Sunday, November 11, 2007
UDA stands down.. the UFF..
The BBC report that the UDA have issued what Jackie McDonald claimed would be a “significant statement” and, although the detail remains to be seen, it seems that they are saying they will stand down the UFF.. at midnight tonight. And they’ve claimed that “UFF weapons were being put beyond use, but stressed that this does not mean they will be decommissioned.” ANYhoo.. Apparently, “The Ulster Defence Association is committed to achieving a society where violence and weaponry are ghosts of the past.” In response to which, I’ll quote Ian Paisley Snr - “it will only come when rigorous law enforcement takes place..” Adds According to this report, “The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has [already] warmly welcomed the statement describing it as a significant step.”
Update The BBC’s Politics Show included a clip of Jackie McDonald speaking today in which he made clear that he wants to see a UDA-endorsed political representative elected to the Assembly - a point which fits with something he said previously. He also referred to the people he, and the UDA, represent - forgetting that he hasn’t actually been elected.
And he stated, in relation to decommissioning - “They’re not the UDA’s guns. They’re the people’s guns.”
Pete Baker @ 12:10 PM
what about the PAF, RHC etc? Are these sectarian drug dealing thugs going to take up the slack after the UFF disappears?
Consign McDonald’s statement to the ‘who gives a fuck’ category.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 01:30 PMWhatever way it’s spun and however ineffectual it appears I suppose it’s progress of a kind, and to be welcomed.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 01:45 PMare they now totally commit themselves to selling drugs to children?
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 01:46 PMHarry,
I think you’ll find that’s a market the provos have already tied up.Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 02:22 PMYou have to laugh at how the UDA act as if the protestant working-class community and themselves are synonymous. “The people’s guns” indeed.
I’d like to see the process of verifying how these weapons weren’t decommissioned, but rather put beyond “use” (reach?).
Standing down the UFF almost seems like non-gesture to me. What was the UFF doing in the past few years anyway? Gathering “intelligence” on republicans?
Apologies for being such a critical asshole btw, I suppose the statement is to be welcomed…
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 02:44 PMA spokesman for the UFF, Billy Shootspatrick said, “This is a terrible blow, not just for the lads but for their families as well. Layoffs this close to Christmas are always doubly difficult. But some of us saw this coming when we went on short time a few years back and since then a lot of new business has gone to the migrant workers when they started killing each other. I was going to buy the child his first hand gun this Christmas but now I’ll have to watch the pennies. I can’t even give him mine ‘cos it has to be put beyond use! If I didn’t have my other job in the RIR I don’t know what I’d do.”
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 02:48 PMreally???
i live in a well known south armagh town, i have never seen any drugs being sold by the provos
bad and all as they are.
shit, i must be going to the wrong bars, shit, i must get myself down to that well known shinner hang out and score myself some dope.
so, do you think Chuclke McG uses his postion to make contact with leaders of well known drug growing countries??
when is the first official vist of the columbian leader to stormont???
i think, intelligence insider, you are the one on drugs
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 02:49 PMAs if anyone listens or cares about what the uda drug dealers actually think…
sure all the latest shooting were carried out by the Mars joint Loyalist Liberation Movement…Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 02:54 PMso the UDA don`t sell or peddle drugs. Aren`t the major importers, suppliers and distrubuters of drugs!!!!
Yeah and I saw four flying pigs last night!Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 02:57 PMFII, I think you will find that ALL paramiltaries in Northern Ireland are involved in the drugs trade. Certainly the UDA are heavily involved in the trade but PIRA are the biggest importer of drugs in the UK.
And Harry, thanks for reminding us all which paramilitary group in N.I. have a FARCing Columbian connection! FARC are one of the biggest exporters of drugs worldwide with an ANNUAL income from drug trafficking estimated at 1 billion dollars 5 years ago.
From “Playing the Green Card - Financing the Provisional IRA by John Horgan and Max Taylor”
“They [the PIRA] attempt to adopt a public stance that they abhor the
use of drugs ... that belies the fact that they have in the past, and
certainly do at present, derive funding from the drugs trade ... the
Loyalist paramilitary organizations are much more directly involved in
the straightforward drugs dealing. The IRA tend to be two or three
steps removed.Police and
dealers say the IRA controls the distribution of drugs to criminals on
both sides of the border. Narcotics are smuggled into Ireland through
Dublin and Cork and distributed after prices and quantities are
agreed at meetings in hotels in Dundalk and Drogheda. The IRA does
not handle the drugs, but oversees the operation and takes a
percentage from each deal. In return, it sanctions the dealers’
activities and moves against their opponents.Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 03:44 PMThis is fantastic news as it’s about time all sides involved in N.Ireland’s conflict took the brave step forward towards a lasting peace.
This is a step in the right direction!
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 03:45 PMAs the UFF is the UDA in another guise this statement is meaningless.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:13 PMAll the usual caveats aside, a step in the right direction. The UDA are clearly tramps (and dangerous tramps at that), but this is progress.
But, bearing in mind that, “They’re not the UDA’s guns. They’re the people’s guns.” Can I have one Jackie?
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:20 PMInteligence insider
Any theories on the moon landing or the shooting of JFK. Maybe you could tell us where shergar isPosted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:26 PMThe UDA don’t represent the majority of protestants in the areas where they operate - not even close to it. If that was the case they’d have several representatives at Stormont.
The UDP ceased to exist because of poor election results which weren’t even enough to get them one seat in the last PR election they contested.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:36 PMNow I feel all Catholic teenagers can safely dander along any Belfast road they like. Wait at any bus stop they like. Cool.
Anyway as long as people want drugs…drugs will be supplied.legal or illegal. Drugs are not really “pushed” they are"pulled” by the users. Should be legalised. That way the rich fat cats can legally make more money from all of us. Makes me feel much better that Im not enriching the UDA or the criminals…just the “Entrepreneurs” of the world. The UFF and most of all the other 3letter abbreviations are controlled by Whitehall anyway. Time all you lot woke up. Listen to Alec Jones infowars.comPosted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:38 PMisn`t it strange that for years the uda fought turf wars amongst themselves over drugs….
their leaders openly flaunted and still too this day do, their ill gotten gains, whilst the majority of law abiding Protestants did things the uda rank and file to this day don`t and never have done.
Got a job. As to the uda being any different from the uff,do they really believe anyone will swallow that…and as to a sleeping giant being raised. What planet are these criminal drug dealers of the uda on.
They were never and are not defenders of Protestantism, wouldn`t know one iota about the basis of the reformed faith, have no respect or support.
They are scum.To finish some here can try and whitewash history but facts are facts….everyione in the sec urity forces know it…the uda are up to their necks in drug dealing and criminality and are protected from high!!!!
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 06:13 PM“Whatever way it’s spun and however ineffectual it appears I suppose it’s progress of a kind, and to be welcomed.”
I’m loath to give them anything resembling gratitude…About time, is all they really deserve..
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 06:49 PMThe loyalist paramilitaries were largely organised and directed by the security forces and financed by drugdealing.
It is and has been a long established British custom still going on today in Afghanistan.
The fact remains that the UDA was a legal body right up until 1992 and there were no calls by unionist politicans for that to change during the 70’s and 80’s when those same politicans and their ordinary supporters were happy to use the paramilitaries as ‘muscle’ to enforce political strikes.
It is always disagreeable cleaning up a mess but let’s remember just whose mess this is.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 06:50 PM“As the UFF is the UDA in another guise this statement is meaningless.”
Picador’s comment above is all that needs saying, really.
The real interest is in why the BBC, whose journalists know the truth of this only too well, have bigged it up so much.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 07:14 PMToday at church we had an act of remembrance. The names of those members of the congregation who were killed in the First and Second World Wars were read out, the last post was played and poppy wreaths were laid before the two lists of names, prayers were said.
What has this to do with the UDA statement?
Nothing; and that is the whole point.
I have said it before but will repeat; it is nauseating the way the UDA try to appropriate the memory of brave men and women who died in the two world wars. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the two world wars (especially the First) it does not detract from the honour and respect due to those who died in those conflicts. The UDA on the other hand are due no respect and are devoid of honour just as they are and always were devoid of morality or political purpose.
To try to compare the actions of brave people with the UDA is utterly revolting. The UDA are a group of drug dealers, pimps, criminals and thugs as well as betimes murderers. What honour is due to the people who murdered people in Sean Graham’s bookmakers shop, the Rising Sun bar, the Heights Bar in Loughlinisland? (and before any cheerleaders try to tell me the Heights bar was the UVF let us remember that they are all one group of thugs and killers, remember the so called Combined Loyalist Military Command). Even on the rare occasions when the loyalists managed to murder IRA members these were no heroic acts; they involved shooting people in their homes. A carbon copy of the murderers of the IRA.
When any loyalist cheerleader comes on this web site extolling the virtues of the alphabet soup of criminals we should remember the extent of their heroism: “Trick or Treat”; “Yaba daba doo any Taig will do”. Those two statements neatly sum up the qualities of loyalist paramilitaries and those who cheerlead for them.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 07:18 PMTurgon,
You might have had a point twenty years ago when the UDA were a legal body supported and used by your community’s political leaders. Now you’re just a sad dupe who has allowed our British masters to criminalise their tools now that they are no longer needed.
As for yet another tedious reference to the dead of bygone wars? It should be remembered that the same army is involved in at least two deeply repugnant wars at this very moment and the people involved are as noble or ignoble as anyone else in any other war.
Do try and live in the present and forget this strange idea that there is such a thing as a ‘good war’ with one side of goodies against another side of baddies. Wars are all dirty filthy tragedies fought by people who have allowed themselves to be brutalised into killing their neighbours.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 07:34 PMlib 2016,
I had hoped to ignore your post as my business here is with the loyalist murderers not the republican ones. However, since you insist on beginning an argument which will merely detract from the relevant issue here which is the practically universal contempt which the loyalist thugs are held in:I suggest to you that your problem is that there are unionist posters who abhor what the loyalist thugs did. Just as there are nationalist and republican posters who abhor everything which the IRA did supposedly “in their name”. You would like to tar me with the cheerleader’s brush with which you tar yourself with your sycophantic worship of the leadership of the republican movement and all the works of that band of sectarian murderers. It must gravely distress you that there are people of all sides on here who oppose one another sharply yet oppose murder much more.
So wars are dirty tragedies fought by etc.
Well my father in law never fired a shot in anger in the Second World War. He did spend three and a half years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. He did not return a brutalised man. He returned that which he left: a quiet, humble, godly, South Fermanagh farmer and he never killed anyone let alone any of his neighbours.
You of course lib would like to lower everyone into the gutter along with yourself and support the murderers of Marie Wilson and the rest of the Enniskillen dead. Oh yes they were remembering the war so it was fine to blow them up.
Maybe I am a dupe lib, you are clearly in a position to tell. I would, however, rather be a dupe than a sycophantic cheerleader for murderers as that is assuredly precisely what you are.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 07:52 PMTurgon,
The problem with your position is that I’m a pacifist. In my eyes the Enniskillen Massacre was as wrong and cruel as the Dresden bombing, or Blair’s illegal war in Iraq. No less wrongheaded but all done by decent men who thought that they were doing the right thing.
I ask why good men, and there are good men on all sides, do evil but you want to play games and pretend that the loyalists had no support. I saw them on the streets marching in their thousands when it looked as if they could win. Didn’t hear much condemnation, though.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 08:05 PMWell lib let us see.
“In my eyes the Enniskillen Massacre was as wrong”Compare with
“As for Enniskillen itself - the nationalist population was under attack from the British Army and the community which backed them. They fought back and when there is violence innocent people get hurt….end of story.”Fancy denying you made the second post? You have previously tried to tell me that it was me who provoked you into it when it was actually Dewi though the “provocation” was his condemning Enniskillen.
Yes lib 2016 I guess there is some weasel way by which those two statements can be reconciled but no honest or honourable way. You are the sort of pacifist who is so opposed to killing that they cheerlead for the killers and leap on their bandwagon. A pacifist indeed.
By all means stay on this thread lib, your posts merely detract from what should be being discussed here: namely the revolting behaviour of loyalist terrorists. I am sure some loyalist cheerleaders are delighted the thread has been moved off their friends’ behaviour. Still giving cover for loyalist killers must come easily for one so keen to give cover to republican ones.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 08:26 PM
