Bleak House

Last Monday evening I spoke at a debate in Dublin organised by the UCD Frank Ryan Society. Four speakers were billed but in the end only 3 turned up. Susan Fitzgerald, who is one of the BATU strikers was unable to make it, which was unfortunate given that the letter read out in lieu of her attendance sent the sparks cascading.

I have attended many of these events over the years in Ireland and Britain. With time I have come to form a view of the likely composition of the audiences that are drawn to them. They tend to be small – around 30 in this case. Observers would need to come equipped with emotional armour impenetrable to embarrassment to be able to make the claim that the audience is ‘packed’ with any particular type of person. These audiences are rarely packed, made up as they are of people starting out on their political odyssey or older types who have missed every stop along the route and simply don’t know where to get off.

A generalisation, no more. To the extent that it might accurately reflect the composition of Monday’s audience, it did not diminish the quality of the overall discussion including the contributions from the floor. Yes, there were the usual stray dogs along to bite someone or something they took umbrage to, whether it was the BATU strikers or the suggestion that Marxism had failed to deliver. They usually bite off more than they can chew and either run out, fingers metaphorically in ears before another illusion is shattered, or they sit there sullenly rueing the notion that the world spins on an axis not prescribed in whatever ‘good book’ they daily fumble through. Even though it may have sounded like something out of a promo for Slavoj Zizek’s book In Defense of Lost Causes Kevin Bean captured the atmosphere of the night when he humorously admitted to having identified with a long line of political projects that had failed. His task since has been in trying to understand why grand ideological projects lend themselves to catastrophic implosion.

The meeting was a double barrelled blast at the major retreat from radicalism undergone by both Provisional republicanism and the trade union movement. As the flyer for the event expressed it, ‘over the past thirty years, both the trade unions and Irish republicans have moved from a position of open radicalism, into the mainstream and now are at the centre of upholding the status quo.’ Finn Geaney, from the Teachers Union Ireland and Dublin Trades Council spoke about the union side of the equation while myself and Kevin Bean focussed on republicanism. Whether the double barrels got off all the shot or hit the target, or may even have been loaded with nothing more than blanks, those there on the night can make their own minds up. It is difficult to get freshly worked up about something as stale as the defeat of radicalism.

There was little in what either Kevin or I said which would give rise to disagreement between us. Over the years, in Belfast, London, Southampton, Liverpool and Manchester we have rehearsed the issue together. There was hardly much we did not know about each other’s perspective by the time Monday’s discussion had come around. We had long since concluded that republicanism had sustained a major defeat in its battle with the British state. On the subject of the trade unions Finn Geaney raised many issues but a tendency to rely on Marxism as the panacea gave a touch of the messianic to his project. His penchant for Das Kapital nudged the thought ‘beware the man of one book’ onto the fringes of my mind. While the clearly erudite Finn Geaney can never be pigeon holed so easily, food for a drifting thought did emerge from his reference to Marx’s magisterial work. For me, the ‘sacred text’ from whatever stable produces the ‘word’, then the ‘prophet’, followed by the ‘great leader’ who murders the writers and ensures that there is no one left to put the inverted commas around the crimes against humanity that are frequently the outcome of such ventures.

Most in the audience seemed to think of revolutionary schemas. I appeared to be the only one there at least willing to profess that I am not a revolutionary and am somewhat disconcerted to find myself alluded to as such. I do not trust revolutionaries. They promise so much, deliver so little and forever after devote much of their time and energy to the suppression of those who would flag up the gap between revolutionary preaching and practice. It seems that revolutionaries end up being such fervent censors because where they end up is so far removed from their starting point that the need for concealment is all the greater amongst them.

Like the nirvana of religious afterlife, there is no revolutionary utopia where we may all go if we can just get the programme right and the formula fine tuned. And as much as I enjoyed our Dublin discussion and would return if invited, it did little to dissuade me of that.

Chronicles Of Long Kesh: Scenes From the Inside

The following review featured in today’s Belfast Telegraph

Chronicles Of Long Kesh: Scenes From the Inside

Around two years ago I was interviewed by Martin Lynch in Belfast’s John Hewitt bar. He was laying the founds for the Chronicles of Long Kesh. As one of the former denizens of the then sprawling news magnet I can readily testify to the forensic mind Lynch brought to the task. His probing unearthed long forgotten nuggets from a distant past which reduced both of us to uncontrollable fits of laughter over pints of beer. He couldn’t believe what I was telling him and I couldn’t believe I was telling it.

That was much of what Long Kesh was about – laughter. When Bobby Sands famously said that revenge would be the laughter of our children, he may have been inspired by the laughter he witnessed behind the walls even in the worst of circumstances. Laughter overcomes a lot, including the delight a malign adversary derives from his nefariousness. In 1980 when a naked Tony Miller from Derry laughed in the face of a screw who had been kicking him, all of his comrades banged up along the blanket wing knew who emerged the victor from that exchange. There is a freedom in laughter. Frequently the most psychologically liberating moments in the prison arrived via laughter. And there were lots in this play for an audience to laugh about. Humour was its strongest feature.

The story of Long Kesh is a challenging one to chronicle. For three decades it formed a stage where deaths, escapes, riots, burnings, protests and violence were the major acts viewed by a large audience. Can such an incident-packed and prolonged time span be adequately explored in the form of a play? And to boot a play deprived of props relying entirely on the power of performance to deliver. A film is perhaps a better medium, even more so a book. The hiatuses and silences that need plugged are pretty expansive. For the historian in the audience and her companion, the devotee of detail, the playwright might just, to borrow a phrase, have extended his reach at the expense of his grasp. Yet this must be qualified by recognition that there is a tendency on the part of those who live through or have been deeply affected by any event to want it reproduced exactly as they recall it. No depiction can manage this. To expect that it should is to ignore the licence that so distinguishes art from science.

With Oscar, Toot, Eamon, Hank and Thumper forming the prison population, acuity was enhanced by having the story of Long Kesh narrated by Freddie Gillespie, a prison officer. His tale insinuated how a battle ground could become a bottle ground. Freddie, like so many in his keep, survived the battle but not the bottle. As narrator, it fell to him to join the dots that an audience less familiar with the jail scene might have difficulty placing in any intelligible context. It is hard to see how it might succeed otherwise. The play is predicated on the audience’s familiarity with events. The bizarre musical outbursts only have meaning if grounded in that familiarity, outside of which the play is rapidly reduced to cabaret sustained by a series of charades. During the blanket protest nocturnal sing songs were one of the limited ways of putting the evening in. They were also used after a particularly bad wing shift to show that despite regime brutality the spirits had not been broken.

The acting was superb as it deftly manoeuvred between the two levels at which the play operated. At the surface there were the stern faced soldiery drillers in the parade ground where feet were hammered against the ground and heads yanked to the side in response to barked military commands. This was the controlled martial backdrop that the political prisoners sought to drape behind their stage. At another level, chronicled was life as it was lived by prisoners in the cells and huts that spawned the marshy ground on which the prison was built: banter, trauma, emotions, hypochondria, chicken choking and depression.

If there was one thing the play failed to capture it was the pervasive thought control that insidiously gnawed away at the autonomy of intellectual life within the prison. For sure it produced writers and artists but the controlled environment also allowed it to throw up the nemesis of art, the censor. The screws censored the prisoners and the prisoners censored their own.

In the end one scene followed me home; where two blanket prisoners took to lying on the floor conversing through the pipes to each other. For two years during the no wash protest before he was moved Martin Livingstone and I in adjoining cells, audible but invisible to each other, would assume the prone position and chat about every nonsense under a sun we never got to see. It was darkness at noon, every noon.

Dublin Public Meeting: From Radicalism to Reform

Kevin Bean, Finn Geaney, Susan Fitzgerald and myself will be speaking tomorrow night in Dublin at the New Theatre, Connolly Books, Temple Bar about the state of radicalism in Ireland.

"A very timely debate is taking place under the title "From Radicalism to Reform" in the New Theatre, Temple Bar on Monday 19th January. In light of the current economic crisis, what is the status of radicalism in Ireland?

The speakers will make a critical examination of the Republican and Trade Union movements over the past three decades. Guest Speakers will include Dr Kevin Bean, lecturer in the University of Liverpool and author of "the New Politics of Sinn Fein", Mr Anthony McIntyre - former political prisoner and author, Mr Finn Geaney, Teachers Union Ireland and Dublin Trades Council member and Susan Fitzgerald from the BATU strikers. The date of the meeting is Monday 19th January and the venue is the New Theatre, Temple Bar.

Over the past thirty years, both the trade unions and Irish republicans have moved from a position of open radicalism, into the mainstream and now are at the centre of upholding the status quo. But the question remains, to the benefit of whom? This debate will attempt to address this massive political change in Irish society and to highlight the actual outcome of moving "From Radicalism To Reform".

This debate has been organised by the UCD Frank Ryan Society

Date: Monday 19th of January
Time: 8:00 pm
Place: New Theatre, Connolly Books, Temple Bar

For Further details contact: Patrick Farrell - 085-7080388 or frankryansoc@gmail.com"

Jimmy Duffy

Officially Jimmy Duffy, but known universally as ‘Jimmy Duff’, this redoubtable republican activist was another of Richard O’Rawe’s 300 Spartans of the blanket protest. But Duff was not just any old Spartan who no matter what difficult circumstances they endured always had company in abundance. It might have been out of sight and locked up in another part of the same wing but it was there. Being 'three year’ men Duff along with three others had to do a considerable portion of their protest isolated in B Wing Crumlin Road Jail.

In republican lexicon ‘the men behind the wire’ referred to the internees. There was even a popular song composed of which that was the title. In blanket history ‘the men behind the wire’ were those held in B Wing in cells that were caged in. Jimmy Duff knew what it was like to be a man behind the wire in both sets of circumstances. A former internee his second spell behind the wire was considerably more arduous than the first. The Blanket men of B Wing the Crum endured a lonely experience as the jail administration sought to break their spirits through the application of intense deprivation. One of his fellow blanket men from the time commented:

The screws kept us in solitary confinement and made us slop out or go to the toilet naked as they tried to break our spirits. They refused us showers and did everything to stop us talking to each other. All through that period, Jimmy, who was our O/C, was an inspiration.

When they were eventually moved up to the H Blocks circa late 1978, despite the severity of the conditions and the harshness of the regime, it was a relief to them. There was company and with 300 protestors there was a statistically lower chance of the screws focussing in on any one particular individual.

That’s how I met Jimmy Duff. He was at the bottom of our wing in H Block 4. Although about ten years older than the rest of his fellow prisoners he went about the protest with the gusto of a teenager. When released this IRA volunteer campaigned tirelessly at home and abroad on behalf of the men who were left behind.

After the killing of Joe O’Connor in Ballymurphy which saw me seriously at odds with those who either defended the killing or out of some sense of loyalty decided it was ‘my movement right or wrong’ I experienced considerable ostracism and hostility. When I bumped into Duff in Castle Street a month after the killing he laughed and said ‘where have you been hiding?’ Whatever views he held he never joined the ranks of the ostracisers. On one occasion coming through a lane close to where I lived Duff and a friend moved into single file to let me pass. It avoided the nonsense of shouldering or jostling. The first ignored me while Duff silently mouthed ‘hello’ and smiled. It was interesting to see how he handled it and kept both I and the shunner onside.

Duff despite being a quiet type of man was hugely popular. In his final days his old comrades from ‘the Murph’ were at his bedside tending to his needs. When they buried him his other old comrades from behind the wire fittingly formed the guard of honour. One of those, Sinn Fein MLA Fra McCann also gave the oration. He summed Duff up pretty well in saying: ‘it would be fair to say that in all my dealings with people over the years, when Duff’s name came up in conservation, I never heard anyone having a bad word to say about him.’

When Jimmy Duff died he was 62. In a year or two nobody who participated in the blanket will be younger than 50. Time is running out for them. Into the valley of death ride the 300.

Hang ‘em High

The Irish penal system should reflect the fact that we are a modern democracy and should be defined by principles of dignity and justice. Decision-making in the penal system should be characterised by accountability and transparency. The way we treat offenders at present is far too frequently shameful, whereas it should be a matter of national pride – Irish Penal Reform Trust

For once Kevin Myers has pleased rather than annoyed most people. He must feel somewhat out of place with the adulation he has been receiving since last Tuesday’s article in the Indo having a go at Geoffrey Evans. Evans incurred the wrath of Myers by receiving heart by-pass surgery financed from the public purse in Dublin’s Mater Hospital. Now it has to be said that even if Kevin Myers is bathing in the reverence he has been showered under he is hardly a seeker of it. It is that which makes him such a great writer. He is not afraid to offend. Greatness is not, as is held in some quarters, something reserved alone for those writers we agree with.

Readers of the Indo, unless I am hopelessly optimistic, will have been relieved to find out that Myers is not opposed to by pass surgery in general but to the type of people who actually get it in some cases. The recipient in question on this occasion is an English murder-rapist who has served more than 30 years of a life sentence for the brutal slayings of two young Irish women, Elizabeth Plunkett and Mary Duffy, back in the 1970s. Those of us grey enough to recall the events remember just how horrific the killings were and the sense of public outrage they gave rise to. Evans and an accomplice John Shaw, suitable candidates for the British Army, chose to carry out their killing spree on the Southern side of the border where they thought they stood a better chance of avoiding retribution than the average squaddie up North. With 30 years time for reflection they might now ruefully conclude that they should have taken their chances in the North. Soldiers certainly got killed there but very few ever went to jail for murder. Out of those who did there are none behind bars 3 decades later.

A failure on the part of Irish authorities to comply with extradition requests from Britain for Shaw and Evans on earlier charges is blamed by Kevin Myers for allowing them a period of freedom during which they murdered both women. The context for such non-compliance lies in a political establishment willing to go to ‘almost any lengths to avoid sending IRA terrorists to Britain for trial.’ While Myers is right in pointing out there was a reluctance to extradite republicans to British jurisdiction the government did in the end extradite more republicans than the British ever convicted members of the British Army of murder. And there is a serious ethical question looming large over any consideration on whether to extradite republicans to the British when the source of the evidence against them were those who failed to do anything about British Army murders.

It would be unfair to blame Kevin Myers for having caused an outbreak of flog and hang syndrome even if he might welcome it. He has merely tapped into the prevalent culture that is out there. Listening to a discussion, in which Myers was involved, on Matt Cooper’s Last Word on the evening of his column’s publication, there was overwhelming backing for his contention that Geoffrey Evans should have been denied any treatment. Myers actually expressed the hope that Evans would not pull through from the coma he had slipped into following his operation. Capital punishment by medical deprivation.

There is no doubt that the crime of Geoffrey Evans was abhorrent. Few have sympathy with the character of the man. But it seems as grave a crime to wilfully withhold life-preserving medical treatment from a seriously ill man. Nowhere in our legal system is provision made for the punishment of those in custody through the withholding of medical intervention. Human rights are for human beings otherwise they are not human rights at all. Or worse, they are human rights and those deemed subhuman are not allowed to avail of them.

Moreover the argument that Evans is being kept in prison courtesy of the tax payer, who must also fork up for his medical treatment, and should therefore be made to pay for his own treatment is bogus. Fact is, everybody in prison is there at the expense of the tax payer. It then follows that all prisoners not paying for their own keep – are there any who do pay? – should be denied treatment. This amounts to little more than a clarion call to discriminate against prisoners and take us back to the era of Paddy Cooney when the then Minister of Justice could publicly state that ‘prisoners have no rights.’ Contrast this with the view of Belfast solicitor Joe Rice commenting on prisons in the North which are much better than their southern counterparts: ‘Some people in prison are among the most vulnerable people in our society and this case demonstrably undermines the need to provide them with the highest standards of professional care.’

Little wonder that there is much that is terrible about the Irish prison system. The former Inspector of Prisons the late Dermot Kinlan described it as an appalling indictment of a so called 'caring society'.

For Kevin Myers and those who back him it is very much ‘what we have we hold.’

Good Friday Review: Not For The Back Cover

Stray Taoist reviews Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.

"[...] While that makes it easy to dip in to to locate certain articles, it also leaves me thinking if the work-shy dirty lefty he is had taken these as research material, and written another work, it would have been even better. But in reality, I am nit-picking. It really is an excellent work, with the angsty Checz authour quotes kept to a minimum."

Not For the Back Cover
Stray Taoist, A Blog of Very Little Brain

One of the books I got for Christmas was Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism by one Anthony McIntyre. And I thought I would write a review of it, you know, just because I can. And I shall also keep count of the number of reviewing cliches as I go. Place your bets now!

By way of further introdution, this isn’t a book per se (one), more a collection of articles from the sorely missed (two) The Blanket, newspapers, writing groups and more. Did I ever mention I wrote for The Blanket? If you know my real name, fvdo real, you can find them. Get me, rubbing shoulders with authors. I should also point out I have had tea in the author’s kitchen, but more of that later. So not so much a review (and I am only one paragraph in), more a tortuous tale of my life, what I believe, what others believe, and where minds meet and history begins, ends and is bent.

To save you, like everyone does in reviews, jumping to the last paragraph (which won’t contain a summary, at least I don’t think it will), this is a great book, an important book (three), but, in the end, not the book Dr McIntyre has in him that I think, know and hope he has in him. I await that book, when it arrives. (four…maybe).

A lot of the articles I have read previously, being a long-time fan of The Blanket. Taking them from there (and the other sources), and putting them together in themed sections works really well, as you get both the narrative of the Peace Processtm, and Dr McIntyre’s thinking as it, and he, progresses. While that is the book’s great strength, it is also the greatest weakness. (five, definitely). All the parts that make up the themed sections were written for a time and a place (six), and a certain medium, so they are short, pithy, witty (I laughed out loud more than twice, and wry-smiled way more times than that), intelligent and thoughtful. You get through one, then there is a slight disconnect as you get to the next one. Nature of the beast (seven), I guess, it being an anthology of sorts.

While that makes it easy to dip in to to locate certain articles, it also leaves me thinking if the work-shy dirty lefty he is had taken these as research material, and written another work, it would have been even better. But in reality, I am nit-picking. (eight). It really is an excellent work, with the angsty Checz authour quotes kept to a minimum. Sure, some turns of phrase get used a few times, but that only comes out as I have ample time to read on the train, and can go through a book quite quickly.

More sticky (hahahaha, geddit?) is that fact (and both he and I would acknowledge it) that we are different political persuasions. (And on differing sides, as others would see it, in the Norn Iron conflict of recent years. No, it hasn’t gone away you know. Although I have a, as you might expect, complicated lineage.) But, as Voltaire said, snip one of the ultimate cliches nine. I have always found him engaging to talk to, articulate, erudite and fun. Given the qualms some would have at talking to him (from where I am from), I had none, and enjoyed our brief conversations. His insight spills over into the book, and much of his analysis I would agree with. (There are some moments of evident Left-isms, but given his background, that is to be expected. While I am not against a United Ireland myself, I would certainly not be for some socialistic thirty-two county disaster project. shudder) I wish the interview with Hugh Orde had been printed, if only to dovetail the article mentioning it, but I guess there were reasons for that.

It is important historically for the very reason that history is written by the victor (ten), but in the case of Northern Ireland, it is written (rewritten, being written, etcetc) by the spinners. It is important historically as while my race have long memories, those memories are sometimes recast for all sorts of reasons, be they political expediency (and there is a lot of that referenced, spotted and called out in the book), MOPEry or whatever. And reading these articles does take your breath away at not only the hypocrisy of the Republican leadership (this is about Republicans, so no whataboutery, please) but the downright gall of their lies. We all know they lied, but gathered together like this makes is both starkly, and comically, depressing. It takes the years worth of material on offer here put together in this way to really drive this point home.

And the time is another of the disconnections. Given the wide-ranging remit (eleven) of the themes, you can finish one section then find yourself years previous in the next. Again, with the reworking of these into a large volume, this might have disappated somewhat, but it isn’t that jarring, truth be told. I am just trying not to be overly gushing. I have a reputation as a grump who likes nothing to uphold here. Even within the themes there is some jumping around in time, but not anything that disrupts the flow of discussion.

Some of the turns of phrase are Norn Iron through-and-through, but not enough to put off someone with an interest in learning more, and a different viewpoint, of Irish politics post-peace process. The writing is clean, understandable, fluent and makes its point well. The nature of them being punchy short(ish) pieces, I guess. Again I think they would make the basis of a great longer book.

The themes work even if you have no background in The Troubles and the recent peace machinations. (While certainly not agreeing with anything Dolours Price would think, I also wondered at the time of the first (90s) ceasefire why there were victory parades down The Falls. They are all glad they have stopped shooting my lot, their lot, the police and the army? What what?) More important still is the fact this isn’t mainstream (in NI sense) thinking, dissenting from the hegemony beamed from Andytown. Surely a Christmas present for those leechers, moochers and parasites in Stormont. It wouldn’t do them a bit of harm to hear something new, something different and something true. Dr McIntyre, I salute you and your work. Now get writing that longer book.

Not sure that that did end up being about me (it is all about me!), and might even almost be a proper review. But what do I know?

Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

You can also order directly from Gill & Macmillan:
Email sales@gillmacmillan.ie

Are you a bookseller looking to stock Good Friday?
Call or Fax your order to: Tel: +353 1 500 9500 or Fax: +353 1 500 9599

Gill & Macmillan is now the exclusive distributor in Ireland and the UK If the book is not on the shelves of your local bookstore,
ask them to order it for you!

Terrorist Israel

As we've seen so many times before, we have an instance of the United States preventing the Security Council from taking any action in the crisis in Gaza, whether it would be an actual move to impose a cease-fire, but they even went further than that to prevent even a statement from being issued, the sort of the lowest level of response from the Security Council. The U.N. diplomats essentially said exactly what Condoleezza Rice said two years ago at the time of the Israeli attack on Lebanon, when she went before the council and said, "We don't want a cease-fire yet," essentially telling the world, there is not enough dead people yet. We want more dead people before we will call for a cease-fire. And that has been the consistent position of the Bush administration, including President Bush himself on his weekly radio address, and it was the same position taken this weekend - Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies

It is like a sick joke hearing the US government describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Even by the most general definition of terrorism, which is the deliberate targeting of civilians for political purposes, Hamas pales in comparison to the terrorist state of Israel. It can certainly be argued that Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are wrong not to mention counter productive, but if that makes Hamas terrorist then Israel falls within the super-terrorist category. And where Hamas attack Israeli military personnel even the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni – serious contender for next Israeli prime minister - claims that this falls outside the rubric of terrorism.

Today is the 11th day of the Israeli terror. Palestinian medical staff estimate that 560 people have been killed, one quarter of whom according to UN sources are civilians. So gung ho are Israel’s willing executioners that they have taken to killing their own troops with tank fire. In their latest terrorist attack a UN school was targeted for mortar fire. At least thirty people have been killed. Few would dispute that those who target schools for mass murder are deserving of the terrorist label. Funny how the US government can hurl itself into a state of apoplectic rage when Columbine High is attacked but can become the numero uno cheer leader for attacks on the school in Gaza.

Israel is also reported to be using white phosphorus as it did in Lebanon two years ago. The agent can cause terrible burns to anyone caught up in it but it is not illegal if used as a smokescreen. At the same time Gaza is reputed to be one of the most densely populated areas in the world. It is hard to imagine that white phosphorous will not produce civilian casualties in such crammed conditions. Charles Heyman, a former British Army major, pointed out that ‘if white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague.’ Although long before then the real smoke screen will have been used to smother the truth as Israel blames Hamas for any casualties arising from its use of the chemical.

Knowingly involved in state terrorism Israel has moved to suppress knowledge of its actions. Foreign journalists have been banned. Ethan Bronner, New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem, points out that ‘Israel has never restricted media access like this before, and it should be ashamed. It's betraying the principles by which it claims to live.’ This helps make it easier for hacks such as the disreputable Charles Krauthammer to proclaim ‘Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life.’ As scrupulous as Nazi Germany from whom it has learned so much.

Aided by censorship Israel not only seeks to pursue its terrorism unhindered it also works to cover up the impact on a civilian population In resisting demands for a cessation. Tzipi Livni disgracefully lies ‘there is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.’

Tzipi Goebbels.

Génocidaire

The Clinton Administration took the lead in opposing international action. Its policy was a calculated political decision. Shocked by unexpected American military casualties in Somalia and a humiliating withdrawal, Washington insisted that a cease-fire in Rwanda, clearly impossible to attain quickly, had to precede humanitarian aid. Perhaps the most important single reason for American inaction is still not admitted. Impoverished and perennially troubled little Rwanda had no strategic, political or economic significance. All it had were the mutilated victims of the most horrendous orgy of mass killings in modern times – David Heaps, consultant for the Ford Foundation in Africa from 1960 to 1971.

The verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was a long time in the making. It took a trial of six and a half years to judge on a genocide which lasted only three months. When Judge Erik Mose announced the findings of the Tribunal there was little there to surprise any except perhaps his lawyer Raphael Constant, for whom the judgement was ‘a disappointment.’ For the relatives of the thousands murdered by the top genocidaire and his allies it was justice. ‘Let him think about what he did for the rest of his life’, the words of Jean Pierre Sagahutu who lost his parents and seven siblings. He survived because he took refuge in a septic tank throughout the genocide. Jean Paul Rurangwa, who lost a father and two sisters said ‘the fact that he was sentenced to the biggest punishment the court can give is a relief.’ Aloys Mutabingwa, the Rwandan representative to the ICTR, said ‘justice has been delivered. We are satisfied … the essential thing is that their role in the genocide was established. The court ruled that Bagosora had the authority over the killers. It is the most important thing.”

Important because as the prosecutor at the tribunal, Barbara Mulvern, stated it ‘finally puts to rest the claims by some people ... who still deny there was a genocide or deny that it was planned. No one can claim that any more.’

Theoneste Bagosora was convicted of ‘genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.’ He was the cabinet director in the Hutu government’s cabinet defence committee and a senior member of the fascist Hutu Power movement. He was the senior military figure in the country during the three blood-soaked months. The former church choir boy was sentenced to life as were two co-defendants while another was acquitted. At the ICTR hearing General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of a token presence of UN ‘peacekeepers’ described Bagosora as the ‘kingpin’ and ‘the leading body’ behind the genocide. At times Dallaire had met with Bagosora while on duty in Rwanda. The idea for the title of his memoirs Shake Hands with the Devil was rooted in one such meeting.

In a hundred day period 14 years ago from April 6 to July 17 the world’s most intense genocide took place while the world, induced into a state of inertia by the USA and UN, stood by and did nothing. Bill Clinton in 1998 apologised: ‘We come here today partly in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred.’ Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General said ten years after the event that ‘the international community is guilty of sins of omission.’ He was head of the UN peace keeping forces at the time and is perhaps more than anybody guilty of failing to keep the peace. After Bagosora mutilated and murdered 10 Belgian soldiers, UN troops were pulled out leaving the entire Tutsi population to the mercy of their attackers. As the Guardian’s Chris McGreal put it:

A shocked world was wondering how, without lifting a finger to help the victims, it had allowed 800,000 Tutsis to be butchered in just 100 days, in one of the most extensive mobilisations of a population against its fellow citizens ever seen.

Theoneste Bagosora was born in August 1941 in Gisenyi prefecture, in the west of Rwanda. It was a region populated by many of the Hutu ruling class. The son of a school teacher he attended a Catholic school where he was unlikely to have been detached from the attractions of genocide through any reading of the Bible. He undertook a diploma in advanced military studies in France and also attended military academies in Belgium. While he had retired from the army in 1993 he retained his portfolio as defence minister. He was a rabid racist who according to author Linda Melvern would take to spitting at Tutsis in the officers’ mess. He had promoted hatred with a particular vitriol and was quite open before, during and after the 100 days in 1994 about the need to wipe out the Tutsis. Although acquitted of conspiring to commit genocide he was convicted of involvement in the killings of 10 Belgian Paratroopers, whose torture, mutilation and killing by the men under his command, he observed, the deaths of the Rwandan prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who was reportedly raped with a Fanta bottle before being killed, and the murder of the president of the constitutional court, Justice Joseph Kavaruganda. He was further judged responsible for the well organised killings by soldiers throughout Kigali and Gisenyi. He had helped establish the Interhamwe whose sole purpose was mass murder. It was the cutting edge of the genocide.

Although the prosecutor Barbara Mulvaney put it, ‘he was the man in control, hands down, no dispute’, using the lack of conviction to conspire, Bagosora intends to appeal on the grounds that his actions were based on war time conditions and not the result of any pre-planning.

But the evidence of pre-planning is all too easy to find. Romeo Dallaire details in his book how he persistently alerted his superiors at the UN about plans he had uncovered to mount genocide. The court itself stated that it ‘certainly accepts that there are indications which may be construed as evidence of a plan to commit genocide’. It also found that once the genocide started Bagosora was the chief military figure in the country. The court cited an incident prior to the killings when Bagosora had stormed out of 1993 peace talks in Tanzania saying he was returning to Rwanda to ‘prepare the apocalypse.’ Which is probably the last honest thing he ever said. Since his Cameroon detention in 1996 he has disputed all involvement in the maelstrom he was responsible for launching throughout the country: ‘Me, I don't believe that genocide took place.’

For Chris McGreal, Bagosora could be described as the Heinrich Himmler of Rwanda for whom no mitigation is warranted:

When the killing was over, the organisers attempted to portray the mass murder as a spontaneous bloodletting born of fear and anger that no one could stop. What amounts to genocide denial is still being espoused by apologists for the Hutu extremist regime that oversaw the killing and by some defence lawyers in and out of the courtroom, who have sought to blame the victims for their own murder by delving into a history of oppression by Tutsis before most of the victims were born. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has buried that obscene version of history by convicting Bagosora of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes – and, in the process, establishing that what happened in Rwanda in 1994 was neither accidental nor spontaneous. The trial laid bare the extent of the planning for the genocide and the mobilisation of the state to implement it. It provides the most complete record of the planning of the killing going back to four years before the mass slaughter began. And Bagosora was at the centre of what the prosecution called "preparing the apocalypse".

The catalyst for the genocide was the shooting down of a plane carrying the Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, in April 1994. Immediately mass murder stalked the streets. It was on the return leg from Tanzania where President Habyarimana had worked on a peace agreement which in McGreal’s words, if implemented,‘would have seen the RPF in government and its forces integrated with the Rwandan military.’ Although a French judge has since accused Paul Kagame the current Tutsi president of Rwanda of having ordered the plane shot down, in the view of the prosecutor at Bagosora’s trial:

My personal opinion as a prosecutor is that the preponderance of evidence is that the men in our courtroom are the men who shot down the plane. They surrounded the site. They wouldn't let the UN in, they wouldn't let foreign observers in, they took the shell casings. They had much more to gain … Habyarimana was flying back to implement the deal … If that plane had landed, Bagosora would have personally lost his house, his job, his position. That's on a very personal level. But he would also have had to demobilise his forces in the army and integrate them with the RPF and they felt Habyarimana had capitulated, and Bagosora wanted to stop him. It was the catalyst to start the killing. Bagosora needed a big event to mobilise people, to spark the bloodlust and put the killing machine into place. Habyarimana was seen by the people as 'papa'. That's why they shot down his plane.

What the Tribunal verdict sentence does, as argued by Reed Brody, a specialist in international justice for Human Rights Watch, is to send out a message to other world leaders: ‘it says watch out. Justice can catch up with you. The authors of genocide can and will be punished by the international community.’

Cormac Mac Airt

Mac Airt, as he was frequently referred to, was always a fighter. And as it turned out he battled terminal illness with the same determination that took him through his life. For months it was being reported that he was ‘nearing the end’, had arrived ‘at death’s door’ or ‘won’t see the weekend.’ But each time he rallied and battled and for long enough came back. Friends who visited him either at home or in the hospice commented on the pain he appeared to be in. When I asked one why he didn’t just let go, the response was simple – ‘you know Mac Airt.’

In this day and age we have a right to feel that pain management techniques would be so developed, state of the art, that people suffering agony as they near the end would be a throw back to darker ages. It annoys that he should have suffered so much at the end given the amount of suffering he went through as a result of his illness.

A former internee, Cormac Mac Airt was arrested in late 1976 transporting IRA equipment. A man held without trial by the British on the grounds of political expediency was now to be tried by the government that had denied him all due process. And it had the arrogance to tell him he was a criminal. In all it held him for a total of 13 years, much of it in conditions which drew the opprobrium of Archbishop Tomas O Fiaich, the all-Ireland primate: 'one would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone a human being.'

Cormac Mac Airt was one of the 300 Spartans referred to by Richard O’Rawe in his book Blanketmen. Along with the others he stood naked apart from a blanket in defence of the republican pass that the British state would never cross and complete its journey of transforming political prisoners into ordinary criminals. Had the British succeeded, the armed struggle of the IRA would have been depicted globally as a criminal conspiracy, and the vile behaviour of the British state vindicated. Cormac Mac Airt helped stop that.

I never came across Cormac during the protest. It was like that in jail. Meeting others was sometimes a hit and miss matter. On the blanket you could hear of a character for years, learn lots about them, feel a deep affinity with them, but never meet them. Now and then chance on a visit would throw two people together. Some time after the blanket I was in the cell next to him. He was the block O/C.

It was impossible not to like Cormac. As with us all he had his moments but they were few and far between. There was a competitive edge to his character which always came out during football. But as soon as it ended he would pull his mischievous grin and wind up those he had fallen out with during the game. In good humour he would mock-slap the back of my head, laugh and sing, knowing that when it came to football I was as grouchy as himself.

Despite having a reputation for a bit of a temper – ‘he was feared by he screws, they wouldn’t mess with Cormac’ - as block O/C he kept a cool head. He never pushed the men into anything and always knew how to play the authorities, when to calm it, when to up the ante. Within days of his release in 1986 I got a smuggled note from him. I still recall how he signed off – 'chin up’. On my first parole I had a drink with him. After release I would bump into him but our friendship dissipated in the wake of the Joe O’Connor killing. Like many others at the time he took a position ‘my movement right or wrong.’ After that we never spoke again although I never felt any deep hostility from him.

The last time I saw him was at the funeral of Brendan Hughes. He looked poorly. My memory on that day was of a lively Mac Airt jogging around the prison yard in 1986 with Brendan, both of them fit and full of life. Now one was dead and the other wasn’t long for the road. We didn’t speak. There were no growls or scowls or dirty looks, just silence, but not an uncomfortable one. Both of us had grown used to it. It was just the way it was.

Shortly before he died towards the end of last year he had Richard O’Rawe at his bedside and asked ‘how’s your mate?’ It was a reference to myself. He told Richard to pass on his regards to me. On hearing it I asked Richard to tell him he was one of the great blanket men. He was that for sure. In terms of the political situation I don’t know how he felt. It was nebulously floating around that he felt republican activists had been short changed. Nothing more than ephemeral perhaps. Whatever substance there may have been to it, he certainly held on to his affinity for the movement he had served, being buried by it and requesting that Bobby Storey deliver the oration at his funeral.

In personal terms I was given to reflection that both of us had come in from the cold that had long frozen our friendship.

Falk off Israel

‘The declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 was at the expense of ethnically cleansing 513 Palestinian villages, creating over 700,000 Palestinian refugees and expropriating their lands, homes and businesses in 78% of Palestine … There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former (Palestinian) population’ - the late Israeli Defence Minister, General Moshe Dayan.

Before its campaign of focussed mass murder in Gaza began Israel’s willing executioners had moved to suppress Richard Falk, the professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN’s special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. Falk, who describes himself as an ‘American Jew’, has been an exceptionally astute and persistent critic of Israeli aggression who has constructed probing critiques highlighting the Nazification of Israeli policy in the Middle East. In June 2007 he infuriated Israeli authorities when he penned an article in which he spoke out against ‘a holocaust in the making’ and ‘genocidal tendencies’.

In mid December, because he feared an escalation of Israeli violence possibly resulting in a ground invasion of Gaza he led a UN delegation to the region to monitor and report on events there.

I was leading a mission that had intended to visit the West Bank and Gaza to prepare a report on Israel's compliance with human rights standards and international humanitarian law … the purpose of my reports is to document on behalf of the UN the urgency of the situation in Gaza and elsewhere in occupied Palestine. Such work is particularly important now as there are signs of a renewed escalation of violence and even of a threatened Israeli reoccupation.

Israel, an implacable foe of human rights activity, had no intention of allowing Falk to thwart its human rights abuses. In the words of Professor Falk the Israeli government ‘had strongly opposed my appointment a few months earlier and its foreign ministry had issued a statement that it would bar my entry if I came to Israel in my capacity as a UN representative.’ This was a cynical disregard by Israeli authorities for its own claim that every Jew in the world has a right to Israeli citizenship and the protections which it brings. The treatment Falk received when he arrived alongside UN colleagues at Ben Gurion Airport served to underline the bogus nature of the professed Israeli respect for all Jews. On entering the airport he was:

put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems. At this point, I was treated not as a UN representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed.

He was then separated from his two UN colleagues and:

taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away. I was required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room and taken to a locked tiny room that smelled of urine and filth. It contained five other detainees and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office.

The following day the UN’s special rapporteur was deported to Geneva. Undeterred, since the Zionist assault on Gaza Falk has accused the Israelis of violating international humanitarian law and of having committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. ‘The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.’ Falk singles out three areas in which the Israeli action constitutes violations of international humanitarian law: collective punishment; targeting civilians; disproportionate military response.

The last point he underscores by pointing to a major anomaly in the logic of the Israeli military strategy, pointing out that despite the much vaunted need to protect Israeli citizens from rocket attacks the Israelis atrocities have led to a Hamas rocket attack which resulted in the death of the first Israeli civilian in over a year.

He has further argued that it is mandatory for the UN's International Criminal Court to investigate Israel’s policies in occupied Palestine. The court should decide ‘whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.’

Richard Falk has proven to be an effective advocate of human rights in the Middle East. This lies behind the Israeli and the US virulent opposition to his appointment to the UN Human Rights Council. Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton was very blunt about it. ‘This is exactly why we voted against the new Human Rights Council.’

Exactly why indeed.