Ms Cahill’s Appeal

Which philosopher made the comment that what does not kill us makes us stronger, is not as important as the sagacity it embodies. It is a wisdom very much on display in the resilient human spirit of Ms Cahill, the young Belfast woman, who stepped into the breach and virtually sacrificed her anonymity to ensure her rapist did not maintain his. She has emerged from her experience very much alive and stronger and despite strong resistance to her efforts is fast blazing a trail deep into the conspiracy of silence that for so long has allowed abusers...

An Open Appeal to All Republicans

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer Ms CahillAn Open Appeal to All RepublicansMs CahillOver the last number of weeks, there have been several allegations circulating – alleged to have been perpetrated by members of the Republican Movement.There has been mixed reaction to this within the Republican Community, but particularly those within the Provisional republican movement, and those within Sinn Fein Circles. This reaction ranges from outright disgust, horror, condemnation, to the very damaging “turn a blind eye and say...

Short Straw

It is not certain why the short straw ends up in the hands of Mary Lou McDonald on the issue of Sinn Fein’s handling of sex abuse cases carried out by party members or those with inextricable links to the party. On the three occasions that she has faced Suzanne Breen of the Sunday Tribune, the paper's Northern editor has mauled her. Were McDonald playing professional soccer her performances would see her on a free transfer to a team well down the lower divisions by now. In these public exchanges she is emulating her track record in elections –...

Disappeared

I didn’t go out to get this morning’s Sunday Tribune. My wife bought it in Belfast before it was scooped up by either the censors or the interested. So I will read it tonight when she returns or alternatively get it online. In parts of West Belfast it seems to have been going quickly enough. A journalist friend sent me a text message around 9am saying ‘Trib sold out.’ A friend in Louth also sent me a text saying Gerry Adams will be like Houdini if he manages to escape this time. The two texts combined suggest today’s story is another strong one....

Beadle’s About

Suzanne Breen and the Sunday Tribune are to be complimented for the sterling investigative journalism they are conducting. Tonight, as every Saturday night, is filled with a sense of expectation that tomorrow’s paper will be awash with new revelations. Belfast readers will have to be up earlier than usual. A former republican prisoner laughed as she told me Sinn Fein members were spotted buying the paper in bulk so that nobody else would get a chance to read them. If true, they must envy the Chinese for internet censorship. She read hers on-line....

Hannibal Lechter Cumann

Cartoon by Brian MórClick to enlarge...

Ardoyne Assault & Battery

Throughout the course of the Northern conflict Ardoyne was a reluctant host community to serious acts of political violence. It was so rich in source material that one of the outstanding early academic works providing serious insight into the mindset of the IRA and the relationship between it and the community centred on ‘the district’ as its inhabitants fondly term it. Frank Burton for some now incomprehensible reason called Ardoyne ‘Anro’ in his book The Politics of Legitimacy.The political violence that afflicted Ardoyne, and which is often...

Ballymurphy Rape

the man who raped me, was nearly 40 and a prominent west Belfast IRA member ... I was frightened because of his position in the IRA and I didn't want to cause pain to my family. When I didn't speak out the first time, it set a pattern which I now deeply regret, but I was only 16 then – Ms Cahill.It made for harrowing reading. A young woman from West Belfast narrated to the Sunday Tribune her account of the persistent sexual violence she was subjected to by a serial rapist who was also a member of the Provisional IRA and a former republican prisoner...

Pantomime Politics

Keeping the best wine to the last was not what Peter Robinson had in mind as the Christmas season drew to a close and the best political pantomime in years took to the stage, a little late but no less funny despite its lack of seasonality. Sinn Fein, in pursuit of parity of esteem, has not been willing to allow the DUP to have the silly season all to itself. It sent Mary Lou McDonald out to stumble and stagger along the airwaves so that it too could for once make a genuine claim that it is a co-equal in the ministry of something. The Ministry of...

Lying For the Big Lad

While we might all wait on the latest Iris Robinson joke doing the rounds, in the case of Sinn Fein what we wait on is the next lie. They are as funny as Iris jokes, being as stupidly constructed as they are instantly beyond belief. Gerry Adams didn’t know his brother was in Andersonstown Sinn Fein until two days ago. Just as he didn’t know Niall Connolly of the Colombia 3 was a party member until somebody in Cuba told him. We might have been born at night Gerry but it wasn’t last night. Last night, you see, was for something else, a death rather...

A Helping Hand

There are some terrible scenes appearing on our TV screens from Haiti where an earthquake, the worst to hit the country in over 200 years, has devastated the capital Port au Prince. It seems the poorest countries or the poorest regions within rich countries suffer most from earthquakes, once termed class quakes because of how focussed they were. We know of course that earth quakes as natural phenomena don’t discriminate in the sense of going after one person more than another. But the affluent build structures that make quakes less likely to inflict...

Futile Contempt

Despite repeated assurances by the Provisional IRA that it would never surrender, would never quit, would never give up one bullet or one ounce of explosive, would never be defeated, and that the armed struggle would continue so long as the goal of a united independent Ireland remain unrealised, it finally capitulated – Timothy ShanahanA week ago today in a gratuitous act of political violence a member of the British Police Service of Northern Ireland was targeted by Irish republicans. A booby trap device was attached to his car and he was critically...

The End of the Adams Era

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer Tommy McKearneyThe End of the Adams Era by Tommy McKearneyHowever reluctant he may be to go, Gerry Adams’s leadership of Sinn Fein is surely coming to an end. Having survived perilous times for over four decades, the Sinn Fein president is being brought down unexpectedly by a domestic issue not strictly of his own making. The Adams presidency will end under a cloud of disquiet generated by a failure to deal adequately with allegations made by his niece against her father. During the years...

Booted Out

Iris Robinson has been booted out of the DUP. The horny old hypocrite was given the chop by the party in extra swift time once her financial corruption was exposed through BBC Spotlight. No claims by the leadership that it had only discovered she was a member; straight out on her hoop. Outside of the puritanical religious circles she floats in her horniness will be forgiven if not forgotten. She will always be remembered and ridiculed, with no great degree of solemnity attached, as the Randy Mandy of Northern Irish political life. It is the hypocritical...

The Iris Virus

Just finished watching the Spotlight investigation into the financial and other affairs of Iris Robinson, presented by Darragh MacIntyre. As is well known by now Mrs Robinson had an 'inappropriate relationship' as her husband phrased it with Kirk McCambley, 40 years her junior. That is her business and what draws consenting adults together in a sexual tryst is not for the rest of us to be judgemental about. She may be an extortionist gangster but that is for another day. Her affair is just that, her own affair. Robinson is not the first MLA...

Stoned for God

Not that long ago I came across one of those pieces that almost prove the existence of the devil. Almost, but not quite. That is so because the presence of sheer malevolence in itself is never sufficient cause to offset the certain knowledge that the concept of a devil is every bit as ludicrous as its complementary concept of a god. A young woman of twenty living in Somalia was stoned to death by the merciful men of faith for the heinous crime of having an affair with a man almost ten years her senior. He received 100 lashes. Those of us not brimming...

Cynical Versus Clinical

Today, as last Sunday and the Sunday before that, Suzanne Breen, the Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune, has been clinically tearing to shreds the protective web of deceit that Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has been cynically weaving around himself since it was first suggested that he played a major role in promoting and covering for his brother Liam. Liam Adams has been at the centre of a public controversy over charges that he raped his daughter for a number of years, commencing when she was an infant. Gerry Adams has publicly stated...