British #SpyCops in Ireland: What is @FitzgeraldFrncs covering up? An interview with Jason Kirkpatrick

by soundmigration Jan8 2017

Jason Kirkpatrick wants Irish Dept of Justice to explain role of British undercover police spying on him in Ireland

I spoke to Jason Kirkpatrick targeted by British undercover police across several countries including Germany, N Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. The officer was Mark Kennedy attached to the UK’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU.) Kennedy operated in many European countries including several deployments to Ireland.

The NPOIU is a political policing unit set up to illicitly disrupt political networks social movements and family campaigns challenging abuses by the police.

The unit was preceded by the Special Demonstrations Squad (SDS) set up in 1968 to infiltrate protest movements opposed to the US war in Vietnam.   Both units not only spied on political organisations and social movements, but on campaigns against police abuses and murder in the UK.

Mark Kennedy, using the name Mark Stone, from the UK’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit, was deployed multiple times in Ireland. The Department of Justice and An Garda Siochana refuse to cooperate so far with Jason Kirkpatrick.

Jason is currently bringing legal cases in several jurisdictions with an aim of expanding the Pitchford Inquiry into the scope and nature of undercover policing set up by the current UK prime minister Teresa May. Currently this inquiry is limited to undercover policing in England and Wales. Jason and others are pushing to see this expanded to cover all areas that British undercover police targeted them.

It is understood that the NPOIU operated using contractual terms of agreements with several nation states/police units around the deployment of British officers from the unit in those states. It’s likely that some of the information held by the Irish police force includes such an agreement. It is also common practice for information fed back by British undercover police to their units is shared with the police force of the country they are operating in.

Full interview below

Currently the Irish state refuses to publish an existing report into Mark Kennedys deployments across Ireland, or who he was spying on and what information he has supplied to both the British and Irish states. Minister for Justice Francis Fitzgerald has called for another report from Commissioner O Sullivan, a move that should be understood as a stalling tactic to resist any transparency around some really dodgy policing

 

 

Source: Soundmigration Jan 8 2017

Radio Free Éireann - Martin McGuinness' health and Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland

Radio Free Éireann podcast broadcast on WBAI 99.5FM Pacifica Radio, New York City, Jan 7 2017

In the first part John McDonagh and Martin Galvin speak to Derry Republican Mickey Donnelly via telephone from Derry about Martin McGuinness’ health. 

In the second part the journalist and author Ed Maloney talks about McGuinness and the implications for Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland.

 

 

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Source:  The Pensive Quill
              Radio Free Éireann - Transcripts
              WBAI 99.5FM Pacifica Radio

Jury awards $10.5 million in punitive damages in DuPont cancer case

By Earl Rinehart
The Columbus Dispatch  •  Thursday January 5, 2017 6:35 PM

Craig Holman | Dispatch file photo
DuPont's Washington Works chemical plant on the Ohio River

Jurors who awarded an Ohio man $10.5 million in punitive damages Thursday apparently heeded his attorney’s call to punish DuPont for causing his cancer, and to send a message to corporate America.

"It's important to punish, to end this corrupt corporate mentality," attorney Gary J. Douglas urged the jury in U.S. District Court in Columbus.

The amount was the largest awarded of three DuPont cancer cases tried so far in Columbus.

After the verdict, Douglas said of DuPont, "One would hope, depending on how callous they are, with compensatory damages of seven figures and punitive in eight figures, when they're looking at 3,000 cases, they would do the right thing."

That, he said, would be a mass, "global" settlement with the plaintiffs.

The same jury awarded the plaintiff, Kenneth Vigneron, 56, a truck driver from Washington County, $2 million in compensatory damages last month.

Vigneron said his drinking water was tainted by C8, a chemical used to make Teflon, from smokestack emissions at DuPont's Washington Works plant. The particles settled on the Little Hocking Water Association well fields, eventually contaminating the water supply.

The plant is along the Ohio River in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Jurors also had found that DuPont acted maliciously because it knew in the 1960s that C8, or perfluorooctanoic acid, was toxic and a cancer risk, but said nothing publicly until forced to by lawsuits and regulators.

The jury returned to court on Wednesday to hear both sides argue how much to give Vigneron, who suffered from testicular cancer. His attorneys didn't ask for a specific number; a DuPont attorney asked for "zero," saying the company already has paid enough for its "mistake."

Douglas told jurors DuPont has a "staggering" $18.8 billion that can be converted to cash, including $4.5 billion in cash and other sources. A plaintiff witness, forensic economist Robert Johnson of California, said the company has net sales of $68 million a day.

“That $2 million in (compensatory) damages, they make in 42 minutes,” Douglas said.

Johnson said he studied DuPont’s corporate financial statements and documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said a single award of $100 million would allow DuPont stockholders to still receive a dividend and "no one has to lose his job."

Financial observers have said DuPont is concerned about how one large punitive damage award affects the thousands of remaining suits it faces.

Of the two previous trials in Columbus, one jury awarded a woman with kidney cancer $1.6 million in compensatory damages, but said she was not eligible for punitive damages. The other jury awarded a man with testicular cancer $5.1 million in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages.

U.S. Chief District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. heard the three C8 cases and will preside at the next one, which also involves testicular cancer, beginning Jan. 17. In May, several federal judges will hear C8 cases in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. The goal is to hear 270 cancer cases at the rate of 40 cases over 10 months every year.

DuPont attorney Craig Woods told jurors the company regrets what happened, but that "DuPont has paid for their mistake. It doesn't deserve to be punished on top of that."

The company said it spent $594 million to clean up C8 problems. That included $70 million for a community health study in 2005, $20 million to build state-of-the-art water filtration systems at all six public water districts affected, and millions for a science panel that in 2012 said there was a probable link between the chemical and several types of cancer.

"This money was committed for doing the right thing," DuPont attorney John Gall told the jury of three women and three men.

DuPont is expected to appeal the verdict.

C8 no longer is used to make Teflon, a product that now belongs to a DuPont spinoff called Chemours Company. Chemours issued a statement after Thursday's verdict: "In the event DuPont claims it is entitled to indemnification from Chemours as to some or all of the judgment, Chemours retains its defenses to such claims.”

Chemours stock closed Thursday down 33 cents, or 1.5 percent, at $21.88. DuPont stock fell 36 cents, or .50 percent, at $73.81.

Source: The Columbus Dispatch, Jan 5 2017