Irish Political Review, November 2010
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Fintan O'Toole Formula Obama & Arab Street Not On Our Knees Yet John Martin David Morrison Labour Comment page 12 page 7 back page IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW November 2010 Vol.25, No.11 ISSN 0790-7672 and Northern Star incorporating Workers' Weekly Vol.24 No.11 ISSN 954- 5891 Like A Virgin! Lisbon looms again! Witnesses To Mass Murder In The Icy Bann is the headline to an Irish Times article The EU has had to come up with an ad advertising the opening of a Trinity College exhibition of documents written by hoc response to the Greek sovereign debt Protestants who suffered a setback in the English/Scottish ethnic cleansing of Ulster in issue. It sought to do so by pledging a 1641.. large amount of money to bail out Greece If the word "murder" is to be used about events in a conflict of civilisations over three called the European Financial Stabiliz- and a half centuries ago, then so must some other words that are not pleasant. ation Facility (EFSF). However, this was There was a time—we recall it well: it was not very long ago—when superior people clearly a stop-gap solution and something deplored the fact that there were bigots with long memories who carried on about things more permanent had to be done and there that happened in the 17th century as if those events had something to do with us. As we has been much talk of more 'economic understood their position, it was that there was a time in the past beyond which moral governance' to ensure more stability and standards and moral judgments did not apply That view seemed sensible to us and we were happy to go along with it. But, if the superior people now want to publish co-ordination among Euro states. Presi- sensationalist headlines about "murder" in the mid-16th century, and relate that "murder" dent van Rompuy was given the task of to politics in the present day, then we must also discuss ethnic cleansing, colonial coming up with a real solution. displacement, cultural genocide, and perhaps even actual genocide. The subject is a Pandora's Box, best left unopened. But the superior people have POLITICAL CRUX opened it—their columnist John Waters has assured us that they are the superior people. When the Euro was established, budget- So be it! ary and other economic issues were left to the national states. Fiscal rules were agreed A correspondent to the Irish Times (22 Oct.) wrote: and then ignored by Member States for "It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of the publication of the 1641 their own political reasons. And this caused Depositions in Trinity College Library, hidden from view (in the best Trinity manner) for the current economic problems. well over three centuries. They provide detailed accounts of the massacre of Protestant The debt crisis is clearly a problem that settlers at the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion, and future study of them will surely alter our cannot be solved by throwing huge perception of the nature of religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. amounts of money at it. In fact that will "Who knows? Perhaps we may even have to revise our historical judgement of that devil incarnate, Oliver Cromwell (an Englishman as well as a Protestant). make it worse as the Greeks and others "We may certainly be encouraged by the publication of such documents to challenge will interpret it as being let off the hook wherever we find them (and from whatever direction) expressions of sectarian hatred. and the money markets will see a large Neither side in this terrible conflict has a monopoly of truth and justice. continued on page 2 continued on page 4 Taming Tigers? Sunday Independent headline, October one of the golden chains that Connolly 24th: Soden: Let's Quite EU And Join US. warned about in vain. Selecting suitable people for jobs is a Soden is Mark Soden, a former inter- When Soden was dropped by the Bank, large part of the art of government. The national banker who was Chief Executive he wrote a book suggesting that Ireland Minister for Finance set up a Central Bank of the Bank of Ireland, which pushed him should break the European ties on it and Commission to advise him, and to carry out in 2004 for accessing adult internet look West. On his appointment to the weight with international banking for sites on his work computer. Central Bank Commission on October being independent. The name Bank of Ireland carries a 1st, he advised the Government about the One member of this Commission has comfortable national feeling. It is not contents of his book, which was about to suggested selling off the two main Irish widely understood that the Bank of Ireland be published, and was appointed anyway. Banks. Another has suggested leaving the was the British Bank in Ireland, established At least there can be no doubt about his EU and becoming the 51st State of the in the days of the Protestant Ascendancy, independence. He is entirely free of the USA. and that after independence it remained Irish orientation in the world of the last continued on page 5 fundamentalists who had usurped the power of state by means of Parliament, C O N T E N T S broken the stable Government in Ireland, Page and threatened mayhem in Ireland against Like A Virgin! Rediscovering 1641. Editorial 1 Catholics and those loyal to the Crown. Lisbon Looms Again. Jack Lane 1 Taming Tigers? Editorial 1 The dispossession of the Irish in Ulster Readers' Letters: Augsburg & Westphalia, Stephen Richards. by the Crown, and the displacement of the Rose-Tinted View Of Fianna Fail? Kells reader natives by colonists—selected on sectarian Private Hospitals. Nick Folley 3 grounds to minimise the danger of fellow- Obama's 'New Beginning' At An End In The Arab World? David Morrison 7 feeling arising between the new possessors Political Snapshot. Philip O'Connor 7 and the dispossessed—had happened a Harris Doing As Harris Does. Jack Lane 8 generation before the governing system based on the Plantation was undermined First Ballymurphy, Then Bloody Sunday. Report, and Poem by W.J. Haire 9 by the English Parliament. It had happened Shorts from the Long Fellow (State Broadcaster; Anglo Bank Cost; Brian Lucey & well within living memory. The State— David McWilliams; Government Performance; Could And Should; Lucey On The the regime—on whose authority it was Property Market; Lenihan On Banking Crisis; The Irish Times; The Village 10 done, was undermined. The dispossessed Moral Denunciation From O'Toole. John Martin 12 acted to resume possession. They set 1939 Greaves-Regan-O'Riordan Conversations. Manus O'Riordan 14 about uprooting the Plantation. Republican Ireland And Zionism. Philip O'Connor. As far as one can tell at this distance, (Part 1, De Valera On Zionism And Palestine) 18 the regime of the Crown in the Irish In Reply To Jeff Dudgeon On Peter Hart. Niall Meehan 21 Parliament was functional. When the Es Ahora. Julianne Herlihy (The Cosh Of The Crozier; Ireland & The IMF; regime was overthrown, the consequences History Of IMF; Manifest Destiny) 23 were much like the consequences of the Hard On Hart? Brendan Clifford 25 overthrow of the functional Baathist Biteback: Nama & Associate Professor Lucey. Feargus O Raghallaigh 26 regime by USUK, with Irish assistance. Naval Warfare. Pat Walsh. (Part 1) 28 Is there an eternal morality that applies When. Poem and article by Wilson John Haire 32 to these things, and that is applicable, Does It Stack Up? Michael Stack (The Government; Croke Park Agreement; regardless of circumstances and elapsed Bertie Ahern; Department Of Finance; Automatic Pilot) 33 time? We are told that the overthrow of the Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: Iraqi regime was virtuous because it Not On Our Knees Yet, James! brought down a "tyrant", and did not lose (back page) its virtue because of what it led to, even though the consequences were foreseeable. "I express my warmest congratulations Catholic and Protestant, settler and Gael, We gave the people of Iraq their freedom to the department of history and to Prof. met during the 1630s when the English and that was a meritorious act, regardless Jane Ohlmeyer and also to their colleagues did not meet as it had shown itself of what they did when freed from the in Aberdeen and Cambridge. subversive of government. The Stuart regime. "Yours etc, Gerald Morgan, But there was a social stratum in Iraq The Chaucer Hub, Trinity College." monarchy was acceptable to the Irish on traditional grounds,despite what it had that felt free under the tyranny, and because So Professor Morgan of the Chaucer done to them. However, it was not of the tyranny, under which there was a Hub is shocked by the revelation from the acceptable to an English faction, and when degree of order, a kind of citizenship, and opening of hidden documents of alleged the English Parliament was called in 1640- reliable infrastructure of public amenities massacre in Ulster. 41, it went into rebellion. The King's that enabled them to live like us. And the Hidden documents! There have been Minister in Ireland was called to London Irish had reason to know that, having had long stretches of time when published and killed by the rebellious Parliament. a considerable degree of intercourse with histories of Ireland seemed to deal with His crime was that he had governed Ireland the Tyranny. little but the allegations in these "hidden" as a Kingdom of the Three Crowns, instead The Iraqi middle class was destroyed documents.