The Media Centre at the Athens ESF is a bustling hive of activity enabling activists, professional media and anyone who wishes to communicate the ESF to a wider world to do so. So how does the Media Centre work? Everyone volunteers their experience and expertise to help get things off the ground and running smoothly. Two groups involved in setting up and running the support for the Media Centre are Hellug and AWMN. Each was approached a month before the forum to provide the hardware and internet access through their network.

So why did they get involved with the ESF?

'It's fun, it's what we do, we learn something and it's a challenge!' says Mick Flemm (not his real name!).'It's a huge challenge, we've had up to 120 laptops, the media centre computers connected onto a backup system we weren't sure would work!' Cirrus, who finshed his service in the Greek army just 3 months ago, describes how it's the biggest single project they've been involved with. When asked about problems all eyes go up to heaven with lots of gesticulating and pooh pooh sounds. 'Problems?' he asks, 'we found chaos! We had to cable the entire network and phone lines and only got access to the main server two days ago!' Mick Flemm adds ' we didn't know if the bandwidth and access points we set up would have enough capacity for everyone, if we had enough coverage. Now it's great, OTE has set up their network and we can now do video streaming which we weren't able to do before'.

Initial reports coming in from the ESF in Athens, courtesy of Indymedia Irelands own Paula Geraghty, include photo essays here, here and here; and a description of the media centre.

'Comely maidens dancing at the crossroads' was what started it. DeValera's dismissive comment regarding women's roles in his vision of a new Ireland. Misquoted, of course, the actual word he used was 'happy'. So there we were, a bunch of women activists with nothing to do on Mayday (No RTS, aaaahhh) but be happy.

What better place than at the crossroads beside Herbert Park and the US embassy, right in front of DeValera's monument. Throw in a bit of dancing, a picnic with free food for all, send out a few invites, and see what happens...

A large protest took place outside the offices of the Health and Safety Authority to mark international workers commemoration day. The protest was supported by BATU and SIPTU as well as local T.D. Ruairi Quinn and Sean Ryan T.D. of Labour. There was a considerable amount of corporate press photographers and tv cameras as well.

The family of Justin Foley were also present and they laid flowers for Justin at the doorstep of the HSA in Hogan place. There was a minutes silence at 12. Building workers held 23 crosses one - each to represent each worker killed in work related accidents during 2005.

A hard days work never killed anyone? Justin Foley 0.21 Mb 23 crosses to commemorate each worker who was killed 0.3 Mb Ruairi Quinn T.D. and Sean Ryan T.D. support the protest 0.28 Mb 23 deaths - no more 0.37 Mb

This morning, Thursday 27 April peace activists from the Belfast-based Justice Not Terror Coalition staged a ‘die-in’ and blockade at the main gate of Thales Air Defence, Alanbrooke Road, Castlereagh.

‘This symbolic and totally non-violent action effectively blockaded and closed down the main entrance to the Thales war profiteers site in Belfast for a period of time. We re-enacted an everyday scene from the streets of Baghdad, Samarra, Fallujah and other Iraqi towns and cities under US and UK military occupation’, said JNTC member Ann Patterson.

‘War profiteers Thales in Belfast specialise in short-range missiles for the British government’s war efforts. Arms traders such as Thales concentrate on strategies to make a killing from armed conflicts. We are calling on the decision makers in Thales to start using the expertise and skills of their workers in socially useful ways rather than manufacturing weapons of death and destruction’, said Mark Chapman.

Like any other Open Publishing site Indymedia attracts its fair share of trolls. For some years Indymedia users have been harrassed by an obsessed cyber-stalker going under a variety of names. This troll has abused people through the site, as well as sending intimidating and insulting personal emails to different constributors on our editorial lists (particularly to a woman who contributes to the list). This crackpot's one-person mission to allegedly monitor the (completely open!) workings of Indymedia.ie has also prompted them into going as far as using a popular blogging site to pour deliberately ill-informed abuse on Indymedia contributors including editors.

We do not know the identity of this individual. All we know is that they appear to be admired by neo-Nazis who gather on a separate internet forum of the international far-right. Some of those neo-Nazis carry links to the crackpot blog in their posting signatures. Indeed, so prominent are the links that Tony O'Reilly's Evening Herald carried a story last Wednesday describing this latest website monitoring Indymedia, as a section of the world's most notorious neo-Nazi website "the racist, right wing Stormfront." Unlike the so-called "professionals" who inhabit O'Reilly's publishing empire, we don't mistake a random signature linking to a completely different site, as evidence that both operations spring from the same social betamax. An older posting from a contributor to another far right site prompts further suspicions in asking of the self-styled Indymedia Watch "aren't these crowd neocon supporters?"