In the seas of time you float serene,
Oh! silver stars of nations born,
And you draw a tear to free men's eyes,
Through dungeon bars forlorn.
Oh! star of Erin, queen of tears,
Black clouds have beset thy birth,
And your people die like morning stars,
That your light may grace the earth.
BobbY Sands died in 1981, in prison after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27. The significance of the hunger strike was the prisoners' aim of being declared as political prisoners (or prisoners of war) and not to be classed as criminals. Today Liam Hannaway is 38 days on Hunger Strike, he needs your support and help!
Websites are blocked by Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or IP address. However, only about 20% of blocked sites are identified by IP; the remaining 80% are unable to be identified at a physical location. Sites identified as being located in Thailand have legal action taken against their operators.
Several technologies are employed to censor the Internet such as caching, blacklisting domain name or IP address, or simply redirection to a government homepage. Blacklisting the website is beneficial for this kind of web censorship as the webmasters would be unaware that their websites are being blocked. This measure is said to be used to make websites appear unavailable.
Because of the above my articles are either scrambled or unavailable here in Thailand. Certain mainstream outlets are still available but all objective commentary or opposition censored which runs into the thousands now. TV stations of the people or those reporting events objectively have been closed down.
Several reporters critical of the establishment are serving sentences of up to 20 years presently here. I have been fiercely critical of the BBC's coverage of occupied Ireland in the past but I must acknowledge their coverage of events here have generally been reasonably balanced. In the absence of being able publish his articles presently BFClarke a usual anchor here has asked me to publish this on his behalf, to try to describe events exactly, as he has been forced to furnish the links below long with an article that was scrambled last night because of present circumstance.
Latest Update : 3 dead +, Hundreds injured.
Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawasdipol, or Seh Daeng, the head of Redshirt security has been shot in the head at the protest site in central Bangkok . He was admitted to Hua Chiew hospital and is receiving an emergency treatment for a gunshot wound where his condition is said to be stable. At least 10 people were also njured in the clashes between the army and protesters near Lumpini Park. Demonstrators threw stones at close circuit television cameras and blockaded the area with steel fences.
Immediately after he was shot at Sala Daeng intersection, Seh Daeng was rushed to Hua Chiew hospital. He is still receiving emergency treatment.
Snipers carrying weapons and live ammunition moved into position prior to the shooting. Gunfire and loud explosions were heard near the area where the Redshirts are camped out at their protest site in Bangkok. The gunfire started after the 6pm (1100 GMT) deadline set by the government passed without the protesters moving off the scene.
Sean Boonpracong a Redshirts spokesperson earlier said, "We believe that this is the beginning of the army plan to crack down on us. We have been prepared for this for a long time,"
"We will send out groups to surround these vehicles to prevent them from advancing," Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader said. "We believe the army will try to crack down this evening or tomorrow morning."
Earlier reports said army chief Gen Anupong Paojinda on Wednesday approved "Operation Ratchaprasong" involving 32,000 troops and 120 APCs to seal off the rally site.
The government had threatened to cut off power and water supplies to the Rajprasong neighbourhood of Bangkok, where the demonstrators are massed, if the protesters did not disperse by midnight local time (1700 GMT) on Wednesday.
The Prime minister's spokesperson Korbsak Sabhavsau said,
"It's clear that the red shirts have only verbally accepted to join the reconciliation roadmap but have not agreed to end the protests," In Thai culture a verbal agreement, is very different to a formal written one with an official presence.
It is clear that the Redshirts will not back down, that there will be a bloodbath if the army and APCs move in to the protest site. It is likely that marksmen are going to take out the hardcore leaders, as is usual with Eton educated British leadership with protest movements like occupied Ireland and other neo-colonies.
Earlier in the day, Seh Daeng or Commander Red said in an interview before he was shot,
"I'm not afraid of dying. They've marked my head. If I'm afraid, it is who will lead the Redshirts?. All I have on me is a small pistol and a stick ... ..If anyone comes to arrest me, I can assure you I'll shoot and fight to the end ..... Soldiers are on to me. There are snipers out there. But they'll never get me, I'm a Redshirt security commander-in-chief, I can't fear anything, I will not wear protective armour, such dress would make me feel like one who fears death and would prevent me from leading others who do not have protective clothing."
"We will continue to rally here at Ratchaprasong. If the government wants to disperse us, do it tonight and don't wait till tomorrow because we'll fight to the end," Redshirt Leader Jatuporn declared.
He said army specialist Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawadipol, also known as Seh Daeng, was now in a stable condition after he was shot in the head. While he was giving the speech, Redshirts were shining spotlights at nearby buildings to prevent snipers from attacking the red-shirt leaders.
Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawasdipol, or Seh Daeng, the head of Redshirt security has been shot in the head at the protest site in central Bangkok . He was admitted to Hua Chiew hospital and is receiving an emergency treatment for a gunshot wound where his condition is said to be stable. At least 10 people were also njured in the clashes between the army and protesters near Lumpini Park. Demonstrators threw stones at close circuit television cameras and blockaded the area with steel fences.
Immediately after he was shot at Sala Daeng intersection, Seh Daeng was rushed to Hua Chiew hospital. He is still receiving emergency treatment.
Snipers carrying weapons and live ammunition moved into position prior to the shooting. Gunfire and loud explosions were heard near the area where the Redshirts are camped out at their protest site in Bangkok. The gunfire started after the 6pm (1100 GMT) deadline set by the government passed without the protesters moving off the scene.
Sean Boonpracong a Redshirts spokesperson earlier said, "We believe that this is the beginning of the army plan to crack down on us. We have been prepared for this for a long time,"
"We will send out groups to surround these vehicles to prevent them from advancing," Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader said. "We believe the army will try to crack down this evening or tomorrow morning."
Earlier reports said army chief Gen Anupong Paojinda on Wednesday approved "Operation Ratchaprasong" involving 32,000 troops and 120 APCs to seal off the rally site.
The government had threatened to cut off power and water supplies to the Rajprasong neighbourhood of Bangkok, where the demonstrators are massed, if the protesters did not disperse by midnight local time (1700 GMT) on Wednesday.
The Prime minister's spokesperson Korbsak Sabhavsau said,
"It's clear that the red shirts have only verbally accepted to join the reconciliation roadmap but have not agreed to end the protests," In Thai culture a verbal agreement, is very different to a formal written one with an official presence.
It is clear that the Redshirts will not back down, that there will be a bloodbath if the army and APCs move in to the protest site. It is likely that marksmen are going to take out the hardcore leaders, as is usual with Eton educated British leadership with protest movements like occupied Ireland and other neo-colonies.
Earlier in the day, Seh Daeng or Commander Red said in an interview before he was shot, "I'm not afraid of dying. They've marked my head. If I'm afraid, it is who will lead the Redshirts?. All I have on me is a small pistol and a stick ... ..If anyone comes to arrest me, I can assure you I'll shoot and fight to the end ..... Soldiers are on to me. There are snipers out there. But they'll never get me, I'm a Redshirt security commander-in-chief, I can't fear anything, I will not wear protective armour, such dress would make me feel like one who fears death and would prevent me from leading others who do not have protective clothing."
UPDATE ; "We will continue to rally here at Ratchaprasong. If the government wants to disperse us, do it tonight and don't wait till tomorrow because we'll fight to the end," Redshirt Leader Jatuporn declared.
He said army specialist Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawadipol, also known as Seh Daeng, was now in a stable condition after he was shot in the head. While he was giving the speech, Redshirts were shining spotlights at nearby buildings to prevent snipers from attacking the red-shirt leaders.
Everyone, Republican or otherwise, has their own particular part to play. No part is too great or too small; no one is too old or too young to do something.
Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.
They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken.
They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.
Quotes of Bobby Sands
''I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom. I shall not settle until I achieve liberation of my country, until Ireland becomes a sovereign, independent socialist republic. ''
Irish Activist
Date of Birth:
March 9, 1954
Date of Death
May 5, 1981
For the first seventeen days of his hunger strike in prison Bobby Sands kept a secret diary mostly in English but occasionally breaking into Gaelic. He saw the hunger-strike as something much larger than the Irish prisoner's five demands and having major repercussions for British rule in Ireland. His diary was written on toilet paper and had to be hidden, mostly carried inside Bobby's own body, you see even in prison there is British censorship to this very day.
On March 30th as he lay on hunger strike in Long Kesh internment camp in occupied Ireland, he was nominated as candidate for Fermanagh South Tyrone by-election.
On day thirty-one of his hunger-strike, he was visited by Owen Carron who acted as his election agent. Owen said of that visit, 'Instead of meeting that young man of the poster with long hair and a fresh face, even at that time when Bobby wasn't too bad he was radically changed. He was very thin and bony and his hair was cut short.'
After the result was announced where Bobby wss elected by more than 30,000 voters, Owen visited Bobby again. "He had already heard the result on the radio. He was in good form alright but he always used to keep saying, 'In my position you can't afford to be optimistic.' In other words, he didn't take it that because he'd won an election that his life would be saved. He thought that the British would need their pound of flesh. I think he was always working on the premise that he would have to die."
At 1.17 a.m. on Tuesday, May 5th, having completed sixty-five days on hunger-strike, Bobby Sands Member of the British Parliament, died in the H-Block prison hospital at Long Kesh concentration camp. In his own words: "of course I can be murdered but I remain what I am, a political POW and no-one, not even the British, can change that." Nine loyal young comrades of Bobby were to follow him to early graves in solidarity with his beliefs.
Voting In Britain For War. Take Your Pick
By John Pilger
May 06, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Staring at the vast military history section in the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organised killing. There was nothing I recognised from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children’s limbs hanging in trees and nothing on the burden of shit in your trousers. War is a good read. War is fun. More war please.
The day before I flew out of Australia, 25 April, I sat in a bar beneath the great sails of the Sydney Opera House. It was Anzac Day, the 95th anniversary of the invasion of Ottoman Turkey by Australian and New Zealand troops at the behest of British imperialism. The landing was an incompetent stunt of blood sacrifice conjured by Winston Churchill; yet it is celebrated in Australia as an unofficial national day. The ABC evening news always comes live from the sacred shore at Gallipoli, in Turkey, where this year some 8000 flag-wrapped Antipodeans listened, dewy-eyed, to the Australian governor-general Quentin Bryce, who is the Queen’s viceroy, describe the point of pointless mass killing. It was, she said, all about a “love of nation, of service, of family, the love we give and the love we receive and the love we allow ourselves to receive. [It is a love that] rejoices in the truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And it never fails”.
Of all the attempts at justifying state murder I can recall, this drivel of DIY therapy, clearly aimed at the young, takes the blue riband. Not once did Bryce honour the fallen with the two words that the survivors of 1915 brought home with them: “Never again”. Not once did she refer to a truly heroic anti-conscription campaign, led by women, that stemmed the flow of Australian blood in the first world war, the product not of a gormlessness that “believes all things” but of anger in defence of life.
The next item on the TV news was an Australian government minister, John Faulkner, with the troops in Afghanistan. Bathed in the light of a perfect sunrise, he made the Anzac connection to the illegal invasion of Afghanistan in which, on 13 February last year, Australian soldiers killed five children. No mention was made of them. On cue, this was followed by an item that a war memorial in Sydney had been “defaced by men of Middle Eastern appearance”. More war please.
In the Opera House bar a young man wore campaign medals which were not his. That is the fashion now. Smashing his beer glass on the floor, he stepped over the mess which was cleaned up another young man whom the TV newsreader would say was of Middle Eastern appearance. Once again, war is a fashionable extremism for those suckered by the Edwardian notion that a man needs to prove himself “under fire” in a country whose people he derides as “gooks” or “rag-heads” or simply “scum”. (The current public inquiry in London into the torture and murder of an Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, by British troops has heard that “the attitude held” was that “all Iraqis were scum”).
There is a hitch. In the ninth year of the thoroughly Edwardian invasion of Afghanistan, more than two thirds of the home populations of the invaders want their troops to get out of where they have no right to be. This is true of Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and Germany. What this says is that, behind the media façade of politicised ritual – such as the parade of military coffins through the English town of Wootton Bassett -- millions of people are trusting their own critical and moral intelligence and ignoring propaganda that has militarised contemporary history, journalism and parliamentary politics – Australia’s Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, for instance, describes the military as his country’s “highest calling”.
Here in Britain, the war criminal Tony Blair is anointed by the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee as “the perfect emblem for his people’s own contradictory whims”. No, he was the perfect emblem for a liberal intelligentsia prepared cynically to indulge his crime. That is the unsaid of the British election campaign, along with the fact that 77 per cent of the British people want the troops home. In Iraq, duly forgotten, what has been done is a holocaust. More than a million people are dead and four million have been driven from their homes. Not a single mention has been made of them in the entire campaign. Rather, the news is that Blair is Labour’s “secret weapon”.
All three party leaders are warmongers. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats leader and darling of former Blair lovers, says that as prime minister he will “participate” in another invasion of a “failed state” provided there is “the right equipment, the right resources”. His one condition is the standard genuflection towards a military now scandalised by a colonial cruelty of which the Baha Mousa case is but one of many.
For Clegg, as for Gordon Brown and David Cameron, the horrific weapons used by British forces, such as clusters, depleted uranium and the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of its victims’ lungs, do not exist. The limbs of children in trees do not exist. This year alone Britain will spend £4 billion on the war in Afghanistan, and that is what Brown and Cameron almost certainly intend to cut from the National Health Service.
Edward S Herman explained this genteel extremism in his essay, The Banality of Evil. There is a strict division of labour, ranging from the scientists working in the laboratories of the weapons industry, to the intelligence and “national security” personnel who supply the paranoia and “strategies”, to the politicians who approve them. As for journalists, our task is to censor by omission and make the crime seem normal for you, the public. For it is your understanding and your awakening that are feared, above all.
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