the photographer's eye

 

"I don't like seeing the women and children suffering," said the photographer.

He was talking about the war footage Ireland's State funded television station RTE shows nightly from the Gaza Strip. Evidently the Israelis have been turning the place upside down frantically looking for their kidnapped sons and daughters, that is to say the remaining hundred Israeli men, women and children kidnapped by the Gazans from Israel over a year ago and believed held ever since in fetid tunnel dungeons underground. The suffering women and children whose images had so upset the photographer were of course Gazans injured in the resultant war zone which their city has become, not their Jewish hostages. The Israeli men, women and children being held hostage in dungeons by the Palestinians of Gaza have not featured on RTE's nightly coverage. Nor have the 150 hostages released in the early phases of the Israeli retaliation. Nor have the 1200 Israelis torture murdered by the Gazans on the opening day of their attack on Israel a year ago. RTE's nightly sympathy is reserved for the perpetrators of terror rather than the victims of it.

I scratched my bald pate thoughtfully.

Decades ago me n the photographer had worked together in a magazine and today we'd met by chance in the street.

"You're seeing a war zone," I reminded him, "World War Two would have looked the same. You could go to any war zone on earth and find distressing footage. Bear in mind that Ireland has lived with forty years of anti Israel propaganda on RTE. And bear in mind RTE is very selective with its compassion and in its choice of which war zone to feature. It could have spent the last forty years showing you nightly footage of bleeding men, women and children in Sudan where the Islamist government has murdered five million of its own citizens during my life time without any real let up in the violence. Bear in mind that the oppressed Sudanese people haven't bombed anyone, invaded anyone, or torture murdered anyone, or posted video trophies on the internet of themselves racially abusing their victims as they kill them. Nor have the perennially suffering Sudanese people held any kidnapped captives from neighbouring countries in dungeons beneath their cities. All of these crimes the Iranian proxy statelet of Gaza has committed against Israel during the same forty years and in particular over the past year while RTE was ignoring the Sudanese government's ongoing wars against its own people. Incidentally RTE has also all but ignored Zaire, now known as Congo, where the death toll is nearly as high and as random as in Sudan. Ditto Somalia. Ditto Mozambique. Ditto Angola. Even Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's smash and grab on Ukraine receives scanty coverage on RTE compared to the nightly hand wringing from Gaza."

"Why aren't people speaking out?"

"Irish people are quiescent or afraid. The Israelis don't beat people up or murder people or stab children on the streets of Irish towns and cities. Muslim gangs do. It's easier for the citizenry to keep quiet, let RTE do their thinking for them, and hope the crocodile eats them last. And people are terrified of being labelled racist if they speak out against the collapse in immigration law which has brought the Muslim gangs here. And people are very conscious of the fact that an Algerian Muslim man stabbed three children in Dublin a few months ago in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza and there has been no exposition or ongoing discussion or any discourse at all in Irish media about what he did. So people fall silent. They're terrified. And that's where we are."

"Where does it end James?"

"End for who?"

"Well I meant for Ireland."

"It ends with what you see in Haiti and Mexico. It ends with gangs having shoot outs in our streets, it ends with kidnappings and beheadings on a daily basis, and it ends with the thugs controlling our political parties. Yet even that horror show will not be the final destination. I hold with the commentator Mark Steyn on this. For Ireland gang rule is just an interim stop on the way to our true destination. I used to think the Netherlands or France would be the first Western European countries to fall to the Jihadis. Now I think it will be us. Our acquiescence to anti Israeli propaganda is a symptom of a deeper societal malaise that will end with a new dark ages. We've become incapable of standing up to any evil. It ends for us in black Islamic night. Contrary to popular belief old pal, I think the crocodile will eat us first."

trump n proletariat

 

Sitting quaffing a coffee in a cafe with a fine view of hills and plains, I dialled up Padre Baines on the mobile phone.

"Padre did we have a bet on the American elections a few years ago?"

"We did James."

"I think I won a hundred quid off you back in 2016, the year Donald Trump got in," recalleth I merrily.

"You did," says the Padre, "in fact I seem to remember you tried to get me to increase the bet to a thousand shortly before the voting."

"Ah Padre, it would have made a great story. We'd have dined out on it. How about another hundred on tonight's result?"

"No way."

"I'll give you your choice. Even money either candidate."

"No. I'm not betting. But who are you supporting, Kamala or Trump?"

"I think Mr Trump is unfit for office," I told him. "And Kamala is more of an abortionist than he is. So I'll be watching but just because I find American democracy so fascinating. I won't have a horse in the race unless you bet with me."

"Sorry James."

Somewhat disconsolately I bid him adieu.

Under Bergoglio the Apostate, the Catholic Church is really losing its dash.

And clearly my incipient gambling addiction is not as cured as I thought it was.

All around the heartland of Kildare, talk seemed to be of the American elections.

At the bookshop in Kildare town the lady proprietor told me a lot of her customers would be staying up to watch the results come in.

The owners of the cafe had told me the same thing.

As I rambled through misty November weathers, an old lady in the street shouted something about me being a Trump supporter.

I was quite bemused.

Later, like about half the population of Ireland apparently, I too stayed up all night watching the results come in by television and computer.

The congenitally anti Trump lefties at NBC were doing a tolerably competent job in suppressing their overt loathing for Mr Trump so I stayed with them most of the night.

Fox News isn't available on television in Ireland as its owners the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdock's family, fear its availability here would damage their credentials with Euro trash socialists and Jihadis alike. The Murdocks crave the approval of such types and court them copiously through their abysmal Sky News outlet which was available on election night though unwatched by me. Nor was Fox election night coverage being live streamed on the internet. Fox reports were posted on Youtube an hour after their unavailable live broadcast. I thought this was a bad business decision by the Murdocks. I could not trouble myself to watch their recorded footage. Thankfully idiot banks have lent the Murdocks so many billions that bad business decisions or not, the banks themselves cannot afford the Murdocks to go under. Here is the news. They're going under anyway.

The BBC coverage was a yawn fest. How the mighty have fallen. Ditto CNN.

With half the Irish nation staying up to watch the results live, the Bolshevick Irish national broadcaster RTE, funded through compulsory taxation on the gulpens, ie the citizenry, allowed its overpaid staff to go to bed so that they could be fresh as daisies reporting the biggest story on earth in the morning when it was all over.

Glenn Beck had the best internet based coverage with a likeable panel and measured pro Trump commentary.

I stopped watching Ben Shapiro's thoroughly capable coverage when some of the eejits on his panel started smoking cigars. Smoking cigars is not a sign of individuality or bold rebelliousness, and I'll warrant few enough people want to watch eejits smoking them.

The coverage on Mark Steyn's pro Trump website was scanty enough. At first there were no postings at all coming through to my computer but eventually stuff started to appear. I'm not sure if the fault was mine or his. Since Steyn has retreated to the remoter margins of online commentary, being worshipped by a lost tribe of internet trolls as their mad half Belgian, half Canadian, naturalised American, sort of Irish, white god, he's gone full Colonel Kurtz, one moment calling for civil war, the next urging everyone to get out and vote. I've been a bit leery of him since with the rise of Donald Trump a few years ago, he turned turk on both Mr Bush and the war on terror. Mac V had told me to terminate his command at some stage but I found the extended metaphor too wearisome and couldn't really be bothered.

There were copious bomb threats being phoned in to some of the election night count centres. Robert Spencer on his Jihad Watch website seemed sceptical about the FBI's attribution of the bomb threats to Russian email server addresses, a scepticism which I thought spoke more about the bona fides of Mr Spencer himself than about anything else.

During the night word came through that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had just fired his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. I had regarded Mr Gallant as the man who would be king and I believed the US Biden Administration had conveyed the same idea to Mr Gallant himself, assuring him that he was their favoured choice for Prime Minister of Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to show him the door on this night of all nights was a sign to me that Donald Trump was about to win the American Presidency.

In the early hours of the morning Irish time, the Pennsylvania count centre attempted their usual shenanigans with Trump leading, announcing a suspension of the count for the night. The Republicans were ready with lawyers and the count continued.

The count in Georgia was slow but the burst pipe shenanigans of 2020 did not materialise.

The count in Arizona actually was suspended but Arizona wasn't the key and nobody seemed to care.

I went to bed at 10 am Irish time waking up in the late afternoon to find a voice message from Padre Baines on my mobile.

The message said: "Well James, I suppose you're delighted. Donald Trump has won again."

I groaned like a heffalump in pain.

No matter what I say or write, I will be remembered near and far in the fantasistic collective imagination of the gnath daoine as an unrepentant Trump supporter.

I quite like the newly elected President's purported Health Department guy Robert F Kennedy though.

He'll last about six weeks working for President Trump.