A long day. I overslept slightly and cycled into town just on the dot of midday, as a pink samba band were being followed by a phalanx of riot cops with shields, and mounties (horses also accessorised for the occasion). Today was the "Carnival for Full Enjoyment", and a lot of rumours and whispers had been going around that this was "the one to watch". I generally thought this was police hype, so I didnt add to it in last nights report. Even a non-political friend of mine in Edinburgh was asking me if this was going to be the really violent demo of the week, and how everyone in her workplace was talking about it, and the management in her cafe were wondering if they should board up the windows or not...

The pink drummers tried to march one way and were turned back, so headed off West quite quickly, leaving a load of people to run up behind them. This was right on the dot of midday and I thought it was a bit foolish to be marching off so fast, considering a lot of people probably hadnt arrived at the meetup point yet. As it happened, the carnival was split in two, with the other group heading east on Princes St on their own, where they had their own fun and games reportedly. The Clown Army were in some other part of town doing their thing, and were met with huge amounts of Police surrounding them.

So a group of around 400, possibly a quarter of which was made up of rubberneckers, hangers-on, mainstream journalists and other assorted non-combatants, marched for approximately 20 minutes before being shepherded away from their intended direction by four mounties blocking the road. The march went on for a bit and then rounded a corner towards an office block. I assumed that this one was of the places marked out on some pre-determined trail, possibly with some links to business. The street was narrow and there was cops at both ends...

Did I neglect to mention how many Police there were? There were lots. Hundreds. Thousands possibly. Very in your face, lots of evidence gatherers, with extremely hi-tech equipment, taking pictures of people masked up and being quite physical about it. They followed the march as much as they could with as many people. There were police from everywhere following the demonstration, including from Manchester, Humberside, Merseyside and the London Met.

UPDATE 11.25 PM 5 JUL:
Deportation plane leaving at 1 am
******** 21 years old - 4 months pregnant by Irish Guy - is the daughter of a woman who has been allowed leave to remain here on humanitarian grounds. She is being deported on the plane. She was allowed a single phonecall to her mother tonight by the Gardai. No room at the inn in Ireland anymore. There are several pregnant women of different nationalities locked up in Mountjoy Women's prison this eveining. Their immediate fate is unclear at the time of writing.
**************************************************

INDYMEDIA.IE 4 JUL:
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 Cloverhill 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.

The RAR activist I spoke to believes a mass deportation to Nigeria is imminent. RAR are thus calling for an EMERGENCY protest at the GNIB Burgh Quay on Tuesday 5th July at 1.30pm.

If you think the disability bill recently passed in the Dail has nothing to do with you, you should think again. If passed into legislation, it represents a major assault on all our constitutional rights. This author has no political allegiance and is concerned with the interests of disabled people and the contribution they can make to the wider community. In that context and for reasons set out below, it is nevertheless necessary to say that Fianna Fail and the PDs deserve a roasting on this issue alone at the next general election.

For the second time they have introduced legislation that is in opposition to everything the disability lobby has asked for - and so desperately needs - and in doing so they are conducting a unique experiment in tampering with the constitution. If they succeed there can be no doubt that the bill will be used as a precedent for future legislation. The first attempt to introduce disability legislation in 2002 ended in disgrace amid an outcry from disability groups because of its inadequacy. Second time round, we were promised there would not be a repeat of the first fiasco - the views and wishes of people with disability were to be taken on board. A Disability Legislation Consultation Group was set up to include senior representatives from a number of disability bodies and for three years they toiled over the content and guiding principles of the bill. A comprehensive set of recommendations were submitted to the government by the DLCG. But the ‘consultation’ turned out to be a charade. The press release issued by the DLCG in May 2005 states:

‘This is now a totally flawed and fundamentally inadequate piece of legislation. It fails to meet the needs of the disability sector and we are appalled that the Government is determined to ram it through the Oireachtas in the face of opposition from the very people it was originally designed to benefit.’

It’s now clear that the consultation was a strategy for keeping potential opponents on side for as long as possible so that the time for effective protest would be minimised. At the time of writing, the Bill awaits the approval of the President who may refer it to the Supreme Court because of its constitutional implications. Whatever the President decides, the government are on notice: the disability lobby will not forget this. The government has, yet again, turned its back on the disability lobby.

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“What we intend to do on Monday, if they do not open, is picket from 6.30 p.m. to let them know that we will not be backing down. We are choosing that time for people who will be at their jobs during the day. If work resumes at the site we will start picketing at 11 a.m. The purpose of the picket is to persuade employees working at the building of the refinery to halt work, as some have done, and to show that we are not forgetting the five innocent men in Cloverhill prison.”: P.J. Moran, Ballinaboy Resident.

“WORK CONTINUES AS NORMAL AT THE COMPANY'S SITES IN MAYO” So reads the Shell press release of Friday July 1st. At the refinery site at Ballinaboy everything, mostly signs and flagmen huts, that was on the ‘oil road’ outside the site was cleared away by Shell-Statoil-Roadbridge-Sicim by 3.15pm on Friday, and inside machinery had stopped work by 3.30pm.

This morning in Rossport the truck illegally carrying pipes to the Shell-Statoil-Roadbridge-Sicim compound, which had been halted on the roadside since Tuesday the 21st of June, was removed after negotiations, and with that so ended a 12 day, 24 hours a day, roadside vigil, which highlighted the inadequacies of the developers traffic management plan, or rather its virtual non-existence. The truck left without entering the compound.