Showing posts with label Carrie Twomey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carrie Twomey. Show all posts

Carrie Twomey 🎤 speaking on LMFM.

“Racism is not the answer” says Drogheda resident Carrie Twomey McIntyre.

She joined Michael Reade to discuss the D Hotel being turned into accommodation for International Protection Applicants.


Racism Is Not The Answer


⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

Racism Is Not The Answer

Carrie Twomey ðŸ’•on looking into her front garden. 

Burst Away In Flight

Listening to the starlings gather, their chatter

was increasingly boisterous, like children

released at recess bouncing into the rhythm of play.

I looked out the window, wondering where they were

conducting their cacophony, when

with an astonishing sonic boom

- the sky fell down -

the frenetic flock burst away in flight.

⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

Burst Away In Flight

Carrie Twomey ðŸ’• I lit a candle for Sinéad last night. 

I don’t think I was the only one and I like to imagine her final path brightly lit given how many of us loved her. The Irish know how to mourn, and how to send people off.
 
This is a national, generational icon passing. They called Diana the People’s Princess but Sinéad Sinéad was the People’s Heart. She was their champion, their lion, she opened her mouth and majestically roared without even trying. She spoke up for all the underdogs of the world and never stopped being an underdog herself.
 
Her courage was a beacon, a sustenance. It sustained people. We didn’t realise how interwoven into the fabric of our beings her existence was or how much of a basic necessity her courage and honesty were to our living until her unexpected death caught us jagged. She was part of the fabric of our hearts and her absence is making us skip a beat, unsure of how to keep pumping.
 
That’s what you are seeing in Irish media and online. Last night’s RTE news was devoted to her. The radio stations were all Sinéad. Twitter is a public wake full of memories.
 
She loved Twitter and was tweeting up until her death. She could speak freely, unfettered by management and unedited by press. It scandalised some but the more people in her life tried to stifle her the more she needed to roar. She was brave because she kept roaring even when she was being held down.

Her struggles were shared. In being so honest about everything she allowed us to hear ourselves speaking when we didn’t have the same courage.
 
I am so sad she doesn’t get to fully become an old woman, as I loved watching her age and going on that journey with her.
 
I am so angry at the people and men in her life that made her feel so desperately unlovable.
 
I hope she is hugging her son Shane now, and is able to finally sleep peacefully, with him in her arms.

Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

The People's Heart

Carrie Twomey ✊speaking on the Michael Reade Show, LMFM in advance of tomorrow's solidarity vigil for Ukraine in Drogheda. 




Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

Helping People 👫 "It’s Not A Binary Choice"

Carrie Twomey  I miss the pause reading an actual newspaper or magazine gave you, that doesn't come with reading the news online.

My memories are of stopping to read the paper, associating newspaper reading as a break from everything.

You found a peaceful, solitary spot to read in, whether it be the kitchen table, at a restaurant, the library, everything else went on hold while you took the time to read.

A newspaper gave you everything, too, with its range of coverage, comics, and puzzles. It was brain food in a way the Internet is not; the Internet is bite sized, empty calories, driven in part by the frenetic manner of consumption.

Newspapers, once printed, were never in a hurry, they were leisure. Books are read with a destination in mind; newspapers took a meandering path. 

My memories place reading the paper in sunny spots, too, the pinnacle haze of nostalgia, the sun slanting in the window just so.

The Sunday papers were the ultimate indulgence - an almost day long pause, at least the full morning devoted to all the expanded sections. We took the Register & the Times and it was always fun the breadth between the two on Sundays.

Moving to Belfast I kept up the Sunday tradition and Anthony really spoiled me every week bringing in a plethora of broadsheets. A real pleasure, newspapers were.

When I think of my dad, one of the images that immediately comes to mind is him sitting at his table in the garage, with the paper, some magazines, and books surrounding him.

I'd love to sit in that garage again today, reading the paper, stealing some time.

Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

Pause Time

Carrie Twomey ✊ interviewed on LMFM after fascists and their allies made a brief but subdued appearance on the streets of Drogheda on February 7.
    

⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

No To Fascism On Drogheda Streets

Carrie Twomey ✒ shares her thoughts about what she observed while on a Sunday drive with a friend.


Ghosts

Today we saw the ghosts
In the parking lot,
smoking cigarettes
And stretching their legs
after the long drive
Everything they once owned distilled
to the confines of their Jeep,
Strapped to the roof
Wandering ghosts lost
We looked away distracted and they
Disappeared with their exhaled smoke
Back driving, keeping driving,
until their final resting place
is reached. Not this parking lot
Full of cars and shoppers and indifferent children
Somewhere safe, and quiet, still
Ghosts don't, can't stop
Not while their war goes on
Now it is as if they were never here
Gone with a puff of smoke

Ghosts

A Couple of Europhiles ✒ interview our favorite Irish couple.

Carrie and Anthony are great company, freethinkers and they have a thing or two to say about the recent elections in Northern Ireland where Sinn Fein has achieved a historic majority.

It’s a pleasure to hear their perspective and I think you’ll enjoy Anthony’s lovely accent.

Carrie and Anthony McIntyre are writers and researchers living in Ireland. Carrie is an American who has lived in Ireland for 20 years. She was the former editor for The Blanket, an online journal that analysed the peace process. Anthony is a former IRA prisoner and author of Good Friday The Death of Irish Republicanism.

⏩Follow Carrie and Anthony on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Bailey Alexander is An American living in Piemonte. Sailed across the Atlantic aboard our 43 Nauticat in 2002 and spent over a decade living in Rome, Paris, Prague, Malta, Venice and Bucharest before settling in Piemonte, Italia. View more posts.

The Carrie And Anthony McIntyre Interview ✑ Historic NI Elections 2022

Anthony McIntyre recalls the joyous birth of his daughter on this day in 2001.


Today marks the first day in the journey of my daughter into her twenties, her teenage years now behind her. It is a landmark. 

I vividly recall her birth on a cool Friday morning, the 23rd of February, 2001. When she emerged from my wife's aching and exhausted body after a long slow labour, her piercing eyes looked into mine. They say at that point, children cannot focus and therefore do not see the face in front of them. I much prefer the comforting narrative that I was the first person she set eyes on. We were, it seemed, locked in one of time's eternal moments, always to exist within my memory. She of course remembers it as well as she does me being born.

If there is a moment to equal the birth of a child, I am yet to discover what it is. The previous day, my wife lay in labour. It was her first child and the territory was completely new to her. As she lay on her bed, she read an attack launched against her in the Andersonstown News. She had offended it by winning a poetry prize. That's how it was back then. She was more than capable when it came to dealing with her detractors, giving it back in spades.

I had left her side at the hospital around seven hours earlier to return home for a shower and shave. I was standing at the mirror, razor in hand when the call came through. A nurse told me my wife was going into the delivery suite. It was almost two in the morning. I rang a taxi. The best they could do was an hour. No good. I ran from our home in Springhill through Westrock and the Whiterock, down the Donegal Road and into the Royal Maternity. After a further grueling four hours, during which my wife declined any serious pain relief, the zenith of our journey was reached. A star was born.

I raced to town to pick up the biggest bunch of flowers I could lay my hands on. I was extra cautious crossing the West Link at the Grosvenor Road. I had a new daughter and wanted to see her again so none of my usual nonchalant jaywalking, which had so traumatised my mother when I first got out of prison. Back to the hospital to deliver the flowers and then home to Springhill to inform those stalwarts of neighbours - who had not succumbed to the pressure to ostracise us - of the news.

That evening I headed out for celebratory drinks in the Grosvenor's Oasis Bar with Brendan Hughes and Tommy McReynolds, two of my closest friends. Brandy was on the go and The Dark was roaring for someone to come up with a cigar. Then we celebrated her arrival with booze. Tonight, she and I celebrate twenty years on, brandy for me, spiced rum for her. 


Our hardy little bear has made the journey from Belfast's Royal Maternity to Dublin's Trinity College where she is now a second year undergraduate. She set out on that trek at three minutes past seven in the morning. Sentimental and schmaltzy, for sure, given the day that is in it - for me, on that morning in the Republic of Springhill, a Queen brought forth a Princess. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Twenty Years Ago

Carrie Twomey had a conversation with a taxi driver about the upcoming general election.

One thing I learned living in Belfast was to keep the chit chat in a taxi to a minimum. I like to think I honed the art of the non-committal non-answer. You never know who you are riding with, what their politics are, or who they are related to. So it was very unlike me earlier today when I got into a taxi and the driver's opening gambit was, "Did you see the debate last night?"

"That Mary Lou livened things up sure. Those two would have been dead boring without her," the driver continued.

At first, I hid behind my children, still thinking to myself showing my political hand was not going to be wise. "My daughter watched some of it with me last night. She thought Mary Lou was very rude."

"Aye she can be blunt true enough, she can be that. But maybe that's what we need now. A bit of change."

Fuck it, I thought to myself. "Change is one thing," I said, "but you'll not get that with them lot. I will never, ever vote them. I lived in Belfast 8 years and I know what they are like. Ernie O'Malley named it On Another Man's Wound and that's all this shower are, using the past and other people's wounds to keep their dirty money rackets going and hide behind populist platitudes to give them the veneer of respectability."

"Ah well you wouldn't know what it's like up there from down here now," he said.

"No, you don't, that is true. But I do know, and I'll tell you what, look at all the people who have resigned and left the party over bullying and intimidation down here - it's in their DNA. Mary Lou can't even answer a straight question about Conor Murphy smearing Paul Quinn because she has to answer to the boys. And it was the boys what done Paul Quinn and it was the boys who bully in the party. No, I'm not going to vote for someone who's going to have some young ones putting the knees out of someone's kid because they looked at one of theirs the wrong way. Whatever about Fine Gael and Fianna Fail and their bad points, that's not one of them, they aren't going to be sending thugs to your home in the middle of the night and denying it on Prime Time later."

"You may have a point, you may have a point, I wouldn't want that to take root here. Or be in the government."

"No, you wouldn't, and the funny thing with them is, as my husband likes to say, given how infiltrated we know the IRA were and are, if you vote SF you'd be putting MI5 in the Dail!"

"You're giving me a lot to think about, I wasn't thinking along these lines before but there's a lot here to mull over."

As the ride was coming to an end, I brought up Brexit. "I know the election has been focusing on important issues like housing and health, but I have been concerned about the lack of discussion about Brexit going forward. It's nowhere near finished and we have yet to feel the impact of whatever disaster the UK engineers in the next round of trade negotiations with the EU. We need to have a real strong hand in there, and I don't think SF will add anything to Ireland's position. They don't have a clue. And this needs to be considered because what is coming down the pike with Brexit is going to have a massive influence on Ireland and our economy."

"You've a very fair point there, I didn't even think about Brexit at all, I wouldn't want SF handling things."

In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought, and when we pulled up to the house I concluded with this: "The idea of "change" is real popular right now. Everything must change, the system is broken, raze it to the ground, that sort of thing, it's in the air everywhere. We see it in my home country with Trump. We see it with Brexit in the UK. But just because this nebulous idea of "change" is popular and everyone else is doing it, doesn't mean we have to - especially when what is being sold to us as "change" is putting the knuckleheads of Sinn Fein in the Dail. That's not change, that's dangerous. That's stupid. The one thing in common all these things - Trump, Brexit, Boris Johnson, Sinn Fein - have, is power for power's sake. There's no plan, no thought of what is good for the nation with that kind of "change". It's all about getting those individuals into power, and then keeping them there. That's it. They will say whatever it takes to get them there. They don't mean any of it. That's not the point. That's why they don't have a plan, or can't tell you how they are going to do what they say they are going to do. It's irrelevant. The only thing that matters to them is that they win, and if it takes selling "change" to you to get them to vote for them, they'll slap "change" on themselves and count all the suckers."

I went on, "I look at my country now and I despair. I love living in Ireland. You don't know how lucky you have it, really. It's stable, and safe, and a really, really, good place to live. Yes, it has it's problems, as all places do. And we tend to look at our own problems and think they are the worst and everything is the pits, we get obsessed. But let me tell you, even with all the problems Ireland has, it's nothing. It's a great place. Don't ever take it for granted. We have a small democracy here and it works. I love it."

"It's interesting you say that," the taxi driver said. "I work with a fella from Spain who's living here now and he says the same thing. He loves living here. Says its so peaceful and easy. I never thought of it that way."

The ride was well over by now and I paid my fare. "You've given me a lot of food for thought," the driver said. "I wasn't sure how I was going to vote and I was thinking about Mary Lou but you make really good points and I think I've made my decision. I don't think they'll be getting my vote, that's for sure. Thank you, it was good to discuss this. I learned a lot."

"I wasn't sure if I should say anything at the start - you know yourself about politics - but you got me going!"

"If you don't discuss, you don't learn!" says he. And with that, he was off.

Now, I've been here long enough to know Irish people love nothing more than to tell you what they think you want to hear, if only to keep the conversation going smoothly, and he could have taken me for a literal ride as well as the proverbial one. But as I got out of the car and went into the house, I felt like I'd done a good thing, no matter how small an action it actually was.

In For A Penny, In For A Pound


Carrie Twomey writes on the inadmissibility of the Boston College tapes

A point on yesterday's ruling, which some commentary is getting confused. The guarantee of confidentiality is what makes them unreliable, not the bias of the interviewer or interviewee.

The perception of bias was an argument put forth by the defense during the case to illustrate the unreliability of the contents of the tapes.

It is not, however, what undermines the tapes legally or fatally. The guarantee of confidentiality and the structure of the project is what killed the tapes legally.

The judge observed that the promise of withholding the tapes until death gave
"freedom to speak the truth but it also gave freedom to lie, to distort, to exaggerate, to blame and to mislead".
(Application to Exclude the Boston Tapes Evidence, paragraph 37)

"The prosecution simply cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that whether it is true or not the confession was not the consequence of the false guarantee"
(Application to Exclude the Boston Tapes Evidence, paragraph 25)

The false guarantee referred to is the promise of confidentiality until the death of the participant given in the donor agreement, which allowed the interviewee to speak freely.

"I find that the confession is likely to be unreliable in the sense that it may well be unreliable as a direct result of the circumstances in which it was improperly and dishonestly induced by Mr. McIntyre working under the auspices of the Project Director Mr. Moloney in conjunction with Boston College"
(Application to Exclude the Boston Tapes Evidence, paragraph 33)

The donor agreements for the loyalists were the same as the donor agreements for the republicans. All donor agreements had the same flaw: in contrast to Boston College's contract with Ed Moloney, which had the key phrase limiting the confidentiality of the archives 'to the extent of American law' in it, the donor agreements did not.

That is where phrase 'improperly and dishonestly induced' comes in, because the donor agreements stated the donor would have control until death and their interviews would be protected until death which as we all know now – but did not know then – was not true.

The lack of oversight of the project also contributed to the unreliability of the tapes as evidence.

All of this is important to clarify because it means the ruling applies to the Winston Rea case as well as Anthony’s own – it is not because of the interviewer, it is the conditions of the interview that renders them inadmissible as evidence.

A last point. Oral history is not evidence. Oral histories are not "confessions". Oral history is not "sworn testimony", and it is never meant to be.

The PSNI and the PPS have a lot of questions to answer about how they went on this wild goose chase, especially in regards to how much time, money, and resources they wasted in doing so.

Hopefully some journalists have already filed FOIs and/or asked their MPs to find out how much the PPS and PSNI have spent on the international subpoenas, how many detectives and police support staff have been tasked to the cases, and how many man-hours have been dedicated to everything Boston College related. This should be contrasted to the lack of resources the PSNI says it suffers from in its ability to handle legacy cases.

It is a travesty that it took this long – over 8 years – for the courts to confirm what has been obvious and known since the start.

As much as the Boston College tapes can be held up as an example of how not to conduct an oral history project, so too can the pursuit of the tapes by the PSNI and PPS be held up as an example of how not to police the past.

How Not to Police The Past


Carrie Twomey with a response to today's ruling in the Bell case

I am so sorry for everyone that has had to go through this for so many years. For the waste of time, resources, and money, chasing something that was always a sham and mockery of justice.

The Boston College archive was an oral history, with all that entails: memory, a rough draft, and opinion. Oral histories are a guidebook, sign-posts, maps to be used in excavating history. They are not confessions for use in prosecution, nor are they perfect or corroborated histories. They are not meant to be. They are one person's recollections. They are meant to be challenged, and filled out. They turn history into people and their personalities, with all their flaws and imperfections. They are important and they have their value and place.

Their place however is not in a courtroom. Today's ruling recognizes that. This is something we have said all along. The Boston College archive was worthless as evidence. It is a travesty of justice that it has taken as long as it has, and cost as much as it has, in terms of people's lives, emotions, expectations, and in monetary terms, for the court to finally put an end to their pursuit. Farce does not begin to cover what this has been.

We are in the Supreme Court in London next week fighting the subpoena of Anthony's materials, another sham case pursued in part I believe to create the pretext to arrest Anthony in order to put pressure on him to become a witness in the Bell case, something they were never going to achieve regardless.

The Bell case collapsed because the court ruled the tapes are inadmissible. It ruled that their inadmissibility goes beyond the narrow Trial of the Facts, and the PPS has declined to appeal the ruling.

“The tapes will become public with the end of this trial. Everyone who reads about them can form their own view, informed or otherwise, on the many issues they raise. But in the context of a criminal trial they are just not reliable or fairly obtained evidence.” - Judgement: Application to Exclude the Boston Tapes Evidence

We knew that from the first subpoena issued. Boston College had a duty to fight much harder against the subpoenas than what they did for precisely this reason: they were not evidence, they would never stand up in court, the pursuit of them was an abuse of process, and an egregious abuse of the US-UK MLAT. Shame on Boston College. Shame on them for not standing up for history. Shame on them for not protecting their researchers, their research, and, most importantly, their research participants. Shame on them.

A lot of things have been, are being, and will be said about Anthony and his involvement in the project. Some of which we would agree with, especially with the gift of hindsight! But I still passionately believe history belongs to people, and it is important it be told – especially in times and eras where it is contested, silenced, censored, and oppressed. The Belfast Project meets all those criteria. It is a history that the state wanted suppressed. State actors, supporters, and agents never wanted the histories contained in the Boston College archive told. We know this by the lengths they have gone to in destroying it. The histories in the archive are a means of unravelling the state’s carefully constructed façade.

Keep digging, keep pushing against the pricks, keep telling your truth.

History Belongs to People, Not the State


Carrie Twomey asks, will Lyra McKee’s death be a footnote or an endnote to the Troubles?

Lyra McKee could not know that she would be the first ‘ceasefire baby’ to be killed in the Troubles. She would probably argue, of course, that she was hardly the first; after all, she made her name championing the lost ceasefire babies, those lost to suicide in the midst of the imperfect and unfinished peace. And just as context conspired to take those young people away, so too did context, in the guise of another young person, another ‘ceasefire baby’ who allegedly pulled the trigger, take her away.

For all the crocodile tears now being shed, all the embracement of Lyra as a symbol of the so-called success of the peace process, the vows to ‘never again go return to the dark days’, the context that cruelly took Lyra away was complacency. Hypocrisy residing in a comfort zone of bile, bigotry and hatred that would rather retire on the fat tit of the tax-payer while mouthing platitudes, than do the spade work so desperately needed.

All these politicians, vultures feasting on carrion, bleating nothingness, thoughts and prayers – really, thoughts and prayers from Gerry Adams who doesn’t even write his own tweets or if he does, replies to himself, the utter lack of self-awareness and the complete overload of shamelessness never ends – they are all vacuous, empty, clueless.

For they will do nothing, nothing of substance, that will make any difference. My god, London completely forgot Northern Ireland existed when they campaigned for Brexit and even in the heat of their ridiculous negotiations barely remember it. Calls to eradicate the dissidents will only end up with more Terry Gilliam-like security forces enlarging the context for more radicalization of ceasefire babies who have been raised on a diet of Troubles folklore and myth, and will only ensure the merchants of bile and bigotry keep doing nothing but wringing their hands, and raking it in.

Look at the DUP now, kingmakers, doing nothing for the people of Northern Ireland but everything for their own paltry power. Look at SF, “standing in solidarity with the people of Derry” (as useful as a supply truck full of thoughts and prayers), as long as the people they are standing with are their people, which is to say the ones they have bought and paid for or are currently blinding with their cult-like grooming.

Was anyone ever really truly committed to the peace process in the first place? Apart from as a dirty money-making exercise, I mean?

All London wanted was an acceptable level of violence, i.e., not in England, which it got, in exchange for jobs for a lot of boys of all persuasions.

All SF wanted was the façade of power, which it got, never more beautifully illustrated than the fact that Stormont’s been mothballed for 2 years now and no one has really noticed nor cared.

All the loyalists wanted was parity of esteem with SF’s demands, and they got it via counter-intelligence funded ‘community jobs’ and the like, a field gleefully exported as a success-model to conflict regions around the world.

All the Unionists wanted was not to have to give up their Union or their marches or their bigotry, to somehow come out as the Actually Most Oppressed People Ever because the IRA are bastards and always will be, and didn’t they just get that too.

But where are the people who just wanted the violence, and the climate it existed in, to stop? The people who just wanted acknowledgement of what they went through, and who put them through it, not shown in the lenses of propaganda and point-scoring, whataboutery and willful obfuscation, but in the naked light of truth, which comes in all forms, rough and hard or softly spoken, but above all, plain, unadorned, to the point.

The war, the conflict, the troubles, was terrible. It was terrible for everyone, not just us and not just them, and there is no competition for who it was terriblest for because ultimately no one was right, everyone was wrong, everyone suffered, and we all lost. Everyone was duped, and everyone was betrayed. And everyone is still being betrayed and still being duped.

Because as much as we don’t want Lyra to be a note of any kind, and how could Lyra be dead, and how could she have been killed in such a manner - and now she is; now she’s a statistic and a name to be waved about like some kind of flag that proclaims of the bearer, “I’m doing something: absolutely nothing”.

Because as long as we keep electing politicians who don’t act like Lyra did, and don’t care what other people’s backgrounds are, or how different they may be, and actually get to know ‘the other’, and like them, and work with them, and befriend them, we’ll just end up with more of the same, 900 odd years of an endless cycle, my hurt is better than yours, and I’ll prove it, poses and phrases and dog-whistles and red meat with no substance, footnotes, addendums, ad nauseum.

Will her generation make her death an endnote, her life a coda to stopping the cycle, throwing the bums out, and build the Ireland they were promised?

So much in this world right now depends on the mettle of her generation. Across the world, her collective generation offers hope that these awful status quos of swamps and corruption and elites will be overthrown and some honesty and fresh air will blow away the squalid fetidness. We hope, we hope, we hope. What gives us hope is these young people believe. Lyra believed. She believed and now she’s dead.

The old chestnut says a pessimist was never proved wrong in Northern Ireland. Please, despite history, despite precedent and pattern and ignorance and arrogance, please don’t prove me right.

From Good Friday To Bad

Carrie Twomey recommending an article which helps put in context the importance of battle over the past.

If you want to understand what has been behind the British motivation in regards their pursuit of the Boston College archives, and the cold war being fought over the narrative of the past, this article gives you the big picture and shows you exactly what we are up against.

History Matters

Your laugh still rings in our ears. You led by example, examined your conscience and spoke out when it was needed most. You were a man full of love, an open spirit; you took responsibility when no one else had the courage to own their actions, you were burdened for it but bore your load with dignity. Now you join your fallen volunteers where they wait for you with open arms. You were, and are, loved. Deepest sympathies to the Hughes family circle. Anthony & Carrie McIntyre



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