What One Thousand ‘Journalists’ Arriving in Dublin Won’t Want to Know About EuroMayday Protests
international |
summit mobilisations |
feature 
Wednesday April 28, 2004 17:22
by neuropa
’Why Protest the Dublin EU Summit? What are the Issues Anyway?’
It is critical to show, during such a display of media power and control as we have seen in the past few weeks in Ireland in the run-up to the EU Summit, that independent groups and people have the ability to create and share their own media, self publish, build networks and communicate freely and autonomously. We have been taking our information autonomy for a while now around here, using the limited means and technologies at our disposal.
In that spirit - here is a (free) guide to what is missing from all centralised and commercialised media in Ireland at present , a clear exposition of the issues that concern those who are preparing to celebrate EuroMayday and to protest the Dublin EU Summit. Don’t get MAD with those thousand foreign journalists and their Irish compatriots when you see these urgent and legitimate concerns glossed over and ignored by the mainstream – get EVEN. Don’t Hate the Media – Become the Media.
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Increasingly Our Lives in the EU are Precarious and We Want Security.
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The EU is Trying to Steal OUR New Languages from out of our Mouths. Computer Code is a Human Language. Why Should it be Owned by Corporations?
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The EU is Mutating our Concern about the Ecosphere into Yet Another Big Business Opportunity – A Market Trading in the Right to Pollute.
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The EU is Trying to Impose Blanket Privatisation of Core Public Services in Europe Behind Our Backs. We Want the Minutes of the Article 133 Committee Meetings made Public.
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The EU is Aggressively Confronting Developing Countries in WTO Trade Talks in an Attempt to Force them to ‘Liberalise’ their Economies and accept the ‘Argentina Treatment’.
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The EU (especially the EU Commission) is a Secretive Institution Despite the Right of Access to Information for EU Citizens having been ‘enshrined’ in the Amsterdam Treaty.
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The EU is using ‘Terrorism’ as an Excuse to Eliminate our Right to Privacy and as an Excuse to take away our Right to Protest against War and Global Economic Injustice.
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The European Security Strategy is a Coded Blueprint for Creating an Armed Superpower to Protect, in the International Arena, the Economic and Political Interests of the Major Powers in the European Union.
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The Draft EU Constitution Consecrates Neo-Liberalism as the Official Doctrine of the EU. It makes Competition the basis for European Community Law, and indeed for all Human Activity. We Want a Europe Based on Economic Justice in Europe and in the Global South.
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The EU lets Capital Travel Freely while Severely Restricting the Rights of Accession Country Citizens to Freedom of Movement.
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The EU is a Fortress and We Do Not Want To Live in a Fortress while People Whose only Crime is to be Poor Die in Large Numbers Trying to Get Inside.
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Blair, Ahern, Berlusconi and others in Europe are Forcing us Against our Wishes to Live in a War Society and We do not want to be Bomb-Fodder for Fundamentalist and Neoliberal Franchises Alike.
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A Democratic Mediasphere is a Necessity in Ireland and in the EU Generally. We Do Not Want a Mass Media Subservient to Corporate and State Interests. Media Belongs in the Community.
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Comments (14 of 14)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14How exactly will the demilitarised Europe with the little security apparatus you clearly want, provide security against subversion from within and without? Oddly, I trust the democratically elected governments of the EU more than the fundamentalist terrorists.
Trading pollution credits gives people a right to pollute? Maybe, if you want immediate no pollution targets, something which would plunge Europe into a new Dark Age. Otherwise, it can be empirically proven that credits make the process of reducing pollution much easier and more efficient
You want more small-fix media? Would you like to abolish big newspapers and TV? Otherwise how would these be funded? Taxes = Govt control, Private Money = Private control. Simple as that. If you want to speak, and enough people wish to listen to you, then set up an internet site, or a newspaper, or distribute leaflets. Nobody is stopping you. However, remember these will express your PERSONAL beliefs just as ,the Sun say, reflects the views of its owners.
"Polish anti European Economic Forum Protests April 28th-30th face Co-ordinated campaign of repression and intimidayion
Just a few weeks from the Forum, in Warsaw and in other cities, a campaign of harrassment against activists was started. Techniques used by the police and the ABW have included: spoken threats, repeated telephone calls with proposals for interviews, summons to appear in police stations, interrogations, home visits, enquiries at activists' workplaces and to neighbours, stopping people in the street because of posters and leaflets they are carrying. As well, telephone tapping and surveillance of electronic communications. Police in civilian clothes have been to squats and to centres of independent information, they have frightened owners of cinemas and places where meetings had been planned.
By involving ourselves in the preparation of demonstrations and of the Alternative Economic Forum, we are opposed to the "mono-think" of the neoliberal economy which leads to globalisation. We are looking for alternatives. However, the authorities, who lack precise understanding of the "Anti-Summit", are desperately trying to attack the organisers. Given their lack of coherent arguments and inability to understand basic communication skills, they are trying to use the only methods they know - force and violence.
We will not be intimidated! Being aware of the fact that similar interventions by the police and secret services have preceded similar international protests, we will remain firm in the face of oppression! It's nothing but shame and scandal for the authorities, especially given that the Central Police Command has just given us the green light for authorising the demonstration.
One of the forms of expressing one's opinions: the participation in a peaceful demonstration, is a fundamental human right in a democratic state."
From Polish IMC
http://pl.indymedia.org/pl/2004/04/5135.shtml#english /
Background
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/76926
I will be marching this weekend, but not against the EU and not against the expansion of the EU.
I will be marching against the presence in this country of the warmonger Bush. I will be marching against the conversion of Shannon Airport from a civilian airport into Europe's least-defended USAF base. I will be marching so that when international news coverage shows the Bush - Ahern lovein, they will also have to show streets of people who oppose this man and all that he represents.
So, while you are entitled to your opinions on Europe, please don't assume that I am marching in support of all of them. There will (hopefully) be hundreds of thousands of people on the streets this weekend. Each one of us will have our own reasons for being there.
Be careful how you use the word "we".
Jack
i dont see anythiong that says or implies that hte protest are against the eu or enlargement... it is a very good list of things alot of ppl want looked at in the eu
You ask how the "demilitarised Europe" protect itself against "subversion"? You are missing the point. The point is that the European member states of the EU have an attrocious foreign policy record, one that has very little to do with "security against subversion from within and without". The foreign policies of France in Algeria, Britain in Kenya and the Middle East, Switzerland in selling arms to brutal regimes, and in fact all the EU countries supporting and providing legitimacy to brutal dictatorships in the Third World have nothing WHATSOEVER to do with "protection". They have been primarily about securing access to markets and raw materials in the Third World. This is why the EU is so friendly with the corrupt tyrants in North Africa for example -to gain cheap access to gas, among other reasons.
The EU has to protect itself against terrorism, of course, just as, say Iran has to protect itself against terrorism. But does that mean you would support Iran building up a huge military force with the very deliberate capacity to reach thousands of miles outside its borders, on the grounds that "How could a demilitarised Iran with a little security apparatus provide security against subversion from within and without?"
Terrorism, as the historical record clearly shows, can not be fought with bombs and jet-fighters. It requires what Tony Blair (before he became Bush's lapdog) called the "3 'p's -protection (internal security), penetration (intelligence work) and political process (aimed at convincing those who may support the terrorists that there is a peaceful route).The EU militarisation has NOTHING to do with terrorism. An EU military force will be used to continue and expand the already existing foreign policies of the member states, which have been largely amoral and have caused much suffering in the world.
As for your assertion that "it can be empirically proven that credits make the process of reducing pollution much easier and more efficient", this is laughable. Sometimes the easy way is not the right way. Relying on the pollution credits idea to tackle pollution and climate change is like trying to put out a raging inferno with a Mister Squeeze water pistol. If you think that the gigantic changes which are absolutely vital to combating catastrophic polution and the possible impending climate catastrophe would "plunge Europe back to the Dark Ages", then I can only recommend you actually do some research on this quite urgent topic before making carzily innaccurate claims. For a start, you can try the following link:
http://www.climatechangesolutions.com/
After that there is:
http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/GlobalWarming.asp
"it can be empirically proven that credits make the process of reducing pollution much easier and more efficient"
Remember, it is the *reduction* of *pollution* which we want to be easy and efficient.
Also, "empirical" is a big word. Be sure you understand its meaning before you start.
today on pat kenny show richard boyd barrett, IAWM spoke on behalf of mayday protestsers to garda inspector ?
discussion mostly around violence- rbbb tried to expand on issues
mentioned events and times, including grassroots stuff, if somewhat confusedly.
no mention of indymedia or this exhibtion
callers in all along lines of "them loonies are costing us millions, get a real job"
i rang in after and gave details of independant media festival with indymedia and dcmn- times dates, mentioned saturdays forum with the brownes on media and told them that there would be the post mayday feedback etc happening in centre
needless to say- none of this was communicated to the public
put festival posters up in public libraries- ilac and kevin st
charleville mall, nearest pub lib to centre, is closed
Hanley NJ, Shogre, White, An Introduction to Environmental Economics, Oxford University Press. contains a good empirical (yes, I do know what it means) account of the efficiency gains of tradable pollution credits in setting pollution limits. As it wasn't written by a radical Marxist you probably won't believe it, though.
I still maintain that if you cancelled all pollution overnight in the world there would be a vast transport and energy crisis. I don't deny that the environment is an important issue not being properly addressed. However, pollution credits (if properly implemented) should certainly be a part of a pollution reducing strategy, and rubbishing the idea on ideological grounds is shortsighted. If, for example , rather than credits, limits were introduced Denmark would pay many times more than Germany for the elimination of the same amount of pollution.
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Dear indymedia,
I am writing to indymedia because I am absolutely a supporter of this organisation, being the first independent global media. Conscious of its incredible innovation in the media world and the dramatical impact that can have in its future development I just want to tell Indymedia and its activists to be aware of the issues they are focusing their protests. Don't protest inconditionately to the EU enlargement. Has to be acknowledged its positive contributions. For example:
creating a transnational organisation the EU will make the states lose some important powers in favour to local areas. This is what we have to ask while demonstrating in the streets: a more fair EU that can strenghten the local soveregnity in a process of global changing.
The EU has the potentiality to become a good answer to the uncontrolled economic globalization. Since now doesn't seem that is movong in that direction but if you analyse it deeper it is very slowly doing it; so we have to put pressure on the positive steps that have to taken.g.
So, for you "efficiency" means saving money for corporations operating in Denmark.
I was hoping that we would be talking about reducing pollution.
I don't see how exporting German pollution does anything good for Danish emphysema. Obviously, the Germans might consider it efficient; the Danes would certainly object.
Ever consider they are using the threat of the globilization protesters as a cover because of the actual possible threat of an Al Qaeda attack, seeing how there will be the 25 heads of E.U..
So by using this sorta "anarchist threat" stuff, they keep the people calm, as they reckon the gardai can handle it, and also allows them to build up secuirty with as much military they desire, to do the real job of lookin out.
so in brief-build up propaganda to keep people/business calm, and allows security build-up
Just a thought, and a shitty one at that.
mooooooo
'Keeping people calm'?
So you keep people calm by running scare stories for weeks and creating a state of siege?
And the Al Quaeda thing? Looks like you are just doing damage limitation for the government now that the riots have not materialised.
Yes as I am so proud of your Free State government, with it's ganster Fianna Fail and it's West Brit allies.
No I mean cause the lefties in ireland are generally not exactly seen as hard to put down, and public conception probably saw the may day riots was a good example of Gardai putting down all those crazzzzy anarchists (specially that 11 year old one).
All and all was jut something that I had a thought about.
On another note anyone see Charlie Bird complaining about the "damage" on his van, was hilarious was expected a massive thing, turned out to be some chap wrote Liars with a yellow marker.
Out of curiosity you blame media or government more for the hype?
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