Anarchists Condemn G8 Scaremongering - press release
Date: Wed, 2013-05-22 09:37

In response to yesterday?s Irish News (Mon 20 May 2013) front page article, ?Police to Occupy hundreds of vacant premises in Belfast during G8?, the Workers Solidarity Movement condemned security forces scaremongering in the media.

A spokesperson for the All-Ireland anarchist organisation said:

?These kind of absurd and over-the-top scare stories are aimed not so much at intimidating anarchists, but the concerned citizens, trade unionists and others wanting to show their opposition to the offensive waste of money on this pointless G8 charade.
Invoking the phantasm of invasions of ?thousands of international protesters? and bogeymen ?anarchists bent on destruction? is really aimed at creating a bogus climate of fear to try and intimidate ordinary members of the public out of exercising their legitimate right to demonstrate their objections to this reckless waste of resources. Resources that would be better spent on preventing cuts to services and attacks on the already penniless, like the Bedroom tax.

We find it a dereliction of civic duty and a shameful violation of journalistic ethics, that such crude propaganda from the security forces is printed more or less verbatim by journalists and newspapers, without any attempt to verify their veracity or solicit alternative views.

The real forces ?bent on damage and destruction? at this grotesque spectacle, will be the G8 representatives within their temporary battlements, planning the further ruination of peoples lives through ever more savage austerity, and the destruction of our environment through the unsustainable despoliation of the planet in the service of profit for the few?

Well respected blog "NamaWineLake" has made it's final post. This is a great loss to the Irish online community. Thanks for all your great work NWL!
After 3.5 years and over 2700 posts, NamaWinelake blog has made it's final post. This is indeed a great loss to online investigative citizen journalism. The blog was at the forefront of investigation into the secretive behaviour of the organisation with a mandate to deal with the huge portfolio of troubled properties handed over by the banks. In recognition of it's good work, indymedia has long maintained an rss feed to it's articles on our front page. Sadly that feed will no longer be updated.

The blogger says all posts made to the blog thus far will remain accessible to the public, and this decision was for personal reasons and not to do with any legal threats etc.

We at indymedia would like wish the blogger well and thank him for his efforts to highlight important issues relating to NAMA and make the behaviour of NAMA a little more transparent for the citizens of Ireland

You can access the blog here:
http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/

Apple claim to have negotiated an agreement with the Irish government whereby they paid 2% tax or less. In this time of deep austerity, it's time to kick out these US tax dodgers and instead focus on giving support to indigenous small businesses.
On May 21, 2013, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) of the U.S.
Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee held a hearing on how individual andcorporate taxpayers are shifting billions of dollars offshore to avoid U.S. taxes. The hearing examined how Apple Inc., a U.S. multinational corporation, has used a variety of offshore structures, arrangements, and transactions to shift billions of dollars in profits away from the United States and into Ireland, where Apple has negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than two percent.

The report which they discussed is attached to this article. It makes for some very interesting reading. Below I have taken some quotes from it to give you the basic idea of what's going on and why we need to do something about this. For too long we have ignored small business in favour of this model of supporting large corporations who funnel huge amounts of money through our economy, while employing relatively few people and paying virtually no tax. This in turn severely distorts our GDP figure and helps the government in it's lies about the economy. It's time we made them pay their share or get out, and, instead of relying on these tax criminals, gave our support to indigenous small business which is a far more sustainable model in the long term and doesn't leave us as open to blackmail or corruption of our government officials. Because you can be absolutely sure there is some serious lobbying involved here in allowing something so lucrative to continue this long.

Apple have several subsidiaries in Ireland. ASI ADI AOI AOE.
By a series of intricate transfers of intellectual property and carefully orchestrating which arm takes responsibility for each of it's business activities, the net result is that Apple are paying as little as 0.05% tax in Ireland.

The following quote gives the idea of their function and how these subsidiaries fit together:

"These offshore affiliates enable Apple Inc. to keep
the lion?s share of its worldwide sales revenues out of the United States and instead shift that
sales income to Ireland, where Apple enjoys an unusually low tax rate and affiliates allegedly
with no tax residency.

The key roles played by ASI and AOE stem from the fact they are parties to a research
and development cost-sharing agreement with Apple Inc., which also gives them joint ownership
of the economic rights to Apple?s intellectual property offshore. As of 2012, AOE had about
400 employees and conducted a small amount of manufacturing in Cork, Ireland involving a line
of specialty computers for sale in Europe. Also as of 2012, ASI moved from zero to about
250 employees who manage Apple?s other manufacturing activities as well as its product-line
sales. As part of its duties, ASI contracted with Apple?s third-party manufacturer in China to
assemble Apple products and acted as the initial buyer of those finished goods. ASI then re-sold
the finished products to ADI for sales in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India; and to
Apple Singapore for sales in Asia and the Pacific region."

Since its inception more than thirty years earlier, AOI has not had any employees in Ireland.
ADI has one employee in Ireland, Cathy Kearney:

"While AOI shares the same mailing address as several
other Apple affiliates in Cork, Ireland, AOI has no physical presence at that or any other
address. Since its inception more than thirty years earlier, AOI has not had any employees.
Instead, three individuals serve as AOI?s directors and sole officer, while working for other
Apple companies. Those individuals currently consist of two Apple Inc. employees, Gene
Levoff and Gary Wipfler, who reside in California and serve as directors on numerous other
boards of Apple offshore affiliates, and one ADI employee, Cathy Kearney, who resides in
Ireland. Mr. Levoff also serves as AOI?s sole officer."

ASI employs 250 people in Cork which used to work for AOE:

"ASI is a subsidiary of Apple Operations Europe (AOE) which is, in turn, a subsidiary of
AOI. Prior to 2012, like AOI, ASI operated without any employees and carried out its
activities through a U.S.-based Board of Directors. Also like AOI, the majority of ASI?s
directors were Apple Inc. employees residing in California. Of 33 ASI board meetings from
May 2006 to March 2012, all 33 took place in Cupertino, California. In 2012, as a result of
Apple?s restructuring of its Irish subsidiaries, ASI was assigned 250 employees who used to
work for its parent, AOE. Despite acquiring those new employees, ASI maintains that its
management and control is located outside of Ireland and continues to claim it has no tax
residency in either Ireland or the United States. "

some of the most damning facts in the report are in these 2 paragraphs:

"Apple told the Subcommittee that it had obtained this special rate through negotiations with the
Irish government. According to Apple, for the last ten years, this special corporate income tax
rate has been 2 percent or less:

Other information provided by Apple indicates that the Irish tax rate assessed on Apple
affiliates has recently been substantially below 2%. For example, Apple told the Subcommittee
that, for the three year period from 2009 to 2011, ASI paid an Irish corporate income tax rate that
was consistently below far below 1% and, in 2011, was as low as five-hundreds of one percent
(0.05%): "

But Apple may be the company that, while not benefitting the Irish exchequer very much, may cause all the rules to change for US multinationals based in Ireland. There is a hint here in the end of the report:

"Apple?s ability to pass title to the goods it sells around the world through Ireland resulted in 84% of Apple?s non-U.S. operating income being booked in ASI.This left very small earnings, and correspondingly
small tax liabilities, in countries around the world. In 2011, for example, only $155 million in
earnings before taxes were recorded in Apple?s UK affiliates. Apple also had no tax liability in
its French and German retail affiliates that same year. Through this foreign profit shifting, Apple
is able to reduce its foreign tax rate to below 2%.The ability to pay taxes of less than 2% on
all of Apple?s offshore income gives the company a powerful financial incentive to engage in
convoluted tax planning to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Congress can change those incentives by
closing offshore tax loopholes and strengthening U.S. tax law. "



You can read the full report for yourself here:

Apple tax avoidance Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee report

The amount of money used to bail out failed banks would have ended world hunger for 50 years. This is the world presided over by G8 leaders who meet every year to co-ordinate how to continue failed policies which favour the 'have yachts' over the 'have nots'. We say 'Another World is Possible' and over five days in June our Festival of Ideas hopes to challenge and inspire those who want to fight for it.

Check the website at www.anotherworldispossiblebelfast.org - More events are still being added
Thursday 13 June

Belfast Not for $hale
Workshop on the dangers of hydraulic fracturing (fracking).
2.30pm, Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre, Donegall Street

The Condition of the Working Class
Film screening followed by discussion and Q&A with film directors Deidre O'Neill and Mike Wayne.
5.30pm - 7.30pm, Northern Visions, Donegall Street

Platform for the Alternative
Opening rally, followed by music. With speakers Brian Campfield (NIPSA); Clare Daly, TD; John Douglas (Mandate); Bill Greenshields (People's Assembly); Jimmy Kelly (Unite); Patricia McKeown (Unison); Dave Ward (CWU).
6pm, Oh Yeah Centre, Gordon Street

Friday 14 June

Inconvenient Truths
Public meeting on issues of welfare and poverty, with speakers Patricia McKeown (Unison); Michael Calderbank (Red Pepper magazine); Paul Morrison (British Methodist Church)
2pm, Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre, Donegall Street

George Galloway: Live and Uncut
A Talk by the outspoken MP for Bradford West.
6.30pm, The MAC, St Anne's Square, Admission £2

Stand Up to the G8
Comedy night with Scott Cappuro, Nick Revell, Kate Smurthwaite, and Brendon Burns
8.30pm, The MAC, St Anne's Square, Admission £5

Saturday 15 June

Rally and Demonstration
Assemble at Custom House Square at 12noon

Tariq Ali - The Obama Syndrome
Talk analysing Barack Obama's presidency and the continuation of the 'War on Terror'
2.30pm, Arts College, York Street

Sunday 16 June

Choice - Time to have your say
Information and consultation Seminar on newly released abortion guidelines, organised by Alliance for Choice.
12noon, The Black Box, Hill Street

Palestine - The way forward
Public meeting on the continuing struggle of the Palestinian people.
12noon, Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre, Donegall Street

From Global Poverty to the Empty Purse
Public meeting on the impact of welfare reform on women, organised by Reclaim the Agenda.
2pm, Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre, Donegall Street

Venzuela and the Fight against US Intervention
Screening of 'The Revolution will not be Televised' followed by discussion.
2.30pm, The Black Box, Hill Street

Folk the G8 - Open mic
Open mic afternoon for songs about the G8, austerity, and the fight for a better world.
2-8pm, The John Hewitt, Donegall Street

Folk the G8 - Songs of Protest
Concert featuring David Rovics, Tommy Sands, Pól Mac Adaim, Paddy Nash & The Happy Enchiladas, Grace Petrie, Boss Sound Manifesto, and more.
7pm-midnight, The Black Box, Hill Street

An analysis on recent armed actions!
Óglaigh na hÉireann yesterday (17th May) claimed responsibility through the media for a gun and bomb attack on British Police operating in the Twinbrook area of West Belfast. An attack which by all accounts forced a panicked PSNI unit to scramble along the ground for cover before retreating from the area altogether, albeit only for a few hours.
Wednesday?s was the latest in a series of ÓnhÉ claimed attacks on crown forces in the Belfast area since the beginning of the year, attacks which have demonstrated a capacity for utilising mobile phone detonation, mortar capacity, under car booby trap technology and now a clear ability and intent to engage ?face to face? with the armed forces of the British State.

RNU has made their position on ?Physical Force? quite clear (see our A-Z section), it is a legacy issue borne from Britain?s insistence on maintaining its presence here by force. While claiming the right to hold a critical analysis on the political suitability of each and any republican armed action, we refuse to join in the hypoctrical chorus of condemnation from those who choose to ignore the fact that the overwhelming bulk of armed actions in Ireland are still carried out by the British state.

Day and night ? and directed by MI5 -a heavily armed British PSNI literally stalk Irish Republicans and their families with hostile intent. In West Belfast, despite the best attempts from Sinn Fein and others to portray them as an accountable non-partisan force, so called PSNI ?community officers?, Armed Response Units and Tactical Support Groups all participate in the daily harassment of republican activists.

Families are followed constantly by PSNI patrol cars and jeeps. Veichles and individuals are subjected to humiliating searches on the roadside, in school grounds while collecting children, at work, and in the home during raids which are conducted on a whim and often in random retaliation for one incident or another.

Republicans on the ground will tell you that the British PSNI carry out their armed duties with gusto, appearing to take a perverse and macho pleasure in harassing republican families, men women and children alike. Copious cases are reported of PSNI officers following republican families around for hours and subjecting them to searches at the most inappropriate and humiliating moments. Of shining powerful lights into republican homes late at night, making verbal threats and smiling smugly at the shocked reactions of parents, whose priority is to comfort their children clearly distraught at the hostile nature of the Armed Men in their midst.

But on Wednesday afternoon in broad daylight, the macho posturing of the armed British Police was deflated in Foxes Glen, when the same PSNI officers refused to engage with Irish Soldiers, instead opting to crawl along the ground to find cover. According to local people they used family cars and wheelie bins to hide behind, then scurried along footpaths in a clear state of panic before speeding out of the area, leaving the ground to Óglaigh na hÉireann.

Later a compliant media reported on the almost compulsory presence of school children ?playing in the area?, a claim disputed in the ONH statement and indeed not borne out by the fact that it was 1pm on a school day.

Sinn Fein claims as to ?no support? for ONH in the Twinbrook area appear to hold no water and raise the question as to why that party needs to continually repeat this well rehearsed mantra, not to mention their obviously hypocritical new position on armed actions.

Republican veterans will confirm that attacks such as that which occurred on Wednesday cannot take place at the level which they have (and there have been numerous such attacks in the Twinbrook area) without a degree of local support. Indeed for four years or more the population in the Twinbrook district have increasingly relied on ONH to face down Anti-Community elements in that area, in full knowledge that the PSNI have no interest in Anti-Social criminality, except as a means to recruit and manipulate local youths.

Indeed the apparent response which ONH has made to requests for intervention from the community may well point to their increasing levels of support and success in Belfast and the seeming inability of the PSNI to disrupt their efforts as they have done to other like minded republican groupings.

At the beginning of January ÓnhÉ admited trying to assassinate a serving PSNI officer at his home in East Belfast by placing an UCBT beneath his vehicle In early march three more PSNI officers had a narrow escape at the Duncre towpath along the M5, when an ?anti-personnel device? exploded close to them. According to both the PSNI and Republican sources the IED was detonated using mobile phone technology. In a statement from the British PSNI, Detective Chief Inspector Karen Baxter said ?Had this device exploded as intended we would?ve had fatalities this morning,? she said. ?There was a significant degree of planning involved and this was a sophisticated device?.

Less than a week later Óglaigh na hÉireann aimed what they termed to be a ?MK 1, 10 KG? Mortar device at New Barnsley PSNI Barracks in West Belfast, it appears that British Army bomb disposal units were able to disable the device before it launched.
That attempted mortar attack in itself, ? alongside the appearance of mobile phone detonation technology a week earlier ? shines a further light on the ongoing crisis which the British PSNI are facing in their loosing battle to defeat Militant Irish Republicanism in the Belfast area, and the extents to which they will go to cover up that crisis.

Last July the PSNI assisted by dubious figures in the world of Journalism, did their best to discredit a claimed ÓnhÉ gun and horizontal mortar attack on a PSNI patrol, which took place along the Glen Road, again in West Belfast. According to the Óglaigh na hÉireann statement, one of their active service units had fired at (with a rifle) and hit a passing PSNI jeep which was driving along the Glen Road in the early hours of July 27th, 2012. As another Jeep sped to the scene, they then used mobile phone technology to detonate a horizontal mortar device which fortunately for the British Police appeared not to leave its launching tube at full velocity.

Despite video footage of the attack being released to the Irish News, the PSNI ? assisted by former Sunday World Journalist Suzanne Breen ? spent the following week attempting to discredit the Óglaigh na hÉireann claim. Firstly they pointed to the absence of the unexploded mortar and launch tube (ignoring the possibility that an ASU would retrieve such objects for forensic reasons) and then relied on a PSNI statement which claimed that ONH lacked both mortar capacity and the ?ability to detonate using mobile phone technology?. A prolonged attempt was then made to discredit ONH by claiming that the attack was in fact a staged ?hoax?.

It is now clear however (with both the M5 and Ballygomartin attacks) that both mortar capacity and mobile detonation capacity did exist, the carpet has arguably been pulled from under the feet of the conspiracy theorists, pointing to the fact that the Glen Road attack probably did occur just as ONH claimed. What is equally clear is that the PSNI have found themselves incapable of infiltrating or significantly disrupting the activities of Óglaigh na hÉireann (no charges have arose from any of these attacks) perhaps suggesting that the prudence of that group last year (maintaining their own autonomy) was well based.

Whatever the operational capabilities of Óglaigh na hÉireann and the PSNIs clear inability to defeat their efforts, what is still missing from the equation is a debate within the wider republican family as to the long-term merits of physical force, Its benefits, its drawbacks and the price which the movement and its supporters pay in terms of Gaol time and harassment.

Republican Network for Unity would call on the wider republican and socialist family to consider the holding of such a debate, free from an atmosphere of schism and based only on the realities of cold hard facts.

Jarlath Toner (RNU Armagh)