EU subservient to US – Irish MP who called Obama ‘war criminal’
by aletho
RT | July 12, 2013
Standing
up to one's government is becoming the only way for citizens to stop
the spread of Western imperialism and its double standards, said Clare
Daly, the now famous Irish MP who lambasted President Obama at Northern
Ireland's G8 summit.
RT recently interviewed
Daly, discussing matters of politics, economics and human rights set
against a backdrop of US pressure on the world to comply with its
vision.
Despite
hefty political backlash incurred after the summit for calling Obama a
“war criminal,” Daly appeared optimistic that her views were shared by
many across the world. She ultimately believes, she said, that it is
those people across Europe and America who should scrutinize their
politicians and demand greater accountability in foreign affairs and a
lesser flexibility to US coercion where matters like war in the Middle
East and the fate of whistleblowers are concerned.
Speaking
of Ireland, which some may remember was the subject of her attack at
the summit, she complained of the country’s “unprecedented slobbering”
whenever Obama appeared on the horizon, saying that, “It’s hard to know
which is worse, whether it’s the outpourings of the Obamas themselves,
or the sycophantic fawning over them by sections of the media and the
political establishment.”
But she also takes a more encompassing view of things, underlining the suffering of the austerity-ridden Irish.
“When
Obama visited, [the government] would make no points of criticism,
everything was wonderful. We must get American companies into this
country to create employment, but the reality is that most of the
American companies come to avoid paying their taxes at home and in
Ireland, which means it is ordinary people who suffer, and the very
wealthy are those who want these companies to benefit,” she said,
emphasizing Europe’s economic subservience to the United States.
The political and moral implications of this subservience are Daly’s main targets.
Ireland,
she says, is a neutral country. But that policy loses meaning already
at Ireland’s Shannon airport: whether it is the government’s ignoring of
planes armed to the teeth, or suspicious cargo that could be anything
from arms deliveries for third parties, to prisoners being relayed for
rendition by the CIA, there is a relationship of unquestioning
submissiveness when it comes to the Irish government and the US.
“The
arrangement is that when a military aircraft lands on our territory,
they are not supposed to be armed, carrying explosives, weapons, not
engaged in intelligence or in any military exercise. But our question
is, how do we know they are not providing ammunition for Syria? We don’t
know that, because the Irish government won’t investigate or carry out
inspections of those flights as they should.”
“They
never go on to an aircraft when the US carries people suspected of
being trafficked on rendition flights – do they ask them about
passports? The Irish government turned a blind eye on that.”
The
opposite logic was applied to the rumor of NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden stopping over in Ireland on a commercial flight from Moscow to
Cuba, with the Americans sending a provisional arrest warrant to the
Irish in the hopes that they would hand him over. Daly herself is a
great supporter of Snowden’s struggle and considers him an international
hero.
And
Daly is not surprised with the lax attitude European governments took
to Snowden’s revelations about the US spying on the world and its
governments. She believes those governments ultimately want the same
thing, on the one hand, and on the other – they fear economic and
political pressure from the US.
“They
have a reason to be fearful because the United States is using its
weight – its economic weight, in some instances, and its military weight
in others – to intimidate those countries. I think we saw that
graphically with Ecuador – threatening to take their trade preferences
from them if they were to give him asylum.”
The
grounding of the Bolivian president’s plane in Vienna and the collusion
of every major Western European country in the incident is seen by Daly
as a supreme example of this process.
Her
final conclusion is that ordinary people must not give up the fight for
what they believe is right. And that fight must encompass all spheres
of life – from economics to politics and to the defense of people and
whistleblowers of all kinds – because their governments appear unwilling
to take the stance against US hegemony themselves.
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