Brian Greene

’Why Protest the Dublin EU Summit? What are the Issues Anyway?’

It is critical to show, during such a display of media power and control as we have seen in the past few weeks in Ireland in the run-up to the EU Summit, that independent groups and people have the ability to create and share their own media, self publish, build networks and communicate freely and autonomously. We have been taking our information autonomy for a while now around here, using the limited means and technologies at our disposal.

In that spirit – here is a (free) guide to what is missing from all centralised and commercialised media in Ireland at present , a clear exposition of the issues that concern those who are preparing to celebrate EuroMayday and to protest the Dublin EU Summit. Don’t get MAD with those thousand foreign journalists and their Irish compatriots when you see these urgent and legitimate concerns glossed over and ignored by the mainstream – get EVEN. Don’t Hate the Media – Become the Media.

From March 22 to April 2, 60 trained Iraqi pollsters interviewed 3,444 randomly selected Iraqis for USA Today. This is one of the first polls in Iraq that seems to me well weighted statistically, though to be sure we’d have to know more than USA Today told us.

The numbers are negative for the US, and are much more negative than previous such polls. Moreover, the polling ended by April 2, just before the Shiite uprising and the worst of the Fallujah fighting, so that it is highly likely that the present attitudes of the Iraqi public toward the US are much more negative.

TV3 Irelands 4th TV station (launched after RTE1 Network2 & TG4) launched a teletext service in 2001, but last weekend it dropped its news & sports pages from the text servive. Teletext services are in decline in europe as digital TV takes hold but TV3 carried a full text service on digital platform, The loss of news and sport (replaced by entertainment news) is a loss of an alternative text news service to rival RTE’s AERTEL. It is a sad loss of a good service provided by TCM to TV3 since 2001. The regularity of updates to the new entertainment news service is patchy since the weekend, but soft news is no replacement for hard news. TV3 text is available in Ireland via UHF and to UK & Ireland via digital satellite services.

Condoleezza Rice & Bertie Ahern take the stand today, to defend their futures, Ahern wont remember while Rice will spin the war. On June 26th they can swap notes. It will fill our news screens and deflect from the real problems they represent. avoid the TV news if you dare.

IMPACT has claimed that the Government’s stealth taxes will eventually erode incomes.
[bhg comment]
where were the IMPACT leaders last September/October ? lining up with the Govt. to support stealth taxes in the form of Bin Charges.
[/bhg comment]

The Union has said the Government’s failure to adjust personal tax credits and tax bands in line with inflation has resulted in more people being pushed into the higher tax band.

Philip Mullen of IMPACT has said, “What we would like to see happening is that taxation policy would properly index the tax bands and the basic relief that people receive, so that people will be maintained on the tax band that is appropriate to them which in the vast majority of cases should be in the lower tax band.”

The Government has decided to hold the referendum on citizenship rights on 11 June, at the same time as the local and European elections.

[bhg->] I hope the electronic machines can handle 3 polls at once

The fact that this date was chosen by PD/FF to hold a referendum on what will become a more divisive issue than it has ever been is shocking, the bill has not been presented, there are 9 weeks to polls open and no green paper published. FF TDs claim that there is a major problem with immigration (legal & illegal) where babies born in Ireland are entitled to citizenship.

First they stop pregnant women leaving Ireland, now they wont let them in!

This is a smoke screen in smoke free Ireland for the way the Govt. dealt with the health system, where nurses are priced out of their low paid jobs and queuing on trolleys for days is normal.

Blame them for the health crisis, them being FF & PD.