SAOIRSE32

BreakingNews.ie

20/11/2005 - 16:20:11

**See also the official ‘Dalai Lama’ website

The Dalai Lama visited a reconciliation centre in Northern Ireland today at the start of a three-day visit.

The exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhists met management and staff at the Corrymeela Centre in Ballycastle, Co Antrim.

He arrived in Northern Ireland, for his first visit since 2000, after two days of engagements in Scotland.

The Dalai Lama has lived in India since he fled from Chinese troops in 1959.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his non-violent struggle for Tibet.

The 70-year-old will officially open the headquarters of Mediation Northern Ireland in south Belfast tomorrow before concluding his engagements with a Way of Peace celebration at Belfast Cathedral on Tuesday.

His UK trip followed a 19-day visit to America.

BBC

Army bomb experts have removed a pipe bomb type device from the grounds of a leisure centre in Derry following a security alert.

Templemore Sports Complex, off the Buncrana Road, was evacuated during the alert which has now ended.

Army bomb experts who were sent to the scene removed a number of items for scientific examination.

A police spokeswoman said it was believed the pipe bomb had been lying there for some time.

BreakingNews.ie

20/11/2005 - 12:23:14

A documentary about Eamon de Valera’s early life that was too controversial for RTE to screen is now in production with a US television station.

WGBH in Boston has begun work on the project which claims that the former Irish Taoiseach and president was half-Cuban.

De Valera was the most influential politician in the first 50 years of the Irish state, yet his origins have remained shrouded in mystery.

Born in New York, he later returned to Ireland with his Irish-born mother but his father’s identity has never been proven unequivocally. The history books claim that de Valera’s father, Juan de Valera, was a wealthy Spanish businessman who settled in New York.

But an academic at Columbia University in New York believes he has documentary evidence that links de Valera’s early years to a rural province in Cuba.

Professor of Film, Brendan Ward, who has Irish parents, has tracked down church records in Mantanza which contain de Valera’s baptismal, First Communion and Confirmation certificates.

“I have spent two years getting permission from the Cuban authorities to access them and now I finally have it,” he said.

Mr Ward originally approached RTE executives with the idea in 2003 but they were not interested.

“We had a lot of talks, but I think it was too much of a hot potato for them, politically,” he said.

Mr Ward will travel to Cuba with a WGBH crew next year to begin filming on the project.

“His American citizenship actually saved him from certain execution after the Easter 1916 Rebellion so the course of 20th Century Irish history could have been radically different.

“De Valera wanted this whole part of his life repressed because illegitimacy was such a taboo subject at the time and would have caused an enormous controversy while he was in such high public office.”

De Valera’s volumes of private papers, which may shed some light on the subject, and have never been published and remain in the family’s hands.

“I’ve been to the Mantanza province where this Valera name is common and I’ve met members of the Valera family. They look remarkably like Eamon de Valera. They are tall and slim with oval-shaped faces,” said Mr Ward.

If he proves the connection it would be the second major Cuban/Irish link. Revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s mother was Anne Lynch from Co. Galway.

De Valera seriously contemplated entering the religious life in his youth, but his biographer Tim Pat Coogan has speculated that the questions surrounding his legitimacy may have been a deciding factor.

He went on instead to fight in the Easter Rising and played a key role in the War of Independence and the Civil War. He founded Fianna Fáil in 1927 and served as Taoiseach from 1932 to 1948 and again in two further Fianna Fáil Governments. He was also elected president for two terms. He died in 1975 at the age of 92.

The De Valera family do not comment publicly on the former Taoiseach’s background and origins.

Sunday Life

By Joe Oliver
20 November 2005

A WEST Belfast club that counts Gerry Adams among its members has been given a clean bill of health - by the police!

And residents on the Falls Road have also withdrawn objections to the renewal of a seven-day entertainments licence for the Irish Republican Felons club.

The club - membership is strictly reserved for serving or former republican prisoners - had agreed to a three-month monitoring period when the first application was made earlier this year.

It was carried out by officers from Belfast City Council. During the period they found no evidence of drunkenness, lewd behaviour, excessive littering or fights outside the premises.

Sinn Fein councillor Paul Maskey also confirmed in writing that residents no longer had any objections, and police confirmed they had received no complaints.

Last month, former club chairman Liam Shannon was awarded £4,000 after suing the Government in the European Court for breach of his human rights in relation to an RUC raid in May 1997.

Sunday Life

20 November 2005

A MONUMENT commemorating the IRA ambush of three soldiers in south Armagh 30 years ago has been moved to the Army’s Bessbrook Mill base.

The memorial cairn had stood inside the perimeter of the Army’s fortified Drumuckavall observation post just a few yards from the border with the Republic until last month.

Known as ‘Golf 20′, Drumuckavall is close to the spot where three members of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers were shot dead by IRA gunmen on November 22, 1975.

Fusiliers James Duncan (19), Peter McDonald (19) and Michael Sampson (20) were part of a four-man covert observation post located just a few metres inside the Armagh/Louth border. Unaware that their position had been compromised, the soldiers had been manning the position for more than 30 hours before it came under sustained attack.

Up to 10 gunmen opened fire from two positions inside the Republic - killing the three fusiliers and badly wounding the fourth.

The survivor, a lance-corporal, managed to crawl to a nearby road where he was found by reinforcements who had arrived by helicopter.

One of the weapons used in the Drumuckavall attack was later used to murder 10 Protestant workers near Kingsmills in January 1976.

Senior south Armagh Provo Seamus Harvey - suspected by the security forces of having been heavily involved in the Drumuckavall attack - was later shot dead by the SAS.

The memorial stone has stood at Drumuckavall since the controversial observation post was built in the mid 1980s.

Every November, soldiers manning the base laid a poppy wreath to mark the anniversary of the IRA attack.

However, the Government’s decision to demolish a number of south Armagh observation towers meant the Drumuckavall memorial had to be relocated.

As Bessbrook is not one of the Army’s 14 core sites to be retained after August 2007, it is likely the memorial’s final resting place will be inside the Northern Ireland Memorial Garden at Palace Barracks, Holywood.

Sunday Life

By Alan Murray
20 November 2005

A SPECIAL prison riot squad is on standby at Maghaberry Prison over fears that violence will erupt between UDA prisoners.

Governors are concerned that tensions between Andre Shoukri’s north Belfast brigade and brigades from the east and south of the city could spill over into jail violence.

Sources connected to the UDA insist there is “no major problem”.

But it is understood that remarks by south Belfast UDA boss Jackie McDonald on last week’s UTV Insight programme angered Shoukri’s supporters.

In the ‘Slow Surrender’ programme, McDonald was asked how the UDA would deal with other ‘Jim Grays’ in the organisation - a reference to the murdered east Belfast ‘bling brigadier’, who ran a money-spinning criminal empire.

He replied that it was for the Chief Constable to deal with such people.

UDA elements in north Belfast interpreted this as a direct reference to Shoukri, currently on remand on blackmail and money laundering charges.

“It was certainly commented upon during brigade meetings, but there is no major problem at the moment between us and south Belfast,” said a north Belfast UDA source.

McDonald and Shoukri denied they were at loggerheads in an exclusive Sunday Life interview earlier this year.

But within weeks, the pair and their supporters were involved in a stand-off in the Sandy Row area of the city.

Shoukri’s prosecution on a string of charges has caused resentment among his supporters.

The 28-year-old is being held on remand with former Irish League footballer John ‘Bonzer’ Borland, believed by police to be his second in command.

A Prison Service spokesman said yesterday that the prison situation was constantly monitored and there had been no “incidents” involving loyalists.

But prison officers say two internal response units are on stand-by to deal with any violent incident that might develop between north and south Belfast UDA prisoners.

The Herald

IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent
November 18 2005

Britain is poised to become the main European refuelling hub for secret CIA flights carrying terrorist suspects for interrogation in North Africa and the Middle East.
Despite protests by MPs and MSPs, the UK government has taken no action either to halt the clandestine flights or demand to know whether prisoners were on board the 390 known to have landed at Scottish and English airfields since 2001.
They are called “rendition” missions. This is the White House-sanctioned process of moving al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist prisoners to third countries where they can be interrogated beyond the reach of US and European human rights’ legislation.
The countries to which captives have been taken for questioning by local security forces have been accused by the UN of employing torture to obtain information.
Officials in Germany, Spain, Sweden and Norway have opened criminal investigations into possible violations of national and international law on the issue. Italy has filed a formal extradition request naming 22 CIA agents allegedly involved in the kidnap of a radical Muslim cleric in 2003.
Ireland and Denmark have lodged protests over the pit-stop presence of CIA-operated aircraft on their territory en route for Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or “ghost” prisons elsewhere in the world. Denmark has even asked the CIA to avoid using its airspace when transporting prisoners.
A German intelligence source said: “Britain may soon be one of the few countries, if not the only one, still willing to accept rendition missions via its sovereign territory.”
The Herald has revealed Scottish RAF bases and civilian airports had played host to the 170 “rendition” missions en route to or returning from Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Jordan.
Glasgow and Prestwick airports handled 149 of the refuelling stops, including a number of overnight stays. RAF Leuchars, Edinburgh, Inverness and Wick were the other locations.
Professor Martin Scheinin, of the UN’s human rights commission, said: “When several states, by co-operating with each other, breach their obligations under international law simultaneously where torture might be involved, then all bear individual responsibility. I have submitted a list of detailed questions to the government of the UK over rendition flights.”
A source from Germany’s spy service said: “While most European governments initially turned a blind eye to rendition flights in the immediate aftermath of September 11, the embarrassment factor involved once the media realised that suspects were being abducted for torture at the hands of third parties means that these missions can no longer be carried out with impunity.
“Austria scrambled fighters to intercept an unauthorised CIA flight two years ago and our own government is increasingly hostile to US arrogance in assuming that Ramstein air base is US territory.”
Spain this week opened a judicial inquiry into claims that CIA flights used Majorca and the Canary Islands.
A CIA spokesman said the agency carried out rendition flights only via “countries which are political allies and whose intelligence services grant permission”.

Sunday Independent

DANIEL MCCONNELL

TRINITY College Dublin, Ireland’s oldest university, is giving masters’ degree qualifications to its Arts graduates for a payment of €498 without any course work being completed.

The practice, of long standing and known throughout academia, was described by FG Education spokeswoman, Olwyn Enright, yesterday as “highly questionable”.

It seems certain to prolong the debate on the standard of qualifications which last week saw the Government’s Chief Science Advisor, Barry McSweeney, being moved to another post.

It raises the question as to why a TCD Arts graduate seeking a job would bother to spend two years on a masters when they can get one for a relatively modest payment. Applicants wishing to avail of the qualification need to be out of the college for three years and pay a fee to the office of the proctors.

Economic and industry figures said that the handing out of such qualifications could give such students an unfair advantage when competing for jobs outside of academia.

“Many businesses and corporations may be swayed by the presence of such a qualification on a CV,” said one industry figure, who did not want to be named, yesterday.

TCD in a statement to the Sunday Independent said: “As with Oxford and Cambridge, the University of Dublin awards the MA degree to holders of the BA after three years, as an indication of maturity. This is a very ancient process, well known in academic circles. The University would not itself regard the MA as a postgraduate qualification, and it is certainly not the equivalent of the MPhil or MLitt, for example.”

Trinity College in a statement stressed that no additional academic work or examination is required to attain the award.

It said: “When making appointments to academic posts, the University would not regard the MA as a postgraduate qualification. The degree of Masters in Arts is not in fact included in the University of Dublin Calendar Part II, which is devoted to Graduate Studies.”

But in Britain, many universities object to the practice. Martin Ince, contributing editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement which compiles the international university rankings, said other colleges in the UK were unhappy with the system in place at Oxbridge.

He told the Sunday Independent : “No academic job in Ireland or the UK could be obtained off the back of such a qualification as most of the colleges are aware of these MAs. However, the danger exists when people who have obtained such degrees apply for jobs overseas with employers who may not understand the distinction.”

In all other Irish universities, the MA is awarded after the candidate has successfully completed a prescribed course of study over one or two years and in many cases has passed an examination. A spokeswoman for UCD said: “We are not currently engaging in a scheme like that in Trinity, nor are we likely to do so in the future.”

Irish Examiner

By Harry McGee, Political Editor
19/11/05

DUP leader Rev Ian Paisley told the Irish Government yesterday that the prospects of his party engaging in talks with Sinn Féin in the New Year were remote.

Dr Paisley, speaking to reporters after his meeting with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Dublin, said he has been told by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) that it will not be in a position to give the IRA a ‘clean bill of health’ when it next reports in January.

Asked would he ever share power with Sinn Féin in a devolved government in the North, he said: “No. Not with IRA/Sinn Féin,” seeming to rule out the prospect of a restored Assembly.

However, he immediately qualified the remark by saying: “I believe, as the Taoiseach has said and also the Minister for Justice has said, that terrorism must finish. The IRA has to be disbanded.”

Dr Paisley led a senior DUP delegation to Government buildings for an hour-and-a-half long meeting with Mr Ahern, Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern and Justice Minister Michael McDowell.

In a prepared statement, he said they had a forthright exchange of views with the Taoiseach.

He told the Government that proceeding with allowing members of parliament from the North become involved with the internal workings of the Oireachtas would be “shortsighted”.

“If it transpires that Northern Ireland MPs are to be treated on an equal basis with those who are members of the southern parliament, then we would consider that a quasi-constitutional claim on Northern Ireland,” he said.

“Such an unfriendly act of aggression against Northern Ireland’s sovereignty would not be tolerated by us as unionists.”

He said such an act would “jeopardise the prospect of a proper friendly relationship between our two countries”.

The DUP also expressed grave concerns about the return of the Colombia Three to Ireland.

“There are things we would never agree on such as the Taoiseach’s wish to see a united Ireland,” said Mr Paisley.

Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern, however, gave a more upbeat assessment of the meeting and reiterated the Government’s commitment to the resumption of a devolved executive in the North.

Referring to the DUP, Mr Ahern said: “They didn’t say anything in their remarks that would suggest they were not going to go back into devolved Government and have the institutions up and running.

“But it is quite clear that they are going to take their time. They are going to be cautious in relation to what might or might not come out of the IMC report.”

Asked about the prospects for a resumption of the institutions, he said: “Depending on what the IMC say, we would expect progress to happen thereafter.”

Newshound

(Jim Gibney, Irish News)

Human rights and the pursuit of justice have dominated Clara Reilly’s life for more than 30 years.

Clara divided her early-married life between rearing a large family and campaigning for those experiencing the sharp edge of injustice.

As far as injustice is concerned Clara had a baptism of fire. She lived in Turf Lodge in the early 1970s when the area was under virtual military curfew and local people were being regularly arrested for interrogation or internment.

With one of the few available phones in her house, distraught relatives were at Clara’s door day and night seeking help to get their loved ones released from British military custody.

It was these fraught encounters between the powerless and powerful that prompted Clara to become involved in human rights work.

Along with Fr Faul, Fr Murray, Fr Brady and Anne Murray she helped set up the Association for Legal Justice (ALJ) in 1970.

The ALJ recorded by hand thousands of accounts of arrest and torture of detainees.

The ALJ was instrumental in convincing the Irish government to take the British government to the European Court of Human Rights where they were found guilty of degrading political detainees known as the ‘hooded men’.

Clara won a precedent-setting landmark case against the British government when she was arrested for ’screening’ – a policy used for mass arrests to gather intelligence. The judgment forced the British government to end ’screening’.

In 1981, the year of the hunger strike, Clara organised an international conference about the use, by the crown forces, of plastic bullets. They killed seven people that year including three children and Belfast mother of three Nora McCabe. Nora’s killing by an RUC man was famously captured on camera. The RUC killing of Sean Downes with a plastic bullet at a protest in Belfast in August 1984 led Clara and bereaved family members to set up the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets.

In 1991 she helped establish the Relatives for Justice (RFJ) which has been campaigning for truth and justice for hundreds of families of those killed by crown forces or as a result of collusion.

Those who work with Clara describe her as an ‘indefatigable advocate’ for all people’s human rights.

Early in Clara’s life injustice visited her family. Her father was interned in Crumlin Road gaol when Tom Williams was hanged in the 1940s.

Her four bothers were interned in the seventies.

Loyalists killed her brother Jim; another brother Harry had his life cut short due to being severely injured in a bomb blast. Her cousin Brendan O’Callaghan was shot dead by the British army.

Clara believes there should be no strings attached to human rights, that justice is indivisible, above party politics, the interests of governments and armed organisations.

She used her formidable skills to encourage armed republican organisations to respect people’s human rights and managed to save people’s lives.

Clara Reilly would be an ideal choice as a victim’s commissioner.

It is unlikely she is on the British government’s short list given her trenchant opposition to the cavalier way they treat victims and survivors of the conflict.

Instead Peter Hain appointed Bertha McDougall, the widow of an RUC man as victim’s commissioner. She may well be an effective commissioner. Time will tell.

Nationalists view the appointment as a sop to the DUP.

For years RFJ has challenged the British government to accept its part in the conflict and its responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of people and to end the situation where the state forces kill, investigate themselves and then exonerate the killers.

They have opposed the British government sponsored ethos, so often reflected in media coverage, which treats relatives of those killed by the IRA as more deserving of sympathy and support and those killed by the crown forces as less deserving of sympathy and support.

This attitude has created a hierarchy of victims with those the RFJ represent at the bottom. They believe the refusal to recognise all victims equally is adding to the grief of thousands of relatives.

RFJ is seeking justice not revenge, truth not imprisonment. That is a magnanimous step for people denied both. Will they get it? Will someone like Clara Reilly ever be a victim’s commissioner?

November 19, 2005
________________

This article appeared first in the November 17, 2005 edition of the Irish News.

Indymedia Ireland

by Seán MacRuadhán. - RSYM Saturday, Nov 19 2005, 8:39pm
sp@rsym.org address: 392 Falls Road, Belfast

In response to the recent sensationalist press reporting in the tabloids regarding Dessie O’Hare, A spokesperson for the Free Dessie O’Hare Campaign stated, “The Free Dessie O’Hare Campaign will not be deflected by the recent malicious gutter press journalism concerning the recent transfer of Dessie O’Hare from Castlerea Prison Co Roscommon to Portlaoise Prison Co Laois.

PRESS STATEMENT RE: DESSIE O’HARE TRANSFER

In response to the recent sensationalist press reporting in the tabloids regarding Dessie O’Hare, A spokesperson for the Free Dessie O’Hare Campaign stated, “The Free Dessie O’Hare Campaign will not be deflected by the recent malicious gutter press journalism concerning the recent transfer of Dessie O’Hare from Castlerea Prison Co Roscommon to Portlaoise Prison Co Laois.

The facts concerning Dessie’s transfer to Portlaoise are as follows, “After returning from temporary release on Wednesday 16th, Prison Officers searched his hand luggage and found alcohol which was contained in two lucozade bottles, in a cosmetic bag they found two sleeping pills and when he was strip searched a mobile phone was recovered. After a disciplinary hearing Dessie was informed that he was been transferred to Portlaoise”.

The public would be better served if the media concentrated on highlighting the continued refusal of the Irish Government to release Dessie O’Hare as a qualifying Prisoner under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, instead of engaging in sensationalist headlines of no substance which only purpose is to demonize Dessie O’Hare and further add to the continuing torment of Dessie’s, wife Claire and there two Children.

STATEMENT ENDS

BBC

Click to view - Enya’s new album Amarantine is to be released next week

Enya has dedicated her latest album Amarantine to the BBC Northern Ireland producer who introduced her individual ethereal singing style to a worldwide audience.

Tony McAuley, who died at his home in the Glens of Antrim in June 2003, gave the Irish singer her television break when she recorded the music for The Celts series.

Enya subsequently released the soundtrack from the series as her debut album, The Celts, in 1987.

The singer, who is Ireland’s best selling solo musician, said McAuley had played an integral role in bringing her music into the public domain.

“He was very important… a great, great friend who got us involved in the first project which was The Celts,” she said.

“We had a wonderful time at the BBC, because firstly we were asked to write the music for one episode, but when we had put forward a few pieces, the director, David Richardson, said he wanted us to write the music for the six episodes, which was a great compliment.”

Tony McAuley was a central figure in developing Irish music

McAuley also played an instrumental role in the careers of Paul Brady, the Chieftans and Van Morrison.

In the past, Enya has performed her songs in English, Gaelic, Welsh, Spanish and even Elvish (for the Lord of the Rings soundtrack).

However, her latest album, to be released on 21 November, has stretched her linguistic singing repertoire to the fictional language of Loxian.

After trying to sing the track Water Shows The Hidden Heart in English, Gaelic and Latin, her co-writer Roma Ryan suggested she tried it in Loxian.

“(When) we worked on Lord of the Rings, Roma was working on writing the lyrics in Elvish because of Tolkien’s fictional language,” she said.

“So when we went to work on the album she suggested, because we were working on this one song and we had great difficulty deciding on what the language was going to be, she suggested creating a fictional language called Loxian, which was absolutely so exciting.”

According to the Sunday Times Rich List, Enya is the joint 78th richest person in Ireland with an estimated fortune of 100m euros (£70m).

She was also the world’s biggest selling artist in 2001.

However, despite her fame and success the Donegal singer says she still gets excited about creating original music.

She said: “I have a great love of music always had, and to put together this album and kind of lose yourself in the music is really interesting, to be creative and not think of the commercial side of the music, to focus on what you want to say in a song, so the extra bonus is the success.”