“Police were evacuating the area when the bomb went off.”
Few details so far, but the BBC are reporting that a car bomb has exploded near Newry courthouse.
BBC Ireland Correspondent Mark Simpson said it appeared to have been a car bomb which “seems to have been planted by dissident republicans”. “What the IRA used to do quite frequently was target the courthouse – that is what dissident republicans are now doing,” he added.
Also from the BBC report
A car was abandoned close to the gates of the courthouse at about 2200 GMT on Monday. Police were evacuating the area when the bomb went off.
Anyone know about the extent of damage?
Early reports say nobody has died – hope not.
Irish people trying to kill Irish people, insane.
Jesus pippakin, they have been doing that forever. Even before the Normans arrived under invitation from the Pope.
Eamonn Mallie is saying on Twitter that Danny Kennedy says car with bomb aboard driven right to gate of Newry courthouse. Recognised dissident code word used in warning.
dmfoto with first shot on twitter indicates very little damage
http://tweetphoto.com/12224739
Via maxer08 on twitter first video
Via maxer08 on twitter first video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8s5oUmzGUA
Are you impressed?
What a batshit crazy question. Of course not. Are you always a tool?
This has been coming for a long time. Armagh is turning into a ‘dissident’ playground. There’s still some serious fuckwits about. Hope there were no injuries.
Maybe I’ve picked you up wrong then…just for clarity, you are 100% opposed to this type of activity and would call on those responsible to be identified to the PSNI and prosecuted where possible?
There was circa 300 to 400 active Provos at any one time, and circa 100 active FRU agents and a similar number on the books of Special Branch. Add in MI5 and MI6 and you’re looking at the majority of the Provos/Shinners working for the British state. There is no reason to assume that this group is not every bit as infiltrated and controlled by the British state as the Provos/Shinners are.
The advantage of this very low level of state-sponsored terrorism is that it serves purpose of encouraging the muppets to believe that this is the alternative to not endorsing the legitimacy of British sovereignty. The result of this will be, therefore, a further consolidation of that British sovereignty.
Since the muppets gave up their national rights in return for a cessation of activity by the state-sponsored murder gangs, it is necessary to reinforce the bargain by actions such as this.
I think you’ve probably got some faulty math there, Alias.
They’re contemptible scum.
In the last forty years has violence moved Irish unification one inch closer?
No. But it has moved it back by several decades at least. Of course these “patriots” are too thick to know otherwise.
As a proud Irishman, I would request that these morons kindly fuck off and disappear.
I’ll be interested to hear the response to Post Number 13
time time again we hear on slugger how dissidants are poorly organised and arn’t worth the paper that’s written about them. Make no mistake, they represent a real threat to human life in NI. The question is, are people from nationalist/republican areas ready to ‘out’ thesescum bags or are they still though of as ‘heroes’ of the community?
Strange that they target a largely nationalist town like Newry?
This would just be one big yawn were it not for the fact that sooner or later innocent lives will be lost. By innocent I mean anyone other than these tossers being blown up by one of their own devices.
30 years of this nonsense resulted in SF sitting in Stormont and a UI as far away as ever. What exactly makes this latest bunch of muppets think they can achieve anything other than dead Irishmen, lengthy jail terms and general disruption to the community?
I say to anyone who knows these misguided and deluded people, think what happened before. Do you want to risk child abusers getting away with it. Do you want sadists taking their pick of young vulnerable girls.
It cannot work it really does create, that latest trendy phrase ‘a climate of fear’. Dont let them do it. Make sure your young people are safe from harm.
I am actually shocked that in the light of all the recent allegations someone even wants to go back in time.
Or put another way, this bunch want to climb into Jim Allister’s magic time machine and fuck off back to the seventies.
Silence is the answer to #13 Shame.
No wonder our car insurance is so expensive.
No answer yet then…maybe Mark McGregor’s busy. I’ll cheeck back later.
Was that the dissident entry to the Your Country, Your Call competition, MARY McAleese’s search to find two “game-changing” ideas that will help secure prosperity and jobs for Ireland.
Pippakin
This thread is about a bunch of tossers blowing up Newry courthouse not about child abuse.Lets not,ahem,hijack this thread eh?
When an area is run by gangs, and it doesnt matter whether the gang call themselves the ‘sharks’ or the ‘provos’. The result is the most sadistic and depraved will infiltrate. The sadistic few build a reputation, they are always prepared to go the extra yard in hurting others, always prepared to ‘disappear’ someone. Such people then surround themselves with the kind of vultures who would choke on their own vomit, at the violence being meted out to someone, rather than risk the loss of their own ‘stature’ in the ‘gang.
We cannot risk that, cannot go back to the murder and mayhem of the past.
The political situation here’s sometimes said to be stuck in a paradigm that’s obsessed with identity and identity-preservation. It should move on to one based in, say, recognition and pluralism, or discourse or something. Whatever you think is better, I suppose, than the familiar tribal stuff. The thing with the dissidents is, who are they?
The identity bit doesn’t make sense. The agenda, such as can be reconstructed from their ‘actions’ involves, primarily, harassing emblematic figures (persons or institutions) that represent progression of some sort, however imperfect or faltering it might be. Cops who break the mould in some respect or the policing board building, for instance. So they’re just conservatives. But since we’re famous for lacking civic life here, what exactly they want to conserve is a mystery.
The other notable aspect of their behaviour besides this pointlessness is their general ineffectiveness. Several ‘sucessful’ (as they’d see it, I hasten to add) efforts out of how many failures? And those are the failures we know about. And some of the successes have been, for example, throwing fireworks over the wall of a sparsely populated army base in north Belfast. Even on a terror agenda they fail. Few are terrorised, really, not to the extent of years gone by anyway. More just emphatically bored and irritated at the audacity of the clampets.
We don’t know who they are, or what their actions are meant to be. They’re pointless, just sociopaths. Dangerous, yes, as the tenth time they try, they do manage to explode something, and the tenth time they explode something, it’s under some poor bastard’s car.
What I’m saying is that these wazzocks have no identity and no agenda and are as dangerous as any fuckwit with a bag of fertiliser and access to google can be.
I’d suspect criminal investigation could clear them up pretty quickly. Proper, forensic investigation. They don’t seem too bright. Maybe Baggott’s efforts to limit cop bureaucracy are aimed at making just this possible?
skullion
Indeed I have not. I have merely pointed out the obvious outcome. See my comment #1 for my reasoning.
the pathetic lost souls who did this really are sad – vicious – losers – with nothing to offer but the hatred of the past. move on you bunch of w______rs
Getting a bit iritated at the comments aimed at Mark McGregor.
We have no right to ask people to condemn their beliefs, we can ask them to think twice before they give such would be murderers aid or assistance.
I know and so does everyone that some republicans feel let down by S/F and the GFA, and some of these people spent years in prison for their beliefs. So no I am not asking them to condemn disidents, just ask those disidents to be peaceful in their actions, and to put life and prosperity first. Our day will come, our direction should be to the future, not the past.
Pippa you are a sad deluded sentimentalist if you think
‘just ask those disidents to be peaceful in their actions, and to put life and prosperity first.’
that will have any effect.
Pippakin
We are asking people to be honest in their beliefs, we’re not asking them to condemn their beliefs. For someone so able to express his opinions as Mark McGregor, don’t you think it’s odd that he chooses not to answer a question that for the rest us is very simple?
Perhaps the man himself can clear this up for us.
”you are a sad deluded sentimentalist if you think
‘just ask those disidents to be peaceful in their actions, and to put life and prosperity first.’
that will have any effect.”
Just so Bryan — these people inhabit the same self-deluded wasteland formerly inhabited by Messrs Adams, McGuinness et al. Their notions of history and myth, truth and reality exist in a parallel universe where uniting Ireland will result in some Gaelic paradise which never existed and never will.
The rest of us accept that NI will remain within the UK for as long as the voting majority wish and simply want to get on with the everyday business of living.
Rather than attempting to appeal to the dissidents good nature or reason with them, these twisted dinosaurs merely need to be thrown into prison and forgotten about.
BryanS Skintown Lad
You are asking someone to step outside their ‘comfort zone’ and express an opinion that in all probability cannot be expressed in a yes/no answer, or quite possibly an answer as long as War and Peace.
As for ‘sad and deluded’ – I am a realist and can see where the dissidents may, almost certainly will if they continue, end up. I think many of them can or will see it too. It is no good thinking to we would never let that happen, we wont have to, others will and we will be too engrossed to see until it is too late.
FGS, give me a break I don’t sit at a computer ensuring your questions are met as and when they are raised – I do have a life. In this case I’m loath to answer questions framed in such a manner when the majority put them without a real name. Demanding I jump through little hoops held out from behind a cloak of anonymity.
But I’m surprised you even need to ask the question. Of course I do not encourage people to cooperate with or endorse the PSNI, just as I do not encourage people to cooperate with or endorse those detonating bombs but I’m also not a constitutional nationalist or supporting the British state’s role in Ireland. Many of my and other blog entries have focused on the ongoing political nature of policing and the use of the police against legitimate political activism. While that is ongoing for some including me it is a purely political decision on not legitimising them.
Of course some of their role is legitimate and/or civic, that gives rise to situations where even some of those rejecting them on principle will inevitable cooperate but while they are inextricably linked with political activity anything other than rejection on political grounds won’t be forthcoming from me.
Rejecting a political police force and armed struggle are not mutually exclusive positions. Just because Republicans planting bombs are wrong doesn’t make the PSNI suddenly right or acceptable – they drop their politics and mine might not be an issue in return. However, unlike both organisations raised here I have not engaged in anything other than legitimate activity, I have not abused process or used futile armed tactics, I have no information to withhold, no power to abuse.
I do have the right to hold poltical opinions – something many on this site along with the PSNI and those planting bombs seem in agreement in wanting to deny people.
Mark,
I wasnt demanding you jump through hoops. I asked a question and your curt reply lead to another. Nor did I resort to name calling.
As for the substance of the reply, youre entitled to your opinion, same as me. No issue there.
I’ve little time for the PSNI either, but the non-co-operation. Just how far does that go with you…if we had a bus load of kids coming home from GAA training splattered all over the road in Newry last night (wrong place wrong time), would that still hold?
Why this wall of silence about certain journalists whose hatred of Sinn Féin is so great that they “big up” the dissidents at every opportunity? What exactly is their agenda?
I was in Derry recently and expected to meet a hotbed of dissent following media reports about the rise of the dissidents there. Not a bit of it.
Of course, a small number of dissident cells, which have some experienced operators within their ranks, can do damage, but the bigger picture, in my view, is the assault on Sinn Féin. This chimes in with the dissidents whom I have spoken to, who were more interested in expressing their hatred of Sinn Fein than attacking the “Brits” and all their ills.
mark mcgregor,
‘they drop their politics and mine might not be an issue in return.’
Is the PSNI a political party ? Who exactly is denying your political opinions ?
iluvni,
‘if we had a bus load of kids coming home from GAA training splattered all over the road in Newry last night (wrong place wrong time), would that still hold?’
Or a bus load of tourists . pensioners , etc .
The so called ‘dissidents’ are enemies of ALL the Irish people not just SF or Unionists . The vast majority of people voted in the GFA to put an end to the violence .
Let’s hope that these criminals are found quickly and are put behind bars for a very long time before they ‘achieve’ another Omagh . And apart from destroying the lives of many families what did Omagh ‘achieve’?
Obviously some people have not got the message .
Greenflag,
Certainly…a busload of kids, OAPs, shoppers, anyone.
Sinn Fein’s Pat McLarnon doing a great job trying to defend the dissidents behind this attack on Politics.ie
http://alturl.com/vxoa
Ferguson,
I don’t read that as McLarnon defending the dissidents at all. As he says, “stating facts”. Commenters imaginations are going a bit strong over there.
Anyone who plants a bomb is trying to kill. It doesn’t matter when or where you leave it – there is always a chance the PSNI wont get the warning or someone will be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Don’t forget, if you use Pat’s logic the Omagh bombers weren’t trying to kill anyone and we know what happened there.
PS. You can call me Stephen.
these are scum in newry do we want our kids to suffer the last thirty yers p oo7
Ongoing security alert at Lough Rd Lurgan, bomb squad have sealed off the main road into the town from the motorway.
Mark McGregor
I remember a time where you posted a you-tube video of what you described as brutal political policing, or words to that effect. Upon viewing the video it became apparent to all posters that you had greatly overstated the case and what was actually recorded were police officers carrying out a difficult task with professionalism, under the heavy verbal abuse of locals.
when posters pointed out what they saw, and how it didn’t accord with what you alleged you saw, you failed to come back to your own post to defend yourself.
so forgive us this time our criticism of your momentary silence on this thread but more importantly, forgive us for thinking your latest smears of the PSNI are not very well grounded this time either.
I would not ask anyone to deny their beliefs, but if this continues, people will die, or be maimed for life. If this continues we will end up with the kind of ghettos where children are abused and young girls raped, not just with impunity, but with apparent immunity.
No sane sensible person wants that. Arguably John Hume got Sinn Fein out of the hole they had dug themselves. He offered them a lifeline and they were wise enough to grab it.
A long time ago I heard someone say the British Military had no problem with the ‘war’ in the north, they thought it was a great ‘training ground’! Excuse me if I object to my country being used as a firing range and the people as moving targets.
So utterly pointless. All of it.
Sad
Hate to play devil’s advocate here, but exactly how are the actions of the ‘dissidents’ today any less justifiable than those of PIRA say 20 years ago?
Gerry Lvs castro
So these dissidents are going to continue where PIRA left off. Like PIRA is not a shining example of ‘how not to’ to everyone?
I bet there are ‘people’ on some streets just quietly, secretly, salivating at the thought of the power.
Or the Easter rising etc ?