'THERE WILL BE ANOTHER DAY.....'
By Peadar O'Donnell ; first published in January 1963.I was in luck on transport - a young man , a commercial traveller, whose road led to Ballybofey, made no bones about going out of his way to enable me to do my errand en route and in a vague way he understood it was some sort of IRA business. We made stops here and there and it was well into the afternoon when we got to my place of call. A man in a postman's jacket chanced to cycle by , just as we needed guidance, and he pointed out the house I sought , then made a useful remark to me - 'You'll be somebody he knew in the army?' , he said. So there was that gap between us, too - 'the army' meant the Free State army. I proceeded on my way and was taken back when the boreen I walked down opened on to a nicely gravelled street, in front of a trig , white-washed three-windowed thatched cottage. The young woman who came to the door wore her hapiness like a halo. This home , this woman, should not be involved in so drab a business ; no, her husband was not at home, but he was nearby, in a quarry, raising metal for the County Council. She would call him , as it was his tea-time anyway. We were in the kitchen now. "It would be in the army you met him ? At Finner, was it...?" , she asked. I spent some dreary months there, a prisoner in solitary confinement. Let me take a seat : she would not be a minute in going for him, but I could not let things go at that : "Maybe you better tell him who is waiting for him. I'm Peadar O'Donnell." Light and welcome went out of her, like it was blown out from within. "It's about the cows...?" , she said. I nodded. And then she did a wonderful thing - she lifted the kettle off the crook , set it on the hearth and she went out. (MORE LATER).
FEAR AND LOATHING IN SOUTH ARMAGH......
The inside story of a personal feud that has left one man dead and tarnished the reputation of the PIRA's most fearsome brigade.
From 'Magill' magazine , April 2003.
By John Keane.
What happened next was unprecedented within the tight-knit republican community of South Armagh. At the beginning of March, a gang of 12 men in three cars ambushed one of the O'Callaghan brothers, 37-year-old Danny. After ramming his car on the Monog Road near Crossmaglen, they dragged him from the vehicle , leaving his son Danny (12) with a broken arm and another son, Joseph (10) with an eye injury caused by a glass splinter. The gang took their victim to the near-by Creggan housing estate and shot him in both ankles and elbows and he was then dumped, bleeding heavily, in a playground. Following the shooting, the O'Callaghan family made representations to the leadership of the republican movement ( '1169' Comment - sic : those representations were made to the leadership of the Provisional movement) in Belfast but the response, in the words of one PIRA veteran, was "a deafening silence". Worse was to come. On 10th March 2003, Patrick O'Callaghan and his brother Kevin, who both have homes on the southern side of the border, were warned by gardai of a plot to shoot them and similar warnings were delivered by the PSNI to two other brothers living near Crossmaglen, Anthony and Seán - the latter a gaunt, former H-Block prisoner known as 'Boney'. The possibility of the O'Callaghans defying the 'No Building' law on Larkin's Road was clearly not going to be tolerated. On the morning of Wednesday 12th March 2003, Kevin O'Callaghan and his son Seán (21) drove from their home in Inniskeen , County Monaghan, across the border to Waters Filling Station and shop in Cullaville - their intention was to get two five-gallon drums of home heating oil, which is cheaper in the North than in the South. PIRA Volunteer Keith Rodgers , who played football with the younger O'Callaghans, was among a group of eight PIRA men in two cars waiting to ambush him.......(MORE LATER).
HIDDEN HEAT , LOWRY'S LAND AND JUDGE JUDGING.....
Two recent events here in this bent State epitomise the prevailing characteristics that unfortunately exist in abundance amongst our 'Ruling Class', and which have a detrimental effect on the society in which the perpetrators have a say over. On the one hand we have a wealthy politician and a wealthy judge , both of whom were not satisfied with their already-secured place in the 'pecking order' and decided that they should have even more and, on the other hand, we can see the affect such greed has on the society they 'rule' over.
There are thousands either like that politician and that judge or who desire to be like them and, God help us, they are in a position in this poxy State to either help frame State law or help implement and enforce it , once framed. But there are millions more that are directly effected by the actions - sometimes 'suspect' , to put it mildly, and other times as blatantly corrupt as any so-called 'democratic' tyranny can sustain - as evident by that school in Bluebell , Dublin. The system here is so unbalanced that it is beyond 'tweaking' and can only truly be conquered by being dismantled and disposed of. I favour these two policies as foundation stones for a new beginning as, amongst other attributes, they have a 'check and balance' system built-in which would allow the people themselves the opportunity to ensure that fair play is obtained, and not leave it up to an overpaid , greedy and out-of-touch political and judicial Class to decide when - or by how much or how often - the rest of us are to be screwed by them. Until that change comes , we had all best get a second layer of clothes ready , 'cause that shower of time-serving gangsters are only warming up. Pardon the pun.
28TH NOVEMBER 1905 :
"National self-development secured through the recognition of the duties and rights of citizenship on the part of the individual, and with the aid and support of all movements originating from within Ireland, which, instinct with national tradition, do not look outside Ireland for the accomplishment of their aims" - this was the policy outlined at the First National Council Convention, held at the Rotunda, in Dublin, on Tuesday, November 28, 1905, under the presidency of Edward Martyn, at which the programme of the men who later became known as the 'Sinn Feiners' was promulgated by Arthur Griffith.
Sinn Féin was founded on November 28, 1905 ,compromised of an amalgamation of Cumann na nGaedheal, the National Council (which was founded in the main to organise protests at the visit of the British King, Edward VII, and included in its ranks Edward Martyn, Séamus McManus and Maud Gonne) and the Dungannon Clubs, a largely IRB-dominated Republican campaign group. Contrary to the perception which has been advanced by some that Sinn Féin in its first years was not Republican in character but rather sought a limited form of Home Rule on the dual monarchist model, Brian O'Higgins, a founding member of Sinn Féin, who took part in the 1916 Rising, and was a member of the First and Second Dáil, remaining a steadfast Republican up to his death in 1962, had this to say in his Wolfe Tone Annual of 1949: "It is often sought to be shown that the organisation set up in 1905 was not Republican in form or spirit, that it only became so in 1917; but this is an erroneous idea, and is not borne out by the truths of history. Anyone who goes to the trouble of reading its brief constitution will see that its object was 'the re-establishment of the independence of Ireland.' The Constitution of Sinn Féin in 1905, and certainly the spirit of it, was at least as clearly separatist as was the constitution of Sinn Féin in and after 1917, no matter what private opinion regarding the British Crown may have been held by Arthur Griffith." (More here.)
And today - 28th November 2012 - that same organisation , with the same objectives, lives on in the Republican Movement and continues to hold that same steely determination that its Founding Fathers had, a desire for justice for the Irish people and for full political freedom : 'freedom' , not just from the British, but from the 'Free State' mentality that has all but crushed the Spirit of our people. And our day will come.....
RTE TV DOCUMENTARY : 'RED COW 3'.
We have written before about this atrocity and we got good feedback from other parties that are interested in the subject matter - we have received notification that on Monday 3rd December 2012 , at 9.35pm , RTE One TV will be broadcasting a documentary on the issue : 'Eddie Hobbs meets people as they learn about their relatives' roles in the Civil War, including a Dublin special needs assistant who discovers the story of how his great grand-uncle was killed in one of the conflict's most disturbing events aged just 16.....' (From here.)
Although Irish republicans have good reason to shudder anytime the establishment main-stream media attempts to address any issue to do with republicanism (this, for instance , in which republicans blend-in seamlessly with drug pushing scumbags) , it would be hard (if not near impossible) even for RTE to attempt to put an anti-republican 'spin' on the events covered by this documentary as the actual facts of what happened, and how and by whom, are too widely known. Still , don't take my word for that , as it is RTE we're talking about....
Appropo of nothing in particular, other than it caught my eye at the time....
......and, although her voice and choice of songs do nothing for me, they strike a chord (!) with enough people to make it worth her while. I'd give her a 'standing ovation' (!) if she spent some of her fortune and hired a new publicist or manager : a recent promotional 'tweet' from her camp , in connection with her latest album, 'back'(!)fired on her and it was for that sceneario , rather than the quality or otherwise of her voice, that she briefly 'trended' in cyberspace. Still, not such a bummer , maybe, when you're trying to shift a few extra copies of a new album.....
Thanks for reading, Sharon.
