What One Thousand ‘Journalists’ Arriving in Dublin Won’t Want to Know About EuroMayday Protests

international | summit mobilisations | feature Wednesday April 28, 2004 17:22 by neuropa

’Why Protest the Dublin EU Summit? What are the Issues Anyway?’

It is critical to show, during such a display of media power and control as we have seen in the past few weeks in Ireland in the run-up to the EU Summit, that independent groups and people have the ability to create and share their own media, self publish, build networks and communicate freely and autonomously. We have been taking our information autonomy for a while now around here, using the limited means and technologies at our disposal.

In that spirit - here is a (free) guide to what is missing from all centralised and commercialised media in Ireland at present , a clear exposition of the issues that concern those who are preparing to celebrate EuroMayday and to protest the Dublin EU Summit. Don’t get MAD with those thousand foreign journalists and their Irish compatriots when you see these urgent and legitimate concerns glossed over and ignored by the mainstream – get EVEN. Don’t Hate the Media – Become the Media.

Guide to Issues is Here

*******************
Increasingly Our Lives in the EU are Precarious and We Want Security.

*******************
The EU is Trying to Steal OUR New Languages from out of our Mouths. Computer Code is a Human Language. Why Should it be Owned by Corporations?

*******************
The EU is Mutating our Concern about the Ecosphere into Yet Another Big Business Opportunity – A Market Trading in the Right to Pollute.

*******************
The EU is Trying to Impose Blanket Privatisation of Core Public Services in Europe Behind Our Backs. We Want the Minutes of the Article 133 Committee Meetings made Public.

*******************
The EU is Aggressively Confronting Developing Countries in WTO Trade Talks in an Attempt to Force them to ‘Liberalise’ their Economies and accept the ‘Argentina Treatment’.

*******************
The EU (especially the EU Commission) is a Secretive Institution Despite the Right of Access to Information for EU Citizens having been ‘enshrined’ in the Amsterdam Treaty.

*******************
The EU is using ‘Terrorism’ as an Excuse to Eliminate our Right to Privacy and as an Excuse to take away our Right to Protest against War and Global Economic Injustice.

*******************
The European Security Strategy is a Coded Blueprint for Creating an Armed Superpower to Protect, in the International Arena, the Economic and Political Interests of the Major Powers in the European Union.

*******************
The Draft EU Constitution Consecrates Neo-Liberalism as the Official Doctrine of the EU. It makes Competition the basis for European Community Law, and indeed for all Human Activity. We Want a Europe Based on Economic Justice in Europe and in the Global South.

*******************
The EU lets Capital Travel Freely while Severely Restricting the Rights of Accession Country Citizens to Freedom of Movement.

*******************
The EU is a Fortress and We Do Not Want To Live in a Fortress while People Whose only Crime is to be Poor Die in Large Numbers Trying to Get Inside.

*******************
Blair, Ahern, Berlusconi and others in Europe are Forcing us Against our Wishes to Live in a War Society and We do not want to be Bomb-Fodder for Fundamentalist and Neoliberal Franchises Alike.

*******************
A Democratic Mediasphere is a Necessity in Ireland and in the EU Generally. We Do Not Want a Mass Media Subservient to Corporate and State Interests. Media Belongs in the Community.

**********************