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Baile na nGael
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
Posted by Jim on August 9, 2019
Active Member Captain Michael C. Thomas Division 8
WAKE :
Sunday, August 11, 2019
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM & 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Perinchief Chapels 438 High Street
Mount Holly, NJ 08060
FUNERAL :
Monday, August 12, 201911:00 AM
First Baptist Church1341 Woodlane Road
Eastampton Township, NJ 08060
All Off-Duty Members should attend in Class A Uniform.
Posted by Jim on
Riot police have withdrawn from a republican area of north Belfast following clashes today over their efforts to prevent a bonfire constructed by local youths from being lit.
There was cheering as the PSNI pulled out, and tensions reduced further after the PSNI announced the operation had been cancelled.
A handful of anti-internment bonfires are still lit in some republican areas, traditionally to commemorate the introduction of internment without trial brought in by the British government on 9 August 1971. However, republican groups do not support their continuation due to sectarian displays which mimic and respond to the hundreds which appear on loyalist bonfires every July.
This year’s bonfire in north Belfast was again constructed by a so-called nationalist “hood community” in the New Lodge despite the intense opposition of Sinn Fein and a majority of local residents in the area.
Efforts to prevent the bonfire in recent weeks resulted in graffiti threats to those contractors hired to remove it, as well as a local community centre.
However, the PSNI decision to lay violent siege to the stack of wooden pallets early this morning came as a surprise. Over a dozen armoured vehicles were involved, and scores of riot police were deployed, some armed with plastic bullet guns.
Between one and three local youths remained atop the pile throughout the day, while others who attempted to join them were beaten away. There were repeated standoffs and missile throwing, as well as a full baton charge by the PSNI. One riot policeman fell to the ground after he was struck on the side of the head by a missile.
The standoff came to a sudden end this afternoon when the PSNI withdrew. PSNI Assistant Chief Alan Todd said the decision had been taken for reasons of public safety because of “risks to innocent bystanders”. However, he also blamed the presence of “older people” who he claimed had been “using women and children as shields” and were “probably related to violent dissident republican groupings”.
Republican groups have reiterated that they oppose the bonfire. The Republican Network for Unity said it condemned the “heavy handed tactics of the PSNI” in the New Lodge but also said it believed “the will of the local residents in the area should be respected and the fire should not take place”.
“For years 9th August bonfires were lit to mark the anniversary of Internment. In more recent years these fires have turned into a hub for antisocial elements to reck havoc on areas that the majority don’t even live in,” they said.
“As Republicans we need to work with the local residents in all areas to find a way of still remembering anniversaries such as internment without attracting antisocial elements into our areas.”
Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly, who supported the PSNI operation in the New Lodge, strongly condemned those involved in the bonfire.
“This is a disgraceful situation because residents include people who are already vulnerable, some of whom have disabilities and other health related problems,” he said.
He added that “the vast majority of the community have told [Sinn Féin] they do not want this bonfire” and that it had been built “by anti-social elements who torture this district throughout the year”.
Mr Kelly added that the PSNI and youth workers had attempted to negotiate with the young people to come down from the pile of pallets so it could be cleared. “Residents are adamant the bonfire should not be lit,” he said.
The PSNI’s handling of the New Lodge bonfire is being compared with one in Avoniel last month, one of hundreds of loyalist bonfires constructed for the ‘Eleventh Night’. It was deemed illegal as it was constructed in the carpark of a public leisure centre in east Belfast.
After a peaceful negotiation with figures linked to the loyalist paramilitary UVF, the Avoniel bonfire was allowed to proceed by the PSNI, who blamed the threat of UVF violence.
Tensions are expected to remain high in Belfast over the weekend after an anti-internment commemoration march, planned for Saturday, was today ruled to be ‘illegal’. The Anti-Internment League, who are organising the march, said it would be holding a protest at Belfast City Hall instead.
Posted by Jim on
Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation NYC 5KEach September, the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation hosts the annual 5K Run & Walk in NYC honoring the final steps of Firefighter Stephen Siller and the lives of all those lost on 9/11, along with the military and first responders who continue to put their lives on the line every day. This year, the NYC Run will be held on Sunday, September 29, 2019. For the first time, the Foundation is planning to display banners showing the names and photographs of the 6,957 U.S. military members who have given their lives for our country since 9/11/01. They are asking for the help of FDNY active or retired veterans and active military to volunteer for a couple of hours on the morning of the 5K Run and display these banners in Class A uniforms as participants exit the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. “In Memoriam Banner Holders” ItineraryPlease report in Class A uniforms, or formal attire designated for your program. Rallying Point Location: Esplanade Plaza, New York, NY 10281 (exact location TBD) Report Time: 6:45 – 7:00 A.M. Line-Up: 8:00 – 8:20 A.M.First Wave of Runners Exiting Battery Tunnel: 8:30 A.M.Final Wave of Runners Finish: 11:00 – 11:30 A.M. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Gavin Naples at gavin.naples@tunnel2towers.org or call the Foundation at 718-987-1931 for further details and instructions to register. A final list of volunteers is needed by Friday, September 13, 2019, so that badges can be processed and distributed
Posted by Jim on August 8, 2019
An attempt by hundreds of PSNI police to remove a bonfire in a deprived republican area of north Belfast has erupted in a riot this morning. Amid a standoff, one riot policeman has fallen to the ground after being struck by stone-throwing youths. Youths stayed on top of the bonfire as dozens of armoured vehicles and riot police invaded the New Lodge area this morning. The bonfire is due to be lit tonight, the anniversary of the introduction of internment without trial.
The largest remaining nationalist bonfire in the north of Ireland is broadly opposed by New Lodge residents themselves. The event is blamed every year by politicians and media on young people they describe as “scumbags” and “hoods”.
Its construction took place amid small-scale rioting over the course of last week.
In recent days, “contractors beware” has been written on local walls, an apparent threat to those hired to remove the wood pile. That echoed a successful tactic of loyalists last month after their bonfire at Avoniel Leisure Centre was threatened with removal but subsequently allowed to proceed.
However, the response of the PSNI on this occasion has been dramatically different, with scores of regular and riot police, some armed with plastic bullet guns and police dogs deployed this morning into the heart of the republican area.
PSNI encircled the bonfire, creating a police line which soon came under attack from stones and other missiles.
Appeals by grassroots republicans for the PSNI to pull back to allow a mediated solution have gone unheeded. The situation remains volatile, with growing numbers of youths are gathering in the area. One member of the PSNI was seen to fall to the ground after being struck by a large stone.
Sinn Fein has called for the removal of the bonfire. Local representative Caral Ni Chuilin said the bonfire “isn’t wanted” and should be removed, and “all the criminal behaviour needs dealt with”.
Posted by Jim on August 7, 2019
Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, August 7, 2019
The philosopher A C Grayling has called Brexit ‘a suicide cult’, though the comedian John Oliver probably coined the phrase first in 2017 after Theresa May invoked Article 50 to begin the two year countdown. Oliver said May and the Brexiteer cult had drunk their suicide potions which would take effect in 2019. Indeed Boris Johnson says, October 31 is ‘do or die’.
There is compelling evidence that the DUP are full (more like ‘fool’?) members of this deluded cult. Jeffrey Donaldson assured BBC Radio 5 last week that he ‘could live with 40,000 job losses’. Of course he could; his job won’t be one of them.
What an incredible statement for a politician to make, even what passes in the DUP for a politician.
Nevertheless, it sums up the attitude of the cult perfectly. They now accept an economic pile driver is descending, but they don’t care because the time for their magic potion to take effect rapidly approaches so they can dispense with all the lies and subterfuge.
You might have noticed the change in the past few weeks after the departure of Theresa May. Until recently Brexiteers, and our own mini- me version, the DUP, have been inventing nonsense, spotting unicorns, misrepresenting, mis-describing and misreporting the economic and legal facts and figures which indicate the inevitable catastrophe of no deal.
From 2016 to 2018 Donaldson, the DUP self-appointed expert on Borders, assured every media outlet he appeared on that technology would solve the backstop question the DUP had created in December 2017. That’s technology which doesn’t exist and which neither Donaldson, nor any of his fellow cult members could name.
Donaldson and cult arch-priest Owen Paterson assured people that the US-Canada border and Norway-Sweden border were ‘frictionless’. They’re not. Sammy Wilson treated us to repeated characteristically foam-flecked versions of the same fantasies.
Now, all has changed. As Johnson’s government lavishes £2.1 billion on no deal preparations to add to the £4 billion already, in Johnson’s elegant phrase, ‘spaffed up the wall’, cult members are thereby implicitly accepting that it’s going to be dreadful. The markets are pricing in a no deal Brexit, just as they priced in Brexit itself in 2016 by immediately dropping the pound 15 per cent. These days it’s at parity with the Euro in airport exchanges and will sink towards parity with the dollar. Still, the cult’s millennial rapture is coming into sight so they don’t care. Nothing is more important than leaving the EU.
Economists and think tanks and the Bank of England ask when will reality catch up with Johnson? When will he see sense? Futile questions. Johnson drank the potion in spring 2016, a year before May invoked Article 50. For him, ‘sunny uplands’ are in view. Only a malign conspiracy of Brussels and Dublin prevents the enjoyment of this bounty after October 31. They are the scapegoats for the economic crash he’s going to cause. Pathetically the DUP pygmies toddle along behind him chanting ludicrous attacks on Leo Varadkar and the Irish government which gets them coverage in the Tory press which has also mounted an onslaught on all things Irish.
The DUP have overplayed their hand and they know it. Last week twenty-seven civic bodies, including traditional DUP supporters in business and farming, issued a joint statement opposing no deal. Remember, they all support the backstop which the DUP’s stupidity and intransigence called into existence in the first place.
What’s extraordinary for a backwards looking, supposedly historically conscious party like the DUP, is that they have learnt nothing from Carson’s speech in the Lords when he lamented what a fool he’d been to be lured into playing the role of a puppet ‘in the political game that was to get the Conservative party into power’.
Amid the wreckage of Brexit, the DUP cult members are careless, as Donaldson admitted, of the impoverishment inflicted on people here. They’re supporting making people poorer.