Special Features
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Will we see a clone of the mummified political corpse of the PDs with rumoured new party?
It’s a measure of the stagnation of establishment politics in this State that some media circles are reacting with frissons of excitement to rumours that former Progressive Democrat Leader Michael McDowell might form a new political party.
Fine Gael’s “New Republic” is a privatised Republic
There is no hint of modesty in Fine Gael’s claims for its future economic and political plans. This is the ‘most ambitious programme for political reform since the 1930s’ according to their leading spokespeople as they proclaim their vision of a ‘New Republic.’ Alas Fine Gael’s ‘new’ Republic would look very similar to the old one which that party had a big hand in fashioning.
Joe Higgins MEP welcomes European Parliament’s rejection of SWIFT agreement
I welcome the defeat of the SWIFT agreement in the European Parliament. This proposal is a crude attempt to use the threat of terrorism to increase surveillance of people across Europe. It represents an attack on civil liberties, giving US agencies access to billions of financial transactions and personal information.
Joe Higgin MEP Reacts to the Brutal Budget
What a damning indictment of the Budget that alcohol was the only stimulus featuring significantly in Finance Minister Lenihan’s economic landscape.
The Joe Higgins Column July 2009
IN THE course of the Dublin Euro Election Campaign our posters stated that, if elected, I would be a voice for workers and the unemployed. That is a crucial role that I will endeavour to fulfil.
Joe Higgins: My take on the election
Like a garment that has been churned overlong in an industrial washing machine, with periodic bouts of intense spin drying, and after a final rinse and spin, comes to a shuddering halt in a drained and shrunken condition. And that is when one has emerged successfully!
Child abuse – Irelands’ gulags
By Joe Higgins
Mary Raftery’s documentary, States of Fear, which gave rise to the Child Abuse Commission was first broadcast just over ten years ago, on Tuesday night, 27th April 1999. It was a shocking story, powerfully told but what happened the next morning in the Dail cast an interesting light on the ‘states of consciousness’ of the main political parties about the seriousness of what it had unearthed.
Labour – No Alternative
AGAINST THE background of the developing crisis in the Irish economy, the Labour Party continues to posture as a party that fights in the interests of working people. At its recent national Conference, Party Leader Eamon Gilmore several times referred to "crony capitalism" which had brought the country to the "edge of disaster". He demanded an economy "where economic activity is primarily to serve the needs of people and where people are no longer slaves of the market".
The Labour Party now feels comfortable in naming capitalism and the market as responsible for the crisis because this is commonly referred to in the Irish and international media. However just as in that same media establishment, there is no question of the Labour Party identifying socialism as the solution to this crisis. In fact the Labour Party supports the same capitalist market but merely wants it a bit more regulated.
Working people need new leadership
Joe Higgins: from Daily Mail, March 25, 2009
A ferocious campaign is now in full swing denouncing the proposal for a one day national strike on Monday next by workers whose incomes are being savaged, thanks to the disastrous economic crash brought about by the rampant greed of speculative and crony capitalism.
‘Strike plan is economic suicide’, thunders the Irish Examiner while the Irish Times brands it ‘national sabotage.’ Going one better Sunday Times journalist, Frank Fitzgibbon, speaking on RTE said the proposed strike was not national sabotage but was in fact ‘economic terrorism.’
Not just a few bad bankers – Capitalism to blame
By Joe Higgins
FOR SHEER brass neck you have to hand it to the members of the Fianna Fail/Green Party government.
There was Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey, at the recent Fianna Fail Ard Fheis laying into the bankers. They used the Irish economy “as their own personal piggy bank” he declared. They were “money manipulators (who) endangered the economic survival of our people”. In short, they were guilty of “economic treason” doing more damage than anyone “except perhaps Cromwell”.
