Marching Season

Posted on June 22, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Marching Season has begun.
It is that time of the year …mid-June to mid-August….when Orangemen walk about a lot.
They do this because
1 It is their British, Protestant and Unionist Culture.
Or
2 It annoys Catholics.
Or
3 It is British, Protestant and Unionist Culture to annoy Catholics.

As with any sporting season, we have had some pre-season friendlies, games to show that both teams …Orange marchers and Catholic residents are up to the challenge.
So last nights game in North Belfast did not disappoint fans of either side.
The Orange marchers tested the Parades Commission determinations to the fullest and in the post-match analysis will be working out how breaches will be policed on bigger days in the season…the Twelfth of July for example.
On the residents side…Sinn Fein MLAs Gerry Kelly and Caral Ni Chuilin were on the streets. Both got knocked around a bit by a PSNI (Police Service of Norn Iron) land rover. Sinn Fein are using the video of the footage for propaganda and they seem to have a point.
It will do Gerry…I declare an interest as I class him as a friend….no harm. In Republican circles, he is a hero and even at 60 years of age has upstaged the republican dissidents by getting in the face of the police. Gerry Kelly is a Sinn Fein member of the Policing Board, which oversees the Police.
Likewise Caral who got a few bruises from the same landrover…it will do her no harm either.
The last time I saw Caral who is the Minister for Culture Arts and Leisure was at the launch of the Irish language initiative, Liofa. She was chatting happily with PSNI officers including Asst Chief Constable Judith Gillespie.

Yet it was only the first match in Marching Season. Orangemen got to march. Residents got to protest. And over the course of the two month season, we can expect more of the same. Thats the trouble with Marching Season…DUP and SinnFein joined at the hip and ruling Norn Iron as a one party state (the one party has a Green Wing and an Orange Wing…its a two month long opportunity for DUP and SF to rally the troops and then seamlessly re-engage with their coalition partners before the autumn.

If it sounds like a farce…..its because it IS a farce.

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Right Of Reply: Patrick Corrigan

Posted on June 22, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

A few days ago, I posted a bog “A Tale Of Two Corrigans” in which I noted that Patrick Corrigan, top man in local Amnesty International, made a very public speech last Saturday, criticising American record on human rights and foreign policy and still managed to be in the VIP seats at the Waterfront Hall just forty eight hours later….to listen to the American President Barak Obama. Presumably it was by invitation.
I contrasted this with the treatment of another Corrigan…Mairead Corrigan, who actually won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her efforts with Betty Williams to bring Peace to Norn Iron.
The Nobel Peace Laureate was airbrushed out of the entire proceedings. Ironically the American President is himself a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
I do not know whether Mairead Corrigan was invited to the Waterfront.
I do not know whether she declined the invitation.
But I do know that while fellow Nobel Laureate Obama was making a speech name-checking John Hume, David Trimble, Rev Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams….Mairead Corrigan was standing outside Belfast City Hall….protesting American foreign policy.
It seems she is the wrong sort of Nobel Peace Laureate.

Mr Corrigan…as I noted here…has blogged his speech of last Saturday. On his blog, I asked whether he had taken the opportunity to mention his concerns to President Obama. His reply is now on his Blog.

A couple of days ago, Mr Corrigan contacted me via Facebook and asked why there was a delay in publishing his right of reply. Apparently he has sent a comment on my Blog. It has not reached me. Mr Corrigan has stated that he will re-send the comment when he has time.

Let me emphasise as I did in the original post that if Mr Corrigan chooses to comment, I will be happy to publish it.

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Rio De Janeiro….And Belfast

Posted on June 21, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

At first sight, there is little in common between Riode Janeiro and Belfast. I mean Mardi Gras is hardly the GLorious Twelfth.

And the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016 is hardly the World Police and Fire Games which are coming to Norn Iron later this summer.

But there IS a connexion. The rioters in Brazil are out on the streets protesting because they feel totally disconnected from these two massive vanity projects. The Police and Fire Games…not to mention G8 Summit, Titanic, City of Culture nonsense, MTV Awards and the rest are vanity projects dreamt up by Government aided and abetted by a compliant media to produce a “progressive narrative” for Norn Iron.

Are those fleg protestors, Orangeutans not merely on the streets because they feel “alienated” as the academics tell us.

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Irish Labour Party Deserves All It Gets

Posted on June 21, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

I have no sympathy for the Irish Labour.
Nominally a sister Party of the SDLP, it has been remarkably unsupportive of SDLP down the years. I recall a walkout at a 1970s SDLP Conference whenConor Cruise O’Brien …a truly awful man got up to speak.
Of course the 21st century Irish Labour Party has even worse people leading it…ex-Workers Party yahoos like Eamonn Gilmore and the obnoxious Pat Rabbitte.
You couldnt like them if you reared them.

What exactly is the point of the Irish Labour Party?
Always…2011 is an exception…the third Party in Irish Politics….it should be representing the working class against centre-right Fianna Fail and Right wing Fine Gael, the traditional big beasts in Irish Politics.

Labour actually protects the working class by being in Opposition. Less well in Government. Over the past thirty years it has been almost impossible for Fianna Fail and totally impossible for Fine Gael to form a Government without help fro smaller parties. Although FF did form a short lived coalition with Labour in 1992, FF has alwys preferred to rely on much smaller parties.
Fine Gael relies on Labour to form a Government. And vice versa.

The post-election horse trading is now a feature of Irish politics, with the inevitable Labour Party Special Delegate Conference to decide on whether to join a coalition with FineGael. It is also traditional for Labour to agonise before “reluctantly” entering coalition. Of course the truth is that Labour careerists would sell their granny for a ministerial limousine.
Thus the never ending debate. We live in times of austerity. Does Labour in coalition Government mitigate the worst excesses of red clawed right wing Fine Gael…or does it collaborate?

Inevitably since entering into coalition with FG in 2011, the Labour Party has had to make toughdecisions. The natural inclination of FG is to cut taxes and cut services. The natural inclination of Labour is to increase taxes and increase services.

With 19.5% of the votes in 2011, Labour is now showing at 11% in opinion polls. And will be destroyed at the next Election and will lose half its seats. Panic is setting in. Decent Labour people have lost the party whip and today the Labour Party lost a backbencher…only elected in a bye-election eighteen months ago. They are in meltdown and deservedly so.
Because it was inevitable.
It is self evident that the junior partner in any coalition gets the blame for everything and the credit for nothing.
And Labours traditional supporters …as has been the norm for thirty yearswill be unforgiving.
Collaboration trumps Mitigation every time.
Thats the pattern …a chastened Labour Party will lick its wounds for a decade …and do it all again, getting in to bed with FF or FG in ten years.

but surely a lesson for Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems in Britain.
What will they do in 2015?
After five years of mitigating and collaborating with Camerons Tories, will they try and save themselves by detaching themselves fom the Conservatives or even enter a pact with Cameron?
And what about the Alliance Party? The SDLP and UUP seem semi-detached from DUP and Sinn Fein…effectively an Opposition within the five-party Government. But Alliance are the prop that keeps DUP and SF in charge.
All of their members seem happy with that….after agonising of course. but they too would sell their granny…just like Irish Labour Party and Britains Lib Dems. Will the Alliance voters turn on them?
There are alterntives to Alliance. SDLP has at least stopped the rot. Even the SDLPs most severe critics on Slugger O’Toole can no longer deny it (but they do). And there are Greens and even Tories and now NI21 on the flank once occupied by UUP.

Is that why Alliance have sent out its attack dogs and even its poodles.
Alliance can prepare for a mitigation-collaboration debate with its own voters.

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LetsGetAlongerist Coup D’Etat?

Posted on June 21, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

With so much talk about no Opposition at Stormont, it strikes me that there is an Opposition OUTSIDE Stormont. A curious combination of Overclass, liberal unionist and letsgetalongerist.

Is there not an elite group of overpaid Norn Iron patriots forming groups and placing “their” people in key jobs around Norn Iron, so that we will all wake up one morning and find letsgetalongerist tanks on the lawn.

Have these people taken a leaf out of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and infiltrated BBC, UTV, Belfast Telegraph and at least one Tinternet message board? Have Alliance, Greens, SDLP, UUP, Conservatives and NI21 been infiltrated by sinister people from think tanks and lobbying groups?

Have these people got a “hit list” of democrats and refusniks (such as me)who will rendered off to some hell-hole black prison in South Belfastand force-fed a diet of vol au vents and wee coaktail sausages on a wee stick? Inhuman treatment. No good in looking to Patrick Corrigan to come to our aid as Local Amnesty cannot interfere.

When will they strike?
Perhaps when the British Government pulls the plug on the whole Stormont farce, this Overclass will Vichy-style negotiate to put themselves in power claiming the Norn Iron Life & Times Survey as a manifesto and justiication.

In this respect LetsGetAlongerists are worse than the Taliban.
Democrats must be vigilant.
We must monitor the treachery of these people.

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Quote Of The Week?

Posted on June 21, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Quote of the Week has to be from Ian James Parsley (still a member of the Alliance Party). Writing in his blog about NI21 (and isnt the batlle between Alliance and NI21 heating up nicely?) Mr Parsley (politician and businessman) states.

“Ultimately the real currency of politics is not votes but influence”.

To a democrat like myself that seems a tad undemocratic.
By the way have I ever mentioned that the Alliance Party (ian Parsley is sometimes a member) has 52,000 votes and two Executive seats?

Anyway one of the rather unfortunate things about Norn Iron politics is that people who couldnt get arrested never mind elected form pressure groups with fancy names and network with each other to further their agenda such as integrated schools and “normal politics”.
It is in effect an undemocratic and unaccountable Opposition. The arrogance is breathtaking. It is a scandal.

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John F Kennedy: The Irish Legacy

Posted on June 20, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

JFK1

I was in Dublin last week and picked up the First Day Cover, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Visit of President John F Kennedy to Ireland.

I am old enough to remember that visit. It was some forty odd years after Ireland became a nation but just seven years after Ireland was accepted into the United Nations. It was three years after Ireland sent troops on UN Peacekeeping Missions to the (Belgian) Congo.
Kennedys election as President of the USA in 1960 was actually a proud moment for Irish people. A sign that our ethnicity had at least been recognised and JFKs visit was in many ways, international recognition that we were a nation.
Some of the footage and commentary sounds twee and patronising. And the sight of Uachtaran/President De Valera and Taoiseach Sean Lemass as well as Minister for Foreign Affairs Frank Aitken, emphasises the fact that these former IRA men were closer to 1916, the War of Independence, the Civil War, the Emergency 1939-45…..JFKs visit helped to convince us that we no longer needed the inferiority complex.
Camelot died in the streets of Dallas.
For me….I was 11 years old then….it would take a while to learn that JFKs father was a bit of a crook. My father knew of course. So did every American and Irish adult.
And of course only an inner circle knew about the serial womanising of JFK.
From old Joes Hollywood starlets, to “Happy Birthday Mr President” to Mary Jo Kopechne, we know it all.
And we know about the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missisles. And that speech he made at the Berlin Wall….in the same week he visited Ireland in 1963.
It is impossible to think of JFK in Ireland in June 1963 and not think of the context that six months later he was murdered.
President Obama visited Ireland this week and visited Berlin this week.
But he is no John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
He makes good speeches and holds the Nobel Peace Prize (yes honestly) but he has done very little.
As one of my best AMerican friends put it earlier this week “he is a Chicago politician”.
And of course JFK was Boston Irish.

I think I spent most of my adult life distancing myself from the whole Kennedy Myth. True Ted Kennedy was a big player in the Norn Iron Peace Process. And true, he was always on the side of the Good Guys against the Bad Guys on Capitol Hill.

But was Camelot a sham?
On maybe four occasions I have visited the Kennedy Homestead at Dunganstown inCounty Wexford. What impresses me most is that it is NOT touristy. It is very much in the context of a family showing visitors around the outbuildings, now a tribute to a famous relative.
No “Gift Shop” just a handful of very dated postcards…. from the 1960s.
It is barely mentioned in County Wexford tourist literature. It is decidedly low key.
JFK4<

I was last there in September 2003. The young man who showed us around was. The son of one of the daughters who hosted the President in 1963. A genuinely nice guy.
Of course I knew the History…it has always been a simple fact that Kennedy was absolutely genuine in his affection for Ireland. And entirely fitting that the Guard of Honour at his funeral was the from the Irish Army…he had beenimpressed by a guard drill on his visit. That is a signal honour of which the nation should be proud. The TG4 documentary about that Honour Guard is still available on YouTube. The wreath that Kennedy laid at Arbour Hill is now in the Kennedy Homestead.

Certainly in September 2003, I was skeptical.
But June 1963 was not JFKs first visit to the homestead.
Shortly after WW2, Kennedy was staying at (as I recall) Lismore Castle in County Waterford and drove to Dunganston.
A short time later he wrote to an American friend about the trip.
That letter is in Dunganstown.
In it, JFK chides his lady companion on that trip for a dismissive comment that his distant relations were like the people from "Tobacco Road". He states that she missed the whole point. The point was their DIGNITY.
And DIGNITY is everything.

As always SmartArses will be cynical about the Emigrant Flame…lit from the flame at Kennedys Arlington Grave, which will be put on display in New Ross, County Wexford, a few miles from Dunganstown. And maybe even cynical about the visit of Caroline Kennedy to mark the fiftieth anniversary of her fathers visit.
image
Not everybody gets the “Irish”.
We respond to the people who do.
John F Kennedy did.
His granddaughter Tatiana seems to get us. Thanking the Irish for her “good looks and sense of humour” will resonate with us.

The simple truth is that Kennedy was both the Boston-Irish socialite…a playboy who won the 1960 Election with the questionable assistance of Chicago politicians. But thats only half the story. The other side is that he believed in Dignity. Too few people do……….and for me it is enough that HE did.

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Slugger O’Toole And West Belfast

Posted on June 19, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Is it cos Im from West Belfast? (as Ali G might have said).
Slugger O’Toole’s obvious dislike for James Kelly and Mairead Corrigan…couldnt be anything to do with them both being from West Belfast…could it?
No …there would need to be a pattern.
Well…Gerry Adams is from West Belfast.
Does Slugger like Gerry Adams?
Im guessing that they dont.
Mairtin O’ Muilleoir? Hmmm I dont think so.
So is that four from West Belfast they dont like?
Well maybe.
Does Slugger like ME? Im from West Belfast.
I dont think they do. Id be mortified if they do like me.

So could that be a pattern?
Probably the wrong question.
Maybe Quintin Oliver is from West Belfast. Slugger likes him. If only everyone could be like Quintin.

Questions. Questions. The only real answer is…Lima. So they say.

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Slugger O’Toole And Non-Persons

Posted on June 18, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Does Slugger O’Toole, the LetsGetAlongerist message board have a list of people who are are “undesirables”? Probably not …or I would probably be on it.
Yet Slugger seems to ignore some people.
What harm could James Kelly the veteran journalist who died aged ONE HUNDRED having been a journalist for EIGHTY TWO YEARS have done that he did not merit an obituary when he died two years ago?
One reason proffered was that it was maybe not newsworthy. Most reasonable people would disagree.
Take Mairead Corrigan. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in 1976, at a time when Peace was not exactly popular.
On a Slugger thread, I draw attention to Mairead Corrigans strange omission from the VIP seats at the Waterfront Hall and her seemingly not being paid tribute in President Obamas speech…on the subject of Peace.
It is an insult to many thousands of people.
I ask why not.
Mick Fealty bizarrely calls my questions SPECULATIVE. Although he cant quite bring himself to use Mairead Corrigans name. I call the questions LEGITIMATE.
It is the kind of question that Journalists SHOULD be asking and SHOULD be highlighting the answers.
Pity there are no journalists associated with Slugger O’Toole. Or are there?

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A Tale Of Two Corrigans

Posted on June 18, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Here is an odd thing.Yesterday I was looking thru the Amnesty International website when I spotted a blog by Patrick Corrigan, the Amnesty Man in Belfast and occasional contributor to letsgetalongerist website Slugger O’Toole. The blog was actually a text of a speech made to G8 protestors at Belfast City Hall on Saturday. It was scathing about United States record on human rights and foreign policy.
But curiously less than 48 hours later, Mr Corrigan was in the Waterfront Hall…in the VIP Section, directly behind Peter Robinson, the First Minister and beside Mark Carruthers of the BBC.
I commented on his blog, asking him if he had used the opportunity to make the same points he had made to protestors just two days previously. If he replies, I will let you know.
I do not know how many of the trade unionists from NIPSA, Unison etc who listened to Mr Corrigan on Saturday got tickets to the Waterfront.
Of course President Obama name-checked many who had worked for Peace…Hume, Trimble, Paisley and Adams. And of course the nice lady in Alexandra Park. But did he mention Mairead Corrigan?
Who is Mairead Corrigan?
Her sisters three children were killed in 1975…knocked down by a car driven by an IRA volunteer who was shot dead by the British Army. The incident led to the formation of the Peace People, which Mairead Corrigan co founded with Betty Williams. It was a short-lived mass movement…the first organised Peace Movement of the Troubles.
Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.
There was of course controversy. Divisions within the Peace People over the fate of the Nobel Peace Prize money, the perception (which I shared and still share) that the movement was naive and certainly exploited by the British Government. Ultimately the Peace People disintegrated after just a few years later.
But it remains a fact that Mairead Corrigan is a Nobel Peace Laureate.
So why was she not in the Waterfront yesterday alongside her namesake Patrick? Did she not deserve to be there?
Did she not deserve a mention (maybe she was) as much as Rory McIlroy and “Dame” Mary Peters.
Where was she?
Well she was at Belfast City Hall…protesting about American policy in Syria and other places. Ms Corrigan takes Peace seriously. She was on a ship seized by Israelis as it tried to get to the Gaza Strip to aid Palestinians.
Perhaps Mairead Corrigan is the wrong type of Nobel Peace Laureate.
Patronised by the Establishment in 1976, she is now a marginalised figure.
A lesson surely for those kids in the Waterfront Hall who were patronised shamelessly yesterday.

Which is better? Quiet Diplomacy? Confrontation?
Which Corrigan has it right?
Who is “Wrong Way Corrigan”?

(If you dont know the reference…Douglas Corrigan was an American aviator who in 1938 filed a flight plan from New York to Los Angeles and landed in Ireland…and was dubbed “Wrong Way Corrigan”)

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