The purpose of this article is to describe my experience of an International Volunteer Project so that well-intentioned potential volunteers will have some idea of the kind of conditions they may face. Service Civil International (SCI), the organisation that promoted the project describes itself as: “an international non-governmental organisation committed to the promotion of peace and understanding through voluntary activities. These activities consist primarily of 2-3 week long international volunteer placements involving volunteers from all over the world. These projects range from working with marginalised people to ecological, arts and cultural projects, amongst others.” The Irish branch of Service Civil International is called Voluntary Service International (VSI).

In my job I get four weeks of annual leave each year. This year I decided to spend two of those weeks participating in an SCI International Volunteer Project. After perusing the project booklet and considering various options, I plumped for a project (or workcamp) called “Othala” in the village of Weenermoor in the North West of Germany, near the Dutch border.

Riot police have been firing tear gas at demonstrators in Budapest in the last hours as they tried to storm hungary's state TV company. Storming TV stations is a pretty traditional way of kicking off a revolution. The protesters are angry at the revelation that the current prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admits that his party lied to gain office. Being relatively new to democracy the Hungarians find such cleverness a distasteful display of sociopathy. Hungarian radio played a tape of a meeting in which Gyurcsany & other party leaders (socialists by the way) did their Nixon best to pull the wool over the electorates' eyesv last week & since then the "politicisation" index of Hungarians has shot up. They are now very newsworthy and enjoying their second day of attention on Slavic language news sites.

Indy Audio Updates: 'Zoltan' (not real name) who describes the night when MTV (Hungarian TV) was attacked by angry demonstrators (6:38mins / 1.5megs)... Balazs describes how Hungary exploded in the last couple days and the lasted effect of 'socialism' and the imprint of the Soviet crushing of the 1956 revolution. He also offers some interesting observations about how media behaves in a post-socialist country. Part 1 (15:42mins / 3,6megs), Part 2 (16:43mins / 3.8megs)
BBC: We lied to win, says Hungary PM | BBC: Protests Target State TV
Reports From IMC.hu:National television under siege in Hungary | Photos of the disturbances

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

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?"

“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.