Archive for the ‘Unionism’ Category
Cash for Ash -Will the Stormont Sinn Féin-DUP Coalition be Incinerated?
A BBC (Northern Ireland) news story offers a neat summary of the key issues in Belfast’s FosterGate : £400 million disappear into the pockets of Cash for Ash friends of the Stormont Peace Process Government.
Cash for Ash – Stormont Incinerated?
“It is estimated the way the scheme was set-up will cost taxpayers £400m over its 20-year lifetime.
Mr Bell told the BBC that top advisers from his DUP party stopped him from restricting the RHI scheme.
According to Mr Bell, the advisers, who deny the allegations against them, secretly tried to “cleanse the record” of references to Mrs Foster.
Those alleged attempts to alter the papers were made “without my knowledge, without my consent”, Mr Bell said, and were revealed to him by a senior civil servant at the department.
In Derry, Pressure Mounts on Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster
If Arlene Goes, so does her Deputy Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin.
Goodbye Marlene?
Arlene Foster, First Minister, Under Pressure in Derry
“Arlene needs to resign. Take to the streets! Demand her resignation!
People Before Profit have called a protest at the Guildhall, calling on Arlene Foster to resign over the Renewable Heat scandal. People are outraged because we’re told day in, day out that there is no money for benefits or for public services, but here we have £400 million wasted due to sheer incompetency.
Coming hot on the heels of the Social Investment Fund fiasco, it seems anything goes up on the Hill as long as DUP-Sinn Fein dominance is maintained.
The Coalition partners stage occasional sham fights to maintain credibility. But mostly they are watching and scratching one another’s back.
Sinn Fein goes easy on the DUP now, perhaps remembering how helpful the DUP was two years ago when Spotlight exposed a phoney “research” organisation which Sinn Fein had used to claim a staggering £700,000 in “expenses.”
In the last three years, the DUP has had involvement in the Red Sky affair, the Nama scandal, the SIF/Charter NI fiasco and now the bonfire of public-money that is the Renewable Heat scheme.
But the Assembly hasn’t laid a glove on either wing of the Executive.
None of this is accidental. The Stormont structures are designed to sustain a system based on the idea of communal solidarity. Bread and butter issues don’t figure when it comes to forming or getting rid of a government. In practice, it is permissible to plunder the public finances – but not to upset the Orange-Green balance.
Working-class people should take a hard look at the parties which have either been involved in or turned a blind eye to these events.
Arlene Foster is unfit for office. She should resign without further ado.
Join us at the Guildhall, 5pm – Friday December 16″
Super Chairperson Joe Kelly – What is the Statement behind Your Question? A Frank Discussion About the Irish Peace Process With John Meehan and Killian Forde
Thoughts of Chairperson Joe Kelly, April 8 1938 – December 7 2016.
Phrases that came immediately to mind :
“How’s Your Love Life?”
“What is the statement behind your question?”
“Are there any loose people in the room?”
“What’s your point?”
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution” [borrowed from Emma Goldman]
“Can we break up into small groups?
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Joe Kelly voted No to the deletion of Articles 2 and 3 from the Irish Constitution in a 1998 Referendum, a very unopular decision – only 5 per cent of the voters wanted to keep these Articles.
Joe was very troubled about this and discussed it often with me. Being the man he was, he organised a broadcast radio discussion between me and a then Sinn Féin member of Dublin City Council Killian Forde.
Here is a transcript : Read the rest of this entry »
Could Released Boston Archive Tapes Bring Down the Peace Process Stormont Government?
An RTÉ “This Week” Story contains dramatic warnings :
Link to Transcript :
TRANSCRIPT: Fran McNulty reports on further developments relating to the Boston College Belfast project
A hidden scandal – MI5 in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland under the peace process is supposed to have put the bad old days of Police Collusion with Loyalist Murder Gangs, and state force misbehaviour, into the distant past. The recent De Silva Report on the murder of civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane contains a lot of material which is very critical of the British State but leaves many questions unanswered :
Ed Moloney concludes in this essay :
“So, a powerful indictment of…what? RUC incompetence or malevolence, or evidence of some hidden subterranean manipulation? We don’t know because as with so much of Sir Desmond de Silva’s report, there are more questions than answers, more what’s, where’s and when’s than why’s.”
Bringing the story up-to–date read Eamonn McCann’s Belfast Telegraph Article
Sham row over ‘FBI-style’ body hides scandal of MI5
Web Link :
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamon-mccann/sham-row-over-fbistyle-body-hides-scandal-of-mi5-16268218.html?r=RSSMore and More, peace process policing and justice in Northern Ireland is hidden from view – Kafka-like rules are becoming more common, where people are held in jail without even knowing the charges made against them – as highlighted in another article on this blog featuring Dáil questions from Clare Daly TD to Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore.
Why Was Billy Stobie Charged With Pat Finucane’s Murder?
I should first of all disclose an interest in this story. As they say in the country where I now live, I have a dog in the fight.
Billy Stobie was a valued source of mine and not only did I harbor the loyalty towards him that journalists should always show their sources – in our case to the extent that I fought and successfully defeated a Scotland Yard subpoena seeking the notes of our conversations which were sought to buttress his criminal prosecution – but I also liked him despite his all too evident flaws.
That he was a rogue and a scoundrel was undeniable. That image that was set in cement in the public mind when The Sunday Tribune published his photo above the story of his involvement in the Pat Finucane scandal just after his arrest in June…
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Which State Has Invaded Nine out of Ten Countries on Earth?
Or what quality does this select band of states share?
Andorra, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Mongolia, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Vatican City?
Here is a link to the unsurprising answer :
British have invaded nine out of ten countries so look out Luxembourg
And Union Jack wavers wonder why they provoke ridicule :
Germans Laugh at British Absurdity
Not seen much on British TV because this
piece was deemed a potentially anti-monarchy satire and so was not promoted too much in the UK.
Update :
The Journal.ie writer did not mention regarding the brilliant sketch “Dinner For One”: Freddy Frinton was an anti-fascist who blocked the screening of his sketch in Germany for 30 years.
And finally, Hitler comments on the Union Jack fluttering in Belfast :
The Force Research Unit – How it Began
Great work again – hats off to Ed Moloney and Bob Mitchell
By Ed Moloney and Bob Mitchell
In the wake of the de Silva report on the Pat Finucane assassination there has been a renewed interest, at least on the part of obsessives like ourselves, in the origins of British military intelligence operations in Northern Ireland. By coincidence BBC Panorama also has a documentary in the pipeline, postponed recently for some unexplained reason, on the Military Reaction Force (MRF), the prototype intelligence group established by the British Army’s counter insurgency guru, General Sir Frank Kitson. This fascinating period in the Troubles is being revisited on several fronts and deservedly so.
Some interesting light was shed on this early period in the development of military intelligence units and operations by a document released under the 30 year rule back in 2005. It is a Northern Ireland Office briefing paper prepared for a meeting in April 1974 between British prime minister Harold Wilson…
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De Silva’s Gaping Hole
A gaping hole in the De Silva Pat Finucane Review
UPDATED 14.05 EST
STATEMENT BY ED MOLONEY ON THE DE SILVA REPORT – Dec 12th 2012
In his report on the murder of Pat Finucane, Sir Desmond de Silva has this to say in relation to the RUC’s role in encouraging the UDA to target the solicitor (Par 73):
“The critical issue, in my view, was to determine whether RUC officers had been involved in inciting loyalists in custody to attack Patrick Finucane. Allegations that RUC officers had incited loyalists in this manner were first expressed privately by the Ambassador of the Government of Ireland to the Cabinet Secretary on 13 February 1989, the day after Patrick Finucane’s murder.”
In December 1998 I was the Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune newspaper. During that month I had lunch with the late Tommy Lyttle, then the West Belfast Commander of the UDA. During the lunch he told me that RUC…
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Pat Finucane – A De Silva British State Whitewash?
Read this – and see that the British State is very unlikely to hold a Public Inquiry into the killing of Pat Finucane
Corrected 14.40 EST
Correction – December 27th 2012 – The Force Research Unit member we identified as Peter Charles Jones from the two photos taken of the unit was in fact a soldier called Kevin Dodds. He was/is a friend of another well known special forces soldier, Charles Pettifer, a former member of the SAS who married Tiggy Legge Bourke, friend of the late Lady Diana Spencer and nanny to her two sons. Dodds and Pettifer, according to our sources, went into business together after military service and set up a risk assessment company (business-speak for private detectives). However as you can see here, Pettifer has since moved up in the world, literally.
Meanwhile the former SAS soldier turned thriller writer known as Andy McNab was obviously indulging in some sly humour at the expense of the former FRU member when he wrote the novel described below (cue tipsy laughter…
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British State Helped UDA to kill Pat Finucane – but Prevented this Loyalist Killing Machine from Bumping Off Gerry Adams
The British State facilitated the murder of Pat Finucane – and prevented the UDA from killing Gerry Adams – all done to help the Six County Peace Process.
UPDATED DECEMBER 7th
It remains to be seen just which UDA plot to kill the Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams it was that leading UK barrister Sir Desmond de Silva was referring to when he sent a message to the Louth TD this week warning him that details of the plot would be revealed in his 500-page report into the UDA’s killing of Belfast solicitor, Pat Finucane which is due to be published in the coming days.
De Silva’s private, and remarkably speedy inquiry into the Finucane murder was the response of British prime minister David Cameron to nearly two decades of calls for a full, sworn public inquiry into a scandal that nearly everyone knows, especially the British government, enmeshes MI5, British military intelligence and the RUC Special Branch in a series of murders carried out mostly in Belfast in the 1980’s by Loyalists, acting as a classic counter…
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Tomás Ó Flatharta 