Workers Solidarity Movement

Remember the good old days - before the election - when the Green party used to be in favour of the anti-war cause and used to support the searching of CIA ‘rendition’ planes passing through Shannon? Remember how the Greens used to believe that the reason why the then Fianna Fail/PD government wouldn’t sanction the searching of these planes was because they were in George W Bush’s pocket?

Well - apparently the Greens were wrong all the time. Now that they themselves are part of that government they’ve realised the real reason why the Irish state won’t challenge the US war machine on this issue. Green Party Councillor Brian Meaney, a member of Clare County Council has discovered that the State can’t afford the resources it would take to search these planes because they have to spend too much money minding the U.S. warplanes which pass through Shannon.

“The antics of the anti-war movement through incursions into the air- field have ensured that funding that could support a programme of searching suspected rendition flights at Shannon has been diverted elsewhere”, according to the astute Cllr. Meaney (Source ‘Irish Times, 22nd Dec. 2007)

By the way recent figures have shown that between March 2003 and September 2007 1,059,382 US military personnel have passed through Shannon on 8,698 flights.

This article is from Workers Solidarity 101 published Jan/Feb 2008

Draft PDF of WS101 - articles will differ from proofread version