NATO aims to be 'the white race in arms'

The Annual General Meeting of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance was held in the Mansion House in Dublin recently. The meeting which was attended by 70-80 people from around the country was the largest AGM of the Alliance ever.

At the start of the meeting the EU flag in the hall was taken down and replaced by the PANA flag, in a demonstration of opposition to the emerging EU military alliance.

The meeting heard of the progress of the alliance in creating a network of organisers across the country in preparation for a campaign on the next EU treaty, likely to be called the Paris Treaty, which is expected in late 2000 and is likely to try to strengthen the link between the EU and the Western European Union military alliance even further.

A resolution proposed at the meeting expressed PANA's "alarm at Ireland's growing involvement in the international arms trade, with (1) the increasing number of military-use export licences granted by the Department of Foreign Affairs to Irish-based companies; (2) the ongoing development of an EU arms industry; and (3) the increase in spending on military equipment by the Irish defence forces, which will be necessitated by new commitments to EU and PfP security arrangements" and resolved to "continue its campaign to highlight and counter the above challenges to international peace and security, and, in particular, to Ireland's neutrality, independent foreign policy and highly-respected UN peacekeeping role.

To that end, Ireland's participation in PfP will be closely monitored as will developments in EU security and defence under the Amsterdam Treaty and the follow-on EU treaty already being discussed and which is likely to be drafted during the coming year, based on terms of reference to be agreed at the EU Summit in Helsinki in mid-December."

It was noted at the meeting that the so-called "Peace Dividend" of the Stormont Deal was partly being fuelled by an increase in the armaments trade.

Partnership for Peace activity can go beyond peace-keeping and humanitarian missions and in 1997 was "enhanced" to include peace enforcement/crisis management; "much more robust, complex military-to-military co-operation", according to a senior NATO official, quoted in June 1997. The US Ambassador to NATO remarked that the enhanced PfP was furthering the goal of military interoperability and "making the difference between being a partner and being an ally [of NATO] razor thin".

While the Leinster House administration could choose which aspects of the PfP it wished to adopt it was important to note the broadness of the PfP and to question for how long Ireland could confine its involvement. And as a PfP member, would Ireland not be associated with those PfP actions it didn't take part in?

Speaking at the meeting the PANA chairperson Roger Cole expressed satisfaction at the increasing 'NO' vote againstto further enmeshment in the emerging European superstate, which went as high as 38% at the last (Amsterdam Treaty) referendum. He felt that the Irish people would not be prepared to participate in the exploitation of developing countries which would be the consequence of a militarised European Union.

The development of WEU/EU relations will be central to the next European Treaty. There are several options available: maintaining the status quo is not one of them. Even the EU Neutrals are willing to strengthen the WEU links -- the Swedish and Finnish Governments have offered proposals to ensure that all EU members, whatever their military status, should have an equal say in EU mandated WEU missions, and Austria's Foreign Minister has even hinted that Austria may consider full WEU membership, thereby relinquishing its neutrality. The majority of EU states want a complete EU/WEU merger.

The NATO-linked WEU has been chosen to be what is in effect the defence wing of the EU. However the WEU is only the middle-man between NATO and the EU, and the British, in particular, are now leading a move to sidestep that middle-man and link the EU directly with NATO. Having all the EU in the PfP facilitates that move.

NATO has always been regarded as the "defence club of the prosperous transatlantic democratic world . . . If, as NATO plans and expects, Russia falls into its embrace, the alliance is on track to become (and don't think the Chinese and Islamic world have not noticed) not only a security system that reaches from Los Angeles to Vladivostock, but something more ambitious still: the white race in arms." (Martin Walker, The Guardian, October 27, 1998.)
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Begrudger's Guide to the Millennium

(Note to readers. Like many guides to the last 1,000 years, this guide deals mainly with the last ten years and, at best, the last century. Neither is it a guide.)

Ireland has changed greatly in the past ten years. In 1989 Charlie Haughey was forming his second Leinster House coalition government and telling people about having to keep wearing their hair shirts. In 1999 he appeared in the Central Criminal Court and newspapers went into great detail about Charlie Haughey's shirts.

In 1989 emigration was a curse that Paddy Reilly and Christy Moore sung songs about and most families suffered from. Everyone felt sorry for people who felt so desperate that they would leave their home and travel (many times illegally) to another country. In 1999 the concern was about immigration and we suddenly discovered that Irish people could be racist in their own country. (But we have, of course, had plenty of practice with the Travellers.)

In 1989 unemployment was a major issue. Politicians hung their heads in shame and said there was nothing they could do, the jobs weren't there. In 1999 unemployment was still a 'big issue' but now it was because all the newspaper-and-sandwich shops in the country were crying out for low wage workers and there weren't enough people to fill the jobs. If the news about all the politicians with their hands in the till hadn't come out, Mary Harney would have had a fine time whipping people into jobs that they would barely have done when they were schoolchildren looking for pocket-money. But give the woman a chance. Where there's a will, there's a way.

In 1999 it turned out that every begrudger in the country in 1989 was right when they said that the whole place was run by thieves with their hands in the PAYE pocket. Charlie Haughey doesn't deserve all the credit. Like the tip of a pyramid, he had a whole support structure beneath him, including people who said that Dermot Morgan was only telling funny jokes. But don't feel too bad, you've got a millennium candle to cheer you up.

The Provisionals: from the cause of Irish freedom to the cause of 'equality' under British rule.

In 1989 Gerry Adams and Martin McG . . . etc had half the world believing that Irish freedom was the one, the only, THE cause. In 1999 they tell you about All-Ireland institutions of administration. Of course we had those in 1915 (under British rule) but that didn't stop Easter 1916.

Computer-type people may have heard about the Y2K bug. The underlying problem with this bug is that the original computer programmers only allowed two numbers to designate a year ie 1969 would be designated the numbers '69', the preceding numbers '19' being assumed. So, the bug arises from that when the clock swings around to 2000 some computers might interpret this as '00' and assume the prefix '19'. And so, instead of reading the new year as 2000 it will read it as 1900.

Bill Clinton tipped us off with his quip about drunks going through revolving doors. What seems to have happened is that the central processing unit of a certain Provisional movement has been Y2K bugged.

QUEEN'S ARSE

This makes sense. It makes sense because if this is 1900, then its OK for 'Sinn Féin' 'MPs' to travel over to Westminster to the House of Commons and sip their coffee in their British-backed offices. (It doesn't matter whether they take an oath of allegiance to the Queen and kiss her feet because with their privileges in Westminster they will regularly lick the Queen's arse -- with their free postage privileges.)

It makes sense because if this is 1900 then Sinn Féin won't be invented for another five years. Therefore it will be another five years before Arthur Griffith comes forward with his idea of withdrawing Irish representation from the English parliament.

Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Féin in 1905. Arthur Griffith's ideas were based on the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but even then, before it became a Republican organisation Sinn Féin was founded on the principle of abstentionism from British-controlled parliaments. In 1917 Sinn Féin was reconstituted as a Republican organisation, which by definition precluded recognition of a so-called monarchs right to rule by birth.

And so, truly, Ireland has changed greatly in the last ten years, creating an economic system with a mixed level of a high consuming, low earning population. It's political system by contrast has shown a willingness to lurch an alarming 100 years backyards. Back to a British (empire) Council of the Isles -- Britons Unite -- Back to a power struggle in Europe between Britain and France and Germany (with Paddy under Tommy's coat-tails).

We look forward to a future tribunal of inquiry into who took the courage from the Irish people.

HARD TIMES

It's a hard time for revolutionaries. For the first time ever -- and only ten years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall -- the plain people of Ireland think they have even a snowballs chance in hell of sharing in the capitalist spoils -- Celtic T***r and all -- while staying in their own country.

Everyone is so obsessed with pretending that they're doing well that piffling little matters like neutrality can practically jump out the window of their own accord. But, of course, in the bad old days there were 400,000 unemployed, so there were presumably 400,000 people who reckoned their lives might be on the line if their politicians -- who have now been recognised as being generally, by and large, corrupt -- decided to let NATO press the button and tell them who to fight.

Charlie Haughey: from hair shirts in 1989 to Charvet shirts in 1999.

Do you remember a time when Charles J Haughey was praised for how people could say what they liked about him and he didn't sue? Nowadays you would only describe that as being sensible -- like Dracula not going into sunlight -- but 'way back then, six or seven years ago, it was a virtue. People were marching through the streets for tax relief, when at about the same time so-and-so was buying multi-thousand pound shirts. Nowadays, however, people have bought the hype: everybody wants a multi-thousand pound shirt.

Hot Press, in a recent edition wrote: "The E generation's given way to the Me generation, a repulsively self-satisfied, self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-obsessed abomination of nature, a new breed of Young Irelanders obsessed with restaurants, property supplements, pubs, clubs, clothes and cars. Our famously youthful nation has become a race of communications junkies who never seem to say anything, 'producers' who never produce anything, commuters who never go anywhere, and socialites who act in a decidedly antisocial manner. Dublin in particular has become, in the words of Christy Moore, a 'hotbed of nothing'.

"In this context, the age-old idea of the young being capable of effecting progressive change, invention, innovation, radicalism or even revolution is a joke. Ireland '99 is run by a new nationalist party: The Mé Féiners -- ambitious, upwardly mobile, uptight automatons." Even the Big Issues has gone capitalist.

Nineteen ninety-eight -- the year of the dove -- passed on to 1999 -- the year of the tiger -- and we wonder what new animal awaits us in 2000: the year of the beast?

The Nationalist Nightmare used to be a fairly straight-forward affair. But the "real" nightmare, in this day and age, is that you don't know who the nationalists are anymore. You know the loyalists -- the ones with the pipe bombs, and the articulate ones who don't want the other fellows to throw the pipe bombs but understand if they do, even though they wish they wouldn't. You know the unionists — much the same as the above, but they really, really wish the other fellows wouldn't throw the pipe bombs until the Grand Master nods his head. But where have all the nationalists gone. Washington? Patten's head?

There used to be a time when even John Hume said nationalists wouldn't stop until they got a united Ireland; but that was after Bloody Sunday and his audience wouldn't listen if they heard anything else.

There used to be times, and God knows there were lots of them, when our old friends Adams and McGuinness said nothing else would do, no ceasefires or nothing. There used to be a time, in short, when a nationalist stood up for his nation or at least paid lip service to it.

FORGET

Those were times, but these are other times. In these times you are required to forget everything that happened before. Don't just swallow what you may have said or believed five or ten years ago; forget it or turn it on its head. Things have changed greatly in Ireland in the past ten years. You can now betray your country and hold your head high.

The RM (Republican Movement) hasn't changed though. You can call yourself a MP, an MEP, an MLA, or a TD. If you don't stand for freedom and unity, you don't stand for your country.

Republicanism is not defined by materials, assets, numbers, not by the stance taken on specific articles of the so-called 'Good Friday Agreement', Mitchell Principles or the carefully chosen words of prepared statements.

Republicanism arises from a basic love of country. It develops from that through experience or study to a determination to establish the freedom and unity of Ireland and its people.

For people with simple tastes like that, the array of organisations claiming to be for the same things can be confusing. It might be something like finding yourself in the cereal aisle of a supermarket when all you want is cornflakes. It is possible to get diverted by the colourful packaging and pick up a box of Fruit Loops or Coco Pops but simple lessons cut most deep and simple tastes last the longest.

There is no need to get our minds into tangles as to the meaning of Irish Republicanism.

Pearse explained it simply that the Irish people and none but the Irish people shall be sovereign in their land.

That principle was established in law by the First (All-Ireland) Dail on January 21, 1919 which was democratically elected by the people of the 32 counties in the general election of 1918.

Recognition of the authority of the Westminster parliament or either of the two assemblies (Leinster House and Stormont) set up by the British to partition Ireland and subvert the All-Ireland Republic is therefore breaking the law as well as the principle of Irish Republicanism.
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Decolonising Latvia

The three small East Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became independent in 1918 following the collapse of the Russian Empire, and were forcibly incorporated into the USSR in the summer of 1940. The period from then until the German invasion of 1941 was to be remembered as the 'terrible year'.

Soviet policy was to decapitate the three nations by eliminating all leadership elements: teachers, clergy, lawyers, journalists and so on, who were deported to forced labour in remote parts of Russia.

The process was almost complete by the time the Germans invaded. In 1944-1945 the Germans were defeated and expelled and Soviet rule resumed.

POST-SOVIET LATVIA

Anti-Soviet demonstrator in 1990.

In 1991 the three Baltic States regained independence after 50 years of foreign occupation. One problem faced by all three states is the presence of Russian communities and enclaves established by the Soviet regime.

Russians made up 45% of the population of Latvia. The general situation in Latvia had been that resident Russians, even second-generation and third-generation settlers, are loyal only to Russia and contemptuous of ethnic Latvians.

The new Latvian government introduced the concept of a 'core nation', consisting of all former citizens of the Latvian First Republic, and their descendants. Members of the core nation automatically became full citizens; others were classed as 'denizens' and were obliged to retain citizenship of Russia as the successor of the Soviet Union. (Russia accepts all persons described as Russian on former Soviet identity cards as full citizens of Russia.) Denizens have full rights of citizenship except that they cannot participate in politics at any level, and are not eligible for employment in the public sector. To become a citizen a person must have lived in Latvia for ten years, pass a test similar to the US citizenship test and state on oath that they had not taken part in Soviet repression. The government can grant citizenship to persons who had helped Latvians in the Soviet period. Latvian citizens may not hold dual nationality and must surrender any foreign passports they hold.

THE RUSSIAN MINORITY

The bulk of the ethnic Latvian population is rural while Russians make up the majority of urban dwellers and of industrial workers. Latvians now have a monopoly on public sector jobs, from which all Russians have been displaced. For their part, many Russian officials were able to make the transition from doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism to anything-goes capitalism with amazing alacrity. The thriving business and financial sector in Latvia is run entirely by Russians, who use Latvia as a base from which to conduct trade between Russia and other countries, and some spectacular fortunes have been made. In Latvia they are out of reach of Russian corruption and protection rackets, and the only demands they make on the Latvians is that they maintain an open economy and keep out the Mafiya, Russian denizens cannot vote in Latvian elections but they can vote in Russian presidential elections, in which they have voted overwhelmingly for the Neo-Stalinist candidate Valerii Zyukovsky. The Communist Party is illegal in Latvia, and in any event Russians have no vote: the main Russian organization is a highly politicised Orthodox Church.

Among the Russians there has arisen a demand for what they call a Soviet Homeland in southern Latvia: a demand supported by certain elements within Russia. After an initial exodus of persons fearing retribution for past actions, emigration from Latvia to Russia has been insignificant.

In response to criticism from human rights groups, Latvians have pointed out that their citizenship laws are no more restrictive than those of Germany, Switzerland and other West European states. Latvia is actually the most prosperous of the 15 successor states of the Soviet Union, and also the most orderly.

THE LATVIAN COMMUNITY

The Soviet regime was opposed to inherited wealth, but was a strong believer in inherited guilt. Because almost all ethnic Latvians had a relative who had either fled west or been deported east, they were ineligible for employment in most occupations and were not allowed to live in urban areas: thus being compelled to work for very low wages on collective farms.

There were both Latvian-language and Russian-language primary and secondary schools, but a person educated through Latvian had virtually no chance of proceeding to third-level education. The Latvian language was regarded with a certain contempt by Russian migrants, who were influenced by the crank linguistic theories of Professor Marr, which had been sponsored by Stalin himself.

Latvian girl in national dress.

Ethnic Latvians tend to have low self-esteem, and also have the lowest birth rate of any community in Europe. There are high levels of nervous disorders, coupled with an unwillingness to seek treatment because under the Soviets psychiatry was part of the machinery of repression.

Among survivors of Soviet persecutions, post-traumatic stress disorders are frequently found, but are also encountered in the families of those who suffered at the hands of the previous regime: in persons who themselves escaped unscathed but who are affected by what happened to close kin. Most Latvian families lost a member to Soviet oppression. To give an example, out of some 10,000 Latvian soldiers and police deported to camps in the Tomsk region of Siberia in June of 1940, at the time of the 1955 amnesty, less than a hundred were still alive. During the Second World War about a quarter of the Latvian population perished.

The Kenyan writer Wa Thiong'o Ngugi says in his Decolonising the Mind:
"The biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against [collective defiance] is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as a wasteland of non-achievement and makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland.

"It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest from themselves, for instance with other peoples' languages rather than their own. It even plants serious doubts about the moral rightness of struggle. Possibilities of triumph or victory are seen as remote, ridiculous dreams. The intended results are despair, despondency and a collective death wish."

THE WIDER BALTIC PERSPECTIVE

The situation in Estonia is close to that in Latvia. Ethnic Russians make up 35% of the population, and some areas in the north-east are entirely Russian. Estonia has adopted similar policies to those of Latvia.

In Lithuania, things have gone differently. Ethnic Lithuanians make up 80% of the population, with a 10% Polish minority and the remainder mostly Russians.

The three Baltic states broke away from the crumbling USSR in stages over the years 1990 and 1991. And Russia finally renounced all claims to them by the Belovezhskaya Agreement of December 1991. Already before this the local Communist parties had thrown in their lot with the separatists, and in Latvia the head of the Communist party, an ethnic Russian Anatoli Gorbunov, actually became interim president during the transition period.

In Lithuania the leader of the independence movement, Professor Landsbergis, became interim president. The new government granted citizenship to all residents irrespective of ethnic origins and the Communist Party was allowed to retain its political machine, periodicals, clubs and so on. In subsequent elections Landsbergis was defeated by the former Communist Party leader Algirdas Brazauskas and the Democratic Labour Party, which is the old Communist Party recycled, formed the government and, unable to break away from the methods and thinking of the past, proceeded to make an absolutely monumental mess of the Lithuanian economy. In 1998 Brazauskas was defeated at the polls by Valdas Adamkus, a Lithuanian who had lived in the United States from the age of 17 and is a retired director of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

In their attitude to the Soviet past the Lithuanians, who suffered just as much as the Latvians, have emerged with a totally different mind-set. They have developed an enormous chauvinistic national pride. In particular they insist on their moral superiority, not only to the Russians whom they dismiss as a race of thieves, but also to 'Westerners' who are considered pleasure loving and degenerate. This attitude puzzles outsiders and infuriates the Russians, who have their own ideas about 'Holy Russia'.

The strong position of the Catholic Church, in hibernation since 1940, is an important factor here and traditional Catholicism is probably stronger than it is even in neighbouring Poland. A few months after independence a ceremony was held on the Hill of the Crosses at Siluva, at which the whole of Lithuania was consecrated to the Sacred Heart and members of the Provisional Government including President Landsbergis (who is a Lutheran Protestant) attended it.

Also in the early days of independence, Lithuania sent a national expedition to the Himalayas to climb Everest. The Lithuanian state has begun a massive campaign to identify the graves of all the Lithuanians who perished in the Gulag and to arrange for their reburial in Lithuanian soil.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In the post-Soviet Baltic States, the de-colonization effort has been focussed almost entirely on the economy. Only sporadic efforts have been made towards the de-colonization of the mind: to rid society of Soviet-imposed ways of thinking and behaving. In Latvia there have been attempts at cultural de-colonization: for example all Soviet schoolbooks were withdrawn and, as a temporary measure, pre-1940 school texts were reprinted and reissued. At third level there is a shortage of Latvian-speaking staff and so courses continue to be given in Russian. Russian is gradually being phased out, but is being replaced by English and German rather than Latvian.

In Lithuania the emphasis on Lithuanian moral superiority strongly resembles previous Soviet propaganda, though the Catholic Church undoubtedly has had an influence. As a person who can remember the Ireland of fifty years ago, there is a familiar ring about it.

(Since this lecture was delivered a Canadian citizen has been elected president of Latvia.)

Abridged version of a lecture given by Pól Ó Croidheáin at the International Conference on Post-Colonial Problems, June 1999.
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