Mary Kelly to receive Continuity IRA support group award in absentia
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news report 
Saturday January 25, 2003 22:12
by A. O'H.
The peace activist Mary Kelly said today on Wbai's radio free Eireann, New York, that she would not be able to attend the dinner dance of the Irish National Freedom Committee, the New York support group of Republican Sinn Fein. She is to receive the Michael Flannery award. The proceeds of the event, to be held in Queens on Jan.31 are to go to Continuity IRA prisoners, including Colm Murhphy convicted in connection with the Omagh bombing. Ms. Kelly said she is too busy with the Shannon anti-war camp to attend. The Continuity IRA is at war with Britain and has refused to call a ceasefire.
Comments (12 of 12)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12If this is true will Mary Kelly condemn and officially disassociate herself from these murderers ?
The above is just another attempt to slander a person who has played a major role in the peace movement. BTW when will Bertie and Mary distance themselves from Bush and Blair who have got the deaths of half a million Iraqi children on their records.
First of all, you idiot, on the Internet it's libel, not slander.
Second of all, it doesn't matter how heinous the statement is, if it's true then libel is impossible. And considering a press release was posted on Indymedia by the organisation honouring Kelly, that makes you an idiot once more.
Mary Kelly is of course, more than capable of speaking for herself. The following is strictly my own opinion. This garbage re the CIRA is as I have already stated simply an obvious attempt to slander, libel or whatever term you wish to use, Mary Kelly in particular and the anti war movement in general. The number of innocent people who had their lives brutally cut short at Omagh was in two figures. An appalling crime but so was the deaths of over half a million Iraqi children. I await with bated breath, your “condemnation” of the murders of those innocent children courtesy of Bush Snr. & Jnr. and Blair. The crimes of Bush, Blair, Clinton, Daddy Bush and “Human Rights” Carter would warrant them appearing in the dock at a modern version of Nuremberg. They have got a lot more innocent lives on their conscience(s) than the CIRA will ever have. Incidentally, before you even ask, I am not a republican, I am a Marxist. BTW, you are the idiot if you think that any significant number of people would believe such obvious imperialist propaganda.
Well put Des, you have taken over Pat C's role of putting these pompous middle class wankers in their boxes. By the way some of them hate Marxists as well as republicans so you are probally in trouble on that one.
This story is true. This honour for Mary Kelly is announced on the National Freedom Committee's web site. -- at irishfreedom.net.
This story is true. This honour for Mary Kelly is announced on the National Freedom Committee's web site. -- at irishfreedom.net.
Des, the anonymous poster is correct. If you would please view the following link
http://irishfreedom.net/index2.html
you will see the details of the award referred to. Scroll down about half way.
To say that an article on Indymedia is libellous is a serious allegation, and knowing that you are a regular user of the site I know that you wouldn't try to do damage to it. The law of libel is very clear (even though it's still pretty severe on authors and publishers); a statement that is true is legally incapable of being defamatory.
Group libel (i.e. it's a slander against the anti-war movement) isn't known to the law in Ireland either (and rightly so, it's a tool to oppress freedom of speech).
There's nothing wrong with criticising the article but it would be great if you could do that without making baseless claims of libel (the distinction that the anony-mouse referred to is that libel is defamation in written or permanent form, but that's not really very important right now). In no way is the original article libellous of anyone and chucking around silly statements about the law is dangerous to Indymedia.
Thanks.
I am not a legal eagle Daithi, when I used the term “slander”, (I did not mention the term “libel”), I was speaking in a strictly non-legal sense. Perhaps slagging off or smear might have being more appropriate? The post I have commented on is an action replay of a previous attempt to slag off the peace movement in this country. I am of course aware that Mary Kelly has received an award from a CIRA support group in the states. To the best of my knowledge, this was unsolicited. If you have information to the contrary, I would be interested.
Thanks
Des
Well, yes, I think it's pretty much an award that you don't have to fill in an application form for ;-)) : as far as I remember Mary Kelly actually responded to the stuff being said about her on this site, the last time the issue was raised. I'll try and dig out the link. (Of course, this doesn't make criticism or defence of the award any different, but it might shed some light).
Thanks for the clarification, and sorry for the aggressive tone; the thing is, a lot of Indymedia sites have had libel-related trouble, often from corporate interests, so it's an awkward issue. A lot of the time, the articles disappear rather than risk getting stiffed in the courts. The legal list is working on a plan at the moment to co-ordinate legal strategy (i.e. to fight a case as a test case that could apply to other sites) so it's not all bad news, however.
http://indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=19274
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