One night I was woken up by a Garda, by him booting me in the ribs, because, he said, `I can't be arsed bending down and I don't like touching shit with my hands!'

My name is David and I am homeless. I was asked to write a piece on the reason for my situation and my experiences of being homeless. This is it. I am sorry if it comes across as a sob story, it isn't meant to and I am not looking for sympathy or for people to feel sorry for me. As it is things are looking up for me at last but it probably does come across that way because after a long time spent thinking about it, there aren?t many good things that I can say about it.

Contrary to popular belief homeless people haven't brought the situation on themselves and do not choose to live that way, as is the case with me. After my mother passed on, I decided that I wanted to get away from Liverpool and go back to my home country of Ireland, (having left when I was six or seven because my Mum and Dad split up, my Mum being from Liverpool she took me back to be with her parents.) as I had no family left there, being born an only child and late on in my parents life (my Father had passed on two years earlier and I had no family in Ireland either.) I had nothing to keep me there and I felt I needed a change.

Continue to the rest of the story.

Threshold has some good resources which indicate that if David were to wait for "social housing" he could wait as long as 12 years. More of this research is at Focus Ireland calls into question (pg. 126) the role that land speculation and the planning process in the provision of "social housing". As part of a response to the situation the evangelical Dominican Friars run the Merchant's Quay Project and the Simon Community and St. Vincent de Paul undertake similar work. However David can rest assured that the proper authorities have the problem in hand. As long ago as the 21st of January 2002, Minister Bobby Molloy, in a criticism of a Focus Ireland report said "[...]There is no escaping the fact that there are far too many people homeless and this Government is totally committed to dealing with the problem of homelessness. We have made considerable improvements in the way we are addressing the problem."

The G8 are returning to Europe in June after fleeing to the Rocky mountains last year in an attempt to avoid the protests that greeted them in Genoa in 2001. The G8 are effectively an unelected world government who dictate the world’s economic and political agenda through the IMF, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank. Their neoliberal policies of war and profit are destroying the planet and its people. The G8 will meet in Evian, France from the 1st to the 3rd of June. Hundreds of thousands of protestors from all over Europe are heading there to greet them!

Globalise Resistance, an Irish activist network, is calling on all organisations and individuals to sign the call opposing the G8 and encourages people to make their way to the protests and alternative summits that will be held near Evian. Anti-G8 leaflets and trade union motions are available from GR's web pages.

Globalise Resistance is running buses to get there, and an alternative bus known as the 'Good Bus' is being discussed.

Current GR Bulletin
The 'Good Bus'

See also CLAAAC - Anti-Authoritarian and Anti-Capitalist Convergence Against the G8, ATTAC, War On Want, World Development Movement, Globalise Resistance UK, Zone Autogérée a Genève (Fr.), AntiG8.org, Evian 2003, G8Deviant.org (counter-summit planning).

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This Saturday, the 10th May, Tony Doherty, whose father Patrick was killed on Bloody Sunday, is to take part in a walk from the Bloody Sunday monument to the monthly vigil outside Raytheon, to protest the killing by US Parachuters of 13 innocent protesters in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.

The massacre, which took place on Monday April 28th outside the school that the 82nd Airborne Division were occupying, was later justified by an official US military cover story. The story claimed that soldiers had come under fire, and that they had only fired aimed shots at gunmen. The walk is organized by the Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign as part of the campaign against the arms trade and its presence in Derry, in the form of Raytheon. Continue to the complete article here

Links: Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign / Irish CND / Mairead Maguire on Raytheon / Fallujah and the Media (from Counterpoint)

"On May 14, the various Irish groups campaigning on trade issues invite you to join in a public lobby of the Dail. We will meet at the Dail, and collectively lobby our TDs. Under the banner of the newly formed Trade Justice Ireland coalition, we will present our elected representatives with four simple questions about clear injustices:

"1. Why do trade rules allow the economies of third world countries to be undermined both by unfair barriers to products from poor countries, and by unfair practices of export subsidies and dumping?

"2. The new trade agreements that Ireland is currently involved in negotiating are unlikely to benefit developing countries. Poor countries do not have the negotiating capacity to protect their interests in new areas, and their concerns with existing agreement are being ignored. Why is there still a push to create even more trade rules?

"3. Why, in Ireland and within Europe, is there so little transparency and democracy in the negotiation of trade rules?

"4.Why do the rules of international trade, negotiated and enforced through the World Trade Organization, take precedence over all other international agreements on human rights, labour rights, and the environment, and why are the negative effects of trade on social, gender and workers' issues still being ignored by trade agreements?".

Full newswire article

Trade Justice Ireland / Comhlamh / Oxfam Ireland / Trocaire / ActionAid Ireland

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"It is effective” says Fatme, of the looting of the museums and ministries, “By destroying a people’s heritage, you destroy their past and future. We have been made - to them - a people without a past - our records and archives are destroyed, burnt in the ministries. We become a people without names, no records to say we exist. It is not the objects themselves we are sad about, it is what they represented to us. We are the oldest civilisation, but we are presented to the world as terrorists, as fanatics. Only people who fight with small guns are called terrorists. Bush, who bombs us with cluster bombs, and strangles us with the embargo, is a ‘civilised man.’".

Continue to full report from Caoimhe Butterly here

New report: 8th May
Previous reports from Iraq by Caoimhe
26th April: Lessons Unlearned
29th April: Crowd Control American Style