From the Newswire: Rateyoursolicitor.com was set up last March to allow Irish users of legal services to communicate their experiences of solicitors and barristers. The site provided the public with an opportunity to name and shame (or name and fame) the legal practitioners they had experience of, by awarding them a 3, 2 or 1 star rating or an AVOID rating. However, over the past couple of weeks serried ranks of lawyers have lined up in the Four Courts to try to get the site taken down. The site was indeed down all day today and today’s paper claims it is down because of a court order. In fact it is only off-line for technical reasons. It is being given broader bandwidth and other improvements and it will be back on-line within days. In the meantime it can be accessed from the www.crookedlawyer.com site by clicking on “Latest News 15th September 2006”.

Previous tales of the Internet and the law: Pirates & Hackers | Pimping the Music Industry and an Interview With A Vampire | IRMA To Sue Filesharers For Clawing Back Profits From Greedy | Indymedia Blog On Bill Gates 'dot communist' comment

Walking to Store street Garda station

There was a large turnout today on the 1st anniversary of Terrence Wheelock who died as a result of injuries received in Garda custody. About 500 people from the Sean McDermot Street and Summerhill community turned out in support of the Wheelock familes demand for an independent inquiry. The protest was preceded by a mass in Sean McDermot Street church. Other groups that came to show their support included activists with Residents Against Racism, Working Class Action, Sinn Fein, Labour and the Workers Solidarity Movement. The family of John Maloney also came out in solidarity as well as independent T.D. Tony Gregory, Cieran Perry, Christy Burke of Sinn Fein and Joe Costello of Labour.

Larry Wheelock addressed the crowd and was followed by Joe Costello speaking on behalf of the local public representatives (Burke and Gregory) and Cieran Perry then spoke.

Previous Indymedia Coverage:
Interview with Laurence Wheelock – Terence's Brother Mar 2006
Interview with Esther and Larry Wheelock– May 2006
Wheelock family move out of Summerhill– after intimidation July 2006
first mention of Terence on the newswire who was in a coma at the time July 2005
Original report of Terences death, followed by Garda responses in comments

" How many of us can put our hands up and say we are not ourselves primarily responsible for the culture of drunkenness that our children are now embracing with such eagerness?"

Nothing can be done collectively without laying on booze

“In the name of greed we are in danger of losing everything that is good about our town”. So said SF town councillor Paul Hayes at a public meeting held in Clonakilty, West Cork on Monday 4th September and it might have been a good thing if every parent, politician, publican and young adult in Ireland had been present. Certain events in Clonakilty in recent years have the familiar ingredients of many a story that could be told up and down the country: petty politics; worries about garda presence, indifferent parents; grasping business interests and so forth. But an analysis of the situation is instructive because, if we are looking to apportion blame, none of us come out of it looking good.

There appears to be general agreement nowadays that the country is rapidly losing its soul, whatever that is or was. We acknowledge the benefits of increased prosperity but are as rabbits frozen in headlights about what to do with its negative consequences, which are increasingly difficult either to ignore or to avoid. Some folk snarl at talk like this, terrified both of its impact on profit – pursuit of which is the new compulsory religion – and that we might all end up back where we were 30 years ago. Well, it is at least arguable that nothing will guarantee that we end up on the scrap heap more than shoving our heads in the sand about what we are making of our country right now. The trouble with the ostrich perspective is that you are left with limited faculties for thinking and communicating, if you see what I mean.

Answering difficult questions early on a Saturday morning

In June, the women members of the WSM hosted a dayschool on Women in Revolutionary Struggle. Following on from this RAG (Revolutionary Anarcho-Feminist Group) decide to host a women's only day-school on sexual violence. This was held in the in the new Seomra Spraoi space in Dublin.

I have to be honest; I wasn’t looking forward to it. Sexual violence is a difficult, emotional and disturbing issue. Spending a Saturday talking about it just wasn’t my idea of fun. It was something important, that had to be done, but not exactly a barrel of laughs.
But I was wrong, there were lots of laughs, and it was fun (who’d have thought it!). RAG are to be complimented for creating a relaxed and easy going environment in which to discuss this most difficult of issues.

The first thing we did was get to know the person sitting beside us – we asked them about what they liked and didn’t like, what they were good at and what they were bad at. Then we went around in a circle, each introducing the person we had been talking to everyone else. I discovered that Clair likes Organising and that Eve likes Rossport Solidarity Camp and hates Shell. I like cats and have a bad memory. It was an easy start to the day, but things were about to get more difficult.

Reclaiming Fitzwilliam Square over Mayday'04

From the newswire: A LOCAL authority has come under fire after revelations it sold a prime development site in a thriving town centre for just €100. Leitrim County Council last week defended its decision to sell the town centre car park, which is estimated at being worth tens of thousands of euros. The land on Church Lane just off the Main Street in Manorhamilton was sold to the Manorhamilton Enterprise Forum Ltd, a voluntary group comprising of local businessmen. They have since sold it on to developers for an undisclosed "slight" profit who are in the process of building a major residential and commercial development on the site. The development was unsuccessfully appealed by a number of local residents to An Bord Pleanala in April and involved a petitions signed by Hundreds of local people. It has further emerged this week that the County Council have agreed to purchase back some of the development for €900,000....story continues.