was listening to yesterday rte radio again and hearing a lot of politicians talking about how they met these people worried about conscription,particularly older women,... and i thought by god these FF'ers are telling us they only meet are stupid disconnected no voters, that they are saying that the only no voters are imbeciles.
now im no-voter-who-abstained, im deeply anti-war , campaigned and marched against shannon etc, but i don't think conscription is on the horizon, but im am worried about merkel and and o'deas words about making the EU a global power player and 'exporting peace and prosperity to the rest of the world' echoing george bush's comment just a few weeks ago... and we all know what GWB means about exporting democracy, it means exporting capitalism and conflict and drill rigs.
But I was talking to my mother (an FG reluctant yes voter,most worried about immigration) who said she met a neighbour who said the very same thing about conscription, and i said well she's an imbecile... and she said well i don't think it'll happen right now but maybe my grandchildren...' but i said well im big anti-military head and even i don't think that will happen, imbeciles!
Then I heard Mary Hanafin talking about the conscription issue coming up again, but she describe how a young women came up to her and asked her about shannon, military and neutrality and hanafin said she went on to say how it didn't change our position on neutrality (which could be true but we're not neutral).
Dermot Ahern and Michael martin both said how they found a lot of older women were bringing up conscription and and that's what they found after doing polling after nice 1 that it was older women worried about military.
anyway my main point is i then realised that these women aren't imbeciles they just think in different way to me and other young folks on the issue militarism.
when i think of iraq or Afghanistan, i think of the 100,000 unnecessary deaths and the trauma and destruction Iraqis have to live in ( and also the pillaging of their resources) but when the so called general public think of Iraq, particularly older women think in sons...
this is why they use the word conscription to convey their worries about neutrality, while i would use militarisation.
you see all the time on the news in uk and usa they manly report the deaths of us soldiers, they barely mention t the deaths of even the iraqi soldiers on 'our side' even if they died in the same battle.
UK and US parents say bring the troops home, they don't say end the war or save iraqi lives, most don't think in that way.
both patricia mckenna and pana and SF mary lou mcdonald all said they weren't worried about conscription or weren't going around telling people about their sons being conscripted and it wasn't in their literature. It wasn't in any no groups leaflets.
M L McD said on tv3 other night that she wasn't using scaremongering about conscription but people were thinking 'longheaded' about it and she was most worried about militarisation. and when she says militarisation she means imperialism (cos she doesn't mind the other kind).
lots of yes vote advocates mention indian and china in threatening way, a distance menace that are will trying to dominate the world, which leave you to think how could we fight them without conscirption...
so that's a longwinded way to say something very simple and obvious, conscription (ie. military neutrality) is valid concern in this eu referendum.
that's why they exit polls said they lost nice 1 and so they made changes ith the seville declaration reassured people and nice 2 passed but it's still why they lost lisbon.
and it a valid concern because we're not neutral and never really have been, and were certainly not now with active facilitation of the iraq war at shannon and no matter what ff/fg say, many of their voters are concerned about militarism, because of our history of being on the wrong end of imperialism, which connected to the feeling for independence which connects with the general fear of loss of sovereignty,(its the reverse of the uk independence euroscpetics who are pro-military). we've seen this at one of the biggest ever protest marches in recent times against the iraq war and the use of shannon. you could say our position on neutrality wasn't going to change but we're not neutral so nobody can't trust their assurances on that. Our neutrality is threatened most by our own governments actions not some exterior EU bogeyman.
so maybe these people aren't coir constituency either but COIR hit on the right word to use, conscription because it reflects women's and parents fears more then faraway conflicts that the PANA and the SWP talk about, so coir partly won it on SF,SP, PANA and SWP's issues with FF and FG voters.
that and uncertainty, distrust and immigration.
insert 'sons and daughters' and male parents where appropriate
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