Letter to US Ambassador Ireland re Mary Anne Grady Flores prison sentence

Dear Ambassador

I have just received notification that grandmother Mary Anne Grady Flores was sent to prison on Tuesday to serve a six month sentence in the United States for having photographed a non-violent protest against drones at a point where she believed she was entitled to take pictures of the protest.

Before posting news of this amazing prison sentence on social media, I decided to contact you to register my astonishment and to protest most vigorously about the sentence.  I have forwarded to you the report and shameful picture that I received courtesy of Democracy Now.

As a human rights activist, it becomes necessary for me to complain about human rights abuses in countries around the world, including the USA.  The outrageous sentence imposed on Mrs Grady Flores may not rank in kind with the recent executions in Saudi Arabia, or the horrors of Isis, or the threatened executions in Egypt, or indeed the continued incarceration of prisoners, including their torture, in Guantanamo Bay.

Nevertheless her incarceration is a human rights abuse.  The right to protest is sacred, especially when it is non-violent.  To send anyone to prison for taking pictures of a peaceful, non-violent protest is outrageous.  Mary Anne was trying to prevent the killing of innocents far from the United States by US drones.  How does this make her a criminal?

I call on you Ambassador to complain against this outrage to your President and to urge him to show moral support for Mrs Grady Flores.  In October 1960, Presidential candidate John F Kennedy showed moral support for the jailed Martin Luther King in Atlanta by phoning Mrs Coretta King. Two days later he was released.

Mary Anne Grady Flores and Jonathan Wallace should be released forthwith.  So too should all such peaceful protestors who are in prison in the United States because of peaceful civil disobedience, including many Catholic Workers and members of other non-violent anti-war protest groups.  Many of these are in delicate health and many have passed  away after ill health in inhuman prison conditions left them debilitated and physically but not morally weak.

As we face the prospect of "more of the same" or worse after the US elections, it is time for President Obama to show the same concern for the rights of non-violent protestors as he has recently and properly shown for the black people whose lives have been snuffed out by gun-toting police or the citizens including children murdered by gun-toting fanatics on the streets of the USA.  It  is also absolutely important that he stop the drone killings and recede from State violence himself.

With best personal wishes

Justin Morahan

47 executions in Saudi Arabia is to be condemned

All executions are barbaric and Saudi Arabian executions - beheadings by the sword - are particularly barbaric.The taking away of human life is unjust, cruel, inhumane and sickening.  To kill 47 prisoners as Saudi Arabia has done in recent days - announced to the world today - is human nature at its lowest. With the lone voice of a blogger I condemn it.

The Saudi authorities have declared the prisoners to have been "terrorists".  I have no idea whether or not some of them were. Whether they were terrorists or not they should never have been executed.  Terror is not the answer to terror.

At least one of those executed, the cleric Nimr al Nimr, by all accounts, was not a terrorist. He was a protestor against the Saudi monarchy.  By all accounts, he rejected violence.  He did not engage in it or support it. The barbaric killing of each and every one of these victims is heinous.  The killing of Nimr al Nimr is particularly heinous.

Any government or dictator sanctioning capital punishment for any reason today should take stock of themselves and put an end to this crime against humanity. No-one who tolerates this practice at home can condemn it elsewhere.

Let 2016 be a new beginning when we say NO to State murder of any human being for any reason whatever.

The nonviolent protest action of two Irish parliamnetarians at Shannon airport

See also earlier blog Theatre of the Absurd in Ennis Court 


Yesterday, two TDs were taken away separately from their parliamentary duties in Dublin and driven separately to prison in Limerick.  Limerick is about 200 km from Dublin.

First Mick Wallace, a thorn in the side of government bureaucracy and corruption, was picked up by appointment at Clontarf Garda station, allowed to call to his home for a few personal items and driven to prison.  He was released after two hours, apparently because of the revolving door system. His release is conditional.

A short time after his release in faraway Limerick, Clare Daly, having said goodbye to her daughter,  was being driven to the same prison. She was processed there for about 90 minutes and then she too was released conditionally. 

Both of these elected representatives to the Dáil or Irish Parliament's lower house (where the bulk of legislation is enacted) had been waiting to be picked up to serve a sentence of one month in Limerick prison.   Both had refused to pay a fine of €2000 each, on principle. To highlight Ireland's complicity in multiple wars they had scaled the fence at Shannon airport last year to inspect the US  planes which they knew were carrying troops and arms to various war zones.

After a prolonged trial, both TDs were found guilty of transgressing airport laws.  Right was on their side, morals and ethics were on their side.  Witnesses gave first hand evidence of having seen weapons on civilian US aircraft. Experts testified that using a civilian airport in this way was complicity in war, that the two TDs were trying to save lives. The two told the court that they had asked the Gardaí and relevant Minister in the Dáil time after time to ensure that none of these planes were carrying arms  They had been told to find evidence themselves and come back with it to the Minister.  So they scaled the fence to find the evidence first hand and were arrested.

The judge believed all of the evidence given on their behalf.  But they had transgressed.  He fined them €2000 each, with one month prison in default.

The active witness of Clare Daly and Mick Wallace at Shannon was an example of nonviolent action at its best.  Like the earlier actions of Margaretta D'Arcy and Niall Farrell (who sat on the runway in a similar protest) and the even earlier actions of the Pitstop Ploughshares (Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Damien Moran, Ciaran O’Reilly) who decommissioned a warplane before the GW Bush invasion of Iraq, and Mary Kelly who performed the same feat at the same airport a short time earlier, these are actions worthy of praise.

Gene Sharp and Erica Chenoweth would have given it their academic blessing.  Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Jesus Christ among others would have approved and would have given it a more substantive blessing.

Revelations re Shannon and Ireland's complicity in War

from Shannonwatch

PRESS RELEASE

Shannonwatch, 23^rd Sept 2015

Extent of Shannon and Ireland’s Complicity in War Revealed

The Department of Transport has revealed that in 2014 a total of 272 flights were given permits to take weapons or explosives through Shannon Airport. In response to a freedom of information request by Shannonwatch they confirmed that the majority of the flights were taking US troops between military bases and locations in the Middle East. The information also shows that US troop carriers and aircraft with machine guns, rocket motors and other war material are routinely allowed to fly through Irish airspace. Again the majority of these are flying to or from US military bases around the world.

The permits are requested by airline operators under the Air Navigation (Carriage of Munitions of War, Weapons and Dangerous Goods) Order. Close to twenty requests were refused in 2014 but the Department would not reveal where these were from or why they were refused. It would only state that they were refused on the advice of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

“The information provided by the Department shows the alarming level of support that Ireland is giving to US military operations overseas” said John Lannon of Shannonwatch. “Over 550 permits were granted to airlines carrying troops, weapons and explosives to their forward operating bases. There would seem to be an overwhelming bias towards facilitating flights from the US and other NATO countries. How can our government claim we are in any way neutral when this is happening?”

“The information reveals flights going to the likes of Saudi Arabia which is dropping cluster bombs on Yemen” continued John Lannon. “When we see the scale of the refugee crisis created by the use of weapons in Syria we begin to get a glimpse of how arms shipments can impact on a region. It’s not something we should be part of.”

The companies identified as carrying weapons and other war related material for the US include Atlas Air, Omni Air International, Southern Air, National Airlines, Delta Air, Kalitta Air and North American Airlines. 

 “The records received by Shannonwatch reveal a lack of transparency, no proper oversight and little regard for the consequences of war.” according to John Lannon. “It is shameful that the Department of Transport had to be compelled under freedom of information legislation to make these details available. Why couldn’t the government have answered some of the many requests made by TDs like Clare Daly, Mick Wallace and Sinn Fein’s Sean Crowe for details of what is being brought through Shannon by the US army?”

Even though the Department of Transport has finally made this data available, Shannonwatch say that they still don’t know what is on the US Air Force Hercules that land at Shannon. “These aircraft are exempt from freedom of information and the only way to find out what is on them is to do what Mick Wallace and Clare Daly tried to do in July of last year, which was to inspect the planes themselves.” said John Lannon.

Former army commandant Edward Horgan who is also a Shannonwatch member said “The FOI documents show that on 6 particular flights the amount of small arms ammunition, that is bullets, sent from the USA to Afghanistan in 2014 amount to almost 420,000 lbs weight which is about 190 metric tons. We are led to believe that these flights were approved to fly through Irish airspace by the Department of Foreign Affairs.”

“In my (military) opinion, this ammunition was probably intended to supply the Afghan army. However, given how events have developed in Iraq, where huge amounts of arms including tanks and armoured vehicles and vast quantities of ammunition supplied by the US to the Iraqi army, was both captured and handed over to ISIS and other militia groups, then it is not unlikely that in time, much of this 190 metric tons of ammunition sent by the US to Afghanistan in 2014 could be captured or handed over to the Taliban and other such groups”.

“US arms manufacturers will be delighted with these developments as they will continue to replace all this ammunition expended in wars, or stolen and handed over to the likes of ISIS”.

The information provided to Shannonwatch reveals US troop movements via Shannon to airports in Eastern Europe as well as to Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Shannonwatch have published a complete list of all the flights on their website www.shannonwatch.org, with details of flight sources and destinations, what they were carrying and whether or not the plane landed in Ireland.

For more information contact 087 8225087 or email shannonwatch@gmail.com.

Letter to Governor Mary Fallin re unjust execution of Richard Glossip

Dear Mary

You have the unbelievable power to stop an unjust execution and give a chance to a proper defence team to fight the injustice for the first time.

With that power comes responsibility

Please change your mind and grant a stay to Richard Glossip who, you must know by now, was stitched up for the murder of Mr Van Treese, when they interviewed Justin Sneed and hid the video of the interview.

What a shambles of a prosecution on which to justify the taking of innocent human life.  No fingerprints, no DNA evidence.  Only the word of the killer prompted by State interrogators.

Poverty is not a crime.  Richard's poverty denied him a proper defence.

The death penalty is utterly barbaric.  "We think you're guilty by our standards, therefore we kill you" is a motto worthy of Jihadi John and his Isis clan of murderers. Please don't join them.

With best personal wishes

Justin Morahan
Pacifist, human rights activist
Dublin Ireland