Sinn Fein on the slide

The latest opinion poll in the Irish Republic, conducted by IPSOS/MORI, shows a significant drop in the satisfaction rating for Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.  His rating fell from 37% in May to 29& in the latest poll, a drop of 8%.  Back in May he was the most popular party leader but that is not longer the case.

 

One factor may be that in recent weeks Adams has been hit by fresh accusations that he was involved in the Provisional IRA.  Ex-IRA prisoner Dolours Price said that the Louth TD had been a senior IRA figure who had snactioned a bombing campaign in Great Britin and had ordered the deaths of people who were accused of being informers - the so-called 'disappeared'.

 

Adams has also been hit by comments on his poor performance in the Dail.  In August it was reported that he had one of the worst attendance records in the Dail, having missed 17 of 68 sitting days  for the first six months of the year.  Of course 25% absenteeism is better than Sinn Fein's performance at Westminser where it is 100% absenteeism!

 

The party itself has also seen a drop in support, down 4%, while Fianna Fail is up by 4%.  As a result Sinn Fein has lost its place as the second most popular party in the Irish Republic.

 

Some people say that all publicity is good publicity but that is not always the case.  The more exposure Sinn Fein gets in the Republic the more people will see what it is really like and the more its past misdemeanours and its present incompetence will be exposed.

More about Marie Stopes

In my previous post I pointed out that Marie Stopes opposed abortion and described it as murder.  However there are other facts about her that the promoters of the Marie Stopes clinic would probably prefer you not to know.

 

Marie Carmichael Stopes was born in Edinburgh on 15 October 1880 and educated there and in London.  She received her PhD from Munich University and then became the first female academic at Manchester University, where she lectured in palaeobotany.  However she is remembered primarily for her pioneering work in promoting contraception.

But there are other aspects to Marie Stopes that tend to be downplayed.

 

Stopes was a keen advocate of eugenics and in 1912 she attended the inaugural meeting of the Eugenics Society.  When she came to write her books about marriage and birth control they were infused with the theory of eugenics and even by the standards of the time she was an extreme eugenicist.  In The Control of Parenthood, published in 1920, she wrote that were she in charge she would 'legislate compulsory sterilization of the insane, feebleminded ... revolutionaries ... half castes.'  Marie Stopes believed in racial purity and that was reflected in her call for the compulsory sterilisation of 'half castes'.

 

Indeed journalist Zoe Williams, writing in The Guardian on 2 September 2011, admitted that:

Her eugenics programme was actually slightly to the right of Hitler's, just because her definition of defective is so broad.  There are certainly issues of Birth Control News that seem to suggest, just with their news agenda, that some people should be sterilised for nebulous reasons of defectiveness, like not being rich enough.  As you might expect, there are strong strains of racism: she described the southern Italians as a 'low-grade race'; she was accused of anti-semitism by her birth-control allies; and in a stinging attack on the French who, in the early 1920s tightened their laws against contraception, she said tha if they really wanted to repopulate their nation, they should 'eliminate the taint of their large numbers of perverted or homosexual people.

 Marie Stopes also supported child labour and wrote, 'Not many years ago the labourer's child could be set to work early and could very shortly earn his keep. ... The trend of legislation has continuously extended the age of irresponsible youth in the lower and lower middle classes.'

 

In 1935 she attended the International Congress for Population Science in Berlin, held under the auspices of the Third Reich during the second year of Hitler's government.  Then in August 1939, just weeks before the start of the Second World War, she sent a letter to Adolf Hitler, enclosing a copy of her Love Songs for Young Lovers.  Her aim was to have her poems distributed through birth clinics in Germany and she wrote, 'Dear Herr Hitler, Love is the greatest thing in the world: so will you accept from me these (poems) that you may allow the young people of your nation to have them.'

 

More than once she was accused by other pioneers of birth control, such as Havelock Ellis, another eugenicist, of being anti-Semitic and in 1942 she wrote:

Catholics, Prussians,

The Jews and the Russians,

All are a curse,

Or something worse ...

 

Marie Stopes took a strong dislike for her son's fiance, Mary, who was short-sighted and wore glasses.  Nevertheless they were engaged in October 1947 and after they were married she cut her son out of her will, citing the eugenics argument that their children might inherit the condition!

 

She regarded homosexuality as a perversion but had a strange view on marriage.  Free love within marriage was acceptable, so long as the extre-marital partner was of the opposite sex.  In this she had the consent of her husband, as evidenced by a contract drawn up between them in later years.

 

This is a short summary of the views that Marie Stopes held but it serves to explain why Marie Stopes International when asked about its founder, said, 'We tend to keep our distance.'  Yes, maybe, but they do keep her name over the door.

John Larkin and Marie Stopes

 

Over the last few days there has been a lot of coverage in the local media, newspapers, radio and television, about a comment on abortion that was made by the Attorney General, John Larkin QC, prior to his appointment to the office.  It was his own personal opinion about a serious ethical issue and one that he was perfectly entitled to make.

 

Indeed it is worth recalling what he actually said.  Larkin was on a panel on the Sunday Sequence programme on Radio Ulster, along with Dawn Purvis, who now heads up the Marie Stopes operation in Belfast.  When he was asked about whether abortion would ever be justified in the case of foetal abnormality, Mr Larkin said: 'If one is prepared to contemplate the destruction of a highly disabled, unborn child in the womb, one should also be prepared to contemplate, I think, putting a bullet in the back of the head of the child two days after it's born.'

Ms Purvis described his comments as a disgrace, saying it was such language that 'criminalises women' and made Northern Ireland 'the backwater that it is'.  Mr Larkin then replied: 'Help me out Dawn, tell me the logical distinction between destroying the unborn child in the womb, seconds before birth and putting a bullet in the head of the child two days after it's born.'

Since Friday newspaper and other media reports have used words such as 'outcry', 'astonishment' and 'fury' and on Saturday the Belfast Telegraph had the story on page 1 and page 2 under a headline - 'Attorney General facing a storm of criticism over radio comments on abortion'.

However this is very much a media-generated controversy.  I haven't heard anyone outside the media commenting on it and it is certainly not a subject that comes up in general conversation.

 

Moreover there is a certain irony about these attacks on John Larkin.  They arose in the context of the opening of a Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast, so perhaps the supporters of the clinic will consider renaming their clinic since Marie Stopes herself took a position on abortion that was virtually identical with that taken by John Larkin, in what was a personal comment on an ethical issue!

 

Marie Stopes, who died in 1958, always opposed abortion, unlike the organisation and the clinic that bear her name.

in 1938 she wrote to the Courier-Mail newspaper in Brisbane saying, 'I was glad you gave space to the fact that the Queensland Medical Association is planning "an extensive educational campaign against the evil of abortion".  The majority of married women do not realise the frightful injury they do to themselves and to their possible future children by an abortion.'

Moreover, she was a friend of the American writer Avro Manhattan and when a female friend of Manhattan had an abortion, Marie Stopes accused him of murdering the child! 

However I haven't heard any pro-abortionists demanding the removal of Marie Stopes name from the clinic.  Neither have I heard representatives of the Marie Stopes clinic being questioned in the media about the fact that the person whose name the clinic bears described abortion as murder. 

But maybe that's too difficult a question for some of our local media.

 

Another Irish News report on parades

Allison Morris

Yesterday (18 October) the Irish News reported on the forthcoming Reformation Sunday church parade organised by the County Grand Orange Lodge of Belfast.

 

It was on the front page as the lead story, under the headline 'Orange Order plans march past Catholic church - again.'  Moreover, if that was not enough, the newspaper continued with Allisa half page on page 12 and also devoted page 13 and Newton Emerson's column on page 20 to parades.

 

With its Latin motto 'Pro fide et patria', the Irish News certainly devotes plenty of space to Loyal Order parades.  Moreover the newspaper is well placed to cover such events as its offices are in Donegall Street and therefore on the main parade route into the city centre.

 

I was therefore rather amused by the headline mentioned and by the start of Allison Morris's article:

Hopes that the end of the marching season would allow sectarian tensions to ease have been dashed with permission for yet another Orange Order parade pass(sic) St Patrick's Church in Belfast.

Organised to mark the anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, it will include four bands and around 400 participants along the city's Donegall Street.

The Irish News headline, with its use of the word 'again', and the first paragraph, with its talk of 'the end of the marching season' and 'hopes have been dashed', imply that the forthcoming church parade was unexpected.  However this is an annual church parade, which has taken place for many years. 

 

Indeed year after year the Orange brethren have walked past the Irish News offices on their way to and from the city centre church service.  To imply that this church parade was not expected is disingenuous.   Or are we to believe that Allison Morris did not know it was coming?  Surely a journalist who takes a special interest in parades would know and if she does not know, surely her editor would know?  Or is it just to spice up the story?

 

Surely not!  Would anyone suggest that the Irish News would 'spice up' a story about Loyal Order parades .........

The church parade will be on Sunday 28 October.

Compassion for the unborn child

Yesterday in her column in the Belfast Telegraph Finola Meredith wrote about the opening of a Marie Stopes Clinic in Belfast.  Abortion is an issue on which she holds strong views and I note that she is writing about the same subject in the Irish Times today.

 

The title in the Belfast Telegraph was 'Why pro-life zealots need to show more compassion.'

I believe that we all need to approach the subject of abortion with love and compassion.

 

However it seems to me that the stance adopted by pro-abortionists is one that itself lacks compassion.

I would therefore like to suggest another viewpoint on the subject: 'Why pro-abortion zealots should show more compassion ... for the unborn child.'

The 'faith' of the atheist

Rev William Taylor

The following 'letter to the editor' was written by Rev William Taylor and appeared in The Times yesterday (16 October).  It was one of a number of letters that appeared in response to an opinion piece by Matthew Parris on 13 October.  In that article Parris argued that 'when advocacy is driven by the advocate's belief that he is obeying God's command, we ought to be told, and are often not.  Religious convictions should be declared as financial interests are.'

The atheist (or secularist) position, with its accompanying ethical codes, is just as much as 'faith position' as that of the Christian.  To 'believe' that there is no God is equally as much a position of 'faith' as to 'believe' that there is no God.

If the 'religious' are to declare their hand in public debates then so ought atheists.

Rev William Taylor
Rector, St Helen's Church
Bishopsgate, London EC3

William Taylor served in the British Army as an officer in the Royal Green Jackets for five years before being ordained.  In 1995 he joined St Helen's, in the heart of the City of London, and he became rector in 1998.

 

His point is well made and absolutely right.  Moreover it stretches beyond this area of interest.  Some time ago I pointed out that a local commentator on welfare reform, Goretti Horgan, was being described as an academic.  However she is also a political activist, associated with the far-left Socialist Workers Party.  She has been interviewed in the media on a number of occasions as an 'academic expert' but her political activism is rarely mentioned.  Indeed I can only recall hearing it mentioned once on the radio and that was after I had raised the issue. 
 

The same is true of journalists, who may well hold strong political views or may be assertively secularist.  I can think of two mainstream media figures whom I first encountered many years when one of them was an election candidate for Sinn Fein - The Workers Party and the other was her election agent.  There are others in the media who at one time had a strong religious faith but have now abandoned it and have now become very anti-evangelical.  Yet these things are not 'declared' in the way that Matthew Parris wants.

 

There seems to be a 'liberal consensus', which is actually very illiberal, that Christians should be subjected to high levels of scrutiny and transparency, even when others are not.

Christian and scientist

http://vimeo.com/51399008

This is a video of a personal testimony by Professor Chris Shaw in Ballymena Elim Pentecostal Church.

 

Dr Shaw is Professor in Drug Discovery within the School of Pharmacy. Prof. Shaw's exciting work involves the discovery and characterisation of biologically active agents within nature, most notably from amphibian venoms that are harvested worldwide. High-throughput molecular technologies involving de novo peptide sequencing, "shotgun" cDNA cloning and pharmacological screening is directed towards the functional genomic understanding of peptidomes, thus allowing rapid acquisition of structural data and the generation of peptide molecular libraries for novel drug leads. http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPharmacy/Staff/AcademicStaff/ProfessorCShaw/

 

He was speaking in Ballymena last Sunday night and his testimony is well worth watching, especially in an age when we are faced with an increasingly aggressive and abrasive atheism.  Militant atheists are keen to portray evangelical Christians as unlearned and uneducated folk but this testimony is a clear rebuttal of such atheistic propaganda. 

 

In this context his references to the infamous Richard Dawkins are especially interesting.