SAOIRSE32

Irelandclick.com

A West Belfast driving instructor who was the victim of a vicious road rage attack on the Derriaghy Road last week says he is disgusted that his attackers have not been arrested, despite the fact that the incident happened in broad daylight in front of other witnesses and he was able to report the number plate to the PSNI.

Samuel Moylan, 45, was attacked by two men in their twenties after stopping at a red light on the road last week.

“I stopped the car at a set of traffic lights that were just about to turn red, which I always do because I’m a driving instructor, but I could see in the mirror that the two men in the car behind were making gestures and getting angry that I had braked.

“My only mistake was turning around to look at them, pointing out that the light was red. At this stage they jumped out of their cars and leapt towards mine.

“I then got out of my car and they set upon me. One nearly knocked me out with the first punch, and then the other got me by the arms as he hit me again. I was left in shock, but as they drove off, all I could think of was get the registration, which I took down immediately.

“I contacted Woodbourne police station but was told they don’t deal with that, and I’d have to report it to Lisburn station. Then I was informed by a constable at Lisburn station that he couldn’t come out to take a statement; that the earliest he could come would be Tuesday – almost a week later. “I was just so angry because I could identify this pair and knew their number plate, yet the police still couldn’t come out to even look for them.

“I’ve seen this kind of thing before, and I’m almost afraid to ask my drivers to stop at an amber light because people can be so aggressive, but this was just outrageous.

“I think it’s ridiculous that decent people can’t even get things investigated in this area, and thugs are free to run loose.”

A spokersperson for the PSNI said, “We are aware and have received reports of possible road rage on 29 June. About 2.30pm on the Derriaghy Road a man who had stopped at traffic lights was assaulted by two men who had got out of a blue car. The man sustained cuts and bruising in the incident and attended hospital for the injuries. Police attempted to get in contact with the victim on a number of number of occasions to record the statement of complaint but have so far been unable to contact him.”

Journalist:: Laura McDaid

Irelandclick.com

The Falls Road was yesterday under strict curfew, but it was not at the hands of the British this time, but a re-enactment of the infamous and failed crackdown of July 1970.

All the colour and sounds of yesteryear were brought to the 35th anniversary of the Curfew when a ring of steel was placed around the Falls Road leaving a whole community facing limited food supplies and CS gas.

Pints of milk, a rarity when people couldn’t get out to the shops, headscarves, barricades and banners were again the order of the day at the colourful spectacle of street theatre attended by a large crowd.

And kids were looking at their grannies in a different light realising that in earlier days they were in fact dedicated revolutionaries as they sang those old songs We Shall Overcome and We Shall Not Be Moved.

For the men who had drawn the short straw and were delegated to playing British soldiers, the reality hit home as the drama unfolded and the famous female revolutionary resolve of West Belfast took hold.

One desperate corporal who was getting the worst of a beating cried out “It’s only acting. Stop hitting me, missus!” to rapturous cheers – and barking of dogs.

The re-enactment of the Falls Road curfew that lasted from July 3 to July 5 1970 and was eventually broken by women from all over Belfast bringing relief in the form of food and other items in prams, is part of a series of events commemorating the curfew in which four people were killed.

Lt General Alan Freeland ordered the curfew in the lower Falls in an area bounded by the junctions of Falls Road and Grosvenor Road, Albert Street and Cullingtree Road.

Daily Ireland columnist Danny Morrison gave a talk on the context of the 1970 Curfew and its implications for the rest of the conflict when the British army turned on the people of West Belfast.

He referred to the West Belfast women who eventually broke the curfew.
“It was the end of the so-called honeymoon period when the working class section of the nationalist community realised they would not get to achieve their civil rights without a major struggle against the state and the British army.”

Robert McClenaghan of the Falls Curfew Commemoration Committee, who was 12 when people were ordered into their houses in his grandmother’s street, said the days of the barricades were brought alive.

“The women of the district have again driven out the army from the Falls Road. It brought it all back seeing the women with their bottles of milk, scarves and loaves of bread,” he said.

“We walked down from St Paul’s chapel and met more people at Leeson Street. I could still smell the memory of the CS gas. As a child you were part terrified but part excited and we had a lot of fun walking out into the front doors of houses that were part of the curfew but out the back doors of the same houses that weren’t. There was certainly a lot of banging of bin lids.”

Journalist:: Andrea McKernon

Indymedia Ireland

‘What happened to compassionate leave to stay?’ sez Wag ‘Oh Yeah. McDowell. That’s what happened’

RAR (Residents Against Racism) have heard from various asylum seekers whom they are in contact with that Gardai were seen in and out of pubs and homes in Blanchardstown picking up approximately 20 Nigerian asylum seekers last night. Some women were also picked up last week in Galway. The men are now in Coverhill Prison and the women (two at least) are in Mountjoy Women’s Prison.

One of the women in Mountjoy is Tanya Dube who was resident for the last 4 years in Galway. This is the same Tanya Dube who after being locked up in the Women’s prison in Mountjoy in July 2002 while heavily pregnant, was brought to hospital with a ‘guard’ of two ban gardai and two female prison officers. She was released after her recovery without any money or train or bus ticket at the time and, after returning to Galway with money provided out of the pocket of a RAR member, was later subsequently brought to Crumlin Hospital with her newborn and gravely ill baby who died after two days.

She is now separated from her husband who has already been deported and her teenage son who is still in Galway.

>>READ ON

Indymedia Ireland

Posted by Patrick
Monday, Jul 4 2005, 7:12pm

The two Vice-Presidents of Republican Sinn Féin, Des Dalton and Josephine Hayden addressed hundreds of political activists from around the world on the political situation in Ireland from a Republican perspective.

They spoke at a public meeting organised by the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement on the theme of ‘Make Britain History’ and at several workshops that were held as part of the G8 Alternative Summit. The RSF speakers were very well received and there was a lot of interest expressed in the Irish liberation struggle. Many contributers in the discussions spoke of the need to build a solidarity movement in Scotland in support of the cause of a free and united Ireland and the end to British imperialist rule. This theme will be developed into concrete action in the weeks ahead.

Afterwards Turrlough McDaid of Lothian Trades Council took people on a fascinating tour of James Connolly’s Edinburgh. The tour included the spot where the tenement once stood that he was born in on the Cowgate where a plaque was erected to his memory in 1968, as well as St Patrick’s Church where he was baptised, and various other locations where he lived and campaigned as a socialist activist.

A detailed account of the visit will appear in SAOIRSE.

Ireland’s Place In The Struggle Against Imperialism

Talk delivered by RSF Vice President
Des Dalton at the Alternative G8 Summit in Edinburgh
On July 3, 2005.

The Irish struggle for national liberation, no more than any other national struggle, cannot be viewed in isolation. Since the foundation of the Irish Republican Movement in 1791, Irish Republicans have always been conscious of the international dimension of Ireland’s fight against British imperialism. The founders of the Society of United Irishmen, such as Theobald Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy McCracken and Thomas Russell all were inspired by the American War of Independence, particularly its more progressive elements, with Thomas Paine’s ‘Rights Of Man’ having a significant impact. The ideals, which fired the French Revolution, provided the ideological base for the United Irishmen, its ideas of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality have remained as the political cornerstones of Irish Republicanism, and it was to revolutionary France that they automatically turned for help.

However the United Irishmen also developed links beyond France, in particular with the Society of United Scotsmen, Thomas Muir one of their leaders was an honoury United Irishman. Even at this stage they were clear that they were engaged in a common cause of human and national freedom.

Over the following 200 years in almost every phase of the Irish struggle for national independence Irish revolutionary leaders have cast an eye on international events. The Fenians were more than aware and indeed supportive of the Paris Commune in 1871. The IRB was to the fore in organising opposition to Britain’s imperialist South African ‘Boer War’ at the turn of the last century. And in 1914 Irish Republicans actively opposed recruitment in Ireland for participation in the First World War. No Irish Republican was clearer about the nature of this war and Ireland’s role in the international anti-imperialist struggle than Edinburgh born James Connolly. It can be said that his slogan of “We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland” more than any amount of words that can be written or spoken sum up the worldview of Irish Republicans. It encapsulates the commitment of Irish Revolutionary Republicans to the freedom and liberation of the Irish people in defiance of all imperialism, British or otherwise.

In 1936 Frank Ryan led a contingent of Irishmen most if not all members or former members of the Republican Movement to Spain to fight in defence of the Spanish Republic. This international solidarity has also seen the Republican Movement closely develop its links with the national liberation movements in the various stateless nations of Europe, in particular with our sister Celtic nations of Scotland, Wales and Brittany but also with the Basque country, Sardinia, Catalonia and Corsica. Each one represents yet another front in our common cause of establishing national democracy, the only basis for a free community of nations, internationalism in its truest sense.

Informed by this historical experience Republican Sinn Fein has a very clear view of the ongoing struggle against the British occupation of Ireland in an international context. No more than the people of Iraq or Palestine, the Irish people’s right to national sovereignty and democracy is being denied to them. The enemy is the same, be it Westminster, Washington or Tel Aviv. Imperialism may have different faces but its purpose and effects are the same. Whilst imperialism by its nature has always been a global phenomenon, in the 21st Century the powerful and wealthy industrialised states of the northern hemisphere have united in common purpose. Globalisation is about the enrichment of these states whatever the cost in terms of people or the environment. This involves of course the ruthless acquisition and exploitation of natural resources, as evidenced by the ongoing vicious and illegal war which the US and Britain are waging in Iraq in order to control that country’s vast reserves of oil, or US backed attempted overthrow of the democratically elected government of Venezuela.

Here in Europe the various stateless nations have under the EU seen only a further erosion of their national rights, the EU rather than representing a means of escaping the imperialism of Britain, France, Spain or Italy represents a new form of imperialism, with power directed from Brussels rather that, London, Paris, Madrid or Rome. The EU project from day one has been fundamentally undemocratic; its aim has always been to erode national democracy placing power in the hands of Europe’s political and economic elite. The EU constitution was about putting the framework in place for the creation of militarised EU super-state. We can but congratulate the people of France and Holland for their courage and wisdom in rejecting this.

In the world of today national liberation movements now face a powerful array of forces. In an Irish context we have witnessed a powerful array of political and financial resources deployed in support of the Stormont Agreement, from both sides of the Atlantic. This off course follows a pattern, the EU and US have also lent their weight to the Oslo accord which as well as sponsoring the so-called ‘road map’ for the middle east and the numerous attempts to bring an end to the ongoing insurgency of ETA in the Basque country. All of this is done so as to placate, divide and finally draw the teeth of the various revolutionary movements. None of these initiatives including the Stormont Agreement have tackled the fundamental cause of injustice and conflict. In each case they offer limited change and reform of the status quo. Essentially it is in the interests of the US and EU to remove any disruption or obstacle which these revolutionary national liberation movements might pose to their political and economic agenda.

From the beginning Republican Sinn Fein have pointed out that the Stormont Agreement could not deliver a just and lasting peace in Ireland because it failed to deal with the root cause of conflict in Ireland, which is the British occupation of Ireland. Not only that but we also said at the time it was signed in 1998 that it would lead to an increase in sectarianism, which recent studies have shown to be the case, as it served to only to further institutionalise sectarianism within the Six Counties. The now dominant position of the ultra sectarian DUP was only made possible because of the political climate crated by this sectarian agreement.

The Stormont Agreement was about simply reforming British rule in Ireland, making the Six County state, which since its creation in 1921 was based on religious discrimination and political repression, more acceptable to nationalists. Its aim like the various attempts which preceded it, such as the Anglo-Irish Agreement and Sunningdale, was to divide and dilute resistance to British rule.

The Stormont Agreement not only sought to end resistance but also to criminalize all future resistance to the British occupation of Ireland. This has included the removal of the right to political status, which was secured because of the sacrifices of many Republican prisoners who endured hunger strikes over the years culminating in the deaths of Bobby Sands and his nine comrades in the H Blocks of Long Kesh in 1981. Today Republican prisoners in Maghaberry prison are forced to once again embark on a campaign of resistance to this criminalisation. The British state in response to this campaign have enacted legislation which can be used to transfer Republican prisoners to jails in England, Wales or indeed Scotland as a means of disrupting any active resistance.

On top of all of this former comrades, who in 1986 left the Republican Movement following their decision to accept take seats in the 26 County parliament, and who were warned at the time the logical conclusion of the direction they had embarked on was ultimately accepting British rule in Ireland, were finally absorbed by the British state. Not only did they take seats in the re-established Stormont Assembly but became ministers of the British Crown, administering British rule on the ground.

As we speak they look set to take the next step of taking seats on the Six County policing boards and going on to enforcing the writ of the British crown in Ireland.
Already they have engaged in acts of intimidation aimed against Irish Republicans, including beatings and threats, they have even attempted to deny CABHAIR, provides for the welfare of Republican prisoners and their families, access to bars and other amenity areas for use in fund raising.

Despite the best efforts of a powerful alliance comprising of the British, US and Dublin governments, the EU, the media and the churches, the Stormont Agreement has lurched from one crisis to another. This is because of the agreement’s inherent contradictions, at the time it was signed the Unionist community were told on the one hand it would strengthen the union with England whilst nationalists on the other hand were told it would lead eventually to a united Ireland. This is a circle, which cannot be squared; it can do one or the other it cannot deliver both.

The reality of course is that nationalists were given symbolic concessions the real substance was won by Unionists who secured a final acceptance by the 26 County state that the Six County state was part of the so-called United Kingdom by the removal of article s two and three of the 26 County’s 1937 Constitution, this concession was enshrined in an internationally recognised agreement.

Despite the obvious failure of the Stormont Agreement, the line from London, Dublin and Washington is that the agreement is the “only show in town”. This is reflected in the media, which deny space to any discussion of an alternative, particularly one that seeks to create a New Ireland free of British rule.

Republican Sinn Fein, despite the many and oft repeated claims in the media that there is no alternative, possess a clear and credible alternative. EIRE NUA (New Ireland) provides for a federation of the four provinces of Ireland, with maximum decentralisation of power from national, to provincial, to regional right down to local and community level. EIRE NUA sets out a governmental structure which involves people in the decision making process at every level. As we view both partitionist states as part of the problem the creation of a New Ireland north and south is the only viable way forward.

With a parliament for each province, in a nine county Ulster, unionists would be able to exercise real autonomy whilst nationalists would have their position strengthened, all under the direction of their own provincial parliament, Dail Uladh, within which both nationalists and unionists could make real decisions, on issues such as economic development, education, health and social welfare and employment. When the EIRE NUA proposals were first put to the leaders of unionist opinion by the leadership of the Republican Movement at the Feakle talks in 1974 they viewed them as a workable alternative to British rule.

As a means of breaking the present political deadlock Republican Sinn Fein propose the election of a Constituent Assembly, our proposals contained within Towards A Peaceful Ireland call for the election of such an assembly by the people of All-Ireland, the purpose of the Constituent Assembly would be to draft a constitution for a new Ireland, all shades of political opinion in Ireland would be free to put forward candidates. If elected, Republican Sinn Fein would put before the assembly our vision of a New Ireland contained within EIRE NUA.

The assembly would have six months to complete its task of drawing up a constitution, following which the proposed constitution would be put before the Irish people in an All-Ireland referendum. Not a two state referenda, as was the case with the Stormont Agreement in which only the people of the Six Counties voted on the agreement itself, whilst the people of the 26 Counties voted merely on the amendment of the 26 County constitution. Following the adoption of a new constitution Towards A Peaceful Ireland states that the British government must give a public declaration of intent to withdraw from Ireland within a stated period. Along with this would come the release of all political prisoners and an amnesty for those on the wanted list.

Republican Sinn Fein believes that our proposals contain the blueprint for a just, lasting and sustainable peace for all of the Irish people. EIRE NUA and Towards A Peaceful Ireland can allows us to make a reality of Tone’s dream of substituting the names protestant, catholic and dissenter with those of Irish men and Irish women.
Along with our social and economic programme SAOL NUA we can set about creating real All-Ireland political and economic democracy, bringing to an end once and for all the injustice of British rule in our country.

Republican Sinn Fein comes to Edinburgh obviously highlight and the political situation in Ireland and the continued struggle against British occupation.
However we also come here as an act of solidarity with all peoples who are struggling to vindicate their right to national independence, freedom and democracy.
We are all united in a common struggle to establish in the world a community of free nations. Present as we are in the city of James Connolly’s birth I can think of no better description of the kind of world which we should be working to create than that described by Connolly himself: “The day will come, and perhaps like a bolt from the blue when the frontiers will not be sufficient to prevent the handclasp of friendship between the peoples. But that day will come only when the Kings and Kaisers, queens and czars, financiers and capitalists who now oppress humanity will be hurled from their place and power, and the emancipated workers of the earth, no longer the blind instruments of rich men’s greed will found a new society, a new civilisation, whose corner stone will be labour, whose inspiring principle will be justice, whose limits humanity alone can bound.”

Ends.

http://rsf.ie

Guardian

Neil McIntosh
Monday July 4, 2005

The French president, Jacques Chirac

First Iraq, then agricultural subsidies, then the battle between Paris and London for the 2012 Olympics. Now cross-Channel relations have turned even chillier after the French president, Jacques Chirac, launched an attack on Britain’s contribution to European cuisine and agricultural.

According to French newspaper Libération, Mr Chirac thought he was off-microphone when he delivered his forthright assessment of Britain’s food and farming methods. He was talking to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, at a meeting in Russia yesterday.

He was heard saying: “You can’t trust people who cook as badly as that. After Finland, it’s the country with the worst food.”

Warming to his theme, the French leader added, to laughter from Putin and Schroeder: “The only thing they [the English] have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow.”

The French president also told of an incident when then-Nato secretary general George Robertson had urged him to eat a dish from his native Scotland, thought to be haggis. “That’s where our problems with NATO come from,” he said.

A French government spokesman told reporters: “I have nothing particular to say”, but Mr Chirac’s culinary musings may prompt discussion - if not a little apprehension - around the G8 dinner table in Gleneagles later this week.

Relations between France and Britain have become increasingly troubled in recent months, with Mr Chirac and Tony Blair blaming each other for the failure of EU budget talks and clashing over agricultural subsidies.

In Singapore, where the two cities are vying to win Wednesday’s IOC vote and host the 2012 Olympic Games, temperatures were raised today when a British delegate broke protocol by directly criticising Paris’s Stade de France’s suitability as an Olympic stadium.

BBC

The victim was driving a lorry when he was shot

Police officers are searching a number of houses in east Belfast as part of their investigation into the murder of Jameson Lockhart.

The 25-year-old from north Belfast was shot as he sat in a lorry on the lower Newtownards Road last Friday.

The searches have been taking place in the nearby Dee Street area.

Two men arrested on Monday in connection with the shooting are still being questioning.

Mr Lockhart and another man had been clearing rubble from the site of the now-demolished Avenue One bar when the attack happened.

The other man escaped without injury.

It is believed that Mr Lockhart’s business had previously been targeted several times.

www.irsm-belfast.com/Bodenstown-2005

Click on above link for photos of the IRSP’s Bodenstown commemoration this year.

Posted to Seven Stars Republican Socialist News by Peter Urban.

BreakingNews.ie

**Read Danny Morrison’s interesting article: Berry is Sandbagged by Sunday World

04/07/2005 - 19:42:42

Paul Berry

The Reverend Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists tonight confirmed they had suspended an Assembly member over allegations about his private life.

Newry and Armagh MLA Paul Berry was suspended over claims in the Sunday World newspaper in May that he met a male masseur in a south Belfast hotel.

Mr Berry said he met the masseur for treatment for a sports injury but denied any sexual act had taken place.

He threatened to take legal action.

A party spokesman told the Press Association tonight: “Paul Berry is suspended from the DUP, pending an investigation that is ongoing.”

Mr Berry was regarded as one of the rising stars of the DUP when he was elected as the youngest Northern Ireland Assembly member in 1998 at the age of 22.

A textile worker by trade, he came to prominence as a gospel singer, and in particular for protest songs against former Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble.

He was a prominent supporter of the protests by Portadown Orangemen at Drumcree against the Parade Commission’s ban on them since 1998 for marching down the nationalist Garvaghy Road.

As the MLA for Newry and Armagh since 1998, he served on the first assembly’s Health Committee.

Despite the allegations about his private life, Mr Berry still managed to receive the most votes for a Unionist candidate in Newry and Armagh in the British general election in May and also retained his seat on Armagh Council in the local government elections.

He was unavailable for comment tonight following the DUP’s statement.

BreakingNews.ie

04/07/2005 - 17:11:13

Supporters of the five men jailed over opposition to a gas pipeline being built across their Co Mayo lands today handed in a letter calling for the resignation of a minister.

The letter was delivered to the Galway office of Minister of State Frank Fahey demanding he leave his post at the Department of Justice, as hundreds held protests calling for the release of the men.

The campaigners have claimed Mr Fahey, as former Marine Minister, approved of the pipeline and the compulsory acquisition of lands by the oil companies along the route.

Dr Jerry Cowley, an Independent TD, said: “I think the time has come for Minister Fahey just to bow out now because those people are in jail because of all that has happened by successive ministers.

“I just don’t think it is acceptable that those people can languish in jail while this goes on, while Shell bulldozes its way over the small people,” the TD told RTE Radio.

All five of the protesting men – farmers Willie Corduff, Philip McGrath and Brendan Philbin, and retired schoolteachers Vincent McGrath and Michael O’Suighin – were sent to prison after refusing to guarantee to the Dublin High Court that they would not obstruct the construction of the Corrib gas pipeline in Co Mayo.

Around 200 people gathered in protest today at the proposed terminal site at Bellanaboy in north Mayo, while others went to Mr Fahey’s office.

The 9km (5.5 mile) contested pipeline is part of the €990m Corrib gas project in Mayo. Shell E&P Ireland are looking to pump gas from the Corrib gasfield along the pipe to a onshore refinery at Bellanaboy in Mayo.

A statement from Shell E&P Ireland (SEPIL) today said: “It is important to point out that gas pipelines remain the most common and safest way to transport gas in Ireland and countries all over the world in a wide range of conditions, environments, terrains and at many different pressures.”

Shell E&P Ireland said the Corrib gas pipeline had been designed and would be built to world class standards.

“This pipeline, which runs on the seabed for most of its length, has been designed for a pressure of 345 bar, however, it will never run at this level,” the company said.

Shell E&P Ireland said the onshore pipeline would normally operate at a pressure of 120 bar and the design pressure of 345 bar meant there was a two-fold safety factor in place.

“It is deeply regrettable that the unfounded fears of some landowners have been recklessly stoked by some who must bear some of the responsibility for the current situation,” it added.

However, Ireland’s largest trade union SIPTU’s offshore exploration spokesman Padraig Campbell said that within the trench to bring the gas ashore there would be five high-powered electric cables, hydraulic lines carrying massive pressure and a waste pipe.

“You have a whole combination of different lines thrown into this trench, it is a pure guinea pig experiment.

“They thought they could do it without anybody saying boo, the people in the area have educated themselves to the danger and they are not going to tolerate it,” Mr Campbell said.

“They will put up with proper Bord Gais standards, they are willing to do that and are very amenable.”

A spokeswoman for Mr Fahey said he would be making no comment on the issue.

BreakingNews.ie

04/07/2005 - 18:10:16

An environmental activist was granted permission in the High Court today to bring proceedings aimed at ensuring the re-routing of a proposed motorway away from the Hill of Tara.

Vincent Salafia was allowed challenge the treatment of 38 archaeological sites along the stretch of the proposed M3 motorway route near the world-renowned site in Co Meath.

The case will be testing the validity of the directions given by Environment Minister Dick Roche under the National Monuments (Amendment) Act, 2004 for the excavation of the archaeological sites within the Hill of Tara complex.

Campaigners, who have been seeking the protection of the site, are disputing a 14km section of the planned 62km M3 motorway which is scheduled to run alongside the former seat of the kings.

Mr Salafia raised many constitutional issues in his application.

Preliminary work, which began on the 38 sites in early June, included the stripping of topsoil and metal detecting under the supervision of consultant archaeologists working for Meath County Council and the National Roads Authority.

BBC

An Orange Order parade is to be allowed to pass the flashpoint Ardoyne shops area of north Belfast on 12 July.

However, the Parades Commission has imposed restrictions on band music being played and the conduct of supporters.

There was violence in the area during an Orange parade last month.

In a separate ruling, Orangemen have once again been banned from marching along Garvaghy Road in Portadown after this Sunday’s Drumcree service.

In another ruling on a contentious route, Orangemen and two bands will be allowed through Workman Avenue in west Belfast on the morning of the 12th, but not on the return journey in the evening.

The Drumcree parade has passed off peacefully in recent years but was at the centre of violence over the years.

Orangemen last walked down the Garvaghy Road in 1997.

The Tour of the North parade was attacked as it passed the Ardoyne shop fronts on Friday 17 June. Police were also attacked with stones and petrol bombs.

The Parades Commission was set up in 1997 to make decisions on whether controversial parades should be restricted.

Indymedia Ireland

by Sinn Féin
Jul 4 2005, 1:34pm

Following the discovery at the weekend of Dublin City Council’s refueling contract with Shell Oil, Sinn Féin aim to maximise pressure by terminating the Council’s contract.

Sinn Féin on Dublin City Council will tonight call on other parties to support an emergency motion demanding that the Council terminate its contract with Shell Oil with immediate effect. The motion is in response to the imprisonment of five Mayo men last week by the High Court.

Deputy Group Leader and South East Inner City councillor Daithí Doolan said: “These men are in prison for standing up for their community in resisting efforts to bring a potentially lethal high-pressure gas pipeline through their lands. The support for their actions throughout Ireland has been incredible. Ógra Shinn Féin pickets on Statoil stations last week reported an unprecedented groundswell of support for this small community standing up to a massive corporation with an atrocious human rights record.

“Sinn Féin, along with other parties and individuals, has called for the immediate release of the Rossport Five but the reality is that it is only when political and economic pressure is brought to bear on corporations like this that anything can be achieved. As a result we are demanding that the Council stand with these five men and the Rossport community by terminating its contract with Shell Oil and we look forward to cross-party support on the issue.” ENDS

Text of motion:

This City Council supports the people of Rossport, Co. Mayo in their campaign against Shell Oil & Statoil’s laying of a dangerous pipe line in such close proximity to their homes. In light of the court action taken by the these companies and the resulting imprisonment of the 5 land owners, we are calling on this City Council to terminate the City’s contract with Shell Oil with immediate effect.

Sinn Féin

Published: 4 July, 2005

The five Sinn Féin TDs this morning handed a letter to the Norwegain Ambassor, His Excellency Mr Truls Hanevold, requesting the Norwegian Government instruct its state company Statoil to use its influence with its partner in the Corrib Gas development, Shell, to have the injunctions against the Mayo protestors lifted. The TDs are also asking that Statoil cease all work on the pipeline pending a full inquiry into al aspects of the project.

(Text of letter) :

A Chara,

We, the undersigned, Sinn Féin TDs, respectfully

request that the Norwegian Government instruct Statoil to use its influence with it’s partner in the Corrib consortium, Shell, to lift all court actions against the protesters in Mayo.

We also request that Statoil instruct the consortium to cease all work on the pipeline pending a full enquiry into all aspects of the project.

Finally, we would respectfully draw the Norwegian Government and people’s attention to the fact that Statoil is part of a development that would not be acceptable in Norway itself on environmental and safety grounds, and that Statoil is benefiting from revenue and licensing terms that would not be permitted under Norway’s own regulatory system.

Is muidne,

Caoimghin O Caolain
Aengus O Snodaigh
Martin Ferris
Arthur Morgan
Sean Crowe

BreakingNews.ie

04/07/2005 - 13:16:45

A mother today claimed in court that her 16-year-old son was left in a state of concussion and had baton marks on his back after he was beaten by gardaí.

The teenager had been due to appear in the Dublin Children’s Court over a theft charge but was not present for the proceedings.

Both of his parents were present and claimed that their son could was not in a fit state to make it to court and because he was at home resting.

The teen’s mother claimed: “He was beaten by the gardaí yesterday and taken to the Mater. He has a splint on his hands and seven baton marks on his back. He was in hospital over night.”

She further claimed that the alleged beating occurred at approximately 4.30pm on Sunday and the teenager was taken to the Mater Hospital, in Dublin, soon afterwards.

“He was kept in all night because he has concussion and has a splint on his hands and can hardly walk,” she told Judge Cormac Dunne.

The teenager’s mother also said that an enquiry is to be conducted at Store Street Garda Station over these claims.

Judge Dunne told the boy’s parents to consult with their solicitor over these allegations. He agreed to adjourn the case, which is not connected to these allegations, in the absence of the boy until Friday.

Belfast Telegraph

£10,000 wheelchair ‘will help Ryan’s life’

By Linda McKee
newsdesk@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
04 July 2005

RYAN Shannon’s mum describes him as an outspoken child who never stops talking.

Even at the age of six, he seems destined to grow into an independent sort of person.

“Everybody’s been telling me how much of an inspiration he is to other kids - he’s like the boss of his class,” Teresa Shannon says.

The six-year-old from Dunmurry was born with brittle bone disease and his doctors believe he will never be able to walk.

The condition was diagnosed 48 hours after he was born but the major operations were all carried out within the past year. Ryan has suffered 49 fractures in his short life.

“He’s been through all his major operations, to get rods into his arms and legs to stop them from fracturing,” Teresa says.

She explains that Ryan has been in pain for much of his life, but remains a cheerful child.

“It used to break your heart,” she says.

“But even if he has his arms and legs in plaster, he always has a smile on his face at the end of the day.”

Now Ryan’s family want to get him a specialised wheelchair that will allow him more independence. The chair that is most suitable would allow him to rise or drop to different levels and to get into bed or onto the settee without help.

This type of wheelchair is not funded by the NHS and costs £10,000. It’s only under warranty for two years and the call-out charge to repair any damage is £80, Teresa says.

Teresa has a bad back and is bed-ridden at times, so she will increasingly be unable to lift Ryan as he grows older. Not only will the wheelchair make her life easier, it will offer Ryan much more independence.

“It would help him down the line,” she says.

Since they learned what kind of wheelchair Ryan needs, his family have been dreaming up ideas to raise the money, including running a pub quiz or a family fun day featuring bouncy castle and face painting.

Teresa is keen to hear from anyone who thinks they can help and can be contacted at 07767 428915.

“He’s been through an awful lot in his life and he deserves something good to come out of it,” she says.

Sunday Life

Family of ’sacrificial lamb’ to meet Irish Govt officials

By Chris Anderson
04 July 2005

IRISH government officials are to meet this week with a couple who believe their son was sacrificed by British Army intelligence to protect top IRA agent, Freddie ‘Stakeknife’ Scappaticci.

Father-of-two, John Dignam, a leading republican from Portadown, was brutally executed by the IRA’s infamous ‘nutting squad’ 13 years ago, after being abducted from a Co Monaghan hotel.

The 32-year-old’s naked body, and those of his close associates, Gregory Burns and Aidan Starrs, were dumped on a lonely border road by the Provos, who claimed all three confessed to being intelligence service agents. The IRA also alleged they had been involved in the murder of Portadown woman, Margaret Perry.

Ironically, a leading figure in the IRA’s so-called internal security unit at the time was himself in the pay of the British - west Belfastman Freddie Scappaticci.

Now John’s parents, Pat and Irene Dignam, have been granted a meeting with Dublin officials, as they attempt to discover how and why their son was killed.

“We want the Irish government to support our campaign to uncover the truth,” said Irene Dignam.

“We are meeting Irish officials next Thursday, and will be raising a number of serious issues that have recently come to light.”

The Dignams said they will be asking Irish officials to raise the circumstances of her John’s death with their British counterparts.

They have also asked for a meeting with Secretary of State, Peter Hain.

Indymedia Ireland

Click on the Indy link for some great photos of the demonstration

Irish Independent

A DEFIANT message was delivered to Shell E&P Ireland (SEPIL) at a rally in Castlebar, Co Mayo attended by up to 1,500 people yesterday, that there would be serious unrest and protests if the firm did not locate a controversial gas processing terminal at sea.

The wives of five men from the Rossport area of north Mayo, who have been in Cloverhill Prison since Wednesday for denying Shell employees access to their properties, warned there was only one possible solution to the impasse - an offshore platform.

Fine Gael TD Michael Ring told the rally it would cost Shell much cash if they did not locate at sea. Otherwise there would “be a lot of innocent people in jail”.

A statement of demands from the ‘Rossport Five’ held at Cloverhill - James Philbin, brothers Philip and Vincent McGrath, Willie Corduff and Micheal O Seighin - was read out. The five are due back in the High Court again on Wednesday when an attempt will be made to have them released.

Tom Shiel

Guardian

High court lets woman on hunger strike stay in UK

David Pallister and Eric Allison
Monday July 4, 2005
The Guardian

Just as the Live 8 concert was reaching its climax on Saturday night a British Airways jet was due to leave London for Harare. On board should have been a 26-year-old Zimbabwean woman, Patricia Mukandara, who has been on hunger strike for 11 days in protest against her deportation.

But in a day of drama at Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire, where she is being held, a dozen other Zimbabwean women barricaded themselves in her room as she refused to accompany immigration officers back to what she called “the lion’s den”.

The centre was put on a “lockdown” alert and all visitors were told that no detainees could be seen that day. At 8pm staff in riot gear entered and the women were dispersed. Ms Mukandara and another detainee, Spiwe Zondo, were taken to Colnbrook detention centre.

But in a last-minute intervention, just an hour before takeoff, her lawyer won a high court injunction stopping her removal.

Ms Mukandara, a failed asylum seeker, is one of up to 100 Zimbabweans on the hunger strike in a number of detention centres. They are protesting at the lifting of a ban preventing people being returned to their country against their will.

Her solicitor, Jovanka Savic, said the order had been made by Mr Justice McCombe after lawyers argued that the situation in Zimbabwe was unsafe for deportees from the UK.

“In this case the judge decided the removal was inappropriate and has given an order that it be stayed,” she said. “There was no reasoned thinking behind the Home Office decision in November that the ban on deportations should have been lifted.”

It had been reported that de portations were being put on hold until after the G8 summit.

Kate Hoey, the Labour MP who recently returned from a clandestine visit to the country, said: “This attempt to deport this woman to Zimbabwe was a shameful act by a Labour government.

“To do it on the same day they support something like the Live 8 concert shows outrageous hypocrisy. It puts Charles Clarke [the home secretary] in the position of trying to send someone back to what is at the very least likely to be imprisonment and torture.”

In an interview with the Press Association Ms Mukandara said: “I am so weak I can hardly walk. I have not eaten for 11 days and I have not had any fluids for four days.

“I am so confused. One minute you are told the deportations have been stopped. I can’t believe they want to send me back to the lion’s den.”

She claims her father, a manager for a white farmer, was killed by Zanu-PF supporters of Robert Mugabe during a farm invasion in 2000.

She fled to the UK to seek asylum and claims she has since heard that her two brothers have been killed.

The first was beaten to death as he returned home from work, she said. The second fled to South Africa but was deported, tortured in Harare’s maximum-security Chikurubi prison and died later from his injuries, she claimed.

She has been in detention for more than six months and three previous attempts were made to deport her before the intervention of her MP, John Austin. “These deportations should be suspended,” he said.

Human rights groups in Zimbabwe claim that people returned from the UK are being paraded on television and that moves are being made to change the law to allow them to be tried as traitors.

Ms Mukandara’s legal team must present their full arguments by tomorrow and the government has 21 days to respond. A Home Office spokesman said he would not comment on individual cases.