Slugger O'Toole

Good old Newshound. John has Frank Millar’s analysis in the Irish Times from Saturday. He’s not buying the Gerry has sold out on the revolution line. Instead he believes the seemingly never-ending process will continue, and make the next tranche of negotiations much more complex and problematic for all parties. I have never been persuaded that Gerry Adams is lying to himself or to his own people. There have certainly been seismic shifts in republican attitudes and strategies. But there …

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Saturdays Newsletter carried a platform piece by Sir Reg Empey in which he outlined his concerns for the future. His concern over Dail speaking rights for Northern MP’s and MEP’s is shared it seems by Andrew McCann (praise indeed). The Party has since its release been explicit in its distrust of the IRA statement. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.

The Observer notes that low unemployment, high consumer spending and rising house prices have all brought a feeling of well being to the NI economy. However, in the FT, John Murray Brown looks at some of the a underlying structural problems that remain to be tackled: Pat McArdle, chief economist at Ulster Bank, now part of Royal Bank of Scotland, told this year’s annual CBI Northern Ireland lunch that the region looked set to underperform the UK as a whole …

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There are plenty of reports about the power of blogging and how the disaggreation of official newsflows can change the citizen’s relationship to information, and the state. John Lloyd looks at how some young British Muslims are being radicalised by website’s run from 1000’s of miles away – mostly without any knowledge of parents, family, neighbours or friends. Refering to some of the Yorkshire based London bombers: These young murderers were that new phenomenon, terrorist nerds. Night after night, they …

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AS we await the fourth (and final?) act of IRA decommissioning, Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey has threatened to introduce sanctions – his party will refuse to co-operate with North-South bodies set up under the Agreement – if Northern Irish politicians are granted speaking rights in the Irish parliament, the Dail. Sir Reg said: “As you may recall when the deal with Sinn Fein was not completed last December, I said this was outside the terms of the Good Friday …

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Morning Ireland had an excellent snippet on this morning with a detail examination of the party’s election prospects in the wake of the IRA’s suspension of it’s military campaign from Fionnan Sheehan of the Irish Examiner, and Cian McCormick talks to three TDs on how their parties might consider the possibility of Sinn Fein as a prospective coalition partner in future. Most are cagey, but given the IRA acquits itself well over time ahead there were no objections in priniciple. …

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Secretary of State for NI [and Wales], Peter Hain, has gone back to the future and published an updated Annex to the April 2003 Joint Declaration [pdf file] by the British and Irish Governments outlining the, ostensibly, two-year plan for normaisation of security – “Providing the enabling environment is established and maintained this programme will be achievable within two years though if the conditions are right to move more quickly in implementing elements of the plan, the Government will do …

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When Ed Moloney gave his initial reaction to the IRA statement, on RTE’s News at One he was met with a barrage of ad hominem attacks from SF ally Niall O’Dowd and, more particularly, former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds – listen here. Moloney expanded on the theme in an Irish Examiner article the following day, and the Sunday Herald carried another astute article by him yesterday “No matter what was in the IRA statement of this week, there can be little …

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One Tim Hames, writing in today’s London Times, looks ahead to a ‘win-win’ scenario for Sinn Fein in which it will (he believes) “decommission the SDLP even faster than General John de Chastelain and his team can dismantle the IRA’s arsenal”. But the rub, for those fundamentalists still within modern Sinn Fein may be the shift away from the headline terms of the war (severing the link Britain), to a new imperative under conditions of peace and democracy: The more …

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With another death attributed to Loyalist paramilitaries over the weekend, the end of the IRA campaign is throwing light on that (lesser known) side of the paramilitary equation. Henry McDonald’s excellent piece in the Observer magazine yesterday, details exactly how the shady world of Loyalist paramilitarism has moved from its heartland and into North Down’s ‘Gold Coast’ – with tragic results for at least one family. The Dorrians are Catholics living in a village that is largely Protestant, on the …

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It is being reported this afternoon that the GOC NI has announced that the Home Service Battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment are to be disbanded. Well done the DUP, clearly concessions to republicanism have stopped since they are providing leadership that’s working! UPDATE: Sir Reg Empey has issued his response. Predictably the DUP hides its embarrassment at further concessions to Republicans by trying to blame the UUP for this decision. This is lies. Let us not forget that for …

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Geoffrey Wheatcroft with a fierce critique of Tony Blair’s apparently contradictory stance on the Northern Irish peace process, and his more combative and aggressive approach to terrorism in Britain. He concludes: If there is no moral distinction between Adams and al-Zarqawi, and Adams’s objectives are certainly no more honourable or rational than al-Zarqawi’s, there is one objective difference: Adams is white. No doubt Tony Blair doesn’t consciously think in terms of ‘darkies’ or Mahometan savages, but the grim and very …

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THE man you love to hate, Kevin Myers, gives us either a cynical or uncharitable view (depending on your own political outlook) of the IRA statement. Meanwhile, Tommy McKearney believes the IRA statement throws down many challenges to republicanism. Republican critic Anthony McIntyre believes little has actually changed, except that the IRA may now be used to quell republican dissent. On the other side of the fence, Eric Waugh believes there are many implications for republicanism if it is to …

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You wait around for ages.. and then two turn up at the same time.. The slightly larger one – more here – found by the NASA-funded team snatched the headline from the slightly smaller one – which has a moon. Although they should probably start referring to orbiting bodies like this in a more accurate way.. Large Kuiper Belt Objects Found? or.. Large Trans-Neptunian Objects Found? Not quite as sexy a headline, is it? Now.. what’s the status of that …

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The Sentence Review Commissioners’ assessment of Secretary of State Peter Hain’s decision to revoke the early release licence of Sean Kelly.. and his sudden change of mind.. is unlikely to provide any surprises. Since Hain has now indicated that he will not make available to the Commissioners all the information on which he initially based his decision, they’ll have nothing on which to assess whether the conditions of the licence were breached. From the linked report – Having seen the …

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Kevin Toolis’s piece in January arguably kicked off an avalanche of criticism that set Sinn Fein on course to a nightmare PR period in the immediate aftermath of the Northern Bank robbery. Today he remembers the murder of Judge William Doyle after Mass at St. Brigid’s in Derryvolgie Avenue: ironically, the chosen time and place for several murders by both the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries down through the years. Toolis notes a lack of remorse in the IRA closing of …

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IRA is one of Technorati’s top tags at the moment. If you read down through them you’ll get a decent idea of how the world’s bloggers are interpreting the news. In Sri Lanka for example the Tamil Tigers are being urged to follow their example. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.

BIT of a surprise at a pub quiz question last week in the Errigle. One of the questions asked was about a local website getting listed in Esquire’s top Fifty Best things in the media. The answer was, of course, here first, but it appeared in the Irish News shortly afterwards, the day of the quiz no less. And there were quite a few Irish News staff in the bar that night. Fix! I’m off for a week. Will pop …

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Beth McGrath, daughter and sister to two victims of the Shankill Road bombing talks about how their loss has affected her and gives her views vis a vis the IRA statement. Although pragmatic and measured, her belief is that bitterness is not the answer and will not help move the peace process on nor ease her own personal grief. FRom someone who has experienced violence and loss so directlt these words are rather inspiring and brave. By Noreen Erskine BBC …

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Via thon Newsblog, a light diversion – “You are free to speculate, as you wish, about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of 2001“, Stanley Kubrick… or, for a less philosophical approach, the lego version is still online. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.