Posted by Jim on June 22, 2015
June 22, 2015
Honorable Brendan Boyle
118 CHOB
1st Street & Independence Ave SE
Washington, D. C. 20515
Dear Representative Boyle:
Thank you for your timely call for hearings by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee for Security and Cooperation in Europe (HelsinkiCommission) into the latest revelations of British security forces collusion with loyalist death squads in Northern Ireland. Other evidence relating to the British allowing informers to murder innocent people, the deSilva Report into the assassination of attorney Patrick Finucane, the book LETHAL ALLIES by journalist Anne Cadwalladar all document without question the lawless oppression endured by the Catholic/Nationalist minority for 30 years.
Your voice for accountability reminds me of the late Representative Joseph Moakley’s (MA 9th-D) challenge of America’s support of the military in El Salvador at the time of the assassinations of six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper at their University in San Salvador. In 1989 he led a House Task Force which conducted hearings and visited El Salvador essentially to do the work of the U. S. State Department. You may face the same challenges. Our State Department has a sordid history of silence, looking the other way and complicity when it comes to British lawlessness, murder, injustice and the crushing of democracy in Ireland from the civil rights protest in 1968 through the assassination of six elected Sinn Fein officials and seven campaign workers. The Reagan administration did everything it could to deter Congressman Moakley from holding hearings and meeting with El Salvadorian officials. But such was his courage and determination that Salvadorian soldiers were eventually imprisoned. In fact, more Salvadorian soldiers were imprisoned for that one act of slaughter than British soldiers ever imprisoned in 30 years of their murderous work in the North of Ireland.
In exercising your important foreign policy oversight function, it is vital that those with the primary responsibility for implementing foreign policy—the Department of State —be invited to testify. Perhaps they could address some of these critical areas pertaining to your concern.
State assessment and accountability for the implementation of the Belfast Agreement (as amended) particularly with regard to the ‘independent’ investigation into over 1000 killings in the conflict but particularly those deaths involving police and security forces which are being investigated by current or retired PSNI (RUC).
The official Department response, if any, regarding the BBC One Panorama and the Spotlight documentaries and Brendan McCourt’s RTE report regarding British collusion with loyalist death squads (Glennane Gang), the use of informers, the British Army Military Reaction Force and the corruption of the justice system in N. I. as depicted in the book LETHAL ALLIES.
State’s position and any documentation exchange with Britain regarding its failure to implement an independent public inquiry into the assassination of attorney Patrick Finucane as required by the Belfast Agreement, failure to disclose information about the British Army role in the Dublin Monaghan bombings and British involvement regarding the murder of attorney Ms. Rosemary Nelson, journalist Martin O’Hagan and six elected Sinn Fein Councilors and seven campaign workers.
State’s opinion of the BBC interview with loyalist leader Ken Meginnis, a member of the Ulster Defense Regiment, in which he asserts he was called by Prime Minister Thatcher after the killing of three UDR soldiers by the IRA. He was asked for the names of the killers and he gave her three names. The next day those individuals were killed by the British Army. Does the Department of State understand this action as compatible with the rule of law or the law of the jungle?
The Department of State’s position with respect to the 2012 Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) subpoena request from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (PSNI) for tapes held in the Irish Archives of Boston College. State had an important Treaty- defined role to play in determining whether the Justice Department should grant the request or oppose it because it would be harmful to U. S. interests e. g. the peace process in Northern Ireland; was in violation of treaties like the Belfast Agreement; was contradictory to representations made by the State Department in support of U. S.-U. K. extradition treaty amendments; or contrary to U. S. policy with respect to human rights. Did State offer any reservations to the Department of Justice about the intent of the subpoena request and the moral obligation to question it?
Disclosure of State Department records pertaining to the 1981 statutory embargo of arms sales to the RUC imposed by Congress and the secret resumption of arms sales by the Reagan administration in direct violation of that statute. Does State understand the implications for enforcing arms embargoes as a tactic with other nations if the U. S. government won’t abide by its own embargo of arms?
Congressman Boyle, the police force in Northern Ireland is the most discredited police force in Western Europe. It is worth determining whether or not any one in the State Department has actually seen these latest documentaries or read LETHAL ALLIES or the Stalker/Sampson and Sir John Stevens reports from the 80’s. Alone each would justify opposition to the MLAT subpoena. Each would justify enforcement of the law banning arms sales to the RUC.
Your position is morally and politically defensible but will opposed just as Congressman Moakley’s Task Force was opposed. I hope you will not be deterred in performing your duties in search of the truth in what was described in the Irish Independent recently as the “…bone chilling moral bankruptcy…” of collusion. Our Department of State and the British government opposed President Clinton’s granting of a visa to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and you should expect similar opposition even from House leadership with arguments like Northern Ireland is such a small problem in the world and the U. K. is such a dear friend of the U. S. You may realize, as did President Clinton, that America’s standing in the world was enhanced when it confronted those naysayers. Congressman, even that big step from President Clinton began with small steps like a dialogue between former Senator Christopher Dodd and former New York City Council leader, the late Paul O’Dwyer and others like colleagues Joe Crowley, Peter King, Richard Neal, Jim McGovern and Eliot Engel and former Representatives Jim Walsh and Bruce Morrison.
In the past, the leadership of organizations like the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Irish American Unity Conference, the Brehon Law Society, the Irish Northern Aid Committee and the Irish-American Labor Coalition has proven to be steadfast in support of efforts such as yours. I hope you will consider building and expanding such a coalition again so that they can become a bulwark in defense of your pursuit of truth, justice, the rule of law for all those living in Northern Ireland. If I can be of any assistance in this effort, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Cummings
Posted by Jim on June 20, 2015
Born in Rosscarbery, Co. Cork, in 1831 Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa witnessed the devastation brought upon the Irish people during “An Gorta Mor” as a child in the 1840’s. Rossa became a fervent nationalist coming of age during the era of Daniel O’Connell and the Young Ireland Movement. In 1856 while living in Skibbereen, he founded the Phoenix National and Literary Society, an Irish nationalist group which aimed to remove the British from Ireland. In 1863 Rossa began working for The Irish People, an Irish Nationalist newspaper, and eventually became its business manager. Rossa was convicted of treason against Great Britain and sentenced to life in prison for his part in planning the “Fenian Uprising” of 1865. O’Donovan Rossa served eight years in English prisons, enduring brutal conditions he later chronicled in his 1874 book, “Prison Life.” In 1871, he and fellow Fenians like John Devoy were released on the condition of permanent exile. O’Donovan Rossa, Devoy and the others arrived in New York aboard the ship Cuba and received a hero’s welcome from local Irish nationalists. Rossa became editor of the New York edition of the United Irishman, an Irish Nationalist newspaper. He became an extremely active member of the American Fenian movement, and was also a member of Clan na Gael, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Corkmen’s Association. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa died in Staten Island on June 29, 1915 – and the call came from Ireland to “send his body home”. O’Donovan Rossawas buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin where Padraig Pearse gave his famous graveside oration: “The fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
Posted by Jim on
BIGOTRY AFTER TRAGEDY
Evidence of anti-Irish attitudes in the upper echelons of the US media has
shocked the Irish public as it struggles with a disaster in Berkeley,
California, that this week claimed the lives of six students and injured
a further seven. All of the fatalities were Irish, including one
Irish-American.
The students who were all on the J-1 summer work exchange programme died
on Tuesday when the fourth floor balcony that they were on collapsed
into the street. The balcony in question had been constructed of timber
beams. The beams were rotten and had crumpled under the weight of
students attending a 21st birthday party, sending them hurtling to their
deaths.
Incredibly, the New York Times used this horror as the basis for a
stereotyped story of the Irish as drunken party-goers, and all but
accused the students of damaging the apartment.
The piece by Adam Nagourney, Mitch Smith and Quentin Hardy begins with a
discussion of the J-1 program. It claims, without any basis or evidence,
that this program is a “source of embarrassment to Ireland — marked by
a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying.”
Their description of the J-1 programme is completely at odds with the
reality of Irish students working long hours for minimum wage to fill
gaps in the US labour market over the summer season, and an important
cultural link between Ireland and the US.
It then went on to say that the students died at “what neighbors
described as a loud party,” and even spoke to one neighbour who
complained about the noise. It goes on to suggest that Irish exchange
students drink constantly and have a habit of damaging property, linking
the disaster to an isolated incident of student bad behaviour last year.
The story appears to suggest that the students were partly responsible
for their own deaths by standing together on the balcony. There was no
attempt to report on the inherent structural weakness of the balcony,
nor the evidence of dry rot witnessed by emergency workers and
journalists who were present at the scene.
Berkeley’s mayor, Tom Bates, has said investigators believe the wood was
not sealed properly at the time of construction and was damaged by
moisture as a result. Berkeley building inspectors also found another
balcony at the Library Gardens apartment building to be “structurally
unsafe” and “a collapse hazard”, and ordered it to be demolished.
It has also emerged that Segue Construction, which built the building in
2007, paid $3 million (2.6m euro) to settle a legal action alleging
water damage on balconies and windows at another complex.
MOUTHPIECE FOR THE BRITISH
But the New York Times has a history of publishing pieces denouncing the
Irish and the struggle against British rule. It has rarely mentioned
British war crimes or the hundreds of murders carried out by “security
forces” in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
Clearly influenced by British-funded lobbying campaigns, those Irish
Americans who support the Irish cause have typically been at the
receiving end of the New York Times’s high-handed condemnations and
willful ignorance of the situation in the Six Counties.
But the approach to the Berkeley disaster appears to have once again
exposed a vein of general anti-Irish prejudice which used to be a major
force in American politics, particularly in New York.
Tanaiste Joan Burton urged The New York Times to remove the articles
which she said was both “a shame and shocking” in its treatment of Irish
students. Former Irish President Mary McAleese said she found the
article “utterly offensive” and described the six victims of the
Berkeley balcony collapse as ‘young people who worked hard, studied
hard’.
“What bothers me most is the sheer absence of human empathy, the sense
of sociopathic disassociation of the actual reality from the true story
of these parents, the brokenness of these children’s bodies and the poor
little children fighting for their lives,” she said.
A petition has been started to request the New York Times remove their
article on the Berkeley tragedy and is online at http://bit.ly/1exvJo8
Posted by Jim on June 19, 2015
Nice item from the “ On This Day” column in the Belfast Irish News.
Good to know that Fr. Flanagan of Boys’Town was an Irish patriot.
Eamon Phoenix. Irish News. June 19, 2015
Fr. Flanagan of Boys’ Town delivered one of the most inspiring addresses that has been made in Ireland within living memory when he spoke at Corrigan Park, Belfast last night – his final speech to the Gaels of the North.
Referring to the problem of Partition, Fr Flanigan said he did not come to Ireland as a politician and he hoped he would say nothing that would hurt the feelings of any Irishman, but as a lover of his country, as one anxious to see her play her part in the world of today, he could not – and he spoke for millions of Irish-Americans – look upon Partition as anything but a disaster. In spite of plausible attempts to make a case for it during the war, Partition raises far more problems than it solves. It saddles a small and comparatively poor country with two expensive legislatures and civil services. It tears in two an economic entity which nature obviously intended to be a unit. Worse still, it violates the elementary principles of democracy and fair play.
Fr. Sean Mc Manus, President Irish National Caucus
Posted by Jim on June 18, 2015
Statement from Relatives for Justice Director Mark Thompson in advance of Stormont Assembly Motion on Collusion
“Following several recent television programmes highlighting collusion Relatives for Justice and families contacted a number of MLA’s, TD’s, MP’s and MEP’s seeking urgent action concerning revelations from these programmes; we also contacted An Taoiseach, the Irish Government Department of Foreign Affairs for the North, members of the US Congress, and other international political representatives. A further RTE programme on collusion is also to be screen on Monday evening exposing even more collusion.
“Collectively the families bereaved and those injured through collusion, including the NGO’s supporting them, feel that the issues raised via the programmes require full and comprehensive discussion at the highest levels of government in Belfast, Dublin, London and Washington if there is to be resolution of the appalling vista that is collusion.
“That resolution must be as a result of an independent inquiry such is the scale of collusion affecting hundreds of families from across the community, including regular members of the State’s armed forces who were also allowed to be killed. Collusion is the most egregious violation of human rights.
“Immediately after the Panorama programme Raymond McCartney MLA tabled a motion for debate in the Assembly on collusion.
“And last week a delegation of over 60 families bereaved through the policy of collusion, representing several hundred victims of collusion, also met with MLA’s including the joint First Minister Martin McGuinness in which his support was pledged in addressing collusion.
“The Motion on Collusion will be discussed tomorrow, Monday 15th June, in the Assembly and is scheduled to take place at approximately 6.30pm.
“We believe that it is important that the issue of collusion, and the accompanying impunity, will be debated at the heart of government in this part of the jurisdiction and we very much welcome that first step in ensuring that similar debates are held in Dublin, London, Washington and Brussels.” ENDS
Families wishing to attend should be at the Assembly for no later than 6pm and those requiring a lift can avail of transport from the offices of Relatives for Justice, 39 Glen Rd. Belfast BT11 8BB. Lifts will leave RFJ from 5pm to allow for rush hour traffic and administration access to the public gallery of the debate chamber.