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22 April 2004 Edition

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The 5th Column

Anthems of Dissent

MUSIC MAG Mojo's May edition carries a hit parade of what they call "The 100 Greatest Protest Songs Ever: The 20th Century's Greatest Anthems of Dissent".

The selection is almost exclusively of British or American origin. U2 get listed for Pride: In the Name of Love ("an endorsement of non-violent activism rather than a direct harbinger of change"). And Eric Bogle's No Man's Land (The Green Fields of France), about First World War soldier Willie McBride, is the only other one with a distinct Irish link. There's not a mention of Luke Kelly, Moving Hearts, Christy Moore or Damien Dempsey (and certainly no Wolfe Tones or Irish Brigade!) but it is just the sort of stuff to get Simon Cowell's high-waisted knickers in even more of a twist.

The usual suspects are there — John Lennon, The Clash, Tom Robinson, Billy Bragg, Sex Pistols, Country Joe and the Fish, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Public Enemy, James Brown, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Edwin Starr, Pete Seeger, Bob Marley, Woody Guthrie.

Labbie Sifrie's Something Inside So Strong, which has been a bit of an anthem at many a Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, hasn't made the list, though (much to the relief of some picky pop pickers).

Mojo's Number 1 is Bob Dylan's Masters of War because:

"The aggressive Masters of War was no pacifist lament, no Where Have All the Flowers Gone, and used the old Brechtian munitions profiteers as symbols of the new military-industrial complex. In the fury of the final verse, he wishes nothing less than death itself on the corporate suits sponsoring the arms race, who threaten his world and his future, vowing to stand over their graves till he's sure that they're dead.

"It's now being sung to Donald Rumsfeld."

RIR gun used in row

AN RIR SOLDIER from Armagh who left his personal protection weapon with a friend while he went out for the night in Portrush returned to find that his pal had used it to threaten another man in a family argument, Belfast High Court has heard. Two men were subsequently arrested.

A defence lawyer said that the RIR soldier "should have known better" than to leave it with someone else.

The accused (which do not include the RIR soldier) were released on bail.

Royston's rattling

BABY-FACED Dublin Mayor Royston Brady threw his rattle out of his pram this week after the publication of yet another mayoral interview attacking his fellow Dublin City councillors.

Desperately seeking headlines to bolster his flagging Euro election campaign, Baby Face first publicly lashed out at council colleagues earlier this year. The backlash was so great that he was forced to issue a public apology. But this week has shown that, within days of him apologising, Baby Face went back on his word and did the dirty again in an interview with the glossy magazine, Interiors.

Brady accused sitting MEPs of treating the European Parliament as a "retirement home". The trouble for Royston (now in hiding or under house arrest by FF) is that most MEPs are from his own Fianna Fáil party.

Silly mayors' pact

LABOUR EX-MAYOR Dermot Lacey, Baby Face's predecessor and the man who kept his place in the Labour pecking order despite breaking the party whip to force through the Bin Tax, was on the defensive about the young upstart's attacks on his elders and betters.

And Labour Councillor Eamonn O'Brien (once of the Sticky Workers' Party during the days of the so-called 'Official IRA') has even tabled a motion calling for a vote of no confidence in the Fianna Fáil pup.

What neither Dirty Dermot nor Sticky Eamonn thought to mention, though, is that Royston Brady owes his position to the Labour/Fianna Fáil pact on Dublin City Council that sees the First Citizen's job rotate between the supposedly sworn enemies.

One to watch

ÓGRA Fianna Fáil has challenged Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte to help in its call for an inquiry into the fundraising activities of the Workers' Party, including when Brother Rabbitte was a leading member of the Stalinist sect.

Ógra FFer Cathal Lee said that recent TV allegations that the current WP supremo, Seán Garland, an old comrade of the Labour leader, "is associated with a major international counterfeiting operation calls into question how the Workers' Party financed its political organisation".

Cathal Lee adds: "Financial misdeeds and political patronage from disreputable sources must always be investigated and revealed."

Young Lee is, remember, speaking on behalf of Fianna Fáil.

Brits give Wellington the boot

A HISTORY POLL of British adults has shown that more than half think their supposedly most famous seafarer, Admiral Lord Nelson, led the British Army at Waterloo. Almost half think that the Battle of the Little Big Horn, scene of Custer's Last Stand, did not take place. One in three think the Cold War didn't exist.

The survey of 2,069 adults aged 16 or over was carried out for Blenheim Palace to mark the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Blenheim.

One in four of those surveyed think the fictional hero Hood was real while half of all those asked said that the 13th Century Scottish hero William Wallace was an invention of the movie industry for Mel Gibson's film, Braveheart.

More recent history also passed the Brits by.

While one in ten thought Winston Churchill was a fiction figure, a third think that Hitler's Italian fascist ally, Mussolini, is also fictional and more than one in ten think that Adolf Hitler himself never existed. Well at least that goes some way to explaining who votes for the British National Party.


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