US Military in Shannon, Good for the Irish Economy

by Raymond McInerney - Global Country of World Peace Fri Jun 21, 2002 01:24 raymond.mcinerney at ul dot ie 122 Vale Avenue, Carew Park, Limerick 086 3626144

I’m sure there are a lot of people in Ireland who have problems with the US military presence in Shannon. Cllr McMahon and all the others on the Clare County Council should be told of this. We should be a country of peace.

Maybe we can have a petition, any suggestions on the wording.

We can also have a protest.

We should write to Aer Rianta and the Irish Government requesting that they put a stop to the Air Force exercises.

Its late at night, will write something more constructive over the weekend.

by pissed Fri Jun 21, 2002 08:03

Joe McGellan you fucking prostitute are you just to stupid to figure out somthing to do other than lick uncle sams boots.

by Joe McGellan Fri Jun 21, 2002 11:15

I'm not licking uncle sams boots.
I'm highlighting the attitude prevalent in this country "We will work for blood money".

by Tim Hourigan Fri Jun 21, 2002 11:19

They've kept quiet about it for ages.
Now they mention it when two councillors pass an opinion. Whereas the regular protests at the airport are not mentioned at all. But the reporter does include the assertion that people rang a councillor to say they have no problem with it.
That's hardly balanced reporting.

And who the hell rings anyone up up just to say, "ah, well it doesn't bother me"?
People don't bother ringing unless they either support it or oppose it.

It just shows how much the media cares about accuracy and informing the public.

by BlackPope Fri Jun 21, 2002 12:48

Another fine example of spineless lickspittle money-grubbing polit-prostitutes plying their daily trade - pimping the interests of those they pretend to represent to the lowest or ugliest bidder.

In-f@@Xing-credible!!

... and Ireland long a Republic be
... a province once again !!

Connolly, spin in that grave, boy!!

Greetz, BP

by Steve Sun Jun 23, 2002 20:49

The harsh reality is that the powers that be in this country have been gradually chipping away at the concept of Irish Neutrality. The presence of Irish army officiers at NATO headquarters speaks for itself. The granting of landing rights to U.S. aircraft during the gulf freedom struggle, and now their assistance to the "war against terrorism" shows where the ruling class in this country is heading. Ahern's describing those people who oppose Nice (including your's truly) as "whingers" show's that they are not totally confident that Nice 11 will succeed. I hope a united campaign of all parties and individuals can get together in order to ensure that Nice 11 is defeated.

by P-bear - The P-bear Foundation Tue Jul 23, 2002 18:43 ur2dumb2bonline at hotmail dot com

If you pride yourself as a redblooded, proud-to-wave-a-flag American, who might take offence to someone voicing unflattering opinions about the government of the United States of America - don't read on past these lines. Please don't. I implore you, you'll just have a feckin brain haemhorrage and be in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

If you do chose to continue you'll soon realise that I'm not trying to offend or denigrate, I've just been doing some lateral thinking. I've been putting two and two together and occasionaly coming up with 4-&-a-half. If you do read on, please remember that I've made the distinction between the US people and its elected government. I'm not tarring you all with the same brush. I will, however, with all probability never be able to enter the US again after this, what with all the new sniffers policing the net. Plus if I die an untimely death..well you know why... ;-)

I am, as it always must be when you publish your thoughts, open to feedback, but please respect my opinion and remember that's it's all food for thought. So no abuse will be entertained whatsoever only intelligent discussion.

As a philosophical aside to the Market-dive this past while then...

The resources on our wee planet are drying up.
The oilfields are near exhausted.
Natures larder starts to look like Old Mother Hubbards Cupboard as we overfish and drive a horde of species to the brink of extinction.
In short, we're just thirty years shy of experiencing real deprivation on a scale hitherto unseen in the history of mankind.

If you use an indice of 1-100 to gauge our consumption of the earths resources as a planetary organism, we, the human race collectively, are currently at 120%.
If we continue for the next 10 years we will be at 150% consumption.
If this rate continues in its current exponential trajectory, we will have successfully exhausted the bulk of our current natural resources - ie oil, minerals, gas, timber - by the year 2030 (recently scientifically proven. I can find a link if one so desires). The main culprits in this spiral of destruction? The USA and Western Europe. First World countries for the most. Russias pollution levels have consistently dropped over the past 10 years. Partially because she was encouraged fiscally to improve pollution levels in return for subsidies and concessions from the EU. The USA has, in stark contrast,seen an ever increasing pollution output. Well thats what happens when every second driver has to have a giant gas-guzzling pickup to get around and knows nothing about what their engines emissions are actually doing to the world around them. Besides, everybody gave up listening to Sting years ago....who's left to evangelise upon the environment? Bono has different fish to fry at the moment. George Michael is the only voice left in a position to say something but he's being gargling sperm for so long his voice is kind of redundant.

Thats some scary thoughts, especially for those with children.

Throw into this melange the blatant disregard for the Kyoto Agreement (Greenhouse Effect Accord - to reduce the production of Ozone Layer damaging gases, look it up on google) by the US government and many other "responsible" First World nations and you have an environment on the brink of implosion, supersaturated with pollutants, food chains irreversibly contaminated, ecosystems raped and damaged irrevocably.

Resources are the new crusade - it's no longer just a simple simple case of justifying military action because a nation HAS to defend itself against invasion or attack or mass-destruction. Or that one nation has unjustly invaded another in pursuit of its own selfish goals (the ideological conflict).
No. It's far more rudimentary, fundamental and urgent than that my friends.

It's down to fuel and food.

The next Great War will be fought over Resources. Recent US-led crusades display a disturbing trend in this direction (Gulf war anyone?)

The US government and its Allies know this and are panicking. Hell, does the prospect of food riots in the USA within the next 10 years seem outrageously far fetched?

Hmmm. I dunno...I've been ruminating a lot on this of late.

Bush Jr comes to power in a conspicuously irregular manner (Oil monnaied/lowbrow/blueish-collared/thick-as-pigshite/marionette), archly engineers a war that by its very vagueness of definition ("The War on Terror" - it's about as clever as a CNN Spin Doctor is allowed to get when spoonfeeding a media-numbed, channel-surfing population) allows a mandate for borderline perpetual warwaging, thus assuring a vastly inflated military budget and a market upturn thats historically incumbent in such situations. The way that the US government is vetoing UN procedures to make US soldiers equally culpable for "warcrimes", looking for immunity for its soldiers is morally reprehensible. Why should they get carte blanche to say, accidentally bomb village weddings or kill Canadian servicemen without fear of prosecution or reprehension?
Noticeably absent in US news sources I might add (San Francisco Gate excepted).

Just take Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War 1982, the premise is basically the same.

A faltering and stuttering economy, an imploded self-sufficiency and a very disgruntled population can only lead to trouble (exhibit A: Brixton riots of 1981, Miners Strikes over pit closures, council estates regularly turning into battlegrounds).

What do you do?

Same as every other fickle leader in the history of mankind - YOU GIVE THE PLEBS A COMMON ENEMY, a cause to rally behind and lo and behold all those misgivings evaporate in a flash of nationalist fervour. So you dispatch a fleet of your finest to the South Atlantic to liberate a Tescos (Walmart equivalent beloved of Anglophiles) on a ROCK with a few Landrover driving sheep farmers, from a bunch of Argentinian soldiers, while Harrier jumpjets wheel through the sky, pilots delighted at being able to combat test their nimble little fighters.
Your population forgets their gripes and throws itself into mass hysteria. Military spending rises, jobs are created in the defence industry and its ancillaries, your exchequer begins to stabilize and if you're victorious, well...you can count on a second term at the very least. All of which happened to the Tory Administration.

How do you think Napoleon/Hitler/insert-Warmongering-despot-of-choice-here________ remained in power for so long??? It wasn't just an iron grip of terror, it was keeping the rational misgivings of a populace balanced against a feeling of successful national wellbeing and superiority. Any idea where/what Dachau is? It's a residential suburb of Munich, 15 kilometers from the city centre that is famous for being the location of a Nazi concentration camp. The people who lived there knew what was going on but balanced it against a continuing prosperity and feeling of wellbeing, one that overrode their consciences. I must be careful to point out that this is of course a sweeping generalisation, I'm merely attempting to illustrate a broader point in relation to my theory, that it's easier not to think about the moral ramifications of your governments actions when there's sufficient food on the table and the sweet jingle of copper in your pocket.

Still with me? You still have to chance to save yourself a tumour...depending on your openness.

Now to the really contentious part of my theory, the one that will have many people up in arms and hopefully force some folk to reconsider their position on the true intentions of their governments and how far they are prepared to go to protect the way of life of their nation (this is the noblest motivation I can find, anything else is just too heinous and inhuman to consider).

I firmly believe that the tragedy of September the 11th was engineered, or at the very least permitted to happen, by the Bush administration (or whoever manipulates it, bona fide conspiracy theorists can furnish me with more info on this point, I'm just a novice). And for all of the reasons outlined above and more besides.

The current global economic crisis, the gradual erosion of resources, the very real prospect of food shortages in the first world. There exists the very real potential for a nation as large as the USA to, all of a sudden, be plunged into an unprecedented domestic emergency.

Food riots, petroleum shortages, 2mile tailbacks to gas stations. An environment so polluted that it refuses to support itself. A demoralised country watching its comforts slip away and those who didnt have much to start with left crippled, helpless and poverty-stricken, their anger slowboiling in much the same way as many an uprising began its fomentation. A return to the Great Depression if things continue. This applies to Western Europe as well, you're not gettin away with it yet lads.

Watch footage of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Observe the manner in which they collapse.
Straight down, no tilt or sway to either side. They basically implode in a relatively surgical manner.

Now cast your mind back to 1993 and the first bomb attack in the basement carpark of the WTC. It became quite clear that attacks on the Towers were viable, inevitable and also a huge problem for Manhattan. If the Towers collapse, they'll do so in the general direction of whichever side of the superstructure was damaged the most. Some buildings in the Downtown area already have protective mechanisms in the form of huge concrete blocks, pneumatically controlled to counteract the sway induced by highspeed Atlantic winds. The damage potential in the collapse of one of these giants is massive.

To be succinct: Domino Effect.

The same collapse premise applied to the WTC.
Except, to counteract the massive potential destruction that their collapse would incur, the buildings were jerryrigged with strategically placed explosives, so that their fall would not trigger a domino effect. Try chopping a tree down sometime, maybe then you'll see the physics behind it. My dad is an architect (hence some background knowledge acquired osmotically through a childhood of architectural lecturing and reading material), some of my friends are architects and a sizeable proportion have major misgivings about the manner in which the WTC collapsed, even with US government sanctioned theorizing on plasmic heat and pressure dissipation.

Mix into this conspiracy chowder the fact that US security services were perfectly aware of the presence of known terrorists and associates within their borders training at provincial flight schools and you have the high probability of upper government collusion with security agencies, allowing the terroists to perpetrate a massacre within US borders. Bush even put the shackles on the FBI, preventing them from disseminating their information on the terrorists movements and ultimately acting upon this information to avoid a strike. When they succeeded so tragically, it was the perfect excuse to set in motion the events which are even now unfolding.

Plus, the dubious manner in which the last election was conducted and Bushs subsequent accession to the presidency and the whole picture becomes disturbingly clear for me. What has a college of voters got to do with democracy? Please, I'd like to know.

A panicked government sacrificing its own citizens for the nations greater good - in order to ostensibly intensify and elevate security levels to unprecedented levels in order to prepare the nation for the measures necessary to maintain order when the resource issue starts having a recognisable effect on the daily lives of Americans, who will not take lightly to paying more for food, gasoline and normal comforts in a coming time of wont. It will render WWII argumets useless because its no longer a question of dictatorship or ideological dominance - it's one of survival.

The shattered faith in the nations economy and in the trustworthiness of industry leaders plays a role too (Enron, worldcom et al).

All does not augur well for the temper of the nation, hence this strange, unshakeable image of food riots within the next 10 years swimming in my minds eye. I've been to the US and seen at first hand the prosperity and the poverty existing side-by-side, the stark delineation, so my theory is not altogether uninformed. My experience there lends some credence to my thoughts. My theory sounds, even to me, Mansonesque, but upon reflection, perfectly viable. Given the backdrop of downtrended markets, dwindling resources, terrorist threats...its only a matter of time before the worm turns.

And it has in the form of this "terrorist threat". This blanket labelling of any potential menace, no matter how vague, to US government interests is alarming - it's being used as a finite excuse to roll into a country and depose their government and then judiciously take advantage of its resources to perpetuate a form of new-age absentee imperialism. It only serves to coalesce dissonant factions behind a common cause - the reduction of unwanted US governmental influence abroad through direct attack upon US interests, domestic and otherwise. Perhaps this is exactly what the US government wants: that the "enemy" itself become more starkly defined through irresponsible foreign policies.

Which brings me back to one of my key original points - YOU GIVE THE PLEBS A COMMON ENEMY and George Dubya is your uncle....

DISCUSS!

by Jim Thu Apr 20, 2006 07:46

I'm sick of hearing all this anti US war talk, Irish neutrality and the use of Shannon. The US is essential to the Irish economy and I'm not just talking about F-16s and C-5s buying fuel, I'm talking about Intel, Microsoft and many other multi-nationals.

Ireland are part of Partnership For Peace which is practically NATO, now thats not neutral is it? The protesters who damaged that US aircraft at Shannon should get the maximum sentence possible. Their actions have had a negative effect on Irish/US relations and not to mention tens of thousands of Irish seeking green cards in the US.

It's time to grow up, if any of the ignorant, hippy anti-war protesters knew the real consequences of barring the US from Shannon they wouldn't be protesting. Is it worth losing your jobs over and risking our economy?

War is never fully justified but it happens.

by Seán Ryan Thu Apr 20, 2006 13:23

Unarmed F-16s?

That's just a downright stupid idea. Imagine a group of 'sitting ducks' just flying around our western coast.

What exercise could they do that they couldn't do at home? And cheaper too.

Isn't this a call by the dickheads who pretend to lead to begin a terrorist tourist season?

It'd definitely bring revenue into the country too.

I can just see the advertising campaign:

Vanessa Mae's 'Bach street prelude' a soaring interpretation of Bach's 4th lute suite prelude begins. Screen fades from black and a breathtaking panoramic view of our coastline is revealed. A low rumbling begins a fast crescendo and suddenly an F-16 hurtles from the top of the screen and levels off to very rapidly fill the screen. For a few moments Vanessa can no longer be heard as the plane streaks straight for the viewer and then suddenly dissappears as it flies off-camera and its decrescendo begins. It's back to the idyllic vista of our coastline. A slight hissing sound gets louder as a little spot appears to emerge from the background and begins to get larger. Once the spot is identifiable as a ground to air missile it immediately heads off screen leaving an winding vapour-trail and once more Vanessa fills our ears, and beauty our eyes. The massive explosion that follows prompts the camera to do a slow zoom towards our coast and the little chap celebrating a hole in one with a cool refreshing pint of Guinness.

"There's nobody like the Irish - bring your money enjoy the craic"

by cool j Fri Apr 21, 2006 04:04

Ireland is now investing just as much in the US. Multinationals are ruled by strict self-interst and don't care bout the poltics of any country in which the can make an quick and easy buck i.e Ireland today. To bring your argement to its logical conclusion it would have been a could idea to have the Nazis using are airports back in the 40's as it would be "good for business"!!