Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1148

A Song Is Born

The Uri Avnery Column focuses on the Israeli occupation.


It goes like this:

Ahed / You are the promise and the glory / Standing as high as an olive tree / From the cradle to the present / Your honor will not be violated / Palestine has been planted in us / As a dock for every ship / We are the land and you are the water /

You are covered with blond hair / You are as pure as Jerusalem / You taught our generation how the forgotten people should revolt / They thought the Palestinians are afraid of them because they are wearing armor and holding a weapon? / Palestine has been planted in us / As a dock for every ship / Our nation must be united and resist for the freedom of Palestine and the prisoners /

Your blue eyes are a lighthouse / For a country that has every religion / You united the people far away and close / You ignited the spark in all our hearts / Your head is raised up high encouraging us / You ignited the light in our darkness /

Despite the softness of your hands / Your hands have shaken the world / Your hands returned the slap to the occupier / And returned esteem to the nation / Palestine has been planted in us / As a dock for every ship / We are the land and you are the water.

If I were an adherent of the occupation, this song would frighten me very much.

Because the force of songs is much stronger than the force of weapons. A gun wears out, but a song lasts forever.

In the early days of the Israeli army, there was a slogan hanging in our mess: "An army that is singing is an army of victory!"

The present Palestinian generation has decided to lower its head and wait until the storm has passed. The coming Palestinian generation may act in a completely different way.

On the eve of my 15th birthday, I joined an underground (or "terrorist") group that fought against the British colonial regime. Almost eighty years later I remember just about every song of that time, word for word. Songs like "We are unknown soldiers without uniforms…" and many more. Afterwards I wrote an anthem for my company.

I am not a poet. Far from it. But I have written some songs in my time, including "Samson's Foxes", an anthem for my commando unit in the Israeli army. So I know the force of a song. Especially a song about the heroism of a 16 year old girl.

The Moment I saw the scene of Ahed al-Tamimi boxing the face of an Israeli army captain, I knew that something important had happened.

The British politician Lord Acton famously wrote: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I would add: "Occupying another people tends to make you stupid, and a long occupation makes you utterly stupid."

In my youth, when I was already a member of the anti-British underground, I was working in the office of a British lawyer, many of whose clients were officials of the British administration. I often asked myself: "How can it be that such intelligent people can behave so stupidly?” They were nice people, who treated even a lowly clerk like me politely. But they had no alternative: the occupation compels the occupier to behave stupidly.

It works like this: in order to uphold an occupation regime for any length of time, the occupier must believe in the superiority of his race and in the inferiority of his subjects, who are seen as primitive creatures. Otherwise, what gives him the right to subject another people? That is exactly what has happened to us now.

The Moment I saw the face-boxing scene on TV, I knew that something momentous had happened. The Palestinian people now have a national heroine. The Palestinian youth now has a model to emulate.

The Israeli public has got used to the occupation. They believe that this is a normal situation, that the occupation can go on forever. But the occupation is not a natural situation, and some day it will come to an end.

Ten thousand British ruled hundreds of millions of Indians, until a skinny man called Gandhi went to produce salt on the seashore, contrary to the law. The Indian youth arose, and British rule fell away like a leaf from a tree in autumn.

The same stupidity took hold of all the occupation enforcers who dealt with Ahed al-Tamimi. Army officers. Prosecutors, military judges.

If we were wise occupiers – an oxymoron – we would have sent Ahed home long ago. Expelled her by force from the prison. But we are still keeping her locked up. Her and her mother.

True, some days ago the army realized its own stupidity. With the help of Ahed's devoted (Jewish) advocate, Gabi Lasky, a "compromise" was worked out. Several charges were dropped and Ahed was sentenced to "only" eight months in prison.

She will be released in three more months. But that is too late: the picture of Ahed is already engraved in the mind of every Palestinian boy or girl. Ahed, the girl covered with blond hair, her blue eyes shining like a lighthouse. Ahed the saint. Ahed the savior.

The Palestinian Jeanne d’Arc, the national symbol.

The Story of Ahed al-Tamimi happened in the West Bank. But it resounded in the Gaza Strip, too.

For most Israelis, the Gaza Strip is something else. It is not occupied territory. It does not concern us.

But the situation of the Gaza Strip is even worse than straight occupation. The strip is completely surrounded. North and east is Israel, west is the sea, where the Israeli navy shoots at everything except for fishing boats close to the shore. The south belongs to Egypt, which behaves even worse than the Israelis and in close cooperation with them.

The situation in the Gaza Strip is as close to hell as one can get. Food at subsistence level, electricity for two to four hours a day, the water is polluted. Work is extremely scarce. Only the most severely ill are let out.

Why? It has to do with the demon that plagues the Israeli government: the demographic devil.

In historical Palestine, the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, there now live about 13 million people, roughly half Jewish and half Arab, with a slight edge in favor of the Arabs. Numbers are uncertain, but roughly there are 3 million Arabs in the West Bank, 2 million in the Gaza Strip and 1.5 million Arab citizens in Israel. The Arab birthrate is higher than the Jewish average.

These numbers disturb the sleep of many Israeli officials, especially politicians. They look for means to change the balance. They once had the illusion that if the situation in Gaza got unbearable, people from Gaza would emigrate. But it did not happen. Palestinians have become very tenacious.

Then a new fashion came up: just ignore the bastards. Just imagine that the Gaza Strip has sunk into the sea, as one Israeli politician once prayed. No Strip. Two million Palestinian less.

But the Strip is there. True, Gaza is ruled by the Islamic Hamas party, while the West Bank is ruled by Abu Mazen's PLO, and the enmity between the two is vicious. But that happened in almost all liberation movements in history. In our case, the underground split between the Haganah ("Defense"), which belonged to the official Zionist leadership, and the Irgun ("Organization", short for National Military Organization). Then the Irgun split, and the even more extreme LEHI ("Fighters for the Freedom of Israel", called the "Stern Gang" by the British) was born. They all hated each other.

But among the people, there is no difference at all. They are all Palestinians. Ahed is the heroine of all of them. Perhaps her model played a role in what happened last week.

For some time, the Gaza Strip was quiet. Some kind of modus vivendi had even come into being between the Hamas government and the Israeli one. The Israelis congratulated themselves on their cleverness. And then it happened.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, the population of Gaza stood up. Hamas organized them to assemble on Friday near the border fence, unarmed. A prolonged campaign of passive resistance was to start.

When I was asked what would happen, I said that the Israeli army would shoot to kill. Simple: Israelis don't know how to deal with passive resistance. They shoot in order to turn it into violent resistance. With that they know how to deal. With more violence.

And That is exactly what happened last Friday, the first day of the campaign: snipers were posted along the line, with orders to shoot the "ringleaders" – anyone who stood out. 18 unarmed demonstrators were killed, almost a thousand were shot and wounded.

If anyone thought that the democratic world would stand up and condemn Israel, they were sadly wrong. Reactions were feeble, at most. What was revealed was the incredible hold the Israeli government and its Zionist organization has over the world’s political establishments and communication outlets. With few exceptions the atrocious news was not published at all, or as minor items.

But this cannot go on for long. The Gaza protests will continue, especially on Fridays (the Muslim holy day), until May 15, the Naqba ("Catastrophe") Day, which commemorates the mass flight / expulsion of half the Palestinian people from their homes. Palestinian flags will fill screens around the globe.

Ahed will still be in prison.

Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist.
He writes @ Gush Shalom

Windrush Generation

Mick Hall lifts the lid on Theresa May's disgusting treatment of the Windrush Generation. 
The Windrush generation were regarded by Theresa May as low hanging fruit ripe for the picking.
The despicable way the Tory government and Theresa May has treated the children of the Windrush generation was deliberate: it’s not an aberration it’s deliberate policy. The home office under May and then Amber Rudd picked what they regarded as low hanging fruit by attempting, and in some cases removing, British citizens to a foreign land.

Is there any greater crime when from her own mouth Mrs May has said on countless occasions the first obligation of a Prime Minister is to protect the British people from harm.

This issue is indicative of the low density warfare Cameron and then May have been conducting against their own citizens since 2010.

First they came for the long term unemployed, especially those who were least able to defend themselves, mainly the sick and disabled. With the help of the mainstream media they smeared and slandered them as workshy, benefit cheats. As with the Windrush generation they set in place rules and regulations, targets which the Tory government new full well it would be almost impossible to meet.
Lives were ruined people died.

At the time when people complained about the way the DWP had treated them, they came up against a brick wall, any flak which did eventually rain down was aimed at the corporations who did the governments bidding thus shielding leading Tory politicians from blame.

With immigration becoming a hot topic in 2013 amongst Tory voters and with UKIP gaining electoral traction, May as Home Secretary was desperate to bring the numbers down. This is when the Windrush generation stepped into the frame, like the sick and disabled before them, they were regarded as low hanging fruit ripe for the picking.

May knowing full well they were British citizens ordered her bureaucrats at the Home Office to come up with a policy which targeted them. Then the Border Agency under Theresa May acted like the Gestapo when targeting them. Dawn raids, tricks, abstruse arguments and subterfuge were also used to against them. Men and women who had lived legally in the UK for almost their entire lives ended up in detention centers bewildered, mystified as to why they had been targeted for deportation.

When they first spoke up, protesting they were British citizens and had been all their lives, this is a mistake; whether in the detention-centre, border agency office or Home Office, no one in authority was listening.

Why? Because the gophers and bureaucrats new full well what was happening to these folk was not a mistake, but policy emulating from the top of the Tory government.

Two years ago stories about the illegal treatment of the Windrush generation of children began to seep down to the street and were taken up by sections of the media. This prompted the Caribbean nations to make discrete enquiries in London: finding the rumours were true they notified the British authorities. May ignored them just as the various works and pensions Secretaries of State did when it came to those who had their benefits stolen.

Even last week May was still refusing to meet a delegation of senior politicians from the Caribbean to discuss this matter. Thankfully they were having none of it, the dam finally burst, rightly pouring excreta and blame on the British prime minister, the author of this whole wretched business. If there is any common decency left within the Tory party, which I doubt, she must be forced to resign in ignominy having broken one of her own red lines.

Mick Hall blogs @ Organized Rage.
Follow Mick Hall on Twitter @organizedrage

A Morning Thought (10)

"Pour Out Your Wrath"

From the Uri Avnery Column, a discussion on the Haggadah.
I was about to write an article about Pesach eve' when I remembered that I wrote exactly the same article six years ago. So I am sending the old article again – I just have nothing to add.

I Am writing this on Friday night, the eve of Passover. At this moment, all over the world, millions of Jews are gathered around the family table, observing the Seder, reading aloud from the same book: the Haggadah, which tells the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

The impact of this book on Jewish life is immense. Every Jew takes part in this ceremony from earliest childhood, and plays an active part in the ritual. Wherever a Jewish man or woman goes in later life, they will take with them a memory of the warmth and togetherness of the family, the magical atmosphere – and the overt and subliminal message conveyed by the text.

Whoever invented the Seder (“order”) ritual, many centuries ago, was a genius. All human senses are involved: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting. It includes eating a ritualized meal, drinking four glasses of wine, touching various symbolic objects, playing a game with the children (searching for a hidden piece of Matzo). It ends with singing several religious songs together. The accumulated effect is magical.

More than any other Jewish text, the Haggadah forms the Jewish conscious – or, rather, unconscious - mind today, as in the past, influencing our collective behavior and Israeli national policy.

There are many different ways to view this book.

Literature: As a literary work, the Haggadah is rather inferior. The text is devoid of beauty, full of repetitions, platitudes and banalities.

This may cause wonderment. The Hebrew Bible – the Bible in Hebrew – is a work of unique beauty. In many places, its beauty is intoxicating.

The peaks of Western culture – Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy – are not its equal. Even the later Jewish religious texts – Mishnah, Talmud and so forth – while not so uplifting, contain passages of literary merit. The Haggadah has none. It is a text devised purely for indoctrination.

History: It’s not. Though it claims to tell history, the Haggadah has nothing to do with real history.

There can no longer be the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan.

The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.

The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.

Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.

There is no need to point out that in a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon ever existed).

But is this really important? Not a bit of it!

The Passover story does not derive its immense power from any claim to be history. It is a myth that grips the human imagination, a myth that is the basis of a great religion, a myth that directs the behavior of people to this very day. Without the Exodus story, there would probably be no State of Israel today – and certainly not in Palestine.

The Glory: One can read the Exodus story as a shining example of all that is good and inspiring in the annals of humanity.

Here is the story of a small and powerless people that rises up against a brutal tyranny, throws off its chains and gains a new homeland, creating a revolutionary new moral code on the way.

Seen in this way, the Exodus is a victory of the human spirit, an inspiration for all downtrodden peoples. And indeed, it has served this purpose many times in the past. The Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of the American nation, were inspired by it, and so were many rebels throughout history.

The Other Side: When one reads the Biblical text attentively , without religious blinkers, some aspects gives us food for other thoughts.

Let’s take the Ten Plagues. Why were the entire Egyptian people punished for the misdeeds of one tyrant, Pharaoh? Why did God, like a divine Security Council, levy on them cruel sanctions, polluting their water with blood, destroying their livelihood with hail and locusts? And, even more gruesome, how could a merciful God send his angels to murder every single Egyptian firstborn child?

On leaving Egypt, the Israelites were encouraged to steal their neighbors’ property. It is rather curious that the Biblical story-teller, who was certainly deeply religious, did not omit this detail. And this just a few weeks before the Ten Commandments were handed down to the Israelites by God personally, including “Thou Shalt Not Steal”.

No one ever seems to have given much thought to the ethical side of the conquest of Canaan. God promised the Children of Israel a land which was the home of other peoples. He told them to kill these peoples, expressly commanding them to commit genocide. For some reason, He singled out the people of Amalek, ordering the Israelites to eradicate them altogether. Later, the glorious King Saul was dethroned by His prophet because he showed mercy and did not murder his Amalekite prisoners-of-war, men, women and children.

Of course, these texts were written by people living in times long past, when the ethics of individuals and nations were different, as were the rules of war. But the Haggadah is recited - today as before - uncritically, without any reflection on these horrible aspects.

Especially in religious schools in Israel today , the commandment to commit genocide against the non-Jewish population of Palestine is taken by many teachers and pupils quite literally.

Indoctrination: This is the real point of these reflections. There are two sentences in the Haggadah that always had – and still have – a profound impact on the present.

One is the central idea on which almost all Jews base their historical outlook: “In every generation they rise against us to destroy us”. This does not apply to a specific time or to a specific place. It is regarded as an eternal truth that applies to all places, all times. ”They” is the entire outside world, all non-Jews everywhere.

Children hear this on Seder evening on their father’s knee, long before they are able to read and write, and from then on they hear or recite it every year for decades. It expresses the total conscious or unconscious conviction of almost all Jews, whether in Los Angeles, California, or in Lod, Israel. It certainly directs the policy of the State of Israel.

The second sentence, which complements the first, is a cry to God: “Pour out your wrath upon the nations that do not know you…for they have devoured Jacob and desolated his home…Pour out your wrath on them! May your blazing anger overtake them! Exterminate them from under the heavens of the Lord!…

The word “nations” in this text has a double meaning. The Hebrew word is “goyim”, an ancient Hebrew term for “peoples”. Even the ancient Children of Israel were called a “Holy Goy”. But over the centuries, the word has taken on another meaning, and is understood to refer to all non-Jewish individuals, in a very derogatory way. (As in the Yiddish song “Oy, Oy, Oy, / Drunk is the Goy.)"

In many translations, the word "exterminate" is changed into "pursue".

To understand this text properly, one has to remember that it was written as a cry from the heart of a defenseless, persecuted people who had no means to take revenge on their torturers. To raise their spirits on the joyful Seder evening, they had to put their trust in God, crying out to Him that he should take revenge in their stead.

During the Seder ritual, the door is always left open. Officially, that is to allow the Prophet Elias to enter, if he should miraculously rise from the dead. In reality it was to allow the Goyim to look in, so as to disprove the anti-Semitic libel that Jews baked their unleavened Pesach bread with the blood of kidnapped Christian children.

The Lesson: In the Diaspora, this craving for revenge was both understandable and ineffective. But the founding of the State of Israel has changed the situation completely. In Israel, Jews are far from being defenseless. We don’t have to rely on God to take revenge for the evils done unto us, past or present, real or imagined. We can pour out our wrath ourselves, on our neighbors, the Palestinians and other Arabs, on our minorities, on our victims.

That is the real danger of the Haggadah, as I see it. It was written by and for helpless Jews living in perpetual danger. It raised their spirits once a year, when they felt safe for a moment, protected by their God, surrounded by their families.

Taken out of this context and applied to a new, completely different situation, it can set us on an evil course. Telling ourselves that everybody is out to destroy us, yesterday and most certainly tomorrow, we consider the grandiloquent bombast of an Iranian bigmouth as a living proof of the validity of the old maxim. They are out to kill us, so we must – according to another ancient Jewish injunction – kill them first.

So, on this Seder evening, let our feelings be guided by the noble, inspiring part of the Haggadah, the part about the slaves who rose up against tyranny and took their fate in their own hands – and not the part about pouring out our wrath.


Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist.
He writes @ Gush Shalom

Soldiers Of Nationalist Destiny

If Fianna Fail wins Westminster MPs in Northern Ireland, why do we need an Irish Republic? That’s the key argument which controversial commentator Dr John Coulter address in his Fearless Flying column today. 
Flicking through my portfolio of clippings from my days writing political articles in the News Letter in the 1980s, I came across an interview I did with then leading North Belfast solicitor and nationalist politician, the late Paschal O’Hare. He was then seemingly disillusioned with the direction the SDLP was taking and suggested the formation of a new nationalist party based on the ideals of the New Ireland Forum.

This was during the era when former British Prime Minister, the late Maggie Thatcher, delivered her famous ‘out, out, out’ speech in relation to the recommendations of the New Ireland Forum.

Basically, the New Ireland Forum report was a democratic and purely political ‘long war’ to secure a united Ireland and radically opposed the Provos’ vision of the terrorist ‘long war’ to secure the so-called democratic socialist 32-county republic.

Moderate nationalism must be asking itself, what is the democratic alternative to Sinn Fein now that the Provos’ apologist front has supposedly fully embraced the concept of ‘the ballot paper in one hand and the bachelor’s degree in the other’.

Just as the SDLP replaced the late Eddie McAteer’s Irish Nationalist Party when the latter had run its political course, so now a new moderate nationalist vehicle is needed to replace the SDLP now that that party has run its course and succumbed to the Sinn Fein bandwagon.

Moderate nationalists will have to face the inevitable. To combat the republican movement’s political respectability strategy the time has come to fold up the SDLP and allow Fianna Fail to contest elections in Northern Ireland.

The Northern manifesto for Fianna Fail in the six counties must be the New Ireland Forum report - along with the pledge that any FF Westminster MPs will follow the example of the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and take their seats. This could put quite a number of Sinn Fein’s seven Commons boltholes in doubt.

At Stormont, the DUP may not be able to cut a deal with Sinn Fein, but a key to restoring devolution long term could be a DUP/FF power-sharing Executive - a move which would inevitably nudge Sinn Fein openly into a Far Left position as nothing more than James Connolly’s avowedly communist Irish Socialist Republican Party (not to be confused with the INLA’s political wing, the IRSP).

Nationalists north and south need to be aware that Unionism’s ace card is a hard border under Brexit. Such a move would cripple the republic economically, reducing its financial state to nothing more than the castrated Celtic Tiger of a few years ago when it took millions of euros - much of it supplied by the UK - to bail out the republic.

For a number of years I have been pushing my own Unionist ideology of Revolutionary Unionism which looks at Irish politics from an all-island perspective. The term comes from the 17th century Glorious Revolution when the Protestant Ascendancy ruled the entire island of Ireland.

The clerical abuse scandals across the island have been the political iceberg which has effectively sunk the religious Titanic known as the Irish Catholic Church. In the early 1900s, the Unionist chant was ‘Home Rule means Rome Rule’.

The influence of the Catholic Church has been terminally smashed. This does not mean the Christian faith is dead in southern Ireland. There will always be certain parishes which will remain true to Rome, especially after the planned visit of Pope Francis.

But many Catholics are deserting Rome and swelling the ranks of the Pentecostal movement. This should not be misinterpreted as Catholics joining the Reformed Faith of Protestantism. Irish Pentecostalism views itself as a non-denominational Christian faith based purely on the Salvationist theology of being ‘born again’ spiritually. The movement was founded in Monaghan in 1915 during the teeth of the Great War.

While many of its churches are in the north, it is starting to expand rapidly in the republic. It means the Catholic Church in southern Ireland is being battered from two directions - the growing secularism caused by the fallout from the clerical abuse scandals, as well as the quiet revolution in Pentecostalism.

At long last Unionism is starting the slow process of thinking outside the box - or should that read, thinking outside Northern Ireland? Gone are the days in the DUP when an elected representative would be severely disciplined for venturing across the Irish border into the 26 Counties.

Likewise, Revolutionary Unionism should not be confused with the liberal trend in Unionism which suggests Northern Unionists should prepare themselves for the inevitability of a united Ireland. Revolutionary Unionism is about dismantling the failed experiment known as ‘the republic’ and bringing the ‘Occupied 26 Counties’ back into a new Union with the UK post Brexit.

The key to this scenario will be the role of the Commonwealth, and especially the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. In the so-called ‘Noughties’ (the post new millennium years) when I was composing the ideology of all-island Revolutionary Unionism, I would have been mocked on a regular basis about such an all-island solution.

Mind you, as a young cub BBC Radio Ulster freelancer in 1981 covering the Fermanagh/South Tyrone Westminster by-election won by Owen Carron - the late IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands MP’s election agent - if I’d told Carron as he gave his victory speech that day that one day Sinn Fein would sit in a partitionist parliament at Stormont with Ian Paisley senior’s DUP, he would have probably recommended me for serious counselling. But it happened in 2007.

In 1985 as a reporter, I stood feet away from Rev Paisley when he issued his famous ‘never, never, never, never’ speech against the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Imagine what the reaction of ‘The Big Man’ would have been as he walked off the platform that day if I had said to him - ‘Dr Paisley, one day you will do a deal with the IRA’s political wing and enter a power-sharing Executive at Parliament Buildings!’ But it happened in 2007.

Fianna Fail is the only party which can save nationalism in a post Brexit Ireland. If its MPs can take their Commons seats, why do we need a republic on this island? Like it or not, Southern Ireland needs to become part of a British dominion in a post Brexit society.

Could Ireland become a British dominion like Canada, New Zealand or Australia after March 2019 when the UK formally quits the European Union? Don’t titter; with Brexit negotiations still not reaching a conclusion, especially over a Customs Union and hard/soft border, my dream of a Revolutionary Unionist Ireland is still on the cards.


Dr John Coulter has been a journalist working in Ireland for the past 40 years.

His ebook, An Sais Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism is published on Amazon Kindle.

Dr Coulter is on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

A Morning Thought (9)

Defending Memories From Smears

Chris Fogarty continues with his quest for truth regarding 1845-1850 Ireland.

My book names a great many of them; English lords with English estates also, all Church of Ireland (Anglicans). The evictor of my grand-uncles and grand-aunts was England-born Lord Ashbrrook (Castle Durrow, Co. Laois) whose current descendant lives on his Arley Hall, Cheshire estate. Also attached are photos of Holocaust mass graves monuments that merit attentive reading.

I am familiar with Strokestown, the old 26,980-acre Pakenham-Mahon estate, having been raised on the nearby old 24,410-acre Lord Mount-Sanford estate. Many of Ireland's English landlords were British army officers. Pakenham was killed leading Britain's January, 1815 attack on New Orleans. A few days earlier another such scion, of English Landlord Ross of Rostrevor, Co. Down, had burned the White House and was shot by a U.S. sniper as he, General Ross, led the attack on Baltimore (witnessed by Poet Francis Scott Key).

Another England-born British soldier of landlord connection was General Sir Edward Blakeney. His Uncle John Blakeney had been England's High Sheriff of Co. Galway. General Blakeney was Commander-in-Chief of the 67 British army regiments deployed to Ireland in 1845-1850 to remove its abundant production of meats, livestock, flour, meal, and all other food crops. (Those 67 regiment were more than half of Britain's 130 regiment army; more force than had conquered the Indian Subcontinent.) As Blakeney neared completion of his Holocaust, in 1849 Queen Victoria conferred on him the Order of the Bath (or Garter). Nearly a decade later she knighted William Wilde, making him Sir William.
Wilde played a key role in Ireland's 1841 Census and was appointed Commissioner of the 1851 Census. His 1851 Census officially "established" that 1845-1850 starvation deaths totaled 21,770. To "explicate" the actual, mass death he cited celestial eclipses of a millennium earlier, and "mysterious visitations" of lethal pandemics to which "the Irish are uniquely susceptible." He fancifully named them "the Barking Mania,' "the King's Cholera." etc.

Thus Victoria knighted Wilde for concealing and minimizing what she had awarded Blakeney for perpetrating. Wilde's honored falsification of the 1851 census has led to the continuing lie of "a million dead, a million fled."

As to the Holocaust-era Irish on the Pakenham-Mahon estate, my book defends their memories from the smears heaped upon them ever since they were murdered or evicted. It does so by 1) exposing the U. of Illinois professor's potato-famine promoting falsification of exhumed artifacts in Ballykilcline, and 2) by naming the locations of all of the grain-kilns and -mills, livestock pounds, and other abundant evidence of non-tuber edibles they produced.

Please help to reduce future genocides by promoting the truth regarding 1845-1850 Ireland. 

Muslim Studies Program Director Argues New Atheists Misrepresent Islam

From Atheist Republic Scott Jacobsen writes on Islam being misrepresented by New Atheism.
Photo Credits: Tehran News


 According to the Tehran Times, the New Atheist writers and thinkers tend to “misread and misrepresent Islamic sources” based on the interpretation of their work by one Michigan Professor, Mohammad Hassan Khalil.

Khalil is the author of Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism. He is the Director of the Muslim Studies Program of Michigan State University. He said, “In fact, their [the New Atheists’] portrayals of Islam are sometimes even more extreme than those of violent radicals themselves.”

In a brief interview, Khalil described the New Atheist writers including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins, as seeing Islam primarily as a violent religious ideology. That members of al-Qaeda and ISIL who engage in the acts of terrorism are acting in the name of Islamic scripture when they commit the acts of terror.

Khalil argues that the terrorists and extremists are in fact deviating from Islamic scripture. In response to a query about the main message of his book, he responded: 

My central argument is twofold: (1) Violent radicals cannot be considered "literalists" who adhere carefully to Islamic scripture and tradition. I offer various examples of radicals diverging from and misreading Islamic sources. (2) Prominent New Atheist writers also tend to misread and misrepresent Islamic sources. In fact, their portrayals of Islam are sometimes even more extreme than those of violent radicals themselves.

In other words, first, Khalil argues violent radicals are not “literalists” who deviate and misread Islamic scripture; second, the New Atheists portray Islam in a more extreme way than the radicals or extremists themselves.

Further on the second point, he argues the Western world’s academics who have been influenced by the New Atheist interpretations take the same extremist interpretation approach. Khalil, as far as can be ascertained from the interview, argues against New Atheists’ and the radicals’ interpretations rather than providing a full-breadth alternative. 




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A Morning Thought (8)

Sinn Féin To Hold Ard Fheis On Abortion – After The Referendum!

Matt Treacy, writing last month, flags up inconsistencies in Sinn Fein's position on the upcoming referendum on the 8th Amendment. 
Responding to increasing unease within the party over its stance on abortion, the Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle met on Monday March 19 and decided to bring its annual Ard Fheis forward from November to June. This will apparently allow members to decide whether Sinn Féin will support legislation on allowing abortion up to 12 weeks, or beyond.

That sounds very democratic except that the referendum will be held in May, when the electorate will in effect also be voting for the legalisation of abortion at least up until 12 weeks, as that is the recommendation of the report approved by the majority of TDs and Senators, including Sinn Féin.

McDonald when questioned made it clear that the party’s position is in support of 12 weeks even though that has not been voted on by the members. So the Ard Fheis is really nothing more than a rubber stamp public relations exercise forced on the leadership who were hoping along with the government that people would be sleep walked into voting for a liberal abortion regime on the basis of simply repealing the 8th amendment.

The motion to be put to the Ard Fheis commits Sinn Féin to supporting the recommendations of the Oireachtas report, and that:

abortion without specific indication should be available through a GP led service in a clinical context as determined by law and licensing practice for a limited gestational period. Sinn Féin members of a legislature shall act in line with the view of the Ard Chomhairle which will be informed by the best available medical advice, when legislating regarding the limited gestational period.

Which is what the Committee approved when it voted for a motion placed by Fine Gael TD Kate O’Connell. Which must be the first time a motion to a republican convention was drafted by a Fine Gaeler.

Sinn Féin members on the Committee also voted in favour of a motion, that was defeated, which would have allowed for abortion on the grounds of “socio-economic considerations” pertaining to a woman’s health. Which exposes the pretence that the party is not now, at leadership level, on the most extreme side of the abortion debate.

Speaking in the Dáil on March 20, Cork TD Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire made it clear that he and other Sinn Féin TDs support the 12 weeks proposal. Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín who is opposed to the repeal of the 8th amendment underlined exactly what is being voted on:

The debate on repeal is currently a debate on abortion on request with no restriction for the first 12 weeks of the child’s existence … Another element is not being discussed. The Minister’s policy document does not seem to mention any gestational limit for certain children, maybe children with life-limiting conditions.

So it is apparent that when people vote in May – before Sinn Féin holds its Ard Fheis ostensibly to decide on how it will vote on subsequent legislation – that a Yes vote is a vote for a 12 week limit, and that abortion may be legislated for in the cases of a child being likely to be born with a disability.

There is much dissimulation on the pro repeal side. Even Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit who support a more radical liberalisation of abortion law than proposed in the report, was anxious that the referendum not be contested on the actual issues:

I do not want in any sense to duck the issue of the 12 weeks and the important discussions that were had at the all-party Oireachtas committee but it is important to remind people that, in the first instance, what we are voting for is repealing the eighth amendment.

That is the Trojan Horse.

The claim that the referendum is simply to repeal the 8th is not exactly true anyway, as the default for legalising abortion on demand has already been agreed by the Oireachtas in passing the Committee report as 12 weeks. That is what will be put into legislation if the referendum votes to repeal the 8th. There is little doubt that TDs and Senators would again approve this, and that Sinn Féin will impose another party whip.

The death of Savita Halappanavar continues to be referred to by the pro abortion side, and was again by McDonald in announcing the Ard Fheis, when in fact the report into the case showed that the 8th amendment had nothing to do with the hospital mismanagement that was the central issue. The hospital failed to detect the development of the sepsis infection that led to her death. Had it done there was no legal impediment to any procedures being taken to save her life.

There will be much more dissimulation and lies as the campaign proceeds. There were even attempts to claim that the huge rally which turned out in support of rejecting the amendment proposal numbered less than 9,000.

Others will continue to utter weasel words in justification of their being marched into the lobbies by the party commissars. Pearse Doherty the Donegal TD was at one time adamantly opposed to abortion, and made that clear at meetings. Now he claims that he is opposed to “unrestricted abortion,” while supporting a 12 weeks limit which if legislated for will introduce just that within that time frame, and potentially beyond that where it concerns unborn children with diagnosed disabilities.

Sinn Féin Ard Fheiseanna are invariably well choreographed and dissent very rarely gets to be heard. So it will be interesting if there any motions opposing the leadership’s pro abortion stance, and whether any such motions if proposed will even get to be heard and voted upon.

In any event, holding such a conference After the referendum is just more smoke and mirrors designed to deflect from what is being voted on, and to try to ensure that Sinn Féin members dutifully turn out to deliver leaflets and put up posters which conflict with their own views on the issues.

The latest victim of the refusal to allow a free vote is Carol Nolan the Offaly TD who was suspended from Sinn Féin on March 21 for voting against the proposal to hold a referendum.



Matt Treacy’s book A Tunnel to the Moon: The End of the Irish Republican Army is also available @ Amazon. 


Matt Treacy blogs @ Brocaire Books. 


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