Gerry on the Holy Land, Jesus, Roman Imperialism and…
Interesting programme by Gerry Adams on Channel 4 just now. So far as I can see it’s less about forgiveness, the Bible and religion and more about what the Sinn Fein President clearly sees as parallel political situations both now and in historic Palestine. He doesn’t have any shortage of witnesses to underwrite the parallels in the context of the Middle East. The parallels with Northern Ireland are mostly drawn from his own input. It’s peppered with some really interesting conversational snippets… not least where Gerry notes that elites never offer anything that’s not dressed up (I possibly paraphrase here) as ‘the common good’…
Thank God I’m an atheist. Anyone can hijack religion to justify their own motives, unfortunately.
Thought Alan McBride was perhaps unwittingly used in this doco. His integrity shone through but his contribution was tokenism. Same too for Mrs Finucane.
I am glad that C4 allowed Adams to make this programme.
It was good to be able to remind oneself of what an insufferably narcissistic bore he is.
A man clearly crippled and confused by his own self-righteousness.
Cringemaking comments at the beginning about Maze tunnels etc., before he was allowed to get into his stride, balancing the Shankill bombers against the culpable up-to-cabinet level Brits who took out his friend Pat Finucane.
I doubt Alan McBride would be allowed near a TV studio if he was as bitter as Mrs Finucane.
gerry on gerry more like,i did not realise how far adams was up his own ass,what a /no i must not get angry.
A poor effort from which I learned nothing at all.
Ah the usual suspects are shocked and appalled.
As every Daily Mail reader knows Jesus was English.
As every News Letter reader knows Jesus was an Ulsterman and reguarly marched on the Twelfth with Nazareth True Blues Flute Band.
I suppose all of us know several victims. All of us know families of victims. Those of us relatively untouched thru not losing a parent, wife, husband or child can only imagine the pain of Mr McBride and Mrs Finnucane.
Its a shame that “Framer” talks of a widows bitterness.
Frankly I dont know how I would react?
Would have reacted?
Like Alan McBride from the Shankill or the late Mrs McCarten from the Markets area who look to the future.
Or the mother of hunger striker Patsy O’Hara and Willie Fraser who look to the past.
Little did Jesus know that 2000 years after he walked those steps in Galilee that Geroid Adams, freedom fighter of a distant land and time dimension, would come and follow them.
Very shoddy poor documentary. Adams is extremely parochial and is only able to be articulate within the small vocabulary of Conflict-Speak. When venturing onto non-troubles conversatin, he is surprising inarticulate and always seems to be grappling for words.
Did many of the academics actually know who he is? His references to Long Kesh were playing to the gallery, I’m sure it left everyone in GB scratching their heads, if they’re were watching Dancing on Ice.
I too was gobsmacked at the statement ‘when noone else is pushing for peace etc…’
This was flabbergasting as was the lack pf challengue. Sinn Fein, when outsiders lift the outer epidermus, reveals a shallow ghetto mentality that really hasn’t a lot to say.
I would not be classed as religious so I found parts of it interesting, like the bit about Jesus possibly not being in Bethelhem when he was born or even in a manger. Switching off from the stereotypical thoughts I have of GA parts of it was well researched and put over.
It started to fall down with the little remarks from time to time that referred to his life which always seemed to be about the oppressive Brits. Near the end I felt that one time GA just stopped short of comparing his life with Jesus.
I was a bit surprised at the contrast between the feelings of Mrs Finucane and Alan McBride. Saying that, if it was me I would probably be bitter like Mrs Finucane.
My overall impression of the program was that GA reinforced his belief that the IRA were forced into doing the deeds they carried out and everyone else is to blame except the republican movement. He did also seemed to be trying to re-invent himself just before he hangs up his political gloves.
making peace takes generals?
Doesn’t it just Gerry.
Just been up the Falls as I heard there was a report of a vision. A god like guy with beard, glasses, sandals and a hunger strike blanket, shit it was non other than the blessed Gerry Adams!!!
He was ranting and handing out bottles of Buckfast and kebabs to anybody who would listen to him,poor sod nobody was paying any attention to him.
I saw hi brother Liam, a short distance away getting a payment form MI5?????
So Gerry Adams done the chattering classes no good at all here, shame on him. Giving them no ammo at all with which to hurl at him they have to make it up themselves.
Ya evil bastard that ye are!
Jesus is hear , he is everwhere. look around see the light my man, see him calling you, look around see him touching you. Am I mad Am I sick
No I am reading a blog
Nice shots of rural donegal, wouldn’t it be nice to have the money to live like that, if only I’d been a revoloutionary…
Loved the ‘as we say in irish’ agusablahdeblahgibberish…translated straight as a yank cliche ‘the clever man knows the truth’ or something like that.
Thoughts so deep you could wade through them and not get yer ankles wet, translate that into ‘irish’ “General” Adams.
He reminded me of Idi Amin without the charisma or humour.
Framer,
Cringemaking comments at the beginning about Maze tunnels
I believe that was Long Kesh to which he was referring.
Gerry Adams was well put in his box by the Palestinian Christian man who told him that violence in response to oppression would just lead to tit for tat.
That was wisdom, Gerry, something you showed no awareness of.
But Gerry’s name comes out at 666 on my numeric alphabet and that is the reason he’s out looking for cover by doing this programme. And I can assure you that that’s the reason why he was asked.
John
There is a guy called scarecrow looking for you over on http://tinyurl.com/ya3wh6g I believe he speaks your language ;¬)
PE stop pollouting the threads with your nonsense. If your idol is being criticised take it on the chin. Try to keep on topic, which isn’t me but Gerry the general.
Lol Driftwood. “aguswackashingolerawack” “as the Irish say, it was the last throw of the dice”
GA is narcissistic, a trait of the psychopath. Alan McBride unfortunately, let Adams of his conscience hook however, to be devils advocate, why did the Frizzells let their upstairs room be used by loyalist terrorists? I don’t think the UDA were that chronically short of office square meterage.
Feile an Pobail t shirt ( The Provo Arts Festival, beloved of naive peacemonkeys who are the same kind of people who tell their pals abroad about the Joys of Orangefest too)
Bigotry as humorous social commentary, what an exibition.
Too right, Turgon. The SDLP never happened according to the blesssed Antichrist Adams. He is totally deluded as it was prophesied he would delude others.
Can we now assume that the ‘ball not man’ rule goes out with window when discussing Adams? Or now as I think back to the Pat Doherty thread, it goes out the window when discussing any SF member?
Marcionite
The t-shirts were fab. ‘Celtic for the cup’ or something I presume was a gaelic phrase. But as mentioned a few days ago, the ‘Terror chic’ PLO 70′s scarf (£1.99) ,beloved of shoppers at’Fresh Garbage’ of a certain vintage was a nice touch.
The Tiger Woods apology was less contrived than this crap.
NI would be a lot better off if everyone there forgot his or her opinion about Christianity, so I won’t express mine, and it would be censored for offensive language anyway. That said, any public act by a politican of Adam’s stature is obviously based on a political calculation.
Instead of reading in all our various attitudes towards SF or the PIRA, it’s more interesting to ask why he thinks these particular angles will play to his advantage at this moment. I don’t have a clue about this.
Even if Adams looked like a monk accompanied by his spin-friar this below was the revolutionary war as practised by two its heroes:
“Ms Price, who fell out with the Provisionals over the direction of the peace process, is expected to tell the ICLVR that she drove another of the Disappeared – a former monk in the Capuchin order turned IRA intelligence officer called Joe Lynskey – across the border days before he was murdered and secretly buried.
Mr Lynskey had been having an affair with a comrade’s wife and ordered the shooting of his rival. Ms Price is also expected to tell the ICLVR she was in a car which drove Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee – two IRA informers – across the border before their disappearances. The bodies of all three men have never been found.
Ms Price told the Irish News that Mr Adams was her “OC” – Officer Commanding – at the time of the killings which the Social and Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) has called “war crimes”. She also spoke of her battle with alcoholism and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, the results of her involvement in IRA activities.” Times report.
This programme was surely quite blasphemous. I mean Gerry Adams doing the Christ tour on Channel 4 when everyone knows that the correct ritual for such blessed ceremonies is that they are presented on BBC 2 by a superannuated English actor with the ability (and the lack of shame) to speak to his audience in a strangulated voice of hush.
Tradition needs be respected and I can only but blame the baleful influence of Vatican II for this exercise in modish trendiness.
Someone should be sacked, I don’t know who that someone might be, so they should just sack the nearest one – the public demand no less!
Rory Carr
I don’t really think that that many people mind that Adams did this programme.
It showed Adams up for the intellectual lighweight that he is;whilst also bringing to light his self-righteous zealotry.
It also served to bring to the fore the great paradox between Gerry the church man and all the rest of the boys in the cages reading their Frantz Fanon, with his suggestions that the church establishes a sophisticated system of political oppression within the colonized land, that colonization and evangelization work hand in hand, and that the colonizer’s God creates humans as inferior or superior.
I hear that C4′drama department may now do a remake of Jesus story, with Gerry as Jesus and the the old 12 man IRA Army Executive as the 12 apostles; with the only problem being that they are not sure which of them to cast in the role of Judas.
“When he came to the discussion of the relevance of Jesus’s teaching to his own life he was asked a few questions about how Jesus’s non violent message conflicted with the IRA campaign of violence. Unsurprisingly in view of the nature of the programme Adams’s rewriting of the history of the Troubles was never challenged. he was not challenged when he stated: “If no one pushing for a peaceful solution then you will get violence;” clearly the SDLP never happened.”
The Irish were oppressed by Unionist dross. Some, such as the SDLP, tried to do an accommodation with the Nazis earlier in the day; others, like the Zealots, continued the militant tradition against the foreign oppressors and the colonialists.
As in The Life of Brian, I guess imperialists and their thuggish local reps only want to see what they want to see.
It is possible Gerry Adams believed every word he said. Regrettably, in light of recent revelations, he may be the only one who did.
Someone should be sacked, the public demand no less!
My we have moved on.