text:
Uncovering the Truth About the 1981 Hunger Strike
Bobby Sands Trust
Brendan Duddy
"Rusty Nail"
Anthony McIntyre
Brian Rowan
Jim Gibney
Liam Clarke
Dolours Price
Ed Moloney
Gasyard Debate
ICJP
Irish Government
Irish News Special Issue
Andersonstown News
Derry Journal
The Blanket
The Pensive Quill
Mountain Climber
Sile Darragh
Blanketmen
Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane
Brendan Hughes
Colm Scullion
Former Hunger Strikers
IRSP
Kevin McQuillan
Richard O'Rawe
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh
Ten Men Dead
The British Offer from Thatcher
Anthony McIntyre interviews Richard O'Rawe (2006)
'The Blanket' meets 'Blanketmen'
All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Anthony McIntyre speaks with Richard O'Rawe • 16 May 2006
Q: This month marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands, Frank Hughes, Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara. How has it been for you emotionally?
A: Terrible. It has been terrible.
Q: Can you elaborate?
A: Bob has been in my thoughts all the time. He left from our wing. The others were in different blocks. And I just get this vision of him. I see him in the wing canteen for mass just before he went up to the prison hospital. He was smiling at me. He knew he was going up there to die. I knew it too. It was just so unbelievably heartrending and it has never left me. That smile has been with me for over a week; that smile of pathos. I went over to his grave and just looked around me. There was Joe and big Doc, Bryson and our Mundo, wee Paddy Mul, Todler and all the dead volunteers. It was just horrific.
Q: Bobby was very much the master of his own destiny once he decided that he would face down the Brits in the sure knowledge that Thatcher was determined to see him to the grave. And in a sense you and the jail leadership had less control over the first four hunger strikers than you had over the rest. There was effectively little you could do. But the real story of the hunger strike for you begins with Joe McDonnell. You claim that in the final days of Joe's hunger strike the British made an offer substantive enough to end the protest and save the lives of Joe and the other men. In your account the prison leadership recommended accepting this but that the republican leadership outside the prison effectively overruled you. The hunger strike continued and six other men lost their lives. This is what makes your book Blanketmen so important and in the eyes of many critics controversial. What prompted you to write it?
A: I saw a wrong here. It was a gut-wrenching wrong.
Q: Despite attempts by Jim Gibney to pull the wool over the eyes of people with his spurious claim in the Irish News that you never raised your concerns with any ex-prisoners until last year, it is well known within the republican constituency that you had been giving off on the matter for years – long before the book came out. In fact Brendan Hughes would often rib about it – a 'quick, hide, here he comes again, complaining about the hunger strike' type thing. You actually claim to have raised the matter with Danny Morrison in the Rock Bar while he was in the company of Gibney.
A: I remember that. Danny and Jim had just finished a game of squash in the Beechmount Leisure Centre and had come in for a pint. I was only in a couple of minutes before them and I joined them in one of the wee boxes. During our conversation, Danny said that he was writing a book about the hunger strikes. I then asked him to write 'the truth.'
Q: That must have sounded like a foreign language to him. How did he respond?
A: When he asked me what I meant, I told him about us accepting the deal. You know, his mouth dropped open. I was left with the impression that he didn't know about this. Either that or he's a better actor than Robert de Nero.
Q: Or he was amazed that you knew about it. He may have thought up until the Rock Bar discussion that only one person in the prison knew – the camp O/C.
A: A possibility.
Q: One which may place him in the frame as being complicit in the events, whatever they were, during the final days of Joe McDonnell's life?
A: It is a way of looking at it.
Q: What happened that his book wasn't published?
A: I don't know. An interesting question though.
Q: Do you think the leadership told him to bin it?
A: I don't know. One thing's for sure, if he had been writing anything contentious, and been silly enough to show it to them, they'd have put the squeeze on him to pull the book. We're talking in the conditional tense here, but it takes a bit of balls to publish and be damned – especially when those who might be criticised are the IRA leadership. One criticism that was directed at me, was that no one knew Blanketmen was coming. In fact, a member of the GHQ staff, a former blanket man, visited me about a year before the publication date, and asked me about it. Specifically, he asked me if I was going to 'hurt Gerry Adams?' I told him I was going to 'tell the truth.' I asked him if he knew the real story of the hunger strike, that we had accepted the Mountain Climber offer, and he nodded his head. Do you know what he said? 'Sometimes hard decisions have to be taken in times of war, Ricky.' Well fuck that. I don't mind hard, strategic decisions being taken. I mean; who would want to be a general? They have a thankless task. But when brave men die needlessly – that's crossing the line; that's not on, as far as I'm concerned anyway. You know, the GHQ staffer wired me off not to be influenced by yourself!
Q: Despite all their nonsense that you never told anyone about your concerns he must have suspected that you had vented them to me. Why else say that? How did he learn you were publishing a book if you didn't tell anyone?
A: That's a point.
Q: And of course I'm the advisocrat working tirelessly to undermine the peace process! Maybe myself and Catherine McCartney wrote the book in the month after her brother was butchered just to wreck Gerry Adams' chances of getting a knighthood!
A: Anyway, I told the GHQ staffer I was my own man, that neither you, or anyone else would force me to do something that my conscience didn't feel was right. Then he asked if I'd like to speak to Gerry Adams. I said no. Now, in fairness, this guy didn't threaten me in any way, nor did I feel threatened. What he was trying to do was to start a process that was aimed at persuading me to pull the book.
Q: This is the book that no one including themselves knew about until it appeared on the shelves?
A: I wasn't going to allow that to happen.
Q: If I can take it back to Jim Gibney. He was there in the Rock Bar, yet he put out that dissembling cant in his column that you never raised the issue with anyone over a 24-year period?
A: I've answered that in Monday's Irish News. You know as well as anybody else the status of Gibney's Irish News column.
Q: I take it you are referring to it being widely viewed as the 'I love my leader' column?
A: Homer Simpson! Do you ever read it?
Q: I wouldn't make a point of looking for it. But every now and then somebody points to something in it where he seems to reveal something he shouldn't have. He wrote one time that the peace process does not want truth and cannot function with it. Another time he claimed that Bobby Sands wrote out on the evening of the end of the 1980 hunger strike that he would begin a new hunger strike on the 1st of January. Which meant the Brits had no time to renege on the offer they supposedly made to end the first strike. This was an admission that the first strike collapsed and the Brits did not renege. It also means that Gibney is contradicting himself when he wrote in the Irish News that 'the document could have been the basis' to end the protest. Why otherwise would Bobby have written out stating his intention to start a new strike when there was absolutely no time to test the Brits for sincerity? I look for the faux pas rather than the intent in what he writes. I am waiting on you to be labelled a securocrat in that column. The problem is that you support the peace process.
A: Firstly, let's look at what Gibney said in the first part of his 11 May article. In relation to the Brit document that was delivered to the hunger strikers after they had come off the 1980 strike, he said, 'hours before the document arrived the strike was ended rather than let Sean McKenna die. The document could have been the basis on which the prison protests ended. However the document was an offer from the British to the prisoners not an agreement. There is a huge difference.' How right he is! But if there was no 'agreement' between the two parties at the end of the first hunger strike, then how could the Brits be accused of 'reneging' on an agreement? That's why Bob immediately wanted a second hunger strike. He knew there was no agreement. We all did. The first hunger strike collapsed. The Dark told the Daily Mirror, that the boys had indicated they were not prepared to die. So all this stuff that Big Laurny McKeown is going on about, you know, the 'we wanted to avoid a repetition of what happened at the end of the first hunger strike, when the Brits reneged on a agreement/deal,' is pure bullshit. Understanding that is crucial to removing the gobbledygook that Laurny, Morrison and Co. have thrown up to cloud the issue in the second hunger strike. They are talking what Mick Collins called 'ballsology.'
Q: It seems that you are right and that once again Gibney has put his foot in it. I have written elsewhere that the need to have firm guarantees on any offer from the Brits was understandable but not because of what happened at the end of first hunger strike. 1980 failed before the Brits made any offer that needed to be guaranteed. If the leadership is inaccurate about the ending of the 1980 hunger strike then its account of the 1981 hunger strike depreciates in value.
A: To answer the second part of your question, of course I support the peace process. Like or dislike Gerry Adams, he has to be given credit for ending the un-winnable war.
Q: I think there is some confusion that you could help clear up. It relates to the decision making process during the hunger strikes. What was the chain of command and what say if any had the prisoners in the decision making process?
A: Anyone listening to the likes of Laurny would think that the hunger strikers had the ultimate say in this. Let's get real here. Laurny is trying to protect Big Gerry. The foot-soldiers in the trenches never dictate strategy. Why, even the majors and the colonels – in this case, Bik and myself – didn't have that power. Tactics come from afar; from people who are removed from the field of conflict, but who have the power to determine strategy. People should read Bik's comm to Adams on page 336, Ten Men Dead. On that page Bik told the hunger strikers that, 'I explained the position about my presence being essential at any negotiations …'
Q: What is the significance of this? Would Bik not have a right, even an obligation to be there?
A: Let me give you an example which shows the real purpose served by Bik's presence. It also illustrates their tactic of dictating the ground on which the debate will take place – and they've done this rather successfully, I think. Right, they have restricted the whole debate to the four days before Joe died. But 11 days later, the Mountain Climber came back with the same offer. Adams was on the blower to him. Adams told the hunger strikers about this offer when he visited the camp hospital on 29 July, so there is no disputing that this offer was genuine. Yet when the Mountain Climber came off the mountain for the second and last time, Bik didn't even know what had been rejected on his behalf. This is evident from Bik's comm to Adams, dated 22.7.81, written after the Mountain Climber had gone. Bik said, 'you can give me a run-down on exactly how far the Brits went.' (Page 330 Ten Men Dead).
Q: This seems to suggest that the prison leadership had a very tenuous grip on the actual negotiations. They left it to outside leaders.
A: Outside was always in control. Whoever claims otherwise is talking bullshit.
Q: It certainly reveals the true nature of the balance of power between the leadership and prisoners. I consistently argued within the prison in the mid-1980s that the jail leadership was a mere extension of the outside leadership into the ranks of the prisoners. Its primary function was to represent the interests of the leadership against the prisoners and then only to represent the interests of the prisoners against the regime. They did both quite well.
A: Bik was Adams' man. When Bik spoke, Adams spoke. Everybody knew that. The hunger strike was in safe hands when Bik was in control. The frustrating part in all of this is that the likes of Laurny and Bik know the score. But rather than confront the leadership and ask for an account as to why their last six comrades died, they feel a perverse duty to defend that leadership. It's part of the shameful cover-up to protect the leadership from acute questioning. The first four lads knew the score. They accepted that there was little chance of them surviving. But Joe reaching critical point was different. And this was eating away at me. What made it all the worse was that people were running around as if the history of the hunger strike was a beautiful box of chocolates wrapped in roses. I knew that the roses were nettles, there to jag your finger if you tried to open the box. Everyone could look at and admire the chocolate box but no one was ever really allowed to open it up and look inside to see what was really there.
Q: You took massive criticism for your book from Sinn Fein apologists. To rework a phrase from the Czech writer Milan Kundera, they all lined up against you, right from the president of lies to the idiots of writing. They vilified you, tried to demonise you and to this day they are vitriolic in their condemnation of you. Can you explain the type of tactics that have been employed against you?
A: Nobody knows more about demonisation than Sinn Fein. For decades republicans have been demonized and marginalised and made out to be the ghouls of society. Now they are doing the same thing with me.
Q: Such as?
A: They needed to bring me down from the status of former blanket man to the level of the gutter, where it would be all the easier for people to kick me as they passed by. They had to ensure that I was something people would kick off their shoe. Right from publication day, I was persona non grata, someone who was to be ostracised. The smears started. People who I had been friends with avoided me. A former cellmate on the blanket refused to speak to me. Friends I had all my life blanked me out and made it clear when I went in to a pub that I was not welcome in their company. All The President's Men cut the tripe out of me on television, radio, newspapers – anywhere they had the chance. They tried to attribute false motives to me. They said it was about money. All of this was bullshit. As Danny could testify there is hardly a washer to be made from books.
Q: Especially the type of books he writes.
A: That's another matter. They even accuse me of taking a position of being close to those who supported Thatcher during the hunger strike.
Q: It's ironic then that Thatcher's colleague Michael Portillo should turn up at a play by Danny Morrison and not at your book launch. And no one has heard you call, in true Thatcheresque manner, for the comrades of Bobby Sands to hand themselves into the Diplock courts like common criminals in order that they may be whisked off on the conveyor belt to Maghaberry Prison by the British justice system. The IRA chief of staff and adjutant general at the time of Bobby's death have been doing just that in the past week.
A: Enough said.
Q: But you must have known that this is what you would face. It is their form. They have tried it on John Kelly, Brendan Hughes, Brendan Shannon, Tommy Gorman, Martin Cunningham, Marion and Dolours Price – the list is endless. And these republicans were not challenging the most sacred cow of Adams-style republicanism in the way that you were. You knew that there was little in the way of reward in what you were pursuing, only grief.
A: Some times in life you need to stand up and tell the truth. When the lack of truth is used to camouflage the facts surrounding the deaths of the most sacred of comrades we all need to take stock. These are our kith and kin. These six men should have been enjoying a life with their families like the rest of us; maybe the unmarried ones would have found wives and had the pleasure of enjoying watching their kids grow up. No, there is a wrong here and it has no respect for creed, ideology, tradition or simple humanity. Six people need not have died. They should never have died. Human life is important. So is humility. I see no humility at all from those who made the crucial decisions, not an ounce of it. I see no contrition, or adequate explanation given to the families as to why their sons died. What we get instead is the jackboot on our necks. For why?
Q: You know why. They cannot stand the slightest modicum of dissent. They view any alternative idea as some sort of dangerous illness, the spread of which must be halted by a range of means. Some people, including former members of the movement, think they are fascistic. But you emerged robust. Every TV studio or radio station that I happened to be at in the wake of the book's publication – usually for discussions about the murder of Robert McCartney – I heard comments that you must have a point given the track record for unreliability of some of those who attacked you. The morning your book hit the shelves you featured on Talkback. Danny Morrison came in heavily but unpersuasively against you. His performance in a sense won the argument for you or at least gave you the space to develop your argument. The following Sunday I was in the BBC in Belfast and all the talk was of how unconvincing Morrison sounded. This week at a book launch just after the RTE documentary, it was the same thing, essentially: 'O'Rawe must have a point as Morrison simply does not sound credible.' In essence, without Morrison protesting too much you would not have made the impact you did?
A: I don't think that is correct. People have difficulty believing Danny at the best of times but …
Q: Ed Moloney recently wrote that he 'had caught Danny telling so many lies' that he could believe him about nothing.
A: … but my book has to stand on its own. I think it has done that.
Q: There are many memorable pages in your book. It is a moving account of how naked men for years defied a vicious and brutalising prison management working for the British government to brand the mark of the criminal on republicanism. But the real point of controversy is your assertion that the Army Council stopped a deal being reached that would have delivered to the prisoners the substance of the five demands. Army Council people of the time seem to dispute this. Ruairi O'Bradaigh, for example, is on record as saying that the council did no such thing although he does state that your claims must be explored further. It seems clear that he suspects you are right in what you say but wrong in whose door you lay the blame at. What have you to say to this?
A: At the time we had no reason to believe we were dealing with any body other than the Army Council of the IRA. What reason was there to think otherwise?
Q: And not a sub-committee specifically tasked with running the hunger strike?
A: Whether they called it a sub-committee or not, we were of the view that everything went to the Army Council. Nobody led us to believe any different. Did you think any different?
Q: At the time, no.
A: We all felt it was the Council. Brownie was representing the Council and he wrote the comms. Why would we think we were dealing with anything less than the Council when he was the man communicating with us?
Q: You might not wish to say it but for the purpose of the reader – and this has been publicly documented in copious quantities – Brownie is Gerry Adams, who was a member of the Army Council and the IRA adjutant general during the hunger strike.
A: I have nothing to add to that.
Q: But do you still hold to the view, despite the protests from O'Bradaigh, that the Council actually prevented a satisfactory outcome being reached?
A: No, I do not. Army Council was the general term I used to describe the decision makers on the outside handling the hunger strike. I was not privy to Army Council deliberations. But I believed they were the only people who had the authority to manage the hunger strike from the outside. So it seemed safe then to presume that when we received a comm from Brownie it was from the Army Council as a collective.
Q: But what has happened to lead you to change your mind and accept that the Council may have been by-passed on this matter by Gerry Adams?
A: I have since found out that people on the Army Council at the time have, after my book came out, rejected my thesis and refused to accept that the Council had directed the prisoners to refuse the offer.
Q: Bypassing the Council as a means to shafting it and ultimately getting his own way would seem to be a trait of Gerry Adams. Do you believe then that the bulk of the Council did not approve blocking an end to the hunger strike before Joe McDonnell died?
A: Absolutely. The sub committee managed and monitored the hunger strike. Given that comms were coming in two and three times a day it is simply not possible to believe that the Council could have been kept informed of all the developments. Could the Council even have met regularly during that turbulent period?
Q: Could they not be covering for their own role?
A: I have not spoken to any of the council of the day. But those that have claim that they appeared genuinely shocked that my book should implicate them. And they do allow for the possibility that the wool was pulled over their eyes by the sub-committee handling the strike.
Q: So what do you think did happen?
A: As I said in my book, Adams was at the top of the pyramid. He sent the comms in. He read the comms that came out. He talked to the Mountain Climber. As I said earlier, we know that he, and possibly the clique around him, decided to reject the second offer, at least, without telling Bik what was in it. Nobody knows the hunger strike like Adams knows it. And yet he is maintaining the silence of the mouse, the odd squeak from him when confronted.
Here's what he said in relation to the Mountain Climber in the RTE Hunger strikes documentary,
'There had been a contact which the British had activated. It became known as the Mountain Climber. Basically, I didn't learn this until after the hunger strike ended.'
He didn't learn what? About the contact and the offers, or the Mountain Climber euphemism? If he's saying he didn't know about the offers, then why did he show the offer to the Father Crilly and Hugh Logue in Andersonstown on 6 July 1981? And if he's saying he didn't know of the Mountain Climber euphemism, I'd refer your readers to Bik's comm to Adams on pages 301-302, Ten Men Dead, where Bik tells Brownie, who is Adams, that Morrison had told the hunger strikers about the Mountain Climber: 'Pennies has already informed them of "Mountain Climber" angle…' So he knew about the Mountain Climber euphemism, and he knew of the offers. As a defensive strategy, this lurking in the shadows, this proceeding through ambiguity, can only work for so long. At some point academics and investigative journalists are going to ask the searching questions and Gerry Adams is not going to be up to them.
Q: Are you now suggesting that Adams may have withheld crucial details from the Army Council?
A: I don't know the procedural detail of the relationship between Adams and the Army Council. What I do know is that my account of events is absolutely spot on. You said yourself on RTE on Tuesday that there was independent verification of the conversation between myself and Bik McFarlane.
Q: Indeed. I think you realise there is a bit more than that. As you know I have enormous time for Bik. It goes back to the days before the blanket. But I can only state what I uncovered. I am not saying that it is conclusive. These things can always be contested. But it certainly shades the debate your way. If Morrison and Gibney continue to mislead people that there is no evidence supporting your claim from that wing on H3 I can always allow prominent journalists and academics to access what is there and arrive at whatever conclusions they feel appropriate. That should settle matters and cause a few red faces to boot. We know how devious and unscrupulous these people have been in their handling of this. They simply did not reckon on what would fall the way of the Blanket. Nor did I for that matter. A blunder on their part.
A: If the Army Council say they received no comm from us accepting the deal, and also say that they sent in no word telling us effectively to refuse the deal, then I think the only plausible explanation is that those who sent in the 'instruction' to reject the Mountain Climber's offer were doing so without the knowledge or approval of the Army Council.
Q: When you say 'those' you presumably mean Adams and Liam Og who was also sending in comms coming to the prison leadership?
Q: Liam Og has been identified by Denis O'Hearn, author of the biography of Bobby Sands, as Tom Hartley. It appears that Hartley was privy to every comm between the leadership and the prisoners.
A: That would be the case.
Q: How can we be sure that Adams rather than Liam Og was responsible for withholding information from the Army Council?
A: Because, while we might not know the procedural detail, Adams had a relationship with the Army Council that was vastly different from Liam Og. You point out that this is well recorded in public.
Q: Despite Jim Gibney's assertions in the Irish News that you never discussed your concerns with anyone prior to the publication of the book, you claim to have raised them with Hartley in 1991.
A: I did. He didn't think pursuing it was the wisest course of action. Immediately after the conversation with him I told my wife Bernadette about it. She recalls it to this day.
Q: Was he a gofer?
A: Not at all. He was a major player.
Q: If his role in the hunger strike was so central and he is aware of your concerns but has chose to say nothing he leaves himself open to the allegation that his main concern lies in protecting his master and his own role in what seems to have been a sordid exercise in manipulation and deception. Why were you still expressing your doubts to people like him ten years after the hunger strike?
A: I liked Tom. And it wasn't just him. I had serious reservations about our boys dying on hunger strike. I didn't like the way the army council, as I believed it then was, had handled the matter. I was angry. I just felt that the six boys had been used and abused. I felt that my six buddies had died on hunger strike for nothing. I raised it with a lot of people some of whom have admitted to you that this is so. And nobody could tell me why the boys died. They became pawns in a wider battle. These were people who had lives, feelings, and families. They did not deserve this.
Q: There is an irreconcilable tension between your account of the days prior to the death of Joe McDonnell and Brendan McFarlane's. Can you take us through that?
A: Bik was called up to the camp hospital on Sunday the 5th of July to meet Danny Morrison. I knew nothing about what was happening up there. He returned and sent me up a comm telling me that there was some guy called the Mountain Climber on board. He was from the British government and he had offered us a package of concessions.
Q: Which in your estimation was sufficient to end the hunger strike?
A: Absolutely.
Q: How close were they to the five demands?
A: We had eight men on hunger strike. To go beyond Joe took us into an abyss that I could see no way out of. I looked at the Mountain Climber offer for three hours. It was a fantastic offer. I never expected it. Remember, Danny Morrison told RTE's Good Morning show on 5 May, Bobby's anniversary, that what the Brits 'were offering us was more than they were, publicly or privately, offering the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace …'
Q: Was the fact that you were desperate to prevent your colleagues from dying not colouring your judgment and allowing you to overstate what was on offer?
A: Obviously not, if we're to believe Danny's account of the offer. No. I repeat that what was on offer was enough to honourably end the hunger strike. We had our own clothes – we didn't care if the ordinary prisoners had their own clothes as well. We had made this crystal clear in our 4th of July statement, written by myself. It was a bit like Eamonn De Valera – he deleted the idea of a republic in order to break deadlock with the Brits during the War of Independence, and we took out the term political status to also break the deadlock with the Brits during the hunger strike. After that everything was possible.
Q: Then why has Bik McFarlane held to his position that there was no offer?
A: I don't know why he started out from this position in the first place given that Morrison contradicted him so thoroughly. Since his initial claim that there was no offer he has shifted his position though to try to come into line with Morrison. He is now saying there was no deal. They want to river dance between deal and offer and blur the issue.
Q: Yet he knew that a deal was on offer?
A: Morrison told him the offer was made. In the RTE Hunger Strikes documentary, Danny said he visited the prison hospital on 5 July 1981. 'I went in and I think there were eight people there. Joe McDonnell was brought in as well. Joe was blind and was in a wheelchair. We told him what they were offering at that stage…' Is it possible that Morrison didn't tell the O/C of the prisoners about this Brit offer? Come on!
Q: It seems clear that Adams was the main point of contact with the Mountain Climber. Why do you think he has been so reticent in responding to your charges? While trying to dismiss you his intervention has nevertheless been minimalist. He has preferred to leave it to the sandbags – people like Morrison and Gibney.
A: Because he has got so much to hide. He pretended on the RTE documentary that he only found out who the Mountain Climber was after the event. He was the man who was talking directly to the Mountain Climber on the phone. He was the man who was making the decisions as to what was a good deal and what wasn't. And what was good for him was by no means good for the boys. And he has avoided this like the plague. It is about time we knew exactly who the Mountain Climber was, the nature of the contacts, and the detail of the offer that he made. Was that offer sent into the prisoners? Twenty-five years on, and we still don't know the detail!
Q: Which would invalidate Morrison's point that if the leadership had prevented a deal the Brits would have been trumpeting it from the rooftops. The Mountain Climber was presumably told that the prisoners had rejected it. And Thatcher, with her reputation for facing down rather than parleying with opponents, was hardly going to let it out that she was making offers to the deadly enemy, the IRA.
A: Of course.
Q: Is it your view that the offer from the Mountain Climber was relayed to the jail leadership by Morrison in the hope that the prisoners would reject it and that when they decided to accept it elements within the leadership had to effectively overrule yourself and Brendan McFarlane?
A: Yes. We accepted the deal. Why would we not? We were offered a way out which meant comrades would not have to die. Who in their right mind would not take it?
Q: It has been a difficult time for the Sinn Fein leadership. Instead of arriving like conquering heroes carrying the flame lit by the hunger strikers they now have to answer media questions implying that they may have had a hand in killing the hunger strikers. No matter what answer they give it is swamped in the tidal wave of reverberations caused by the question. The leadership has been less than sure footed in its media management.
A: All they have done from day one is stick the knife in me. And that is not a successful PR strategy. At the end of the day for all these guys that know what happened I have one thing to say to them: you should have some contrition and acknowledge that we deserve the truth. That is the least our dead comrades deserve.
Q: Truth from them – some would say you are losing it?
A: We have a right to know.
Q: If you absolve the Army Council of the day, as a collective, of responsibility for sabotaging a conclusion to the hunger strike that would have saved the lives of six men, who do you hold responsible?
A: Maggie Thatcher had the responsibility for bringing this all to an end.
Q: But given that she made an offer, which would have brought it to an end, and which was sabotaged, who then on the republican side, if not the Council, was responsible?
A: You are trying to tie me down.
Q: I should not have to. You should be telling us directly if as you say you believe in our right to know.
A: Let's put it like this. The iron lady was not so steely at the end. She wanted a way out. The Army Council, I now believe, as a collective were kept in the dark about developments. The sub-committee ran the hunger strike. Draw your own conclusions from the facts.
Q: What could be the possible motive for Adams and the sub-committee wanting to prolong the hunger strike?
A: I don't know for sure. I can only speculate and this time it would be wrong for you to try to nail me down on what is only opinion.
Q: Yet one way of reading your book is to see the decision to sabotage a successful conclusion to the hunger strike in the context of Sinn Fein needing to strike while the electoral iron was hot.
A: I floated it as a possibility, yes.
Q: John Nixon from the 1980 hunger strike team was very forthright in asserting this perspective on the RTE documentary.
A: John Nixon demonstrated that it is probably the most persuasive argument made in relation to the longevity of the hunger strike. The absence of an Army order to end the hunger strike, when it was blatantly obvious that nothing more was to be got from the Mountain Climber, reinforces this opinion. It is impossible to believe that Gerry Adams did not see the bigger picture and did not realise how omni-important Owen Carron's election was to the future of republican strategy. He would have been a fool not to. And Gerry Adams is no fool.
Q: But being a fool not to see the electoral opportunity does not mean that it is ethical to follow such a premise to the point of allowing six comrades to die in order to fulfil the potential of that opportunity?
A: It would be an absolute disgrace if it were the case that six men were sacrificed to bring Sinn Fein onto the constitutional altar. I just find it impossible to believe that any republican would let six of their comrades die so they could work partition.
Q: But the logic of your book is precisely that?
A: It is one of a range of possibilities. I am not going to be dogmatic on it. I can only state what I know and anything after that is speculation. I know that there was an offer made and somebody outside rejected it.
Q: Bik, I have always seen as a very humane and compassionate guy. I know this may jar with the way the media often depicted him. But I knew him well. To me he loved his comrades. The image of him as someone who would not fight to save the lives of the hunger strikers against the wishes of a malign and ambitious leadership element jars with my experience of him.
A: I feel sorry for Bik. He has been thrown to the wolves. And he is hoping that this dies out before any more serious questioning takes place. I can live with that. He did what he did at the time and that's it. The problem he has is that he has never learned to question; he has never learned to think outside of the movement structure. And that is a tragedy.
Q: Do you as a leading republican strategist during the hunger strike feel any sense of guilt over what happened?
A: Well, yes. I feel guilty that I didn't call for it to end sooner. But I did try to prevent the last six men dying, to save lives. I did put out the conciliatory 4th of July statement. Bik had about 5% input into that. I tried to stop the thing. But it was patently clear that it didn't matter what I said. It just did not matter. The leadership called the shots.
Q: How do you feel when former hunger strikers like John Pickering and Laurny McKeown try to minimise your role in the hunger strike?
A: It's not nice, not nice at all. In fact, some of the attacks on me have bordered on the fascist. It's as if no one else is allowed to express a view contrary to the leadership's line. Their sole intent – not just them, but Morrison, Gibney and cohorts – is to de-intellectualise the discussion, engage in name calling and smearing and that way either drag the debate down into the gutter where people will switch off, or force me off the field so they can continue to have it to themselves. I'll tell you one thing, they are wasting their time. I'll always oppose those who try to suppress truth, whether from inside the republican Movement or outside of it.
Q: What does the future hold in terms of where this debate is going?
A: The leadership had better get used to the idea that this debate is going to expose them. Their troubles won't soon blow away, you know. The debate will explain how they have got to where they are. Did you ever think back then, as we debated socialism and republicanism, that we'd see the day republicans would be nominating Ian Paisley for first minister in a Stormont Assembly? Jesus, what a debacle! Bobby Sands, socialist, secularist, republican bears no resemblance to any of this. None of the boys did.
Q: Thanks for your time. What you have done is to remain consistent with the precept of Danny Morrison who urges republicans not to let anyone else take authorship of our history. As you make clear in your Irish News Platform piece it is a battle between your audacity and their mendacity. They have failed to intimidate you. You are right never to yield to these leadership screws, any more than you did to the blanket screws, the self-appointed custodians of a hideous and terrible secret. To give way would allow them to prohibit you from expressing now what you expressed during the blanket protest – in the immortal words of Bobby Sands:
the undauntable thought, my friend
that thought that says 'I'm right!'
Category: 2006, Anthony McIntyre, Interviews, Media, Richard O'Rawe, The Blanket
Tagged: Anthony McIntyre, Interviews, Media, Richard O'Rawe, The Blanket
55 HOURS PART FOUR: WEDNESDAY 8 JULY 1981
55 HOURS PART THREE: TUESDAY 7 JULY 1981
55 HOURS PART TWO: MONDAY 6 JULY 1981
55 HOURS PART ONE: SUNDAY 5 JULY 1981
CHANNEL TIMELINE
Documentary: The Hunger Strikes
Thatcher's Offers
UPDATED: National Archives 30 Year Papers – July, 1981
Margaret Thatcher was told 'some' IRA leaders wanted violence to stop in 1981
British believed elements of IRA wanted peace in 1981
Adams rejected chance of early end to hunger strike
Provo bosses let hunger-strikers die – they know who they are and so do I
Mountain Climber Notes + Timeline
"Rusty Nail": The Smoking Gun
Mountain Climber Notes
Press Release: Unseen Documents Unveiled during Launch of Duddy Archive at NUI Galway
Richard O'Rawe speech in Chicago
Underlying Slur in Morrison's Hunger Strike Comments
How Could Brits Renege if There Was No Offer?
Did Hunger Strikers Believe Danny's Spin?
UPDATED: Danny Morrison on the end of the 1980 hunger strike
Gerry Adams: The '81 hunger strike
Forget the myths, Adams didn't trade lives for votes
The Tragedy of 1980
Adams starved hunger strikers of the truth
Read between the lines and shine Ghost Light on Gaza
"LETTER TO PRESS – EVERYONE RECOGNISES THAT, REPUBLICAN P.R.O. H-BLOCKS"
The Public and the Private
Former IRA prison leader releases O'Rawe 'comms'
Interview with Bik McFarlane, Derry Journal
Sentinel: Never-before-seen 1981 hunger strike documents disclosed
NIO documents released to Sentinel
Finding a way through a maze of missed chances
Jim Gibney: Hunger Striker Helped Others Through Toughest Times
Gerry Adams speech on Joe McDonnell: A Heroic Leader
NIO ordered to respond to Sentinel request
Deadline for NIO on Hunger Strike FOI Request: 8 March 2009
Excerpt from Adams interview with Irish News
Irish News letters page: There was no hunger strike offer
Irish News letters page: Act provides facts
Irish News letters page: Only an inquiry can solve 1981 Hunger Strike issues
Irish News letters page: The Facts of the Hunger Strike Have Already Been Established
Radio Free Eireann interviews Ruairí Ó Brádaigh
Thomas 'Dixie' Elliott: "We got nothing"
Irish News letters: Judge the hunger strikers on their own brave deeds
Bobby Sands Trust (8)
Brendan Duddy (13)
"Rusty Nail" (25)
Anthony McIntyre (14)
Brian Rowan (2)
Danny Morrison (16)
Jim Gibney (1)
Liam Clarke (4)
Dolours Price (1)
Ed Moloney (1)
Garret FitzGerald (3)
Gasyard Debate (8)
Gerry Adams (18)
ICJP (7)
Irish America (2)
Irish Government (6)
Irish News Special Issue (25)
Margaret Thatcher (11)
An Phoblacht (16)
Andersonstown News (8)
Belfast Telegraph (9)
Derry Journal (13)
Irish News (66)
Slugger O'Toole (26)
Sunday Times (3)
The Blanket (11)
The Pensive Quill (12)
Mountain Climber (15)
Sile Darragh (2)
Statements (91)
Blanketmen (10)
Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane (11)
Brendan Hughes (4)
Colm Scullion (2)
Former Hunger Strikers (11)
IRSP (12)
Kevin McQuillan (2)
Martin McGuinness (1)
Richard O'Rawe (14)
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (1)
Sinn Fein (6)
Ten Men Dead (4)
The British Offer from Thatcher (7)
Timelines (10)
"Rusty Nail" An Phoblacht Anthony McIntyre Back-channel Belfast Telegraph Blanketmen Bobby Sands Trust Book Reviews Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane Brendan Duddy Brendan Hughes Brian Rowan Colm Scullion Commentary Danny Morrison Denis Bradley Derry Journal Documents Families Former Hunger Strikers Gasyard Debate Gerry Adams ICJP Interviews Irish America Irish News Irish Times IRSP Kevin McQuillan Liam Clarke Margaret Thatcher Media Mountain Climber News articles Richard O'Rawe Sile Darragh Sinn Fein Slugger O'Toole Statements Sunday Times Ten Men Dead The Blanket The British Offer from Thatcher The Pensive Quill Timelines
Full index of site ordered by date
Use this link to access all contents
New to Archive
SPRING 2013: 55 HOURS
A day-by-day account of the events of early July, 1981.
The Death of Garret Fitzgerald: • Excerpt from Garret Fitzgerald's autobiography
• Irish News: Deal with British government vetoed by IRA says FitzGerald
Expanded Timeline of the Events between 29 June - 10 July: Sourced from Danny Morrison, Garret Fitzgerald, British Government documents, Ten Men Dead, Before the Dawn, Biting at the Grave, INLA Deadly Divisions, Blanketmen, Irish News, Belfast Telegraph, and eyewitness accounts.
Articles by Danny Morrison and Jim Gibney detailing a visit to Long Kesh after its closure added to archive.
Irish News: Was There a Deal? Special investigation added to archives. 28 & 29 September 2009 editions
Two articles from July 1981 have been added to the archive which show details of the ICJP settlement: British and IRA Prisoners Appear Ready To Move Toward Agreement and 5th IRA Hunger Striker Dies Before Settlement Reached
An archive for 1999 has been created with 3 articles detailing Thatcher's negotiations with the IRA during the hunger strike
The 2005 Archive has been updated with 11 new items, including book reviews, interviews with Bik McFarlane, and articles by Hugh Logue (ICJP), Richard O'Rawe and Danny Morrison. Click and scroll for more.
1. Primary Sources
July 18 1981 Document
NIO documents (Sunday Times FOI)
The July Offer from the British Government
Videoes of Gasyard, Derry, meeting
2. Commentary
3. "Rusty Nail" at Slugger O'Toole
a. O'Rawe's account confirmed: Hunger Strikers Allowed To Die (28 March 08)
b. Hunger Strike Controversy Has Not Gone Away, You Know (17 April 08)
c. O'Rawe and the Derry Journal (18 April 08)
d. 'Adams Complicit Over Hunger Strikers?' (5 April 09)
e. Did Thatcher Kill All Ten, or only 4? (7 April 09)
f. "Let's have the whole truth" (9 April 09)
g. What were the hunger strikers told? (12 April 09)
h. When in a hole… (19 May 09)
i. Upcoming Debate: "What is the Truth Behind the Hunger Strike?" (21 May 09)
j. The Truth is a Heart-breaking Thing (24 May 09)
k. 1981 Hunger Strike Truth Commission (25 May 09)
l. "I will not be attending and will not send a representative" (26 May 09)
m. "This is a huge opportunity and I feel there's a potential here to end this" (4 June 09)
n. Gerry Adams to meet Hunger Strikers Families; Inquiry Sought (13 June 09)
o. Gulladuff: More Heat Than Light (19 June 09)
p. Prolonging the Hunger Strike: The Derailing of the ICJP (17 July 09)
q. Gerry Adams and Kieran Doherty, 29 July 1981 (8 August 09)
r. 1981 Hunger Strike: A Case to Answer (28 Sept 09)
s. 1981 Hunger Strike: Deconstructing McGuinness (28 Sept 09)
4. Political Groups
IRSP 1981 Discussion forum
Republican Network for Unity
5. Books
Afterlives: The Hunger Strike and the Secret Offer That Changed Irish History, by Richard O'Rawe
Before the Dawn, by Gerry Adams
Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair, by Padraig O'Malley
Blanketmen: An untold story of the H-Block hunger strike by Richard O'Rawe
INLA: Deadly Divisions by Jack Holland and Henry McDonald
Ten Men Dead, David Beresford
6. Misc.
July 21 1981 Thatcher interview
The Rhythm of Time
There's an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend? It has withstood the blows of a million years, and will do so to the end.
Grid Focus by Derek Punsalan 5thirtyone.com.


Too often we discover at the end of a day that if we aren't careful, our lives are reduced to looking down at our devices and accomplishing whatever's on our to-do lists. In the process, we lose our connection with the deeper human need to be present to what surrounds us. Caring connects us with each other, making us the best of who we are and what we can be. Caring is a decision to engage with the world around us.
Caring enriches all facets of our lives. It makes workplaces worth working in, schools worth learning in, our relationships worth being in, and the world worth living in. Caring is everything.
This session, applicable to leaders at any level and in all walks of life, gets to the heart of creating a workplace and a life that matters. Based on David's book, Caring Is Everything, you will leave with an inspiring and thought-provoking message about the vital role that caring serves in every aspect of our lives.
Learn how caring impacts everything you do: it fosters trust, engages employees, builds loyalty, creates meaning in our lives, and leads to business success.
Understand the true meaning of service leadership and how to build a more fully human organization.
Leave with practical strategies to amplify your impact on everyone you serve – through a stronger authentic and caring presence.
Remember that self-care is an ethical responsibility. In order to take good care of others you must take good care of yourself.
In today's fast-paced, rapidly evolving business and professional environment, a high value is placed on looking outward and upward, continuously striving for the next summit, the next Everest. As successful people, we tend to look upward to the achievements we hope to realize.
But success isn't just about height. It's also about depth.
The journey down…the journey within…the journey to The Other Everest… is equally valid.
True – authentic – leadership is fueled by a voyage that takes us inward toward the hardest realities of our lives. The best leadership comes from people who have penetrated their inner darkness, men and women who can lead the rest of us to a place of authenticity away from what the world sees, who have been there and know the way, and in so doing, know the why.
Connect into your vision, purpose and your deepest core values to unlock your true leadership potential and amplify your impact and influence in all areas of your life.
Create a space to reflect, think strategically, and get a new perspective on ways to influence others – while bringing renewed value to those you lead.
Take the time to reset your internal compass – Discover the path to an undivided life – a life with greater balance, inner peace, and well-being in the midst of relentless demands.
The challenging economy in the resource sector during the past few of years has placed leaders in a whirlwind of change. Downsizing, reorganizing, and redesigning the organizations where we work is now the norm. Surviving the change has become today's "business as usual". Whether you are laying people off, frenetically repositioning yourself in the marketplace or growing your business, managing change is the new reality. In the midst of all the chaos, it's time to think of the future in new ways.
Take an opportunity to step away from the fray, be inspired, and get a renewed perspective from one of Canada's most respected voices on leadership and organizational culture. David Irvine's thought-provoking session will provide practical tools and processes for keeping your talent engaged in an uncertain economic environment.
Leave with practical insights and strategies for building an engaged culture when you are in the midst of laying people off.
Understand how everyone is impacted differently by the change and how to respond effectively to the diverse array of reactions.
Re-build bridges of trust. Restoring trust after a layoff is mission-critical in organizations today. Effective and productive organizations and teams need mutual trust and respect based upon authentic and accountable connections. Discover ways to restore trust in the demanding environment of continual change.
Trust is the keystone of success – both in leadership and in life. It's the new global currency. It crosses cultures and generations. Trust lies at the foundation of every relationship and is perhaps the most important issue facing the world today. Building and restoring trust is your number one leadership challenge, and your number one accountability as a leader.
Take this opportunity to gain a new perspective on trust in today's world from one of Canada's most respected voices on leadership and organizational culture. But rather than gaining simply greater knowledge and an intellectual understanding of trust, you will leave with an experience of shifting the fundamental way you build trust in your relationships. You will leave with a new view of who you are as a leader and a fresh vision of what your organization can become – through your capacity to build trust.
Recognize, describe, and demonstrate positive authentic trust building behaviours.
Demonstrate essential skills for trust building with employees who exhibit trust blocking behaviours.
Develop and demonstrate a personal process to build trust with individuals who exhibit blocking behaviours.
Achieve greater authenticity in all relationships.
Develop the capacity to build and maintain trust with groups.
Assist employees to develop accountability.
Develop organizational "simplicity" by "maximizing the amount of work not done" for greater efficiency.
Assist in developing capacities and skills in managing conflict amongst teams.
Develop skills to manage meetings where conflict arises, thus decreasing wasted time and efforts.
To be sustainable family businesses must be built on the foundation of a strong family.
In this session, learn the fundamentals of family dynamics. You will leave with skills for opening communication within and between generations that will lead to respect, high trust, and clear goals that support both the family and the individual – so the family can run the firm instead of the firm running the family.
Building Bridges of Trust – Trust is both a belief in and reliance upon something or someone. It's about connect-ability and reli-ability. This session offers a practical and proven Accountability Agreement Process™ that ensures highly trusting, accountable relationships within the context of a family business.
Accountability In An Age Of Entitlement – Without accountability there will be no success – in a family or in a business. How do you ensure that the coming generation has the necessary mind-set to take the business to the next level and make it in the world?
Succeeding At Succession – In this session you will learn why most family businesses fail to make it past one generation by understanding the three fundamental tasks that are essential for succession success – and a clear path to achieve these tasks.
Conflict Resolution – Conflict is part of any family and any business. This session focuses specifically on the dynamics of an intergenerational family business and ways to effectively handle conflicts that arise.
Building An Engaged Business Culture – Authenticity is the ability to align your passion and talents with the needs of the business and is what keeps everyone in a business family engaged, focused, and loyal. This session will provide a practical, meaningful road map to ensure that everyone in your family is finding their voice, and thus sustaining their commitment to themselves, to the family, and to the business.
Building a customer service mind-set within your organization starts with a service mind-set toward your employees. This inspiring, engaging leadership development session teaches the fundamentals of service leadership.
A service leader is committed to identifying and meeting the legitimate needs of their people and removing barriers so they can serve the customer. To lead, you must serve. The primary difference between a service leader and a traditional hierarchal manager is that a service leader is committed to helping people reach their highest potential. Service leadership is not a technique. It's a philosophy for both leading and living.
As a service leader, the aspiration to lead is preceded by a commitment to serve. It's about choosing service over self-interest.
What does it mean to be a service leader?
How do you coach and help your employees grow?
What is the mind-set necessary for a leader in order to create a service mentality in your organization?
What is the difference between being a servant and being a "slave" to your staff?
Boards serve a vital role that goes beyond simply "getting through the agenda." As leaders, you have an opportunity – and a responsibility – to inspire and engage people, create a shared vision, foster trust, and build an aligned organization.
The leadership necessary to build a great organization does not come about by accident. It takes intentional action, focused discipline, and life-long learning.
David Irvine offers a renewed view of the fundamentals of leadership, culture, and board governance. Gain, in this session, a revitalized perspective on your leadership responsibility, and strengthen your competence in the practice of leadership as a board.
In this inspiring and interactive session, you will learn practical insights and strategies for building a strong board that serves and fosters your full potential as an organization.
Learn the fundamentals of board governance, and your key roles and responsibilities as leaders to achieve an aligned, high trust, collaborative, and focused board.
Develop your mission, vision, and values to ensure that these are current and relevant to your present organization.
Learn the fundamentals of building a cohesive, high-trust leadership team as a board. A healthy culture starts with a healthy board.
Parenting in today's fast-paced, self-indulgent culture of entitlement is not easy. Never has there been a more important time to instill accountability in young people and help them grow into adults capable of facing life with self-reliance.
With over thirty years of experience as a family therapist, youth leader, parent, and mentor to executives, David Irvine understands the importance of raising responsible, resourceful and resilient children who treat themselves and others with dignity and respect.
Balance supports and demands…to nurture accountability in young people.
Instill an accountable mind-set in youth – a commitment to full citizenship rather than consumerism.
Lead young people with a new understanding of rights, responsibilities and contribution.
Work together with teachers to cultivate accountability with youth.
Be prepared for a new awareness of yourself as a parent. You will be supported, stimulated and energized as David inspires you in your challenging and important role as a parent in today's changing world.
This presentation can be a valuable add-on to any corporate event where spouses can be invited for an engaging and inspiring evening presentation.


text:
Martial Roumain in Mansa Mussa Narcissus Rising by Eleo Pomare. Photo courtesy The Clark Center
Remembering Versatile Dancer and Choreographer Martial Roumain
A native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Martial Roumain, choreographer, dancer, educator and actor, passed away on January 14 at his home in Manhattan.
Born in 1951, Roumain was a gifted dancer who found his calling as a young man. He told the story of watching an assembly program in his junior high school and walking out feeling disappointed. His music teacher challenged him, "Can you do better?" A few weeks later, Roumain performed an interpretive dance that so impressed the teacher and the principal, they arranged an audition for him at The Clark Center for The Performing Arts in New York City. He later wrote, "I remember the fear and the excitement of this audition. For this little boy from Haiti had won one of the first full scholarships. The day I began, I felt like a beam of light had been turned on! My thirst for knowledge, for the different dance forms, was being quenched. I had entered a 'village,' so to speak, with nurturing, talented elders, guiding me through the different ways of movement and dramatic expressions. I found endless joy, creativity and freedom in expressing myself but, most importantly, how to share my craft with others.
At the age of 15, he made his debut with the Chuck Davis Dance Company. At 17 he was licensed to teach dance by the New York City Board of Education. After graduating from The Juilliard School, he performed as a soloist with the Eleo Pomare Dance company, the Fred Benjamin Dance Company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Jose Limón Dance Company, The Kazuko Hirabayashi Dance Theater, Contemporary Dance System, Joan Miller's Dance Players and Forces of Nature. He also performed extensively on Broadway (including in Treemonisha as lead dancer, West Side Story as Chino, Bubbling Brown Sugar and The Wiz), as well as at the Metropolitan Opera House (The Medium, in the role of Toby, Ariadne Auf Naxos and Porgy and Bess) and on film and television.
Roumain was a dancer of great facility. He was well trained in the dance pedagogy of modern expression, but through his work with the late Haitian dancer/choreographer Jean-Léon Destiné, he had the opportunity to learn the old African rhythms as played by master drummer Alphonse Cimber.
His choreography (which won prizes at several European competitions) has been set on many companies, including the Chuck Davis Dance Company, Mafata Dance Company, Jubilation! Dance Company, Ballet Guadeloupeen, Trinidadian Dance Theater, Orchesis Contemporary Dance Theatre and off-Broadway productions of Carmencita, Marine Tiger and Women, a benefit performance at the United Nations for the women of Darfur, Sudan.
Roumain, like his mentor Eleo Pomare, was steeped in the theatrical experiences coming from The Actors Studio. Evidence of this is in his choreography of Essence—A Portrait of Four Women: He "recomposed" the musical text for the drama of his four female characters. He was one of the last of those immediate dancers/choreographers to stand on the shoulders of teachers and performers of African descent who married the music idiom of jazz in his life's work.
Roumain also served as artistic director of the Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company and as assistant to Eleo Pomare and Geoffrey Holder. As the executor of the Eleo Pomare estate, Roumain continued to stage work in Taiwan and throughout the U.S. During the last 10 years of his life, he was active with Clark Center NYC, where he staged ballets, spoke on behalf of the organization, and served on the board.
Roumain was a principled man with a brilliant smile who loved to tease and have fun. He was a cook and, like Pomare, loved to design and make costumes. His long-time association with Joan Miller, both as a dancer in her company and as costume assistant, led him to become custodian of her archives, which he guarded fiercely. He was a friend for life. He is survived by his loving sisters, Janette, Bonnie and Marie. He had a large family of nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews around the country and in Israel, and a dance family who truly loved him. He leaves us with wonderful memories. —Rashidah Ismaili, Jill Williams, Joan H. Burroughs
Martial Roumain The Clark Center
Stephen "tWitch" Boss Has Died
Honoring Chet Walker (1954-2022)
Dance Magazine
In Memory of Nina Novak, 1923–2022
Cristobal van Scanzoni and Urszula Sieminska
Remembering Dr. William Hamilton, Dance Medicine Pioneer
More In Memoriam

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


After our Dial-to-Donate campaign, running Tough Mudder, swear jars and other company activities our 12 months of fundraising for Nottinghamshire Hospice has come to an end with a total of £7,353 raised for the charity. We were proud to present the cheque to Nottinghamshire Hospice at our office.
Our initial target was £7K as that is the amount required to fund the hospice to run their operation for one day.


Claudia Chiang-Lopez, Amber Stephens, and Nicholas Lepp (all Communication Studies) received awards at the department's end-of-year ceremony celebrating student accomplishments. Chiang-Lopez was awarded the Graduate Outstanding Teaching Award for her research, service ,and teaching work in COM 101 and 102. Stephens and Lepp received Outstanding Graduate Research Awards for their publications, presentations, and thesis work.
Caitlin J. Saladino (Lincy Institute & Brookings Mountain West) recently was featured as a guest columnist in the Las Vegas Sun. The piece, "Public R1 Universities Undervalued as Elitists Clamber for Acceptance," highlights the value of schools like UNLV, in the wake of the college admissions scandal. The piece was originally published on March 22.
Romeo Jackson (Student Diversity and Social Justice), Elizabeth Macdowell (Law), Emily Troshynski (Criminal Justice), and marriage and family therapist Jane Heenan facilitated a Social Justice Conversation on the topic "Gender Diversity and the Law."
Erika Engstrom (Communication Studies) presented "Television's 'New Man' Persona: Nostalgia and Masculinity in ABC's 'The Goldbergs'" at the annual conference of the Far West Popular and American Culture Associations in Las Vegas. Engstrom examined how hegemonic masculinity and masculine communication styles are portrayed in the popular network sitcom of family life in suburban Philadelphia during the 1980s.


Both Vivian and my Nokia phones were stuffed up, but in two different ways.
Yesterday my Nokia 1100 which I bought 2 and half years ago was discovered inside the side pocket of my cargo pants. Except Vivian found it after the pants visited the washing machine, and was hanging to dry, i.e. my phone went swimming. So I pressed the power button, and guess what -- it did not turn on. I would have guessed so, when the water was still coming out from inside of its plastic shell.
So I took it apart, cleaned up the residual water, put it back together -- and it still would not want to power on. I then took it apart again, and officially declared it dead. I then told Vivian that I probably will need another mobile phone soon.
After church today I was browsing the web for some cheap mobile phone deals. Hey, it has always been exciting shopping for gadgets online! I then put my dead 1100 back together when I tried to clean up the desk, pressed the power button, and up it came the Nokia hand shaking animation in its monochrome LCD glory!
Wow. My Nokia has just came back to life! On a Sunday as well!
Well, that was one almost stuffed Nokia. Verdict is -- mobile phones, they do not swim well. Do not wash them together with your pants and shirts.
Prior to our trip up to the Gold Coast, Vivian's Nokia 3310 had a dead battery. Well, not dead as in DEAD, but with a full charge you still cannot make a 2 minute conversation.
So we went to one of our favourite shop, eBay, to hunt down some new battery. According to some limited research, i.e. putting "3310 battery" inside eBay search, you can buy either a BLC-2, which is the one that came with the phone when we bought it more than 3 years ago. You can also buy a BMC-3, which should fit the 3310 according to the sellers. So we ended up buying a BMC-3 because there's one selling a "genuine Nokia battery" in Brisbane (heard too many dodgy battery killed people in China report), and got the seller to post to my Gold Coast address.
It was a fast delivery. We opened up the package, and tried to fit the BMC-3 into Vivian's Nokia 3310 -- but there was a problem! BMC-3 is actually a few millimetres thicker than the BLC-2. However it is already too think to a point that we cannot close the battery cover when the battery was inserted!
After a few attempts plus some brute force, we have finally managed to close the battery cover. However Vivian's Nokia 3310 now looks like someone who has just came back from the buffet restaurant, who is overfed with food and really stuffed!
Well. The phone is usable. Its new battery is great. However the whole thing just does not feel right when you hold it on your hand. Verdict? It is possible to put a different battery inside your mobile phone, but it is still best to get what you had before.


As more and more consumers become actively involved with health care, providers need to differentiate themselves from one another to continue to grow their businesses. Additionally, providers and employers are constantly looking at ways to encourage healthy behaviors to reduce the total cost of health care. At SaveAround, we get that and not only have the products in the form of healthy offers across all channels to support your initiatives, but are on the leading-edge of the health care incentive advising some of the largest organizations on the next phases of health care incentive programs. Don't get left behind and lose consumers or employees because your programs are stale or outdated.


The Lake District's diverse landscape is filled with passionate people featured in this book. From Chefs, Bakers, Farmers and Producers, some of the County's most innovative and delicious recipes all in one place!
Featuring over 30 recipes and with two foreward's in the book by Simon Rogan (L'Enclume, Cartmel) & Kevin Tickel (Forest Side, Grasmere), this book promises quality thoughout including beautiful imagery of the Lake District and surrounding areas.


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Development of New Structural Health Monitoring Techniques Dissertation
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fiu authors
Fekrmandi, Hadi
During the past two decades, many researchers have developed methods for the detection of structural defects at the early stages to operate the aerospace vehicles safely and to reduce the operating costs. The Surface Response to Excitation (SuRE) method is one of these approaches developed at FIU to reduce the cost and size of the equipment. The SuRE method excites the surface at a series of frequencies and monitors the propagation characteristics of the generated waves. The amplitude of the waves reaching to any point on the surface varies with frequency; however, it remains consistent as long as the integrity and strain distribution on the part is consistent. These spectral characteristics change when cracks develop or the strain distribution changes. The SHM methods may be used for many applications, from the detection of loose screws to the monitoring of manufacturing operations.
A scanning laser vibrometer was used in this study to investigate the characteristics of the spectral changes at different points on the parts. The study started with detecting a load on a plate and estimating its location. The modifications on the part with manufacturing operations were detected and the Part-Based Manufacturing Process Performance Monitoring (PbPPM) method was developed. Hardware was prepared to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed methods in real time.
Using low-cost piezoelectric elements and the non-contact scanning laser vibrometer successfully, the data was collected for the SuRE and PbPPM methods. Locational force, loose bolts and material loss could be easily detected by comparing the spectral characteristics of the arriving waves. On-line methods used fast computational methods for estimating the spectrum and detecting the changing operational conditions from sum of the squares of the variations. Neural networks classified the spectrums when the desktop – DSP combination was used. The results demonstrated the feasibility of the SuRE and PbPPM methods.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1863
laser scanning vibrometer
manufacturing process monitoring
piezoelectric
structural health monitoring method
surface response to excitation method
https://doi.org/10.25148/etd.fi15032180
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text:
Tafasir Al Quran (Persian: تفاسیر قرآن) are collections of books as commentaries on the Quran, written by Mulla Sadra.

Mulla Sadrā

Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, also called Mulla Sadrā (; also spelled Molla Sadra, Mollasadra or Sadr-ol-Mote'allehin; ) (c. 1571/2 – 1640), was an Iranian Shia Islamic philosopher, theologian and 'Ālim who led the Iranian cultural renaissance in the 17th century.  According to Oliver Leaman, Mulla Sadra is arguably the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world in the last four hundred years. Mulla Sadra brought "a new philosophical insight in dealing with the nature of reality" and created "a major transition from essentialism to existentialism" in Islamic philosophy, although his existentialism is not to be readily compared to Western existentialism. His was a question of existentialist cosmology as it pertained to Allah, and thus differs considerably from the individual, moral, and/or social, questions at the heart of Russian, French, German, or American Existentialism. Mulla Sadra's philosophy synthesized Avicennism, Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi's Illuminationist philosophy, Ibn Arabi's Sufi metaphysics, and the theology of the Ash'ari school and Twelvers.

Commentries
Among Quran commentaries, Sadra's interpretation are considered eminent and valuable. His  interpretation of the Quran covers only some of the verses and chapters. Sadra first showed a linguistic and semantic discussion in the beginning of every chapter and verse. He refers to philosophical problems in the verse and afterwards tries to explain it. He marks the beginning  of his interpretation of each verse with the main title and names the successive  stages of his philosophical discussions with secondary titles such as  "inspirational unveiling", "explanation and expansion", "merciful wisdom", and  "note".

According to Fazl Al Rahman, Sadra's religious works were written probably after maturing his philosophical thought. Hosein Nasr marks the commentaries as an important sample of hermeneutic and esoteric interpretation.

These interpretations are based on philosophical, gnostic and intuitive approaches. In fact these interpretations written during the different parts of his life. This collection, which amounts to 8 volumes, is among the Shia heritages of Tafsir.

Contents
The first part is concerned with the interpretations of Surat Fatiha  al-Kitab. Mulla Sadra there referred to hadiths and other resources for interpreting these Surah. The second part is concerned with  the interpretation of chapter al-Baqarah from verse 1 to verse 22. According to Sadra, God created everything in the universe of form and its equivalents in the universe of meaning.

The third and fourth volumes were concerned with chapters of Baqarah. Sadra interpreted the 45 verse, referring to meaning and concept of transmigration and its explanations. He mentioned the aims of the verse.

In the fifth volume, Sadra interpreted two eminent verses, namely Ayat al-Kursi and Ayat an-Noor. He reminded those who do not care about the meaning of Verses that changing the concepts of words lead to confusions. Therefore According to him, we mjust interpret Quran in the same way that ordinary people understand it. In the interpretation  of verse an-Noor, Mulla Sadra examined problems such as the meaning of light and other subjects.

He discusses the  interpretation of as-Sajda and al-Hadid chapters in the sixth volume. He tried to follow his methods applied in interpreting the other verses, beginning with semantic subjects and considering philosophical problems.

He devoted his 7th and 8th volumes to the interpretation of Chapter Ya-seen. The other commentaries by Sadra are as follows: Interpretation on Surah 56 (al-Waqi'ah), Surah 57 (Al-Hadid); Surah 62 (al-Jumu'ah); Surah 65 (al-Talaq); Surah 86 (al-Tariq); Surah 87 (al-A'la); Surah 93 (al-Duha) and Surah 99 (al-Zilzal).

References

Shia tafsir
Sufi tafsir

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to Speak on "Discipline VS. Dissent" at Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for International Affairs of Yeshiva University on January 24
Press Release January 24, 2007 yunews
Jan 24, 2007 — Former UN Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke will speak on the conflicts facing diplomats and people of conscience in times of moral crisis when he keynotes an event sponsored by the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for International Affairs at Yeshiva University on Wednesday, January 24. The program begins at 8 p.m. at the Park East Synagogue, 164 East 68th St.
The event coincides with the publication of Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust by Mordechai Paldiel, director of The Righteous Among the Nations department at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Institute in Israel. The book is the first issued by the Schneier Center and is being published in conjunction with KTAV Press.
The book details how courageous diplomats in China, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, Brazil, Holland, Turkey, Italy, Yugoslavia, Japan, Germany and the Vatican risked their lives and careers to save Jews during the Holocaust. Their diplomatic protection saved tens of thousands of Jews.
The occasion will also commemorate the historic and timely United Nations resolution 60/7 (2005), which established January 27 as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp, was liberated on January 27, 1945. The resolution has particular resonance in light of the international conference on Holocaust denial recently held in Tehran, which attempted to revise history.
Admission to the lecture is free and open to the public. To RSVP, write to schneiercenter@yu.edu or call 212-737-6900.
The Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for International Affairs of Yeshiva University, inaugurated in March 2004, seeks to promote international understanding and cooperation by providing an educational forum for the exchange of ideas related to diverse critical issues in our increasingly interdependent world. The Center draws upon the academic and intellectual resources of all schools and affiliates of Yeshiva University and promotes research and publication on the part of all its students and faculty. Concerned with a broad spectrum of global issues, ranging from political problems of war and peace, human rights and welfare, to world problems of public health, the environment, and international regulations and law, the Schneier Center sponsors public lectures by notable world personalities and leaders, as well as educational programs for college and university students. The Center is committed to enhancing citizen participation and civic culture. It works with public and private organizations dedicated to improving the individual's ability to live and function in a globalizing world. Consonant with its vision of a world defined by tolerance for difference, the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for International Affairs of Yeshiva University sets the standard for open dialogue, peacefully conducted.
Ambassador, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Arthur Schneier Center, Discipline VS. Dissent, International Affairs, Press Release, Rabbi Arthur Schneier, Yeshiva University
'Flowers Aren't Enough,' a Show About Domestic Violence, Performed on Wilf Campus
Yeshiva University Undergraduates Volunteer Across NYC on Sunday, January 28
yunews


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New York puts M/A-COM on notice over radio network
New York State has taken a preliminary step toward possibly revoking a $2 billion contract to build a statewide interoperable radio network, the New York Times reports.
The State Office for Technology issued a letter of default on Aug. 29 to M/A-COM, a Lowell, Mass.-based unit of Tyco Electronics, in which it gives the company 45 days to remediate problems with the system. In the default letter, the state cites 19 significant contractual deficiencies.
Tyco Electronics disputed the state's assessment of its work, according to the newspaper. The company issued a statement indicating that it had "met or exceeded" the requirements under the contract and was working with the state to resolve "a few remaining" problems.


Yikes: who the hell put THAT on Bluray?
Yeah, but the dumb chick plowing the car through the garage door after the ghosts tried to poison her with carbon monoxide via the car exhaust was friggin' hilarious! I don't think that I was supposed to laugh out loud in the movie theater when she did that, but I sure as hell did!