A few days ago I mentioned the great challenges humanity is currently facing. Intelligent life emerged on our planet approximately 200,000 years ago, although new discoveries demonstrate something else.

This is not to confuse intelligent life with the existence of life which, from its elemental forms in our solar system, emerged millions of years ago.

A virtually infinite number of life forms exist. In the sophisticated work of the world’s most eminent scientists the idea has already been conceived of reproducing the sounds which followed the Big Bang, the great explosion which took place more than 13.7 billion years ago.

This introduction would be too extensive if it was not to explain the gravity of an event as unbelievable and absurd as the situation created in the Korean Peninsula, within a geographic area containing close to five billion of the seven billion persons currently inhabiting the planet. read full story / add a comment

The AP has revised its stylebook to no longer include the term Islamist. They explain why:
"Islamist” is frequently used as a label for conservative Islamic political movements, particularly Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood . It generally carries a negative connotation"

Has the AP thought that maybe it carries a negative connotation because fascistic movements – religious or otherwise – generally do?

The disgusting Council on American-Islamic Relations which has previously lobbied AP to drop the term because they say it ”has become shorthand for ‘Muslims we don’t like’” and “is currently used in an almost exclusively pejorative context” is elated: We believe this revision is a step in the right direction and will result in fewer negative generalizations in coverage of issues related to Islam and Muslims."

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Akbayan Partylist today called on President Benigno Simeon Aquino III to "shake the military establishment" and "weed out the corrupt, murderers and traitors" among its ranks. The partylist group made the call after the Court of Appeals' decision to hold elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) accountable for the enforced disappearance of Jonas Burgos in 2007.
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The IRELAND-PALESTINE SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN presents:

MIKO PELED, Israeli activist and author of The General’s Son

3pm, Sat 13th April, Gresham Metropole Hotel, McCurtain St, Cork City

Don’t miss this unique oppurtunity to hear firsthand from an Israeli activist for freedom, justice and equality in Palestine and Israel. Copies of his book will be avaialble for purchase and signing on the night. read full story / add a comment

On Sat April 13th the EU Ministers of Finance are assembled in Dublin Castle. Join the National Protest to Stop Property Tax Robbery Assemble 12:30 Garden of Remembrance / Parnell Square to march to Dublin castle #ResistTheRobbery #A13 read full story / add a comment

Weekly Worker issue 956 - April 04 2013

Welfare cuts: Housing should be a basic human right
The cuts to housing benefit are cruel and irrational, says Michael Copestake

Anti-cuts movement: Frontism produces no lasting gains
What can we expect from the People’s Assembly? Dave Isaacson looks at the June 22 build-up

South African left: Attempt to go round already existing mass organisations
Wasp might be able to sting the SACP/Cosatu bureaucracy. But, asks Peter Manson, can it become a mass party capable of leading a socialist revolution? read full story / add a comment

Eddie Ford doesn't like Kim or the bizarre North Korean regime but he looks behind the headlines to examine how the US is stirring things up. Full story at url.

Over the last week there has been a considerable escalation of tensions between North and South Korea. To some degree, of course, this is ‘business as usual’ rhetoric, eg, Pyongyang on March 31 declared that it was in a “state of war” with Seoul (actually that has been the case since the 1953 armistice). But there is more going on than heightened rhetoric - though so far, thankfully, not a single missile has been fired.

Now, I am no admirer of the North Korean regime. It is a brutal and very odd Stalinist dictatorship, which quite literally deifies its leaders - whether the current tyrant, the Great Successor, Kim Jong-un, or his grandfather and Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, the “eternal president” who died in 1994 and presumably still guides the nation, albeit in his new, other-worldly form. To think that such a repressive system could be a workers’ state of any kind, deformed or otherwise, is a grotesque abnegation of genuine socialist politics. read full story / add a comment

Link to a wsws review by Joanne Laurie of a new Israelii documentary: The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh.

The newly released film –directed by Dror Moreh., a former election ad maker for Ariel Sharon - largely consists of interviews with former heads of Shin Bet , the notorious Israeli intelligence service . According to Laurier , The Gatekeepers “ provides a glimpse into the crisis wracking Israeli society and the failing Zionist project.”
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Hi All:

As of last Thursday ( March 28th 2013 ) FAS funding for the DBD Jobs Club, in Bawnogue ( Clondalkin ) has been withdrawn completely without any satisfactory explanation.

The Jobs Club Leader has been told that he is about to be made redundant and all services from our Jobs Club is to be withdrawn immediately.

Over the last 10 years, The Jobs Club has provided a very valuable service to local jobseekers over and it is unthinkable that, when its needed most, the area will be deprived of this valuable service. read full story / add a comment

The Dublin anarchist bookfair returns to Liberty Hall on the 6th of April for our 8th annual edition, and the theme 1913-2013 - Rebuilding a Movement from Below. There will be a social in Seomra Spraoi on the 5th and a radical walking tour around Dublin on the 7th. read full story / add a comment

Vegan Ireland: the Vegan Society of Ireland launch their new Supporter Card, t-shirt, and tote bag, at a movie and food event, Saturday 6th April, 2013, at The Exchange, Exchange Street Upper, Dublin. Time: 2pm – 4pm. read full story / add a comment

A lot of hype in the MSM lately about North Korea. These two clips from the RT show "breaking the set" with commentators from answercoalition.org give some much needed context and background from which to interpret the current media spin. Instead of a seemingly irrational belligerent nihilism, the North Korean statements in context, become more like a rational defensive response to a systematic aggressor bent on harming and undermining their country and it's tendency to socialism. You may find some of the facts that emerge about North Korea rather surprising. read full story / add a comment

OSSL claim that their company was a supplier to Shell in respect of the Corrib Gas Project. They allege that acting on Shell’s instructions, OSSL has distributed bribes on Shell’s behalf to parties connected with the project, including the Irish police force (the Garda) who have been the subject of serious accusations of wrong doing by environmental activists protesting against the project. The main accusation being that the Garda has acted as an offshoot of Shell security. read full story / add a comment

Dublin Alternative G8 Committee will be meeting at the Pearse Center, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin, at 8pm next Tuesday. read full story / add a comment

The IRELAND-PALESTINE SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN presents:

MIKO PELED, Israeli activist and author of The General’s Son

on 7.30pm, Thur 11th April, Gresham Hotel, O’Connell St, Dublin 1

Don’t miss this unique oppurtunity to hear firsthand from an Israeli activist for freedom, justice and equality in Palestine and Israel. Copies of his book will be avaialble for purchase and signing on the night. read full story / add a comment

On Good Friday the community opposing Shell's Corrib gas project in county Mayo held the 8th annual Good Friday walk to remember the campaigners in Nigeria who were murdered for opposing Shell's destruction of their homeland in 1995. read full story / add a comment

The Spanish platform JSF (Juventud Sin Futuro – Youth With No Future) has called for demonstrations around the world on the 7th of April under the theme “No nos vamos, nos echan” – “We don’t leave, they make us leave”. read full story / add a comment

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English with English Subtitles

Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1950

Starring: Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day

Saturday 20 April 2013

3.00pm

doors open at 2.30pm

New Theatre

(entrance through Connolly Books)

43 East Essex street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

day membership: €8.00

free tea & coffee
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British human rights group Amnesty International and legal charity Reprieve have condemned the British government's secret courts passed in the House of Lords as a “terrible day for British justice” read full story / add a comment

RT have been running stories following developments regarding the discovery of a new SARS like coronavirus which has a mortality rate of 50% and is transmissable between humans. Is this the one that kills off most of the great unwashed and lets the elites roam free to spend their ill gotten loot in a fascist marshal law paradise? read full story / add a comment