Who's Next?


 
A poem from frequent TPQ contributor Steven Katsineris. It was written in 2004.

 
 

Tents have given way to bricks and mortar, but refugees they remain.

The years of waiting and neglect have given way

to a grim determination to hold on against all odds.

For memories persist of that ancient and beloved land.

Songs and stories have kept alive the hope of return, through the long exile.

In the camps of the dispossessed life rises from the ashes, time after time,

revealing the resolute will of a people to resist.

These wronged, who will never give up their just rights for morsels of land.

After fifty years of anguish and mourning for the land they lost,

for Palestinians, there is still only one place to go, home to Palestine.

 
 
  • Al Nakba is Arabic for The Catastrophe. Palestinians use this to describe the 1948 loss of their homeland.

Al Nakba


 
  • Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN-designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced … I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces - Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

A Child's Death Each Hour

Guest writer Tain Bo with a piece on Israel's War on Gaza





In the Middle East crush thy neighbour is a theme that every western generation becomes witness to. The reluctance of the powerful nations plays out with inhuman undertones as they shuffle the already stacked deck where a powerful ally can blitz an impoverished weak people. Meanwhile, the more wealthy Arab nations straddle the fence unwilling to rock their own boat.

Mass Murder In the Gaza Chamber

A response to the comments of Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn 

Carrie Twomey with her second piece taking Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn to task over his comments in a recent WGBH radio interview.

Professional Public Relations Spokesperson Jack Dunn complains that Boston College’s “narrative” hasn’t been able to gain any traction with the media, and he doesn’t understand why. This isn’t the first time he has registered this complaint. The problem explains itself, though, doesn’t it?

'Narrative'




Pauline Mellon with a piece nailing the media for its portrayal of state abuses including the slaughter of the Palestinians. It ran on her blog The Diary Of A Derry Mother on 27 July 2014. Pauline Mellon is a Community Rights activist and Social Justice campaigner in Derry.


In 1986 the Knesset, the legislative branch of the Israeli Government passed a law making Holocaust denial a criminal offence. Any objective person would tell you the amount of evidence that exists in different forms makes anyone who would dare deny the attempted extermination of the Jewish people seem as crazy as those who perpetrated the Holocaust.

Implausible Deniability

A response to the comments of Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn

Carrie Twomey with the first of two pieces taking Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn to task over his comments in a recent WGBH radio interview

Jack Dunn unwittingly hit the nail on the head in his snide reference to my husband’s 18 years in Long Kesh as an IRA prisoner. He called the difference in approach to protecting the oral history archives of the IRA held at Boston College a clash of cultures. He couldn’t be more right.

Cultural Differences

Yesterday afternoon alongside my wife I sauntered into town and crossed the footbridge at the River Boyne outside Scotch Hall Mall. Once we had secured a spot at the bridge’s northern end where no one coming in our direction could avoid us – they had to reach us before they could either turn left or right prior to exiting the bridge – we set up our vigil on behalf of the residents of Gaza who are being subjected to merciless slaughter by the Israeli murder machine.

Friends on the Footbridge - Enemy at the Gates

The late Brian Mór, illustrating through his artwork the role of one of many British agents in the senior echelons of the Provisional IRA.


Keeping Things Under Control Dr Reid




Pauline Mellon with a piece from her blog The Diary of a Derry Mother. It featured on 25 July 2014. Pauline Mellon is a Community Rights activist and Social Justice campaigner in Derry.


Hot, Hot, Hot!

Sandy Boyer laying out what is on air with Radio Free Eireann this weekend.

Radio Free Eireann will be on the air for 2 hours, from 1-3 pm New York time, on Saturday June 26th, to raise the funds needed to keep WBAI and the show on the air.

We will thank anyone who can contribute $75 with a CD Great Irish Speeches including Emmett's speech from the dock and Pearse's oration at the grave of O'Donovan Rossa.

You can pledge by calling 212 209 2950.

Radio Free Eireann is heard on WBAI 99.5 FM and wbai.org on the web where it can he heard for 10 days. We broadcast live from Rocky Sullivan's of Red Hook, 34 Van Dyke Street in Brooklyn.


Keeping Wolves from the Door

Compare these 2010 rubbish responses from Barack Obama against the forthright 2009 discourse of George Galloway on the issue of support for the Zionist murder machine. The paucity of the case for supporting Israeli terror is truly laid bare.

The President of Rubbish Excuses for a Murder Machine

At times America Embraces Liberty



At times Liberty Avoids America.



Too Free or not too Free? ... that is the Question

America and the Question of Liberty

George Galloway is not everyone's favourite analyst or commentator. But in this address to the British parliament he called it perfectly regarding Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. He also lambasted the double standards of Western political elite. He could just as easily have been speaking this week in the midst of the Israeli slaughter of the Gazans.

There are few who can match is passion, clarity and economy of words in projecting an argument and image that sticks in the mind.

We are Authors of the Palestinian Tragedy

Sinead Fallon tackles the media handling of mental illness. It featured in The Journal on 19 July 2014 and is reproduced by TPQ with the author's permission.

Sinead Fallon
 When the media highlights mental illness it’s the same story all the time, on the TV or on the radio – an average young man who feels down.

The Reality of Mental Illness doesn’t fit into a Sanitised Sound Bite

The late Brian Mór with another of his witty takes on how republicanism in the North became what it opposed.



Application for Service in Her Majesty's Provo RUC

Sandy Boyer with his weekly plug for Radio Free Eireann.


On Saturday July 19 at 1pm New York time Radio Free Eireann will cover the "On the Run" issue with Ed Moloney, author of A Secret History of the IRA, and Gerry McGeough who served two years in prison after coming home to Northern Ireland.

Radio Free Eireann to Discuss the OTR Issue

Pauline Mellon with a piece from her blog, the Diary of a Derry Mother. It featured on 17 July 2014. Pauline Mellon is a rights activist and social justice campaigner in Derry.
 
 
 



A few weeks ago I learned of plans to modernise and extend the Museum of Free Derry or as it's known locally 'the Bloody Sunday Museum' following an investment of over two million pounds. My first thoughts were this sounds promising, I hope it helps enhance the area and ensures the history of the area is protected.

Cultural Vandalism or Lack of Thought?


All over a world that has been subject to soccer saturation and where World Cup mania abates but slowly, kids whatever their nationality have been playing soccer. Emulating their heroes, thinking they too might represent their nations on the field of dreams at some point in their lives, which they expect to live out in full. In most places once the knockabout is over the kids return home to their parents and the safety of their homes. Not so if they by happenstance are Palestinian.

Kill Them on the Beaches

Chris Bray writing on the Boston College case. It featured in his blog on 11 July 2014.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland

In October 2012, news stories announced that the Police Service of Northern Ireland would be pursuing subpoenas of tapes and notes from interviews with former IRA member Dolours Price. The PSNI had already gone after Dolours Price interviews archived at Boston College, but this new effort was to be directed at the newspaper and TV journalists who had interviewed Price about the BC subpoenas. In the crosshairs: CBS News and the Sunday Telegraph.

More than a year and a half later, there is no evidence that those subpoenas ever arrived. When Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams emerged from his four-day interrogation at the PSNI's Antrim station, he said that police had confronted him with material from the Boston College interviews; he made no mention of CBS or Telegraph materials. And my own tedious search of Pacer, the federal court case management website, turns up no evidence of subpoenas served on CBS News headquarters in New York.

To be sure, we can't see very far into the underlying events, and it's not clear what kind of contest may have taken place over this threat of subpoenas directed against journalists. I've been asking journalists and public affairs staff at CBS News and the Telegraph if they received subpoenas, or discussed the possibility of subpoenas with the PSNI, but those questions have gone entirely unanswered. Liz Young, the public affairs director at the PSNI, offered this careful non-answer to my questions: "Given that investigations are ongoing we are not in the position to either deny or confirm that a subpoena was sought and no inference should be taken from this." So the conclusion has to balance the likely with the wholly unknown: It appears that the PSNI threatened journalists with subpoenas, but then didn't follow through, and it's not possible at this point to know why the threatened subpoenas apparently didn't arrive.

Now: Spot the pattern. In May of this year, a new round of news stories announced that the PSNI would be seeking new subpoenas to secure every Belfast Project interview archived at Boston College. Again, no one is answering questions, but there's no sign that those subpoenas have arrived.

Meanwhile, the high-profile arrest of Gerry Adams resulted in nothing more than the four-day-long collapse of the PSNI's souffle. Three years after the Grand Inquisition began, Adams is a free man, and would not seem to have much reason to worry. The other big event in the PSNI's supposed murder investigation was the March arrest of former IRA leader Ivor Bell, long purported to have been chief of staff to Adams in the 1970s IRA in Belfast. Bell was charged with aiding and abetting McConville's murder, not with committing it; as yet, the PSNI hasn't charged a single person with actually kidnapping McConville or actually killing her. And Bell is also a free man, released on bail as the Public Prosecution Service tries to decide whether or not to bother taking the charges to trial. They do not seem to be in any particular hurry.

So the PSNI's "investigation" into the 1972 murder of Jean McConville -- an investigation opened 39 years after the event -- has made more noise than progress: some arrests that led to the release of those arrested; an arrest, with weak and likely to be abandoned charges, of someone who isn't alleged to have killed McConville; and a storm of threats and promises that have mostly seemed to evaporate.

The available evidence continues to support the argument that I've now been making for more than three years: The PSNI is putting on a show, not a murder investigation.

But then spot the other pattern: Many news stories reported the PSNI's claim that it would subpoena CBS News and the Telegraph; none reported that the subpoenas didn't arrive. Many news stories reported that the PSNI would be pursuing the whole Belfast Project archive at Boston College; no news stories have reported that those new subpoenas haven't been served. Many news stories reported the dramatic arrests of Adams and Bell; few journalists appear to have noticed that the air has leaked out of those arrests.

In Indonesia, puppeteers perform Wayang Kulit, a theater of shadows in which images are projected on a screen by performers who stand behind it. The PSNI is the Dalang, the puppeteer, in the shadow play of the Jean McConville "investigation." And the news media continues to treat the play as real life.

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

Sean Bresnahan with a piece that traces the origins of the current Israeli terror to the policies of the British state.


When the occupying-British imposed the 1917 Balfour Declaration on the people living under their mandate in Palestine, following the end of the First World War and the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, they initiated the conflict we now see raging in the Middle East. It was a region that had seen peaceful co-existence between Arab and Jew for centuries - over a thousand years in fact - with ethnic or sectarian tensions, a largely unheard of feature of life under Ottoman rule.

All that was to change when the British ceded to the demands of Rothschild Zionism to facilitate a homeland for the Jews on the lands of those who had already lived for thousands of years on the territory in question. It suited the British interest to do so as it would provide a welcome ally in a strategically vital region slipping from their grasp, with the added corollary that resulting divisions would also be amenable to exploitation, facilitating continued British influence going forward in an unpredictable period for their diminishing empire.

We should also bear in mind that all the horrendous, murderous tactics we see the Zionist employ against the Palestinians find their origin in British state policy as applied against those who revolted against their illegal, self-serving occupation of the Holy Land. It was the British who introduced collective punishment, it was the British who introduced home demolitions, they introduced shoot-to-kill, arrest and internment without trial and it was the British who introduced the concept of dismantling Palestinian state and societal institutions.

Almost all of the severe violations of civil and human rights we see on a regular basis today find their origin in British policy in Mandated Palestine and it was from the British the Zionists learned. How to treat the Palestinian, how to respond to any resistance on their part, how to subjugate them by means of relegation to a sub-human category that permits all forms of willful atrocity including mass-murder of the innocent. The apple never falls far from the tree.

Zionist Israel is a criminal, usurping entity to be rightly opposed using all and any means available. But we should always, always bear in mind that the ultimate responsibility for this terrifying situation we now see on a nightly basis, with images of children dead in their beds and charred remains of teenage boys and girls killed by Israeli air strikes while cowering in their homes, rests with those who brought this situation into being. The British. Oh but we know them only too well ...


Made In Britain

Mike Burke with a review of John M. Regan’s Myth and the Irish State (Irish Academic Press, 2013). Mike Burke lectures in Politics and Public Administration in Canada.

This book is a compilation of articles and reviews that John Regan has previously published[1], with a newly-written introductory chapter that provides an overview of the book and traces the development of the author’s thought. 

No Peace in the Irish History Wars

Guest writer Frankie McKillen with a piece commenting on the pervasiveness of child abuse and the extent of the cover-up.


Frankie McKilllen


The Establisment


Everyday more and more stories are emerging about what sounds like institutionalized child abuse with politicians and celebraties. On the 'fringe' there is a sister covering for a brother or a brother covering for his brother.

People Telling People What to Think are Doing the Unthinkable

The late Brian Mór still entertaining us with his cutting edge art.



Run Spud, Freddie's Here

For some reason throughout Ray Kennedy’s Anfield days I never quite succeeded in purging from my mind the thought of him as the man from Arsenal rather than a bona fide Liverpool player. It was much how I tended to view Michael Thomas.

Kennedy, foreshadowing Thomas, first made his name with the London club. He proved much more effective in the red strip of Liverpool than Thomas ever did and his career there was dazzling. He was a member of what was arguably the best Liverpool side ever, the 1977 European Cup winning team. By the following year he was central to what was one of the finest arrangements ever to marshal midfield English soccer, alongside Souness, Case and MacDermott. He was to make over 380 appearances in a Liverpool strip before joining John Toshack’s Swansea in 1982.

Ray of Hope

Sandy Boyer detailing the content of this weekend’s Radio Free Eireann broadcast.

                            
Radio Free Eireann will interview Ed Moloney, the author of Voices from the Grave and Paisley from Demagogue to Democrat, about the growing crisis caused by the Orange Marches in Northern Ireland on Saturday July 12 at 1pm New York time on WBAI, 99.5 FM and wbai.org on the web. We will also have an eyewitness account of the Orange March in Ardoyne.

Radio Free Eireann will feature Dee Fennell of the Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective with an eyewitness account of the Orange March that threatens the peace agreement on Saturday July 12, at 1 pm New York time.
 
You can listen on WBAI 99.5 FM or wbai.org on the web where the show will be available for 10 days. 

Radio Free Eireann broadcasts from Rocky Sullivan's of Red Hook, 34 Van Dyke Street in Brooklyn. Join us at Rocky Sullivan's for your politics, your pizza and the best pint of Guinness this side of Dublin.


 

 

Radio Free Eireann with Ed Moloney and Dee Fennell

Guest writer Beano Niblock with his thoughts on Sunday's World Cup final.





Alas, we come to the final tie of what at times has been an exciting — at times humdrum — and at times surprising tournament. In many ways it has been a little rollercoaster of a ride and has thrown up a few surprises—some pleasant, some hard to believe. Think Costa Rica, think Brazil. Overall, this particular foray will not be remembered as the most skilful or exciting of all time but neither will it be condemned to the dustbin of series.

World Cup Final 2014: Germany V Argentina

Another cartoon from the late Brian Mór on the success of good old Fred!


He Who Touts Wins

Seven

Guest writer Angela Nelson with a short piece on the funeral mass for Gerry Conlon. Angela Nelson is a republican activist and social justice campaigner in West Belfast.

I uploaded this for people who were unable to attend the mass of Gerry Conlon to read.

Prayer for Justice