The ruling elite and their media mouthpieces are toying with the idea of using the recession to overthrow, or at least to suspend, parliamentary government.

Pick up a Dublin broadsheet any day now and you’ll find a po-faced piece calling for a “national government” or rule by an unelected group drawn from the “business community.” The argument is that the mass of plain people may have to be coerced into paying an unacceptable price for a crisis they had no role in creating, and that a government answerable to the people might baulk at imposing the coercion now called for.
The answer? A government not answerable to the people.
Under the headline, “The time is here: we must have a national government”, Shane Coleman asked in the Tribune (March 8) what public reaction would be “if and when the big untouchables are tackled” – child benefit, social welfare, third-level fees etc. Fine Gael and Labour, he suggested, might choose to reflect public anger. And that would never do. All the main parties must stand together against the people.
Across at the Indo, Alan Ruddock suggested that the decisions which “must” be taken “are incapable of securing consensus”. So, British Airways chief Willie Walsh should be appointed minister for public sector reform; Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary should be given a cabinet position; billionaire developer Dermot Desmond put in charge of banking; former Granada television boss Gerry Robinson made Minister for Health; and a selection of other “entrepreneurs, managers, wealth creators” brought in to fill government positions.
The same line is being pushed by commentators in the Times and Examiner and finds regular expression on radio and television discussions. Aviation tycoon Ulick McEvaddy wants former finance minister Charlie McCreevy brought back.
What all these people have in common is that none has any mandate, all are drawn from a narrow layer at the top of society and, without exception, are advocates of unrestrained competition and “light touch regulation” – letting the free market rip through every aspect of life. In other words, the same acrid philosophy which plunged us and much of the rest of the world into economic disaster in the first place.
None of the pieces I have read suggests that Joe Higgins, for example, or Kieran Allen or Rev. Sean Healy, might have something relevant and useful to contribute.
The campaign to usurp representative government, to eliminate any involvement of the lower orders of society, seems seriously intended. Only a fool would rule out the possibility of the current clueless and desperate administration deciding to abandon ship and hand control of the economy over to this gallery of gargoyles.
We may have to take to the streets to thwart them.

Hopes for movement towards a fair settlement in the Middle East have to be seen against the background of continued, systematic, illegal expansion of Israeli settlements onto Palestinian land.
On March 2, the Israeli group Peace Now reported that the housing ministry plans to build 73,000 new housing units on the West Bank. On March 7th, the Guardian reported that Israel plans to construct 5,500 new housing units in Palestinian east Jerusalem.
The moves to annex more of the tiny patches of land left to the indigenous Palestinian people are entirely illegal in international law and directly contrary to successive UN resolutions. They are a clear indication that far from seeking peace, the Israelis are continuing the racist ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland.
How has Barack Obama’s government reacted? The only critical comment I have been unable to unearth was a remark from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the effect that the planned expansions would be “unhelpful.”
Despite the public rhetoric of western leaders, on the ground there is no peace process. The need for solidarity with Palestine is greater than ever.

The official Catholic spin on the decision of Rev. John Magee to step back from duties as Bishop of Cloyne is self-evident nonsense. It’s said that he plans to devote himself full-time to helping inquiries into the cover-up of clerical sex abuse in his diocese.
Baloney. What’s needed is the release of all relevant documents and a day’s questioning of Magee by the police. I repeat: were this any institution other than the Catholic Church, the doors of the diocesan archive would have been kicked down by now and Magee taken into custody for interview under caution.
After all, covering up a crime of this sort is itself a serious crime. Where is the law-and-order brigade when we need them?

Let’s hear it for Danny Nalliah, leader of an evangelical church in Victoria, Australia, who has announced that the bush-fires which claimed 200 lives last month had been God’s punishment of the State for liberalising abortion law.
Danny had a dream “of fire everywhere, with flames burning high and uncontrollably”. Immediately he awoke, he was visited by “the Spirit of God” which told him “that His conditional protection of the nation of Australia had been removed... for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb.”
The name of Danny’s church? “Catch the Fire.”
And a mention, too, for South Korean cult leader Jeong Myeong Seok, who has just been given a 10-year stretch in the slammer for raping a number of his followers. “Pastor Joshua” told the court that his sexual assaults had been intended to “purge the sins” of the victims.
Religion. Don’t you just love it?