Fascist groups now seen as behind Northern Ireland flag clashes -- Gerry Adams claims fascist group have leadership role in flag rallies

Violence in Belfast over union flag continues (Photo: Broadsheet)

Right wing fascist groups and mafia-type intimidators now appear to be at the heart of the flag protests in Northern Ireland.

Britain First, a fascist group based in Britain, has claimed to be at the forefront of leading  what it describes as peaceful flag protests. 29 police officers were injured over the weekend in clashes that threaten to restore the bad old days in Northern Ireland.

The clashes began last month after Belfast City Council ruled on December 3 that the Union Jack would no longer fly over City Hall every day but only on 15 select days and have continued unabated since.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott have both pointed out that outside agitation is forming a large part of the protest core.

Adams stated over the weekend that, “The vast majority of the protests taking place around the flag issue are illegal. Most are being organized by the BNP, (British National Party which is composed of fascists) the UVF and criminal elements, some of whom are well known drug pushers.”

Read more news from Ireland

On their website the British First group proclaims, “As protests continue across Ulster at the disgraceful decision to remove our flag from Belfast City Hall, Britain First has once again been at the forefront of peaceful demonstrations.

“Instead of going away, as those who would attack our flag and Ulster’s British identity had hoped, the protests are only getting stronger.

“We see protests in Ulster, we see them on the mainland – no surrender, we will never submit to this attack on our flag.

Read More: Loyalist flag riots leave 29 police injured in Belfast as violence escalates

“Many thousands have turned out to take a stand against this disgusting attack, many thousands more are on the way.”

PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott said social media is playing a role and youngsters as young as 10 are involved.

We’ve had an 11-year-old in custody but I believe some of [the rioters] are as young as 10,” Baggott said.

“The flag has become a rallying point. If you ask them what they are doing, [some] wouldn’t be able to tell you. It’s easy for them to be manipulated. They are not mature enough to see the consequences for their own life opportunities or the bigger picture.”

He said the riots “gathered a momentum of their own, quickly, through modern communications, which is a new phenomenon.”

Baggott said there was an urgent need for the Parades Commission to tackle the protests. “There has been a vagueness about the need for protests to be properly authorized and regulated through existing mechanisms, which at the moment is the Parades Commission. There has been an ambiguity around this for some time,” he said.

Read More: Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams says “vast majority” of the Belfast protests are illegal

The deeper issue is that the unionists can feel the power flow away from them. The recent census show a nationalist majority is in the offing in Northern Ireland with the Catholic numbers one birth cycle away from a majority.

Does that mean a united Ireland?

No, not necessarily, but it means parity of esteem issues like flags will become even more important.

VP Joe Biden suddenly looks like the smartest politician in America -- Irish American VP goes where no other politicians dare in Washington D.C.

Vice President Joe Biden arrives to a House 

Democratic caucus meeting at the Capitol on Jan. 1, 2013.

(Credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

Joe Biden is suddenly the most popular politician in Washington and a real contender for 2016. The latest opinion poll by Public Policy shows him running a strong second to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination.

The Irish American Vice President, widely dismissed by the haughty press corps looking for the new and the beautiful, is at the very heart of the dramatic new initiatives by the Obama administration.

In a time of electoral gridlock, Biden appears to be the one figure who can reach out to the other side and force a civil discourse.

On the fiscal cliff he galloped to the rescue and cut the deal with Senator Mitch McConnell before riding off like the Lone Ranger. Opinion polls showed the public believed by a 57 per cent to 20 per cent margin that Biden’s deal was better for Democrats than Republicans.

Read more: The NRA will not allow Joe Biden to blame law-abiding gun owners for actions of madmen

Now on gun control he is defying the conventional wisdom again and getting real traction behind his recommendations which he will deliver to the president next week.

He has met with the NRA, Walmart, and every major gun constituency, forcing a dialogue where none existed before and making clear that action will be taken to prevent another Sandy Hook.

Don’t rule out the possibility of a deal that Biden can craft that the NRA can get along with, strange as that may seem.

Biden notes there appears to be a near universal belief that more background checks are needed for all gun sales.

He is determined that action will occur.

"There are executive orders, executive action that can be taken. We haven't decided what that is yet, but we're compiling it all with the help the attorney general and all the rest of the cabinet members, as well as legislative action, we believe, is required," he said.

Sure the NRA said it was “disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment.’’

But everything is different after Sandy Hook and Biden knows it even if the NRA does not.

He is suddenly being noticed. “These weeks can continue to set him up as one of the few who can deliver in an era when no one thinks accomplishments can happen and everyone believes Washington is broken — an appealing position to be in as he considers his future,” a Biden loyalist told the Washington Post.

Maureen Dowd in The New York Times stated, “Mr. Biden can spread everything out on the table and negotiate his way through all of his former colleagues' shortcomings, weaknesses, fears and frailties.”
In  a time when American politics is so polarized Biden has managed the extraordinary trick of being able to appear reasonable to both sides.”

Chris Cilliza, who writes the influential The Fix column for the Washington Post, wrote, “What’s apparent and indisputable over these past few weeks is that Biden has put himself at the center of the national political conversation in ways that have helped his boss but also himself.”

In this new political arena maybe a pol with old fashioned skills is what’s really needed. Joe Biden is certainly starting off 2013 on fire.

Next up, immigration reform for the miracle worker?

Read more: Gun nuts lose argument over assault weapons ban, threaten civil war - VIDEO

Notre Dame support is a search for family and common roots for millions -- Celtic FC, the other great Irish Diaspora side, are their only equivalent

Notre Dame fans tailgating for the BCS Championship.
(US Presswire)

Miami: Picture the scene in the distant parking lot at Sun Life stadium in Miami on Monday night.
I had gone back to my rented car to retrieve the car keys, realizing in my rush to get to the game I had left them in the ignition - duh!

A family of five was sitting around in near darkness, attention glued to a small computer screen in front of them showing the first half highlights.

They were the only live occupants of the parking lot, sitting in the eerie glow of the nearby stadium lights, a part of but apart from the BCS Championship game.

Notre Dame was so far behind at that moment against Alabama that if it were a boxing match the bout would have been halted, but the family of five seemed undaunted.

They wished me good cheer and asked if I wanted to join them. Curious as to their story, I did for a few moments.

They had driven from Virginia and had no hope of seeing the game and could not afford the tickets anyway. They had watched the Wake Forest game live in the stadium but otherwise they drove from game to game following the Fighting Irish from a series of parking lots.

They loved to tailgate and join their fellow subway alumni wherever the green was worn.
Before you dismiss them as nuts, you have to understand the nature of the true Domer to whom no Notre Dame game is ever out of reach.

Read more: Nightmare for Notre Dame ends a dream season for Fighting Irish

I met so many in South Florida who consider Notre Dame games a holy pilgrimage, who build their year around them and win, lose, or draw will follow the Fighting Irish to hell and back again.

After the game I walked back to that same parking lot with a family of three, a mother and two young daughters, also from the South.

They were able to recite chapter and verse of every game they had attended and the cross-country trips they regularly took.

I would think the two daughters were early teens if that, but they were able to remember Notre Dame players like other kids could say the names of the One Direction boy band.

What is the attraction, I asked the mother? “We’re Catholic,” she said simply. “We see them as family.”

There is a lot to that, the sense of family that grows up around Notre Dame followers. It is one great shared ambition finding voice on playing fields from California to New York and even Dublin last year.

TV ratings were up 67 per cent for their games in 2012. Notre Dame remains a phenomenon of American sport. They could play a community college and 80,000 would show up.

It reminded me again of the similarity to Celtic soccer team, that other great Irish Diaspora side from Scotland who have come to embody something very deep in the souls of the children of Irish immigrants worldwide.

There is a shared pride and commitment to the heritage and memory of those who came before them. Notre Dame have been playing football for 125 years.

Celtic was founded in 1887 by Brother Walfrid of the Marist brothers, an Irish religious order. Irish priests were the foundation stone of Notre Dame too by the Holy Ghost fathers.

Both teams were blatantly discriminated against by top sides, which resented their religion through the early years and relegated them to underdog roles.

Because of that through the generations the commitment to the teams, as an intrinsic part of the DNA of the Irish emigrant experience, has lived on in millions.

What I saw in the parking lot and witnessed this week was much of that, mixed with pride and an embrace of all that is best in old fashioned America.

Celtic defeated Barcelona this year, the greatest club football team in the world led by Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest player in world soccer. It was one of the biggest shocks of recent times.

The Irish of Notre Dame went undefeated until the Alabama crash and burn but had a season to remember. Generations later those who follow them still have so much to treasure and to find common cause with.

Little wonder that they continue to be kingpins in their respective sports and to attract millions of followers, some of whom will never see them live.

Read more: Fighting Irish crusade crushed by the Crimson Tide 42-14 in BCS National Championship

Nightmare for Notre Dame ends a dream season for Fighting Irish -- Heavy hearts but heads held high after remarkable year

Nightmare end to the season for Brian Kelly and the Notre Dame team

Miami: In the end the dream season ended in a nightmare for Notre Dame, but the fans in Sun Life stadium in North Miami were still resilient despite the beating.

“Think how bad we’ve been for so many years,” said the woman from Virginia beside me as the Alabama juggernaut rolled over and crushed the Irish. “We made the national  title  game, that is amazing.’

True, but we had somehow convinced ourselves the stars had aligned and an incredible victory was at hand.

But as Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, to be Irish is to know the world will break your heart.

There were a lot of broken hearts but no real complaints in Miami on Monday.

A journey that began in Dublin in September with a win over Navy took Irish fans on a magic carpet ride that finally crashed to earth on a humid night in Miami.

The refereeing decisions in the critical early plays went against Notre Dame, but even if they had got every bounce of the ball it would not have been enough.

It seemed like men against boys at times and the Irish faithful so boisterous, so upbeat, so hopeful at the start were soon reduced to shocked silence as Alabama moved the ball at will. The crimson tide proved unstoppable.

Read more: Fighting Irish crusade crushed by the Crimson Tide 42-14 in BCS National Championship

It was clear from the beginning that the Irish fan base were more energized. This was not Alabama’s first rodeo and their fans were far less boisterous in the pre-game cheering sections.

They were like the Yankees in baseball, they expect to be playing for national championships every year.

The Irish certainly do not. The long drought since the mid 80s seemed interminable. The pent-up demand for Irish success was never more evident, the dream of a national championship no mirage as the season advanced with win after win.

Earlier, the Notre Dame tailgate party in Miami Beach was a celebration of a remarkable year. 10,000 fans paid $75 dollars a head to wine and dine, bask in the Florida sun, reminisce and brag and talk about the big game. The atmosphere was electric, the anticipation total. The shattering disappointment to come was still unseen.

So defeat was utterly devastating.

We trudged out of Sun Life Stadium late in the fourth quarter, heads down and spirits sagged but the disappointment will lift. As the lady from Virginia noted, the Irish have come a long way and the road back was always bound to have many turns. But the Fighting Irish made their fans proud from Dublin to South Bend and beyond.

Alas, it was not a championship season but it was a wonderful year.

Notre Dame’s new ‘Rudy’ is Arturo Martinez, a cancer survivor -- Walk on will bring back Rudy memories to Fighting Irish fans

Notre Dame's Arturo Martinez

Miami: Notre Dame will have an inspirational player to match the famous Rudy story when they play Alabama tonight in the BCS Bowl.

Arturo Martinez will be suited up tonight for the Fighting Irish, a walk on who has survived Stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma.

He will take part in the pre-game warm ups with his team. “It will be 20 minutes of being just like the other guys," Martinez told the Miami Herald. "I’ll look up and see an ocean of people for the national championship game in my own backyard.”

Rudy Ruettiger is a legend for walking on at Notre Dame and getting to make the team in his final game as a senior, even for one play.

But Rudy never battled cancer and still made the team.

Arturo Martinez will not get into the game on Monday night. Hopefully as a senior he will get a walk on role, but his inspirational story will drive the Notre Dame legend once again, as a place where magical things can and do happen.

Read more: Joining the Notre Dame faithful in Miami on a mission

Martinez was a sports crazy ninth grader in Miami when cancer was first diagnosed,a golf ball sized tumor on his jaw.

He conquered the cancer and made his high school football team as a defensive end in his final year and went to Notre Dame, a college that had always inspired him.

After attending his first football game he decided to try out as a walk on.

The odds were huge, but like cancer, Arturo wanted to beat the odds.

“There are kids sitting in that chemotherapy room right now wishing they had the energy to play a sport...I had to do this not only for me, for them.”

After seven months getting in condition with the help of a Notre Dame conditioning coach, he sent his tapes to the team. A few days before the end of his freshman year he was accepted.

So like Rudy, Arturo is an inspirational figure.

“I call him Rudolfo," said Arturo Martinez Jr, Art’s father, “He’s our miracle."

On Monday night he will be a hero for everyone.

Read more: Joining the Notre Dame faithful in Miami on a mission

Joining the Notre Dame faithful in Miami on a mission -- Alabama and Notre Dame roll into town for BCS stand-off

Notre Dame gears up to face Alabama

Miami: The Notre Dame faithful are gathering in their droves here, the weekend of the big game.

But so are the Alabama battalions and the good-natured rivalry has already begun.

At a nice beachside restaurant here the numbers of Notre Dame and Alabama fans were about equal and the good-natured ribbing lasted through three courses.

On the plane from New York the numbers were overwhelmingly Notre Dame, the subway alumni traveling from all points North, South, East and West  to support their team on the big day.

Many are still pinching  themselves that they are here at all. You would have got odds of 100/1 on it before the season started.

I feel the same myself, suddenly strolling  around in shorts and a T shirt, when I should be shivering in a New York winter. I associate Notre Dame games with cold crisp Autumn days in South Bend , not T shirts and  88 degrees in South Florida.

Interesting  to me is how many Irish-born I know who are going to the game. The contest in Dublin between Notre Dame and Navy opened up a huge new fan base for the Fighting Irish, the fact that this is a dream season and that it kicked off in Ireland makes it even more remarkable.

The ‘Bama folks have seen it all before. Bill Petersen, a fanatic Alabama fan was in the restaurant eating with his wife and two daughters.”I wanted to bring them to learn and witness the old time football religion,” he said gesturing at his two young  girls. “It is  the closest thing next to religion in bringing Alabama folk together.”

And Notre Dame folk too. This game is already a blockbuster and South Florida will bleed crimson and blue and gold these next few days.

The talk is all about tickets which are apparently, dropping in price as the game nears. The question for many is when to buy their tickets, ten minutes before kick-off or now when the market seems to be saturated.

All I know is that through the graces of a dear friend, my in-law Pat Egan and I have two of the most precious ducats in all of sport-- and no, they are not for sale.

Go Irish!

No reason to allow Union Jacks to fly alone over Belfast any more - Unionists need to get used to equality agenda and equal symbols

Belfast City Hall

I’d almost feel sorry for the Loyalist protesters complaining about their Union Jacks no longer flying proudly over Northern Ireland were it not for the fact that they had it so good for so long -- and still do in terms of lording it over nationalists when it comes to symbols.

Danny Morrison, writer and former Sinn Fein political figure put it beautifully recently when he compared the place names of Belfast and showed just how dominant the unionist tradition remains.

If you’re a nationalist in his imaginary board game he says “You can't use the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, the Queen's Bridge, the Albert Bridge, the King's Bridge, Victoria Street, Prince's Street, Queen Street, King Street, Albert Street, the grounds of the Royal Victoria Hospital, a helicopter from the Kings Hall, Lower Windsor Avenue, the fields behind the Royal Academy. Nor can you be disguised as a prostitute from the Albert Clock, a student from Queen's, a worker with Royal Mail, a violinist with the Royal School of Music, a Queen's Counsel, a (former) member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a screw of Her Majesty's Prison Service, a soldier with Her Majesty's armed forces, a Crown Court judge. Nor by boat up Victoria Channel to Albert Quay, Victoria Wharf or Alexandra Jetty. You must use the Queen's English on the Queen's Highway or else you'll be in breach of the Queen's Peace.”

So there. Nice job Danny.

And how many nationalists names are there around Belfast? Not many that I can think off unless you count Ballymurphy. The Falls Road means in Gaelic, district of hedges-- hardly revolutionary stuff!

When you consider that Ian Paisley essentially sparked The Troubles when he charged up the nationalist Falls Road in the mid 1960s to remove a lonesome tricolor flying in an local building there my sympathy for the Loyalists lessens a little.

Remember we are not talking about flying the tricolor side by side, which would be warranted given the fact that the population numbers are now equal and Belfast City Hall has a Nationalist /Alliance majority .

We are talking about flying the Union Jack about 15 days a year instead of every day and no Tricolor. The Loyalists want to party like it is 1922 all over again and a Protestant state for a Protestant people.

Alas for them, that ship sailed a long time ago now and there can be no flag of convenience any longer that does not recognize both traditions.

So Loyalists should just get used to the new era, not try and fly yet another kite.