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BEWARE Bullying Bosses abound!
STAND UP for the STRIKING Bus Workers.

As the grey misty rain fell throughout the day – you truly knew it was winter. The fact that over 300 bus workers were gathered in this dog of an afternoon outside Dublin Bus HQ would indicate that we all have entered the season of discontent.

If you can ascertain the facts, and that is not an easy thing to do if you are dependent on RTE-Pravda coverage, you know immediately that management are bullying the workers, undermining their working conditions, and attempting to create a two-tier workforce, with the introduction of longer hours on new routes.

Related Links: Harristown Drivers marching on Dublin Bus HQ | Support the Dublin Bus strike (via swp.ie) | NBRU statement on the strike. | SIPTU statement | IWU support statement| Dublin Bus services affected by the actions of management

A large crowd braved the cold evening weather to attend the first Irish screening of the documentary on the trial of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Eight - "Don't Let Shell Kill Again" , which was appropriately projected onto the outside wall of the Shell headquarters building at 52 Lower Leeson Street in Dublin, on the 12th anniversary of the executions.

Sister Majella McCarron, in what will probably be her last public appearance, made a short speech to provide a context for the film, remembering Saro-Wiwa and the others who were executed at the behest of Shell, after a series of events which shocked the world in 1995.

Sister Majella gave us an insight into the situation in Ogoniland today, and Senator David Norris read an excerpt from Saro-Wiwa's speech at his sentencing hearing in Port Harcourt, when he and his co-defendants heard that the special military tribunal had decreed that they were to be hanged.

The annual Ken Saro-Wiwa Memorial Seminar was also held at UCC in Cork on November 10th, and Saro-Wiwa was remembered as well on Friday morning in Mayo, where an attempt to hold a peaceful march to the proposed Shell refinery site at Bellanaboy was marred by the police efforts to force construction traffic along the road.

The World Bank will visit Malahide, Co. Dublin on the 12th and 13th of November. The talks taking place in Malahide will not be attended by elected 'representatives'. The group meeting there is the financial arm of the World Bank - The International Development Agency (IDA). The people talking and making decisions that will affect the lives of millions will be unelected senior civil servants.

We in Grassroots Dissent agreed that the strength of counter-summit protests is located in the potential for outreach we decided to hold an info tour (details below) on the model of development enforced by the World Bank and the Bretton Woods institutes. We also agreed that a common enemy fosters alliances and we have been working with NGO groups; Debt and Development coalition; Comhlamh; The Latin America Solidarity Centre (LASC) and Trocaire. These groups will hold a Photo Stunt on Sunday November 11th, 11.30am, Dáil Eireann, Kildare Street, Dublin 1. With the support of these NGO’s we have decided to do what we do best...

'Route Irish', a feature length verité/essay film on the campaign(s) against Irish facilitation of the US/UK Invasion of Iraq will be screened for the first time publicly in Dublin on Wednesday 7th November in Seomra Spraoi.

This film is firstly a vérite documentation of the emergence between 2002 and 2004 of a broad popular opposition to the US military use of Shannon Airport in the buildup to, invasion of, and occupation of Iraq.

It follows a loose network of politicians, activist groups and individuals through the story of the rise, fracturing and sudden decline and disappearance of this movement and retraces the way in which their combined efforts, energies and strategies served to effectively tear away the Irish States' veneer of neutrality and non-alignment in the post September 11th era of the 'War on Terror'.

Secondly it is a essayistic reflection asking, from the perspective of one Irish individual caught up in the cycle of protests here, why the international pre-war wave of opposition to the invasion of Iraq appeared so suddenly, peaked so quickly, and failed to sustain itself despite the fact that, in historical terms, all of the predictions of that movement (and worse) were proved right in the course of the ongoing US/UK occupation.

Thirdly it has, because of the progress of political events in Ireland, become a strange and surreal portrait of the Green Party pre their elevation to government.

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