BERNADETTE DEVLIN ADDRESS VIDEO BLOODY SUNDAY

Bernadette (Devlin) McAliskey addressed this year's Bloody Sunday March For Justice. Despite a very wet day up to 5,000 people attended the march in solidarity with the victims of Bloody Sunday. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Thanks very much. I wasn't really quite sure where to start here today. It's good to see so many people here. I thought actually that Kate was going to read out some of the thanks to people before I started but she's going to do that afterwards.

So I'd just like to take a minute to thank Kate Nash, to thank The Nash Sisters, to thank the families who have asserted their right to keep this issue to the fore until the truth is followed by accountability for the action.

It has been a lonely enough path at times for families. There are times when people who are in the thick of what is actually happening – the people who have actually have suffered the brunt of the pain and the loss - who have to travel very lonely paths sometimes - although we try our best to stand with everybody.

The ebb comes and goes. And it takes very brave people to keep standing their ground when there are plenty of people with them and when there are no people simply because they know that justice remains to be done needs nd not simply be seen to be have done.

So here on the forty-first anniversary of Bloody Sunday I'm actually surprised myself that on this cold day that somewhere in the back of my head is a slightly-too-close for me at the minute a very uncomfortable memory of standing here forty-one years ago.

Sometimes you forget as well why we came on that day. It's very important to remember first of all that we continue to fight - to challenge the cover-up, to challenge the pattern, to challenge the belief that the state can do whatever the states likes.

And even though some people from time to time get tired or begin to collaborate with the state in believing that it's all best swept away somewhere and new starts made on corrupt beginnings.

We still have to keep in front of people's minds that it didn't just happen to us. Bloody Sunday is not exclusive to the people of Doire - not exclusive to the people of Northern Ireland. Had many of you had the opportunity, which you didn't, to be at some of the events yesterday, and hear Jenny Hicks speak of the loss of her two daughters at the cover-up in Hillsborough, to hear Dave Douglas speak about the cover-up of the attack on the miners, to hear Susan McKay speak on the cover-up of sexual abuse of innocent children who were supposed to be safe in the care of institutions and were violated there.

And I think what stood in common to all of us yesterday as we were speaking was that the deed was bad enough. The shooting of people in the street in Doire was bad enough. The failure to protect people in a football stadium was bad enough. But the worst thing that happened to people was that having done it was the lie!

To immediately, in the aftermath of doing it, to lie about it. And to consistently maintain that lie to protect the state, to protect the interest, to protect the guilty. And in order to keep that lie alive, to demonise, to vilify the innocent.

And let us remember that even today when the vast majority of the innocent have been declared innocent - which we always knew - that innocence is still denied to young Gerald Donaghey. Innocence is still denied to that young person on whose corpse soldiers planted nail bombs in his pockets so that they could say they saw them there or whatever it was they did. There has still not been a declaration of innocence for young Gerald Donaghy.

Let us also remember, and we talked about that yesterday as well, that that pattern, that pattern of the state action doing what they want, lying about the fact they did it, being able to draw in the great and the good - the media, the police, the Church, the social speakers, the powerful - to maintain the lie.

That demonising of the victims, that long, long process of barricading the truth away from the people. People talk about how long The Saville Inquiry took - how expensive The Saville Inquiry was. It took a long time and it cost alot of money because for every single inch of that journey, for every single day of that journey, the British government, who set the Inquiry up, prevented the truth from being brought before it.

That's why it cost alot of money. That's why it took alot of time.

And as one of the people and I still say - I never asked for that Inquiry...I never wanted it...that's my personal stand...I never wanted to go to it because the man who was sitting there, decent human being though he was, was an employee of the government I saw murder people in front of my eyes!

How was he going to find his employer guilty? So he laid the blame at a half a dozen soldiers. And they still have not been held to account.

But the true culprits will never be held to account unless we keep on this path until they are.

But let us not forget what took us onto the streets that day.

We did not stand here forty-one years ago for the purpose of being shot. That's not why we came here. We didn't stand here all that time ago to create a situation that we would have to remember year after year.

We came on the streets that day to end the policy of internment without trial. That's what took us here.

And here today forty-one years later we have a new administration. We have a new dispensation. We have a new power structure. We have new civic collaborators in the administration of government.

But we still have internment without trial!

We still have people in prison on the whim and the dictate of the Northern Ireland Secretary of State - the Overlord of this place.

And whatever minions of small people who think they have power here... the fact that they cannot have Martin Corey released means they have no power! Power still lies in the fist of the Northern Ireland Secretary of State. But they have paper power.

Marian Price remains in prison on the whim of the Secretary of State.

Dolours Price cannot be harmed by this state anymore because they have finally destroyed that good woman and she is now gone.

But the Minister of so-called Justice, David so-called “Liberal” Ford, under Article 7 of the 2000 Act, at the stroke of a pen could release her sister whom they are also trying to break in body and soul and spirit and mind. And for what?

It took all day yesterday in the High Court for a very brave lawyer to keep battling against David Ford and we're not supposed to say this because David Ford asked the judge to insure there was no reporting.

Well...I don't work for the media...so I'm not reporting... I'm just telling you!

But in the High Court, on a judicial review, the judge said that David Ford's behaviour and his judgment on not allowing Marian Price out - and not even considering it – for a few hours to sit by the coffin of her sister was unlawful, unreasonable and irrational. That's what the judge said about the Minister of Justice of this small, misbegotten, corrupt, little, pretending state.

He said the Minister of Lilliput is irrational. He said the Minister of Lilliput doesn't understand the law.

And he said that that young woman should be released for at least four hours to sit by the coffin of a sister with whom she had shared a cell for many years. With whom she had suffered the human torture, degrading and inhuman treatment of having a tube put down her throat, into her stomach, held down until a jug of liquid was poured into that funnel, into that tube and into that stomach every single day for over [two] hundred days.

When we talk about people on hunger strike many young people here forget that when Marian Price and Dolours Price were on hunger strike it wasn't that they were fasting - they were force fed in that manner for every day for [two] hundred days - and it destroyed those young women. It destroyed their physical health and still the state not satisfied.

Bullies one of them all of her life and imprisons the other one.

We came here forty-one years ago to demand (the end of) internment without trial. We came here forty-one years ago to make it perfectly clear that if Her Majesty's government – Her Majesty owns the government – if her Majesty's government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland could not insure that this part of her jurisdiction was governed openly, transparently, democratically and within the dictates of fundamental human rights and freedoms - which should be extended to people in prison - which should be extended to people who should not have their liberty removed from them except by due, open process of law - then this place should not be governed by Her Majesty's United Kingdom government.

And I would like to say from this platform that I for one have not changed that position. And I don't care who is currently standing between us, between us and Her Majesty's government and attempting to administer democracy on their behalf.

Make the damn state work!

Make it work openly, democratically in support of the civil rights we have demanded since 1968!

We stand today looking at a new dispensation, people still in prison, the people in these houses – people who live here - no housing executive after a few years! No welfare state! No health! No benefit! No civil rights! No nothing!

And you look on that wall and ask for what died the sons, the daughters, the children of these streets.

We have got to get our act together. We have got to do a bit more than just march. We have got to organise. We've got to educate ourselves. We have got to get moving or there will soon be nothing here for anybody.

Let's look at the bravery of the people who stood here. 

Let's look at the endurance of the families who have held this fight. Let's look at the endurance of Marian Price and Martin Corey and the others and let's say to ourselves: we have got to get a political programme together here and get the struggle for civil rights, political rights, social rights and economic rights together or we are in, comrades and colleagues, for one hell of a hiding. Thank you very much.

Martin Luther King's Altruism British Occupied Ireland

"As early as 1963, civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland had compared themselves to blacks in Alabama and Little Rock, and identified themselves as the 'Negroes' of Northern Ireland. They sang 'We Shall Overcome' at their marches and in early 1969 deliberately modeled a protest march on the lines of the Selma-Montgomery march. Oddly, perhaps, the Northern Ireland protesters identified more with black American protests than the myriad of protests in Europe that year — in Paris, Prague, Berlin, Rome and London. They saw their struggle as closer to that of African Americans in the U.S."

- Brian Dooley -
The Fight for Civil Rights in Ireland and Black America
-


Martin Luther King was the most influential figure in British Occupied Ireland's struggle for human rights.King's speech in Washington and most importantly on Irish television sets with his famous "I have a dream" delivered to over a quarter of a million people, resonated not just with the segregation and discrimination against blacks in housing and jobs but with Irish nationalists who identified and still do with being the Irish nigger well used to bigoted British political oppression and their cultivated sectarianism. Further televised abuse of civil rights campaigners and marchers made Luther King's Civil Rights Movement, a mirror image of Occupied Ireland and was not just the most significant mass protest against injustice in American history but also, the spark for protest in Ireland too.

Unlike today, the largely uncensored corporate media of that time, played an important role in Ireland's fight for justice, especially when Britain murdered 14 unarmed civil rights protesters and morphed the peaceful Irish civil rights protest, into armed struggle for national self-determination. Martin Luther King's non-violent protests were based on Mahatma Gandhi's type of leadership, who was  himself inspired by Ireland's ancient struggle, who himself inspired Aung Sang Suu Kyi in Burma or Myanmar. He was a socialist but avoided communism's strickty, "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied spirituality's place in our reality.



Five years ago the Smitsonian Institute included British Occupied Ireland in its Folk-Life cultural festiva,l with the Bogside Artists invited to take part, despite vociferous objections from the British on the Irish Arts Council, who suggested to the Bogside Artists that they reproduce their Peace Mural on the Mall. They did just but they also paid homage to Martin Luther King. The mural was well received. They chose to paint Luther King for obvious reasons. The mural was a great success at 4th of July celebrations on the Mall where Luther King made his most inspiring speech for the cause for which he gave his life. The article below clarifies the relevance of Martin Luther King in today's society, particularly in British Occupied Ireland, where Internment without trial is again a reality and the negation of civil rights not just for Marian Price and Martin Corey but all of the royal subjects of Viceroyal Villiers.


The Meaning of Altruism

By Paul Balles

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness." --Martin Luther King

September 23, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - WHEN I was a college freshman, I became completely enamoured with Ayn Rand. As a literary heroine, she surpassed so many of my early heroes.

The self-defence of Rand's hero architect Howard York in The Fountainhead, standing trial for dynamiting a housing project he designed.

It was such a captivating defence that I insisted on sharing it with everyone who would listen. Many of my classmates who did listen came to the same conclusions as me.

Six million copies of The Fountainhead provided evidence of the following that Rand developed.

Many of us couldn't help wanting to be trial lawyers, who could make arguments as convincing as Roark (and Rand).

Over the next decade of subscribing to Rand's "objectivism", I realised that I had been infected with the worst kind of selfishness. Objectivism was the term that Rand used to describe selfishness.

To Rand, altruism reflected the evil she opposed. Altruism is the opposite of selfishness and involves doing for others, without any expectation of reward.

"From her start, America was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality," Rand declared.

This is a near-perfect description of the present conflict between America's two political parties.

For Rand: "Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society."

She perceived a choice between: "A morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man's happiness on earth - or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces."

According to Rand: "The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value."

Martin Luther King Jr opposed Rand's philosophy.

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness," he said.

Presaging opposition to Rand's ideas, 19th Century British Prime Minister William Gladstone said: "Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race."

Apart from anything else, when asked about her position on the Middle East conflict, Rand firmly supported Israel with a rationale that could have come out of a typical anti-Arab hate speech by Benyamin Netanyahu, Abe Foxman, David Harris or any AIPAC speaker.

She explained her position by saying: "Because it's the advanced technological and civilised country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages who have not changed for years and who are racists and who resent Israel because it's bringing industry and intelligence and modern technology into their stagnation."

Current Republican candidates for the posts of US president and vice-president, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, both subscribe to a "morality of rational self-interest".

Ryan, an avowed fan of Rand, hasn't grown out of the enamoured college freshman. He not only tried to get all of the interns in his congressional office to read Rand's writing, he also gave copies of her novel Atlas Shrugged to his staff as Christmas presents.

Should the Republicans win the coming elections, there's little doubt that they will carry Rand's philosophy and politics with them.

Economist, teacher and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith complained that: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins offers some sage advice: "Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish."

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years.

Big 40 Year Commemoration of Bloody Sunday Families Call for ... on Twitpic

Big 40 Year Commemoration of Bloody Sunday Families Call for ... on Twitpic

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