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Just
when Provisional Sinn Fein would have us believe we
were on the road to a United Ireland because of their
clever tactical GFA driving in 1998, along comes Tony
Blair in 2002 to turn the car lights on this Republican
cul-de-sac in an article entitled "Prime Minister
sheds light on the details" (The Guardian
Friday July 26, 2002 Page 12):
"Mr.
Blair...said that unionists should accept they have
gained from the Good Friday agreement. 'The idea that
Unionists have gotten nothing from this is absurd,'
he said as he reeled off a list of their gains. They
were: securing Northern Ireland's place within the
United Kingdom; placing Sinn Fein in a 'partitionist
assembly'; all parties sitting in a power sharing
executive; and persuading the Irish Republic to give
up its territorial claim to Northern Ireland."
All
of which is true enough but what Mr. Blair didn't
say was that Irish Republicans got nothing from this
deal save the limited right to co-administer devolved
British Rule in colonially dependent Northern Ireland
(which makes them no longer Republican by definition)
and the false Alice in Wonderland promise of jam tomorrow
but never jam today regarding Irish unity. Nor did
Mr. Blair mention just how much money might have gone
into off-shore bank accounts to persuade the corrupt
Irish political elite to give up their claim to Northern
Ireland or how he had once told the Irish electorate
back in April-May 1998 that they had no other choice
but to vote for the then named Belfast Agreement because
said Blair then: "There was No Plan B (i.e. United
Ireland)." And like drowning men reaching for
a sword, the weak divided Irish Nation reached for
Blair's sword with Bill Clinton's encouragement (because
he needed Blair's British sword elsewhere). The fact
that even Puerto Ricans get more choice than that
from the US Congress every four years or so goes of
course without any mention in the neo-colonial press
in Ireland. God forbid Irish people discover other
colonials getting a better deal.
Why
some Guardian columnists though even bother
to ponder this blank space named Blair is the real
mystery. Like David Trimble, he is a riddle not worth
solving. Any Labour Prime Minister who can so openly
spurn the Labour Unions who brought him is in a word,
however highbrow, scum. As the criminal career CIA
Officer E. Howard Hunt said about Richard Nixon: "He
is the darkness reaching out for the darkness."
An apt description for most solipsistic politicians
anywhere who have made an opportunistic career out
of appearing to try to be all things to all people
by saying this but doing that or by faking left but
going right all the while upholding the dishonour
of the status quo - their goal all along. The only
way you can really get a handle on these politically
sociopathic personality types is by focusing not so
much on what they say but on what they do and don't
do and by seeing the no-longer-needed friends and
acquaintances left behind in their political career
boat's wake. It is why all politics is lethal not
local.
But
since no one likes to dwell on a bad deal they made
out of fear of having been played the fool, there
is much market in the politics of denial which has
many manifestations: i.e. There will be a United Ireland
by 2016 (just after Texas merges back with Mexico);
Support the Peace (read Pacification) Process; the
Good (for who?) Friday Agreement (because we got feck
all); It (British Occupation and Rule) doesn't really
matter (that is why there is British Occupation and
Rule); the Brits (who stay) want out of NI because
it cost them too much money to stay (never a measure
of disinterest anywhere else though); Britain has
no strategic or selfish interest in Ireland (except
for that NATO beach head called NI); People run from
debating Sinn Fein (only when their shot at); Giving
up our claim to NI will make Irish unity more likely
(just like West Germany never giving up their claim
to East Germany made German unity more likely); The
IRA needs to give up the guns and disband (like the
ANC didn't); and the (gerrymandered majority) minority
Unionist veto is really just democratic consent (tell
it to the black South Africans who never settled for
a similar undemocratic white minority veto), etc.
Such
politics is illusory! That is its value. It allows
democratic governments and party elites to rule by
fooling rather than by force. That's why so much corporate
and government money is spent on public relations
propaganda because words are cheap and lies at least
temporarily effective. Which of course isn't to say
they would never rule by force, hence Bloody Sunday
and the killing of Joseph O'Connor, but as Mark Twain
once said: "A lie will get half way around the
world before truth gets its boots on." And the
beauty here for all liars and thieves is in this lag
time also known as the present.
It
is why Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen can say Nice II
will not endanger Irish sovereignty even though the
cheerleading mantra of the European Union has for
some time now been "ever closer union" (i.e.
less national sovereignty in exchange for more EU
federalism). That lag time between their lies now
and the truth later gives these over paid prevaricators
the electoral currency they need to buy votes and
manipulate the Irish population into handing over
even more of our national sovereignty to the EU like
Italians in WWII handing over their troops to the
direction and control of the Greater Axis powers.
Their game plan is weak Irish nation now, weaker European
province later.
Even
the fact that the original architects of the European
Union envisioned a United States of Europe (as a way
to prevent any further wars of destruction on the
European continent) is discreetly marginalized these
days in the pages and verse of official opinion. This
is unfortunate because it is a good argument to make
for historically warring countries like France and
Germany to give up some of their national sovereignty
in exchange for a regional peace and economic stability
pact. But since not all countries in Europe have a
history of warring with each other, this constant
ever closer federally integrationist approach of the
Pro-Nice II crowd is dubious and at best beguiling
in heterogeneous Europe which can and will never be
as homogenous as the United States given historical
circumstances. European integration has its limits
because you just cannot make American (federal) stew
out of this con-federal EU tossed salad.
However,
since European federalism, like American federalism,
is propelled by the forces of wealth and power for
their own ends (i.e. cheaper labour, newer markets,
single currency, etc.), the marginalizing and de-emphasis
in the media of the Anti-Nice Treaty argument (which
likes the EU just as it is) will be brought into play
by the usual trans-national corporate forces. They
will fund the private for profit advertising media
darkness just as was done to the Anti-GFA argument
because the nationalism of smaller free market countries
is a dirty word and is easily sold out by easy to
buy elites who even when they don't believe their
own lies are often times caught up in illusions of
their own making. Case in point, how many times have
you heard or read the following Pro Nice Treaty lie
on TV or in the usual press: "We will be better
able to influence the affairs of all of Europe once
we are more securely subsumed into it"? Naturally,
no one who says this can explain how this could be
so. How can we, a weak divided country of under 4
million people on the periphery of Western Europe,
become more influential in the EU with even lesser
rights and powers than we have now? It is about as
likely as the Irish talking the Brits out of Northern
Ireland.
And
if you really think a vote against Nice II is a vote
against enlargement then what was the point of the
Treaty of Amsterdam in 1998 which permitted the accession
of five more Eastern European countries into the EU?
Four years later and not even one part of that unanimously
agreed to accession has materialized? Isn't that why
Mr. Romano Prodi said the Irish vote against Nice
wouldn't stop enlargement? The Treaty of Amsterdam
is still in place and all countries in the EU support
that enlargement and more. So who is really holding
up enlargement? Answer: the major players of the EU
(i.e. Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the UK) who
don't want any of the smaller EU players like Ireland
on an equal footing any more and don't want any of
the other Eastern European states to be admitted with
the status of equal partner. The major players want
enlargement but on their contract of adhesion terms
(i.e. the Treaty of Nice). So a vote against Nice
II by Ireland will not stop enlargement, but it just
might cob web the EU elitists for a while and for
all of our own good.
The
lies to be sure will be flowing back and forth as
they already are in this up and coming Nice II referendum
which is why it is imperative that we all try and
support alternative media publications like The
Blanket which like the Russian literary journal
Syntaxis, launched in 1959 by Soviet Dissident
Alexander Ginzburg, publishes the work of writers
who have very little chance of appearing in the official
press or even in Provisional Sinn Fein's An Phoblacht
which of course never shies from debate with any one
who disagrees with them disciplined party organ that
it is. And if you believe that PSF lie, then you'll
probably believe that there will be a United Ireland
by 2016, but don't think for a moment that Ireland
has nothing to lose and everything to gain by voting
for Nice II because it indeed has much to lose and
little to gain.
It's
about the Nation stupid! And as long as we are members
of this viable EU confederacy as it currently stands
then we should continue to treat it as the international
forum that it is more than it is anything else (so
far) wherein everyone comes to the table with their
own national self interests to bear. That is why the
UK has not adopted the Euro as its currency and it
is why the Danes can prohibit German nationals from
owning land in Denmark. They all got their right to
abrogate from various EU Treaties when it suited them
so let's get ours. And forget about our dishonest
government and media's specious guilt trip about how
we could wreck it for others! Just vote no. Nuff said.
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