The Official Ambassador for the London Olympics is one, Harry Windsor

Tonight the Pensive Quill features guest writer Dave McSweeney offering his views on the upcoming London Olympics.

Dr John Coulter in a recent article on The Pensive Quill raised the issue of the economic and social meltdown in the 26 county state necessitating Republicans accepting that integration with the British state may be the only answer to the situation.

I would disagree with John; hitching yourself to a more nuanced version of what has destroyed you is never a route forward. There is definitely a version of Cameron’s ‘Eton Rifles’ in Ireland who realise their survival, on their terms, is dependant on having a strong backup from their philosophical cousins across the water. The other ninety per cent of people on the island need a new radical departure from what has gone before.

It would seem even if political connection did come to pass a large section of the British population would not notice. In a survey released in March 2012 carried out by the major British Tour operator “Journeys of Distinction” one in five of the 2,000 members of the British public surveyed could not name the constituent countries of the United Kingdom.

Dissidents on a Hiding to Nothing

Today The Pensive Quill reproduces an article carried on Eamonn Mallie's blog. The author of the piece is journalist and author Brian Rowan and it was penned in the run up to the Easter Rising Commemorations. While the analysis is not without shortcomings and could have been better pitched it invites serious reflection on the part of those still committed to armed campaigning. Rowan in some of his commentary vents views already held by republicans who do not support Sinn Fein but remain opposed to any armed struggle.


In the coming days the different dissident republican groups will have something to say about their wars. They will use Easter to present themselves as more right than those republicans who have now chosen peace and politics after many decades of “armed struggle”.

And, in a few days’ time, when the words of the dissidents are spoken they then need to be dissected and challenged. Their actions may be deadly, but these are phoney and pointless wars – wars without purpose, and wars that are very personal.

Never Reveal Sources

Former Blanket columnist and guest writer Dr John Coulter maintains the final outcome of the Boston College tapes legal saga will have long-term implications for journalists reporting political and paramilitary developments in Ireland.

One cold October morning in 1991 when I was Editor of one of County Antrim’s oldest weekly newspapers, the Carrickfergus Advertiser and East Antrim Gazette, one of my most reliable loyalist contacts met me on the way into the office and told me to my face that I was to be shot dead.
  
At the time I was being investigated by the police concerning my role as a commissioned researcher on the controversial Channel Four’s Dispatches programme, The Committee, which had probed allegations of collusion between the then Royal Ulster Constabulary, the then Ulster Defence Regiment and members of loyalist death squads.
  
At that time in 1991, the Troubles were still raging. It would be another three years before the loyalist and republican paramilitary ceasefires would be declared and another seven years until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
  
In journalistic terms, collusion was a taboo subject. But I had a confidential source within the so-called RUC Inner Circle, the secret organisation planning the murder of republican suspects.

From Pomeroy to New Orleans

The 53 year-old Storms has joined the ever-growing fraternity of evangelical moralists whose hypocrisy is exposed through an embarrassing sex scandal - Brett Michael Dykes, The Lookout 

The gay porn video controversy that has gripped a Tyrone parish and fuelled much discussion and ribald commentary elsewhere is probably much ado about nothing, or certainly very little. You would imagine in times when priests are being censured and censored by the Vatican Infallibilia while the Cardinal of Australia is calling Jews inferior ( he might really mean subhuman) that there would be more to tax the collective mind of parishioners than this business. The priest in the eye of the storm, Martin McVeigh,  would appear to have done no wrong other than forget to erase the contents of his memory stick and ended up giving a PowerPoint presentation containing ‘images of guys with moustaches going at it hammer and tongs.'

Yes, it was foolish given the holy communion ceremony he was about to perform. But blunder rather than badness is written all over it.

So what if he watches gay porn. I like to watch soccer or Scandinavian crime fiction and he watches porn. Some like to drink, others take speed, acid, ecstasy, whatever, and the odd one does a bit of bird watching or poetry writing. It is the tapestry of modern existence that might get up the noses of the politically correct and the I just love to be offended brigade.

In spite of that lot there is enough tolerance about to permit people the space to do as they wish so long as they are not being harmful to others. That harm however provides no insurance cover for beliefs. On that front there is no right not to be offended, no ideas or opinions with special protection. Let them all take their chances in the crucible of reason. There are many who wish there were a right not to be offended.  Just imagine the power that would give to them. Don’t watch this, don’t read that, don’t go there, don’t talk to her, don’t discuss that, don’t believe what I don’t believe. Welcome to the Dictatorship of Don’t.

The problem would be much greater if this priest was a carrier of the Iris Virus and went round hammering gays, calling down on their heads the fire and brimstone from a ‘loving god’ who would torture and torment them for the sheer pleasure of the I just love to be offended mob. When the pain of another is required for one’s own pleasure, that is a real abomination. McVeigh really needs to bite the bullet on this one and acknowledge his mistake as distinct from fessing up to any serious transgression. Otherwise the real crime is going to be in the cover up and he is going to draw ridicule down upon him rather than fire and brimstone:

The whole incident has more than a little Father Tedness to it, especially McVeigh's claims that he doesn't know how the images got on his key.  Were they just resting in his account?  Did he accidentally brush against another priest and catch them like a virus?  Did an elite squad of gay priest porn-commandos put them on there while his attention was elsewhere?

That's how daft it has come to look.

It is not as if he is in the position of the anti-gay pastor Grant Storms in New Orleans earlier this year. This ‘Christian patriot’, as he promoted himself, was arrested for choking the chicken ‘in the vicinity of a carousel and playground where children were present.’  He wasn’t a kiddie fiddler by the way, just somebody who was horny and decided a quick flog of the bishop would soon put matters right. No interest in kids so why in or near a kids’ playground and not in some naval school populated by burly marine cadets? Witnesses reported him to the cops because they observed him sitting in his car with 'his zipper down' attending to himself 'while watching children on the playground at Lafreniere Park.'

Once rumbled with the stolen cookie (pronounced cockie if you use a strong New Orelans drawl) in his hand, Storm asked the gay community for forgiveness. He had previously used religion to make life difficult for gays. He campaigned against the French Quarter’s gay Mardi Gras, which he termed a ‘Southern Decadence’ event. He confessed to having been 'proudful, arrogant ... I have been vicious at times in my condemnation of others.’

New Orleans was bunged as hundreds of thousands alighted from spacecraft to accept his contrition. Shows you what can happen when the chippers are down.

No need for Martin McVeigh to look as implausible and ridiculous as Storm. Time for the priest to cut the crap, cut his losses and, rather than run, stand his ground.

Smashing H-Block

Today The Pensive Quill features a book review by guest writer Sandy Boyer. The book is Smashing H-Block – The Rise and Fall of the Popular Campaign Against Criminalization, 1976-1982 By F. Stuart Ross. Reviewer Sandy Boyer was the Coordinator of the New York H-Block/Armagh Committee. He is currently the co-host of Radio Free Eireann broadcast Staurdays at 1pm on WBAI 99.5FM or wbai.org and is helping to build a New York campaign for Marian Price.


Millions of people throughout the world know that Bobby Sands died on hunger strike. Very few people know that there was a campaign outside the prisons that mobilized hundreds of thousands of people throughout Ireland on behalf of the men in the H-Blocks and the women in Armagh Prison. The movement for the prisoners actually involved more people than the Civil Rights Movement which has received far more attention.

Smashing H-Block is the first book to document the campaign outside the prison. It is important both because that story needs to be told for its own sake and because it is extremely relevant to today when internment is back and political prisoners in Maghaberry are on a dirty protest.

Solidarity Event for Marian Price

Tonight The Pensive Quill features a piece forwarded to us by Sandy Boyer. It was written by Michael Patrick MacDonald, Author of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie.

As driving rains and threats of a Nor’easter kept most New Yorkers inside this past Sunday afternoon, close to one-hundred people filled Rocky Sullivan’s Pub in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They came to unite against a revived internment policy in Ireland, and to stand in solidarity with the basic human rights and due process deserved by every citizen in a democracy. The continued imprisonment of Marian Price for … well, no one knows ‘what for’ because the British government hasn’t made that clear. For
allegedly providing a mobile phone to people who were charged with killing two British soldiers, even though the accused in that case was found not guilty? For holding a piece of paper that held words critical of British rule in Ireland?

Chris Bray: Close Enough for Government Work

Mildly amusing new and tiny little discovery that will only be of interest to close observers of the Belfast Project subpoenas who enjoy making fun of government lawyers. That might very well be an audience of me, but let's do this thing anyway and call it a party.

When Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Healy Smith sent the First Circuit a letter, two weeks later, to say the things she hadn't thought to mention during oral argument over the Belfast Project subpoenas, nobody much understood what she was up to. Writing at Letters Blogatory, lawyer and longtime observer Ted Folkman shrugged that "it must be the silly season in the Belfast Project case."

"I am not sure of the procedural correctness of the government’s letter" Folkman wrote. "The Federal Rules are silent, and the letter is pretty plainly not a citation of supplemental authorities under Rule 28(j)."

Beats the hell out of me what that is, but then here comes my old friend Google with Rule 28(j) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure:

Continue reading

This & That: Take 8

Hats off to Harry

The following headline threw me for a moment when I first read it: ‘Massacre of 16 Civilians Spurs Calls for US Withdrawal from Afghanistan.’ Surely Harry Redknapp had not broken new ground and put his sporting nose into political affairs, thus crossing a line that many are not willing to see breached. Tottenham Hotspur demanding a US withdrawal and maybe even a British one if the logic is followed through? That would make Spurs even more radical than Sinn Fein.

Up until then I was of a belief that Harry’s interest in foreign affairs was restricted to tax matters and not war in Afghanistan. I even pondered that were he to get the England manager’s job that would add weight to his call. Not something Capello or Erickson would ever have considered. Needless to say I got it all wrong. Missing the full stop can tend to change the meaning of a sentence. Anyone recall the debate about the role of the comma in Peter Brooke’s claim about Britain having no selfish strategic interest in Ireland? A reminder that the need to pay close attention is paramount.

Harry, if he steps into Capello’s shoes, will have his work cut out getting England into countries rather than out of them.

Selling Snow to the Eskimos

The new Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt has hardly surprised his audience with his announcement that he is willing to go to the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis. Where he might have caught it unawares was in his stated reason for considering such a visit: to sell the union to the Catholic party. What does he have in his bag of wares that he might possibly sell, which has not already been bought? He might as well have promised to go there in order to ensure that Friday will remain the day immediately preceding Saturday.

Selling the union to Sinn Fein is pushing an open door. The party support the partition principle, administer British rule, endorse the British Police Service of Northern Ireland, and implement the Tory cuts. What else is there about the union that he can sell? Well, he can try a bill of rights integrated into the union bill of rights rather than one specifically addressed to the North alone.

Slick Mick is clearly not a man without business guile. Like a shifty used car salesman he intends going to the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis merely to dupe the assembled sheeple, hoping to sell them something they previously bought. The thing is, he shall succeed and will depart the conference to ‘god save the queen’ ringing in his ears.

Boston Behaving Badly

Recently administrators at Boston College banned a lecture due to be delivered by William Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois, forcing it to relocate. Ayers is a figure of some controversy because of a former association with the Weather Underground Movement. The body was responsible for a number of bombings and shootings in the 1970s. Perhaps too close for comfort is the belief that it was also involved in the killing of a Boston cop, Walter A. Schroeder shot in the back during a bank robbery in 1970.

It was left to none other than the flappable Jack Dunn to explain BC’s position. Dunn has sought to cultivate his law abiding credentials this year and has been eager to demonstrate his abhorrence for political violence. He has done this by demonstrating his willingness to assist law enforcement agencies whenever possible even to the cost of his university’s reputation and his own personal integrity: Goddammit, I don’t care how big a clown it makes me look and I may not appear purty because of it but I’m gonna stand shoulder to shoulder with the lawman, Yes siree. You hear me Elmer? Well, Elmer and just about everybody else heard Jack and concluded that PR stood for Puerile Rubbish.

Ayers is no stranger to controversy having generated plenty of it when it was disclosed he was associated with the election campaign of Barack Obama in 2008. His view of the cancellation was simple:

It's kind of a shameful thing to the administration because one can certainly understand why in Saudi Arabia or Serbia or China why speakers would be cancelled for a variety of reasons ... But in the US, in a democracy, that doesn't make sense.

There are a lot of things about Boston College that do not make sense. Jack Dunn being one of them.

Ayers continued:

Let's say the mob gathers outside the gate at BC and demands that they teach astrology, or creationism, or that the world is flat ... Should they then give in to the mob and teach those things? Absolutely not. So why should they do that with this?

Well, maybe not the mob Professor Ayers but if the Justice Department come running BC will appoint Ken Ham head of science. And it requires little in the way of explanation to point out the creationist crackpot he is.

Still,  more straws on the camel’s back.

Belfast Project Director Ed Moloney interviewed on New York radio

Below is a transcript of an interview with Belfast Project Director Ed Moloney on New York radio, Radio Free Eireann, WBAI 99.5 FM , New York City, Saturday 21 April 2012:  John McDonagh (JM) and Sandy Boyer (SB) interview Ed Moloney (EM) to get an important update on appeal pending in the federal court in Boston concerning The Belfast Project, the Oral History archive at Boston College.

Download

(1:40 PM)
 
Sandy Boyer (SB): Welcome back to Radio Free Eireann WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.We’re speaking with Ed Moloney, the Director of the Belfast Project, the Oral History of The Troubles which the US government has subpoenaed on behalf of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Ed, thanks for being with us. Ed, can you hear me?

Ed Moloney (EM): Yes I can.

SB: We didn’t get you for a moment. So Ed, there’s new development: after you had two rounds of briefs and oral arguments suddenly the US government has come back to the court of appeals.

EM: Yes, it was an extraordinary incident. Our oral hearing in Boston was on April the fourth and then on April the sixteen, I think it was, a letter was sent to the three appeal judges by the US Attorney’s office trying to raise issues that had been dealt with both in the, to some extent in the written brief and also in the oral argument, and that was the assertion from us, which was really central to our argument that we should be allowed to have a proper say in the court proceedings, that there was no great risk to either to myself or to Anthony McIntyre.

Where are The Spartans?

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer and former blanket man Thomas Dixie Elliot who attended Sunday's demo in support of Marian Price.

I attended yesterdays rally, April 22nd, in support of Marian Price, where I met up and walked with several former Blanket Men, among them Willie G, my friend Sa and Davy Glennon. Just after the speeches a former Blanket man/Hunger Striker from Belfast, Hodgie, approached me and asked did I see the banner.

The banner he referred to was a drawing of Marian with the question above it ... 'Where are The Spartan's?' (sic)

The Spartans are how Richard O'Rawe referred to Blanket Men in his first book of that name.

Speaking for myself I must say I was angry that someone had gone to the bother of not only making such a banner but that it was held up beside the platform. And this while former Blanket men from Derry and Belfast stood among the crowd in support of Marian.

Ears To You Mrs Robinson

I suppose when we learn of someone in the Northern micro government drawing attention to their ears there is a tendency to think of old jug head Edwin Poots. Although on reflection his listeners are something he probably wants attention averted from rather than to. Earplugs for him must be the size of traffic cones.

Ears can be the butt of many jokes and outsized ones are pretty hard to hide. There are few inconspicuous places to put them. It is not like a bald head where any cap will do the trick. And in some cases only a long eared bunny hat will suffice. And they aren’t exactly the type of headwear you would turn up sporting at a funeral. Weddings, not much use for them either. And at school, well you are goosed. May as well be on the blanket where an eye for the defect was a highly developed piece of anatomy. Ears, they are a cartoonist’s dream when it comes to churning out caricature.

Now to the point of this story. I read somewhere in February that Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness are both partially deaf in one ear. At the time Robinson quipped ‘when I confided in Martin I discovered that he had a hearing deficit in his right ear so now you know the secret of how we work so well together.’ Peter must have been to the left of Martin to make himself heard. But these days we expect Sinn Fein to be to the right of the DUP, so hear we go.

Chris Bray: Self-Inflicted Wounds

Below, a letter filed today with the clerk of the First Circuit by Eamonn Dornan and James Cotter, the lawyers for Belfast Project researchers Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, responding to the extraordinary letter to the same court this week from Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Healy Smith.

The letter opens with a rebuke: "We could not find any provisions in the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure or U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s Rulebook which would permit the Department of Justice to make further submissions or communications once the Panel has risen following oral argument."

But then, walking through a door the U.S. Attorney's Office has opened, the letter goes on to challenge the government's premise that the State Department has not been in contact with the McIntyre family regarding the threat the Belfast Project subpoenas presents to their safety: "The Appellants are ready, willing and able to provide evidence of those contacts, if the matter is remanded."

So Barbara Healy Smith has given her opponents in a legal appeal an opportunity to point out to a court that she willfully disregards its rules, and to effectively call her a liar -- while offering to prove it.

The government seems determined to put on a public display of its bad faith and limited ability. Under the circumstances, I'm pretty happy about it.

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Kids are Force-fed Evolution Nonsense: Militant Atheists Trying to Make Monkeys of us

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer and former Blanket columnist, Dr John Coulter who shares his views on creationism and evolution. This article was written prior to easter and originally appeared in the Daily Star.

Irish Christians should use this week's commemorations to spark a new Easter Rising!

I'm not advocating street riots, but instead taking a pledge to mark Christ's Resurrection by ensuring that Creation Studies are firmlyplanted in school religious education and science lessons.

Is it any wonder we are becoming less and less a Christian society when our kids are bombarded on a daily basis about evolution? the brainless concept we are all descended from apes!

I am an unashamed and unrepentant Creationist. I firmly believe in the Biblical account in Genesis of how the world was created by God. I am not a tub-thumping, Bible-bashing loony.

Bishop Knows Best

Gerry Adams and his brothers and sisters are to be applauded for making a public statement acknowledging that their father, Gerry senior, was a child abuser. This is a dark shadow hanging over many families and the courage of the Adams family in speaking out may help to bring this subject into the open where it can be dealt with. As Adams told RTE, there is a "culture of concealment" around child abuse. That being said, the release of this information should not be allowed to detract from the very serious issues raised by the case of Liam Adams, Gerry's brother, which had broken a few days earlier on UTV ... Gerry Adams' account of his dealings with his brother doesn't bear scrutiny and leaves more questions than it answers. – Liam Clarke

Sinn Fein boss Gerry Adams can hardly be faulted for calling on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to ‘instigate an inquiry into the sexual abuse of patients in the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.’ It is what most elected representatives would do and if not it is what they all should do.

Chris Bray: Miserable Ratfuck Bastards

  Meanwhile:

Among the documents that appear to have been destroyed were: records of the abuse of Mau Mau insurgents detained by British colonial authorities, who were tortured and sometimes murdered; reports that may have detailed the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers in Malaya by soldiers of the Scots Guards in 1948; most of the sensitive documents kept by colonial authorities in Aden, where the army's Intelligence Corps operated a secret torture centre for several years in the 1960s; and every sensitive document kept by the authorities in British Guiana, a colony whose policies were heavily influenced by successive US governments and whose post-independence leader was toppled in a coup orchestrated by the CIA.

The documents that were not destroyed appear to have been kept secret not only to protect the UK's reputation, but to shield the government from litigation. If the small group of Mau Mau detainees are successful in their legal action, thousands more veterans are expected to follow.

 
-- "Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes: Review finds thousands of papers detailing shameful acts were culled, while others were kept secret illegally." Guardian, April 17, 2012.

These assholes are pursuing subpoenas of academic archives? 

A person with dignity like Marian Price.

Tonight The Pensive Quill features a talk given by Mgr Raymond Murray at a gathering in St Oliver Plunkett’s Church, Lenadoon, Belfast, 3 April 2012. The subject og his talk was the ongoing detention of Marian Price

The Church is a worshipping family. She reaches her full stature only when she falls on her knees and bows her head in adoration. What is worshiping God? The care of the sick, the struggle for justice, the needs of the poor, the education of the young – all these are worshiping God – all these people are made in God’s image. The Church is supremely herself when God’s family gathers in a building like St Oliver Plunkett’s to worship.

We are reminding ourselves this evening of the importance of every human being – the concrete historical, live individual, the person with a name. The name this evening is Marian Price. All morality, Christianity and human rights, at least a person’s commitment to these things, can be summed up in our attitude to this man or woman with a name – not some abstract man or woman. A person with dignity like Marian Price.

Dead Children of Toulouse

He didn't appear to want to go out and stayed in his room to recite the Koran and read books. As soon as he'd hear the muezzin (calling for prayer), he would run to the mosque - Mohammed Benalal Merah, father of Mohammed Merah

As recent events in the French city of Toulouse have demonstrated all too bloodily, Jewish children are not merely in need of protection from disease ridden mohels who sexually assault them under the self serving label of religion.  There are others listening to a different, but no less murderous god, who see Jewish kids aged four and five walking to school with their eight year old fellow Jewish pupil and Rabbi father as fair game for premeditated slaughter.

Writing in the Guardian Jonathan Friedman referred to the mindset of some who view attacks of the Toulouse types as legitimate: ‘deeming even the unborn child inside an Israeli mother's womb a legitimate target, because that child will one day grow up to wear his country's uniform.’ We will kill people not for what they have done but for what we have ordained they will do according to our self exculpatory doctrine of predestination.

Chris Bray: Mosquito Won't Stop Buzzing in Court's Ear

Two weeks ago, Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Healy Smith had a very bad day in court during oral argument before a panel of judges from the First Circuit. Today, amazingly, she's going for a do-over, filing a letter with the court to challenge arguments made by Eamonn Dornan, the exceptionally sharp lawyer who argued the Belfast Project appeal for Anthony McIntyre and Ed Moloney. More in a moment, but here's the letter:
Healy Letter
The remarkable thing is that Barbara Healy Smith spoke after Eamonn Dornan in court. She had an opportunity to challenge or rebut anything he told the judges. Having failed to do that, she now in effect comes padding back into the courtroom two weeks later, holds up a finger, and says, "And another thing...."

Lawyers, is this sort of thing common? Is it regarded as ethical? At the very least, it seems sniveling and unprofessional.

Continue Reading

Bernadette McAliskey speaks about Marian Price.

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a talk by Bernadette McAliskey, delivered on International Women's Day 8 March 2012 at Conway Mill Belfast. Thanks to Sandy Boyer for sending it to TPQ.

Moderator: In 1969 Bernadette became MP for Mid-Ulster at the age of twenty-one. The youngest MP at the time, and as I am aware, she still holds the record as youngest MP ever to be elected. Bernadette, like myself, was active within the Armagh and H-Block Committee and for years has remained vocal insisting on the rights of prisoners and people be upheld and respected.

I hand you over to Bernadette. Please, give her a hand.
 
Bernadette: Thanks very much.

I have no real idea how we are supposed to express the sense of loss, the sense of anger, the sense of a great many things that come to me sitting here on International Women's Day in two thousand and twelve.

I shouldn't be here. Monsignor, you shouldn't be here. None of us should be here. This was supposed to be over. This was supposed to be sorted.

And when I do sit here on this International Women's Day, there's a depth of pain, (Bernadette pauses and does sound check as audience could not hear) there's a depth of personal pain, when I sit here, that has to be shared by a whole lot of the faces I'm looking at.

How much we gave. And how much we paid. And how much we lost. And how hard we fought. Every day. Every single day from the very first day that we decided that this depth of injustice for human beings was not good enough for us!

It wasn't good enough for our families, our children, our neighbours, anybody. And because we said it wasn't good enough we were punished. And somehow we got caught in a long, long, long line of sorrow and imprisonment and internment and running to gaols and trying to explain to people that we weren't the problem.

And we're still here. And this hasn't changed.

Public opinion throughout the world is moving in favour of ending the prohibition of illicit drugs.

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article from guest writer Mick Hall that features on the Organised Rage blog. It focuses on the futility of the war on drugs.

By all accounts Otto Fernando Pérez Molina is not one of the good guys, a Guatemalan politician and former senior military officer, he has been President of Guatemala since 14 January 2012. His unsavoury reputation goes back to the 1990s, when before entering politics, he served as Director of Military Intelligence, and is said to have ordered the murder of at least 184 civilians who were opposed to the often brutal regime of his then boss, President Ramiro de León Carpio. 

Nevertheless, having once been closely associated with 'the war on drugs' within Guatemala he now seems to have changed his mind, and has some interesting things to say about how societies deal with illicit drugs. He points out after becoming president of Guatemala three months ago, he found the security forces were no further forward in their U.S. sponsored war against drugs than they were 20 years before. When as head of military intelligence he was responsible for running this so called 'war.' If anything he claims the situation is far worse today, with drug consumption higher and production greater. 

To Play or not to Play

What are you talking about ‘We won’t play on the day’? Why can’t they? … Do they play on the date of the Heysel Stadium disaster? How many dates do they not play on? Do Man United play on the date of Munich? Do Rangers play on the date when all their fans died in that disaster ...? – Comedian Alan Davies


The Hillsborough Stadium disaster of 23 years ago today remains a livid sore in the city of Liverpool. The ‘enemy within’, as The British Prime Minister of the time, Margaret Thatcher, regarded soccer fans, walked into the death chamber like lambs to the slaughter.  The ‘slum game watched by slum people’ as the Sunday Times is stated to have so callously put it, like revolution, devoured its own children.

No Basis For Imprisoning Anybody

Tonight the Pensive Quill features a Radio Free Eireann interview which was aired as a Patrick's Day Special on 17 March 2012. The interviewer was Sandy Boyer (SB) and his guest was Eamonn McCann (EM). The issue under discussion was the ongoing imprisonment of the republican Marian Price.

SB: And welcome back to Radio Free Eireann. This is our Saint Patrick's Day Special on WBAI 99.5 in New York. And we're going over to talk to Eamonn McCann in Doire (Derry) about Marian Price.

Marian could be spending the rest of her natural life in a British prison in Northern Ireland. Unlike other political prisoners in the North, Marian has not been convicted, she's not been tried, she doesn't have a prison sentence, she doesn't have a release date and she doesn't even have a date when her case is to be reviewed by the parole board. Eamonn, thanks for being with us.

(SB experiences some phone difficulties)

EM: Hello. Hello.

SB: Oh, Hello, Eamonn. We were just talking about Marian and the fact that she is in prison and could be for the rest of her natural life.

EM: Indeed.

SB: No review, no release date, no trial. How does this come about?

More Work to be Done on the Boston College/PSNI Subpoenas

Today The Pensive Quill features guest writer Helen McClafferty urging support for the campaign against British police supoeanas aimed at seizing the Boston College oral history archive.


May 5, 1995 –‘ Boston College to award Margaret Thatcher the prestigious Ignatius Medal on the anniversary of Bobby Sand’s death’.

Irish America was responsible for preventing such an obscenity and we can do it again, this time by making sure the British do not win their case with regard to The Belfast Project, Boston College and a Sealed Subpoena demanding the oral Irish history tapes be handed over to the PSNI.

Britain has always been in the business of dismantling Irish America and the last thing its establishment wants to see is a strong and united Irish lobby rise again, this time galvanized around such a controversial issue as the Boston College subpoenas.   We need to send a clear message to all our U. S. politicians at every level that Irish America still has clout.

One Loud Voice

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Pauline Mellon who has been campaigning on behalf of the imprisoned Marian Price.

On Sunday April 22nd at 2.30pm in Derry there will be a procession leaving from Free Derry Corner and arriving at the Guildhall Square for a rally to address the ongoing internment and torture of fifty eight year old Republican prisoner Marian Price. The event is organised by independent activists and will be led by world renowned human rights campaigner Monsignor Raymond Murray.

Marian Price was arrested following an Easter Commemoration in Derry lastyear. She was sent to Maghaberry all male prison where she spent ten months in isolation on the order of Secretary of State Owen PatersonMarian has remained in custody and isolation despite being granted bail on the questionable charges brought against her.

Chris Bray: Cause and Effect

Boston College in-house lawyer takes vacation, delays their appeal

Okay, this is funny.

For months, the government lawyers arguing in court for the subpoenas of archival material at Boston College have sounded a persistent note of urgency: This is a murder investigation! There's no time for delay! Reflecting this urgency, the government pushed for an expedited schedule in the First Circuit, trying to resolve the legal appeals over the subpoenas as quickly as possible. (See, for example, this scheduling order in the appeal filed by Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre: "The government's request for an expedited briefing schedule is allowed. ")

Then came April 4, when the government's lawyer was left baffled and babbling by the questions from a panel of appellate judges in the Moloney and McIntyre appeal. Suddenly? Not so urgent. Below, a motion from Boston College's lawyers to slow down the briefing schedule in the university's separate and more limited appeal in the same case. Taste the funny: "The Government has authorized Boston College to advise the Court that the Government assents to this motion, and does so with the hope that briefing in this case will proceed expeditiously and that the case will be ready for argument by this Court’s September sitting."

Boston College, and their frenemies in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, hope that briefing in this case will proceed expeditiously so that argument can happen soon. In, like, maybe let's skip the rest of the spring and the whole summer and go for, I don't know, early autumn?

The Continued Imprisonment of Marian Price

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Sandy Boyer with a piece that first appeared as an op-ed in the Irish Echo on 4/04/2012

Marian Price is the only woman political prisoner in Northern Ireland. She is effectively interned and could spend the rest of her life in a British prison without a trial, sentence, release date or even a date when the Parole Commission will review her case.

Unless the courts intervene, she will only be released by order of a British Cabinet Minister, Owen Paterson, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Twice she has been arrested and brought before a non-jury Diplock Court. Twice a judge has ordered her released on bail. Each time Owen Paterson overruled the judge and ordered her back toprison. He said that he was revoking her license (parole in American terms).

IRSP Hunger Strike Investigation Findings Disclosed

Today The Pnesive Quill features Alex McGuigan Chairperson, Belfast Executive, Irish Republican Socialist Party, outlining the findings of an IRSP investigation into the management of the 1981 hunger strike.

On Wednesday 11th April 2012, Teach na Failte in Belfast hosted a public meeting on the 1981 Hunger Strike, the first in a 3 day exhibition and series of public meetings on the H-Block campaign era held in Cliftonvile Community Centre in the north of the city. The public meeting on the 11th April, chaired by Teach na Failte representative, Paul Little, included invited speakers, Richard O'Rawe, former PRO of the Provisional IRA H-Block prisoners during the Hunger Strike and author of 'Blanketmen' and 'Afterlives'.

Also on the panel were former O/C of INLA prisoners in the H-Blocks during the 1981 Hunger Strike, Rab Collins and former INLA blanketman and IRSP spokesperson, Willie Gallagher. Former Sinn Fein publicity director, Danny Morrison and former H-Block O/C of the Provisional IRA prisoners during the 1981 Hunger Strike, Bik McFarlane, were both invited to take part in the public meeting but neither attended.

Hooden Raus

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy - Alfred North Whitehead

Two former republican prisoners, Seamus Finucane and Jim McCarthy, have spoken to their local Sinn Fein paper regarding their views on the exiling from West Belfast of young people allegedly involved in anti-social activity. Finucane works with some Committee For Public Safety while McCarthy is prominent in Community Restorative Justice circles.

With a newly found sense of propriety Seamus Finucane said of a recent expulsion order:

Whatever the allegations, this is not the proper mechanism for dealing with this. These men need to be allowed back home to be with family, especially as some are suffering from mental health issues. There is no context to these threats and no support for the group issuing them. These threats are personality-driven.

In similar vein Jim McCarthy said:

We call on whoever made these threats on some very vulnerable people to lift them. Dialogue can resolve these issues and our door is always open, no issues are insurmountable.

Radio Free Eireann Interviews Belfast Project Director Ed Moloney After First Circuit Hearing First Circuit

WBAI 99.5 FM NYC

Saturday 7 April 2012

Download

The original transcript can be viewed at the Boston College Subpoena News Website


Sandy Boyer (SB) interviews via telephone Ed Moloney (EM), the former Director of The Belfast Project who, along with Dr. Anthony McIntyre, is the plaintiff in an appeal to stop the British government subpoenas served on Boston College for confidential material from the project’s archive. Oral arguments were heard in that appeal last Wednesday in The First Circuit Court of Appeal in Boston.
1:42PM

Sandy Boyer (SB): Welcome back to Radio Free Eireann, WBAI 99.5 FM in New York. We’re talking about The Belfast Project, the Oral History project which looks at the history of what’s called The Troubles from a different point of view: from the bottom up. Instead of the politicians and “the official” history, this was a history from the point of view of the people who were doing the fighting in the IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force.

And we have on the line with us Ed Moloney, who was the Director of The Belfast Project. Ed, thanks very much for being with us.

Ed Moloney (EM): No problem, Sandy.

The Courage of A Child

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a report from guest writer Helen McClafferty on the ongoing detention of political prisoner, Gerry McGeough.

Mr. Eamon O'Cuiv of the Fianna Fail party along with Gerry McGeough's daughter, Una McGeough, and members of The Free Gerry McGeough campaign from northeast Ireland, held a press conference in Dublin on Thursday, April 5th. The press conference was reported in the Irish Times.

In addition to the press conference, letters of support for McGeough's release were sent from Monsignor Raymond Murray, Fr. Des Wilson of Conway Mill, Fr. Sean McManus of the Irish National Caucus, Pat Ramsey, MLA of the SDLP, Alban Maginness MLA (SDLP).

The Free Gerry McGeough campaign is focused on the immediate release of Gerry McGeough and having outstanding issues with regards to paragraph 20 of the Weston Park Accord (2001) implemented fully through legislation and in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.

Transcript: Eamonn Dornan’s Oral Argument in the First Circuit Court of Appeals

Transcript: Eamonn Dornan’s Oral Argument
First Circuit Court of Appeals
Boston MA 4 April 2012


In the matter of the subpoenas served on Boston College for material from The Belfast Project.

Eamonn Dornan, attorney for the appellants Ed Moloney and Dr. Anthony McIntyre, delivers his oral argument to the court.

Legend: Eamonn Dornan (ED), the Court’s Chief Justice, the Honourable Judge Sandra L. Lynch and panel judge, the Honourable Juan Torruella.

Eamonn Dornan (ED): (audio begins during ED’s introduction)…along with James J. Cotter the III, the law offices of James J. Cotter the III for the appellants, Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre.

Chief Justice, if I can reserve two minutes rebuttal time?

Judge Lynch: Yes, you may.

There Goes Our Supporters, We Must Lead Them

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a piece by Tommy McKearney on the Household Charge reproduced from his blog.

Having refused to support the call for a boycott of the household charge and opting instead to stoke up fear about possible penalties for those who don’t pay, Sinn Fein is now trying to play catch up. No matter what the final count for non-registration/non-payment turns out to be, the fact remains that huge numbers of people (over 50%) have rebelled against the coalition government’s tax and Sinn Fein is concerned that it may be left behind.

Over 3,000 people from all over the Republic gathered in Dublin’s National Stadium on 24th March for an anti-household charge rally and those present spoke of an electric atmosphere. It had been many years since any political protest had generated such passion. One week later and again the crowds gathered in Dublin to protest. This time even larger numbers marched through the streets to the Fine Gael ard fheis in order to demonstrate their anger outside the governing party’s annual conference. Coincidentally, the ard fheis coincided with the deadline for payment of the charge and by midnight of that day, word was out that almost one million households had still to register.

Time To Give Something Back

The humorist Erma Bombeck once commented that ‘anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.’ A couple of things about this: firstly, a humorist whose vocation is to make people laugh would derive great professional joy from watching Liverpool. As former striker John Aldridge bitingly stated, the team is a laughing stock. Secondly, brain death could never possibly result from watching Barcelona, three times, thirty times or three hundred. The mind comes to life and marvels at the sheer range of talent on display at the Nou Camp. If Barcelona travels to France the assumption is that it does so to serve up a feast of soccer.  If Liverpool makes the journey people suspect the team is off to Lourdes.

On Saturday Anfield’s Awfuls managed a 1-1 draw at home to Aston Villa. That Villa was the team followed by Bobby Sands but few others in the H Blocks, hardly sweetens the pill of yet another failure to take all three points from a home fixture.

Dominic And Mary McGlinchey Remembered

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries and an oration delivered by Declan McGlinchey in Bellaghy on Saturday the 6th of April in honour of his father and mother who both died during the course of the republican struggle.

On behalf on myself, my brother Dominic and the wider family, I would like to welcome you all to Bellaghy, to share with us this Easter Saturday in commemorating our mother and father, Dominic and Mary. Whilst here, we pay homage to Thomas and Francis and all of the unsung activists who lie in these two grave yards, who gave so much in the pursuit of Irish freedom.

This year is the 25thanniversary of my mother’s death, killed by faceless strangers as she bathed my brother and me on a Saturday night. Like so many others who suffered similar fates, we carry the pain of this night as best we can and try to turn them into giving us the strength to do the right thing in the future.

Unravelling The Boston College Debacle: An Interview with Carrie Twomey

Today The Pensive Quill carries an interview that first featured in Irish American News Online and was conducted by Sabina Clark

Carrie Twomey doesn’t mince words. She is furious at Boston College for failing to protect their archives. Carrie is the American-born Orange County, Southern California wife of Belfast-born author, journalist, ex-Irish Republican Army volunteer and former prisoner Dr.  Anthony McIntyre. And, she is on a mission for her husband who cannot enter the U.S. because of his IRA past.

McIntyre and journalist and author Ed Moloney are in the eye of the storm in Boston College’s oral history debacle. They have now parted ways with the university and are filing a joint lawsuit against the U.S. government’s release of the Dolours Price archive to the British Government’s Police Service of Northern Ireland, PSNI.

The oral history project covers the time span of the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the late 1960’s up to the present and was originally suggested by Professor Paul Bew, a visiting professor from Queen's University in Belfast, who felt this could be accomplished since it was ‘such a short period of time in the overall conflict.’

Letter About a Supremacist Body

Tonight The Pensive Quill features a GARC letter that was hand-delivered by the body to the Parades Commissioners in their Belfast office on the 5th April.

To The Chairman,

Once more a Loyal Order, on this occasion the Apprentice Boys of Derry, have been rewarded for their intransigent attitude and refusal to engage with the residents of The Dales, Mountainview and Ardoyne by receiving your permission to march through our area on Monday 9th April 2012. As the
Residents’ Group that represents the majority of people within the Greater Ardoyne area, and the most vocal and vociferous in our opposition to sectarian parades, we would like to officially register our disgust at this decision.

The Apprentice Boys, as you are well aware, are a Protestant supremacist grouping that has at the centre of its ethos anti-Catholicism and an anti-Irish attitude. They regularly march to assert this supposed supremacy over their neighbours within areas where they are welcome and we agree that they have a right to do so. However within the Greater Ardoyne area, an independent survey carried out by impartial researchers has found that 96%of residents are opposed to all Loyal Order parades through their area. By continually granting Loyal Orders permission to march through Greater Ardoyne, the Parades Commission is infringing upon residents’ right to live free from sectarian intimidation and harassment, as enshrined in legislation in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent accords.

Ed Moloney Interviewed Outside Boston Court

Today The Pensive Quill carries a transcript of a BBC Radio Evening Extra report by Andy Martin in Boston. It features an interview with Ed Moloney.

First Circuit

BBC Radio
Evening Extra
Wednesday 4 April 2012

Audio available for 7 days


Seamus McKee (SMc) goes to BBC Reporter Andy Martin (AM) who is reporting live from Boston covering the appeal hearing on the matter of the PSNI subpoenaing records from Boston College’s Oral History known as The Belfast Project. Ed Moloney (Ed) is interviewed both on tape and live.

5:14 PM

Seamus McKee (SMc): Let’s go to Boston. The appeal to block the hand-over of secretly recorded interviews with former IRA members is just finished. The PSNI’s attempting to get an American university to hand-over transcripts of the interviews conducted as part of The Belfast Oral History Project. Andy Martin’s outside that court room in Boston. What happened in court, Andy?

Teach na Failte Hunger Strike Exhibition

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a flyer from Alex McGuigan about an upcoming event pertaining to the hunger strikes. Alex McGuigan is Chairperson of the Belfast Irish Republican Socialist Party.

The Irish Republican Socialist prisoner's support group, Teach na Failte, in Belfast are hosting a H-Block Hunger Strikes exhibition and a series of public discussions over a three day period, beginning on Wednesday 11th April and lasting until Friday 13th April, in the Cliftonville Community Centre, Manor Street in the north of the city.

The Hunger Strikes' exhibition will be open to the public from 11am-5pm and 6pm-9pm daily.

Chris Bray: Academics - Read This Judge's Question

Chief Judge Sandra Lynch, addressing a question to a federal lawyer during an appellate hearing this week:

"Are you arguing then that there is a per se rule that it is never, when it involves a criminal prosecution, there is never any possibility of an academic privilege?...It's not clear to me whether you are arguing that there is an automatic rule that the First Amendment can never trump a criminal prosecution, or whether you are saying in most cases a criminal prosecution is a sufficiently legitimate government interest to override any First Amendment claim being made."

The important part of the lawyer's answer: "I can't think of where it would."

Prosecutors and university lawyers will be citing these cases for decades. The outcome will echo long and loud.

Chris Bray: Thoroughly Reframed: The First Circuit Cuts Through the Haze

Start in the hallway, and look for little gestures.

A panel of judges from the First Circuit heard arguments today -- listen to them here -- in the pair of appeals filed by Belfast Project researchers Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre. But first there was a long wait, as the judges heard a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act in a courtroom that had no open public seats. So everyone filing in for the arguments over the Boston College archival material stood around in a remarkably pleasant seventh-floor hallway, where the federal judiciary should open a bed and breakfast to take advantage of the awesome waterfront views.

Then the DoMA case ended, the courtroom emptied, and the people in the hallway filed in for the Belfast Project hearing. The result of that repopulation of an empty courtroom was clear enough. At one point, a judge asked a question that, as legal blogger Ted Folkman wrote shortly after the hearing, "sparked some laughter from the side of the courtroom where the Moloney & McIntyre partisans were sitting."

Like guests at a wedding, observers at the hearing lined up behind their sides: a team of lawyers from the U.S. Attorney's Office watched from the public seats on the center-right behind their colleague arguing the case, while (for example) the lawyers who wrote the ACLUM's amicus brief lined up on the left behind Eamon Dornan, the lawyer arguing on behalf of Moloney and McIntyre. Ed Moloney and Carrie Twomey, Anthony McIntyre's wife, sat up front on the left, behind Dornan.

Two lawyers attended as observers for Boston College: Associate Counsel Nora Field, and Jeffrey Swope, the outside lawyer the university hired to contestulate(*) the Belfast Project subpoenas.

Field and Swope? They sat to the right of the government lawyers.

 

Senator John Kerry Op-Ed

 

Senator Kerry Op-Ed (unedited)

It’s an overused and oft-quoted phrase that those who fail to study the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

But sometimes there are exceptions even to this axiom when people have worked painstakingly to overcome the most painful of history and decided together to leave something in the past in the interests of exploring a better, more peaceful future.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela spoke poignantly of the responsibility he felt to put the past behind him in order to focus on the future of his country.

In Northern Ireland, as well, leaders have done the hard work of trying to leave some of the past buried so as not to distract or destroy an effort to build a different future for all who want peace and opportunity.

History must not be a weapon against those trying to seize the opportunity of today to build a more promising tomorrow.

John Kerry (D) is the senior senator from Massachusetts and the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee


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Chris Bray: Hot Pursuit

I accuse you of murder! And I will not rest until I bring you to justice! But, anyway, you're free to leave. No big deal.

-----

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors will walk into an appellate court in Boston and tell a panel of judges that they are seeking evidence in an exceptionally serious crime, the murder of a widowed mother of ten who was taken from her home in Belfast and shot in the back of the head by members of the Provisional IRA. Because they are aiding police officials in the United Kingdom with such an important investigation, they will sound a note of urgency: The matter before the courts must be brought to a conclusion, because murderers must be brought to justice.

They will be full of shit.

There was a murder, and it was awful. A widowed mother was killed, and ten children were left with no parents. But is there a murder investigation underway? Is the Police Service of Northern Ireland working to bring killers to justice?

Northern Ireland Police Threaten Academic Freedom

A slightly edited version of this piece appeared in Index On Censorship today, Monday 2nd April 2012

This Wednesday in a Boston Courthouse a crucial legal battle will be played out. It is a consequence of a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) contempt for academic research based on the protection of confidential sources. While the ‘troubles’ in the North of Ireland may be over for most people the PSNI is one state agency determined to poke at the hornets’ nest that is the region’s politically violent past. In doing so it displays wanton indifference to the caution urged by amongst others Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, a former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and current head of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, who warned that investigating the past ‘would blow apart the degree of consensus we have achieved.’

The extent to which the PSNI is successful in its attempts to seize academic research will prove ruinous to public understanding of the Northern Irish conflict. It will drain the pool of knowledge that society may draw upon in order to keep itself better informed. The judicial outcome in a Boston courtroom will determine the ability of non-state actors, principally, academics, journalists and historians to collate information crucial to a more rounded public understanding. In the words of a prominent civil liberties lawyer in the US the move ‘could forever chill groundbreaking and important research.’

Parvana’s Journey

Parvana on her draining voyage through death and despair, sets out from where the first novel The Breadwinner ended. My daughter persisted in her demands that I read it. I gave in and agreed to take it on the family holiday to Cork. I could hardly do otherwise. It was on a walk through Dublin one evening that I had picked up the first in the series for her. It is a children’s book but raises issues that adults normally deal with and which have forced themselves upon a child just in her first year of teenage life.

Parvana lost her beloved father, so central to the first novel, through illness. She is forced to journey alone in inhospitable territory. The hell that is war moves at full throttle. Was it ever anything else other than hell? She must walk alone until along the way she meets a baby in a bombed out home and takes him with her. It seemed a greater challenge than the one she had earlier failed to rise to. Then she had opted out of burying the child’s mother, the strength was beyond summonsing. Physically she no longer felt capable. That resource had been used up in burying her own father. At times she must have felt the baby was just the kitten she had initially mistaken it to be. Its abandonment would then have been an unproblematic choice in the knowledge that a kitten could fend for itself unlike a baby. She did not abandon the child, instead pulling it aboard for her journey and named it Hassan.