News about the Irish & Irish American culture, music, news, sports. This is hosted by the Irish Aires radio show on KPFT-FM 90.1 in Houston, Texas (a Pacifica community radio station)

August 15, 2005

4th Victim of Loyalist Feud

To Index of Monthly Archives
To August 2005 Index
To receive this news via email, click HERE.
No Message is necessary.
----

News about Ireland & the Irish

UT 08/15/05 Loyalist Turf War Claims Fourth Victim
BT 08/15/05 Police Know Identities Of Boy's Killers: Claim
BT 08/15/05 Fears Of 'Mob Rule' On Belfast Streets
UT 08/15/05 Police 'Lured Into Riot Estate'
UT 08/15/05 Stand Up To SF, Kenny Urges Irish Government
BT 08/15/05 Thousands Affected By Algae In Pipes
BT 08/15/05 Seven Years On, Omagh's Wounds Still Run Deep
BT 08/15/05 York Celebrates Its Famous Son
MN 08/15/05 Bk Rev: Van The Man Revealed
HC 08/15/05 U2 Receives Portugal's Order Of Liberty Honor

******************************************

http://www.utvinternet.com/newsroom/indepth.asp?pt=n&id=63816

Loyalist Turf War Claims Fourth Victim

A man was shot dead today by loyalist paramilitaries
outside the shop where he worked in south Belfast.

By:Press Association

The victim was gunned down as he arrived on a motorbike to
open up Gilpins Furniture store on Sandy Row.

It is believed he was hit several times just after 8am.

Loyalist sources claimed he was targeted as part of the
vicious feud between the rival Ulster Volunteer Force and
Loyalist Volunteer Force.

The victim, thought to be from the Ballysillan area of
north Belfast, has been linked to the LVF.

He is the fourth man to be killed in the deepening turf war
which is costing £30,000 a day to police.

Families associated with the LVF have been forced to flee
after UVF gangs laid siege to an east Belfast housing
estate.

Gilpins, which is in the heart of a loyalist stronghold,
did not open following the shooting.

Michael McGimpsey, the Ulster Unionist Assembly member for
south Belfast, was horrified by the killing.

He said: "Everybody in the area is disgusted by this.

"It`s disgraceful. Anyone with information about this
matter should give it to the police quickly."

Alasdair McDonnell, the SDLP MP for south Belfast, said:
"It`s clear people intent on endangering lives and
livelihoods are at large in this city.

"There can be no justification for this brutal and cowardly
attack."

Democratic Unionist representative Jimmy Spratt urged all
sides to pull back.

"This madness has to stop before it escalates further," he
said.

Shooting Lead Former Stormont minister Carmel Hanna said no
one had a right to take life.

The nationalist SDLP Assembly member said: "There are too
many weapons on our streets and these sort of cold blooded
crimes are not acceptable.

"I urge anyone with information to bring it to the police
service so that whoever is responsible is taken off our
streets."

******************************************

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=657016

Police Know Identities Of Boy's Killers: Claim

By Brian Hutton
15 August 2005

Police know the identities of the UVF killers of Belfast
schoolboy Thomas Devlin, it was claimed today.

Detectives investigating the fatal stabbing of the 15-year-
old GCSE student in the north of the city on Wednesday say
they have yet to establish a motive.

Raymond McCord, whose son Raymond Jnr was beaten to death
by a UVF gang in 1997, said today that it was known who
carried out the savage attack.

He claimed well-known UVF men in the Mount Vernon area of
North Belfast were responsible.

"Police knew who carried out the attack within 24 hours -
maximum - with the informers they have down there (in the
UVF)," he said.

"Everybody knows it was the UVF."

Mr McCord demanded that Secretary of State Peter Hain make
a full statement on the UVF ceasefire and what he
understands to be a breach of the ceasefire.

"It seems to be that there is a different set of rules for
UVF crime and any other crime in Northern Ireland. The
record speaks for itself on that," he said.

"The UVF have never been on ceasefire. Since 1994 there
have been around 30 murders carried out by the UVF and not
one person was charged."

Detective Superintendent Colin Sturgeon called on the
family and friends of the killers to come forward with
information.

"I would ask them to consider how they would feel if this
happened to one of their family or friends," he said.

Two men and a juvenile arrested last week in connection
with the murder have since been released from police
custody.

A police spokeswoman yesterday revealed that one of those
brought in for question was re-arrested in connection with
an unrelated matter. It is believed he was charged with
possession of ammunition in suspicious circumstances.

Thomas was stabbed near Fortwilliam service station on the
Antrim Road around 11.50pm last Wednesday as he and a
friend went to the garage to buy sweets.

Both boys were walking along the Somerton Road towards the
Lansdowne Road when they were attacked by two young males
who were walking a dog.

******************************************

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=657018

Fears Of 'Mob Rule' On Belfast Streets

By Deborah McAleese
15 August 2005

Concern was mounting today over the rising culture of "mob
rule" on the streets of Belfast.

Politicians in south Belfast have said an incident
yesterday in which a teenage boy was tied to a lamppost and
covered in paint by a masked gang in the Village area is a
frightening example of how thugs are taking over the
streets.

There were also fears that unless better community
relationships are built up with police then incidents of
this kind will increase.

The 15-year-old boy was in a garden in south Belfast when
he was approached by three men who dragged him to a
lamppost on Broadway, at the bottom of the Donegall Road,
at around 1.45pm yesterday.

The masked men tied him to the lamppost before throwing
paint over him.

An ambulance was eventually called and the teenager was
taken to Belfast City Hospital.

The DUP's Ruth Patterson said such "rough justice" was
unacceptable and added that she would not like to see mob
rule becoming part of the normal pattern of daily life.

She said: "These type of incidents are occurring because of
the demise of the RUC, the paying off of officers and the
fact that there is not enough partnership between police
and the community. If this continues we could see different
groups running different areas."

Carmel Hanna of the SDLP said it was "further evidence of
the brutalisation of our society".

She said: "Mob rule has no place in our society. It is
totally unacceptable."

******************************************

http://www.utvlive.com/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=63814&pt=n

Police 'Lured Into Riot Estate'

Police and fire crews were attacked when a nationalist mob
went on the rampage in a Northern Ireland housing estate
overnight.

By:Press Association

Up to 50 people stoned the emergency services and set cars
on fire as rioting broke out at Dunclug Park in Ballymena,
Co Antrim.

One youth suffered head injuries after being hit on the
head with a brick but refused to be taken to hospital.

A public representative who saw the violence claimed the
thugs involved were trying to lure police into a trap.

SDLP councillor Declan O`Loan said the trouble, which has
been linked to the nationalist Ancient Order of Hibernians
annual celebrations, was plotted.

"Police were reluctant to go into the estate," he said.

"They knew very well the primary purpose of this
destruction was to entice them in for further attacks on
the police.

"When the police and Fire Service entered the estate they
were stoned, we saw on the ground a large amount of bricks
and broken pavings."

Mr O`Loan added: "There was some dispute among members of
this crowd as well. One young man was severely hit on the
head by a brick and collapsed on the ground for some time."

Although sectarian tensions have been rising in Ballymena,
a mainly Protestant town, nationalists and republicans have
been blamed for the latest outbreak.

A helicopter and up to eight police Land Rovers were
brought in to quell the disturbances which raged for four
hours.

A Police Service of Northern Ireland spokesman said the
area was brought under control at around 3am.

No officers were injured and no arrests were made, he
added.

******************************************

http://u.tv/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=63808&pt=n

Stand Up To Sinn Fein, Kenny Urges Irish Government

The Irish government must force Sinn Fein to become a true
democratic party and not tolerate its deception any longer,
Fine Gael's leader said last night.

By:Press Association

In a blistering attack, Enda Kenny accused Sinn Fein`s
leader Gerry Adams of holding Irish premier Bertie Ahern to
ransom on several issues.

Speaking of the IRA`s recent pledge to dump arms and
embrace politics, he reminded Sinn Fein: "It`s real
democracy because it`s democracy not just in word, but in
deed."

"When we go electioneering, the vast majority of us load up
our cars with posters and leaflets - not balaclavas, stun
guns, fake Garda uniforms or canisters of CS gas.

"We play by the rules. And as committed democrats, we play
for keeps."

Opposition leader Mr Kenny told the Parnell Summer School
in Co Wicklow that the coalition partners of Fianna Fail
and the Progressive Democrats must not be fooled by Sinn
Fein.

"The two parties may tolerate Sinn Fein bullying, they may
put up with Sinn Fein`s deceit and abject insincerity," he
said.

Mr Kenny recalled that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and
the IRA`s promise to decommission all arms.

But he said people still had to wait seven years for a
statement declaring an end to the terror group`s 36-year
armed campaign.

"It`s time Sinn Fein were told, `The more you get, the less
you give, the more you want. So, get over yourselves`," he
said.

"Play your part in giving the people of this island what
they voted for."

"They`ve had seven years of pious choreography, seven years
of sweating over semantics, seven years of torture, along
with racketeering, drug-dealing, money-laundering,
kidnapping, punishment beatings and bank robberies."

The Mayo TD criticised what he claimed were "secret deals"
done between the Irish government and Sinn Fein in the
past, including the offer to release the IRA killers of Det
Garda Jerry McCabe before the aborted Northern Ireland
power-sharing deal last December.

Det Garda McCabe was shot dead in a botched post office
robbery in Adare Co Limerick in 1996.

"No holder of the office of Taoiseach should put themselves
in the position where they can be held to ransom later by
the claims of an organisation who could lie for Ireland,
and with a tenuous grasp, not just on the truth, but on
sincerity," Mr Kenny said.

He claimed last December`s £26.5 million Northern Bank raid
in Belfast - which was blamed on the IRA - had been
airbrushed from political discussion by Mr Adams and Mr
Ahern.

He asked: "Will it be used to fund their other half, Sinn
Fein, in their efforts to buck up democracy on this
island?"

******************************************

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=656959

Residents' water rage

Thousands Affected By Algae In Pipes

By Jonathan McCambridge
15 August 2005

Thousands of residents in South Armagh have been left
without drinking water after their mains were contaminated
with algae, it was claimed last night.

Residents have complained that they are being forced to buy
bottled water for drinking and cooking and it is believed
up to 14,000 people are affected.

Local politicians are demanding the Water Service takes
immediate action.

The Water Service has said the problem is caused by a high
level of algae from Lough Ross, which supplies the area.

It is believed build-up is caused by the warm weather.

However, Sinn Fein councillor Terry Hearty said it has been
allowed to go on for too long.

"The situation has been very bad now for going on two
weeks," he said.

"The water is impossible to drink, you can't cook with it.
It only gets worse when you boil the water and people can't
afford to keep buying bottled water."

The Water Service has said the water is given full
treatment at the water treatment works and, based on water
samples taken and analysed, is safe to drink.

It said recent tests have also indicated that the situation
appears to be improving.

Newry and Armagh MP Conor Murphy said: "The reality is that
despite the fact that Water Service state that the water is
safe, the water is undrinkable.

"It is a gross colour and has a strong obnoxious smell and
no right thinking person would attempt to drink it."

He said the issue was causing concern and hardship for
residents.

During a meeting with Water Service, Sinn Fein called for
water tanks and bottled water to be supplied to local
people.

People are currently having to travel to Newry City to buy
bottled water.

Councillor Pat McGinn said there needed to be a long term
strategy to deal with the problem so it did not re-occur in
the future.

******************************************

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=656948

Seven Years On, Omagh's Wounds Still Run Deep

By Linda McKee
15 August 2005

Relatives of the Omagh bomb victims showed their solidarity
with those bereaved in the London Underground terrorist
attacks in a special memorial service yesterday.

The relatives laid a wreath to the victims of the London
bombings of July 7 as they commemorated their own dead at a
service in Omagh attended by representatives of the British
and Irish governments to mark the seventh anniversary of
the Real IRA atrocity.

Lord Rooker, representing the Government, and Irish
education minister Mary Hanafin paid their respects to the
29 people and two unborn babies who lost their lives on
August 15, 1998.

They were joined by David Clarke, representing the victims
unit of the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister.

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed when the Real
IRA bomb blast ripped through Omagh town centre, promised
that the relatives of the victims would not forget and
would not allow the perpetrators to forget.

"We feel it's important that we continue to remember," he
said.

"It's particularly sad that no-one has been held to account
for what has happened in Omagh."

Electrician Sean Hoey (35), of Molly Road, Jonesborough,
South Armagh, faces a total of 61 terrorist and explosives-
related charges connected to the Real IRA attack.

But Mr Gallagher said a civil action initiated by the
relatives was on hold as the people being sued were holding
up court proceedings.

He promised that the relatives would persevere with their
fight to have the perpetrators punished.

Hundreds of mourners gathered in Omagh's memorial garden
for the service of prayer, verse and song.

Before the memorial service, Mr Gallagher said: "We will be
remembering all victims of terrorism, but especially those
that died in London on July 7.

"We will be laying a wreath for the victims."

He outlined plans to enlarge the garden, drawn up after
Lord Rooker granted a further plot of land for the purpose.

"We are hoping to have a larger, more accessible garden
with disabled parking in place for the 10th anniversary,"
said Mr Gallagher.

******************************************

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=656982

York Celebrates Its Famous Son (The One Who Tried To Blow
Up Parliament)

Ian Herbert
15 August 2005

The delicate issue of how to commemorate the 400th
anniversary of a terror plot conceived by religious
extremists has caused a House of Commons firework display
and an ITV documentary to be abandoned in the past few
months. The city of York is, however, less coy about its
most notorious son's part in the plot.

This week the city begins a three-month festival to mark
Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up the House of Parliament in
1605. The city's Guy Fawkes 400 event will explore the way
that England's large, disgruntled minority of Catholics
spawned a bomb plot.

Included in the city's celebrations are a permanent Guy
Fawkes trail and a Plotters' Ball, which is already sold
out at Fawkes' old school, St Peter's - where the burning
of Fawkes' effigy has always been considered inappropriate.

There will also a concert of 16th-century music entitled
"Ye Traitors All" and fireworks by the Derbyshire firm that
is said to have made the gunpowder Fawkes planned to set
off.

London has been less inclined to "Remember, remember the
5th of November". The House of Commons commission, chaired
by the Speaker, Michael Martin, a Catholic, rejected a
suggestion for a fireworks display to mark the anniversary,
despite an offer from a pyrotechnics firm to put on a
privately financed event to supplement an exhibition that
is going ahead.

The Commission declared that planning for the exhibition
had "been careful to avoid associating the event with any
notion of celebration" since "even after 400 years there
are sensitivities to be taken into account (and sadly,
perhaps especially in today's international climate) so the
approach will be dispassionate and educational".

There were also plans to make an ITV programme about the
plot, hosted by the Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond, in
which a full-scale Jacobean House of Lords, filled with
crash test dummies to represent those who would have
frequented it, was to have been blown sky high. These are
on hold. The best London seems to have managed is the small
exhibition in the Palace of Westminster and a small display
at Shakespeare's Globe in Southwark.

York has always been far more comfortable about Fawkes,
whose father, Edward, worked as a notary of the
ecclesiastical courts and an advocate of the court of the
Archbishop of York and whose mother, Edith, was from the
eminent Harrington family, merchants and aldermen of York.

Although the son of middle-class Protestants, Fawkes'
conversion to Catholicism is believed to have been
influenced by one of his tutors at St Peter's, John
Pulleyn. His fellow pupils, among whom were the brothers
John and Christopher Wright (later part of the Gunpowder
Plot conspiracy) may also have played a role. The
conversion was cemented when his father died and his mother
remarried a Catholic.

He enlisted in the Spanish army and from afar became deeply
disillusioned with the way in which the highly
materialistic, highly commercial and highly nationalistic
culture of his native country was leading further away from
the embrace of the Roman Catholicism that represented for
him the ideal of heaven on earth.

Fawkes' concern for the plight of Catholics in England led
him to seek support for a Spanish invasion of England. This
mission failed, but he soon met Thomas Wintour, another
fellow conspirator, who may have recruited him as one of
the Gunpowder Plotters.


York's events will be supplemented by an exhibition at
Coughton Court, near Alcester, Warwickshire, the estate of
the the Throckmortons, descendants of Robert Catesby, the
bomb plot mastermind. Clare Throckmorton said it was not a
celebration of the plot. "They were terrorists, no
different to the terrorists we see now," she said. "Most of
the Throckmortons did not agree with it."

******************************************

http://www.metronews.ca/books_review.asp?id=10170

Bk Rev: Van The Man Revealed

Van Morrison: No Surrender
Johnny Rogan
Random House Canada
$35.99 (Hardcover)
*** 1/2 (out of five)

Musically, Van Morrison has provided decades upon decades
of soulful tuneage, above and beyond radio hits Brown Eyed
Girl, Moondance, Tupelo Honey and Wild Night. Off-stage,
Van The Man demonstrated the fine craft of moodiness.
Sample: A U.K. journalist enquires how Van The Man came to
write a song called One More Time, recorded by Morrison's
'60s group Them. The response? "I got a pencil and wrote it
on a piece of paper." That ornery snippet alone makes this
epic second instalment on Van The Man (Irish rock
biographer Johnny Rogan's previous effort was Van Morrison:
A Portrait Of An Artist) worth the read. But Rogan goes
steps further by drawing an unusual parallel between
Morrison's unlikely rise to fame and the brewing sectarian
conflicts in Northern Ireland where the young George Ivan
Morrison grew up. A great tangent for the history junkie,
but it's a rather loose comparison to Morrison's oft-
unpredictable behaviour patterns.

******************************************

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/ae/jump/3310560

U2 Receives Portugal's Order Of Liberty Honor

Associated Press

LISBON, Portugal - Members of the Irish rock band U2
received Portugal's Order of Liberty, one of the country's
highest honors, at a formal ceremony held before their
concert Sunday in the Portuguese capital.

President Jorge Sampaio presented the medals to Bono, The
Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen in recognition of their
work for humanitarian causes over the past 25 years,
including heightening awareness on the debt issues facing
developing countries.

U2 played at a Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief
two decades ago, and last month took part in the Live 8
concerts aimed at pressuring leaders of the world's richest
nations to increase aid to Africa.

The award ceremony was held at the presidential palace in
Lisbon.

Sunday was the final European date on the band's Vertigo
tour.

----
To receive this news via email, click HERE.
No Message is necessary.
To August 2005 Index
To Index of Monthly Archives
Posted by: Unknown / 7:02 AM
Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?