The kindness of strangers

Eventually we were found out on the banks. What looked like the cutest move 2 years ago to guarantee al the account holders in Irish banks and the bond holders who leant to them to a total value of €300 Billion has bounced on Fianna Fail, the Greens, Fine Gael and Sinn Fein. Tonight its clear that the EU and the IMF see the down side of this.
Bail Out 1 in 2008 was rolled out to restructure the banks leading to the line under the affair on Black Thursday in September. The problem is that the value of €50 Billion which FF told us would be the cheapest bail out ever and that would ensure Ireland would be the first out of recession has only made matters worse because the €50 B figure isn’t believed anymore by the money market.

So the advance party is on it’s way and will be here by the end of the week. The problem is that the Greens and Fianna Fail nationalised banking debt accumulated by bank rolling the FF developer buddy clique. The prospect of allowing Anglo or the Irish Nationwide to go to the wall was a step too far for FF and the greens. Thence the ultimatum that seems to have been given from EU member states as the prospect of dithering is destabilising the euro and pressurising Spain and Portugal. The big question is has the EU got enough to support the Spanish and Portuguese economies? So when they plane lands at Dublin Airport in the next few days and the officials from the EU or ECB or IMF or more likely all 3 arrive in Merrion St they should consider bringing a bottle of whiskey to break the atmosphere. As the old Irish proverb says “There’s no strangers here only friends who haven’t yet met”

Black Thursday was supposed to draw a line under the past however the markets don’t believe the government’s figure of €50 Billion. Indeed the markets have made their mind up on the government. The humiliation of a nation will follow as Fianna Fail will dress the bail out as a bank bail 2!
They’ll continue with the line that there is no bail out but there is additional support for the bank industry. What they won’t point out is that the bank guarantee scheme backs private debt with the states resources! In 2008 the fiscal difficulties that our government adjusted spending to cope with were caused by a reduction in tax income not by a spending requirement to sustain the unsustainable. Throw in the national fault lines within the eurozone and the internal need to support each states own economy and it’s a short hop and a skip and a jump from the Galway Tent to Anglo Irish to Merrion St and before you know it you’ve the Euro on the slide and the internal economies of 5 states in the melting pot.

As a guide to how we’ve fallen Russia Today has some guy comparing Ireland to a 3rd world dictatorship where the general has made off with the money. In such countries at least a coup usually followed. So how close are we to social strife now? Where will this end for Cowen, Ahern, Harney, McCreevy and the banking elite? The kindness strangers is seemingly more attractive to our society than the greed of old friends.

Time to Libert-ask the key questions

A year ago Libertas was the creation of a recluse Galway neo con businessman who founded a company that claimed to be a think tank. Only Ireland could produce Declan Ganley. A Galway man with a home counties accent, whose mysterious money created an aura of acceptance. The Irish psyche always has a soft spot for the quare fella with the foreign accent to give him authenticity; Eamon De Valera, Sean McBride or Sean Thornton each dissidents in their day. Declan Ganley became the Mister Pussy of Irish politics, on the surface you see something quiet different to what goes on beneath.
It’s a symptom of how far politics in Ireland has been discredited that someone like Declan Ganley can get so far in a year. His company Libertas employs as members, employees of one of his other interest Rivada. Rivada was awarded substantial contracts in telecommunications in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Rivada also has been given US defence contracts in communications and boasts ex US military personnel on its board. Ganley who, it seems, uses his dual nationality when it suits him has an equally ambivalent attitude to being Irish, his company Libertas opposes “our political elite” but if he can get a dig out from another nation’s political elite sure what the hell? But Ganley will combine with those who oppose the US military stopover at Shannon and begorrah he’ll forget about his business interests because he knows that when it comes to having a cut at a discredited government, his ultimate interest is in creating in Ireland the circumstances where Ireland exists economically as Europe but citizens are riding second class behind his “elite”. It’s his intention to create an Ireland riding side rear guard on a neo con driven US agenda, at lest it was until Obama got into power. Ganley will transfer Ireland’s European reliance to one on the US. He’ll replace a social model of society with an economic one.

As someone who sees the benefit in the Lisbon Treaty from the point of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and in particular education and how this could benefit pupils in Ireland, I smile when I see this Hertfordshire man’s butler raise the Irish flag over his home from his flagpole overlooking the N17, the road that leads to Shannon Airport. What does the man with the Alaskan board actually understand about the lives of ordinary people?

Let me put my hand up. I’ve voted against Maastricht but for Amsterdam, against Nice but for Lisbon. I’ve always felt that when you look on an EU Treaty you vote because of one key issue. I could not have got through college but for getting a job in Germany during the 80’s. I never got a J1 I always went to Germany because it was new culture. My recollection of the 80’s was that in Europe the left and right had an understanding that mutually assured their dominance. This was why the European Christian Democrats so successfully marginalised Margaret Thatcher in EU negotiations. Her response was to cosy up to Ronald Reagan. The EU worked because of the balances that politically existed. Now with the upsurge in regional parties with an obstructionist agenda such as UKIP the neo cons see their opportunity and strike to bring European progress to a halt.
But my concerns about EU as a military power disappeared when the Berlin wall collapsed. I still have concerns about the EU and it’s because of the democratic deficit that is inherent in the structures. Lisbon was a way to bring in more democracy and accountability into decision making.
And this is where I wonder about Declan Ganley, why is it that he’s big not accountability in Eurioe but won’t disclose to SIPO details of Libertas’ funding, 6 months after he gave the commitment on TV that he would. I wonder about his connections with an Albanian solicitor who was subsequently murdered amidst allegations of financial connections with businessmen. I wonder about how Declan Ganley claimed he was a key government advisor in the 1990’s in a Baltic state. I also wonder how if CJ Haughey & Co hadn’t discredited politics in this country how far Declan Ganley could have ever got if questions when asked were answered? Once on a local radio discussion on CJ Haughey I offered the opinion that the problem with this country is that it takes 15 years to find out what’s going on today. This maxim doesn’t only apply to the affairs of the late Taoiseach but also our dissident Solzhenitsyn from the salt mines in Glenamaddy.