Tonight The Pensive Quill carries an article by Eamonn McCann originally published in the Irish Times
Why Disillusioned Republicans Breached IRA’s Code of Secrecy

"The things we have in common from our past, long past, are often in my mind. 
Now that it is all over bar the final destruction of the weapons 
I look forward to the freedom to lay bare my experiences 
unfettered by codes now redundant. 
This is the only freedom left to me and those Republicans of like mind." 
— Dolours Price, 2005

The contradiction that ran through the Provisional movement explains the anger of Gerry Adams’s accusers.

Gerry Adams says that former colleagues who accuse him of having ordered the death of Jean McConville are driven by hostility to the peace process, by a conviction that he personally sold out the republican struggle and by the fact that they have had “their own demons” to deal with.

He is right that many of his accusers, including the two most prominent among them. Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes, both now dead, saw the Good Friday agreement as a betrayal of republicanism and regarded him as the man who had led the movement into acceptance of the shameful deal. He is right that both had been distraught toward the end of their lives at the way the IRA campaign had ended and, at a personal level, had been damagingly affected by the thought that their own armed actions had turned out to have been for nothing – or at least for nothing that came close to the objective the struggle had been aimed at. And he is right that these were the factors which prompted them to put their accusations on the record.

Telling the truth

But he isn’t obviously right in suggesting that these feelings caused them to concoct wicked lies to discredit him.

It is at least as likely that they broke the IRA’s code of secrecy because they believed it had been rendered meaningless by the strategy adopted by Adams and his close associates. On this reading, what they’d been driven to do was not to tell lies but to tell the truth.

The republican movement differed from groups involved in armed struggles elsewhere which are commonly likened to the IRA campaign in that republicans saw themselves not as fighting to achieve a political goal but as a legitimate army defending an actually existing republic.

In this perspective, a deal which others might regard as a major step towards an honourable peace was seen as a desertion of the battlefield. One of the statements regularly quoted in republican speeches at the height of the Troubles came from the most hallowed figure in the pantheon, Patrick Pearse, in “Ghosts”:

The man who in the name of Ireland accepts as a ‘final settlement’ anything less by one iota than separation from England is guilty of so immense an infidelity, so immense a crime against the Irish nation . . . that it were better for that man (as it were certainly better for his country) that he had not been born.

Attached to a conviction that the republic Pearse had in mind and which he was to proclaim on the steps of the GPO and which had thereby acquired a de jure if not a de facto existence, this provided the moral sanction for IRA members to take lives and put their own at risk.

Moral justification was vital for prosecution of the war. Without a belief that the war was just and had been properly declared, many if not most IRA members would have had problems joining the fight, if not immediately on recruitment then soon enough after as the savagery they were involved in, as happens with all wars, bore in on them.

Most of those who joined the IRA did so for decent reasons. They had experienced their communities being brutalised by the forces of the state.

Fr Denis Faul, chaplain in Long Kesh and a fierce opponent of political violence, cited, for example, a young man who had seen his mother abused and humiliated in her own home by an RUC or British army raiding party.

Joining the IRA did not betoken a propensity for violence but was an understandable reaction to personal experience.

The former republican hunger striker Tommy McKearney once explained that it was only after some time in prison, when he had space to discuss the struggle with a sizeable number of other volunteers, that he realised that not only were republicans in a minority in the Catholic community but they appeared to be a minority in the IRA. The intransigent ideology of republicanism matched the mood of potential IRA members and of many in the communities they came from. But mood falls far short of embrace of an ideology.

Contradiction

Herein lies the contradiction which ran through the Provisional movement and which Adams was among the first to recognise and acknowledge.

On the basis of this understanding, his embarkation on the road to the 1998 agreement did not represent a betrayal of the movement but an attempt to bring the movement into alignment with the consciousness of the people in whose name the struggle was being conducted.

There was nothing inherently ignoble about this. But it required a break with the ideas which had powered the struggle.

His problem was that he couldn’t spell this out, not at the time anyway, to those who had embraced traditional republicanism and in many cases had suffered mightily in its name.

Hence the rage against him of those members and former members of the movement who still held hard to the old ideals.

This doesn’t mean that they have told lies against him. Rather, it explains why they have told the truth.

Why Disillusioned Republicans Breached IRA’s Code of Secrecy

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries an article by Eamonn McCann originally published in the Irish Times
Why Disillusioned Republicans Breached IRA’s Code of Secrecy

"The things we have in common from our past, long past, are often in my mind. 
Now that it is all over bar the final destruction of the weapons 
I look forward to the freedom to lay bare my experiences 
unfettered by codes now redundant. 
This is the only freedom left to me and those Republicans of like mind." 
— Dolours Price, 2005

The contradiction that ran through the Provisional movement explains the anger of Gerry Adams’s accusers.

Gerry Adams says that former colleagues who accuse him of having ordered the death of Jean McConville are driven by hostility to the peace process, by a conviction that he personally sold out the republican struggle and by the fact that they have had “their own demons” to deal with.

He is right that many of his accusers, including the two most prominent among them. Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes, both now dead, saw the Good Friday agreement as a betrayal of republicanism and regarded him as the man who had led the movement into acceptance of the shameful deal. He is right that both had been distraught toward the end of their lives at the way the IRA campaign had ended and, at a personal level, had been damagingly affected by the thought that their own armed actions had turned out to have been for nothing – or at least for nothing that came close to the objective the struggle had been aimed at. And he is right that these were the factors which prompted them to put their accusations on the record.

Telling the truth

But he isn’t obviously right in suggesting that these feelings caused them to concoct wicked lies to discredit him.

It is at least as likely that they broke the IRA’s code of secrecy because they believed it had been rendered meaningless by the strategy adopted by Adams and his close associates. On this reading, what they’d been driven to do was not to tell lies but to tell the truth.

The republican movement differed from groups involved in armed struggles elsewhere which are commonly likened to the IRA campaign in that republicans saw themselves not as fighting to achieve a political goal but as a legitimate army defending an actually existing republic.

In this perspective, a deal which others might regard as a major step towards an honourable peace was seen as a desertion of the battlefield. One of the statements regularly quoted in republican speeches at the height of the Troubles came from the most hallowed figure in the pantheon, Patrick Pearse, in “Ghosts”:

The man who in the name of Ireland accepts as a ‘final settlement’ anything less by one iota than separation from England is guilty of so immense an infidelity, so immense a crime against the Irish nation . . . that it were better for that man (as it were certainly better for his country) that he had not been born.

Attached to a conviction that the republic Pearse had in mind and which he was to proclaim on the steps of the GPO and which had thereby acquired a de jure if not a de facto existence, this provided the moral sanction for IRA members to take lives and put their own at risk.

Moral justification was vital for prosecution of the war. Without a belief that the war was just and had been properly declared, many if not most IRA members would have had problems joining the fight, if not immediately on recruitment then soon enough after as the savagery they were involved in, as happens with all wars, bore in on them.

Most of those who joined the IRA did so for decent reasons. They had experienced their communities being brutalised by the forces of the state.

Fr Denis Faul, chaplain in Long Kesh and a fierce opponent of political violence, cited, for example, a young man who had seen his mother abused and humiliated in her own home by an RUC or British army raiding party.

Joining the IRA did not betoken a propensity for violence but was an understandable reaction to personal experience.

The former republican hunger striker Tommy McKearney once explained that it was only after some time in prison, when he had space to discuss the struggle with a sizeable number of other volunteers, that he realised that not only were republicans in a minority in the Catholic community but they appeared to be a minority in the IRA. The intransigent ideology of republicanism matched the mood of potential IRA members and of many in the communities they came from. But mood falls far short of embrace of an ideology.

Contradiction

Herein lies the contradiction which ran through the Provisional movement and which Adams was among the first to recognise and acknowledge.

On the basis of this understanding, his embarkation on the road to the 1998 agreement did not represent a betrayal of the movement but an attempt to bring the movement into alignment with the consciousness of the people in whose name the struggle was being conducted.

There was nothing inherently ignoble about this. But it required a break with the ideas which had powered the struggle.

His problem was that he couldn’t spell this out, not at the time anyway, to those who had embraced traditional republicanism and in many cases had suffered mightily in its name.

Hence the rage against him of those members and former members of the movement who still held hard to the old ideals.

This doesn’t mean that they have told lies against him. Rather, it explains why they have told the truth.

27 comments:

  1. Eamonn McCann, cutting through the guff with a typically insightful analysis

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  2. Great piece. I must admit I prefer to read Eamonn McCann than to listen to him speak at times.

    I agree fairly with most of what he has to say here and value his opinion. However, sometimes when he is asked a question on tv, he seems to go off tangent of the original question, only to reign himself back in and refocus after about 3-4 minutes of "butterfly" loosely connected topical conversation.

    Others, I have been in the company with have also commented on this. Maybe, that is where he loses his potential target audience.

    Now, that being said he usually gets the message across cutting through most of the guff that other social commentators tend to sprout.

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  3. Indeed this is a powerful piece by Eamonn in which I see myself as an IRA volunteer.

    Most of us, if we are truthful, who joined the Republican Movement at an early age; I was 16 and spotted at the front of riots, hadn't a clue about 'Isms' socialism or otherwise.

    It wasn't until the prison system swallowed us up that I heard of such things. In fact I first heard about socialism walking round the yard while on remand from Red Micky Devine.

    What kept us going through the Blanket Protest was the belief that we could bring about the ideals we learnt from Micky, Bobby and the likes of Tommy McKearney.

    Speaking for myself I believed that if we defeated the British attempt to criminalise our Struggle from within these walls then after that there would be no stopping us.

    I left jail with a head full of ideas which I hoped would change things for the better...Empowering the communities in which we lived... The Gaelicisation of our areas and our people - teaching Gaelic and replacing the mimicry of loyalism; tattered Tricolours and painted kerb stones with Gaelic street signs etc.

    Then eventually reality hit me...

    These ideas had little or no interest to certain people who wanted to control our areas. Gaelic worked for a while, a few of us got two rooms in Dove House and got Conradh na Gaeilge up and running. Sinn Fein then took control and pushed many founding members out. The push from then on was not about promoting Gaelic but taking over other Irish language groupings in the town.

    I walked away from Sinn Fein back then disillusioned yet not fully realising that the push was actually on to remove the foot soldiers, those with ideals and especially those who would question.
    In effect to gain complete control of everything from top to bottom.

    I disagree with Eamonn only in the final part of the piece where he completely lets Adams off the hook.

    Adams and McGuinness while pushing the PRM towards a political and peaceful path sacrificed those men and women who trusted them. In the case of the Hunger Strikers, for an election result which would add the ballot box to the weaponry of the IRA...or so we were told.

    The ballot box was to replace the Armalite but only a certain few knew that. Those few continued for years convincing IRA Volunteers that the War would not be wound down, Republicans would not sit in Stormont and so on.

    IRA volunteers died not knowing what a Catholic Priest, Fr Reid, knew and that was they were merely killing for time...They were merely dying for time.

    Until the time was right for Gerry and Martin to end it.

    Each needless death since the time they took the decision to end the War, whether it was an IRA volunteer, civilian or the enemy is on their hands.

    They never set out to achieve peace nobly they did it ignobly and at a high cost in lives.

    Therefore I believe for this reason that they cannot be allowed to continue to proclaim themselves as peacemakers.





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  4. You have to hand it to,Eamonn McCann,he is a very intelligent and astute observer.If,G.A.,is human at all,he cannot be anything but decimated as a person,by this article.

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  5. Dixie: Wrote.

    "I disagree with Eamonn only in the final part of the piece where he completely lets Adams off the hook.

    Adams and McGuinness while pushing the PRM towards a political and peaceful path sacrificed those men and women who trusted them. In the case of the Hunger Strikers, for an election result which would add the ballot box to the weaponry of the IRA...or so we were told.

    The ballot box was to replace the Armalite but only a certain few knew that. Those few continued for years convincing IRA Volunteers that the War would not be wound down, Republicans would not sit in Stormont and so on.

    IRA volunteers died not knowing what a Catholic Priest, Fr Reid, knew and that was they were merely killing for time...They were merely dying for time.

    Until the time was right for Gerry and Martin to end it.

    Each needless death since the time they took the decision to end the War, whether it was an IRA volunteer, civilian or the enemy is on their hands.

    They never set out to achieve peace nobly they did it ignobly and at a high cost in lives.

    Therefore I believe for this reason that they cannot be allowed to continue to proclaim themselves as peacemakers. "

    I agree 100%, They knew exactly what there aim was as far back as 1972. It makes me sick to the core, I'm still trying to ascertain if michaelhenry is really a SF councilor, or, a British plant to weather up a storm on TPQ.

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  6. Whereas I am fundamentally in agreement with the theme of the article, i.e. Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price did not lie I must take issue at another level. Eamon appears to laud Adams leadership capabilities.

    "But mood falls far short of embrace of an ideology.
    Herein lies the contradiction which ran through the Provisional movement and which Adams was among the first to recognise and acknowledge."

    Let's be clear on a couple of points:

    (1) Of course not all young volunteers who joined were ideologically committed to Pearse and Connolly's Irish Republic. Many were merely reacting to the unjustness of the situation and the threat that existed in and to their communities.

    (2) Gerry Adams had secured the Presidency of Sinn Féin. As such he was the trusted servant of that organisation and defender of it's ideology. A figurehead who answered to the ultimate authority of the Army Council.


    From an ideological Republican perspective Adams not only recognised and acknowledged this 'contradiction' of motivation as Eamon calls it but he also exploited it.

    If an ideology is defined as a set of beliefs or principles, especially one on which a political system, party, or organization is based then if those principles are compromised the ideological underpinnings are negated also.
    Back in 1986 when Adams abandoned Irish Republican ideology to take seats in partitionist assemblies there was no call form the grass-roots for membership in either Belfast or Dublin administrations yet he and his cabal choose this path despite the clear historical evidence as to it's futility and the inevitable results of constitutional participation.

    Yes all that has happened since yet another 'parting of the ways' has frustrated, angered and saddened many noble Republicans and probably was a consideration in Brendan's and Dolours's revelation about the failed leader.

    All that said I imagine that there are very very few people even amongst those who are the least informed (even among his own party) who believe Adams's denials. De facto I don't believe they doubt the truthfulness of Dolours or Brendan.

    Let Adams and his Free-Staters off to their rightful destination of yet another populist, amorphous and self-serving political charade.

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  7. Eamon Mc Cann has come at this from an outsiders point of view,and it is typical of the man,as Anthony says cutting through the guff, or cut out the crap as we say. when Adams and Mc Guinness secretly engaged with the brits was the full AC aware of this ?were they kept informed about the outcome of these meetings ,or was it an ego trip for the two main men with everyone else a bit player,if so what we now know to be fact ie,six men allowed to die needlessly on hunger strike,operations going wrong on a scale which would suggest something more than incompetence,the farce of the good Friday Agreement the surrender (however you look at that) of weapons,and the sight of Mc Guinness Standing on the steps of Stormont four square with Third Force commander Pete the punt and the chief cuntsnotable and calling on republicans to join him in the slime and become an informer,it seems to me to be a reasonable conclusion to draw that the Green Book was torn up long ago ,therefore any and all critism of those who led the movement down the path of surrender is fair comment and its time that the lying toerags who have made a cushy life for themselves were forced to swallow a bitter pill ,the truth, we need more people to stand up and say how it was not less,quisling $inn £einds and their cronies must wish that those who speak out would join the ranks of the disappeared,we are now seeing more and more republicans are shaking of the shackles of misguided loyalty and questioning just what it was all about and how did we end up in such a mess , when asked these questions I just point to Adams and Mc Guinness.

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  8. I'd go along with that Henry Joy but I don't agree that we should just let Adams and Sinn Fein off to their Free State, because they are successfully manipulating a hell of a lot of people into supporting British rule in Ireland as though this somehow forms the struggle against that rule. In particular they're targeting a new generation, to divert them away from any genuine form of resistance. For that reason we need to be constantly challenging them and exposing them in every forum on every issue. Because they are now the lynchpin of the very system we oppose. A lot of people say we shouldn't spend our time criticising Sinn Fein when it's the British who are the enemy but I don't think that's fully accurate. As I said they are part of the system we oppose and therefore should be considered our direct political opponents

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  9. We have to have our own politics and analysis yes but we must also have a critique of the system and all its constituent parts

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  10. Itsjustmacker
    I'm still trying to ascertain if michaelhenry is really a SF councilor, or, a British plant to weather up a storm on TPQ. SF councilor or Britsh plant, same thing isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  11. itsjustmacker,
    "I'm still trying to ascertain if michaelhenry is really a SF councilor, or, a British plant to weather up a storm on TPQ"

    I allways tought he was creation of Anthony to have a laugh :)

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  12. André Poulin

    "
    I allways tought he was creation of Anthony to have a laugh :)"


    Well , Anthony has been accused of worse things than that.

    I doubt if he would lower his standards down to a skitso level, like blogging as one person and replying to himself as himself.

    That's a big No NO. He's not the type.

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  13. Itsjustmacker,

    Andre is jesting not being serious!

    Michaelhenry is just Michaelhenry and he is as much part of the Quill as anybody else.

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  14. What confusing for me about the Michaelhenry's contributions, and there's much confusion where Michaelhenry is concerned, is why would anybody bother replying to him.

    He's a puppet who realises at some level that his strings have, and are still being pulled. But rather than face up to that fact, which would ultimately lead to the cutting of those strings (but that requires courage - for the puppet to become real - and there is no coming to consciousness without pain), he comes on here attempting to wind people up (pull their strings).
    I guess it's like a 'circle of abuse' of sorts; the abused becomes the abuser.
    Replying to him is grist to his mill. By engaging him we support him in maintaining his 'puppet republican' façade, and indeed the whole PRM farce.

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  15. Itsjustmacker-

    " A British plant "-

    I have been likened to a thorn on a rose in the past if that is any good to you-

    Gerry Adams is in the states now
    getting ready for the big Sinn Fein bash fund-raiser-there is still a few reporters following him but they cant catch him-they are no good-so they bluff and make up jackanorys-

    I enjoy reading-drinking-music-fcuk-I am Spartacus-I mean I am AM-aren't I-who cares-

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  16. istjustmacker,

    I was really not serious, I have a great respect for Anthony. It's just reading MH, it's sometime feels like being in an Eugene Ionesco play.

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  17. Andre'.

    Point taken about mickey H.

    Anthony put me in the picture regarding your post.

    No offence meant.

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  18. Itsjustmacker,

    Andre didn't seriously mean he was my creation

    ReplyDelete
  19. From Sandy Boyer

    Radio Free Eireann will broadcast live from Rocky Sullivan's of Red Hook
    and over WBAI, 99.5FM and wbai.org, tomorrow Saturday November 9th from
    1-2pm New York time. Our featured guest will be Ed Moloney author of A
    Secret History of the IRA who will discuss the damage to Gerry Adams from
    the recent RTE documentary on the disappeared.

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  20. Dixie,
    I have met Janet Muller, CEO with POBAL, a few times in Montréal. She came to the same conclusion as you. For her, Sinn Féin never took seriously the promotion of the gaelic language in Northern Ireland.

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  21. Which ever way you cut it, if you are sending out people to fight/kill/die etc. you have a duty to tell them the truth - using them like pawns in your own game is exactly what imperial Britain has done/still does with its own armed forces - so GA out-Thatchered Thatcher in the end and covered up child abuse too - what a guy, what a leader - well done MH you are welcome to him.

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  22. We five of us founded niaonra na fuiseoige in Twinbrook ,we then voluntarily built the first Irish nursery school solid building in the north,Marie managed to screw over £100K from the brits,the school as you can tell from its name is dedicated to Bobby Sands and I,m proud to say we moulded with the help of a local teacher a huge lark to front the building,its still there to this day, the official opening of the school was attended by Bobbys family and Adams was not invited, we had very very little support from psf at that time, this niaonra has now developed into a large primary school with over a £6 mill grant,and of course quisling $inn £eind hijacked the credit for this schools foundation much in the same way they hijacked anything of value in our communities the language included.

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  23. I never did understand why Adams and McGuiness were able to hold on to their command after their failure during the hunger strikes and prison struggle in general.
    It would seem the only value the POWs had was propaganda and even back in the early years there was never much mention of the prison struggle.

    The second hunger strike only began to gain momentum with the late Vol. Bobby Sands being elected.
    Whilst the prisoners and those of us that supported the prisoners hoped that this would be an edge to bring the hunger strike to a quick resolution.

    How wrong we were as in at least one man’s mind the amount of support shown by the ballot for Vol. Bobby Sands was translated in Adams mind as a vote for Sinn Fein and when Owen Carron received the same sympathy vote clearly Adams had a new role in mind.
    Even though the votes were for the hunger strikers Adams calculated this to his benefit.
    I can’t speak for all but I remember at the time that there was never enough done to end the prison struggle.
    I recall that morning on the 5th of May the reports were grim and by the early evening me and a few others had gathered near a block of flats the Brits or peelers rarely ventured into as there was only one way out.

    Sitting there waiting as we did every night talking and planning what we would do if Sands died.
    I recall with clarity the announcer on my wee transistor radio stating Bobby Sands had died.
    I remember first being hit with sadness and anger and then disillusion set in as I walked away my friends asked where was I going and let’s get wired into the Brits.

    I said no I am going home which I did knowing that this would be the first and only god knows how many would follow.

    By 1983 talking amongst friends there was the distinct impression that something was terribly wrong in the State of republicanism.
    The whispers were soon hushed as Brit propaganda.

    The war would go on yet the whispers would soon become a reality and the cold hard truth would smack us in the gob.
    It was all for nothing!

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  24. Gerry Adams gave order to take explosives into Britain': ex-IRA man

    In an interview with the Sunday Independent, Peter Rogers, who served 18 years of a life sentence for Det Gda Quaid's murder, told how he met Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness in the sports ground of Trinity College Dublin on October 11, 1980.

    It goes on to say..

    Rogers told the Sunday Independent: "I was summonsed to Dublin as to find out why there was a delay in moving stuff. It was the stuff that I was caught with.

    "I was extremely unhappy about it. The explosives was weeping and there was a heavy smell of marzipan off it. You daren't touch it, but your hands were soaking wet with the nitroglycerine coming off it. It was dangerous, highly dangerous.

    "I didn't want to move it for the simple reason I was afraid, number one, of losing the route into England and I was also afraid that if it was compromised that the active service unit might have been caught in England.

    "It was supposed to have been gone on a couple of occasions but different circumstances didn't allow for it and one of the main ones was the condition the explosives was in." During the Seventies almost 100 IRA members were killed while moving or making bombs, and Rogers would have been well aware of the dangers.

    Rogers said he was summoned to meet Adams and McGuinness because "they were in charge of operations".

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  25. i think i hear the word 'liar' floatin around in the ether frankie, do you!

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  26. Rodgers finger pointing again with not a ounce of fact in his possession -sad the way time plays on some minds-

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  27. Grouch,

    The poster below you is a liar, Adams & McGuinness lied.. Guess that makes three.

    ReplyDelete