My views on Greece: EU Actions Undermine Democracy and National Sovereignty

1.     It was corrupt Greek politicians of the two main parties (New Democracy and Pasok) and their oligarch friends that destroyed Greece. Once the country joined the Euro, international banks loaned Greek governments huge amounts of monies which was used to fuel their political hold on power, secure building contracts for their developer friends as well as to personally enrich themselves. A country whose people were traditionally thrifty changed overnight as they experienced the world of credit.

2.     The politicians falsified the national budgetary figures to secure Greek’s entry to the Euro in 2001.

3.     Political misuse of state monies to enrich politicians and their cronies, governmental failure to put in place a proper tax collection system and their misuse of the first Euro bailout loan to pay off international debtor loans rather than invest in the country has meant that the Greek people are permanently in debt for generations to come unless a comprehensive write down is put in place. 
4.  The wealthy Greeks more than any other social class have paid little in taxes.

5.     No prominent member of this corrupt elite has ended up in jail.

6.     It is now the ordinary Greek people that are paying for the elite’s extravagant lifestyles, yachts and grandiose building programmes.

7.     For last seven years, Greeks have been forced to live through a policy of austerity to experience draconian cuts in hospitals, education and other public services

8.      Unemployment is at 60% for the under 25 year olds with little unemployment assistance available.

9.     For those that have jobs, wages are low.

10. Hunger and scavenging for food is a fact of life for increasing numbers of Greeks.

11. With such an austerity programme forced on the nation by their creditors, the ability for people to contribute towards paying off the national debt is almost zero. Throughout history visionary politicians such as Roosevelt in the US and Atlee in GB and economists such as Chopra and his employers the IMF have recognised this economic fact. Austerity in such cases leads to more austerity and more indebtedness.

12. Further cuts are unimaginable for ordinary Greeks.  Extra VAT will only impact negatively on the tourism trade for instance.

13. Selling off national resources to pay for the mad expenditure of a small rich elite is immoral and is undemocratic. National resources should be in the ownership of a sovereign state and its citizens.

14. The international bankers who are assisting Greece going into debt and the venture capitalists who are waiting on the sidelines to purchase the country’s public assets at knockdown prices conspired with others to bankrupt and humiliate the country.

15. Alexis Tsipras is the first Greek prime minister in modern times that has been honest with the electorate and kept by his party’s election promises. Hence Syriza’s huge win in the referendum on the bailout.

16. In spite of the European establishment manipulation of the media  (to give the impression even up until the day of the vote that the YES campaigners were in the lead) and the dark messages from the financial and political big-guns that a NO vote would mean exit from the EU, nearly two thirds of Greeks supported Syriza.

17. What Syriza want is to secure a significant write down in the debt amount, a sustainable repayment structure and therefore a chance for the economy to recover so unemployment can be lowered, wages rises, businesses to grow. In other words, to give hope and a future for the Greek people.  
18. The Federal Republic of Germany secured a write-off of over 50% of debt at an international conference held in London during 1953. With anger towards Germany still strong after the Nazi destruction of much of the continent from World War Two, many countries were not happy to offer such a generous debt relief. But the Americans persuaded its European allies, including Greece, to relinquish debt repayments and reparations in order to build a stable and prosperous Western Europe.

19. The EU leaders and the banks have ignored the democratic wishes of the Greek people, have set out to blackmail and humiliate them for their vote in the referendum and have organised a very EU coup by forcing the resignation of the country’s popular finance minister Yanis Varoufakis,  by splitting the Syriza party and by increasing the severity of the bailout conditions.

20. The EU leaders may feel that they have won a battle against Syriza. But in fact by their actions, they have undermined democracy, destroyed the sovereignty of a nation and privatised public assets to benefit a small international elite.

21. I for one will be putting my money where my words are and will be holidaying in Greece later this month.

Note: In Ireland the ordinary taxpayers ended up paying for the extravaganza of our wealthy incompetent corrupt politicians. We were never given a say in this decision by the last government. I abhor the fact that my taxes and that of my children are used to pay off  the loans/purchases of the corrupt Denis O’Brien and co that has allowed him and others to purchases NAMA companies at knockdown prices. Syriza is trying to stop this injustice happening in Greece. 

Fiscal Treaty: Why should we pay even more for the mistakes of greedy Bankers, Property Developers & their Poltical Lackeys?

I support a Union of European democratic states. But like David McWilliams, Eamon O’Cuiv, Richard Boyd Barrett, Shane Ross…I am voting Níl in this referendum.

A Yes vote will lead to a further loss of sovereignty on top of what was handed over (without the will of the people) by the last unpatriotic government in order to bail out their greedy banker and property speculator friends. The future of generations to come was mortgaged to pay for their personal and institutional gambling debts.

The crisis was caused by this old boys network. But it us that are facing austerity and losses for something that we did not cause. Our taxes are being used to pay for the debts of private banks not to create jobs, sustainable growth and development.

As well as the wages of ordinary hardworking people, our schools, hospitals, and community services are being robbed once again. Yet not one corrupt banker, property speculator, civil servant or politician has been prosecuted and made pay for their crimes. They still enjoy the high life with all their taxpayer-funded exorbitant pensions, expenses, consultancies, NAMA fees…

A Yes vote will further erode democracy as our lives will be decided even more by unelected bureaucrats who are not answerable to the will of any electorate.

Instead let our political leaders fight to write off the banks debts and spare us these cuts.

Lisbon Treaty Does Not Deliver the Reform to the EU that is Needed

Irish Agriculture on Its Knees

acknowledging the progress initiated by the European Union in such areas as human rights, the environment and ending the military conflicts between states that once was endemic across much of Europe, nevertheless there are serious discrepancies in other policy areas that are incorrectly promoted by Irish EU proponents as success stories.
Ireland’s traditional agricultural and fishing communities have been devastated by EU membership. In a time when food security is becoming increasingly important due to the sharp rise in world population and the looming global energy crisis, the numbers working on Irish farms and at sea are only a small fraction of pre-1973 levels while more and more of our food is imported from countries who let their own people starve, destroy biodiversity and drain off scant water resources so that they can export agricultural produce to Europe and elsewhere. The Common Agricultural Policy has done nothing to develop sustainable agriculture. With its rich grasslands, Ireland could become an international centre for organic agriculture, something never grasped or understood by successive Irish government.
Likewise, the depletion of our fish resources and the livelihoods of our once proud fishing communities were caused by the free rein given by the European Commission to the foreign fleets allowed inside our waters.
These problems are not unique to Ireland though. Other EU countries have suffered similar fates.
I have only recently returned from southern Portugal where many villages lie almost devoid of young people, where the fish-processing industry of Portimao has been obliterated and where farmers are giving away the fruits of their labour in spite of the unprecedented demand from the burgeoning tourist sector of the Algarve. This is because the local hotels and supermarkets chains import food produce from Africa and elsewhere rather than give a living wage to indigenous producers.Portugal is also where I saw many young teenage Eastern European girl prostitutes along the roadsides, the victims of vicious pimps and human traffickers who have become beneficiaries of the easing of border restrictions within Europe over the last decade.
It is obvious that the European Union needs radical reform. But not what is proposed by the anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty, which as our EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, said would be rejected by 95% of European citizens if they were given the right to vote on it.

Click here to see my article written immediately after the Irish electorate last year voted No to the Lisbon Treaty.

Irish Government Should Be Proud & Not Embarrassed by the Lisbon Vote

My letter below on the subject of the significance of the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty appeared in this week's Galway City Tribune:

Dear Editor,
While working in Poland in the days immediately after the referendum, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of Polish people who, upon discovering that I and my colleagues were Irish, came forward to shake our hands in appreciation for Ireland voting against the Lisbon Treaty.
Thanks to Bunreacht na hÉireann, we were able to stand up for the rights of all Europeans to have the final say in the political re-structuring of Europe and have exposed in the process the serious democratic deficit that sadly is now appearing in the EU governing infrastructure. Greater efficiency for EU administration should not be secured by sacrificing the rights of ordinary European citizens to have a real say in shaping their own destiny. It is frightening to realise that, where it not for the safeguards built into our own constitution, the Lisbon Treaty would have been voted through Dail Éireann by politicians of all hues. It is even more astonishing to know that the inhabitants of no other EU state have this constitutional protection. If they did, there is no doubt that other countries would have said ‘No’ just as France and the Netherlands did in 2005 in what was then called the ‘EU Constitution’ but subsequently repackaged as a ‘Treaty’ to deny the peoples of other countries the right to vote on its acceptance. It was our former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern that had the honesty to confirm that there was a 90% overlap between both documents.
Many voters rightly expressed anger at the legalistic, bureaucratic and technical terminology of a 400 page Treaty that represented the most un-intelligible document ever put before a European electorate. It is even more chilling to know that this was a deliberate ploy. For according to one of its prime architects, former French President Giscard d’Estaing, this was necessary in order to hide its true meaning and avoid referenda in the other EU countries.
The belief that the need to ask the Irish people to vote was considered a necessary evil by the establishment that had to be suffered (but which never again would have to be undertaken if the Treaty was passed and subsequently needed changing) was reinforced by what can only be described as displays of arrogance prior to the referendum by our Taoiseach telling us that he had not read the Treaty that we were to vote on; and by our European Commissioner stating that only a lunatic would bother reading it in its entirety!
So rather than be embarrassed at the Irish people’s decision, the government should have the pride and the moral courage to tell other governments of their own lack of a democratic mandate to say ‘Yes to Lisbon’. Giving the impression that the Irish have somehow betrayed Europe and should display a collective sense of national humiliation is wholly unjustified.

Membership of the European community has been extremely positive for Ireland in areas such as industry, education, the environment and social justice. Whilst many of the Lisbon Treaty’s clauses were beneficial to the rights of individuals, peoples and states, others were anathema to our society. For instance getting us to increase our military budget, support Euratom and finally accept the loss of a full time Irish Commissioner is not what one would expect from what is supposed to be a community of sovereign and equal democratic states.
Furthermore the behaviour of EU Commissioner Mandelson in the last few months was a portent of what we could expect in the future. For where is the economic, social or environmental benefits in forcing Ireland to be opened to cheaper less regulated farm foodstuffs produced by small South American elites who are enthusiastically destroying the rainforests in their greed to expand their own huge ranches and enormous riches?
Fair play to the Irish for showing that the final decision in shaping the EU should lie with the ordinary citizens of Europe and not with its politicians. For we do not want to experience a new version of an over-centralised and undemocratic super state that was the Soviet Union.

Yours sincerely
Brendan Smith