GOVERNMENT LOSES
MAJORITY AS TWO
FF TDs RESIGN WHIP!!!

Cowen’s shambolic government on brink of collapse:

Political disaster now faces the discredited government of the FF/Green coalition as Sligo-North Leitrim TDs Dr Jimmy Devins and Eamonn Scanlon both informed the Taoiseach today that they intended resigning the Fianna Fáil party whip in protest against the government’s decision to transfer breast cancer services from Sligo General Hospital to Galway in plans for “rationalisation” by the Health Services Executive. The plan would leave the entire north-west of the Republic above the Galway-Dublin line bereft of such services with no alternative for the population except grace and favour attendance at Northern Ireland hospitals as an uncaring Government brutally enforces economic coercion on the most vulnerable sectors of our population, the sick, elderly and children.

The restrictions are also entirely unnecessary as it was admitted only last week by the director of the National Treasury Management Agency, Dr Michael Somers, that the government was sitting on a cash hoard of €27Billion held by the agency as a reserve. Yet, the Government proceeded to transfer €3Billion additional cash to the pension reserve fund which is currently being used to bail out the delinquent private banking system which has been the main culprit, along with the property moguls, for the present economic crisis.

The defection of two TD’s is a real crisis for Cowen as his tottering government engages in a savage deflation of the economy, attacking the living standards of working people and their families in the most brutal fashion and is a political time-bomb in the path of his government’s campaign of lies and deception in trying to force the electorate to vote again on the damnable Lisbon Treaty rejected by the people in last year’s referendum. The only thing saving the government from immediate collapse and with it, the entire EU bureaucratic campaign to force in the undemocratic Lisbon Treaty is the fact that the Dáil is in recess. But, in order to pass their new banking legislation to prop up the failed capitalist financial system, the parliament must be recalled earlier than October, the date of the referendum on Lisbon. Weeping and gnashing of teeth in Brussels tonight as their puppet Cowen sinks in the swamp of his own incompetence and political deceit.

Sack Cowen and his scrooge Government!

NO to Lisbon Treaty bureaucrats!

FearFeasa Mac Léinn

Áth Cliath/DUBLIN, 05 LÚNASA/AUGUST, 2009

TC WORKERS EVICTED
BY FORCE FROM
DUBLIN PREMISES:




Pregnant woman starts labour during fracas:


Workers at the Thomas Cook travel agency branch in Dublin who were occupying the premises in the city centre, opposite Trinity College, in pursuit of agreed redundancy payments from their employers based in Britain, were evicted by force following a dawn raid by 150 Gardaí (Irish State Police) at 4.00am Tuesday morning.

The Gardaí used a battering ram to break down the door and gain entrance and arrested the 40 or so workers, mainly women, who were continuing the occupation all week. One woman worker, who was pregnant, started to go into labour in the street while awaiting the arrival of an ambulance. The child was born in hospital shortly afterwards. Also arrested were Cllr Richard Boyd Barret, People Before Profit Alliance, and other supporters who had gathered in the street outside and were roughly handled by the large force of Gardaí present.

These brutal tactics show that Scumbag Cowen and his rotten government will use state power without hesitation to smash worker resistance to his government’s inhuman and anti-social policies in defence of capitalist interests during this banker and speculator sponsored economic recession, the burden of which is being forced on working people and their families.

The arrested workers and supporters were incarcarated in the Dublin Bridewell prison and brought before the High Court later in the day at 2.00pm. Outside the court a large support crowd demonstrated their solidarity and was widely representative of Trade Unions SIPTU, UNITE, CPSU, Dublin Council of Trade Unions and political groups People’s Movement, Socialist Workers’ Party, Sinn Féin, Socialist Party, éirigí, People Before Profit, Workers’ Solidarity, Campaign Against the EU Constitution, Worker's Party and many family members of the arrested workers plus individual supporters from all over Dublin. Continuous support for the protest was expressed by passing motorists, taxi-drivers and bus passengers.

The arrest of the workers at Thomas Cook has caused outrage and deep anger in the city and even though they were all released by the court, the stark contrast between the treatment meted out to them in comparison to that of the criminal bank gamblers and property speculators has not been lost on the wider population and is a further factor in the growing unrest and opposition to the tottering Cowen government as it tries to con the people into voting for its EU Lisbon Treaty scam in next October’s referendum.

FearFeasa Mac Léinn

Áth Cliath/DUBLIN, 05 LÚNASA/AUGUST, 2009.

Scenes outside Four Courts, Dublin, 04.08.09:

IRISH TAXPAYERS
SUBSIDISING ISRAELI
WAR MACHINE:


Irish taxpayers money is being spent on buying defence equipment from Israel, a country which has been condemned by the Irish Government in public for its inhuman assaults on the civilian populations of Lebanon in 2006 and more recently, Gaza, 2008/9.

Despite its public stance and assurances of support to the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples, this Government apparently sees nothing wrong in trading in arms with those it condemns for using the same arms in its vicious war policies in the Middle East.

The situation was revealed in an article in this month’s “Flying in Ireland” an aviation magazine which also covers military aviation here. Here is the direct quote from the magazine:

The Government has been making great play of its commitments to Irish neutrality in the context of the proposed second Lisbon Treaty referendum yet, here it is, arms trading with one of the belligerents in the chronic conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours. This disgraceful hypocrisy should be ended immediately. There are other sources for this equipment which do not involve us in supporting the war industry of an aggressive Zionist state which wreaks havoc on its neighbours in flagrant violation of the UN Charter which we are supposedly committed to and all standards of human rights agreed internationally.

It is no real surprise that this is happening as the Government has been allowing the US military to pass over a million troops for its agressions in Iraq and Afghanistan through Shannon Airport and refusing to inspect the transport of prisoners to the torture camp at Guantanamo for years now in complete violation of international laws. Shame on Cowen and his Green collaborators! Boycott Israel Now!


FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/DUBLIN, 10 IÚIL/JULY, 2009.

And here is what our money is being spent on: (Warning: these images are explicit)

ELECTRICIANS BEGIN
FIGHTBACK AGAINST
WAGE CUTS:

As 10,000 electricians began official strike on Monday, 06.07.09, the Employers and Government reacted in the usual manner. Rattled that their wage cuts and job cuts policies were being challenged on the streets they repeated the usual list of lies they churn out at times like this; the “greedy workers” holding the country “to ransom”; “selfish sectional interests”; “we are pricing ourselves out of the market” and other such shibboleths.

The fact is, the Government and the Employers, both cronies in the creation of the property bubble which has brought the Irish economy to its knees, are now pursuing an agenda of bullying, socially-regressive capitalism in a determined effort to cut wages and conditions and increase their own profits at the expense of workers and their families. They have, in effect, declared war on working people and their basic living standards.

As mentioned below by FPB, one of the leading figures in this war is Tom Parlon, Director General of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) which acts for the employers who employ most of the striking electricians. Parlon, a former minister in the corrupt Ahern government and leading figure in the Harney-led “Progressive Democrat Party” which was wiped out in the 2007 election when Parlon lost his Dáil seat, was one of the instigators of the de-regulated financial and property development sectors which went on the rampage in Ireland of the so-called “Celtic Tiger” years up to 2008 and produced the local economic collapse here, inevitable given the deliberate connections made between the Irish economy and the perpetrators of global financial fraud based in the USA by Parlon and his developer cronies. Scumbag Parlon, who arse-licked every cliché-ridden sloganiser of US fraudster Corporate Finance who came here, now has the brass neck to demand wage cuts from workers who have been denied wage increases already signed up to by his CIF and their associates.

The electricians are in the front-line of the war at the moment and deserve the support of every trade union member and progressive political forces in Ireland. The future welfare of all workers in this country depends, in great measure, on their success in this dispute.

FearFeasa Mac Léinn

Áth Cliath/DUBLIN, 08 IÚIL/JULY, 2009.