In 1963 , the British pulled out of Kenya . The Mau Mau 'terrorists' that fought against the British presence were treated much like the Irish ' terrorists ' , and are now fighting the Brits again !
They are taking their former oppressors to court to seek compensation for human rights abuses during the 1950's and 1960's . More than half a million Mau Mau belonging to the Mau Mau Trust welfare group have hired British lawyer ( fight fire with fire ! ) Martin Day to fight their case . They claim that British soldiers regularly beat and tortured the Kenyans with rifle butts and glass bottles before putting them to work as slave labourers . It has been stated that some of the men were effectively castrated by the British soldiers , while female prisoners were raped repeatedly and with extreme violence . The brits , as can be expected , deny the claims and have said that the majority of 'official ' records(ie their own files) were destroyed in the war .
On the other hand , Mr Blair , we Irish have plenty of paperwork ......

Liam Mellows , the Irish Republican leader , predicted in the Treaty debate on January 4 , 1922 -- " Men will get into positions , men will hold power , and men who get into positions and hold power will desire to remain undisturbed and will not want to be removed " ;
Human Nature again - Mellows was warning us about those that fool themselves into thinking that they can cosy up to the British but still maintain their opposition to the British presence : the Brits , of course , are past masters of pulling people like that ' the extra mile ' ie into the establishment . They will try it now , again ,in Kenya , and are doing it now , in Ireland . But not to all of us ...

A group called ' Ailtiri na hAiseirghe' , Irish for ' Architects of the Resurrection' , entered the political scene in the Free State in the early 1940's , with the intention of creating a ' Gaelic , Christian ,Corporatist (fascist) state ' . They apparently supported the Portugese dictator Salazar , and condemned "the cumbersome indirect methods of our imposed, corrupt , unchristian , Godless and inefficient brand of parliamentary democracy " . They stated that there should be "room for only one national party " in the State , and that under its rule we would be " a model for the whole world ,and our superior civilisation would enable Ireland to control not only the Atlantic , but the Pacific ... " .
They also claimed that such a State " could dictate to dictators and in co-operation with Divine Providence it could settle the affairs of the universe for another two-thousand years ! In the 1943 election , four 'Resurrection' candidates amassed four thousand votes between them - in !944 , seven 'Res' candidates got six thousand votes , all but one of them losing their deposits . In the 1948 election they fielded one candidate and received only 323 votes . Perhaps Fine Gael should change its name and improve its fortunes ......
About ten years ago , a Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft was a columnist with the (ever-so) British ' The Sunday Telegraph' (perhaps he still is - its not a newspaper I 'take' , as they say...) . In one of his columns , Geoffrey stated - " Fifty years ago , Serbs and Croats were massacring each other on a scale that makes the Ulster(sic) problem seem as trivial as it indeed is . Partition has been the greatest boon and benefit Ireland has enjoyed this century .It is the essential condition without which the southern state could not have survived as it has " . I say-steady on , Geoffrey , old man !
I have just removed 'The sunday Telegraph' from my Christmas card list ...

In May , 1956 , while speaking to the Aden Legislative Council , British Lord Lloyd stated~ " The importance of Aden both strategically and economically is such that we (British Government) cannot forsee the possibility of any fundamental relaxation of our responsibilities for the colony " -- In November 1967 , Britain withdrew !
Speaking about Cyprus in 1954 , Henry Hopkinson , a Colonial Office Minister of State , said~ " It has always been understood and agreed that there are certain territories in the Commonwealth which , owing to their particular circumstances , can never expect to be independent " -- In August 1960 , Cyprus became independent ...
In ???? , speaking at ////// British PM ~~~~~~~ stated that due to the proximity of the two isles/our stiff upper lip/ for the sake of our position on the world stage/ the British will continue to exercise a jurisdictional claim in Ireland-- however , in ..........

An extract from MIchael Davitts ' The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland' states -- The genius of misgovernment has never been more wilfully blind in its methods or more persistent in the folly of political unwisdom than in the ways and means of Englands rule in Ireland . Laws and force have come to us across the sea in their most provocative form and applicaton , while concessions were never wisely or tactfully made to a cry of justice , but always to the pressure of turmoil , illegality or insurrection . Every stage of the Anglo-Irish struggle attests this fact in its history " .
Those that left the Movement in 1986 and are now in the pay of the British -"attempting to change things from the inside" - would do well to remember that it was tried before ; the only position the British will allow them is that of a poacher turned gamekeeper . And our history is littered with those ....

By early 1931 it was obvious to the Free State administration that what they termed " the normal process of the law " could no longer deal with Republican activity in the State , and Free State President Cosgrave introduced the necessary paper-work to set up a Military Tribunal on October 14 , 1931 . Eamon de Valera , who had left the Movement in 1926 and formed the Fianna Fail party , stated - " They (the then IRA) are to be taken into these secret tribunals and maltreated and nobody is to hear a word about it and nobody is to be allowed to raise his voice in protest. That is the situation. But tradition is a hard thing to kill. They have been reared in that tradition . That is the Gospel that kept Irish Nationality alive through all the centuries of persecution . These are the men whom we want to crush now . These are the men who are represented as terrorists , these who never thought of themselves . They are simply the rats that are to be squelched . These are the people who are ready to give everything that they had for Ireland , and well we know it , and now they are being deserted by the majority of their people . They have been deserted by old comrades who can no longer see any hope of success on the line they are adopting , by people who were with them originally but who are so far away from them now that the road which they are following is leading diametrically in the opposite direction . They are brave men anyway : let us at least have for them the decent respect that we have for the brave " .
---- Words from a heavy heart , obviously , but words the man was to put into action .

More words from another anti-republican ; " The only solution for dealing with the (P)IRA is to kill 600 people in one night- let the United Nations and Bill Clinton and everyone else make a scene , and it is over for 20 years " .
--- Former British Defence Minister Alan Clark , October 12 , 1997 (see ' Ireland On Sunday' newspaper , 12/10/97 , page 15) ; that's the attitude that got the British into trouble in all the countries they colonised - indeed , it is the reason they set out on their conquest . And they still have'nt learned !

One of this State's elected representatives who sits in Leinster House and is paid 1438 Euro a week for doing so has what hundreds of thousands of ordinary working-class people have'nt got - a medical card , which he has used three times since his election last May . Politicians in that institution received a pay-rise in 2000 and , in January 2001 , they received another increase ( of 18.7per cent) , then an extra 4 per cent in October last plus another wage increase last week (announced after the budget) which has them at their present wage ; after ten years ' service ' they get 1670 Euro a week , based on present wage structures . On top of their salary , they also get 625 Euro a week in various expenses , not all of which has to be vouched for with receipts . Martin is apparently a quick learner~ Leinster House has no shortage of financially and morally corrupt members - now , since last May , Ferris ( the ' good ' apple) has gone into the barrell ( of bad apples ) to change them or , at the very least , to ' keep an eye on them ' but ... human nature kicked in and another wealthy politican decided he , too , wanted more !
Plus ca change , plus c'est la meme chose .

A Mr George Marshall was ' Regional Director of BBC Northern Ireland(sic) ' in 1937 and is best remembered by us for the following quote - " There is no such thing today as an Irishman. One is either a citizen of the Irish Free State or a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland(sic) . Irishmen as such cease to exist after the partition " . George may be gone but no doubt his sentiments live on in the minds of his BBC colleagues .

The Informer Reynolds~
The meetings that Reynolds attended of the ' United Irish Supreme Executive' were detailed gatherings to plan the Rising - he supplied chapter and verse on these to his English paymasters . He also compiled and handed over information which led to the arrest of most of the membership of the Leinster Directory of the United Irishmen : the arrests took place at the home of Oliver Bond , in Bridge Street , Dublin , in March 1798 . The arrests were a severe blow to the organisation and irreparably damaged the prospects of a successful rising taking place the following May .
Reynolds , thinking that his ' job ' was done , refused to comply when ordered to testify at the ' trial ' of Oliver Bond and John McCann , the Provincial Secretary of the Leinster Directory , and so was placed under arrest himself ( in May 1798) ! However , being the weasel that he was , he struck a deal -- in exchange for personal immunity he agreed to appear in court to give evidence about certain figures and , for a lump sum of £5000 and a pension for life he agreed to tout on the people arrested at Bond's house .
Reynolds was no doubt proud that , thanks to him , three members of the Directory - McCann , Billy Byrne and Bond were found guilty in July 1798 . McCann and Byrne were executed while Bond died in jail the following September . The Informer left Ireland for his own safety and was employed abroad by the English authorities . He settled in Paris and died there on August 18 , 1836 . I can only hope he had many a sleepless night .
Lloyd George again ~
In his book 'Year 501; The Conquest Continues' , Noam Chomsky tells how former British PM Lloyd George noted approvingly that British diplomacy had prevented the 1932 Disarmament Convention from banning the bombardment of civilians . Lloyd George observed - " We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers " . God knows he sent enough people , including coloureds , to their deaths ...

The British police in the Six Counties (PSNI) have been in the news here recently in connection with their recruitment , as an informer , of a 13-years-young boy with special needs ; the youth was offered sums of money to report on the movements of a number of people in his area , and arrangements were put in place wherby the youth could pass this information on to his British handlers .
The use of informers by the British is as old as the struggle itself , and one such infamous tout springs to mind ~
Thomas Reynolds , the son of a wealthy merchant , was born in Dublin in March 1771 , and became a successful dealer in silks . He married into a family connected with the Tone clan , and he joined the United Irishmen in 1797 . Such was his popularity that he was elected leader of the Kildare Society of United Irishmen and was soon promoted to membership of the Leinster Provincial Directory . In 1798 , his financial situation took a turn for the worst , and his father died . He inherited considerable property from his father and , for a time , this stopped him from becoming bankrupt . One of his creditors , a man named Cope , persuaded him to sell information to the British authorities as a means of keeping himself going financially . Reynolds was desperate for cash and agreed - his position within the United Irishmen gave him access to valuable detail regarding the planned Rising for that year .
More on this informer later ....
Quickie on Llyod George - On Monday , December 22 , 1919 , his ' Bill for the Better Government of Ireland ' (known here simply as ' The Partition Bill') was read to the British Parliament and was passed into British law in 1920 , but did not come into force until May 1921 . And has caused nothing but trouble since ....

'Quickie' on Lloyd George -
The man's son once said " Father was sick of the Irish Republicans .He was quite willing to let them have what they seemed determined to have ; an impoverished semi-peasant country with their peat fires and undrained bogs and dreams of glory seen in a fine mist of alcohol " . The nerve of that man ~ and after all we done for him ....

Another decent Brit who promised to look after us was Henry 8th - he operated a policy known as 'Surrender and Regrant' , wherby 'Pardons' and English titles were offered to Irish ' terrorists ' if they surrendered to him and pledged to follow English laws ! ( So thats where Blair got it from ) .

Those Irish people that refused to ' cut deals' with the likes of Lloyd George etc were treated the old-fashioned way by the British ; after the executions of the leaders of the 1916 Rising (and leaving out the deaths on hunger-strike of Tomas Aghas in 1917 and Terence MacSwiney in 1920) the British Government executed 24 Irish Republicans in the five years of conflict from late 1916 to 1921 ; but the new Fianna Fail regime in the Free State executed some 77 Irish Republicans in the six months from November 1922 to April 1923 . "Poachers turned gamekeepers" ~ still with us to this day ; they have no ' bottom line ' , no principle , no new low they won't stoop to - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing . But they have always been with us ,and have always failed to carry out their paymasters instructions . As it should be .

More on OLIVER CROMWELL ~
He apparently had much to gain , personally , from the invasion of Ireland ; in 1642 , following the passing of the ' Adventurers Act ' by the English Parliament ( the aim of which was to defray the cost of subduing Ireland by inviting 'contributions' from the wealthy merchant class , in return for which they were guaranteed land in Ireland following the conquest ) in which Cromwell invested to the tune of £2,050 , which ensured that he was subsequently granted land in the ' Barony of Eglish ' ( Co Offaly) .
The historian James Leyburn stated - " What Cromwell did (in Ireland) deserves to be ranked with the horrors perpetrated by Genghis Khan . His 'pacification' of Ireland was so thorough that it left scars on that country which have never been forgotten or forgiven " .

" One perplexity after another.Crises chasing each other like the shadows of clouds across the landscape . Miners , unemployment , reparation , Silesia and , as always , Ireland " .
------ Lloyd George , June , 1921 .
Lloyd George became British PM ( in an administration comprising Liberals and Unionists ) in December 1916 . More on this man ,and a quote from his son ,later .....

A 'quickie' on Fine Gael-- A woman from Co Down contacted Fine Gael Head Office in Dublin earlier this year and enquired about membership . A M/S Sarah Belton wrote back to the woman , stating - " We are always delighted to hear from people with new ideas. As you are living outside Ireland , associate membership is the only option available to you " . That explains Fine Gael's political position better than I could !
Britain has the worst record on human rights in Western Europe- to date, it has lost more than 50 of the cases brought against it at the European Court of Human Rights ; 12 of those cases (almost 25% of the total) have been directly connected to the conflict in the Six Counties , where Britain has been found to have breached articles of the European Convention on Human Rights(ECHR) on the right to life , on the prohibition on torture , on the use of inhuman or degrading treatment , on unjustified detention and on the right to a fair trial . Twice , Britain has been forced to derogate from the ECHR under Article 15 because of it's use of illegal seven-day detention orders . The ECHR was finally incorporated into British law in October 2000 , some 50 years after it came into being !
The refusal to incorporate the Convention was based on Britains continued use of the ' temporary ' Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) , most specifically the use of seven-day detention orders which were in flagrant breach of all human rights conventions and legislation . Under Blair's Labour Government , the British state has managed to circumvent the threat to the PTA posed by incorporation of the ECHR simply by making the legislation permanent (the new 'Terrorism Act') and by making seven-day detention dependent upon a magistrate rather than a police officer !
The British administration are a devious bunch to cut a deal with - the Provos have apparently taken them on their word in relation to the Stormont treaty and , while the Adams family may make a living on the ' rubber chicken' lecture circuit and promote themselves as world leaders , no date has been given for a British withdrawal from Ireland . Have you a ' Plan B ' , Gerry ?

The Fine Gael party has been in the news here recently due to the death of one of its Dublin ex-Leinster House members . The party has an interesting history , which is hardly ever mentioned --
During their lifetime , the Blueshirts underwent four name changes; The Army Comrades Association , the National Guard , the Young Ireland Association and the League of Youth . The name changes were due to proscription by the then Fianna Fail administration in Leinster House . Eoin O Duffy , who was sacked as Commissioner of the Free State police , was elected as leader of the Blueshirts - on his instruction , in 1933 , the ' right-arm salute ' (think Nazi) was adopted !
From then untill September 1934 , the Blueshirts enjoyed their greatest period of support and activity .
it was at that period that O Duffy was ousted as leader and replaced by Ned Cronin , who promptly took the group downhill ~ it struggled on for two years but ceased to exist after 1936 . Most of its members jumped camp into the fledging Fine Gael .
Following his explusion , O Duffy founded his own organisation and led an ill-fated crusade to Spain to support Franco's fascists during the Civil War . The Fine Gael party is not alone anti-Republican but is a pro-British and pro-Unionist political party . It has no time whatsoever for the Republican position re the political issue in our six north-eastern counties , and would be of the opinion that the British won the issue a long time ago ; with this in mind , I will annoy the Blueshirts by quoting the words of Padraig Pearse in his last few hours before he was executed by the British -
" We seem to have lost . We have not lost . To refuse to fight would have been to lose ; to fight is to win . We have kept faith with the past , and handed on a tradition to the future ..... if you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight . You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom . If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom , then our children will win it by a better deed " . Look out , Fine Gael - it's not over yet ....

....Austin Stack was sent to Strangeways Prison in Manchester , from where he escaped in October 1919 . During the Black and Tan war , as Minister for Home Affairs , he organised the Republican Courts which replaced the British legal system in all parts of Ireland . He rejected the Treaty of 1921 and , following a short PR tour of America , returned to Ireland to take up arms on the Republican side in the Civil War .
In the general round-up of Republican leaders in April 1923(during which Liam Lynch was shot dead by Free State troops) Stack , the Deputy Chief of Staff , was arrested in a farmyard in the Knockmealdown mountains . This was four days after Lynchs death . Imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail , he took part in a mass hunger-strike by Republican prisoners in October 1923 , which was his 5th hunger-strike in 6 years . Shortly after the end of the 41-day hunger-strike , in November , he was released with hundreds of other political prisoners . He married Una Gordon in 1925 .
In April 1929 ,he entered the Mater Hospital in Dublin for a stomach operation - he never recovered , and died 2 days later , on April 27 , 1929 . Austin Stack is buried in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetary , Dublin .
Go ndeanaidh Dia trocaire ar a anam usual calma.
Martin Ferris and others like him have no shame to attempt to link themselves to those men and women like Austin Stack . Make a career for yourself by all means , Martin , but not on another mans wounds .

Shortly after his election earlier this year to Leinster House , Martin Ferris (PSF) claimed to be the first "Sinn Fein TD" for Kerry North " since Austin Stack" - He's right in a Provo sort of way ~ Austin Stack was never elected for Kerry North ! On five occasions , Stack was returned as a Sinn Fein Deputy ; 1) 1918 for Kerry West ; 2)1921 for Kerry and West Limerick ; 3)1922 Kerry and West Limerick; 4)1923 for Co Kerry and 5)1927 for Co Kerry . He was still Ard-Runai of Sinn Fein when he died in 1929 . It must be noted that Austin Stack was each time elected to an All-Ireland Dail , not a 26-County institution calling itself 'Dail Eireann' .
Austin Stack was born in Tralee , Co Kerry , in 1880 . In 1904 , he captained the Kerry team which won the All-Ireland final and , for many years afterwards , he held a postition on the Kerry board of the GAA . He was arrested with Con Collins on April 21 , 1916 , while planning an attack on Tralee RIC barracks in an attempt to rescue Roger Casement . He was sentenced to death but this was later commuted to twenty years penal servitude . Released in the general amnesty of June 1917 , he became active in the Irish Volunteers again and was elected Secretary of Sinn Fein - a position which , as stated , he held up to his death . His health was shattered due to the number of prison protests and hunger-strikes for political status he took part in . In the 1918 General Election , while a prisoner in Belfasts Crumlin Road jail , he was elected to represent West Kerry in the First Dail . He was sent to Strangeways Prison in Manchester , from where ...(more later..)

Our old friend Conor Cruise O Brien has been in the news here recently re income tax matters ; apparently , not only was he not paying all the tax judged to be owed by him , but actually admitted as much on radio !
Conor would consider himself as an opponent of colonialism abroad but defends the British presence in Ireland ; he is a former editor of a British newspaper yet agrees with censorship of Irish newspapers ; he is a self-proclaimed liberal and proponent of free speech yet , when he was a Free State Minister , he introduced Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act(which barred Republicans from radio and television) ; he was a member of thr Anti-Apartheid Movement yet broke the academic boycott of South Africa .
He joined the Free State Labour Party in 1937 and in 1968 he won a seat in Leinster House and was made spokesperson on foreign affairs (which included the Six County area !) by then Labour leader Brendan Corish . During an interview with 'Washington Post' journalist Bud Nossiter , O Brien showed Nossiter dozens of letters which had been sent to the Editor of 'The Irish Times' newspaper - Nossiter inquired if O Brien intended to censor those letters , to which O Brien replied -- " No , but we will hit the Editor who produces these things " . In 1977 , he lost his seat .
Lord William Whitelaw ,Frank Cluskey , Paddy Devlin and Ken Maginnis are amongst those who have defended him , while the late Neil Blaney , Tim-Pat Coogan and Austin Currie have criticised him .
In his autobiography 'My Life and Themes' , Conor Cruise O Brien wrote ~~ " If Home Rule had been achieved by the parliamentary route , David Sheehy (his grandfather) would certainly have had a seat in the Irish cabinet . Our whole family would have been part of the establishment of the new Home Rule Ireland . As it was , we were out in the cold , superseded by a new republican elite " .
DAMMIT ! Connor , you're right of course - your career in "the new Home Rule Ireland" was banjaxed by Republicans ; what a bummer ....
As such ,by way of an apology ,please accept the following verse ---
' With pomp and with ridiculous display
the politicians corpse is borne away ,
and all around him carped and slanged
I wept- I had wished to see him hanged ' .
( G K Chesterton , poet and British Liberal MP ) .

On August 11 , 1986 , U S Army physician Hugo Almeida was granted political asylum in Cuba . Almeida was serving at a U S Army base in Stuttgart , West Germany , when he was ordered by his C.O. to go to Central America . He refused , and was given duty by the C.O. at what Almeida classed as "unsocial hours" . He was then confronted by a Colonel Burgos , who threatened to force him to serve in Central America - he still refused ,and was demoted from Captain to Private .
It was then that he deserted . When Cuba announced that Almeida had been granted asylum , Washington denied that he even existed ! Then , on August 20 , 1986 , the Pentagon admitted that he was one of their recruits , but that he had been demoted because he was not a "fully-accredited doctor" . Almeida said - " I did'nt want to fight in a Vietnam war - type struggle in Central America . As an Hispanic , I could not participate in the U S military aggression in Central America . I've lived and travelled in those Countries and I' ve seen the poverty and misery there, and how little the U S does to help the people who need it most . We should not fool ourselves into believing these people really want us there ".
Theres a message in there for Cromwells people in this Country....
" Great God ! Did I ever think I would live tosee it , to see men who were the bravest , now fooled that this Treaty means a realisation of our highest ideals "
---- Kathleen Clarke , speaking about the 1922 Treaty of Surrender ; No doubt the woman would say the same re the 1998 Treaty .

The 'new' British Secretary of State for our Six Counties , Paul 'Spud' Murphy , was'nt always in touch(!) with matters in that part of our isle : back in 1997 , the bould Murp was a lowly political development minister in Tony's cabinet and shared the pleasure of his company with us in October that same year , in Dublin . He was asked by a journalist of the possible composition of any Six County 'parliament' , and replied that any such assembly should consist of 90 members elected by PR and any cross-border bodies put in place would be tasked with "uncontroversial matters" such as tourism , energy, EU issues and agriculture and stated his opinion that "that is all that will emerge from the current settlement(sic) talks in the North" . That opinion was , of course , stated for the benefit of the Unionists , much the same as so-called republicans were told by their leadership that any such Six County assembly would be the first step on the road to getting the British out ! They both can't be right ..
Some correspondence received re the American Civil War - During the American revolution , Thomas Jefferson said that if he and his comrades-in-arms (ie"terrorists" !) were captured by the British , they can expect to be treated as the Irish are treated by the British - " mercilessly tortured and killed" . Abe Lincoln , in justifying the violent conflagration of a civil war which left over 625'000 dead , said - " Dangers spring up against us which must be met and if destruction be our lot , we must ourselves be its author and finisher " .
Also , correspondence received re Daniel O Connell - "...a middle-class landowner and monarchist , and an anti-revolutionary who vehemently condemned the working class struggle against capitalist inequality. In 1838 , he voted against reducing the hours of child labour in factories .... "
Keep 'em comin' , folks - thanks .

OLIVER CROMWELL - a name from Irish history which even our native 'Brits' in this Free State find hard to excuse !
Cromwell landed at Ringsend , Dublin , on August 15 , 1649 , with 20,000 soldiers and launched a nine-month military campaign . With King Charles 1 recently executed , Cromwell's position was impregnable and he had scores to settle in Ireland which had largely supported the Catholic King in Englands Civil War . When Drogheda ,in county Louth , refused to surrender , his army stormed the walls and slaughtered 3,500 defenders and civilians in what Cromwell called "a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches" . Four weeks later , Wexford suffered a similar fate from the 'New Model Army' , and those that survived were executed , exiled or had their lands confiscated , and the land was handed out as payment to his army - about eleven million acres of the Countrys 20 million acres was given away .
In his book entitled 'The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland' (which was actually written and first printed in 1865) John Prendergast described how it was proclaimed by drum and trumpet on market days throughout Ireland in October 1652 that-- "On September 26 1652 , all the ancient estates and farms of the people of Ireland were declared to belong to the adventurers and the army of England " . One of Cromwells men(but this time wearing a British Army uniform , in Ireland , 1990 !) was interviewed in a Yorkshire TV documentary in August 1990 marking the 20th Anniversary of the deployment of British Troops in the Six Counties ; he described how he got a reaction out of those that did not offer resistence to him and his fellow troopers -- "You pull their armpit hair when you search them , that gets them going~you've got to muck them about as much as you can".
Not as bad as what Cromwell did to us , I know , but ,between them all , they've been "mucking us about" for almost 1000 years .... And Counting !

....the U S Constitutional Convention was all about the issue of slavery -- there would have been no agreement among the 13 colonies unless slavery continued and the idea that slaves would still be regarded as property was protected . Slave-owners wanted "their property" ,for purposes of the census , to be counted . To their shame , the framers of the Constitution gave in and counted slaves for purposes of representation as "three-fifths of a human being" ! President Abraham Lincoln is given credit for freeing the slaves but it was a political decision by Lincoln to satisfy abolitionists in his party for his re-election bid ; it was not a moral decision . Lincoln declared~ " That the two races could never live together on terms of social and political equality " .
"....that fine old soldier John Mitchel described MYLES BYRNE as " A tall figure , the splendid ruin of a soldier d'elite , bearing himself still erect under the weight of eighty winters .The grey eye is keen and proud , the thin face bronzed and worn by war and weather , and the whole bearing gives the idea not of decrepitude , but of a certain dashing gallantry .He has marched over half of Europe , and stood full often at the head of his regiment on the rough edges of battle in Spain , in Germany , in Greece and other , earlier memories , cloud at times his clear grey eyes ; and through and beyond the battle smoke and thunder of all Napoleon's fields , he has a vision of the pikemen at New Ross , and hears the fierce 'hurrah' on Oulart Hill " . END .
A beautiful description of a brave man and the cause he believed in . A man that would put todays pretenders to shame - those that strut the world stage .in fine suits and fancy cars , with their $500 -a-plate dinners in big hotels ~ its not what the struggle is about ; it must come from the heart , not the wallet . We may be broken sometimes , but never beaten !
( Thank you , Frank , in Enniscorthy , for the above information ).

Just in passing; a short story which speaks volumes --
In 1781, LUKE COLLINGWOOD , Captain of the British slave ship 'ZONG' ,(from Liverpool) , ordered that 131 sick slaves be thrown overboard ,which they were , and all drowned . The reason this was done was that if the slaves had died on board the ship , the owners would be left at the loss(ie out of pocket) but if they were thrown alive into the sea , it would be the loss of the insurance underwriters ! A legal case followed ('Gregson V Gilbert') which was a simple claim for compensation only , not a murder trial . (Hope the Adams Family know who they're dealing with ...) And on the issue of slaves --
George Washingtons livelihood depended on the institution of slavery - he was a prime 'breeder' who derived income from the sale of slaves . So , to, did Thomas Jefferson , who 'bred' slaves while writing the 'Declaration of Independence' ! The two men were said to be haunted by the guilt involved . The U S Constitutional Convention was all about the issue of slavery ...(more later) .
Also - more on MYLES BYRNE to follow....

A few additional points re 1798 -
It is believed that one of that years leaders of the Rising,NAPPER TANDY, was the first Irishman to be judicialy extradited to England, in 1798. He was extradited from Hamburg and sentenced to death at Lifford Courthouse in 1801 - however , as part of the 'AMIENS TREATY' then being negotiated by Napoleon,he was released but died 18 months later, a free man . Pardon me while I now contradict myself regarding Catholic priests and politics -- During the 1798 Rising , Wexford had 85 priests , of whom only 11 joined the Rebels , including Fr Murphy of Boolavogue . He was captured , flogged and hanged in Tullow, Co Carlow , on July 2 , 1798 . One of the few decent priests ,recognised as such by the British and dealt with accordingly by them
Re MYLES BYRNE -- " For over 30 years he followed the flag of France across the battlefields of Europe ,whilst seeking out information from all sources on the situation in Ireland. After his retirement in 1835 , when all hope of striking a blow for his own country had failed , he settled in Paris and continued to write , off and on , for twenty years, right up to the day of his death in 1862 . His widow published his Memoirs in three volumes and the story was published in serial form in the 'Shamrock' of Dublin , in 1869 , and reprinted in the 'Irish Weekly Independent' in 1898 .
Whilst in Paris , his home was a 'safe house' for all who had ever served Ireland and one of the most welcome visitors to his home was that fine old soldier John Mitchel , who described Myles Byrne as ......(More later).