Official Communication from the UFA
Posted by Jim on October 7, 2019
Retired members are reminded to make sure their address on file with the UFA is current and up-to-date. Parking placards for retired members expire
DUP veto must be withdrawn
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Irish News Editorial. Belfast. Monday, October 7, 2019
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was stating the obvious at the weekend when he said that the UK has so far failed to come up with proposals which are capable of breaking the Brexit deadlock and allowing deeper negotiations to follow.
Mr Varadkar, speaking at a Fine Gael event in Dublin, insisted there was still time for progress to be made, but, with a crucial EU summit to take place on October 17 and 18, it is clear that the British government has only days to produce a substantially overhauled blueprint.
Boris Johnson needs to start by accepting that his bizarre suggestion about a revived Stormont Assembly supervising post-Brexit arrangements on the border in Ireland should be withdrawn.
There is of course not the slightest indication that our devolved structures are capable of being restored in the foreseeable future, particularly with the forthcoming report of the public inquiry into the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal expected to place a further intense spotlight on the credibility of senior DUP figures.
However, even if business at Parliament Buildings can somehow be eventually resumed, Mr. Johnson needs to realize that a decisive majority of MLAs entirely reject any implication that the DUP will be allowed to veto key developments.
The British prime minister has suggested that Northern Ireland could continue to apply EU legislation relating to agricultural and other products, but only if Assembly members provided their consent every four years.
This would require a cross-community Stormont vote which could be potentially blocked by the DUP, even though it holds just 28 of the 90 seats in the chamber.
Mr. Johnson must surely realize that a measure with serious consequences for Northern Ireland which is opposed not only by two thirds of Assembly members but also the main business and farming organizations is entirely unsustainable.
Although his Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay hinted yesterday that changes to the mechanism were possible, it is quite possible Mr. Johnson is still playing political games and is fully prepared to face a catastrophic no deal exit from the EU as long he remains in power.
If Mr. Johnson instead really wants to protect the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, it is essential that he respects the views of the overwhelming majority of elected representatives in both Stormont and indeed the Dail.
Drew Harris – Extreme Abuse Of Power
Posted by Jim on October 6, 2019
Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig thinks Garda Commissioner has huge questions to answer over an extreme abuse of power.
On Wednesday evening, RTE broadcast the excellent but very disturbing documentary No Stone Unturned. The
Only the wilfully blind and naïve could fail to draw the very clear message that there was a sinister relationship at a senior level between agents of the British state and loyalist paramilitaries, during the years of the Northern conflict. While the documentary focused on the killings in the Heights Bar, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney also went to some length to place the event in a wider context.
The killers were part of an extensive conspiracy that reached high into the British state apparatus. Not
It is this aspect of the story, the virtual arming of loyalist paramilitaries by the state, that places a large question over a suggestion offered by way of explanation for inactivity by the state apparatus. Several commentators have opined that RUC and MI5 were overprotective of informers and were reluctant to expose valuable sources of information that could potentially save a greater number of lives.
This theory collapses when examined in light of their turning a blind eye to the importation of a massive shipment of lethal and sophisticated arms. The only logical explanation for allowing this to happen was that the British state was outsourcing one aspect of its counterinsurgency terror strategy through the use of loyalist paramilitaries.
Loyalist paramilitaries, based around a farm in Glenanne, County Armagh and from where a sectarian murder campaign was unleashed across the rural 6-Counties.
Another question.
In 2010, then PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris wrote a letter to the legal representatives of UVF victims telling them that they would not get an investigation into the wider questions raised by the activities of the Glenanne gang. Reviewing the Harris decision in Belfast’s High Court,
Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig is an independent councillor on Donegal County Council.
Official Communication from the UFA
Posted by Jim on October 4, 2019
COLUMBUS DAY PARADE
On Monday, October 14, 2019, the Columbia Association will march up 5th Avenue to participate in the annual celebration honoring one of Italy’s favorite sons, Christopher Columbus. This day is one that is filled with much pride for those of Italian heritage. All off-duty members and their families are invited to march in the parade. The assembly point for members is at West 44th Street and 5th Avenue by 1030 hours. There will be a pre-parade breakfast at 0900 hours, and an after parade gathering at the conclusion of the parade. Members are requested to attend in dress uniform. For further information and location of breakfast and lunch, please visit www.fdnycolumbia.com or contact Joseph DePaola, L-27, Parade Chairman at 845-558-4410.
10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TUNNEL TO TOWERS BRAVEST BBQ
The 10th annual Bravest BBQ will be held on Saturday, October 12, 2019 (rain or shine) from 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM at the Hillside Swim Club, 151 Signs Rd., Staten Island. Tickets are $25/per person online / $35 at the door. Children under 14 are free. Picnic includes food, drink, music, rides, games, and more, and will honor 2019 “Man of the Year” DAC Andrew DiPadova (Ret.). Proceeds support the Tunnel to Towers
1ST AND 3RD DIVISION MEMORIAL DAY COLLATION
The 1st and 3rd Division Memorial Day Collation will be held immediately following the services on Thursday, October 10, at St. John the Divine’s Synod Hall (
STREET RENAMING
Trump’s impeachment battle is part of a bigger global crisis in democracy
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BY ISHAAN THAROOR
President Trump is cornered and lashing out. Just this week, he has demanded the arrest of political rivals, raged about a “coup” against him and kept firing his incessant fusillades at the “corrupt” and “fake” press. Trump sees the impending congressional impeachment inquiry as a “hoax”; most sober analysts believe House Democrats now have a clear-cut case to prove the president’s abuse of power, as evidence of Trump seeking to pressure a foreign government into giving him dirt on a domestic opponent keeps piling up. On Thursday, in front of cameras and reporters on the White House lawn, he openly called on governments in Ukraine and China to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his family.But Trump may hope the atmospherics of the showdown — rather than the facts — are still in his favor. Backed by the United States’ right-wing media, Trump intends to hunker down in America’s polarized battlefield and fight for his survival, even if that means dragging the country’s institutions into the morass. The bulk of Republican politicians remain too afraid to turn against him, while administration officials and federal bureaucrats see their personal fate tethered to his moods. “The implicit day-to-day charge for many Trump advisers is simple,” reported my colleagues at the White House. “Figure out how to handle or even polish Trump’s whims and statements, but do not have any illusion that you can temper his relentless personality, heavy consumption of cable news or thirst for political combat.”Trump’s disregard for long-standing norms leaves U.S. politics in a somewhat unfamiliar place. “Authoritarian regimes have this problem all the time … when all government activity is the product of the id of the leader,” Timothy Naftali, a historian and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, told my colleagues. “But in a republic, that’s unusual.”If there is central theme to the age of Trump, it’s precisely that: What was unusual in sophisticated republican democracies is becoming increasingly commonplace. And not just in the United States. The impeachment saga convulsing Washington — where an embattled leader is calling into question the very legitimacy of those opponents challenging his conduct — has, to a certain extent, analogues elsewhere.In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close Trump ally, complained of a “witch hunt” launched by his rivals as the country’s attorney general pursues possible corruption charges against him. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who came to power this year via the votes of a fraction of a fraction of the British public — smeared members of Parliament thwarting Brexit as agents of “surrender” and “betrayal.” In India, the world’s biggest democracy, the country’s Hindu nationalist leaders routinely cast their rivals as “anti-national” liberals who ought to move to Pakistan.On both sides of the pond, talk of “deep state” conspiracy theories is rife, often with an all-too-familiar undertone. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, laid the impeachment inquiry at the feet of Jewish financier George Soros — whose support of liberal causes over the years has made him a frequent target of anti-Semites and nativists. On Thursday, Jacob Rees-Mogg, an influential Brexiteer and current leader of the House of Commons, conspiratorially cited Soros as a supposed enemy of Brexit and backer of its British opponents. The remarks led to calls from Jewish politicians in Britain for Rees-Mogg to resign. There are immediate consequences to such demagoguery, not least in the form of far-right terrorist attacks and violence carried out by people inflamed by this sort of rhetoric. But there’s also a long-term toll, one that’s more imperceptible, yet no less corrosive, to the body politic. It’s the kind of erosion on display in places such as Hungary, Poland and Turkey, where majoritarian, nationalist politicians have steadily undermined democratic institutions and the liberal norms they’re supposed to uphold.“The death of democracy is now typically administered in a thousand cuts,” wrote the Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond earlier this year. “In one country after another, elected leaders have gradually attacked the deep tissues of democracy — the independence of the courts, the business community, the media, civil society, universities and sensitive state institutions like the civil service, the intelligence agencies and the police.”You don’t need to look further than Trump’s Twitter timeline. The president has lambasted any federal agency, independent civic institution or media organization he sees working against him, even when their employees can only be accused of doing the job they are supposed to do. State-appointed judges are either his judges or enemies. Journalists who say nice things about Trump are good; those who don’t are “fake.” Law enforcement officials posing next to Trump along the southern border are heroes, but those investigating Trump’s campaign or using internal channels to voice their alarm over his dealings are traitors.Diamond placed Trump at the center of “America’s own political decay” and observed how the president’s excusing of “a grim list of dictators” abroad and embrace of nativist politics at home had “shaken the post-World War II liberal order.” He also blamed political cynicism on both sides of the aisle, “calcified systems that don’t deliver public goods and complacent citizens who cannot bestir themselves to vote.”As myriad analysts have already argued, Trump is not a sui generis figure, but a symptom of American politics and, in particular, of the radicalization of the American right. “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics,” wrote political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein in a prescient piece long ago in 2012. “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”The uproar over impeachment may only underscore these hard-line positions. It gives Trump the fuel to drive an angry, resentful reelection campaign, and it reveals the frailties of an American system bound together by fraying civic understandings and aging conventions.“What makes Trump dangerous is that he exposes parts of liberal democracies that were only shadowily visible up until now,” said Peter Sloterdijk, celebrity German philosopher and frequent critic of the left, in an interview with the New Yorker last year in which he spoke of the American president as a “degenerate sheriff,” happy to flout the rules of the state he leads. “In democracies, there is always an oligarchic element, but Trump makes it extremely, comically visible.”