The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

“Wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or get pinched.” That pretty much sums up the Irish-American “curriculum” that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.

Source: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

http://www.globalresearch.ca

By Bill Bigelow

Global Research, March 17, 2019

Zinn Education Project 22 October 2018

“Wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or get pinched.” That pretty much sums up the Irish-American “curriculum” that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.

Sadly, today’s high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom. In my own high school social studies classes, I begin with Sinead O’Connor’s haunting rendition of “Skibbereen,” which includes the verse:

… Oh it’s well I do remember, that bleak

December day,

The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive

Us all away

They set my roof on fire, with their cursed

English spleen

And that’s another reason why I left old

Skibbereen.

By contrast, Holt McDougal’s U.S. history textbook The Americans, devotes a flat two sentences to “The Great Potato Famine.” Prentice Hall’s America: Pathways to the Present fails to offer a single quote from the time. The text calls the famine a “horrible disaster,” as if it were a natural calamity like an earthquake. And in an awful single paragraph, Houghton Mifflin’s The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People blames the “ravages of famine” simply on “a blight,” and the only contemporaneous quote comes, inappropriately, from a landlord, who describes the surviving tenants as “famished and ghastly skeletons.” Uniformly, social studies textbooks fail to allow the Irish to speak for themselves, to narrate their own horror.

These timid slivers of knowledge not only deprive students of rich lessons in Irish-American history, they exemplify much of what is wrong with today’s curricular reliance on corporate-produced textbooks.

To support the famine relief effort, British tax policy required landlords to pay the local taxes of their poorest tenant farmers, leading many landlords to forcibly evict struggling farmers and destroy their cottages in order to save money. From Hunger on Trial Teaching Activity.

History Proves that Western Governments Have Already Used Food as a Weapon of Genocide

First, does anyone really think that students will remember anything from the books’ dull and lifeless paragraphs? Today’s textbooks contain no stories of actual people. We meet no one, learn nothing of anyone’s life, encounter no injustice, no resistance. This is a curriculum bound for boredom. As someone who spent almost 30 years teaching high school social studies, I can testify that students will be unlikely to seek to learn more about events so emptied of drama, emotion, and humanity.

Nor do these texts raise any critical questions for students to consider. For example, it’s important for students to learn that the crop failure in Ireland affected only the potato—during the worst famine years, other food production was robust. Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire, “Ireland’s was surely the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly.” But if only this one variety of potato, the Lumper, failed, and other crops thrived, why did people starve?

Thomas Gallagher points out in Paddy’s Lament, that during the first winter of famine, 1846-47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultry—food that could have prevented those deaths. Throughout the famine, as Gallagher notes, there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.

The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.

More than a century and a half after the “Great Famine,” we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions. Raj Patel opens his book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System: “Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.”

Patel’s book sets out to account for “the rot at the core of the modern food system.” This is a curricular journey that our students should also be on — reflecting on patterns of poverty, power, and inequality that stretch from 19^th century Ireland to 21^st century Africa, India, Appalachia, and Oakland; that explore what happens when food and land are regarded purely as commodities in a global system of profit.

But today’s corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about this inequality than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants. Take Pearson, the global publishing giant. At its website, the corporation announces (redundantly) that “we measure our progress against three key measures: earnings, cash and return on invested capital.” The Pearson empire had 2011 worldwide sales of more than $9 billion—that’s nine thousand million dollars, as I might tell my students. Multinationals like Pearson have no interest in promoting critical thinking about an economic system whose profit-first premises they embrace with gusto.

As mentioned, there is no absence of teaching materials on the Irish famine that can touch head and heart. In a role play, “Hunger on Trial,” that I wrote and taught to my own students in Portland, Oregon—included at the Zinn Education Project website— students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? A system of distribution, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?

These are rich and troubling ethical questions. They are exactly the kind of issues that fire students to life and allow them to see that history is not simply a chronology of dead facts stretching through time.

So go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains. But let’s honor the Irish with our curiosity. Let’s make sure that our schools show some respect, by studying the social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irish—and that are starving and uprooting people today.

*

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Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and co-director of the Zinn Education Project. He the author and co-editor of numerous publications including Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years and A People’s Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis.

Featured image: The Irish Famine, 1850 by George Frederic Watt. (Source: Zinn Education Project) All other images in this article are from Zinn Education Project.

The original source of this article is Zinn Education Project

Copyright © Bill Bigelow, Zinn Education Project, 2019

War Crimes: From Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland to Croatia, Kosovo and Iraq

Source: War Crimes: From Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland to Croatia, Kosovo and Iraq – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

http://www.globalresearch.ca

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, March 07, 2019

Global Research 23 September 2011

Author’s Introduction and Update

A former soldier “known” as “Sergeant O”, was interviewed by the BBC. “He still believes the actions by soldiers on the [Bloody Sunday] day were “a job well done”“(Belfast Herald, March 5, 2019).

Sargeant O’s statement is a bald face lie:

“We were under fire. We started looking for targets and started dropping them. Shooting them. The mood between the blokes was not elation but a job well done… But I don’t think all 13 were innocent – there were some bad people there. I don’t care what Lord Saville said, he wasn’t there.”

The Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland is scheduled to ” decide whether any of the soldiers involved in the killings will face prosecution.”

The British government has responded to this initiative with a view to undermining the judicial procedure: According to Prime Minister May “attempts to prosecute”  for events which happened 50 years ago require “greater legal protection”.

“The system to investigate the past does need to change to provide better outcomes for victims and survivors of the troubles but also to ensure members of our armed forces and police are not unfairly treated.”

The British government has protected those responsible for almost half a century.

With regard to the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, who are the “soldiers” Prime Minister Theresa May wants to protect.? 

What is the command structure. Who decided? 

The military officers who gave orders to shoot in the “Bloody Sunday” massacre bear responsibility and should be considered for prosecution.

Who are they?  Three names stand out.

Lieutenant Coronel Derek Wilford  commander of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 PARA), which constituted an elite special force unit of the British Army, retired in 1982.

Sir General Michael Jackson. In 1972 Jackson was Captain of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment and second in command (after Wilford) in the Bloody Sunday massacre. Jackson was subsequently rewarded and promoted. He was never investigated for the crimes committed in Northern Ireland in 1972. In 2003, he was promoted U.K. Chief of the General Staff (retired in 2006)

Major-General Sir Robert Ford, Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland in 1972. (retired in 1981, deceased in 2015)

The Bloody Sunday massacre was led by two commanding officers of the parachute regiment  Lieutenant Coronel Derek Wilford and Captain Michael Jackson. Pursuant to their orders the parachute regiment opened fire.

While the two commanding officers (Wilford and Jackson) ordered the soldiers to shoot, they were under the orders of General Sir Robert Ford. The First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment which led the Bloody Sunday massacre was under General Ford’s jurisdiction. 

Both Wilford and Jackson were rewarded rather than prosecuted for their role in the 1972 massacre.

Wilford, who retired from the Armed Services, was awarded the Order of the British Empire by H.M. Government in October of 1972,  less than a year following the January 1972 massacre.

Michael Jackson’s role in Bloody Sunday did not hinder his military career. In fact quite the opposite. He ascended to the highest rank of the British military, before retiring in 2006 from the rank of Commander of the General Staff (CGS).

These are the individuals who should be considered for prosecution.

Below is my article first published in 2011

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 7, 2019

***

Almost 40 years later, the 5000 page Saville Commission Report into the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland, while calling for compensation to the victims’ families, fails to identify who were the perpetrators, both within H.M government and the British Army.

“The North’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS) is continuing to scrutinise the Saville report to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bring charges against British soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday on January 30th, 1972. While progress has been made on the issue of compensation there have been no substantial developments in relation to the possibility of British soldiers being charged. The PPS confirmed yesterday that the 5,000-page report by Lord Saville into Bloody Sunday remains under examination but that it is not yet in a position to rule on whether or not criminal cases can be taken against British soldiers involved in the shootings over 39 years ago.” (Irish Times, September 22, 2011)

The payment of compensation is intended to whitewash Her Majesty’s government.

Were these spontaneous killings or were members of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment obeying orders from higher up?

While the possibility of bringing criminal charges against British soldiers has been raised, the broader issue of  “Who” within the British military and intelligence apparatus ordered the 1972 killings in Derry has never been addressed.

What was the underlying command structure of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment which carried out the massacre?

General Sir Robert Ford  was the Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland in 1972. The First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment was under his jurisdiction.

Lieutenant Coronel Derek Wilford  was commander of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 PARA), which constituted an elite special force unit of the British Army.

Wilford described by the BBC as “a well-respected high-flying officer” was exonerated by the 1972 Widgery Tribunal.

While attention has been placed on the role of  Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, the role of  his adjutant, Captain Michael Jackson (who at the time had links to the Army’s Intelligence Corps) has been obfuscated since the outset of the investigation in 1972. Jackson was allegedly also instrumental in the cover-up.

Captain Michael Jackson was second in command (Adjutant) of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment.  He started his military career in 1963 with the Intelligence Corps. The Int Corps is a unit of military intelligence and counter-intelligence attached to the British Army, which played a key role in Northern Ireland. The so-called “14 Intelligence Company” also referred to as “14 INT” or ‘The Det” “was a British Army special forces unit, established during the Troubles, which carried out surveillance operations in Northern Ireland”. ( http://www.eliteukforces.info/the-det/).

General Sir Michael Jackson

Under the orders of Lieutenant Coronel Derek Wilford, Captain Michael Jackson and thirteen other soldiers of the parachute regiment opened fire

“on a peaceful protest by the Northern Ireland civil rights association opposing discrimination against Catholics. In just 30 minutes, 13 people were shot dead and a further 13 injured. Those who died were killed by a single bullet to the head or body, indicating that they had been deliberately targeted. No weapons were found on any of the deceased.” (Julie Hyland, “Head of NATO Force in Kosovo was Second-in-command at “Bloody Sunday” Massacre in Ireland”, World Socialist Website, 19 June 1999).

Both Wilford and Jackson were rewarded rather than prosecuted for their role in the 1972 massacre.

Wilford, who subsequently retired from the Armed Services, was awarded the Order of the British Empire by H.M. Government in October of 1972,  less than a year following the January 1972 massacre.

Michael Jackson’s role in Bloody Sunday did not hinder his military career. In fact quite the opposite. He ascended to the highest rank of the British military, before retiring in 2006 from the rank of Commander of the General Staff (CGS).

In 1982 he became Commander of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, and Brigade Commander in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s.

From his stint in Northern Ireland, he was reassigned under United Nations auspices to the theatre of ethnic warfare, first in Bosnia and Croatia and then in Kosovo.

In the immediate wake of the 1995 ethnic massacres in the Krajina region of Croatia largely inhabited by Serbs, General Michael Jackson was put in charge as IFOR commander, for organising the return of Serbs “to lands taken by Croatian HVO forces in the 1995 Krajina offensive”. (Jane Defense Weekly, Vol 23, No. 7, 14 February 1996).

And in this capacity Jackson “urged that the resettlement [of Krajina Serbs] not [be] rushed to avoid tension [with the Croatians]” while also warning returning Serbs “of the extent of the [land] mine threat.”(Ibid)

Following his stint in Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia, Lieutenant General Mike Jackson led the June 1999 land invasion of Yugoslavia and was posted to Kosovo as KFOR Commander.

In Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, General Michael Jackson applied the counter-insurgency skills acquired in Northern Ireland. In Kosovo he actively collaborated with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) headed by Commander Agim Ceku.

Ceku and Jackson had worked together in Croatia in the mid-1990s. Agim Ceku was Commander of the Croatian forces which conducted the Krajina massacre under “Operation Storm”.  Meanwhile, Jackson was responsible for the repatriation of Krajina Serbs, under UN auspices.

In turn, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), a mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon was responsible for advising the Croatian HVO forces in the planning of “Operation Storm”. The same mercenary outfit was subsequently put in charge of the military training of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) largely integrated by former KLA operatives.

1999 War Criminals Join Hands (Kosovo 1999).

From Left to Right: Hashim Thaci, Head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which had links to Al Qaeda and organized crime. Hashim Thaci had ordered political assassinations directed against the Party of Ibrahim Rugova. Thaci was a protégé of Madeleine Albright. [Later became President of Kosovo, still on the Interpol wanted list]

Bernard Kouchner, Head of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in Kosovo (July 1999- January 2001), instrumental in elevating the KLA to UN status through the formation of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC).

General Michael Jackson, Commander of KFOR Troops in Kosovo.

General Agim Ceku, Military Commander of the KLA and the KPC, investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) “for alleged war crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in Croatia between 1993 and 1995.” ( AFP 13 Oct 1999)

General Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Commander.

While General Michael Jackson during his tenure as KFOR Commander in Kosovo (1999-2000) displayed token efforts to protect Serb and Roma civilians; those who fled Kosovo during his mandate were not encouraged to return under UN protection. In post-war Kosovo, the massacres of civilians were carried out by the KLA (and subsequently by the KPC). Both NATO and the UN turned a blind eye to the KLA’s targeted assassinations.

Upon completing his term in Kosovo, General Sir Michael Jackson was appointed Commander in Chief, U.K. Land Command (2000-2003).

And in February 2003, barely one month before the onslaught of the Iraq war, he was promoted to Chief of the General Staff (CGS)

As Chief of General Staff General Michael Jackson played a central role in the 2003 Iraq military campaign in close liaison with his US counterparts. He also played a key role in the military occupation of Southern Iraq, led by British forces based in Basra.

“Bloody Monday”, September 19, 2005 in Basra, Iraq

On Monday September 19, 2005, two British undercover “soldiers” dressed in traditional Arab garb, were arrested by the Occupation’s Iraqi police driving a car loaded with weapons, ammunition and explosives.  Several media reports and eyewitness accounts suggested that the SAS operatives were disguised as Al Qaeda “terrorists” and were planning to set off the bombs in Basra’s central square during a major religious event.

The two SAS soldiers were “rescued” by British forces in a major military assault on the building where they were being detained:

“British forces used up to 10 tanks ” supported by helicopters ” to smash through the walls of the jail and free the two British servicemen.”

The incident resulted in 7 Iraqi deaths and 43 injured.

(The Times, 20 Oct 2005 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1788850,00.html)

“Compensation” to the Families of the Victims

Instead of investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the Basra massacre led by British forces. the British government confirmed that it  “will pay compensation for injuries and damage caused during the storming by the army of a police station in Basra in the operation to release two SAS soldiers” (The Scotsman, 15 Oct 2005).

The wording was reminiscent of the Bloody Sunday massacre: no prosecution, no investigation, no justice, but “compensation” as a cover-up to war crimes.

Captain Ken Masters of The Royal Military Police (RMP) in Basra had the mandate to investigate the circumstances of the “rescue” operation. To this effect, he also indicated that he would cooperate in his investigations, with the civilian Iraqi authorities.

The Royal Military Police (RMP) is the corps of the British Army responsible for the policing of service personnel, both in the U.K. and overseas.

As part of his RMP mandate, Captain Masters was to investigate “allegations that British soldiers killed or mistreated Iraqi civilians”. Specifically in this case, the inquiry pertained to the British attack on the prison on 19 September, where the 2 SAS soldiers were being detained for subsequent interrogation. The attack had been authorized by CGS General Sir Michael Jackson and British Defence Secretary John Reid.

 “Compensation to the families of alleged Iraqi victims who died during the fracas depended on the official investigation being carried out by Captain Masters [of the Royal Military Police in Basra] and his team.”

That investigation was never carried out. Captain Ken Masters of the RMP allegedly “committed suicide” in Basra on the 15th of October 2005.

According to the MoD  “the circumstances [of his death ] were not regarded as suspicious.” [emphasis added] The MoD report suggested that Captain Masters was suffering from “stress”, which could have driven him to commit suicide. In the words of a Defense analyst quoted by the BBC:.

“Capt Masters was part of quite a small outfit and his job would have been quite stressful. It’s quite an onerous job….. I think, [there is] quite a lot of stress involved” (BBC, 16 October 2005, emphasis added).

There were apparent disagreements between the MoD and Captain Masters who was responsible for investigating “the actions and behavior of military personnel”. (The Independent 17 Oct 2005).

The attack on the 19th of September to “rescue” the two SAS men was launched under the command of Brig John Lorimer. In a statement, Lorimer said that the purpose of the raid was to ensure the safety of the two SAS men.

On October 12, CGS General Sir Michael Jackson  was in Basra for consultations with Brigadier John Lorimer.

CGS General Michael Jackson, had previously approved the rescue operation of the elite SAS men:  “Let me make it clear that it was important to retrieve those two soldiers.” (quoted in The Times, 12 Oct 2005).

Three days later, following General Jackson’s visit to Basra, Captain Masters was dead:

“Captain Ken Masters, the top British military police investigator working in Iraq, was found hanged at his barracks in Basra [on October 15].” 

No subsequent RMP investigation into the Basra “rescue” following Captain’s Masters untimely death was undertaken.

No police investigation was carried out into the unusual circumstances surrounding the death of Captain Masters.

It was an open and closed case.

The matter passed virtually unnoticed in the British media. Nonetheless, the Daily Mail (17 Oct 2005), dismissed the suicide thesis: “Little is known of his private life and it is said to be unlikely that the pressures of work would have led him to commit suicide.”

Apologizing for War Crimes

From Bloody Sunday in January 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland to Croatia, Kosovo and Basra, Iraq in September 2005.

Last year in June 2010, General Sir Michael Jackson “apologised for Bloody Sunday” in a TV interview broadcast by the BBC.

(Click link to hear Jackson’s statement

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8742373.stm

“The former head of the British Army, General Sir Mike Jackson, has offered a ”fulsome apology” for the events of Bloody Sunday, following the publication of the Saville report into the events of 30 January 1972 in Londonderry. The findings called the fatal shootings of civilians by British soldiers a ”catastrophe” for Northern Ireland. Prime Minister David Cameron has said the killings of 13 marchers was ”unjustified and unjustifiable”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8742373.stm

Prime Minister David Cameron said “He was “Sorry”.

Apologizing for War Crimes? What are the legal implications? Indictment or “Self-indictment”?
.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2019

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid English

Source: Stupid, Stupid, Stupid English

http://www.counterpunch.org

by Patrick Cockburn

March 5, 2019

I was sitting in a cafe on the Falls Road in heavily nationalist West Belfast when a local radio reporter came in looking for residents to interview about the effect of Brexit on Northern Ireland. She said that the impact was already massive, adding: “Stupid, stupid English for getting us into this pickle. We were doing nicely and then they surpassed themselves [in stupidity].”

It does not take long talking to people in Northern Ireland to understand that almost everything said by politicians and commentators in London about the “backstop” is based on a dangerous degree of ignorance and wishful thinking about the real political situation on the ground here. Given how central this issue is to the future of the UK, it is extraordinary how it is debated with only minimal knowledge of the real forces involved.

The most important of these risks can be swiftly spelled out. Focus is often placed on the sheer difficulty of policing the 310-mile border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland because there are at least 300 major and minor crossing points. But the real problem is not geographic or military but political and demographic because almost all the border runs through country where Catholics greatly outnumber Protestants. The Catholics will not accept, and are in a position to prevent, a hard border unless it is defended permanently by several thousand British troops in fortified positions.

The threat to peace is often seen as coming from dissident Republicans, a small and fragmented band with little support, who might shoot a policeman or a customs’ official. But this is not the greatest danger, or at least not yet, because it is much more likely that spontaneous but sustained protests would prevent any attempt to recreate an international frontier between Northern Ireland and the Republic that wasn’t backed by overwhelming armed force.

It is unrealistic to the point of absurdity to imagine that technical means on the border could substitute for customs personnel because cameras and other devices would be immediately destroyed by local people. A new border would have to be manned by customs officials, but these would not go there unless they were protected by police and the police could not operate without British Army protection. Protesters would be killed or injured and we would spiral back into violence.

We are not looking at a worst-case scenario but an inevitability if a hard border returns as it will, if there is a full Brexit. The EU could never agree to a deal – and would be signing its own death warrant if it did – in which the customs union and the single market have a large unguarded hole in their tariff and regulatory walls.

An essential point to grasp is that the British government does not physically control the territory, mostly populated by nationalists, through which the border runs. It could only reassert that control by force which would mean a return to the situation during the Troubles, between 1968 and 1998, when many of the 270 public roads crossing the border were blocked by obstacles or cratered with explosives by the British Army. Even then British soldiers could only move through places like South Armagh using helicopters.

The focus for the security forces in Northern Ireland is on dissident Republican groups that never accepted the Good Friday Agreement. These have failed to gain traction inside the Roman Catholic/nationalist community which has no desire to go back to war and give up the very real advantages that it has drawn from the long peace.

But that peace could slip away without anybody wanting it to go because Brexit, as conceived by the European Research Group and as delineated by Theresa May’s red lines, is a torpedo aimed directly at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement. This meant that those who saw themselves as Irish (essentially the Catholics) and those who saw themselves as British (the Protestants) could live peacefully in the same place. Moreover, the agreement established and institutionalised a complicated balance of power between the two communities in which the Irish government and the EU played a central role.

Yet ever since the general election of 2017, when May became dependent on the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), it is the DUP – the party of Ian Paisley – that has been treated by politicians and media in Britain as if they were the sole representatives of the 1.9 million people living in Northern Ireland. Its MPs are seldom asked by interviewers to justify their support for the UK leaving the EU when Northern Ireland voted for Remain in the referendum by 56 per cent to 44 per cent.

In ignoring the nationalist community in Northern Ireland, the British government is committing the same costly mistake it committed in the 50 years before 1968 which led to the fiercest guerrilla conflict in western Europe since the Second World War. The nationalist community today has a lot more to lose than it did half a century ago. It is no longer subject to sectarian discrimination in the way it used to be, as well as being highly educated and economically dynamic, but this does not mean that it can be taken for granted.

It may also be that the majority of the Northern Ireland population in two years’ time, when the Brexit transition period might be coming to an end, will no longer be Protestant and unionist but Catholic and nationalist. In the last census in 2011 Protestants were 48 per cent of the population and Catholics 45 per cent. The Protestants are not only a declining proportion of the population, but an increasingly ageing one, figures from 2016 showing that Catholics are 44 per cent of the working population and Protestants 44 per cent. Significantly, Catholics make up 51 per cent of school children in Northern Ireland and Protestants only 37 per cent.

The Protestants are a community on the retreat, but many have argued that this does not make much political difference because it is a mistake to imagine that all Catholics wanted a united Ireland. Many felt that they were better off where they were with a free NHS and an annual UK subsidy of £11bn.

But Brexit has changed this calculation. With Ireland and the UK members of the EU, religious and national loyalties were blurred. Many Protestants, particularly middle class ones, voted Remain in the referendum, but the vote was still essentially along sectarian lines. “You would not find many nationalists post-Brexit who would not vote for a united Ireland in a new border poll whatever they thought before,” said one commentator, though the likelihood is that if there were to be such a poll there would still be a slim majority favouring the union with Great Britain.

If May’s deal with the EU is finally agreed by the House of Commons then the issue of a hard border will be postponed. Any return to it would put Northern Ireland back on the road to crisis and violence. Stupid, stupid, stupid English.

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Patrick Cockburn is the author of  The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution.

Finian Cunningham: Lithuania’s Diplomatic Hitman Takes Aim at Irish-Russian Relations

Let’s tar and feather the next mind-controlled imbecile who repeats the lie that Russia invaded Crimea. When a nation votes 94% to rejoin Russia, that is not an invasion.

“For the past four years, the EU has imposed sanctions on Russia in line with Washington over pejorative claims that Moscow “annexed” Crimea. This claim is made in spite of the fact that the Crimean people voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine, which had been taken over by a NATO/EU-backed Neo-Nazi coup, and to join the Russian Federation.” Are we not sick of these lying propagandists, right-wing lunatics?

Source: Lithuania’s Diplomatic Hitman Takes Aim at Irish-Russian Relations

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Finian CUNNINGHAM

13.01.2019

 

Lithuania’s Diplomatic Hitman Takes Aim at Irish-Russian Relations

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius is no ordinary diplomat. He is more a diplomatic hitman whose ideological mission is to blow holes in European-Russian relations at every opportunity.

One of his recent “jobs” was to write an op-ed for the Irish Times in which he castigated the European Union for appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Linkevicius used a hoary old historical analogy comparing the EU with British leader Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement in 1938 of Nazi Germany’s Hitler.

Apart from the ignorant historical waffling, the other curious thing about Linkevicius’ op-ed piece in Ireland’s so-called “paper of record” was the timing. It was published on December 17, three days before EU foreign policy officials were to meet in Brussels on the issue of extending sanctions against Russia.

As it turned out, the EU agreed to extend sanctions on Moscow by another six months until July 31, 2019, when the matter will come up for review again.

For the past four years, the EU has imposed sanctions on Russia in line with Washington over pejorative claims that Moscow “annexed” Crimea. This claim is made in spite of the fact that the Crimean people voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine, which had been taken over by a NATO/EU-backed Neo-Nazi coup, and to join the Russian Federation.

EU sanctions have been rolled over every six months for the past four years, each time given impetus by some new dubious issue, such as the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in July 2014 or the alleged poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England in March 2018.

Typical of the Baltic states and their rightwing governments, Linkevicius’ world view is dominated by an abiding Russophobia.

Before becoming Lithuania’s foreign minister in 2012, he was the country’s permanent representative to the NATO military alliance. The 58-year-old politician’s top concern is to ensure that European states never normalize relations with Russia. He is frequently quoted in Western media or writes op-ed pieces in which he lambasts European calls or inclinations for re-engagement with Moscow.

His recent diatribe in the Irish Times was thus his usual run-of-the-mill Russophobia. Given Lithuania’s appalling history of collaborating with Nazi Germany, it surely is twisted irony for Linkevicius to level duff analogies about Russia.

However, the poison pen of Linkevicius is not just a simple matter of one politician airing his warped view of the world. Linkevicius and his rightwing anti-Russian ilk are appointing themselves as the arbiters of relations between the entire 28-member EU bloc and Russia. In other words, a minority of ideologues who view everything through a prism of Russophobia are trying to dictate to the rest of Europe on how to conduct relations with its biggest and, arguably, most strategically important neighbor, Russia. And that dictated conduct is to be unrelentingly hostile. How democratic of Linkevicius.

The Republic of Ireland, like several other EU members, has counted the cost of sanctions on Russia dearly. Between 2014 and 2016, Irish exports to Russia were slashed by half, from €722 to €364 million. The loss was due to Moscow enacting counter-sanctions on EU countries which badly hit Irish agricultural exports of beef, pork and dairy.

As with other EU economies, the Irish have been rueing the whole sanctions war with Moscow. Last year, a senior Irish government delegation travelled to Russia in a bid to “reset relations”. As the Irish Times reported: “Trade the target as Ireland seeks a reset in relations with Russia.”

More recent data shows that trade relations between the Irish republic and Russia have recovered hugely from the low-point in 2016. Total bilateral trade had risen by 40 per cent to €800 million for the year ending 2017, which is almost back to the level it was before the Ukraine conflict started. (Ireland’s bilateral trade with Lithuania is estimated to be about half that with Russia.)

There are plenty of indicators that the Irish economy is still struggling from the 2008 global financial crash. Ireland’s rural economy is particularly hurting with harrowing cases of farmers going bust and having their dwellings repossessed due to debt arrears.

As with many other EU countries, the Irish economy and society can’t afford the continuing futile new Cold War with Russia. The premises for the conflict are entirely bogus but the damage is entirely palpable for many ordinary people from loss of jobs and business.

The crucial thing about the EU sanctions policy on Russia is that it requires unanimity among the 28 member states for the measures to be extended.

If, say Ireland, were to have voted against the renewal of sanctions at the last December 21 European Council meeting, then the EU would be have to revoke its policy against Russia.

Given the background trends in the Irish economy and the behind-the-scenes moves by Irish officials to restore trade relations with Moscow, it can be fairly speculated that the Lithuanian foreign minister spotted a possible “weak link” in the EU chain of sanctions.

Linkevicius’ article in the Irish Times on December 17 was a diplomatic hit job, knowing that the paper is widely read by Irish representatives in the Brussels administration.

There was no news value in Linkevicius’ op-ed piece. It was a pointed sabotage against any notion of normalizing trade ties between the EU and Russia. Historical appeals about appeasing Nazi Germany were grotesque falsification of current events, and a blatant bid at moral blackmailing. The article was headlined: “How many wake up calls about Putin do we need?” More to the point, the Irish Times should publish an article with headline: “How many wake up calls about Russophobia do we need?’

Here’s a prediction. Next time the EU meets to decide on extending sanctions against Russia on July 31, you can bet Linkevicius will dust off another poison pen piece to some paper in a European capital considered to be going soft (that is, coming to its senses) on ending sanctions.

 

Finian Cunningham: Time for a United Ireland

© AP Photo / Peter Morrison

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Finian Cunningham

17.10.2018

It is nearly 100 years since British rulers inflicted a grievous blow to Irish sovereignty, when they forcibly partitioned the neighboring island nation into two separate states.

Now, with the Brexit debacle intensifying, it is evidently time for Ireland to be reunited as one country, as it had been for millennia before.

This week, it is apparent again that British Prime Minister Theresa May can’t get her fractious London government to agree on terms to leave the European Union.

Some within her ruling Conservative party want a “hard Brexit” — that is, a clean break from the EU — while others in, and outside, the party want a “soft Brexit”. The latter would involve an ongoing trade association with Europe.

READ MORE: Northern Ireland Could Face Blackouts in Case of No-Deal Brexit — Reports

However, it is on the island of Ireland that the political squabbling in London is most manifest. A hard Brexit could mean the reimposition of an official border between the Republic of Ireland, a member of the EU, and Northern Ireland, which is under British rule and is therefore due to leave the European bloc in the coming months.

The issue of a border in Ireland is an extremely sensitive one. It is only a little over 20 years ago that Northern Ireland was gripped by a three-decade war in which thousands of people died through violence between pro-independence nationalists and pro-British unionists.

© REUTERS / Clodagh Kilcoyne

Ireland Wouldn’t Want North-South Border to Be Issue Which Fails Brexit Talks – Academic

British army and police forces suffered heavy casualties too, while also killing hundreds, many of them innocent civilians. And, of course, British authorities and news media woefully distorted the euphemistically named “Troubles” as being all about containing Irish “terrorists” wreaking havoc and mayhem.Since a landmark peace settlement was agreed in 1998, the island of Ireland has witnessed a transformative peace. While Northern Ireland remained part of British jurisdiction, thus placating unionists, it has coexisted with its southern neighboring state without any border controls, thus giving nationalists an important sense of a unified island.

If the “hard Brexiteers” led by the likes of Boris Johnson prevail, then a hard border separating the North and South of Ireland would likely be reinstated. Such a development will be seen as an overturning of the historic peace settlement and could re-ignite conflict on the island again. It is lamentable that selfish English politicians seem so abjectly and recklessly indifferent to the potential dangers facing Irish people.

READ MORE: EU Trying to ‘Beat Britain Into Submission’ — Ireland Leave Supporters

The European Union’s position is that no hard border should be imposed on the island of Ireland.

For all its flaws, at least the EU is mindful of the need for maintaining peace in Ireland. Also, it recognizes that a border with customs controls would impact badly on the economy of the Republic of Ireland, which is a long-time member of the EU and whose interests therefore Brussels has a duty to defend.

If British premier May goes for a softer Brexit option that could entail a sort of customs union throughout the island of Ireland, and the setting up of a trade barrier between Ireland and the rest of Britain. Goods exported from both the North and South of Ireland to Britain would be inspected at seaports entering mainland Britain, in the same way goods from France, Holland or Belgium, and so on, would be too.

© AP Photo / Niall Carson

Troubles Ahead: N Ireland Police Chief Warns of Brexit Border Security Concerns

That option is unacceptable to the hard Brexiteers and a small unionist party in Northern Ireland whose parliamentary votes support the Conservative government. They view such a soft option as diluting the integrity of the United Kingdom of “Britain and Northern Ireland”.In other words, for them, it smacks of the whole of Ireland becoming de facto independent from British rule.

But let’s look at a possible solution from an Irish point of view, instead of from the viewpoint of squabbling English politicians. By “an Irish point of view”, we mean the wishes expressed democratically by all the people on the island of Ireland, both North and South.

READ MORE: ‘No Grounds for Optimism’ on Brexit Ahead of European Council — Tusk

It is a fair assumption that most people across Ireland would want a borderless island. Nationalist-minded citizens in the South and the North would carry a majority in any all-island referendum on the matter. Even, it can be averred, many traditional unionists in the North would now be open to a united Ireland, owing to their economic self-interests.

Indeed, in the Brexit referendum in 2016, the majority of Northern Ireland voted to remain within the European Union. The vote to leave the EU was mainly an English movement. Yet Ireland, North and South, is being thrown into turmoil because of English decisions.

Furthermore, many of the sharp sectarian divisions that so marred Northern Ireland have melted away over the past two decades with the arrival of peace, as well as from a new generation of progressive youth, and the free flow of people between the two jurisdictions.

Ireland today is much more cosmopolitan and integrated than it was during the bitter sectarian conflicts of the past. In short, a border now seems wholly redundant and anachronistic.

© AP Photo / Matt Dunham

Brexit May Create a Time Border Between Northern Ireland and Rest of UK

The London-centric English political establishment have always treated Ireland with a snide disregard, typical of colonial arrogance. They often referred to Ireland as the “Irish problem” — meaning how they would manage to suppress the unruly and rebellious Irish. Maybe if the sniveling British establishment would just respect Irish self-determination for independence then they would not continually create an “Irish problem”.Almost 330 years ago, when two English rival kings were vying for the throne of England, they fought their bloody civil war on Irish soil.

The result of the battle between Protestant William of Orange and Catholic James the Second, left Ireland with a legacy of sectarian strife.

READ MORE: Brexit Could Be Extended by Another Year — EU Negotiator Michel Barnier

In the last-ever all-Ireland parliamentary elections in 1918 (when the whole island was then under British colonial rule), the Irish electorate voted overwhelming for full independence from Britain. That “Irish problem” was dealt with by the British rulers waging a brutal war in Ireland (1918-1920) which ended up with the partitioning of the island into the Southern and Northern states that we have today.

The carving-up of Ireland nearly 100 years ago was an unprecedented violation against the Irish nation. It was a violent, perfidious act of gerrymandering by London in which it annexed a northern corner of the island, giving a built-in pro-British unionist majority, which has been cited by London ever since as a “mandate” to rule “Northern Ireland”. (And they’ve the cheek to slap sanctions on Russia for allegedly annexing Crimea!)

© AFP 2018 / Attila Kisbendek

‘Catastrophe for Brexit’: Johnson Slams May’s Plan to Remain in Customs Union

In truth, the so-called Irish problem has always been an English problem. Because English politicians have continually refused to respect Irish self-determination and nationhood.We are seeing the same sordid conundrum being played out once again today.

English politicians are almost in a state of civil war over their differences on Brexit, and they are prepared to, in effect, take their quarrel on to Irish soil to fight it out. But, as before, it may be Irish people who again pay the price with their blood if violent conflict returns to the island.

So, let’s take this English problem by the horns, and give it an Irish solution — once and for all. An all-Ireland referendum on independence from Britain.

READ MORE: Thousands of Scotland’s Independence Supporters March in Edinburgh (VIDEO)

It is surely time for Ireland to be united, free and independent from London’s interminable interference, so that all her people can live in peace and prosperity.

That would be long-overdue natural justice to artificial political and painful problems foisted on Ireland for centuries by England.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

Ireland Passes Bill Banning Goods From Israeli Settlements in Occupied Palestine

End the suffering, relocate Israel to Florida!

The upper chamber of Ireland’s parliament passed a landmark bill that would effectively impose a nationwide ban on the purchase of goods and services originating in illegal Israeli settlements.

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http://www.mintpressnews.com

by Whitney Webb

July 12, 2018

DUBLIN – On Wednesday, the upper chamber of Ireland’s parliament – the Seanad – passed a landmark bill banning the purchase of goods and services originating in illegal Israeli settlements. Passed with 25 senators voting in favor and 20 against, the bill still needs to go the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, Dáil Éireann, for a debate and a vote and then pass through additional stages of review before being signed into law.

The bill’s recent passage by the Seanad as well as its backing by Irish parliament’s second-largest party, Fianna Fail, suggests that Ireland could soon be the first nation in the world to ban the importation of goods and services originating from illegal Jewish-only settlements in Palestine’s West Bank.

The fact that the bill was even brought to a vote suggests that the law is likely to withstand unprecedented pressure from the Israeli government and its supporters as it now moves to Dáil Éireann for consideration. Indeed, the bill – officially titled the “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018” – was originally introduced earlier this year on January 24th but, soon after, the Seanad voted to delay the debate on the measure after it was protested by the Israeli government.

At the end of January, less than a week after the bill was introduced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned Ireland’s ambassador to Israel, Alison Kelly. Kelly seemed to acquiesce to Netanyahu, assuring him that the Irish government would not support the measure. Netanyahu and other Israel politicians had asserted that the bill would “harm the state of Israel” and was an endorsement of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Despite the strong protest from Israel’s government and following several months of relative silence, independent Irish Senator Frances Black – who introduced the bill in the Seanad – announced on June 27th via Twitter that the bill was back on the legislature’s debate schedule.

Unsurprisingly, after the bill’s recent passage in the Seanad, Israeli lawmakers vowed a diplomatic response, though the details of that response have not been made public at this time. However, the Irish envoy to the country has been summoned to Israel’s Foreign Ministry for a meeting on Thursday regarding the bill’s advancement.

Israeli settlers have strongly attacked the bill’s passage. Shai Alaon, mayor of the illegal settlement Beit El, claimed “the European attempt to curtail settlement in Judea and Samaria will not succeed” and called the Irish senators who voted in favor of the measure “a group of anti-Semites.”

Palestinians welcomed the measure, with top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat calling the bill’s passage in the Seanad a “courageous step” that challenges “Israel’s culture of impunity.”

If the measure is ultimately signed into law, the ban would send a dramatic message to Israel given that Ireland currently imports a wide variety of products from illegal West Bank settlements, including fruit, vegetables, wine, plastics, and cosmetics. Thanks to EU labeling regulations that went into effect in 2015, these products are clearly marked as originating in illegal settlements and can longer be misleadingly marketed as products “made in Israel.” Though such labeling allows consumers to make informed choices while shopping, the ban would remove those goods from stores in Ireland entirely.

Though supporters of Israel and Israeli politicians have slammed the ban as “radical”, “anti-semitic” and “extreme,” such arguments do little to change the reality of the illegal nature of settlements, which are not only internationally considered illegal but are also considered war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as well as International Humanitarian Law. Those measures explicitly prohibit occupying powers from placing their own civilian population into occupied territories with the intent of annexing that territory.

Thus, instead of being “radical” legislation, this bill would enforce compliance with both Irish and international law.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

An Irish bill on Israeli settlement goods could make history

Ireland may be on its way to make the purchase of goods and services from Israeli settlements illegal.

Source link

http://www.aljazeera.com

by Yara Hawari

July 8, 2018

The ‘Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018’ seeks to ban the sale of goods originating in Israeli settlements in Ireland [AP Photo]

 

On July 11, the upper house of the Irish parliament, the Seanad, will vote on a landmark bill that, if passed, would ban the purchase of goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements. The “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018” was put forward by  Irish independent Senator Frances Black and co-signed by Senators Alice-Mary Higgins, Lynn Ruane, Colette Kelleher, John G Dolan, Grace O’Sullivan and David Norrison on January 24 this year.

However, just six days later, the Seanad voted to delay the debate on it indefinitely after Israel protested. On January 30, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned the Irish ambassador to Israel, Alison Kelly, who explained that the Irish government did not support the bill. Netanyahu had claimed the bill sought to “harm the state of Israel” and was an attempt to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Six months later, on June 27, Black announced that on Twitter that the proposed law is back on the schedule for a debate in the Seanad. And just a week later, Fianna Fail (Warriors of Fal), the second-largest party in the Irish parliament, declared that it was going to back the bill, raising hopes among Palestine supporters in Ireland that it would indeed pass.

If the Seanad approves it, it would then be passed to the lower house of the parliament for a debate and vote. If passed, the bill will have to go through several more stages of review and amendment before it is signed into a law.

Although its opponents have labelled it as “radical” and claimed that it harms free trade, the bill actually enforces compliance with both international and Irish law.

Israeli settlements in both the occupied West Bank and the Golan Heights are illegal and constitute a war crime under both the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which prohibit occupying states from transferring their own civilian population into occupied territory.

Passing the bill would simply mean that Ireland is moving to modify its domestic legislation to comply with its third-state obligations under IHL.

Currently, the country is importing a variety of products from illegal Israeli settlements, including fruit and vegetables, wine, plastics, big brand beauty products such as “Ahava”, and others.

All of these are already clearly labelled as products from illegal Israeli settlements under the new EU labelling regulations issued in 2015 – ie, they cannot be labelled “Made in Israel”. This allows Irish – and EU consumers in general – to make an informed choice when shopping.

The EU imposed these labelling rules based on the notion of “differentiation” between Israel and the Palestinian land it occupied in 1967. But Black’s bill takes this a step further. It suggests that simple labelling is not enough and proposes to enforce international law by banning goods produced within illegal settlements.

This is not an “extreme” or “radical” measure, as some have claimed. It simply identifies settler-made products for what they are: illegal. These products are made on stolen land with stolen resources, under the protection of a criminal regime. Their presentation and sale as legal products helps to normalise Israel’s crimes – the continuous annexation and colonisation of Palestinian land.

This bill comes at a time when the international community continues to be complicit in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes and violations of Palestinian rights. Even the EU continues to maintain strong economic, cultural and political ties with Israel that on occasion violate its own commitment to IHL.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yara Hawari

Yara Hawari is the Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.