Decent Dissent and Dodgy Decisions - Lisbon and NAMA

POOR POLITICIANS

People who see certainties where others see nuances and shades of meaning are either prophets or a quacks, and our politicians are not prophets.
Our Minister of Finance cannot even accurately predict profits, or lack thereof, from the biggest gamble that Ireland has ever undertaken.
We have seen years of mismanagement and poor decision making of which NAMA is the most recent example, and with the Lisbon treaty we have chosen to say No, to dissent.
Dissent and disagreement with Government is the lifeblood of democracy, it is also essential because every once and a while it is right, and the powers to whom we try to speak are wrong.

One very important lesson came from America, from a courageous commentator Edward R Murrow - but more about him later.

The elected, transitional, holders of power in our state, our employees, continue to impugn the intelligence and the loyalty of the people of the state of Ireland in relation to the European Union.

Some media pundits credit our politicos with a knowledge and understanding of the challenges facing Ireland and Europe which neither common sense nor their track record suggests they deserve.

If our politicians had proven their self declared knowledge, foresight and planning, about finance, the economy, health services etc. we might be able to accept the premise that they knew what the hell they were talking about.

But to date this Government has proven little except their own arrogance and hubris in spite of its failure.
With bank bailouts, NAMA, toxic debts, rising unemployment and a real sense of insecurity and uncertainty their failures have enveloped the country in a fog of fear.
This fog, fear and confusion in addition to the BCI ruling on referendum coverage may yet be used to push through the Lisbon treaty on a second attempt.

THE GREATEST LESSON IN DISSENT

One of, if not the greatest American journalist of the modern era was Edward R Murrow. Never in a thousand years could my writing even come close to how he phrased a warning about Governments who felt they - and they alone - knew everything, dismissed accountability and marginalized dissent. In 1954, in a challenge to the McCarthyite witch hunts he said:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular"

These words are utterly appropriate to our challenges today.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty or allow the refusal to accept the Lisbon Treaty to be confused with our commitment to a European Union. Dissent is said to be the highest form of patriotism.

A No vote in a referendum is just that, we do not accept the proposition put before us by our elected legislators, and want a better deal.
We simply want a Union for the benefit of the people and communities, not for the politicians and corporations.

Our country was not created by people who achieved great things with courage, reason and conviction, not fear - and we must "not be driven by fear into an age of unreason based on illusory guarantees and clever editing.

When we dig into Irish history we see despite censure, public ridicule and the real danger of death we have had the incredible fortune to have had leaders who never allowed themselves to be subdued or cowed, and who supported just causes despite their unpopularity.

Our greatest leaders came from hugely diverse backgrounds. Jim Larkin overcame media vilification for Union organization.
James Connolly died for his belief in workers rights. Griffith’s commitment to self determination, O Connell’s belief in the right to vote, Parnell’s belief in fairness, Tone and Emmett’s belief in secular democracy and women’s rights fought for by people like Winifred Carney now buried in an unmarked grave in Milltown cemetary and Constance Markiewicz have all shaped our sense of nationhood.

We must remember that accusation is not proof, the cheap innuendos by Dick Roche and his ilk about funding of the No campaign mean nothing, particularly when dual standards exist in relation to the funding of the Yes groupings.

If the Government had accepted the recommendations of the Standards in public office, this issue would be more transparent and more in the interest of the democratic process but perhaps not in the interests of the Government.

DEALING WITH DISSENT

With other EU states going for parliamentary ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, without plebiscite, the attempt to force through the second Lisbon vote is an appeasement of sorts.

Again, we can learn from history. Dealing with dissent at home so as not to upset Europe was a policy followed in the 1930's by the Chamberlain Government who appeased an unaccountable system in Germany.
Chamberlain knew most of all that the staunchest critics of his European policy had to be marginalized and isolated - his supporters in the media portrayed the foremost critic as, if not totally senile, at best morally or intellectually confused - he was called Winston Churchill. History has taught us that all Chamberlains' certainties were in fact miscalculation and confusion.

That suggests that the office can not only make the man, the office can make the facts. The solemn guarantee Mr. Chamberlain held in his hand after the Munich conference were about as believeable as those Mr. Cowen has shown us.

But by unremittingly repeating these pointless garuantees (about what is not in the treaty) the illusion is created that the context of the treaty rejected by the Irish, as well as the constitution rejected by the French and Dutch, has fundamentally changed.

FIANNA FAIL FIXATION

At the launch of the Fianna Fail Yes campaign on September 2nd 2009 Mr. Cowen aptly demonstrated this arrogance by stating he did not even contemplate the rejection of the Lisbon treaty on a second attempt.

This is possibly the last chance FF have to 'win' an electorial victory before 2012. As the major party in power it is FF who, along with the greens and indies, have the power to put the referendum to the people, again, and have decided to do so, so it is primarily their referendum.

I for one do not want to see a triumphful FF telling us how they assured we won Lisbon. Its their only chance to win anything at this point, with the support of the opposition, corporations and even the church.

If Lisbon goes through they will use it as a further justification to go full term even with a 17% approval rating (i.e. family and friends) and as their are no more local or EU elections in that period, this is almost certainly the last chance people have to voice their dissent at the ballot box until 2012

CONCLUSION

We cannot allow a failing, self serving and corrupt Government, hardly worthy of the legacy of nationhood that they have inherited, or their corporate supporters to use control of the media and the fear of a deeper financial crisis that they themselves precipitated to force us to vote against our own best interests, and the interests of our fellow European citizens.

This country faces a great challenge. With the clear and present danger of financial ruin and longterm hardship, the confusion we as citizens must now address is stark and forbidding.

But note with hope in your heart we have made it through in the past.

The confusion and debate about Lisbon is really about if the Irish Government actually know what they are talking about - and their track record of the management of our country in health, education, financial regulation or economic planning does not engender any belief in their abilities to have made the correct judgement on the Lisbon treaty.

The chance to pause and reflect after democratic rejection has not been used to build the kind agreement that We the People really want, a desire that really exists

We want our leaders to give us a treaty that is accessable, that gives greater democratic accountability and transparency, and if they deliver that we will work with them to develop a better future for all.

Again, as always – thanks for reading. Even if you don’t agree with me – I hope you give some thoughts to the points made

And please let others now about these blogs

Citizen Simon - out





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The use of fear and guilt to force a Yes Vote

In the great song Bu$hleaguer, a b-side on ‘I am Mine’ Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam asks how do they do it – the same song gives the answer – drilling for fear makes the job simple.

Keeping people uncertain of the future and creating fears for the wellbeing of themselves and their families makes them easier to control and manipulate

There is now the implied threat from all the major political parties in Ireland that rejecting Lisbon will cause economic meltdown to follow.

They failed to win the argument in the last referendum simply because the treaty could not be sold in a normal, positive way.
So now fears and uncertainties are being generated based on fear of the collapse of our economic systems.

The use of scare tactics of what may happen to you if you do not vote the way your told by a discredited group of people is downright nasty.

If they want they want me to vote in favor, then they have to give positive reasons, not simply generate a fear to manipulate us at our most vulnerable level.

If there is one thing we have learned from the last US election, is that the electorate can achieve change they can believe in.

President Obama ran a campaign that made the majority of the electorate feel that their opinion was worth something, it bought the sense of empowerment back to a generally disillusioned population.

We have seen a campaign where the desire for change on what the citizens of the US wanted overcame fear mongering.

Yes, the EU also needs change in the way it works, I support the ideals of the EU but change to Europe should be what is decided by the population of the Union, not by a narrow segment who – using abstract political and failed economic theories – wish to impose. We need more democracy and accountability, not less.

Also, lets not forget the politicians in Ireland who will use this fear mongering are the same people that got us into this economic mess in the first place, bailing out the financial institutions who bypassed regulators, using loopholes and – in some cases if not illegal – methods certainly not in the spirit of regulations in a distasteful way of maximizing perceived profits.

Again showing an astounding lack of understanding and judgment, in January 2009 the Irish Government decided to nationalize Anglo Irish Bank.
Irish taxpayers now own a private bank that was suspended on the stock markets with a loss of 98% on share value.
This was despite the prior knowledge of a financial trick used to mask losses.

The way it worked was like this – bank executives took out loans in order to purchase Anglo Irish shares.
Then, the loans are transferred to another bank prior to the end of year-end audits, thereby causing "Loans to Directors" to be understated.

In 2008, the loan to Messers FitzPatrick and Bradshaw amounted to €87 million; but the transfer loophole resulted in the accounts showing only about €40 million outstanding to directors, instead of €150 million.

The regulator said, "While it does not appear that anything illegal took place in relation to these loans, the Financial Regulator was of the view that the practices surrounding these loans were not appropriate.

Now, the people who carry the can for this are workers in the public sector with a levy, a reduction in their income, on their pensions.

Perversely the pension package of Mr. Fitzpatrick and others were in the private sector, and their pensions will probably remain largely un-affected.

This is simply one example of what happens when appointed, unaccountable people are given to much power, and that we end up paying for it.

Voting for Lisbon wont stop this hapening, it may even make things worse.

But it sent such a shock through the Irish economy.

Rather than an example of Government ineptitude, this fear, this economic crisis, has created uncertainty, and this is a way of forcing the Yes Vote !

We joke about Catholic guilt, but there are some aspects that should be looked at.

Society is a complex thing, affected by many historical communal factors.
One that cannot be ignored is religions affect on the way our society works in the past and in the present.

In a tangential way, guilt is fear – whether to suffer for sins in the next life or just the more tangible idea of Karma – that what goes round, comes round, exists in most of us.
92.2% of Irish people have had some exposure, even nominally, to Christian concepts.

As a nation we also have a sense of fair play, and are generally a grateful and compassionate group of people.

We are told that Europe has been good for us, that we should be grateful, that we should afford other European Citizens the general good fortune that we have had, and not to do so is ungrateful and shameful.

I agree that Europe has been good for Ireland.
I agree that others should be given a fair shot at sharing in a European idea.

But I think it would be more shameful, and unfair and wrong to accept the Lisbon treaty as it is, with little understanding of it, eroding the importance of the nation state and create an unanswerable bureaucracy that would pass laws to allow the exploitation of our fellow European Union Citizens.

Erosion of the rights of the Nation State is dangerous, of the worlds top 100 economies, 51 are now corporations!!!

And we have seen where that leads. in bank scandals right across the EU.

Their primary job is to create wealth for their shareholders – by any means necessary - unlike the concept of nation state which is for the improvement of society.

There have been economic downturns before, they will happen again – and the very transfer of economic planning to external, unaccountable bureaucracy and de-regulation has helped cause the current downturn.

As I have explained in previous podcasts and blogs, our fellow Europeans have been denied the right to, along with us, make the choice to change the way our union works.

Like Chuck D from Public Enemy said back in 1990 – Power to the People - Gotta Give us want We want – Gotta give us what We need

Its our choice.

Again, as always – thanks for reading, thanks for reading or listening.

Even if you don’t agree with me – I hope you give some thoughts to the points made

And please let others now about these blogs, podcasts and youtubes.

Citizen Simon - out

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