Tomás Ó Flatharta

Looking at Things from the Left

Archive for the ‘Ed Moloney’ Category

A series of Tributes to the Investigative Journalist Ed Moloney – “A strong voice against censorship: both that of the state and the more insidious self-censorship that had crept into journalism”

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A number of tributes to the investigative journalist Ed Moloney are published below.

Also included is an account of how Ed published sensational evidence about the role of William Stobie (at one time a quarter-master in the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association), in the political murder of Belfast human rights lawyer Pat Finucane. The British state’s unsuccessful attempt to obtain details of the journalist’s confidential sources were defeated.

It is refreshing to read tributes about about a man I knew well that are kind, affectionate, and that do not pretend Ed was a saint.

He had a short fuse!

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A tribute to the outstanding  journalist Ed Moloney, who passed away in New York Aged 77

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https://wp.me/p1iwpM-4NB

Ed was a great friend and will be missed.

Condolences to Joan McKiernan, and all friends, colleagues, and  comrades.

A reminder : Ed Moloney’s work on issues concerning child abuse in the six-county bit of Ireland which remain unsolved :

John Meehan October 20 2025

‘I was raped by Mountbatten in Kincora at 11; he wasn’t a lord… to me he was king of the paedophiles’ – Journalist Chris Moore makes sensational new allegations in a new book

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Chris Moore from Belfast is no ordinary journalist.

He has worked for decades on the Kincora child abuse scandal. After extensive new research he makes credible allegations about the British royal family’s Lord Mountbatten (killed by an August 1979 IRA bomb in the western Irish county of Sligo) and a wide-ranging British state cover-up.

A new book brings the story up-to-date.

Link :


Kincora: Britain’s Shame – Mountbatten, MI5, the Belfast Boys’ Home Sex Abuse Scandal and the British Cover-Up

Kincora: Britain’s Shame – Mountbatten, MI5, the Belfast Boys’ Home Sex Abuse Scandal and the British Cover-Up

Readers are recommended to go and see the film “Lost Boys” whenever they get the chance – despite the British State’s efforts to kill the story, aided and abetted by the Irish police force, An Gárda Síochána (Guardians of the Peace).

All of this is grim reading.

The UK government has locked up files on Kincora until 2065 & 2085.Veteran investigative journalist Chris Moore’s new book, ‘Kincora: Britain’s Shame’, launched last night in a packed Duke of York bar, means we don’t have to wait until then. #mustread

Patrick Corrigan (@patrick-corrigan.bsky.social) 2025-05-16T09:13:34.658Z
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The Man Who Blew the Whistle on the late British IRA Spy Freddie Scappaticci

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Ed Moloney has diligently reported on the Steaknife (Freddie Scappaticci) story for many years. Skeletons are falling out of cupboards : Link : http://thebrokenelbow.com/2023/04/11/the-man-who-blew-the-whistle-on-scap/

His name is Ian Hurst although for a long time this former intelligence officer in the British Army’s Force Research Unit (FRU) called himself ‘Martin Ingram’ whenever he met the media. A chirpy Mancunian who served with the FRU in Derry, he broke with the military and gradually emerged in public with secrets to tell, angered by what he believed was the shameful way an agent he ran in the IRA had been treated.

The Derry IRA’s quarter master’s department included in its ranks one Frank Hegarty, whose career in the IRA had been controversial. He had been expelled some years before by Ivor Bell, then the chief of staff, when it was discovered that he had been having an affair with the wife of a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and had failed to tell his superiors. And so it was that eyebrows were raised when the news filtered through that Hegarty was back, a move that had been arranged by Martin McGuinness. 

Ian Hurst, pictured in his days as a soldier in the Force Research Unit

Hegarty’s exposure as a spy and death at the hands of the Internal Security Department – the IRA’s spycatchers – led to more internal speculation about McGuinness’ true loyalties. The Belfast-based veteran IRA leader, Brian Keenan was one who did not keep those doubts to himself. The pair had never got on and Keenan blamed McGuinness for facilitating his arrest in Northern Ireland and subsequent deportation to a London court where he received a lengthy sentence for IRA bombings in England in the early 1970’s.

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Convicted Criminal Ghislaine Maxwell – Low Media Standards, an Irish Link, and a Prince of England

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A lot of public commentary about the convicted criminal Ghislaine Maxwell, her late boss Jeffrey Epstein, and an alleged client, Britain’s Prince Andrew, suffers from low media standards. An interesting exception is the reporting of a former BBC correspondent John Sweeney.

It is a horrific story. Known credible allegations should be highlighted.

Lazy speculation and lurid gossip should be avoided.

John Sweeney – a Blogger-Journalist who carefully assesses hard evidence

John Sweeney carefully assesses real hard evidence. The author avoids sloppy tabloid-gossip methods. He explains the serious evidence very well. The scandal is far from over in the courts – especially in the case of the British state’s Prince called Andrew.
John Sweeney explains no evidence was presented at the Maxwell trial implicating Bill Clinton in either trafficking or criminal sexual intercourse with underage women. Evidence was presented proving that Clinton, ex US President Donald Trump and other wealthy powerful men accepted freebie flights given by Epstein and Maxwell. Sweeney sarcastically observes at one point that men such as Clinton and Trump enjoyed having sex with 23 year old women – the Epstein/Maxwell gang assisted them.
Sweeney also explores very interesting connections between the criminal behaviour of Ghislaine Maxwell and her late father Robert Maxwell : a corrupt billionaire who died after he fell off his private luxury yacht “Lady Ghislaine” in disputed circumstances.

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Roy Greenslade – Agent Of Influence – TPQ – Anthony McIntyre Explores a Strange Story

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Anthony McIntyre offers a useful review of the Roy Greenslade story. At this stage I agree that the retired Professor is probably telling the truth, denying any role in an alleged IRA plot to kill the journalist Liam Clarke in 1988. We should all accept that denial unless any new facts are brought forward casting doubt on the former journalist’s statement. Read the rest of this entry »

The Official IRA and Workers Party In The Wake Of The De Rossa Split | The Broken Elbow

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“Helmut Oberlander”, a whistleblower, explains the recent split in the Workers’ Party / Official IRA. The message below was sent to Ed Moloney.

Once again, in the history of left-wing organisations which degenerate politically, we see the needs of the apparatus (in this case criminal businesses created by a conspiratorial army aided by North Korean forged dollars) prioritised against legitimate struggles waged by the working class and its allies.

This form of left politics is today re-emerging via the ideology of “Campism”, where régimes like Xi Jinping’s China (a major capitalist power) are supported when they are competing against Donald Trump’s USA. Xi Jinping and company know that “left wing” puppets in foreign lands can be cynically bought.

Irish Workers’ Party Leader, the late Seán Garland

I received the piece below as a comment on an article I wrote on the recent split in what remains of the Workers Party and Official IRA. ‘Helmut Oberlander’ is the undoubtedly fictitious byline that came with the article but knowing a little about the organization involved, I cannot blame the author for seeking refuge in such a deep blanket of obscurity. That aside, I think what ‘Helmut’ has to say about his former comrades at the time that Prionsias de Rossa led most of the WP’s TD’s into the new Democratic Left party, carries the ring of truth and authenticity as well as fascinating revelation. And so dear reader I recommend it to you. Enjoy: Read the rest of this entry »

Written by tomasoflatharta

Aug 15, 2020 at 9:27 am

Bobby Storey Was Gerry Adams’ Beria | The Broken Elbow

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Ed Moloney compares Bobby Storey, the lieutenant of Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams with Lavrentiy Beria, the number two of Russian dictator Josef Stalin from the late 1930’s till he was executed in infamy after Stalin’s death in 1953.

Beria had a grisly CV

Beria attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as “our Himmler“. After the war, he organised the Communist takeover of the state institutions in Central Europe and Eastern Europe and political repressions in these countries. Beria’s uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. Stalin gave it absolute priority, and the project was completed in under five years.After Stalin’s death in March 1953, Beria became First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In this dual capacity, he formed a troika, alongside Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov, that briefly led the country in Stalin’s place. A coup d’état by Nikita Khrushchev, with help from Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov in June 1953, removed Beria from power. He was arrested on charges of 357 counts of rape and treason. He was sentenced to death and was executed on 23 December 1953.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria?wprov=sfti1

Bobby Storey’s CV is not pretty, especially in relation to the people “disappeared” by the IRA in the 1970’s. Another Beria? Stalin’s lieutenant was a much more sinister figure.

I also suspected then and more so later, that such was his uncritical adoration of the Big Lad that he was either naive in the extreme about Adams, what drove him and where he was going politically, or that he chose cynically to ignore the obvious.

My suspicions in this regard were rooted in  the episode I know best about Storey’s relationship with Gerry, and that was about the disappearance of Jean McConville.

In pursuit of the fiction that none of this had anything to do with him, Adams had given Storey the job of finding out what had happened to Mrs McConville, who had been involved in her disappearance and, most importantly, where her remains had been buried.

This was at a point in the peace process when clearing up the issue of the ‘disappeared’ had assumed urgency and priority, so much so that Bill Clinton had taken sides in favour of justice for the disappeared.

For Adams to ask Storey to find out what happened to Jean McConville was like Stalin asking Beria to discover who gave the order to bury an icepick in Trotsky’s skull. Gerry knew, and knows more about what happened to Jean McConville and why, and who was involved in her ‘disappearance’ and how, than anyone still living.

When Storey went to interview Dolours Price he was, according to her account to me, astonished to hear her side of the story, which was of course that Gerry had given the order to ‘the unknowns’ to send Jean McConville to her maker. Clearly Gerry had denied all knowledge and put the blame on others, especially Ivor Bell, a line the British state and their police chiefs dutifully followed in later years.
— Read on thebrokenelbow.com/2020/06/21/bobby-storey-was-gerry-adams-beria/

Many loyal Sinn Féin supporters will not care :

The RUC, who rarely made any secret of their hatred for Storey, had no doubt that he was one of the planners behind the Provos’ mass breakout from the Maze in 1983 when 38 terrorists escaped after a prison officer was killed.

Storey later described the escape as a “great achievement” for the IRA, who he said had “shafted Margaret Thatcher”.

Detectives were also convinced that Storey was the principle organiser of the Northern Bank robbery in Belfast in 2004 that netted the IRA £26million.

But he was never charged in connection with it.

And although he spent a total of 20 years behind bars, Storey had an uncanny record of eluding convictions on a litany of other terrorist charges down the years.

Police claimed witnesses were too scared in some cases to testify against him. 

But Sinn Fein claimed police operated a policy of internment by remand for Storey who was a lifelong republican from a republican family.

Talking about his life in a rare interview, Storey said his family had to move when he was a child from their north Belfast home after loyalist attacks on their area.

And he claimed that it was the bombing of McGurk’s bar, where 15 people were killed in 1971 and Bloody Sunday just a few months later, that shaped his future, prompting him to join the IRA at the age of 16.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/the-hardest-of-hard-men-bobby-storey-was-feared-by-opponents-and-republicans-39303502.html

Lessons?

The leader is not always right. Leadership cults should be mocked.

Armando Iannucci relentlessly tears the Stalin cult to pieces in this film.

And, we should honour the memory of many innocent victims whose lives were wrecked by Lavrentiy Beria.

Brilliant Mockery of the Stalin Cult

Lavrentiy Beria and his loyal Stalinist killers

The Workers’ Party in Ireland Splits Again

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thebrokenelbow.com/2020/06/19/what-if-they-held-a-split-and-no-one-came-or-is-the-workers-party-about-to-disappear-up-its-own-orifice/

Gavin Mendel-Gleason, a supporter of the WP wing which has expelled the “northern business committee” makes a statement open to possible alarming interpretations :

While they would have been afraid to move with Sean Garland still alive, they saw their chance with his death.

A sister party in the foreign fields of North Korea is also called the Workers’ Party.

Seán Garland outside an Irish court while successfully contesting a US extradition request over alleged North Korean counterfeiting of “SupetDollars”

Was the WP northern business committee trying to avoid a fate similar to the late Kim Jong-Nam after he fell out with his brother Kim Jong-Un?  Presumably Gavin Mendel-Gleason does not have the same clout as Seán Garland or the leaders of the Kim dynastic family? Read the rest of this entry »

Coronavirus In Ireland: A Doctor’s Grim Warning – 277 Intensive Care Beds in Ireland – 60,000 Will Be Needed – Stay Home!

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A Very Scary Message to All in Ireland, Passed On by Ed Moloney.

I received this message in an email from a friend in Dublin, earlier today. It came originally from a doctor practicing in Ireland who wishes it to …

Coronavirus In Ireland: A Doctor’s Grim Warning


Scary Numbers from a Doctor Working in Ireland

The Government has said between 25% and 75% of the population will get the virus. If 25% of the Irish population get it, which based on the numbers above is a very low estimate, that’s 1.2 million people.
5% needing intensive care means 60,000 people will need intensive care beds to stay alive.
We currently have 277 intensive care beds in Ireland.
I’m going to say that again:
At least 60,000 Irish people will need an ICU bed to stay alive.
We only have 277 ICU beds in Ireland.

Let’s place the Irish Crisis in an International Political Context; Daniel Tanuro writes :

6. The major danger of the epidemic is the possible saturation of hospital systems. This would inevitably lead to a worsening of the price paid by the poorest and the weakest, in particular among the elderly, as well as a further shift of care tasks into the domestic sphere, that is to say generally onto women. The saturation threshold obviously depends on the countries, the health systems and the austerity policies that have been imposed there. It will be reached all the more quickly insofar as the governments are running behind the epidemic instead of preventing it. The fight against the epidemic therefore requires a break with austerity policies, a redistribution of wealth, refinancing and de-liberalization of the health sector, the suppression of patents in the medical field, North-South justice and a clear priority given to social needs. This implies in particular: banning dismissals of infected workers, the maintenance of wages in the event of partial unemployment, stopping checks, “activation” and sanctions against social security recipients, etc. It is mainly on these questions that we must intervene to counter irrational responses and their potential for racist-authoritarian slippage.

7. There are many commonalities between the Covid-19 crisis and the climate crisis. In both cases, the capitalist system’s logic of accumulation for profit makes it incapable of preventing a danger of which it is nevertheless aware. In both cases, governments oscillate between denial and the inadequacy of policies designed primarily according to the needs of capital, not the needs of populations. In both cases, the poorest, racialized and weakest, especially in the countries of the global south, are in sights, while the rich say that they will always get by. In both cases, governments are using the threat to advance toward a strong state while far-right forces are trying to take advantage of fear to out forward foul Malthusian and racist responses. In both cases, finally, the social law of capitalist value comes into direct contradiction with laws of nature with exponential dynamics (the multiplication of viral infections in one case, warming and its positive feedbacks in the other).

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6452

Daniel Tanuro, a certified agriculturalist and eco-socialist environmentalist, writes for “La gauche”, (the monthly of the LCR-SAP, Belgian section of the Fourth International).

Daniel Tanuro is the author of The Impossibility of Green Capitallism, (Resistance Books, Merlin and IIRE) and Le moment Trump (Demopolis, 2018).