The controversial trade deal being negotiated between the EU and the US could spell disaster for EU farming and particularly for the Irish beef sector, according to a new report from Friends of the Earth Europe.

The report ‘Trading away EU farmers’ reviews modelling studies carried out in the EU and US on the impacts of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The report concludes that TTIP will massively increase imports from the US, while having far fewer benefits for EU producers. Studies foresee a decline of up to 0.8% for EU agriculture’s contribution to gross domestic product, while US agriculture's contribution to it will increase by 1.9% - a net trade benefit to US interests of over 4 billion euros. read full story / add a comment

Weekly police raids, harsh living conditions, constant threaths of violence, arrest and detention by authorities, these are just some of the things that more than a thousand children in the Netherlands have to deal with. As part of refugee families whose asylum application has been turned down by the Dutch state, these children live in family camps spread over the country. Even though in the last years different organizations have campaigned against these human right violations and studies have pointed out the intense emotional harm these children face, the Dutch state has done nothing but building a new prison for refugee families who are about to be deported. At this point several families have formed a collective with political activists. Next to local demonstrations at the family camps, they call out for international support to pressure the Dutch state to end the violations of the children’s rights and those of their families. read full story / add a comment

Sssh! Keep it under your hat, but preparations for a rebellion and revolution are being made in Temple Bar. The dangerous subversive Margaretta D’Arcy (aka Ireland’s Guantanamo Granny) is holding a series of lunchtime readings of the groundbreaking 1970s play she co-authored with John Arden (aka The Angry Young Man) at Connolly Books in Essex Street. Each day, between 1pm and 2pm, volunteers are taking parts and reading scenes from the Non Stop Connolly Show about the life and struggles of James Connolly. The last scene covering the 1916 Easter Rising will be performed on Thursday 12 May, the centenary of Connolly’s execution. read full story / add a comment

Science No Longer Supports Fluoridation. Are politicians beholden to special interest groups which use appeal to authority and big money to protect fluoridation instead of the American people? read full story / add a comment

Big capital has constantly decreased its contribution to the state – creating a gap in the state’s coffers which is then filled by more and varied taxes on ordinary people – ultimately shrinking the very market big capital needs to sell its increased production of goods. read full story / add a comment

On 22 January the Financial Times reported that Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, was donating £500,000 towards the anti-Brexit campaign in Britain. This is the same Goldman Sachs as is behind the threatened Tyrrelstown evictions in Dublin. read full story / add a comment

Recently David Gerstman of the Tower Blog (actually called “The Israel Project’s The Tower blog”) attacked the entire liberal arts Oberlin campus in Ohio as being lax on anti-Semitism because he doesn’t like what “one” of the college’s assistant professors wrote on her own personal face book page. Ironically Joy Karega, the alleged anti-Semite, was not really criticizing Jews in general, per se, but mostly what can be defined as some dirty politics of the State of Israel that is terrorist in nature. But conflating criticism of Zionists as supposed to mean anti-Semitism in general is what many propagandists are deliberately trying to d0—confuse various forms of debate in order to create a freeze on any negative criticism of the Zionist project in Israel as State for Jews or their Zionist influence here in America. read full story / add a comment

It has been one hundred years since the heroic Easter uprising of the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) and the ICA (Irish Citizen Army) against the might of the British Empire in 1916. The planning of the 2016 commemoration was thrust into the hands of the conservative Fine Gael/Labour government who would have been at least a bit uneasy about the potential for increasing the political support base for the more politically radical Sinn Féin. However, the problem of artistic representation of the events was at least partially resolved by the well-worn techniques used by successive conservative Irish governments over the years since the Easter Rising: mythologisation, diversion and counternarrative. read full story / add a comment

This report was originally filed on 8th Mar by ShannonWatch. A recent report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism entitled CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals is deeply worrying. Not only are civilians being killed in the initial so-called "targeted attacks" but it now appears to be US Government/CIA policy under the President Obama administration to send in secondary drone bombing attacks on the rescuer's who go in to drag survivors from the burning buildings. Even worse, there have been several incidents whereby the subsequent funerals of the victims of earlier drone attacks have been attacked by CIA drone bombings causing huge casualties among the mourners. read full story / add a comment

Weak Irish capitalism makes a deal with Catholic hierarchy in which the hierarchy get control over many areas of Irish life and in return preach and organize in support of capitalism and against socialism and as part of this against women's rights. read full story / add a comment

Trump started back when Obama came to power. Questioning his birthplace. I have no time for Obama but this was racism. Then he refuses to condemn the KKK. His father was arrested as part of a KKK mob in New York City in 1927. Google Trumps farther and the KKK. Then he calls immigrants from Mexico and Central America, criminals and rapists. Then he calls for all Muslims to be kept out of the US. then he attacks women in the most vicious and degrading way. He is trying to build a white racist movement of mainly low paid workers and workers who have not benefited from the economic policies, globalization etc, of the past decades. Policies of the system that the racist Trump is a leader. in Chicago the youth came out and shut his racist divide and rule mouth. As Chicago resident i am proud. I thank the youth who took the lead. Sean O'Torain. (Throne.) read full story / add a comment

RNU Ard Chomhairle member Tony Taylor had his license revoked by the Secretary of State yesterday. He now finds himself in Maghaberry, yet to find out why. read full story / add a comment

The MA CEESA (Community Education, Equality and Social Activism) took this year out to think about what we do and how we can do it better. We've been doing a lot of thinking and talking to people in that time and the result is that we're making some changes in the course while keeping the basic principles intact. read full story / add a comment

EU interferes with Irish electoral process by delaying important information that would have educated and informed the Irish electorate prior to casting their votes in the hope that it's preferred parties that "play ball" would do better from public ignorance of the actual results of the policies on citizens of these EU preferred parties. read full story / add a comment

The hidden agenda behind the migrant crisis.

- Destroy "National hegemony"

-European super-state

-Cultural Marxism / Kalergi-Coudenhove read full story / add a comment

Puerto Rico's House of Representatives approved legislation to reform its highly indebted public utility company "PREPA." read full story / add a comment

US District Judge Thomas Griesa ordered "hold-out" investors on Thursday to explain why various sanctions on Argentina should not be lifted. read full story / add a comment

Steve Keen is the author of Debunking Economics. He is critical of Neo-Classical Economics read full story / add a comment

The US House of Representatives held its second hearing on Puerto Rico's debt crisis this year. The hearing focused on potential legislative solutions including bankruptcy protection and an economic oversight board. read full story / add a comment

Paul Craig Roberts clearly outlines the systematic way western financial institutions and the IMF have traditionally looted the third world and now, having exhausted that process, have turned to looting other western countries such as Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and more recently, Spain and Italy. read full story / add a comment