Price of an Irish Nigger in a British Gulag

Marian Price is just one of several Irish people currently politically interned in British Occupied Ireland during which time lawyers have not been allowed to see any of Britain's ‘alleged’ evidence.

• She has been kept in solitary confinement in a ‘male’ high security prison
• She is effectively interned without a trial, sentence, or release date.
• She has not been given any timescale for any investigation.
• She has not been allowed to see the evidence that the state claims to have
• Her release has been ordered on two occasions by judges. However, on both occasions the British Vice royal has overruled those decisions.
• The Vice royal claims they ‘revoked Marian’s license, ’despite Marian never being released on license. She was given a Royal Pardon.
• Marian’s Royal Pardon has ‘gone missing’ from the home office (the only time in history). The British Vice royal has taken the view that unless a paper copy can be located – it must be assumed that she does not have one. It is generally agreed that MI5 shredded her majesty's pardon.
• Despite no ‘license’ existing for her release from prison in 1980, it is the non-existent licence that is being used to keep her in prison.
• She can only be released by Theresa Villiers the current Vice royal responsible for Marian's internment.

A Time for ‘Sublime Madness’
By Chris Hedges

January 21, 2013 "Truthdig" - - The planet we have assaulted will convulse with fury. The senseless greed of limitless capitalist expansion will implode the global economy. The decimation of civil liberties, carried out in the name of fighting terror, will shackle us to an interconnected security and surveillance state that stretches from Moscow to Istanbul to New York. To endure what lies ahead we will have to harness the human imagination. It was the human imagination that permitted African-Americans during slavery and the Jim Crow era to transcend their physical condition. It was the human imagination that sustained Sitting Bull and Black Elk as their land was seized and their cultures were broken. And it was the human imagination that allowed the survivors in the Nazi death camps to retain the power of the sacred.

It is the imagination that makes possible transcendence. Chants, work songs, spirituals, the blues, poetry, dance and art converged under slavery to nourish and sustain this imagination. These were the forces that, as Ralph Ellison wrote, “we had in place of freedom.” The oppressed would be the first—for they know their fate—to admit that on a rational level such a notion is absurd, but they also know that it is only through the imagination that they survive. Jewish inmates in Auschwitz reportedly put God on trial for the Holocaust and then condemned God to death. A rabbi stood after the verdict to lead the evening prayers. 

African-Americans and Native Americans, for centuries, had little control over their destinies. Forces of bigotry and violence kept them subjugated by whites. Suffering, for the oppressed, was tangible. Death was a constant companion. And it was only their imagination, as William Faulkner noted at the end of “The Sound and the Fury,” that permitted them—unlike the novel’s white Compson family—to “endure.”

The theologian James H. Cone captures this in his masterpiece “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” Cone says that for oppressed blacks the cross was a “paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.” Cone continues:

That God could “make a way out of no way” in Jesus’ cross was truly absurd to the intellect, yet profoundly real in the souls of black folk. Enslaved blacks who first heard the gospel message seized on the power of the cross. Christ crucified manifested God’s loving and liberating presence in the contradictions of black life—that transcendent presence in the lives of black Christians that empowered them to believe that ultimately, in God’s eschatological future, they would not be defeated by the “troubles of this world,” no matter how great and painful their suffering. Believing this paradox, this absurd claim of faith, was only possible in humility and repentance. There was no place for the proud and the mighty, for people who think that God called them to rule over others. The cross was God’s critique of power—white power—with powerless love, snatching victory out of defeat.

Reinhold Niebuhr, as Cone points out in his book, labeled this capacity to defy the forces of repression “a sublime madness in the soul.” Niebuhr wrote that “nothing but madness will do battle with malignant power and ‘spiritual wickedness in high places.’ ” This sublime madness, as Niebuhr understood, is dangerous, but it is vital. Without it, “truth is obscured.” And Niebuhr also knew that traditional liberalism was a useless force in moments of extremity. Liberalism, Niebuhr said, “lacks the spirit of enthusiasm, not to say fanaticism, which is so necessary to move the world out of its beaten tracks. It is too intellectual and too little emotional to be an efficient force in history.”

Niebuhr’s “sublime madness” permits the rest of us to view the possibilities of a world otherwise seen only by the visionary, the artist and the madman. And it permits us to fight for these possibilities. The prophets in the Hebrew Bible had this sublime madness. The words of the Hebrew prophets, asAbraham Heschel wrote, were “a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven.”

Primo Levi in his memoir “Survival in Auschwitz” tells of teaching Italian to another inmate, Jean Samuel, in exchange for lessons in French. Levi recites to Samuel from memory Canto XXVI of Dante’s “The Inferno.” It is the story of Ulysses’ final voyage.

“He has received the message,” Levi writes, “he has felt that it has to do with him, that it has to do with all men who toil, and with us in particular.” Levi goes on. “It is vitally necessary and urgent that he listen, that he understand … before it is too late; tomorrow he or I might be dead, or we might never see each other again.”

The poet Leon Staff wrote from the Warsaw ghetto: “Even more than bread we now need poetry, in a time when it seems that it is not needed at all.”

It is only those who can retreat into the imagination, and through their imagination can minister to the suffering of those around them, who uncover the physical and psychological strength to resist.

"… [T]he people noticed that Crazy Horse was queerer than ever,” Black Elk said in remembering the final days of the wars against the Indians. He went on to say of the great Sioux warrior: “He hardly ever stayed in the camp. People would find him out alone in the cold, and they would ask him to come home with them. He would not come, but sometimes he would tell the people what to do. People wondered if he ate anything at all. Once my father found him out alone like that, and he said to my father: ‘Uncle, you have noticed me the way I act. But do not worry; there are caves and holes for me to live in, and out here the spirits may help me. I am making plans for the good of my people.’ ”

Homer, Dante, Beethoven, Melville, Dostoevsky, Proust, Joyce, W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson and James Baldwin, along with artists such as the sculptor David Smith, the photographer Diane Arbus and the blues musician Charley Patton, all had it. It is the sublime madness that lets one sing, as bluesmanIshman Bracey did in Hinds County, Miss., “I’ve been down so long, Lawd, down don’t worry me.” And yet in the mists of the imagination also lies the certainty of divine justice:

I feel my hell a-risin’, a-risin’ every day;
I feel my hell a-risin’, a-risin’ every day;
Someday it’ll burst this levee and wash the whole wide world away.

Shakespeare’s greatest heroes and heroines—Prospero, Anthony, Juliet, Viola, Rosalind, Hamlet, Cordelia and Lear—all have this sublime madness. As Theseus says in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.

“Ultimately, the artist and the revolutionary function as they function, and pay whatever dues they must pay behind it because they are both possessed by a vision, and they do not so much follow this vision as find themselves driven by it,” wrote James Baldwin. “Otherwise, they could never endure, much less embrace, the lives they are compelled to lead.”

Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

© 2012 TruthDig.com

The Price of Justice for an IrishNigger

 international | rights and freedoms | opinion/analysis  Saturday September 01, 2012 21:25 by BrianClarkeNUJ - AllVoices

What Civil Rights ?

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny."

- James Madison

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

Winston Churchill as, In The Highest Degree Odious : Detention Without Trial in Wartime Britain by A. W. B. Simpson

Dublin Sept 15th at 2pm, Garden of Remembrance Free Marian Price

Forty years ago Marian Price marched for civil rights, with her friend Moira Drumm in British Occupied Ireland after being inspired by the Black Civil Rights movement lead by Martin Luther King in the US. Over 40 year later on a windy day, she reached up and held a script, to prevent it being blown away, while a masked man read the traditional IRA’s “Easter Message.” She was arrested on May 13th 2011 and charged with encouraging support of an illegal organisation. Marian appeared three days later in court in Derry, where she was granted bail but as she left the courthouse, she was re-arrested, as per order of a document, signed by the Vice royal Owen Paterson and taken to high-security, solitary confinement in the all male Maghaberry jail. The court case was meaningless, because Paterson’s contempt for justice and due process was trumped by his order to override the bail decision of the Judiciary.

Now, as a result of sensory deprivation torture, she is seriously ill and has been transferred to a Belfast hospital, like her former friend Moira Drumm whom the British shot dead in a Belfast hospital many years ago. Marian is under armed guard with locked bolted doors, barred windows and under 24 hour surveillance. She is gravely ill with pneumonia, while probably being held until she dies in one way or another. Paterson’s order for Marian to effectively die in a British prison, was based on “intelligence” information from his secret services, who have a vested interest in the internment of traditional Irish republicans and political dissidents.

In July, Marian was then charged with “providing property for the purposes of terrorism” allegedly having bought a mobile phone which the British maintained was subsequently used in the killing of two British soldiers at Massereene barracks, back in early 2009. Marian was held then, for two days, questioned about this specific allegation, before being released without charge. No evidence was found in the interim or proffered to the court on this matter. The Judge looking at precisely the same lack of evidence, again granted Marian bail. But yet again as she left the court, another unelected vice royal Paterson order, took precedence over the judge and the court.The Massereene charge was meant to discredit her and associate her with the shootings to undermine a public campaign for her release which attracted considerable support, from people not politically aligned, who could not fathom what crime she had actually been committed, at the traditional Easter Commemoration. Since then the British have orchestrated several personal whispering campaigns, against Marian and her supporters.

A year after her original arrest, the charges relating to the commemoration were thrown out of a Derry court by the judge, who was told, preliminary papers were still not ready. Judge McElholm declared every citizen was entitled to a fair trial, in a reasonable period and that the British had clearly not met this criteria. But again Marian was imprisoned by an order from Paterson. This was the third time a court ordered her released and the third time the unelected English Vice royal in British Occupied Ireland, overruled the court and said no. Further to overruling the judiciary, he also overruled his own Queen. Marian Price was previously given a full royal pardon by the Queen of England or the royal Prerogative of Mercy.Cardinal O'Fiach the head of the Catholic Church bore witness to the fact. Vice royal Paterson again claimed that this document, which would set Marian free, had been lost or shredded by his colleagues. This is a rather serious matter, because perverting the course of justice, is a very serious matter carrying a life in prison for ordinary mortals.

Patrick Ramsey, a Social Democratic Labour member of the elected British Assembly recently wrote to Paterson about this "lost" pardon and formally asked;

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- What communication [has Paterson] personally had with this person/Department?

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

Again the unelected English Vice royal Paterson in Ireland contemptuously dismissed the elected Irish Assembly member Ramsey's inquiry, stating that "unfortunately the Royal Prerogative of Mercy was not recovered but had no bearing on current circumstances. Patterson has now even gone further and is now demanding, the local elected Assembly be downsized and it's 'peace process' structures be dismantled.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez and two leading criminologists, Dr. Phil Scraton of Queen’s University and Dr. Linda Moore of the University of Ulster, have visited Marian with all three calling for her release both on the grounds of her civil rights, basic due process and for humanitarian health reasons before she dies. Both academics and authors of several official reports on prisons in Occupied Ireland, stated: “Given the concerns expressed locally and internationally regarding her continued detention and declining health, we urge you to release her on humanitarian grounds. Marian Price has been imprisoned…without trial in circumstances which may amount to administrative internment and which we believe to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Vice royal Paterson the horsey blood sport enthusiast, married into British royalty, sniffed his stiff Tory upper lip and overruled their recommendation once again. Internment without trail, like all things experimented with in British Occupied Ireland, in the last 40 years of British war on the Irish people, is now being introduced in England itself. While Patterson was overruling his British judiciary and Queen, his Tory party colleagues are introducing a Bill to give it's Ministers power, to use secret service gestapo evidence in secrecy, under “Closed Material Procedures.” Such evidence would not be produced in court, for “national security” reasons, preventing even the accused, the right of defence or the right to know what charge exactly is being made against them..

When Marian was 19, she was one of nine members of the Provisional IRA, who planted four bombs in London, which included the Old Bailey almost 40 years ago in March 1973. Despite a two hour warning, a man died from a heart attack. The IRA team, included Gerry Kelly now a Minister at the Stormont parliament and she was also under orders of several current leading Irish politicians, involved in the peace process, a peace process undermining justification for huge secret service, British taxpayers budgets in Ireland. Marian Price was freed more than 30 years ago in 1980, suffering from tuberculosis, anorexia and weighing just five stone. She and her sister Dolours spent 200 days on hunger strike, demanding political status. They were force-fed three times a day for 167 of the 200 days, with a tube forced down their the throats into their stomach, which almost murdered Marian several times. The resulting trauma and psychological damage of ongoing torture then and now, led to a 1980 royal pardon because of imminent death.

Marian has insisted from the moment arrested in May last year, that she was released in 1980 on a Royal Prerogative of Mercy, which Paterson does not have the authority to override. Paterson claims its terms, which he has not seen, authorizes him to override his queen. Marian's lawyers have repeatedly asked that the pardon be produced, so the terms can be checked by a judge. One does not have to be particularly bright, cynical or subjective, listening to the contradictions in Patterson's waffle subsequently, to conclude who precisely should be spending the rest of their life in prison for perverting the course of justice in British Occupied Ireland. The cause of peace in Ireland is not served by the denial of justice. The only cause served by keeping Marian Price and other political prisoners of conscience interned without a proper trial Maghaberry, is the cause and coffers of the bloated secret service British taxpayers budgets. There is a call for those who genuinely want peace in Ireland, to work for justice and protest in Dublin on Sept 15th at 2pm, from the Garden of Remembrance.

The author would like to thank Eamonn McCann for his researched material used in this article.

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