Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sftig.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!mhuxm!sftig!jmg From: jmg@sftig.UUCP (J.McGhee) Newsgroups: net.politics,net.legal,net.flame,net.nlang.celts Subject: Re: Re: American Official Detained, Searched & Interrogated in North Ireland Message-ID: <619@sftig.UUCP> Date: Wed, 6-Nov-85 10:40:49 EST Article-I.D.: sftig.619 Posted: Wed Nov 6 10:40:49 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 8-Nov-85 05:32:43 EST Distribution: net Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Summit, NJ Lines: 99 Xref: watmath net.politics:11847 net.legal:2535 net.flame:12661 net.nlang.celts:259 > Ah, Marie Howe. If I tried to make films of a prison housing terrorists in a > nation which has experienced a couple of thousand-plus deaths related to > insurgency I'd expect difficulties. Ah, John Purbrick. Good propaganda technique! Withhold just enough facts so that your audience gets the most erroneous and most damaging impression of your opposition. You must have studied technique at Whitehall in London. Yes, those nations like South Africa and the Philipines, Nicaragua under Samosa, Chile and El Salvador certainly do get up tight when you bring their dispicable acts out into the daylight where everyone can see. That's why South Africa recently started attacking news cameramen in their country; that's why Samosa's National Guard blew the brains out of an American reporter and why so many are "Missing" in Chile and El Salvador. That's why the reporters were trapped on board the plane at the Manila airport while Benigno Aquino was assassinated by the Philipine Army and Police. The world has come a long way since the time when a bill was introduced in the "mother of parliaments" in London calling for the **> CASTRATION <** of all Catholic priests, but we still have a long way to go. > Yes, they mistreated her. Yes, she was begging for trouble. Sounds like I've heard these lines so many times before, usually in cases of rape or wifebeating when the attacker tries to justify his insane acts. > Maybe when the police and soldiers treated her with > skepticism they had heard about the last time she was arrested, back home; Let's see, you must be referring to the time in 1976 when Marie Howe, along with many others, was arrested for an act of civil disobedience on a picket line protesting human rights violations in northern Ireland at the docking of a British ship in Boston Harbor. Of course, Marie Howe and all the other picketers were released about an hour later, immediately after the picket was over and all charges against them were dropped as usually happens in this kind of incident. There seems to be a long train of precedent for her act from the Boston Tea Party to the civil disobedience of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King and most recently the arrests of some rather prominent Americans for acts of civil disobedience in front of the South African Embassy in Washington. Well, I guess all those people must be morally bankrupt individuals. Isn't that right, John? > on that occasion she tried to give the cops a false name. I don't know where you came up with that piece of nonsense, but that is totally and completely untrue. It is ludicrous to suggest that Marie Howe would not be recognized by any person in her own home district. In fact, I would say that she probably blew her cover when she appeared as one of the main speakers on that occasion. I can tell you that an American Police Chief who recently travelled to northern Ireland, speaking from a podium outside the UN in Dag Hammerskjold Plaza, denounced the Royal Ulster Constabulary as being a completely sectarian force of repression which did not deserve to be described by the word "police" because they could not measure of to the standards of any police force in America. > Ulster Protestants have made a lot of protests about "Loyalist prisoners" > lately. Could Mr McGhee explain who these prisoners are? How do he and > Marie Howe feel about them? Glad you mentioned that! Let me start by giving you a little recent history. In **> EVERY <** instance where loyalist prisoners have protested maltreatment or have protested against the kangaroo courts of northern Ireland, they have been **> SUPPORTED <** by the Nationalist/Republican prisoners and Sinn Fein who have experienced the same injustices from the same government, but on a much larger scale and much more frequently. At one time the British Army placed Loyalist and Republican prisoners in the same prison compounds because they thought the two groups would fight like cats and dogs. To their utter amazement the two groups got along very well together and supported each other in their protests for better conditions. The Loyalist and Republican prisoners formed a joint governing council of prisoners and created a flag with two hands clasped in brotherhood surrounded by a ring of barbed wire. When things got to that stage the British decided to separate the two groups in different compounds or else the Loyalist prisoners might come to the inevitable conclusion that they didn't need the British for anything. Andy Tyrie is the head of the Loyalist paramilitary assassination squad known as the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), which has never been banned or outlawed in spite of the fact that Andy Tyrie has openly stated in front of TV cameras that they assassinate Nationalists and that they receive information from the British Army and RUC on proposed assassination targets. Recently he stated: "Some people say that northern Ireland Catholics are second class citizens. This is untrue. Actually, they are third class citizens. Northern Ireland Protestants are the second class citzens." In the 1700's Protestants were not only participants in the Irish independence movement, they were its founders and principal leaders. These facts have been purged from the British histories of Ireland and a mythological doomsday scenario has been promoted by the British government whenever it refers to a United Ireland in order to promote a chicken-little "the sky is falling!" mentality among them. You ought to be more careful about what you say, John. Some people may begin to suspect you of being a "Fenian plant" for feeding me "just the right questions". J. M. McGhee