The Longest Ransom Note In History

The Irish bailout unsurprisingly isn't working to calm Euro fears, and the details are making the Irish distinctly unhappy:

This is not a rescue plan. It is the longest ransom note in history: do what we tell you and you may, in time, get your country back.

The extent of the abandonment of Irish national interests is clear from three aspects of the deal.

The interest rate, at almost 6 per cent, is viciously extortionate.

The National Pension Reserve Fund, which is all we’ve got left for strategic investment to rebuild our economy, is to handed over – in a brazen example of “demanding money with menaces” – to failed banks.

The disastrous banking strategy is to be continued: “an intensification of the measures already adopted by the Government” is the Government’s own phrase. And a savage attack on low-paid workers, in the form of a huge reduction in the minimum wage, is to be written into a binding agreement.

Would the Irish people, if asked, vote for any of these measures as decent solutions to our very real dilemmas? That the answer is so obviously “no” tells us the brutal truth: Irish democracy has been abandoned by a zombie government.

No, Irish democracy was abandoned by its very own people who agreed to further EU integration.