In the global controversy over corporate control of agricultural seeds, crops and food, an emergency community meeting was held Tuesday night at the tiny village of Summerhill, Co. Meath. The village is next door to the site of a proposed five year experiment with 450,000 patented genetically modified (GMO) potatoes. The local community is worried that farmers who become contaminated by the patented potatoes may lose ownership of their crops . They are also worried about the scientific evidence of health and environmental risks, the impact on property values, and a threatened boycott of Irish potatoes if the experiment goes ahead. ... read full story / add a comment

The Annual Jim Gralton Commemorative Weekend and School took place in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, on the weekend of the 22nd/23rd April.
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I1m not sure if anybody was actually tasked with producing a public report of the 22 April anti-war gathering in Dublin, so I hope there are no objections if I give my own personal reflections on the event.
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St. Michael's primary school is to close this coming June. Apart from the obvious educational concerns, What of it's historical significance? ... read full story / add a comment

Huge anti-US demonstrations in Athens ... read full story / add a comment

Northern Ireland Committee Irish Congress Trade Unions Biennal Conference backs mass non-payment of water charges ... read full story / add a comment

The Pope does product placing. At least that was the message from the Wall Street Journal today, and reported globally in translation. It was perhap a sly puritan reference to the rumoured movement on permissive Vatican condom rule relaxation between married really sick people. Or perhaps it was just more bollox, like the pope's election, or all of Dan Brown, or 1916, or the Moon Landings, or 911, or blood sacrifices in general, and more particularly - "everything you watch on TV".

But that much said..,

The Pope, Benedict XVI; (the man (((i))) reminded everyone wore a NAZI uniform as a politically indoctrinated minor); the German Shepherd; Papa Ratzi; the Black Pope; yer man :- has worn these multi-national-corporate logos and products... ... read full story / add a comment

“The Power Of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” is brand new documentary about what our future could look like. First show publicly in Ireland in conjunction with LASC at the Convergence Festival Dublin on April 22nd, it got it’s second showing in Ireland just a few hours ago in McCarthy’s Bar Dingle, County Kerry, as part of events there for Latin America Week 2006. ... read full story / add a comment

Salmon Poetry has announced that Galway poet Kevin Higgins’ debut collection, The Boy With No Face, which was launched in February last year, was their best-selling book of 2005. ... read full story / add a comment

(Vanunu's 20th year and counting. . . 11 in solitary, 7 more allowed contact only with unsympathetic Jewish prisoners, 2 more unfree to leave a hostile Israel - this is the process of attempting to break an indomitable will.) ... read full story / add a comment

Yesterday, April 23, '06, the Sunday Times ran a story about corruption in a multinational engineering company called JE Jacobs that was recently awarded the N6 roads contract in Galway. Two company members were convicted in Chicago last year of illegal bidding and trading of insider information on construction contracts.

In the article the Times referred to "Jacobs’ Irish arm", (presumably for legal reasons) which is Jacobs Engineering Ireland. TaraWatch has learned the new head of the NRA Fred Barry was a director with Jacobs when he was hired last year.

Everybody knows the construction industry is corrupt, the archaeological profession is corrupt and of course the property development/rezoning industry is rank. Everybody knows there is more to the story as to why the M3 goes where it goes, and will not be moved unless it is forced. It is time Irish citizens put their heads together and figured this one out, before it is too late.

There are already many strong indications as to who and what is involved. Lat year we all saw Tommy 'Pots 'n Pans' Reilly, the Fianna Fail by-election candidate in Meath, get pulled from the race because he had bought land with Frank Dunlop in the Tara Skryne Valley. Then there was the Ireland on Sunday investigation into the owner of land at the Blundelstown interchange, Cathal McCarthy, and other 'friends of Fianna Fail', printed below.

Let's start putting the pieces together. TaraWatch is beginning a 'Land Registry Fund' to do a complete serach of land ownership in the Tara Skryne Valley. But that is only the beginning. Let's do some communal research and see what we can excavate from the muck of Meath.

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Saturday 22/4/06 - The Teacher’s Club.

At this meeting whose purpose is to form and reform associations and to invigorate the anti-war effort, there arose a topic that at first glance might look to be irrelevant. However it is a topic that eventually dominated the meeting and strengthened our association. ... read full story / add a comment

marseille.indymedia.org ... read full story / add a comment

Yesterday evenings recital was an effort by the Association of Music Lovers to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Norwegian composer Christian Sinding. ... read full story / add a comment

A revenue source has claimed that hundreds of taxi drivers are deserting their jobs, rather than submit to rigorous audit checks being carried out by the Department of Revenue. Rogue drivers have been amassing undeclared income, and under new tax clearance rules established by the regulator when the industry was deregulated, many are falling prey to the new tightening of regulations. ... read full story / add a comment

Revolt Video presents an updated film concerning the events at Baldonnel Aerodrome on Easter Sunday.
A full round-up of Easter Weekend and more will be screened at the Indymedia Film Night Thursday 27th
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75151
Video 8 1/2 mins, mpeg2 88.7mb
http://www.obin.org/video/irlandia/16-04-06-baldonnel.mpg ... read full story / add a comment

A source within the hotel industry has revealed how top Dublin hotels like the Burlington and the Jury’s chain are offering voluntary severance packages to their staff in the hope of re-employing cheap migrant labour. ... read full story / add a comment

The Dargle Valley area of Bray is home to hundreds of high value homes, prices influenced by the spectacular backdrop of the famous Sugar Loaf mountains and views of the sparkling Dargle River. It is also home to the illegal dump on Love Lane. Of landfill proportions, this dump is being ignored by Wicklow CC officials in the grand tradition ignoring the start up of illegal landfill in the county at times when the local authority is not in a position to provide a service itself. Coolnamadra, Whitestown and Blessington all carry allegations that Wicklow CC in someway supported their existence in the early days of their lives because there was no other home for the waste, commercial waste having been banned at their own official landfills at that time. The same could be said today in Love Lane.
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Ballymoney Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí McKay has just completed a speaking tour of the Basque Country. The Rasharkin man, who was there representing Ógra Shinn Féin, was to be accompanied by a member of the South African ANC but they were refused access to the region by the Spanish Government. Journalists who were to interview the Sinn Féin man were also subject to harassment from the Spanish authorities. On Friday Cllr McKay gave the opening address - in Basque - at the Basque Topagunea Festival, the first big festival since the ETA Ceasefire and which was attended by over 20,000 people.
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"Court orders Paranagua to end ban on GMOs
A federal court has ruled that Brazil’s main grain port of Paranagua must open all of its soya terminals to genetically modified soyabeans, thus ending its ban on genetically modified organisms." ... read full story / add a comment