It was three years on March 11th since the triple nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima plant in Japan in 2011. This article attempts to try and give an picture of the situation today and to show that the accident is still an active event that will take many decades to cleanup and it is anything but over.
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It was suspected that offices of the GSOC (garda siochana ombudsman commission) were being bugged. Shrouded in secrecy, they brought in specialists from the UK under advice from their equivalent body in the UK, the IPCC. These specialists did a high tech sweep of their offices under cover of darkness and a report was created which suggests that it was extremely likely that highly sophisticated bugging of the office had occurred. Government and high ranking gardai have closed ranks and are trying to spin this as a problem with GSOC instead of addressing the strong possibility that GSOC was bugged and who would want to do that and have access to do so except the gardai themselves. If true this is a grave issue. It is believed in some circles that this bugging may be related to investigations by GSOC into the case of large scale heroin importer Boylan who it is alleged has been working with gardai and has "magically" evaded conviction in the face of overwhelming evidence of trafficking huge amounts of drugs. This affair may go right to the top and has the potential to sink this government ... read full story / add a comment

Magaretta D'Arcy, a 79 year old peace activist who is also undergoing cancer treatment was arrested at home in Galway but NOT for bankrupting the country and saddling it with billions of debt, NOT for corruption and other white collar crime, but for the crime of having a conscience and actually caring about her fellow human beings. That's correct. In this country you can destroy it in all sorts of ways and you will be fine as no banker, politician, developer, bond holder or other types of people who have been involved in economically destroying this country, and causing widespread austerity, hardship and misery which in itself has led to many suicides and so forth. None of these people have come before the courts or been jailed. However for the really serious crimes of still having your humanity at 79 and doing something about it instead of shutting up and doing nothing, for these crimes, the state will bring the full force of the law against you and will always find some narrow argument to shut out the wider context of your action, to convict you and get you quickly behind bar. In that way the state quickly ensures that this dangerous contagion doesn't spread and it serves as a lesson to all as to what might happen to them. ... read full story / add a comment

The Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is sponsoring an invite only fracking workshop in London this Friday 15th Nov 2013 as part of its long term plan to introduce fracking in Ireland. It has already commissioned research to help 'determine best practice guidelines to regulate the shale gas industry in Ireland' (all their own words). There is no hint here fracking will NOT be allowed whatever the findings. This same body though is immune from prosecution under Irish law (See Box 1 below) making a mockery of it's regulatory role. ... read full story / add a comment

The future is not good for pensions and the further away you are from retirement the bleaker is the prospect that you will get anything like you have paid in. A number of factors have come into play to cause major trouble and nearly all of these affect the underlying basic fundamentals required for a pension system to work and along with the continual counter coup to remove the social gains of the past century by the financial elite, the prospects remain grim. ... read full story / add a comment

The coming referendum on the abolishment of Seanad Éireann would, if passed, remove the existing constitutional right of the President to refer proposed Bills to the people for a referendum. It would pass the initial responsibility of passing Bills into law onto the Dáil alone - a dangerous development, particularly where any ruling party might hold an overall majority. ... read full story / add a comment

Today the mainstream media are claiming that there has been a chemical attack by the Syrian government near Damascus even whilst an UN inspection team arrives. The reports have been conflicting with the initial reports claiming 280 victims and then later up-ing it to over 1,300 killed.

However, the claims are predominantly coming from the so called Free Syrian Army who are backed and funded by some of the despotic Gulf States, as well as Saudi Arabia and by the Western powers principally France, USA and UK. This same group is made up mercenaries of all kinds including members of Al Qaeda who want to turn the country backwards and bring in Sharia Law and just back in May 2013 the UN accused the Syrian rebels of using chemical weapons.

What is most telling though is that it makes absolutely no sense for the Syrian government to do this. In recent months they have retaken areas held by rebels and seem to have repelled several attack campaigns in the past two year. And France in particular as well as the other powers have been consistently in the last year being trying to throw the mud of chemical weapons and then chemical weapon attacks in a clear effort to force public opinion to back no-fly zones and from there total demolition of the country and invasion followed later by a pliant regime. The end game is to clear the way for an attack on Iran which the crazies have been pushing hard for many years. ... read full story / add a comment

People are getting fed up. We have had the Anglo Tapes released and the government decides to go after the whistle blower instead. Since 2008 unemployed has risen to 14% and it would be a lot higher only that 40,000 people are leaving the country every year. The government job initiative is welfare for business interests and as described here is a scam. It is time to high light this even though many have known it for months.

It seems like everytime I view the FAS website more and more real jobs are disappearing from it and being replaced with free labour internships. When I search for specific sectors now all I seem to find are internships. This scheme is absolutely sickening me as it has potentially destroyed several thousand entry level jobs. I can't believe that Joan Burton and the Labour Party have completely ruined the youth labour market with a scheme which is:

-replacing real paid jobs with "internships"
-exploiting the jobless
-wasting tax-payer money to provide companies with free labour
-putting underqualified/inexperienced/unvetted people in jobs with far too much responsibility(working with kids etc...)
-distorting our unemployment figures
-putting existing paid jobs at risk
-being used to makeup for a shortfall of skills in the public service due to the recruitment embargo ... read full story / add a comment

The astonishing tapes show senior manager John Bowe, who had been involved in negotiations with the Central Bank, laughing and joking as he tells another senior manager, Peter Fitzgerald, how Anglo was luring the State into giving it billions of euro. Mr Fitzgerald had not been involved in the negotiations with the Central Bank and has confirmed he was unaware of any strategy or intention to mislead the authorities. Mr Bowe, in a statement last night, categorically denied that he had misled the Central Bank.

The audio recordings are from the bank's own internal telephone system and date from the heart of the financial crisis that brought the State to its knees in Sept 08.

Anglo itself was within days of complete meltdown – and in the years ahead would eat up €30bn of taxpayer money. Mr Bowe speaks about how the State had been asked for €7bn to bail out Anglo – but Anglo's negotiators knew all along this was not enough to save the bank. ... read full story / add a comment

This year's G8 promises to be different for a number of reasons. G8s and G8 protests have, by now, become something of a ritual. One where each side already knows the rules of the game. The great and good come together to discuss how they might set the world to right, and the protestors outside condemn them for not doing it quickly enough – or not really intending to do it at all. Charity is promised to Africa, and folks like Sir Bob Geldof will proclaim that a successful G8 has been had. Other folks will throw bricks and bottles at the police, and feel that they have stuck a blow for the cause. What cause exactly is not always clear. The media have a field day – a morning glimpse of presidents and prime ministers, and then spend the rest of the day with the unwashed outside; hoping that they will start a riot – or, at least, do something that looks good on camera and will fill thirty seconds on primetime news. And the general public have a little bit of entertainment to lighten the daily drudge of work, or more and more commonly, unemployment. So why should the G8 Summit on the 17th and 18th of June 2013 be any different? ... read full story / add a comment

Call Out:
Come to the Rossport Solidarity Camp, Pullathomas, Co. Mayo for a week of action in June against Shell’s Corrib Gas Project. This week has been called to coincide with one of Shell’s busiest work times. Come to act in solidarity with the 13 year old campaign in Mayo against Shell’s Corrib Gas Project. The week will be jam packed with a wide variety of actions! There will be something useful for everyone to do, regardless of your experience and skills. The Rossport Solidarity Camp is being erected specifically for this week, and will be taken back down when the week is completed. So if you are planning on traveling to Mayo this summer – make it this week! ... read full story / add a comment

The central bank is planning changes to the Code of Protection on mortgage arrears, these changes will mean it will be easier for people to be counted as non co-operating and thus make repossession easier, please send the submission below to code@centralbank.ie or make your own submission and send before April 10th to ensure your opposition to this is taken into consideration, with 95,000 people in arrears because of this banking led recession, the people who are bailing out the banks need fairness, there is nothing fair in all powers of discretion, supervision and appeals being with the banks who will not consider the good of the person or common good of the country. ... read full story / add a comment

The EU bailout in Cyprus seems, on the surface to have taken on board some good ideas such as burning bondholders, capital flight controls, and much more limited small depositors state bank guarantee scheme, but does this stand up to closer inspection or have they just used these good ideas in a rather twisted way to further the same old financial terrorist agendas? ... read full story / add a comment

All the worry about Global Warming has tended to focus on carbon dioxide emissions but the real threat may be methane emissions.... In the past 5 years there have been major changes happening up in the Arctic. The annual summer melt of the sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean has greatly increased, exposing a much larger area to heating during the summer months which in turn has warmed the ocean enough that the frozen methane hydrates on and below the seabed are beginning to melt, causing methane gas to bubble to the surface. The trouble is methane is up to 100 times (over initial 20 year period of release) more effective than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and the estimated quantity of methane hydrates suggests the amount of carbon contained in them exceeds all the coal, oil and gas burned so far. And should the tundra melt in Siberia then the huge area of peatland will resume decomposing thereby emitting a very large quantity of carbon dioxide. This scenario would take us past extinction danger point which is reckoned for a rise of 6oCelsius or more would be close to certainty. ... read full story / add a comment

The Commandante is dead but the Revolution continues. If there is an afterlife then Chavez is in Valhalla.

He wrote, he read, and mostly he spoke. Hugo Chávez, whose death has been announced, was devoted to the word. He spoke publicly an average of 40 hours per week. As president, he didn't hold regular cabinet meetings; he'd bring the many to a weekly meeting, broadcast live on radio and television. Aló, Presidente, the programme in which policies were outlined and discussed, had no time limits, no script and no teleprompter. One session included an open discussion of healthcare in the slums of Caracas, rap, a self-critical examination of Venezuelans being accustomed to the politics of oil money and expecting the president to be a magician, a friendly exchange with a delegation from Nicaragua and a less friendly one with a foreign journalist.

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The anti-abortion movement was not cowed by the outcry over Savita's tragic death nor by the huge popular response marching in November. The Government plans legislation only to allow abortion when the woman's life is danger and the criteria for establishing that are not yet known. All opinion polls on the subject show a huge majority in favour of liberalisation of the laws -- a majority which is also rising over the years. The abortion rights movement has been publicly quiet for some time now while the opposition is loud and in public view. Can the movement for abortion rights summon the necessary militancy to achieve its objectives? ... read full story / add a comment

Press statement - Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes (CAHWT) 11 Feb 2013
Eyewitness reports of Garda violence at South Dublin County Council

19 year old protester hospitalised: plainclothes Garda ‘smashed my head on wall’

Campaigners against the property tax – who staged one of a number of peaceful protests at Councils today – have questioned why Gardai at South Dublin County Council used brutal and unnecessary force against them, including some plain clothes Gardai. Cannisters of pepper spray were also waved at locals who were manhandled and handcuffed. One is currently being kept in Tallaght Hospital for observation of his injuries. ... read full story / add a comment

An insight into prison life in Ireland, namely Castlerea Prison, Co Roscommon.

On 21st April 2010 I was convicted of assaulting a number of Gardaí in relation to Shell to Sea protests and sentenced to 6 months imprisonment. Remission for good behaviour means that prisoners will have their sentences reduced by a quarter, once you keep your nose clean. I was given credit for 2 weeks time served previously in 2009, before I was bailed out pending my appeal.

So I spent 4 months in jail from April to August in the summer of 2010. ... read full story / add a comment

Where we are on the 40th anniversary of joining the EEC.

This is part one of a two part series and the second article can be found here ... read full story / add a comment

Irish Referendum Practice from McKenna (1995) to McCrystal (2012).

This is part two of a two part series. To read the first article in the series you can find it here ... read full story / add a comment