Last Sunday, 13th May 2018, members of DiEM25 met in Belfast. That same day, eleven women, from both sides of the Irish border, travelled to England and Wales for an abortion that would have been illegal in Ireland. There was nothing unusual in that. It is an everyday occurrence. In 2016 just under 4,000 women from the island of Ireland had to travel to Britain for an abortion. In other words, eleven women a day. As if that wasn’t bad enough, these women risk long-term damage to their reproductive health - and indeed to their very lives - by the lack of adequate aftercare on the island of Ireland. Many other women risk prosecution by buying mifepristone and misoprostol online to be delivered
Motion 157 This DM notes that, more than sixteen years after the murder of the investigative journalist and Belfast Branch officer , there have been no convictions for the crime, despite the identities of those who ordered and carried out the assassination being widely known. Noting the failure of the investigation by UK police services, especially the PSNI, DM instructs the NEC to seek to enlist the support of OSCE, the Council of Europe and the UN for an effect international investigation into the murder of Martin O’Hagan. Irish Executive Council motion at last week’s Biennial Delegate Meeting of the National Journalists in Southport. Today is World Press Freedom Day, two days af
Many years ago, Edward Said, the towering Palestinian American intellectual who founded the academic field of post-colonialist studies said in Orientalism: ‘Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.’ His words were never m
