The Handsome Jord

Canadian political-punk band Propagandhi played Dublin for the first time in five years on the 12th of December to a youthful and energetic crowd at the Temple Bar Music Centre. The band, known for the heavy political content of their albums and live shows, are touring to promote their latest album “Potemkin City Limits” their first release in over five years. After their show I talked with drummer Jord Samoleski about his life in politics and music.

Propagandhi have been quite busy in Winnipeg during their down time between albums with some band members helping to run their “G7 welcoming committee” record label and others involved in social justice work. Propagandhi are somewhat unique as punk-rockstars as they practice what they preach. All band members are vegans, in line with the band's strong stance on animal rights, and many are involved in radical social movements which they promote through their music.

Particpartory Economics | Propagandhi Wikipedia | Propagandhi’s Website | No-one is illegal | Canada-Haiti Action Network | Video distributed on their "Todays Empires..." album |

Alien Attack Repelled

Indy-Celebrations

After our hosting provider suddenly cut our database, on January 8th, we were plunged into crisis. We only ever raise enough money to pay our hosting bills and this was completely unexpected. We moved to a new server the following day, but soon realised that we needed a much more powerful system to keep up with the traffic volumes - the new server fell over immediately.

Happily, the indymedia community rallied round in no time at all. Thousands of euros came in through our online donation form, and more came through individual donations, cheques through the post and even from collections at protests. Altogether, within a week of launching our appeal, some €4000 came in - as large numbers of people put their hands in their pockets to keep indymedia online and to secure it's future.

Our techies got busy, and have built us an impressive new network of servers, whirring and buzzing away, scattered across the world, to ensure that the free media will keep on publishing. Due to this new infrastructure, and the huge show of solidarity that we received, we can now offer more features for contributors and readers. You can now publish audio files (up to 20MB) directly on to indymedia and publish PDF files too. In the near future we will be introducing extra features: a new encrypted server, giving users greater privacy in browsing and publishing.

Water Tax: Beaten in the South

A non-payment campaign has been launched by the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions through ‘Trade Unions Against Water Charges’. They advocate non-payment of the charges, which are due to be introduced in April 2007, as the "best way to overturn the Government’s proposals".

Their campaign also opposes any plans to privatise the Water Service. A leaflet urging the public to join the non-payment campaign will be circulated to every household in Northern Ireland. There will be those who wonder if everyone on the ICTU executive is happy about this initiative, who if wonder whether they will cave in to pressure to call it off if the British government makes the tiniest concession.

Union Non-payment site | NIPSA’s anti-water charges page | Congress: Don’t pay twice, it’s all right | SP: Politicians and Water Charges | SP: December 2006 article | We won’t pay website | WSM: Lessons from beating the water charges |

This is what Independent Media looks like.

William Hederman talks with the authors: 'The Rossport Five were back in the capital today for the Dublin launch of 'Our Story – the Rossport Five', their account of their time in prison in 2005 and the events that led to their imprisonment....

The five men – Willie Corduff, Vincent and Philip McGrath, Micheál Ó Seighin and Brendan Philbin – travelled to Dublin for the launch and press conference, along with Shell to Sea spokesperson Dr Mark Garavan and family members and supporters. Dr Garavan compiled and edited the book and wrote the introduction. The launch took place at Buswell's Hotel, opposite Leinster House. There was a strong turn-out of print and broadcast journalists and photographers.

'Our Story – the Rossport Five', which had already been launched in Co Mayo before Christmas, records accounts by the five men and their wives of the 94 days they spent in prison in 2005, as well as their roles in the campaign since 2000 against the proposed method of processing Corrib gas.

Philip McGrath and Mark Garavan are due to travel to Norway later this month to speak at a conference on how communities can benefit from natural resources.'

Rummy's Other Mission Accomplished

Justin Morahan notes the following points in his article on the trial of Saddam Hussein:

• Four defence lawyers were assassinated during the trial (two by alleged US/Iraqi collaboration)
• Four of the 5 original judges have either resigned or been killed
• The US spent hundreds of millions of dollars in support of the prosecution
• No confidential visits were allowed by defence lawyers to their clients and none at all until after the start of the first trial
• The Defence team was allowed only minutes to begin presenting its defence after the charges were made known on May 15th 2006
• Defence had to end its case within weeks but the Prosecution were allowed months
• Evidence was withheld from defence counsel.
• Defence lawyers were denied access to investigative hearings, denied prior notice of witnesses and denied permission to visit the scene of the alleged crime.
• Trial sessions were announced oftentimes without advance notice or consultation with the result that even the most experienced lawyers missed the hearings.
• Four of the five judges who started in the case were removed by publicly acknowledged US interference
• During the trial, George Bush declared that Saddam Hussein "will be" executed
• Transcripts of the proceedings were refused to defence lawyers.

and more....