Monday, February 27, 2006
It’s All Mary McAleese’s Fault: Frazer
Today’s Newsletter contains a headline accusation from Willie Frazer that Mary McAleese and Fr. Alex Reid were to blame for Saturday’s riot in Dublin. Not adverse from using inflammatory language himself, apparently Mr. Frazer sees a link between comments attributed to both individuals and the events of Saturday in Dublin. He does not, however, say whether or not he believes his own usage of extreme language played any part in provoking the riot.
Chris Donnelly @ 09:58 PM
Chris Donnelly who last month was blogging from a great moral height on how receptive republicans were to unionist viewpoints.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 10:26 PMslug
ball, not man.
And don’t shoot the messanger.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 10:31 PMIt’s clear that Frazer is working hand in hand with the DUP. No coincidence that Paisley had been levelling both barrels at McAleese recently. With the demise of Paul Berry there is a vacancy for a DUP right-wing firebrand in County Aramgh.
Intially the DUP distanced itself from Love Ulster (perhaps due to the paramilitary connection) but now they are openly working together. Thus Donaldson & co were present at the Dublin stunt.
Are the reactionary elements in Dublin going to collude with this agenda by attacking the President? I hope so because I think they will get more than they bargained for. Ordinary people in the south have absolutely no time for Paisley and his bigotry.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 10:52 PM“Are the reactionary elements in Dublin going to collude with this agenda by attacking the President?” - elfinto
The answer to that question is yes.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 11:02 PMRegarding the Nazi comments of Father Reid and The Irish President. I dismissed these comments at the time as being in the realm of the absurd but also as telling us something about the way nationalists view unionists.
I don’t agree with Frazer that these Nazi comments caused the riots. But I would think it possible that the Nazi comments and the riots have a common cause.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 11:03 PMUnionists are using these comments because they want to be offended.
I suggest they look up the word hyperbole in the dictionary
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 11:08 PMnonsense - it was the securocrats who were behind it all, firstly suggesting the march to the dup and then using their agents in rsf to stir up trouble - anyone with an ounce of brains can see that - the securocrats are everwhere comrades, working tirelessly to frustrate sinn fein!
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 11:38 PM“I don’t agree with Frazer that these Nazi comments caused the riots. But I would think it possible that the Nazi comments and the riots have a common cause. “ - Slug
They sure do: the sectarian bigotry of that supremacist organisation known as the Orange Order.
Although it’s interesting to hear Unionists demand that Republicans build bridges to them, whilst Unionists are busy burning them on the other side.
How does the Unionist community expect members of the Orange order to build bridges when its members will be barred from membership if they dare attend the wedding of a Catholic friend, for example? Is that bridge building or bridge burning?
The answer is that Unionists use the demand that Nationalist build bridges to them solely as a means of censoring Nationalist criticism of the unmitigated and unreconstructed bigotry of Unionism itself.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 11:44 PMMary McAleese comment shows that nothing offends like the simple truth. They fit the Orange Order perfectly. Here is what she actually said:
“They gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics, in the same way that people give to their children an outrageous and irrational hatred of those who are of different colour and all of those things.”
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 11:48 PMSomehow, I just can’t picture Mary McAleese and Alec Reid in Burberry baseball caps and Celtic tops, swigging cans of Strongbow and lugging slabs of concrete at the Gardai, clutching looted Adidas tops in the other hand.....still it’s a rather amusing image…
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 11:48 PMDubliner
“They [the Nazis] gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics.” [Dubliner’s quote]
She wasn’t talking about Orangemen - you added that. She just says “people in Northern Ireland”. I assume she leaves Catholics out of that. And if this is the quote its even worse than I remembered. Its not that the unionists are like the Nazis, its that the Nazis are like the unionists. And Dubliner thinks this is the simple truth. Dublin rule grows less attractive by the day.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2006 @ 11:58 PMSlug the term “people” does not mean she was referring to 100% of Protestants. The Unionist media coverage of her comments was the worst possible interpretation of her remarks. She apologised afterwards. Obviously she was referring to some Unionists, not all. But you wouldn’t think that reading the Unionist press saying she called Protestants Nazis. She also mentioned “people” in South Africa in relation to Aparteid. Should whites in SA be offended by that too? Was she calling all whites in SA racists? Of course not.
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 12:09 AMThat slug1 12.09AM is me, Brian Boru.
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 12:12 AMDid you know that frazers website contains a link in which paisley gives a speech naming one of the mc reavey brothers (consequently murdered) as the killer in knigsmill, Even though the police gave a statement refuting the mc reaveys had any involvement in such things. Mr frazer having been asked many times to remove it continues to have it on his site.
Why.
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 12:30 AM“Dublin rule grows less attractive by the day”
Ahh, that old line. You’d think that half a million unionists were about to vote for a united ireland right before the riots and have now changed their minds.
Not likely.
The vast majority of unionists will never vote for a UI so why bother trying to persuade them.
The small minority who would probably even consider the idea are unlikely to be perturbed in the slightest by the actions of an insignificant group of rioters.
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 12:34 AMFrasier needs a new publicity flack.
He didn’t attract more than a phone booth full of RSF fanatics and even the lumpenproletariat passed up the loyalists in order to beat the piss out of the Garda.
Tom Cruise fired his sister after the Oprah romp, so maybe his sis can punch up Willie’s coverage.
Worse yet, the artifice of these regularly contrived events now bores the rest of the world rigid.
Irish Times 26 Feb 06
Riots low on list of priorities for internatinal press
“Despite the shockwaves generated at a national level by events on Dublin’s streets last weekend, the disturbances generated few ripples in the international media.Compared to the rioting in the Muslim world over the Muhammad cartoons, the number of casualties - 14 people injured - was relatively low and clearly insufficient to persuade the world’s press that this was a major news story.”
It starts with the predictable article in the Gardian and ends with a 400 word teaser in the Calgary Hearld.
Christ, ya bombed in Alberta.
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 04:14 AMThe Dubliner & Slug
That’s a misquote and snip of the Presidents words.
Firstly she said ”for example, of Catholics”, in context it makes a difference.
And secondly if you read the full quote the peoople of Dublin should be just as offended for being called racist.Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 07:03 AMGood man, Willie. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
TS
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 09:24 AMWhen saying that the Nazis are “the same as” “people in NI”, the Irish President perhaps should have clarified exactly who. It has left me wondering.
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 09:25 AMhehe, you gotta love nationalists - even after the weekends events they still manage to make it all about themselves and try to reinforce their tried old “Most Oppressed people on Earth” myth.
“They [the Nazis] gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics.”
They should be both sides of the divide in NI, there are some nasty, bigoted catholics just as there are some nasty bigoted prods
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 10:28 AM“slug7”
a misquote again…
“They [the Nazis] gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred, for example, of Catholics.”Mary’s unfortunate error was giving an example.
And yes you’re right “there are some nasty, bigoted catholics just as there are some nasty bigoted prods”Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 10:40 AMMaca: I think the Irish President’s mistake was to bring NI into Holocaust day. Fair enough, she blurted it out before she realised and we could all do that. Just like Fr Reid. But these slips are possibly all the more revealing because they reveal something underneath.
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 10:53 AMThank you for clarifying that Maca, I was doing me nut in reading the misquotes.
McAlees might just as easily have said “for example, of Protestants” and she would have been just as right…
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 10:55 AMThis weekends events have certainly produced some profound difficulties for our nationalist and republican friends.
They have been faced with their own intolerance and predjudices and they are desperate to interpret things in a way that puts them back in the victims seat.It’s not going to work.
What happens the if there are a coupe of hundred loyalists on a rampage and they are told that it is just a minor skirmish, nothing to get excited about?Every utterance of Paisley is attacked for fueling the flames of hatred, yet so many people in the republic think they can call Unionists Nazis or claim every Orangeman is a bigot, and not expect these words to help create a situation in which riots occur?
People have spent a lot of time and effort in demonising Unionists.
It’s a bit rich now when we hear them condemning the riots.If you want to prevent further riots like this, the answer is not in drafting in more police, it’s in facing down your own inherrant predjudices and accepting that Orangemen and Unionists are ordinary people, not monsters.
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 10:58 AMFrom fair_deal
“Even though the police gave a statement refuting the mc reaveys had any involvement in such things”
The claims against the McReaveys are based on intelligence documents from immediately after the incidents so it had not been picked out of the sky but based on official documents (although it is now commonly accepted the quality of intelligence at that time was not good). The RUC response to the statements of Paisley made under parliamentary privilege was to reject them, one can only presume on later intelligence received about the attack.
I must ask how a nationalist/republican is happy to use police intelligence when it clears a nationalist but when it accuses republican groups based on intelligence we get calls of securocrat conspiracy?
Victim groups naming people they believe are culpable for crimes is nothing new or unusual. British-Irish Rights Watch regularly submit reports naming names as do nationalist victims group. Whether it is a wise tactic or not FAIR’s practice in this case is no different than others.
On slugger itself Nationalist commentators have been naming a number of murdered UDR men as responsible for a series of attacks in south Armagh and the republic to justify the riots in Dublin. If it is an acceptable tactic for slugger commentators why is it unacceptable for FAIR?
Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 @ 11:07 AM
