Turn Your Pasty Irish Faces to the Sun. And Go Blind!
A Land Fit for Falangists!
“This is our country. This is our journey. Yes, we are in times without precedent but I believe that for Ireland this current crisis is the darkest hour before the dawn, that we have a generational lightness of soul, that in the long Hibernian nights on the western edge of Europe we remembered the light that went before, imagined the light to come. We are a people looking always and ever to the possibilities of a new day. That new day is here, a bright new day where there is no gap, where the people and its Government are one again, a day when our people are united in cause. Seamus Heaney said: “You have to try to make sense of what comes, remember everything and keep your head.” We will. Together and for our country let us believe in our future. For Ireland and each other, let us lift up our heads, turn our faces to the sun and, as has been already said, hang out our brightest colours. This is the first day of a journey to a better future. That future will be achievable when Ireland can again take charge of its own destiny, when by the centenary of the 1916 Rising we can prove to be the best small country in the world in which to do business, to raise a family and to grow old with dignity and respect.”
Enda Kenny, March 9, 2011.
Facing the sun in my new shirt
that you embroidered in red yesterday,
That’s how death will find me if it takes me
and I won’t see you again.
I’ll take my place alongside my companions
who stand on guard in the heavens,
with a hard countenance,
they are alive in our effort.
If they say to you that I fell,
know that I’m gone to my post up there.
Victorious flags will return
at the merry step of Peace
and they’ll bring five roses:
the arrows of my quiver.
Spring will laugh again,
which we await by air, land and sea.
Onwards, squadrons, to victory,
that a new day dawns on Spain!
Spain united!
Spain (the) great!
Spain (the) free!
Onwards Spain!
English translation of Cara al Sol, the anthem of the Falange Party.
What clearer clarion call could there be? Now is the time I think for me to return to my spiritual homeland, lovely holy pissing Ireland. I have heard the call and got the message. Ireland is open for business!
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EU Should Admit Greece is Bankrupt | Christian Rickens
The unvarnished truth - the second Greek Bailout should not have happened.
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How else can one explain the fact that around a quarter of the package won’t even arrive in Athens but will flow directly to the country’s international creditors? The holders of Greek government bonds are to get some €30 billion as an incentive to convert their old paper into new bonds. The aim is to keep alive the illusion that Greece isn’t bankrupt — after all, the creditors are voluntarily forgiving part of the debt. The financial sector is cleverly manipulating the fear that a Greek bankruptcy would trigger a fatal chain reaction.
That leaves €100 billion. But that too isn’t geared to what Greece needs in order to get back on its feet. It’s linked to an estimate of how much debt the Greek economy can bear without collapsing. International technocrats agree that with debts amounting to 120 percent of gross domestic product, the country can just about go on servicing its debt. That’s the level at which the cow can go on supplying milk without dying of exhaustion. So 120 percent became the goal.
Collaboration, with our European partners | Cunning Hired Knaves
The European project was supposed to be a bulwark against the dangers of fascist ambition, but now it is the instrument used to dismantle European democracy in the interest of the risk adverse looking for a steady income stream from the provision of the social net by those who cite the words and actions of old fascists while doing so.
The post Collaboration, with our European partners by Richard of Cunning Hired Knaves summed up in one sentence. For much better sentences and many more urgent points read the post.
On Sunday there were massive demonstrations throughout the Spanish state, with half a million people on the streets of Madrid and 450,000 in Barcelona, protesting against the labour ‘reform’ planned by the Partido Popular, the right-wing party that most closely represents the interests of the power elites that conserved their position when the transition from dictatorship to democracy was undertaken.
S.P.A.R.K. protest at cuts to lone parents, Dublin 18th February 2012
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Please share the link to this video
Exiting the euro | Michael Roberts
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[...]
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Ian Stewart | The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash
In The Observer, Sunday 12 February 2012
Anyone who has followed the crisis will understand that the real economy of businesses and commodities is being upstaged by complicated financial instruments known as derivatives. These are not money or goods. They are investments in investments, bets about bets. Derivatives created a booming global economy, but they also led to turbulent markets, the credit crunch, the near collapse of the banking system and the economic slump. And it was the Black-Scholes equation that opened up the world of derivatives.
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Greece: a Sisyphean task | Michael Roberts
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As Greece stares into the abyss, Europe must choose | Maria Margaronis
Do we really want to live in an economic union that must destroy the future of millions in order to just tick along? Maria Margaronis points out that the situation in Greece today says little about Greece and everything about the EU.
The trouble with historical metaphors is that they can obscure the present: what’s really at stake here is not Greece’s identity but Europe’s. All eyes are fixed on Athens, but the way out of the crisis requires a choice about what kind of Europe we want. The one we have now, with its deep structural inequalities and its rigid adherence to a failed economic ideology, protects neither democracy nor human rights. Stiff-necked and punitive, it prefers to eat its children.
Comment by: Pope Epopt
Mar 24th 2011 at 19:03
Just had the thought that with some Grecian 2000 (does that still exist?) and judicious facial topiary, Dennis O’Brien could look quite - well, you know, Bruno Ganz.
Comment by: Manuel Estimulo
Mar 25th 2011 at 15:03
Hola Popt!
Is true, but what use is a fat Hitler?
Escept to enter a fat Hitler competition. They are still very popular in Austria.
Besos
Manuel
Comment by: William Wall
Mar 28th 2011 at 18:03
Spot on! Onward Christian soldiers.
Comment by: Pat \'deVerse\' DúnLaoire
Mar 29th 2011 at 12:03
Like most people, I am very well-aware of the old connection between the 1930s Fine Gael, Eoin O’Duffy and their fondness for Fascism.
And while it appears that the lines, as expressed by Enda Kenny also come from the Cara al Sol anthem, the depiction of Enda, James O’Reilly and Michael Noonan as Fascists is quite frankly “daft”! A fetish for ‘Law & Order’, the FG boys and girls may be, but Fascists, Falangists and Nazis, they are not!
Comment by: Donagh
Mar 29th 2011 at 14:03
In fairness I don’t think Enda would win a fat hitler contest. A Margaret Thatcher look-a-like competition maybe. But there would be stiff competition between Michael Noonan and James Reilly. I think though that Reilly has the charisma to pull it off: