Protesters march through Dublin over Irish austerity plan

[2012 Countdown]

Protestors gather outside the GPO in Dublin as part of a demonstration organised by unions
against the Government's handling of the economic crisis. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire

IRISH TIMES REPORTERS

Approximately 50,000 people marched in Dublin this afternoon in a protest organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) against the Government’s austerity plan.

The protest started on Wood Quay at noon, before crossing over to the north quays to Ormond Quay, continuing on to Bachelors Walk and then onto O’Connell Street, arriving at the GPO at 1pm.

Addressing the crowd on a podium at the GPO, Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole said the Government was doing a deal with people who had not been elected.

He said the country was paying billions to bail out the banks and the Government had declared war on the poor. He said Irish people were not subjects, but citizens, and wanted their republic back.

Ictu president Jack O'Connor told protestors the country had been brought "to its knees" by the Government and bankers.

"Several generations of Irish men and women" will have to foot the bill, Mr O'Connor said.

Congress general secretary David Begg said that Dick Turpin at least wore a mask when he robbed people. He also told the crowd that 100,000 people had joined the march, although gardaí said their estimate was 50,000.

“Does anybody in this country or in Dáil Éireann think that we can as a people afford to pay 6.7 per cent on money that we did not ask for in the first place and that is being forced upon us to bail out the banking system in Europe which is in hock to this country for €509 billion?”

Along with speeches from union leaders, some of whom were booed, musicians Christy Moore and Frances Black also performed.

Another speaker gave out what they claimed was Minister for the Environment John Gormley's home telephone number and instructed the crowd to "phone him as often as possible".

The protest ended shortly after 2pm and the majority of the crowd dispersed. A second, smaller rally then started and a crowd of several thousand people was addressed by Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins.

Another group of about 300 protestors walked to the Dáil to continue their protest. A number of bottles and bangers were thrown at a line of gardaí blocking access to Leinster House and posters with a picture of Taoiseach Brian Cowen were set on fire.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... king3.html

=============

Protesters march through Dublin over Irish austerity plan
By the CNN Wire Staff
November 27, 2010 12:07 p.m. EST

Thousands of people march through the streets of Dublin, Ireland to protest against austerity cuts, November 27, 2010.

Dublin, Ireland (CNN) -- Tens of thousands of people demonstrated on the streets of Dublin, Ireland, on Saturday against the government's austerity plan.
Irish police estimated the number taking part in the largely peaceful demonstration to be about 50,000.
The protests were organized by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), which has called the four-year plan for spending cuts and tax hikes "savage and regressive."
Irish police said a comprehensive policing plan has been put in place "in order to facilitate a peaceful march." Groups of eight to 10 police officers were seen at several key intersections, monitoring the activity.

Families, pensioners, the unemployed and members of unions and community groups were among the demonstrators who braved a rare dusting of snow to come out Saturday, the ICTU said.
The marching route took protesters along the River Liffey to a Dublin landmark, the General Post Office.
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen announced the plan this week after agreeing to a bailout package from the International Monetary Fund and European Union, needed to tackle Ireland's massive debt.
The plan saves 10 billion euros ($13.4 billion) through welfare cuts and an additional 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) through higher taxes. There will be reductions in the minimum wage and public-sector pay, and a hike in the value-added tax on goods and services, Cowen said.
The plan calls for introducing water meters, making students pay more for higher education, and requiring more Irish workers to pay income tax.
Trade unions complain the plan unfairly targets lower-paid workers, while making no provision for a tax on asset wealth. They say it fails to explain how the Irish people can carry the banks' massive debts and sets out no strategy for creating jobs.
"People are angry and they've had enough of this government," local journalist Juliette Gash told CNN. "They're furious because they feel like the government has handed over the keys to the country."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/11 ... index.html

======

Demonstrators in Ireland Protest Austerity Plan
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: November 27, 2010


A demonstrator holds a picture of Prime Minister Brian Cowen of Ireland during a protest in Dublin on Saturday.

DUBLIN — After a week that brought Ireland a pledge of an $114 billion international rescue package and the toughest austerity program of any country in Europe, thousands of demonstrators took to Dublin’s streets on Saturday to protest wide cuts in the country’s welfare programs and in public-sector jobs.

The protests centered on a milelong march along the banks of the Liffey river in central Dublin to the General Post Office building on O’Connell Street, site of the battle between Irish republican rebels and British troops in the Easter Uprising in 1916 — an iconic event that many in Ireland regard as the tipping point in Ireland’s long struggle for independence.

The choice of venue for the protests by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, coordinating the march through the city, reflected the mood of anger, dismay and recrimination in the wake of the economic shocks of the past 10 days. Those shocks have been the culmination of two years in which the Irish economy has shrunk by about 15 percent, faster than any other European economy.

Before that, Ireland enjoyed more than a decade of unprecedented prosperity, so the rescue package being worked out by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union and the austerity program the Dublin government has been forced to adopt to secure the bailout loans have come as a deep shock.

Among other things, the austerity package will involve the loss of about 25,000 public-sector jobs, equivalent to 10 percent of the government work force, as well as a four-year, $20 billion program of tax increases and spending cuts like sharp reductions in state pensions and the minimum wage. One Dublin newspaper, the Irish Independent, estimated that the cost of the measures for a typical middle-class family earning $67,000 a year would be about $5,800 a year.

The ensuing political turmoil has raised questions about the ability of the government of Prime Minister Brian Cowell to secure backing for the austerity package when it is presented to Parliament on Dec. 7. The coalition government was weakened last week by a split between the Fianna Fail party, which Mr. Cowen leads, and its main coalition partner, the Green Party, and a stunning loss by Fianna Fail in an election Friday for a parliamentary seat that reduced the government majority to two.

The peaceful and restrained nature of the protests on Saturday was one indication that the unrest may not lead to confrontations in the streets, as some have feared. On a bitterly cold day, turnout appeared to have fallen far short of the 50,000 that organizers had forecast.

Organizers had called for a “family friendly” demonstration, and that appeared to be what they got. With a police helicopter hovering overhead, speeches at the post office building drew cheers and shouts of support, and the detonation of some fireworks, but there were no reports of arrests. Protesters waved banners that depicted the austerity measures as an attack on the country’s poor, and told reporters that they feared for their futures, and the country’s.

“Everything’s collapsing,” one woman said.

“We can’t afford it,” a father with a young child said of the spending cuts. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to come out of it.”

The anger of many speakers, and among the protesters, appeared to fall about equally on the Cowen government and on the international financial institutions working out the details of the rescue package. Officials in Brussels, where European finance ministers were meeting on Saturday to discuss the package, said it could be confirmed with an announcement on Sunday.

One of the O’Connell Street speakers, typical of others, urged the country “not to allow a government with no mandate, bowing to people in Europe who are not elected, to determine our future.”

But if the government could take some encouragement from the relative quiescence of the demonstrators, its wider political prospects remained deeply uncertain. Fianna Fail’s share of the vote in the election last week, in Donegal, fell to 21 percent from 51 percent in the general election of 2007. The seat was won by Sinn Fein, a historical rival of Fianna Fail dating from the struggle for independence a century ago, but a marginal force in the republic’s politics in recent decades.

Although by-elections are regarded as unreliable bellwethers of voting patterns in general elections, the Donegal result was a further pointer to what many Irish political commentators expect to be a harsh loss for Fianna Fail in a general election that Mr. Cowen has indicated he will call for February or March.

In the meantime, the prime minister has rejected calls for his or the government’s resignation. He has said he intends to see the rescue package and the austerity program approved by Parliament before calling an election, the reverse of the pattern that Sinn Fein, among other groups, has demanded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/world ... ublin.html

[JackRiddler]

Thank you!

[2012 Countdown]

I started this thread to post on one event, but I thought I would pull this out of the Wall Street thread and insert here for more exposure-

related: must see.

Jim Corr: "I am asking that the Irish people unite, as our forefathers did, and take to the streets at 11am Saturday 27th from Wood Quay Dublin, to voice our anger and concern over the actions of our politicians and what is happening to Ireland."

More stories on this subject in general within that thread, and much recent work by JackRiddler-
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21495&start=645

[2012 Countdown]

Trade Union march 27 November 2010
A montage of clips from the Trade Union march in Dublin, on the 27 November 2010.



(btw, Love the bag-pipes at the 2:35 mark.)

=====
Irish Official Sees Bailout Deal Sunday
BY QUENTIN FOTTRELL

DUBLIN—Irish Communications Minister Eamon Ryan said Saturday that talks between the EU and the International Monetary Fund on an €85 billion ($112.5 billion) Irish aid package will conclude Sunday, and he described as "inaccurate" speculation that the interest rate on loans would be as high as 6.7%.

European Union finance ministers will meet Sunday in Brussels for talks on the bailout package, the U.K. treasury confirmed. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will travel to the event. It is understood the original push for the meeting came from France. It had previously been thought the finance ministers would speak ...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... lenews_wsj

[seemslikeadream]

let them eat potatoes

Toll of Irish Holocaust. The 1841 census of Ireland revealed a population of 10,897,449. This figure includes the correction factor established by that year's official partial recount. When, between 1779 and 1841, the U.S. population increased by 640 percent, and England's is estimated to have increased, despite massive emigration to its colonies, by 100 percent, it is generally accepted that Ireland's population increase was 172%. [10] The average annual component of this 172% increase is x in the formula (1+ x)^62 = 1 + 172%; thus 0.0163, or 1.63%. Accepting that this 1.63% rate of annual population increase continued until mid-1846 (one human gestation after the late-1845 beginning of removal of Ireland's food), the 1846 population was 11,815,011. Assuming that rate continued, the population in 1851, absent the starvation, would have been approximately 12,809,841. However; the 1851 census recorded a population of 6,552,385; thus there was a "disappearance" of 6,257,456. This population-loss figure of 6,257,456 is scarcely susceptible to significant challenge, being derived directly from the British government's own censuses for Ireland. It is reasonable to assume that the rigor established in the recount of 1841 became the standard for the 1851 census; so that any residual undercount would be systemic, affecting 1841 and 1851 proportionately (and, if known, would increase the murder total).These 6,257,456 include roughly 1,000,000 who successfully fled into exile and another 100,000 unborn between 1846 and 1851 due to malnutrition-induced infertility. Of the 100,000 who fled to Canada in 1847, only 60,000 were still alive one month after landing. [11] Among the 40,000 dead was Henry Ford's father's mother who died en route from Cork or in quarantine on Quebec's Grosse Ile. Thus; though from 1845 through 1850, 6,257,456 "disappeared," the number murdered is approximately 1.1 million fewer; i.e., 5.16 millions. Consequently; if Britain's census figures for Ireland are correct the British government murdered approximately 5.16 million Irish men, women and children; making it the Irish Holocaust. This number, 5.16 million, exceeds the high end of the range (4.2 to 5.1m) of serious estimates of the number of Jews murdered by Nazis. The least reliable component of the foregoing arithmetic is the number assumed to have successfully fled. If the fleers who survived prove to number, say, 900,000 instead of 1,000,000, the murder count will have to be corrected from 5.16 to 5.26 millions. This amount of adjustment, up or down, of the 5.16 millions murdered is determinable by sensitive review of the immigration records of the U.S., Canada, Argentina, and Australia; and of government records on the Irish who fled to Britain at the time. We invite bona fide documentation of the foregoing; whether in confirmation or rebuttal. Economists and historians are disqualified if their published work on the events of 1845-1850 covers up the British army's central role therein. Such individuals lack the standing to participate in this truth-quest.
http://home.comcast.net/~irishholocaust ... ersion.txt

[2012 Countdown]

Europe Goes "Completely Mad" At Suggestion Of Irish Default Demanded By 57% Of Irish Population
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/28/2010 16:19 -0500

Today the myth of a popular, democratic government in Ireland collapsed for good. After an impromptu poll of 500 people nationwide found that a "substantial majority" of the people, or 57%, wants the State to default on debts to bondholder, what it ended up getting was precisely the opposite. Why? "Last night that the Irish delegation negotiating with the EU-IMF last week raised the issue of default. "The Europeans went completely mad," a senior government source said." Of course, this is a reason for the Europeans not to want an Irish default, not for the Irish. And last time we checked, the Irish government represented its people, not the interests of Brussels. As America showed all too well, we expect every banker in the world to threaten perpetual damnation for Ireland should they decide on doing what is right for its people (and so very wrong for another year of record banker bonuses). Then again, with elections in Ireland imminent, it is almost certain that there will be a massive popular overhaul of the government, and all bets at that point will be off whether the ECB can dictate terms to a brand new, and far more loyal, government. To quote to Independent: "In Dublin, there is barely concealed outrage at the interventions of Ms Merkel and at the position adopted recently by the European Central Bank, which precipitated the arrival of the EU-IMF team in Ireland."The ECB f**ked us," one government official in Dublin was reported yesterday to have said." We wonder how soon before rhetoric finally shifts to action.

More from the Independent:

Asked if they agreed with a proposed €1 reduction of the minimum wage, 66 per cent said no, while 34 per cent said yes. Asked if they supported a proposed cut to child benefit, 60 per cent said no and 40 per cent said yes.

A proposed increase in third-level fees was rejected by 65 per cent and approved by 35 per cent. Asked if they agreed with a proposed reduction in tax relief on private pensions, 59 per cent said no and 41 per cent said yes.

The public was more evenly divided on the issue of broadening the tax net. Asked if they agreed that everybody who earned over €15,300 a year should be included, 52 per cent said no, while 48 per cent said yes. The proposed €100 property tax was rejected by 55 per cent, with 45 per cent in favour.
At this point what happens in Ireland in the grand scheme of things doesn't matter. Tomorrow all eyes will be on Portuguese bond spreads, Tuesday Spain, and Wednesday on Belgium and Italy.


link-
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/europe ... population

[82_28]

I'm about to start a motherfucking open-source religion. Fuck these motherfuckers and how they destroy extant life. People sharing their own same goddamn sliver of time with them in an infinite cosmos. Fuck them.

[2012 Countdown]

Going to post this here too, as it KICKS ASS. Must see, imo-

'The Euro Game Is Up! Just who the hell do you think you are?' - Nigel Farage MEP



► European Parliament, Strasbourg - 24 November 2010
► Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP, Co-President of the EFD group;
..................................
► Debate: European Council and Commission statements - Conclusions of the European Council meeting on economic governance (28-29 October)

Transcript:

Good morning, Mr van Rompuy,

You've been in office for one year and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble, there's chaos, the money's running out - I should thank you; you should perhaps be the pin-up boy of the Eurosceptic movement.

But just look around this chamber, this morning. Just look at these faces. Look at the fear. Look at the anger. Poor old Barroso here looks like he's seen a ghost.

They're begining to understand that the game is up and yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it's pretty clear that none of you have learnt anything.

When you yourself, Mr van Rompuy, say that the euro has brought us stability. I suppose I could applaud you for having a sense of humour, but isn't this, really, just the bunker mentality?

Your fanaticism is out in the open. You talked about the fact that it was a lie to believe that the nation state could exist in the 21st Century globalised world. Well, that may be true in the case of Belgium, who haven't had a government for six months, but for the rest of us, right across every member state in this Union - and perhaps this is why we see the fear in the faces - increasingly people are saying, 'We don't want that flag. We don't want the anthem. We don't want this political class. We want the whole thing consigned to the dustbin of history.'

And we had the Greek tragedy earlier on this year, and now we have this situation in Ireland. Now I know that the stupidity and greed of Irish politicians has a lot to do with this. They should never ever have joined the euro. They suffered with low interest rates, a false boom and a massive bust.

But look at your response to them. What they're being told, as their government is collapsing, is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact Commissioner Rehn here said they had to agree their budget first before they'd be allowed to have a general election.

Just who the hell do you think you people are?

You are very very dangerous people, indeed. Your obsession with creating this Euro state means that you're happy to destroy democracy. You appear to be happy for millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor. Untold millions must suffer so that your Euro dream can continue.

Well it won't work. Because it's Portugal next, with their debt levels of 325% of GDP, they're the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain. And the bailout for Spain would be seven times the size of Ireland's and at that moment all of the bailout money has gone - there won't be anymore.

But it is even more serious than economics. Because if you rob people of their identity. If you rob them of their emocracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.

[Byrne]

a relevant Blog article (comments/discussion also):

Who bankrupted Ireland?
Now across Europe the great blame game will rumble back into play. Our banks, your banks, their banks, or is it your feckless householders or ours, certainly can't be theirs, they're still doing well in Germany. Expect lots more national stereotypes to be wheeled out for ritual defamation.

So let's ask who it was took a dump in Ireland?

First, the suspects.

Ireland has three big insolvent banks and several other smaller, equally insolvent financial institutions we won't bother to mention by name.

Ireland also has a large number of subsidiaries of European, British and American Banks.These subsidiaries are often registered as Irish and therefore on Ireland's tab not the nation of the parent bank. This often gets forgotten in the excitement. But it is KEY.

Ireland also houses a very large chunk of the world's Special Investment Vehicles (SIV's) which are the shell companies which house trillions and trillions of dollars and Euros and pounds worth of Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). These are what Warren Buffett described as "weapons of financial mass destruction'" And they are in their own way as hard to find and disarm as the ones we had a fraudulent war over. Anyway I digress.

These CDOs, in turn, house an equal or greater nominal value of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) written upon the CDOs. I can't tell you the figures because only the Irish Stock exchange has the otherwise completely confidential paper work and I have serious doubts (from what I have been told in the last week by an insider with first hand knowledge) that the Irish regulator and stock exchange have much of a clue themselves.

So, to the crime.

Some of this will, for legal reasons have to be done in generalized terms with names left out to protect the Innocent - me. But to start with let's be reasonably specific. Germany was and is very very angry with Ireland for ruining its banks. That is what a German banker told me this week. She spoke on the guarantee of anonymity as she would suffer all sorts of legal problems if she was identified. I am sorry that this leaves you just having to trust that I'm not just making this up, but I hope many of you know me well enough to go with it.

In fact it was rumoured in German banks that at the time of the collapse of Hypo Real Estate, an angry call was made from the German Premier to the Irish, to complain, to which the answer was ... well it was short. Now this is nothing but a rumour. But it was a rumour in Germany which indicates that some in Germany were and perhaps still are very angry and blame Ireland.

So are they right in their blame?

The same banker told me this. She was aware of instances, and so was everyone else, of banks, German banks, who used to fly their people from Germany to Ireland in order to do deals that were not allowed in Germany.

German banks set up subsidiaries in Ireland. These subsidiaries were often registered as completely Irish companies. Back in Germany the German regulator (BaFin) had strict and enforced rules. Very good rules for the most part. Far, far better than Britain or Ireland. But these good rules, properly enforced meant German banks could not do many of the most lucrative and in hind sight reckless kinds of deals.

So the German banks would do the figures and work it all out in Frankfurt, then send a banker over to Ireland, get them to sit at 'their' desk in Ireland, in the Irish bank, and do the deal there. The legal registration of the deal and the 'oversight' were all Irish. This is known in the financial world as jurisdictional arbitrage. You and I would call it cheating if we were feeling charitable and lying if we weren't.

The Banker flies back to Germany, where the German bank hasn't done any deal, and therefore has done nothing wrong. The deal was properly overseen and approved by the appropriate Irish financial authorities and the profits would be banked at a very happy Irish bank. If any management of the 'deal' was required an Irish company would be hired, there are many, and an Irish manager often living not far from Cork, would 'manage' the money in and out. I have spoken to such people. Usually I can hear the sweat coming off them as they ask how I got their number and where did I get my information. To which I would reply that the Internet is a very large place and never, never forgets.

Now my question to you is this. If it's a German bank and a German banker doing the deal is it Germany who made the mess? Or, equally justified, if the deal was actually done in Ireland in an Irish company allowed and no doubt welcomed by Ireland's financial world, and overseen by Ireland's wonderful regulators, is it Ireland who made the mess?

Should Germany, have pulled the plug on this racket? Should Ireland? Whose losses when they finally came, are they?

If the bank is registered in Ireland as an Irish bank/business, then the loss is on Ireland's tab. Depfa was an Irish bank. Just months before its collapse in 2007 it was bought by Hypo, a German bank. Had that not happened the €180 billion euro loss at Hypo Real Estate would have been Ireland's loss, dwarfing all other losses. Why was Hypo Real Estate bought by Germany at that moment?

I can't say for sure. But think about this. Sachsen Landesbank collapsed due to around $30-40 billion in bad sub prime loans its Irish subsidiary called Ormond Quay had made in the U.S. OrmondOrmond's collapse caused the immediate collapse of one of Germany's Landesbanks. Which suddenly sent ripples of fear through all the other Landesbanks as the world woke up to the rampant idiocy that the Landesbanks had been getting up to ...in Ireland.

Germany had to step in and bail Sachsen out. Now lets think about Depfa. Depfa started life as a German bank. It became listed in London and then in 2002 moved to and registered itself in Ireland in the newly set up IFSC (Irish Financial Services Centre) This was like a legal gated community or financial maquiladora. The IFSC was in many ways supposed to be the regulator of what went on in its grounds. I leave you to decide how well it must have done.

By the way the IFSC was created by Dermot Desmond with the help of Charles Haughey.

So Depfa is now an Irish registered bank. But it has very close ties to Germany and many German banks and landesbanks. If ever Depfa went down it would certainly have plunged a vast swathe of German banks and landesbanks into a storm of insolvency, that would have dwarfed the fall out from SachsenLB. . Depfa must not be allowed to go down.

So when in 2007 Depfa was suddenly bought by Hypo Real Estate was it because news of financial problems hadn't reached Germany and they bought it because they thought it was a great deal and were cheated by those crafty Irish? OR might Germany have known that a massive crisis was ticking away in Depfa and could see the clock was running down close to zero hour, and realized that if left in Ireland it would not, could not be rescued by Ireland and so would be left to start a chain reaction that would move straight to Germany? If they thought the latter, do you think it likely that Germany would have just said "Oh Scheisse" and sat waiting for Armageddon, or do you think they would have taken emergency action to bring Depfa under German ownership and jurisdiction where German pockets were deep enough to bail it out and thereby save the rest of Germany's banking system?

You decide.

So let's return to our question? Whose fault? Would Germany be right to be bitter about Depfa/Hypo and others? Or does the blame lie with the Germany banks and Bankers who flew to Ireland to do their mess? Is it Ireland's banks mess or Germany's? I don't think we can disentangle the blame.. maybe when the Irish Banks' books are finally opened we could. But I bet you no one outside the top bankers and politicians, the people who oversaw the creation of the bomb in the first place, will ever be told what's really in there.

I can't say and neither can you, if the losses are Irish or German. But we can say, the losses never were, and should not ever be, yours and mine. We, the people, who were told nothing, were not asked nor consulted, whose laws were either ignored, set aside or re-written, we should not be expected to pay for those losses now.

They are bankers losses. It is NOT a question of Irish or German. It is question of wealthy bankers from all countries not just Germany (almost every nation, Germany, America, Russia, France Britain, we did dirty work in Ireland) and their corrupt Irish helpers versus the people. It is not a question of should the Irish people or the German people pay. Neither people should. It should be the bankers who made the losses who should take them.

DO NOT allow the bankers to set us against each other as a cover for their crime and guilt.

http://golemxiv-credo.blogspot.com/2010 ... eland.html