Thursday, May 31, 2007
It was lack of southern Protestants ‘wot lost it’…
Tongue firmly in cheek, Newton Emerson reckons that Sinn Fein ‘bombed’ simply because there weren’t enough Protestants in the Republic to wind up their supporters... (subs needed)
Newton’s Optic: Sinn Féin has blamed “a serious shortage of Protestants in the 26 counties” for its poor showing in last week’s election.
“Sinn Féin draws its core support from people who can’t be relied on to vote,” explained Dr Pat Answer, Professor of Advanced Shinnerology at Dublin Sunday Business College.
“They might be too drunk or hung-over on election day, or have a court appearance or a meeting with their parole officer.
“They might have injured themselves by climbing through a kitchen window while carrying a wide-screen television. Or they might simply have lost track of the date because they never go to work.
“Whatever the reason, Sinn Féin voters need to be provoked to the polls and there simply aren’t enough Protestants in the Republic to cause the necessary level of antagonism.”
The situation is very different in Northern Ireland, where the daily sight of Protestants cutting their perfect hedges, driving their sensible cars and going to church in elaborate hats wedged tightly onto their pointy little heads ensures that Sinn Féin voters are always angry enough to cast a ballot.
Attempts to widen the party’s southern appeal beyond its traditional sectarian base may only have made matters worse.
“According to our research, many Sinn Féin voters thought that Mary Lou McDonald was a Protestant,” Dr Answer said. “She certainly has that smug look about her. Or at least she certainly did.”
Dublin Sunday Business College has defended the wider sociological methodology behind its research, which overestimated Sinn Féin’s final tally by a statistically acceptable 300 per cent.
“We were right about the number of people dumb enough to vote for Sinn Féin,” Dr Answer said.
“We just forgot that they were lazy as well.”
For party activists the question now is where they go from here.
“Well, we can’t go back up North,” Sinn Féin community outreach negotiator Anne Phoblacht said. “It’s full of Protestants.”
Developing a separate southern strategy could also prove problematic.
“We warned people on the doorsteps to vote for us or the Protestants would get in,” Ms Phoblacht said. “But everyone just laughed because they thought we meant Trevor Sargent.”
The Irish Times understands that senior party figures have already discussed the possibility of bringing more Protestants into the Republic. Martin Ferris has agreed to charter a boat and Aengus Ó Snodaigh has offered the use of a van.
“We’re mainly interested in people from Nigeria,” Ms Phoblacht said. “You can have any Protestants you like as long as they’re black.”
Experts agree that this is Sinn Féin’s only hope for an electoral breakthrough.
“There’s no point being sectarian when there aren’t any Protestants and no point pretending to be non-sectarian when there aren’t any Protestants,” Dr Answer explained.
“There’s also no point talking about equality when you’ve no Protestants to be equal to and no point talking about rights when you can’t claim that Protestants are infringing your rights.
“So really it’s all the Protestants’ fault. No wonder people hate those hedge-cutting freaks.”
But it’s not all bad news for Sinn Féin. The party polled quite well in Border counties due to Northern Ireland’s provocative proximity.
“If there had still been some Protestant farmers in the area we might even have won a few seats,” Ms Phoblacht said.
“What a pity we killed them.”
Mick Fealty @ 12:55 PM
This was a very good piece of satire which unfortunately masks the ethnic cleansing of 80% of the Protestant population in the ROI since partition - now where are the Public Inquiries when you really need one?
Despite smug southern nationalism, their piece of the emerald isle is bathed in the blood of northern Protestants. Any wonder unionists are in such a tizzy about a united ireland. For all their claims about culture, the micks are incredible dim. Strategy I for convincing Protestants to join a United Ireland - lets discriminate and destroy their culture in the Free State and blow them to pieces in the north in front of their children.
Posted by on May 31, 2007 @ 11:21 PM“and blow them to pieces in the north in front of their children.”
Yes, won’t somebody think of the children!!!!!
Posted by on May 31, 2007 @ 11:30 PMStrategy I for convincing Protestants to join a United Ireland - lets discriminate and destroy their culture in the Free State and blow them to pieces in the north in front of their children.
Well it seems to have worked with the Snoddys doesn’t it?
Posted by on May 31, 2007 @ 11:44 PMFor Sammy Hanna’s education:
Ethnic Cleansing in Ireland:
A Millennium Perspective by William Hughes“I will not ignore ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Kosovo."[1]-British Prime Minister, Tony Blair
The idea that Great Britain has any moral standing to intervene in another nation’s civil war because of supposed “ethnic cleansing” is simply preposterous. As a ruthless imperial power, it wrote the book on subjugating other races.[2] Fortunately, in the case of its American colony, it was repelled.[3] But, only after it had suffered military losses at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry and New Orleans in 1814.[4] Other British-held territories in China, India, Africa, Australia, Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America, weren’t as lucky.[5] In fact, the 200,000 indigenous peoples of Tasmania were literally wiped out by the British.[6] Slave trading, piracy and opium running, were also part of its notorious practice of empire building.[7]
With respect to Ireland, ethnic cleansing has been the essence of British rule dating from the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169. One of its earliest racist laws, enacted in 1367, was the “Statute of Kilkenny.” It prohibited intermarriage between the British and (Gaelic) Irish under penalty of death. To the British, the Irish were subhuman.
If one thinks of Irish history as a play, crafted in London’s Whitehall by its bureaucrats, at the direction of powerful wirepullers, where the actors (read individuals, political parties, military, police, etc.) are given certain roles, but the end result is already known by the wirepullers, then the tragic drama of Ireland under British rule can be understood.
Since British outrages against the Irish are so many, space requirements permit me to cite only a few of the more egregious ones.[8]
The Great Terrors
In 1520, when Henry VIII broke with Rome, it added religion to the bias against the Catholic Irish. Under Henry’s daughter, the murderous Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), the killing fields of Ireland ran red with the blood of innocent victims. It is estimated 1.5 million Irish peasants were starved or “put to the sword” and much of their lands seized by English predators, while she reigned.[9]
By the time the zealot Oliver Cromwell arrived on the scene, the Irish were ripe for more carnage. “It has pleased God to bless our endeavors,” he wrote of the mass slaughter in 1649, by his Puritan troops of 3,552 Irish inhabitants of the seaport town of Drogheda, just north of Dublin. He pompously continued, “I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches."[1 This Drogheda massacre is one of the leading examples of the insidious British policy of ethnic cleansing in Ireland. Another is Cromwell’s sacking of Wexford and the killing of 2,000 of its citizens.
The infamous “Cromwellian Settlements” followed his conquest of Ireland. Millions of acres of land (41 percent of Antrim, 26 percent of Down, 34 percent of Armagh and 38 percent of Monaghan) were allocated to English Protestant settlers. The landowners of Irish birth were either killed, banished or forced out to Connaught in the west of Ireland, where it was hoped “they would starve to death."[11] A Cromwell biographer labeled this massive confiscation of Irish lands, “by far the most wholesale effort to impose on Ireland the Protestant faith and English ascendancy."[12] The British policy of colonizing Ireland with Protestants still has repercussions which are felt today on the streets of Belfast.
From 1649 to 1652, one-third of the population of Ireland was destroyed. Petty, an English historian says, “660,000 Irish people were killed."[13] Twenty thousand Irish boys and girls also were sold into slavery to the West Indies. The Irish peasant farmers that survived were forced to pay rent to their usurpers. Once prosperous home grown industries were also destroyed because they “competed with British factories."[14]
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 12:09 AMPart 2
The memory of the holocausts under Elizabeth I and Cromwell have been forever seared into the psyche of the Irish race. Cromwell’s evil idea that Irish Catholics were “barbarous wretches” has, too, unfortunately, passed into the British mindset.[15] Parliament reacted to Cromwell’s crime against humanity in Ireland by passing an infamous Resolution that legitimized ethnic cleansing. It stated, “The House doth approve the execution done at Drogheda, as an act both of justice to them and mercy to others who may be warned by it."[16]After the shaky British monarchy was restored in 1660, under Charles II, the vicious propaganda against Irish Catholics continued unabated. Many of the “vilest pamphlets” hyping the threat of a supposed “Popish Plot” against the Crown were printed in Holland.[17]
When James II, Charles’ brother, succeeded him as King of England and Ireland in 1685, the hopes of Irish Catholics rose. His defeat, however, by the forces of William of Orange, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, on July 12, brought renewed disaster. More confiscations of Irish lands followed and the adoption into law of the notorious “Penal Laws” in the late 1690s. Their net effect was to hold that, “The law does not presume any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic."[18]
As time passed, there were periodic, but failed, rebellions in Ireland. In 1845, with nationalist aspirations at their lowest ebb, the moans of the starving were heard. The potato crop was blighted and famine stalked the land.
The Irish Genocide
Author Thomas Gallagher sets the scene for this unspeakable tragedy in his moving testament to the Irish dead, Paddy’s Lament: “A famine unprecedented in the history of the world, a chapter in human misery to harrow the human heart was about to start, and even little children could see its quick, sure approach in the nakedly fearful eyes and faces of their parents."[19]
By the mid-19th century, Ireland was a country of eight million, mostly peasants. As a result of years of exploitation, they survived as tenant farmers and were never far from economic disaster. They were forced to exist on a single crop: the potato. A disease turned the potato into a foul slime. When the Irish masses turned to the British government for relief, they received the back of London’s hand.
Meanwhile, “Food, from 30 to 50 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint (from Ireland) by 12,000 British constables, reinforced by 200,000 British soldiers, warships, excise vessels, and coast guards… Britain seized from Ireland’s producers tens of millions of head of livestock, tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry and dairy products-enough to sustain 18-million persons."[2
Gallagher estimates two million died from the famine. Writer Chris Fogarty, however, places the numbers “murdered at approximately 5.16 million… making it the Irish holocaust."[21] Distinguished legal scholars, like Professors Charles Rice of Notre Dame U. and Francis A. Boyle, U. of Illinois, believe that under International Law, that the British pursued a barbarous policy of mass starvation in Ireland from 1845-50, and that such conduct constituted “genocide."[22]
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 12:12 AMPart 3
The Wrong of Partition
An armed uprising occurred in Ireland, on Easter Monday, 1916. It was quickly crushed and its leaders executed by firing squads on the orders of General John “Mad Dog” Maxwell.[23] In the next general election, in 1918, Sinn Fein, the Republican Party, won 75 percent of the seats allocated to Ireland in the London Parliament. In defiance of Great Britain, its representatives set up an independent parliament known as Dail Eireann (Assembly of Ireland). London replied with massive violence, spearheaded by the “Black and Tans,” fascist storm troopers.
Two years of war ensued with the Irish Republican Army, (IRA) fighting the British to a stalemate.[24] In 1921, a truce was declared. During negotiations for an Anglo-Irish Treaty, British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, issued an ultimatum to the Irish delegation: Sign a draft treaty or face immediate and “terrible war."[25] The signing led to a bitter civil war and the partition of Ireland, with the six northeastern counties becoming the bogus state of “Northern Ireland.”
After the civil war ended, Eamon De Valera became Prime Minister of the “Irish Free State,” which consisted of the twenty-six counties in the South. On July 1, 1937, a Constitution was adopted by his government rejecting partition and any oath of allegiance to the British Crown.
Six County Police State
Since the late 60s, British rule in the North of Ireland has been marked by events, like “Bloody Sunday,"[26] the “Dublin-Monaghan Bombings,"[27] and the death of the “Ten Hunger Strikers."[28] It has employed political assassinations, a shoot-to-kill policy, raiding of private homes, plastic bullets, the repressive Diplock Court system, tear gas, surveillance, torture and deportation in order to suppress the Irish.[29]
As resistance by the IRA to the occupation intensified, so did renewed oppression.[3 Actions, like the torching of Catholic churches, and the murders of attorneys Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, have underscored its policy of terror.[31] Although British officials regularly deny any responsibility for Loyalist (read Protestant, Unionist or Orange Order) terrorism, strong evidence suggest the contrary.[32]
Thanks to American activists, Ex-British Army Captain, Fred Holroyd, (MI 6) revealed to a C-Span audience details of Britain’s “dirty tricks” in the Six Counties. British tactics included murders, bombings, framing of innocent victims, black propaganda and kidnappings.[33] Holroyd said the Special Air Service (SAS), undercover military personnel that are licensed to kill, are controlled directly by the office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, and that the SAS, often referred to as “Margaret Thatcher’s Praetorian Guard,” ran spies into the 26 Counties.[34]
British wrongdoing didn’t stop at the Irish shores. It also unsuccessfully opposed the MacBride Principles, U.S. sourced anti-discrimination legislation, which promoted equal employment opportunities for Catholics in the sectarian dominated Six Counties.[35]
Conclusion
A “Peace Process,” in Ireland, was boldly initiated, in 1993, by Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and the Social Democratic Labor Party’s John Hume. It eventually evolved into the 1998 “Good Friday Agreement.” Unionist prevarications, however, and the reluctance of Blair’s Labor government to trump the Orange card, despite having a 179-vote majority in the Parliament, have brought it to the brink of failure. Keep in mind that on December 19,1993, the London Sunday Times reported a secret Anglo-Irish deal to “smash the IRA, if a peace deal is rejected."[36]
Some now wonder, if the “Peace Process” is yet another example of Perfidious Albion’s dirty tricks. They ask, “Will British ethnic cleansing return once again to Ireland and with a fury that would shame even Cromwell?” Only the wirepullers at Whitehall know for sure the answer to that troubling question.
If the past 831 years is prologue, we would do well to heed it.
© William Hughes 2002
William Hughes is the author of “Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order” (Authors Choice Press) and “Baltimore Iconoclast” (Writer’s Showcase), which are availabel online.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 12:16 AMMr Emerson stand up and take a bow, a really amusing piece indeed.
(PS didn’t someone say Aonghus Ó Snodaigh is a Protestant?) yes the Ulster-Scots translation is Angus O’Snout
Sam Hanna,
(This was a very good piece of satire which unfortunately masks the ethnic cleansing of 80% of the Protestant population in the ROI since partition - now where are the Public Inquiries when you really need one?) yes they only make up 3% of the population, but own 19% of the wealth!!Norn Chick,
(A disease turned the potato into a foul slime.) why did they not mash them!!Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 12:59 AMNewt’s still funny.
And those of ye who think he isn’t let’s see what ye can do.
And those who think it’s schoolboy magazine stuff, well post your schoolboy stuff up here so we can compare.
So he’s a middle class unionist. I know they’re not popular, but it’s not yet a hanging offence.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 01:01 AMAs I say Newt is funny.
Compare and contrast The Devil.
Go on Dev, mash the slime was it? What a card you are!
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 01:05 AMThanks for the chuckle Norn Chick.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 02:19 AMNorn Chick
its too bad the prod majority wont read it as the truth of genocide that it is
I bow to your superior presentation and knowledge
Too bad they will never accept the truth that it is
but then they dont believe their side is guilty of anything but martyrdom
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 02:23 AM“I bow to your superior presentation and knowledge “
superior presentation and knowledge ? It was copy and paste from Noraid !
http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 02:38 AMPaid
“Newt’s still funny.”
In your opinion.“And those of ye who think he isn’t let’s see what ye can do.”
Err, no. I’m not a paid satirist. If I was I’d be as shite as...well Newt.
“And those who think it’s schoolboy magazine stuff, well post your schoolboy stuff up here so we can compare.”
Again, he’s putting his stuff out there. He should be prepared for the critics.
“So he’s a middle class unionist. I know they’re not popular, but it’s not yet a hanging offence.”
Not a hanging offence but its a bit annoying hearing middle class unionists slaggin working class prods. They used them for long enough to do their fightin.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 06:00 AM“I bow to your superior presentation and knowledge “ superior presentation and knowledge ? It was copy and paste from Noraid !
http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htmSo NORAID wants to incite an inquisition against protestants like the Catholic Church did in 15 century Spain against Jews
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/The_Spiritual_Roots_of_Anti-Semitism.aspIf 80% of Protestants in the ROI were either murdered or hunted out after 1922 what hope have 1 million prods in a UI dominated by SF?
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 06:31 AMGuys, I picked this up from the thesaurus in thefreedictionary.com:
Noun 1. satire - witty language used to convey insults or scorn; “he used sarcasm to upset his opponent”; “irony is wasted on the stupid”; “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own"--Jonathan Swift.
Congratulations to all whose politics were ‘targeted’ but kept their sense of humour. If you didn’t, I suggest you read the piece again; this time keeping Swift’s words close to mind.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 06:51 AMAh yes, the old taigs are lazy, stupid and murderous satire. I love that one because I can laugh at stuff like that. Do I win a congratulatory backslap Mick?
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 07:02 AMOoops, I forgot alcholic, thieving bigots as well! Ho ho ho! I love that stuff.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 07:06 AM“Congratulations to all whose politics were ‘targeted’ but kept their sense of humour. If you didn’t, I suggest you read the piece again; this time keeping Swift’s words close to mind.”
Sure Newton’s Optic is all such a great fecking satirical joke. I am laughing my B@llocks off.
Newton’s Optic: “If there had still been some Protestant farmers in the area we might even have won a few seats,” Ms Phoblacht said. “What a pity we killed them.”
‘THE STARVING VICTIMS WERE OFFERED FOOD IN RETURN FOR RENOUNCING THEIR CATHOLIC FAITH AND CONVERTING. DURING THE FAMINE THERE WERE MORE THAN 125 MISSIONS IN IRELAND FOR THE PURPOSE OF CONVERTING CATHOLICS.’
http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm‘Jews had the choice to convert, leave, or be burned at the stake. Thus started the Inquisition.’
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/The_Spiritual_Roots_of_Anti-Semitism.aspPosted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 07:35 AMWhether you think Emerson piece is funny or not doesn’t really matter becasue it is completely true.
The reason Sinn Fein will always do badly south of the border is because there are relatively few prods and nobody resents their existence.
Similarly if the DUP ever choose to contest elections on the mainland - their inevitable failure could also be explained with a similar satirical piece about the Great British Public and the dearth of fenians in their midst.
There’s nothing to see here - move along.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 07:41 AMAh yes, the old taigs are lazy, stupid and murderous satire. I love that one because I can laugh at stuff like that.
Where does Newton say that?
In the article I read he’s lampooning Sinn Fein and their supporters’ bigotry.Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 07:45 AMBriso,
I don’t want to get lumbered with a defence of the piece. Nor do I want to prevent people from coming to their own different conclusions about the piece. But I see two problems with your criticism.
One, it’s meant to engage the irony nerve. More pointedly: satire does not murder, people do. Two, if there is a single butt of the joke it is certainly not at the expense of ‘taigs’, as you put it, but rather Sinn Fein’s electoral strategy, north (which most people seem to have ignored thus far) and south. In the Republic (which is 95% ‘taig’ as you might say) that comes to less than 10% of the population.
It does cut very close to the bone. And I can see why some don’t like it. But then again that is what satire is supposed to do.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 07:51 AM‘Similarly if the DUP ever choose to contest elections on the mainland - their inevitable failure could also be explained with a similar satirical piece about the Great British Public and the dearth of fenians in their midst.’
The DUP already have a voice with nine MP’s at westminister. Why would they follow the folly that SF made of themselves in the recent election in the ROI?
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 08:09 AMThe automatic assumption by Sinn Fein supporters here that all Sinn Fein voters are “taigs” would seem to prove the author’s contention.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 08:16 AM“The DUP already have a voice with nine MP’s at westminister. Why would they follow the folly that SF made of themselves in the recent election in the ROI?”
Because they know they have no chance on the mainland - Sinn Fein have only just learnt the lesson in relation to the RoI “mainland”. Emerson has hit the nail on the head again.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 08:18 AM“One, it’s meant to engage the irony nerve. More pointedly: satire does not murder, people do. Two, if there is a single butt of the joke it is certainly not at the expense of ‘taigs’, as you put it, but rather Sinn Fein’s electoral strategy, north (which most people seem to have ignored thus far) and south. In the Republic (which is 95% ‘taig’ as you might say) that comes to less than 10% of the population.”
Sure - the thrust of the piece is “SF only get any votes by stirring up the taigs”. Something I’ve heard from, well, numerous unionist posters here. Along with claims of mass murder of the Protestant population in the South, which of course ignores big chunks of reality.
So, yeah. It’s just the same stock arguments, dressed up in funny clothes.
Posted by on Jun 01, 2007 @ 08:22 AM
