While Ken Loach has his own film called Route Irish, which deals with “the most dangerous road in the world” (aka Baghdad Airport Road), coming out later this month in the UK, Irish film-maker, Eamonn Crudden made his own Route Irish back in 2007, but his dealt with the protest movement at Shannon Airport in Ireland. Crudden spent several years putting his documentary together, which documented:

...the emergence of the Irish antiwar movement between 2002 and 2006 and of the broad popular opposition to the US military use of Ireland’s civilian Shannon Airport in the build-up to, invasion of, and occupation of Iraq.

The documentary follows a loose network of activist groups, individuals and politicians through the story of the rise, fracturing, sudden decline and then disappearance of this movement and then retraces the way in which their combined efforts, energies and strategies served to effectively tear away the Republic of Ireland’s veneer of neutrality and non-alignment in the post September 11th era of the ‘War on Terror’.

The background to the story begins after the September 11 attacks, when the Irish government offered the use of Shannon Airport to the US government. Shannon is one of the three primary airports in Ireland, and is the country’s second busiest. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the Irish government still allowed the US military to use the airport. This was a highly controversial decision and sparked a series of demonstrations and a challenge to the High Court.

It also sparked a series of direct actions by demonstrators. In January 2003, a woman smashed a nose cone and attempted to cut fuel lines of a US Navy jet with an axe. Her trial led to her acquittal. Then in February 2003, a group called the Pitstop Ploughshares vandalized a US Navy aircraft at the airport. Members of the group were tried three time. They were eventually all acquitted.

A 2007 survey found 58% of Irish people opposed the use of Shannon for prosecuting the Iraq war.

Cult film director, Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Walker) said of Crudden’s video essay:

“Route Irishis an excellent documentary. It deals very very well with the frustrations of a peace movement. It tackles some complex matters which aren’t usually discussed or even thought about.”

 
Bonus trailer for Ken Loach’s ‘Route Irish’, after the jump…
 

Weren’t you excited that they stopped making Humvees? Didn’t you breathe a sigh of relief that perhaps some sanity had slipped into the world sideways? Well, hm. Now they’re making a FLYING one.

Generals may be notorious for always wanting to fight the last war but if true, there will be no shortage of tomorrow’s weaponry they’ll be able to choose from. At least in the U.S.
Earlier today, the New York Times ran a big piece on a new class of weapons that can hurl conventional payloads with precision accuracy at a target from thousands of miles away. Or at least that is how it’s being billed at this point.

For obvious reasons, that could turn into a very big deal. But with all the attention lavished on Prompt Global Strike, another story got lost in the shuffle that has the capacity to have an equally transformational effect on the U.S. military.

The Defense Advanced Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Defense Department’s research arm, has decided to go ahead with what it calls the Transformer (TX) program. The idea is to enable soldiers to go into battle riding a four-person flying car that also function like an airplane. The vehicle, which will be able to drive 250 miles on a tank of fuel, will not need a runway to get airborne.

(CBS News: Flying Humvees in Military’s Future?)

Good AP report on the stresses faced by women enlisted in the military on their return home (not to mention while they’re on active duty). We don’t need another post-Vietnam in this country. Treat veterans right and provide the services they need.

WASHINGTON ?

Discover Magazine reports on a new military-grade Taser which has a 200-foot range and has raised concerns about lethality. As opposed to what, um, guns and all that OTHER stuff the military uses? Hey, I just hope mall cops don’t end up with them…

If you?