BRIT SINN FEIN MI5 SOCK PUPPETS

BRIT SINN FEIN ARE MI5 SOCK PUPPETS

Amid leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, senior intelligence source reveals worries were voiced in 2008

Senior figures inside British intelligence have been alarmed by GCHQ‘s (Government Communications Headquarters) secret decision to tap into transatlantic cables in order to engage in the bulk interception of phone calls and internet traffic.

According to one source who has been directly involved in GCHQ operations, concerns were expressed when the project was being discussed internally in 2008: “We felt we were starting to overstep the mark with some of it. People from MI5 were complaining that they were going too far from a civil liberties perspective … We all had reservations about it, because we all thought: ‘If this was used against us, we wouldn’t stand a chance’.”


The Guardian revealed on Friday that GCHQ has placed more than 200 probes on transatlantic cables and is processing 600m “telephone events” a day as well as up to 39m gigabytes of internet traffic. Using a programme codenamed Tempora, it can store and analyse voice recordings, the content of emails, entries on Facebook, the use of websites as well as the “metadata” which records who has contacted who. The programme is shared with GCHQ’s American partner, the National Security Agency.


Interviews with the UK source and the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden raise questions about whether the programme:


■ Exploits existing law which was passed by parliament without any anticipation that it would be used for this purpose.


■ For the first time allows GCHQ to process bulk internal UK traffic which is routed overseas via these cables.


■ Allows the NSA to engage in bulk intercepts of internal US traffic which would be forbidden in its own territory.


■ Functions with no effective oversight.


The key law is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Ripa, which requires the home secretary or foreign secretary to sign warrants for the interception of the communications of defined targets. But the law also allows the foreign secretary to sign certificates that authorise GCHQ to trawl for broad categories of information on condition that one end of the communication is outside the UK.


According to the UK source: “Not so long ago, this was all about attaching crocodile clips to copper wires. And it was all about voice. Now, it’s about the internet – massive scale – but still using the same law that was devised for crocodile clips. Ripa was primily designed for voice, not for this level of interception. They are going round Ripa. The legislation doesn’t exist for this. They are using old legislation and adapting it.”

Truth is Treason    in Britain's Empire of Lies

Take the latest disclosure that the Saudis tried to bribe Russia into abandoning its long-time ally, Syria. Given their own venal form of feudal rule, the Saudis seem to think that everyone else can be bought at a price. Apparently, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan dangled a $15-billion arms deal in front of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin if the latter would jettison his country’s strategic alliance with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. 

From past Saudi arms deals with British Premier Margaret Thatcher, involving multi-million-dollar bribery, kickbacks and other corruption, it is a fair bet that Prince Bandar also gave a nod and a wink for personal funds to be arranged for President Putin. To his credit though, Putin reportedly rebuffed any such treachery with the Saudis.

But what is significant here is that the disclosure of this sleazy business - thanks to Saudi unintelligence - represents a fatal gaffe for the whole Western-coordinated conspiracy against Syria.

For the past two years, the US, Britain and France have sedulously contrived a narrative that they are supporting “a pro-democracy uprising” in Syria. In this “noble endeavor”, the purportedly law-abiding and human-rights-upholding Western states are ostensibly supporting “freedom-loving rebels” out of the sheer goodness of their hearts.

In one fell-swoop, however, the Saudi gaffe-machine has blown a giant hole in the Western narrative over Syria. This is not the first time that the Saudi loose cannon has swung around on its Western patrons. A few months back, a Saudi “thinker” close to the House of Saud let it slip to the media that a top concern motivating Riyadh’s interference in Syria was to neutralize the regional influence of Iran.

In the meeting between Prince Bandar and Vladimir Putin, the Saudi spy chief went on to say that “whatever regime comes after” Assad will be “completely” in Saudi hands.

So, there you have it. It’s not about supporting democracy in Syria. It’s about installing a regime in Damascus that will be under the boot of Riyadh, which in turn, means that any such regime will be under the geopolitical control of Washington and its allies, and thus aligned in the imperialist axis of antagonism against Tehran.

Of course, astute observers are already aware of the Western criminal conspiracy against Syria, and we should know this anyway from the preposterous notion that feudal-style Persian Gulf dictators are claiming to champion the cause of democracy in Syria.

Nevertheless, it is valuable when this conspiracy is exposed and admitted to by the co-conspirators themselves. Western political leaders, diplomats and media tend to be more savvy in the art of sophistry and deception. We can analyze and identify their criminal agenda, but it is rare to uncover an admission. But the reliably hapless Saudi rulers have done just that in their bribery attempt with Russia’s Putin.

Not only that, but in the same encounter Prince Bandar revealed much more about the criminal collusion against Syria. Another sweetener offered to Putin by the Saudis was that “Saudi Arabia would not sign any contracts damaging Russian interests by allowing [Persian] Gulf countries to transport gas across Syria to Europe”.

Prince Bandar, in his zeal to grease Putin’s hand, inadvertently tells the world of a major strategic reason why the Persian Gulf monarchs are so keenly sponsoring criminal regime change in Syria. Apart from isolating Iran, there is evidently an important oil and gas incentive. It’s worth reading Bandar’s words again: “Saudi Arabia would not sign any contracts damaging Russian interests by allowing [Persian] Gulf countries to transport its gas across Syria to Europe”.

It has been speculated before that the Persian Gulf oil and gas sheikhdoms want to obviate the narrow Strait of Hormuz on the eastern side of the Gulf through which most of their hydrocarbons are transported - some 17 million barrels of crude every day or nearly 20 per cent of the world’s daily total. Safe passage through the Strait is the gift of Iran, which controls most of the territorial waters. The Persian Gulf Arab dictators and their Western patrons know that if Iran is antagonized too far, then this maritime lifeline can be cut off and with that the petrodollar capitalist world economy will be sunk.

Because of this strategic vulnerability, it seems that the Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis want an alternative oil and gas supply route out of the Persian Gulf, to the North West. Syria’s land offers a prime route for this Arab oil and gas to the Mediterranean and thence to the vast market of Europe. This would get the House of Saud and its cronies off the hook with regard to dependency on Iranian goodwill;
and, further, the newfound geopolitical freedom would allow these adversaries to adopt an even more bellicose line towards Tehran - something that Washington and its allies would gladly approve of.

Prince Bandar’s admission in his meeting with Putin, held at the end of July, attests to this plan of the Persian Gulf sheikdoms breaking out of the Straits of Hormuz straitjacket via the Levantine territory of Syria. For the Arab monarchs to achieve that, they have to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad - a close ally of both Russia and Iran. That goal, by Bandar’s own admission, is one more explanation for why the Arab dictators have funneled at least $100 million to the mercenaries fighting in Syria to topple Assad. The latest expenditure was reportedly $50 million, spent by Saudi Arabia to buy weapons from Israel for supply to the militants. Most of those weapons are going to the Al Qaeda groups, such as Al Nusrah Front and Islamic State of Iraq and Shams.

Moreover, when Putin repudiated the Saudi bribery, it is reported that Prince Bandar then told Russian officials “the only option left in Syria is a military one - and that they should forget about the Geneva-2 international peace conference because the opposition would not attend”.

In other words, the Saudis are self-incriminating by openly declaring more state terrorism on behalf of the Western regime change plot against President Assad.

In this way, the Western propaganda façade over Syria is exploded more than ever by Saudi “intelligence”. The agenda is driven solely by geopolitics and oil and gas resources, involving state-sponsored terrorism to achieve these ends. In a word, it is criminal, and the criminals have just openly confessed.

In the war of information and truth over the conflict in Syria and the region, the Western co-conspirators just shot themselves in the foot. Clearly, having more money than brains can have a major downside.

Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.He co-hosts a weekly current affairs programme, Sunday at 3pm GMT on Bandung Radio

Ex-MI6 officer Joins Guantánamo 
Inmate in Hunger Strike


Show of solidarity for camp's last UK resident, Shaker Aamer, will express officer's shame at service's 'support for torture'



Mark Townsend
The Observer, Saturday 10 August 2013 23.04 BST





Former MI6 officer Harry Ferguson. Photograph: Gerard Farrell


A former MI6 officer will begin a week-long hunger strike on Monday in solidarity with the Guantánamo Bay detention camp prisoner Shaker Aamer, a move he says is prompted by shame over the behaviour of the British intelligence service he once served.


Harry Ferguson, 52, will attempt to fast for a week to highlight the plight of Aamer, the last UK resident being held at the US military camp, who has been on hunger strike for more than 170 days. The former MI6 operative, who took part in the fight against terrorism, said he was motivated by a regret that the "organisation of which I was once proud to be a member now supports policies including assassination, rendition, torture and detention without trial".


He said that recent claims that British intelligence officers had been covertly campaigning against Aamer's repatriation had proved the final straw.


"In fact [the legal charity] Reprieve has recently uncovered evidence that MI6 is directly briefing against his return to this country because once he arrives here he will reveal that MI6 officers were present while he was being tortured," he added.


Ferguson said the shame he felt over such disclosures was heightened by recruitment work he had carried out for MI6 and lectures he had hosted defending the security services.


"Sadly, my advice today to any aspiring recruit who values the defence of human rights would be to stay away and do something better with their lives. The intelligence services are not what they were. Above all, they have forgotten the lessons that we learned during the struggle against Irish terrorism: that brutality and injustice are not the answer, they simply fuel the next generation of terrorists," he said.


Aamer has been on hunger strike since March to highlight his demands to be brought home to London. He is among a reported 60 Guantánamo detainees still refusing food, the majority of whom are being force-fed. The 47-year-old, whose wife and children still live in south-west London, has been detained in the military prison for 11 years without being charged or tried.


Clive Stafford-Smith, director of Reprieve and Aamer's lawyer, welcomed Ferguson's decision to draw attention to Aamer's plight. "It is a big deal that someone who is so linked in with MI6 is willing to make such a strong statement," he said.


Aamer has twice been cleared for release, once by President George W Bush in 2007, and once by Barack Obama in 2009. On the second occasion, six intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the FBI, agreed that he was no threat to the United States or its allies.

Shaker Aamer with two of his children, son Michael and daughter Johninh. Photograph: PA


The British government continues to insist that the decision regarding when Shaker is released is purely an American one. Yet Shaker remains a prime witness in a British police prosecution into torture and has already been interviewed by officers from Scotland Yard.


The UN convention against torture dictates that both Britain and the US co-operate fully in any such investigation, and suggests that the US would be in violation of international law if Aamer is not returned to London to be a witness. His supporters are baffled as to why the British government appears not to have sought to enforce the rule of law against the US.


Ferguson's hunger strike is part of a campaign by Reprieve, which is supporting the Guantánamo Bay hunger-strikers by encouraging supporters to give up food temporarily.


Stafford-Smith and celebrities, including actor Julie Christie and comedian Frankie Boyle, are among those so far to have completed a hunger strike in solidarity with Aamer.


Meanwhile Stafford-Smith has revealed that Aamer has recently shared some of the vivid dreams he has been experiencing during his hunger strike, one of which blends his prison experiences with Obama's efforts to reform America's healthcare system.Stafford-Smith said: "The dream is about Obamacare, the president is strapped tightly into a force-feeding chair. He is vomiting on himself because they are forcing the liquid nutrient into him at very high speed."

GERRY ADAMS WRONG TO ATTACK 10,000 HUMAN RIGHTERS & MARTIN COREY

Some Provisional Sinn Fein supporters are currently very angry with Gerry Adams latest outburst, attacking more than 10,000 human rights demonstrators, who marched against internment at the weekend in Belfast and who were also commemorating, more than 42 years of internment without trial, as human rights activists have done annually, for almost a hundred years in Ireland.

People are now calling Gerry Adams' party, British Sinn Fein, because of the extent of  their collaboration with the British, particularly with regard to internment without trial, censorship and prevention of free political expression. Some say, British Sinn Fein are now more British, than the British themselves. The following statement of a Sinn Feiner from County Limerick, is an example of the growing dissatisfaction within Adams's party ranks, when he said of the anti internment protest, "Well done on your dignified march at the weekend to highlight an important issue. I've always been a SF supporter but your analysis of Gerry Adams is spot on. Their rhethoric these days is the same as that of The Workers Party about 30 years ago."


The political negativity or doom and gloom of Provisional Sinn Fein, is in marked contrast, to the very positive vibe around the Anti-Internment March at the weekend. While Provisional propaganda called it the 'Dissident March in the Irish News, with a frontal assault, attacking Republican Unity, the Organizing Committee, Stewards and Participants, despite extreme provocation also from Loyalist extremists, remained united and disciplined.



While it was disappointing  for traditional Irish republicans, to see Adams' party align themselves divisively, with the sectarian fascist thugs of the orange order, who attempted to prevent the march going through Belfast, it is also not helpful to republican unity, for any band, despite the extreme provocation, to be playing "Take it Down from the Mast" entertaining, drunken alcoholics in any felons club, who were afraid to march themselves. It is unhelpful whatever the level of collaboration. 

This is history repeating itself, as during the hunger strikes, when the stickies started fighting among themselves, as the principles of the hunger strikers started to shine through. Unfortunately good people were badly misled and betrayed, some paying the ultimate price, as both officials and provisionals consigned themselves to the dustbin of history. 

This Rally was the Phoenix rising, from the ashes of both, once proud traditions, once again. Unity must be the watchword and lesson from that experience, with the Irish people of no property,  being the only guarantors to be trusted, after the experience of so many betrayals, from native gombeen men, political careerist carpetbaggers, morphing into active alcoholic felons, riding on the backs of other Irish men and women's wounds.

Both Adams and the Loyalist thugs failed miserably on the 9th of August 2013, while demonstrating how prejudiced and bigoted their hatred for human rights' activists, socialists and genuine traditional Irish republicanism really is. The 10,000 strong marchers, succeeded not alone in commemorating the anniversary of internment with respect but also highlighted the continued injustices in British Occupied Ireland today. Praise goes to the steadfastness of the marchers, along with the continued humanity and loyalty of everyone involved in the anti Internment events, which is in marked contrast to highly paid collaborators of ongoing internment 42 years later.



During the Hunger strike rallies, Adams and his felons, regularly rallied around West Belfast, shouting that Gerry Fitt is a Brit, before he was burned out of his home. Seamus Lynch of the Belfast stickies gave Adams a lot of stick about it at the time. Adams and British Sinn Fein, are walking the well worn path of the Fitts and Lynchs, who stood all idly by as their Irish brothers and sisters bled. They are again walking into the same political oblivion collaborating in the internment of old republicans like Martin Corey, who has served 23 years for the Irish Cause. British Sinn Fein are in effect administering internment and damning internees with feint protest.

After the deaths of the 10 hunger strikers, Adams and his Chameleon republican careerists, replaced the SDLP, who boycotted Stormont on political principle unlike Adam's party. They also stole their middle class agenda and middle class British salaries. Now their Gaelic Chameleon Lord Mayor, from their Gaelic Chameleon  party or was that Official Sinn Fein? wants to be addressed as Lord Millar of Belfast, while professing republican principles more akin to the entreprenuerial spirit of the Republican Bush Family of Texas. Nevertheless it is important for Ireland's sake, not to resent British Sinn Feiners as individuals, but instead what Brit Feiners, are doing to the traditional Noble Spirit of Republicanism and Ireland, like their collaborating opportunists in Fianna Fail and the blue shirts before them.

Eamon de Valera, covertly co-operated with Britain to crush the IRA. Papers reveal that De Valera and entire cabinet in the late 1930s, former IRA members, asked London to help smear the IRA's Chief of staff as a communist agent. De Valera's government executed more IRA members than Britain and borrowed Albert Pierrepoint, to hang one of them.During the war, more than 1,500 were interned, while several died on hunger strike in Irish jails. Gerry Adams hasn't hung anyone yet with his own hands that we are aware of but he has hung Martin Corey out to dry with more than 3 years interned, who alreadygave almost 20 years of his life, as a Provisional IRA volunteer imprisoned in Long Kesh. There are many more currently interned by remand in Maghaberry, while British Sinn Fein share power administering it in Stormont.


Unlike the SDLP,. British Sinn Fein will not do a principled boycott of Stormont like their predecessors the SDLP, a) Because they are too fond of the Queen's shilling, B)Because they are the political sock puppets of MI5, politically blackmailed. When British SS MI5 say jump, British Sinn Fein say how high! George Orwell described their mentality as follows: “Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” 

Now I have been warned, by someone, who professes to have strong connections with the British and American intelligence community, that I will be whacked, I.e. murdered, for campaigning against internment or divulging anymore Provisional Sinn Fein not so secrets activity, as a former Chairperson of Newry Sinn Fein before they went totally British. There is nothing personal in any of this towards any member of British Sinn Fein and I wish all of them well in their private lives outside politics. I would however strongly advise Gerry Adams and ask his fellow travelers, including his alcoholic felons, that for once, just once, to put their communities and dysfunctional Ireland first, before they go on their merry way into the dustbin of Irish history, like Gerry Fitt and the Stickies. 

They need to sit down and work out a common strategy, with all the groups involved in the Anti Internment Rally at the weekend and work towards republican unity, instead of undermining it. That is if they can convince them, at this late stage with something positive like ending internment once and for all in Ireland. and building a lasting peace with justice for everyone, including the loyalists. Can we for once stick together and put Ireland's interests first, like our Republican martyrs of yesteryear. None of us are an island and none but a fool or child, can see the ultimate self destruction of selfishness and self-centredness, we must rebuild community Ireland.

10,000 HUMAN RIGHTERS RALLY AGAINST INTERNMENT IN BELFAST

Irish Republican News · August 9, 2013

   

More than ten thousand republicans, socialists and concerned citizens took part in a civil rights march against internment through Belfast this evening despite heavy rioting by loyalists and a political campaign to demonise those taking part. 

The planned march along a neutral city centre route from nationalist areas in north Belfast to west Belfast was not considered contentious. But tensions had increased during the week after it was revealed that almost a thousand loyalists had been given permission to hold ‘protests’ along the parade route.
The Parades Commission appeared to have been hoodwinked into believing legal protests were planned when it permitted a number of previously unknown groups to mass along the parade route.

Two so-called ‘residents groups’ were granted permission to stage a protest involving an estimated 300 people at Royal Avenue, where the worst of the violence broke out. A further four protests were held by other Protestant organisations including the Orange Order, adding a further six hundred loyalists into the mix.

Long before the parade made its way into Belfast city centre, hooded flag-waving loyalists blocked the road and rioting erupted along Royal Avenue.
Shocked tourists looked on as bricks, bottles, stones and fireworks showered a showpiece city centre boulevard known for its shops, restaurants and bars. The police responded with water cannon and a small number of plastic bullets, while dogs were used to attempt to control the loyalists.

Business premises were attacked and bins were set alight amid the disturbances. However, the riots only served to draw attention to a hugely successful parade and the incoherent rage of loyalism.While the original, neutral city centre route through Royal Avenue was blocked off, marchers were ironically directed by the PSNI through the intersection of Peter’s Hill and Carrick Hill, passing an interface with the loyalist Shankil Road.

The parade was briefly attacked at the intersection where a burning barricade had been erected. However, it ultimately made it down Millfield to a rendezvous with thousands more cheering supporters in the Divis area of west Belfast.

Organisers successfully appealed for calm from marchers. Amid a lull in the trouble, civil rights activist Dee Fennell said the media had wrongly portrayed the parade.
“This is a parade over a human rights issue, not a republican parade and certainly not a dissident republican parade.”

He said the march had been organised by the Anti-Internment League, and that he is not aligned to any republican group. He said political activists are being held for up to two years on remand before having charges dropped or beating them in court.

“It’s a way to get activists off the streets for two years,” Mr Fennell said. “People think internment is a thing of the past, but only the way it is used has changed. It is now more selective.”

THE POLITICS OF INTERNMENT 1971 #ReleaseMartinCorey

‘Internment’ by John McGuffin (1973)

---

Chapter 7
THE POLITICS OF INTERNMENT 1971

IN the mid-1960's people might have been forgiven for thinking that internment was a thing of the past. (True, the obnoxious Special Powers Acts were still on the Statute Book, but they were in abeyance). Such thinking was not to be right, however. The monolithic structure of Unionism proved incapable of reforming itself under the onslaught of the civil rights campaign. Terence O'Neill might have been able to save the Unionists with his pragmatic approach and his appreciation of the need for change, but their diehard 'not an inch' backwoodsmen would have none of it. And so the week of 12 – 16 August 1969 saw the old familiar pattern: a police force unable, and, in many cases unwilling,^[1] to prevent the sectarian attack upon the Falls Road periphery, led in some cases by the B specials. That month was to see house burning, intimidation and murder – ten civilians dead, including a 9-year-old boy asleep in his bed, shot by a high-velocity Browning machine-gun used with murderous recklessness by the police in their Shorland armoured cars; 145 injured, hundreds of families burnt out of their homes, 90% of them Catholic. Free Derry was born that week. The barricades went up in Belfast. The first steps towards the irrevocable demise of Stormont were taken. And, predictably, men were detained, without charge or trial.
     At 6.45 a.m. on 14 August, 28 Republicans were arrested and taken from their homes. As usual, no 'Loyalist' extremists or gunmen were arrested.
     When the English Special Branch men arrived next month to sort out the RUC they asked for the files on all the 'terrorists'. They were handed the records, mostly out-of-date, on the IRA. "What about the UVF," they asked. "It doesn't exist," was the reply. "We have no records on Loyalists."
     But this time it was not to be internment. The British army had had to be called in. Callaghan and Wilson had summoned Chichester Clark to Downing Street. The B men were 'phased out'. The Scarman Tribunal was set up. The Labour Government was tired of the old-fashioned traditional Unionist methods. Moreover, from behind the barricades a campaign was being mounted. Illegal radios proliferated. Street newspapers were born. The detainees were released after 17 to 20 days. The message should have been clear; internment should have no place in the 1970's.
But the Unionist hierarchy learn nothing from history. The gangling figure of Chichester Clark, the stand-in PM, shambled off into obscurity as 1970 and 1971 saw an escalation of the violence by the Provisional IRA, themselves a reaction to the attempted 'Loyalist' pogrom of 1969.
     On 23 March 1971 Brian Arthur Deane Faulkner achieved his lifelong ambition and became PM. The English press warned that he was the 'last man in'. If he couldn't control the situation, direct rule was a certainty. But despite the obvious immensity of the task, Faulkner was confident.
     This was the moment for which he had schemed, intrigued and betrayed, for so long. With a staggering record of disloyalty to previous PMs, he could hardly expect to be trusted or liked, but surely all could agree on his shrewdness and ability.
     In fact, Faulkner's intelligence was always greatly over-rated by the media. And his biggest mistake was soon to come. The Sunday Times 'Insight' team claim^[2]that "when he took over the issue was not whether internment was to come, but when and on what scale. By then Faulkner had been an advocate of internment inside Chichester Clark's Joint Security Committee, for six months." Whether this is true or not, and on balance it seems a reasonable statement, it is certain that Faulkner had completely failed to learn the lesson of how and when internment 'worked'. He had been Minister for Home Affairs in 1959 under Brookeborough, and, with the help of his trusty aide, the civil servant William Stout, he bad been responsible for the implementation of internment, which he apparently felt to be responsible for the defeat of the IRA border campaign. As is made clear already, this just was not so. The campaign failed, for lack of popular support, and, most important, the internees could languish in Crumlin because there was no campaign to get them released.
     Nevertheless, one of Faulkner's first actions upon becoming Northern Ireland's last PM was to order the RUC Special Branch to work with the Director of Military Intelligence at Lisburn in drawing up a list of those Catholics who should be interned. The army were unhappy. General Tuzo, the GOC in Northern Ireland since February 1971, consistently opposed internment, believing, rightly, as it turned out, that they could not get the right people. But as the violence escalated, Faulkner became more and more insistent. On 9 July he telephoned Heath. "I must be able to intern now" he demanded. Accordingly, with some reluctance, a 'dry run' was agreed upon. At dawn on 23 July, 1,800 troops and RUC raided Republican houses throughout the province, searching for documents. They got enough to encourage them. The decision to intern was only a matter of time then, despite army objections.
     The position was complicated by the mistrust and, in some cases, downright hostility between the army and the RUC. As the Sunday Times team put it: "The army believed the police list was politically motivated, and the police believed that the army's list showed inadequate local knowledge." Both were correct. Some sections of the army had favoured a small internment in the spring of 1971, with only 50 or 60 men being lifted. They had been overruled. Now the task was to be much greater.
     The list had more than 500 names on it. Of these only 120 or 130 were gunmen or officers in the IRA. The vast majority were regarded either as 'Fellow-travelling sympathisers' or troublesome political activists – like PD socialists. The police contribution was the names and addresses of former internees. But Faulkner was determined. At the Joint Security Committee meeting at Stormont, Shillington, the Chief Constable, agreed with Tuzo that internment would not work. That made no difference. Faulkner secretly flew to London that afternoon. There he convinced the Cabinet. Tuzo could offer no alternative. Maudling was his usual indolent self. Whitelaw said nothing. Internment without trial was acquiesced to. The date was set for 10 Augnst. On Sunday 7 August, however, Harry Thornton, an innocent building worker, was driving his car past Springfield Road barracks when it backfired. Soldiers opened up and killed him. His friend Murphy was dragged from the car, covered with Thornton's blood, and savagely beaten by police and army. Within minutes the people of Clonard went wild. The fighting went on all night but had died down the next day. But the army were taking no chances. At midnight on Sunday the order went out: operation internment was brought forward 24 hours. Brian Faulkner had unwittingly signed himself his own political death warrant – and that of Stormont, too.

TIME FOR NEGOTIATIONS ON A GENUINE PEACE WITH JUSTICE

There's no nicer people in Ireland, than those from British Occupied Ireland. I am speaking about people from both communities there. I say that as a Galway person, who is from the west of Ireland, who lived there for several years. It is against my instinct, as an Irish person, to allow for the fact and reality, that Britain has any right in the governance of any part of Ireland but I am must face the difficult current reality as my starting point, that there are many other Irish people who see it differently. To be honest it hurts but I can live with it.

Last night, and over the last number of months, I have been mezsmerized, watching the British PSNI paramilitary police operate in Belfast. They did a good job in very difficult circumstances. It is not easy for me to admit that but credit where credit is due, they did a good job.Now I will make a lot of enemies, by saying that. I understand that!. Some people will accuse me of being a traitor and a Tout for saying that. They would be wrong. I have put my life on the line, as a matter of principle on this. I am no angel but that is a fact.

Ruairi O Bradaigh has recently passed away. He is probably the Irish republican, who most impressed me most, in my time around Irish Republican Socialist politics. He would not be pleased with the above statement, neither I am sure would his friend Martin Corey, who is also a principled man, but I I must first be honest with myself, before I can be honest with anyone.It is time I believe for Republican Sinn Fein, whom I believe are the only real Sinn Fein left to talk with everyone, including the Brits.

There are some very genuine people in 32CSM, RNU, Eirigi, IRSP, SWP, etc.,..even in British Sinn Fein. Those in British Sinn Fein are naive, if they believe you can be Lord Mayor of Belfast, call yourself and your party Gaelic names and still want people to call you Lord, while professing to be a republican of any sort. It is time Martin Millar came clean and stopped being a chameleon calling himself an Irish name, in an Irish named party. Those career politicians living on genuine Irish republican wounds, should do the decent thing and call themselves the Chameleon Party.

Last night in Belfast, was a major victory for democracy and the vast majority of working class people in the City, whether they are aware of it or not. Everyone who a participated in making that Anti Internment Rally happen, including the PSNI should be very proud of their contribution last night A lot of noble spirits who gave their lives, including British ones, particularly over the last 40 years, were jumping for joy in another realm of freedom last night and I am not talking about any earthly realm of privilege.

I believe all Irish people of goodwill, from whatever community can see that and would be willing to sit down around a table and negotiate a genuine compromise. The British have shown good faith over the last few months with decent policing and while one swallow never made a Summer, it's a good start. It would be consolidated further, by ending internment without a proper transparent public trial and releasing internees like Martin Corey, Stephen Murney and those internees on remand, as a further act of good faith. It is a time for generosity by all people of good faith to negotiate, without surrendering traditional principles.

I believe a major factor to become clearer, after last night in Belfast, is that people can see, that their political objectives, can be achieved, without political violence, if people are willing to work for them. I salute everyone who participated in the rally last night. I credit the PSNI with being fair cops last night and I salute the decent Unionist people, who did not buy into the fascism of those trying to prevent free expression of political beliefs. I offer my condolences to the British viceroyal on the recent loss of her father, she is very welcome in Ireland, strictly in a private capacity.