The regular news digest of the People’s Movement, No. 147 is out now. It can be freely downloaded from the People's movement website and this issue has articles covering TTIP and a trade union view on Brexit. Recently Greenpeace published details of secret negotiations between the EU-US which were leaked and they indicated that EU officials had completely sold out to the US on all their corporate agenda demands. The TTIP agreement is by far and away the most undemocratic agreement ever devised and will shred protections of all kinds and oblierate the sovereignty every state that has this imposed on them. However the mainstream rightwing corporate media is not covering what is in TTIP and simply make false statements that it will bring jobs and growth, where the core issues are central to what it means to how society right across both the EU and US is run. Naturally our own mainstream political parties of FG and FF are completely for this corporate power grab of an agreement. ... read full story / add a comment

Woodburn Forest near Carrickfergus in County Antrim has become the site of the first operational fracking rig on the island of Ireland. On Monday 16 May InfraStrata PLC began to drill, seeking to confirm a viable oil find which will pave the way for large scale extraction. Community campaigners continue to resist and all support is welcome on the site to stop the drilling while one local mounts a legal challenge. ... read full story / add a comment

100 years ago, if a Dublin Castle tout had entered the Connolly Books building on Essex Street, Temple Bar, he would have been quids in. Sitting hugger mugger around a huge table in the centre of the room are more than 20 of the most subversive characters in Ireland, spouting socialist verse and preaching revolution and rebellion. They include communists, trotskyists, anarchists, republicans, trade unionists, anti-austerity activists, pacifists, militant feminists, internationalists, environmentalists, ex political prisoners, independent TDs, writers, poets, singers, artists, and actors. They have banded together in one bold adventure: to read, over a series of lunchtimes, the entire, epic, 24-hour Non Stop Connolly Show. ... read full story / add a comment

A cross party group of TDs have expressed concern at the jailing of two political activists, Sean Doyle and Eamonn McGrath. Both men have been remanded in custody until the 21st of May and 24th of June respectively for taking part in a peaceful protest in Kilcoole. Sean was arrested after being assaulted by an individual in front of Gardai while his attacker went unpunished. The same attacker then viciously pushed a woman to the ground. The Gardaí present saw fit to arrest the protesters for trespass while they gently escorted the assailant away. No charges have been brought against this man. The continuation of the political policing of the Irish Water protests exposes the Garda, yet again, as a force used to protect the status quo at the expense of ordinary people. ... read full story / add a comment

Today in Limerick Court, the Irish state on behalf of capitalism and property in favour of its own citizens
and the original ideals of the 1916 proclamation, was planning to use the resource of the state to
carry out 170 home evications throwing potentially hundreds more citizens onto the streets. ... read full story / add a comment

If there was ever a way to discourage recycling it is to charge for it. But there is more to this story. Way back during the Bin Tax campaign it was said that the original plan was to charge for recycling and all along the plan was to send most of the recycling material like paper, cardboard and plastic to feed the huge incinerator then planned for Dublin.

This €600 million incinerator is now being built after it was forced on the people of Dublin by the former chairman of Dublin City Council John Tierney in the most undemocratic and secretive way and completely against all the councillors. This incinerator needs to be fed huge amounts of burnable material to keep it 'profitable'. It was sized for 600,000 tonnes which is more than all waste from Dublin. Tierney of course signed a lucrative deal with the incinerator operators Covanta whereby the council will make up the gap financially if they don't get enough material to feed into the monster. Now the dots have joined up and we can be sure that this announcement to start charging for recycling in July 2016 is very much connected with this since the incinerator will start operating early in 2017.
... read full story / add a comment

Mary-Anne Grady Flores a grandmother from upper State New York was jailed for six months and started her sentence on Tuesday last for taking pictures of an anti-drone protest. The letter below has been sent to the US Ambassador along with the Democracy Now account of the jailing ... read full story / add a comment

In the recent elections in Venezuela the right wing opposition long backed by Washington has secured a majority by winning 107 out of 167 seats. This is the first time since the early days of deceased former president Chavez rose to power that the right has had control of the parliament.

This allows them to to remove ministers from the presidential cabinet. Had they won 111 seats, they would have been enough power in the legislative body to dismiss Supreme Court Judges, reform the Constitution and convoke a recall referendum of the national executive without having collected the minimum quota of signatures required by the Bolivarian Constitution. It is likely they will try this anyhow.

In the second victory for the empire, the neo-liberal right wing got back into power in Argentina just two weeks ago in late November with the election of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri from one of the country's richest families
... read full story / add a comment

Irish government wastes over 1 million euro on biased fracking study
in spite of world oil prices rendering fracking itself as nothing
but a major loss making and pointless exercise. ... read full story / add a comment

Shell to Sea Activists and AFRI commemorated the 20th Anniversary of the deaths of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine outside “Corrib House:” Shell’s Irish Headquarters in Dublin. The activists carried crosses bearing the names of each of the men executed by the corrupt Nigerian Government on 10 November 1995. Many sources believe that these executions were done at the behest of Shell. Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people, had been actively leading successful civil society actions and demonstrations thwarting Shell’s development of oil on the land of these indigenous farmers and fishermen. Even though it hasn’t been explicitly proven that Shell ordered the killing… they did benefit from the outcome and later paid reparations to the families. (In 2009 Shell settled out of court to the tune of 15.5 million dollars to the families of the victims to avoid going to court in the USA.) ... read full story / add a comment

On the 6th October, parents representing the Irish Support Group REGRET met with a group of 15 TDs and Senators at the Irish Parliament ('The Dáil') . Maureen O'Sullivan T.D. organized the cross-party meeting to bring attention to the serious adverse reactions suffered by Irish schoolgirls after taking the HPV vaccine 'Gardasil'. R.E.G.R.E.T stands for "Reactions and Effects of Gardasil Resulting in Extreme Trauma" ... read full story / add a comment

The political trial of 18 people who delayed Joan Burton in her car began today. It is an escalation in the attempt to demonise and vilify an entire community for rejecting the Labour Party.

Four AAA members were present in court, as part of the targeting of our own organisation by the Gardai and the establishment. On top of these charges, we have had permission to collect money door to door refused in two Garda districts, including Tallaght and there has been the revelations around Operation Mizen which has seen Gardai carry out surveillance on water charge activists including Paul Murphy TD. ... read full story / add a comment

The Indymedia website returns to service today after an almost two week outage from Sept 29th until today Oct 13th.

This was an unplanned outage and unfortunately it took much longer than expected to restore and may have led people to think we had shutdown permanently. We hope our contributors and readers will return and continue to make use of Indymedia for it's intended purpose of posting news, reports and events by the public and activist communities. ... read full story / add a comment

Shell have recently applied for permission to operate their raw gas pipeline linking the Corrib gas field to the Bellanaboy refinery and are asking the Dept of Energy and Minister Alex White for “prompt processing” of its application. We have until the 25th of September to put in objections.

Don’t reward Shell abuses in Ireland! We, the undersigned demand that you reject Shell's request to operate their dangerous raw gas pipeline that will be used to plunder Ireland’s resources.

... read full story / add a comment

The REGRET Group recently received a list of all the adverse reactions
reported to the Irish Health Regulatory Authority (HPRA) following
vaccination with the HPV vaccine Gardasil. ... read full story / add a comment

The EU's negotiating team for pharmaceuticals, medical devices and cosmetics in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) met with civil society organisations inside the Commission on Wednesday (27 May) to defend the inclusion of the health sector in the trade deal.

In Europe, universal healthcare is a source of national pride, as well as a constant subject of debate. So, the inclusion of a healthcare chapter in TTIP has triggered heated reactions from health NGOs and trade unions, who are wary of an American-style liberalisation of a heavily regulated sector. ... read full story / add a comment

I'm writing in to bring to your attention a Muslim extremist who was speaking in Cork,
at the Cork Dawah Centre on Shandon St. on the 24th of May, called Abdurraheem Green. ... read full story / add a comment

The Indymedia mailing lists run by the global Indymedia server, used for the running of the Indymedia Ireland site for the contact form, reported posts, newswire editorial actions and various other tasks have shutdown and are no longer available. This has necessitated the setting up of a new set of working lists on this server but it means people will have to resubscribe if they so wish. ... read full story / add a comment

Garda have attacked an occupation of Fingal council offices by water charges protesters causing injuries like the one pictured.

We understand these happened when the Garda smashed a plate glass door in on top of the protesters who were occupying the entrance.

According to one of those attacked posting to the Balbriggan page "Garda have attached 3 of us and shattered the fingal county council office doors on top of us picture to follow. If you listen to the video u will hear the glass crashing on top of us" The video is at https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=633082310156899 ... read full story / add a comment

This Morning at 6.30am we were woken from our beds.Private security working for NAMA were breaking into our homes. We live in a flourishing squatted community in Grangegorman.This space which was once disused warehouses filled with rubble, asbestos and broken glass has been turned into an inspiring and beautiful place to be.The place is coved with artwork, and the community garden has begun to blossom.We have a circus space, poetry nights, folk gigs, Art Exhibitions, Fairs and a community Kitchen.

... read full story / add a comment