| Culzie | Date: Saturday, 2012-04-07, 9:24 PM | Message # 1 |
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Generalissimo
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| Republican Easter Rising speech to focus on reconciliation
By Brian Rowan
Saturday, 7 April 2012
One of Sinn Fein’s most senior leaders will speak directly to republicans on Sunday – just weeks after challenging them to say sorry for the hurt caused by all IRA armed actions.
Declan Kearney, the party’s national chairperson, is the keynote speaker at the Easter commemoration at Milltown Cemetery in west Belfast.
His words will be delivered to an audience expected to include some of the most senior figures in the IRA’s “war”.
The initiative being explored is to move the peace process beyond ceasefires, the political agreement and the ending of the armed campaign — to an “authentic reconciliation” phase.
And Sunday’s speech will be listened to and heard much wider than the republican community.
“There are two possible explanations for the Declan Kearney intervention – and crucially, they are not mutually exclusive,” former IMC Commissioner Lord John Alderdice told the Belfast Telegraph.
“The sceptical politician in me says that Sinn Fein, recognising that further political success in the South depends on putting the unsavoury aspects of the IRA past behind them, are trying to recruit unionists to help them persuade the wider community to ‘let the past be past’ – or at least the violent republican aspect of it.”
But, Lord Alderdice added: “The alternative explanation for me is that Declan Kearney and his colleagues may now be taking the logical next step along a road of
real political progress into a genuinely new terrain of democratic commitment.
“The possibilities of this are groundbreaking, and for me there is enough evidence of good faith in the last 20 years of engagement with Sinn Fein that we must also take the next steps down this path and see where it takes all of us – not just republicans.”
Loyalists will also be listening on Sunday.
“This is such an essential conversation,” Frankie Gallagher of the UDA-linked Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) told this newspaper.
He also challenged political unionists to engage in the debate.
“Unless our unionist political leaders take this conversation forward the Protestant community won’t,” Gallagher added.
Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news....O1UreQ2
Ulster Protestants consider themselves to be a separate nation. This nation they call Ulster
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| RSAUB | Date: Sunday, 2012-04-08, 8:18 PM | Message # 2 |
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Colonel general
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| Lord Alderdice is bang on the money, they will win over some Unionists eventually.
When you have the likes of the Minister Latimer supporting them, over time they'll be able to roll out a couple of other traitors.
They bend over themselves to help Prods who contact them in relation to issues around health care and housing, they have been doing it for years now. As time passes a lot of people who don't remember the troubles or weren't effected by the troubles might decide to give Sinn Fein the vote as they do the work on the ground, Sinn Fein know this and in the South they know that they are in a good position to push on for more electorial success as the other parties have been badly damaged by the state of the Irish economy, the only thing that really hit Sinn Fein was the Irish families of Garda officers killed by the IRA protesting against them and getting real media exposure, over time these protesters will fade away or not get as much media exposure.
In all honesty Sinn Fein are in a very strong position.
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| Culzie | Date: Tuesday, 2012-04-10, 3:58 PM | Message # 3 |
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Generalissimo
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| Yes and its hard to take in that these murderers now sit in goverment. Of course they got there by those who voted for them ...the Roman Catholic people. Those Unionists who taunted them with cries of ''where's your mandate''have well and truly got the answer. These Unionists obviously must never have read their history or heard of how Redmond was deserted in favour of sinn fein and later how the nationalist party was shunned in favour of the sdlp who in turn lost out to sinn fein in Ulster. Given the right circumstances which is usually created by the extremists. The RC people will always favour those extremists.
Ulster Protestants consider themselves to be a separate nation. This nation they call Ulster
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| RSAUB | Date: Tuesday, 2012-04-10, 10:10 PM | Message # 4 |
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Colonel general
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| Very true and it's been that way through-out History, unfortunately some Protestants live in a dream land. I was reading in today's Newsletter, 3,400 dwellings in the Kilcooley estate in Bangor, yet only around 4000 people live in it. With stats like that, god help the future of loyalist Ulster.
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| Culzie | Date: Wednesday, 2012-04-11, 2:41 PM | Message # 5 |
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| Yes thats the way it is. It has always been there in front of us for many many years. We knew what the score was and cannot plead ignorance. If you read anything about the newly arrived Ulster-Scots to America you can see how many of them were big families. One writer said they were very re-productive. And even at home I read somewhere that Rev Cleland (who built Stormont Castle) had 10 offspring. So it wasn't just in America and it wasn't just the 'lower' classes who had big families.
Run into that fella in the supermarket. The one who was ready for 'battler draught' when I mentioned about Tyrone and Fermanagh to him a lot of years ago. He seems a bit more mellow now. Some folk just like to play the ostrich. Maybe that how they deal with it.
Ulster Protestants consider themselves to be a separate nation. This nation they call Ulster
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| RSAUB | Date: Thursday, 2012-04-12, 7:08 PM | Message # 6 |
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Colonel general
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| Very true, people like to shout and roar and stick their heads in the sand and come out with rhetoric like:"there won't be a United Ireland while I'm alive" or "over my dead body" etc, all sounds very good and pasionate but facts or facts and reality is reality.
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