CCI Friends,
It is encouraging to know that intelligent persons in other parts of the world are searching for ways to penetrate the veil between their top bureaucrats and citizens of their countries regarding the Ukraine/NATO war. Read below for insights and solutions as we try to educate mainstream Americans concerning the very real potential for a full-scale nuclear war if we don’t settle for workable solutions.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
ACURA Q&A:Clare Daly, Member of theEuropean Parliament from Ireland,Talks With ACURA’s James W. Carden
June 28, 2022
Last week the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted to approve Ukraine’s candidacy for membership in the European Union. Only days before, the EU- and NATO- member state Lithuania enacted a blockade of Russia’s Eastern European enclave, Kaliningrad. Meantime, Russia’s military gains in eastern Ukraine have been met with ever more promises of Western aid for Ukraine. To discuss these and other developments, on Thursday, June 23rd, I spoke with Clare Daly, a courageous and outspoken member of the European Parliament from Ireland, and a stalwart opponent of the trans-Atlantic militarist consensus that has both Washington and the European Parliament in Brussels firmly in its grip.
—James W. Carden, American Committee for US-Russia Accord
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James W. Carden: Clare, thanks for taking the time to talk with me today. Our timing is, depending on how you look at it, either very good or very bad, as news reaches us here in the US that this afternoon in Brussels the European Parliament voted in favor of Ukraine’s candidacy for the European Union. The vote was 529 votes in favor, 45 against, and 14 abstentions. You and your party, the left-wing Independents4Change, abstained. Can you explain why, and what you think of the timing of the vote?
Clare Daly, MEP: Our point of view is if people from Ukraine or anywhere else want to join the European Union, and that’s a free choice decided by the majority, and it’s done on terms that don’t bankrupt its populations, well, then that’s a matter for them. Of course, that’s not what’s on the table at the moment. The vote is being used to ratchet up the tension with Russia.
Everybody knows that there’s no way Ukraine is actually going to join the European Union in the foreseeable future. Now interestingly, there were amendments put down by the Left group in parliament arguing that the normal criteria – that of democratic rights, rule of law, eradication of the influence of oligarchs, fighting corruption, should also apply in this case.
But 423 MEPs thought that in this case the old criteria didn’t matter – the main thing is to get Ukraine into the club. So it’s just a game, but a very dangerous one, really.