Quite a sizeable proportion of the denizens of the mythic Norneverland don’t really think Human Rights are a thing to aspire to . They feel that to fight for those ordinary rights of the person is somehow , vaguely not quite clean. Some of them feel that it is actually not for them at all. They might even perceive that something like that was almost too left-wing …or dare I say it, anti -British as well.This line of thought has even led to the murder of some lawyers in Norneverland in the very recent past.
This leads me to Amal Clooney , wife of film star and all- round heartthrob film star, George. Remember me telling you all about George’s pre-wedding hi-jinks in Italy last year.Well, since then ,George’s new wife has become something of a media star in her own right.Obviously more people are going to know about her now.She’s a beautiful woman as well as being a very intelligent lawyer and has featured in some very high-profile cases in the past .This would have gone largely unnoted until she became part of what has become known as a “power couple” to the readers of “Hello” magazine .Readers of the magazine may be more interested in the sleek , chic style of the couple but both are intelligent ,socially-minded people and there is even talk that Mr Clooney has some political ambitions too. It might not be fanciful to imagine him and his beautiful wife as the ultimate celebrity inhabitants of a Democratic White House some time in the future.Well…you never can tell…look at Ronnie Regan ….
George has already assumed the title as one of the world’s sexiest and most handsome men in the minds of most of the world’s females. They may be already very jealous of his beautiful wife for stealing him away but they’ll also have a hankering to emulate her undoubted style. The feminists will bask in the glory of a prominent, beautiful and also intelligent and successful woman.
That might not really go down too well in Norneverland though, because like their delight in low-level homophobia and racism , a fear of feminism, even among some women , is the norm among a quite conservative population and strong women are sometimes viewed with suspicion ; again , as somehow behaving in a vaguely” unclean” or unnatural way .
The fact that Amal Clooney , as part of a legal team , is pitting herself against not only the British Government but also the British Security forces will not go down well with a substantial percentage of the Norneverland population ,in any case. Human rights or not…. She is the face of the legal team which is taking the UK government to the European Court of Human Rights.That alone, is bound to make a media splash.To some , the Government can do no wrong.
All this hoohah is about the “Ten Hooded Men”.This harks back to 1971 when the men were interned and apparently tortured while being held without trial under the orders of the British Government. These men , of course were from a nationalist background , so they would never have been given any support by anyone in the unionist community. Unionists generally thought that this was the proper way for their government to behave anyway.; just as long as they weren’t doing it to Unionists themselves.The consensus was that if it was that other lot, it would have been perfectly alright. After all , they, themselves, were on the British Government’s side .They never saw how their own freedoms ansd laws were being twisted out of shape and how those same twisted ideas could be used against themselves some time in the future.They never supported the Civil Rights campaign anyway, never mnd anything to do with Human Rights. It was exactly the same position they took with the South African conflict and Nelson Mandela …if they thought about it at all. if Mandela was locked up , that was fine by them too.Norneverland is one weird place and it was even weirder back in 1971.
The men concerned ; fourteen of them,were dragged out of their homes; were hooded, subjected to violence and forced to listen to constant loud static noise. They were gaoled and constricted without any charges ,deprived of sleep, food and water and forced to stand in a stress position while being beaten if they dared to fall down.They were thrown out of helicoptors twenty feet above the ground but they believed they were actually being tossed to their deaths.The men are claiming that this behaviour was torture. I suppose you would think that if you were one of those men , but the British Government wants to argue about the semantics of the word “torture”.The European Court of Human Rights has already ruled that the men had been subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment, but not torture.Since then the Irish Government has already joined this latest campaign.
This is the fetid, grubby scenario that this beautiful , talented woman has now found herself wallowing in. She has already defended the Greek Government ; she has worked on the Enron case, so she is no glamourous lightweight.It should be noted, though , that in Norneverland’s relatively recent past , one human rights lawyer has already been murdered in front of his family, in his home and another has beenblown to smithereens when her car was bombed.A section of the public here do not understand the very concept of Human Rights for everyone .The powers that be and their clinging acolytes do not really like this Human Rights business at all. things were much easier in the past when you didn’t have the worry of such fripparies….
So I hope that Amal, her husband and the world’s media and paparazzi who will doubtless follow her every move , are aware that her life may well be in danger, not just from the ladies who believe in their hearts that she has stolen their dreamboat ,George, from them ,but from other more disturbed individuals who have always lived in the shadows here..
Amal Clooney and the Ten Hooded MenAmal Clooney is part of a team representing 10 men taking the UK to the European Court of Human Rights.
The men allege they were tortured when they were held without trial in Northern Ireland in August 1971.
Their claim is being backed by the Irish government.
Some were also thrown from helicopters while their heads were covered with hoods.
In 1976, the European Commission on Human Rights upheld a complaint by the Irish government that the men had been tortured, a ruling that was later overturned on appeal.
The European Court ruled that the men had been subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment, but not torture.
Hello Harry – i posted about the implications of the EU Court ruling of “inhuman and degrading treatment” which go far beyond the working class Belfast men who were rounded up, I think, in the Internmment drag-net (operation demetrius).
The out-working of the sentence goes some way to explain the involvement of a top-level Human Rights lawyer , as Amal Clooney is in her own right, whoever her husband may be
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/torture-files-the-hooded-men/
Excellent , Ben.I’m supposing the” powers- that -be” are drawing a line in the sand ….it’s like something out of “Yes Minister”….you know how it is ..”Well now …we never got around to shoving red -hot pokers up them. …nobody had their fingernails pulled out with pliers…..we’ve come some way since we used to hang them for a wee while to tenderise them ….then stretched them out on the rack …before we disembowelled them while they were still ticking over ….so they could also enjoy the show…before we butchered them up into neat little quarters and sent them to the four points of the compass….What have these people got to complain about?…Noise!!!!?…Have they ever been to a Who concert?
Refreshing all the same to see a different–sex marriage in the limelight for a change, if only for the most fleeting of nanoseconds.
It might be said, Esteemed Blogmeister, that poor ole George Clooney hadn’t a chance from the beginning, what with the name he was born with and then, the one he was baptised with.
Georgeous and George, of course need no introduction but perhaps his surname does: ‘Cluanai Ban’ in the leprechaun means, (gulp), ‘Flatterer of Females’.
And this is only the Captain’s Run, so the speak. A mere warm up. Take the word ‘Druze’, the community the family of his wife Amal belongs to: if pronounced with a particularly heavy intake of breathing, it comes out sounding remarkably like the word in leprechaun – ‘druis’ – for, (gulp), ‘lust’. And not restricted to the raunchy of one particular gender.
You mention that George C may have political designs on the White House. Well, he might. Considering the Clooneys have had a thing about houses. Take the case of Aunty Rosemary with hits to do with houses, hits terraced and hits semi-detached:
‘This old house is a a-gettin’ shaky
This old house is a-gettin’ old
This old house lets in the rain
This old house lets in the cold’.
Ah, yes: cold houses. Which brings to mind that great nobel-prize winning knee-trimbler of a phrase ‘a cold house for Catholics’. Whether it was the venerable ventriloquist, Read-my-lips Harris of Ireland’s Own or his puppet, Lord David of Go Lightly actually came up with phrase first is neither here or t., at this house remove.
What is important now is that the following couplet is coming into focus, finally. Referring to any one of the ten hooded men:
‘But he feels no fear nor pain
Coz he sees an angel peekin
Through a broken window pain’
An angel name of Amal who, if anyone had ever heard her sing ‘come on a my house’ would have recongised her as the bean a ti with the complexion of ‘apple an’ plum and apricot a too-a’.
Let’s hope when Amal sorts out the boys in the BA who liked to play with their choppers in public she’ll turn her almond eyes south of the Black Pig’s Dyke.Where some anomalies to do with rights, may well need to be put to, erm, rights.
Not unconnected, curiously enough, in a roundabout class of a way, with yet another former student of yours, Esteemed Blogmeister, who has been (reluctantly) in the limelight this very weekend. Even as he hurried (grudgingly) from studio to rodeo to make innumerable cameo appearances in this the day of Romeo and Julian.
For the first time in his strife-free life Perkie finally undestood the meaning of that old Fianna Fail anthem (the one which preceded the ‘Arise and follow Je Suis Charlie’ one) and once sung with great gusto by the Clancy Brothers: ‘The Legion of the Rearguard’.
Take a bow, Esteemed Blogmeister. Or, on second thoughts, perhaps, better not.
But, as our constant Greek chorus of leprechaun speaking geeks were heard to squeak: if Pat Carey (for it is he !) found it too hard not to come out of the closet, he ought to try coming out of the …..cofra.
Lest things be lost in titivation, best to point out that cofra is Erse for closet. Proclaiming oneself ‘gay’ in the Free Southern Stateen is hard but announcing to the bailiwick of the button-down blueshirt that one is ‘gaelic’ is a horse of a different dath, somewhat.
A nad being as good as a w. to one’s devoted reader in Norneverland: so, one nad will do rightly.
On the Monday of the Saturday (today) in which The Unionist Times is bedecked with roses and cuddly thighs at this latest triumph in outing Built-in Prejudice, we had this latest skelp (a daarling word, Joxer, a d. word) from thetrilby-hatted, gentle GAH-hating Fag-an-Bealach-baiting Brian O’Connor.
Under the heading, ‘The Ten Most Annoying Words in Irish Sport’ and starting at the bottom, down there at number 9 one finds the following:
‘Gael. It is Irish sport’s most loaded word – Gael. It is remarkable how often the GAA can spout this with a straight face- and in English too, which you’d think would might cleanse some of the ethnic purity away.But this is not about speaking Irish:Gael comes with Devish presumptions:what it means to be really Irish, buck-lepping handballers at the crossroads, the glory of the little village, Brit-hating Shinner Irish:the real green deal. It is ironic with all the talk of burnout that the flame of this tired old piece of Provo-lite cant still gets vigorously fanned by the ethnically pure hot air of the truly repressed.’
Devish? Can this Sport of the Kings korrespondent be referring to Devon Lock, the queen mum’s horse, or could he – surely not ! perish the very t. !! – be alluding to DeValera?
It gives Perkie’s inner repressed racial purist no satisfaction at all, at all on this day of Anthony and Leopatra to put on record to the tissued paper of record that the old myopic Blackrock Boy’s favourie sporting ball was of the shape ovoid.
And that the same Fear Fada / Long Fellow was known to come down rather heavily on those same Proto-type Provos, even of the lite varite.
And, buck-lepping handballers……? Was it not an ‘unknown’ handballer from Castleknock /Croke Park hinterland who saw to it that Croke Park, erm, would alone stand at the only unfinished national stadium in the discovered world?
And as for the Gaelic Gael vis a vis than Gaelic Gay: there was Perkie’s inner presumptuous pure Gael presuming that the Cusack Stand stood for Citizen Michael rather than Citizen Donal Og.
Wrong Mickey, again.
When you’re finished, Amal, in Norneverland why don’t you come on-a our house down here in the Free Southern Stateen?
You can-a come and see Perkie inner ‘cluanai ban’ anytime,
And that’s a prom.
I just knew it ! ……..I stopped myself offering up any references to George’s auntie Rosemary….I knew that the Mighty Perk would weigh in with an appropriate reference….”Forsooth!”… cried the soothsayer!!!!
Oops ! Sorry about that that, paddykool.
Fact number 1 is, the blog of Esteemed Blogmaster is not only quick on the draw but also the cause of quickness on the drawers of others.
Fact number 2 is, one had internally debated about which Auntie Rosemary song(s) to reference. (Actually, the verb ‘debated’ being now rendered essentially redundant, one must perforce say ‘one had an internal conversation with one self’.),
One had indeed settled on a song which had particular reference to the topic in q. but such as the unwholesome times we live in one felt compelled to choose another.
For the record, the original front runner was her 1955 hit ,not titled ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ but rather ‘Where will the baby’s dimple be?’ which contains the deathless if not debt forgivable lines:
‘Seems to me like it’ll be a sin
If it;s always covered by a safety pin
Where will the dimple be?’.
Having armed herself with the sure knowledge of where hubby George’s dimple is, one is confident that this experience will stand to Amal as she sets about investigating where the B.A.’s dimple will be located with reference to the question of the hooded men and the helicopters.
Bron aris orm,
Makes one wonder what you have to do someone to torture them if these men were not in fact tortured. I wonder what Norma’s reaction would be if 14 of her Unionist/British Brethren were subjected to this treatment by state forces.
I dare say that Norma would thank Her Maj personally for allowing her troops to deal with such even-handed fairness. I imagine it’s as much fun tossing any kind of paddy out of a helicopter. ….Orange or Green….sure they bounce just the same, don’t they? ..Mind you ..at twenty feet up , they mightn’t bounce that easily , come to think of it!!
“A dismal dawn was breaking when they took her man away
Not knowing what was his crime
Just what he was guilty of not one of them could say
But they would think of something in time…”
Interned without trial and “apparently” tortured? Who supplied military intelligence (?) with information as to who and who should not be interned? It would appear that sources did not just suspect people were guilty, they knew they were guilty. Why bother about evidence? Hindsight is a wonderful thing, however, we now know there were miscarriages of justice.
I would not describe a process which resulted in being arrested, stripped, blindfolded, beaten, subjected to electric shocks, subjected to sleep and sensory deprivation as apparent torture. Fr Murray and Fr Faul documented allegations of burning, beating, abuse of genitalia, blindfolding and waterboarding. Evidence has emerged about the use of such barbaric practices throughout the world.
Kitson suggested that the law was just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, to dispose of unwanted members of the public. When internment failed, the Diplock courts took over. Trial by jury ended. Diplock favoured a signed confession as the only reliable evidence that the accused was guilty as charged on the balance of probability that the confession had not been the result of torture or inhuman treatment. Terms such as ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, ‘inhuman or degrading treatment’ emerged without definition in the 1973 Emergency Provisions Act. The right to legal advice was abused. The EPA defined terrorism as ‘the use of violence for political ends’? It is somewhat strange that subsequent injuries to suspects were described as ‘self-harm’, accidents with knives, forks, tin cans and butting their heads on walls. Complaints of assaults during interviews were common but ignored.
Also ignored was the evidence from the Scarman Report into Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland in 1969, the rest is history.
Looks like Kincora may finally be getting a full investigation also
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/15/mi5-kincora-childrens-home-northwen-ireland-sexual-abuse
Harry
“A section of the public here do not understand the very concept of Human Rights for everyone”
I doubt that there is any decent human being who wouldn’t condem the calculated murder of both Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson .But should our outrage be confined to “Human Rights lawyers” .During the troubles, the I R A murdered judges and also if memory serves me right a solicitor.It is to be hoped that there is not a hierarchy of legal victims.Both lawyers and Judges deserve the ultimate Human Right of not being murdered.
I was not making any tribal distinction here but I’ve no doubt at all that many people supported and positively relished the deaths of these solicitors.They were deliberately targettted after all and there was great support for the killers. It is also indisputable that the unionist population showed scant support for a civil Rights movement.Who knows how it would have panned out had they the littlest foresight and faced down the lunatic fringe.