Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from Garibaldy (see all)

Garibaldy has commented 360 times (7 in the last month).

1. Comment on The End of the Northern Ireland Model of Peace Processing?
   on 30 April 2012 at 1:19 am

   I’m aware of what the concern is Pete. And that isn’t simply that more people are unhappy, it is that the entire deal is in danger of unravelling. However, for an argument that a pact is unravelling to be plausible, it would require people who remain within the organisation to be doing this stuff, not people who left the organisation because they couldn’t do it. So his whole argument that talking to terrorists doesn’t work because it is no longer working in NI is based on a blatant falsehood.

   As for the broader question of dissident violence. At this time, the danger seems to be that they will get lucky and kill some people connected to the security forces, or some bystanders with a bomb. However, short of some disaster on the scale of August 69, internment, or Bloody Sunday, there is little prospect that they will be able to mount and sustain a serious campaign with a significant amount of popular support. Nor is there any evidence to suggest otherwise, regardless of what Americans seeking to justify continued operations in Afghanistan would like us to believe.

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2. Comment on The End of the Northern Ireland Model of Peace Processing?
   on 30 April 2012 at 12:58 am

   The question here Pete is what is meant by the term ‘the IRA’. My understanding is that the groups now calling themselves the IRA are not using the term provisional IRA, and that the reason for this is that they are seeking to claim continuity with a pre-existing tradition but at the same time separate themselves from Adams, McGuinness and co. This is the key fact, and a fact that Rubin seems unaware of. It’s clear what he is referring to – it’s the like of the people who stayed with Adams and co but who now are active in the various groups calling themselves Óglaigh na hÉireann. Describing them as ‘mainstream IRA’, meaning the provisionals, is no longer accurate, so the whole thing is based on either ignorance or a falsehood.

   Given McGuinness’s reaction to the murders at Massarene and provisional support for the cops, we are near enough at a situation where they are being blamed for the actions of people they are trying to see put in gaol.

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3. Comment on The End of the Northern Ireland Model of Peace Processing?
   on 29 April 2012 at 9:11 pm

   I meant they were treated like as though they were still provisionals for the purpose of arguments like Rubin’s, which ignore the reality on the ground in pursuit of an argument that is grounded in a mistaken premise. The fact, for example, some people in Tyrone who stayed with the provos until a few years ago are now, having left them, possibly re-involving themselves in terrorism is taken as evidence that the entire provo army is doing so, when nothing could be further from the truth as anyone with eyes can see. You are talking at total cross purposes to what I was saying.

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4. Comment on The End of the Northern Ireland Model of Peace Processing?
   on 29 April 2012 at 7:11 pm

   You get articles like these from time to time, usually written by Americans who display an extremely limited grasp of facts on the ground. This is one. Former provisionals are being treated as though they were still provisionals, and the water is muddied by the ignorance of those writing. That is clearly what is happening here.

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5. Comment on Being an all-Ireland party has its downsides – Sinn Fein’s inconsistency on property taxes
   on 22 April 2012 at 12:11 am

   On a related note, the cheek of this from a party that supports raising corporation tax in one part of the island and lowering it to the rate it opposes in the other cracked me up

   http://newrytimes.com/2012/04/20/murphy-slams-double-standards-and-inconsistency-of-sdlp/

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6. Comment on Being an all-Ireland party has its downsides – Sinn Fein’s inconsistency on property taxes
   on 22 April 2012 at 12:10 am

   Of course, southern taxpayers already pay for local government through income tax, a model brought in by Fianna Fáil decades ago. Hence the opposition to double taxation, especially when the taxation concerned is as often as not regressive in its application.

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7. Comment on Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore calls for delivery on Northern Ireland Bill of Rights
   on 22 April 2012 at 12:03 am

   I’m enjoying the notion that the demand for a Bill of Rights in NI has anything at all to do with what some people here like to denounce as the “rights industry”.

   The demand was first made a serious part of NI politics with the Civil Rights campaign of the 1960s. The mantra that it was not needed was heard from the Stormont regime, which resisted attempts to mirror English anti-discrimination laws on the grounds that they were illegal already. And this from a regime built on discrimination. It was in these circumstances that the demand became prominent. The demand was consistently raised in the following 30 years by various political parties and groups (some converting to the idea later than others – Gerry Adams was of the opinion that a bill of rights had no part to play in his struggle in 1983). Its necessity was accepted in the Good Friday Agreement, What has happened subsequently is not the fault of what people are calling the rights industry, but rather of the political parties that wish to resist it so that it does not limit their freedom of manoeuvre.

   As for the question raised above about social and economic rights, clearly some people have never heard of the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, to which the UK is a signatory.

   And there’s something ironic in unionists who claim to represent the values of 1688 opposing a bill of rights. At least there is if you have any grasp of the history of this, instead of being under the illusion that all this began sometime around 1998.

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8. Comment on Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore calls for delivery on Northern Ireland Bill of Rights
   on 21 April 2012 at 7:18 pm

   A bill of rights, and a court capable of enforcing it, still is WP policy. One of many!

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9. Comment on Sinn Fein’s seven goals towards unification?
   on 8 April 2012 at 4:49 pm

   Paddy,

   Of course those figures from 1973 and 1981 reflect a large amount of abstention still, so they give an inflated sense of the growth of the population in Belfast who are nationalist, if not nationalist votes.

   I’d really like to see the evidence for the idea that the provos have been eating into what was the NILP vote or the Alliance vote (I suspect most of the NILP vote is dead to be honest).

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10. Comment on Sinn Fein’s seven goals towards unification?
    on 8 April 2012 at 12:09 am

    “3 To convince a section of unionist opinion that their identity, self-interest and quality of life will be best served, secured and guaranteed in a united Ireland;”

    Um, to convince some unionists that the best protection of their unionist identity is in a united Ireland. So not to persuade some unionists to become nationalists then.

    I’m also not in the least surprised to see no mention of fighting sectarianism, or, indeed, forging what someone once described as the unity of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter. There is also a total absence of anything that might in anyway connect to Connolly. You’d almost think it wasn’t Easter. Or maybe you’d think that the people who produced this aren’t in any way interested in republicanism as a political philosophy.

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