Peter Matthews on IBRC payments

The last government agreed that the State should pay €31bn to IBRC (formerly Anglo and Irish Nationwide) over a 13-year schedule ending in 2025. The first payment of €3.1bn was made in March 2011. The next payment is due on March 31.

If the European Union and the European Central Bank force us to make this payment, it would amount to increasing the totally unjustified, odious debt burden on the people of Ireland .

How is it unjustified? How is it odious?

Loan losses that occurred in the Irish banks following the financial collapse in 2008 were calculated in March 2011 at €75bn. In the 12 months since then it is becoming increasingly apparent that mortgage loan losses will get progressively worse.

Evidence is mounting that the total loan losses in Ireland could rise towards €100bn.

Throughout 2008 and 2009 there was a slow motion run and controlled implosion of the Irish banking system. In response, the ECB advanced massive loans to the Irish banks and in turn the Central Bank of Ireland responded by providing Exceptional Liquidity Assistance (ELA) to the Irish banks.

Professors Karl Whelan, Brian Lucey and Dr Stephen Kinsella recently made excellent presentations to the Oireachtas Committee on the issue of the promissory notes and ELA.

They showed how the Central Bank of Ireland effectively created €45bn ELA money "out of thin air". The Central Bank of Ireland doesn't owe any of this money to the ECB, they said.

On a once-off basis, money was created and pumped into the Irish banks to keep them solvent.

When the Irish banks repay these ELA loans, the Central Bank of Ireland simply retires them. The money literally disappears.

Therefore, the €31bn ELA money created by the Central Bank of Ireland, and advanced to IBRC to cover promissory notes, can and should be written off.

Specifically, on March 31 next, the write-off by the Central Bank of Ireland of €3.1bn ELA would mean that the Government wouldn't have to borrow that money to pay the €3.1bn promissory note.

That promissory note could literally be torn up.

The same applies to all the remaining €25bn ELA loans to IBRC and the remaining €25bn promissory notes on IBRC's balance sheet.

There is nothing dubious or wrong about doing this.

Losses which should have been borne by bondholders have, wrongly, been dumped on the people of Ireland.

Normally, when banks collapse, their funders do not get all their money back. In Ireland, bondholders were redeemed all their money with interest at the insistence of the ECB.

Since the end of 2008, as payments to bondholders fell due, neither the banks nor the State had the resources to pay them.

That is where the ECB stepped in. It lent approximately €135bn to our banks to enable them to repay the bondholders and also to replace lost deposits.

The ECB became fully complicit in dumping this bill onto the people of Ireland.

Under normal capitalist principles, the ECB would not have shielded bond- holders from the consequences of their investments. They would have to accept that Ireland is "taking one for the team".

Taking all this into account, again under normal capitalist principles, the ECB could not object to writing off up to €75bn of the loans it advanced to the Irish banks.

If the ECB is unwilling to do this, then the Central Bank of Ireland should top up its Exceptional Liquidity Assistance loans to the Irish banks to €75bn (in the case of AIB and Bank of Ireland substituting ELA for ECB loans) and then write it off.

The ECB has a limited ability to prevent the Central Bank of Ireland from doing this. It can only veto a proposal by the Irish Central Bank with a two-thirds majority of its governing council.

There are 23 members of the governing council, including Ireland's representative, Governor Patrick Honohan.

So, if he and seven other members of the governing council support the proposal to write off the ELA money there is nothing Ms Merkel, Mr Sarkozy, Mr Draghi or anybody else can do about it.

But has Mr Honohan held discussions with ECB President Mario Draghi regarding writing off the ELA money? Has he lobbied other Central Bank governors? Has he lobbied the other eurozone countries in trouble so we can take a joint approach towards debt restructuring?

Writing off that €75bn would have a massive positive impact on Ireland.

Firstly, this would allow AIB and Bank of Ireland to pass on these write-downs to mortgage holders and struggling businesses, providing a much needed stimulus to the Irish economy.

Secondly, it would allow us to 'tear up' our obligation to redeem the €31bn promissory notes.

Overnight, our national debt would fall towards the Eurozone average and substantially improve our prospects of leaving the EU - IMF bailout programme.

We have been damned with faint praise from the troika. But the current EU policy of 'kicking the can down the road' just prolongs the crisis.

Our Government has shown willingness and fortitude in taking tough, necessary and often deeply unpopular decisions. It's now time for the ECB to establish fairness within the eurozone.

If the European political establishment really believes we're doing such a good job, the best way to show it is to agree to lighten the debt load on the people of Ireland by €75bn.

Peter Mathews is a chartered accountant and Fine Gael TD for Dublin South

- Peter Mathews

Sunday February 26

Haiti Solidarity Films and Actions

Haiti Solidarity Ireland

On Saturday 25th February we will be showing these films in the New Theatre, starting at 1 p.m.

Three Radharc Documentaries on Haiti

In 1991 the Radharc film crew made three documentary films for RTE on the situation in Haiti at the time of the election of Jean Bertrand Aristide. These include interviews with Aristide, scenes of the post-election celebrations, and demonstrations where people were killed by the army. Also interviewed are the then U.S. Ambassador, and journalist Maggie Steber who witnessed and survived an assassination attempt on Aristide.

“Priest, Prophet, President” 7/2/91 Asks how and why Aristide ended up as a presidential candidate, and the background to his political activity as a young priest working in a poor Haitian parish.

“Friends and Enemies of the President” 1/5/91 Looks at the support Aristide could rely on and the powerful enemies with whom he needed to negotiate.

“O La Liberté” 8/5/91 Examines the huge work that lay ahead of Aristide at the beginning of his presidency.

A Documentary by Kevin Pina, US journalist

"What's going on in Haiti?" Haiti in 2007 under US/UN Occupation

On Tuesday 28th February we will hold a public meeting in the Ireland institute 27 Pearse St. at 7.30 p.m.

Elsie Haas, a Haitian journalist, artist and film maker living in exile in Paris, has been campaigning for many years against the Duvalier dictatorship and its successors.

She will address the meeting on the developments in Haiti since the coup d'état of 2004 against Aristide, and how the UN occupation is facilitating the return of Duvalierism.

On Wednesday 29th February we will picket the Brazilian Embassy in Charlotte Way, off Camden St from 5.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

This is in protest against Brazil's role in legitimising the coup d'état and managing the occupation forces known as MINUSTAH (United Nations' Mission for the Stabilisation of Haiti), and to demand an end to the occupation.

End the Occupation of Haiti!

Greek steelworkers statement

Statement of the trade union of the workers of “Helliniki Halivourgia”
(Greek Steelworks)

“The board of the trade union of the workers of “Helliniki Halivourgia” condemns the attempt of the fascist organisation “Chrisi Avgi” and other groups to provoke slander and discredit our heroic struggle.

“Crisi Avgi”, has been against our struggle since the beginning as it does in all workers’ and people’s struggles.

It defended the industrialist Manesis saying that his proposals for dismissals and a 5-hour workday were “reasonable under the difficult situation of the market”; that every company exists for this reason, to make profit.

Since the beginning, Chrisi Avgi accused our trade union of being “intransigent and lead by outsiders” that the trade union’s stance “leads the factory to closure”.

Chrisi Avgi tried to create a conflict between our colleagues from the factory of Volos and us, arguing that we strike because we have ensured high redundancy payments unlike our colleagues in Volos.

When they saw that this reactionary slander had no result, that the steelworkers continued proudly their struggle against Manesis and his class as a whole, that this struggle met the support of the working people in Greece, of workers from all over the world as well as of immigrant workers who work in Greece, they decided to use other underhand means to attack our struggle.

On the 109th day of strike, Chrisi Avgi suddenly visited the factory under the pretext of bringing material support. After taking photos of the pasta and the bottles of water they had brought, which were “decorated” with revolting pre-election slogans (which we saw after them leaving), and after them videotaping their presence, they played their well known role.

By means of various statements they started provoking our struggle, the board of the union and its leaders. At the same time, a few other groups used this as an opportunity to say openly, what they have been hiding for so long i.e. that they also utilize our strike to their interest, without agreeing with our struggle and its content.

We answer to all of them that they are too small, to criticize and slander the struggle of the steelworkers. The steelworkers are expressed through the decisions of their General Assemblies and the board of their union. These decisions reflect the class content and orientation of our struggle, our demands.

We reiterate that we ask for the solidarity of all workers. But we state clearly, once more, that the struggle of the steelworkers can neither be disoriented nor bought off, under the pretext of material support. Hundreds of trade unions, mass organizations and thousands of workers from Greece and the rest of the world have responded to our call since the beginning, organisations with which we have many different opinions, goals and directions.

We are aware that some do not offer material support in order to help, but they hope for other things. We state that the steelworkers are not for the teeth of Chrisi Avgi and other so called revolutionaries. The steelworkers are part of the organised class oriented movement that was and is the basic supporter of their struggle. It is no coincidence that all these groups attack PAME, inside and outside Greece, which PAME has been the basic supporter of our struggle and is now organising a campaign all over Greece for the financial support of our struggle. We call the steelworkers to isolate those who cause damage to our struggle. We say to Manesis and his people, that they fool themselves, if they believe that they will provoke and break the solidarity movement with our struggle. Provocations will not succeed.

We struggle for all Greece to become “Hallivourgia”

Details of the greek cuts and the KKE response

Τhe myths concerning the crisis and the response of the KKE and the class-oriented labour movement.

A life of hell for the working class, for all the people who toil is being prepared by the black front of the coalition government-Troika-plutocracy. Their agreement on the measures which have been announced is only the precursor for infinitely worse measures, which they will bring with their “new agreement” by June 2012.

The new memorandum of impoverishment which was voted on 12.2 includes amongst other the following measures:

Reduction of basic salaries by 22% (National General Collective Agreement-NGCA, sectoral and professional agreements). The basic salary for the newly hired workers will be further reduced by 10%, besides the 22% reduction i.e. a reduction of 32%. Abolition of sectoral bargaining agreements. Freezing of wages till 2015. Full time employment will be converted to part-time employment, upon the decision of the employers. Automatic wage increases based on seniority are suspended till unemployment falls below 10% , in fact they are abolished.

Collective bargaining agreements will last for maximum three years. All collective bargaining agreements which apply today will expire one year after the adoption of the new memorandum. Review of the new NGCA by the end of July in order to align with the basic salary in rival countries (Portugal, Turkey, Central and Southeastern Europe).

Abolition of one-sided recourse to arbitration.

Reduction of pensions by 300 millions euro annually. The new cuts will affect both basic and auxiliary pensions. Further cuts in basic pensions of several pension funds which will apply retrospectively from 1/1/2012.

Merging of all auxiliary pension funds by June 2012 and the beginning of s study “a sustainability factor that adjust benefits to promptly eliminate any future imbalances should they occur” which will lead to new cuts to auxiliary pensions as well as to retirement compensations.

2% reduction of the social contributions of the employers through the abolition of the contributions for the Workers’ Housing Organization and social benefits. The respective organizations will close down.

New reduction of the contributions that the employers pay for IKA (the biggest pension fund of private sector workers) from 1/1/2013 by 3%. Employees in public sector- Former state-owned enterprises- Banks. Abolition of permanent employment in former state-owned enterprises and banks and reduction of salaries New dismissals of 15.000 employees in public sector 2012, through “labour reserve”.

Reduction of employees in public sector, who work with temporary contracts, by means of not renewing contracts. Cuts of 636 million Euros on the salaries of the employees in public sector who are paid according to special wage scale by the end of July 2012.

New cuts on the salaries in public sector by means of revising the wage scales. Reduction of the number of public sector employees by 150,000 till 2015 and employment in line with the rule of 1recruitment for 5 exits. Reduction of the overall intake in academies (military, police) that guarantee automatic employment in public sector. Closure of public organizations and entities by June 2012

Reduction in the sector of healthcare and pharmaceutical spending by 1.1 billion Euros.

Cuts in a series of social benefits, by enacting criteria based on income. Reduction of benefits for families with more than 3 children. Reduction of operational and consumption spending of the state by 300 million Euros. Cuts on several entities supervised by the ministries of Education and Culture by 200 million Euros.

Reduction of expenditure on the overtime of doctors in hospitals by 50 million Euros.

Reduction of Public Investment Programmes by 400 million Euros. Reduction of expenditure on military equipment for the defense of the country. A new tax system in June 2012 which will abolish a series of tax breaks which have remained for sections of the workers. Larger tax exemptions for big capital.

The myths regarding the crisis must be rejected

This massacre of the working class-popular gains which are being implemented by the memorandum of 12/2/2012 as well as Memorandum 1 (2010) and the so-called Medium-term programme were not discovered now, they were clearly described from the Maastricht Treaty to the “Strategy for the Euro 2020” which were agreed on by all the governments in the EU before the crisis. The crisis is of the capitalist system itself and not of the debt as various bourgeois and opportunist claim. The capitalist crisis is the opportunity and pretext for the imposition of measures now which have been already scheduled and are necessary of the competitiveness and profitability of the European monopolies. These are reactionary measures which have as their urgent goal extremely cheap labour power and the mass eradication of small and medium-sized businesses. Without radical changes at the level of the economy and power, as long as the capitalist monopolies are dominant everywhere within the EU there cannot be a pro-people solution, as the opportunist forces, such as SYN/SYRIZA and the forces of the “European Left Party”(ELP). The various so-called pro-people funds, the utopian humanization of the ECB, the various loans which will again be paid for by the people either through Eurobonds or through renegotiation which is proposed by the ELP or through the separation of the debt into allegedly moral and odious debt which again means that the people will pay.

Such management proposals serve capitalist profitability and incriminate the people, so they must be rejected.

The response of the KKE and the class-oriented labour movement

The responsibility now lies with the people. It is necessary for the worst to be prevented. For this to be realized, the basic direction of the people’s movement must be the overthrow of capitalism. The only way out is the working class popular power with disengagement from the EU and unilateral cancellation of the debt. There is no other solution for the people.In this course of intensifying class struggle, the overthrow of the government and elections will be a link in the class struggle and beneficial for the people, provided that they use it as a weapon to cause an even greater rupture in the political system. Now the question for the people and every worker, for the unemployed, the self-employed, the poor farmers, for young people and women who belong to the popular strata, for every individual is not just their liberation from the parties of the plutocracy, but their support for the KKE. In this way will the rupture be substantial.

Any other political choice does not frighten them, does not make life difficult for them, but facilitates a political solution which will come in succession so that the massacre of the people can be implemented. It will facilitate the promotion of new reserves for the bourgeois political system, possibly of new parties or party alliances, which will seek the most effective deception and subjugation of the people. Only the alliance with the KKE can serve the people’s interests, because a pro-people political line can exist only in people’s power. But this is not enough; today workers must not consider themselves merely as voters. They must be active, contribute to the unions on a daily basis, to the struggle committees in the workplaces, to the people’s committees concerning every problem of the people so that the anti-people offensive meets a practical answer till the final confrontation for power.

Bailout = Austerity Public Meeting

Saturday 31st March 2 pm Ireland Institute
Prof. Kathleen Lynch
Dr Conor McCabe
Gen. Sec. John Douglas

Blueprint for a Syria takeover

by Felicity Arbuthnot writing in the Morning Star

For anyone in two minds about what is really going on in Syria, here is a salutary tale from modern history. Recently discovered US-British government papers, which have since been omitted from even BBC timelines on Syria, have sinister echoes of current sabre-rattling.

In late 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, Royal Holloway University historian Matthew Jones discovered some “frighteningly frank” documents – the 1957 agreement between prime minister Harold Macmillan and president Dwight Eisenhower endorsing “a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion (of Syria) by Syria’s pro-Western neighbours.”

At the heart of the plan was the assassination of the perceived power behind then president Shukri al-Quwatli.

Also targeted were head of military intelligence Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, chief of Syrian general staff Afif al-Bizri and Khalid Bakdash, the general secretary of the Syrian Communist Party and first ever communist to be elected to an Arab parliament.

The document was drawn up in Washington in September 1957.

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, reduce the capabilities of the regime to organise and direct its military actions … to bring about the desired results in the shortest possible time a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals,” it says.

“Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.”

In the light of President Bashir Assad’s allegations of intervention and cross-border incursions by foreign forces some of the plans’ phraseology is fascinating.

“Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared and (with) SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria working through contacts with individuals.

“Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus … care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.”

It further states that a “necessary degree of fear … frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes,” would “provide a pretext for intervention,” by Iraq and Jordan – then still under British mandate.

Syria was to be “made to appear as sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments … the CIA and SIS should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

Incursions into Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon involving “sabotage, national conspiracies, and various strong-arms activities” were to be blamed on Damascus, the document advised.

In late December 2011 an opposition Syrian National Council was announced with a plan to “liberate the country.” Its representatives met Hillary Clinton. There now seems to be a US-endorsed Syrian Higher Revolutionary Council.

There are all-too-clear parallels with the Eisenhower-Macmillan plan to fund a Free Syria Committee with the “arming of political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” within Syria.

The CIA and MI6 planned to foment internal uprisings and replace the Ba’ath Communist-leaning government with a Western-friendly one.

Expecting this to be met by public hostility the plan anticipated that their agents would “Probably need to rely first on repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power.”

The document was signed off in both London and Washington. Macmillan wrote in his diary of “a most formidable report” which was “withheld even from British chiefs of staff.”

Washington and Whitehall had become concerned at Syria’s increasingly pro-Soviet, rather than pro-Western, sympathies and they disliked the pan-Arab Ba’ath and Communist Party alliance, which was also widely supported by the Syrian army.

These political concerns were augmented by Syria’s control of a main pipeline from Iraq’s western oilfields in those pre-Saddam Hussein days.

Briefly put, in 1957 Syria allied itself with Moscow by signing an agreement on military and economic aid. The previous year it had recognised the People’s Republic of China.

The Soviet Union, as Russia has done now, warned the West against intervening in Syria.

Syria remains unchanged as a country valuing its sovereignty and the historical loyalties remain.

In 1957 this independent-mindedness caused senior State Department official Loy Henderson to say that “the present regime in Syria had to go.”

Ultimately the plan was not put into action since, British mandate or not, neighbouring countries refused to be part of it.

In a tone similar to that of 1957, Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague has said President Assad “will feel emboldened” by Russia’s and China’s voting against the US and Britain-drafted resolution at the UN.

Clinton has called for “friends of a democratic Syria” to unite and rally against the Assad government.

“We need to work together to send them a clear message – you cannot hold back the future at the point of a gun,” she said.

The Russia-China veto at the UN has been condemned by the US varyingly as “disgusting,” “shameful,” “deplorable” and “a travesty.” Jaw-dropping and embarrassing double standards.

Perhaps the bottom line is that in 1957 Iraq’s oil, to which Syria held an important key, was at the top of the Western agenda. Today it is Iran’s – and, as Canadian academic Michel Chossudovsky notes so succinctly, “The road to Tehran is through Damascus.”

If Not Alarmed, Pay Attention by Joe Jamison

If Not Alarmed, Pay Attention

by Joe Jamison

A gigantic political-economic crisis is gripping Europe. It is hammering Ireland and other small states on the “periphery” of Europe: Greece and Portugal, and -- though not “small and peripheral” -- Italy and Spain.

Yet, so far, in Irish America, one detects almost no recognition of the scale, nature, and novelty of the disaster engulfing Ireland.

What just happened to Greece and Italy could happen to Ireland, and soon. In an action many described as tantamount to a coup d’état, a few weeks ago German Chancellor Merkel ousted elected Italian and Greek leaders. She parachuted into power two unelected banker-technocrats. The new Italian Prime Minister, Mario Monti, was an official of Goldman Sachs. The new Greek Prime Minister, Lucas Papademos, worked for the European Central Bank.

In 1941, an earlier German Chancellor required fifteen divisions to install a collaborationist Greek government. Today, despite the Greek people’s magnificent fight back against austerity, Chancellor Merkel did the same -- with a few phone calls.

The very interests in Ireland that have brought the country to its knees want to keep up the semblance of normality. Unlike in the days of the peace process there will be no “Pan-Nationalist Front” now. Grassroots forces in Ireland and Irish-America will have no allies in the government parties, nor in the senior civil service.

This week, in the run up to March 17, there will be a normal trip by a Taoiseach to the US for his normal round of Washington business and government meetings. He will express confidence in his government’s course and appeal for investment and tourism. The Embassy staff will complete plans for the light-hearted, traditional Shamrock Ceremony at the White House next month. All is well.

Except for the fact that all isn’t well.

A crisis always exposes the real power relations. It lifts the rhetorical fog.

In its latest proposal for the Eurozone, Germany wants Greece to yield sovereignty over tax and spending decisions to a Eurozone 'Budget Commissioner’ to secure a second €130 bailout. According to the Financial Times,

"In what would amount to an extraordinary extension of European Union control over a member state, the new commissioner would have the power to veto budget decisions taken by the Greek government if they were not in line with targets set by international lenders.

"The new administrator, appointed by other Eurozone finance ministers, would have responsibility for overseeing 'all major blocks of expenditure' by the Greek government....

This crisis is not normal for other reasons.

The crisis has far to go. The measures the European elites are imposing on the peoples of Europe are bound to deepen the depression, setting in motion political upheavals of all kinds.

Having already surrendered the powers of an independent state, step by step, treaty after treaty, for decades, the Irish government announced it will commit a final act of folly and accede to the Treaty for Fiscal Stability. Like Greece and Italy, Ireland will be at the mercy of German banks.

It gets worse. The Irish Times has disclosed the Fiscal Stability Treaty favored by the Irish government was specifically designed to avoid a referendum in Ireland.

The masters of Europe learn. They know that, since 1987, democrats in Ireland have been able to compel a referendum on eurotreaties. They know Ireland is a key arena of the fight between democratic and plutocratic Europe.

This is no normal recession and normal upsurge in immigration. This is no normal right-of-center government imposing budget cuts in public services and bestowing tax cuts on the rich and the corporations.

The unreal tranquility is also rooted in the notion that we are in the aftermath of the great storm, the four decades in the Six Counties before 2007. There is “a settlement.” Our job is to help to implement the Good Friday Agreement. In the North, democratic change and demographic change, or both together, will sooner or later move the needle. There may be a referendum on reunification by 2016.

One unspoken assumption of this outlook is that there would be an independent, healthy, reasonably prosperous 26-county state for the Six Counties to reunite with. That assumption, I believe, is now in question.

Some far-seeing observers in Ireland blurted out the inconvenient truth. Democrats and patriots – left, right, and center -- insisted for decades on the absurdity of Ireland handing over ever more power to unelected officials in a Brussels bureaucracy dominated by German and French big business.

But, the march of folly continued. In treaty after treaty the Irish state surrendered essential economic powers -- such as its own currency and control over its exchange rate.

Sometimes Irish voters did listen to the dissenters and voted a treaty down. When they did so, Irish elites, goaded by Brussels, re-ran the referendum to get the desired result.

In Europe, a mood is in the air like nothing we have seen in our lifetimes.

Democracy in Europe is being extinguished by a Germany acting on the crazed priorities of German high finance

The elites who presided over the crash and slump in Europe and who profited from the boom that preceded it show no remorse in their drive to make little people bear the full cost.

This will worsen the coming downturn.

At Davos, Switzerland a few days ago, these self-assured elites left little doubt where they stand. There is no jobs crisis; there is only a crisis of investor confidence. Regardless, any crisis has nothing to do with us. Things can be patched up by slashing the social safety net.

In Davos, the Great and the Good chose to party on. The Titanic steams toward the iceberg.

Public opinion in the Twenty Six Counties may be awakening. In the mainstream Irish media, sober commentators with a sense of history glimpse the march toward the abyss. They urge a change in course. Academic and other non-party political leaders of civil society are writing open letters in the Irish Times appealing for, at least, a policy of expansion, not austerity.

Now, it is time for us in Irish America to wake up.

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This is the first of a two-part opinion essay by Joe Jamison, president of the Irish-American Labor Coalition. He writes in a personal capacity.Irish Echo, NY Wed. Feb. 8, 2012