BrainSurgery4 Beginners

2025-02-06T20:44:00.001+00:00

XR activists glue themselves to door of BlackRock investment firm in fossil fuel protest:
by Caroline O Doherty, Irish Independent

Protest against Clontarf Energy Plc, Clontarf, August 2022

2023-03-08T22:07:00.000+00:00

Extinction Rebellion protest demanding that Clontarf Energy Plc switch their business model away from investing in fossil fuel extraction, outside their head office in Dublin 12/09/2022 (RollingNews)

Extinction Rebellion protest against Aughinish Aluminum

2023-03-08T18:22:00.002+00:00

2020-02-05T15:12:00.002+00:00

Extinction Rebellion GreenWashing protest

Fine Gael HQ, Dublin, Monday February 3.

Must be a better job than this . . .

2020-01-26T15:24:00.001+00:00

Rebellion week Lock-On, Merrion Square.

Irish Independent report by Caroline Ó Doherty about Rebellion Week Oct 19

Hopeful kids at XR Rebelllion Week 2. October 19.

2019-12-01T11:13:00.003+00:00

IDF tackles terrorism . . . ?

2019-11-16T00:12:00.001+00:00

2018-02-12T09:46:00.000+00:00

Crisis in Education:

Another example of Israel's tactic of targeting children . .

Reported in +972

Israeli authorities deported a 14-year-old epileptic Palestinian girl from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip earlier this month, without notifying her parents, and despite the fact that she has never lived there a day in her life.

2017-11-18T01:07:00.003+00:00

I have just been listening to the recording on the IPSC website of the meeting in Wynns with Mike and the others.

All the contributions were interesting, valid - even inspiring.

But nobody talked about the core issue: Israel's objective.

Israel is not simply a colonial power; or an apartheid state like South Africa.

Colonial powers occupy foreign countries to exploit resources and cheap labour. But that is not the case in Palestine.

The Israeli government does not want cheap Palestinian labour. It wants a Jewish state, from the River to the Sea. They began ethnic cleansing in 1948, and they haven't finished yet.

So the reason they attack children is perfectly logical. It is so that their parents will emigrate, to bring their children to safety.

The reason for the mindless pointless intimidation for so-called "security" is to wear people down, to drain their will to resist, until they just leave.

So it is not simply a question of persuading the Israeli state to recognise Palestine and treating the Palestinians equally. That is not going to happen.

Any short-term concessions to Palestinian statehood are just that: short term, to bide time with the international community.

So whether we like it or not we are not just campaigning for the Palestinians. We are attacking the very basis of the Israeli state.

So we should expect a hard and dirty fight.

Ilan Pappe describes Palestine as ‘The Biggest Prison on Earth’, and what Mike said about Israel not letting us in to see it is probably true.

So we should be thinking very carefully about strategy.

2017-11-17T09:48:00.000+00:00

Interesting article here from Electronic Intifada about Leo Varadkar . . .
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/why-irelands-prime-minister-tagging-israel-lobby-facebook

Shock and Awe

2017-11-15T00:21:00.001+00:00

Is it reasonable, acceptable to use shock tactics to advertise radio programs. Particularly during the day when young children may be listening ?

2017-11-15T00:20:00.001+00:00

Time to protest to the Dutch Embassy and start a boycott of Dutch produce:
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/dutch-government-teams-israeli-settlement-profiteer?utm_source=EI+readers&utm_campaign=3d472465dd-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e802a7602d-3d472465dd-299202849

2017-11-08T02:06:00.000+00:00

http://www.justvision.org/nailaandtheuprising

2017-11-08T01:48:00.001+00:00

November 2017

West Bank blues . . .

Earlier this month Benjamin Netanyahu visited Teresa May in London to commemorate the centenary of the infamous Balfour declaration. Balfour's declaration supported the Zionist vision of a secure home in Palestine for the Jewish people persecuted throughout Europe: "a land without people for a People without a land". The only problem is that the land they selected did have a people: predominantly Muslims with some Jews and Christians.

The Balfour declaration only supported a Jewish homeland, not a Jewish nation or state. And it was on condition that "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".

But 1947, in the wake of the holocaust of WWII, the Jewish people were given a state, Israel, and thus began the expulsion of the native Palestinians.

Unfortunately, unlike the Indians in America, the Palestinians did not die off after contact with the invaders. They were forced into refugee camps, within Palestine and in bordering countries, where they have grown in number.

Today the Palestinian people are divided in to different separate groups: in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Israel, in refugee camps, and an diaspora around the globe. And Israeli restrictions on their movement prevents them from coalescing.

Israel's long-term ambition is the occupation of all the land of Palestine from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean sea. And to achieve this they have continued with a program -overtly and covertly - of ethnic cleansing, by stealth.

They have in place a myriad of rules and regulation to restrict the movement of Palestinians. They have laid siege to Gaza, and they are using legal and illegal means to populate the West Bank with Jewish people.

Their definition of Jew is very unclear. Any of us Gentiles here in Ireland could convert to Judaism and gain automatic citizenship of Israel and the right to live in Jerusalem. But Palestinians born in Jerusalem do not have Israeli citizenship, and have to go through a regulatory obstacle course to be allowed live in their own home town.

Depite the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, the Israeli state is never going to grant the Palestinians complete autonomy or independence. As recently as last week in London Netenyahu said there could never be an independent Palestine. So they are actively maintaining a state of conflict, and heightened security.

The infamous wall has been built under the pretext of "security". Supposedly along the so-called Green line, the 1947 border, between Israel and the West Bank, the wall actually encroaches on Palestinian communities. It is cutting people of from their hospitals, schools and workplaces; cutting farmers off from their farms. People can easily - if illegally- get into Israel from the West Bank if they really need to. But legally they must come through the checkpoints. So the wall is not there for security, but to intimidate, and marginalise Palestinians. And to confiscate their land.
And to intimidate Israelis from having any contact with Palestinians.

The signs at the borders between Israel and Palestine Area A read: "The Entrance For Israeli Citizens Is Forbidden, Dangerous To Your Lives, And Is Against The Israeli Law".

The army is also very important to maintain this pretence of security.

Sahar Vardi in an Israeli woman, a peace activist from Jeruselem. She was born to a father who refused to do his obligatory military service during the first intifada, she has been protesting since her early teens. She told us (a group from Ireland) that she has been imprisoned "seven or eight" times for refusing to do her military service. Her description of the role of the army in Israeli life is reminiscent of the Catholic church in Ireland 40 years ago. Everybody from an early age is taught to look up to it, to accept it unquestioningly, and to take it for granted that they must serve their time (three years for men, two for women) for the security of the state.

It starts at the age of seven when children make presents in school for their soldiers. For some it starts even earlier if they join the scouts.

But according to Vardi the army have said they no longer need this conscription. They want people to train as professional soldiers, to make a career in the army doing skilled jobs. They don't want short-term unskilled soldiers. But the Israeli government insists on maintaining the draft to instil the belief that it is necessary for security and loyalty to the state.

But there is another reason why Israel wants to maintain the high level of security.

June this year saw the 50th anniversary of the Six-day war, when Israel invaded the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. It also saw in Tel-Aviv the 8th ISDEF exhibition, "the premier international defence and homeland security expo, catering to the needs of the Military, Police, Special Forces, and HLS by exposing them to the products and solutions provided by innovative defence and security companies worldwide".

A group of peace-activists managed to crash the event and stage a minor sit-down protest. The ten activists were wearing black tee-shirts with the slogan, “Israeli military industries profit from the occupation".

Military and security technology is a major export for Israel: sniper rifles and missile systems to the Serbs fighting in Bosnia; assault rifles to the South Sudan army in violation of an EU arms embargo; surveillance equipment to the Ugandan government to spy on LGBTQ activists; the Arava cargo plane was used by Mexican, Argentinean, and Guatemalan governments during the “Dirty wars” in these countries, to kill and disappear dissidents by dropping them into the ocean in what became known as “death flights."

So the conflicts in Gaza and the Occupied territories provide an excellent testing ground for all this technology; they are in effect a showcase for the producers, who can show that the equipment they are offering has been field-tested and is "battle-proven".

And the Israeli people don't realise what is being done in their name.

After a tour of Hebron recently, our Israeli guide - a former soldier, told us that we now know more about the situation there than most Israelis.

Or as one woman, Barbara, told Joe Duffy recently, the Israeli government keeps the Israeli people in a state of fear about Palestinians.

Entrance to Israel from Bethlehem

Palestinians going through checkpoint to get to work in Jerusalem

The True Cost

2017-08-11T22:51:00.001+01:00

Saw a frightening documentary last night about the fashion industry.
The film is called "The True Cost" - I saw it on Netflix.
According to this film the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry on the planet(after oil). The world consumes about 80 billion items of clothing every year. Clothes are now so cheap we dispose of them all the time. Americans generate about 37 kilos of textile waste per person/year. We donate thousands of tons of clothes to charity shops. They can only sell about 10%. The rest are dumped in markets in places like Haiti, putting local tailors and seemstresses out of business.
But that is only a part of the problem.
90% of cotton is genetically modified, using massive amounts of water, chemicals, insecticides and pesticides. These are having catastrophic environmental effects in those area with large cotton plantations, Bangladesh, US . . causing concentrations of cancers, birth defects, physical and brain damages.
And if that wasn't bad enough farmers in India are getting themselves into debt with Monsanto for seeds that aren't producing enough cotton.
and in depair they are committing suicide . . .

Think about this the next time you look at a nice bright cheap shirt in your local mega-store . . .

Presidential election.

2011-10-09T00:53:00.000+01:00

"Presidential blather a mix of sweet nothings".- Fintan O'Toole in today's I.Times.
But what can he expect. The President is a powerless position, a figure-head.
There is nothing to argue about.

2011-01-16T18:28:00.000+00:00

The country is in a major crisis, but what is the government doing about it ?
Entertaining us again with another leadership contest.
It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Why can't Brian Cowen, and Fianna Fail, realize that regardless of what they believe about their own actions - the very question of their suitabilty for leadership is weakening the country.

It is a measure of the dysfunctionality of our political system that this afternoons press conference even took place.
If we could manage our own affairs this issue would have been resolved months ago.

It is time for everybody in Leinster House to resign and for the President to apply to Brussels for direct rule.

Donegal bye-election

2010-11-04T22:53:00.002+00:00

4 Nov 2010
"To be fair, we have given no consideration collectively to the situation created by Jim McDaid. That just hasn't come up yet for consideration." The Fianna Fail Chief Whip, John Curran on RTE's Morning Ireland denying that any date had been set for the "other three" bye-elections.
But it is just not credible that the government didn't discuss the situation created by McDaid's resignation when they met to discuss the outcome of the court decision last night. Given their narrow majority it would have been irresponsible NOT to discuss it.
How long do they think they will survive ?

BrainSurgery4 Beginners

XR activists glue themselves to door of BlackRock investment firm in fossil fuel protest:
by Caroline O Doherty, Irish Independent

Protest against Clontarf Energy Plc, Clontarf, August 2022

Extinction Rebellion protest against Aughinish Aluminum

Extinction Rebellion GreenWashing protest

Fine Gael HQ, Dublin, Monday February 3.

Rebellion week Lock-On, Merrion Square.

Irish Independent report by Caroline Ó Doherty about Rebellion Week Oct 19

Hopeful kids at XR Rebelllion Week 2. October 19.

IDF tackles terrorism . . . ?

Crisis in Education:

Carillion collapse

Government response

Public meeting in Bray

March in Bray

Sign the petition

Another example of Israel's tactic of targeting children . .

Shock and Awe

West Bank blues . . .

The True Cost

Presidential election.

"Presidential blather a mix of sweet nothings".- Fintan O'Toole in today's I.Times.
But what can he expect. The President is a powerless position, a figure-head.
There is nothing to argue about.

Donegal bye-election

BrainSurgery4 Beginners

XR activists glue themselves to door of BlackRock investment firm in fossil fuel protest: by Caroline O Doherty, Irish Independent

Protest against Clontarf Energy Plc, Clontarf, August 2022

Extinction Rebellion protest against Aughinish Aluminum

Extinction Rebellion GreenWashing protest

Fine Gael HQ, Dublin, Monday February 3.

Rebellion week Lock-On, Merrion Square.

Irish Independent report by Caroline Ó Doherty about Rebellion Week Oct 19

Hopeful kids at XR Rebelllion Week 2. October 19.

IDF tackles terrorism . . . ?

Crisis in Education:

Carillion collapse

Government response

Public meeting in Bray

March in Bray

Sign the petition

Another example of Israel's tactic of targeting children . .

Shock and Awe

West Bank blues . . .

The True Cost

Presidential election.

"Presidential blather a mix of sweet nothings".- Fintan O'Toole in today's I.Times. But what can he expect. The President is a powerless position, a figure-head. There is nothing to argue about.

Donegal bye-election

XR activists glue themselves to door of BlackRock investment firm in fossil fuel protest:
by Caroline O Doherty, Irish Independent

"Presidential blather a mix of sweet nothings".- Fintan O'Toole in today's I.Times.
But what can he expect. The President is a powerless position, a figure-head.
There is nothing to argue about.