Editor:
It is popular to use a 100-day cycle to report progress or measure change particularly in government. More than one hundred days have now passed since St. Patrick’s Day in America.
Surely it is time to report progress on what is purported to be the success of the U.S.-brokered peace treaty, the Good Friday Agreement.
Americans are bereft of any significant GFA news or commentary. There were a few references to polls on Ireland’s reunification but no mention of British failure to be accountable for covering up the targeted killing, in collusion with loyalist terrorists, of 1100 mostly Catholic Irish citizens by British "security" forces.
ne explanation for this news gap? Major American media sources for European news reporting remain British.
This comes with an alarming English preoccupation with locating where the Winston Churchill bust resides in the White House. Another opinion is Britain’s insistence on using the term "troubles" for the Irish conflict which diminishes it to something like a toothache or constipation instead of the systematic corruption of law and justice and the abandonment of democracy.
Of course, the Trump administration’s first 100 days, by design, sucked the oxygen out of any news stories other than his foreign and domestic adventures, distractions, lawsuits, and diplomatic disasters. That left little room to report Britain’s Brexit bullying of Ireland, its obstruction of GFA obligations and human rights violations. Let me note some little noticed events/activities that suggest Britain’s determination is to perfect Ireland’s partition, not promote its reunification.
The Congressional Friends of Ireland, including Representatives Keating, Boyle, McGovern, Neal, Pelosi and 32 others, urged the appointment of a Special Envoy to Ireland to advocate preparations for the Irish unity poll and to demand British accountability for the systematic breakdown of the rule of law and justice in Northern Ireland.
Britain is expediting the Archive Research Project to complete the Official History of Northern Ireland. Dan Holder of the Committee of Administration of Justice and Professor Coleman of Queen's University Belfast are critical of a deeply flawed process for selection of historians, and the continued veto power of government to block access to records.
PSNI Chief Jon Boutcher whines to Congress and to Parliament about costs of investigating legacy killings. Many never were given a required Inquest due to suspected involvement of security services. Still waiting for his Kenova Report on the 250 killings linked to British double agents. The irony is Britain’s investigation costs only climb because the Ministry of Defense acts like a separate sovereign nation and the preserve of the Conservative party. It continues to reject valid information requests thereby ignoring British law, the Prime Minister, and Parliament.
The U.S. Department of State failed to give any statement about the GFA or the cover-up Legacy statute opposed by the EU and by all in Ireland.
Nor did it even comment on Britain’s failure to respond to judicial and public appeals for independent inquiries into the collusion murders of attorney Patrick Finucane, Sean Brown, attorney Rosemary Nelson, or to the continued failure of Britain to disclose British Army, police, and MI5 involvement in the largest loss of life of the entire conflict, the 1974 Dublin-Monaghan bombings.
Unfortunately, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to confirm NJ businessman Edward Walsh as U.S. Ambassador to Ireland received little media attention by mainstream media. Unfortunate because Chairman Risch (R-Idaho) used a script handed him by the British and Israeli lobbyists to express concern for Ireland's position on protecting telecommunication infrastructure off Ireland’s coast and to question the Irish Republic’s position on Israel’s slaughter and starvation policies in Gaza.
Not a word from Risch about the GFA and Britain’s lawless and systematic campaign to kill Irish citizens. But perhaps the most significant development during these 100 days was a speech in Philadelphia given by former Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadker.
He concluded: “London does not always pay attention to what is happening in Ireland North or South. But they always pay attention to the White House.”
The question remains: is there anyone in the White House listening?
Michael J. Cummings, Chestnut Hill, PA
Michael Cummings, among other distinctions, was a co-founder of the American Brexit Committee
