“If only we could fight climate change like we fight wars” pleads Fintan O’Toole in THE IRISH TIMES.
I don’t know how you, dear reader, rate Fintan as an Eco Warrior, but as an Ego Warrior he has some form.
I don’t know what he understands by “we” because as a human being, an Irish citizen and a native Dub I cannot recognise in his writing any common bond whatsoever. He might as well be from another planet.
The usages and abusages of the BBC and other British media have set my teeth on edge since infancy.
The name of my State in the English language is Ireland, but the BBC toed the British Government line and called it Eire. It didn’t talk of Deutschland, or Nederland . For some reason the British media often refer to “The Irish Taoiseach” as if states other than Ireland called their First Ministers “Taoiseach.”
A couple of weeks ago in the OBSERVER (or SUNDAY TIMES) an article by Fintan mentioned the“Irish Taoiseach” with no sense of irony.
In Fintan’s imagined universe everything in Britain was enlightened whilst in Ireland under native rule was in darkness, But compared with Britain Ireland was more enlightened at home and abroad in many things.
For instance-
When some British conscripts were stuck in trenches within half a mile of a nuclear blast and others were used as guinea pigs for chemical weapons, Ireland’s volunteer soldiers suffered no such abuse. (They were, though, shown training films from Britain’s Army Kinema Corporation calculated to fool them as the poor British Squaddies were fooled).
When actors such as John Gielgud were being dragged before British courts, MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, who had escaped their more intolerant native London, cohabited gaily in Dublin, where they were feted, and their Gate Theatre was subsidised by the State on the initiative of Charles Haughey.
Reading Fintan O’Toole’s perverted invention of Irish history is like an unamusing translation of An Beal Bocht (subtitled An Milleanach – The Whinger).
The prosecution of The Rose Tattoo in 1957 was thrown out by the District Court, But it appears central to the Black Propaganda War waged against Ireland by its pathetic Ego Warrior, Fintan O’Toole.
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