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Anti-Empire
Human Rights in IrelandIndymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
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Website / newspaper / journal / web based media updates: Feb 8th - Feb 15th national |
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press release
 Sunday February 15, 2004 11:10 by Indymedia Ireland Editorial Group - Indymedia Ireland
 This page contains information on updated websites, new issues of journals and newspapers, videos available on the net etc. A similar page will be published each week. Please add your information here. Include direct links if you have them, or details on where the print publication is available, if not. This is not a normal newswire page and has different editorial rules. It will stay at the top of the wire no matter how many stories are published in the meantime. It is also designed as a pointer to other sites, so please do not (a) post full articles, or (b) add comments that don't consist of information on new content in the paper/website/whatever. This means that comments on who did what to whom, which party got more votes, what you think of a particular author or article, whose hamster was eaten by Freddie Starr , or anything else, will be hidden. If you are upset by an article linked to, you can add a comment or an (original and more-than-a-single-line) article as a standard newswire story. This is a page for links and updates only. The normal practice of hiding links to sites that are racist, discriminatory etc. will be followed. |
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Comments (33 of 33)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33The Socialist Party and the Belfast Airport Workers reply to slurs
In November, Sean Smyth, former member of the SWP made serious and completely untrue allegations on The Blanket website, about the striking airport workers in Belfast and the Socialist Party. Replies to these slanders have been written by the Socialist Party and the Airport Workers. These replies, as well as Sean Smyth's original article can be read at:
http://www.socialistparty.net/
DES MOINES, Iowa - In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists.
....
"This is exactly what people feared would happen," said Brian Terrell of the peace ministry, one of those subpoenaed. "The civil liberties of everyone in this country are in danger. How we handle that here in Iowa is very important on how things are going to happen in this country from now on."
But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's "Yoda"—a balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to national security.
....
The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America.
Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islands—waves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses.
Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe.
Yesterday, February 3, Detective Jeff Warford of the Polk County Sheriff's Office-FBI-Joint Terrorism Task Force came to Catholic Peace Ministry's office here in Des Moines with a subpoena for me to testify before a Federal Grand Jury next Tuesday, February 10. Mr. Warford also served papers on Elton Davis at the Catholic Worker House and Patti McKee, who was coordinator of Iowa Peace Network until last month. The Grand Jury process is shrouded in secrecy. We do not know who or what the object of this investigation may be, beyond "possible violations of federal criminal law in the Southern District of Iowa."
The proceeding will be behind closed doors. We may not have an attorney present. We have the right to plead the Fifth Amendment, refusing the answer questions that might incriminate us. The government, then, can offer us immunity from prosecution, in which case we will obliged to answer under threat of contempt of court and could be imprisoned for the length of the Grand Jury session, 18 months, should we continue to refuse to answer. This immunity would be limited to our own testimony and anything any of us say could be used against the others.
Whatever is going on, this is definitely an escalation on the part of the government's war on dissent and clamp down on civil liberties. The fact that anything that we three and the peacemaking communities we represent could possibly attract the notice of a "Terrorism Task Force" is reprehensible. Please spread the word, express concerns you have with Federal and Polk County authorities. Keep us in mind and prayer.
more at link...
Brian Terrell
Executive Director
Catholic Peace Ministry
''The 72 year old Baron Hutton of Bresagh, County of Down, North Ireland, is a classic representative of the British ruling establishment. A member of the Anglo-Irish elite, he was educated at Shewsbury all boys boarding school, and then Balliol, Oxford, before entering the exclusive club of the British Judiciary. Whilst British
Judges are overwhelmingly conservative, upper class, white, male and biased, Hutton's background is even more compromised.
His name will be familiar to residents of the Six counties of Ulster. During the bloody thrity years war Hutton was an instrument of British state repression, starting in the late 1960's as junior counsel to the Northern Ireland attorney general, and by 1988 rising to the top job of Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
Hutton spent his career as Judge and Jury in the notorious northern Ireland kangaroo 'Diplock Courts'. These were special non-Jury courts, condemned by human rights advocates for their miscarriages of justice. He was hated for this role by the families of the many innocent catholics wrongly convicted here.
Hutton distinguished himself after the Bloody Sunday massacre of civil rights protesters in 1972. He played a key role in the ensuing judicial cover-up called the Widgery Inquiry which absolved British troops of Murder. This miscarriage of justice is only now being investigated by the current Saville inquiry.
Then in 1978 he represnted the British Government before the European Court of Human Rights, defending it against a ruling that it abused and maltreated detainees from the conflict.
However, he will be remembered in the rest of the UK for his role in the 1999 Pinochet affair. Another senior Judge, Lord Hoffman had contributed to the decision to arrest and extradite the notorious former dicator of Chile and mass murderer General Pinochet during his visit to Britain.''
For Download and Distributation in and around Dunrdum...
Airfield, Bin tax and an arsehole local councillor..
Zipped file (551kb) http://www.geocities.com/antrophe/thebridge.pdf.zip
Unzipped file (2070kb)
http://www.geocities.com/antrophe/thebridge.pdf.pdf
(unzipper thing can be downloaded at http://www.winzip.com/downau81.cgi?winzip81.exe)
Amnesty International
Press release, 28/01/2004
Since November 2002 there has been a dramatic rise in the number of people detained or sentenced for expressing their opinions online or for downloading information from the Internet in China. According to Amnesty International's records, by January 2004, 54 people had been detained or imprisoned for such activities - a 60 per cent increase on the November 2002 figures. In addition, an unknown number of people remain in detention for disseminating information about the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) over the Internet.
"We consider them all to be prisoners of conscience and reiterate our calls to the Chinese authorities to release them immediately and unconditionally," Amnesty International said today, publishing its latest report on the control of the Internet in China.
Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath has said he hopes that Palestine could eventually become a member of the EU.
"In highlighting the socio-economic profile of ICT users, rather than PC ownership or Internet access, this analysis complements the CSO's [Central Statistics Office's] recent report on our Information Society," said Minister Hanafin. "The finding... that almost three-quarters of people in the 'higher professional' bracket are ICT-proficient, in contrast to 15 percent of people in the 'unskilled manual class' category, best illustrates the societal challenge we collectively face in terms of achieving a fully participative Information Society."
Dear Mr McDowell,
I write to you to express my disquiet at the deportations of migrant parents of Irish citizen children.
My plea supports similar please by migrant and migrant support organisations and by the groups organised under the CADIC umbrella as well as by the Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission has noted in a recent statement that prior to the Supreme Court decision of January 2003, the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform had a procedure whereby families of Irish children could apply for residency. The HRC also noted that many of those families who had been in the asylum procedure, abandoned their claims on advice that they could rely on their application for residency. Those families were advised, often by government officials as well as lawyers, and legitimately expected that they would be able to remain and raise their Irish child in Ireland. Now many families who lawfully applied for residency are having their applications returned to them and are being told that they will not be processed any further.
more....
New issue of Bad Subjects.
BAD SUBJECTS
Marxism & Theory Issue
This issue of Bad Subjects is not so much about re-thinking Marx as it is grounding our understanding of the world not only in a materialist, historicized method, but also in the more general reminder that Theory (poststructuralist post-Marxism) cannot nor will it ever be able to transform for the better a world that we're seeing day by day slipping into barbarism. Rather, the essays collected here question a locatable power of capitalism to push for the maintenance of true democratic rights. They collectively form a critique of those who formulate a utopian power-is-nowhere-and-resistance-is-everywhere Theory where any type of cultural phenomena, from playing music to the film Jackass become forms of social and political critique and resistance. The issue includes essays by Frederick Aldama, JC Meyers, Mrinalini Chakravorty, Manuel Yang, Robert Soza, Elizabeth Krassnof Levy, McKenzie Wark, and an interview with Saskia Sassen.
To read Bad Subjects issue 66 on Marxism & Theory, go to
Recent Bad Subjects issues include:
#65 Protest Cultures []
#64 Panic []
#63 Iraq War Culture []
.
NY Times
http://tinyurl.com/38cef
In a withering critique of the Bush administration, former Vice President Al Gore on Sunday accused the president of betraying the country by using the Sept. 11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq.
"He betrayed this country!" Mr. Gore shouted into the microphone at a rally of Tennessee Democrats here in a stuffy hotel ballroom. "He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place."
http://www.ireland-information.com/irishmusic/cocklesandmussels.shtml
- - - - -
Exploitation is the Price of Cheaper Food, Says Oxfam
by Cahal Milmo
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0209-02.htm
Global retailers, including British supermarkets are, systematically inflicting poor working conditions on millions of women workers to conduct price wars and feed ever-rising consumer expectations of cheap produce, Oxfam said yesterday.
A study of employment conditions in 12 countries which supply items from jeans to gerberas to international brands such as Walmart and Tesco found that the largely female workforce in many suppliers is working longer hours for low wages in unhealthy conditions and failing to reap any benefit from globalization.
Women in developing countries are estimated to occupy between 60 and 90 per cent of the jobs in the labor-intensive stages of the clothing industry and the production of fresh fruit and vegetables destined for supermarket shelves in Europe and America.
SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS AND INTELLIGENCE
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/02/020904.html
An Air Force study of the Iranian government that was co-sponsored by the National Security Agency shows how U.S. intelligence agencies are making use of "social network analysis," a social science research tool, to inform their products.
In social network analysis the patterns of social interaction are subjected to rigorous examination and modeling, beginning with questions such as: Who knows whom? Which individuals and groups interact with one another and on what terms?
Social network analysis provides a useful way of structuring knowledge and framing further research. Ideally, it can also enhance an analyst's predictive capacity.
"Correctly interpreting a social network assists in predicting behavior and decision-making within the social network," wrote Capt. Robert S. Renfro, II and Richard F. Deckro of the Air Force Institute of Technology.
"The ability to understand and predict behavior of members in a social network allows the analyst to evaluate specific courses of action that will influence the members of a social network in a desirable manner."
- - - -
also read:
Richard F. Deckro
http://en.afit.af.mil/ens/deckro/
the paper:
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/socnet.pdf
The International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON Some 40 rejected asylum seekers, mainly Afghans, in the tiny Pacific island state of Nauru recently suspended a hunger strike. Some had sewn their lips shut to protest the detention of 280 people who have been dumped on the island over the last two years and denied asylum.
They are being held under Australia's "Pacific Solution," which bars asylum seekers arriving by boat from gaining access to Australian territory. Their fast - which ended only when a team of Australian doctors said they would visit Nauru to evaluate the strikers and the Australian government agreed to review their cases - highlights the desperation of rejected asylum seekers who face either detention or forced return to danger or repression in their home countries.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A United Nations (news - web sites) team arrived in Iraq (news - web sites) on Saturday to assess whether it will be possible to hold elections before the United States hands sovereignty back to Iraqis mid-year, as Iraq's majority Shi'ites have demanded.
"I hope the work of this team will help resolve the impasse over the transitional political process leading to the establishment of a provisional government for Iraq," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) said in a statement from New York.
The United States says there is not enough time nor enough security to organize polls before the planned June 30 handover of power. It wants to let regional caucuses chose a provisional government, which would rule until full elections in 2005.
Ciaran Ennis, also head of marketing at IBM's pan-European sales and marketing centre in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin, said that events such as the Iraq war were not linked to any lobbying by the ACCI.
"Issues of a political nature are not something for the chamber - we concentrate on trade issues," he said.
Both the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and the Tanaiste, Mary Harney, reiterated during the Iraq war that the risk of adverse trade investment decisions by US-based companies were a prime reason for allowing US military aircraft to refuel at Shannon.
"I'm not going to comment on that one specifically," said Ennis. "But there are certainly issues which have their origins in political events and end up having an impact on commercial ones.
The Feb 10th edition of ISV - our irregular online international news bulletin - is now up at http://www.socialistparty.net/pub/pages/intr10-02-04.htm
Articles include:
The Hutton Report: War Crimes and Whitewashes
Iraq: Still No Exit Sign
Venezuela: Workers Struggle Against Reaction
Britain: The Respect Convention & the Socilaist Party
Iran: Massacre Provokes Widespread Strikes
Lenin: The Original Dictator?
Review: BBC2's The Key
The Socialist Youth site has also been updated with various articles, and the SY Election Manifesto for the UCD Student Union elections.
http://www.socialistyouth.cjb.net
'Brief news:
Nikiforos Diamandouros, the European Ombudsman, has criticised the European Parliament for failing to control smoking in its buildings efficiently. The Ombudsman underlined that "in view of the possible adverse health effects of exposure to smoke, the European Parliament should pay particular attention to the need to promote effective compliance with its internal rules on smoking". He added that the exposure of staff to smoke in the workplace might raise the issue of legal liability. '
In a shuttered J.C. Penney store here, more than 500 job recruits sat at long tables and leafed through packets of information. John Watson, a staffing supervisor for Halliburton Co., welcomed them with a somber introduction.
"I'd like to start out by saying we've already had three deaths on this contract so far," he told the workers, who had signed up to support the U.S. military in Iraq. "If you're getting any pressure from home, if you have any doubt in your mind ... now is the time to tell us. We'll shake hands and get you a plane ticket home."
By the end of that early January week, four of every five recruits would be packing to leave for a one-year stint in Iraq. There, in the largest mobilization of civilians to work in a war zone in U.S. history, they drive trucks, deliver mail, install air conditioners, serve food and cut hair.
By Michelle Goldberg
Pay For Subscription Required
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/11/cointelpro/index_np.html
Free *FULL* reprint at
http://tinyurl.com/ytgjb
Feb. 11, 2004 | The undercover cop introduced herself to the activists from
the Colorado Coalition Against the War in Iraq as Chris Hoffman, but her real
name was Chris Hurley. Last March, she arrived at a nonviolence training
session in Denver, along with another undercover officer, Brad Wanchisen, whom
she introduced as her boyfriend. The session, held at the Escuela Tlatelolco, a
Denver private school, was organized to prepare activists for a sit-in at the
Buckley Air National Guard Base the next day, March 15. Hurley said she wanted
to participate. She said she was willing to get arrested for the cause of
peace. In fact, she did get arrested. She was just never charged. The activists
she protested with wouldn't find out why for months.
Chris Hurley was just one of many cops all over the country who went undercover
to spy on antiwar protesters last year. Nonviolent antiwar groups in Fresno,
Calif., Grand Rapids, Mich., and Albuquerque, N.M., have all been infiltrated
or surveilled by undercover police officers. Shortly after the Buckley protest,
the Boulder group was infiltrated a second time, by another pair of police
posing as an activist couple.
Victory!
by kos
Tue Feb 10th, 2004 at 19:36:56 GMT
I've received word from Iowa that the federal subpoenas against Drake University and Catholic Peace Ministries have been withdrawn.
I'll provide more details as they emerge.
Update: At least two of the four subpoenas against protesters were withdrawn.
RESPECT -
an acronym for Respect, Equality, Socialism, Environment, Community, Trade Unionism - is a new left wing party founded recently in England. Supporters and founding members/organisations include George Galloway MP, Ken Loach, SWP, ISG etc etc
It will contest the European Parliament Elections in Juen 2004.More information @ its new website :
http://www.respectcoalition.org/index.php?sec=1
If you have information relating to Iraq which you believe might be of interest to the U.S. Government, please contact us through our secure online form. We will carefully protect all information you provide, including your identity.
To help us confirm and act quickly on your information, you must provide your full name, nationality, occupation and contact information including phone number. This allows the U. S. Government to grant rewards for valuable information.
We will maintain strict confidentiality.
Read and sign the petition against this shame
The text of petition:
To: The Norwegian Nobel Committee
We, the Undersigned, ask to the Norwegian Committee to ignore the nomination of Mr Bush, President of the United States of America, and the Prime Minister Mr Blair to the Nobel Peace Prize: we not only condemn their outrageous action and behaviour, considering unacceptable the manipulation of truth in order to justify the attack launched against a defenceless population and reject their lies spread as irrefutable truth – which are destroying thousands of innocent lives-; but we cannot accept the adduced grounds as well, to legitimate the obscene nomination, that is to say “The courage shown leading a war without the UN support”, a motivation that should be deprecated, not rewarded.
The war against Iraq set a very dangerous precedent: to turn this criminal deed into a necessary step on the path towards peace, might cause the increase of war lords’ ambitions of expansionism and omnipotence, and be interpreted as an implicit permission to keep on pursuing their illegal and inhuman aims.
So, we strongly and firmly oppose this nomination and ask to the Norwegian Committee to conscientiously ponder a decision and actually look for someone who really deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, someone who, for example, daily risks his/her life helping poor-sick-oppressed people everywhere, and send a clear message of hope to whom still tries to believe in the real meaning of the word PEACE.
You can sign the petition here:www.petitiononline.com/nobel369/petition.html
Computer files containing personal information on every transatlantic traveller will be passed by airlines to the US anti-terrorism authorities, under a deal agreed between the EU and the US.
The US will be given extensive information including credit card details, e-mail and home addresses, travel plans and personal phone numbers as part of the battle against terrorism.
With John Kerry way ahead in the Democratic race in the US - here comes the dirt. Pretty lame but it should get better.
Hutton on Guy Fawkes:
"As for the lighted taper in his hand, I am persuaded that Mr Fawkes' explanation, that he was lighting his pipe, is to be accepted. The wisdom of his action is no doubt open to question. But it is undoubtedly the case that the large number of barrels stacked against the walls partially, if not wholly, obscured the NO SMOKING signs. Questions regarding the contents of these barrels are, of course, beyond the scope of this inquiry."
J V P Whittle
Coca-cola (and Pepsi) is also infiltrating the Zapatista community in Chiapas. We are told by neo-liberal media that the Zapatistas are engaging in voluntary capitalism, yet we question whether the Zapatistas are aware of the health risks from drinking the refined sugar product. There is also the question of water rights, if Coca-cola attempts to claim ownership of their water, does this allow them into the Zapatista autonomous zone?
''What do you get when you mix Koyaanisquatsi, video of the G8 riots in Genoa, an Adbusters attitude, and the words of John Zerzan and Källe Lasn? The result would be Surplus, a new film from Sweden that is making the film festival circuit and could soon be headed to a radical film night near you. Surplus could accurately be described as an anti-capitalist film that is critical and irreverent towards authority, even some of our favorite anti-authoritarians like John Zerzan. With a bouncing techno soundtrack and cut up video montage editing, this film wouldn't be out of place on the big screen of some trendy urban dance club. Gandini creates some jarring and amusing juxtapositions in several sequences where comments from Zerzan and Lasn are substituted for the words of George W. Bush and Fidel Castro. The film does include some interesting words from Castro, but his “rice and bean” utopia in Cuba is criticized several times in the film. U.S. Leader, George W. Bush, is presented as the fool that he is. Scenes from the spectacle of the Western world are contrasted to scenes showing workers at a ship salvage yard in India. One famous person familiar to geeks, Steve Ballmer from Microsoft, is shown in several scenes as some beserk, screaming capitalist out to motivate his geek troops.''
Official Site with cool video downloads...
Surplus: Terrorized into being consumers
http://www.atmo.se/?pageID=4&articleID=382
Welshpool 'Nazi pub' story untrue
A journalist for the New Statesman magazine who caused a row by claiming to have witnessed a gathering of neo-Nazis in a mid Wales bar has admitted the pub does not exist.
Freelance journalist Jack Jameson, who wrote the article headlined Weimar in Wales, told BBC Wales it was a composite of many pubs and that it was not meant to be taken as a news story but rather as "an allegory"
Full story at:
Iraqi prisoner comforting his son