Workers Solidarity Movement

Any public protest of more than 49 people will have to apply for permission at least 37 days in advance.  Otherwise it will be illegal. While emergency protests are allowed, the Bill says it has to be an “extreme emergency” and permission must be applied for three days in advance.

Around 900 arrests took place at the G20 summit in Toronto as police used considerable force to break up protests. Media reports & video (below) indicate that many of the beaten were journalists covering the protest. The G20 was meeting to co-ordinate further attacks on the global working class. This is what the coded statements from the G20 about 'austerity budgets' and 'cutting deficits' will mean in practice. This despite the "risk that synchronised fiscal adjustment across several major economies could adversely impact the recovery" acknowledged in the final G20 communique.

Dublin Shell to Sea organised a protest at Mountjoy prison Friday night after receiving the news that Shell to Sea campaigner Maura Harrington had been arrested for non payment of fines and was on her way to the prison for the 5th time in two years. Some 40-50 people turned up on a few hours notice including a contingent from the Critical Mass cycle that was taking place.

A few hundred people took part in a protest last night at the Mansion house in Dublin where the Taoiseach Brian Cowen was going to dinner with the organisation of the domestic section of the capitalist class that instructs him. As various bosses and Cowen went into the venue protected by ranks of Gardai, with the riot squad on standby outside the back entrance of Anglo Irish Bank and mounted police across the road, they were jeered by the crowd with shouts of 'thieves', 'robbers' and 'scum.'

An IPSC meeting on Saturday saw some of the Irish participants on the Freedom Flotilla talk of their experiences, and discuss what practical steps Irish people can help take to bring about the end of the siege of Gaza and Israeli apartheid as a whole and secure self determination for the people of Palestine. This is the audio from the meeting.

Public services are safe from the threat of a fair deal for four years. The kind of crippling cuts that were recently pushed through by ICTU, amounting to a 10% pay cut in some cases in the form of a "pension levy", are now almost certain to remain.

A recently leaked report, which appears to have been produced by the CIA's Red Cell, aims to shore up support for the war in Afghanistan by manipulating public opinion in Western Europe.  The report targets France and Germany as regions which need specially designed messages to stem an eroding popularity for the war.

The BBC has reported that at least 23 people have been killed and 300 injured in violence which has erupted in the city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan. It is not yet clear what forces are responsible for the violence.

Until recently Kyrgyzstan's head of government was President Kurmanbek Bakiyev who was forced to flee the country after riots erupted in April 2010.  Bakiyev's power base is largely in the southern area of Kyrgyzstan including Osh.