Established in 2019, the Azure Forum is a British foreign policy think-tank based in Ireland. Largely flying under the public’s radar, the Azure Forum has been active in foreign policy debates in the media and pro-Atlanticist media circles.
Protecting National Security Debates from “Nefarious Actors.”
Though the organisation’s name, cheesily derived from Ireland’s national colours, St. Patrick’s blue and saffron, the Azure Forum has far less than saintly designs in mind for Ireland’s future.
Waxing lyrical about Ireland’s position as a small nation on their website, the Azure Forum believes that “Ireland has a unique global brand as a smaller even-handed nation with balanced foreign policy approaches and strong moral or soft power.”
Its stated aims are the cultivation of Ireland’s global reputation and to fill the gap in defence and security think tanks in Ireland, and to ensure that conversations around national security are managed in such a way that Irish foreign policy discussions are not subject to the “misinformed or even dominated by nefarious actors.”
Who these nefarious actors are, the Azure Forum does not specify, but we suspect they might include those who are opposed to British and American geopolitical dominance, especially so given the light of the backgrounds of the Forum’s members.
The Azure Forum’s virtue signalling towards Ireland’s history as a small and independent, and most importantly, globally-minded, country, is naught but insincere performance, only employed for the sake of obscuring its member’s duplicitous intentions under the guise of benign lobbying.
The organisation appears to have ample networks with Ireland’s professional university and security sectors, which have climaxed in the group being granted speaking time at the government’s forum on Irish neutrality and security.
Meet the Committee:
Knowing that the Azure Forum is intent on aligning Ireland with Atlanticist interests, it is important that the Irish public are aware of the people who comprise senior and analytical positions within the organisation.
Following President Michael D. Higgins’ criticism of the government’s controversial neutrality and international security forum, Professor at UCD Edward Burke has sought to slate the notion that the neutrality review committee is stacked in favour of NATO.
As previously reported by The Burkean, at least 61 people attending the event are explicitly Pro-NATO or have direct connections to Anglo-American policy interest groups. Out of the 79 people scheduled to attend the neutrality forum, only 1 individual, Roger Cole from the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, is openly supportive of Irish neutrality.
Burke himself, a member of the Azure Forum, has previously written a book, titled “Army of Tribes: British Army Cohesion, Deviancy and Murder in Northern Ireland”, on the topic of the British Army’s experiences in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s.
Paddy McGuinness, one of the two members of the organisation’s advisory council currently sits on the advisory committee of the UK’s reinsurance pool for Terrorism risk, PoolRe, an organisation established in the wake of the IRA’s London bombing campaign in 1993.
However, most concerningly is that from 2014 – 2018, Paddy served as Britain’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Intelligence, Security and Resilience, where he advised two British Prime Ministers on British Homeland Security as well as Government Security policy, largely related to cybersecurity.
The second member of the Azure Forum’s advisory council is Vice-Admiral Mark Mellett, who previously served in the Irish Defence Forces, and has a record of cooperating with NATO/ISAF forces in Afghanistan. However, within the Defence Forces, Mellett has been a champion of diversity, leading the Defence Forces to introduce its Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, searching to elevate the position of sexual, and ethnic minorities within the army.
Mellett previously celebrated the growing foreign national population in the Defence Forces, and has advocated for strong external connections to other militaries and state bodies. Perhaps NATO would be an example of such an external military organisation?
Caitríona Heinl, is Executive Director of the Azure Forum and a foreign affairs policy-making official who has received ample experience in the field of international relations in the EU and Asia. She will be present at the government’s international security review forum, and has previously spoken at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.
Further analysts involved with the Azure Forum include David J. Hickton, a former US district attorney for the Obama administration, and Mark Williams, an expert in online hate, extremism and disinformation. Williams has previously been involved in the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast, named after a former DNC leader allegedly involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex ring and one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement.
Much public information is available regarding the organisation’s participants, but notably, the Azure Forum website does not list its trustees. For what reason could this be? Either the website is still a work-in-progress years after the Azure Forum was founded, or perhaps because the group’s trustees wish to remain unknown.
Pro-NATO Networking:
Reviewing the kinds of events that the Azure Forum has hosted and attended will give the reader a clearer understanding of the underlying malice in the institution’s vision for Ireland’s alignment with Anglo-American Atlanticist policy interests, as well as the extent to which Pro-NATO foreign policy pundits have networked with influential foreign officials and elites.
Starting with an event held last year, titled “Are Ireland’s views on neutrality and NATO changing?” This event was attended by Conor Gallagher, Irish Times journalist who recently published a book seeking to “debunk” the “myth” of Irish neutrality. Cathal Berry, an Independent TD supporting Irish militarisation, as well as Claire Cogan, the founder of BehaviourWise, a consultancy group responsible for the data provided in an Irish Times article which found that a majority of Irish people supported NATO membership.
At the MacGill Summer School, the Azure Forum co-hosted an event in which they questioned if neutrality is still an option for Ireland. This event was attended by Paddy McGuinness, Caitríona Heinl, Professor Brigid Laffan, and the Dutch Ambassador to Ireland Adriaan Palm. Also present at the event was Professor Andrew Cottey, who is also expected to be attending the government’s neutrality and security review forum, along with Laffan, and Heinl in their capacity as supporters of revising Ireland’s neutrality.
And as if an event questing Ireland’s neutrality was not indicative of the Azure Forum’s true foreign policy designs for Ireland, the group co-hosted another event in Dublin on the topic of EU-NATO collaboration, including Christian-Marc Lifländer, the head of NATO’s Cyber Defence Section.
The group is using Ireland’s position with internet cables falling into Ireland’s marine territory and the lack of Irish defence capabilities, as well as the large online tech corporate sector in Ireland through multinational companies in the country, they are seeking to bolster Ireland’s cybersecurity not for Ireland’s sake, but for the interest of Western Powers and US multinationals based in Ireland. Not only is the think tank against objective Irish interests to preserve its military and political neutrality, as indicated by the overwhelming connections between the group and NATO, but it does a pathetic job at pretending to hold Ireland’s interests at heart.
I’m not surprised at the lack of “Balance For Foreign Interests “.
How we haven’t invited others with UNSC VETO POWER is beyond me.
China would be equally at home and why not invite Russia also.
If we’re expecting anything more than a DOGS DINNER from this outcome
then we should also invite Ukraines Zelensky and North Koreas Kim Jong ill.
Unfortunately the average gobsheen does not question the direction of their country, and the puppet regime we have counts on it.
What is happening to ireland is a “pathological singularity”.
It is when the obliviousness of the average person to basic tenants of reality becomes so widespread,
when the simplicity of the average person verges on intellectual retardation,
when lust and alcoholism multiply the mental deterioration of the population,
when our crude and metaphorical style of speech ( in which people ramble on in pseudo-metaphors and quaint irish mannerisms while actually saying very little other than conveying their emotional state of placidity or vengefulness) means that native sophistication leaves the Irish culture and foreign sophisticated concepts fill the void along with their loyalties and ideologies
when institutions, businesses, and individuals show widespread incompetence, and resentfulness at having to work, overcharge, steal, and are volatile and threatening,
etc shit like this
What else is the people going to do other than deteriorate under such leadership?
Irish society was poisoned from the top down using psychologists to reconstruct the irish identity into something it never was.
The population of this country is being groomed, not just by the schools or media, but by the whole situation.
Everything leads towards the disenfranchisement of the native irish and their replacement and the removal of their sovereignty.
Will anyone pay attention as the regime sleepwalks the public into yet another bad deal?
Do the people even have the mental faculties anymore?
Or are the Irish slowly learning sophistication and expression from abroad, an unintended side effect of flooding Ireland with foreign media and people, and are we learning to mimic the process of seeking self actualization like more established countries without our unique national pathologies do?
edit
the “pathological singularity” i said was on the way to happening to ireland is when the tipping point of society is reached,
when pathological individuals become irresistably in the ascendant and dominate, when society becomes so toxic and allergic to honourable practices and lifestyles that a condition of total paralysis is reached in society, intellectual mass paralysis from which a people cannot recover as the healthy ones are suppressed.
I dont think we are there yet but we are not far off.
It certainly seems that the current government are introducing and bedding into legislation such things that the majority of Irish citizens are against. They have also ensured that we are overwhelmed with migrants. The perilous migrant route across the sea, and ultimately many ending up in Ireland was at its busiest ever two weeks ago. This is their legacy to the Irish people and they are so proud of it.
Solid work, old chap. Vice-Admiral Mark Mellett is the former Chief of Staff of our Armed Forces. He was appointed by his Mayo neighbour Taoiseach Kenny but first had to get overseas experience. His was in Afghanistan which does not have a navy. His overseas experience was pushing a pen and picking his nose with that pen for six months in Kabul. No practical experience, in other words.
NATO membership will bring him and his navy buddies big bucks, desk promotions, bigger pensions and cushy numbers when they retire, as the Irish tax payer buys war ships not fit for our purpose of defending fisheries and stopping drug pushers.
The UCD and their academics cited are no different. Huge NATO related grants to sell Irleand and the Irish down the river for 30 pieces of silver, inflation adjusted upwards of course.
There is a God and he visited Cork City today Thurs 22nd June @1300.
True to form the Rebel County confronted the slithering, snake like ,Traitor, Micheal Martin and heckled and called him out for the underhand way he is attempting to slide Irleand under the wing of NATO.
How these brave few, managed to enter the ‘NATO Recruitment Forum ‘ is unknown .
How they managed to smuggle in a large banner with the powerful simple maessage, NATO WARS ,Millions Dead’ is unknown.
Why the Garda Thugs and security were not deployed to eject them is unknown.
Possibly Martin did not wish to show his brutal fascist inclinations ,in front of so many International guests.
First the Hate Speech draconian censorhip of Free Speech and now the attempt to enter NATO under some form of obfuscated terms.
The Regime has overreached and appear in a hurry before the Irish People throw them on the dustbin of History. Someone is applying pressure on them.
Remember it is not our puny Army ,Navy,Air force they wish to corral ,but our Island home as a base for Nuclear armed Navy’s , Air borne nuclear armed bombers and spy radars and communications.
This puts a target for extermination on every Irish person in a Nuclear conflict.
Also note as members of the warmongering NATO associated EU ,we are contributing money for arms/weapons to continue to feed the killing fields of Ukraine.
Also note the Irish Regimes have allowed the US to use Shannon as a refueling and logistics base,during the Afganistan,Syrian,and Iraq wars, and as a transit point for CIA torture rendition flights.
Today it was heartening to see Martin confronted on his BS.
The People are waking ,but it has taken us to the edge of the abyss before action was taken.
We need more of this disruptive action to remove this Regime cohort of foul traitors who are leading us to Armageddon.
HEAR HERE,
…and don’t forget to leave the ” Rotten Eggs Behind “.
The Notorious Spineless Spectacle from the Rebel County.
Recently,the ” 6 Counties Pie ” only had 2 gluttonous foreign OUTSIDERS devour it entirely and belched out “Their Westminister Pact ” in after dinner speeches.The First ONLOOKER to congratulate the swine fest was the ever famous ” United Ireland’s Sham Fein.
The same 2 Behemoth Porkys are at the table and overplaying their representative stakeholders position in the ” 26 Counties Pie ” GOBFEST.
Who will be the first gobshite to congratulate the ” OUTCOME ”
Now is the time for those with real vested interests to unite and combine their
PATRIOTIC POWERS IN PROTEST AND PROTECTION FOR ” EIRU
Excellent exposure of the bias of nearly all those speaking at this forum for NATO
Ireland membership of the EU has not worked out well.
We have lost control of our borders by EU diktat.
We have lost contol of our economy ,when we surrendered our Independent currency the Punt.
We lost contol of our Justice system,when EU Law and diktat became superior to Irelands Laws.
We lost control of our society and culture when dangerous liberal EU diktats on LGBTP were imposed.
We lost our Neutrality, when the EU supported with weapons and funds the proxy Ukraine war on Russia.
Ireland is clearly at war with Russia, First thru its controlled MEDIA and propaganda outlet RTE.
The truth about the conflict in Ukraine has never been told to the People of Ireland. Only constant demonisation and lies.
An ignorant, uninformed People are a danger to themselves. That is the purpose of war propaganda.
The war in Ukraine is a proxy war by the US/NATO/EU on Russia, since the Feb Coup of 2014 ,led by the US/NATO, using NAZI factions as its shock troops.
The Ukraine Regime has since been dominated by NAZI ideology supporters, who discriminated against the ethnic Russians, in Law and with violence, and causing the secession and revolt in the Crimea and Donbass.
Ireland as a member of the similarly corrupt War mongering EU, contributes our Taxpayer funds to supply weapons to the killing fields of Ukraine.
The root cause of the war on Russia and the coming war on China is to preserve US global dominance, maintained by its $Reserve currency , Petrodollar and 850 Military bases worldwide, and 11 Carrier Group Navy.
The Chinese financed New Silk Roads all the way to Europe, and the BRICS+ multicurrency trading system by-passes all these extortion tools of US Military and Finance.
This is known as the ‘Thucydides Trap’, first espoused by the Athenian General of the same name, during the Pellopenese Wars .
The dominant Spartan Federation felt threatened by the rise of the Athenian City State and went to war to prevent the threat,
The Spartans were destroyed and so will the US/NATO/ EU who have taken on a peer enemy who has long prepared for this conflict, military, monetary ,economic and diplomatically.
Critical thinking people should celebrate Russian success ,as it frees Ireland from the clutches of the vicious, insidious machinations of the EU and its real Master , the dangerous ,evil, war-mongerng US Admin, controlled for decades by dual citizen Neo-Cons at its State Dept.
“Ignorant and uninformed people”. That’s exactly right.