Woman murdered in Tullamore..

[jimmym]

To be honest I stood by as a bystander throughout over 170 pages of back and forth between members. I only came on here initially to get information on the case that may have leaked and away from the cesspool of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I know all about the agendas being spewed by our lovely media outlets and other sources. So I created a profile and now I'm here to stay.

stick with me il show you the ropes, Who to avoid and who to fear,

 

[Happyhonkaman]

A balanced article.. more like it please

Ashling Murphy killing: Worst outcome of this sad time would be to make men the bad guys

Reason tells us that random attacks cannot be purely gender based

Anne Harris

The victim was young, beautiful and life was full of promise as she completed her studies. The murder happened in broad daylight, on a green and pleasant part of the Irish countryside. It was a random act of savage violence by a man against a woman. There were eyewitnesses.

Three years ago, the village of Enniskerry was in anguish over the abduction and murder of Jastine Valdez just as the people of Tullamore are over Ashling Murphy today. Jastine Valdez’s parents are “new Irish” and she was aspiring to that too. The Filipino/Irish community was gutted with grief. There was a candlelit vigil.

But there were no widespread calls for national vigils for Jastine Valdez. The president did not send a special message, Sinn Féin did not organise a candle lit vigil in Belfast, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill did not talk about a “watershed moment”. There were no vigils in New York, London and Edinburgh.

Mary Lou MacDonald did not announce a motion to establish a “gender-based unit within the Government”.

Two things happened in the immediate aftermath of the brutal murder of Ashling Murphy. Grief engulfed the country. For Ashling, for her family, for ourselves. And the wrong man, a Romanian called Radu Floricel, was arrested and questioned over two days. As headlines became hysterical about “closing in on a killer”, the mercy was that the rule of law prevailed.

“Her name was Ashling.”

There is plenty of evidence that men are aware that women have it harder in having to be ever-alert to the strength of a potential assailant. No more words were needed on the banner. But the shadow on the nation’s grief demanded many more. Over all forms of media, but particularly social media, the rights, risks, privileges of the simple act of “going for a run” were hotly debated. The shadow was named: every woman’s nightmare – the crazy who lurks in the undergrowth, the moment when innocence collides with evil. Random.

Reason and Women’s Aid statistics tell us random is rare, that almost 90 per cent of femicide is committed in the home. Mother of five Ms Bashabsheh is how most Irish newspapers named the mother of five, originally from Jordan, who was found dead in her home the day before Christmas. Her husband is charged with her murder.

Her name was Zeinat.

If ever a family needed a presidential message, it was Zeinat’s family. Or the family of teenager Alanna Quinn Idris, who suffered a ruptured eyeball and fractures to her cheek and eye socket in a brutal attack after Christmas.

New Irish lives matter.

Reason also tells us that random attacks cannot be purely gender based. Almost exactly two years ago a 19-year-old man, Cameron Blair from Bandon, opened the door at a house party in Cork and within minutes had been stabbed to death by another man.

But undeniably women are more conditioned to seeing themselves as potential victims than men. And there’s a reason for that. My mother’s stricture to my six brothers remains indelibly imprinted: “Never raise your hand to a woman, you don’t know your own strength.”

Like it or not, most men are physically stronger than women. The recognition of this, like the fact that much of the dirty, dangerous work in our world is done by men, has been extraordinarily difficult for certain schools of feminists. It amounted to acknowledging an inequity: it was up to society to change, not women.

Changing society

You would not think it from this moment, but actually society is changing. The last year for which statistics are available show femicide has decreased. You would not think it from this moment, but there is plenty of evidence that men are aware that women have it harder in having to be ever-alert to the strength of a potential assailant.

The nationwide rallies in protest at the verdict in the Belfast rape trial were heavily peopled by men, as vociferous in their calls as women. The then minister for justice Charlie Flanagan, a man, immediately responded by commissioning a report into sexual violence. Its recommendations form the basis of the “ambitious strategy”, about to be announced by Minister for Justice Helen McEntee.

But Sinn Féin won’t wait. The white heat of the social media response clearly provides the potential for another “youthgrab”. Their motion for a “gender unit” in Government smacks of the callous politicising of a brutal murder. Besides it doesn’t make sense. A sudden random act of violence is a social not a political issue. How can a deranged and evil decision by one individual to kill an innocent woman be legislated for? What law can prevent that?

One result of ill-thought-through gender policy in the past has been the demonisation of all men as potential perpetrators. Much of the MeToo crimes were perpetrated by men of a certain age but younger men find themselves carrying the burden. It’s no secret many feel alienated and confused. The worst outcome of this past sad week would be making men into the bad guys. That way lies a war between the sexes.

Ashling Murphy, by all accounts, was gentle and peace loving. What better way to memorialise her than to remember those other victims – male, female, Irish, new Irish, non-Irish? That way death shall have no dominion.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

Ffs, a bit of spacing and paragraphs m8.

No one is going to read that.

 

[jimmym]

Ffs, a bit of spacing and paragraphs m8.

No one is going to read that.

I read it and it is on the money,

 

[Hank Scorpio]

I read it and it is on the money,

You've better eyesight than me Jim.

 

[Happyhonkaman]

Ffs, a bit of spacing and paragraphs m8.

No one is going to read that.

It had formatting, pasted on a phone so the site just removed it all.. I broke it up as best I could

Accept my sincerest apologies Dan

 

[jimmym]

You've better eyesight than me Jim.

Ironic considering my magazine collection .

 

[Dolphin75]

Rest In Peace, Ashling.

We need much tougher sentencing for violent crimes and murder - the current slap on the wrist approach to those with dozens of convictions has utterly failed. The vast majority of men are good, decent guys who treat women with respect. The courts need to deal with the scumbag minority effectively, instead of this hysteria that boys and men are all potential rapists, wife-beaters and murderers of women - and need to be patronised and shamed for just being male.

 

[CaptainSensible]

A balanced article.. more like it please

Another one, I'd put it in the wrong thread. Letter from the Irish times, which I reckon mirror the views of most women in the country and not the sensationalists. Although Matlock won't be happy with these reasonable well balanced ladies stealing her thunder on the proc!!

Sir, – The UN Office on Drugs and Crime monitors the rates of homicide across the world. In 2019, the last year for which reasonably complete statistics are available, Ireland had the 11th lowest rate of homicide against women of the 193 UN member states.
With 0.33 homicides of women per 100,000 population, we had the lowest rate of the homicide of women in the European Union, and the third lowest on the European continent as a whole, behind Iceland and tiny Liechtenstein.

In countries such as Norway, Canada and New Zealand – often held out as nirvanas for women’s rights by NGOs and lobby groups – women die by homicide at rates of between 0.5 and 0.93 women per hundred thousand, in other words at between two and three times the rate of killing in Ireland.

These are the facts.

No level of murder is acceptable, and statistics provide no comfort when we are talking about the loss of life.

But if anybody beamed down from Mars last week and observed the media coverage of this issue, would they get the impression that the number of homicides against women in Ireland is among the lowest in the world?
On the contrary, one narrative was permitted, which is that the rates of murder, violence and sexual violence against women are completely out of control and rising exponentially, with women – all women – facing potentially mortal danger on a daily basis, and men – all men – being culpable for this.

One broadsheet daily newspaper had a front-page headline by a female writer which asked “Which of us will be next?”
What purpose does it serve to terrorise women and suggest that we should become prisoners in our own homes? What is the point of demonising all men as being responsible, and not the absolutely tiny percentage of so-called men who are the perpetrators

And why doesn’t a single female politician or representative group have the courage to shout “stop” to this hysteria? – Yours, etc,

SARAH-ANNE
CLEARY,
Strokestown,
Co Roscommon.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

^

Fair play Sarah-Anne , cut through the rivers of bullshit.