EXPOSED
Scandals that Rocked the Irish State
Frank Connolly
Scandals that Rocked the Irish State
Frank Connolly
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About The Author
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MAGA pundit and best-selling author Eric Metaxas appeared recently on Elijah Streams, a platform for “prophetic voices” and right-wing politics. Metaxas compared President Donald Trump to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, saying that “God, in his mercy to us, created this man for such a time as this.”
Metaxas is promoting his book on the American Revolution, which came out in June. Baptist News reviewer Rodney Kennedy wrote, “Metaxas has not written an American history but an evangelical playbook for controlling America with MAGA politics. Revolution is a historical impostor because its underlying purpose is to produce a right-wing government in America today.”
Indeed, Metaxas called for a “holy remnant” to “unify around Donald Trump and his agenda.” He told host Kelsey O’Malley, “If we want to make America great again, we must make America godly again.”
Metaxas said that God had given him a moment alone with Trump shortly before the 2024 election:
And I said to him, almost like I'm talking to a teenage boy, because I respect and love this president so much, but I felt this urgency to say, ‘Mr. President, you need to know that God miraculously saved your life for his purposes in history . . .
Continue @ RWW.
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
One thing they say about the Irish weather, maybe two things: don't complain, it will change in fifteen minutes anyway; this year, summer will be on a Thursday.
Unlike ceasefire Gaza where bombs rain down, with over 1500 Palestinians killed there during the supposed cessation, we are spared that . . . for now. But where the government's abandonment of the Triple Lock mechanism might lead us is another matter.
While not everybody in Ireland has a home, those that do appreciate the value of sleeping with a roof over their head, a private space to be shared with family, a place to cook, relax, read, write or pray - for those spiritually inclined. None of them expect a bulldozer to come up, its attached megaphone blaring a five minute warning to evacuate the premises before the home is demolished, their lives' acquisitions destroyed in a flash.
While not everybody in Ireland has a home, those that do appreciate the value of sleeping with a roof over their head, a private space to be shared with family, a place to cook, relax, read, write or pray - for those spiritually inclined. None of them expect a bulldozer to come up, its attached megaphone blaring a five minute warning to evacuate the premises before the home is demolished, their lives' acquisitions destroyed in a flash.
That is life on the West Bank where the Nazi yahoo, Bibi the Butcher, yesterday began destroying homes of residents in Hebron, which is under military lockdown. The rationale provided is that two Palestinian freedom fighters mounted an anti-terrorist operation which claimed the lives of two invaders serving with the Israeli Occupation Force. Both freedom fighters also lost their lives.
Netanyahu, in a clear statement of colonial covetous intent referred to the Occupied West Bank as Judea and Samaria. In election mode, ahead of Israelis going to cast their vote, with him trailing behind in the polls, Netanyahu promised an attack 'such as has not been carried out since the Six Day War," He wants to demonstrate that he is Mr Security, encouraging Israeli voters to forget what he does not want them remembering: he was at the helm of Israeli society when some Palestinians broke out of their open air concentration camp and struck back.
There is much to be critical about the Palestinian action that day but to assert that it was conjured out of thin air is simply to echo the Zionist narrative which absolves its murderous forces of culpability. It is always important to deprive the Zionist fiction of oxygen so that it cannot deprive Palestinian actions of history. As much as we might wax critical of the October 7 attack, it was a counter offensive, not an offensive.
Contrast the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes with the response by the Israeli government to murderous thieves determined to steal and settle in the homes of evicted Palestinians. The thieves are rewarded with more stolen property, more weapons, more promises of a greater Israel. After yesterday's fatal armed exchange Netanyahu described the murderous thieves as "heroic" settlers who were "standing in the breach" rather than on the necks of those whose land they are stealing.
Contrast the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes with the response by the Israeli government to murderous thieves determined to steal and settle in the homes of evicted Palestinians. The thieves are rewarded with more stolen property, more weapons, more promises of a greater Israel. After yesterday's fatal armed exchange Netanyahu described the murderous thieves as "heroic" settlers who were "standing in the breach" rather than on the necks of those whose land they are stealing.
The overall plan is simple, drawn straight from the Nazi play book: impose Hebrew speakers on other people's homes, and on that basis claim Greater Israel is all the territory where Hebrew speaking Israelis happen to live. There is a parallel to be drawn with Russia using Russian speakers for its occupation of Ukraine and calls by an element on the far right AFD party in Germany for Greater Germany to encompass all German speaking areas. We know where it ends.
Human Rights Watch has described the planned mass expulsions in Hebron as a war crime and a crime against humanity while B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, has urged global pressure to halt the planned forced displacement of Palestinians. UN Secretary General Antonio Guttierez has expressed his extreme alarm.
Human Rights Watch has described the planned mass expulsions in Hebron as a war crime and a crime against humanity while B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, has urged global pressure to halt the planned forced displacement of Palestinians. UN Secretary General Antonio Guttierez has expressed his extreme alarm.
Yet these voices will remain ignored while Western societies like Britain are more alarmed by an English pensioner holding a placard in support of Palestine Action than it is about Israel pursuing its lust for child murder in Hebron, executing fourteen year old Naji Nidal al-Baba.
⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.
Attempts to stop people including writer Sally Rooney from expressing support for Palestinians facing genocide have been likened by Mary Robinson to the demonisation of opponents of South African apartheid.
Speaking before an event on international law held at the Museum of Literature on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green, the former president said that over her long career “this is the most difficult time [and] the challenges are more serious than they’ve ever been”.
She said the decision by British publisher Faber not to sell Rooney’s books in the UK over concerns the author’s support for Palestine Action could expose her to legal jeopardy was “a very worrying constraint and repression”.
Robinson, a former UN commissioner for human rights, said the current conflict had been “so complicated by the need to address and combat anti-Semitism, and that is important, but it’s also now constraining genuinely legitimate protest on the Palestinian side”.
Before the event examining the pressures on international law and global accountability, she said “you have to allow people to protest when they see that a genocide is unfolding, that horrible things are happening in the West Bank”.
Continue @ Irish Times.
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I have sent the letter to the following newspapers.
The Irish News, the Derry Journal, Belfast Media, the Strabane Chronicle, the Mid Ulster Mail and the Newry Reporter.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.
The Criminalising of INLA Hunger Striker Patsy O'Hara.
We, the undersigned Blanketmen and Women, are appalled that a young Republican, Christopher 'Crippy' Dillon from Derry has been charged for wearing a commemorative T-shirt bearing the name of INLA Volunteer Patsy O'Hara who died on hunger strike Forty-five years ago in 1981.
Christopher was then jailed for breaking his bail conditions because he had been stopped by the PSNI while on his way to support the residents of Garvaghy Road.
Patsy and his nine comrades, Bobby, Francis, Raymond, Joe, Martin, Kevin, Kieran, Thomas and Michael, paid the ultimate sacrifice when they died on hunger strike resisting the attempted criminalisation of the Republican Struggle by the British government - led for the most part by Margaret Thatcher.
Charging anyone for wearing a commemorative T-shirt bearing the image of any of these ten brave men has to be seen as an attempt at criminalising them again forty-five years after their deaths.
This must be resisted, as failure to do so is failing all ten hunger strikers. It will eventually lead to criminal charges being brought against anyone who wears a T-shirt bearing the image of any of these brave men.
Antoin O’Hara H5 - Thomas Dixie Elliott H3 - Gerard Hodgins H5
Seamus Meenan H5 - Gary McNally H3 - Phillie O'Neill H5
Sam Millar H5 - Hugh McCann H4 - John Nixon H5
Seán Fay H5 - Peter McGowan H5 - Gina McElroy A3 Armagh jail
Alex McCrory H4 - Sean Fitzsimons H4 - Johnny Gilmore H4
Frankie Doherty (RIP) H5 (added by his son Orann who said his late father would have wanted it included)
Patrick Stumpy McCourt H5 - Ned Kelly H3 - Niall Kerr H4
Gerry Donnelly H4 - John Hunter H5 - Antoin de BrĂşn H4
Seán Boyle H4 - Nuke Toal H4 - Dan Daly H5
Tony Campbell H5 - Maurice McGibbon H4 - Anthony McIntyre H4
Tommy Crosgrove H5 - Geraldo McDade H3 - Sean Laverty H5
Tommy McKearney H3 - Thomas Starrs H4 – SĂ©amus Kearney H4
Éamonn Mac Con Midhe H5 - Teddy Crane H5 - T Fitzsimmons H4
Damien Fields H4 - Tony Duncan H4 - Richard O'Rawe H3
Gary McCool H4 - Don Mulholland H3 - Ultan Mc Nulty H4
Gerald McDade (Geraldo) H3 – Willie ‘Deek’ Johnston (RIP) H3 (signed on his behalf by his brother Patsy) – Tommy Gorman H6 (added by his wife Anne as he is ill)
Pádraic Mac Coitir H5 – Albert Allen H4 – Colm Scullion H3
Colm O’Neill H3 – Joe Bonner H4
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| Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman. Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie |
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Un Exploded Minds
The walking wounded wander,
Every day they ponder
On the life they have squandered
A war rages in their minds
♞♜♝
Each day their minds replay itThey struggle to stay away from it
Like a movie, their mind keeps playing it
A war rages in their minds
♞♜♝
The steel cell door slams hardThe walk around the yard
They thinking very hard
A war rages in their minds
♞♜♝
They can’t get help to fix it
If they speak, they’ll get convicted
The spiral just gets deeper
A war rages in their minds
If they speak, they’ll get convicted
The spiral just gets deeper
A war rages in their minds
♞♜♝
Horror they have seen
Plays out on their minds' screen
It haunts them everywhere
A war rages in their minds
Plays out on their minds' screen
It haunts them everywhere
A war rages in their minds
♞♜♝
If they visit an NHS physician
And tell them their position
The police service take them away
A war rages in their minds
And tell them their position
The police service take them away
A war rages in their minds
♞♜♝
They said there was a ceasefire
The war was really over
But the memories are never over
A war rages in their minds
The war was really over
But the memories are never over
A war rages in their minds
⏩ Brendan Curran, Irish conflict poems 
2020
2020
There is nothing republican about intimidating the vulnerable or putting a landlord’s property interests before human dignity. Those who claim a connection to the Republican cause while associating themselves with such disgraceful actions have shamed the very principles they profess to uphold.
As Wolfe Tone reminded us, “Our strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property.”
Our tradition should stand with the dispossessed, not the powerful; with those offering shelter, not those using violence to remove them and line their pockets with the scum landlords blood money.
In a country gripped by a housing and homelessness crisis, and amid the devastation inflicted upon the Palestinian people in Gaza, solidarity must mean more than slogans. Irish republicanism without social justice and international solidarity is republicanism stripped of its soul.
⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
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