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Socialist
Democracy wishes to lend its voice to those opposing
the campaign of intimidation being waged by the Andersonstown
News against its critics, a campaign waged locally,
across the Internet and in the Irish Press in the
USA.
Any
impartial observer would long ago have concluded that
ideas of journalistic integrity in this journal play
second fiddle to the need to massage news to justify
the accelerating drift to the right by the Sinn Fein
leadership. This has now reached a level where the
Andersonstown News represents a very serious
obstacle to a genuine debate about the situation we
find ourselves in - locked in a sectarian colony which
now has the popular support of many of those it imprisons.
Much
more serious than the manoeuvrings of the Andersonstown
News editors is what these manoeuvrings tell us
about Sinn Fein policy in relation to the Steaknife
revelations.
The
Steaknife story exposes the utter barbarism of British
rule and the ruthless willingness to sacrifice the
lives of civilians to terrorise the nationalist working
class and also to place agents within the IRA. It
quite clear from the Andersonstown News management
of the story that the Sinn Fein leadership want to
avoid any further investigation of the saga - not
surprising when we consider that the implication was
that the British were in a position to influence the
direction of republican policy in the direction of
the current partitionist settlement.
We
utterly condemn the campaign of intimidation by Andersonstown
News and the censorship of criticism of the role
of the Sinn Fein leadership.
We
intend to express our opposition to this censorship
by publishing the initial offending article that led
to legal threats by Andersonstown News on our
own website and by contacting other socialist organisations
worldwide urging that they also protest the intimidation.
Solidarity.
John McAnulty is writing on behalf of Socialist Democracy
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