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Israel’s uneven democracy is now breaking
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Government Forum directs philanthropy up dead-ends
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By Michael Smith.
This article appears in Village Magazine, May-June 2023. It was written by Michael Smith and not Rory O’Sullivan. Apologies for the editorial error.
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Biden seemed to acknowledge the American future no longer looks as good as when my grandparents left Galway. By Victoria Costello. Towards the end of my forthcoming novel, Orchid Child, which explores intergenerational legacies and debts in an Irish-American family, an American teenager is walking in a wooded East Galway with an older Irish relative he’s just met, when a gust of wind rises seemingly from nowhere, creating a mini tornado of leaves and twigs, complete with sparks of light and a whirring sound. “We call that a faerie eddie”, the old man tells his visitor, noting that the Good Folk must be pleased at this meeting of far-flung kin on property still in the family. I view this bit of folklore as an apt metaphor for the swirl of mixed emotions generated by Joe Biden’s nostalgia-filled visit to Ireland this past week. Like everything else about the relationship between Ireland and its 32 million, far-flung, American kin, it’s complicated. From both sides of the Atlantic, we shared a laugh about the British display of pique over POTUS relishing his Irish roots for four whole days while skipping the coronation. To which I say, spare us, and Harry and Meghan, too, while you’re at it. Many can also relate to Fintan O’Toole’s discomfort about Biden’s outdated conflation of Irishness with Catholicism. As is true in both countries, “The Church” is simply no longer THE church. A fair number of us have even gone pagan. I get that the Republic of our Irish American imagination can be cringeworthy to today’s politically progressive, Euro-Centric Irish public. And yet, Joe Biden makes a good point when he says, “you can be nostalgic about the future”. Where it gets trickier is when we take in the embarrassed reactions of Irish commentators at Biden’s unabashed displays of sentiment about his Irish roots. I get that the Republic of our Irish American imagination can be cringeworthy to today’s politically progressive, Euro-Centric Irish public. And yet, Joe Biden makes a good point when he says, “you can be nostalgic about the future”. Whether he intended it or not, I took this line of his to refer to an American future that no longer looks as good as it did when our grandparents left West Ireland for the US Eastern seaboard. The fact is, America today is a holy mess. With an ever-blurring line between church and state and a democracy corroded by Trumpian fascist fantasies, it’s like we’re on a runaway train, watching ourselves return to the bad old days. In comparison, Ireland appears as a bastion of liberal democracy. The ironies abide. Another Biden oratorical touch on this trip was his repetition of the phrase, “Ireland remembers”, as an invocation of Irish grit and survival against the Great Hunger and centuries of colonial oppression. To the Irish parliament, he used it as a predicate for his assertion that we will, together, address the global food insecurity that is a direct result of climate change. I can’t imagine Biden making that statement at any campaign stop in the US outside of Vermont or California. So what’s going on here? Allow me to digress. When I first started digging into my Irish roots—my original motivation for doing so was a mental health crisis in one of my sons, which evolved to my researching and writing of a novel based loosely on the family history I’d discovered—I knew nothing more than my Irish grandparents’ names—Michael and Ellen Costello. Not even which county they’d left behind—Galway, as it turns out. This wholesale ignorance, I’ve discovered, is entirely typical. I submit it’s also unhealthy, both for each of us as individuals and for the collective. Much of the story I pieced together of their real lives after emigrating was as tragic as I imagine their lives would have been had they stayed in Galway, given all hell was about to break loose with the rebellion and a civil war. In America, my grandparents’ chief enemy was the poverty they faced alone, without the safety net of nearby family. Indeed their fates were tragic: Michael’s drowning death at 28; Ellen gone in the 1918 flu epidemic, leaving my five-year-old father Jack to be raised by Ellen’s Mitchell and Lynch sisters. For my grandparents’ generation, assimilation was a matter of survival, not for themselves, but for those who came after. For my parents, it was more of a choice. I remember my mother expressing no interest in keeping in touch with any relatives with an address outside the Tri-state area. For me and my siblings, assimilation was a done deal. Ireland a fading story dragged out on St. Patrick’s Day or should the subject of JFK arise. But at what cost? This is the question I grappled with as I wrote what became Orchid Child. The protagonist of my novel, Kate, is a neuroscientist, her family’s third generation success story, who brings her neurodiverse nephew (the teenager at the faerie eddie) to West Ireland, unaware that she’s set foot on the same ground her grandparents fled eighty years earlier. The choice of this scientific specialty for my main character, who is, after all, my alter ego, reflects my fascination with the epigenetics of generational trauma. How the effects of famine, war, poverty, genocide, forced immigration extend across generations and shape our mental and physical health. One of the first Ireland-specific research papers I came across that invoked this still emerging scientific principle was done by Dermot Donaldson, who applied it to a new paradigm for psychotherapeutic treatment of Troubles-related, PTSD in Northern Ireland. His paper contained a poetic phrasing that you’ll see invoked frequently by researchers working in this field. “The generations are boxes within boxes: inside my mother’s violence you find another box, which contains my grandmother’s violence, and inside that box you would find another box with some such black, secret energy – stories within stories, receding in time”. To borrow from Joan Didion, who famously pointed out that we tell
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The Information Commissioner’s Office has just upheld a complaint about the infamous bombing of McGurk’s bar in Belfast. The complaint was made against Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI). It concerned the discovery of the covert British Army “ambush observation post” in the vicinity of McGurk’s Bar on the night of the Massacre. The overwhelming odds are that the post was manned by a unit of the notorious MRF on the night. The MRF was a covert unit set up to confront the IRA by Brigadier (later General, Sir) Frank Kitson. It engaged in surveillance and assassination. The British state has been – and continues to be – severely embarrassed by the actions of the MRF. It has denied for decades that it had an assassination role. Whenever the MRF has been attacked in the press, the defence raised by the British state is that it was little more than an organisation that engaged in the surveillance of suspected terrorists. When an organisation lies for decades, one can – I hope – be forgiven for becoming cynical and suspicious. I am deeply suspicious about the lies the British State has been spewing about the observation post which was located near McGurks bar and another licensed premises allegedly frequented by members of the Official IRA. My concerns are heightened by the fact the British state has been lying about every facet of the McGurk atrocity for decades. A detailed account of some of this deception can be found by clicking this link The McGurk’s Bar cover-up. Heath’s Faustian pact. How a British prime minister covered up a UVF massacre in the hope of acquiring Unionist votes to enable the UK join the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU. In summary, a UVF gang planned to attack a pub which they believed was frequented by Official IRA volunteers. The plan was thwarted by the presence of guards who were posted outside the pub. The bombers opted instead to attack McGurk’s bar which was nearby. Eleven people were killed. Kitson and the RUC went into cover-up mode immediately. For reasons which appear perplexing – at least on the surface – they pretended that the bomb was one made by the IRA which had exploded prematurely inside the building; moreover, that the bomb was in transit, the intention to attack another venue entirely. The cover-up was expansive. It employed numerous individuals on both sides of the Irish Sea. Propagandists (probably Hugh Mooney of the infamous IRD) prepared scripts containing questions and answers for a recital of lies to be performed in the House of Commons. It is impossible to think of a more blatant attempt to mislead Parliament than this. Boris Johnson’s deceit pales in comparison. The organisation, Paper Trail, has shown that not only was this deception executed, but that additional scripts were prepared. The extra lines were not spoken as the public had swallowed the deception that the attack was an IRA ‘own goal’. The Tory Party and Official Unionist party, then led by Brian Faulkner, had a motive for disseminating the fiction about the IRA ‘own goal”: they did not want public pressure brought to bear on the Tory government to intern Loyalist paramilitaries. At the time, the British government was interning Republicans but not Loyalists. (Internment was arrest and detention without trial.) For decades, the families of the victims have called upon the British government to release all of the files they have about the atrocity. Nothing less than a full judicial inquiry is merited. Britain will not do so voluntarily. If the proposed legacy legislation is defeated, US Congressional pressure should be sought to bring about an inquiry into McGurks. In the absence of an inquiry, it is inevitable that speculation will fill the void. If the British state feels that this speculation is unfair, it has no one to blame but itself. One possible scenario which explains all the lies is that the MRF was the mastermind behind the attempt to bomb the pub which they believed was frequented by the Official IRA. They may have prepared the bomb, or at least helped in its preparation. At least one member of the UVF gang could have been working with them. In this scenario, the MRF agent inside the gang was not able to stop his colleagues from attacking McGurks after they became frustrated waiting outside the perceived Official IRA pub. In this scenario, it is easy to understand why figures such as Brigadier Kitson, the RUC and an array of ‘useful idiots’ in the House of Commons, became embroiled in a sordid cover-up and smear campaign that continues to this day. The possibility that Kitson was behind the bombing, does not undermine or contradict the theory that the cover-up was designed to avoid the internment of Loyalists. Sadly, both theories dovetail perfectly. There are even more sinister possibilities: the plan might have been to bomb the alleged Official IRA-frequented pub and either {i} portray it as an Official IRA own goal, or {ii} pretend the bomb was placed by the Provisional IRA in order to stimulate a feud between the Officials and the Provisionals. This is not as far-fetched as it seems. I have spoken directly to a Special Military Intelligence Unit officer who was active in Belfast in the 1970s. He told me how he once lifted guns from an Official IRA arms dump planted them with a Provisional IRA cache. Next, British intelligence leaked the whereabouts of the stolen weapons to spark a feud between the two wings of the IRA. This sort of divide and conquer tactic was straight out of Kitson’s play book. The Official and Provisional wings did engage in a murderous feud in the 1970s. If a judicial inquiry into McGurks is ever established, the terms of reference should be wide enough to explore all of the foregoing possibilities by references to the archives of the British Army at HQNI Lisburn, the MoD, MRF, MI5 at the Home Office, MI6 and
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1. France came to terms with its most shameful military scandal, the framing of Capt. Dreyfus. Britain still clings to the wreckage of its attempt to destroy Capt. Wallace after 50 years of lies and deception. L’Affaire Dreyfus convulsed France for over a decade, 1894-1906. The scandal has come to symbolise an injustice perpetrated by a state against an individual, characteristically a whistle-blower who has exposed state malfeasance. L’Affaire Dreyfus began in December 1894. Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer, spent five years imprisoned on Devil’s Island in French Guiana for allegedly spilling State secrets to the Germans. The real culprit was Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, a treacherous French Army major. When evidence emerged against Esterhazy, the military was obliged to convene a trial against Esterhazt, but acquitted him after two days. The Army then laid additional charges against Dreyfus, based on forged documents. Subsequently, Emile Zola produced his celebrated denunciation of the scandal, J’Accuse! It ignited public fury. A new trial of Dreyfus resulted in another conviction for the innocent captain and a 10-year sentence. This, however, did not wash with the public and eventually Dreyfus was pardoned and released. Finally, in 1906, he was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He died in 1935. Colin Wallace was also a captain in the military. False evidence was concocted to blame him, inter alia, of leaking military secrets which had been spilt by others. He was unfairly dismissed from his Army post in 1975. He was later accused of murder. As in L’Affaire Dreyfus, the prosecution relied upon perjury to secure the conviction. Dr Ian West, a Home Office pathologist, used his time in the witness box to disgorge one lie after another. Wallace spent six years in prison, a year longer than Dreyfus. Like Dreyfus, his conviction was eventually overturned. One of Wallace’s supporters in the British media was the late Paul Foot. He wrote of Wallace in April 1987 that the ‘most fantastic thing about Colin Wallace’s fantastic story is that every time you check it against the facts, it fits them’. The same cannot be said about the outpourings of Her Majesty’s Government (HMG). Despite repeated humiliations, the British Establishment is still swearing that black is white. 2. Wallace exposed PSYOP dirty tricks. HMG said he was lying. When proof of dirty tricks emerged, HMG had to rewrite its lies. HMG lied about the work Wallace carried out while at HQNI at Lisburn. One of Wallace’s tasks was to plan psychological operations (PSYOPs). In 1987 and 1988 when Wallace’s case became a cause célèbre in Britain, HMG assured the Commons that Wallace had never had a PSYOPS role. HMG also denied the existence of a particularly sinister programme run under the rubric of ‘Operations Clockwork Orange’. Clockwork Orange fed lies to the media about British parliamentarians such as Harold Wilson, Denis Healey, Tony Benn and others. Then, in 1989, files emerged which proved that Wallace had indeed served as a PSYOPs officer; moreover, that Clockwork Orange files existed. Defence Secretary Tom King conspired with Margaret Thatcher to push this particularly embarrassing genie back into the bottle. Rather than hold a wide ranging inquiry, as certain civil servants had expected, King curtailed the terms of what became the Calcutt Inquiry. David Calcutt QC turned out to be an honest man. He confirmed that Wallace had been dismissed unfairly, but little else. This was not Calcutt’s fault. His terms of reference were narrow and restrictive. Wallace was paid £30,000 compensation. 3. Wallace raised the spectre of collusion and was accused of being a Walter Mitty. Now HMG is doling out millions to victims of collusion. What had Wallace discovered during his time as a PSYOPs officer? Wallace came to suspect the existence of collusion long before this became an accepted fact for which HMG has compensated many victims such as the families and survivors of the Miami Show band atrocity. Yet, when Wallace raised the spectre of collusion between the British state and Loyalist paramilitaries, he was denounced as a liar. In addition to the payment of compensation to victims of State-Loyalist collusion, a string of enquiries including that of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, the Historical Enquiries Team, along with the publication of various books, have confirmed that British agents were working inside Loyalist paramilitary organisations. The most infamous of these killers was Robin ‘The Jackal’ Jackson. He was one of the gang which bombed Dublin and Monaghan in 1974 murdering thirty-three people. Wallace has maintained for decades that there were reasons to believe the State had colluded with the UVF gang that bombed Dublin and Monaghan in 1974. Various British government have refused to release their files on the twin atrocity. 4. Wallace said the State knew about the child abuse at Kincora. He was vilified for decades. In 2022 the Police Ombudsman criticised the RUC for having failed to act on knowledge it had of the scandal. What else did Wallace reveal only to be traduced as a Walter Mitty type fantasist? Wallace has told the truth about the infamous Kincora Boys’ Home child sex abuse scandal. All of the inquiries set up by HMG have ordained that the only abuse suffered by the residents of Kincora was that perpetrated by the staff members at the home. This is entirely wrong. In recent decades countless former victims have come forward with detailed accounts describing how they were abused by people from outside of the home. HMG still libels the victims as liars and fantasists. One of the victims, Richard Kerr, is trying ti get his case heard in Belfast. He has become frustrated at one delay after another in the case. Wallace has produced contemporaneous records which prove that he and others in the Army knew about the abuse at the time. RUC records prove that the police knew about it too in the 1970s. In 2022 a report by the Police Ombudsman for NI acknowledged this and criticized the RUC
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