The term “ the deep state “ has
gained a lot of traction through Mike Lofgren's magisterial essay. I
will use it here to refer to a nexus of intelligence agencies,
financial monoliths, government agencies and politicians to which
enough power has accrued that they can act outside the law
The deep state as the end of liberal democracy
For example, many of the repossessions of homes in the USA from 2008 were illegal because the banks, the foreclosing entities, had sold on the mortgages. Lloyfd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs let the cat out of the bag on TV when he baldly stated that the Obama administration ignored citizens' welfare in order to buttress the “economy”.
The deep state as the end of liberal democracy
For example, many of the repossessions of homes in the USA from 2008 were illegal because the banks, the foreclosing entities, had sold on the mortgages. Lloyfd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs let the cat out of the bag on TV when he baldly stated that the Obama administration ignored citizens' welfare in order to buttress the “economy”.
The USA has entered a pathological
political space in which the most libertarian Republicans are now the
voices avowing classical values of free speech, getting the state out
of our business, and the benefits that have accrued from the Snowden
revelations. The response from Obama has been to create “rights”
like “marriage equality” and to use everyone's discomfort with
gender-as-politics to hide his true agenda.
The situation is very different in
Ireland because, particularly since the Shatter incident, the state
has lost power. Indeed. there is a consensus that there is a lack of enforcement of many laws;
http://www.corruptioninireland.com/apps/blog/
It is indeed conceivable that neither of the two parties that have dominated Irish politics since 1921 will be in government after 2016. So what does the deep state do when it meets a power vacuum?
http://www.corruptioninireland.com/apps/blog/
It is indeed conceivable that neither of the two parties that have dominated Irish politics since 1921 will be in government after 2016. So what does the deep state do when it meets a power vacuum?
Let's look first at the Irish deep
state. The preceding entry talks about its actions; destruction of
many of the signal achievements of Irish culture. What these actions
have in common is first of all their criminality; it is clear that
they were able to hire/create politicians willing to interfere with
prosecutions. Secondly, there is a nuancing of the private and
public; DCU, a state university, was able to have an illegal
disciplinary procedure on its books for over a decade. IMRO, a
“private” “music rights” organization, benefited from a
state-created monopoly (one corruptly given). Both committed many
crimes, with impunity., Lacking recourse to the criminal law, those
injured by the crimes can take their chances in the ruinously
expensive Irish civil courts, a system that has spawned 3 of the
biggest 20 law firms in the EU.
Why does this writer think some of this
came out of an American think tank? There is the fact that Ahern
repeatedly brought David Putnam over to talk about how community and
civil society can be destroyed; it is likely that Ahern saw this as a
“how to” manual. The goal was a state largely owned by Ahern and
his cronies, democracy crushed by e-voting, and massive immigration
making the native Irish a minority. Since 2009, this last has been
happening through emigration of the Irish.
The two Tweedle parties alternated in
government and protected each others' scams. Who knows what would
happen to FG's scam of Rehab if they attacked the CRC? What might
happen to the Motorola lawsuit against Denis O'Brien if FF were not
allowed keep their music scam, even if it destroyed the greatest
music industry in the planet as of 1995? The Irish “deep state”
was unfortunately riven with tribal allegiances
So what can be done? In fact, very much
can be done. The state has extremely little power now, particularly
relative to pre-2008. We can insist that Irish public institutions
reflect our sensibility as Irish people. We can insist on the now
radical notion that the rule of law applies equally to all citizens,
and that civil servants who perpetrated the crime since 1997 should
lose their pensions. And so on
The current state of affairs is not
sustainable and it is really only a matter of calibrating how
aggressively nationalist the incipient party that may hold power
from 2016 will be. Ireland has turned from its initial goal of
exemplifying an ethnic nationalism by allowing its citizens take over
control of a hitherto colonial system to a neo-colony in which a
self-appointed elite judge their citizens in accordance to how they
conform with neoliberalism. The goal, to make the Irish an ethnic
minority in their own country, was actually explicitly stated by
DCU's president during the Ahern era as both inevitable and desirable.
It is unlikely that speech could be given in the current climate
after 5 years in which the Irish have carried the burden of the 2008
Wall St crash, as Tim Geithner explicitly proposed that they should.
Seán Ó Nualláin 22 Iuil 2014
PS 26 u nollag 2014; The political party system in Ireland has since self-destructed with sinn fein now the most popular party. It is unlikely that they will be quite as compliant as the tweedle parties so what happened? How did an experienced (if not very bright) politician like Kenny preside over this?
The explanation possible lies in a set of deals comprising the deep state takeover in the 1990's; law to be used as a subversion of citizenship, not as a means to justice; the destruction of native culture (artistic, intellectual, archaeological) and an inexorable progression to privatizations like water, health, and the universities, a rerun of 1970's Chile. In return people around Ahern became (if briefly) billionaires and foreign investment (FDI) grew.
The problem is that the deep state imperatives required either e-voting with power to nominate a PM or eternal Tweedle alternation with "Labour" enabling the scams of each. Of the items not mentioned in the 2011 manifesto by which fine Gael achieved government, if not power, Kenny almost certainly believed he could get away with continuation of the scams (eg penalty points, music), abortion, gay marriage, and full payment of the bondholders as the economy recovered, It is well within the bounds of possibility that he failed to see the new dispensation agreed by Cowen and Ahern wherein destruction of the institutions of the first Irish republic would be compensated for by a massive, undemocratic transfer of money and thus power to their cronies. For example, why bother that the state has no territory (after the 1998 Belfast "agreement") if you and your cronies hold title, through coillte, to massive tracts of land?
Now it is too late for Kenny and a new terrible beauty is possible. in this, my last post of the year, I ask the reader to look at the posts on Scotland and hold out the hope that we will learn from their hopes
Seán Ó Nualláin 22 Iuil 2014
PS 26 u nollag 2014; The political party system in Ireland has since self-destructed with sinn fein now the most popular party. It is unlikely that they will be quite as compliant as the tweedle parties so what happened? How did an experienced (if not very bright) politician like Kenny preside over this?
The explanation possible lies in a set of deals comprising the deep state takeover in the 1990's; law to be used as a subversion of citizenship, not as a means to justice; the destruction of native culture (artistic, intellectual, archaeological) and an inexorable progression to privatizations like water, health, and the universities, a rerun of 1970's Chile. In return people around Ahern became (if briefly) billionaires and foreign investment (FDI) grew.
The problem is that the deep state imperatives required either e-voting with power to nominate a PM or eternal Tweedle alternation with "Labour" enabling the scams of each. Of the items not mentioned in the 2011 manifesto by which fine Gael achieved government, if not power, Kenny almost certainly believed he could get away with continuation of the scams (eg penalty points, music), abortion, gay marriage, and full payment of the bondholders as the economy recovered, It is well within the bounds of possibility that he failed to see the new dispensation agreed by Cowen and Ahern wherein destruction of the institutions of the first Irish republic would be compensated for by a massive, undemocratic transfer of money and thus power to their cronies. For example, why bother that the state has no territory (after the 1998 Belfast "agreement") if you and your cronies hold title, through coillte, to massive tracts of land?
Now it is too late for Kenny and a new terrible beauty is possible. in this, my last post of the year, I ask the reader to look at the posts on Scotland and hold out the hope that we will learn from their hopes
