What Killed Denis Donaldson?

Sure, a blast from a shot gun nearly took his hand off, as he, in hopeless fright tried to hold the door closed... then moments later, in the remote waterless, electricity free old Irish cabin, as he lay on the floor another blast from a shot gun was the moment which froze his life in eternity.

What killed him? Was it that it was uncovered that he was, for most of the modern history of the war in Ireland a spy for the British in the IRA Army counsel?

It has been written that he was killed to send a message to the wielders of power in the Republican movement, by the ex-rank and file soldier on the street. Who knows. Some have said that they were saying that the Army Counsel, seems to be made up by British agents and folks who, today have sold out all the hopes for justice of those who faced life and death on the streets, who today are not living on the plush like the AC members.

In short, if for revenge, "justice", as a message, he faced death as the good, the bad, the innocent and the guilty have faced in Ireland for 800 years. He died as a symbol of the wrongs... like the British soldier who died for putting on the symbol of his uniform, like the little girl coming home from the store clutching a container of milk, who, at point blank range was shot in the head by the British soldier - never charged, who died as a symbolic warning to her community that someone must pay for his mates killed the day before... and all those many who died, because a hidden politic of control of non-aligned nations by NATO... the hidden wielders of hatred and difference... why did any of them die?

Why are we divided? So that those in those unreachable places, high in the rarified air of real power... need us to be divided and see each other as the enemy in my face rather than see them as the despoilers of the world, who play on our greed, our sexism, our racialism, our homophobia, our fear, our hurt... and it costs us, and even them, all hope for the future.

Many cling to the politic of division, the faith of division, the hierarchy of pain - "I hurt more than thee... " all fly in the face of God, in the face of unity, and fly towards the melting icecaps, towards the equality of fear we will face by being led into such error by all the politics of division and hate... isn't so important that we keep our movements pure by our harsh judgements of each other and ignore the rising water around our feet? Are we not as foolish as the German philosopher who said that a man sentenced to death, should be executed on the last day of the world, to keep meaning in the world... what sadness.

So many place masks on other people's faces, cartoons of who we would make them, and resist every invitation from that person to look behind the mask, at the soul... and then we shoot, we push them out of the meeting, we refuse to listen or even give them the respect of telling them the sourse of our anger, we point fingers, guns, bombs, editorials at the mask and never ask to look behind that mask... and the water rises.