SAOIRSE32

Daily Ireland

Editor: Colin O’Carroll
06/06/2006

The use of a Co Derry beach by the British army for its military exercises is one of the clearest physical signs that the North of the country is still under military occupation, despite the moves, mostly by republicans, to take the gun out of Irish politics.
While the British blast the beauty spot of Benone Strand in Co Derry with all kinds of ordnance day and night, setting fire to the vegetation in the sand dunes, local people are denied the chance to take advantage of the beach and its natural assets without fear of being harassed by British soldiers, or possibly worse.
They are also denied the opportunities normally engendered by having such a natural attraction on their doorstep, the chance to develop businesses and tourism in the region that would benefit the entire community.
Tourism to the region is discouraged because of the constant closure of the beach, and people’s natural worries about innocently straying into the middle of a live firing exercise and being blown to bits.
There are stories of innocent anglers being quizzed and harassed by soldiers until they flee, and of others being buzzed by low-flying helicopters that come so close they blow their rods over, while still others have been disturbed by amphibious craft that come ploughing up the beach.
On top of this there are the ever-present high-powered cameras that follow every move, making people fearful and stressed.
It’s no wonder that many visitors vow never to return.
Another factor of the scandal that is a British army firing range in this area of outstanding natural beauty and scientific interest, is that they are using it to practice their tactics and hone their capacity to kill for the illegal and immoral war in Iraq.
Every time a helicopter strafes the beach and dunes at Benone with heavy-calibre tracer ammunition, it is a practice run for a similar action against the people of Iraq.
In the same way that the Irish government is complicit in the war in Iraq through allowing the Americans unfettered use of Shannon airport to funnel its soldiers and war materiel out to the conflict, and possibly spirit kidnapped people off to secret torture camps, the people of the North are also being made complicit in the illegal actions of Britain in supporting the US in their war.
As the people of Derry look across to the burgeoning development on the similar coastline of the Inishowen peninsula in the Republic just a mile across Lough Foyle, they must be wondering where their peace dividend is.
It’s high time for this modern day Berlin Wall across one of our most beautiful stretches of natural sandy coastline to be removed, and for those who are using it to practice killing people in yet another immoral war to take their weapons home.

Daily Ireland

The publishers of Daily Ireland have launched a £3 million (€4.4 million) claim against the British government over the denial of advertising revenue.
The bill represents a government advertising spend of £200,000 (€292,000) a month since the paper began publishing in February last year.
The Equality Commission is backing the paper’s court action against the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister.
The case was listed at yesterday’s call-over at Belfast County Court when Judge Kennedy was told that a jurisdictional issue would have to be settled before a hearing could go ahead.
It is understood that, because of the amount of money involved, the case may have to be transferred to the High Court.
Daily Ireland, part of the Andersonstown News Group, is claiming compensation for alleged breach of statutory duty and unlawful discrimination contrary to the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998.
The publishers complained to the Equality Commission in February 2005 after the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister said it would not place recruitment or public notice advertisements in Daily Ireland and would continue the policy of advertising in The Belfast Telegraph, The Irish News and News Letter.
Legal arguments relating to the jurisdiction point are expected to be heard at the end of June.

Daily Ireland

Funds from foreign affairs minister will benefit Free Derry Museum

By Eamonn Houston

A museum dedicated to the history of some of the pivotal events of the Troubles received a cash boost from the Irish government yesterday.
The Bloody Sunday Trust, which oversees the Museum of Free Derry, was awarded €25,000 (£17,000) by foreign affairs minister, Dermot Ahern.
The museum has amassed an impressive archive of material relating to the civil rights era in Derry.
Sinn Féin MP Martin McGuinness and SDLP leader Mark Durkan have been credited with securing the money which will be used to further develop the museum.
Mr McGuinness said: “I welcome the announcement for the Bloody Sunday project. I made representations on behalf of the Bloody Sunday trust and I am glad that these have been successful.”
Mr Durkan said that the museum had exciting plans for the future.
“I wrote to foreign affairs minister, Dermot Ahern, expressing my full support for the Trust’s application to the Department’s Reconciliation Fund and am delighted that the minister has allocated €25,000 towards this project.
“This museum will provide a lasting commemoration, not just of the tragic events of Bloody Sunday, but of that entire period in Derry’s history – a history that merits being told and heard.”
Adrian Kerr of the Bloody Sunday Centre said that the funding would help the museum grow. It has already attracted thousands of visitors since it opened in January.
“We’re very grateful,” he said, “I would like to thank Martin McGuinness and Mark Durkan for their efforts. We’re still getting a lot of visitors and have received a very positive reaction. We look forward to seeing the finished product.”
The museum will be housed at Glenfada Park, which is central to most of the events detailed in the exhibitions, and also close to the Bloody Sunday Monument, Free Derry Corner and the Bogside Artist’s murals.
The main area for the Battle of the Bogside is only yards away from the museum’s site, with two people killed and five others injured in front of the building during Bloody Sunday.
The Trust said the collection which contains over 25,000 individual items, many donated to the museum by local residents, would be known as the National Civil Rights Archive.
It will tell this part of the city’s history from the point of view of the people who lived through it.
The term Free Derry has been used for the musem and it will be covering areas in Derry including the Bogside, Brandywell, Creggan, Bishop Street and Foyle Road.
The museum’s collection will be expanded to tell the story of the city right up to the present day.

Ben Dowell
Tuesday June 6, 2006

FilmFour is developing a film based on the last six weeks of the life of the Irish republican hunger striker Bobby Sands.

Sands: died after 66 days on hunger strike

The film, Hunger, will focus on Sands’ last days in 1981 at the Maze Prison near Belfast, where he was imprisoned for possession for firearms.

An elected MP at the time of his death as well as a poet and writer, Sands died aged 27 after 66 days refusing to take food and has been heralded as a martyr to the republican cause.

To be made by Blast Films, the film has not yet been cast but is expected to get a small theatrical release before it is aired on the channel, probably next year.

Directed by artist Steve McQueen and written by Irish stage and screenwriter Enda Walsh, the commission is part of an initiative at Horseferry Road to work directly with visual artists for the screen.

Artist Sam Taylor-Wood, the darling of the Britart scene, is also in the early stages of developing an opera drama for Channel 4; and the broadcaster’s head of arts, Jan Younghusband, has also commissioned Exodus From Margate, a modern retelling of Moses’ Biblical migration to the Promised Land.

The channel has also signed off on Gadaffi, a joint commission with the English National Opera about the Libyan leader, and has also commissioned an opera called Apollo 11 from the composer Jonathan Dove.

This summer will see The Play’s the Thing, in which the work of a new British playwright is mounted on the West End stage by producer Sonia Friedman.

Programmes planned for the autumn include a four-part series called How Music Works, in which celebrated composer Howard Goodall “strips music down to its barest components”; and in a one-off film, Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak will tell the life of the French artist Toulouse Lautrec.

Making the announcement, Ms Younghusband said the commissions proved that the channel was serious about arts programming.

“I want Channel 4 to provide the canvas for new work and to provide a nurturing and supportive environment for artists, film-makers and writers to express the arts on screen,” she said.

“If we can bring the best of television and film craft to the arts we will succeed in communicating arts to a mainstream audience.”

Sinn Féin

Published: 6 June, 2006

Sinn Féin Health spokesperson Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD has voiced his deep concern at reports in the media that the HSE North East is to cut spending by nearly €10 million. Deputy Ó Caoláin, who represents Cavan and Monaghan — two counties directly affected by the HSE Northeast, said “Such cuts would have a devastating impact on all acute hospitals in the region and would be fought tooth and nail.”

Deputy Ó Caoláin said, “Over the last number of years we have seen widespread cuts to hospital services in Monaghan, Cavan, Meath and Louth. A further contraction of service deliveries including timeframes for same can only spell further misery and fear for whole communities including those who have suffered multiple avoidable deaths over the past short number of years.

“Sinn Féin’s critical concern is for patient safety and avoiding worsening delays in securing both emergency and elective procedures. The priority here should not be the imposition of restrictions but rather the adequate resourcing of the HSE. The reality is that per capita spending in the North East is below the national average.

“It is intolerable that the HSE is suggesting further cuts in the Northeast when the healthcare service in the region is already in deep crisis. Cuts such as those reported in the media would further compromise patient safety and will not be tolerated.” ENDS

Derry Journal

06 June 2006

DERRY’S NEWLY elected Mayor, the SDLP’s Helen Quigley, has vowed to play a lead role in transforming the city into a place that everyone is “proud to call home.”
Last night, at the Guildhall, where she was officially inaugurated as Derry’s new First Citizen, Mayor Quigley spoke of her determination to “make Derry a better place to live, an easier place to get a job, a safer place to socialise and a cleaner place to visit.”
“In short, a place that we are all proud to call home,” she told councillors and a packed public gallery.
“That’s the Derry I want and that’s the Derry I will work tirelessly to help deliver over the next twelve months and beyond.”
Mayor Quigley, who represents the Northland electoral ward in Council, has also pledged to help bring more jobs to the region - and to protect those already here.
“As Mayor, I will fight for Derry wherever I need to and whenever I can - by trying to attract new jobs and protect existing ones; by lobbying to secure the investment we need or have already been pledged, in everything from our road, rail, port and airport infrastructure to our skills base and our educational capacity.”
The new Mayor said she was also determined to use her year in office to represent all of the city’s communities.
She said: “For too long we have interpreted the terms ‘communities’ as nationalist or unionist. We must broaden our understanding to include the growing number of ethnic communities in our midst, be they newly arrived migrant workers or long-established families.”
In her inaugural address, Councillor Quigley also pledged to use the office of Mayor to “reach out to older people”, to support families who want “to do the best they can for themselves and their children”, to work with young people and to see more women “take their place in all sectors and at all levels of society.”
Mayor Quigley also vowed to spend the next year ‘championing’ the city’s interests “effectively” and ‘all our people equally’.
A key element of her year in office, she revealed, would be ’safeguarding’ the city’s built heritage.
“Having lost so many of the city’s beautiful buildings over the last number of years, we must appreciate the potential that our historic fabric - be that in the shape of a shirt factory or an old house - represents for tourism and the city’s image.”
She added that she was under no illusion as to “the scale of the task ahead of us to realise Derry’s potential as the thriving hub of a prosperous North West region.”
Turning vision into reality, she said, was ‘within our grasp - but only if we work together.”
“As Mayor I will do whatever it takes to make this a reality. The journey will not be easy but the outcome will be more certain if we travel it together in a spirit of co-operation, friendship and reconciliation, united in our belief that this city can become all that our mothers and fathers dreamt of and all that our children so richly deserve.”

BBC

A man and a woman have been arrested in connection with the murder of six men in County Down 12 years ago.

The six men were murdered in the Heights Bar, Loughinisland

Both were arrested in the greater Belfast area on Tuesday and are being held for questioning at a police station in Antrim.

Six Catholic men were murdered by loyalist paramilitaries as they watched a soccer match in the Heights Bar, Loughinisland, on 18 June 1994.

The Ulster Volunteer Force was blamed for the attack.

One of the victims, Barney Green, 87, was one of the oldest people to be murdered during the Troubles.

The others who died were Adrian Rogan, 34; Daniel McCreanor, 59; Eamon Byrne, 39; his brother-in-law Patrick O’Hare, 35, and 53-year-old Malcolm Jenkinson.

Five people were also injured in the attack by gunmen armed with an AK47 and a Czech-made rifle.

BBC

The transfer of responsibility for matters of national security from the police to MI5 is a cause for concern, a policing watchdog has said.

NI Oversight Commissioner Al Hutchinson said the move had “profound potential implications for the police service”.

In his 16th report, he said the transfer must not stop police from investigating organised crime.

The report also criticised the failure to build a new police training college in Northern Ireland.

However, Mr Hutchinson said that “tremendous progress” had been made in the transformation of policing in the past five years.

The Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, also known as the Patten Commission, was set up after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 to develop a framework for a police service capable of attracting and sustaining support from the whole community.

Mr Hutchinson is an independent figure charged with overseeing the implementation of the Patten report’s 175 recommendations.

In his latest report published on Tuesday, he said 124 of the recommendations had now been completed, 10 more since his last report.

‘Robust and rigorous’

The decision means MI5 will gather intelligence on terrorist groups and their activities, while the police will gather criminal intelligence.

The oversight commissioner highlights the fact that it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between terrorist and criminal activities, and warns that the change must not prevent the police from investigating organised crime.

He said the transfer must not affect the robust and rigorous accountability of the police.

The oversight commissioner also expressed concern about the failure to provide a new police training college, five years after the government gave a commitment to do so.

The government has pledged £90m to the project, a figure which is £40m less than what is needed.

Until this shortfall is addressed, one of the Patten Report’s key recommendations will remain unfulfilled.

Mr Hutchinson said the reforms were irreversible and had gone so far that there was nothing to stop Sinn Fein joining the Policing Board.

He said the political judgement from Sinn Fein that the time was right to act was the only thing needed.

“Virtually everything is on a good track to improvement, and I don’t know why they would hesitate in joining from a practical perspective,” he said.

Policing Board chairman Professor Sir Desmond Rea said he welcomed Mr Hutchinson’s comments on the police college.

“While the government has made available £90m there remains a shortfall, without which the college, as planned, simply cannot be built,” he said.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Roy Toner, who has responsibility for the management of change within the service, said the commissioner’s “positive remarks” on the level of change achieved.

“Creating and managing change in a large organisation like ours, while at the same time delivering a quality policing service, is not easy, but we are doing it,” he said.

Mr Hutchinson, an officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 34 years, took over as Oversight Commissioner from Tom Constantine who held the position from May 2000 until his retirement at the end of 2003.

05 June 2006

Family and friends of murdered Ballymena schoolboy Michael McIlveen gathered on Saturday to stage a football tournament and fun day to raise money towards a memorial garden close to his home.

Sean McIlveen, uncle of the 15-year-old Catholic who died on May 8 a day after being attacked in the centre of the County Antrim town, said they want the garden to be a place of remembrance and also a place of healing.

“We want the garden set up in memory of Michael but also want it to act as a symbol of cross-community reconciliation to try and bring both sides of the community together,” he said.

Family friend, Lynsey McCrudden (24), one of the main organisers of the fundraising event, said: “We want the garden to show that no one should have to die like Michael did and hopefully it will help prevent others dying.”

The fun day included a soccer tournament on a football court close to Michael’s Dunvale home which was a place where he was often found playing with friends. Hundreds of local people were present at the Fun Day.

On Saturday Michael’s friends were playing matches for special trophies in his name.

Sean McIlveen said: “Beside the football court there is some unused ground and that would be an ideal spot for the memorial garden.”

Lynsey McCrudden said: “We want the garden to have a tree, a bench and a plaque and we also looking at the possibility of getting a plaque at the place where Michael was attacked.”

Later in the summer another Fun Day, this time free for children in the area, is planned for the Dunclug estate.

Meanwhile Sean McIlveen has already been in contact with Glasgow Celtic captain, Lurgan’s Neil Lennon, who said he would speak to Barry Ferguson, captain of arch-rivals Rangers about getting involved in a fundraising gesture.

In the days after Michael’s death his friends, from both sides of the community united in grief and the words ‘MickyBo RIP’ - after Michael’s nickname - were printed up on Celtic and Rangers shirts.

Friends wearing Celtic and Rangers jerseys helped carry his coffin on the day of his funeral in a powerful image which touched officials of the teams in Glasgow.

RTÉ

05 June 2006 22:44

The leaders of the Orange and Loyal orders have had their first-ever formal meeting with the leaders of the Catholic Church in Northern Ireland.

The delegation met Archbishop Seán Brady and other northern bishops at Dr Brady’s residence in Armagh at the request of the Loyal orders.

The group consisted of Robert Saulters and Drew Nelson from the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, William Logan and the Rev Tom Greer of the Royal Black Institution, and George Dawson MLA and Mervyn Storey MLA from the Independent Orange Institution.

A spokesman for the Joint Working Group described the meeting as ‘a cordial, businesslike and useful exchange of views held in an atmosphere of concern for the coming months which all sides wish to see pass in an entirely peaceful manner’.

Archbishop Brady said the meeting was powerfully symbolic coming at a time when tensions often rise in Northern Ireland.

He said it showed the desire of the leadership of the loyal orders to go beyond the barriers of history and marked a first step that was to be greatly welcomed.

Dr Brady also said that it was ultimately through gestures of friendship and understanding at local level that contentious issues would be resolved.

Irish Independent

A FORMER associate of loyalist Mark Haddock was charged yesterday with trying to murder him.

Mark Haddock (left) leaving court in Belfast last January with Darren Moore (right) who was charged yesterday with trying to murder him - click to view

Darren Moore (36), of Mount Vernon Park, north Belfast, was remanded in custody after appearing at Belfast Magistrate’s Court.

Mr Haddock (37) was shot six times at Newtownabbey last Tuesday and is recovering in Royal Victoria Hospital, where he is under a 24-hour armed police guard.

Det Insp Gareth Nicholl said when Moore was charged he replied: “Not guilty. Could you check my alibis?” But he believed he could connect Mr Moore with the charge.

Mr Moore was remanded in custody until July 4.

Last week’s shooting was blamed on the UVF after it was alleged that Mr Haddock had been a Special Branch informer for more than 16 years. The murder bid took place while Mr Haddock was on bail awaiting judgment in a Crown Court case in which he denied the attempted murder of Ballyclare pub doorman Trevor Gowdy in December, 2002.

Moore had been charged in connection with the same attack. The charge was later dropped.

cryptome.org/

5 June 2006

A writes:

Martin asked could you please put up his response to the Liam Clarke piece today: http://cryptome.org/mcguinness-spy3.htm

Martin Ingram is the co-author with Greg Harkin of the best seller Stakeknife: Britain’s secret agents in Ireland.

A point of Correction

Martin Ingram

I have no intention of getting into a public slanging match with Liam Clarke but I feel I must address a number of points raised within Liam’s latest communication to Cryptome.

My record on telling the truth stands and he knows it. He feels slightly put out by having his bells jangled that is all.

Liam Clarke knows that the now Chief Constable Hugh Orde told the family of Mr Notorantonio that my claims that he featured within the Brian Nelson files — that he had been involved in the Stakeknife story — were true. Mr Clarke sat on that story because his sources did not want the story in the public domain.

The newspaper (the People) that did carry the story received an immediate injunction, forcing that paper to publish a blank page in recognition of the state’s desire to stop the story from being told. The injunction made it clear that no mention of the murder could be made and further more a second injunction prevented the paper from telling the world that it had been injuncted in the first place.

Liam Clarke may well have a close relationship with Sir John Stevens but no matter how many times he repeats Sir John stories it does not make them accurate or authentic. The bottom line is Sir John was not best pleased when this story made it to print.

Liam is also being disingenuous in regards to his contacts. Liam enjoyed entertaining the now Chief Constable in his home of an evening. Now I am unsure how many journalists in Northern Ireland enjoy that privilege but I would speculate not many. Indeed I doubt many could muster a contact book with an MI6 officer within, so for Liam to say he does not enjoy a privileged relationship with key personnel is wrong.