Conflict
OFMDFM: “We would ask everyone to give the official the time and space to conduct this work…”
The reaction of our indigenous administration to two nights of violence in east Belfast that was, according to the PSNI, at least partly orchestrated by the UVF in the area and included shootings by still-violent republicans and loyalists? Intensive face-to-face discussions “involving community leaders, police and senior loyalist and republican representatives” [dissenting ones? - Ed], and the subsequent [...] more »
Second night of violence in east Belfast
A significant police presence at the scene of last night’s rioting has failed to stop a recurrence of the violence. From the UTV report Update From the BBC report Police have confirmed that dissident republicans were responsible for shooting a photographer during trouble in east Belfast on Tuesday night. It happened during a second night [...] more »
CoI Gazette denounces attempt to resurrect Eames Bradley
Gladys had a blog on Sunday Sequence’s interview with two former members of the Consultative Group on the Past: Denis Bradley and Rev. Lesley Carroll in which they called for Eames Bradley to be looked at again. My comments on Eames Bradley are posted below. It seems, however, that Gladys and myself are not the [...] more »
News Letter interview with Eric Glass
Eric Glass has been a bit of a quiet hero to Fermanagh unionists for years. Like a number of such people they have said little publicly about what happened to them during the IRA’s terrorist campaign. Now, however, Eric has spoken to the News Letter about his remarkable story of courage. Eric Glass was a [...] more »
Sinn Fein also has a ‘duty of care’ to its old volunteers…
There’s a great piece by veteran journalist Alan Murray in the print version of today’s Belfast Telegraph, in which he discursively exams the idea that Sinn Fein deliberately set out to hurt the Travers family by appointing the only member of the IRA gang killed their 22 year old sister Mary. Well, they aren’t saying [...] more »
Queen’s Visit: Time to move on but not to forget…
‘I have signed my own death warrant’; so (allegedly) did Michael Collins spake after he had signed The Treaty in London in 1921. Collins’s support for the Anglo-Irish Treaty which both agreed to the partition of the country and required elected representatives in the new state to promise to be faithful to His Majesty King [...] more »
#Obama v #OBL: “We finally got our man last week, it’s true”
On the front page of the Irish Times this morning Lara Marlow asks: “WHAT WAS Barack Obama thinking during that long moment of silence, after he laid the wreath at the foot of the Survivor Tree?” This great piece of writing from Walter Kirn outlines his own complex thoughts: It had to end somewhere, History’s [...] more »
“Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics…”
Over a month after US President Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to authorize US forces to use missile strikes “kinetic military action” against Libya without the approval of Congress, and the UN withdraws from Tripoli as its offices, and other foreign missions, are attacked in the aftermath of a NATO air strike on one of Muammar Gadafy’s homes. In [...] more »
Bill Craig came to his senses too late
Interesting to see that the Guardian has marked Bill Craig’sdeath at 86 with a Chris Ryder obit and touching to see that Mark follows the peculiar Irish practice of warning against speaking ill of the recently dead. Sam McBride’s” Political Giant” is infected by similar sentimentality on the unionist side. But critical comment on Craig’s record [...] more »
“Scotland never divided the way Ireland did…”
Steve Bruce with a well researched broadside on the dodgy accusation that Scotland is awash with sectarian, football related violence: Scotland never divided in the way Ireland did. It did not divide politically: the native Scots who worked with the Irish settlers and their children in the labour movement and in the Labour party always [...] more »
Kerr funeral: A day of contrasts
I caught the last five minutes of Cardinal Brady’s address at Constable Ronan Kerr’s funeral mass on BBC Radio Ulster, you can hear the full address here. I have taken three excerpts and transcribed them, “There have been many defining moments in the ongoing journey towards reconciliation and peace but today as we honour the [...] more »
Killing unifies both Catholic and Protestant opinion
One of things you learn growing up in the Troubles is that you cannot negotiate with a man with gun or a block of Semtex (more commonly gelignite in the early days) in hand. One to one, he wins every time. As Brian argues, physical force is its own argument. Tragic though it is, the [...] more »
Blood and Oil – the charge of hypocrisy is too easy
So why not intervene in Bahrain, Yemen, even Saudi Arabia, the BBC among others asks? “Take it case by case,” is the holding reply. And then that little phrase “oil rich states” crops up. Is default cynicism the right reaction to the attacks on Libya or is it just impotent chatter? Is there no middle [...] more »
Here we go again!
So the old imperial powers Britain and France are the ones to take the lead in stopping Gadaffi. MOD sources are telling the BBC that they expect British forces to be in action “within days”. France has just forecast military action against Libya “within hours.” This may be a bluff -calling move to press Gadaffi [...] more »
US dithering over Libya suggests the moment of overstretch has arrived
Just to lift sights out of the island for a bit, a pre-Paddy’s Day reflection on America that has nothing to do with Ireland. This it will be noted, is in accord with Ireland’s new found modesty about its own importance across the pond. To Europeans, not to mention pro-democracy Arabs, Obama’s silence over Libya [...] more »
Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work
A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan [...] more »
Time for the Americans to retreat. But who will take their place?
It’s 2031. A new generation is at loggerheads in Ireland and the Caucasus are in flames. The Chinese President goes into a huddle with his advisers in the Forbidden City to thrash out which overseas investment to cut and which to boost in order to put pressure on one or other faction in the distant [...] more »
Egypt: Will it be the secret policeman’s fall?
President Hosni Mubarak’s shuffling of the Egyptian cabinet while Cairo burns, has all the appearance of rearranging deckchairs on a doomed Titanic. Yet, despite the protests, he may still survive. If he were to go, who would replace him? His son, the just as unpopular Gamal? The Muslim Brotherhood? Mohamed ElBaradei? Or Omar Suleiman, intelligence chief and [...] more »
The peace process not such a good model after all
Which reminds me…. Platform for Change’s driving force Robin Wilson has produced a corrective to the notion that the lessons of the NI conflict are easily exportable. Like myself, Robin is associated with the Constitution Unit. He introduced his new book in a CU blog which I here reproduce. The water crisis in Northern Ireland [...] more »
The prospects for lower CT – clarification urgently needed
On reflection, I agree with the comments that David Cameron did not necessarily go so far as the Bel Tel claim that he had “dropped a heavy hint that calls for a cut in Northern Ireland’s corporation tax would be kicked into the long grass as a result of the collapse of the Irish economy.” On [...] more »
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Books
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Hearing the Other Voice from the Grave: Why Should we Listen to David Ervine’s Stories?
Ed Moloney’s Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland has received considerable attention in the press and in the public realm since its publication earlier this year. Although the book relates the experiences of the Provisional IRA’s Brendan Hughes and the PUP/UVF’s David Ervine, much of the discussion has focused on Hughes’ stories [...] read our review » -
A New Vision for the Catholic Church – Book Review
The oft-quoted verse from the book of Proverbs, ‘where there is no vision, the people perish,’ (chapter 29, verse 18) opens a new book by Gerry O’Hanlon, A New Vision for the Catholic Church: A View from Ireland (Columba Press, 2011). That verse could be considered an apt summary of the current state of the [...] read our review »
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Of the Old North and other Vanished Kingdoms..
I’m currently trawling through Norman Davies’s fabulous new tome – “Vanished Kingdoms” – Five stars in the (London) Telegraph’s review from Ben Wilson: All the nations that have ever lived have left their footsteps in the sand,” writes Norman Davies. “The traces fade with every tide, the echoes grow faint, the images are fractured, the human [...] read our review »
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