The Irish left (people)
I agree with the Irish left mainly on
civil liberties
(for example,
the blasphemy law).
I disagree with them primarily
on
the economy, crime, and foreign policy.
Some of the following have noble records in fighting for sexual and religious freedom
in Ireland,
the rights of gays and atheists, separation of church and state,
opposition to censorship, and so on.
But that does not mean that their foreign policy or economic ideas make any sense.
Search for historical statements by the Irish left
For
reasons I discuss elsewhere,
the Irish left is far more likely than the Irish right
to make embarrassing statements supporting foreign non-democrats
(such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Palestine, Libya, Vietnam
and the Soviet Union).
Such statements need to be remembered.
- Proinsias De Rossa
is a former leader of the extremist
Workers Party.
-
His current incarnation as a
Labour Party
member is a bit better, but not much.
- The Cold War:
- De Rossa attended a
Soviet propaganda event in Dublin,
January 11, 1983.
- He then however protested US Vice-President George Bush's visit to Ireland,
May 18, 1983.
- He complained,
October 25, 1983,
about the use of Shannon Airport by US military on their way to and from
West Germany.
- He
protested US President Ronald Reagan's visit to Ireland in 1984.
- He gushed praise over
Soviet dictator Gorbachev's visit to Ireland,
April 3, 1989,
despite the fact that Bush and Reagan were elected and Gorbachev wasn't.
- De Rossa defended the communist regime of Nicaragua:
- De Rossa defends Nicaragua in the Dail,
26 Apr 1983:
"One of the most serious charges made by the USA against the Sandinista Government was that of persecution against the
Miskito Indians.
... They continue to repeat this charge despite the fact that it has been denied by independent sources".
- De Rossa,
November 10, 1984,
defends Nicaragua.
-
Dail, 6 December, 1984.
A motion is proposed to call on the Soviet Union to grant Jews religious freedom
and allow them to emigrate.
- What kind of lunatic could speak against such a motion?
- De Rossa could:
"the proposers of the motion did not approach
Deputy Mac Giolla
or myself to see if we would be prepared to support this motion. ... we recognise that there is a problem of alienation of Jews in the Soviet Union. However, we do not go along with the terms of the motion as put forward because it is an over-statement and the case made to support it has not been proved.
There are obviously two sides to every story and no case has been made for the defence."
Note the patronising "alienation" of Jews, not "oppression" of Jews.
- He claims there is something wrong with being anti-Soviet!
"the case that is made concerning the USSR is in many instances tinged with a high level of anti-Sovietism. I heard Deputy Taylor deny that he is in any way anti-Soviet, and I accept and welcome that."
- Like a credulous child, he believes Soviet propaganda:
"The case has been made that Jews in the Soviet Union are completely oppressed, are denied any rights and denied the facilities to practise their religion or to learn the Hebrew language. I have here some figures from an official Soviet source which to some extent at least refutes the assertion that all Jews in the Soviet Union are oppressed. I will go through those figures very quickly.
...
Religion in the Soviet Union is a private matter, ...
we have to accept there are two sides to every story. I am simply putting forward my views on this matter and I am indicating that I do not believe there is total oppression of Jews in the Soviet Union.
I should like to quote a letter which appeared in the English language Soviet Weekly".
- He sneers at political prisoners:
"People have listed people who are persecuted in the Soviet Union. I have here a report to the Council of Europe and it lists a number of people who were imprisoned allegedly for trying to teach the Hebrew language or for pursuing cultural affairs. It always amazes me that all these people are very well educated."
- De Rossa attacks Israel:
- Israeli wall creating Palestinian ghettoes
(also
here),
Proinsias De Rossa, March 9, 2004.
De Rossa
compares the Israeli security wall
to the Nazi ghettos:
"Looking at the watchtowers, guns and barbed wire, I thought of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Growing up just after the second World War, I could not understand how the world stood by (*)
while six million Jews
were gassed, burned and buried alive. I learnt the answer in Qalquilya.
First, you dehumanise your victims, than you criminalise them en masse, and then you imprison them en masse.
Finally, you can kill them while the world watches."
-
De Rossa calls Gaza a "prison camp"
(also here),
Nov 2006.
"The occupants of this camp are being systematically starved."
"At the same time they are being massacred."
- Reply to De Rossa:
- (*) The world did not "stand by", Mr. De Rossa.
Britain and America - the two countries you have spent your entire career attacking
- fought to stop it, and sacrificed
900,000 lives
to end it.
They were joined by
Australia, Canada, New Zealand
and
many others.
-
Ireland stood by, it is true -
to its eternal shame.
Ireland stood by
because of all the appalling
anti-British, anti-American and "anti-war" people
who, unfortunately, so often dominate discourse in this country.
People like
the modern Irish left,
in fact.
-
Sinn Fein - your first political party - not only stood by,
they actually
supported the Nazis.
Were you not aware of this?
It was no secret, then or since.
If you "could not understand" growing up in the 1950s
how the world stood by during the Holocaust,
if you thought it was such a big issue,
then how come the first political party you joined
was the only one in Ireland that had supported the Nazis?
-
Yes I know you were never pro-Nazi.
Yes I know Sinn Fein were no longer pro-Nazi when you joined them
(because Germany had lost).
Yes I know you have renounced Sinn Fein long ago anyway,
and gone through
a long political journey since.
I am glad you have.
But you've still a long way to go
before you understand who are the kind of people who will
"stand by"
in the face of fascist, communist or Islamist tyranny,
and who are the kind of people who will
go out there and fight it.
If you really wonder how people could have stood by in WW2,
then you should become (as I have become)
a fan of Britain and America,
and a bit of a sceptic of countries like Ireland.
- Soviet Archives
(also
here),
by the brave Russian dissident
Vladimir Bukovsky,
contains many documents secretly scanned by Bukovsky from
the former Soviet Union.
- The section
KPSS and Communist World
(also
here)
contains alleged
communications between the Soviets and foreign leftists,
including the item:
- Item 0640,
alleged letter from the Workers Party of Ireland to the Soviets,
15 Sept 1986.
- The libel case
- The above
is the letter at the centre of the
De Rossa Libel Case
in which
De Rossa won
£300,000 plus costs.
See
libel case details.
- He sued
about an article by
Eamon Dunphy
in the Sunday Independent on
December 13th, 1992.
- De Rossa denied that the signature on the above letter was his.
In other words, his position is the letter is a fake.
-
Bukovsky replies
to this allegation that his archive contains a fake.
- There remains to this day
no explanation for how a fake could have ended up in the Moscow archives.
- It should be noted that Dunphy's article contains many allegations
beyond just publishing the Soviet letter.
- Embarrassing admissions from the libel trial:
- The Sunday Independent may have lost the case, but they did achieve something.
The trial was a great public service
in bringing out embarrassing information about the Workers Party.
-
Irish Times articles, Feb-Mar 1997.
- March 1, 1997:
De Rossa admits WP links to the genocide state of North Korea.
"Mr De Rossa said they sought to establish relationships with a lot of other parties, including the North Korean Communist Party."
- March 5, 1997:
De Rossa admits links to the Soviet Union:
"He agreed the WP decided to seek formal relations with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in November 1983.
...
He understood from reports that contact had also been made in the 1970s."
- De Rossa admits other links to tyrants:
"Mr De Rossa said the WP subsequently sought to establish formal relationships with the communist party of East Germany."
- March 6, 1997:
De Rossa says Sean Garland of the WP did seek funds from Moscow.
"Mr Garland said it was true he had sought money but he had not received any. He was asked what authorisation he had for seeking such money and he had said none, that he had done it of his own accord."
- De Rossa did not see this as morally wrong:
"Mr De Rossa replied that it was not a serious matter to seek funds from other parties. The money was not sought from Russia. As he understood it, it was sought from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was not a crime to seek financial support from other parties."
- De Rossa admits the WP received support from East Germany:
"Mr MacEntee asked if the WP had any support from East Germany. Mr De Rossa said there was an occasion in 1987-'88. There was a request to a party in Germany to know if they would be in a position to provide them with a printing machine."
Proinsias De Rossa's support for
communist Nicaragua.
From a
1990 speech:
He praises the Eastern Bloc for finally (after 40 years) letting its slaves go,
and says the Eastern Bloc countries have therefore
"proved more responsive to popular pressure"
than the western countries which have allowed their people actually pick the government
for all of those 40 years!
- The left-wing Independent TD
Finian McGrath
- McGrath supports Cuba:
-
Finian puts his faith in Fidel's 'different' take on democracy,
Sunday Business Post, April 30, 2006.
Finian McGrath denies that
Cuba
is a repressive dictatorship.
"It's a different kind of democracy to Ireland", said Ireland's
useful idiot.
- McGrath called for a state visit to Ireland by the
unelected dictator and mass murderer Fidel Castro.
- Finian McGrath,
interviewed in Magill, Feb 2006:
"I think Castro is a great guy, a charismatic figure who's been
totally misrepresented by the West."
Magill asks: "So you've no problem with his torture chambers and suppression of free speech?"
McGrath: "Well, that's all news to me.
I never heard about that.
Amnesty hasn't said anything about it to me lately.
This is just rightwing propaganda."
- Note to Finian McGrath:
Type "Amnesty" and "Cuba"
into a search engine:
- Amnesty country report 2005.
"[Amnesty International] last visited Cuba in 1988
and has not been permitted into the country since then."
Says it all, really.
A regime so criminal they will not even permit Amnesty to exist there.
- All Amnesty articles on Cuba
- For example,
Cuba: No dissent allowed,
9 August 2005:
"The Cuban authorities continue to suppress any form of dissent
by methods such as harassment, threats, intimidation, detention and long-term imprisonment."
What is wrong with McGrath that he cannot simply read what Amnesty say about Cuba?
- Fintan O'Toole
(and search)
-
Terrorists slash their way into the heart of the American Dream,
September 12, 2001
- Fintan O'Toole's appalling reaction to 9/11.
He couldn't even stop spewing anti-Americanism for one day!
-
He reacted to
the deliberate killing of thousands of innocent American men, women and children by
hate-filled Islamic religious fascists as follows:
"But there will almost certainly be a dark side. For there
is in American culture a fundamentalism no less strong than that of those
who may have plotted yesterday's carnage. The tendency to divide the world between
the forces of God and the forces of Satan, the elect and the damned, is, ironically
one of the things that America shares with its most ferocious enemies."
-
Reaction
by Eoghan Harris
- Reaction
here
and here.
-
Fintan's selective facts
by Eoghan Harris, October 6, 2002
- See blog-irish.
- Fintan O'Toole spoke at
Marxism 2009,
organised by the
pro-jihad
SWP.
- If Michael D. Higgins
is the political heir of de Valera,
Fintan O'Toole is the intellectual heir of
Alfred O'Rahilly
- providing the intellectual support for an inward-looking,
"anti-imperialist", anti-foreign companies, anti-capitalist,
neutral Ireland
that refuses to support Britain and America.
- Michael Jansen
confuses a lot of people.
- Despite the name, Michael Jansen is female.
-
CAMERA report on Michael Jansen's reporting on Israel.
"The majority of Michael Jansen's articles consisted of one-sided condemnations of Israel by partisan sources, with no Israeli voice to provide perspective or counterbalance.
...
Much of Jansen's reporting was based on second-hand information from Hamas spokesmen or pro-Palestinian sources, some with radical agendas.
Several articles consisted entirely of allegations against Israel, without any Israeli counterbalance. And editorial comments by Jansen herself underscored these allegations."
- See blog-irish.
-
Michael Jansen on Iraq, July 23, 2007:
"the overwhelming number of insurgents are Iraqi nationalists fighting for liberation."
They are of course fighting for no such thing.
They are fighting to enslave Iraq, not liberate it.
-
Israeli settlements squeezing out Christians and Muslims, Michael Jansen, Irish Times, October 7, 2010.
-
She talks about Christians in Bethlehem and the West Bank
without mentioning
their persecution by Muslims.
She blames their problems on Israel.
-
She quotes anti-Israel activist
George Rishmawi
of the
Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement
who says Muslims get "angry" at Christians
not because of the ideas that lead Muslims to
persecute Christians all over the world
but rather because of something Israel does.
- Click on the
Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement
on the day of this article and you see they are promoting a book:
Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment
(rather than a history of savage attacks against civilians).
They run the
IMEMC news site,
which describes the killers of settlers in Aug 2010 as
"Palestinian Fighters".
- The Irish Times paper edition prominently highlights this quote from Rishmawi:
"It would be a lot easier for Israel if it can get rid of the Christian community.
It could portray its fight as being against Islam."
Strangely, the Irish Times does not mention that
Israel's Christian population grew by 25 percent from 1995 to 2007,
and has grown by 345 percent since 1949.
Some war against Christianity!
- The message seems to be that if the Christian population is declining in the PA
and increasing in Israel, it could not possibly be the PA's fault.
It must be Israel's fault.
Why? Israel wishes to remove the Christians from the PA,
so as to present its war as against Islam.
The fiends!
- Like all agenda-driven journalists, Jansen never asks the unasked question:
What would happen to a Christian in the West Bank who did
loudly and vocally blame the PA, not Israel, for the decline in the
Christian population?
- Honest Reporting also
notices this article.
They outline some of the Muslim persecution of Christians in the PA.
-
Why Christians are leaving Palestine: Islamist violence is the real force driving Christians out of the Holy Land, Boaz Modai, The Irish Catholic, 9 Dec 2010.
It seems that if you want to understand the Middle East, you are better off reading the Irish Catholic than the Irish Times.
It's a bit like reading "The Reader's Digest"
instead of "The Nation" or "The New Statesman".
-
The West must confront Binyamin Netanyahu or risk alienating Arab democrats says Michael Jansen, 26 May 2011, after
Netanyahu's magnificent speech to the U.S. Congress.
But she is unable to quote any "Arab democrats" who are alienated.
She quotes Fatah, Hamas and the Arab League, none of whom are democrats.
She talks about the Arab street that is allegedly "democratic" but also hates Israel, the only democracy in the region.
And then she says we should respect that Arab street rather than despise it!
- Eddie Holt
-
Eddie Holt - The archetypal left-wing response to Sept 11th
-
Interview with Holt by the lefties at Media Bite, 2007.
-
When asked about the Mark Steyn and Charles Krauthammer columns at the Irish Times:
"The Mark Steyn and Charles Krauthammer columns were/are though, it seems to me hideous, absolutely hideous. I really wouldn't have much more to say other than that."
Yes, we have noticed you do not engage with their arguments.
- He claims Blair and Bush are war criminals,
and claims they killed hundreds of thousands of people
(please provide evidence).
"It does seem to me if you kill 600 - 700,000 people and you have told lies in order to facilitate their killing, I would have thought that is good enough to qualify you at least for trial as a war criminal."
- He claims that the comments of
Iran's President dedicated to "wiping out Israel"
are a "myth".
As in this image.
- On Ireland's fantastic economic success,
one of the great capitalism success stories in the world,
and a living refutation of his worldview,
he is of course dismissive:
"EH: .. there is a sense that a number of people have benefited from the Celtic Tiger, of course, but the big beneficiaries have been the very wealthy.
MB: We don't actually have, objectively speaking, a whole lot to show for it?
EH: No, we don't. There are twice as many cars as there was in 1995, or almost. It's crazy."
Oh if only we listened to people like Holt and were poor!
- Eamonn McCann
has been a pioneer in secular anti-sectarianism both North and South.
-
But he is also an extreme leftist
- a SWP member
and Trotskyist.
- McCann claimed (on the
Eamon Dunphy show,
Newstalk 106, Mon 20 Mar 2006)
that the Iranian
President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
was "elected".
Nice to know he supports brave dissidents
struggling for freedom in foreign lands.
- SWP member Eamonn McCann led a
sabotage attack on allied equipment
in wartime, destroying the offices of US defence company Raytheon, Derry, Aug 2006.
-
He
openly admits it:
"we hurled computers from the windows, used fire extinguishers to put the mainframe out of action and destroyed any paperwork and computer discs we could find".
-
Eamonn McCann,
Socialist Worker no.262, Aug 2006:
"The US/Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Gaza have posed the question:
"Which side are you on?"
On the side of the US and its Israeli surrogate,
or the side of the resistance?
Socialist Worker makes no bones about it.
We are on the same side as Hezbollah and Hamas."
- Why do we don rose-tinted spectacles for Obama's war?, Eamonn McCann, 11 May 2011.
President Obama in reality is carrying on the war against the jihad in a
very similar manner to President Bush,
despite Obama's dreadful appeasing rhetoric.
But the Irish left, which hated Bush, are silent, because Obama is a Democrat, and black.
McCann is rare on the Irish left in pointing this out, and continuing to oppose Obama.
One could almost admire his integrity - if integrity in a jihad supporter was something to be admired.
- McCann says:
"What did George W. Bush do which Obama is not continuing to do?
The main differences seem to lie in skin-tone and hypocrisy quotient, with George W. coming out lighter on both counts."
I agree with McCann.
The only difference is he thinks this is terrible, whereas
I think it is great.
Eamonn McCann
photographed
with a mob
looting the offices of US defence company Raytheon, Derry, Aug 2006,
because it supported Israel.
Shame on him.
- Vincent Browne
-
Saddam trial breaches international law, Vincent Browne,
October 23, 2005.
-
Vincent Browne
disputes the trial of Saddam:
"Saddam Hussein was quite right to question the presiding judge at his trial.
Under what authority was Rizgar Mohammed Amin sitting in judgment on the legal president of Iraq?
Saddam was a tyrant, he manipulated the electoral process to give feigned legitimacy to his rule but,
under international law, he was - and remains - president of Iraq.
In contrast, the judge presiding over the trial of Saddam has no legitimacy whatsoever.
He was appointed by the illegal invaders and occupiers of Iraq.
The court has no basis in the Iraqi constitution or Iraqi law.
It has no basis under international law."
- This passage alone is enough to make me dismiss
Vincent Browne's entire life's work.
Nobody who describes an unelected dictator as being
(or ever having been) the legitimate ruler of any country
can be taken seriously when they write about politics.
As Richard Waghorne
says, such a statement is in opposition to
"the fundamentals of democratic thought".
- Perhaps Vincent Browne is saying that the legal recognition of Saddam by other states
shows what a nonsense international law is.
But no, he intends the possible lack of legal status of the invasion to be a criticism
of the invasion.
- Waghorne describes my world view:
"Moral clarity demands that we deny tyrants the status of legitimate rulers.
To do any less is to accord to unelected strongmen the same moral status as democratically elected leaders."
-
Nuclear hypocrisy over Iran (pay to view), Vincent Browne, Irish Times, February 1, 2006.
-
Vincent Browne is relaxed about Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology.
Why? Because the democracies have nuclear technology,
so it would be only fair for every maniac dictator in the world to have it too.
"Iran is entitled to develop nuclear energy".
He even defends their threats against Israel:
"In challenging the legitimacy of the state of Israel, Iran ... is advancing a reasoned opinion supported by historical fact."
-
He even makes excuses for their pursuit of nuclear weapons:
"If Iran wants to acquire nuclear weapons capacity, it has been encouraged to acquire it by those very countries that now threaten it."
And of course he says Israel is to blame for Iran's plans to destroy it:
"even if it was the case that Iran was then or is now trying to acquire nuclear weapons capacity, the blame for that would lie with those states that conspired to create those circumstances in which Iran feels it necessary to acquire such capacity."
-
One would have thought the left would be against nuclear proliferation,
not in favour of it.
- He actually condemns the 1981 Israeli bombing which stopped Saddam's
nuclear weapons program!
- "How is it that double standards in the conduct of foreign affairs is the accepted norm?"
he asks like a simpleton,
wondering why it's ok for Israel to have nuclear weapons but not Iran.
Why doesn't he try listening, just once, to the answer.
It's because Israel is a democracy
and Iran is a dictatorship.
Dictatorships should not be treated the same as democracies,
not on this issue, or any other.
There's something fundamentally wrong with
Vincent Browne that he cannot see this.
- He even ends with:
"Meanwhile, hands off Iran."
Thank heavens people like Vincent Browne don't run the US or UK.
What a dangerous world it would be if people like him had power.
-
Berlin Wall celebrations mask reason it was built, Vincent Browne, 11 Nov 2009, shows almost complete moral confusion.
- According to him,
the Berlin Wall was not built to keep communism's enslaved people in, but rather it:
"defused a dispute that hung over from [WW2], a dispute that could have resulted in far worse consequences, possibly a nuclear conflict in the heart of Europe."
(Well wasn't that very nice of those nice communists to build it then!)
- According to his leftie history, somehow the West provoked Stalin into
oppressing Eastern Europe, something he would never have done otherwise.
- He concedes that
"The repressive character of the East German regime"
caused people to flee,
but you have to love the passive tense:
"in response to this leakage, .. the infamous Berlin Wall was constructed in August 1961."
Not "the communist dictatorship constructed the Berlin Wall".
But "it was constructed" by persons unknown.
-
And you can feel the sneer around "the infamous"
as if we are all very simple-minded for viewing it as evil.
He then sneers that the evil America may have approved its construction.
(According to him.)
And further sneers that
"its fall 20 years ago was seen as an emblem of victory for the "free world"".
Yes, real sneer quotes this time.
He sneers at the East Germans being granted the vote:
"the rapture for western "democracy" has faded".
Yes, his sneer quotes, not mine.
Based on, well, no convincing evidence, he says of the wall:
"its fall was not the liberation it promised."
- Crumbs, what a sneering cynic.
Give me
Ronald Reagan
over Vincent Browne any day!
- Vincent Browne spoke at
Marxism 2009,
organised by the
pro-jihad
SWP.
- Tom McGurk
- McGurk on Israel
- Tom McGurk, 6 June 2010,
describes
Israel's self-defence in the Gaza flotilla incident
as:
"murder, piracy, kidnap and gross larceny all in one. ...
how does this action differ from what Somali pirates do on a regular basis off east Africa?"
-
How Castro showed up Uncle Sam,
a sick tribute to the dictator of
Cuba
by Tom McGurk, Sunday Business Post, 24 February 2008.
- "Castro has left Cuba with real status among Latin American countries".
Yes, indeed.
The status of being
the least free country in Latin America.
Indeed, the only dictatorship in the region.
- "Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, western capitalism and the free market seemed messianic and triumphant. Against this backdrop, Castro's solitary experiment, that persisted on a small island off the coast of Florida, became even more tantalising."
So in the middle of all this wonderful good news,
Cuba's sad, solitary, bad news story became
"tantalising"?
He obviously only has contempt
for those Cubans who sadly hoped that the fall of the Soviet empire
would mean their liberation too.
- The propagandist McGurk says:
"Despite what propagandists say, the Castro revolution proved hugely popular with ordinary Cubans."
How does McGurk know, since Cubans are not free to tell us?
- "Of course, the average Cuban has little material wealth, and the Party remains at the centre of everything. But, then, this is a society where, with food, housing and transport so cheap, and education and health free, material wealth is largely irrelevant. Anyway, since the state owns all the shops, goods are the same price everywhere.
To be in Cuba is to experience the wonder of a society where the tyranny of consumerism does not exist. There is no advertising at all and individualism comes second to the common good."
So, from his position as a wealthy, well-paid media star in Ireland,
one of the richest and freest countries on earth,
does McGurk casually dismiss a society of endless poverty and complete lack of
individual freedom.
Oh, the tyranny of being rich!
If only McGurk could be poor like the Cubans!
-
Of course, he doesn't actually want to live in poverty in Cuba, you understand.
He just thinks it's wonderful that all those rustic, quaint, photogenic foreign people do.
McGurk is
in a long line of
western leftists praising foreign tyrannies they would never live in.
- Mary Fitzgerald
was introduced to us with a series of
Islamist whitewash pieces
in the Irish Times in 2006.
-
For some reason, the Irish Times
decided to print
a long series of
bland, pious whitewashes
by Fitzgerald
of Islam,
Islamic history,
Islamic teaching, Islamic clerics and Islamic organisations.
-
Just as they do not understand the neo-cons,
so the Irish Times reader does not understand the jihad.
And this bland, politically-correct spin will keep them that way.
- If you really want to understand the jihad,
and understand the currents in Islam
that have led to modern Islamist terror,
you need to read sites like
Jihad Watch
and MEMRI,
which have for years been casting a cold, unflinching eye on uncomfortable reality:
-
Tony Allwright
on a classic example of media bias in a
Mary Fitzgerald article on Al Jazeera:
"she contrasts it with the "rabidly right-wing" Fox News
and the "sombre, earnest and careful" BBC.
Why does she omit the epithet "left-wing" from the BBC's description, being its most abiding characteristic?"
-
All that glitters is not literary gold, Mary Fitzgerald, October 11, 2008.
- Islamic religious maniacs try to kill the publisher of
a book about Mohammed
in London in 2008.
And how does Fitzgerald respond?
By sneering at the book,
not at the Islamic maniac bombers!
- If people were bombing the Irish Times because of Fitzgerald's writings,
I would not concentrate on how crap her articles are.
I would be outraged at the threat to western free speech.
-
The future of Islamic Ireland, Mary Fitzgerald, Irish Times, 12 Feb 2011, is the usual whitewash.
- Muslim immigration is simply seen as a good thing.
While I have sympathy for any individual Muslim trying to improve their life,
the concept that more Muslim immigration might eventually lead to violence, or calls for sharia - as has happened in the UK and other places -
is simply not mentioned here.
There are no sceptical voices.
- She notes that the Clonskeagh mosque is linked to the
Muslim Brotherhood and
Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
But what they stand for is not really explained.
She notes that al-Qaradawi
supports Palestinian suicide bombing.
But she does not explain
his other abhorrent beliefs.
Nor are the beliefs of the
Muslim Brotherhood
explained.
- We get a vague statement that MPAC promoted an
"austere Salafist strain of Islam"
without any explicit mention of the fact that they
openly threatened the freedom of all Irish people.
-
Ireland's first major
Islamic terror plot
is not mentioned.
Maybe it's just "what we should expect" from new immigrants.
- The article quotes "typical Muslim" Eoin Whelan.
Is this the Eoin Whelan
who was linked to MPAC?
-
In typical statist and grievance-mongering style,
the article ends by demanding that the
government must change, not new Muslim immigrants.
-
Young, Arab and angry, Mary Fitzgerald, Irish Times, March 5, 2011.
- Fitzgerald casually quotes
Abd al-Bari Atwan
supporting the Arab revolutions,
without telling us that he is a supporter of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic terror.
He supports nuking the Jews of Israel:
"If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."
- Does Fitzgerald, with all her meticulous research, not know about this guy?
Or does she not care?
-
Tremors of attacks still reverberate for Muslims, Mary Fitzgerald, Irish Times, 7 Sept 2011.
- Fitzgerald, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, spins that there were only
"pockets"
within the Islamic world where 9/11 was celebrated or condoned.
She ignores the polls
showing that the majority of Palestinians and Egyptians supported 9/11,
and that majorities in many Islamic countries supported Bin Laden.
Since when is a majority a "pocket"?
(Bizarrely, Fitzgerald quotes these polls later in the article, but it doesn't stop her using the word "pockets" above!)
- She sympathetically quotes the son of Bin Laden mentor
Abdullah Azzam (died 1989)
as claiming that his father would not have supported 9/11 and Al Qaeda.
No evidence for these absurd claims is presented.
Abdullah Azzam
supported global terror against the infidel.
He promoted the blood libel against the Jews. He said the Jews
"mix the blood of a Christian or Muslim into dough."
There is even a terrorist group called the
Abdullah Azzam Brigade.
- Fitzgerald claims that
"The soul-searching the attacks triggered in the US was mirrored in many Muslim-majority countries".
Yet no evidence of this "soul-searching" is presented.
Indeed it is notable how little soul-searching about jihad, sharia, the Koran and Mohammed
took place in the Islamic world after 9/11.
Even later in the same article she notes that
the majority in Jordan, Indonesia and the Palestinian territories supported Bin Laden in 2003, 2 years after 9/11.
She notes that Al Qaeda support has declined since then, but this is not "soul-searching" after 9/11.
It is Muslims who support or tolerate the killing of Jews and infidels
suddenly being angry when Muslims get killed.
It is self-interest and gross hypocrisy, not "soul-searching".
-
Fitzgerald claims that
"The once-plodding process of reforming an ancient religion to fit contemporary times has accelerated in the decade since 9/11".
But again no evidence is presented.
In reality, there has been little reform in Islam since 9/11.
Those Muslims willing to re-examine the Koran and Mohammed
are still a tiny minority under death threat.
- She praises Saudi fanatic
Salman al-Ouda
for his alleged "moderation",
without noting his
strong support for jihad terror
and support for killing Americans in Iraq.
- She spins women wearing the hijab as good,
she promotes Turkey's Israel-hating Islamists as a model
- the left-wing spin goes on and on.
-
The Abdullah Azzam Brigade
is even linked to Al Qaeda!
-
They said in May 2011
after the death of Bin Laden:
"May Allah have mercy on Osama, the Sheikh of Jihad, the Imam of Piety, the example of asceticism and the model of patience, the pioneer of glory in this age, and the awakener of the Ummah from its slumber.
We in the Brigades of Abdullah Azzam bear witness that we only went out for jihad after incitation from Sheikh Osama bin Laden, by his words and his actions."
- Maybe Mary Fitzgerald should explain to them that Abdullah Azzam would have opposed all this.
I'm sure they'd like to know.
Phoenix mentions me in an article, Sept 2010, and (deliberately?) misspells everything.
- The far left
Phoenix magazine, 24 Sept 2010, mentions me in a profile of Mary Fitzgerald, and perhaps gives a masterclass in media tricks.
- I was at first tempted to say fair play to them for even reading me,
but then I noticed a couple of odd things.
- First, they spell my name wrong. Is this deliberate, so readers can't Google my site and see for themselves?
- Second, they misquote me as referring to
"Islamisist witewash".
I have never used the first of those words.
(I suspect Phoenix doesn't even know what the word "Islamist" means.)
And I never misspelled "whitewash".
(Check the Internet Archive
here and
here
if you don't believe me.)
Are these deliberate misspellings to make me look foolish?
Rather pathetic if so.
- On a different note, I was amused to see
the loony left Phoenix describe Mary Fitzgerald as "firmly on the liberal right"
and part of a rightward drift of the Irish Times!
Phoenix.
A masterclass in left-wing media tricks?
Or just incompetence?
Return to The Irish left.
Since 1995.
