Derek Joyce. Noice. #StopCETA

The Ditch: The Party Line | Episode 35: Where in the World, with Vijay Prashad ‘If western countries are not going to take care of the needs of their citizens, what do they expect? Why would you be surprised if you are not allowing students to have classrooms? I mean this protest in France doesn't begin in the centre of Paris – it begins in the suburbs. And in the suburbs mostly black and Arab students are complaining – we don't have teachers, we don't have desks, we don't have classrooms. Those were the early complaints. ‘And this went out on the street and said, you know, what the hell, you're raising the military budget but what about us? You're talking about tanks, we don't have classrooms. So then this explodes because it brings back the Yellow Vest people who were protesting a few years earlier. Similar things, guns and butter, spending money on some useless stuff, what about us? You're bailing out banks, what about us?’

The Ditch: The Party Line | Episode 34: Celebrating The Phoenix Live, Part 2 ‘We grew up in an era when we were told on our first day in the job that news is something that somebody somewhere does not want to see in print. And for everything else – take an ad. Every edition of the Phoenix was like that. Every story in the Phoenix, somebody didn't want to see it. Now I have to say it's not like that. ‘And I know this from the other side. As a PR person if you send a press release into a national newspaper, or especially a local newspaper, and the first three paragraphs are well put together, you can put the recipe for brown bread and Latin into the fifth and sixth paragraph and it's going to wind up on the paper.’

The Ditch: The Party Line | Episode 33: Celebrating The Phoenix Live, Part 1 ‘I was going to ask toward the end, as a kind of a lighthearted question, would you please describe in detail why you hate the Irish Times so much, but I think we covered that comprehensively.’ ‘Well actually, yes, I’ve really got to say this: apart from neutrality and militarism and all that, on Palestine, Gaza and Irish people's terrific support and identification with what's happened to the Palestinians – there is a special place in hell reserved for whichever genius in the Irish Times decided to embark on a campaign to convince its readership that Ireland is suffused with antisemitism. It is the most despicable lie.’

🗣️Time change: Tim Anderson and Clare Daly live with The Ditch 📆Tomorrow, 7pm, The Whistleblower In Ireland to talk about his new book Understanding Yemen, Tim Anderson joins Clare Daly and The Ditch to discuss war and resistance in Palestine, Yemen and Iran – and what real national sovereignty looks like. ⬇️Tickets and details ⬇️

The Ditch: The Party Line | Episode 31: Chris Hedges on New World Order ‘If you are going to spend a lot of time in Gaza, writing about the Palestinians, you're going to become a management headache because management is going to get a lot of blowback from the Israel lobby. And so most reporters know what's good for them and good for their advancement and they follow it. It's very cynical. ‘On the Iraq War, which I denounced, all of us who covered the Middle East, there was no real divergence of opinion about the invasion of Iraq, that it was going to be a debacle. But at that time, especially in the wake of 9/11, reporters knew that to say a thing like that was career suicide. ‘I ended up being a good example that they were correct. I was issued a reprimand and told that I could not speak about the war publicly, which I defied and then left the paper.’

🗣️This evening we celebrate The Phoenix The Ditch's Paulie Doyle and Harry Browne chat with The Phoenix's Paddy Prendiville, Paul Farrell and a cast of contributors in The Whistleblower at 7pm Unreserved seating, early arrival recommended Details: eventbrite.ie/e/the-ditch-li…

The Ditch: The Party Line | Episode 30: Aaron Maté Live in Dublin ‘The FBI can just investigate a president for being a Russian agent because they don't like what he tangentially said about Ukraine. It was ridiculous but it was accepted because we've accepted the power of the national security state. ‘When did that happen? Because the American people and left liberals, last century, 50, 60s, 70s, onwards: there was a countercultural resistance to the likes of the FBI and the CIA. Now certainly with liberals – they love these guys: why and when did that happen?’

When the Irish right wing fly tricolours they’re exclusionary. Some exclude the north from Ireland. They share that denial with southern liberals for whom this proposed Orange march is further reason to oppose the united Ireland they've never wanted. ontheditch.com/comment-no-go…