Silver haired, silver tongued boulevardier who, despite an outspoken passion for the Gunners, has survived long years living in Tottenham only by dint of his great personal charm. Heroes from history: Robert Emmet; Tom Paine;Crazy Horse;Pancho Villa; Joe Hill; Mother Jones; Stalin;Vo Nguyen Giap Literary favourites:Cervantes; Voltaire; JM Synge; Arthur Miller; Frank Norris;Ambrose Bierce; F Scott Fitzgerald; Philip Roth; Cormac McCarthy: Frank O'Connor; Donald Westlake;Nikos Kazantzakis; James Lee Burke; George Pelicanos; John Sandford etc. etc. Cinema: John Ford; John Ford and John Ford Music: Kristofferson; George Jones; Willie;Sinatra; Ella;Hot Jazz Club; Ry Cooder; Robeson.

Latest comments from Rory Carr (see all)

Rory Carr has commented 2,026 times (8 in the last month).

1. Comment on Ruairí Ó Brádaigh dies
   on 6 June 2013 at 9:38 am

   Sea-green incorruptible in a time when to so be was neither fashionable nor profitable.

   May you now find peace and rest, Ruairí.

   Condolences to family and friends.

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2. Comment on Are the Sunday Mirror (and the Met) latest ‘target’ of Bangor con man, Mark Townley?
   on 4 June 2013 at 10:52 am

   It might be useful to have a butcher’s at Philip Boucher-Hayes’s update on the continuing saga of the travails of the latest jihadist to grab the attention of the tabloids.

   http://tinyurl.com/lm7yppr

   What is most revealing, to my mind anyway, is a recitation of the bare facts:

   “The actual known facts of the story were only this:Ashraf Islam had handed himself in at Hounslow police station the day after Lee Rigby was murdered and threatened to murder Prince Harry. He was charged under section 16 of the offences against the person act, namely that he had made a verbal threat. One assumes the threat was made to the police officer in Hounslow. He pleaded guilty to the offence in the Magistrates court and is being held on remand pending sentencing. (My emphasis)

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3. Comment on Lord John Laird in hot water over Fiji ‘gig’…
   on 2 June 2013 at 12:32 pm

   “Laird and others” of course. Apologies.

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4. Comment on Lord John Laird in hot water over Fiji ‘gig’…
   on 2 June 2013 at 12:30 pm

   Before we rush to exonerate Laird and other because they have been subject to underhand entrapment by journalists eager to get (or make) a story whatever the cost, we might consider that, if they were on a fishing exercise, it was because they had reason to believe that this pond was well stocked with particularly fat fish all too eager to have a bite at any juicy bait that might be dangled before them.

   In short, it had been broadcast abroad that these particular fish
   were greedy little beggars.

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5. Comment on How well does the Catholic church understand its own teaching on abortion?
   on 24 May 2013 at 8:07 pm

   Do you have the requisite medical and surgical skills to perform an abortion, Séamus ? If not then it becomes very simple,

   “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I cannot help you.”

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6. Comment on How well does the Catholic church understand its own teaching on abortion?
   on 23 May 2013 at 5:48 pm

   I am not in disagreement with what you say, Newman but I am not a woman and will never have to face the dilemna, nor am I in position to make judgement on any woman. The only thing I am able to exercise really is compassion and that not often enough.

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7. Comment on How well does the Catholic church understand its own teaching on abortion?
   on 23 May 2013 at 3:26 pm

   Perhaps this scene from the film Zorba the Greek illustrates best my feelings on the matter – we do what we can do for those we can. Zorba fights to save the woman’s life but, once she has been killed he can do no more.

   http://tinyurl.com/p32ldvy

   So it is with the woman who goes ahead with the abortion – we can do no more for the unborn child but we then must do the best we can for the woman herself – without judgement.

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8. Comment on How well does the Catholic church understand its own teaching on abortion?
   on 23 May 2013 at 12:17 pm

   My Catholic education taught me that the message of the Christ could be reduced to two, very simple commands:

   ” Love the Lord, thy God with thy whole heart and thy whole mind and all of thy soul and, love thy neighbour as thyself.”

   Simple. Not easy. But simple.

   That being so, if I, believing that abortion was wrong, was approached for help and advice by a woman in distress and intent upon abortion either as a friend or in a position of authority, I believe that my duty would be to use all my power of argument to convince her to desist and not proceed with the abortion.

   But then I would have placed myself in a position whereby I had an obligation, insofar as I was able, to aid that woman materially and spiritually that she might better be able to rear the child in love and reasonable comfort.

   However if I failed and the woman was determined to proceed then, as there was nothing then I could do for the child, my obligation was to see, again insofar as I was able, that the woman had her abortion in conditions that were most conducive to her physical, medical, psychological and spiritual well-being.

   Simple. Not easy. But simple.

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9. Comment on Adams’s extended RTE interview on political murder turns the southern clock right back for Sinn Fein…
   on 16 May 2013 at 3:07 am

   Leaving aside your (second) snide and barrel-scraping comment on my earlier typo, Tmitch we can agree that both must have certain characteristics but where does that get us other than to recognise that those characteristics then must be shared by all who practise such form of warfare – state forces and resistance armies alike.

   While an essential characteristic of guerrilla warfare is the use of small, mobile forces capable of operating within territory held by superior enemy forces this is shared by any who employ that method and id not defined by the ideology of the actors.

   Terrorism, on the other hand, is simply defined as employing tactics capable of instilling terror and, similarly is not restricted to any agency.When it comes to questions of scale it is apparent that stae forces in general tend to employ a much greater degree of terrorism than any smaller guerrilla force is capable of commanding. For all the horrors of 9/11 it shrinks in scale by comparison with Shock and Awe and the prolonged aerial bombardment of Baghdad that preceded it, which was its very intention, It is ironic however that there is an inverse ratio between the level of terror employed and the frequency of the label “terrorist” being employed. Why those who set off a single home-made bomb in a Western city should be any more of a terrorist than those who deploy silent drones carrying military ordnance to deploy into wedding parties in Pakistan is beyond my ken which, I think, is why language must be twisted and debased in a devious attempt to justify it. Back to Humpty Dumpty again.

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10. Comment on Adams’s extended RTE interview on political murder turns the southern clock right back for Sinn Fein…
    on 15 May 2013 at 7:04 pm

    I’m afraid, TMitch, that your response to my earlier post is getting us nowhere fast.

    This false distinction between guerrilla and terrorist only serves to reinforce the crude propaganda of elements of, usually expansionist, states which uses terrorist as a pejorative term to describe any movement opposed to their own terror, repression, denial of rights.

    It has been wisely said that “Terrorism is war waged by the oppressed against the powerful. War is terrorism waged by the powerful against the oppressed.” Since the powerful have control of all, including language, we then have a Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland situation where, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.“.

    Guerrilla warfare has been employed by established nation-states including Britain and the USA, what else were the Desert Rats, or the Weathermen, Wellington’s tactics in Spain in the Peninsular war ? And, as for terrorism, what else was Blitzkrieg, the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima but terrorism on a mammoth scale ?

    In short, guerrilla warfare is a form of tactical battle that is employed where the situation demands it it and is not limited to any party. We could argue about terrorism till the cows come home but one thing is certain – the states of the world, few, if any, of whom have not themselves been guilty of practisng terrorism for their own selfish ends do not have the moral right to determine who or what is a terrorist group when the term is used only as a a crude piece of name-calling designed, ironically, to strike a modicum of terror into its own citizens in order to bolster their support for waging greater terror against such groups and the civilian populations from which they emanate.

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