I recently returned from the longest stretch of time at home in Ireland since I left in 1993. In the 2 months I was there I witnessed Ireland at one of the most crucial periods in it’s history. I never left Ireland because economics pushed me out. I left because I was curious for other things and places. I wanted to know what the world could teach and show me. Little did I know that 1994 would mark the beginning of the period in Ireland’s economic history which later became known as the ‘Celtic Tiger’. They were boom years like no one had ever known and Ireland bought and spent like never before. For the first time in it’s history it began to experience what was perceived and packaged as economic freedom.
In an economy driven by credit which was encouraged by the government and driven by the banks Ireland became one of the wealthiest countries in the EEC and living standards were calculated to be one of the highest in the world. The Irish who had been forced to emmigrate in the 70’s and 80’s came back in droves, immigrants flooded into the country, housing prices went through the roof, waiting lists for BMWs and Land Rovers bulged with 25 year olds with more money than sense. People borrowed and consumed and the culture and fabric of the country changed profoundly. To steal from Yeats, a Terrible Beauty was born.
Over the years on brief visits home I was quietly shocked at the changes I saw take place. Ireland was becoming a country not unlike the United States in it’s appetite for consumerism. In this respect it was quite apparent what was going on. Scandals and tribunals of government and business corruption abounded and were allowed to. When the downturn came here it was going to hurt and it was going to hurt very very bad.
In what was Ireland’s equivalent to the Enron debacle, Anglo Irish bank was nationalised in Jan 2009 after it was discovered that it’s chairman hadn’t disclosed details to the inland revenue of some €87 million in loans (ie: taxpayer money) he received. After all what is €87 millions amongst friends? Ireland was now firmly entrenched in it’s recession which many say is actually a depression. The banks have been bailed out to the tune of €54 billion. Sound familiar? Welcome to the band aid to neo liberal free market economics.
Multi national corporations that were lured here in the 80’s with low corporate tax rates are now leaving. The eastern european immigrants are going with them back home to the countries where these same companies are now setting up shop. Unemployment is soaring at 12.5% in a country of only 4 million. Joblessness is affecting a wide demographic of people and many are leaving. And on top of all this CEOs are still getting bonuses in the millions.
Despite all this and what I think was a feeling of helplessness amongst people there is a resilience there. Nov 6th I followed 20,000 public sector workers marching through the center of Dublin. Strikes are becoming more widespread and increasing in numbers. On Nov 26th last a staggering number of 250,000 workers striked across the country against the public sector wage cuts planned by the government.
Today is the eve of what will be the most dreaded state budget ever. During the boom when budgets were announced no one paid attention. There was no need to. The country was awash in money. Tomorrow’s will be very different.
If Ireland is to recover it has to seize the opportunities that recession presents and seize them now. The key element being to realize that the old way of doing things cannot continue. How Irish people position themselves now to deal with this and a new way of living and doing business, whilst living in a rapidly changing world, will be the deciding factor in the future of generations to come. Fortunately the majority now realize this.
Ireland’s future is not in it’s current government. It’s future lies in redistributing wealth and bringing equality back into the equation. It lies in innovation and entrepreneurs with their eyes on sustainability at all levels. Oh and an awful lot of resolve to see wrong made right.
In this sense Ireland’s choices are not that different from the ones most of us must make.
Sometimes we end up in places wondering what has brought us here. I found myself asking this question as I pulled into the town of Oswiecim in southern Poland on a wet and foggy night in September. It struck me that it was probably the same question that millions of jews, gypsies, gays and members of the intelligentsia asked themselves when shipped here by the Nazi’s in the 40’s. The difference between their reasons and mine being that mine were my own.
I got an eerie feeling as the tyres of the car rumbled across the train tracks and into town. It was a Saturday night and as I passed the town square on route to a hotel I noticed crowds of young weekend revelers hanging in the bars. Just like anywhere else. Except in some regards this town isn’t. I found my hotel and crashed.
The story of Auschwitz Birkenau is known by all and I’m not here to rehash the facts only my own experience of a visit to what is now a Unesco World Heritage site with as many as 8000 visitors some days. What many don’t realize and which I didn’t is that Auschwitz was in fact 3 camps. It was expanded to facilitate the implementation of the Nazi genocidal policy of the ‘Final Solution’ which aimed to wipe out the entire jewish population of Europe. At Auschwitz I as I passed under the infamous slogan on the gate of ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’, ‘Work Frees’ I got my first hint of understanding the scope of how cruel and crushing this terrible lie had been.
As a walked around Auschwitz I, listening to my tour guide on my headphones recount just how systematic the place had been run by the Nazi’s I found myself staring at the worn patches in the stone floor. I was thinking of those people walking on these very same floors. The terribly evil Nazi officers and their helpless destitute victims. The tour guides microphone picked up the ambient noises around us and in my ears the sounds that stood out were the other visitors feet shuffling along the floor. When I closed my eyes those very same footsteps were of the individuals who died here , echoing from the past. When I looked out the window they were the very same windows but they were not part of a cage keeping me in.
We moved on to Auschwitz II and it was here that the scale of what happened and the cruel intent that was responsible for it began to bear down on me. This place was picked because of it’s convenient location on the railway line that shipped people in. Every factory needs an infrastructure . Apparently it seems even when your product is death.
Auschwitz Birkenau as it’s better known is 320 acres of what was once a mass killing machine exterminating 5000 people a day. The sheer scale of it when you are confronted with it in a visit like this is what is the most staggering. Most of it is in ruins but as far as the eye can see stand the chimneys of the sheds where up to 1000 prisoners were kept at a time. The sheds are cold brick buildings with rudimentary bunk beds that provided no comfort. Slogans stenciled on walls reminded prisoners to behave and that drinking water was strictly forbidden. Poland winters are notoriously cold. There was nothing about these huts that would protect you from it. That much was obvious.
What I couldn’t help thinking when I walked around this sad place is that really this wasn’t very long ago. We’re supposed to learn from our past but in the case of genocide and bullying I don’t think we have. Rwanda happened and was allowed to happen. The international community knew what was occuring and did nothing about it. Rwanda like many problems that are now arising in the developing world are occurring because of corrupt regimes but also because we as the first world have raped and pillaged these countries of their domestic raw materials and therefore wealth. All to support our own materialistic, selfish and non sustainable lifestyles. If Rwanda had been a country rich in oil it would have mattered to the US and her European cronies and they would have stepped in to do something. But there was no oil. As far as they were concerned there was nothing worth saving, not even human lives.
Besides growing up in a country that was torn apart by war (Ireland) I have been living in the US for 16 years and have witnessed the American reaction to the 911 atrocities. I’m still living there while the United States wages war in 2 countries and thousands of innocent civilians continue to die at it’s hands. We are now into the 8th year of the ‘war on terrorism’. Deep down this basic evil fact puts me at odds with myself and my own morals. I have like I’m sure so have many people, avoided it when it raises itself in my consciousness. I’m not sure I can continue to do so anymore. The holocaust has it’s deniers and unfortunately too there are many who fail to admit the atrocities today that are perpetrated in their name. I think the term is ‘collective denial’. Until the consequences of these actions come home to roost I guess this mental condition of denial will continue.
President Obama in April 2009 at the annual memorial to the Holocaust, said in reference to the lessons of this dark time in our history :”to recognize ourselves in each other; to commit ourselves to resisting injustice and intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they may take.”. The thing is these ‘forms’ sometimes aren’t necessarily just swastika touting skinheads or turban wearing, Kalashnikov waving Koran readers. Sometimes they wear suits, read the bible, and have massive military budgets beyond the GDP of many countries. This is a ‘form’. So I’d say Yes President Obama I recognize it in ourselves. The question is do you? This is the real lesson to be learned.
