Archive for the ‘Media and State Misbehaviour’ Category
SECOND FRONT OPENED IN LEGAL FIGHT TO SAVE BOSTON COLLEGE ARCHIVES
SECOND FRONT OPENED IN LEGAL FIGHT TO SAVE BOSTON COLLEGE ARCHIVES
Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre are pleased to announce that they are opening a second front in their fight to prevent the Police Service of Northern Ireland gaining access to the Belfast Archive at Boston College. In addition to the legal action currently ongoing in the federal appeals court in Boston, they have this week filed papers in the Belfast courts seeking a judicial review of the PSNI action alleging that the UK authorities are in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and the British Human RIghts Act of 1998. The Judicial Review asks that the British Home Office’s request of assistance from the United States be quashed, the subpoenas be declared unlawful, a discontinuation of the PSNI’s application for the material, and for an injunction stopping any material from Boston College being received by the PSNI. The two legal actions in Belfast and Boston emphasise our utter determination that the enormously valuable historical documents in the Boston College archive will never fall into the hands of anyone except those authorised by the terms of the solemn and unbreakable contracts we made with the interviewees. Ultimately these papers tell a part of Ireland’s recent troubled history and they should be used for no reason other than to educate and inform. Read the rest of this entry »
Violent Legacy of Irish Troubles, British Double-Standards – Boston College Row Revisited
Ed Moloney’s Irish Echo Editorial (an Irish-American Newspaper) on the Boston tapes controversy is required reading for all people genuinely interested in dealing with the violent legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles (1969-1998, signing of the Good Friday Agreement).
Two key quotes :
Number 1 :But the war has now ended, peace reigns and there is a desperate need for dealing with the past in a way that solidifies that peace and ensures an untroubled future.
The British have chosen a way that does the opposite. The Boston College subpoenas symbolize an approach to this issue based on revenge and the view that alleged combatants in that war should be dragged before the courts, convicted and jailed.
Number 2 :
There will be those, of course, who will say that if Gerry Adams did order Jean McConville’s “disappearance” then he deserves to be prosecuted. In a normal society, one ruled by a normal government, that would be a difficult argument to answer. But Northern Ireland is not, even with the peace process, a normal society and nowhere is this more evident than in the administration of justice.
The plain, undeniable fact is that there are double standards in the way justice is doled out in Northern Ireland.
Read, Circulate, and Act.
Slowly, but inexorably, the penny is dropping, both here in the United States as well as back in Ireland.
The Boston College subpoenas seeking access to oral history interviews with former IRA activists on behalf of the police in Northern Ireland are about the dumbest things that have ever happened in the long relationship between the United States, Britain and Ireland.
The difficulty is not how to describe why they are so dumb, but in counting the ways in which they are so dumb.
First of all, this is not the way in which to heal a conflict like that in the North of Ireland.
Over 3,000 people died and tens of thousands were scarred, physically and mentally, by a war that was undoubtedly one of the longest and most violent, if not the most violent in Irish history.
But the…
View original post 1,543 more words
A Government Starting to Crack? Are we over-optimistic?
Perhaps we are over-optimistic, – and the little voice should always say “optimism of the will, pessimism of the spirit” – we think that was Antonio Gramsci’s advice to activists – but it looks like the Kenny- Gilmore government is on the slide downwards towards a Cowen-Gormley meltdown – let’s hope!
By now most will have read the comments Leo Vardkar made about RTÉ, and I’ll get to them in a moment. But let’s start with his less than opportune timing as regards this remark:
He also said RTÉ was “encouraging people to break the law” by giving access to campaigners urging people not to pay the household tax. He claimed RTÉ would not give access to groups advocating that people refuse to pay the television licence fee.
Well perhaps they would if there was a campaign of mass non-payment on the TV license.
But what if instead of ‘law-breakers’ being the problem, the truth is the law itself is broken?
According to The Journal.ie
THE HIGH COURT has granted leave for a challenge to be made against the household charge because the necessary legislation and the statutory instruments are in the English language only – and have yet to be…
View original post 1,029 more words
Phil Hogan gets go-ahead to use bills because of household tax mass boycott
Government admitting non-payment of household tax is supported by a vast majority of the population. Read below biased headline of a right-wing newspaper.
Over 100,000 rally in Lisbon against austerity – Irish Media Please Copy
Left-wing sources brought this event to our attention – no comment so far on any mainline Irish Media that we have seen.
While Reuters report that “Over 100,000” people packed into the city’s main square, another report says 350,000 were present.
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120211/wl_nm/us_portugal_protest
Here is a photo :
Lisbon Rejects Austerity - Irish Media Please Copy
Vincent Browne Vs the Troika: Transcript and Broadcast; Street Protest at Department of Education
Two Worlds Collide
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/01/19/vincent-browne-vs-troika-the-transcript/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px43eINU2OM&feature=youtu.be&t=5m3s
It’s a knockout!
The body language is eloquent.
On Vincent’s TV3 late night news show (Thursday January 19) the policy of paying billions to unsecured bondholders is linked to the the DEIS mass demonstration outside the Department of Education earlier in the day.
Two Worlds Collide, Cosy EU Commission Office, Angry Marlborough Street Protest, Same Day
Tomás Ó Flatharta 