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Synon Article
 national |
rights, freedoms and repression |
opinion/analysis
 Monday February 23, 2004 14:53 by Dave McCarthy - Traveller Visibility Group tvg at indigo dot ie 11 Comeragh Park, The Glen, Cork. 021 4503786
Where do you find old newspaper articles?
While working on material concerning racism in the media, I found that nowhere on the internet could I get a copy of Mary Ellen Synon's infamous article she wrote in 1996 concerning Travellers. This article achieved a new low in standards of journalism in Ireland. Four years later, the same writer managed to offend all but Kevin Myers when she wrote about the athletes in the Special Olympics. I have scanned the 1996 article into our own web site for reference. Below is the text. Time to get tough on tinker terror ‘culture’
Gardaí believe travellers (sic) are behind 90pc of attacks on the rural elderly. For too long intellectuals have “cherished” the squalid Traveller lifestyle. Instead, we must make these criminals pay, writes Mary Ellen Synon.
Sunday Independent, 28th January 1996.
We now know - some of us have always known – the source of the terror that has overtaken the lives of old people living alone in the country. It is lying on the roadside, living in the fields, sustained, encouraged, indulged by the money of the welfare state and the sanction of the intellectuals. I mean of course the travellers and their "culture".
We know it. But we are not supposed to say it. And yet there it was last week, simple, clear, and on the front page of the Irish Independent - how it got there I do not know: “Garda intelligence gathered over the past couple of months indicates that more than 90pc of the attacks on elderly people in rural areas are being carried out by travellers based mainly in three centres.”
And the week before, this from Kevin Myers, the last thinking journalist on The Irish Times: “A hugely disproportionate amount of the rural crime is by a handful or travellers . . . their deeds are inexplicable and horribly effective - they have generated an atmosphere of terror in rural areas unlike anything 1reland has experienced since the 1920s.”
It could not be otherwise. Little else could come from "cherishing" the caravan slum-life of tinkers.
Though or course it is not country people who “cherish” the tinkers. It is the intellectuals and the politicians. In their pursuit of levelling, these ideologues have manufactured the lie that each man is as good as the next. They point to the sewer that is a travellers' camp and lay: “That is a culture which must be honoured like any other.”
But honour, like stigma, is earned. And a tinker camp earns no honour.
Look at what it is, and what the intellectuals and the politicians say one should honour. It is a life of appetite ungoverned by intellect. It is a life which marauds over private property and disregards public laws. It is a life of money without production, land without cost, damage without compensation, assault without arrest, theft without prosecution, and murder without remorse. It is a life worse than the life of beasts, for beasts at least are guided by wholesome instinct. Traveller life is without the ennobling intellect of man or the steadying instinct of animals.
This tinker ‘culture’ is without achievement, discipline, reason or intellectual ambition. It is a morass. And one of the surprising things about it is that not every individual bred in this swamp turns out bad. Some individuals among the tinkers find the will not to become evil.
For the poverty and brutal life of the Travellers’ camps does not force anyone to become a criminal: it simply presents a life in which virtue has no reward and lawlessness is acceptable. Every man in every tinker camp who becomes a criminal - like every man anywhere who becomes a criminal - becomes evil by choice. Crime is volitional.
So consider what ought to be done with these breeding grounds of crime. Simple: stop petting tinkers and start treating them like all other citizens.
When they fail to insure or tax their cars, prosecute them. When they neglect or abuse their children, prose cute them. When they steal, prosecute them. When they murder, prosecute them. If then they are convicted of murder, imprison them for life. For life.
At which point, the intellectual and the politicians who have encouraged this tinker “culture” will say - as they are saying already – “We must not get hysterical about these murders. We do not know what causes these crimes. We must not seek simplistic" (admire for a moment the arrogance with which they used the word, 'simplistic') – “solutions.”
It is now time for citizens to refuse to be intimidated by such bilge from intellectuals. First, citizens are not “hysterical.” They are concerned, and they are right to be. Second, we do know what causes these crimes. Each assault, each murder, is caused by some individual - not “society” not a “peer group” - choosing to go out and seize a victim and rob and murder him for money or pleasure. Third, there is a solution to these crimes, and it is straightforward.
Murder is rarely a first crime. When each of the murderers of recent weeks is caught - and I pray to Nemesis that each will be caught - the Gardaí will find that each has a record of crime. A murderer starts with middling crime and move on to worse. So, politicians must give the Gardaí the means to pursue and prosecute and convict all crimes by all thugs. A man who commits armed robbery must go - with certainty, without exception - to prison for years. On release he must be told that, if he commits another serious crime, he will not be given just the same sentence again; he will be put in prison for life.
Though of course an intellectual will say, "prison does not work." He is lying. Prison does work. We need prisons, better, stronger prisons, lots of them. And we need police and courts with the power (and the will) to put thugs inside forever.
And should the prisons rehabilitate the inmates? Sure, they can try. Training and education ought to be available to those who plan to live straight after their release. But the first lesson in training and education must be this: if you do not obey the law once you are out of prison, you will certainly be back, and for the rest of your life.
For prison is not there to rehabilitate. It is there to retaliate.
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Comments (14 of 14)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14If you find it offensive (which I assume you do), why put it up on Indymedia, not to mention your own site?
The Sunday Indo is supposedly, THE sunday broadsheet.
It is read by the chattering classes of d4, or rather, their decadent offspring. How can I say something sooo generalising?
Well, the fact that the people they picked for the 04 crew (a gang of dollies that drink in Lillies) is one example.
The fine journalists, though, never have any need for any examples when ranting, sorry, writing their stories. Check Eilis O' Hanlon's article Sunday before last, in their magazine.
Basically, the blurb introducing her article (which is about how decadent our youth are supposedly becoming) states that she '"looks at" how The Left, as well as consumerism, have eroded family values.
So her look is actually no level of analysis at all; just a rant on how socialism and feminism have eroded the family. Of course, she does not give any examples. She doesn't need to, she is Eilis O' Hanlon.
Then consumerism is mentioned, again, without any examples what not to actually back up her drivel.
What do I mean by examples? Well, studies done by various think tanks might be a start. Examples where the Left have directly contributed to the malaise that is the nation's youth might help
How does one get a job on that paper. Any one of us post a reply nerds on any indymedia thread could put togeter a better article. How do I know that? People generally give examples to back up their arguments.
Damn, a number of (but by no means all!) writers on that paper would fail Junior Cert level English. If not, they should. (the examiner that would pass these fools probably works for the S.I)
by the way, a cursory glance at Synon's arstesticle will confirm just what I've said- no examples.
I hope their drinking bouts in Lillies give them liver failure. I suspect brain rot has set in a long time ago. Idiots.
I thought the Sindo was the equivalent of the Mail in the UK, or possibly the Torygraph. The chattering classes are supposed to be socially liberal, and so are hardly the target for Sindo-style reaction. The Sindo's tasteful tits and fulminations are for the conservative self-made wannabes surely?
... the Sindo does have a variety of writers, but generally seems to be libertarian in tone ( Nozick's definition of the term, that is) Sindo tries to present itself as a broadsheet, Mail is a tabloid for the middle classes.
Personally, the "fifth column" writers are there for the posh kids that love to hate the poor, the ones that pay to go to Griffith college, or that ABC Colege of business. They are air heads in their burberry scarfs, but the broadsheet that is the Sindo makes them feel good about themselves.
They'd never read the Tribune, cos Ross O' Carrol Kelly is a piss take of them.
Ok, now I am ranting! The diffrence is a) I'll admit to it b) I'm not getting paid handsomely for it.
Lifes not fair. However, the main point of this reply of mine; The Sindo encourages rubbish journalism. If they want to sell more papers, give the likes of Brenden O' Connor a real job- the storeroom janitor!
didnt pull her punches or kow tow the great left wing PC,do not offend anyone consensus of journalists and dross that generally passes for comment in our collective Irish Uk rags.Right wing as she may have been she got some reaction and stirring in the palsied thought process of the liberal left whingers of Ireland.
Pity she is gone ,it was the most entertaining colum in the Sindo.
...of just how awful that article was. Also, I rarely buy the Sindo (unless there's a specific reason, such as there's a piece about someone I know or something like that) so I've only ever read extracts of that infamous piece. I do know it's used in universities as a leading example of incitement to hatred of minorities. The slamming of 'left-wing intellectuals' is often a feature of Sindo journalism.
It never ceases to amaze me how this paper is still functioning. It's a stunningly self-referential publication. On the three/four occasions I've looked at it over the past year, I've noticed that Sindo journalists actually fill a lot of column inches by writing features profiling other Sindo journalists, such as: '[Sindo Journalist's] struggle with [Insert appropriate serious illness or addiction], by [Other Sindo Journalist].' It surprises me that people still buy the paper in droves, and not just because of the bigotry, but because this type of crap is boring.
O'Hanlon is one to talk about family values. One of those times I looked at the paper, she'd written a big feature on her own family and how she didn't get on with them. I got about two paragraphs in before I nodded off. Her opinions are never properly backed up with facts or logical argumentation.
Yes it is a crap newspaper. Becoming more like the National Enquirer each week. It has security and crime correspondents Cusack and Guerin whose investigative journalism extends to getting pissed with cops and hoods. Mind you Cusack did the same when he was wth the Times. Amazing to think then that these two creatures are considered some kind of fount of wisdom when it comes to the republican movement. To the extent that some of their crap has actually led to crisies in the peace process! Then there's mad old Conor whose nonsense should be confined to crayon on the walls of some secure institution. And Eilis O'Hanlon. Enough said. And Harris!! And all presided over by a fucking half wit in a panama hat who has about as much intellect as the bar in the Oval. Soft porn for the middle class.
people buy it to see what is the latest bout of madness from it's assortment of half wits and lunatics. Credit where credit is due, it has the reputation of being a "diffrent" "broadsheet".
Conor Cruise O Brian- barking mad, but how many countries have an ex foreign minister that goes over to "the other side"? (ie; his love of all things unionist.) Before this crazy old codger started writing for the rag, Ireland was just coming out of the Catholic gulag that Dev had imposed on us all. Then this yoke starts telling us what great fun he has visting Unionists up north.
Eilis O' Hanlon ; a Catholic from the North who is so anti Republican, she makes Johnny Adair look like a member of greenpeace.
Last but not least, Veronica. The paper has the distinction of producing the replacement plastic Madonna saint for 21st century Ireland. Let no one say a bad werd 'gainst her.
My point is; for the last ten years, Sindo has been slightly more different than the other serious,( and by that logic, boring) papers. It became well famous during the last ten years, which were a time of change.
For the last three, the paper has turned into a right wing lunatics rag. Obviously, staff there have been celebrating way to hard, the alchohol has eroded their brain cells.
Jim Cusacks, and Harris sad attempts over the last few weeks to bring the findings of the PrimeTime report last month into disrepute have led to a change in the paper, in my opinion.
Over the last few weeks, I have seen less and less pompous "Hurrah for the government, hurrah for George Bush" type articles. Even when Cusack printed his drivel, the editorial was rather bland, in a " Yes, yes, we concede there needs to be an independent ombudsman..."
I'll actually dig out an article from last sunday, where the tone seems more Trib than Sindo! Gives a minute!
here it is, the Sindo attempting balanced reporting, I cannot believe it.
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=36&si=1131620&issue_id=10480
Breden O' Connor does not seem to be writing much for the paper- maybe he ran away to get a job as a clown at the circus...
The Indo papers have always been right wing and obnoxious - right back to 1913 and basically campaigning for Connolly to be executed in 1916. They supported the Blueshirts, and Franco and only thing that has changed is they now combine the same type of politics with an appeal to the middle class degenerate!
Interestingly, while the Sindos rabid anti-republicanism has remained intact, they have alienated a portion of their audience by extending the remit of the incoherent and illiterate ramblings of their "writers" to other left wing aunt sallies - which is a bit confusing for Labour types who have been fed on a similar vein of anti- RA/SF drivel but who like to think that htey are fond of travellers and gays and so on. Confusing!
Its silly to compare the Sindo with the older middle class conservatively Catholic paper that condemned Larkin, Connolly and supported Franco.
Today's Sindo verges on tabloid style and favours endless columnists over any noticeable news coverage.
It also has plently of "lifestyle" articles probably plagiarised from women's magazines.
Basically I think the sindo is bought by culchies (and ex-culchies in Dublin) who like to think they're class above other proles/plebs!
I haven't touched the Sindo in ages - the last time I bought it there was an article where the "journalist" wrote about a report which noted there was a higher level of mental health problems in Northern Ireland because of the Troubles. The "journalist" wrote an article along the lines of "maybe it's the mental health problems that caused the Troubles". It was a particularly lazy, illogical piece of nonsense.
does anyone actually buy the Sindo . I sometimes read it as everytime I go to a football match there are piles of them lying on the ground to be given away free.
I was in England last week and to my surprise they were even giving it away free in the hotel.
I won't state the obvious about why everyone seems determined to give it away but has anyone else noticed that Eilis O Hanlon seems to write all her anti republican columns in one day and then release them weekly over the next year.