I agree with the Irish left mainly on civil liberties
(for example, the blasphemy law).
I disagree with them primarily
on the economy, crime, and foreign policy.
Some of the following have noble records in fighting for sexual and religious freedom
in Ireland,
the rights of gays and atheists, separation of church and state,
opposition to censorship, and so on.
But that does not mean that their foreign policy or economic ideas make any sense.
Search for historical statements by the Irish left
For
reasons I discuss elsewhere,
the Irish left is far more likely than the Irish right
to make embarrassing statements supporting foreign non-democrats
(such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Palestine, Libya, Vietnam
and the Soviet Union).
Such statements need to be remembered.
Michael D.,
Irish Times,
November 10, 1984,
defends Nicaragua, and says the elections that the communists won were fair.
He describes Nicaragua as "a pluralist democracy".
In the Senate,
20 March, 1985
he describes Nicaragua as
"a small country that has recently thrown off the shackles of dictatorship
...
In every sphere - health, education, welfare, housing - its achievements have been enormous. It is a society which is transforming itself.".
He promotes the idea of inviolable
state sovereignty:
"In international law we have signed covenants that recognise the integrity of national territory, that accept sovereignty. Under international law the belligerence of the statements being made against Nicaragua are outrageous."
He asks for
"support for this democracy that may not exist should we ignore the challenges which are there to it now ... so that we might save people who have established democracy in the wake of the cruellest dictatorship of the century."
Michael D. quotes the communist dictator Castro
in the Dail, 2 February, 1999:
"I recall making a documentary in Rio during the United Nations conference on economics and development when the most moving statement was made by Fidel Castro in a short speech. He said: "Let us pay the debt to humanity before the debt to the banks." Regardless of whether one agrees with him, it explicitly put the right to life expressed internationally above the right to debts.".
Michael D.'s response to 9/11
- "rather than seeking to demonise, we have to try,
however painful and difficult it may be, to seek to understand".
Michael D. on Israel
Michael D.,
as part of a crackpot anti-Israel European delegation,
28 August 2005,
calls for
the removal of
"all settlements, the more than 400,000 settlers"
from the West Bank.
His delegation claims, despite all the evidence, that
suicide bombings are
"executed by Palestinian non-state actors".
His delegation claims that the Israeli occupation is the cause of the conflict!
"The Delegation views the continuing occupation
and these policies as the root cause of the current deadlock"
Michael D. in the Dail,
12 March, 2003,
slanders the Americans by saying they are
about to slaughter the Iraqi population:
"by the time this House returns on Tuesday, 25 March it is possible that up to one million mothers may be affected by war, there may be 100,000 direct casualties and 400,000 secondary ones".
Being anti-war means never having to say you're sorry,
Anne Marie O'Connor,
New Ross Standard, Apr 17 2003
- on the liberation of Iraq.
She criticises people like Michael D.
"We all saw the scenes. The utter joy, the scenes of uncensored jubilation. Indeed, watching the euphoria
did wonders for the soul.
So you would think that the entire free world looked at the images of a liberated Baghdad with relief
and with joy. After all, we hadn't seen such a spectacle of repressive regime-bashing since the fall of the
Berlin Wall. Statues were pulled down, Saddam posters torn to shreds, and finally, people were able to
speak their minds."
Michael D. regards the liberation of Iraq as a crime,
Dail, 16 April 2003.
"It was on this population that people decided to use the instruments of war.
...
I look back now at all that has been said during this Dáil term regarding this awful and appalling war. To the war mongers who celebrate and suggest we were wrong because not enough people were killed to fulfil our predictions, I say that any loss of life for the kind of project being pursued was a disgrace and a blot on the morality of us all."
Michael D. on Mark Steyn
Torturous apology
by Mark Steyn, May 11, 2004
(also here):
"to be coerced into apologizing more generally is very foolish.
What happened at Abu Ghraib
is terrible because it's an offense to American values, not Arab ones.
It's ridiculous to insist that America has to apologize to Arab thugocracies in which
what's merely simulated in those photographs is done for real every day of the week."
Michael D. on Steyn's column,
in the Dail,
20 May 2004:
"Repeatedly this column of bigotry, homophobia and racism that is presented every Monday
contains attacks on what we call the basic decencies on some principle of balance.
The editor of that newspaper would want to indicate to me what she is balancing
when she produces material like that.
...
In The Irish Times Mark Steyn said there had been more fuss about a man with woman's underwear
over his head than about a man who had no head at all. This is typical of the
slick, degrading, immoral rubbish which is being propounded every Monday in that newspaper."
Higgins' spluttering incoherence ("homophobia"?),
his utter inability to address Steyn's arguments,
and his thinly veiled call for censorship,
shows the intellectual poverty of the Irish left.
It's very amusing really, watching the innocent, poorly-read,
Irish Times reading lefties
try to deal with a full-on neo-con like Steyn.
It is obvious they never even heard of Steyn
before he dropped
like a bomb into the complacent, insular waters of their Irish Times.
They have probably never even heard of most of
these writers either.
To 1960s lefties like Higgins,
the neo-conservatives are from another planet.
The Irish left don't read them
and don't understand them.
They only read their own - which is why their opinions are so narrow and insular.
Michael D. is the political heir of
de Valera -
the leader of an inward-looking,
neutral Ireland
that refuses to support our western democratic allies,
but views itself instead (absurdly)
as some kind of innocent peasant ex-colony
that should be allied with the Third World.
Michael D. Higgins opposes the brave allied effort in Iraq, Feb 2007.
David Norris
(and search)
is a hero of
the long fight to legalise homosexuality in Ireland.
But on foreign policy, he is one of the main opponents of
America and Israel in Ireland.
You would think he would have some sympathy for
the brave American and Israeli
troops fighting the fascist, gay-murdering
Islamists.
But no. All he does is criticise them and try to demoralise them.
Irish Senate, 23 Mar 2004.
Norris supports sanctions against Israel
for killing the monster
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin:
"We should not be trading with a rogue state."
He gets a lot of support in the Senate.
Nobody defends Israel.
Norris on Israel,
Irish Senate, 20 May 2004
- "There is one thing that we can do. There is a human rights protocol attached
to the external association agreement of the European Union. Since we hold the Presidency of the EU,
why do we not operate that and remove the special status awarded to Israel?"
He gets a lot of support in the Senate.
Nobody defends Israel.
He describes Gaza as
"an open-air concentration camp".
Note this is after
the Israelis left!
This is after all the Jews (9,000 of them) were ethnically cleansed to satisfy the Palestinian
Muslim supremacists.
This is after the Palestinians were free to set up their own working state.
And yet somehow they are living in a "concentration camp".
Norris has a bizarre understanding of democracy.
He thinks that just because the majority of people vote for something,
it must be "respected":
"It is a frightening comment on democracy that because we do not like the people who are elected,
we can get rid of them. I do not particularly like Hamas.
As a gay man, I am certain I would not last ten minutes with them.
However, that does not mean I can countermand the sovereign authority
given to Hamas by the people of Gaza."
For me, human rights always trump
democracy and sovereignty
(that's why I'm not a leftist).
Hamas do not believe in human rights.
So I couldn't care less
how many people voted for them.
Attacking them and deposing them is always legitimate.
Democracy is a means to an end, the end being a free society.
Democracy is not something inherently good.
Rather, it is the only statistically reliable means
discovered so far of establishing and
maintaining a free society.
Here's how he criticises a religious totalitarian organisation
that wants to kill him for being gay:
"I am not naturally disposed to support Hamas,
about whose origins and policies I have serious reservations.
However, I would point out:
(a) Hamas was legitimately elected ..."
and so on.
Can you imagine him confining himself just to saying
he has "serious reservations"
about America or Israel!
He claims Hamas was
democratically elected
(in an environment where
the opposition is shot)
and then he complains that the Jew-killing terror group Hamas
"was boycotted and further financially punished
... Shamefully, the European Union, including Ireland, collaborated in this."
Shameful!
He doesn't say the existence of Hamas is shameful.
He doesn't say the decision by ignorant Palestinian people
to vote for gay-killers is shameful.
No, apparently it's shameful that Ireland boycotts Hamas!
What's shameful, in my opinion, is that Ireland
gives any aid to Palestinian authorities at all,
and has a Palestinian embassy at all
(Fatah or Hamas, it's all the same).
Freedom of sexuality in Israel
- It is, of course,
the only country in the Middle East where Norris could live in peace
- the only country where he would not be persecuted
for his sexuality.
Norris on America
Norris on America,
Irish Senate, 5 July 2006.
Hamas, which kills Jews and gays,
and wants to exterminate them all,
is: "the legitimate Government" of Gaza,
while the US government, which runs a tolerant free society, is:
"the dark shadow of the criminal regime entrenched in Washington
which has spread its plague all over the world".
Why left-wingers have even an ounce of sympathy for
reactionary Islamic religious fanatics is beyond me.
It makes no logical sense.
People like Norris certainly make left-wing politics seem to be based on emotion
rather than reason.
David Norris on Bush,
Irish Senate, 20 May 2004
- "here we have a criminal involved in war crimes
...
it is unparliamentary to allow that man to remain unimpeached
...
He is a war criminal."
Norris discussing whether President Bush could be arrested on his visit to Ireland,
Irish Senate, 23 June 2004:
"I ask the Leader to seek an opinion from the Attorney General on the status of President Bush while he is in this country. Some senior lawyers have suggested he might be vulnerable to arrest because he has clearly broken international law."
Norris and the Greens exemplify the "dreamworld"
and "postmodern paradise" that much of Europe lives in,
totally detached from reality
since they have for so long been
children protected
from the harsh world by America.
I wonder if, in the future, some European government
(Belgium maybe?) will actually
get so detached from reality that they
will try to arrest or attack the US President.
Certainly, I would support US military action against
any country that did this.
David Norris, 2008, from the safety and comfort of Ireland,
attacks the democracy of Israel's brave stand against
exterminationist attack from non-democracies.
His current incarnation as a
Labour Party
member is a bit better, but not much.
The Cold War:
De Rossa attended a
Soviet propaganda event in Dublin,
January 11, 1983.
He then however protested US Vice-President George Bush's visit to Ireland,
May 18, 1983.
He complained,
October 25, 1983,
about the use of Shannon Airport by US military on their way to and from
West Germany.
He
protested US President Ronald Reagan's visit to Ireland in 1984.
He gushed praise over
Soviet dictator Gorbachev's visit to Ireland,
April 3, 1989,
despite the fact that Bush and Reagan were elected and Gorbachev wasn't.
De Rossa defended the communist regime of Nicaragua:
De Rossa defends Nicaragua in the Dail,
26 Apr 1983:
"One of the most serious charges made by the USA against the Sandinista Government was that of persecution against the
Miskito Indians.
... They continue to repeat this charge despite the fact that it has been denied by independent sources".
Dail, 6 December, 1984.
A motion is proposed to call on the Soviet Union to grant Jews religious freedom
and allow them to emigrate.
What kind of lunatic could speak against such a motion?
De Rossa could:
"the proposers of the motion did not approach
Deputy Mac Giolla
or myself to see if we would be prepared to support this motion. ... we recognise that there is a problem of alienation of Jews in the Soviet Union. However, we do not go along with the terms of the motion as put forward because it is an over-statement and the case made to support it has not been proved.
There are obviously two sides to every story and no case has been made for the defence."
Note the patronising "alienation" of Jews, not "oppression" of Jews.
He claims there is something wrong with being anti-Soviet!
"the case that is made concerning the USSR is in many instances tinged with a high level of anti-Sovietism. I heard Deputy Taylor deny that he is in any way anti-Soviet, and I accept and welcome that."
Like a credulous child, he believes Soviet propaganda:
"The case has been made that Jews in the Soviet Union are completely oppressed, are denied any rights and denied the facilities to practise their religion or to learn the Hebrew language. I have here some figures from an official Soviet source which to some extent at least refutes the assertion that all Jews in the Soviet Union are oppressed. I will go through those figures very quickly.
...
Religion in the Soviet Union is a private matter, ...
we have to accept there are two sides to every story. I am simply putting forward my views on this matter and I am indicating that I do not believe there is total oppression of Jews in the Soviet Union.
I should like to quote a letter which appeared in the English language Soviet Weekly".
He sneers at political prisoners:
"People have listed people who are persecuted in the Soviet Union. I have here a report to the Council of Europe and it lists a number of people who were imprisoned allegedly for trying to teach the Hebrew language or for pursuing cultural affairs. It always amazes me that all these people are very well educated."
De Rossa attacks Israel:
Israeli wall creating Palestinian ghettoes
(also
here),
Proinsias De Rossa, March 9, 2004.
De Rossa
compares the Israeli security wall
to the Nazi ghettos:
"Looking at the watchtowers, guns and barbed wire, I thought of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Growing up just after the second World War, I could not understand how the world stood by (*)
while six million Jews
were gassed, burned and buried alive. I learnt the answer in Qalquilya.
First, you dehumanise your victims, than you criminalise them en masse, and then you imprison them en masse.
Finally, you can kill them while the world watches."
De Rossa calls Gaza a "prison camp"
(also here),
Nov 2006.
"The occupants of this camp are being systematically starved.""At the same time they are being massacred."
Reply to De Rossa:
(*) The world did not "stand by", Mr. De Rossa.
Britain and America - the two countries you have spent your entire career attacking
- fought to stop it, and sacrificed
900,000 lives
to end it.
They were joined by
Australia, Canada, New Zealand
and
many others.
Ireland stood by, it is true -
to its eternal shame.
Ireland stood by
because of all the appalling
anti-British, anti-American and "anti-war" people
who, unfortunately, so often dominate discourse in this country.
People like
the modern Irish left,
in fact.
Sinn Fein - your first political party - not only stood by,
they actually
supported the Nazis.
Were you not aware of this?
It was no secret, then or since.
If you "could not understand" growing up in the 1950s
how the world stood by during the Holocaust,
if you thought it was such a big issue,
then how come the first political party you joined
was the only one in Ireland that had supported the Nazis?
Yes I know you were never pro-Nazi.
Yes I know Sinn Fein were no longer pro-Nazi when you joined them
(because Germany had lost).
Yes I know you have renounced Sinn Fein long ago anyway,
and gone through
a long political journey since.
I am glad you have.
But you've still a long way to go
before you understand who are the kind of people who will
"stand by"
in the face of fascist, communist or Islamist tyranny,
and who are the kind of people who will
go out there and fight it.
If you really wonder how people could have stood by in WW2,
then you should become (as I have become)
a fan of Britain and America,
and a bit of a sceptic of countries like Ireland.
Soviet Archives
(also
here),
by the brave Russian dissident
Vladimir Bukovsky,
contains many documents secretly scanned by Bukovsky from
the former Soviet Union.
The section
KPSS and Communist World
(also
here)
contains alleged
communications between the Soviets and foreign leftists,
including the item:
Item 0640,
alleged letter from the Workers Party of Ireland to the Soviets,
15 Sept 1986.
He sued
about an article by Eamon Dunphy in the Sunday Independent on
December 13th, 1992.
De Rossa denied that the signature on the above letter was his.
In other words, his position is the letter is a fake.
Bukovsky replies
to this allegation that his archive contains a fake.
There remains to this day
no explanation for how a fake could have ended up in the Moscow archives.
It should be noted that Dunphy's article contains many allegations
beyond just publishing the Soviet letter.
Embarrassing admissions from the libel trial:
The Sunday Independent may have lost the case, but they did achieve something.
The trial was a great public service
in bringing out embarrassing information about the Workers Party.
March 1, 1997:
De Rossa admits WP links to the genocide state of North Korea.
"Mr De Rossa said they sought to establish relationships with a lot of other parties, including the North Korean Communist Party."
March 5, 1997:
De Rossa admits links to the Soviet Union:
"He agreed the WP decided to seek formal relations with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in November 1983.
...
He understood from reports that contact had also been made in the 1970s."
De Rossa admits other links to tyrants:
"Mr De Rossa said the WP subsequently sought to establish formal relationships with the communist party of East Germany."
March 6, 1997:
De Rossa says Sean Garland of the WP did seek funds from Moscow.
"Mr Garland said it was true he had sought money but he had not received any. He was asked what authorisation he had for seeking such money and he had said none, that he had done it of his own accord."
De Rossa did not see this as morally wrong:
"Mr De Rossa replied that it was not a serious matter to seek funds from other parties. The money was not sought from Russia. As he understood it, it was sought from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was not a crime to seek financial support from other parties."
De Rossa admits the WP received support from East Germany:
"Mr MacEntee asked if the WP had any support from East Germany. Mr De Rossa said there was an occasion in 1987-'88. There was a request to a party in Germany to know if they would be in a position to provide them with a printing machine."
McGrath called for a state visit to Ireland by the
unelected dictator and mass murderer Fidel Castro.
Finian McGrath,
interviewed in Magill, Feb 2006:
"I think Castro is a great guy, a charismatic figure who's been
totally misrepresented by the West."
Magill asks: "So you've no problem with his torture chambers and suppression of free speech?"
McGrath: "Well, that's all news to me.
I never heard about that.
Amnesty hasn't said anything about it to me lately.
This is just rightwing propaganda."
Amnesty country report 2005.
"[Amnesty International] last visited Cuba in 1988
and has not been permitted into the country since then."
Says it all, really.
A regime so criminal they will not even permit Amnesty to exist there.
For example,
Cuba: No dissent allowed,
9 August 2005:
"The Cuban authorities continue to suppress any form of dissent
by methods such as harassment, threats, intimidation, detention and long-term imprisonment."
What is wrong with McGrath that he cannot simply read what Amnesty say about Cuba?
He reacted to
the deliberate killing of thousands of innocent American men, women and children by
hate-filled Islamic religious fascists as follows:
"But there will almost certainly be a dark side. For there
is in American culture a fundamentalism no less strong than that of those
who may have plotted yesterday's carnage. The tendency to divide the world between
the forces of God and the forces of Satan, the elect and the damned, is, ironically
one of the things that America shares with its most ferocious enemies."
Fintan O'Toole spoke at
Marxism 2009,
organised by the
pro-jihad
SWP.
If Michael D. Higgins
is the political heir of de Valera,
Fintan O'Toole is the intellectual heir of
Alfred O'Rahilly
- providing the intellectual support for an inward-looking,
"anti-imperialist", anti-foreign companies, anti-capitalist,
neutral Ireland
that refuses to support Britain and America.
The article is tired old left-wing claptrap that the US and Israel
are the cause of the Islamic terror (jihad)
and Islamic oppression (sharia)
that has been going on across the world
for nearly 1,400 years.
Here's how she deals with the bizarre left-wing and Islamic anger that
blames the allies for killings done by jihadis:
"hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are believed to have been killed and thousands of Afghans. US officials say most die at the hands of their own countrymen. That doesn’t change the perception that the US is ultimately responsible because it started both wars."
Note she doesn't say that this "perception" is insane,
and shows that the root cause of Islamic anger and violence
must lie elsewhere.
She writes as if this "perception" has a point to it.
She says if you'd been in Guantánamo,
"you’d probably join an extremist group too".
Speak for yourself, Ms Marlowe.
Most people who suffer do not become sadistic killers.
And jihadis don't join up because they have "suffered".
(Most haven't.)
They join up because they are in the grip of religious euphoria and fanaticism.
They are starry-eyed believers, not normal decent people driven to desperation.
She talks of
"the .. dangerous failure to provide Muslims appalled by US policies with an alternative to suicide bombing."
Um, duh.
How about voting?
Jihadis don't suicide bomb
lines of voters
because they have "no alternative".
They do it because that's the kind of people they are.
She bizarrely claims that
"the creation of a viable, independent state for the Palestinians"
would reduce, rather than escalate, Islamic terror.
No evidence for this is provided.
If lefties want the US to "get it",
they should come up with some evidence, rather than just making arrogant assertions.
Mark Steyn destroys Lara Marlowe, September 6, 2009.
Marlowe wrote in the Irish Times:
"First prize for lunacy goes to Canadian commentator Mark Steyn, who accuses Obama of .."
and then writes something that Steyn never said.
She never bothered to Google
to check that Steyn actually said it.
As any blogger will tell you, it's a good idea to quote someone's actual words
rather than a paraphrase (especially, as here, a hostile paraphrase).
Steyn replies:
"And first prize for laziness goes to Irish commentator Lara Marlowe."
Iraqi couple creating new life in land which destroyed their own, Lara Marlowe, February 20, 2010,
about some Iraqi refugees in the US.
What a disgusting headline.
The jihad, not the US, destroyed Iraq.
But hell will freeze over before Marlowe will recognise this.
She writes:
"Amjed and Aseel recognise the paradox: the US wrecked their country, and now welcomes them with open arms, and they are grateful."
The jihad could not possibly be to blame.
Only the white man can be guilty!
When asked about the Mark Steyn and Charles Krauthammer columns at the Irish Times:
"The Mark Steyn and Charles Krauthammer columns were/are though, it seems to me hideous, absolutely hideous. I really wouldn't have much more to say other than that."
Yes, we have noticed you do not engage with their arguments.
He claims Blair and Bush are war criminals,
and claims they killed hundreds of thousands of people
(please provide evidence).
"It does seem to me if you kill 600 - 700,000 people and you have told lies in order to facilitate their killing, I would have thought that is good enough to qualify you at least for trial as a war criminal."
He claims that the comments of
Iran's President dedicated to "wiping out Israel"
are a "myth".
As in this image.
On Ireland's fantastic economic success,
one of the great capitalism success stories in the world,
and a living refutation of his worldview,
he is of course dismissive:
"EH: .. there is a sense that a number of people have benefited from the Celtic Tiger, of course, but the big beneficiaries have been the very wealthy.
MB: We don't actually have, objectively speaking, a whole lot to show for it?
EH: No, we don't. There are twice as many cars as there was in 1995, or almost. It's crazy."
Oh if only we listened to people like Holt and were poor!
Eamonn McCann
has been a pioneer in anti-sectarianism both North and South.
But he is also an extreme leftist
- a SWP member
and Trotskyist.
McCann claimed (on the
Eamon Dunphy show,
Newstalk 106, Mon 20 Mar 2006)
that the Iranian
President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
was "elected".
Nice to know he supports brave dissidents
struggling for freedom in foreign lands.
SWP member Eamonn McCann led a
sabotage attack on allied equipment
in wartime, destroying the offices of US defence company Raytheon, Derry, Aug 2006.
He
openly admits it:
"we hurled computers from the windows, used fire extinguishers to put the mainframe out of action and destroyed any paperwork and computer discs we could find".
Eamonn McCann,
Socialist Worker no.262, Aug 2006:
"The US/Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Gaza have posed the question:
"Which side are you on?"
On the side of the US and its Israeli surrogate,
or the side of the resistance?
Socialist Worker makes no bones about it.
We are on the same side as Hezbollah and Hamas."
Vincent Browne
disputes the trial of Saddam:
"Saddam Hussein was quite right to question the presiding judge at his trial.
Under what authority was Rizgar Mohammed Amin sitting in judgment on the legal president of Iraq?
Saddam was a tyrant, he manipulated the electoral process to give feigned legitimacy to his rule but,
under international law, he was - and remains - president of Iraq.
In contrast, the judge presiding over the trial of Saddam has no legitimacy whatsoever.
He was appointed by the illegal invaders and occupiers of Iraq.
The court has no basis in the Iraqi constitution or Iraqi law.
It has no basis under international law."
This passage alone is enough to make me dismiss
Vincent Browne's entire life's work.
Nobody who describes an unelected dictator as being
(or ever having been) the legitimate ruler of any country
can be taken seriously when they write about politics.
As Richard Waghorne
says, such a statement is in opposition to
"the fundamentals of democratic thought".
Perhaps Vincent Browne is saying that the legal recognition of Saddam by other states
shows what a nonsense international law is.
But no, he intends the possible lack of legal status of the invasion to be a criticism
of the invasion.
Waghorne describes my world view:
"Moral clarity demands that we deny tyrants the status of legitimate rulers.
To do any less is to accord to unelected strongmen the same moral status as democratically elected leaders."
Vincent Browne is relaxed about Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology.
Why? Because the democracies have nuclear technology,
so it would be only fair for every maniac dictator in the world to have it too.
"Iran is entitled to develop nuclear energy".
He even defends their threats against Israel:
"In challenging the legitimacy of the state of Israel, Iran ... is advancing a reasoned opinion supported by historical fact."
He even makes excuses for their pursuit of nuclear weapons:
"If Iran wants to acquire nuclear weapons capacity, it has been encouraged to acquire it by those very countries that now threaten it."
And of course he says Israel is to blame for Iran's plans to destroy it:
"even if it was the case that Iran was then or is now trying to acquire nuclear weapons capacity, the blame for that would lie with those states that conspired to create those circumstances in which Iran feels it necessary to acquire such capacity."
One would have thought the left would be against nuclear proliferation,
not in favour of it.
He actually condemns the 1981 Israeli bombing which stopped Saddam's
nuclear weapons program!
"How is it that double standards in the conduct of foreign affairs is the accepted norm?"
he asks like a simpleton,
wondering why it's ok for Israel to have nuclear weapons but not Iran.
Why doesn't he try listening, just once, to the answer.
It's because Israel is a democracy
and Iran is a dictatorship.
Dictatorships should not be treated the same as democracies,
not on this issue, or any other.
There's something fundamentally wrong with
Vincent Browne that he cannot see this.
He even ends with:
"Meanwhile, hands off Iran."
Thank heavens people like Vincent Browne don't run the US or UK.
What a dangerous world it would be if people like him had power.
According to him,
the Berlin Wall was not built to keep communism's enslaved people in, but rather it:
"defused a dispute that hung over from [WW2], a dispute that could have resulted in far worse consequences, possibly a nuclear conflict in the heart of Europe."
(Well wasn't that very nice of those nice communists to build it then!)
According to his leftie history, somehow the West provoked Stalin into
oppressing Eastern Europe, something he would never have done otherwise.
He concedes that
"The repressive character of the East German regime"
caused people to flee,
but you have to love the passive tense:
"in response to this leakage, .. the infamous Berlin Wall was constructed in August 1961."
Not "the communist dictatorship constructed the Berlin Wall".
But "it was constructed" by persons unknown.
And you can feel the sneer around "the infamous"
as if we are all very simple-minded for viewing it as evil.
He then sneers that the evil America may have approved its construction.
(According to him.)
And further sneers that
"its fall 20 years ago was seen as an emblem of victory for the "free world"".
Yes, real sneer quotes this time.
He sneers at the East Germans being granted the vote:
"the rapture for western "democracy" has faded".
Yes, his sneer quotes, not mine.
Based on, well, no convincing evidence, he says of the wall:
"its fall was not the liberation it promised."
Crumbs, what a sneering cynic.
Give me
Ronald Reagan
over Vincent Browne any day!
Vincent Browne spoke at
Marxism 2009,
organised by the
pro-jihad
SWP.
"Castro has left Cuba with real status among Latin American countries".
Yes, indeed.
The status of being
the least free country in Latin America.
Indeed, the only dictatorship in the region.
"Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, western capitalism and the free market seemed messianic and triumphant. Against this backdrop, Castro's solitary experiment, that persisted on a small island off the coast of Florida, became even more tantalising."
So in the middle of all this wonderful good news,
Cuba's sad, solitary, bad news story became
"tantalising"?
He obviously only has contempt
for those Cubans who sadly hoped that the fall of the Soviet empire
would mean their liberation too.
The propagandist McGurk says:
"Despite what propagandists say, the Castro revolution proved hugely popular with ordinary Cubans."
How does McGurk know, since Cubans are not free to tell us?
"Of course, the average Cuban has little material wealth, and the Party remains at the centre of everything. But, then, this is a society where, with food, housing and transport so cheap, and education and health free, material wealth is largely irrelevant. Anyway, since the state owns all the shops, goods are the same price everywhere.
To be in Cuba is to experience the wonder of a society where the tyranny of consumerism does not exist. There is no advertising at all and individualism comes second to the common good."
So, from his position as a wealthy, well-paid media star in Ireland,
one of the richest and freest countries on earth,
does McGurk casually dismiss a society of endless poverty and complete lack of
individual freedom.
Oh, the tyranny of being rich!
If only McGurk could be poor like the Cubans!
Just as they do not understand the neo-cons,
so the Irish Times reader does not understand the jihad.
And this bland, politically-correct spin will keep them that way.
If you really want to understand the jihad,
and understand the currents in Islam
that have led to modern Islamist terror,
you need to read sites like
Jihad Watch
and MEMRI,
which have for years been casting a cold, unflinching eye on uncomfortable reality:
Tony Allwright
on a classic example of media bias in a
Mary Fitzgerald article on Al Jazeera:
"she contrasts it with the "rabidly right-wing" Fox News
and the "sombre, earnest and careful" BBC.
Why does she omit the epithet "left-wing" from the BBC's description, being its most abiding characteristic?"
Islamic religious maniacs try to kill the publisher of
a book about Mohammed
in London in 2008.
And how does Fitzgerald respond?
By sneering at the book,
not at the Islamic maniac bombers!
If people were bombing the Irish Times because of Fitzgerald's writings,
I would not concentrate on how crap her articles are.
I would be outraged at the threat to western free speech.
US kills 100 people, "mostly civilians", in Afghan air strike, May 2009.
When David Norris calls for Obama
to be arrested as a war criminal,
please tell me here.
"The US/Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Gaza have posed the question:
"Which side are you on?"
On the side of the US and its Israeli surrogate,
or the side of the resistance?
Socialist Worker makes no bones about it.
We are on the same side as Hezbollah and Hamas."
Since 1995.
