicans and will need extremely delicate handling, but for revolutionary republicans to pass up such an opportunity is left wing infantilism. Instead of abstentionism to avoid the mistakes of the past, the key is surly not to cling irrevocably to past republican dogma, which in truth has never served the movement well in the post 1922 period, but to build an organization which is based on the collective will of the membership and has the necessary inbuilt democratic checks and balances.

True state agencies will place road blocks and obstacles in the way, but there is no surprise about this, it has always been so, it is what all revolutionaries face.

The one certainty about the British State, when dealing with republican groups, it is guaranteed to make a bad situation worse, as we have witnessed with the charade trial of independent republican Gerry McGeough, which ended with him being sentenced to 20 years jail time and the current treatment of Republican prisoners in Maghaberry jail.

Napoleon once said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Good advice perhaps, but it seems to me to base an entire military campaign on the possible mistakes of one’s enemy is taking this dictum to the level of the absurd.

MH

* Url:http://www.organizedrage.com/2011/05/continued-british-presence-in-ireland.html

Private pensions will be ransacked to fund public sector pay and perks

Private pensions will be ransacked to fund public sector pay and perks

The pension levy is simply a means to honour

a gimmicky election promise, writes Jody Corcoran

Sunday May 15 2011

WE ARE in real trouble now. At the first time of asking, the Government has shown itself to be utterly incompetent. Not only is the proposed pension levy grossly inequitable, it may also be unconstitutional. Make no mistake, though, it was designed for no reason other than political expediency.

Before the election, Fine Gael said no tax increases on income; Labour said no cuts in social welfare. It was glaringly obvious even then: never the twain shall meet.

After the election, both Fine Gael and Labour were adamant on one thing: public- sector pay levels would remain untouched, notwithstanding the niceties of that three-card trick -- the Croke Park Agreement -- the credibility of which was destroyed by Joe Durkan of the ESRI last week.

To honour a gimmicky election promise, then, this Jobs Initiative wheeze, it has come up with a desperate measure, an outrageous stroke. No matter how it might try to dress it up otherwise, with its by now familiar 'spin' made to seem as if black is white, the Government has decided to raid the pensions of private-sector workers, such pensions which have already been bled white by this recession.

When the verbiage is stripped, this is what we are left with: just over 500,000 workers, clinging on by their finger tips in the real economy, are to be robbed of the guts of €4,000, that a few unemployed may (just may) get back to work to pay income tax that the inflated pay of those in the public sector be maintained.

It is a scandal.

The coping class is about to be screwed again, therefore, by the very people who had vowed to protect them. Quelle surprise. Fine Gael has just lost the next election, not that that matters a jot anymore, and Labour has shown itself to be true to form.

With a little imagination, there was another way, a better way, which would have bound in solidarity all sectors in society, public and private, workers and jobless, OAPs and the young, that we might all contribute, as we should, in a fair and equitable way to help lift this country out of a mess.

This is not designed as yet another attack on the public sector, but somebody has to say it: enough is enough. Within the past fortnight, two men, economists in the public sector, Joe Durkan of the ESRI and Morgan Kelly of UCD, said it: enough is enough.

Kelly last week set out a radical proposal that may help

the country avoid bankruptcy, avoid becoming a long-term protectorate of the EU, Europe's answer to Puerto Rico; he said that public sector pay should be slashed by up to 50 per cent.

Of course Kelly was to be rounded upon by fellow public-sector academics, to be portrayed as a maverick, a loner, as some kind of isolated figure, a recluse, who had gone too far, who had come to believe his own publicity, as decreed by that periodical to the stars, of Hollywood glitz and glamour, Vanity Fair, no less.

So the jealousy has become naked, the back-biting a form of upfront knifing: the attacks on Kelly are no more than economists in academe jousting to the seductive allure of media whoredom. All of which is to say that, by and large, Kelly was right.

"At age 50, every man has the face he deserves," said Orwell. What then are we to make of Joe Durkan of the ESRI, aged 68, going on 69? If ever a man spoke the truth last week, it was Uncle Joe.

Pay in the public sector needed to be cut by 10 per cent, he said: and yes, he said, he would stand in line, at the front of the line, in fact, to take a cut of 20 per cent.

Kelly has credibility, not just because of what he rightly predicted in the past, but because he is prepared to stand in line too.

Durkan has even more credibility, because he worked in the real world for six years from 1983 before he returned to the public sector, UCD, in 1989, and from there to retirement, and then back to the ESRI this year, the public sector institute he had first joined in 1969.

It is not as if such advocates are saying what they are saying for reasons to do with ideology. The facts speak for themselves.

In 2009, the ESRI used authoritative data to analyse the public/private sector wage gap and to investigate the impact of awards implemented under a number of wage- setting institutions on the differential. The results indicated that public sector pay increased dramatically from 7.7 to 23.5 per cent between 2003 and 2006.

The ESRI also found that by 2006 senior public-sector workers earned about 10 per cent more than their private sector counterparts, while those in lower-level grades earned between 24 and 32 per cent more.

Furthermore, the public premium predated the payment of a further two Social Partnership wage deals, along with the pay increases awarded in the second benchmarking exercise.

The years 2003 to 2006 are instructive: these pay increases, and the two subsequent, were awarded mostly at the height of the Celtic Tiger, and even at the downturn.

Who paid for this? The taxpayer, mostly through stamp duty on property sales in the bubble era. It is, therefore, incontrovertible: the sector benefitted greatly from the property boom. Yes, the bankers and property developers -- and media owners, through advertising revenue -- also benefitted; but undoubtedly, and excessively, workers in the public sector lapped it up.

In the real economy, events of the last four years have taken their toll: job losses, pay cuts, pension decimation. The public sector has taken a hit of sorts too: new entrants have been asked to contribute to their own pension; but other than that, and tax increases it pays with the rest of us, it has escaped relatively unscathed.

And now the private sector is to have its pension raided that the unemployed may find work again, that they may pay tax again -- in effect, and this is the effect, that workers in the public sector will continue to enjoy an outrageous pay differential and perks, to finance, in extreme, taxis from Waterford to Dublin, fine wine

and even finer art, as we saw

last week.

Here is how Colm McCarthy of UCD, formerly of the ESRI -- and, like Joe Durkan, formerly of the real world -- saw it last week: around 520,000 people own €80bn in private-sector pensions, an average of about €154,000 each. The levy will cost them about €920 a year on average.

In the public sector, however, about 330,000 employees have entitlements under pension arrangements. These schemes are unfunded and therefore have no taxable assets, but the total liability has been estimated at €108bn.

It follows, then, that the average sum standing to each member in these unfunded schemes is about €327,000, which is more than double the average amount standing to those in funded schemes which are liable to this levy.

The Jobs Initiative is being funded, in effect, by those who have small occupational pensions: those with the bigger pensions, public servants in the main, will not be contributing.

As McCarthy says, Michael Noonan looked a bit uncomfortable while explaining this measure to Sharon Ni Bheolain on Tuesday evening. And well he might.

On Wednesday evening, however, I was a bit confused: RTE, the public service broadcaster, gave an account of the ESRI quarterly report as prepared by Joe Durkan on Six-One News. But at no stage did the RTE report refer to the elephant in the room, as highlighted by the ESRI: that is, the call by Joe Durkan that public sector pay be cut by 10 per cent and that he himself would take a 20 per cent cut.

Fine Gael and Labour, then, campaigned in a General Election fully aware that the country was broke, but pretending otherwise, that the EU/ IMF/ECB would somehow allow the Government to throw around money on a wheeze which may, or may not, get a few hundred back to work.

To honour that dubious pledge, it has turned to where

it is always easiest to turn -- and in doing so has stoked the anger which exists between the public and private sectors, when there is nothing to be gained by this.

With a little imagination, there was a better way: call it a Jobs Levy, where everybody, bar none, is made to contribute to a national cause.

Everybody: the unemployed €5 a week, ditto our OAPs; all 1.8 million workers, private and public, €10 a week; those on over 100 grand €20 a week, and so on.

Surely it should not be beyond the wit of the Government to devise such a levy -- as opposed to the spin, at which it is adept . . . or, well, maybe that's just it, maybe it is beyond them.

* Url:http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/private-pensions-will-be-ransacked-to-fund-public-sector-pay-and-perks-2647679.html

Statement by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions May Day 2011

Statement by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions May Day 2011*

Irish Left Review

May 4th, 2011

We send greetings to workers in all lands on this May Day. We have so much in common. The economic crisis reaching across the globe has touched us all. Amidst all the wealth created by the labour of working people, who were not responsible for the global crisis, we are now expected to protect and bail out the wealthy few.

The free market demands that the bankers and the financial institutions get their pound of flesh in the form of guaranteed interest rates and loan repayments. This at the expense of the wages, pensions and working conditions of working people, at the expense of unemployed benefits and other social welfare payments. With two further hair shirt budgets endorsed by the present and previous governments more cut-backs are inevitable.

Ireland in common with Greece and Portugal has now lost the sovereign right to make decisions on their own future, a role now taken by the IMF/EU/ECB. Can we default on the debt? Well by all accounts we can never repay it. So it must be restructured at the expense of the European bankers and financial institutions. The government must be forced to travel this road. Borrowed money must be used for job creation with state sector companies allocated a central role, not privatised.

Our slogan for May Day is resist AUSTERITY. The trade union movement must lead this resistance at all levels, at union meetings, in workshop actions, in street protests. There is a propaganda war to be fought and won. The majority of economic commentators in all branches of the media are telling people that there is no alternative. Resistance is futile. The majority of politicians echo this viewpoint.

We must prove them wrong. If people can change governments they can change policies Governments cannot rule without the consent of the people. The trade unions have the power to make this happen.

LONG LIVE MAY DAY.

Phil McFadden
President

Sam Nolan
Secretary

Dave Field
Vice President

* Url:http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/05/04/statement-dublin-council-trade-unions-day-2011/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+irishleftreview%2Ffeed+%28Irish+Left+Review%29

Reflections on the Lack of Revolution In Ireland, Continued

Reflections on the Lack of Revolution In Ireland, Continued*

Published May 2, 2011

I haven’t got through reading all the articles on May Day International, but there is lots of excellent and important stuff, not least this absolutely brilliant piece by Costas Douzinas on the European Union. Excerpt:

"But there is another tradition that belongs to the left. Liberal cosmopolitans forget that the first to call himself cosmopolites was Diogenes the Cynic. He was a fierce critic of institutions, conventions and the powerful unlike the Roman Stoics, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius who are presented as the founding fathers of cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitan tradition takes place in the streets of Athens and Paris more than in the backroom negotiations of bankers and elite politicians, in the parrhesia of the young rather than the monotony of TV commentators and the hospitality towards the excluded and persecuted."

You may also be interested in my piece on why there hasn’t been too much resistance in Ireland. I didn’t find my own explanation entirely convincing, or at least sufficiently comprehensive, so I would like to expand on a few things that came to mind when I was writing it but just didn’t have the right combination of chops and space to fit it in. I focused on the matters of property ownership, debt and working conditions because while it’s fairly obvious to most people that these are important factors in curtailing resistance, I think we are bombarded far too much with the idea that what really keeps people in their place is the quality of their ideas.

This is what O’Toole is saying: people think in certain ways because this was the way of life they grew up with. And it follows from this that all that might need to be done is to somehow get people to think the right thoughts. I think there’s a kind of seductiveness to this, because it allows you to keep politics confined to what often gets called ‘the marketplace of ideas’, where the material conditions in which the ideas get produced can get safely ignored, and instead of class conflict you get high-minded sweet reasonableness. The other thing I chose – which is the whole question of trade union resistance and the noxious effect of social partnership, not only on trade unions but on democratic politics- I don’t think I fleshed out too well. I would add to what I wrote that it allows for a displaced class conflict staged via the media. So the government and the trade unions basically play the role of the ruling class, and are held up as a lightning rod for resentment, thus distracting attention from IBEC et al.

It is remarkable how often ‘vested interests’ gets used as a phrase to describe some power-hungry politician or some overpaid trade union official, and maybe even property developers and bankers, but is never used to refer to the vested interests of the owning class in Irish society. You never hear any politician of any mainstream party, and certainly not any opinion-maker of any significance, refer to the ‘vested interests’ of Intel, or Tesco, or Dermot Desmond. These entities and people simply form part of the natural habitat in which the rest of us are thrust. The effect of all this is to crush any idea that the institutions of government, or trade unions, can function as the instrument of democratic politics. It engineers apathy, despair and anti-political attitudes among the population.

The amount of right-wing economic propaganda directed at people is just insane, even by the standards of most free-market states. It is hard to imagine that there is a country in the world with a higher ratio of household name celebrity right-wing economists per capita. Perhaps somewhere like Chile in the Pinochet years, I don’t know. You have this raft of guys who are employees of banks and financial institutions, and they go on to RTE or Newstalk or wherever, and they just vomit forth all this stuff that has a veneer of scientificity, but the way in which they’re treated, the whole performance, they’re like a priestly caste, as I was discussing with Eoin the other day. Then there is the whole smart-ass masculine-dominated coverage of economics. This ties in with the whole property-owning democracy thing, of course, where politics is something for the politicians, and what you really need to be worrying about is how that fetish abstraction known as ‘the economy’ is going to affect your house price, your pension, your job prospects, and so on.

It is now at the point in Irish society where democratic politics is forestalled because people think they have use economistic prophylactics whenever moral statements are involved. So on the rare occasion that someone comes out and says something like, “I don’t think that people on minimum wage should be effectively increasing the subsidy to the likes of Tesco and Pfizer by paying higher personal taxes while the latter two pay nothing extra”, the response is always “ah now but if we raised corporation tax then that would make the country less competitive and then we’d all have no jobs so you can’t do that.” The important bit for me here is how the “you can’t do that” element of these responses never gets subjected to any scrutiny. To say “you can’t do that because they’d do this” is to say something concrete about what the power of these entities entails. They can screw people. Now in a normally functioning society the next question would be: should these corporations be allowed to screw people? Ask yourself when the last time you heard anything approaching this line of questioning, either in print or broadcast media, where the person making the comments was either a) denounced as a nutter; b) systematically interrupted; c) a token radical. This is the sort of thing I was talking about when it came to Ireland’s church-free authoritarian conservatism.

A whole other area is the cordon sanitaire thrown around any sort of direct action. Having grown up in Northern Ireland and had massive bombs going off a couple of hundred yards down the road, having seen burning 18 wheeler lorries out the front door of the house at 6 in the morning, and basically lived in a climate of fear for a good few years, I have to say that the fear propagated in relation to even the mildest physical agitation here is simply stunning. That time the SWP protesters bum rushed the Dail car park you’d have thought Leinster House had been under sustained attack from a helicopter gunship. And then there was the time the éirígí councillor chucked the red paint over Mary Harney and Joe Duffy started asking her if the next thing would be snipers on the streets. I didn’t live in the Republic until ten years ago, so I never really got a perspective on how people viewed the war in the North. But I get the impression that that part of the island was portrayed as a hellhole, in deliberate contrast with the peaceful, orderly southern State. You don’t get it so much nowadays, but in the first couple of years I lived here I would get people saying to me that they wouldn’t go north in case a bomb went off. (Strangely enough this sentiment was never accompanied by any concern for my family, all of whom had been spending an awful lot of time there.)

If you read Eoghan Harris’s column today, and there is no need, believe me, you can see a pretty good distillation of the imagined effects of this paramilitary consomme. An unholy collection of reds and republicans and red republicans, all with indelible psychopathological insecurities, and driven on by fundamental misconceptions of how the real world works, which is to say, neoliberal capitalism trussed up as ‘social democracy’, risk engulfing the State in disaster. Harris of course is an extreme case, but I think he’s fairly in tune with the role these grotesques play in the ebb and flow of news reporting and analysis. There is a controlling function to the whole anti-republican/anti-dissident posture adopted by politicians and commentators: we must be careful not to get any radical ideas about democratic control of natural resources in case the Real IRA blows your town centre to bits, killing your family, scaring off all the American multinationals, and plunging the country into untold decades of darkness. Seems reasonable to expect this sort of thing to intensify as popular anger begins to manifest itself the streets, as I believe it will.

* Url:http://hughgreen.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/reflections-on-the-lack-of-revolution-in-ireland-continued/

There must be some way out of here: social movements and the crisis in Ireland

There must be some way out of here: social movements and the crisis in Ireland*

Laurence Cox of Interface Journal

May 1st, 2011

Like its predecessor, 19th century robber-baron capitalism, disorganised capitalism knocks the stool out from under the formal representation of social movements in parliaments. Perhaps it would be better to state this in reverse: organised capitalism created the relatively brief conditions within which social movements (in particular the workers’ movement) could find a relatively stable presence within many western European party systems, but those conditions have been increasingly weakened in recent years, and the likelihood of movement parties emerging (as opposed to parties which originated in movements) is now much reduced.

The concentration of capital in media production and the commodification of academia have had similar effects on other aspects of the ‘public sphere’ so that, as in the 1880s, social movements are typically on the outside, looking in as all and sundry go through the familiar routines. In Ireland, this means blaming the crash on workers and trade unions rather than on neoliberalism and deregulation; targeting poor communities for cuts while bailing out the banks; pushing through the handover of gas reserves to multinationals while squeezing money out of the demand side of the economy; and so on.

In this sense, the recent Irish general election is interesting as an indicator of the popular mood: the combined vote for right-wing parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) was down below 55% while that for left-wing parties (defined in a generous way to include Labour and the Greens along with United Left Alliance and Sinn Féin) over 34%. In 2007, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the neoliberal rump that was the Progressive Democrats had over 72% of the vote and the left had 20.4% - the last election thus saw a left swing of some 15 percentage points on the earlier right-left split, which had remained broadly stable for some decades. Of course, a substantial proportion of the new ‘left’ vote went to the Labour Party (now the junior partner in a coalition government), and some part of this is bound to be disappointed by Labour’s devotion to European respectability at the expense of everything else; so there is probably some further room for left growth here (as well as the potential to put Labour’s loyalty to their new coalition partners Fine Gael under pressure).

A similar situation applies to the unions: despite the double loyalty of union leaderships to the Labour Party and to attempts to restore the recently sundered corporatist pact with capital and the state ‘on any terms’, the massive turnouts for recent Irish Congress of Trade Unions demonstrations can hardly be interpreted other than as a strong rejection of the attempt to offload the costs of the crisis onto workers, with particularly strong feeling in the public sector, now the home of the highest union density (and, not coincidentally, the target of those who aspire to ‘reform’ the working conditions of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people). The approach of union bureaucrats to demonstrations over the past two years has been defined precisely by a concern to ensure that members did not become too mobilised or active, lest they need to be ‘cooled down’ at a later stage.

Matters are somewhat different beyond the union movement. In non-membership-based movements (community activism, feminism, ecology and so on) the turn in the boom years to ‘social partnership’ (the provision of funding and policy ‘consultation’ to professionalised ex-movement organisations) was itself a powerful tool of demobilisation. Recent attempts to mobilise working-class communities and others in opposition to cuts fell very flat, while a rather different constituency of NGOs, professionals in funded organisations, and other institutionalised bodies turned out in large numbers to simulations of movement events, like the misnamed ‘Social Forum’ in CityWest or the Labour Party front ‘Claiming our Future’. Finally, and in keeping with Ireland’s traditions of clientelism, the only effective large-scale protests against the cuts have raised particularist demands – that the level of the state pension should remain, services at Navan hospital should be maintained and student fees should not be reintroduced.

So where does all of this leave social movements?

A quick summary would be to say that there is no institutional way out of the current situation. The organisational superstructure of the years of boom and ‘social partnership’ is too dependent on funding and policy access (or, now, the nostalgia for both) and its base too demobilised to be an effective route for change. Two years of attempting to build coalitions against the cuts and the IMF have largely been a washout, while the one partial success - the United Left Alliance, a coalition of existing Trotskyist parties and independent socialists - came at the cost of a sudden break with movement organising in favour of electioneering.

Movement organisations, for their part, now face substantial challenges. Is there a way back from dependence on funding? The much-discussed US book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded suggests that if there is, it lies in a shift from service delivery to advocacy and campaigning, linked to a principled decision for financial independence and self-funding. My own sense from talking to organisers over recent years is that this is now widely seen as common sense, but that it requires the development of skills which have not been in much demand in the years of funding proposals and policy submissions; and the willingness to endure an upheaval in internal relations as members, rather than professionals, come to take the lead in practice and not simply rhetorically.

Critical intellectuals, too, have to rethink their job. The focus on in-depth critique of official discourses (above all official economics) has proved, bluntly, to be a dead end: far from the global and national crisis leading people to acknowledge the accuracy of the critique and change their politics, it turns out that the critique of economic theology is almost irrelevant to the job of changing people’s economic and political loyalties. If people believe their bread is buttered on a particular side, they are evidently only too happy to believe that the problem lies with public sector unions (or anywhere else that suits). The ordinary footsoldiers of neoliberalism are simply not that rational. What critical political economy has lost, in its long engagement with the politics of ‘opinion’, is a willingness to reflect on agency - how a critique can come to acquire social and economic force - and to find ways of translating technical expertise into straightforward, strategic demands; key issues which can be widely understood and widely supported by those who do not have postgraduate degrees but nevertheless perceive themselves as losing out from the bailout and the cuts.

The key battle in this last respect, for several years now, has been the struggle in Rossport in the west of Ireland. At its simplest, we have a government minister, since imprisoned for corruption, handing over the keys to €540 billion of gas reserves to Shell and Statoil; the state under various governments backing this up with the deployment of the military and a police occupation whose overall conduct the police Ombudsman has been instructed not to investigate; and a right-wing hate campaign in the media against leading campaigners. We also have a remarkable alliance of social movements doing its very best under immense pressure to resist and transform this situation. Most recently, a recording of police discussing raping and deporting activists has highlighted realities which many people have preferred to ignore.

Rossport is not only the place where the actual economic choices made by the mainstream parties are most clearly visible, it is also a place which brings together local communities in struggle, key union issues, ecological concerns, an experience of police violence shared by many poor people on this island, majority world solidarity and, most recently, core feminist concerns. In the late 1970s, an alliance of mass movements stopped plans for nuclear power in Ireland at Carnsore Point in Wexford. If anywhere has the capacity to be the Carnsore Point of the 2010s - a place where the machinery of destruction and impoverishment can be stopped in its tracks, and where social movements can rally around the development of alternatives for Irish development - it is Rossport.

In order for this to happen, of course, movements and intellectuals have to throw off the ‘muck of ages’, or rather the office suits donned for the years of partnership. The desire to be on the inside, in line for funding and a seat at the table, dies hard - as does the intellectual desire to be a respectable dissenter. A respectable dissenter, in our contemporary usage, of course, is in the last analysis a member of the elite - one calling for a different direction, but making this call to other members of the elite. An effective organiser, by contrast, is one whose primary concern is to find issues around which ordinary people are willing to mobilise, around which effective alliances can be made, and which can offer the possibility of disrupting the polite and respectable world of meetings and policy papers.

It does take time to get beyond the politics of ‘business as usual’ and the attempt to formulate the next response to crisis, and the process is not an easy one. Saturday 7 May sees two interesting attempts to do this. The day seminar ‘Beyond the crisis: global justice, equality, social movements’ in Dublin’s autonomous social centre Seomra Spraoi will attempt to see past our immediate situation and understand how movement struggles are placed over the next decade or so. Simultaneously, under the banner ‘Reclaim the unions!’ a wide coalition of trade union activists are launching a new network which looks promising. As we come to recognise that our organising situation has changed fundamentally, we have the chance to reorient ourselves beyond existing routines and, maybe, start to turn the neoliberal tide.

* Url:http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/05/01/social-movements-crisis-ireland/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+irishleftreview%2Ffeed+%28Irish+Left+Review%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

Waiting for the great leap forward: Trade unions, social movements and the hubris of power

Waiting for the great leap forward:
Trade unions, social movements and the hubris of power*

Daniel Finn of Irish Left Review

May 1st, 2011

Just when you think the British Conservatives could do no more to endear themselves to us, we learn that David Cameron’s government is considering a proposal to scrap the May public holiday, replacing it with a long weekend in October that will be dubbed ‘Trafalgar Day’ or ‘UK Day’.


The Tory MP Andrew Rosindell gave his two cents worth on the matter: ‘I don’t think we need a workers’ day any more than we need a day for pensioners or any other group. It is silly.’

You can always depend on the Tories to stick their finger in the eye of the working-class and its traditions. How else are they meant to fill their days? Yet there are those on the Left who would accept, more or less begrudgingly, that Rosindell has a point. The ‘old’ working-class, whose movement displayed its wares every May Day like Orangemen on the Twelfth, is no more. What we have now is a miscellaneous assortment of wage-earners, with little or no sense of common identity. Trade unions represent particular groups of workers, a minority of the labouring population, whose interests can in no way be considered identical with those of society as a whole. There will never be a return to the glorious moments of collective action that scorched the skies of twentieth-century Europe.

An overly bleak view of the present often grounds itself on an excessively rosy view of the past. The people who tell us that the old working-class movement is dead and buried often forget how difficult it was to build that movement in the first place. Eric Hobsbawm recalled some of the main obstacles faced by labour organisers at the close of the nineteenth century in his Age of Empire:

The divisions within the masses whom socialists classified under the heading of ‘the proletariat’ were indeed so great that one might have expected them to stand in the way of any practical assertion of a single unified class consciousness. The classic proletariat of the modern industrial factory or plant, often still a smallish though rapidly growing minority, was far from identical with the bulk of manual workers who laboured in small workshops, in rural cottages or city back-rooms or in the open air, with the labyrinthine jungle of wage-work which filled the cities and – even leaving aside farming – the countryside … in addition to all these there were the even more obvious differences of social and geographical origin, of nationality, language, culture and religion, which could not but emerge as industry recruited its rapidly growing armies from all corners of its own country, and indeed, in this era of massive international and trans-oceanic migration, from abroad.

In the face of such terrific odds, a coherent, effective working-class movement was built. It’s wrong to assume that industries which became centres of militant trade unionism were simply born that way. The FIAT plant outside Turin was the command centre of the Italian labour movement throughout the 1970s; the discussions among its shop stewards had as much influence on national politics as debates in the national parliament or mutterings in the army command. Yet for much of the post-war period, FIAT had managed to shut the unions out of the Mirafiori plant altogether; when a strike finally proved successful in the mid-sixties, every astute observer recognised that Italy was about to enter a new and turbulent era. The miners’ union which obsessed Tory politicians from Heath to Thatcher had remained largely quiescent for half a century after the failed General Strike of 1926 before flaring into life in the early ’70s.

What sectors of the modern economy might follow the same pattern, transforming themselves from barren ground to fertile pastures in the space of a few years? Naturally, such developments can’t be predicted in advance, but we should be ready for surprises. The owners of Wal-Mart – today’s equivalent of Ford or General Motors for the US economy - have spent a fortune trying to block organising drives by the trade union movement in their stores. So far they’ve been successful, but they certainly wouldn’t have allocated those resources if they believed that economic trends had rendered the cause of labour as hopeless as Jedward’s Eurovision entry.

This is not to say that we should expect the pattern of the last century to simply repeat itself. We may see collective action shift from the workplace to the community – something which has been notable in Latin America over the past decade. The Bolivian experience is a useful corrective to the gloom. Its labour movement was decimated by economic restructuring in the 1980s: the tin miners’ union, which had put itself at the head of every struggle for decades, effectively collapsed within the space of a few years. The social bases of left-wing politics in Bolivia simply disappeared as neoliberalism was imposed without any serious resistance. Yet the last decade has seen a remarkable turn-around, with insurgent communities challenging the subordination of their country to the same interests now preying on Europe’s weaker countries.

Political traditions can survive and mutate when the society which once gave rise to them has disappeared. The next few years are likely to be grim, for Ireland and for Europe. But sooner or later the agents of austerity will over-reach themselves, just as they did by trying to charge the people of Cochabamba for the rainwater which fell on their roofs. As the hubris of the powerful gives rise to multiple and quickening moments of crisis, a whole field of political possibility opens up for those who understand that there is a logic to life other than that of the dead hand of the market.

* Url:http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/05/01/waiting-great-leap-trade-unions-social-movements-hubris-power/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+irishleftreview%2Ffeed+%28Irish+Left+Review%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

Unmasking the bondholders: The audit of Ireland’s new ‘national’ debt

Unmasking the bondholders: The audit of Ireland’s new ‘national’ debt*

Andy Storey of Action From Ireland

May 1st, 2011

On Easter Monday, the Irish peace, justice and human rights advocacy group Afri launched a satirical version of the 1916 Proclamation at Arbour Hill cemetery, where the leaders of the Easter Rising are buried.

Actor and writer Donal O’Kelly read out the new proclamation on behalf of the bondholders to whom Irish people’s money has been pledged through the bank guarantee:

We declare the right of senior bondholders to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by the Irish people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by their repudiation of the bank debt…. The senior bondholders are entitled to, and hereby claim, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman.

The proclamation was signed by ‘financial speculators unknown to you’ and O’Kelly’s face mask symbolised the shadowy, opaque nature of the creditors to whose upkeep Ireland’s future has been mortgaged.

Can that mask be lifted? It has been in other countries through the mechanism of a debt audit. Initiatives like this have happened in Uruguay and Ecuador, and have taken various forms – including parliamentary committees and citizens’ tribunals. A call for such an audit has been made in relation to Greek debt. The central point in each case is to untangle the web of secrecy around the debt and work out who lent what to whom, when and for what purpose. Typically, there is an expectation that at least some of the debt will be found to be ‘illegitimate’ and can, therefore, be repudiated.

Ecuador, as I’ve previously written about on CrisisJam and elsewhere, provides a particularly striking example. In 2007, Ecuador’s President Correa established a debt audit commission, which reported in 2008 that a portion of the country’s debt was indeed illegitimate and had done ‘incalculable damage’ to Ecuador’s people and environment. Ecuador then defaulted on the illegitimate portion of its debt. Despite predictions of economic disaster, the country registered 3.7% economic growth in 2010 and the forecast is for growth in excess of 5% in 2011. Indeed, there is now strong demand for Ecuadorean bonds again, i.e. the country can access the international financial markets despite a repudiation of its past debt.

The salience of the Ecuadorian example for current public debates in Ireland is obvious – which is why Afri, and some other organisations, are about to launch a debt audit in Ireland. We want this, in the first instance at least, to be quick, so we are going to ask a small number of academics – with expertise in economics, finance, law and related disciplines – to trawl through the books and see if they can answer the following questions:

* To whom is the bank debt (for which the state has assumed responsibility) owed? When was this debt contracted? Specifically, was it before or after the government’s bank guarantee was issued?
* When does the debt fall due for repayment? How much has already been repaid, and to whom?
* How much of the debt is senior, guaranteed and subordinated? And what are the legal implications arising from these different categories?

The researchers will not make recommendations regarding the legitimacy of the debt – they will simply establish the facts insofar as that is possible. It will be up to campaigners to make what use they can of the resource the audit will provide them with. I will be providing crisisjammers and others with more information on this initiative once we are up and running (hopefully very soon).

Realistically, the auditors will probably not be able to get clear and comprehensive answers to the questions they are asking. But that itself will be a telling finding. In the Sherlock Holmes short story ‘Silver Blaze’, the following famous exchange takes place:

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?

Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.

Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.

Holmes: That was the curious incident.

The absence of information should be as much of a cause for anger and mobilisation as its existence: ‘You’re asking us to pay this debt, and we don’t even know who we’re paying it to?!’ Though we do have our suspicions: as a recent article on the subject was entitled, ‘It’s the (German) banks, stupid!’ That article cited an estimate that a 50% writedown on the debt of the EU peripheral states would wipe out €850 billion of capital in German and French banks alone. And to stop that happening, money is being channeled from European taxpayers and from the ECB through Ireland, Portugal and Greece to the financial institutions of Germany, France and elsewhere. This is the logic of the so-called ‘bail outs’.

A political problem here is that most Germans (and others) don’t seem to have yet grasped that they are not bailing out feckless Mediterraneans and Celts – they are bailing out their own banks. There is an important and urgent task of political education to be done here, across and beyond Europe. And that will be a theme of a gathering of activists taking place in Athens on 6-8 May: participants from Greece, Poland, Germany, the UK, Morocco, Tunisia, Mexico, Argentina, Malawi, Brazil, Belgium, the Philippines, Ireland, Spain and many others will trade experiences and ideas for action. If we are going to get out of this mess we will need, as the original 1916 proclamation said, the support of ‘gallant allies in Europe’ – and further afield.

* Url:http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/05/01/unmasking-bondholders-audit-irelands-national-debt/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+irishleftreview%2Ffeed+%28Irish+Left+Review%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

We are Ireland, we will resist

We are Ireland, we will resist*

Hugh Green of The Punishment of Sloth

May 1st, 2011

Many people in Ireland are only too aware that some Greek protesters, at the start of last year, chanted ‘we are not Ireland, we will resist’ in response to the policies of austerity unleashed upon the population. In Ireland, the chant stung leftists and cheered ruling elites.

On the surface, something seems convincing about the claim Ireland is different. In the aftermath of the burst construction bubble, with sudden mass unemployment, savage wage cuts, a mammoth bailout of the banking sector, and the country’s economic policy under de facto control from right-wing fanatics in the EU, ECB and IMF, you would think objective conditions exist for a major radicalising of the population. And, if not now, when?

Prominent left-leaning commentator Fintan O’Toole named the ‘Negative Equity Generation’ as the ‘dog that does not bark’. Thirtysomethings who bought homes with cheap credit during the boom were spurning collective action because their consciousness had been formed by the ‘dismantling of the postwar social democratic consensus and the rise of neoliberalism’. Political independence from Britain may have been won through the collective militancy of previous generations, but these people, like their counterparts in the UK, were, O’Toole claimed, ‘Thatcher’s children’.

Thatcher gets far too much credit here. Ireland does have a ‘Property-Owning Democracy’, but its impetus wasn’t the neoliberal turn of the 1970s. Post-independence, the Republic of Ireland’s ruling elites had no need for a Mont Pelerin society. There had been no war, and no social democratic consensus either.

In Sins of The Fathers, a new study of Ireland’s economic history, historian Conor McCabe provides vivid illustrations of how Ireland’s ruling elites fostered a kind of neoliberal consciousness avant la lettre.

McCabe writes:

Not only would the promotion of home ownership save the local authorities money in the long run, it would also bring stability and good sense to a family. In 1952 the Labour Party senator, James Tunney, told a meeting of Dublin County Council (of which he was chairman) that ‘I am a firm believer in private ownership, because it makes for better citizens, and there is no greater barrier against communism.’

Ireland’s economic boom coincided with the collapse of Catholic Church influence. A popular media narrative of the boom was that sexual freedom and the free flow of capital went hand in glove, and the Church’s repressive authoritarianism, with its child sex abuse and slave labour scandals, had been conclusively discarded, now that everyone was able to buy his or her own house. But this is hardly the full picture.

McCabe again:

The social arguments for owner-occupancy were raised once again in 1957 by the Bishop of Cork, Most Rev. Dr. Cornelius Lucey. ‘The man of property is ever against revolutionary change... Read article »

‘Consequently a factor of the first importance in combating emigration and preventing social unrest, unemployment marches, and so on, is the widest possible diffusion of ownership.’ Dr. Lucey raised these points as he believed that ‘ownership [of property] is neither valued nor favoured among us, as it should be.’

If O’Toole’s ‘Negative Equity Generation’ is not agitating for revolutionary change, it’s not least because they have to pay off mortgages many multiples their annual salary on a dwindling income. As Bishop Cornelius Lucey approvingly recognises, this situation does not normally make one a revolutionary.

We need to avoid the temptation of dodgy psychohistory - a much-loved pastime of Irish elites, along with cosy rounds of golf and setting up offshore bank accounts. Against the idea of a unique Irish docility, what concrete resistance has there been of late?



2009 saw the biggest worker mobilisation for a generation in terms of both the number of disputes and the number of workers mobilised: roughly 15% of people in paid employment. Not bad for ‘Thatcher’s children’. These were overwhelmingly public sector workers, as the chart below shows.



In the broad ‘Industry’ category, which includes manufacturing, electricity, gas and water supply, where some 246,000 people worked in 2009, only 268 workers – 0.1%- were involved in industrial disputes. This should tell us something pretty important about the power of capital over labour in Ireland.

Now, look at 2010: in the year of the EU-IMF-ECB ‘bailout’, there were only 511 workers in the State involved in industrial disputes.

One factor shaping this apparent docility is doubtless the shock of the rise in unemployment and fall in living standards, on account of the internal devaluation programme, fostering the fear of losing one’s livelihood altogether.

But another is the deal struck by trade unions with the Government on pay and reform in the public sector, the latest manifestation of ’social partnership’, where industry bosses, government, and the trade unions engage in negotiations, the basic premise of which is that all have a common interest, and - as the term’partnership’ implies - participate as equals.

Whatever the gains, the political effect of social partnership has been to obscure the conflict between labour and capital, and institutionalise the image of a society where everyone – financial speculator and low paid childcare worker alike - works together for the common good. The public sector - like an alcoholic or petty criminal - now has a (Labour Party) minister for ‘reform’.

Unions are then easily demonised by media outlets run by tax fugitive oligarchs, with any demand portrayed as contrary to the corporate health of Ireland Inc. This enables Ireland’s ruling elites, backed by the EU-IMF-ECB, to dismantle what threadbare social fabric there is.

Even in the middle of the crucifixion of Irish workers as an example to other European populations of what happens when they refuse to dismantle their welfare states, the ideology of social partnership is on display in the Irish Congress of Trade Union slogan for May Day that there is ‘A Better, Fairer Way‘. A better fairer way to what, precisely?

Examining the Eurozone countries hit hardest by the economic crisis, Vicenç Navarro notes that Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain have all been governed by deeply conservative forces throughout most of the 20th century, dominating the political and economic life of these countries. In Ireland’s case, the fervently anti-socialist Catholic Church held massive influence. It has largely left the scene; its authoritarian conservatism has not.

And yet for all that, there is still widespread popular sympathy in Ireland for Marxist revolutionary James Connolly’s apothegm that ‘the cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour’. The idea of a different Ireland already exists.

Connolly held that ‘the struggle of Ireland for freedom is part of the worldwide upward movement of the toilers of the earth’, and that ‘the emancipation of the working class carries within it the end of all tyranny - national, political and social’.

In Ireland, the scene must be set for open confrontation - not consensus - with these conservative forces. The international character of the current crisis engineered by financial speculators and their collaborators in the EU, the IMF and ECB, and at national government level means it is therefore crucial that, pace the chant of the Greek workers, Ireland is indeed Greece, it is Spain, it is Portugal, and - once the shock of 2010 has worn off - it will resist.

* Url:http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/05/01/ireland-resist/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+irishleftreview%2Ffeed+%28Irish+Left+Review%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

May Day 2011 Statement

May Day 2011 Statement

Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America

1 May 2011

The Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America send solidarity greetings to our fellow workers and comrades in the class struggle around the world on the working class holiday of May Day, also known as International Workers' Day. We salute and share in your fight against oppression, exploitation, and imperialism. The struggle of any group of workers is the struggle of all workers.

As the North American section of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement, we extend our greetings to our comrades and fellow members of the IRSM in the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Irish National Liberation Army, Republican Socialist Youth Movement, and Teach na Failte, along with all republican socialist prisoners of war in Irish and British prisons. Our commitment to the struggle for national and working class liberation in Ireland, and working class liberation worldwide, is unbroken.

Capitalism remains in the midst of its deepest crisis in decades. Millions of workers have lost their jobs, while millions more live in fear of losing theirs. The bosses use this crisis as an excuse to roll back wages and benefits, while their lackeys in government use it as an excuse to make deep cuts to social services and attack organized labor. These are acts of war against the working class, and the working class must respond in kind.

Until recently, the only noteworthy instances of mass working class resistance in the United States emerged amongst layers of the hyper-exploited immigrant working class, but unionized workers in Wisconsin and Michigan joined the resistance this year, as their rights to organize and collectively bargain were assaulted by reactionary politicians.

We urge all American workers to join the struggle, and to refuse to be divided by the bosses and the promises of the bosses' hired politicians, no matter what political party they belong to. The IRSCNA will continue to actively support all working class struggles, including immigrant and amnesty movements. Indeed, any other position for Irish-Americans and supporters of Irish republicanism would be hypocritical. The IRSCNA will always be found on the front lines of the class struggle, as our members were during the Battle of Seattle in 1999 or in Wisconsin and Michigan in 2011.

Fellow workers, we must begin organizing, educating, and agitating for fundamental changes to how our class-based society is organized. The solution lies in our hands, and our hands alone. We can and must follow the path of revolution until we achieve a sustainable socialist economy that meets the needs of our species and the planet we share.

There must be no war but the class war, until the class war has been won by us and the class system has been abolished. We must reject both increasingly para-fascist conservatism and liberal reformism in favor of the freedom, equality, and fraternity that only socialism can provide.

In Ireland, conditions are growing for a republican socialist alternative to fill the void in revolutionary politics. It is obvious that neither the Good Friday Agreement nor any other imperialist brokered settlement can resolve the fundamental contradictions at the heart of Irish society. Only a socialist Ireland with full self-determination can do that, and a socialist Ireland can only thrive if capitalism is defeated on a wider scale.

On May 5th, voters in the North of Ireland go to the polls for council elections. For the first time in three decades, five IRSP candidates in Belfast, Derry, and Strabane are on the ballot offering a republican socialist alternative. We urge working class voters to cast their votes for that alternative.

Elsewhere this year, we have seen heroic resistance by the peoples of Egypt and Tunisia, as imperialist backed dictatorships were faced down. We take inspiration from these events, and we can envision a world where one imperialist client state after another falls, and where imperialism itself falls to the combined efforts of the global working class. This is a vision that's anathema to imperialists, conservatives and reformists alike.

On behalf of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement, we also extend solidarity greetings to our allies and comrades in the following organizations: All-African People's Revolutionary Party, Communist Party of Cuba, Freedom Socialist Party, Industrial Workers of the World, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Radical Women, Revolutionary Communist Group, Scottish Republican Socialist Movement, Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee, Union del Barrio, United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and all others who are struggling to liberate the working class from the shackles of capitalism and imperialism. Our only allegiance is to the working class.

As the great Irish revolutionary James Connolly said, "The great only appear great because we are on our knees, let us arise!"