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==========================The cunning inversion of the "no alternative" argument
by W. Finnerty Sat Jan 28, 2012 09:19
Reply to T K at Fri Jan 27, 2012 21:45
I believe all the concerns you have expressed are entirely valid, and it really is a very grim situation indeed which we all find ourselves in just now. The good thing is though, as your comment powerfully demonstrates, more people seem to be realising just how bad and how difficult things are, and how much worse they may yet become.
In the longer term, and with the benefit of hindsight, the "just follow the money" plan has not worked out well for the people of the Republic of Ireland as a whole.
The only workable alternative (that I can think of just now) is for "the people" to switch to a basic "follow the Constitution" plan: particularly with regard to the core part of our Constitution, as represented by the contents of Article 6.1 .
If enough people were to do that, and if they were to take all of the peaceful, respectful, and lawful steps available to them to make it clear to our Government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) that we now wish to try and learn from our basic mistake, by making a dramatic change of direction (in a timely fashion), then we might still have a chance?
The argument being used by our politicians that there is "no alternative" to bailing out the bankers in connection with their multi-trillion Euros "derivatives" gambling debts is, and always has been, a complete lie (as far as I'm concerned at least). And, when very senior politicians refer to such debts as "our debts", as I have heard at least one of them do on RTE (the Republic of Ireland State Broadcaster) in the past few days, then they are very significantly and very fraudulently compounding that basic lie (in my view).
The truth of the matter (as far as I'm concerned) is that -- from the very outset -- our Government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) never had "any (lawful) alternative" other than to either totally refuse to pay any of these self-inflicted "derivatives" gambling debts belonging to the reckless and greed-ridden bankers, or, if the bullying from the bankers got strong enough, to then publicly put the whole matter to the people of the Republic of Ireland using a constitutional referendum. That way, the people of the Republic of Ireland could, under the very clear, very healthy, and very sensible terms of Article 6.1 of Bunreacht na hEireann , which is the highest law of the land, have the "final" say on the whole matter: where "final" actually meant "final".
Instead of doing either of those two things, our Government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) "went down an entirely wrong road" (in my opinion).
In itself, and in the particular set of circumstances concerned, for our Government to have "taken the wrong road" was not necessarily "the end of the world" (it seems to me). Governments, like individual people, can learn from their mistakes -- provided of course they have what it takes to honestly face up to their mistakes, and to then deal with them in a responsible manner -- and, for a limited period of time, I believe our Government's basic mistake regarding this gambling-debt bailout matter still could be reversed.
However, to keep on "going down the wrong road" in the way our Government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) still seems to be doing -- i.e. for our Government to keep on paying bailout money to the bankers in connection with their " derivatives " gambling debts, even when there is now good reason to believe that the overall size of the debts in question might be hundreds, or even thousands of trillions of Euros, then that really is extremely worrying (for me at least).
Additionally, with the worrying thought that history often repeats its basic patterns, and as some will already know, Seneca's very tidy piece of good advice (please see below) failed to register with Nero.
"Errare humanum est; perseverare diabolicum."
(Seneca the Younger, Roman Emperor Nero's Principal Adviser, circa 4 BC -- 65 AD)
"To err is human; to persist [with error] is [the work] of the devil."
Related Link: http://www.humanrightsireland.com/UnitedNations/26January2012/Email.htm
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The above text has been copied from the comment at the following Indymedia (Ireland) location:
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/101168&comment_limit=0&condense_comments=false#comment287495
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