Things are pretty dire. What the world needs now is obviously another Celtic band releasing a new version of the old Irish rebel song The Foggy Dew about the Easter Rising. The Tossers, as ever, step up and deliver, ending their new album Smash the Windows with their version of track, first written by an Irish priest some time after 1919.
It is, as is to be expected from the Chicago-based Celtic punk veterans, a very solid version. It breaks no new ground, but there is no call for it to do any such thing. This is in keeping with The Tossers modus operandi, as a band without any pretence at "evolving" their sound, merely seeking to do what they've been doing well since the early '90s even better.
And that is being the self-proclaimed "world's loudest folk band", with a seemingly endless well of songs of drinking and carousing, of working-class people surviving an often hostile world of war and exploitation, and of Irish history and tradition, filtered through Chicago's Southside.
Of course, it might be said to be timely as the Easter Rising had its 100th anniversary last year. Also, amid the chaos of Brexit, the united Irish republic the rebels fought for may be closer than ever (in form, if not exactly the progressive social content the rebel's' Proclamation envisaged.)
But really... there is never a bad time to record a version of the best song about the Rising, when Irish rebels struck out for freedom as the horror of World War I engulfed Europe. By 1916, the British crown that was not just pillaging Ireland and impoverishing its people, but sending increasing numbers of young Irish men to their untimely deaths. in the conflict. Many Irish men signed up in a form of economic conscription -- the Crown's shilling beat hunger. But the threat of actual conscription hung in the air.
The contrast — between dying seeking to free Ireland from colonial chains versus dying for its colonial rulers in a faraway land in a futile war between empires — runs right through the song.
As the song declares in the second verse: "'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-El-Bar."
And, later, reflecting on the "lonely graves are by Suvla's waves or the fringe of the great North Sea", it reflects how much better it would had those Irish men "died by Pearse's side or fought with Cathal Brugha".
The rising, of course, failed, but violent British repression swung public sympathy behind the cause of Irish freedom. As the song concludes "For slavery fled, O glorious dead, when you fell in the foggy dew."
The album also features an original track about another decisive moment in Irish history. Called "1969" it is about, as the earth-shaking events in that year in the six counties in Ireland's north still claimed by Britain. Irish Catholics, suffering discrimination and oppression in the statelet, marched for civil rights, only to face extreme repression, setting in motion the violent conflict known as the Troubles that wracked Northern Ireland the next couple of decades.
No one can deny that this one is timely — in a way the band could not have predicted. The life and activism of veteran Irish republican leader Martin McGuinness, who died on March 20 died aged 66, was defined by the events of 1969 in his beloved home town of Derry, at the very centre of the storm. I talked about all that in my last post, but the song also tell the tale.
1969
Long ago, far away, far across the sea
There were those in Ireland who had marched for equality
Since leading Sinn Fein politician Martin McGuinness died aged 66 on March 20, much ink has been spilt on the life and legacy of the ex-IRA fighter who helped negotiate Ireland's peace process. Praise and sometimes slander, from highest offices around the world to ordinary people, have come the way of the deceased man from Derry in Ireland's north.
But how many of these bastards have bothered to use McGuinness's death as a great excuse to bang on about one of the greatest songs most famously sung by possibly Ireland's greatest-ever folk singer as part of one of the great Irish folk bands? Huh?
A whole bunch of people have missed this rather obvious trick. But no more! The absence of Luke Kelly and the Dubliners in discussions of Martin McGuinness's life and times ends here! I WILL END THIS AND I WILL END THIS NOW!
Yes! You can listen BELOW to Irish songwriter Phil Coulter's classic song "The Town I Loved So Well", first recorded by the Dubliners in 1973.
It describes the Derry that McGuinness, like Coulter and thousands of other working-class men and women, grew up in. It captures the tragedy of the violence that wracked it from the perspective of the working class who were its victims. And YES there is much more to say and GODDAMN IT fear NOT I go on to SAY FUCKING BUCKET LOADS OF IT DOWN BELOW IN THIS VERY POST!
But first, before anything else should even be thought, much less said... first... Luke Kelly.
In my memory I will always see the town that I have loved so well Where our school played ball by the gasyard wall and we laughed through the smoke and the smell Going home in the rain, running up the dark lane past the jail and down behind the fountain Those were happy days in so many, many ways in the town I loved so well
In the early morning the shirt factory horn called women from Creggan, the Moor and the Bog While the men on the dole played a mother's role, fed the children and then trained the dogs And when times got tough there was just about enough But they saw it through without complaining For deep inside was a burning pride in the town I loved so well
There was music there in the Derry air like a language that we all could understand I remember the day when I earned my first pay And I played in a small pick-up band There I spent my youth and to tell you the truth I was sad to leave it all behind me For I learned about life and I'd found a wife in the town I loved so well
But when I returned how my eyes have burned to see how a town could be brought to its knees By the armoured cars and the bombed out bars and the gas that hangs on to every tree Now the army's installed by that old gasyard wall and the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher With their tanks and their guns, oh my God, what have they done to the town I loved so well
Now the music's gone but they carry on For their spirit's been bruised, never broken They will not forget but their hearts are set on tomorrow and peace once again For what's done is done and what's won is won and what's lost is lost and gone forever I can only pray for a bright, brand new day in the town I loved so well
The song is a great demonstration of the talents of Luke Kelly as a folk singer, as he hits lines bemoaning a sudden and devastating shift towards violence with ever greater force.
The song starts depicting a working class community that suffers poverty (the men are on the dole, though the women work in local factories), but with a strong sense of community and pride. The narrator leaves and later returns to find a town "brought to its knees" by violence, with the "army installed by the old gas yard walls, and the damned barbed wire grows higher and higher". Kelly's voice is almost broken with barely suppressed anger as he declares "My God, what have they done?", before insisting the town's spirit is "bruised but never broken" and they set their eyes towards peace.
It is a song about social realities in the folk tradition, and is not explicitly political. It is no "rebel" song, and while it bemoans British military violence there is no suggestion of sympathy for the armed resistance McGuinness helped lead in the 70s. If anything, the reference to "bombed out bars" suggests the violence, from all sides are fuelling the singer's despair and grief.
But this doesn't reduce its capacity to capture the reality that made McGuinness who he was. When it was clear the armed struggle could not bring about a speedy end to the war, while the violence wrecked havoc on all aspects of society in Ireland's north, McGuinness was part of the push for an end to armed conflict to shift the struggle to peaceful means.
The ;picture of Derry, and what happened to it in the Troubles, provides a great frame to understand Martin McGuinness.
Born the son of a tailor in 1950, McGuinness grew up poor, in the working-class (and largely Catholic and nationalist) Bogside in Derry. Leaving school at 15, he worked a series of low-paying jobs. He was working as a butcher's apprentice when, in 1969, he witnessed one atrocity against his community too many and joined the IRA.
Derry is the second largest city in the six Irish counties that Britain retained when Ireland was partitioned in 1921 at the end of the War of Independence that ended direct British rule over 26 of Ireland's 32 counties.
To ensure a population in the partitioned state that was "loyal" to the Crown, it was established with an artificial majority of the largely loyalist Protestants, with the largely nationalist Catholic population a minority (Derry, however, has a clear Catholic majority).
The state was set up on the basis of Protestant supremacy, with Northern Ireland's first prime minister James Craig famously declaring it "A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people."
Run along sectarian lines, Catholics suffered poor services, housing and were denied access to many jobs, often reducing to living in slums. Local voting rights were granted to those who owned property. As many Catholics didn't own homes, they couldn't vote. In Derry, this meant that despite Catholics being the majority, the town was run by bigoted pro-British Protestant unionists.
Most of Northern Ireland's working class were Protestant, but within the working class, the poorest and most deprived were overwhelmingly Catholic (and nationalist).
In his funeral oration at McGuinness's graveside, his long-time comrade and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said:
Like many other Derry ‘wans’, Martin grew up in a city in which Catholics were victim of widespread political and economic discrimination.
He was born into an Orange State which did not want him or his kind. Poverty was endemic.
Unsurprisingly, such injustice sparked opposition. Inspired by the US civil rights struggle, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed in 1967 to campaign for equality for Catholics. The response to peaceful civil rights marches was extreme violence — especially in Derry.
Extra-legal loyalist gangs and the infamously sectarian and violent Royal Ulster Constabulary viciously attacked marchers. When marchers sought to defend themselves, attacks grew into anti-Catholic pogroms.
Catholics in mixed or largely Protestant areas were driven from their homes, which were often burned — turning the Catholic areas of cities like Belfast and Derry into besieged ghettos. Adams, in his 1997 memoir Before the Dawn, describes police snipers on building tops, opening fire on any Catholic they saw move. At this time, the IRA was all but non-existent.
In 1969, tens of thousands of Catholics were forced from their homes, many fleeing across the border into the Republic of Ireland — at the time, the largest forced movement of people in Europe since World War II.
The besieged population did not take the repression lying down, and brutal attacks by police and loyalist gangs were met with barricades and riots as people sought to defend their communities. In January 1969, with barricades erected, the nationalist areas of Derry (including the Bogside) declared their areas "Free Derry" — a liberated zone, protected by residents armed with clubs, rocks and petrol bombs, in which the sectarian authorities were barred from entering.
In August 1969, three days of violent street fighting between the RUC, which used CG gas (the first time it was used against civilians within the British state) and the nationalist community, known as the Battle of the Bogside broke out, sparked by attempts by a notoriously sectarian Orange parade to march through nationalist areas.
With the community undefeated, the British government took the fatal decision to mobilise British soldiers, sending them to the Bogside.
The Troubles had begun.
The British military failed to take control of Free Derry until 1972 (while the IRA operated openly, defending the area), but the path to full scale military conflict was opened.
In his graveside oration, Adams continued:
I remember [Martin] telling me that he was surprised when his father, a quiet modest church going man, marched in the civil rights campaign here in Derry.
The Orange State’s violent suppression of that civil rights campaign; the Battle of the Bogside, and the emerging conflict propelled Martin into a life less ordinary.
With British soldiers on the streets, the conflict spiralled into war, as a civil rights struggle morphed into an armed struggle for national liberation.
To crack down on the newly re-energised republican movement, the British authorities introduced internment in August 1971. Doors were smashed in, homes raided and hundreds of overwhelmingly Catholic men and women (most of whom weren't active republicans) were interned without trial, often tortured.
In Before the Dawn, Adams describes a terrible event in the working-class Catholic neighbourhood of Ballymurphy, where he lived. The day interment was introduced, the British Army set up a "free fire" zone in the area. For three days, soldiers opened fire on sight on anyone within their line of fire — shooting 11 civilians dead, including a priest who ran to to aid a wounded man and a mother of eight, on the streets desperately trying to round up her children to keep them safe.
This massacre predates the start of the IRA's bombing campaign. There has never been any justice for the atrocity. The soldiers responsible came from the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. Five months later, on January 30, 1972, the same regiment opened fire on unarmed civil rights marchers, killing 14 in the infamous Bloody Sunday massacre.
McGuinness, a leading IRA member in Derry at the time, witnessed the events on Bloody Sunday. In an April 1972 Irish Times profile of McGuinness entitled (to McGuinness's embarrassment) "The Boy Who Rules Free Derry", he said:
The worst I ever felt was Bloody Sunday. I wandered about stunned, with people crying and looking for their relatives, and I thought of all that about honour between soldiers. The British Army knew right well we wouldn’t fight them with all those thousands of people there, so they came in and murdered the innocent.
Think of this context and listen to the song again.
It's not hard to see how the likes of McGuinness ended up IRA volunteers, responding to such conditions with guns in their hand.
McGuinness may have become a leader of note, but his story was typical of his generation. Young working class men and women, looking to live ordinary lives, were driven to resist by violence and oppression.
A story told often about young working class men from nationalist areas being "lifted" by the British occupying forces, interned with trial and tortured — despite frequently having no involvement in republicanism. Instead, they were interested in the same things as young men everywhere — watching sport, getting drunk, trying to get laid.
But once released, the previously apolitical youths would search out their local IRA recruiter.
Adams pointed out in his 1997 memoir Before the Dawn, the working class nationalist in Ireland's north were not better or worse than anyone else. They were neither devils nor saints, just ordinary people facing extraordinary violence. Neither inherently pacifists nor predisposed to violence, they didn't want war but were willing to fight one when they felt they had no choice.
And with that reality of ordinary people — will all the good and bad that comes with it — came good and bad in the armed conflict.
There was incredible bravery, resilience and sacrifice. (None are more justly famous than the 1981 hunger strikes in which 10 men died rather than give up their dignity in the face of the Thatcher government's heartless cruelty).
This existed along with reprehensible violence that can not be justified no matter the cause. (One infamous example is the 1987 Remembrance Day bombing, when an IRA bomb went off at an Remembrance Day event at a War Memorial in Ennskillen in Northern Ireland and killed 10 civilians. The incident was described by Sinn Fein as a "huge tragedy" and Sinn Fein's An Phoblacht criticised it as a "monumental error". The IRA unit responsible was disbanded. The IRA had not intended to kill civilians, instead aiming to target British soldiers, but such deaths were always a strong risk with such bombings.)
The point is not whether both aspects have equal weight — I think the republican movement, whatever it did wrong, was trying to respond as best it could to a horrific situation not of its own making. Merely to point out that people enter such struggles with all their flaws and imperfections, not helped in this instance by the role of militarist thinking in the republican tradition.
(There is something sickening about the lecturing of one side of a conflict, which did not start the conflict, by those writing in safety who have never lived through one thousandth of the suffering of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.
And when pointing out the reprehensible, it is reprehensible not to point out the sheer scale of the violence dealt out against not just active republicans but the general Catholic population during the Troubles, who were targeted for cold-blooded mass murder by loyalist death squads operating in collusion with the British state. This ugly truth is proven in great detail by Anne Cadwallder's 2013 book Lethal Allies: British Collussion in Ireland.)
McGuinness and Adams, especially, grasped that the issue was not simply which side had greater cause or was responsible for more suffering, but finding a way to resolve the armed conflict so the struggle for republican goals — and to advance the interests of working class people who bore the brunt of the conflict, from all sides — could occur in a peaceful framework.
As a few commentators have pointed out, there were never *two* Martin McGuinnesses, a violent terrorist first and a peacemaker second. Rather just one with the same goals, who proved willing to adapt strategy and tactics through experience. Adams put it in his speech at McGuinness's funeral:
"There was not a bad Martin McGuinness or a good Martin McGuinness. There was simply a man, like every other decent man or woman, doing his best."
The best evidence of that intent — to do his best for the community he came from, lived in, loved and sought to serve as best he could — came with the turn out to McGuinness's funeral. Thousands accompanied his coffin and is made its way down the streets of his beloved Bogside.
McGuinness's funeral, March 23.
Looking at the pictures of McGuinness's tricolour-draped coffin almost lost in the sea of people, I wracked my brains to think of a single living Australian politician whose funeral would generate such a response. I finally concluded a few could — but only to ensure the bastards were definitely dead and buried.
Make no mistake. The town McGuinness loved so well sure loved him back.
"The Town I Loved So Well" may not be a rebel song, but here is one about Joe McDonnell, one of the republican prisoners who died in the 1981 hunger strikers.
'And you dare to call me a terrorist, while you look down your gun...'
Barnie McKenna, Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly and John Sheahan.
Saint Patrick's Day, every March 17, is a day where the whole world seems to come together to celebrate the culture of an ancient peoples that has survived invasion, occupation and genocide by binge drinking beer artificially turned green while wearing novelty leprechaun hats.
But it might also be one of the rare days people feel obligated to pay some attention to you banging on about the glory of Irish folk music legends such as the Dubliners. Or maybe not, but one can but try.
The Dubliners emerged out of the post-war period that saw big ruptures and innovations in various cultural in Western countries. In Ireland, the Dubliners, with a raw energy and rough edge that owed something to the same spirit of the times that led to the rise of rock'n'roll, helped lead a crucial traditional Irish folk revival. they took folk music out of stuffy concert halls being performed by the stiffly middle class people put the music back into smokey pubs. And from there, to England's Top of the Pop's and well beyond.
Often political or bawdy, the Font of All Knowledge that is Wikipedia informs us that the band "drew criticism from some folk purists and Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ had placed an unofficial ban on their music from 1967–71."
Having disbanded after 50 years in 2012, the band's members and output was wide and varied — with banjo player Barney McKenna (said to have revolutionised tenor banjo playing) and fiddle player John Sheahan the only two members to have been in the band from start to finish..
My play list focuses heavily on the definitive line up featuring singers and founding members Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew.
Kelly, who tragically died in from a brain tumour in 1984, was a left-wing activist one of the greatest folk singers of his generation, able to impart such passion and personality in his rendition of songs to render many of his versions definitive.
Ronnie Drew... well no one has ever accused the man of having the "greatest" voice, but, described as the "sound of coal being crushed under a door", it was certainly one of the most original — and perfect for story telling.
The two weren't song writers. They interpreted songs written by others, whether traditional standards or a new generation of folk song writers like Pete St John and Phil Counter, but the band created definitive recordings of wide array of songs.
What the Dubliners did in the 60s, in revitalising an old tradition with new energy, bringing it to a new generation in a way they could relate to, The Pogues did in London in the 80s, infusing Irish folk music with the energy and attitude of punk. Not for nothing did The Pogues record with the Dubliners in 1987.
And when The Pogues recorded a track like "Dirty Old Town", they weren't just covering Ewan McColl's folk standard, they were specifically, clearly, covering the Dubliners' version featuring Luke Kelly.
This is ap lay list of 20 songs that I think give the best overview of the quality of the Dubliners -- and their two most defining and distinctive singers, Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew. A couple of tracks such by Barnie McKenna are also thrown in, as is a version of traditional song Carrikfergus sung by Jim McCann, who replaced Ronnie Drew in the band for a chunk of the '70s, simply because ... well when you hear it you'll know why.
Done right, there is little to match Irish folk music in its capacity for affecting or amusing story telling, for bringing to real characters drawn from every day life. And few have done it so well as the Dubliners.
In today's Daily Carlo, I will share two things I learned by going into the horrible depths of NSW Parliament House tonight at Macquarie Street... that I am going to put *on my blog* despite having put it on Facebook because I have decided that fuck it. FUCK IT. I AM GOING TO START USING MY BLOG TO *MICRO BLOG* AND JUST PUT UP RANDOM SHIT!!! COZ I CAN!!! FUCK YOU!!!
NSW parliament is not like other parliaments I have visited. the WA parliament is no where near as "historic", "prestigious" and "fucking pompous" as this building. SA parliament? Don't joke. The ACT Legislative Assembly is a fucking B-grade , all-plastic convention centre compared to this. Not even the federal parliament feels as "steeped in history"/pompous crap" as the NSW Parliament.
And these are the lessons of my visit to the place:
1) the security police are *much* friendly, nicer and happily jokey than they are when you have to go to court.
2) The fucking beer is reasonably priced in the parliamentary bar. Like I mean $5 for a fancy fucking over-hopped pale ale craft beer that, anywhere else, with that amount of suits and soulless bar atmosphere, would surely cost like $8 or $9. I mean you can barely get a fucking schooner of VB or Toohey's New anywhere in this state for five bucks these days. WE ARE PAYING FOR THESE GODDAMN HACKS TO DRINK REASONABLY PRICED BEER! IT IS AN OUTRAGE!!!
3) Well... I'll get to that.
To expand on point one... at least I *got dressed up for fucking court*. You would think they would give you *some* respect! But no... cold, mechanical, harsh, soulless... that is some of the things the mothers of the cops at Parramatta Court House say about their sons who work there as security.
But Parliament House? Never mind I went in looking like I'd just woken up from my park bench I call home, as I go through and set off the metal detector the cop is all like "steel caps in your boots? not a problem... only problem is you are still sober at this time of night!" (Somewhat presumptuous to assume I was sober...) Way out was met with equally jokey cops. I really am not used to, and feel quite nervous around, friendly cops.
And while we are on the topic of point TWO... I should point out it was hardly a smooth ride... they really didn't seem to want us in their bar and for ages we couldn't get served because the guy behind the bar was very clear that you needed to be associated with some sort of sitting elected parliamentarian. And ours had disappeared to go off to prepare a speech for somethingorather. Eventually one parliamentarian was scrounged up by someone who *knows* these kind of people and the nicely dress man behind the bar was satisfied he was allowed to serve us.
Which was fine until I needed to order another and, standing there for sometime while the man behind the bar did various other tasks, was not convinced I would *get* served at all, what with looking, as I explained, as though I had just arrived from my park bench. But sure enough he did... and I was stunned by the change I got for the twenty I gave him. STUNNED! OUTRAGEOUS! THIS IS THE TAXPAYERS MONEY HE WAS GIVING BACK TO ME!!!
You might be wondering why I was even there.,.. and that reminds me. Point three. I didn't just learn it at Parliament House today, but was told of it once more .. .and that is:
Established, proven, collusion between the British state and death squads in northern Ireland to carry out the most heinous, unspeakable, stomach turning, soul wrenching massacres of civilians is truly ... well fucking unspeakably horrific.
And for more information, read this article by some prick who wore a suit to parliament today (and was forced to tolerate me shuffling along after him) about more details. Or watch this documentary about the British state's use of what can only be described as serial killers to slaughter civilians, often wiping out whole families. And think about both how this is a direct continuation of an approach the British state took to other parts of its Empire over the centuries, perfectly the craft, and how this practice in Ireland has led directly to the occupiers actions in Iraq -- using sectarian violence and death squads to divide and rule for Great Power.
If you really want to have your stomach turned, your tear ducts dried out and your heart taken and stomped on and smashed into a thousand pieces at the sheer unspeakable destruction of innocent human life driven by hatred, bigotry, cold-blooded hypocrisy that has never been properly recognised or had anything like justice administered for, then you can read Anne Cadwallader's Lethal Allies.
Oh well. Luke Kelly sings a mean song about the mess, at least.
'My name is James Connolly and I didn't come here to die..."
On May 12, 99 years ago, the British authorities occupying Ireland shot dead of the greatest figures of the pre-1917 socialist movement, who had fought for workers' and human liberation in three countries -- Scotland, Ireland and the United States.
A prisoner of the British crown after the failed Irish Rising in Easter 1916 that sought to throw off British rule, of which he was the military commander, he couldn't even stand due to an injury sustained during the fighting. (Connolly, with an ankle shattered by a bullet, had continued for days to direct the rebels from a stretcher.) So, to place him before the firing squad, they strapped him into a chair and shot him anyway.
The Easter Rising was never just for Irish freedom, and no one captured its internationalist cause better than Connolly, its most left-wing, clear-sighted leader who headed the world's first workers' militia, the Irish Citizen's Army, which joined with the Irish Republican Brotherhood forces.
The rising, especially for Connolly, was intended as a blow against the British Empire, then one of the main belligerents sacrificing the lives of millions of young working-class men in unprecedented slaughter across Europe. With British recruitment of often desperate, unemployed Irish men escalating and the threat of conscription looming, the Irish folk song about the rising, The Foggy Dew, puts it clearly, "Twas better to die 'neath and Irish sky than at Sulva of Sud el-Bar" -- where hundreds of Irish men did dieas members of the British Army in the disastrous Gallipoli invasion.
It was intended, not as an end in itself, but as a first blow against the barbarism drowning Europe in blood -- and while the rising fell, a more decisive and lasting blow came in Russia the next year and it is no coincidence that its leader, V.I. Lenin, was a staunch defender of the Irish rebels.
You can read more about this shit here, here and the depth of Connolly's thought and lasting contribution to international socialism here.
Does James Connolly and his struggles have any relevance to our times? Well... lets ask modern Irish singer Damien Dempsey as he sings the song below to a huge protest in against water charges, the largest part of the Irish people's fight back against crippling austerity, in Dublin last November...
'Where oh where is our James Connolly.... HE'S HERE!'
As regular readers will know, for a couple of weeks now I've been doing my "Daily Carlo" posts whereby I post on this blog every single day to ensure the Internet gets its *daily* dose of Carlo Sands!!!
It is without question a very important cause and one I remain *so* committed to I have posted *every single day* except for all the days between the last time I posted on February 28! Aside from those days, which have included every single day in the month of March except for today, March 17, I have been posting daily without fail. It is, indeed, an impressive record.
And today, well, really, I don't know that I have anything to say asides from: I FUCKING HATE PEOPLE.
I mean, I try not to let it show, as anyone who has ever had any engagement with me will attest. A more sociable and "skilled at social interaction with other humans" person you will not find on this or any other planet in the Known Universe. FACT.
But... sometimes... sometimes people are just, like, you know, really, really "people-like" and I just want to kill them and then the voices in my head start getting louder and louder till I can't even hear myself SCREAM and then A RED MIST DESCENDS AND EVERY GOES BLANK AND WHEN I COME TO THERE IS BLOOD AND BODY PARTS EVERYWHERE AND POLICE SIRENS ARE WAILING AND I NEED TO GO INTO HIDING ONCE MORE!!!
I fucking hate that.
On days like that, all you can do, should you want my advice (and why else would you be reading this blog?) is listen to God's Gift To Humanity: Shovels and Rope.
I got to see the husband-and-wife folk country rock'n'roll duo from South Carolina just two weeks ago and they were AWESOME. They were BEYOND AWESOME. They were the MOST AWESOME THING EVER SINCE THE LAST TIME I SAID SOMETHING WAS THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER EXCEPT THIS TIME I REALLY MEAN IT!!!!
Yes, when I say I hate people, I mean people WHO ARE NOT MICHAEL TRENT AND CARY ANN HEART FROM SHOVELS AND ROPE!!! COZ I LOVE THEM!!!
I love them in a maybe slightly creepily obsessive fashion that includes finding their address online then looking at images of their Johns Island, Charleston house on Google Maps ... but I am not going to post the image or link to such things here because that would be wrong and creepy and THEY ARE MINE!!! SHOVELS AND ROPE AND ME HAVE SOMETHING SPECIAL AND YOU JUST STAY AWAY!!!
The best bit about seeing them was when we were like right up the front and they were like just metres away. Like five metres away. I was so close to them I could see the veins bulging on Michael's neck (I call him "Michael" because I have stood five metres from him for like an hour-and-a-half watching his veins bulge and also looked at images of his street on the Internet, so we are pretty close really.)
Actually, the best way to comprehend how I feel about them is to post their song "Tickin' Bomb", which, by the way, they played when I saw them and it was AWESOME!!!
I don’t know you, but I know of you And from what I know I think I love you oh oh ooh Oh! You make me feel like I’m sitting right beside you If we ever met it’s just no telling What I might do Oh oh ooh oh!
Anyway, the point I was trying to make before I got distracted by how awesome Shovels and Rope are was... that this awesome Shovels and Rope song sums up my attitude to the rest of humanity today. QUITE FUCKING WELL.
My tongue's a match and all my veins are full of gasoline I come upon ya like a hit of methamphetamine Eyes roll back in your head Well I tell you right now, you better watch your back You can talk dirty til your tongue turns black But if you're throwin into me I'm gonna throw it right back at you
In other news, today is St Patrick's Day, the Official International Day For Pretending To Be Irish And Using That Nation's Problem With Alcohol As An Excuse To Get Really Drunk -- or as Tony Abbott likes to think of it, "a great excuse to offend an entirely new group of people".
So, to honour the day, loyal readers, here is everything I have ever posted on this Godforsaken blog that has included the tag Ireland.
And here is a great song by The Pogues about a mythical Irish hero and getting really drunk.
There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands
Well Jesus Fuck, any naive illusions that the turn of the New Year might bring with it anything approaching basic fucking decency along with its endless crippling hangovers was quickly destroyed by the glorious news that British TV has commissioned a fucking *sit-com* to be set in the... Irish Famine.
Yes this *is* the same "famine" (so-called despite the fact it was caused by deliberate British policies) that caused the population of the island to *halve*, with about one million starving to death and another million forced to emigrate. HAHAHA!
What next? American TV to greenlight a hilarious new sitcom on the deliberately spread smallpox epidemic that devastated Native Americans? Or perhaps Australian TV might take a stab at a funny-yet-heartwarming comedy about the near-total genocide of Aboriginal people in Tasmania?
I got a joke about the famine for them, too -- they can have this one for free, it's a corker and it goes: "How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?" The answer? "NONE!"
HAHAHA! Get it? It is funny coz it is about a million people starving to death in agony despite the fact their country was producing more than enough food to feed everyone on the island, just most of it belonged to large (frequently absent) English landowners who had it shipped off to England under English armed guard! Fucking hilarious!
AHAHAHA! Just *looking* at this Dublin memorial to the Irish hunger victims is amusing!
But what *I* want to know is who'll play the wacky-and-lovable-yet-utterly-racist-and-genocidal Charlie Trevelyan?
Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, KCB, was, of course, the cheeky scamp of a top-ranking British official in Ireland who oversaw the policy of denying badly needed relief to the starving masses because, as he wrote in a letter, he viewed the mass starvation as an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population" and "the judgement of God".
It is likely a moot point, as you can probably bet on the show not featuring those who ruled Ireland at the time -- you know those actually fucking responsible for it, as then-British PM Tony Blair acknowledged in an official apology to the Irish people in 1997 (perhaps in about 150 years or so a British PM might apologise to Iraq for Blair's war crimes).
After all, the show's writer, Dublin-based Hugh Travers, explained: "We’re kind of thinking of it as 'Shameless' in famine Ireland."
The Showtime US version of “Shameless” series depicts the dysfunctional family of Irish American Frank Gallagher, a single father of six children. While he spends his days drunk, his kids learn to take care of themselves.
So we are basing a sitcom on The Famine on a drunken Irish American series. Hard to beat that I'd say.
So, yes. This show looks set to be all about laughing at the poor. It is the victims of that Great Hunger, considered by many to be deliberate genocide, who will be the source of its "humour".
And why not? That seems the fad in comedy -- laughing at the poor without any care for the context of their predicament ... or who is responsible for it.
The best comedy, on the other hand, "punches up", not down. It mocks the powerful and seeks to laugh *with* their victims, not at them.
And maybe, following such an approach, maybe it would be possible to make a comedy series set in the famine -- much like a show like Blackadder Goes Forth found humour in the horrific mass slaughter of World War I. By making the humour the sheer absurdity of the situation, and the incompetence of the aristocratic officer class blithely sending others out to die for a futile cause.
I just *had* to put in another pic of that Dublin memorial. The looks on their faces is too funny!
But whatever, you might be thinking, it was a long time ago. Perhaps enough time has passed... except for the fact that there are stories like this one from January 3, about how the bones of Irish children who died in a "coffin ship" fleeing the Great Hunger 170-odd years ago had just washed up on a Canadian beach.
It is just one example of how the effect of the Great Hunger extended far beyond Ireland's shores. Large numbers of million or so people who fled in the infamous coffin ships headed for North America, but plenty headed here to Australia too. (One was my great great great grandfather who settled in Victoria -- and was a dedicated Orangeman sectarian, which just goes to show even bigots get hungry.)
Strangely enough, the decision by Britain's Channel Four to commission the series has caused widespread outrage. An online petition is calling for the decision to be reversed.
But if you want to make up your own mind, feel free to read a special secret "leaked" version of the script published by IrishCentral.com.
Or have a listen to the issues as spelled out below by Sinead O'Connor. Yes, I know. Sinead O'Connor. I did not want to have to resort to such extreme methods, but really, the fucking Brits had it coming.
'..then in the middle of this, they gave us money not to teach our children Irish...' Those British bastards forced me to do this.
And, OK, why not, while we are on the topic. Here is Irish folk legend Paddy Reilly with his hit version of Pete St John's classic tale of an Irish man during the famine transported as a convict to Botany Bay for stealing food ("Trevelyan's corn").
'Against the famine and the Crown, I rebelled, they cut me down...'
What the media should do, of course, is take all their editorials and op eds about a world famous politican who has died -- with their "authoritarian" and "tyrant" descriptors and their tales of economic destruction and class hatred and rising corruption and society breakdown and support for dictators -- and just do a simple find/replace, removing "Hugo Chavez" and inserting "Margaret Thatcher". Just to save some time.
One of these two leaders' deaths sparked widespread mourning, the other street parties. Check out these images and see if you can guess which one was the "tyrant"...
HUGO CHAVEZ DIES
Hundreds of thousands of people accompany Hugo Chavez's coffin onthe streets of Caracas
Venezuela's streets were scenes of outpourings of grief.
Real News report on mourning for Chavez in Venezuela and beyond
MARGARET THATCHER DIES:
Celebrations break out in Glasgow's Green Square after news of Thatcher's death.
Thousands gather outside Belfast's City Hall to celebrate news of Thatcher's death.
The corporate media are eulogising her and expressing "disgust" at those who have the gall to be happy at the demise of their greatest tormentor.
But even when they might feel obliged to give some nod of recognition to the savage class war Thatcher waged across Britain, there is one aspect likely to be largely ignored -- on top of Thatcher's infamous assistance to pro-Western dictators all over the world, there was Thatcher's policies of murder and torture in the cause of deepening British control over the six counties in Ireland's north.
It is well known that -- on top of the torture and abuses in prisons and the campaign of killings and repression in Ireland's north -- Thatcher's refusal to compromise in the case of the hunger strike by republican prisoners in the infamous Long Kesh camp lead directly to the death of 10 men.
Under Thatcher, the policies of repression against the Irish struggle extended onto mainland Britain, with the gross violation of the rights of Irish people living in England that included the framing by means of torture of innocent people for bombings they had nothing to do with.
Censorship is a sign of a guilty regime -- the truth cannot be allowed out. And so the censorship in Thatcher's Britain on "the Irish question" went to absurd lengths -- Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams' voice was even banned from being broadcast. But it was not just Adams' voice -- a song by a popular band that dared deal with the topic was banned from public broadcast and a TV performance of the song was pulled from the air.
The song was The Pogues "Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six". Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan is now better known as an irredeemable drunk, but his lyircs savaged the British state crimes against the Irish people -- in Ireland and Britain. It campaigned for freedom for the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four -- framed for bombings they didn't commit, both before Thatcher came to power, but whose suffering continued under her government while attempts to get out truth were censored.
Thatcher's regime was one that could not even bear to hear about its own crimes in a song...
...There were six men in Birmingham
In Guildford there's four
That were picked up and tortured
And framed by the law
And the filth got promotion
But they're still doing time
For being Irish in the wrong place
And at the wrong time
In Ireland they'll put you away in the Maze
In England they'll keep you for seven long days
God help you if ever you're caught on these shores
The coppers need someone
And they walk through that door
You'll be counting years
First five, then ten
Growing old in a lonely hell
Round the yard and the stinking cell
From wall to wall, and back again
A curse on the judges, the coppers and screws
Who tortured the innocent, wrongly accused
For the price of promotion
And justice to sell
May the judged be their judges when they rot down in hell...
May the whores of the empire lie awake in their beds
And sweat as they count out the sins on their heads
While over in Ireland eight more men lie dead
Kicked down and shot in the back of the head ...
'Five simple things we asked of them, five simple things denied. But Thatcher would not compromise...'
Scenes of jubilation in celebration at Thatcher's death on Falls Road in Belfast. You can hear the banging of bin lids -- a highly symbolic gesture as the banging of bin lids was used on Falls Road (and other places in the nationalist community) to announce the death of each of hte 10 young men Margaret Thatcher let starve to death in 1981.
SO HAVE A FUCKING DRINK COZ OUR VICTORIES ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN... BUT WE ARE STILL HERE AND MAGGIE THATCHER IS NOT!!!
You know the thing about the fucking British? They fucking fuck shit up.
You can’t take the fucking Brits anywhere, they always insist on taking their fucking armed forces with them and invading and colonising the god damn place. I hear Cromwell was invited over to Ireland back in the 17th century for a FUCKING PINT OF GUINNESS.
Next thing you know, the entire place is blown to shit and the country bloodily subjugated. Again.
The British make the worst dinner party guests ever. More than anything else, they just never know when to fucking leave.
And when forcibly evicted, they insist on holding on to what they can. They grab at whatever bottles of wine and after dinner mints within their reach and won’t let go.
Possibly even more ink than blood has been spilled over the terrible violence during the Troubles in the six counties of Ireland the British insist on pretending are British despite the fact that a simple glance at a map would seem to indicate those six countries are actually IN FUCKING IRELAND.
And yet so little of what has been written starts from the basic premise that those six Irish countries... are... well... IRISH.
I realise this is a complicated concept. I realise when you brutally conquer and pillage someone else’s land all sorts of tricky moral issues arise such as “Is this our land? Or does it belong to the people we raped and pillaged?”
It is a tricky one, as we realise here in Australia. I mean yes, the land invaded and brutally colonised did belong to someone else.
But... did it really? I mean really? And what does ownership really mean?
These are the profound philosophical questions a brutal coloniser grapples with, but I'll tell you one thing, try and take Carlo Sands’ fucking beer and you will find out what ownership fucking means.
The British, on the other hand, have finally decided it is not legal to shoot Irish people. The Brits can’t just go around shooting Irish people in Ireland any more — it’s been declared unlawful.
This is a true story. It happened just last year.
The context is the findings released last year in an inquiry into the January 30, 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in which 26 unarmed Irish people were shot by British soldiers at a civil rights protest. Fourteen people died, seven of them teenagers.
It only took the British some 38 years to publicly acknowledge the fucking obvious: that British troops had, in fact, gunned down unarmed Irish people, in Ireland, while they took part in a civil rights march.
It was a 12-year long inquiry that cost British taxpayers £191.2 million to decide that responsibility for the bloodshed lay with those doing the shooting rather than those getting shot.
Such a rejection of a venerable English tradition no doubt caused quite a stir among sections of the British establishment: first fox-hunting, then shooting Irish people — they must be terrified they’ll ban polo next.
It is always sad to see a venerable tradition go by the wayside of relentless modernisation
The Irish, on the other hand, should probably be grateful.
After all, it took Britain 150 years to apologise for the so-called “Potato famine”, in which about a million Irish people starved to death and another million emigrated despite the fact that plenty of perfectly good food was being shipped out of Ireland at the same time ... by the FUCKING BRITISH.
Such a deliberate policy could, by some nasty, small-minded bigots who just can’t let go of an odd million or so people being condemned to a horrific death by starvation in a totally unnecessary fashion, be considered genocide.
Regardless, at the very least, you can’t say the British are not getting quicker at acknowledging their errors/crimes against humanity.
I raise all of this because March 1 marked the 30th anniversary of the start of a hunger strike a young Irish man called Bobby Sands. He died 66 days later. Nine other men died on hunger strike in the prison they were held in.
Sands was incarcerated in what was best described as a concentration camp called Long Kesh and, with other Irish republican prisoners, was tortured and beaten remorselessly. He had been sentenced in a trail without a jury to 14 years jail for possession of a gun — five other men were charged for possession of the same gun.
Sands was a young man who personally faced brutal persecution and wanted to defend his community from fascist gangs and British soldiers (sorry, that’s a tautology).
For his troubles, he got railroaded through a jury-less trial.
In prison, republican prisoners began to protest the denial of basic civil liberties. They wished to be recognised as what they were: prisoners of a war brought to their country by Britain.
They did not wish to be branded common criminals, and refused to wear prison uniforms. Then, they refused to wash or empty the buckets the prison authorities kindly gave them as toilets — and the prison authorities reduced them to sleeping on piss-soaked mattresses and smearing their own shit on the walls of their cell.
Seeing no other way to get their grievances heard, a hunger strike was organised. Sands was the first to start, on March 1, 1981.
In return, Sands copped relentless abuse by the Thatcher government for being a cold-blooded terrorist — of the sort Thatcher would not deign to negotiate with.
In the middle of Sands’ hunger strike, a by-election in the seat of Fermanagh and South Tyrone was held. Sands was put up as a candidate.
Running from within the conceptration camp, Bobby Sands won.
On May 5 1981, Bobby Sands, honourable representative for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in the British parliament, died. One hundred thousand people turned out for his funeral.
When Thatcher eventually, finally, fucking dies — millions will fucking celebrate.
‘Five simple things we asked of them. Five simple things denied. Thatcher would not compromise.’
Can you find Ireland on the map? I’ll give you a hint, it is not in Britain.
SATISFYING NEWS: In the February 26 Irish elections that resulted in the Fianna Fail government getting lynched by voters for imposing savage austerity and handing the country over to the IMF, Sinn Fein candidate Dessie Ellis won a seat the Dail in the Dublin North West constituency.
Twenty-two years ago, a Fianna Fail government handed Ellis over to the British to face “justice” for resisting British occupation. On February 26, he took a seat belonging to Fianna Fail.
JUST IN: In a piece of even MORE satisfying news, the Irish just beat the English in a World Cup cricket match...
"We want blood! (we want blood), We want blood! (we want blood), let the scarlet red river turn our cities into mud..."
Finally, someone has stood up and said what needs to be said. And that someone is the great singer-songwriter from Dublin, The Mighty Stef (born Stefan Murphy).
The Mighty Stef aims his rough-as guts, drunken, impassioned, bluesy musical guns at the Irish government and calls them out for what they are: fucking lying thieves.
Having turned those parts of the Emerald Isle not still occupied by the British into a happy hunting ground for corporate plunderers (corporate tax rate lowered to 12%), when the good ship Corporate Plunder ran aground, the good people in the Irish government gave them 70 billion euros.
I mean, seriously, they gave it to them. It was not a loan. They wont have to pay it back. Just "there you go, you cheeky scamps, don't spend it all on lollys".
And these are the sort of people who wouldn't give a beggar a buck in the snow.
I mean, I was personally a bit strapped for cash a year or two back and I asked Brian Cowan himself if he could lend me a few bucks for a few pints in his nation's lovely pubs.
Well, the reply I got from his personal secretary's staff clerk's assistant's secreatary is not printable even on this blog.
Hell, I was only trying to do the bastard a favour. The economy clearly badly needed a stimulus package to get it back up and running and nothing stimulates an economy like a Carlo Sands' drinking binge.
But no.
But a bunch of goddamn fucking thieves in suits who fucked the economy up in the first place give him a call and next thing you know its 70 billion pounds from the public coffers straight into the veins of the profit junkies.
And it all gets blown on debts and speculation. Soon as they get the cash, it's straight down to their dealer round the stock market and whole sad and pathetic cycle starts again.
With the cash not being spent on anything *actually* productive or useful, far from saving the economy, it drove it further into crisis. Unemployment has tripled since 2007, numbering hundreds of thousands. Wages are 20% lower than three years ago.
Mass migration, that terrible feature of Irish history that has foisted morbid, miserable Irish folk songs on innocent people all over the world, is raising its ugly head once more.
And, after it all, the government has found itself a little strapped for cash.
The solution? Pay for the bailout of the parasites by squeezing the fucking people that *actually* do something useful in society, that actually produce something of social value: brewery workers and bartenders.
And the working class in general, they were just the first that came to mind.
The problem is it wasn't even the government's cash to begin with. It was money provided by taxpayers.
And the rich in Ireland generally don't pay taxes (do they Bono?).
So the government gives the rich the working people's cash. Then, it makes up the balance by making the working people pay even more.
It follwed this up by slashing billions out of social services, cut funds to education and hike up tuition fees, slash public sector jobs, reduce pensions and increase taxes for ordinary people.
But that was still not enough, because the Irish government claims it still can't pay its loans to... the FUCKING BANKS.
The solution? Well, "dear banks, get fucked" is the one understandably that struck most Irish people, who polls say back a default.
Instead, the government went crawling on its knees to the International Monetary Fund and European Union and got 90 billion odd euros in a loan at high interest rates, in order to burden the Irish people minus the six counties claimed by Britain with *even more* debt it never asked for. (But don't worry, the six counties claimed by Britain are having to pay for debts racked up by the British government for handing billions of euros to British banks.)
And in return the cash, the government will lose economic sovereignty and hand the running of the day-to-day economy over to IMF and EU bureacrats *and* commits to implementing *further* savage spending cuts and other neoliberal austerity measures - of the sort that helped cause the fucking crisis in the first place.
This, you might think, may make people angry. Well, the government is on the verge of collapse an some 100,000 protested in Dublin on November 27 at this state of affairs.
The Mighty Stef goes further: "Let the downtrodden rise with a fire in their soul ...how many times do you need to be told? We want blood!"
How to organise such a thing? I made some general suggestions on the issue of how to make the streets run scarlet red with the blood of the ruling class, followed by what may be best described as a "colourful" discussion in the comments section, in my post Could *this* be the wall?
But the practicalities are largely to do with Australia and the Irish people will have to find their own solutions. And, indeed, their own walls.
The Mighty Stef has rightly raised the issue and got the ball (if not yet the heads) rolling. And this from a man whose previous experience of protest songs was this effort in response to Ireland losing a football match to France in the "Hand of Frog" scandal.
But I like the Mighty Stef in general. Rough, raw and drunken... Irish, in other words. If you want to hear some more, here are three song suggestions (though I could list more):
Death Threats: "It's getting to the stage I guess I always knew it would, where I can't walk down my street. I'm getting death threats here, death threats there from everyone I meet..." Carlo Sands can relate, especially to the empty beer glasses in the film clip.
Poisonous Love: "I'll return, your jewelry, I'll return your keys. I'll return your records and your poxy DVDS. I'll give you back your innocence that you blindly gave to me, and I'll sink you to the bottom of the sea..." The Mighty Stef shows the mature way to deal with a relationship break up.
Waitin' round to die: "I came of age and I met a girl in a Tuscaloosa bar, she cleaned me out and hit it on the sly. I tried to kill the pain, I bought some wine, hopped a train..." The Mighty Stef teams up with Shane MacGowan to cover Townes Van Zandt's classic.
Or you could just get on with the task of spilling their blood.
"Coz I've heard all the lies that I'm ever gonna wanna hear... we want blood!" Accoustic fury this time.
November 2 and Spring is in the air! Flowers and thoughts of a wide variety of situations involving Johnny Depp and a bottle of absinthe are abundant!
At least in our hemisphere.
In the Northern hemisphere, it is deep into autumn and winter is gathering momentum for its miserable assault. And few places ever seem as miserable as Belfast.
Which has always posed the question in my ever inquiring mind: what the fuck do the British want with that place anyway?
Sure, it is up there in the global stakes of quality wall mural art, but at least half of them are not exactly flattering to the British crown.
"Sure it says 'British scum fuck off' but check out the quality strokework involved."
But surely this is all ancient history, Comrade Sands? Wasn't there some kind of piece of paper signed about a decade ago that committed everyone to put down their guns and dance around in a giant circle of love chanting "oooommmm" while Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley handed out daisies to school kids?
Well, the lovefest hasn't been going to well of late, for the simple reason: The British ruling class are fucking bastards.
And, if there is one thing worse than the fucking British, it is a fucking wannabe Brit.
Ie: Ulster unionists.
The sharpest political analysis of this bizarre situation of a bunch of Irish people desperate to be British was provided by Ali G.
Ali G: Is you Irish?
Unionist politician: No, I'm British.
Ali G: So is you here on holiday?
I mean, who the fuck actually wants to be British?
At best, the Scottish and the Welsh sort of reluctantly tolerate the situation. The English really don't have much choice in the matter — and have you seen how miserable they look?
Why don't these loyalists in Northern Ireland want to be part of some cool nationality, like Jamaican?
Or, come to think of it, what about just being Irish, seeing as that is where they actually live.
Who the fuck doesn't want to be Irish?
Everyone loves the Irish — they drink all the time, sing rowdy songs and write great plays.
The Irish gave the world Guinness and St Patrick's Day parties. The English have given us cricket.
Even the best English musicians, like The Beatles or The Smiths, all have Irish heritage.
The Irish have produced brilliant writers and personalities, like Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Bernard Black.
True, the Irish also gave the world Bono, but there is always a wanker in any crowd.
I just don't fucking get it.
And the thing is, each to their own. Who am I to judge these people's weird English fetish?
But there is no need to impose being British on a fair chunk of a completely different nation. That is really just cruel.
Now, I know what you are thinking. That is all well and good comrade, but it is what a majority in Northern Ireland want.
Bullshit it is. It's called a gerrymander, or just plain fucking cheating.
You try to win a pool game with a trick like this one, you end up with a fucking cue in the face.
“No, that's right. You're on bigs so you start with seven balls, I am on smalls so I have three balls to sink. What do you mean, it's totally fair!”
Supposedly “majority loyalist” Ulster in the north has nine counties. To manufacture a majority of people who like to pretend to be British, the Northern Ireland statelet only took six Ulster counties. And even then, the British-freaks only have an outright majority in two of them.
To quote the ultimate source, John Lennon: "Well you claim to be a majority/you know that that's a lie/you're really a minority/in this sweet emerald isle.
(And while we are on the topic, how much fucking better is John Lennon's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" compared to U2's song of the same name?
"How loooong, hoooowwww looonnng must we sing this song?" I don't know, Bono, how about you shut the fuck up right now, you pointless, whining, arrogant piece of shit?)
The end of armed conflict was a good thing, but all the rhetoric aside, the Good Friday Agreement that involved getting together to chant oom and/or share power between unionists and Sinn Fein in the six counties that Britain seems so reluctant to just admit are actually in Ireland, could only have been a pretty basic compromise at best.
Why? The British ruling class, as I believe I mentioned earlier, are fucking bastards.
Which, after a long digression, brings me back to November 2.
The British government thought it would be just a wonderful idea to have a military parade through the streets of Belfast on this no doubt already quite miserable day.
You see, the Royal Irish Regiment had just returned from occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, and holding down the natives just like in the good ol' days - before all the savages got funny ideas about governing themselves. Hooray!
A good ol' military parade to celebrate a bit of "keeping the savages in their place"? Who could possibly complain?
Well, maybe the entire fucking nationalist community that suffered close to four decades of brutal military occupation by the British Army, including by the very regiment that was to hold a party on their streets.
The death toll of of the Nationalist and Catholic community at the hands of the occupying troops tops 400 people.
My source in Belfast inform me there was no less than four separate protests on the day. (I can't reveal my source, but her code name is "Clancy-pants". And I can't recall having seen her sober.)
The largest protest was organised by Sinn Fein near the military parade. A peaceful demonstration, it was headed by family members of those murdered by British troops.
So, how did the loyalists respond?
Bottles, brioks and bigotted chants, while the police stand by.
And what is it with tough-guy bigots and baldness? What are they, scared of nits?
It isn't in the footage, but the loyalist mob also took to chanting the delightful ditty, "Would you like a chicken supper, Bobby Sands"?
Bobby Sands (no relation) was the first of ten republican prisoners in the concentration camp of Long Kesh to die on hunger strike in 1981.
Now my first thought was, naturally enough, "what a bunch of disgusting bigots".
But then I thought about it a bit more, and thought "no, give these people a chance. Don't just jump to the worst conclusion."
So I figured, well, I mean they are clearly not altogether bright, perhaps they simply haven't followed the news over the last 27-odd years. Perhaps they never heard Bobby Sands had died, or even about the hunger strike.
Maybe they thought he was still on the blanket protest in H-block and, in the interests of healing the wounds of the past, figured the offer of a decent feed would be seen as a token of good faith and a willingness to move forward, together.
Then I saw the bottles flying towards those whose family members were murdered.
No, just fucking bigots.
So below is my response. It is also for the Iraqi and Afghan people, who, last century, both drove the British Army out, only to see the fucking scum return, tagging along after the new Empire.
