In March 1932 , with the help of the IRA , De Valera's Fianna Fail party was voted into power in the Free State - it was a decision which not all IRA activists were to live to regret .......

.......the ' Treason Act ' was introduced by De Valera's administration in May 1939 ~ this called for the death penalty for what the Free Staters described as " acts of treason " (which , of course, those same Free Staters would know nothing about ....) but was not their triumph card - within weeks , an even more draconian piece of legislation which was to be used almost exclusively against republicans during the following decades was in place ; the ' Offences Against the State Act ' ( still operational today) allowed for imprisonment and internment without trial (Part Two of same) and gave the Leinster House administration the power to set up Special Military Courts . Over fifty republicans were quickly interned .
In August that same year (1939) the military courts were established and were to remain in operation until the end of the European war in 1945 . The following month ( after the outbreak of war in Europe) the Free Staters declared a " State of Emergency" (which stayed in place for 37 years , only to be replaced by an updated version , in 1976!) and passed 'The Emergency Powers Act' , which supplemented the ' Treason Act' and ' The Offences Against the State Act' ~ the 'EPA' gave the new Free State Justice Minister , Gerry Boland, powers to intern suspected members of the IRA and suspected republican sympathisers ...... (MORE LATER)>>

Until November 8th , 1988 , in the Six Counties, a suspect had an absolute right to remain silent while being questioned by the RUC, and at his/her 'trial' . On that date , an ' Order in Council' approved by the British House of Commons removed that right - in December 1993 , that same ' Order in Council' was extended to include Britain .
The British , like all colonisers, used a captive country and its population to ' field test ' new legislation before introducing same on what they referred to as the ' mainland' ; today , the British and their fellow war-mongers are testing new weapons in Iraq ~ tomorrow............ ?

...... the convoy in which the English viceroy Lord French was travelling was alerted to the IRA presence and did not slow down , as the road was only partly blocked ......
..... with the convoy now travelling at high speed and the British military escort with the convoy expecting a gun-battle , they were prepared when the IRA opened fire . The Volunteers concentrated their fire on the second car and hurled grenades and mills bombs in its direction . Fire was returned and a fierce gun battle took place , in which IRA Volunteer Martin Savage , 21 years of age, was fatally wounded by the machine-gun and rifle fire from the British Army escort ~ he had taken up position behind the cart with Dan Breen and Tom Kehoe .
The British military kept driving towards the Phoenix Park , leaving two wounded DMP men on the road - the Volunteers ignored them and instead carried Savage's body into Kellys Pub and then vacated the area , as they knew British re-inforcements were on the way .
After an inquest , Martin Savage's body was handed over to his relatives and he was buried with full military honours in his native Ballisodare , County Sligo .
Lord French lived through that December morning , partly due to the fact that he had been travelling in the first car , and remained as viceroy until after the Truce in July 1921 . He was rarely seen in public , and spent most of his time in England .
However , he was never allowed to forget the episode , as his sister was the prominent Irish Republican and feminist , Charlotte Despard ......

When he was President of the United Stated , Henry Kissinger was associated with the brutal coups in Chile and the secret bombing of Cambodia . If one studied what he meant by ' realpolitik' it becomes clear that his analysis and formulation of foreign policy ruthlessly excluded ethnic or moral considerations . He stated - " Ronald Reagan knew next to no history , and the little he did know he tailored to support his firmly held preconceptions " . ... the kettle calling the pot black !
Kissinger stated that the details of foreign policy bored Reagan , and that analysis of substantive issues was " not his forte" ~ he describede Reagan as " unintellectual " ....
When future generations look back on George W.Bush Junior's term(s) in Office , they might just be kind enough to quote John Dewey's verse , and leave it at that -
" Open-mindedness is not the same as empty-mindedness . To hang out a sign saying ' come right in; there is no one at home ' is not the equivalent of hospitality ".

The English viceroy in Ireland , Lord French , was on a train due to arrive at Ashtown railway station at 11.40am on December 19th , 1919 ; an IRA unit was waiting for him ........
Three of the eleven IRA volunteers pretended to be farm labourers and entered Kellys ' Halfway House' Pub at the crossroads , from where they had a good view of the main road which led in the direction of the Phoenix Park . The rest of the unit , armed with revolvers , mills bombs and grenades , took cover in the ditches along the road leading to the railway station . The three men in the pub were to place a cart across the narrow road leading from the station to the park-road in order that Frenchs' convoy would slow down as it approached the obstruction ; when this happened , the Volunteers in hiding at the side of the road were to open fire on the second vehicle in the convoy , as the IRA Intelligence Department had learned that it was that second car which would be carrying French .
When they heard the train arriving , the three Volunteers left the pub to block the road with the cart and had almost done so when they were challenged by a DMP Officer (British policeman) - the DMP man was fired on by one of the IRA men but the damage had been done ~
the delay meant that the road to the Park was only partly blocked and the convoy , alerted by the gunfire , now knew not to slow down . (MORE LATER)>>

....... only one per cent of the land of Belarus remained unscarred by radioactvity , which will stay in the soil for a mimimum of one thousand years . In a further offshoot of the disaster , it later emerged that large quantities of heroin reaching the United States drugs market came from the Chernobyl region , the product of over-large mutated poppies which were highly radioactive . The radioactivity came from Strontium-90 , which enters the bone tissue through dairy products and causes tumours and leukaemia ; Plutonium , taken into the blood system ; Caesium-137 , which the body mistakes for potassium and concentrates in the muscles ; and Iodine-131 , which concentrates in the thyroid glands which control growth .
Chernobyl was not done on purpose :
how far is Bush prepared to go in his quest for cheaper oil and a friendly puppet administration in an oil-rich country ?
how far will Hussein go to protect his ill-gotten empire and life of luxury ?
and how much will the rest of us pay for either man's decision ?

ADDENDUM to yesterdays apology ~
My guestbook (bottom of page) has been 'taken over' by ' Cathy and band ' and/or ' Leslie and Dakota ' ; don't know how or why : I don't even like rock'n roll (more of a 'jitter-bug' man meself....) So leave the guestbook alone for now .
Thanks , man.......

[3/19/2003 6:40:29 PM | John Horan]
In 1919 , an IRA unit planned to assassinate the English viceroy in Ireland , Lord French :
This unit , led by Dan Breen and Sean Treacy , had established that French made his way from his residence in Dublin's Phoenix Park to attend 'official' functions in Dublin Castle in the city centre but was cautious enough to vary his route each trip - however , in early December 1919 , the IRA Intelligence Department received information on the English viceroy's proposed movement for a function to be held on the 19th of that month and the IRA unit set in train a plan to ambush him .
A few days before the 19th , it was reported in the media that French was in England on a week-long business trip , but the IRA were aware that he was actually at the family home at French Park in Roscommon ; they also knew that he was to return to Dublin by train to Ashtown Station on the 19th of December from where he would travel by road to the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park . On that date , the assassination plan was put into place ~ eleven Volunteers took up position near the railway station at Ashtown and waited for the train carrying French to arrive - it was due at 11.40am ........ (MORE LATER)>>

On April 26th , 1986 , 1,900 tonnes of highly radioactive uranium and graphite exploded : the people of Chernobyl and surrounding areas were exposed to radiation ninty times more intense than from the Hiroshima bombing . For those in the Republic of Belarus , immediately North of the border region where the reactor was located , the effects were , and remain, devastating ~
of the then 2.2 million population , over 70 per cent were contaminated by nuclear fallout . Only one per cent of the land of Belarus remained unscarred by radioactvity , which will stay in the soil for a minimum of one thousand years ........ (MORE LATER)>>

Apologies for the way this page has repeated itself in some posts in the last few days , but it appears to be out of my control ; within the last week I have had trouble in trying to even access the Blogger site itself , and major trouble in opening the ' Edit/Post and Publish' page of ' 1169....' ~ and now my posts are apparently being returned to me and sent out again and again and .....
It's probably just gremlins connected to the 'Google/Pyra Labs' issue , although I am aware that there are those 'out there' with a better knowledge of computers than me (I am an old dog trying to learn new tricks!) and better operating units than the petrol-driven system I have (thanks to my 14-years young son for that description......) .
However , I shall persist and , if the explanation for the trouble is not as simple as just gremlins somewhere in the new/changed Blogger network , then watch out , Big Brother -
you're gonna need to do more than you're doing now ........
(HOPEFULLY MORE LATER)>>

A number of attempts were made during the Tan War to assassinate the English viceroy in Ireland , Lord French : The English viceroy was a member of the French family from French Park in County Roscommon and , in 1874 , he began his career in the British Army . He was made a ' Viscount ' in 1915 for his services to the British Crown a year earlier as Commander of the British expeditionary force in France and , no doubt as a ' Thank You ' gesture to his employers , proposed that conscription be introduced in Ireland . At the height of the anti-conscription campaign in Ireland , French was promoted to Lord Lieutenant (May 1918) and immediately ordered the arrest of Irish Republicans ~ over 70 members of Sinn Fein and some IRA Volunteers were arrested within days and imprisoned in England . Not long after the Tan war began in January 1919 , Sir Neville Macready was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in Ireland , having being recommended and proposed for the position by his friend , Lord French , who, under the ' Defence of The Realm Act ' awarded himself extensive powers with which to 'subdue the natives' . That same year (1919) IRA leaders Dan Breen and Sean Treacy were in charge of a group of IRA Volunteers who had been specially chosen to form Michael Collins' "hit squad" , and the two men decided to assassinate senior English government officials in Ireland ; it was felt that the publicity ensuing from such an assassination would generate worldwide interest in the Irish struggle and would make other British 'statesmen' think twice before using Ireland as a stepping-stone for their own career .......... (MORE LATER)>> William Craig was the British 'Home Affairs' Minister in the Six Counties when he stated ~ " When you have a Catholic majority you have a lesser standard of democracy " !! The same man banned the 1968 civil rights march - his comments and actions were obviously noted and approved by his superiors , as he was nominated by the British Government , in 1977, to a legal committee of the Council of Europe where he was assigned the task of reporting on human-rights legislation ! The words 'fox' and 'hen-house' spring to mind ......

The Four Courts garrison surrendered on June 30th , 1922 , after two days bombardment by the British-armed Free State forces ; Dick Barrett and over 100 other republicans were arrested and imprisoned in Mountjoy jail in Dublin where , over the next few months, they planned future republican policy and actions .
Sean Hales , a Free State deputy ( Leinster House member) was assassinated in Dublin on December 7th , 1922 , and his companion Padraic O Maille , deputy speaker of the Free State parliament , was seriously injured . ~ the reaction of the administration was swift and ruthless:
it was agreed to execute four of the republican prisoners being held without charge or trial in Mountjoy jail. The following morning , December 8th , 1922, at dawn, Dick Barrett , Rory O'Connor , Liam Mellows and Joe McKelvey were summarily executed by firing squad in the yard of Mountjoy jail .
The Free State declared that the four men were executed - ".... as a reprisal for the assassination of Brigadier Sean Hales and as a solemn warning to those who are associated with them who are engaged in a conspiracy of assassination against the representatives of the Irish people " .
The four men were the first of the Free State administration's executions of it's former comrades ~
but the struggle continued .....

After signing the 1985 Hillsborough Treaty , Garret Fitzgerald (Fine Gael Taoiseach at the time) told Leinster House that it was "the first clear affirmation in any binding Anglo-Irish agreement since 1921 that Britain had no interest in the continuing division of this island " ~ however , to his embarrassment , in addressing the House of Commons one week later , the then British P M , Margaret Thatcher , stated ~" Far from representing any threat to the Union of Northern Ireland(sic) with the U K , the agreement reinforces the Union " .
Some of the Irish claimed it was a "Brits Out" treaty , while the Brits claimed it re-inforced their jurisdictional claim in this country ~ and the whole thing was run again 13 years later with a new name !

The Four Courts garrison surrendered on June 30th , 1922 , after two days bombardment by the British-armed Free State forces ; Dick Barrett and over 100 other republicans were arrested and imprisoned in Mountjoy jail in Dublin where , over the next few months, they planned future republican policy and actions .
Sean Hales , a Free State deputy ( Leinster House member) was assassinated in Dublin on December 7th , 1922 , and his companion Padraic O Maille , deputy speaker of the Free State parliament , was seriously injured . ~ the reaction of the administration was swift and ruthless:
it was agreed to execute four of the republican prisoners being held without charge or trial in Mountjoy jail. The following morning , December 8th , 1922, at dawn, Dick Barrett , Rory O'Connor , Liam Mellows and Joe McKelvey were summarily executed by firing squad in the yard of Mountjoy jail .
The Free State declared that the four men were executed - ".... as a reprisal for the assassination of Brigadier Sean Hales and as a solemn warning to those who are associated with them who are engaged in a conspiracy of assassination against the representatives of the Irish people " .
The four men were the first of the Free State administration's executions of it's former comrades ~
but the struggle continued .....

After signing the 1985 Hillsborough Treaty , Garret Fitzgerald (Fine Gael Taoiseach at the time) told Leinster House that it was "the first clear affirmation in any binding Anglo-Irish agreement since 1921 that Britain had no interest in the continuing division of this island " ~ however , to his embarrassment , in addressing the House of Commons one week later , the then British P M , Margaret Thatcher , stated ~" Far from representing any threat to the Union of Northern Ireland(sic) with the U K , the agreement reinforces the Union " .
Some of the Irish claimed it was a "Brits Out" treaty , while the Brits claimed it re-inforced their jurisdictional claim in this country ~ and the whole thing was run again 13 years later with a new name !

The Four Courts garrison surrendered on June 30th , 1922 , after two days bombardment by the British-armed Free State forces ; Dick Barrett and over 100 other republicans were arrested and imprisoned in Mountjoy jail in Dublin where , over the next few months, they planned future republican policy and actions .
Sean Hales , a Free State deputy ( Leinster House member) was assassinated in Dublin on December 7th , 1922 , and his companion Padraic O Maille , deputy speaker of the Free State parliament , was seriously injured . ~ the reaction of the administration was swift and ruthless:
it was agreed to execute four of the republican prisoners being held without charge or trial in Mountjoy jail. The following morning , December 8th , 1922, at dawn, Dick Barrett , Rory O'Connor , Liam Mellows and Joe McKelvey were summarily executed by firing squad in the yard of Mountjoy jail .
The Free State declared that the four men were executed - ".... as a reprisal for the assassination of Brigadier Sean Hales and as a solemn warning to those who are associated with them who are engaged in a conspiracy of assassination against the representatives of the Irish people " .
The four men were the first of the Free State administration's executions of it's former comrades ~
but the struggle continued .....

After signing the 1985 Hillsborough Treaty , Garret Fitzgerald (Fine Gael Taoiseach at the time) told Leinster House that it was "the first clear affirmation in any binding Anglo-Irish agreement since 1921 that Britain had no interest in the continuing division of this island " ~ however , to his embarrassment , in addressing the House of Commons one week later , the then British P M , Margaret Thatcher , stated ~" Far from representing any threat to the Union of Northern Ireland(sic) with the U K , the agreement reinforces the Union " .
Some of the Irish claimed it was a "Brits Out" treaty , while the Brits claimed it re-inforced their jurisdictional claim in this country ~ and the whole thing was run again 13 years later with a new name !

On December 8th, 1922 , Dick Barrett , Rory O'Connor , Liam Mellows and Joe McKelvey were executed by firing squad in the yard of Mountjoy jail in Dublin .

The executions took place at the height of the Civil War and aroused revulsion and anger at home and abroad. Dick Barrett was born at Hollyhill, Ballineen , County Cork during the 1890's , and was educated at the local national school and later qualified as a teacher . He was an IRA Brigade Staff Officer and occasionally acted as Brigade Commandant of the West Cork Brigade during the Tan War 1919 - 1921 .
He continued his teaching job despite being heavily involved in IRA operations , as this helped him to avoid British suspicion . Barrett also managed to organise fund-raising activities for comrades 'on-the-run' . In 1920 he was appointed Quartermaster of the West Cork Brigade ;
after the Crossbarry ambush ( in which a company of over 100 IRA Volunteers ambushed nine lorries of British troops and killed a large number of them ) Dick Barrett was arrested (March 1921) and imprisoned in Cork jail and later on Spike Island , off the Cork coast .
He rejected the Treaty of December 1921 and played a leading part in the establishment of the republican headquarters in the Four Courts in Dublin , in April 1922 ; on June 28th that year , the Four Courts were attacked by Free State forces armed , in part , by the British ....... (MORE LATER)..

In an attack on partition in March 1941 , a Cardinal McRory , in writing to a Colonel Donovan ( U S President Roosevelt's representative , I think) described the Irish situation as existing because of partition - " The whole miserable state of affairs rises from an un-natural division of a natural unit . Being artificial , partition can be upheld only by unjust measures , of which the incitement of religious bigotry and sectarian prejudice has a main place " .
It would be a pleasure to listen to a sermon like that any day in Church , but it won't happen ~ the Catholic Church in this country , while not as powerful as it once was , has fixed itself firmly to the coat-tails of the Establishment and abides by the same rules and regulations as the political ' elite' etc .
When the Establishment changes , so will the Church ......