An anarchist response to Ireland on Sunday

national | summit mobilisations | opinion/analysis

Tuesday February 10, 2004 17:05

by James O'Brien - WSM

Last Sunday, Feb 8th, Ireland on Sunday published a scare story about anarchism and the forthcoming EU protests. Below is a reply.

This is a reply to the article about anarchism and protesting against the EU in Ireland on Sunday (February 8th).. Apologies for the detailed nature of the article, but since it manages to include so much falsehood, scaremongering, exaggeration and half-truths in 3 pages I think it’s necessary that a substantial reply is made.

I talked to Ms Tynan on the phone, asking her whether she would answer questions about her article. She wanted them in writing and agreed that using the comment facility on indymedia to reply would be “fair enough”.

The story was lacking in balance. It made no attempt to inform the reader of basic anarchist ideas, such as the importance of freedom, the necessity of social justice, why coercive authority needs to be challenged, particularly in the form of the state and capital.

Though you wouldn’t know it from IoS, anarchists are involved in a hell of a lot more than protesting rather pointlessly against big institutions. You’ll find anarchists working in the Trade Unions, Food not Bombs, anti-war activity, Reclaim the Streets and the anti-bin tax campaign, and much else. We also produce our newsletters, magazines, and have our own websites. A libertarian socialist society is only possible with mass participation and anarchists are therefore committed to working to achieve that. We operate in an open manner simply because we want our ideas to reach as many people as possible. This openness is at odds with the impression that the IoS gives of one of “plots” and “shadowy groups”. These things are the figment of Ms Tynan’s (or her sub-editor’s) imagination.

My own organisation, WSM, has been around for 20 years and is known to anybody involved in trade unions and radical politics. The Dublin Grassroots network, involved in organising demos on Mayday and other events, contrary to a policy of plotting and conspiring, just had an open meeting where anybody could come along and participate.

The nitty-gritty:

In the first part of the article which she co-authored with Priscilla Lynch, Ms Tynan wrote that “anarchists held an extraordinary meeting last week to fine-tune plans to bring chaos to the streets of Dublin on May 1”.

This is simply false. In fact the meeting was what it said it was: a social night for anarchists, friends, and interested parties to have a chat and relax in an informal setting. Part of the social night was a discussion and that there was nothing “extraordinary” about this is evident from the fact that ‘Bad Thoughts’ discussion evenings have been held before and will be held in the future. A quick check through the indymedia archive would have established this.

The topic being discussed changes on each occasion, previous subjects have included a discussion on the media(!) and the involvement of anarchists in social struggle and the anti-bin tax campaign in Dublin. Future discussions will be held on combating racism and other topics of interest to anarchists. These discussions are never planning or organising meetings. They are fairly informal events where anarchists can discuss various issues without the pressure of coming to decisions. When anarchists in Dublin wish to organise something we do so in planning meetings.

On the night in question, the discussion was about the Black Bloc tactic. The discussion has no bearing whatsoever in the planning of any protests for Mayday. Ms Tynan and Ms Lynch turned an abstract theoretical discussion about the nature of black blocks where no plans were made, never mind “fine-tuned”, into one of detailed planning.

The authors regularly state that they “infiltrated” or “penetrated” the meeting which she calls an “inner sanctum”.
This is arrogant, dishonest nonsense.
The evening was an open one, the advert stated “all welcome”. After the initial discussion, which lasted about an hour and a half, Ms Tynan approached several individuals and spoke to them for some time. All these individuals knew Ms Tynan was a journalist. They knew because she told them so. This is clearly not infiltration. The word, if it means anything at all, means that one becomes part of a group and gets information without their knowing your true purpose. But the repeated use of the word carries a sinister meaning: it conveys the sense of a conspiratorial event, it implies that the information that the reader gets is hard won and that the group would not be happy with it being public knowledge. The same applies to the use of words like “plot”, “spine-chilling”, “inner sanctum”, “chaos” and “penetrate”.

If Ms Tynan managed to join an anarchist group and attend internal meetings, then perhaps she would be justified in her use of the term “infiltrate”. Instead she had done the equivalent of going to the Savoy cinema, buying a ticket to Lord of the Rings and then boasting how she “infiltrated” the Savoy.

Anarchists are not ashamed of our political views. We regularly hold public meetings where anybody can attend. Needless to say we won’t be put off by gutter journalism in holding more. We have internal ones for organising and open ones for reaching out to a wider audience. The fact that Ms Tynan and Ireland on Sunday conflate the two, despite the clear description in the advert that all were welcome and that it was an informal social evening, indicates that they are either grossly incompetent or dishonest or both.

The article contains a number of falsehoods about the role of Chekov Feeney.
Chekov is not the main organiser of either any protests that might happen in May nor, for that matter, of the anarchist social evening. He had no part in the latter and has a small role in the former: that of setting up a couple of email lists.
While Chekov is an anarchist militant active in many areas, the authors have picked one area where he is not the main organiser or co-ordinater. This assertion appears to stem from the fact that the author had talked to Chekov. But obviously, in the real world, talking to a journalist isn’t sufficient to make anybody the main co-ordinater of anything. Perhaps in the fantasy world of Ireland on Sunday things are different.

Chekov had explicitly informed Ms Tynan that the first organising meeting involving anarchists in relation to EU protests were had not yet taken place and that no media spokespeople or co-ordinaters were chosen. Obviously if the meeting hadn’t taken place yet, then nobody, including Chekov, could be the co-ordinater.
Ms Tynan states that Chekov has been in contact with the Wombles, a group in the UK. Again Chekov said this was rubbish: “I am not coordinating the Irish operation. In fact, although several coordinators were appointed at the planning meeting in the Teachers club on February 7th - well after Thursday’s social which Ms Tynan attended - I was not one of them. I have also never been in contact with any member of the Wombles and have never claimed to anybody that I have.”
He also said that Ms Tynan made the quotes attributed to him up.

The writers manage to convey the impression that Richard Boyd Barrett and Rory Hearne were snubbed by not being invited. It is gratuitous to drag the names of two people from an entirely different political persuasion into a scurrilous article, thus vaguely associating them with meaningless trouble and indiscriminate violence. For the record no personal invitation was proffered to anyone, including any anarchists, and secondly there is no reason to think that either of these two gents would have much interest in attending an anarchist social night, unless, perhaps, the opening discussion was about Trotskyism or something similar.

I have little knowledge of the Wombles, but given the exaggerations used in the rest of the article, I doubt that they are “vicious” or have “strong links” with ‘terrorists’. Ms Tynan doesn’t actually back up these claims; what exactly is their link to the Kurdish PKK? Where did she source this claim? She doesn’t say, she doesn’t provide any evidence for the claims. This is unacceptable journalism.

But it’s easy writing and it’s necessary if one’s objective is to create a sensationalist atmosphere which facilitate the sales and therefore the advertisers. Hence the repeated use of words like “chaos”, “plot”, “infiltration”, and the insertion of falsehoods such as Chekov’s contact with Wombles. Look how easy it is to write unsubstantiated scaremongering shite: “It has been reported that Deirdre Tynan, a journalist with Ireland on Sunday, has links with the Omagh Bombers. She is planning to write articles to promote their evil agenda in the future.” Such claims are patently rubbish, without foundation and utterly lacking in evidence and no doubt would be upsetting to the subject if made without the disclaimers. They should never be made without the capacity to back them up. But Ms Tynan and Ireland on Sunday are happy to forgo providing inconveniences such as facts and simply use this level of logic in their articles.

The anarchist scare story has been used increasingly in recent times. After the Gardai rioted on Dame Street after the RTS in May 2002, the press constantly speculated about the prospect of violence at subsequent Reclaim the Streets events. They went off peacefully and true to form took the shape of a party where good humour prevailed.

The most striking example of a scare story was about this time last year when GNAW called a non-violent demo at Shannon on March 1st. Various groups got into a frenzy about the prospect of non-violent direct action and between them and the media a sort of hysteria was created which fostered the impression that a violent day was in store. Nothing of the sort ensued.

There are exceptions to this type of reporting; for example Paul Cullen’s report in the IT of the September 2002 RTS was fair and Deglan de Breadun’s (sic) managed to keep more of a cool head than his colleagues around March 1st.
But unfortunately the tactic of scare story isn’t going away. Perhaps it makes a nice change from the diet of crime that the tabloid press regularly feeds the public. In any case the credibility of such predictions of mad, irrational violence must at this stage be at a very low ebb. While it is very easy to do an article on protests, hyping up the prospect of violence, one rarely sees an admission from the press in the aftermath that they were talking shite. But the hype that they create has repercussions. It creates a climate of fear that will likely lessen the popular support and involvement in protests and it serves to legitimatise a heavy-handed state response to such.

It should be noted that there is a strong possibility that Ms Tynan is aware of the untruthful and unfair nature of her article. During the anarchist social evening she said to a number of people that while she was sympathetic to anti-capitalist protesters, she was writing for a right-wing rag which was only going to publish one type of story: a hysterical scare. A number of people, with whom Ms Tynan conversed, reported that she confessed to being ashamed to writing for such an awful newspaper and asked for understanding from anarchists that she had to write crap articles in order to make a living.

This displays a disturbing lack of integrity in a journalist. Perhaps her editors modified her article, but this raises the question as to why she allowed her name to be used and to allow herself and her research to be knowingly used to discredit decent hardworking libertarians. It is ironic that the front page of the current Workers Solidarity deals with the very topic of journalists writing ridiculous scares about anarchism. It is even more ironic that Ms Tynan has said that she read it.

For those interested in some reasoned anarchist thoughts on the black bloc check out Red and Black Revolution 6 & 7. Articles on the web at
http://www.struggle.ws/rbr/rbr6/black.html
http://www.struggle.ws/wsm/rbr/rbr7/blackbloc.html
http://www.struggle.ws/wsm/rbr/rbr7/blackblocreply.html

Anarchist websites on the EU:
http://www.struggle.ws/wsm/eu.html
http://geocities.com/eufortress/

WSM site: http://struggle.ws/wsm.html
Current issue of Workers Solidarity:
http://struggle.ws/wsm/ws/2004/79.html
http://struggle.ws/wsm/ws/2004/79/bogeyman.html

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Comments (24 of 24)

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Drunk journalist says ethics belong in the 1960s

by Aileen

Tue Feb 10, 2004 17:12

sovietpop at eircom dot net

A conversation with Deirdre Tynan of Ireland on Sunday

A drunk women approached me at the Bad Thoughts meeting last Thursday. 'Listen, I need to talk to you, we need to go somewhere quiet, I cant talk here'. Here was a small upstairs room of a pub, which was filled with good natured anarchists chatting and drinking. I thought her furtiveness was a bit strange, but nevertheless, we sat down in a quiet comer. "The thing is" she said glancing nervously around her

"I feel awful, I feel terrible, I'm a journalist, I've been sent here to write a hatchet job, but I feel sympathetic to what you are doing. The article will come out on Sunday - I feel terrible. I write for Ireland on Sunday and I've been told to get a certain type of story, and I'm going to write it but there is nothing I can do. I have to pay my rent. I used to work for the Daily Mail in Paris. But I got sick of writing lies about Roma. It is so right wing. So I quit. But now I'm in Dublin and I have to write this story. But then all publicity is good publicity isn't it."

Well no, I told her. All publicity is not good publicity. If you write a story about violent anarchists it will have two effects. Firstly, it will mean that nobody will be interested in any alternative vision of the future we might have. Secondly it creates a climate of fear which allows the police and state to use violence against us. In Genoa, the press reported, in the days coming up to the protest, that there might be bomb attacks on the city. No such attacks materialised (because they were nothing more than police fiction). What did materialise was a situation in which the police felt free to gas, beat and ultimately shoot one of the protestors. So, no, all publicity is not good publicity. Ignoring my point, she continued, "the police are out to get you, they have been sending in press releases, they are getting trained by the PSNI. I feel so bad, what am I going to do?"

Well you need a personal ethical framework I said. "That's impossible," she said.

I told her I worked as a sociologist and we have professional ethical guidelines, one of which is that if you interview someone, you tell them first who you are. Couldn't you at the very least do that? Couldn't you at the very least not write lies? Couldn't you at the very least not take quotes out of context? Couldn't you at the very least report our statements. She didn't answer, except to re-iterate how bad she felt and that she needed to pay her rent. I suggested she should look at the NUJ ethical guidelines.

"Those don't apply anymore," she said. "Those are from the sixties." She had a brainstorm "I could take my name off the article?"

This bizarre suggestion indicated that her concern was more for her own good name, than for any damage her article would do, or indeed with any concern with the truth. Surprise, surprise, this lack of concern for the truth is evident in the article which finally appeared in Ireland on Sunday. She spoke of having 'infiltrated' a meeting whereas in fact, she attended a widely advertised and open public meeting. She spoke of hate-filled anarchists she met there, whereas in fact, she spent the evening talking drunkenly to many anarchists whose politeness and patience were stretched in the extreme by her continual concern with having to sell her soul in order to pay her rent. She spoke of plots, where there had been open discussions on a variety of political issues. She spoke of thousands of anarchist protesters, where there had been about forty at the meetings. I could go on.

Links between Wombles and PKK

by Badman

Tue Feb 10, 2004 17:17

This rather strange accusation, which would be obviously ludicrous to anybody who knows anything about politics, seems to stem from the fact that Kurdish communists were responsible for giving Winston Churchill his grass mohawk during the Mayday 'guerilla gardenning' protest a couple of years ago. The wombles were also on that protest.

By the same logic, anybody who marched in Dublin or Belfast last February 15th has close links to the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA since RSF and the 32 county lot both took part in that.

she's done her time with newsfox too

by D. Tynan's Ex

Tue Feb 10, 2004 19:04

check out on the companies references at http://www.pressetext.com/references.mc

and tynan's reporting on other papers is not too distant from the IoS rubbish.

no links with PKK

by a womble - wombles

Tue Feb 10, 2004 19:38

wombles at hushmail dot com

Hi,

I'm involved in the wombles and we have no links with the PKK. In fact our group wasn't even formed at the time of mayday 2000 when winston got his mohican, so it can't even stem from that. (we were formed in october 2000 after the prague IMF/World Bank summit).

There was an article about us in the London Evening Standard at the time of Mayday 2002 which among other lies untruthfully alleged we had links with the PKK. The Evening Standard, Daily Mail & Ireland on Sunday are all owned by the same media group and since the Evening Standard regularly write total bollocks about us, I guess their sister paper has just regurgitated some of these 'stories' without bothering to do any research of their own.

The tactic of guilt by association with terrorist groups is a classic one. Mud sticks.

Can someone paste the text of the Ireland on Sunday article up here. Would be good to know what they are saying about us.

To the Irish comrades: hang on in there! we get this shit from the press every Mayday, don't let the bastards get you down.

Love & Rage
Cholet.

Good response

by Jonah

Tue Feb 10, 2004 19:43

At the risk of being a complete madman, the girl might deserve something of a break.

First of all, the Anarchist response doesn't say whether the issue of her copy being changed by subs was discussed. I've written for newspapers where I have written one thing and the subs have changed it around, inserted words, headlines etc. in an effort to attract attention. Now maybe none of that was done, but at the same time the copy a journalist generates and the copy that makes it to the page are not necessarily one and the same.

Secondly, a lot of journalists write for publications with whose editorial line they strongly disagree with. In my time I've known a militant republican activist who worked for the Sunday Independent and a sub-editor in the Irish Times who was breathtakingly right wing. If journalists restricted themselves to writing only for publications whose editorial lines they agreed with, we wouldn't have much work. Ms Tynan could disagree strongly with the IoS editorial line and still work there. Pay cheques do not spontaneously mainfest themselves. And especially in an organisation like IoS, where journalists are treated very poorly, including journalists I know who left as a result, this bullying treatment might lead to writing the articles in a certain manner. All publications have their own house style. I used to work in a place that described the IRA as 'terrorists'. I don't believe they are, but I wrote them as such because that was the house style.

All that said, she doesn't sound innocent.

If the people involved feel strongly enough on this they should make a complaint to the National Union of Journalists, presumably Tynan is a member of the NUJ and certain allegations, like fabrication of quotations for example, are serious infringments of the NUJ Code of Ethics. I'd also point out that if the only action done is to post on Indymedia, no-one outside of the activist left is going to be aware of it, and no journalist is going to know that if they lie, they will be held accountable in a meaningful way.

One last point, simply by posting this you may have given Tynan her copy for this weekend's piece.

'Anarchists Threaten to Kill IoS Reporter'

http://archives.tcm.ie/downdemocrat/2003/03/04/story1060.asp

Mongolia no less.

Good response by the way. Be interesting to see if she responds.

Dear Womble:

by Badman - Indymedia Ireland

Tue Feb 10, 2004 19:59

The text of two of the three articles is at the below link. The third article has not been posted up.

Jonah: if you write lies (or allow your name to be put to an article that contains lies) you are responsible for them. I belive that several people pointed this out to the journalist on the night. I also believe that the article is being sent to all of the mainstream media. I also believe that legal action is being considered by certain individuals mentioned in the article.

Shit forgot the link

Tue Feb 10, 2004 20:04

Doh! There it is this time, my dear womble. And don't worry, we won't let this shit get us down.

Also, Jonah, complaints to the NUJ are on the way. By the way, you may have given the IoS pond-life the quote they were looking for. "According to a chilling and sinister message left on the anarchists' website [insert your quote here] but the heroic journalists of IoS will not allow ourselves to be intimidated by these evil hate-filled terrorists. However, in the light of these vicious threats, we demand that Minister McDowell acts immediately to give the gardai powers to lock up all of these self-proclaimed anarchists and throw away the key..." I can just see it now.

Have just read article

Tue Feb 10, 2004 20:20

Thanks for the link badman, hadn't realised it had been posted elsewhere and so didn't comment on it, as distinct from the response in my first post not wanting to write about something I hadn't seen. What a disgraceful article. 'hate filled' and by the way they're 'middle class' so it's okay to hate them said the no doubt hard as nails reared in the backstreets of Dolphins Barn journalist.

I'll cheerfully admit to having occasionally written things I didn't agree with for the sake of a paycheque, but I never wrote anything so twisted from the truth. Quotes taken off the internet as if they're solid and reliable sources. Good Grief. I'm beginning to wonder if a complaint to the NUJ would do any good. Perhaps you should contact this lot http://www.sfwa.org/, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Maybe she's in their Irish branch.

Bit disturbed to see Pat McKenna being quoted wondering about the poor Gardai. I'd be a little more concerned with the poor peaceful protestors who seem to foolishly wander into batons every now and again.

Still though, great to see Deirdre and the IoS remaining true to that great journalism principle. Afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.

aye

by p

Tue Feb 10, 2004 20:30

"Kurdish communists were responsible for giving Winston Churchill his grass mohawk during the Mayday 'guerilla gardenning' protest a couple of years ago"

aye. churchill ordered the gassing of the kurds in 1922. greatest ever briton indeed.

bush has his statue of him on a table in the oval office.

The third of the three articles

Tue Feb 10, 2004 21:39

MAY DAY MADNESS

WE INFILTRATE THE ANARCHIST GROUPS WHICH HAVE ALREADY BROUGHT TWO CITIES TO THEIR KNEES AND ARE NOW DETERMINED TO SPOIL EU ACCESSION DAY

ON THE face of it, it looks like just another of the thousands of pompous but otherwise' harmless messages that circulate among left-wing agitators and other disaffected groups on the world wide web every day of the year. But, looking closely at this e-mail, you find that what appears to be a call for peaceful protests in Dublin on May Day is, in fact, an alarming advertisement that has been placed on Internet links around the world.

The e-mail calling for a 'European day of action in Dublin on Saturday, May 1st' has been translated into at least 13 languages and has appeared on anarchist websites and internet links connected to terrorists in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, America and Britain.

The plan is as simple as it is frightening... to hijack the highpoint of Ireland's six-month EU presidency, when hundreds of dignatories and thousands of visitors will be in Dublin to mark the accession of 10 new countries to the EU.

On May 1, people from all over Ireland and Europe are expected to pour into the capital for a day of festivities that has been dubbed the 'Day of Welcomes' and will be launched with an elaborate fireworks extravaganza. It is this very carnival-type atmosphere that campaigners from across Europe, some with links to extremist groups, are intent on hijacking to bring the capital to its knees to highlight their objections to EU policies - knowing that the eyes of the world will be focused on Dublin.

The anarchists have even drawn up contingency plans, to use violence if the gardai adopt heavy-handed tactics similar to those used to curtail angry protesters at the G8 summit in the Italian city of Genoa in July 2001.

And Ireland on Sunday can reveal there has been no shortage of willing volunteers prepared to jump on this particular bandwagon in their pursuit of adrenaline-fuelled violence.

The word is out that Ireland is the place to be on May 1 and a series of meetings have already been held in Dublin and more are scheduled to take place in London at the end of the month.

IoS has penetrated the inner sanctums of some of these groups and our investigations have discovered that anarchists in Ireland have been in contact with a notorious London-based group called the Wombles who have a history of violence that has been used at a series of major summits.

Their Innocent sounding name, which conjures up images of the fictional characters who lived in Wimbledon Common, is a million miles away from the radical Ideology of the Wombles, a vicious British anarchist group with links to listed terror organisations.

History of violence at major summits

The Wombles is headed by London-based Alessio Lunghi, a 25 year old university dropout, who is just one of thousands of people who responded to the internet invite for a 'mobilisation to Dublin for May 1st against the EU bosses' posted in the Urban 75 electronic bulletin board and forum.

Lunghi (well known to London's Metropolitan Police) and his group are holding a meeting on February 28 in Kentish Town, London, to discuss their game plan.

The Wombles have a chilling track record of violence and vandalism. They are dedicated hard-core anarchists who earned their stripes dodging tear gas and plastic bullets in Seattle at the World Trade
Organisation summit in 1999. The resulting chaos saw a state of emergency imposed on the city.

In 2000, the Wombles were said to be responsible for the chaos which paralysed London. About 95 people were arrested and nine police officers were injured. The Cenotaph, a World War I memorial and a statue of Winston Churchill were defaced with graffiti and a fast-food restaurant was ransacked.

But the IMF and World Bank meeting in Prague in 2000 was the turning point for the radical group.

It's here that Lunghi, who has fluent Italian thanks to his wine-importing father, hooked up with Ya
Basta, a group of Italian anarchists with links to South American rebel groups and the PKK, Turkish, Kurd communists who have been placed on the EU's list of International terror organisations.

Amid the water cannons and police marksmen, Lunghi formed the alliance. It was a meeting of
minds and tactics: violent disorder targeted action, anarchy. Lunghi took what he learned to London. In
2001, rioters went on the rampage as the protest escalated into violence. As darkness fell, a group of
hard-core demonstrators turned their attention to the busy and unguarded Tottenham Court Road area. Militant anarchists intent on violence broke away from peaceful demonstrators and left a trail of
destruction.

More than 20 shopfront windows were smashed with rocks including those of several banks, Coffee Republic and Habitat. The rioters also attempted to set fire to a Tesco store,

And the man coordinating the Irish operation - Chekov Feeney - has confirmed he has been in contact with the Wombles.

His group, the Workers Solidarity Movement, may be trying to muster support to protest against 'all that is wrong with the EU as it currently stands: militarism, neo-liberalism, fortress Europe and the EU police state'. But the Wombles will have an altogether more sinister strategy.

Chekov told IoS: "There will be a significant number of international activists. And I can confirm that we have been in contact with the Wombles. We don't support violence but there are a small number of people already in Dublin who would be that way inclined."

The 27-year-old has put the ball in the Gardai's court and warns that the mood of the day will be dictated by their reaction.

"How the day turns out will depend on the Gardai. It's becoming more and more clear that the police often instigate the violence in the first place," he said.

A South American activist and a colleague of Chekov Feeney who attended the strategy meeting in a Dublin city centre bar on Thursday night, which IoS penetrated, said: "If the cops hit you, of course you have a right to hit back. If they attack, you just can't stand there."

The meeting, sometimes heated, which was attended by up to 30 activists, was called to discuss the use of 'black bloc tactics', adopted for protests in Genoa, Geneva and Seattle, where campaigners wear a mask to conceal their identity and form blockades.

Gardai have conceded that thousands of demonstrators will descend on Dublin and although publically they claim they are ready for any eventuality, secretly there are concerns that with their already overstretched resources, they will struggle to cope. One source said: "Not only do we have all the normal duties to deal with but we have to provide the security for 25 heads of state, cope with the tens of thousands of people who will be in Dublin for the celebrations plus the additional headache of protestors, some who will be hell-bent on causing trouble.

"If violence erupts as it tends to do at these events, things could get hairy. We do not have the experience of other forces, such as the PSNI, in dealing with riots and, although we have received thorough training, there is a big difference between theory and practice."

A source in the PSNI, a force with years of riot experience garnered from the sectarian conflict in the North, also doubts the Garda's ability to cope with the situation.

GARDAI ADMIT THEY WILL STRUGGLE

"I know the PSNI have offered assistance and advice but there is no comparison between an actual riot and a simulated one. You have to think on your feet and be able to hold your nerve - that comes with experience, which the gardai do not have."

The handling of the "Reclaim the Streets" May Day protest four years ago was the subject of formal complaints (still unresolved) after videotape showed several members of the public being assaulted by police.

Gardai are liasing with police forces around the world to ensure that known trouble-makers are kept out of Ireland. And the Defence Forces, whose role is to support the Garda, have confirmed 11,500 soldiers have been placed on standby.

Front page of Ireland on Sunday

Inside spread

stop the press!

by (O((o[___V_-_------_-_V___]0))O)

Tue Feb 10, 2004 21:48

mayday: the truth!

sundays exclusive!

Now that's what I call 'Bollocks"

by lefteria womble - wombles

Tue Feb 10, 2004 22:46

It hardly needs to be said, but I'm gonna say it anyway. The WOMBLES were formed after Prague (in October 2000) as a response to the use of surround-and-beat tactics by the UK pigs.

The idea was that a well-protected crowd - helmets, shields and protective padding - could confront the police riot and bust people (and obviously themselves) out of any police cordon.

NO weapons - our only weapons are our bodies and our minds.

So we didn't do Seattle. We didn't do Mayday 2000 (though many of the crew were present, as members of other groups or acting independently.

OK, we'll concede mayday 2001 - we were there, trying to crack open a police cordon in our "trademark" overalls and padding. We got a right kicking but managed to bust a thousand people out of the encircling police.

The aggro on Tottenham court road came long after we had left the scene, most of nursing injuries (the padding was good but not good enough).

As another wombles post says above, we get this every year in britland at mayday time. We got the blame for organising the gothenburg riots and also the anti-FTAA actions in Quebec too. If only we were that influential!

Don't let this put anyone off: the Associated Newspapers group (in the UK, the Hate Mail, the Evening Standard et al) have had it in for anarchists, and our group in particular since Day One. Remember it was the Daily Mail that called pre-ww2 fascist leader Oswald Mosely the future of Brit poltics.

We look forward to meeting all of you - on the streets, where we belong!

The Wombles didn't do Mayday London 2000.

by iosaf (the ipsiphi) {an elf}

Tue Feb 10, 2004 23:09

barcelona

we did.

Some of the wombles did Monopoly 2001.
we stopped World Bank meeting in Barcelona.
The wombles are family and squamily.
and so too are we.

& we are all coming to Dublin 2004.

Now I humbly suggest that the Irish establishment find the best way to do "the sloppy big hug", I have suggested the best way is to let it be just that "a sloppy big hug".
Mayday is "our day", London 2000 saw us transform westminster square into a garden and yes there were little problems mostly at the Trafalgar square end, but we did give the world an icon "punky churchill". And since then our techinques, our ideas, our websites have entered the global mainstream.

So let's all grow up (mostly over on the Garda/Independent news side)

Europe of 450,000,000 people is worth a sloppy big hug. MayDay is worth a bit of respect, because all of us together draw upon collective culture, experience and oh yes that "fine air of privelage".

NUJ Code of Conduct

by James

Wed Feb 11, 2004 14:00

Bluekingfisher's comment on the other thread is pretty damming, sounds like she's puts her hands up.
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=63353#comment61443

Anyway, from the 1960s:
National Union of Journalists
Code of Conduct
NUJ, c/o 9th Floor, Liberty Hall, Dublin 1 tel: 8748694 - fax:
8749250 nuj@adnet.ie

1 A journalist has a duty to maintain the highest professional
and ethical standards.

2 A journalist shall at all times defend the principle of the
freedom of the Press and other media in relation to the collection of
information and the expression of comment and criticism. He/she shall
strive to eliminate distortion, news suppression and censorship.

3 A journalist shall strive to ensure that the information
he/she disseminates is fair and accurate, avoid the expression of
comment and conjecture as established fact and falsification by
distortion, selection or misrepresentation.

4 A journalist shall rectify promptly any harmful inaccuracies,
ensure that correction and apologies receive due prominence and
afford the right of reply to persons criticised when the issue is of
sufficient importance.

5 A journalist shall obtain information, photographs and
illustrations only by straightforward means. The use of other means
can be justified only by over-riding considerations of the public
interest. The journalist is entitled to exercise a personal
conscientious objection to the use of such means.

6 Subject to the justification by over-riding considerations of
the public interest, a journalist shall do nothing which entails
intrusion into private grief and distress.

7 A journalist shall protect confidential sources of information.

8 A journalist shall not accept bribes nor shall he/she allow
other inducements to influence the performance of his/her
professional duties.

9 A journalist shall not lend himself/herself to the distortion
or suppression of the truth because of advertising or other
considerations.

10 A journalist shall only mention a person's race, colour,
creed, illegitimacy, marital status (or lack of it), gender or sexual
orientation if this information is strictly relevant. A journalist
shall neither originate nor process material which encourages
discrimination, ridicule, prejudice or hatred on any of the
above-mentioned grounds.

11 No journalist shall knowingly cause or allow the publication
or broadcast of a photograph that has been manipulated unless that
photograph is clearly labelled as such. Manipulation does not include
normal dodging, burning, colour balancing, spotting, contrast
adjustment, cropping and obvious masking for legal or safety reasons.

12 A journalist shall not take private advantage of information
gained in the course of his/her duties, before the information is
public knowledge.

13 A journalist shall not by way of statement, voice or
appearance endorse by advertisement any commercial produce or service
save for the promotion of his/her own work or of the medium by which
he/she is employed.

this means war

by golda

Mon Feb 23, 2004 00:16

basically all im saying is is that yes everyone has the right to protest etc etc,
but if these Womble fellas and other foreigners come over and start rioting and smashing up our city, you will not only have the Army and the Gardai to give you all a hiding, but the general Dublin public will take you all down as well. cause trouble IF YOU DARE, i for one will not let my city and home be damaged by these scum.

churchill mohawk

by sparky - woms

Mon Feb 23, 2004 23:58

dp_sparky at btinternet dot com

07971960678

the winston churchill "mohawk" was indeed done by a womble, for which he served a month inside.there was PKK graffiti on the statue at the time so thers your link!

Come on Sparky

by Hack Watch

Tue Feb 24, 2004 02:19

You can do better than that.

Sources would be a good start.

An explanation of how this alleged mohawker managed to be a member of a group that didn't form for another year would be good second steo.

There is INLA grafitti on the wall outside my house. Does that mean I have 'close links' to Dessie O Hare?

Eyewitness to Winston

by Joe

Tue Feb 24, 2004 11:36

I was actually there at the time about 5m from the statue. Old Winston was an obvious target but the person who put the Mohawk on didn't look anything like a womble (ie wearing white padded gear etc) or for that matter a PKK supporter.

After the mohawk had been put on a number of young Turkish/Kurdish communists dabbed blood (red paint) on Winston. (He ordered the RAF to gas bomb Kurds in Iraq after WWI as well as being behind the disasterous invasion of Turkey during the war).

So the 'link' with the mohawk placer amounts to no more than my link with 'Kilroy' when I sprayed 'Anarchy, peace and love' on a wall down a Dublin lane as a teenager at some point after 'Kilroy was here' was dabbed on the wall.

Golda if you are worried about people coming to Dublin to smash it up I'd suggest you set up a vigilante group and head down to Temple Bar any Friday or Saturday night. You'll find your average stag party is a far greater danger than a lot of people in padding that leaves them looking like (and as mobile as) the Michelin man.

How many of us were there?

by iosaf

Tue Feb 24, 2004 15:38

& to my mind the "punky churchill" was just the sort of creative protest we had all looked forward too. The invitation was quite clear, guerilla gardeners were invited to Westminster Square to transform that very symbolic place into a garden for the day using vegetal matter in a "macro-green-anarcho-sense". To which end the astro-turf was stripped and laid on the road, (something astro-turf is designed for) and varying plants and shrubs were planted. Many of us had spoken before about the "decorative" potential of plants, and it had become quite common place to see statues and monuments in London at that time with vegetal matter. In the lead-up to that day, "guerilla gardening" had become popular, throughout London's squat scene people were cultivating. & looking back on it, that was very optimistic. We had a succesful kitchen garden on our site, and had tried to "reclaim" brown soil sites mostly along the disused train lines in Hackney in the east of London. Westminister Square held very few surprises for those assembled there. I still have some photos of the day, and one taken from on top of the traffic light two meters to the left of Winston at 13h30 show a minimal police presence (they were still in normal yellow jackets and seemed to be on "hippy mode". The impression the photo gives is of a colourful critical mass event, at that stage Westminister Bridge had just been closed.

The "reds" (trade unions, small political parties etc...) were invited to assemble on the Strand which is 1.5km to the east. They had expected to move towards Trafalgar Square in the afternoon, but were stopped from moving by the police who closed the way to trafalgar at charing X. This caused many problems, loads of reds started to siphon off the charing X junction into Trafalgar through the road next to Martin in the Fields (I dont remember it's proper name), and the others came into Whitehall and the Westminster Square area through the roads around the ministry of war, old scotland yard (I believe it's called). Included amongst those were supporters of the PKK and loads of other national interests and that very peculiar national interest Chelsea football club. By that stage, "perhaps less creative" protesters had started on the graffiti spray. I say "less creative" because I don't really remember seeing anything "inspiring" that day _in spray_. Even the "walter raleigh cigs are cool" could have been done better if the graffiti person had only prepared a stencil. In short there was a clear difference between those who had first assembled at Westminister square who for convenience sake are termed the "Reclaim the Streets! / guerilla gardening" assembly (who had held the previous week a completely open day of discussion and a book fair) and those who had assembled to the east.
At 4pm (ish) a young etonian (on a scholarship) went psycho in the mc donalds at the top of whitehall. He went in and started throwing burgers onto the road, none were eaten, he scared the shit out of the workers within, and oddly enough at the stage the PKK graffiti had gone up, the McD had only two normally uniformed cops outside it. [It had not been thought of as a potential target by the Met, perhaps because their intelligence based on the open assembly which naturally they had inflitrated had not selected it as a point of decoration or action.
It is very important for everyone to remember that there were several May Days that year, some protests, some celebrations, and one merely the debut of a 21st century movement.

The etonian McDonalds attack led to three dividing lines being drawn by the police dividing the crowd who in total numbered about 25,000. I think that is the point when traditionally one would think the "riot" had begun. Though it wasn't really much of a riot. Military Police (from the Guards building) assisted by the Met closed Whitehall and progressively We were coralled into Westminister Sqaure, where in the final hours of the evening we had an open assembly, only a few people spoke, and the collective debated which way to get out. There were really only two options. & I'm glad to say that the route I suggested (in a conspiratorial whisper from centre back) was adopted. It would have been much stickier if we had gone up towards Victoria. The superintendent in charge had said that each person leaving would be searched, and for about one hour at that stage we had not been allowed leave. This meant we were under open arrest, and surrounded by cops, military cops, MI5 and all the spooks you can think of.
We all left "en masse" and crossed Lambeth bridge and trundled off to Kennington. I remember that very clearly. I was one of the first to go up that little road in Kennington near the Oval when the police had a surprise go at us again.
& on & on it went...
I went home and watered my vegetables and thought if my section of privet hedge would last in Westminster Square, (it didn't) whilst on the TV ( of the neighbours) , Mr Blair and co. had started screaming about horse whipping. Charming little cockney woman (the neighbour) gave us seeds for carrots with a big cheery smile, "reminds me of the war, making do with what you have, nothing wrong with what you're doing, plant these and think of me....". They were out of season and in any case never grew.

Whoever did the punky churchill gave the world an icon, and in any case, as was pointed out next day Churchill was a traditional target for "defacing"/graffiti and it was probably the nicest way he had ever been subverted.

I'm glad the person who did Churchill became a womble. I'm glad the wombles were one of the collectives to emerge from that debut. & I still think the day (from guerilla gardening/RTS point of view was a success.

by sparky - wombles

Tue Mar 02, 2004 18:24

your right, the wombles formed after said activist placed mohawk on curchill.he joined when the group established itself in london a year after.
enough trivia

concerning macdonalds mayday2000 london

by BlackDog

Mon May 03, 2004 01:55

The macdonald was closed before it was trashed. There was only one or two staff inside it, who retreated, as soon as windows smashed. There were no cops outside when first window smashed. A dozen soft suited nearby tried to get to front of it but were quickly repelled some of them dragging brazen collegues.
I don't know about burgers being thrown out but a few t-shirts from tourist shop next door were flung over crowd.
Quite a few people went quite mad with the mcdonalds.

It seems people held back on trashing much in May 1st 2004, Dublin to respect the requests for this not to happen by protest organisers.

An update

by Sabre

Thu Jan 13, 2011 13:04

I stumbled upon this discussion from 5 years ago and felt it needed an ending.

Deirdre Tynan went on to win the top news award at the 2004 ESB Irish Journalist Awards. She won the 'Story of the year Award' for her investigative article, published in the Ireland On Sunday newspaper, which exposed irreparable flaws in the government's 60 million euro e-voting system. The system was later scrapped. The full citation is available on the website of the ESB, who were the event sponsors in 2004.

A check on the news database Lexis-Nexis shows that Deidre Tynan went on to write both court and general current affairs articles for Ireland On Sunday and latterly during her time in Ireland, for the Irish Examiner newspaper, for several more years.

She has also written for the Irish Mail On Sunday, the Irish Times and The Sunday Tribune in Ireland. For UK media, she has written for both The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. She has also written articles for the New York Daily News, New York and covered the recent uprising in Krgystab for both the Washington Post and the New York Times.

She left Ireland in 2005 and attended a Graduate M.A. programme at New York University, New York, specifically aimed at developing the special skills of experienced journalists. There, she developed a speciality in reporting on Central Asian Affairs. Also, according to the website of the journalism department in NYU, she graduated from NYU's MA programme in 2007.

She was based in Bishkek, in Krgyzstan for 7 years. According to NYU, the Irishwoman was appointed as the Chief Central Asian Correspondent for EurasiaNet, a central asian news reporting service which is the regional equivalent of Reuters and AP.

She was the second Irish female journalist to report from Afghanistan after the Taliban fell. She was also one of only a handful of western journalists to report from Turkmenistan when the dictatorship there fell. She was smuggled into that country via a lorry at a time when there were explicit threats against western journalists and monitors that they would be harshly treated by both pro and anti-government forces if they were discovered to have entered the region.

She has most recently reported the conflict between Georgia and Russia as well as reporting on normal day-to-day matters in the central Asian region. She has recently moved to Germany where she reports on current affairs and business for Irish and British media.

And, of course... none of the other people who posted anonymously on this website and criticised her work were ever heard of again.

Thank you for submitting your CV Deidre

by Prospective Employer

Thu Jan 13, 2011 13:32

It seems that the moral of the story is that gutter journalism is a nice career path.

Not an isolated piece

by Hack

Thu Jan 13, 2011 13:45

The OP isn't the only example of dodgy journalism from Tynan.

The Irish Examiner was brought to court and fined over an article she wrote on the Brian Murphy manslaughter trial in 2004. The judge ruled that the Examiner had committed a criminal contempt in publishing matters that were dealt with in the absence of the jury.

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