Raising the standard
Earlier today as the leaders of the Stormont Administration prepared to roll out the red carpet for George Bush and Gordon Brown 100s of people took to the streets to voice their opposition. At one point during the city centre rally éirígí activists gained access to City Hall, removed the Union Jack which flies above Belfast 365 days a year and in an act of solidarity and defiance raised the Iraqi flag along with a banner much to the delight of the assembled crowd.
This protest follows on from their closure of the US consulate a few days ago. 
Occasions like this really bring the nutters out, dont they? As for War Crimes, we should take a closer look at some of our own politicians.
Is the bottom photo some kind of Father Ted tribute group, or something?
WELCOME TO THE NUCLEAR ISLAMIC STATE
Pip Pip
Excellent stuff from éirígí.
Other people it seems have no shame. the least McG should have done is wear a stop the war or Palestinian pin.
While éirigi didn’t manage to russell up too many people, and they are a small microgroup with zero profile, I wish them well, but it is fair to say that nationalist and republican voters—whether in the six counties or in the twenty six counties—will not wish to split the republcian vote by voting for them in preference to Sinn Féin.
I was there today at Stormont and at City Hall, fair play to éirígí for their stunt.
Student politics.
The Big Man himself invented student politics. You have to be a certain age to recall all his stunts, the good the bad and the mainly ugly! Robbo even tried his hand at it down south but came a cropper. Never was as nimble on his feet as the Big Man.
What about the war crimes of McGuinness and Adams?
Observer
I really do not understand Unionists when they keep going on about the SF leadership being war criminals, as you are the ones who support the British state. Now if you are genuine in your beliefs about these people being war criminals, then you support a state that insists your local representatives share power with war criminals and more to the point you go along with it, weird.
What éirígí is saying is that Bush is a war criminal and they want no part of him, which is perfectly logical, as to your position, well?
Mick what is clear is that you or eirigi dont view McGuinnes and Adams as war criminals. You are supporters of terror , Bush liberated Iraq SF/IRA butchered people just because they were protestants.
dublinsinnfeinsupporter I wouldnt be so sure about people not wishing to vote for Éirígí as opposed to Sinn Féin as most republicans are weary of the spin that has been drip fed by the present leadershyip of Sinn Féin.
I think a lot of people in the north would welcome electoral intervention from Éirígí possilby starting with council elections.
….meanwhile war criminal Martin McGuinness runs our wee country.
éirígí, bloody hypocrites!
President Bush is not a war criminal just a politician who has been poorly advised . He did the right thing in moving into Afghanistan after Osama Bin Laden and removing the Taliban . He did the wrong thing by withdrawing too quickly from Afghanistan and not finishing the job .
He did the right thing in removing Saddam Hussein from power but there was virtually no planning for the aftermath.
As for ‘eirigi’s show of protest – pissin into the wind might have been more useful.
observer ,
‘SF/IRA butchered people just because they were protestants.’
Liar . They also shot Roman Catholics because they were a) members of the RUC or British Military or Prison Officers or servants of th e British State in Northern Ireland . They shot Protestants for the same reasons.
The ‘butchering ‘ was IIRC mostly done by Loyalist Protestants against innocent Roman Catholics simply because they were Catholics . You may have heard of the Shankill ‘butchers’ and if you haven’t the record is there for you to read .
‘Bush liberated Iraq ‘
Well if you call 300,000 Iraqis dead , 2 to 3 million Iraqis having to flee their country as refugees, billions of dollars in property damage and a country now more divided than ever in it’s history, 4,000 American soldiers dead , tens of thousands of Americans maimed for life , and 2 billion dollars a week going into a hole in the ground in the Iraqi then you might want to ask yourself – if ‘liberation’ has been of any benefit to the Iraqi people as opposed to the benefit of the major oil companies.
As for McGuinness, Robinson , Adams etc if they’re not at each other’s throats by the time the ‘marching ‘ season is over it’ll be a miracle .
Despite the public show for Mr Bush this ‘shower’ will not last the year . Neither will either have a strong Mr Blair or Mr Ahern to run to to plead their case . Messrs Brown and Cowen will be transfixed on their personal political survival for the next couple of years if they last that long . The scene is being set up for another ‘suspension ‘ . Paddy Power will have the odds up on the board soon enough
….meanwhile war criminal Martin McGuinness runs our wee country.
éirígí, bloody hypocrites!
Posted by Ulsters my homeland on Jun 16, 2008 @ 10:46 PM
So then you agree it was a war?
Bush liberated Iraq SF/IRA butchered people just because they were protestants.
Posted by observer on Jun 16, 2008 @ 09:25 PM
Bush liberated Iraq? Liberated them from a minor tyrant to install what? Sheer unadulterated chaos!
liberating Iraq = 1 million dead Iraqi’s
Butchered by IRA = 2,000 > dead
You have some interesting math skills their bubba
The most despicable part of the whole affair is the alliance formed between Trade Unions and dissident republicans.
You have to wonder if all the Unison members are quite as supportive of Erigi as some of their leaders are….
“They also shot Roman Catholics because they were a) members of the RUC or British Military or Prison Officers or servants of the British State in Northern Ireland . They shot Protestants for the same reasons.” – Greenflag
So, the ten Kingmills protestants were “members of the RUC or British Military or Prison Officers or servants of the British State in Northern Ireland”? I’m sure that is news to their families who were unaware of their secret double lives, believing to be ordinary decent men who were murdered simply because of their religion.
observer tells us:
[i]“SF/IRA butchered people just because they were protestants.”[/i]
Seems we have another Unionist poster who either does not know or chooses to ignore the facts of the matter,
From Sutton index on the CAIN website:
The Provisional IRA killed 517 civilians, of whom 428 were from NI. Of these, 261 were Protestant or about 61% and 167 Catholic or about 39%
The security forces killed 186 civilians from NI, 162 Catholics –about 87% — and 24 Protestant or about 13%.
The Unionist/loyalist gangs killed 808 civilians from NI, 686 Catholics — about 85% — and 132 Protestants or about 15%.
So, if observer’s observation is correct, it would seem that HMG and the unionist/loyalist groups are FAR MORE guilty than the PIRA.
I wonder why observer seems to ignore the war crimes of HMG and the unionist/loyalist gangs.
Bob,
It’s a fair guess that the number of “civilians” does not include members of the security forces.
Their murders were just a reprehensible as the murder of civilians by various paramilitaries… be they loyalist or republican.
To leave them out of a debate like this leads people to the conclusion that their deaths were different from the “civilians” or indeed partially justified…..
Now I’m sure nobody on here would like to have any of their post interpreted like that so let’s not just define “civilians” so narrowly..
What’s to differentiate a “civilian” who died in a bombing and two policemen who stopped a car driving dangerously and got a hail of bullets for their troubles.
bob mcgowan ,
‘I wonder why observer seems to ignore the war crimes of HMG and the unionist/loyalist gangs.’
You wonder ? Get a grip man the answer is and always has been staring you in the face . It’s because idiots like ‘observer’ and ‘ulsters my homeland ‘ look upon ‘catholic’ deaths as being of lesser ‘value’ than ‘protestant/loylaist’ deaths . It’s that simple.
Thanks for reminding the ‘purposely’ blind with the facts and numbers . Not that it will make one iota of difference to their preferred state of ‘ignorance’. Gobshites they are and gobshites they’ll remain
And on the topic of the thread itself….
I for one would welcome the election of Barack Obama in November for the simple reason that would it mean that a Bush style president would not be in the White House to give ammunition to the kind of deluded cretins who protested at City Hall today and who then were outflanked at Stormont in the afternoon.
An Obama presidency would expose these people for what 99% of them are, bitter anti american types who are still depressed that communism lost the Cold War and global free market capitalism rides on.
Dave ,
So, the ten Kingmills protestants were
Right -same from the other side except more so
So, the Miami showband were
So, the Quinn children were
So, the Greysteel pub customers were
So, the Bloody Sunday marchers were
etc etc etc etc etc etc .
Wise up .
Greenflag,
people must never forget the actions of the loyalist paramilitaries and those serving in crown uniforms who went outside the rule of law.
It’s just a pity that people seem to forget that the overwhelming majority of servants of the crown acted within the rule of law. Many of them did make tough decisions, sometimes deciding who lived or who died, in order to advance the greater good. Thing is, society asked them to make those tough decisions to protect us all. I didn’t see anyone saving lives in the troubles they way Special Branch did…… all of the paramilitaries were too busy seeing how many people they could kill.
windsor rocker
‘ global free market capitalism rides on.’
It does indeed . You forgot to add in ‘regardless’ as in regardless of the welfare of the mass of people in the USA /UK and other developed countries who are seeing their rights watered down, their personal freedoms and information becoming the ‘property’ of global corporations and their ‘futures’ being sold to the lowest bidders in a global labour market.
Capitalism ‘behaved ‘ itself much better when ‘communism ‘ was around . You can draw you own conclusions as to what the end result of untrammelled global capitalism will lead to sooner or later . That’s right . The revolt of the discarded middle and lower middle classes in the west and of a large section of the working class also .
Mr Obama’s election may help forestall such a revolt in the USA but if he’s unsuccessful in stemming the tide of American middle class emisseration , which will not be an easy task given Bush’s squandering of America’s dollars then you can expect Obama’s successor to finish the job .
windsor rocker ,
people must never forget the actions of the loyalist paramilitaries and those serving in crown uniforms who went outside the rule of law.
True but some appear only too willing too
‘It’s just a pity that people seem to forget that the overwhelming majority of servants of the crown acted within the rule of law. ‘
I don’t . I’m aware of the great sacrifice many RUC and UDR men made . Given the nature of ‘civil’ or should I say ‘uncivil’ war in a State such as NI – and given the political polarisation then you have to expect that both sides will be selective in their ‘remembrances’ . Hopefully in time both sides will come to see that it was a war that need never have been fought nor have cost a single life.
But that’s humanity for you . We never learn and never will
See that Iraqi flag they raised? Is it the old one with Saddam’s handwritten “Allahu Akhbar” slogan on it or the new one introduced by the Yanks?
If it is the former then at least the protesters are being consistent and calling for the return of Saddam Hussein’s regime, if it is the latter I am pleased to see the protesters are supporting George Bush’s actions in liberating Iraq and helping to establish the new democratic republic the free Iraqis have created.
‘…George Bush’s actions in liberating Iraq and helping to establish the new democratic republic the free Iraqis have created.’
Many thanks for the unintentional and seemingly endless hilarity. Modern Iraq is as far removed from reality as ‘Comical Ali’s’ protestations that Sadamn was winning the War; evidently so are some people are on here. Whether anyone agreed or not with the WMD justification for invading Iraq – i.e. nonsense – the after-plan, the stabilisation of the state were ignored when all the command structures of the Iraqi state were decimated in the original invasion. This did not happen to the defeated parties after WW2 – Why? Because the German state would crumble, chaos, oh dear…
Many of these ‘free’ Iraqis have the purple dye of the voting procedure on their one hand, and armalite in the other. Now the US forces have finally realized the Sunnis hated – and always hated – the Al Quaeda Jihhadists, and paid them to seal the deal. Which was kind of the situation before they went in, 1 million dead…Very clever. Please though, keep the priceless stupidity coming, it does cheer me up so.
Windsor Rocker tells us:
[i]“It’s a fair guess that the number of “civilians” does not include members of the security forces.
Their murders were just a reprehensible as the murder of civilians by various paramilitaries… be they loyalist or republican.”[/i]
Sorry, Rocker, but members of the armed forces of the State against which the rebellion is directed are NOT civilians, but combatants. And, the PIRA campaign WAS a war so members of the armed forces of both the government and the rebels are combatants, not civilians. And HMG used the RUC as combatants.
Killing combatants in a war is NOT murder by any definition. Please use language properly.
“1 million dead”
Not even nearly, divide it by ten and you might be getting there, the overwhelming majority killed by Baathist dead-enders and Al-Qeda holy warriors who are now collecting their justified eternal rewards.
Iraq is free, Iraq is democratic.
Viva Iraq Libre! Viva George Bush!
Interesting to see progress being made in Iraq. HOpefully a stable government will remain stable after the pullout of US troops. Although if i were a betting man…
But what is really the point of this “student politics”. It won’t change anything, doesn’t add anything constructive, just a waste of energy. I think Bush already knows the vast majority of Europe strongly dislike him and dissaprove of his Iraq mistake.
I guess Erigi wanted to get in the press while they had the chance, bush won’t be around to be the man that people love to hate much longer.
Harry you’re full of so much fantasy why not just go ahead and say that in fact the invasion forces killed no iraqis at all? That would be about as realistic a your other claims anyway.
Iraq is as democratic as the US wants it to appear as you must surely acknowledge. The US wouldn’t have “liberated” Iraq had they thought the iraqis would then start making their own decisions and deciding what to do with their own oil. The US invaded with no legal foundation because they wanted to grab the oil and establish another puppet state in the region – mush like they had nder the shah in Iran.
As with the raising of the Iraqi flag – I would suggest that they were trying to show their solidarity with the Iraqi people and were neither calling for the resurrection of the executed Saddam (and to think him and rumsfeld were once such good friends), nor supporting bush’s “liberation” at the barrel of a gun.
Mick Hall
I really do not understand Unionists when they keep going on about the SF leadership being war criminals, as you are the ones who support the British state. Now if you are genuine in your beliefs about these people being war criminals, then you support a state that insists your local representatives share power with war criminals and more to the point you go along with it, weird.
This doesn’t make sense. First what does “supporting the British state” mean? Presumably you mean “wish to remain part of the UK”?
Wishing to remain part of the UK does not mean that one has to support every Government policy or decision!
Dishonest Bob’s back
1. It wasn’t a “war” and simply saying so doesn’t make it so.
2. Therefore there were no “combatants”.
3. Policemen, prison officers, ex-policemen, ex-prison officers, ex-soldiers, etc., are civilians.
4. All murders are wrong, no matter the occupation of the victim.
Ian Óg seems to have got worked up about the “Insult to the people of belfast having their national flag removed from its national place and an Iraqai flag inserted in its place”.
I thought the insult was made weeks ago when Martin Mc Guinness gave an invitation to George Bush. I suppose its a case of remebering it all when the next time comes to use my vote wisely.
Old Uncle Harry hereby sticks his neck out, you can all laugh at me derisively in a year’s time if I am wrong.
Here goes:
[b]The Iraq war is over, the Americans and their allies won.[/b]
Get used to it, get over it, find something else to rant and rave about but accept it. Iraq ain’t no Vietnam, this time the good guys won.
How sweet it is.
Just a slight addendum to your prognoses Harry:
The people of Iraq lost.
Viva Occupied Iraq!!!
And if you are naive enough to think that because it disappears from the papers as soon as the US and “allies” move out, then you really do belong in fantasy land.
The “war” was an invasion, the “victory” an occupation. The “good guys” brought us an illegal invasion, Abu Ghraib and general torture, dishing up the fat contracts to their cronies, privatised armies with no acountability, hundreds of thousand of dead and injured “free” Iraqis etc. etc.
Oh yeah how sweet it is – about as sweet as the smell of bullshit.
Guys
I think it is fairly clear that the Iraq war was illegal, but Harry’s right: it’s over. Iraq now has a lawful, internationally-recognised government and the Allied troops are there with the consent of that government.
Having invaded the place, the Allies are surely under a moral obligation to stay as long as the Iraqi government requires them to stay.
‘The Iraq war is over, the Americans and their allies won.’
Therpay, evidently, is required. The war is over as the bombings continue and death squads carry out atrocities every day. Nothing I see in response to the fact that Iraq prior to the invasion was one of the FEW secular states in the region and that Sadamn was as opposed to Al Quaeda as America and the rest of us are (terrible dictator that he was, though perhaps less so than in the 1980s when the Americans preferred him quite astoundingly to Iran. Forgotten about these facts, haven’t we?).
America has won in the sense that it has destroyed Iraq, as the place will eventually be partitioned along Shi’a, Sunni and Kurdish lines to produce three separate states. I’m sure you have no idea of what any of these differences actually are, subscribing to a parallel universe of bad American action film philosophy. In this sense America has won. Excellent thinking.
Islamic States Support by the US: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iraq.
“Down with that sort of thing!”
“Careful Now!”
Harry
I won’t even mention Iraq for fear of repetition of your hysterics the last time I tried to engage with you on that topic. Instead your Vietnam quote caught my eye;
>>Iraq ain’t no Vietnam, this time the good guys won.<<
What? the free people of Vietnam, who died in their millions and defeated the greatest power the world has ever known. Fighting for their homeland was not a crime, never will be a crime, and your view on this merely cements your place in the lunatic fringe. Good God in heaven, the saying about how much we can endure and not how much we can inflict should have been coined for the heroic Vietnamese.
I thought this was about Northern Ireland, not US/Iraq.
I will say, it does sound like some of you people in here are secretly (or openly?) rooting for chaos to erupt in Iraq the minute the US leaves, just to validate your opinion of the affair.
http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/brog-wow-bush-spreads-touches-despite-vision-18305
If you believe a stalinist dictatorship which murdered, tortured, brainwashed, exiled and imprisoned millions of Vietnamese for the audacity of opposing stalinism were the good guys I’m afraid that puts you firmly in the lunatic fringe Eoghan old son.
Read the history, read the facts, find out about the gulags, the re-education camps, the killing fields, the boat people who were so enamoured of the stalinist version of ‘freedom’ that they packed their families onto rickety ships to brave typhoons in shark infested seas rather than live another day under stalinist terror.
Ignore the left liberal “Hollywood” version of what happened in Vietnam PE, find out the true story, discover all the joys of life under the “agrarian reforms” of Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot.
They weren’t the good guys any more than Mao or Stalin were.
Flashharry & Wining The Vietnam War
I think Nail Ferguson tried to make the argument that the American war effort in Vietnam would have been much more successful if they had run it like the imperial Brits did – perhaps. If they like the French had been in control of the whole country. But the problem was the North it could only really be beaten with increased bombing or so they thought.
William Shawcross writes very well about the secret bombing of Cambodia to disrupt the traffic and supplies from north to south. But it didn’t work the North was able to keep up. Now in order to make the war and the bombing effective the total destruction and an invasion of the North would have been necessary.
It could have been done. Besides the point about Vietnam then being free – free of Vietnamese. Those who were left who would have had access to the sea would have tried to escape the fire storm only to be meet with another fire storm from the American navy. At least these deaths would have been quicker than compared being slowly burned to death by napalm on land.
It could have been done and it was done – to the whole of Japan and in the seas surrounding Japan in WWII.
I’m sure it was considered by Nixon the problem was he sought detante with the Stalinists in Peking and Moscow.
Re. Iraq. An occupied country can never be free or sovereign in any real sense. The US planning is for a client state in Iraq and they may or may not get it, just as they may or may not get their dozens of permanent airbases and minicities. The situation in Iraq is catastrophic, and there are no easy solutions. Part of the US strategy over the last year has been to supply and fund Sunni groups previously at war with the occupiers.As a long term solution to Iraq’s woes this is witless.
mickd writes:
“Part of the US strategy over the last year has been to supply and fund Sunni groups previously at war with the occupiers.As a long term solution to Iraq’s woes this is witless.”
Yes shades of Michael Collins as some would say. But supporting one group against another is part of imperial strategy.
Internal civil war is always of benefit to an occupying power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNv7IIwH5Qo
That’s more like it.
You know the lunatic fringe is out when the attacks on ‘Liberal Hollywood’ proceed apace. Strange revisionist arguments that what the US got up to in Vietnam wasn’t so bad and so-on. Continue living out these twisted dreams that the atrocities which saw 2 million south east Asians killed – mostly civilians, not your Vietcong – were justified. More than any tin-pot left wing dictatorship funnily enough. By that reckoning the US Army’s worse than those dreadful left-wing dicators. Care to reconcile that? Continue living these freams out, praying the US had slaughtered more and won. These people who so dream of course have never been anywhere near an army or action themselves and prefer to deal in the blood of young men sent out to live out their pathetic dreams.
And incidentally, the second point is wrong. ‘Hollywood’ in the 1980s did go through a phase of pretending they hadn’t lost in Vietnam, and had been betrayed somehow by ‘the guys back in Washington’. Don’t you know your Rambo films?
Reaganite, action-spectacular drivel. The third had him in Afghanistan, alongside the Osama’s lot in the Mujahideen fighting those damned Russians. In fact I think Rambo 3 is dedicated to them you’ll find. That worked out so well, that alliance…Funny how the same people who feverishly approved that alliance are now at the forefroent of the ‘War On Terror’. They’ll be correct about something one day, though perhaps not in this life.
Its one thing to be totally wrong about every political subject. But at least get the movies right – know about something!