The software used to run the Indymedia website has now been upgraded with the latest release (Oscailt 3.2) which now allows users to post stories and comments with multiple embedded videos and audios.

Previously you could only have embedded one video per story or comment. The embedded video was also recently upgraded a few months back to allow for embedded Politube.org video which are preferrable to YouTube videos because of licensing and the fact that they support independent media outlets and activists and are a non profit organisation.

When corruption is uncovered in functional jurisdictions a long established and well tested series of events come into play. Police investigate and if sufficient evidence is collected suspects are brought before the courts to account for themselves. If found guilty, they are given appropriate punishment. In dysfunctional jurisdictions such procedures are often ignored in the interests of protecting the powerful.

Related Links: http://www.publicinquiry.eu

I'm a poet and I know it

The new book of poems, Time Gentlemen Please, by Galway poet Kevin Higgins, which was published this March, is causing consternation and disagreement on the Left.

Some in Galway Alliance Against War are not at all happy about Higgins’s satire on their protest against the Salthill Airshow.

The Galway Branch of the Socialist Workers Party have, as has already been covered on Indymedia, taken issue with another Higgins poem, ‘Firewood’. The poem takes issue with their stance on Darfur.

"The least controversial definition of poetry is ‘writing that doesn’t go all the way to the right-hand side of the page’ — which, given the parlous state of the rainforests, demands a greater justification for publishing it" - From Red Banner

This is a short interview we conducted with Gearóid Ó Loingsigh on the state of affairs in Colombia at the moment after the release of Ingrid Betancourt and after years of the implementation of Plan Colombia.

Gearoid is an Irish researcher for social organisations in Colombia and author of "La Estrategia Integral del Paramilitarismo en el Magdalena Medio" and "El Catatumbo: Un Reto Por La Verdad" as well as a forthcoming publication on the oil industry.

$7,000,000 WMD for Peace

Ciaron O'Reilly writes: ''...Shannon Airport felt spooky. The last sight of the West by most of the 4,000 young Americans who passed through its small "departure" lounge to their deaths in Iraq. Spooky, too, as I reflected on an Irish society so integral to facilitating the killing yet so disengaged with the escalating and expanding war. Most U.S. troops in Iraq have passed through this small rural out of the way airport.

Spooky as I reflected on my own disengagement from the ongoing suffering. Have I, too, learned to live in an Ireland with the transit lounge for death that is Shannon Airport?...''