The subject of this opinion piece submitted to Indymedia Ireland is Anjem Choudary (also known as Omar Bakri Muhammad), a Muslim cleric who was born in Syria, participated in the 1982 revolution against the Syrian Ba'athist regime and was later given political asylum in the UK. He spoke at a debate in Trinity College on Thursday night. Choudary is well known for his extremist Islamic views and was leader of Al-Muhajiroun, an organisation whose eventual goal was to prepare the way for a global Islamic theocracy.

Choudary's remarks pointed out something in blunt terms which anti war campaigners have been saying since 2001, when it became common knowledge that Shannon was being used as a refuelling base for US warplanes. He said that "if you allow Ireland to be used to refuel US warplanes which are going on bombing raids, what do you expect the reaction of the Muslim world to be? This is not neutrality. It is better for the Muslim world to tell you this reality, so we can change this situation, and to make sure what is taking place in other countries will not happen here in Ireland." His remarks were in the context of his argument that Ireland is open to attack by terrorist groups, because of its support for the Bush administration's war on terror.

"The CW5's 2 main statutory defences to the charges were ruled out as 'inadmissible' this morning by Judge Donagh McDonagh, who was then rather suddenly forced to 'pull the plug' and send the jury home after his relationship with a certain Mr. Bush was revealed to the Court by defence counsel."

With the above words the Anon Court Reporter starts this, his 9th and last for this round, court report. Since it seems the judge forgot to order that the reasons for the collapse of the case be kept out of the media (as was done when the first trial collapsed) all the gory details are included in full. Also included below are links to Anon Court Reporter's exemplary day by day blow by blow reporting of the case

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5
• Days 6 & 7
• Day 8 report
• Feedback: Jury would probably have found CW5 not guilty

An attempt to look at the Paris riots, with more questions than answers.

The last seven days have been interesting. Here at home there was a large gathering of union workers protesting against the casualisation of labour at Irish Ferries, who plan to lay off Irish workers and employ Eastern Europeans at lower wage rates in their place. In Argentina, demonstrators opposed to the exploitation of Latin America by multinationals clashed with riot cops at the FTAA summit, providing the now familiar unwelcome mat for Dubya. Undoubtedly the focus was on Paris however, as it entered its second week of rioting after two teenagers were electrocuted to death fleeing from police.

Already there is revisionism happening in left circles regarding the events of the last eleven days in the banlieues of Paris (and now further afield). Several commentators and newspapers in France have been drawing comparisons between the rioting in depressed districts of the city with the student and general strike in May/June 1968, while others sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and speaking up in favour of rights for Islamic communities in the aftermath of the War in Afghanistan have been calling it "the French Intifada". Both of these paralells are flawed. The soixante-huitards may have been involved in street clashes with the CRS, but these clashes had an explicit political dimension and statement behind them; and even the tactics used differ markedly from those on the streets of Paris now. Nobody is denying either that the situation of the mostly Black and Arab families is grim, but to suggest that it is equivalent to the oppression suffered by the people in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip is complete hyperbole.

This text was originally posted on Aotearoa IMC

I was one of the co ordinators of the Irish mobilisation to the Second European Social Forum which was held in Paris two years ago, to the day. We had over a hundred people come from Ireland, and it was my job to head over early and co-ordinate accomodation with the ESF organisers there, as well as get the lie of the land and find out where everything was happening...

Imagine the shock when most people coming to the ESF discovered that a lot of the sessions were happening thirty or forty kilometres out from what most of us consider Paris, that beautiful walled medieval city of the Commune, May 68 and the Revolution. I spent the first day going from Bobigny (end of the line) to St Denis, and the hidden Paris of the ghetto-suburbs blew me away. Looking back on it now, the French ESF organisers probably opened Europe's eyes to the hidden reality of 21st century Paris. At the time we thought it was stupid to spend half the day travelling, but now I think it might have been a stroke of genius...

Mile after mile of desolate estate- high rise ghettoes reaching out to the horizon. The train stations were all covered with New York style hip hop grafitti, and when I got off at the second last stop (St Denis-Porte de Paris) I got a real shock. It was Bastille Day, when France celebrates its revolution, and in the middle of this concrete urban bunker that doubled as the town's main square, a bunch of old (white) army veterans were holding up French Tricolour banners gilded in gold with the names of their legions and the battles they had fought inscribed on it. This did not look to me like a progressive bunch of Communards or Sans Culottes. Maybe some of these guys had seen action in Algeria with Le Pen's torturing paratroopers.