A <em>blog entry</em> is a single post to an online journal, or <em>blog</em>.
Irish Water are in much deserved trouble with the Data Commissioner. The DC has said that Irish Water’s policy on how it intends to use your personal information that it is currently demanding has “some simply unsupportable approaches” to obtaining the consent of customers on certain issues, such as marketing.
According to the Irish Times the commissioner has said “Irish Water will wind up dealing with data protection complaints, some groundless but many with a strong basis”
Any of our readers in Scotland unsure about the referendum on independence might like to check out the magazine for the very posh, Tatler, that has an article sub headed "Scottish aristocrats are fiercely opposed to independence, but if the ‘yes’ vote gets its way, will they really abandon their ancestral mountains and ancient customs?"
Some choice quotes below, we recommend you not be drinking while reading these least you blow your computer with repeated spluttered sprays of liquid
Reports are emerging that up to 500 migrants may have drowned off Malta as the boat they were trying to reach Europe in was sunk. The death toll through drowning in the Mediterranean as a result of the racist policies of Fortress Europe reached a horrific new peak over the summer with 2,200 people drowning since June according to the UNHCR. For comparison in the entire 28 year period of its existence some 136-245 people were killed by another migration barrier, the Berlin wall.
We welcome the spreading revolt again the Irish state’s cruel Asylum process . In Cork up to 300 Asylum Seekers have been blockading the direction provision centre on Kinsale road over the last two days.
Those forced to live in the is centre include 9 year old children born in Ireland who have spent their entire lives in direct provision. Conditions under which they will have had little privacy, been unable to eat food prepared by their parents and forced to live off canteen food.
On the 28 August in 1844 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels meet for the 1st time in the Café de la Régence in Paris. Engels later remembered Marx outlining the "economic determinism" of his "materialistic theory"
On Sept 3rd 1915 Tom Barker was arrested for having the anti-war poster seen on the left. Tom was a member (as James Connolly & Jim Larkin were) of the revolutionary syndicalist IWW union.
In mid August the story emerged that a suicidal migrant who was pregnant as the result of rape was forced to continue the pregnancy for weeks after requesting an abortion despite both a failed suicide attempt and a hunger and thirst strike. After been forcible rehydrated she ‘agreed’ to a C-section as an ‘alternative’ to the abortion she had first requested 8 weeks into the pregnancy. (See www.wsm.ie/migant-x for more details).
Thousands of people took part in demonstrations against her terrible treatment across Ireland, treatment that reflected the racist patriarchal authorisation nature of the Irish state. Astonishingly the forced birth brigade rather than maintaining a shamed silence actually protested that the state had not forced her to continue the pregnancy to its conclusion.
Well, it has taken longer than expected but here is the last part of my critique of Blackledge’s terrible article on anarchism. Indeed, it has taken so long I’ve actually written and published the review of the otherwise excellent book it is part of (long version in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, short version in Anarchist Studies).
Thousands of people took part in the LGBT Noise March for Marraige Equality in Dublin Aug 24th and I went along to photograph the demonstration. It is expected that the governemnt will bring in a referendum on the issue some time in the next couple of years.
Saturday 23 August saw a second large pro choice ‘Our Bodies Our Rights: Rally to Repeal the 8th Amendment’ march through Dublin bringing the number who took part in emergency mobilisations in Dublin alone over 3,000.
