I4C Trouble with Daly and Wallace

It's been over a month of unrelenting bombing, death and horror in the Gaza Strip. And it's been over 75 years of Israeli impunity and colonial violence. Every new death could have been avoided with yesterday's ceasefire. Shame on the EU for refusing to call for one: a ceasefire is not a radical demand, it's the bare minimum!

While it's difficult to talk about anything other than the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinians, we take some time to discuss the Commission's recommendation to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and to grant candidate status to Georgia.

Lastly, if you're interested in hosting an event with Mansoor Adayfi in Ireland between the end of November and January, please get in contact with Nicolas: [email protected]

On this final episode we hear from Andy Worthington, Investigative journalist and activist, who tells us about the plight of the 16 men who have been cleared for release but continue to be detained in Guantánamo. He urges EU governments to take action to end this deplorable situation.

And our last speaker is Moazzam Begg, former Guantánamo Bay detainee, who shares some of the horrors he witnessed and explains the prisoners' deep pain and trauma from being cut off from their families for years.

On this third episode we hear from two remarkable legal experts:

Alka Pradhan, Human Rights Counsel at the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions,  explains the US’s use of Guantánamo as a legal black hole. She also emphasises the urgent crisis in medical care affecting the men still in Guantánamo, an aging detainee population quickly deteriorating after years of torture and harsh conditions.

Our second guest is Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. After a historic technical visit to Guantánamo, her report concludes that detainees have sustained “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law."

While the European Council gathers in Brussels to assess the situation in the Middle East, Mick and Clare explain that calling for anything less than an immediate ceasefire is an abnegation of collective responsibility. Which EU values is the Commission representing? What will it take for the EU to demand an end to collective punishment? The gap between European citizens' views and the actions of our institutions continues to widen.

This second episode of the series welcomes human rights attorney Beth Jacob. Beth has represented Guantánamo detainees since 2005. She helps us understand what this facility is and why so many men are still stuck there despite having long been cleared for release. Most importantly, she gives us an insight into the detainees' enduring humanity, their creativity and resilience in the face of such horror and injustice.

The second guest is Valerie Lucznikowska, from September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Having lost her nephew in 9/11, she shares with us her drive to turn grief into action for peace. An incredibly moving and brave testimony.

We’re finally releasing the “Close Guanánamo!” series, a podcast adaptation of an event we recently hosted: the most significant gathering ever assembled on Guantánamo in the European Parliament.

This series is a unique opportunity to learn about the horror and lawlessness of this detention facility from those who experienced it. You’ll hear from former detainees, US military and civilian lawyers, the UN rapporteur, 9/11 families and other international experts and firsthand witnesses.

The event aimed to call for the closure of the detention camp and seek the urgent involvement of EU countries in searching for viable relocation options for the 16 men who have been approved for release, never convicted of any crime, but who have nowhere to go. Guantánamo is a terrible crime scene that the EU can help bring to an end, once and for all.

This first episode features Mansoor Adayfi, former Guantánamo detainee and author of the book "Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo"; together with James Yee, former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo, wrongly accused of espionage and placed in solitary confinement.

After over a week of horror in Gaza, enabled by the EU’s continuous support for Israel and its shameful failure to call out Israeli war crimes and push for a ceasefire, we’re back to discuss what’s happening in Palestine. In addition, we talk about Clare’s recent trip to Bulgaria, the growing political culture of ostracising dissenting voices and the EU’s proposal for the Ukraine facility being a debt trap for Ukrainians.

Long live Palestine, long live Gaza!

As the world looks on in horror at the situation in Gaza, we take a moment to discuss the need to contextualise recent events and point to the real root of violence: Israel's apartheid against Palestinians. In declaring unconditional support for an extreme right-wing government employing genocidal and dehumanising rhetoric on Palestinians, EU institutions are validating and emboldening Israel's acts of aggression and undermining the EU's ability to play a credible role in the peace process.

We're back in Strasbourg for another plenary week after having organised some very successful events in the past few days, which we're very happy to share with you. We also talk about the tragic developments in Nagorno-Karabakh, where over 100,000 Armenians have been forced to flee; the Media Freedom Act, which despite its name, allows governments and private companies to use spyware against journalists; the EU's refusal to ban glyphosate; the shameful new asylum and migration pact and the Parliament's report on economic coercion by third countries.

Mick and Clare are joined by two very special guests this week: Ilia Lobzhanidze and Beka Natsvlishvili, who tell us about their country and help us better understand Georgian geopolitics and the concerns of ordinary Georgian citizens.

Join us as we discuss Clare and Mick's meeting with European defence industry representatives, the latest protests in Ireland, funding for Ukraine and much more.

Fins aviat!

We're back from the summer holidays, ready to bring you the latest from the plenary week in Strasbourg. Clare and Mick talk to Bethany about Ursula von der Leyen's State of the European Union (fitting name, if you ask us),  the EU throwing taxpayers' money at the arms industry (again), their clash with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the EU-Tunisia migration deal and the heated debate about criminalising sex work.

You can click here to read the article Clare mentions about Zelensky.

links:

European Council on Foreign Relations, essays on neutrality and European defence: https://ecfr.eu/publication/ambiguous-alliance-neutrality-opt-outs-and-european-defence/ 

Study on EU Border Regime: Profiteering from Dehumanisation and Mythologised Technologies: https://left.eu/content/uploads/2021/11/EU-Border-Regime-Profiteering-from-Dehumanisation-and-Mythologised-Technologies_.pdf 

We’ve got a second podcast for you this week, we discuss Covid, Vaccines, the Common Agricultural Policy, Tsikhanouskaya (Belarus’s Guiado) visiting the EP (again), and lovely Belgium.

This week Mick and Clare are joined by the wonderful Bethany Howard, another week, another host. They are just back from Lithuania at the trial of Algirdas Paleckis former journalist and MP accused of espionage. They fill us in on the trial and what they saw there.

They also discuss the COP in Glasgow and the depressing reluctance of rich countries to take meaningful action on the climate

Finally, Covid never went away but it’s back in full swing- they discuss how governments are handling it and the need for room for debate around the vaccine pass.
 

Clare and Mick are back in the Parliament, we discuss their recent trips.

Clare fills us in about the report she just launched in Bulgaria and her visit there; Mick tells us about his trip to Nicaragua during the recent elections; Finally Clare has just been to Chios island in Greece where she met asylum seekers imprisoned on charges of people smuggling. She tells us the stories of the people she met in the prison there and the gross mistreatment of migrants by Greece, called “Europe’s shield” by EU Commission president Von der Leyen- is this what she meant?

Read the report on rule of law in Bulgaria, Spain and France here: https://claredaly.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/BindingtheGuardian.pdf

Mick and Clare are just back from the Julian Assange trial in London. This week the podcast is all about journalism- what does it mean for the world when journalists can be jailed for exposing war crimes?

Following on from that we discuss Taiwan and the lambasting Mick got last week for a video he put out on Taiwan and the One China policy. The One China policy is something accepted by the UN and the Irish government, yet somehow stating that now gets you described as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party…

Damien and Clare are missing this week and Ciara, Mick’s parliamentary assistant, is taking over as presenter. Mick gets his revenge for previous “censoring” of his jokes by telling a long story he heard about a priest… lord help us.

We discuss rising energy prices and gas shortages as we come into the winter- how did we get here, and what comes next? Also on the agenda- EU relations with the Sahel, China, and Ethiopia, and the killing of protesters in Lebanon this week.

Clare reports back from her mission to Bulgaria, Mick and Clare discuss the I4C position on Belarus.

They also talk about tax havens, the Pandora Papers and the EU’s hypocrisy in blacklisting certain Global South countries as tax havens while countries within the Union… including our own…. continue to engage in similar practices.

They look at the International Criminal Court’s decision to pursue the Taliban for war crimes committed in Afghanistan- fair enough, but why the refusal to look at the crimes of the US or Afghan armies?

Finally Mick fills us in on recent developments in Tigray, Ethiopia.

So many issues, so little time. This week Clare and Mick are taking us through a whole range of recent events in the Parliament and beyond, most notably the letter that they wrote to the CEO of Portuguese bank Novo Banco calling on the bank to release Venezuelan funds for medicines and vaccines.

They’re also talking about the attempted arrest of Catalan MEP Carles Puigdemont, a visit to Brussels by a group of Irish people affected by the mica building blocks scandal, last week’s elections in Russia and Germany, the persecution of journalist Algirdas Paleckis in Lithuania, and finally, how best to tackle methane emissions.

This week Mick and Clare are in Strasbourg and they’re discussing Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her speech on the “state of the union”… the absolute state of it is right.

We’re talking hypocrisy, fortress Europe and “Great European Values”.

This week the Parliament is getting well and truly back into the swing of things. Mick and Clare catch us up on what has been happening in their committees. They discuss the sixth IPCC report on climate change and how its section on methane emissions is being deliberately misused by the meat and dairy lobby, corruption and organised crime in Bulgaria, working conditions in the aviation sector and finally Afghanistan.

This week Clare, Mick and Damien discuss the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the European reaction, the 20 years of US occupation and counterinsurgency during the war in Afghanistan and Irish government complicity in it, and the importance of learning the lessons. They also go back to 2010 to listen to what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks had to say about the war, and discuss how, even though the US war in Afghanistan is now over, the US war on journalism still continues.
 

This summer Belgium was devastated by floods the likes of which it has never seen before, leaving 41 dead. In July, Clare and Mick met Cristophe and François two of the sound engineers in the European Parliament, to discuss what happened.

The episode wasn’t published at the time but we’re releasing it now because it’s a powerful conversation about how it feels to see climate change in action, very close to home.

Things are wrapping up for the summer in the European Parliament so we’re leaving you with a big one. Mick and Clare are going deep into foreign policy, their positions on the big issues of the day- Syria, Cuba, Belarus- and the threads that tie it all together.

The recent media barrage has misinterpreted Clare and Mick’s critique of the warmongering anti-China, anti-Russia rhetoric as towing the line pushed by those governments. In this episode they set the record straight - they’re not pro-China or pro-Russia, they are against the EU using Russia and China as bogeymen to justify militarisation.

They’re also discussing the shrinking space for dissenting opinions and the dangerous tendency to label any view outside of the dominant pro-US one as “fake news”.

Finally there's some talk about issues closer to home and the recent Disclosures Tribunal report on Garda whistleblower Nick Keogh.

This week we've got something different- we're airing an episode of  the Echo Chamber Podcast where Clare and Mick were interviewed by Tony Groves and Martin McMahon.

They talk about foreign policy- particularly Syria and Iraq, the EU and recent attacks on the MEP's foreign policy positions in the Irish press. 

This week its I4C Trouble with Wallace and… Thomson. Clare is away and Mick and Damien are using it as an opportunity for an environment triple bill.

First up is the EU Climate Law, the not-so-ambitious EU plan for reaching climate neutrality by 2050 which goes to a final vote this week. Mick explains why approving the law as it is amounts to a commitment to climate catastrophe.

Then we’re talking bees- small creatures with a huge impact on EU food systems. There are big decisions to be made in the European Council next week on protecting the EU bee population and Mick and Damien are here to fill us in on that.

Last of all we’re talking about rail, specifically the Southeast on Track campaign to reopen the Wexford/Rosslare - Waterford Rail Link which was shut down during austerity. There are some proposals to turn it into a greenway, but getting rid of a viable rail line is anything but green…

On this week’s episode Mick, Clare and Damien are talking about a country that’s close to all of their hearts- Italy! They take us through Italian politics, Italy’s impact in the EU and of course… Football.

Then there are some updates from Brussels- They're talking about unmanned arial mobility- drones for postal deliveries and air taxis, Europol- the trans-European police force and the beefing up of its powers, how the environment often gets neglected in EU trade deals and the environmental impact of the military sector.

This week we’ve got something different for you. Clare and Mick recently appeared on Sina Rahmani’s the East is a Podcast to talk about national sovereignty in the age of global capital. This week we’re broadcasting that interview.

Clare, Mick and Sina talk about the Irish parliament’s recent actions on Palestine, Ireland’s strange position as both historical underdog and member of the EU imperial core, and whether politics has the potential to be brought closer to the people.

This week the EU whistlestop tour is coming home to Ireland.

We’ve got an entire episode dedicated to Éire - its role in the EU and how EU membership has shaped it. We talk about defence policy, the eurozone, the groups Irish MEPs belong to in the European Parliament and the Irish people who are making waves in Brussels.

In this week’s episode Clare, Mick and Damien are taking a pitstop in Germany on their inter-rail tour of the EU member states. Mick tells us about his glory days selling light up necklaces on the streets of Munich.

They’re also talking us through the recent events in Belarus and the EU’s reaction to them, EU PESCO projects on military mobility and ever closer EU-NATO cooperation, and Afghanistan where the US is finally doing what it should have done years ago and getting out.

Finally there’s some talk about recent developments in the Environment committee- what did and did not get included in the recent biodiversity strategy and updates on methane emissions.

This week on the podcast Clare and Mick are talking about the massacre that is happening in Palestine and Gaza. Opinions voiced on this in the European Parliament last week ranged from the equivocal “two sides” school of thought, to out-and-out messages of support for the apartheid state of Israel. They discuss the falseness of this “two sides” idea and the reluctance of the EU to criticise Israel, a state which enjoys a particularly privileged relationship with the bloc.

This week was also plenary in the Europe Parliament- meaning votes on legislation- Clare and Mick take us through some updates on the TRIPS waiver, the Digital Green Certificate, counterfeit currency, climate change impacts in the Global South, data protection and access to environmental justice.

This week on the podcast the Eurotrip continues with a chat about the Netherlands, a small, densely populated country that rivals Ireland in its obsession with dairy and tax breaks for multinationals. Then on to some updates from the week: fishing, transport and foreign policy.

Finally we discuss the horrors unfolding in Palestine and Gaza- Israel is killing Palestinian children and there’s no real criticism coming from the EU.

It was all go in the European Parliament last week: with decisions taken on Brexit, arms funding, space, Russia, Colombia and more….

Clare and Mick are taking us through these latest developments before resuming their EU member state tour in France. Oh la la!

The EU’s proposed Digital Green Certificate- A travel certificate those who have been tested, vaccinated or recently recovered from Covid-19- has provoked strong reactions in Ireland. Many are worried about the implications of the certificate, while others see it as a potential lifeline for the tourism industry.

This week Clare and Mick are diving into the issue and talking us through the Digital Green Certificate- what is it? how will it affect people in the EU? and should we be concerned?

This week, Clare and Mick posed questions to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) over whistleblower reports of a cover-up around the chemical weapons investigation in Douma, Syria in 2018. 

On the podcast they discuss the Douma whistleblower testimonies and the need for the OPCW to meet with the dissenters. They’re also chatting about French MEP Nathalie Loiseau's reactions to their questions on the Douma report and the attention this all got in the Irish media.

Finally, there’s football… Mick talks about the cancelled Super League and we learn about how governments use football teams as “sportswashing.”

Ecuador has just elected right-wing former banker, Guillermo Lasso as president.

Clare and Mick were in Ecuador observing the elections.

In this episode they report back, giving us the lowdown on the political reality in Ecuador, the electoral process and the outlook for the country going forward.

Repeated US invasions, years of US occupation and the frontline of the fight against ISIS… Iraq is a country that has suffered some of the most severe consequences of foreign interference in the Middle East

Clare and Mick spent the past week in Iraq, meeting key decision makers on the ground, listening to them and learning more about the challenges that the country faces.

Here’s the real story of that visit, straight from the horse’s mouth

We’ve got something a little different for you this week. Justin Podur, Associate Professor at York University's Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, is joining Mick and Clare to discuss the recent agricultural reforms and the farmer’s protests that they have provoked in India.

See more of Justin’s work including his Anti Empire Podcast on his website https://podur.org/

This week China has hit back at EU sanctions by sanctioning some members of the European Parliament Committee on Human Rights. Mick and Clare give us the inside story on what is happening there and go in-depth about the EU’s invoking of human rights where and when it suits them.

They’re also talking about vaccine passports and EU exports of banned pesticides to third countries, before touching down in sunny Lisbon and chatting about Portugal’s role in the European Parliament.

In our post-paddy’s day episode Mick and Clare are giving us the lowdown on all things Austria. There’s also talk of pastures closer to home and the Irish government’s failure to “green” their agricultural policies as well as the farmers in India taking to the streets in some of the biggest protests in history.

Also on the agenda: vaccines (what else?), the trend towards in camera (private) European Parliament meetings, and US foreign policy under Biden who, despite his positive reception by many in Europe, looks set to be more belligerent than Trump.

*correction: in the episode Mick mentions a football match between Germany and Austria in 1982, which was fixed to deliberately exclude a third team from qualifying. The team that they were trying to prevent qualifying was Algeria, not Tunisia.

This week, the US, EU states and others came together to block a petition by over 80 developing countries to lift patents on vaccines at the World Trade Organisation. Rich countries delivering yet another blow to global health...

That’s not all Mick and Clare are sounding off about, they’re also talking about the European Parliament decision to waive the political immunity of three Catalan MEPs, the conflict in Syria ten years on, and the way the EU picks and chooses which human rights violations matter, and which ones don’t… It’s hypocrisy unbounded.

We’re also jumping back into the tour of the EU member states with a deep dive into Poland. There’s been a lot of discussion of Poland’s rule of law (or lack of it) and the existence of LGBTI exclusion zones in Poland recently. So what are Mick and Clare’s impressions of the Poles in the Parliament? And who’s been spreading misinformation to the Polish public about crisp sandwiches?

The vaccine rollout is all anyone is talking about at the moment and Mick and Clare are no exception. They give us the inside scoop on what’s happening at EU level and why the UK’s relative success with the rollout is an argument for stronger public healthcare systems.

Then back on the EU tour where the next pitstop is… Estonia. Mick and Clare take us on a tour of this little Baltic country and its Members of the European Parliament who are leading the charge on anti-Russian sentiment...

The first stop on Clare and Mick’s virtual whirlwind tour of the EU member states is… The Czech Rep- ahem Czechia… What’s going on in Czech politics? who have they got in the European Parliament? and what on earth is a pirate party?

Then on to discussions of China, new EU sanctions on Venezuela, and the carbon “bootprint” of the military sector

Mick and Clare discuss all things foreign policy- What is the EU’s role in foreign affairs and why does it matter? 

They talk EU military spending and the European Parliament’s total obsession with Russia and the Navalny saga, which is getting more airtime than the serious humanitarian crises happening elsewhere. There are some positive developments in the Parliament’s stance on the conflict in Yemen. But other issues continue to fly under the radar: what about the the EU land-grab happening in Ukraine? And why is the EU not doing more to address Abiy Ahmed's war crimes in Tigray, Ethiopia?

The reports from the Houses of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality mentioned in the episode can be found at the following links:

Report on Penal Reformand Sentencing (May 2018)

Report on Direct Provision and the International Protection Application Process (December 2019)

A video of the ceremony, including a speech by Councillor Declan Bree, can be viewed here.

Emma Clancy's report, Discipline and Punish: End of the Road for the EU's Stability  and Growth Pact can be found here.