Surely not November 21, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
From Brendan Howlin in the IT…
“It’s the hollowing out of the centre. I had that debate with the troika when they were here all the time. If they repeatedly demanded burdens that were unacceptable to the people, they would pull down the centre of politics in Europe and what would follow would be ugly.
“I don’t think the institutions of Europe have served the EU project very well during the crisis. They allowed what was a very manageable crisis in Greece to expand and obviously there was an international banking crisis that followed up on that.”
The IT itself notes:
In an extraordinary criticism of the institutions that oversaw his own government’s bailout, Mr Howlin said the lack of generosity shown by the EU worsened the crisis in Greece and added to the rise of populist right movements.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Troika rule was already in place when the LP went into Govt in 2011 as a decidedly junior partner. So it was entirely predictable how events would unfold, to wit, the LP acquiesced. With 37 seats there was an alternative, they could have provided a robust opposition against austerity. The 2016 election would have been very different.
The lure of Office, Salaries and Perqs was a temptation. And it really didn’t look as if any of the LP TDs were up for a fight. On the contrary they were very comfortable with the idea that excessive public spending was the cause of the crisis. Joan Burton opened food banks with a smile on her face and devoted resources to clamping down on welfare fraud, complete with Garda checkpoints in industrial estates. This effort was in contrast to the lack of efforts to combat corporate fraud and tax evasion.
For all this, praise was lavished on them by the Sindo and the rest of the MSM.
It appears Howlin knew this would happen but just went ahead and did it anyway.
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+1 Howlin is beneath contempt, and so are the journalists who are facilitating this nauseating spectacle (Harry McGee, for instance).
Is this the same Howlin who thought the taunt ‘Who speaks of Syriza now?’ was some sort of witty put-down, rather than the articulation of a deeply felt contempt for all those who struggled and struggle against austerity.
The death of the Irish Labour Party can’t come quick enough.
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‘I had that debate with the troika’ – oh, I can just picture it now, the bould Brendan full of passion and courage, making his case to those fellas from the ECB and the IMF, telling them exactly what they were getting wrong, setting them right, banging his fist on the table, raising his voice, overcome with passion. ‘Won’t someone think of the centre!’
This alleged ‘debate’, if it even happened, surely was more like this:
‘Tell us this now lads, and remember I’m just spitballing here, having an auld brainstorm, no bad ideas in brainstorming as they say, but tell us now, did you ever think, might it have been a good idea do you think, to maybe have, I’m just throwing this out there, you know, some kind of, what would you call it now, I suppose the word I’m looking for here is “debt relief”, did you ever think of maybe offering that to the Greeks, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘No, we did not.’
‘Ah sure fair enough, I’m sure you know best, not for me to be telling ye how to do your business, I’m sure it’s the right thing to do, yes, now I think of it, sure if I was in your position I would have done the same! Sure I was only asking for a friend, like.’
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Labour, as always, wrestled with it conscience – and won.
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The Troika forced Greece to break human rights: http://www.ejiltalk.org/europes-debt-to-greece/
The Court of Justice of the European Union gave the EU a ‘get out of jail free card’ when it ruled in the Pringle case that the EMS is not an EU institution. (Mind you, it had already stooped pretending to balance the rights of capital and labour when it ruled in favour of wage dumping in Laval.)
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