On Thursday 8th August, the Belfast Branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign is proud to host our annual Palestine Day as part of Féile an Phobail 2019. As usual, the day will take place in St. Mary’s University College on the Falls Road in Belfast and will run from 12 noon until 9pm. read full story / add a comment

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has released a report outlining “serious and urgent concerns” regarding the state’s attitude towards the democratic right to protest. After consultations with protest groups from across the country, the ICCL reports “severe misuse” of the Public Order Act by Gardai, in the form of arrests without charge, harassment of protesters and imposing limits on where people can protest, seemingly in order to punish and discourage such action. read full story / add a comment

Around the world the space for standing up for Palestinian freedom and rights is being shut down by those that oppose our shared values. They are using false claims of antisemitism to deny the Palestinian reality of living under Israel’s colonial system of Apartheid, occupation, oppression and dispossession. read full story / add a comment

I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That’s exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the public, I had been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign, which had been disseminated over the years. So it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention. But once I looked into the facts of this case, what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief. read full story / add a comment

In an open letter, over 340 civil society organisations are demanding that the European Union immediately halt free trade agreement negotiations with the Mercosur bloc (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) on the grounds of deteriorating human rights and environmental conditions in Brazil. The letter is addressed to presidents of the EU institutions ahead of the ministerial-level meeting next week in Brussels where EU and Mercosur foreign ministers aim to finalise the negotiations. read full story / add a comment

Summary: The UK is shamed by the jailing of Julian Assange read full story / add a comment

The WSWS website carries an interesting report on the atrocity in Sri Lanka providing background and relevant context unlikely to appear in the corporate and state media. For starters they say:

Despite an intelligence alert 10 days before, both the government and police failed to warn the public and took little or no action to prevent the terrible bombings. read full story / add a comment

Julian Assange who helped setup Wikileaks and in one of the first set of leaks revealed the murderous campaign of the US military against innocent civilians in Iraq amongst many other leaks showing the systematic criminality and inhumanity of the US government was betrayed this morning by the right wing corrupt president Lenin Moreno of Ecuador. Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa – whose government granted Assange asylum in 2012 – branded his more pro-US successor Lenin Moreno the “greatest traitor in Ecuadorian history” for rescinding the asylum claim and allowing British officers to enter his country’s embassy.

At the moment in a damage limitation exercise to try and shutdown support for Assange the corporate press is saying if charged, he could face up to 5 years in prison. This is to make it not so bad, but we can be 100% sure if deported to the USA, they will have a long list of dubious charges and most likely will give him a prison sentence that will more than easily cover the rest of his lifespan for that is the way of such regimes. read full story / add a comment

A gut punch that gets straight to the essence of the stark reality of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. This is how an artist resists.” – Joe Sacco

Between 27th March and 4th April the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign is honoured to host a speaking and exhibition tour with acclaimed Palestinian political cartoonist Mohammad Saba’aneh. read full story / add a comment

Yesterday, the governor of the Paris military district told France Info that soldiers of the Operation Sentinel counter-terror mission had been authorized to fire today on the “yellow vests.” Asked about whether soldiers were capable of carrying out law enforcement duties, General Bruno Le Ray replied: “Our orders are sufficiently clear that we do not need to be worried at all. The soldiers’ rules of engagement will be fixed very rigorously.” read full story / add a comment

The death last month of a former senior British police officer, John Stalker, will no doubt have rekindled many disturbing and distressful memories for the families of six men shot dead by the RUC during the dark read full story / add a comment

On March 8 each year, there is certainly no shortage of outrages that have been perpetrated against women over the course of another year of violence, human rights abuses and oppression read full story / add a comment

THIS IS OUR LAST CHANCE TO OVERTURN THE EU COPYRIGHT REFORM

In September 2018, MEPs voted for a version of the copyright Directive which will indirectly lead to implementing upload filters on most of the services you use online. The European Parliament’s (EP) Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee Rapporteur, MEP Axel Voss, then started the ‘trilogue negotiations’ – closed-door ‘informal’ negations with the representatives of the EU Member States (Council) and the European Commission (EC). These negotiations resulted in a trilogue agreement in Mid-February 2019. Despite massive criticism, the text has been made even worse than the EP’s proposal. read full story / add a comment

Investigative Journalist and ex presidential candidate Gemma O'Doherty has become the subject of a campaign of google censorship like many others recently who dissent from the status quo. Gemma, however did not take this lying down. She took it straight to google HQ

Support Gemma in her fight against google censorship.
And support independent non corporate media platforms where this control cannot so easily be exercised over free speech! read full story / add a comment

The London-based International Observatory of Human Rights have added to the long list of the country’s human rights violations in their recent 2018 in Review: Human Rights Violations in Turkey read full story / add a comment

Rightwing "President" Bolsonaro who was appointed president of Brazil by arranging for a stich-up of former president Lula da Silva and getting him sent to jail but for whom polls show he would have won the election, rose to power on a rethoric of fighting corruption.It was clear all along that this concern as well as himself was bogus. However he was backed by the Western media at all stages and looked on lovingly from Washington. It been cleared all along he was their man.

Now thankfully it looks like this could all unravel, because he and his family have been embroiled in a huge scandal in Brazil involving money laundering, corruption and murder through his connections to right wing mafia type dead squads composed of former police and military officials.

During his fake campaign he rallied endlessly against a particular law in Brazil allowing federal officials immunity from prosecution and investigation and has now eaten his own hat as it were by invoking the use of the very same law to protect himself. read full story / add a comment

Nobel Peace Laureate Maguire gives reasons for nominating thw Wikileaks founder read full story / add a comment

This blog, my first, will in general aim to document the program and specifically my experiences on JobPath. Protecting their identities you will meet the other job seekers and staff, will there be villains and hero’s or stale biscuits and tea? The blog will be anonymous because I’m not sure how DSP or Seetec will feel about the real time, real person, review.

Why do a blog, I feel that it gives a window for the 115,000 people who will be invited to the mandatory scheme over the full 4+2 years. JobPath is discussed by politicians, by journalist and even on public forums, the vast majority of whom only get the opportunity to view from the outside in and so only see things from a superficial vantage point. My time embedded or if you like immersed in the scheme, gives a personal and unique opportunity to document my experience and is allowing me the privilege of blogging from the inside out. It requires some intrusion into my life and maybe some repetitive reading, it will require some commitment from myself and the thought of possible consequences leave me a little unhinged. However difficult it is personally, hopefully it will serve the purpose of shedding light on the truth in a way that turning up with a press pass or in a Ministerial car, never could do.

In November 2018, I received a second ‘invitation’ that I couldn’t refuse to do another 52 weeks of JobPath. Considering the amount of people who viewed the blog from all corners of the planet and the participants that the blog helped, along with the number of people who contact me for and offering me help, I’m going to do another 52 weeks of blogging under JobPath two. The aims will be the same. read full story / add a comment

On Thursday 6th December, to coincide with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)’s General Assembly, the Irish Campaign to Boycott the Eurovision in Apartheid Israel 2019 wrote to the Director General of RTÉ, Dee Forbes, Rory Coveney, Strategic Advisor to the Director General, and Michael Kealy, Head of RTÉ’s delegation for Eurovision, asking them to call on the EBU not to broadcast any Eurovision events into Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied Palestine. read full story / add a comment

In The case of Selahattin Demirtaş v. Turkey (no. 2) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Turkey to release the opposition deputy from prison….and, in its complex ruling this week, concluded there has been “several violations of the Convention”. read full story / add a comment