Thursday, October 30, 2008
“...time for an effort to be made to reduce rather than heighten tension”
Parades Commission Chair Roger Poole has just released a statement on the weekend’s events… below the fold:
“We have been asked to review our decisions but in fact there are very narrow grounds upon which we can review decisions and in this instance the Commission did not deem that there were sufficient grounds for a review.
“We would ask that those who intend to come to the city on Sunday review their own positions and redouble their efforts to take tension out of this issue in advance of the parade. Belfast deserves a peaceful weekend and the citizens and traders in the city are entitled to a trouble free day. Anyone intent of causing or contributing to civil unrest should stay away.
“I acknowledge the helpful comments from the GOC of the British Army who has recognised that not everyone in NI supports the army and that there is a legitimate right to a legal protest. It is not helpful that some political and community leaders continue to call for either the homecoming parade or the legally notified protest, to be banned.
“Now is the time for an effort to be made to reduce rather than heighten tension around this parade and protest. There is an onus on those political and community leaders in a position of influence to demonstrate leadership between now and Sunday through their words, their actions and their commitment to non violent actions.
“Our door remains open to all political parties and to those organising protests and parades to come into the Commission and discuss with us how best to ensure a peaceful day.”
Mick Fealty @ 10:36 AM
What were the remarks of the GOC?
And will anyone really take notice of anything Roger Poole says anyway. It’s a fairly bland statement restating the obvious.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 11:58 AMIt is sad that it has come to this. I believe protests are worthy in their own right to raise issues, but we know already through previous decades of this stuff that SF doesn’t like the British army for obvious reasons, the same way the DUP doesn’t like the IR-Army for obvious reasons.
That much is obvious, so what is the point in protesting a message that we all know so clearly.
I think the RIR should ditch Belfast, and perhaps choose a location that people would appreciate them, welcome them, be proud of their efforts even though not feeling in full support of wars as a means to an end in itself.
For example, places like Carrickfergus, Ballymena, etc, would welcome these troops and the hospitality sectors would be appreciative of the crowds. Crowds could get food without the fear of getting a gobbed-on burger and chips etc.
Belfast is clearly not a sharing city, why bother with it whenever there are other places that would really appreciate hosting the event not least for the economic benefits for local traders etc.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:08 PMDC
Do you extend your idea not to parade in Belfast to nationalist/republican parades too? Or to any parade where one group of people say they don’t want it to happen.Or perhaps that might be considered pandering to the threat of violence….
Just wondering….
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:10 PMThey are both interlocking strategies - unionism-nationalism - remove the other and one can only run so far until no one really cares.
A bit like, say, Forest Gump, running the world only to return to pick up his life again.
These are strategies, not policies, not civic-mindedness of equality and human rights. The move by SF in particular to protest on a backward issue that pre-dates the American-led Afghan-Iraq war proves this to be nothing other than what it is.
It is an ethno-national protest as imagined by SF to appeal to its voters so as not to be ethnically outbid by Eirigi.
Leadership, no. Leadership it isn’t. This is ethnic fellowship, at a time when people need really responses to world changing events such as the collapse of capital and new debates around the socialisation of capitalism’s failings.
Back home in Belfast we are about to witness, something that with all our section 75s and EQIA, which the Shinners love so much, a return to old ethnic-bloc antagonism - a message we have all heard before.
Anybody got anythning new?
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:23 PMPoole is his usual insipid self….what he should have done is ban the Shinners hate protest and hopefully the Police will show Erigi and the other lefty loonies that they won’t get out of their ghetto in the Falls.
The hatemongering scum should be kept out…time to welcome the RIR heroes and other regiments to the Capital city of British Northern Ireland.
COME OUT IN YOUR THOUSANDS AND SHOW THE TERRORISTS AND THEIR ILK THAT ULSTER IS BRITISH AND WE WELCOME HER MAJESTY’S FORCES TO OUR CITY
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:23 PMThey should review it! Both leaders of the main political partys should show leadership on this one and reach a compromise but doubtful it will happen on time but it would be a pleasant surprise.
Extremists on both sides are loving this chance to drag the rest of us backwards.
As I said on another thread earlier today;
So the Million+ people who marched against War in London & millions elsewhere pre Iraq & Afghanistan were wrong then?
They should never of been out there in the first place! It was all based on lies and rooted in money.
Let them have a parade in their barracks where there family and friends can welcome them back.
The rest of us (vast majority) don’t actually care and have plenty of other concerns.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:23 PM2050….who ever you are….speak only for YOURSELF….the British people of Northern Ireland most certainly care and we welcome Her Majesty’s Royal Irish Rangers home to their capital city.
GOD BLESS THEM ALL
[Keep it civil - edited moderator]
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:37 PM2050….who ever you are….speak only for YOURSELF….the British people of Northern Ireland most certainly care and we welcome Her Majesty’s Royal Irish Rangers home to their capital city.
GOD BLESS THEM ALL
THE MURDERING SCUM WILL BE THE PROTESTORS
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:39 PMCOME OUT IN YOUR THOUSANDS AND SHOW THE TERRORISTS AND THEIR ILK THAT ULSTER IS BRITISH AND WE WELCOME HER MAJESTY’S FORCES TO OUR CITY
Posted by Marion on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:23 PM
ulster is NOT british, it is IRISH. the u.k. consists of g.b. AND n.ireland. g.b. is british, ulster is irish, a thing recognised in british law.
thousands may turn out to welcome the child killers and butchers of afghanistan/iraq…................
thousands more will turn out to state loudly and proudly: not in my name! NO to institutionalised murder.Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:41 PMLorraine….please don’t let yourself down by displaying ignorance, lack of knowhow, knowledge, display of hatred, willing to lie, be a hatemonger, etc etc.
This comment, ‘....killers and butchers of afghanistan/iraq….’ shows that you don’t have a clue what the RIR and other regiments were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously you support the Taliban in Afghanistan….wonder where your Equality Act / Section 75, so loved by the terrorists in suits, Sinn Fein / IRA , would fit into in that country. Women’s Rights etc….
Anything thing British - HATE IT
Anything evil, like the Taliban - LOVE IT
SINN FEIN / IRA—SURELY UNFIT FOR GOVERNMENT
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:46 PMHi Lorraine….are there two of you or are you contradicting yourself…..
By the way ‘...protesting loud and proud…’....I thought the Sinn Fein / IRA councillor Paul Maskey told us all it was going to be ‘a dignified and quiet protest????’
Isn’t it ? or do you know something different?
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:50 PMMick,
Surely all the threads on this issue could be reconciled into one thread and the others closed.
It is too difficult to follow and I am sure impossilbe to manage especially given the impossibilty of any common ground on the issue.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:51 PM“NO to institutionalised murder.”
I have no doubt you have a point with that issue; however, I imagine that Britain weighed this up and thought about risks too.
It is likely that when using violence as a means to change local regime it will sow the seed of its usefulness locally. So, when the coalition army withdraws the first thing the locals will do is to retaliate in a similar way, one against the other.
It is whether this retaliation will be any worse than that under Saddam and that of his sons or the attack on women in Afghanistan etc.
That’s why in particular Blair’s legacy cannot yet be written, Bush’s the same. I hope that there isn’t anymore of this to come, but come what may it might still turn out for the better, relatively speaking.
Of course people like you Lorraine seem to be fixed on the absolutes, fair enough - I wasn’t keen on the whole Iraq war thing at all and was in opposition to it. I wont be in Belfast though this Sunday.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:52 PMpost 10. (why you use me name eludes me)
afghan and iraqi people are being butchered in their thousands. opposition to this sort of behaviour is not hatred.
your rants sound typical of the brave ulster loyalist psyche which sees heroism in terms of throwing blast bombs at school children; little wonder you have no compassion for the thousands being slaughtered in afghanistan and iraqPosted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:53 PMAs a Derry Catholic and former full-time soldier in the RIR I will be attending Sunday’s parade to welcome home my old regiment and other ranks who’ll be on parade.
I will be on one of 7 buses [approximately] 350 people who will leave Derry to go up to Belfast and be proud to salute these find brave men.
To be demeanded by the supporters of terrorism is sickening but the skins of these young men and women is thick enought to withstand the diatribe of abuse from ignorant people.
They have withstood more than verbal bullsh*t and will march through Belfast with pride this coming Sunday.
LEST WE FORGET
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:54 PMLorraine…
You as a Sinn Fein / IRA supporter have some cheek! ‘Throwing blast bombs at schoolchildren’ you state. A] It wasn’t thrown at schoolchildren
B] It shouldn’t have been thrown at anyoneand C] more importantly, thousands of bombs, bullets were thrown and shot at Army, Police, Innocent Protestants and Roman Catholics by your friends. Remember the Party of Government, Sinn Fein / IRA murdered 1,771 people in Northern Ireland, not to mention those elsewhere and also murdered more Roman Catholics than any other agency.
So get a life and lie on in your bed next Sunday, where you no doubt are every other Sabbath day.Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 12:59 PMggn
post 12, good pointThing is , all the threads are following the same traditional route.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:01 PMLorraine, must be on British benefits, if she can sit all day on the PC sending out hate filled messages. No need to go out and earn her living.
Put her to work, I say….there must be some jobs going for a proficient computer operator.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:03 PM“NO to institutionalised murder”
....so join in the SF protest when you will be standing alongside some of those who ....errrrrr…...3500 dead ...... shootings…..bombings ......disappeared ....errrrr
And of course isn’t it better to stand and protest in Donegall Place than to fight for the rights of people in a whole country who were held hostage by religous fundamentalists who opressed women, banned music and killed people for crimes like exercising freedom of speech? Well, at least here you can join that protest. In Afgahanistan or Iraq that would have got you and possibly your family executed.I am not advocating war as a good instrument of policy. Wars are dreadful things but by your shallow definition, in World War 2 it was wrong for the UK and USA to fight the Nazis as some innocent civilians were been killed along the way.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:03 PMHi cynic….just off to work after the lunch-break but had to say that I agree with you wholeheartedly…..it is time that those Sinn Fein / IRA / Lefties / Socalist Workers and other assorted loonies got a life and stayed in their beds / ghettos / drinking dens or wherever else they spend their Sunday mornings. I doubt it would be in any Church or chapel.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:10 PMdifficult as it may be for some to accept, i am NOT a sinn feiner, just an ordinary civilian. and one who is opposed to the illegal wars bush and blair took us into for oil and money (for themselves, not for us).
further, i don’t know how many times i’ve read about injured soldiers from iraq/afghanistan returning home to discover all the flag waving and bluster is just that, with nothing substantive in terms of rehabilitation and state assistance to help them get their scarred lives back together.
so you can display all the hatred you like, i have no problem with welcome home parades per se, but this one has taken on a life of its own which can only end in disaster.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:12 PMLorraine; I am posting for the first time on this thread but have read most of the previous postings. If you are not against the parade per se, may I just suggest then that you stop posting about it. It is you and others on other media outlets, radio, tv and press are fuelling the flames that could lead to violence next Sunday. In my humble opinion, the protest by Sinn Fein and the other assorted nonentities is purely designed to stir up trouble, to get the parade cancelled and now that is won’t be, to confront those who are hoping to attend and get a riot started. The protestors also wish to scare people from coming least there be trouble, so it can be said to be very carefully contrived. As Gerry Adams said of the anti Loyal Order parades, ‘These protests just didn’t happen, they were carefully planned and I give those who planned them great credit for what they have done’....No doubt his views on this protest are in a similiar vein.
So give the PC a rest…..and help contribute to a more peaceful event. IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN - SO ACCEPT IT. OK?Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:19 PMSweet2u….Lorraine - Do as the man says please….give it a rest for now….away and get the marker out and get that Big Anti War poster prepared.
Wars aren’t beautiful - But sometimes they are necessary !
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:22 PMSo Poole goes for its everybody else’s fault line as well
Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:25 PMterence
what takes place on slugger is dialogue. we are allowed to hold opinions and beliefs and express them.
even with sectarian stereotypes being fired against me i still enjoy the cut and thrust of debate.
i have a principled position vis-a-vis the udr/rir. they are a sectarian murder gang. they murdered and maimed. they are not heroes and i will protest the obscenity of parading them through belfast, and continue to articulate a principled position vis-a-vis them and their illegal wars.
telling people stop posting could almost be interpreted as a yearning for the old days when catholics/nationalists were hemmed into the ghettoes and subjected to british brutality if we tried to walk into the city centre.Posted by on Oct 30, 2008 @ 01:29 PM
