Ireland used to be neutral and pretty much non-aligned, staying close to most members of the Non-Aligned nations if not being an actual member of the bloc. Then came Bertie Ahern, the Taoiseach (prime minister) who resigned last year, and his namesake Dermot, minister for foreign affairs for many years, who tore all that up and allowed Uncle Sam to use Shannon Airport for extraordinary rendition, whereby the US outsourced its torture clients to pals such as Morrocco or Egypt, even supposed enemy Syria; as a transit airport for the war on Iraq; and as a base for transport of the disappeared to CIA 'black site' prisons.
The airport authority announced recently that it had profited to the tune of €30 million from this trade in death over the past four years, with around a million US troops passing through to Iraq or home to the US. Since the US invasion, continuing demonstrations and a permanent peace camp have targeted Shannon, and a dedicated website has logged the comings and goings of CIA planes engaged in Bush's trade in torture (begun, lest we forget, by Bill Clinton, who signed off on the CIA torture enterprise before leaving office).
For all reports on the trade in torture and the machinery of death passing through Shannon and elsewhere, here's a comprehensive resource site. For more on the subject of extraordinary rendition and the CIA's network of secret prisons across the globe and especially in Europe, see here and here. For a long account by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, see here.
The airport authority announced recently that it had profited to the tune of €30 million from this trade in death over the past four years, with around a million US troops passing through to Iraq or home to the US. Since the US invasion, continuing demonstrations and a permanent peace camp have targeted Shannon, and a dedicated website has logged the comings and goings of CIA planes engaged in Bush's trade in torture (begun, lest we forget, by Bill Clinton, who signed off on the CIA torture enterprise before leaving office).
For all reports on the trade in torture and the machinery of death passing through Shannon and elsewhere, here's a comprehensive resource site. For more on the subject of extraordinary rendition and the CIA's network of secret prisons across the globe and especially in Europe, see here and here. For a long account by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, see here.
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