From top: A view of the damage to the entrance of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Denver yesterday; Dr Julien Mercille

White, right-wing terrorists are killing more Americans in America than jihadists.

Dr Julien Mercille writes:

We have heard a lot about Islamic terrorists recently in the wake of the Paris attacks conducted by ISIS. In general, the implicit or explicit association between “terrorism” and “Islam” can be seen everywhere in popular culture and political commentary.

But last week, we witnessed another act of terrorism, this time committed by a white man in the United States at an abortion clinic in Colorado. Three people died in the shooting and the suspected gunman, Robert Lewis Dear, was taken into custody.

This is yet another event of terrorism conducted by white people, that have killed more individuals in the United States than jihadists since 9-11, as this New America Foundation study found. The study shows that right-wing white terrorists have killed 48 people whereas jihadists have killed 26 since 9-11.

The sad thing is that the shooting at the Colorado abortion clinic is not an isolated event—abortion clinics have long been subjected to terrorist acts and harassment. The perpetrators are often linked to Christian fundamentalist groups, as noted by Juan Cole, the professor of history writing on Islam and religion, in an excellent post on the subject.

Anti-abortion extremists can be seen outside abortion clinics or the houses of those who work there with signs such as “Prepare to Meet Thy God” and “Fear Him Who Has the Power to Cast You Into Hell”.

Anti-abortion extremists have killed eight abortion providers in the US over the years. One well-known case is the assassination of George Tiller in 2009, an abortion doctor who operated in Wichita, Kansas. He was killed point-blank on a Sunday in his Church. After he was murdered, his clinic closed.

Tiller had a history of being targeted by Christian Right terrorists. His clinic was firebombed in 1986. In 1993, he was shot five times by a Christian Right woman called Shelley Shannon (who is now serving time in prison), an attack which he survived.

Targeted intimidation against doctors and staff of abortion clinics is common and on the rise (see this graph). In 2010, 27% of US clinics suffered from those types of threats, whereas in 2014, it was 52%.

This Oxford University Press book tells the stories of abortion providers who have been “physically assaulted, picketed at home, threatened over the phone, and stalked around town”.

As a result, they have been forced to “take different routes to work on a regular basis, they change their schedules frequently, they plan their living arrangements as a precaution, they buy guns, and they wear bulletproof vests.”

Yes, bulletproof vests. As one of them explained

“If anybody told me when I was in medical school that I would go to work armed and with a bulletproof vest, I would have thought they were nuts. But I do have a bulletproof vest, and I do go to clinics armed these days.”

There have been parallel political moves to restrict abortion in the United States. So far in 2015, states have enacted 51 new abortion restrictions, for a total of 282 since 2010.

It is the anti-abortion climate that occupies a large part of public discourse that gives rise to attacks against clinics. With so much of the public discourse demonising abortion, it is no wonder that some people come to believe that clinics are against God’s will or evil in general and decide to take violent means to eliminate them. It is irrational (what exactly does God have to do with abortion again?) but it happens.

And when terrorist acts are committed by white people or Christians, they rarely produce the same sensationalist media coverage. For example, white terrorists are described as “troubled loners” whereas Muslim terrorists are often suspected of being part of a global conspiracy.

Family and relatives of white terrorists are interviewed as they wonder what went wrong, telling us they cannot understand why their son or husband did what he did, whereas relatives of other terrorists are never interviewed.

Also, there’s apparently nothing that can be done to stop white terrorists because they’re bad apples that don’t represent any broader trend, whereas Muslim terrorists can be bombed and police forces boosted to deal with them.

Double standards are thus the rule in public discourse about terrorism.

Julien Mercille is a lecturer at University College Dublin. Twitter: @JulienMercille

Pic: Reuters

From top: Saturday’s The Herald; Dr Julien Mercille

The demonisation of Muslims often leads to the thesis that we are now facing a ‘clash of civilisations’ between the west and Islam. But the only thing that matters is who the West consider its allies and enemies

Dr Julien Mercille writes:

The Paris attacks have led many in the media to demonise Muslims and allege that we are facing a “clash of civilisations” between the West and Islam. Those assertions are dangerous and factually incorrect.

There are many examples, but I think I found the best one of all this weekend in the Herald. Its front page reads: “WELFARE ISLAMIC STATE: Wanted Terror Chief is Living Off Benefits in Dublin; Islamic State Terror Leader in Ireland is Living on Welfare” (see picture). The article tells the story of an alleged ISIS leader who lives on welfare in Dublin.

In addition to being an attack on Muslims, it’s also a not-so-subtle swipe at welfare recipients. The reader is supposed to equate “welfare” and “ISIS” and to think they’re both evil. Readers could thus become more favourable to cutting welfare lest hard-working Irish people subsidise Islamists.

There is also an element of instilling fear among the population—people are more likely to give the government a blank cheque when they believe the nation is under threat. The terrorist described by the Herald is allegedly a “major terror suspect” and is “under constant surveillance by gardai”.

He is “of Middle Eastern origin” and “spends a lot of time in his apartment, leaving very occasionally”. He has “a long association with extremist Muslim terror groups including Al Qaeda”.

The Herald thus joins a long list of commentators who have used the Paris attacks to cast a negative light on Muslims.

Donald Trump said, “I want surveillance of certain mosques” and that he would send Syrian refugees back to Syria if he was elected President. He also called for a database of all Muslims in the United States to be set up, in order to track their movements. Another presidential candidate, Ben Carson, equated Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs”.

Such statements have real effects. A recent study found that hate crimes against Muslims spike after jihadi attacks (the study looked at Britain). For example, anti-Muslim attacks quadrupled in the UK after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.

The study’s author said the media was in part responsible for this, as “Findings also suggest that where the media stress the Muslim background of attackers, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent response is likely to be greater”.

The demonisation of Muslims often leads to the thesis that we are now facing a “clash of civilisation”, an idea popularised by the American conservative political scientist Samuel Huntington. The Sunday Independent loves that idea and many of its writers have repeated it in the last few days.

For example, Jody Corcoran writes that we are witnessing “conflict along the fault line between the Western and Islamic civilisations” and that “Islam has bloody borders”. There has been a lot of “warfare between Arabs and the West”, for example, on 9-11 and in the recent Paris attacks.

But this, of course, is nonsense because it is factually incorrect. There is no antagonism between “the West” and “Islam”.

For decades, the West has strongly supported Saudi Arabia, which is a cultural center of Islam and the most fundamentalist state in the world; the West is also strongly allied with the Gulf monarchies such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

So religion is not important, what matters is “who does the West consider its allies and enemies”. Allies’ sins will be glossed over while those of enemies will find their way to front pages.

Western governments are now claiming to be offended by ISIS due to its barbaric practices. But there are no such feelings regarding Saudi Arabia (or regarding the US invasion of Iraq, to name one US intervention among many others).

For instance, talking about ISIS, former justice minister Alan Shatter said to the Herald that there was “no moral principle which says you can be neutral when it comes to a group of individuals who believe in beheading people, who glory in death, who enslave women, who inflict terrible tortures on individuals and who basically are responsible for dreadful, appalling atrocities both within Iraq and Syria and quite happy to export their fanaticism to other parts of the world”.

Concerned about beheadings? Women? Exporting fanaticism? Then focus on Saudi Arabia as much as ISIS.

Saudi Arabia reserves the death penalty by beheading for about 80 to 90 people per year ], for crimes including “nonlethal offenses, such as drug-related ones”, reports Amnesty International.

The Saudis are also well-known to export their intolerant fundamentalist version of Islam, Wahhabism, which has inspired many groups in the Middle East, like ISIS. Saudi Arabia has just sentenced to death a poet for “renouncing Islam”.

But nothing is done about Saudi Arabia. In short, there is no clash of civilisations, only power interests.

Finally, here are two resources to follow ISIS-related news:

1) Patrick Cockburn is a journalist who writes for the London Independent, and he’s actually Irish. He is described by many as the best Western journalist on Iraq. His articles can be found here.

2) Robert Fisk also writes for the London Independent and is acknowledged by many as one of the best journalists on the Middle East; he is based in Beirut. His articles can be found here.

Julien Mercille is the author of Cruel Harvest: US Intervention in the Afghan Drug Trade. Follow Julien on Twitter: @JulienMercille

From top: Members of the French community in Ireland on O’Connell Street, Dublin on Saturday; Dr Julien Mercille

The causes of terrorist attacks have nothing to do with the left or the right.

Dr Julien Mercille writes:

The terrorist attacks in Paris killed more than 120 innocent civilians. They were the latest in a series “Islamic State” (Isis) attacks that killed 43 people at a market in Beirut, 26 at a funeral in Baghdad, and 224 aboard a Russian plane.

The events are understandably tragic and deeply saddening. However, they are not isolated, even if they have received disproportionate media coverage. For example, thousands of Iraqis have died because of Isis terrorist bombings. The number of civilian fatalities in Iraq has increased from 4,623 in 2012 to 9,473 in 2013 and 17,045 in 2014, according to Iraq Body Count , an independent website. A large proportion of those are attributed to Isis.

Two questions have dominated the airwaves: why did this happen, and what should be done about it?

The conventional view is that this happened because of Islam, which is spreading violence, and we need to retaliate militarily.

For example, in his front-page Sunday Independent article, Brendan O’Connor blames Islam, which “literally means submitting” — but he declares that Westerners “will not submit”. He asserts that Islamic networks and attacks, after all, “cannot operate totally in secret and totally without some support from communities”. The implicit message is that we should thus be suspicious of Muslim communities. He also argues that Muslims themselves should do more to stop religious violence.

O’Connor also believes that “the Left” gets it all wrong, claiming that “the Left in the West goes into an orgy of blaming ourselves” for the attacks.

He is not alone in thinking this. Also writing in the Sunday Independent, Eilis O’Hanlon said the same about “the Left”, stating ]: “We in the West are, ultimately, blamed [by “the Left”] for every evil act committed against us by Islamic fanatics”. In short, “excuses will always be made for terrorists when they spill our blood”.

But those statements are so factually incorrect that one wonders if their authors have ever read anything on the subject of terrorism or Islam. I don’t have space here to address every aspect of the issue, but let’s get the basics out of the way.

First, outlining causes of terrorist attacks has nothing to do with “the Left” or “the Right”. It’s just about the facts.

The fact that the formation of Isis goes back to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq is not even controversial. So is the fact that Western military intervention under the “Global War on Terror” has increased terrorism worldwide. This shouldn’t be too surprising for anybody who understands international affairs. If a country bombs another, it is likely that some groups and individuals from the destroyed and occupied country will seek to retaliate.

For instance, an important New York University study  found that the US invasion of Iraq led to a sevenfold increase in terrorism worldwide. The authors looked at the annual number of fatal jihadi attacks globally in 2001-2003 and compared that to the number of attacks in 2003-2006. They found that during the first period (before the invasion) there had been 28 attacks per year, while after the invasion, there had been 200 attacks per year.

There are many experts and analysts who have stated the same.

For instance, the CIA consultant and academic Chalmers Johnson explained the process through the concept of “blowback”, which denotes the unintended consequences of foreign policy interventions.

In the Irish Times, Lara Marlowe wrote yesterday that “there is a straight line between Bush’s invasion of Iraq and France’s torment”.

Barack Obama stated in an interview, saying that Isis is “a direct outgrowth of Al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion, which is an example of unintended consequences”.

Tony Blair also admits that Isis would not have emerged without the invasion of Iraq. When asked if the Iraq invasion had been the “principal cause” of the rise of ISIS, he answered: “I think there are elements of truth in that”.

The process by which groups like Isis emerged out of the invasion of Iraq, evolving from al-Qaeda’s activities there, has been well described by the journalist Patrick Cockburn in his book The Jihadis Return.

Many Isis leaders are former Iraqi officers in Saddam’s military. When the US invaded, they disbanded the army and this resulted in thousands of disgruntled soldiers, now unemployed and armed, left to fend for themselves.

This Washington Post article is excellent at explaining how they joined Isis and how they came to play prominent roles in its military strategy.

Also, some Iraqi insurgents who would become Isis leaders were incarcerated in an American prison in Iraq called Camp Bucca for a few years during the occupation.

As the Washington Post reported, “Camp Bucca provided a unique setting for both prisoner radicalization and inmate collaboration—and was formative in the development of today’s most potent jihadist force”, Isis. The radicals’ time in prison “deepened their extremism and gave them opportunities to broaden their following” so that “the prisons became virtual terrorist universities”.

The above strongly suggests that more bombing will not reduce the likelihood of further attacks in the West. In fact, more bombing will likely lead to more savage acts of retaliation in Europe. Therefore, to stop the bombing should be a first step towards a solution.

There are then other steps that should be taken, including to stop supporting Western allies such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, which spread extremist interpretations of Islam and provide support for a range of violent groups in the region. Then, other hot issues in the Middle East that feed resentment should be dealt with through diplomacy, including Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, the war in Syria, the wreckage in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

Sure, those steps won’t solve every problem. But at least they will go a long way towards reducing the violence, contrary to more military action, which will have the opposite effect.

To conclude, here are two competent analysts who I think are good sources to follow current affairs in the Middle East:

1. Juan Cole is a professor of Middle East history and expert on Islam and religion. He writes an excellent daily blog called Informed Comment ].

2. Glenn Greenwald is the journalist who received the national security documents leaked by Edward Snowden. He writes at The Intercept here.

Julien Mercille is a lecturer at UCD. His book Deepening Neoliberalism, Austerity, and Crisis: Europe’s Treasure Ireland is out now. Follow Julien on Twitter: @JulienMercille

From top: Miriam O’Callaghan interviewing former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis; Dr Julien Mercille

The former Greek Finance Minister’s interview on RTÉ’s Prime Time sought to portray him as an arrogant failure next to the likes of Michael Noonan.

Dr Julien Mercille writes:

The former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, was in town last week for an appearance at Kilkenomics. David McWilliams invited him and had a discussion session about topics ranging from Greece, Ireland, religion and politics. Varoufakis seemed impressed with the event as he wrote that it had been a “happy day” for him and that although it was his first visit to Kilkenomics, it would certainly not be the last.

However, Varoufakis also had an interview with RTÉ’s Miriam O’Callaghan for Prime Time, which can be watched here.

I’m not sure Varoufakis was very impressed by our state broadcaster.

Indeed, the interview shows O’Callaghan repeating the Irish government’s line uncritically. Her questions could have been taken straight from Enda Kenny’s and Michael Noonan’s notebook.

The gist of her queries was that Varoufakis had accomplished nothing in his negotiations with the troika because he was too arrogant.

If you want to get a quick flavour of the interview, someone made a three-minute video of O’Callaghan’s questions here. It’s good at showing that her 20 questions or so are all trying implicitly or explicitly to picture Varoufakis as a failure, and conversely, to show that the Irish government, and Michael Noonan in particular, was so much better at negotiating with the troika.

For example, she asked:

– “Let me quote the Financial Times, they said that you were regarded in Eurozone capitals as the most unbearably garrulous and irritating man they’d ever dealt with.”

– “Did it make sense, whatever your arguments were, for you not to get on with your EU colleagues, because those personality divisions made it even less likely that you would succeed in getting the billions that you needed for your country?”

But O’Callaghan misunderstands how the Eurozone works, how political power operates, and what determines the outcome of negotiations between the troika and countries that received a bailout.

This is not about “personalities” and “who you get along with”. Are we really to believe that the troika gets the finance ministers from Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal in a room, they chat and joke together for a few days, and then a troika official says “oh, Michael Noonan seems like a really nice guy, actually we both love soccer and fishing, and we drive the same car, so I’m totally willing to give him a good deal”.

Whereas another troika official says “you know, that Varoufakis, I really don’t like the way he flips up his jacket collar all the time, let alone that he plays the piano, which I never liked as an instrument, so he’s not getting the money”.

It’s incredible that our state broadcaster would convey such a simplistic interpretation of the one issue that has been at the centre of economic policy for the last six years.

Eurozone negotiations between the troika and debtor countries are about power—and that’s it. A negotiator will be described positively by the media and the troika if he does what he’s told, but if he challenges European authorities, he will be pictured as an arrogant or deranged character.

That’s is exactly what Varoufakis tried to explain to O’Callaghan. He asked her, seeking to make the point that it wasn’t about personalities, “but do you think the troika liked Michael Noonan?” To which O’Callaghan was proud to answer: “I think they probably did”.

Oh I’m sure they loved Noonan too, because he did everything he was told to do. But it has nothing to do with personalities.

It is true that Syriza failed to persuade the troika to present Greece with a better deal. Syriza was able to make some small improvements for the Greek people, but overall, they did not succeed in improving the policy package to which the troika is subjecting Greece. They really failed. But the reasons for that have to do with the fact that the troika has overwhelming economic and political power over the Greek government, so it was able to force Greece to accept its terms.

Another key aspect of power relations is that the quality of argumentation has little to do with outcomes in international relations. O’Callaghan asked Varoufakis:

– “If your argument was so self-evident and powerful, why did none of them buy those arguments?”

Well, for about the same reason that when women didn’t have the right to vote, even though they had a pretty good argument to get it, those in power didn’t care. Or when George W. Bush wanted to invade Iraq on zero argument at all, he was able to do it no matter what.

Similarly, fiscal consolidation does not work to revive economies in a downturn, but that doesn’t prevent the troika from doing it anyway.

The last point that was confusing in the interview is the reason why the troika would be so mean as to want to crush Greece. O’Callaghan asked: “But why would the troika want to crush Greece?”

Varoufakis explained, correctly, that it is Syriza that the troika wanted to crush, because Syriza was providing an example of defiance toward the troika to all Europeans. The troika was scared that this influence could embolden other forces elsewhere, like Podemos in Spain.

Julien Mercille is a lecturer at UCD. His book Deepening Neoliberalism, Austerity, and Crisis: Europe’s Treasure Ireland is out now. Follow Julien on Twitter: @JulienMercille

From top: Passos Coelho of the right-wing PSD; António Costa, leader of the opposition Socialist party and supporters; Dr Julien Mercille

What is the truth behind the alleged coup in post-election Portugal?

Dr Julien Mercille writes:

This weekend, there was a lot of talk on social media about an alleged coup in Portugal. For example, on twitter, #PortugalCoup was very popular.

However, the truth is that there has been no coup in Portugal, not even a constitutional crisis. But this could change, of course.

How did the whole controversy arise? (Interesting discussions may be found here , here and here.

On October 4th, legislative elections were held for the Portuguese parliament, which has a total of 230 seats.

There are two main electoral groups: left wing and right wing. The two main right-wing parties won 107 seats together, while the three main left-wing parties won 122 seats.

However, the one party that won the most seats on its own is the right-wing party PSD, which got 89. It is led by a man called Passos Coelho.

What was unexpected in the election is that the centre-left Socialist Party (PS), which can be compared to Ireland’s Labour Party, did not do as well as expected. On the other hand, the “radical left” parties Bloco de Esquerda (“Bloco”) and Communist Party did very well.

Bloco is interesting to watch because it is the Portuguese equivalent of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. It is one of those new left-wing parties that got electoral traction in Europe during the economic crisis of which we are slowly emerging.

The last player in the thriller is the President of Portugal, Mr. Cavaco Silva. He was elected in 2006 (there are separate presidential elections in Portugal) and he happens to be a member of the right-wing PSD party that got the most votes in the legislative elections. He’s a big political figure in Portugal who has been around for a long time. You can compare him to Margaret Thatcher in his politics and significance, so pretty right wing.

The normal procedure is that following a legislative election, the President offers the leader of the party that got the most seats the opportunity to form a government. So the President gave that chance to the leader of the PSD, Passos Coelho.

And there’s the rub. Passos Coelho cannot muster a majority in parliament. Indeed, the right-wing parties (PSD and CDS) only have, together, 107 seats. That falls short of the majority needed of 116 seats.

However, together, the left parties (Socialist Party, Bloco, and the Communists) have 122 seats and thus have a majority. Therefore, they could vote down any piece of legislation introduced by a right-wing government.

And here one can see where the accusation that the President conducted a coup comes from. He asked the leaders of the right-wing parties to form a government even though it is the left-wing parties that have the most seats.

However, the fact is that this accusation is wrong. The President just followed tradition: it is always the leader of the party that has the most seats in parliament that gets asked first to form a government. The President, therefore, did nothing wrong or illegitimate in this respect.

But this is not all what fuelled the “coup” story. In his speech, the President made some revealing remarks that were truly extraordinary and deemed very inappropriate, even by some members of the right-wing parties.

What he said is basically that he would not allow in government leftist parties, like Bloco and the Communists, that oppose Europe’s regime of austerity and NATO.

The President effectively conveyed that he cared more about what financial institutions and the European establishment think of the Portuguese elections than what Portuguese people want. Indeed, he declared:

“After having completed a demanding programme of financial aid, which implied heavy sacrifices for the Portuguese, it is my duty, within the scope of my constitutional remit, to do everything possible to avoid that wrong signals are transmitted to the financial institutions, investors and markets, placing in question the Country’s external trust and credibility which, with great effort, we have been gaining”

In short, he doesn’t want parties that challenge the Eurozone and NATO to be in government:

“The observance of the commitments assumed within the framework of the Euro Zone is decisive, is totally crucial for the financing of our economy and, consequently, for economic growth and job creation”.

The parties that the President does not want in government are Bloco and the Communists because they have called for:

“the repeal of the Lisbon Treaty, of the Budgetary Treaty, of the Banking Union and of the Pact of Stability and Growth, as well as the dismantlement of the Economic and Monetary Union and Portugal’s exit from the Euro, and, still further, the dismemberment of NATO, of which Portugal is a founder member”

This is very explicit, and it infuriated many throughout Europe. It has been suggested that it meant that the European Union, or the troika, had concocted a coup towards Portugal, by forcing out parties that oppose European austerity.

But as stated above, so far, there hasn’t been any coup because everything has proceeded normally (except for the President’s incendiary words). Even the left parties agree with this. For example, a leader of Bloco, Catarina Martins, said that the President’s speech was unacceptable not for the decision to give the right-wingers the first shot at forming a government, but for the comments he made against left parties.

But the soap opera is not over, far from it.

What will most likely happen next is this.

Within a few days, the right-wing government will lose the parliament’s confidence, because it doesn’t have a majority.

Then the question will be: what will the President do? Normally, he should give the opportunity to the left parties to form a government, which ostensibly, they would be able to do, because they have a majority of the seats.

But what happens if the President remains stubborn and simply does not want to let the left parties Bloco and the Communists enter government? Then, we’ll have a real constitutional crisis, and depending on how things go, something that one could characterise as a coup by the President.

Sparing you the legal details, an additional problem is that, according to Portuguese law, there cannot be new elections before nine months from now, so governance in the country until then would be unstable and uncertain, to say the least.

If, on the other hand, the President yielded and allowed all left parties to form a government, then, we would have a majority government of the left.

But even then, problems could arise between the Socialist Party, which is centre-left, and Bloco/Communists, which are “radical left”. Would those two groups be able to agree on enough common policies to maintain a government, or would they fail to reach consensus to the point that their government would fall?

To follow the developments, watch this space.

Julien Mercille is a lecturer at UCD. His book Deepening Neoliberalism, Austerity, and Crisis: Europe’s Treasure Ireland is out now. Follow Julien on Twitter: @JulienMercille

From top: Stephen Collins; Julien Mercille

For the establishment the choice is simple.

Stability or ANARCHY.

Dr Julien Mercille writes:

Stephen Collins is the Irish Times political editor. I see him in effect as a de facto government spokesperson [so closely do his views mirror those of the coalition].

His latest article on the upcoming elections conveys the government’s message. It is entitled “Stability or Chaos is the Choice Facing the Irish Electorate”

The alleged choice between “Stability or Chaos?” is one you will hear repeated often in the coming weeks. The claim is that voting for mainstream parties will preserve stability, while voting for independents and anti-austerity parties will bring chaos.

But this is a propaganda trick. Of course, we think of “stability” as a good thing and “chaos” as a bad thing. Therefore it’s supposed to make you want to vote for Enda Kenny again.

But the reality is this: the “stability” that Collins longs for is in fact the “stability of the Irish establishment”, which he thinks must be protected. “Chaos”, on the other hand, is anything that disrupts the establishment and takes away its prerogatives.

A few illustrations may be found on the website of the Nevin Research Institute, which produces two documents every three months that are must-reads for anybody who wants to understand the economy: the Quarterly Economic Observer and the Quarterly Economic Facts.

They give a picture of the economy and present key indicators about the state of the economy in a language that is easy to understand. It just released the documents for the Autumn quarter.

What kind of “stability” have the mainstream parties given us, and would logically continue giving us if re-elected?

– As David McWilliams’ excellent documentary The Great Wealth Divide showed, wealth is still very concentrated in Ireland. The top-20% of households own 73% of the country’s wealth. The top 10% own 54% and the top 1% own 15%. Stability means this won’t change.

– The budget is still focused on cutting taxes, which are regressive and unnecessary as Ireland is a low-tax, low-spend economy, which prevents investment in public services. This gives us the stability of poor public services.

– We have a 21% rate of unemployment and under-employment combined (under-employed people are those who would like to work full-time but are stuck in part-time jobs). For the last 5 years, that number has remained very stable indeed, oscillating between 330,000 and 475,000 people.

– The unemployment rate is still at nearly 10%, rather stable as well, as it is not falling very rapidly.

– The youth unemployment rate (for those under the age of 25) is still at 21%. Stability again.

– The deprivation rate is still very high, at 31%. Stability here too.

Sure, you could counter that whatever the poor state of the economy, we are now in recovery mode, so things are getting better. This is true, things are getting better and the recovery is becoming more real. But unless we adopt the low standards of Fine Gael-Labour, we should quickly point out that things could be much better if the government made better decisions.

What are those better decisions? They are policies that Stephen Collins would call “chaotic”. But in fact, they would actually improve our quality of life and the economy.

For example, there are a series of projects that could be accomplished:

– More investment to upgrade our poor-quality infrastructure. This will raise economic productivity, among other things. IBEC, the employers association, agrees and calls for €1 billion extra investment in the upcoming budget. The population also agrees and wants more spending, not tax cuts, as revealed by an important Irish Times opinion poll just released.

– Wealth tax on the rich. Even a small tax could raise about €300 million according to the Nevin Institute. You don’t need to be a member of the hard left to call for this. David McWilliams did in The Great Wealth Divide, just like economist Stephen Kinsella in the Sunday Business Post, along with many others.

– Invest in better public services so we can catch up with other countries. This will lower our cost of living (for example, thanks to cheaper public transportation and health care costs) and would increase employment take up and retention (for example, if the state provided better childcare services, parents would find it easier to work).

– Don’t cut taxes: Ireland is already a low-tax economy, and in any case, the tax cuts proposed by the government in the upcoming budget are regressive, meaning that they will mostly benefit the better off.

There are many more possibilities explained in the Nevin Institute’s documents, and in Unite the Union’s Budget 2016 submission, which can be found here.

In short, the choice is not between “stability” and “chaos”. It’s between supporting the establishment, or supporting everybody else.

Julien Mercille is a lecturer at UCD. His book Deepening Neoliberalism, Austerity, and Crisis: Europe’s Treasure Ireland is out. Follow Julien on Twitter: @JulienMercille

From top: John Tierney, Irish Water managing directo; Dr Julien Mercille

In another colossal waste of money Irish Water will go door to door to find out what they already know.

Dr Julien Mercille writes:

Our domestic troika (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour), just like the European troika (European Central Bank, European Commission and the IMF), always claim that they are in favour of efficiency and a lean public sector while being tough on waste in government.

Last week, events around Irish Water revealed again this not to be the case.

As many as 54% of households still have not paid their water charges, which means a rather low 46% payment rate.

Newly released documents obtained by the Sunday Times show that Irish Water had originally estimated that only 20% of customers would not pay their bills — in other words, boycott has been nearly three times larger than expected. It was also predicted that by now, 1.7 million people would have registered, but in fact there are only 1.36 million who have done so.

Another surprise of the released documents is the relative effectiveness of the protests. John Tierney, Irish Water managing director, stated that they have slowed down the rate at which water meters are installed by as many as 1,000 per month.

Apparently taken aback by those unforeseen events, it has now emerged that Irish Water is undertaking private research to find out why so many people are refusing to pay their water charges, as reported by the Sunday Business Post yesterday. It has hired a private company called Behaviour and Attitudes to conduct a study.

The firm is based in Dublin and specialises in market research. It will reportedly go from door to door in the country to ask people if they have paid their bills, and if not, why not? They will be asked if they agree with the statement, “Why should I pay the bill when everyone else isn’t paying?” and if they believe that “water should be free”.

Irish Water has so far refused to reveal how much the study had cost, but it is obviously a waste, since we already know the answer. It is not difficult to understand that people protest the water charges because they are tired of austerity measures.

Also, Rory Hearne at NUI-Maynooth conducted an excellent study of the motivations of water charge protesters. It found that the main reasons for protesting were that “austerity has gone too far” (60% of respondents), to “stop the future privatisation of water” (59%) and to “abolish water charges” (57%).

Why not simply look at this report rather than spend more money on yet another study that will only confirm the obvious? Maybe Irish Water wants more precise information on why people boycott in an attempt to build their next marketing/propaganda campaign to try to convince people to pay?

A few months ago, it spent €650,000 on an advertising campaign to do just that, or in more polite language from its marketing plan, to generate “credible mass acceptance that there is a need to pay for water”.

The advertising agency Rothco created a short clip that was played on the radio, television, movie theatres and elsewhere for eight weeks. The 60-second clip was entitled “The Story of Water from Cloud to Glass” and can be watched here.

On Irish Water’s website, there is what seems to be a follow-up clip entitled “The Story of Water from Drain to Sea”, which can be watched here. Who knows how much it cost?

Another waste is the ongoing prosecution of water charge protesters by the State, through which 27 people will be instructed to appear before the courts, including Paul Murphy TD.

In this legal operation, statements were taken from 100 Garda members, while countless officers have of course been used everywhere in the country to police communities opposed to the installation of water meters. I am not aware of an estimate of the costs of those operations, but the money wasted could have been spent on homelessness, welcoming refugees, reducing waiting lines in hospitals, etc.

Efficiency principles as commonly understood have thus been thrown out of the window. The only way the above can be conceived as efficient is from the viewpoint of those in power. It is efficient to spend taxpayers’ money on trying to put in jail those who protest, because that might enable the domestic and European troikas to achieve their goals. That means it might be efficient for elites, but not for anyone else.

Julien Mercille is a lecturer at UCD. His book Deepening Neoliberalism, Austerity, and Crisis: Europe’s Treasure Ireland is out. Twitter: @JulienMercille

From top: Refugees cross the border from Serbia into Hungary yesterday; Dr Julien Mercille

The refugees crossing Europe should be welcomed as they are fleeing chaos of the west’s creation.

Dr Julien Mercille writes:

We have heard a lot about the hundreds of thousands of refugees flocking to Europe, but much less about Europe’s responsibility for this state of affairs. Indeed, most refugees are fleeing countries in the Middle East that have recently been invaded or attacked by Western forces or seriously affected by the consequences. In short, this is “blowback” from Europe’s own militaristic actions.

It is a no-brainer that a rich continent should help people leaving poor countries out of desperation. And because Europe also bears a direct responsibility for the chaos, it has an even larger moral obligation to do everything possible to fix the problem.

However, media coverage has highlighted personal tragedies and stories such as that of the little boy (Aylan Kurdi) drowned on a beach. Those stories show the human costs of the crisis. However, Europeans could look at thousands of images of drowned children without ever knowing that their governments played a large role in creating the problem through war.

Military interventions for regime change in the wake of 9-11 in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have involved the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Spain. The no-fly zone to remove Muammar Gaddafi from Libya was led by the UK and France, with assistance from Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Canada, among others.

The large majority of refugees come from exactly those places, like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ireland played an important role as well by allowing US military flights through Shannon airport on the way to and back from those wars. This is still going on, as the group Shannon Watch reported last week:

“Right now, armed US troops and military planes move through Shannon Airport on a daily basis. We contribute to the NATO-led operations in Afhganistan, a country that has been brought to its knees by the US/NATO invasion, and we supported the equally devastating NATO invasion of Libya. And we provide tax breaks and other supports to companies that develop and manufacture components used in the lethal weapons systems that kill innocent people throughout the Middle East”.

In Syria, the atrocities were triggered partially by the spillovers of the Iraq war. Groups like ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front which are terrorising large areas of the Middle East emerged out of the invasion of Iraq, evolving from al-Qaeda’s activities there.

This is well described by the journalist Patrick Cockburn in his book The Jihadis Return. For example, many of the leaders of the Islamic State movement were incarcerated in an American prison in Iraq called Camp Bucca for a few years during the occupation.

As the Washington Post reported, “Camp Bucca provided a unique setting for both prisoner radicalization and inmate collaboration—and was formative in the development of today’s most potent jihadist force”, ISIS. The radicals’ time in prison “deepened their extremism and gave them opportunities to broaden their following” so that “the prisons became virtual terrorist universities”.

Therefore, as James A. Paul, the former executive director of the Global Policy Forum (based on New York), said, to use the term “regime change refugees” would go a long way to change the media discourse and popular understanding of the situation.

Also, while Europe is procrastinating and dragging its feet to welcome hundreds of thousands of refugees, countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey have already received 3.5 million of them from Syria, and they haven’t invaded Iraq or Afghanistan.

A Sunday Business Post investigation revealed Ireland’s shameful record. During 2008-2014, the total number of people given refugee status in Ireland was only a third of the average across the EU’s 28 member states (relative to population size of European countries). Whereas Ireland accepted only 46 asylum seekers per 100,000 population, the EU average was 148. Ireland has thus the second-highest rejection rate of asylum seekers in the EU, after Greece. Those figures completely undermine our government’s recent claims that it has provided a “very large response” to the crisis.

But hope has come, once again, from ordinary people. There have been numerous actions across Europe supporting the refugees. We will have to pressurise our governments if any sense of morality is to influence the response to the ongoing tragedy.

Julien Mercille is a lecturer at UCD. He is the author of Cruel Harvest: US Intervention in the Afghan Drug Trade (Pluto). Twitter: @JulienMercille

From top: Paul Murphy TD; Dr Julien Mercille

The targeting of Paul Murphy TD and the surveillance of Irish Water protesters are part of a Europe-wide attempt to criminalise dissent. A struggle exemplified by Spain’s incredible anti-protest laws.

Dr Julien Mercile writes:

Last week, we heard about yet another example of political policing in Ireland, which is certainly not the only country not to respect its citizens’ right to protest.

The Irish Daily Mail revealed that Gardai have been secretly spying on water protesters for six months, under the codename Operation Mizen. The Operation was established following the Jobstown protests last November.

The Garda team is led by Jim McGowan, the husband of Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan. It has compiled profiles of protesters and gathered information on their whereabouts and activity on social media. The Operation is currently restricted to Dublin, but is expected to spread nationally.

The top target is understood to be Paul Murphy TD. The police say the operation seeks to “prevent crime”, but of course, unless you believe in the fantasy that Paul Murphy is the source of crime in this country, it is a clear act of political policing, meaning that its purpose is to track and possibly arrest those who dissent from government-troika policy.

Ireland now looks like a “Big Brother” surveillance state, and an inefficient one at that. How much of taxpayers’ money is spent on Operation Mizen? This illustrates yet again that austerity is very selective. If you have cancer, your health services will be cut. If you’re a deluded police officer plotting to arrest water charge protesters in the belief that this will reduce crime in the country, you’ll get extra funding, and perhaps even a promotion if you catch “ringleader” Paul Murphy.

The Irish Daily Mail strongly opposed Operation Mizen, and rightly so. The newspaper called it “profoundly disturbing” and “not proper in a free and open democracy” because protest is a “fundamental right”. It said, correctly, that placing political protesters under general surveillance is reminiscent of a “police state”.

Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald has been questioned about what she knew about the Operation. Of course, if she knew anything, that would make the whole scheme even more outrageous. But we’re still awaiting for answers from her. Government officers have always felt an urgency to implement austerity, but never to answer questions that might make them look bad.

Ireland is not alone in conducting political policing. In Spain, for example, an anti-protest law just came into force on 1 July. Enacted by the pro-troika, right-wing government of Mariano Rajoy, the new law, as in Ireland, comes in the wake of protests that erupted in reaction to austerity.

The law has been criticised by civil society, NGOs, human rights experts and organisations. According to polls, only a small minority of the Spanish population support the law. All opposition parties have said they would repeal the law if they obtain a majority in the general election later this year.

For example, Amnesty International described it as “an assault on the rights of its citizens” because it restricts rights to peaceful assembly, association and freedom of expression. It criminalises some legitimate forms of protest and increases penalties for others.

Human Rights Watch said that the laws “unjustifiably curtail basic human rights protections”.

For example, filming police is now restricted and carries fines of up to €30,000 for those who disseminate footage. (Filming has been essential to prove excessive use of force by the police in recent years during protests).

Other restrictions include demonstrating near the parliament, while police are allowed to fine people participating in peaceful resistance actions if authorities have called for the break-up of the gathering. Also, blocking home evictions is criminalised, an activity that has become very common in Spain during the crisis.

Social media is also targeted. A person writing on Facebook or Twitter that there will be a protest at a given place can be held responsible for the said demonstration.

Minor offences will translate into fines or €100 to €600, serious offences up to €30,000 and very serious offences up to €600,000.

The government maintains that the new law aims to protect the security of citizens. But all opinion polls show that Spaniards are preoccupied by economic problems and political corruption, not by security.

In short, surveillance is growing here and elsewhere. This is a rational strategy on the part of those in power, who use force and spies because they cannot win through debate and argument. Unfortunately for them, the facts do not support their propaganda, and people know it.

Julien Mercille is a lecturer at UCD. His new book, Deepening Neoliberalism, Austerity, and Crisis: Europe’s Treasure Ireland (Palgrave) is out. Twitter: @JulienMercille

(RollingNews.ie)