Irish plan anti-war protest at Shannon Airport on December 6.

More than 100,000 United States troops have been shuttled to Iraq through Shannon Airport during 2003 alone. The Irish anti-war movement believe that this effectively makes the nation's primary international airport effectively a U.S. military base.

''Bringing Protests at Shannon to a New Level''
The Re-Birth of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience in Ireland

''What is planned for Saturday, December 6th, is designed to bring protest at Shannon to a new level. Before deciding whether you intend to participate, take some time to examine the context. Shannon airport is effectively a US airbase, with 100,000 troops shuttled through in 2003 alone. In September, 141 US military flights landed at the airport bringing through 10,000 armed soldiers. Moreover, documents revealed in Edward Horgan�s court challenge indicate that Patriot missiles have been transported through the airport. Bluntly put, an Irish civilian airport has been integrated into the US war machine and is helping to kill innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.indymedia.ie/index.php

Especially when the Irish show their well-known contempt for tyranny. Go on, ya boys!

:beer:
dbt

Surely, this must be a new thing. Since the Irish nation sat out WWII and maintained somewhat pro-German feelings in their neutrality.

Yes, many individual Irish served in the British army, but their nation showed no such contempt for tyranny.

Are you mad or just uninformed? Have you read no history before WWII.

Declaration of the United Irishmen - 1791

In the present great era of reform, when unjust Governments are falling in every quarter of Europe; when religious persecution is compelled to abjure her tyranny over conscience; when the rights of man are ascertained in theory, and that theory substaintiated by practice; when antiquity can no longer defend absurd and oppressive forms against the common sense and common interests of mankind; when all Government is acknowledged to originate from the people, and to be so far only obligatory as it protects their rights and promotes their welfare; we think it our duty, as Irishmen, to come forward, and state what we feel to be our heavy grievance, and what we know to be its effectual remedy. We have no national Government -- we are ruled by Englishmen, and the servants of Englishmen whose object is the interest of another country, whose instrument is corruption, and whose strenght is the weakness of Ireland; and these men have the whole of the power and patronage of the country as means to seduce and subdue the honesty and spirit of her representatives in the legislature.

Such an extrinis power, acting with uniform force, in a direction too frequently oppisite to the true line of our obvious interents, can be resisted with effect solely by unanimity, decision and spirit in the people -- qualities which may be exerted most legally, constitutionaly, and effecaciously by that great measure essential to the prosperity, and freedom of Ireland -- an equal representation of all the people in Parliament. We do not here mention as grievances the rejection of a place-bill, of a pension bill, of a responsibility-bill,, the sale of peerages in one house, the corription publicly avowed in the other, nor the insensible to their enorimity, but that we consider them as but symptoms of that mortal disease which corrodes the vitals of our constitution, and leaves to the people in their own government but the shadow of a name.

Impressed with these sentiments, we have agreed to form an association to be called "The Society of United Irishmen", and we do pledge ourselves to our country, and mutually to each other, that we will steadily support and endeavour, by all due means, to carry into effect the following resolutions:

FIRST RESOLVED-- That the weight of English influence on the Government of the country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance which is essential to the preservation of our liberties and the extension of our commerce. SECOND -- That the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed is by a complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in Parliament. THIRD -- That no reform is practicable, efficaciious, or just, which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persiasion. Satisfied, as we are, that the intestine divisions among Irishmen have too often given encouragement and impunity to profligate, audacious and corrupt administrations, in measure which, but for these divisions, they durst not have attempted, we submit our resolutions to the nation as the basis of our political faith. We have gone to what we conceive to be the root of the evil. We reformed, everything is easy; without it, nothing can be done. And we do call on, and most earnestly exhort, our countrymen in general to follow our examlple, and to form similar societies in every quarter of the kingdom for the promotion of constitutional knowledge, the abolition of bigotry in religion and politcis, and the equal distribution of the rights of men through all sects and denominations of Irishmen. The people, when thus collected, will feel their own weight, and secure that power which theory has already admitted to be their portion, and to which, if they be not aroused by their present provocation to vindicate it, they deserve to forfeit their pretensions for ever.

Care to address my comments about Germany, Hitler and WWII? Or just how Ireland continued its neutral course during the Cold War?

For the record, the little bit of non-black blood I know I have is Irish and I am proud of it. However, I am not proud of Ireland's behavior in WWII.

Now a quick question, is that something Wolfe Tone wrote? It's quite good.

situation had nothing to do with admiring Hitler. They hate the english. It's a conflict of interest. Same with the cold war. They hate the english and with good reason. Everything must be seen in that context.

that this wasn't a long forgotton hatred that prevented Ireland from entering the war. Many of the people running the Republic during WWII were the very ones who had fought the English for Ireland's freedom. If would have been very difficult for them to do a 180 and go to England's defense.

And not a good one. The world knew what Hitler was and Ireland still took a pass. Even the U.S. which hated communism aided the Soviets against Hitler.

Sometimes you have to make tough choices.

And lets not put ourselves above the Irish my friend. Three million lives have been lost since 1998 in Congo. What have you done about it. Is this genocide any less than Hitler's? Go talk on your cell phone and play your video games and type on your computer. Coltan from Congo is running them all. Where is your contempt for tyranny?

I lobby my representatives to aid ALL of Africa. We have abandoned Africa because it is not militarily significant and not "socially important" to most Americans.

America has not abandoned Africa.
The failure of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to express even the most perunctory regret over the assassination of Congo President Laurent Desire Kabila last year, betrays how implicated Wastington is in this latest outrage against the most important country in central Africa. Washington's silence is even more glaring considering that its foreign policy experts are all aware that African people view the secret intelligence agencies of the US government, which work closely with corporations seeking vast fortunes in the region, as the probable authors of this crime.

George Bush Sr., father of the president, even had an intimate connection with one of these plundering corporations. (Barrick Gold Mining) But this is not mentioned in the commericial media, as usual, go even further than indifference to insult the fallen head of state, while speculating on the breakup of Congo. The US media are today blaming Kabila for failing to bring peace to the Congo. This is a monstrous charge, since Washington is largely responsible for the war that has crushed the Congolese people's hopes for a better life since the overthrow of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The Congo governmetn has been trying to expel Rwandan and Ugandan troops that invaded eastern Congo in August 1998. The US has secretly supported them and their occupation of the area of fabulous mineral wealth.

The invaders, on the other hand, have been supplied with high-tech weaponry and communications and transportation equipment by their imperialist backers. There is evidence of military training and coordination from the Pentagon and the involement of mercenary companies, including MPRI of the US, Executive Outcome of South Africa, and Sandline of Britian.

What US corporations wanted from Kabila, and what he refused to give, was outright control over an area that contains some of the world's most important deposits of gold, diamonds, cobalt, manganese, uranium, copper, zinc, germanium, silver, lead, iron and tungsten.

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila.htm

by yourself.
Africa is extremely militarily significant.

War in Congo has claimed over THREE MILLION LIVES since 1998 alone. Innocent civillians have been brutalized, massacred, raped and tortured by all parties to the conflict. It began with the US - sponcered invasion of Rwanda in 1994, and followed with two subsequent US sponsored invasions of Congo (in 1996 and 1998). These are not the simple "civil wars" declared by the western press. Even the Rwanda "genocide" (in 1994) has to some extent been manufactured in the American mind to serve the mythology of tribalism. Meanwhile, Amercian green berets and military advisors and Pentagon officals have participated from blackboard to battlefield.

Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, Rwanda and Congo/Zaire are wars where factions are armed with US made weapons (M16s, SAMs tanks); where US covert forces undertake brutal secret missions and psychological operations; accountable to no one; behind entrenched in subverting democracy and orchestrating chaos that is expediently advertised as such by our dubious media. At the roots, however these are wars like any other war.

Essential to the superalloys and weaponry of the global economy of war are Congo's cobalt, uranium and columbium tantalite (coltan). Cobalt is elemental to nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, tank armor, intustrial furnaces and aerospace, and for 50 years the CIA has insured the free flow of cobalt out of Congo. The human devastation in poverty, disease, torture and massacres is uncountable. Adjectives do not describe the suffering. Similarly, coltan is essential for cellphones and childrens playstations, and companies like Sony and Nokia have been cashing in on this windfall paid in human blood.

http://www.audarya-fellowship.com/showflat/cat/WorldNews/48471/3/collapsed/5/o/1

No Man Can Find The War by Tim Buckley

Photographs of guns and flame
Scarlet skull and distant game
Bayonet and jungle grin
Nightmares dreamed by bleeding men
Lookouts tremble on the shore
But no man can find the war

Tape recorders echo scream
Orders fly like bullet stream
Drums and cannons laugh aloud
Whistles come from ashen shroud
Leaders damn the world and roar
But no man can find the war

Is the war across the sea?
Is the war behind the sky?
Have you each and all gone blind:
Is the war inside your mind?
Humans weep at human death
All the talkers lose their breath
Movies paint a chaos tale
Singers see and poets wail
All the world knows the score
But no man can find the war

Just ran agross this researching something else.
The Irish government agreed to a request from the Secretary General for a force of Irish troops to serve with UN forces in Congo.
The experience showed that Irish troops were as well trained and suited to peacekeeping as any other nationality.
The Congo operation marked the first opportunity for the Irish Defense Forces to serve alongside armies from other nations.
http://sunset.ennis.ie/article.php3?id_article=105

None of the people I know over there approve of it,and I think they are really getting sick of it.
I hope it is very well attended.

If only to raise a pint (or two or three) and join my friends in protest! :toast: :toast: :toast:

Go Ireland!

Tavern in Sugarhouse Entry, off High St., Belfast. We can meet Thomas McCabe and discuss the restoration and preservation of our liberty. Maybe we'll get arrested for helping publish The Morning Star and writing seditious material. It's not that far away, only 200 years ago. I think DU is alot like Peggy's.

Thomas McCabe, the noted radical, and in 1776 vigorously opposed plans by the city's merchants to fit out ship for the transportation of slaves; the proposal was dropped.

T'was hard the woeful word to frame
T'was worse the tie that bound us
But harder still to bear the shame
Of foreign chains around us
And so I said the mountain glen
I'll seek it morning early
And join the bold United Men
While soft wind shakes the barley

While sad I kissed away her tears
My fond arms around her flinging
The foeman's shot burst on our ears
From out the wild wood ringing
The bullet pierced my true love's side
In life's young spring so early
And on my breast in blood she died
While soft wind shakes the barley

Then blood for blood without remorse
I've taken to Oulard Hollow
I laid my true love's clay cold corpse
Where I full soon will follow
And 'round her grave I wander here
Now night and morning early
With a breaking heart when e'er I hear
The wind that shakes the barley

:toast:

Interesting anecdote about McCabe. Thanks.

... :beer: