Discussions about the role of corporate media usually end up being esoteric analyses of the subtle misdirection and bias exposed by Chomsky and Hermann. Sometimes though the corporate media just lets it all hang out and tells such huge porkies that it's hard to believe. Perhaps the most "skilled" example of the art of complete and utter lies that has sullied our eyes is the work of "journalist" Deirdre Tynan and her editors and publishers at Ireland on Sunday.

Presenting herself in the article as an intrepid undercover journalist, and in the pub as an angst-ridden victim of greed, the sodden scribe managed to scribble together a "story" which would be laughable were it not published in a periodical which claims to report fact. This blatant lying is part of a larger trend of vilification of anarchists and other activists by the corporate media in the run-up to the EU Summit in Dublin.

Detailed rebuttals of the patent falsehoods told by this Grub Street hack have been contributed by our reader-writers including a very detailed account by the Workers Solidarity Movement, and a personal report by one of the interviewees (whose gentle suggestion of ethical standards was dismissed as being "from the sixties").

But we shouldn't be so surprised because Ireland on Sunday belongs to the same group of newspapers that published scandalous stories about the badly beaten and tortured media activists at the Genoa Social Forum in 2001.

It has been suggested that Deirdre Tynan and Priscilla Lynch may have an incomplete control over the work published under their name and that the editor-in-chief (Martin Clarke) is associated with a high turnover in staff who find the workplace ethically distateful. However, their names are on the piece and they bear responsibility for it.

From the Newswire: 'One of the central, but not well known, direct goals of the Irish EU Presidency is to reach agreement with the European Parliament about the CO2 Emissions Trading Market. This market is to be launched in 2005. Ministers of the EU member states are demanding a market full of loopholes, so that companies can escape reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gases on EU territory. Instead companies will be able to produce and trade the commodity “the right to pollute” by financing cheap efficiency projects in Eastern Europe and in the South.

An agreement between the EU Member States and the European Parliament should finally be reached at the end of June, but ideally should come about before the last legislative session of the European Parliament in April, before the elections. Ireland already held a conference in Dublin on February 3 to discuss the various National Allocations Plans among the Member States. These allocation plans are the foundation of privatising the right to pollute among companies in the EU, concerning high-polluting industries such as the steel and paper industries. Before the end of March, all Member States should have finished their allocation plans.

The most crucial topic will be on the loopholes that will be provided to companies. Last year, the European Commission proposed to link the European Market with other “flexible mechanisms” for reaching reduction targets, such as the CDM and JI mechanisms, that make it possible for Member States and companies to create the right to pollute with CO₂ in the EU, by developing or financing “climate projects” in other countries. The Commission however proposed to put a cap of 8 per cent on this. The EU Parliament agreed on this. In December, a majority of the EU-member states expressed the opinion that they want to get rid of this cap. Now, Member States and the EU Parliament have to come to an agreement so that the trading scheme can be implemented in January 2005.

This so-called “linking directive” will boost the European Market with cheap credits, so reaching the Kyoto-targets will be much cheaper for companies. States such as Spain (which is very energy inefficient), as well as most industries, are heavily engaged in lobbying the EU Parliament and other Member States to link the European market with these other flexible mechanisms. The consequences are that no reductions will have to be met in Europe itself, enabling industry and Member States to continue polluting anyway and further postponing solutions to climate change. Another consequence is that a very lucrative market will be created, by creating a new commodity and very flexible market rules.'

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Irish Taxpayer Funds Free Ride for CO2 Industries: Friends of the Irish Environment
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Cullen Ignoring Kyoto Targets -Labour
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