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Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

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Human Rights in Ireland
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Lockdown Skeptics

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offsite link Best-Selling Hybrids Face Net Zero Ban From 2030 Tue Dec 24, 2024 15:42 | Will Jones
Some of Britain?s best-selling hybrid cars will be banned from sale after 2030 under a?Net Zero crackdown?proposed by Ministers, including the mild hybrid versions of the Ford Puma, Range Rover Evoque and VW Golf.
The post Best-Selling Hybrids Face Net Zero Ban From 2030 appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Experts Call For Return of Lockdown-Style Social Distancing as Flu Surges, Claiming ?a Fifth of Thos... Tue Dec 24, 2024 13:46 | Will Jones
Experts?have issued an urgent call for lockdown-style social distancing ahead of Christmas Day amid surging flu infections, claiming that a fifth of those infected have no symptoms but can spread it.
The post Experts Call For Return of Lockdown-Style Social Distancing as Flu Surges, Claiming “a Fifth of Those Infected Have No Symptoms But Can Spread It” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link J.K. Rowling Leads Backlash Against Sturgeon for Claiming There Was No Public Opposition to Gender S... Tue Dec 24, 2024 11:23 | Will Jones
J.K. Rowling has led a feminist backlash against?Nicola Sturgeon?after she was accused of ?rewriting history? over the gender self-ID law controversy by claiming there was no public opposition until "forces muscled in".
The post J.K. Rowling Leads Backlash Against Sturgeon for Claiming There Was No Public Opposition to Gender Self-ID Until “Forces Muscled In” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Science Shock: CO2 is Good for the Planet, Peer-Reviewed Studies Suggest Tue Dec 24, 2024 09:00 | Chris Morrison
Dramatic evidence has been published in a number of recent science papers that CO2 levels are already?'saturated', meaning little or no further warming is to be expected and rising CO2 levels are all beneficial.
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offsite link Whoever Rules Britain Is Going to Be Unpopular Tue Dec 24, 2024 07:00 | Noah Carl
It isn't so much that the Tories are getting more popular as that Labour is getting less so. Which illustrates a more general predicament for the Tories and any other party that might have aspirations to government.
The post Whoever Rules Britain Is Going to Be Unpopular appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?113 Fri Dec 20, 2024 10:42 | en

offsite link Pentagon could create a second Kurdish state Fri Dec 20, 2024 10:31 | en

offsite link How Washington and Ankara Changed the Regime in Damascus , by Thierry Meyssan Tue Dec 17, 2024 06:58 | en

offsite link Statement by President Bashar al-Assad on the Circumstances Leading to his Depar... Mon Dec 16, 2024 13:26 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?112 Fri Dec 13, 2024 15:34 | en

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Poppies: Patriotism and pyromania

category international | anti-war / imperialism | other press author Friday November 11, 2011 19:33author by pat c Report this post to the editors

James Turley writes about the criminalisation of those who have burned poppies and elaborates on the imperialist agenda behind the whole remembrance charade. Those who fell should be remembered but not to glorify imperialism.

It is that time of year, again, when the world is colonised by plastic poppies. No establishment luminary will be seen in a public forum without one of these slightly naff trinkets pinned to his or her lapel; and thousands more people around the country will likewise sport the designated symbol of remembrance for the war dead.... .

More troubling is the fate of three Northern Ireland teenagers, about whom little is known except their ages - two are 17 and one 16 - and that they were pulled up before Coleraine magistrates court, charged with ‘incitement to hatred’. The 16-year-old also faces charges relating to ‘improper use’ of a social networking site, thanks to his publication of damning visual evidence of the ‘crime’ on Facebook....
Remember, remember ... the imperialist slaughter
Remember, remember ... the imperialist slaughter

The poppy appeal is not simply about commemorating the dead, however. It is about our dead - it is about a hundred years, give or take, of British history, during which ‘our brave boys’ (and girls) have been massacred in two truly apocalyptic wars, as well as picked off in countless relatively minor scuffles provoked by the decay of the empire.

The poppy ideology is, in fact, a bait-and-switch; the very real generalised empathy of the population to those who paid for capital’s rapacious drive to war with their lives is mobilised to support the very same institution - the state - which feeds the meat into the mincing machine. Like all ideology, it is participatory: the annual ritual of pinning the poppy to your lapel seals the compact, just as a few words of mumbo-jumbo transubstantiates cheap wine into the blood of Christ. The British Legion’s orgy of emotional blackmail, which complements the whole thing - pictures of gravely wounded soldiers and bereaved families all over the tube - does not hurt, either....

Related Link: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004614
author by serfpublication date Fri Nov 11, 2011 23:16author address author phone Report this post to the editors

The real nub of this is that the poppy campaign is used to indirectly help finance the current imperialist war machine.
Money they might otherwise have to fork out for looking after the victims of their escapades is paid by the public instead, leaving their coffers free to finance the next invasion and the killing of more cannon fodder economic conscripts and many anonymous brown people and their families who have the misfortune to be living near oilfields and other natural resources or strategic routes..

I think one poster put it well on this thread:
https://www.indymedia.ie/article/94848

"I think the very last guy from WWI died recently...
the money you collect in your tin won't really do anything for him or his comrades. All it would do is help "externalise" the expenses of compensating ex soldiers from Iraq, Afghanistan etc who were "unpatriotic" enough to be shot but not to die. Don't you think governments have learned anything from corporate behaviour at all??

By wearing the poppy you help to support any recent imperialist military adventures that such sociopathic politicians choose to engage in. And sadly, it's obvious that all the things that the poor tommy or paddy thought he was battling in the awful hell of the trenches for, have been subsequently taken away from his children by their corrupt governments by strokes of the pen.

The poppy is truly the most cynical insult to the ideals of those who fought in the trenches"

author by Pop Epublication date Sat Nov 12, 2011 10:30author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I really think the vast majority of people dont know that the money is goin to all the modern day veterns, lovely fellas like the paras who killed on bloody sunday, the sas etc. Is it worth havin a bit of a joined up awareness campaign on this???  It is one thing that gets on my goat this time of year.  And there is nothin worse when some idiot tells me, that we have to respect other peoples tradition as if the poppy is a protestant/orange symbol, since when did imperialism become a tradition. Is facism a tradition, that should be remembered equally? The vast majority of people in those wars did not want to be there, and were there because of poverty, it was not a valiant liberation struggle but the carvin up of power amongst the elites of the world, simple as.   

Anyone up for settin up an 'anti-war' poppy awareness stall where these brit legion fcukers are sellin these things

 
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