Kevin McDaid was buried today. Enough acres of newsprint have been devoted to his appalling death – this blog has little to say that has not already been said many times and much more eloquently.
But the reports of Kevin McDaid’s funeral add yet another nasty addendum to the whole shameful story. Unionism, having disgraced itself so comprehensively, had one last chance to redeem some moral ground, but in depressingly typical style it failed.
The Irish Times reports that:
“Leaders of Presbyterian Church of Ireland churches in the town attended the funeral as did Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, MP, SDLP leader Mark Durkan, MP and Assembly members Francie Brolly of Sinn Fein and the SDLP’s John Dallat. No Unionist politicians were noticeable either inside or outside the church.”
As so often before, the unionist parties – including the ‘Vote for Change’ UCUNF vehicle of convenience – gave posthumous succour to the loyalist thugs by deliberately and consciously avoiding any display of cross-community solidarity. By visibly not attending Kevin McDaid’s funeral – even though their own religious leaders managed to attend – the unionists sent a very clear signal to the loyalist thugs – ‘we don’t really care about McDaid, and we don’t really condemn what you did’.
Disgraceful, inhuman, and blatantly sectarian, but depressingly little different from the past. Unionism is a nasty creed that needs to be eradicated – today has shown that even name-changes do not change its true nature.
Coming from the man who had nothing to say about the murder of two soldiers and a policeman within two days of each other.
ReplyDeleteMind you, the policeman was a Catholic who had served in the RUC. Better not delve too deeply into his tragedy lest it reveals the utter baselessness of your demographic 'blog thesis'.
Seems you touched a raw nerve here, Horseman.
ReplyDeletePity he did not read all your blogs.
Anonymous No 1,
ReplyDeleteYou'll find that nationalist politicians, representing both SF and the SDLP, attended Stephen Carroll's funeral (and, recently also the funerals of Protestant PSNI killed on duty). Why do the unionist parties refuse to show the same revulsion when loyalist mobs kill Catholics?
It is very clear to me that their absence is designed to show their continuing bigotry against the Catholic Church (ie they won't set foot in one), which is simply fuel to the sectarian fires that lead to murders like Kevin McDaid.
If they are not bigots, why were they absent? Simple question, simple answer ... ?
And you'll find that an all-party group of MLAs issued a condemnation of the savage murder and condolences to the McDaid family.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, where were the Shinners at the funerals of Quinsey and Azimkar?
Willie McCrea claims £10,000 in expenses for furniture for his second home says the Daily Telegraph.
ReplyDeleteI see A Tangled Web is now giving a political platform to the Neo-Nazi British National Party.And to the Racist UKIP or the BNP in blazers as they are sometimes known.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDelete... where were the Shinners at the funerals of Quinsey and Azimkar? Rather a silly comparison. Both were buried in their own country, despite being killed in NI. Neither were citizens of a polity that SF claimed to represent, let along 'on behalf of us all'.
Some great views on ATW today.
ReplyDeleteMcCann is ranting on about what is left of the Empire.
Another post about how Obama "seized" GM. Is seized a new meaning for saved?
Another post about how Obama should not use the killing of an abortion doctor in church to try to paint these "lunatics as the real terrorist threat to America." Umm, Oklahoma bombing, 1996 Olympic bombing, all the shootings and bombing of abortion clinics in the 90's???
McCann ranting about the Empire has Vance joined in or are Comments Off as usual?Talk about two bald men fighting over a comb!
ReplyDeleteComments off on McCann. The whole thing is censored now. If you don't have an account you have to wait for your post to be approved. They are like the Chinese government over there.
ReplyDeleteSuch a thin skinned bully Andrew can dish it out but cannot take it.
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese Government is more open minded than Andrew and Dave.
ReplyDeleteVance is at least better than McCann. I don't agree with 99% of what Vance says but he at least does not manage to insert an anti-Irish line into every post like McCann does.
ReplyDeleteIt's a father-son relationship between them two.Still Andrew must be jealous of daddy with all his media work old Dave must be rolling in money!And poor Andrew is left with the crumbs!Still it's a good racket Dave got going getting on the Tv and Radio as often as possible.I wonder why Andrew is not invited on Tv and Radio?
ReplyDeleteTwo DUP councillors jump ship to UCUNF D Nelson (Ballymena)and Harry Greenaway (Dungannon)
ReplyDeleteAlasdair McDonnell claims £14,000 for Stamp Duty on expenses
ReplyDeleteNaomi Long Alliance elected Lord Mayor of Belfast.And congratulations to Tom Hartley for doing such a great job this past year.
ReplyDelete'Rather a silly comparison.'
ReplyDeleteNo, a very sensible comparison since you're the one banging on about redemption and evoking new beginnings.
Both were buried in their own country, despite being killed in NI. Neither were citizens of a polity that SF claimed to represent, let along 'on behalf of us all'.
They were killed and buried in the United Kingdom, the same polity that Northern Ireland is, and is almost guranteed to remain, a part of.
As for ATW, we like sensible arguments, not the baying of republican filth masquerading as considered comment.
Almost guranteed not 100 percent sure eh Andrew a little doubt start starting to creep in.Also Andrew are the BNP still Anti-semetic I thought you liked the Jewish people giving a platform to a party that denied 6 million died in the concentration camps is a funny way of showing it!
ReplyDeleteAlso Andrew do you believe the Jews control the British media because Nick Griffin does he wrote a book about it.Maybe that's why you don't get on tv and radio eh Andrew.
ReplyDelete'Almost guranteed not 100 percent sure eh Andrew'
ReplyDeleteThe only thing guaranteed in life is death, something Sinn Fein/IRA knows a great deal about.
'Also Andrew are the BNP still Anti-semetic I thought you liked the Jewish people giving a platform to a party that denied 6 million died in the concentration camps is a funny way of showing it!'
Considering that I have already gone on the record as saying I would vote UKIP, and have already submitted my vote for UKIP by postal ballot, I see you've made yourself out to be a bit of a pillock with a mind impervious to reality.
Still, on this blog, you're in good company.
No giving a platform to the BNP at ATW makes you a Moron Andrew supporting Israel and Hitler-worshippers is a very odd position to have.
ReplyDelete'No giving a platform to the BNP at ATW makes you a Moron Andrew supporting Israel and Hitler-worshippers is a very odd position to have.'
ReplyDeleteThe platform afforded to the BNP is by a fellow ATW contributor, not me.
Speaking of 'Hitler worshippers', how is Sean Russell's (he of Irish republican legend) statue in Dublin these days? Hear it got a bit of a richly deserved hammering (LOL)!
'Andrew why do you need a postal vote ? Is it because you are so fucking fat you can leave the house?'
ReplyDeleteAnd we thought quips about 'thick Irishmen' were only said in jest.
Also during the second world war Winston Churchill gave support to Stalin's Russia does that make him a Stalinist?I do not think so the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
ReplyDeleteChurchill and Stalin were brought together by the inexhaustible ambitions of Hitler's Germany. As two thirds of the triumvirate that made up the 'Big Three', the British-Soviet and particularly the Churchill-Stalin relationship lay at the heart of the United Nations' war against the Axis Powers.
ReplyDeleteChurchill's attitude towards the Soviet Union had appeared to come full circle by the time of Stalin's death in 1953. He was a proponent of Britain's intervention against the Reds in the Russian civil war and in 1946 at Fulton.
'Comparisons' with Churchill are no comparisons at all. Bringing in Britain's wartime leader when focusing on the statue of someone who was prepared to help round up Dublin's Jews and ship them off to Auschwitz as the price for ending 'partition' shows the sheer inability to face reality amongst contemporary Irish republicans.
Prince Harry still wearing the Nazi Uniform then?
ReplyDelete'Prince Harry still wearing the Nazi Uniform then?'
ReplyDeleteThose aforesaid quips will definitely not be said in jest.
Time to move on to a blog with some appreciation of reality.
Go on Andrew.Punish us.Deprive us of your incisive analyses.
ReplyDeleteDylan song for Andrew:
ReplyDeleteCome gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
I find it particularly weird that the handful of Irish people who tried and failed to collaborate with the Nazi's get so much attention. You know when you think of the Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Croatians, Yugoslavians. You think of even when the allies found out what happened to the Jews they still opted to send them off to Israel/Palestine instead of having them come to their countries in large numbers. You never hear people criticizing America for turning away in the SS St. Louis packed full of Jews in 1939. Yet this IRA/Nazi connection which failed with all of the Nazi agents getting arrested by the IRISH government and most of the IRA interned by the IRISH government gets so much attention.
ReplyDeleteThere is even an Irish journalist that publishes opinion pieces in some of the Israeli newspapers every now and then. He writes in such a biased way that if you did not know anything about Ireland you would think that when he talks about the IRA he is actually talking about the national army of the country. When he talks about Jews getting kicked out of Limerick he fails to include that they were welcomed in Cork and one of them actually later became the mayor of Cork.
FF, FG and Labour all have had Jewish senior members of their parliamentary parties in recent years and may still have. Some relocated Jews did come here during or after WW2, I remember seeing a TV documentary on the subject.
ReplyDeleteMPG.....
'I find it particularly weird that the handful of Irish people who tried and failed to collaborate with the Nazi's get so much attention.'
ReplyDeleteOK, just one last post from me.
Probably because Dublin is perhaps the only city in western Europe where a statue of a known Nazi sympathiser not only exists, but was replaced in bronze after the previous statue was damaged by vandals.
Indeed, Pedro. Sinn Fein/IRA administering devolution within the United Kingdom. Who'd have thought it possible.
I guess some incisiveness doesn't fit too comfortably with Irish nationalists.
There is a statue of Nazi sympathizer Edward VIII in your country and even his head was sawed off and put back on.
ReplyDeleteIn America there is postage stamps, songs, medal of honor, awards, airports, schools, named after the Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh.
anonymous post above, don't worry McCann will not answer now that you proved his point null and void.
ReplyDeleteThere is a park in Israel named after Eamon De Valera as thanks for all the work he did sheltering jewish children during World War 2.
ReplyDeleteYitzak Shamir used the codename Micail as a tribute to Michael Collins during Israels War of Independence.
ReplyDelete