“Look, I don’t think a hunger strike can be used as a pretext for human rights to free people. Imagine if all the criminals in Sao Paulo entered into hunger strikes to demand freedom.

We have to respect the decisions of the Cuban legal system and the government to arrest people depending on the laws of Cuba, like I want them to respect Brazil, like I want to respect what the United States does to comply with its laws.

But it’s not just in Cuba that people died from hunger strikes. Everybody knows what happened in Ireland. How many people of the IRA died on hunger strikes? I see many people today criticizing Cuba for causing a death, and they said nothing about the deaths of the IRA. It’s as if it were a normal thing to die in Ireland and not normal for people to die in other countries.

I would like that it hadn’t happened. But I cannot question the reasons why Cuba arrested him just like I don’t want Cuba to question me about people who are arrested in Brazil.”

Independent on new Welsh number 8 Gareth Delve
Eddie Butler thinks England are spoiling the Six Nations.
And the Western Mail on Geordan Murphy keeping out Kearney.

Continued

The peace processors, on all sides, have long appealed to history. Tony Blair felt its hand on his shoulder. Sinn Fein often said that parties opposed to power-sharing were on the wrong side of it.

Bill Clinton often quoted Seamus Heaney’s line which said that it might rhyme with hope. And we have been inspired by the experience of South Africa as a country which could rise above old animosities.

Sir Reg Empey has effectively said hooey to all that. He wants to play politics by the old rules, in which it is a competition between parties, all seeking to maximise their influence and their votes. He is right. Or, at least, if he is wrong, he has little alternative.

For what he is being asked to do, in the interests of peace and love and shamrock dancing in the sunlight among the orange lillies, is to serve as a rubber stamp for every decision of the coalition of Sinn Fein and the DUP.

• Failure to agree candidates.

• Failure to co-ordinate policy.

• Failure to be accountable.

The Conservatives claim they are bankrolling everything but are in ” a one way marriage with nothing coming back.” Claiming they have no influence over decision -making in Ulster Unionism the Tory spokesperson said: “The Conservative party’s fear is that we will be dragged down into the gutter of tribalism instead of Northern Ireland politics being elevated onto the national stage.”

Conservatives argue they are going to end up with only one candidate out of eighteen-North Down.  “The policing and justice decision has put the relationship under strain. Conservatives do not believe Ulster Unionists were right in voting against the return of policing and justice” said a spokesperson.

One way is to make common cause on key issues of the common good.  Each party can make a convincing case for this electorally rather than consign common causes to the level of platitude in the peroration of speeches. The Assembly vote was an opportunity missed. Had the UUs and the SDLP tabled a joint amendment or moved a separate resolution to make it an issue of confidence to create a three party veto on Executive business, it would have been bold move towards creating a platform of the centre. As it is, Robinson is actually offering concessions on this although no one seems to have noticed. The problem is, there is no real common cause in the centre. While the UUs and the SDLP unite to condemn the schools transfer deadlock, they are divided over selection itself. Again, Edwin Poots told the Assembly that the DUP were going to abolish 50:50 police recruitment before the end of the year. The UUs and SDLP will presumably split on that. Even on a shared future, they risk being outflanked by the DUP and SF. Is it any more than a slogan? Where is the joint case that each side benefits and can appeal to their separate electorates on that basis?  To forge a real political role for themselves the UUs and the SDLP will have to do more than gurn. What young voter cares which unionist shafted whom a decade ago? Or which nationalist is the greener over a Derry/Londonderry name change?  For as long as the parties believe in their hearts that identity politics win in every case, the centre parties will always lose out. 

Is she to be believed?  Unlikely that she would volunteer a direct lie, two years after her retirement. Ignorant because she was better off not knowing and didn’t ask? The Guardian’s timeline shows how close to American interrogations she was, and yet the torture took her by surprise. MI5’a record has been famously slammed in the Mohamed judgement and an MI5 officer is under police investigation.  At the same time the agency’s effectiveness in thwarting several serious terrorist attacks is established.  It’s worrying that alleged attempts by MI5 to set up the Derry man Kieran Doherty as an informer may have contributed to his murder by the RIRA, although this might be only an excuse. Neverthess it reopens old wounds and revives old memories that are still raw. To achieve some measure of MI5 accountability, MLAs have three choices: to continue asking the PSNI in the forum of the Policing Board if the national security protocols   are being observed; to join in pressing for more effective scrutiny by a beefed up Intelligence and Scrutiny Committee at Westminster to which it would be a shrewd move to appoint Mark Durkan ; or join the like of SF’s Martina Anderson, who yesterday called for the removal of the “poisonous “ MI5 from “our country” and leave themselves open to the charge of hypocrisy when they call for the defeat of the dissident republicans.

From the BBC report

Dr Myers said: “It’s something that, with a lot more resources and with a lot more manpower and quality control, possibly could have been avoided but I have difficulty in thinking that this is something that was a design error.”

He said: “The standard phrase is that the LHC is its own prototype. We are pushing technologies towards their limits.”

“You don’t hear about the thousands or hundreds of thousands of other areas that have gone incredibly well.

“With a machine like the LHC, you only build one and you only build it once.”

And from Cern’s Director General, Rolf Heuer.

Two years of continuous running is a tall order both for the LHC operators and the experiments, but it will be well worth the effort. By abandoning CERN’s traditional annual operational cycle we’re increasing the overall running time and discovery potential over the next three years. This run will be followed by preparations for 14 TeV collisions in a single shutdown and another major advance into new territory as great as the one we are on the threshold of achieving.

And, on the search for ‘dark’ matter, I can’t resist linking the Guardian’s interview with Brian Cox

G: Historically, we’ve often thought we’re getting close to cracking the secrets of the universe. Are we?

Brian Cox: I honestly think the wheels are coming off our picture of the way the universe works at the moment. We don’t know what 96% of the universe is made of – that tells us that we don’t understand something fundamental. It reminds me of the start of the 20th century when quantum mechanics and relativity were about to appear.

G: We wouldn’t expect a dog to understand the mysteries of the universe, so why should we imagine that we can?

Brian Cox: It’s an open question, whether it’s too complicated. All you can do is point back to history to note that we’ve been successful on this reductionist journey up to now. But there’s no reason…

G: Have you ever believed in God?

Brian Cox: No! I was sent to Sunday school for a few weeks but I didn’t like getting up on Sunday mornings. But some of my friends are religious. I don’t have a strong view on religion, other than illogical religion. Young earth creationism, for example: bollocks.

Heh.

At the same time it is neither possible nor desirable to shut a family victim up. The gruelling campaigns of the Omagh families and the McCartneys may not have been successful but they uncovered much that would have remained hidden.  Penny Holloway’s is a case in point where her brave and skilful campaign carried on to the highest level won a rare reappraisal of a decision not to proceed in the case of the murder of her son Thomas.  In cases of deep pain and controversy, we can only proceed case by case and with minds as open as possible and with no grandstanding from politicians. While it is right that more heed is paid to victims than ever before,  their demands should not be accepted just because they are victims. These issues should be considered even more carefully, now that Justice powers are about to be handed over. All the parties should be alive to the danger of turning cases into political footballs. They must question their own prejudices. The behaviour of politicians on the Policing Board sets a mainly helpful precedent.  “Justice” is both what the courts say it is and what the public thinks it is. It is up to us all, not just the judicial process, to ensure that the two coincide. 

“This is a new era for politics and a new era for the SDLP. This country needs a strong SDLP and the people of the North need strong representation at Westminster.

“Today I have submitted my application to represent the party in the constituency of Fermanagh South Tyrone in the forthcoming Westminster election. This election will be won and lost on the doorsteps and I am keen to build on the good work of Tommy Gallagher and others in the weeks and months ahead. I know I have a fight ahead of me to win the seat but I am looking forward to the challenge.”

A similar device under the passenger seat of a car belonging to a police officer’s girlfriend in East Belfast was further evidence of growing expertise in the hands of dissidents. Does this mean dissident engineering skills are improving or has there been an influx of fresh personnel with real bomb-making skills? Neither of these two factors is mutually exclusive.

It has also been revealed that the Newry bombers had undertaken a dry run to the courthouse nearly a year ago in a huge disruptive exercise which paralysed traffic.

There is no evidence that security experts are seeing particularly new or original technology. What is shaking the police to the core is the fact that these -IEDS ( improvised explosive devices) are now detonating.

What is not clear is why rebel republicans are now having success after such a long period of botched operations like the device discovered not far from Ballykinlar security base in South Down. Again the bomb at the policing board headquarters in Belfast only partially exploded.

A former IRA activist who is totally committed to the peace and political processes is highly critical of some of the individuals known to him who are linked to dissident republicanism.

He pointed out it is not always easy to know the young people now involved because the IRA ended the war in 1994 when some of these people were only children.

Some further extracts of interest

What is ‘national security’?

3. ‘National security’ relates to the safety and security of the state and its people. ‘The protection of national security, and the carrying out of other related activities in the interests of national security, are in law the functions of the Security and Intelligence Agencies (“SIAs”), accountable to Ministers in the UK Government.

General Principles

4. Constitutionally, national security is an excepted matter under section 4 of and Schedule 2 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (“the 1998 Act”). It is not, therefore, among those matters devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

5. Issues will arise within the transferred policing and justice field which have a national security dimension or which touch on national security related issues. Therefore, there will be a need for consultation and the sharing of information between the Secretary of State and the Minister of Justice. It is the responsibility of the UK Government to determine what information pertaining to national security can be shared and on what terms it is provided. Information which, if made public, might hinder the ability of the SIAs to perform their functions, or which might reveal the operations, investigations, sources, techniques or methodologies of the SIAs or of other agencies that use the same techniques or methodologies will not be shared. [added emphasis]

And

NIO historic records

10. All records created by the NIO prior to devolution, whether they are held electronically or on paper files, remain Crown Public Records and continue to be subject to the Public Records Act 1958. The NIO therefore retains ownership of and control of access to all pre-devolution records.

11. To facilitate the smooth operation of the Department of Justice (DOJ), and to ensure good governance, the NIO will provide access for DOJ officials to those pre-devolution NIO records relating to matters that are now devolved that are necessary for them to carry out their post-devolution functions effectively. DOJ officials will have no access to pre-devolution NIO records that relate to matters that remain the responsibility of the UK Government, including records that relate to matters of national security.

12. For the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), any pre-devolution NIO records that are held by the DOJ will be deemed to be held by the DOJ “on behalf of” the NIO. Under the FOIA, information held by one public authority on behalf of another is considered, for the purposes of the Act, to be held by the originating body, and they are the decision making body. Therefore, when a person requests access to information held on pre-devolution NIO records that are on loan to the DOJ, it will be for the NIO to provide the response to the applicant and apply any exemptions or public interest test that might be necessary. [added emphasis]

There is an annex to the above Protocol - Arrangements for Managing Issues which are National Security Related or Which Have a National Security Dimension

1 Counter-Terrorism Policy and Legislation

1.1 UK-wide counter-terrorism legislation applies in Northern Ireland and remains the responsibility of the UK Government. In pursuance of that responsibility, the UK Government works with the PSNI and other agencies in the policing and justice field on issues relating to counter terrorism and other reserved or excepted functions.

And

2 Contingency planning and crisis management

2.1 These matters are devolved. Northern Ireland Executive Ministers lead in the planning and government response to any event that does not involve a national security dimension. Where a crisis or public order situation is national security related, it remains the responsibility of the devolved administration to manage the devolved government agencies’ response in close liaison with the NIO which leads on any issues relating to reserved or excepted matters including deployment of the armed forces, co-ordination across national government, UK wide media handling and international implications.

2.2 The police operational response, including any request for military assistance, is a matter for the Chief Constable who has operational responsibility and is independent consistent with the arrangements in place between the Home Secretary and other Chief Constables. [added emphasis]

3 Policing

3.1 The Independent Commission[2] on Policing in Northern Ireland recommended that responsibility for policing be devolved to the NI Executive, except for matters of national security. Post devolution of policing and justice, the Chief Constable, while remaining operationally responsible, will be accountable to the Minister of Justice on all aspects of PSNI work save that he or she will continue to be accountable to the Secretary of State (representing the UK Government) for those aspects of the PSNI’s work - past, present or future - that have a national security element or dimension. Where the practical consequences of this impact on the role and responsibilities of the Minister of Justice he/she will be given access to relevant information in accordance with the principles set out in para 5 above including through the arrangements which will be put in place for the Chief Constable to brief the Minister of Justice on the security situation in Northern Ireland. The powers and responsibilities of the Policing Board have not been altered as a result of devolution or of this document.

3.2 The Minister of Justice is responsible for the process of appointing the Police Ombudsman (“PONI”) and for sponsoring his/her office (although the appointment is made formally by HM The Queen on the recommendation of the First Minister and deputy First Minister). In relation to all devolved matters PONI reports to the Minister of Justice. In relation to reserved or national security matters, PONI reports to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State may issue guidance to PONI on matters relating to national security. [added emphasis]

And a final extract

15 Organised crime

15.1 Organised crime remains a PSNI operational lead and the established procedures for management of national security information govern the passage of information from the SIAs to the PSNI. As in other areas, devolved Ministers will have access to relevant information in accordance with the principles set out in paragraph 5 above [in the protocol] to assist them in the effective conduct of their responsibilities. [added emphasis]

Particularly important in a situation where “a good friend” may be involved…

The baleful focus of Mr Robinson’s attention was the Ulster Unionist minister Michael McGimpsey who had earlier told members:

We are here due to Sinn Fein blackmail… I understand the anxiety of the DUP when it comes to facing the electorate.  In side deals there is something about the Irish language,  an Irish civic forum and an all-Ireland parliamentary forum and on-the-runs – what Gerry Adams calls a staging post…  If a Justice minister needs to call in the Army, where will SF stand then?” And – where is Nigel Dodds?

This you have to admit, was quite a good question. But with an eye to his own voters, Mr Robinson set about Mr McGimpsey whom he bracketed with the the absent non-member and DUP apostate Jim Allister. 

I support (the transfer) on the basis of the DUP manifesto of 2007, co-authored , voted for and campaigned on by Jim Allister

…
Mr Allister’s reference on the radio to the 2012 hurdle could not be disposed of quite so easily. Mr Robinson admitted that under D’Hondt, Sinn Fein could have chance of gaining Justice if they become the largest party ” but they will not become the largest party after the next election.” Clearly that’s a problem deferrred.  It was easier to scorn Mr McGimpsey’s claim that SF would oppose any move to call in the Army to deal with the dissident threat.

“Paragraph 2 of the National Security Protocol.  Any request for military assistance is a matter for the Chief Constable who has operational responsibility and is independent. I hope that kills off this Ulster Unionist nonsense”

Declaring that claims of side deals were “claptrap” he asked

“ where do they get this nonsense?  It is all complete trash.”

Contrary to the claims of Sir Reg and Margaret Ritchie who led it, the First minister praised the achievements of the working group on improving the functioning of the Assembly, even though they had last night turned down an FMDFM offer not to oppose bringing to the Executive any measure supported by three ministers.

“ But I make the offer again.”

The pledge of a more open approach to the operation of the four party coalition suggests that Ulster Unionist and SDLP complaints are about to be taken on board, notwithstanding Mr Robinson’s harsh words about the Ulster Unionists this afternoon.  Hopes will be raised that the UUs will soon be able to climb down from the uncomfortable hook on which they have impaled themselves. This and the imminent publication of the Robinson/McGuinness version of the CSI document together with the passage of the Devolution of Justice motion appears to set the Assembly on a far more positive course - with the caveat that nearly all the details have yet to be worked out.

On the transfer of Justice powers, a lot of devil will be in the detail. For instance SF’s Martina Anderson breathed fire against MI5

(“malignant, poisonous; some parties want to make them part of policing and then blame us for rejecting it “)

Now what party would that be? Surely not SF’s sturdy partner?

In an impressive display of his credentials, the SDLP’s thwarted Justice minister Alban Maginness laid out a full programme for the Justice Ministry that was so long he hadn’t finished it by the time his five minutes were up. The list contained a charter of rights for victims, prisons ombudsman, reform of the prison service, a new women’s facility and a new prison,  new accountability for the PPS, a criminal law reform forum and reform of legal aid. He would have no trouble spending the full £1.3 billion, even before we pay for all those police officers with damaged hearing

In a thoughtful and notably non partisan contribution based on her grassroots experience of a multi-agency approach to the problems of North Belfast,  SF’s Cara Ni Cuilin declared that great strides had been made towards ending criminality but that “gaps remained that will be plugged today.” If SF proceeds along these lines the outlook will surely be encouraging.
Late in the day Sir Reg Empey rose suddenly to treat members to a milder version of the McGimpsey speech so savaged by Peter Robinson . He was heard in silence as he read out woodenly from a text. Inevitably he approved of the devolution of P&J, but not to this lot.

“ We do not believe in transferring justice powers to parties that cannot agree on the transfer of children from primary to secondary schools… Th leaders have not had a single discussion about the dissident threat .or what to do when inevitable problems arise.”

The SDLP’s other champion of detail Alex Attwood derided Martin McGuinsess for professing joint working and erring on the side transparency.

“ It is not joint working to exclude the SDLP.. and to do deals over the heads of the community on a shared future and parading.. Let’s see the documents!”

In fact Margaret Ritchie had told the Assembly during Questions earlier that the CSI document will be published on Thursday.

Towards the end of the debate the DUP’s Edwin Poots threw in a squib nobody seemed to notice.

“ We’re getting rid of 50:50 (police ) recruitment at the end of the year.”

 
Has he shared this with anybody else?