Are you a tax justice believer?

Bono may campaign to end world poverty - but his band are taking advantage of the same tax avoidance schemes that rob impoverished countries of billions.

Billions drains out of impoverished countries each year because of multi-national companies shifting their profits to avoid tax. We need international action to make everyone pay their fair share.

Here, activists launch an international song contest for the best alternaitve U2 song about tax injustice. Upload your performance for tax justice!

...and the great thing is, as you'll see in this video, no less than Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan TD agrees.

Some Organisations That Do Some Good:
• AFRI - Aid from Ireland
• Debt Ireland

The death has occurred in London of Bob Doyle, the last surviving Irish soldier of the XV International Brigade of the Spanish Republican Army. Bob, whose health had been failing for some time had survived a recent double heart attack, before passing peacefully last night surrounded by his family. He was a few weeks short of his 93rd birthday.

Bob's career as an political activist has been recorded in his book Brigadista, which recounted his early life in Dublin as a Republican volunteer and later as a member of the Republican Congress, prior to his abortive first attempt to fight against Franco in July 1937, which saw him stow away on a ship to Valencia.

On his return to London (which he was to make his home for the remainder of his life) Bob contacted the CP and arrived in Spain by the more usual route, walking over the Pyrenees in a group of 15 volunteers, including the writer Laurie Lee. Bob was given basic military training and promoted quickly due to his aptitude and experience. Assigned to a training base behind the lines, Bob disobeyed orders and left with a detachment of British volunteers to take part in the second battle of Belchite in February 1938. He was captured at Calaciete with Frank Ryan and survived the concentration camp of San Pedro, before being released in a prisoner exchange in February 1939.

Bob joined the merchant navy on the outbreak of the second world war, where he received a medical discharge for an ulcer. He spent the remainder of the war as a firewatcher on the roof of the CP offices in central London.

He threw himself into political activity after the war and was one of the Communist leaders of a major printworkers' strike in 1959 and the fight for a 40 hour week. Bob was also undertaking more dangerous work, frequently travelling to Franco's Spain helping to organise the underground unions there.

Bob was an unusual Communist. This writer first encountered him in London during a Poll Tax demonstration, dressed in a top hat and tails. Bob was to be seen on many demonstrations in London throughout this period for a variety of causes and was not shy of confrontation with the bosses or the police. Bob was also a firm advocate of the legalisation of cannabis and was an enthusiastic grower of the herb in his north London greenhouse.

More recently, Bob has been in involved with Spanish Civil War commemorations both here in Ireland and in Spain and he was due to accept honorary Spanish citizenship in the coming months. He hadn't taken up an offer extended several years ago from the Zapatero government as it would have required giving up his Irish citizenship in exchange. Under a new law, however, non-Spaniards are entitled to retain their original citizenship.

Bob attended his last commemoration at Jarama last February where he delivered a a speech fired with passion and anger attacking global capital and the hold it still has on the world.

Bob's funeral arrangements are to be announced next week.

No Pasarán

'I am here to make you boil with anger; the powers that supported Franco in Spain are still active, and today their reach is global': Report on Speech by Bob Doyle - September 2006

Some History of Irish Involvement in the International Brigades is Here.
Previous Indymedia Obituary of International Brigades Veteran James Maley.
Homage to an Anti-Fascist: Michael O'Riordan RIP.
Indymedia Article Marking 70th Anniversary of the Connolly Column

NOTE: Indymedia Ireland invite those with memories of, or reminiscences about, Bob Doyle to use this page as a virtual tribute. We will endeavour to, after a period, print the page out and present it to his family.

On Saturday 16th August at 3pm the Coolagad river burst its banks in Delgany Co. Wicklow. A culvert under the R761 collapsed and forced a road closure and millions of gallons of water to flow into Killincarrig village. What happened next can only be described as gross negligence by Wicklow County Council and it's Fire Service. Approxamitely 20 residents started to look for assistance from the various state agencies but were ignored. WCC had no emergency numbers in place, had no crews working on the ground, had no sandbags filled and would not allow its Fire Service to be dispatched.

Wicklow is the only County in Ireland that refuses to dispatch Fire Brigades to floods. In light of the recent history of this service and its problems in Bray you would think that the powers that be would put their budgetary problems aside and assist the taxpayers that fund this service. Dublin Fire Brigade provides a call-out service to Wicklow Fire Service from Tara St. in Dublin.

The operators of this service informed our residents that they received 250 calls from Wicklow Residents to deal with flooding. They were unable to dispatch any Wicklow based brigades because of restrictions imposed by the Chief Fire Officer of Co. Wicklow. They were also unable to give an emergency number for WCC.

Related Links: Climate Change will flood Limerick | Ramor Ryan gatecrashes the ineffectual UN Conference on Climate Change | Daily Video Reports From Camp For Climate Action | Creative Commons Images of Flooding In Ireland

The new book of poems, Time Gentlemen Please, by Galway poet Kevin Higgins, which was published this March, is causing consternation and disagreement on the Left.

Some in Galway Alliance Against War are not at all happy about Higgins’s satire on their protest against the Salthill Airshow.

The Galway Branch of the Socialist Workers Party have, as has already been covered on Indymedia, taken issue with another Higgins poem, ‘Firewood’. The poem takes issue with their stance on Darfur.

"The least controversial definition of poetry is ‘writing that doesn’t go all the way to the right-hand side of the page’ — which, given the parlous state of the rainforests, demands a greater justification for publishing it" - From Red Banner

A short report on four republican commemorations of the Easter rising. The guilty parties include the Workers' Party, IRSP, 32 CSM, RSF, and Sinn Féin, carefully watched by the state's sterling political police.

Related Links: Workers' Party | 32 County SM | IRSP | Republican Sinn Féin | Sinn Féin