Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It does, because Mr. Assange pointed out a decade ago that the real winner from the Afghan war would be the US military industrial complex. The war funnelled trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money directly into the pockets of five big US defence companies that were involved in the US war effort and the atrocities that resulted from it.

I will borrow the words of the great historian, Howard Zinn. While written from the perspective of an independent activist, I think they are words that we can all reflect on.

It is a world of clashing interests – war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism – and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.

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