COMMEMORATIONS AND THINGS WORTH REMEMBERING by Michael J Cummings

Every June Britain’s armed services officially celebrate the monarch’s birthday with the Trooping of the Color.  Each regimental band recalls a victory like Trafalgar and Waterloo and marches before the Queen.   It is an impressive and bellicose event I first witnessed in 1972.  The ceremonies’ sole purpose is to thrill the great unwashed and tourists alike with past Empire  conquests.  Northern Ireland, a colonial garrison grafted on to the Empire to serve Tory politics,  did  not figure in  the program.  Nor  is it ever likely given it symbolizes military and police lawlessness wrapped in a legacy of official lies.

Official and unofficial remembrances in England  are the equivalent of a cottage industry.  Historical revisionists gambol about from campus to newsrooms, from pulpit to the halls of political power.  It  becomes a blood sport at times with the desecration of monuments and the occasional dust-up in  football matches.  Author David Rieff in his book   In Praise of Forgetting   isn’t a big fan of memorialization as a moral and political duty and especially  when used by politicians or their handlers to promote conflict.  Such was the case in N. I. once the 1998 Agreement was signed.   Sound familiar? 400 years ago is  like yesterday to  loyalist pawns who  commemorate  King Billy’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne or the  relief of Derry.   Their anti-Catholic and anti-Irish performance has been   rewarded with every Royal  commemorative ceremony, medal and title the British have at their disposal.  The Butcher of Bogside Parachute  commander Derek Wilford,  bigot biggie Ian Paisley, every Chief Constable of the Royal Constabulary who looked the other way as their forces slaughtered Catholics at will,  and Communist plot promoter  Britain’s  Military Attaché to China,  Brigadier General Gordon Kerr, all embraced the ‘dirty war’ in Ireland in the name of the Queen.

Rieff does have praise for war crime trials and   truth commissions.  There is  a duty to debunk the whitewashing of crimes.  He   would likely see the  UK’s stalling and  creating crisis’s in N. I. peace  talks’ as a vain attempt  to memorialize their fabricated   role  there as a defender of democracy and the rule of law.  Prime Minister    Cameron and Taoiseach Kenny were   eager to appear at  any wreath laying ceremonies remembering the fallen  rather than be with the  families of  victims of Ballymurphy, Dublin-Monaghan or Loughlinisland  murders or look into the eyes of Geraldine Finucane and feign a sincere interest in their efforts to seek truth and justice.

The pay-off for the Royalty hoopla and commemorations is the crafting of a chimerical vision of the significance  of being British and, lest we forget, past ‘glory.’   The BREXIT referendum has required  Cameron to use every propaganda tool to revive those memories of past glory and righteousness.   This  included  two  Irish cards:  the prediction of economic hardship for Ireland and  instability in the North.   Oh the hypocrisy of evil!!  The very hallmark of foreign policy for  the Tory party has always been to maintain instability in the North to keep a divided  island politically and economically weak.

Kenny  and Obama played their bit parts dutifully urging  a Remain vote but neither could  explain why with any convincing data.  The Anglophile ‘Amen’ crowd in the Wall Street Journal and  New York Times predicted the sky would fall and life as we know it would forever change if Britain left the EU.  Andrew Roberts in the Wall Street Journal  berates those Americans who don’t understand the “history and tradition” of the so-called special relationship.  In fact the  UK is more often parasite then partner.  Roberts sounds like another Saxon propagandist in stating:  ”Why shouldn’t Britain make British laws and have  our own judges?”   Nazi leader Goebbels  in 1933   toldthe League of Nations:  “..we will deal with our enemies…our Jews… as we see fit.” One of the primary  unstated reasons for the UK wanting to leave the EU has been the growing wave of human rights violations in N. I.   being charged and litigated in Strasbourg.

Whatever the result,  the Irish Republic  and America lose. Obama’s  unctuous pleading and praising  England makes our government appear weak and indebted to a nation that has done everything it can to offend American’s idea of justice, democracy and the rule of law in N. I.  The Irish Taoiseach played  the obsequious role of supplicant like so many before him.  It’s sad.  Brought to heel by a government that mocks Ireland’s very sovereignty by  refusing to reveal the truth of the largest mass murder since the Republic was founded; the no warning bombing of Dublin and Monaghan.

How can we combat this constant invoking of some ‘imperial exception’ propaganda?  Listen to the voices and read the reports of the victims of arrogant misrule whether from the Pat Finucane Center, the Winter Law firm , Amnesty International or the works of Paul Larkin (A Very British Jihad), Anne Cadwallader(Lethal Allies) or the Police Ombudsman Reports of Nuala O’Loan and Dr. Michael Maguire.  Read what has been accomplished by the Center for Legal and Social Studies in Argentina in exposing the lawless murder of thousands by Operation Condor, a US and UK backed campaign to crush dissent in South America.  I promise you will never again fall for Britain’s patriotic tripe!!