Limerick Leader prints more propaganda and again presumes to speak on the behalf of activists

national | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Friday May 19, 2006 00:22

by Seán Ryan

Limerick Leader follows up on an article they published recently, where they along with the American Ambassador, threatened the people of Limerick with their jobs, if we didn't shut up about Shannon Airport.

Following this, activists including Ed Horgan wrote to the Limerick Leader in reply and were published.

The have published a reply to us. And I for one do not like it.

The Limerick Leader has done it again.

It has published a piece on its Editorial and Letters section on page 8. The title of the piece is “Air Storm.” Funnily enough it is published under another article titled: “Mind games.”

It starts out by rubbishing Ed Horgan’s reply to a slanderous piece published by them some weeks ago. (See link at bottom.)

It has now published more propaganda and stated that ‘protesters deny none of these facts.’ Of course they again ‘forgot’ to verify this.

Some of these facts include:

i. The troops tours of duty are legal.

ii. Full sovereignty was restored to Iraq on June 30th 2004.

iii. There can be no question of the Iraqi government’s legitimacy.

iv. “American and other multinational forces are in Iraq with the agreement and approval of both the legitimate government of Iraq and the United Nations. What more can anyone ask?”

v. “Finally there is no issue here of neutrality, either. We are not at war with Iraq or with Afghanistan. We are helping those governments to fight terrorism and insurgency. There are no state-to-state conflicts in either theatre – thus, there is no legal issue around the concept of neutrality. For the military are there to protect the process of creating democracy. And the UN are the moral guardians of that process.

After pointing out that us ‘protesters’ (Are we no longer activists?) do not deny these facts, we are informed: “The truth is that supporting democracy is not only our legal right. It is our moral duty.”

I’m going to take some time out before I tear this apart. I’m too angry and insulted to do so presently.

Here’s a link to a piece on Indy that shows the development of the above:

Limerick Leader Slanders all Activists. - http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75738