Interview with Dixie Elliott

Peace Processing the Memory of the Conflict

No Choice But to Take It

Radio Free Éireann Interview with Richard O'Rawe

Take It Down From the Mast

A bit of Stick had at the recent Anti-Internment March in Belfast

Wiki-Dump

All correspondence in relation to Allison Morris' and Ciaran Barnes' complaints and the NUJ's handling of the issue.

True to Their Words

Disproportionate Coverage of NUJ case in the Irish News

What Price Justice?

For Irish News reporter Allison Morris, Celtic v Cliftonville in Glasgow

The Weird World

Journalists and Online Shenanigans: Double Standards Exposed

Dolours Price Archive

"I look forward to the freedom to lay bare my experiences unfettered by codes now redundant."

Irish Republican Movement Collection

Annoucing the Irish Republican Movement Collection online archive at IUPUI

The Belfast Project and Boston College

The Belfast Project and the Boston College Subpoena Case: The following paper was given at the Oral History Network of Ireland (OHNI) Second Annual Conference in Ennis, Co Clare on Saturday the 29th September 2012

Challenge and Change

Former hunger striker Gerard Hodgkins delivered the 2013 annual Brendan Hughes Memorial Lecture

Brendan Hughes: A Life in Themes

There is little to be gained in going from an A to Z chronological tour of the life of Brendan Hughes. The knowledge is out there. Instead a number of themes will covey to those who are interested what was the essence of the man.

55 HOURS

Day-by-day account of events of the 1981 Hunger Strike. A series in four parts:
July 5July 6July 7July 8

The Bell and the Blanket

Journals of Irish Republican Dissent: A study of the Bell and Blanket magazines by writers Niall Carson and Paddy Hoey

Thursday, September 30, 2010

PATBIC




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Immediate Action required in the Gerry McGeough Vincent MacAnespie Trial

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a piece by guest writer Helen McClafferty on the need for immediate action in the case of Gerry McGeough and his co-accused, Vincent MacAnespie.

I am being appreciatively inundated with calls and emails from various people around the world, especially since Gerry McGeough’s second heart attack, asking “what can we do to help support Gerry and Vincent at this time”?

In the wake of these calls and emails, I ask you to take the following action:

1) Write letters to your local newspaper (Letters To The Editor)…

objecting to the fact that McGeough and McAnespie have been politically singled out to stand trial on” alleged charges dating back 30 years”, etc., etc., etc. You can go to the “freegerry.com web site for updated information on the case/trail.


2) FILL THE COURT ROOM WITH SUPPORTERS

Gerry McGeough is due back in court in approximately six weeks providing he is medically sound to do so.


3) DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE THE COURT AS LONG AS THE TRIAL LASTS…

Carry posters that say “FREE GERRY MCGEOUGH AND VINCENT MCANESPIE”. “BRITISH GOVERNMENT RENEGES ON GOOD FRIDAY AGREEMENT”. “STOP THE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED PERSECUTION OF THESE TWO MEN”.


4) CONTACT YOUR LOCAL SWEDISH EMBASSY-RE: GERRY MCGEOUGH…

Insist that the Swedish government do two things: 1) make a statement denouncing the use of their asylum papers as evidence in any court against anybody and 2) to swiftly take the required action to have those papers immediately returned to their rightful owner, the Swedish government and don’t allow any Swedish government employee to testify in a Diplock court.


5) CALL, EMAIL, FAX YOUR LOCAL SINN FEIN …

Ask them…” what have they been doing to help McGeough and McAnespie since their arrest March 2007”? The one and only comment on their arrest was reported in An Phoblacht.com on March 8, 2007 where MP Michele Gildernew and TD Caoimhghin O Caolain “branded the arrest of Assembly election candidate Gerry McGeough as outrageous”. However, since then, there has been absolutely no further condemnation of their arrest and 3 ½ year persecution by the Crown. The big question here is WHY hasn’t Sinn Fein stepped up to the plate on behalf of McGeough and McAnespie?

Quick Update

Gerry's trial is set to resume on October 11th. No apparent consideration has been given to his current health and well-being.

Originally his trial was set to resume approximately six weeks after his second heart attack, but it is obvious now they want the trial done and over with before any demonstrations and growing unrest among concerned republicans and other supporters of Gerry can get underway.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Behead Jay Leno

Death to the infidel who would pour scorn and insult on the nation’s great leader. Jay Leno is a heretic who has insulted the one true prophet of modern Ireland, our glorious Taoiseach. And for that the penalty is something not very nice, even if BIFFO is something of a false profit making all sorts of wrong predictions about an end to the country’s economic woes. Taking the piss out of him hardly ranks therefore on the same level as taking it out of other prophets. Take it out of them and you will not live to regret it.

So what was it that Jay Leno actually did? Not a lot when you think of it. Indulged in a bit of light hearted entertainment at Brian Cowen’s expense. What odds? Virtually the whole country was doing that after his recent Good Morning Ireland performance so Leno just helped internationalise things in a humorous sort of way. The morning after the night before interview had already made its way to the international press and its face was much sterner than Leno’s.

Any one familiar with the Jay Leno Tonight show will know he is renowned for his sketches that invite ridicule. He opens his show by displaying a photo and asking the audience what the person caught on camera does for a living. On this occasion he gave them three possibilities to choose from: bartender, politician or comic. When Leno announced that the guy having a good time in the picture was a politician, not just any old politician but ‘Brian Cowen, Prime Minister of Ireland’ the studio audience fell about itself laughing. Leno could just as easily have said Boris Cowen and few would have noticed. Then just to spice things up a bit the Tonight host said ‘oh God it’s nice to know we are not the only country with drunken morons, isn’t it?’ True enough. They overpopulate the world. In BIFFO’s defence it has to be said that if he is a drunken moron he is not alone amongst Irish politicians. First among equals maybe but definitely not on his Jack Daniels.

Almost as many people are estimated to have viewed Leno’s Tonight show as live in Ireland. No small number to be mocked and scorned in front of. Needless to say the patriots of Ireland – who only last week were all gleeful at BIFFO’s misfortune - began to complain to RTE’s Liveline, insisting on an apology from the NBC network which features Leno’s show. Cowen, however, even if he was smarting refrained from getting involved. He might even have decided to taken it on the chin and passed it off as a comedy skit, something that goes with the turf. In any event NBC don’t look like they are for folding and giving into the demands of patriotic Ireland (probably none other than the stalwarts of local Fianna Fail cumainn). Good for NBC and anybody else who stands up against the humour haters and in defence of the profane, the sacrilegious and the right to mock. There are enough maniacs running around in religious circles screaming ‘blasphemy’ at whatever it is annoys their fancy without the creation of secular saints, to whose defence will spring every charlatan and their axe.

As for BIFFO, have as many as you like Brian. You are just toasting the national Zeitgeist all the way down.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Biffo Redux




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Sunday, September 26, 2010

A brief Interview with Martin Galvin, Esq: What It Means For Gerry McGeough If Pronounced Guilty

Tonight’s Pensive Quill features an interview with Martin Galvin. It was carried out by guest writer Helen McClafferty.

There is a great deal of speculation and assumptions floating around out there in cyber space regarding what type of sentence Gerry McGeough is facing. I asked Martin Galvin, a prominent New York attorney helping out on Gerry's case, to explain what the possibility is if pronounced guilty.
Martin explained that:

Under the terms of the deal, if pronounced guilty, Gerry McGeough would first be sentenced to a lengthy jail term. While he would be eligible for early release, after 2 years, (even for someone like Gerry who endured a notorious German prison and 3 years in a federal penitentiary) this is not a minor thing for a man in his 50s with a bad heart serving time in the conditions at Maghaberry with young children.

Martin went on to say that:

The problem with this type of sentence is the fact it is "a release on license or parole", which can be revoked at any time for little or no reason other than the constabulary claims to have intelligence information that you are associating with people they dislike. (eg Terry McCafferty). McCafferty was jailed a few weeks after his release. It was claimed there was intelligence information that he was associating with dissident Republicans. After 15 months it was admitted that there had been no intelligence information against him. This could mean a quick return to Maghaberry prison under the original sentence.

For those of you not familiar with the Terry McCafferty case, the following was taken from the Irish News, Monday, March 29, 2010. The paper reported:

"Alleged Real IRA leader” Terry McCafferty was released from Maghaberry Prison after the Sentence Review Commissions ruled his detention illegal on the basis that the case against him was unreliable. McCafferty had been released on licence in November 2008, half-way through a 12-year sentence for possession of explosives, but, as noted at the time, in December 2008 the Secretary of State revoked his parole licence and he was re-arrested at Belfast International Airport. Since then there has been a legal battle over the case, which included a December 2009 Court of Appeal ruling rejecting a legal challenge to the decision to revoke McCafferty’s licence.
As part of that legal battle the attorney general appointed a special advocate to represent McCafferty at hearings which he was not allowed to attend because of sensitive intelligence material presented to the commission by security agencies. The case took a dramatic turn earlier this month when the special advocate announced he was withdrawing from the case, claiming he was not being allowed to properly represent the alleged dissident. However, McCafferty’s lawyer Paul Pierce was last night informed that the sentence review commission had recommended the prisoner’s immediate release. Welcoming the move, Mr. Pierce said: “My client has been held in prison without any valid evidence for the last 15 months. He will be considering a civil action against the secretary of state for this illegal detention.”


I hope the above information helps people to have a better understanding of exactly how serious the consequences are facing Gerry at this time.

I cannot impress enough upon republicans that if Gerry is convicted, not only will it serve to prove the British government did not hold up their end of the Good Friday Agreement, but it will now set a precedent, going forward, that all republicans will now be in jeopardy if the RUC/PSNI decide you are next.

For more legal information on Gerry's case, you can download and listen to Martin Galvin on WBAI's Radio Free Eireann, by using this link and scrolling down to Saturday, September 18, 2010 show 1:00pm: http://archives.wbai.org

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Religious Opinion Against Rights

David Quinn frequently takes up the sceptre on behalf of the Catholic Church and the religion of Catholicism. I have often read him but have always found his reason wanting. He tends to rely on argument by assertion and presupposes a privileged position as of right for his religious opinion. I also listened to him once in a debate with Richard Dawkins at the end of which Dawkins must have felt like the cat that got the cream.

His column in last Friday’s Irish Independent devoted itself to the visit of the Catholic pope Joseph Ratzinger to Britain. He at first claimed the Vatican chief had conquered, only to pull back a sentence or two later to the more modest position that:

if he didn't exactly conquer, he certainly persuaded many people that there is a lot more to Joseph Ratzinger than the caricature of him many might lead us to believe.

This is in spite of reduced numbers having turned up to greet the pope, compared with the 1982 papal visit, a decrease perhaps better explained in terms of a greater disinterest in religion than by Quinn’s take that smaller numbers were down to security and financial considerations.

Nor is it accurate to claim that ‘the Pope's visit to Britain last weekend was vastly more successful than almost anyone anticipated’. Quinn could have said with greater plausibility that the crowd that turned up to protest the visit ‘brought ten times as many people as expected to a rally opposite Downing Street.’ But in a world as imaginary as the god of David Quinn, the Christian columnist saw critics of the papal visit ‘reduced to petty and impotent fury.’ Wish, father to the thought.

The real success of Ratzinger’s visit lay in the fact that it avoided any major controversy. He was not pelted with eggs and there were no priests caught on camera flashing as the popemobile zoomed past them.

What struck me about Quinn’s piece was that his real concern is that the challenge to the power of religion is steadily curbing its ability to restrict the rights of others. Quinn masks this as an attack on Christian rights:

if the forced closure of Catholic adoption agencies in the UK and elsewhere because they want children to be adopted by married, opposite-sex couples isn't an example of a direct attack on the rights of religious organisations, then nothing is.

But the rights he cites as being violated are precisely in those areas where religion seeks to discriminate against others on the grounds of religious opinion. Clearly the grounds for discriminating against people in same sex relationships are based on a religious opinion. Religious belief should not be allowed to function in that capacity any more than sporting belief.

When Quinn supports Ratzinger’s description of secular tolerance as the ‘dictatorship of relativism’ he seeks to subvert what is a bulwark against the dictatorship of Catholicism.

As is evident from the position of Quinn this Catholic dictatorship would seek to deny abortion to US and Swedish women on the basis of the religious opinion of the doctor. Any legal rights the women have would be rendered null and void by religious opinion. Irish couples who choose not to get married would be denied infertility treatment because the religious opinion of the fertility doctor would override their right. Women in general would have no right to the morning after pill if some chemist decided on the grounds of his religious opinion that they should not get it. Again legal rights being subverted by religious opinion. In all these cases Quinn values his opinion over the rights of others.

On the same dubious grounds Quinn also complained that the Government and opposition parties refused to add a conscience clause to the Civil Partnership Bill:

a true example of the "dictatorship of relativism" which insists that no distinction can be made between one "lifestyle choice" and another, and that those who make such distinctions must be penalised.

Distinctions can always be made between lifestyles. But Quinn wants some lifestyles not just to be desisted from – a matter of personal choice - but to be actively penalised by intrusive religion. It is society’s prerogative, not the church’s, to set its own standards. Quinn rejects this. He is intolerant of Minister Dermot Ahern’s advice to politicians not to let religion "cloud" their judgment and Minister John Gormley’s instruction to bishops to "stick to the spiritual needs of their flock", rather than "intrude" on ‘matters of State.’

In a bid to present religious believers as victims Quinn hits out at ‘aggressive secularism.’ What he is really doing is presenting in a harsh light assertive secularism which is nothing other that the assertion that people have rights that cannot be eroded by the religious opinion of others. The ‘rights’ of religion is nothing other than an attempt to discriminate against those religion does not approve of.

Because of the concern with safeguarding rights against religious opinion Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, made the point at the rally where, according to Quinn, only the petty, impotent and furious turned up: ‘we are no longer listening to religious leaders - we get our morality from other places.’

It is as well we do otherwise we would believe raping children sits on the same moral plateau as ordaining women priests and worthy of the same sanction.



Friday, September 24, 2010

da Jersey Shore




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Thursday, September 23, 2010

The Culture of Getting Away With it

The first child sex scandal in the Catholic Church took place in AD153, long before there was a "gay culture" or Jewish journalists for bishops to blame it on. By the 1960s, the problem had become so dire that a cleric responsible for the care of "erring" priests wrote to the Vatican suggesting that it acquire a Caribbean island to put them on - Terry Eagleton

Is the pope merely the victim of what one cardinal dismisses as ‘the petty gossip of dominant opinion’ or has he a genuine case to answer in terms of how he handled child sex abuse cases? Last week’s Panorama team cast a critical eye over Joseph Ratzinger, in his role as Archbishop of Munich and, before he became pope, his time as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005. In darker ages it was known as the Inquisition. The function of that notorious institution was doctrinal enforcer. It was in his role as Prefect over this body that Ratzinger wielded enormous power as he hunted down dissidents and silenced opposition. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was in effect the Vatican political police.

Panorama first looked as the case of Stephen Kiesle, a 1970s Californian priest who was convicted for molesting two boys. For A full nine years he was retained in Holy Orders rather than given his marching orders. For the last five of those years the case was being mulled over by the CDF.

Tom Doyle, a priest and church lawyer who is highly critical of the Church’s handling of the abuse issue, told Panorama that the prolonged delay was a result of a ruling by Pope John Paul II that no priest younger than 40 should be allowed to leave the priesthood. ‘I think they saw it that if we made it difficult to impossible to get out of the priesthood then men will stay in.’ It echoes the old IRA line from the James Cagney film Shake Hands With The Devil – ‘once in never out.’ Doyle was scathing in his observation that the attitude of the church hierarchy was that it was better to hold on to a child abusing priest than have one less priest at headcount.

Next, Panorama looked at a case from Tucson in the US state of Arizona. The case of Father Michael Teta came before Ratzinger's office in 1997. Ratzinger had been told by Bishop Manuel Moreno that in his relationships with men and boys Teta displayed a ‘satanic’ character. For seven and a half years angels standing on the head of a pin were looked at from every conceivable angle before this least angelic of characters was expelled. This prompted the acerbic comment fom Lynne Cadiga, the lawyer for one of Teta’s victim, that ‘there’s no doubt that Ratzinger delayed the defrocking process of priests who were deemed ‘satanic by their own bishop.’

Again, it fell to Tom Doyle, the church lawyer, to give a some frank appreciation:

There is no credible answer as to why that case sat there for seven-and-a-half years. I've never in my career as a canonist heard of a case taking that long on appeal - I never have.

Panorama also showed that suspicion of Ratzinger’s mismanagement of child abuse cases reached back into the 1970s. While archbishop of Munich he chaired the meeting examining the case of Peter Hullermann, another erring priest. The meeting recommended that the abuser be given psychotherapy. Werner Huth, the psychiatrist who examined him felt the risk of re-offending to be so high that he informed the bishops of his findings. His advice was ignored. After that Hullermann was brought back into the priesthood, where he took off once more on the trail of abuse until 1986 when he was convicted in a German court of sexually abusing children. At no point had the German police been informed by the Church that the priest posed a danger to children.

Austen Ivereigh of the lay group Catholic Voices sprang to the defence of Ratzinger:

He sat down in 2001 and said I want all these cases on my desk. They began to arrive, 3,000 cases over 10 years. And he spoke later, at the time of his election as Pope, of the 'filth' in the church. I think he, more than anybody in Rome, really got it.

What Ivereigh really should have said was that more than anybody in Rome Ratzinger really got away with it.

The culture of getting away with it has a knock on, filter down effect which has enormous consequences. As Terry Eagleton put it so well:

One blindingly simple reason for the huge amount of child abuse in the Catholic church (on one estimate, up to 9% of clerics are implicated) is that the perpetrators know they will almost certainly get away with it.

How they know they can get away with rape but not with questioning papal infallibility is the terminus any investigation will ultimately arrive at, despite the attempts by the Vatican to divert it into a cul de sac where it can be silently suffocated.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Boolavogue




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

What The Pope Knew

Well may the pope defy "the petty gossip of dominant opinion". But the Holy See can no longer ignore international law, which now counts the widespread or systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity. The anomalous claim of the Vatican to be a state – and of the pope to be a head of state and hence immune from legal action – cannot stand up to scrutiny – Geoffrey Robertson.

Panorama is well identified in the public mind as a standard bearer of British investigative journalism. Serviced by the front line veteran of many hotspots across the globe, Fergal Keane, it clearly has the wherewithal to pull away the facades behind which good documentaries can be put together. So I was hardly reluctant to sit down last week and watch a Panorama investigation into clerical child abuse fronted by this most competent of Irish journalists, titled What The Pope Knew. At the end I was not so sure it had been as decisive or as conclusive as it could have been. Perhaps the clinching evidence, which is too effervescent not to exist, remained inaccessible to Keane and his BBC colleagues, or could not be crystallised sufficiently to get past the corporation’s libel lawyers.

Certainly Panorama fell short of the expectation of the denizens on Richard Dawkins’ website where some hoped the pope would emerge no different from Gary Glitter. Dawkins alone seemed to be the dissenting voice against his followers, in expressing satisfaction at what he had watched.

Whatever about the debate on its merits, without the booster of sensationalism the documentary did enough to raise awkward questions for Joseph Ratzinger, the current boss of world Catholicism, in relation to how he, as a powerful figure at the centre of the Vatican power grid since 1981, handled child abuse cases stretching back over the decades. As Geoffrey Robertson, who has just completed a book on the role of Ratzinger, makes clear, during the time when the German cleric was in charge of enforcing discipline within the Church:

tens of thousands of children were bewitched, buggered and bewildered by Catholic priests whilst attention was fixated on 'evil' homosexuals, sinful divorcees, deviate liberation theologians, planners of families and wearers of condoms.

And he is the person who insists on the ‘corrective supplied by religion.’ Why should society allow him or his followers any input into shaping its ethical standards? On the contrary it should be protecting citizens from him and his ideas.

Panorama went live a few days before Ratzinger landed in Scotland to begin the opening leg of his British tour, the first papal visit in 28 years. There will be a view that it was mischievously timed to cause maximum discomfort to the Vatican. The counter opinion is that the iron was hot so it was time to strike and draw major attention to what are serious issues which any democratic society would want to see addressed sooner rather than later.

Panorama in its examination of three separate sample cases of serious child abuse by clerics in both the US and Germany has shown that no satisfactory explanations have been forthcoming from the Vatican regarding the role of Ratzinger in adjudicating on the clerics involved. Unable to deny widespread abuse all it had to offer in defence of Ratzinger, was that he had done ‘nothing to hide any crime’ and had acted ‘absolutely correctly.’ Well, of course he operated absolutely correctly. The infallible are immune from acting any other way. For that reason they set themselves the task of correcting the rest of us so that we may be just like them.

The Vatican is faced by a global conflagration, made more intense by suggestions that the cover up was fanned by none other than the boss. Country after country produces accounts of sordid clerical activity, bishops fall, cardinals’ graves are dug up by police in search of evidence and payouts to the targets of abuse have soared. Despite the protestations made in defence of Ratzinger on Panorama by Catholic Voices activist Austen Ivereigh that ‘he, more than anybody in Rome, really got it’ the suspicion remains that Ratzinger got clever rather than got just. Summarising one of the arguments made by Geoffrey Robertson in his book, Terry Eagleton said:

Those who imagine that the Vatican has recently agreed to cooperate with the police, he points out, have simply fallen for one of its cynical public relations exercises. In the so-called "New Norms" published by Pope Benedict this year, there is still no instruction to report suspected offenders to the civil authorities, and attempting to ordain a woman is deemed to be as serious an offence as sodomising a child.

Whatever it is the pope ‘got’ the rest of us should hope to avoid. As for what he knew, more, seemingly, than he is prepared to divulge. A case of the Holy See that did not see.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Irish Patriot




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Liverpool Down

I suppose it is the lack of culture in me that caused me to blaspheme in a sporting sense today. Yes, I watched most of the All Ireland football final between Cork and Down and even managed to send a local friend and Down supporter a text telling him that Down were corked. Still, I was really more interested in the result of the Manchester United game against Liverpool played around the same time.

At least sporting blasphemy doesn’t yet lead to beheading, hanging, stoning or exile although I am sure my friend might temporarily think that a fitting penance for me, albeit for texting him rather than supporting a foreign team. In any event he will get his own back because in addition to following Down he is also a United fan. And at Old Trafford this afternoon his team were determined to put Liverpool down.

I have fond memories of Liverpool Football Club from the days when they were a good side capable of producing finessed flowing football. The team was one dash of serious colour on an otherwise grey prison backcloth. Then they were red. Today they are just grey, an effect borrowed from the prison of their own mediocrity.

There were more Manchester United supporters in the jail than Pool fans and they were pretty raucous. I found it soothing to go though all my time spent there without United ever winning a league title, if we don’t count the second division title they took in 1975 after a Denis Law goal for Manchester City had sent the team he had helped to win the European Cup hurtling out of the first division the previous April. Their fans are unlikely to be heard boasting about that dubious success. The final year in jail was the closest Man U came to seizing the Liverpool crown, before being shunted aside at the finishing line by the great pretenders of Leeds United.

Once free the competition that electrified the prisoners was no longer there. United went on to win many titles but by then jail rivalry had gone out of it and it didn’t seem important any more; the edge had been blunted.

Still it is always a source of joy for a Liverpool supporter when the team manages to beat Manchester United. And today would have been no different. Unfortunately, United took it courtesy of an outstanding performance by Berbatov in which he netted a hat trick. Even applying the arithmetic of the peace process can’t make it a draw. Berbatov’s 3 to Gerard’s 2 makes it a clear victory for United and a defeat for Liverpool.

To read that Liverpool sit just outside the relegation zone, two above it where they are dangerously perched on the cushion of Stoke, is stinging to say the least. But it is hardly a surprise. For long Graeme Souness has been warning that the team he once captained is poised to meet the same fate as Leeds did once they were knocked off their throne in the early 1990s. Roy Hodgson was a good coach for Fulham with its limited expectations but it is impossible to see him reversing the fortunes of this Liverpool team. As Ronnie Whelan lamented on RTE during the week, Liverpool are on the floor and are not for getting of it any time soon. Manchester United, no longer the power house of a few years ago, are also a team that Whelan and many others think are on the downward spiral. So the real measure of Liverpool’s performance this afternoon is even worse than it might have first appeared. They were beaten by a Manchester United team well past its best.

I don’t believe Liverpool will feel the trap door open beneath their cumbersome feet. But from where they sit at the minute it stands to reason that relegation is a more likely prospect than taking the championship. It must be tempting for the fans who stand on the Kop singing Walk On to change their tune and sing the words of a song performed by their fellow Liverpudlians, The Beatles, Yesterday.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Fáilte go Baile Átha Cliath




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Thursday, September 16, 2010

A Duty of Pastoral Hate

Terry Jones, like others of his ilk, wants to be known as pastor. In the minds of the breed it confers a certain status on them: pastors of the lord doing goodly acts, leading their flocks and saving souls. I can’t even claim to be tone deaf when it comes to the term. When I hear ‘pastor’ an immediate diminution in moral worth is ascribed to the bearer. I tend to think of Pastors Peebles and McClinton, men of the cloth who in the image of the god they worship, learned to hate with a perfect hate. For them godliness is synonymous with hating their Catholic neighbours.

We are not so ethnocentric to think pastoral hate is something exclusive to the North of Ireland. It can hold its own in many rings where the power of hate is used to deliver a hefty punch. Just take a quick glance at the preachers on the god channels, their faces contorted with hate, a selective quote from the bible, a scapegoat to throw it at, made more emphatic with a good thump of the holy book – only out of respect of course – a bit of rabble rousing and before you know it god’s your uncle.

The purpose of Jones’ aborted Koran burning venture was to insist that his good book is morally superior to the good book he sought to burn. It is an attitude that dovetails perfectly with the rise of Christian nationalism in the US, so well described by Micelle Goldberg in her book on the subject. Christianity has a history of burning people who for one reason or another declined to conform to its tenets. The film The Name Of The Rose visually conveys something of the terrors the Christian gentlemen found it so delightful to put human beings through. So by some reckoning it may be a progress of sorts that the burners have switched their purifying mindset to books.

On the Thursday before his holy bonfire was due to ignite Pastor Burn ‘em revealed that he had got the sign from god he had been anticipating giving the go ahead to halt the fires. God, it seems, was happy that a local imam had supposedly acceded to a request from Jones not to proceed with the building of an Islamic cultural centre in the vicinity of New York’s Ground Zero. This allowed Jones to pull in his heavenly horns: ‘we have now put a temporary hold on our planned event.’

Strange that god never told the pastor to stay his hand on the cancellation, that it was a tad premature. Otherwise we are led to conclude that god was so short-sighted that he did not know the imam was a rascal intent on reneging. The imam for his part denied he or his colleagues had ever reached any agreement on the location of the cultural centre with the book burning pastor. Jones then accused Imam Muhammad Musri of having ‘clearly, clearly lied to us.’

But god wasn’t too straight either, withholding vital information from the pastor about the imam’s crooked intent. Maybe there is a theological explanation for that. Perhaps Yahweh did send a message but it was intercepted by Allah in the inter-celestial wars they presumably wage out there in heavenland.

Since then the messages from god have been getting through untrammelled. The pastor moved from a postponement of his burning to something that almost resembled a denunciation: ‘we will definitely not burn the Koran, no. Not today, not ever.’ Nothing less than a miraculous conversion. ‘We feel that God is telling us to stop,’ added Jones. A bit of strategic thinking and tactical nous on the part of god saved the day then.

Pastor Jones is a bible bashing moron. Worse, he is one who showed what a conflagration a fool with a religious book and a tin of petrol can ignite. But folly is contagious and perhaps the best advice aimed at fire stopping its spread came from Sajjad Karim, a Muslim and British member of the European Parliament. He deftly ridiculed the Jones plan, boldly stating that it:

is the act of one man and his followers alone. His actions should not be identified with the West or Christianity. Muslims globally must know that, through this Quran burning, this man will achieve nothing. He has been isolated in his country and his religion. It is only through a reaction that any perverse sense of achievement can be earned.


The pastor and the perverse, a word association we have long come to take as axiomatic.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Abuse Upon Abuse

Today the Pensive Quill Carries a double piece from guest writer Helen McClafferty drawing attention to the plight of Irish republican Gerry McGeough.

“Abuse of Process” Application Rejected

Gerry’s trial, adjourned since March, restarted today, September 13th. The resumption comes after his legal team’s “abuse of process” application was rejected this morning.

It appears that no matter how good the arguments, the Defense motions are destined to be brushed aside. Much of today’s “evidence” consisted of reading excerpts from Gerry’s novel “Defenders” to the court, while aged ex-members of the RUC and UDR from the Tyrone area looked on from the public gallery waiting to give testimony. According to many observers, “the show-trial has to be experienced to be believed.”

In this weekend’s Sunday Tribune, an article written by Suzanne Breen: “Swedish asylum allegations to be used in case against McGeough” stated that: “political asylum applications are generally regarded as confidential and it is understood that it will be the first time such documents will be used against a republican”. The article goes on to say that “indeed, the current position of the British government is that, in the public interest, asylum claims made by foreigners arriving in Britain are confidential. That is clearly stated on official forms given to asylum seekers. Gerry McGeough's attorney said "Gerry should have exactly the same rights."

According to the article “last year, the then British Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas, told the House of Commons: "Information re­ceived from asylum seekers is treated in confidence and details of their claims are not disclosed to the authorities of the country they fear being returned to."

So, there you have it…Britain’s double standard rears its ugly head once again when it comes to Irish republicans getting any fair treatment in their diplock court system. Tomorrow members of the Gardai are scheduled to testify by video link from Dublin.

Gerry McGeough Suffers Another Heart Attack

14/09/2010

Gerry was to appear again in court today when he was taken ill this morning and rushed to Craigavon Hospital. It appears he has suffered another heart attack and will remain in the hospital under observation until further notice.

IT IS TIME TO STOP THIS 3 ½ YEAR PERSECUTION OF GERRY MCGEOUGH

For several years, prior to Gerry’s arrest, he was living a peaceful existence with his wife and children in Tyrone until he decided to run in the Assembly Elections as an Independent candidate on an anti-PSNI platform in March of 2007. That is when Gerry’s life took a change for the worse and it has been a living nightmare for him and his family ever since. Gerry was arrested at the count center, following the poll, and he has been vindictively persecuted by the British crown and their minion civil servants the RUC/PSNI.

Over the 3 ½ years that Gerry’s trial was continuously postponed by the Crown, much of the "evidence" has consisted of reading the statements of dead people into the record, quoting paragraphs at his trial from his novel "Defenders", published in 1998, which was factored in to the Prosecution's argument. Using the BBC television program Panorama as part of their case in order to try to fabricate evidence against him by focusing on the 1997 series ‘Provos” by Peter Taylor (screened as “Behind the Mask in the U.S.). Gerry’s Diplock trial is a sham. The case against Gerry has degenerated into a farce.

In contrast, the British government has operated a secret scheme granting royal pardons or immunity from prosecution to hand-picked ex-IRA members and Loyalists wanted for killings, bombings and other paramilitary activities. No members of the British forces are being charged or tried for their part in the 1969-98 North of Ireland conflict (the soldiers responsible for "Bloody Sunday" including those British/Orange forces behind the Dublin-Monaghan bombings).

In their obsessive need to prosecute and imprison Gerry, his legal team’s “abuse of process” application was rejected and the British are now prepared to turn international political asylum refugee laws on their head by using as their chief “evidence” alleged political asylum application papers from Sweden (which are normally subjected to a 50-year confidentiality protection clause under Swedish law). The move will be the first time such documents will be used against a republican and has widespread implications for the entire concept of political asylum and has now become a major Human Rights issue.

To pretend that Gerry’s arrest and on-going legal saga has anything to do with “justice” is a pathetic joke. He is being discriminated against for purely political reasons and there is a determined effort to railroad him into prison at the highest political level.

Your prayers that Gerry returns to his normal good health and for an end to the 3 1/2 year harassment of him and his family by the RUC and Crown are greatly appreciated.



Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Yesterday...




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Incendiaryana Jones

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately - Michel de Montaigne

Earlier in the month Pastor Terry Jones had been promising to burn 200 copies of the Koran to mark the anniversary of the 3000 citizens put to the sword by men of god on 9/11 – individuals described by Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Paris Grand Mosque and France's leading spokesman for the Muslim community, as ‘terrorists, despicable people’.

In a demonstration of his pretentiousness Jones called his planned event ‘International Burn a Koran Day.’ International? The man tends to a congregation of 50 in Gainsville, Florida who worship in a church grandiosely known as the Dove World Outreach Center.

Hardly the epicentre of global opinion Jones nevertheless succeeded in reaching out to the world but not with a torch. Judging by its reaction Jones seems to have shoved a turd beneath the nose of the international community. Mark Mardell of the BBC asked rhetorically:

How come an extremist planning a book-burning that would disgrace any time after the Middle Ages has some of the top politicians in the West jerking around like puppets on a string?

The malevolent power of religious mania I imagine.

The international response came in torrents, quickly assuming the characteristics of a political tsunami. Jones even grabbed some premium US presidential time. The US commander in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, and the Vatican all added their voices to the fray. President Barack Obama warned that any Koran burning would be a ‘recruitment bonanza’ for al-Qaeda. Perhaps, but hardly any more so than murdering people on Flotillas or bombing to smithereens Palestinian children from American manufactured jets.

As expected the usual suspects turned up to rail against Jones’ proposed move. In Afghanistan the chant of ‘Death to Christians’ went up, as a mark of brotherly love, no doubt. Elsewhere, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki warned that it could be a pretext for violence. Maryam Namazie the campaigning Iranian rights activist describes the peaceful government he represents as ‘the regime of flogging, stoning and execution.’ They presumably find justification for lashing women and hanging gay men on the basis of some ramblings to be found in the book Jones wanted to torch.

Some of the protestors were said to be enraged that the US government had
not banned the Koran-burning. If it does not ban the burning of its own national flag it is hardly going to ban burning the Koran. And of course those demanding that the burning should be banned never seem to consider that adding flogging and stoning to the banned list might be a better idea.

Still, none of it is an excuse for the Jones plan which he eventually abandoned; not after international pressure but upon receiving a sign from god.

It is probably too much to ask of the good Christian pastor that he should never have considered burning the Koran in the first place. God’s man there to do god’s bidding and god’s alone. Mere lowly mortals could not aspire to speak with him. It might interfere with the communications from god.

Jones may well be nothing other than a religious crank slapping down those he feels are lesser beings because his good book is better than theirs, but book burning is so steeped in Nazi thematics that the US blogger John Smart said ‘we need to voraciously oppose those who believe burning books is appropriate.’ Whether it is the Koran or a Stig Larsson novel, the principle is the same: book burning, unless done for the purposes of keeping warm in sub zero temperatures, signifies a Dark Ages mind. Anyone familiar with Ray Bradbury’s inspirational Fahrenheit 451 will remember the battle by one lonely fire fighter against the book burners.

Water, out of which humankind evolved, not fire, is the weapon of the heroic in these encounters.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

A Proposal




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Let There Be Lolly

The arrogance of some archbishops knows no bounds. Perhaps with their heads so far up one of the universe’s many black holes, they have no appreciation of the world they live in. Given the ignominy heaped upon the Roman Catholic hierarchy because of its global cover up, from the highest authority down, of clerical rape of children, in normal circumstances it would be expected that a touch of humility would be in order. Not so for the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols.

Nichols, who is leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, has been telling Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Humanist and whoever else that they should all fork up out of the public purse so that the pope can visit Britain. This flies in the face of the sentiment expressed in a survey by Theos, a religious think tank, which found that 76% of people sampled rejected the idea that the public should cough up the money for the visit on the grounds that the Pope was a religious figure.

Alan Palmer, Chair of the Central London Humanists expressed a secular perspective:


We know that many people are angry that the State Visit of Pope Benedict XVI is going to cost the UK taxpayer a lot of money. Some wonder whether in the current economic circumstances we should be spending millions of pounds to provide a state platform for a religious leader … Clearly many of our supporters are very unhappy with some of the statements made by the Pope in the name of the Catholic Church and Vatican State. This adds to the dismay many feel at our government honouring a Pope whose pronouncements fly in the face of the human rights that we support.

There is no reason that Joseph Ratzinger should not visit Britain, if he can pay his way. There is nothing in his Nazi past to suggest he was involved in war crimes, which would be prohibiting. There are some such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens who have demanded the arrest of Ratzinger on the grounds that he covered up child abuse. Dawkins levels the charge of crimes against humanity. An interesting approach but these things if not carried out with sufficient gravitas can quickly acquire the flavour of a stunt. As is the way with stunts and gimmicks, they all too easily lead those behind them into cranks’ corner from where it is well nigh impossible to make concerns heard above the din of ridiculing voices. As a result the argument can be lost by default.

At the heel of the hunt British citizens are not serfs obligated to carry and keep a clerical class. Ratzinger should fund the visit out of church coffers. No one else should be expected to do it on his behalf. Arguably the Queen who has invited Ratzinger to Britain should open the purse. But that would be forcing the public to pay by proxy. She has made a habit of fleecing the taxpayer over the years so they get you every which way.

Not content with fleecing the British tax payer, an aide to Nichols, Edmund Adamus, added insult to robbery by describing Britain as a ‘selfish, hedonistic wasteland.’ The penance for its sinfulness presumably to pony up for the visit of the man who will help put matters right. The sheer chutzpah of Adamus – not supported on this one by Nichols - is breathtaking. Perhaps the selfish, hedonistic pursuit of boys, much opposed by the British public, has escaped his attention.

An estimated £12 million is to be forked out and Vincent Nichols tells us: ‘this is the leader of probably the oldest international institution that serves humanity in a tremendous way right around the globe.’

The institution in leading by tremendous example has in the words of the body behind the Protest The Pope campaign been busy in:


• opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of AIDS
• promoting segregated education
• denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women
• opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people
• failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.
• rehabilitating the holocaust denier bishop Richard Williamson and the appeaser of Hitler, the war-time Pope, Pius XII.

Maybe there is something in biblical scripture that can justify these categories of behaviour but for people who develop their sense of right and wrong from sources other than the bible, the tremendous way should have a very large ‘no entry’ sign emblazoned across its main access point.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Viva Espana




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Bad Days and Worse

To be an unbeliever is not to be merely “open-minded”. It is to be, rather, a decisive admission of uncertainty that is dialectically connected to the repudiation of the totalitarian principle, in the mind as well as in politics – Christopher Hitchens.

The polemicist Christopher Hitchens is dying. He announced as much during a discussion with Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic National Correspondent. The exchange between the two men, at one point joined by the writer Martin Amis, was simply billed as ‘A Conversation With Christopher Hitchens.’ It covered much more ground than that of the illness gripping the author of God Is Not Great and numerous other books but his outlook, intensely focussed as it is on his mortality, was what I found of primary interest. The rest we have sort of heard before.

While Hitchens' political perspective over the past decade has been a persistent source of irritation to me I have long admired the power of his mind. Never content to be told by someone ‘read our paper, nothing else, and you will have the right politics’, I always found the arguments presented by Hitchens engaging and forceful although not persuasive. My wife bought me his memoir Hitch-22 as a birthday present which his accelerated dying process, as he put it, will accelerate the speed with which I get around to reading it. A bit of bookish queue jumping is excusable under the circumstances.

The cancer that began in his oesophagus has spread to his lymph nodes. It isn’t good. Having undergone chemotherapy Hitchens is showing the physical signs and seems to have succumbed to the notion that his cancer is much too virulent for the treatment. He wants to live so took his chances with a trying and tiring treatment in the knowledge that chemo not miracles can cure potentially fatal illnesses.

This was what the discussion with Goldberg was really about – facing death without any belief in god or an afterlife. That Atlantic featured it at all is an indication of how what happens to us upon death still grips people. There is no widespread easy acceptance of the fact that death is what happens. All individual life ends with it and proceeds no further. The Mark Twain view that he had been dead for millions of years before he was born and found nothing wrong with it is not one that reassures many.

Hitchens describes his dying as being made up of bad days and worse days. An apt way to put it, given that for the vast majority of us, the final furlong to the final fence where by necessity we must fall rather than jump, is not something to which we joyously gallop. There is a preference to tighten the reins and slow down to a jog trot. If the other guy wants to shoulder us aside in order up get up the queue a place or two don’t interfere with him. Be considerate to his needs and ask him to invite his friends.

Hitchens remains able to read and write so he is able to regale us with his take on many of the issues hovering over our times. Describing himself as a realist he thinks he will be a lucky person to live another five years. He does not find it insulting for people to pray for his recovery but would be angered if they were praying for him not to recover but to be ‘saved’. It would be a warped type of mind that would happily see him dead but ‘saved’.

When asked would terminal illness ever prompt him to state that he had been ‘saved’, or washed in the blood of the lamb as the pompously pious might put it, he was clear. Wittily quoting Jeeves to Bertie Wooster he said ‘the contingency is a remote one’. There were, he explained, circumstances that are conceivable where a patient, whose cancer had spread to the brain inducing terror and raving, might make such a ‘ridiculous remark’. He drew attention to the existence of an old game played by religion where its adherents would spread falsifications that people had on their death bed abandoned their deeply held scepticism and embraced what they had never believed. As examples he highlighted the cases of Voltaire, Thomas Paine, David Hume and Charles Darwin. In his case he was confident that such a fabrication would not be believed by any who know him.

I have little doubt that there are those who will respond to news of Hitchen’s illness with perverse religious glee, seeing in it some sort of heavenly retribution because he refused to believe what they believed. It will reinforce their belief that their god is a good god and the proof of it lies in their holy god having fired a cancer volley into the unholy body of the unbeliever; just as he has in the past sent tsunamis and hurricanes to regions of the world as a blow against gays.

The ‘dearest friend’ of the Hitch, Martin Amis, interjected to argue that it is irrational and premature to state there is no god given that we know nothing about how 86 % of the universe is made up and very little about galaxy formation. The only rational position to hold is that of an agnostic ‘teetering on the very brink of atheism.’

Hitchens was not overtly hostile to this idea, claiming that on the subject of god’s existence he is certain he knows as much as - maybe more than - the pope knows about it. For him religion is man made and all the gods found so far have been man made. If there is a higher intelligence no one yet has found any proof of its existence and none can claim to act in the name of a higher power or tell us, either with or without infallibility, that they know something about god’s existence because of divine revelation that the rest of us don’t

It was a lucid and dignified performance by a man many of whose critics want to see him near the end screaming repentance and begging forgiveness so that their own lingering doubts can be assuaged.


Saturday, September 4, 2010

Branch Man




Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Friday, September 3, 2010

Yeehaw

I am not from Ardoyne, but as a Republican I had every right to protest against bigots and stand shoulder to shoulder with the residents. I remember on many occasions being asked to go to similar protests and in fact sat linking arms with Tom Hartley and Jim Gibney on the Ormeau Road in 1996. I can't see any difference between then and now. Perhaps this is the price that some pay for getting into bed with unionists? - Pádraic Mac Coitir.


Last Saturday’s North Belfast march by the Royal Black Institution has once again flagged up the contentious issue of parades and the limitations of Sinn Fein’s state centred reformist strategy which has thus far failed to bring relief from sectarian coat trailing to communities like Ardoyne. It also gave cause for reflection on one of the more colourful moments of the marching season.

What happens up North generates little interest this side of the border. Even the 12th of July was a normal day here, its significance lost to most, until the scenes of rioting and police attacks melded to create a news story. In truth it was after the 12th that I realised the 12th had in fact occurred.

Shortly before leaving for holiday abroad I, like many others, courtesy of the internet, viewed the much discussed verbal confrontation between Sinn Fein’s Bobby Storey and a masked youth during the annual July disturbances in North Belfast.

Assimilating and filtering the images led to a range of possible depictions, some no more than a fleeting wisp. The first cast Storey as a prisoner governor experiencing in-your-face defiance from a protesting prisoner determined not to be cowered by authority. ‘Yeehaw’, the youth’s contribution to the exchange, was one of the cries blanket men would hurl in the face of a governor to drown out his voice during the farcical adjudication process.

That image, analytically infantile as it was, soon dissipated as something else took shape, this time of a mature Storey making a coherent and robust defence of community order against the recklessness of his youthful opponent. Here, ‘yeehaw’ was a statement symbolising not politically inspired defiance but cerebral nothingness. Larry Hughes aptly summed it up in his pithy observation in TPQ that it 'doesn't give much inspiration.’ Storey’s intellectual conquest of what opposition he faced should at that point have been absolute.

It proved not to be and that image, like the first, drifted. The picture that finally crystallised and took root was one of Storey blowing an opportunity gifted to him by circumstance to illustrate what his party alleges is the shambolic political content and nihilism behind much of the rioting. How he dealt with it led to the audience seeming to attach less import to ‘yeehaw’ than it did to Storey’s angry but ultimately lame dismissal of the rioter for being masked. The chair of Belfast Sinn Fein, long associated in the public mind with the hooded IRA, incongruously described the wearing of the mask as ‘ridiculous.’ At that point whatever case Sinn Fein might have made was drowned out by jeers of ‘yah, boo, yah, boo’.

On the day irony seemed to elude Storey, his performance comparable with a hypothetical scenario where Ian Paisley confronts a young firebrand preacher and tells him it’s ridiculous to be brandishing a bible. Nor did there appear to be much in the way of cognisance of the gathering of masked PSNI members whom, according to Pádraic Mac Coitir, a former republican prisoner and long time friend and comrade of Bobby Storey, ‘battered and dragged us off the road.’

Even among Sinn Fein’s republican critics there is a view, as expressed by Larry Hughes on TPQ, that ‘the activities of recent times resembles nothing more than mindless vandalism’; a void expressed in the grunt of ‘yeehaw.’ It is not that Sinn Fein has, therefore, no case to make for its position, even if it is one that can only be made from within a reformist framework. Storey, unlike his colleague Sean Murray in dealing with Padraig Mackel of Eirigi on BBC Talkback, opted for diktat rather than dialogue and consequently failed to produce an argument that would have prevented the masked youth from hogging the limelight with two politically unintelligible syllables.

Storey’s value to Sinn Fein lies in the IRA legitimacy and tradition that he brings to the party’s handling of the parades issue which, like much else in the party’s trajectory, constitutes a reversal of what went before, again caught so well by Mac Coitir:
I was one of the people involved in a peaceful sit-down protest on the Crumlin Road on the 12th July. I was disgusted, but not surprised, when I heard the utterances of Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly when he condemned us for doing what he and others had done for years on the Garvaghy, Springfield and indeed Crumlin Roads.

But the IRA tradition and the authority it is meant to generate works only for those who were members of its organisation, not those who accuse it of having gone wayward. Storey’s choice of discourse when confronting his masked adversary undermined the IRA laden gravitas he sought to bring to the exchange. The moral of the story - if you read a riot act to a rioter, particularly if you have rioted yourself, don’t feign surprise if you get a riot.

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