Shannon Peace Vigil among the warplanes

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Monday September 14, 2009 23:30

by Edward Horgan - Shannonwatch.org

Neutrality - my Aunt Rose's sore elbow (ARSE)

The monthly peace vigil at Shannon on Sunday 13 Sept took place on a beautiful Indian Summer's day when nature seemed to be at peace with itself.
However, a closer look inside the airport fence showed very few civilian planes, with Aer Lingus cut backs on Shannon services, Air France/CityJet about to abandon its Shannon Paris route, and Ryanair also planning schedule cutbacks.
There was plenty of military activity however, with four warplanes surrounded by Gardai and Airport Police.

Shannon Peace Vigil 13 Sept 09 - Peaceniks among the Chaos

Fifteen peace activists attended this vigil, and we were accompanied by almost twice that number of Gardai, who seemed to be behaving a little like headless chickens. When we arrived at 2 pm as usual, there seemed to be no Gardai at the road checkpoint, but there were a number of Garda vehicles and several Airport Police vehicles within the airport attending the three warplanes on the ground, and a fourth one that landed at about 2.12 pm. The usual contingent of Gardai on overtime eventually arrived at about 2.20pm complete with their hired-in truckload of anti-riot barriers. If the 15 of us had started a riot at 2 pm we would have had no one to riot against for 20 minutes. At 3 pm at the end of the vigil, I drove up to the airport, wearing my "Guantanamo" orange suit, to deliver two peaceactivists to the bus at the airport. We passed up to a dozen gardai at the barriers, who seemed not to notice us until after we had passed, and then sent a squad car after us. When I was ordered to leave the set down area immediatly, as I was setting down my bus passengers, I asked the Garda to inform his superiors that I was requesting that the warplanes at the airport be searched.

Our peace activists included three from Germany, and the usual suspects from Galway, Mullingar, Limerick, Clare and Cork. The Dublin contingent were on late Summer holidays.
While we were at our usual roundabout stand, we were closely observed by two individuals driving a Crysler car that we have reason to believe may be two of the US soldiers who are based full-time at Shannon airport. At a previous demonstration a few months ago one of these individuals took several photos of our peace vigil.

OMNI Air Troop-carrier Shannon 13 Sept 09