February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Ray O’Hanlon
If Friends of Sinn Féin ever considers an IPO, it will consign Martha Stewart and pro-wrestling to the minor leagues. The fund-raising group raked it in big time last week during the Gerry Adams 30-hour stopover in the Big Apple. When all the checks come in, the total for the Sheraton bash on Wednesday night could well exceed $500,000.
Overall, FOSF has collected in the region of $3.75 million to date since it began fund-raising in March 1995 and that includes the distinctly unhelpful 18-month campaign by the Provos between their two cease-fires. Of course, the matter of the Provos maintaining a stance more akin to the boy scouts is crucial to FOSF’s ability to raise money on a large scale in the U.S. so obviously any collapse of the peace process and a return to violence would be a potentially nasty kick in FOSF’s transom. That said, a resumed IRA campaign might not necessarily mean an end to fund-raising entirely for FOSF.
Yes, Sinn Féin big might suddenly find U.S. visas to be as scarce as green bunting on the Shankill and the U.S. government might move to block funds being sent back to Ireland. But FOSF is by now so well-established that it might be able to still raise money to continue the battle for hearts and minds strictly on U.S. soil, by way of media advertising, for example. Still, that’s not the scenario that will make sweet the dreams of FOSF folk this very night. They would rather look ahead to the next greenback windfall. How does a million bucks in 24 hours sound?
Muddled geography
The next Irish person who has problems with the Immigration and Naturalization Service should claim to be a native of Erie. He or she might be allowed in given that the INS presumably still counts Erie, Pa. as part of the United States. Whatever about Pennsylvania, the INS does seem a bit confused over the wee sod’s exact status if the Assessment/Referral Memo in relation to the McAllister family case is anything to go by. The document, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and referred to in an Echo report last week, variously refers to "Eire," "Erie," the Irish Republic, "Republic of Ireland" and even, Lord save us, the "Free State."
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Jeanie Johnston on time
The Jeanie Johnston is on schedule. The replica Famine-era passenger ship currently being built near Tralee, Co. Kerry, will be ready for its transAtlantic voyage to the U.S. and Canada in April 2000, according to the Jeanie Johnston project’s latest newsletter.
U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Mike Sullivan recently visited the shipyard in Blennerville where the Jeanie Johnston is being assembled by an international team that includes AOH members affiliated with carpenters unions in Philadelphia and New Jersey.
The voyage of the Jeanie Johnston is being billed by the project boosters as the "Biggest Irish Event Ever in North America," a claim that does little justice to the weekly appearance of "IF" of course. Meanwhile, the plan is to complete the Jeanie Johnston by Christmas so that it will be ready for trials early in the new year. The project still needs about $1.2 million, and although most of this sum has already been pledged, the chairman of the Jeanie Johnston Committee, Dr. Henry Lyons, was quoted in the newsletter as saying that the pledged funds, mostly from U.S. sources, were needed now in order to ensure that there is no slippage in the final weeks before the sailing ship’s launch.
Fortune smiles
Fortune magazine’s October issue includes a glowing report on the Celtic Tiger, which, in Fortune’s estimation, has spawned "an entirely new species of Irishman and Irishwoman: educated, optimistic and affluent."
The report waxes lyrical about soaring GNP, GDP and so on and so forth and even suggests that economic prosperity might do what decades of bullets, bombs and politics could not do: reunite the North with the South.
Fortune’s man on the spot, Rob Norton, had visited Ireland at the tail end of the 1960s and was less than impressed by the wee Republic’s economic prowess, or lack of it, at that time. All has changed, changed utterly, in the intervening years and a ferocious prosperity has been born. Norton reckons that in the years since his first visit, Ireland "had caught up with the rest of Western civilization."
Well, yes indeed. "IF" always reckoned the government was on the mark when it banned cannibalism a few years back.
Sweetie’s coming to town
Embattled former Taoiseach Charles Haughey is not expected in New York any time soon, but the next best thing is.
"Sweetie," the controversial bestselling book in Ireland about Haughey, his loves and labors lost, will be launched here Monday, Nov. 1 by its author, Kevin O’Connor. O’Connor is already known in several U.S. cities for supplying weekly news reports from Ireland to various radio shows. In New York, he’s a regular on the "Adrian Flannelly Show."
"Sweetie," suffice it to say, is full to the brim with all sorts of skullduggery and also chronicles Haughey’s 10-year affair with newspaper columnist Terry Keane, who would often refer in her columns to a pal named "Sweetie." Few were surprised when it finally emerged that Haughey and Sweetie were one and the same.
One tale from the book that has raised eyebrows is the allegation that then Taoiseach Jack Lynch had his phone tapped back during the arms crisis of 1970 and that the tapping originated in the office of Haughey, who was then minister for finance. Lynch died last week aged 82 and Haughey was booed at the funeral in Cork. The New York launch of "Sweetie," will take place at 5:30 p.m. at the Grafton Gifts store, 839 Third. Ave., at 51st Street, in Manhattan. For details, call (212) 759-2850. The book will be launched in Pittsburgh on Friday, Nov. 5, at the Blarney Stone, 30 Grant Ave.
They said
"The Dublin administration’s decision to join the NATO-led ‘Partnership for Peace’ by the end of October without a referendum in the 26 counties is yet another U-turn which reveals the scorn with which Bertie Ahern and his colleagues view the public. Neutrality is being sold out behind closed doors." From the front page lead story in Saoirse, the Republican Sinn Féin paper.