Thursday, December 17, 2020

10 reasons by CETA would finish Ireland - letter to the FT

  

Can Ireland (indeed Europe) afford the CETA trade deal? 

“CETA hands corporations the right to demand compensation from our government if a law damages their profits. This could cover everything from environmental protections, safety for working people, our health and more” (Uplift). 

 

The Green Party explanation says there is a new approach “mitigating  the risk  of  abuse and safeguarding the right to regulate in the public interest”.

If you think about it for one moment even, you will realize that every law and policy brought for consideration damages the profits of one corporation or another. Let’s take 10 examples and consequences of abuse even before we give them legal as well as financial power over governments and countries.


Corporations and Covid

1)  New regulations to ‘flatten the curve’ in March. I wrote and asked the government to close abbatoirs and live export as two high-risk businesses for the spread of Covid between both workers and countries, through their lax consideration for life (I didn’t say the last bit in the letter to them but, remember, I was a legal advocate in a protected disclosure case against the meat industry in 2015 and the government took their side, despite the 300 pages of evidence. For restrictions, as well, my TD said “Sorry, Franc, the meat industry are too big” Two months later the virus was almost gone bar several serious clusters in meat factories. Were they closed even for a moment? No. There were still 52-seater buses crammed with sick meat workers being ferried into work on threat of losing their jobs, over 300 new inspectors employed and only 16 inspections carried out. 


Governments Only Pay For Loss of Profits - How long is a piece of string?

2)  The Green party explanation adds ‘The  court will  not  be able  to  award punitive  damages,  only damages  that  amount to  the  specific loss.’ Let’s take the arms industry. That Trident nuclear submarine replacement in the UK is to cost 205 billion. What if the government decide to spend that money in public interest instead? What if they stop sending arms to Saudi Arabia. Will they immediately owe those lost profits. In Ireland we have our own arms industry, military intelligence and although we have just signed the treaty to ban nuclear weapons thankfully (coming in to force on the 23rdJanuary) will we be doing anything about the components (Dail Debate) https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2012-06-21/6/we make here. This article explains how inconsistent Ireland’s policy is already and the fact that the main weapons investors in Ireland are AIB and the Irish State’s Nation Pension Reserve Fund. http://www.afri.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Ireland-Irish-Finance-and-the-Nuclear-Weapons-Industry.pdf .  Our military telecommunications exports are around 410 million this year and drones and related weapons just under 40million. What if the government decided that the human cost of war was too great and we shouldn’t host these companies. What profits would we owe them and relocation costs.


What happened to Taxing Corporations & Financial Services

3)  And what if Europe tried to implement that 0.01% tax on Financial Services to save us from the recession? One MEP thought it was so important that he went on hunger strike for more than two weeks to get it discussed again). That will cut into their profits and maybe they’ll be able to afford the best lawyers to argue that it is against the trade agreement to implement any tax. We have our own International Financial Services Centre in Dublin in Northwall & George’s Dock. An RTE report in September 2020 said that before them, people were able to own their own homes without being burdened for their lifetime in crippling debt https://theplatform.ie/elementor-1465/ to get Foreign Direct Investment. For a community-level understanding, think of the IDA grants – for foreign business to start up in Ireland and Enterprise Ireland Business Continuity Grants. The latter, going to Irish SMEs is stopping at the end of December but the IDA will be extended to December 2021. 


Ireland Inc is Itself A Corporation That Will Pose A Threat, Having Already Ripped Ireland Off To The Tune of Billions  

4)  Ireland itself is a Corporation; Ireland Inc. You might have thought they would be on our side but no, Ireland Inc is currently considered the tenth most attractive prospect for Foreign Direct Investment in the world. It was the recipient/destination of 100 billion in shifted profits in 2015, from the International Financial Services Centre – none of it creating any sort of financial benefit for Irish People. If we interrupt their massive profits and tax free status, the financial industry will bankrupt the government first and then the actual productive services (food, clothes, housing, health, education) instantly.


Global Reset = Sue Every Country and Then The Banks End up Owning Everything & Everyone as Collateral

5)  The CETA deal would add legal power to existing financial power. It would facilitate an instant power grab where, government by government and therefore country by country, are bankrupted; the agenda being a financial and wider reset where all sovereignty is lost. The corporations sue the governments and a country’s debt allows the banks to recoup everything in exchange for it. What is sovereignty? The ability for a person or community or country to look after themselves, through growing their own food, their ability to ban or refuse substances or practices that exploit or eradicate social structures and people’s lives. That is the outcome and it would be instant.


Take Power FROM The Banks for their Fraudulent Behaviour


6)  The CETA agreement and the current IDA and FDI extrapolation of wealth is the exact opposite of what the public want. It is the exact opposite of a just transition. It is the exact opposite of starting an EU-wide public bank where people’s money would be safe and facilitates the State’s sovereign right to create the credit we need to support real services and businesses (and don’t get me started on food security and meaningful work. It seems almost naïve to put those two words together anymore). Banks should be having their power taken away right now. They have been operating fraudulently for ten years, lending money, purely digitally, with no regard for their reserves and recouping heinous amounts of interest. We have a window here to say out loud that they are insolvent and they should have declared their insolvency; to insist banks forgive a whole generation of mortgage loans, lent on this illegal basis. They must not be allowed to claim more debt, from offering credit to get recover from the Covid crisis let alone demand more bailouts. Paschal Donohoe must be in on their fraudulent plan or he doesn’t understand. Neither interpretation bodes well in a finance minister.  And why should we be taking away Corporations’ power? They are not paying any tax; we already cannot regulate them. On a ground level, Ireland has banned the use of several toxic fungicides, pesticides and herbicides but does not have the power to stop TESCO or any ‘multinational’ from selling products grown using them. And there’s no requirement to label them either. Think of the massive advantage corporations already take (or we already give) to unethical intensive producers in warmer growing climates, using low paid workers in insecure housing (also known as slavery in their supply chains) and undercutting anything grown properly, harmlessly or locally. 


CETA trade deal leaves no way to address covert profiteering


7)  Brexit is looming and Ireland should be moving our ferries to travel between here and the continent. Instead, the government has been subsidizing the ferries between UK and here ‘for food imports and exports and pharmaceutical exports’. The hauliers should be subsidized not the ferries. And with CETA, Ireland will never be able to address the fraud which is the import of food from Europe to the UK and then how it is just loaded again in UK warehouses and brought over – increasing the price of food here several times over. Instead, the Irish government has been giving recovery grants to the Food and Drink sector including exporters and importers. A cursory look at who those exporters are will show that they are billionaires, nothing like the pubs and venues obliterated here, through changing restrictions (wet pubs? Who coined that phrase, to make them sound like the ‘wet markets’ of China. Everyone knows there’s much less risk from drinking a pint than sitting down to a meal) 


        People might not know that much of the 50 million for farmers’ recovery went to manufacturers too – the very same factories that would not shut and did not lose out and indeed kept the pandemic going flat out when the countr was nearly clear. And remember the pharmaceutical industry are corporations too, and already non-compliant (animal welfare in research and use of ingredients with known side affects) with impunity (it is in law that they are not responsible for adverse affects from their products).  Think of the power they already have over governments, especially as they are associated with hospital and healthcare provision. They have mission statements to have ‘every citizen on an average of 4 prescribed drugs from cradle to grave’ and in America, doctors lose their licenses if they don’t deliver the full complement of 26 vaccines to their patient list. This is big business. In Ireland, who do you think is suggesting that the government should have new school vaccination programmes rolled out and advertise on peak hour radio that people should have flu vaccines every year. They are creating a market. With this latest virus, they are seeking to create a captive market. What does this have to do with CETA? It will be banks, multinational supermarkets, technology (which they are now calling ‘dual purpose’ military and civilian technology. Which should ring alarm bells) and pharmaceutical nano & biological blends that will be controlling us. The government will be able to do nothing about any even of its own commitments laid out in the Programme For Government or the Paris Agreement or EU directives. 


Justice, Precedent and Environmental and Other Laws: Out. Financial Gain As Superior Law: In

8)  How do I know that there will be no instances where a government wins a law suit against a corporation? I take TESCO as my example first, where they kept buying up stretches of riverside and applied for planning permission for their megastores. In response, there were always countless objections and evidence brought forwards of threat to town centre businesses and destruction of natural habitats and species. TESCO would appeal and appeal the refusal for permission, until the County Council’s could not afford to defend their refusal anymore and the stores went ahead.  

Environment Cannot Be Protected: The law of Ecocide has not been adopted in Ireland and so there is not even a case to be made for wilful environmental damage by Corporations


9)  More recently, there was the case of Austria announcing that it would go organic, completely. Everyone was on board and Europe as we know has as one of their directives that each country should aim for 20% organic to save biodiversity. Suddenly it turned out that it would be ‘illegal’ for them to become fully organic and ban Monsanto/Bayer etc farm sprays and seeds. This is an exact case of a corporation’s profits being threatened and that not being allowed.


Public Money is Already Going Directly to Technology With No study of Damage To Civilians or Natural World

10)                  It was 6 months ago today that the Green Business Consultancy got our tender in to run Ireland’s National Biodiversity Data Centre. We had a proposal to roll out a nationwide recruitment of citizen scientists (All the data comes from these volunteers, no one is paid to gather biodiversity data and they had only managed to recruit 10,000 in ten years. We planned to involve every school and every college, as well as members of NGO’s concerned and knowledgable about species and species loss. We had heard that Ireland is charged several thousand a day for our failure to survey and protect biodiversity in the designated special conservation areas, since they asked us to 20 years ago. 


      We knew as well of the roll out of rural broadband and 5G and proposed a survey of areas before and after the shortwave masts went up and the new 'communication hubs' - of which 300 were put on Valentia Island alone (an island that is only 3 miles by 7miles), without any study of increased electro magnetic stress or possible disorientating affects on migrating birds and insects. 


       We went a step further and said we would implement an Information Management System which would allow the government and Local Authority procurement departments to draw down Green Deal funding on the strength of real data and evidenced biodiversity goals and results (Biodiversity includes marine and fresh water life and plants as well as land, soil, wildlife and insects (pollinators/beneficial and harmful insects. Not only did we not get that tender, they wouldn't even read it. They just wanted to give it to Compass Informatics. Even though they have no recruitment drive, no data coming in, no obvious use of the half a million annual contract - except for 4 scientists on about 50,000 who don't want to lose that so say nothing. Everyone telling the same story, that they're terribly underfunded. Even though the hardware is there, the software is there, a hopeless on line shop where the manager sends out a guide to recognising bees or dragonflies. Very fishy altogether. Oh yes, and it's overseen by the Heritage Council, the minister for which also asked them to consider the proposal. 



       At the moment surveys are only done by companies who seek to exploit a resource – as I found out when we applied for the National Seaweed Mapping project. We were going to pay the tradional seaweed harvesting license-holders to observe and monitor their area. But no, they didn’t want to tell the Irish seaweed harvesters about the plan, they wanted only a drone and software to sell to International mechanical harvesting interests. Oh who are they, you might ask. Canada is definitely the main one. And who is the CETA agreement with? Canada. And who has already bought a lot of Irish coastline harvesting rights? Canada. And is there crossover between Irish harvesting licenses and what has already been sold to Canada? Yes. And is mechanical harvesting damaging? Yes. And does between 40 % 80% of our oxygen come from algae and seaweed? Yes. And do you think that traditional seaweed harvesters are likely to win in court, even with the Oireachtas committee having decided to protect their rights in 2019? No. We lost the fisheries to the EU. We are just about to lose the Seaweed. In fact we will lose everything if CETA goes ahead; all our assets, our homes, our freedom, our ability to make our own living and our health. 

 

Thank goodness for the public campaigns, the opposition and the green party too who questioned the CETA trade deal so it wasn’t ratified on Tuesday in a rush and there’s another month for consideration. This is serious but it’s not through yet. Fight it will all you have.  

 

 

Saturday, November 21, 2020

Be Discerning and Keep Your Own Counsel

This is a social commentator who saw this coming:

Free 30 minute sustainability consultation for the first three people who recognise who made this astute and timely observation and sends me the answer:


“If you want to change society in ways that you wouldn’t normally have an excuse to do then you find an excuse, it’s a technique of mass perceptual manipulation that I gave a name to a long long time ago. 
“‘Problem, reaction, solution’ 

At stage one you create a problem, real or manufactured, you blame someone else or something else for it

At stage 2 You want a reaction. You want a reaction from the public that is either A. do something or B. not against it strongly enough to say you mustn’t do it.

And step number three is then offering the solution openly to the problems that you have either covertly created or lied about."

Geopathic Stress and EMF Clearing in Ireland and Remotely

At the Pylons Demonstration...It's Just Been Rolled Out Anyway
 & Next Highspeed Rural Broadband


We are Veritably Swamped in EMF - Electro Magnetic Frequencies

Come and Learn How To Clear Yourself and The People (& Possibly Pollinators) You Care About

Geopathic Stress Clearing 

Working remotely: I am very excited to launch my new website, the Alternative Health Consultancy. As you know, the actual health centre, with its all-organic and plant-based catering and accommodation, are on the Kilkenny/Carlow border. However this service of clearing Geopathic Stress, which clears all the electro magnetic and other earth and technological energies out of your home and your family, I can do from a distance. How you may ask? Because Harmony Hall is a bio-architecture building and so it acts as a blueprint. For more information, please follow the link!


Review

My first geopathic stress clearing client, from the new site just wrote: "I feel a huge calm over our house & home. It doesn't seem as chaotic any more, kids laughing lots and in general everyone in good form"


Website Launch Offer

I have a launch offer for the rest of this year €150 but whenever you need to clear the energy, I'll be there. 

New Helpline for Individuals and Business Owners

Harmony Hall Vegan Organic Health & Accommodation

 

I'm on a buzz about another aspect of my new website. People might have expected the distance geopathic stress clearing I launched last week, but many are asking: Why am I offering a Free Helpline to individuals and businesses affected by Covid?

I just don't want anyone else taking their own lives because the restrictions are making them go bankrupt, for want of someone to talk to, proper advocacy, someone who cares and is able to help find other ways forward, with support and grants. 

This is an important time to be alive. There's a glaring double standards going on within the authorities, around who is allowed to do what and who will be supported in this crisis.

Europe, Ireland included is to be subjected to the horrendous economic plans they are proposing for us in their budget. They have so ignored the proposals of the one MEP who proposes a solution - a 0.01 tax on all financial transactions, not too much to ask - that he had to hunger strike for 18 days at least and lose 10kg of his body weight to get his idea back on the table for discussion. That is how determined the EU (with our own Paschal Donohoe right in there) not to help Europ out of the impending recession, Even though the financial sector are doing marvellously,

So don't think they care if we do or don't survive over here. We the people must support each other. Pick up the phone if you need to.

Frances MIcklem's Alternative Health Consultancy

Only the Pharmaceutical Industry is Excited by the Vaccines So Far


 


When I see headlines that a vaccine is 'showing promise' liked and commented on only by other pharmaceutical executives, it makes me slightly hopeful that normal soulful people are waking up to the loose cannon that pharmaceutical companies are; subsidised hundreds of millions (especially for a covid vaccine development) & with laws that protect them from being accountable for their products. Ever wondered why the State had to pay 4 million for the devastating affects of a GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals vaccine? Corporations, with a mission statement to have every citizen on at least 4 prescribed drugs from cradle to grave, cannot be sued. Let that sink in. 


They also have a captive market of frightened people on every continent prepared to try a vaccine plus leverage with the authorities to force it on people if they don't want it. The effects of these rushed through vaccines will only bankrupt countries further, if the UK government are correct when they say there will be a wave of deaths after a vaccine's adverse affects #HSEhttps://lnkd.in/ddu7bDJ My approach? Turmeric. https://lnkd.in/dWTxERN

MEP Pierre Larrouturou Had To Hunger Strike to Ask For A Tiny Tax on Financial Services


 


Will our very own Paschal Donoghue Euro Zone leader and friends let MEP Pierre Larrouturou die, rather than admit his point? Pierre Larrouturou is the man leading the European budget negotiations. He is on his 12th day of hunger strike to protest against the EU’s refusal to tax rich corporations to fund climate action - the 'obscene' EU budget.

People across Europe are fasting for a day in solidarity and sharing his message....well actually it's our message isn't it. Stop being the gatekeeper for the banks and the corporate interests Mr Donoghue, do something that makes economic sense and not just for your own pocket. I've only just heard that this is going on. Please let everyone know we must get a result for this MEP. Public pressure needed! #politicsandlaw #banks #MEPhungerstrikehttps://lnkd.in/eZxP9ys

This must be his 22nd day of hunger strike and yet we hear nothing in the news of the MEP, who is starving himself to insist on economic justice for us, for over a week. "In an unprecedented move, French MEP and general rapporteur for the 2021 budget, Pierre Larrouturou, begins his 13th day of hunger strike on Monday (9 November). His objective: to achieve more resources for health, climate and employment by taxing financial transactions EuroActiv France reports."  


"A European tax on financial transactions and corporate profits could bring an annual €120 billion to the EU budget and finance a green recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, without asking a penny more from national governments, says Pierre Larrouturou." 

"MEP Pierre Larrouturou deplored the meagre €7.5 billion proposed in the European Commission's Just Transition Fund. To finance EU climate action, he suggests some of the ECB's "easy money" could fuel the European Investment Bank (EIB) instead of going into private banks."

This was hardly mentioned, even findable in the on line news, let alone mainstream news...even though he did it for us. He stopped hunger striking in time not to die and has got his idea back on the table for discussion next month.

Support those that nurture not those that murder

 Let's have a little less compensating the barbaric mink skinners and send that money to save the zoo. Jeez, can this government please sort out its priorities.



Monday, November 16, 2020

Cut & Paste to push Minister Donohoe on Private & Public banking and save the MEP hunger-striking for us

Our Minister for Finance: paschal.donohoe@oireachtas.ie

French Senior MEP Pierre Larrouturou is on hunger strike (maybe his 18th day now) asking for a minuscule but important tax on financial services to help Europe recover.

To send support: pierre.larrouturou@europarl.europa.eu



 Dear Minister Donohoe,

 

Public banking & hunger striking MEP, trying to protect us from your decisions.

 

I am writing to respond to the Indecon Report you sent me that blocked earlier legislation.

The Indecon Report does not address:

1.   Usury: The need for Public Banks in order to end Usury in Ireland 

Usury: The practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest.

2.   Credit Creation: The public banks’ capacity to facilitate the State’s Sovereign Right to Create Money.

The power of Irish-owned banks to provide credit. The fractional reserve mechanism (if used by credit unions and post offices empowered as full commercial banks) would be exactly the institutions capable of delivering Fine Gael’s own recent Wellbeing-aligned proposal, meeting the housing needs, care and health needs, food and greening and Covid recovery support for small and medium sized companies – currently defunct.

 

3. Credit as A Public Utility: The Need To Establish Credit as a Public Utility. 

Public utilities are a class of services provided to the public, including making power and water available. A public bank would provide businesses with the credit they need to operate and deliver their goods and services.   

 

4.   Interest-free credit. Consolidated interest should

be banned. 

Banks do not need to charge interest as they already lend several times what they have in reserve and receive the money back in full. As well as using loans as securities to create more credit and provide more loans, on the strength of the first.

 

5.   Lending Criteria & Fine Gael’s Wellbeing Objectives: 

Your paper points out how there are different economic priorities for all demographics. Regional public banks served by real people, in a face to face role, as already exist in the many under-utilized but much loved post offices & credit unions, are the best situated to determine the diverse credit needs & assess social and environmental benefits of proposed enterprises. Regional public banks are the only way to realize your party’s Wellbeing objectives. 

 

 

6.   Public Expenditure. Imagine the fractional reserve leverage of all 

public contracts and regional allocated funds passing through the public banks, multiplying regional inputs exponentially.

The charter for public banks for societal good, is in line with the Local Government Climate Action Charters and EU Green Deal and Just Transition criteria. The DOF and local authorities could draw down more of these funds for Ireland, if you could demonstrate the money was reaching the communities and not getting sucked off by the meat and dairy bosses and multi-nationals. 

 

7.   No money goes off-shore. 

The benefits of an independent, not for profit bank system, is that public banks do not take any money out of the economy.

8.  Set Up: Existing credit unions hold substantial savings, empower them as full commercial banks. 

People have noticed how you’ve started to include Credit Union savings when you talk about bank reserves and you and I know that when the banks are at last forced to declare their insolvency, they will be trying to lay claim to these last savings of ordinary people. 

 

9.   Running Costs: There are people waiting at the door to put their money somewhere safe. 

Member/owners of the new banks will be happy to pay charges. With customer services to be delivered by existing Credit Union and Post Office staff, the government outlay would be negligible. Passing State financial transactions through a public bank would cover its running costs many times over. 

 

10. Mortgage resolution: If the government, which only leaves you to 

agree – as all the other parties are behind regional public banks - choose to back the implementation, and pass EU money through the public banks, they would be in a position to buy Ireland’s entire mortgage portfolio and secure everyone’s homes. (You do need to legislate to bring house prices down in line with their value in real terms as well though, rather than letting private banks continue to offer 30 year mortgages for inflated figures that keep people inprisoned and keep the banks’ auditors agreeing that they can loan more on the strength of those loans. Otherwise, public banks will be just feeding the beast by offering mortgages to pay those same prices.

 

11.The introduction of a public bank would not create competition 

for smaller lending institutions, as the report suggests, the resistance comes from the private banks who currently hold 100% of the power to distribute credit in Ireland, through those smaller lending institutions and through the government.

 

 

Eventually, in New Zealand (I think), a TD equivalent said to the Minister for Finance, “Just give them the bank”. And he did.

 

That is what you must do, Paschal Donoghue. Just give us the public banks. People are waking up to your unwillingness to allow the people of Ireland to help themselves. Maybe you too are waking up.

 

12. Pierre Larrouturou is the hero. He has been on hunger strike for 17 days now – He is the only person standing between you and inflicting abject poverty on the whole Eurozone.

He makes his case for the urgency of establishing a 0.1 per cent tax on buying and selling stock and a 0.01 per cent tax on all other financial transactions. 

You are the enemy but you could be seen as a king, if you concede these obviously essential economic strategies: Tax on financial services and an EU public bank and Member states to have full public banks too.

 

Regards, 

Frances Micklem

 

Saturday, November 7, 2020

The Quality and Intent of Fine Gael Leadership

 


"Leo constantly pulling strings for me, you've no idea".

To be in government you must be a public representative. Leo Varadkar is a private representative. He has to be sacked. A person without remorse doesn't resign. Varadkar was specifically in charge of Irish people's welfare as Minister for Social Protection and right up to managing the Covid Emergency Payment and he has shown no mercy, let alone responsiveness.


Deny him the creature comforts of a massive state pension. He, Donoghue and Simon Coveney have 'led' Ireland into disaster over several years. Only Donoghue hasn't been officially exposed yet but someone will soon outline his horrendous betrayal of the country too, in his puppetry role for the banks. (Note to self, must find out who run our pillar banks as keep letting them off as a faceless institution when there's people making cruel decisions in there, or at least accepting their artificial intelligence as gospel).


This is much worse than Phil Hogan who was ONLY (!) minister for our environment and then all Europe's agriculture and probably wanted to retire anyway.


Read this text 3 times and ask yourself if Varadkar should be sacked. Blatantly sabotaging us, GPs & the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) #FireLeoVaradkar #CorruptioninFineGael

Vote of no confidence? Total traitor I'd go as far as to say

Taoiseach under fire from own party for not sacking him.

Anyone noticed that even when you look up Who's Taoiseach? Leo Varadkar's name still comes up for the first 20 hits? It's Leo Varadka's ego has even infiltrated the algorithms


Shameless Leo Varadkar's  still more annoyed with his friends than aware of his own behaviour.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/varadkar-warns-tds-to-be-careful-who-they-choose-as-friends-after-leak-row-39708203.html