Stand With Palestine Events and Workplace Day of Action on Naksa Day

Mairead Corrigan Maguire taken away after being shot with rubber bullets by Israeli soldiers.
from a photo series
by the ISM's Martinez

In a Gandhi-like protest, a completely unarmed and peaceful gathering of peace activists who were walking to the Bil'in Wall were tear-gassed and then shot with rubber bullets. After being brought to ambulances for treatment they returned to the non-violent demonstration. Among them was Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire writes from Palestine...

'...When the walkers got half way down the road, the Israeli soldiers started firing nerve gas, and plastic bullets directly at us. At another point they used water cannons. We were a completely unarmed peaceful gathering and this vicious attack from the Israeli soldiers was totally unprovoked attack upon civilians. The soldiers block the upper part of the road, thus preventing Dr. Barghouti and some of the Palestinians joining the main vigillers. We were then tear gassed and as I helped a French woman retreat I was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet. Two young women, one from USA and one from New Zealand, helped me towards an ambulance. I saw an elderly Palestinian mother carried on a stretcher into the ambulance, as she was shot in the back with a plastic bullet. I saw a man whose face was covered in blood and a Palestinian youth overcome with the gas. About 20 people were injured. Ann and myself went back to the protest where the people were being viciously attacked with nerve gas and plastic bullets. I was overcome with gas and took a nose bleed which resulted in being carried to ambulance for treatment....'

Related Links: Peace People / Nobel Prize - 1976 / NobelWomensInitiative.org
PalSolidarity.org: All we had for breakfast was tear gas / on December 2006 she was Arrested at Faslane, Scotland

Willie Corduff with his wife Mary on his release from prison in September 2005

Mayo farmer Willie Corduff, who was jailed for three months in 2005 over his opposition to Shell's inland gas refinery at Bellanaboy and high-pressure pipeline through his farm, has been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. Awarded annually to six grassroots environmental heroes, the $125,000 no-strings-attached prize is the largest of its kind in the world and is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for the environment.

Related Links: Goldman Environmental Prize | Shell to Sea | Report on last Wednesday's High Court ruling

Whitehall - where Captain Jack White died in 1946

“The Burning” – PDF here– is a full length play written about the circumstances surrounding the destruction Captain Jack White’s papers following his death in Broughshane, Co. Antrim in 1946. White, as many people will know, was one of the more well known figures in Irish history that identified with anarchism. The only son of British Boer War hero, Sir George Stuart White (“The Hero Of Ladysmith”), he was assured a bright future in the upper echelons of the British military until his conscience intervened and he resigned his commission.

Breaking with family, he gravitated to political activism and the revolutionary left. His baptism of fire was the Great Lockout in Dublin in 1913, where he worked alongside Larkin and Connolly and proposed the idea of the Irish Citizen Army. Of Protestant “stock”, he was active in the fight against imperialism, reserving particular vitriol for the “Orange” state formed in the north of Ireland after partition in 1922.

Related Links: Launch Of 'Misfit': Autobiography of Captain Jack White | 1916 - Connolly, blood sacrifice and defeating British imperialism

Dramatic Scenes At Fridays Blockade

Six people were arrested this afternoon on the site of Shell’s controversial refinery in Ballinaboy, Co Mayo. The six were part of a group of more then thirty who entered the site at 11am this morning as part of a ‘people's site inspection’. A five hour game of ‘cat and mouse’ ensued as Gardai and Shell’s private security personnel attempted to remove the protesters from the site. The six arrested were taken to Belmullet Garda station before being released.

Today’s site incursion was the latest in a series of similar actions and follows closely on yesterday’s site incursion by a group of female activists from both the local area and Cork Shell to Sea. Those involved in today’s action were from both the local area and the Dublin Shell to Sea group.

Related Links: Women's trespass at Bellanaboy on Friday 13th | Work halted at Bellanaboy as protesters gain entry to Shell's site, six arrested. | Corrib Gas pipeline route selection begins. | We can stop them | Shell to Sea activists blockade lorries at Bellanaboy | 04.04.07 Sees Yet More Aggression by Shell Cops |

Get out your blue crayons

Climate change is everywhere. Ramor Ryan gatecrashes the ineffectual UN Conference on Climate Change in Nairobi and comes back blaming Capitalism.

A momentous report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms that climate change is 'man-made and unstoppable'. The 21-page report, described as conservative by the IPCC itself, says human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are to blame for heat waves, floods and heavy rains, droughts and stronger storms, melting ice-caps and rising sea-levels.

The IPCC is comprised of over 2000 climate experts and scientists. It was set up in 1988 by the UN and the World Meteorological organisation to guide policy makers on the impact of climate change. Despite strenuous attempts by oil companies and big business to undermine the final report, it remains quietly apocalyptic in its assessment.

Its mind-boggling conclusion predicts serious water shortage for between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people, food shortages for 200 to 600 million people. Coastal flooding will hit seven million people within 70 years. The list of potential catastrophe goes on and on.

Related Links: SP on climate change | The Politics and Reality of Peak Oil | Book Review: Ramor Ryan's 'Clandestines: the pirate journals of an Irish Exile' | Climate Change Action Now: Demonstration This Friday 13th ,Dublin City | International Day of Direct Action against Climate Change and the G8. | Climate Change: Answering the Sceptics (and Channel 4) | Ireland and Climate Chaos