Campbell extradition hearing proceeds; Corry returns home
Posted by Jim on October 30, 2017
Campbell extradition hearing proceeds; Corry returns home WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
DUP is finding it difficult to accept NI no longer ‘a Protestant state’
Posted by Jim on
Adams: the DUP is finding it difficult to accept NI no longer ‘a Protestant state’
Gerry Adams has said the DUP is struggling to reach a compromise with his party because Unionist leaders once boasted of having “a Protestant parliament for a Protestant state”.
Suzanne Breen. Belfast Telegraph.Friday, October 27, 2017.
Gerry Adams has said the DUP is struggling to reach a compromise with his party because unionist leaders once boasted of having “a Protestant parliament for a Protestant state”.
Speaking in Armagh last night, the Sinn Fein president insisted his party was committed to making the ongoing negotiations work and to restoring power-sharing at Stormont.
But he claimed the British Government had “no investment” in the talks process and “no affinity with it”. He also accused Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of trying to “wash his hands of the North” and said it felt like “John Bruton was back in office”.
Mr Adams claimed he didn’t know if the current talks would succeed but he stressed that his party’s Northern leader Michelle O’Neill was committed to making them work.
The Sinn Fein president said the political impasse could be overcome only by the DUP and his party working together.
“That will present many challenges for us. It also presents problems for the DUP leadership,” he said.
“What we need to do collectively is to accept that a rights-based society is in everyone’s interest. Moving to that position given that their leaders used to boast that they had a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state, is very difficult for political unionism.
“But on the other hand it is self-evident that this is no longer a Protestant state. And the notion of a Protestant parliament should never have been acceptable. No thoughtful unionist really believes that this would ever be acceptable in these modern times.”
Mr Adams added that Arlene Foster’s party must recognise “that they can only be in political office on the basis of a modern political dispensation bedded in equality and fairness”.
He continued: “In other words, they have to treat the rest of us as equals and we have to treat them as equals. Is the DUP leadership up for this? We will know soon enough.”
Turning to London, Mr Adams said: “For their part, this British Government has no investment in the process, and no affinity with it. It is beset with its own difficulties and is only in power with DUP support.”
He claimed Secretary of State James Brokenshire had been “less than helpful”. Brexit was “a disaster” for everyone in Ireland including “unionist business people and farmers who must be appalled by the DUP leadership’s attitude and their disrespect for the vote of the people”.
With Leo Varadkar increasingly attacking his party in the Dail, Mr Adams said the Taoiseach shouldn’t think rivalry between Fine Gael and Sinn Fein was more important than the process to restore devolution.
“It is not. He must rise above this. It is crucial that he makes the North a priority, not just because of Brexit… but because of the obligations and responsibilities of his office,” the Sinn Fein president said.
He maintained that Mr Varadkar could play a meaningful role in efforts to restore the institutions.
“If he has the political will, he clearly has the ability and will get huge public support for efforts to persuade the British to fulfil their obligations,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein MP Elisha McCallion has slammed Mr Brokenshire for refusing to meet the Joint Oireachtas Good Friday Implementation Committee several times.
“This comes alongside his refusal to meet with groups from the Irish language sector. Mr Brokenshire has no such problems when meeting groups like the Orange Order,” she said. “The failure by the British Government to act with rigorous impartiality as required by the Good Friday Agreement has contributed to the current political crisis.”
The Northern Ireland Office didn’t respond to a request for comment
Dublin refuses to recognise Catalonia’s independence
Posted by Jim on October 28, 2017
Dublin refuses to recognise Catalonia’s independence
The 26 County state has said it will not recognise Catalonia’s
declaration of independence from Spain, according to the Department of
Foreign Affairs in Dublin.
“The resolution of the current crisis needs to be within Spain’s
constitutional framework and through Spain’s democratic institutions,”
it said.
However, in Scotland, the Cabinet Secretary for External Affairs, Fiona
Hyslop said the people of Catalonia “must have the ability to determine
their own future.”
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams TD described the declaration of
independence as a “historic step” towards Catalan statehood, and
expressed his solidarity with the people.
“The right to self-determination is a corner stone of international law
and this declaration must be respected,” he said. “I believe it is now
incumbent on the Spanish government to agree an internationally mediated
process on the way forward. That is what the Catalan government have
offered. That goodwill must be reciprocated.
“It is time for the Spanish government to seize the opportunity for
dialogue. I would encourage the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to urgently press
for this process with the Spanish Prime Minister.”
However, neither the Taoiseach nor the Irish President, Michael D.
Higgins, have issued statements on the situation.
In dramatic scenes yesterday, a motion to declare independence was
approved by the 135-member Catalan parliament, with 70 votes in favor.
Opposition lawmakers walked out of the chamber in protest ahead of the
vote.
After the vote officials and lawmakers cried “Llibertat! [Freedom]”.
An emotional President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont called on his
people to remain peaceful. “In the days ahead we must keep to our values
of pacifism and dignity. It’s in our, in your hands, to build the
republic,” he said.
Outside parliament, thousands who had gathered cheered the news, some
dancing and raising a toast. In Barcelona, people crowded around TV sets
to watch the historic events unfold.
The Sant Jaume Square outside the government office was packed with
thousands of people celebrating. Many were draped with the “Estelada”
flag that adds a blue triangle to the red and yellow Catalan flag and
has become a symbol of the separatist struggle.
“I feel so emotional after the huge fight we went through, we finally
got it,” said Rosalina Cordera Torelles. Another woman said she was
relieved. “Now we are Catalan at last,” said Rita Carboneras. “We can be
ourselves.”
But despite the referendum and declaration of independence, the
government in Madrid still claims to still rule over Catalonia. Both it
and Spain’s Constitutional Court have insisted the declaration is
“illegal” under Spanish law.
Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy said it was a move that “not only goes against
the law but is a criminal act.” He declared he was “sacking” the head of
the Catalan regional police and shutting down the Catalan government’s
overseas offices. A spokesman for Spain’s prosecutor’s office said it
would bring charges of “rebellion” against prominent Catalans.
In Ireland, a variety of protests and events are being organised in
support of Catalania, with the involvement of Sinn Fein, the 1916
Societies and People before Profit.
People before Profit said it would be submitting a motion to Dublin City
Council calling for recognition.
Ahead of Friday’s declaration, republican members of Derry City and
Strabane District Council united to formally back Catalan independence.
A proposal by Sinn Fein Councillor Caoimhe McKnight that the council
writes to the British and Irish governments asking them to formally
recognise the democratic outcome of the Catalan independence referendum,
was backed by all republican councillors.
Independent republican councillor Paul Gallagher, wearing a T-shirt
bearing the Estelada flag, hailed the Catalan people’s discipline and
courage and expressed concern Spain might move to establish “tyranny” in
the region in defiance of the democratic wishes of the people there.
Cllr McKnight said the motion demonstrated solidarity with the people of
Catalonia, who in turning out to vote in their independence referendum,
in spite of a “full-frontal attack by the Spanish authorities”, had been
“inspirational”
WTC LODD Active Member FF Robert M. Tilearcio Engine Company 266
Posted by Jim on October 27, 2017
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Sectarianism should be defined as a hate crime
Posted by Jim on October 26, 2017
Jim Gibney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday , October 25, 2017
HOW do you spot sectarianism, I asked myself as I read Sinn Féin’s One Community document which the party will debate at its Ard Fheis in a few weeks’ time and its campaign literature on the same theme #SUAS (Stand Up Against Sectarianism), which it launched a few weeks ago?
I remember a few years ago coming out of the lift on the top floor of the assembly and bumping into the north’s deputy first minster, Martin McGuinness, who was red in the face and clearly in a reflective and rushed mood.
I asked him how he was. He said it is difficult when you are dealing with bigots as he disappeared into the lift. He had just left a meeting with the DUP.
I stood beneath the large chimney pot towering over the yard of ‘C’ and ‘D’ wings in Crumlin Road jail. It was the spring of 1977.
I watched lads in their late teens and early twenties ‘bouling round the yard’, chattering away and animated, as young men are when they are together. You would think they were on a social outing.
In fact, many were walking a tightrope: balancing very grave matters indeed. Many of them would spend the best years of their young lives in jail – on the basis of forced statements usually composed by their RUC assailants.
Judges, educated in some of Ireland and Britain’s most prestigious universities, with trained minds to spot police brutality and injustice, dished out cruel justice that ruined lives.
I was 16. I was in competition with another 16-year-old for a plum job as an apprentice electrician. It was touch and go.
I was asked what school I went to. The other lad, a Protestant, got the job.
In the mid-1970s the Workers’ Party ran a poster campaign: ‘Sectarianism Kills Workers’.
In May 1975 I stood in Richard ‘Oatesy’ McErlean’s parlour in Thompson Street in Belfast’s Short Strand/Ballymacarrett area.
Two of his sons, John and Thomas, lay in the parlour side-by-side in their coffins. They had been killed by the UVF as they played cards in the loyalist Mount Vernon estate having been lured to their death by a work colleague.
In a rally of thousands in the mid-1990s outside Belfast City Hall, organised by trade unionists, I shouted with scores of others, at the platform party for failing to mention the sectarian killing of Catholics by loyalists.
The march was against sectarianism.
The northern State was set up on the basis of a crude sectarian head-count. How many Protestants were needed to keep Catholics and their united Ireland aspiration at bay?
Historically the English administration fostered political sectarianism using Protestant colonists from Scotland and England to hold Ireland for the Crown.
You can usually see racism based on skin colour. You can see homophobia and misogyny because specific groups – gays and women – are the target.
Sectarianism in the north is insidious because it was a cornerstone of the state. It was state practised and all classes played their part in ‘keeping Catholics in their place’.
State-sponsored sectarianism is visible and invisible, crude, sophisticated and divisive.
It dictated employment, education, housing and voting rights. It demeans, demoralises and disempowers its victims.
That is why in Sinn Féin’s One Community document it argues for it to be defined legally as a ‘hate crime’.
Opposition to it is driven by the principles of equality and parity of esteem – the bedrock of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).
This is the only acceptable basis on which the north’s administration can exist in the all-Ireland framework of the GFA.
The document argues for the all-Ireland institutions of the GFA and the councils to drive opposition to sectarianism and for sectarian awareness training for the police, trade unions, public sector workers and for children to be educated about it also.
It calls on the GAA, rugby, soccer and boxing organisations to promote anti- sectarianism similar to the high-profile campaigns they ran against racism and homophobia.
Important anti-sectarian work is ongoing in local communities, civic organisations, education, business, sport and faith groups and with foreign nationals.
Sectarianism not only kills, it poisons the mind and the society that tolerates it or pretends it does not exist.
It does exist but there is no acceptable level of sectarianism permissible.