Martin Galvin – AOH National Freedom for All Ireland Chair
Documents Reveals British Home Office Suppressed Video for fear of validating charges of “shoot-to-kill” policy in Northern Ireland New York, NY 10/19/2020The Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), has issued the following statement by National Freedom for All Ireland Chairman Martin Galvin: “The recent announcement by the AOH of the broadcast release of the “Plastic Justice” report on October 24 has prompted the release of new and damming evidence of the coverup involving the use of plastic bullets and broader British policy in Northern Ireland.”A historian who had uncovered documents while doing independent research at Britain’s Kew Archives, has forwarded new evidence after learning of the “Plastic Justice” report launch. The records were made shortly before and after the August 12,1984 killing of John Downes by a plastic bullet fired fired into his chest at point blank range by members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.. “In a handwritten memo dated August 16,1984, British Home Office official Anthony Townsend, directed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to withhold film of the actual shooting, because the footage would ‘inevitably increase the belief that that a shoot-to-kill policy was in operation’.Theses and other records will now be part of the launch and have also been forwarded to solicitors for the Downes family, for use in their legal battle for an inquest. “”Plastic Justice” will describe how the British label victims as criminals or rioters to justify murders and intimidate witnesses. Crucial evidence is withheld. Inquests which could provide truth on these murders are denied. Not one British trooper or Royal Ulster Constabulary member was ever found guilty for any of these 17 killings, even where victims were children. Both Frances Meehan and Mark Kelly will speak about their personal experiences, fighting for justice. These newly discovered documents will give added weight to these charges.”This launch will be watched by Hibernians across the United States along with members of other prominent Irish American organizations. The program will Relatives for Justice Director Mark Thompson, Frances Meehan, (sister of Michael Donnelly) and Mark Kelly, (brother of Carol Ann Kelly). The Ancient Order of Hibernians and Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, led by National Presidents Danny O’Connell and Karen Keane, are co-hosting the launch in a virtual webinar and YouTube broadcast, beginning at 4pm Irish time and 11am in New York. at Ancient Order of Hibernian in America Live on YouTubeThe AOH is proud to sponsor the release of “Plastic Justice” and are gratified that it has already born tangible returns in the release of this new evidence that will aid the long overdue quest for justice.
About The Ancient Order of Hibernians Founded in 1836 with membership in all 50 states, the Ancient Order of Hibernians is the oldest and largest Irish-Catholic Organization in the United States
Memorial Mass in Honor of Former Fire Commissioner Carlos M. RiveraFormer Fire Commissioner Carlos M. Rivera died on October 12, 2020. Rivera was appointed the 27th New York City Fire Commissioner by Mayor David N. Dinkins on January 1, 1990 and served in that position until his resignation on August 31, 1993. A Mass will be held in his memory on Friday, October 16, 2020 at 10:00 AM at Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church, 666 Albin Ave. in West Babylon, NY.
23rd Street Fire Memorial Mass Box: 55-598 The Officers and Firefighters of Engine 16 and Ladder 7 cordially invite all retired and active members and their families to the annual Engine 16/Ladder 7 23rd Street Memorial Mass, where we remember all members who made the supreme sacrifice on Saturday, October 17, 2020 at 12:00 PM at the R.C. Parish of Our Saviour, 59 Park Ave NY, NY 10016. All Uniform members are requested to attend in class ‘A’ uniform.
DC Thomas Reilly, Division 3; BC Walter Higgins, Bn-7; Lt John Finley, L-7; Lt Joseph Priore, Bn-4; FF John Berry, L-7; FF James Galanaugh, E-18; FF Rudolph Kaminsky, L-7; FF Joseph Kelly, E-18; FF Carl Lee, L-7; FF William McCarron, Div 3; FF Bernard Tepper, E-18; Prob FF Daniel Rey, E-18.
The landed proprietors in a circle all around – and for many miles in every direction – warned their tenantry, with threats of their direst vengeance, against the humanity of extending to any of them the hospitality of a single night’s shelter. Many of those poor people were unable to emigrate with their families, while, at home, the hand of every man was thus raised against them. They were driven from the land on which Providence had placed them; and, in the state of society surrounding them, every other walk of life was rigidly closed against them. What was the result?. After battling in vain with privation and pestilence, they at last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb; and in little more than three years, nearly a fourth of them lay quietly in their graves.”
It’s the visa lottery with nine lives, or maybe even more.
The 2022 Diversity Visa Lottery is now accepting applications from eligible countries and that includes Ireland, the Republic and the North.
The lottery has been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, but has managed to continue functioning nonetheless.
And while the number of Irish recipients has amounted to only 33 and 32 in the last two years respectively, the lottery stands at just about the only way an Irish person can apply on a general basis for legal entry to the United States.
In a release, the Coalition of Irish Immigration Centers stated that it was urging Irish nationals who are interested in immigrating to the United States to enter the 2022 Diversity Visa Lottery.
Stated the CIIC release: “The DV Lottery is a congressionally mandated program that provides up to 55,000 individuals with immigrant visas to the United States. Lottery winners may be eligible to obtain Green Cards and become permanent legal residents of the U.S.
“The DV-2022 registration period opens at noon EDT on Wednesday, October 7, 2020 and runs until noon EDT on Tuesday, November 10, 2020.
“All information, including eligibility criteria and program instructions for DV-2022 can be found on the U.S. Department of State website: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/diversity-visa-program-entry/diversity-visa-instructions.html.
“Individuals planning to enter the DV Lottery need to remember the following: Entries are only submitted online via the U.S. Department of State website within the registration period at www.dvlottery.state.gov; There is no charge for submitting an entry; Entrants now need a valid, current passport from their country of origin to complete the online application.”
The release advised: “Remember to retain your confirmation number received after submission – it is needed to check entry status; Always seek reliable support! Find your local Irish center here: ciic-usa.org/find-your-local-irish-center; Be wary of fraudulent companies and 3rd party entities trying to take advantage of immigrants for monetary gain; Know that not everyone who is selected in the lottery will receive a green card, and 3rd parties cannot increase chances of a positive outcome.”
The CIIC release sated that it was “of note” that Ireland had the lowest number of entrants in the DV-2021 as recorded in the last 15 years. Additionally, there were half as many entries overall last round as there had been in previous years.
“There are limited pathways for Irish nationals to emigrate to the United States. The DV Lottery is an opportunity that should be taken greater advantage of,” said Aileen Leonard Dibra, CIIC Executive Director.
“As we always remind people, those individuals that are interested in coming to the U.S. should enter the DV Lottery each year. The process is free and completed online. There is nothing to lose. Do not miss your opportunity to enter. If you have questions, our centers throughout the United States are available to provide guidance.”
Only in corridors of power in London has the latest opinion poll on support for Scottish independence registered a modicum of shock to disturb the prevailing confusion.
The analysis of the results by Sir John Curtice contains only one small note of comfort for the Union cause.
A new poll from Ipsos MORI for STV has suggested that 58% now say that they would vote Yes in another independence referendum. Just 42% state that they would vote No, and thereby back staying in the Union. What conclusions can we draw? No previous poll has put ever support for independence so high.
More importantly this is the ninth poll in a row since June to put Yes ahead. On average, these polls have put Yes on 54%, No on 46%.
It is the first time in Scottish polling history that support for independence has consistently outstripped backing for staying in the Union.
However, we should be careful about drawing the conclusion from today’s poll that support for independence has now risen further.
A poll from Savanta ComRes released over the weekend, the interviewing for which took place at the same time as today’s headline grabbing poll from Ipsos MORI, put support for independence at 53%, one point down on the company’s previous poll in August.
We will need further evidence before we will know whether the higher level of support for Yes in today’s poll represents no more than the kind of random variation that we might expect in the polls given that Yes are well ahead, or whether it signals a further significant shift in favour of independence.
…For no ministry that actually cared about the United Kingdom’s long-term integrity would behave as this ministry has done. The recklessness would be breathtaking if it were not for the suspicion that it is, in fact, a product of scandalous indifference. Time and again, I have been told that the government ‘gets it’, that henceforth it will be paying attention, and every time this is revealed as a worthless commitment that doesn’t even rise to the level of a promise.
My postbag confirms the impact of this. Each week, and sometimes more frequently than that, I hear from people who never had to think about their no vote in 2014 but now find themselves contemplating their preferences should there be a second plebiscite on independence. Many of them would still vote no, but with markedly less enthusiasm than before; others suggest they are too depressed to vote at all; some find themselves surprised, and perhaps even a little alarmed, to discover they can imagine voting yes. Some have already changed their mind, deciding getting out is the only realistic way forward. These are company directors, farmers, lawyers, academics and if Boris Johnson is losing people like this — folk with plenty to lose from independence — then you may imagine how he’s faring with other kinds of voter.
No wonder it is now possible to find Scottish Tory politicians who will sigh as they pour themselves a late-night Laphroaig and confess that, miserably, it’s all over. Pessimism has always been an important part of the Tory sensibility but, right now, this pessimism is warranted. It is so even if the SNP is still unable to answer important but basic questions about the realities of independence. The first decade of the new state’s life would be astringent to say the least. But then the last ten years have been pretty ropey ones for the UK and that colours people’s views too.
For nearly a decade now, politicians and media figures in London have persistently underestimated both the appeal of independence and its possibility. It has been put in a box marked ‘unthinkable’ and so it need not be thought about. This complacency, this lack of imagination, has always been a significant problem for Unionism and yet, despite the obvious evidence before them, few Tory politicians have shown themselves prepared to grasp reality, let alone grapple with it.
Flag-waving is not the answer. Competent government in London and a prosperous United Kingdom is the best available response to this challenge. For a long, long time, independence has been a nice idea. If all other things were equal it would even be an attractive one. But all other things have never, quite, been equal and so the risks of independence have always been considered greater than the risks of Union. It might have some advantages but these would come at too high a cost.
Well, that calculation of risk and reward is changing. There has never been a time when ‘all things’ have ever looked so equal. That has certain obvious consequences and the opinion polls are merely reporting what is obvious on the ground.
For this is a three-legged crisis for Unionism. Covid is one leg and Johnson is another but the third, and most significant, leg is Brexit. It cannot be repeated too frequently that Brexit is the sole reason this argument has substance right now. No Brexit, no material change in circumstances that might justify revisiting the national question while the embers of 2014 still glow. Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP would still campaign for independence but they wouldn’t have any good argument for demanding a second referendum. Well, however disagreeable you may think it, they have a decent one now. (It remains decent even if you also think ‘once in a generation’ should mean something too.)
Once Brexit was pursued, and especially once it was decided to pursue it at all or any cost, some of this crisis became inevitable. For Brexit must happen even though two parts of the United Kingdom — Scotland and Northern Ireland — voted against it. But the manner in which Brexit is happening, with little regard for those who rejected it and still less interest in the privileges enjoyed by the devolved administrations, is placing the Union under renewed strain.
The detail is less important than the sentiment. Few people, I suspect, are truly exercised by the internal workings of the withdrawal agreement or, indeed, by the precise manner in which the Internal Market Bill may or may not impinge upon the devolved parliaments. But, to put it in architectural terms, they do care about the look of the post-Brexit house the government intends to build.
Perhaps this is a blip or a phase or just a passing flirtation. I would prefer it if this were the case but the numbers strongly suggest it is not.
Even now, most politicians at Westminster — and especially most so-called Conservative ones — do not get it. You might think the survival of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should be considered a modestly important issue but plainly very few Tories at Westminster really think it is. So Douglas Ross was right to lambast his colleagues and it was miserably revealing that his speech received so little attention.
As he argued, correctly, if so-called Unionists do not care about the Union and if they mistakenly believe independence would come at little cost — psychological as well as civic — to England then they are both deluding themselves and helping to make the case for that independence. With friends like these, who needs the SNP?
There is something melancholy about all of this and a keening sense of Scottish Unionists being, as I have observed before, abandoned by the people they mistakenly considered their co-religionists. Verily, what do they know of the United Kingdom, who only England know?
Boris, Brexit and Covid is a combination of potent toxicity. Any two of those would have been dangerous; adding the third ingredient may prove lethal. If the United Kingdom dies, it may not do so on Boris Johnson’s watch but the conditions for its demise will have been created during his hapless spell at the helm.
Minister for the Union? What larks, eh?
Meanwhile the lockdowns in Scotland and Wales provide a sort of rehearsal for breakup
