Absolutely!!
No danger of the 'Ra taking power.
- Thread starter WolfeTone
- Start date
Absolutely!!
No, I'm pointing out that SF is run from Northern Ireland by unelected people who are unapologetic about their terrorist past and who still control a criminal organisation. SF is a political front for that organisation.
That doesn't mean every voter or member or every elected representative is in favour of terrorists being the real power behind the party but it does mean they are complicit in it. They may choose to be willfully ignorant of the truth but that doesn't change the truth.
The leadership of the RC Church condemns the rape of children. There are no known child rapists running the RC Church. If the rapists ran the show and proudly proclaimed the fact that they used to rape children but don't anymore I don't think as many Catholics would support them.
Duke of Marmalade
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Purple has already pointed out the falsity in this analogy.
I agree, indeed I hope, that the 25% SF support in the Republic especially amongst the young is despite their association with terrorism.
The Catholic Church have been doing their best to root out the depravity at their core. By contrast Sinn Féin have merely recognised that the ballot box was more effective than the bomb and the bullet, so they switched tack but rather than disown that murderous campaign they glorify it.
Anyway, parking the mortality aspect which I agree carries a sprinkling of double standards esp. with FF. But it is clear that SF are in thrall to the hard men (& women?) of IRA Army Council based in West Belfast. Do the 25% who voted SF fully appreciate this? If so would they care? Would they be happy for our Taoiseach to similarly be in thrall to that esteemed body? Would the broader Irish electorate be happy with that?
Stephen Collins is no Eoghan Harris. His opinion piece, highlighted in an earlier post, brought it home to me in the most explicit terms the connection between SF and the IRA Army Council. I sort of half believed it but had an element of doubt but this opinion piece on top of Mary Lou's expression of credo in the IRA and the attendance at her "friend's" funeral testifies to how intolerable it would be to have SF sharing power.
Maybe FG/FF should tone down the morality narrative and focus on the true focus of power in SF/IRA.
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A couple of points
1. DUP are already on record championing how a 52/48% result in Brexit had to honoured in the interests of democracy, apparently such a narrow margin is substantive.
2. Inherent in your comment is a view that the democratic will of the people for a UI (should it ever be expressed) not be afforded to the people due to the threat, real or perceived, of terrorist violence!
The British government succumbed to the threat of Ulster volunteer violence and democracy was usurped. What followed was a century littered with violent insurrection, Civil war, sectarian murder.
It was the disenfranchisement of the Irish people to parliament of its own, as fought for and won, through exclusively peaceful and democratic means, that spawned the IRA in the first place.
Denying Irish people their fundamental right to determine their own political, economic and cultural lives, as provided for by the Constitution in Ireland, and under the terms of the GFA in NI, is recipe for resurging the IRA.
When ..
- priests finish their sermon with a rallying cry of "Up the rapists"
- the porches of churches have stalls selling pins and badges proclaiming the glories of the rapists
- the Primate of All Ireland attends the funeral of someone like Brendan Smyth
.. then the analogy holds. Until then ..
What odds?
This whole "IRA Army Council" is the stuff of yesteryear. If an AC exists, what matters is its activities. I personally do not care, they can call themselves an AC all they want, but if their raison d'etre was to make cuddly bears for deprived children in Africa, would it matter?
What commentators in this topic need to point out is, what subversive activity, if any, is at play?
To all intents and purposes, every security report from PSNI and Garda suggests that while an AC exists in some form, it does not exist in any form other than legitimate political activity.
The inference here is that members of SF running for office, or elected to office, are pedophiles or, covering up for same?
These are of course outlandish, unsubstantiated allegations of a very serious nature. The information you hold should be passed onto the authorities lest you become complicit in the alleged cover up yourself. Can you substantiate these allegations and have you provided the information to the authorities?
For my part, if I knew anybody who was running for office was engaged in cover up or worse, I certainly wouldn't vote for them.
The IRA issued a public apologised for death and injury of all non-combatants as a result of its actions.
Make of that what you will, but it is factually wrong to say they are unapologetic.
Duke of Marmalade
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A truly breathtaking position, which I doubt you really hold. So you have no problem with Mary Lou as Taoiseach being answerable to an Army Council of reconstructed terrorists in West Belfast? What can I say? So we have sham interviews with our Taoiseach when all the while she is answerable to unaccountable figures in a foreign state. If that is your idea of a healthy democracy, do you think it is shared by the 25% who voted for SF?
Cuddly bears are a long way off the punishment beatings that are still regularly carried out in their name. Upset some of their leaders's children you end up like Paul Quinn.
But you have made the leap that MLM is answerable to an AC.
There is no evidence of this other than what you interpret legitimate political activity to mean.
To suggest MLM is being directed by subvervises, that she is not a capable and free-thinking politician in her own right is preposterous. It feeds into to political mud-slinging for sure, but has no basis in truth.
It is notable that all this 'bogey IRA' stuff re-emerges around election time. And now that they are the main opposition, I suspect it will be re-gurgitated on a more regular basis purely for political posturing.
All political parties have their bases where collective policy is formed and devised, including the input from unelected members. It is naive not think so.
Jaysus, we even have a government party today that was reliant on the votes of its unelected members from NI to participate in government. Look at controversy they caused - well, outside AAM, none actually.
We even allow the government of the reconstructed British Army terrorists to govern in this country. Notwithstanding their continuing cover-ups by members of its terrorists of mass slaughter of innocents, Miami Showband, Dublin/Monaghan, Ballymurphy, Loughlinisland, Pat Finucane, et al
But we could spend the rest of our lives on the whataboutery, or we can accept that while what is going on is unpalatable in various quarters from various perspectives, we voted as nation for this. We voted for prisoner releases, voted for the recognition of a partitioned Island, voted for continued British governance despite the continued cover-ups of murder and voted for the disarmenant of paramilitaries and the pursuit of exclusively democratic and peaceful means.
If members of SF are engaged in criminality, or the cover up of Paul Quinn muder, or any other subversive activities they need to be held to account, no different to members of the British State who perpetuate the cover-up of criminality or murders.
But to make the jump that it all amounts to some secret cabal controlling the views of MLM is Wizard of Oz stuff.
Haven't gone through the thread but with a SF Taoiseach are we going to be going down the road of lauding Volunteer X & Y, celebrating Narrow Water, mourning Loughall and all the rest of it? Mary Lou has recently confirmed to the Sindo that she has drank all the Coolaid, and are the people of the 26 now to be doused in it, willing or not. I'm not sure how many of the 25% are really on board with all the slaughter, so by any rational judgement ML should have just moved on quietly, a few sympathetic 'we're all victims' & "different times" platitudes.... but no, not until she's rammed the legitimacy of the RA down your throat will she rest. So on that basis I have absolutely no problem with the will of the people* being "subverted" by other political parties clubbing together to freeze out SF.
*25% of them
*25% of them
We are already long on the path to all that.
Constable James O'Brien of the Dublin Metropolitan Police was on duty at gates of Dublin Castle on Easter morning 1916 when members of James Connollys Irish Citizen Army marched up to the gates. O'Brien was unarmed. When the ICA tried to enter the Castle, O'Brien doing his duty as a police officer refused entry.
Without warning, the ICA blew his brains out. He was married with three children.
Every year, the Irish Labour Party commemorate the memory of Connolly and the 'heroics' of the ICA. No mention of war crimes, no apology. The Labour Party have been in government here.
Countess Markiewicz, revered to this day amongst FF, is also alleged to have carried out the execution of an unarmed police officer.
These are war criminals.
I support the ideology of a united peaceful Ireland. I also acknowledge the right of a people to use force to defend their community and where their fundamental rights to exercise political democratic autonomy has been usurped by violent means.
But I'm not afraid to acknowledge that the pursuit of political aims to establish a independent Ireland by force comes with the baggage of war crimes, sectarian murders, the murder of children, the torture, murder and disappearance of informers.
Carried out in the name of the Irish Republic, led by Connolly, Pearse, Dé Valera, Collins, Markiewicz et al, whose portraits adorn the highest offices of this State at any given time.
We have reached a point in this country, for the first time in over a century, where constitutional democrat politics has taken the ascendency over subversive activities of paramilitaries and the British State.
I hope it continues to embed itself and that the remnants of the violent past fade away permanently - just as the war crimes of Connolly, Collins, Dev et al appeared to have faded away from the memories of their supporters.
SF focused on cheaper housing. The 25% bought it. Incidentally, I have no doubt housing would be a lot cheaper with SF in government, a handy by-product having wrecked the economy.
Just to add to this, and my earlier views, I'm not advocating for anyone to vote for SF. If their policies on housing, health, education etc are not agreeable, then I certainly won't be voting for them.
My staunch defence of SF is in answer to implied accusations that in casting my vote I am somehow complicit in a series of despicable crimes.
Thatcher et al tried this tatic and failed. She used the slogan "a vote for SF is a vote for the IRA".
Personally, I consider my vote for SF to have been a vote for an end to the IRA. My vote has done more to remove guns from Irish politics than all the crooks of the British security apparatus ever did.
This is absolutely the SF narrative, all nations are born in bloodshed type This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language. My considered take on the Troubles is 20+ years longer than justified (post Sunningdale). That's a lot of unnecessary death for the slow learners & its for that they get the blame.
While 1916 was a suicide mission, the 1918 election was clear indication that the Irish as a resounding majority demanded self-determination. When that was resisted by force then force was justified - Yes I know the IRA fired the first shots... So the War of Independence had an attainable goal, which was duly attained, albeit imperfectly on many many fronts.
Ulster was not so simple, and this is the one sticking point in the "Its all one Sinn Fein and its all one IRA". Unless the Protestants of the NE were to be driven into the sea there was never going to be neat solution. 50 years of misrule later, its all kicks off down the Vic (so to speak) and while the PIRA might have started out as justified defenderism, it became a long war death cult, never going to win, never to fully lose. A futile waste of life, an unhealthy dose of sectarianism thrown in.
So while the ancestors of the Labour Party, or whoever, may have killed, unjustifiably, at least it was not on a large and protracted scale as part of a wholly unviable venture.
Long story short I don't see the Irish State signing up to the deeds of the PIRA and the quicker SF get that into their heads the better.
Ah bless, I don't doubt your sincerity but isn't it obvious that SF can't leave it behind, they absolutely must sew together all the threads of Irish Republicanism or they are relegated to raggle taggle provo terrorists. If I "just" thought they were going to ruin us financially I could live with that (....I've voted FF at one point after all) but the gaslighting SF are and would/will try to do is just too much for me to stomach.
Duke of Marmalade
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Wolfie I accept that SF are not alone in being answerable to unelected backroom figures. The British Tory Party is notorious for its "men in grey suits". And of course today the Real Taoiseach of the UK is Dominic Cummings. So my revulsion is not so much that Mary Lou keeps company but with the company that she keeps.
On a side issue you seem to buy into Gerry Adams' mantra that there is parity of disteem between republican atrocities and those perpetrated by British forces. One atrocity alone, the killing in cold blood of 10 Protestant workmen, shows that the IRA were in a different league. I acknowledge that the Brits did not always show the kind of restraint they showed in NI in other theatres, but that is not relevant to this thread.
Are you comfortable the highest office's of this State commemorating suicide missions as gallant actions? What message does that send to future generations of idealistic youth?
BTW, I have no quarrel with the principle motives of 1916 and WoI. The democratically achieved Irish Home Rule parliament had been usurped by the threat of violence from a minority.
I'm just not going to whitewash or ignore the crimes that were attributable to the IRB and Volunteers like most political parties, and their supporters do.
Arguably, the subsequent Civil War suggests the goal, in the eyes some, were not attained.
The subsequent introduction of Bunreacht na hÉireann by FF and the territorial claim within, is testament to that view.
I'm reading the Proclamation now, clearly it outlines how this "unviable venture" of Irish independence had already spanned several centuries.