Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Britain's $unday Bloody $unday

How dare they criticize Syria or anyone else?

"Britain to pay Bloody Sunday victims; 13 were killed, 14 hurt in 1972" September 23, 2011|By Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press

DUBLIN - Britain said yesterday that it will offer compensation payments to the families of people killed and wounded on Bloody Sunday, a nearly 40-year-old massacre by British paratroopers in Northern Ireland that fueled Irish Catholic support for the IRA.  

Related: Ireland Like Iraq

Thirteen people were killed and 14 wounded on Jan. 30, 1972, in Londonderry when the soldiers opened fire on a Catholic crowd demonstrating against Britain’s detention without trial of Irish Republican Army suspects. Britain compounded local fury by hastily ruling that the soldiers, none of whom were wounded, were responding to IRA attacks and targeting gunmen.

Last year, Prime Minister David Cameron apologized after a 12-year investigation found that the soldiers were not under attack and fired without justification on unarmed civilians, many of whom were fleeing or aiding the wounded....
 
Also see: Sickening Sunday: Worth the Wait

Peter Madden, a Belfast lawyer who represents many of the victims’ families, said negotiations would open soon with the British government to put a price both on the lives lost and maimed and on the damage caused to victims’ reputations by the British Army’s “shameful allegations’’ that they were armed IRA members.

But some families immediately rejected any offer of financial compensation, saying they want criminal prosecutions of those who opened fire. Nobody has ever been charged for the 13 killings.

“It is repulsive. Offensive. Not now, nor at any time will I accept money,’’ said Linda Nash, whose 19-year-old brother, William, was shot fatally in the chest. “I’ve already told my legal team I want to go forward with prosecutions.’’

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The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, authorized by former Prime Minister Tony Blair in the immediate build-up to the Good Friday peace accord of 1998, was empowered to find the truth behind the British Army’s worst act of violence in Northern Ireland. 

That's not what government commissions do.

The investigation led by English judge Lord Saville produced a 5,000-page report based on evidence from 921 witnesses, 2,500 written statements, and 60 volumes of written evidence. It cost nearly $300 million.

Legal experts say wiggle room remains for prosecutions and, more likely, civil lawsuits against the retired soldiers, particularly those who were found to have lied during their testimony.

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"Live bomb found in Belfast, police say

LONDON - Police in Northern Ireland said a live bomb was found in a busy part of Belfast and it was “capable of causing death or serious injury.’’ Homes and businesses were evacuated after the bomb was discovered late Friday near restaurants. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Irish Republican Army dissidents opposed to the province’s peace process have attempted a number of recent bombings and shootings, though few have killed anyone (AP)."

Gee, I wonder who could have left that lying around?

See: Irish Are No Fools 

Neither are we, readers.  Not anymore.

"Ex-IRA chief runs for president; McGuinness readies campaign for Irish post" by Shawn Pogatchnik Associated Press / September 19, 2011

DUBLIN - A former Irish Republican Army commander, Martin McGuinness, announced yesterday he is running for president of Ireland - and faced immediate questions about his murky IRA past....

Beware of the AmeriKan media when the word murky is used!  

"The details of how the accident unfolded remain murky"

"the truth lies buried in the murky world of spies."  

See: They Don't Want Your Blood Money

Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?

Seeing through the murk yet?

McGuinness, deputy leader of the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party, has won plaudits for his conciliatory role atop the 4-year-old coalition government in Northern Ireland, a British territory that the IRA had long sought to overthrow by force....

You see, sometimes force is okay and allowed for such things (Iraq, for instance). 

Other times.... ???

But McGuinness also has never come clean about his role directing an IRA campaign that killed nearly 1,800 people and maimed thousands more. At times he has flatly denied IRA membership, while in 2003 he testified to a British fact-finding tribunal that he quit the IRA in the early 1970s, a claim widely dismissed as implausible.

McGuinness took part in secret 1972 negotiations between IRA commanders and the British government. The following year he was arrested in the Republic of Ireland in a car containing explosives and ammunition and convicted of IRA membership. He declared from the dock that he was proud to be an IRA member.

Independent historians of the Sinn Fein-IRA movement say McGuinness served on the IRA’s senior command from around 1975 to 2005, when the IRA declared it was going out of business. Several IRA splinter groups continue to plot bomb and gun attacks and denounce McGuinness as a traitor to their cause....

And we know who is running them.

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