Mary Hanafin Creates Stasi for Welfare Recipients

national | worker & community struggles and protests | news report

Monday December 14, 2009 17:55

by Fred Johnston

Stasi-like policing powers up the stakes in class war

Mary Hanafin seems proud of the creation of new laws which put those in receipt of welfare under checkpoint security

Mary leaves no stone unturned: Stasi camera in fake rock

Mary Hanafin is proud of a tranche of new regulations which in effect create Stasi-like powers for the State and further undermine the working-class. New powers just announced permit the investigation of any bank accounts held by people in receipt of social welfare, and social welfare inspectors, working with customs officers, can mount checkpoints and question the occupants of a vehicle as to whether they are claiming social welfare while also working. With no shame whatever, let alone a sense of irony, Hanafin says (Irish Independent, December 14th) that: ". . .we will do whatever is necessary to work with agencies in this and other jurisdictions to combat fraud because, after all, taxpayers' money is at stake."

For Hanafin, there seems to be no memory of how many millions where syphoned into foreign accounts by rich and protected individuals in Ireland throughout the 1980s and how tax-dodging was a commonplace among the rich; nor how much of this was facilitated by banks and financial institutions and those working in them. Only the poor - and the blind - cheat, in her book. Only welfare recipients become 'fraudsters.'

No mention that taxpayers' money is baling out banks ruined by the wheeling and dealing and simple bog-standard greed of bankers who ruined Anglo-Irish Bank and others and who still walk the streets unhindered by the law and continue to dine out lavishly. No mention of establishing a surveillance unit that could question the proprietors of expensive eating house as to how often these chancers dined in their establishments, and how much their bills came to. No mention of vehicles driven by ex-bankers being stopped and questions asked.

The idea of imposing further psychological pressure and bland fear upon the unemployed is a cute one: the idea is to make absolutely sure that the unemployed are beaten into submissiveness and made to feel utterly powerless in front of a government which makes up its rules as it goes along, with no regard to fairness, equity or even decent human rights. Hanafin and others will be aware that the unemployment situation will continue to get worse. Unrest must be avoided, dissent diluted. powerlessness must be injected into the masses on the dole queue. Orwellian and simple, the plan appears to be to create an underclass grateful to have a loaf of bread on their tables and utterly oblivious to politics, let alone their place in society. At the same time it is important to divert attention from the real fraudsters who brought this country to its knees. Imagine what some of them might utter from the dock of a court or tribunal about how they and their rogue banks were protected.

Without a blink of an eye, a new Stasi has been created in this country. Fear has been aroused, paranoia induced into a class of people already ignored by government. The very people who would protest in any other European country have been bludgeoned slowly into submission by a ruthless Right-wing government.

{http://leahjoelle.blogspot.com - acknowledged for photo of rock}