The Workers’ Party have accused Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney of prioritising Donald Trump’s foreign policy ahead of Irish neutrality. Cllr. Éilis Ryan, the Workers’ Party candidate in May’s European Parliament elections, said:

“Simon Coveney has, for the first time in our history, given formal backing to United States overseas aggression. Successive governments under Fianna Fáil, Labour and the Green Party have facilitated US overseas aggression by allowing the use of Shannon Airport, but this move marks a new departure, leaving behind even the facade of neutrality.

“It flies in the face of the values of anti-colonialism and sovereignty which Irish people are so rightly proud of.”

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Lets be clear the chemical attack last week was not done by Syria. It would make absolutely no sense. They have already more or less beaten the US/Uk/France (via Saudi proxies) backed ISIS terrorist group with the great help of Russia. Besides Syria destroyed all their chemical weapons a few years back under the watchful eyes of international agencies. So why on Earth would they bring the wrath of the world upon themselves. They are not that stupid. No this chemical attack like the other ones, is done via the terrorist cells (-trained, financed and armed by Western powers through local proxies) - against the "moderate terrorists" and ultimately arranged by their sponsors which is as US, UK & France, the very same states crying crocodile tears about human rights when they regularly bomb countries and people for "human rights". Even now as they screech in unison about this staged attack by them blaming it on the Syrians they have absolutely zero interests in the lives of the people in question. Even the most unobservable person can see it is used merely as a pretext to their agenda. That agenda however is not just to take action and drop bombs as always but something bigger and it is brilliantly outlined in the article written back before this latest fiasco where intelligence had already revealed that the US/UK were planning this latest attack. In short the agenda is to link the clumsy chemical poisoning of Skripal with the Syria chemical attack. The plan was simple. Russia is a monster for using chemical poisoning (except they didn't) and so is Syria too (except they didn't) and they are friends. Therefore Russia should be expelled from the 5 member UN security council and if that could be pulled off then the US/UK & France could safely ignore China and the "Western Free World" would have a free hand to bomb and intimidate who they like. You see the problem is the USA is in debt and technically should be insolvent but because the dollar is the global reserve currency backed by threat of US military, special forces and colour revolutions no-one dares challenge it except of course the Russia-China axis. Nevertheless USA had it's day in the sun and their power is declining. The UK think they can re-establish their colonial relationship and presumably they would be the dominant partner and need to hang on the coat tails of the USA to achieve their aims. Even though the USA is clearly the bigger of the two, the UK are much better at this game than the US could ever hope to be, hence the confidence they can successfully use them.

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Jeremy Corbyn Diplomacy, and not bombing, is the way to end Syria’s agony

Looks like we have blindly picked Empire

We are publishing this piece by PANA explaining what PESCO is about and how it means the loss of our neutrality. Unfortunately since then on Dec 7th the Dail voted by 75 to 42 to join PESCO. Some key points are:
:
1) PESCO is a binding agreement because it says so. The government claims it is not. It is.
2) PESCO commits us to spending 2% of GDP on military spending by 2022. This is a figure of € 5.5 billion. We currently spend 1/10th of that on defense. This makes a mockery of "fiscal space"
3) PESCO in the event of crisis places under NATO's command. Therefore we are no longer neutral.
4) PESCO is the side door to Ireland joining a EU Army / NATO and would have us involved in "humanitarian" bombing and "peace making" -in other words imposing the demands of the corporate interests that rule above all else.

The Irish Government is considering joining PESCO. This will be one of the most important decisions this FG/Independeny Alliance will ever make. There needs at the very least a serious debate on the issue, and in any genuine debate form all sides in the corporate media. On the evidence so far this is highly improbable, as is their total lack of coverage of the use of Shannon Airport by US troops

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The three routes used by ISIS to transport stolen oil to Turkey

For the past year, there have been numerous reports that ISIS have been transporting the oil they have stolen from Iraq and Syria, to Turkey and this has been greatly facilitated by the Turkish state at the highest levels. It is widely known the oil was being sold and exported by BMZ Ltd owned by Bilal Erdogan, President Erodgan's son. It is extremely unlikely that they are doing this for nothing and tens of millions have probably been siphoned off by the Erdogan family and other key officials and the Turkish economy has no doubt benefitted from an injection of cheap stolen oil sold below world market rates. The Russian Defense Ministry on Dec 2nd revealed the vast scale of the oil smuggling operation which somehow was missed by the NATO/US in the past 2 years.

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In the last two months, the dramatic and sad photographs of 3 year old Aylan Kurdi, and his brother lying dead on the shores on a beach in Turkey have finally opened the curtain very slightly on the horrors and terror of war in Syria. It is hard to conceive the trauma of this family first seeing one of their other brothers beheaded by ISIS jihadists, then to flee and then for this man's wife and two remaining young children to drown in the sea whilst attempting to escape. If you were to listen to politicans from the UK all the way up to the present prime minister, you would think they were doing this so they could scab off the social welfare but as anyone knows, this was the act of a family desperate to flee the terror in their home country and get to safety at all costs. However Aylan Kurdi and his brother and mother aren't the only ones to drown or being killed in war, there are tens of thousands dead.