WHEN THE KNOCK COMES ON YOUR DOOR!! (VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED)
INTERNMENT : Indefinite detention without trial and repressive laws used in an 'emergency,' when ruling regimes are under threat, from the people below, because of injustice. In Ireland, that 'emergency' has been going on, since the formation of the scum, sectarian, police, statelet of British Occupied Ireland
Internment has been used as a political weapon, in every generation, since the formation of the British police state in Ireland in June 1921. In 1922 Ballykinlar camp was established and divided into two sections, each holding about 1,000 men. On 22 December 1938 the Sectarian Stormont regime resorted to internment again. During the 1956-1961 internment many of the men interned then were lifted again on 9 August 1971.Internment instigated again in a supposed peace process. From 2010 it is still happening with Marian Price, Martin Corey and many others being held in secret, selective, covert, political internment.
The internees are working-class men and women who have suffered considerably, in some cases dying because of their political conscience. Some have shown great bravery and heroism while some have been guilty of cowardice. They are not well-known public figures, politicians or publicists. They are ordinary men and women who have suffered for their political ideals, who have heard the 'knock on the door' too. For those peace-loving British commoners who support the forces of 'unlawful and disorder' this is to remind them of the old caveat: Quis custodes custodiet? Who will guard the guards?
The Knock on the Door In many a time, in many a land, With many a gun in many a hand, They came by the night, they came by the day, They came with their guns to take us away, With their knock on the door, knock on the door, Here they come to take one more. Look over the oceans, look over the lands, Look over the leaders with blood on their hands, And open your eyes and see what they do, When they knock over there friend, they're knocking for you, With their knock on the door, knock on the door, Here they come to take one more.
The death of Jimmy Savile marks the end of the line not just for a man but if there is any decency left in England, probably for the BBC, who both lived a Jekyll and Hyde existence, hiding a paedophile ring within the bowels of the BBC. Jimmy Savile was a flamboyant BBC pop presenter, who personified much of what the BBC is about. Savile inhabited the hidden BBC world where personalities from politics and entertainment mixed with criminals, to gratify their perverted lusts for children.
A young boy of just eleven years of age, was arrested in the early seventies, for stealing sweets at a Hampstead shop. Taken to the local police station and under questioning, he revealed the of names of many men from the BBC and others in the public eye, who took boys out from a care home where he lived. The eleven year old boy had a sexually transmitted disease, which the police doctor refused to let pass. The boy revealed that other boys were meeting men on Hampstead Heath, a lot of them from the BBC, for pocket money.
At this time a well-known IRA man, during a deathbed confession sacrament, told of IRA intelligence unearthing kinky parties for the establishment in Dublin and London, where young boys were brought in by a well-known figure, the East End gangster Ronnie Kray. Kray had access to many London care homes and had boys delivered to parties at DJ Alan ” fluff” Freeman’s flat over a music shop in East London. There they met BBC elite, politicians, show biz types and DJs, that included Jimmy Savile, Joe Meeks and Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
Savile was well known to police, in fact Savile started the DJ disco genre, simply to gain access to boys. At the time, many DJs wanted scooter riding boys with make up and Carnaby Street clothes.The old beat policemen of the time who walked the streets in central London ,speak of the whole region's crime squad where Matt Baggot now head of the PSNI paramilitary British police comes from along with East London being disbanded, becuase of their corruption, paedophilia, necrophilia and funny handshakes.
The crime squad where Baggot came from, knew about the Kray gangsters and the sex parties known as ” Pink ballets ” with young boys, in the same way that Fred West held kinky parties for years with high flyers in the BBC and the House of Lords. Social workers and the policemen like Baggot were well aware of Fred’s activities but looked the other way. Who were they covering up for?After the IRA bombed the East London waterworks, when Reg Kray announced that if the IRA bombed once more, every Irish pub and club in Britain would be destroyed, needless to say it didn't stop them.
There is a saying in MI5 secret service circles that; “only the enemy is in front of you, and every other bugger is behind you”. While the Soviets were successful in recruiting beautiful women as honey trap intelligence operatives, for politicians and key BBC personnel, the British employed young boys. However this was a big mistake as most paedophiles are very promiscuous. Rothschild’s Cambridge apostles were almost all easy to lead astray, blackmail and threaten with exposure from every side. Guy Burgess said that boys boarding schools and universities were a breeding ground for paedophiles, where bullying of the younger boys gave rise to this particularly BBC phemomena.
When Guy Burgess defected to Russia, the British establishment had more than its fair share of paedophiles, many of whom were elevated to national heroes, within and without the BBC, while others, like Burgess were condemned as traitors. At the end of the day, under analysis, whether heroes or traitors they all have the same perverted paedohile lusts, which are still used, as a means to control them and society by their secret service masters. This combined with the fact that knowledge is power tells us where real power in Britain lies.
Winston Churchill’s Sandhurst file, for example, describes him as a confirmed menace to the younger boys.Meanwhile as the young boy who was caught shoplifting in the Hampstead supermarket disclosed names of many of Britain's top people using the other boys, an angry senior detective disclosed, that Sir Anthony Blunt, Keeper of the Queen’s pictures had the inquiry squashed from the highest level.There’s a saying in Intelligence circles: “a BBC paedophile will only promote another Paedophile,“there is more than a little truth in this which will take us eventually right inside both palaces on the Thames.
Maurice Oldfield: who spent a considerable time in British Occupied Ireland, was installed as intelligence chief on the recommendation of Lord Rothschild. Oldfield then promoted other paedophiles in the secret service, before being sacked by Margaret Thatcher herself a personal friend of Jimmy Savile in 1980, because details of his visits by young boys to his home and visits to Kincora Boys home in Belfast reached her.
People ask why all these care home abuse scandals, were being hushed up under Labour Governements? There is also the question of missing kids with estimates in the hundreds? It may be because Peter Mandelson, chief Trustee of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty Children seemed to be looking the other way or that the secret services had Labour packed with their own paedophile operatives as a honeytrap for the left.Still their own Rupert Murdoch was tapping all the phones of these homes, so he should have know ? Whispers in some circles say they were all carefully in place to keep a lid on the goings on of British high society.
One of the few honest men at the BBC, Larry Grayson said he could not stand Jimmy Saville and he once told a local radio presenter, that Savile had contacts in British mortuarys whom he would pay, to let him into the morgues, so he could "fxck the dead bodies". A friend used to always tell a story, of how Savile had savagely raped a young women at one of his clubs and how she had been threatened by Saviles establishment chums, to drop the charges. Savile with the help of the BBC was certainly a very sinister rapist, necrophiliac and paedophile.
Essentially the British establishment and the BBC is still full of these creeps, because this is what they believe in and they can easily be blackmailed. Britain and unfortunately Occupied Ireland are both run by a Satanic cult. Maurice Oldfield was a rampant out-of-control paedophile. While in charge of all military and police intelligence in British occupied Ireland during the undeclared British war in Ireland. Every time Oldfield visited Ireland, the Royal Ulster police and members of Orange Lodges, supplied Oldfield with young boys, from care homes for boys.Oldfield wasn't the only one sexually abusing these boys in care, so too were high-ranking British police officers in Belfast and elsewhere in conjunction with high-ranking British army officers, Orange Lodge members, and the usual paedophile pillars of British Occupied Ireland's-society suspects of judges, magistrates, politicians, et paedo al..
When eventually someone blew the whistle and the ensuing saga which was known as Occupied Ireland's Boys' Homes Scandal became public, it was under reported by the British media, particularly the BBC, who never revealed to the public, that either Oldfield head of MI6 or that high-ranking paedophile British army officers were involved before killing-off and ignoring the scandal altogether. Even Thatcher was forced to remove Oldfield from the post as Director of MI6, because she was briefed on Oldfield buggering scores of young Irish boys in care in British Occupied Ireland's Ireland boys home institutions.
The BBC also covered-up and whitewashed the Haut de la Garenne Children's Home Scandal. The British security services are determined to keep British Occupied Ireland as part of the United Kingdom and have been using paedophile dirty tricks, to control almost all of the political leaders, now in the local parliament of Stormont. The British secret services are prepared to allow child abuse and rape to take place to control all politicians and to intern any political opposition. Kincora boys' care home was involved, but was not the only one of the many boys' care homes in British Occupied Ireland, involved in supplying vulnerable young boys, to the so-called `High and mighty' of the British Establishment and the BBC.
British Prime minister, Edward Heath, visited several care homes for boys in Ireland, Kincora being one of them .The IRA had other reasons besides removing British rule from Ireland for blowing-up Mountbatten, they also had moral reasons, because of his bizarre sexual fetishes, which involved the BBC/NI/British Establishment paedophile ring, abusing boys in Kincora and at more than six other care homes for boys in British Occupied Ireland.
The whole British Establishment including all of Westminster, the BBC and the judiciary are rotten to the core, and that is why paedophile rings in Britain and the BBC exist with impunity. Mountbatten is only the tip of the iceberg of perverted masonic muck that includes loyalist/orangemen flying the butcher's apron, all part of the sectarian, masonic, establishment, protected by paedophile pricks, with their flute-playing, sash-wearing, provocative, Benny Hill style, silly marching-celebrating a "Battle" they won near a babbling brook centuries ago!
The internment of enemy aliens during wartime, may possibly be justified to some extent but it is clearly unconstitutional to forcibly remove and Irish citizens in their own land, with British secret service dictats. That is exactly what the British are currently doing, in a so called peace process, in British Occupied Ireland currently. In fact they have been doing this with every generation of Irish, since the formation of their sectarian scum statelet in Ireland.
The British government is using the 11 September attacks and the ‘war on terror,’ as an excuse for draconian repressive measures, which politically interns Irish citizens. There is no requirement on the part of the British, to disclose evidence with their odious activity. Since internment breaches the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the British government claims there is a ‘national emergency,’ despite a peace process, as an excuse for opting out of that part of the ECHR. Using this, the British government, continues to intern Irish citizens, simply on bigoted or sectarian perceptions of paranoia and suspicion.
Gareth Pierce, a lawyer who successfully campaigned for the release of the Guilford 4 after 10 years of campaigning has commented, that the bureaucrat "is giving himself/herself the powers of a dictator". Detentions without trial and house arrest, have often been used by brutal dictatorships, who learned their techniques from their former British colonialistmasters.This internment in British Occupied Ireland is a thin end of a wedge. At some stage, anti-irish measures, will also be extended to Britain itself, to includes political activists, trade unionists, etc.
There has been considerable opposition to internment, from within the British legal profession, with Ian MacDonald QC, who was-appointed to a panel of lawyers, to represent suspects in secret courts, resigning, saying; "My role has been altered to provide a false legitimacy to indefinite detention, without knowledge of the accusations being made and without any kind of criminal charge or trial. Such a law is an odious blot on our legal landscape and for reasons of conscience I feel that I must resign".
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, commenting on the publicly apology of a British Minister, to those wrongly convicted of Guildford pub bombings, stated; "On the day when the prime minister apologises for past miscarriages of justice, his government is paving the way for many future injustices. The proposals are the latest in a long line of assaults on the right to a fair trial". These are often used to harass trades unionists and ordinary Irish people. Civil liberties have been eroded to such an extent in the British police state with internment without trial, non-jury ‘Diplock’ courts, and interrogation methods of the British, that civil rights no longer really exist.
Changes in the law, in relation to the British Occupation in Ireland, are then absorbed into general British law, with the right to silence, emasculated to extend into all domestic law in the UK. All of these measures being used against Marian Price and the Irish today, represent a threat to trade unionists, socialists and anyone who may protest against government and big business. What is used against the Irish today, is used by the British government, against others tomorrow. As the Tory government attacks living standards, jobs, services, workers, it is also bringing in laws tested on the Irish, that will be used to repress resistance to those Tory attacks on ordinary people's living standards.
The argument that internment is odious or human rights do not apply, because of a ‘state of emergency’ since 11 September 2001, is a very handy one for a Tory government, who wants to suppress all political opposition, particularly workers’ struggles. We need to stick together with principles before personalities, to argue against the British government’s use of the fear and the terrorist narrative, to push through these secret courts and totalitarian measures. Socialists, trade unionists, in tandem, with the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English people of no property, along with civil rights campaigners, need to continue to fight all these repressive laws together, while resisting agents of division.
Secret document revealed under 30-year rule shows Ireland assessed for the help it could provide in the case of a nuclear war threat.
Despite Ireland officially being neutral and not belonging to NATO, 30 years ago, Ireland was secretly ready to let half a million of its people fight alongside Britain should nuclear-fuelled World War III break out.
The contents of the previously secret strategic importance of Ireland to the UK in times of war was revealed alongwith other State papers from 1981. Ireland was essentially prepared to be of help the UK should such a nuclear showdown come about, there is no reason to believe that it has changed .
The report in question was compiled by Irish intelligence services and as a result, Ireland’s assistance to Nato was outlined as:
the availability of over 500,000 people fit for military service
the possibility that a total of 44 of our ports could be used by military
having oil resources that could be tapped to provide fuel
be used as a stopover/base for American troops
have radar sites established on the west and south coast to provide an early warning system for nuclear strikes.
When standard military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency of Kenya in the 50s, the British created gangs of friendly tribesmen, who were pretending to be terrorists. These "pseudo gangs," quickly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive by befriending, then ambushing, genuine freedom fighters or guiding the British to freedom fighter camps. What worked half-century ago is still undermining trust among today's resistance to British Occupation in Ireland. Forming fake republican groups, is a British speciality in Ireland today, practiced since 1971, when Kitson recruited 'turned' IRA members, nicknamed the 'Freds' operating undercover in Brigadier Kitson's area of responsibility.
Kitsonian pseudo-gangs are a key part of the "low-intensity operations" deployed by British Imperialists in the waning days of colonial rule and their legacy has been bequeathed to the Americans. In the early 1950s, Kitson worked with counter revolutionary groups and individuals in Malaysia, Kenya, Cyprus, Oman and then British Occupied Ireland, perfecting strategy and adapting his theory to local circumstance. His counterinsurgency techniques are used in every part of the world today, with imperial interests.The British using Kitsonian techniques while disengaging overtly from occupation, covertly deal deviously with local revisionist revolutionaries, while managing at the same time, to leave enduring institutions behind, to ensure neo-British futures and markets, particularly for their industrial war complex.
Of course Kitson's pseudo-gang strategy cannot work in isolation, without severe control by the British in the form of a police-state. activity, In addition to targeting and "sanitizing" opposition directly, the British still target any part of the civilian population, which supports resistance or has critical intelligence. British measures include collective curfew punishment, as a result of fake gang activity, such as bomb warnings, internment without trial, censorship, and restrictions of free movement. British forces still try to intimidate civilians and separate them from resistance, while trying to collect intelligence to infiltrate genuine resistance of local networks.
The British still enlist surrendered or defected rebels in Ireland, under the guise of a peace process and give them carte blanche, in efforts to penetrate genuine community networks to undermine campaigns such as that against political internment and secret courts currently. British Occupation in Ireland is dependent on local intelligence networks, while it has limited success from former members of Irish resistance intelligence, providing crucial information. However like the loyalists in British Occupied Ireland, some new allies are using their positions to settle private grievances and line their own pockets. .
Throughout Britain's former empire of colonial rule and repression, some British mentored puppets now called nationalists, subscribe to a legacy of violence in Britain's wake. As a leading human-rights group has put it, "Internal-security laws and anti-terrorist laws, are a draconian remnant of the laws used during Britain's colonial era." Britain's Colonial Office crafted the police states throughout its former empire and then drafted the new constitutions and legal systems of institutional coercion and political repression in Britain's former colonial states. Like Ireland, Britain's first colony, repressive laws, undemocratic institutions, not peace or progress, are the primary heritage of the British presence in both parts of the island.
British strategy worldwide as in Cyprus, culminated in the suspension of due process and censorship of the press, with the island taking British direction and repression resulting in division of the island like Ireland. Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Hastings Banda, of Malawi, both used the inherited British methods to suppress opposition and divide, rather than unite their nations. Kenya's Security Act, a replica of British legislation, enabled harassment, internment, torture and the murder of hundreds of opposition. In Malawi laws of the British colonial precedent, gave powers to murder dissent. Like the British, these powers included internment without trial, torture and extrajudicial murder.
Britain's legacy in Occupied Ireland and elsewhere is not just limited to institutions and laws but also includes individuals of local populations, who were formerly used by the British in counterinsurgency operations, helping to carry out repressive measures both while the British were at war in Ireland and now in their low intensity operation dubbed a peace process.These former loyalists and secret collaborators. currently help ensure failure rather than providing anything worthwhile to a civil society. Objective history not written by the imperialists or their minions in places like Ireland, offer the lesson, that the real "outposts of tyranny" are the institutions left behind by the colonial British and their military strategists of British twentieth-century empire such as the current Kitsonian model in British Occupied Ireland.
Systemic Fascist/Stalinist/Gilmore Censorship of Irish Media
Indymedia Ireland Involved in Cover Up Censorship Abortion Cronyism Health Politics
Indymedia Ireland Involved in Cover Up Censorship Abortion Cronyism Health Politics
international | consumer issues | news report Monday November 26, 2012 15:29 by BrianClarkeNUJ - AllVoices
Systemic Fascist Censorship of Irish Media
Comrade Gilmore & Herr Reilly
Indymedia Ireland Involved in Cover Up Censorship Abortion Cronyism Health Politics
Indymedia Ireland Involved in Cover Up Censorship Abortion Cronyism Health Politics
international | consumer issues | news report Monday November 26, 2012 15:29 by BrianClarkeNUJ - AllVoices
Systemic Fascist Censorship of Irish Media
The leader of Ireland's parliamentary opposition, Mr Martin said he had been looking for information on the location of the 20 primary care centre sites for months, while it appears the Labour partnership in the Coalition Government was facilitating a cover-up. It would appear their partners in the so called media of the left such as Indymedia Ireland are also involved in censorship, to protect their former Stalinist comrade now private healthcare lobbyist, Gilmore.
Gilmore's Criminal Private Healthcare Buddy
The leader of Ireland's parliamentary opposition, Mr Martin said he had been looking for information on the location of the 20 primary care centre sites for months, while it appears the Labour partnership in the Coalition Government was facilitating a cover-up.
“It took us some months through the Freedom of Information act to get this very basic information, which I have been asking for in the Dáil for the last number of months, I asked the Tánaiste in the Dáil could he produce and would he publish this documentation immediately and of course they refused. The freedom of information request was delayed for a further month, which really illustrates complete contempt for the Dáil, a blatant lack of transparency and we now know why.”
As reported by The Irish Times of last Saturday, Swords and Balbriggan were added the day before the announcement of the chosen sites, while Ballaghaderreen and Kilkenny were put on the list, just hours before it was announced. Indymedia Ireland are also censoring material related to this cover-up, along with censoring material initially published but later removed, related to the murder in a Galway hospital, of a mother refused an abortion, to save her life. Indymedia Ireland are also involved in massive censorship of matters relating to Marian Price, with the removal of a family statement on the seriously deteriorating health of this political internee.
Ms Shortall who resigned from her post in the Labour coalition on principle, said at the weekend this revelation showed “blatant stroke politics” were behind the decision. Dr Reilly “started off by assisting some of his colleagues and looking after some of his colleagues, and then at the last minute slipping in another four, two of which were in his own constituency.This documentation gives the lie to the many convoluted excuses and justifications that Minister Reilly and his colleagues gave in the Dáil and elsewhere to claim that there was some other criteria used .. other than pure political patronage.”
In October Dr Reilly told the Dáil, that the rationale behind the decision on primary care centres chosen, were made from a list with a “logistical logarithmic progression”. Ms Shortall said the documents demonstrated this justification to be “codswallop”. Likewise the bullscutter on a abortion and the censorshit of Indymedia Ireland relative to Marian Price and Eamon Gilmore, has a distinct whiff of the old sticky, RTE, Brit censorshit contagion. They are a disgraceful example of the sell out of the Irish working class both in parliament and in the Irish media in the closed shop of passes for politics in the clearly unfree Irish state that is compromised to secret dark forces.
The orginal vote of no confindence was called after it was reported that a list of primary care centre sites was altered the evening before its launch to include four new centres, two of which were in Dr Reilly’s constituency. The two centres, located in Swords and Balbriggan, were added to the priority list despite them not being located in the top 30 locations drawn up by the HSE and then minister RóisÃn Shortall.
Eamon Gilmore who has firmly supported Reilly, should also resign immediately, along with all of the agents involved in systematic media censorship in Ireland, of all articles related to the progressive resolution of problems stemming from ignorance in Ireland, as a result of persistent censorship in both the corporate and infiltrated media of Ireland.
Related Link: http://irishblog-irelandblog.blogspot.com/
Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore says he has full faith in Dr James Reilly
The leader of Ireland's parliamentary opposition, Mr Martin said he had been looking for information on the location of the 20 primary care centre sites for months, while it appears the Labour partnership in the Coalition Government was facilitating a cover-up. It would appear their partners in the so called media of the left such as Indymedia Ireland are also involved in censorship, to protect their former Stalinist comrade now private healthcare lobbyist, Gilmore.
Gilmore's Criminal Private Healthcare Buddy
The leader of Ireland's parliamentary opposition, Mr Martin said he had been looking for information on the location of the 20 primary care centre sites for months, while it appears the Labour partnership in the Coalition Government was facilitating a cover-up.
“It took us some months through the Freedom of Information act to get this very basic information, which I have been asking for in the Dáil for the last number of months, I asked the Tánaiste in the Dáil could he produce and would he publish this documentation immediately and of course they refused. The freedom of information request was delayed for a further month, which really illustrates complete contempt for the Dáil, a blatant lack of transparency and we now know why.”
As reported by The Irish Times of last Saturday, Swords and Balbriggan were added the day before the announcement of the chosen sites, while Ballaghaderreen and Kilkenny were put on the list, just hours before it was announced. Indymedia Ireland are also censoring material related to this cover-up, along with censoring material initially published but later removed, related to the murder in a Galway hospital, of a mother refused an abortion, to save her life. Indymedia Ireland are also involved in massive censorship of matters relating to Marian Price, with the removal of a family statement on the seriously deteriorating health of this political internee.
Ms Shortall who resigned from her post in the Labour coalition on principle, said at the weekend this revelation showed “blatant stroke politics” were behind the decision. Dr Reilly “started off by assisting some of his colleagues and looking after some of his colleagues, and then at the last minute slipping in another four, two of which were in his own constituency.This documentation gives the lie to the many convoluted excuses and justifications that Minister Reilly and his colleagues gave in the Dáil and elsewhere to claim that there was some other criteria used .. other than pure political patronage.”
In October Dr Reilly told the Dáil, that the rationale behind the decision on primary care centres chosen, were made from a list with a “logistical logarithmic progression”. Ms Shortall said the documents demonstrated this justification to be “codswallop”. Likewise the bullscutter on a abortion and the censorshit of Indymedia Ireland relative to Marian Price and Eamon Gilmore, has a distinct whiff of the old sticky, RTE, Brit censorshit contagion. They are a disgraceful example of the sell out of the Irish working class both in parliament and in the Irish media in the closed shop of passes for politics in the clearly unfree Irish state that is compromised to secret dark forces.
The orginal vote of no confindence was called after it was reported that a list of primary care centre sites was altered the evening before its launch to include four new centres, two of which were in Dr Reilly’s constituency. The two centres, located in Swords and Balbriggan, were added to the priority list despite them not being located in the top 30 locations drawn up by the HSE and then minister RóisÃn Shortall.
Eamon Gilmore who has firmly supported Reilly, should also resign immediately, along with all of the agents involved in systematic media censorship in Ireland, of all articles related to the progressive resolution of problems stemming from ignorance in Ireland, as a result of persistent censorship in both the corporate and infiltrated media of Ireland.
It was 1959. The National Council for The Blind of Ireland gave my visually impaired mother a wireless. It was our first radio. At the time my contemporaries were clued in to the highlights of Radio Luxemburg and the Light Programme. But, always one to live in the past, I had a preference for the folk programmes on Radio Eireann. My adrenalin was really let loose by the prologue to one in particular:
The rick is thatched The fields are bare, Long nights are here again. The year was fine But now 'tis time To hear the ballad-men. Boul in, boul in and take a chair Admission here is free, You're welcome to the Rambling House To meet the Seanachi.The Seanachi was, of course, Eamon Kelly.
I was to follow Eamon's stories, on the air, and later in Dublin theatres, through his one-man shows, for decades.
His trademark introduction was: "In My Father's Time" or "Ye're glad I came." In between tales of "The King of England's son" and "The Earl of Baanmore" he would tell his own life-story.
And those who knew his style could always differentiate between the fact and the fiction.
He was born in Rathmore, Co. Kerry, in March 1914. In his autobiographical work "The Apprentice" he tells of how the family moved when he was six months old. He was brought to Carrigeen on Maurice O'Connor's sidecar. (Of course when he'd be wearing his Seanachi's hat he'd tell you he remembered it).
Eamon grew up in a Rambling House and in later life said: " ... my ears were forever cocked for the sound that came on the breeze. It wasn't the Blarney Stone but my father's house which filled me with wonder".
He was only a child when this country gained independence but he had his Kerry ear cocked long before that to accumulate stories such as this: " 'Will I get in this time' the sitting MP said once to one of our neighbours, coming up to polling day. 'Of course you will' the neighbour told him. 'Didn't you say yourself that it was the poor put you in the last time and aren't there twice as many poor there now?' "
Eamon didn't lick his storytelling ability off the ground. He said of his father that he was " ... a friendly person, a good talker. Neighbours and travelers were attracted like moths around a naked flame into his and my mother's kitchen". Their kitchen had " ... all the rude elements of the theatre; the storyteller was there with his comic or tragic tale, we had music, dance, song and costume".
When he left school Eamon became apprentice to his father who was a master carpenter and wheelwright.
The young apprentice missed nothing; seventy years on he could mimic a verbose mason who described how to put a plumb-board against the rising walls to "ascertain their perpendicularity".
He also began taking a correspondence course with Bennett College in England. Then it turned out that the architect of a hotel enlargement project that he was working on was the craftwork teacher at the local Technical School. Eamon enrolled for a night course. The teacher's name was Micheal O' Riada and, in his autobiography, Eamon told how he " ... was the means of changing the direction of my footsteps and putting me on the first mile of a journey that would take me far from my own parish. He taught me and others the craft of wood and in time we passed examinations set by the technical branch of the Department of Education in carpentry, joinery and cabinet making. He taught the theory of building and how to read plans: he taught solid geometry which holds the key to the angles met with in the making of a hip roof or staircase".
No matter how far from home Eamon was working he cycled two nights a week to Tech. He was soon to learn that Micheal O'Riada's interests were not confined to sawing and chiseling. He introduced his pupils to books, writers and the theatre. On the head of this Eamon went to see Louis Dalton's company, at the town hall, in "Juno and the Paycock".
"It was my first time seeing actors on a stage and the humour, the agony and the tragedy of the play touched me to the quick".
He was mesmerized by the actors and " ... their power to draw me away from the real world and almost unhinge my reason long after the curtain had come across".
Micheal O'Riada was impressed with Eamon's reaction to the theatre. He discussed O'Casey, Synge and Lennox Robinson with the young carpenter and advised him if he ever went to Dublin to go to the Abbey Theatre.
Mr. O'Riada also told him that if he kept making headway in his studies and passed the senior grade in the practical and theory papers he would enter him for a scholarship examination, to train as a manual instructor, in Dublin. Since Eamon had left school at fourteen he also had to do additional study in English, Irish and Maths. He passed his scholarship examination, and the interview in Dublin, with flying colours.
He trained and worked as a woodwork teacher for years until he became a full time actor. His first acting role was as Christy Mahon in "The Playboy of the Western World" along with the Listowel actress, Maura O'Sullivan. He would later marry, and spend the rest of his life, with Maura.
They moved to Dublin and Eamon was employed by the Radio Eireann Repertory Players and later by the Abbey Theatre Company. He drew large audiences in villages during the '50s as he traveled around Ireland with his stories. He was to spend more than 40 years as a professional actor. Working with the top actors and leading producers of his day, he performed in New York, London and Moscow.
As a storyteller, his vivid and evocative descriptions are unsurpassed. Whether it was about an emigrant-laden train gathering speed before fading from view at Countess Bridge or sparks flying when the blacksmith struck red hot iron, nobody could tell it like Eamon. Once, in the Brooklyn Academy, while telling one of his famous stories he mentioned an Irish town and drew a graphic word-picture of emigrants at the station. From the audience he heard; "Divine Jesus" and a man crying. Ever the professional, Eamon instantly changed gear, swung to comedy and in seconds had the homesick exile laughing.
Watching him on the stage, the Paps-of-Dana and Dooncorrig Lake almost materialized around you. There was a temptation to look up for the rising ground above Barradov Bridge.
In the Peacock Theatre in the 1980s, you were standing beside the young Eamon Kelly as he made a Tusk Tenon at the workbench beside his father or walked barefoot on the submerged stepping-stones with his first-love, Judy Scanlon.
As Anette Bishop described it in the Irish American Post: "It's a case of the past returning to raise a charming blush on the cheek of the present". Everything Eamon Kelly did was tried, tested and honed to perfection. And he always expressed appreciation of the crafts, skills and talents of others. "The correct actions of a craftsman sawing, planning or mortising with the chisel were as fluid as those of an expert hurler on the playing field".
When rehearsing for Seamus Murphy's "Stone Mad", which he adapted as a one-man show, he spent days observing stonecutters at a quarry in the Dublin mountains. In the course of the show he "lettered" a stone on stage.
With little or no interest in money himself, he was always on the side of the underdog and the marginalized. He was playing S.B. O' Donnell in "Philadelphia Here I Come" on Broadway, in January 1972, when he heard the tragic news of Bloody Sunday. There and then he decided to play his part in trying to rectify man's inhumanity; he became a vegetarian.
Eamon was shy, by nature. And even in his eighties he would be, by far, the most nervous artist backstage. This was because he was a perfectionist. A year before he died I saw him in a hotel about to do a piece he had performed hundreds of times. With the utmost humility he asked a staff member about facilities to do a last minute rehearsal: "Do you have anywhere where I could talk to myself for a while?"
While the great storyteller won't ever again stand on a stage or sit by the fire of a rambling house, his voice lives on. Rego Irish Records have brought out a video "Stories of Ireland, as told by Eamon Kelly" and a cassette "Eamon Kelly, the Irish Storyteller". (You'll find Rego Records at http://www.regorecords.com)
Kerryman, Brendan O'Shea (O'Sheas Tailoring, Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin) told me the following story:
At the end of September 2001, Eamon Kelly brought a suit in to Brendan for some alterations. The suit was fifteen years old. Prior to one of his trips to America, Eamon had it made by another Dublin tailor who left the jacket minus an inside pocket and the trousers without belt-loops or a back-pocket. Now, Eamon, the perfectionist, asked his fellow-Kerryman to rectify the sartorial omissions, which he did.
When Eamon died on 24th October 2001, he had left detailed instructions with his wife, Maura, about the funeral arrangements and which suit he wanted to be laid out in. Yes, you've guessed it!
Did the man who wrote so lovingly of Con-the-tailor, who made his first Communion suit, and who had portrayed an unforgettable tailor in "The Tailor and Ansty" want to somehow, bring the work of a Kerry tailor out of this world with him? I don't know. And neither does Brendan O'Shea.
As his coffin left the church, the Congregation gave a round of applause. The show was over and this time there was no encore. The final curtain had fallen on a one-man show, performed by a man of many parts. Actor, storyteller and writer, loving husband, devoted father and great Kerryman.
Shortly before his death, while lecturing North American Literature and Theatre students in the art of storytelling, he said: "My journeying is over. If the humour takes me, I may appear in some Alhambra, where angels with folded wings will sit in the stalls, applaud politely and maybe come round after and say;' that was great' ".
As he walked into that great Rambling House in the sky, can't you imagine the opening line?: "Ye're glad I came".
NOTE: Our thanks to Mattie for his contribution; if you'd like to read more of his stories, you'll find them on his website, please click Mattie Lennon.
BIO: Mattie Lennon was born in the first half of the last century at Kylebeg, Lacken, Blessington, Co. Wicklow. He was not at any stage called "the black sheep of the family" mainly because he was (and is) an only child. He spent the first 25 years of his life at home on a small farm. He claims to identify with Patrick Kavanagh's "burgled bank of youth" (and says he is one of the few of his generation who knows how to make a bush-harrow). As a young fellow whenever he was blamed in the wrong he would compose a derogatory ballad about his accuser. There weren't many false accusations so he wasn't very prolific.
He was nicknamed "the Poet" but emphasises that the term wasn't always complimentary. He agrees that what is said behind ones back is their standing in the community and his favourite quotation is a comment made about him by a neighbour: "Wouldn't you think someone would tell him he's an eejit, when he doesn't know himself".
He has spent most of the last thirty years in Dublin but when asked "Will you ever go back to Kylebeg"? the answer is always Joycean. When James Joyce was asked, in Trieste; "Will you ever return to Dublin?" he said; "I never left".
Mattie Lennon has written articles (mostly humorous) for The Sunday Independent, The Irish Times, The Irish Post, Irelands Own, Irelands Eye, Kerry's Eye, The Wicklow People, The Leinster Leader as well as numerous on-line publications. He claims that he was once told; "You have the perfect face for radio" and he compiled and presented his own programmes in the "Voiceover" series on RTE Radio One. He has presented ballad programmes on KIC FM and is currently doing a Saturday morning ballad show at 11.03AM, on Liffey Sound 96.4 FM. (You can listen to it on the Net. Go to www.liffeysound.com and follow the links) He also does pre-recorded programmes for other stations. One such programme is "The Story And The Song" in which he plays a number of ballads, having first told the story behind each one. In 2005 his One Act Play, “A Wolf By The Ears” got a public reading in Teac Siamsa, Tralee. In 2006 he produced a DVD ,”Sunrise On The Wicklow Hills” and compiled a book of Dublin Bus-workers writings, “There’s Love And There’s Sex And There’s The 46A ”. He was in the final of the “Eamon Kelly Story–telling Competition” at Listowel Writer’s Week in 2007. Most years since 2000 he has been in the final of the Sean McCarthy Ballad Competition in Finuge. He still writes the occasional ballad (not all of them fit for human consumption).
Thu, Nov 15, 2012 The Islands
There are hundreds of islands around the Irish coast. Achill is the biggest, the Arans the most romantic; Skellig Michael the most dramatic and Tory the most menacing - at least in legend. The Blaskets offer the most fertile ground for literature and Clare island is the most meticulously studied. But, whichever island you may visit, you can be sure each of them has its own superlative. For example, Little Skellig off St. Finian's Bay in Co. Kerry, is known for its gigantic colony of white seabirds called gannets. Content edited and adapted from the book "Ireland - Atmosphere & Impressions" by Dr. Christopher Moriarty. Photo Credits: Skellig Archway from Travel Publishing
One of the most common sources for Bridget's articles and comments. A rich store of, what else, Irish customs. Eamon Kelly has written many books and told countless stories; fascinating reading and filled to the brim with the world of Irish history and tradition.Click here for According to Custom.
Irish Gifts Rollover button Images: Wedding LaRose, Kids Reading & Kitchen Apples and Tea from All Posters prints. The information provided on this site is offered as-is, without warranty. This site's owners, operators, authors and partners disclaim any and all liability from the information provided herein. Any trademarks or registered trademarks on this site are the property of their respective owners.
Tom Barry, a former General in the IRA, talking about the need of a British withdrawl from the occupied 6 counties to secure a lasting settlement.
In the early 70's Barry discussed tactics with IRA men including Joe Cahill who said -
"He wasnt an armchair general, he was a military genius. In the conflict he led by example. Throughout the decades, the goal of a united Ireland in his lifetime was his greatest wish. Not all that long before he died, I met him. He had one desire, he said. If he had the energy, he would love to get some men together and have another go at the British establishment, to see could he achieve his aim"
Petraeus Sex Scandal Covers More Shocking Story
By Barry Sheppard
November 25, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - San Francisco - The capitalist press has been overloaded with the sex scandal of General David Petraeus, former commander US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his resignation as head of the CIA.
The story has morphed into something wider, drawing in other high officers.
I’ll return to the saga of the “Real Housewives of the High Command” below, but first I want to discuss a story that has received only scant attention, about one of the grunts who was on the ground in Afghanistan.
Staff Sergeant Dwight L Smith was on Christmas leave last year, and returned home to his family for the holidays. He went out jogging, when he says “something clicked”.
He went back home and got into his Hummer. He decided to kill someone, he later told police. He ran down a 65-year-old woman, Marsha Lee, at random. Witnesses saw him get out of his vehicle, and pick up Lee, injured and screaming, and threw her into the back seat.
Her naked body was found discarded in a wooded area half a mile away. Her head was bashed in with a heavy object. She had been raped.
Then he returned home. His mother said he seemed relatively normal, and they went Christmas shopping that afternoon. He was arrested that evening after police found his bloody Hummer.
Smith’s parents did previously notice his outbursts of anger, throwing laptops, and punching holes in the walls. “I know my child,” his father said. “This isn’t my kid. He was a goofy kid. This isn’t the same man that I sent over.”
What transformed this “goofy kid” into a monster? Two related things.
One was that he suffered a severe concussion in the war. Estimates are that 500,000 US soldiers have suffered concussions and other brain injuries in the wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan.
Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrtist and retired brigadier general told a New York Times reporter that the army has failed to treat soldiers who have been exposed to blasts. He compares the situation to the runaround soldiers were given for decades about damage from Agent Orange in Vietnam.
The capitalist politicians and military brass do not want to admit the scope of the problem. They want to keep a sanitised image of these wars before the public.
They are fearful that if the public knew the full truth, these wars would become even more unpopular than they already are. That is why they do not help returning soldiers with brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, unemployment, and other problems, to anywhere near the extent of the problems these soldiers face needed.
The result is soldiers running amok (Smith is far from the only one), suicides, depression and other mental problems going untreated. The soldiers are cannon fodder, to use an old expression.
The other thing that transformed Smith is expressed in a letter to his father: “I’m going to be honest with you dad. I have killed a lot of men and children. Some that didn’t even do anything for me to kill them. Also some that begged for mercy.
“I have a problem. I think I got addicted to killing people. I could kill someone go to sleep wake up and forget that it ever happened. It got normal for me to be that way. I never wanted to be this way. I just took my job way too serious. I took things to the extreme.
“Anyone can tell you that I changed. It’s like being a completely different person.”
He did not mention the women he killed, probably out of shame. It is significant that he chose a woman to murder.
His story, while an extreme example, illustrates a truth about wars of occupation. Even if the US soldiers are greeted as “liberators” from an oppressive regime at first (and the idea that they were to be greeted in Iraq and Afghanistan by hugs and kisses and flowers was always a fantasy), the reality soon sets in.
The occupiers become hated by the occupied. The war becomes a war against a people. Resistance grows within the people. They begin to fight the occupiers. The occupiers cannot trust the people, and soon must start kicking down doors to find the “enemy”.
As the “enemy” increasingly is the people, it includes not only men but women and children too. Soon the occupiers are taking part in atrocities. Some go to extremes, while others are just part of regular “search and destroy” missions.
I am reminded of what a soldier told me in 1968 in Vietnam. I accompanied the Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate, Fred Halstead, to Vietnam to talk to the soldiers on the ground about the war.
One soldier, who was fiercely against the war, was anguished. He said when he was in firefights, sometimes women and even children would pull out weapons and open fire on US soldiers. They shot the women and children.
Killing ordinary Iraqis and Afghans, including women and children, and other acts of oppression, affects the mental health of the soldiers.
The politicians and the brass do not want these truths to get out, either.
The fact that Smith suffered a bad concussion and had become inured to killing men, women and children are related.
The resistance fighters do not have tanks, helicopters and jet bombers. They have small arms, including mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs (IEDs in army-speak). In other words, with explosives at short range, that cause concussions.
To turn to the opposite end of the military hierarchy, what do we learn from the Petraeus scandal?
A not-so-minor point is that the whole thing began with what is called a “socialite”, Jill Kelley, who is a friend of Petraeus and others in the high command, informing a friend in the FBI that a woman who turned out to be Petraeus’s mistress, had sent her emails she found to be harassing.
That the FBI agent could then launch highly invasive surveillance of Petraeus’ emails raises the obvious question: if such could be done to the head of the CIA, what about us mere mortals?
I will leave aside the salacious use the media have made of the affair, including the innuendo that the mistress used her wiles to bring down the poor honorable general, a tale that goes back to Adam and Eve.
No one in the media talks about Petraeus’s part in carrying out the huge war crimes of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
What has been exposed is that for years, the Kelleys have been regularly throwing lavish parties not only for Petraeus, but many other top generals. Champagne, caviar, cavorting with socialites — that is how the high command amuses itself while the Sergeant Smiths get blasted by mortars and kill Iraqi and Afghan men, women and children.
Barry Sheppard was a long-time leader of the US Socialist Workers Party and the Fourth International. He recounts his experience in the SWP in a two-volume book, The Party — the Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988, available fromResistance Books. R
Monday November 26, 2012 22:04
by BrianClarkeNUJ - AllVoices
It was 1959. The National Council for The Blind of Ireland gave my visually impaired mother a wireless. It was our first radio. At the time my contemporaries were clued in to the highlights of Radio Luxemburg and the Light Programme. But, always one to live in the past, I had a preference for the folk programmes on Radio Eireann. My adrenalin was really let loose by the prologue to one in particular:
Mattie Lennon was born in the first half of the last century at Kylebeg, Lacken, Blessington, Co. Wicklow. He was not at any stage called "the black sheep of the family" mainly because he was (and is) an only child. He spent the first 25 years of his life at home on a small farm. He claims to identify with Patrick Kavanagh's "burgled bank of youth" (and says he is one of the few of his generation who knows how to make a bush-harrow). As a young fellow whenever he was blamed in the wrong he would compose a derogatory ballad about his accuser. There weren't many false accusations so he wasn't very prolific.
