Shinn Féin Poblachtach Gaillimh. Republican Sinn Féin Galway

Republican Sinn Fein, Comhairle Connacht, calls for the rejection of the Austerity Treaty

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:55:00 +0000

“This treaty if passed will force the state into continual austerity measures over a number of years, the same type of austerity which has done nothing for the people other than inflict suffering. It was not the people who have created this mess it was the banking elite who gambled billions in the casino that is the stock markets. The political and banking elite would not share the profits so why should we now share the debt,” the PRO for Comhairle Connacht said in a statement issued on May 13.

The statement continued: “Austerity has been rejected by the French and Greek people and now it is the turn of the citizens of this state to reject them also. Handing over further sovereignty to the unelected bureaucrats in the Europe will not shorten the lines of people at the airports that are being forced to leave our shores nor will further austerity create jobs to lower the numbers on social welfare.

“The establishment parties are now attempting to bully the people into accepting continued austerity. This is nothing new as they have used fear on many occasions to force people into accepting things they did not want to, the Lisbon Treaty being the obvious example. Republican Sinn Féin are calling on the people to stand up and oppose this attempt as they have others.

A No vote will be a positive step towards regaining control of our future and that of generations to come. Republican Sinn Féin calls on people to come out and play their part in rejecting this treaty. What is needed now is not further austerity nor is it the handing over of more of our sovereignty to the EU, what we need now is a alternative to the failed Free State and a rejection of all forms of imperialism whether it be British imperialism in the form of their continued occupation of the six counties or European imperialism in the form of the EU. We in Republican Sinn Féin believe we have that alternative in Eire Nua and Saol Nua which are the only credible alternatives to the failed systems in this country at the moment.

[R . S . F news] iris no 295

Sat, 12 May 2012 23:10:00 +0000

In this issue:

1. Media black-out of Republicans

2. Derry, NOT Londonderry!

3. Say No to the Austerity Treaty

4. Bobby Sands remembered in Dublin

5. A celebration of the life and times of Brian Mór Ó Baoighill

6. Brian Mór - A Man You Don't Meet Every Day

7. Families reject shoot-to-kill verdicts

8. HET review must be independent say victims' families

9. Many appeals likely in Section 29 cases

10. Jail scanners to be put on trial in Six-County jails

11. Basque loses extradition appeal

12. Third time the charm in BC archives battle?

1. Media black-out of Republicans

IN A letter to the Irish Times on May 5, 2012, Des Dalton, President,

Republican Sinn Féin, said:

Sir, your editorial of May 1 entitled ‘Still a capacity for mayhem’

displayed an inability to draw any lessons from our history coupled with

an unwillingness to even acknowledge the existence of, let alone engage

with, the Éire Nua proposals for a Federal Ireland as a credible and

coherent alternative to the present failed partitionist set-up.

In the past Republican Sinn Féin offered to engage in debate through the

offices of your paper on the merits of the Éire Nua, an offer, which,

sadly was not taken up.

You declare that Republicans who have rightly identified the failure of

the Stormont Agreement to deliver a just and last peace for the people

of Ireland “appear beyond talking to”. This is indicative of a mindset

which in the past condemned generations of our people to conflict and

war because of its unwillingness to engage with all of the issues

including the fundamental cause of that conflict and war – that is

continued British occupation and partition. It is in short the mentality

which gave rise to the Section 31 broadcasting ban on Irish Republicans.

With honourable exceptions the mainstream media have simply parroted

official line peddled by Stormont, Leinster House and Westminster that

the Six-County state is now a normal democratic society. The reality is

far removed from this. The Six-County State remains an undemocratic and

sectarian statelet. The Stormont Assembly has an executive with no

opposition while implementing a system which forces people to designate

themselves along sectarian lines. The state itself continues to rely on

draconian legislation, non-jury courts and a paramilitary police force

to enforce its writ. The internment without-trial of Republican veterans

such as Martin Corey and Marian Price along with the ongoing struggle

for political status by the Republican prisoners in Maghaberry prison

all point to the abnormality of this state.

In 1998 during the two state referenda on the Stormont Agreement and the

amendment of Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 26-County constitution

Republican Sinn Féin pointed out that the agreement failed on two

levels. 1. It failed to address the root cause of conflict in Ireland,

which was and remains British rule and partition. 2. The agreement

served only to institutionalise sectarianism and would lead only to an

increased polarisation of the two communities. This is an analysis,

which has been borne out by a number of independent studies including

figures released by statutory bodies within the Six Counties.

As an alternative to all of this Republican Sinn Féin have consistently

advocated the Éire Nua programme as a non-sectarian and democratic way

forward. With its provision for decentralisation of decision making

powers from national to provincial, to regional, right down to local or

community level it gives all sections of the Irish people a real voice

and involvement in the decisions that affect them. On each occasion

these proposals have been put to unionists they have been acknowledged

as a workable alternative and indeed your one of your columnists, David

Adams writing in the Irish Times on December 3 2009 said that it was the

only serious attempt to outline what a united Ireland would mean: “The

Éire Nua document, authored by Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill in

the 1970s, remains the only serious bid by any strand of nationalism or

republicanism to address the issue at all.”

Éire Nua includes a Draft Charter of Rights and would include the

European Convention on Human Rights in the domestic law of a New

Ireland. In retrospect, the only problem with Éire Nua was that it was

produced by the “wrong” people, those who have been labelled disturbers,

subversives, dissidents and terrorists – all undesirables in the eyes of

the Establishments. Yet, it has been admired and praised by many

scholars and academics It needs to be promoted vigorously.

The old order is being questioned more and more, people are receptive to

new ideas and the circumstances are opportune again. Republicans have

never advocated simply attaching the Six Counties to the existing

26-County state. We believe both states are part of the same problem and

have clearly failed. The Irish people are in need of a beacon of hope

now more than ever and way out of the tired and failed politics of

partition. At a time when we are being squeezed by the old imperialism

of British Rule in the Six Counties and the new imperialism of the

EU/IMF we believe Éire Nua along with our social and economic programme

Saol Nua are a blueprint for making the All-Ireland Republic set out in

the 1916 Proclamation a reality for all of the Irish people. As in the

past we are proud to provide leadership based on principled and coherent

policies.

2. Derry, NOT Londonderry!

IN A statement on May 5 Michael Rooney, PRO, Mayo Republican Sinn Féin,

condemned the use of the British colonial naming of our city of Derry as

Londonderry in their booklet advertising An Post Rás 2012.

Michael Rooney stated, “This calling of in Irish city by the name forced

on it by an invader cannot be accepted. The calling of Derry by its

British name by a government body is the same as saying that the Irish

have no place in Ireland.”

“The city name of Derry was agreed when the city council democratically

voted to drop the name of Londonderry as it showed an English connection

to the city that the English only have by force.”

“I am calling on the management of An Post and the government minister

to openly proclaim that our city of Derry is not preceded by the name of

London and that they reissue the timetable leaflet with the proper map

of Ireland showing the rightful city name of Derry.”

3. Say No to the Austerity Treaty

IN A statement on May 5, 2012, Republican Sinn Féin Galway County

Councillor Tomás Ó Curraoin has called for a No vote in the forthcoming

referendum on the Austerity Treaty:

“Republican Sinn are calling for a rejection of the Austerity Treaty on

May 31 as we believe it represents yet another attempt to enslave the

Irish people in order to prop up a failed and undemocratic EU. Since the

26-County state first joined the then EEC,

“Republican Sinn Féin have consistently pointed out that the true

purpose of the project was the creation of an undemocratic superstate at

the expense of the Irish people. In the years since these warnings have

been borne out. We have seen our fishing industry decimated, thousands

of families forced off the land and the end of our sugar beet industry

as just part of the price to be paid.

“The referendum on the Austerity Treaty is an important part of the

fight back. Already we have seen Irish people organising themselves in

both rural and urban Ireland on issues such as the septic tank charge,

the household charge and the right of communities to cut their own turf

in defiance of an attempted EU ban.

“This referendum will give people an opportunity to send out a clear

message that they still believe in the words of the 1916 Proclamation:

‘The right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland.’”

4. Bobby Sands remembered in Dublin

THE Annual Bobby Sands Commemoration was held in Dublin on May 5 on the

traffic-isle in front of the GPO, watched by a crowd of about

two-hundred people in total

At about 1.45pm, led by a piper, an Republican Sinn Féin colour party ,

uniformed representatives from Cumann na mBan and Na Fianna Éireann ,

the parade left the Garden Of Remembrance in Parnell Square and marched

down O'Connell Street to the GPO where were chaired by Paddy Tidd.

Paddy recited the names of the 22 Irish Republicans who died on hunger

strike for justice between 1917 and 1981. Stirring orations were

delivered by Republican Sinn Féin Vice-President Fergal Moore and Ard

Chomhairle member Cáit Trainor.

5. A celebration of the life and times of Brian Mór Ó Baoighill

A CELEBRATION of the life and times of Brian Mór Ó Baoighill was held on

May 7, 2012 in Connolly’s at 121 W. 45th Street in midtown. Many New

York and Irish notables attended including John McDonagh and Sandy

Boyer, host and co-host of Radio Free Éireann on WBAI 99.5 fm.

Liza Butler, recording engineer at WBAI, Martin Galvin, Larry Kirwan of

Black 47, former Irish National Liberation Army member Larry Lynch;

Helen McClafferty, chairperson of the Free Gerry McGeough committee; Joe

Flaherty of the Waterbury, CT Ancient Order of Hibernians; Vic Sackett,

Nassau County Ancient Order of Hibernians; Irish American artist Marty

Walsh; Gaire Ó Dubhshláine of Clan Na Gael; Mícheál Ó Coisdelbha, Tom

Costello, Pádraig MacLiam, Josh Jacobs, Dominic Bruno, Maggie Trainor,

Liam Ó Murchadha, Séamus Ó Dubhdha and Jane Enright of Cumann Na Saoirse

Náisiúnta; Chris Byrne, member of the band Seanchai and co-owner of

Rocky Sullivan’s in Brooklyn, and Mary Ward of Republican Sinn Féin.

Mary travelled from Ireland to meet with Congressmen in Washington, DC

on May 2nd on behalf of the Éire Nua programme and for the celebration

of the life of her long-time friend. Mary’s husband Pat Ward died in

1988 on hunger strike in the 26 counties. Also attending was a teary

eyed Joanie, Bernie’s long-time partner. In all there were probably 100

people who attended to honor Bernie.

Bernie shocked America at Christmas 1983 when he rented an electronic

War” that prompted Bill Buetel of WABC Channel 7 to remark on the air

“IRA hijacks sign in Times Square, more at Eleven”.

6. Brian Mór - A Man You Don't Meet Every Day

TO say that an era passed when Bernie Boyle died would be a cliché, and yet

Bernie, aka, Brian Mór, was a Republican activist, an artist and a

veritable force of nature.

I first met him in The Bronx in a pub called Durty Nelly's, though I'd

been aware of him for some time. The guy was hard to ignore. A big

hulking presence he kept his cards close to his chest until you passed

some unspoken test.

I was playing in a duo called Turner & Kirwan of Wexford back then.

Bernie used to take in a set occasionally. Coming of age in the 60's he

knew his music and his taste was broad. Turner & Kirwan's particular

sound and fury, however, seemed to confound him Irish acid rock tended

to do that.

Bernie must have finally judged that it was not without merit for one

night he nodded at me and we began to talk. Once you had passed his

litmus test he took you totally into his confidence. In that one

conversation I learned his political views, ideas on art, and his

rock-ribbed abhorrence of any compromise, pomp or shallowness.

There was something about the man that made you want to be better than

yourself in order to live up to his expectations. Once you were one of

his people you could change your point of view, disagree with him, but

on no account could you let yourself down.

Later that night he took me down the street to The Bunratty. That pub

opened my callow brain to the wonders of traditional Irish music. Back

in Wexford jigs and reels were nailed to the floor and drained of their

vigor by very nice and proper musicians; in the wild North West of the

Bronx traditional music was unhinged and unfettered, mad as the mist and

snow.

Bernie's often-hooded eyes gleamed as he watched characters and players

the like of Johnny Cronin, Banjo and Accordion Burke knock my socks off.

That was a gift he gave me and I still owe him big-time for it.

There were few stauncher Republicans. He was from the breed that

initiated the Border Campaign of the 1950's and he remained

uncompromising until the very end. He aspired to a 32 County Republic

and would settle for nothing less. All gains and losses were measured

against this golden grail.

He never seemed to have any doubts that unification could be achieved,

whereas I was full of them. I think that was where his calling as an

artist stood to him - when things were at their worst he could lose

himself in the fine strokes of some painting and emerge renewed and even

[R . S . F news] Say No to the Austerity Treaty

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:35:00 +0000

Say No to the Austerity Treaty

In a statement on May 5, 2012, Republican Sinn Féin Galway County Councillor Tomás Ó Curraoin has called for a No vote in the forthcoming referendum on the Austerity Treaty:

“Republican Sinn are calling for a rejection of the Austerity Treaty on May 31 as we believe it represents yet another attempt to enslave the Irish people in order to prop up a failed and undemocratic EU. Since the 26-County state first joined the then EEC, Republican Sinn Féin have consistently pointed out that the true purpose of the project was the creation of an undemocratic superstate at the expense of the Irish people. In the years since these warnings have been borne out. We have seen our fishing industry decimated, thousands of families forced off the land and the end of our sugar beet industry as just part of the price to be paid.

“The referendum on the Austerity Treaty is an important part of the fight back. Already we have seen Irish people organising themselves in both rural and urban Ireland on issues such as the septic tank charge, the household charge and the right of communities to cut their own turf in defiance of an attempted EU ban.

“This referendum will give people an opportunity to send out a clear message that they still believe in the words of the 1916 Proclamation: ‘The right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland.’”

[R . S . F news] Beware of bogus callers using your name

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:35:00 +0000

Geraldine McNamara Republican Sinn Féin Publicity Officer said today that she wishes to draw attention to the dangerous practice used by bin companies in which the householders’ full name and address are placed on the bins.

It has come to Geraldine’s attention that unscrupulous people are using this information to gain access to households especially the elderly. The con-men arrive at the door and call the householder by name thus creating a familiarity that gives the person the impression they should be able to trust them as in “if they know your name, then they must know you or a family member”.

Once the con-men have gained access the older person is then too frightened to ask them to leave and may part with money out of fear.

Geraldine is calling on all householders to remove their names from their bins and also calling on the companies to use a number code to identify customers in the future.

“We must do all we can to ensure the safety of our older citizens” Geraldine said.

[R . S . F news] Kadar Adnan released from Israeli jail

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:30:00 +0000

Geraldine McNamara PRO of Republican Sinn Fein has said today Tuesday, 24 April 2012, that it is with great joy that we greet the news that Palestinian political prisoner and hunger striker Khader Adnan has been released.

Kadar had been interned without trial in an Israeli jail and went on hunger strike until his release was guaranteed.

Kadar was one of nearly three hundred Palestinian people who are being interned without trial in Israeli jails in what the Israeli’s call ‘administrative detention’.

In a statement following his release Kadar thanked his Irish supporters;

He said "I ask God to move the consciences of the free people around the world. I thank them all, especially Ireland, for they have stood by my hunger strike. I ask them to stand in solidarity with all the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in the past, present and future, with our tortured and oppressed people who live under the injustice of occupation day and night."

Khader Adnan

Geraldine said “she sends solidarity greetings to Kadar Adnan and his family on behalf of Republican Sinn Fein and hopes that one day he will see the freedom of his homeland”

[R . S . F news] The Centenary of 1916 has real relevance for the Ireland of today

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:30:00 +0000

The Centenary of 1916 has real relevance for the Ireland of today

Speaking at Republican Sinn Féin’s seminar to launch its build-up to the Centenary of the 1916 Rising in 2016 entitled Who Fears To Speak of Easter Week which took place at the Ireland Institute’s Pearse House on Pearse St on Saturday April 21 the President of Republican Sinn Féin Des Dalton said:

“The build-up to Centenary of the 1916 Rising is rapidly developing into a battle over not only how we view our past but also the vision we have for our future. The purpose of today’s seminar is to begin the countdown to 2016 and in doing so set out the relevance of 1916 for the Ireland of today. The other speakers will cover aspects of the Rising such as the idea of the ‘prophetic shock minority’sparking the flames of revolution, and the 1916 Proclamation and its place in the Irish Republican tradition. Ruairí Og Ó Brádaigh is the editor of SAOIRSE. He is someone who has given much of his adult life in Republican activism and journalism. Ruán O’Donnell has brought to the study of Irish Revolutionary history great scholarship and attention to detail as evidenced in his numerous published works notably his masterful biography of Robert Emmet and most recently the first of his three volume study of Irish Republican prisoners in English jails from 1968 to 1998. On the basis of the first volume we eagerly await the next two!

“Speaking in UCD on May 20 2010 the then head of the 26-County administration Brian Cowen accused Irish Republicans of seeking to ‘hijack’ the centenary of the 1916 Rising. It is an accusation that has been oft repeated by other members of the 26-County political class, but it is an accusation that does not stand up. Republicans cannot hijack something they have never abandoned. Irish Republicans will commemorate the centenary of 1916 as well as the anniversaries of the other landmark events in Irish Revolutionary history, just as we have in the past.

“Each year Irish Republicans both in Ireland and abroad have commemorated 1916 without fail. The 26-County state on the other hand has alternated between ignoring the anniversary and banning any commemoration of it. 1916 commemorations throughout the 26 Counties were banned by the Dublin administration in 1937. In 1966 Republicans were baton charged in Dublin by the 26-County police. In 1976 Republicans were prosecuted – including Fiona Plunkett sister of Joseph Mary Plunkett - and some jailed for their participation in a banned commemoration at the GPO. Each year Republicans face the prospect of prosecution for the distribution of Easter Lilys. Despite this repression and repeated attempts at airbrushing the very spirit of 1916 from the collective memory a poll taken on the 75th anniversary of the Rising in 1991 showed 65% of people believed it should be commemorated.

“For forty years the 26-County administration ignored the anniversary of 1916 but since 2006 it has opportunistically seized on it in order to sell the big lie that history has come to an end and British rule in Ireland is now accepted.

“This is the crux of the issue, 1916 is not merely an historical event which can be taken down from the shelf every few years and dusted off like some neglected family heirloom, admired and then conveniently shelved again for another generation or two. It is an event which still speaks to the Ireland of the 21st Century. It is this fact which most unsettles the chattering classes in Leinster House and elsewhere. The speech by Stormont First Minster Peter Robinson marking the centenary of the signing of ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ in 1912 in the 26-County Department of Foreign Affairs on March 30 is the first step in a campaign to dilute and sanitise the Centenary of the 1916 Rising. The political establishments in Stormont, Leinster House and Westminster have signalled their intention to suppress any meaningful commemoration of the 1916 Rising by burying it in a celebration of the imperialist carnage of the First World War.

“The choice of the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ to begin the ‘decade of commemoration’ the two partition states is in many ways quite apt as it symbolises the fundamental difference in the vision for Ireland held by Irish Republicans as opposed to the forces of represented in the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’. The ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ is written in the narrow, sectarian and patriarchal language of empire, while the 1916 Proclamation addresses itself to ‘Irishmen and Irishwomen’ in the inclusive language of democracy, progress and human freedom. A kind of state sponsored amnesia is employed in an attempt to erase the more uncomfortable aspects of our history. Those very aspects of 1916 that serve as a reminder of how far short the political establishment and the state over which they preside falls short of the ideals set out in the 1916 Proclamation. There is nothing new in this, writing about the 26-Couunty state’s attitude to the Golden Jubilee of the rising in 1966 Declan Kiberd observed that 1966 represented: ‘A last, over-the-top purgation of a debt to the past.’ The former curator of Irish Art at the National Gallery of Ireland Dr Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch writing in History Ireland in its Spring 1997 edition said: ‘By concentrating solely on glorifying the past it could be quietly forgotten that the aims of those who had sacrificed their lives in the Rising had not yet been properly achieved. Leaders like Pearse and Connolly were promoted only for their military exploits. Their radical ideas on education and justice, as yet unattained, were not mentioned. This kind of simplistic approach, largely fostered by politicians and propagandists, did not encourage much critical exchange of ideas and as a result a mood of disenchantment quickly set in.’ The role of historians such as Ruán O’Donnell will be vital in the coming years in the battle to ensure a new generation is not robbed of their history or collective memory as a nation.

“Over the next four years the centenaries of the founding of the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army and Cumann na mBan will be marked. Next year we will remember with pride the heroic 1913 Lockout. Therein is a message to the trade union leadership of today – another stark reminder of how far removed they are from the founding ideals of the trade union movement at precisely the moment when a vibrant and radical trade union movement is most required. Other anniversaries including the landing of the arms off the Asgard in 1914 and Pearse’s oration at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa act as milestones on the road to the centenary of the Rising. The years after 2016 will bring the centenaries of the historic 1918 General Election – the last occasion in which the Irish people acted as a unit in a single vote on the question of Ireland’s right to national independence. The Tan War, the British Government of Ireland Act which partitioned Ireland, the Treaty of Surrender and the subsequent Civil War or Counter-Revolution all will be reminders of where we have come from and how far we have still to travel.

“Irish Republicans unapologetically declare that 1916 will remain unfinished business while Ireland’s historic right to nationhood continues to be denied by either the old imperialism of British occupation or the new imperialism of the EU and IMF. This is the unpalatable truth that the establishment most fear in the message of 1916 and it is what gives 1916 its continued relevance for a new risen generation. 1916 remains unfinished business while Britain holds any part of Ireland.

The message of 1916 could not be clearer; ‘Ireland unfree shall never be at peace’. Starting today let us embark on a commemorative journey that rekindles the fires of revolution; political, social and economic, ideals and ideas which inspired the revolutionary generation of 1913-23. Let us proclaim to all that we still believe in the ‘The right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland.’”

[R . S . F news] Republican Sinn Fein launch No to Fiscal Treaty website

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:30:00 +0000

Republican Sinn Féin launch No to Fiscal Treaty website

As part of its campaign against the 26-County Austerity Treaty Republican Sinn Féin have launched a campaign website: www.nofiscaltreaty.net. The website provides up to date information on the campaign over the coming weeks.

[R . S . F news] Irish Republican Information Service (no. 294)

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:30:00 +0000

In this issue:

1. 1916 remains unfinished business

2. Statement from the Continuity POWs, Maghaberry jail, Co Antrim, Easter 2012

3. National Irish Freedom Committee Easter Message 2012

4. Fight against the privatisation of water and the introduction of water meters

5. NIFC at 'Tent State' Rutgers University

6. POWs punished over Easter Lilies

7. RUC left gun on child's bed after Belfast raid

8. Outrage at Edward Heath memorial plan

9. Stephen McConomy remembered in Derry

10. Greyhound set to issue final City Council waste bills

11. Getting Hillary involved is key to ending IRA tapes saga

12. Riots may be controlled with chemicals

13. ‘Covenant’ parade to converge on Stormont

14. The moral hijacking of Bloody Sunday

1. 1916 remains unfinished business

OVER the weekend of April 6 to 9 Irish Republicans throughout Ireland, England, Scotland and the United States held commemorations in honour of the 1916 Easter Rising.

On April 11 a very successful event took place in Dublin. A well-turned out colour party marched from the Garden of Remembrance led the marchers, and a piper, to the GPO where proceedings were chaired by Andy Connolly, Cathaoirleach, Comhairle Ceantair Átha Cliath.

The 1916 Proclamation was read by Róisín Hayden, a statement from the Republican POWs, Maghaberry jail by Líta Ní Chathmhaoil and the statement from the Leadership by Pádraig Ennis. Margaret Mullen laid a wreath on behalf of the Republican Movement. The oration was delivered by Tomás Ó Clérigh.

Vice-President of Republican Sinn Féin Fergal Moore addressed the commemoration at Castlerea, Co Roscommon; National PRO Geraldine McNamara spoke in Derry and Drumboe, Co Donegal and the Ard Rúnaithe Josephine Hayden and Líta Ní Chathmhaoil spoke in Tralee, Co Kerry and Longford respectively.

Speaking at the Republican Sinn Féin 1916 commemoration at the Republican Plot in Donaghpatrick cemetery, in Co Galway on Easter Sunday, April 8, the President of Republican Sinn Féin Des Dalton said:

“As Irish Republicans we are proud of the long tradition of revolutionary endeavour from which we draw our inspiration and guidance in matters of principle. The 1916 Rising is a pivotal event in that history, providing us with the founding document of the All-Ireland Republic, the Proclamation of Easter Week. It is upon this historic declaration of the ‘right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland’ that we take our stand, and it is from Ireland’s historic right to nationhood that we draw our mandate. That right to nationhood can never be extinguished ‘except by the destruction of the Irish people.’

“Here in Co Galway there is a proud tradition of resistance to the forces of the British Crown, it was in Aughrim in 1691 that the forces of Gaelic Ireland took their last major stand against the Sasanach. It was in Ballymoe in East Galway that Éamonn Ceannt one of the seven signatories first saw the light of day. Outside of Dublin Galway witnessed one of the more significant actions against British forces during Easter Week, 1916. With Liam Mellows in command the forces of the All-Ireland Republic ensured that in the words of C Desmond Greaves: ‘From Oranmore to Ballinasloe, from Tuam to Kinvara, the King’s writ no longer ran on 600 miles of Irish soil.’ Through the following turbulent years of revolution more of Galway’s sons would make the supreme sacrifice in the cause of Irish Freedom, including the Loughnane Brothers of Shanaglish, An tAthair Micheal Ó Gríofa, at the hands of British forces. Later at the hands of the Free State the six martyrs at Tuam and Tony Darcy, who along with his comrade Séan Mac Neela of Co Mayo, died on hunger strike in Arbour Hill in 1940. All of these men died in defence of the All-Ireland Republic of Easter Week and in defiance of its enemies.

“In four years time we will be celebrating the centenary of the 1916 Rising. The speech by Stormont First Minster Peter Robinson marking the centenary of the signing of the so-called Ulster ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ in 1912 in the 26-County Department of Foreign Affairs on March 29 is merely the first step in a campaign to dilute and sanitise the Centenary of the 1916 Rising. The political establishments in Stormont, Leinster House and Westminster have signalled their intention to suppress any meaningful commemoration of the 1916 Rising by burying it in a celebration of the imperialist carnage of the First World War.

“The 1916 Proclamation and the so-called ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ symbolise the fundamental difference in the vision for Ireland held by Irish Republicans as opposed to the forces of imperialism. The ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ is written in the narrow, sectarian and patriarchal language of empire, while the 1916 Proclamation addresses itself to ‘Irishmen and Irishwomen’ in the inclusive language of democracy, progress and human freedom. In many respects the build-up to the Centenary of the 1916 Rising has become a battleground in the war between these competing visions of Ireland, between the imperialist past as represented by partition and increased subjugation by London and Brussels or the vision of hope and aspiration to a new and better Ireland as represented by the Proclamation of the All-Ireland Republic. Instead of the failed and corrupt Ireland of the Mahon and Moriarty tribunals or the institutional sectarianism of Stormont, 1916 represents an Ireland which guarantees religious and civil liberty and equal opportunities, an Ireland that cherishes ‘all of the children of the nation equally’.

We in Republican Sinn Féin have the blueprint for such a New Ireland and it lies in our proposals for federal Ireland, ÉIRE NUA, providing for a truly democratic and inclusive Ireland with maximum decentralisation of power and decision-making from national, right down to local and community level. Taken together with our social and economic programme SAOL NUA they contain the basis for making the All-Ireland Republic of Pearse and Connolly a reality for all of the Irish people. For Irish Republicans the 1916 Rising is much more than an historical event, it symbolises the highest ideals of human and national freedom. While any part of Ireland remains under British occupation or any vestige of our sovereignty is claimed by an undemocratic European superstate 1916 will remain unfinished business.

“The 1916 Rising represents a spirit of idealism and self-sacrifice that has rarely been more needed than in the present time. The Irish people are held in the grip of two imperialisms. In the Six Counties the old imperialism of British occupation and in the 26 Counties the new imperialism of the EU/IMF. Despite the best efforts of the apologists for British Rule in Stormont, Leinster House and Westminster to portray it otherwise, the reality of British Rule on the ground in the Six Occupied Counties as experienced by the nationalist community has not changed. The nationalist people of Lurgan and Craigavon live under a state of siege from the RUC/PSNI. Arbitrary house raids and arrests are the stock-in-trade of these latter day ‘Black-and-Tans’ as they enforce British Rule on the ground with the active support of the Provos. The revelation on Good Friday that four members of the British Colonial police were being suspended for the use of racist and sectarian language should not surprise anyone. The RUC/PSNI remains an institutionally sectarian force. Changing its name and cap badge does not change the nature of the RUC/PSNI, no more than the changing of the RIC to the RUC did in 1922.

In Maghaberry prison young Irish Republican prisoners are locked in a struggle for the same right to political status for which Bobby Sands and his comrades died on hunger strike thirty-one years ago. The fact they have been forced to sustain a dirty protest for more than a year because of the intransigence of the Stormont regime, constitutes a gross violation of even the most basic of human rights. Today we salute the POWs in Maghaberry and pledge them our continued support and also we remember their comrades in Portlaoise prison who too are imprisoned because of their loyalty to the All-Ireland Republic. ‘We love them yet, we can’t forget, the Felons of our Land.’

“In the 26 Counties the political and financial elites of the 26 Counties are lining up with their masters in the EU/IMF to sacrifice their own people in order to bail-out the failed and undemocratic EU and its currency. The political elites of Leinster House and the EU have set the tone for the forthcoming referendum on the EU Austerity Treaty by threatening people with the supposed dire consequences of a rejection of the treaty. Fear and intimidation it seems are again to be the employed by the 26-County Administration and the EU as they attempt to steamroll the Irish people into giving away the last vestiges of independence. Off course we have heard it all before during the referenda on the Lisbon and Nice treaties. And on both occasions people were forced to vote again for treaties they had already rejected. The power elites of the EU are not interested in the will of the people but instead are intent on grabbing even more power using the fear of the people. In this they have willing collaborators in the political establishment of the 26-County State.

“Since the first referendum on joining the then EEC in 1972 Republican Sinn Féin have warned of the consequences for Irish people of becoming entangled in this club of former imperial powers. Unfortunately what we warned of in terms of the consequences for our farming and fishing have been realised with the almost total loss of our fishing industry and the forcing of thousands of our people off the land. Today people are even being denied the right to cut their own turf. We salute and support the communities who are defying the diktats of Brussels in upholding the century’s long tradition of turf cutting in rural Ireland. The people of Ireland are beginning to stir themselves as we can see in the campaigns against the Septic Tank charge - in which our County Councillor here in Co Galway Tomás Ó Curraoin has splayed a leading role –as well as the campaign against the household tax. Again we salute all of those people who refused to be intimidated into registering or paying this unjust tax. It is time we all stood together and fought back, the old and the young, the employed and the unemployed, urban and rural Ireland. On May 31 we can send a clear signal to the political establishments in Leinster House and Brussels that we still believe the right of this and future generations to the ownership and sovereignty of our country by voting No to the Austerity Treaty.

“The attempted Anglicisation of Ireland is being stepped up. Last year we witnessed, at a cost of over €30 million, the visit to the 26 Counties of the Queen of England while this year it was announced that Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann would be used next year to promote the designation of Derry, the historic Doire Cholm Cille as a ‘UK City of Culture’. Irish Republicans would welcome the holding of the Fleadh in Derry but not for the purpose of normalising British Rule. It is evident that the British state is now attempting to co-opt the three strands of a distinct Irish culture, our games, our music and our language in order to prop up British rule in Ireland. It has also been mooted that the Oireachtas festival –celebrating the Irish language – will also be held in Derry next year. In Newry recently the RUC/PSNI held an Irish language public meeting, using the language as a recruiting tool. However former British Secretary of State Peter Hain let ‘the cat out of the bag’ regarding the British governments real attitude to the language. The newspaper Gaelsceal reports Hain as admitting that the promises of an ‘Irish Language Act’ for the Six Counties was off set by moving its ratification from Westminster to Stormont where, Hain proclaimed there would be an ‘inbuilt majority’ against it. The Irish News columnist Patrick Murphy hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that while constitutional nationalism has now fully embraced British rule and thus is drifting from cultural nationalism, which still extols a sense of Irish separateness from Britain, the British Government recognises this: ‘If you were in Whitehall today trying to bed down the latest British victory in Ireland, you would bring cultural nationalism into line with political nationalism. That explains the political pressure to bring the Fleadh to a British government event in Ireland.’

“However in Derry on January 29 this year an alternative message was delivered loud and clear to the political establishments in Stormont, Westminster and Leinster House. People from Derry and throughout Ireland defied the political establishments of partitioned Ireland when they came out on to the streets of Derry to mark the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Three thousand people according to the Irish Times of January 30 made their presence felt in a dignified display of solidarity with the survivors and families of the victims of the British army’s massacre of civil rights marchers in Derry on January 30 1972. Their very presence tells us that the pulse of Irish nationality still beats strong despite the censorship and repression of Britain and its surrogates. Despite everything there remains ‘The risen people who shall take what ye would not give.’

“I can think of no more fitting way to conclude in this sacred place than with the words of Pádraig Mac Piarais. Speaking at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa he warned the occupiers of our country: ‘Rulers and Defenders of Realms had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death: and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! — they have left us our Fenian dead, and, while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.’”

2. Statement from the Continuity POWs, Maghaberry jail, Co Antrim, Easter 2012

A chairde

It is a great honour that we, the Republican POWs here in Maghaberry, have this opportunity once again to address you, the people of Ireland and abroad, on this the 96th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. We extend Easter greetings to our comrades, friends and supporters throughout the world, and would also like to thank Republican Sinn Féin and CABHAIR for all the work done on our behalf. We extend special greetings to our families whose support is invaluable.

As you gather at the graves and monuments of Ireland's patriot dead you do so with great courage, unbowed and unbroken but mindful of the fact that the road ahead has never been harder. But as true Republicans we have never turned our backs on our struggle.

Those of us imprisoned at home and abroad have been so for our political beliefs. Our belief in the Proclamation of 1916 and all that it entails is steadfast and will remain so. As you are aware we the Republican POWs commenced protest action coming up on a year now. This decision was not taken lightly and is a direct result of the non-implementation of the Agreement which was signed on August 12, 2010.

This agreement was signed by Republican POWs in good faith. It had become clear that the British Government and their relevant departments had no intention of implementing the agreement they signed. Once again the British Government has embarked on a criminalisation policy within this concentration camp against Republicans and as such we had no alternative but to commence protest action.

We are Prisoners of War; we cannot be broken or criminalised and any such attempt to do so will be met with resistance. Our protest will continue until we see the full implementation of the August 12 Agreement.

We thank our families, Republicans and comrades for their renewed and continual support.

We, the Republican POWs, applaud those who took to the streets in protest in our name Once again we pledge our full support to the Leadership of Óglaigh na hÉireann and our comrades-in-arms who continue to fight for Irish freedom. We salute you.

We, the POWs, continue to resist all attempts by the NIO to criminalise us and our struggle and with your continued support we are confident of victory. In the words of Liam Lynch “we have declared for a Republic and will live by no other law”.

Continuity not compromise.

Tiocfaidh ár lá.

O/C Republican POWs Maghaberry

3. National Irish Freedom Committee Easter Message 2012

“TO OUR comrades, friends, and supporters gathered in solemn remembrance of the 96th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, we extend greetings. We thank all those who have joined us in supporting traditional Irish Republican principles in the struggle for a united, free Ireland over the past year. As we commence with the Countdown to 2016 program, we find ourselves once again confronted with attempts to criminalise Irish Republicans and de-legitimise the All-Ireland Republic of 1916 - proclaimed, won by force of arms, and twice ratified by the will of the Irish people in the only All-Ireland elections the island has ever witnessed. The Republic is neither a historical footnote nor an ideal to be striven for - though suppressed and driven underground, it is a living nation, the legitimate all-Irish government for which generations of our patriot dead have struggled.

“We particularly acknowledge the sacrifice and the struggle of the Republican Prisoners of War in Maghaberry Prison currently on dirty protest in defence of their rights as prisoners of war. We demand the British immediately implement the August 2010 Agreement and re-assert the rights of the Republican prisoners, as military units swearing allegiance to the legitimate All-Ireland Republic, under the provisions of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. We categorically condemn any attempt to criminalise Irish Republicans for actions in defence of the Republic.

“We support the efforts of the Irish people to organise the defence of their land against corporate greed and political corruption. From Shell-to-Sea to the Vita Cortex workers, the efforts of the Irish people to protect their land, culture, and livelihoods are resounding examples of bravery and commitment. Further, we condemn that same exploitation and corruption which is creating yet another generation of economic refugees. Forced emigration is spreading like an epidemic and is decimating communities and families across the island. We thank those who have chosen to stay and fight, and welcome those who have left in the hopes of a better life.

“The seriousness of the crisis is shown by the rabid campaign of political harassment being carried out against political dissenters. The return of the disgusting practice of internment without trial - exemplified by the cases of Martin Corey and Marian Price - is an affront to the civilised world. We join the people of Ireland and others worldwide in condemnation of this barbaric practice and demand their immediate release.

“We welcome the work of Republican Sinn Féin to promote the ÉIRE NUA peace plan in Ireland, even as our own Republican activists promote it in America. The media and political blackout on this dynamic non-sectarian plan for peace must, and will, be broken. ÉIRE NUA, the four province federal solution remains the only Irish-authored plan for a united Ireland considered a serious proposition by Unionists in the context of a British withdrawal. Taken together with SAOL NUA, the social and economic policies of Republican Sinn Féin to be advanced in a united Ireland, there exists a solid plan for the peaceful reunification of Ireland upholding the principles of both the Proclamation of 1916 and the Democratic Programme of 1919. We must, therefore, end that lie that there is no alternative to the current process and the continuance of the status quo in Ireland.

“Life springs from death and from the graves of dead patriot men and women spring living nations…let us therefore also celebrate this season of rebirth by rededicating ourselves to those principles of Tone, Connolly, Pearse, and others which so inspired those who came before us. We cannot wait for events to reach an even worse crisis level, we can act today for a better tomorrow.

“Long live the Republic of 1916!”

Cumann Na Saoirse Náisiúnta (National Irish Freedom Committee)

http://www.irishfreedom.net/

4. Fight against the privatisation of water and the introduction of water meters

GERALDINE McNamara, PRO, Republican Sinn Féin, stated on April 17 that the decision by Leinster House representative Phil Hogan to hand over the water supply services to an Bord Gáis is an absolute disgrace. This new company is to be known as Irish Water and is to supply water to householders in the 26 Counties.

“It beggar’s belief that the state can remove itself from the responsibility of supplying clean water to its people; clean water is a basic human right and should not be privatised,” Geraldine said.

“Since the collapse of the banking system, the 26-County administration is doing everything to support the bank bailout and is doing this to the determent of the most vulnerable in society. People are being told that on top of water charges they are going to have to pay to have water meters installed at a total charge of nearly €800. This, we are told, will be part of the standing charge and then we will have to pay for every drop of water used.

“This scheme should be resisted with even more gusto than the household tax and is another household charge.

“During the Celtic tiger years local councils were still deprived of finance to upgrade and repair water supply pipes and reservoirs. New housing estates were built with no thought as to the burden on existing water and sewage networks, now when there is a risk of drought here due to low rainfall Phil Hogan is taking advantage of people’s fears to transfer the public water supply into private hands at enormous cost to every individual in the state.”

Geraldine McNamara concluded: “We must fight against this backhanded scheme and keep our water supplied by local councils. Phil Hogan is using the water meter charge to distract people from the point that the supply will be privatised and that water will no longer be supplied free to all in society.”

5. NIFC at 'Tent State' Rutgers University

A National Irish Freedom Committee (NIFC) information booth at Tent State University, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ is in place since April 15 and will be there until April 22. Speakers and events are planned throughout the week. If you are in the area stop by and say hi. This is a joint tent-hosting information about Ireland and Palestine.

Irish/Palestinian solidarity tent is set up - we have info about Martin Corey, CABHAIR, ÉIRE NUA , political prisoners, copies of SAOIRSE, a Palestinian flag, Shell-to-Sea banner, ÉIRE NUA SAOL NUA banner, Irish Republican and Palestinian posters on display.

Cumann Na Saoirse Náisiúnta

National Irish Freedom Committee

http://www.irishfreedom.net/

6. POWs punished over Easter Lilies

ON April 15 it was reported that the Republican prisoners in Maghaberry Prison had been placed under 24-hour lock-up for refusing to remove their Easter Lilies.

The POWs were punished for marking the Easter Rising and locked up on Easter Sunday, April 8 when, they said, visits were also cancelled.

A spokesman for the British Prison Service said “appropriate steps were taken to ensure that the well-known policy on the wearing of lilies was adhered to over the Easter period”.

7. RUC left gun on child's bed after Belfast raid

IT was reported on April 18 that members of the RUC/PSNI had to return to a house to recover a a gun belt including a pistol that was left behind in the operation following the arrest of a man suspected of Republican activity

The British colonial police launched an internal investigation into how a gun and ammunition were left on a child's bed after its members raided a house in north Belfast.

The 39-year-old man who owns the property indicated through the IRSP that he intends to make a complaint about the RUC blunder to the British Police Ombudsman's office in Belfast.

The RUC/PSNI said it was “treating the temporary loss of this equipment extremely seriously” and had started a disciplinary investigation into “the circumstances of the incident”.

8. Outrage at Edward Heath memorial plan

ON April 15 the brother of a teenager murdered on Bloody Sunday condemned plans to erect a memorial stone to Edward Heath, the British prime minister at the time of the 1972 massacre.

The tribute to the late Conservative PM will be mounted at London’s Westminster Abbey and is expected to be unveiled later this year.

Edward Heath, who died in 2005 at the age of 89, served as prime minister between 1970 and 1974.

John Kelly, whose brother, Michael, was among those gunned down on January 30, 1972, described the memorial move as “sickening”.

“I, personally, hold Ted Heath - the political master of the British armed forces in 1972 - among those ultimately responsible for the murder of my brother on Bloody Sunday. To memorialise him in any way is both sickening and contemptible.”

It was in 2003 that Ted Heath gave evidence to the Saville Inquiry hearings in London.

Throughout his testimony, the ex-PM rejected suggestions that the British government had planned the events of Bloody Sunday. As prime minister in 1972, Heath ordered the original Widgery Inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

During his evidence to Saville, he also denied pressuring Lord Widgery into producing a report that was favourable to the security forces and said the conclusions reached were achieved “without fear and favour”.

9. Stephen McConomy remembered in Derry

IN April 1982 eleven year-old Derry schoolboy Stephen McConomy, like hundreds of other children in the city, made his Confirmation. Two weeks later he was dead. He was shot and killed by a plastic bullet, fired by a British soldier just yards from his home in the Bogside.

The St John’s Primary School pupil had been out playing with friends on April 16th, 1982 when a member of the British army’s Royal Anglian regiment shot him in the head with a plastic bullet. Eyewitnesses who tried to go to the boy’s aid were prevented from doing so by the soldiers, who threatened to shoot anyone who went near him. Eventually Stephen was taken to Altnagelvin hospital and then immediately transferred to the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast where he died three days later.

More than 1,000 people attended the schoolboy’s funeral and leading figures, including the Bishop of Derry, Dr Edward Daly, called for an end to the use of plastic bullets.

No British soldiers have ever been charged in connection with the schoolboy’s death.

Emmett McConomy was just seven years-old when his brother was killed but has said it is “still harrowing” for the family.

Emmett said he doesn’t remember much from the time but that his brother’s memory was always with him growing up. “I have been looking at photos of Stephen and it brings everything back,” he said.

“We have his Confirmation photo which was taken less than two weeks before his death. In it he is wearing the same jumper he was wearing when he was shot. The next photo that was taken of him was in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast after he was shot and he was lying unconscious. He was dead a short time later.

“The clothes he was wearing when he was shot were taken away to be examined and were returned to us by the police wrapped in brown paper. My late mother kept that brown paper package with his striped jumper in it in the wardrobe for years after his death,” he said.

Emmett also said that it is clear Stephen was not posing a threat to the soldiers when he was shot. “Stephen was small in stature. There is no way anyone could have taken him for anything other than a child. The army claimed he was shot from a distance of 17 feet; eyewitnesses have told us it was more like seven feet. He was completely innocent. Everyone knows that.

“Stephen lay face down on the grass after he was hit and when others tried to come to his aid the soldiers threatened them saying they would get the same. They knew exactly what they had done,” he said.

His brother said the lack of a proper investigation into the incident added to the family’s pain at the time. “In 2003 we met senior [RUC/]PSNI detectives in Strand Road to get information on the initial police investigation. We were told that the soldier who fired the fatal shot was interviewed under caution and said that it was an accident. That was the extent of the investigation.

“It is unbelievable that someone can take the life of a child and explain it away as an accident and even more unbelievable that it was taken no further than that.

“As a family we have sent letters to the soldiers involved, addressed with their names, but the MoD refused to pass them on to the soldiers, saying it was not their policy. The soldier who shot Stephen wasn’t following Mod policy and broke all the rules.

“He took the plastic bullet gun off the designated gunner and leaned over the driver to fire out a side window. The military said the gun jammed and he was clearing it and pulled the trigger twice. They also claimed the gun was not accurate and that it did not fire in a straight line. Conveniently the gun was later destroyed, despite the fact that it was involved in the death of a child,” he said.

Emmett McConomy also said his mother never got her son’s death. “My mother was always tormented by his death. She never got over it and always expected him to come back through the door. For years she always set a place for him at the table. She never accepted his death. It must be different when someone loses a child as a result of an accident, but it is a very different thing for a mother to have a child murdered and for it not even to be have been properly investigated.

“She then had to go through the trauma of having her home raided by the same regiment who shot her son. They did it just to antagonise her.

“It is a testament to her that she managed to carry on and raise the rest of us. She had the support of many people in the city and that kept her going,” he explained.

The family are engaging with the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) in an effort to find out more about what Stephen’s killing. Emmett now believes that despite the passage of time, the family can still get some answers about what happened to Stephen, although he acknowledges that it is unlikely that the soldier who fired the baton round will ever be prosecuted.

“I don’t think we will ever get full justice. The police failed to investigate properly at the time and, with all the years in between, it seems unlikely, but we live in hope.

“We don’t believe there will be prosecutions but Stephen deserves a proper investigation. He was innocent. He was a citizen and was entitled to the same rights as everyone else. It seems that people living in the North, even children, were not afforded the same rights as everyone else.

“What happened was unjustified. There was nothing in MoD guidelines to justify what happened,” he said.

He also called for a fresh inquest to be held into his brother’s death. “At the time the family were not happy with the original inquest. We will be meeting with the HET next week and while we will wait to see what comes out of that and how their investigation is progressing, it could open up new options to us. Maybe a fresh inquest would bring us some answers,” he added.

The Derry man also said that the family hope to see an end to the use of plastic bullets. “They are still there. They may not be used as frequently as they used to be but the police still have the power to use them and they are still as lethal as ever.

“Watching the coverage of the riots in England last year the hypocrisy was clear. The government said plastic bullets should not be used but their use is still allowed here.

“It is wrong to use plastic bullets on the streets of Manchester or London and it is equally wrong to use them here. There are better alternatives now, and there was even better alternatives 30 years ago. As a family we have always wanted them to be withdrawn. We had hoped that would be the legacy of Stephen’s death. We hoped he would be the last. Unfortunately that has not been the case,” he said. Emmett also said the McConomy family would like to thank the people of Derry for their support throughout the years.

To mark the 30th anniversary of Stephen’s death a plaque will be unveiled on Fahan Street close to the spot where he was shot on Thursday, April 19th at 6pm. This will be followed by an event in the Tower Hotel examining the details of his death and the campaign for justice.

10. Greyhound set to issue final City Council waste bills

FINALLY, in the third week in April, 140,000 households in Dublin city will receive their waste bills for the last quarter of 2011. It is believed that technical problems matching the Greyhound and council IT systems caused further delays after an initial deferral due to data protection concerns.

Council bills, which were due to be issued at the end of December 2011, are now three months overdue. The bills, which will be the last ever to be issued by the council, cover the last quarter of 2011. Despite the bills covering the period in which the council were collecting, the bills will in fact be issued by Greyhound and payments will also be collected by the private operator.

11. Getting Hillary involved is key to ending IRA tapes saga

AFTER recently hearing arguments regarding Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre's quest to judicially challenge Britain's efforts to obtain Boston College's archived IRA interviews pertaining to Jean McConville's death, it's anyone's guess how the US Court of Appeal for the First Circuit will ultimately rule.

But an even bigger question is: What is Hillary Clinton's take on the BC tapes saga?

It may be weeks before the Appeals Court renders its verdict. And, even then, Moloney and McIntyre may fight on – either on the wings of victory, or in the form of an appeal of a negative ruling to the US Supreme Court.

Moloney and McIntyre argue the peace process could be imperilled if the [RUC/]PSNI gets hold of the interviews, and prosecutions of Adams or others ensue. In addition, they say that McIntyre and the former IRA members who took part in the project could be targeted for violence.

Most Americans think that the conflict in Northern Ireland (sic) ended with the Good Friday Agreement. Subsequent agreements on policing structures, the completion of IRA and loyalist decommissioning, and the seating of a DUP-Sinn Féin inclusive Executive were simply loose-ends.

Hence, while the heart-breaking details of Jean McConville's death and secret burial have been enough to garner some press attention, in a world were the violence in Syria and the spectre of an Israeli-Iranian war looms large, the Boston College tapes row hasn't been high on the American media agenda.

But some in Washington have noticed – including Massachusetts senator John Kerry, who chairs the Senate's powerful Foreign Relations Committee.

In February Kerry wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her to use her influence to get Britain to withdraw its request for the BC tapes.

Last week he followed up by penning an opinion piece in the Boston Herald stating that the US-UK treaty at the heart of the case wasn't intended for cases such as this.

The fact that Kerry wrote the opinion piece at all is striking. This isn't an election year for the senior senator from Massachusetts. In the short term, at least, has he has nothing to gain politically from going to bat for BC and its Belfast Project.

That the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has taken such an active interest in the case has surely been noticed by British diplomats in Washington, and likely Downing Street as well.

Matters such as the murder of Jean McConville are matters for law enforcement in the UK, but there is obviously more at play here and this is what diplomats do – try to quietly tidy up 'messy' situations before they get worse.

Clinton has made no secret of her admiration for the peace process and its players, and she clearly values deeply the role that she and her husband have played in helping to bring a substantial measure of peace and stability to the Occupied Six Counties in Ireland.

She has also made it known that, whether or not Barack Obama wins re-election, she'll be stepping down as Secretary of State early next year.

If Hillary Clinton does decide to ask Britain (and hence the PSNI) to back off, given the premium placed on that face-saving in the diplomatic world, she won't do so publicly.

But if Britain does withdraw its request between now and next November, it's a safe bet it'll do so after one of Hillary Clinton's parting peace process interventions as Secretary of State.

Jim Dee, Belfast Telegraph, April 18, 2012

This article appeared in the April 9, 2012 edition of the Belfast Telegraph

12. Riots may be controlled with chemicals

IT was reported on April 9 that future riots could be quelled by ‘projectiles containing chemical irritants’ by British police using new weapons that are now in the final stages of development.

The Discriminating Irritant Projectile (Dip) has been under development by the British Home Office's centre for applied science and technology (Cast) as a potential replacement for plastic bullets.

Documents obtained by the British newspaper the Guardian revealed that the summer 2011 riots in England provided a major impetus to the British Home Office research into new-generation riot control technology, ranging from the Dip to even more curious weaponry described by Cast technicians as “skunk oil”.

The briefing by Cast for the RUC/PSNI said that last year's disorder sparked a surge of ideas to the Home Office from the public as well as companies manufacturing police technology. To capitalise on the interest, Cast convened a “brainstorming” event in October. Participants included police from London and the Six Occupied Counties, the Police Federation, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.

The November briefing, The Development of New Less Lethal Technologies, suggested that the Dips would be loaded into guns used to fire the existing generation of plastic bullets. They would be intended to be accurate at a range of up to 65 metres.

It is understood that the Dip, which was originally supposed to have been introduced in 2010, would be loaded with CS gas, pepper spray or another irritant.

Other parts of the briefing, released under the Freedom of Information Act, refer to a need in the short term by police to develop “counter laser dazzle” technology to protect officers from being dazzled by people using lasers like those used in recent Greek riots.

Large sections of the briefing were redacted by the British Home Office, which designated them as “commercially sensitive”. However, the Guardian said that the “less lethal” technology discussed included heat rays and sound weapons. One weapon that particularly interested police officers was something Cast technicians referred to as “skunk oil”.

The system would involve pellets containing foul-smelling liquids being fired from weapons similar to paintball guns. Such would be the smell that individuals hit by the pellets would want to go home to change their clothes, while associates would be reluctant to stay close to them.

The Guardian also obtained figures illustrating the extent of recent spending by police forces around the country on the existing generation of plastic bullets, now referred to as attenuating energy projectiles (AEPs).

Some forces appear to have decided to considerably boost their stocks. Leicestershire constabulary spent £19,630 buying AEPs in 2010-11, doubling its spending on the previous year. So far in 2011-12 it has spent more than £10,000. Even a relatively small force, Avon and Somerset, which faced serious disorder in Bristol last year during the English riots and on a previous occasion amid anger over a controversial Tesco store, has spent more than £70,000 in the last three years. It also currently possesses 28 AEP launchers. That is 16 more than the larger West Midlands police, which still nevertheless spend more than £53,000 stocking up on AEPs in the last three years.

Gloucestershire police, whose territory was the scene of one of the more surprising outbreaks of rioting last summer, decided to considerably boost its AEP stocks last year. It spent £32,060 doing so, more than double its combined spending in 2009 and 2010.

Elsewhere, Greater Manchester said it had sufficient supplies last year after spending more than £76,000 in the previous two years, while Nottinghamshire has spent £74,000 in the past three years.

A number of forces, including Merseyside and West Yorkshire, declined to provide information. Merseyside used the Home Office's claim that terrorism remains a "substantial" threat as a reason for not providing the information.

A final response has not been provided by the Metropolitan police. The Met commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, told a meeting of the Metropolitan police authority last November that the force authorised the deployment of plastic bullets on at least 22 different dates last year.

Another freedom of information request from the Guardian found that the Home Office supplied £4.4m worth of AEPs between 2007 and March last year to police forces across England and Wales. The projectiles are supplied to the Home Office by the Ministry of Defence for police use.

While the Home Office invoiced forces for £700,000 worth in 2007-08, this rose to £1.2m in each of the following years and to £1.3m in 2010-11.

13. ‘Covenant’ parade to converge on Stormont

THOUSANDS of Orangemen are set to converge on Stormont later this year to mark the centenary of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant according to a report on April 5.

The Orange Order has confirmed that Parliament Buildings will provide the symbolic backdrop for a major parade by members of the loyal institutions in Belfast on September 29.

April’s edition of the Orange Standard – the Order’s monthly publication – reports that Stormont Finance Minister Sammy Wilson has granted permission for the large event to be staged in the grounds of the historic estate.

The route of the march is likely to pass through the city centre en route to Stormont.

Organisers want the route to incorporate the City Hall, the venue for the most famous Covenant signing – led by Sir Edward Carson – in 1912.

The parade will be open to all of the loyal orders, with both the Independent Orange Institution and Apprentice Boys already having confirmed their participation.

Numbers will also be boosted by the attendance of brethren from England and Scotland.

Members of Grand Lodge ratified the plans at a meeting in Bessbrook last month.

On April 18 it was reported that the Orange Order had received a grant of almost £900,000 from the European Union to “help address the legacy of the conflict in Northern Ireland (sic)”.

14. The moral hijacking of Bloody Sunday

FORTY years ago 13 Catholics in Derry were shot dead by British paratroopers. A fourteenth man died from his gunshot wounds five months later. For years, what came to be known as Bloody Sunday was held up by many as an indictment of British rule in Ireland. Yet now it is used to justify British rule in Ireland. One of the most subtle and least-criticised coups carried out by the British state in recent years has been its moral appropriation of this atrocity, its transformation of Bloody Sunday from evidence that Britain plays only a destructive role in Ireland into an event which shows that British largesse, especially of the therapeutic variety, is still required in that apparently childish nation.

The 14 men who were killed, seven of whom were teenagers, had been part of a crowd of 10,000 protesters. They were demanding equal rights for Catholics in housing, employment and voting, in a sectarian, Protestant-run statelet where Catholics were two-and-a-half times as likely as Protestants to be unemployed. In the four years before Bloody Sunday, since a fledgling Catholic civil-rights march in Derry in October 1968 was brutally broken up by the local police force, tensions had been running high in Northern Ireland. The British Army arrived in August 1969 to back up Britain’s local Protestant allies and internment without trial was introduced in August 1971. All marches were banned. It was against this backdrop that thousands of Catholics in Derry defied Britain’s emergency laws and marched for civil rights on 30 January 1972.

The response of the paratroopers transformed the conflict. The belief of many Catholics that it was possible to reform Northern Ireland, to make it a more equal place, was shattered by the brutal force with which Britain seemed determined to preserve the sanctity of one of its few remaining colonies. Huge numbers of nationalists were radicalised by Bloody Sunday, coming to believe that it was only through the expulsion of British forces from Northern Ireland, and the unification of Ireland, that proper freedom could be attained. There followed a long, bloody war between the IRA and British military forces.

In recent years, however, the history of Bloody Sunday has subtly yet dramatically been rewritten. Through academic revisionism and political opportunism, and particularly through the 12-year Bloody Sunday Inquiry overseen by Lord Saville of Newdigate from 1998 to 2010, Bloody Sunday has been turned from an historic event into a private tragedy, from an incident in a war that had been brewing for four years, and which continued for another 20, into a freak encounter between trigger-happy paras and innocent Catholics. Bloody Sunday has been wrenched from its historical context and transformed instead into a kind of one-off tragic drama starring evil British soldiers (who were severely chastised by the Saville Inquiry) and mostly decent Catholic protesters (the victims were exonerated by Saville and their families were apologised to by David Cameron).

The impact of the rewriting of the Bloody Sunday story by the modern British state has been twofold: first, it has helped to dehistoricise that day; and second, it has helped turn it into a vehicle for therapeutic intervention into the lives of people in Northern Ireland, who apparently require a new army of British-funded experts to help them come to terms with their tragic pasts.

The removal of Bloody Sunday from history can be seen most clearly in the conclusions of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. Unlike the initial inquiry into Bloody Sunday, carried out by Lord Widgery in 1972 and widely written off as a whitewash, the more recent Saville Inquiry is seen as providing the Official Version of Events. Yet the key accomplishment of Saville was its abstraction of Bloody Sunday from the historical flow, its removal of 30 January 1972 from any sense of continuity between 1921 (when Partition was enforced) and 1968 (when northern Catholics first started rising up) and the early 1970s (when the British state responded with martial law). Instead, through inviting the families of the 14 victims to express their emotions in a rarefied chamber while simultaneously slapping the wrists of the soldiers involved, Saville reduced Bloody Sunday to the super-violent equivalent of a playground fight that called for a good headmaster to intervene and make amends.

Courtesy of Saville, Bloody Sunday is now understood as a day on which certain British soldiers went OTT (Saville said the paras ‘lost control’;), causing great distress to certain Derry families. Of course Bloody Sunday is an occasion of private grief - but it is also an historic event with causes and consequences. All of that has been airbrushed from the record by a process of official remembering which has reduced Bloody Sunday to something like the Dunblane massacre, only involving paras and Catholics rather than a lone gunman and schoolchildren. Saville didn’t whitewash the individual paratroopers’ responsibility for the events, in the way Widgery did; no, he partook in a far more profound form of whitewashing, turning Bloody Sunday from a political quake into an out-of-control streetfight. In focusing attention on the misjudgement and moral turpitude of individual soldiers, Saville whitewashed the historical role of the British state in using force to deny democracy and equality in Ireland.

Indeed, so thorough has been the lawyerly makeover of Bloody Sunday that the British state, the author of the atrocity, can now assume its moral authority in Ireland through taking an apologetic approach to such tragic historic events. In scolding some of its soldiers and offering apologies to their victims, the British state has extricated itself from the history and politics of Bloody Sunday, taking the elevated position of a dispassionate fixer of past wrongs. Today, one of the key ways Britain justifies its continuing presence in Ireland is as a moral manager of the past, a facilitator of reconciliation between hurting communities - and its moral hijacking of Bloody Sunday has been a key plank in this rehabilitation of its rule in a neighbouring nation.

In response to the controversy over the fact that the Saville Inquiry cost a total of £200million, Lord Eames, the Lord Archbishop of Armagh, said no price was too high when it came to combatting the ‘psychological trauma’ inflicted by such events, because ‘this hidden consequence or legacy of The Troubles is probably just as desperate a need to meet as any of the physical’. It was a revealing statement. Bloody Sunday has become bound up in a new theory which says that certain ‘out of control’ events in the war of 1969-1994 didn’t only cause trauma to individuals and families, but also ‘national trauma’, which it is incumbent upon Britain’s lords, lawyers and psychologists to address. Indeed, Lord Eames himself is co-chairman of the Consultative Group on the Past, a vast outfit devoted to working out how to deal with the psychological ‘legacy’ of The Troubles, while untold amounts of money have been pumped into investigating the scale of ‘national trauma’ (one academic survey estimated that 22 per cent of people in Northern Ireland are still struggling to cope mentally with events from the war). The Office of the First Minister of Northern Ireland has produced a report titled Living With the Trauma of The Troubles, which implores all political actors to recognise the ‘long-term social and psychological effects of these traumatic events’.

What we have here is a profound reorganisation of Britain’s political authority over the Irish people. Where once Britain justified its rule in Ireland in moral or nationalistic terms, talking about the need to protect the Protestants in the North from being swallowed by an ‘intolerant’ Irish Republic, now it justifies its presence in therapeutic terms, presenting itself as the neutral provider of psychological repair to suffering people, including those whose suffering was caused by British elements who ‘lost control’. This new approach reproduces many of the prejudices of old, only in more PC lingo: once, British propagandists presented the Irish as a fickle, childish people, not up to the serious business of controlling their own affairs; now, they depict them as a traumatised, damaged people, requiring the constant care of brain experts and bishops funded from the British purse. Both historically and today, Irish people’s political capabilities and moral robustness have been cast into doubt by outside actors keen to assume moral authority over them.

Bloody Sunday was not a freak incident in which paras ‘lost control’ - it was part of a war by the British state to maintain control over its colony of Northern Ireland. And now, 40 years on, that same tragic event is used by the same British state to reassert, in therapeutic terms, its governance of Northern Ireland. Historians will surely look back in amazement at how cynically and successfully Britain took moral ownership of Bloody Sunday.

-- Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/12022/

Statement from the Republican POWs, Maghaberry Jail

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:25:00 +0000

Statement from the Continuity POWs, Maghaberry jail, Co Antrim, Easter 2012

A chairde,

We thank our families, Republicans and comrades for their renewed and continual support.

Continuity not compromise.

Tiocfaidh ár lá.

O/C Republican PoWs Maghaberry

[R . S . F news] Easter Statement 2012

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:25:00 +0000

Easter Statement from the Leadership of the Republican Movement

ON the occasion of the 96th anniversary of the momentous Easter Rising of 1916 the Leadership of the Republican Movement sends greetings to Irish exiles throughout the world and to all Irish Republican prisoners.

In particular we salute the prisoners in Maghaberry Prison, Co Antrim who have been on protest for political status for two years this Easter. The British, and the Stormont regime which includes our former comrades who have accepted and now administer British rule in the Six Occupied Counties, entered into an agreement with the prisoners in August 2010 to end strip-searching.

They reneged on that arrangement. They never implemented the alternative of the BOSS chair and so the no-wash strike continues. Even the secretary of the prison warders’ union has stated publicly that the protest should be settled.

Meanwhile there is a publicity black-out on the plight of the prisoners while their comrades outside do their utmost to support them. The political status won at such great cost by the heroic hunger strikers was signed away as just another of the many surrenders to English rule in Ireland by the Provo leadership.

The state visit by the British monarch to the 26 Counties in the past year – the first such in 100 years – was intended to normalise British rule in Ireland and put the seal on the current sell-out of the Six Counties to England. Republican Sinn Féin’s protests on that occasion delivered a clear message.

Empty streets in Dublin and carefully-selected audiences elsewhere showed the performance to be a failure. Yet the Establishment persists in calling it a “success”. But the reality was on the ground – and at a cost of €38 million for security.

Then in February the GAA sold out its independence and the ideals of its founders when it accepted a massive amount of English money -- £61 million in sterling or €77 million euro – to develop Casement Park in Belfast. Roger Casement got the English hangman’s rope but those who use his name allow themselves to be exploited by Stormont just as others contribute to the city of Derry – historic Doire Cholm Cille – being the British “City of Culture” in 2013. Those who pay the piper undoubtedly call the tune!

As the centenary of the fateful Easter Rising of 1916 approaches the intentions of the Leinster House establishment become clearer to all. They want to combine commemorations of 1916 with those for members of the British forces involved in the imperialist World War I.

Republicans must clarify the issue for the Irish people. We salute the memory of those who died for Irish freedom. Others can pay homage otherwise to their dead, many of whom were forces for economic reasons to take part in the 1914-18 “war to end all wars”.

A further step has been taken to integrate the 26-County state forces into the British war machine with the announcement that RUC soldiers are now suitable to join the ranks of the 26-County police even up to top level. These new arrangements will bring the British forces back south of the Border 90 years after they were driven out by the men and women we honour today.

At the same time a combination of the International Monetary Fund, the EU Commission and the European Central Bank is dictating the pace for many years to come in eroding the limited sovereignty of the 26-County state. Undue hardship is being wantonly inflicted on ordinary people while the well-off continue to thrive.

The good name of the Republican Movement, valid since 1986, is under attack again. Criminality masquerades as Republicanism and confuses the Irish people. The name of Republican Sinn Féin and of the Continuity IRA have even been stolen by a minuscule local grouping in its reckless attempt to bewilder further those who stand for the full freedom of Ireland.

The people who rejected constitutionalism and reformism and stood staunchly by the revolutionary road when it was deserted and betrayed in 1986, have upheld the banner of Irish Republicanism down the years. They merit the support of Republican-minded people even as the no-wash protest continues in Maghaberry Jail.

Martin Corey of Lurgan, Co Armagh, who spent 19-and-a-half years in a British jail in the 1970s and 1980s, was returned to prison two years ago. He is now spending his third Easter in jail on no charge whatever. It is nothing short of internment again.

Republicans and their followers who support Martin and the prisoners on protest have been brought before British courts in the Six Occupied Counties for holding peaceful demonstrations on the streets.

Let us, in our turn, stand by the same Cause, the Cause we uphold today, the Cause of Pearse, Connolly and the men and women of Easter 1916!

An Phoblacht Abú. Long Live the All-Ireland Republic.

-- Issued by the Leadership of the Republican Movement, Easter 2012.

[R . S . F news] Robinson speech is attempt to suppress true meaning of 1916

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:20:00 +0000

Robinson speech is attempt to suppress true meaning of 1916

Statement by the President of Republican Sinn Féin Des Dalton

The speech by Stormont First Minster Peter Robinson marking the centenary of the signing of “Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant” in 1912 in the 26-County Department of Foreign Affairs is the first step in a campaign to dilute and sanitise the Centenary of the 1916 Rising.

The political establishments in Stormont, Leinster House and Westminster have signalled their intention to suppress any meaningful commemoration of the 1916 Rising by burying it in a celebration of the imperialist carnage of the First World War.

The 1916 Proclamation and the so-called “Solemn League and Covenant” symbolise the fundamental difference in the vision for Ireland held by Irish Republicans as opposed to the forces of imperialism. The Solemn League and Covenant was written in the narrow, sectarian and patriarchal language of empire, while the 1916 addresses itself to “Irishmen and Irishwomen” in the inclusive language of democracy, progress and human freedom.

Irish Republicans unapologetically declare that 1916 will remain unfinished business while “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland” continues to be denied by either the old imperialism of British occupation or the new imperialism of the EU and IMF.

[R . S . F news] Fines for honouring Ireland's patriot dead

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:20:00 +0000

Fines for honouring Ireland’s patriot dead

IN A statement on March 21 a spokesperson the Joe Conway/Brendan Watters Cumann, Republican Sinn Féin, Newry, Co Down said:

“We wish to put on record our disgust at the British judicial system here in occupied Ireland after five Republican Sinn Féin members from Co Armagh were heavily fined following an Easter commemoration in Lurgan, Co Armagh in 2011.

“The Republican Sinn Féin members were found guilty on March 7 in the British courts for simply honouring Ireland’s patriot dead last Easter. One member from our

Cumann was however acquitted after an RUC/PSNI witness was discredited for fabricating evidence against him.

“The heavy fines handed out are further proof that British rule in Ireland is continuing to brutalise republicans opposed to the partitionist set up in Ireland.”

[R . S . F news] Irish Republican Information Service (no. 293)?

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:20:00 +0000

In this issue:

1. RSF Armagh oppose loyalist band parade

2. British state spends thousands of pounds on farcical trial

3. McGuinness prepared to meet Queen of England

4. Nuala O'Loan slams Ombudsman on investigation of murders

5. Garda to open ranks to RUC members

6. ‘Free Marian’ letter campaign launched

7. Inquest opens into IRA men shot dead by SAS in 1990

8. Coroner demands answers from RUC/PSNI over files

9. British army looking to recruit in Six Counties

10. Schoolboy charged with rioting told not to enter the Six Counties

11. Students claim victory over British military on campus

12. An Bord Pleanala decision on Slane bypass welcomed

13. Over 300 Irish a week moving to New York to find work

14. BC subpoenas are legally dumb and dumber

15. The People's Front 3rd International Symposium

16. Outrage as Nike issue 'Black and Tan' sneaker line for St. Patrick’s Day

17. Five murdered Irish emigrants reburied

1. RSF Armagh oppose loyalist band parade

THE decision by organisers of a loyalist parade to march through Armagh

City on St Patrick’s Day has been condemned by the local Republican Sinn

Féin Cumann.

The PRO of the Charlie Agnew Cumann said on March 8: "Republican Sinn Féin view the forthcoming loyalist band parade as an attack on the family orientated festival due to take place in the city. The motives behind this band march are highly questionable and could be deemed intimidating to the many families and others who will be celebrating the Festival of St. Patrick."

She continued: "There is a feeling among the local community that the city and the festivities are being hi-jacked by these loyalist bands. Armagh, being the historic city of St. Patrick and boasting two Cathedrals in his name, has always been host to cross-community events; the intrusion of upwards of 40 loyalist bands will sour the normally good atmosphere of the day.

“Local businesses will be adversely affected in this time of economic woes. This Band Parade will provoke tensions and is causing bad feeling in our City"

Republican Sinn Féin has serious concerns with regards to the logic behind the timing and location of this Loyalist Band parade. In light of the local opposition to this parade Republican Sinn Féin calls on the organisers to re think their position and logic in regards to this parade.

2. British state spends thousands of pounds on farcical trial

FIFTEEN people, including the President and Vice-President of Republican Sinn Féin, were fined between £300 and £700 at Craigavon Court on March 8, 2012.

The savage fines were imposed for the so-called “crime” of marching through part of Lurgan in January last year (2011) demanding the release of political hostage Martin Corey, a local man who is being held in Maghaberry jail for the last two years without charge or trial.

Yesterday's outcome in Craigavon court was the result of a long and costly trial. Over 20 RUC/PSNI witnesses were called and several months were given over to the case.

A spokesperson for the POW Department of Republican Sinn Féin said the numbers of RUC members called was “indeed excessive, and very expensive”.

"The cuts being imposed on the people of the Occupied Six Counties to fund such a farce as was seen in Craigavon yesterday is the crime, not the march through Lurgan."

3. McGuinness prepared to meet Queen of England

ON March 15 it was reported that Martin McGuinness has indicated that he may be prepared to meet Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, acknowledging for the first time that she impressed him during her visit to Ireland in May 2011.

The British Queen is due to visit the occupied Six Countie this summer as part of her diamond jubilee celebrations.

Martin McGuinness told RTÉ: “Was I pleased that she spoke Irish at Dublin Castle? I was. Was I pleased that she stood very reverently to honour those who had given their lives in the Easter Rising for Ireland’s freedom? I was impressed by that.

”But what was I most impressed with? I was most impressed with her speech in Dublin Castle when she talked about how we could all have wished that things could have been done differently, or not at all.

”I think that when she said that — that was her acknowledgement, this is my interpretation — that Britain could have done an awful lot of things better in the past."”

That’s one way of putting centuries of oppression, murder and land-grabbing.

4. Nuala O'Loan slams Ombudsman on investigation of murders

IT was reported on March 14 that former Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan had current ombudsman Al Hutchinson’s handling of a second investigation into murders carried by the UVF — and allegations of police collusion in the crimes. Al Hutchinson is leaving his post at the end of this month. His departure was hastened after questions were raised about working practices within his office.

On the eve of leaving her post in 2007, Nuala O’Loan launched the Ballast report, an investigation into collusion between the RUC and the UVF in the murder of Raymond McCord jnr in 1997.

Several murders committed by informants working for Special Branch were also investigated. However, five years later, an investigation by AL Hutchinson into collusion appears to have made little headway. It follows a public storm after nine men were acquitted of the murder of UDA commander, Tommy English. They included the alleged former UVF leader in north Belfast, Mark Haddock.

Speaking on the BBC’s Spotlight programme, Nuala O’Loan said it was important that the Ombudsman worked as fast as the PSNI.

She said: “My belief is that the current Ombudsman is under the same statutory obligation as I was and that these matters should be investigated. If you have police officers who are handlers or controllers who may have committed crimes, that needs to be dealt with as a matter of priority.”

5. Garda to open ranks to RUC members

RECRUITMENT to fill senior positions within An Garda Síochána are for the first time to be open to those working in the RUC/PSNI, according to a report in the Irish Times of March 18.

26-County Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said he “very much welcomes” the opportunity to put the radical new system in place. “These new regulations mark a truly historical further step in relations between the two forces,” he said.

However, Garda sources were critical of what they saw as a lack of full consultation between the minister and his officials and the main Garda representative bodies.

The new, more open recruitment system was provided for in the Inter-Governmental Agreement on Policing Co-operation that was signed a decade ago. It resulted from recommendations in the Patten report on policing in the Six Counties.

A move to the Republic would be seen as attractive to many senior RUC/PSNI members because the rates of remuneration and expenses are higher in the Garda.

With immediate effect, when vacancies arise in the Garda at the rank of inspector, superintendent, chief superintendent or assistant commissioner, the competitions to fill them will be open to RUC/PSNI members as well as serving gardaí. The two most senior ranks in the Garda – deputy garda commissioner and garda commissioner – will still be filled by Government appointment from within the force.

However, if RUC/PSNI members were successful in securing any one of the vacancies currently at assistant commissioner level, they would be eligible in the next few years to be appointed by the Dublin Administration to the position of deputy garda commissioner or garda commissioner. Until now only those serving as gardaí were eligible to apply for other, more senior, positions in the Garda.

In recent years there have been exchange programmes between the Garda and RUC/PSNI. These have facilitated relatively small numbers working for the other force for a period.

However, the scheme unveiled yesterday represents the first time that members of the RUC/PSNI could resign from their senior positions in the North in favour of a permanent senior post in the Garda.

6. ‘Free Marian’ letter campaign launched

ON March 13 a group of Marian Price supporters launched a letter-writing campaign calling for her to be freed from “ongoing internment and torture.”

Marian Price has been detained in prison for 11 months after her licence was revoked by Sec. of State Owen Paterson. On February 17 she was moved to the health care centre in Hydebank as concerns for her welfare mounted. The lobby group describe themselves as political activists who are ‘non-aligned to any political party.’

“Many of us do not even share the political beliefs held by Marian Price,” said local spokesperson Pauline Mellon. “We are seeking to highlight the case from a human rights, and lack of justice perspective. We want to hold the powers that be to account. While many of us do not support Marian’s views, we do support her right to a fair trial, due process and natural justice. Her incarceration is an affront to those things and harks back to the worst days of the conflict here and none of us wish to return to any aspect of those.

”The group are asking members of the public to down load a copy of the letter, sign it and post it to the British Secretary of State.

The letter states that: “Marian Price, a woman desperately in need of urgent healthcare is serving a prison sentence for offences committed nearly 40 years ago, offences she was pardoned for. The pardon that could secure her release has been conveniently lost or shredded. The idea that an unelected, unaccountable English politician can over-rule the Northern Ireland judiciary and disregard the justice powers devolved to Stormont is of real concern.”

Mrs. Mellon said: “Unlike decades ago we can’t point the finger of blame to Westminster. Secretary of State Owen Paterson has decided that Marian is a threat to society but two judges have granted her bail, therefore they do not agree with his assessment.”

Draft letters can be downloaded from www.freemarian.co.nr

7. Inquest opens into IRA men shot dead by SAS in 1990

ON March 12 the inquest opened in Belfast into the deaths of Dessie Grew and Martin McGaughey died in an SAS ambush in October 1990.

The incident prompted allegations that the British Crown Forces were still operating a “shoot-to-kill” policy in Six Occupied Counties.

The court heard that the 11-strong jury would have to consider how the two men came to be at an isolated farm building and how they met their deaths. In May last year, the supreme court in London ruled that a coroner must examine the “planning and control of the operation” that led to the shootings.

Martin McGaughey, a 23-year-old Provisional councillor, and DessieGrew, a former member of the Irish National Liberation Army, were killed o isolated farm outbuildings at Lislasley outside Loughgall, Co Armagh.

The court will be told that four undercover soldiers fired 72 rounds at the two men. Autopsy reports showed Grew sustained 48 wounds and McCaughey was hit by 10 bullets.

Three AK47 rifles were later found beside the men.The farm was believed to have been under surveillance by an army undercover unit.

Over the next few weeks the inquest will hear from more than 30 witnesses. Twelve soldiers, who have all been granted anonymity, and five former RUC officers, are due to give evidence to the inquest.

The case has become one of the oldest outstanding inquests in the Six Counties. Lawyers for the men's families have claimed that the failure to hold a prompt inquest breached their right to life under European legislation.

Relatives sought a ruling by the Supreme Court after disagreements about the parameters of the inquest. The coroner must comply with article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, even though the Human Rights Act 1998 was not in force at the time of the shootings.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that states have a duty to investigate suspicious deaths.

The jury was told by Coroner Brian Sherrard that throughout the three-week hearing it would hear evidence from the soldiers that they believed the men were going to fire at them.

In a statement read to the court Dr Brian Cupples, who checked the men’s bodies shortly after they died, said that two guns lay close to the victims’ bodies and that ammunition was inside one of the men’s pockets. He said one of the men was wearing a green boiler suit and gloves.

“There was evidence of multiple gunshot wounds to the body. There was no evidence of any struggle having taken place after the shooting, with death occurring at the immediate time of the shooting,” he said.

The other man was wearing a jersey, jeans and gloves. He was lying face up and a rifle was nearby.

“A rifle magazine was protruding from the trouser pocket,” Dr Cupples said.

On March 13 the commanding officer of the SAS unit that shot dead the two men has denied they were operating under a shoot-to-kill policy.

Soldier K told the inquest in Belfast that all soldiers followed the yellow card policy where they only opened fire if their lives were in danger. He said the army were there to provide reassurance, deterrent and attrition.

However, documents provided by the Ministry of Defence to the inquest outlined that soldiers were aware that part of their role was to kill or capture terrorists.

8. Coroner demands answers from RUC/PSNI over files

THE most senior coroner in the Six Counties, John Leckey, has demanded answers from the RUC chief constable over an apparent last-minute change of British colonial police policy on disclosing files about alleged shoot-to-kill incidents during the Troubles, according to a report on March 9.

He has given representatives of Matt Baggott seven days to tell him why he was now objecting to his plan to process an estimated one million documents relating to nine long-delayed inquests.

Families of the dead have expressed “dismay and shock” at a move which John Leckey's lawyer warned could jeopardise the scheduled start of the inter-linked inquests in April next year.

The cases involves six people, including IRA men and a Catholic teenager, who were shot dead by the security forces around Lurgan and Armagh in 1982 amid claims there was a deliberate intention to kill them.

The coroner will also examine the deaths of three Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers in a bomb blast weeks earlier, an attack allegedly carried out by the IRA men who were subsequently gunned down and therefore seen as a potential motivation for the claimed shoot-to-kill policy.

An investigation into whether police set out to kill was carried out in the years after the incidents by former Greater Manchester Police deputy chief constable John Stalker and Sir Colin Sampson of West Yorkshire Police.

The Stalker and Sampson reports were long classified top secret but the RUC/PSNI finally handed over edited versions to the coroner in 2010 after a long legal battle. The reports were then passed to lawyers for the families.

The latest issue to hit the inquests relates to 85 boxes of material held by the British police, upon which the reports are based.

As they did with the main reports, the RUC intend to apply for Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificates to exempt certain details contained within the 175,000 documents, such as names of police and witnesses, from being passed to the court on security grounds.

With the inquests due to be heard in sequence, John Leckey planned to deal with the issue of PII and subsequent disclosure to the court on a rolling basis, with only material relating to each incident being processed before that specific case.

John Leckey and lawyers for the families believed the RUC/PSNI supported the rolling process which was first set out by the coroner in 2008. However, at the beginning of March, with the coroner at the stage where he could hear the first PII application, he received a letter from the police indicating they now had a "fundamental difficulty" with the PII issue.

The RUC/PSNI said it wanted to examine all the documents relating to the nine deaths and deal with all the PII issues before the first inquest started.

In response, the coroner's lawyers have now penned a letter putting a series of questions to the PSNI, demanding answers within seven days. One question challenged Mr Baggott: why has there been such a delay on matters so obviously urgent on such a fundamental issue?

The letter also expressed concern whether the PSNI was deploying sufficient resources to the task of reviewing the material.

At this morning's hearing in the coroners' court, John Leckey said he needed to know what the police's issue was.

“Someone must have advised the chief constable: there is a fundamental difficulty, we've got to put a stop to this,” he said. “And I presume the chief constable was advised what this fundamental difficulty was.”

John Leckey's barrister Frank O'Donoghue QC told him the April 2013 start date would be under threat if the matter was not resolved.

“The hearing on 8th April 2013 is now in considerable jeopardy and that has a considerable knock-on effect in regards to booking of courts and calling of witnesses,” he said.

But the coroner told the families' lawyers that he still hopes the date could be met.

“I don't want your clients to think I am forgetting about 8th April 2013. It's still my intention to start then,” he said.

Frank O'Donoghue said the RUC would not be the only organisation involved in the PII process. The Crown Solicitors Office is also representing the Ministry of Defence, the Security Services and "other agencies".

The barrister told the coroner that the court had not been informed who the other agencies are.

“Who are the other agencies?” responded the coroner. “I want them identified by name.”

John Leckey is investigating the deaths of IRA men Eugene Toman, Sean Burns and Gervaise McKerr near Lurgan, Co Armagh in November 1982.

The RUC fired 109 bullets into the car the three were travelling in, claiming it had crashed through a checkpoint.

The other alleged shoot-to-kill incidents Mr Leckey will examine are the deaths of teenager Michael Tighe, shot dead by the RUC in November 1982 at a hay shed near Craigavon, Co Armagh where rifles were stored, and suspected INLA men Roddy Carroll and Seamus Grew, shot dead at a police checkpoint near Armagh in December 1982.

The inquests are due to start next April, running chronologically. The bomb attack on the three RUC officers will be examined first.Bottom of Form

9. British army looking to recruit in Six Counties

THE British Crown Forces are hoping to recruit 750 new recruits in the Six Counties over the next 12 months.

Jobs with the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and Army will be full and part-time - and cover a wide range of trades and professions including engineers, medics and logistical personnel.

The British army wants to recruit 600 people, half of them part-time with the Territorial Army. Postgraduates can train as officers with a starting salary of more than £24,000.

10. Schoolboy charged with rioting told not to enter the Six Counties

A 13-year-old school-boy from County Donegal has appeared at Londonderry Magistrates' Court. He was charged with offences connected to disturbances in the Madams Bank Road area of the city on March 12.

The schoolboy, from Newtowncunningham, is charged with committing riotous behaviour and with causing criminal damage to an RUC Land Rover. He was released on bail and was told not to enter the Six Counties except to attend court appearances.

District Judge Barney McElholm said he could not impose a curfew on the juvenile because he lived outside the jurisdiction but added that the juvenile's parents could impose their own curfew on him.

The court was cleared of members of the public in advance of the remand hearing. Seven members of the juvenile's family were allowed to remain in court for the hearing.

11. Students claim victory over British military on campus

A GROUP calling for the British Army to keep out of Queen’s University claimed a victory after an event by the head of the campus’ Officer Training Corp (OCT) was “postponed”.

A protest was held on March 10 at the Student Union, by the Campaign to Demilitarise Education group, comprising students and Republicans, calling for an end to the “British Military on campus”.

The protest was held before a planned “leadership course” was due to take place at the university by the Commanding Officer of the OCT, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Maundrell.

Following the protest, Queen’s University confirmed the event was postponed, but a spokesperson refused to comment on the reason behind the move.

However, a spokesperson for the campaign, Éamonn Ó Maolmhuaidh told the South Belfast News during the demonstration that the group believed pressure from the protest was working in their bid to see ‘troops off campus’.

“We want to see our university demilitarised,” he said.

“This is also about forcing the university to live up to its ethos as a place for all students to feel comfortable studying in. The Officer Training Corps makes a mockery of that idea.”

The group claim a previous event in which the OTC were to hold an information stall was axed due to the threat of peaceful protest, and have said their actions are in the spirit of “radical student politics”.

Following the protest, Éamonn Ó Maolmhuaidh said the group later learned the OTC event had been called off.

“This is proof that our protests have the power to get our point across,” he added.

A spokesperson for Queen’s University said the event had been postponed but as yet no date had been decided upon for it to be reheld.

The OTC is an offshoot of the Territorial Army. A Ministry of Defence spokesman confirmed that the leadership course was cancelled, but declined to comment on the reason for the decision.

12. ‘An Bord Pleanala decision on Slane bypass welcomed’

THE campaigning organisation Save Newgrange welcomed the announcement on March 7 that An Bord Pleanala had refused planning permission for the N2 Slane Bypass, in County Meath and called on the Minister for Transport, the NRA and Meath County Council to immediately implement a HGV ban of the village.

The group had launched a Facebook campaign, after the route, which was proposed to pass within 500m of the Newgrange/Brú na Bóinne UNESCO World Heritage Site, was announced by Meath County Council, in December 2009.

Extensive legal submissions were made by members of the group to An Bord Pleanala, and numerous high-profile archaeologists, such as Professor George Eogan, Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at UCD, objected to the plan.

The 3.5km bypass was to be part of the larger M2/A5 Dublin to Derry road upgrade, which is still in planning in Northern Ireland (sic), and which is to be the longest road project ever built in Ireland. It had been mooted as part of the St. Andrews Agreement.

Other objections were voiced, regarding the design and funding of the bypass, by Dr. Edgar Morgenroth, Transport Economist with the ESRI., who called it "idiotic."

Campaign spokesperson, Vincent Salafia, said:

“This is a huge victory for heritage and sustainable development in Ireland.

“The UNESCO World Heritage Site is our most popular tourist attraction, which will play a key role in our economic recovery, and it deserves the highest level of legal protection.

“We urge the authorities to immediately implement a HGV ban in the village, in order to protect drivers, villagers and the heritage value of the village.”

13. Over 300 Irish a week moving to New York to find work says expert

UP to 300 Irish a week are moving to New York to seek work, according to Agnes Delaney, the Chairwoman of the Aisling Irish Community Centre in New York.

Her comments were made in an interview with WCBS News early in March.

“We probably see about 300 people come through these doors every week,” she said. “More and more are coming, especially for the last four years, since 2008, when the economy in Ireland started to go down.”

She says they have the same good work ethic that generations of previous Irish have.

“It’s not that they’re walking in the door and saying ‘Poor me.’ They’re walking in the door and looking for the adventure and looking for work,” she said.

The flood of new Irish is confirmed by Paul Finnegan, executive director of the New York Irish centre in Long Island City.

“I get e-mails all the time from people in Ireland wondering how they can come to live and work legally in the United States,” he said. “We implement the ancient Irish spirit of welcome, which is the Gaelic word Fáilte, so everyone is welcome here,” said Paul Finnegan, speaking of the centre.

He said that efforts to secure the E3 Visa that would allow more Irish to come to work here legally are critical.

“Nobody’s looking for preferences for the Irish. We’re just looking for a level playing field,” he said. “I have a very hard time telling people in Ireland that want to come here that they really shouldn’t consider it unless they have a viable option to become legal here.

The E3, which has been bottled up by Senator Charles Grassley in the senate, would allow 10,500 reciprocal working visas for the Irish in America. Twenty other counties have reciprocal visa arrangements with the US but Ireland has none.

14. BC subpoenas are legally dumb and dumber

SLOWLY, but inexorably, the penny is dropping, both here in the United States as well as back in Ireland.

The Boston College subpoenas seeking access to oral history interviews with former IRA activists on behalf of the police in Northern Ireland are about the dumbest things that have ever happened in the long relationship between the United States, Britain and Ireland.

The difficulty is not how to describe why they are so dumb, but in counting the ways in which they are so dumb.

First of all, this is not the way in which to heal a conflict like that in the North of Ireland.

Over 3,000 people died and tens of thousands were scarred, physically and mentally, by a war that was undoubtedly one of the longest and most violent, if not the most violent in Irish history.

But the war has now ended, peace reigns and there is a desperate need for dealing with the past in a way that solidifies that peace and ensures an untroubled future.

The British have chosen a way that does the opposite. The Boston College subpoenas symbolise an approach to this issue based on revenge and the view that alleged combatants in that war should be dragged before the courts, convicted and jailed.

To do this, they created a special police unit, the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), put it under the control of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and authorized it to dig up evidence to support criminal prosecutions.

The emphasis in this approach is on retribution and punishment. Yet anyone who has had dealings with victims of the violence in Northern Ireland knows full well that most just want to know what happened to their loved ones. Who killed their father, brother, son, mother, sister, wife? Why did they do it, and did their loved one suffer?

There are exceptions of course but most I have had dealings with seek the truth, not revenge, and I strongly suspect they are in the majority.

What they want most of all is a proper truth recovery process. South Africa provided one model, a truth and reconciliation commission in which perpetrators were offered an amnesty in return for full candour about their deeds.

They could have chosen the British version and opted to scratch away at barely closed wounds but did not, knowing that to do so would mean that South Africa could never put the past behind it, that the past would continue to haunt the present and the future with catastrophic consequences for all South Africans.

The second way in which the Boston College subpoenas are dumb is because they are so politically stupid. Ostensibly, the subpoenas are in pursuit of the perpetrators of the murder of Jean McConville, but anyone who is familiar with the case knows that it is really about getting Gerry Adams who is alleged to have given the order to “disappear” Mrs McConville, an accused spy for the British Army.

Whatever one may think of Gerry Adams and his misguided efforts to deny any past association with the IRA, the reality is that Northern Ireland would not now be enjoying peace without his efforts.

He may have been less than straightforward with his IRA comrades; he may even have been duplicitous and furtive in his dealings with them, or have exaggerated the political benefits of the Good Friday [Stormont] Agreement, but the stark truth is that he did bring this awful war, this endless bloodshed, to an end. I doubt that anyone else could have.

Yet the logic of the Boston College subpoenas is to drag him before the criminal or civil courts and stain him with the McConville murder. So the architect of a peace process centered on compromise ends his political life arraigned or sued for murder courtesy of the same government with whom he compromised. And this is supposed to cement the peace in Northern Ireland?

What message does that send to IRA dissidents who have long accused Adams and his colleagues of naivety in their dealings with the British? What they will say is this: “You trusted the Brits, Gerry. You accepted their deal and their terms and now look what they are doing to you? Once they had you where they wanted you to be, they stuck the knife into you.”

And this is supposed to strengthen the peace in Northern Ireland? If this is the logic behind the Boston College subpoenas then truly the lunatics are now running the asylum.

There will be those, of course, who will say that if Gerry Adams did order Jean McConville’s “disappearance” then he deserves to be prosecuted. In a normal society, one ruled by a normal government, that would be a difficult argument to answer. But Northern Ireland is not, even with the peace process, a normal society and nowhere is this more evident than in the administration of justice.

The plain, undeniable fact is that there are double standards in the way justice is doled out in Northern Ireland.

As myself and researcher Anthony McIntyre were battling in the Boston courts against the [RUC/]PSNI subpoenas last fall, the British prime minister, David Cameron, summoned the family of slain Belfast attorney, Patrick Finucane to Downing Street. Finucane had been shot dead by loyalist gunmen in 1989 but it is now widely accepted that British intelligence and the police in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), had foreknowledge of the murder plot and allowed it to happen. Finucane was a legal thorn in their flesh and what better way to remove it than by way of loyalist bullets?

Such was the concern about this level of collusion in an attorney’s murder, not least here in the United States, that Cameron’s predecessor, Tony Blair, was obliged to announce that there would be a public inquiry into Pat Finucane’s slaying and we would all get to know just what part the RUC and British spooks had played in this dirty deed.

But Cameron’s summoning of the Finucane family was not to tell them of a date for the beginning of this inquiry, but to inform them that he was withdrawing Tony Blair’s promise. There would be no inquiry into Finucane’s death.

So those who say that the [RUC/]PSNI has a right to rummage through Boston College’s files for the names of the killers of Jean McConville must also justify the denial of that same right to Pat Finucane’s family to scour the files of MI5 and the RUC Special Branch for the names of those who colluded with his killers?

Pat Finucane was a high profile victim of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but not so Patrick McCullough. Who is Patrick McCullough, I can almost hear the reader ask? Well, he was a 17-year-old Catholic boy, just starting his first job in life, when he was shot dead in a loyalist drive-by shooting near his North Belfast home.

Patrick died in June 1972, six months before Jean McConville was “disappeared” by the IRA. No-one has ever been held accountable for his killing and, unlike Jean McConville, there has been next to no publicity about his killing. He was his parents’ first-born and most loved child, the first of fifteen children when his life was suddenly and brutally ended. His mother and father never recovered from his death, and their loss was every bit as tragic and wrong as that suffered by Jean McConville’s family.

I learned about Patrick McCullough’s death from a poignant letter his younger brother, Fr. James McCullough, a member of the missionary Kiltegan Fathers, wrote recently to the Irish Times newspaper seeking an inquiry into official indifference towards his brother’s killing. I contacted the priest to talk about his experience.

When his brother was killed, the police never once visited the family home to tell them what was happening in the investigation. The only visit the family had from the security forces was shortly after the funeral when their home was raided by the British army. Fr. McCullough suspects that their purpose was to plant weapons in the home so as to justify his brother’s murder.

When the British government set up the Historical Enquiries Team, Fr. McCullough wrote to the then [RUC/]PSNI Chef Constable, Sir Hugh Orde. His letter was forwarded to the HET which wrote to him saying they would be in touch. That was in 2006. Since then, neither Fr. McCullough nor any of his family have heard a word from the HET or the [RUC/PSNI. He described his treatment at the hands of the [RUC/]PSNI and the HET as “abysmal.”

The killers of Patrick McCullough are well known. An investigation in 2003 by the Belfast newspaper, the Irish News, discovered their identity while noting that no-one had ever been arrested or charged. Recently, the reporter who wrote the story confirmed to me that neither the HET, nor the [RUC/]PSNI, had ever contacted her to discover their names. There have been no subpoenas for Patrick McCullough.

The silence from the police lasted until Fr. McCullough’s letter appeared in the Irish Times. Then, suddenly, he was phoned by an HET investigator who offered a meeting. When Fr. McCullough complained about the indifference shown by the RUC towards his brother, the HET man replied, according to Fr. McCullough: “……that he had never experienced sectarianism in the RUC or [RUC/]PSNI.”

On the HET’s promotional video, the unit’s commander, former Scotland Yard detective Dave Cox, addressed the issue of how the HET dealt with allegations of police collusion in murders in this way: “Most times we are able to actually answer and dispel those worries.”

In other words, it never really happened.

This is the last and most compelling reason why the Boston College subpoenas are not only dumb, but morally wrong. The HET is not a fit and proper body to deal with Northern Ireland’s past because it operates double standards. And Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice should not be helping these people do their dirty work in Boston.

It is up to Irish America to make sure Holder gets that message.

15. The People's Front 3rd International Symposium

THE PEOPLE'S FRONT 3rd International Symposium on the Unity of the Peoples against Imperialist Aggression held in Istanbul, Turkey from March 2-4 this year, finished up with the Final Declaration [edited] below. This year’s Symposium was dedicated to Eyüp Ba?.

“We were organizing the symposium meetings in Europe for long years and since 2009 we are holding these meetings in Turkey. We have carried out the third symposium this year, despite the difficulties of organizing an international symposium. We have lost our comrade Eyüp Ba?, who was one of the organizers of the first symposium, during the preparations of the first symposium. Our comrade Remzi Uçucu, who undertook responsibilities in the organization of the first symposium is now imprisoned in Ankara Sincan F-Type Prison; Yasemin Karada?, one of our friends who organized the second symposium is now in ?stanbul Bak?rköy Prison; Yasemin Karada? is struggling with the tortures in the prison and with her illnesses. We salute Remzi and Yasemin.

“Last year, the popular movements developing in Egypt and Tunisia and the occupation of Libya were in the agenda, while, this year, the process has evolved into preparations for the interventions against Syria, Iran and, as a future target, against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Imperialists are organizing conspiracies against Iran and trying to legitimize an invasion. Like Iran, the imperialists and primarily the USA, is preparing for an invasion by using NATO and their collaborators and by legitimizing the terror of imperialism. It is our duty to stand side by side with the peoples of Syria and Iran and to support their resistance.

“We salute the struggle of Lebanon and Palestine against Israeli occupation and struggle of Iraq against US occupation.

“This year, revolutionaries, friends and comrades from many countries of the world participated to our symposium. Participants explained the problems of their own countries and shared others’ problems. In this symposium we saw again and again the indispensability of taking united actions in the struggle of the oppressed people against imperialism.

“This year we came together as the delegates from various organizations in Honduras, Ireland, Bulgaria, Greece, Russia, England, Ghana, Uganda, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Philippines.

“Symposium, salutes the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed and exploited peoples of Middle East, Far East, South Asia, South America, Africa and Europe.

“Important developments occurred last year in our region, especially Libya, Egypt and Syria and the imperialist aggressors and their local collaborators carried out dozens of attacks, massacres, provocations and invasions. Various popular movements emerged in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

With this perspective, our symposium took the following decisions:

The participants of the symposium admit the necessity of declaring themselves to be a union. It declares that this decision will be put into force after the approval of the organizations in the relevant countries. The Symposiums considers this to be an important step towards the formation of the broadest unity of the oppressed people against imperialism. It arrives to the decision that next year a call will be issued to organize an extended meeting to form an anti-imperialist union among the representatives of the oppressed people, under the light of the conclusions drawn from the past three symposiums.

The Symposium protests the policies of exploitation and invasion that places the burden of the crisis upon the shoulders of the oppressed people as the crisis deepens. The peoples of the world have to unite, organize and fight in order to liberate themselves from imperialism and its invasions and to realize the social justice.

The Symposium declares that it is a right to resist against imperialism.

The Symposium commemorates the martyrs who fell in the struggle against imperialism and its collaborators and salutes the imprisoned militants. The Symposium declares its support to the Cuban 5 and Mumia Abu Jamal who are in the US prisons and to their families; to Ahmad Saadad and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and to their families; to the revolutionary prisoners in the prisons of Turkey and to their families; to Lebanese George Abdallah in French prisons and to his family.

The Symposium demands the immediate and unconditional release of the political and revolutionary prisoners in all corners of the world.

Our Symposium demands an immediate end to the isolation policies implemented against the political prisoners in the prisons of imperialist and collaborator countries and it also demands that the humane conditions for the political prisoners should immediately be set up. The Symposium supports the struggle against isolation.

In line with the decision that we took in the 2nd Symposium about the international day of action against the military presence of imperialism-Zionism, The Symposium affirms that it will declare an international day of action after a conclusion is reached in negotiations among the members of the symposium committee. After this declaration an international united action will be carried out in all the countries of the member organizations, in front of the imperialist embassies or the institutions that represent them, on the same day at the same time. The Symposium asks for the exposition of the institutions that represent the imperialist aggression and urges that these works are carried out as a campaign. With this perspective, all the representatives are responsible from carrying out the interviews in their own countries and from informing the committee about their date proposal for the international action day. (For example, May 15th, being also the anniversary of the Israeli occupation against Palestine.) This day of action and the following days might be organized as a one-month-long festival in which a chain of concerts, demonstrations, meetings or a boycott campaign against the imperialist-Zionist goods might be realized.

The Symposium decides to launch the works about anti-imperialist concerts, events and cultural activities in the international arena.

The exploitation by the imperialists and their monopolies destroys the nature in our countries and the world. It pollutes our environment and makes our planet unliveable. Imperialism is the enemy of nature and the human race. Everything is a mere tool for exploitation for imperialists. The Symposium calls our peoples to stand by with their future and homelands, to expose the exploitation and to struggle against the collaborator regimes and the imperialist monopolies that plunder our lands and water.

The Symposium calls for a united struggle against the imperialist institutions like IMF; WB, ADB, WTO and all others. The Symposium calls for an immediate cancellation of all military, economic and political agreements and pacts.

Against the imperialist exploitation, The Symposium expects the unity of all the peoples and their political representative organizations is ensured. The united struggle shall strengthen the struggle of the peoples. The Symposium suggests that concrete steps are taken in order to form the anti-imperialist unity of the peoples. It declares that this could be achieved only through the internationalist solidarity. Internationalist solidarity develops and strengthens our struggle.

The Symposium is against the aggression and oppression policies of EU, IMF and European capitalism and it states, carried out against the peoples of Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland under the cover of debt. We call the oppressed and exploited peoples of the world to reject to pay this unjust debt. We say “No” to this reactionary plan. We declare our solidarity with the peoples of Europe.

Believing that the Palestinian struggle shall be victorious through an anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist struggle, The Symposium salutes the struggle of the Palestinian people. It demands that the conditions for the return of the Palestinian refugees should be prepared. It hopes that the Palestinian people and the Arabic peoples will struggle together and side by side.

The Symposium calls for the unity of all anti-imperialist forces in the South Asia against the US imperialism and its follower, Indian imperialism. It says “Stop” to the open massacres by the Border Security Forces and other military forces of the Indian State against the Bengali people.

The local collaborators of US imperialism, primarily Turkey and then the collaborator Arab regimes directed all the weapons of imperialism against the Syrian people. Syrian people is not alone! Today it is our duty to expose the lies and attacks of imperialism and its collaborators all around the world and to stand side by side with the anti-imperialist attitude of the Syrian people. Anti-imperialist consciousness necessitates such an attitude. This Symposium declares its solidarity for the Syrian people and supports the struggle against imperialism.

16. Outrage as Nike issue 'Black and Tan' sneaker line for St. Patrick’s Day

IT was reported on March 10 that footwear giant Nike had launched a sneaker called 'The Black and Tan.'

It appears the company was totally unaware of the implications of the name for millions of Irish who connect it to the notorious paramilitary force that terrorised Ireland during the War of Independence.

“It would be the American equivalent of calling a sneaker 'the al-Qaeda',” said one leading Irish American.

Ciarán Staunton, President of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, stated that the Nike move left him speechless. “Is there no one at Nike able to google Black and Tan,” he asked.

The Irish Times first revealed the Nike screw up in an article in their Saturday edition.

They likened it to the Ben and Jerry fiasco when the ice cream company were forced to apologize and withdraw a ‘Black and Tan’ ice cream some years ago.

Kicksonfire.com, a major online sneaker retailer, lauded the Black and Tan line on their website saying, "Beer drinkers can rejoice soon as their favourite pastime is slated to have an official piece of footwear endorsed by Nike SB.

“The Nike SB Dunk Low ‘Black & Tan’ is set to hit shelves in roughly 10 days and if the last photo set we showed you wasn’t enough these should definitely hit the spot.

“The leather-trimmed sneakers feature a gradient suede portion that goes from black to tan and is highlighted by a creamy swoosh. The insoles also give a shout to the stout by featuring an image of a pint glass. These may ultimately be pretty hard to find as they are a quick strike release but don’t let them pass without a fight.”

Nike has also listed a sneaker called 'the Guinness.' Both the 'Guinness' and the 'Black and Tan' retail at about $90.

Six years ago Ben and Jerry's issued an abject apology after a similar gaffe.

“Any reference on our part to the British army unit was absolutely unintentional and no ill-will was ever intended. Ben Jerry’s was built on the philosophies of peace and love,” said a spokesman at the time.

The orders the Black and Tans had in Ireland are best summed up by one of their commanders, speaking in June 1920:

“If a police barracks is burned or if the barracks already occupied is not suitable, then the best house in the locality is to be commandeered, the occupants thrown into the gutter. Let them die there – the more the merrier.

“Should the order (‘Hands Up’) not be immediately obeyed, shoot and shoot with effect. If the persons approaching (a patrol) carry their hands in their pockets, or are in any way suspicious-looking, shoot them down. You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right parties some time. The more you shoot, the better I will like you, and I assure you no policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man.”

-- Lt-Col. Smyth, June 1920.

17. Five murdered Irish emigrants reburied

FIVE murdered Irish immigrants cast into a mass grave in 1832 at Duffy’s Cut near Philadelphia were reburied in a full Catholic ceremony on March 9, 2012. Four labourers and one female, a washerwoman, will be reburied.

They will be buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in a service that will include bagpipers and a grave site marked with a 12 foot high Celtic Cross donated by Immaculata University.

“It's just the right thing to do, to give these men a Christian burial," said university spokesperson Marie Moughan. “They'll get a real burial that they didn't have in 1832, that's for sure,” said the historian Bill Watson, who played a major role in uncovering the remains.

Railroad officials never informed the relatives of their deaths and burned down the shantytown they lived in likely to cover up the murders.

Four months before their deaths a passenger ship, the John Stamp, arrived from Ireland. The passenger list offers the possible identity of 15 workers from Donegal, Tyrone and Derry.

A sixth body has been identified as John Ruddy of Donegal, the only person to be positively identified. He will be buried in his native Ireland.

Their grave will be marked with a Celtic Cross made of limestone quarried in County Kilkenny, Ireland.

Originally efforts were made to unearth all 57 bodies but Amtrak refused saying the mass grave was too close to active rail tracks to be exhumed.

Kurt Bell, an archivist with the state Historical and Museum Commission says what has been uncovered is vital.

“It really speaks volumes about the social history of railroads. We don't know a whole lot about the men who built the railroads in Pennsylvania from early in the 19th century,” said Bell, a railroad historian. “The Watson brothers have really shed light on a little-known subject.”

The mystery of Duffy’s Cut, how 57 Irish immigrants died and were anonymously buried in the summer of 1832, is thus coming to a close. Several skulls unearthed show evidence of violence and bullet holes.

What is known is that In the summer of 1832 a group of 57 Irish immigrants came to the area west of Philadelphia to work on the construction of the railway line. Within six weeks the men, mainly from Donegal, Tyrone and Derry, were all dead and anonymously buried in a mass grave outside the town of Malvern.

For some time it was thought that the mass grave was due to an outbreak of a dangerous disease such as cholera and this was simply a way of dealing with infection. However, the evidence soon painted a different picture. The skulls found show signs of violence and bullet holes.

These grizzly finds confirm what the two leading historians on the archaeological dig feared. “This was much more than a cholera epidemic”, said William Watson.

Chairman of the history department at Immaculata University, William Watson and his twin brother, Frank, have been working on this archaeological mystery for almost a decade.

Since 2009 the Watson brothers have uncovered seven sets of remains. For seven years before the brothers found nothing at the site and the hypothesizsed had been that the group of men had died of cholera. The disease was rampant at the time and the mortality rate was between 40 and 60 percent.

They theorised that some might have been killed by vigilantes due to the anti-Irish sentiment in the 19th century America, because of tensions between the poor transient workers and the affluent residents or an intense fear of cholera. It could have been a combination of all three.

Now that the Watson brothers have four skulls all with evidence of trauma they show that the men were struck in the head. Janet Monge, an anthropologist working on the site, says that at least one of the men was shot.

Monge said “I don't think we need to be so hesitant in coming to the conclusion now that violence was the cause of death and not cholera, although these men might have had cholera in addition.”

“They do have indications on their skeletons that life was not a bowl of cherries,” said Monge who is the keeper of collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

The Watsons discovered the mass grave through the personal papers of their late grandfather who had worked on the rails long after the 57 men were killed. The projects name comes from the name of the man who hired the group of Irish men, Philip Duffy, and the part of the railroad that the men were hired to build, the cut.

When the immigrants died, or were killed, in 1832, Duffy ordered the shantytown, where they had lived, to be burnt and their bodies buried in the railroad fill. The Watsons say the men’s families were never told of their deaths.

The Watsons believe that they have been able to identify 18-year-old John Ruddy as one of the bodies found. They compared his bone size to the ship’s manifest and also found a section of teeth with a rare genetic anomaly which they believe matched with an anomaly shared by some Ruddy family members in Ireland. The DNA results should be returned in six months.

The 47-year-old twins both have doctorates in history but have nothing more that introductory biology.

“It has been indeed a crash course…and it's been fascinating," said The Watsons plan to look into Irish camp in Downingtown, 10 miles up the tracks. Research shows cholera also made its way to that camp, Bill Watson wonders if murder did as well.

“It happened here,” Watson said. “Why not there?”

[R . S . F news] Irish Republican Information Service (no. 292)

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:25:00 +0000

In this issue:

1. Fight back and vote No

2. Brian Mor Ó Baoighill laid to rest

3. Section of Act ‘repugnant to constitution’

4. Shell to Sea spokesperson sentenced to prison

5. 1981 hunger strikers remembered

6. Increase in attacks against the elderly condemned

7. ACLU backs the secrecy of interviews at Boston College

8. RUC rehiring to be investigated by Audit Office

9. Women protest in support of Marian Price

10. Peace barriers were mainly erected at sectarian flash-points

11. Queen's Irish visit 'affected me tremendously' – Provo MLA

12. Supergrass system 'will continue'

13.

1. Fight back and vote No

“Fear and intimidation are again to be the stock-in-trade of the 26-County Administration and its political masters in Brussels as they attempt once more to steamroll the Irish people into giving away the last vestiges of independence,” said Des Dalton, President of Republican Sinn Féin in a statement on February 29, 2012.

“The political elites of Leinster House and the EU have set the tone for the forthcoming referendum on the EU Austerity Treaty by threatening people about the dire consequences of a rejection of the treaty.

“Off course we have heard it all before during the referenda on the Lisbon and Nice Treaties. And on both occasions people were forced to vote again for Treaties they had already rejected. The power elites of the EU are not interested in the will of the people but instead are intent on grabbing even more power using the fear of the people. In this they have willing collaborators in the political establishment of the 26-County State.

“The system of finance capitalism driven by France and Germany created the economic collapse of the past four years yet it is the working people of Ireland and Europe who are being asked to pay the price”.

The statement concluded: “As we approach the centenary of the 1916 Rising we have now an opportunity to fight back and show that the 1916 Proclamation still speaks for this generation when it declares: ‘The right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.’ Begin the fight back for our country and vote No.”

2. Brian Mor Ó Baoighill laid to rest

BRIAN Mór Ó Baoighill, who died on February 18 was buried in New Jersey on February 24. At the graveside Pat Williams of the National Irish Freedom Committee read a statement from the Irish Republican Movement in Ireland and Fr. Pat Moloney.

The eulogy was delivered by his colleague in Radio Free Éireann, John McDonagh, in the course of which he said:

“I am here to pay tribute to the life and legacy of my friend, Brian Mór. It is an impossible task – for in every way, Bernie was larger than life. His wit, his talent, his commitment to a free Ireland and even his very name were larger than life.

“Fortunately, there is no need to sum up his legacy in a few words – Bernie has left behind a treasure trove of artwork, cartoons and writing. He has laid the foundation for future generations to follow – and we will be forever in his debt.

“One of Bernie’s favorite author’s, Evelyn Waugh, once wrote “your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.” I am lucky to have been part of his actions and I’d like to share a few with you. Bernie was a character that only being born the son of immigrant parents in New York City could produce.

“Born in Harlem, Bernie later moved to the South Bronx, where his adored sister Margo was born. His mother’s biggest complaint was that he kept drawing on the walls of their apartment – Bernie’s friend Joe can tell stories about how many times she had to repaint the walls. How lucky we are that Bernie kept drawing on walls, and that we can still see his artwork on the walls of the Comic Club, Rocky Sullivan’s and Robert Emmett’s, to name a few.

“Although a born and bred New Yorker, Bernie never forgot his family ties to Donegal, and at the Irish People newspaper, found the perfect place to blend his Fenian passion with his artistic skills. Bernie and I worked together for many years, and as crazy as some of my ideas might have been, Bernie found a way to make them even more outlandish.

“One of our finest moments was standing in the middle of Times Square on December 16, 1983, watching the electronic sign board send Christmas Greetings to Irish Prisoners of War. Our second finest moment was enjoying the stir it made. I’ll never forget sitting in the Blarney Stone with him, as we watched Bill Butell, anchor of Channel 7 news in NY, say “IRA hijacks sign in Times Square. More at 11.”

“Bernie looked as though he had just won the lottery, knowing that his art was being shown around the world. In the pages of the Irish People, Bernie’s cutting political cartoons were the first thing that people looked for when opening the paper. And whether hung on someone’s refrigerator, or condemned in the House of Commons, they made a big impact.

“One of Bernie’s greatest gifts was his ability to blend history with current events. Whether hosting Radio Free Éireann, writing a scathing article or lampooning a subject in a cartoon, Bernie’s knowledge of Irish history was beyond reproach – and perfectly juxtaposed with the issue of the day.

“You often hear people say “what can I do? I’m only one person?” Bernie’s legacy shows just what one man can accomplish. Bernie’s artistic talent should have made him a millionaire. But he was generous to a fault with his gift. Bernie’s worth will not be measured in dollars, but in his actions – giving his talent to further ideals he fervently believed in; mentoring younger artists; sharing his wisdom with those wise enough to listen. It seems wrong to live in a world without Bernie – we had so much more to do. We need more paintings, murals, cartoons. But knowing Bernie, I think he would find these words by Edna St. Vincent Millay fitting:

My candle burns at both ends

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -

It gives a lovely light. “

3. Section of Act ‘repugnant to constitution’

A RULING by the 26-County Supreme Court that a section of the Offences Against the State Act was unconstitutional has serious implications for many Republicans who were arrested and charged, (and indeed the Gardaí that arrested and searched their homes) and whose cases are pending in the special non-jury court.

Five Supreme Court judges, including Chief Justice Susan Denham, ruled on February 23 that a section of the Offences Against the State Act was “repugnant” to the 26-County Constitution. The section has been routinely used in the past by Gardaí to search the homes of people they deem “suspects”.

The Supreme Court ruling means many cases pending before the special non-jury court could be in doubt.

The Supreme Court ruled that section 29 (1) of the Offences Against the State Act of 1939, as inserted by section 5 of the Criminal Law Act of 1976, was “repugnant” to the [26- County] Constitution.

“A member of the Garda Síochána who is part of an investigating team is not independent on matters related to the investigation,” Chief Justice Susan Denham said on behalf of the court. “The person authorising a search warrant is required to be able to assess the conflicting interests of the State and the person whose home is to be searched”, the judge said.

Article 40.5 of the Constitution expressly provides that one’s home is inviolable and shall not be forcibly entered except in accordance with the law, she said. This meant it had to be done “without stooping to methods which ignore the fundamental norms” of the legal order as contained in the [26- County] Constitution.

The court granted a declaration that section 29 (1) of the Offences Against the State Act (as inserted by section 5 of the Criminal Law Act 1976) was repugnant to the [26- County] Constitution as it had permitted a search contrary to the Constitution on foot of a warrant not issued by an independent person.

The Supreme Court ruling was given in the case of an Algerian man, Ali Charaf Damache (45), John Colwyn House, High Street, Waterford. He was arrested as a suspect in an alleged conspiracy to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks over his drawing of the prophet Muhammad.

4. Shell to Sea spokesperson sentenced to prison

ON Tuesday February 21, Shell to Sea spokesperson Terence Conway was handed two three-month prison sentences for protesting against Shell's Corrib Gas Project.

Throughout the week local residents were protesting on the roads while many of their supporters were in court in Belmullet, which so far has resulted in twelve people being convicted of 33 charges resulting in fines totalling €5,825.

Two more people have to face the courts with 21 charges between them. One person was given a two-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months in exchange for signing a bond to the peace.

Terence Conway was given two three-month prison sentences to be served concurrently, but he is currently on bail pending an appeal in the circuit court.

With a few exceptions, most cases so far have been straightforward Public Order Sections 8&9 for blocking roads. Everyone who pleaded not guilty was convicted and fined, and most who pleaded guilty got the Probation Act (no conviction) or got their case struck out entirely (with a €200 euro donation to a charity).

The last case to be heard on Monday resulted in a conviction and fine, despite what looked like very clear video footage refuting the charge. There were numerous contradictions in Garda evidence, one in particular which caused major concern about Garda conduct of the case. The case will be appealed in the circuit court.

During Shell to Sea spokesperson Terence Conway's case on Tuesday, he spoke and gave evidence about the injustices faced by the community in Erris, including a clip of footage from the well-known incident at McGrath's pier.

Terence Conway stated that “What we have been subjected to by the actions of Shell and the State is worthy of a dictatorship. The police are working as an arm of the oil companies.”

When the Judge responded that “This is a law-abiding country and there is justice for all in the country,” about 25 local residents and supporters walked out of the courtroom in protest.

When a handful re-entered the courtroom and stood with their backs to the Judge in defiance, Gardaí were fairly heavy handed in throwing them out of the courtroom without any formal request from the judge to do so or orders of contempt of court. Soon after, about 15-20 extra Gardaí arrived on the scene and blocked off the entrance to the courtroom. The crowd waited in the lobby of the courthouse for the case to finish surrounded by a circle of Gardaí, and no one was allowed back inside.

On Wednesday [February 22] a stenographer was disallowed from making an audio recording of the court proceedings, despite this being common practice. When asked for a reason by the defence council, the Judge ruled that he did not want it falling into 'the wrong hands.'

Also on Wednesday one person's criminal damage charges were dropped after a director of IRMS security testifying against the defendant changed his story in court regarding evidence. The Shell security initially claimed he had detailed notes taken of the incident, and later admitted that he had no such notes.

On Monday,February 20 local residents blocked Shell's haulage route between Bellanaboy refinery and the compound in Glengad while many of their supporters were up in court.

On Tuesday February 19 as people from the Rossport Solidarity Camp were coming out onto the road getting ready to leave for court, a group of about 20 Gardaí arrived to clear the road for a Shell convoy returning from the compound in Glengad. People were pushed back through the gates to the camp and one person's walking stick was taken off him and thrown into a ditch. When the person went to retrieve it they were held face down into briars in the ditch for over a minute while the convoy passed(photos of the incident can be seen in Indymedia Ireland).

[R . S . F news] Irish Republican Information Service (no. 291)

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 02:10:00 +0000

In this issue:

1. Death of Brian Mór Ó Baoighill

2. Clonmult Martyrs commemorated in Cork

3. Ex-soldiers jailed for brutally beating Irishman

4. POA 'rethink' strip searching in Maghaberry jail

5. Ford 'actively' pursuing alternatives to prison strip-searching

6. Continued detention of Marian Price ‘internment’

7. Boston College to challenge handover of interviews

8. UDA super-grass evidence dismissed in Belfast trial

9. Nationalists living in flats die earlier

10. Loughinisland victims' families begin legal challenge

11. HET investigation 'whitewash'

12. Advisers back all-Ireland anti-fracking campaign

13. Campaigners convicted as community members block Shell's haulage in Mayo

14. Accountability for RUC raid

15. Khader Adnan to be released

16. Shaker Aamer, the Briton still locked in Guantánamo, will not be forgotten

17. Jingoism is no answer to England's ebbing power

1. Death of Brian Mór Ó Baoighill

ON February 18, 2012 Cumann na Saoirse Náisiúnta/The National Irish Freedom Committee (NIFC) in the United States reported the death of Brian Mór Ó Baoighill.

The statement said: “Brian was, first and foremost, a true Irish Republican, an unrepentant Fenian who gave so much of his time and energy to the cause of Irish freedom and unity.

“Amongst his many other attributes Brian was a renowned Celtic artist, a prolific satirical cartoonist, a historian and a fountain of knowledge and wisdom. He broke bread with practically every notable Irish-American personality of this past half century and played a prominent role in every historic event involving the New York Irish-American community.

“He was our friend and fellow traveller who now takes his rightful place in the ranks of our departed Fenian stalwarts. He leaves us with fond memories, but, also with a void that will never be filled. Farewell dear friend.

“Ar dheis láimh Dé go raibh anam uasal -- Ní bhe?dh a le?théid ann go deo arís.”

On February 21, the President of Republican Sinn Féin, Des Dalton, said:

“Irish Republicans were saddened to hear the news of the death of Brian Mór Ó Baoighill, in New York. Brian was a life-long Irish Republican activist and a man steeped in the history and revolutionary Fenian tradition of Irish America.

“Brian’s unique gifts as an artist were given selflessly to aid the cause of a free Ireland. His paintings were used to highlight the plight of the Hunger Strikers in 1981 as well as every other facet of the ongoing struggle against British rule in Ireland. Famously in December 1983 he was responsible for an electronic sign in New York’s Time Square sending out Christmas greetings to Republican prisoners. Brian took great pride in the fact the British Ambassador was questioned over the sign. Brian used his artwork as a weapon against imperialism and in defence of the men and women of no property. Among his last works were cartoons in opposition to the visit by the Queen of England to the 26 Counties in May of last year.

“In June of last year he wrote an open letter to the Lord Mayor of Belfast to protest at one of his poster artworks, commemorating Theobald Wolfe Tone and the 1798 Rising, being hung in Belfast City Hall. Brian saw this as merely an attempt to distract from the fact that Belfast and the rest of the Six Counties were still occupied by British forces. In his own inimitable style Brian finished his letter by declaring: ‘When the Belfast City Hall is located in a united Ireland, not the United Kingdom, I would be honoured to see my artwork displayed. Until then, I request that it be taken down. Moving the picture of the Queen of England from one wall to another does not in any way make Belfast part of a United Ireland. I object to my artwork being used to pretend otherwise.’

“Brian’s involvement in the cause of Ireland stretches out over five decades; he was a founder member of Irish Northern Aid (NORAID) in 1972 and worked with the Irish People newspaper for almost 20 years. In 1986 he rejected the attempts of a reformist leadership to hijack Republican Movement and was among the founders of Cumann na Saoirse of which he remained an officer up to his death.

“Brian had a deep understanding and knowledge of Irish history and was a living link with previous generations of Irish Republicans who fanned the flames of revolutionary Republicanism such as Michael Flannery, Joe Stynes and George Harrison. Brian very much followed in their footsteps and ensured that the torch was passed to a new generation. Brian Mór was a friend, comrade and mentor to succeeding generations of activists in the cause of Irish Freedom in the US and Ireland over many years and was always willing to give freely of his time and experience.

“Brian leaves behind a gap in the ranks but his legacy of unflinching loyalty and tireless commitment to ideal of the All-Ireland Republic of Easter Week is an inspiration to his friends and comrades on both sides of the Atlantic. In the words of Thomas Davis: “The rudder of our ship was he, our castle’s corner stone.”

“Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.”

2. Clonmult Martyrs commemorated in Cork

THE 91st Anniversary Clonmult Martyrs commemoration took place in Midleton on Sunday, February 19.

The commemoration assembled at 2.30pm outside the Courthouse and proceeded to St. John the Baptist Churchyard where the proceedings were chaired by Donal Varian. After welcoming everyone Donal asked Tony Horgan to lay a wreath on behalf of Republican Sinn Féin on the grave of Volunteer Deasy and a decade of the Rosary was recited.

The Commemoration then continued to the Republican Plot, Holy Rosary Churchyard. Where Donal said a few brief words before asking the following to lay wreaths. Donal Dennehy laid a wreath on behalf of the families of the Clonmult Martyrs on the Republican Plot. Veteran Republican Kerry John Mangan laid a wreath on the grave of Commandant Diarmuid Hurley OC, who was killed by Crown Forces three months after his comrades. Mary Ward ,Republican Sinn Féin, laid a wreath on behalf the Republican Movement.

Donal then spoke about the sacrifice the Clonmult Boys, the men and women of 1916 and the generations since have made.

He then introduced Mary Ward of Republican Sinn Féin to give the oration. She said:

“The strongest common bond uniting mankind is love of liberty and a willingness to sacrifice anything to achieve it. From man’s earliest record to the present time the names that glow forth from the yellowed pages of history are not the names of rulers who controlled men’s lives, not the great orators and poets who stirred men’s hearts but the simple honest men of every race. Men like those we honour here today, the Clonmult Martyrs. Who by sacrificing themselves for the ideal of freedom ennobled men’s souls.

“Throughout history’s pages there is no story so sorrowful yet so grand as Ireland’s long struggle for freedom. Indeed no country has laboured so long and diligently, has suffered so much and failed so often and yet had the strength, the courage and the character to try again. The dying words of Robert Emmet ‘When my country takes her place among the nations of the world, then, not till then, let my epitaph be written’. The glorious words of Alan Larkin and O’Brien ‘God save Ireland’ were spoken before a hostile tribunal for a cause which they knew in their day at least was doomed to failure. They failed but they inspired other to follow in their example. And so it was the Fenians inspired the men and women of 1916 and they in turn inspired the men and women of the 1919-1922 period.

“During the 1919-1922 period the IRA were well aware that they faced the might of the British Empire, a far more superior and equipped enemy, so they changed and adapted their tactics. They perfected the art of guerrilla warfare; a method which was later employed by freedom fighters the world over from Kenya to Algeria. When the men from East Cork went to the farmhouse in Clonmult, they had witnessed the cruelty of the Black and Tans auxiliaries, they had attended the funerals of Tomás MacCurtain murdered in front of his pregnant wife and children and of Terence Mac Swiney following a long hunger strike in Brixton prison. They had witnessed the burning of Cork city, yet they pledged to fight for the freedom of Ireland, to uphold the Republic proclaimed in arms at Easter week and ratified by the Irish people in open ballot in 1918.

”In January 1921 the active service unit of the fourth battalion of the first Cork brigade took possession of a disused farmhouse in a secluded position overlooking the village of Clonmult. Commandant O’Hurley decided to ambush a military train at Cobh junction on Tuesday Feb 22nd 1921. He set out to make the necessary arrangement accompanied by Vice-commandant Joseph Ahern and Captain Patrick Whelan.

“On Sunday February 20 Michael Desmond and John Joe Joyce left the farmhouse to go to a nearby spring when they noticed the house was surrounded by British forces. They both died as they fought to return to the house, but not before they had warned those inside of the situation. A sortie from the farmhouse was attempted in the hope that assistance could be organised from the local company in Conan. With the farmhouse burning around them, an attempt was made to escape, but many of the volunteers were killed in a hail of bullets from the Blank and Tan forces who had come to re-enforce the British regulars. Of the prisoners taken, two were later executed, five others had their sentences commuted and one, Captain Higgins, who had been shot through the mouth, had his life spared by the advent of the truce in July.

“The Ireland of today is a product of a counter-revolution, which succeeded in over throwing the 32-County Republic of 1916 and the all-Ireland Dáil Éireann of 1919. The forced partition of Ireland in 1922 was brought about by the threat of an immediate and terrible war by England and by the collaboration of erstwhile Irish Republicans. The more recent Stormont agreement of 1998 updated and secured English rule in the six counties, again with the collaboration of former Republicans. In helping to bring all of this about these lost souls, we are told, had been infiltrated by English agents. There is scarcely a doubt about this but they were already infiltrated from deep within by an overweening pride and arrogance, which has been the downfall of many before. No Irish patriot died for a new Stormont or a new style English crown police force. But some are so conceited in their self-importance that they think they can ignore this truth.

“The objective of the so-called peace process never was a peace in Ireland; its objective was to bring the armed struggle for Irish freedom to an end, just as in 1921-1922 the English found more devious and wily ways of defeating Irish resistance to their rule.

“There is also a more ominous, more menacing and longer-term objective behind this un-holy alliance of English imperialism and Irish collaboration, it is to extinguish forever Irish Republican resistance to English rule in our country, but there are still faithful republicans in Ireland, north and South. We, you and I, men and women, boys and girls renew our Republican vows here today, we pledge ourselves, as the Clonmult martyrs pledged themselves never to desist in our efforts until we have ended English rule in our country for all time.

“There is so much in the Ireland of today which is an affront to the noble ideals of our patriot dead. The dishonesty, the lies, the deceit, the mercenary and shameless selfishness and greed in public life are the very anti-thesis of the generous and honourable ideals of our patriot dead. The contrast is obvious and unmistakable.

“Not only have we the unjust and undemocratic partition of our country, we also have an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. This has not happened by any accident or misfortune. This is the result of deliberate and pre-meditated policies implemented under the cover of a clever smoke screen provided by well-paid and unscrupulous spin doctors.

“The education system has been fundamentally re-shaped to train workers for the multinational enterprises which are now more powerful than governments and for export to Australia and elsewhere. Just this week the government was calling for the speeding up of apprenticeships from FAS, they can’t get rid of our young people quick enough, our best and our brightest.

“Even in the universities, the classics, the Irish language, Irish history and Irish and Celtic studies have been downgraded, some would say virtually abandoned. Is this any wonder when the Smurfit’s and the O’Reillys now provide considerable finance for some of these colleges? Skills are certainly important, but the schools and colleges should also be helping parents to imbue their children with standards and values for life. They should also be helping students and pupils to appreciate and develop their Irish identity, as well as to develop their critical facilties, their capacity to think things through, to assess and appraise and evaluate all that they will have to encounter in life. The politicians and the bosses of finance and industry, however, prefer to keep young people malleable and compliant, a prey to advertising hype and disinformation.

“The travesty of democracy, which we witness daily in our country, is a well-managed spectacle of mockery and deception. From the local councils and shady deals to the mock theatre of Leinster House and Stormont, to the mandarins of Westminster and the European Union, and the invincible looking power of the United States and Britain backed by the muscle and might of international capitalism, the ordinary, decent, hardworking people of Ireland in town and country are being exploited, and the weakest and most vulnerable, the old, the ill, the incapacitated, the disadvantaged many young people who come from our schools barely literate are the most exploited of all. We have ever rising levels of crime, some of it quite vicious and ruthless.

“Both states fail to protect their citizens from exploitation by trans-national capital and manipulative commercial interest, from drug pushers and alcohol producers, as well as from British spies and agents. Politicians get into power backed by the wealthy groups and individuals and then they are the prisoners of these people. Two examples of this are the compliant hire of Shannon airport to the US administration and the revelations that Irish hospitals have to pay twice what they pay in Spain for essential drugs manufactured by companies in Cork.

“In a democratic system, power rests with the people; in Ireland today there is collusion and a conspiracy among the wealthy, the politicians and sections of the media to accumulate and share the spoils at the expense of ordinary people. Yet the ordinary people have to pay for the bank bail-out and the excesses of these gangsters who are actually being paid up to €200,000 by NAMA, 8 times more than the average industrial wage.

“The priorities in public life in Ireland are the priorities of rampant capitalism and this is facilitated and made possible by politicians whose only interest is power for powers sake. Meanwhile we have a plethora of tribunals, enquiring into all kinds of misconduct and costing millions of euro each year. A lot of fraud and corruption has been unearthed, but nobody ever seems to be prosecuted for misdeeds. Ads since shame and embarrassment are in short supply; these tribunals serve now as expensive and protective shock-absorbers, where wrong doing can be reluctantly exposed while even more corruptive practices proceed apace.

“We have lost our manufacturing base, our fishing rights, mineral rights and financial independence to the EU and the infamous Troika. No the Ireland of today is not a pretty sight. English imperialism is alive and well and holds six of our counties in direct occupation. This same power infiltrates the other 26 counties and dictates its terms to them. In the whole country, there is a basic affliction which is a lack of principle, standards, value and morality. Both states are in hock to English imperialism, neo liberal capitalism and its free market and culture of greed.

“The great and almost daunting, challenge to us Irish Republicans is to confront and change all of this. In the 1790’s Wolfe Tone and his comrades faced a similar challenge. They rose to the occasion in every sense of the word. They formulated their plans and they confronted those who were the exploiters of the Irish people, foreign and domestic.

“The hallmark of their approach was that they sought no personal gain for themselves, their rallying cry was liberty, equality and fraternity and they gave generous and unstinting service. Then, they made their appeal to the broad mass of the Irish people, Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, and they organised their generation. They were truly revolutionary and their message struck a chord with the common people. The broad mass of the people always retain and cherish a yearning for freedom based on justice.

“We are not alone in the task we seek to accomplish. We have many active supporters who are not present here today. We have our Republican prisoners, who are also a source of inspiration to us as they keep their lonely vigil for Ireland, and to whom we send greetings from this historic spot. We have many friends and sympathisers throughout Ireland and we have active supporters abroad. All share with us our vision of a New Ireland – ÉIRE NUA, a New Democracy of four provinces with regional, local and community self-government. For us the model is neither Boston nor Berlin. For us the task is to restore the historic Irish nation on the basis of liberty, equality and fraternity, and to put the people of Ireland in charge of their own destinies. We will continue to work to accomplish this noble task, for which so many have laboured over the centuries. We will continue to work regardless of the defections of recent years and regardless of the sinister efforts by certain elements in the Establishment and in the media to denigrate our work and to smear our good name.

“In the Six Occupied Counties, the nightmare of the nationalist people continues. In some areas it is particularly acute and communities live in continual fear of attack. The Stormont Agreement has not brought reassurance to the Unionist people either. And neither Westminster nor Leinster House can bring peace with justice, because both of these institutions operate to a different agenda. As Wolfe Tone said of the Ascendancy of his time “They see Ireland only in their rent rolls, their places, their patronage and their pensions”.

“The ÉIRE NUA programme for a four province federal Ireland represents a modern progressive project based on the original ideas of Tone. It is the surest guarantee of a secure place in Ireland for all our people.

“I will conclude with the words of General Liam Lynch ‘We have declared for a Republic, We will have no other law.’

“An Phoblacht Abú.”

3. Ex-soldiers jailed for brutally beating Irishman

IT was reported on February 19 that two ex-British soldiers had been jailed having been convicted of a savage street attack on an Irishman in England.

In the previous week Bolton Crown Court heard how after brutally beating 24-year-old Stephen Mahon the British soldiers congratulated each other as they walked off leaving their victim in agony on the ground.

Stephen Mahon was targeted in the totally unprovoked attack because the assailants, who were serving soldiers at the time, heard his Irish accent. He told the court that his nationality was the only reason he was assaulted.

One of the British soldiers, Simon Pierce, already has a conviction for breaking the jaw of a black man in a racist attack. Christopher Turner's face was so horrifically smashed that surgeons had to insert a metal plate in his mouth and he was unable to work for a month. Pierce wasn't jailed for that attack because the trial judge was told a prison sentence would ruin his promising British army career. He also assaulted his parents, smashed his father's window with a concrete block, and head-butted a policeman.

Pierce (19) and Philip Arrowsmith (20) pleaded guilty to attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent. They attacked Stephen Mahon after a night's drinking in Bolton town centre last year. They repeatedly kicked him as he lay defenceless on the ground.

Stephen Mahon managed to get up and stagger away but the soldiers followed him and launched another attack on him, kicking him as he lay injured on the street.

After the attack on Stephen Mahon both soldiers were discharged from the British army.

4. POA 'rethink' strip-searching in Maghaberry jail

THE prison officers' union in the Occupied Six Counties called on February 23, 2012, for a rethink on the routine use of full body searches in jails in the Six Counties.

Finlay Spratt of the Prison Officers Association (POA) believes the practice can never be dispensed with completely, but is angry at the lack of progress on introducing new technology.

The POA chairman described the justice minister's failure to introduce state-of-the-art search equipment as “completely unacceptable” – claiming the delays were causing unnecessary tensions within our prisons.

“There's no excuse for not introducing the type of search equipment used in airports,” he said. “If these new machines are good enough to stop people bringing things on to aeroplanes, with hundreds of people on board, then they should be adequate for prison establishments.”

Republican groups have been campaigning for an end to strip searches for some time.

The NI Prison Service is currently undergoing a radical overhaul following recommendations made by a review panel.

A spokeswoman for the Prison Service in the Six Counties said “alternative technologies” to body searches were being explored including the possibility of low-dose X-ray technology.

5. Ford 'actively' pursuing alternatives to prison strip-searching

STORMONT justice minister David Ford said he is ‘actively pursuing other alternatives to full body searching in Northern Ireland prisons’.

On February 22 he defended his decision not to publish the findings of a Prison Service study into other options to strip-searching at Maghaberry Prison in Co Antrim. He said the report ‘contained sensitive material relating to security issues’.

Ford said that strip-searching was “not particularly pleasant for either the officers carrying it out or for the prisoners” but said the searches were necessary until a suitable alternative was found. He said the use of an x-ray system was one of the options being considered.

The minister denied claims by those protesting against the searches that the external arrangements had been relaxed.

“An agreement was made and it related to the issues of searching within the prison,” he said. “It did not cover the issue, which applies to every prison in the UK (sic), that there must be full body-searching on entry to and exit from prison.”

6. Continued detention of Marian Price ‘internment’

ON February 17 Marian Price – also known by her married name, Marian McGlinchey – was moved from Maghaberry prison to the women’s prison at Hydebank outside Belfast.

Former Armagh Women’s prison chaplain, Monsignor Raymond Murray, said British secretary of state Owen Paterson’s decision to revoke Marian Price’s license had echoes of the past for nationalists.

“This is a form of internment,” said Monsignor Murray. “I am just shocked that the secretary of state wouldn’t be aware of how seriously nationalist people look on internment. We thought it had all ended and here it is coming under a form of revocation, revoking a license.

“He would have to explain to us and explain the process of law as regards Marian Price. In any way has she broken the law? That would have to be provided but it is not provided by shoving her into prison on a pretence in an unjust way.”

7. Boston College to challenge handover of interviews

IT was revealed on February 23 that Boston College has decided to appeal the decision of the US district court requiring the college to hand over interviews from seven republicans who participated in its oral history project on the Troubles.

The college, however, is not appealing a ruling that tapes of interviews with former IRA prisoner Dolours Price be handed over to the British authorities.

In a statement the college confirmed that on February 17 it filed an appeal against the requirement that it turn over all or parts of the interviews with the seven republicans which were carried out by writer and former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre.

“The university is seeking further review of the court’s order to ensure that the value of the interviews to the underlying criminal investigation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland outweighs the interests in protecting the confidentiality of academic research materials,” Boston College said in its statement.

The Belfast Project was directed by author and journalist Ed Moloney and involved interviews with former IRA and loyalist paramilitaries based on guarantees that the information would not be disclosed until after they died.

Anthony McIntyre carried out interviews with 26 former IRA members. Challenging the demand for the interviews to be released, Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre said such action would endanger the life of Anthony McIntyre and his family and the lives of those who gave the interviews. Ed Moloney, Anthony McIntyre and Wilson McArthur – who interviewed loyalists who engaged with the project – issued a qualified welcome for the Boston College appeal, but again called on the university to take action to try to safeguard the tapes of Dolours Price.

“With respect to the standard of review of the materials, we can see absolutely no difference between the seven cases now to be appealed by Boston College and that of Dolours Price. For our part, we will continue our fight to protect all our interviewees, republican and loyalist, including Dolours Price,” they added.

Anthony McIntyre said last night there was no reason why the college couldn’t also seek to protect Dolours Price’s tapes. “They are covering their tracks and have abandoned Dolours. There is no rhyme, reason or consistency or logic to it. We are still in the fight to protect Dolours and everybody else, and Boston College should do the same,” he added.

None of the tapes has been handed over to the British authorities yet pending the outcomes of the appeals. Tapes have been given to a US commissioner acting on behalf of the US justice department.

8. UDA super-grass evidence dismissed in Belfast trial

ON February 22 nine men, including senior north Belfast loyalist Mark Haddock, were acquitted of the murder of Ulster Defence Association leader Tommy English, after the judge dismissed key “super-grass” evidence in the trial.

Three other men who were accused of lesser Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) crimes such as assisting offenders and perverting justice were also cleared.

Only one of 13 men who were in the dock at Laganside Crown Court over the full 71 days of the trial – reckoned to be one of the most expensive criminal trials in Northern Ireland history with some suggesting it could cost up to £10 million – was convicted.

Neil Pollock (34), from Fortwilliam Gardens in Belfast, was found guilty of possessing a sledgehammer for terrorist purposes and of intending to pervert the course of justice. He was granted bail, with Justice Gillen due to impose sentence in the coming weeks.

Haddock (43), who is facing other criminal charges, was returned to Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in late 2006 for an attack on a nightclub doorman.

As well as the murder on Halloween in 2000 of Tommy English at his home in Newtownabbey on the outskirts of north Belfast, the nine defendants also faced a range of other charges including wounding with intent, possessing guns and hijacking.

The main evidence was given by two so-called super-grass brothers Robert and Ian Stewart. They are both convicted UVF members who turned queen’s evidence against the accused. They received hugely reduced sentences of 3½ years each for a number of UVF crimes, including the murder of English, who was shot during a UVF-UDA feud in which seven died.

The Stewart brothers, who are in a witness protection programme, said they were part of the gang that killed English. Implicating the defendants they said they regretted their actions and turned queen’s evidence because “we could not live with our lives”.

Justice Gillen, however, was withering in his evaluation of the evidence from the Stewarts. He found it “risible” that it took them eight years to build up the courage to give evidence against their former colleagues.

Justice Gillen said: “In summary, these are dishonest witnesses of very bad character who have lied to the police and to the court, on some occasions wrongly implicated a number of men who were clearly not present at the crimes suggested, on other occasions at worst falsely embellished or at best wildly confused the roles and words of those whom they alleged were present, have clear difficulties distinguishing one crime scene from another, have obviously colluded to produce certain parts of their testimony and have given evidence which is flatly contradicted by unchallenged independent evidence throughout the process.”

Referring to how, in January, two men were convicted of the racist murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence in London in 1993 the judge said advances in forensic science and current law allowing the temporary setting aside of the rule against double jeopardy “may yet ensure that those who committed these egregious crimes, including potentially even some of those whom I have acquitted in this case, will yet face their just deserts and be subject to condign punishment from the courts”.

Those acquitted of the nine more serious charges including murder were: Haddock; John Bond (45), Essex Court, Carrickfergus; Ronald Bowe (35), Ross House, Mount Vernon estate, Belfast; Samuel Higgins (36) The Meadow, Antrim; Philip Laffin (34), Bridge Street, Antrim; Jason Loughlin (36), Bryson Court, Newtownabbey; David Miller (40), Upritchard Court, Bangor; Darren Moore (42), Mount Vernon Park, Belfast; and Alexander Wood (35), Milewater Way, Newtownabbey.

9. Nationalists living in flats die earlier

SIX-County Department of Health research that shows nationalists and tenants living in flats are more likely to die earlier than unionists or those living in houses is proof that families should not be living in the New Lodge tower blocks, a local campaigner said this week.

Kate Ward from the Participation and the Practice of Rights Project was speaking after new research was released from the department last month on mortality rates between 2003 and 2007. The Analysis of Mortality patterns in the Six-County report showed that Catholic males died at the average age of 76.3 compared to Protestant men at the age 77.2, while Catholic females died at the age of 80.8 compared to their Protestant counterparts who died on average at the age of 81.7.

The highest death rates were also found in those living in flats or apartments compared to terraced houses. Females living in detached homes had a 44 per cent lower death rate than those living in flats.

Campaigner Kate Ward said the latest report showed that the ongoing campaign to move families out of the New Lodge tower blocks is entirely justified.

“The residents of the Seven Towers’ most recent survey results show the health effects of poor housing; 71 per cent of residents feel their health has been affected by the poor heating, 83 per cent by the dampness and over 76 per cent of the residents visit their GP far in excess of the UK average of five times per year,” she said.

“Despite this however, when the residents, together with health and housing experts Professors Green and Ormandy, last year worked to construct a cost alternative proposal to the NIHE’s cladding proposal which would actually improve the health of the residents, they were told by Minister McCausland that they should accept the substandard scheme since ‘half a loaf is better than none at all’.

“Government has a duty to proactively engage with residents to improve their health regardless of where they live or what religious background they belong to. It is a duty which the government has thus far, failed to live up to for Towers’ residents.”

10. Loughinisland victims' families begin legal challenge

RELATIVES of those who died in the Heights Bar shooting in Loughinisland, Co Down in 1994 are seeking to overturn the finding that there was no evidence of collusion between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the UVF.

Families of victims gunned down in the bar by loyalists while watching the 26-County soccer team beat Italy in the 1994 World Cup have started legal action to overturn the police ombudsman report into the murders.

The relatives are challenging the report's conclusions that there was no evidence of collusion between the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang responsible and the RUC.

Lawyers and families of the dead believe the RUC investigation was compromised because a number of those directly involved in the shooting were police informers. However, before being able to challenge the report, they are contesting a decision to refuse legal aid.

A judge has granted permission to seek a judicial review of the funding denial. A full hearing on that preliminary issue will take place in June and the challenge to the ombudsman's report is expected to follow this summer.

Six nationalist men were shot dead when the UVF sprayed the Heights bar in Loughinisland with gunfire on June 18, 1994. No one has been convicted of the murders, although 16 people have been arrested for questioning in connection with the attack, all were released.

In June last year, the outgoing police ombudsman in the Occupied Six Counties, Al Hutchinson, found there was not enough evidence of collusion between the RUC and the loyalist gang, although he did identify failings in the investigation, criticising it for “a lack of diligence, focus and leadership”.

11. HET investigation 'whitewash'

THE family of Manus Deery, the Derry teenager shot dead by the British Army 40 years ago dismissed a report into his killing as a “whitewash”.

The British Army maintain that a soldier in a lookout post on Derry’s walls fired at what appeared to be a gunman about 200 metres away, missed him and the ricochet fatally injured the teenager in the Bogside in 1972. His family have always disputed the Army's version and on February 17, 2012 they criticised the Historical Enquiries Team report into the teenager's death.

Manus Deery's sister Helen said she wanted the case re-opened.

“With the information which they were given it is near impossible to come back with the same report that I now have,” she said. “Letters with different dates, they didn't even get my mother's name right the second time round.

“They got it wrong the first time round and I made them take note of that and they came back the second time with her name still wrong. It's a whitewash.”

12. Advisers back all-Ireland anti-fracking campaign

ON February 17 it was reported that a new organisation is to campaign against fracking and is being backed by advisers in the areas of economics, law, science, public health and policy development.

Good Energies Alliance Ireland will cover the covering the 32 Counties of Ireland, and will also promote ways in which the wise use of energy can be supported from sustainable sources and practices.

Fracking, which involves using water to fracture rocks to drill for shale gas, is causing concern over the potential environmental and health considerations related to the activity.

However, while there are genuine fears about this method of extracting natural resources, companies are promising hundreds of jobs in rural areas.

Bringing together the many community groups around the country, Good Energies Alliance says its plan is to use information and creative communication to raise awareness of the process of fracking and:

* To lobby nationally and internationally for a ban on hydraulic fracturing until independent scientific studies verify that it can be undertaken sustainably and will not result in environmental, social or economic harm.

* To research and support ways in which the wise use of energy can be supported from sustainable energy sources and practices by means of programmes and events.

One company, Tamboran, which hopes to be granted a license to frack in Leitrim made a presentation in Leinster House earlier this week. It hopes to drill for up to 2.2 trillion cubic feet of gas in Leitrim over more than 30 years.

Widespread unregulated fracking in the USA has caused environmental damage in many states, while France has banned the practice. A report being carried out by the university of Aberdeen on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency is set to be published later this month.

13. Campaigners convicted as community members block Shell's haulage in Mayo

IN Belmullet district court on Monday, February 20, 2012, six campaigners were convicted of a total of 13 charges between them with fines totalling €3,035.

While the court was in session local residents blocked Shell's haulage route between Bellanaboy refinery and the compound in Glengad. Monday was the beginning of a week-long special sitting for anyone arrested in the last year for protesting against Shell's Corrib Gas project. In all 19 protestors face 80 charges between them for “civil disobedience”.

On Monday six out of 19 people's cases were heard, and all six were convicted of every charge they faced. A bench warrant was issued for one person who was unable to attend court. So 12 people are left to be heard, some of them with four or five charges each.

Around 1pm a group of local residents decided to block the haulage route to Glengad, and were thrown off the road by Gardaí. The usual camera person Terence Conway was up in court in Belmullet, so the Gardaí took advantage of the lack of cameras and were fairly rough with people. One woman was thrown into a ditch, and another had her breast pinched by a Garda.

The last special sitting dealing with campaigners against Corrib resulted in 24 of 27 people being acquitted. So far this week, the Judge has not accepted any of the defence arguments.

At one stage when one defendant questioned the level of force that had been used on the protesters, Superintendent Patrick Diskin responded that "Public order situations are never pretty, pushing and shoving sometimes has to happen to ensure people don't get hurt."

Gardaí refused to arrest local people on the roads on Monday, instead using brute force. Yet they are happy to criminalise outside supporters in their effort to further isolate the community of Erris.

Around 70 people stopped all Shell work on Friday and Saturday February 17 and 18 including the haulage and massive convoys that have been distressing local residents for the past few weeks.

Two buses from Cork and Dublin with 20 people each arrived to the Rossport Solidarity Camp on February 17 and including local residents and folks already on the camp about 70 people went out at 7am Friday morning to stop work.

A few Shell vehicles carrying workers tried but failed to get into the Aughoose compound because of the number of people standing in the road.

After several hours of relaxed but effective protesting, around 2pm one of the fence panels near the gate decided to fall down in solidarity. Seeing openings in the fence behind the fallen panel, about 12 people got into the compound before IRMS security were able to secure the fence.

The protesters made their way through the compound and exited of their own accord, without any bother from IRMS or the Gardaí. However within 5 minutes up to 40 Gardaí showed up on the scene, coming out in full force at the first call from Shell security.

[R . S . F news] Tribute to Brian Mor O Baoighill

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 02:10:00 +0000

Statement from the President of Republican Sinn Féin Des Dalton

Irish Republicans were saddened to hear the news of the death of Brian Mór Ó Baoighill, in New York. Brian was a life-long Irish Republican activist and a man steeped in the history and revolutionary Fenian tradition of Irish America.

Brian’s unique gifts as an artist were given selflessly to aid the cause of a free Ireland. His paintings were used to highlight the plight of the Hunger Strikers in 1981 as well as every other facet of the ongoing struggle against British rule in Ireland. Famously in December 1983 he was responsible for an electronic sign in New York’s Time Square sending out Christmas greetings to Republican prisoners. Brian took great pride in the fact the British Ambassador was questioned over the sign. Brian used his artwork as a weapon against imperialism and in defence of the men and women of no property. Among his last works were cartoons in opposition to the visit by the Queen of England to the 26 Counties in May of last year.

In June of last year he wrote an open letter to the Lord Mayor of Belfast to protest at one of his poster artworks, commemorating Theobald Wolfe Tone and the 1798 Rising, being hung in Belfast City hall. Brian saw this as merely an attempt to distract from the fact that Belfast and the rest of the Six Counties were still occupied by British forces. In his own inimitable style Brian finished his letter by declaring: “When the Belfast City Hall is located in a united Ireland, not the United Kingdom, I would be honored to see my artwork displayed. Until then, I request that it be taken down. Moving the picture of the Queen of England from one wall to another does not in any way make Belfast part of a United Ireland. I object to my artwork being used to pretend otherwise.”

Brian’s involvement in the cause of Ireland stretches out over five decades, he was a founder member of Irish Northern Aid (NORAID) in 1972 and worked with the Irish People newspaper for almost 20 years. In 1986 he rejected the attempts of a reformist leadership to hijack Republican Movement and was among the founders of Cumann na Saoirse of which he remained an officer up to his death. Brian had a deep understanding and knowledge of Irish history and was a living link with previous generations of Irish Republicans who fanned the flames of revolutionary Republicanism such as Michael Flannery, Joe Stynes and George Harrison. Brian very much followed in their footsteps and ensured that the torch was passed to a new generation. Brian Mór was a friend, comrade and mentor to succeeding generations of activists in the cause of Irish Freedom in the US and Ireland over many years and was always willing to give freely of his time and experience.

Brian leaves behind a gap in the ranks but his legacy of unflinching loyalty and tireless commitment to ideal of the All-Ireland Republic of Easter Week is an inspiration to his friends and comrades on both sides of the Atlantic. In the words of Thomas Davis: “The rudder of our ship was he, our castle’s corner stone.”

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dilis.

[R . S . F news] Irish Republican Information Service (no. 290)

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 02:05:00 +0000

In this issue:

1. Khader Adnan near death

2. O’Hara and Devine families open letter to Adams

3. Petrol bombs thrown at British police

4. RUC misconduct figures published

5. Independent councillor condemns internment and mistreatment of Republican prisoners

6. Brian Shivers jailed for 25 years

7. Provos to support British Queen’s Jubilee

8. West Belfast alert 'elaborate hoax'

9. Independent inquiry into death squad killings demanded

10. Calls for Burton to clarify pension rule changes

11. Shooting enthusiasts win court battle over gun licences

12. Unlock NAMA occupy 66-67 Great Strand Street, Dublin

13. Senior health official to get €430,000 severance payment

14. Palestinian protesters target UN chief Ban Ki-moon

15. Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro launches memoirs

16. The Assange case means we are all suspects now

17. Welcome to Police State America

1. Khader Adnan near death

A PALESTINIAN prisoner on his 62nd day of hunger strike while shackled to a bed in an Israeli hospital is in immediate danger of death, according to a medical report submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court in an effort to secure his release.

Khader Adnan, 33, a baker from a village near Jenin, is being held without charge by the Israeli authorities under a four-month term of "administrative detention". He began his hunger strike on December 18, the day after being arrested.

Adnan's lawyers have submitted a petition for his release to Israel's Supreme Court, but no date has been set for a hearing. The situation was urgent, lawyer Mahmoud Kassandra told the Guardian. "This is the last chance. The medical report says he could die at any minute. We hope this will succeed but I am not optimistic."

Adnan's hunger strike is in protest at his detention without charge or being told of any evidence against him, and over his claims of abuse and degrading treatment during arrest and interrogation. This is his ninth period of detention, according to reports. In the past he has acted as a spokesman for the militant group Islamic Jihad.

Many protesters say Adnan has become a symbol of Israel's occupation and its treatment of prisoners. More than 300 Palestinians are held under "administrative detention" orders in Israeli prisons.

On February 15, 2012, Geraldine McNamara, National PRO, Republican Sinn Féin again condemned the Israeli administration for refusing to act in the case of Khadar Adnan, the Palestinian political prisoner on hunger strike in Ofer jail for 62 days.

She continued: “Today Khader Adnan has slipped into a coma and has only a short time to live.

“Khadar is on hunger strike as a result of his detention without trial at the hands of the Israeli’s. He has asked to be charged or released. In his own words Khadar said ‘My dignity is more precious than food’.

“He's willing to die courageously defending it.

“West Bank, Gaza, and other protesters joined Adnan's strike supportively.

“Khadar has been kept in deplorable conditions and has been tortured. Throughout his detention, he has been subjected to degrading and inhuman treatment, including physical abuse, prolonged periods of interrogation, isolation and unsanitary conditions of detention.

“His condition's now extremely grave. Yet prison authorities shamelessly called his health ‘acceptable’. They found no grounds for shortening his detention or releasing him.

“Sadly soon it looks like Khadar will be released from his prison hell in the same way Bobby Sands and his comrades were in 1981 in British-Occupied Ireland.

“Too many stood idly by then and we should be ashamed that no international body has succeeded in calling on the Israeli’s to end this tragic situation.

“We are told that a person is innocent until proven guilty but in Israel a person can be interned (detained) without trial as has happened in this case.

“Unfortunately imperialist governments worldwide never learn from their mistakes, Khadar will become a martyr and many more will follow in his footsteps.

“He is fading fast now but his strength of character will live forever.

“Our prayers are with Khadar and his family at this time.”

2. O’Hara and Devine families open letter to Adams

THE following letter from the O'Hara and Devine families appeared in the Derry Journal on February 10.

“Open Letter to Gerry Adams , Danny Morrison Jim Gibney, Martin McGuinness,

Tom Hartley, and Bik McFarlane.

We welcome the fact that Danny Morrison has broken his silence and has given some insight into the events of the first week of July 1981 concerning the hunger strike in Long Kesh. In that light we would like to ask a few questions in the hope of getting answers that may finally put to rest the events surrounding the tragic deaths of our loved ones.

Danny has stated that he relayed the contents of an offer to the PIRA prison OC, Bik McFarlane, on July 5 1981.

Richard O'Rawe, the prison PRO, has said that Bik sent him down a comm detailing what was on offer, and that he said to Bik "Tá go leor ann.'' (There is enough there). This has been verified to some of our families by two ex-Blanketmen who had been there on the wing and heard the words. Also, Bik himself, in a press interview in 2009, finally admitted he had had a conversation with Richard, and that he thought the Brit offer was "amazing." In light of this, we must assume that Bik made his and Richard's views known to their outside leadership. What we would like to know is:

Q1 Why was this not accepted?

Q2 Who, on the outside overrode Bik's authority?

Q3 Why was the Hunger Strike allowed to continue, on direction from the outside (not the POWs)?

Q4 Mrs McDonnell asked Gerry Adams to save her son's life to end to the Hunger Strike by ordering the POWs off it. Mr Adams' reply was that he did not have the authority to do this. Who had the authority (Brendan McLaughlin was ordered off it due to his medical condition)?

Q6 Why was the IRSP (who were joint participants in the Hunger Strike) not informed about the offer through Mountain Climber?

Q7 The British sent you their offer (to be released upon the ending of the Hunger Strike) in the form of dictated statements on the 6th and 20th of July. Why were these statements never shown to the POWs?

Q8 Who took the decision to withhold the statements from the hunger strikers and the prison leadership?

Q9 On the 29th of July, Gerry Adams told the mother and father of Kieran Doherty, and the hunger strikers, that ''there was no deal on the table, no movement of any sort'' despite him being at the centre of on-going communications/negotiations with the Brits from July 4th to July 20th. Why did Adams deliberately mislead the hunger strikers? Did he think that they might call off their fast if they found out what was really happening? We should not forget that four of those men who listened and joked with Adams, went on to die horrible deaths in total ignorance of what the British were offering.

In Danny Morrison's recent letter he spoke of the 'families’ pain'. Danny can't even hope to imagine the pain felt by some of our families. We, the undersigned, believe that the Hunger Strike was prolonged when an honourable settlement was available, a settlement that would have saved the lives of six brave men.

We called for an independent inquiry three years ago, asking all those involved in this matter to attend. Only Richard O'Rawe and the late Dr Garrett FitzGerald said they would attend. We once again call for on Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Jim Gibney, Martin McGuinness, Tom Hartley, and BikMcFarlane to attend. The least we deserve is a reason why they won't attend, and failing that, they could provide answers to.

Is sinne

Peggy and Tony O Hara. Michael and Louise Devine.

3. Petrol bombs thrown at British police

TWO petrol bombs were thrown at RUC/PSNI and fire crews in Derry on February 14. Stones were also thrown during the incident at Rossville Street. One vehicle received minor scorch damage as a result of the attack. There were no reports of any injuries

4. RUC misconduct figures published

IT was reported on February 13 that in the last three years 83 RUC/PSNI members were convicted of offences at internal hearings, but only 18 were dismissed or required to resign from the police service. The rest were allowed to stay in the British colonial police, but faced sanctions such as a reduction in rank, a fine or a reprimand. Another 22 members chose to resign rather than face proceedings.

In general there was a wide range of offences or alleged offences, including theft, drugs, assault, and attempting to pervert the course of justice, as well as drink-driving, sex offences, dishonesty and assault. These cover a similarly wide range of misconduct among the population at large, for which members of the public face the due process of law.

Currently there are 25 RUC/PSNI members suspended from duty, and they have been paid a total of nearly £700,000 while they await the outcome of their disciplinary investigations. In one particularly disturbing case, an RUC man suspended for more than seven years may have received some £275,000 in pay while off duty.

5. Independent councillor condemns internment and mistreatment of Republican Prisoners

ON February 7 Independent Republican Councillor for Newry & Mourne, Davy Hyland, spoke out against the what he believes to be the “internment and brutalisation of republican prisoners” currently being held in Maghaberry.

Davy Hyland, referring in particular to Marian Price, Martin Corey and Gerry McGeough, currently being held in Maghaberry, said that republicans were “being unjustly held captive” and added that “some Republican prisoners are not receiving the adequate medical treatment they require.”

He continued, “Marian Price is apparently being held because her license was revoked by the British secretary of state, yet she was never released on license.

“Marian was granted a pardon due to ill-health following a lengthy hunger strike and subsequent force feeding during the 1970s. Today she now finds herself being held in solitary confinement in an all-male prison.

“Another Republican prisoner, Martin Corey, is currently interned after his licence was also revoked by the British secretary of state. Martin Corey was released from Long Kesh in 1992 after spending 19 years in prison. In 2010 he was arrested, imprisoned and charged without trial.

The Independent Councillor also branded the reasons for Gerry McGeough’s incarceration as “ridiculous” as they relate to charges dating back to the eighties and said it is clear that Gerry McGeough is not receiving adequate medical treatment, a matter which he said “must be of grave concern for Gerry and his family.”

Davy continued “It’s clear that Republican ex-prisoners have a sword hanging over their heads and if they speak out against British occupation or if they don’t toe the line they will find themselves being returned to prison.

He cited Colin Duffy’s case as a “perfect example” of this practice, claiming that Mr Duffy “found himself arrested, charged and imprisoned” in Maghaberry for almost three years on remand chiefly because of his “strong Republican beliefs” and his vocal condemnation of the current establishment. Davy Hyland believes this to be a “clear case of internment.”

He went on to highlight the on-going protest in the prison against “controlled movement and forced strip searches” and said that the recent images of republican prisoners sporting long beards and long hair had brought “the reality and seriousness of the situation home to many people. It’s an image we thought we would never see again. Ten men gave their lives in 1981 so that today’s republican prisoners would not have to suffer the same treatment they endured.”

Councillor Hyland condemned what he sees as a lack of action by politicians:

“Some Stormont politicians claim to be concerned about such cases, yet they don’t seem to be doing anything about it, except issuing the odd vague statement. Despite the fact that some of them were once held captive by the British state, they clearly have short memories. They are the ones who gave David Ford the job of Justice Minister, they put him in the position, so they have a lot to answer for.

“The Stormont politicians regularly harp on about leaving “the bad old days” behind us. Yet it’s clear that for republicans the bad old days have never went away.

“The fact that a British secretary of state, Owen Paterson, can revoke licenses as he pleases is proof who really holds power.

Cllr Hyland concluded by saying “As an elected representative, I personally call for an end to the torture and brutality of republican prisoners and for the full implementation of the August 2010 agreement which would bring this crisis to an end. The BOSS chair is already in Maghaberry so why aren’t they using it if the technology is there?

“If those in Stormont are really opposed to these injustices then they should walk out of the puppet assembly and join the numerous picket lines and rallies against these injustices that are constantly taking place.”

6. Brian Shivers jailed for 25 years

ON February 10 Brian Shivers (46), who was convicted of killing two soldiers at Massareene British army base in 2009, was sentenced to life imprisonment and was told he must serve a minimum of 25 years in prison.

The length of the sentence means Brian Shivers, who is terminally ill, is likely to die in jail. During the trial, Brian Shivers's lawyer said his client suffered from cystic fibrosis and had only a few years left to live.

He is to appeal his conviction.

7. Provos to support British Queen’s Jubilee

IT was reported on February 17 that Councillor Conor Maskey, a Provisional member of

Belfast City Council said his support of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee should be seen in the context of forthcoming centenary celebrations such as the 1916 Easter Rising. He and his party colleague Jim McVeigh have backed a report detailing the council’s plans to celebrate the Queen’s 1952 accession to the British throne at the beginning of June.

8. West Belfast alert 'elaborate hoax'

A ‘SECURITY’ alert in west Belfast was sparked by an elaborate hoax. British army bomb experts were called to the scene at Ross Road on February 10 to examine a suspicious object. A number of homes were evacuated and the area was sealed off for a time, but the alert has since ended and the diversions have been lifted.

9. Independent inquiry into death squad killings demanded

A REPORT, published on February 5 into an infamous massacre of five nationalists twenty years ago is calling for an independent inquiry into the Ulster Freedom Fighters slaughter which also left seven others wounded.

The 70-page Relatives for Justice report was presented to families of those killed on the anniversary of the Seén Graham’s bookmakers murders, and called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to commission an independent inquiry into the Belfast slaughter on February 5, 1992.

The report details British Crown Force collusion in the murders of the five nationalist victims – Jack Duffin (66); Willie McManus (54); Christy Doherty (52); Peter Magee (18) and James Kennedy (15).

Mark Sykes from RFJ, who was shot in the attack which claimed the life of his 18-year-old brother-in-law, Peter Magee, said the new report not only highlighted the extent of collusion but it also seeks justice for the dead.

“It is asking David Cameron to make a full apology to those bereaved and injured,” he said. “We also want information from him around the weapons coming into the country because British military intelligence knew about them through Brian Nelson.”

Nelson was a British agent working in the UFF.

Mark Sykes said the collusion has always been suspected, with eye-witnesses claiming an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) jeep stationed opposite the bookmakers moved only minutes before the murders took place.

It was widely believed leading loyalists Joe Bratty and Raymond Elder, who lived not far from the Lower Ormeau where the attack took place, and who were shot dead by the IRA on the Ormeau Road in 1994, were behind the attack.

A new memorial stone on the 20th anniversary of the killings. Relatives of all five victims as well as friends and supporters attended a memorial Mass at St Malachy’s church before children of some of the murdered unveiled a new memorial to them at the scene of the shootings on the lower Ormeau Road.

The report claims a gun used in the attack was handed back to a UFF agent, that a key

10. Calls for Burton to clarify pension rule changes

THE 26-County Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton and her department ‘should launch a public information campaign on the implications of changes in the rules for State contributory pensions’, according to the lobby group Older and Bolder on January 23, 2012.

The organisation’s director, Patricia Conboy, called on Joan Burton to provide those affected by the changes with “clarity, transparency, and adequate time to prepare and plan”.

She said the Minister was now “flagging the possibility” of changing the way in which entitlement to the State contributory pension was calculated, moving from a mix of total number of years and yearly averages of contributions to total number of years solely.

“The possibility of introducing this change in September 2012 is being mooted,” Ms Conboy said.

“What is not clear is what any of the above means for parents who take time out of the labour force to care for children; people who become ill for example with cancer and take leave to undergo chemotherapy; carers of sick/older relatives; people who work/travel abroad for a period of time.”

The State pension (contributory) is paid to people from the age of 66 who have enough social insurance contributions. It is not means-tested and the maximum rate at present is €230.30 per week.

The minimum, for people with an average of 10 contributions per year over a minimum five-year working life, is currently €115.20.

Under changes already announced in the budget and due to come into force in September, those with the minimum 10 contributions per year will see their pension drop to €92 a week. The five-year working life requirement is being doubled to 10 under separate measures announced as far back as 1997.

The new “total contributions” plan under review by the Minister would see this minimum payment for those with 10 years of contributions fall to €76 a week.

Éamon Timmins from the charity Age Action warned that changes to the qualification criteria will mean significantly smaller pensions for some.

“The changes will result in an unexpected reduction of €1,500 in a person’s annual income for the rest of their lives,” Éamon Timmins said.

Age Action also called for clarity about the 26-County government’s long-term plans for the State pension, following comments by the Minister that she was examining the possibility of bringing forward changes which had been originally planned for 2020.

The 2010 National Pensions Framework stated that the Government would adopt a “total contributions approach” from 2020 when calculating a person’s PRSI contribution. This would replace the “average contributions” system currently used.

11. Shooting enthusiasts win court battle over gun licences

MORE than 160 shooting enthusiasts in the 26 Counties won a legal battle to have their applications for restricted firearms considered again. They had claimed their applications were being refused on a blanket basis by Gardaí without adequate reasons.

On January 31 they won a legal challenge to Garda refusals to grant them firearms licences.

The hearing was brought to a temporary halt in mid-January after Justice Hedigan expressed concern that a senior Garda had altered a “substantial number” of application forms.

Another senior Garda responsible for issuing gun licences admitted, in a series of test cases brought by three sports enthusiasts, that he failed to complete mandatory sections on application forms.

The test cases, which will cost the taxpayer more than €500,000 in legal costs, were dramatically adjourned to allow the authorities to decide whether they could stand over the current firearms licensing system.

The National Association of Regional Game Councils (NARGC), which supported the test cases, said it was “outraged, but not surprised” at the behaviour of some senior Gardaí responsible for issuing restricted firearms licences.

“In light of the evidence placed before the High Court and the findings of Mr Justice [John] Hedigan in relation to same, NARGC now calls for fundamental changes to the licensing system to ensure transparency, fairness and the maintenance of public confidence in the safety and security provisions of the system,” it said in a statement released after the terms of settlement were reached.

As part of the terms of settlement, the 26-County State has agreed to quash the decisions refusing restricted firearm certificates.

The applications will now be re-submitted for a fresh consideration.

12. Unlock NAMA occupy 66-67 Great Strand Street, Dublin

A NEW campaign group Unlock NAMA was launched in Dublin on Saturday January 28, 2012

Unlock NAMA is a campaign to access NAMA properties for social and community use and to hold NAMA to account. Whereas NAMA is all about giving public money to private banks, the aim of Unlock NAMA is to make public buildings available to the public. Rather than socialising commercial losses, we say socialise resources.

The problem is that NAMA is designed to make this as difficult as possible. The lack of transparency or of any mechanism for engagement with the public makes it hard to know where NAMA’s properties are, and even harder to gain access to them.

NAMA’s bank bailout has been a complete failure: the banks have needed more hand outs and even nationalisation, yet they still are not lending.

Meanwhile NAMA is squandering the property it has acquired and providing massive debt forgiveness to developers.

The demands of Unlock NAMA are: 1) Make NAMA properties available for social and community use; 2) Publish full addresses and details on all properties under NAMA and 3) Publish full details on all sales of NAMA assets.

13. Senior health official to get €430,000 severance payment

THE Secretary-General of the 26-County Department of Health, Michael Scanlan, is to receive lump sum and severance payments of more than €430,000 when he steps down in April according to a report in the Irish Times on January 25, 2012.

He will also be eligible for a pension of €107,795 at the end of his seven-year term in office. Michael Scanlan will be 56 in the early summer.

According to Free State Minister for Health James Reilly, Michael Scanlan would be retiring on April 8, 2012 on the expiry of his term in office. He is also to step down from his position as chairman of the board of the Health Service Executive, to which he was appointed just before Christmas.

The department said that on his retirement Michael Scanlan would have served for nearly 38½ years in the Civil Service.

“In accordance with the terms of his contract he will qualify for a pension and lump sum based on his actual service plus just over 1.5 added years (ie a total of 40 years reckonable service) and a special severance gratuity of one half of his annual salary.”

The department said that as Michael Scanlan was retiring after February 29th, his pension, lump sum and severance would be based on his salary as reduced under financial emergency legislation introduced by the previous government (sic).

Last year there was widespread controversy when it emerged that former secretary general to the Government Dermot McCarthy was to receive an annual pension of €142,670, a once-off lump sum of €428,011 and a special severance payment of €142,670.

14. Palestinian protesters target UN chief Ban Ki-moon

DOZENS of Palestinians staged a hostile protest as the convoy of visiting UN chief Ban Ki-Moon crossed into Gaza from Israel on February 2, 2012.

Many were relatives of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails - who are currently said to number about 4,000 - and said they were angry at Ban Ki-Moon’s refusal to meet them to discuss the prisoners' situation. Some threw shoes and some held signs reading “enough bias for Israel”.

Ban Ki-Moon is visiting the region to try to kick-start stalled peace negotiations.

A month of “exploratory talks” ended last week without any breakthroughs. Negotiations on a two-state solution stalled in late 2010 after a “dispute” over Jewish settlement construction.

The protesters formed a human chain in an attempt to hold up his convoy, reported AP news agency, but Hamas security forces moved them away.

His convoy continued on to Khan Younis, where he was scheduled to visit a school and a Japanese-funded housing project.

He urged Israeli leaders to offer “goodwill gestures” to Palestinians to provide fresh momentum for peace negotiations which stalled over the issue of Jewish settlement construction.

With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by his side, Ban Ki-Moon affirmed that “all Israeli settlements are contrary to international law and prejudice the outcome of a final peace deal”.

The Quartet of Middle East peace mediators - the US, UN, EU and Russia - said last year that they expected both sides to use the exploratory talks to submit detailed proposals on borders and security arrangements, in the hope that the dialogue would encourage direct peace talks.

But the Palestinians say while they have made proposals, the Israelis have not.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected demands for a settlement freeze as a precondition for talks.

15. Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro launches memoirs

FORMER Cuban President Fidel Castro made a rare public appearance to launch his memoirs in early February.

The book, Guerrilla of Time, is almost 1,000 pages long and relates his childhood and rise to power in the Cuban Revolution.

Fidel Castro, 85, said it was every Cuban's duty to fight until the last moment, for Cuba, the planet, and humanity. He had not been seen in public since April last year.

Communist Party newspaper Granma said the launch at the Havana Convention Centre lasted more than six hours.

The two-volume memoir is based on conversations between Fidel Castro and journalist Katiuska Blanco.

It starts with former President Castro's earliest childhood memories and takes the reader up to December 1958, the eve of the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista by Castro and his followers.

Culture Minister Abel Prieto and Director of the Cuban Writers' Union Miguel Barnet were among those speaking at the launch.

Mr Barnet said the memoirs were “as vivid as a 3D film”.

At the event, Fidel Castro spoke about current affairs, praising Latin American students for “standing up for their right to free education”.

He also paid tribute to his friend, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who “had done more than anyone else for the Venezuelan people".

It was the first time Fidel Castro had appeared in public since the closing session of the Communist Party Congress in April 2011.

Fidel Castro handed over the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006, and has kept a low profile since.

16. The Assange case means we are all suspects now

THIS week’s Supreme Court hearing [first week in February] in the Julian Assange case has profound meaning for the preservation of basic freedoms in western democracies. This is Assange’s final appeal against his extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct that were originally dismissed by the chief prosecutor in Stockholm and constitute no crime in Britain.

The consequences, if he loses, lie not in Sweden but in the shadows cast by America’s descent into totalitarianism. In Sweden, he is at risk of being “temporarily surrendered” to the US where his life has been threatened and he is accused of “aiding the enemy” with Bradley Manning, the young soldier accused of leaking evidence of US war crimes to WikiLeaks.

The connections between Manning and Assange have been concocted by a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, which allowed no defence counsel or witnesses, and by a system of plea-bargaining that ensures a 90 per cent conviction. It is reminiscent of a Soviet show trial.

The determination of the Obama administration to crush Assange and the unfettered journalism represented by WikiLeaks is revealed in secret Australian government documents released under freedom of information which describe the US pursuit of WikiLeaks as “an unprecedented investigation”. It is unprecedented because it subverts the First Amendment of the US constitution that explicitly protects truth-tellers. In 2008 Barack Obama said, “Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal.” Obama has since prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as all previous US presidents.

With American courts demanding to see the worldwide accounts of Twitter, Google and Yahoo, the threat to Assange, an Australian, extends to any internet-user anywhere. Washington’s enemy is not “terrorism” but the principle of free speech and voices of conscience within its militarist state and those journalists brave enough to tell their stories.

“How do you prosecute Julian Assange and not the New York Times?” a former administration official told Reuters. The threat is well understood by the New York Times, which in 2010 published a selection of the WikiLeaks cables. The editor at the time, Bill Keller, boasted that he had sent the cables to the State Department for vetting. His obeisance extended to his denial that WikiLeaks was a “partner” – which it was – and to personal attacks on Assange. The message to all journalists was clear: do your job as it should be done and you are traitors; do your job as we say you should and you are journalists.

Much of the media’s depiction of Bradley Manning illuminates this. The world’s pre-eminent prisoner of conscience, Manning remained true to the Nuremberg principle that every soldier has the right to a “moral choice”. But according to the New York Times, he is weird or mad, a “geek”. In an “exclusive investigation”, the Guardian reported him as an “unstable” gay man, who got “out of control” and “wet himself” when he was “picked on”. Psycho-hearsay such as this serves to suppress the truth of the outrage Manning felt at the wanton killing in Iraq, his moral heroism and the criminal complicity of his military superiors. “I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy,” he reportedly said.

The treatment handed out to Assange is well-documented, though not the duplicitous and cowardly behaviour of his own government. Australia remains a colony in all but name. Australian intelligence agencies are, in effect, branches of the main office in Washington. The Australian military has played a regular role as US mercenary. When prime minister Gough Whitlam tried to change this in 1975 and secure Australia’s partial independence, he was dismissed by a governor-general using archaic “reserve powers” who was revealed to have intelligence connections.

WikiLeaks has given Australians a rare glimpse of how their country is run. In 2010, leaked US cables disclosed that key government figures in the Labor Party coup that brought Julia Gillard to power were “protected” sources of the US embassy: what the CIA calls “assets”. Kevin Rudd, the prime minister she ousted, had displeased Washington by being disobedient, even suggesting that Australian troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

In the wake of her portentous rise ascent to power, Gillard attacked WikiLeaks as “illegal” and her attorney-general threatened to withdraw Assange’s passport. Yet the Australian Federal Police reported that Assange and WikiLeaks had broken no law. Freedom of information files have since revealed that Australian diplomats have colluded with the US in its pursuit of Assange. This is not unusual. The government of John Howard ignored the rule of law and conspired with the US to keep David Hicks, an Australian citizen, in Guantanamo Bay, where he was tortured. Australia’s principal intelligence organisation, ASIO, is allowed to imprison refugees indefinitely without explanation, prosecution or appeal.

Every Australian citizen in grave difficulty overseas is said to have the right to diplomatic support. The denial of this to Assange, bar the perfunctory, is an unreported scandal. Last September, Assange’s London lawyer, Gareth Peirce, wrote to the Australian government, warning that Assange’s “personal safety and security has become at risk in circumstances that have become highly politically charged”. Only when the Melbourne Age reported that she had received no response did a dissembling official letter turn up. Last November, Peirce and I briefed the Australian Consul-General in London, Ken Pascoe. One of Britain’s most experienced human rights lawyers, Peirce told him she feared a unique miscarriage of justice if Assange was extradited and his own government remained silent. The silence remains.

-- John Pilger, February 5, 2012

http://www.sovereignindependent.com

17. Welcome to Police State America

YOU know you live in a police state when the president allows the military to continuously harass a prisoner against whom no crime has been proven by interrupting him every five minutes of the day to ask him, “Are you okay?” and forces him to stand to attention naked at roll call. What it can do to one man it can do to every man.

You know you live in a police state when said prisoner is barred from exercising in his cell and told where he may and may not put his hands when he goes to sleep at night. Only a police state would dictate how an individual can sleep.

You know you live in a police state when the government punishes, rather than honours, whistle-blowers who reveal its crimes such as the US massacre of civilians in Baghdad that PFC Bradley Manning exposed.

You know you live in a police state when wardens force pregnant women prisoners to deliver their babies while in chains. (Not exactly “the new birth of freedom” of which Abraham Lincoln spoke.)

You know you live in a police state when the president orders the assassination (ie, murder) of American citizens without bothering to arrest them and bring them to trial.

You know you live in a police state when police forces across the country attack unarmed and non-violent citizen protesters with pepper spray and clubs.

You know you live in a police state when hundreds of thousands of citizens are rotting in prisons for victimless “crimes” such as smoking pot and your country leads the world in incarcerations with 2.3 million behind bars and when hundreds of thousands of these prisoners are sexually assaulted.

You know you live in a police state when working people who say overwhelmingly that they want to join a union cannot do so for fear of being fired, and in which the money earned by the poor is taken by the state and given to the rich. If the government can rob one person, it can rob every person.

You know you live in a police state when your government makes terrible, punishing wars on small countries after falsely accusing them of having a “weapon of mass destruction” while it possesses tens of thousands of them.

You know you live in a police state when the president signs into law an Act allowing him to arrest innocent citizens on his say-so and have the military imprison them indefinitely without charge, legal counsel, or trial before a jury of their peers.

You know you live in a police state when you can be barred from flying in an airliner on suspicion of “terrorism” that has not been proven and which is impossible for you to challenge.

You know you live in a police state when you are under surveillance by Federal agencies such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others, for your political views rather than the commission of any crime against the state, and when said agencies can access your medical records, bank statements, and “private” papers, tap your telephone, question your neighbours and employer and follow you around.

You know you live in a police state when the military gets the biggest percentage of your tax dollars so that it can spend as much for war as the next 20 nations combined while claiming it is attacking other countries in the name of peace and order.

You know you live in a police state when the Pentagon has more than a trillion dollars in research projects underway to make sophisticated killing machines that will give it control of the entire planet from 2,000 military bases and outer space and to terrify the world with its arsenals of nuclear weapons and germ warfare.

You know you live in a police state when people write to you to commend you for your “courage” for writing critically against the government when, in fact, you should have every good reason to live in fear of so doing.

sherwoodross10@gmail.com, February 5, 2012

[R . S . F news] Khadar Adnan 60th day on hunger strike

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 02:05:00 +0000

Geraldine McNamara National PRO of Republican Sinn Fein has again condemned the Israeli administration for refusing to act in the case of Khadar Adnan the Palestinain political prisoner on hunger strike in Ofer jail for 60 days.

Today Khader Adnan has slipped into a coma and has only a short time to live.

Khadar is on hunger strike as a result of his detention without trial at the hands of the Israeli’s. He has asked to be charged or released, In his own words Khadar said “My dignity is more precious than food."

He's willing to die courageously defending it.

West Bank, Gaza, and other protesters joined Adnan's strike supportively.

Khadar has been kept in deplorable conditions and has been tortured. Throughout his detention, he has been subjected to degrading and inhuman treatment, including physical abuse, prolonged periods of interrogation, isolation and unsanitary conditions of detention.

His condition's now extremely grave. Yet prison authorities shamelessly called his health "acceptable." They found no grounds for shortening his detention or releasing him.

Sadly soon Khadar will be released from his prison hell in the same way Bobby Sands and his comrades were in 1981 in Ireland.

Too many stood idly by then and we should be ashamed that no international body has succeeded in calling on the Israeli’s to end this tragic situation.

We are told that a person is innocent until proven guilty but in Israel a person can be interned (detained) without trial as has happened in this case.

Unfortunately imperialist governments worldwide never learn from their mistakes, Khadar will become a martyr and many more will follow in his footsteps.

He is fading fast now but his strength of character will live forever.

Our prayers are with Khadar and his family at this time.

[R . S . F news] Khadar Adnan 60th day on hunger strike

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 02:05:00 +0000

Today Khader Adnan has slipped into a coma and has only a short time to live.

He's willing to die courageously defending it.

West Bank, Gaza, and other protesters joined Adnan's strike supportively.

His condition's now extremely grave. Yet prison authorities shamelessly called his health "acceptable." They found no grounds for shortening his detention or releasing him.

Sadly soon Khadar will be released from his prison hell in the same way Bobby Sands and his comrades were in 1981 in Ireland.

Too many stood idly by then and we should be ashamed that no international body has succeeded in calling on the Israeli’s to end this tragic situation.

We are told that a person is innocent until proven guilty but in Israel a person can be interned (detained) without trial as has happened in this case.

Unfortunately imperialist governments worldwide never learn from their mistakes, Khadar will become a martyr and many more will follow in his footsteps.

He is fading fast now but his strength of character will live forever.

Our prayers are with Khadar and his family at this time.

[R . S . F news] Palestinian political prisoner Khader Adnan near death on his fiftieth day on hunger strike.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:25:00 +0000

Geraldine McNamara PRO of Republican Sinn Fein has called on the International community to protest by every means possible to the Israeli administration in order to highlight the plight of political prisoner Khader Adnan and his fellow detainees.

Khader Adnan has reached the 50th day of his hunger strike against prison conditions in Ofer Jail Israel. This includes five days of refusing liquids as well; Israeli prison officers have started force-feeding him liquids to keep him alive.

In solidarity, dozens of youth activists in Gaza have announced that they are joining Adnan in his hunger strike.

Adnan is one of nearly three hundred Palestinian people being interned without trial in Israeli jails in what the Israeli’s call ‘administrative detention’.

This type of detention is in violation of the Geneva Convention which bans detention without charge.

The Israeli’s are not the first to use this type of internment without trial Geraldine said.

We have seen it in the occupied six counties when Brian Faulkner signed it into law in 1972.

It was also used in 1916-22 and during the 40’s and fifties campaigns.

Recently we have seen it in Guantanamo bay and it is also during this detention when prisoners are continually tortured to force confessions out of them. The truth does not matter as long as the oppressor has their way.

The Palestinian people have long been campaigning to have their state recognised by the United Nations but at present they are being annihilated in their native land.

. The United Nations has been working on and involved in the question of a Palestinian state since 1947, over 60 years later that statehood has not been granted to the people of Palestine and they are still oppressed and treated like refugees in their own homeland in 2011.

The British government’s “Balfour Declaration” in 1917 expressing support for a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine led to the start of mass immigration of mainly eastern European Jews and continues to the present day.

No consideration was given to the native peoples and the Palestinian people rebelled in 1937 and continue to fight for recognition to their right to have independence and statehood.

Resolution 181 of the united nations in 1947 proposed two independent states in Palestine one Jewish and one Palestine Arab. Again no one asked the native people for their consent.

In 1948 Israel declared itself as an independent state and continued to expand into Palestine.

Since then the Palestinian people have been fighting for justice and their right to freedom in their own homeland.

Khader Adnan will die unless there is an immediate inquiry into the illegality of his detention without charges, and the cruel treatment he received at the hands of the Israeli prison guards.

One of the leaders of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Saleh Nasser, called for an investigation of Israeli detention practices by the International Court of Justice, and voiced support for what he called Adnan’s "heroic battle against the Israeli occupation's inhumane and racist policies."

Geraldine said that the international community has been very vocal in favour of the so called Arab spring but has laryngitis when it comes to the plight of the Palestinians who are treated like stateless people in their own homeland.