Damien Mulley

Red Mum now has a column in the Echo (Dublin version.)

Twenty is bigger than Jesus and that ugly scouser Lennon. That’s no mean feat, even these days when so many people haven’t listened to Jesus’s cds or Lennon’s sermons.

To complete this holy trinity DJ mentions that Donncha’s photos could be in a TodayFM book. His work may even be on the late late with plank kenny.

Tom has put up his podcast of the interview with Robert Scoble. I don’t know why but the theme tune to the Flintstones started going through my head when I thought of Scoble in mp3 form. My brain is weird, what can I say. Anyway, like Homer did with his “Homer, Homer Simpson” remake, here is one for Scoble.

Scoble, Robert Scoble
He’s the greatest guy in history
From the town of Redmond
He’s making a nice guy out of Bill G.

Rob writes about everyone he meets
using RSS and disruptive techniques

When you meet MicroScoble,
You’ll have a scoble doble do time,
A doble do time,
You’ll have a Bill and Steve and Ray old time.

Euan Semple quotes from Theodore Zeldin and says the quote can aptly describe the blogosphere:

I see humanity as a family that has hardly met. I see the meeting of people, bodies, thoughts, emotions or actions as the start of most change. Each link created by a meeting is like a filament, which, if they were all visible, would make the world look as if it is covered with gossamer. Every individual is connected to others, loosely or closely, by a unique combination of filaments, which stretch across frontiers of space and time…

Suzy gives her thoughts on the Nally case and predicted there would be a lot of talk in the ‘sphere about this but it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. She also points to the ever hilarious rantings of United Irelander to be the opposite of what she believes. UI wants the man freed, yet Nally himself said he deserves jailtime.

After reading Suzy’s link to the Vincent Browne piece in the Business Post I was of the view that the man was definitely guilty of manslaughter and possibly murder. Vincent seems to suggest the victim was executed with the killing shot, a shot to the head. However there seems to be conflicting reports whether the second shot was to the head or shot him in the left arm and went through it and into his chest and lungs.

If you read UI as the counter to Browne then you will probably side with Suzy since it seems UI’s argument is the same as some of the loony liberals UI hates would post about on Indymedia. Suzy, pick a better person who disagrees with your view, you’re being lazy and going for easy kills. (This is the point in the post where UI decides he needs to make a rebuttal. Can you hear the mouse go clicky clicky?)

However my view softened when I heard an interview with Nally that was replayed on the Last Word tonight. He lives very close to where those two brothers were sexually assaulted and beaten last year and one died in hospital later from the beating. This was where the girl sliced the guys penis off too if I recall. They were travellers too that did it. And yes it does matter as all but the most openminded folks generalise, it is what humans do to prevent information overload.

An interesting fact was that Nally said he was guilty and he should do time. When he was reloading the gun he was of the firm belief that the other guy who had fled in the car was getting the rest of the clan to come back and kill him. It wasn’t about teaching a lesson to them, it was about the fact that he struck out at robbers on his land and then realised they could kill him or do worse before they killed him, like what happened to his neighbours. It was about he was an old man, he was alone, all he had left were his possessions and some of them were taken already. The state of feeling so weak and powerlessness can make one do irrational things. Thieves were on his land and threatening his world.

Seems to me he believed he was fighting for his life. If you believed that you could be sexually assaulted and murdered in a horrific way, what would you do? Me? I’d use force, I’d use every means to preserve my life. At the same time, there is a cost for destroying life, no matter who’s it is, if we respect our own life so much then we need to pay the price when we take another’s. I think the sentence the man got was fair.

Nally was asked did he speak to the victims family and he said no. He was asked if he did what would he say and strangely he said that they should cop on and start behaving and acting responsibly. I fear that Nally was just in the wrong place at the wrong time but that his case is just a convenient way to polarise people. Bigots love this kind of stuff to push their own agenda and their barely concealed hatred. A rally in Mayo will not be productive. People in Mayo should be reflecting on their community and what could have been done to prevent something like this. Look after your old people, tell your neighbours to check in with you, make sure everyone is safe, communicate with the Gardai more and as Nally said, some need to cop on.