Sandals and Scandals

Sean Mallory irreverently has a go at a Belfast reverend and a few others along the way.


Although to be fair, with the slight exception to such teachings being those of love thy neighbour, John chapter 0, verse 0: “if thy neighbour should turn out to be Catholic or Irish then smite him down to linger in eternal pain among the heathens and the non-believers in Orangism.”
The good reverend, being a man of God, declared that he finds ‘offensive’ attempts to persuade Unionists to join a United Ireland. And that the UVF gun running of 1912 was not terrorism but that “they were of their period” and “ a community prepared to defend themselves”, and:

I’m British, I was born British, I will die British and I want no part of a united Ireland. I can’t be bought. I can’t be bribed.

Mmmmmm, a Unionist that can’t be bribed, now there is something unique - and obviously not a member of the DUP!

In union with ‘Mervyn's World’ perspective on the history of his community, the heirs of the 1912 gun runners, the UVF's Red Hand Commando have started their own initiative which is backed by the nefarious Loyalist Communities Council.  The latter represents loyalist paramilitary groups including the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando, and who publicly endorsed three DUP candidates in the recent Westminster elections - Nigel Dodds, Gavin Robinson and Emma Little-Pengelly. It also endorsed the Ulster Unionist party (UUP) candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Tom Elliott. The RHC has lodged a request with the British government to have themselves absolved of their murderous past, sorry, de-proscribed.

Former DUP economy minister Simon Hamilton has previously credited the LCC with attempting to move paramilitaries such as the RHC away from violence but didn’t specifically reject its backing.

I acknowledge the work that the Loyalist Communities Council has been doing in trying to work with paramilitary organisations to try to take them away from their past - I think that is positive, that is something to be encouraged.

He said shortly after the murder of Colin Horner, which is believed to have been part of a UDA internal feud. Now that is an unambiguous method of removing the past or more precisely the person from the past!

Considering their recent endorsement of the DUP, and the DUP being in a coalition of sorts with May's Tories, one can only surmise the outcome of such a request!

Speaking of which ...  the release of the £1bn DUP-Tory deal monies for Norn Iron must be approved by a Commons vote, admits May's government. A condition heretofore never mentioned and one that is unlike their Faustian pact not a done deal especially since  the DUP deal is being challenged in a crowdfunded legal case by Green party activist Ciaran McClean. He claims the deal breaks the promise of impartiality in the Good Friday agreement and also is in breach of the Bribery Act.

The high court has notified both sides’ legal teams that, because of the urgency of the claim, it should be heard in October, at the beginning of the new legal term. It is likely to begin on 26 October.

John Taylor – AKA Lord Kilclooney – and an Ulster Unionist supporter, joined Mervyn's World when he made the apparently rational claim that Nationalists, since they are in the minority to Unionists, could never be regarded as equals.

Applying Taylor's logical thinking to Unionism it would logically conclude that Unionists being in the minority in Britain should never be considered equal to the general British public!Elsewhere

IOC (international Olympic Committee) member Patrick Hickey, has resigned his executive post. he stated that he didn’t want the scrutiny surrounding his personal ‘deployment’ of tickets in Rio to tarnish or sully the good name of the already tarnished and sullied Committee, Seb Coe anyone. Especially since they gave him £326,000 to pay his bail money .... another Faustian pact ... bless’m!

The Republic's Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan quit her post due to an ‘unending cycle of scrutiny amid efforts to rectify the failures and mistakes of the past.’ These pertain to the recent garda scandals, including falsified alcohol breath tests, wrongful motoring convictions, financial irregularities at the Garda Training College, and the ill treatment of garda whistleblowers. A pity Foster couldn’t take a leaf out her book!

But all is not lost! Former RUC officer and PSNI deputy chief constable Judith Gillespie who currently sits on the Republic's Policing Authority - and what a job they’ve done - has been tipped as her replacement. That should keep a certain car bonnet-hopping Shinner happy!

Newton Emmerson, Irish News, 17/08/2017, takes a swing at ‘Rebel’ music. He relates a chimerical anecdote where he and a colleague, English perhaps, were ‘compelled’ to join in while sojourning in Ballycastle. The incident lead him to conclude that due to it being a “coy phenomenon” then "rebel music must be a source of embarrassment among nationalists themselves.” 
A common problem for Newton and other Unionists is that they presume to have an understanding of Irish Nationalism and its various facets, based on their own Britishness.


Internationally

Wirathu, a Myanmar Buddhist monk - but no follower of the Dalai Lama - has ignited and stoked through his teachings, the brutal and murderous military campaign of the Myanmar army against the Rohingya Muslims.

Amid reports of the burning of villages and extrajudicial killings, the military campaign is described by The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein as “clearly disproportionate and without regard for basic principles of international law.” And calling on the Myanmar government to end its bloody campaign added, “the situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the de facto Myanmar leader, said her government, the first civilian led government in years, blamed the violence on “terrorists” and claimed the controversy has been caused by “a huge iceberg of misinformation” with a good dose of Trump's fake news also!

In response to the brutality, over 400,000 people have signed a petition to strip Aung Sang Suu Kyi of her Nobel Peace Prize. When you look back at some of the past laureates, she's in fine company!