Having failed because of stalinist censorship in the pensive quill, to engage a former irish republican in reconciliatory debate, I offer these two articlesand video as evidence of the flip side of fascism.
"
GIVE US BARABBAS
‘No more inquests and no more prosecutions with respect to Troubles-related deaths.’ John Larkin
The North’s Attorney General has plunged into the turbulent waters of the area's conflict strewn past where dangerous currents, their sensors activated by the sound of a fresh idea punctuating stale environs, still threaten to pull a career under. In acting as he did John Larkin has shown more fortitude than most, in particular the political class which has been dipping its toe into the muck for the best part of 15 years, and pulling it back out even faster. The political sentinels have demonstrated with unremitting consistency how not to turn at every turning point, in those memorable words, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
In arguing that a line should be drawn under the past Larkin now finds himself somewhat isolated, discursively at least whatever else may be going on in the undergrowth. The political parties see some advantage in collectively distancing themselves from his comments, while the victims’ lobby, for whom any embracive outcome of substance is not within the gift of society, feels as unfulfilled as ever. For those left to grieve, loss is a vacuum that simply cannot be filled.
The victims' lobby has emotive reason to find the proposal anathema, but the political class should desist from the displays of mock horror it has acted out for constituency consumption. It has long known that the system does not work yet, in a rare show of unity, has clamoured to ensure it stays in place while paying lip service to the need for change. Barra McGrory, albeit less bluntly than Larkin, previously tried to steer the debate in a similar direction so there is no room for the vacuous claim that it came out of left field. As Director of Public Prosecutions he is not an insignificant figure. Upton Sinclair’s biting quip easily sums up the politicians: ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.’
Larkin has simply proposed placing a STOP signal in front of a vehicle already stalled, calling for ‘a halt to all probes into offences carried out before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998’ on the largely functional grounds that they are subject to the law of diminishing returns.
No imprimatur from a Harvard law professor is needed in order for this conclusion to pass muster. The countless victims still demanding redress illustrate the current deficiency better than anything else.
John Larkin has made the right call in terms of prosecutions. Not because his proposal approaches any notion of perfect justice: far from it. He proposes not the ideal outcome but the optimum one in terms of what is achievable within the constrained range of possibilities presently available in the North. There is no shortage of irony in a lawyer having to remind politicians of Otto Von Bismark's timeless pearl that often 'politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.'
Although I have a dog in the fight due to the Boston College affair, which alone is sufficient to make me thoroughly indisposed towards prosecutions, my views on a prosecutorial role in respect of the past were formed prior to the Boston archive becoming a hotly fought over issue. Reflecting on the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday I commentedthat:
Nothing since has emerged that would lead to a change of heart. Prosecutions have been a one way process, a weapon of legitimation employed by the British state against non state combatants designed to absolve it, implicate its opponents and distance itself from ‘lethal allies.’
The continued insistence on prosecutions from whatever quarter is made in the sure knowledge of the seriously limiting effect it will impose on wider truth recovery. It raises suspicions that much of it is deliberately designed to inhibit the emergence of anything other than a controlled circumscribed truth; to so refine and rarify truth through legalese that its value to society will be severely diminished. Politicians wielding the stick of retribution are prone to poke the eye of revelation, so that society in general and victims in particular, will see less rather than more.
John Larkin has outlined a method that if stringent in both its application and oversight procedure, has the potential to unlock more truth than is likely to see the light of day under any other set of proposals. As a rule uncomfortable truth will generally come out in spite of us rather than because of us. Larkin in opting to spite us, has charted a potential course towards that moment best described by psychiatrist, Dr Philip McGarry, ‘when the denials, the half-truths and the lies will no longer, in essence, cut the mustard.’
Still they shout 'No, not him! Give us Barabbas.' "The North’s Attorney General has plunged into the turbulent waters of the area's conflict strewn past where dangerous currents, their sensors activated by the sound of a fresh idea punctuating stale environs, still threaten to pull a career under. In acting as he did John Larkin has shown more fortitude than most, in particular the political class which has been dipping its toe into the muck for the best part of 15 years, and pulling it back out even faster. The political sentinels have demonstrated with unremitting consistency how not to turn at every turning point, in those memorable words, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
In arguing that a line should be drawn under the past Larkin now finds himself somewhat isolated, discursively at least whatever else may be going on in the undergrowth. The political parties see some advantage in collectively distancing themselves from his comments, while the victims’ lobby, for whom any embracive outcome of substance is not within the gift of society, feels as unfulfilled as ever. For those left to grieve, loss is a vacuum that simply cannot be filled.
The victims' lobby has emotive reason to find the proposal anathema, but the political class should desist from the displays of mock horror it has acted out for constituency consumption. It has long known that the system does not work yet, in a rare show of unity, has clamoured to ensure it stays in place while paying lip service to the need for change. Barra McGrory, albeit less bluntly than Larkin, previously tried to steer the debate in a similar direction so there is no room for the vacuous claim that it came out of left field. As Director of Public Prosecutions he is not an insignificant figure. Upton Sinclair’s biting quip easily sums up the politicians: ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.’
Larkin has simply proposed placing a STOP signal in front of a vehicle already stalled, calling for ‘a halt to all probes into offences carried out before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998’ on the largely functional grounds that they are subject to the law of diminishing returns.
No imprimatur from a Harvard law professor is needed in order for this conclusion to pass muster. The countless victims still demanding redress illustrate the current deficiency better than anything else.
John Larkin has made the right call in terms of prosecutions. Not because his proposal approaches any notion of perfect justice: far from it. He proposes not the ideal outcome but the optimum one in terms of what is achievable within the constrained range of possibilities presently available in the North. There is no shortage of irony in a lawyer having to remind politicians of Otto Von Bismark's timeless pearl that often 'politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.'
Although I have a dog in the fight due to the Boston College affair, which alone is sufficient to make me thoroughly indisposed towards prosecutions, my views on a prosecutorial role in respect of the past were formed prior to the Boston archive becoming a hotly fought over issue. Reflecting on the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday I commentedthat:
Nothing since has emerged that would lead to a change of heart. Prosecutions have been a one way process, a weapon of legitimation employed by the British state against non state combatants designed to absolve it, implicate its opponents and distance itself from ‘lethal allies.’
The continued insistence on prosecutions from whatever quarter is made in the sure knowledge of the seriously limiting effect it will impose on wider truth recovery. It raises suspicions that much of it is deliberately designed to inhibit the emergence of anything other than a controlled circumscribed truth; to so refine and rarify truth through legalese that its value to society will be severely diminished. Politicians wielding the stick of retribution are prone to poke the eye of revelation, so that society in general and victims in particular, will see less rather than more.
John Larkin has outlined a method that if stringent in both its application and oversight procedure, has the potential to unlock more truth than is likely to see the light of day under any other set of proposals. As a rule uncomfortable truth will generally come out in spite of us rather than because of us. Larkin in opting to spite us, has charted a potential course towards that moment best described by psychiatrist, Dr Philip McGarry, ‘when the denials, the half-truths and the lies will no longer, in essence, cut the mustard.’
The End thanks be to God
These Sniveling ‘Lefties’
What A Sorry State Of Affairs
By William BowlesNovember 21, 2013 "Information Clearing House - I have been involved with left-wing politics in one guise or another pretty much my entire life and I have to admit to getting an awful lot of stuff wrong, largely because rather than thinking things through properly for myself, I listened to the ‘authority’, to those who allegedly know best.
Contrary to popular belief, I’ve gotten more radical as I’ve gotten older and as just as willing to consider new ideas, new approaches, perhaps due to my 19th century ‘liberal’ arts education that encouraged us to explore wherever our fancy took us, (though it has to be said that much depended on the quality/interest/encouragement of the lecturers we had and a pretty motley but interesting crew it was).
All of this by way of a run-in to this Mother Agnes Mariam affair that once again reveals the bankrupt nature of left political activity in this country (and elsewhere in the ‘developed’ world).
If I remember correctly, Mother Agnes came to our attention back in September when she blew the lid on the chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, incurring the wrath of the Western media as she contradicted the story then being peddled, that it was Assad wot did it.
The International Institute for Peace, Justice and Human Rights (ISTEAMS) has just published a comprehensive report on the chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta. The document is called The Chemical Attacks on East Ghouta to Justify Military Right to Protect Intervention in Syria. With video clips and the evidence provided by witnesses to support the conclusions, the report has been submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council and spread among foreign diplomats.The author is ISTEAMS President and International Coordinator Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross (el-Salib), the Mother Superior of the Monastery of St. James the Mutilated (Syria). A fearless faithful, she has been collecting the evidence related to bloody events in the conflict zone since the very start of Syrian rebellion: the militants running rampant, the staged fakes and instances of one-sided highlighting of the events in Syria by Western media… ‘East Ghouta: False Flag Chemical Attack‘ By Nikolai MALISHEVSKI | 28.09.2013, Strategic Culture Foundation
So Stop the War have organised (yet another) conference and Mother Agnes got invited (and as it turns out, the only person speaking who had actually experienced Syria first-hand!) and a couple of rogues, Jeremy Scahill activist journalist and Owen Jones of the Independent newspaper, refused to attend if Mother Agnes was on the platform, on the grounds that Mother Agnes was an apologist for ‘mass murderer’ Assad. No proof was offered for this opinion, nor has any emerged since then as far as I know that Mother Agnes is an ‘apologist’ for the Assad regime. In any case, isn’t Owens the pot calling the kettle black?
Owen Jones…is a paid-up member of a UK…[Labour]…party that played a lead role in no less than genocide; in an act of military and economic aggression on Iraq totally against International Law, not to mention morality. He sits beside these politicians and pleads with leftist thinkers to join them and “change them from within”. — ‘Owen Jones & Mother Agnes. A lesson on conciliatory “leftists”’ By Phil Greaves
In any case Mother Agnes disinvited herself from the affair but the smell left by Scahill and Jones remains. Frankly, I think it’s outrageous that two people and one of them an employee of the corporate press, and the other a US journalist/writer, can dictate who should and should not appear at a public meeting organised by the left in the shape of the Stop the War Coalition!
I mean like what kind of threat is it if these two buffoons didn’t pitch? Who is likely to miss their presence? And shame on STW for caving in on this, once again revealing the bankrupt and utterly dishonest nature of the ‘left’.
I know I keep banging on about this but once more into the breach…when is the left here (and elsewhere) going to jettison its imperialist baggage? What does it take? Why is it that we are always, I mean always telling the rest of the world what to do?
Therein lies the imperialist core at the heart of the left, more commonly known as the ‘White Man’s Burden’. Apparently running the planet and its people is hard to give up even for those who claim to be anti-imperialist.
Mother Agnes’ biggest ‘sin’ was calling the ‘rebels’ murderers and exposing the Ghouta gas attack, and after all it was the ‘rebels’ that torched her monastery so perhaps she’s biased. But by the same token and in spite of this she has mediated meetings with all sides in the conflict even those she condemns as murderers. And what if she does support Assad? So what? What if she thinks Assad is preferable to mass murder? She’s not alone in thinking that in Syria.
What these sniveling ‘lefties’ want is everybody, everywhere toeing the Western lefty line. It’s all or nothing apparently. Essentially the Western left is saying, ‘What we need is a real revolutionary running Syria not Assad the phony anti-imperialist and until he comes along, we support bombing you into democracy’.
Now Assad’s credentials may or may not be up to the mark, this is not the point. It’s the idea that we, that is the miniscule Western left decides on the fates of others. It’s outrageous!
So it’s alright to rain bombs on Syria, Libya or wherever, if the pres ain’t Che Guevarra, seems to be the cry of many on the left. More chickenshit opportunism. But this attitude has a pedigree, it didn’t just happen. For as long as other countries have been having revolutions, we have been dismantling them in our critiques and more shamefully, in our actions, like effectively censoring Mother Agnes because two men objected.
Surely the lesson here is for us to keep our noses out of other country’s business and doing something about our own fucked up situation instead. Lost in shuffle are the fate of millions while we debate whether or not to support a country that’s getting hammered by the Empire, whether by proxy or direct intervention. I’m ashamed to be part of a left that even entertains these backward and reactionary views, never mind acting on them. What a sorry state of affairs.
Visit Bills website - www.williambowles.info
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Some if not a lot of these so-called lefties supported the Imperialist destruction of Libya! Racist and anti-Arab and pro-Israel.Democracy Now gave continous coverage of the deadly, counterrevolution that murdered hundreds of Africans living and working in Libya.Chomsky in the forfront.Socialist Worker's Party also cheering on imperialist aggression against Libya. I agree with the author , opinion about the U.S. left. It's our way or the high way.How do you follow a revolutionary party that have yet to liberate the working class in facist U.S. Scahill and Jones could learn a great deal about leading a revolution from Assad.But they won't because he's not white.
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Some if not a lot of these so-called lefties supported the Imperialist destruction of Libya! Racist and anti-Arab and pro-Israel.Democracy Now gave continous coverage of the deadly, counterrevolution that murdered hundreds of Africans living and working in Libya.Chomsky in the forfront.Socialist Worker's Party also cheering on imperialist aggression against Libya. I agree with the author , opinion about the U.S. left. It's our way or the high way.How do you follow a revolutionary party that have yet to liberate the working class in facist U.S. Scahill and Jones could learn a great deal about leading a revolution from Assad.But they won't because he's not white.
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