Conflict – Page 58 – Slugger O'Toole

Cover up acts require a lot of kicking and screaming!

Mick Fealty on March 23, 2005, 5:44 pm

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Susan McKay believes that Geraldine Finucane did not get the coverage she deserved last week because the media was absorbed in the McCartney’s meeting with George Bush. She quotes Judge Cory’s grandson, “who, when thwarted, would announce that he was going to his room and he was going to kick and scream and turn blue”. But she warns: The Belfast republicans who have taken to jeering at the McCartneys for turning to Bush as their champion should reflect on this. …

Killers have moral obligation to hand themselves in

Mick Fealty on March 23, 2005, 5:39 pm

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Former IRA prisoner explains what he sees as the symbolic significance of the IRA’s offer to kill three men in connection with the killing of Robert McCartney. He also beleives there is a moral obligation on those responsible to hand themselves up. 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 regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: …

Republicans will have to pay price for McCartney

Mick Fealty on March 23, 2005, 5:25 pm

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Damien Kiberd believes that it does the Republican movement no favours to get hung up on who is supporting the McCartney campaign. He believes that it created the situation, and it must deal with it or face the political consequences. It is inevitable that in the wake of such a ghastly slaying people would intervervene to take advantage of their plight to pursue Sinn Féin. That does not make the criticisms of Sinn Féin that they voice any less forceful. …

SDLP members helped McCartney sisters

Mick Fealty on March 23, 2005, 3:23 pm

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Strange hands afoot? It seems that some members of the SDLP did have a role in helping the McCartney sisters get to America. A travel agency which is part owned by the party’s deputy leader Alisdair McDonnell made the arrangements whilst another unnamed party member allegedly acted as an ad PR for them in Washington. Something that they may now consider not to have been a very smart move. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers …

IRA draws a line under McCartney murder

Mick Fealty on March 23, 2005, 2:48 pm

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That’s what commentator Malachi O’Doherty told Slugger the day its last statement was released. This latest statment seems to be of a piece with that analysis: The IRA has spelt out its position in relation to the killing of Robert McCartney. It was wrong, it was murder, it was a crime. But it was not carried out by the IRA, nor was it carried out on behalf of the IRA. The IRA moved quickly to deal with those involved. We …

IRA: Responsibility with British and Irish governments

Mick Fealty on March 23, 2005, 2:35 pm

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The full text of the IRA’s Easter statement.The following is the full text of the IRA Easter message as published in today’s issue of An Phoblacht: “On this, the 89th anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916, we remember the men and women of every generation who have given their lives in the struggle for Irish freedom. The leadership of Óglaigh na hÉireann extends solidarity to the families of our comrades who have fallen during this phase of the struggle. …

Sinn Féin prospers financially on volunteerism

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2005, 4:50 pm

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Most of the reporting on Sinn Fein’s finances can be safely filed under the category of smoke without fire. Jokes abound re the $26 million taken in the bank robbery. But proof is still unforthcoming as to whether or not the party’s sister organisation the IRA was even involved. However last week there was an interesting story in The Times, which shows the party dipping into the deficit that most of the Republic’s party’s have been subsisting on for some …

IRA have done all in their power to help?

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2005, 3:56 pm

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Ogra Shinn Fein have suggested that the sisters ought to be grateful that the IRA has done all in its power to help them find justice. The sisters were not impressed! 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 regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

Dispute over hunger strikes rumbles on…

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2005, 3:46 pm

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Liam Clarke at the weekend wrote an opinion piece which backs Richard O’Rawe’s claim that the H Block hunger strikes were sustained over an artifically long period to ensure the election of Owen Carron, Bobby Sands’ election agent. An Phoblacht this week provides some of its readers with the opportunity to refute O’Rawe’s allegation. Hat tip to Balrog. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider …

Sisters receive ‘death by knife’ threat

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2005, 3:18 pm

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The Daily Mirror reports that one of the McCartney sisters has already had a death threat.According to Angelique Christafis: The handwritten letter which claimed to be from the IRA and Sinn Féin, told the sisters: “You will all die in time,” adding they were on a hit list and would not be shot but knifed. Enclosed with the letter was a photograph of the sisters, which had been smeared with excrement. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has …

See no, hear no, speak no…

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2005, 3:00 pm

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Party election candidates Cora Groogan and Deirdre Hargey, along with former Belfast councillor Sean Hayes and one other unidentified witness have given statements to the Police Ombudsman. All are understood to have stated that they “saw no fighting in the bar, with sources confirming they have little evidential value to the police investigation”. 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 regular …

Sinn Fein would win according to UTV poll

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2005, 2:20 pm

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At least that’s the way it is at the moment. This UTV online poll is nothing more than random straws in the wind, but it’s currently putting Sinn Fein on 56% and a McCartney sister on 37%. For once on the UTV site, the comments are worth perusing to pick up to the ambivilance felt by some nationalists over the apparent politicisation of the McCartney campaign. Mind you, the previous poll reckoned Ireland was going to stroll the Six Nations! …

Drop in demand for death threat fund

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2005, 11:17 pm

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Amid all of the concern over the McCartney killing there are odd reminders that in some respects the disturbed conditions in which people have become accustomed to living with are beginning to settle. At least that’s how Unionist MLA Fred Cobain reads the drop in demand on emergency funding from people needing to leave their homes at a moment’s notice – a particularly widespread phenomenon throughout post Agreement Northern Ireland. Just under £7 million was spent last year by the …

NI Catholics still need the IRA

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2005, 10:41 pm

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Not all opinion overseas sees things in such black and white terms. CTV in Canada had their correspondent in Belfast, who picked up some dissenting voices from mainstream dissatisfaction with the IRA. 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 regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

King: McCartney case has potential to transform NI

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2005, 10:31 pm

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The Telegraph of Calcutta reckons that Sinn Fein has moved from the status of rebels to that of robbers. Time magazine magazine notes how the public stature of the IRA has fallen in the US: Americans applauded their stand against the I.R.A., whose stature at home and abroad has plummeted in the face of the McCartneys’ campaign to have Robert’s killers arrested. By breaking the code of silence in Northern Ireland that has long surrounded crimes committed by I.R.A. members, …

Unbearable closeness of politics and crime?

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2005, 1:55 pm

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Jim Cusack has an interesting piece on the juxtaposition of the modern marketing strategies behind the phenomenal electoral success of Sinn Fein and what he sees as its close reliance on various illegal activities of the IRA. Much of his primary material appears comes from a paper by Sean McGough of the University of Birmingham – Selling Sinn Fein: the political marketing of a party in Conflict Resolution: “Sinn Fein appears to have grasped the sales-oriented concept and utilised marketing …

Demand for justice has changed Northern Ireland

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2005, 1:41 pm

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An interesting opinion piece by Sunday Telegraph staffer Jenny McCartney (she’s the daughter of a prominent Unionist politician, and no relation of the dead man’s family), in which she predicts that the McCartney sisters are in for a rough ride on their return to Belfast. She believes “they will be subjected to the full force of Sinn Fein’s PR machine, which will attempt to smear them and their motivations”. She concludes by recalling another victim of apparently random IRA violence: …

Britain braces itself for fresh Republican campaign?

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2005, 1:27 pm

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Following up on a front page story in the Observer yesterday, the Guardian has discovered that MI5 has raised the threat of violence from Republican paramilitary groups to “substantial” – one category below the perceived threat from Islamist groups linked to, or inspired by, al-Qaida. 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 regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK …

Magennis witness changed her story?

Mick Fealty on March 20, 2005, 5:55 pm

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Angelique Christafis has been taking stock of how the climate in Belfast has changed since the sisters went to Washington to take their case to a wider audience. There is some anger from others who have lost loved ones that they should be getting such attention. But she also talks to a taxi driver who picked up one of the Sinn Fein candidates who’d previously claimed she saw nothing in Magennis’s Bar that night who claims: “She told me Magennis’s …

The mess the IRA is in…

Mick Fealty on March 19, 2005, 11:30 pm

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The Economist is no passive cheerleader for the Bush White House, but it’s North American column – Lexington warns that “Gerry Adams should not underestimate the mess the IRA is in“: The White House has stopped short of knee-capping Mr Adams. It carefully failed to invite Northern Irish politicians of all stripes to its lunch, not just Mr Adams. It also arranged a meeting between Mr Adams and America’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss. If Mr Adams can …