European Union

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Belfast & District Trades Union Council Talk 2nd of May: Who Profits From Peace?

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Belfast & District Trades Union Council invite you to their Annual May Day Lecture:

Who Profits from Peace?

Thursday 2nd May at 7pm to 9pm

Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre

45/47 Donegall Street, Belfast , BT1 2FG

Will decent manufacturing jobs be replaced by low paid jobs in the finance and services industry?

The ‘double transition’ – towards peace and neo-liberalism – has been evident in the world of politics, finance, law and accountancy. This talk will examine who the winners and losers are in the peace process and will also explore ‘who really profits from peace?’

All welcome and talk will include a Q&A session.

Speaker: Dr Conor McCabe

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Why Ireland’s 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee Decision Was Taken: Part 3

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This article follows on from Why Ireland’s 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee Decision Was Taken: Part 1 & Part 2.

Hindsight provides 20-20 vision, but in light of more recent events political spin and a sense of justifiable grievance can cloud the popular understanding of what happened in the past. There is, of course, the accuracy of the historical record to correct the flawed collective memory.

One ‘flawed memory’ is that the bailout by the Troika was forced on Ireland in order to ensure that money from Irish tax revenue was used to pay back French and German banks, and that since the bailout was a consequence of the guarantee, that it too was forced on Ireland by the ECB to ensure that European banks got their money back. At the time that the bailout was announced, Brian Lenihan began the process of conflating the terms and conditions of the program with the guarantee:

“There is simply no way that this country, whose banks are so dependent on international investors, can unilaterally renege on senior bondholders against the wishes of the ECB. Those who think we could do so are living in fantasy land.”

But when Irish politicians provided an unlimited guarantee the credibility of the guarantee and therefore its effectiveness in upholding the banking system depended on the willingness of the ECB to prevent a country from defaulting on its sovereign debt.

This is not to say that the actions of the ECB, its rules and structures or even the way that the single currency is arranged and the orthodox thinking that underpins it in the interests of private banking is correct or just. Far from it. However, a clear order of cause and effect must be followed, and the ECB is not responsible for the far reaching consequences of providing an unlimited guarantee.

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Arms Sales, Debt and Corruption

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Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German MEP with the Free Democrats party has announced that he is resigning from German politics because he is “fed up with German hypocrisy”. Chatzimarkakis was born in Germany to Greek migrants and has dual nationality so his actions and comments are particularly directed towards German-Greek relations. The issue of corruption is the one where he sees hypocrisy as most glaring:

“The Germans in their hearts believe it is OK to bribe if it leads to more profit. They have a totally different attitude to corruption as the donor [party]. Many regard themselves as not guilty if they give… The guilty ones are those who take … this is the sort of hypocrisy that I am personally fed up with.”

A recent report entitled Guns, Debt and Corruption: Military Spending and the EU Crisis, authored by Frank Slijper, hones in on one sector where such corruption is endemic. Greece has long had the highest levels of military spending in the EU and Germany has been one of its leading suppliers of military equipment. In 2011, two former managers of the German firm Ferrostaal were convicted in Germany of paying €62 million in bribes in connection with the export of submarines to Portugal and Greece, and Ferrostaal itself was fined €140 million. The former Greek Defence Minister, Akis Tsochzopoulos, along with several others, faces trial in Greece for taking kickbacks on defence contracts, including an alleged €8 million from Ferrostaal.

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EU-US Free Trade Agreement: Race to the Bottom of the Atlantic

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A lot of ink has been spilt in the mainstream media, praising the role a free trade agreement between the EU and the US could play in pulling the two economies out of the crisis they are engulfed in. Richard Bruton outdid himself in the Sunday Business Post on 14 April 2013, claiming “abolishing restrictions in the EU’s services sector alone could boost EU GDP by 2.6%.” Three days later a press release from him claimed that the whole deal could boost EU GDP by a mere 0.5%! Of course, these claims of increased growth, together with hundreds of thousands of new jobs, should be treated with a pinch of salt by those with the experience of the ‘Lisbon jobs’ promises. 

These trade negotiations will be carried out in secret, away from any real public or parliamentary scrutiny. Thankfully the draft mandate prepared by the European Commission for the Council has been leaked, although it’s outrageously meant to be kept secret from most MEPs and the public at large. The draft clearly illustrates these negotiations are a means for big business including agri-business on both sides of the Atlantic to push their interests at the expense of European and American working people. They will drive for full liberalisation of public services, and a race to the bottom in terms of regulatory standards. They intend to give privileged access to ‘justice’ to major corporations and may threaten internet freedoms with the potential for ACTA by the backdoor!

The International Trade Committee of the European Parliament will vote on a resolution in April which will most likely voice support for the negotiations. Here, Paul Murphy MEP and Tanja Niemeier (Trade Advisor for European United Left in the European Parliament) provide a critical analysis and explain why  this deal will not be ‘win-win’ for workers on both sides of the Atlantic, as the free trade propaganda suggests.

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Why Ireland’s 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee Decision Was Taken?

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There seems to be a myth doing the rounds at the moment that the 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee, which ran for 2 years from September 2008 until 2010, wasn’t put in place to simply stop both Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide from collapsing in order to protect, as far as possible, the considerable interests that a small group of Irish people had in those cauldrons of greed and corruption.

Rather, popular thinking now goes, the notorious guarantee was put in place because of pressure from the ECB who were eager to ensure that revenue from Irish taxes would be used to pay bondholders in the banks of Core EU countries in full.

Take this recent article published on the 27th of March last which has the headline: “Germany’s rethink on just where the blame lies for the Irish bank bailout”. The implication behind the headline is that the bailout was required because of the guarantee, but also suggests that the statement made by the German Finance Minister that the Irish guarantee was a solely Irish initiative is a ‘rethink’, that is, an attempt to change the narrative that the bailout, and the guarantee that made it inevitable, was dictated by interests of big German banks.

“It was the Irish government that imposed the farthest-reaching guarantee for its banking system at the start of the crisis – on its own initiative,” said German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

The statement itself was prompted by comments made by Irish politicians while negotiating on bank debt. Such comments, of course, are tailored to an Irish audience who are increasingly convinced that the enormous and unsustainable burden of Irish bank debt which the residents of Ireland are being forced to finance is being imposed by the ECB and Germany in order to protect their own struggling banks. This particular framing of the story feeds into the tale told about Timothy Geithner’s phone call and the posthumous yarn about the letters Brian Lenihan received from Jean-Claude Triche.

These Irish politicians are entirely aware, however, that the decision to provide such a broad guarantee was made without the advanced knowledge of the ECB. It is a consequence of this decision which was only put in place to maintain access for Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide to the interbank market that the vast majority of bonds have been paid off in full.

We know this because on the 3rd of Oct 2008 the ECB published an opinion on the Irish bank guarantee. Here’s the relevant excerpt.

“As a further general comment, the ECB notes that the Irish authorities have opted for an individual response to the current financial situation and not sought to consult their EU partners. In view of the similarities of the causes and consequences of the current financial distress across EU Member States and the potential interdependencies of policy responses, it would have been advisable to properly consult other EU authorities on the envisaged legislative plans.

2.5 A further point relates to the risks to the Government’s budgetary position arising from any financial support to Irish credit institutions. While the ECB appreciates that any guarantees provided by the Minister under the draft law would be contingent in nature, given that the financial exposure of the Irish State under such guarantees is potentially very large, the Irish Government could be obliged to make significant payments in case these guarantees are called over the next two years. At a point in time when the Irish budgetary position is deteriorating and may risk exceeding the 3 % of GDP reference value for public deficits, as specified under Community law12, this is a cause for concern, even when the provision of financial support would, under the draft law, as far as possible ultimately have to be recouped from the credit institution or subsidiary in question.”

More to follow.

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EU Austerity Budget – Cuts, Cuts, Cuts

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The Irish government has made much of the fact that it now holds the EU Presidency, chairing meetings of the European Council. It has been proudly proclaiming success in negotiating a new EU budget for 2014 to 2020 (the so-called Multiannual Financial Framework – MFF). What they don't say, however, that in the position of Presidency, they are pursuing the same austerity policies that they implement in Ireland – imposing unprecedented levels of cuts to the EU budget.

Two weeks ago the European Parliament voted for a resolution that rejected, in its current form, the proposed MFF. The proposal comes from the February summit of the EU Council and was a product of horse trading and negotiations between the EU's 27 heads of state.

This Summit was presented as showdown between Hollande on the one hand and Merkel and Cameron on the other. In reality, it was a discussion on how far to stick the knife into workers and poor people, with Herman Van Rompuy, backed up by the Irish Presidency, presenting a draft proposal for a second round of cuts. This was then amended to reflect the various political pressures on the heads of states. Despite these competing pressures, all heads of states feared an open conflict over the EU budget that would rattle the markets at a time they seemed to be calming. They also no doubt feared such open division could give confidence to workers and those opposed to austerity that they face a divided enemy and give impetus to new struggles.

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Tsipras in London: “Europe is the field of the class fight”

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The following questions and answers with an audience took place after a talk Alexis Tsipras gave to SYRIZA’s London branch in Friend’s House in Euston on Friday, March 15th. Coverage of the speech itself can be found here. Some of the questions have been condensed to remove lengthy preambles and/or tangents but they remain an accurate reflection of the query posed by the audience member. Rónán Burtenshaw

Q. Could you give us a few reflections on what we can learn from the Left in Latin America and particularly the legacy of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela?

A. That’s a good question because I was in Venezuela a few days ago. What impressed me about my recent visit was the tens of thousands of people waiting patiently to go past the remains of Chávez. They weren’t expressing grief waiting to pay their final respects but they were showing hope, resolution and determination. This signifies that for the last fourteen years this process has been ongoing in Venezuela and is continuing. This shows us that no social transformation or movement can be sustained without popular support. Chávez was accused by his opponents of being a dictator but I have not met many dictators who have won thirteen elections in fourteen years. For us it is clear proof that without popular support it is not possible to carry out these reforms. This is what we can learn from the Latin American experience, and particularly Venezuela.

Q. How can Greece create enough room to manoeuvre at the international level to resist pressure from the creditors, the IMF and the EU and follow a real alternative path to austerity?

A. How will our lenders, creditors and our partners in the European Union be able to answer that question? It would be the first time that they are under this pressure from a government with popular support. How would they deal with this pressure? I am certain that austerity isn’t the way out of this crisis and, in fact, that it is the political aim of those who force it upon us. They are fully aware of that. They want to blackmail people with this enormous debt, which has been worsened by government policy, and by the threat of expulsion from the Euro. The clear aim is to create the conditions where the southern European belt will be a place of cheap labour and favourable conditions for exploitation, and they have been confronted so far with no opposition from any of the governments from the south. Instead what these governments are doing is accepting every absurd measure that’s being proposed to them. But once they have resistance from a government with popular support the balance of fear will change, it would move to the other side of the battlefield.

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Developing of the Tale of the Tiger: Ireland and the IMF

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The paradox of the hot bath is symmetrical: it draws the blood to the periphery, as well as the humors, perspiration, and all liquids, useful or harmful. Thus the vital centers are relieved; the heart now must function slowly; and the organism is thereby cooled.

(Foucault 1961 [1965: 169–70])

The following essay is an attempt to answer a question of critical importance to the history of the Irish State’s development; Namely, in light of the IMF’s recent disciplinary stance toward the Irish State, and in consideration of the key role played by a number of inter- and supra-national financial institutes in stimulating Ireland’s period of unprecedented economic growth, can the IMF’s stance in the post-crisis period be deemed an attempt to legitimise the institute’s technocratic claims to authority; and what are the implications of Ireland’s bailout within the wider context of Europe.

The essay will be two-pronged in its approach; in the first section, we will seek to offer a revisionist interpretation of the negative consequences of Ireland’s economic growth having been characterised largely by external exigencies. Ireland of the Celtic Tiger era was heralded as a “successful model for small and peripheral states in this era of globalization.”[1] The factors culminating in its dramatic demise thus merit closer attention within the wider context of development (or indeed post-development) studies.

In the latter section, we will seek to contemporise the discussion by focusing on the EU-IMF bailout in 2010. Here we will attempt to offer a political economic approach to the IMF’s intervention and authoritarian stance in Ireland, by contrasting the Fund’s economic surveys prior to and following the financial crisis. We will offer two readings of this: first, we will consider if the Fund’s authoritarian stance can be read as part of the institution’s bid to continued legitimacy– in its failure to prevent the crisis, and in light of its crisis of legitimacy prior to this.[2] Secondly, we will consider how the Fund’s stance toward Ireland relates to its roles as part of a wider international economic system, acknowledging that the IMF and the World Bank function as “twin intergovernmental pillars supporting the structure of the world's economic and financial order.”[3] In so doing, we will seek to offer an alternative reading to the “sovereign” debt crisis.

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Tsipras in London: “SYRIZA has a responsibility to put an end to this social disaster”

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This is the first of a two-part on the SYRIZA London event with Alexis Tsipras on March 15th. The second will cover the more discursive question and answer session which followed his speech as well as my own reflections on the ideas and proposals he put forward. Rónán Burtenshaw

Alexis Tsipras arrived in Friend’s Meeting House in Euston on Friday evening for the final leg of a three-day London tour. He used the trip to make connections with the British centre-left establishment – meeting with members of the Labour shadow government, speaking at the London School of Economics (LSE) and doing interviews with Channel Four and the Guardian. Friday was more informal – a public address organised by his SYRIZA party’s London branch in front of a mixed audience, largely made up of British leftists and Greeks, that numbered about a thousand. Tony Benn, the democratic socialist former Labour MP, had been scheduled to introduce Tsipras but was unable to attend for medical reasons. He sent a statement instead, read out by members of the Greek Solidarity Campaign in Britain, which called SYRIZA “the party of hope for Greece and democracy in Europe.”

Tsipras began his speech by framing the European conflict as a battle between neoliberalism and democracy. “Europe is on edge, with two forces colliding. On one side stands the productive forces of democracy, the people fighting to create a society of justice, equality and freedom. And on the other side a neoliberal political project unfolds. Its aim is to control bodies and minds through the politics of fear, to discipline human life in its entirety, to intensify the exploitation of labour and to increase the profits of capital.” SYRIZA, he said, “declare that we are part of the experiment of democracy.”

The struggle for democracy was the central pillar of the speech – its references far outnumbering those of socialism or equality. It was raised as a popular and radical demand, one that would undermine the legitimacy of the established order and halt the advance of neoliberal capitalism. “Syriza believes that radical democratic changes are the only way out of the crisis for the people of Europe. This is not an optimistic illusion. It is the compelling conclusion of rational argument and detailed analysis.”

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Profitable Poverty in Extremadura: Bailing Out Banks, Evicting Poor People

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This is a translation of a piece written by Manuel Cañada, a militant in Trastienda, a social rights collective. It was originally published in Rebelión on 30th June last year. A friend from #AcampadaMérida (manifesto here) suggested I translate it as it helps provide the context to the situation in Extremadura. However it has universal resonance, particularly so in countries living in the wake of burst property bubbles.

The discourse of social Darwinism and the 'the kingdom of the plasma screen TVs' cited in this translated text on evictions in Extremadura ought to be particularly relevant to Irish readers. This morning, the head of the Department of Finance has declared that it 'is not necessarily appropriate that banks should be using taxpayers' money to subsidise people living in accommodation, even if it is a family home, that is beyond their means', citing an 'unnaturally low' level of repossessions (as if there were anything 'natural' about a neo-liberal state that protects the financial sector at all costs!). Meanwhile, Michael Noonan the Minister for Finance has cited, on the public broadcaster, the problem of satellite TV subscriptions taking priority over mortgage repayments.

Bailing out banks, evicting poor people

by Manuel Cañada

I ask of the political economists, of the moralists, whether they have calculated the number of individuals it is necessary to condemn to misery, to undue labour, to demoralisation, to infancy, to crapulous ignorance, to unconquerable misfortune, to absolute penury, so as to produce a rich person.

- Almeida Garret

12th of June 2012, in Mérida's Juan Canet neighbourhood. It is not yet nine in the morning and a group of riot police, armed with plastic bullet rifles, oversee the rapid removal of furniture from a council house. It is one of 16 such evictions carried out in Extremadura in the last month and a half. Expectant rifle sights scan the doors and cots scattered in the middle of the street. A woman, until now a resident of the flat, begs unsuccessfully to be allowed in to her home to pick up the bottle so she can feed her son. No, these neighbourhoods are not reached by the psalms that speak of the greater interest of the child, nor is there room in the suburbs for affectations of compassion. “They treat us like terrorists”, says an older woman, consumed by rage. For some time now we have ceased to be surprised by the presence of riot police and special operations teams in these slums of misery. It is the silent war, the war of the rich against the poor, the coming social war.

One eviction every three days. The Extremaduran regional government (in Spanish, la Junta de Extremadura), a weatherproof homeowner and judge, has let eviction be the guide of its housing policy. 764 eviction cases are open, and of these, we are told, 90 are to be carried out imminently. This is happening in a region with near 150,000 people who are unemployed, with more than 60,000 in receipt of no benefits whatsoever, and when the number of people seeking assistance from Cáritas food programmes keeps multiplying. A tsunami of marginalisation and misery is advancing with its mouth wide open and, while this is going on, the Extremaduran government starts spinning the roulette wheel of eviction. “I only get €436 euro in unemployment benefit and I have to pay €143 in rent. How do they expect me to pay another late payment bill”, says one of the women threatened with expulsion. “They don't want to apply the rent reductions to me because they say I have previous debts”, another neighbour complains. “Can you believe they have the right to threaten you with getting thrown out on the street for a debt of €800?”. The stories of uncertainty and fear pile up. The regional government, the property owner, mobilises police and judges to frighten poor people, but it does not seem to show the same diligence or energy in fulfilling its obligations as landlord. The lifts stopped working a long time ago in many blocks and the neighbourhoods are filling up with cockroaches, but the exemplary government of Extremadura can only think about making money, and, especially, in that most profitable of investments: fear. The vineyard of the powers that be, always sprinkled with fear.

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Translation: Bifo: “The defeat of the anti-Europe begins in Italy”

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This is a rushed translation of an interview with Franco Berardi (Bifo), conducted by Amador Fernández-Savater for the Interferencias blog on eldiario.es, published 27thFebruary.

What is the context in which the Italian elections have taken place?

The political disintegration of Europe. Europe was born as a project of peace and social solidarity, taking up the legacy of the socialist and internationalist culture that opposed fascism. In the 90s, finance capital's major centres of power decided to destroy the European model and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty unleashed the neo-liberal assault. In the last three years, the anti-Europe of the ECB and Deutsche Bank seized the opportunity of the 2008 financial crisis in the US to transform the cultural diversity of the European continent (its Protestant culture, gothic and communitarian, its Catholic culture, baroque and individualist, its spiritualist and iconoclastic orthodoxy) into a factor of political disintegration of the European Union; and above all in order to make labour resistance bow completely before capitalist globalisation. The drastic cutting of wages, the elimination of the 8 hour limit to a working day, labour precarity among young people, the postponement of retirement for older people and the privatisation of services. The European population has to pay the debt accumulated by the financial system because debt functions as a gun pointed at the backs of workers.

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FIRST COMMUNIQUÉ FROM ‘CAMP DIGNITY’ (#Acampadamérida)

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FIRST COMMUNIQUÉ FROM ‘CAMP DIGNITY’ (#Acampadamérida)

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Extremadura can bear no more. There are more than 160,000 people (more than 30% of the active population) who are unemployed, and 70,000 of them no longer have any form of income. Extremadura is currently the most impoverished area of Western Europe: more than 40% of Extremadurans live beneath or on the threshold of poverty. The brutal cutbacks imposed by the neoliberal executives in Brussels, Madrid and Mérida are destroying our region’s public systems of health and education. Men and women, young and old, workers and unemployed, are all suffering the neoliberal attack and debt blackmail in the form of unemployment, exploitation, misery, eviction, exclusion and criminalisation.

2.

We demand a basic income now. For months, thousands of people have mobilised throughout the whole of Extremadura seeking the implementation of a Basic Citizen Income, in successive street demonstrations and by signing up to the Popular Legislative Initiative. The Extremaduran Platform for a Basic Income and the dozens of social collectives that have supported its demands do not and will not accept the so-called ‘basic income’ -which is nothing but a very limited selective charity- proposed by the Extremaduran Government in response to the social mobilisation. We demand the implementation of a Basic Income that covers 100% of people in our region without an income, one that is high enough to guarantee the minimum of dignity that every human life deserves above and beyond the rules of the market: we are people, not commodities.

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Government resignation – and then what?

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Translation of an article by sociologist Jorge Moruno and philosopher Juan Domingo Sánchez Estop, published today in Público, analysing the present conjuncture in the Spanish state in light of major corruption scandals and the crumbling of the current regime’s legitimacy.

Government resignation – and then what?

The Bárcenas papers are not a simple case of political corruption in which a boss puts his hand in the till and all can be simplified by talking about rotten apples. Beyond the final denoument, what we are faced with is an entire process of putrefaction of the party system that arose from the 1978 assembly (cortes), in which the Partido Popular is the main -but not the only- political exponent of the Spanish real estate-financial bloc which has benefitted so much from these decades of bubble. Some of us have taken to referring to this ruling layer from the political-speculative tandem, which draws together the worst of our society, as a lumpen-oligarchy, thereby highlighting the nature of its policies and the way it puts them into practice.

This modus operandi functions by democratising the idea of the speculating property owner, turning every citizen into a potential entrepreneur with regard to his home or the one she aspires to obtain. The spreading of this idea and its practice brought about a situation in which, for a time, the possibility of social ascent was associated with the negotiating ability of the individual and not with the extension of collective rights and the development of a democratic culture that placed value on what is public. This operation of moving society to the right, based on the ideology of the property owner, always works as long as one can speculate a little bit more. Corruption, then, is not a mere consequence of casino-capitalism; it is also the necessary lubricant for putting it into practice. The common thread between regime politicans, speculators and builders is reflected perfectly in the Bárcenas papers, where many of the donors are now receiving contracts for Madrid hospitals up for privatisation. Corruption -of the systemic kind- is also seen in the way the vice-president of the CEOE (Spanish employers’ body) receives a discount in the cafeterias of public institutions such as universities and ministries, whilst at the very same time he rails against anything that sounds public, even when this sector is his biggest source of payment.

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Prof. Terrence McDonough on the Irish Promissory Note Deal – Galway 12 Feb 2013

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Audio recording of Prof. Terrence McDonough’s talk in Galway tonight, “What the !$%! just Happened? A Discussion on the Recent Debt Deal.” Thanks to Vicky Donnelly of Galway Debt Justice for organizing the event.

Main Talk

Mcdonough12-02-13-talk by Conormccabe on Mixcloud

Q&A

McdonoughQ&A-12-02-13 by Conormccabe on Mixcloud

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