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Human Rights in IrelandPromoting Human Rights in Ireland |
Dublin - Event Notice Thursday January 01 1970 Clare Daly T.D. to launch 'Mentioning The War: Essays & Reviews (1999-2011) by Kevin Higgins
dublin |
arts and media |
event notice
Monday March 19, 2012 22:21 by Over The Edge
DUBLIN LAUNCH of Mentioning The War by Kevin Higgins YOU ARE INVITED to the Dublin Launch of Mentioning the War - Essays and Reviews (1999 -2011) by Kevin Higgins published by Salmon Publishing YOU ARE INVITED
by indyreader Sat Jun 09, 2012 21:34
non-contrarian, it seems to me rather than blaming indymedia, you should join the SWP / IAWM and as a member, go along to their meetings and properly highlight your concerns directly with the groups themselves. more of the same Tom. Are you REALLY on the same side when all you ever seem to do is undermine it??
by wageslave - (personal capacity) Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:59 Tom
by non-contrarian Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:35
In her defence of "respected activist" Yassmine Mather , editor wageslave yesterday made the assertion that my "behaviour" in trying to "split the left" is consistent with the modus operandi of a paid agent provocateur . My reply was censored . Here it is again
by wageslave - (personal capacity) Thu Jun 07, 2012 18:55
Re: a few examples of articles onSyria :
by wageslave - (personal capacity) Thu Jun 07, 2012 17:36
Tomeile comes here to try to create divisions among the various groups on the left and foment trouble with his lies. He has a specific agenda to try and cause problems on this site and such behaviour is in keeping with the actions of a paid provocateur.
by non-contrarian Thu Jun 07, 2012 12:48
I posted a comment here yesterday . It was deleted by editors with the reason "troll" . A few minutes ago I attempted to post it again . It was taken down within seconds . Why ?
by wageslave - (personal capacity) Wed Jun 06, 2012 15:41
brought to you by Kevin "hypocrite" Higgins
by orwell fan Wed Jun 06, 2012 15:20
"His writing is overtly political in a way that draws comparison with George Orwell "
by reader Wed Jun 06, 2012 15:15
what's albanian for "load of self important bollocks" or "vanishing up your own arse"?
by Enver the Envious Wed Jun 06, 2012 12:53
I remember the British comedian Alexei Sayle interviewed some time ago -- on the Parkinson show I believe it was - about his years in the Maoist movement in the UK. In the seventies Sayle was a member of a British Maoist group that supported the hard-line Maoist orthodoxy of Albania's president, Enver Hoxha. Come rain hail or shine , Sayle and his extremely small band of comrades used to sell an "anti-revisionist" Maoist newspaper outside factory gates in the Liverpool area . Or rather not sell them – the papers were almost wholly subsidized from Albania, and according to Sayle, nobody in England outside of “the party” ever bought a copy more than once - most ended up being dumped. The copies that weren’t dumped were sent over to Albania - for reasons that only became clear to Sayle some years later after he quit the party. The comedian told Parkinson how mortified he had felt on seeing an articulate English-speaking Albanian refugee interviewed on the TV one evening. The dissident explained how, while in detention for anti-state activities, prisoners were regularly shown copies of the English paper that Sayle had been trying to sell to the “British working class” .As part of their compulsory “re-education” program, prisoners were told that the pro-Albanian Maoist perspective of the paper was typical of the views held by workers in England at the time.
by Over The Edge Thu Apr 19, 2012 23:40
Kevin Higgins's 'Mentioning the War: Essays & Reviews (1999-2011)' recently published by Salmon Poetry today featured in four Albanian national daily newspapers.
by Over The Edge Fri Apr 13, 2012 18:14
Dublin launch poster
by Over The Edge Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:12
One of the essays from 'Mentioning The War' is now available on the Irish Left Review |
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Jump To Comment: 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Kevin Doyle reviews 'Mentioning the War: Essays & Reviews (1999-2011)' by Kevin Higgins in the current issue of The Irish Anarchist Review, the magazine of the Workers Solidarity Movement http://www.mentioningthewar.blogspot.ie/2012/11/irish-a....html
Irish Anarchist Review - issue no. 6
Joe/Tom
For the record:
I didn't support the invasion of Libya. I have never supported Arming opposition / invasion of Syria.
I do think IAWM membership has been naive in their positions on Libya
I would personally welcome a statement about the position taken on Libya, about Madhi al Harati and his involvement in irish activist groups, and about the IAWM position on Syria. Can I be any clearer than that?
I did NOT run interference for pro Libya invasion forces on this site. Why would I considering I personally disagreed totally with that position. That's illogical. I actually petitioned that some of your posts addressing these questions be left up. I even posted personally to highlight the disgusting NTC murder of Gadaffi
When I personally hid your posts on this site, I did it because you were banned and deliberately making trouble on our site, not because I differed in my views. Please stop misrepresenting my position on these matters. you have been given plenty of leeway on this site by the very people you persist in posting smears and lies about.
I don't see us as political enemies at all. I personally agree with much of what you say. however I also think that activist groups need some positive support as well as the constructive criticism. Your posts were just relentless attacks, which could be easily mistaken for something else. Something the warmongers might post. Or something someone setting out to deliberately divide / damage a troublesome movement encouraging demonstrations and causing trouble at the airport the US military are using might wish to do.
Perhaps your manner of posting is part of what's causing the problem here. Would you consider altering it a little to get your message across? A spoonful of sugar and all that. I don't see why you can't make exactly the same points in a more constructive reasonable way without getting everyone's back up, and without triggering a hide. Win win scenario no?. Surely it's getting your actual message out that matters, not getting a dig in at all and sundry.
Wageslave, I’ve told you before that I’m not making personal attacks on anybody here . But, no, I haven’t “got” your bourgeois reformulation of this site’s original revolutionary intent : from an activist site dedicated to “the passionate telling of the truth “ into “an open publishing facility to the public so they can publish news stories on the web and get them read with minimal barriers, cost and effort.” Also, for me, this is a serious ,on-the-record discussion between political enemies, and not a “bun fight” . Let’s keep that discussion in the third person as much as possible.
Since he was exposed as an agent of the CIA last year, the IAWM has not published anything about Mahdi al Harati on its site . A picture of the CIA asset appears in the video still on the IAWM’s home page and there are many other videos on the site that also promote him as a genuine supporter - a respected activist !- of the anti-war movement. The IAWM refuses to discuss the role Al Harati played within the group despite being pressed to do so by myself and others both publicly and in email corespondence . Did his influence on the movement influence the IAWM’s decision to support the Libyan rebels last year ? Did his supporters on the steering committee have access to IAWM membership lists? Wageslave thinks that raising such matters constitutes an “attack on the Irish left” , but these questions are of vital importance for the Irish left as a whole , as well as for the personal security of individual members of the IAWM.
My criticisms are not of “naïve mistakes” made by the IAWM. I insist that the group consciously supported the right-wing Islamist forces that overthrew the Gaddaffi regime : its steering committee knew that the NTC to which these groups owed allegiance had been set up and financed by the CIA . The IAWM supported the NTC knowing full well that its official spokespersons had called for Nato military intervention in Libya as far back as February and March, 2011. Instead of exposing and opposing the war plans of Nato and its proxies , the IAWM distributed leaflets that called on the Irish government to recognize the NTC and demanded that its militias be armed and financed from Libya’s oil revenue .
When I tried to point out on this site that the IAWM had demanded Libyan assets - frozen at the behest of the US and its supporters - be handed over to the NTC so that they could "buy heavy artillery ", my posts here were censored . I was accused by the editorial board of being a troll trying to smear the IAWM . All through the Nato war , the IAWM portrayed the NTC lynch-mobs who were doing Nato’s dirty work on the ground as “revolutionary fighters” valiantly fighting a “hated dictatorship”. The Indymedia Ireland editorial board functioned as part of the anti-Libya disinformation campaign by consistently preventing criticism of the IAWM position appearing on the site and using every dirty lie in the book they could throw at the opponents of the IAWM's line in order to do so . Editors who now defend the naïve idealism of the IAWM are in fact as much attempting to portray themselves as naïve idealists and not censors , slanderers , liars and disseminators of Nato’s filthy war propaganda.
Had the IAWM leadership been a group of “naïve idealists” they would surely have shamefully admitted that they had made a huge mistake over Libya once they saw the results of the Nato war there. But , even after numerous, verifiable reports appeared in the media of racist atrocities perpetrated by “rebel”” forces whenever they seized towns from pro-Gaddaffy forces, the IAWM steadfastly continued to refer to the overthrow of the Gaddaffy regime by these racist cut-throats as the “liberation of Libya” by “revolutionary forces” . The IAWM site attempted to justify the brutal murder of Col Gaddaffy – a hideous crime carried out by cowards operating under the guidance and protection of US gunships - by saying that the deed “wasn’t done in cold blood” . Naïve idealists ? No, conscious twisters and liars in the service of imperialist slaughter.
Wageslave now argues that the IAWM steering committee , and by extension the Indymedia editorial board , are “naïve idealists” who are “engaged in worthwhile endeavours” , but that they were somehow “taken in by the lies and media spin more than they should have been” But it was the IAWM itself and its backers on this site's editorial board that were doing the most important lying and media spinning on behalf of imperialism . The IAWM , an organization whose eponymous role is to oppose war , repeated the lies and spin of the capitalist media in regard to Libya . The only website in Ireland that had been expressly set up to counter the spin and lies of the warmongers and the corporate media is this one .Throughout the war on Libya , Indymedia Ireland’s editorial board played a sweeper role for the Irish Anti war Movement’s steering committee , deflecting and censoring all criticism of the “humanitarian “ hands-off-the-people-of-Libya line that was adopted by the IAWM . This hands-off-the-people line had been worked out previously in relation to Iran – imperialism’s ultimate target in the region. Search the IAWM website for any statement made by the group during the course of the Nato war that said “Hands Off Libya” and you will not find one .Search for a Hands Off Syria statement by the IAWM and you won’t find one . This is what you will get :
- Solidarity with the people of Syria demanding an end to Assad regime
- End the violent repression now
- Western backed intervention and proxy war against Iran is no solution
Search for a Hands off Iran statement and you won’t find one and never will on the IAWm site , because the line for the humanitarian left must be Hands Off the People of whichever country Nato has in its sights on . Who decides what constitutes”the people” of any of these historically oppressed nations ? Why , the historically nations’ historical oppressors of course - with the aid of their faithful , humanitarian left .At the end of the Nato war on Libya , as the Al Qaida flag was being raised over Benghazi , and as the torture , murder and mass expulsions of Libya’s Africans intensified, it was time for the IAWM to turn its attention to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Syria , where coincidentally Mahdi al Harati had turned up to defend the Syrian people . The naïve idealists of the group’s steering committee could hardly have been expected to know at the time that Syria was an important ally of Iran and the next country on the US State Department’s list for regime change .Could they?
JoeMc / Tom, I'm glad you have posted information on madhi al harati.
But comments posted, however informative, while under a ban for persistently breaking our rules are immediately hidden. Hence previous hides.
Also, It is misleading to imply it was the information presented that resulted in the hides. It was more to do with the manner in which it was presented, who was doing the presenting and the perceived motivation for the comments.
You fail to mention who was arguing for leaving up your comments on madhi al harati on indymedia lists. It was actually myself. Rather strange behaviour coming from your nemesis eh Tom? However the other editor had a good point in that you seemed to be using the post to try to damage the Irish left, IAWM, IPSC etc., All very worthwhile endeavours in my book. Yes, Mistakes were made on Libya / Syria by some people involved in certain groups on the left who were taken in by the lies and media spin more than they should have been, and arguably they should have taken a more cynical line on what was going on, but then again, such is the nature of idealists that they sometimes naively believe that human nature can't possibly sink to the levels of nasty sociopathic behaviour that the US imperialists and their cronies / client states frequently do.
But I think they can be forgiven for this. It's indeed hard to accept that fellow humans can act in such underhand ways towards their fellow man. However unless you can offer hard evidence that particular groups have been infiltrated then you should desist from posting harmful smears. Such behaviour is divisive and destructive to fragile movements. Also, as another poster has suggested, you should actually join these groups and take these matters that seemingly concern you so much up at their meetings rather than just posting smears here
Thanks again for misrepresenting our position on Libya / Syria.
I'll spell it out one last time.
Nobody here supported an invasion in Libya and Nobody here supports an invasion in Syria nor the supply of arms to violent dissidents there by the US and client states nor the transport in and use of paid / mad jihadist armed mercenaries to destabilise any country to further the aims of imperialists.
We think people like Madhi Al Harati who assist the CIA agenda while posing as activists are despicable human beings. In general, we think all agent provocateurs and their handlers are despicable human beings and should be outed (but only if there is hard evidence)
Nobody moderating here works for this state or any other state. We are just volunteers here to offer an open publishing facility to the public so they can publish news stories on the web and get them read with minimal barriers, cost and effort.
Got it?
If you break our rules persistently and attack the volunteers here in a personal manner (as you have) then you will be banned and all your posts, good bad or otherwise will be hidden for the duration of the ban.
Got it?
Now why not join the fight against what's wrong in this world instead of relentlessly attacking those trying to do something about it Tom. If you genuinely care then please try to work with us to get the information out. And please stop these stupid bunfights and this useless vendetta against our site ok?
Wageslave says that I post editorial comments on the site knowing that this is not allowed. That is true, but she will also know that I have tried to bring my concerns to the editorial lists on many occasions only to have the board use scurrilous lies they invent about me to justify not responding to me.
As recently as February the Indymedia editorial board was censoring materials critical of the Free Syrian Army . In January the board censored comments that correctly linked the CIA asset and IAWM activist ,Mahdi al Harati , to atrocities committed by the Free Syrian Army . The ed board stood over the deletions of comments about al Harati’s role with the following accusation levelled by editor Mark Grehan against those that exposed the activities of Mahdi al Harati .
” It can be argued that the story was planted there to destroy the credibility of the Left in Ireland and groups like the IAWM and the IPSC. Certainly the story is being used this way,”
Grehan’s argument won the day on the editorial lists ; the IAWM and the Indymedia site got spared another bit of trolling- which, after all , was coming from somebody who was a notorious “stalker pervert” and “Mossad agent” .
The following item on wsws today reports on the agenda of the Free Syrian Army - of which the Libyan /Irish CIA asset Mahdi al Harati is a leading member - and whose bloody work the Indymedia Ireland editorial board has so stoutly defended :
Houla massacre carried out by Free Syrian Army, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/syri-j13.shtml
"If an anti-trolling law was in operation in Ireland , it could be the way to deal with indymedia's resident troll ."
very funny! considering it's coming from "indymedia's resident troll sbu"
Clare Daly launch speech now available on Irish Left Review
Thanks for bringing the thread back on subject . I just had a quick read of Clare's speech, which I found to be quite fair and not authoritarian in any way . Hopefully there is some reconciliation going on between the Galway bard and his former party ? I will respond to Ms Daly's speech later , but would like to add what I hope will be seen as a constructive comment on the other matter raised on this thread .
Websites will be legally obliged to provide victims with the identity of people who post abusive and defamatory online messages about them under plans outlined by the UK Government yesterday .
According to Sky News today , the plan would see internet service providers given greater protection from being sued if they help to identify trolls. As the law in both the UK and Ireland stands at the moment, website operators are liable for defamatory material that appears on their sites - even when they disagree with the content.
UK Justice Secretary , Ken Clarke said when introducing the UK anti- trolling plan yesterday ,
"Our proposed approach will mean that website operators have a defence against libel as long as they comply with a procedure to help identify the authors of allegedly defamatory material."
If an anti-trolling law was in operation in Ireland , it could be the way to deal with indymedia's resident troll .
Attached is the text of Clare Daly's speech at the launch of 'Mentioning the War' at the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin on Wednesday.
Clare Daly speaking at Dublin launch of Mentioning the War
text of speech by Clare Daly T.D. at Dublin launch of Mentioning the War 0.17 Mb