Workers Solidarity Movement

REMAIN INDOORS, TERRORISTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR FREEDOM

Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan has said Ireland is on alert for terrorist attacks and that sweeping zero-tolerance anti-terrorism legislation will be soon before the Dáil.

Enough hysteria. In Ireland we've prided ourselves for not indulging such wacky 'anti-terrorism' mania to the extent the US and UK have post-11/9. 'Terrorism' is an ill-defined nonsense term and this is as true as ever.
 

The question isn't which of these countries' governments isn't truly committed to freedom of expression, as the Picket Line of Justice would suggest, but which is. Today Spanish police arrested at least 16 lawyers of Basque political prisoners. Three were arrested on their way to the Spanish Special Court for the first day of a mass trial against 35 pro-independence activists. This is only two days after a 80,000 person protest for the rights of Basque political prisoners.

Also, on December 16th 2014 we saw 11 anarchists in Barcelona area detained in what has been known as "Operation Pandora". All 11 detainees (4 of them were released on charges on December, 18th) are anarchist activists. Solicitors for the accused have stated that they have been arrested for being organised; evidence against the accused is non-existent and desperate. Presiding Judge Bermúdez said “I am not investigating specific acts, I am investigating the organization, and the threat they might pose in the future”, presumably having to stop himself before saying 'Anarchy is on trial'.
 

Defending Free Speech in France Does not Stop with the Mainstream Press - Support Saïdou and Said Bouamama

(Translation of article from Alternative Libertaire)

On January 20, 2015, the rapper Saïdou and Bouamama Said, a sociologist and activist, will appear before a Paris Court, following an investigation for "public insult" and "incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence" on foot of a complaint from a far right organisation.

Demonstrations took place overnight across the Spanish state against the series of police raids targeting the anarchist movement. The Barcelona demonstration of 2000 people was led by a banner proclaiming "If you touch one; you touch all".

Demands include "Freedom for those arrested for struggling", "Down with prison walls" and "Social war against the state of capital".

Media reports say that the raids took place in 15 locations in Barcelona, Sabadell, Manresa and Madrid and that 11 have been arrested. The usual excuse is given, 'terrorism', but the same reports reveal that all that the raids have discovered are "computers, mobile phones and notebooks found during searches"
 

We have an easy winner for the WTF example of media bias this week in relation to the water charge resistance. The Sunday World journalists have pulled out all the stops in the service of Denis O'Brien as illustrated below. In case you miss the small print under the photo we have underlined it in yellow 'How it Could have Looked'.

The non exploding Drogheda 'petrol bomb' was a weak story in any case, a scare that felt manufactured before the Sunday World got creative with its photographs of a burned out van from somewhere else altogether. But really what sort of excuse can be offered up for such transparent bias?

'Smear Them' - Indo makes shocking newspaper vilification of anti-Water Charges campaign

The conveyor belt of smears against Water Charges protesters has lurched back into Full-Speed Mode, with Denis O'Brien's Irish Independent deciding to run this incendiary headline: ''Shoot him' - Protester makes shocking Facebook threat towards Taoiseach'.

This story, featuring in one of the largest publications on the island, is based on some Facebook comment a person seemingly made in anger: 'Shoot him make a martyr haven't had one in a long time'. This headline is ludicrous for a few reasons.

Garda assaulting community protesters and the media not reporting? Politicians spinning greater and greater lies about 'sinister fringes' and dissidents? What's happening now to Water Charge resistors happened to the people of Rossport a few years back and we can learn from their determined resistance.

Scenes of Garda violence being used against water charge resistors have come as a shock to many people. Ten years ago if this had happened most people elsewhere might only have heard rumours and assumed that something must have been done to deserve the response. Today however the prevalence of camera phones and the ease of sharing photos and video on Facebook has meant one video after another showing disproportionate violence from the Garda has ‘gone viral’.
 

Protests took place in cities across Mexico yesterday following the disappearance of 43 student teachers in the southern state of Guerrero almost two weeks ago, with many of those having gone missing after the police arrested them.  Thousands of people blocked streets and roads, chanting “They took them alive; we want them back alive"!

The students, who studied at Ayotzinapa, a radical teacher training college in Guerrero, went missing on the night of 26 September. Iguala’s municipal police fired on the students’ buses and, an hour later, unidentified gunmen fired upon them again. The attacks left three students and three others dead in the city, as well as at least 17 wounded. 43 students remain unaccounted for, a significant number of whom were seen being driven away in police vehicles after the first attack. A mass grave has since been found in a nearby location, but the charred remains have yet to be identified.

Saturday evening August 23 saw over a 1000 people take part in a demonstration in Dublin demanding the legalisation of Cannabis organised by Legalise Cannabis Ireland. The front banner read ‘Medication - Taxation - Industrialisation - Civil Liberties’ and “We will raise awareness and demand change to Irish legislation for the benefit of every person in Ireland. The time is now to end the hypocrisy’

The message of the march as expressed by the front banner was very much a demand for capitalism as normal rather than the gangster capitalism of illegality. That’s obviously a very limited demand - indeed it’s already been won or partly won in a number of European countries and more recently states in the USA.

Tuesday night the government published the overdue Cooke Report into the GSOC bugging controversy. Retired High Court Judge John Cooke, no stranger to controversy himself (link: see comments) was appointed by Enda Kenny to establish whether the offices of GSOC were bugged.

Wednesday morning Frances Fitzgerald, Minister for Justice and Equality and replacement for Alan Shatter after he was forced to resign, is lauding the report as an exoneration of the Gardaí. The 64-page report claims that “evidence does not support the proposition that actual surveillance…took place and much less that it was carried out by members of the Garda Síochána.” Yet there are a number of revelations in the report that raise serious questions as to its ability to speak to the bugging issue in a definitive manner.