Comrades this afternoon took part in a peaceful vigil in Dublin today. The Main speakers being Róisín McAleer, from Social Rights Ireland, Fionn Wallace and Former MEP’s Clare Daly and Mick Wallace.
Fionn Wallace said as follows: “Here in Ireland we have an utterly craven and subservient political and media class.
In response to the genocide in Gaza and the unprovoked US attacks on Iran, all the Irish establishment can offer is hang wringing and weak words.
Other conflicts and sites of genocide and ethnic cleansing are not even mentioned. The suffering in Syria and Sudan is invisibilised, hidden from view.
The million dead in the Ukraine war is not a topic for polite discussion.
Meanwhile we are materially complicit in the crimes of the US-led war machine, through the use of Shannon airport and our airspace to ferry troops and weapons to imperialist wars and to aid in the commission of genocide.
Unbridled war and aggression are normalised by the establishment and media with barely an attempt to justify it.
The expansion of wars and military aggression is normalised.
The mass slaughter of men, women and children is normalised.
Genocide is normalised.
The unprovoked bombing of sovereign nations is normalised.
Listening to the mainstream media and our political leadership you would think
stealing billions of euros from hospitals, schools, housing and pensions in order to enrich the arms industry and the merchants of death is only natural.
This is the so-called rules-based international order on full display.
Where the United States invent the rules and the rest of the world follows orders.
The US and NATO are not only carrying out a genocide, they are driving us full throttle into world war 3.
The new US undersecretary for defence policy is a guy called Elbridge Colby. He is crystal clear about where all this going. The US must focus on the real threat to American hegemony, China. That means getting like-minded partners like the EU to build up their defense capacities and look after their own spheres of influence in order to free up the US to go after China and crush their rise.
This plan will affect everyone on earth. War and instability is already causing a cost of living crisis, mass displacement, and worsening the climate crisis. And now they want to invest colossal sums in rearmament that will be paid for by the working class. They want to beef up recruitment all across the EU, targeting poor and disadvantaged areas so that the working class will do pay with their lives too.
The EU published a white paper on defence policy earlier this year called Defence readiness 2030 that is in essence a programme to get the EU ready to start a major ground war by 2030. This is the vision for the future. Death and destruction and the end of the social contract. A war economy and the militarisation of society.
What is the Irish government doing in response to this push to war and militarisation? They are busy ripping up the last vestige of Irish neutrality, the triple lock.
They are looking at this lawlessness from the US and NATO and their imperialist aggression and their plan of action is to ram through legislation that will take away the necessity for a UN mandate for the deployment of Irish defense forces abroad.
They will have Ireland fighting alongside NATO as they commit genocide and stoke war and instability across the globe.
These comprador tools of empire do not understand the first thing about the concept of sovereignty, independence, or democracy.
There is no democratic mandate to remove the triple lock. The triple lock is a restriction won by the Irish people through our rejection of the Nice treaty because of its threat to Irish neutrality. A concept that has the overwhelming support of the Irish people.
Our sons and daughters will be coming home mutilated and in body bags because Fainna Fail and Fine Gael care more what their imperialist masters in the EU and NATO want than what the people they are supposed to represent think.
It is our duty to do everything in our power, through direct action and protests, raising awareness, and making ourselves a nuisance, to show the leadership we will not let them signg Ireland up to imperialist wars, we will not let them destroy Ireland’s legacy of diplomacy and peace. We will not let them throw in Ireland’s lot with the same genocidal imperialist forces that colonised, and partitioned our country, and still occupy the 6 counties today.”
