Posted by Jim on August 12, 2017
There is increasing speculation that Sinn Fein could become the junior
partners in the next coalition government in the 26 Counties after the
party leadership refused to rule it out.
While current leader Gerry Adams and reputed leader-in-waiting Mary Lou
McDonald both condemned the deals currently used to hold up minority
governments in Dublin and London, neither would rule out entering into a
coalition with either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.
“You either take the plunge and you go into government or you don’t,” Ms
McDonald said.
Any decision on the matter will need to go before a special Sinn Fein
Ard Fheis, a potentially fraught conference of party delegates, many of
whom would be ideologically opposed to a deal with a right-wing party.
Both Mr Adams and Ms McDonald were speaking after the Fianna Fail
leader, Micheal Martin, while ‘ruling out’ a coalition with Sinn Fein,
left open the prospect of a confidence-and-supply deal with the party
for a minority government after the next election.
Any coalition would be a “matter of discussion” and depend on the
agreement of a “robust, transformative and ambitious” programme for
government, Ms McDonald said.
“Then, crucially, can we only ask the party itself,” she said, but
added: “We want to be in government.”
Mr Martin has consistently rejected the prospect of a coalition with Ms
McDonald’s party, but some of his most prominent TDs now openly say they
would favour such an alliance over one with Fine Gael.
A future coalition government involving Sinn Fein must have a strategy
for Irish unification, party leader Gerry Adams has indicated.
He said his party will place an emphasis on housing, the health service
and Brexit as part of any post-election negotiations on forming a
coalition government.
The Louth TD described ‘confidence and supply deals’ such as the current
one between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael as “fundamentally dishonest” and
“quasi-democratic”.
“Nobody votes for a confidence and supply deal,” Mr Adams said, but
emphasised that Sinn Fein “wants to be in government to deliver change
in the lives of citizens”.
He said Sinn Fein’s aim “is to replace partition with a new agreed
Ireland”, adding “you are not going to achieve that with a minority
government deal”. However, he also declined to rule out a coalition
with a larger party.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has commissioned a white paper on a
united Ireland, which is due to be completed later this year, and
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said Fine Gael should “bring back into use
the term ‘United Ireland Party'” as a tagline.
Mr Adams has also said “Sinn Fein is open to negotiating with other
parties to deliver a republican programme of government and real change
in the lives of citizens”.
“Regardless of what parties are saying today, and depending on what
mandates we receive, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail will either enter a
formal partnership or begin to talk to Sinn Fein.”
Any move by Sinn Fein to return Michael Martin or Leo Varadkar as
Taoiseach could benefit the small socialist parties.
Solidarity TD Paul Murphy warned “about the road that is being traveled”
by Sinn Fein, pointing to “demoralisation” that took place when Labour
went into government in 2011 and helped to implement Fine Gael’s
conservative agenda.
“Coalition on any basis with the right will be a disaster for working
class people,” he said.
“Look at the experiences of the Green Party and the Labour Party. They
all went into coalition supposedly with the good intentions of
delivering on their election promises. They inevitably ended up as
implementers of austerity and regressive policies.”
Posted by Jim on
The scene for the Battle of the Bogside was set long before August 1969.
For years the nationalist majority of Derry had suffered a unionist
gerrymander of the city which left many Catholics living in slum
conditions.
Matters came to a head in October 1968 when a civil rights march was met
with force by the RUC.
Pictures of MPs leading the parade were beamed across the world,
bringing the problems in the north of Ireland to a global audience.
In January 1969 the situation deteriorated further when loyalists
attacked a People’s Democracy march from Belfast to Derry at Burntollet.
Days later ‘Free Derry’ was born in response to attacks on Bogside
pensioners’ homes by the RUC.
The July 12 Orange Order parades in 1969 were accompanied by violence
and so it was not a surprise that tensions were high leading into the
Relief of Derry march planned for August 12.
The largest loyal order march of the year, the Relief of Derry, was
organised annually by the Apprentice Boys to mark the end of the Siege
of Derry in 1689.
For years it had been a source of tension in the city as a coat-trailing
exercise and it was often accompanied by violence.
Despite the rising tensions, on August 8 1969 the Stormont government
decided to allow the parade to go ahead.
As it passed close to the Bogside at Waterloo Place on August 12,
rioting erupted between nationalists and Apprentice Boys and their
supporters.
RUC immediately used armoured cars and water cannon – followed by
loyalist rioters – to chase nationalists back into the Bogside.
What became know as the Battle of the Bogside began.
Rioting ebbed and flowed as day moved into night and Bogsiders,
supported by nationalists who rallied from all over the north-west,
forced police and loyalists back out of ‘Free Derry’.
Rioters used the vantage point of the high-rise Rossville Street flats
to keep police at bay with missiles and petrol bombs.
At one stage — with concern rising that rioters would run out of petrol
— the Derry Citizens Defence Association dispatched representatives to
obtain petrol from a garage, providing a receipt against the petrol
seized.
By the morning of Wednesday August 13, rioting had spread to other
nationalist areas of the north in a pogrom of Catholic areas.
Taoiseach Jack Lynch issued his famed and usually inaccurately quoted
message that “we will not stand idly by” as he sent Irish troops to the
border to establish first-aid posts.
What Lynch actually said was: “The present situation is the inevitable
outcome of the policies pursued for decades by successive Stormont
governments.
“It is clear also that the Irish government can no longer stand by and
see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.”
With refugees fleeing south, Stormont mobilised the B-Specials who were
soon repelled by the Bogside nationalists.
As the north faced into an abyss on day three, two people were killed by
the RUC.
Nine-year-old Catholic boy Patrick Rooney was shot dead in his Divis
Flats’ home in west Belfast when police fired from a Browning machine
gun mounted on an armoured car.
In Armagh, John Gallagher was also shot dead at Cathedral Road by
B-Specials.
With the RUC now completely exhausted and over-stretched, Six County
prime minister James Chichester-Clarke asked the British government to
deploy troops.
At 4.30pm, British PM Harold Wilson agreed.
At around 5pm on Thursday August 14 the first soldiers of the Prince of
Wales Own – on standby outside Derry – marched into the Waterloo Place
front line in their distinctive ‘Tommy’ tin hats and carrying tin
shields and SLR rifles.
Their commander, Major David Hanson told journalists:
“Provided one is pleasant and polite, one can achieve an awful lot in
this world.”
Their arrival marked the start of what the British army code-named
Operation Banner, a campaign of atrocities that was to last 38 years.
The next day, August 15, six people Herbert Roy (26), Hugh McCabe (20),
Samuel McLarnon (27), Michael Lynch (28), Gerald McAuley (15) and David
Linton (15) were dead.
Posted by Jim on
By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)
Leo Varadkar’s visit here ruffled unionist feathers but he wasn’t
addressing unionists.
His target was the British government and its failure to offer any
details about what they intend to do about the problems they have caused
for Ireland.
As he said in his speech at Queen’s he is going to be sitting with other
EU leaders in October assessing whether enough progress has been made to
begin trade negotiations.
At the moment the answer is no. Sir Simon Fraser, permanent secretary at
the Foreign Office until 2015 said on Monday: “We haven’t put much on
the table.”
Actually Britain has put absolutely nothing on the table about Ireland,
one of the three priority items where progress needs to be made.
There’s another reason Varadkar’s remarks weren’t addressed to the DUP.
Michel Barnier had made clear he will only negotiate with sovereign
states, not devolved administrations.
As Varadkar’s colleague Neale Richmond, who speaks for Fine Gael on
European Affairs, said last week, the DUP is “politically impotent” in
the matter.
There is no evidence they have had any influence on the British
government.
On the contrary, the waffle Jeffrey Donaldson spouts is proof the DUP
has no policy until they know what the British government’s policy is, a
perfect example of the root of our current problem here – lack of
unionist leadership.
Varadkar intoned the usual cliches about getting the executive up and
running but privately the Irish government believes there is no chance
of that happening in the near future and the main reason is that the DUP
has no policy for reinstating the executive.
They do know one item that is necessary. They have to change their
attitude and behaviour, something the DUP have found impossible.
Let’s be clear about this fact. The DUP went into an executive with Sinn
Fein only because they believed that was the best way to prevent any
change in the north.
Their fear was greater Dublin involvement looking like joint authority
if they didn’t.
Remember, all the senior figures in the party opposed the Good Friday
Agreement.
Arlene Foster and Donaldson left the UUP because Trimble was not hard
line enough.
The DUP opposed devolving policing and justice. They agreed but reneged
as they do, then wouldn’t implement it until forced in 2010.
The party has opposed any change on flags, emblems, Orange marches, the
past, victims, you name it. Their participation in the executive was
never enthusiastic.
It’s a unionist trope. In the words of the historian E.H. Carr unionists
can’t see change “as achievement, as opportunity, as progress, but as an
object of fear”.
They can’t see that the world is in perpetual motion. For unionist
‘leaders’, for want of a better word, change means inevitable decline,
loss, defeat.
They don’t seem to realise that change itself is inexorable so when an
event such as the loss of their majority in the assembly election
happens it’s proof that change is bad, not that new ideas and policies
have to be devised to cope with inevitable change.
Instead they look for a way to claw back to where they were. Hence the
frantic resurrection of the oul’ alliance with the UDA and UVF to get
out the vote for them in June’s election.
All so they could say, “See, there are still more Prods”. No thought of
the horrible price they pay for that deal.
Endorsed by the men who are an incubus on their own community.
Undermining their own public representatives. Supported by convicted
extortionists, drug dealers, thieves and gangsters whose nefarious
activities are reported luridly every Sunday in a local paper. But, hey,
that’s OK if it gets you elected.
The price was immediately visible to all in the disgraceful twists and
turns unionists made around the bonfires which threatened the homes of
people who’d just voted for them.
Did you ever see such a gutless performance by politicians? Yes,
obviously you did. The last time unionists were called upon to do the
decent thing for their electorate.
They can’t stand up to the UDA because they might need them again soon
to prevent change.
The DUP’s fundamental policy is, “Stop the world, I want to get off.”
Posted by Jim on August 11, 2017
A 47-year-old Irishman has been arrested by Border Patrol agents in Northwest Montana for attempting to enter the United States illegally.
Agents encountered the Irishman, carrying a large backpack, along the international border near the northeast section of Glacier National Park. He had previously overstayed his US visa and was prohibited from re-entering the United States for an extended period, according to Michael Rappold, public affairs officer for the Havre Sector Border Patrol Station.
According to the authorities, the Irishman entered the United States from Canada by walking southbound, through the woods, to avoid detection. Rappold told the press he was just carrying clothes and nothing illegal.
He has been arrested and processed in preparation for a removal hearing. He remains in custody (as of Aug 10) with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Agents monitoring border
Border Patrol Division Chief John South said “This is a great example of how effective our agents are at identifying and interdicting cross border traffic in remote areas of the border.
“They’re always ready to carry out our agency’s mission and safeguard the public.”
Earlier this summer, in June, Border Patrol agents arrested five Romanians who had entered the U.S. illegally and were panhandling in Whitefish, in the same region.
It has been known for years that some seeking to enter do so by hiking through rugged terrain and crossing mountains. However, it remains a very dangerous route as the areas are sparsely populated and can be difficult to navigate.
Irish citizen’s visa options
Currently Irish citizens entering the United States must have a visa for longer stays or are issued with a holiday-visa (a 90-day visa waiver). If the visitor overstays their 90-day allotment they can be banned from re-entering the United States for a ten-year period.
Other long-term visa options include being sponsored by an employer (H1B), earning a visa due to their extraordinary talents (O visa) or winning a green card through the diversity lottery visa. In 2017 50,000 US Green Cards were issued through this lottery, just 124 of them went to Irish citizens.
It is time for Irish to go it alone on immigration reform
Posted by Jim on August 10, 2017
The agri-food sector is particularly exposed to the dangers of Brexit
Colm Kelpie. Irish Independent. Dublin. Thursday, August 10, 2017
Cavan, Monaghan, Kerry and Longford are the counties most exposed to the economic effects of a hard Brexit, while average farm incomes overall could be slashed by more than 6pc, a stark analysis shows.
More than one in five workers in each of those counties work in the sectors most vulnerable to the UK’s EU exit, the study states, including agri-food and beverages, accommodation and tourism services, air and freight transport and traditional manufacturing.
Some 243,000 workers are employed in those sectors, according to the study by business body Ibec.
“By examining employment in these sectors across different counties, we can give some idea as to which areas of the country are most exposed in the event of a ‘hard’ Brexit,” the Ibec report stated. The counties with the highest exposure are Cavan, which has 28pc of its workforce in the affected sectors, Monaghan at 27pc, Kerry at 22pc, and Longford at 21pc.
“Exposure is lowest, as expected, in urban areas,” the report stated. “The least exposed counties include Cork and Galway cities along with the four Dublin local authorities and their surrounding counties (Louth, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow).”
The analysis said that in nominal terms, Co. Cork has the highest numbers of jobs in the exposed sectors at 28,000. But that is less than 14.5pc of employment in the region.
Ibec also warned of steep hit to farm incomes and output, arguing that a hard Brexit has the potential to reduce farm output by around €3,000 per year per farm, across 140,000 farms throughout the country.
This would result in a net 6.5pc fall in average farm incomes overall and an up to 9.5pc fall in incomes for livestock farms, Ibec claimed.
Referring to a recent study by cross-border development body InterTradeIreland and the ESRI detailing the impact on food and beverage manufacturing exports to the UK in the event of a hard Brexit, Ibec said overall food and beverage manufacturing output could be slashed by around 8pc permanently.
“Our own modelling extending from these findings, suggests a €2.1bn fall in Irish food and beverage manufacturing exports would translate to a fall of over €415 million in demand for farm output,” the Ibec analysis stated.
“Applying this to figures from Teagasc’s National Farm Survey suggest that the immediate impact on Irish exports to the UK alone would translate to a steep reduction in farm output of around €3,000 per farm annually, across 140,000 farms. Assuming a proportional fall in variable costs, this would result in a net 6.5pc fall in average farm incomes overall and up to a 9.5pc fall in incomes for livestock farms.”
The study also stated that any hit to tourism from the UK, such as from the weakening in sterling, will be more keenly felt in rural areas.
It stated that British tourists are most important for the north-west, with British visitors accounting for just over 47pc of the total tourist revenue in the region, followed by the east and midlands at 36pc, and the south-east at 35.1pc.
Gerard Brady, Ibec’s head of tax and fiscal policy, said Budget 2018 must include measures to protect these vulnerable sectors.
“There are serious downside risks on the horizon,” he said.
“Following a fall last year, indigenous exports to the UK have recovered some lost ground in the first half of 2017.
“But there will be increased volatility as the year goes on, with sterling depreciating once more since the UK election. No matter what the outcome, Brexit will hurt both our indigenous exporters and rural regions disproportionately.”
Despite the bleak assessment, growth prospects remain robust. Ibec forecasts GDP growth of 4.2pc this year and 3.2pc in 2018, driven by a strong domestic economy.
Consumer spending is to rise by 2.8pc. Investment is forecast to grow by 8.4pc as the construction sector continues to recover from a low base, it said.
There are serious downside risks on the horizon