Social Items

TPQ
Beslan 2004
Pauline Mellon with a piece from her blog The Diary of a Derry Mother. It featured on 18 August 2014. Pauline Mellon is a social justice campaigner in Derry.


On September 1st the people of Beslan, North Ossetia will mark the tenth anniversary of the Beslan massacre. On what was the first day of the new school year, Chechen separatists stormed a school containing over 1100 people. In the following 52 hour siege 334 of the people lost their lives, 186 of which were children.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth is.

TPQ features a transcript of Helena Kennedy interviewing solicitor Gareth Peirce. Appreciation to TPQ's tireless transcriber.

BBC Radio Four
A Law Unto Themselves
5 August 2014
  

HK: During a career spanning nearly forty years solicitor Gareth Peirce has exposed some of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history. She's been described as the doyenne of British defence lawyers, is adored by her clients and has been offered, though refused, a CBE for services to justice. But she's never far from controversy. Many of her clients have been accused or actually convicted of acts of terrorism. In the late 80's and early 90's she helped free convicted Irish bombers including the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four.

(Audio clip of news broadcast is played)

More recently she worked to secure the release of British detainees in Guantánamo Bay and for years she thwarted government attempts the Muslim preacher Abu Qatada.

(audio clip of news broadcast is played)

Many see Gareth Peirce as an indefatigable fighter for human rights and defender of the underdog. But some argue that her work represents a threat to national security making Britain appear a safe haven for terrorists.

Catching Police Liars by the Skip Load


It’s a hideous atrocity, sadistic, vicious, murderous, totally without any credible pretext. It’s another one of the periodic Israeli exercises in what they delicately call "mowing the lawn." That means shooting fish in the pond, to make sure that the animals stay quiet in the cage that you’ve constructed for them, after which you go to a period of what’s called "ceasefire," which means that Hamas observes the ceasefire, as Israel concedes, while Israel continues to violate it. Then it’s broken by an Israeli escalation, Hamas reaction. Then you have period of "mowing the lawn." This one is, in many ways, more sadistic and vicious even than the earlier ones - Noam Chomsky

Flimflam and Fudge for the Lone Soldier


Guest writer Mary Marshall from Sydney Australia with some thoughts on the position of the Greek Orthodox Church for all of Palestine on the matter of Israeli occupation.

"We in our country do not divide the martyrs into Christians or Muslims. All the martyrs are our martyrs. All those who struggle are ones who struggle for us. All of us have one goal, and it is to liberate Palestine -  Atallah Hanna (Interview with As-Safir – Notes on Arab Orthodoxy - 2013)

Kairos Palestine

The late Brian Mór artistically saying so much by using so little.




At and Through the Heart of Everything

TPQ reproduces an interview Huw Nesbitt conducted with Anthony McIntyre. It featured in VICE magazine on 7 July 2014.


Anthony McIntyre visits his former cell block with his son in 2007


On the 21st July 1972 the Provisional IRA detonated 19 bombs across Belfast in the space of an hour. Known as Bloody Friday, the attacks claimed the lives of nine people and injured 130 others. At the time, it was one of the most violent acts that had happened during the Troubles. If you were the one that planned it, you’d probably want to keep quiet, right?

The ‘Boston College Tapes’ Document Northern Ireland’s Murderous Past

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)