COVENEY’S CALL TO ARMS

EUROPAWNS

Ireland is a pawn in the stuttering euro experiment, a minor piece that can be sacrificed at any time in the greater game that has been played out for many decades between Germany and France in their drive for a federal ‘United States of Europe’-style EU.

Full European Monetary Union (EMU) is an integral part of that drive, all new entrants to the EU mandated to join the euro, all current members (with the exception of the UK and Denmark) mandated to join eventually. With EMU comes full European Fiscal Union, European Banking Union and every other economic union you care to mention, all national monetary, fiscal and banking policy surrendered.

Within that union Ireland is insignificant, dispensable – witness the threats before the Troika came to town, witness further what happened to Greece, with a similar-sized economy to our own but twice our population.

Despite the fact that already we have grievously suffered as a direct consequence of joining the new currency (and we aren’t alone, with five Eurozone going bankrupt, all the rest bar Germany with massively increased debt/GDP ratio), our current government sees no problem with this drive to ever-closer union, more than willing to see us subsumed into this new EU.

For those of us who would prefer to see Ireland as an independent republic among equals in a scaled-back EU, that’s a serious concern.

EU-PAWNS

Of even more concern, however, is what emerged last week, the invocation by the France of the EU Treaty clause 42.7, the mutual defence clause, and our government’s response to it.

Because of our long-held and widely respected policy of neutrality, we have an exemption under that clause, yet this government has opted to send Irish troops to the al Qaeda hotspot of Mali, to enable France to free up its troops there. This is a dangerous development, really dangerous.

What happened in Paris last Friday week is deplorable.

What happened in Beirut a few days before that is deplorable.

What happened in Kenya this year, in Nigeria, is deplorable.

What’s happening right now in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine is deplorable.

Indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel, attacks on individuals, is deplorable.

None of those statements in any way takes from the others – there are so many atrocities happening right now across the globe, carried out in the name of one god or another, fiscal or physical or theological, all deplorable.

Ireland, however, does NOT need to be sucked into this.

A KALEIDOSCOPE IN BLACK-AND-WHITE

What’s happening in the Middle East right now is being presented to us in very simple and stark terms – it’s good versus evil, a clash of civilisations, them against us.

It is not.

The Middle East may not be the kaleidoscope of people and religions and attitudes that we enjoy in Europe but neither is it a monolith, one people with one idea and Israel apart (as it is), one religion. There is, and always was, diversity, colour, tolerance, friendship, hospitality, music, laughter, song.

What’s happening now though, the destruction of the Middle East, is all about the oil, about control of the fields, the production, the pumping, the pipelines. 

Since the early 1900s, Britain and/or the US has been toppling regimes in this region, replacing them with those whom they deemed supportive of UK and US needs. How those puppet regimes treated their own people? Irrelevant. Does anyone seriously believe that the western ‘allies’ gave a damn about the everyday fate of ordinary Libyans under Ghaddafi, or ordinary Syrians under Assad, any more than they gave a curse about Iraqis under Saddam Hussein or Iranians under the Ayatollahs?

This isn’t conjecture, this isn’t conspiracy, this is recorded fact. Almost a century before the recent ill-fated western-backed ‘Arab Spring’, in 1916 we had the western-backed ‘Arab Uprising’ against the Ottoman Empire, but when it was all over, Britain and France carved up what was left between them. Ever since then, the US a late but most enthusiastic arrival to the party, they have all played their own games in that unfortunate area.

BUSH FIRE RAGES ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST

The current turmoil was started by George Bush Snr in 1992 with the first invasion of Iraq, continued by his son and his allies in 2003, subsequently added to with orchestrated chaos right across the region. 

Many of those on the ground – probably most of those on the ground – are fighting what they see as a religious war. That’s what those who are pulling the strings want them to think, that’s what they want all of us to think, that’s what our own government now seems to think. But, just as with Ireland and the euro, they are pawns in a much bigger and much dirtier game, WE are pawns in a much bigger and much dirtier game.

We need to step back from this and have a good, hard look. By all means offer all the non-military help we can to the people of Paris and of France, to any other of the innocents in all this. But Mali, al Qaeda, troops? An increase in our defence budget to include fighter jets? 

Where are Enda Kenny and this government leading us, exactly???

A cartoon from 1916, a few decades before the US became involved

For further reading:

The Guardian, Iraq was really about the oil;

The Spectator: The wars that are really about the oil;

Or if you want to off mainstream and for a really big read, Blowback Paris: Exxonomics 102.