It was sheer coincidence that on Thursday, at the very moment the body of Dolours Price was being prepared for a post-mortem examination in Dublin, John Kerry was sitting in a grand room in Washington, being examined for his potential fitness as US secretary of state.
Price, in her youth a committed Irish Republican Army volunteer, was found dead in her bed in a Dublin suburb Thursday. If diplomatic reason prevails within a government that may soon have Kerry as its top diplomat, the ill-conceived attempt to hijack a confidential oral history project from the archives at Boston College will have died, too.
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I couldn't agree more. I have never understood by the British dragged this up, and even less, why our government was participating.
Obama should tell them to f&$* right off.
He can't without seeming like a total hypocrite - the American "War on Terror" rests on the same state secrecy that Britian's does.
The Brits might want to open up some of their own dark secrets from the "troubles" era before they ask the US to pry into this
Sadly, the issue is now moot as to Delours Price -- with her passing, her tapes by the terms of her interview with BC are to become public.
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The deal, scurrilous as it might have been, was that Price's interviews would stay confidential until she was dead. Now she is dead, may she rest in peace. Why in the world should the documents remain sealed?
Imagine, the specatacle of the Boston Globe, once thought of as a leader in progressive journalism, pleading for the government to cover up the truth and "walk away" for expediency's sake.
The IRA is defeated and gone. The "Troubles" as we know them are over. All that remains is to hold the leaders such as Gerry Adams accountable for the countless murders they committed.
If, in full possession of the facts, the Irish and British governments and people decide to reconcile and move forward, as South Africa did, that is their prerogative. These documents can help lead them to the truth. No one alive has a privacy right in them. Therefore, there is no moral or legal reason to withhold them. Period.
Imagine, for example, if a Globe columnist had urged that all investigation of the Charles Stuart/William Bennett case should have ended with Stuart's death, so that we could "move on," instead of further examining the reasons that such a miscarriage of justice could happen to Bennett and to an entire community of color. There would have been outrage, and rightly so.
To plead shamelessly for the burying of the truth purely because of base anti-British sentiment is disgusting and racist, and it is disgraceful for the Globe to countenance such illogical hate in its pages.
The documents should remained sealed in the sense that the U.S. Government should stop drop its effort to legally force their disclosure. This is about confidentiality and the ability of University researchers to go about their business without opening the folks they work with to prosecution. The U.S. has very weak protections for research participants, and this case is gutting them. Moloney and his partner agreed to unseal the records themselves - allow them to follow their own process.
You seem to know something about Northern Ireland, but a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous game. The IRA was not "defeated", they agreed to a cease fire. "The Troubles" as a discrete historical moment are indeed over, but the larger "Trobules" - the period from the 1160s onward - continues. The rioting recently over the display of the British flag on Belfast's City Hall is evidence of this. So are the continuing disparities and inequalities for residents of NI. In this light, SO much more remains than simply understanding Adam's full involvement. That Gerry Adams was in the Provos is about the worst kept secret in NI - its kind of like Lance Armstrong's refusals regarding doping - Adams continues to say he was not involved but noone believes him. This is a sideshow. Addressing the deep political, social, and economic inequalities in NI is the real task that remains.
As far as truth and reconciliation - the British are up in arms over Jean McConville's murder. True, getting to the bottom of the IRA's kidnappings and disappearences is important. These are a small number of individual tragedies, and related documents, compared to the deaths and troves of sealed documents that the British government is responsible for. Where is this zeal for them to face their own skeletons? That is part of truth and reconciliation as well.
It seems like you are most upset by the "anti-British sentiment" being "disgusting and racist". Being British is not a race. This isn't racism. Holding the UK accountable for its mass human rights abuses isn't about being anti-British, it is about coming to terms with centuries of repression in Ireland and about making a new way forward for both countries. Addressing the activities of the Provos and other Republican and Loyalist organizations are also important parts of this.
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Was our biggest ally untill Obama got elected.
Our biggest ally? What a laugh. They blame all of the Troubles on us when it was their troops moving in and shooting everyone. They refuse to extradite hacker Gary McKinnon. They make a hash of things in Afghanistan and need our troops to rescue them. Some ally. Like a deranged needy ex-wife is more like it.
convenient