Forget about Blair ..
As the baroness leads the EU team to negotiate in the region with the other members of the quartet
what can be achieved .
-Nothing unless sanctions are applied against Israel and the UN courts come out with less ambiguous deliberations .
The danger is that situation will escalate into another JIhad and open an opportunity for Iran to enter the fray.. read full story / add a comment

*For background and updates on the Waihopai Ploughshares action, trial and acquittal go to........
http://www.ploughshares.org.nz
read full story / add a comment

Both Shia communities In Iran and Iraq can see that ‘’ the enemy of my enemy is also my friend ‘’ and in this regard they will find common ground in their distrust of the West and Israel with possibly dreadful consequences .
So while it suited the US to have Iran and Iraq locked in a decade of war , the tables are perversely reversed now .
Mission Accomplished ?
The world is in a more parlous state after G.W Bush's military folly

read full story / add a comment

Nahr al-Bared refugee camp has still not recovered from the devastating war in 2007 during which it was destroyed.

read full story / add a comment

Preas Ráiteas ó RNU/RNU Press Release read full story / add a comment

The Women’s Peace camp Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th of March, at Shannon airport, as part of the International Women’s Day celebrations, was certainly worth while. Women and some men came from afar. read full story / add a comment

*On a surrealistic aside Jim Dowling is presently careering down the Pacific Highway in the recycled vegie oil fueled Catholic Worker van full of Dowling kidz - carrying Damien LeGoullon's entry into this year's Archibald Prize (Australian portrait competition). They'll be swinging by the appropriate Sydney gallery before heading to a wedding. See Damien's work attached to this email - the final portrait has a B52 Bomber and runway in the background!

Portrait
http://thechristianradical.blogspot.com/2010/03/clockin....html
read full story / add a comment

Today, the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM) will held a protest (Friday 26th Feb) at 5pm outside the Dail to demand the government impose sanctions on Israel in response to the outrage where seven falsified Irish passports were used to facilitate the assassins of senior Hamas figure, Mahmoud Al Mabhouh, in Dubai. read full story / add a comment

What the Irish people need are jobs at home not war abroad. read full story / add a comment

PANA welcomes the collapse of Dutch government over the Afghan War.

The Peace & Neutrality Alliance welcomes the decision of the Dutch Labour Party to collapse the Dutch Government because of Prime Minister Balkenende efforts to refuse to honour a commitment to withdraw Dutch troops from the occupation forces in Afghanistan. read full story / add a comment

1000 Architects and Engineers call for new 9/11 Investigation. They cite evidence of demolition at three World Trade Centre Towers. read full story / add a comment

Valentine’s Day was marked at Shannon Airport by a vigil calling for Love not War. Around 25 people gathered in the sunshine outside the airport entrance, displaying black hearts and calling for an end to the U.S. military use of Shannon. Demonstrators ended the hour long vigil by giving their black heart ‘Valentine Cards’ to the Gardai who stood behind the metal barriers which they had erected to block access to the airport. read full story / add a comment

On January 28th, we had the chance to have a telephone talk with Camilla Chalmers, from the Plateforme Haïtienne de Plaidoyer pour un Développement Alternatif (Haitian Platform in Defence of an Alternative Development, PAPDA), in Port-au-Prince. Here we transcribe the questions and answers we could exchange in spite of the natural difficulties of communication in these circumstances. We believe his opinions represent a contribution to understand what’s really going on in Haiti, they contradict the official version of the media and give us a very precise notion of the type of solidarity that the Haitian people need –and that we should not fail to give.

read full story / add a comment

Approximately 40 people packed in Solidarity Books in Cork to hear Elsie Haas (a Haitian film-maker and journalist, based in Paris) and Jose Antonio Gutierrez (of the Latin American Solidarity Centre in Dublin) talk about the political and economic history of Haiti and how the recent US intervention in the country, following the earthquake, is just a continuation of the UN-led occupation since 2004, following on from 200 years of occupations and imperialism. read full story / add a comment

As Tony Blair's evidence to the Iraq invasion inquiry , Old Labour ' statesman said yesterday he didnt believe a word of his rambling fiction. Did he really get away with this with his lying by increments, his obscenely flawed rhetoric. His false claims re Saadam and WMD.. the notion of a rogue state ..- the real rogue stat in the region.
And do the Brits reall give a dam anyway, as integrity has only an inconvenience and only had £ shop currency.
The whole inchoate gibberish. - from the man who felt the hand of history on his shoulder.
Yo ! Blair- as GW Bush would have said.
read full story / add a comment

Auschwitz survivor, Hajo Meyer, used a speech to encourage support for the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Approximately 100 people attended the meeting in The Grosvenor Hall, Belfast on Friday 29 January 2009.

During his speech, Meyer condemned the misuse of the holocaust for political purposes and compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians today to Nazi treatment of Jews before and during the second world war.

The meeting, to be repeated in Dublin on Saturday 30 January, concludes a month-long series of events organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign to mark the first anniversary of Israel's invasion of Gaza in December 2008.

Prior to arriving in Ireland, Meyer had spent the previous week on a speaking tour in Scotland and England organised by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. In February, Meyer is to continue his speaking tour in France, Austria and Germany. read full story / add a comment

*Background on School of Assasins (Americas)
www.soaw.org

*Send solidarity letters & postcards to peace prisoner....
Louis Vitale
c/o The Resister,
PO Box 43383,
Tucson,
AZ 85733,
U.S.A.
and we will forward it to him. read full story / add a comment

Anyone judging from the huge numbers of troops mobilised to Haiti could reasonably believe that this is a country in the middle of a brutal civil war instead of a nation hit by a deadly earthquake. While the Media has been feeding constantly news of murder, mayhem, and gangsters supposedly in control of Haitian streets, together with calls for a “strong arm” and “security” to make possible the delivery of relief, the reality seems to be quite another. Medical and Food assistance has been largely delayed by a cobweb of inefficiency, bureaucracy and negligence and not for “security” issues. In the meantime, hungry and thirsty Haitians have been largely looking for their beloved ones under the rubble with their bare hands. Very few doctors and relief agencies have dared to go to the streets of Port-au-Prince, where precious assistance –currently stockpiling in the airport- is much needed.
read full story / add a comment

Saturday 30th January will see the Irish premiere – indeed the first screening in the English-speaking world – of the 1962 film Octobre a Paris [October in Paris] by Jacques Panijel.

The film got its first and only screening in Paris in May 1962, immediately after which the film club where it was being shown was raided by Police and the film seized. Other 16 mm copies being screened around France were seized in the following days. Later in that summer Panijel did manage to get Octobre a Paris shown at the Venice Film Festival, but soon after the film would disappear, not to re-surface for over forty years.

The film is a first-hand account, using eye-witness testimonies and original footage, of the 17 October 1961 massacre in Paris and the events leading up to it. read full story / add a comment

A total of 1276 civilian flights were granted permits to carry weapons and munitions of war through Ireland in 2009. The vast majority of these were from American civil airlines, chartered by the US military, and involved flights to or from the United States. Almost all landed at Shannon Airport. read full story / add a comment