Cracker-Jacks, I thought when I picked up my Sunday Times last week. They’ve gone the full-Monty, they’ve gone completely nutty, they’ve paged the 1980s and 90s, those dark days when the Troubles dominated domestic policy, and pulled out legislation used to prosecute terrorists who blow up shopping centres full of children and started waving it around at ‘far-right protesters.’
The Sunday Times in Ireland (which is an odd hodgepodge of Irish stories Pritt-sticked over British stories) ran with: “Ireland’s far-right activists face arrest under anti-terror laws. Security protocols beefed up after protests at TDs’ homes.”
“The security services are preparing to use anti-terrorist legislation to prosecute extremists for intimidating members of the cabinet and Dail at their homes and places of work. The move signals a significant shift in the state’s approach to confronting the far right and anti-government groups, which are now considered an evolving form of terrorism across Europe and the United States.
There are continuing concerns about the security arrangements in place to protect cabinet ministers and TDs in the run-up to the local and European elections.”
To which the reply must be: I hear you are now a terrorist now Father?
What flipping moron in government thought that this story was a good idea? Probably the same eejit who thought running that bonkers referendum that trashed mothers on the weekend of Mother’s Day. That’s a special kind of stupid right there.
They are certainly not sending their best down there in the Department of Justice, as President Trump once said about another bunch of illegal immigrants.
The piece continues, “Politicians, rather than asylum seekers themselves, are drawing the ire of violent extremists. The threat is very much directed at them,” one security source told The Sunday Times.”
Exactly. I am glad said Source has finally understood that. The mainstream media and politicians for months have been labelling anyone who takes issue with the bonkers immigration policy by this Irish government as being racist or far-right or fascist or anti-immigrant. But the frustration as never been about the asylum seeks individually, it was always about government policy that has seen huge numbers of people come to Ireland because the government essentially rolled out the red carpet.
Not only that but protesters with home-made posters could see themselves in the dock in the Special Criminal Court. They really came out swinging in the Sunday Times I tell you.
“The security services are now engaged in discussions with the director of public prosecutions (DPP) on what charges could be preferred against extremists. Trials could be referred to the Special Criminal Court, the non-jury court used to prosecute violent dissident republicans, jihadists and serious organised crime gangs, if the DPP considers there is a significant risk of an accused person or group interfering with juries.”
That’ll show ‘em. I need to sit down.
I mean never mind that actual organised criminals were running around Drimnagh the very next day (the early hours of last Monday) and shot dead a one Josh Itselo from Ballyfermot. This was reported as a ‘chaotic incident on Knoceknarea Road on Monday morning’ were Gardai recovered an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle close to the crime scene. (You can learn all about the AR-15 here)
But who cares about organised, drug-related, gang murders with semiautomatics when we have far-right, racist, extremists, terrorists in our mist. Said ‘terrorists’ were making their way to home of Taoiseach Simon Harris to interrupt the children’s bedtime. It’s the Special Criminal Court for you! How dare you interrupt the reading of the Gruffalo.
Listen, I am not saying I support this kind of direct-action protest or threats of any kind, that goes without saying, but this story was dropped in the Sunday Times for a reason. It was no accident and it was done yet again to intimidate in a quite outrageous fashion people who are protesting this immigration policy, the vast majority of which are peaceful. They are not extremist, or far-right agitators, or indeed terrorists.
Personally, I don’t think that the “protesters who circulated images of themselves standing outside the Taoiseach’s home in Greystones, Co Wicklow, last Thursday, where they unfurled an anti-immigration banner saying: “South Dublin Says Close the Borders” are terrorists.
Even the Sunday Times admitted the protest lasted only five minutes. Taoiseach Simon Harris described the incident as “downright thuggery”. I bet if it was a couple of Trinity students who were there unfurling a banner that said Free Palestine, they would not have anti-terrorism legislation waved round in their faces and slammed by the Taoiseach as being involved in ‘outright thuggery.’
Anyway, I’d say there were a few regrets in the Department once they picked up the Sunday Independent, who had commissioned a few polls.
Amazingly, despite a year of intense demonisation by the mainstream media that would have us believe that the far-right were lurking under every bed, unsurprisingly to anyone with a working brain, immigration is now the key issue, far above the ‘rise of the far-right’ bogey man.
“After the Dublin riots last year, Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks polled on concerns over increased immigration versus the rise of the far right.
This month, the findings are completely reversed: increased immigration (55pc) is up 13 points; growth of the far right (43pc) is down 12 points.” I can only imagine the newsroom when those figures came out.
Immigration is now the key issue up a whopping 15 points in a month. “As an issue of concern, immigration (41pc) is up 15 points in a month, second only to housing (54pc), down five points, and well ahead of healthcare (29pc), down two points, with the cost of living (25pc), also down two points.”
Following the Irish government explaining why the UK Rwanda policy was actually a great idea (for the UK) a majority of those now polled want checks at the non-border border. Even I was surprised by that one.
“Half of the public, including a majority of Sinn Féin supporters, want checkpoints on the Border to limit the number of asylum seekers coming from the UK, according to the latest Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks opinion poll.”
A slam dunk I’d say by the Indo there, over-reach in the Sunday Times and the Department of Fools.
In sum, you can call those who are furious over the government immigration policy all the names you like – racist, far-right, extremists, or even terrorists.
But we all know that the vast majority of them are concerned voters, nurses, teachers, plumbers, lawyers, and mothers in the home. They have no desire to interrupt the bedtime reading routine of any child. They’ll just go to the polls and let their views be known. And I doubt they take kindly to be called, implicitly, a terrorist.