Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Government amendment to the Green Party motion is replete with hypocrisy. It acknowledges the need for international agreements to control the international trade in arms, to assist conflict resolution and to prevent the terrible cost to human lives and economically. The same Government has allowed our island to be a military aircraft carrier for the biggest imperialist superpower and arms merchant in the world to launch a murderous invasion of Iraq in support of a transparent lie that has killed and maimed tens of thousands of innocent people. It supports logistically the ongoing occupation of Iraq by this imperialist superpower. We cannot take this Government seriously in its commitment to the poor of the world after that.

The billions of humanity and the hundreds of millions of children who live in poverty, have no clean water and suffer disease and homelessness want to see poverty made history. However, that will not be achieved by well-meaning millionaire rock stars and artists cooing to the alleged gentler side of international establishment politicians who are the main spear carriers for the major multinational corporations which rob those poor countries with trade agreements and by other means, just as brutally as their forebears did with cannonballs and sailing ships in a past era.

These are the same multinational corporations such as Shell which sent five decent Mayo residents to jail today. The courts have turned logic on its head to facilitate Shell, sending residents to jail to stop them from opposing works for which no consent has been given by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and with no qualified risk assessment yet put into the public domain.

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