Thursday, December 31, 2009
Cardinal Cahal Daly dies…
Cardinal Cahal Brendan Daly died tonight. The 92 year old prelate has been in hospital suffering from heart trouble. The late Cardinal was a distinguished scholar in scholastic philosophy and was credited with writing Pope John Paul II’s famous speech at Drogheda in 79 when he visited Ireland. In that text Pope John Paul uttered the words to the IRA:
“On my knees I beg you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the ways of peace. You may claim to seek justice. I too, believe in justice and seek justice. But violence only delays the day of justice.”
Daly rigourously avoided interfacing with politicians. He was the bishop of Down and Connor before becoming Archbishop of Armagh and ultimately Cardinal. He was born Loughguile in Co Antrim and educated at St Malachy’s College in belfast where he later taught… He held senior post as a lecturer in scholastic philosophy in Queens Univeristy in Belfast, prior to his elevation within the Church.
Eamonn Mallie @ 06:10 PM
“but I am the designer, the one who conceived it”
If you thought public art here was problematic, and it is, spare a thought for the people of Senegal. In an attempt to deflect criticism from representatives of the majority group of supernaturalists in the country [90% Muslim] - of a frankly hideous, oversized [50m], socialist realism bronze statue being constructed by North Korea at a cost of $27m (£16.6m) - the Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade, has offended representatives of the minority group [6% Christian]. According to Gambia’s online Freedom Newspaper
The president told a gathering at a national teachers conference in Dakar that while Catholics pray to someone who is not God, no one talks about that, yet they continue to attack his monument which, he maintains, is purely meant to preserve the cultural heritage of the continent of Africa. “They pray to a man, Jesus Christ, someone who is not a God. People do not find anything to tell them, nobody makes any objection, including myself. When I go to church, I am not interested in what goes on inside, because I am a Muslim. This is not my problem,” the president, whose French wife is a practicing Christian, said amid rapturous applause from the audience.
Which seems a perfectly rational, if somewhat limited, response to accusations that the statue is idolatrous.. ANYhoo.. President Wade has reportedly sent his cabinet minister son, Karim, to apologise to the Catholic Archbishop of Dakar. But this BBC report in November identified the real controversy
When he visited the building site in September, he explained how the money generated from people visiting the site and its museums would be shared. “The land is state property and the fees to build the statue have been paid by the state… but I am the designer, the one who conceived it,” said Mr Wade. “So we should see how we share the benefits. The state will go with 65% and l shall take 35% for myself.”
Pete Baker @ 05:42 PM
Van Morrison - hoax victim
Van Morrison was a hacker’s victim. He hasn’t fathered a son by Gigi, and adds:
“For the avoidance of all doubt and in the interests of clarity, I am very happily married to Michelle Morrison with whom I have two wonderful children.”
Brian Walker @ 05:37 PM
The Case of the Stolen Photographs
Last Sunday, Ciaran Barnes ran a story in the Sunday Life quoting a ‘senior republican source’ who expressed anger about the Liam Adams scandal and made a bit of a stink about his involvement with Sinn Fein in West Belfast. Photos of Liam Adams with Fra McCann, Tom Hartley and West Belfast youths were printed. These photos had previously been published in the Andersonstown News, whose coverage of the scandal has been more or less supportive of Adams and by extension, Sinn Fein, which is understandable as Sinn Fein and its community involvement is the Andersonstown News’ bread and butter. To expose the full extent of the child abuse scandal and do some real investigative reporting about who knew what when and who signed off on who where - which Barnes’ report hinted at doing - would cause real problems for Teach Basil. As such, head honcho Máirtín Ó Muilleoir’s blog has been noticeably quiet on the issue, only posting a couple times to complain about how the rest of the media has been examining the issue. Today, however, he really let loose, and is ready to call in PC Plod (or at least the Belfast Media Group’s lawyers). Does he know where Liam Adams is, one wonders? Has he uncovered other victims of abuse? Will the Andersonstown News be breaking this story wide open, and really exposing the extent of corruption in West Belfast?
Not quite.
Rusty Nail @ 12:55 PM
“The history of aeroplaning in this country will date from 31st December 1909”
The daring aviator was Harry Ferguson a talented engineer and inventor who is best remembered for his advances in the development of the tractor. Only six years after the Wright brothers had piloted their flyer over the sands of Kitty Hawk the Irishman was emulating their feat in a field just 13 miles from Belfast. The aircraft, a monoplane, was made in Belfast, with the exception of the 8 cylinder English made J.A.P. engine.
Ernie Cromie of the Ulster Aviation Society said that he had essentially designed and built his own plane in a year. “The engine was 35 horse power even for a car nowadays that isn’t much, but no-one was building engines specifically for planes,” he said. “Harry tuned and worked with that engine so that it would have enough power to get his aircraft up.”
Pete Baker @ 12:05 PM
“intelligence branch of the PSNI, known as C3, has been working non-stop with MI5”
No injuries reported after a number of shots were fired at a police station in Crossmaglen, south Armagh, last night. Meanwhile, despite the BBC’s re-assuring report, the Belfast Telegraph reports that “The PSNI has foiled a major dissident bomb plot after a lorry packed with 1,000lb of explosives was found under a flyover bridge.” From the brief iol report.
Technical examinations are to be carried out today on what is believed to have been a massive bomb found near Newry. Up to 1,000lbs of explosives were reportedly discovered during the day-long operation yesterday on a lorry that was abandoned under a bridge on the A1.
The Guardian also reports on the activities of still-violent republican paramilitaries
The intensification of the dissident campaign coincides with a political crisis within the Northern Ireland power sharing executive. Sinn Féin has threatened to leave the coalition with unionists if the Democratic Unionist party continues to block the transfer of policing and justice powers to the assembly. If the assembly and the power-sharing institutions collapsed, republicans opposed to the peace process would portray the political failure as a victory for them.
Update According to a new BBC report on the Newry alert
In a statement, Newry and Mourne police commander, Chief Inspector Sam Cordner said the items were currently being examined “but we can confirm at this stage that this was not a bomb”. “This was not a viable device. “However, we believe that the items were components which had the potential to be used in the making of a bomb,” he said.
And The Belfast Telegraph have replaced their earlier report with this detailed one.
Pete Baker @ 11:20 AM
McMichael award highlights importance of court reporting
Whether you approve of honours or not, three cheers for Ivan McMichael, the doyen of a dwindling profession, that of court reporter, for being made MBE. He should have waited for the spurs of knighthood.. At the height of the troubles, he was also a terrific news tipster. For generations, he has supplied court stories to the entire media without a serious stumble. In a rare burst of modesty Ivan comments:
“I have been thinking why me instead of colleagues who achieved so much more, and some of whom are household names,” he said.
Aw shucks Ivan!, In the courts he’s a legend. I was in court when a magistrate made a mistake in a ruling. Ivan began a curious rumbling, clearing of the throat and shuffling about. Then he let out a loud whisper: “No !“ that echoed all over the court room The magistrate looked up and saw Ivan shaking his head vigorously. “ Oh I’m sorry Mr McMichael, “ he said, and corrected the point. Ivan was not always go gentle with colleagues but always retained their respect and affection. May he continue for as long as he wishes. He’s surely needed.
Brian Walker @ 09:06 AM
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Guardian exclusive tears holes in the FCO story of the background to Peter Moore’s release
A diplomatic and political storm is likely to follow the Guardian’s categorical claims that the kidnapping of Peter Moore and the murder of three, and probably four security guards was sponsored out by an elite Iranian force which took them to various locations deep inside Iran. Evidence of the Iranian connection comes from one of the Iraqi kidnappers whom the Guardian has interviewed. I assume the Guardian had been sitting on the story for some time, not wanting to risk Peter Moore’s fate and decided to publish immediately after his sudden release. The kidnappers were trained and run by the Iranian al-Quds brigade who took charge of the hostages at the Iraq-Iran border. A “former senior Iraqi intelligence commander” tells the Guardian:
Brian Walker @ 09:34 PM
“an absolutely phenomenal 26 days”
From CernTV. A short end of term report from the scientists at the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator, including Belfast-born director of accelerators, Steve Myers - interview with Robin McKie noted here. It’s still the experiment most likely to find more than a pair of WIMPy socks. If they’re really there…
Pete Baker @ 04:56 PM
Adams family saga being buried on Wikipedia?
Interesting edit war going on at Gerry Adams’ biography page on wikipedia. All mention of claims his father was abusive and his involvement around allegations over his brother Liam are currently removed and subject to intense argument on the discussion page. An entry on Liam Adams is blank with a redirect to the discussion on Gerry’s entry. The only small reference to the subject remaining is a brief mention on the entry for Gerry Adams, Sr.
Mark McGregor @ 12:38 PM
Don’t mistake the symptoms for the disease
Combined with his blunt attack on his own security system, Barack Obama’s deadline of tomorrow for a preliminary assessment of the apparently thwarted attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner will make big waves on this side of the pond. We can expect a revival of the “Londonistan ” analysis like this from Michael Burleigh.
Typically, the British elite tried to manage the problem by co-opting the self-appointed tribal chiefs, and paying them off with honours. Unfortunately, some of the so-called moderates also had outrageous views about adulterers, homosexuals or Jews, and worse, were disconnected from the radicalised youths who wished to dictate our foreign policy with bombs on buses and the Underground. In turn, under its Prevent policy, the Government perceives a difference between ‘‘extremists’’ (who merely say they want to kill Jews or homosexuals), and ‘‘violent extremists’’ who want to blow us all up.
Brian Walker @ 10:29 AM
Power and Politics
Via European Alternatives an article from Zygmunt Bauman ‘Reconnecting Power and Politics’, he rounds on many of those in power would identify themselves as ‘Left’ across Europe
In recent years to be on the ‘left’ has come to signal an intention to be more thorough than the ‘right’ in carrying out the agenda of the right, and better at protecting such undertakings from the backlash inevitably caused by their dire social consequences. It was Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ that laid institutional foundations under Margaret Thatcher’s inchoate ideas about there being no such thing as society, ‘only individuals and families’. It was the French Socialist Party that did most work on the dismantling of the French social state. And in East-Central Europe it is the ‘post-communist’ parties, renamed as ‘social democrats’ (wary as they are of being accused of lingering devotion to their communist past), that are the most enthusiastic and vociferous advocates – and most consistent practitioners – of unlimited freedom for the rich and the leaving of the poor to their own care.
Mark McGregor @ 09:52 AM
Ireland and US handbagged after Mountbatten assassination…
THERE are many interesting disclosures flowing from the UK and Irish archives after the IRA assassination of Mountbatten in 1979. The Times reports that a “telegram from Robin Haydon, the British Ambassador in Dublin, to Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary, revealed that Lord Mountbatten’s daughter, Lady Pamela Hicks, had told him that 1979 had been the first year that the boat was not under guard or searched for devices before the family went aboard”. Haydon wrote:
In the absence of an official report, it would be unwise to go into detail, but I must say I find it extraordinary that the boat was apparently not searched by the Garda before it sailed. It is even more extraordinary that, to my knowledge, no questions have been asked by the Irish media about the level and adequacy of Garda security for the Mountbatten family.
It sounds not unlike the accusations of collusion that fly around Northern Ireland today.
The Irish Times reports that Anglo-Irish relations were low even before the Mountbatten and Narrow Water attacks. Four days beforehand, Thatcher considered taking the vote away from Irish citizens living in the UK, and bringing them “fully within the UK’s immigration laws”. Relations deteriorated further after the bombings. The British government even discussed the possibility of sanctions against Ireland unless it secured better co-operation on security, which apparently was forthcoming. Some pretty harsh sanctions against the Irish were certainly on the table initially - including “more vigorous use of the SAS”, the “closing of Border roads” and even “reintroduction of executive detention [internment]” - though pragmatism seems to have led to a more measured bilateral response later. Lynch would even agree to cross-border helicopter overflights.
Thatcher’s ‘special relationship’ with America on the Irish question was also frosty. We learn from the Irish Times that she banned one Northern Ireland Secretary from meeting New York governor Hugh Carey following reports that he was planning to put pressure on the British government over Northern Ireland. She “would not think of discussing with President Carter, for example, US policy towards their black population”.
Nor did the US refusal to grant an export licence for Ruger revolvers intended for the RUC impress Thatcher. After all, “[s]he herself had handled both of the gun(s) which the RUC at present used and that which was on order. There was no doubt that the American Ruger was much better.” A Foreign Office letter to the then US secretary of state about the restriction stated: “It would without doubt be seen as a sharp shift in the US policy, and would certainly give encouragement to the Provisional IRA, who would exploit it to the full,”
Even worse, as far as Thatcher was concerned, was Carter’s lacklustre response to the Mountbatten killing. The BBC reports that he wrote only to Thatcher to express his “profound sadness” at the “tragic death” - avoiding condemnation and references to terrorism or murder. However, a later State Department statement “condemning the organisations which indulge in violence and asking Americans not to support them” seems to have mollified the British.
And so unionists don’t feel left out, it should be noted that long before the Anglo-Agreement, Thatcher’s relationship with Ian Paisley was also far from cordial. As the FT reports:
In spite of her prounionist position, unfriendly letters were exchanged at the time between Mrs Thatcher and the Reverend Ian Paisley, the staunch Protestant and Democratic Unionist party leader. In a July letter to Mr Paisley, the prime minister wrote: “For the moment it seems unlikely that we would have anything to gain from a meeting on security.”
Mr Paisley replied: “Thank you for your note which, being a statement of facts already within my knowledge, was hardly illuminating.
“Neither does it reassure either myself or the people of NI that their continuing plight is a matter of your urgent personal concern.”
Belfast Gonzo @ 05:38 AM
Major embarrassment for SDLP in Irish archives…
EXPENSES rows are not new. The Irish archives reveal that Dublin was prepared to hand out payments to the SDLP after the collapse of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive in 1974. Rather embarrassingly for John Hume and co, an official said details of the claims “do not tally” with records and advised further investigation to ensure “the SDLP aren’t claiming for something they aren’t entitled to”. Even more worryingly, one senior Irish government official believed Hume wanted internment brought back to tackle IRA violence. Now why would he think that?
Belfast Gonzo @ 04:24 AM
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
“Pages of half truths, opinions, bias, lies.”
According to Gerry Adams’ latest post at “This Blog”, “[He] stopped buying the Sunday papers about ten years ago.” And a message to the faithful, “’[He’ll] tell you about the ones with their own wee agenda some other time’ [he] smiled. They usually write for the Sunday World, the Sunday Times, papers of that ilk.” So don’t worry your little heads about questions over his brother Liam’s time in Sinn Féin in Dundalk. Or about questions over his brother Liam’s time in west Belfast between 1998-2006. Or the question of whom, exactly, Gerry claims to have informed at Clonard about those [1987] allegations? Or why, if because of Gerry Adams’ intervention, when Clonard Youth Centre stopped employing Liam Adams in 2003 no-one passed that information any further? Or why the Clonard Youth Centre has no record of anyone raising any concerns? Or why Liam Adams’ employment as a youth worker in west Belfast apparently ended just before Aine Tyrell decided to reactivate the case against her father in 2007 - after 5 years of Gerry Adams promising, but failing, to arrange a meeting between the two? Or any other “stupid” questions. Sure, “It goes with the territory”. Doesn’t it? Adds Two of the people in the Dundalk photographs contradict the official Sinn Féin line.
According to former SF election agent Fra Browne, Liam Adams was an active and well-known member of SF Dundalk in the 1990s. “Arthur Morgan has been quoted as saying Liam didn’t register on the richter scale. That’s not true. Liam was a contender for nomination as a candidate in the 1997 election,” said Mr Browne. “There were two contenders, Liam Adams and Owen Hanratty. However, a number of people in the party were concerned because Liam was from Belfast. “We wanted to put forward a local candidate. When Liam saw the anger that was there he withdrew his name. He was certainly an active Sinn Féin person in Dundalk.”
Pete Baker @ 09:50 PM
Let’s hear it for the Oldies
So Van’s still the man at 64! Why ever not! Over 500 news stories and counting throughout the world proclaim it so it must be true. And he’s more open about Van 111’s citizenship than his place of birth. Well, what do you expect from a man called Ivan from off the Bloomfield Road?
Brian Walker @ 06:31 PM
Adams: Safe at home, vulnerable away…
Worth noting in passing Squinter’s straw poll of sentiment in West Belfast suggests that Gerry Adams’ support is undiminished in his own political heartland… It’s a point I made myself on GMU last Thursday (about 8.20)... It, I would suggest, indicates there is no immediate threat to Adams in the Westminsters (the SDLP are nowhere and ‘other’ republicans have made zero progress in developing a functional alternative to SF’s strategy)...
The ‘political problem’ has more to do with wider party morale than Adams personal fortune in the short termn per se… (In East Tyrone and South Armagh, Slugger hears that people are much less impressed with the party leader’s response underfire than those in his own parish, so to speak)... And the democratic centralism of the party means the party will not bend easily to opinions of the media, new or old…
It remains to be seen just how (if at all) it will affect the party’s (ill concieved IMHO) attempt to rack up pressure on the DUP over the devolution of policing and justice…
Mick Fealty @ 11:19 AM
Former Hunger Striker Calls on Adams to Resign from Sands Trust
Former Hunger Striker Gerard Hodgins has called upon Gerry Adams to resign from the Bobby Sands Trust in light of his actions surrounding the accusations against his brother, Liam Adams. The Sands Trust is currently run out of the Sinn Fein offices on the Falls Road, and its members are Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley, Jim Gibney, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, Sile Darragh, Caral Ni Chuilin, and Peter Madden (Madden and Finucane represent the Trust). Hartley, Morrison and Adams have been on the Trust since its inception. The Sands family have rejected the Trust and have publicly called for it to be wound up. “We came to look closer at the Trust and in turn were concerned at the lack of control or accountability”, said one family source. “There were no records of minutes etc. or proper accounts and it was debatable if they ever functioned as a Trust but rather as an extension of SF.”
There was also family concern over an alleged attempt by Sinn Féin to insert a clause in the new Trust which would have made Gerry Adams a financial beneficiary. “It came in the draft version of the new trust documents drawn up in 1994 though Adams said that it should read the president of Sinn Féin of the day. We didn’t agree to either”.
In related news, Sinn Fein Vice President Mary Lou McDonald has said anyone found to have covered up the abuse of children should be arrested: “Anyone found to be complicit in the cover up of child abuse must be arrested and made to face the full rigours of the law.”
Hodgins’ letter to the Irish News is very hard hitting; its full text, along with McDonald’s press release, follows below the jump.
Rusty Nail @ 10:46 AM
“I’m hoping they will do it and I’m hoping they won’t renege.”
The Belfast Telegraph follows up yesterday’s report on the mood music from within loyalist paramilitary groups with a prediction from an anonymous “well-placed source” that - “The UDA is expected to fully disarm before the February deadline set by the Secretary of State, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal.” [Is that the “good” and “bad” UDA? - Ed]. Whether it’s dependent on the success of Martin McAleese’s lobbying isn’t made clear but the title quote, from “a government source”, suggests some sort of arrangement has been made. There’s also an interesting reference to the paper’s previous report of an impending meeting between UDA leaders and the deputy First Minister, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, before Christmas. From the Belfast Telegraph report
This newspaper understands the talks that were planned for December 16 were organised by telephone while senior loyalists, including Jackie McDonald, were in Brussels. It is understood McDonald was keen to meet the Sinn Fein leader before the pre-Christmas deadline he had set for First Minister Peter Robinson to agree a date for the transfer of policing and justice powers. However, according to a senior source other loyalists felt they were being “bounced” into those talks without proper consultation and preparation.
And they’re probably right.. After all, think of the effect of such optics on that manufactured “crisis”...
Pete Baker @ 10:12 AM
Monday, December 28, 2009
The Rights and Wrongs of TV3 and Brian Lenihan
TV3 were right to report that finance minister Brian Lenihan had been diagnosed with cancer.
Unfortunately, just about every other decision they made in covering the story was wrong.
What TV3 gave us was Ursula Halligan, seemingly ill-prepared, at one point stumbling over tenses (“Brian Lenihan was, um, is…”) and saying not very much after the first sentence.
(As an aside, why do television news editors feel the need for faux actuality, going over to ‘our reporter on the spot’ just to show a journalist shivering outside some anonymous building, when the same information could be imparted by the reporter in the studio. That’s an issue beyond this one report though, so we’ll let it pass for now.)
TV3 then spoke to a doctor who said a lot about cancer and not much about Brian Lenihan.
The report closed with what mounted to a political, if not an actual obituary.
Online, a consensus quickly emerged that TV3 should not have run the story. Major newspapers took the same line the following morning.
John McGuirk got it right when he argued that the news should be reported, given Lenihan’s position.
But he admits he didn’t see the report himself, and could not know it did not address the effect on government stability, the price of Irish bonds, or banking shares, to name just three issues.
Instead we got this:
Interviewer: “Is it too early to talk about political consequences?”
Halligan: “Yes it is…”
Wrong. Political consequences were the only reason to broadcast the story. Instead, we got morbid curiosity.
Gerard Cunningham @ 07:27 PM
Iris Robinson to stand down
The BBC have just announced that Iris Robinson is standing down from public life (presumably both as an MP and MLA?) because of depression. “The stress and strain of public life comes at a cost and my health has suffered,” she said.
Turgon @ 05:52 PM
“They don’t seem to see the inherent danger..”
With the final final deadline for paramilitary groups to decommission without consequences about to come hurtling around the New Year corner [February 2010], and with Martin McAleese still lobbying on behalf of the “good” UDA, in the Belfast Telegraph Alan Murray reports on the mood music from within those paramilitary groups.
The kitchen cabinet assembled here by Martin McAleese is composed of former public servants drawn mainly from the nationalist community in Northern Ireland and the criticism of it, from one who has had the introductions at a recent meeting in the Wellington Park, is that they don’t pick up the implications of funding projects nominated by the UDA alone. “They are well-meaning former public servants from here who just do not pick up the nuances of this within the loyalist world,” said a well-placed unionist source.
“They don’t seem to see the inherent danger in handing over projects totally to the control, or the partial control, of a paramilitary organisation and the message that would convey on the ground. “And they don’t get the angle that the UVF, which has decommissioned, feels that the UDA is being treated in a special way when they haven’t delivered and are breaking into pieces as a structure.”
Pete Baker @ 11:23 AM
The focus now is on Gerry Adams’s survival
When a journalist in a newspaper labels a leading politician as a liar and produces what ‘s claimed to be a smoking gun so to speak, we know that it’s game on for the highest stakes. Suzanne Breen and the Sunday Tribune are hardly risk averse. They come to the Adams scandal buoyed up with a clear victory over the government over their refusal to disclose the source of the Real IRA claim for the Massareene murders. Recognising the significance of a story which significantly adds to the pressure on Gerry Adams, the BBC cautiously covers the Sunday Tribune’s publication of a photograph of
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams canvassing with his brother Liam for the party in Dundalk in 1997, at a time when Gerry Adams has said his brother Liam had been expelled from Sinn Fein.
In a comment piece, Northern editor Suzanne Breen claims:
“Today, we expose this as a lie. Far from having Liam “dumped” from the party, Gerry Adams accompanied his suspected paedophile brother on a Sinn Féin canvass through Dundalk town centre just days before the 6 June election. The Sunday Tribune has uncovered photographs and a newspaper report of the event. The brothers are seen laughing on the canvass – more proof that they were not “estranged”.
The BBC report includes a partial rebuttal:
A Sinn Fein spokesman said it saw no conflict with the Sunday Tribune’s claims and Mr Adams’ previous comments on meetings with his brother. “Gerry Adams has made it clear that he did see his brother on occasions in the 1990s and made it clear when he discovered he was a member of the party in the Dundalk area he moved to have him expelled in the late 1990s,” a Sinn Fein spokesman added.
While expulsion in the late 1990s is technically not incompatible with Gerry Adams smilingly canvassing for Liam as late as 1997 according to the Tribune’s evidence, it lacks conviction.
Breen goes on
Gerry Adams’ disturbingly inadequate response to his brother’s suspected abuse makes him politically toxic. He is stripped of all credibility and moral authority. His position as a public figure is untenable. Were he the leader of any other party, he would have resigned by now. Would Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny, Peter Robinson or Mark Durkan survive such damning revelations? Not a chance.
In the Sunday Times, Liam Clarke covers similar territory adding that Adam’s meetings with Aine were -
the same approach of endless but unproductive meetings which republicans often use when people complain against those close to them. The families of many of those killed and secretly buried by the IRA were subjected to the same treatment, as were the family of Robert McCartney, the man stabbed by IRA members in 2005.
Clarke concludes
A politician who has this much explaining to do is a liability to everyone associated with him.
We now wait to see if Gerry Adams produces a new defence or enjoys more lenient treatment from Sinn Fein than former auxiliary bishops in the Dublin archdiocese are at last receiving at the hands of the Irish Church. Is there a Sinn Fein equivalent of Diarmuid Martin? The constrast with the Church’s actions however belated, is now blatant and must be causing mental turmoil for those who are able to reconcile strong support for Sinn Fein with devotion to the Church. This is now a crisis which even this most enclosed of political movements cannot leave to piecemeal statements from a spokesman. Despite the tsuami of schadenfreude rising up from its enemies, Sinn Fein cannot dismiss this as a purely politically motivated attack.
Brian Walker @ 10:33 AM
Magners League Weekend 9
Cardiff Blues 42 - 13 Newport-Gwent Dragons
Glasgow 25 - 12 Edinburgh
Leinster 15 - 3 Ulster
Munster 35 - 3 Connacht
Scarlets 14 - 21 Ospreys
Table here
Bunching up nicely at the top.
Dewi @ 05:16 AM
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Lenihan leak condemned
If it’s confirmed that Brian Lenihan has pancreatic cancer, the prognosis is poor. You don’t need to be an oncologist to know that. His illness sadly recalls a similar affliction his ebullient father suffered from for most of his adult life. TV3’s newsbreak seems a piece of over-keen competition but it’s entirely typical of the trade. Alas, the serious illness of a finance minister cannot be “private” for long. Did the station break a self imposed embargo the bigger news outlets privately agreed to observe over the holiday? It’s hard to believe that TV3 had a genuine scoop for any longer than five minutes: this is the kind of story that sweeps over the lobby in a single wave. On personal matters, the political culture in Dublin still seems more respectful than London’s. Nevertheless I expect that the 24 hour news cycle will compel confirmation and that holding story has only 24 hours at most to run – holiday or not - and will break before the markets open. As well as the personal tragedy, it couldn’t have come at a worse time politically.
