Tomorrow's news today (or next week's news today)

Not that we would ever lower our standards to make it short, make it snappy and make it up but at this time of the year journalists have to really earn their corn by producing several papers ahead of time. In fact, I've just been handed the Andersonstown News Monday edition and next week's South Belfast News — reporters got to have holidays too, you know.

The Irish Echo, therefore, with its front page announcing its Irish American of the Year 2007 is effectively put to bed. Though our arts editor Eileen Murphy can still head into Manhattan on Christmas-morn to make last-minute alterations if she thinks a story — such as Tony Blair seeing the light — merits coverage.

There was quite a lot of heated discussion in our Wall Street office (it sounds plush but the rents are actually cheaper than at our previous midtown abode) over this year's recipient. There's no cash prize to the Irish American of the Year or even a crystal bowl but it's a coveted title which has gone previously to John Hume and Senator George Mitchell among others. As part of its repackaging, the Irish Echo is moving more towards Irish America so Bertie, Ian, Martin and anyone else based this side of the Atlantic isn't in the running.

Not that there are any shortage of worthy nominees in the US. Both Barack and Hillary are in with a shout, though Obama has perhaps let the Irish constituency go by default (his website has an Irish Americans for Obama but only 148 people have signed up and none of them are named!), as is Bill Flynn, that collosus of the peace process who saw his peace process endeavours bear fruit this year. From Philadelphia come several notable contenders, including:

John Brennan, ICT CEO
Jim Delaney, Chairman of JD Capital and founder of JG Wentworth
Chuck Bergen - VTree Inc CEO
Daniel Cronin Chorus Communications CEO
Dan Keating - Keating Companies - Chairman
Paul & Theresa Flanagan Murtagh – Murtagh Brothers Builders
Thomas Harty - levyangstreich.com
Marty Malloy - gallagher-law.com
John O'Malley - volpe-koenig.com
Frank Reynolds - invivotherapeutics.com CEO

And then there's our literary leaders: is it time for the incomparable William Kennedy, the bard of Albany and one of American's greatest novelists to get his duefor his lifelong literary achievements and deep understanding of the history of our people at the Crossroads of the American Diaspora?

Bill Clinton pehaps? Didn't even Al Gore claim Irish parentage? Or the up-and-coming Governor of Maryland Maryland O'Malley or Presidential race outsider Chris Dodd?

All good nominations but though the end-of-year edition of the Irish Echo is put to bed, I'm keeping mum.

Finally, my pal Elaine Matsushita sends me this photo of her and new billionaire owner of the Tribune Corp Sam Zell (he's the one with the bald head) when he visited her Home Life section of the Chicago Tribune. Sam says it's a brave new world, let's hope one with plenty of space for the Home Life supplements!

A little bit red-faced at our descent into commercial Christmas

One too many flashy tie; too many boxes of chocs; another bottle of spirits you won't open.

Perhaps it's time to suggest friends and colleagues look further afield when buying that stocking filler.

As far as South Africa, in fact, where TLC (The Love of Christ or Tender Loving Care, take your pick) Missionaries care for newborn and abandoned babies, many the children of AIDS-suffering mothers.

Led by Tyrone padre Fr Barney McAleer, TLC Missionaries works within a shoestring budget to save and nurture babies into childhood, caring for their physical, educational and spiritual needs. Gerry Adams visited Fr Barney some years back (a memorable visit with journalist Eoghan Ó Néill who has just published Cathracha, his sweeping travelogue, during which Gerry Adams addressed the South African and foreign press pack in Irish. When he finished, Nelson Mandela interrupted to ask the assembled reporters if they'd like him to translate.) and since then there's been a fundraising link between Béal Feirste and the orphanage. Over £2000 was raised at the Aisling Awards in November and wired out to Fr Barney.

You can read the TLC Christmas newsletter online and see more pictures like those above.

On their website, TLC spell out to well-wishers their top 10 Christmas requests. It's all a bit embarrassing, surrounded as we are by X-Boxes, ipods and expensive aftershaves.

So here is a list of the top ten items we could use:

1. Pick n pay Gift cards – to help us for Christmas!

2. Shopping vouchers – for other things

3. Swimming Towels – Hooray for summer!

4. New pillows – Ours are “vrot”

5. Dinner Plates and Bowls – Boy, we feed a lot of people!

6. Drinking glasses – They know how to drink too.

7. Frying pans – We like to make pancakes!

8. Rugby and soccer balls – We love to play outside!

9. Computer paper – The office also needs a Christmas present!

10. School stationery – The new year is on its way.

Touch lost in double-quick time

The speed with which Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is losing his once faultless political touch is truly bewildering.

In just a few months, the consummate politician has become a shambling train wreck of a political leader.

How, for example, could the Bertie of old ever have thought it's a good idea to accept a €30,000-plus pay rise? It's not a question of whether or not he deserves the pay hike or of what his counterparts in the private sector get. An astute politician would realise that those issues are meaningless to the general public who will never be convinced that Bertie is entitled to an extra €30k per annum even if he was to perform the occasional heart surgery op on the side.

And then the ignominy of appearing before the Mahon Tribunal to be unceremoniously grilled. Yesterday it was none of the Tribunal's bloody business, today a friend who isn't a friend is similarly dispatched. Then there's the small matter of another, previously unaccounted for, €5000 which will be the subject of another Bertie appearance in February.

At some stage, expect the focus to return to the aborted plan to place a casino in Phoenix Park.

The fall from grace of the Taoiseach has been swift and salutary. A change in career beckons.

Sordid case comes unstuck

The Sean Hoey Omagh farce was the PSNI at its RUC best and, libel laws notwithstanding, in any developed country this type of showing would result in handcuffs being slapped on the guardians of the law.

There was a time when the Diplock Courts not only turned a blind eye to this make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach when it came to putting republicans or alleged republicans in jail but actively encouraged such behaviour.

However, just as some political forces are stuck in the past and finding themselves coming unstuck, so too are elements of the farces of law and order (not just the police but the entire criminal justice apparatus) firmly mired in yesteryear.

This time, it didn't come off which is just as well for an innocent man, Sean Hoey, and for all of us who believe that a fair criminal justice system — rather than the pig's breakfast we've been served up here for 40 years and more — is the cornerstone of our new future.

Is it too much to hope that those tasked with upholding the rule of law will move swiftly against their own perverters of justice. On the record of the PSNI to date, sadly, yes.

All of which shows the mountain which has to be climbed to bring the institutionally sectarian and institutionally anti-republican PSNI into the 21st Century. For, as the inability to tackle loyalist thugs intimidating an entire Catholic community in Stoneyford, Co Antrimshows, many senior PSNI officers don't view harassment and abuse of Catholics, even when it spirals into petrol bomb attacks, as being anything to get too bothered about. Sure, isn't that what always happened here, is the attitude.

Those taking up positions on policing bodies would be well advised to take a large bucket and shovel with them because there's a lot of oldfashioned RUC thinking to be cleaned up.

Shameless self-promotion; an apology

Blogs aren't supposed to be about shameless self-promotion so apologies first for showcasing this great ad marking Belfast Media Group success in the Aisling Awards and in the Newspaper Society Awards.

The 'poster' shows Colm McKenna of Bank of Ireland and Robin Livingstone, Andersonstown News editor, presenting President Mary McAleese and Martin McAleese with a minature statuette of our Person of the Year Award, scuplted by Cliodhna Cussen.

Let's get it all out in one splurge: Belfast Media Group is also shortlisted with Conrad Atkinson for the Arts & Business Arts Awards in the University of Ulster on 10 January. Conrad has returned from New York where his new exhibition is raising eyebrows and hopes to join us for the awards. We're actually shortlisted in two categories for Conrad's inspiring Some Wounds Healing; Some Birds Singing exhibition. In one of those categories, there's only two runners. 50-50, the sort of odds I can live with.

“Congratulations to all the short listed companies, it is inspiring to see the levels of partnerships that are taking place in our local communities. We are ddelighted to be involved in this our second year as title sponsor of The Allianz Arts & Business NI Awards." said Adrian Toner, Head of Allianz in Northern Ireland

Alice O’Rawe, Director, Arts & Business said, “The calibre and diversity of nominations this year has reached an all time high, which shows the breadth, scope and the unlimited possibilities of these partnerships. The opportunities are infinite and you need not look beyond this year’s examples of creativity for inspiration!”

Tribute in Milltown

Singing the Indian drum song in honour of the hunger strikers at the Republican Plot in a snow-covered Milltown Cemetery in January 1985 were Clyde Bellecourt (right) and young AIM members. Looking on are Alfie Doherty (right), father of hunger striker Kieran Doherty TD and Maura McDonnell, sister of hunger striker Joe McDonnell.

Gerry Adams is also there as is Pádraig Wilson (with cap, left).

Pictured top is Floyd Westerman performing the Rabbit Dance with our very own Connla Lawlor (now CEO of Lá Nua) at the Irish medium school Bunscoil Phobal Feirste; this photograph ran on the front page of the Andersonstown News.

While I was trying to get the land back, my bro was selling it

Riding shotgun with Floyd Westerman when he came to Belfast was Clyde Bellecourt, an articulate American Indian Movement founder who had spent his share of time (both before and after his visit) in jail.

Clyde's brother Vernon, who didn't make the trip, was among the most prominent AIM leaders of his generation. An inveterate campaigner, he travelled the globe meeting heads of state and lobbying for support for the cause of the native American.

In September of this year, he travelled to Venezuela to meet Chavez. Sadly, he fell ill on his return, and at the age of 75, passed away in October.

Like Clyde, Vernon (pictured here at a 1973 press conference) cut an imposing figure in his Indian dress, beads and plaits.

Clyde's journey of spiritual discovery started in the 'hole' of a federal prison where his drug and drink demons had dispatched him. Vernon had a more prosaic background: he was in real estate. As Clyde joked about his realtor sibling: "while I was trying to get our land back, my bro' was trying to sell it". (With thanks to Kevin McKiernan for that last yarn. Kevin was in Wounded Knee II, Floyd wasn't though The Times of London makes that claim in an obitiuary today).

Have started chasing a long tail of American Indian memories via the internet.

Red Crow says goodbye

Extraordinary tribute to his "Irish friends" and with Sinn Féin identifying green issues as one of their four key policy areas in the time ahead, who's to say Floyd Westerman's prescient songs about the destruction of Mother Earth haven't finally found their mark!

Here come the anthros

Native American singer and warrior leader Floyd Red Crow Westerman, who passed away earlier this week, visited Belfast in January 1985 and stayed in the modest surrounds of my Beechmount home.

A wonderfully gifted singer-songwriter, Irish audiences will know him best for Quiet Desperation which Christy Moore recorded. As a young man, he remembers being shifted off to the Christian school where the Indian children were shared out between the different sects. He had a wonderful sense of humour, and brought a wry eye to the often calamitous position of the Amerian Indian. In Here Come The Anthros, he told how his grandparents remains were dug up by anthropologists and put on show in a museum; until he demanded them back for reburial.

He attended the Bloody Sunday parade in Derry the year he visited Belfast. The weather was miserable and I remember his admiration for the young "warrior" bandsmen who marched in white shirts. He played a concert-to-die-for in the Conway Mill which included his take on "This Land is My Land" with new lyrics for Ireland, played the tribal drum at a céili in Cumann Cluain Ard and at a protest outside Armagh Women's Prison and took part in many community interchanges.

He viewed alcohol as part of the white man's chemical warfare against the Indian people. Inspired, I packed in the drink from his visit until the close of polls of my first election foray that May.

His rapid rise to fame came after he appeared in Dances With Wolves with Kevin Costner (Floyd thought this was the most important film about Indians because it highlighted for the first time Indian languages) though I remember him telling us that he refused to take part in a TV ad because they wanted him to wear a head dress of feathers which were inappropriate. His Indian name was Red Crow and he sent me some pictures later which showed him in full traditional dress doing a tribal dance. Polished and all as his acting was, I thought his music-making prowess a cut above. For a long time, I had a tape of that Conway Mill concert, which included Fulsom Prison blues adopted for the H-Blocks and the memorable Custer Died For Your Sins.

A man of great elegance and dignity, he was before his time in anticipating the rise of the South American indian peoples.

His partner when we met was Yvonne Swan, reputedly the first Indian woman to have killed a white man (who was molesting her son) and not to have gone to prison.

There's a moving tribute on myspace. with excellent, recent photos. Two years ago he received a lung transplant, giving him a new lease of life after he had effectively given up singing.

On YouTube, a video interview by Roibeard O Ceallaigh from 2004 has been posted in which he pays tribute to his "Irish friends", recalls the singing outside Armagh jail despite British guns being pointed at him, talks about being inspired by Bobby Sands and sings in his native Lakota. "You in your time," he says in a message to Gerry Adams, "did the best for your people as we did for ours."

In Memory of Floyd Red Crow Westerman

Ar dheis láimh Dé go raibh sé.

40 Under 40

A new prison for Magilligan Strand, plus ca change. The British were the inventors of the concentration camp so their knowledge of prison building takes some beating; how fitting that they've no money, a la Varney, to promote investment but are happy to build more prisons to put the debtors in jail. (Franice Molloy of SF estimates that at any one time, half our prison population is in jail because they couldn't or wouldn't pay their bills. In some areas, such as Coleraine, the sympathetic police collect the debtors on a Friday and bang them up for three days. They're released in time for Sunday dinner and that's their week's chokey done. A waste of time when the violent bullies aren't being locked up.)

The ASBO debate continues apace and it's certainly another tool in the armoury of any community under the jackboot of these violent, anti-social thugs but an ASBO without parental engagement is worth little. Instead of putting the teenage tearaways under curfew, a curfew and ban from pubs for some of the parents would be more beneficial to the parents, children and community.)
Meanwhile, get your nominations in for 40 Under 40 in New York at the end ofNovember. The Northern Ireland Bureau in DC is among business partners of the event on the understanding that the list will, for the first time ever, include some of the huge American Scots-Irish population.

The Irish Echo is on the trail of Irish America's young guns for a novel celebration in New York next year.
40 Under 40 will spotlight the up and coming leaders of Irish America across a variety of fields, from music to medical research and from construction to computer programming.
40 Under 40 listing will be guests of honor at a reception on Park Avenue, New York, on 27 February which is being hosted by Irish Consul General Niall Burgess.
"This generation of young Irish and Irish American high-achievers has set the bar higher than ever in terms of accomplishment and endeavor," said Irish Echo editor Ray O'Hanlon.
"We're delighted to revive the Irish Echo 40 Under 40 listing to salute them in style," he said.
Nominations are now open for the Irish Echo 40 Under 40. If you think you know someone who deserves to be on the list, you can use the nomination form on our web site, www.irishecho.com

Nine months lost

Nine months in gestation but no Christmas baby from Varney's famous tax report.

After all, Gordon Browne made the appontment so he was hardly going to pick someone who would contadict his boss. And he who declared the Northern Ireland economy unviable, Peter Hain, weighed in for good measure to let us know that the report wouldn't recommend reducing corporation tax — before the investigation had even begun.

For my book, Sir George Quigley presented an unanswerable argument to Sir David Varney but he remained deaf and blind to the evidence a few miles up the road that low corporation tax is PART of the economic regeneration budget.

Of course, it's a clasic argument for stopping sucking on the hind tit of the empire: Varney's main objection was that Britain would lose out. Interestingly, there's no sympathy for the restless natives losing out for the Olympics shenanigans in London or the incentives to the London financial centre.

I see the cross-border bodies are also appointed today. Great to see Sean Gallagher of Smarthomes (I'm presuming it's he) on Intertrade Ireland. Perhaps now we'll see some action on phones, stamps and banking. And David Lyle of Lyle-Bailie International is on Tourism Ireland which shold be interesting since his media experience should lead to a fresh look at how Tourism Ireland does its work.

Ag dul faoi

Bhí sé mar bheadh na scannáin ann ag an tús, tháinig an doctúir gur dhearaigh sé saighead mhór dhubh ar mo leathchos chlé. Le cur i gcuimhne dó gur sin an ceann a mbeadh sé ag dul isteach sa ghlúin ann.

Ach cheil siad an dara píosa den scannán orm nuair a chomháiríonn tú anuas as 10 (bhí rún agam seasamh a ghlacadh agus a dhéanamh i nGaeilge. Ní bheadh sé go díreach chomh clúiteach le Gearóid Ó Cairealláin arb é a fhreagra é nuair a tháinig lucht an otharchairr air gur fhiafraigh siad: "Are you allergic to anything?" "The English language," ar seisean Ach dá dtarlódh sé nach musclóinn, bheadh líne deas le rá ag duine éigin ag mo shearmanas.).

Bhí mé ag fanacht leo ceist a chur orm cuntas anuas nuair a thit mé i laige. Nuair a mhuscail mé, bhí mo menescus loite imithe. Agus anois, tá mé ar ais sa bhaile, ag beartú fáil amach ag sodar arís sa bhlian úr nuair a leigheasann mo chos phollta.

Seconds out: O'Reilly and O'Brien

So things have taken a nasty turn at Independent News and Media where Gavin O'Reilly, son of Tony and ceo, has slammed 15 per cent shareholder Denis O'Brien and suggested he couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery, much less a global media business.

If we are to believe Gavin, the hostile share build-up by O'Brien is because of hostile coverage of his media activities in the Independent group of newspapers.

Ah lads, an inveterate opponent of and a donor to the SDLP, don't be knocking seven colours of s+++te out of each other.

Meanwhile, my small source in the world of feathered friends (AKA a wee birdie) tells me Dan Cassidy's How The Irish Invented Slang has just been reprinted for the first time. Sadly, the entire run was sold out in one day. Back to the printers, guys.

I am out there in cyberspace trying to locate Gerry Adams' speech to the SF conference in Dublin last week which was billed as the first step in repairing the damage caused by May's general election in the South. Colm Heatley in the Sunday Business Post tells us the Sinn Féin leader told delegates they have to become as comfortable with the word 'prosperity' as they have with 'equality'. Which means we may be moving closer to Alex Salmond's 'Building a Wealthier and Fairer Scotland'.

Bingo! Here's Gerry Adams' comments from the Engaging with Modern Ireland conference in Dublin last Saturday. (Whaddamean, it took me a week to get this on the site, I've a full-time job, you know!)