On Saturday I was taking photos at the Gaza solidarity march through Dublin to post to the WSM Facebook page as part of the may we are now using the page to report news as its happening. I spotted this placard in the crowd and took a couple of pictures of it, figuring that people’s frustration with the huge focus Irish media and politicians have put on the Garth Brooks concerts would make it popular. On returning home I posted it to our Facebook page with the text below. I thought it might generates 10 or 20,000 views but at the moment of writing it is only 3,000 short of quarter of a million and should exceed this within the next hour.
At todays 1500 strong Gaza solidarity demonstration in Dublin.
An explanation for our readers outside Ireland. The Irish media has been dominated for the last week not by the unrelenting Israeli bombardment of Gaza but by the fact that a US singer, Garth Brooks, can only play 3 rather than 5 concerts in Dublin’s largest sports stadium.
On Saturday I was taking photos at the Gaza solidarity march through Dublin to post to the WSM Facebook page as part of the may we are now using the page to report news as its happening. I spotted this placard in the crowd and took a couple of pictures of it, figuring that people’s frustration with the huge focus Irish media and politicians have put on the Garth Brooks concerts would make it popular. On returning home I posted it to our Facebook page with the text below. I thought it might generates 10 or 20,000 views but at the moment of writing it is only 3,000 short of quarter of a million and should exceed this within the next hour.
At todays 1500 strong Gaza solidarity demonstration in Dublin.
An explanation for our readers outside Ireland. The Irish media has been dominated for the last week not by the unrelenting Israeli bombardment of Gaza but by the fact that a US singer, Garth Brooks, can only play 3 rather than 5 concerts in Dublin’s largest sports stadium.
Irish politicians have been putting forward emergency legislation, not to end the assault on Gaza but to make it possible to have 5 rather than 3 concerts for Garth Brooks.
The Taoiseach (Prime Minster) has said he intends to personally intervene and has said he will ask Obama to intercede, not with Israel to stop the bombing of Gaza, but with the concert promoters to see if Garth Brooks couldn’t be given another 2 nights.
Various media outlets have suggested that Ireland is an international laughing stock not because we have seen such a fuss mad about 3 concerts rather than 5 but, strangely enough, because, they tell us, not enough fuss has been made!
The more cynical amongst us suspect that this concern for Garth over Gaza is connected to the fact that a lot of money was expected to be made by the concert promoters, publicans and hoteliers and the politicians could as usual expect some of this to ‘trickle down’.
A dozen of so Garth Brooks fans did demonstrate at the GPO earlier, over 1500 turned out for Gaza demonstrating once more that what the politicians see as important is not what the people see as important.
WORDS, PHOTOS & VIDEO: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )