Social Items

TPQ
NUJ VINDICATES BOSTON COLLEGE RESEARCHER

Following a hearing in London on 24th July 2013, the NUJ Appeals Tribunal upheld an appeal by journalist Anthony McIntyre.

The Appeals Tribunal overturned the findings of a subcommittee of the NUJ’s Ethics Council of 25th March 2013 pursuant to a Rule 24 complaint lodged by Allison Morris and Ciaran Barnes which alleged that Mr McIntyre had breached clauses 2, 3 and 4 of the NUJ’s Code of Conduct.

The NUJ Appeals Tribunal found that Mr McIntyre had “no case to answer” and that he had not breached any part of the code as alleged.

The Appeals Tribunal overturned the 6 month suspension and formal reprimand issued by the Ethics Council.

In its decision of 25th March 2013, the Ethics Council subcommittee had found that Mr. McIntyre had breached Clause 2 of the Code of Conduct which requires that a journalist should “strive to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed accurate and fair” as well as Clause 3 which requires that he “do his utmost to correct harmful inaccuracies.”

However, the Ethics Council had declined to make a finding of a breach of Clause 4, which requires a journalist to “differentiate between fact and opinion” due to the difficulty the Ethics Council experienced “in differentiating between fact and opinion in reaching a conclusion concerning the publication,” a finding which Mr. McIntyre had described on appeal as “nonsensical.”

The Appeals Tribunal decided indeed that “the matter complained of was clearly an expression of opinion” and concluded that there was no case to answer.

Mr. McIntyre welcomed the decision by the NUJ Appeals Tribunal to overturn the flawed decision-making and penalties issued by the Ethics Council.

Mr McIntyre states that after a ‘scrupulously fair hearing’ before the Appeals Tribunal he is ‘extremely happy to have been totally vindicated and to know that the baseless claims by the two Belfast journalists, Allison Morris and Ciaran Barnes, were rejected in their entirety.’

He described the decision as a major victory for freedom of expression over those who would seek to suppress it.

“The growing culture of censorship in the North is under scrutiny, and UUP leader Mike Nesbitt, alone amongst political leaders, appears to be attuned to this problem in his current attempts to introduce legislation that would push back the constraints on free expression. The Tribunal decision is important in this context because it effectively entreats journalists to oppose censorship rather than impose it.”

Mr McIntyre concluded:

“While extremely satisfied with the outcome, it is my sincere hope and expectation that those news outlets which announced the flawed Ethics Council verdict against me in March will have the professional courtesy to provide the same level of coverage to this indisputable and unalloyed vindication.”


STATEMENT OF NUJ APPEALS TRIBUNAL




BACKGROUND

For background to Allison Morris's and Ciaran Barnes's complaints against Anthony McIntyre see: NUJ Wiki Dump

NUJ Vindicates Boston College Researcher

  • By the way, if you want more weirdness, check out America Needs Fatima. This is an American organization that thinks that the way we'll solve all of our problems is by putting a statue of the Virgin Mary in every home and getting everyone to worship it – PZ Myers

Corking Blasphemy


  • We need help, we really need help to progress the search for Deirdre further – Bernadette Jacob.

Deirdre Jacob was 18 years old when she went missing in July 1998, shortly after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which conveys some measure of just how long her parents have been emotionally drained by the knowledge vacuum regarding her fate. Yet the normal human concept of time has been first elasticated, then truncated by the rupturing effect of loss. In the words of her mother:

Every anniversary is difficult, every day is difficult - and I suppose 15 years seems a very long time. Well in some ways it’s a very long time in that we haven’t seen Deirdre and she’s missing. But at the same time because it’s with us all the time, it seems like as if it was yesterday in another way.

Deirdre Jacob


Anti-Internment Rally

  • Prices of meat, fruit or fresh vegetables have soared in recent years, leaving parents in poorer families reliant on school lunches to ensure adequate levels of nutrition. However, the scheme is plagued by waste and corruption. Incidents of poisoning are common, though rarely this serious. School meals in India are usually provided by contractors. Many use substandard ingredients and pay officials to turn a blind eye - Jason Burke

It is not Sandy Hook. Nor were the victims the target of first degree intent. So the newsworthiness of the traumatic catastrophe is unlikely to attract as much attention in this part of the world or endure long after the funerals. But for bereaved families the loss and grief is still the same. Twenty five children, aged between 4 and 12, who left their homes on Tuesday morning for the school day, never again to return to the hustle bustle of their neighbourhoods. The metaphorical silence of the grave has enveloped them – they were in fact cremated - immutable in its ability to be broken. A tranquillity not welcome when one is so young and which leaves nothing vaguely resembling serenity in its wake.

www.businessinsider.com - 

I have a recollection from childhood days of hearing my mother refer to 'starving India.' It seems in some parts of it starvation is never that far away: ‘According to the World Bank, 43% of Indian children are underweight –the highest level in the world and a figure that has remained constant for at least 20 years.'

Hunger, a wolf that is at times kept away from the door by schemes like 'the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, the world's largest school feeding program involving 120 million children.' The venture helps increase school numbers, adding to greater literacy and basic skills rates as a result. A worthwhile social venture on the surface but the disregard for the consumer of the product by those determined to make profit to the detriment of all else subverts its purpose. Unbridled greed is a universal malaise that breaks out given the slightest opening in any part of the world. Avaracious food contractors in Delhi or greedy developers in Dublin, the intent is the same: the ruthless pursuit of wealth which of course they will pretend they create so that we all might share in it.

Despite complaints from the cook at the school that something was wrong with the cooking oil the headmistress ordered the meals to be served up. Was she worried about impatient hungry children or being merely indifferent to the contents of a meal she would not have to eat? The cook at least consumed the food, he too being poisoned but managed to survive.

In any event the headmistress scarpered. Fear of retribution perhaps rather than a sense of primary culpability most likely lying behind her decision to head for the hills. The police hunt for her continues.

There have been widespread protests and resentment against authorities that failed to protect vulnerable children. The state government, supposedly a replacement for a previous administration saturated with corruption, has been lambasted for not moving quickly enough to provide medical attention for the children, some of whom were allowed to return home from where they were rushed to hospitals by their parents. According to The Guardian:

The local clinic near the school lacked even basic medication and equipment, ambulances were not available and none of the monitors in the intensive care unit in the state's main hospital, where another 26 children are currently under treatment, were in working order when casualties arrived. Specialist medication to counter the effects of poisoning was not immediately available.

What chance had they? The curse of poverty and hunger had condemned them to the bottom rung in a hierarchy of patients.

Police buildings and vehicles were attacked while effigies of the state’s chief minister were burned. In a country which reportedly has large swathes of territory without any functioning ambulance service, there seems little sense in allowing cops to have vehicles when they appear to use them for no good purpose. Protestors were batoned off the streets by police, never quick when it comes to moving against rapists: the families of dead children deemed a greater threat to societal wellbeing.

There is a cruel irony in life sustenance being the cause of life extinction. In US schools the kids are shot by gun nuts; in Indian schools the assailant is poverty. The result - dead children. Yet the need to be educated is so strong that a five year old girl lying in her hospital bed said ‘will go to school once I am fine’. Even with the Taliban shooting kids for going to school or where the risk of being poisoned is substantial, the need to learn is overpowering.  Children are still turning up to school in the poorer parts of India, but since Tuesday have been refusing to avail of the school meals. They are literally starving to learn.

Starving to Learn.

PRESS RELEASE FROM ED MOLONEY & ANTHONY McINTYRE
July 14th, 2013

Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre are today announcing their intention of lodging a Freedom of Information request with the British government archive at Kew, Surrey seeking the lifting of an 84 year embargo on the war diaries of the First Gloucestershire Regiment compiled in 1972 and 1973. The diaries, which record daily military events during a regimental tour, cannot be opened until January 2059.

Bid For British Army Papers: FOI Request for 1972 Archive War Diaries

It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones ― Nelson Mandela

Michael Campbell in a Medieval World

  • History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by  controlling money and its issuance - James Madison

The standing protest #BookTheBankers took place yesterday in Dublin for the second consecutive week. In sweltering heat the group, much smaller in number, assembled as it did last week outside the Dail just around mid afternoon. It was largely overshadowed by the protests around the equally important Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill. At one point the movers behind it posted a cancellation on the internet in order to avoid a clash of events which probably inadvertently contributed to a diminution in size.

The protest achieved little of the coverage of last week, but then the virgin event tends to be titillating for the media. Nevertheless, it does underscore the strategic imperative of innovation in order to capture public imagination and sustain media interest.

That said, the action can hardly be described as a failure, it being one more straw on the bankster’s back to paraphrase an old idiom, just as yesterday’s separate Jail the Bankers protest in Gorey was. No one believes that the Dail is going to cave in on itself and legislate for jailing the shysters responsible for bleeding society dry as a result of people standing silently outside parliament reading books. The people on vigil – because this is what it is, people letting government know that they are being vigilant about the relationship between politicians and the rapacious bankers – standing there are the last to think that. The value of their protest rests in it keeping the issue of the banks live while serving as a public checkpoint where someone can shout ‘halt’ before the thieves in Mercs freewheel into the night, booty bonus intact.

The progress of #BookTheBankers is not to be assessed on the false criterion of whether it manages in Bastille week to storm the walls or not. A few days ago the following comment on the very informative Cedar Lounge Revolution site made a lot of sense.

Given the week that has been in it it’s easy to forget the Anglo issue. Indeed given the thoughts many of us had last week about how that might impact on political activity in the last three weeks before the Dáil recess it is interesting how the passage of the abortion legislation wiped it off the front pages.

Fact is, it was not expunged from the media. While the author put its return down to an interview in the Daily Mail, it also featured in news items, talk shows and across the internet because of the standing protest. And as so often happens when a campaign is going forward it is beginning to weave its way into a wider tapestry of protest.

Debt Justice Action - http://www.NotOurDebt.ie

Easy to do, hard to ignore, Booking The Bankers for their book cooking is a statement that some are not prepared to be slaves to the money masters.

Standing up to the Money Masters








Opposing Sectarian Parades

Yesterday a protest took place outside the Dail. Staged under the catchy slogan Book The Bankers it was an expression of disgust prompted by the kleptocracy that the bankers of Anglo Irish have come to personify as a result of the public having heard their Deutschland über alles taped conversation in which robbing the nation blind was pretty much boasted about. The banksters at Anglo Irish very much subscribed to the philosophy of the kleptomaniac: never worry about the condition, you can always take something for it.

Booking the Bankers





Upsetting the Cardinal

In a welcome move the Dail has passed the first stage of the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill by 138 votes to 24. The Catholic right despite blustering pronouncements failed to mobilise significant opposition, finding real succour only in the ranks of Fianna Fail, the bulk of whose TDs voted contrary to party leader Micheal Martin.

This & That: Take 22

A leaflet from the Repatriate Michael Campbell Campaign










Bring Michael Campbell Home

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)