The IRA is committed to following a political path

GerryAdams of Sinn Fein

PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton has said today:

“The Provisional IRA is committed to following a political path and is no longer engaged in terrorism.” 

He added:” Our assessment indicates that the primary focus of the Provisional IRA is committed to promoting a peaceful, political agenda, and our assessment is also that the IRA is committed to following a political path and is no longer engaged in terrorism.”

He even went further still: “I accept the bona fides of Sinn Fein’s leadership regarding their rejection of violence and pursuit of the peace process and I accept their assurance that they want to support the police in bringing those responsible to justice.”

In any terms that means the IRA or Sinn Fein are not involved in any criminal activity or murders as the Irish Independent would have us all believe. Even last February, the Garda Commissioner, Noirin O Sullivan, has stated in emphatic terms what she thinks the IRA are about today: 

“We hold no evidence that the Provisional IRA still maintain its military structure with a clear stance being maintained against all military activity.” Though this answer is a bit coy for political reasons only, it is still further evidence from the police this side of the border that the IRA and Sinn Fein has embraced the peace process and have fully and always since they signed on the dotted line.

This of course would be fine in any proper functioning democracy, but on this corrupt little island of rogues and robbers, still here after the saints and scholars had left, leaves a lot to be desired starting with gutter journalism by the Irish Independent. 

That newspaper has fanatically defended anything spouted against Sinn Fein, using tactics better suited to The Enquirer or other such rag mag. They have heralded fiction as fact and fact as fiction by innuendo, and friendly interviews of those who have an interest in shutting out Sinn Fein from any political process. Any if you say nothing, you really said everything because you said nothing. Its not personal of course but all political, underwritten by big business at the expense of the electorate. If that all sounds a bit conspiratorial then don't forget Ahern and Cowen and why we are where we are today.

Reading between the lines of any newspaper needs a certain visual dexterity to see if there is a kernel of truth at all in what is being written. Is it journalism or a political propaganda peace? That uncertainty is all what the Irish Independent needs. It is as if a group of gossips got together in a pub to shed mischief onto the masses, and it is true that you have less to fear from a thief than a liar. Denis O Brien now owns the deciding share of anything of value in the Irish Independent. He bought of their morality a long time ago. 

What is left is to them now are their informed sources, insiders, people close to the source of the source; their deep throats, private whispers, and lies. And when the truth does bite them in the rear end now and again, they always pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing had happened.

Barry Clifford