Slugger O’Toole (Mick Fealty) throws a hissy fit in Cic Saor’s direction

(When is a question a "real" question - a) when Mick Fealty deems it to be so
Please see Mick Fealty's response at the bottom of this article)



Mick Fealty from his Guardian page - described as: a “writer, analyst and the founding editor of Slugger O'Toole”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/mickfealty

Sophistry and evasion were already well worn tactics in the days of ancient Greece where the key rules of rhetoric and argumentation were first developed – in the Western part of the world at least. Aristotle defined sophistry as “wisdom in appearance only”.

On twitter yesterday we saw media pundit Mick Fealty engage in just such evasion and sophism with this author. (Fealty runs the Slugger O’Toole website – a site that does have moments of illumination it must be said.) The reasons for Fealty’s extraordinary “wobble” may lie in the fact that he has been under pressure lately after blogging in support of that inveterate anti power sharing Unionist and Biblical Creationist Jim Allister – here: http://sluggerotoole.com/2013/05/30/in-praise-of-jim-allister/

Cic Saor aficionados can go onto twitter - @brehonisbest -and examine the arguments for themselves but basically Fealty insisted on ignoring a question I put to him and answering a question that I didn’t ask.

My question to "Slugger" can be summarised as this – "have you ever reported the scathing dismissal by two massive state tribunals of FRU spook Ian Hurst as a reliable witness?" This of course refers to the demolition of Hurst's testimony by both the Saville and de Silva Tribunals. See my blog on this here:
http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=495

Instead of simply answering yes or no to the question (the answer is no) – Fealty chose to answer a different question that suited him better – i.e "have you ever raised the question of Hurst’s credibility on your website?" Other twitter readers were just as quick as me to see Fealty’s sophism in action. He then blustered further by asking – “you need a govt tribunal to tell you not to treat spooks as reliable witnesses?” Yet more sophism.

To paraphrase his surprising vitriol and invective – it is not me that came up Belfast’s river Lagan in a bubble. Fealty is well aware that Ian Hurst (given the cover name "Martin Ingram" by the Sunday Times) is no run of the mill spook. Ian Hurst has been a significant player in the post Good Friday Agreement propaganda war – perennially quoted by august organs like the Guardian and lauded by the likes of Ed Moloney in his allegedly definitive book on the IRA. Hurst is, or was, the Troubles and intelligence “expert” par excellence and for Fealty to pretend otherwise is classic evasion. Indeed the present multi million Euro Smithwick Tribunal is almost solely based on the evidence of Hurst and his equally discredited FRU sidekick Peter Keeley (Kevin Fulton).

So to be clear Ian Hurst – the most quoted and interviewed British military "intelligence officer" (he was actually a sergeant) in the whole of the Troubles, whose basic narrative was that that Sinn Féin and the IRA was controlled by the British, has been officially exposed by the Saville and de Silva Inquiries as a humbug and not one mainstream journalist has reported this fact. Not to my knowledge - the Guardian newspaper, not its Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald, not Ed Moloney, not Liam Clarke, not Vincent Browne and not Mick Fealty.

How extraordinary.






@Paul Larkin
Carrick
Mí Iúil 2013

 

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