As an American of 65 years, a strong Republican, a Christian and someone that is very patriotic, proud of my country, I stand for right and justice. Until President Trump was elected, I believed in the American way.
But after seeing how our elected officials and retired presidents and our friends, neighbours, and our own families would sell their souls and betray their country... I’m in shock. I’m hurt, deeply wounded, disappointed, ashamed, and scared to death.
President Trump’s character was ‘assassinated’, attacked, because he loved America and its people and the idea of the American dream. He tried to protect America, but lies, evil lies killed him and America by the hands of its own people, bought off by haters of America.
Jane Toney
Mount Airy
North Carolina
Mary Lou has no real power over Sinn Féin
I’m always struck by the naivety of Mary Lou McDonald as leader of Sinn Féin. It’s as if she has been told so much and no more regarding policies, and is content to go with this and parrot instructions, which come from Belfast, primarily the real home of Sinn Féin/IRA.
SF top dogs have a grasp of this, particularly Gerry Adams and the northern command of the organisation.
What we witness now is the Adams/McGuinness-inspired “unarmed strategy”; the mindset of members like the careless tweeter, TD Brian Stanley, who understand the true nature and aims of the Shinners.
Mary Lou, with her early grounding in Constitutional politics, is well out of the loop of the inner SF circle.
She appears to be always trying to play catch-up with the Belfast leadership. Let us begin by recognising she is not the true leader of Sinn Féin.
She is put there as the acceptable face of the southern branch of the organisation, without any real power over the party.
That power lies north, and with a different agenda to that of our Dáil, the voice of our 26-county Republic.
Robert Sullivan
Bantry
Co Cork
Warrenpoint soldiers not frogmarched here
The problem with Michael Clifford’s dichotomy of good (Old) IRA versus bad (Provisional) IRA is that both groups claimed the Easter Rising martyrs of 1916 as their predecessors. Whatever our view of the Easter Rising may be today, it did not have a democratic mandate in 1916 and none of its leaders had been elected to any office.
Mr Clifford then claims that the “primary offence committed by the tweet was against the relatives of the soldiers killed at Warrenpoint, along with relatives of Lord Louis Mountbatten, 83-year-old Lady Barbourne and the two teenage boys...” Firstly Mr Stanley made no reference in his tweet to Mountbatten or to the bombing in Co Sligo.
Secondly while everyone sympathises with people who have lost loved-ones in violent incidents, the soldiers who died at Warrenpoint were not frogmarched to Ireland; they were not conscripts. They had, like previous members of the Parachute Regiment in Ballymurphy and Derry, signed up willingly to wage war in Ireland.
Dara Binéid
Monkstown
Cork
It’s always winners who right history
The tweet by SF TD Brian Stanley generated acres of newsprint.
Some Irish Examiner readers are puzzled as to how “The Boys of Kilmichael” are considered heroes but “The Boys of Warrenpoint” are called murderers.
Shortly after Kilmichael the “Good Old IRA” (as Danny Morrisson calls them) set a roadside bomb near Youghal which killed seven Hampshire Regiment bandsmen and one civilian who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
O’Donovan Rossa grew up in the Rosscarbery area like General Tom Barry and he masterminded one of the first urban bombing campaigns.
This didn’t stop him receiving the Freedom of Cork City, an honour he shares with the likes of Ronan O’Gara and Roy Keane.
Glasgow, Manchester, and London were hit relentlessly until future 1916 leader Tom Clarke and his cohorts were caught and locked up.
Six months before the famous ambush of Auxiliaries one of the “Boys of Kilmichael” (Charlie Hurley) led an attack on the RIC which resulted in the deaths of three constables near Timoleague. The local parish priest certainly didn’t consider the perpetrators heroes or freedom fighters.
He called them “merciless, cruel assassins”. The Bishop of Cork and Ross Daniel Coholan declared that “these murders make my blood creep.”
Within weeks of Kilmichael the bishop declared anyone taking part in ambushes (ie IRA volunteers) would be excommunicated. This angered General Tom Barry greatly, as most of his men were devout Catholics.
The “Good Old IRA” succeeded in removing the British police and British army from areas like West Cork wheras the Provisional IRA failed to do likewise in Armagh, Derry, etc, and it’s always the winners who write history.
Michael O’Flynn
Friars Walk
Cork
Who wouldn’t pay student nurses?
The lot of the student nurse reads like a scene from a horror film except that it’s a real daily occurrence, it’s unpaid, relentless and lasts for four years.
It involves, inter alia, in dealing full time with pregnant women; cleaning up blood, faeces, vomit, and urine.
Without even finishing their modules, the student nurses have to help deliver babies, have to carry out complex natal care on women who are high risk in their pregnancies, doing, for example, abdominal palpitations to feel the stomach to see which way the baby is lying.
Or having to check for tears, and examine sutures, looking out for, and having to make personal assessments of, sepsis and other deteriorations.
Giving injections and being left alone in a room with a woman who has a post partum haemorrhage — something no student nurse is yet trained to deal.
Working 31 hours a week, 13 hour day shifts, 12 hour night shifts and half days for no remuneration whatsoever.
Take the example of a student nurse who couldn’t risk losing her part-time job working as a waitress in a cafe because she needed to pay for her college fees and transport, so often times she would work a night shift in the Coombe from 8pm to 8am and then would have to go straight to her part time job and work a full day, without any sleep.
What kind of a Government will vote down the plea of thousands of such heroic front line workers for a miserable pittance, while arguing for days over the appointment of a Supreme Court judge who is already handsomely paid, or scoring points and feigning outrage at the tweet of a fellow TD over something that happened 100 years ago.
To paraphrase Shakespeare “do ye not have hearts of flesh at all, but rather hearts of stone?” If ever a case needed maximum attention from a complacent, unheeding Government it is this.
Is it little wonder that the opposition — who universally supported the paying of student nurses — rise higher and higher in the polls in the light of such a blatant and specific Government injustice.
Maurice O’Callaghan
Stillorgan
Co Dublin
We need to hook a deal on fishing
Time is running out for a deal on a level playing field for the fishing industry, a big employer. Let’s hope a deal can be worked out for all of us and Minister Simon Coveney needs to get a deal over the line before December 31.
Let’s hope the EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and his team can get a compromise and avoid a collapse in discussions.
After the year we have had we need some good fortune and reassurances that there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland ever.
Perhaps that’s deliberate optimism but what happens if it all fails at the final hurdle for our fishing industry and our trade?
Noel Harrington
Kinsale
Co Cork
Let’s play ball and sort fixture mess
The GAA aren’t obliged to look after the women’s organisations but they do anyway. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all work off the same hymn sheet so girls and boys would have a fixture list that made some sense.
Aodhagán Mac Coitir
Goatstown Close
Dublin
Let’s teach logical thinking in schools
We have had fake news, misspoken briefings, even some straight out lies but now we have stupid news and the worry is what will be the end of this
sequence? Schooling should include some form of logical thinking or truth evaluation so that people will see what is true. Students will then be able to see that astronomy is scientific whereas astrology is pseudo-science, even if it is more fun.
They will learn Elvis was a great singer, but he is now dead. They will learn that man has walked on the moon, even if it was in a space suit and eventually women will walk there too. They will learn that vaccination is life-saving, not being vaccinated can be life-taking. There are so many people that are gullible or lack understanding of complex matters that we have much to fear although good schooling and good reporting will help to swing the balance.
Dennis Fitzgerald
Melbourne
Australia
