Home

No To NATO Meeting and Other Anti-War Events

Submitted by webmaster on Mon, 02/03/2009 - 23:58.

Events

  1. 03/03/2009 - 12:30 Protest Meeting at Eircom HQ, Dublin
  2. 04/03/2009 - 19:00 No To NATO Public Meeting Teachers Club - Organise for NATO 60th Anniversary
  3. 16/03/2009 - 19:30  Christy Moore Anti-War Gig UNOCCUPIED MINDS

News

  1. RTE Coverage of Lisbon Debate Unbalanced in Favour of Yes Side Says New Report
  2. 5th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week
  3. US government has "threatened" the British government with reprisals if rendition/torture details revealed

 

Events Details

03/03/2009 - 12:30 Protest Meeting at Eircom HQ, Dublin

Protest Meeting at Eircom HQ (near Heuston Station) - Tue 03 March at 12.30pm

Eircom plans to award a major contract to Israeli company Amdocs. This is despite the recent murderous Israeli assault on Gaza, which claimed the lives of over 1,300 people, including more than 300 children. Israel has shown a blatant disregard for international law and the norms of civilised behaviour.

Protest against this to show your opposition to Eircom’s “Business As Usual” attitude.

Organised by The Irish Anti-War Movement

Getting There: From City Centre Luas to Heuston Station - Address: Office 1 Heuston South Quarter, St. John's Road, Dublin 8

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

04/03/2009 - 19:00 No To NATO Public Meeting Teachers Club - Organise for NATO 60th Anniversary

Public Meeting - Organise for 60th NATO Anniversary

Wednesday March 4th, 19.30,

Teachers Club,
36 Parnell Square West,
Dublin 1.

For further information please contact
Mark Price: info@irishantiwar.org or 086 345 4332
Come to the meeting above to find out more about NATO.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

16/03/2009 - 19:30  Christy Moore Anti-War Gig UNOCCUPIED MINDS

IRISH ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT TO COLLABORATE WITH MUSICIANS, ARTISTS
AND ABBEY THEATRE IN MAJOR EVENT ON WAR AND OCCUPATION

 

 A night of theatre, poetry, songs & music

 

Performances by 

 

Christy Moore, Stephen Rea, Sinead Cusack, Roisin Elsafty, Mick Pyro [Republic of Loose], Judith Mok [Soprano], Joyce

 
& The Abbey Theatre presents Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza by Caryl Churchill
 

March 16th Vicar Street.

 

Doors 7.30pm. Show begins 8pm.
Tickets €25 from Ticketmaster www.ticketmaster.ie

Proceeds to Irish Anti-War Movement & Irish Medical Aid for Palestine

 

News Details

RTE Coverage of Lisbon Debate Unbalanced in Favour of Yes Side Says New Report

The primary finding of this research is that on RTÉ’s leading news programmes from January 1st 2008 to June 14th 2008, 63% of the contributors to news items which focused on the Lisbon Treaty were supporting a Yes vote.

Three television programmes (Six One News, Nine News and Questions & Answers) and three radio programmes (Morning Ireland, News At One and Drivetime News) were analysed over this timeframe via RTÉ’s website. The following is a summary of the report’s main findings:

  • RTÉ’s coverage of the Lisbon Treaty campaign was unbalanced with contributors from the Yes side making up 62.75% of speakers in discussions and news items focusing on the Lisbon Treaty. This suggests that perhaps it was RTÉ policy to deliberately limit coverage of the No side’s arguments. It is to be hoped this research may elicit further explanations.
  • This imbalance needs to be viewed in the light of the relevant legislation. The Lisbon Treaty was a matter of “public controversy”, it was “the subject of current public debate” and by facilitating such a skewed presentation of the debate, it is difficult to see how RTÉ’s duties were discharged “objectively and impartially” .
  • RTÉ has a legal requirement that its coverage of “matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current public debate” be presented so as to be “fair to all concerned” . This research finds that was not the case.
  • RTÉ’s own Charter places a requirement on the broadcaster to “strive to reflect fairly and equally the … political diversity of Ireland and its peoples” . By not facilitating fair, and even reasonably, equal contributor participation the broadcaster has failed its own Charter.
  • Questions and Answers was the most unbalanced programme with 72.34% of guest panel speakers being for the Yes side. The audience participation was also unbalanced with panellists permitted to interrupt audience No speakers, further skewing the balance in favour of the Yes side.
  • The most surprising finding was that the coverage remained unbalanced from early in the new year, up to the announcement of the date of the referendum, throughout the thirty days of the referendum campaign and as the results were being discussed.
  • Coverage of the results was particularly unbalanced, with panels of experts dominated by Lisbon Treaty supporters.
  • The coverage of the Yes and No sides differed in one very significant way. In many reports RTÉ journalists/presenters would often frame the debate in terms of “How can the Yes side win?”, rather than the more journalistically objective, “Why should the Yes side win?”
  • There was a distinct difference between the questions put to the Yes and No sides. For example, obvious conflicts over the Treaty’s interpretation by the ICTU and IBEC were not explored.  IBEC’s submission to the Forum on Europe contained many claims about the Lisbon treaty which the ICTU would have been opposed to.
  • There were a small number of cases in which RTÉ journalists/presenters engaged in aggressive interrogation of contributors to Treaty-focused news items. While these incidences were very few, they all happened to speakers from the No side.  An example of this are comments referring to speakers on the No side as “failed Dail Candidates”
  • In complaints made to RTÉ regarding the substantive issue of the numbers of speakers from the Yes and No side during the referendum, RTÉ’s explanation was that it would ensure approximately 50% coverage for both sides. 50-50 coverage cannot compensate for a 63%-37% speaker ratio.
  • When complaints were made to RTÉ about a single Yes speaker being given airtime without a corresponding No speaker present, the reply from RTÉ was that a No speaker speaking on a different programme was compensation for this. The legal obligation to do this within “two or more related broadcasts” may be applicable to a different edition of the same programme, or between the two main evening television news programmes, but a mid-morning chat show is not “related” to an early morning news programme.
  • The Audience Council was given inaccurate information about the coverage of the campaign.  As illustrated in section 13.2.3.
  • Three members of the RTÉ Audience Council were from organisations that had taken a specific Yes position.  None represented organisations taking a No stance.
  • The composition of the RTÉ Authority was unbalanced in that it reflected the higher socio-economic sections of Irish society who polling showed were more likely to vote Yes and did vote Yes. Citizens from the lower socio economic groups were more likely to vote No.  Membership of the Authority is not reflective of the diversity of Irish society.
  • There was a failure by all of the structures within RTÉ to monitor and correct the imbalance which developed during the protracted Lisbon debate. This is due to the make-up of the bodies themselves and not due to any particular individual.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week

Mark your calendars - the 5th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week will take place across the globe from March 1-8, 2009!

First launched in Toronto in 2005, IAW has grown to become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. Last year, more than 25 cities around the world participated in the week’s activities, which also commemorated 60 years since the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and land in 1947-1948. IAW 2008 was launched with a live broadcast from the South African township of Soweto by Palestinian leader and former member of the Israeli Knesset, Azmi Bishara.

MORE INFO HERE:

http://www.caiaweb.org/node/1125"

Do post on your site share the information if you believe in this campaign.

CROSS POSTED FROM http://irish4palestine.blogspot.com/

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

US Government has "threatened" the British government with reprisals if rendition/torture details revealed

Breaking news in Britain 4/2/09,

but will Ireland's role in Binyam's rendition ever be highlighted in the public domain? 

British court asks that President Obama reconsider his predecessor's repeated "threats" levelled against the judges who considered allowing the public to learn the details of American torture of Binyam Mohamed.

In an extraordinary ruling, 2 British judges sitting on the case of Binyam Mohamed have revealed how the US government has "threatened" the British government with reprisals should the British reveal evidence that American agents were involved in his rendition and torture.  The judges end the decision with a plea to President Obama to reconsider President Bush's remarkable policy of retribution against anyone who might reveal American crimes:

If the information in the redacted paragraphs which we consider so important to the rule of law, free speech and democratic accountability is to be put into the public domain, it must now be for the United States Government to consider changing its position or itself putting that information into the public domain.

Mohamed v. Secretary of State, at ¶107.

No fewer than 8 times, the judges refer to the American "threat" made against their closest ally, the British. Mohamed v. Secretary of State, at ¶¶62, 70, 73, 76, 76, 76, 77, 107).  The British intelligence services have 42 documents that apparently demonstrate abuse of Binyam Mohamed a British resident.

"The US is under a legal duty to investigate the crime of torture, not to suppress evidence that it happened," said Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith.  "And the UK has a similar duty.  For the Foreign Secretary to give in to these illegal demands by the Bush Administration is capitulation to blackmail, pure and simple.  It is hardly Britain's finest hour.  As the judge's say, it is up to President Obama to put his money where his mouth is.  He must repudiate his predecessor's reprehensible policy."

Mr. Mohamed is a victim of "extraordinary rendition" and torture. He was initially held illegally in Pakistan for 4 months, which is where a British intelligence agent interrogated him under circumstances later found to be illegal by the British court. He was rendered to Morocco by the CIA on July 21, 2002, where he was tortured for 18 months, with the British government supplying information and questions used by the Moroccan torturers.  On January 21, 2004, he was rendered a second time, to the secret "Dark Prison" in Afghanistan, where his torture continued.  Since September 2004, he has been held in Guantánamo Bay.  He has never been tried for any crime.

"Binyam was tortured horribly in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan and it is clear from this case that the British security services were complicit in that torture," said Clare Algar, the Executive Director of Reprieve.  

"Today's judgment notes the British Government has a duty to investigate and possibly prosecute the perpetrators. Unfortunately, it seems that this might be the only way of exposing the shadowy facts about kidnap and torture which the US continues to hide beneath the false front of national security."

Reprieve lawyer Cori Crider added:  "Secretive and lawless to the last, one of the final acts of the Bush administration was to try to bully its closest ally into sweeping Binyam Mohamed's torture under the rug.  This is repugnant to the principles of open justice on which both our societies were founded."  

"On Day One of his administration, President Obama declared his government would "operate under principles of openness, transparency and of engaging citizens with their government". If this does not apply in the case of Mr. Mohamed's torture, where does it apply?"

For further information, including a full analysis of the judgement and public court documents, please contact Clive Stafford Smith (07940 347125; clivess@mac.com); or Katherine O'Shea at Reprieve's Press Office on 020 7427 1099.

Note for Editors:
Reprieve, a legal action charity, uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, working on the frontline, to provide legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. Reprieve promotes the rule of law around the world, securing each person's right to a fair trial and saving lives.  Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of Reprieve and has spent 25 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the USA.

Reprieve's current casework involves representing 33 prisoners in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, working on behalf of prisoners facing the death penalty, and conducting ongoing investigations into the rendition and the secret detention of 'ghost prisoners' in the so-called 'war on terror.'

Reprieve is a charitable company limited by guarantee; Registered Charity No. 1114900 Registered Company No. 5777831 (England) Registered Office 2-6 Cannon Street London EC4M 6YH; Patrons: Alan Bennett, Martha Lane Fox, Gordon Roddick, Jon Snow, Marina Warner

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________