The Northern Peace Process -- all the hard, behind-scenes work of nearly two decades, all the struggle, all the slow achievement, agonizing setbacks, small but crucial steps forward -- nearly lies in ruins now that the Northern police have arrested four Sinn Fein members, raided party offices, including in government buildings at Stormont, and accused the IRA of having infiltrated Northern Secretary Mr Reid's offices. SF denies the charges (not surprisingly). See Belfast Cops Raid Sinn Fein Offices [AP World News] or the lead story here (Irish Times) and here (The Guardian).

It is very difficult to tell what the real story is here but if it is true that SF was involved then the party has proven definitively that it is not mature or capable enough to be a part of any democratic process and still has not come in from the cold. If the police raids are politically motivated with no basis in fact then an entirely new structure must be put in place for policing and the service thoroughly investigated and disciplined and the UK government's motives scrutinised.

Looking on from the outside it is very difficult to imagine the police move having been sanctioned from on high (as it must have been) at this delicate point (the unionists were already close to walking out on the process) for frivolous reasons. Too much over too long has gone into the process and surely the UK government would not want a return to the pre-Agreement, pre-ceasefire days. On the other hand the republican movement is riddled with dissidents and those who heed neither Gerry Adams nor Martin McGuinness anymore. This must be an enormous disappointment to democratically-committed SF activists (of which there are many), especially those now within Northern government structures, who risked much to achieve the reconciliation that exists (no matter how tension-filled). In the meantime the world is watching the trial of the three alleged IRA members in Colombia, accused of aiding the FARC guerillas and travelling on false passports. I admit: I am cynical about endless SF protestations of innocence.  And disgusted by self-serving unionists who produce endless hoops for SF to jump through and happily destabilise the whole process for their own petty reasons. As the joke goes: someone should throw them all onto some small island to fight it out amongst themselves. Oh... er... yeah...

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer./ Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold..." -- WB Yeats.

Update on Sunday: It isn't looking any better, with Sinn Fein party member and administrator of the Stormont SF office Denis Donaldson charged with having information likely to be of use to terrorists. The Taoiseach is claiming the Stormont raid was 'over the top' -- a wishy-washy response that sounds more like a comment on unruly football fans or rock concert-goers than on a situation that could cause the whole peace process edifice to crumble...

11:17:24 AM  #   your two cents []

Charles Lamb. "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once." [Quotes of the Day]
10:57:06 AM  #   your two cents []

Weapons of mass distraction. <<A new breed of computer games is teaching today's teenagers how to wage, and win, the war against terror.>> [Salon.com] I must say I find this notion pretty unlikely...
10:55:59 AM  #   your two cents []

Google Degraded? Geeks Aghast. <<Did Google lower its standards for ranking Web pages on its search engine? Its filtering of spam sites and doorway pages appears to be less than what it used to, observers say.>> [Wired News]
10:54:08 AM  #   your two cents []