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Spying on the prodigal prince and his American wife. Harry and Megan are surely the targets of surveillance by His Majesty's secret services. MI6 reported to Queen Elizabeth II for 70 years. By David Burke.

by admin 14 September, 2022

Introduction. Queen Elizabeth II received briefings from fifteen chiefs of the British Secret Service during her 70-year reign, much of it about Ireland. The briefings undoubtedly covered a wide spectrum from Charles Haughey, the bogeyman of Irish politics – as the UK saw it – to Martin McGuinness and the murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten. In the modern era the communications of Prince Harry and his American wife are surely being monitored by Britain’s vast espionage network, in particular, GCHQ. 1. Royal briefings. Richard Moore, the Chief of the British Secret Service (MI6/SIS), has offered his “deepest sympathy and condolences to the Royal Family”, adding that: Fifteen Chiefs of SIS held office during her long reign. Each of us were honoured to oversee the provision of intelligence to the longest running reader of intelligence reports. In my meetings with The Queen, I was always struck by her candour, wit and burning sense of duty. MI6 is Britain’s overseas intelligence service. It is part of the Foreign Office. (MI5 operates inside the UK and Britain’s colonies.) The fact that Queen Elizabeth II enjoyed meetings with no less than fifteen MI6 chiefs and that reports were submitted to her, may come as a surprise to some. However, readers of ‘The Secret Royals’ by Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich will not be surprised. ‘Secret Royals’ came out in hardback last year and is about to be published in softcover shortly. The book is a genuine page-turner packed with one fascinating story after another, the cumulative effect of which is to afford a fascinating insight into the relationship between the British intelligence community and Buckingham Palace. It is no exaggeration to say that the TV series ‘The Crown’ is drab by comparison to it. (The book is known as ‘Spying and the Crown’ in some jurisdictions.) In full, the statement issued by MI6 Chief Moore (also known as ‘C’) reads as follows: 2. Charles Haughey was perceived as an enemy of the Crown. Many secrets, however, remain buried in the vaults. It would be fascinating to know what type of material MI6 showed to Queen Elizabeth about this country. Did they, for example, reveal what they knew about Charles Haughey, the perceived bogeyman of Irish politics? MI6, like the British establishment, never understood Haughey and tagged him as a clandestine IRA godfather, at least during the 1970s. In 1980, Robin Haydon, Britain’s ambassador to Dublin, described Haughey to Lord Peter Carrington at the Foreign Office as ‘no friend of ours’ and as a man who had the potential to become ‘hostile’ towards the UK. Haydon was known as ‘Sir Spy’ among Haughey’s inner circle. No doubt MI6 was just as critical of Haughey in its briefings at Buckingham Palace. 3. Reports about the Provisional IRA. The information furnished to Buckingham Palace in 1979 must have made for sombre reading. Did Martin McGuinness’ name crop up in the briefing about the murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten? If MI6 was any good, it should have. In later years, both parties shook hands with each other as part of the peace process. And what of the reports on Haughey after he became Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) in December 1979? An intriguing thought is that these reports may still exist in some shape or form at Buckingham Palace and may one day fall into the hands of historians such as Aldrich and Cormac. 4. MI6 and damage to Anglo-Irish affairs. How much damage did MI6 chiefs such as Sir John Rennie, 1968-73; Sir Maurice Oldfield, 1973-78; and Sir Arthur Franks, 1978-82, occasion to Anglo-Irish affairs by briefing Queen Elizabeth with faulty information about Haughey, Fianna Fail and the attitude of people in Ireland towards the IRA? A file released by Britain’s National Archive in London in 2009 revealed Queen Elizabeth’s “alleged dislike of the Irish”. The comment was made by a Foreign Office official in 1979. This (and other factors) shut down the possibility of a state visit to London by Irish President Patrick Hillery. A more extensive analysis of the queen’s hostility towards Ireland was not released. The effect of a state visit by the late President Hillery and a reciprocal one by Queen Elizabeth in 1979/80 is now difficult, if not impossible, to guage save to say that it could only have improved relations. Haughey’s first term as taoiseach spanned December 1979 to June 1981. In 1979, during a trip to Chicago, Princess Margaret commented at a reception hosted by the city’s mayor, Jane Byrne, that: “The Irish, they’re pigs.” (A claim was later made that she had uttered the word ‘jigs’ not ‘pigs’.) 5. A regular visitor to Ireland. Henceforth, Richard Moore will report to King Charles III. The new monarch, a popular figure in Ireland, will be eager to learn all he can about the Irish dignitaries he has met, and those he has yet to meet. Those who have met King Charles on his many visits to Ireland, such as President Michael D. Higgins, have praised him for the depth of his knowledge about the island. The President has even opined that he knows more about this country than ‘some’ British politicians. In private, senior Irish diplomats are voicing alarm not merely about the profound ignorance of senior Tory politicians, but also their advisers at the FCDO. 6. On Her – and now – His Majesty’s secret service. MI5 and GCHQ will also report to the new king. GCHQ monitors global communications including those of Ireland. King Charles has already established an excellent relationship with the intelligence community. As prince, he was patron of GCHQ, MI6 and MI5. On one visit to GCHQ he told his hosts that: Few people in this country will ever know just how great a debt we all owe you. But for those privileged enough to understand something of what you do, the difference you make to our security, our prosperity and to the defence of our values is both clear and invaluable. During a visit to

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Culture

Reviewing the Dublin theatre festival and its fringe

by admin 12 September, 2022

Two arts and culture festivals in Dublin this month Taking place this month in Dublin are two major arts and culture festivals – the Dublin Fringe Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival – both returning with a full programme of live events. The Dublin Fringe Festival runs from 10 September – 25 September. The Dublin Theatre Festival runs from 29 September – 16 October 2022. The fringe festival will feature a large lineup of events and installations in venues across the city. Included for example is the free event (€10 deposit) School Bus by Léann Herlihy, meeting at Bull Alley bus stop, which involves a bus journey and a history of queer, ecological and abolitionist survivalist groups. The theatre festival will feature performances in venues across the city including the Abbey, Gaiety, Pavilion, and Project Arts Theaters. It will also include performances in less traditional venues such as the National Maternity Hospital and Kennedy’s pub. Included in the lineup is Joyce’s Women, a new play by Edna O’Brien in the Abbey Theatre. Joyce’s Women examines the life of James Joyce through the lens of the women who surrounded him; including his wife, Nora, and his daughter, Lucia. The show runs from 29 September. Also included is a theatrical production in the Gaiety Theatre of Colm Tóibín’s novel The Blackwater Lightship about a gay man suffering from HIV/AIDS in Ireland in the 1990s, and his relationship with his mother. The show runs from 27 September. A full programme and tickets are available online at both festival websites: fringefest.com and dublintheatrefestival.ie. Prices for the fringe festival vary but many events are free. In some cases for the theatre festival tickets are available at a discounted price of €10. Many of the productions also have preview nights with tickets available at a cheaper price. Reviews of several of the performances will go up on the Village website in the coming weeks.

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Villagestands by Varadkar-leak story but, after due process, the Tánaiste remains innocent in the eyes of the law

by admin 9 September, 2022

4August/September 2022 VillageMagazine published correspondence in November 2020 under the headline ‘Leo Always Delivers’. It showed that in April 2019 then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar transferred the confdential draft (it was subsequently amended 30 times) heads of agreement for the contract being negotiated between government and the Irish Medical Organisation to a friend of his. That friend was the president of a rival doctors’ representative organisation, the National Association of GPs (NAGP), Dr Maitiú (Matt) O Tuathail. As this magazine said at the time, the transfer constituted a crime under the Ofcial Secrets Act (OSA) 1963 and, possibly, under the Criminal Justice (Corruption Ofences) Act 2018 (the “Corruption Act”). At no time has Villageever said that Mr Varadkar had been convicted of a crime but, instead, the assertion we made was that his actions were, objectively and precisely, a crime. Villagehas seen defnitive legal advice that the maximum allowable period for a summary prosecution of an ofence under the OSA is six months from the date of the commission of the ofence. An alternative prosecution on indictment only applies in cases of breaches of the OSA that afect national security. This one did not and so it would not have been possible for the DPP, Catherine Pierse, to prosecute this particular crime under the OSA. Villagebelieves that Pierse’s decision not to prosecute will most likely have been determined by the fact a prosecution had run out of time. It is worth, as an aside, recording, with exasperation, that no Minister has ever been prosecuted, let alone convicted, under the OSA, in Ireland (or the similar UK legislation). To be clear, a decision by the DPP not to prosecute is not the same thing as a decision that there has been no criminality. Any decision by the DPP not to prosecute could be because prosecution has run out of time — or because there is not enough evidence to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt; or because the case might not be, for whatever reason, in the public interest. Therefore the DPP’s decision not to prosecute probably does not afect the validity of our claim. We cannot be expected to row back from it.As to the Corruption Act, it provides in Section 7 (2): “An Irish ofcial [which all agree includes a Taoiseach] who uses confdential information obtained in the course of his or her ofce, employment, position or business for the purpose of corruptly obtaining a gift, consideration or advantage for himself or herself or for any other person shall be guilty of an ofence”. We will not rehearse the arguments we have made as to the applicability of the Corruption Act in this case. However, the key point is that it focuses on advantage rather than simply monetary gain, and that the advantage can be conferred on either the person passing, or the person receiving, the information. A solicitor with Arthur Cox, Tara Roche, recently wrote: “to date, investigations into allegations of bribery or corruption in Ireland have been uncommon and there have been no prosecutions under the Corruption Act”. However, this trend appears to be changing slowly. The Garda National Economic Crime Bureau now has a team dedicated to the investigation of serious and complex economic crimes. That suggests that, one way or another, white-collar crime will now be prosecuted far more often. The complexity, including, presumably, huge degree of legal complexity, of the Varadkar case resulted in inevitable delays. The Garda took 18 months to create a fle of several hundred pages, in which they made no recommendation. Furthermore, it is believed that the DPP also obtained external counsels’ advice. There cannot be any doubt that this was, and was treated by the authorities as, a non-trivial case, despite the contrary claims of many charlatans – especially charlatans in Ireland’s one-time newspaper of record. Despite all this, some still persist in claiming that Village’s headlines are defamatory. Mr Varadkar himself originally and rudely said he would not sue Villagefor defamation as it would be like suing someone on Twitter. The analogy is unsound. Then, after the decision not to prosecute him, Mr Varadkar declined to sue for fear that his “sworn enemies” would use the opportunity to immiserate him. However, he also acknowledged some time ago that the time at which it was permissible for him to launch defamation proceedings has now passed.. Arguably he could apply for an extension to that period but the preferred procedure would have been to initiate his defamation action and then apply to postpone proceedings until the investigation into his criminal conduct had concluded. The way he went about claiming defamation by Villagewas, to borrow his own phrase “not best practice”.Villageasserts Mr Varadkar’s right to due process of the law in full and we share his concerns about the invidious position in which people fnd themselves while waiting for a criminal complaint to be resolved. Villagealso asserts Mr Varadkar’s right to the presumption of innocence under the law. For all that we disagree with the outcome, the criminal process has been exhausted and the matter is closed. Politics aside, we wish Mr Varadkar well. But Villagestands by its story. Village stands by Varadkar-leak story but, after due process, the Tánaiste remains innocent in the eyes of the lawEDITORIALIssue 77August/September 2022 Challenging the endemically complacent and others by the acute promotion of equality, sustainability and accountabilityONLINEwww.villagemagazine.ie @VillageMagIRE EDITORMichael Smitheditor@villagemagazine.ieDEPUTY EDITOR J Vivian CookeREPORTERRóisín O’SheaDESIGN AND PRODUCTIONLenny RooneyADVERTISINGsales@village.iePRINTERSBoylans, Drogheda, Co LouthVILLAGE IS PUBLISHED BYOrmond Quay Publishing6 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7

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Truss ahoy! The new PM will be worse and stupider than the last few. By Kevin Lalor Higgins.

by admin 5 September, 2022

Today, September 5 2022, all over Little England, the blackberry-jam-making sessions of the local Women’s Institutes were paused shortly before 12.00 noon. The tea urns and their cosies had been readied in anticipation. The members seated themselves before the old portable televisions used on such occasions, to watch the anointing of Liz Truss MP as Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party and by extension, the New Prime Minister. For the average Tory vote, this means that their prayers of: ‘Make it Stop’ seem to have been finally answered. Whatever comfort this may give the faithful, they seem blissfully unaware that for the ‘natural party of Government’ occupancy of Downing Street this time around, places them not so much in the driving seat, as in the last chance saloon. In choosing their new leader, the Tories contrived to empty their chocolate selection box, leaving them just just one vile acidic ‘strawberry cream’ and a rock hard indigestible (that can glue together the jaws of a T-Rex) to choose from. I say good luck to them. Ms Truss attended Merton College, Oxford. Now, no one in their right mind is going to throw about the term ‘red-brick’ about Merton. No College whose Statutes were being drawn up in the 1260s should be subjected to such abuse. Certainly, she attended, but your present writer must respectfully refrain from saying she was educated there, all objective evidence being to the contrary. Truss has recently celebrated her forty-seventh birthday. This means that she was born just four years before Merton belatedly first admitted women students. By the time she entered, Merton’s brave new world was still in infancy. Seven-hundred-year-old Oxford colleges do not adopt tumultuous change overnight. The institutional upheaval of 1979 most certainly drew a whole cohort of wonderful scholars into the Merton fold, but it was a process of kerfuffle and anxiety about equality, inclusiveness and sensitivity to scrutiny. Would she have cut the mustard at Lady Margaret Hall (before it admitted men for the first time in 1979) ? Ms Truss’ output as a politician suggests the venerable Merton was not merely compelled to isolate some of its intake to a virtual red-brick extension but, educationally speaking, had to put up at least a temporary cavity-block annex, in a period of flux. In short, Ms Truss is stupid, incredibly stupid. Before there are outraged cries of misogyny, the same is true of the entire British Cabinet and indeed the Tory party as a whole. This is quite separate from the fact that they are as a collective, deeply unpleasant human beings. Exposure of politicians to daylight in modern political landscapes is tightly controlled, but today it requires more than a Bernard Ingham’s thuggery and physicality to protect a Prime Minister. Neither is the elaborate ‘Communications Suite’ in Downing Street, which seems to have more bugs than a bed in a Tory Landlord’s bedsit, sufficient. It is doubtful if even a reborn Charles Saatchi (80 next birthday) could do much with her, even though he is decidedly experienced at mishandling women. There will always be a herd of hungry and ambitious brats willing to torque up the bullshit in both Downing Street and Tory Central Office and Murdoch will always be ready to supply secondments, his entire media empire and elegant Georgian houses close to the Palace of Westminster. Essentially on paper, the Tories are armed to the teeth and stand ready to repel Mogadon Man Starmer, and given that all Tories stand always ready to slaughter their own first borns in the pursuit and retention of power, you wouldn’t bet the house against them. Their first and greatest problem is the individual they have installed as their nominal leader. In truth, it is doubtful if she herself knows what she believes in, or actually thinks about anything. She will be overwhelmed from day one and directed by whatever party faction establishes itself as her kitchen cabinet. And then there is Boris, who sees himself as an incipient triumphant comeback kid. The only way to describe the Tory Government and British politics at this time is chaotic. Living next to these noisy neighbours will become even more unpleasant and uncomfortable. The shadow-boxing over the NI Protocol may turn very nasty indeed. We understood the faux-Churchillian bravura of Johnson and knew it was essentially gin-scented trapped wind. Truss is not merely dumb she is potentially more capable of vindictive madness than the Eton bully. In her posturing to placate the DUP, it is perfectly possible she will end the historic and indeed vital common travel area between our islands. Objectively, Truss may appear to us ridiculous, even comical; but she is not funny. No proper Conservative ever is.

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Vilifying the victims: two of the most vile British Intelligence smear campaigns of the Troubles blamed innocent murder victims for their own demise. By David Burke.

by admin 4 September, 2022

The Information Research Department (IRD) of Britain’s Foreign Office sought to smear the victims of Bloody Sunday and the McGurks bar bomb atrocity. They even went so far as to attack a group of British politicians by linking them to a campaign for justice for the victims of Bloody Sunday. To the IRD, any association with the campaign for justice for the victims of Bloody Sunday was a shameful act. On 30 January 1972, British paratroopers murdered 13 unarmed civilians in Derry, none of whom posed any sort of a threat to the military – unless, that is, you consider the waving of a white piece of cloth in the air a potentially lethal act. Within minutes Britain’s black propaganda machine swung into action. The head of the Army’s PsyOps department, Col Maurice Tugwell, who had joined the British Army in Derry, was among them. Upfront, Col Derek Wilford, the cowardly commander of 1 Para (cowardly because he has sacrificed his own men by lying about the orders he gave them to save his own skin) spewed out a torrent of lies about an imaginary attack on his troops by the IRA. Later, the Information Research Department (IRD) of the Foreign Office took over the smear campaign against the Bloody Sunday campaigners. A man with deep Irish roots – Hugh Mooney – led the IRD charge. Mooney was a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He had once worked for the Irish Times. As an IRD officer, Mooney was complicit in a multiplicity of MI6-IRD smear campaigns. An indication of his mindset can be gleaned from the fact that when he later tried to smear leading members of the British Labour Party, he felt the best way to bring them into disrepute was to link them to the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday. (This episode, and a forged document the IRD created to further it, are described more fully later in this article.) Mooney had assets in the British press. One of them was a Tory guru called Tom Utley. Ultley was a British intelligence ‘agent of influence’ or in modern parlance, an ‘influencer’. At the time of the Bloody Sunday massacre, Utley was working for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, both pro-Tory papers popular with middle and upper class Britain. Mooney and Utley discussed the Bloody Sunday problem together. It was ultimately resolved that Utley would write a paperback about it. According to a confidential letter dated 24 March 1972, the FCO reported to the MoD that Utley hoped to ‘complete the writing in about six weeks, though this may be a little over-ambitious’. According to the letter, he was ‘obviously’ going to ‘need a certain amount of help from Army PR, particularly on the propaganda aspect’. While Utley failed to produce the book, in 1975 he published the rather grandiosely titled ‘Lessons of Ulster’ which took a broader look at Northern Ireland and a litany of developments that had occurred in the meantime. An indication of his mind-set can be gauged from the fact that he objected to the use of the phrase ‘Bloody Sunday’, something he described as ‘slavish obedience to IRA mythology’. He argued that some of those killed were ‘fresh-faced boys who might otherwise have lived to swell the ranks of patriotic militancy’. In other words, they probably would have joined the IRA if they had not been shot. An indication of his mind-set can be gauged from the fact that he objected to the use of the phrase ‘Bloody Sunday’, something he described as ‘slavish obedience to IRA mythology’. He argued that some of those killed were ‘fresh-faced boys who might otherwise have lived to swell the ranks of patriotic militancy’. In other words, they probably would have joined the IRA if they had not been shot. The IRD demonised the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday and those who supported them. Clearly, they believed they had turned them into political untouchables. Hence, they felt they could undermine British Labour Party MPs by associating them with the Bloody Sunday quest for justice. Towards this end, the IRD forged a pamphlet based on a genuine Bloody Sunday campaign leaflet. The original is reproduced hereunder: Merlyn Rees, who served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (and later as Home Secretary) was undermined – at least in the eyes of Mooney and his IRD colleagues – by linking him to the Bloody Sunday campaign. His name was added to the IRD forgery which appears under this paragraph. (See the bottom of the left hand column). A man called Stan Newens appears on the authentic pamphlet. He was supplanted by Stan Orme MP on the fabricated version. In a similar fashion, Tony Smythe became Tony Benn. David Owen MP was added to the list too. Owen, however, had the last laugh: when he became Foreign Secretary later in the 1970s, he abolished the IRD. Mooney deployed a similar tactic to smear Charles Haughey TD of Fianna Fail, i.e., he took an original document produced in Ireland and doctored it to include smears about Haughey before printing his own version in London. Mooney was also responsible for the smear campaign against the victims of the McGurks bar bomb atrocity. 15 innocent people were murdered when the UVF attack McGurks bar in Belfast in December 1971. The black propagandists issued a statement insinuating that at least some of the victims of the attack were responsible for their own demise. The propagandists alleged that the bomb had been brought inside the pub by an IRA unit and had exploded prematurely – a so-called ‘own goal’. The campaign was furthered by statements by politicians. See Alleged disappearance of UVF Bomb Massacre Files: MoD excuse for destruction of Brigadier Kitson’s logs is far from convincing. By David Burke. Despite the best efforts of David Owen, the black propagandists found other avenues through which they managed to smear their victims including Charles Haughey. David Burke is the author of

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General

The State is abdicating responsibility for National Defence. By Gerard Humphreys, former army officer.

by admin 3 September, 2022

Introduction. As the lights begin to go off in Europe, the State continues to abdicate responsibility for national defence and is failing to fulfil its key obligations as an independent entity in international law. The geopolitical situation continues to rapidly deteriorate yet the government is engaged in a massive PR exercise ostensibly celebrating the centenary of independence. Because of a reckless disregard for our security we have insufficient numbers of defence personnel to deploy our ships or put aircraft fit for purpose into the sky. Rather than discharging their duty to properly maintain and equip the defence forces the government response is to reduce the number of ships and seek to privatise the role of the defence forces. War in Europe 1939 On 1 September 1939 the government ordered the full mobilisation of the Defence Forces including all reserves. By the end of that month some 19,000 troops were under arms which was 50% of the agreed war establishment strength of 37,000. However, this limited expansion was objected to by the Department of Finance. Within two months of mobilisation Finance had forced the Army to contract its size in the interests of economy. By January 1940 Defence Force numbers had fallen to 16,000 and by May to 13,500. In January 1940 the government appointed General McKenna as Chief of Staff. He reported “a complete absence of the most important weapons, … namely anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft weapons …”. He also had no officers. The dead hand of the Department of Finance Since the foundation of the Officer Cadet School at the Military College in 1928 up to 1939, the State had only commissioned about 100 officers through the Cadet School most of whom spent over 9 years as Second Lieutenants without promotion. No adequate provision was made by Finance for the Army. By May 1940 following the collapse of France, Germany was in possession of the Atlantic coastline from Norway to the South of France. Ireland was an obvious candidate for invasion: by Germany to seize ports and airfields with which to assist the invasion of Britain and threaten Britain’s Atlantic lifeline. It was also at risk of an invasion by Britain to seize the treaty ports. This was within seven months of the Department of Finance having drastically cut the Army. The Government finally acted, and the leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael issued a call to arms which had a dramatic effect. Those who fought on both sides of the Civil War, rallied to the colours and by March 1941 the Army was over 41,000 strong and the Local Defence Force (later the FCA now called the Reserve) had a strength of 88,000. By 1941 Britain was putting an economic blockade into effect against Ireland and denying key materiel to Ireland. The aim of the blockade was to extract Irish concessions on defence, in particular the Treaty ports. We will come back to this later. However, the dead hand of Finance was still causing major problems for the Army with Finance refusing to sanction the commissioning of experienced NCOs as officers to fill a drastic shortage of officers and further compounded the difficulty of recruiting good officer material. The Department of Defence is a decoy department; the decisions are made by the Department of Finance. Complaints about Finance obstructing NCO promotions were repeated in 1941–42. The Department of Defence is a decoy department; the decisions are made by the Department of Finance. Complaints about Finance obstructing NCO promotions were repeated in 1941–42. History Repeats Itself with War in Europe in 2022 Today, the current establishment as of the 30th of November 2021 shows a total strength of 8,539 for the Army, Navy and Air Corps against an establishment of 9,500 that is for the Permanent Defence Force. The total strength of the Reserve Defence Forces is down to 1,611 out of an establishment of 4,069. Over the 6-year period from 2015 – 2020 military expenditure as a percentage of government expenditure accounted for on average just under 1.2% of the Government of Ireland’s expenditure in contrast to eight comparator countries where average expenditure accounted for some 2.6% of total government expenditure. The comparator countries were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Sweden. Ireland also spends considerably less on defence in per capita terms as a percentage of overall government expenditure and as a percentage of GDP/GNI, than any of the comparator countries selected. Ireland does not maintain a defence force from a military point of view in sufficient strength to fulfil the security obligations required by international law for a neutral state. In 1986 the Permanent Defence Forces had a combined strength of 13,600 and the Reserve Forces had a strength of 15,800 which means the strength of the Army, Navy and Air Corps is 40% below what it was in 1986 and the Reserve Forces are 10% of what they were in 1986. Commission on Defence presented Government with three options The Defence Forces as constituted at present are not capable of fulfilling its primary objective of defending the State against external aggression. The Defence Forces as constituted at present are not capable of fulfilling its primary objective of defending the State against external aggression. In 1982, Ireland’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Noel Dorr told the General Assembly’s first meeting on disarmament: “We are small, militarily insignificant and outside any alliance and we have acknowledged our own vulnerability. Our armed forces are about the same size and serve the same peacekeeping and other purposes as those which every country would be allowed to maintain even in a disarmed world.” The Government needs to understand, however, that we do not live in a disarmed world. Disconnect There is a disconnect between the Government’s stated policy and the current funding of the Defence Forces. More recently, the Government engaged in a public relations exercise when it announced an increase in Defence spending. The Commission on Defence identified three levels of Ambition. Level One

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Alleged disappearance of UVF Bomb Massacre Files: MoD excuse for destruction of Brigadier Kitson's logs is far from convincing. By David Burke.

by admin 3 September, 2022

On 4 December 8:45 p.m., a UVF gang set out on a bombing mission. One of those involved was Robert James Campbell. The UVF bomb exploded outside a small pub in Belfast called McGurk’s, a cosy place where Catholics and Protestants from the same neighbourhood – all of whom knew each other well – met for a few drinks. The UVF unit left the bomb outside the pub, not inside it. It consisted of forty to fifty pounds of gelignite. It was ignited by lighting a fuse, not a timer. A paper boy saw the UVF car pull up and a man deposit the bomb outside the pub before fleeing. He spotted the fuse sparking and warned the man not to go up the road. According to Robert James Campbell, his unit had originally wanted to attack another establishment which they believed was frequented by the Official IRA and its supporters, but it had two guards posted outside. After waiting for an hour for them to go inside, the UVF unit decided to go elsewhere. They drove to McGurk’s. The British Army had two Ammunition Technical Officers, i.e., bomb disposal experts, circulating around Belfast on standby in case a bomb was detected. They attended at the scene in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Because of the darkness and the debris, they were unable to determine the exact location of the detonation. They decided to carry out a further inspection at daylight the next day. Following the daylight inspection, the Army’s 39 Brigade HQ in Lisburn recorded in its Ops Log at 11.10am: “ATO is convinced bomb was placed in the entrance way on the ground floor. The area is cratered and clearly was the seat of the explosion. The size of the bomb is likely to be 40/50 lbs”. This information corroborated what the paperboy had witnessed. The bomb killed fifteen people, two of whom were children. Another seventeen were badly wounded. The building was demolished. A knowingly and thoroughly dishonest statement was issued stating that the bomb had been brought inside the pub by the IRA and detonated prematurely. The insinuation was that the bar was a safe haven for the IRA to stage operations, and that at least some of the victims were IRA sympathisers. The disinformation charge was led by Frank Kitson. Kitson is still alive. At the time, he was in charge of British military activities in Belfast and its environs. He was also an expert in counter-insurgency (i.e. dirty tricks, collusive murder, torture and black propaganda). Paper Trail, a charity which helps victims of atrocities such as McGurk’s, has been digging into Britain’s National Archives to try to understand what happened. The work it has undertaken has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bomb was not an ‘IRA own goal’. Aside from a few die-hard Unionist bigots, no sane and respectable commentator bothers to recirculate Kitson’s lies any more. But there is more, a lot more to this scandal, than meets the eye. Paper Trail uncovered military logs relating to the attack which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had failed to release when it made other logs available. Happily, the same logs were available elsewhere. Paper Trail submitted a complaint about this development to Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO has just announced that it accepts the MoD’s explanation, namely that the relevant logs were in the process of being scanned before allegedly being destroyed and that the crucial logs were accidentally omitted during the scanning process. This explanation is trite. The time has long since passed for a full judicial inquiry. A full breakdown of the Information Commissioner’s conclusion and the evidence unearthed by Paper Trail can be found here: https://mcgurksbar.com/ico-accepts-mod-excuses-for-missing-massacre-files/ The Paper Trail website can be accessed here: https://www.papertrail.pro/ David Burke is the author of Kitson’s Irish War, Mastermind of the Dirty War in Ireland which examines the role of counter-insurgency dirty tricks in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s and the template it set for the Troubles. His next book, An Enemy of the Crown, the British Secret Service Campaign against Charles Haughey, will be released at the end of September 2022. Both books can be ordered/purchased here: https://www.mercierpress.ie/irish-books/kitson-s-irish-war/ https://www.mercierpress.ie/irish-books/an-enemy-of-the-crown/ Other stories about British Intelligence black propaganda operations, dirty tricks, Bloody Sunday, the Ballymurphy massacre, McGurks bar bombing, Brigadier Frank Kitson and Col Derek Wilford on this website include the following: Bloody Sunday murderers operated a mobile torture chamber. By David Burke. Soldier G – real name Ron Cook – the Bloody Sunday killer with ‘the sadistic edge’ over his ‘partner’, Soldier F. By David Burke. Bloody Sunday: Brigadier Frank Kitson and MI5 denounced in Dail Eireann The covert plan to smash the IRA in Derry on Bloody Sunday by David Burke Soldier F’s Bloody Sunday secrets. David Cleary knows enough to blackmail the British government. Learning to kill Colin Wallace: Bloody Sunday, a very personal perspective Lying like a trooper. Internment, murder and vilification. Did Brigadier Kitson instigate the Ballymurphy massacre smear campaign? Where was Soldier F and his ‘gallant’ death squad during it? Another bloody mess. Frank Kitson’s contribution to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 300,000 have died in Afghanistan since 1979. Lying like a trooper. Internment, murder and vilification. Did Brigadier Kitson instigate the Ballymurphy massacre smear campaign? Where was Soldier F and his ‘gallant’ death squad during it? A Foul Unfinished Business. The shortcomings of, and plots against, Saville’s Bloody Sunday Inquiry. Kitson’s Private Army: the thugs, killers and racists who terrorised Belfast and Derry. Soldier F was one of their number. Soldier F and Brigadier Kitson’s elite ‘EFGH’ death squad: a murderous dirty-tricks pattern is emerging which links Ballymurphy with Bloody Sunday. A second soldier involved in both events was ‘mentioned in despatches’ at the behest of Kitson for his alleged bravery in the face of the enemy. Mentioned in Despatches. Brigadier Kitson and Soldier F were honoured in the London Gazette for their gallantry in the face of the enemy during the internment swoops