A L S O+T O D A Y "You start to think that he's dead" By Jeff Stein Federal agents wonder if Eric Rudolph has survived his year in the wilderness   T A B L E+T A L K Should the Clinton administration reconsider its policy of reconciliation with China? Draft policy in the Headlines area of Table Talk   How-to, why-not and what-for -- find it all at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author       R E C E N T L Y The question that won't go away By Christopher Hitchens Is Clinton a stone-cold rapist or isn't he? (03/16/99) The China syndrome By Joshua Micah Marshall GOP outrage over Chinese nuclear espionage is mostly politics (03/15/99) The danceable tragedy By Herbert Gold Just past Carnival, dozens die off the Florida coast, and still Haiti waits for a savior (03/12/99) Can Amtrak survive? By David M. Fine Despite its impressive new Boston-Washington bullet train, the national rail service faces daunting problems (03/11/99) Gun smoke By Daryl Lindsey Can the unprecedented legal challenge to gun manufacturers withstand the counterattack of the NRA and Bob Barr? (03/11/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		A DEATH FORETOLD | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - It was particularly ironic that Rosemary Nelson was murdered while many of the leaders in both communities -- including Trimble, Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon and Irish Congress of Trade Unions leader Inez McCormack -- who have kept the peace process on track had just the weekend before crossed the Atlantic for a conference held jointly at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and across the Hudson at Columbia University. Called "The Equality Agenda: Northern Ireland in 2000," the conference put on display the components of the Good Friday accord: a focus on human rights -- as manifested through economic, cultural and legal rights -- in every aspect and at every stage of building this new society. What makes the Good Friday accord so radical is its refusal to accept the old bilateral model of the body politic -- Catholic Nationalist vs. Protestant Loyalist. From the time of the first cease-fire declaration back in the fall of 1994, a startlingly broad array of community activists has seized the opportunity demilitarization has brought to articulate a radical new notion of equality that seeks the bannerless people on the furthest fringes of their communities and thrusts them into a forum with people who'd already presumed their own right to be heard. The new model for Northern Irish inclusion counts gender, ethnicity, physical capacity, race, sexual orientation and socioeconomic class -- not just religion. Much of the impulse for inclusion has come from women, who were sick of the war-room secrecy that characterized Northern politics for so long. Civil rights activist Bernadette McAliskey once said that she didn't devote her life to the cause of freedom only to turn decision-making over "to a small group of men playing high-class intellectual poker with Ireland's future and refusing to consult or inform the masses." The refusal by leading Irish women to pursue business-as-usual politics led to an agenda that includes the issues of Chinese, South Asians, Travelers (Ireland's nomadic people) and other ethnic communities as well as disabled people and the lesbian and gay communities. Perhaps the most startling feature of this new inclusivity is its declaration that there will be no "hierarchy of victims," a worldview that gets the Irish beyond the old Catholic vs. Protestant polarities. There will be no yardstick for establishing who has suffered more than whom. As London sociologist Mary Hickman reminded last weekend's conferees, the Good Friday agreement was not simply about people having the good manners to respect differences, but about their "having the freedom to express differences." The implications of this bold new venture reach beyond Northern Ireland. Nancy Soderberg, who as a National Security Council official steered the Clinton administration's Northern Ireland policy during the hardest years of negotiation, told the conference that the lessons the White House has learned in Northern Ireland are informing its approach to the futures of Ethiopia, Cambodia, Haiti and Kosovo. As U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (and former Irish President) Mary Robinson has pointed out, "The legacy of the Cold War which suggested there was contradiction between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural on the other, is slowly dissipating." The United Nations is now urging governments to conduct "human rights assessments," Robinson said, along the lines of environmental impact assessments. But while the stamina of Northern Ireland's grass-roots peace architects remains inspiring, the dangers to civil liberties that Rosemary Nelson struggled to expose continue apace: So-called "emergency legislation" that allows police to sweep through neighborhoods picking up people and detaining them for up to a week with no charges being proffered and no right to legal counsel; progressive erosion of the right to silence; resistance to the idea that a peacetime police service needs a vetting mechanism to eliminate people with records of abuse. Even those in the law enforcement establishment who are willing to institute reform measures are loath to establish a truth commission to deal with the facts of the RUC's part in supporting and perpetrating torture and murder. "The police say, 'Let's look forward; don't look back.'" says Human Rights Watch attorney Julia Hall. SALON | March 17, 1999 Margaret Spillane writes about culture and politics for the Nation and other magazines. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R E L A T E D_.S A L O N_.S T O R I E S Northern Ireland: Who will police the police? The peace accord has forgotten to address one key issue: The repressive ways of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. By Margaret Spillane May 20, 1998