PADDYS DAY INTERNATIONAL

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh 

Pronunced

(law aila pawdrig suna deeve)

Dance as if no one were watching,

Sing as if no one were listening,

And live every day as if it were your last.

WHEN GENOCIDE BECAME "FAMINE" : IRELAND, 1845 - 1850

This petition seeks your support for a campaign to:

* Persuade relevant authors, editors and website content providers to stop using the word ‘Famine’ for what took place in Ireland between 1845 and 1850, and start using terms such as, "The Great Hunger" or "An Gorta Mór".

* To call on the Government of Ireland and its Ministers, and members of all political parties to correctly call it Án Ócras Mór, Án Gorta Mór, or The Great Hunger.

It should be signed by anyone, of any religious, political or intellectual background, who wants the truth about Ireland’s history to be faced and justly discussed, not evaded or concealed.

In proud and loving memory of the Men, Women and Children of Ireland who suffered and died in the Great Hunger.

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This petition has been launched by a Facebook group, Irish Holocaust - Not Famine. The Push to educate in Facts.

Along side our website : http://www.irishgenocide.webs.com 

Our aims are dedicated to correcting and spreading the truth about what should rightfully be called not the ‘Great Famine’ but the Great Hunger (An Gorta Mór).

A letter supported by the response to this petition will go to authors and editors of books on the ‘Famine’, and of works on Irish history which refer to the ‘Famine’. (This will include content providers of appropriate websites.) The letter will also go to Irish Government Ministers and Politicians of all hues.

Why? To ask them to consider recent and ongoing research showing that the Great Hunger was the direct consequence of deliberate, intentional genocidal acts against the Irish people; and after they have done this, to acknowledge the overwhelming weight of the evidence that is being uncovered.

Authors, editors etc could then make their acknowledgment clear to all by (e.g.) using the term ‘Great Hunger’ instead of or alongside terms such as ‘famine’, or by saying in the preface to a new edition of their work that, in the light of recent research, they feel the exclusive use of the word ‘famine’ to be misleading and distorting.

Government Ministers and politicians could then speak out, with courage, about what took place between 1840 and 1845, and no longer dodge the issue in deference to the sensitivities of, "Other Governments".

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Background

History books, text books and websites around the world still repeat and give life to the idea that the ‘Great Famine’ of 1845 – 1850 was a severe and prolonged food shortage arising purely from the effects of potato blight. This grossly distorts the truth: ‘famine’ implies that the food shortages arose simply from natural causes.

In fact, armed British troops seized Ireland’s agricultural produce and exported it to Britain – while the Irish people were dying from starvation. There was no food shortage to blame on potato blight; exports of all food products from Ireland increased during the worst years of the ‘Famine’. Ireland actually produced sufficient food to feed its population twice over. Also, British troops and government officials blocked many attempts at relief from entering Ireland.

The 1841 census recorded an Irish population of 8.2 million. By 1851, the figure had dropped by 26% to 6.5 million. These statistics give an indication of the scale of the disaster, but since many of those affected by the Great Hunger lived in remote and inaccessible places, it is possible far more died than has ever been thought.

Today, what took place is increasingly being suspected by millions in Ireland and in the diaspora on reading the deluge of information being published by scholars of high renown. Increasing numbers of people worldwide want what they feel is a deliberate attempt to inflict genocide on the people of Ireland discussed and exposed and if true described as a crime against the people. People are now learning the knowledge that was withheld from them at school and questioning why our education system treats the subject as something not to be spoken of. That is not good enough. We need the truth, we need to know our history and until we know our past we are ignorant of the events of our own country. There was a food shortage in potatoes but people were abandoned by government and the first duty of government is the welfare of it's people. Britain failed miserably and the question is, did they do it deliberately? The signatories of this petition seem to think so. They feel that sites using this tragedy in our country as a present day Tourist attraction' and persist in using the word famine are wrong and are misleading.

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Every name added to this petition will make even stronger the case for using terms such as the Great Hunger – terms which admit, instead of denying, the truth of what took place. Only when the word ‘Famine’ has been abandoned will future generations describe what took place for what it truly was, failure of government and continued questioning as to the real motive for the neglect of millions. Was it genocide? many think it was. If so, stop describing it as famine.

Add your signature – help the truth be known by everyone.



This is the link - it only takes seconds to put yr name on it -

http://www.petitions24.com/when_famine_became_genocide_ireland_1845_-_1850

BETRAYAL OFTHE PEOPLE OF NO PROPERTY IRELAND

Perhaps because the industrial revolution never happened in Ireland, preceding my political education, I have always had a greater affinity with Tone's term of "the people of no property," rather than the Marxist term "working class." However there is much from my experience, that would confirm Trotsky's observation, "the working class could only trust its own forces in order to achieve." A good example of this, would be the lack of 'consciousness' in the Provo leadership of rural, South Armagh, which comes from my experience of working in Sinn Fein's offices in Newry, dealing with every day issues of the people of Newry. 

One particular incident stands out for me, with regard to all of this. When Tom Lonergan and I set up the offices in Newry, we were aware of various anti-social issues in the area, as a result of more than three generations of gerrymandered, massive unemployment, of up to 80%, created by the the sectarian, Orange, Stormont Junta. The offices were set up, in the wake of the death of the 10 hunger strikers and the election of Bobby Sands MP, for the purpose of garnering and organizing the people in the area, to effect a revolution in Ireland. Prior to the Hunger Strike and during the dirt strike, a few republican lads and myself, were protesting on Hill Street, outside the offices of Rory McShane, a prominent Social Democrat politician, who regularly passed us, with his fellow suits, sniggering at our protest. These SDLP suits, have now been replaced by Provo suits, who now snigger, at young people's protests, as happened with my fallen comrades on those protests and myself.

Because of the re-drawing of the constituency boundaries, Newry became part of the South Armagh constituency, and as a result, heavily reliant for authentic leadership, politically, to South Armagh. One day an ex-IRA volunteer and ex-POW of Long Kesh, who had helped us politically with our work, came into our office and told me privately, that a supergrass, was about to break in Newry, which would betray many volunteers in the area, resulting in long terms of imprisonment for volunteers. Because my work in the area at the time, was being undermined by Belfast leadership, I asked my colleague, to go out to the leadership in South Armagh and explain all of the details carefully and mention, that I asked him to do so. 

Later I asked him about the results and he told me, that he was told, that there was no credibility attached to the report and had dismissed it. As I have previously written, I was considerably annoyed and as a result, went to Belfast, to clarify the matter but found the leadership there, totally inadequate. I had no option but to resign. I have strong feelings about this matter, but I am not getting into the blame game, there is much to go around, what goes around, comes around. People can decide for themselves. All I can do is strongly advise Irish people, to never forget the lessons of our history or we will definitely repeat them, with considerable unnecessary loss of life. Again, I would ask for the sake of future generations, if you feel remotely anything like I do, please share this article, as this will be mostly censored. I have not named the individual concerned publicly and refuse to do so, for the sake of their personal security. An article below from Wikipedia, gives a rough outline of events, approximately six months later.

However, I do feel I am entitled to my opinion on the Paul Quinn matter and other killings in the area. A line needs to be drawn under all past crime in the area, including those who have engaged in being informers, and people need to find genuine forgiveness, for misdeeds committed.The problems in Newry, South Armagh cannot be resolved either by party or personality politics, while the British Occupation will exploit this, particularly when people are divided. I believe old Irish Brehon Law should be applied to these killings, to be adjudicated by the elders of the area, in a non-party political manner. Compensation needs to be made to the victim's families. 

Policing in this area needs to be carried out, strictly by locals, again, in a non-political manner, without any form of fascist violence. Any future informers to the British, need to be expelled from the area. The community needs to unite or be decimated. Because the British created the problem with their artificial border, there is no place for them in this solution and bringing the SAS back into the area, is treachery. Nobody should have a monopoly on smuggling on any part of the border, as everyone in the area has suffered deprivation as a result of being cut off from their natural hinterland and are entitled to supplement their income. People need to resolve this among themselves, as soon as possible, non-violently, without involving the British or outsiders from Belfast. The bottom line is still Brits Out!

Wiki....

Eamon Collins (1954 - 27 January 1999) was a Provisional Irish Republican Army paramilitary in the late 1970s and 1980s. He turned his back on the organisation in the late 1980s and later co-authored a book called Killing Rage telling of his experiences in the IRA. He was beaten and stabbed to death in 1999 near his home in Newry.

Collins grew up in Camlough, a small, staunchly Irish republican town in South Armagh.After finishing school, he worked for a time in the civil service in London before studying law at Queen's University (QUB). At Easter 1974, as Collins walked home to his parents' home in south Armagh, he saw his father being beaten by British soldiers. He was himself badly beaten when he tried to stop them, and both were detained.

Collins never completed his degree at QUB. After working in a pub for a period, he joined the Customs Service of Northern Ireland, located in Newry. Around this time, Collins got married. He and his wife, Bernadette, would have four children.
§IRA career.

Collins joined the Provisional IRA at the height of the blanket protest by H-block prisoners in the late 1970s, which sought Special Category Status for republican prisoners. Collins became involved in street demonstrations at the time and was impressed by the left-wing politics of the new generation of republican leadership that had emerged in the late 1970s. He joined the South Down Brigade of the IRA, based around Newry. This was not one of the organisation's most active units, but it sometimes worked with the South Armagh Brigade, which was the most effective of the IRA's command areas. Collins says in his book Killing Rage that he never felt able to kill anyone himself, but instead became the South Down Brigade's "intelligence officer".

This involved gathering intelligence on intended assassination and bombing targets. His planning was directly responsible for at least five killings, including that of Ulster Defence Regiment Major Ivan Toombs. Many of the bombing targets of Collins' unit were of limited significance. For example, they destroyed the public library in Newry and a pub where a police choir drank after practice.

Collins became noted for his hard-line views on the continuance of armed struggle within the IRA and later becoming part of the Internal Security Unit. On the suggestion of the South Armagh Brigade, he became a member of Sinn Féin in Newry. The South Armagh IRA wanted a hard-line militarist in the local party, as they were opposed to the increasing emphasis of the republican leadership on the political over the military wing of the movement. Collins was not selected as a Sinn Féin candidate for local government elections. In part, this was due to his suspicion of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership, whom he suspected of running down 'the war'. He had a public dispute with Gerry Adams at the funeral of an IRA man killed in a failed bombing, where Collins was accused of calling Adams a "Stick" (a derogatory name for Official IRAmembers, who were considered traitors by Provisional IRA supporters). InKilling Rage, however, Collins denied the claim, suggesting he only accused Adams of taking actions likened to those of a "Stick".

Despite his militarist convictions, Collins found the emotional strain of the IRA campaign, along with the pressure from the security forces, intolerable. On two occasions, he was arrested under anti-terrorism legislation, held in Castlereagh holding centre for seven days, and subjected to 24-hour interrogation. On the second of these occasions, in 1985, the Royal Ulster Constabulary were enraged by the killing, on the day of Collins' arrest, of nine of their colleagues in an IRA mortar attack in Newry. Towards the end of his time in custody, Collins reportedly "broke" and said that he was prepared to co-operate with the police.

In his book, Collins says that the strain of the interrogation exacerbated doubts that he had already had about the morality and direction theIRA campaign. He argues in his book that the republican leadership had already decided that the "war was over" by the mid-1980s and was already manoeuvering Sinn Féin to participate in what later became theNorthern Ireland peace process.
§"Supergrass"

Subsequent to his arrest, Collins became an IRA supergrass, on whose evidence the state could prosecute large numbers of IRA members. Collins was held with other paramilitary informers in the Crumlin Road Prison in Belfast. After an appeal from his wife, however, who remained a republican supporter, Collins retracted his evidence against former colleagues. In return, he was given a guarantee of safety by the IRA, provided he de-briefed the organisation on his experience. Collins agreed and was then transferred to the republican wing of the prison.

As a result of losing his status as a protected informer, Collins was then charged with several counts of murder and attempted murder. When tried, Collins was acquitted due to a lack of evidence other than his own confessions, which he had since retracted. He then spent three months being interrogated by the IRA and was eventually allowed to relocate to the Republic of Ireland, but was not allowed to travel north of Dundalk.
§Post-IRA life

Collins moved to Dublin and squatted in a deserted flat in the working class Ballymun area of the city. At the time, the area was experiencing an epidemic of heroin addiction and Collins volunteered to help a local priest, Peter McVerry, who ran programmes for local youths to keep them away from drugs. After several years in Dublin, Collins lived in Edinburgh, Scotland for a period, where he ran a youth centre. In 1995, he moved back to Newry. An IRA order exiling him from Northern Ireland had not been lifted but with an IRA ceasefire in operation, he judged it safe to move back in with his wife and children. In 1995, he also appeared on British television to tell his account of his experiences in the IRA.

In 1997, he co-authored 'Killing Rage', with journalist Mick McGovern, an exposé of the IRA and the Troubles. He also contributed to the bookBandit Country by Toby Harnden about the South Armagh IRA. In 1998, Collins gave evidence against leading republican Thomas "Slab" Murphy, in a libel case Murphy had brought against the Sunday Times, over a 1985 article naming him as the IRA's Northern Commander.[5] After his testimony, Collins was heard to shout, "No hard feelings Slab". In the immediate aftermath of the trial, Collins' home was attacked and daubed with graffiti calling him a "tout" (slang for informer). Since his return to Newry, his home there had frequently been attacked. His family home in Camlough was burned to the ground. Threats were made against his children, who were bullied in school. Graffiti was painted on the walls of the streets where his family lived.
§Death



Eamon Collins was murdered on 27 January 1999, while walking his dogs near Barcroft Park, Newry. He was stabbed and beaten so badly, that police initially thought he had been hit by a car. One reason is thought to have been revenge for Collins' writings against the IRA and for his court testimony in Dublin against Murphy.[1][6] The Sinn Féin chairman of the local Newry district council, Brendan Curran, a one-time PIRA volunteer, stated "As far as I am concerned, Eamon Collins was a dead man walking. I am not sad at his death. He will not be missed. I have no feelings for Eamon Collins.". Gerry Adams stated the killing was "regrettable" but added that Collins had "many enemies in many, many, many places". Collins' death is attributed at the CAIN website to "unknown republicans". Collins is buried at Monkshill Cemetery, Newry, not far from Albert White, a Catholic officer of the RUC, whose assassination Collins engineered.

Trotsky and the struggle for a Revolutionary International (1933-1946) – Part One
Written by Patrick Larsen

The figure of Leon Trotsky has created a new wave of interest among historians and writers of all types. Recently two new books about the Russian revolutionary have appeared; the first being the work of U.S. Professor Robert Service and the second of Bertrand M. Patenaude, a historian at California University. Both of them belong to that class of commercial literature typical of the bourgeoisie, full of factual errors, which tries to present Trotsky as an authoritarian politician who only lost to Stalin because he lacked tactical skills.
Introduction

Another work, much more sympathetic in its style and its content, is the new novel by Leonardo Padura, “The man who loved dogs”. It tells the stories of Trotsky and his assassin, Ramón Mercader, both stories projected on the life of Iván, a Cuban who represents the post-revolutionary generation on the island.

We have dealt with this important contribution elsewhere. But although it has great value in reclaiming the general legacy of Trotsky, it does indeed contain some mistakes in the appreciation that the author has of aspects of Trotsky's political activity.

The main reason is that the majority of facts about his life which are presented in the book have been taken by Padura from Isaac Deutscher's trilogy – The Prophet Unarmed, The Prophet Armed and The Prophet Outcast. This biography, although it contains some interesting facts, has the major disadvantage of having been written by a person who lacked a firm comprehension of the method of Trotsky. He therefore fell into a whole number of misinterpretations of key elements of his life, especially concerning the last phase of it.

What all these books have in common is the absence of a serious analysis of Trotsky's attempt to found a new revolutionary international, the Fourth International. All of them regard it with a certain suspicion, emphasizing its reduced numbers, its isolation from the working masses and the splits which took place in the movement.

While most of Trotsky's biographers were full of praise for his great literary works such as My life or the History of the Russian Revolution they never understood why the creator of the Red Army spent countless hours of his last years writing letters, critiques, manifestos and programmes which only reached a handful of people and in many cases dealt with practical questions in the day-to-day work.

In our opinion this great flaw was mainly due to the fact that all of these writers were intellectuals on the margins of the workers' movement. They did not have the knowledge or the experience of aparticipant and consequently their books were not written with the methodology of a revolutionary militant.

However, when one reads the hundreds of letters that Trotsky wrote to create and train a new Marxist leadership, and when one studies the activity of his followers during the Second World War, it is impossible not to be impressed, faced with the magnitude of the lessons that this epoch contains for the future.

The objective of this article is, on the one hand, to serve as an introduction to the reading of Trotsky's last writings, and on the other hand also to extract the principal lessons of the attempt to create a Fourth International. For reasons of space, we cannot go into a detailed analysis of the subsequent history of Trotskyism and we will therefore limit ourselves to give an overview of the main reasons for the decline of the Fourth International after the end of WW2. For a more complete history, we recommend the work of Ted Grant:History of British Trotskyism, The origins of the collapse of the Fourth International by Fred Weston and The theoretical origins of the degeneration of the Fourth - Interview with Ted Grant.

In the work of researching the material for this article, it has been necessary to reclaim the real Trotsky, buried under a mountain of distortions and manipulations. By saying this we are not only referring to the monstrous lies of Stalinism nor only to the caricature presented by the bourgeois historians. We also refer to the “theoreticians” of the small self-styled Trotskyist sects, who have hijacked the name of the great revolutionary.

Always fond of internal rows and personal antagonisms, these gentlemen always had a modus operandi, a style and a life completely separated from the real mass movement. Their hysterical denunciations and their schematic views never allowed them to enter into contact with the living workers' movement and consequently they gave a very bad name to Trotskyism; something which has alienated many workers and made them refuse to collaborate with the 4th International and its subsequent fractions.

Trotsky himself, who had a profound knowledge of the psychology of the masses, did everything to throw out sectarianism and educate the cadres in the Bolshevik method of winning the majority. In this article we will show how he made several attempts to push his followers towards the mass organizations, not only to influence them, but also to constantly renovate his own movement, give it new life blood and break with the vicious circle of the small-group environment.
“The most important work of my life”

It was in the year of 1933 that Trotsky came to the conclusion that a new revolutionary international was necessary. Before this, he had maintained the position of building an opposition within the official Communist Parties in order to fight for a genuine Marxist programme. But it was a huge political event which made Trotsky change his mind: the catastrophe in Germany, where the crazy “theory” of the Third Period and the consequent refusal to form a united front with the Social Democrats, whom they called “social-fascists”, which opened the gates for Hitler to come to power.

From that moment on, Trotsky came to the conclusion that the Party and the International not only had been incapable of taking a correct stance in the decisive moments. They had also been organically incapable of learning from their mistakes and they had proclaimed the big defeat of the German working class as if it was a victory (“After Hitler, our turn!”). He therefore thought that such an organization was doomed and could not be reconquered as an instrument for the proletarian revolution.

Contrary to his biographers, Lev Davidovich considered that the task of forging this new International was the “greatest work of his life”. In 1935, in one of his lesser-known works, Diary in Exile, he wrote the following:


"And still I think that the work in which I am engaged now, despite its extremely insufficient and fragmentary nature, is the most important work of my life—more important than 1917, more important than the period of the Civil War or any other.

“For the sake of clarity I would put it this way. Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place—on the condition that Lenin was present and in command. If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution: the leadership of the Bolshevik Party would have prevented it from occurring—of this I have not the slightest doubt! If Lenin had not been in Petersburg, I doubt whether I could have managed to conquer the resistance of the Bolshevik leaders. The struggle with ‘Trotskyism’ (i.e., with the proletarian revolution) would have commenced in May, 1917, and the outcome of the revolution would have been in question. But I repeat, granted the presence of Lenin the October Revolution would have been victorious anyway. The same could by and large be said of the Civil War, although in its first period, especially at the time of the fall of Simbirsk and Kazan, Lenin wavered and was beset by doubts. But this was undoubtedly a passing mood which he probably never even admitted to anyone but me.”

“Thus I cannot speak of the ‘indispensability’ of my work, even about the period from 1917 to 1921. But now my work is ‘indispensable’ in the full sense of the word. There is no arrogance in this claim at all. The collapse of the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these Internationals is at all equipped to solve. The vicissitudes of my personal fate have confronted me with this problem and armed me with important experience in dealing with it. There is now no one except me to carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third International. And I am in a complete agreement with Lenin (or rather Turgenev) that the worst vice is to be more than 55 years old! I need at least about five more years of uninterrupted work to ensure the succession."[i]
The first steps: The bloc of the four

According to Trotsky, the new international would of course not fall from the sky from one day to another, but would be the result of a process of formation. It would include different sectors of the workers' movement who had arrived at the same conclusion or were drawing close to it. The degeneration of the Third (Communist) International and the bankruptcy of the Second International, in the context of the rise of fascism and the worst crisis in the history of capitalism created a vacuum on the political scene.

It was in such a situation that Trotsky received with great enthusiasm the news of the formation and the rapid turn to the left of the ILP, the Independent Labour Party of Great Britain. The leaders of the ILP were even for a short time flirting with the idea of setting up a new revolutionary international, although they subsequently abandoned that position. Other organizations, especially left-wing splits from the Socialist parties in Europe, were coming closer to the very same conclusion.

The followers of Trotsky, the Bolshevik-Leninists, participated in that debate and in the conference which was held by fourteen labour organizations and parties in Paris in August of 1933. This meeting had certain similarities with the conference of Zimmerwald in 1915, which, in spite of the enormous theoretical confusion, organized those who opposed the First World War. Just as in Zimmerwald, in the Paris conference a left and a rightwing appeared. The adherents of the left were four organizations who came out signing a declaration for a new International. These included, apart from the International Left Opposition, the SAP of Germany and two Dutch organizations, the RSP and the OSP.

This initiative, in spite of the programmatical limitations and the subsequent disagreements, showed how Trotsky was absolutely willing to collaborate with other groups, even with people who came from other traditions within the workers' movement. He was never afraid of an open and honest discussion with groups or individuals who were moving in the direction of Bolshevism. However, at the same time he insisted on transparency and honesty on the part of his allies and reserved the right to always put forward his own position:


“Revolutionary irreconcilability consists not in demanding our “leadership” be recognized a priori, not in presenting our allies at every occasion with ultimatums and threatening with a break, with the removal of signatures, etc. We leave such methods on one hand, to the Stalinist bureaucrats, on the other to some impatient allies. We realize full well that disagreements between us and our allies will arise more than once. But we hope, more than that, we are convinced, that the march of events will reveal in deeds the impossibility of participating simultaneously in the principled bloc of four and in the unprincipled bloc of the majority. Without resorting to any unbecoming “ultimatums”, we claim however our full right not only to raise our banners but also to state openly to our allies our opinions regarding what we consider to be their mistakes. We expect from them the same frankness. Our alliance will thus be strengthened."
The French Turn

Trotsky was completely conscious of the weakness of his forces, not only from a numerical point of view, but also from the point of view of the lack of political experience of his followers. In one of the discussions he had with a visitor in his house in April of 1939 he explained it in these terms:


“We have comrades who came to us, as Naville and others, 15 or 16 or more years ago when they were young boys. Now they are mature people and their whole conscious life they have had only blows, defeats and terrible defeats on an international scale and they are more or less acquainted with this situation. They appreciate very highly the correctness of their conceptions and they can analyze, but they never had the capacity to penetrate, to work with the masses and they have not acquired it.”[ii]

This was one of the main reasons why he began to recommend a sharp turn towards the Socialist parties, and especially their youth organizations, beginning in France. In his opinion, the Trotskyists should enter these organizations to win the best proletarian elements. This tactic, which was later referred to as “entryism”, was not only about getting a numerical growth in terms of militants, but also about giving new life to the internal regimes of the Trotskyist groups.

This was a vital point for the educating of Marxist cadres in the harsh school of the class struggle. From the Old Man's point of view, it was not sufficient merely to comment on the life of a party from the perspective of an external observer. On the contrary, it was crucial to converge with the masses in revolutionary action, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the left against the right:


“It is not enough for a revolutionist to have correct ideas. Let us not forget that correct ideas have already been set down in Capital and The Communist Manifesto. But that has not prevented false ideas from being broadcast. It is the task of the revolutionary party to weld together the ideas with the mass labour movement. Only in this manner can an idea become a driving force.

“A revolutionary organization does not mean a paper and its readers. One can write and read revolutionary articles day in and day out and still remain in reality outside of the revolutionary movement. One can give the labour organizations good advice from the sidelines. That is something. But that still does not make a revolutionary organization.(...)

“In relation to the Socialist Party, the League has shown not only insufficient initiative but also a hidebound sectarianism. Instead of taking for its task the creation of a faction inside the SFIO just as soon as the crisis in the latter became obvious, the League demanded that every Socialist become convinced of the correctness of our ideas and leave his mass organization to join the group of La Verite readers. In order to create an internal faction, it was necessary to pursue the mass movement, to adapt oneself to the environment, to carry on a menial daily work. Precisely in this very decisive field the League has not been able to make any progress up to the present – with very few exceptions. A great deal of valuable time was allowed to be lost. (...)

“The criticism, the ideas, the slogans of the League are in general correct, but in this present period particularly inadequate. The revolutionary ideas must be transformed into life itself every day through the experiences of the masses themselves. But how can the League explain this to them when it is itself cut off from the experience of the masses? It is necessary to add: several comrades do not even see the need of this experience. It seems to them to be sufficient to form an opinion on the basis of newspaper accounts they read and then give it expression in an article or in a talk. Yet if the most correct ideas do not reflect directly the ideas and actions of the mass, they will escape the attention of the masses altogether” (Trotsky, The League Faced with a Turn, June 1934[iii])

Afterwards, Trotsky made the same recommendations for his followers in England concerning the ILP and in the United States concerning the Socialist Party. In many cases his followers received the advice with a lot of conservatism and opposed entering the organizations in question, or in some cases only a handful entered and did so too late to influence the left-wing tendencies that were developing in the rank and file of the Socialist parties.
Trotsky and the Spanish Revolution

The country where this refusal on the part of Trotsky's comrades to accept his advice generated most controversy was Spain. The study of Trotsky's position in regard to the Spanish Revolution could merit a whole article or a book apart[iv], but in this occasion we will limit ourselves to the most important lessons.

Since the proclamation of the Second Republic in April of 1931, Spain had lived through a revolution of enormous dimensions in all spheres of social and political life. The subsequent incapacity of the republican-socialist government to keep its promises, especially the agrarian reform which would have benefitted the poor and exploited peasants, led to the electoral defeat of the left in the elections of November 1933. What followed afterwards is known as the “bienio negro” (the two black years).



The heroic resistance on the part of the workers, when faced with the entry of the ultra-right-wing CEDA party in 1934, represented the beginning of the armed insurrection and the proletarian commune in Asturias. This experiment was only cut across by the ferocious repression on the part of the army, led by general Franco. This was the very same officer who led a new coup d'etat in July of 1936 with the aim of destroying the revolution once and for all. But the brave workers of Catalonia and in other parts of Spain rose up and prevented a Fascist victory. In effect they made themselves the masters of Barcelona and other parts of Spain. Thus the Spanish civil war commenced in July 1936 and lasted for three years, up until Franco's final victory in April of 1939.

This was the context in which Trotsky tried to build a revolutionary party which could play the same role as the Bolshevik Party had played in Russia in 1917. A victory for the revolution in Spain would have acted as a real earthquake, which in turn would have changed the whole balance of forces internationally. That is why the amount of attention which Trotsky paid in dealing with the Spanish revolution, (something that the majority of his biographers ignore), is completely justified.

From 1930 onwards, one of his old friends, his former secretary, Andreu Nin, had been living in Spain. Nin was a relatively experienced cadre who had been many years in the Soviet Union, working as the President of the Profintern, the Federation of red trade-unions. From his arrival in Spain, he began to correspond with Trotsky about the problems of the revolution and the tasks of the Spanish communists. Nin began to develop more and more differences with the Old Man. While the former wanted a fusion with the right-wing-Communist group of Joaquín Maurin on an eclectic programme, Trotsky insisted on maintaining ideological clarity and discipline.

In the course of the year 1934, the same phenomenon of radicalization of the Socialist Youth which had been seen in France was repeated in Spain. The Spanish Socialist Youth even reached a point where they invited the Trotskyists to enter the Socialist Party in order to “bolshevize” it[v]. The main leader of the Socialist Party left, Largo Caballero, who organized his followers around the paperClaridad, spoke in favour of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and quoted the writings of Lenin on more than one occasion. But instead of grasping this historic opportunity, Nin and his friends opposed Trotsky's call to enter the PSOE and the FJS (Socialist Youth Federation). The Stalinists were more intelligent and they managed to make a fusion between their own miniscule youth organization and the Socialist Youth, thus conquering a solid base in the working class youth.

The fusion of Nin's group (Izquierda Comunista) with Maurin's Catalan group (The BOC), led to the formation of the POUM (The Workers' Party for Marxist Unification). Although it was very much accused of being Trotskyist by the Stalinists and although its members showed a lot of courage during the civil war (including Nin himself who was brutally tortured and murdered by the Stalinists), the POUM was never a Trotskyist party. Instead of carrying out the revolution from below, building the power of the workers' and peasant committees, it vacillated between reformism and revolution.

It recognized the legitimacy of the Catalan bourgeois government, the Generalitat, and even entered it with Nin as Minister of Justice. They accepted the dissolution of the militias and the disarmament, something which the government was promoting with the excuse of creating a single professional army. The leaders of the POUM also decided to call upon its militants to abandon the barricades during the famous May Days in Barcelona in 1937, when the Stalinists attempted to destroy workers’ control in the Telephone Exchange.

All these actions were severely condemned by Trotsky who in the last instance explained the defeat of the Spanish Revolution by the lack of a genuine revolutionary party. In his brilliant, unfinished article Class, Party and Leadership, he pointed out that the destruction of the Spanish Revolution was in no way due to a “low level of consciousness” on the part of the working class, but rather due to the betrayal of the leaders:


“The workers’ line of march at all times cut a certain angle to the line of the leadership. And at the most critical moments this angle became 180 degrees. The leadership then helped directly or indirectly to subdue the workers by armed force. In May 1937 the workers of Catalonia rose not only without their own leadership but against it(...)

“The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions. Precisely for this reason the working class is often caught unawares by war and revolution. But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilizing the collapse of the old leading party.(...)

“Victory is not at all the ripe fruit of the proletariat’s “maturity.” Victory is a strategical task. It is necessary to utilize the favourable conditions of a revolutionary crisis in order to mobilize the masses; taking as a starting point the given level of their ‘maturity’ it is necessary to propel them forward, teach them to understand that the enemy is by no means omnipotent, that it is torn asunder with contradictions, that behind the imposing facade panic prevails. Had the Bolshevik party failed to carry out this work, there couldn’t even be talk of the victory of the proletarian revolution. The Soviets would have been crushed by the counter-revolution and the little sages of all countries would have written articles and books on the keynote that only uprooted visionaries could dream in Russia of the dictatorship of the proletariat, so small numerically and so immature. [vi]

Incredibly, these very same arguments about a so-called “immaturity” and “low level of consciousness of the masses” are used by reformists in relation to the Venezuelan revolution today. Their aim is to hide their own incapability of completing the revolution by expropriating the capitalists, the bankers and the landlords.

Just as in Spain, in Venezuela the central problem is the lack of a real Marxist leadership which can guide the revolution. And as in Spain, the activity of the Venezuelan masses was also 180 degrees in contradiction with the activities of the reformist ministers during the 11, 12th and 13th of April 2002. While the latter were in hiding or fleeing from the coup d'etát, the masses courageously opposed the coup, taking the control of the streets and fraternizing with the revolutionary elements in the army.

But precisely as with the Spanish revolution, in Venezuela the revolution is running the risk of a defeat, because there is no mass Marxist leadership to drive all the energy of the masses towards the taking of power.
The debates with the leaders of the American SWP:The method of transitional demands

The largest party of Trotsky's movement was without doubt the American Socialist Workers' Party. Its leaders had followed his advice and in a short space of time they had managed to make a successful fusion with the centrist party of A.J. Muste (The American Workers' Party), in reality with the purpose of winning the followers of the AWP over to Trotskyism, without allowing any political concessions. Afterwards they had entered the Socialist Party and effectively won over its youth organization, the Young Peoples' Socialist League. They had also managed to conquer important positions, as the one in Minneapolis, where they led the famous Teamsters Strike in 1934. The SWP had a membership of around 2,000 towards the end of the 30s.

However, Trotsky was completely aware of the theoretical shortcomings of the SWP leaders. He tried to prepare them for the great events that lay ahead by providing them with an insight to the dialectical method of analysis and a militant attitude towards the intervention in the mass movement. During 1938 and 1939 he held various discussions, with Cannon, Shactmann, Vincent Dunne, Joseph Hansen and other leaders of the American party.

The debates lasted for whole days at a time and had a widespread character, not just dealing with the particular problems of the practical work in the United States, but also about general problems of revolutionary tactics and strategy. The notes taken from the discussions were subsequently published and they constitute a real goldmine of lessons for revolutionary work.

The main point which ran through all the discussions was the methodwith which one could connect with the most active layers of the masses and consequently, the transitional demands to win them over. At that time, there was an increasing mood in favour of united proletarian action, but the class lacked a party on a national level.

Reflecting this mood, the LNPL (Labour's Non-Partisan League) was launched as a political instrument of the workers. However, the LNPL was launched by trade union leaders who merely wanted it to restrict it as being an office under their bureaucratic control which would recommend the vote for the bourgeois candidate Roosevelt. The SWP leaders were doubtful as to whether they should participate in the LNPL but Trotsky insisted on the struggle for “a policy which enables the trade unions to put their weight on the balance”.

He explained that it was necessary to counter-pose revolutionary demands to those of the reformists within the LNPL, in a concrete and audacious manner which could be understood by the workers:


“We are for a party, for an independent party of the toiling masses who will take power in the state. We must concretize it—we are for the creation of factory committees, for workers’ control of industry through the factory committees. All these questions are now pending in the air. They speak of technocracy, and put forward the slogan of ‘production for use.’ We oppose this charlatan formula and advance the workers’ control of production through the factory committees. (...)

“We say, the factory committees should see the books. This program we must develop parallel with the idea of a labour party in the unions, and workers’ militia. Otherwise it is an abstraction and an abstraction is a weapon in the hands of the opposing class. (...)

“Naturally we must make our first step in such a way as to accumulate experience for practical work, not to engage in abstract formulas, but develop a concrete program of action and demands in the sense that this transitional program issues from the conditions of capitalist society today, but immediately leads over the limits of capitalism (...)

“Then we also have the possibility of spreading the slogans of our transitional program and see the reaction of the masses. We will see what slogans should be selected, what slogans abandoned, but if we give up our slogans before the experience, before seeing the reaction of the masses, then we can never advance. .”[vii]

Faced with the scepticism, especially on the part of Shactmann, Trotsky pointed out that the slogan for a workers' militia was a necessity inherent in the concrete situation of the United States, even though this country was very far away and the threat of fascism seemed quite distant. He underlined that on the one hand the events of Europe would have a huge impact on the consciousness of the North American workers and on the other hand that the workers' militia could be proposed in a concrete way to protect shop stewards and picket lines from scabs and the bosses’ armed gangs.

Another controversial point was about the Ludlow amendment, by a bourgeois member of congress proposing a referendum on the participation of the United States in the Second World War. The schematic and abstract way of thinking of the SWP leaders had led the party to reject every attempt of using this slogan in favour of the referendum.

Trotsky opposed himself directly to Cannon and his colleagues and gave them an important lesson on how to tackle the question of democratic demands and connect them with the struggle for socialism. In the first place he explained that, until you can overthrow the bourgeois democracy, you have to take advantage of the means that it gives to you (regardless of how limited these are), in order to mobilize the masses in favour of your programme.

Of course he did not for one instance believe that a referendum could stop the outbreak of the war, nor decide whether the United States would take part in it or not. But Trotsky maintained that “We cannot dissipate the illusions [of the masses] a priori, only in the course of the struggle”. He added that it was crucial to say openly to the masses that the revolutionaries would fight side by side with their class brothers and sisters in favour of this referendum proposed by Ludlow, showing in practice that he wasn't really interested in realizing it, and that the working class could only trust its own forces in order to achieve such a referendum.

The words of Trotsky about the Ludlow amendment could perfectly have been written yesterday about the democratic demands in Tunisia and Egypt, where millions are struggling against the remnants of the dictatorships of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. It is a good answer to all those sectarian elements who reject the necessity of giving support to democratic demands, among them for a Constituent Assembly.

In all these discussions we can observe the dialectical method of Trotsky in contrast with the mechanical ideas of sectarianism.

Part 2 ⇒

[i] Trotsky, Diary In Exile, pp. 53-4

[ii] Writings of Leon Trotsky, : Fighting against the stream. 1939.

[iii] Writings of Leon Trotsky: The league faced with a turn, June 1934

[iv] Among the writings that analyze Trotsky's position on the Spanish Revolution, I would like to highlight the introduction written by Pierre Broué to the Spanish edition of his works on Spain and also the article by Juan Manuel Municio, “Trotsky, La izquierda comunista y el POUM” published in Marxismo Hoy No. 2, 1995.

[v] For a more detailed historical analysis of the development of the Spanish Socialist Youth, I recommend the following work: Pierre Broué: The Spanish Socialist Youth (When Carillo was a leftist), published in Revolutionary History, 2007.

[vi] Writings of Leon Trotsky: The class, the party and the leadership. 1940.

[vii] Writings of Leon Trotsky: On the Labor Party Question in the United States, 1938.

History & Theory » Topics » Economic theory

WILLIE PUTS MURPHY UP THE POLE FOR PADDYS DAY

NewsFlash Newry/South Armagh

Willie Frazer was caught on NightVision putting Conor Murphy up the pole in South Armagh, while removing the Irish tricolur from poles, before Saint Patricks Day. Reports are also coming in, that Sinn Fein have offered the RUC/psni the use of a portacabin to use as a canteen while they are removing dissident posters from the poles in the area. It will be very tricky, with an election looming, so every election poster, has to be strip searched and their anal cavity probed, for boobies.

One traditional smuggler, who wishes to remain anonymous, said, "We have offered one of our biggest portacabins for use by the RUC/psni so they can all have a cup of tay and we'll throw in a drop of discount whiskey as well. We are also offering them discount cigarettes and diesel. It's one of our biggest portacabins and 20 RUC men could fit in there at a time. You could also throw in a few PSNI women if they are fit enough. However we want it back in time for the General election, so we can use it outside a polling station. We are also offering to send over a few of the Bhoys, for entertainment.

Willie Frazer asked us to help them out, so that they can remove all the dissident posters and Tricolours in South Armagh. We can also supply them with a bit of Waccy Baccy and anti-depressants, to keep their spirits up. He also said that Willie and his loyal brethern, can also use it for a night, on their motorcade to Dublin, while British drones overhead, can escort it all the way to Dublin using the backroads across the border, round Cross. We've also offered Willie a few of our Bhoys for the night and for the Craic"





How Governments Twist Terrorism


States craft terror definitions and designations to absolve themselves and satisfy their constituencies.

By Philip Giraldi

March 12, 2015 "ICH" - "American Conservative" - The Washington Post reportsthat “terrorism trend lines are ‘worse than at any other point in history.’” But what is terrorism? It has frequently been pointed out that “terrorism” is a tactic, not an actual physical adversary, but it is less often noted that a simple definition of what constitutes terrorism is hardly universally accepted, while the designation itself is essentially political. The glib assertion that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter fails to capture the distinction’s consequences as the terror label itself increasingly comes with a number of legal and practical liabilities attached. Describing an organization as terroristic in order to discredit it has itself become a tactic, and one that sometimes has only limited connections to what the group in question actually believes or does.

The bone of contention in defining terrorism is where to draw the line in terms of the use of violence in furtherance of a political objective. In practice, it is generally accepted that state players who employ violence do so within a social framework that confers legitimacy, while nonstate players who use political violence are ipso facto terrorists, or at least susceptible to being tagged with that label, which confers upon them both illegitimacy and a particularly abhorrent criminality. But some on the receiving end of such a Manichean distinction object, noting that the laws defining terror are themselves drawn up by the governments and international organizations, which inevitably give themselves a pass in terms of their own potential liability. They would argue that established regimes will inevitably conspire to label their enemies terrorists to marginalize both resistance movements and internal dissent in such a way as to diminish the credibility of the groups that are so targeted. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently been doing precisely that, and one might reasonably argue that government use of violence is often in practice indistinguishable from the actions of nonstate players.

Some common dictionary definitions of terrorism include engaging in “the systematic use of terror,” surely an indication of the inscrutability of an issue when the word must be used to define itself. The United Nations has been unsuccessfully negotiating a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism since 2002 that would define terror as causing death or serious injury or destroying or damaging public or private property “to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.” The United States Federal criminal code uses similar language, as does the Patriot Act, with the key elements being the use of violence or physical destruction to “intimidate or coerce” a civilian population or an existing government.

Governments are aware of what can be accomplished by invoking the word “terrorism.” The diplomacy-averse United States frequently hides behind the label, as it is prohibited by law from negotiating with groups so-labeled, and thereby avoids having to confront the possible legitimacy of what they represent. And it also justifies a uniformly violent response, which is invariably described as self-defense.

Fourteen years ago the “global war on terror” was used to justify wholesale American intervention in predominantly Muslim countries. A number of European countries, including France and Britain, have followed the example of the two Patriot Acts by introducing antiterrorism legislation that provides special police and intelligence service authorities that limit normal legal protections in terrorism cases. The broadly written laws have largely rendered the authorities immune from either regulation or prosecution, and governments in the West have generally been reluctant to allow any third-party inquiries into the related behavior of military and police forces. In the United States the state secret privilege, originally intended to prohibit the exposure of classified information in court, has been used to completely derail judicial proceedings relating to offenses allegedly committed by the government in terrorism cases.

And critics of the essentially hypocritical double standard used in defining terrorism certainly have a point. One might reasonably argue that the use of drones, in which “signature” targets are killed because they match a profile, fits comfortably within the definition of terrorism. During 2003-4, American Army and Marine forces in Fallujah sometimes shelled and bombed targets in the city indiscriminately and were certainly responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths. The Israeli Defense Forces killed thousands of civilians in two incursions into Gaza as well as several attacks on Lebanon. There was no declaration of war to justify the use of armed force in either case, and independent observers noted that many of the civilian casualties could have been avoided, normally a defining factor that makes an incident terror. Both Israel and the United States turned the tables on the situation by referring to their opponents and victims as “terrorists.” There has been no accountability for the deaths because it was two governments that carried out the killing.

In a world seemingly obsessed with terrorism it was inevitable that something like ananti-terrorism industry would grow dramatically. Every television and radio network has its own stable of pundits who pontificate on every violent incident, and there also are well-compensated freelancers, who describe themselves as experts, such as Evan Kohlmann and Steve Emerson. Emerson recently had to apologize after claiming that Birmingham, England had a number of no-go areas controlled by local Muslim extremists.

It should be no surprise that lawyers have now also gotten into the game. In 1996 Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which allows victims of terrorism to file civil suits in federal and state courts against sponsors or supporters of terrorism. Once you have a group or individual labeled as terrorist, or providing assistance to terrorists, there are a number of options you can pursue. The burgeoning antiterrorism industry appears to be in some ways linked to the increasing employment of Lawfare, which uses the legal system to wage war by alternative means, making it possible to obtain a favorable judgment and damages from the assets of a recognized terrorist organization. Such litigation benefits from favorable legislation in the United States that makes terrorism a worldwide crime subject to U.S. judicial review.

Recent court cases have involved both states that allegedly sponsor terrorism or actual organizations that are now parts of governments that either currently or at one time were perceived to be terrorists. Many of the groups targeted are enemies of Israel, and the Israeli Lawfare center Shurat HaDin is most active in pursuing such litigation. In a recent case in New York City, the Palestinian Authority was successfully sued by a group of Israelis and Americans over terrorist attacks that took place in Israel in 2002-4. If the appeal fails, the Palestinian Authority will be required to pay $1 billion in damages and will be bankrupted, with negative consequences for the United States, which has been seeking to create a viable government on the West Bank.

The U.S. Department of State identifies four countries as state sponsors of terrorism, making them prime targets for sanctions and other legal action. They are Cuba, Sudan, Syria and Iran. Cuba is an anomaly as it has not threatened anyone in decades but remains on the list due to the deep passions within America’s politically powerful Cuban Lobby. Sudan likewise should not be so designated, as even the U.S. government admits that it is cooperative on terrorism issues.

This leaves Syria and Iran, both of which are regarded as state sponsors of terrorism even though both are themselves victims of terrorist attacks carried out by groups supported by the United States. They are on the list because they harbor or cooperate with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. All three groups consider themselves to be resistance movements against the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, but Israel regards all three as terrorists, a view shared by the United States on the state department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list. That viewpoint is not necessarily shared by many European governments, which regard the organizations as having evolved into legitimate political parties. There are also thousands of individuals and groups considered to be terroristic or criminal, collected by the U.S. Department of Justice on its Special Designated Nationals List. Individuals and organizations on the list have their assets blocked and are subject to other punitive action by the United States government.

Being designated by the Department of the Treasury or state does not necessarily mean that someone or some organization was actually involved in terrorism. The Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity, was declared a terrorist organization in 2001. Its officers were convicted and imprisoned in a 2008 trial because the Treasury Department determined ex post facto that it had given money to Hamas before that group was itself named as a terrorist organization.

Inclusion on the State or Treasury lists can mean that there is solid evidence of wrongdoing, but it can also represent mere insinuations or a strong desire to see a group singled out for punishment. In any event, once a group or person is designated for a list, it is difficult to get off. Organizations that have not engaged in terrorist activity for many years remain on the list while other groups that are active escape censure. Recently, the Mujaheddin e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist group thatkilled six Americans in the 1970s, was removed from the list under political pressure from Congress and the media. Again, Israel was involved. MEK is an enemy of the current government in Tehran and is itself an important component of the Israeli intelligence effort against Iran, having been involved in the fabrication of information suggesting that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program as well as participating in the assassinations of Tehran’s scientists.

So what terrorism actually consists of very much depends on one’s perspective, rendering the word itself largely meaningless. But those who are listed as terrorists experience real consequences even accepting that the designation is both selectively applied and politicized. The United States and Israel in particular use the terrorism label to demonize opponents, drum up fear, and generate popular support for security policies that might otherwise be unpalatable. They also justify their own behavior by asserting that they occupy the moral high ground in the defense of the world against terror, a claim that certainly should be regarded with considerable skepticism.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest

SINN FEIN MAY LEGALIZE UNDERAGE SEX

>


Cinema Bizarre - Dysfunctional family Lyrics

I'm a punk,
I'm a sinner,
I'm a lost new beginner.
I'm a threat to myself,
I'm a get Armageddon.
I'm a freak,
I'm a liar.
I'm a flirt,
I deny that I know it,
Then I mess it up.

And sometimes I feel like ,
I'm only one.
No wonder why I've become,
So dum so dum di dum di dum.

I get more and more strange,
I'm going insane.
I'm building it up,
Just to break it down.
You get what you see,
The product of a dysfunctional family.

Dysfunction,
Dysfunctional,
Dysfunctional family.


Dysfunction,
Dysfunctional,
Dysfunctional family.

I'm a bit suicidal,
I'm my own worst rival,
Train wreck, white trash, freak, maniac, psycho.
I'm a trouble making rebel,
Made a deal with the devil,
I'm way past ever coming back.

But sometimes I feel like,
I'm not the only one,
When I see why I've become,
So dum, so dum di dum di dum.

I get more and more strange,
I'm going insane.
I'm building it up,
Just to break it down.
You get what you see,
The product of a dysfunctional family.

Dysfunction,
Dysfunctional,
Dysfunctional family.

Dysfunction,
Dysfunctional,
Dysfunctional family.

I'm not anybody,
Don't you cry for me,
I'm just from a dysfunctional family.

Family, family, family, family, family, family,
family, family, family, family, family, family,
family, family, family, family, family.

I get more and more strange,
I'm going insane.
I'm building it up,
Just to break it down.
You get what you see,
The product of a dysfunctional family.

Dysfunction,
Dysfunctional,
Dysfunctional family.

Dysfunction,
Dysfunctional,
Dysfunctional family.

Dysfunctional family

Dysfunctional family





Ireland has a growing reputation as Europe's most neoliberal country, with 'Paedo' Sinn Fein expected to be Ireland's largest political party after the next election. Seasoned political analysts are speculating, after all the controversies surrounding the Party's cover up around paedophiles, that after the next General election, Gerry Adams may be Taoiseach and the Party will legalize paedophillia in both parts of Ireland. Gerry has confessed that he spends quality time, frollicking naked with his dog on a trampoline, along with physical intimacy with the tress of Ireland,in his back garden. Gerry Kelly, the chief enforcer of the Irish Peace Process, spent several years in the Netherlands, where there was a legal Paedophile Party.

A Dutch court some years ago rejected an attempt by anti-paedophile campaigners to outlaw, it's Paedo Party, which tried to cut the age of consent, from 16 to 12 and legalize child pornography. A court in The Hague at the time said, "The freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of association should be seen as the foundations of the democratic rule of law and the PNVD is also entitled to these freedoms,"  The court also  declared, curbs on freedom of expression could only be applied, where public order is at risk. Judge Hofhuis said at the time, "They (opponents of the party) only want to give expression to their moral concerns. That is far from being sufficient to outlaw a party. It is up to the voter to give a judgment on the arguments of political parties,"

'Paedo' Sinn Fein's rise to power in Ireland, includes members, who believe they are not doing anything criminal, and the party is seen, as a powerful example of Irelands' neoliberal approach to it's many social issues. One of it's MPs, today declared controversy around the rape of a youth as rubbish. It is also expected, that 'Paedo" Sinn Fein, will relax laws on soft drugs, prostitution, gay marriage, abortion and same sex marriage. However traditional republicans in Republican Sinn Fein are outraged and disgusted, about this policy, while people are considering bringing a case to the courts about the matter, as they believe 'Paedo' Sinn Fein, do not reflect Irish society and are flouting children's rights. They demand that Irish citizens, must make their voices heard, if they want to protect Irish children, from paedophile interests.

Many observers believe, that the 'Paedo' Sinn Fein party, wants to legalize the possession of child pornography and allow pornography to be shown on RTE television. Others believe the Party wants young children, to receive sex education and that young people, be allowed to participate in pornographic films. There is also a Loyalist party in Ireland, who believe that sex with animals should also be allowed but their leader Willie, wants abuse of animals to remain illegal. However these ideas are proving too much for some farmers in South Armagh, who have put up posters objecting to the parties and want Ireland to outlaw these parties, who are provoking a backlash in Dublin, which includes receiving threats.

The reaction against the party comes at a sensitive time in Irish history. There is difficulty with integrating many Orangemen, along with the country's sinner population, as mainstream politicians are finding it hard to swallow Willie or the sinners, neoliberal values. The country's Dissidents have also caused controversy, by saying that aspiring Irish citizens, should not tolerate Willie or the sinners' neoliberal values. Sinners complain, that they have been targeted on social media, because one of their members were filmed along with Willie, kissing a couple of goats and a few sheep.

The highly controversial political party known as the 'Paedophile party' disbanded, when the party's members, took a decision to do so, after their controversial policies, were condemned, both at home and abroad. It was unable to participate in a general election, because it failed to collect enough support, to be on the ballot papes. They disbanded, after they were unable to collect enough signatures. It remains to be seen, just how far the sinners and Willie, will take their agenda, but they do appear to have the backing of the British Government, who have some very powerful paedophile rings at Westmisnter.They also appear to have the backing of the BBC and many religious groups.

HAPPY PADDYS DAY COUNTS

On the 2 March 1972, United Kingdom, Paedophile, Prime Minister, Edward Heath stated in the House of Commons:


"The Government, having reviewed the whole matter with great care and with reference to any future operations, have decided that the techniques ... will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation... The statement that I have made covers all future circumstances." Since that time, the UK have outsourced their torture and taught it to torturers worldwide. Now, the the British Government have declared, that they are leaving the European Court, because they can no longer comply with European Law, neither can the comply with International Law, and have refused to join the International Criminal Court. They are currently torturing, politically interned Irish POWs in Maghaberry, by unecessary strip searching and sticking everything up the arse, as in Kenya in the articles below, which is typical paedophile torture. There is modern equipment as used in airports and prisons all over the world, to carry out this work, without torture and degradation.

As far as Irish Blog is concerned, there is no need to write anymore about UK standards of injustice, the above actions, confirm in themaelves, their uncivilized status.They have just sent the SAS back into Ireland and without European Law, can torture at will in Occupied Ireland again in despite a PSEUDO PEACE PROCESS. They also plan to use Occupied Ireland again, as a test laboratory, to develop further drone technology.

In Irish Blog's Court, they are proven C(O)UNTS!

CASE DISMISSED !

Paper trail: from Northern Ireland’s hooded men to CIA’s global torture

In August 1971 the UK authorities arrested and interned hundreds of men in Northern Ireland. Fourteen of them were selected for "special treatment" - torture in a specially-built interrogation centre at a British Army camp. The men were subjected to the soon-to-be infamous "five techniques" of hooding, stress positions, white noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and water - combined with brutal beatings & death threats.

Allegations soon emerged of abuse. Amnesty International sent its first ever research mission to the UK to investigate, interviewing the men and finding some of them to still be black and blue with bruises.

In it's October 30 1971 report, Amnesty found a "prima facie case of brutality and torture".



Responding to public outrage in Ireland, the Irish government made history by taking the first ever inter-state case under the European Convention of Human Rights, alleging the UK had tortured the men.

While the UK denied torture, Prime Minister Ted Heath soon announced a prohibition by UK forces of any future use of the techniques.

In 1976, the European Commission on Human Rights found that the UK had tortured the men, but the UK appealed the decision claiming that the techniques used had no long-term impact.

The appeal succeeded and in 1978 the European Court of Human Rights found that the interrogation amounted to "inhuman and degrading treatment" but not torture.

The difference was subsequently seized upon by those who wanted to use similar interrogation techniques.

In 2002, Jay Bybee in the US Attorney General's office prepared legal advice on what could and could not be done to interrogation subjects. He quoted liberally from the Ireland v UK 1978 decision in the infamous 'torture memos':





Within months, the CIA was using the "five techniques" in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.

Here's an excerpt from a CIA report on what they did when interrogating a "high value detainee" (HVD). The similarity of the torture techniques to those applied in Northern Ireland is striking.



With the publication today of the US Senate report into CIA torture, more of the horror of US abuses has now been laid bare.

Meanwhile, happy with the downgraded European Court decision and the "special stigma of torture" removed, the UK quietly forgot about Ted Heath's supposed probihition. In Iraq, the techniques were put to use again.

They cost Baha Mousa his life. The inquiry into his death found that the Iraqi's 2003 demise was caused by "factors including lack of food and water, heat, exhaustion, fear, previous injuries and the hooding and stress positions used by British troops - and a final struggle with his guards".
Letter from Home Secretary Merlyn Rees to Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in 1977, when the UK was arguing (successfully, as it turned out) in Strasbourg that the techniques used were not torture

Meanwhile, through work by the Pat Finucane Centre, NUI Galway and RTÉ, files were discovered in the UK state archives in Kew suggesting that Britain misled the Court in 1978, withholding key evidence demonstrating they knew the techniques had long-term health impacts on the victims, and that the torture had been authorised at UK Cabinet level.

Following calls from Amnesty International and others, the Irish government has now decided to appeal the European Court decision in light of the new evidence. Perhaps the 'hooded men' will finally have their day in a Strasbourg Court with the full truth before it.

Shockingly, to date, no proper, independent investigation of the torture of the 'hooded men' has ever been carried out by the UK authorities and no-one has ever been held to account.

With total impunity in the UK for torture conducted in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, it is perhaps no wonder that the US followed the example of their closest ally when it came to fighting their 21st century "war on terror".New evidence of British colonial atrocities has not changed our national ability to disregard it
Members of the Devon Regiment round up local people in a search for Mau Mau fighters in Kenya in 1954. Photograph: Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images

@GeorgeMonbiot



There is one thing you can say for the Holocaust deniers: at least they know what they are denying. In order to sustain the lies they tell, they must engage in strenuous falsification. To dismiss Britain's colonial atrocities, no such effort is required. Most people appear to be unaware that anything needs to be denied.

The story of benign imperialism, whose overriding purpose was not to seize land, labour and commodities but to teach the natives English, table manners and double-entry book-keeping, is a myth that has been carefully propagated by the rightwing press. But it draws its power from a remarkable national ability to airbrush and disregard our past.

Last week's revelations, that the British government systematically destroyed the documents detailing mistreatment of its colonial subjects, and that the Foreign Office then lied about a secret cache of files containing lesser revelations, is by any standards a big story. But it was either ignored or consigned to a footnote by most of the British press. I was unable to find any mention of the secret archive on the Telegraph's website. The Mail's only coverage, as far as I can determine, was an opinion piece by a historian called Lawrence James, who used the occasion to insist that any deficiencies in the management of the colonies were the work of "a sprinkling of misfits, incompetents and bullies", while everyone else was "dedicated, loyal and disciplined".

The British government's suppression of evidence was scarcely necessary. Even when the documentation of great crimes is abundant, it is not denied but simply ignored. In an article for the Daily Mail in 2010, for example, the historian Dominic Sandbrook announced that "Britain's empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria." Could he really have been unaware of the history he is disavowing?

Caroline Elkins, a professor at Harvard, spent nearly 10 years compiling the evidence contained in her book Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. She started her research with the belief that the British account of the suppression of the Kikuyu's Mau Mau revolt in the 1950s was largely accurate. Then she discovered that most of the documentation had been destroyed. She worked through the remaining archives, and conducted 600 hours of interviews with Kikuyu survivors – rebels and loyalists – and British guards, settlers and officials. Her book is fully and thoroughly documented. It won the Pulitzer prize. But as far as Sandbrook, James and other imperial apologists are concerned, it might as well never have been written.

Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.

The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.

Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.

Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.

No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, "1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process".

The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan's is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.

Without explaining what this means, Lawrence James concedes that "harsh measures" were sometimes used, but he maintains that "while the Mau Mau were terrorising the Kikuyu, veterinary surgeons in the Colonial Service were teaching tribesmen how to deal with cattle plagues." The theft of the Kikuyu's land and livestock, the starvation and killings, the widespread support among the Kikuyu for the Mau Mau's attempt to reclaim their land and freedom: all vanish into thin air. Both men maintain that the British government acted to stop any abuses as soon as they were revealed.

What I find remarkable is not that they write such things, but that these distortions go almost unchallenged. The myths of empire are so well-established that we appear to blot out countervailing stories even as they are told. As evidence from the manufactured Indian famines of the 1870s and from the treatment of other colonies accumulates, British imperialism emerges as no better and in some cases even worse than the imperialism practised by other nations. Yet the myth of the civilising mission remains untroubled by the evidence.

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