On 2 April 2013, the UN General Assembly adopted an Arms Trade Treaty which is intended to regulate the international trade in conventional arms. It covers everything from small arms to battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships. According to the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs the treaty will "foster peace and security by putting a stop to destabilising arms flows to conflict regions. It will prevent human rights abusers and violators of the law of war from being supplied with arms. And it will help keep warlords, pirates, and gangs from acquiring these deadly tools".

67 Member States including Ireland signed the Arms Trade Treaty when it opened for signature on 3rd June. By signing they signaled their intention to become a party to the Treaty in the future.

Margaretta D'Arcy, Mick Wallace TD, Zoe Lawlor and Clare Daly TD discuss the US military and CIA use of Shannon with Gardai

For the first time in many months the regular peace vigil at Shannon Airport was held in bright sunshine. But what didn't change was that the peaceful protestors were outnumbered by Gardai who erected crash barriers and stood in line to block access to the airport. Even the presence of two TDs, Clare Daly and Mick Wallace who asked to walk up to the airport, was met with the usual refusal.

Sixteen peaceful protesters. And more than twenty Gardai all staring in the wrong direction, away from where the war criminals might be. Keeping the airport free of peaceful protestors. Just "doing their jobs" they said.

Bradley Manning went on trial at Fort Meade in Maryland on Monday, facing 21 charges resulting from the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified digital files to WikiLeaks. His "crime" was to expose the truth about the much more serious US war crimes and about their secret foreign policy dealings. His punishment, if the US government have their way, will be life imprisonment.

A groundbreaking research project mapping the US government's programme of global rendition has just been launched. It is called The Rendition Project, and it contains a database of over 11,000 pieces of data on confirmed and suspected rendition flights and other flights from related carriers. Over 350 of these flights came through Shannon Airport.

An Iraqi Air Force Hercules (photo: Lockheed Martin)

Just after midnight on Wednesday night of this week (May 1st), three C-130J Super Hercules aircraft being supplied to the Iraqi Air Force by Lockheed Martin touched down at Shannon Airport. They were enroute from the US to Iraq, and were accompanied by 2 US Air Force Hercules.

The Iraqi Air Force's new C-130s lined up on the tarmac at Shannon one behind the other,  with the US aircraft parked at either end. All five used USAF callsigns; the ones with the Iraqi markings were RCH975, RCH999 and RCH410. And the serial numbers of the Iraqi aircraft were YI-309, YI-307 and YI-308.

Back in 2003 Kieran Allen and Colin Coulter produced a well researched booklet entitled 'The Irish Republic, the United States and the Iraq War: A Critical Appraisal'. It outlined the effective transformation of Shannon into a US military installation, saying it was deeply offensive to the overwhelming majority of Irish people. The booklet showed how the Irish government at the time was guided more by a concern to accommodate the demands of the Bush administration than to serve the interests of its own citizens.  Initially the Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowan seemed content to say little about what was going on at Shannon in the hope that the controversy surrounding it would blow over.  As popular pressure began to mount however, Mr Cowen began to resort to a series of evasions and half-truths in order to conceal the full scale of Irish collusion in the US war drive. But he economy with which Mr Cowen chose to handle the awful truth of what was happening at Shannon tended merely to further expose en entirely shameless government that held in utter contempt those people it was supposed to serve.

A decade later the only thing that has changed is the people in government. Instead of a Fianna Fail Minister for Foreign Affairs who uses evasions and half-truths to conceal Irish collusion in the US war drive, we now have a Labour minister who does exactly the same. Like his predecessor, Eamonn Gilmore has mislead the Dail and the Irish people on numerous occasions in relation to Shannon, the US military and the CIA. And he consistently refuses to investigate its known involvement in renditions.

Allen and Coulter's conclusion in 2003 was that the conduct of the political establishment in Dublin was consistently determined not by the welfare of the Irish people but rather by the insatiable imperial demands of the "fanatics" running the United States, Sadly this still holds true, There are still major lessons to be learned, and changes to be brought about in terms of Irish foreign policy. And given that little has changed since 2003, it is informative to revisit 'The Irish Republic, the United States and the Iraq War: A Critical Appraisal' and to examine how and when the abandonment of Irish neutrality began.

The text of the booklet is reproduced here in full.