Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Friday, September 6, 2013
LITTLE BOYS BUY BIG TOYS IN LONDON
What the deluded Americans do not seem to realize is that they are on their own. The only entities willing to support their aggression on Syria is Saudi Arabia and Israel.
By Finian CunninghamAugust 31, 2013 "Information Clearing House - The United States of America stands exposed in the eyes of the entire world as the number-one terrorist threat to the future of humanity. Many have known this fact already, but now it is universally clear.
As the US prepares to launch an overt war on Syria (the covert war has been raging for 30 months), the vast majority of humanity can finally see through all its decades of pretense and conceit as the world’s model of democracy and international law. And what they see is the ugly opposite. The US is a terrorist state that holds international law, democracy and human rights in utter contempt. It is ready, as it always has been, to kill countless civilians for its selfish political ambitions. That is the conventional definition of “terrorism”.
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad made a profound point recently when he said that his country has faced aggression for more than two years, but only now is the real enemy revealing itself - the US and its minions. But the US terrorist state is not just being called out over Syria. It is being revealed as the enemy to the entire world.
From past wars in the Caribbean, Central America, Philippines, Vietnam and Indochina, through coups and covert ops in Iran, Iraq, Africa, to recent killing fields in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, the historical picture is now complete. All these conflicts and many more - too many to mention here - integrate into one indisputable truth. The US is the world’s biggest terror state. If it is not dealt with definitely, then the future of the world is in peril more than ever.
In previous crimes of aggression, the US ruling elite could invoke the spurious cover of “a coalition of the willing”, or the abused authority of the United Nations or NATO. It was able to do that through deployment of lies, fabrications and a supine mass media that would lend credibility to the mendacity. Now, thanks to alternative, critical media and instant global communications, the American lies don’t work any longer. In an instant, they are exposed; just like the attempt in the last few hours of US Secretary of State John to frame up Syria over alleged chemical weapons use.
The New York Times, BBC and the usual Western media mouthpieces for imperialist propaganda dutifully facilitated Kerry and his US state terrorism with bombastic, important-sounding headlines: “Kerry lays out evidence against Syria”. There was hardly a critical question raised, even though there are grounds for dozens such questions. Years ago, that kind of herd-think might have been enough to buy the US warmongers enough time to launch a war - but not any more. Within minutes of Kerry’s supposedly definitive condemnation, statements, articles, tweets and blogs were pulling the charade asunder, showing that apart from Western-media-amplified bombast, Kerry was not saying anything of value. It was just another risible repetition of earlier hyperbole and empty rhetoric. Or in short, lies.
The people of the world have reached a critical mass of intolerance towards the rogue terror states of the US, Britain, France, Israel and a few other accomplices. We have watched their relentless mass murder and exploitation of fellow humans in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We have witnessed how this tiny group of state terrorists imposes on the vast majority of humanity their vile criminality and in the process then insult us with grotesque lies and justifications. We have seen how these rogue states have stolen land, poisoned people’s water, burnt their crops, dispossessed their homes, assassinated families with aerial drones and ground drones in the form of death squads. They have committed all these shocking crimes with lies and impunity to the point where now these state terrorists are operating in more than one country simultaneously in a permanent state of relentless war, pushing the very future of humanity to the brink.
However, despite this lawlessness and gangsterism, the people of the world are fighting back.
This week the British parliament voted against the London government’s arrogance to provide its usual criminal special relationship to the Americans. In the execution of past war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya - to mention a few - Washington could rely on the trusty British imperialists to give a veneer of “coalition of the willing”. British premier David Cameron’s plans to repeat the criminality by backing Washington’s plans to bomb Syria were dealt a crushing blow by the British parliament voting against any such military action. Cameron was forced to withdraw. The vote in the British parliament is not so much a sign of ethics among Britain’s political class. It is
more a reflection of the global awakening among ordinary citizens that this insane state terrorism must stop.
The French government has also backed off earlier bellicose bravado, with French President Francois Hollande belatedly calling for a “peaceful, political solution” over the Syrian crisis. Even Washington’s reliable Canadian puppet Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that his country will not be getting involved military in Syria. It is also reported that 10 members of the NATO alliance - one-third of the total - are not willing to support American strikes. This latter grouping comprises the usual minions of the US. And we haven’t even yet acknowledged the more strident opponents, such as Russia, China, Iran and the majority of nations elsewhere in Asia, Africa and the Americas.
The people of the world have had it with elite Western rulers acting as terrorists who are holding humanity to ransom. The rulers are presiding not only over military terrorism. They are inflicting economic, social and ecological terrorism with their bankrupt capitalist smash-and-grab system. That system has reached the point of meltdown and that is why we are being pushed into relentless wars - in order for the rulers and their politician puppets to corner the remaining resources. The ultimate solution to end the wars is for the people to overthrow the economic system that US and Western elite rulers preside over. The insane criminality of the US rulers over Syria is exposing this historic challenge facing humanity.
After the British parliamentary setback the US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said: “Our approach is to continue to find an international coalition that will act together. It is the goal of President Obama and our government... whatever decision is taken, that it be an international collaboration and effort.”
Can you believe how ridiculous these American puppets sound? What the deluded Americans do not seem to realize is that they are on their own. The only entities willing to support their aggression on Syria is Saudi Arabia and Israel. So, how’s that for credibility? The only support Washington can muster is from a feudal, sword-wielding, head-chopping regime and a criminal pariah genocidal state. Coalition of the Willing? More like Coalition of the Killing.
Friday, July 27, 2012
London Olympics Opening Ceremony was 'Crap' - Tory MP
The Olympic opening ceremony was boycotted or ignored by almost all of the world despite all of the hype by the BBC world service. The problem was made worse for tha vast majority of working people worldwide with cable TV companies making huge profits televising the games for the rich with ordinary people priced out worldwide.The opening ceremony was said to be far inferior to the epic opening in Beijing four years ago by those who viewed both. Beijing who received much criticism for its human right record is however generally acknowledged to have a far superior record than Britain, particularly with its treatment of political prisoner of conscience in British Occupied Ireland.
More than 18,000 military are deployed on the streets of London, accompanied by police and private security, who add more than another 30,000. Drones in the London sky, with the Royal Navy's biggest warship moored on the Thames, RAF Typhoon jets on permanent standby, with orders to use "lethal force," while surface to air missiles are positioned in housing estates. Fear is what the British terrorist state itself actually produces. Far removed from their notional ideals, this militarized normality, embodies the reality of our increasing inequality, growing corporate power, the continued rise of the domestic industrial war complex and the authoritarian governance of power, obsessed with global prestige and the media spectacle.
This paradox of the self fulfilling prophecy of threats become indistinguishable from the everyday petty narcissistic anxieties of our selfish, self-centred societies,with our deepest fears preyed upon for profit and power. Racial prejudices too are being resurrected, to advance the demand for such madness. Besides the false flag operations fueling the demand, the real target are the anarchical wars of all against all, to prevent the masses of ordinary people resisting, the injustices of a return to feudal exploitation. Britain beneath its veils of sovereign deceit with its arrangements of social division into class hierarchies is in its death throes.
Brad Evans in Truthout puts it all this way, "Any informed critical theorist knows that the political depends upon the ability to bring into question what is not seen as problematic. This drives us to question why something is not on the public agenda. How does power operate to prevent us from critiquing its most visible traces? Questioning the unquestionable requires making the implicit explicit. When we do so, it allows us to really open up the functioning of power as it impacts upon everyday lives. This is not about abstract esotericism. It is about the desire to question power, especially liberal power on the basis of its effects."
A soldier is a trained killer wherever he is but to have trained killers on the British capital's streets??? Should this be North Korea, Beijing, Syria, or Iran, politicians would undoubtedly be lambasting the despotic state of military affairs. The typical British logic however reason it to be an efficient use of resources, to maintain the democratic peace as in say British Occupied Ireland. So the distinctions are getting increasingly blurred between war, peace, global, local, private, public, soldier, citizen but then the UK was always to a greater extent a militaized society in need of a war in every generation like the U.S. now, to keep its facade of a United kingdom.
British militarism, with its psychological brinkmanship and brazen show of Olympic potential force, whether intended for an audience external, internal or both, makes militaristic posturing of a punishing state the insecure manifestation of its lost empire. Why ? because London 2012 is reflective of the dangerous world they helped create. Of curse no one wants to be blown up by a suicide bomber, thee is no freedom in that. However London 2012 with its high-profile nature and location for the Olympic Games undoubtedly makes it a prime target. Commonsense told everyone after 9/11 and 7/7 false flag or not, why people hated the targets. The simple laws of physics or cause and effect tells everyone of the need to account for our actions and our history of violence. Only then can we deal with the root of the problem and the equations of power.
The London Olympics are a presentation of the British terrorist state apparatus, with its private security firms of hangers-on, deploying mass-suppression techniques and paranoid state technologies to the export earning Commonwealth of colonial neo-colonies. Democracy, peace, freedom be damned. Along with internment without trial, the dumping of Habeus Corpus and the Magna Carta, the military zone of Olympics London 2012, researched in Occupied Ireland, is about to become the international norm of their tyranny.
In the name of security, they give us a glimpse of our future of militarized enclaves,with the most advanced technologies to ensure once you enter "the zone," you are a commodity, to realize profit and you have no political rights. Either we accept this or demand a return of political and social discussion. This requires questioning the vacuous politics of privileged boundaries and to question the framing of the questions, in such away that we expose the nature of power and violence at the source of the problem.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Militarized Olympic Zone Tramples on Civil Liberties
Militarized Olympic Zone Tramples on Civil Liberties
Olympics 2012 Militarized Zone : Lockdown London an Orwellian Parody Police State Developed in British Occupied Ireland
Olympics: Kabul. Baghdad. London. Three to avoid this summer
The missile batteries, fighter jets and VIP lanes are what happens when a world agency blackmails a city aching for prestige
There seems to be no limit to the efforts of Lord Coe and his friends at the International Olympic Committee to bring this summer's London Games into ridicule and contempt. A week-long "military exercise" is currently under way in the capital. RAF Typhoon jets are to scream back and forth over the Thames. Starstreak surface-to-air missile batteries are being set up in East End parks and on flats in Bow, with 10 soldiers manning each one. Army and navy helicopters will clatter back and forth, with snipers hanging from their doors "to shoot down pilots of terrorist planes".
Machine-guns will for the first time be toted by guards on the London tube. Police special forces, "trained to kill", will wear balaclavas to avoid identification. There are to be naval landing craft roaming the coast off Weymouth and submarines at the ready. The Olympics have become a festival of the global security industry, with a running and jumping contest as a sideshow. No one in government dares call a halt. Nero in his prime could not have squandered so much money on circuses.
The Olympics have become an Orwellian parody of what happens when a world agency blackmails a government aching for prestige into spending without limit. Not one defence spokesman has come up with a plausible scenario for the jets and missiles. The latter have a range of just three miles and are said to be usable "only at the express instruction of the prime minister". What will they shoot down, and on whose head will it crash?
These boys-with-toys are costing taxpayers £1bn yet they cannot add an iota to national security. They have nothing to do with deterringterrorism, even supposing there to be any such threat. The modern terrorist uses suicide tactics, by definition immune to deterrence. All the government has done is raise the politico-military profile of the Games and tempted some crackpot to have a go. Even at the street level, Occupy London and the cycling militants must regard Lord Coe's VIPlanes as a golden opportunity. The Olympic organisers are planning to close the Mall, Horse Guards Parade and most of St James's Park from June onwards, for fear someone might plant a bomb near the volleyball contest, crazily located behind Downing Street as a sop to Tony Blair. This is despite the prime minister and the mayor's office specifically countermanding the decision. Computer firms eager for contracts place regular stories about the "threat to the games from cyber-attack". One firm has been hired to deploy 450 "IT wizards" to guard the Games from hackers.
This means that, for the rest of the summer, London will effectively be "ruled" by the IOC. Enthusiasts for world government should take note. An unaccountable, self-validating body expects five-star hotels, chauffeur-driven BMWs, Soviet-style Zil lanes and all-green light phases for its thousands of "officials" and corporate hangers-on. It not only expects them, it gets them. It demanded and got its own legislative powers, under the 2006 London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act. Lord Coe does what the IOC tells him and passes the bill to George Osborne, who pays it. When the opening ceremony alone was £30m short (on a staggering budget of £60m), the cheque was promptly sent round.
The IOC is ever vigilant for its sponsors. Inspectors are to fan out across the capital, arresting anyone who uses the words "2012 Olympics" or any other associative phrase, for not paying Coe and the IOC a fortune in sponsorship fees. Jamie Oliver cannot hold an Olympics party in Victoria Park as he is a non-sponsor. Blogs, pictures or videos on YouTube or Facebook are banned. Anyone who so much as carries an unapproved bag, hat or shoe in a venue is banned. The Chinese politburo is Liberty Hall compared with this authoritarianism.
Transport for London has been reduced to a gibbering wreck. It has warned Londoners to get out of the city for the duration – at what cost to the economy? Citizens have been warned that central London roads will be closed, tube drivers may go on strike, and hospital casualty departments will be short of blood. How this will make money for London, as promised by Coe and others, is a mystery. As a tourist destination the place is being put on a par with Baghdad or Kabul.
There is no civic dividend from this sum and never has been. August in London is always a light month and, as the empty rows at Athens and Beijing showed, Olympic sports are not people draws. The irony is that the chief success of the London Olympics organisers has been the chief source of criticism. They have undoubtedly generated domestic enthusiasm. By making ticket sales a national lottery they achieved what appears to be the first sold-out Olympics of modern times.
However, roughly 85% of these buyers are Britons, few of whom will stay in London hotels. The crowds will be concentrated at the venues. It is the government, through its hospitality for the IOC "family", that will sustain the luxury hotel market this August. For the non-games districts of the capital, I would be surprised if shops, buses and tubes are not half deserted, taxis unused, theatres, cinemas and concert halls empty and any royal park not fenced off for a commercial sponsor pleasantly uncrowded.
The London Games began in a spirit of economy and popular enthusiasm. At the considerable cost of £2.4bn, they were to answer the state gigantism of the Beijing Games and fuse modern sport into the urban fabric. London would prove that cities did not have to be rich to host the games. It would be "the people's games".
The IOC put a stop to that. It drove a pliant British government to the present paranoia, budgetary incontinence and corporate greed. If the image of the London Games is to be rescued this summer, it must rely on diverting attention to the sincerity of young athletes and spectators, on somehow restoring the dignity of the sporting spirit. For now, a noble movement has been hijacked by a monster that is plainly out of control.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
ESCAPE THE OLYMPIC KILLING ZONE OF LONDON 2012
Magna Carta Raped by Spook Rule
The Magna Carta, the charter of English liberties was imposed on King John in 1215, it will be dead on its anniversary in 2015. It has been shredded in British Occupied Ireland by the Secret Services and their front man the unelected English autocrat Paterson, who re-introduced the wartime instrument of internment without trial, in total disdain of a supposed peace process.
The first published edition of the Magna Carta, appeared in 1759 produced by William Blackstone, serving later as a source of U.S. constitutional law in “The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest.” Both charters have served significantly, as the basis for law in the legal profession and the basis of human rights activity in the Charter of Liberties, widely recognized as the cornerstone of fundamental rights or as Winston Churchill put it, “the charter of every self-respecting man at any time in any land.”
The Charter in 1679 was elaborated to include the Habeas Corpus Act, formally titled “an Act for the better securing the liberty of the subject, and for prevention of imprisonment beyond the seas.” The modern version is internment or in the US called “rendition” imprisonment for torture. Much of English law was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution affirming, “the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended” and in 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court further ruled that rights guaranteed by this Act were “considered by the Founders as the highest safeguard of liberty, providing that no “person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law and a speedy and public trial.”
ESCAPE THE OLYMPIC KILLING ZONE LONDON 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
UK Riots 2011 London 2012 Olympics !
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Return of anti-Irish racism in Britain
Tuesday, July 17th, 2012 at 5:14 pm
BRIAN WHELAN
Poster advertising Saturday's "anti-IRA" march in Liverpool
Last week saw the announcement of an “anti-IRA” march in Liverpool by hardline English Defence League splinter group the North West Infidels (NWI), a far-right street protest movement. The march is an anachronism, a feeble attempt by the far-right to relive past ‘glories’ – but if you scratch beneath the surface of English society anti-Irish prejudice still lurks.
Thousands of Irish people have emigrated to England over the last three years. They’ve arrived in the country with over 600,000 Irish born citizens, but are quite often completely unaware of the difficulties past generations faced moving here.
Occasionally you may notice the signs of a previous tension; a total stranger might approach you in the pub upon hearing your accent to let you know their relative was killed while serving in the North, as if you were to blame or should apologise.
For me the soft face of anti-Irish sentiment first hit home when people began to leave comments under articles I’ve written suggesting it’s time for me to move home and hand my job and house over to a British person. I felt it was my own fault for venturing below the line.
Poster advertising Saturday's march
It turns out I’m not alone. British-born journalist Brendan O’Neill regularly receives “Paddy-bashing’” abuse for simply having an Irish surname and occasionally speaking out against “Catholic-bashing”.
This Saturday Liverpool’s Irish community had planned to march against racism. The event is organised by the James Larkin Society with the hope of countering the worrying rise in far-right activity targeting Muslims, trade unionists and Irish republican groups living in the north of England.
Outraged by the prospect the North West Infidels have called for their own protest billed as “Stop the IRA march in Liverpool”, despite the event having nothing to do with the IRA.
The poster in red, white and blue boldly declares: “Over the past several years the city of liverpool and north west england has seen the rise of anti-British feeling projected on them by immigrant families from the republic of Ireland.”
The rhetoric is laughable, but it’s being backed up with physical force.
“These people are much like the Islamics. They take take take with one hand and abuse their host nation with the other. They openly support sinn fien [sic] and the irish republican army and we are expected to stand by, smile and allow them to spread the hatred for britain.”
Last February, in scenes unseen since the 80s, hardline British nationalists stopped a march commemorating Liverpool-born Republican Sean Phelan and racially abused marchers.
The NWI, usually dedicated to harassing the Muslim community under the pretence of protesting “extremism”, have openly expanded their remit to include targeting Irish families.
Any sane English person would stay away, as the protest represents something abhorrent to right-minded people, and while most Irish immigrants have no interest taking part in an anti-racism protest or republican commemoration, even a fringe re-emergence of anti-Irish street marches should come as a warning to us all.
The rhetoric of groups like the English Defence League is just the recycled racism of the 1980s when the National Front and British Movement would stage “anti-IRA” marches as an excuse to attack and intimidate Irish immigrants. As a consequence many Irish people moved to the forefront of the fight against the far-right in the UK and played a central role in beating the fascists off the streets.
The unspoken rule seems to be that Irish people are white, so discriminating against them can’t be racist. When BBC3 screened RTE’s documentary about Irish rappers last week the soft face of anti-Irish prejudice quickly surfaced on Twitter:
“Irish rappers on bbc three!? Give it a rest, f**k off back to the fiddle and flute you potato eating chumps!“
“Irish rappers!!…potato famine has resulted in some damage chromosomes me thinks”
Similar Tweets about any other nationality could potentially get the person arrested or fired from their job, but when the jokes are aimed at the Irish it is written off as “banter”.
Brian Whelan
This is a situation helped by our love of self-deprecation and general thick-skinned nature when taking criticism, but outbursts like the above should not be tolerated. It’s up to us to decide when the joke stops.
The recession has scattered an entire generation of Irish youth across the globe, hopeful and idealistic, but ultimately abandoned by our own government and without any networks for support. While the French government has created new constituencies abroad to represent their expats, Ireland withdraws support closing the RTE London office at a time when more Irish people here need a voice than ever before.
A fractured Irish community with no connection between the old generation and the new arrivals can make an easy target. Without a sense of our own history anti-Irish sentiment might seem like something that doesn’t affect you, but if left unchecked it could come marching down your street next.
Brian Whelan is an Irish journalist living in London. He blogs atbrianwhelan.net and Tweets at @brianwhelanhack.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Wenlock and Mandeville Olympic Undercover IRA Moles Targeted by British Army
Wenlock and Mandeville Targeted to be Whacked or Interned Without Trial in British Occupied Ireland Concentration Camp.
The BBC was nothing but a front for Lord Muck and the IRA an evil spying network of murderers. New documents have revealed. that Wenlock and Mandeville, two ex-employees of the now defunct BBC 606 and the official mascots for the 2012 Summer Olympics being held in London 2012, have unmasked the two Irish moles as agents working for the IRA, who have burrowed their way deep undercover of the radioactive Olympic Stadium, ready to explode at the closing ceremony.
New devastating evidence proves what Tory leaders have been saying for years, that the BBC is nothing but lies and propaganda, that even watching it is tantamount to treachery, and the only way to find out the truth is to watch government briefings on Gerry Adam's TV in British Occupied Ireland. Documents covering the period from September1971 to 9 May this year, indicate a contact between someone who may have been in IRA intelligence officer and someone whose name is very similar to a man that started work as a cleaner at the Olympic Stadium.
New devastating evidence proves what Tory leaders have been saying for years, that the BBC is nothing but lies and propaganda, that even watching it is tantamount to treachery, and the only way to find out the truth is to watch government briefings on Gerry Adam's TV in British Occupied Ireland. Documents covering the period from September1971 to 9 May this year, indicate a contact between someone who may have been in IRA intelligence officer and someone whose name is very similar to a man that started work as a cleaner at the Olympic Stadium.
"This damning level of infiltration into the Olympics is simply unbelievable," said one MI5 intelligence officer. "It is simply inconceivable. My brain is beginning to hurt as we speak. But I'm not in the least surprised. We now know that Wenlock and Mandeville spent all the money they earned at the BBC and from selling weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, on producing propaganda and speading lies for ex-colleagues working at the BBC."
The cleaner who used to also work for the BBC, would have had access to the inner workings of the BBC in the evenings, when everyone had gone home, it was revealed. It is not difficult to see how, using coded messages secreted inside BBC 606 broomhandles and bin-liners, he could have edited footage, to make it look like the Irish in British Occupied Ireland, weren't happy about UK troops liberating them. Pictures of dead innocent Irish were thought to have been mocked up during tea breaks in staff
canteen by Wenlock and Mandeville who are also believed to have hacked into the BBC's computer system, with the full knowledge of the management and rewritten the next day's news announcements to include lies and propaganda and dirty nasty filth about the UK government. Despite listening to their own rewritten reports, BBC editors didn't twig because their brains were so addled from hookah pipes, prostitutes and Irish propaganda fed into their brains from the age of two, one expert revealed.
A search of Wenlock and Mandeville's lockers at the Olympic Stadium by UK special forces at the weekend, also revealed several containers of dangerous chemicals and five dirty bombs, proof that they were also manufacturing biological and nuclear weapons from all the contaminated radioactive soil spread around the Olympic Stadium. Incredibly, the documents also prove that Osama bin Laden was also in control of the BBC for years and so Wenlock and Mandeville must have been best friends with Osama up to the time of his death, said a professor of logical deduction at Oxford.
The cleaner who used to also work for the BBC, would have had access to the inner workings of the BBC in the evenings, when everyone had gone home, it was revealed. It is not difficult to see how, using coded messages secreted inside BBC 606 broomhandles and bin-liners, he could have edited footage, to make it look like the Irish in British Occupied Ireland, weren't happy about UK troops liberating them. Pictures of dead innocent Irish were thought to have been mocked up during tea breaks in staff
canteen by Wenlock and Mandeville who are also believed to have hacked into the BBC's computer system, with the full knowledge of the management and rewritten the next day's news announcements to include lies and propaganda and dirty nasty filth about the UK government. Despite listening to their own rewritten reports, BBC editors didn't twig because their brains were so addled from hookah pipes, prostitutes and Irish propaganda fed into their brains from the age of two, one expert revealed.
A search of Wenlock and Mandeville's lockers at the Olympic Stadium by UK special forces at the weekend, also revealed several containers of dangerous chemicals and five dirty bombs, proof that they were also manufacturing biological and nuclear weapons from all the contaminated radioactive soil spread around the Olympic Stadium. Incredibly, the documents also prove that Osama bin Laden was also in control of the BBC for years and so Wenlock and Mandeville must have been best friends with Osama up to the time of his death, said a professor of logical deduction at Oxford.
The news that agents from intelligence services have attempted to infiltrate news organisations like the BBC has shocked media pundits worldwide. "I can't believe it," said the former head of MI5. "We have one over-riding rule here in London never interfere with the democratic rights of the media and freedom of speech. It just shows how low Wenlock and Mandeville are willing to go. I am outraged. If there's one thing we won't stand it is MI5 or MI6 agents working as British journalists. The media must be allowed to present information in whatever way it likes without any interference from us. Now I must go, I've got an Olympic report to edit, hearts, minds, the empire and all that, old chap."
Ms.Givings, speaking from the new Palace on the Thames, confirmed she has been hard at work creating a treble agent to infiltrate the Wenlock and Mandeville terrorist network at the Olympics. "After a hard day on the wards with director Stanley Kubrick who withdrew his 1971 epic Clockwork Orange, despite its status as an Irish art-house classic of the genre, I spent quite some time introducing Wenlock and Mandeville to sapphic love. I have loved women in the past and slept with them too. I think if you love and want to pleasure a woman, particularly if you are a woman yourself, then certainly you know how to do things in a certain way."
Ms Givings was indeed no slouch in the girl-on-girl department according to one furry cup guru "It tends to be the case that normal lesbians or bisexual moles may not perhaps be as well endowed as Ms. Givings in the phwoaaar department make indifferent lovers. Ms. Givings, on the other hand, can lead a whimpering partner to a shattering climax within seconds, before continuing to work the trembling recipient for days, if not weeks.However as I expressed my doubts to MsGivings, she became increasingly agitated. I had, she insisted, completely missed the point. The debate became increasingly acrimonious until, incredibly, a furious MsGivings pulled down her shorts and proceeded to urinate onto two expensive copies of Wenlock and Mandeville, while one of her M15 spokesperson colleagues Rebekah "Basher" Wade, lay underneath licking her lips.
Personally I think they should both have been sent home pending psychiatric evaluation. And while I am prepared to admit a certain sympathy with some peoples' love of the outdoor life, the Olympics and all that, I insisted that water sports are deadly. However they both said their tipping point was the exclusion of that golden boy of English soccer David Beckham from playing at the Olympics. MsGivings said "I don't think I'll ever work for MI5 again," she was visibly-shaken as she sat tearfully clutching a picture of Posh and Becks atop two jewel-encrusted thrones on their wedding day in 1999. "I'm on tablets from the doctor. It's me nerves,"
she explained, before breaking down entirely and blubbering uncontrollably into a English replica shirt.
Beckham apparently was not included in the Olympic team because he engaged in a golden shower with Rebecca Loos and one of her friends, had sold graphic text conversations between the pair to a UK tabloid. "He can't speak at the moment," said spokesperson Rebekah Wade. "He's already smashed up the flat and right now Nancy's holding him by his feet while he tries to get out to play some football" M15 spokesperson Rebekah "Basher" Wade defended the deployment of Jordan's WMCs (Weapons of Mass Circulation to unmask Wenlock and Mandeville ): "The girl's a national institution. Those Irish have targeted England's premier piece as well as our Olympic showpiece.
I am neither Gaeilgeoir nor Catholic - but I am still Irish
RITE & REASON: JAMES JOYCE in Portrait of the Artist says: “When the soul of man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”PATRICK SEMPLE
During my life I have had a sense of wanting to “fly by those nets”, to avoid the constraints of nationality, language and religion.
My family came to Ireland in the early 19th century from Scotland. My paternal grandfather was in the army in Ireland and in India. Having come home from the famous Nile expedition, he was posted to Wexford, where he died in 1909. I was born there 30 years later.
My parents, who were adult in 1922, as citizens gave the new State their full, but not uncritical, loyalty. Since I was a boy I have wanted to free myself from the narrow, self-conscious and extravagant national pride all around me.
I was born just 17 years after Independence, so as I grew up, I heard at every turn the espousal of Ireland and everything Irish, but always felt that self praise is no praise. Some teachers indoctrinated children with a nationalism that amounted to hatred of Britain – and we wonder why violent republicanism still rears its ugly head.
I once heard a language enthusiast on radio say that unless you spoke Irish, you were not a proper Irishman. According to this principle, I am numbered among the 95 per cent or more defective Irish people. However I am in favour of preserving the spoken language as far as possible.
Two native-speaker friends independently told me that sometimes so bad is the Irish on radio and television that they have to turn it off. Having been brought up a member of the Church of Ireland in the post-Independence period of triumphalist Catholicism, I was made to feel an outsider. For so many people, in Ireland and outside, Irish is synonymous with Roman Catholic. Brendan Corish, leader of the Labour Party in the 1960s, went even further and said publicly: “I am a Catholic first and an Irishman second.”
I resented being seen by fellow countrymen as being Irish but not the full shilling. I resented that being Irish, foreigners expected me to sit lightly to the law and to have an ongoing affair with alcohol. How then am I Irish?
I am Irish pure and simple. I am as Irish as the most extreme republican, as the greatest enthusiast for and most fluent speaker of the Irish language and as the most fervent Catholic.
I am neither proud nor ashamed of it. I am glad I am Irish and I know I could never live contentedly outside Ireland.
There are characteristics of Irish people that I appreciate: generosity to the afflicted, welcome to the stranger, relaxed approach to living and a particular sense of humour. However, none of these is exclusive to our people.
We are not God’s gift to the world. We are one of a multitude of peoples on the planet who live together within particular national boundaries. There are characteristics of many Irish people I do not appreciate: for example, the selfishness of being so laid back as to be unreliable and believing that the destructive use of alcohol is funny.
I’m not a Kerry republican, a Dublin 4 nationalist or an Ulster or any other kind of unionist. I’m not a Gaeilgeoir or a Catholic.
On the other hand I am not Anglo Irish in any sense – I don’t possess or ever did possess, a horse! Neither have I an emotional home in England. I don’t want to be other than Irish. I am simply a human being who was born on the island of Ireland – and I’m glad that I was.
Patrick Semple is a former Church of Ireland clergyman and writer. He teaches creative writing at NUIM His website is patricksemple.ie
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