Upcoming Events

National | Crime and Justice

no events match your query!

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite
UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.

offsite link Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent
Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!

This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".

According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.

People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.

offsite link AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent
Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.

offsite link Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy
We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza

Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support

With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza

offsite link China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy
This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty

A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed.

The Saker >>

Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

The Role of the Gardai

category national | crime and justice | opinion/analysis author Wednesday September 01, 2004 19:33author by Dec McCarthy - Workers Solidarity Movement Report this post to the editors

The primary role of the police is to preserve the status quo in society. In other words, the first task of the police force, of any police force, is to ensure the rule of the State and the rich elite. In practice this means priority is given to concerns of State over that of the population. For example, in Stoneybatter, near Dublin city-centre, on a number of occasions, the Guards have responded to break-ins over 12 hours after the event. In contrast the Guards were always prompt in attending to the scene of a bin-truck blockade.

The fact that Guards also do useful work, like investigating genuine crimes such as rape or doing traffic control, provides them with a level of cover for the fact that their primary role is to control the population in the interests of the rich. While it would be foolish to dismiss the useful work the police do, it is naive to think that it is the fundamental reason for their existence.

Garda Behaviour

Garda misbehaviour, incompetence and plain subversion of justice happens all too regularly. When you think about the continuous nature of the scandals, you are forced to conclude there is something rotten about the police. Take just a few of the more well-known examples: The Guards investigating the savage murder of two elderly women in Grangegorman framed Dean Lyons, a totally innocent man. They simply forced a confession out of a vulnerable person. It isn’t the only case of Gardai faking confessions and setting people up, though perhaps it is the most blatant and tragic - another couple died before the real killer was caught and Dean Lyons suffered under the shame and subsequently died prematurely.

The Gardai in Donegal tried to frame Frank McBearty for murder. Again, they tried to fake a confession and they also severely harassed the man’s family by issuing over 200 summonses against family members. It turns out that Gardai there were also faking the discovery of explosives in order to gain credit from their superiors for disrupting the IRA.

The roll call of shame has a long meandering history; from the heavy-gang antics of the 1970s, where policemen helped suspects talk by giving them a good heavy beating, to the Kerry Babies case of the 1980s to the shooting of John Carthy in Abbeylara a couple of years ago.

The Gardai’s actual competence as a police force that protects the community is put in perspective when you consider the almost total lack of prosecutions against serial child-abusers, for example in institutions run by religious, in Irish society until the 1990s. It is inconceivable that the Garda didn’t know what was going on in wider Irish society in the fifties and sixties, yet they singularly failed to intervene to protect the most vulnerable.

Routine Lies

The routine lies that Guards peddle in the District Court to gain convictions are so common as to be barely worth remarking upon. Rarely acknowledged too are the regular beatings meted out to working class youths. The Department of Justice pays out over €1,000,000 annually in compensation for unlawful arrest, assault and harassment. And that figure represents the tiny minority who have bothered to make complaints that were successful. Many more are intimidated out of doing so; many never bother making a complaint at all.

Very recently we have witnessed the wholesale militarisation of Dublin, with over 4,000 Guards, many dressed in storm-trooper like gear and water-cannon, protecting the European elite. The same absurd level of policing was readily available for George Bush when he graced us with his presence. The sheer level of resources poured into these events illustrate the priorities of the State and the police: the elites take precedence, dealing with joy-riders, drug-dealing and assault is very much a secondary consideration

The Good & the Bad

So there are problems with the Police Force. What else can one expect with a large organisation of over 10,000 members? But the problems with the police force are systemic and arise because it is a police force rather than from the proverbial bad apples. If it were the latter the problems could be rectified, but of course they never are.

In fact it is often mentioned, rightly, that Gardai join the force with the honourable motive of assisting society. Also, many individual Gardai sympathise with the aims of, say, anti-war activists or dislike the bin-tax or many other measures it is their job to enforce. However, it isn’t the individual that is the problem, but the institution of the police force itself and its manipulation of the individuals it controls. The institution is a bureaucratic machine which implements the wishes of those in control, i.e. the rich, and the lower echelons follow their orders. The system encourages individual Guards to identify their interests with that of the State and status quo. The individuals in the bureaucracy ‘switch off’ a part of their individuality when doing their job so that a Guard who is personally anti-war can find herself arresting anti-war activists for actions she probably thinks are justified!

Whose Streets? Our Streets!

The police force is in fact the core function and essence of any State. That is why priority is given to political policing, even at a mundane level. The recent Mayday events in Dublin organised by the Dublin Grassroots Network, were hardly a serious threat to the State. Nevertheless activists were routinely stopped and questioned for the subversive act of leafleting working class neighbourhoods.

The political nature of the police and their function is the reason why they dislike Reclaim the Streets and anarchist tainted events such as the Mayday weekend. We are reclaiming space that the State insists on controlling. An unauthorised RTS or occupation of Fitzwilliam Square is in effect saying to the State: “we will decide for ourselves where to go, we don’t need your permission”. Such actions also have a wider resonance, a symbolic message of people going out and doing things for themselves; of refusing to obey orders; of questioning the rights and privileges of the rich and the State to control our actions.

And that is why the police often try to have a heavy police presence at our events; all that fluorescent yellow is an attempt to symbolise that they are in control of the streets.

Outside of Popular Control

Anarchists refuse to acknowledge the right of the State to decide what is legitimate and what is not. As mentioned above, the police force is the quintessential face of the State. As such it must be beyond effective community control. If it weren’t, the ruling class would find that they no longer had a reliable force to, say, break up pickets of striking workers and suppress opposition. For example, when they were needed last autumn, the police were there at bin-tax pickets getting names for the courts.

People mightn’t remain indoctrinated in the lore of capitalism forever, and at the first sign of the throwing off of their ‘voluntary submission’ and dissent, it is necessary for the capitalist class to have a force capable of containing it.

Talk of the Gardai being unarmed is basically false. They are a police force, not a police request service. If you don’t do what they want they will force their will upon you. They and their colleagues in the army, are the only organisation in the country permitted to use force. And they have easy access to firearms if needs be. The fact that they are not an everyday sight is indicative of the ideological success of capitalism rather than a benign policy of the State.

Freedom!

Anarchists want to minimise the use of force in human relations. The basic anarchist thesis is that it is only legitimate in self-defence and must never be under the control of a minority. For that effectively grants power to the minority, who will, as everybody with power does, use it primarily for their own ends and with a view to controlling others. But it is possible to live without recourse to controlling elites and their organised coercion. Anarchists have confidence that people can run their own affairs, particularly in a libertarian socialist society where society is structured to facilitate freedom and justice.

Related Link: http://www.struggle.ws/wsm

 #   Title   Author   Date 
   Well Done!     Peter    Wed Sep 01, 2004 19:58 
   Bullshit     crime victim    Wed Sep 01, 2004 19:58 
   Haha good one!     John P    Wed Sep 01, 2004 20:09 
   Get a job???!     Hooly    Wed Sep 01, 2004 20:12 
   Gardai and claims that 90% encounter bullying!!!!!     Michelle Clarke    Wed Sep 01, 2004 21:44 
   Dear Mr/ Ms. Crime victim     jeff    Fri Sep 03, 2004 17:56 
   Get off our backs and be thankful     Al    Tue Sep 07, 2004 20:29 
   Guardians of the Piece     BONZO    Thu Sep 09, 2004 20:35 
   So you all basically have no real issues, right?     Ruri    Fri Sep 10, 2004 15:45 
 10   Question to Ruri and al     Badman    Fri Sep 10, 2004 15:57 
 11   The drugs don't work     Ruri    Fri Sep 10, 2004 16:05 
 12   They Make the MOST NOISE!     - - - - - - - - - - -- - - -    Fri Sep 10, 2004 16:11 
 13   Issues     Joe    Fri Sep 10, 2004 16:25 
 14   Hey Joe     Ruri    Fri Sep 10, 2004 18:08 
 15   Ruri:     Badman    Fri Sep 10, 2004 18:18 
 16   Thunderdome     Tom    Sat Sep 11, 2004 03:26 
 17   Replies     Joe    Mon Sep 13, 2004 16:18 
 18   Joe     Ruri    Mon Sep 13, 2004 16:39 
 19   re: Ruri     Joe    Mon Sep 13, 2004 16:58 


Number of comments per page
  
 
© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy