Anti-war march on O'Connell Bridge

Most of the population would have been getting out of bed this morning with a raging hangover. Mid afternoon people would be wiping the crust from their eyes, and making their way into town for a fry up, trying to recollect all the hazy memories of the night before, when the crowds were out and everyone was fired up with enthusiasm.

Thus I couldnt help but think that this day was very fitting for the anti-war march in Dublin. Approximately eight hundred people marched from the Garden of Remembrance to the end of Grafton Street, stopping briefly on O'Connell Bridge for a barely-registered two minute silence, then looped around back to the GPO. At the start of the rally where people assembled for speeches, there were numerous references made to three years ago where 100,000 people marched in town. This march today just seemed like a bad hangover for the Irish anti-war movement (no capitals). Hazy memories of when the crowds were out and everyone was fired up with enthusiasm, now long lost to the mists of time.

A message to Mr Carey...

Residents of Erris will be discomforted to hear that the former Chief Superintendent of the Mayo Garda Síochána, John Carey, has been appointed as a local consultant to the Corrib Gas Project. Carey ‘s new role, which will be part-time, will ‘see him meeting local groups and residents and conveying their hopes and concerns relating to the project to the Corrib management team’ according to last week’s Mayo News. He will, apparently, ‘also be involved in informing people locally about the plans for the project as it moves forward’.

Carey’s appointment is fast on the heels of the appointment of two other prominent locals. Journalist Christy Loftus, and former County Secretary, Padraig Hughes now act as ‘external advisors’ to Shell. Both men are in a prime position to influence local opinion and defend the role of Shell in endangering the lives of the local community and ripping off the Irish taxpayer.

Carey, a local man from Bangor, resigned his position in the guards in April 2005. He had been Chief Superintendent of the area, stationed in Castlebar for the previous 9 years. He is generally considered to have ‘retired early’. Perhaps he just wasn’t Assistant Commissioner material. He is also a well known Mayo GAA personality. He captained the team to win the National League in 1970 and went on to win All Star honours, becoming Mayo’s first All Star in 1971.

The end of casinos and card rooms in Ireland?

Blurry eyed from the adrenalin...

About four years ago I got a job working for security in a large Vegas-style casino in Auckland, New Zealand. On my first morning I was introduced to the manager and other people I would be working with, handed a swipe pass, and given a list of my daily duties. The casino and adjoining conference centre and hotel were open 24 hours, all year round, and employed roughly 2,000 people in total. The majority of these were food/drink and cleaning staff on three rotating eight hour shifts. I had started on a Monday morning at 8am, and after being shown the ropes in the control room, my team leader asked me if I'd like to go on a tour of the gaming floor. Why not, I replied.

So off we went down to the enormous gaming floor. Bear in mind this was before 9am on a Monday, so I expected the place to be near empty, maybe a few cleaners hoovering the deep green carpets or polishing the roulette wheels in anticipation of a few people drifting in later on in the afternoon. Not a bit of it. Tables were full, cards being dealt, lights flashing and buzzers sounding, chips being stacked and counted. The "one armed bandit" areas were the worst. Red-eyed, gaunt, pasty, slouching, with their change bucket in one hand and the other eternally poised over the button, these people looked like they'd been there all night, all week, all their lives.

This was in huge contrast to the other "casinos" I'd previously been in - namely the Merrion, and the Jackpot (now closed, as far as I know) on Montague Street. These were card rooms, with no more than 60 people playing in a knockout Texas Hold'em tournament. There was no alcohol, they certainly werent open 24 hours, and the atmosphere was intimate and reasonably relaxed. They were operating in a legal grey area, and even though I'd been playing poker for a good while with friends in private house games, very few people seemed aware of their existence. In the last four years though, there's been a huge upsurge in people playing poker, and the casinos have multiplied in Dublin, and beyond.

David Norris, Harry Browne & Augustine O Donoghue

Harry Browne (journalist and anti-war activist) and Senator David Norris (Joycean scholar, anti war and gay rights compaigner) launched the "The Profits of Extermination. How U.S. Corporate Power is destroying Colombia" in Trinity College on Thursday night. The Author is Francisco Ramirez Cuellar, President of Sintraminercol (The Miners Union of Colombia). Introduction and translation by Aviva Chomsky. Several attempts have been made to assasinate the author since the book was published. The book outlines how corporate greed has resulted in human rights abuses in Colombia. The event was Organised by Colombia Solidarity Network and Trinity One World Society in collaboration with Latin America Solidarity Centre. For copies of the book at sale at the discount price of ten euro please email colombia (at) lasc.ie .

Message from the author of the book: Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, President SINTRAMINERCOL, General Secretary FUNTRAENERGETICA

To the Brothers and Sisters of the Social Organisations in Ireland.

On behalf of the workers in the mining sector of Colombia I wish to extend our warmest greetings to this book launch. First of all we wish to thank the Colombia Solidarity Network delegation that visited our country last June and July. Such visits allow us to show you first hand the grave situation facing the trade union movement and the communities and for you to see first hand the challenges we face and hopefully encourage you to continue in your internationalist solidarity.

It gives us great pleasure to know that you are launching our book The Profits of Extermination as this allows us to continue with our investigations and to mobilise the community and trade union organisations, the victims of the attacks by the Colombian government, the multinationals and the international financial institutions.

Unfortunately since we published the book the situation in the mining and energy producing regions of Colombia has not improved. Currently 87 of every 100 people forcibly expelled from their land come from such regions. The total number for displaced people in Colombia is in excess of 3 million in a country of barely 44 million. 80% of all human rights violations and 71% of the murders of trade unionists take place in mining and energy regions.

Dublin in early Twentieth Century

Having organised and trained through secret sinister revolutionary organisations...

"..The nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the nation but to all material possessions of the nation, the nation’s soil and all its resources, all wealth and wealth-producing processes within the nation. In other words, no private right to prosperity is good against the public right to secure strictly equal rights and liberties to every man and woman within the nation." - Padraig Pearse.

“The carnival of murder on the continent [World War I] will be remembered as a nightmare in the future, will not have the slightest effect in deciding for good the fate of our homes, our wages, our hours, our conditions. But the victories of labour in Ireland will be as footholds, secure and firm, in the upward climb of our class to the fullness and enjoyment of all that labour creates, and organised society can provide. Truly, labour alone in these days is fighting the real war for civilisation.” - James Connolly.