As the year draws to a close, we highlight some of the news stories that made it to the pages of Indymedia during the year. We are certainly living in "interesting times" as old the Chinese curse goes! Events in north Africa and the middle east related to the "fake arab spring" remained in the headlines and also as we head into 2013 the Irish economy is still saddled with enormous burden of debt by a criminal layer of developers, bankers, politicians and an international financial elite dictating to government and the promise of many more austerity budgets to come which will have the effect of stripping away all the social safety nets. ... read full story / add a comment

Our political parties are at it again. They can't seem to stop. They are rezoning land in areas where the County Manager has already strongly opposed it and as usual FF councillors are at the forefront with FG very close behind. You would think that something might change after FF has led this country to economic ruin and has saddled everyone with debt that has nothing to do with them, restarted emigration and condemned the young, old and sick to cutbacks and poverty for an indefinite period with no end in sight. It all just goes to show the huge democratic deficit in this country and the fact that these self-serving political parties and their developer friends don't give a damn about anyone, the environment or our common future. And so we feel it is important to featurize this local but important story below.

Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown councillors are to vote on a murky rezoning project near Tibradden in the Dublin Mountains on December 10th, which breaches the county development plan and national policy, as well as policy on siting of facilities for older people. Most crucially it breaches the current limits of the no-building areas in the Dublin / Wicklow Mountains, which are a vital amenity for the whole community.

To date a majority of local councillors have been in favour, against the advice of the planners and even the County Manager - but have not explained their reasons for voting yes to this development. It will create a "retirement village" cut off from library, churches and other community contacts: perhaps isolation facility would be a better term. Despite all the scandals, it seems to be "business at usual" over at DL-Rathdown... ... read full story / add a comment

Two demonstrations have been called in light of this tragic death
Pro-Choice Ireland have called a demonstration for 6 o'clock this evening Wednesday 14th November outside Leinster House.
Action on X in conjunction with Galway Pro-Choice has called a candle lit vigil for this Saturday the 17th of November beginning at the Garden of Remembrance at 4 o'clock .

UPDATE: "NEVER AGAIN" are holding a protest at the Dail, Kildare Street, Wednesday, November 28, 2012 6:00pm see HERE

31 year old Savita Halappanavar died last week after being denied a termination after presenting with a miscarriage. Having originally presented at the hospital with a back pain on October 21st, it was discovered that Savita was miscarrying. She was 17 weeks pregnant at the time.

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The Children's Referendum is being held on Saturday, 10th November 2012.. There are lots of YES posters up but it seems few people really know anything about this referendum. What is it about? Indymedia have put this feature together to help people see and access some of the arguments.

The main article here is campaigning for the NO vote but there are also links to other articles which have taken a critical look at the new wording and what the potential ramifications are and these are linked here. We encourage readers to become familiar with them so that they can make a better choice on Voting Day. ... read full story / add a comment

Paper given at the First Annual Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi Day School, at the Dublin Offices of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, 33 Gardiner Place, Dublin, on the 20th of October, 2012.

The "Arab Spring" and The Seduction of the Western Left

I wish to claim, in this paper, that the invasion of Libya set a new precedent in the co-option of Western Left into imperialist adventurism. Following the work of Jean Baudrillard, I will claim that the method used was the age old method of seduction.

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€1,600 billion. That is the figure for Irish Oil & Gas reserves already licensed revealed this morning in a detailed report from Shell to Sea using the energy corporations own reports and estimates. People in Ireland will see almost no benefits from this incredible wealth because the Irish state gives these reserves to the corporations at the cheapest terms in the world. ... read full story / add a comment

Things on the global Police State front get more frightening and ominous by the day. This latest announcement serves to underline that. The FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars. It is known as the Next Generation Identification (NGI) program. This report comes from Russia Today (rt.com) and quotes an article in New Scientist magazine. The project itself was announced back in 2005 and was part of a project to upgrade the existing Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America. ... read full story / add a comment

Abstract: For most progressive activists, it is a given that the military-industrial complex is a clear and highly visible barrier to progressive social change. So it is particularly interesting to note that a number of groups involved in progressive activist education – which are held in high regard by activists – maintain strong links to military and political elites. One of the best known of these organisations is the US-based Albert Einstein Institution. This paper will provide a systematic analysis of the history of this Institution, and the key people associated with it, and demonstrate how their work is intimately linked to the international democracy-manipulating community – whose work is exemplified by the US-based National Endowment for Democracy, a group which is well-known for its support of the failed 2002 coup in Venezuela. This analysis will expose the crucial role such activist educators play in catalysing revolutions in countries deemed appropriative for regime change by transnational elites. In the light of the dubious nature of these educational activities, this paper will conclude by offering a number of suggestions for how concerned citizens and educators may counter the cynical (ab)use of activist education by political elites as a new and powerful tool of imperialism. ... read full story / add a comment

On 29th July we interviewed Fionuala Cregan on the Paraguayan crisis, its background and the Latin American context in which it takes place. She is based in Argentina and works with the Latin America Regional Office of Church World Service. She has also written for the Irish Times on Paraguay and has extensive research on the impact of agribusiness on Paraguayan peasants' lives. She has been a long term supporter of LASC. The views expressed here are her own. We hope that this interview will give a better insight into the developments in that country. ... read full story / add a comment

"Is there a safe way to frack? Probably: but not profitably; and
certainly not within the geology of a little emerald isle. "
- Greg Palast, investigative Journalist ... read full story / add a comment

Charles Taylor’s sentencing to 50 years’ imprisonment on 11 counts of war crimes is undeniably momentous. However, with Sierra Leoneans still suffering abject poverty and remaining in dire need of aid, it must be questioned for whose benefit the costly War Crimes Court really is, writes EMMA PURDY ... read full story / add a comment

As the leaders of the global diamond industry gathered in Vicenza, Italy for the annual meeting of the World Diamond Council, Palestinians remained trapped in a surreal nightmarish existence under the cosh of a diamond-funded, nuclear-armed belligerent regime: "The Israeli forces used [taser guns] and I have bruises on my arms and legs. I saw them open a protester's mouth by force and spit in it, and they spit in my face as well. While being under custody, a police officer of Ramle district addressed both me and another female activist while being cuffed with verbal sexual harassment, threatening to rape us. I have to admit I burst in tears ." ... read full story / add a comment

At 4.30am this morning the Occupy Galway camp was forcibly removed by Gardai and Council workers. At 1pm we held a public assembly with around 100 people in attendance. The mood at the assembly was one of determination and optimism and it was agreed by all that the fight is only just getting started! ... read full story / add a comment

A political struggle in a European nation of less than three million, largely ignored by other socialists in Europe, has nevertheless come to the fore in the capitalist media repeatedly since the late 1960s. This has been largely as a result of the the Basque people’s struggle for socialism and independence from the Spanish and French states, a struggle led for decades by Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the marxist armed organisation better known by its acronym, ETA. The organisation reawakened Basque national consciousness, has worked with others for the restoration of Euskara, the Basque language, organised Basque workers and faced the repression of the General Franco dictatorship in the Spanish state. Famously, in 1973 it assassinated the Prime Minister of the state, Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s right-hand man, which hastened the fragmentation of the dictatorship and its passage to partial democracy.
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Once again we are being asked to vote on yet another EU treaty. This time it is the Fiscal Treaty otherwise known as the permanent austerity treaty. Most of the people of Europe are against this treaty and they are once again relying on us although as usual most of the governments of Europe are for the treaty because well they represent the people in power -the large banks, corporations and financial elite in general. As we know they call the shots these days in every country and it has got to the stage where "investors" will lend money to governments and charge a nice rate of interest too and in this way they get to decide how much they will allow governments to spend on luxuries for the middle class and poor like health, education, social welfare, pensions, water and sewage etc. And since the financial crisis they have come to the realization that none of this is neccesary. In fact the only arms of government really required are the police, army, courts and prisons.

Anyhow in this feature the folks from People's Association Watchdog have done a really good job in going through the Fiscal Treaty line by line and doing alot of other research and analysis to discover and explains what it really means. And don't forget if enough of us vote No, the government will be back to give us plenty of more chances to vote Yes, just like they did with the Nice Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty.

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Occupy Galway took part in a protest march over the weekend along with many other groups at the Labour Party conference held in NUIG Galway. Here are some photos from the event ... read full story / add a comment

For the past six months and longer once Libya had fallen to the NATO sponsored 'rebels', we have faced a continuous media onslaught about Syria with reports of protests, shootings, killings, attacks, bombing and so forth. The backdrop to the narrative is that this is part of the Arab Spring which started last year and it is a good thing overall. So many people are probably wondering what really has been happening, given that this is the same media that was cheer leading the Iraq war almost 10 years ago even though at least a million+ are now dead as a result. And yet somehow they want to imply that they are doing the right thing now. We should also recall that this is the same media that is promoting austerity and encouraging us to accept the blame for the mad years of the bubble and as a consequence we should pay up the €90 billion bailout and in the process see all the state services stripped to the bone. They are presenting the uncomplicated truth surely ... read full story / add a comment

“There was a big line of them" ... read full story / add a comment

Israeli Apartheid Week is an annual international series of events held across the globe. The aim is to educate people about the nature of Israeli apartheid against the Palestinian people and to build the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement locally and globally. Last year, IAW took place in over 60 cities across the globe and this year the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (http://www.ipsc.ie) is proud to again host a series of events in Ireland. ... read full story / add a comment

Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist was born in 1944 in North Dakota on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. He is the 11th child of 13 children and from his early years suffered racism and brutal poverty at the hands of US government and its officials. ... read full story / add a comment