Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!

Today's
Stories
June
15, 2004
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music

June
11, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Reagan in Truth and Fiction
Ron
Jacobs
Ray Charles' Legacy of Spirit
Chris
Floyd
Funeral Games
Steven
Sherman
How Reagan Destroyed the Democrats and Paved the Way for Clinton
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Remembering Reagan
Norman
Solomon
Media's Mourning in America
Paul
Alexander
The Kerry Fantasies of Chalmers Johnson
CounterPunch
Wire
The Terror Hour: Miami TV Station Invites Commandoes to Talk
About Planned Attacks on Cuba
June
10, 2004
Noam
Chomsky
The Apotheosis of Reagan : Divinity
Through Marketing
Gary
Leupp
Bush, the Religious Scholar
Patrick
Cockburn
The Iraqi Street Has Spoken: New
Govt. Made Up of CIA Pawns
Saul
Landau
Force-Feeding Lies About Free Trade
Scott
Evans
Settling for the System: How Punkvoter.com Became Just Another
Tool of the Democrats
Jacob
Levich
John Kerry's World of Hurt: Senator Supports Beam Weapons
Zeynep
Toufe
Reagan, Neo-Cons and the "Intelligence Failures"
Nico
Pitney
Reform at Wal-Mart?
Dave
Zirin
Son of a Reagan: What a Sporty 6-Year Old Saw at the Revolution
Jack
McCarthy
Where Were You When Reagan Croaked?
Gary
Corseri
Nouns That Should be Acronyms
David
Price
Reagan and the Black Budget
Website
of the Day
Inequality by the Numbers

June
9, 2004
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Israel's Common Use of Torture
Must be Exposed
Mike
Whitney
Alan Dershowitz, Still Defending
Torture
John
Chuckman
Why the CIA will Always be a Costly Flop
Jim
Tarbell / Roger Burbach
Bush's Democratic Charade in Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Put Reagan on the $3 Bill
Miguel
D'Escoto
Reagan was the Butcher of My People
Becky
Burgwin
The Betrayal of Smarty Jones: Flogging a Natural Born Hero
Patrick
Cockburn
The Rich Have Been Warned to Leave
Baghdad
June
8, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will
the Earth Accept His Corpse?
Dave
Lindorff
The March on Rumsfeld's House: Is
the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam?
Phillip
Cryan
Torture, Bombings & the Press in
Colombia
Mark
Zepezauer
Getting Reagan Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Reagan, Radicals and Repetitive Reactions
John
L. Hess
Reagan and Bush in Normandy
Alex
Dawoody
Reagan and Saddam: the Unholy Alliance
Christopher
Fons
Reagan in a Word: Mean
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Some Tenets are More Important Than Others
Ahmed
Bouzid
Nothing New Under the Israeli Sun
Michael
Leon
Bush the Narcissist

June
7, 2004
Jason
Leopold
New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling
Knew of California Trading Schemes
Patrick
Cockburn
The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern
of Attacks is Changing
Dennis
Hans
From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's
Dark Global Legacy
Tracy
McLellan
Nader at the National Press Club:
a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics
Bill
Blum
The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't
End the Cold War
Ben
Tripp
What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed
Bullshitter
Susan
Davis
Reagan, In a Nutshell
Phil
Gasper
Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance
Website
of the Day
A Child's ABCs of Terrorism
June
5 / 6, 2004
C.
Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of
Human Wrongs
Saul
Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession
Dave
Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited
Brian
Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong
Rich
Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black
Elaine
Cassel
A Sorry FBI
Cathrin
Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia
Ben
Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra
Kurt
Nimmo
The Madness of King George
Ron
Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)
Laura
Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?
Lenni
Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met
Abigail
Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy
Prisoner?
Mark
Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes
Gerry
Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too
Toni
Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised
Derek
Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old
M.
Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom
Matt
Siegfried
An American Way of War
Dave
Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations

June
4, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's
Animal House
Cornwell
/ Penketh
Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy
Wayne
Madsen
Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink
Greg
Moses
Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq
Yitzak
Laor
Before Rafah
Ghali
Hassan
Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte?
Jane
Stillwater
God, the Rapture and Vera Casey
CounterPunch
Wire
D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage?
John
Borowski
Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush
Mike
Griffin
Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW
Alexander Cockburn
Has Bush Gone Over the Edge?
Website
of the Day
Aquae Urbis Romae:
Water and Empire

June
3, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma
Dr.
Susan Block
America in tha Hood
Michael
Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin
John
Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number
One in the Deranged
Christopher
Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome
on $12,000 a Month
Samia
Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq
Mike
Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case
Diane
Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead
Scott
Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert

May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran

May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy

May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
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May 21, 2004
Ray
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The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
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Darkness at Noon
Jack
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Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
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Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
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May
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|
June
15, 2004
"I
Was Born Here" No Longer Suffices
Ireland
Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
By
HARRY BROWNE
Dublin.
Elections to the European parliament
are a matter of extraordinary indifference to most voters in
Europe, and the addition of 10 new countries this time around
doesn't seem to have changed matters.
The elections aren't actually
"European" in any real sense. Nearly all of the issues,
in nearly every country, are local and national. They thus have
the qualities of a series of midterm elections, with low turnouts
(44 per cent this time, including sub-30 per cent in some new
states) and incumbent parties generally punished by the electorate.
The EU attempted a 'unifying'
gimmick this time around by trying to get results announced across
the continent on Sunday evening, more or less all at once, even
when some countries had voted days earlier. Regardless, media
coverage in each country gave a vague nod in the direction of
the European dimension, then settled down to talk about the domestic
implications of their vote, which anyway trickled in slowly.
Anyway, the transnational parliamentary 'groups' are largely
obscure, especially once you get past the Christian democrats,
social democrats and Greens.
This weekend's European polls
followed the traditional pattern, with governments seeing their
party representations in the mostly impotent parliament slashed
across the continent. The only exceptions were the new governments
in Spain and Greece, still on post-national-election highs. Pro-war
governments in Britain and Italy got a satisfying hammering,
the left made some advances, but it would be highly optimistic
to see this as a massive triumph for peaceniks. (The 'anti-war'
German government also got a swift kick.)
Ireland offers a perhaps typical
example of how little there is to celebrate. The government here
has facilitated US imperialism with a pitstop at Shannon Airport,
against popular sentiment. (Mary Kelly's re-trial on charges
of damaging a US Navy plane in a Shannon hangar starts this week.
See http://www.counterpunch.org/)
Anti-war parties did exceptionally well, with Dublin in particular
now an indisputably left-wing city. Sinn Fein performed exceptionally
well right across the country. But the war was not an issue.
And on a crucial issue of human
rights and internationalism, the Irish electorate voted by nearly
four to one for a reactionary, anti-immigrant change in the state's
Constitution--despite the opposition of all those otherwise successful
left-wing parties. The significance of the government's 'citizenship
referendum' may be more symbolic than substantive for most people;
it is, nonetheless, a fundamental and ugly answer to the oft-asked
question about where precisely Ireland stands in the world, given
its history of poverty and colonialism. Up to 10 years ago, it
was still possible to suggest that the country lay somewhere
between the first and third worlds. Today, the Irish people,
who once went forth to build the continent's buildings and roads,
have put another brick in the wall of Fortress Europe, having
already climbed safely inside.
Citizenship in Ireland has
traditionally been determined by birth, as in the US and Canada,
as well as by descent, which is the main basis, along with naturalization,
of most European citizenships. On both bases the Irish passport
has traditionally been among the easier ones to attain: until
a few years ago you could get one if you could trace an Irish
ancestor four generations back. (These days it's restricted to
two generations.) And the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern
Ireland put the pre-existing birth-on-the-island-of-Ireland rule
into the Constitution, to protect the Irish identity of Northern
nationalists despite the abandonment of any direct claim on the
British-controlled Northern counties.
This weekend's vote took that
rule right back out of the Constitution, and overturned the practice
of the entire history of the Republic since independence from
Britain. Last week, every child born on the island of Ireland
was born an Irish citizen. This week, one of a child's parents
will have to show his or her own citizenship, or that they have
lived in the state--with a legal status not including asylum-seeker--for
at least three of the last four years in order for the child
to be eligible for a passport.
The rebel 1916 proclamation
pledged that the Republic would "cherish all the children
of the nation equally". The referendum, railroaded through
in the midst of local as well as European elections with little
debate, means that some children are more equal than others.
The arguments in favour of
the change suggested Ireland needed to get in line with the rest
of Europe on this issue. But citizenship laws vary across the
continent, and no one has been calling for standardisation--despite
the purple Euro-passport we all get these days. The more crucial
line of argument was that the government--and 'citizenship tourists'--had
discovered a loophole that was causing untold numbers of women
to arrive in the country, heavily pregnant, in order to have
an Irish child and therefore stay in the country--or indeed elsewhere
in the EU, putting strain on maternity services and the welfare
system.
The government tries not to
say it, but these women are presumed Nigerian, or otherwise African.
Why else would the minister for justice comment that "anyone
with eyes to see knows we have a problem"? The only way
this "problem" could be visible is if you're looking
out for black women with big tummies or new babies.
It's reasonable to assume there
was such a thing as citizenship tourism. But we have no idea
of the numbers--they are certainly fewer than the millions of
'grandfather rule' Americans who can get an Irish passport--and
after a Irish Supreme Court decision last year the parents of
Irish-citizen children have had no automatic right to remain
in the state. In fact, many have been deported. In other words,
if there was a problem it was costing very little, unless you
feel your own citizenship is devalued if other people can get
it too easily. (This is a variant on the anti-divorce argument--"my
marriage is devalued if other people can end theirs"--that
that finally lost out among Irish voters in the 1990s.)
Meanwhile, everyone still has
an illegal cousin in the US, and still celebrates the birth of
each US-citizen child to that cousin. And the incredible growth
of the Irish economy in the last decade would have been impossible
without immigration. As one anti-referendum campaigner put it:
"the Irish people have ignored our past and rejected our
future."
The realities of migration
and nationality remain much more complex than Irish voters might
hope. Even as the election results trickled in on Sunday evening,
the nation turned on their televisions to watch an important
soccer match between France and England. This being Ireland,
we cheered the comeback of a mostly black French team against
an England side whose forwards are called Rooney and Owen.
As Dublin's tourist industry
goes into overdrive to mark the 100th anniversary of James Joyce's
fictional Bloomsday this Wednesday, Irish radio presenter Tom
McGurk pointedly quoted Ulysses. In one famous sequence,
a bigoted nationalist, known as the Citizen, confronts Joyce's
nebbishy Jewish hero, Leopold Bloom, demanding to know "what
is your nation". "Ireland," Bloom replies. "I
was born here." Under Ireland's newly amended Constitution,
his answer would no longer be sufficient.
Below is
an opinion article I published in the Irish Evening Herald prior
to the referendum:
ALTHOUGH I was born in Italy
and grew up in New York and New Jersey, I am an Irish citizen.
Why? Because I can prove my descent from an alcoholic RIC man
who was born in the "Queen's County" about 120 years
ago.
I'm still not sure why my grandfather
legged it from what's now called Laois, and out of Ireland, about
90 years ago.
The "grandfather rule"
for citizenship is a way of recognising that Irish people were
forced to flee colonial poverty and oppression, but this particular
grandfather probably faced more of those horrors in Manhattan
than he did on the Auld Sod.
Still, soon after he passed
through Ellis Island he met and married a good Wexford woman,
and they filled their Hell's Kitchen tenement with little US-citizen
babies, including my Dad.
Plenty of Americans hated immigrants--plenty
still do--but the government there had the sense to realise that
these babies didn't belong to some other state.
Whatever the colour of their
skin, whatever religious or political beliefs were discussed
in whatever language was spoken in their homes, even if their
mothers waddled off the boat eight months pregnant, it made sense
to recognise US-born children as US citizens. What else?
That's still the rule in the
US, and in other immigrant societies like Canada and New Zealand.
It should stay the rule in Ireland, despite the efforts of Michael
McDowell to change it with this blatantly discriminatory referendum.
Sure, elsewhere in Europe citizenship
is often governed by the racist logic of the bloodline. But by
European standards Ireland is young, a republic without royal
dynasties or other "old Europe" throwbacks, and with
a relatively enlightened citizenship-by-birth policy throughout
the history of the State.
Rather than dragging ourselves
down to their level, shouldn't we be taking the lead in Europe?
If we can show the way with plastic bags and cigarettes, can't
we be an example by giving proper respect to all the innocent
babies born on our soil?
Citizenship is one crucial
way we do that. In a better world, people's rights and freedoms
won't be governed by the colour of their passports -- themselves
a relatively recent invention in human history, a way for governments
to control us.
But in the real world of today,
an Irish passport confers real, dramatic advantages. Ask yourself:
by what moral authority can you claim those advantages for your
child but not for the one beside her in the maternity hospital?
Of course, that child and his
parents should also have the choice to claim and retain citizenship
from their country of origin, for whatever good it does them.
After all, despite the bloodline
nonsense, nationality is not really an either-or thing. When
I was a kid, my Irish-American Dad and Italian-American Mom did
an exercise to occupy three children on a long car journey: taking
what we knew about the places our ancestors came from (Laois,
Wexford, Naples, Sicily) and all the family names, we listed
the nations and cultures that might be "in our blood".
My folks were good historians,
and Mom covered both sides of an envelope in tiny writing with
names of places and peoples--some we'd never even heard of.
Since before humans came out
of Africa, moving and mingling has been a huge part of the story
of our species. All of us are the mixed-up descendents of migrants.
Happily, settling down and
growing attached to a particular place is also part of our story.
Most people, given a half-decent chance at a half-decent life,
will try to stay where they're known and loved.
No floodgates have opened into
Ireland, no tide of humanity is pouring in. A few thousand people
have fled desperate lives, landed on our shores and had babies.
And if this wandering grandson
of a drunken cop can be an Irish citizen, why on earth shouldn't
they?
Harry Browne is a journalist and lecturer in the
school of media at the Dublin Institute of Technology: harrybrowne@eircom.net
Weekend
Edition Features for June 12 / 13, 2004
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