Displaying posts published in

May 2017

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany: Should Migrants Integrate? “We are an open society. We show our face. We do not wear burkas.” by Soeren Kern

By on May 19th, 2017

The list makes no mention of German culture as being the guiding or core culture (Leitkultur), nor does the task force explicitly demand that migrants assimilate to the German way of life. Rather, the guiding principles appear to be aimed at encouraging Germans to embrace the foreign cultural norms that migrants bring to Germany.

“We cannot ask anyone to respect our customs if we are not ready to articulate them…. Our country is shaped by Christianity…. Germany is part of the West, culturally, spiritually and politically speaking.” — German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

Proponents of a Leitkultur argue that it necessary to prevent the establishment of parallel societies, including those governed by Islamic sharia law.

A government task force created to promote the integration of migrants into German society has published a list of the core features of German culture.

The list studiously omits politically incorrect terms such as “patriotism” and “leading culture” (Leitkultur), and effectively reduces German traditions and values to the lowest common denominator. The task force, in fact, implicitly establishes multiculturalism as the most complete expression of German culture.

The so-called Cultural Integration Initiative (Initiative kulturelle Integration) was created by the German government in December 2016 to promote “social cohesion” after Chancellor Angela Merkel opened German borders to more than a million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The task force — led by the German Cultural Council (Deutscher Kulturrat) in close cooperation with the German Interior Ministry and two dozen media, religious and other interest groups — was charged with reaching a consensus on what constitutes German culture. The original aim was to facilitate “cultural integration” by encouraging migrants to assimilate to a shared set of cultural values.

After five months of deliberation, the task force on May 16 presented a list of what it considers to be the top 15 guiding principles of German culture. Encapsulated in the catchphrase “Cohesion in Diversity,” the list consists of mostly generic ideas about German culture — gender equality, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, pluralism and democracy — that are not at all unique to Germany.

Continue reading →
BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Islam In Islamic Terrorism Ibn Warraq’s new book unveils what really motivates Islamic terrorists today. Hugh Fitzgerald

By on May 19th, 2017

Ibn Warraq, the celebrated apostate, author of Why I Am Not A Muslim and of scholarly works on the Koran, Muhammad, and early Islam, as well as polemical works in defense of the West, has now written The Islam in Islamic Terrorism, showing, in the words of the Islamic fundamentalists (or, more exactly, revivalists) themselves, what really motivates Islamic terrorists today, and what has motivated them since the time of the Kharijites in the first century of Islam: the belief in the need to recover the pristine Islam of the time of Muhammad, by removing all innovations (bid’a), the further belief that it is the duty of Muslims to wage Jihad against all Unbelievers until Islam everywhere dominates, and to bring about the resurrection of the caliphate, and the imposition of Islamic Law, or Sharia, all over the globe.

Ibn Warraq’s The Islam In Islamic Terrorism is a brilliant series of reported echoes down the corridors of Islam, where the same complaints about bid’a, the same insistence on regulating every area of a Believer’s life, the same refusal to allow freedom of religion or thought, the same duties of violent Jihad and Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong, the same demands for a return to the same pristine Islam of Muhammad, the same virulent antisemitism, the same quotes from the Koran and Hadith, the same hatred of Infidels, the same insistence that “we love death more than you love life,” the same call for bloodshed and Muslim martyrdom, the same dreary fanaticism, are thoroughly described and dissected, and above all the various violent manifestations of this revivalism over the centuries are linked to one another, as Ibn Warraq brings to bear the massive research he has been conducting over many years, in primary and secondary sources, and here deploys to splendid effect.

Ibn Warraq has performed a service for all those who are at last ready to look beyond the present platitudes about socioeconomic and other putative “root causes” of Islamic terrorism — Israel, the Crusades, European colonialism, American foreign policy, all held up for dissection and dismissal one after the other. He cites the studies that reveal Muslim terrorists to be both better off economically, and better educated, than the average Muslim. Most of the terrorist leaders have received solid educations in Islam, giving the lie to those apologists who claim that only those “ignorant of the true Islam” become terrorists.

He notes that Jihad against the Infidels started more than 1300 years before Israel came into existence, that the Muslims paid little attention to the Crusades until very recently, and that American foreign policy has often favored the Muslim side, rescuing Arafat from Beirut when he was besieged by the Israelis, supporting Pakistan despite its collusion with terrorists, looking away when Turkey invaded Cyprus, putting troops in Saudi Arabia to protect that kleptocracy from Saddam Hussein, and lavishing hundreds of billions in foreign aid on Muslim countries, and more than four trillion dollars on military interventions and “reconstruction” in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the hope, likely forlorn, that those countries could be made less barbarous than before.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How to Solve the Palestinian Problem …and bring peace to the Middle East. Daniel Greenfield

By on May 19th, 2017

In 1990, there were half as many Palestinians as Kuwaitis in Kuwait. Two years later there were almost none.

With the support of the international community, some 700,000 Kuwaitis expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their country. If they had not done it, basic arithmetic shows that the Palestinians would have outnumbered Kuwaitis in Kuwait in a generation.

The Palestinians of Kuwait were kidnapped, tortured and killed. “Kill a Palestinian and Go to Heaven,” became the slogan. When Kuwait was “liberated”, tanks and armored vehicles were sent into the Hawally suburb of Kuwait City known as Little Palestine. Half the buildings were knocked down by bulldozers. Some detained Palestinians were buried in mass graves. The vast majority, including those who had been born in Kuwait, were deported or forced to flee a land they had lived in for a generation.

The violent ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians went mostly unremarked. While the Kuwaitis were ethnically cleansing their Palestinians, they continued to fund Palestinian terror against Israel and condemn Israel for violating the human rights of those they were deporting.

And the world shrugged.

President George H.W. Bush defended Kuwait’s actions. “I think we’re expecting a little much if we’re asking the people in Kuwait to take kindly to those that had spied on their countrymen that were left there,” he said. This was in the same press conference in which he condemned Israeli “settlements.”

A year later, Israel expelled 400 Hamas members. Every human rights organization was outraged. The State Department “strongly” condemned Israel. And Israel was forced to take them back.

The Kuwaiti Nakba isn’t much remembered. There are no rallies full of old women clutching house keys to lost homes in Hawally. They had made a bad bet by backing Saddam Hussein. And paid the price for it.

Kuwait refused to allow Palestinian Authority leader Abbas to visit until he apologized for supporting Saddam. And apologize he did. “Yes, we apologize for what we have done,” the terror boss whined.

The PLO has yet to apologize to Israel for the Muslim settler role in the attempted 1948 genocide of the indigenous Jewish population and the thousands who were maimed and murdered by its terrorists.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Left’s Reckless Rush to Judgment on Obstruction of Justice Why the latest line of attack doesn’t hold water. Joseph Klein

By on May 19th, 2017

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller III, a former FBI director, to serve as special counsel overseeing the investigation of alleged ties between Russian officials and President Trump’s campaign. Mr. Rosenstein acted Wednesday evening in Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ stead, since Mr. Sessions had recused himself from any involvement in Russian investigation matters. Mr. Sessions did so because of his own contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. while he was advising the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein briefed senators in a closed meeting on Thursday. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said his take-away from the meeting was that what had started out as a counter intelligence investigation is “now being considered a criminal investigation.” As for the Trump-hating left and their lackeys in the mainstream media, they have already rendered a guilty verdict against President Trump for obstruction of justice without any credible facts to support it to date.

Mr. Mueller, a well-respected former federal prosecutor whose appointment was widely praised in Congress on both sides of the aisle, will have a broad investigatory mandate. He is authorized to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” as well as other matters that “may arise directly from the investigation.” With such authority, Mr. Mueller could explore such related issues as the circumstances behind the firing of James Comey as FBI director, conversations between Mr. Comey and President Trump, including any perceived efforts on President Trump’s part to influence the direction of any FBI investigation, and the unmasking and leaking of classified information pertaining to former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn.

Mr. Mueller will have free reign to call for a grand jury, issue subpoenas and decide whether to press criminal charges. His requests for all the resources he needs, on top of what the FBI already has in conducting its ongoing investigations, will almost certainly be honored. Moreover, Mr. Mueller, whose tenure as FBI director made him a popular figure with FBI career agents, will trust the FBI enough to piggyback on its findings rather than have to start from scratch.

President Trump’s initial reaction to the special counsel appointment was reportedly restrained. However, he complained in an early morning tweet on Thursday that he was being unfairly singled out for special counsel scrutiny. “With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special councel (sic) appointed!” he tweeted. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” Maybe so, but Mr. Mueller’s appointment, which provides the Democrats and anti-Trump media the independent special counsel they have demanded, will give the Trump administration at least some breathing room to return to its policy agenda. That’s not to say that Democrats, their leftist base and Trump haters in the mainstream media won’t continue to raise the Watergate and impeachment banners, and try to put political pressure on Mr. Mueller to come out with findings that support their pre-determined verdict of guilty. Mr. Mueller’s reputation for integrity, and dispassionate pursuit of all relevant facts upon which to render an unbiased judgment, will be sorely tested.

President Trump’s many enemies calling for his head, in the media and political world, have zeroed in on the charge of obstruction of justice. They obtained ammunition in that regard from the alleged memo that former FBI Director Comey is said to have written following a one-on-one conversation he had with the president, in which Comey claimed President Trump had asked him to let go of the FBI’s investigation of Flynn. No doubt, Mr. Mueller will explore all avenues in gathering and analyzing facts that could possibly make out a credible case of obstruction of justice against the president and/or any of his aides. However, based on what is known publicly to date, nothing President Trump has done comes anywhere close to constituting obstruction of justice.

Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, wrote that if the Comey memo is “food for obstruction of justice, it is still an awfully thin soup.” The operative statute is Section 1503 of Title 18, United States Code. It forbids, among other things, “corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication” influencing, obstructing, or impeding, or endeavoring to influence, obstruct, or impede, “the due administration of justice.”

The question is whether President Trump’s alleged request to Comey to let go of the Flynn investigation, or any other negative action or statement by the president with regard to the Russia investigation, constitutes actionable obstruction of justice. That would require proof of the president’s specific wrongful intent to “secure an unlawful benefit for oneself or another,” according to Professor Turley.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bill de Blasio Will March Behind a Terrorist Why is the Puerto Rican Day Parade honoring Oscar López Rivera this year? By Kyle Smith

By on May 19th, 2017

That the mayor of America’s largest city is planning to march with a convicted terrorist in next month’s Puerto Rican Day Parade illustrates a fundamental fact about the Left in America: From student activists all the way up to leading officials, not excluding the 44th president, they are willing to shrug off terrorism provided it has sufficient left-wing bona fides.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio says he will march behind Oscar López Rivera, the convicted Puerto Rican terrorist who served 35 years in prison before President Obama commuted his sentence. Organizers of the parade, to be held June 11 on Fifth Avenue, say that not only will López Rivera lead it, but he will in a sense be designated the hero of the entire history of the celebration: He’ll be granted the title of “National Freedom Hero,” a designation never before bestowed on anyone.

López Rivera, an admitted leader of the 1970s Marxist terror group FALN, which sought independence for Puerto Rico under Communist leadership, was in 1981 sentenced to 55 years in prison, later increased to 70 as punishment for an escape attempt. After being arrested with six pounds of dynamite in his Chicago apartment and declaring at trial, “I am an enemy of the United States government,” he served a bit more than half of his sentence before Obama released him. Puerto Ricans have repeatedly voted against independence in a series of referenda, so López Rivera’s terrorist career amounted to killing innocent civilians — FALN carried out more than 100 bombings, including one at Manhattan’s landmark Fraunces Tavern in 1975 that killed four — to pursue a political goal not supported even by his fellow Puerto Ricans.

De Blasio this week shrugged at López Rivera’s hideous past.

“The organization he was affiliated with did things I don’t agree with, obviously, and they were illegal,” the mayor said at a press conference this week. “I don’t agree with the way he did it. But he did serve his time,” adding that López Rivera “renounced violence.”

He did? Here is what López Rivera, quoted in yesterday’s New York Times, said upon his release from a halfway house in Puerto Rico on Wednesday: “We are a colonized people, and according to international law, that says all colonized people have a right to struggle for its independence, using all methods within reach, including force.” (Emphasis mine.)

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dem Leadership Looks to Squelch Impeachment Talk By Rick Moran

By on May 19th, 2017

Worried about the public perception of pushing for the impeachment of President Trump less than four months into his presidency, Democratic Party leaders are warning their more excitable members to back off calling for Trump’s ouster.

The Hill:

Democratic leaders have a message for those members of their caucus beating the drum to impeach President Trump: not so fast.

“I would suggest … there needs to be a full investigation first,” Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Wednesday. “We need to get to the facts, and let the facts lead where they may.”

In the eyes of several Democrats, however, the facts already lead to impeachment.

[…]

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) spoke out at a closed-door House Democratic Caucus meeting Wednesday morning to highlight the urgency of removing Trump, whom the Democrats increasingly see as a national security liability.

Almost simultaneously, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) took to the House floor to trumpet the impeachment call he’d sounded earlier in the week. He characterized his decision as a “position of conscience.”

It’s the first time in her long career that Rep. Waters has given a fig about “national security.” And Mr Green: Put a sock in it.

The impeachment debate is forcing Democratic leaders to walk a fine line in their approach to the ongoing Russia-Trump saga. On one hand, the Democrats want to keep the pressure on the White House and tap the energy the remarkable story is generating among members of their base, many of whom support the impeachment route. On the other, they don’t want to politicize their calls for an independent investigation.

“We have to be circumspect as we look at this tale of horrors,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “Because we should not give the impression that we are obsessed with removing Donald Trump from office — it will only harden his supporters.

“Based on what I’ve read and heard, Mr. Trump is in trouble, and he doesn’t need any help to get into deeper trouble.”

Top Democratic leaders insist they’re not putting any pressure on their troops to shy away from impeachment calls.

“Members can come to their own conclusions, and we don’t pretend to stand here and speak on behalf of every single individual member of our caucus,” Crowley said.

The “case for impeachment” doesn’t exist — yet. What members have is a tissue of half-truths, unsubstantiated rumors, anonymously sourced reporting, and lots and lots of wishful thinking.

There has not been a shred of hard evidence — video or audio recordings, documents, eyewitness, first-person testimony, or anything else that would stand up in a court of law, much less the court of public opinion. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

MacArthur’s Spies: The Heroes of the Philippines By Elise Cooper

By on May 19th, 2017

MacArthur’s Spies by Peter Eisner recounts how three individuals played a significant role in the resistance against the Japanese occupation in the Philippines during World War II. The book shows how heroes come from many backgrounds: a singer, a soldier, and a spymaster. As the Greatest Generation dies off, written accounts such as this are a reminder of how ordinary people can become extraordinary by putting themselves in danger to help others survive and achieve victory.

The emphasis of the book is on the American singer Claire Phillips, who opened a nightclub in Manila catering to Japanese officials and officers. She and those who worked for her gathered information that was passed on to the allies. In addition, she provided food, supplies, and medicine to many of the allied POWs and citizens interned in the camps. Given the code name “High Pockets,” she met with guerrilla fighters to inform them of Japanese military plans, and by all accounts, she gave credible intelligence reports.

Another contributor was U.S. Army corporal John Boone, one of the first to start a guerrilla organization against the Japanese. He had to evade not only the Japanese, who would kill him on the spot, but also homegrown Communist Filipinos and turncoats. After the Japanese overran the forces in Bataan, they demanded that the Americans surrender. Although the majority did, Boone was one of the few who disobeyed orders by refusing to surrender, and he fled into the jungles, where he aided in foiling the Japanese. Through sabotage and disruption, he and his men helped pave the way for General MacArthur’s return. Readers will enjoy how Eisner intertwines the resistance with the battles fought in and around the Philippines.

Charles “Chick” Parsons was called MacArthur’s spymaster. An American businessman who was in Manila during the Japanese advance, he convinced the enemy that he was a Panamanian diplomat. They never found out he actually was a U.S. Navy intelligence officer, and they allowed him to depart the Philippines. Having convinced MacArthur to have him return, in March 1943, he arrived back via submarine. He eluded detection by operating off the grid and became the chief aide in organizing and supplying the guerrillas, including making sure the intelligence network was successful.

The book also discusses the faceless American heroes, those captured by the Japanese. Although much is known about the Nazi atrocities during World War II, the Japanese also had their share of brutality. Citizens in Manila would have to bow and show their subservience to the Japanese or risk being slapped, kicked, and beaten. One of the worst was the Bataan Death March, where starving and thirsty American prisoners were forced to trek for miles in the wilting sun.

Eisner noted, “This march was a horror show of inhumanity. The Americans and Filipinos who fought with them were brutalized and slaughtered. When some stopped because of exhaustion, they were bayoneted on the spot. Another example occurred just after the surrender, where the Japanese mowed down the allied forces with rifle and machine gun fire. This continued throughout the war and came to a head when in August 1944 the Tokyo High Command issued a secret kill order.

“At the Palawan POW camp, prisoners became slave laborers and were forced to build an airfield. In December, under the guise of a supposed air raid, the POWs were told to go into the trenches for shelter. Suddenly, the Japanese guards dumped gallons of gasoline into the trenches and torched them.

Continue reading →
MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

With Fox News’s Ratings in Free Fall, the Future Looks Bleak By Peter Barry Chowka

By on May 19th, 2017

The sudden death of Roger Ailes (R.I.P.) yesterday is a grim omen for the network he envisioned and built. In the wake of the recent upheavals at Fox News, the conservative cable television network’s ratings are experiencing a precipitous decline from cable news leadership for the first time in the history of the channel. As the rest of the mainstream media continue their efforts to undermine and “resist” the Trump Administration, this development bodes ill for the future — not only of the unique kind of fair and balanced if right of center reporting pioneered by the Fox News Channel (FNC), but of the prospects for conservatives continuing to have a major media platform, maintain power, and advance their agenda in the months and years ahead.

The Fox News Channel launched on October 6, 1996. MSNBC, originally a collaboration between NBC News and Microsoft, had started three months earlier. Prior to mid-1996, CNN, the other competitor, was the exclusive cable news outlet in the United States, synonymous with “cable news.” It enjoyed a long monopoly in the field during which it was able to build its brand at home and abroad.

Lacking the backing of a huge well oiled news organzation like NBC or the tailwind legacy of a sixteen year international presence like CNN, FNC initially had a bit of a shaky start. But under the guidance of media and political genius Roger Ailes (the FNC CEO and Chairman), the financial support of international media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and with a clear agenda (“fair and balanced” reporting with a consistent respect for conservative viewpoints), after gaining wide cable and satellite distribution, Fox pulled ahead of its two rivals. By 2002, FNC had done the unthinkable, establishing itself as the #1 cable news channel in the United States. Notwithstanding its being constantly derided by the rest of the mainstream media, Fox News’s prime time ratings dominance went largely unchallenged for the next fourteen years.

The Fox News Channel’s innovative and successful approach to presenting the news in the new millennium helped to change the TV news landscape from one dominated by breaking hard news read by mostly interchangeable news readers to a model that relied on opinionated marquee personalities and colorful left/right debate. Prime time personalities Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, for example, both of whom debuted on FNC the night that it started, continued to host programs in prime time, seemingly in perpetuity. CNN’s “breaking news is king” strategy, and its aging prime time host Larry King, were caught off guard.

For its part, the ill-conceived MSNBC floundered during its first decade. The channel’s original plan for some kind of interactive cable TV-online collaboration with Microsoft (one of MSNBC’s early prime time shows was the laughable nightly tech program The Site with Soledad O’Brien) was soon scuttled, and it experimented with both left and right wing hosts and anchors (Phil Donahue, Keith Olbermann, Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan, and even Michael Savage for a short time) before settling on a hard left approach that corresponded with the rise of Barack Obama in 2008.

The seventeen month campaign trek of Donald Trump from his announcement on June 16, 2015 to his election victory appeared to institutionalize Fox’s hegemony. FNC, it was widely assumed, now had its man in the White House and it had helped to put him there. Ironically, what happened during the first Republican candidates’ debate on August 6, 2015, carried exclusively on FNC, presaged the channel’s eventual decline.

The debate was co-hosted by Fox News’s newest star, prime time anchor and special events coverage co-anchor Megyn Kelly. Her first question, directed to Trump, was provocative and incendiary:

Kelly: “Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women. You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’”

Trump: “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

Kelly: “No, it wasn’t. Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?”

In a flash, Fox News’s popular celebrity anchor had thrown down a gauntlet, unfairly in the opinion of many, right in the face of a candidate who was quickly gaining attention and momentum with conservatives – the core of the FNC audience – and in the very first Republican debate of the 2016 election season seen by a record 24 million viewers!

The ensuing undercurrent of bad feeling between Trump and Kelly – often breaking out into the open on social media – dragged on for months. It soured many viewers on Kelly and diminished her appeal as the attractive and smart face of Fox News.

Kelly supposedly made up with Trump for a much-hyped, hour long prime time Fox broadcast network special. The forced détente, however, seemed fake. Later in 2016, Kelly wrote negatively about Trump in her memoir Settle for More, for which she was paid around $11 million according to deadline.com. In interviews to promote the book, Kelly said that she felt such fear during 2016 that she and her husband hired or were provided with armed bodyguards to protect her and her family from perceived dangers arising from her to-do with Trump.

The Women of Fox News

“The on-air dynamic of an older, not necessarily attractive, male authority figure and his lovely female guest (look, she’s beautiful and smart too!) is such a trademark of Fox News” opined LA Times television critic Lorraine Ali in an April 6, 2017 Times feature story “Scandal, sexism and the role of women at Fox News.”

Indeed, anyone with eyes and sensibility had to take note that very early on the Fox News channel was appealing to male viewers with a lineup of very attractive young women correspondents, anchors, and guests who, as Ali noted, were “smart too!”

As Chelsea Schilling writes at WND (May 2, 2017), “It’s no secret that Fox News has some of the most attractive female hosts in the business, and many fans have become accustomed to seeing beautiful, leggy women deliver the daily news. In fact, Google searches of almost every woman on Fox News reveal scores of images of the lady-hosts boldly baring their long legs.” Writing at Breitbart on April 27, 2017, Daniel Flynn refers to Fox News as a “hot-women-only cable news culture.”

Continue reading →
BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sean O’Callaghan The Real Heroes of a Dirty War

By on May 19th, 2017

I took up William Matchett’s splendid book as someone who, in August, 1974, murdered Inspector Peter Flanagan of RUC in a County Tyrone public house. I am deeply ashamed of that act. Like many young Irish republicans before me I thought I was fighting for Irish freedom. I was not.

Secret Victory: The Intelligence War That Beat the IRA
by William Matchett
William Matchett, 2016, 272 pages, about $30
_________________________________________

Some might regard the title of this book as making a grandiose claim. Others may deride it, or ignore both title and book, choosing instead to believe that whatever fragile peace Northern Ireland enjoys today is a blessing bestowed by Tony Blair, Gerry Adams, Bill Clinton and an assortment of peaceniks, chancers and conflict resolution groupies. Many such people have lined their pockets by grossly inflating their influence in the “peace process” and exporting their inanities to gullible audiences worldwide.

In reality they reaped the harvest of peace that others had sown in a long intelligence war, and William Matchett’s book is the perfect antidote to their delusions. The author is a former senior officer in the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary who fought the IRA (and their loyalist counterparts) for a quarter of a century and who has gone on to advise police forces across the world on counter-terrorism. He describes with the familiar understated practicality of the North’s Protestant-Unionist majority how he and his Special Branch colleagues were able to win a war of intelligence within the civil law.

One experience of mine in Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast in 1989 confirmed for me—not that I needed much convincing—the absolutely central and critical role that RUC Special Branch played in degrading the Provisional IRA, and forcing it to end its campaign of murder and intimidation against the people of Northern Ireland. I was being led, in the company of seven IRA members, through the tunnel from the jail to the courthouse, each of us handcuffed to another prisoner. I happened to be handcuffed to a senior and long-standing member of the IRA from Dungannon, County Tyrone, named Henry Louis McNally. I knew him quite well from my days as an IRA operative in the mid-1970s in County Tyrone. He was once named, by Ken Maginnis, an Ulster Unionist MP in the House of Commons, as being directly responsible for the murders of seventeen members of the security forces. He had been arrested, charged, and later convicted of the attempted murder of British soldiers travelling by bus to their base in Antrim.

McNally was a very canny, experienced and long-term senior IRA man who followed his own timetable, operating in his native County Tyrone for going on sixteen years, interrupted only by one spell on remand. I was curious as to why this cautious man was operating far from his normal stomping ground. I asked him, and the answer I received in that tunnel was this: “Special Branch have us in a vice-like grip in Tyrone and it is just too difficult to operate, so like a fool I finished up going to Antrim to get some kills and ended up here.” Out of the mouths of babes and killers … McNally had no love for the Special Branch, but he had good reason to be realistic about them as formidable and professional enemies forged in a very unforgiving fire.

In the introduction to his book Matchett describes his first days as an eighteen-year-old recruit in the RUC, stationed in the IRA heartland of South Armagh:

At 18 it was a rude awakening to the reality of armed conflict. I was shot at, caught in roadside bombs and mortared. I lost some good friends. I would lie if I said I was not afraid. I knew the IRA men who were doing this, we all did, but we could not prove it.

This was Northern Ireland in 1982, not Beirut or Afghanistan, but a part of the UK situated on the island of Ireland. It is I think worth taking a moment to ponder those lines. The border was but a stone’s throw away and mostly the IRA simply scooted across the border into the Irish Republic where Matchett and his colleagues could not follow. And so it went on—year after bloody year. A police force that had been utterly demoralised and demonised by the events of 1969 took years to recover some sense of mission and purpose. It wasn’t until police primacy in law enforcement and intelligence gathering was restored in 1976 that a revamped and reinvigorated RUC really took on the slow and deadly task of taking back control of IRA-controlled areas of Belfast and Derry. Slowly but surely the rule of law began to assert itself. The centre of IRA activity began to retreat more and more to the rural heartlands bordering the Irish Republic. Eventually towards the end the IRA was on its knees, its last stronghold in South Armagh on the verge of collapse.

It would of course be wrong to downgrade the huge role and sacrifice undertaken by the British Army, particularly in the early 1970s. Without the Army holding the line in those difficult years the RUC, and Special Branch in particular, would almost certainly never have had the breathing space to re-organise. Matchett recognises the debt of gratitude to those soldiers who served and were injured or murdered when he writes simply, “The Army prevented Ulster from unravelling.” Of course one of the primary differences between the police and the Army was that police knew the ground where they were born, went to school, got married, had children and worked and socialised. They were of the soil, as their enemies in the IRA were, and they proved more resolute, determined and fearless in protecting their children, homeland and way of life than those who opposed them. They were often frustrated by having to observe the rule of law—but it proved the right way. They were determined to outwit and outlast the IRA—and they did. Matchett sets out in clear, precise words the operational strategies and tactics Special Branch adopted to defeat a well-armed and vicious terrorist group.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The 25th Amendment? Forget It Impeachment would be a picnic by comparison with Trump opponents’ latest brainstorm. By Brian C. Kalt

By on May 19th, 2017

Interest in Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is peaking. Multiple amateur constitutional scholars have advocated its use to remove President Trump from office, as an alternative to impeachment. But Section 4 is a tool for a different job. Its use under today’s circumstances has the potential to tear the country apart.

Section 4 is not a suitable substitute for impeachment. To be sure, impeachment sets a high bar: a majority in the House, then two-thirds in the Senate to convict and remove an official. Section 4 sounds easier: If the vice president and a majority of the cabinet declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the vice president becomes acting president.

Section 4 is a great solution if the president is missing or comatose, but a terrible one when he is conscious and in full control of his Twitter account. The first difficulty is that the president can contest the cabinet’s action. If he does, Congress assembles, debates and votes. Unless two-thirds of both House and Senate vote within 21 days to back the cabinet, the president retakes power. Because impeachment requires only a simple House majority, it is easier for the president to defeat a Section 4 action than to avoid impeachment.

Further, if the president loses a Section 4 vote, he is displaced only temporarily; nothing stops him from trying again. All he needs is the support, one time, of more than a third of either the House or Senate.

Some argue that impeachment is limited to high crimes and misdemeanors, making it inappropriate for the case of someone who is (as Mr. Trump’s calmer critics describe him) simply in over his head. But anyone who wields as much power as the president and who is grossly incompetent surely will have done something that rises to the level of an impeachable offense.

Section 4 is also horribly hazardous. The fatal flaw emerges from this passage: “When the President transmits . . . his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of [the cabinet] transmit within four days . . . their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

After reading that, who do you think holds presidential power during the four-day waiting period between the president’s declaration and the cabinet’s counterdeclaration? The answer is the vice president. The best reading of the text and the only reading of the crystal-clear legislative history is that the president does not immediately retake power.

Several intelligent but poorly informed commentators have gotten that wrong and said that the president would retake power immediately. A besieged president would have a tremendous incentive to look at the text, interpret it favorably to himself, and rally his supporters around that interpretation. He would assert that he had retaken power immediately and—showing his ability to discharge the powers and duties of his office—he would fire his disloyal cabinet and name more-agreeable allies as acting secretaries.CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →