A socio-political and cultural blog from the Republic of Ireland. The truth about the Celtic Tiger, it's demise and other related matters. Fír-eolas ar an Tíogar Cheiltigh, a thurnamh agus nithe gaolmhara eile.
Friday, September 03, 2010
NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON IRISH FOREIGN POLICY:
Dublin Conference will discuss the possibilities of retaining an independent Irish foreign policy within the EU
PANA(Peace and Neutrality Alliance) and the Irish Anti-War movement(see sidebar for links to websites) are organising a national conference on an Independent Irish Foreign Policy this weekend. A wide range of political figures, NGO leaders, Activist Groups and general public will debate the issues. See pana.ie for the full agenda.
Hundreds of Peace Activists and members of solidarity organisations will protest in Dublin’s main street today and tomorrow against the presence of former British Prime Minister,Tony Blair in the Irish Capital. Mr Blair is launching his newly published book of memoirs in the main bookstore in O’Connell Street. The Irish Police have mounted a high level security cordon around the store and caused much resentment among neighbouring shops and street stallholders by demanding that they close their businesses while Mr Blair gets on with his business of trying to sell his book. This over- reaction by the police has been challenged as an illegal demand and stallholders have declared that they will not move voluntarily from their traditional stands. Protest organisers have vowed to support the local business people in their opposition to this outrageous demand.
Popular reaction to the Blair visit has been mostly hostile although Mr Blair has been invited to appear on Irish National Television (RTÉ) tonight. Since leaving officeMr Blair has gone on to make his fortune and is now reputed to be worth £60 million. Meanwhile, the country he invaded along with US President George Bush in 2003, has become a devastation zone.
There is no elected government because the British and the American overlords deliberately stoked up sectarian division to help consolidate their rule.
Sources like the British Medical Journal “The Lancet” have estimated that up to 1 million Iraqis have been killed. Based on studies undertaken by local NGOs, at least 15,000 Iraqis disappeared during the first four years of US occupation.. An estimated 30,000 untried detainees are currently being held by the Iraqi authorities. Most are housed in overcrowded and unsanitary facilities controlled by the Ministries of Justice, Interior and Defence.
In February 2010, US forces turned over thousands of their prisoners to Iraqi authorities – they were still holding 5,800 people. Despite claiming to withdraw from the country, 50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq.
The Iraqi people have not obtained the “democracy” promised by Bush and Blair; just last month the Electricity ministry issued an order banning "all trade union activities at the Ministry and its departments and sites". The police were instructed "to close all trade union offices and bases and to take control of the union's assets, properties and documents, furniture and computers". For good measure, the government is to take legal action against trade union officials under the Terrorism Act. Banning trade unionism hasn't helped with electricity supply either. In Baghdad's poorer districts power is only available for one or two hours a day. And the government recently doubled electricity charges to around 100 dollars per month.
Iraq’s infrastructure and health services, once the best in the Middle East, have been destroyed. More than eighty per cent of Iraq's water remains untreated, according to the United Nations. More than half of Iraqi children do not complete primary school, and youth unemployment runs at thirty per cent. And UNHCR has reports a big rise in the sex trafficking of Iraqi women across the region, among the millions of Iraqis internally or externally displaced from their homes.
Iraq's child mortality rate has increased by a staggering 150% since 1990, when draconian UN sanctions were first imposed. During the embargo, which lasted until May 2003 and prevented the rebuilding of water and sanitation infrastructure by banning chlorine and spare parts, the leading cause of death for children under five was waterborne illness. An estimated 500,000 children died in the first 5 years of the embargo.
In 2008, only 50% of primary school-age children were attending class, down from 80% in 2005. Approximately 1,500 children were known to be held in detention facilities. In 2007 there were 5 million Iraqi orphans, according to official Government statistics. Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19% before the US-led invasion in 2003 to 28% in 2007.5
Vast numbers of Iraqis have been displaced due to the deliberately provoked sectarian conflict and the effects of the military occupation. Almost 4 million refugees have been displaced to neighbouring Syria and Jordan. All of this resulted from a policy of invading Iraq to safeguard oil supplies to the US. It was part of a deliberate strategy to use the oil of the Middle East as a lever to pressurise other countries to conform to the demands of the US.
This is the shocking and inhuman legacy of Tony Blair who is now trying to make money for himself on the results of his crimes in Iraq. Even in his home country of Britain, this despicable man is regarded as a war criminal who should be placed on trial in the International Court at the Hague. The fact that he is loathed by the British public is one reason why he has chosen Dublin to officially launch his book in Europe. He will find out today he is just as much despised in Ireland as everywhere else.
FearFeasaMacLéinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin
Meán Fomhair/September 03 2010.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
CALLS FOR INQUIRY
IN AFTERMATH OF
POLICE TACTICS AT
TORONTO PROTEST:
Many civil liberties groups in Canada, includingthe Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Amnesty International , have called for an independent public inquiry into the actions of Toronto Police over the three days of the G8/G20 Summits in the Canadian city last weekend, 25/26/27th June 2010. They have been joined by Greenpeace and the Ontario leadership of the New Democratic Party, part of the Opposition in Canada’s parliament.
In three days of mayhem in the downtown areas of Yonge Street, the main shopping area, Queen’s Park, in front of the Ontario Legislature building, Queen Street and adjoining streets, protesters and local residents were subjected to violent baton charges, snatch squads, firing of tear gas and rubber bullets. People detained for hours in pouring rain in the street, prevented from departing by lines of heavily armed police. Sleeping people were pulled from their homes at gunpoint in the middle of the night. Many were beaten by Police after being arrested. The brutality and aggression shown by the Toronto Police has shocked people throughout Canada.
Journalists, including Jesse Rosenfeld, reporting for the British “Guardian” newspaper, were punched, arrested and had their equipment broken. Constitutional rights were disregarded, free speech and assembly brutally suppressed by Robocop gangs of Police some mounted on horses and over 900 people arrested.Detainees were held in steel cage cells with up to 30 people per cell, sleeping on concrete floors with open bathrooms, denial of food and water, illegal confiscation of medications, sexual harassment, severe verbal threats and intimidation, being refused access to legal counsel or phones, denying access to bail hearings in a timely manner; personal property stolen or sometimes smashed by Police, constant exposure to bright lights, and extreme exposure to cold, multiple searches including strip searches and more. On the Sunday morning, June 27th, the University of Toronto campus was raided twice and 75 arrests were made.
As public anger mounts across Canada, the Chairperson of the Toronto Civilian Police Board tried to mollify public criticism by admitting “mistakes in communication” in dealing with the security situation arising from the G8/G20 summits held in the city last weekend, stating that “the force may have made a mistake by not telling the public they’d mischaracterized the powers police had during the G20 summit”.“That may be one of the communication issues to be looked at,” Police Board chair, Alok Mukherjee, said in an interview on Wednesday, “whether the correction was properly notified to the public.”
According to Mr Mukherjee,it was the Ontario provincial Ministry of Community Safety that notified police Friday afternoon, June 25th,that the police force and its Chief were misinterpreting a controversial amendment the Ontario provincincial cabinet passed in secret on June 6th, supposedly to help police secure the area around the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Police had acted as if the temporary amendment to the Public Works Protection Act meant they could demand identification from, and search or arrest without warrant, anyone within five metres of the fence encircling the security perimeter. The Provincial Government of Ontario is now claiming that they agreed to the amendment only to be applied within the security fence and not outside it, stunned by the brutality of the Toronto Police actions against peaceful protest and the political backlash now sweeping the Province and throughout Canada.TorontoPolice Chief ,Bill Blair, had given a press conference Friday morning, June 25th, defending the five-metre policy in the face of public consternation. Many civil-liberties advocates argued the amendment had been made in secret and without giving people proper notice that their rights had changed.
With widespread and mounting allegations of misconduct, arbitrary mass arrests and confusion over what powers police had – and why they didn’t clarify them to the public – “the whole thing is turning into quite a fiasco and absurdity,” said New Democratic Party leader, Andrea Horwath. An internal police review, she argued, “is not enough: It doesn’t give you that outside perspective. … These questions will only be answered by an independent review.”
Toronto Mayor, David Miller’s, spokesman Stuart Green said on Wednesday this week : ”the Mayor stands by remarks he made in support of the police previously, and sees no need for a third-party investigation”
Canadian Civil Liberties Association lawyer, Nathalie Des Rosiers and several constitutional lawyers, have argued that regardless of the way the amended Act was represented or acted upon, the fact that no one in the Province or the Police Force bothered to publicise it until just before the G20 weekend itself is problematic.“The CCLA is planning to help people who are seeking compensation to initiate a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Ontario,” said Des Rosiers, “We have a couple of plaintiffs”.Des Rosiers said the CCLA has been overwhelmed with phone calls and has already collected 75 complaints from people claiming they were wrongfully imprisoned, detained, harassed or assaulted by the police.
As the political fallout continues, solidarity rallies with those arrested and still detained have been organised in Toronto and other main cities for this week, including at Hamilton, Windsor and London, Ontario, and at Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver. The Toronto rally takes place today 01 July at Queens Park, outside the Ontario Legislature, where some of the worst police violence occurred last weekend. One of the worst scenes, which has aroused public anger all over the country, was the police baton charge of a group of peaceful protesters whose “crime” was singing their country’s national anthem “O Canada” in the street close to the legislature building.A crowd of more 1,000 gathered outside Toronto's police headquarters Monday evening this week to protest the massive police operation and allegations that people were arrested who had nothing to do with the violence."We don't want a police state," chanted the crowd, watched over by a large contingent of police officers. It later marched through the downtown area of the city.
In a front-page editorial on Monday, the “Toronto Star”, Canada's biggest circulation daily newspaper, called the summit security plan, and the reaction to it, "a brutal spectacle that failed a city and its people."They took our city to hold a meeting and bullied us out of the core, damaging the commerce of thousands of merchants and inconveniencing the entire population. Then, they failed to protect our property," the Star said.
Wily Ontario Provincial Premier, Dalton McGuinty, has failed to answer fierce legal criticism of his secret cabinet decision to alter the Ontario Protection of Public Works Act on 06 June last apparently giving Toronto Police wider powers of arrest and detention of citizens which contributed massively to the public unrest in the city last weekend during the G8/G20 summits, a decision which his own Ministry of Public Safety now says was "misinterpreted" by Police Chief Blair. The strong condemnation of the Toronto Police both within Canada and internationally no doubt having something to do with Mr McGuinty's Pontius Pilate stance.
Downtown Toronto, Canada’s commercial capital and largest city, was besieged by several thousands of police in gas masks and riot gear Friday and Saturday as protesters gathered in the city centre to mark the holding of the G8 and G20 summits in Canada this weekend. The now familiar sight of black uniformed riot police armed with tear gas, rubber bullets, stun grenades, shields and batons greeted the protesters as they attempted to make their way down Yonge Street, Toronto’s main shopping area.
The police denied using tear gas in the city although most of them were wearing gas masks and British Sky News television showed a tear gas launch in the Queen’s Park area of the city. The overwhelming show of force shocked Torontonians as public transport was disrupted and shops and banks closed in a fevered attempt by the state authorities to create an atmosphere of fear, terror and intimidation in the city got underway.
Close to the Ontario Legislature building at Queen’s Park on Saturday, a small gathering of protesters who had assembled in what had been agreed beforehand with the Police would be a “designated speech area” for legitimate use by the demonstration was attacked by riot police and the area cleared as the Police reneged on their previous agreement. This type of nefarious tactics is now a regular pattern of state responses to peaceful protest and demonstrations at these “summits” which, at a cost of $1BN to Canadians,are a complete waste of money. Despite the fear-mongering by politicians obsessed by their own pompous arrogance, the protesters don’t want to confront them personally but, want to show that the majority of ordinary people are opposed to their disastrous economic and social policies and their pursuit of brutal campaigns of murderous violence against people in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere in the world.
In a secret agreement on 02/06/10, Ontario Liberal Party Premier, Dalton McGuinty, agreed to extend police powers of arrest and detention under the Ontario Public Works Act by designating the police fence at Union Station and the Metro Toronto ConventionCentre, just west of the south end of Yonge Street where the G20 meeting will be held later today, as “public works” and concealed this from public knowledge until last Friday, thus preventing civil liberties lawyers from challenging the legislation in the courts ahead of the summits. The secret deal allows Toronto police to arrest without warrant, search and detain any person who goes within ten metres of the "public works" fence. This is a scandalous contempt for civil rights unprecedented since Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s use of wartime emergency legislation in his 1970’s confrontation with Quebec separatism.
The use of such legislation and restriction of civil liberties which now automatically accompanies the arrival of the G8 and G20 caravans to any city shows the utter contempt for democracy and civil rights by these politicians and their determination to ignore public protest against their wasteful and murderous policies on a world scale. Hypocrites all, spouting lies and false declarations of respect for democratic process and public opinion. Democracy and civil rights, although constitutionally established, are set aside at the whim of corrupt politicians and police.
Another familiar aspect of these summits nowadays is the attendance, unwanted and uninvited by the organisers of peaceful protest, is a group of masked individuals known as “Black Bloc” who infiltrate the larger demonstrations intent on committing acts of violence and damage to property and giving the police the excuse they want to attack the peaceful protest. This correspondent witnessed such events in Strasbourg, France in April 2009, where similar acts of violence took place at the protest against the NATO 60th Anniversary Summit held in that city, also attended by Mr Obama and the rest of the NATO leaders.
The most notable thing though, which I witnessed, was the appearance of numbers of persons dressed as “Black Bloc”protesters being ferried away in police vehicles, not under arrest, but fraternising with the police as if they were part of the overall police operation. This was being done some distance from the main demonstration which was being viciously attacked by the French paramilitary CRS and was only seen by me from the back window of a pub where I had taken shelter from CRS throwing tear-gas and blast grenades at anything that moved in the street outside. Canadians should be wary of television reports and police descriptions of these so-called “Black-Bloc” activities. At least some of them, as I witnessed in Strasbourg, are definitely police “agents provocateurs” and a previous incident in Quebec,in 2007, documented at the end of the video here below, proves.
(Second video: leading Canadian economist on G8 fakery)
