David Norris (Independent)

I will use their titles but all the other language I have used when referring to them stands.

Through all of this, the corruption of language is a significant and telling factor. In a revealing moment the Lady Macbeth of the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice, described the horrendous bloodbath that followed the Israeli assault upon Lebanon as "the birth pangs of a new democracy". As I indicated, under the Bush Administration the West has descended to values not seen since Adolf Hitler, but people are afraid to squeak. Even under Hitler, however, brave individuals were doing important work. I think, in particular, of the late Victor Klemperer, a cousin of the great and distinguished conductor, Otto Klemperer. He used his time in seclusion during the Nazi tyranny to compile an academic analysis of the linguistic system employed by the Third Reich.

Language is important and I invite Senators to examine for a moment some of the language employed. "Shock and awe", the description of the initial barrage of bombing against the civilian population of Baghdad, could easily be translated as "Blitzkrieg". "Shake and bake" is the euphemism used to conceal the illegal use of white phosphorus against personnel by the United States Army in Falluja. "Extraordinary rendition" is another euphemism employed to cover the nasty reality of kidnap and torture.

We need a Victor Klemperer in our universities to conduct an analysis of the way in which the Bush Administration has abused language to perpetuate tyranny. I hope this may be done and believe it will be, for although it has taken a long time, there are signs that a corrective is being applied, even within the American system. Seventy per cent of the American people are now against the war, making it clear that those of us who consistently opposed the war and were accused of anti-Americanism for our pains were the most pro-American of all.

In response to allegations about Ireland's involvement in extraordinary rendition, the Government has consistently obfuscated and lied. In the two reports produced and adopted on this issue, one by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the second by the European Parliament, the Minister for Foreign Affairs did not answer clear questions which were put to him. Instead, as he had done in this House and consistently to the press, he insisted upon answering questions he had not been asked.

I defy any person to point to one instance where I or any of the others leading the charge in this matter claimed that torture victims were transported through Shannon Airport on their way to torture centres, yet this is what the Minister consistently denies. Why does he deny something which has not been said? The reason is that he cannot answer the charges made and the charge I and others have made, namely, that the fact this country collaborated with the United States by assisting aeroplanes on the return leg of their villainous and shameful journey is incontrovertibly true.

The torture circuit is an unbroken line in which Ireland has played a mean, cowardly and disgusting role. To give one example, on 17 February 2003, an Egyptian citizen who had been granted asylum in Italy, Abu Omar, was violently abducted in broad daylight in the Via Guerzoni in Milan. The incident was witnessed by various civilians, including a woman called Rezk Merfat who saw the terrified Abu Omar being jumped on, struggling and crying for help and being forced into a van. Abu Omar was then taken to the American airbase at Aviano where he was flown a short distance, put into another aeroplane with United States markings which delivered him to Cairo. This, according to legal documents, is what happened to him:

The first measure was to leave him in a room where incredibly loud and unbearable noise was made ... he has experienced damage to his hearing. The second kind of torture was to place him in a sauna at tremendous temperature and straight afterwards to put him in a cold store room . . . occasioning terrible pain to his bones . . . as if they were cracking. The third was to hang him upside down . . . and apply live wires to give electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body including his genitals. He has suffered damage to his motory and urinary systems . . . he became incontinent.

He was tortured for a further seven months and has never been charged with any offence. However, on the return journey to the United States from Cairo, as part of the torture circuit, on the following day, 18 February, the Gulfstream jet stopped off to be refuelled at Shannon Airport. No protest has ever been made at this gross violation of international and Irish law by a so-called friendly government. This has all been done because of the Irish Government's gutlessness in the face of American capital.

I have mentioned the late Frank Aiken. How horrified he would be at the queasy way in which we have attempted, without recourse to either the sovereign Parliament of Ireland or the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, to shift our firm position that Tibet was a separate and sovereign country. We have also said little about organ harvesting, an appalling practice about which my colleague, Senator O'Toole, will speak. Again, money is the reason for these developments.

Let us examine the situation in the Middle East. There has been a systematic violation by the Israeli Government of the most basic human rights of the Palestinian people. We know full well that in the external association agreement between the European Union and the state of Israel, there are attached to this treaty important human rights clauses. However, we have done nothing to assert these clauses and even my modest proposal that the Government should support the establishment of a monitoring group to oversee the human rights situation in the occupied territories has not been pursued by the Government. Once more, United States pressure, the influence of American money and the perceived threat to jobs financed here by US multinationals has, I suspect, played its role. In the past various Government's have taken up decent and moral positions on certain issues. However, sadly, on most occasions it has had to be shamed into this by the action of courageous individuals such as the Dunnes Stores strikers and Tom Hyland, whose heroic defence of the people of East Timor is well known to this House. I admired the staunchness of the late Mr. Haughey when he refused to support Margaret Thatcher in herFalklands War adventure.

What we need is an understanding of the position announced by the former Senator and President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, in her work on ethical globalisation. We need to understand that this small and fragile planet is threatened not just environmentally but politically by the pursuit of narrow selfish and sectional interest and the failure to date of any major state to attempt to establish an ethical foreign policy. Sadly, the Government has in its amendment made it clear it has no intention of supporting these standards.