Hundreds demonstrated today against Fine Gael’s worrying proposal to make Irish language education optional, and no longer compulsory.

The demonstration was kicked off at the main gates of Trinity College at lunchtime, and so was witnessed by large crowds of sympathetic spectators as well as participants.

Hundreds marched to the headquarters of Fine Gael, to shouts of “Fine Bearla.” When the group arrived at Fine Gael headquarters, party leader Enda Kenny emerged to address the crowd. He received jeers from the crowd when he told them that removing the Irish language requirement would actually help the language. In an act of dispcicable cowardice he then fled from the crowd when someone from Ogra na Gael got up to speak.

Some observers such as "Fear Bocht" are unimpressed:

There is nothing intrinsically progressive about Irish; in fact the cultural snobs and elitists have often used it to look down on the working class. Nor has it anything especailly republican about it; I'll think you'll find Wolfe Tone did not have a word. For those who want to speak it, learn it and teach it, all facilities should be given but compulsion did not and will not work.

Extract: An idea or rather an image bubbles up in my head of a human being held in one of the prisons for captives in the “War on Terror” - their sense of self slowly disintegrating under the pressure of uncertainity, torture and fear. I try to articulate what I think about Guantanamo. My heart is pounding and I am stabbing the air with my finger.

Meanwhile the same lackey is continuing to repeat his demand that we condemn Republican violence. This is absurd. I had expected grubby debating society tricks, oily pragmatism and weasel words but I wasn’t ready for such lazy contempt and a sheer inability or unwillingmess to argue for the merits of his decision on refuelling at Shannon.

Unexpectedly one of the retinue makes a coherent point about the plight of the Kurds and I begin talking to him. Bertie is still looking up and down the street though and his prayers are answered in the form of a beetroot faced man with a bristling moustache, a stocky little black dog and more than a couple of jars inside him.

The subject of this opinion piece submitted to Indymedia Ireland is Anjem Choudary (also known as Omar Bakri Muhammad), a Muslim cleric who was born in Syria, participated in the 1982 revolution against the Syrian Ba'athist regime and was later given political asylum in the UK. He spoke at a debate in Trinity College on Thursday night. Choudary is well known for his extremist Islamic views and was leader of Al-Muhajiroun, an organisation whose eventual goal was to prepare the way for a global Islamic theocracy.

Choudary's remarks pointed out something in blunt terms which anti war campaigners have been saying since 2001, when it became common knowledge that Shannon was being used as a refuelling base for US warplanes. He said that "if you allow Ireland to be used to refuel US warplanes which are going on bombing raids, what do you expect the reaction of the Muslim world to be? This is not neutrality. It is better for the Muslim world to tell you this reality, so we can change this situation, and to make sure what is taking place in other countries will not happen here in Ireland." His remarks were in the context of his argument that Ireland is open to attack by terrorist groups, because of its support for the Bush administration's war on terror.

"The CW5's 2 main statutory defences to the charges were ruled out as 'inadmissible' this morning by Judge Donagh McDonagh, who was then rather suddenly forced to 'pull the plug' and send the jury home after his relationship with a certain Mr. Bush was revealed to the Court by defence counsel."

With the above words the Anon Court Reporter starts this, his 9th and last for this round, court report. Since it seems the judge forgot to order that the reasons for the collapse of the case be kept out of the media (as was done when the first trial collapsed) all the gory details are included in full. Also included below are links to Anon Court Reporter's exemplary day by day blow by blow reporting of the case

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5
• Days 6 & 7
• Day 8 report
• Feedback: Jury would probably have found CW5 not guilty

An attempt to look at the Paris riots, with more questions than answers.

The last seven days have been interesting. Here at home there was a large gathering of union workers protesting against the casualisation of labour at Irish Ferries, who plan to lay off Irish workers and employ Eastern Europeans at lower wage rates in their place. In Argentina, demonstrators opposed to the exploitation of Latin America by multinationals clashed with riot cops at the FTAA summit, providing the now familiar unwelcome mat for Dubya. Undoubtedly the focus was on Paris however, as it entered its second week of rioting after two teenagers were electrocuted to death fleeing from police.

Already there is revisionism happening in left circles regarding the events of the last eleven days in the banlieues of Paris (and now further afield). Several commentators and newspapers in France have been drawing comparisons between the rioting in depressed districts of the city with the student and general strike in May/June 1968, while others sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and speaking up in favour of rights for Islamic communities in the aftermath of the War in Afghanistan have been calling it "the French Intifada". Both of these paralells are flawed. The soixante-huitards may have been involved in street clashes with the CRS, but these clashes had an explicit political dimension and statement behind them; and even the tactics used differ markedly from those on the streets of Paris now. Nobody is denying either that the situation of the mostly Black and Arab families is grim, but to suggest that it is equivalent to the oppression suffered by the people in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip is complete hyperbole.