Get some mountainy fresh air into ya for a good cause!

On Saturday 13th September, the IPSC will be holding its annual sponsored walk.

This time it will take us through the scenic Dublin Mountains. The route is up to Three Rock mountain and from there on to Fairy Castle then on to Tribrabben mountain, down into Pine Forest and Cruagh Wood, on in to the Massey estate, finishing up in Rockbrook and will end with a meal in the Merry Ploughboy pub.

Further details (how to get there, exact times etc) will be posted on Indymedia and the IPSC website next week

If you would like to pick up a sponsorship card, please phone the office (01 6770253) or email info@ipsc.ie

Last year's walk was a great success and a lot of fun, so please come along and make this one just as good.

Here is some good background from activists and writers on the left about the current situation in Georgia.

Mark Almond is especially interesting as he is very knowledgeable on Georgian democracy.

These speeches are from an SWP meeting held in Central London recently under the banner of the Stop the War Coalition.
Mark Almond is a writer and lecturer on history who teaches at Oriel College Oxford and is the chair of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. He has served as an election observer under the aegis of the BHHRG in a number of countries including Georgia and Ukraine.

Boris Kagarlitsky is a Russian Marxist theoretician and sociologist who has been a political dissident in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. He is coordinator of the Transnational Institute Global Crisis project and Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements in Moscow.

Kate Hudson is currently the chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (since 2003) and is also a member of the Communist Party of Britain. She is also Head of Social and Policy Studies at London South Bank University and edits the journal Contemporary Politics.

John Reese from the SWP also spoke at the meeting- you can check out his speech on youtube.com by searching under -Georgia, Nato and Spreading War.

and not Anti-War activists?
Maybe in the future
the only consistant revenue
to keep Shannon Airport alive
will be from the killing?
from The New Republic:
The End Of Aviation
by Bradford Plumer
Post Date Wednesday, August 27, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/6and3v

''Early signs of an aviation apocalypse are already upon us. As oil prices flirt with $130 per barrel and the dollar struggles, airlines are paying nearly 80 percent more for fuel than they did a year ago. Twenty-five airlines have gone belly-up this year--three to four times the usual yearly rate. Major carriers like American, Northwest, and United, still reeling from the industry downturn after September 11, go barely a month without announcing layoffs and capacity cuts.

And it gets worse from there. Despite recent fluctuations, a growing number of economists are bracing for oil to hit or surpass $200 per barrel in a few years, and most industry analysts agree with Douglas Runte, of RBS Greenwich Capital, who told The Wall Street Journal in June, "Many airline business models cease to work at $135-a-barrel oil prices." After all, most airlines barely figured out how to be profitable in a world of low fuel costs.

{....}

While air travel isn't covered by the Kyoto Protocol, the next round of climate-treaty talks will likely address the issue, and the EU has recently announced that it will bring aviation into its emissions-trading regime--forcing airlines to pay for 15 percent of their carbon use starting in 2012.

Some interesting world social trends could end or be severely limited, as well....

''Immigration, meanwhile, did not begin with the birth of Easyjet, but some migration flows could cool off--the 465,000 Poles who have flown off on low-cost carriers to work in the United Kingdom since 2004, for instance, or the 70, 000 Filipinos who migrate to the United States each year, or the Caribbean workers, skilled and unskilled alike, who fly frequently up to North America, often maintaining homes in both places.

other blogishness here: http://LMV.hu/redjade

10 Years On - Remembering the Victims of the Omagh Bombing 15th August 1998
My wife was pregnant with twins this time last year and it got me thinking about Avril Monaghan, the woman who died, pregnant with twins, in the Omagh bombing. This is a short piece that I wrote at the time, remembering that tragic day in general, and those hugely unfortunate twins in particular. I'm sharing it here to commerorate these people on the tenth anniversary of their deaths.
Two Who Almost Were

You two then were like our two now
When the big bang banged
But you two now are like our two then
Because the big bang banged
And what did you know of it?
Or what did you care for it?
The cause, I mean ?
Not the big bang that banged.

The result for those committed
Can not be considered worth it.
That big bang that banged
For an Ireland that has never been ?
Unlike you two who always will be ? united.

- Mark Conroy.

US imperialism could only stand idly by as its puppet regime in Georgia has been defeated.
The US puppet regime in Georgia thought it could retake S. Ossetia and Abkhazia. It underestimated the revival of Russian power. Now its US and Israeli military has been crushed and the regime is in tatters. This represents a change in world relations. Russia has now shown it is prepared to intervene militarily beyond its borders. This will mean that the russian minorities in the former Soviet republics will become much more assertive. this in turn will mean that the governments of these countries will have to pay more heed to Russia. And the sige of Bush only able to wring his hands in china while his boy was getting whipped in Georgia will strengthen all Anti uS forces worldwide.
Georgia: A Change in the Balance of Forces in World Relations.

Labor?s Militant Voice
Loughfinn@aol.com
8-14-08
When the Stalinist regimes collapsed in Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1990's and when Chinese Stalinism moved towards capitalism, the US corporations and their representatives in the White House and the Pentagon moved to fill the vacuum. As the US regime explained at the time it moved to establish "full spectrum domination", that is to establish total control over the world. They have been having some success in this ever since.
Part of their worldwide offensive was to take control over the energy resources in the middle east; hence the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Alongside this was an aggressive strategy to take over and gain access to the energy resources of Central Asia. Part of this was to establish friendly regimes in these areas, which would allow them to put a military ring around China and Russia. They have also been moving to set up nuclear weapons systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Last week a US puppet regime, that of Mikheil Saakashvili in the Republic of Georgia, invaded the small area of South Ossetia, which while formally part of Georgia, has been semi independent for the past decade and a half. The armed forces of Georgia, trained20and armed by the US and Israel, attacked and killed civilians and drove people from their homes.
The object was to take the area back into Georgia. The result was different. The Russian government moved in with a massive force of troops and crushed the US and Israeli backed Georgian military, drove them from South Ossetia and also from Abkhazia, the other semi independent area of Georgia which is sympathetic to Russia.
The South Ossetians fear of the Georgian regime is not unfounded and it comes as no surprise that Russia would move to defend the South Ossetians and the Russian minority against Georgian aggression. The Saakashvili regime has a history of autocratic methods covered up by the US mainstream media. Anatol Lieven of the Financial Times points out that, ?The Bush administration backed by Congress, Republican presidential candidate John McCain and most of the US media also adopted a highly uncritical attitude to both the undemocratic and chauvinistic aspects of the Saakashvili administration and its growing resemblance to that of the crazed nationalist leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia in the early 1990?s.? (Financial Times 8-14-08)
Russia is not the only regime in the neighborhood with questionable democratic credentials. Given the tightly controlled US mass media that echoes the White House/Pentagon line, the average American would not only have never heard of Georgia until the present crisis or would mistake it for the southern US state of the same name.
The US and its NATO allies are increasingly bogged down in Afghanistan. Iraq will explode in the faces of the so-called coalition forces in the period ahead. One of the main allies of the US in the area, nuclear-armed Pakistan, is in danger of collapse. The Israeli repression of the Palestinian people continues and the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah makes its control more and more difficult. All recognize the increased influence of Iran in the region. Now with this defeat in Georgia US imperialism's big fist has less power.
The defeat of the US puppet in Georgia is of world significance. The humiliated US regime has had to stand by and watch. As one commentator said all Bush could do was "wring his hands in China." The Russian regime has shown that it has recovered from the collapse of the post Stalinist era and is now prepared to intervene militarily in the areas around its borders which the US was trying to control. There are large Russian minorities in most of the countries on the borders of Russia and the governments in these countries will now have to take their opinions much more in to account.
The offensive of US imperialism of the past decade and a half has received a serious setback. Every country in the world has seen their defeat and humiliation in Georgia and will be more prepared to ignore US orders from now on. Poland has already said that it would now need more guarantees from the US before it would consider allowing US missiles on its soil.
The crushing defeat of the US regime's ally in Georgia represents a change in the balance of forces in the world, a weakening of US Imperialism and a strengthening of the regimes in Russia and China. This will mean that there will be more volatility in the world and also more opposition to US power. US power=2 0will no longer be seen as unstoppable.
Alo ngside this setback for US imperialism in Georgia and the weakening of the power of the US regime worldwide, there has been the recent announcement that China will overtake the US as the world's number one industrial economy in the next two years. This is much sooner than expected. US imperialism is headed towards losing its place as the number one power in the world.
What will be the result of this for the US working class? The more US capitalism loses its world dominance, the less it will be able to make concessions to its own working class at home. US capitalism is already living in debt from day to day. It only survives due to the money loaned to it by its rivals. This cannot go on. Even in this case of Georgia, the US did not hold Russian currency and bonds that it could have threatened to dump to force Russia to back down. In fact it was the opposite. Russia holds large quantities of US dollars and bonds that could have been used to pressure the US to back off. But it did not even have to use these weapons. Nor did it have to threaten to turn off the energy it supplies to Europe. It was able to keep these weapons in reserve and still crush the US puppet. .
A new situation is opening in the US. As it loses its world dominance it will attack its own working class much more. This in turn will increase US working class consciousness and struggle. The working class here will be pushed in the direction of independent action and independent organization; one form this will take will be the building of a mass workers party. This was the tendency when other major imperialist powers lost their world dominance.

New opportunities will open up for the working class movement he re but there will be nothing automatic in this. Workers will have to organize and educate and agitate. Nothing will be delivered to us on a plate. We need to organize in the workplaces, the union rank and file, the neighborhoods, we need to create an alternative to the union bureaucracy which is cowed by capital and the bosses and their parties. We need to build an alternative to the system of capitalism that dominates our lives. This cannot be said enough. We as workers have to change our lives and become organizers and activists. We cannot go on as we have been doing.
As we move to become activists and to organize we need to avoid falling into the trap of seeing the regimes of Russia or China as examples. We have to stand for democratic socialist societies where society is run democratically by working class people not bureaucratic and capitalist elites as in Russia and China. And we need to recognize the rights of all minorities and nations to self determination, not only South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia but Georgia from Russia also. The solution for places like Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia is to guarantee the rights of all these different peoples to self-determination, that is that they can determine their own future thr ough democratic decisions. At the same time as guaranteeing this right, we should advocate a world wide democratic socialist federation. We are at a place in history where the problems we face, economic, environmental, military, can only be resolved on a world scale, through a democratic socialist worldwide federation.

Would you like to come along to the next Dublin Branch meeting of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign?
The next meeting is at Thursday 14/08/08 at 7pm.

Held in the IPSC office in Room 5, 64 Dame Street, Dublin 2. (Beside Peader Kearney's pub). Press 1-0-5-Bell on the intercom to buzz up.

Come along to discuss and plan upcoming activities. We have stalls at festivals and city centres, organise demos, film evenings, lobby politicians etc.

All ages and nationalities are welcome. You don?t have to know a lot about Middle Eastern politics to get involved.

Please call Kevin in the office 01 6770253 or Ronan on 086 4082535 for more details.

Check out www.ipsc.ie or email info@ipsc.ie

RSF has ridiculed Provo councillor Monica Digney's claims that she opposed a Brit parade in Ballymena.
The comments by the Ballymena Borough councillor ? the Provos' Monica Digney ? that she agreed to the RIR (formerly UDR) parading in Ballymena, Co. Antrim, because they already enjoyed the freedom of the borough, were a pathetic attempt to divert responsibility for allowing such a parade to go ahead.

The Director of Publicity of Republican Sinn Féin, Richard Walsh, said: ?She cannot claim to be opposed to the parade, having personally sanctioned it. Her actions show that ? despite what she has said ? she is in support of the British army of occupation. They have an appalling record in Ireland arising out of the continuing British occupation, and this cannot be separated from their appalling records in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed it has recently been revealed that disgraced Brit Lee Clegg is currently serving the British Crown in Afghanistan.

?Parades in support of the murderous British forces are an insult to the Irish people, and to have these parades imposed upon them within their own country is outrageous.?

Walking through the streets of Dublin, Ireland, after the Paul Kelly's gig http://www.paulkelly.com.au/ last night, I thought I should write this reflection.
It was strange to be in a packed Dublin gig of sentimental swaying Aussies 12,000
miles from home, having been raised in a family home of Irish sentimentality in Brisbane, Australia. My father left County Offaly as a teeneager to score work in London in '46 and then on to Australia on asssisted passage in '49, intending to spend a couple of years and have a look around. He did not return to his home village Clara for 26 years, made possible by the windfall of a scucces in the Football Pools with his fellow Everton Park posties in '75. It was the first time he met his youngest sister born after his departure and now pregnant with her first child.

My dad never really integrated into mainstream Australia - bursting into song in public places, treating Brsbane as one big Irish village welcoming strangers as friends he hadn't met and getting us kids to sleep by telling us bedtime stories of his mystical faraway village. His rebel songs put us firmly on the side of the Indians while we watched Westerns on Saturday afternoon tv, made us sympathetic to the aborigines which we caught the occasional glimpse of as we trundled to school through the Fortitude Valley red light district and suspicious of cops. My father had his nose broken by the cops in the '50's ("I was talkin', when I shoulda been listenin!"), my older brother had his nose broken in the '70's (a case of mistaken identitiy as Consorting Squad Detective John Frederich Johnson who had bashed me months earlier in a previous street march thought he was in a mismatch rematch). I was relieved to get out of the '90's with my schnozel still intact. I had sensed a pattern forming!

The street and society I grew up in felt sterile and foreign to the spiritulaity and home I was fashioned in - devoid of spirituality, welcome and mysticism. The virgin bushland, part of the Ennogera Army Barracks at the end of the street, where we played was sensory overload - the reptiles, the loud strange bush noises, the heat. What was unfolding in Derry and Belfst in my teenage years was much more significant in our home than what was going down in Saigon and Long Tan where the soldier boys from over the back fence were headed. Today the soldier boys, from over the back, deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. Years before they killed and died at Gallipoli, from where the Barracks gets its name.

What Paul Kelly does in lyric and song is to wring the spiritality and pathos from this strange land and the culturally displaced lives lived in it. Among other snippets, we hear of children pretending to be asleep so to eariwg on parents intimate conversations, long bus trips to mend broken marriages, revenge fantasies on being dumped, and Aussies who have stayed abroad too long. Kely's people came from County Clare in the 1850's renaming the place they farmed in Victoria after their abandoned County.

JABILUKA PLOUGHSHARES TEN YEARS ON!
http://www.plowsharesactions.org/webpages/JABILUKAPLOWS...S.htm

Ten years ago today, we headed up a bush track created by Energy Resources Australia (ERA) into the Jabiluka Mine lease, located in the sparsely populated Northen Territory of Austraia. to disable uranium mining equipment.
Like today, it was the anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. We had been partly inspired by the life and conversion of Fr. George Zabelka the Catholic chaplain to the bomb crew that had pulverised Nagasaki on Augist 9th. 1945, this the oldest Catholic centre in Aisa. The predominantly Catholic bomb crew had used the Nagasaki Catholic cathedral as thei ground zero target.
Fr. George Zabelka's slow awakening to his complicty in this historic crime, his growing awareness of its roots in the Constantine shift when the church abandoned is pacifism in the 3rd. century and his two year walk of repentance from the Trident nuclear base at Bangor, Washington, USA to Bethlehem inspired us. Our walk into Jabiluka was a contnuation of his walk in the light and the truth. It was a walk into risk responding to the cries of past, present and future victims of uranium mining.

We were careful to follow the ERA track as we had no guide to avoid trespassing on sacred aboriginal sites. It was the same track that weeks earlier, along with scores of protestors, we had blockaded the early morning shift change at the mine. That early morning blockade was high risk as some enraged miners tried to run us down with their trucks, on arrival the Northern Territory cops came in swinging and throwing blockaders off the track into the bush. The scenes are covered well in the unauthorised documentary "Minds and Energy". I remember striding furiously down the track with the windscreen wiper in hand of a miner's truck which tried to run us down. My fury is covered well in the same film as I unleash a speech about the little known (by the then movement and public) Depleted Uranium munition that had been used extensively in Iraq '91. One million rounds unleashed from U.S. A10 Warthogs and 11,000 7lb D.U. shells from U.S. tanks in those short two months. D.U. had left battlefields in Iraq poisoned for years to come, these rounds and shells continue to kill Iraqis ans U.S. military veterans to this day. Since then, D.U. has been used extensively by the U.S. military in Serbia and Afghanistan. The cutting edge of the Australian anti-uranium movement was largely ignorant of this munition at Jabiluka in '98 - 7 years after its initial use.

As primarily anti-war focussed activists, we had been a(n initially celebrated) minority at the large blockade camp 10 miles from the lease. Most of those who mustered for direct nonviolent resistance were young white environmentalists outraged that a second uranium mine in opening in a pristine wilderness World Heritage listed National Park. There were also small numbers of indigeneous people willing to confront the mine. The small Mirrar tribe had been browbeaten in the late '70's by the federal government and the Uncle Toms of the Northern Land Council to relent and let the huge open cut Ranger Mine go forward. They were taking a courageous stand against further desecration of their ancestral homeland by the new Jabiluka mine. Their elder was arrested and incarcerated in Darwin for her resistance.

Previously, the Hawke Labor Gvernment of the '80's had failed with its cynical attempt to brand Jabiluka as "North Ranger" to facilitate its opening under its Labor's "three mine policy". In '77 the Labor Party ran an election campaign on banning all uranium mining in Australia. On gaining office under the leadership of Bon Hawke in '83 they sold out immediately. Initial work on Roxby Downs/South Australia, the largest uranium deposit in the world, continued before the A.L.P. convened to change its policy. The three mine policy adopted was their attempted compromise with the huge anti-uranium movement of the late '70's and '80's.

Many courageous people put themselves on the line at Jabiluka in '98. Eco warriors had stopped trucks moving equipment into the site by locking onto their undercarriages. Others explored "black wallaby" actions breaking into the site and locking on to equipment. Many were arretsed and roughed up whille blockading and trespassing. They were hit with multiple hyped up charges - locking on became "car theft" according to the NT cops. There was a broken leg, a broken collar bone and various concussions. One black wallaby affiniity group were placed in a police van, the cops then retreated from the vehicle while the miners conducted a controlled explosion. I wonder if those folks still have Jabiluka ringing in their ears today? Others who were locked on had their hats removed and water poured out by the cops so they would slowly burn and dehydrate.

By Nagasaki Day, the blockade camp was depressed and defeated not by the cops and the state but by the NGO ureaucrats and aspiring movement politicians. With a Federal election looming, the orders came from Labor Party apparchics to deflate the blockade, sideline the issue to - they believed - increase their election chances. The direction was for the nonviolent direct actionists to stand down and make the long journey home. They had served their cannon fodder role to attract initial media attention for the hi drama/low risk taking movement bureaucrats. A deal was made between the blockade leadership and the cops, the old chestnut of white sycophancy wheeled to enforce it and paralyse the resistance.

The deal was the police would be given prior knowledge of all protests, there would be no incursions into the mine site, climaxing on the eve of that year's federal election with the police faciltating movement buraucrats entry into the Jabiru police station to order 100 people to cease noncoperation, admit they all really weren't "John Howard", give their names and accept bail. Thieir submision was much to the relief of the prison staff in Darwin where I was by then located who were anxious about this prospective influx into their system and where they were going to put them! A handful of us had already been already a moving and a shaking in the NT jails syststem drawing attention to the terrible conditions and managing a few reforms.

Anyways, the deal facilitated an easy entry for the Jabiluka Ploughshares into the mine site on the night of the Nagasaki '98 anniversary.. The security was lax, they must have felt their task subcontracted out. Convinced that the movement was policing itself and seemed to be on a long coffee break that night. We cut through the cyclone fence and made our way to a huge excavator, we lifted the lid and cut the internal cables, we spraypainted "Nagasaki", "Horoshima", "Chernobyl" and a town in Iraq that had been poisoned by uranium. We climbed on top of the huge excavotor, broke the glass of the driver's cabin reached through and hammerd away on the ignition. Uranium mining excavator disabled, we sat in prayer in this beautiful bush night.

Labor lost the election, we went to Darwin's Berrimah Jail, then to court, then to jail again, we were slandered by movement bureaucrats http://www.takver.com/history/jabiluka1998.htm. One woman spent a chunk of her PhD slamming us without bothering to interview with us - the low quality of research standards in Australian academe I guess! Time moved on for those who had gathered at Jabiluka some gave up the struggle, some continue, some folks took their lives http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/passing-pip-starr-...apher, others took office http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=EfM1C168hjY&feature=related to administer today's Austrlian Labor Government's uranium mining and export policy that looks something like an internatonal car boot sale with the ethics of a smack dealer "if we don't sell it someone else wil!"

Over 30 years ago ('77), my brother and I headed down to Brisbane's Hamilton Wharves to blockade a uranium shipment. The consequences of that night, besides the short term aches and pains, were the suspension of civil liberties in the state of Queensland for several years resulting of 3,000+ arrests for exercising free speech, multiple house raids, harrasment, frameups, blacklisting and consequent immigration and a police force so corrupt they were discovered running child pornography cottage industry from their Juvenile Aid Department. This child porn/ cop connection brought them undone, it was a bridge to far. It initiated a chain of events that exposed "The Joke", launching the "Fitzgerald Inquiry into Police Corruption" which saw the Police Commisioner was sentenced to 14 years and five government ministers also jailed.

Relevant to note where that uranium shipment was bound from Brisbane wharves that '77 night. It was bound to Iran where the U.S. was supporting an aggressive nuclear energy program under their despotic Shah. Ironic that we now stand on the precipice of a nuclear strike on Iran on the basis of Iran's nuclear program we once noruished with Australi an uranium. Governments, despots, Shahs and clients don't last forever - nuclear material pretty much does! Do your best to keep it in the ground.

Don't get fooled again!
Swords into Plowshares!

As Paul Kelly and an old comrade from the Joh daze (it built character) aboiginal elder Kev Carmody remind us

"From Little Things Big Things Grow!" http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A1f4cfN3X51I._cA...rd=r1

If Those Who Support The War Saw These
The mainstream media continues to broadcast sanitised images from embedded reporters that have passed through the official channels in order to lessen the effects of the brutality of the so-called "War on Terror". Below is a collection of images gleaned from the web that show the reality of the "War on Terror", the human cost.
This article is an attempt to show the reality of the "War on Terror" - a reality as it plays out for those affected by it, rather than the simulation of war that is so often presented by the mainstream media (MSM). I'm choosing to use images rather than words, in my hope that ten images will be worth at least ten thousand words.

The images of war that are presented to us are coming mostly from reporters that are embedded. Although it may be argued that embedding reporters allows greater access to information for them, the truth is that embedding is a form of censorship. All reporters have to sign consent forms accepting certain terms and conditions and what they can report on is closely monitored. When Lt. Col. Rick Long of the U.S. Marine Corps was asked about this his reply was: "Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment."

With these thoughts in mind let's see how the "War on Terror" is affecting people.

This image on the right is from the blog The Last Minute Blog (dot com). It shows an image of George Bush's face made up of the faces of dead American soldiers. (All the dead here have died in Iraq.) The post for this entry on The Last Minute Blog is about the moment the American death toll hit 3,000 - December 2006 (which of course does not take into account those who have died since the war from injuries sustained during it).
The image on the right was taken by Zoriah. It shows a dead American soldier lying on a floor in Fallujah, Iraq from a suicide attack. Zoriah posted this image on his blog and was ordered to remove it by the US Army. After he refused, his "embed" status was taken away from him and he had to leave Iraq. Introducing the series of images on his blog, Zoriah wrote:“What I saw was abhorrently graphic, yet far too important for the world to ignore. I present images that provide an uncensored view of a terrible event, and some small measure of dignity to those who lost their lives.”
I'm not sure where I cam across this image first. I know it had something to do with a Robert Fisk website and I published it on a blog I used to keep (and often mean to get back to). It shows a baby killed during the bombing of Iraq in March 2003. Shock and Awe? Certainly shocking and awful. SHAME on the killer. The image also features on Empire Burlesque. As Howard Zinn said: "Whatever is told to you about war and how we must go to war, and whatever the threat is or whatever the goal is—a democracy or liberty—it will always be a war against children. They’re the ones who will die in large numbers."
On the right is an image of the head of a man beheaded in Iraq. No amount of oil, ideology, or Islam justifies such horror - and no further comment is needed to describe the image (and if it is, words fail me). I came across the image on the site Please Stop War, which is a man's simple plea: ""WAKE UP" and STOP KILLING EACH OTHER!"
The image on the right shows a soldier from the Northern Alliance standing amongst the bodies of dead Taliban. It comes from the site Constitution Club and the post A breakdown of US and enemy casualties in Iraq. It's interesting to note that more bombs were dropped on Afghanistan in the first six months of 2008 than in the whole of 2006 and most of 2007 combined, according to John Pilger.
The dead Iraqi on the right was taken from the blog of John Mitchell (Letters Nobody Will Print), who in turn took it and some more from The Nausea. Scroll down to the entry for Saturday June 16th 2006 for more images.
Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the boy on the right, is a victim of cluster bombs dropped on Baghdad. The image is taken from Jefooi. Human Rights Watch said it was appalled the U.S. military could have dropped cluster bombs in civilian areas of Baghdad, an act it described as a possible violation of international law.
This image (right) is a still from the Film "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" by Rory Kennedy. It is taken from an interview with the filmaker, showing a man shackled to his prison cell bars. Is this what western "justice" has amounted to for Iraqis?
If you turn to the right you will see the aftermath of victims of a White Phosphorous Chemical Weapons attack in Fallujah, Iraq. The images were taken from Mindprod. If this, and the other images from the linked page, became the normalised images of war, I believe the war could stop overnight and we'd go a long way towards ensuring that war is, as Albert Einstein called for, "abolished".
Michael Greenwell writes in his blog: 'I am listening to Blair’s last Prime Minister’s Questions and most of the MPs are falling over themselves to congratulate him. Let’s not forget that according to the UN the waging of an aggressive war is “essentially an evil thing…to initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”' The image on the right accompanies this blog entry.
This image is taken from the No World Systems blog under the headline: Marines Ordered To Execute Civilians In Nazi-Like Slaughter Steven Watson writes: "With evidence having emerged that marines were ordered by superiors to massacre women and children in Haditha in Iraq two years ago, combined with scores of other testimonies and reports of such barbaric demands being forced upon American troops daily, it is clear that organised execution and ritual slaughter is the set policy of the architects of aggression in the middle east."

Having seen these images start/continue agitating against the war. Keep blogging, keep writing, keep protesting, keep educating, keep on keeping on.

As Howard Zinn says: "Everything we do is important. Every little thing we do, every picket line we walk on, every letter we write, every act of civil disobedience we engage in, any recruiter that we talk to, any parent that we talk to, any GI that we talk to, any young person that we talk to, anything we do in class, outside of class, everything we do in the direction of a different world is important, even though at the moment they seem futile, because that’s how change comes about. Change comes about when millions of people do little things, which at certain points in history come together, and then something good and something important happens."

________________

Mark Conroy, August 2008.

'huge contract to deliver fuel to the U.S. military'???
This is not an accusation - but it is a question, and some Irish reporter should look into this....

Quote: ''Today's Washington Post has a much-discussed piece about a top McCain fundraiser named Harry Sargeant, who has "bundled" a huge amount of campaign contributions for McCain from a host of unlikely donors.

[....]

What this means for McCain isn't really clear. But the upshot is that one of the more prolific bundlers for McCain appears to have bagged a huge contract to deliver fuel to the U.S. military in Iraq, even though he wasn't the lowest bidder for that contract, allegedly by relying partly on a connection in Jordan to deliver it.....''

more at http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08...t.php

also read:
Bundler Collects From Unlikely Donors
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20....html

My question is:
Since it is clear that the US Military-Industrial Complex is dumping money into the McCain Campaign anyway it can to continue the Iraq War - Is Irish/Shannon related money also part of this effort and is it legal in the USA or in Ireland to do so?

When I read the phrase: 'huge contract to deliver fuel to the U.S. military'

the first thing that comes to my mind is TopOil and ther other refuelers at Shannon http://www.top.ie
but, again, I have no evidence to accuse them with.

But if I was a reporter from some 'Legit' media in Ireland - I'd be looking at this very closely.