fantastic 10 x 10 x 10 skill exchange workshops

great stuff…

This print took a lot longer and was a lot more work than I imagined it would be. This is the largest print I have ever attempted (2 meters long). It took many proofs until I started to feel happy with it.

A lot of my work would try to deal with humanity’s crulety. I have borrowed heavily from Goya, Hogarth and other artists work because not that much has changed in some regards. I recycle and reference their work in order to create my own messages.

The plan is that as I progress in teaching I will upload more and more on to this site. 

You get the idea…

http://misterdfinn.googlepages.com/home

Mono prints completed by 1st years Synge Street 2007-2008

I found some of my life drawings when I was doing a tidy up. Well they are better up here than rotting in an old portfolio.

http://www.amnesty.ie/live/irish/article.asp?id=21358&page=00

 

Europe in ’state of denial’ over role in US rendition and secret detention

Europe in ’state of denial’ over role in US rendition and secret detention

Amnesty International today warned that not a single measure has been taken to prevent further European involvement in rendition and secret detention.

Amnesty International’s report, State of denial: Europe’s role in rendition and secret detention, published today, shed further light on the extent of Europe’s role in the US-led rendition and secret detention programmes. It also exposes the continuing failure of European states, including Ireland, to admit or investigate violations carried out by their nationals or on their territory.

“European governments are in a state of denial and have been sidestepping the truth for too long,” said Amnesty International. “Their involvement in renditions and secret detention runs in stark contrast to their claims to be responsible actors in the fight against terrorism.”

The report highlights six cases – involving 13 individuals — and details the involvement of European states. This ranges from governments permitting CIA flights headed for rendition circuits to use European airports and airspace, as with Shannon Airport, to hosting secret detention centres, or “black sites” and includes the participation by security services from European states in interrogations of their own citizens while concealing their whereabouts from their families.

“The plane that took Khaled al-Maqtari from Baghdad to Kabul where he entered the CIA’s black site detention facilities for almost three years of solitary confinement came from Shannon,” Amnesty International Irish Section Executive Director Colm O’Gorman pointed out.

“The aircraft that took Abu Omar from Germany to Egypt returned to the US through Shannon. Ireland has been identified as a likely stopover point by the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.”

The report calls for concerted, Europe-wide, action to ensure an end to these violations.

Six of those rendered from Europe remain in illegal detention in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Another is being held in Egypt after an unfair trial before a military court. All of the victims of rendition and secret detention interviewed by Amnesty International say they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated.

German national Khaled el-Masri, for example, was seized in Macedonia before being turned over to the US and rendered to Afghanistan, where he says he was held in secret, beaten and interrogated by US agents, and questioned by a native German speaker called “Sam”. After four months, US agents flew him by night to Albania, drove him to a remote country lane, and told him to walk away: “as I walked I feared that I was about to be shot in the back and left to die.” Instead, he was met by armed Albanian officials who put him on a plane for Germany. More than four years later, he has yet to receive any official acknowledgement of his detention, let alone reparations for the violations he suffered. Those responsible — in Europe and the US — have never been held to account.

“There is an accountability gap,” said Mr O’Gorman. Nobody is accepting responsibility or has been held to account.”

“Despite individual prosecutors making efforts to investigate and ensure accountability for past violations, European governments have invoked national security or state secrecy grounds to stymie investigations,” said Amnesty International.

“The Irish Government has not taken meaningful steps to discover whether or not Irish territory and airspace has been used for renditions,” Mr O’Gorman continued.

“It has responded to growing evidence of the renditions spiderweb by saying, in effect, that individuals must themselves identify and present “evidence” to their local Gardaí. It has ignored international calls for an independent inquiry to be held into Ireland’s role in renditions.

“Instead of taking concrete preventative measures, our Government has continued to rely on discredited US assurances. This is in the face of advice from a range of bodies including the Council of Europe and the Irish Human Rights Commission that such assurances are wholly inadequate.

“Even when US assurances to Britain were recently shown to be worthless having been breached over the use of Diego Garcia, the Department of Foreign Affairs merely ‘emphasized’ to the US Embassy ‘the great importance the Government attaches to the reliability of the assurances’.

Amnesty International reiterated that governments have an obligation to protect people from terrorist attacks, but must do so within the framework of human rights and the rule of international law. Rendition and secret detention undermine such measures by restricting the ability of states to bring to justice those responsible for acts of terrorism.

“To its credit, the Irish Government has been a strident critic of the US extraordinary rendition programme and other aspects of its ‘War on Terror’,” Mr O’Gorman acknowledged. “What we are calling for this rhetoric to be matched by action and if the Irish Government truly believes rendition is wrong then they must act to prevent it.”

The report makes detailed recommendations for specific European states and Europe in general to deal with renditions.

Amnesty International calls on the Irish Government to immediately:

Establish procedures to discover whether aircraft presenting as “civilian”, and thus bypassing restrictions placed on official or military flights, are in fact “state aircraft”.

Require all requests for overflight or landing authorisations by foreign aircraft to include information on the identities and status of all persons on board, the purpose of the flight and its final destination, and the final destination of each passenger.

In order to ensure Ireland’s compliance with international law in the long-term the organisation also called on the Irish Government to:

Establish an independent inquiry to investigate thoroughly all allegations that aircraft engaged in renditions have transited Irish airspace or airports.

Review Ireland’s regulation of landing clearances for all foreign aircraft. This review must make solid recommendations for reform, which Government must then implement.

Require clauses in all bilateral or multilateral agreements for granting overflight or landing permission to foreign aircraft, that the human rights of passengers shall be respected;

Establish monitoring and control systems for ensuring compliance with international law, including through exercising, when necessary, the right to search civil planes.

Read State of denial: Europe’s role in rendition and secret detention

Read: The six case studies of individuals and groups caught up in the secret detention and torture as a result of the involvement of European states

Listen to a webclip of Abu Omar
“My life has changed and I feel like a destroyed man…. All night long I suffer nightmares and all day long I remember torture so I shake. “
Abu Omar, describing how he feels after the torture suffered in Egypt.

• Abu English Windows: http://emedia.amnesty.org/ctwj1-230608-eng.asx
• Abu English Real: http://emedia.amnesty.org/ctwj1-230608-eng.ram

Listen to a webclip of the Manferd Novak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

• Manfred English Windows: http://emedia.amnesty.org/ctwj2-230608-eng.asx
• Manfred English Real: http://emedia.amnesty.org/ctwj2-230608-eng.ram

Join us and “Shine a light on torture”. World Day Against Torture 26 June 2008

Find out more about Amnesty International’s campaign to counter terror with justice

Here is a link to the gentle and wonderful work of Paula Henihan.

“Paula specialises in mixed media printmaking, using mainly screenprint, digital print and collograph. Her prints fuse diverse printmaking processes including both digital and traditional processes. Her work plays with the medium of print in an innovative manner and attempts to push the possibilities of print past the two-dimensional framed paper piece. Paula experiments with print through varied mediums, processes and three dimensional forms.”  (From website)