Category: Anti-War
BASQUES AGAINST NATO AND EU – Interview with Herri Ekimena organisation.
Oscar DíazTranslation from Castilian Spanish by D.Breatnach
(Reading time main piece: 10 mins.)
1. What is Herri Ekimena?
Herri Ekimena is an initiative that emerged in March 2022. A series of organizations began to get together due to concern about the offensive of Atlanticist imperialism in Ukraine, in addition to the blatant manipulation of the media to get us to support their war strategy.
We also observed that, in a context of capitalist crisis and with the excuse of the war against Russia, economic measures were being imposed that resulted in greater impoverishment of the working class.
That is why we took to the streets at that time with the slogan “NATO and the EU condemn us to war and misery”, to turn the official discourse around a little and point to these two organizations as the main ones responsible for the increase in international tensions, as well as for the oppression of the working classes of the imperialist bloc itself.
Also in the month of June of that 2022 we called a demonstration in Bilbo, “against the imperialism of NATO and the EU” and calling for the end of the Russophobia that is still being promoted.
In parallel to the NATO summit that was held in Madrid, we also carried out a 48-hour poster campaign in Gernika, a city with great anti-fascist symbolism that the Ukrainian Nazis tried to appropriate, citing it in a speech before the Spanish Parliament by Zelensky himself.
After a short break, we resumed the fight in the streets at the end of the year, with the “Free Euskal Herria out of NATO and the EU” campaign. In March we held a massive demonstration in Bilbo, together with Askapena1 and the Bardenas Ya2 collective.
This demonstration was exciting to us as we saw that the work that had been done was already bearing fruit and that the anti-imperialist spirit that has historically characterized Euskal Herria was projected in the streets.
We are currently in a restructuring process in order to be more effective, and give new impetus to the anti-imperialist struggle in the streets, which is where this game is truly played.
2. Why combine anti-fascist and anti-imperialist slogans?
The imperialist offensive, which has to do with the systemic crisis of capitalism and the rise of new economic powers, is being accompanied by a general reduction of rights and freedoms.
Those in power fear popular revolts, like those that have been taking place in the French State in recent months.
In Euskal Herria we know well what emergency laws or illegal practices are employed to put an end to dissent, but these types of measures are spreading and becoming normalized throughout Europe. Concentration camps for migrants, deportations without any type of legal guarantee, electronic anklet tags are also normalized…
And also in the case of the countries bordering Russia, imperialism is responsible for waving old supremacist and anti-Slavic flags, such as is happening in Ukraine or Poland.
We see therefore that capitalism, in its most decadent phase, has little scruple when it comes to reactivating liberticidal policies or inciting openly Nazi military and paramilitary shock forces.
So in effect, we believe that the anti-imperialist struggle and the anti-fascist struggle are inseparable parts of the same struggle for our rights and freedoms.
3. A few years ago one could see Donbass flags in the stands of Atlethic3. Why mix football and politics?
Through various institutions, including football clubs, they want to force down our throats the supposed “depoliticization of public spaces.” It is false, because they are the first to try to control absolutely all areas of our lives that we may become submissive and uncritical people.
The media bombardment is constant, generating false debates among humble people about insecurity, occupying empty properties… They thus try to legitimize, by action or omission, measures of social control and police repression that are very, very worrying.
So when someone puts a poster on the street to denounce any injustice, or puts up a banner, or paints graffiti… They are calling into question that false normality that they want to impose on us.
It is sad — but this situation also reflects the weakness of the system in terms of political legitimacy. Who explicitly supports them? Who is not fed up with everything that is happening? So they are afraid of the flame that starts a prairie fire.
Sports venues do not escape this logic of imposing false normality, even if the laws have to be twisted or passed directly through the triumphal arch.
A Donetsk flag, for example, ruins their photo and calls into question the story that people agree with what they do. So they impose fines of €3,000 just for displaying the flag of a People’s Republic.
Let’s hope that in not many years we will be able to analyze all this as the blows of a dying regime, but for now it is up to us to organize the response and popular solidarity. Repression should not be normalized, nor should people who step forward feel alone.
4. Is EH Bildu4 being favorable to NATO?
We do not believe that the social base of EH Bildu is in favor of NATO. That is, if we asked EH Bildu voters if they were in favor of NATO, surely 99% would say no. The problem is that, for its leaders, opposing Atlanticist imperialism is not currently on the list of priorities.
Regarding the issue of the war in Ukraine, Arnaldo Otegi5 has openly positioned himself in favor of Ukrainian “sovereignty” and against the Russian “occupation.” Is Ukraine now a sovereign state? Or is it rather a puppet of NATO in its offensive against Russia?
Doesn’t Russia have the right to defend itself from NATO attacks? What about the thousands of people killed in Donbass since 2014? Should Russia have been obliged to watch this genocide impassively?
Have the self-determination processes in Donetsk, in Lugansk, in Crimea … not been practical exercises of sovereignty? In this context, we can say that the speech of some EH Bildu leaders has favored and continues to favor the interests of NATO.
Their support for the State Budget deserves special mention, which includes a 25% increase in military spending. A measure imposed precisely by NATO to approach 2% of GDP in 2029, which is truly outrageous.
So… perhaps it is harsh to say that EH Bildu is in favor of NATO so let us put it another way: What is EH Bildu doing to make Euskal Herria break with NATO? What teaching are they carrying out among their social base and at a public level to create a truly anti-imperialist consciousness?
Very little or nothing, we believe, that is the reality.
5. Will it be possible to continue to see reliable information about Ukraine in the Basque Country and the Spanish state now that military juntas have been formed in African countries that have expelled French embassies? They are very different countries and thousands of kilometers away…
The events that are taking place in the SAHEL area are complex processes, and surely have many sides that make it difficult for us to equate them with the decolonization processes that we have known historically.
But we would be committing a mistake if, due to these supposed “imperfections” with respect to the theoretical manual, we stopped supporting countries that are fighting for nothing less than to expel their occupiers (since those are true occupiers who try to impose themselves by force of weapons thousands of kilometers from their borders) and also to gain control of their enormous natural resources.
How can it be that in extraordinarily rich countries, like Niger or Gabon, the majority of the population survives in absolute poverty? We will have to carefully observe all these processes, but in anti-imperialist Euskal Herria we can only rejoice and tell them that they are not alone.
In this land that, to a degree, also knows what it is to fight against armed occupiers and various collaborators, we know very well that solidarity is the love between people.
Regarding the quality of the information that we are able to receive in Euskal Herria or in the Spanish state, we believe that right now it is below minimum.
It is pathetic to see how, every time an event occurs that could undermine the hegemony of Atlantic imperialism, the mainstream media wait to receive instructions before even reporting the event.
The control of capital over the big media is a reality, so we must promote and support alternative means of information and communication. And also to fight openly in the streets, so that they have no choice but to report our demands.
6. Couldn’t the creation of a multipolar world be dangerous on a war level?
Yes, in fact it already is. We had been talking for years about the end of Yankee hegemony and the economic rise of countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the so-called BRICS.
Perhaps we thought that this change of orientation of world hegemony was going to be a calm process, without any surprises…
But nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that Yankee imperialism is mortally injured (which we believe it is), the truth is that it seems willing to kill as it dies.
Currently it has restructured NATO in a few months, has de facto absorbed the European Union and is reconfiguring its alliance policy on a global scale. It is increasingly easier to identify “which side” the different states are on, which can be the prelude to a conflict on a planetary scale.
We have been able to verify this recently with Morocco. NATO and the EU buy Morocco and abandon the Sahara to its fate.6 What should the Sahrawis do if Algeria, Russia or China offer them help to win their rights and survive as a people?
Of course there may be geopolitical interests in this aid from emerging powers, but it is necessary to analyze whether the agreements, commercial exchanges, donations and aid are produced with mutual respect for sovereignty and benefit the currently oppressed nations.
Of course, from a revolutionary point of view we have to be exacting, and not give a blank cheque to these emerging powers.
In this entire process of multipolarity, whether we like it or not, which is already making its mark upon world geopolitics, there is a class struggle that we must not ignore.
But this critical stance cannot lead us to fall into ninism and evade our own historical responsibility: to combat Atlanticist imperialism from the very heart of the beast.
7. You say “Euskal Herria free from NATO.” And what about the rest of the Spanish state?
We say Euskal Herria should be free outside NATO, but also outside the EU. We believe that this contribution is important, since for many years consideration of leaving the EU has been a kind of taboo, also in Euskal Herria.
Some thought that the EU might even support a possible independence process in Euskal Herria, just as was thought in Catalonia.
But the EU has definitively been revealed as a capitalist lobby, as an instrument at the service of elites with a more than dubious past, even with regard to their support for Nazism.
Úrsula von der Leyen, Josep Borrell… are faithful representatives of the EU of Capital, authoritarian and totally committed to the interests of the US. That is why we say that neither the nation nor as a class have a future within the EU.
We make this statement from Euskal Herria, which is our area of struggle. But of course it extends to the entire Spanish State, as well as to the French State and all the peoples of Europe.
A future in freedom is not possible belonging to these criminal organizations, neither in Euskal Herria nor anywhere else.
8. What do you think of the military administration by Margarita Robles of the PSOE/UP government?7
Margarita Robles is a pit bull of Spanish politics, a woman who knows perfectly the ins and outs of the State from the offices to the sewers. Not for nothing has she been in positions of power for more than 30 years, originally in the shadow of Belloch, later of Rubalcaba…
At first it may have been surprising to see her at the head of a Ministry like the Defense Ministry, she who comes from the judiciary and who, even in relation to the conflict between Euskal Herria and the Spanish State, had adopted a dialogue profile at certain times.
We are missing a lot of information (I wish that we in Herri Ekimena knew what was going on in the Ministry of Defense, haha), but Margarita Robles is probably dedicating herself to doing in the Spanish military what she also did in her day in the Ministry of Justice and Interior.
That was to send the most archaic elements to the refrigerator in a non-traumatic way to perfectly adapt to the current standards and guidelines of NATO and the EU. Change a minimum so that everything remains absolutely the same.
Can anyone imagine Spanish generals standing up for Spanish national sovereignty in the face of Atlanticist imposition? This could happen in the French State, in fact it would not be unreasonable for something like this to happen.
In the Spanish State it is much more unlikely, but it is the responsibility of politicians like Mrs. Robles that nothing should deviate from the script written by Washington and Brussels.
In this regard, it is worth highlighting the role of the PSOE in what has been the process of integration of the Spanish State into imperialist structures. In addition to Felipe González, we could mention Javier Solana (who became Secretary General of NATO), Josep Borrell8…
Whether it is a matter of affinity, or a matter of pragmatism, the truth is that it appears that the PSOE generates a lot more trust among the imperialist powers than any other political party at the level of the State.
9. There were elections this past July 23, 2023. Did any of the political forces propose the departure of NATO from the Spanish state?
We are not aware that this was the case. As we have said before, this government is responsible for the largest increase in military spending in history, and faithfully complies with NATO and EU mandates.
Vice President Yolanda Díaz has publicly supported sending weapons to Ukraine and, as far as we know, no party that supports the government has opposed these shipments as a matter of principle.
We remember that these are weapons that are being used by Nazi soldiers to bomb and murder, not alone Russian soldiers but also the civilian population of Donbass. So we have to organize and fight in the streets, because if we don’t, things will remain exactly the same or worse.
This is the reason for existence of Herri Ekimena, to activate the popular struggle against the imperialism of NATO and the EU. We are working at it and, if all goes well, there will be good news in this regard in the coming weeks.
SOURCE
http://oscar-elbloquedeleste.blogspot.com/
FOOTNOTES
1Askapena was the internationalist solidarity arm of the broad Basque national liberation organisation but split from it many years ago in concern at the deviation from the path of resistance by the leadership under Arnaldo Otegi.
2Bardenas Ya is an organisation campaiging against the military installation in Bardenas, Nafarroa (Navarre).
3Athletic Bilbao FC, whose fans and many of its players have a strong anti-fascist and pro-Basque independence tradition.
4EH Bildu is the political party of the current compliant ‘official’ leadership of the Basque national movement, replacing the Herri Batasuna of the past.
5Leader of EH Bildu who has led the party into what many consider its collaborationist current stance.
6Western Sahara was a Spanish colonial possession and it abandoned it without decolonisation, which allowed Morocco and Mauritania to invade and occupy it against the wishes of the Saharawi people. As a result of the national liberation struggle of the Polisario Front, Mauritania withdrew but Morocco remained in occupation and carrying out repression against the resistance. Shortly before Trump’s departure from the USA’s presidency, he agreed to endorse Moroccan defiance of the UN-recognised Sahawarwi resistance to occupation in exchange for Morocco reversing its long anti-Zionist policy and formally recognising the Zionist occupation of Palestine, which the Moroccan Kingdom has done.
7The recent coalition Government of the Spanish State, the social-democratic PSOE with the Left-social democratic alliance of Unidas Podemos. Currently, the PSOE is endeavouring to form a government in coalition with a somewhat reconfigured Left-social democratic coalition called Sumar.
8All three have been PSOE politicians, Felipe González a prime minister and widely believed head of the GAL anti-Basque terrorist gang. Borrell was President of the European Parliament (2004-2007) and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Spanish Government from 2018 to 2019. He attacked Catalan self-determination which he characterised as part of a disease, despite his own Catalan origin and he is now the Foreign Minister of the European Union.
Cluster Bombs for Ukraine
(This article is reprinted from Socialist Democracy by kind permission of the author Gearóid Ó Loingsigh)
(Reading time: 3 mins.)
The USA has announced that it will supply cluster bombs to Ukraine as part of its support for the war against Russia.
On one level the move is not surprising, on another it reveals some fundamental truths about the course of the war and US intentions.
They are banned by international treaty, one which has not been signed by Russia or Ukraine, and of course, neither has it been signed by the US. The US has always dragged its feet on the question of the banning of certain types of weapons.
Cluster bombs, are simply put bombs that break up into smaller components leaving small explosive devices scattered over a large area of land. They are a
…conventional munition that is designed to disperse or release explosive submunitions each weighing less than 20 kilograms, and includes those explosive submunitions…
These weapons are designed for use against massed formations of troops and armour or broad targets, such as airfields. Cluster submunitions, however, sometimes fail to explode on impact and can kill or maim civilians who later come into contact with them. These unexploded submunitions may remain dangerous for decades.(1)
They have all the potential to leave Ukraine like the US left Cambodia and Laos in the 1970s.
According to Cluster Munition Monitor 23,082 casualties were confirmed by the year 2021, with around 18,426 resulting from unexploded munitions.
Biden has a long and chequered history on the use of the weapons.
His ambassador to the UN had condemned their use by Russia, stating they had no legitimate place on the battlefield, though two days later the State Department censored the official transcript of her intervention to remove the phrase.
Biden had criticised the use of and access to such weapons in the past. (2)
Whilst it is all very interesting and even of humanitarian concern that the US would wish to turn Ukraine in another Laos and Cambodia, though unlike Kissinger they will be telling no lies about their bombs, it is of greater interest what it says about the war.
Biden’s official reason is that Ukraine is running out of munitions and they need the cluster bombs. We have been told from the word go that this war is winnable, i.e. that Ukraine can win it.
This of course ignores that Ukraine is not the only warring party fighting Russia; NATO is part of the war, although it is not putting many boots on the ground, though it clearly has had a hand in some operations.
Every week we hear announcements that the counter offensive will smash Russia, almost there, one more push, the Russians have run out of weapons, their army is demoralised and deserting etc. Now it turns out that Ukraine needs these weapons or else.
These weapons are very useful in halting advances by your enemy, they are not as necessary in situations where your enemy is routed, unless you think it may regroup and retake the initiative.
Ireland has wholeheartedly supported the war in Ukraine, confirming to those who wish to see that it is not a neutral country. It has had little to say on the issue of these banned weapons.
They will make parts of Ukraine uninhabitable and make agriculture a dangerous profession as sowing and reaping become potentially life-threatening activities. If Biden will go to these lengths, what else will he do?
Despite the media talking about Putin’s willingness to use nuclear weapons, it really has to be asked whether the US is willing to go that far as well.
What then of the former leftists running round chanting victory for NATO, or as they would put it for Ukraine? None of them have said much either on Biden’s choice of weaponry. Is there no length to which the US will go that marks a turning point for them? The answer is no.
Should Biden propose facilitating large scale rocket attacks on Moscow they are as likely to cheer them on as to remain silent. What they will not do, ever, is oppose the escalation of the war. Modern day Kautskys.
Notes
(1) See https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/clusterataglance
(2) See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/07/bidens-complicated-history-cluster-munitions/
DRIPPING WITH PROPAGANDA – BUT ALSO REVEALING
NEWS & VIEWS NO 4. – Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 4 mins.)
A recent article appearing briefly on breakingnews.ie was packed with some of the typical anti-Russian propaganda of the current western mass media but also, unintentionally, revealed the purpose of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
Whether one is pro-NATO, pro-Russia or of some other position, it can be instructive to dissect this mass media propaganda to which we are subjected daily in western states.
Let’s take the headline first, which serves not just as an ‘attractor’ or ‘hook’ to draw the reader but also as a statement in itself and, in this case, very definitely as propaganda.
“NATO prepares military plans to defend against bruised but unbowed Russia” is the headline. So straightaway we are being told that NATO needs to defend itself against Russia, which is turning truth completely on its head.
Firstly, where in the world is the Russian Federation attacking NATO? In Ukraine? But then the Ukrainian state is not actually in NATO, is it? Unless what is meant is US/NATO’s plans to get the Ukrainian state into NATO, of course, which they’re generally vague about.
But if not there, where? Nowhere, of course.
Who threatens whom?
As to reversing reality, one look at a map of Europe with NATO states indicated makes it clear that it is not NATO that needs to defend itself but Russia — and bears out the Russian line that one of the reasons they went to war was to stop their encirclement by NATO.
Then, we need to consider that NATO is not a country or one region in the world that could need defence. No, it is a military alliance of European states with the United States. And if it ever was a defensive alliance, that ‘reason’ for its existence disappeared with the fall of the USSR in 1991.
Far from scrapping NATO or even freezing its expansion then, US/NATO started collecting former USSR states into its alliance until nearly every state on Russia’s eastern borders had joined the alliance or was friendly towards it and hostile towards Russia.
The former Ukrainian regime was friendly towards Russia until the coup in 2014 by pro-NATO elements, which are the regime now in power and responsible for a decade of cultural attacks on – and artillery bombardment of – the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas area.
Only a propaganda-blinded fool or a liar could deny that Russia has been and is under threat from US/ NATO, rather than the reverse.
We could do with looking at the record of states in invasion of – and interference in – other countries.
The USA is the founder and leader of NATO; since the end of WWII, the USA has been involved in 34 armed actions against smaller nations, not including coups and proxy wars. This includes initiating 81% of all global armed conflicts from 1945 to 2001.
The United Kingdom is a major NATO member and, with direct involvement in 35 armed conflicts since WWI, has exceeded the USA’s tally by one and France’s tally of 33, also an important NATO member, by two.
How many Russian Federation armed conflicts since it came into existence? Thirteen, mostly on or around its own state’s territory, whereas the armed conflicts of the USA, UK and France were mostly outside their own territories and far from their borders.
So who has more reason to fear attack from whom?
“What we see in general is that the Russians are careful around NATO. They are not seeking a conflict with NATO. I think that is a sign that they are very, very busy,” the article quotes NATO Chairman, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer saying. “Busy” with what, is he inferring?
Nuclear weapons
“NATO, as an organisation, does not provide weapons or ammunition to Ukraine and has sought to avoid being dragged into a wider war with nuclear-armed Russia,” states the article.
True, as far as that goes but how many NATO states are supplying the Ukrainian state with military equipment? It would be quicker to list how many are not supplying it!
In that quoted sentence, there is almost an admission that were it not for Russia’s nuclear weapons, the US/ NATO forces would be willing to intervene directly to attack and invade Russia.
Indeed, they may still do so. NATO Chairman, Admiral Rob Bauer, in briefing the press, “laid out the biggest revamp to the organisation’s military plans since the Cold War” (of course for purely defensive reasons!).
“US President Joe Biden and his Nato counterparts are set to endorse a major shake-up of the alliance’s planning system at a summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, next week,” we are told.
“About 100 aircraft take to the skies in that territory each day, and a total of 27 warships are operating in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas, with those numbers set to rise. In new plans, NATO aims to have up to 300,000 troops ready to move to its eastern flank within 30 days.”
Of course, weapons and military transport require funding (a big source of profits for the arms industries). “In 2014, NATO committed to move towards spending 2% of GDP on their military budgets by 2024” (2014 was the year of the US/NATO-inspired coup, 8 years before the invasion).
“At their July 11-12 summit, the leaders will set the 2% figure as a spending floor, rather than a ceiling to aim for.”
“Russia bruised but unbowed”
When wishing to force the enemy to surrender, it may be sufficient to bombard it from the air and sea. But in order to extract its riches, the situation requires either invading troops on the ground or a compliant regime.
In this context it is significant that Admiral Baur commented that of Russia’s ground forces, around “94% is now engaged in the war in Ukraine”, meaning that the state’s principal ground defence forces are already engaged in war and presumably taking casualties.
But Russia’s armed forces are “bruised but by no means bowed” in the war in Ukraine, commented Admiral Bauer, which looks very much like an admission that pushing Russian forces into a proxy war in the Ukraine was intended to sap Russia’s military strength.
So that Russia can be invaded, carved up into US/NATO dependencies, its rich natural resources plundered for the benefit of western imperialist states? No, surely not, the USA, UK and France would never go to war for imperialist plunder, would they?
End.
SOURCES:
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2345663/us-initiated-81-global-armed-conflicts-from-1945-to-2001
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_Kingdom
IRISH NEUTRALITY – WHO CARES?
Clive Sulish
(Reading time main article: 6 mins.)
A packed public meeting in Dublin city centre on Saturday listened to and applauded prominent people speaking against the Irish State becoming part of military alliances, whether PESCO1 (“NATO by stealth”2) or NATO itself.
The high-profile panel of speakers chaired by Irish MEP Clare Daly featured fellow MEP Mick Wallace, Sevim Dagdalen (MP Die Linke), Medea Benjamin (founder of Code Pink) and Anne Wright (ex-US Army Major and opponent of the US-Iraq War).
Celebrated anti-imperialist rapper Lowkey was also a speaker as was Yanis Varoufakis (ex-Syrza)3 who addressed the meeting by recorded video from abroad and applauded the Irish for their long resistance to colonialism and urged them to be proud of their state’s neutrality.
BACKGROUND
There is a constitutional impediment to the Irish state’s participating in a war partnership with another state and during WW2 the state’s official position was neutrality.
However, it was always a pro-Allied neutrality with British downed airmen allowed to cross over into UK territory and US servicemen often crossing the UK border to visit the ‘south’, while German downed airmen were interned for the duration of the War.
The impediment is not absolute and is usually referred to as the ‘Triple Lock’, listing the three conditions which would enable to government to send more than 12 troops overseas:
- a mandate from the United Nations
- a Government decision
- and a Dáil vote 4
In recent years some politicians and public commentators have floated the idea that the Irish state could rejoin the British Commonwealth and, since the war in the Ukraine, a discourse has arisen that the State needs to join an external military alliance in order to protect itself from Russia.
The Irish Times/Ipsos poll in April, amid criticisms of not following best practice in its design and even accusations of trying to steer respondents towards favouring joining some external military alliance, delivered two thirds clearly against the Irish state doing any such thing.
Russophobic propaganda has speculated on the activities of Russian trawlers in the Irish Sea. This is entirely a whipped-up alarm and discussion without the slightest foundation in fact since Russia has never presented the slightest threat, militarily or politically, to the Irish people.
On the other hand, Britain has invaded and occupied Ireland for over 800 years and is still in possession of one-fifth of its territory and has substantial economic and financial interests in the country as, more recently, have the USA and European Union states.
The UK’s Royal Navy frequently enters Irish national waters and the State has regularly permitted its ships, along with warships of other NATO countries, to dock in Irish harbours. And also the Royal Air Force, it has recently emerged, to patrol Irish territorial air space.
As part of this false alarm and discourse, the Irish Government5 recently founded the Consultative Forum on International Security Policy which was scheduled to meet last week in Cork and Galway, then for two days in Dublin Castle.
The President of the State, Michael D. Higgins, in an unusual intervention during an interview with the Examiner expressed concern at what he perceived as the “drift towards NATO” and criticised the composition of the speakers and chairperson of this organisation as being pro-NATO.
Michael D commented on “the admirals, the generals, the air force, the rest of it” and described its chair Louise Richardson, as a person “with a very large DBE – Dame of the British Empire”.
President Higgins apologised later for what he said was “a throway remark” about Richardson but did not withdraw his remarks about the overall composition of the Forum which has indeed been criticised by others, including Richard Boyd Barrett TD6 and Senator Frances Black.
THE DUBLIN MEETING
Varoufakis referred to Ireland as though the nation had won its independence, as was the case with every speaker that followed (with the exception of Lowkey).
A member of the audience was heard to remark ironically to another that he was grateful he had attended as heretofore he hadn’t been aware of Ireland’s ‘independence’.
Lowkey, the British-based rapper, tore the illusion of Irish state neutrality to tatters by recounting the use of Irish airports not only for US Army flights under Air America through Shannon, but also airlines run by the CIA and others using other airports in Irish state territory.
The rapper exposed the ‘neutrality’ of the Irish government in training soldiers going to fight in Ukraine and also in its continued support for the Israeli State and was cheered when he declared that, as an Iraqi, he was proud that his country had “kicked the ass of the British”.
In a masterful exercise in research-backed criticism, Lowkey went on to strip the pretence of independence and impartiality from the Government-founded “Consultative Forum”, exposing the imperialist and even NATO background of the main panel members and its chairperson.
All the members of the Neutrality Who Cares panel were effective speakers and made useful points although it was curious to hear one of them denouncing “Russian fascists” without commenting on the fascist units in the Ukrainian regime’s national army.
It was Lowkey who drove the sharpest and longest nails into the verbal crucifixion of the Irish Government’s drive towards NATO and who brought the loudest cheers from his mostly Irish audience.
Even celebrated speaker Daly did not come very close, though she too exposed the propaganda of the Government and pro-NATO cheerleaders. The MEP debunked the excuse of protecting underground communication cables, pointing out that 25% of them are out of action regularly.
The Irish MEP also lampooned the idea of any underwater cable being protected by NATO, considering where the responsibility for the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline lies!7
Finally she warned the audience to be on the look out for an attempt to remove the Triple Lock under some kind of excuse as a first step to permit the Government to enter a military alliance.
A PART OF IRELAND ALREADY IN NATO
It was left to a youth member of the audience in the Q&A section, reading a statement on behalf of the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation, to point out that a part of Ireland is already in NATO, viz. the Six Counties, occupied by Britain and a part of the United Kingdom.
The youth called for a broad front to unite around opposition to becoming part of an external military alliance and imperialism (see full statement in appendix). Small flyers advocating the same course of action had been distributed inside the meeting earlier.
The People Before Profit party also distributed leaflets against joining NATO to people attending the meeting.
Indeed, it is hard to see why the presence of NATO in a part of Ireland should be so markedly missing from the panel’s speeches. Since it cannot have been accidental we must ponder what the rationale for its omission could have been.
Do those on the panel agree with the colonial occupation of a part of Ireland? That seems hard to believe, at least of some of them. Or perhaps they believe its discussion would be a distraction from the neutrality issue and if so, how can that be?
Or is it that they seek the support of sections of Irish society who are comfortable with the continued occupation and partition of Ireland? If so, they are seeking to build the movement against Irish membership of NATO in terms they think acceptable to timid sections of the middle class.
When resolute action becomes necessary or when reaction starts to bite, those sections will fade out of the anti-NATO movement. For practical as well as for ideological reasons, the campaign must appeal to the working class on an unashamedly anti-colonial and anti-imperialist basis.
Wherever the Government’s Forum has gone, it has encountered public opposition. It was picketed at its Cork and Galway venues, while inside the former, an anti-NATO banner was unfolded and many in the audience denounced the Government’s direction.
Even after the protesters had been hustled out, another stood up to denounce the chairperson’s speech before he too was manhandled away.
In Dublin Castle, venue for the Forum on Monday and Tuesday with a long history as administrative centre of British occupation, people against NATO, war or militarism and for Irish independence displayed banners and placards of protest and flew national flags.
AIA Tweet featuring National TV broadcaster RTÉ quoting Irish Government leaders’ ridiculous comments on the display of Irish Republican flags by protestors outside main pedestrian entrance to Dublin Castle in the city centre.
IN CONCLUSION
The general mass media silence on the Neutrality Who Cares meeting in Dublin and in downplaying the protests against the Forum at all its locations is part of the Irish Gombeen class drive to join NATO, despite the well-known opposition of the wide Irish population.
It is not forgotten that when tens of thousands thronged Dublin streets marching against triple water service taxation and privatisation, how the mass media reported participation merely by “several thousand” or even “hundreds”.
Nevertheless the comments of the President of the State and remarks by some journalists in the mass media do reveal that even in their own sections, the Gombeens do not have it all their own way. In the general population, however, the mood is clearly for non-militarisation of Ireland.
If the anti-NATO movement remains active and militant and adopts a generally broad anti-imperialist stance, going to most sections of society but especially to the working class, the Gombeens’ drive towards participation in PESCO and NATO will be decisively defeated.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Permanent Structured Cooperation is the strange name of this proposed European Union-wide military alliance.
2As described by Clare Daly.
3Syriza is a Left social-democratic coalition party that was elected to government in Greece in 2015 on a promise to implement necessary social and economic reforms in the teeth of EU and other imperialist resistance. However, once the EU and the ECB began to tighten the screws, the resistance of the party’s leadership disintegrated. Varoufakis had been appointed finance minister and to give him his due, he tried to rally his cabinet colleagues around a program of non-compliance with EU diktats but was unsuccessful. Although it remains the main social-democratic opposition in Greece, the party has continued to slide in popularity in elections since.
4Irish UN peacekeeping forces exceeding 12 personnel have been sent overseas with those three conditions satisfied to many conflicts around the world, most notably Lebanon, where they have suffered some casualties and to the Congo, where they suffered many.
5The Irish Government is a coalition of two traditional main oppositional parties, Fianna Fáile and Fine Gael, with the Green Party. The Labour Party does not have a noticeably different position on external military alliance and Sinn Féin recently dropped their decades-long opposition to Irish membership of NATO and the EU.
6Barrett is a Teachta Dála (member of the Irish parliament) and member of the People Before Profit left-wing political party. Frances Black, with a successful career in singing, is an independent Senator in the same parliament who has sponsored a Bill to ban products from the illegal Israeli settlements. The Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018 was passed in full by the Senate in 2018, and passed its first vote in Dáil Éireann in early 2019. It was then sent for detailed scrutiny in the Oireachtas Select Committee on Foreign & Affairs and Trade. This review took place over several months, hearing from expert testimony and input, and in December 2019 the Committee also voted in favour of the bill. Since then the Government is delaying bringing it forward.
7Although direct proof is not yet available, circumstantial evidence points towards US armed forces’ responsibility and journalist Seymour Hersh (Pullitzer Prize winner for exposing the US military massacre in Mai Lai, Viet Nam and its subsequent attempted cover-up) has confirmed the US military’s responsibility on the basis of inside knowledge from his contacts.
APPENDIX
Text of statement read out during Q&A period of Neutrality – Who Cares public meeting in Dublin 24 June 2023:
Anti Imperialist Action Ireland hold the revolutionary position that Britain, NATO and any other imperialist power is not welcome in Ireland. Anti-Imperialist Action have been active in opposing all forms of imperialism in Ireland and have been to the fore in opposition to NATO.
NATO is a great threat to Ireland and the Irish People, and in realisation of that, we urge and call on everyone here to vocally oppose the presence of NATO in Ireland whether you be an anti-war activist, a Socialist Republican, an anti-Fascist, a trade unionist, or just against the presence of a foreign power in Ireland, get behind this position and ensure that your sons and daughters aren’t sent off to be slaughtered in illegal wars of conquest.
While all the focus has been about the push towards NATO for the 26 Counties we cannot forget that the Six Counties are already occupied by NATO by virtue of Britain’s illegal occupation. Only a militant broad front of progressive forces all across the 32 counties can make a firm stand against NATO’s presence in Ireland. Everyone has a part to play in such a broad front which Anti-Imperialist Action and others are working hard to establish.
Reject NATO. Britain and NATO out of Ireland now!
SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION
Anti-Imperialist Action statement on line: https://anti-imperialist-action-ireland.com/blog/2023/06/21/the-free-states-imperialist-circus/?fbclid=IwAR27Y7HSZOJKgLe_oivFx828jHfUMFa4mNXADUY1jhFh1KaDsoxGmsxhN1Q
https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/e2a6b-consultative-forum-on-international-security-policy/
FOR A SOCIALIST REPUBLIC, AGAINST THE FREE STATE, ENGLAND AND NATO
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time main text: 6 mins.)
On Sunday participants in a 1916 Rising Commemoration organised by the Irish organisation Anti-Imperialist Action were harassed by police as they gathered to march to the Irish Citizen Army Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Six political police in plain clothes walked among those gathered beside Phibsborough shops demanding names and addresses of the participants, most of whom were fairly young. Four uniformed Gardaí also stood nearby and a Public Order Unit van parked at the cemetery entrance.
The participants declined to be intimidated and set off on their march, led by a lone piper playing Irish marching airs, followed by a colour party with different banners interspersed among the marchers, among which fluttered many flags.
Organisers had learned that the coach carrying members of the Republican Flute Band from Scotland that was to lead the parade had been prevented by police there from taking the ferry to Ireland.
Historical background
In 1916 a broad alliance the Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan, na Fianna Éireann and Hibernian Rifles1 took part in a Rising organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood against British rule in Ireland and against world war.
Due to a number of unfortunate circumstances, the leader of the Volunteers cancelled the Rising which however went ahead a day later than planned and was for the most part confined to Dublin, where a third of the numbers in the original plan took part and fought for a week.
The occupying British Army shelled the city centre from a gunship in the river Liffey and also from artillery on land. Explosions and resulting fires destroyed much of the city centre including the General Post Office in the main street, which had been the headquarters of the insurrection.2
After a week with the city centre including the GPO in flames, the rebel garrison evacuated to Moore Street where the following day, surrounded and vastly outnumbered, the decision was taken to surrender.3 A British military court passed death sentences on nearly a hundred prisoners.
All but fifteen of those sentences were commuted to long jail periods but the seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation4 and another seven were shot by British firing squad in Dublin, a fifteenth in Cork and after trial months later a sixteenth was hanged in Pentonville Jail, London.
At Easter 1917 Irish Republican and Socialist women commemorated the 1916 Rising; ever since then Irish Republicans and sometimes Socialists in Ireland and in many parts of the diaspora have commemorated the Rising, whether legally5 or otherwise, in jail or at liberty.
The War of Independence began in 1919 with many of the Rising’s survivors participating6.
The Parade on Sunday – local and national historical memory marked
At Cross Guns Bridge over the Royal Canal the parade halted and flares were lit in memory of events there in 1916.
On Easter Monday 1916 a small group of Irish Volunteers had marched from Maynooth along the canal bank to join the Rising in Dublin and found guarding the bridge two Irish Volunteers who advised them to wait until the following day to go into the city centre.
The Maynooth group spent the night in Glasnevin and the following day marched into the GPO, passing an empty Cross Guns Bridge on the way. Back towards Phibsborough, British artillery had blown a barricade and killed Seán Healy, a Fianna member at the Nth. Circular Road crossroads.
Later, the Dublin Fusiliers unit of the British Army blockaded the bridge, preventing people from crossing it in either direction. They shot dead a deaf local man who failed to heed their challenge because he did not hear it.
We Serve Neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland declared one banner carried last Sunday, Britain/NATO Out of Ireland another, This Is Our Mandate7, Our Republic and Collusion Is No Illusion, It Is State-Sponsored Murder were another two.
A large banner also declared alongside the image of James Connolly that Only Socialism Can Be the Solution for Ireland. Some organisations also carried their own banners, such as those of Dublin Independent Republicans, Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign and Irish Socialist Republicans.
Flags fluttering included those bearing the logo of the organising group Anti-Imperialist Action and others bearing the slogan “Always Anti-Fascist”, green-and-gold Starry Ploughs, a couple of Ikurrinak (Basque flags) and another two of Red with Hammer & Sickle in yellow.
At the Monument: speeches and songs
Glasnevin Cemetery (Reilig Ghlas Naíonn) covers over 120 acres in North Dublin city and is in two parts, each with Republican Plots separated by the Cabra Road and contains the graves of both famous and ordinary people.
On the north side there is also access to the Botanic Gardens, both on the south banks of the Tolka river. The imposing Monument to numerous Republican uprisings and the Irish Citizen Army Republican plot is on the south side, across the pedestrian bridge over the railway line.
A man chaired the event for Anti-Imperialist Action and spoke briefly, introducing people for readings (all of which were from James Connolly) and for orations. The presentations of these were evenly divided between men and women, three of those being of young people.
Three songs were sung: a woman sang The Foggy Dew (by Charles O’Neill) and Erin Go Bragh (by Peadar Kearney), while a man sang Patrick Galvin’s Where Is Our James Connolly? Two women read out pieces by James Connolly and another read out the 1916 Proclamation.
The words of the chairperson and of those giving orations were different but there were common themes: upholding the historic Irish spirit of resistance, the importance of the working class in history and the objective of a socialist Republic encompassing the whole of the Irish nation.
These words were balanced by denunciation of US and British imperialism and the colonial/ NATO occupation of the Six Counties by the latter; the Irish client regime; the special no-jury courts8 of both administrations in Ireland and repression by police forces and occupation army.
Also denounced were those political parties that had abandoned the struggle for the Republic and instead had become part of the colonial and neo-colonial administrations or, in the latter case, were on their way to becoming so.9
Floral tributes were laid by representatives of a number of announced organisations and then others came forward to lay floral tributes also. The colour party lowered flags for a minute’s silence in homage and salute before slowly raising them again and the piper played Amhrán na bhFiann.
The chairperson thanked all for attendance, listing organisations by name and cautioning all to stay close together as they left, due to the threatening presence of Gardaí and in particular the Public Order Unit. In the event, the celebrants exited the cemetery and dispersed without incident.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1A small unit, an armed wing of a split from the more socially conservative USA version of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, their participation in the Rising was notable.
2Photos of much of the destruction are available on the Internet and accessible by search browser.
3The terrace they occupied still stands and is the object of a historical memory and conservation struggle against property speculator plans approved by the municipal city managers and Government political parties (see smsfd.ie).
4A remarkable document, the text of which is available from many postings on the Internet.
5Irish women commemorated it in public in contravention of British WWI martial legislation in 1917 and 1918 and for decades the public commemoration of the 1916 Rising (and even the flying of the Irish Tricolour) was forbidden in the British colony of the Six Counties with attendant colonial police attacks on any attempt to do so.
6Sometimes inaccurately called “the Tan War” (reference to a special colonial police auxiliary force that became known as the “Black n’ Tans”), the war saw the birth of the IRA and lasted from 1919-1921. A British “peace” proposal opened deep divisions in the nationalist coalition and was followed by a Civil War 1922-1923, in which the pro-Treaty government and armed forces were armed and supplied by the British to defeat the Republicans in a campaign of repression and jailing, military actions, kidnapping and torture, murder of prisoners, assassinations and over 80 formal executions.
7Also displaying text referring to the First Dáil’s Democratic Program of 1919.
8The Diplock court in the colony and the Special Criminal Courts in the Irish State, political special courts in all but name, with low proof bar and abnormally high conviction rate and refusal of bail while awaiting trial.
9References to 1) the 1930s split from the Sinn Féin party, the Fianna Fáil political party that became a preferred Government party of the foreign-dependent Irish ruling bourgeoisie and 2) to the Provisional Sinn Féin party who endorsed the British pacification plan in 1998 and embarked on the road to becoming a party of reformist nationalism in the colony and is heading for neo-colonial (and neo liberal capitalist) coalition government at the moment.
THOUSANDS MARCH IN BILBAO AGAINST NATO, WAR AND FASCISM
Manifesto of the organisers: Askapena1, NATOren eta EBren Aurkako, Herri Ekimena and Bardenas Ya
(Translated from Castilian version by D.Breatnach)
(Reading time total: 6 mins. including Comment)
We began the previous manifesto talking about emergencies. We said that it was essential to reclaim an anti-imperialist and internationalist Euskal Herria2.
And that urgency, that need, is what has brought together comrades from all corners of Euskal Herria here today. Well done all of us!
Capitalism is going through a systemic crisis. They speak to us of a “extraordinary period” but the truth is rather that we find ourselves in a permanent crisis. As we have supposedly departed one, they have already placed us in another.
As of 2020, moreover, we have entered a phase of exceptionality in which States take advantage to impose economic, social and disciplinary policies that point towards a war scenario. Therefore, we cannot separate the capitalist decomposition from the increase in repression and censorship.
The rise of fascism that is taking place throughout Europe is a direct consequence of the bourgeoisie’s fear of losing the control it exercises over an increasingly exploited and angry population.
In the field of international relations, we are also witnessing the increasing loss of hegemony of the Empire that has controlled the world practically without opposition for the last 30 years.
The bloc led by the United States and NATO, far from accepting the end of its historical cycle, seems determined to increase armed conflicts. In addition to giving a boost to the arms industry, they intend to hinder the growth of emerging powers such as China or Russia.
For this phase of confrontation, they have finally achieved the support of the lobby led by Ursula Von der Layen, the “gardener” Borrell3 and company.
NATO and the EU, together with the Zionist entity that redoubles its attacks on the Palestinian people, are today the main props of this dark period in history.
As far as NATO is concerned, we have to understand that its role goes beyond being a mere military organization. It is true that it is mainly the army of the bourgeoisie (and it is demonstrating this in Donbass, as it has also demonstrated in Yugoslavia, Libya or Syria).
But it has the superior function of being the military arm against anyone who opposes the policies of capital. Today these translate into the over-exploitation and precarity of the working class (especially women and people of colour).
And changes in labour rights to deprive us of material concessions wrested through class struggle, change of laws to increase the repression of those struggles, etc.
A clear example of this is the latest General Budget of the Spanish State, supported by all the social democratic parties4.
The budget supports the deterioration of the material conditions of working peoples to benefit NATO, giving it more control capacity and recognizing their right to appropriate civil infrastructures to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie.
The support for these militaristic policies, at the dawn of a world war, is a real shame and demonstrates the total lack of commitment of the leadership of these parties to the future of the Working Peoples of the world.
In Euskal Herria we are well aware of what NATO represents:
in addition to the military training industrial estate in Las Bardenas or the military exercises carried out at the Araka base (Gasteiz), we have recently witnessed blatant support from the Government of Gasteiz for war industries such as SENER or SAPA.
Nor can we forget the historical support of NATO, through the Gladio network, to the Spanish and French States in their legal and illegal repression5 against the struggle in Euskal Herria.
If we add to this the economic and social exception measures imposed on us by Brussels (private pension funds, increase in the retirement age, dismantling of public health) …
It becomes increasingly clear to us that neither as a nation nor as working class do we have a future within NATO or the EU. The need to destroy these instruments of domination by the bourgeoisie, as well as the Spanish and French States, is more than evident if we aspire to build a future in freedom.
These are not good times, of course not. The situation is becoming more and more complicated throughout the world. And that is why we here today are calling for the activation in each town and each neighborhood of the anti-imperialist Euskal Herria.
Thirty-seven years ago we said “NO to NATO!”6
Today, we not only reaffirm this rejection, but we once again make an urgent call to join forces with the rest of the working peoples and oppressed nations of the world to stop the imperialist offensive promoted by this criminal organization along with its allies in the European Union.
From Chile to Donbass, passing through Laos, Mali or Vietnam…
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING PEOPLE!
AN ANTI-IMPERIALIST BASQUE COUNTRY!
COMMENT: A GIANT STEP FORWARD
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: One min.)
The estimated 2,000 turnout in support of this demonstration must have exceeded the expectations of the organisers and greatly encouraged them. Two thousand is not a huge number in the highly-politicised Basque Country, even with a total population of less than three million, north and south.
But this is a nation which has for decades been under a political leadership, the surviving members of which have now taken the road of pacificaction, of accommodation to capitalism and the Spanish and French states, of social-democratic ‘opposition’.
This movement had a united national political leadership, an armed guerrilla movement, a daily newspaper, a trade union and smaller affiliated groups; it had café/bars/social centres throughout the southern provinces.
Though in decline and fragmented with the leadership’s embracing of the pacification process (through which, unlike the Provos, they did not even gain the release of their hundreds of imprisoned comrades), it still exercises a heavy influence on politics in the Basque Country.
That is today the ambit of Otegi, EH Bildu and Geroa Bai and neither did their parties participate in Saturday’s demonstration nor as an individual any of senior responsibility in their structures, though certainly individuals in their social and cultural sectors were seen in the march.
In that context and after 25 years of pacification, 2,000 in open attendance is a giant step forward for the Basque resistance. ‘Tús maith, leath na hoibre‘, it is said in Irish: ‘A good beginning is half the work’ and indeed, a beginning is how the organisers view the event.
“Dissident” groups such as Amnistia ta Askatasuna, Amnistia Garrasia, Tinko and Jardun have arisen in the last decade and youth have been very prominent in these and others disparate groupings, which is important for any revolutionary movement.
The photos and videos of Saturday’s demonstration show older and mature faces too, veterans of the struggle and also those active during the pacification period and this too is important, for it brings a certain continuity to the movement and the awareness of mistakes made in the past.
More than 50 organisations in the Basque Country supported the call for this demonstration.
The road ahead will not be easy (when has it ever been for the Basque nation or the working class in general?) but a giant step forward has been taken.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Askapena is the internationalist arm of the Basque movement for independence and was responsible for a number of years for maintaining a network of Basque solidarity organisations (which in some cases it founded) in Mexico and across a number of European cities, including Belfast, Dublin and Cork. In 2011 five of its leading activists were arrested on charges of supporting the guerrilla organisation ETA, through Askapena’s solidarity with political prisoners. The five defended their right to work with prisoner and internationalist solidarity and were finally acquitted in 2016 earning much admiration for their stance (in stark contrast to the 47 activists in a number of prisoner support organisations who apologised for their activity in a Spanish court in September 2019 in exchange for non-custodial sentences for the majority).
2The current Basque name for their nation, “the Basque-speaking country”, replacing the former “Euskadi”, now used to refer only to the three-province ‘autonomous’ region of Bizkaia, Araba and Gipuzkoa.
3Josep Borrell, Foreign Minister of the EU Parliament who has described the EU as “a garden”. A Catalan member of the PSOE, hostile to Catalan independence who after five minutes stormed out of an English-language interview by Tim Sebastian on the German TV program Conflict Zone regarding the struggle in Catalonia.
4This is a reference not only to the social-democratic coalition government of the PSOE and Podemos but also of the Basque EH Bildu and Catalan ERC, the votes of which MPs supported the Budget.
5A reference not only to banning of parties, organisations and demonstrations but also to routine torture and the kidnapping and assassinations of the State-sponsored GAL of the 1980s.
6In the 1986 Referendum on whether the Spanish state should join NATO, the southern Basque Country gave a majority vote against, the only region to do so (though the vote against was high in some regions), the total vote being 52.54% in favour.
SOURCES
IRISH GOVERNMENT COMPLICIT IN FOREIGN MILITARY VIOLATIONS OF IRISH SOVEREIGNTY
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 6mins.)
The Irish State nominally rules over the 26-Counties land territory and its corresponding sea and airspace. Yet these have been and are repeatedly violated by the US and UK military with Irish ruling class secret collusion.
Now a Senator in Leinster House is seeking a hearing in the High Court to have the behaviour of successive Irish Governments in allowing UK military overflights declared unconstitutional.
The Sea, oh the sea … and the air!
As stipulated by international law, a sovereign state’s area includes the sea up to 12-miles from its border1 and therefore Ireland has a 12 mile territorial sea, a 200 mile exclusive economic zone before any additional claims are made to the continental shelf including the Rockall Bank.2
According to media report, a comprehensive survey of the Irish State’s territorial waters was not undertaken until 2014, i.e nearly a century after its foundation, which in itself is an indictment of an allegedly independent island state.
According to The Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) says potential territorial waters stretch to 898,442km sq – an area bigger than the oil rich North Sea.3
Through the decades when Ireland was a fishing nation and fresh fish was eaten weekly in most homes, Irish fishing boats had to compete with those from many other states fishing illegally inside Irish sea limits.
The Irish Navy was the only policing enforcement agency and through much of that time it had only three corvettes to patrol 12 miles out from the whole coastline of the Irish state. Subsequent EU legislation then left Irish seas more open to foreign-based fishing than it did to Irish boats.
The sovereign air space of a state corresponds to that over its land and 12-miles out to sea from its coastline.4
The use of Shannon airport by the US military in transit of troops, weapons and prisoners has long been known and protested.
Shannon Airport protests
Over the years there have been many highly-publicised protests over the US military use of Shannon, ranging from mass protests outside the airport buildings to deliberate trespass and even damage to a US warplane.
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2022/1220/1342962-shannon-stopovers-protest/
The response from the Government Minister to questions in Leinster House is always that the US is not violating Irish sovereignty, arms, military and prisoners are not being transported through there – because the US authorities have assured the Irish Government that they are not.
In February 2003 five members of the Catholic Workers’ Movement under the name Pitstop Ploughshares gained access to a hanger in Shannon Airport and damaged a USAF warplane there. They were Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Ciaron O’Reilly and Damien Moran.
They were jailed for up to 11 weeks awaiting committal for trial to which they were finally sent in Dublin Circuit Court in March and October 2005 on two counts of criminal damage, €100 and US $2.5 million. The faced a maximum 10 years if convicted.
Two aborted trials followed as one judge after another revealed their bias and partiality. In July 2006 after twelve days a mixed male and female jury acquitted the accused on all charges on the grounds that they had taken the action to save lives in Iraq and were justified in doing so.
In October 2012 dramatist, writer, former Republican prisoners and veteran activist Margaretta D’Arcy was arrested with Niall Farrell for scaling the fence and entering the grounds of Shannon Airport.
In June 2014 at the age of 80 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease D’Arcy was jailed for two weeks in Limerick Prison for refusal to pay the fine and remained defiant.
In July 2014 then members of the Irish Parliament Clare Daly and Mick Wallace5 used a rope ladder to climb over a perimeter fence and enter the grounds of Shannon Airport and made no attempt to avoid arrest.
They were both fined by a court for trespass in February 2015 and refused to pay the fine, eventually being taken to Limerick jail by Gardaí in December 2015 and released less than two hours later.
On 25 April 2017 anti-war activists Edward Horgan, a retired Irish soldier of 78, and civil servant Dan Dowling, 39, were arrested in the airport grounds and charged with criminal trespass and malicious damage (felt-tip graffiti slogan on a warplane).
In a very low-level publicity case in January this year (2023), a jury in Dublin found both guilty of trespass but not of criminal damage at the airport and were ordered to pay €5,000 each to a women’s refuge in Co Clare.
On St. Patrick’s Day 2019 two ex-USA military Ken Mayers and Tarak Kauff, now anti-war campaigners of the US chapter of Veterans for Peace, cut a hole in the airport’s perimeter fence, entered Shannon airfield with a banner and were arrested.
In May last year, a majority jury verdict found Mayers (85) and Kauff (80) guilty of interfering with the running of the airport but unanimously not of criminal damage to an airport perimeter fence and of trespassing the airport with the intent to commit an offence or interfere with property.
The judge fined the anti-war activists 5,000 euro each. Both had spent 11 weeks in prison and had been required to spend nine months in Ireland awaiting trial, despite clear indications that they had no intention of absconding and indeed were looking forward to the trial to publicise the issue.
Senator Craughwell’s case to the High Court.
Less well-known is that successive Irish governments have for decades by secret agreement permitted permitted UK air force planes to fly over Irish airspace and to interdict, i.e. force or shoot down other aircraft. This is what has led to Senator Craughwell’s taking a case to the High Court.
The Independent Senator maintains that although not the case of a formal military alliance, granting permission to fly over Irish State airspace, unless validated by referendum, is a violation of Ireland’s neutrality and sovereignty and is seeking a number of declarations from the Court.
Craughwell, who is a former member of the Irish Defence Forces and the British Army, as well as being an ex-President of the Teachers Union of Ireland, said that his belief in the existence of a secret agreement is based on a reply from then Taoiseach Brian Cowen to Enda Kenny in 2005.
The Senator seeks High Court declarations including that the agreement between Ireland and the UK allowing armed British military aircraft to intercept aircraft over Irish airspace amounts to an impermissible dilution and breach of Articles 1, 5, 6, 13, 15, and 28 of the Irish Constitution.
He also seeks a declaration that the Government’s failure to exercise control over Ireland’s territorial waters, airspace and exclusive economic zone breaches Article 5 of the Constitution which declares that Ireland is a sovereign independent democratic state.
Craughwell further seeks an order restraining the government from bringing in legislation to give effect to the agreement, unless it has been passed by a referendum.
Irish State Neutral?
Most Irish people mistakenly believe that Ireland’s military neutrality is specifically enshrined in Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish Constitution. However Article 29, section 4, subsection 9° underlines the neutrality of the Irish State in respect of a military force of the EU:
The State shall not adopt a decision taken by the European Council to establish a common defence pursuant to Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union where that common defence would include the State.6
“This was originally inserted by the 2002 amendment ratifying the Treaty of Nice and updated by the 2009 amendment ratifying the Treaty of Lisbon. An earlier bill intended to ratify the Treaty of Nice did not include a common defence opt-out, and was rejected in the first Nice referendum, in 2001.”7
It is fairly clear that the citizens of the Irish state are generally in favour of retaining Irish neutrality but there are elements within the state frequently trying to undermine that policy, chiefly the native Gombeen ruling class.
The Irish State has never been truly independent; it came into existence agreeing to the partition of the nation and in waging war against the forces of national liberation, during which it executed more Irish Republicans than the British had during the War of Independence.
Subsequently, the Irish State has been characterised as neo-colonialist, dominated firstly by British capital, then by the US and finally by the EU.
There are elements within Irish upper circles who long to join the EU military and political club while some others share a nostalgia for the British Empire and Commonwealth and the kind of supporting and sharing role to which John Redmond and his Irish Nationalist Party aspired.
Finally, there are of course elements in the Irish armed forces that are attracted by career advancement through joint military operations with other armed forces along with greater weaponry, such as would be available in a joint European armed force or as part of NATO.
Worryingly, Mícheál Martin during questions in Leinster House some months ago denied that the population would have to be consulted in referendum before the State could join some military alliance.
What now?
Whatever formal position the State may take on neutrality in future, it has been undermining it for decades and doing so in secret.
Why the secrecy? Presumably because the ruling class is aware that most Irish people want to remain militarily neutral and would wish to get rid of a government that was trying to ditch the neutrality policy.
Ireland needs to be independent of all imperialist alliances. Should the Gombeen ruling class succeed in committing the State’s armed forces to some military alliance, the choice is certain to be either imperialist NATO or imperialist EU.
In the latter case, it is entirely possible that Irish troops would be sent to suppress social or national risings in Europe – for example in Catalunya or the Basque Country, with Spanish troops being sent to quell mass protests in Ireland.
Or in either case, that Irish troops would become part of some joint imperialist force in Latin America, Africa or Asia.
Meanwhile the Gombeens, because of the State’s allowing US and UK military aircraft over Irish skies and in Shannon airport, are potentially painting a target for retribution on to the Irish population.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Except obviously where it intersects with another state’s borders (see Airspace – Wikipedia)
2Ireland’s territorial waters to be remeasured down to the centimetre – Irish Mirror Online
3Ibid.
4Airspace – Wikipedia and obviously this currently ends at the borders of the Six County colony, whose own 12-mile UK zone also ends where it meets the Irish borders on land, sea and air.
5Now both Members of the European Parliament.
7Ibid.
REFERENCES
Irish State’s territorial waters: Ireland’s territorial waters to be remeasured down to the centimetre – Irish Mirror Online
Irish State’s territorial airspace: Airspace – Wikipedia
Issue publicised in 2021 with reference back to document in 2016: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/secret-defence-pact-allowing-raf-jets-inirish-airspace-undermines-our-neutrality-says-td-berry-40526069.html
Current High Court challenge: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/senator-seeks-challenge-over-british-military-being-able-to-intercept-aircraft-in-irish-airspace-1438222.html
THE BLOOD-RED POPPY – NOT AT ALL ABOUT REMEMBRANCE
PART I
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Edited from a longer in-depth piece published in 2014 and divided into parts).
(Reading time main text: 8 mins.)
The dominant class in the UK and in some of the British Commonwealth will shortly be calling people to join in a cultural festival which they call “Remembrance” – but that’s not at all what it’s really about.
The organisation fronting this festival in the ‘UK’ is the Royal British Legion and their symbol for it (and registered trademark) is the Red Poppy, paper or fabric representations of which people are encouraged to buy and wear.
And in some places, such as the BBC for personnel in front of the camera, or civil servants in public, or sports people representing the UK, forced or bullied into wearing.1
In many schools and churches throughout the ‘UK’, Poppies are sold and wreaths are laid at monuments to the dead soldiers in many different places. The pressure to wear and display one of the symbols is intense and public figures declining to do so are metaphorically pilloried2.
Prominent individuals, politicians and the media take part in a campaign to encourage the wearing of the Poppy and observance of the day of remembrance generally and for a decade now, to extend the Festival for a yet longer period.
This alleged “Festival of Remembrance” includes concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and the military and veterans’ parades to the Cenotaph memorial in Whitehall, London, on “Remembrance Sunday”.
The Royal Albert Hall concert is replete with military uniforms, British Royals’ presence and “Poppy” symbols everywhere. The big Saturday evening concert starts and ends with the UK state’s anthem, God Save the Queen/ King played by military bands.
Tickets for the big event are restricted to members of the Legion and their families, and senior members of the British Royal Family (the reigning monarch, royal consort, Prince of Wales, the Duke of York and the Earl of Wessex). The event is televised.3
BUT WHAT IS IT ALL FOR?
We are told it’s for charitable purposes – the money raised from the sale of the “Poppies” and associated merchandise is to be used to support former military service people in need and the families of those killed in conflict.
We surely can’t object to that, can we? And isn’t putting up with the military and royal pomp a small price to pay for such charitable and worthwhile purposes?
Yet the main purpose of this festival and the symbol is neither remembrance nor charity but rather the exact opposite: to gloss over the realities of organised deadly violence on a massive scale, to make us forget the experience of the world’s people of war.
Worse, its purpose is to prepare the ground for recruitment of more people for the next war or armed imperialist venture – and of course more premature deaths and injuries, including those of soldiers taking part.
PARTIAL REMEMBRANCE – obscuring the perpetrators and the realities of war
The Royal British Legion is the overall organiser of the Festival of Remembrance and has the sole legal ‘UK’ rights to use the Poppy trademark and to distribute the fabric or paper poppies in the ‘UK’.
According to the organisation’s website, “As Custodian of Remembrance” one of the Legion’s two main purposes is to “ensure the memories of those who have fought and sacrificed in the British Armed Forces live on through the generations.”4
By their own admission, the purpose of the Legion’s festival is to perpetuate the memories only of those who fought and sacrificed in the British Armed Forces – it is therefore only a very partial (in both senses of the word) remembrance.
It is left to others to commemorate the dead in the armies of the British Empire and colonies which the British ruling class called to its support: in WWI, over 230,500 non-‘UK’ dead soldiers from the Empire and, of course, the ‘UK’ figure of 888,246 includes the upper figure of 49,400 Irish dead.5
The Festival of Remembrance excludes not only the dead soldiers of the British Empire and of its colonies but also those of Britain’s allies: France, Belgium, Imperial Russia, Japan, USA – and their colonies.
Not to mention thousands of Chinese, African, Arab and Indian labourers, mule drivers, porters and food preparation workers employed by the army.
No question seems to arise of the Festival of Remembrance commemorating the fallen of the “enemy” but if the festival were really about full “remembrance”, it would commemorate the dead on each side of conflicts.
German soldiers playing cards during WWI. Photos of Germans in WWI more readily available show them wearing masks and looking like monsters. (Photo sourced: Internet)
That would particularly be appropriate in WWI, an imperialist war in every aspect. But of course they don’t commemorate both sides; if we feel equally sorry for the people of other nations, it will be difficult to get us to kill them in some future conflict.
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN WAR
A real festival of remembrance would commemorate too those civilians killed in war (seven million in WWI), the percentage of which in overall war casualty statistics has been steadily rising through the century with increasingly long-range means of warfare.
Civilians in the First World War died prematurely in epidemics and munitions factory explosions as well as in artillery and air bombardments, also in sunk shipping and killed in auxiliary logistical labour complements in battle areas.
They died through hunger too, as feeding the military became the priority in food production and distribution and as farmhands became soldiers.
In WWII 50-55,000,000 civilians died in extermination camps or forced labour units, targeting of ethnic and social groups, air bombardments, as well as in hunger and disease arising from the destruction of harvests and infrastructure.6
Air bombardments, landmines, ethnic targeting and destruction of infrastructures continue to exact a high casualty rate among civilians in war areas: a Reuters study gave over one million killed by the war in Iraq and another study gave between 184,382 and 207,156 civilians killed in Iraq during the war and aftermath.7
That figure for Iraq does not include dead from pre-US invasion western trade sanctions (yes, economic sanctions frequently kill) or the 46,319 dead civilians in Afghanistan8.
The number of civilians injured, many of them permanently disabled, is of course higher than the numbers killed. Most of those will bring an additional cost to health and social services where these are provided by the state and of course to families, whether state provision exists or not.
Real and impartial “remembrance” would include civilians but not even British civilians killed and injured are included in the Festival of Remembrance, revealing that the real purpose of the Festival is to support the armed forces and their activities.
The 2014 slogan “shoulder to shoulder with our armed forces” underlines that purpose9 while contributing at the same time to a certain militarisation of society and of the dominant national culture.
The propaganda is more sophisticated this year: “Our red poppy is a symbol of both Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future” but “Poppies are worn as a show of support for the Armed Forces Community.”10
WEAPONS AND INJURIES
If the Festival were really about “remembrance”, they would commemorate the numbers of injuries and detail the various types of weapons that caused them.
But that might reflect unfavourably on the armaments manufacturers, who run a multi-trillion industry11 in whatever currency one cares to name, so of course they don’t. And if really concerned about death and injury in war, they would campaign to end imperialist war.
But then how else would the various imperial states sort out among themselves which one could extract which resources from which countries in the world and upon the markets of which country each imperial state could dump its produce?
So of course the Royal British Legion doesn’t campaign against war.
SANITISED HISTORY, MILITARY PROPAGANDA AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
Partial remembrance was indeed embodied in the song chosen by the British Legion to promote its Festival in the WWI centenary festival in 2014.
No Man’s Land, sung by Joss Stone, is actually a truncated version of the song of the same title (better known in Ireland as the Furey’s The Green Fields of France), composed by Scottish-raised and Australian-based singer-songwriter Eric Bogle.
The Joss Stone version contains the lyrics of the chorus as well as of one verse and one-half of another, omitting two and-a-half verses of Bogle’s song.
Some of the British media created a kind of controversy, at the behest of who knows whom, to have the British Legion’s song included top of BBC’s Radio One playlist. The song is reproduced in entirety below, with the lines sung by Joss Stone in italics and those she omitted in normal type.
I.
Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
(Chorus)
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
And did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
II.
Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
Although, you died back in 1916,
In that faithful heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Enclosed forever behind the glass frame,
In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?
(Chorus)
III.
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France;
There’s a warm summer breeze that makes the red poppies dance.
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There’s no gas, no barbed wire, there’s no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it’s still No Man’s Land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man.
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.
(Chorus)
IV.
Ah young Willie McBride, I can’t help wonder why,
Do those that lie here know why did they die?
And did they believe when they answered the cause,
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,
The killing and dying, were all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
(Chorus)
It’s easy to see why the Royal British Legion might shy away from the omitted lyrics, which would hardly encourage recruitment or support for war.
Interviewed on video, Joss Stone herself said how important it was to be “true to the lyrics” and that “the last thing one would want to do would be to disrespect the lyric”.
Incredibly, she and John Cohen, the record producer, both separately claimed that they had captured the essence of the song lyrics in the British Legion’s version.12
Although Bogle stated that he did not think the Joss Stone version glorifies war, he did say that it did not condemn it and was ultimately a sentimentalised version that went against the intention and central drive of the lyrics.
“Believe it or not I wrote the song intending for the four verses of the original song to gradually build up to what I hoped would be a climactic and strong anti-war statement,” Bogle said.
“Missing out two and a half verses from the original four verses very much negates that intention.” (apparently in a reply from Bogle to a blogger’s email and quoted in a number of newspaper reports).13
The truncation of the song and the removal in particular of the anti-war lyrics epitomises partial “remembrance” and stands as a metaphor for it, the production of a lie by omission and obscuration.
Sanitised history, military recruitment propaganda and public relations is what this “Remembrance” is about.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Five reasons people don’t wear poppies – BBC News
2Ibid.
3Description on Royal British Legion website in 2014 and matched by Wikipedia account of 2015 event
4Their website in 2014 and confirmed by Wikipedia for 2015.
5Irish in the British Armed Forces – Wikipedia
6World War II casualties – Wikipedia
7https://www.wired.com/2011/06/afghanistan-iraq-wars-killed-132000-civilians-report-says/#:~:text=At%20least%20132%2C000%20civilians%20have%20died%20from%2010,how%20many%20civilians%20have%20di%20in %20these%20wars. And Iraqi Civilians | Costs of War (brown.edu)
8Civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan (2001–2021) – Wikipedia
9The slogan of RB Legion in 2014.
10All about the poppy | Royal British Legion
11“In 2021, the military spending worldwide amounted to 2.11 trillion U.S. dollars. The United States accounted for 38 percent of total military worldwide spending” Defense spendng and arms trade – Statistics & Facts | Statista
12Videos containing quotations from Joss Stone and John Cohen about how they have stayed “true to the song” or “lyric” of No Man’s Land by Eric Bogle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez1WBJaZZ7U#t=10 and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rotXZFXJWo were active in 2014 but now appear to have been taken down.
13Eric Bogle: I don’t like Joss Stone’s cover of No Man’s Land, but I won’t sue | Joss Stone | The Guardian
SOURCES & USEFUL LINKS
Against wearing the Poppy: Five reasons people don’t wear poppies – BBC News
A Unionist from the Six Counties’ view on the Poppy as a measure of support for the United Kingdom: Fewer people are wearing poppies in Belfast, as unionist symbols in the public space are successfully demonised by republicans | Belfast News Letter
Red Poppy Symbol:
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/article/remembrance-poppy.htm
http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-involved/poppy-appeal
(see also Red Poppy and British Legion links)
British Legion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_British_Legion
and Albert Hall Remembrance Concert: http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/File:The Royal Albert Hall, London during the Festival of Remembrance MOD 45159095.jpg – Wikipedia
Videos containing quotations from Joss Stone and John Cohen about how they have stayed “true to the song” or “lyric” of No Man’s Land by Eric Bogle were accessed at the following in 2014 but now appear to have been taken down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez1WBJaZZ7U#t=10 and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rotXZFXJWoWhite Poppy symbol:
http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/index.html
WWI war dead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
Joss Stone’s truncated and rather awful version:
‘No Man’s Land’ – Joss Stone Ft. Jeff Beck – YouTube
Eric Bogle, composer of No Man’s Land on Joss Stone version: Eric Bogle: I don’t like Joss Stone’s cover of No Man’s Land, but I won’t sue | Joss Stone | The Guardian
Joss Stone butchers No Mans Land | urban75 forums
“Controversy” over Legion’s 2014 Festival promotional song by Joss Stone (truncation of Eric Bogle’s No Man’s Land):
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bbc-snubs-official-poppy-appeal-4600035
http://johnhilley.blogspot.ie/2014/11/poppy-appeal-and-royal-british-legions.html
Civilian war deaths due to war in Afghanistan:
Civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan (2001–2021) – Wikipedia
Civilian war deaths due to war in Iraq: Iraq conflict has killed a million Iraqis: survey | Reuters Iraqi Civilians | Costs of War (brown.edu)
Images WWI: Various sources accessed on the Internet
Arms trade: Defense spendng and arms trade – Statistics & Facts | Statista
Veterans for Peace (June 2011-August 2022): http://veteransforpeace.org.uk
Video Veterans for Peace at the Cenotaph:
Remembrance Sunday 2014 (performing song and poem): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t34dnIabsGw
2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsr15SZfVUw
Video and song On Remembrance Day from Veterans for Peace web page: (lists British modern armed conflicts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPLtSkILwvs#t=62
NB: Sadly Veterans for Peace has ceased to exist as an organisation
A DIFFERENT PICTURE SLIPS THROUGH THE PROPAGANDA
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 5 mins.)
We are being constantly reminded by the western press on a daily basis, quite rightly, of civilians being killed in the Ukraine conflict1. On the Ukrainian side. Somehow, the Ukrainian military never fire at the Russian side – or if they do, they somehow never manage to kill civilians.
Amazing, really, in a war which the media keeps telling us is ferocious.
The Russian side is rarely quoted but when it is, its statements are dismissed. They say that the Ukrainian military plant themselves among civilian housing and fire artillery from there. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they and anyway, the Ukrainian State denies it.
The Russian military are, according to the Ukrainian State, not so much careless about the the targets of their bombardment but deliberately aiming at civilian structures.
Why they would do that when, according to the same sources, they want to extend the Russian empire there, is not explained. It’s all about terrorism, according to Zelensky, the Ukrainian premier and media figure.
The Russian State story, not so easy to come by, is that they never target civilian areas deliberately, unless the Ukrainian military are using them to fire from – which according to the Ukrainian State, quoted without question by the western media, the Ukrainian military never do.
BOMBARDMENT AND CIVILIANS
Yesterday’s issue of Breaking News Ireland carried a very unusual photo. It was unusual because it was taken during actual military action, whereas we normally only get photos of damaged buildings and occasionally Ukrainian military standing firm.
But the photo was more unusual than that because it showed Ukrainian soldiers running for cover after a Russian artillery strike, naturally enough but a less-than heroic image for public consumption. The caption tells us it’s in a civilian area in the Donetsk region.
WAIT A MINUTE! In a civilian area? So the Ukrainian military were in a civilian area and got fired on by Russian artillery? Doesn’t that coincide with what the Russians have been saying? Were those Ukrainian military perhaps even firing from that area? We don’t know.
We don’t know because we get hardly any western media coverage from the actual battlefronts, just quotations from the Ukrainian State and, from time to time, commentary from US/ NATO sources. And never any detail from the Russian side.
If we want a more realistic picture, we have to go to sources banned or at least not promoted in the West.
One of those sources is Patrick Lancaster, reporting on the war. In a recent video, he interviewed wounded civilians in a hospital in Izium, Kharkiv region, an area the Ukrainian military left a couple of days earlier and which is now under Russian military occupation.
So refreshing to watch.
Some interviewees blame the Russian State, some blame the Ukrainian State, some seem impartial or keep their own counsel – as one might expect, really, if one thought about it past the propaganda line, which is that everyone there — except the “Russian separatists” — blames the Russians.
And actually, the Breaking News article reported the reluctance of many to leave Sloviansk and Kramatorsk as they are being publicly encouraged to do by the Ukrainian Donetsk Governor, presumably as those areas are going to be pounded by artillery (but by Ukrainian or by Russian?)
This too is interesting, because even anti-Ukrainian State or pro-Russia interviewees (not always the same thing) interviewed by Patrick Lancaster in the Izium town, said that the Russian artillery had hit their town “very hard”.
But then some also stated that Marchenko, the pro-Ukrainian Mayor of the city had announced publicly that the city had been evacuated. All lies, according to one, “only five buses here …. and 50 taxis (but) from Kramatorsk.”
So if the advancing Russian military believed that only Ukrainian military remained in the city …..?
This is a military conflict and of course both sides are firing and, as well as soldiers, civilians are being inevitably killed on both sides. When that happens, is it likely that either side is killing civilians deliberately?
Certainly less likely by the Russians in the Donetsk area, which is a largely Russian-speaking region that has been attacked by Ukrainian right-wing military since that state’s abrupt change of government in 20142.
By the Ukrainian military side, probably more likely on the basis of the previous eight years, or at least of being more careless.
The article I’ve quoted showed a range of attitudes to the call of Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukrainian State’s Governor of the Donetsk region, for civilians to leave and to head into Ukrainian State-held territory — and also of different attitudes to the forthcoming Russian occupation.
Some are going, including a teacher of Russian, which is interesting, because another doesn’t want to go precisely because of the anti-Russian-speakers attitude of the State (and even more so of some of the Ukrainian military).
Some just don’t want to give up their homes and/ or be jobless (or elderly without support) in Ukrainian State territory. Some think they’ll be ok under the Russians while others think they’ll be no better off on the Ukrainian State side.
So, naturally enough a mixed picture but certainly very different to the one being projected day in, day out by the western media. How this article and photo slipped through that blockade is certainly curious.
DOES IT MATTER?
But at the end of the day, does it really matter much to us here in Ireland whether we are being subjected to inaccurate propaganda about the conflict in Ukraine?
Well, if that conflict was sparked by the expansion towards Russia’s borders of the NATO military alliance3, then it does.
If that conflict is part of the shaping up by US/NATO for a war against Russia and China (and possibly India), then it certainly does. Not just because all of those on both sides are nuclear powers and radiation can end up anywhere.
But also because the ruling elite of the British colony in Ireland is part of NATO and the ruling class of the Gombeen state is trying to push it into NATO — or at least into an EU military alliance, which would of course soon enough line up with NATO.
I don’t believe either side in this conflict without proof and analysis. But I do resent the completely one-sided propaganda coming from the western media. Maybe it’s the same in Russia with their own propaganda.
Maybe, but isn’t it the boast of the West that their democracies are superior, with free speech and press?
And if the western media is following the same propaganda line in its reporting out of common interest with US/NATO and EU, is the end result any different from the media in Russia saying what they are told to say?
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Would that they would equally well inform us of those beling killed by the Saudi proxy war in the Sudan or by the numbers of migrants being killed on a regular basis as they try to access safety or just a better life in western states – the same states that are usually responsible for their plight in the first place.
2Yes, eight years prior to the Russian invasion. On the rare occasions when the western media refers to this (they did in the Breaking News Ireland article) it is always portrayed as a problem caused by “pro-Russian separatists” without recording that those areas were attacked as Russian-speaking by Ukrainian fascist and far-Right military units, including the Azov Battalion and the people organised themselves in defence, then received Russian supplies and now, eight years later, a Russian invasion. The origin of the Crimea situation is a similar story.
3For those who think this is a ridiculous claim, type “NATO states in Europe map” into a search engine. Also look up “Minsk Agreement”.
SOURCES
Breaking News Ireland report: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ukraine/why-should-i-leave-some-ukrainians-refuse-to-flee-areas-caught-up-in-war-1334032.html
Patrick Lancaster reporting from Izum, Kharkiv region, 120 Km/ 75 miles southeast of Kharkiv city (random civilian interviews + civilians wounded in hospital): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iFv5jxInOc
From Sirotino, Luhansk, now controlled by Russian an Luhansk People’s Militia (interviews with residents): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRKNBYqb5DQ
Patrick Lancaster, December 2016 (yes, SIX YEARS AGO) in Luhansk People’s Militia trench, under Ukrainian shelling (breaking Minsk Agreement): https://youtu.be/DAo7go-4l0g
Senior Irish politicians thinking about joining a military alliance: https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2022/06/08/ireland-would-not-need-referendum-to-join-nato-says-taoiseach/
rebelbreeze 
