Making Stuff Up

While the mainstream media (MSM) snoozed, Indymedia Ireland contributors were providing eyewitness testimony, photographs, video of, and commentary on, last weekend's Dublin riots. What were the MSM doing during this period? Well, the Sunday Times was concocting a story that blamed the Independent Workers Union for playing a part in organising the riots. Because Indymedia is an Open Publishing medium, the IWU were quickly able to publish a refutation of this astoundingly scurrilous claim see full story below. So far, so good. Our unprecedented speed and openness had allowed the IWU to counter publically a vicious piece of disinformation published in a widely read medium. Imagine our surprise when our editorial collective received a berating email from the Sunday Times' Irish editor John Burns, admonishing us for not checking "our" facts! Mr.Burns appeared confused about who we were and assumed that we were the IWU. He demanded a retraction of the IWU's post because it incorrectly named "Liam Clarke" as the author of the lie. Naturally we wrote to him but it seems that he still doesn't get it.

Meanwhile, Tony O'Reilly's crack team of journalists, editors, sub-editors and secret garda sources were busy churning out their own brand of shite which was neatly countered in public by Indymedia Ireland contributor Chekov. The whole fiasco (and similar disinformation spreading in the past) demonstrates what is at best ludicrous inaccuracy, but is more likely a co-opted and broken media model. The Sunday Times' article is now nowhere to be found on its archives, there is no retraction published and we have audio of another Sunday Times editor spreading the lie, this time on the radio. Here on Indymedia.ie we've clearly published the correction that Liam Clarke denies IWU involvement (although his name is on the story). Compare and contrast. Good-bye Grub Street hacks, you're only useful to the government.

Finally, Indymedia Ireland have decided to join in the fun and games and have launched a campaign to identify the ringleader of the riots after our crack team of investigative journalists have poured through thousands of photographs of the riots.

Camp Re-Opening

Last weekend Rossport Solidarity Camp was re-opened. The origin of the camp was the Solidarity Gathering on the first weekend in June last year. This happened days after Shell were due to start work at Glengad, a beach across the estuary from Rossport, work which has yet to commence. This gathering also saw the inauguration of the national wing of Shell to Sea.

The background to these events was attempts to enter farmlands to build the Rossport part of the pipeline, and injunctions from the High Court. (There had been a NUI Galway Ecology Society visit to the area in February). The camp began as Rossport residents prevented Shell’s trucks from entering their village with a ‘park in’. Another notable event at that time, the middle of June, was a visit to the area by some shareholders, who got a bit of a shock.

With the imprisonment of Willie Corduff, Brendan Philbin, Vincent McGrath, Philip McGrath and Micheal O‘Seighin, on the 29th of June, mass picketing began on all active Shell sites in Erris, see Rossport Resistance Steps Up a Gear, Report from Rossport, Photo Report from Rossport, A Few Days of Struggle in North West Mayo.

At this time the camp got up and running, in Rossport, and with an off-shoot in Glengad, and occasional other off-shoots in various parts of the proposed pipeline route. Campers picketed the Rossport compound, which was successfully closed down, and the camp also served as a sort of info-point to where people could travel and learn about what is happening. Good reports from the camp last summer are here and here.

The camp organised the Tenth Grassroots Gathering at the end of August, as well as the solidarity week.
Read on for a full report with photos on the re-opening on the camp:

No torture jets. Earlier protest in Dublin featuring poster.

On Saturday 25th Feb 2006, while Dublin was busy rioting against a loyalist paramilitary march, peace activists entered Shannon airport and conducted a peaceful protest against the use of a neutral civilian airport as both a staging point in the occupation of Iraq and as a conduit for the transfer of prisoners of the CIA in "extraordinary rendition".

From the newswire (Justin Morahan, Peace People): Colm and I decided to go in, drove to the car park, parked and went in to the airport. We wandered around for over an hour, sat in the observation lounge and saw three US planes, one Aer Lingus and one Ryanair, two small planes partly out of sight. Unfortunately, we had no camera. We also saw US troops passing up and down the corridor beind a glass panel opposite our window.

We had a cup of tea and decided to do the protest in the middle of the Departure Lounge where there were passengers waiting and people including staff to the left, right and upstairs. Colm took out his favourite poster (with Village pic as in previous vigil in Ranelagh see http://www.indymedia.ie/article/74470) and I mine. As we stood holding the posters I started to say Ed McCurdy's poem "Last night I dreamed" and followed with an impromptu speech. Colm wore his Pitstop T-shirt.

Traffic cams show riot in real time

Looking on through the lens of the virtual on Saturday I was stunned by the breath and depth of the live and parasitic (in a healthy way) critique of the action which unfolded alongside the action on O'Connell Street on Indymedia Ireland and throughout the hiberno-blogosphere. I quickly realised that this was definitely the first example of an ad-hoc flashmob of citizen journalists banding together with a decentralised diy publishing infrastructure, spontaneously, as live and with no pre-planning whatsoever and with no notice, flexing its muscles and absolutely wiping the floor with the methods of the traditional media. RTE had just about caught up with events by the time the (10 minutes later than scheduled) late evening bulletin came around. All of the blogs all day were choc full of dissatisfaction with the performance of the 'public service' broadcaster.

I, like almost everybody I know, didn't predict the events of Saturday. In fact the only person I know who did predict a major riot was a friend of mine who happens to hail from the wee North - in retrospect I should have realised that he had his finger on the pulse, for not only does he have much more experience of sectarian marches, but through his job he knows many of the people who were involved and has an unusual insight and sympathy for those people who most Dubliners write off as 'scumbags' and 'knackers'. This article is an analysis of what happened and why almost everybody got it so wrong. This article is a companion piece to the photo essay which I published yesterday.

A 13 minute video of the rioting in Dublin is now available on the global indymedia video site. You can download it by clicking here or by visiting the global indymedia website at video.indymedia.org. The file is made with the xvid codec and mp3 audio. It is approximately 100 MB in size, you will require a broadband connection to view it.