LETTERS

McCain’s Blind Ambition

DEBBIE McGoldrick’s laudatory article on Senator John McCain’s pro-illegal alien rally at St. Barnabas Church last year is another example of power-tripping, opportunistic politicians and selfish special-interest groups undermining the U.S. to fulfill their particular agendas.

McGoldrick’s euphemism of “undocumented workers” instead of illegal aliens is part of the propaganda war being waged in America to reward lawbreakers who have entered the country without permission.

While our federal government has discriminated against Europeans who want to enter America ever since the 1965 Immigration Act, illegal immigration is tantamount to a group of people breaking into someone else’s home. It’s inexcusable.

What McCain and his cohorts should be doing to address immigration injustice is repeal the aforesaid act, and establish fair quotas for Ireland and other European nations. But he’s so drunk with ambition and power that all he wants is a cheap fix to a nation-threatening crisis.

And he must have loved all the applause and praise he got at St. Barnabas. He eats it up.

Another important point that the Irish who applauded McCain fail to realize is that the vast majority of illegals in America are Latinos, and granting them amnesty will eventually create, in not too long a time, a Spanish-speaking nation on our soil.

How would the land of my paternal ancestors like Latino music blasting in the streets of Dublin like it’s heard on McLean Avenue? How about bi-lingual schools and government services in Spanish?

Cain was the first murderer who killed his brother. We now have Senator McCain, son of Cain, trying to murder a nation due to his irrepressible vainglory and blind ambition.

And he’s exploiting Irish immigrants to do it.

Kenneth Reynolds
Bronx, New York

Blair’s Hypocrisy

RECENTLY, British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke about and apologized for the distress suffered by the family of a British soldier killed by American “friendly fire” in Iraq in 2003.

He was not speaking about the distress resulting from the death; presumably he did that several years ago. Rather, he was speaking about the added distress they are suffering because of delays to the inquest concerning the soldier’s death.

(As an American, I am ashamed to say the delay was to a substantial degree caused by the U.S. government, which refused to confirm or release a film of the killing to the coroner conducting the inquest based on a specious claim that it would hurt our national security. Of course, when the film was recently leaked to the media and shown around the world it did not hurt our national security one iota, and the U.S. was exposed for having needlessly and arrogantly caused additional distress to the soldier’s family. Decency required a viewing of the tape be offered to the family long ago.)

Mr. Blair said, “We deeply regret the distress caused to Lance Corporal Matty Hull’s family by the delay in concluding the inquest into how he died.

“I can assure you that we will do everything we can to cooperate with the coroner and also make sure the additional distress, that’s now been caused to the family, is minimized.”

It is outrageous that Tony Blair can be so sanctimonious about the suffering that families endure from delayed (or non-existent) inquests regarding the deaths of loved ones, while his government continues a policy of blatantly thwarting inquests, long overdue inquests, with regard to deaths in the north of Ireland, caused by or in collusion with his police and his army.

Lawrence Downes
New York, New York

Justice for Unionists

PEERING into the shallow end of the gene pool, we find Republican war criminals whining about so-called English oppression and wanting “justice” for the wrongs inflicted on them.

The brazenness of their insistence on victim status is only matched by the way this is accepted by an invertebrate media. Sinn Fein/IRA the aggressor dons the robes of it victims.

The fact is that SF/IRA went to “war” only on condition that their human rights wouldn’t be infringed, although they denied those same rights to their thousands of innocent victims. They are calling for prosecutions against the RUC and army. Why can’t they be prosecuted for their human rights abuses?

Where is the apology to the British/Protestant community for Enniskillen. LaMon, Bloody Friday, the Darkley mission hall massacre, etc.? Fair is fair, right?

The IRA under the fascist rule of comrade Adams and the butcher McGuinness declared a low intensity, sectarian ethnic cleansing campaign of genocide against the people of Ulster, plain and simple!

To listen to the torturers and murderers of SF/IRA gleefully denounce the “human rights abuses’’ of the RUC while they are never held to account for their numerous crimes is nauseating. The Shinners lecture their victims about letting go of the past and moving on, at the same time demanding “justice” for themselves. Spot the hypocrisy?

Real justice is seeing the SF/IRA death squads and their Sinn Fein leaders in the Hague for crimes against humanity. The Republican mafia needs to account for their crimes before there is real peace.

Just to show yet again why the SF/IRA gangsters are not even fit to clean rubbish bins, I’ll take you back to the Provo convention to supposedly support policing.

When Mr. Frazer of the victims group FAIR went to their convention in Dublin to denounce Adams and his lackeys, now masquerading as politicians, Frazer and his three colleagues were met with sectarian and racist abuse by Republicans.

The racist venom spewed against him went as follows: ‘’How many of your family have you got left?” “We didn’t kill enough of you.”

Seems the stage managed and scripted Shinner media production didn’t go as planned. The media got this abuse on tape and it’s on the Internet. Their mask slipped and the truth came out.

Republican bigots are not fit for democracy. Theirs is a sick, sectarian hate-filled mindset.

Comrade Adams wants a Castro-styled dictatorship. They hold the people of the Republic in utter contempt and they hate my community with a burning passion.

So now the worst organized criminals and terrorists of Western Europe will be given police authority and free reign to continue to terrorize, ethnically cleanse and continue their mafia criminal enterprise. Isn’t that just lovely?

Sinn Fein/IRA war criminals must be brought to real justice. The free world demands nothing less.

John Gregg
Pleasantville, New York

Farewell Brother Quinn

WE said slán to Brother Charles Quinn at Iona on February 22. He was a gentle and holy man.

As Hilary Sweeney, teacher of Irish at Iona, remarked outside the church, “Ní bheidh a leitheid arís ann.” (His likes won’t be in it again).

And when his good friend Maurice Brick spoke and prayed in Irish at the funeral Mass he referred to Brother Quinn as “Laoch Na nGael.”

He was indeed a true hero of the Irish. He loved the language and culture and helped numerous people along the path of life.

It was because of Brother Quinn that I was admitted into the Hunter College TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) MA program in the 1980s. I was the first candidate (so they said) in the history of Hunter to list Gaeilge as my second language.

Brother Quinn, who was dean of Iona at the time, wrote a letter to vouch for my knowledge of the language. At his funeral, I felt this connection yet again, because before taking the train to his wake, I accepted a part-time position as supervisor of TESOL student teachers at Hunter.

As the Iona pipe band stood guard at his wake and played at his funeral I felt a great sadness and sense of loss. I also felt privileged to have known this man of God.

Suaimhneas síorí dá anam!

Maura Mulligan
West New York, New Jersey