From top: Peter Sutherland and Simon Coveney at the Bilderberg Conference 2014; Simon Coveney launching the government’s white paper on the defence forces this morning.
New weapons.
A ‘soft’ draft.
Are we going to war?
Siobhan H writes:
In May 2014, Nato-cheerleader Peter Sutherland took Simon Coveney, to the Bilderberg Conference. High on the agenda was, eh, Nato with the supreme allied commander Europe in attendance. What the purpose of having a minister for agriculture there didn’t make too much sense at the time….
Two months later, Simon was given the job as Minister for Defence and today launches a white paper on defence that seeks a huge increase in funding for new technology, weapons, and the introduction of JobBridge soldiers [a new employment support scheme aimed at people in the 18-24 age group]. The question is who is behind this and where are we heading?
PEACE! Anyone?
White Paper on Defence presents exciting new opportunities for the Curragh – Heydon (Fine Gael)
Train angry poor people to kill? That should go well.
Or teach discipline, respect and how to cope with challenge to unemployed, disillusioned young people, whichever way you want to view it.
True. That’s the upside.
But where will we get the money for the costly rehabilitation of soldiers returning? …this won’t be for a peace tour in the Leb. I’d bet me flat on it!
So, my question… who will rehabilitate the traumatised? Considering neither the USA or the UK are able to care for their traumatised soldiers, how do you propose this pretend to be Irish initiative will cope?
Well, it seems it is ‘peace keeping’. So, let’s hope that remains true.
You should become a soldier seeing as you just lost your flat in a bet
Shurrup Stewie, we didn’t spit and seal the deal :)
why dont you volunteer to get fupped by the state?
Works for America!
Transcript of an imaginary conversation, or, is it ? you decide !
“They arent emigrating fast enough, we have to come up with another way of ridding ourselves of these troublesome proles, cant kill them…”
“…perhaps, if they were put in harms way… and sure, we’d get great kickbacks from nato for essentially doing the admin work, and that wouldnt be so bad.”
“Yes, yes i can see it now…
But of course, our “own” kids wont be drafted”
“Ah god no, only the plebs kids, sure who cares about them after their born anyway”
The unemployed arent emigrating in large numbers, 80% of the people who emigrated in the last year left jobs to do so according to CSO figures.
Precisely
And didnt i see an add for a new rte show glamorising the irish military ?
Nothing glamorous about recruit training.
Stupid comment.
I suppose we should have no soldiers at all, at all, because the world will be full of fairy cakes and everything will be cushty come the stroke of midnight, YAY !
Not wanting the military to be glamorised doesn’t mean you think you don’t need a military.
Are you sure that was the intended meaning? :)
It is for me
Tis aye.
An island of 5 million, a bankrupt island of 5 million has no need of such a large military force. It’s a joke.
No matter what people say.
They are but needed anywhere.
The cost far outways any token peace keeping.
We can’t afford an army. A small armed response unit is enough.
But we live to ape our neighbors. Even tho we have almost minus resources to find it. But “tradition”…
We don’t have a “large” military force.
We do for our size. A massive drain on our resources.
We need functioning hospitals, schools etc before wasting money on a full time army. Patting ourselves on the back for sending soldiers to sit on a mountain with binoculars and at the first sign of real danger asking to leave.
So sad people defend something out of a blind sense of some tradition.
When did Irish troops ask to leave a peace keeping/enforcement mission…tell of one instance please…
Something tells me you got rejected by the army
That tack made me laugh a little.
‘such a large military force.’
So how many armed servicemen would be the correct number? Did you even know the number before you read it on Broadsheet?
Our per capita spending on ‘defence’ is one of the lowest in the world.
We are 108th place out of 154 countries in terms of the Global Militarisation Index (measures the ‘relative weight and importance of the military apparatus of one state in relation to its society as a whole’). In the ‘developed’ world, only Iceland is considered less militarised,
You need to spend however much is right for the missions you are doing balanced against your other needs. Ireland does mainly peacekeeping right? Why would you need to spend more when that means less on health, less on schools etc? How would the public feel about an increase? You can’t just increase spending because some other country who is more militarily involved in a war is spending more.
DP, I was addressing the meaningless term of ‘such a large force’. By no comparable metric is it a particularly large force – not absolutely, not per capita and not per GDP.
‘You need to spend however much is right for the missions you are doing balanced against your other needs.’
The philosophy behind the current policy is being set out in the white paper mentioned and linked on this page. He/she may even be right but realistically ‘Laughter Track’ is making empty criticism without knowing/addressing any of the facts.
Why do we need an army?
We’ve already been invaded and owned by USA.
– We allow their troops to use our airport on the way to war.
– We give their corporations very low tax rates.
If any other country invaded us, the USA would come to our aid.
balls, we need an army to keep all the asylum seekers out.
Coveney detailed the White Paper this morning and it all sounds very logical. A doubling of the Army Ranger Wing, better weaponry, intelligence systems and increased peace-keeping capacity. The recruitment drive is not a ‘draft’, it’s enabling careers in the Defence Forces to young people. Nothing sinister about that.
I thought on Morning Ireland they had said they were going to make the army rangers less powerful?
What? Starve them?
No, take away their morphing powers.
In a nutshell Hoop…well put.
I hope that’s correct :)
They’re planning an Institute for Peace at any army camp.
When your army gets bigger and the politicians talk about “peace” get worried, they will put us in harms way.
Just you wait and see.
Dawn Penn singing on Irelands neutrality said
“No no no no”
She was right
We are not neutral.
Logic applies:-
Quite apart from its role as an alliance, NATO has become the standard-setting
organisation for modern military forces, in effect the de facto “I.S.O.”
28
of the military
world. NATO standards cover everything from the detailed physical characteristics of
equipment, through communications protocols, training standards and operational
procedures. Originally designed to ensure that troops from different members of the
Alliance could operate seamlessly together as a single force, the unique NATO process
of achieving full interoperability has been made available through PfP to partner countries
such as Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Austria, etc. For practical reasons, and given that 22
EU member states are also members of NATO, the EU uses NATO standards and
procedures on its missions. In order to be accepted as a peacekeeping partner, it is
now necessary for the Defence Forces to be trained and equipped to NATO standards
Why is Ireland in the list of ‘partner countries’? Ireland isn’t in Nato, surely?
Yes, we are not in NATO. Hence the ‘partner’ status. “hello” describes the reasons we are a ‘partner’ quite well.
The comment about the Bilderberg Conference is absolutely stupid.
Even those who believe that it is entirely sinister accept that it involves a whole selection of influential people from across politics, industry, finance, academia, and the media.
The significance of a NATO commander being there, even speaking in one of the sessions, is fairly minimal.
Interestingly the Conference released an official agenda in 2014 and Russian television released a rival this-is-what-they-really-spoke-about agenda & in both cases the topics were pretty broad-ranging. NATO-related concerns were on the agenda but so too were topics like climate change & other topics which would have an impact on commodity prices & food security. All issues which might be worth a Minister for Agriculture (as well as a putative MoD) discussing.
Sorry, should have posted the link to the White paper.
http://www.defence.ie/WebSite.nsf/WP2015E
I love the assessment of the Reserves – they summarise that poor training levels amongst the RDF are their own fault, not the fault of the Permanent army who are meant to facilitate it. People leave the reserves not because there’s too much training, they leave because there’s nothing to learn.
They also state that going forward they should try to get as much free work out of them as possible and cite the (criminally unpaid) civil defence as a shining example. In particular they want skilled reservists to do jobs for them in their respective fields for free.
Yeah. good luck with that.
Its what the UK are doing
Defence Forces is supposed to be 9,500 anyway, no big deal there. 49% will say ‘We’re not in a war why waste this money?’ 49% will say ‘Ooh, boosting the numbers it’s a prelude to deploying with NATO, what about our lovely neutrality?’ The other 2% are in the army and will be saying ‘Won’t make any difference to me, still can’t pay the mortgage.’
Blueshirts 2.0: The Killing Fields
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/defence-industry-to-use-irish-military-to-test-more-products-under-coveney-plan-31369039.html
Ten-hut…
So the NATO Supreme Aliied Commander Europe was there to collude with Simon Coveney to enlarge the army, give young people who I’d imagine wouldn’t be into the academic route a job and I presume to eventually join NATO. With us they’d be unbeatable – we’ll be in Moscow by Christmas
Europe is in a perpetual war with ISIS and other Islamic extremists, unfortunately this could go on and on. I guess Ireland might need to plan a little for this. Although planning is our Achilles heel.
“The war, therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word “war,” therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that is exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This–although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense–is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Nicely put George.
peter sutherland has way too much clout, especially for someone who isn’t elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutherland
Coup d’État # JobBridge
And will these new soldiers be on JobBridge allowances, and have to sleep in their cars?
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/soldiers-sleep-in-cars-outside-barracks-because-they-cant-afford-to-drive-home-289383.html
basically low paid software testers and developers for the various Weapons manufacturers of the world, when Coveney is involved it’s always some money racket with big business.
He hasn’t gone away y’know.
All these new recruits would certainly come in handy if there were to be any civil disobedience in relation to non payment of new taxes.They would definitely be of some use there.mmmm
they could wear part-army, part-garda uniforms too.
This is part of a drip drip route to joining NATO. It started about 15 years ago. Part of it involves showcasing the Irish military in the media through reality TV, increased press and TV coverage, radio documentaries, Paddy’s Day parades, etc. It was entirely taboo to showcase the army previous to this. In the past, it was purely dry news reporting only.
Coveney is bizarrely both minister for Agriculture AND Defense which must be unique in a democracy.
Part of the reason Fine Gael are desperate to hold power after 2016 is so that they can guide Ireland into NATO which is their unspoken policy.
The various so-called peace keeping and training missions around the world are in fact steps towards ending neutrality and softening up the Irish psyche for it.
Expect a lot more propaganda in this vein.
Good
Maybe then we can then a rebate on bank debt
A few thousand dead skobies is a small price to pay for that
Spare
Coveney is bizarrely both minister for Agriculture AND Defense which must be unique in a democracy.
perfectly reasonable, given that you can make explosives from fertiliser.
It’s because combining Justice and Defense was a terrible idea. Having the Minister for the Marine be in charge of the Navy does actually make sense though.
The original post is a load of tenuous, inferring bollocks though.
We could easily fund the army if we got them to generate revenue from fuel smuggling, cigarette smuggling and nicking a few bank, the way gerrys army up north does
And there was me tinking “Supreme Allied Commander” was a gig yer man Sorkin invented for Will Bailey’s da
‘Good t’be back lads
+1
Meanwhile Sunderland is pushing for Ireland to take in more migrants from the war torn hell holes his Bilderberg mates created….
Coveney’s at it again today, pimping for the international arms trade. NATO here we come.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/coveney-we-face-terror-threat-31481517.html