Over 100,000 rally in Lisbon against austerity – Irish Media Please Copy
Left-wing sources brought this event to our attention – no comment so far on any mainline Irish Media that we have seen.
While Reuters report that “Over 100,000” people packed into the city’s main square, another report says 350,000 were present.
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120211/wl_nm/us_portugal_protest
Here is a photo :
Lisbon Rejects Austerity - Irish Media Please Copy
An open email to Eamon Gilmore – Film to Follow The Ghost Writer?
http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/an-open-email-to-eamon-gilmore/
A great idea – how about a few more such letters?
The author of this open letter says that the Labour Deputy Gilmore – second in line to Fine Gael Taoiseach Kenny – employs a well-paid adviser Mark Garrett who worked for an American firm – McKinsey and Company – connected to a failed coup attempting to depose Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002.
Incidentally, do you ever ask Mark Garret about his period working as…. External Relations Manager for McKinsey and Co, the international firm of management consultants.
Does he know anything about the influential people Venezuela? Remember when the McKinsey office in Caracas, Venezuela, was used in the 2002 coup against President Chavez.
A wikileaked cable told us of a Gilmore conversation with a USA Embassy representative in which the Labour Party leader disclosed his public opposition to a second Lisbon Treaty Referendum, was a pose.
The labour leader is looking like a fabulous Yankee asset – interesting ghosts these days in Leinster House!
The intriguing story of the Irish Labour Party leader makes you wonder if Roman Polanski might be tempted to make a film, using a story akin to his recent thriller The Ghost Writer, where the Tony Blair-like character is played by Pierce Brosnan.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/the-ghosts-of-tony-blair_b_509269.html
Life is often much stranger than fiction.
John Meehan
Action on ‘X’ Public Meeting in Gresham Hotel on Tuesday 21st February at 7.30pm
Action on X
Public Meeting on February 21
Speakers include:
Vincent Browne, Journalist and Broadcaster
Anthea McTeirnan, Journalist and Reproductive Rights Activist
Dr Fiona De Londras, UCD School of Law
Mick Wallace, Independent TD for Wexford
Ailbhe Smyth, Feminist Open Forum
http://www.facebook.com/actiononx2012
In the meantime Eamonn McCann has written a good article on this subject for the Belfast Telegraph :
X’ marks spot for changes to anti-woman irrationality
He captures the spirit of those days well
As concern for the girl and outrage against her ‘internment’ grew, and demonstrations began outside embassies and consulates in Europe and the US, the case was hustled into the Supreme Court in record time.
The former diplomat Eamon Delaney, now a journalist in Dublin, has described younger staff members at the New York consulate photocopying leaflets for demonstrators outside who were running short of supplies.
Read the entire article here :
Defend Our Schools Protest on February 23, Dáil Éireann, Kildare Street @ 3.30pm
Defend Our Schools Protest on Thursday February 23
Trinity
The Left Unity Blogging Network has this post today:
comment on wall from H. Silke : “Not one but two different component parts of the ULA organised public meetings clashing with the ULA’s Dublin city branch meeting (at the same time and place). Hardly driving confidence in joined up thinking never mind revolution? :-/”
and asks, “Can anyone shed any light on the matter?”
Well yes, and it all sheds light on the Babel that is the ULA and the need concentrate on the ULA as an organisation. Last night the Dublin Central Branch held its (well attended) monthly meeting in the Teachers Club, Parnell Square, Dublin. I was astonished to see posters in town for a Socialist Party public meeting at the same time in the Teachers Club on the Fiscal Treaty. Wait, we have a troika of our own. Socialst Democracy, an informal component of the ULA, had a public meeting at the same time in the Teachers Club, with Conor McCabe speaking on the economy. This seems to have been reasonably well-attended too.
Now all three meetings were very worthy of attention and attendance. And no doubt it was all the kind of mix up that we all do on occasion, and was no disrespect to the Dublin Central ULA trying to gather all ULA members and sympathisers in the area for a Branch meeting. But it was also a symptom of disengagement by the components from the ULA itself, of everybody doing their own thing and of little reference into the organisation and schedules of the ULA. And, all three meetings could have been held under the banner of the ULA, and why not. And all three may even have been combined in some way, to cut down on all the subdivision of action and multiplication of energy that is a feature of the left – and the broad social response to austerity too – at the moment.
Des Derwin
Nonaligned ULA members (a few) meet in Dublin
A small meeting for nonaligned ULA members was held in Dublin on Saturday. The short notice and confined notification obviously affected the attendance.
This turned out to be the Dublin leg of a series of meetings, others being in Cork and Galway.
A fair and friendly discussion took place.
It was agreed to pencil in 18th February for a national nonaligned meeting. An email will go out to nonaligned members through the ULA mailing list (hopefully).
Time to legislate for life-saving abortion – 20th Anniversary of the Infamous X Case, February 1992
Time to legislate for life-saving abortion
Irish State Tries to Intern a 14 Year Old Raped Suicidal Girl Seeking An Abortion
Tomás Ó Flatharta 