Running parallel with the vicious media campaign of vilification against the McKevitt family was a campaign of intimidation and harassment conducted by members of the Garda Emergency Response Unit ERU. The overt campaign was directed at the entire McKevitt family including the three youngest children who were aged 8, 6 and 5. ... read full story / add a comment

I was suprised to read in todays Belfast Telegraph Frank Bunting offering any opinion on the cash crisis at the SEELB. The conduct of the INTO in this matter has been disgraceful. ... read full story / add a comment

Short video about the mass media and the butchering of life in Iraq, contains some graphic images. ... read full story / add a comment

Hidden additives. ... read full story / add a comment

I met people after and they asked, but was it art????

Another person said it's art if thats the context that it's made in.........

... read full story / add a comment

A taste of some images from the final year show of graduates from the DIT photography course. ... read full story / add a comment

Voters went to the polls in Mexico, a federation of 31 states and one district yesterday the 2nd of July to directly elect their new President. There are roughly 106.5 million Mexican citizens and their state ranks 12th in the World GDP and 4th for "per capita income" in Latin America.

The "not voting" thing was very simple for Mexico, 2005 saw Chiapas agree to send Sub Comandant Marcus out on a nation-wide "other campaign". Officially 99.4% of ballot offices were opened without incident, and 58.91% of the electorate voted. That means an abstention of roughly 41%.

The "voting" thing has produced a result so narrow that the Federal Electoral Institute can't call the election yet. The mechanism used dictates that the candidate with "plurality of votes" shall win, even if that candidate hasn't got more than 50%. If the IFE can't call the results, it means there is less than 0.3% difference in the results. there is no mechanism for a "run-off" election which readers will remember occured in the recent Peruvian presidential elections. ... read full story / add a comment

Archives dating from the period 1922-1939 are to be opened by Pope Benedict on the
18th of September 2006.

"Giving new insight into what the Catholic Church knew and
did as Europe saw the rise of Nazism in Germany and the
Spainish Civil War"

The files are known as the Secret Archives and files of its
Secretariat of State for the Pontificate of Pius X1.

Reuters/ Irish Times :- (1-07-06).

www.ireland.com

Googled the Holy See, (as one does) to see if more info can be had on
Benedict's criteria for choosing this specific time-frame, such as-
have the archives up until 1922 been opened before and this is part of a synthesis
of release, or why the abrupt stop at 1939?

Reading history in a linear fashion rather than as something which often
involves mass-movement or community consciousness would tend to
point to this era being crucial.

The period preceeding 1922 would hold an unlimited fascination in terms of
labour movement and the assasination of such figures as Rosa luxemburg
(Jan 1919). The Spainish Civil war is mentioned also in the hopeful
analysis of that specific time encapsulation, the assasination of Lorca
comes to mind. The 17 year period of file and archive release necessarily reduces
the reading of the archive within a specific narrow framework which does
not account for the build-up to facism which would definitely preceed the
watermark indicated. The archives would contain some fascinating
documentation of that period in world history but are they part of an ongoing
cycle of release or are they an isolated example of a criteria of choice with regard to
the Shoah?

informations on the secret archives are to be had on the Vatican website
www.vatican.ca
http://asv.vatican.va/home_en.htm
http://asv.vaticanva/en/studi_stud,htm

In terms of bureaucracy and official secrets, many governments
wd have a specific period of time during which state papers are sealed
and released. The opening of the secret archive in an Independent
State such as Vatican city would probably have a different criteria
for selecting and approving the dates for release of such documentations.

... read full story / add a comment

Just after returning from watching Ken Loach's Palm D'or reaping drama The Wind That Shakes The Barley and like most feel slightly compelled to add one or two words to the flurry of type and hype that has accompanied the movies release on these shores. The Wind That Shakes The Barley is a typical Loach movie betraying many of the core techniques of his previous outtings. Again he relies on plunging a shallowly crafted personal relationship, this time between two brothers, into a set of tragic circumstances. These circumstances provide an emotional cover for his overly didactic political approach to popularising alternative historical mythologies that challenge the authors of a victors' history. This time the contested historicity is the rabid nationalism of the Irish text book, that sweeps aside socialist and labour based movements in the process of consolidation of the free state. ... read full story / add a comment