British Scum State of War on Human Rights Of Martin Corey

by Bobby Wed Nov 13, 2013 10:27

... when I was 14 years old

'British Scum'.

Most people I know stopped using this childish language when they entered their early twenties. How can you expect someone to read anything you have to say. Grow up, and if you're going to parade as a journalist, have some standards.

Complete joke.

by Dub Tue Nov 12, 2013 21:06

I responded earlier but it appears my message did not take having sons problems with my phone.

It would appear that anyone that disagrees with some of the concepts posted is to be considered as a Protestant or Orangeman or as supporter of King Billy, and not Irish at all; really if that us your recourse in debate it is pathetic.

You speak of British Army murders on loyalist farms, yet again make no mention of past murders and ongoing murder attempts by republican murder gangs.

"the inevitable all Ireland Republic" mentioned will only come, if ever, by the democratic wishes of the people not through bomb and bullet as has already been proven.

The majority of the people of this island do not support terrorism and do not want anything to do with them.

It is also interesting to note that one poster suggested that the Gardai should be used in Northern Ireland as some kind of community relations officers. This is most unlikely to happen as the Gardai can only serve outside the state on UN missions or on special cases. It's also interesting to note that in many posts on this site the Gardai are castigated and abused for many things including so called Anti republicanism" and a number of them have been murdered by republicans.

As for gulag and other such propaganda posters, there are many images of the troubles that could be used for similar purposes against the republican side so don't try and claim the moral high ground with that kind of tactics.

I shall take my leave now as there are more important issues to be read about.

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Fri Nov 08, 2013 05:49

Precisely Fred,
In fact I would go to great lengths to remove alive any invading insect from y home without harming it. However when someone invades mu home i am obliged to defend my family. A People living in the Murder triangle had their homes invaded by the people in uniform meant to defend them Whole families were wiped out by invafding police and British soldiers.I cannot condemn the women and men who unselfishly stood up for their neighbours, as Martin did as young man. However he served almost twenty years for that. already.

Members of Martin's extended family have received death threats for speaking out against Martin's internment, as members of the Release Martin Corey committee can confirm.I believe as long as few organs of a Free Press exist, such as Indymedia Ireland, that all Irish republicans have a moral responsibility to explore this to the maximum rather than resort to violence.Whether the PSNI and Wall can do that in death throes of Loyalism remains to be seen.

However it would be wrong of me to say, people in their communities should not prepare for the worst and organize defence committees. It is clearly evident that British occupation and social deprivation is the source of the problem. Yes you are correct in saying there are sociopaths on both sides of the divide, that is what the human zoo creates and actually encourages unfortunately. It is not sufficient to condemn atrocities, without addressing the issues that produce violent reactionaries or flesh and blood that want immediate pay back. Peace without justice and the obvious injustice of internment without trial is nonsense as the invading British and their allies well know.

Condemnation, without trying to understand cause and effect is disingenious and usually, though not often the prattle of careerist politicians. Having said that, I personally do not approve of knee capping youth for drug offences or anti-social behaviour,.I believe it is absolutely barbaric and reactionary politics. Gardai, should be introduced initially on a limited basis in the occupied six, to liaise with community leaders, for the arrest of persistent offenders. What is to prevent communities from designating a set number of hours for. community service and re=education. There alos need to be classes on community consciousness and responsibilities. The paramilitary PSNI are quite happy to organize paramilitary vigilantes as a form of social control and counter revolutionary activity.

Having written that I will not hesitate to advocate intelligent self-defence in the community form aggression whether it be the war crimes of Imperialism or native gombeenism.THanks for your support to end political internment without trial.

by fred Fri Nov 08, 2013 04:31

I think you are confusing me with the author of this piece. I am not BC.
I still think, whilst you pretend (very badly) to be even handed you are completely one sided and biased in your comments. Exactly what you are claiming others are.

Pot kettle indeed.

Dub, when ones country is invaded by a foreign power, surely it is not unreasonable to mount an appropriate resistance to that? Would you agree?

Why do you insist on emphasising the violent actions taken by the victims of this invasion so much while at the same time playing down equivalent actions of the imperial aggressor who started the whole thing in the first place. Not the behaviour of an honest commenter in my book.

I'm a pacifist and as such I don't condone ANY violence but that said, it is clearly wrong to condemn the actions of one side disproportionately while playing down the actions of the party that started the whole thing.

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Fri Nov 08, 2013 02:52

Get off yer white fookin horse and stop fleggin it Billy.Yer white horse is dead, people drive cars these days, unless you are a woman in Saudia Arabia or a motorist in British Occupied Ireland, stuck in yet another Fleg protest, stuck in the past, blocking the inevitable United Island of Ireland of the future.

Scum State
A Police State without basic human rights and extreme injustice,with secret courts, secret evidence and secret sentences, that executes lawyers and journalists.
As in states such as British Occupied Ireland, where there is no rule of law, because it is overruled by an unelected British Viceroyal. There is no right to a fair trial in the instance of Martin Corey for example people are politically interned without trial. There is no due process, in fact there is no process at all, the British Viceroyal overrules any process, setting aside basic standards of universal justice. It is a British neo-colonial Scum State where British police and the British Army murder innocent people, operating from loyalist farms.
scum state scum state british occupied ireland occupied six counties neo-colonial martin corey political internmentinternment secret trial police state
by Irish Blog November 07, 2013 add a video

Parity of Asteem

Caption: Video Id: rP3Mxhi4Uio Type: Youtube Video
Silly Walk City March

by Dub Thu Nov 07, 2013 16:44

Again you do not condemn the terrorists which in itself speaks volumes.

It is also interesting to note what you posted in response (albeit from some urban dictionary)

"scum state
A Police State without basic human rights and extreme injustice,with secret courts, secret evidence and secret sentences, that executes lawyers and journalists."

Read it in relation to terrorist murder victims, such as Jean McConville and Charlie Armstrong and tell me, were their human rights cared for, were their murders (and the murders of so many more) not cases of "extreme injustice" carried out by "secret courts" based on "secret evidence" and we all know now, what the then "secret sentences" were.

Can you answer that question without prevaricating?

So spare me the piteous whining and posting of repetitive propaganda posters. Expose the extreme injustice that was done to innocent civilian by terrorist murder gangs,.

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Thu Nov 07, 2013 16:13

SCUM STATEURBAN DICTIONARY

1. Scum State
A Police State without basic human rights and extreme injustice,with secret courts, secret evidence and secret sentences, that executes lawyers and journalists.
As in states such as British Occupied Ireland, where there is no rule of law, because it is overruled by an unelected British Viceroyal. There is no right to a fair trial in the instance of Martin Corey for example people are politically interned without trial. There is no due process, in fact there is no process at all, the British Viceroyal overrules any process, setting aside basic standards of universal justice. It is a British neo-colonial Scum State where British police and the British Army murder innocent people, operating from loyalist farms.
scum state scum state british occupied ireland occupied six counties neo-colonial martin corey political internment internment secret trial police state
by Irish Blog November 07, 2013 add a video

Free Martin Corey

Caption: Video Id: _oPPBA9fQPw Type: Youtube Video
Free Martin Corey

by Dub Thu Nov 07, 2013 12:18

So if there was ugly violence on both sides does that mean that the appellation "Scum" as used in the title of this post can be equally attributed.

And your "well resourced colonial power" reasoning doesn't compute when it is remembered that over 728 civilians were murdered by republican terrorists. And this is alongside those civilians murdered by loyalists.

It's ok say there was ugly violence on both sides (we agree on something) but actually condemning the murderers and calling them all equally to account is the main point.

There are posts/threads on this site if I remember correctly which condemn the use of drones and the deaths of civilians by that usage. Yet terrorists, republican and loyalists (to a lesser degree) used remote technology to explode bombs and kill civilians (in at least on case they used a proxy bomber to move their bomb). Now kettle, pot and black pops to mind when reading those stories.

So before condemning others for any perceived injustices, look in the mirror.

by fred Thu Nov 07, 2013 09:08

both my posts clearly acknowledge that there was ugly violence on both sides.
The difference being that one side was a well resourced colonial power illegally occupying the other's country. Does this obvious fact not enter into your assessments at all?

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Thu Nov 07, 2013 08:50

Brigadier Frank Kitson blended sociological 'normalisation', political policy and legal elasticity. In his book in 1970, he advocated for the Law and the Courts to be used as just another part of the British Army's arsenal. He advocated:

The Law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public. For this to happen efficiently, the activities of the legal services have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible.

Clearly the return of Internment without trial in the cae of Martin Corey and others is being used as an instrument of War not of a Peace Process.

Does Dubstep hold Martin Corey responsible for the invasion of Irag and Lurgan on the Euphrates?

[

[bold]]Ulster on the Euphrates
The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq

By Chris Floyd
02/13/07 "ICH" -- -- Imagine a city torn by sectarian strife. Competing death squads roam the streets; terrorists stage horrific attacks. Local authority is distrusted and weak; local populations protect the extremists in their midst, out of loyalty or fear. A bristling military occupation exacerbates tensions at every turn, while offering prime targets for bombs and snipers. And behind the scenes, in a shadow world of double-cross and double-bluff, covert units of the occupying power run agents on both sides of the civil war, countenancing -- and sometimes directing -- assassinations, terrorist strikes, torture sessions, and ethnic cleansing.
Is this a portrait of Belfast during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland? Or a picture of Baghdad today? It is both; and in both cases, one of Britain's most secret – and most criminally compromised – military units has plied its trade in the darkness, "turning" and controlling terrorist killers in a dangerous bid to wring actionable intelligence from blood and betrayal. And America's covert soldiers are right there with them, working side-by-side with their British comrades in the aptly named "Task Force Black," the UK's Sunday Telegraph reports.

Last week, the right-wing, pro-war paper published an early valentine to the "Joint Support Group," the covert unit whose bland name belies its dramatic role at the center of the Anglo-American "dirty war" in Iraq. In gushing, lavish, uncritical prose that could have been (and perhaps was) scripted by the unit itself, the Telegraph lauded the team of secret warriors as "one of the Coalition's most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror," running "dozens of Iraqi double-agents," including "members of terrorist groups."

What the story fails to mention is the fact that in its Ulster incarnation, the JSG – then known as the Force Research Unit (FRU) –actively colluded in the murder of at least 15 civilians by Loyalist deaths squads, and an untold number of victims killed, maimed and tortured by the many Irish Republican Army double-agents controlled by the unit. What's more, the man who commanded the FRUduring the height of its depredations – Lt. Col. Gordon Kerr – is in Baghdad now, heading the hugger-mugger Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), a large counter-terrorism force made up of unnamed "existing assets" from the glory days in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

This despite the fact that a 10-year, $100 million investigation by Britain's top police officer, Lord Stevens, confirmed in 2003 that the Kerr-led FRU "sanctioned killings" through "institutionalized collusion" with both Protestant and Catholic militias during the 1980s and 1990s. Stevens sent dossiers of evidence against Kerr and 20 other security apparatchiks to the Blair government's Director of Public Prosecutions, in the expectation that the fiery Scotsman and the others would be put on trial.

But instead prosecuting Kerr, Blair promoted him: first to a plum assignment as British military attaché in Beijing – effectively the number two man in all of UK military intelligence, as Scotland's Sunday Herald notes – then with the SRR posting to Baghdad, where Kerr and his former FRU mates now apply the "methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles," as the Telegraph breathlessly relates.

The Telegraph puff piece is naturally coy about revealing these methods, beyond the fact that, as in Ireland, the JSG uses "a variety of inducements ranging from blackmail to bribes" to turn Iraqi terrorists into Coalition agents. So to get a better idea of the techniques employed by the group in Baghdad, we must return to those "mean streets of Ulster" and the unit's reign of terror and collusion there, which has been thoroughly documented not only by the exhaustive Stevens inquiries, but also in a remarkable series of investigative reports by the Sunday Herald's Neil Mackay, and in extensive stories by the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, the Times and others.

We will also see how the operations of the JSG and "Task Force Black" dovetail with U.S. efforts to apply the lessons of its own dirty wars – such as the "Salvador Option" – to Iraq, as well as long-running Bush Administration initiatives to arm and fund "friendly" militias while infiltrating terrorist groups in order to "provoke them into action." It is indeed a picture painted in black, a glimpse at the dark muck that lies beneath the high-flown rhetoric about freedom and civilization forever issuing from the lips of the war leaders.

(Continued after the jump.)

II. Whacking for the Peelers
Gregory Burns had a problem. He was one of Gordon Kerr's FRU informers planted deep inside the IRA, along with two of his friends, Johnny Dignam and Aidan Starrs. But as Mackay noted in a February 2003 story, the already-partnered Burns had acquired a girlfriend on the side, Margaret Perry, 26, a "civilian" Catholic with no paramilitary ties. Forbidden fruit is sweet, of course – but pillow talk is dangerous for an inside man. "Burns didn't keep his mouth shut and [Perry] found out he was working for British intelligence," an FRU officer told Mackay. "He tried to convince her he was a double-agent the IRA had planted in the [British] army – but she didn't buy it."

Burns called his FRU handlers and asked to come in from the cold. He'd been compromised, he said, and now he and his friends needed to get out, with new identities, relocation, good jobs – the usual payoff for trusted agents when the jig was up. But Kerr refused: "He said [Burns] should silence Perry," the FRU man told Mackay. Burns, panicking at thought of the IRA's horrific retributions against informers, insisted: he would have to kill the woman if they didn't bring him in, he told Kerr. Again Kerr refused.

And so Burns arranged a meeting with his lover, to "talk over" the situation. His friends, Aidan and Johnny, volunteered to drive her there: "On the way, they pulled into a forest, beat her to death and buried her in a shallow grave," Mackay notes. Two years later, when her body was found, the IRA put two and two together – and slowly tortured Burns and his two friends to death, after first extracting copious amounts of information about British intelligence operations in Ireland.

'In Kerr's eyes, Burns just wasn't important enough to resettle," the FRU source told the Sunday Herald. "So we ended up with four unnecessary deaths and the compromising of British army intelligence officers, which ultimately put soldiers' lives at risk. To Kerr, it was always a matter of the ends justifying the means."

Then again, Kerr could well afford to sacrifice a few informers here and there to the wrath of the IRA's dreaded "security unit" – because his own prize double agent was the head of that security unit. Codenamed "Stakeknife," Kerr's man presided over, and sometimes administered, the grisly torture-murders of up to 50 men during his tenure in the IRA's upper ranks. The victims included other British double agents who were sacrificed in order to protect Stakeknife's cover, as the Guardian and many other UK papers reported when the agent's work was revealed in 2003. ("Stakeknife" was later identified in the press as Alfredo Scappaticci – an Irishman despite the Italian name, although he continues to deny the charge.)

The FRU also "knowingly allowed soldiers, [police] officers and civilians to die at the hands of IRA bombers in order to protect republican double agents," the Sunday Herald's investigations found. As Mackay reports: "FRU sources said around seven police and army personnel died as a result of military intelligence allowing IRA bombs to be placed during Kerr's time in command of the FRU. They estimate that three civilians also died this way, with casualties in the hundreds."

But some of the worst excesses came from the FRU's handling of operatives on the other side, in the fiercely pro-British Protestant militia the Ulster Defense Association (UDA). Here, among the Loyalists, Kerr's top double agent was Brian Nelson, who became head of intelligence for the UDA. As John Ware put it in the Guardian: "Kerr regarded Nelson as his jewel in the crown… For the next three years [from 1987], Nelson colluded with murder gangs to shoot IRA suspects. Month after month, armed and masked men crashed into homes. Sometimes they got the wrong address or shot the wrong person."

Such as Gerald Slane, a 27-year-old Belfast man shot down in front of his three children. A gun had been found dumped on his property; this, and his Catholicism, was enough to get him assassinated at the order of Kerr's man Nelson. Afterwards, it was found that Slane had no IRA connections.

Another "wrong person" killed by the FRU's agents was the Belfast attorney Pat Finucane, who was shot 14 times in front of his wife and children. Finucane was a civil rights activist who had defended both Catholics and Protestants, but was considered an IRA sympathizer by Loyalists – and a thorn in the side by British authorities. He was killed at Nelson's order by a fellow FRU informer in the UDA, Ken Barrett, who was convicted of the murder but freed last year after as part of an amnesty program in the Northern Ireland peace process. Barrett was unapologetic about his FRU "wetwork" on Finucane. "The peelers [authorities] wanted him whacked," he told a BBC documentary team after his release. "We whacked him and that is the end of the story."

Kerr gave Nelson packages of intelligence files to help facilitate the assassination of UDA targets, including at least four "civilians" with no IRA ties, the Stevens inquiry found. The FRU also obtained "restriction orders" from other British security and military units in Northern Ireland, whereby they would pull their forces from an area when Kerr's UDA agents were going to make a hit there, allowing the killers to get in and get out without hindrance, investigator Nick Davies reports.

Yet the FRU was wary of sharing its own intelligence with other security services – which was the ostensible reason for running the double-agents in the first place. Instead, Kerr engaged in fierce turf wars with other agencies, while "stovepiping" much of his intelligence to the top circles of the UK government, including the cabinet-level Intelligence Committee chaired by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, when Nelson was finally exposed and brought to trial on five counts of conspiracy to commit murder, Kerr testified in his behalf, noting for the court that Nelson's intelligence "product and his reporting was passed through the intelligence community and at a high level, and from that point of view he has to be considered a very important agent."

As one FRU man told Mackay: "Under Kerr's command…the mindset was one of 'the right people would be allowed to live and wrong people should die.'"

This is the "mindset" now operating in the heart of the Green Zone in Baghdad, where the JSG is carrying out – we are told in glowing terms – precisely the same mission it had in Ulster. a unit which has allowed its agents to torture, murder and commit acts of terrorism, including actions that killed local civilians and the soldiers and intelligence operatives of their own country.

III. The White House Green Light
Of course, Kerr and his Baghdad black-op crew are not alone in the double-dealing world of Iraqi counterinsurgency. The Pentagon's ever-expanding secret armies are deeply enmeshed in such efforts as well. As Sy Hersh has reported ("The Coming Wars," New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005), after his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush signed a series of secret presidential directives that authorized the Pentagon to run virtually unrestricted covert operations, including a reprise of the American-backed, American-trained death squads employed by authoritarian regimes in Central and South America during the Reagan Administration, where so many of the Bush faction cut their teeth – and made their bones.

"Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” a former high-level intelligence official said to Hersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it." A Pentagon insider added: "We’re going to be riding with the bad boys." Another role model for the expanded dirty war cited by Pentagon sources, said Hersh, was Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups to confuse and discredit the insurgency, and killed thousands of innocent civilians in quashing the uprising.

Bush's formal greenlighting of the death-squad option built upon an already securely-established base, part of a larger effort to turn the world into a "global free-fire zone" for covert operatives, as one top Pentagon official told Hersh. For example, in November 2002 a Pentagon plan to infiltrate terrorist groups and "stimulate" them into action was uncovered by William Arkin, then writing for the Los Angeles Times. The new unit, the "Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group," was described in the Pentagon documents as "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that brings "together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception."

Later, in August 2004, then deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz appeared before Congress to ask for $500 million to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" to serve as U.S. proxies for "counter-insurgency and "counterterrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" and hot spots around the world, Agence France Presse (and virtually no one else) reported at the time. These hired paramilitaries were to be employed in what Wolfowitz called an "arc of crisis" that just happened to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

By then, the Bush Administration had already begun laying the groundwork for an expanded covert war in the hot spot of Iraq. In November 2003, it created a "commando squad" drawn from the sectarian militias of five major Iraqi factions, as the Washington Post reported that year. Armed, funded and trained by the American occupation forces, and supplied with a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" from the Pentagon, the new Iraqi commandos were loosed on the then-nascent Iraqi insurgency – despite the very prescient fears of some U.S. officials "that various Sunni or Shiite factions could eventually use the service to secretly undermine their political competitors," as the Post noted.

And indeed, in early 2005 – not long after Bush's directives loosed the "Salvador Option" on Iraq – the tide of death-squad activity began its long and bloody rise to the tsunami-like levels we see today. Ironically, the first big spike of mass torture-murders, chiefly in Sunni areas at the time, coincided with "Operation Lightning," a much ballyhooed effort by American and Iraqi forces to "secure" Baghdad. The operation featured a mass influx of extra troops into the capital; dividing the city into manageable sectors, then working through them one by one; imposing hundreds of checkpoints to lock down all insurgent movements; and establishing a 24-hour presence of security and military forces in troubled neighborhoods, the Associated Press reported in May 2005. In other words, it was almost exactly the same plan now being offered as Bush's "New Way Forward," the controversial "surge."

But the "Lightning" fizzled in a matter of weeks, and the death squads grew even bolder. Brazen daylight raids by "men dressed in uniforms" of Iraqi police or Iraqi commandos or other Iraqi security agencies swept up dozens of victims at a time. For months, U.S. "advisers" to Iraqi security agencies – including veterans of the original "Salvador Option" – insisted that these were Sunni insurgents in stolen threads, although many of the victims were Sunni civilians. Later, the line was changed: the chief culprits were now "rogue elements" of the various sectarian militias that had "infiltrated" Iraq's institutions.

But as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets. As Fuller puts it: "If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior, you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever a U.S. colonel enters the room." And perhaps a British lieutenant colonel as well

With the Anglo-American coalition so deeply embedded in dirty war – infiltrating terrorist groups, "stimulating" them into action," protecting "crown jewel" double-agents no matter what the cost, "riding with the bad boys," greenlighting the "Salvador Option" – it is simply impossible to determine the genuine origin of almost any particular terrorist outrage or death squad atrocity in Iraq. All of these operations take place in the shadow world, where terrorists are sometimes government operatives and vice versa, and where security agencies and terrorist groups interpenetrate in murky thickets of collusion and duplicity. This moral chaos leaves "a kind of blot/To mark the full-fraught man and best indued/With some suspicion," as Shakespeare's Henry V says.

What's more, the "intelligence" churned out by this system is inevitably tainted by the self-interest, mixed motives, fear and criminality of those who provide it. The ineffectiveness of this approach can be seen in the ever-increasing, many-sided civil war that is tearing Iraq apart. If these covert operations really are intended to quell the violence, they clearly have had the opposite effect. If they have some other intention, the pious defenders of civilization – who approve these activities with promotions, green lights and unlimited budgets – aren't telling.

This article was first published at Truthout.org[[/bold]]

KItson Pseudo Gangs

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Statements on Europe

by Dub Thu Nov 07, 2013 07:32

If you read my posts you will see I refer to the facts of loyalist murders and the FACT that some British Security force members committed crimes.

I do not see such recognition or acknowledgement of republican murders here, including the murders of members of the Irish Security Forces. I suggest that your comment re Astro-turfing is actually a fine analogy for this fact.

It also amazes me that if any Irish person or indeed any person disagrees with your stance or opinions, they are considered by you to be "trolls", "sociopaths", "scum" or are being handled by someone. Well I suppose name calling is better than being brought into a field and getting a bullet in the neck and having your body dumped in a bog for disagreeing with your point view.

It should also be noted that aside from the modern computer usage of the word "troll", it's original meaning was to describe an ugly creature who lived in the dark and came out now and again to kill people, so I would suggest you are more careful about throwing words around as a they can always be used two ways.

Again the main issue is no acknowledgement of the crimes committed by republican murder gangs whilst trying to point out crimes by others. A suitable word for this stance could be "Troglodytes".

by fred Thu Nov 07, 2013 05:09

interesting to see how people like Dub only seem to want to emphasise the violent response of one side (the victims) of what was clearly an ugly two way conflict triggered in reaction to violent occupation by a colonial power.

Evidently you have a bad case of Stockholm syndrome Dub. Well either that of you are engaged in "astroturfing" (i.e. fake grass roots support) or are doing "rent a troll" for some vested interest. I would guess the latter. Say hi to your handlers for me Dub.

by Dub Wed Nov 06, 2013 22:35

Once again the slurs come out "scum" etc.

I am most definelty not a FF supporter and not a Fine Gael or labour party member and I have never and never will vote for Sinn Fein.

The people beneath contempt are those who murdered their own people and their supporters who seek to absolve them of these crimes and paint them as heroes.

As for the silent majority of the island supporting asymmetric resistance, that's a joke in itself. It would be interesting to see how you can quantify a majority that is silent and therefore doesn't speak its opinions.

There is no doubt that there were crimes committed by some members the security forces and loyalists the clamour of republican groups to claim some kind of moral high ground by demanding "the truth" and justice whilst failing to admit their own crimes and guilt in the murdering of innocent people by bomb and bullet is what is truly beneath contempt. Such groups also murdered ten members of the Irish security forces during their campaigns.

The majority of this country and indeed this island have voted against terrorism and voted for peace.

As for point scoring, the clamour for the moral high ground mentioned above is one of the greatest point scoring exercises in operation in this country. The supporters of the groupings that keep using "serious matters" like this to gain political points . So crying wolf on this issue is pointless.

As for "the dissidents" you refer to, they are terrorists involved in murder and other criminal activities and deserve the fullest contempt of the people, and the full effect of the law in the North and South. These are true sociopaths who will drag their community back to bloodshed.

by fred Wed Nov 06, 2013 20:34

There were sociopaths on both sides. The difference here is that one side was occupying the other's country against the will of it's people, controlled (and still controls) the media narrative and had vastly superior military and spy organisations.

MI6 are still paid well to spy on potential "freedom fighters" and to spin and revise their own ugly role in the north of our country on TV and on the internet to win over the public support of the gullible and ill informed.

But there were two sides to this conflict. And contrary to revisionists, for quite a long time, a majority on this Island silently supported asymmetric resistance to the british occupying forces on this Island until british media propaganda eventually turned the tide of public support amongst the population at large against the violent tactics used in such a campaign of resistance.

The story of IRA violence has been paraded constantly on our TV's and other media over the years in the usual propaganda streams, distorted and without proper context. But now that we have moved on, for proper closure at least, the other story of the underhand and very dirty and violent tactics used by britain in their war of suppression and control over dissidents in this country needs to come out too. As does the truth about all the loyalist or uk government sponsored violent acts and atrocities.

And prisoners given pardons as part of the "peace process" should not be reinterned unless it is the intention of the british to try to deliberately trigger a return to violence from angry dissident groups for whatever Machievellian reasons they would have for such actions.

The case of Marion Price was particularly unfair in this regard

As for the equally "sociopathic" FF / FG / Labour supporters who persist in using serious matters like these to try to score political points against currently popular political rivals on threads like these, I call you out as the greedy self serving trough swilling party apparatchiks that you are and consider you below contempt

by Dub Wed Nov 06, 2013 18:33

Only a sociopath murders a mother of ten kids and leaves them orphaned, while refusing to at least leave them her body to bury.

Only a sociopath fails to acknowledge that the murders of innocent people irrespective of religion or political belief as inexcusable and unjust.

Only a sociopath would seek to justify these crimes against their own community by so called members of their own community whilst seeking to attribute blame to others.

Only a sociopath would seek to be treated with justice when they themselves failed to apply that self same justice to their innocent victims.

Only a sociopath would try to defend terrorist murder gangs.

I could go on but what's the point as the definition of sociopath (a word you used) says it all.

noun

a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviour.

Or

They do not usually care about other people. They think mainly of themselves and often blame others for the things that they do. They have a complete disregard for rules and lie constantly. They seldom feel guilt or learn from punishments.

What better definitions there of a terrorist who murders innocent men women and children but fails to see their wrong.

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Wed Nov 06, 2013 15:55

The following articel from the Guardian, helps give and insight into life in the murder triangle where Martin Corey was born and its background very different to Dublin which has led to his 23 years in prison, as result of British Occupation and their mentored sectarianism.

Faith, hate and murder
Martin O'Hagan was the first journalist to be killed in the recent Troubles in Northern Ireland. He'd been in the Maze prison and was a fearless reporter on crime and the paramilitaries. Susan McKay describes his life as a marked man - and the revival of religious fundamentalism among the loyalists who claimed they murdered him
Susan McKay
The Guardian, Saturday 17 November 2001
On Friday September 28 at around eight o'clock in the evening, Martin O'Hagan went for a drink with his wife, Marie. It was what they always did on a Friday night. They walked, hand in hand, from their house at Westfield Gardens on the edge of town, to the Carnegie Inn. Better known as Father Joes, or Fa' Joes, the handsome old Victorian pub is on Lurgan's main street. The couple had met in Fa' Joes 29 years previously. He was Catholic, she was Protestant. They'd raised three daughters since then. He worked in the Belfast office of the Dublin-based tabloid newspaper, the Sunday World.
Lurgan, in County Armagh, is one of those Northern Irish towns with an invisible dividing line through its centre. Catholic shops on one side of the line, Protestants on the other. A bitter town, in an area which earned the name "murder triangle" during the violent years of the 1970s and 1980s. Its housing estates are dominated by paramilitary factions, Kilwilkie republican, Mourneview loyalist. Fa' Joes was one of the few venues in Lurgan where "mixed" company felt comfortable.
Shortly after 10, the O'Hagans left the pub and headed for home. They'd bought the house a year previously, selling their old house to their eldest daughter, Cara, who was about to get married. They took a slightly different route from their normal one. O'Hagan had been a bit rattled by an incident in the town just over a week previously. A loyalist he knew had accosted him. "You have been clocked walking down here," he'd said. Meaning, noted. Assuming this was a warning, O'Hagan had said, "Thanks for the tip-off." He'd been startled by the vehemence of the man's reply. "It's not a fucking tip-off," he'd snarled.
Westfield Gardens is a terrace of pebble-dashed houses, facing on to playing fields. Behind it lies Mourne-view. The O'Hagans passed by the road leading into the estate. There was a poster stuck on the wall at the corner. It advertised a "Grand Protestant Rally" which was on that night, in the town hall in Ballymena, about an hour's drive to the north: "All true patriots welcome." They were nearly home. They walked past a vehicle parked a few doors down from their house. Behind them, it started to crawl forward. The gunman was in the back. He leaned out of the window and started shooting. Marie thinks her husband must have flung her to safety in the hedge of their neighbours' garden while the bullets flew. O'Hagan fell, caught in the back by three bullets. He was able to tell Marie to get an ambulance but by the time she got back, her husband was dead.
The Grand Protestant Rally in Ballymena started with a prayer. "Our forefathers who gave their lives for Ulster" were invoked, and then the preacher turned to what he called history. "God never makes any mistakes. I am a loyalist and a Protestant. I have a Bible," he said. "We have to look at the persecution of those that would not bow the knee. Northern Ireland is the last bastion of Protestantism. I don't care what anyone says. The papacy is up to its neck in this." The most evil men in history were Roman Catholics, he went on. Hitler. Mussolini. Tony Blair was "a sympathiser with the Irish Republican Army and a Roman Catholic". He had got rid of Peter Mandelson "the only secretary of state with any backbone" to replace him with John Reid - "another RC". Talk about fanatics, he said. "Talk about the Taliban."
While Martin and Marie O'Hagan were enjoying what were to be their last few drinks together, 500 or so loyalists, including a sizeable contingent from Lurgan, were assembled at the rally. Ballymena, County Antrim, is the main town in the heartland of Reverend Ian Paisley's constituency, Northern Ireland's Bible Belt. In 1997, it became notorious for the Harryville protest which followed the banning of a loyalist parade through a nearby Catholic village.
On that occasion, loyalists, many of them drunk, grunted like pigs, roared abuse and hurled missiles at Catholics attending Saturday evening mass at Harryville church. The priest's house was firebombed. Homes were attacked and people beaten up in their beds. A preacher declared that this was "the ancient battle between the true church, Protestantism, and the Whore, the Beast and the Baal worshippers within Catholicism."
In Ballymena's town hall, men in baseball hats with strong, tattooed arms sat alongside girls in belly tops with union flags picked out in rhinestones and neat ladies with handbags. A drummer battered a big Lambeg drum. There was trouble over the handful of journalists who'd turned up. One of the organisers, Mark Harbinson, had urged us to come, but now, he said, there was a problem.
There'd been a "scurrilous" article that day in the Irish News (the Northern Irish daily favoured by Catholics). People were angry, he said, but he'd do his best for us. We were sent to the minor hall, where security men with shaved heads grinned at us and didn't talk. A woman appeared from a side door. "Does any of youse want tea?" she asked. Harbinson came back and said we could come in, but there was to be no recording, and no photographs.
Harbinson is an Orangeman who came to prominence at the protests at Drumcree, which he described in a speech as "Ulster's Alamo". He is a member of Stoneyford Orange Lodge, at Lisburn, near Belfast. In 1999 its Orange Hall was raided by police, who took away intelligence files on 400 or so republican suspects. The material had been downloaded from computers at the British army's NI headquarters in Lisburn. Harbinson later told me no documents had been found. The whole incident had been contrived "to blacken my name", he said.
When Harbinson took the stage in Ballymena, he urged the crowd to make sure to sign the "Ulster Protestant Covenant" which had been distributed. "There's major things planned," he said. "The media is here so there are some things that won't be discussed in their presence." He denounced the Irish News article: "Let me tell you, we are not terrorists - the terrorists are in government at Stormont." He introduced Jim Dixon, who was critically injured when the IRA bombed the cenotaph in Enniskillen in 1987, killing 11 people. The crowd rose, cheering and clapping. Dixon, whose face is permanently ravaged by his injuries, said he was inspired by the "zeal" of the organisers of the rally. He spoke about watching the IRA prisoners, "those evil people", leaving prison as a result of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. "It would make your blood curdle," he said.
"The rot began when they were let into government. Our country is in peril. Let us look at the treachery that has been visited upon us. What sort of government tells us that sodomy is good? That abortion should be allowed? Have they forgotten about justice?
"Our forefathers spared neither blood, sweat nor tears to provide our heritage. We want an end to power-sharing, an end to cross border bodies. Our enemies are the pan nationalist front. We have to face the truth, that Britain no longer wants us and we need some form of independence. The republic wants our country but not our people." Dixon said Tony Blair was a weakling, and an evil man. "I told him the blood of this country is upon his hands."
The pan nationalist front is the term used by unionists for the combined forces of the Catholic church, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Sinn Fein and the Gaelic Athletic Association. In other words, Catholics.
Then Harbinson was back, to give the main speech of the evening. "This is not about the saving of souls. This is about organising the fightback of the loyalist people," he said, to roars of approval. "George Bush said countries that harbour terrorists would not be spared. If that's the case, I'll be waiting for the B52s to flatten Dublin." The crowd cheered and stamped. "The Orange Order is the last bastion of our defence. The order was not set up as a Christian organisation but as a defender for the Protestant faith."
Harbinson said this was the start of a new movement. "We are building towards a united show of Protestant defence for early next year. Have courage, brothers and sisters. No surrender!" He returned to the covenant. It was modelled, he said, on the Solemn League and Covenant of 1912. The original covenant, launched by unionism's leaders, pledged opposition to Home Rule for Ireland, and was signed by almost 500,000 Protestants. At the ceremony to launch it in Belfast, the then Presbyterian moderator had declared that, "the Irish question is at bottom a war against Protestantism".
"The covenant says we will use all means necessary to achieve our ends. Those are the exact words of the original," said Harbinson. "And remember. It is every democrat's right to raise arms in defence of democracy. Never let it be said otherwise." They closed with what Harbinson called Ulster's traditional battle hymn, "Oh God our help in ages past". This too, had been sung in 1912. This time, although copies of the hymn were circulated, few among the crowd even knew the tune. Dixon played an electric accordion with flashing lights.
Afterwards, the organisers were ecstatic. "We now have a massive mandate," said Harbinson. "Everything is being considered. Wait and see. We are fighting for our very existence. The only time the loyalist people was successful was the Ulster Workers Council strike in 1974." That strike, the muscle for which was provided by the loyalist paramilitaries, brought down the previous attempt at powersharing in Northern Ireland. Harbinson said that even if 99% of the people in NI voted for a United Ireland, he would oppose it: "Who said I was a democrat?" Few among the departing crowd were willing to talk to journalists. "The media is against us," said a woman. "The whole world is against us."
Owen Martin O'Hagan, known to all as Marty, was the first journalist to be murdered in the course of 30 years of Northern Ireland's most recent "Troubles". His reporting career had included scrapes that would have frightened less brave souls into early retirement long ago. The eldest of six children, he was born in 1950. His father, a Lurgan man, was a British soldier. It wasn't an unusual career choice for Catholics back then. O'Hagan's early childhood was spent in army bases around Germany. The family moved back to Lurgan when he was four. His father left the army and ran a television repair shop, and Martin left school at 15 to work for him. His parents separated, his father leaving for London.
Martin was 18 when the civil rights marchers were battered by the RUC on the streets of Derry. He'd already joined official Sinn Fein, known as the Stickies, drawn by its republican socialism. His mother, worried about the rising tide of political strife, urged him to go and live in Dublin for a while.
The then secretary of Official Sinn Fein, Mairin de Burca, recalled what happened when US President Richard Nixon came to town. "Martin and I went out and bought six eggs which we started to throw. We didn't run fast enough and we got arrested. Luckily for us, the judge didn't seem to like Nixon either. He fined us £2 each and let us go. Marty was a grand lad. He had a good heart."
Back in Lurgan, O'Hagan got into more serious weapons. He was interned in 1971 and spent a year in the Official IRA compound in the Maze prison. He was frequently arrested and interrogated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). In 1973 he was convicted on arms offences and sentenced to seven years in prison. He was released from the Maze in 1978. Like many others of that prison generation, he educated himself. After his release, he did a sociology degree through the Open University and the University of Ulster.
Andy Pollak, then the editor of the left-wing Belfast magazine, Fortnight, said Martin just walked in one day in 1982 and said he wanted to be a journalist. Pollak took him on. "He was full of enthusiasm and hugely committed. We had almost no money so everyone did everything. Martin would write - he'd also drive the van to Dublin and take the magazine from shop to shop. "He had a courage bordering on recklessness. He'd go and get the stories other people were afraid to touch. Very few journalists have risked going in among these really heavy guys in the paramilitary and criminal worlds. Martin lived cheek by jowl with them. He was the original muckraker - and they hated him for it."
He was also, Pollak recalled, "anti-establishment, utterly unsectarian and with a great sense of humour. Lovely." Lurgan is a small town, its rancours shockingly intimate. O'Hagan knew everyone. He was good company, and he drank in working-class bars. He and Marie were by this time living in the house they bought for £400 on Clara Street, a Catholic enclave near the railway station, where they stayed until the move to Westfield Gardens. O'Hagan converted the old toilet in the backyard into a tiny office.
The journalist Kevin Toolis, then working for the Irish News, met him at this time, and described him as having a "suicidal bravery". He recounted how O'Hagan had brought him on a tour of Lurgan on the "eleventh night", the night before the big Orange celebrations of the 12th of July. The tour included an attempt to have a drink in a loyalist bar, which ended swiftly in a running fight.
O'Hagan came into his own as a journalist after he met the man he regarded as his mentor, Jim Campbell, who was running the Belfast office of the Sunday World from his home in north Belfast. "It was a strange relationship," said Campbell. "We were almost of an age, but I was a sort of father figure." The two men started running stories on loyalist paramilitaries in mid-Ulster, focusing in particular on a leading Ulster Volunteer Force figure known as the Jackal, who'd been involved in several of what remain the worst massacres of the Troubles.
In 1984, the UVF hit back. They shot and critically injured Campbell. "Marty blamed himself because he'd provided a lot of the information we were working on," he said. They moved the paper's offices into two rooms in the Europa Hotel, famous for the number of times it has been bombed. "Marty really rattled the paramilitaries because he had such good contacts," said John Keane, a friend and colleague of O'Hagan's.
"He'd be able to tell you what they had for breakfast before they went out to kill. He had a cynical eye and he was very aware of the sub-structure of society, the unusual alliances, the way people weren't always what they seemed. He was an atheist and a Marxist, liable to start spouting Hegel if you gave him a chance. He used to say, my enemy's enemy is my friend. Very little that happened in Northern Ireland would have surprised Marty."
The paper moved again, to offices in Belfast's High Street. In 1991, the Sunday World ran several stories about an "inner circle" of policemen collaborating with loyalist killers in mid-Ulster. With O'Hagan as one of his researchers, London-based reporter Sean McPhilemy vastly expanded on this in a TV documentary, which also implicated top unionist politicians and business people.
This work would eventually lead to the controversial book, The Committee. Published in the US in 1998, it advances a massive Northern Ireland-wide conspiracy theory, and names many individuals.
O'Hagan had upset the Provisional IRA, too. In 1990, after he'd written a series of articles about splits in the republican movement, he got a call from a republican contact who tricked him into travelling to South Armagh. Kevin Toolis interviewed O'Hagan about the episode for his book, Rebel Hearts. O'Hagan recounted how he was accosted by a masked gunman, hooded, bundled into a car and driven off. When he was taken out of the car, he asked them what they wanted to talk about. They laughed. "You," they said. "I heard the click of guns," he told Toolis. He remained blindfolded while they interrogated him for 14 hours about his informants. It emerged later that they had found his phone number in a notebook on the body of an RUC man they had murdered. O'Hagan was impressed at their interrogation techniques, which were, he said, as good, if not better than the RUC's. However, with a journalist's detachment, O'Hagan noted the narrowness of their minds, the "cocoon world" they inhabited.
They told him they were going to kill him, and he believed them. He knew their form. "Nothing so concentrates the mind as the prospect of being shot dead in a few hours," he told Toolis. In the end they put him in the car they told him was a hearse: "I panicked and said, 'You bastards are going to kill me now.' " Again, they laughed and told him he was lucky: "But there are a lot of others who lay where you are lying now who were shot."
Undeterred, the following year, O'Hagan revealed that a young woman called Margaret Perry, who had disappeared from her home in Portadown, had been murdered by the IRA and buried in a shallow grave in the Republic. The IRA denied it, but her body was later found.
By the early 1990s, O'Hagan was writing about a brutal young man called Billy Wright, a rising star of the Ulster Volunteer Force in its mid-Ulster powerbase of Portadown, a few miles from O'Hagan's home. Wright's gang liked to call themselves the Bratpack. O'Hagan renamed them the "ratpack", and gave Wright the name under which he was to become notorious: King Rat. In 1992, the Ulster Volunteer Force bombed the Sunday World's Belfast offices. Campbell recalled that O'Hagan wasn't there that morning. "He was actually in the Maze, getting beaten up by a loyalist prisoner. This guy had contacted him and claimed he had a story for him. When Marty got there, the guy grabbed him and gave him a doing."
Within hours of the bombing, the Ulster Volunteer Force issued a death threat against everyone who worked for the Sunday World in Belfast. Reporter Jim McDowell (now Northern Editor) was summonsed to a meeting in the paramilitary army's headquarters. Billy Wright said O'Hagan's stories had to stop, and delivered a personal threat: "If anything happens to Billy Wright or his family, he will visit the same tenfold on Martin O'Hagan and his family."
The paper moved O'Hagan south of the border to Dublin, and then to Cork. It was an unhappy time for him. He felt his employers had capitulated to intimidation. He was living alone in hotels and bedsits. Marie and the three girls had stayed in Lurgan. He wanted home, and two years later he was back

Drumcree becoAme the symbol of Protestant resistance to the new power-sharing political order in Northern Ireland. It began in 1995 when nationalist residents of the Garvaghy Road in Portadown (a few miles from Lurgan) demanded that the Orange Order parade from Drumcree church through their area be re-routed. In the stand-off that ensued, the Reverend Ian Paisley declared that it was a matter of "Ulster or the Irish Republic . . . freedom or slavery". The protest - which has taken place on an annual basis ever since - represents a revival of the old order within unionism, with Orangeism, which is explicitly anti-Catholic, as the organising principle.

In 1995, after two days of violence, mediation between local nationalists and the Order took place and a limited parade was allowed. In 1996, the parade was banned. While police and soldiers held the Orangemen back behind steel barricades, Billy Wright - who by this time had a terrifying reputation throughout mid-Ulster - sent his gang to murder a Catholic. The chief constable changed his ruling. The parade would be allowed, he said, because otherwise too many lives might be lost.
The Ulster Volunteer Force had ordered Wright not to get involved in the Drumcree dispute. The murder was his answer. The UVF, then on ceasefire, expelled him, giving him 24 hours to leave the country or face execution. Among those who stood up for his right to "freedom of speech" was one of the Reverend Ian Paisley's right hand men, Free Presbyterian preacher, Pastor Willie McCrea.
Wright formed a new paramilitary group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, denouncing his old leaders in the Ulster Volunteer Force as "communists" (this was because the UVF's politcal wing had talked of making common cause with working class nationalists). He started preaching old-style Protestant fundamentalism - in keeping with the ideology of the Orange Order and the theology of Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church. He also ran a lucrative drugs business and protection racket. That same year, he was jailed for intimidation; he was murdered in prison by republican dissidents in 1997. But his legacy lived on.
The Drumcree parade was forced through in 1997. Afterwards the chief constable again cited the fear that loyalists would kill Catholics. However other Orange parades - traditionally a way of showing Catholics "who is master" - were banned, and the ban stuck. To loyalists, it looked like the government was capitulating to republicans. A humiliation too far. The killings continued.
In 1998, the new parades commission banned Drumcree. Loyalists caused mayhem across Northern Ireland. The ban was upheld. In the early hours of the July 12, loyalists petrol bombed a house in Ballymoney, burning to death three little boys, Mark, Richard and Jason Quinn. Nevertheless, to the fury of unionists, the parades commission has continued to ban Drumcree and other contentious parades in the three years which have followed. Each summer now, ugly graffiti proliferate on walls in towns and villages across Northern Ireland, including the initials, KAT, meaning Kill All Taigs. And each year loyalist groups have held rallies upholding the "God given right to march". At one such rally in County Antrim, a self-styled pastor called Clifford Peeples burned a copy of the recently signed Good Friday Agreement. There were speakers from Paisley's party. A few hours later a student was murdered in Crumlin, a village in Antrim, once predominantly Protestant, that now has a Catholic majority. More than 40% of Northern Ireland's present population is Catholic. For loyalists, the fear of being engulfed, overrun, outbred, ethnically cleansed, is a potent one.
Pastor Peeples, the owner of a Belfast fish and chip shop, is currently in jail, convicted in 1999 of possession of guns and pipe bombs. He once painted the name "Ichabod" on to the wall of a leisure centre in Belfast, and told the police God had instructed him to do it. Ichabod was the son of an Old Testament prophet. His name means the glory that has departed from Israel.
The RUC chief constable, Ronnie Flanagan, dubbed Peeples and his associates "the demon pastors". They specialise in recounting lurid stories of Catholic savagery towards Protestants, and in finding biblical justifications for Protestant retaliation.
It was loyalists inspired by this kind of rhetoric who revived the Orange Volunteers, a "Doomsday" organisation which first appeared in 1972, and devised the so-called Red Hand Defenders. The Red Hand was not an organisation but a flag of convenience allowing paramilitaries meant to be observing ceasefires, to claim responsibility for acts of violence, without losing the privileges they got from the Good Friday Agreement. Those who have rallied under this flag include members of all the main groups opposed to the Agreement and supportive of the Orange Order at Drumcree - the Loyalist Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association, and the Orange Volunteers. Their hero is Billy Wright. "He did what he had to do to ensure that our faith and culture were kept intact," according to a gunman during a paramilitary display in Portadown during Drumcree in 2000. To date approximately a dozen people have been murdered in parades-related violence.
In 1999, the Red Hand Defenders claimed the murder of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson, who had represented the nationalist residents of the Garvaghy Road in Portadown in their legal battles with the Orange Order. Leaflets circulated before her death linked her with a Jesuit plot to massacre Protestants.
They have also threatened to kill the parents of the girls at the Holy Cross Primary School in north Belfast, who have in any case, during the past two months, run the gauntlet of loyalist protesters hurling sectarian abuse and plastic bags full of urine at them. Speakers at the Grand Protestant Rally in Ballymena expressed solidarity with the protesters. If the Orange Order couldn't walk the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, they argued, why should these people be allowed walk to school through a Protestant street in Belfast?
O'Hagan came back to Lurgan in 1994, and resumed work for the Sunday World in Belfast. The IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries had declared ceasefires. "He knew he was still at risk, but he was desperate for home and decided to brazen it out," said Jim Campbell.
He returned to his old beat - paramilitaries and crime. In the last two years of his life, he wrote, for example, about how the neo-Nazi Combat 18 group had been circulating a leaflet about the late Rosemary Nelson. The leaflet, headed "monster mashed", claimed that Protestants were being "ethnically cleansed" from Portadown. O'Hagan incensed dissident loyalists when he interviewed "Crip" McWilliams, one of the republicans who murdered Billy Wright. He then went on to write a prominent article accusing McWilliams of having stalked a schoolgirl.
He wrote about one of the "disappeared" - a woman who had been abducted - revealing that the IRA man responsible tried, years later, to force her family to pay for information about where her body is hidden. He wrote about Ministry of Defence efforts to block the interrogation of an undercover soldier. And he wrote about loyalist drug dealing.
O'Hagan was a tabloid writer through and through. "All he wanted was to be a hack," said Jim McDowell. "And we are white knuckle hacks." He wrote stories with headlines like "Alien-snatch DJ gets French letter". Another tale featured two pictures - one of an Orangeman in suit and sash, the other, taken from a sex contact magazine, of the same man, naked and with a box number covering his private parts.
O'Hagan was the joint Belfast secretary of the National Union of Journalists, and insisted that his employers abide by proper procedures on issues such as contracts and bullying. In 1999, he campaigned on behalf of the distinguished journalist Ed Moloney who was brought to court in a failed attempt to get him to hand over notebooks. (These contained details of an interview with a loyalist alleging security force collusion in the murder of the prominent lawyer, Pat Finucane.) He gave evidence on behalf of Sean McPhilemy in his successful libel case against the Sunday Times. Afterwards, he wrote in the NUJ's magazine that he felt vindicated. Colleagues said when trainee reporters came into the office, it was O'Hagan who took them under his wing. "He was a thoroughly decent guy," said his news editor, Richard Sullivan.
'It's nice to see Martin's making the news instead of writing it. Keep up the good work! LVF. Lead the way.' (from the guest book of the Orange Volunteers website, dated September 30, two days after the murder of Martin O'Hagan). 'Shove ur [sic] dove, and Marty.' (new graffiti in Mourneview).
The Irish News article which so angered the Grand Protestant Committee had drawn attention to the fact that the Ballymena rally was advertised on a loyalist website which promotes the Orange Volunteers. And the poster for the event in fact included the website address. The town hall was booked by the "Loyalist Cultural Society" which is the registered owner of the site.
At the website, you can read the OV's "back to war" statement, issued in February this year. "We don't want to lift the gun," it said. "But any democrat has the right to lift arms in the defence of democracy." This echoed the 1912 Ulster Covenant, in the words also chosen by Harbinson. The statement was given to a television reporter at a meeting which began with a Bible reading and ended with prayers. In between, men in balaclavas showed off guns.
The site's "guest book" is full of messages about "fenian scum" and "spawn of Rome". Many written before September 28 enthuse about the forthcoming rally. One, posted on September 26, by "Big C", starts: "Friday night can't come soon enough for many people. I see the Sunday World were at their work at the weekend but sure we can expect nothing less from the rag that first reported the existence of the Ôcommittee' laughable as it was. I only wish it had been true as we wouldn't have to fight again, the war would have been over long ago." The "committee" referred to is the subject of Sean McPhilemy's book of the same name, with which O'Hagan was connected. The weekend before the Ballymena rally, the Sunday World, O'Hagan's paper, had reported that "loyalist terror gangs" planned to hijack it, and that one of the organisers had said paramilitaries would be welcome.
One message, from "Coleraine loyalist", asks if there is a local Orange Volunteers branch, adding, "I'm interested in joining." The editor replies, "Have you been to any of the rallies? There are three more coming up soon. Maybe you could make yourself known (private message) or to the security staff on the night and what you are about."
Big C has another message, three days after the murder of O'Hagan, promising to reveal "what this man was like". He claims that O'Hagan wrote a story alleging that his Orange Lodge was a recruiting ground for the Loyalist Volunteer Force. This was, he said, "a scurrilous lie".
Republicans had been seen near the lodge since, "so I say good riddance to someone who lived off stories from the dregs of society and who himself was a member of the official IRA and an enemy of Ulster".
When O'Hagan told him he was going to buy the house at Westfield Gardens, his former editor and friend, Jim Campbell warned against it. "I said to Marty, you and I will always be targets," he said. Campbell lives in the Republic. "But Marty thought things had changed." Marie O'Hagan's mother lives in Mourneview, and the house was a good price, because of its location, on what is known in NI as a "frontline". By all accounts, O'Hagan loved his new home. He was planning to install a pond with a fountain in the back garden.
And yet. A five minute walk from his house, O'Hagan must have seen in Mourneview - a twisted tribute to his way with words - gable walls painted with graffiti boasting that the "Mid Ulster Rat Pack" remained defiant. He knew that vicious loyalist feuding meant that many of Billy Wright's gang in the Loyalist Volunteer Force had moved from Portadown to Lurgan. He knew his killers. Like Rosemary Nelson, his attachment to the intimacy of small town Lurgan, kept him close to those he knew hated him.
Within hours of the murder, the RUC said the Loyalist Volunteer Force was suspected. The gun had been used before in a feud murder. It is believed that it was in the keeping of two brothers in Antrim, one of whom had been involved in a previous parades-related murder. The gun was brought to Lurgan by a man from Dungannon, Co Tyrone. The theory is that the man who pulled the trigger was a leading figure in the LVF, one of the original rat pack, a man who first killed as a teenager.
Why was O'Hagan killed? As with Rosemary Nelson, there is a range of reasons, any or all of which may have contributed. Wright had cursed him, and the grudge was still held by those for whom King Rat is a dead hero, a martyr for Ulster. The gangsters didn't like what he wrote, and loyalists are notoriously aggressive towards journalists. It appears he was working on a new story about collusion between loyalists and the security forces. Then again, O'Hagan was an "uppity taig" moving into a nice house in a Protestant part of town. Above all, he was a soft target. Since his murder, there have been two attempted murders of Catholic taxi drivers in Mourneview.
However, more disturbing than the mindset of the extremists on the fringes of unionist society in Northern Ireland, is the fact that many of their views are close to mainstream. It was Paisley, whose views on the current political regime are shared by around half of Northern Irish protestants, who spoke of Drumcree as "a matter of life or death". He also said that "the entire pan nationalist front" backed the "beast of fascism, the IRA", and called the Good Friday Agreement "a prelude to genocide".
It is against the rules of the Orange Order for a member of the brethren to marry a Catholic. Yet Orangemen who have murdered Catholics have been honoured. The Orange Order won't meet nationalist leaders who are former IRA men. But rallies planned by Orangemen are advertised on posters bearing the addresses of websites with information on illegal paramilitary organisations.
After the murder of a policeman in connection with the parades, the Ulster Unionist MP and then Grand Master of the Orange Order, Martin Smyth, said he regretted that "there were men on the ground receiving the consequences of a wrong decision by a senior police officer". After another, an Orange spokesman said, "Unfortunately when you are standing up for liberties, sometimes the cost of those liberties can be very high." UUP leader and First Minister, David Trimble, is an Orangeman, as are many of his UUP colleagues. His position as First Minister of the Assembly in Belfast is precarious, and a majority of his party's MPs at Westminster are against the Agreement he upholds. He is to a considerable degree a hostage to the hardliners.
All summer loyalist paramilitaries hid behind the Red Hand Defenders flag to carry out hundreds of pipe bombings. They killed two young Catholics, and orchestrated serious rioting and the Holy Cross "protest". Hours before O'Hagan was murdered, secretary of state John Reid had pulled back from declaring that the Ulster Defence Association, the largest loyalist group, had broken its ceasefire, but warned that if there was any more violence, he would proscribe it. The next day, after the murder, he dithered. He condemned the murder, as did the local MP, David Trimble, but neither attended O'Hagan's funeral.
"Many of the things that are said about Catholics in Northern Ireland couldn't legally be said about, say, black people, or women. Try exchanging the words," said commentator and historian, Brian Feeney. "But the only legislation available is the incitement to hatred order, and it doesn't work - a complainant has to prove that there was an intention to incite. Back in 1972, Lord Scarman wrote in his report on the causes of the civil disturbances in 1969: 'Those who live in a free country must accept as legitimate the powerful expression of views opposed to their own, even if it is accompanied by exaggeration, scurrility and abuse.' That remains the case."
Reid has since proscribed both the Loyalist Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association. The Red Hand Defenders and Orange Volunteers were proscribed in 1999.
Support for the movement for an independent Ulster is minimal, and few believe that a mass mobilisation such as was seen in 1912 and again in 1974 will happen again. There is no going back to the old unionist state. But speeches such as those heard at the Grand Protestant Rally heighten fear, encourage anger, and, in the end, do not empower Protestants to deal with the new political realities.
Atavistic terrors and sectarian hatreds are easily ignited into paranoia and violence in a Northern Ireland far from settled into peace. There will always be soft targets for the new breed of fundamentalist loyalist paramilitaries, who are rallying around the "God given right to march" issue. They are at once serving their own criminal interests, and obeying "ancestral voices, prophecying war".
The Red Hand Defenders claimed they killed Martin O'Hagan for his "crimes against the loyalist people". Their statement ended, as their statements always do: "God save Ulster." Three further Grand Protestant Rallies are planned; the final one is to be in Craigavon Civic Centre, close to both Portadown and Lurgan. The scheduled date is March 15: the anniversary of the murder of Rosemary Nelson

Death of a Reporter

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Lethal Allies - British Collusion in Ireland

by Jed Wed Nov 06, 2013 15:29

"It seems there is a form of collective amnesia in operation in certain quarters when it comes to terrorist murders."
Hmmmmmm, I'm inclined to agree with you on that one at least.
A hot topic at the minute.
Sickened after witnessing Mr Gerry "I've never been in the IRA and I certainly never ordered any one to be killed" Adams on the BBC the other night.
His evil twin who acted as Brigade Commander and sentenced people to death has a lot to answer for. But not Gerry himself, who was too busy teaching scripture to poor homeless crippled orphans at the time.

And the shinners as a whole have also developed some sort of mass amnesia as they eagerly jump into bed with those who organised the loyalist death squads who butchered innocent Catholics.
Ach sure tis all in the past now lads. As long as there's jobs and government money coming in then isn't that all that matters.
Why let a little thing like truth, justice or selling out your country get in the way......

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Wed Nov 06, 2013 12:04

You really have a brass neck defending the war crimes of the British Empire ! Only a sociopath could do this.

Lethal Allies

Farmers, shopkeepers, publicans and businessmen were slaughtered in a bloody decade of bombings and shootings in the counties of Tyrone and Armagh in the 1970s. Four families each lost three relatives; in other cases, children were left orphaned after both parents were murdered. For years there were claims that loyalists were helped and guided by members of the RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment. But, until now, there was no proof.

Drawing on 15 years of research, and using forensic and ballistic information never before published, this book includes official documents showing that the highest in the land knew of the collusion and names those whose fingers were on the trigger and who detonated the bombs. It draws on previously unpublished reports written by the PSNI's own Historical Enquiries Team. It also includes heartbreaking interviews with the bereaved families whose lives were shattered by this cold and calculated campaign.
About the Author
Anne Cadwallader is an experienced journalist, originally from London. She has worked for the BBC, RTÉ, The Irish Press, Independent Network News and Reuters, spending a large part of her time reporting from Northern Ireland. She is the author of 'Holy Cross – The Untold Story' (Brehon Press, 2004). In 2009 she gave up journalism to work for The Pat Finucane Centre for Human Rights in Armagh as an investigator and case worker.
5.0 out of 5 stars Incontrovertible evidence of British State Murder 25 Oct 2013
By Danny Morrison
Format:Paperback
Even though I am well aware of the history of collusion, reading this book forced me to draw breath and recall just how subversive, murderous and immoral was the British state and its cheer leaders in unionism and its apologists in the media. Anne Cadwallader is a good writer, forensic in her approach. Like her last book, Holy Cross, she cuts through the propaganda, the excuses, the pretexts, and lays bare the incontrovertible evidence of the British state's involvement in murdering and in condoning the murders of its own citizens.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Good research surprised the British let any documentation at all into the public domain 3 Nov 2013
By christine
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Was a bit sceptical at first that there would be anything that was'nt already known as most people no there was state collusion that went to the top of government but maybe some day we might get the whole story not only in the border counties but in all the occupied counties as it was widespread through the north in general as the RUC towards the end of the conflict were FORCED to visit thousands of households across the north to inform republicans and nationalists that there personal details from security files had ended up in the hands of loyalists paramilitaries.but this book is by far the most detailed so far into state collusion
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5.0 out of 5 stars Planned callous murder by British Government 29 Oct 2013
By Mairead Shannon
Format:Paperback
I have read this book from cover to cover, and it has left me severely traumatised. 120 innocent people MURDERED by serving members of the RUC, those gallant holders of the military George Cross. Also assisting and perpetrating the murder of the innocents, the infamous UDR (ulster defence regiment) the regiment held in high regard by the right honourable Jeffrey Donaldson MP. The British government knew the UDR had been heavily infiltrated by loyalist paramilitaries, and done nothing about it. They did in fact use it to their advantage supplying intelligence and weapons to have people murdered at their direction and discretion. This book is a compelling read. The book and author does state that not ALL UDR/RUC were complicate, but certainly to many were involved to deem it"a few bad apples" The orchard is contaminated.

Perfidious Albion

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WATCHFUL FRIENDS

by Dub Wed Nov 06, 2013 09:02

The so called dissident republicans are continuing with a murder campaign do you condemn this?

You fail to acknowledge the role played by terrorists during their murder campaign.

They fought a war with no rules but expected to be treated by the rules of a justice they ignored.

When will the terrorists and their leaders own up to their actions in the same way they demand that the British Government own up. There are many unsolved murders and unpunished murderers amongst the ranks of the terrorists.

As for my vested interest in the British remaining in control in the North, I have none whatsoever, it is upto all the people in the North to make up their minds where they want to be in the future.

As for mental masturbation, seriously is that the best argument you can come up with. There are many other books out there which tell the wider story of troubles. Perhaps the Finucane centre should also do a book on the unsolved republican murders and atrocities and their shot to kill policy.

There were terrorists on both sides who more got their jollies in a more physical than mental sense while carrying out their murders.

I also note you did not contradict me regarding the collusion of republican terrorists with rogue elements of the Irish Security forces. As for your own "Security Forces" comments, it is interesting to note that the "IRA" and every other republican terrorist group (as were the loyalist terrorists) were allegedly protecting their communities but in effect murdered innocent people to suit their own needs.

As has been said so many times before, "There are two sides to a story".

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Tue Nov 05, 2013 20:47

Obviously you haven't read what I have written or Lethal Allies, where all these matters re thoroughly documented and verified. "Security Forces"?, That's a very sick joke, if you care to read Lethal Allies. Terrorism ? it is abundantly obvious that the vast majority of terrorism in British Occupied Ireland over the last 140 years is British Scum State terrorism.

You obviously have a vested interest in continuing on with British State murder and are clearly not interested in a peaceful solution. If you wish to engage in an honest discussion and are remotely interested in peace with justice, try to read and look at some of the tapes posted.This subject is too serious for mercenaries or mental masturbation.

Political Internment

by Dub Tue Nov 05, 2013 19:31

I note that the lead story mentions injustice, what about the injustice of the IRA murder squads and their targeting of innocent Irish people, It was not just the British Army and loyalist terror gangs that caused deaths. This is not point scoring this is telling it as it is.

The Security Forces for the most part operated in the public eye (such as your riot photo above) the terrorists operated in the dark away from public scrutiny and perpetrated crimes under their supposed
Right to do so. Even today terrorists are murdering people in Northern Ireland allegedly dispensing their form of justice.

So your question goes both ways, the terrorists should stand up and admit their full part in what happened and not play word games like the one that was played out on TV last night.

As I said previously collective amnesia appears to be in operation in some areas.

By the way republicans collaborated with rogue members of the Irish security forces during their murder campaign so let's not forget that either.

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Tue Nov 05, 2013 18:57

Lethal Allies a book on British Government Collusion in the sectarian murders of ordinary innocent Irish people in British Occupied Ireland is written by leading journalist Anne Callwallader and produced by the Pat Finucane centre focused on the ethnic cleansing of the Glenanne Gang which still operates in Ireland.

The book documents members of the British police and the British Army who were part of this gang which murdered hundreds of innocent people, particularly in the 1970s, operating primarily from loyalist farms in counties Armagh and Tyrone.

Yes we can trade different perspectives on the bloodletting of British Occupation and neo-colonialism in Ireland until we the cows come home but the solution is not on that path. If you are sincere about peace then you don't have to be particularly bright to see where the solution lies, it's not rocket science.

Internment without trial is an instrument of War not Peace.

Lethal Allies

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The Concentration Camp is a British Invention

by Dub Tue Nov 05, 2013 18:40

Omagh - 29 dead - le Mon hotel etc how many more died in terrorist murder campaigns.

It seems there is a form of collective amnesia in operation in certain quarters when it comes to terrorist murders.

Change the text in the above poster and it could read murdered by terrorists.

by Brian Clarke - All Voices Tue Nov 05, 2013 16:14

Or the 33 civilians murdered by MI5 in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings civilians.Political Internment is a cause not a solution to the horrors of occupation and repression.

Letha Allies

by Dub Tue Nov 05, 2013 14:35

He is getting better treatment than that meted out to the disappeared.