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offsite link Ukraine Buys Huge Amounts of Russian Fue... Fri Jan 20, 2023 08:34 | Antonia Kotseva

offsite link Turkey Has Sent Ukraine Cluster Munition... Thu Jan 12, 2023 00:26 | Jack Detsch

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Human Rights in Ireland
A Blog About Human Rights

offsite link UN human rights chief calls for priority action ahead of climate summit Sat Oct 30, 2021 17:18 | Human Rights

offsite link 5 Year Anniversary Of Kem Ley?s Death Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:34 | Human Rights

offsite link Poor Living Conditions for Migrants in Southern Italy Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:14 | Human Rights

offsite link Right to Water Mon Aug 03, 2020 19:13 | Human Rights

offsite link Human Rights Fri Mar 20, 2020 16:33 | Human Rights

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Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link DEI Wokery is Swallowing Small Businesses Too Fri Mar 29, 2024 09:00 | C.J. Strachan
It's not only large corporations with hyperactive HR departments that are succumbing to efficiency-sapping wokery, says C.J. Strachan. Small and medium-sized enterprises are being swallowed up by DEI as well.
The post DEI Wokery is Swallowing Small Businesses Too appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Are We Being Gaslit Over the Cause of the Princess of Wales?s Cancer? Fri Mar 29, 2024 07:00 | Melissa Kite
First Charles and then Kate ? it's hard to ignore the soaring cancer rate when two members of the Royal Family are diagnosed within weeks. But are we being gaslit about what's behind the surge, asks Melissa Kite.
The post Are We Being Gaslit Over the Cause of the Princess of Wales’s Cancer? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Fri Mar 29, 2024 00:04 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the virus and the vaccines, the ?climate emergency? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Women?s Team with Five Male Players Wins Football Competition After One Male Player ?Broke Opponent?... Thu Mar 28, 2024 19:30 | Will Jones
A women?s football competition has been branded misogynist after it was won by a team featuring five transgender players, amid accusations one had broken an opponent?s leg in two places.
The post Women’s Team with Five Male Players Wins Football Competition After One Male Player “Broke Opponent’s Leg” ? But Teams Who Refuse to Play Against Them Are Branded “Discriminatory” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Further Evidence Gaza Casualty Numbers Are Fake Thu Mar 28, 2024 17:36 | Will Jones
The evidence that the Gaza casualty numbers from the Hamas-run Health Ministry (now over 32,000) are wildly inflated continues to mount. Mark Zlochin looks at what the proportions of male and female UNRWA workers tell us.
The post Further Evidence Gaza Casualty Numbers Are Fake appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Moscow attack reminds us of the links between Islamists and Kiev's fundamentalis... Tue Mar 26, 2024 06:57 | en

offsite link Failure to assist a people in danger of genocide, by Hassan Hamadé Tue Mar 26, 2024 06:32 | en

offsite link Yugoslavia March 24, 1999 The Founding War of the New Nato, by Manlio Dinucci Sun Mar 24, 2024 05:15 | en

offsite link France opposes Russian Korean-style peace project in Ukraine Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:11 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N°79 Fri Mar 22, 2024 11:40 | en

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Blockades of Water Meter installations in Cork and Dublin

category national | bin tax / household tax / water tax | news report author Friday April 25, 2014 23:07author by no water taxes Report this post to the editors

Opposition to water charges has taken the Direct Action route with residents in a Cork housing estate preventing workers from Irish
Water from installing smart meters. Irish Water is the quango that has so far provided over €70 million in setup fees to consultants
and various private firms and the government reckons it will cost up to €1,000 million to get it fully run and running. It will
then be handed over to the private sector so that they can squeeze hard pressed people for money for the rest of their lives.
watermeterinstallationprohibitedposter.jpg

There had been already previous sporadic protests by residents around the country blockading the installation but up to
now the successful efforts of the media to not cover them has ensured that most people had not heard about them. However that
changed this week with the Cork protests and they have now spread to a protest on Thurs (Apr 24th) in a housing estate in Raheny.

The protests come at a bad time for the FG-Lab coalition government with the Local and Euro elections because they will now
be under pressure to pay lip service to these issue and as part of this they have pretend to concede on this by claiming the standing
charge would be only €50 instead of €100. Given all lies about the election promises, the property tax and practically
everything else, we can safely ignore any of these face saving verbal but meaningless promises. In fact this is a good time for citizens
to send a clear message by ensuring the three main parties, FG, FF and Labour lose control of the councils and of their MEP seats. Afterall FF are the flipside of the current government and created the mess in the first place.

One of the reasons given for the introduction of this water tax is the fake greenwash argument that it is to help
conserve use and will be a finance mechanism to 'invest' in infrastructure. However the experience in countries where water
charges have been introduced is that usage goes down by about 10% in the first few months and then gradually returns to
the level it was before and what this demonstrates is that people find they need to use the amount of water they have
always being using. It turns out anyhow that industry and farming use far more water and if you want to reduce domestic
use there are far more effective means of doing this.

Regarding the argument about investment, this is fake too, because again experience shows that the private owners of
water companies consistently put profits and executive salary payouts far ahead of spending money on infrastructure and
usually what happens is they make special pleas to governments to give them money to help them pay for critical infrastructure
projects. In other words there is no savings and the tax payer gets to pay again.

In the case of Irish Water, the plan is to sell it off to the private sector and there has already been interest by certain
individuals who have had big loans with NAMA in the past and who would like to get hold of this 'gift' from the government
which will allow them to cream off money from every household for the privilige of something which the UN says is a right and
that is access to water. Make no mistake this political project to charge and later privatize our water supply is straight
out of the right wing neo liberal agenda where large multinational corporations own pretty much everything, get to trash
and ignore our laws through international -so called -free trade agreements but in reality totally undermine national governments
and laws.

People should also note that the Gardai were quick on the scene in Cork to threaten the protestors with arrest should they try
and prevent Irish Water from coming into the estate. However when it goes to metting out justice to those who brought the
country to its knees the reaction is totally different. In the case of the Anglo Irish Bank trial, the scope of the trial
and charges were so narrow, they were always going to get away with it and with the Anglo tapes where the lads 'picked a number
out of their arse' and schemed to put the government on hook to bail out the banks for billions, all the investigations
under way at the time were dropped and no charges brought forward. There are many other examples selective use of the
law but in all cases, it is used against the 'little' people and totally ignored when it comes to the power elite and their
fellow travellers.

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