Conflict – Page 13 – Slugger O'Toole

Brian Cowen: “let’s go on a journey and forget about the destination”

Pete Baker on April 21, 2010, 11:49 am

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As the Irish Times’ Deaglán de Bréadún reports, Taoiseach Brian Cowen, picking up from where Bertie Ahern left off, has been telling the Journal of Cross-Border Studies in Ireland that the political journey is what is important, not the destination. And he’s not wrong. From the Irish Times article “The ultimate destination of any political project is a matter of time working itself out. Therefore the destination is not the thing to be talking about. That will be for other people …

“The device is understood to have consisted of a number of containers filled with flammable liquid”

Pete Baker on April 14, 2010, 3:18 am

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A day after the attack on the site of MI5’s regional headquarters in Holywood, County Down, a security alert in Newtownhamilton, County Armagh, which began when a Peugeot car was abandoned at the gates of the police station at 2am last night, has ended with the British army defusing a viable device. The Army has defused a bomb in a car abandoned outside the police station in Newtownhamilton in County Armagh. The device is understood to have consisted of a …

“and for a time remained faithful to the IRA leadership and Sinn Fein.”

Pete Baker on April 5, 2010, 5:33 am

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If the Sunday Times article is accurate, why has the Northern Ireland Secretary of State not revoked Bernard McGinn’s early release licence? Fear of a legal challenge? Although some of the original convictions were successfully appealed on the basis that he was not properly cautioned, a twenty year sentence imposed in 1999 remains – despite only 16 months having been served. From the Sunday Times report Bernard McGinn, 52, a master bomber and gunman from Co Monaghan, is among a …

Remember 1641…

Belfast Gonzo on April 3, 2010, 2:23 am

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HISTORY buffs should take a look at the digitised 1641 Rebellion testimonies; the Ulster depositions are the first online. According to the site, these controversial documents, rarely seen over the centuries are witness testimonies mainly by Protestants, but also by some Catholics, from all social backgrounds, concerning their experiences of the 1641 Irish rebellion. The testimonies document the loss of goods, military activity, and the alleged crimes committed by the Irish insurgents, including assault, stripping, imprisonment and murder. This body …

David Ervine: “It was anti the manipulation and false fellowship that he believed religion brought”

Mick Fealty on April 1, 2010, 4:33 pm

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We’ll come back to the book Voices from the Grave quite a bit in the next few weeks I suspect, since several of our bloggers are devouring it as we ‘speak’… Just flicking past the Brendan Hughes segment, David Ervine talks about his upbringing and in particular looks his relationship to the ‘other’ in the ‘pre Troubles’ world of the 1960s… I don’t know that you were ever frightened of the Catholic you knew; you were frightened of the Catholic …

Jean McConville’s daughter to take a civil case against Adams…

Mick Fealty on March 29, 2010, 4:24 pm

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Gerry Moriarty reports the words of Helen McKendry in the wake of the release of Brendan Hughes’s words from the Boston College archive: “I am now going to take a civil case against Gerry Adams. We are seeking legal advice on how to move forward… I don’t want money from Adams, I want him to admit that he ordered my mother’s murder, I just want him to tell the truth”… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written …

Chronology of a FOI request into Rathin ferry contract…

Mick Fealty on March 26, 2010, 5:58 pm

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If want to do any digging into government, then the whatdotheyknow.com site is worth a visit before making any requests just to see what’s already been asked for and what’s been rejected, and what’s overdue… Nevin’s been there and dumped an interesting correspondence with the Office of Government Commerce over the Rathlin ferry contract… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a …

Two Irish books shortlisted for the Orwell Prize

Mick Fealty on March 26, 2010, 3:11 pm

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No Irish bloggers in this year’s Orwell Prize long listing (Chekov made it last year), but two writers make it for their non fiction work: Fintan O’Toole forShip of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger and Ruth Dudley Edwards for her magnum opus on the experience of the relatives of the Omagh bomb victim in their ten year plus quest for justice Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice… Both feature in various of …

Beyond the Grave: Past witnesses to NI’s paramilitary struggles…

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2010, 5:18 pm

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When he was on the Boston College trip with us, Sam McBride managed to take a few minutes out to interview Tom Hachey, who heads up the Irish Institute there. Today the Newsletter leads with a fascinating story on the College archive they have accumulated of interviews with loyalist and republican paramilitaries over the last nine years. Without going into detail, Haschey tells McBride that “Some of the speculation [on the forthcoming Voices from the Grave from Ed Moloney] is …

“reduce the length of time for which the Secretary of State has to be in possession of the report”

Pete Baker on March 18, 2010, 10:17 pm

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According to a BBC report there’s been a slight change of plan in relation to the publication of the “pointless” Saville Inquiry’s report. Rather than the lawyers checking “for issues of national security and right to life” after the report is handed to the UK government, they’ll do that before the official hand-over. From the BBC report The report will now remain with Lord Saville until all the issues surrounding its publication have been resolved, which is expected to take …

On the folly of ‘separate, but equal..’

Mick Fealty on March 15, 2010, 2:36 pm

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Kevin Cullen has a great piece on the slowly corrosive character of the ‘separate but equal’ principle in yesterday’s Boston Globe. …why is there still an irredentist rump, still carrying on as if it’s 1972, reducing a complex dispute over power and equality and national allegiance to something as naively simplistic as Brits Out? It could be the men who murdered Kieran Doherty look around and see that the supposedly new Northern Ireland looks suspiciously like the old one. It …

The new threat of the post ceasefire dissident Republicans

Eamonn Mallie on March 10, 2010, 4:37 pm

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A year on from the killing of Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar shot at Massereene army base in Antrim there is now incontrovertible evidence that dissident republicans have the capacity to do immense damage into the future. Two developments in dissident republican engineering have forced the police to reassess their approach. The bomb at Newry courthouse was the first time since Omagh on August 15 1998 that a so called improvised explosive device actually detonated. And the second development …

The new threat of the post ceasefire dissident Republicans…

Mick Fealty on March 10, 2010, 3:37 pm

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A year on from the killing of Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar shot at Massereene army base in Antrim there is now incontrovertible evidence that dissident republicans have the capacity to do immense damage into the future. Two developments in dissident republican engineering have forced the police to reassess their approach. The bomb at Newry courthouse was the first time since Omagh on August 15 1998 that a so called improvised explosive device actually detonated. And the second development …

“When I say I aspire for Timor-Leste to be like Singapore or Dubai…”

Pete Baker on March 9, 2010, 8:14 pm

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The President of East Timor Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta, has been forthright in his views of his own country’s justice truth and reconciliation process – and revelatory about past attempts at international collaboration between paramilitary groups. In Dublin on an official state visit to Ireland, he’s been offering some lessons for those keen to export The Process™ abroad. From the Irish Times report “It is not like academics or some western donors or the UN who think that if you finance …

“It is not the voices of contented old soldiers that the dissidents need to hear now.”

Pete Baker on February 27, 2010, 11:01 pm

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It’s a point he’s made before. And, for the comprehensively challenged, this time Malachi O’Doherty spells it out in the Belfast Telegraph. Mis-placed pride and the dirty tackling of dissenting voices will not discourage others from pursuing that “tragic history”. From the Belfast Telegraph article Imagine the impact Gerry Adams might have had on Channel Four if he had delivered the insights the producers no doubt expected of him when he talked about Jesus. He might have said he knows …

So what’s the deal with the party then Peter?

Mick Fealty on February 25, 2010, 3:22 am

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The trouble with these deals that we have not yet seen, nor has the likely putative Justice Minister is that we don’t know what they contain. But as raised here a few weeks ago, we still don’t know what might remotely trigger Robinson’s resignation. Lord Ken Magennis in last night’s Tele: Reports have suggested that the price extracted for their support for Hillsborough is a post-dated letter of resignation from the First Minister, to be cashed-in if the DUP decides …

“These Holy Warriors, reportedly operating in the name of Jesus…”

Mick Fealty on February 24, 2010, 4:41 pm

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Who says Muslims don’t do irony? A rather pithy post from MPAC on the bomb left by ‘Catholic terrorists’ in Newry… It’s a slightly round peg jammed in a square hole, but the line “…representative of the beliefs of many millions of Catholics around the world” gives a sense of some frustration about the reporting of “Islamist terrorism” as though it and the whole religion was coterminous. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the …

“Police were evacuating the area when the bomb went off.”

Pete Baker on February 23, 2010, 5:38 am

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Few details so far, but the BBC are reporting that a car bomb has exploded near Newry courthouse. BBC Ireland Correspondent Mark Simpson said it appeared to have been a car bomb which “seems to have been planted by dissident republicans”. “What the IRA used to do quite frequently was target the courthouse – that is what dissident republicans are now doing,” he added. Also from the BBC report A car was abandoned close to the gates of the courthouse …

“blatant attempt to mislead”

Pete Baker on February 18, 2010, 2:04 am

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Still fighting extradition proceedings on charges of glorifying terrorism in Spain, lawyers for convicted ETA killer José Ignacio (Iñaki) de Juana Chaos have been back in court in Belfast. This time they were losing a legal battle for a licence for de Juana Chaos to work as a taxi driver for the West Belfast Taxi Association. From the BBC report His barrister told the court Mr de Juana Chaos, 54, should be treated as an exception to the rule where …

The first item on the agenda: the split

Jason Walsh on February 7, 2010, 2:34 am

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As far as alternative histories go, Philip K. Dick’s ‘The Man in the High Castle’ is my favourite, but how about an alternative history of the IRA? Specifically, if what the late Tómas Mac Giolla claimed about the 1969 split is true, would the conflict have ended a lot earlier – 1970s? 1980s? – without the intervention of just one man? 1969 and all that An interview published today lays the blame for the IRA split of 1969 at the …