Sinn Fein vs Sieg Heil - Spot the Difference

[boojangles]

I dont think its a misreading.Britain had only bad standards in accepting its own responsibilities.Human rights,prisoners rights,I could go on.

Stripe me pink

The point is not whether Britain's standards were objectively high. It was that whatever the highest of these standards were, no less should be applied across the board.

Powell was saying Britain should not treat Africans or Asians under its government by any lower standard than the best standard by which it would treat Britons.

Seriously, is this too hard to grasp?

Its not hard to grasp. Basically he is saying,treat everybody bad. I don't expect you to understand wher Im coming from. I'm basically having a dig at Britains record in treating some of its 'citizens'.
Is that too hard to grasp?

[Evil Genius]

"As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now."

Enoch Powell, Ulster Unionist MP for South Down.

Ah yes, Powell's famous "Rivers of Blood" speech, in which the noted Classicist alluded to Virgil's "Aeneid", as he campaigned against immigration to the UK.
Yes, quite a newsworthy statement to make.
In 1968.

Btw, who was it complained on the "More Double Standards" thread, one day after this post, about "some irrelevant rant about something that happened 40 years ago"?  A poster calling himself "Donagh" or somesuch?  

P.S. Powell refused an invitation to stand for the National Front after he left the Conservatives, and also refused to join the Orange Order upon becoming a Unionist MP in 1974. Speaking of which, one of his first major interventions as a Unionist MP came soon after:
"In the aftermath of the 21 November 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), the government passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act. During its second reading Powell warned of passing legislation "in haste and under the immediate pressure of indignation on matters which touch the fundamental liberties of the subject; for both haste and anger are ill counsellors, especially when one is legislating for the rights of the subject". He said terrorism was a form of warfare which could not be prevented by laws and punishments but by the aggressor's certainty that the war was impossible to win."
"Like The Roman", Simon Heffer, Pg.742

[deiseach]

He said terrorism was a form of warfare which could not be prevented by laws and punishments but by the aggressor's certainty that the war was impossible to win."

Bloody hell. 10/10 for that one.

[Evil Genius]

He said terrorism was a form of warfare which could not be prevented by laws and punishments but by the aggressor's certainty that the war was impossible to win."

Bloody hell. 10/10 for that one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8158074.stm

Whilst I have no desire to be labelled a member of the "Sarah Kennedy/Enoch was Right Camp"  , nonetheless those who simplistically dismiss Powell as some sort of bonkers, Right Wing Nazi-type simply do not know what they are talking about.

For whilst many of the policies he advocated were undoubtedly right-wing, sometimes offensively so, nonetheless they were always argued from an impeccably reasoned position. Indeed Powell was probably the most intellectual politician Britain has seen since in over half a century.

For example, he was at 26 the youngest ever British Professor (of Classics). He was implacably anti-Hitler and correctly foresaw the dangers of Appeasement, writing of Chamberlain after Munich:
"I do here in the most solemn and bitter manner curse the Prime Minister of England for having cumulated all his other betrayals of the national interest and honour, by his last terrible exhibition of dishonour, weakness and gullibility. The depths of infamy to which our accurst 'love of peace' can lower us are unfathomable"
And upon joining the British Army during WWII, not only did he become its youngest ever Brigadier, but astonishingly did so after having joined as a Private!
He spoke many languages fluently, apparently learning new ones for recreation, as well as scholarship.

Of course, like many true intellectuals, he sometimes applied logic and reasoning to an extent which produced absurd or unworkable results. Moreover, he cared little who he offended, so long as his case stood up (in his terms).

Nonetheless, whether loved or loathed, he was a very complex character, who always offered others the careful consideration he himself so rarely received.

[pintsofguinness]

EG you never answered me, do you condem Churchill for his links with Stalin?

[MW]

I dont think its a misreading.Britain had only bad standards in accepting its own responsibilities.Human rights,prisoners rights,I could go on.

Stripe me pink

The point is not whether Britain's standards were objectively high. It was that whatever the highest of these standards were, no less should be applied across the board.

Powell was saying Britain should not treat Africans or Asians under its government by any lower standard than the best standard by which it would treat Britons.

Seriously, is this too hard to grasp?

Its not hard to grasp. Basically he is saying,treat everybody bad. I don't expect you to understand wher Im coming from. I'm basically having a dig at Britains record in treating some of its 'citizens'.
Is that too hard to grasp?

No, I know exactly what you're doing. "Have a go at the Brits" time again, eh.

You can't even bring yourself to admit that at some point, Britain may actually have treated someone reasonably well.

[MW]

He said terrorism was a form of warfare which could not be prevented by laws and punishments but by the aggressor's certainty that the war was impossible to win."

Bloody hell. 10/10 for that one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8158074.stm

Whilst I have no desire to be labelled a member of the "Sarah Kennedy/Enoch was Right Camp"  

On that note, Powell's dire predictions of massive and violent racial rifts haven't come to pass. He would probably have been surprised by how well many immigrants and their descendents have integrated.

Though if Powell were around today, he could probably point to the 7/7 bombings. Who would have envisaged back in the 1960s that 40 years later Britons would massacre innocent Londoners in the name of Islamism.

I would be pretty sure he would find the rise of the BNP a very bad phenomenon, mind you.

[boojangles]

I dont think its a misreading.Britain had only bad standards in accepting its own responsibilities.Human rights,prisoners rights,I could go on.

Stripe me pink

The point is not whether Britain's standards were objectively high. It was that whatever the highest of these standards were, no less should be applied across the board.

Powell was saying Britain should not treat Africans or Asians under its government by any lower standard than the best standard by which it would treat Britons.

Seriously, is this too hard to grasp?

Its not hard to grasp. Basically he is saying,treat everybody bad. I don't expect you to understand wher Im coming from. I'm basically having a dig at Britains record in treating some of its 'citizens'.
Is that too hard to grasp?

No, I know exactly what you're doing. "Have a go at the Brits" time again, eh.

You can't even bring yourself to admit that at some point, Britain may actually have treated someone reasonably well.

What are you talking about? Admitting Britain may have actually treated somebody well? Im sure they have treated thousands upon thousands  of people well,That is their obligation after all.Do you think they deserve credit for that?
My point is the people they didnt treat well.
10 out of 10 for observation tho-When I said I was basically having a dig at Britain on its record on treating some of its so called citizens-It mite have given it away maybe!!

[MW]

So in other words, you recognise that among Britain's standards, to which Powell referred, there are some which could be identified as the highest? You recognise that some people were treated well?

Remind me again what your problem was with Powell's quote?

While you're at it, care to rethink "Basically he is saying,treat everybody bad"?

[Evil Genius]

EG you never answered me, do you condem Churchill for his links with Stalin?

Absolutely not, essentially for three reasons.

First, whilst Stalin was personally every bit as nasty as Hitler, nonetheless Communism is/was not so inherently evil as Fascism (imo). That is because if you look at the Marxist principles* which underlie Communism (or should do, at any rate), they are basically reasonable, if not even admirable. Therefore, when Stalin was conducting his reign of terror, he was breaking  his own Constitution and Laws. Whereas, when Hitler was doing so, he was doing so entirely in accordance with  Fascist Law, designed as it was to legitimise Racism and anti-Semitism etc.

Secondly and more importantly, Churchill's co-operation with Stalin was anything but willing (unlike, say, Sean Russell's co-operation with the Nazis). For when the UK declared war on Germany in September 1939, it did so alongside France (only), following the German invasion of Poland (the three countries had a tripartite mutual defence Pact). At that stage, the USSR was actually an ally  of Germany, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed just a few weeks previously. Indeed, not only did Stalin use the German attack on Poland and the West as a pretext for making territorial gains of his own in Eastern Europe, but the two countries actually assisted each other, with German arms and machinery going to the USSR and oil, in desperately short supply in Germany due to the British Naval blockade, going the other way.

Of course, the Mol-Ribb Pact was a mere convenience for both parties, since neither was yet ready to take on the other. Nonetheless, Churchill did not conclude Britain's alliance with the USSR until after  Hitler commenced his surprise attack on the USSR (Operation Barbarossa) in June 1941. At which point, whilst Churchill would 'unsay no word' of his previous clear and unequivocal opposition to Communism, nonetheless this was for him a direct attack on the Russian people by a greater evil, so that  'the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe'.

Finally, if you study what drove Hitler on, it was the inherently racist-motivated desire for Lebensraum for the German people, to be carved out by force in Eastern Europe. It was not ever his design to go to war with Britain, but when Britain surprised him by declaring war over Poland, he hoped to force the UK to sue for peace by the threat of invasion. Indeed, had the UK permitted him a free hand on the Continent, Hitler would happily have allowed us to keep our overseas Empire unmolested. By contrast, Soviet Communism was a declared enemy of Western-style democracy, wherever it was manifested.

Therefore had he been operating purely out of self-interest, nothing would have suited Churchill and the UK more than to watch the two great enemies of Democracy fight each other to a standstill in Europe, whilst the British Empire, undrained by any war effort, continued to grow ever stronger elsewhere. Consequently, I have no doubt whatever over the righteousness of the the UK's strategic wartime alliance with the USSR, any more than I have of its prosecution within NATO, of the Cold War against the USSR, in the decades which followed the Axis defeat in 1945.

And if you want to know what Churchill thought about that,  I suggest you read the following:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/churchill-iron.html


* - "From each according to his means, to each according to his needs" etc

[boojangles]

So in other words, you recognise that among Britain's standards, to which Powell referred, there are some which could be identified as the highest? You recognise that some people were treated well?

Remind me again what your problem was with Powell's quote?

While you're at it, care to rethink "Basically he is saying,treat everybody bad"?

Just read back on my posts there good man.Your comprehension off a line from Powells speech is completely different to mine. I read it that he is saying Britain has the highest of standards in accepting its responsibilities,which I disagree with.You read it a different way.We are in disageement from the start,so everything else said is immaterial.Understood?

[Evil Genius]

Just read back on my posts there good man.Your comprehension off a line from Powells speech is completely different to mine. I read it that he is saying Britain has the highest of standards in accepting its responsibilities,which I disagree with.You read it a different way.We are in disageement from the start,so everything else said is immaterial.Understood?

Your understanding is incorrect, whereas MW's is correct. That is, Powell was arguing for the highest standard of treatment for all British citizens equally, both within and outwith the UK. And notwithstanding his position on mass immigration, if you study his record in this regard generally, it is clear he was always entirely consistent.

The fact that all British citizens, home and overseas, may not actually have been treated equally by the Government of the day (or before or since) is another matter.

[boojangles]

Just read back on my posts there good man.Your comprehension off a line from Powells speech is completely different to mine. I read it that he is saying Britain has the highest of standards in accepting its responsibilities,which I disagree with.You read it a different way.We are in disageement from the start,so everything else said is immaterial.Understood?

Your understanding is incorrect, whereas MW's is correct. That is, Powell was arguing for the highest standard of treatment for all British citizens equally, both within and outwith the UK. And notwithstanding his position on mass immigration, if you study his record in this regard generally, it is clear he was always entirely consistent.

The fact that all British citizens, home and overseas, may not actually have been treated equally by the Government of the day (or before or since) is another matter.

OK Im sorry MW. I just seen another chance to 'Have a go at the Brits'. My bad.

[Evil Genius]

Meanwhile, back on the subject of Sean Russell's statue, they're even stirring in the Rebel County:


http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2009/07/15/story96349.asp
Wednesday, July 15, 2009 :

Why do our political leaders gloss over Dublin's dirty little secret?

Sad to say, it's a telling sign that when a statue to a Nazi collaborator goes up in Dublin, the least that happens is a splash of emulsion. Can you imagine if a statue to Marshal Pétain were erected in Paris? Or one to Quisling in Oslo? Or even of Mussolini in Italy?

SINN Féin have a way of testing everyone's patience. If asked "do you condemn attacks on property?", I suspect 99% of us would say "yes". But when that attack amounts to spray-painting a monument to a Nazi collaborator? Now that's a difficult one.

Would I succumb to the temptation to do it myself? Certainly not.

Would I encourage someone else to do it? Emphatically, no.

But, if I were a judge, would I fine or jail someone for doing it? Errr...

Yes, not for the first time, the Seán Russell statue in Dublin has been vandalised, just weeks after the latest version was unveiled with much pomp by the spuriously official-sounding National Graves Association (NGA).

Some very naughty person has painted "Hitler's friend" on the statue. For some reason, republicans from the Provo tradition sound surprised. "There seems to be some group in the area who are hellbent on destroying it," Cllr Christy Burke was quoted as saying.

I wonder why that might be, Christy? He now wants CCTV cameras trained on the site in Fairview Park. I wondered why Burke resigned from Sinn Féin last month. Now we might have a clue: unlike Sinn Féin, he supports CCTV cameras to combat crime. Or maybe he just supports them when it's the "desecration" of the republican holy of holies? Perhaps he'll write in and let us know.

According to Burke, all these attacks are "costing the NGA a lot of money". If you do write in, Christy, maybe you could explain where all this money came from in the first place? Otherwise, we'll be forced to draw our own conclusions.

And while you're at it, could we have a clear condemnation of those who scrawl "IRA" on roads and walls, and splatter propagandist murals on the sides of people's houses for them, without being asked?

I know, I know: I'm in danger of sounding facetious. But if Provo types, even recently resigned ones, don't understand what all the fuss is about, they live in smaller bubbles than we thought.

To recap on the history for a moment... Seán Russell was the leader of the IRA who declared war on Britain in 1939 and launched a bombing campaign in British cities, complementing that of the Luftwaffe. The IRA campaign claimed seven dead and almost 200 wounded, the vast, vast majority of them civilians.

Using the novelist Francis Stuart as an emissary, the IRA had opened up contact with the Abwehr, the military-controlled German foreign intelligence service. Twelve Abwehr agents landed in the Free State between 1939 and 1943, aiming to make contact with the IRA and develop plans for joint action in the North.

Éamon de Valera responded swiftly to this direct threat to his pledge that Ireland would not be used as a base for attacks on Britain and introduced the Offences Against the State Act. Several imprisoned IRA men went on hunger strike in response and rather than see them die, de Valera released some.

Sensing weakness, the IRA launched a raid on the Irish army's munitions store in Phoenix Park. Having learned his lesson, de Valera warned the IRA that Easter Rising veterans or not, such activities would not be tolerated. The IRA, in turn, started referring to him as "Judas".

That brief summary would probably not be contested, even by Christy Burke or Larry O'Toole, the leader of the Sinn Féin group on Dublin City Council, who laid a wreath at the recent unveiling, although Sinn Féin/NGA representatives sometimes overlook the dead and wounded, preferring to stress the attacks in Britain were aimed at telecommunications installations.

The real question is, though, was Russell justified? From a Provo point of view, there is no question: "England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity", as Matt Doyle of the NGA puts it. Besides, Russell wasn't involved in sending Jews to death camps or anything (although his convenient death from a burst stomach ulcer in 1940 on board a Nazi U-boat — followed by burial complete with swastika and German military honours — means we can only speculate how far he would have taken his alliance with the Führer).

If it was quite as simple as that, many nationally-minded people might be tempted to shrug. It does beg the question, though, why invest all those euro in a massive bronze statue to the man? (It's "a significant work of art", you know, with a GPS tracking device in its head, apparently). The war on Britain was, after all, a pathetic failure.

As another NGA apologist puts it delicately, "the campaign ran itself into the ground long before any tangible republican objectives could be secured".

Whether or not Russell was actually doctrinally a Nazi is debatable. What is known from several accounts of people then in the IRA was that Nazi sympathies were strong in republican circles. When news of German victories came through on the radio in Crumlin Road jail in Belfast, the IRA prisoners cheered to the rafters.

But for most people, it was very possible to seek an end to partition, support Irish neutrality in the Second World War and still have been able to see that Irish issues paled beside those at stake when the free world was fighting for its very survival.

For the NGA to point out that Russell also sought aid from the Soviet Union a decade earlier and argue, on that basis, that he couldn't have been a fascist only reveals another truth: that Seán Russell was a complete fanatic with a very strange set of priorities. Moreover, he was a fool if he thought Hitler would conquer Britain and turn it into a German colony but leave little Ireland blissfully alone to go its own sweet way.

NOW it is true that all sorts of people — not least those living under the yoke of the 20th century's other monstrous ideology, Marxist-Leninism — formed tactical alliances with Nazi Germany. But when those people are honoured, it's cause for most of Europe to demand their political descendents be banned.

Sad to say, it's a telling sign that when a statue to a Nazi collaborator goes up in Dublin, the least that happens is a splash of emulsion. Can you imagine if a statue to Marshal Pétain were erected in Paris? Or one to Quisling in Oslo? Or even of Mussolini in Italy?

Couldn't a superficially cogent argument be made that these men too were not Nazis in the strictest sense, but merely entered alliances with Hitler for the greater good of their homelands? But wouldn't such arguments be met by riots in the streets?

Needless to say, I condemn rioting too, but why is it that Dublin's dirty little secret — or should that be Dublin City Council's little secret, for the park where the Russell statue stands belongs to them? — isn'tbeing raised in the Dáil, in Brussels and beyond? In a society that extols human equality, officially despises antisemitism, holds gay and straight people, black and white people to be fundamentally worthy of respect, why has the very existence of a monument to Nazi collaboration not been questioned by anyone higher up the political pecking order than local councillors from Fine Gael and Labour?

Seán Russell is a disgrace, but so is the omerta sometimes from people who, in their heart of hearts, know better.

[lynchbhoy]

wonderful, an excuse for someone with an anti sinn fein agenda to allow them to let off that little daft rant !


so russell (who I didnt know much of to be honest - so much for being a well known 'hereo' among republicans) was captain of the luftwaffe or something like that ! !