Photo taken from IVAW.org

As many as 100 veterans of the recent U.S. army involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan will give public accounts of their experiences on the ground, at an event organised by Iraqi Veterans Against the War from the 13th to the 16th of March, in the U.S. federal capital Washington D.C. The hearing will coincide with the 5th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and will precede a series of actions and protests taking place accross the U.S. on March 19th [1].

Liam Madden, a sergeant in the Marine Corps from January 2003 to January 2007 who was deployed to Iraq, Kuwait, Thailand, Japan, and Korea and during his last year co-founded the Appeal for Redress [2], a campaign of service members demanding that congress halt the war in Iraq, said that veterans and civilian survivors of both conflicts will give public testimony and share eyewitness stories that have been censored from the American public about the true cost of these wars.

The hearing is called Winter Soldier and is the second such event to take place in the U.S., the first having been in Detroit in 1971 where Vietnam veterans publicly recounted their own negative experiences. Many Vietnam and WW2 veterans who are involved in the Veterans for Peace Campaign are endorsing and actively supporting Winter Soldier 2.

Related Links: Review of the Winter Soldier Movie | Winter Soldier Site

Masked Poets Seem to be unstoppable in Shannon Warport

wags and activists may be unseen and silent in modern ireland
but na filid gather crowds to hear their message even in 2008 Shannon

“O come all ye travellers & give ear to what I say:
Where do you go and why, upon this St Bridget’s Day?
… Let me carry my tale
To the horrors that lie here,
Here, here, behind the veil.
How many planes
Full of captives in chains?
Where will they go?
To the cages of Guantánamo?
Will government try
To discover where and why?
… What would Bridget have said, had it entered her head
That this would be the destiny of the land where she lies dead?”

The Shannon Rhyming Subversives

bridgets_day_leaflet.jpg 0.14 Mb

CIA Rendition Plane N71PG at Shannon 3 Dec 2007

A first-hand account of a meeting of the Department of Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday 19th December to discuss the issue of Extraordinary Rendition (the transport of abducted prisoners for the purpose of torture in another country) through Irish air-space.

Related Links: Wikipedia Article on Extraordinary Rendition — Extraordinary Rendition stories on Indymedia Ireland

Muriel Lesters block access to the London headquarters of Lockheed Martin

Well apparently they weren't all Grannies,

......but they were definitely ragin' in the best nonviolent sense and it certainly was an interesting demographic that kept knocking on the London Catholic Worker (LCW) door the previous night. Knocking for a meeting that was down at the Catholic Worker cafe. So my humble role of redirecting more militant traffic in the direction of the last fine tuning meeting remained constant.

Rummy Doesn't Want You To Come and Seed Protect Your Precious Bodily Fluids, instead.

'Route Irish', a feature length verité/essay film on the campaign(s) against Irish facilitation of the US/UK Invasion of Iraq, is now available for bittorrent download. The torrent file is available for download at this torrent link: Route.Irish.DivX.avi.torrent. Please seed the torrent as much as you can for as long as you can.

You can find detailed information about the film and some high resolution screenshots from it here. This is the first time a feature length Irish documentary has been distributed primarily through P2P technology and it needs your help for it to work out. You can also help the film on its way by spreading the word that it is available for downloading beyond the Indymedia Ireland community. The file fits neatly onto a CDR. Burn it and spread it around that way too. Continue to the rest of the article for assistance if you are unfamiliar with the use of bittorrent and need some help to download.