SAOIRSE32

www.craigmurray.co.uk

December 29, 2005

**See also >>this article on Cryptome’s mirror concerning UK torture

Craig Murray
Writer and broadcaster

“Damning documentary evidence unveiled. Dissident bloggers in coordinated exposé of UK government lies over torture.

As Britain’s outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is nowa prominent critic of Western policy in the region.

The British Foreign Office is now seeking to block publication of Craig Murray’s forthcoming book, which documents his time as Ambassador to Uzbekistan. The Foreign Office has demanded that Craig Murray remove all references to two especially damning British government documents, indicating that our government was knowingly receiving information extracted by the Uzbeks through torture, and return every copy that he has in his possession.

Craig Murray is refusing to do this. Instead, the documents are today being published simultaneously on blogs all around the world.

The first document contains the text of several telegrams that Craig Murray sent back to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was nonetheless ‘useful’.

The second document is the text of a legal opinion from the Foreign Office’s Michael Wood, arguing that the use by intelligence services of information extracted through torture does not constitute a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.”

>>Read on

Irelandclick.com

If there’s one New Year wish that this community is entitled to have granted, it’s for a police service that can truly be said to serve our people and which will, in turn, be supported by all.

PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde can say all he wants in defence and explanation of what his officers have been up to in past year and the years before that, but he can’t wish away the undeniable truth, and that is that the PSNI is as discredited in the eyes of nationalists and republicans as the RUC ever was.

The ordinary man and woman on the street may not know, and probably never will know, the entire truth of the Stormont ‘spy ring’ episode. But they do know that the evidence on which the case was built was found in the home of a man who was in the pay of the RUC/PSNI for 20 years. In an environment in which truth and honesty are in very short supply, that is one fact which is untarnished, it is a fact that tells us much, much more than any amount of self-serving rhetoric from the British government and its agents.

We are asked to accept as entirely normal that the PSNI will acquire and amass intelligence. After all, the argument goes, no police service can do its job properly without information, some of which is not easily accessible through normal police channels. This would all be well and good if the PSNI were using informants to pursue and arrest those criminal elements who are tightening their grip on this community’s throat. But when the PSNI uses it premier intelligence-gathering resource, Special Branch, to target a political party with catastrophic implications for a hard-won and historic political deal and its democratic outworkings, then Hugh Orde is in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks that nationalists and republicans will consider that acceptable. It is not, and as long as the PSNI continues to invest more energy in surveillance and skullduggery in this community than it does on protection and service, then it will continue to find itself reviled and rejected.

As if the whole Stormont charade were not reason enough for us to keep the PSNI at arm’s length, the year-long Northern Bank investigation is fast turning from a joke into a fiasco. None of the arrests and charges that we have witnessed thus far is likely to inspire confidence in the bemused observer, but the treatment of Chris Ward, the young Poleglass bank official who was held for eight days and interviewed on 50 separate occasions, was particularly desperate and shameful. Although it emerged in court that Mr Ward’s home had been bugged, as had an apartment he stayed in while on holiday, the PSNI admitted in court that the evidence against the accused is wholly circumstantial. For the record, the dictionary defines the phrase ‘circumstantial evidence’ as “evidence which is not positive nor direct, but which is gathered inferentially from the circumstances in the case.” So, even after their ‘suspect’ had his private life subjected to the most minute and sustained scrutiny, even after the traumatised young man was given the most prolonged and intensive grilling ever experienced by anyone in the North, the case gathered and presented to the court was rambling and inferential.
The dark days of the Diplock conveyor belt are gone, thank goodness.

They are gone not because the government or the police wants them gone, but because there is a new and vigorous young generation of lawyers out there who are not cowed or chilled by the awesome power of the state and its agencies and who see opposition to state injustice not as subversion but as their bounden duty. Which is why threadbare cases, fit-ups and cynical conspiracies do not automatically succeed the way they did in the past, but are instead subjected to the most intense and forensic professional scrutiny. That is why the Stormont house of cards collapsed; that is why those being targeted in the Northern Bank investigation will not go quietly.

Away from the whys and wherefores of Stormont and the Northern Bank, what characterised each case was the staggeringly cynical exploitation of the media by the PSNI spin machine. How easy the media is to manipulate is a question for another day perhaps. Mr Orde’s heart may soar at the sight of hordes of his officers camped outside another home on the teatime news, but for the residents of West Belfast it’s just the signal for another round of political posturing.

The IRA’s bold move in dumping its arms should have been the catalyst for a range of similarly progressive steps, not least a move away from the policing ways of the past. But what we’ve seen is elements within the PSNI stepping up their campaign to stymie political progress. If Mr Orde is serious about winning broad community support for policing, his priority in 2006 must be to neuter those within his force who contine to follow their own agenda.

Irelandclick.com

by Damian McCarney

A County Down Ulster Unionist councillor is standing by his claim that West Belfast is “depraved”.

Eddie Rea, a councillor in Killyleagh, made the shock comment in an interview with a local newspaper published last week. Mr Rea stood by his slur on the community this week when he spoke to the the Andersonstown News.

“That is what you would say if you drive through it. It’s graffiti and old untidiness and stuff. It is generally untidy and down in the heel. It is still running fairly high in unemployment.”

He said that he made the comments because South Down Sinn Féin MLA Caitríona Ruane had been speaking about the “regeneration of Ireland”.

Therefore Mr Rea sought to illustrate the futility of Sinn Fein’s economic policies in practice by focusing on West Belfast, the constituency of the President of the party sits.

“I would argue their ultra-socialistic viewpoints are not the way back.”
He does not believe that it is just West Belfast that is “depraved”, but also areas which have poor leadership.

“There are a hell of a lot of unionist areas that have not been led out of the depravity they have been living in… and there has not been good political leadership on the ground.”

When asked if he understood that West Belfast people might find it offensive that he described them as depraved, which is defined in the OED as “morally corrupt” he said, “You might find it offensive, but I’m trying to help. Would you waken up and smell the coffee? Start believing in yourselves.

“You don’t have to follow a semi-Marxist agenda. It’s leadership. If you put people who do not have the right economic strategy in as leaders – God help the people.”

Ironically Mr Rea only came into politics five years ago, after selling his textile company as the ailing textile market could not compete with the Marxist economy of China.

“It was bucked,” said Mr Rea, “thanks to the Chinese.”

Journalist:: Staff Reporter

Irelandclick.com

Kevin Morrison, Youth Project Co-ordinator with the Echo Project, writes about the escalating suicide crisis and what is being done to educate our schoolchildren

West Belfast, Belfast, in fact the entire island of Ireland, has been significantly affected by the issue of suicide and self-harm for as long as we can care to remember.

Only in recent years is the taboo nature of suicide receding and the issue being given more of a priority.

In recent years we have also seen a careful examination of the causes of suicide and different strategies and measures have emerged to address this killer in our midst.

The statistics of suicide are even more alarming when compared to other causes of death in our society.

Road traffic accidents have a brutal and sudden way of impacting on our lives.
The nature of the horrific injuries sustained and cause of death is very public and penetrating.

Death and injury caused by road traffic accidents, drink driving and stolen vehicles are a very public concern and worry, and one we often champion to resolve.

According to World Health Organization estimates, in the year 2000, approximately one million people died from suicide, and 10 to 20 times more people attempted suicide worldwide.
This represents one death every 40 seconds and one attempt every 3 seconds, on average.

This also indicates that more people are dying from suicide than in all of the armed conflicts around the world and, in many places, about the same or more than those dying from traffic accidents.

One response that has emerged to address suicide is a model of intervention from a Canadian Public Services Corporation called ‘LivingWorks.’

This organisation’s primary focus is to create learning experiences that help communities prevent suicide.

The model of intervention that has been introduced to Ireland in the past number of years (the first ever in the Twinbrook area) is called ASIST, Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training.

Over half a million people worldwide have been trained in ASIST, which equips people with the necessary skills to deliver first aid intervention to a person who is considering suicide.

The Colin Community Forum, through its Colin Area Youth Capacity Build Programme, was central in getting eight local people from across all sectors trained to deliver the ASIST workshops.

To date, over 100 people have been trained as suicide first aid interventionists in the Colin Area, with more workshops planned for the New Year.

These people have included health workers, youth workers, community activitists, counsellors, doctors and nurses, those bereaved through suicide and those who have attempted suicide.

In a groundbreaking and bold move, the Colin Area Youth Capacity Build, in partnership with the Falls Community Council, the Lynx Project, Echo Youth Project and St. Colm’s High School brought, for the first time ever, the ASIST Workshop into a school.

Students and teachers together shared experiences, emotions and attitudes and developed skills central to the model of intervention.

Through role-playing scenarios, simulations and group discussion the issue of suicide was no more taboo and brought to the fore of these people’s lives, some who only several weeks ago experienced the death of a past pupil through suicide.

The students were excellent and although initially reserved, they fully participated in all the components of the workshop.

The contributions from both students and teachers ensured that this workshop was a success.

In my opinion, more schools need to be as progressive as St Colm’s High School and be proactive in seeking to address what should not be a taboo or unspeakable subject.

Suicide has killed many, many people in our community, and we need to work collectively together in a co-ordinated and organised manner to tackle this tragic cause of loss of life in our midst.

For further information on ASIST Workshops in the forthcoming New Year you can contact Bill McComb or Kevin Morrison at the Colin Community Forum, 02890 604004.

Journalist:: Staff Reporter

Irelandclick.com

As 2005 comes to a close and Daily Ireland nears its landmark 300th edition, it’s time to thank investors, readers and supporters who made the birth and remarkable success of this republican newspaper possible.

Daily Ireland’s currency has been news, and to mark the end of the year with exclusive coverage of the Stormontgate and Spygate controversies is a great credit to the newspaper’s news team.

This week’s exclusive interview by our US correspondent Jim Dee with former Castlereagh holding centre chef Larry Zaitschek was picked up by our colleagues in all the main broadcast and print media while authoritative commentators from all walks of life have gone to our pages first to get an accurate assessment of the nationalist community’s reaction to the Spygate scandal.

The impact of Daily Ireland on the Irish media scene has been profound and impressive in 2005 with our editors, columnists and feature writers appearing in all the main broadcast media across the country — in the past week alone, Daily Ireland’s flag has been carried on RTÉ, Radio Ulster, Raidió na Gaeltachta and on almost every independent radio station in the country.

But it’s not only in government, political and media circles that the editorial comment and coverage of Daily Ireland is assessed but in every location where supporters of a United Ireland come together.

Through the platform of www.dailyireland.com we have added a totally new global dimension to news coverage from Ireland.

The addition of Dublin correspondent David Lynch to our news team and the opening of a new office in the capital has strengthened Daily Ireland’s national coverage and will be augmented in the New Year with the appointment of advertising agency representation in Dublin.
On a shoestring budget, our promotional teams have made Daily Ireland a household name and for their efforts were nominated for a prestigious marketing award in October.

They are already gearing up to leverage Jarlath Burns and our other sports commentators to ensure the paper continues to enjoy a high profile during the upcoming Championship season.

But the cornerstone of their campaign remains the subscription model — if you don’t have a subscription to Daily Ireland, go now to www.dailyireland.com and get one — which continues to enjoy strong support nationwide.

It’s not only in its editorial pages that Daily Ireland has been making the news, we’ve also broken ground in our legal challenges to funding blocks by British government agencies and remain confident that justice will be done — not to mention standing up to the bully-boy tactics of a certain government minister.

Thousands of pages of British government documents have now been accessed through discovery and the patterns of bias they reveal at the highest levels make for sorry reading seven years after the Good Friday Agreement promised equality for all.

Ultimately, our success is down to the support of our investors, especially in the US (where we have welcomed three new substantial backers to our second round of funding) and the backing of our readers, practical patriots who understand that a daily newspaper which tells the whole story is a vital building block in the new Ireland.

For that support, Daily Ireland says thank you, just as we thank this newspaper’s marvellous and unrivalled team.

We have been given a fair wind in the first 11 months — not least by many of our media colleagues — and we are poised for further progress in 2006, courtesy of your support.

Go raibh Nollaig faoi shéan is faoi mhaise agaibh uilig.

Journalist:: Máirtin Ó Muilleoir

Daily Ireland

Human rights group concerned security forces did nothing to prevent death

Ciarán Barnes

The PSNI’s Historical Enquiry Team is to probe the killing of a Special Branch and British military informer after having files on his death sent to it by a respected human rights organisation.
British Irish Rights Watch (BIRW) is concerned that the security services may have had prior knowledge that the IRA was planning to kill Johnny Dignam, but did nothing to prevent his execution.
According to BIRW, this information would have been passed to the British military by the alleged IRA double agent Stakeknife, who is reported to have been a member of the IRA’s internal security unit, which was responsible for killing informants.
The naked bodies of Mr Dignam and two friends, Gregory Burns and Aidan Starrs, were found within a ten-mile radius in south Armagh on July 1, 1992.
In an initial statement, the IRA said the Portadown men were killed because of their involvement in the murder of Mr Burns’ girlfriend, Margaret Perry, the previous year.
The statement said Ms Perry discovered Mr Burns was working as an informant and that, because of this, he had her killed by Mr Dignam and Mr Starrs.
In a second statement, the IRA said that after being arrested by the RUC in connection with the murder, Dignam and Starrs agreed to work for Special Branch.
The organisation also produced audio tapes of the men confessing their roles as informers prior to being shot.
In its last monthly report, BIRW expresses concerns not only about the murder of Dignam, but the deaths of Burns, Starrs and Ms Perry.
It notes that the PSNI’s Historic Enquiry Team is now responsible for investigating killings connected to the British military agent Stakeknife.
In light of this, BIRW director Jane Winter confirmed her organisation has sent a file on John Dignam to detectives.
She said: “BIRW is concerned that no one has ever been brought to book for any of these four murders, which may have been preventable owing to the prior knowledge by both army intelligence and Special Branch.”
At the beginning of 2005, the parents of Johnny Dignam, Pat and Irene Dignam, called for a public enquiry into claims their son was sacrificed in order to protect a British army double agent.
Speaking to a Sunday newspaper, Irene Dignam said: “I need to know if these allegations are true.
“If they are, then Johnny’s death could and should have been prevented.
“I want the truth. I want to know if the authorities abandoned my son, and let him be killed, in order to protect other individuals.”

Irish American Information Service

12/29/05 05:17 EST

Irish premier Bertie Ahern today said he hoped to see the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly and executive lifted in 2006, and “the earlier the better”.

Mr Ahern said he still hoped to see a united Ireland in his lifetime, but regarded peace and stability in the North as a more important objective.

Mr Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair are expected to start talks on the restoration of devolution with Northern Ireland’s political parties following the publication at the end of January of a report on IRA decommissioning.

The Taoiseach today made clear that, if the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) report backs up the IRA’s claim that they have put all their arms beyond use, he will push for a speedy return to power-sharing at Stormont.

No referendum on unification could practically be held in the North for at least a decade after the restoration of the Belfast Agreement institutions, which were suspended in 2002 amid claims of a republican spy ring at Stormont, he said.

Mr Ahern described the IRA’s announcement in July of a cessation of military activities, followed by the act of total decommissioning in September, as “hugely significant moves”.

“If the IMC state that that is credible, that it has happened, then it will allow Tony Blair and myself to try again to get the parties to enter into meaningful discussions that will hopefully lead to the restoration of the Northern Assembly and executive and the North-South bodies at some time during 2006, and the earlier the better,” he said.

Asked if he was hopeful of securing an agreement to enter power-sharing from the Assembly’s two largest parties, Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, Mr Ahern said: “All we can do is use our powers of persuasion on the strength of the case. The reality is we have moved Northern Ireland from a place of daily killing. It is now a more stable place.”

“That was done on the basis of the Good Friday Agreement… parties sharing power together on a cross- community basis, working to the agenda of the Good Friday Agreement for the betterment of the people of Northern Ireland,” Mr. Ahern said.

Asked whether he agreed with the assessment of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams that he would live to see Irish unification, Mr Ahern said: “Of course I would like to see a united Ireland in my lifetime. I don’t know whether I will or not. But what is more important is that we see peace and stability and people working together in Northern Ireland.”

The way I look at this is that it is not important that it happens in the short run. I have said that the constitutional issue in Northern Ireland is now fixed and change can only be made by the wishes of the people of the North.”

“To have that kind of election now or in the next few years would be entirely unhelpful. What happens in a decade’s time or later on is another thing. What we need now is to have the institutions working and then people can make their own judgment in their own time,” Ahern concluded.

Daily Ireland

**Will try posting here now, but please visit >>the alternate site for any posts missing from the past several hours

Irish government papers reveal fears that Belfast pogrom would follow British ‘disengagement’

Jarlath Kearney

Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave

Six months after the ending of the Ulster Workers Council strike in July 1974, the Irish government made top-secret contingency plans to accommodate up to 100,000 Northern refugees in the South.
The plans – which anticipated the need to hospitalise 1,000 seriously injured people – are detailed in papers from 1975 released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule.
During the height of the UWC strike in July 1974, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had drawn up short-lived plans for his government to ‘disengage’ from the North in a so-called ‘Doomsday’ scenario.
Following the success of the UWC strike in smashing the fledgling power-sharing executive agreed at the Sunningdale talks, the political conflict in the North degenerated quickly.
Northern republicans were also concerned about the possibility of loyalist pogroms similar to those of 1969. In 1974, the IRA’s Belfast Brigade O/C Brendan Hughes was captured in possession of detailed plans for the widespread defence of Catholic communities across the city.
The IRA plans were alleged to include the option of razing whole streets to the ground in order to create buffer zones at interfaces.
The new papers released by the National Archives now confirm that the Irish government was also preparing for a serious escalation in the conflict throughout the North.
Food, bedding and medical supplies were all stockpiled in the South as part of the preparations.

Among the Irish government plans prepared in 1975 was an option to transport 100,000 refugees from Belfast to the South within four days.
Up to 6,000 of the refugees would have been accommodated at Mosney holiday camp, and the Department of Health was prepared to open an emergency headquarters in Dublin at the Customs House. 1,000 seriously wounded people would have been hospitalised at facilities around the border counties and in Dublin.
However, the plans also reveal that Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave personally over-ruled the Department of Defence’s advice by halving the contingency planning in terms of scale. This meant the Irish government only intended purchasing enough supplies for 50,000 potential refugees.
“It was considered that the placing of orders on that scale would not lead to any significant degree of speculation about the purpose of the orders and would avoid the possible adverse consequences,” a confidential memo to the Taoiseach recorded. Despite apparent budget considerations restricting the resources available to fund the plan, the government also ruled out asking the International Committee of the Red Cross for assistance to prevent any perception that Ireland was “in a state of war”.
The government feared that any leaking of the top-secret contingency plans could destabilise the political situation in the North. For that reason, knowledge of the plans was confined to a small number of government ministers, officials and just two health board chief executives.
However, by April 2005, there were just enough blankets to cope with 500 refugees and it was estimated that supplies for 50,000 would take at least six months to acquire.
In the memo to Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, the urgency of implementing the plans was stressed:
“The Government would be subjected to considerable criticism, at a time when maintenance of its authority and of support for its policies was of the highest importance, while the refugees could suffer great hardship.”
The memo also highlighted the positive economic benefit that proceeding with orders for the contingency plans could generate:
“Orders for the quantity of the blankets involved would represent a significant amount of business for the woollen mills which would help to mitigate current employment difficulties.”
Despite noting that the Diocese of Down and Connor had already commenced its own programme of stockpiling supplies provided by the North’s Health Department, the Irish government ruled out any possibility of providing supplies directly to people on the ground in the North.
“The implications of trying to provide this type of protection inside Northern Ireland would be extremely serious,” the memo to the Taoiseach stated.

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FT.com

By Jimmy Burns
Published: December 29 2005 02:00

Support for the IRA in the US was one of the prime concerns of British officials charged with dealing with Northern Ireland affairs in the mid-1970s.

In early 1975, British intelligence helped provide the US Federal Bureau of Investigation with an updated blacklist of suspected IRA members, whose US visa applications were then turned down.

British officials also considered encouraging moderate Irish Catholic politicians to raise funds in the US, as a way of diverting funds away from Irish Republicanism. But within Whitehall it was generally accepted such efforts had limited impact on the steady support the IRA enjoyed among some Irish-Americans, with UK officials estimating up to a third of the organisation’s income was being raised in the US.

A Northern Ireland Office official wrote in a memo to a Foreign Office colleague on June 4 1975: “Many American citizens, not particularly well informed (or indeed much concerned) about Northern Ireland, would be similarly bamboozled by the apparent unity of Irish organisations in the US in subscribing to a policy of getting the British out of Northern Ireland.”

One of the main concerns of British officials was the extent to which the Irish National Caucus - an informal network of pro-Irish Republican Americans - might extend its influence within the US Congress and the US media.

In Washington, British embassy officials warned that once Sinn Féin, the IRA’s political wing, had “gained respectability or power” in the South [of Ireland], then the Irish National Caucus “would become an organisation to be taken seriously both on Capitol Hill and in the country at large”.

Meanwhile, Whitehall paranoia was stirred by the decision of Pope Paul VI to make a saint of Oliver Plunkett, an Irish Catholic archbishop executed in the 17th century for alleged treason against the British state.

Kenneth Jones, an official with the Foreign Office’s western European department, warned in a memo dated April 23 1975 that the planned canonisation was politically a “source of greater embarrassment” to the government than had been the canonisation of 40 Catholic martyrs five years earlier. As supporting evidence, he quoted an Irish Catholic priest who had drawn an analogy between Bishop Plunkett’s persecution and the “squalor of British internment procedures” involving IRA suspects.

Desmond Crawley, head of the British delegation to the Vatican, advised that the government should keep a low profile on the Plunkett affair. The canonisation went ahead with the presence of the Pope, and senior Irish government figures. The Vatican publicised the event as an example of ecumenical reconciliation.