Posted by Jim on June 26, 2018
Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) one of the most eminent English historians explained how England used the Bible in its genocidal, racist, and —after the English Reformation— anti-Catholic oppression of Ireland.
Sadly, today there is still a residue of that deep-seated anti-Catholic bigotry in a significant section of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. (Can any informed, objective person really deny this?) And —since the Six Counties of Northern Ireland were torn away from the other 26 Counties of Ireland by the 1920 British Government of Ireland Act— every time any Unionist/Loyalist/Protestant leader makes a gesture of reaching out to Nationalists/Republicans/ Catholics, the Bible is sacrilegiously deployed to reject that gesture.
Some might see the latest melancholic example of this as being Ballymoney Councilor John Finlay’s over-the-top attack on Arlene Foster’s attendance at the Fermanagh-Donegal GAA game on Sunday, June 24.( See article below :’’DUP councillor berates Arlene Foster for ‘publicly flouting Lord’s Day’ ”. News Letter, June 25).
Was this attack out of concern for the Lord’s Day —which, by the way was changed from Saturday to Sunday by the Catholic Church at the Council of Laodicea in A.D. 364— or could it be seen as a dog whistle? Might some, with good reason, see Councilor Findlay’s attack as a not too subtle attempt to rally the extreme, fundamentalist, ultra-Orange base of the DUP: to show disrespect not only to Catholics, but also to all things Irish (as personified by the GAA)? Just like Gregory Campbell’s disgraceful attack on the Irish language?
A few misguided individuals may think the best way to counter anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, or anti-Black racism is to ignore it—just don’t acknowledge it and it will disappear. History and human nature prove otherwise. Right now, Blacks in the United States quite correctly call out anti-Black racism. And I back them one hundred percent. Same as I back Jewish-Americans who are not silent about some re-emergence of anti-Semitism in the United States.
Any time the Word of God is used directly or by dog whistle to cause division and hurt, we can be certain it is not God’s will. As I said recently in a speech at the headquarters of the AFL-CIO (the federation of 55 national and international labor unions that represent 12.5 million working men and women): “People of faith can be certain that working for justice is doing God’s work on earth. And people of no faith can be certain that working for justice is doing the decent and loving thing. And all of us can be certain that anything that does injustice —anything that marginalizes, demeans, devalues and disrespects human beings— cannot be God’s work, or cannot be the decent and loving thing to do.”
Time to build up The Beloved Community in Northern Ireland—and that, we can all be certain, is God’s will.
DUP councillor berates Arlene Foster for ‘publicly flouting Lord’s Day
John Finlay said Arlene Foster had caused ‘deep hurt’ within the DUP grassroots
Stephen Gamble.News Letter. Belfast. Monday, June 25, 2018.
A DUP councillor has spoken of his “deep sorrow and indignation” at his party leader’s decision to attend a GAA match on a Sunday. In a strongly worded letter to Arlene Foster, Alderman John Finlay accused her of “publicly flouting the Lord’s Day”.
The Ballymoney [a small town in County Antrim] councillor also claimed that Mrs. Foster had caused deep hurt within the grassroots support of the party by attending the Ulster GAA final in Co Monaghan on Sunday. In his letter to Mrs Foster, which the News Letter has seen, the Causeway Coast and Glens representative added: “You said that you realized there are some people who may be uncomfortable with you [sic] being at the GAA match on a Sunday, but you then went on to say: ‘But let me tell you this, I am the leader of a political party that wants to have a shared society in Northern Ireland’. I regard those comments as dismissive and patronizing, and I wonder if you have any appreciation of the depth and extent of the hurt you have caused across the party membership and its support base.”
Mr Finlay said the party has always held the Lord’s Day “to a high view”, adding: “It is extremely upsetting that you feel that you can suddenly sweep that aside because you regard it as politically expedient to do so. How you treat the Lord’s Day in your own personal life is a matter for you, but as leader of my party, you have no right to publicly flout it on the grounds that it is necessary to do so on the basis of promoting a shared society.”
Arguing that Biblical standards are “absolutes and therefore non-negotiable”, Mr Finlay continued: “I commend the current leadership of our party for its stand on key areas such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and I believe that God will bless our continued adherence to Biblical principles on these issues.
Posted by Jim on
Drew Harris, a current Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI police in the
Six Counties, is to become the new Garda police commissioner in the 26
Counties, it has been confirmed.
Mr Harris has worked in the RUC (later PSNI) more than 30 years and has
been intimately involved in some of the most controversial aspects of
policing in the North.
He has been directly linked to a number of cover-ups as the head of PSNI
legacy affairs, and previously headed C3/Special Branch, the agency
responsible for directing, arming and protecting state agents within
loyalist death squads.
His appointment as the first ‘outsider’ to head the Gardai came as a
shock to Sinn Fein, who have yet to comment, but he has faced
condemnation from the party in the past.
When he was promoted to his current PSNI role in 2014, Sinn Fein’s
Caitriona Ruane withdrew from the Policing Board panel to fill the post,
saying she believed the process had been compromised.
Human rights groups in the North had demanded his resignation from the
PSNI over his refusal to release documents on collusion killings. Mike
Ritchie, of Relatives for Justice, described Harris’s role in the
cover-up of the Glenanne killings as “the last straw”. He described
Harris as “a reminder of the political policing of the past and the
contamination of current policing by the cover up of the past.”
His new post attracts a salary of a quarter of a million euro a year
following a pay increase designed to bring outsiders to the post. The 26
County Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said he was pleased that the
“rigorous selection process”, which lasted 10 months, had come to a
conclusion.
“Drew takes up office at a time of major reform and investment which
will redefine An Garda Siochana as an organisation. As we approach the
centenary of the establishment of An Garda Siochana, the organisation is
on the cusp of significant change,” he said.
Saoradh said the appointment of Harris as Garda Commissioner wasn’t a
surprise. It described the police forces in both parts of the island as
“counter revolutionary” and “violently opposed” to republican ideology.
Condemning Harris as “a relic of colonialism”, it said his appointment
would mean that the “corrupt” activities of the Gardai in recent trials
of republicans would continue unabated.
The party also raised what it said were significant questions over his
involvement in British intelligence and collusion:
“Harris, under the terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act,
has been operating under direction from MI5 for some time now.
“What has the extent of these contacts been? Has Drew Harris ever been
in the pay of MI5? Does he remain in the pay of MI5 or an agent of
British Intelligence?
“Harris has also been part of the RUC/PSNI leadership that has withheld
information from families affected by state murder and collusion, and
their legal teams.
“This includes victims of British State murder within the 26 Counties,
including the Dublin/Monaghan bombings. Given the prominent role Harris
has played in the suppression of information, how appropriate is it that
the 26 County administration has appointed him to this position?
Posted by Jim on
A secret MI5 report that resulted in the RUC (now PSNI) police
protecting its agents and informers regardless of their role in the
conflict has been made public after 38 years.
The author of the report, Patrick Walker, was a former colonial
administrator in Uganda. He went on to become head of
‘counter-terrorism’ at MI5 and served as the head of MI5 between 1987
and 1992. He was knighted in 1992.
The Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ), a Belfast-based
human rights organisation, is understood to have obtained a copy under
the Freedom of Information Act after going before an information
tribunal.
Daniel Holder, the deputy director of CAJ, told the Guardian newspaper:
“In our view the Walker report was the blueprint for making RUC special
branch a ‘force within a force’. It radically altered the structures of
the RUC, centralising enormous power within special branch which
controlled everything from forensics to who was arrested and charged.”
Walker’s report in 1980 resulted in Crown force police being ordered
never to arrest a loyalist or republican without consulting Special
Branch (police intelligence). Detectives were told that anyone who was
arrested could be recruited as a British agent.
As a consequence, a number of loyalists were given free reign to kill
Catholics to terrorise the nationalist population into submission, while
IRA informers such as ‘Stake Knife’ were allowed to kill genuine
republicans.
The Walker report, named after the senior MI5 officer who drafted it,
was commissioned in January 1980 at the height of the conflict, shortly
after the IRA killed 18 British soldiers in a single attack. British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was said to fear the IRA was gaining
the upper hand. Walker’s strategy brought scores of killers into the pay
and protection of Special Branch.
“All proposals to effect arrests, other than those arising directly out
of an incident, must be cleared with SB [Special Branch] to ensure that
no agents, either RUC or army, are involved,” he wrote.
“If an individual has made an admission and the CID [Criminal
Investigation Department] officer considers he may have intelligence of
value to give, SB should be allowed to question the individual on more
general matters. It is important that CID should not proceed immediately
to a charge whenever an admission has been obtained.
“If a CID officer decides that an individual being interviewed is not
going to make an admission but may have intelligence of value, he should
arrange for the interview to be taken over by SB.”
After the implementation of the Walker report, a number of loyalists and
republicans became widely known as “protected species”.
One such man was Gary Haggarty, who was jailed for six-and-a-half years
last January after admitting to over 500 crimes including five murders,
five conspiracies to murder and others. Haggarty had been a Special
Branch double agent with the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force.
A controversial cover-up is continuing in the case of Freddie
Scappaticci, who has been accused of being ‘StakeKnife’, an agent for
the British Army within the IRA’s internal security unit, who executed a
number of genuine republicans as informers.
Official inquiries into the murder of the Belfast defence lawyer Pat
Finucane in 1989 have found that Brian Nelson, the man who targeted
Finucane and handed information about him to his loyalist killers, was
also an agent in the pay of the British Army, as were others in the
murder gang. The inquiries found that Walker did not wish to see Nelson
prosecuted, telling the attorney general that he was concerned that it
would damage the morale of agents.
The 1982 report of John Stalker, who investigated ‘shoot-to-kill’
(political executions) found crime detectives were told the cases were
“out of bounds” to CID. Stalker was not told about the Walker report,
but he guessed at “high-level endorsement” of killer agents.
The CAJ’s Daniel Holder said today: “Our concern has long been that the
approach to informant-handling in the past was outside of the law and
violated human rights. The system established by the Walker report not
only fuelled and prolonged the conflict, but left a poisonous legacy
that makes dealing with the past more difficult in the face of
relentless attempts to conceal the impact of such practices ever since.”
News of the release of the report today is extraordinary — it came as
it was announced by the Fine Gael government in Dublin that it is
appointing PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris, a former head of
Special Branch, as Commissioner of the 26 County police.
Posted by Jim on June 25, 2018
Relaunch the Irish Independence Party as a Northern moderate nationalist alternative to the supposedly new-look ‘republican-lite’ of Sinn Fein. That’s the recommendation controversial political commentator, Dr John Coulter, makes in his Fearless Flying Column today.
A person would need to be totally politically naïve to believe that the election-battered SDLP can be revived. That experiment hatched by John Hume and the late Gerry Fitt to obliterate Eddie McAteer’s Irish Nationalist Party has itself run its course.
What is needed to combat Sinn Fein is a new Northern-based moderate nationalist movement with a strong moral influence on abortion and same-sex marriage.
I used to think that the solution to the moderate nationalist dilemma was to merge the SDLP with either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael to combat Sinn Fein’s all-island identity.
There was also the alternative that now that Fianna Fail had organised in Northern Ireland, that republican party’s next move was to formally contest elections, with perhaps next year’s local governmental poll a top target.
Even if there is another Westminster snap poll over Brexit, at least Fianna Fail MPs would take their Commons seats. But there’s another elephant in the political room which even Unionism has had to deal with, which Southern republicanism wants to avoid – sharing power with Sinn Fein in a future Dail.
Southern politicians have witnessed the political mayhem which Sinn Fein is capable of unleashing on democracy if the crisis at Stormont is taken as a benchmark.
The nightmare scenario for both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is that either may need to ‘sup soup with the devil’ politically and form a coalition government in Leinster House with the Provisional IRA’s political wing.
While Sinn Fein has already indicated at a special conference that it would be prepared to enter a coalition Dail government, both main Southern parties are still publicly adamant that a deal with Sinn Fein is not on the cards – no matter how much lipstick and mascara the republican movement plasters on its manifesto.
Sinn Fein is now piling all its political eggs into the Leinster House basket as it now firmly believes it can achieve its united Ireland via Dublin rather than Belfast.
The late Martin McGuinness’ legacy was to create a situation where it had backed the DUP partners into a political corner. For the time being, Sinn Fein can park its Stormont agenda because it has electorally blasted the SDLP off the political map.
Sinn Fein has wiped out the SDLP’s three MPs; the republican movement has more MLAs at Stormont, and if Sinn Fein can play its ‘middle class dolly bird’ card, it could dish out another battering to the SDLP in next year’s council elections in Ulster’s 11 super councils.
The bitter reality which the SDLP must face is that Sinn Fein has done to the SDLP, what the SDLP inflicted on the Irish Nationalist Party. While merger with Fine Gael or Fianna Fail contesting Northern elections may seem like the obvious solution, could it be implemented in time to prevent a moderate nationalist meltdown in the council poll?
The Sinn Fein all-island agenda has an Achilles’ Heel – the emergence of a new six-county moderate nationalist party in Northern Ireland, especially with battles over same-sex marriage and abortion about to become the big summer talking points.
Irish politics is full of ‘what ifs’. What if the Protestant nationalist leader – John Turnley – of the Irish Independence Party of the 1970s had not been murdered by the UDA in 1980 in the Co Antrim coastal village of Carnlough. If Turnley’s brand of radical middle class nationalism had eaten into the SDLP vote, would there have been a need for the republican hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981?
While I have maintained that Sinn Fein needed to copy the IIP in holding the moderate nationalist middle class voter base in Northern Ireland, that was before the republican movement abandoned its historical traditional values as espoused by Padraig Pearse.
As one of the main signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, he must be spinning in his grave at how the modern Sinn Fein movement has drifted away from the Christian faith and into the evil world of secular atheism. That was copper fastened earlier this month at the Sinn Fein ard fheis in the abortion debate with Sinn Fein’s clear message – if you are a nationalist with a pro-life Christian faith, then just clear off!
During the Troubles, Sinn Fein constantly acted as apologists for those who attacked the living; now the party has deteriorated into the pathetic apologists for those who wish to attack the unborn. How can any God-fearing Catholic who calls themselves a nationalist now vote for Sinn Fein?
Prayers for a miracle political revival for the SDLP will more than likely go unanswered. Only SDLP candidates who have built up a strong personal vote will hold their council seats in 2019. The local government poll in the weeks after Brexit will be a political Requiem Mass for the SDLP.
But moderate nationalists have one ace card – they can, and should, reform the IIP as a movement for pro-life Catholic voters. Stormont looks like being moth-balled for the foreseeable future. When it does return, there may well be a new realignment in Parliament Buildings – not along the traditional Unionist/Nationalist/Other divide, but along pro and anti-Christian lines.
Given the march of the secular society, I have often warned that Christians in the future may need to form their own party, although the odds of that succeeding are doubtful given the constant theological bickering among churches and denominations.
But there could be an unofficial Christian alliance between pro-life politicians across the political divide. Pro-choice campaigners were heralding the next stage in their secularist agenda with placards boasting ‘The North is Next’.
Politically and organisationally, moderate nationalist should pool their resources into forming a six-county movement rather than trying to organise on an all-island basis. Sinn Fein may not be completely derailed by a new IIP movement, but the brakes could be put on the bandwagon.
If the moderate nationalist fightback by the SDLP was genuine – and achievable – then the party should have reduced West Tyrone to a Sinn Fein marginal. But the reality is that West Tyrone is still a Sinn Fein stronghold.
The new IIP must be a moderate middle class nationalist movement which clearly espouses all that is good in conservative Catholicism, especially on the pro-life agenda. But moves to launch this movement must be made now as time is not on moderate nationalism’s side.
Dr John Coulter has been a journalist working in Northern Ireland since 1978. As well as being a former weekly newspaper editor, he has served as Religious Affairs Correspondent of the News Letter and is a past Director of Operations for Christian Communication Network television. He currently also writes political analysis articles for national newspaper titles. He is author of the ebook, An Saise Glas’: The Road to National Republicanism, available on Amazon Kindle.
Posted by Jim on
June 25th
WTC
Active Assistant Chief
Ronald R. Spadafora
Chief of Fire Prevention
WAKE
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Frank E. Campbell – The Funeral Chapel
1076 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10028
FUNERAL
Friday, June 29, 2018
11:00 am
St. Thomas Episcopal Church
1 West 53rd Street (on Fifth Ave)
New York, NY 10019
All Off-Duty Members should attend in Class A Uniform.