The Police Ombudsman’s decision to take no further action against an officer who used a PSNI Facebook account to comment on the live case of Derry Republican Tony Taylor has been described as “disgraceful”.
Independent councillor for the Moor, Gary Donnelly, said the “ridiculous decision” comes as no surprise from an organisation that “sweeps human rights abuses under the carpet”.
At the end of last year the Ombudsman’s Office confirmed to the Derry News that it had launched an investigation following numerous complaints made against a PSNI Facebook page which posted about the case of Derry Republican, Tony Taylor.
On November 9 of last year, Mr Taylor was due to attend a parole hearing which was postponed. On the same evening, the PSNI Craigavon Facebook page posted a lengthy statement in response to Irish Republican Prisoner News regarding Mr Taylor’s continued imprisonment.
Part of it read: “If you have sympathy with those who talk about ‘internment in 2018’, ask yourself the questions; WHY did the license get revoked? WHY won’t the convicted prisoner make those reasons public?
“It’s not for us or others to do so, it’s for the prisoner to do. Their silence on the matter should tell you what you need to know.
“There is of course a simple alternative to license. Serve the sentence in full first time. Would RSF (Republican Sinn Féin) prefer that? I’m sure a judge would be only too happy to grant the wish of, ‘Actually your worship, I’d much rather just do the full whack first time.’”
The post was subsequently removed and the PSNI passed the matter on to the Ombudsman’s Office.
Mr Taylor was detained in March 2016 after his early release licence was revoked by then secretary of state Theresa Villiers. He was sentenced to eighteen years in jail in 1994 for IRA activity and again for three years in 2011 for possession of a rifle.
No further charges were brought against him and he did not face trial but remained in Maghaberry prison for almost 1,000 days before his eventual release on November 27, 2018.
At the weekend the Police Ombudsman said the investigation had concluded and it found the Facebook post was “neither prejudicial nor breached privacy”.
The statement read in full: “We received a complaint which stated that the Facebook post had included a number of political comments and suggested that it had breached privacy. There has also been public comment that the post was prejudicial to the parole process.
“We have considered these issues and concluded that the post was neither prejudicial nor breached privacy. It referred to information in the public domain while setting out the processes involved in the revocation of a licence.”
‘Public attack’
In response, Cllr Donnelly described the decision as “disgraceful but not unexpected” and questioned past decisions by the Ombudsman’s office.
He commented: “For many in working class community this ridiculous decision is what we have come to expect from this office. The ombudsman’s office is a toothless tiger which has a track record of impotence.
“Whether it’s investigating withholding information about mass murder or inquests, the use of child informers, the targeting of children of Republican activists in aggressive house raids or stop and searches by the PSNI, this office has no credibility.”
He continued: “They operate safe in the knowledge that apart from some faux outrage near election time by constitutional Nationalism their ineffectiveness along with the human rights abuses will be brushed under the carpet so as not to upset the normalisation policy.
“The facilitation of a public attack on Tony Taylor on social media by the PSNI while he was enduring a tribunal lacking the very basic tenants of justice is typical of what passes for so called policing and justice in this failed statelet.”
With many thanks to: Derry Now for the original story
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The pervert cop has since been booted out of the force
A garda drunk on beer and Captain Morgan, sexually assaulted a female friend as she slept in her hotel bedroom, a court heard.
The pervert cop – since booted out of the force – was jailed for two years today following the sick attack during a charity event in the west of Ireland three years ago.
During the assault, the woman’s husband entered the room and put on a light, at which point the cop, with his trousers down, was ordered out.
The following day he apologised to the couple in a Facebook message, writing: “Unfortunately, loads of beer and Captain Morgan’s (rum) do not fit well with me.”
Man jailed for two months after telling garda: ‘I hope you and your family get cancer’
A judge called the attack “an opportunist and repellent sexual assault on a sleeping female”.
At Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court in Mayo, Judge Rory MacCabe described the fact that the defendant will lose his job as a significant penalty but added: “People have to accept the natural consequences of their actions.”
The judge refused a request by defence counsel, Ken Fogarty, for a suspended prison term.
Earlier Mr Fogarty told Judge MacCabe that the defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has already been served with dismissal papers by the Garda Commissioner.
The defendant, who has served in both metropolitan and rural areas, was decorated with a silver medal for bravery after saving a youngster from drowning, Mr Fogarty explained.
Earlier this year, the married man with children went on trial charged with sexually assaulting a woman after getting into her bed in a hotel room in the west of Ireland.
Mum of two charged with murder of husband in Cork
As the trial was about enter its final stages, the accused changed his plea to guilty on a single count of sexual assault.
At the previous hearing, evidence was heard that the accused is known to the complainant and travelled with her, as part of an eight-strong group to a charity event in the west in July 2015.
The victim was the only female present.
The group then stayed overnight in an apartment which forms part of a local hotel complex.
The victim told the court the group had enjoyed drinks and played card games as the evening wore on.
She said that she had put on her pyjamas and went to the double bed she was later to share with her husband.
The female gave evidence that she was awakened from her sleep by a man molesting her.
Her attacker had put fingers in her and she could feel his penis on her bottom.
Gardai investigating alleged assault on paramedic in Mahon, Cork ‘as 16-year-old boy questioned’
The victim then explained that as a bedside locker light was switched on by her husband, her attacker got out of bed with his trousers down.
She gave evidence she was highly distressed afterwards and was comforted and cuddled by her husband.
The court heard that on the following day the victim and her husband got a Facebook message from the accused in which he apologised to both of them.
In the message, the accused claimed not to remember much about what had happened.
He added: “Unfortunately, loads of beer and Captain Morgan’s (rum) do not fit well with me.”
The message continued: “I can only guess that in my drunken stupor I went to the wrong bed.”
In an emotional and lengthy victim impact statement which she read to today’s sentencing hearing, the victim said being betrayed by a person she then regarded as a friend while in that most vulnerable state – sleeping – left her sick to the very core.
She spoke of her initial difficulties in reporting the incident.
“Who would take my word above that of a garda who is supposed to be a pillar of the community and above the law?”
All her emotional torment could have been avoided in 2015 if he had pleaded guilty then, the victim added.
Continuing her impact statement, she said she had embarked on self-harm. “I hated my body for not waking sooner,” she explained.
The victim ended her statement by saying: “I am branded by the actions of another and I will carry this with me forever.
“Not a day goes by that it does not affect me. It set me on a completely different course than the one I had taken.”
Richard Gaughan of the Garda Ombudsman Commission, which investigated the complaint, told the court the victim had left the others, changed into her pyjamas, and gone to bed.
The defendant had got up to go to the toilet and was gone for some time when his absence was noticed.
Mr Gaughan said the woman’s husband ordered the defendant from the room after finding him in his bed.
The victim was ‘dazed’ at the time.
Defence counsel Fogarty said his client had made a drunken decision on the night in the apartment and had asked him to convey to the victims his profound sorrow and remorse for what happened.
With many thanks to the: Irish Mirror for the original story.
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The British Columbia-based company denies ever being part of Cambridge Analytica or its parent company SCL.
Facebook has suspended a Canadian data firm that played a key role in the campaign for the UK to leave the EU.
The social media giant said AggregateIQ (AIQ) may have improperly received users’ data.
It cites reported links with the parent company of Cambridge Analytica (CA), the consultancy accused of improperly accessing the data of millions.
AIQ denies ever being part of CA, its parent company SCL or accessing improperly obtained Facebook data.
The Vote Leave campaign paid AIQ £2.7m ($3.8m) ahead of the 2016 EU referendum.
An ex-volunteer with the campaign has also claimed Vote Leave donated £625,000 to another group to get around campaign spending limits, with most of the money going to AIQ. Vote Leave has denied any wrongdoing.
AIQ’s website once quoted Vote Leave chief Dominic Cummings saying: “Without a doubt, the Vote Leave campaign owes a great deal of its success to the work of AggregateIQ. We couldn’t have done it without them.” The quote has since been removed.
In total, AIQ was given £3.5m by groups campaigning for Brexit, including Vote Leave, the Democratic Unionist Party and Veterans for Britain. The UK’s Electoral Commission reopened an investigation into Vote Leave’s campaign spending in November.
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“In light of recent reports that AggregateIQ may be affiliated with SCL and may, as a result, have improperly received FB user data, we have added them to the list of entities we have suspended from our platform while we investigate,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
“Our internal review continues, and we will co-operate fully with any investigations by regulatory authorities.”
In a message posted to its website, AIQ says it is “100% Canadian owned and operated” and “has never been and is not a part of Cambridge Analytica or SCL”.
It adds: “Aggregate IQ has never managed, nor did we ever have access to, any Facebook data or database allegedly obtained improperly by Cambridge Analytica.”
Media captionHow the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal unfolded
It also denied ever employing Chris Wylie, the Canadian whistleblower who alleged that the data of 50m people was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has since said the number of people affected could be closer to 87m. CA says it obtained the data of no more than 30m people and has deleted all of it.
Spotlight on Brexit campaign
Analysis by technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones
It was three weeks ago that Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica just hours before a whistleblower’s revelations to the Observer newspaper triggered the current scandal over improper use of data.
Christopher Wylie insisted that Aggregate IQ was closely linked to Cambridge Analytica, and supplied documents to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee which he said proved it.
Now Facebook’s decision to suspend the Canadian firm from its platform appears to give further validation to Mr Wylie’s claims. It also throws the spotlight back onto the potential use of Facebook data during the Brexit campaign.
Facebook says it is looking into whether the data that Cambridge Analytica acquired improperly from as many as 87 million people – 1 million of them in the UK – ended up with Aggregate IQ. The firm worked for both Vote Leave and BeLeave during the EU referendum campaign, but has always insisted it has never been a part of Cambridge Analytica, and has not had access to any of its Facebook data.
AIQ is a small company operating out of Victoria, British Columbia. It uses data to help micro-target voters and was founded by two Canadian political staffers.
Apart from its Brexit work the company has also been accused by Mr Wylie of distributing “incredibly anti-Islamic” content on social media ahead of the 2015 Nigerian presidential election to discredit Muslim opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari, who went on to win the contest.
The BBC has approached AIQ for a response to the Nigeria allegations.
Mr Wylie has said that AIQ was referred to among Cambridge Analytica staff as “our Canadian office”. He told the Guardian he helped to set up the firm as a “Canadian entity for people who wanted to work on SCL projects who didn’t want to move to London” and that he had known the firm’s co-founder, Jeff Silvester, since he was 16.
AIQ says it “has never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica” and that “Chris Wylie has never been employed by AggregateIQ”.
Cambridge Analytica is at the centre of a row over whether it used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to sway the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum.
With many thanks to: BBC England for the origional story.
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The DUP has yet to explain why it used the Cambridge Analytica-linked firm AggregrateIQ in last year’s assembly election and its Brexit campaign for the EU referendum.
The Facebook billionaire said he was “really sorry” for the data breach that sparked the Cambridge Anolytica scandal.
Mark Zuckerberg has said it was a mistake to rely on Cambridge Analytica (CA) to delete tens of millions of Facebook users’ data as he apologised for the “major breach of trust”.
The site’s founder said the political consultancy had provided formal assurances that information harvested from 50 million profiles had been destroyed after Facebook first learned of the breach in 2015.
Mr Zuckerberg said he was now open to Facebook being regulated and accepted that malign actors were trying to use the site for political ends.
The site has been rocked in recent days by the row involving CA, who are accused of using the data to help Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign target political ads on the platform.
The company has denied using Facebook data in its work on the campaign.
The scandal has prompted calls from politicians on both sides of the Atlantic for Mr Zuckerberg to answer to them in person for the breach.
The billionaire told CNN he would be happy to appear before US Congress “if it’s the right thing to do”.
“This was a major breach of trust, and I’m really sorry that this happened,” he told CNN.
In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin asked the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to investigate the DUP’s use of Cambridge Analytica-linked firm AggregrateIQ in last year’s assembly election and its Brexit campaign for the EU referendum.
The DUP paid almost £33,000 during the EU referendum campaign to Canadian data analytics firm AggregrateIQ.
The company received more than £4.6m from Brexit campaign groups – more than any other company in the 2016 referendum.
It was also paid around £12,000 by the DUP as part of its Stormont election campaign last year.
AggregrateIQ is thought to have ‘micro-targeted’ voters with political advertising on social media using their personal data.
It has been linked to a similar firm, Cambridge Analytica. The DUP has declined to explain what it paid AggregateIQ to do, but insisted its campaigns “meet all legal and regulatory conditions”.
On Wednesday Mr Zuckerberg made his first public statement since the controversy erupted – via a Facebook post.
Journalists at The Guardian had told Facebook in 2015 that Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge University professor, had shared data from an app he had developed with CA, he said.
app-facebook
Mark Zuckerberg
15 hours ago
I want to share an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation — including the steps we’ve already taken and our next steps to address this important issue.
We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.
Here’s a timeline of the events:
In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends’ birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them.
In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends’ data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends’ data.
In 2014, to prevent abusive apps, we announced that we were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the data apps could access. Most importantly, apps like Kogan’s could no longer ask for data about a person’s friends unless their friends had also authorized the app. We also required developers to get approval from us before they could request any sensitive data from people. These actions would prevent any app like Kogan’s from being able to access so much data today.
In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people’s consent, so we immediately banned Kogan’s app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications.
Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to confirm this. We’re also working with regulators as they investigate what happened.
This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that.
In this case, we already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people’s information in this way. But there’s more we need to do and I’ll outline those steps here:
First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.
Second, we will restrict developers’ data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers’ access to your data if you haven’t used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in — to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We’ll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we’ll have more changes to share in the next few days.
Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you’ve allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you’ve used and an easy way to revoke those apps’ permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it.
Beyond the steps we had already taken in 2014, I believe these are the next steps we must take to continue to secure our platform.
I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform. I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.
I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together. I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we’d like, but I promise you we’ll work through this and build a better service over the long term.
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Facebook immediately banned Dr Kogan’s app and demanded that he and CA delete the data, for which they provided “certifications” that they had, the boss said.
Last week the company was alerted by The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that CA may not have deleted the data as they had said and the firm was banned from Facebook.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m used to when people legally certify that they are going to do something, that they do it. But I think this was clearly a mistake in retrospect,” Mr Zuckerberg told CNN.
Prof Kogan is alleged to have surveyed more than 270,000 Facebook users through an app he created.
Facebook’s settings at the time allowed app developers to access the personal data of not just the people who used their app, but of all of their friends as well.
Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook has already taken the most important steps to prevent such a situation from happening again.
He told the broadcaster the site would be reviewing thousands of apps in an “intensive process”.
(Facebook) had very few ways of discovering abuse or enforcing on abuse when it was discovered
Whistleblower Sandy Parakilas
Facebook will ban developers who do not agree to an audit, and an app’s developer will no longer have access to data from people who have not used that app in three months.
He said he was confident Facebook could “get in front” of the problem.
“This isn’t rocket science. There’s a lot of hard work we have to do to make it harder for nation states like Russia to do election interference,” he said.
Mr Zuckerberg’s apology came after a former employee of the company told MPs that Facebook had a “wild west” approach to looking after its users’ data and had “little detection” of any violations of its policies.
Whistleblower Sandy Parakilas, who worked in policy compliance and data protection for Facebook between 2011 and 2012, claimed the company “had very few ways of discovering abuse or enforcing on abuse when it was discovered”.
Facebook shares have slid by more than 7.6% since the first allegations were reported at the weekend by the Observer, and the firm received a backlash online – with a number of users reporting that they were deleting their accounts, including the co-founder of WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook in 2014.
The company is also facing legal action from some of its own shareholders, who claim the company made “materially false and misleading statements regarding the company’s business, operational and compliance policies”.
A Statement from the Board of Directors | CA Commercial
The Board of Cambridge Analytica has announced today that it has suspended CEO Alexander Nix with immediate effect, pending a full, independent…
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CA chief executive Alexander Nix was suspended after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that CA had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump.
Downing Street confirmed on Wednesday that the Government employed CA parent company SCL for a contract with the Ministry of Defence, but said this had ended before the recent allegations came to light.
“We are looking across Government to see if there were any other contracts,” said a spokesman. “As the Prime Minister said, we are not aware of any current contracts.”
The Conservative Party said it had been approached by CA with a pitch for work during David Cameron’s leadership, but said this was rejected.
“The Conservative Party has never employed Cambridge Analytica or its parent company, nor used their services,” a Tory spokesman said.
With many thanks to: The Irish News for the origional story.
This website is completely a freelance website all of the news on this site is brought to you personally by me with no donations. I would like to request for personal donations to help me keep it up and running. please consider donating £5 https://www.paypal.me/KevinMeehan
POLICE are investigating after an image was posted online showing a masked man apparently firing shots in tribute to a Socialist Republican in west Belfast.
“The final salute to comrade Harry O’Hara” – IRSP.
Photographs posted on Facebook by the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) – the politicial wing of the Irish National Liberation Party (INLA) – show masked men posing on a street with a picture of Harry O’Hara. Mr O’Hara, from Norglen Drive in the Turf Lodge area, died on February 28th and was buried in the City Cemetery earlier this month following Requiem Mass at Holy Trinity Church. Among death notices expressing sympathy at Mr O’Hara’s passing was one from “Connor Hughes, Cogús Republican Prisoners” in Maghaberry Jail.
West Belfast – INLA
The IRSP’s Belfast branch posted photos on Facebook of a “final salute to comrade Harry O’Hara”. It said “Harry was a loyal republican socialist and he will always be remembered with honour and pride by the Republican Socialist Movement” (RSM). The images show masked men dressed in paramilitay-style uniform posing beside candles and a photo of Mr O’Hara (copy of picture above). In one, a member of the group raises a gun above his head in a firing motion.
The images have been condemned by SDLP councillor Tim Attwood, who represents the area on Belfast City Council. “These are scenes which belong in the past. There is no excuse for masked gunmen on the streets of our city, no matter what the context,” he said. “This was a reckless act and should be roundly condemned.” A RUC/PSNI spokeswoman said: “Police are aware of footage on social media showing shots apparently being fired by a masked man in west Belfast. An investigation is under way.”
With many thanks to: John Monaghan, The Irish News, for the origional story.
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A TEENAGER has been bombarded with threatening and abusive messages from loyalist internet trolls after appearing in a BBC documentary about the Twelfth. Tania Lavery was forced to delegate her Twitter account after receiving a barrage of of offensive messages including death threats and rape threats.
The 19-year-old took part in the BBC Three show Petrol Bombs and Peace: Welcome 🙂 mentto Belfastwhich focused on Twelfth of July tensions in the north of the city. One alarming image posted following the broadcast on Monday evening attempted to identify her Ardoyne home. Ms Lavery’s experience comes amid increasing concern over Twitter trolls – people who send abusive messages using the social network – threatening rape and violence against women. Labour MP Stella Crash is among a host of high-profile recent targets. Earlier this week it also emerged that 14-year-old Leicestershire scoolgirl Hanna Smith had taken her own life as a result of relentless cyber bullying on the Ask.FM social-networking site. Ms Lavery, a former pupil of Holy Cross Primary School, said she is afraid to be in her own home and has had difficulty sleeping since receiving the death threats.
“A man wrote that he hopes I get raped at the bus stop and talked about how I’m a tramp, that I’m a bigoted scumbag,” she said. “My phone literally wouldn’t stop because I had over a hundred friend requests on Facebook. “They found my Twitter and they found my YouTube because I sing and they are making fun of it. “I deleted my Twitter because people were just making up lies.” The documentary followed BBC reporter Alys Harte as she spoke to Orange bandsmen and young Catholics in Ardoyne ahead of this year’s Twelfth. Ms Slavery and her friend Rosin Holmes (18), are from a Catholic background, gave their views and told of their experiences. Both have since received abuse online. Ms Slavery said she was determined to cope with the threats. “They think that all this stuff is going to change who I am but it’s not,” she said. “Yes, I am afraid to be in my house and I’m afraid to go outside on my own but it’s not going to change me.” Ms Slavery said some Orange men involved in the programs had sent her supportive messages online. “The guy that messaged me said we should all go for a drink sometime, even though we were both on the show and we clearly had different opinions,” she said.
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Paisley, McKeague and Seawright among famed users of emotive words.
POLITCIANS playing to their constituency with colourful and emotive rhetoric is uusually regarded as an asset. Renowned orators like Michael Collins and Winston Churchill delivered words in a manner that instilled awe and great loyalty among their audience.
Throughout the Troubles – and even before 1969 – the North of Ireland‘s politicians have enjoyed employing aggressive and provocative language when speaking in public. One of the most notorious incidents occoured almost 50 years ago when big Ian Paisley demanded the removal of the Irish tricolour from Division Street in West Belfast. He warned of riots if the RUC did not heed his call, but the violence the relatively young Free Presbyterian preacher predicted was avoided after a police operation to remove the flag. Over subsequent decades the former DUP leader’s language sailed close to the wind on many occasions but never were his words deemed so offensive that they resulted in arrest. However, his East Belfast loyalist associate John McKeague did face prosecution for a hate crime over the written word rather than an inflammatory speech.
The 1971 publication of Loyalist song book and its inclusion of anti-Catholic lyrics saw McKeague brought to court but ultimately acquitted after the proesecution failed to convince the jury of his intent. McKeague was shot dead a decade later by the INLA. In perhaps the best known episode of inciting sectarian hatred Belfast DUP councillor George Seawright was pprosecuted in 1984 when he made provocative remarked during a meeting of Belfast Education and Library Board. The loyalist, who like McKeague was later gunned down by the INLA offshoot, described Catholics who objected to the singing of the British national anthem “fenian scum” and suggested they should be burnt in an incinerator. Although he denied making the comments, Mr Seawright was prosecuted and received a six-month suspended sentence. The era of social media means the opportunities for people to go beyond what is deemed acceptable is much greater. The court restrictions around using Facebook and Twitter placed on loyalist flag protesters Jamie Bryson and Willie Frazer reflect a recognition of the potential by political and community leaders to incite their followers through.
With many thanks to : John Manley, The Irish News.
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Ruth Patterson: You know Brian, who cares how would be judged, we would have done a great service to Northern Ireland and would be getting rid of these evil, devious, scum like individuals who bombed and murdered their way into government, who walk the corridors of power leaving their blood stained hand prints on everything they touch and who care not how far they go to rid my beloved Northern Ireland of all that is good and proper. Would I shed a tear, NO, would I loose a nights sleep, NO, would I really worry about what anyone else thought, NO. Simple….NS – Tuesday at 13:21
DUP councillor Ruth Patterson was last night charged with sending a grossly offensive message on Facebook. She will appear before magistrates in Belfast on Thursday. Earlier party colleagues had backed her, turning their fire on the police decision to arrest the former Belfast deputy lord mayor.
In a statement, the party accused the PSNI of carrying out a “sensationalist” arrest rather than interview Ms Patterson about her incendiary comments, by appointment. The 57-year-old was questioned by detectives as her supporters planned protests in the city. She was arrested early yesterday in connection to an investigation into “the sending of grossly offensive communications and other serious criminal offences in relation to intimidation and encouraging criminal acts,” police said. The DUP responded: “We fail to understand why the police chose to conduct a sensationalist arrest rather than contact Ruth and ask her to attend an Article 10 voluntary interview. This is a matter we will be raising with the chief constable.” And the party questioned why Sinn Fein assembly member Gerry Kelly, who attempted to stop a police Land Rover in June, was not arrested.
“If there is a legal process to be followed then we will await its outcome: others, who in the past set themselves up as judge, jury and sometimes literal executioners, should do likewise before commenting further,” the statement concluded. A police file relating to Mr Kelly was delivered to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) yesterday afternoon. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein representives on Belfast City Council are to bring forward a motion calling for Ms Patterson to resign her seat. It came as she received support on social media despite her initial support for an attack on a republican parade in Castlederg.Ms Patterson left Musgrave police station in Belfast at around 10.20pm. She was driven away by family members without making any comment. About 30 protesters, some drapped in the Union flag had gathered to call for her release.
With many thanks to : John Manley (Politicial Reporter), The Irish News.
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Tell your family, friends, workmates and neighbours about Stephen’s plight and encourage them to add their voices to the campaign for Stephen’s release.
Join any upcoming ‘Free Stephen Murney’ protests or organise your own
Email info@eirigi.org to get ‘Free Stephen Murney’ stickers
Email info@eirigi.org to play a more active role in the campaign to get Stephen released
Contact your local elected representatives and ask them to highlight Stephen’s case and use their influence to have him released
Contact Barra McGrory, Director of Public Prosecutions, Belfast Chambers, 93 Chichester Street, Belfast, BT1 3JR demanding that he end the prosecution of Stephen Murney
Contact John Larkin, Attorney General, The Office of the Attorney General, PO Box 1272, Belfast, demanding that he put pressure on Barra McGrory to end the prosecution of Stephen Murney
Contact The Human Rights Commission, Temple Court, 39 North Street, Belfast, BT1 1NA and demand that they make representations on behalf of Stephen Murney
This website is completely a freelance website all of the news on this site is brought to you personally by me with no donations. I would like to request for personal donations to help me keep it up and running. please consider donating £5 https://www.paypal.me/KevinMeehan
The social and political chaos surrounding the Twelfth has become a comedy goldmine for internet satirists. Brendan Hugheslooks at the lighthearted online reaction to the North’s volatile parading season.
THE news this week has been dominated by the Twelfth and its violent aftermath. But amid the alarming scenes of disorder on the streets and heated political debate at Stormont, many people have managed to see the funny side.
Events surrounding the Twelfth have provided an irresistible abundance of material crying out to be mocked and parodied. And most of this northern satire has devoloped online, through social networking websites. From flag protester Willie Frazer‘s latest arrest to the towering loyalist bonfires, Facebook and Twitter users have eagerly made light of the north’s annual parading season problems. One picture of a Twelfth rioter being flushed from atop a police Land Rover by water cannon has become a mini internet sensation, wwith numerous different parodies. ‘Loyalists Against Democracy’ (LAD), which was set up late last year during the Union Flag protests in Belfast, pictured above, is one of the north’s most popular satirical Facebook pages with more than 3,000 followers. Its team of voluntary contributors have entertained a poster for a fake electronic cigerette called the ‘e-fleg’, which enables loyalists to “display their Britishness” with “a harmless vapour”.
They also created pictures of Egyptian pyrmid-sizes bonfires and Willie Frazer superimposed into a poster from the TV showBreaking Bad. “People have accused us of inventing Willie Frazer because they think he’s an actor that we hire. He’s a great comic creation,” said a Belfast-based contributor to the Facebook page, who did not wish to be named. “The Twelfth has provided too much am
munition almost. There’s too much to keep up with.” Derry-based satirical Facebook page ‘Pure Derry’, which has more than 14,000 followers, created an image for the Twelfth showing William of Orange driviking a forklift in front of a bonefire. “The whole concept of shifting tyres and pallets I just find incredibly amusing,” the page’s creator and main contributor said. “The reaction has been great. It’s so specialised that it’s a very quirky sense of humour.” Comedian and prominent Twitter user Jake O’Kane gained hundreds of new Twitter followers during the Twelfth due to his tweets. “The problem with being a political satirist in the North of Ireland is that you just have to open the paper and repeat what is said. It’s farcical,” he said. O’Kane said social media has allowed many more people to get involved in political satire. “With social media now everybody can be a political satirist, or try to be,” he said. “It has been opened up a lot more so it seems that it has exploded but it has always been there in the background. “The nice thing about it is that there would be people who wouldn’t have the b***s to go up on stage but they now have a voice.” But the Belfast-based comedian warned that some social networking attempts at satire can become childish and abusive. “If you look at a lot of of social media unfortunately it’s the lowest common denominator. It’s like any new technology, it’s as much abused as used,” he said.
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