In a Letter to the Editor this week, Councillor Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig writes how children should never be canon fodder for rich men’s wars

‘Death by a thousand cuts’ is a well known phrase that is used to describe the slow killing of anythingv – neutrality, sovereignty, a law, human rights, even humans; as we have witnessed in Palestine for 70 years.

The main driver of ‘deaths by a thousand cuts’ is militarism and wars; to the exclusion of basic human needs. And this is the path that the ruling class in Baile Athá Cliath and their masters in London, Brussels and Washington are set to travel.

Trump et al, have ordered their subservient governments around the world, including the 26 Counties, to spend no less than five per cent of their GDP per annum on weapons of death. For weapons of death you need people to operate them; namely armies.

That’s now the very direction that the ruling class i Baile Athá Cliath are headed. They are on a recruiting drive to enlist the working class of the 26 Counties to become canon fodder in imperialist wars around the world. Working class soldiers will fire their weapons of death at the working class soldiers on the opposite side; including civilians on both sides. And while all this slaughter continues and the coffins of our children, grandchildren, friends and neighbours arrive back home, the powerful and wealthy elite, along with their liberal supporters will cry ‘crocodile tears’ or even laugh at the death and destruction. No doubt they will ensure that they enrich themselves too, from the money to be made from wars.

All this while homelessness is on the rise. Houses cannot be built but there is no end to money for weapons of war and death. Our health service is practically non existent. But that doesn’t matter, there are far more profits to be made in weapons and wars of destruction. Our youth will be sacrificed in the wars of the rich but there’s no money for proper youth services.

There is no money for proper sports facilities or specialist sporting centres but no end of money for weapons of death and destruction.

Our children should NEVER be canon fodder for rich men’s wars. And l call on all parents, grandparents and people of conscience to oppose the recruitment drive by the freestate regime to recruit our children to fight and die in NATO, PESCO and imperialist wars in foreign lands.

Our schools and colleges need to stop allowing the defense forces to come into the classrooms to encourage working class children to join their ranks.

We don’t want ‘young Willy McBrides’ coming home in coffins to be buried while they ‘play the pipes lowly’.

We want peace, we want our full sovereignty, we want our neutrality. We want our taxes spent on high quality human living NOT weapons of death and the deaths of our children.No to recruitment of our children for wars. No to weapons of death and no to NATO.

Yours,

Cllr Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig