Friday, August 15, 2008

(Eamonn Ceannt Commemoration , Sunday 17 August 2008)


HYPOCRISY......
" To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."
(Oscar Wilde)



Bush condemns China over its Human Rights record...



Mary Harney (PD) .
When this female millionaire was State Minister for Health in 2006 she declared - "No one , particularly no older person , should sleep overnight on a trolley in a hospital corridor . I am determined to put an end to that for good . People who need to be admitted will have beds , not trolleys , and the basics for human dignity . This will be put in place in the coming months."
It still hasn't happened . Not surprising when you consider that since 2005 the total number of new hospital beds provided by the State for sick people is ten (10) !


Martin McGuinness (centre!) , British politician in the Six Occupied Counties of Ireland.
"I can give a commitment on behalf of the leadership that we have absolutely no intention of going to Westminster or Stormont......I reject any such suggestion and I reject the notion that entering Leinster House would mean an end to Sinn Fein’s unapologetic support for the right of Irish people to oppose in arms the British forces of occupation......the war against British rule must continue until freedom is achieved......don’t go my friends. We will lead you to the republic." (From here)

We would deeply appreciate any assistance you could give us in our fight against these , and other , political hypocrites.....
Thanks!
Sharon.






Wednesday, August 13, 2008



THE IRA : the new IRA is younger , more radical and has seen little of life other than violence.......
By Ed Moloney.
From 'Magill' magazine, September 1980.

The process of IRA re-organisation started , by some accounts, in the Spring of 1977 and according to one leading IRA source is still going on . Belfast , where the successes of the RUC were most evident , was the first to be re-organised largely under the direction of a former Belfast IRA Commander and a former IRA Brigade Adjutant . Most of the old Companies were gradually dissolved and their least-known members re-trained and passed into the new four-person cells , and were joined there by new recruits .

The old Battalion staffs were also dissolved and the Belfast Brigade assigned the task of co-ordinating the new cells . The Belfast Brigade still has three Battalions but they are composed of known IRA members who passed into the new civil and military Administration wing of the organisation . The other seven areas of IRA activity in the North of Ireland - Fermanagh , East Tyrone , South Derry , South Down , North Armagh , Derry City and South Armagh , were with varying success re-organised during the latter part of 1977 and most of 1978 .

South Armagh , where the IRA had always operated what amounted to a form of cellular structure , was the last to be re-organised in the Spring of 1979 . In fact little was changed in South Armagh except the area's relationship to the new Northern Command . The captured British Army intelligence assessment of the IRA which fell in to the hands of the IRA in January 1979 (it was studied for several months before release to the Press Association in May 1979) demonstrated the dearth of information about the new IRA structures in British intelligence circles : in a 'tentative order of battle' , the document's author , British General Jim Glover supposed that all the new IRA Cells were directly co-ordinated by the Northern Command . In fact it seems that there are a number of structures interposed between the Northern Command and the Cells.......
(MORE LATER).



RESISTANCE ON ALL FRONTS.......
IRIS talks to a spokesperson authorised to speak on behalf of the Irish Republican Army.
From 'IRIS' magazine , July/August 1982.

IRIS : " After the massive explosion at Springfield Avenue in West Belfast, in June 1982, in which local homes were devastated by the Brits' detonation of IRA explosives which were being temporarily stored in the area and which the Brits had uncovered , the IRA stated that the explosives had been unprimed and could have safely been removed from the area without detonating them ; that is, the Brits detonated the explosives in an attempt to discredit the IRA in nationalist eyes . Immediately afterwards , the Housing Executive chairman , Charles Brett, appeared to participate in this black propaganda campaign by saying that the effect of the bomb damage would be to delay the West Belfast housing programme , that is , again blaming the IRA by implication .What is your attitude to the Housing Executive's apparently growing collaboration with the British military and their objectives , and the similar collaborationist attitude of other semi-governmental and public bodies ? "

IRA: " Firstly , I think it's important to clarify the background to the explosion you mention . We have suspected for several months that the Brits are working at defusing our bombs before they have cleared the area , that they are deliberately ignoring bomb warnings and the locations given for bombs . In other words , they are deliberately jeopardising civilian lives , knowing that injuries or deaths can be blamed on the IRA . We don't travel with primed bombs , we don't store primed bombs , they are always primed 'on target' . It's not a big job , only a matter of flicking a switch . Timers , also, would not be attached to explosives until they are planted on the target . Unprimed explosives are little different from having a can of petrol in your back yard -it's safe till someone puts a match to it . The kind of explosives we use cannot detonate by friction , by being knocked about , by freezing up or being too warm . A detonator on its own will not detonate it . The only thing that can is a primer of higher velocity explosives than those being primed . In short , they cannot explode on their own , they're probably the safest explosives that there are .

The last person to be killed by unstable IRA explosives was Volunteer Jack McCabe, as far back as 1971 . Any accidents caused by explosives since then have been manual failures by Volunteers . The explosives in Springfield Avenue were not primed and could not have exploded . The Brits primed them and detonated them as part of a classic counter-insurgency move . As always , we regret the damage to working-class homes but while the people of the area are understandably annoyed by the devastation to their homes - and while we share their annoyance - we are confident that people reject the Brits' version of events , if only because they know the Brits of old , that they've lied on a hundred occasions about a hundred different things . The same politicians who gasped in horror after the explosion have also lied about sundry other things whereas , for good or ill , the IRA admits what it does .

On the second part of your question , we know that all British government and semi-government agencies are being used in line with Kitson's theory that all government structures , at all levels , have to be used against insurgents . All these people will be treated like any other enemy of the Irish people . "

(MORE LATER).



THE UNDAUNTED WOMEN IN ARMAGH.

The full story of the republican prisoners in Armagh Jail has yet to be told. It has yet to be sung , and properly described , other than as an after-thought in public speeches - "...and of course the women in Armagh.." Republicans have a right to be proud of those women who, from the Divis Flats grandmother doing six months for what an Orange judge called "riotous behaviour" to the young IRA Volunteer inside for the second time and not yet 25-years-old , have managed, whether they numbered 12 or 120 , to maintain their resistance to the most vicious prison system in Europe. The words that follow , says writer Patricia Collins , were written to encourage more of those women to come forward and tell their story , and are based on conversations with several
ex-prisoners , and on visits and letters from those women presently imprisoned. They were written in the hope of jogging the memory of all those women who wrongly think their contribution to Ireland's future peace is not worth mentioning.

From 'IRIS' magazine , August 1984.

Armagh women's prison : a Victorian granite building in the loyalist centre of Armagh city . Before 1969 virtually unknown , yet it had housed 18 republican women internees during the Second World War , and one during the Border Campaign of 1956-1961. By 1969 however , Armagh Jail's population consisted of a few destitute women , some short-term male prisoners and borstal boys .

Bernadette Devlin brought Armagh Jail into public focus when she was sentenced to six months for rioting in Derry's Bogside: she lost her appeal and started her sentence on June 26th 1970, a month after having been elected MP for Mid-Ulster for the second time in two years . Until her release in October 1970 , having served four months of her sentence , she was treated in effect as a political prisoner, and made a few representations to the prison governor on behalf of ordinary prisoners .

By the beginning of 1971 more nationalist women came to be sent to Armagh Prison , usually on six-month sentences . 'Riotous behaviour' was the usual label affixed by the British judge . " Assaulting a British Army patrol with an offensive weapon - a yard brush ..." , is how Anne Maguire from Ballymurphy describes her 'offence' . She recalls that, at the time, a 60-year-old granny from Divis Flats got six months for hitting a Brit with a bin lid .......
(MORE LATER).







Tuesday, August 12, 2008

FIGHT BACK!

This post is dedicated to our friends and colleagues in the Shell2Sea and Tara campaigns , and to our comrades in the Republican Movement. They may well be out-financed , out-'peopled' and out-'spun' by the various 'establishments' pitted against them , but they keep on pushing back as best they can. So : in praise of us little people who fight back - a Dublin song....

The Inner City Song.

The old man sits and wonders just what can he do
He's lived here in the neighbourhood since 1922
He's forced to leave his home to make way for their plans
And he knows that they dont care or give a damn

So he takes a stroll down Monto whats left of it today
Remembering his childhood and the games he used to play
Now all he's got are memories and they are but few
And it seems the money grabbers want them too


[Chorus]
And living in a one room slum ain't easy
Raising seven children on the dole
No place for kids to play while you build your motorway
Is Loughlin house the playground of today

Dublin's inner city is a sorry sight to see
A mass of filty buildings strife and poverty
The people find it hard to make ends meet most of the time
And you're surprised that they should turn to crime

And living in a one room slum ain't easy
Raising seven children on the dole
No place for kids to play while you build your motorway
Is Loughlin house the playground of today

The greedy speculators are trying to move in
With their lawyers and their legal talk the chances are they'll win
They make their public speeches and give the people some old line
But you know we wont be fooled so easily next time

And living in a one room slum ain't easy
Raising seven children on the dole
No place for kids to play while you build your motorway
Is Loughlin house the playground of today... "



(Our thanks to Mickjoe , who likes to go walking hand-in-hand along Sandymount Strand, for that little Gem!)

Meanwhile , those rich, greedy and immoral bastards carry-on enriching themselves at the expense of future generations , blind even to the damage they do to their own off-spring . Callous , black-hearted gombeens .
Sharon.