Minister McDowell on Sinn Fein/IRA

dublin | crime and justice | news report

Thursday January 13, 2005 18:35

by Reality Check

A stirring statement by the Minister for Justice on the recent Sinn Fein/IRA bank raid

Statement issued by
Michael McDowell, TD
Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform
Thursday, 13 January 2005

The recent attribution of the Northern Bank robbery in Belfast to the Provisional IRA was done by the Chief Constable of the PSNI after careful consideration of the progress of the investigation. It was not done with a view to having a political effect. I have found Hugh Orde to be a level-headed, professional, and honest police man who is dedicated to the good of the people who rely on the PSNI to uphold the law. I have found him to be completely dedicated to the tasks set for him by the Good Friday Agreement. I have found him to be resolutely supportive of that Agreement and its even-handed implementation. Furthermore, the record shows that Hugh Orde has always worked energetically towards the creation of a comprehensive, cross-community involvement in and support for the policing of Northern Ireland.

I have no reason at all to disbelieve or discount his assessment on which the attribution was made.

The degree of trust which he has earned contrasts completely with the gross degradation of trust by those who criticise him most and who now impugn his motivation.

Adams’ Comments on Robberies

"The IRA has denied any involvement and I accept that," Mr Gerry Adams said after the major robbery. He went on to say, “Crimes like this can play no part in the republican struggle and those who are seeking to blame Sinn Fein know this."

But the Sinn Féin president wasn’t speaking of the Northern Bank robbery when he uttered those words.

He spoke those words in June 1996 after a gang of IRA men killed Garda Jerry McCabe while robbing a post office van in Adare, Co Limerick.

Note carefully that these words underline and re-echo his recent theme that Provo members simply do not commit crimes. Note also that those who attributed blame to the Provos for that vicious crime are, as usual, themselves accused of bad faith. The constant implication is that they are hostile to the peace process.

Now reconcile his claim that such crimes can play no part in the Republican struggle with the nauseating posed photographs by Sinn Fein’s TDs with the McCabe killers and their publication in the Sinn Fein newspaper. Contrast those words, too, with his recent ever so plausible but disgraceful excuse on the Late Late show that the Adare killing was the subject of “low-level” authorisation by the Provisional movement.

Now, concerning the Northern Bank heist, the IRA has been making denials again. And, once more, that’s been good enough for Mr Adams. "The IRA has said it wasn't involved," he said this week. "I believe that to be the case."

Does any sane person believe that the IRA or Sinn Fein would now acknowledge that it had carried out the Northern Bank robbery?

For the Provisional movement - Sinn Féin and the IRA- have lied repeatedly about criminality when it suited them. They initially denied involvement in the Enniskillen bombing in 1987. They denied involvement in the importation of weapons from Florida one year after the Good Friday Agreement was concluded. They even denied having a representative in Cuba when asked about the arrest of Niall Connolly in Columbia.

This week, Mr Martin McGuinness asserted that “Gerry Adams and I work on the basis that you can’t tell lies within the peace process. If you tell lies you get caught out and then irreparable damage is done…”

That statement would be risible if its implications were not so deadly serious. Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness have made a career in the Peace Process of over-promising and under-delivering.

Mr McGuinness and his party told George Mitchell and David Trimble, in 1999, that IRA decommissioning would happen after the Northern Ireland Executive was first set up. They undertook that it would start by January 30th, 2000. No act of decommissioning took place by then and the Executive collapsed as a result.

In early 2003, the Irish Government was led to believe that it was the intention of the Provisionals to hold the requisite Army Conventions to end IRA paramilitarism.

Subsequent events, as catalogued in the IMC report and as brought by me to the attention of the Irish people, demonstrate a radical inability on the part of the Provisionals to end paramilitarism. The Tohill episode and the ongoing training and criminal activities of the IRA, cited by both the IMC and myself, demonstrate that a very different state of affairs exists.

The Provisionals are in a state of denial about the true implications of the Good Friday Agreement for paramilitarism and criminality. Unless the IRA ceases to be an armed paramilitary body; unless it categorically ends for good the activities mentioned by the two Governments in paragraph 13 of their joint declaration; unless its members desist from any activity which endangers the rights and safety of others, there is simply no way open for any political progress for any party or politician who owes allegiance to the IRA or is in any way connected with it.

On this, as I said in Dail Eireann before Christmas and before all the latest events unfolded, there can be “no fudge, no budge” by the Irish Government or the Irish people.

Let me make it clear in terms that anyone, even those who live in the parallel universe of Provo theory, self-deception and mythology, can understand.

There is and can be no room in representative politics or in governmental institutions anywhere on this island for any political party allied to any group or body which:

· Supports the use or threatened use of force or violence
· Possesses firearms or explosives
· Violently resists An Garda Siochana or the PSNI
· Usurps the policing function in any part of this island
· Engages in robbery or theft
· Threatens to kill
· Exiles
· Mutilates by punishment beatings
· Extorts and blackmails
· Smuggles and counterfeits

The small minority in the media who pander to the Provisional agenda should always remind themselves of the fact that the IRA Chief of Staff took an oath to deny involvement in the IRA before a Dublin jury as part of a plan to cripple media free speech and to get damages for being revealed for what he was. They might also keep in their minds the name of the witness who swore up against him and was believed by that jury. He was found battered to death near the border.

Small wonder that the Provisionals are now backing a new daily newspaper heavily featured in last week’s An Phoblacht. Will it be to Irish democracy what the Volkischer Beobachter was to pre-WWII German democracy?

We should not passively stand by as a naked plan to subvert democracy by those who are allied to such a movement is put into effect. We are being invited into the Orwellian nightmare of the Provo parallel universe where truth becomes falsehood, where words mean only what the speaker wishes them to mean, and where common humanity is expendable in pursuit of insatiable ideology.

Central to this project is a plan to re-write history and to baptise the most brutal, cowardly, blood-soaked, divisive, anti-republican, sectarian, hate-driven and destructive terror campaign as an heroic struggle for peace and human rights. As the Provo propaganda machine gears itself up to claim against all historical truth that they are the party founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, we can see a crazy “centenary myth” developing before our eyes, designed to fool those with short memories and no knowledge of Irish history into believing a grotesque falsehood. Why?

As George Orwell himself said: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

If Arthur Griffith’s political departure of 1905 is to be celebrated, then all of its political descendants, of which there is a good number, have far better claim as true inheritors than the Provisionals who constantly disown the political stance later taken by him and the great majority of those who, however they may differed on the Treaty, ultimately remained loyal to the principles of democracy.

The Massive Untruth
The massive untruth at the heart of Sinn Féin is that it claims to operate as an organisation wholly separate from the IRA. In fact, as the Taoiseach has said repeatedly, Sinn Féin and the IRA are two sides of one coin. The Independent Monitoring Commission concluded that there was an overlap at senior leadership level between the IRA and Sinn Féin. That confirmed what I had previously said about the presence of household names on the Army Council.

In this context it is as well to remember that every single body dumped, with hands bound and with a bullet wound to the head by the side of the road by Volunteers was a few hours earlier a living human whose murder was personally authorised by the Army Council’s members. Many of them were the subject of unspeakable physical and psychological torture in the hours preceding their murder carried out with the knowledge of people who now pose as champions of prisoners’ rights,

The IMC also confirmed ongoing criminality by the IRA in relation to torture mutilation and cited one example of what, as the IMC rightly pointed out, some people wrongly refer to as “punishment beatings” in which a recent IRA victim was badly beaten around the head with pick axe handles and shot nine times in the lower legs.

So much for the human rights agenda of Sinn Fein. Such actions by IRA “Civil Administration Units” are “lawful” in the eyes of the political hierarchy of the Provo movement and can never be condemned by Sinn Fein (who don’t do the “politics of condemnation”).

It follows that the senior Sinn Féin figures who play a senior role in the IRA are responsible for the pattern of violence, kidnapping, exiling and torture which the IMC is satisfied are under the control of the IRA’s most senior leadership. This responsibility must also apply to the recent Northern Bank robbery.

Perhaps the best explanation for the role of the Sinn Féin/IRA leadership in the recent Northern Bank robbery may be found in Ed Moloney’s “Secret History of the IRA” where he describes the killing of an innocent man in an IRA bank robbery in Newry in November 1994, a time when the IRA were on ceasefire.

The victim, Frank Kerr, a fifty-three-year old single Catholic from South Armagh, died when three armed raiders dressed as postal workers held up staff in the main sorting office and tied them up. Kerr resisted, struggled with the robbers, and was gunned down. The robbery had been carried out by the South Armagh IRA but it was very quickly disowned by the Army Council, which claimed that the operation, while the work of its members, had not been sanctioned by its leadership. Publicly Adams expressed shock at the killing , and Father Reid travelled to Dublin to assure officials that this was indeed the case. Reid had however been misinformed. According to IRA sources the robbery had been given a broad sanction by the Army Council, inasmuch as general permission had been granted to continue “fund-raising” activity, cease-fire or no cease-fire.

Notably, on that occasion, Mr Adams said: “Many people will be concerned also at the way in which the RUC has sought to blame republicans for this killing. The RUC is engaged in a transparent attempt to damage the peace process.” Within weeks the IRA admitted that the murder and robbery was in fact an IRA operation.

Sinn Féin and the IRA have excelled in building plausible deniability into their darker operations. The problem for the Provisionals is that they are so predictable in their approach that their denials have become wholly implausible.

The Real Nature of Sinn Fein’s Relationship to the IRA

What is the significance of all of this? To understand the real nature of the Provisional movement and the real relationship of the IRA with Sinn Féin, it is only necessary to have access to what the Provisionals believe among themselves on these subjects.

Documents recovered from the Provisionals reveal that all members of the IRA are required to learn and to subscribe to a simple but deep-seated ideological proposition; “the Provisional Army Council and its successors were the inheritors of the First and Second Dáil as a Provisional Government”.

Concerning the IRA’s claim to be the legitimate Government of the Irish Republic, volunteers are inducted on the basis of accepted the following:

“This belief, this ethical fact should and must give moral strength to all volunteers and all members of every Branch of the Republican Movement. The IRA, its leadership, is the lawful Government of the Irish Republic, all other parliaments or assemblies claiming the right to speak for and to pass laws on behalf of the Irish people are illegal assemblies, puppet governments of a foreign power, and willing tools of occupying forces.

Volunteers must firmly believe without doubt and without reservation that as members of the IRA all orders issued by the Army Authority and all actions directed by the Army Authority are the legal orders and lawful actions of the Government of the Irish Republic. This is one of the important mainstays of the Republican Movement, the firm belief that all operations and actions directed by the Army are, in effect, the lawful acts and legal actions of the Government of all the Irish people.”

While the Provisionals have tactically relaxed their previous ban on seeking election to parliaments and assemblies, the fundamental position of the Provisionals – including, of course, Sinn Fein - still remains that the lawful and legitimate power of government of the Irish people is vested in the IRA and not elsewhere.

That belief is the basis of the absurd Adams falsehood that Provo “volunteers” commit no crime. Everything they do on instructions is, by definition, lawful. That is why nothing they do can be condemned. That is why no Provo politician will ask or suggest that any person should report any knowledge of the Northern Bank raid or any other outrage to the PSNI or the Garda Siochana. Caoimhghin O’ Caolain couldn’t even advise persons with information on the Omagh atrocity to assist the police when asked to do so on radio.

Where to Now?
The real issue that must now be addressed is the absolute necessity to bring paramilitarism to a decisive, unambiguous and irreversible end. There is little reality in thinking that the IRA will “go back to war”. Since the atrocities at the Twin Towers and Madrid, it is abundantly clear that the Provisionals as a movement would face immediate and radical suppression if they were to seriously attempt such a course. A second Canary Wharf would blow the entire Provisional movement itself to smithereens. And they know that.

The people of both parts of this island must stand up to the deceptions, deceits, propaganda, and stratagems of the Provisional movement. There is no room for the Army Council in Ireland’s future. There is no room in democratic representative institutions, North or South, for those who do the bidding of the Army Council and who cannot or will not operate independently of it. There is no way forward – North or South – for politicians with an agenda based on the existence, legitimacy, or continuity of the IRA.

Those of us who are genuinely Republican – who know the meaning of the term – must stand by the Republic which our grandparents, parents and we have created and serve– not the monster of the Provisionals’ ideology.
A liberal, successful, self-confident, generous and caring Irish society does not need the political insights of Havana or of FARC or of ETA – all of which have been the object of Provo ideological kerb-crawling. These are not models for Ireland, even for the creation of a so-called socialist republic.

As for the Provisional leadership, the moment of truth has arrived and in the starkest manner imaginable. Far from architects and drivers of a peace process, they are seen to be insatiable slaves of a divisve, discredited and destructive ideology. They are more in the mode of Mugabe than Mandela.

They are not republican. They are not committed to human rights or to civil or political liberties. They have betrayed the tri-colour and the reconciliation that it symbolises. They have hi-jacked History. They have put a gun to the head of Hope.

Instead, the Provos have by their actions opened up a gulf of mistrust. They have successfully polarised Northern politics at the expense of those who are reconcilers in the centre ground.

The true republican imperative of reconciling orange and green has been set back for decades by their actions. The door into exclusively democratic and peaceful politics is open for them and will remain open. But it is not a threshold which can be straddled or camped on by those who want to put one foot into democracy while leaving the other foot planted in terrorism.

Our freedoms, our democracy and our future all depend on that proposition. We must stand by the one and only republic that we have – the state that was built by the generation that won us our freedom and that has been sustained since by democracy and the rule of law. There is but one army entitled to be considered Oglaigh na h-Eireann – the Defence Forces maintained by the Oireachtas under Bunreacht na h-Eireann.

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Comments (31 of 31)

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So Tired

by Dogmatic

Thu Jan 13, 2005 19:03

Yawn.!
I love it when McDowell tries to call Sinn Fein fascist. He probably Nazi salutes himself in the mirror when he wakes up in the morning. He would be better off actually doing something as minister for Justice rather than releasing statements and posing for photo's. It is McDowell and the government who have over promised and not just under delivered, but have delivered nothing. McDowell and his cronies have robbed the Irish people blind for years. He is an utterly useless TD, an incompetent minister and an uncaring human being. He should retire to Roscommon where he can organise legal campaigns to sue local authorities around the country, by doing this he can smash what remnants of local democracy this country has left. He can well afford it with the pension he will receive from our pockets. At this stage i don't care who robbed the bank, in fact more banks should be robbed. I believe there is an ATM in government buildings, we should organise a crew robb a JCB and steal it. All the money to go to the victims of the Tsunami crisis

Displacement

by .

Thu Jan 13, 2005 19:16

Sinn Féin

by Sinn Féin

Thu Jan 13, 2005 19:26

Well said Dogmatic.

maybe we should go around and rob a few handbags from pensioners too.

All money, it goes almost goes without saying "to go to the victims of the Tsunami crisis".

Well played Mickey McDowell

by Devil Dog

Thu Jan 13, 2005 19:51

The only Minister to stand up to the SF/IRA criminal conspiracy ...but let's have some action, not words.

SF/IRA Robbery?

by Scáth Shéamais

Thu Jan 13, 2005 20:05

The SF/IRA bank robbery?

Yes, I'm sure it was Gerry Adams himself who led the charge into the vault!

McDowell is assisting in and covering up

by eeekkkk

Thu Jan 13, 2005 20:48

the disappearance of people now (not in the past)

he has no right lecturing anyone about 'fascism' etc

See the feenix this week

Save us the bluff. Give us the Facts

by Brendan Coffey

Thu Jan 13, 2005 22:21

brencoff at hotmail dot com

Is there not a sacred principle in our Justice system that applies to all those accused of crime : Innocent until proven guilty?

Sinn Fein (as much as Liam Lawlor and Company) are entitled to that courtesy. McDowell is aware of the political threat of Sinn Fein to his own party. His tactics, so poorly disguised, are despicable.

The Irish electotare are not eejits. They will wait like all honest people for clear evidence. No point in taliking about "intelligence sources assure us". We heard before from such intelligence sources who assured us of the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. We heard from such intelligence sources of "the incontrovertible evidence " that condemned the innocent Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four.

Give us a break. Give us the evidence.

Lectures

by Barry

Thu Jan 13, 2005 22:35

Michael McDowell lecturing people on republicanism ? Sickening. I have no time whatsoever for Adams etc,. Mc Dowell however is simply a right wing Brit lover.

What about cherishing the children of the nation as equals. Unless they happen to be black of course.

Barry - Brit Lover is a Zenophobic Insult if not Racism

by old argument (fictional opening sentence)

Thu Jan 13, 2005 23:00

I come from Dundalk - I have a black girlfriend from london - does that make me a 'brit-lover'?

Maybe an impressionable republican could be misled by the kneejerk cliche and do some thing stupid to someone.

Why not call him ' A jackbooted suitor of the lying warmongering UK establishment'?

well done Michael.

by iosaf

Thu Jan 13, 2005 23:29

I really like how you tweaked the Eric Blair / George Orwell corpus, since I live in catalonia I do like Eric Blair, and I appreciate Tony Blair all the more for it.

I like animal farm too.
especially the last page.

Now for the future of "progressive democracy" it is more important to worry about the citizens of europe from the east and turkey and their prosperity equality and so than it is to worry about the fenians and billys and those who walked in the path of the afrikaan.

¿can you do that?

If you can, the KGB will let you know through their spokesperson how much money they've got every year for media manipulation and iguana feed.

Im not XENOPHOBIC, or anti-English.

Fri Jan 14, 2005 00:12

As far as Im concerned English people are usually very nice, humorous and often very gentle people. I have English friends and relations, and have had English girlfriends in the past when I lived there. Lovely people mostly.

Your term is more scientifically correct. The term Brit lover in Irelands context has always meant a collaborator with the crown forces (Brits as theyre usually described on the ground). The term Brits out has never meant all British people should be expelled either obviously. The fact is that the British army and its government are referred to throughout the occupied area as simply "the Brits". Funnily enough, although English people refer to themselves as Brits as well, most people I know usually differentiate, calling them the English, or perhaps Limeys.

Apologies if my comment was construed as anything it most definitely wasnt. Also agree totally with your more precise definition of the minister, too true.

Definition of British changing...

by redjade

Fri Jan 14, 2005 01:02

Sense of Britishness more prevalent among ethnic minorities, survey shows
December 18, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,2763,861909,00.html

Most white people living in Britain do not regard themselves as British and prefer to state their identity as English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. But a clear majority of people from the ethnic minorities confidently assert their Britishness and do not feel they belong to any other national grouping.

SF/IRa

by Irishman

Fri Jan 14, 2005 10:41

Keep sticking it to the SF/ Provos. I love seeing them squeal like stuck pigs.

You people are joking surely?

by righteous pragmatist

Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:18

Do you think for a second that any ordinary criminal gang in Northern Ireland would rob the Northern bank and steal £30 millions plus on the IRA's patch?
The loyalist wouldn't have the brains to do it.
They are just cheap street thugs and dope pedlers.
The IRA did it. Noone else has the access the business with which to launder cash like they do.

Sherlock Holmes

Fri Jan 14, 2005 12:26

This is great, some of the people who comment on this site are modern day Sherlock Holmes. Without any evidence they have figured that it is the IRA who have robbed the bank. Brilliant !. My bike was stolen last week outside a shop in town, can you please take up this case and get my bike back and bring the perpetrators to Justice.

Lets be realistic Sinn Fein are not squealing like pigs. Media in this country has been hammering Sinn Fein for years and yet their votes continue to grow. That is what frightens the establishment not the robbing of banks. If McDowell really cared about the subverting of democracy then perhaps he can explain how it is just, that a party who only gets 3% of the votes from the electorate, can wield so much control over our lives. Or perhaps he's too busy doing a photo shoot making promises that he has absolutely no intention of delivering on.

Dogmatic

Fri Jan 14, 2005 14:05

As you're so concerned about people unwielding power disproportionately, do you think it's acceptable for a political party to have its own private army?

Typical

Fri Jan 14, 2005 15:02

How typically Irish. Answer a question with a question. Why don't you deal with my question and then i'll answer yours. Or do you Nazi salute McDowell, and fully support his usurping of power?

No I don't

Fri Jan 14, 2005 15:13

I'll answer anyway. No i don't find it acceptable. But i am not naive enough to think that the IRA will just dissappear because McDowell, Paisley and yourself wish them too. Nor do i view the IRA as being a private army to Sinn Fein. A growing proportion of the electorate in the 26 counties view Sinn Fein as the only party who will deal with the issues, and that is what bugs McDowell and other people in the South. Sinn Fein would never have become a "threat" electorally if other parties had gotten off their arses and dealt with the issues.

Something for Minister McDowell and Devil Dog to reflect on

by Michelle Clarke - Social Justice Activist

Fri Jan 14, 2005 15:14

I entered this yesterday but somehow lost it.

Title:
'It appears Sir Mark Thatcher's plea has worked!!!!

Good odds, I would say, against the terms metted out to others of the alleged coup (two have received terms in excess of 30 years and Simon Mann is in jail in Harare compliments of President Mugabe......not a nice place to be as a former English military expert and old Etonian. The Rule of L:aw proves very wide in SCOPE HERE.

I am greatly disheartened by South Africa's Judicial stance and ask the question is there a prejudice given that inter alia Equatorial Guinea is the largest provider of the commodity oil (supply limited and demand excessive) on the Continent of Africa. I believe Sir Mark is to move to Texas......is this about financing oil deals again!!!!!!

John Ruskin Quote
BRITISH ARTIST AND THINKER
1819-1900

'Life's Rich 'THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE'

Surely, we have lost sight of the meaning of value when we look at Tsunani; Sudan; Iraq and other countries.

(I can but think of a comment made on the TV last night (Hearts and Minds, BBC) - when the interviewer closed off the programme about the young Ukranian woman who was begging before Christmas in Coleraine......Perhaps he just said, like me so many passed her by.......This sure needs a thought.

The equation appears to be:
Corporatism - Cheap Labour -oil product - Finance deals and values enhanced for benefit of corporatism.....in contrast to the HIV impact; malaria; starvation; loan debt etc.

I forgot to finish sentence, the Ukranian woman aged 27.

by Michelle Clarke - Social Justice and Ethics

Fri Jan 14, 2005 20:11

This woman lost her job just before Christmas and ended up on the streets in Coleraine. She got so cold that when admitted to hospital, there was no alternative but to amputate both her legs..................

Too sad and why.........

Michelle

Quotation

Lending a Hand (Jesse Jackson 1941--- Civil Rights Activist)

'Never look down on anybody unless you are helping them up'

What happened in Coleraine before Christmas to this young woman who spoke little English......?

Michael 'Sieg Heil' McDowell

by Sligo Republican Socialist

Fri Jan 14, 2005 22:34

I am astonished at the content contained in McDowells latest press release. To attempt to intimidate the media in the way that he has is disgraceful and and he should publicly apologise. If he disagrees with what this new paper writes when it is published, fair enough, criticise and counter the arguments contained if he can, but please dont stoop to such low levels of intimidation.

His comments are very reminiscent of the comments made by British Minister Douglas Hogg about "IRA Solicitors" in the North weeks before Pat Finucane was murdered by Loyalist/British army murderers. If a similar situation is what he is now aiming towards, it is a very sad state of affairs.

Perhaps his admiration for the Colombian Regime and their so-called system of "Justice" has gone too far. According to the UNHCR the Colombian Government and their allies inthe Right Wing Death Squads have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of political, human rights and trade union activists throughout Colombia. Does Michael and the PD's admire this and is this what we can expect from the PD's if the Trade Unions get too uppity.

For someone complaining about Nazism and fascism Michael is increasingly sounding like someone who supports such ideologys. Then again, he is the hero of the KKK andthe South African Afrikaaner Movement for last years Referendum to deny Citizenship to new born Irish Babies who happen to have foreign national parents.

Its a sad day for Irish Politics when the man supposed to be Minister for 'Justice' stoops to such depths.

He should be a man and apologise. Blame it on too any drinks or a funny turn he took or something but at least he should be a man and apologise.

As for his 'crusade' against criminality. Hmmm, surprising that he is so silent on the illegal (as in criminal) US invasion of Iraq, the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians by the US Military, the continued use of Shannon airport as a vitual military base for these killers to pass through on their way to and from Iraq, on the use of Shannon to ferry kidnapped prisoners bound, gagged and drugged to Guantanamo concentration camp or some other destination where they can be tortured by the US or some of their allies.

No mention of the torture and killing of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Gharib or Afghan prisoners in Bagram. No mentionof the illegal kidnapping by Colombian Secret Services of a Rebel leader from a neighbouring Sovereign State, Venezuela. Nomentionof the US support for a military coup against the democratically elected leader of Venezuela. No mention of the continued use by the US of the 'School of the Americas' in Georgia to train right wing terrorist and dictators in torture techniques etc.

No mentionof British State collusion inthe murder campaign against innocent nationalists. No mention of continuing cover -ups by the British Govt in relation to the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings.

No mention of illegally taking money off pensioners in Nursing homes. Of the PD's former Mayor of Dublin that was convicted of involvement inorganised crime. No mention of Fianna Fails links to various criminals and tax cheats such as Charlie Haughey, Ray Burke, Denis Foley and a host of others. I suppose he thinks that it is ok to rob money off people as long as its not from banks. Apparently robbing by tax fraud is respectable.

Then again, maybe I am just cynical. I suppose he is saving all this for his next press release. I await it with great interest.

Wow!!!

Fri Jan 14, 2005 22:48

I thought Republicans rejected the politcs of
"whataboutery"? Only when it's convenient I guess.

Is there anything factually incorrect in the release or do you just think it's ok for a political party to be part of a movement with its own private army, which can knock off banks whenever it likes?

Fri Jan 14, 2005 23:51

From his comments about Hugh Orde in the first paragraph it is full of inaccuracies, including his extremely dangerous comments about the new Daily Newspaper.

Do you support these comments about a newspaper? Do you believe everything McDowell writes as being accurate?

Why is it do you think that McDowell is so quiet on these criminal activities that I highlighted above? Do you think he should ignore them?

As Minister for Justice, do you think he should ignore evidence and instead base his judgements on the comments of British policemen.

The point I was making is that he has consistently attacked anyone with a left wing/Republican perspective opposed to British Rule, opposed to the War in Iraq, opposed to the right wing policies of his Govt, yet he has never once to my knowledge condemned any of these criminal activities I listed.

Have you ever heard him condemning the 'weasel words' (his words) of Tony Blair or George Bush? I haven't. Have you ever heard him condmning the spin and lies presented by George Bush and Tony Blair about WMD and the reasons for invading and ocupying Iraq? Have you ever heard him criticising them for anything? I haven't. If you have, I'd be delighted to hear when and his comments.

Devil Dog - Response from Jack Russell

by Jack Russell - Social Justice and Ethics - Please

Sat Jan 15, 2005 01:34

Answer to your appraisal of the Progressive Dicks. Since when did the Mad Mullah become Judge and Jury on behalf of the Irish Nation?

Have you heard of 'Due Process' - you little devil. If you haven't, don't ask the Mad Mullah, he will give you the library bible written by himself.

Now little Devil, this Mad Mullah has lied for the last five years to the Irish people. You want proof - little fool devil -then where is the 2,000 Gardai, the Mad Mullah promised, when he preached from Ranelagh's Mount Sinai.

When the Mad Mullah was Attorney General, the corruption in Donegal by the Gardai was rampant. He also didn't turn up for a crucial meeting with the Church on Child Abuse. When asked he said he got no request.

You see little Devil, the Irish people will give this condescending gobshite his P45 in two years and the people in Roscommon are praying, the gales will blow the house down. I mean it should be put down by the Council but the Mad Mullah preached the court and he was right.

Now little devil, this Peace Process is not for idiots like you who have no idea what is going on for the last 35 years because if you did you would not write your little silly comments. So little devil go back to the little hell hole you come from....

Jack Russell

McDowells latest rant

Sat Jan 15, 2005 18:20

"There is and can be no room in representative politics or in governmental institutions anywhere on this island for any political party allied to any group or body which:

· Supports the use or threatened use of force or violence
· Possesses firearms or explosives
· Violently resists An Garda Siochana or the PSNI
· Usurps the policing function in any part of this island
· Engages in robbery or theft
· Threatens to kill
· Exiles
· Mutilates by punishment beatings
· Extorts and blackmails
· Smuggles and counterfeits "

The above is what Michael McDowell Said: So according to his criteria there is no longer any room for the following people, organisations and parties on this island.

(1) The British Government and British army.
.Supports the use or threatened use of force or violence (Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan etc)
· Possesses firearms or explosives
.Threatens to kill (and actually kills)
· Usurps the policing function in any part of this island
· Extorts and blackmails (use of informers etc)
· Mutilates by punishment beatings (Castlereagh & Iraq)

(2) The PSNI
For all the above reasons.

(3)The UUP, DUP, SDLP, Fine Gael, Labour and the Gardai themselves for their support and collusion with the above organisations and policies.

The Gardai are also implicated by the their activities as exposed in the Morris Tribunal which is only the tip of the iceberg, their actions against the Reclaim the Streets protestors and anti-war activists and the many instances of docotring interviews such as that exposed in the Colm Murphy trial and other cases. Also Their failure to have arrested for questioning suspected war criminals that have visited this country or passed through Shannon such as George Bush, Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld

(4) Fianna Fail & the PD's for their support of the all of the above. Plus their continued provision of Shannon airport to the US military allowing them to rest and refuel on their way to carry out atrocities and war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Their failure to have arrested for questioning suspected war criminals that have visited this country or passed through Shannon such as George Bush, Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld.

Let us all look forward to McDowell taking action against all these groupings and organisations before he hands in his own resignation.

On a more serious note, if McDowells doctor is reading this or anyone knows him, will you please increase McDowells medication because it is obviously not working and he continues to remain unbalanced and demented. He's like Kevin Myers on Speed.

Media Threats

by Media Watcher

Sun Jan 16, 2005 01:59

I have to say that I too find his comments about a section of the media very sinister. To make the accusations that he has made against this new newspaper whatever it is called could be very dangerous for people working wit that paper.

Has he any evidence to back up his claims in this regard or is solely because he thinks that the journalists in that paper might actually have the nerve to question McDowells assertions and seek him to back up his wild claims with evidence and that they might decide not to act the indo and Sindo with their rubbish.

The NUJ were right to condemn it and the entire Trade Union movement should now stand together and ensure that McDowell apologises publicly, withdraws his scurrilous statement or else resign.

Which 'Sam' Does He Mean?

by e

Sun Jan 16, 2005 03:41

the lads and a sixpack of journos

by f

Sun Jan 16, 2005 03:52

Errm

Sun Jan 16, 2005 03:59

Where they secretly holding hands in that pic ?

Was that incriiminating photo the price of our neutrality. Does Bertie like GWB to wear the stetson ?

Oh dear

Sun Jan 16, 2005 04:06

Youd swear Bertie just gves georges bum a playful squeeze there. Look at the expresion on dubyas face !

That must be why he went home the next day.

New Northern Bank notes?

by £4£

Sun Jan 16, 2005 14:39

http://www.sluggerotoole.com/archives/2005/01/new_northern_ba.php