BRITAIN'S WAR ON MARIAN PRICE

#MarianPrice  #freemarianprice

On the same day the Parker report was published on 2 March 1972, the United Kingdom Prime Minister stated in Parliament, that its torture techniques in British Occupied Ireland would not be used ever again in future. The Prime Minister's statement, directives expressly prohibiting the use of the techniques, whether singly or in combination, were then issued to their forces by the Government.

At a hearing before British Courts on 8 February 1977, the British Attorney-General declared that the 'five techniques' would not in any circumstances be reintroduced either collectively or individually.

The Irish Government referred to the Commission of International Human Rights in Strasbourg, cases of persons submitted to the five techniques during interrogation, at the unidentified centre or centres between 11 and 17 August 1971.

In a recent article SPOOKY BIZARRE BRITISH SECRET EXPERIMENTS the details of the torture of Marian Price were covered, which clearly demonstrates the British have broken their promises and undertakings to the international community with regard to their torture. They have also re-introduced internment without trial in various disguise.

The Republic of Ireland v. The United Kingdom

Before the European Court of Human Rights

18 January 1978

The British Government introduced special powers of arrest and detention without trial, which were widely known as internment without trial.The Government of the Republic of Ireland brought an application before the Commission of International Human Rights in Strasbourg (ii) that various interrogation practices--in particular the so-called 'five techniques', which included wall- standing, hooding and deprivation of sleep and food--and other practices to which suspects were subjected amounted to torture and inhuman or degrading treatment contrary to Article 3...The Commission unanimously found that the five techniques did constitute a practice of torture and that other practices amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment






UK complicity in unlawful treatment of detainees 'was institutional'

Former army legal adviser tells annual Baha Mousa memorial lecture how he was gagged by MoD after criticising officials

• il

• Richard Norton-Taylor
• The Guardian, Thursday 18 October 2012 20.00 BST

Lt Col Nicholas Mercer said he was banned from speaking to journalists during the Baha Mousa court martial. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

The former chief legal adviser to the army in Iraq has said the UK's complicity in the unlawful treatment of detainees was "institutional" and must be wiped out to prevent future abuses by British troops.

Colonel Nicholas Mercer described how he was gagged by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) after he criticised senior British commanders and MoD officials in the case of Baha Mousa, the Basra hotel worker was died in September 2003 while in the custody of British troops.

Giving the annual Baha Mousa memorial lecture, Mercer said his attempts to set up independent judicial monitoring of the treatment of detainees were blocked by the MoD. Britain's obligations under domestic and international law were routinely ignored, he added.

"Apply the rule of law and this [abuse] will all go away, it is as simple as that", Mercer said. He called on "all public servants, lawyers, professional men and women" to refuse to be part of "this shameful conduct" and end "torture by the state".

Mercer, who is now a Church of England vicar, recalled how in May 2003 – four months before Mousa's death – he drew up an order, known as a 'Frago' in which he referred to "a number of deaths" of individuals in the custody of British soldiers. He stated: "The detained person should be treated with humanity and dignity at all times. They should not be assaulted. They should be provided with water in all cases and food if they are detained for longer. If they need to be restrained then this should only be affected were absolutely necessary and using the minimum force required. Under no circumstances should their faces be covered as this might impair breathing. Medical assistance should be close to hand at all times."

Mercer said no action was taken by UK commanders at the permanent joint headquarters in Northwood, north-west London, in response to his order.

Mercer said that after he gave evidence to the Baha Mousa court martial (where one defendant, a corporal, pleaded guilty, while the others were acquitted for lack of available evidence), he was banned from speaking to any lawyer who was not in the army, and to journalists.

Any speeches he made had to be "checked and expurgated so a 'correct' version could be delivered". He also said he was told by the MoD that he was "not a suitable person" to give lectures on how human rights bound troops on operations abroad.

Price Sisters/Brave Frank Stagg

Theresa Villiers Caught Pants Down on Throne of British Occupied Ireland

Well I never, found the time to welcome Ms. Theresa Villiers, to the island of Ireland, where I was born and raised in my Irish community. She is of course most welcome, in a private capacity. However this most certainly does not extend, to her capacity of being an English person, inheriting the unelected, aristocratic role of  Vice Royal in British Occupied Ireland, as a direct descendant of  her not so great grandfather, George William Frederick Villiers, 1800-1870, Fourth Earl of Clarendon, who also presided as Vice Royal of Ireland, 1847–52 and oversaw the war crime of British ethnic cleansing of 6 million native Irish lives. As a result, Villiers is regarded by the British as the poshest surname of any royal family, having ruled Ireland for her Majesty.

Ms Villiers boasts of law degrees from Bristol and Oxford and of working as a barrister and lecturer in law, at no less than the King's College London 1994-1999 before being elected as MEP for London in 1999. In fact her curriculum vitae says, she has an LLB (First Class Hons.), Bristol University (1990); BCL (Hons.), Oxford University (1991). Barrister-at-law, Inner Temple and Inns of Court School of Law. Barrister, Lincoln's Inn (1992-1994). Lecturer in law, King's College London (1994-1999).

Ms Villiers is also a Member of the governing board of the Conservative Party 2001-2002, when she was Deputy Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament 2001-2002. Areas of special interest to Ms Villiers include, finance and campaigning against the Euro and the European Constitution. So obviously the lady is no slouch and its clear for all to see, that her career will no doubt emulate the infamous Baroness Thatcher, with her royal true blue pedigree. We would hope then, with her illustrious legal credentials, she would be aware of the serious nature and penalties, for anyone engaged in perverting the course of justice, even in such a colonial outpost as British Occupied Ireland.

So let's go back a bit shall we, to ensure Ms Villiers does not forget, that her ignoble predecessor, Owen Paterson, who sent the traditional Irish republican, Marian Price back to jail, because, he said, she breached the terms of the licence on which she had been released in 1980 from a life sentence 40 years ago, for the March 1973 Provisional bombing of the Old Bailey in London, scene of numerous miscarriages of injustice, in open court, of many Irish innocents, such as the Guildford Four and the Birmingham six, to name but a few.

I'm sure Ms Villiers is quite familiar with these cases, it was the talk of London barristers as they supped, for many a year, while the innocent Irish served their fabricated sentences, handed down in open court. In today's secret courts, of secret evidence, that even the accused in not even made aware, it would be much easier to brush British injustice, under their very deep pile carpets and throw away the keys,without being responsible or answerable to anyone.


Now, Marian Price's lawyers insist, that she had been freed by Royal pardon, not on licence, and that Paterson doesn't have the authority to overrule a royal pardon. They have demanded production of the document, so that its terms can be established but Ms Villier's predecessor said, that the only copy has been lost or shredded. This the first and only time, that this has happened. Patrick Ramsey, a Social Democratic Labour member of the elected British Assembly put in place as a result of a peace process, wrote to Ms. Villiers predecessor about this "lost" pardon and formally in his elected capacity asked;

-- Where would Mrs. Price-McGlinchey's pardon have been held?

-- How many staff are currently seeking the document and in what departments?

-- Are those looking for it doing so on a full-time basis, if not, why not?

-- Has the Northern Ireland Office received comment from the judiciary on the apparent loss of the document?

-- How many Royal Prerogative's have been lost (or destroyed) that the government has record of?

-- Who is ultimately responsible for the care and maintenance of the building where these documents are kept?

-- What communication have you personally had with this person/Department?

-- Can you confirm the Department is still seeking the document and will do so until it is found?

Again the unelected English Vice royal contemptuously dismissed the elected Irish assembly member's inquiry, the fruits of a Peace Process, after 40 years of war, stating that "unfortunately the Royal Prerogative of Mercy was not recovered but had no bearing on current circumstances. Patterson went even further and demanded, the local elected Assembly be downsized and it's 'peace process' structures be dismantled, as he regarded it simply as a talking shop, that interfered with unelected, Vice Royal English rule in Ireland.

As Eamonn McCann, the respected cross community writer put it so aptly in the Belfast Telegraph, there are many people - by no means all of them sympathetic to Marian Price's politics - who are quite prepared to disbelieve this. Others will find it impossible to believe, that a Secretary of State could supply incorrect and misleading information in a fraught and sensitive case. But, oh yes, he could.

Speaking of Mr Justice Girvan's handling of the matter, another predecessor of Ms Villiers, Peter Hain scoffed that "It wouldn't have happened anywhere else in the UK". Right enough. If it had happened anywhere else, Hain would have been run out of public life.But this is wild and wacky northern Ireland, where normal rules don't apply, where due process is optional and, at the whim of a politician, where anything goes."

Now Ms Villiers, may I humbly suggest, as a citizen of the Irish republic, not a commoner the property of you or Her other Majesty, that you may wish to consider the above facts, before further matters in this sordid, odious, affair come to light, should you wish to pursue your career sucessfully, in the footsteps, of your infamous former leader, Margaret Thatcher, herself responsible for the deaths of 10 Irish political prisoners, who were actually on hunger strike for shorter periods, than Marian Price, who was force fed, before they were murdered. Your predecessor Pervert Paterson, as he became affectionately known, tallyhomed to your native London, before these foxy chickens came home to roost. You have been handed a poisoned chalice by perfidious colleagues of Albion, unhappy with some of  your dealings with other anonymous bureaucrats and departments.

Lest your minions who have.. ahem... shredded or mislaid the Royal Prerogatives in this instance, have failed to properly update you on the real facts of this matter, they are as follows;

• Marian has been kept in solitary confinement in a ‘male’ high security prison
• She is effectively interned without a trial, sentence, or release date.
• She has not been given any timescale for any investigation.
• She has not been allowed to see the evidence that the state claims to have
• Her release has been ordered on two occasions by judges. However, on both occasions the secretary of state has overruled those decisions.
• The secretary of state claimed he ‘revoked Marian’s license’. This is despite Marian never being released on license. She was given a Royal Pardon.
• Marian’s Royal Pardon has ‘gone missing’ from the home office (the only time in history). The secretary of state has taken the view that unless a paper copy can be located – it must be assumed that she does not have one.
• Despite no ‘license’ existing for her release from prison in 1980, it is the non-existent license that is being used to keep her in prison.
• She can only be released by Theresa Villiers the current Secretary of State responsible despite her protestations

The charges against Marian Price were thrown out of their own British courts, for lack of evidence by a judge, the last time she appeared and now the very same charges have been re-instated against Marian again in a British judicial system, that cannot provide any tangible evidence, in a transparent, forthright manner, as to the reason for her internment and torture.

It would be such a shame for me, as an admirer of beautiful women, to see you removed from your illustrious throne, such as the above or be a scapegoatess of the empire and perhaps have you thrown like Marian, into some dungeon of solitary confinement, tortured daily by bigoted or sectarian sadists, who see it as a blood sport in the tradition of Melton Mowbray the 'Pride of the Shires,' the “it” place for the English fox hunting heritage of the blood sport of your ancestors and family. Hopefully I will not have to to return to this subject again in further detail in the future, with the Big Spirit willing and a modicum of political sanity, from those who have the luxury of being born with a silver spoon in their mouth and given the wherewithal to know better.

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister to Accept Parliamentary Report on Marian Price

 international | rights and freedoms | news report  Thursday October 18, 2012 11:21 by BrianClarkeNUJ - AllVoices 

Marian Price Irish Parliamentary Visit

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister to Accept Parliamentary Report of Group Visit to Marian Price

According to the Irish Times of 18/10/12

Irish Parliamentary Group Visit to Marian Price

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister to accept Parliamentary report of Group Visiting Marian Price

According to the Irish Times of 18/10/12

"The Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore said he would accept a report from an Oireachtas group planning to visit jailed republican Marian Price in two weeks.

Ms Price was detained in May 2011, after the licence on which she had been released in 1980 for IRA bombings in London was revoked.

Mr Gilmore said he had raised the case with former secretary of state for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson on several occasions and, more recently, with the current holder of the office, Theresa Villiers.

“The Taoiseach also took the opportunity to raise the matter with secretary of state Villiers when he met her on October 2nd,” Mr Gilmore added.

“I will continue to raise this case with the British government and to convey my concerns, which are shared by all sides of this House, to them and to relevant Northern Ireland authorities.”

Mr Gilmore was replying to ULA TD Clare Daly, who said the treatment of Ms Price had been deemed to be tantamount to torture by the UN.

“Her medical treatment is not the best and does not adhere to various standards,” she added.

Ms. Daly said she was “an extremely ill woman who represents no danger to the public whatsoever and the longer she is incarcerated in solitary confinement and denied the support she needs, the worse her condition will get”.

Ms Daly suggested that Mr Gilmore join a number of TDs who are planning to visit Ms Price in two weeks.

Mr Gilmore said he was aware a parliamentary group intended to visit her and he would be happy to hear a report when it returned."

Related Link: http://irishblog-brianclarkenuj.blogspot.com/

SONG FOR MARIAN PRICE

IRISH TIMES ECONOMIC DEBATE

'We are the silent poverty class . . . there is absolutely no help and no one is listening' - IRISH TIMES    LINK

"We are not entitled to a grant or any help but the reality is that we have nothing," says a garda's wife who wrote to a number of politicians last week to outline her family's day-to-day struggle.Photograph: Getty Images

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• ‘There are weeks I can’t put food on the table’ | 17/10/2012

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KATHY SHERIDAN

“BEFORE WE start”, said the woman from the Money Advice and Budgeting Service (Mabs), “you should know you’re the seventh guard in here in 10 days.” Seated in front of her were a despairing Garda sergeant and his wife. The Mabs adviser was attempting to reassure them that they were not alone.

Colm and Jean (not their real names) had been floundering for a while. Over several years, Jean had been in contact with this reporter, describing the struggle of people on so-called middle incomes: “We are the silent poverty class. We’re not the kind to ring Joe Duffy or give our names but I’m sure there are thousands like us. There is absolutely no help and no one listening . . .”

Last week, in desperation, she wrote a letter to a number of politicians, including Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar, “mainly because every time I hear him on the radio, he seems to be very anti-public service – as are all his backbench Fine Gael colleagues”.

In the letter, some details of her family circumstances were changed to protect her husband’s identity. However, The Irish Times has since met her and established the facts to its satisfaction.

The couple’s financial problems had been brewing for about seven years, since they bought a well-located but modest, four-bed semi-detached house with an extra bedroom and a better choice of schools for their children. “It was when prices were at their peak . . . We didn’t know that,” she says.

Now, after computing the household figures, the Mabs adviser was focusing on the mortgage of nearly €1,400 a month. Unless Colm started selling impounded drugs, she joked, they would have to seek help from St Vincent de Paul. She would be happy to refer them. In her long, neat columns of income and outgoings, the family’s “available income” per week came to minus €286.36. The mortgage is over the next 25 years and her husband is over 50, Jean wrote.

“ . . . Interest rates are only going to go one way and that’s up . . . I am scared for our children’s future and ours. There are weeks when I can’t put food on the table . . . To the outsider, we look like we have it all . . . Inside we are having a nightmare.

“Whilst we pay our mortgage every month we have absolutely no extra cash at all after all the bills are paid. We live in constant terror of the washing machine breaking down or the car”, she wrote.

“If it wasn’t for my mother bailing us out all the time, we would be right under,” she added.

The effect of constant scrimping and worry leaches into every crevice of family life. There are what she calls “cornflakes days”, when they eat nothing else. There is the pain of seeing their eldest child make it to a prestigious third-level course, but unable to register because they can’t assemble the fees: “Imagine how upsetting that is?”

The younger children are resigned to the fact that they can’t attend birthday parties because the standard €20 gift is way beyond the family’s means.

“We have no savings, no holiday home, no fancy cars,” she wrote. “We have never done anything to put ourselves at risk, only move house to have an extra bedroom . . . We are dying a slow death. We go nowhere.”

Piano or swimming lessons, are unthinkable. She pays the TV licence in dribs and drabs to keep out of the courts. A repair man arrives and gives an estimate of €100 to fix the dishwasher. Later, sitting in the unheated house, she says her parents, a couple on “ordinary pensions”, will probably pay for the dishwasher and the college fees.

How can this happen to a family with an annual income of about €75,000 gross (including overtime and allowances) last year? To a Garda officer in possession of that holy grail of the permanent, pensionable, public sector job? To a family that didn’t party, or buy the Spanish villa, that always paid its bills on time and made sacrifices to maintain the health insurance payments? The payslip is revealing. The health insurance payment to the Garda scheme is €75 a week. The pension-related payments amount to even more.

Some years ago, they prudently joined the Garda credit union’s billpay scheme by which all their bills – including the mortgage – were calculated on a budget plan, and €528 a week deducted at source to pay them (identified as “St Raph BV” on the payslip).

However, price rises in gas, petrol and electricity mean the sum is no longer sufficient to cover the bills. Garda overtime is not available anymore, they say, and the allowances are under threat. They know that the €77.06 weekly rent allowance (designed to cover the cost of gardaí being obliged to live away from their home area), will probably be a target of the cuts.

After six years’ service as a sergeant, the basic salary before allowances is €51,084 but clearly, their day-to-day living expenses have come to depend on the allowances and child benefit. Not featured in the payslip is a payment of €500 a month, after tax, to cover unsocial hours. For Colm, this is compensation for six consecutive nights a month of 10-hour duty, plus Saturday and Sunday work.

After all deductions, he is left with about €109.22 net on his weekly payslip to cover all other costs. Their great fear now is of losing any of those allowances, which Jean describes as a lifeline. If the rent allowance was cut, for example, he would be left with about €30 on his payslip in an average week to cover essential outgoings.

The picture painted by the Mabs adviser is not quite as cheerful. She calculated the family’s net pay and child benefit total at €807.37. After totting up the mortgage payment and items such as fuel, food, clothing and footwear, education/medical/ transport, bin charges etc, she saw no way of getting their outgoings below €1,100 a week.

Seven years ago, said Jean, the price of their new house included €36,000 stamp duty. “And now they are coming after us for property tax and child benefit cuts . . . We are not entitled to a grant or any help . . . At least if I was on social welfare, my [child] would get a grant for college, I would get the interest paid on my mortgage and I would get medical cards. At the moment, I can’t afford to bring my children to the doctor.”

She wonders in the letter how they can be expected to give more, concluding: “We are a sinking ship and nobody is throwing a rope.”

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BrianClarkeNUJ

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BrianClarkeNUJ

The solution to Ireland's problems is very simple but non one in Ireland wants to listen.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32... There is more than enough for everyone in Ireland to have a quality life its just that the banksters have Irish people at each others throats instead of the island being united together to solve their problems like Iceland

Wednesday, October 17, 2012, 17:14:31

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BrianOCinneide

I would say that the problem here is the bank that lent them the money for the house in the first place. The courts should be able to reduce the mortgage repayments to what the mortgagee is able to pay.
Furthermore let the begrudgers stop complaining about the Public Service. Where would they be without the gardai and other civil servants?

17 Minutes Ago

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marsbillie

Without wishing to sound mean, this article I guess sums up the differences between wants and needs in modern society. The emphasis on a broken dishwasher is staggering. I know people living on 4 times less who have managed for years, ask a foreign national whom came to this country. It is also rather insightful that Public servants must have their kids in college. This is truly a money management and planning, or lack thereof issue, hence MABS. Move along. There are people more deserving.

StephenDifc likes this.

21 Minutes Ago

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StephenDifc

75,000 gross? Are you having a laugh? Maybe it is a money management problem? For example: "Estimate of €100 to fix the dishwasher" How much is a sponge, a bottle of fairy and asking the kids to do it?

BrianOCinneide and StephenDifc like this.

24 Minutes Ago

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BrianOCinneide

Like foreigners, eh?

16 Minutes Ago

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SmellybeardM

Tough but fair.

a well-located but modest, four-bed semi-detached house with an extra bedroom and a better choice of schools for their children.

On a basic of 51k?

StephenDifc likes this.

Top Economists: Iceland Did It Right … And Everyone Else Is Doing It Wrong

Iceland Shows the Way

By WashingtonsBlog 
August 25, 2012 "Information Clearing House" ---- Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz notes:

What Iceland did was right. It would have been wrong to burden future generations with the mistakes of the financial system.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes:

What [Iceland's recovery] demonstrated was the … case for letting creditors of private banks gone wild eat the losses.

Krugman also says:

A funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.

Krugman is right.  Letting the banks go bust – instead of perpetually bailing them out – is the right way to go.

We’ve previously noted:

Iceland told the banks to pound sand. And Iceland’s economy is doing much better than virtually all of the countries which have let the banks push them around.

Bloomberg reports:

Iceland holds some key lessons for nations trying to survive bailouts after the island’s approach to its rescue led to a “surprisingly” strong recovery, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief to the country said.

Iceland’s commitment to its program, a decision to push losses on to bondholders instead of taxpayers and the safeguarding of a welfare system that shielded the unemployed from penury helped propel the nation from collapse toward recovery, according to the Washington-based fund.

***

Iceland refused to protect creditors in its banks, which failed in 2008 after their debts bloated to 10 times the size of the economy.

The IMF’s point about bondholders is an important one:  the failure to force a haircut on the bondholders is dooming the U.S. and Europe to economic doldrums.

The IMF notes:

[The] decision not to make taxpayers liable for bank losses was right, economists say.

In other words, as IMF put it:

Key to Iceland’s recovery was [a] program [which] sought to ensure that the restructuring of the banks would not require Icelandic taxpayers to shoulder excessive private sector losses.

Icenews points out:

Experts continue to praise Iceland’s recovery success after the country’s bank bailouts of 2008.

Unlike the US and several countries in the eurozone, Iceland allowed its banking system to fail in the global economic downturn and put the burden on the industry’s creditors rather than taxpayers.

***

The rebound continues to wow officials, including International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, who recently referred to the Icelandic recovery as “impressive”. And experts continue to reiterate that European officials should look to Iceland for lessons regarding austerity measures and similar issues.

Barry Ritholtz noted last year:

Rather than bailout the banks — Iceland could not have done so even if they wanted to — they guaranteed deposits (the way our FDIC does), and let the normal capitalistic process of failure run its course.

They are now much much better for it than the countries like the US and Ireland who did not.

Bloomberg pointed out February 2011:

Unlike other nations, including the U.S. and Ireland, which injected billions of dollars of capital into their financial institutions to keep them afloat, Iceland placed its biggest lenders in receivership. It chose not to protect creditors of the country’s banks, whose assets had ballooned to $209 billion, 11 times gross domestic product.

***

“Iceland did the right thing … creditors, not the taxpayers, shouldered the losses of banks,” says Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, an economics professor at Columbia University in New York. “Ireland’s done all the wrong things, on the other hand. That’s probably the worst model.”

Ireland guaranteed all the liabilities of its banks when they ran into trouble and has been injecting capital — 46 billion euros ($64 billion) so far — to prop them up. That brought the country to the brink of ruin, forcing it to accept a rescue package from the European Union in December.

***

Countries with larger banking systems can follow Iceland’s example, says Adriaan van der Knaap, a managing director at UBS AG.

“It wouldn’t upset the financial system,” says Van der Knaap, who has advised Iceland’s bank resolution committees.

***

Arni Pall Arnason, 44, Iceland’s minister of economic affairs, says the decision to make debt holders share the pain saved the country’s future.

“If we’d guaranteed all the banks’ liabilities, we’d be in the same situation as Ireland,” says Arnason, whose Social Democratic Alliance was a junior coalition partner in the Haarde government.

***

“In the beginning, banks and other financial institutions in Europe were telling us, ‘Never again will we lend to you,’” Einarsdottir says. “Then it was 10 years, then 5. Now they say they might soon be ready to lend again.”

And Iceland’s prosecution of white collar fraud played a big part in its recovery:

[The U.S. and Europe have thwarted white collar fraud investigations ... let alone prosecutions.] On the other hand, Iceland has prosecuted the fraudster bank heads (and here and here) and their former prime minister, and their economy is recovering nicely … because trust is being restored in the financial system.

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