These are photographs from some of the protests against Water Charges I attended in late 2014, see the Water Charge tag for articles written on that topic.
Images: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )
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We have an easy winner for the WTF example of media bias this week (17 Dec 2014) in relation to the water charge resistance. The Sunday World journalists have pulled out all the stops in the service of Denis O’Brien as illustrated below. In case you miss the small print under the photo we have underlined it in yellow ‘How it Could have Looked’.
The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) revealed yesterday (16 Dec 2014) that over the last 12 months alone they have seen 26 asylum seekers or women with travel restrictions who indicated they wanted an abortion but were unable to travel abroad. At least 5 of those women were forced to continue the pregnancy to term.
Demonstrations took place overnight (15 Dec 2014) across the Spanish state against the series of police raids targeting the anarchist movement. The Barcelona demonstration of 2000 people was led by a banner proclaiming "If you touch one; you touch all"
Demands include "Freedom for those arrested for struggling" "Down with prison walls" and "Social war against the state of capital"
Irish Water meter installers continue to be frustrated in Dublin 7 this morning (15 Dec 2014) in Avondale Ave, Montpelier hill and other locations. To add to the fun apparently the clampers have clamped some of the parked up Irish Water vans!
Because of the effectiveness of residents patrolling all the entrances to Stoneybatter they have taken to parking up their trucks at Topaz & Blackhorse Avenue in Cabra waiting for an opportunity to sneak in when people have to go to work or take breaks. Bottom right picture shows some of their crew hiding out near McKee Barracks as spotted by the Blackhorse Avenue page.
In a very welcome development Asylum Seekers have come together to build an independent, self-organised nationwide asylum seeker movement in Ireland. The new group is called MASI – Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland and stands for Freedom, Dignity & Justice for Asylum Seekers!
RTE were full of news this morning about how Obama’s new migration initiative might improve the lives of the huge numbers of people from Ireland illegally in the US. It’s great to see the people trapped in detention centres in Ireland step up their resistance to our cruel regime.
Water charge campaigners are celebrating after chasing Irish Water out of Great Wester Square in Phibsboro this morning (12 Dec 2014). This despite Garda resuming threatening people with the 20m exclusion zone injunction.
A large gang of visibly frustrated Irish Water personnel and Garda tried to prevent campaigners from disrupting installation but failed as campaigners repeatedly jumped barriers. Two campaigners reported being assaulted by Irish Water personnel, we are currently trying to obtain more details about this incident but it would be in line with what happened yesterday in Stoneybatter, another part of Dublin 7. Irish Water were also prevented entering Stoneybatter this morning, see earlier report on this page.
The scene at the bottom of Kildare street where the anti democratic protest barrier was erected to stop people getting within earshot of the politicians in the Dail. All days thousands of people stopped here to demand access to Kildare street.
In this scene one man turns to the crowd and asks if he will really be arrested if he tries to walk up the street. He then climbs over the barrier and starts to walk only to be rushed by several Gardaí. As the crowd chants ‘shame’ more Gardaí come down the street and stand on the inside of the barrier, and after some time the man is allowed to climb back over the barrier.
Regime sources are claiming there were only 12 people with a lot or mirrors at the Dec 10th huge water charges protest. And that they were in any case anarchist dissidents with bad haircuts who in no way represent middle Ireland which was safely tucked up in bed.
One of our dissident anarchist types was leafletting the march as it arrived at Merrion Square and doubled up by videoing sections of it . He then took a stroll down a jam packed Nassau street to have a look at the anti democracy barrier before, lured by the singing of Damien Dempsey returning to Merrion square itself . He kept the camera running and has edited together this video which gives a very good idea of both the size and composition of the crowd.
Note there are lots of places where lots of people were that he didn’t get to, this is actually just a small section of a very much larger crowd.
WORDS Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )
According to Michael Noonan, Ireland currently has the fastest rate of growth in Europe and all the oligarch-owned newspapers are talking excitedly about the “recovery”. Yet all the stories from those who work with the deprived and distressed is an ever-worsening economic squeeze on household income? So which of these stories is telling the truth?
It could very well be that not only are both of these stories true, but that the increasing poverty of a great number of households in the state could be the very thing that is driving the growth in GDP figures