Top US cops called in to investigate IRA informer known as Stakeknife

Posted by Jim on October 18, 2016

Bedfordshire Chief Constable Jon Boutcher (left) is leading Operation Kenova, the investigation into the activities of the alleged Army agent known as Stakeknife.Police Service of Northern Ireland

65-2 An Official Communication from the Uniformed Firefighters Association #48 of 2016

Posted by Jim on October 17, 2016

50 Years Later, Recalling a Manhattan Blaze That Killed 12 Firefighters

Posted by Jim on

By CHARLES DELAFUENTE 

Oct. 17 is a sad day for the New York Fire Department. Monday is the 50th anniversary of the fire that, until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, claimed more firefighters’ lives than any other disaster in the city.

The short trip that the firefighters made from nearby firehouses on Oct. 17, 1966, started around 9:30 p.m. when they headed to a fire at a building on East 22nd Street, just east of Broadway.

Despite the heat and smoke they encountered, firefighters who were there said the source of the blaze — its “seat,” in firefighters’ parlance — had not been obvious. Several firefighters were sent around the block, to 23rd Street, and told to pull a hose through a drugstore there in an attempt to approach the fire from the rear. They went in, and never made it out.

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What was burning in the 22nd Street building, a subsequent investigation showed, was paint and lacquer that had been stored in the basement by an art dealer. What the firefighters who went into Wonder Drug & Cosmetics, at 6 East 23rd Street, across from Madison Square Park, had no way of knowing was that the store and the 22nd Street building shared a basement, and that an interior basement wall had recently been moved to give the 22nd Street building more underground storage space.

That meant that the drugstore’s thick floor was poorly supported, and as the fire burned below it collapsed, sending 10 firefighters plunging into the basement. Two others were caught by the flames that quickly roared up to the first floor through the huge hole left by the collapse.

The death toll was 12: two chiefs, two lieutenants and eight firefighters.

The five-story building that housed the drugstore is long gone. In its place is a high-rise apartment building that covers 22nd to 23rd Streets. On its 23rd Street wall is a bronze plaque that reads, “In tribute to our comrades,” with the date of the fire and the name and rank of each of the 12 victims.

The Fire Department’s current commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, whose father was a captain in the department, visited the scene the day after the fatal fire, and speaks often of the tragedy.

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“It made a lasting impression on me,” Mr. Nigro said last week.

He attended the funeral of several of the men a few days later, which he recalled as “a very sad day.”

Mr. Nigro became a firefighter three years later and was assigned to a Midtown Manhattan company. At the time, he said, the deaths were “still on the minds of the firefighters in that area.”

The memory has not faded. “Any time I go on 23rd Street, which is fairly frequent, whoever I’m with, I tell them” about the fire, Mr. Nigro said, adding, “Every once in a while, I see somebody who was there, and we talk about it.”

Every Oct. 17, firefighters who helped battle the blaze, department commanders and current members of the companies whose members died gather in front of the bronze plaque for a solemn ceremony for what is remembered as the 23rd Street Fire. They will do so again on Monday.

Brexiters should know consequences of ignoring Ireland

Posted by Jim on

By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)

Charlie Flanagan tells us the Irish government will seek ‘legal
recognition of the unique status of the north and the circumstances on
the island’.

However, he was talking in terms of the free movement of people and
goods on the island.

That seems to be what the Taoiseach’s planned ‘All-Island Civic
Dialogue’ seems to be concentrating on too.

(You daren’t call it an ‘All-Ireland Civic Dialogue’ in case you offend
unionists who aren’t turning up anyway).

Most experts think that will be a tall order. In the last week the
indications are that other EU members are lining up to make negotiations
as difficult as possible for the British government after Theresa May
and her ministers’ aggressive and provocative remarks at her party’s
rally in Birmingham.

The Conservative Brexiteers really know how to make friends and
influence people. May and her immediate xenophobic entourage are the
only people who count.

That’s clear now. Our proconsul, her local little Englander Sir Echo, is
her political lapdog who has worked with her during his years at the
Home Office where her authoritarianism was evident in every statement.

Our proconsul takes care to use exactly the same words as May, for
example ‘no borders of the past’, without having a clue what that means
in the future or how it will be implemented.

What we know for sure is this. May and her braying conference place
immigration at the top of the agenda.

Control of numbers means leaving the single market and probably the
customs union too. She, and of course her local lapdog, witter on about
the Common Travel Area, deliberately confusing it with free trade in
goods which it certainly isn’t.

How the two are going to be equated in Charlie Flanagan’s ‘legal
recognition’ is a mystery when Britain leaves the single market.

Puzzling enough as that conundrum is, there’s another more profound
political conundrum.

How do you retain the right to pursue the aspiration towards Irish unity
to be operated by a border poll as provided in the Good Friday Agreement
when the north isn’t in the EU? So far only the Taoiseach has made a
passing reference to this problem in an important speech a couple of
weeks ago.

Suppose post Brexit, in a decade with an inevitable nationalist voting
majority here especially as economic hardship bites, suppose people did
vote for Irish unity: how would that work when the north isn’t in the
EU? How does it join?

The Taoiseach compared the problem to West Germany’s position after 1989
when the wall came down. It joined with East Germany which was admitted
automatically after 1990 to the EEC as it then was.

Could the north do the same and if so, what would the Scottish
government think if the same arrangements weren’t available to Scotland?
Would other EU members agree? Would Spain want similar arrangements to
incorporate Gibraltar as their price?

Charlie Flanagan and the Irish government need to start thinking about
how they incorporate such a process as the German one into the ‘legal
recognition of the unique status of the north’ instead of just talking
about trade.

The Irish government goes on about how a hard border will cause
difficulties for the peace process. Fair enough.

What will cause incomparably more difficulty is if the carefully worded
deal in the Good Friday Agreement about how to advance Irish unity
peacefully and democratically is casually set aside unilaterally by the
British government with no concern for the inevitable consequences.

Let’s state quite simply what they are. A boost for republican
dissidents, destabilisation of Sinn Fein’s political position and
general nationalist outrage that a British government has once again
reneged on a deal, in this case an international agreement.

The Irish government has to start making these points explicitly because
the Brexiteers in this horrible British government care nothing of the
consequences for the north of their rush towards a UKIP-lite position.

Cutting immigration is the number one priority in order to steal UKIP’s
clothes and undermine Labour. Dublin should remind them of the
consequences of ignoring Ireland.

Attacks on Catholics continue

Posted by Jim on

An arson attack on a flat in north Belfast was a sectarian bid by
loyalists to burn out Catholics living in the area.

A bin was pushed against the door of a ground floor flat on Ligoniel
Road and set alight at around 1.25am on Thursday morning.

The death threat ‘KAT’ had been spray-painted outside the property,
which is in a predominantly loyalist area. ‘KAT’ is an abbreviation for
‘Kill All Taigs [Catholics]’.

The blaze damage the ground flat and an upper apartment. Three people
were treated for smoke inhalation, but the targets of the attack escaped
serious injury.

Meanwhile, there was shock when two loyalists who nearly killed a young
Catholic man in an “animalistic” sectarian attack in Derry were this
week given only suspended sentences.

Judge Barney McElholm admitted the victim was lucky to be alive as he
allowed two Waterside men to walk free for their part in the attack,
which took place in the predominantly Protestant Fountain area of the
city.

Darren Dougherty and Robert Lyttle, both 24, were charged with assault
and assault occasioning actual bodily harm respectively.

The court heard the victim was attacked by a group of six-seven males
who were said to have shouted sectarian abuse such as “you Fenian
bastard” during the 2014 attack. CCTV footage played in court showed
Lyttle kicking the victim six times as he lay on the ground and
Dougherty on top of him as girls attempted to break it up.

Passing sentence, Judge McElholm said the attack could have proved fatal
and the victim could have sustained “serious and permanent brain
damage.”

Addressing both defendants, Judge McElholm said: “Both of you need to
take a long hard look at yourselves.” Dougherty was a given three months
jail sentence suspended for two years and Lyttle was given a nine month
jail term suspended for two years