Fourthwrite

Citizens no more by Siobhan O'Dwyer 11 June 2004

The referendum on citizenship in the South of Ireland will change the fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution of any child born on the island of Ireland to claim Irish citizenship.Full Text

Republican spies in Whitehal...by Pauline Hadaway, May 9th 2004

Whitehall Square apartments are located at a crossroads where loyalist Sandy Row converges with Belfast’s increasingly affluent and demographically mixed university quarter. A product of the city’s post conflict commercial and consumer confidence..Full Text

The ongoing political furore about the rights, wrongs, lies and truths of the IMC Report rumble on and we hear a lot of self-righteous indignation or satisfaction from all sides. The most telling part of the whole report has been largely ignored while the real aim of the report ie., the political naming and shaming of the IRA and Sinn Fein, grabs most attention. Full Text

With Sinn Fein’s great capacity for fund raising, the British government’s decision to withhold £120,000 from the organisation’s coffers will not cause undue distress for the party treasurer. Of much greater concern to the party leadership however, will be the incalculable damage the International Monitoring Commission (IMC) report has inflicted on their political ambitions. Full Text

Tom Geoghegan, a BBC correspondent described the mood of those protesting outside Belmarsh calling for the release of the 13 men held without charge as “defiant”. He said, “you have to be pretty committed to go to Belmarsh prison in a remote part of South-east London on a windy Sunday afternoon” Full Text

After holding back publication for six months, Secretary of State for NI, Paul Murphy last week announced the British government’s decision to press ahead with only three of the four collusion inquiries recommended in Judge Peter Cory’s report. Full Text

Delegates from all over Ireland travelled to Cork last Saturday 3rd April to attend the launch of the Independent Workers Union (IWU), and its first annual conference. The event was held in the Victoria Hotel in Cork and drew daylong interest from local media outlets. Full Text

At a Special summit held in Brussels, convened after the Madrid bombings, EU ministers agreed that Europe is to get its own counter-terrorism tsar. A tough talking British Home Secretary, David Blunkett, called on fellow interior ministers to 'cut the waffle' and endorse 'hard action'. Full Text

On Monday evening, much to the relief of their families, five British men held in Guantanamo Bay by American military forces were flown home to England. There was much speculation about what action the British police and Home Secretary would take against them when they arrived and true to form, four of the men were arrested by anti-terrorist police and taken to Paddington Green police station for questioning Full Text

All is well! This was the message to come from the opening of the ‘review’ of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in February. Spokespersons for the British government shrugged off the permanent crises that the Good Friday process had faced, the collapse of its institutions and what was, from their view, a disastrous election which left Sinn Fein as the majority nationalist party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Ian Paisley as the majority unionist party. Full Text

Last weekend hundreds of passers by bore witness to the public suicide of a young teenager as he climbed scaffolding at the Holy Cross Church in Ardoyne to remove his shirt, which he would use as his noose. According to reports he was the thirteenth to end his own life within a six-week period in the area. One of the victims, was a girl from the neighbouring Glenbrain loyalist area. Full Text

The Refugee Action Council held a meeting in Belfast last week to highlight the continuing detention of asylum seekers in Maghaberry Prison. The meeting was attended by representatives of most of the main political parties, human rights and ethnic minority organisations, lawyers, as well as members of the general public. Beverley Hughes Labour Home Office Minister responsible for managing the policy of detention, was not in attendance.Full Text

The UK Holocaust Memorial Day was held in Belfast yesterday for the first time since it was first thought up by the Labour Government a number of years ago. The idea to have a Holocaust Memorial Day is part of the ongoing policy of the British Government and others to take the moral high ground and use emotionalism to cloud political realities. Full Text

Gerry McGeough makes no secret of the fact that he is an ultra-conservative Catholic. In a recent interview with the Irish Catholic newspaper, he voiced his abhorrence of gay marriages and abortion and some years back dedicated his first novel to “The Blessed Virgin Mary”. His religious convictions are extreme, even for “Catholic Ireland". Full Text

Government figures presented to the UK parliament on 12th January, revealed the cost of Lord Saville’s Inquiry into Bloody Sunday rising by as much as £15 million pounds over the past six months to reach £127 million at the end of last year. Full Text

Jeffrey Donaldson has finally accepted the inevitable and joined the Democratic Unionist Party bringing two women MLA’s with him. He fought a good fight within the Ulster Unionist Party but eventually had to admit the defeat of his ambition to oust David Trimble and become the new leader of that party.Full Text

George Monbiot, environmentalist and anti globalisation activist presented his newly published Manifesto for a New World Order on October 9th, to a near capacity crowd at Belfast’s Elmwood Hall. The event, hosted by the New Ireland Group and de Borda Institute, demonstrated that public interest in political ideas remains a latent force even in these cynical times. Regrettably, Monbiot’s manifesto, informed by the contemporary disenchantment with mass politics, Full Text

Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad with power. One of four lessons of history attributed to Charles Beard
In Dublin there is a newsagents called Reads, located close to Trinity College.It is a well-known shop because it's advertising ploy is that it baits Easons.All Reads ads mention that it sells stationery, books and magazines at a large percentage cheaper than Easons. Full Text

There is little doubt but that the Andersonstown News faithfully reflects the views and outlook of the Sinn Fein leadership in a fashion similar to how Belfast's other nationalist newspaper The Irish News once carried the views of the Roman Catholic pontiff and hierarchy. There is something very disturbing therefore when we see the management of the A/Town News use its financial and political muscle to curb alternative publications such as Anthony McIntyre's website The Blanket. Full Text

As George Bush and Tony Blair flew into Northern Ireland on Monday evening hundreds of anti-war protestors from all over Ireland made their way to Hillsborough Castle in protest. Full Text

It is inconceivable that US and British authorities would have announced a meeting with our local political parties before consulting with them in private in order to be certain that Bush and Blair would not be embarrassed by a boycott. Full Text

ÎPerception is as important as realityâ, said British army Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Clissitt in 1999, referring to Îmedia operationsâ during NATOâs war against Serbia, a war in which not a single NATO combatant was killed in action, against estimates of between 10 -15,000 civilian dead. Full Text

As the ãFree World” never tires of telling us, arenât we lucky to live in a democracy. With the onset of this unjustifiable war against Iraq it appears that we are even luckier than we realised because the democracy we live in is a variable democracy. Full Text

The United States, Britain, Spain and their allies are today ready to wage war against Iraq and the television channels are lining up to bring that war right into your front room. Full Text

1300 people took part in a march and rally at Shannon airport on Saturday March 1^st. The march was organised by the Irish Anti-War Movement and an anarchist group called Grassroots Network Against War. The anarchist group had posted – on the web - plans for nonviolent, civil disobedience ie., tearing down the perimeter fence as a form of protest against the collaboration of the Irish government in allowing Shannon to be used by the US military war machine. Full Text

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey was deported from the United States on February 21st as a danger to the American people. How absurd. How scandalous. Bernadette has, if anything, been a champion of the American people, as they actually exist. Not the cowboys in the White House and the bigots in the board rooms, but working class people, black people, women, immigrants and dissidents. Full Text

One of Irelandâs leading human rights campaigners and best known political figures of the last fifty years was deported on Friday past (21^st February) from the USA. Immigration officials at Chicago airport detained and then deported the legendary civil rights activist ostensibly on the grounds that Mrs McAliskey poses a threat to US security. Full Text

Recent happenings in the world of Ulster Loyalism leave one with a strange feeling that there was more manipulation of the outcome than meets the eye. The chain of events that has led to the death of the powerful UDA figure John Gregg and the subsequent flight into exile of the Shankill Road's hard-line 'C' Company are reminiscent of a fast moving B-Movie. Full Text

Sinn Fein MP Michelle Gildernew recently demanded that the ÎClery Actâ be adopted as a blueprint in Northern Ireland. This piece of American legislation requires closer co-operation with the police and that institutions of higher education must disclose campus security information including crime statistics. Full Text

The walls will come down. The task is daunting. It will require belief and confidence in our need to live in a connected city. We will work with the people living near the walls to create safe, secure and sustainable communities. Then the walls will no longer have a purpose and the walls will come down.

You might be forgiven for attributing these words to a politician, while wondering who, among Belfast's current political leadership, would ever express such resolve, such hopefulness for the future of the city. Full Text

George Bush is determined to have his war. It was not enough for George W. to order the levelling of underdeveloped Afghanistan, he is now baying for the total obliteration of the entire muslin world, starting point Iraq. Moreover the Irish government is apparently willing to accommodate and encourage the American war machine by allowing the US military the free run of Irish airspace and the use of Shannon airport.

The on going scandals about child sex abuse by members of the priesthood have disgusted most right-minded people. In what appears to be a never-ending series of exposes the Church again and again emerges with little or no credit. Time and time again, the Church has had to be forced to admit its culpability in the abuse of children. Full Text

Fourthwrite justifiably, has printed articles critical of the lack of unity, organisation and clarity of objective of the various anti-war activists and bemoaning the fact that while it is good to see people getting together to protest on the streets, the lack of any real political focus is disappointing. Full Text

On 1^st January 2003 it became compulsory for all motor drivers in the Republic to have their driving licence available for inspection Îon request from a member of the Gardaâ......................making people carry driving licences has little to do with road safety and everything to do with introducing a compulsory identification card system into Ireland under the guise of public safety. Full Text

Article 42:3 of Bunreacht na hƒireann (constitution of the 26-County Republic of Ireland) specifies that ÎThe State shall provide for free primary education and shall endeavour to supplement and give reasonable aid to private and corporate educational initiative, and when the public good requires it Full Text

The ink was not dry on the reportage of the budget when the media reported that the Government had abandoned its plans to force builders to provide cheaper housing in new private estates, following the two-year campaign by the Construction Industry Federation (CIF). The original plan designated that 20 per cent off all building land was to be set aside for social and affordable housing. These allocation and sale of these houses was to be controlled by the local authorities. Full Text

Republicans have angrily dismissed British newspaper reports that the IRA are about to disband. These reports are "unfounded" said the Northâs former education minister, Sinn FeinÕs Martin Mc Guinness, "The IRA are not a threat to the peace process", and pointed to the ongoing violence by loyalist paramilitaries. Full Text

The Gardai have been in the headlines a great deal over the past few weeks and Mags Glennon outlines some of the issues which have put them there. From the Morris Tribunal to the number of Gardai before the courts on criminal charges, Mags leaves no stone unturned in exposing the corruption and illegality at the heart of the so-called justice system in the Republic of Ireland. Full text

The well-known man about the race-tracks, Charlie Mc McCreevy, delivered his sixth budget on Wednesday 4th December. In what could be construed as an attempt to ingratiate himself with his racing pals he declined to tax this mega-wealthy, multi-million Euro industry. Instead McCreevy played true to form and vented his fiscal rectitude on the social orders that are so traditionally so alienated from society, that they often do not bother to vote.

There is a convention in the English Premier League that a few weeks before the board of directors move to sack a teamâs manager, the chairman or secretary of the club states publicly that they have full confidence in their coach and that he can rest assured that his position is not in any danger. Full Text

The shooting by the PSNI on Sunday night of a man allegedly planting an incendiary device in Belfast has caused great difficulties for those hoping to draw Sinn Fein (including many leading people in that party) into a closer relationship with the Police Authority. Full Text

Two years ago I was quoted in Fourthwrite as saying: whoâd ever believe weâd live to see ex-IRA men being encouraged to join a reformed RUC, a force that will use lead and plastic bullets, Diplock courts and special powers to curb republicanism" Full Text

In the last few weeks after a decade of inactivity, we have seen students go on the warpath. The government cuts, a symptom of the end of the Celtic Tiger, was the trigger for student anger - a massive sixty per cent hike in registration fees and a threat to re-introduce college fees. Full Text

Tonight the early evening RTE news bulletin carried the story of the abolishment of the grant for first time home buyers and the outrage felt by those so affected. Whilst in part this outrage may be justified, a morning paper carried a report of the Spencer Dock sell out, a snip at anything up to ¥600,000, with parking optional at another mere ¥40,000, one feels that the loss of ¥3,610 may not cause the hardship that governmental cuts in other areas may result in.

It started with the Beef Tribunal, and since then we have had Lindsey, Flood and now Morris – I could go on all day. That is exactly the point, why isnât the question asked as to how it is that in a democratic western state, the law of the land appears to be able to be flouted at will? Full Text

Speaking on Sundayâs Breakfast With Frost programme, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said the only thing, which would avert suspension, was the resignation of Martin McGuinness from the Stormont executive. He added that if, ã Martin McGuinness was a man of integrity, he would resign, and there would then be no suspension.” Full Text

There may be a small handful of trusting souls somewhere who believe Gerry Adams when he says that he has never been a member of the IRA. If such a group exists, it is not making itself heard in its efforts to substantiate his denial. Full Text