Monday’s Irish News spotted the quote of the week from Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in the interview with Ryan Tubridy. On being “told” “around 19 – 96″ that his father was an abuser, the re-selected Sinn Féin candidate for west Belfast said
“I got professional help and I intend to get therapy.”
Don’t forget to let us know how that works out…
Is the best way to overcome the legacy of conflict simply to forget about it? Author and journalist David Rieff spoke on this subject last week in a seminar at the Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS) at Trinity College Dublin. Rieff has recently written a book titled, Against Remembrance (published in Ireland by Liffey [...] read our review »
Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland is a new academic tome by lecturer and researcher Lee Smithey. In the book the Pennsylvania academic outlines his findings based on 67 interviews over eighteen months with grassroots activists in unionist and loyalist communities and organisations. This is largely a book about men, even though they [...] read our review »
Short answer: very little, other than he enjoyed the environs of Hillsborough Castle, enjoyed working with the local politicians, and has Gerry Adams to thank for Bobby his dog. Peter Mandelson’s book The Third Man has captured media headlines in recent weeks as the Times serialised the most juicy bits. But what did he have [...] read our review »
I hope his therapist takes him back to what he was doing on 21 July 1972.
A lot of my colleagues at Oxford Street Bus Station that day would like to hear about it.
Marlaghman, what is irrefutable is that Shinners/Provos had no reliable means of detecting British agents within that organisation because that means was controlled by British agents.
That meant that the security services – who were spending hundreds of millions and dedicating hundreds of their highly-trained operatives to the purpose of infiltrating and controlling the Shinners/Provos – had no counterintelligence opposition within that gang to their aim of infiltrating and directing it where they wanted it to go. Hence they were able to direct it to shift from its position of opposing the legitimacy of British sovereignty to endorsing it and from asserting national rights which challenged that sovereignty to renouncing them.
Why did the leadership of the Shinners/Provos appoint British agents to run its Internal Security Unit? Stupidity? Perhaps. But why did they keep those British agents in place until one retired and the other died, when standard procedure is to rotate those positions in order to avoid long-term infiltration of them? More stupidity? Perhaps. But why was Anthony McKiernan murdered in 1988 when he raised questions about one of the British agents that Gerry and Martin appointed to run the ISU, and why was Joseph O’Connor murdered in 2000 when he also raised doubts? It would appear to be more than pure stupidity…
The principle reason that the Security Services controlled the ISU is to ensure that its agents within the Shinners/Provos would not be detected by the ISU. As we now see from the plethora of recent examples, the leadership of the Shinners/Provos also had a policy of not removing sex offenders from their organisation. Why would they allow members to remain within organisation who had such obvious vulnerable points that rendered them susceptible to control by the security services? Yet more stupidity? Perhaps. But then again, one of the functions of the ISU was to vet new members for potential vulnerable points. Since the ISU was run by British agents, it’s a simple join the dots exercise to see that they would want member who could be controlled and would reject potential members who were sound. The ISU also has full authority to interview every member of the Provos and has full access to all Provo operations with a remit that can only be countermanded by a member of the Army Council. In reality, the security services were in control of the Provos.
For the puppet boss of the Shinners/Provos to allow one member to remain in the Shinners/Provos because that member is his kin may be regarded as a lapse of judgement based on nepotism, but how are the other security lapses to be explained? Only as part of a policy that served the interests of their handlers. That is why wee Gerry is frantically spinning a policy as a mix of innocence and ignorance on his part and not something altogether more sinister. If he needs therapy, it should be for the 50 or 60 PIRA members who were murdered by the British agents that he and Martin appointed to run the ISU, and who were murdered to protect the agents at the top of the food chain within the Shinners/Provos.
Alias
We have no way of knowing if your comment is accurate, true there are questions to be answered, but, to take one example, why would they need to spend anything, let alone the hundreds of millions you refer to.
If they had someone bang to rights as a paedophile or rapist, they had them free of charge! and for life.
The truth will only emerge once the trials are out of the way.
Driftwood, my uncle was a bus driver at Oxford Street. Perhaps you knew him as a colleague.
FJH
I worked in the office there from 1980 and knew many of the drivers and other staff who were there that day. The depot manager had bits of glass still coming out of his eyes decades later.
weird seeing the area nowadays compared to then.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gerryward/2927235899/
Driftwood
I feel sick. I am so sorry, the things we do to each other…
I don’t know if any of the survivors were offered ‘therapy’, unlike the perpetrator(s).
that’s just the way it goes……
Driftwood
I understand, so much bitterness, on both sides.
Can we at least agree it must never happen again.
//The way people talk on this site is laughable. They are clearly on here just to attack Adams. So much of the hatred seems to be reserved for Adams and not the actual peodophiles or rapists responsible. (Peter Fyfe, p2, 19)
The main purpose of Slugger **IS** therapy.
Much better for people to get stuff off their chests by attacking Gerry Adams, the really gigantic hate figure, on this website than to have them putting slugs into themmums from their Smith Wessons or Uzis or roadside bombs.
Not saying all of us would actually do this…
Another way of handling irritating contributions would be to avoid reading them. For me: Pete Baker and pippakin, the two obsessives. I must be in a really masochistic mood today since I am reading a thread dominated by these two, though I speeded up things a bit by skipping 99.9% of pippakin’s comments and did not click on a single one of Pete’s cross references.
I got the bus from Oxford Street every day at that time. That day, fortunately for me, I wasn’t there because I was out in a company vehicle and was stuck in a traffic jam due to all of the bombs going off.
TellMeMa
Oh dear! Ive offended you, what a shame, how sad, what can I do but more of the same.
How many times do I have to say I do not hate Gerry Adams, you, and anyone, can check my little blog, item ten, the sins of the fathers. I cant remember if its dated but I was defending him regarding the paedophile accusations before anyone else. The problem has been his lack of clear, honest replies, and S/Fs refusal to deal with the matter appropriately.
You need not read anything Ive written but you should be anxious to ensure that the past is given no chance to be repeated.
>First Robinson goes off to work after the
>wife, we are told, attempted to take her
>own life.
He was just relieved that for once he could go to the office without wondering where she was
posted by Kathleen Collins
Hi TellMeMa, The question isn’t whether people like or dislike gerry adams. Gerry is the one who stated he believed his niece that her father/his brother sexually abusedd her. Gerry is the one who stated his father abused his siblings, Gerry is the one who campaigned with his brother (thinking at the time his brother was a sex offender)Gerry is the one who went on telivision the day after his wife went under surgery to discuss his plan to get therapy. As an elected official–gerry adams actions and words can and should be discussed and it has nothing to do with people liking the man or not
Mr E Mann
Dont know what Peter Robinson has to do with Gerry Adams sudden need for therapy. Perhaps they both would benefit from an understanding ear.
As for Mrs Robinson and her toy boy. I have, of course heard of women of a certain age taking a toy boy before, but this is the first time Ive heard one asked for a refund!
The sf community in west belfast must feel that their sitting MP is ok and that the small matter of keeping information about a pedo and rapest from them has nothing what soever to do with his selection to stand again as their MP.
Now we know that the catholic church has had problems with this and tried to cover it up and when the RM in their own area does this have we not the right to ask what is happening to families that they turn a blind eye of what has happened here.
Child abuse is wrong no matter what your political beliefs are, btw not just in the RM, but the fear within this area from what the RM are famous for must be keeping the local community under a great strain. The truth will come out slowly, but it will, like GA niece has done by letting the people know what was going on, who knew, and who never did anything about it.
Remember we are talking about Chlid Abuse within a movement who ruled with fear and still dose
Maybe the Irish Collie Club, whose members he ordered to be burned alive at La Mon-obviously not ‘Irish’ enough- can find it in their hearts to forgive themselves for their sin of not being ‘Irish’ enough for Gerry.
And offer prayers for this bad time he is going through. The poor wee soul.
The firefighters who scraped his victims off the tarmac at Oxford St Bus Station should also make a statement of atonement to the great Saint Gerard.
We can only hope his ‘therapy’ helps him to see the error of his ways, but gentlemen, as bad as it all is, none of it compares to the abuse of a child or the deliberate coverup of that abuse.
http://www.iraatrocities.fsnet.co.uk/lamon.htm
Child abuse of sorts, and more. Still, now they run justice and policing..all is well.
So it goes.
Tell me driftwood what excatly did gerry have to do with oxford street. I can’t find any reports of him being charged with or evidence to connect him with it. I really would be interested to see what you have.
There are several issues here.
1. Several of the poster here are rabid Loyalist sectarians (who intersperse their sectarianism with O level physics musings. On this point, it must be noted that Orangeism is a cancer and that true peace must entail eliding this cancer from the social mix, the same way Nazism was elided from post war Germany.
2. There is the issue of Gerry Adams (and Martin McGuinness. These are very much flawed characters and their flaws most likely made them the play things of MI5. Martin’s situation is well summed up on Willie Frazer’s site. (Yes, Willie is a rabid sectarian in need of therapy (like most of them) but there you go.
3. There is the issue of how the flaws of Adams and his cronies fed into and mis directed the just demands of the Catholic minority ((and Protestants like John Turnley and Ronnie Bunting who were democrats).
4. There is the issue of how the flaws of these monsters impacted on their families and htose they abused.
The above are not written by order of importance. However, the thugs who demand to walk the Queen’s Highway to perpetuate their culture of Taig baiting/killing do not have much to add to this discussion.
Or to any other discussions either. They are flawed flotsam.
Macanna
He was ‘OC’ of the so called belfast brigade of his wee terror group on the day. he would consider the Oxford St Bus station bombing a ‘success’. Just like his patriotic burning of the Irish Collie Club at La Mon.
Strange person. But sure isn’t he good for a laugh these days.
Sorry driftwood I obviously wasn’t clear. I have heard a lot of people accuse ga of being involved in events like oxford street and la mon, what I was looking for was the evidence that people like yourself seem to posess that I can’t find anywhere.Its a bit like the rumours about wee jeffery that were on here recently, sounds good but a load of old bollocks without proof.
Macanna
Billy Wright was never convicted of murder. OJ Simpson obviously did not murder his wife. And we all know that 4 completely innocent guys (Jamie and Neil Acourt, Gary Dobson, Luke Knight and David Norris) were unfairly castigated in the media for the murder of Stephen Lawrence when they were innocent-as you say-No proof.
And they have all subsequently been shown to be decent guys like Gerry Adams.
Just one addendum:
In their book the ‘The Provisional IRA’ Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie said the bombings were planned by Seamus Twomey, an IRA leader who died at the age of 70 yrs in 1989, he was assisted “by a leading Belfast Provisional who is now a senior member of Sinn Fein.”
In a BBC Panorama programme broadcast on December 19th, 1983, Gerry Adams was accused of involvement in the Bloody Friday bombings by a former IRA member Peter McMullen.
driftwood, I am starting to get the feeling you don’t like ga. Going by what you posted above it is because of what peter mcmullen said.Because the rest of what you wrote has nothing to do with what I asked you.Pointless waffle really.
Driftwood: OJ Simpson obviously did not murder his wife…etc
And a man was accused of being a paedophile* by a neighbour annoyed with his complaints about her loud music
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8523103.stm
(I think she should be fined more than the ridiculous £80)
And there were at least two women who were jailed for murdering their babies on the basis of evidence from an “expert” witness later found to be really tainted.
Lives can be ruined by false accusations.
I could go on, but I won’t.
__________________________
* (heads up, Pippakin!)
TellMeMa,
You won’t go on but I will. Driftwood, either you believe in the principle of a person being innocent until proven guilty or you don’t.
If you don’t then I suggest that your place is not in a Western democracy but in some rathole like Saudi Arabia, where your thinking would be welcomed.
I loathe Sinn Fein and all they stand for but I love democracy and justice more.
posted by Kathleen Collins
It was gerry adams who announced to the world that HE believed his brother had sexually abused his daughter. If you want to complain about the press and the issue of innoncent until proven guilty…then complain to gerry adams…HE is the one who has publically labled his brother a sex offender. Also, it was gerry adams who after his father died stated his father was an abuser of his own children. Again, it is gerry who labeled his own father as a sex abuser.
If people dicuss this issue based on what gerry adams has stated in public…they are not the ones who can be accused of not upholding the principal of innoncent until proven guilty…it is gerry adams who has done that.
Now, it is interesting to consider…was this a policy adapted by gerry adams…to publically label his brother as an abuser to his own child in the hopes of having the courts state Liam can not get a fair trial and thus…getting off the hook for raping his daughter.
Gerry Adams was caught between a rock and a hard place. Liam Adams daughter Aine went public. GA had to make a statement, that it was so full of holes it created more questions is his problem.
If Liam Adams doubts he will get a fair trial in the north, there are other places where this subject has not been making headlines.
It would be better for GA if LA pleads guilty. A not guilty plea would take the lid off the whole dirty mess.