An Irishman's Diary

One bright day I'll wake up, and there'll be no need to write another single bloody word about the North, or the wretched Shinners…

One bright day I'll wake up, and there'll be no need to write another single bloody word about the North, or the wretched Shinners; and blessed be that dawn, writes Kevin Myers.

But it hasn't come yet, and won't - not while Fianna Fáil continues to comfort them and reason with them, as if they're statesmen and stateswomen. Meanwhile they stand there, with their chain-saws dripping blood onto the parquet, a look of baffled sanctimony on their faces as they harangue and whinge the pagan mumbo-jumbo of their creed.

Does the Taoiseach really still think that he understands what they actually mean when they use words such as law, democracy and peace? Or is he finally realising that they talk in a code into which they alone have been indoctrinated? They are Enigma machines, churning out their Enigmatic gibberish, which seems to have a meaning in real English; but not the same as that in Enigmatic.

Sinn Féin-IRA has even taken to talking Politically Correct Enigmatic at us, through the lunatic vapourings of Arthur Morgan, TD. He is unique in the politics of the Republic (though not, alas, in Northern Ireland). He was a member of a terrorist organisation, the IRA, which murdered Tom Oliver, a resident of what is now his constituency. Before this, he was convicted of smuggling arms to the North, at the height of the Troubles when the IRA was murdering people everywhere, so we can safely say he was part of an extended conspiracy to murder.

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He was in jail when Tom Oliver was abducted, tortured and shot, so he clearly has a perfect alibi. But he belonged to the organisation which did the deed; and by association and by his conspicuous failure to condemn it or distance himself from it, he must be considered passively complicit in it. Yet they have strong stomachs in Louth, for the electorate two years ago elected Arthur Morgan as their TD. TD, by the way, doesn't mean Tom's Dead, though in Louth it certainly could, should, and indeed, does, because he is.

Arthur Morgan, TD - that's Teachta Dála, not Tom's Dead - speaking Enigmatic, said recently that it was "inappropriate" for the Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen, to pose with pretty women. So here we really have it: pious, politically correct homilies in Enigmatic from this diseased creature whose intention was to spread murder and grief across Northern Ireland.

So well done to Sean Ward of Sutton for pointing out in a letter to this page that Arthur Morgan, TD, (no, not Tom's Dead) had cheerily posed beside the imprisoned killers of Jerry McCabe, the murdered Garda detective. Here we truly enter Peace Process Wonderland, because we cannot call them murderers without risking a libel action from the worthless, homicidal detritus in Castlerea Prison. That has to be it, the giddy limit, that we live in fear of libelling those who killed a servant of the State and whose death was murder.

But Arthur Morgan, TD (not Tom's Dead) doesn't even call the murder a "killing". In Enigmatic, he described it as the "the tragic events", and - naturally - called for the release of those responsible.

Hmmm. Does the Taoiseach - or any of the Foreign Affairs Sinn Féin-schmoozing wizards - remember Garrett O'Connor? He's dead. D-E-A-D. As in, tragic events. Like Eamon Collins, or Speedy Fagan or Paul Downey, all tragically evented since the Good Friday Agreement. But unlike them, he was also disappeared: i.e., Jean McConvilled. His final hours or days are unimaginable; in Enigmatic, "he got it coming". Consequence for the Shinners? None whatever. Not from the Government, and certainly not from Tony Blair.

Is it surprising that the Sinn Féiners haven't got a clue how the rest of us behave or think or speak? Nobody tells them that we live in parallel worlds, which use the same words, ours in English, theirs in Enigmatic, but with entirely different meanings.

Even when they break our laws, our common ethos and their own solemn undertakings, far from being punished, they're not merely believed but acclaimed. Thus when the lizardly tongue of Gerry Adams declared that the IRA was not responsible for the Castlereagh break-in, the Taoiseach obligingly bleated that he believed him.

Bleat. Bleating has been the primary voice of our political culture over the past 10 years, so no one rocks the peace process - except, of course, Sinn Féin-IRA, which does so whenever it likes. The IRA even tried to tragically event the MI5 agent Martin McGartland in England. Consequences for the IRA? Well, since MI5 is, along with the IRA, co-author of this wretched Agreement, none at all. Scratch one agent. Is it any wonder the IRA thought it could tragically event Bobby Tohill, and without consequence? And in order to keep the IRA in countenance, both the SDLP and the Unionist Party have been ruthlessly sacrificed: a burnt offering made all the easier by the diligence with which the leaders of both parties collected faggots for the bonfire, dousing them with paraffin, then obligingly rummaging through their pockets for matches.

Meanwhile, the Shinner leadership has learnt to glide, with the immunity and ubiquity of Forrest Gump, through an entire range of political moralities, and lo, be obsequiously welcomed by all: the Department of the Taoiseach, the White House, Downing Street, Nelson Mandela's home. What next? A PLO suicide bomber school, Muammar Gadafy's terrorist training camp, a Papal audience, a Bono soirée? No matter. Butchers have been fêted for too long: the mark of Cain is upon the Good Friday Agreement, and this weekend is probably its last.