''Caoimhe of Residents Against Racism writes: ....one of the women with us was given another date and left with one of the RAR members. The other two women were brought upstairs. We told them not to sign anything and to say that they didn’t want to speak to anybody from their embassy. As soon as the women were brought upstairs, the porter/receptionist came over to the other RAR member and myself and started shouting at us to leave the building if we had no business in it. I informed him that we did have business there and he just kept shouting. He was quite aggressive, pointing his finger in our faces and blatantly trying to intimidate us. We were then kicked out of the (public) building.

One of the women who were brought upstairs, had a judicial review pending and didn’t have her two children with her. She rang us from upstairs (on her mobile) saying that the Guards were trying to make them sign the papers and were bring aggressive towards them. She said that the guards told her that they were deporting her. She also said that she hadn’t signed the papers. It is completely illegal to deport somebody who is still in the legal process. At this stage we informed supportive T.D.s of what was happening, who faxed letters to the GNIB and McDowell, reminding him that this woman had a judicial review pending. She was freed, an hour later....''

The purpose of this article is to describe my experience of an International Volunteer Project so that well-intentioned potential volunteers will have some idea of the kind of conditions they may face. Service Civil International (SCI), the organisation that promoted the project describes itself as: “an international non-governmental organisation committed to the promotion of peace and understanding through voluntary activities. These activities consist primarily of 2-3 week long international volunteer placements involving volunteers from all over the world. These projects range from working with marginalised people to ecological, arts and cultural projects, amongst others.” The Irish branch of Service Civil International is called Voluntary Service International (VSI).

In my job I get four weeks of annual leave each year. This year I decided to spend two of those weeks participating in an SCI International Volunteer Project. After perusing the project booklet and considering various options, I plumped for a project (or workcamp) called “Othala” in the village of Weenermoor in the North West of Germany, near the Dutch border.

Riot police have been firing tear gas at demonstrators in Budapest in the last hours as they tried to storm hungary's state TV company. Storming TV stations is a pretty traditional way of kicking off a revolution. The protesters are angry at the revelation that the current prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admits that his party lied to gain office. Being relatively new to democracy the Hungarians find such cleverness a distasteful display of sociopathy. Hungarian radio played a tape of a meeting in which Gyurcsany & other party leaders (socialists by the way) did their Nixon best to pull the wool over the electorates' eyesv last week & since then the "politicisation" index of Hungarians has shot up. They are now very newsworthy and enjoying their second day of attention on Slavic language news sites.

Indy Audio Updates: 'Zoltan' (not real name) who describes the night when MTV (Hungarian TV) was attacked by angry demonstrators (6:38mins / 1.5megs)... Balazs describes how Hungary exploded in the last couple days and the lasted effect of 'socialism' and the imprint of the Soviet crushing of the 1956 revolution. He also offers some interesting observations about how media behaves in a post-socialist country. Part 1 (15:42mins / 3,6megs), Part 2 (16:43mins / 3.8megs)
BBC: We lied to win, says Hungary PM | BBC: Protests Target State TV
Reports From IMC.hu:National television under siege in Hungary | Photos of the disturbances

From the Newswire: Rateyoursolicitor.com was set up last March to allow Irish users of legal services to communicate their experiences of solicitors and barristers. The site provided the public with an opportunity to name and shame (or name and fame) the legal practitioners they had experience of, by awarding them a 3, 2 or 1 star rating or an AVOID rating. However, over the past couple of weeks serried ranks of lawyers have lined up in the Four Courts to try to get the site taken down. The site was indeed down all day today and today’s paper claims it is down because of a court order. In fact it is only off-line for technical reasons. It is being given broader bandwidth and other improvements and it will be back on-line within days. In the meantime it can be accessed from the www.crookedlawyer.com site by clicking on “Latest News 15th September 2006”.

Previous tales of the Internet and the law: Pirates & Hackers | Pimping the Music Industry and an Interview With A Vampire | IRMA To Sue Filesharers For Clawing Back Profits From Greedy | Indymedia Blog On Bill Gates 'dot communist' comment

There was a large turnout today on the 1st anniversary of Terrence Wheelock who died as a result of injuries received in Garda custody. About 500 people from the Sean McDermot Street and Summerhill community turned out in support of the Wheelock familes demand for an independent inquiry. The protest was preceded by a mass in Sean McDermot Street church. Other groups that came to show their support included activists with Residents Against Racism, Working Class Action, Sinn Fein, Labour and the Workers Solidarity Movement. The family of John Maloney also came out in solidarity as well as independent T.D. Tony Gregory, Cieran Perry, Christy Burke of Sinn Fein and Joe Costello of Labour.

Larry Wheelock addressed the crowd and was followed by Joe Costello speaking on behalf of the local public representatives (Burke and Gregory) and Cieran Perry then spoke.

Previous Indymedia Coverage:
Interview with Laurence Wheelock – Terence's Brother Mar 2006
Interview with Esther and Larry Wheelock– May 2006
Wheelock family move out of Summerhill– after intimidation July 2006
first mention of Terence on the newswire who was in a coma at the time July 2005
Original report of Terences death, followed by Garda responses in comments