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What you want to say – 11 July 2018 July 11, 2018

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. Gearóid Clár - July 11, 2018

This was doing the rounds lately (sorry for thejournal link):

http://www.thejournal.ie/us-army-uniform-shannon-4117778-Jul2018/

I know the person who took the picture. There was some interest from political groups to be the ones to publicise it.

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EWI - July 12, 2018

The attitude (and no doubt correct it is) would be that the US is in ultimate control of Shannon.

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2. lcox - July 11, 2018

My new book “Why Social Movements Matter” is out on Monday – a short and hopefully readable essay for general readers, the left and students / academics. Hoping it’ll meet with approval here too!

It’s 30% off with code WSMM18 which should make it around €14.20, via https://www.rowmaninternational.com/book/why_social_movements_matter/3-156-a21ddec8-7526-464b-a10e-0f3c2a38dd7f.

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GW - July 11, 2018

Looks like a good read – tell me is the ebook version burdened with DR? I like to be able to copy out of books into notes, emails etc. and DRMed readers usually prevent this.

So one has to go through the time-wasting bull of photographing a screen, doing OTR etc. etc.

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lcox - July 11, 2018

I don’t know, I’m afraid! But will ask.

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lcox - July 11, 2018

The publishers say this:

“We do have DRM enabled, via Adobe Digital Editions. Admittedly, DRM tends to put a damper on copy and pasting. Adobe Digital Editions does allow you to make notes etc., but only within the auspices of the app itself: https://helpx.adobe.com/digital-editions/kb/notes-highlights-underlining-digital-editions.html

If the eBook is available from other vendors like Apple or Google they sometimes allow slightly more flexibility with copying (they give you a quota, so you can copy a certain amount of a book), but I don’t think any eBook with DRM will allow you to copy much.”

Sorry about that.

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WorldbyStorm - July 11, 2018

Not to worry, that looks great lcox!

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3. ar scáth a chéile - July 11, 2018

Claude Lanzmann died last week. He was blinkered on Israel and its crimes against the Palestinians – but his “Shoah” is a staggering work

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Fergal - July 11, 2018

Absolutely stunning piece of work.. hugely impressive documentary..Polish farmer explaining himself vis a vis the Shoah on his doorstep ‘if my neighbour cuts his finger, I don’t cry’

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4. Fergal - July 11, 2018

Anybody hear about a ‘wave’ of attacks against butcher’s in Switzerland ..in Geneva and Nyon? Windows smashed in and graffiti on walls. The second wave of the ALF(animal liberation front)? In a you couldn’t make it up moment no halal butchers have been visited as they are part of a community that has been stigmatised enough!! How to sectarianise animal rights… divide and divide as opposed to divide and conquer.. ‘christian’ meat is more impure than ‘muslim’ meat..wonder what your average cow makes of all this??

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Fergal - July 11, 2018

Butchers’ … plural better here, isn’t it?

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Gearóid Clár - July 11, 2018

Jaysis!

I’m near there at the moment for work – have colleagues living in Nyon and Geneva, butthey never mentioned it. Could you share a link, please?

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Fergal - July 11, 2018

Hence my question! Can’t do links yet but if you type in ‘ ma rts deux nouvelles boucheries’ to your search engine you ‘ll get an article in French’ think it’s a French speaking radio station.A French friend told me about it last week. I have I idea if this is fake news or so undercover cop work… are( a tiny group of) vegans this dumb?

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Fergal - July 11, 2018

No idea.. some undercover.. oops!!

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GW - July 11, 2018

It’s a passing-out final assignment for recruits to the Genevan equivalent of the Special Branch.

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Fergal - July 11, 2018

😊😊😊!!!

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GW - July 11, 2018

Short Google in German threw up one hit in May. But I didn’t put much effort into it.

Sounds to me like a typical AdF-style misinformation campaign. What could be better – an (invented) attack on the Christian culture of consuming sausages! Refugees are clearly to blame.

Direct action animal liberationists are some of the groups most often and easily infiltrated.

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Joe - July 11, 2018

I read something somewhere recently about butchers in France looking for more protection from the police against this kind of thing.

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5. Paddy Healy - July 11, 2018

Told you So 12 Days Ago!!!
Subject: Could Nato Split? Letter To Media By  Paddy Healy 29-06-2018

DEFEND IRISH NEUTRALITY

I have been pointing out for some time that the movement towards a European army would allow EU to bypass Nato in many things thus removing any US veto on EU military initiatives. In international inter-imperialist politics-trade wars, real wars, surrogate wars etc-no alliance should be ruled out. Remember the Stalin-Hitler Pact!

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6. Tomboktu - July 11, 2018
7. GW - July 12, 2018
Joe - July 12, 2018
EWI - July 12, 2018

The north is a different country.

Oh, please.

There were loyalist riots in Dublin on Armistice Day a hundred years ago (they tried to burn the Mansion House, Liberty Hall and other buildings down). ‘This too will pass.’

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8. Paddy Healy - July 12, 2018

Body Bags to Baldonnell ! Manfred Weber, Varadkars European Boss, Visits Dublin (to support Irish position on Border-Would you believe???)
“IN the long term we have got to work for a European Army” Manfred Weber MEP (Germany) Leader of European Peoples Party (including Fine Gael) in European Parliament
From Luke Ming Flanagan(Ireland) MEP on Twitter 13/06/2018
Defend Irish Neutrality https://wp.me/pKzXa-Ut
Earlier
EU Council President Donald Tusk, Member of European Peoples Party (including Fine Gael) stated that: “With Friends Like Trump Who Needs Enemies—- In order to be the subject and not the object of global politics, Europe must be united economically, politically and also militarily, like never before. To put it simply: either we are together, or we will not be at all.”-At Eu Leaders Summit in Sofia May 15, 2018
Earlier Still!
EU STRUCTURED MILITARY CO-OPERATION (PESCO) is JUST A “Good Start”-Brian Hayes FG MEP Sunday Independent March 11, 2018
“Whether we like it or Not, The issue of integrating European security and defence is on the agenda. PESCO, which the government signed up to last year, is a good start but it is a project-based plan. Many want to go further by putting in place a Deeper European Union –a key priority of EU into the Future.”

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9. Michael Carley - July 12, 2018

John Waters has enlisted Fanon:

Meanwhile, Europe’s old colonizing instinct today confines itself to home territory, where it takes the form of a new elitism wrapped in ­ideology. The upper layers adopt pious and amnesiac positions on the role their own progressive ideas played in colonization, while imposing radical social policies on their “deplorable” fellow citizens at home. It is as though the colonial muscle, seeking exercise, has decided to reform not foreigners but the recalcitrant populations at home. Hence gay marriage, gender theory, abortion, secularism, and mass immigration. Opposition to any of these marks one as a savage.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/08/fanons-warning

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WorldbyStorm - July 12, 2018

Ah, mass immigration finds its way into his noxious list of ‘bad’ things.

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EWI - July 12, 2018

Hence gay marriage, gender theory, abortion, Love Island, secularism, and mass immigration. Opposition to any of these marks one as a savage.

There, fixed it for him.

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WorldbyStorm - July 12, 2018

🙂

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GW - July 13, 2018

He missed out ‘Islamisation’.

For secularisation and simultaneous Islamisation is the double headed spectre lurking at the gates of the Christian west.

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WorldbyStorm - July 13, 2018

🙂

I just reread the paragraph from him above. It’s amazing but it literally makes no sense. There’s a whole heap of terms thrown in ‘elitism’ ‘colonial’ and so on but it is clear he doesn’t have any real insight into what they mean.

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Michael Carley - July 13, 2018

The really amazing thing is the way he hangs it all on Fanon’s analysis of colonialism.

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WorldbyStorm - July 13, 2018

I’ve seen dissident republicans draw on Fanon over the years, 32CSM were very taken with him (perhaps understandably in one way). So seeing him repurposed by JW isn’t a surprise in a way, but how he does it… sheesh, and there’s something distasteful about efforts to equate the experience of murderous colonialism with quite soft cultural processes in the contemporary period (as well as which he deliberately underplays the dualistic and contradictory aspects of colonialism here and pretends that no one recognizes the scars which when I think of it say in regard to the Famine is quite some stretch on his part). Btw he is simply completely wrong re disdain for our music and at least half wrong about the language.

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WorldbyStorm - July 13, 2018

Though just to add on reflection you are spot on – using fanon and simultaneously whining about immigration or even framing the piece in the context of immigration and concepts of ‘the white man’ is genuinely incredible.

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GW - July 13, 2018

But isn’t this invoking of Fanon related to attempts to press the ramshackle non-military political power of the EU into a Leninist analysis of the EU as classical empire? Which also chimes strangely with the direction Macron wants to drag the EU along.

I guess once you have a privileged understanding of the fundamental processes of history, one size fits all.

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10. GW - July 13, 2018

Ian Dunt here has an amusing treatment of the latest white paper guff from the Brexiteer UK government.

The AI as saviour for the technically impossible is particularly amusing:

Quite quickly this descends into badly-written cyberpunk. “This could include exploring how machine learning and artificial intelligence could allow traders to automate the collection and submission of data required for customs declarations,” it says at one point, as if the civil servant writing it got bored and just thought they’d chuck in as much crazy nonsense as possible.

Why not have a machine-learning block-chain-based adaptive border validation software on drones with robot-arms who fly in through the truck-driver’s window and fill out her customs / regulation-compliance forms for her?

Let’s be imaginative and embrace the shining future!

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GW - July 13, 2018

3rd para meant to have blockquotes.

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EWI - July 13, 2018

‘Skynet will save us!’

The Tories welcome our robot overlords.

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GW - July 13, 2018

To jumble up the Brexit jargon, it is cakeism-minus. They have a cake, they have eaten it, some of it is still magically on the plate, and the rest is being vomited up on the floor.

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11. Paddy Healy - July 13, 2018

Drownings Skyrocket to 600 a Month including Babies and Toddlers as Ireland and Other EU Countries Block Humanitarian Assistance to Drowning Refugees in Mediteranean

DEFEND IRISH NEUTRALITY


Varakar Attacked Humanitarian Rescue Agencies in Same Terms as Italian Neo-Fascist Minister Salvini
“No one should do anything to facilitate these people smugglers and human traffickers. I am afraid that some actors in this area are doing that. It might not be their intention but they are doing it.”-Varadkar Replying to Seamus Healy TD in Dáil
“The European political decisions (with the agreement of the Irish Government) that have been taken during the past weeks have had deadly consequences. There has been a cold-blooded decision to leave men, women and children to drown in the Mediterranean Sea. This is outrageous and unacceptable ” said Karline Kleijer, MSF head of emergencies.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Press Release
https://www.msf.org/drowning-skyrockets-european-governments-block-humanitarian-assistance-central-mediterranean

There has been a cold-blooded decision to leave men, women and children to drown in the Mediterranean Sea. This is outrageous and unacceptable—–KARLINE KLEIJER, MSF HEAD OF EMERGENCIES
Over 600 people attempting to cross the Central Mediterranean have drowned or are presumed drowned in the last four weeks alone, including babies and toddlers. These tragedies, which represent half of the total deaths so far in 2018, took place as there were no longer non-governmental organisation (NGO) rescue boats active on the Central Mediterranean. One month ago, the search and rescue ship Aquarius, run by SOS MEDITERRANEE in partnership with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), was blocked by Italian authorities from disembarking 630 people rescued at sea. Further blockages and obstruction of NGO rescue ships by European states followed.
“The European political decisions (with the agreement of the Irish Government) that have been taken during the past weeks have had deadly consequences. There has been a cold-blooded decision to leave men, women and children to drown in the Mediterranean Sea. This is outrageous and unacceptable ” said Karline Kleijer, MSF head of emergencies. “Rather than deliberately obstructing the provision of life-saving medical and humanitarian assistance to people in distress at sea, European governments must set up proactive and dedicated search and rescue capacity in the Central Mediterranean”.

While NGO rescue ships operating in the international waters between Malta, Italy and Libya have been accused of being a pull factor by European politicians, recent events at sea show that desperate people continue to flee Libya regardless of whether or not there are rescue ships. Violence, poverty and conflict are pushing people to risk their lives, and those of their children.
European governments are fully aware of the alarming levels of violence and exploitation suffered by refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants in Libya but are determined to prevent people from reaching Europe at all costs. A key part of the strategy to seal off the Mediterranean is equipping, training and supporting the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept people at sea and return them to Libya. Returning people to Libya is something non-Libyan ships cannot lawfully do as the country is not recognised as a place of safety. People rescued in the international waters of the Mediterranean must not be returned to Libya, but should be taken to a safe port, in line with international and maritime law.

Furthermore, the EU-supported Libyan Coastguard have intercepted around 10,000 people so far this year and brought them to detention centres in Libya, regardless of the consequences on people’s well-being and lives. Abdicating all responsibilities for search and rescue in the Mediterranean to the Libyan Coastguard will only result in more deaths.

———————————————
Ireland To Continue Training and Funding Libyan Coastguard. https://wp.me/pKzXa-Ut
The Irish office of Amnesty International has stated, “The Libyan coastguard is intercepting people in distress at sea and transferring them to Libya, where they are being held in detention centres and exposed to systematic and widespread human rights violations such as arbitrary detention, torture, rape and exploitation.—– Ireland shares responsibility due to Europe’s joint actions to strengthen the capacity of the Libyan coastguard to intercept people and return them to Libya
Watch and Listen to Varadkar Replying to Seamus Healy TD https://youtu.be/VhpZUP7UjHg

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12. Tomboktu - July 15, 2018

<snort>

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EWI - July 15, 2018

A thread of news for those who chose not to believe that the Blairites are prepared to sabotage Labour electorally to prevemt a left-wing Prime Minister in Britain (as happened before in the early Eighties).

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13. Alibaba - July 15, 2018

I watched a Seanad session in which Sinn Féin seantor Fintan Warfield asked what’s happening with the hate crime bill he proposed.

He was informed by David Stanton, Minister of State for Justice at the Department of Justice and Equality, that these matters are already covered by criminal law.

Warfield referred to cases not covered by hate definition in legislation. He made it concrete and personal by saying that when he crosses the road, especially at night, he might try to hold hands with his boyfriend. This was a heartfelt, apt and courageous thing to do.

Stanton responded, “I see gay people holding hands all the time”. What a contemptuous and condescending reply to Warfield’s legitimate concerns, typically expressed by him in a measured and informed way.

There were virtually no senators present.

It’s incredible: the shit they shovel and get away with.

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14. Starkadder - July 15, 2018

I see there is a campaign afoot to have the gluttonous G. K. Chesterton declared a saint:

http://file770.com/saint-chesterton/

I’ve never liked Chesterton the non-fiction writer-he always seems rather smug, and his largest audience seems to be the
Pat Buchanan /Paul Johnson type of Catholic.

Rebecca West got Chesterton’s number a century ago:

As I dislike intensely the condescension with which he slaps the working man on the back I rarely read his political articles. But last week I was sent “The New Witness” of October 30 which contained an article called “I Told You So.” There is no sentiment in that article which would not be a credit to an inhabitant of heaven: in fact it makes one desire to send Mr. Chesterton thither at once. The conclusions of that article are corruptingly foolish and wicked…. Like all sentimentalists he is cruel: the thin wail of the hungry teaches him no truth.

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/clarion/1913/chesterton.htm

The Father Brown stories are good though, but not in the same league
as Dorothy L. Sayers or R. Austin Freeman.

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Daniel Rayner O'Connor - July 15, 2018

From the Vatican point of view, it is surprising that it has not been mooted previously. The guy was, after, all the first Englishman since Henry VIII to be styled by the Pope ‘Defender of the Faith’ and, unlike Hal, he stayed that way.
As to his literature, I would recommend the fantasy of ‘The Man who was Thursday’, even tho’ writ from a bias to the wrong side (Or is it? You decide). Some of his short stories ain’t half bad either, tho’ to many of Fr.Brown’s cases read as if they were rushed off to fill a decline, which I believe they were; the holes are gaping.
For any philippic against him, I would not go to Rebecca West, who went over to the dark side soon enough, but to our own Sean O’Casey. I doubt whether either will be read by the Devil’s Advocate.

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Starkadder - July 15, 2018

“For any philippic against him, I would not go to Rebecca West, who went over to the dark side soon enough, but to our own Sean O’Casey. I doubt whether either will be read by the Devil’s Advocate.”

If you mean West’s strongly anti-Communist 1940-50s writings,
I disagree with these writings, but I believe it would be unfair to
dismiss her whole oeuvre on that basis.
“The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West 1911-17” is a fine collection of her journalism at its most left-wing. She even says numerous nice things about Karl Marx.

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polly - July 16, 2018

I agree Chesterton didn’t see everything in his own society honestly; but he saw some of it. On my first encounter with England it turned out to have been useful preparation to have already read this, from 1910 – ‘The Queer Feet’.

” .. The talk was that strange, slight talk which governs the British Empire, which governs it in secret, and yet would scarcely enlighten an ordinary Englishman even if he could overhear it. Cabinet ministers on both sides were alluded to by their Christian names with a sort of bored benignity. The Radical Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory party was supposed to be cursing for his extortions, was praised for his minor poetry, or his saddle in the hunting field. … Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who still wore Gladstone collars; he was a kind of symbol of all that phantasmal and yet fixed society. He had never done anything–not even anything wrong. He was not fast; he was not even particularly rich. He was simply in the thing; and there was an end of it. No party could ignore him, and if he had wished to be in the Cabinet he certainly would have been put there. “

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Starkadder - July 16, 2018

“I agree Chesterton didn’t see everything in his own society honestly…”

Especially not the poor Jews.

” writing about a journey to America, he says, in defense of Henry Ford, “No extravagance of hatred merely following on experience of Jews can properly be called a prejudice. . . . These people of the plains have found the Jewish problem exactly as they might have struck oil; because it is there, and not even because they were looking for it.”

It’s a deeply racial, not merely religious, bigotry; it’s not the Jews’ cupidity or their class role—it’s them…The insistence that Chesterton’s anti-Semitism needs to be understood “in the context of his time” defines the problem, because his time—from the end of the Great War to the mid-thirties—was the time that led to the extermination of the European Jews.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/07/the-back-of-the-world

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Daniel Rayner O'Connor - July 17, 2018

Yes, GKC should be seen ‘in the context of his time’ in the sense that he was opposed to it, but doing so from a regressive point of view. Although this rendered his political perspectives futile, it does give an archaic colouring to his writings that make them the more readable.
An example of this is precisely his anti-semitism. Unlike his contemporary anti-semites, he opposed the Jews on medieval religious rather than racial grounds.
I think it probable that his flaw (his anti-semitism was never obsessive0 was what has restrained the Vatican from canonising him up to now, even under the mass producer of saints, JPII.
However, that he is being considered for sainthood may be due to his harmony with present anti-islamisation. What he wrote about Mohammed’s religion was considerably more vitriolic than what he produced on Jewry.

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15. Starkadder - July 15, 2018

Socialism And The City? Cynthia Nixon has an interesting interview
here:

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/07/cynthia-nixon-interview-cuomo-new-york-governor

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16. Paddy Healy - July 16, 2018

Oireachtas Group for Peace,Neutrality and Disarmament Formed at Leinster House
(Press Statement and list of 48 TDs, Senators and MEPS Who called the Meeting https://wp.me/pKzXa-Ut)
BUDGET: GUNS OR HOUSES ?? The Phoenix July 13
There is a big push on for Ireland to seriously increase it’s defence spending as a result of PESCO membership, the EU defence and security military body that the government, with support from Fianna Fáil, voted through the Dáil last December. PESCO membership involves a binding commitment to increase defence expenditure, and with the average EU state spending 1.3% of its GDP on defence,Ireland would have to multiply four fold its defence outlay of 0.3%. This means a rise in the current years spend of 946 million to something like 4 billion euro.

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17. Paddy Healy - July 17, 2018

Major Public Assault ON IRISH NEUTRALITY Planned at McGill Summer School Next TUESDAY,July 24
Shopping in Glenties yesterday I picked up the McGill Summer School Booklet.
It is clear that a major public assault on Irish neutrality is planned.  https://wp.me/pKzXa-Ut
Commissioner Phil Hogan, Brendan Halligan, Prof Ben Tonra, and many other extreme Anti-Neutrality Advocates will speak

Given the prejudices of the Irish Media,and as it is the silly season ,it will get major media coverage

Note: British Government Policy (supported by the hard-Brexiteers) is that UK would remain part of European military and security structures after Brexit. This is the structure that Ireland would be joining if the anti-neutrality advocates get their way!

Monday and Tuesday are the most important days-particularly the Tuesday Morning session.

It is possible to pay at the door for one day

FROM BOOKLET

Tuesday 24th July Building A Stronger More Coherent Europe in a Turbulent World

11.00PM   Making Europe More Secure Has To Be A Priority For All its Citizens 

For the European Union, security has become one of the greatest challenges faced by its members———————————————————————————————————————————————————-

—————–Ireland has been able to avoid much of the commitment being requested to play its part in the defence of Europe on the basis of its declared neutrality. However Being Neutral in Today’s World is becoming very difficult. As full members of the EU, is it time that we place this question higher on our national agenda and in a modern day context?

Speakers; Professor Ben Tonra, Jean Monnet Professor of European Foreign Security & Defence Policy, UCD

(Prof. Tonra is Head of Research at Irish Institute for International and European Affairs(IIEA). Former President of IIEA, Brendan Halligan suggested we should consider ending Irish neutrality to ensure protection of EU against BREXIT at this summer school last year. Jean Monnet Professors must be approved for appointment by the EU and the chair is 50% funded by EU) 

Mairéad McGuiness MEP Fine Gael, Vice President European Parliament, 

Jack Chambers TD, FF Spokesperson on Defence, 

Moderator: Ruth Deasy, Former Head of press and media for the European Commission in Ireland 

(Not Invited: Dr Edward Horgan(Comdt RTD) Expert in International Relations, Peacekeeping and  Military Alliances, UN Monitor; Mr Michael Clarke, (Retired Civil Servant at Foreign affairs) Foreign Policy Expert; Dr Karen Devine , Lecturer in International Law at DCU; Mr Roger Cole Chair and Founder of Peace and Neutrality Alliance, Luke Ming Flanagan MEP; Lynn Boylan MEP)

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DF - July 17, 2018

I would agree with Paddy’s analysis here. Furthermore, the rash of building monuments to British wars and so-called ‘peace parks’ (in reality the same thing, but under a euphemism) should not necessarily be seen as an eruption of West Brit tendencies among FG and particularly FF, but more as an effort to defang the Irish public’s centuries-long attachment to anti-imperialism (and hence support for military neutrality).

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WorldbyStorm - July 17, 2018

Very much agree DF.

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18. Paddy Healy - July 22, 2018

Free Press??? Open Debate???
Ireland Deserves a Referendum on Our Neutrality Before We Sell Out For an EU Army—Prof Ray Kinsella Irish Independent 21/07/2018 -NOT PUT UP ON independent.ie
Defend Irish Neutrality https://wp.me/pKzXa-Ut
We should Play no Part in an EU Army,a supposed Deterrent to the Overblown threat of Russia, Ray Kinsella 15/12/ 2017
Removed from Independent.ie website while critical letters and other opinion pieces remain on site
Only Anti-Neutrality Speakers Allowed at MacGill Summer School debate on Neutrality(11am) on Tuesday next

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