September, 2005

Hmmm. All very quick to condemn Harold Good, aren’t we? When something unpopular is said, why do people have to destroy the character of the person saying it?

I have read in a number of places that Harold Good lost members of his own family to the IRA.

Now, this leads me to belive that he owes nothing to the IRA and that his motivations are to the bigger picture - removing terrorist violence from Northern Ireland.

Perhaps those critics should remember that any terrorist organisation decommissioning weapons will not want the media at it’s door. Nor will it want rival factions poring over an inventory of its former arsenal. The need for confidentiality is essential.

These are sensitive times for Republicanism in particular - there exists a body of people who do not agree with decommissioning, and if pressured could become next year’s dissident group. Do you want that? Do you?

I know there are Unionists out there who want to rub the IRA’s faces in it, have it officially labelled surrender. Particularly those who’ve lost relatives throughout the troubles.

I would say to those people - find a kindred spirit in Harold Good. He has faced the same losses, yet in spite of his personal grievances (perhaps because of..), he has helped the IRA along the path to peace in a confident and dignified way.

There’s a long road ahead, particularly in terms of smashing the criminal ring that exists in the wake of the IRA. Let’s take the next step and get Sinn Fein involved in policing and let the rule of law apply to the gangsters.

Just leave Harold Good alone.

I just read an excellent profile of Harold Good over at Slugger. Definitely worth a read to prove that this man is sincere and honest.

Friday, September 30th, 2005 // Northern Ireland: Politics

Been busy the last couple of days, but I couldn’t resist a shot about the freaky weather around Lough Neigh today.

Did anyone else wonder if this was the wind of change blowing through the province? Or was Paisley just yawning in Ballymena? You decide!

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 // News & Media, Northern Ireland: Politics

The Northern Irish blogosphere lit up yesterday with opinion pieces on the IRA decommissioning. Here’s a quick round-up from some of my favourite reads:

The Unionist Viewpoints

It’s all been a bit of an anti-climax for Beano over on Everything Ulster. However, he believes that power-sharing is almost an inevitability, and ends by suggesting that a better system of power-sharing is needed.

Northern Irish Magyar, Paul, isn’t grateful to the IRA for this “Historic” act. The problem with symbolic decommissioning is that it’s taken so long to become a reality, while in the meantime Republicans have shown themselves to be completely immersed in criminality. He also believes that the majority of Unionists no longer support the Good Friday Agreement and that this needs to be addressed.

David and Andrew on A Tangled Web refuse to be duped. Always inflamatory, ATW - particularly Andrew’s post on Provo Claus - doesn’t say anything new, just a little more harshly. Here’s a snippet:

even taking such a shallow enterprise at its word, there is no IRA permanent disbandment or an end to a criminal empire that now has the potential to stretch from Connolly House to the shores of the Black Sea coast

From The Nationalist Bench

On the Nationalist/Republican side, Chris Gaskin heralds the act of decommissioning, and anticipates confusion in the Unionist ranks when the IRA bogeyman has gone away. In a more sober follow-up post, he acknowledges that whatever happens both communities need to learn to live together:

Republicans need to be sensitive to Unionist fears and mistrust because some of them are legitimate fears

United Irelander has a really funny predictive post about the media frenzy that surrounded the announcement. My favourite bit:

Sir Reg will firstly inform the media who he is and why he’s worth listening to, then he will question the evidence. He will probably ask for time to reflect on what has happened. A common unionist tactic of avoiding acknowledging a positive development.

Saved The Best For Last

Big Ulsterman doesn’t post his thoughts on a daily basis, so the Internet doesn’t own him just yet. However, his posts are very well considered and he hammers his point home in a few simple paragraphs. Unlike me

In his first post on the situation, he explains why there is no applause for the IRA, while advocating that a future partnership between traditions must be sought out to our mutual advantage. In a later post, he questions the credibility of the de Chastelain statement and accuses the General of being a student at the Dawson Bailie School of Media Management.

Many of these articles have lively discussions in their comment sections, definitely worth checking them out!

Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 // Northern Ireland: Politics

For people like myself, Northern Ireland can be a deeply frustrating place in which to live. Stuck in the middle of a divided society, it seems both sides will pull and pull until the Province literally tears itself in two.

Here’s a wake-up call. The two extremist parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein cannot live without each other. Their long-running emnity toward each other infects the communities they represent and spreads a mutual fear and distrust among the population.

The ‘No’ Camp

The DUP are not fit to govern. They’re the party who say “No!”. They haven’t made their name on the strength of their policies or their track record of improving Unionist areas. Their strength is in isolating their community further from their Nationalist neighbours. They allowed over a week of aimless Loyalist violence across the Province and without any sincere condemnation, helped to excuse the matter by inventing Unionist disenfranchisement.

How can these people excuse their own lack of effectiveness on someone else? Leadership That’s Working? Apparently not.

I’ve lived in West Belfast (the Nationalist bit) and things are no better there. Gangs of hoods roam the streets on both sides of the tracks, living on the dole, knocking up their little girlfriends, slugging down Olde English cider on street corners. Maybe the gangsterism in these areas sets the like of Johnny Adair up as role models for these dejected teenagers - drug-pushing wide-boys with no respect for their friends, family, women or the law.

The ‘Yes, But Only On Our Terms’ Camp

So what about Sinn Fein, those upstanding members of society who’ve held a gun to our heads for decades, both as a terrorist outfit and as political party/ghetto police force? Their stooges painting propaganda on walls to remind downtrodden Catholics what life might be like without them. What about the unifying effects of their ill-timed “Make Partition History” campaign and ‘rally’? Not exactly an outreach program designed to gain Unionist trust, is it?

Round And Round And Round….

Why in Northern Ireland do the real people come second to party politics and the old themes of division and uncertainty? The people who buy into this propaganda are the ones who suffer from it the most. All this talk of concessions by Unionist MPs ignores the fact that you and I - ordinary citizens - get nothing.

Sure, Sean Kelly got freed. I haven’t noticed an improvement in my lifestyle as a result. Yes, the Good Friday Agreement loosed upon us an unparalleled array of bigotted maniacs. Did civic amenities in my area improve? No. They did not.

Breaking The Cycle

I don’t care about ‘on the runs’. I don’t care about Orange Order marches. They can march straight into hell for all it matters, with their damned Billy Banners. Take the disenfranchised underclass with them.

But leave us behind people who aren’t afraid of ‘the ones on the other side’. Those families who just want to grow up in peace, do an honest day’s work and live in a civilised society. If the people on the Shankill are disenfranchised, it’s because their lot isn’t great. Let’s reach out to them, find a way to rid them of drug-dealing and extortion. Improve their schools and give them prospects, careers. Give the Crumlin Road a new coat of tarmac from top to bottom and spruce the place up.

I’ve said elsewhere about breaking the cycle. What we need here is strong leadership from the middle. From a party with neither Unionist or Nationalist aspirations. We need people, without prejudice, to improve those industrial-era neighbourhoods. The only way to dismantle the machinery of terror is to make the old politics redundant, stop labelling ourselves one way or the other and focus on real politics.

Monday, September 26th, 2005 // Northern Ireland: Politics

Took a wee run over to Craigavon this afternoon for a spot of shopping. I think this must’ve been the first time the entire all-new Levee line-up has been out together on an excursion like this.

We managed to squeeze in nearly four hours of shopping (not that we bought much) and the kids behaved impeccably the whole time! That said, the baby was asleep. Jay was confined to the front of a double-buggy, and Ray was the only one who needed to be shepherded.

Since we’ve had kids, shopping has been a chore. They don’t like it. We don’t like it. A day shopping with young children inflicts a trauma upon you too terrible for words. Less civilised countries could use it as a form of torture. I don’t know if today was special in some way - sometimes planetary alignment affects the children - but Rushmere is a nice spot.

It’s a very well laid out center, with an impressive roster of big-name chain stores. I don’t normally notice these things, because I’m an old-skool bloke shopper. Start at the music shops, end at the music shops. Maybe get a magazine along the way. Grab a super-sized Chicken Royale meal before heading home. I did a bit of that today at Rushmere, while Mrs Levee hunted for garments to show off her stunning post-pregnancy figure. The whole trip was very relaxed - I was able to browse bookshelves in Easons at my leisure with the boys, and Mrs L was able to add to her new wardrobe (she’s becoming a bit of a clothes-horse…)

I’m not being paid by Rushmere to say this (wish I was), but we had a great day’s shopping. We tend to head Belfast and Lisburn, and when I was younger, Ballymena and Coleraine were the big shopping centres. Just goes to show that there are better places away from the usual haunts. Anyway, enough of that.

On the way home, Mrs L and I had a lively debate about whose fault it was that she got pregnant. My slant was that she got in the way of my sperm. Her story is that my sperm attacked her eggs. I didn’t hear her eggs complaining at the time….

Saturday, September 24th, 2005 // Family Life

I watched Dispatches last night on the Northern Bank Robbery in Belfast in December 2004. The programme was not great, it did not shed any light on the crime, did not reveal any additional facts and I felt it was pretty weak.

It is one thing for the police to have an idea of who carried out the crime but it is pointless if they have no evidence to back it up. The British criminal justice system is based upon well established rules that have developed over many years. One rule is that there must be enough evidence upon which to base a case. Ideal speculation and common threads among crimes would never stand up in court and I feel that expecting us to accept such flimsy evidence is a little patronising.

Until there is enough evidence to prove who is responsible for the crime, there is little point in speculating. I think that the IRA probably were responsible for the heist but the lack of prosecutions and the lack of action from the Criminal Assets Bureau show an alarming gap in intelligence.

Friday, September 23rd, 2005 // News & Media

Just as the area is starting to recover from Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita threatens to cause more damage to New Orleans.

Although the area is almost drained of flood water from last months hurricane the damaged levees have not yet been repaired and so even a few inches of rainfall could spell more devastation for the area.

Even those who fled their Louisiana homes are not safe as many sought refuge in Texas which is expected to take a full hit from the incoming hurricane, and so those residents are now being moved once more to Arkansas and Tennessee.

I can’t imagine how the people of New Orleans must feel. To have lost so much …homes, posessions even family, only to have to prepare for more of the same in the coming week. Here in the Levee family our thoughts and prayers are with those people.

Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 // News & Media

It amazes me how a country that is so used to conflict can be so bad at it, yet the British have managed it. There were reports yesterday about two British soldiers in Iraq shooting an Iraqi policeman while undercover. The soldiers were duly arrested by Iraqi authorities. Now here comes the strange bit. Did the British authorities co-operate with their counterparts in Iraq and negotiate with that traditional and revered British diplomacy? Indeed they did not; they took SIX armoured tanks and knocked down the wall of the prison! The soldiers were not even there but in another building (another example of failing British intelligence). This was hardly a proportionate response; it will marginalise the already insecure, angry Iraqi people who will think that the only way to achieve their aims is by using force, the result of this action, and its combined result with other heavy handed British approaches, will be the birth of terrorists.

It appears that internally the British handle threats by a disproportionate and unjustifiable increase in power through legislation while externally they use excessive force to manage perceived threats, usually against weaker states. I call that bullying; whether it is a manipulative intimidation of the electorate or outright intimidation of weak states it is morally reprehensible. The difficulty is that history is written by the victors and the powerful, contrary to myth and fairytale, are usually victorious.

Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 // News & Media

Came across the following quotation from Lord Acton:

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Written in 1881, relevant in 2005. This statement sums up my feelings on just about every political party in Northern Ireland.

Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 // Northern Ireland: Politics

No, this is not the aftermath of a night of hot lovin’. Not that it’s any of your business

Better than that, I just found a KitKat in my drawer that I’d been saving for a rainy day! Now, all I need is a hot cup of tea and I’m all set for the day ahead!

Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 // Spirituality & Stuff