Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1144

Why Mothers Are Voting Yes

The Dishonest And Manipulative Tactics Continue On The 'No' Side.

From the Solidarity Times - Free the Media, Be the Media Facebook page a piece on what the writer sees as dishonest and manipulative tactics employees in the debate around the Eighth Amendment/. 

The Save the Eighth campaign has defended a booklet delivered to 200,000 households which has the appearance of an official Government publication.

The green booklet, entitled Your Guide to the Referendum – Information on the Government’s Proposals, looks like an official Government publication but instead contains arguments put forward by the No side, likely to be disputed by Yes campaigners.

The booklet warns that “unborn babies at all stages of pregnancy will have no constitutional rights, and you will never have a say on this again.



No campaign defends booklet resembling a Government publicationBooklet warns ‘unborn babies at all stages of pregnancy will have no constitutional rights, and you will never have a say on this again’

Palestinians Murdered By Israel: Boycott Israel And Israeli Goods

Republican Sinn Féin/Sinn Féin Poblachtach speaks out about Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians in Jerusalem.The opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem was always going to be contentious as the city’s status is still under debate and claimed by both Palestine and Israel. The fact that even the UN has said the status of this city should remain undecided until a final settlement of all other issues did not deter US President Donald Trump from fulfilling his campaign promise of moving the US embassy there.

The language used yesterday by Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only enflamed an already volatile situation and could only lead in one direction. Palestinians were outraged and protested in many towns and cities. In Gaza where for weeks people have been protesting for the right to return, tyres were lit and stones were thrown at Israeli outposts. This particular protest was met with sniper fire of live ammunition, tear-gas and sound bombs from the Israeli army.

The shootings by the Israeli army left over fifty people dead, many of them children, and thousands injured. TV footage showed bystanders and onlookers being shot. There can be no justification for the deliberate shooting of unarmed civilians in any circumstances. Already within the UN there have been calls for an independent inquiry into these shootings. And once again, like many other calls for inquiries into Israeli atrocities, the US blocked this call. It is clear that there is no justice to be found for the maimed and murdered citizens of Palestine.
Sinn Féin Poblachtach condemn the excessive force used by Israel in these most recent weeks of attacks on the Palestinian people, we call for an independent inquiry into these shootings and for any such inquiry to investigate the purported use of banned ammunition as it seems clear that “explosive bullets” have been used. The deliberate shooting in the legs by Israeli soldiers who, it is alleged, use these banned bullets have led to many people having limbs amputated.

It is clear that Israel is increasingly establishing a mono-cultural, mono-theological state, to this end they are evicting more and more Palestinians from their land and houses and continuing with the expansion of settlements.

We support the calls for a general boycott of Israeli goods as this simple measure has, and will continue, to hurt Israeli finances. National states, academic institutions and businesses need to ostracize the politicians of Israel, particularly the ever-increasing number who call for the eviction and murder of the Palestinian people from their lands.

For Irish people, the events in Gaza brings back memories of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972 when the heavily-armed British army parachute regiment fired on a peaceful civil rights march, The world protested at the death of 14 men on that day. It should now protest against the death of nearly 60 people in Gaza, one more atrocity on the part of the Israelis against the Palestinian people trying to hold on to their homeland.

The only lasting settlement that will lead to true peace, freedom and equality is the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state.

A Morning Thought (25)

The Apprentice - The Education Of Mohammed bin Salman

Stanley L. Cohen writing in Counterpunch looks at the life of MBS.

Photo source James N. Mattis | CC BY 2.0

Looking back over the course of a long impassioned life as attorney and activist, nothing has been a greater source of education and inspiration, for me as a person, than the decades spent working in the Middle East, Gulf and Africa.

Enrolled, there, as almost a student of life, I’ve seen and learned much in age-old cultures bound by tradition, sculpted by faith… a merger of weighty impressive consequence. Indeed, the winds of ancient history have a way of softening the arrogance that comes with the almost reflexive birthright that is the relative infancy of the West.

Like everywhere else, the young women and men of these regions are surely their most valuable resource. It is to them we look to build our future just as they protect our collective past. Yet, long ago, I learned wisdom is not a pre-ordained inheritance but rather comes with the passage of time and the knowledge and experience that is companion to that travel. It is a lesson that 32-year-old Mohammed bin Salman has not yet mastered.

Like an empty rap of Kanye West, bin Salman relishes his meteoric rise to the world stage where he is known simply as MBS. Shifting between traditional look and Gucci flash, depending on his imperial sale of the moment, he enjoys the trappings of endless wealth and political power without understanding, let alone exercising, any of its sophisticated, nuanced responsibility. Nor has he displayed an expansive mark of humanity in his reach for autocratic role.

Stamps of enlightened growth, these are dares that care less about age or position than keenness to listen, look and learn. On all fronts bin Salman has failed the test.

As the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and the heir apparent to the throne of his father, bin Salman evidently wields un-tempered authority to shape the domestic future of his state at the same time he controls its growing belligerent role in international relations. It appears he now speaks as the full voice of the Saudi state in all matters large and small.

Long on pomp, short on circumstance, bin Salman has puffed about the world as if his is a journey at the center of its universe. Along the way, in a very short and inexperienced trek, he has left a wake of carnage in Yemen, destabilized the Gulf and Middle East, continued autocracy at home and, now, reduced a seventy year struggle for freedom, dignity and statehood in Palestine to meek surrender to the blank voice of ignorance that finds comfort in the White House.

Since the onset of the Nakba, Saudi Arabia has supported the fundamental right of Palestinians to self determination, justice and statehood. While its backing has run the course from financial to military to political assistance on the world stage, at no time has any Saudi leader shown public insensitivity or contempt for Palestinians to determine what is in their own best interests in their homeland and Diaspora. With sudden, ugly declaration, that was all to change this past week.

As reported by Israeli media, in a meeting with the heads of Jewish organizations in New York City bin Salman not only indicated that Palestine was not a priority but went on to declare:

It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.

These are not words of a sophisticated principled leader schooled in the history of his region or the humanity of his faith. Nor do they reflect the common shared bond between the suffer of eleven million victims of European induced genocide and millions worldwide who support Palestinians in their effort to reclaim their home. Nor do they bespeak one with the education or capacity to look beyond the narrow rush of the moment to traverse the path of a complicated world driven by an ever-changing political, religious and social landscape.

To the contrary, they are language of a petty shill… an apprentice who would sell his soul, and soon his thrown, to the highest bidder without care or concern for anything or anyone but his own political and economic self-interest. Can it be this is why bin Salman finds such comfort with the likes of Donald Trump and Jared Kushner?

Looking back over the vindictive bombast of bin Salman in a room full of Zionist powers, a seasoned political observer is necessarily torn by one of two equally disturbing conclusions: either his malevolence was spewed in a moment of rash spectacle or was very much a calculated choice to announce to the world his break with Palestine… knowing, full well, his words would not remain within the confines of that meeting.

Perhaps the answer to this question is best captured through a revisit of bin Salman’s body of international and domestic practice as he has consolidated power these last few years. Ever cast in a veneer of reform; don’t be fooled… at day’s end it would appear to be but a cheap shibboleth.

Long accused of subsidizing terrorism, Saudi Arabia had, until of late, maintained the public face of a relatively quiet, stable regional actor. Over the last three years that has changed.

Under the control of Mohammed bin Salman ,Saudi Arabia and its allies have unleashed a vicious and indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen that has left over 10,000 civilians dead and three million others displaced.

Already the most impoverished state in the region, as a result of his novice rage, it is estimated that 19.3 million Yemenis do not have access to clean water and sanitation. To date, there are over 1 million suspected cases of cholera that will prove most deadly of all for at risk malnourished young. Just this past year, hunger and disease took the lives of at least 50,000 children.

Not satisfied with exporting daily carnage in Yemen, in June of 2017 bin Salman triggered a reckless diplomatic crisis with Qatar that continues to date. It resulted in the imposition of trade and travel bans and the severance of diplomatic relations among various states in the region… thereby, foolishly adding to its already over the mark explosive life.

Cast as a move to reign in Qatar’s alleged support of terrorism, the inexplicable Saudi leap made no sense until understood it occurred with the blessing, if not encouragement, of another apprentice… Donald Trump… who was oblivious to the fact Qatar is home to the largest US military base in the Middle East with more than 11,000 troops.

Less than six months later, bin Salman apparently orchestrated yet another Middle East crisis when Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri mysteriously announced his resignation while on a state visit to Saudi Arabia.

Much to the delight of his host, he publicly denounced Iran and Hezbollah for sowing the seeds of regional instability… thereby, for the moment, fueling it by falling in line with the geo-political narratives of the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Reportedly, upon arrival at Riyadh’s airport, Hariri was surrounded by police that confiscated his cell phone and those of his bodyguards. Not long thereafter, Lebanon’s President announced the Prime Minister’s resignation was coerced and that he was essentially a hostage.

Upon his return to Lebanon, Hariri suspended his resignation and then rescinded it in the days that followed. To date, he has remained silent about just what happened in Saudi Arabia.

Nevertheless, no one with seasoned knowledge or experience doubts that the events were, in fact, orchestrated by bin Salman to obtain an ill-composed and short lived benefit… at great, irresponsible, risk to the region.

Under bin Salman, we have seen a breakthrough in some gender based repression that has long been a hallmark of state policy. Among other changes, for the first time, women recently participated in municipal elections; they are also, now, allowed to drive. Elsewhere, the Saudi workforce has opened a bit to include women and, recently, the government allowed the first public concert by a female singer.

In the world of international politics, paradox is often the preeminent bell-weather of short sight or lost vision. On this score, bin Salman has excelled at the contradiction, through domestic policies, that have sought to empower women yet, all at once, struck a blow at other hallmarks of an enlightened tolerant society.

Not long ago, mass arrests were ordered throughout Saudi Arabia without a modicum of judicial protection or due process for those seized. While the full number of those detained remains unknown, estimates range from several dozen to several hundred. The government also confiscated over $106bn worth of private assets, including “real estate, commercial entities, securities and cash” which it claimed were part of an “investigation” into corruption. In what was described as a “consolidation of power”, those swept up included members of the royal family, government ministers and some of the Kingdom’s most moneyed men.

At day’s end, 30 were detained at the notorious 5 star prison at the Ritz Carlton Hotel until they paid “fines” of billions of dollars to purchase their freedom. It has been reported the Ritz proved to be an unhealthy stay for 17 who required hospitalization for physical abuse. One subsequently died showing signs of extreme mistreatment.

Elsewhere, the cruel face of Saudi justice has been on display through beheadings that, over the last several years, have risen above 600… with many executed for non-violent charges such as drug offenses. On just one day in 2016, the government held a mass execution of 47, including respected Shia Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

This year alone, 48 have been beheaded through arcane, flawed criminal justice proceedings which fail to adhere to international standards and are often dependent upon confessions obtained by torture.

For those fortunate enough to avoid the executioner’s sword, severe sentences are imposed upon human rights activists who dare to speak out.

Saudi Arabia has long prohibited public gatherings… including peaceful demonstrations in support of social reform. It has banned independent human rights associations imposing lengthy prison terms upon their founders for any breach of the embargo.

Targeted by “specialized” criminal courts, those who engage in criticism, dissent or other means of freedom of expression, are routinely swept up by “security” forces… often through raids in the middle of the night.

Although attacks on activists predate the ascendency of Mohammed bin Salman to Crown Prince, it is important to understand they continue even as he has been proclaimed as the voice of reform.

Recently, Mohammed al-Otaibi was sentenced to 14 years in prison andAbdullah al-Attawi, to 7 years for offenses including “forming an unlicensed organization”… relating to a short-lived human rights group they set up in 2013.

They join a long list of others who have faced a similar silence. Among them are prominent human rights defenders (attorneys) such as Dr Abdulkareem al-Khoder and Dr Abdulrahman al-Hamid, both founding members of the now disbanded independent Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), who received sentences of ten years and nine years respectively. They are two of the 11 founding members of ACPRA who are either already behind bars or awaiting trial for calling for political and human rights reforms.

These are but a few of the thousands who are prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia. While reform can be a slow march, indeed, given the history of Crown Prince bin Salman, there is simply no reason to believe that it is a stride that will ever reach their deep dark cell.

Generally, history is the best meter of days to come. Yet, with youth, there is always room and hope for growth as experience can provide insight into better times and places if only the travel is one of honest search. Although hope springs eternal, having apparently rejected, in its entirety, the tradition and culture from which he has come, it would appear that the road ahead for 32 year old Mohammed bin Salman is, sadly, not one likely to better with age.

Indeed, not long ago, bin Salman opined that without America’s cultural influence on Saudi Arabia, “we would have ended up like North Korea.”

Perhaps, when next in New York City, Crown Prince bin Salman’s time would be better spent were he to stop and ask people of color, Native Americans, the LGTBQ community, immigrants, refugees, the elderly, unwell and US Muslims about America’s cultural influence.

Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rightsactivist in New York City.



He has done extensive work in the Middle Eastand Africa.  

A Morning Thought (24)

Fine Gael & Sinn Fein

Fine Gael needs to both organise and contest elections in Northern Ireland if it is not to play second fiddle to Sinn Fein following the next Dail elections. That’s the advice controversial commentator Dr John Coulter gives to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in his latest Fearless Flying Column today.
While there has been much talk about how Unionism should deal with Sinn Fein in the future, there needs to be a constructive debate as to how nationalism – especially south of the border – deals with the new-look Sinn Fein bandwagon.

Sinn Fein has already made it clear it sees the route to a united Ireland lying not in Stormont’s politically vacant Parliament Buildings, but through the back door of Dublin’s Leinster House.
What would have been unthinkable during the 1981 republican hunger strike – namely Sinn Fein TDs not only taking their seats in the Dail, but possibly becoming a minority partner in a Leinster House coalition government – is now flavour of the month in republican circles. 
The bitter reality which moderate nationalism must now face is that Sinn Fein has done to the SDLP what the SDLP did to the old Irish Nationalist Party in the 1970s – electoral oblivion.

The SDLP can argue and spin all it wants about pushing its vote up a few percentage points in the recent West Tyrone Westminster by-election, but the result is still the same – the constituency remains a Sinn Fein stronghold. Had the SDLP really been making a significant comeback, it would have reduced the massive Sinn Fein majority acquired by the outgoing MP Barry McElduff to a couple of thousand votes reducing it in status to a Sinn Fein marginal.

Fianna Fail has already indicated that it is prepared to contest next year’s planned local government elections in Northern Ireland, giving the nationalist community an all-Ireland alternative to Sinn Fein. The SDLP’s current Achilles Heel is that it is only a six counties party.

Sinn Fein, even when it had only one TD in Leinster House, was always able to politically taunt the SDLP that it was organised on an all-island basis. Playing the James Connolly-style socialist card was a trick Sinn Fein used when both Irish Labour and British Labour failed to organise and contest elections on an all-island basis, especially when the Irish Labour Party – founded in the same year as Sinn Fein, 1905 – was a coalition partner in the Dail.

With the SDLP well and truly battered at the polls, a new-look Northern Fianna Fail could even attract tactical voting from Unionists to keep Sinn Fein out of council seats in 2019. But where does this leave Fine Gael?

The obvious answer would be that Fine Gael does not want to organise north of the border to avoid overcrowding the moderate nationalist market, thereby splitting that vote and allowing Sinn Fein to snatch former SDLP council seats. That was the bitter lesson which Unionism had to learn when several shades of Unionism contested seats, allowing seats – especially in the Assembly – to be won by a whisker by republicans.

Okay, so Taoiseach Varadkar is primarily concerned with keeping his top job in Leinster House rather than devoting much-needed resources to create a moderate nationalist revival in Northern Ireland.

But what happens in the next Dail poll if the only option for Varadkar to keep Fine Gael in power is to do a deal with Sinn Fein? In reality, he could find himself in the same position as the SDLP – having to work with an all-island party while he leads a party which is only organised in one state in Ireland.

Varadkar’s solution to this dilemma is simple – Fine Gael must organise and contest elections in Northern Ireland like its Fianna Fail counterpart, but he will have to box exceptionally clever politically.

This will require a redefining of the so-called Pan Nationalist Front along the same lines as the former United Ulster Unionist Coalition – or Treble UC – operated successfully within Unionism in the 1970s. That Unionist Coalition represented up to four different Unionist parties in the Seventies – the DUP, UUP, Vanguard Unionists and UUUP.

By selecting the Unionist party best able to win seats, the UUUC secured 11 of the 12 Westminster seats in the February 1974 General Election with only the late Gerry Fitt’s West Belfast stronghold eluding the Unionist Coalition.

Unionist jibes about a Pan Nationalist Front involved the SDLP, Sinn Fein and the Dublin government. Varadkar must take the bull by the horns and replace that nationalist coalition with a new Front involving Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and any viable remnants of the SDLP to isolate Sinn Fein.

Could Varadkar even encourage British Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn to contest Northern Ireland council seats and add a socialist dimension to the reformed Pan Nationalist Front. Could even the Green Party and Alliance Party be persuaded to join the Front in some areas West of the River Bann?

Given Fine Gael’s supposed Right of Centre credentials, could we even witness tactical voting by Unionists – especially in West of the Bann council areas – to slash the number of Sinn Fein council seats after 2019?

One of the arguments which some Unionists have pushed to oppose the creation of a single pro-Union party in Northern Ireland is that having a selection of Unionist parties encourages pro-Union voters to come out and vote for parties of their choice. That sounds nice on paper, but it is clear the pro-Union community wants a single Unionist party to represent them given the current strength of the DUP at Stormont and in Westminster.

Clearly, too, in response to this unofficial unity in Unionism, nationalist voters in Northern Ireland have thrown their weight behind Sinn Fein. The republican movement has been able to significantly tap into the electorally lucrative middle class Catholic vote, while still maintaining its traditional working class republican heartlands.

This is why a new-look Pan Nationalist Front is required, not just in Northern Ireland, but right across the island of Ireland if Sinn Fein is to be kept out of a government role in Leinster House. Simple question which non-Sinn Fein candidates must ask themselves – how many of Sinn Fein’s Dail TD tally could have been avoided if there had been a Nationalist Coalition during the last Leinster House general election?

If there is one election tactic which Sinn Fein has become a master at it is mobilising its vote. It can, quite simply, get its people out on polling day. If there was Australian-style compulsory voting in the Irish republic, would Sinn Fein have the same representation in the Dail?

Non-Sinn Fein parties in the republic will not defeat the republican movement electorally by simply branding Sinn Fein as a loony left-wing commie outfit still run by the Provos’ Army Council. Varadkar has only got one solution on the table – reform the Pan Nationalist Front on both sides of the border, because the Stormont experience is very clear – once Sinn Fein gets into government, it will be very, very difficult to shift the party out!



Dr John Coulter has been a journalist working in Ireland for the past 40 years.

His ebook, An Sais Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism is published on Amazon Kindle.

Dr Coulter is on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

A Morning Thought (23)

New Charges Against Sect Leaders In New Mexico

Lena M reports on Christian child abuse in New Mexico. The piece features in Atheist Republic.


Photo Credits: Patheos

After roughly 18 charges alleging kidnapping and child abuse, which were filed against Deborah and James Green, a married couple who lead a paramilitary religious sect in New Mexico, new charges are filed against them. The Greens are now accused of tampering with evidence and conspiracy to commit tampering with evidence.

Deborah and James Green are leaders of the Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps in western New Mexico, a religious paramilitary sect with anti-Semitic leanings. They were first accused of kidnapping and child abuse and now it is suspected that the Greens attempted to hide children from the commune after a raid by sheriff’s deputies, and that they conspired together and with another person to commit tampering with evidence.

According to New York Times, last year authorities raided the sect’s secluded Fence Lake, New Mexico compound over concerns of child abuse. Cibola County Sheriff's Office began an investigation into the commune after 13-year-old Enoch Miller died from a probable infectious disease. Authorities say the trustees of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps own thousands of acres of land and benefited from a wealthy high-ranking member who aided them in avoiding law enforcement agencies by hiding children. Those holdings and regular deceptions by leaders, authorities said, made it difficult for the small Cibola County Sheriff's Office to investigate allegations of child abuse that former members say went on for years. Former members also said that the group treated followers like slaves and often physically tortured children.

Number of members of the sect, including their leaders, are facing various charges ranging from child abuse, bribery and not reporting a birth, but they have all pleaded not guilty. Deborah and James Green also said they have done nothing wrong.

The Greens opened Free Love Ministries in 1982 with four communal houses in Sacramento, California. They were not experienced ministries but succeeded in attracting about 50 members. The group had a military structure and operated like the Salvation Army. The group fled California for Oregon and later resurfaced near El Paso, Texas, and then in western New Mexico, after one of the group’s former members, Maura Alana Schmierer, sued the group for locking her in a shed without a toilet and for forcing her to give up legal custody of three of her children. The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the sect as a hate group after it published anti-Muslim and anti-gay stories in pamphlets and on its website.

After the two-year investigation lead by Cibola County Undersheriff’s department and dozens of charges filed against the militant sect leaders and members, it looks like the time has come to bring the leaders and the members of this sect to justice. 

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A Morning Thought (22)