NUJ Vindicates Boston College Researcher

NUJ VINDICATES BOSTON COLLEGE RESEARCHER

Following a hearing in London on 24th July 2013, the NUJ Appeals Tribunal upheld an appeal by journalist Anthony McIntyre.

The Appeals Tribunal overturned the findings of a subcommittee of the NUJ’s Ethics Council of 25th March 2013 pursuant to a Rule 24 complaint lodged by Allison Morris and Ciaran Barnes which alleged that Mr McIntyre had breached clauses 2, 3 and 4 of the NUJ’s Code of Conduct.

The NUJ Appeals Tribunal found that Mr McIntyre had “no case to answer” and that he had not breached any part of the code as alleged.

The Appeals Tribunal overturned the 6 month suspension and formal reprimand issued by the Ethics Council.

In its decision of 25th March 2013, the Ethics Council subcommittee had found that Mr. McIntyre had breached Clause 2 of the Code of Conduct which requires that a journalist should “strive to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed accurate and fair” as well as Clause 3 which requires that he “do his utmost to correct harmful inaccuracies.”

However, the Ethics Council had declined to make a finding of a breach of Clause 4, which requires a journalist to “differentiate between fact and opinion” due to the difficulty the Ethics Council experienced “in differentiating between fact and opinion in reaching a conclusion concerning the publication,” a finding which Mr. McIntyre had described on appeal as “nonsensical.”

The Appeals Tribunal decided indeed that “the matter complained of was clearly an expression of opinion” and concluded that there was no case to answer.

Mr. McIntyre welcomed the decision by the NUJ Appeals Tribunal to overturn the flawed decision-making and penalties issued by the Ethics Council.

Mr McIntyre states that after a ‘scrupulously fair hearing’ before the Appeals Tribunal he is ‘extremely happy to have been totally vindicated and to know that the baseless claims by the two Belfast journalists, Allison Morris and Ciaran Barnes, were rejected in their entirety.’

He described the decision as a major victory for freedom of expression over those who would seek to suppress it.

“The growing culture of censorship in the North is under scrutiny, and UUP leader Mike Nesbitt, alone amongst political leaders, appears to be attuned to this problem in his current attempts to introduce legislation that would push back the constraints on free expression. The Tribunal decision is important in this context because it effectively entreats journalists to oppose censorship rather than impose it.”

Mr McIntyre concluded:

“While extremely satisfied with the outcome, it is my sincere hope and expectation that those news outlets which announced the flawed Ethics Council verdict against me in March will have the professional courtesy to provide the same level of coverage to this indisputable and unalloyed vindication.”

---

STATEMENT OF NUJ APPEALS TRIBUNAL

Statement of Appeals Tribunal re McIntyre

---

BACKGROUND

For background to Allison Morris's and Ciaran Barnes's complaints against Anthony McIntyre see: NUJ Wiki Dump

---

Get tough with drug pushers

Dr John Coulter with his column from the Irish Daily Star which featured on 22 July 2013.


Hang the scum! The time has come to get tough with convicted drug pushers who are poisoning our community with their evil trade. Thailand has the right attitude to convicted dealers – let them dangle at the end of a rope!

And all their assets should be seized and ploughed into the health service which is already at breaking point trying to deal with the fall-out from the latest batch of killer tabs.

Polish criminals based in Dublin have been using their dissident republican and rogue loyalist contacts to flood the North with more than 20,000 killer E-tabs which have claimed the lives of 10 young people, a well-informed church source told me last night.

And the source warned that the death toll could rise amid fears that mainstream loyalists are ready to break their ceasefires and go to war against the dealers.

 The source has been counselling some of the young people affected by the killer tabs and said that 'serious meetings among loyalist paramilitaries have been taking place at the highest echelons' to discuss what has to be done. He said:

The three types of drugs are coming from dissident republicans based in Dublin to rogue elements connected to loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, but the real source of the drugs is believed to be Polish criminals who are passing them to the dissidents.

There are three types of tab coming out of Dublin – White Ghosts which came in before Christmas; Double Cherries which came in at Christmas, and Green Rolexes which came in in the last few weeks.

The dosage of each has been stronger and the idea is to get the people hooked on the White Ghosts, then they need the Double Cherries, and then they want the Green Rolexes. With each type of tab, the potency level is increased, but now with this latter batch they have gone too far.

It is estimated there are now more than 20,000 of these tabs in Northern Ireland. The UVF and UDA have both told me that they are being distributed by rogue elements who feel disenfranchised, and some are not even in their organisations.

The well-placed source said 10 people had died so far from the deadly pills, including one alleged dealer. He claimed quite a few people had been already admitted to hospital. He added:

While there are more than 20,000 of these tabs still around, many are being dumped. I just hope they are being placed in drugs bins to stop young children getting their hands on them.

There are 10 people dead at the minute, but there could be more. It is an absolute nightmare as I don't know why these tabs are affecting some people and not others. The leaderships of the various paramilitary groups in loyalism are in serious meetings. They are very worried and the ceasefires could be in jeopardy. Some people could end up in a skip if any people are caught dealing.

I would be annoyed at politicians trying to claim credit for combating this situation when they don't deserve it.

My own sources spoke to the PSNI after the second death and warned them of the links.

The casualty units at hospitals are at breaking point because people who took the tabs are walking in, totally petrified, and claiming they are unwell. There is real anger among the loyalist paramilitary leaderships which I have not seen since the loyalist feuds of a few years ago. They are gunning for someone, but they will do a thorough investigation before they take action. There have been allegations that one of the dealers was a community worker who was caught with three grand from selling drugs.

The clock is ticking. Face reality TDs and MLAs, we need the rope as soon as possible.

Corking Blasphemy

• By the way, if you want more weirdness, check out America Needs Fatima. This is an American organization that thinks that the way we'll solve all of our problems is by putting a statue of the Virgin Mary in every home and getting everyone to worship it – PZ Myers

Boston College Loses Dolours Price Contract, Throwing Jean McConville Probe Into Disarray

Ed Moloney with a piece suggesting more ineptitude on the part of Boston College. It originally featured on his own blog, The Broken Elbow.


Boston College  does not have in its possession the contract Dolours Price signed with the university that established the authenticity and ownership of the interview about her life in the IRA conducted by researchers from the college, thebrokenelbow.com can now reveal. It is not known whether the contract has been lost or was never collected from researchers in Ireland.

Dolours Price – Boston College has lost her contract proving ownership and authenticity of her interview

This disclosure follows revelations in The Irish Times this weekend that Boston College also cannot locate the contracts that identify three out of the seven IRA interviews that have been successfully subpoenaed by the PSNI and the United States’ Department of Justice in an effort to solve the forty year long IRA murder and disappearance in 1972 of Jean McConville, a Belfast widow and mother of ten whom the IRA accused of spying for the British military. These interviews are still the subject of legal argument in the United States.

This means that four out of the nine interviews or sets of interviews – nearly half of the interviews successfully subpoenaed as being relevant to the McConville murder investigation – are now of dubious legal and evidential value despite a lengthy and expensive legal battle fought by the PSNI and their allies in the Obama White House over the past twenty-seven months.

Jean McConville with two of her children

These revelations also raise questions about how many other interviewee contracts with participants unconnected with the McConville investigation or who were part of the UVF section of the archive that so far has escaped PSNI attention have been lost or were never collected by Boston College.

Amid efforts, so far resisted by Boston College, on the part of interviewees to get their interviews returned and to force the closure of the archive, legal sources say that the inability of Boston College to prove that contracts exist will result in the automatic return of these interviews to those who gave them.

All these twists and turns add appreciably to the embarrassment of Boston College’s authorities over a project that has been roiled in controversy over assurances of confidentiality that were given to interviewees by the college in order to persuade them to participate.

The contracts at the centre of this controversy tell interviewees that their control and ownership of the interviews they gave was absolute until their death, after which ownership and control reverted to Boston College. It was this contract, drawn up by Boston College’s own legal advisers, which persuaded the researchers, Ed Moloney, Anthony McIntyre and Wilson McArthur, as well as the interviewees, to take part in the project as it seemingly offered protection against official intrusion.

At the outset of the project in 2001 another part of the arrangement, drawn up in contracts, stipulated that the Project Director, Ed Moloney would create a key for Boston College that would identify all the participants who otherwise would only be identified by letters of the alphabet and numbers for the number of interviews they gave.

The key would be created via the contracts which the researchers, Anthony McIntyre and Wilson McArthur, would ask each interviewee to sign. The arrangement was very strict about one point: for security reasons the contracts and the key they created could only be hand delivered to Boston from Ireland by the Boston College librarian, Robert O’Neill, who traveled regularly to Ireland on shopping expeditions for the college.

In other words McIntyre and McArthur would provide the signed contracts, Moloney would create a key from them and O’Neill would carry all this back to Boston where the documents would be lodged, at least in theory, in the college archive.

Almost at the outset however the arrangement was altered by changes in the domestic arrangements of Ed Moloney, who was obliged for family reason to relocate from Belfast to New York in the summer of 2001, by which time the IRA part of the archive was just a few months old.

Because the security of the project and the guarantees given to interviewees necessitated that the all important piece of information identifying each participant be taken to Boston only by hand this meant that Moloney, now residing in New York, could no longer be part of this process and it was left to O’Neill, the Boston College librarian and the man in charge of the project, to collect the contracts and create the key. Had Moloney been involved this would have meant that security would have been compromised since the ‘by hand only’ rule would have been breached, with potentially harmful consequences for the interviewees.

It is interesting to note that the subpoenaed IRA interviewees not identified by contracts are all at the end of the alphabet, suggesting that they were started long after he had arrived in New York and when he was no longer in a position to be given copies of their contracts. In practice he was not informed of the names of participants although he did suggest names of potential candidates and needs and did read transcripts which were sent in an encrypted form. However identities could never be sent encrypted or in any other way as the security risk was too great.

Boston College went along with this arrangement. Again for security reasons none of this was described in writing or email but was done orally. Proof that it was acceptable to Boston College lies in the fact that never once, from 2001 onwards, did the college ever demand the key from Ed Moloney. This was because de facto the job was O’Neill’s. During Moloney’s stay in New York he traveled numerous times to Boston College, gave lectures to students and had meetings with those in charge of the project and never once was this issue or problem raised.

Had the college been so exercised by the failure to provide this key its lawyers could have sued for breach of contract but they allowed the statute of limitations to expire in 2012, a year after the PSNI/DoJ subpoenas were served. This suggests that the college was not then concerned about the matter.

It also means that from 2001 until 2013, and even after a foreign police force had requested access to its archive, the fact that a significant number of interviews lodged in Boston College had no contracts attached to demonstrate Boston College’s ownership or to establish the identity of the interviewees went completely unnoticed by the authorities on campus or was not regarded as being of concern.

Collection of the contracts and therefore compilation of the key became the responsibility of Robert O’Neill, the college librarian. Did he collect the contracts and then lose them or ‘forget’ or somehow fail to collect the contracts? We don’t know. It does however seem logical that McIntyre – and also McArthur – did have an incentive to ensure that contracts were signed and collected.

The contracts were the guarantee of security and safety and it was in their interests to ensure that each interviewee was both aware of the text of the contract and had signed them – this was the way, after all, in which they could assure interviewees that it was safe to participate. Equally it was in their interests to ensure that the contracts were lodged at Boston College.

Doubtless aware of how damaging all this extraordinary chapter in the IRA archive story is to Boston College’s reputation, the university has turned on its researchers as it has done repeatedly during this sad story.

This time the reason is clear. Earlier this summer, the First Circuit Court of Appeal in Boston reversed a District Court judgement of 2011 that authorised the wholesale handover of IRA interviews – eighty-five in total. That judgement had said that if interviewee ‘A’ mentioned Jean McConville in only one of 18 interviews then all 18 interviews should be handed over. The First Circuit, very sensibly, said that only that single interview should be conceded.

Following this Boston College appears to have discovered that thanks to the contracts snafu, it cannot identify three of the interviewees. Anxious that once again the college will be exposed as alarmingly bungling and incompetent, Boston College is trying to shift the blame on to its researchers and in particular project director Ed Moloney.

On the foot of what looks like a tip off to the DoJ from Boston College, the researchers’ legal advisers have been warned that the US government may well go into court next week to ask that in the case of those three interviewees their entire set of interviews should now be handed over so they can be identified. Boston College is telling our legal team that we can stop this happening if we identify the three interviewees. Failing that there is the threat in the background of a subpoena, with jail time if it is defied, against the Project Director Ed Moloney.

This is how far Boston College has sunk. And as this happens US academe stands silent, acquiescing and in effect collaborating.

Time for Irish to say 'See EU later'

Dr John Coulter with a piece on Ireland and the European Union which first featured in the Irish Daily Star on the 15th July 2013.

It's time to end the Union! Bet you never thought you'd hear a Radical Right-wing Unionist like me saying that?

Value of Boston College tapes diminished by anonymous voices

Historian and journalist, Chris Bray with a piece on the Boston College tapes that initially featured in the Irish Times on 27th July 2013.

 

There are voices and they talk about the death of Jean McConville. It may not matter. After two years of legal proceedings in the US, a set of audiotapes in a Boston College archive are supposed to answer questions about McConville’s 1972 murder by members of the IRA, who claim they suspected her of informing for the British army in Belfast.

Time for Orange to change tune

Dr John Coulter with his July 1st, 2013 copy from the Irish Daily Star.

The Orange Order must celebrate its so-called Christian roots by  marking today's Mini Twelfth by playing only Gospel hymns at contentious flashpoints.

Deirdre Jacob

• We need help, we really need help to progress the search for Deirdre further – Bernadette Jacob.

Deirdre Jacob was 18 years old when she went missing in July 1998, shortly after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which conveys some measure of just how long her parents have been emotionally drained by the knowledge vacuum regarding her fate. Yet the normal human concept of time has been first elasticated, then truncated by the rupturing effect of loss. In the words of her mother:

Every anniversary is difficult, every day is difficult - and I suppose 15 years seems a very long time. Well in some ways it’s a very long time in that we haven’t seen Deirdre and she’s missing. But at the same time because it’s with us all the time, it seems like as if it was yesterday in another way.

Anti-Internment Rally

Look to the Skies

Guest writer Thomas Dixie Elliot with some reflections on prison life

'Let's Cut 'Em Off at the Knees and Let Allah Sort It Out!'

• Franklin Lamb writing from Damascus. This piece featured in Salem News on 12th July 2013. 

AIPAC & OFAC Ratchet-Up US Sanctions Targeting Syria and Iran’s Populations.

Against the Vampire

• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed ― Mahatma Gandhi

State schools are class act: Obama's 'integration' talk is nonsense

Dr John Coulter with a piece that first featured in  June 24, 2013 edition of the Irish Daily Star http://www.thestar.ie/ 

Kleptoparasitism

Guest writer Thomas Dixie Elliott with a piece mocking the inflated claims of the Queens Own. Having seen crap covered walls for years while on the blanket he instinctively recognises it when it is served up as something smelling of roses.

Death by Debt

Guest writer David McSweeney with a piece on the parlous economic situation Ireland is in due to rape by the banksters and their friends.

• 'The most significant threat to our national security is our debt' - Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, August 27th 2010.

Starving to Learn.

• Prices of meat, fruit or fresh vegetables have soared in recent years, leaving parents in poorer families reliant on school lunches to ensure adequate levels of nutrition. However, the scheme is plagued by waste and corruption. Incidents of poisoning are common, though rarely this serious. School meals in India are usually provided by contractors. Many use substandard ingredients and pay officials to turn a blind eye - Jason Burke

It is not Sandy Hook. Nor were the victims the target of first degree intent. So the newsworthiness of the traumatic catastrophe is unlikely to attract as much attention in this part of the world or endure long after the funerals. But for bereaved families the loss and grief is still the same. Twenty five children, aged between 4 and 12, who left their homes on Tuesday morning for the school day, never again to return to the hustle bustle of their neighbourhoods. The metaphorical silence of the grave has enveloped them – they were in fact cremated - immutable in its ability to be broken. A tranquillity not welcome when one is so young and which leaves nothing vaguely resembling serenity in its wake.

www.businessinsider.com - 

I have a recollection from childhood days of hearing my mother refer to 'starving India.' It seems in some parts of it starvation is never that far away: ‘According to the World Bank, 43% of Indian children are underweight –the highest level in the world and a figure that has remained constant for at least 20 years.'

Hunger, a wolf that is at times kept away from the door by schemes like 'the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, the world's largest school feeding program involving 120 million children.' The venture helps increase school numbers, adding to greater literacy and basic skills rates as a result. A worthwhile social venture on the surface but the disregard for the consumer of the product by those determined to make profit to the detriment of all else subverts its purpose. Unbridled greed is a universal malaise that breaks out given the slightest opening in any part of the world. Avaracious food contractors in Delhi or greedy developers in Dublin, the intent is the same: the ruthless pursuit of wealth which of course they will pretend they create so that we all might share in it.

Despite complaints from the cook at the school that something was wrong with the cooking oil the headmistress ordered the meals to be served up. Was she worried about impatient hungry children or being merely indifferent to the contents of a meal she would not have to eat? The cook at least consumed the food, he too being poisoned but managed to survive.

In any event the headmistress scarpered. Fear of retribution perhaps rather than a sense of primary culpability most likely lying behind her decision to head for the hills. The police hunt for her continues.

There have been widespread protests and resentment against authorities that failed to protect vulnerable children. The state government, supposedly a replacement for a previous administration saturated with corruption, has been lambasted for not moving quickly enough to provide medical attention for the children, some of whom were allowed to return home from where they were rushed to hospitals by their parents. According to The Guardian:

The local clinic near the school lacked even basic medication and equipment, ambulances were not available and none of the monitors in the intensive care unit in the state's main hospital, where another 26 children are currently under treatment, were in working order when casualties arrived. Specialist medication to counter the effects of poisoning was not immediately available.

What chance had they? The curse of poverty and hunger had condemned them to the bottom rung in a hierarchy of patients.

Police buildings and vehicles were attacked while effigies of the state’s chief minister were burned. In a country which reportedly has large swathes of territory without any functioning ambulance service, there seems little sense in allowing cops to have vehicles when they appear to use them for no good purpose. Protestors were batoned off the streets by police, never quick when it comes to moving against rapists: the families of dead children deemed a greater threat to societal wellbeing.

There is a cruel irony in life sustenance being the cause of life extinction. In US schools the kids are shot by gun nuts; in Indian schools the assailant is poverty. The result - dead children. Yet the need to be educated is so strong that a five year old girl lying in her hospital bed said ‘will go to school once I am fine’. Even with the Taliban shooting kids for going to school or where the risk of being poisoned is substantial, the need to learn is overpowering.  Children are still turning up to school in the poorer parts of India, but since Tuesday have been refusing to avail of the school meals. They are literally starving to learn.

Means and Ends

Guest writer, social justice campaigner Davy Carlin with another chapter in his story about growing up in West Belfast. 

Yet although many where driven into the politics of the gun due to the immediate circumstances, many thought of those organisations that they joined - apart from providing the initial ‘means’ - had also ‘an end’, held within their understanding.

Antediluvian Behaviour Perpetrated by Loyalists

Moya St Leger with a letter to the Irish News that featured on 16th July 2013.

Dear  Sir,

Is  there no sense of embarrassment within the Unionist community about the moronic  behaviour of loyalists in the Woodvale area of Belfast?

Can Dolours Price Interviews Be Used In Court: A Correction And Clarification

Ed Moloney with a piece on the admisssibility of hearsay evidence. It initially featured on his own blog, The Broken Elbow.

Here Lies Gerry

Guest writer Thomas Dixie Elliot with a bit of political satire.


Gerry Adams dies - all part of the bigger process - and when the dust settles two of the presidents men gather round the grave fondly reminiscing about the things Gerry didn't do when he wasn't in the IRA.

How Republicanism can Rebrand Itself

Guest writer Dr John Coulter is a Radical Unionist commentator and a former columnist with The Blanket. He is currently writing an e-book about republicanism as an outsider looking in. The e-book is entitled An Saise Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism. The chapters are being published exclusively on The Pensive Quill. In this latest chapter, he examines how republicanism can rebrand itself as a relevant and progressive ideology in the 26 Counties.

Beat the Peace into Them

Guest writer Thomas Dixie Elliot with a short piece asking questions of Sinn Fein about its attitude toward its critics.

Silence of the Unmarked Grave

Yesterday as my wife and I left Leinster House we bumped into my former IRA chief of staff Gerry Adams. He was entering the doorway we were exiting through so it was a tight space. He grunted ‘maith thú’ only for us to blank him. It hardly annoyed him, he has faced worse disdain than being ignored. Whether through chance or something else he appeared to be in the company of Pat Rabbitte. That sight triggered alive the last lines of George Orwell’s Animal Farm as I looked from Provo to Stick, from Stick to Provo and back again, realising that it was no longer possible to tell any difference.

Egypt After the Coup ... Is Obama Backing ElBaradei?

Franklin Lamb from Beirut with a piece on Egypt After the Coup. It initially featured on Intifada Voice of Palestine.

The summer time blues!

Guest writer Derry Prisoner Rights activist, Pauline Mellon, with her take on recent events.

Bid For British Army Papers: FOI Request for 1972 Archive War Diaries

PRESS RELEASE FROM ED MOLONEY & ANTHONY McINTYRE
July 14th, 2013

Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre are today announcing their intention of lodging a Freedom of Information request with the British government archive at Kew, Surrey seeking the lifting of an 84 year embargo on the war diaries of the First Gloucestershire Regiment compiled in 1972 and 1973. The diaries, which record daily military events during a regimental tour, cannot be opened until January 2059.

Like Area Managers in a Supermarket Chain

Guest writer fromer blanketman Thomas Dixie Elliot with a piece illustrating the paucity of Sinn Fein's inflated claims.

Covering up Crime

Chris Fogarty with his column as published in the July edition of the Irish American News that hit the streets of Chicago last week.

On June 7 FBI agents visited us. On June 3 we mailed the below letter to the Sun-Times which didn’t publish it. 

Michael Campbell in a Medieval World

It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones ― Nelson Mandela

GARC condemns violent unprovoked attack on members by PSNI

• A statement from GARC issued on the 9th of July 2013 criticises a violent PSNI assault on one of its members.

Standing up to the Money Masters

• History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by  controlling money and its issuance - James Madison

The standing protest #BookTheBankers took place yesterday in Dublin for the second consecutive week. In sweltering heat the group, much smaller in number, assembled as it did last week outside the Dail just around mid afternoon. It was largely overshadowed by the protests around the equally important Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill. At one point the movers behind it posted a cancellation on the internet in order to avoid a clash of events which probably inadvertently contributed to a diminution in size.

The protest achieved little of the coverage of last week, but then the virgin event tends to be titillating for the media. Nevertheless, it does underscore the strategic imperative of innovation in order to capture public imagination and sustain media interest.

That said, the action can hardly be described as a failure, it being one more straw on the bankster’s back to paraphrase an old idiom, just as yesterday’s separate Jail the Bankers protest in Gorey was. No one believes that the Dail is going to cave in on itself and legislate for jailing the shysters responsible for bleeding society dry as a result of people standing silently outside parliament reading books. The people on vigil – because this is what it is, people letting government know that they are being vigilant about the relationship between politicians and the rapacious bankers – standing there are the last to think that. The value of their protest rests in it keeping the issue of the banks live while serving as a public checkpoint where someone can shout ‘halt’ before the thieves in Mercs freewheel into the night, booty bonus intact.

The progress of #BookTheBankers is not to be assessed on the false criterion of whether it manages in Bastille week to storm the walls or not. A few days ago the following comment on the very informative Cedar Lounge Revolution site made a lot of sense.

Given the week that has been in it it’s easy to forget the Anglo issue. Indeed given the thoughts many of us had last week about how that might impact on political activity in the last three weeks before the Dáil recess it is interesting how the passage of the abortion legislation wiped it off the front pages.

Fact is, it was not expunged from the media. While the author put its return down to an interview in the Daily Mail, it also featured in news items, talk shows and across the internet because of the standing protest. And as so often happens when a campaign is going forward it is beginning to weave its way into a wider tapestry of protest.

Debt Justice Action - http://www.NotOurDebt.ie

Easy to do, hard to ignore, Booking The Bankers for their book cooking is a statement that some are not prepared to be slaves to the money masters.

A sterling idea to save Republic:

TPQ regular Dr John Coulter, in his Irish Daily Star column, argues that a 'Skint South should ditch the EU and rejoin Commonwealth'. It first featured on the 17th June 2013.


Pray for the mother of all rows at the G8 conference which kicks off in Fermanagh this morning so that Ireland can tell the European Union to bog off and rejoin the Commonwealth.

New US Envoy On NI’s Past Means Boston College Case Must Be Suspended

Statement from Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre on the appointment of Dr Richard Haass as the new US special envoy to the North.

Hate Filled Display

The following statement was issued by the Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective (GARC) steering committee this morning 10//07/2013.

Conspiracy and Cynical Ploy

The following statement was issued on the 9th July 2013 by the Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective (GARC)

As the 12th of July approaches the community of Ardoyne again braces its self for massive disruption. The recent failure of talks was predictable as micro group CARA is unrepresentative of the views, opinions and sentiments of the residents of the Greater Ardoyne area and has virtually no support.

Menendez Fires Volley Across British Bows On Boston College Archive

Senate Foreign Relatons Committee chairman Robert Menendez

A piece by Ed Moloney outlining the latest move in the Boston College Subpoena case. It initially featured on The Broken Elbow today.

Opposing Sectarian Parades

Death by Committee

Joe McDonnell died 32 years ago today. If memory, with its seeming paradox of increasing unpredictability, is faithful I had a visit on the afternoon of his death with a friend whose brother had just been killed by the IRA after being labelled an informer. Having shot him they ended up beating him around the head for good measure before throwing him down a rubbish chute.

War by Another Name in Syria

Franklin Lamb from Beirut with another in his excellent run of pieces on the conflict in Syria. It initially featured in Counterpunch on the 19th June 2013.

The Obama Administration Prepares a “Marshall Plan” to Reconstruct Syria, But Not for the Syrians

Crisis In Historical Enquiries Team Probe Of NI’s Past Shows Need For A Fresh Start And An End To Boston College Probe

Statement from Ed Moloney & Anthony McIntyre on the failures of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET)

Following the decision by the Policing Board of Northern Ireland to suspend all reviews by the HET of military cases and in light of the board’s expression of no confidence in the leadership of the HET on foot of a damning report by the British Inspectorate of Constabulary into the HET’s performance, we call upon the British authorities to immediately suspend the ongoing PSNI investigation resulting from the subpoenas served on Boston College.

Booking the Bankers

Yesterday a protest took place outside the Dail. Staged under the catchy slogan Book The Bankers it was an expression of disgust prompted by the kleptocracy that the bankers of Anglo Irish have come to personify as a result of the public having heard their Deutschland über alles taped conversation in which robbing the nation blind was pretty much boasted about. The banksters at Anglo Irish very much subscribed to the philosophy of the kleptomaniac: never worry about the condition, you can always take something for it.

Yes I am a whore

Maryam Namazie with a piece that first featured on her own blog on 30th June 2013.
  

Throughout the ages, dissenting women have always been called whores. I know I have many times.
My response? “Yes, yes, I am a whore…”

This & That: Take 22

Upsetting the Cardinal

In a welcome move the Dail has passed the first stage of the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill by 138 votes to 24. The Catholic right despite blustering pronouncements failed to mobilise significant opposition, finding real succour only in the ranks of Fianna Fail, the bulk of whose TDs voted contrary to party leader Micheal Martin.

Martin Corey – Irish Political Prisoner Held Without Charge, Trial

Sandy Boyer with a piece on Maghaberry internee Martin Corey. It first featured on The Wild Geese on 1st July 2013.

Martin Corey has spent more than three years in Northern Ireland’s Maghaberry Prison. Although he hasn’t been charged with any crime, there is little prospect that he will be released any time in the foreseeable future. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a British Cabinet Minister, has revoked his license – parole in American terms - which means that he can be imprisoned indefinitely without a trial, sentence or release date.

Martin Corey received a life sentence in December 1973, when he was 19 years old for killing two members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Northern Ireland police force, in an IRA operation. He served 19 years and was released in June 1992.

Martin Corey returned home to Lurgan, County Armagh. He started a business, formed an ongoing relationship, and became a highly respected member of the local community.

The police appeared at Martin Corey’s door and took him away to prison in the early hours of April 16, 2010, almost 18 years after his release.

His younger brother Joe described what happened:

They came to the door at around 6 a.m. There was about 12 of them standing there when I answered the door. They asked for Martin and told me the Secretary of State had revoked his licence. They gave no reason for this. There was no struggle. He just got up and walked out with them. The brought him to Maghaberry, where he has been ever since.

He was informed that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had revoked his license because he was a “security risk.” Later it was claimed that “he was involved with dissident republicans.”

The Northern Ireland Parole Commission, which is appointed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, held secret hearings where neither Corey nor his lawyers could see the evidence. They returned him to prison, saying he was "a risk to the public."

A Belfast judge ordered him released on unconditional bail on July 9^th because he was being held on the basis of secret evidence. His family rushed to the prison to bring him home.

But while Martin Corey was sitting in the prison reception area and they were waiting outside, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland overruled the judge and ordered him re-arrested.

His lawyers have announced that they will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. But this is a time-consuming process that can consume a year or more.

'Martin Corey was released by the courts.'

In 2011, Martin Corey told The Lurgan Mail that:

I have been in prison for nearly a year and a half, and I still haven’t been given a reason. They have put forward a number of allegations against me, and I’m not able to defend myself against any of them. They say I have been seen speaking to known republicans, and that I visited a number of houses. What does that matter? It doesn’t mean I’ve done anything wrong. They have absolutely nothing on me, and that’s why they haven’t charged me.

His partner, Lynda Magee, said:

He does not know what he has done and has been told nothing about why he is being held He has already served his time and he was willing to do it. But now he is being held for no reason.

Martin Corey is a member of Republican Sinn Fein, a legal political party throughout Ireland. They are opposed to the Good Friday Agreement because they believe it perpetuates British rule in Northern Ireland. Republican Sinn Fein is almost universally believed to be affiliated with the Continuity IRA in the same way that Sinn Fein was traditionally affiliated with the IRA. This can be used by British authorities to justify imprisoning Martin Corey because he is a “dissident republican” and a threat to the peace process.

But people on both sides of the Atlantic who have little or no sympathy with Martin Corey’s politics are demanding that he be released.

Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, met the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in the Dáil (Irish parliament) and urged him to free Martin Corey. Adams stated that 'Martin Corey was released by the courts… [He] should be released and I put it very strongly … that this should be done.

At its last convention, the AOH passed a resolution:

that the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America condemns Owen Patterson [the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland] for the continued imprisonment of Martin Corey and urge that be released immediately on unconditional bail.

Like Martin Corey, Marian Price was imprisoned without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence until she was released in May after her heath was all but broken. They are the most recent targets of the ongoing policy of interning political prisoners.

Martin Corey is only one more victim of the permanent human rights emergency in Northern Ireland. Just in the last few months:

• Stephen Murney has been charged with "possession of materials of use to terrorists" for taking photographs of the Northern Ireland police in action.
• The police tried to intimidate a key witness in order to prevent Brendan McConville and John Paul Wooten from appealing their conviction.
• In May, John Downey was suddenly charged with a 1982 bombing when he went to London from his home in Donegal.

We will need to build campaigns for each of them. If Marian Price is at home today, it is only because there was a very public, very determined campaign to set her free both in Ireland and throughout the world.

As essential as campaigns for individual prisoners are, it’s no longer enough to campaign for one or another of the political prisoners. Both in Ireland and the United States we need to try to broaden our campaign to include as many prisoners as possible and challenge the whole attack on basic human rights. Otherwise, there will be more political prisoners in the very near future.

As Northern Ireland civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin McAliskey put it:

The Good Friday Agreement promised and end to this abuse of human rights and democracy.  It is long past time it delivered on this promise. It is also time the international power players who created this deformity of democracy held it to account.

Bring Michael Campbell Home

A leaflet from the Repatriate Michael Campbell Campaign