US bans Sinn Fein from fundraising in States
Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has been banned from fundraising in the United States, The Times newspaper reported on Monday, citing diplomatic sources.
Ted Kennedy cancels Gerry Adams talks
Leading Irish-American politician Ted Kennedy says he will not meet Gerry Adams during the Sinn Fein leader’s St Patrick’s Day trip to the US.
As reported here, the real problem with the IRA/Sinn Fein, is they no longer stand for anything, much less a struggle for national liberation, and instead have apparently devolved into being just a bunch of criminal thugs.
In Catholic Belfast, IRA becomes Public Enemy
Along the mean streets of this city soaked in blood and memory, something strange is happening. On a wall in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic neighborhood of Short Strand, two words of graffiti have appeared: “Disband Now.”
For those who haven’t followed the story, here’s what happened
On the night of Jan. 30, after a commemoration in Derry for the victims of 1972’s Bloody Sunday, some IRA men were drinking in the bar. So was McCartney, with his friend Brendan Devine.
According to family members, McCartney and Devine got into an argument with a leading IRA member, reportedly about a remark made to a woman in the bar. Despite offering an apology, McCartney and Devine were hauled out to the street. There, on the dark pavement, someone produced a knife from the bar’s kitchen, sliced McCartney open, gouged his eyes and left him for dead. Devine, beaten with an iron bar and stabbed, survived.
Associates of the killer went back in the bar, cleaned up physical evidence, took the tape from the bar’s security camera and instructed the patrons to keep silent because it was “IRA business,” McCartney’s family said.
That might have been the end of it. Like so many acts of violence in Belfast, where armed paramilitaries on both sides carry out “punishment” attacks in their own communities, police would normally add the killing to their files of unsolved cases.
In McCartney’s case, his sisters were having none of it.
His sisters, showing serious courage, organized, talked and gave interviews to anyone who would listen, and now the story is major headlines across the globe. It needs to be emphasized that they are Catholic and live in Short Strand, a hardcore IRA area. And that a former member who spent 18 years in prison says much the same.
Sinn Fein and the IRA have handed their enemies all manner of weapons to use against them.The real tragedy, along with the murder of McCartney, is that any genuine call for Irish liberation is now lost.