Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

In his review of United 93 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Fritz Göttler displays a stunning ignorance of modern Irish history and geography. But then, seeing that the Süddeutsche disfigures itself daily with rabid anti-Bush, anti-Blair rhetoric, one should not be surprised that facts take a back seat in its pages.

Anyway, Göttler warms himself up with some 9/11 background before coming to director Paul Greengrass, and then we get this: "He was just finishing 'Bloody Sunday'', his film about a protest march in Dublin on 30 January 1972, that suddenly escalated into a massacre, in which confused, misinformed British soldiers shot down numerous people."

Later in the piece, Göttler returns to the Republic of Ireland's capital. "The interplay of people in the city of Dublin, which worked so well in 'Bloody Sunday'; this remarkably false, yet unbelievably intense authenticity…"

It is obvious that Göttler is a somewhat confused, misinformed person, because he is mixing up what happened in Dublin on 21 November 1920 with what happened in (London)Derry on 30 January 1972. In Göttler's defence it could be argued that the two bloody Sundays are only 50 years apart, and that Dublin and Derry are located on the same rain-sodden island, and that the henchmen of Anglo-American imperialism were responsible for both killing sprees, but it is a bit shocking, nonetheless, when one comes across such elementary errors. How are we supposed to know that the rest of the piece isn't riddled with blunders?

The Süddeutsche Zeitung is a provincial paper, of course, and so it's only to be expected that the arabesques of Irish life, when viewed from Munich, would be shrouded in mist. One can also say that it would be hard to find people in Ireland who could tell the difference between the Süddeutsche Zeitung and, say the Frankfurter Rundschau. So, this cuts both ways. And the fact that both papers were apologists for Saddam makes it even more difficult to tell them apart.