Slugger O'Toole

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1. Comment on “Nonsense, Minister.” – Redux
   on 18 November 2011 at 9:45 pm

   “Sinn Féin’s ideologically driven campaign…”

   For shame that anyone’s ideology drives their conduct. Perhaps they might instead try a blindfold, a dart, and a dartboard. Wherever the dart hits, that’s their policy.

   The age 11 or so selection itself is only a tad bit better, i.e., the timing was chosen simply and only because that’s when the kids would be changing schools in any event.

   Lastly:

   http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revisited/singlepage

   Kindly note the section on “Open Enrollment”, round about half way down the page.

   Almost forgot, but to borrow Jaime’s meme, students will rise to the level of expectation (and helps to remember that you set the level of expectation not with your words but with what you do).

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2. Comment on Attorney General re-opens #Ballymurphy inquests
   on 18 November 2011 at 7:57 pm

   Reader, since there’s that two link rule, here’s the Brecknell v. United Kingdom decision referenced in the two decisions above:

   http://tinyurl.com/mjc6r6

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3. Comment on Attorney General re-opens #Ballymurphy inquests
   on 18 November 2011 at 7:40 pm

   “Are you a spokesman for the killers; are you quoting an anonymous loudmouth; or is this just your guess? My guess is different, but no doubt equally worthless.
   However, on the off chance you actually *know* anything, were the provos responsible for Kingsmills; (a) congratulated, (b) disciplined, (c) expelled or (d) ignored by the IRA Army Council?”

   No, I am not a “spokesman for the killers”. Re “anonymous loudmouth”, are you referring to a “P O’Neill”, in whose name the related statements were issued? So I wouldn’t exactly call the statements “worthless”.

   Lastly, re the part including and after “However”, courtesy of Wikipedia:

   “The reactions of Irish republicans at the time was mixed. It was allegedly ordered by elements of the IRA leadership (Seamus Twomey and Brian Keenan), but others, such as Gerry Adams, were reported to be very unhappy about it. According to Sean O’Callaghan, Adams said in an Army Council meeting, “there’ll never again be another Kingsmills”.[48]

   IRA members in South Armagh, who talked to journalist and author Toby Harnden in the late 1990s, generally condemned the massacre. One of them, Volunteer M, said it was “a gut reaction [to the killing of Catholics] and a wrong one. The worst time in my life was in jail after Kingsmill. It was a dishonourable time”. Another, Volunteer G, said that he “never agreed with Kingsmills”. Republican activist Peter John Caraher said that those ultimately responsible were “the loyalists who shot the Reavey brothers”. He added, “It was sad that those people [at Kingsmills] had to die, but I’ll tell you something, it stopped any more Catholics being killed”.[49] This view was reiterated by a County Tyrone republican and Gaelic Athletic Association veteran who spoke to Ed Moloney. “It’s a lesson you learn quickly on the football field… If you’re fouled, you hit back”, he said.[50]

   The citations are:

   48-Harnden, Bandit Country p. 134, but see also Robert W. White, p. 386, above. My note, the White work is: Ruairi O Bradaigh, the life and politics of an Irish Revolutionary

   49-Harnden p. 137-138, see also CAIN webservice. My note, the CAIN webservice links to the killings for 1976. Kindly note the Reavey and O’Dowd killings that begin the year.

   50-A Secret History of the IRA, Ed Moloney, 2002…p.320. My note, I omitted the ISBN info provided.

   Consider as well:

   “Another with similar claims was RUC Special Patrol Group officer Billy McCaughey, who was one of the RUC officers present at the aftermath of the massacre. He told Toby Harnden, “the sides of the road were running red with blood and it was the blood of totally innocent Protestants”. Afterwards, McCaughey says that he began passing RUC intelligence to the UVF and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and also to participate in their operations. McCaughey was convicted in 1980 of one sectarian killing, the kidnapping of a Catholic priest, and one failed bombing.[45] However, McCaughey had colluded with loyalists before the Kingsmill attack, and later admitted to taking part in the Reavey killings the day before – he claimed he “was at the house but fired no shots”.[46] McCaughey also gave his view on how the massacre affected loyalists:

   I think Kingsmills forced people to ask themselves where they were going, especially the Protestant support base, the civilian support base – the people who were not members of the UVF but would let you use a building or a field. Those people, many of them withdrew. It wasn’t because of anything the UVF did. It was fear of retaliation.”[20]

   The cites are:

   45-Harnden, p. 138-140
   46-Interim Report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Bombing of Kay’s Tavern, Dundalk July, 2006, p. 122.
   20-”Blood in the Rain”. The Belfast Telegraph. 5 January 2006.

   And for presumably part of the reason why Willie Frazer was not authorized to carry what you all call a personal protection weapon:

   The Kingsmill massacre was the last in the series of sectarian killings in South Armagh during the mid-1970s. According to local unionist activist Willie Frazer of Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR), this was as a result of deal between the local UVF and IRA groups.[35]

   The cite for that is:

   35-Harnden, p. 140

   Seems that Willie has the “right” connections.

   Now from the Boer Daily aka the News Letter:

   “The [HET Kingsmill] report said: “It was clearly a pre-planned attack on a target that had been pre-selected and researched some time before. The murderous attacks on the Reavey and O’Dowd families [by the UVF the day before] were simply the catalyst for the pre-meditated and calculated slaughter of these innocent and defenceless men.”

   See the word, “catalyst”? Hopefully, you’ll do better with the word than Turgon did in his blog post here on Slugger on the relevant HET report (he apparently fails to understand that being pre-planned and pre-selected does not rule out retaliation, since as indicated, the Reavey and O’Dowd killings “were simply the catalyst” for the “preplanned” and “preselected”)(i.e., some had a contingent plan; the contingency occurred).

   Almost forgot:

   “The inquiry team dismissed the claim at the time that the murders were the work of the South Armagh Republican Action Force. It said such was the widespread revulsion that the IRA attempted to distance itself from the attack by using this cover-name. It added: “There is some intelligence that the Provisional IRA unit responsible was not well-disposed towards central co-ordination but there is no excuse in that. These dreadful murders were carried out by the Provisional IRA and none other.[18]”

   The cite is:

   18-”IRA blamed for ‘sectarian slaughter’ of 10 at Kingsmill”. The Irish Times. 22 June 2011.

   Consider as well:

   “According to the account of journalist Toby Harnden, the British military intelligence assessment at the time was that the attack was carried out by local IRA members “who were acting outside of the normal IRA command structure”.[27]

   The cite is:

   27-Harnden, PB, Coronet Books, 2000 p. 187.

   Consider also:

   “It was alleged by Harnden that IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey, on the suggestion of Brian Keenan, ordered that there had to be a disproportionate retaliation against Protestants in order to stop Catholics being killed by loyalists. According to IRA informer Sean O’Callaghan, “Keenan believed that the only way to put the nonsense out of the Prods [Protestants], was to hit back much harder and more savagely than them”.[30] However, O’Callaghan reports that Twomey and Keenan did not consult the IRA Army Council before sanctioning the Kingsmill attack. This version of events is disputed by republican leader Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, who claims that he and Twomey only learned of the Kingsmill attack after it had taken place.[31]

   The cites are:

   30-Harnden, p134

   31-Robert W. White, Ruairi O Bradaigh, the life and politics of an Irish Revolutionary, p. 386.

   Well and truly lastly, re the matter of proper investigation, kindly note the decisions here:

   http://tinyurl.com/7j8m9la

   http://tinyurl.com/6sb8lk2

   So I wouldn’t exactly be found going around blaming “Republicans” for failing to “engage”. Seems that there’s enough of that to go around. Plenty for everybody, you might say.

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4. Comment on Attorney General re-opens #Ballymurphy inquests
   on 18 November 2011 at 12:03 pm

   “If republicans would actually engage over Kingsmills, or Darkley we might never get another prosecution out of it, but we might find out why those people died.”

   Darkley:

   …in retaliation for the murderous sectarian campaign carried out by the Protestant Action Force … by this token retaliation we could easily have taken the lives of at least twenty more innocent Protestants. We serve notice on the PAF to call an immediate halt to their vicious indiscriminate campaign against innocent Catholics, or we will make the Darkley killings look like a picnic.

   Kingsmill:

   …if loyalist elements responsible for over 300 sectarian assassinations in the past four years stop such killing now, then the question of retaliation from whatever source does not arise.

   And if you’re wondering about Lenny Murphy:

   Lenny Murphy (master butcher) has been responsible for the horrific murders of over twenty innocent Nationalists in the Belfast area and a number of Protestants. The IRA has been aware for some time that since his release recently from prison, Murphy was attempting to re-establish a similar murder gang to that which he led in the mid-1970s and, in fact, he was responsible for a number of the recent sectarian murders in the Belfast area. The IRA takes this opportunity to restate its policy of non-sectarian attacks, while retaining its right to take unequivocal action against those who direct or motivate sectarian slaughter against the Nationalist population.

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5. Comment on Irish Bank Resolution Corporation [formerly Anglo Irish Bank] to challenge Sean Quinn’s UK bankruptcy application
   on 15 November 2011 at 8:42 am

   “given that he transferred assets out of his own name for the express purpose of dishonouring personal guarantees…”

   If he did that, and I don’t know one way or the other, but if we assume that he did, then he is not the only human to blame. His creditors should have periodically checked to see whether his assets were still titled in his name. They might also have structured the credit extension, what have you, as a true secured transaction as to him personally and filed the security instrument with the appropriate govt. agency/body so as to prevent anyone from becoming a bona fide purchaser for value.

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6. Comment on Ian Paisley to retire as Free Presbyterian minister
   on 15 November 2011 at 7:30 am

   “I often find myself voting for people who would have shot him dead given half the chance…”

   Who would that be? Certainly no one formerly in the PIRA. As Tim Pat reports in his one work [The IRA: A History]:

   “There was the ‘Official’ Unionist party and a number of rival groupings, the more vigorous of these being the Rev. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party. How democratic the organization is, is open to question, but it is beyond question that Ian Kyle Paisley, the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian with a doctorate from Bob Jones’ Bible Belt University, lungs like the Bull of Basham and a theology from the Apocalypse, has established himself as the leading political figure in Northern Ireland. Certainly in the early days of the Northern conflagration it was he above all others, including even William Craig, who was at the time Minister for Home Affairs, who incited opposition to the Civil Rights marchers. He would have appeared to have been a prime target for the Provisionals but they let him live for two reasons: 1. his onslaughts on the Unionist Party leadership had the effect of bursting the party asunder; 2. ‘he only says publicly what the rest of them say privately, he shows them all up,’ explained a Provisional spokesman.”

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7. Comment on There is no reprieve from the grave: rejecting the DUP’s death penalty call
   on 15 November 2011 at 6:14 am

   Pilgrim:

   You might wish to start by defining your terms. California Penal Code, section 187, in pertinent part:

   187. (a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a
   fetus, with malice aforethought.

   See the word, “unlawful”? Now to continue with:

   189.5. (a) Upon a trial for murder, the commission of the homicide by the defendant being proved, the burden of proving circumstances of mitigation, or that justify or excuse it, devolves upon the defendant, unless the proof on the part of the prosecution tends to show that the crime committed only amounts to manslaughter, or that the defendant was justifiable or excusable.

   See the word, “homicide”? Homicide is each and every instance wherein one kills another human. Murder is, as related, only those homicides wherein the killing is unlawful.

   And murder is a graded offense, as it were:

   189. All murder which is perpetrated by means of a destructive
   device or explosive, a weapon of mass destruction, knowing use of ammunition designed primarily to penetrate metal or armor, poison, lying in wait, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or which is committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, arson, rape, carjacking, robbery, burglary, mayhem, kidnapping, train wrecking, or any act punishable under Section 206, 286, 288, 288a, or 289, or any murder which is perpetrated by means of discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle, intentionally at another person outside of the vehicle with the intent to inflict death, is murder of the first degree. All other kinds of murders are of the second degree. … To prove the killing was “deliberate and premeditated,” it shall not be necessary to prove the defendant maturely and meaningfully reflected upon the gravity of his or her act.

   Lastly, going back to our man who stabbed the child more than twenty (20) times, with the child’s blood being found in every room in the house, the reason why the California Supreme Court rejected a finding of first degree murder is explained by consideration of subsection (14) here:

   http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/190.2.html

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8. Comment on There is no reprieve from the grave: rejecting the DUP’s death penalty call
   on 14 November 2011 at 9:28 am

   Patrick, aside from the merit or not of the death penalty, you started your argument with an initial flaw. We cannot assume that the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six would have obtained the same trial results in a death penalty case. Simply recall in the case of the Guildford Four the subsequent discovery of the witness statement that would have cleared Conlan and the other fellow, which had attached to it a note reading, not to be shown to the defense. Do you think that note would be there in a death penalty case?

   Lastly, to somewhat address the matter on the merits, you need to think of a reason apart from innocent versus guilty, or if you prefer, the case of mistake. I believe that Mick posted on that. You see, we could devise a system that would inflict death on only those we knew to a certainty to be guilty, say, in all cases where he smiled and waved at the CCTV as he was committing the murder. Or some such scheme. You could have, for another example, murder and rape, where her blood is all over his clothing, his semen is in her vagina, and his skin is under her fingernails, and he was apprehended holding a knife dripping with her blood. Can we kill in that instance?

   Almost forgot, but for the one soul above, the Hebrew does not read “kill”. It reads “murder”. So you get the point, if it read “kill”, then we also could not kill in a purely defensive war, or if we were inmates at Chelmno, we couldn’t kill to make good our escape for that extermination camp. By the way, the law of defense of self and defense of others would indeed indicate that not all killing is wrong. So the question is, where are we going to draw the line? Oh, and by the way, for the soul who remarked that the other soul was trolling, not at all. Since absent the claim of immunity from prosecution, one signing the death warrant for an innocent could be said to be guilty of an unjustifiable homicide. Again, consider the law of defense of self and others. What happens if you are wrong in your defense of others? Here:

   Generally speaking, a person is justified in using force to protect a third party from unlawful use of force by an aggressor to the extent that the third party is justified in acting in self-defense. This so-called “alter ego” rule, as applied in early common law, required that the third party had to in fact have been justified in self-defense, irrespective of how the situation would have appeared to a reasonable person. Today, however, the majority view is that the use force may be justified if it reasonably appears necessary for the protection of the third party.

   So, again, what if not reasonably necessary, and the third-party is killed as a result? And don’t get me wrong, since in the more usual circumstance, you come upon the scene and find some already happening event and you decide to act in defense of another. So the argument for why manslaughter and not murder conviction is “heat of the moment” and not so much “malice aforethought.” How much “heat of the moment” and “malice aforethought” is there in singing the death warrant? Seems pretty cold and deliberate to me.

   For a bonus freebie, one of the “joys” of living in a nation with death penalty states is seeing how courts treat homicide. I won’t give the case names, but in California the law school textbook case has a finding of no premeditation even though he chased the little one throughout the house and blood was found in every room, with more than a score of stab wounds. That was the California Supreme Court not wishing to uphold California law, which has the death penalty (so a second degree murder). For the “hilarity”, the California Supreme Court opined that the large number of stab wounds indicated a lack of intent to kill, since if he had wanted to kill the child he presumably would have been more efficient. In contrast, in Pennsylvania, which doesn’t have the death penalty, he simply had an argument with the wife, while the two were in bed, trying to go to sleep, he reaches for the gun in the drawer of the stand next to the bed…and that’s first degree murder, since there was sufficient time for him to have formed the necessary intent, again, malice aforethought, and he could have hardly thought that shooting her in the head would not kill her. One of the “joys” of being a lawyer, getting up and close and personal with the dark side (one of the reasons why being an ambulance chaser is actually preferable to a contract drafter, since as a contract drafter you not only confront the single instance of bad, you also have to think of every possible thing that could wrong and deal with it in the contract and who wants to spend their life doing that?)(those are the real reasons why lawyers get paid the big bucks).

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9. Comment on If the Euro hardens into fiscal union, which way will Ireland jump?
   on 12 November 2011 at 10:14 am

   Folks, you are missing the disease while you find fault with the attempted cure.

   Why did people need that credit?

   Globalization. Free trade.

   For a piece that explains Eire’s and the US’ failure, and Germany’s success, see this piece:

   http://seekingalpha.com/article/212461-what-the-u-s-can-learn-from-germany-about-managing-its-trade-deficit

   We don’t have those covert trade barriers here. And so Apple computer employs 10 in China for every 1 American. Same with most other big tech companies. As you can read, our problem was “merely” made worse by the credit expansion. Was, as I’ve long believed, merely the means to mask the fact that our industry has shipped our jobs overseas. I hate when I hear idiots speak to “level playing field” as the only way there can be such is if our wage rate = foreign wage rate + cost of transport of American company but foreign made good back to the US. For how bad it is, if you will recall, we passed a law that requires one’s medical records to be kept in digital form. Good enough in the sense that if you live in NYC and get sick in Seattle, your med recs can be emailed to Seattle and the doctor there will know your history. Guess who digitizes the record? Folks in India. Believe it or not, we photocopy the records, ship them to India, they scan them, etc., and then send the digital copy back via the net. So the bill in Congress should have been called, The Digital Medical Records For Americans And Full Employment In India Act.

   Eire’s problem is as noted, the currency was too strong for Eire and so Eire got weaker, while the Euro was too weak for Germany so it got stronger via exports.

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10. Comment on “His willingness to attend a Sinn Féin ard fheis sometime next year will not resolve this…”
    on 9 November 2011 at 7:45 am

    “After all, as Alan pointed out, he has attended other party conferences.”

    Then that was a gross mistake. Law enforcement, to include the judiciary as well, must be perceived to be non-partisan. So they don’t attend party conferences, not even as guests/members in the crowd.

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