This morning, Thursday 27 April peace activists from the Belfast-based Justice Not Terror Coalition staged a ‘die-in’ and blockade at the main gate of Thales Air Defence, Alanbrooke Road, Castlereagh.

‘This symbolic and totally non-violent action effectively blockaded and closed down the main entrance to the Thales war profiteers site in Belfast for a period of time. We re-enacted an everyday scene from the streets of Baghdad, Samarra, Fallujah and other Iraqi towns and cities under US and UK military occupation’, said JNTC member Ann Patterson.

‘War profiteers Thales in Belfast specialise in short-range missiles for the British government’s war efforts. Arms traders such as Thales concentrate on strategies to make a killing from armed conflicts. We are calling on the decision makers in Thales to start using the expertise and skills of their workers in socially useful ways rather than manufacturing weapons of death and destruction’, said Mark Chapman.

For the record, the group of four, Tim Hourigan, Mary Kelly, Deirdre Morgan and Edward Horgan, who made a similar submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs on 20 Dec 2005, also offered to make a similar presentation to the EU Committee. The EU declined on cost grounds, and invited me only. However, I have received substantial help from a dedicated group of peace activists, mainly Irish, but with a few significant non-Irish contributors.

Over the past month a Garda has confirmed to me in confidence that they have been directed not to search US CIA aircraft or US military aircraft at Shannon airport, and that many of the Gardai disagree with this directive because it means “… turning a blind eye to the probability of wrongdoing, and we all know what terrible things such policies have led to in the past.”

In my submission to the European Parliament I called a spade a spade, and referred several times to the unlawful killing of over 100,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan and the interconnected rendition for torture programme, and the Irish Government’s complicity in these events. Many MEPs did not want to hear this, and the Irish MEPs in particular were embarrassed at Ireland being publically exposed for its participation in the Iraq War.

If Hitler and his ilk had been robustly challenged much earlier on the murders and torture they were committing in the 1930s, then many of their victims might have been spared. Yet it was considered politically or diplomatically incorrect to do so. 1945 was tens of millions of victims too late to accuse Hitler of mass murder. In my EU submission I referred to Britain as a “rogue European Union state because it is waging in an unlawful war on Iraq that has caused over 100,000 dead", and I referred to Ireland as a “rogue neutral state” for its breach of international laws on neutrality by its facilitation of the Iraq War at Shannon airport.

It was clear from the reaction that MEPs considered that my statements were politically incorrect. I can live with their criticism, but I cannot remain silent given what I know is going on, with a substantial degree of certainty.

Ed Horgan: I went to the European Parliament in Brussels to tell the Parliament what I knew of Ireland’s involvement in the unlawful rendition for torture process at Shannon airport. I insisted on linking the extraordinary rendition process with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the combined serial abuses of international law that these wars and the torture process involved. To a large extent I was telling the EU parliamentary special committee what they did not want to hear – “don’t mention the wars” – I told them anyway in the brief summary of my submission that the 15 minute time slot allowed me. My main submission was thirty-seven pages long, with 45 separate attachments and it became clear very quickly that very few had even read the executive summary of my submission, and some of those who did, read it only with the intention of trying to discredit it, and discredit me. The Irish Times report on Friday captured the tone of the parliamentarians response - “the witness failed to present the facts”.

My response is that the parliamentarians failed to read the facts I put before them. Sean O’Neachtain, FF MEP, standing in for Eoin Ryan MEP, was put forward to attack my submission, but failed to address any of the facts in my submission, including my statement that the Irish Government’s reply to the Council of Europe on Rendition for Torture was fraudulent and misquoted Article 40.4.1. of the Irish Constitution thereby giving the impression that foreign prisoners being taken through Shannon are specifically protected by the letter or wording of the Irish Constitution. Simon Coveney incorrectly accused me of calling Ireland a “rogue state”. My statement was that Ireland was “a rogue neutral state” and I explained this issue in detail.

Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan got a similar response from some MEPs and was accused of “disloyalty” by one UK MEP because he blew the whistle on the Government of which he had been an ambassador.

The primary purpose of my submission to the European Parliament special committee on Extraordinary Rendition (TDIP committee) was to put a dossier of information on the public record in Europe on what the Irish Government has been doing not only in connection with CIA rendition at Shannon, but also on Irish direct participation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I emphasised through my written submission and my verbal submission that the rule of international law needs to be reinforced not trampled on, as many European states, including Ireland, have been doing.

1916 – 90 years on Bertie sends troops in against anti-imperialist demonstration

In the run up to the 90th anniversary of 1916 many wondered how best to mark the event. Some marched the day before, some a few hours after. But the teflon Taoiseach trod where few men dared. At 12.00 he was at the GPO to commemorate an insurrection against imperialism. At 15.00 he was sending the troops in against an anti-imperialist demonstration. First Video Edit First Text Report Meeting for Baldonnel arrestees Further footage at indymedia film night

'They are at once the boldest and the most unmanageable of revolutionaries.
with our backs to the Military parade, we handed out flyers specially printed for the day. The front of the flyer contained details of the relevent campaign and on the back, a copy of the Proclamation with the associated text highlighted. For Shell2Sea and Save Tara ("We declare the right of the Irish People to the ownership of Ireland"); Residents Against Racism ("Cherishing all of the children of the Nation equally"); Cosantoiri Siochana's 'Nothing To Declare' / CIA renditions through Shannon ("We hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State"); and Black Shamrock flyers ("In every generation the Irish People have asserted their right to National freedom and Sovereignty"). Our placards had those same quotes with Black Shamrock posters pasted to the back.
Many campaigns, one simple message; Bertie you're a hypocrite - enact the Proclamation!

"But, hark! a voice like thunder spake, The West's awake! the West's awake!" This is a first hand account of what is probably the first anti-war demonstration on the campus of Glenville State College since the Vietnam era protests. Students are fed up with President Bush and his illegal war in Iraq that is costing the lives of West Virginia's youth which are being exploited by the military in promise for scholarships. We have arisen from our slumber and shall no long stand idly by as Bush and his cronies are destroying not only our country but the world of which all of us live!

I have sat in pubs all over Ireland and I think I heard John Denver's hit song "Country Roads" being sang in nearly all of them maybe even sometimes hummed during sunday mass. Well, this is a story about the land so endeared to Denver and revered with utmost consideration by you guys.