The following article by Ernest Walker was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
RECENTLEY the Irish Times reported that because of the constant claims that Russian ships and even submarines are threatening to damage under water cables the Irish government has committed to purchase under water sonar at a cost of €60 million from French company Thales.
Writing in the paper Stuart Matheson recalled a time in the 1980’s when Sweden found itself in similar situation. In 1981 a Soviet submarine ran aground just outside a Swedish naval base. Because it was a Whiskey-class submarine this was dubbed the “Whiskey on the Rocks” affair. The Swedes then developed a conviction that Soviet submarines were active in its archipelago so invested heavily in sonar capabilities and the subsequent discovery of previous unidentified bubbling noises seemed to confirm their suspicions.
For over a decade Sweden tried fruitlessly to identify the responsible subs. Forward then to 1996 and even though the Soviet Union had collapsed they thought that submarines were still active so they invited two biologists to listen to the recordings and it turned out that a separate team in Britain had been studying the same odd noises in herring tanks.
They had given the noise a name: fast repetitive ticks or FRTs. Mathieson then writes that herrings have swim bladders connected to their digestive tracts. When alarmed or socialising in large shoals, they expel air through their back ends in rapid bursts. The result is a high-frequency buzzing, that on a hydrophone, sounds like a small submarine. In other words, the Swedish navy had spent years preparing for war with farting fish.
Funnily enough a story was going around in the early eighties that the Swedish navy spent time and money on depth charging what they thought was a sub. In actual fact it turned out to be a washing machine that someone had dumped. It just goes to show that when paranoia gets a grip all common sense goes out of the window. As Mathieson concludes “who knows what our own solar investment might uncover?”
Crime against workers
In one of our past editions we wrote about a factory in Limerick. The Irish Times carried out an investigation along with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and found out that the factory was shipping alumina to smelters in Russia where it is used to make aluminium. In the face of new sanctions against Russia the Irish Government asked that the plant be excluded from sanctions citing the need to protect jobs in the area.
Since that time there has been renewed calls from dozens of MEP’s for the European Commission to take action. Most of those calling for that are from groupings of the European People’s Party (EPP) and Renew Europe which includes Fine Gael and Fianna Fail among its members. No Irish MEP’s have been involved but if the calls are successful and that is quite possible as the plant is owned by Rusal described as a ‘Russian Metals Giant’ by the Irish Times. It employees 1,000 workers with another 1,000 working in supporting companies. If sanctions include the manufacture of Alumina the future of the plant will be in jeopardy.
At the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis Mary Lou McDonald referred to “Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine.” If the EU has its way, the possible loss of 2,000 jobs and the effect it will have on the workers and their families will indeed be criminal.
All this to keep the war in Ukraine going on. A war which the EU with its support of the overthrow of the President who was not to their liking in the Maidan coup by right-wing forces, an extreme right-wing at that, instigated.
Let us not forget the Breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbas and of course the vote by Crimea to rejoin Russia. Also Nato, of which the EU is intrinsical a part, which has got Russia surrounded.
At the end of the day 2000 workers and their families may pay a heavy price for the European Union’s adventurous support of Ukraine