From ayearoffestivalinireland.com

On Tuesday night I scarpered up to Dublin for the southern leg of the Irish Latin American Film Festival that had shifted down from three nights in Belfast earlier in the week. The idea behind this festival is to make Latin American short films and documentaries available to the Irish public (just to make us feel a little bit paler and less interesting like!). If these screenings have an Irish angle or even a cupla focail in the voice over, all the better!

The venue was La Dolce Vita, an Italian restaurant in the quieter end of Templebar. The crowd were from all over the world, it was like the UN of hipsters! The main event was a screening of a documentary about an Irish band (Canta Brasil) who play samba music. Rapha Cruz, the Brazillian director was on hand to tell us a little bit about the film and even introduce us to some of the group who were in the audience. The film is called "Samba agus Craic". Perfect!

The colonized are now the colonizers - Irish companies involved in large scale land acquisitions overseas

***Groups across Ireland organize activities to mark 17^th April, International Day of Peasant Struggle of Via Campesina

***Irish company involved in landgrabbing

***30,000 hectares of publicly owned land now privatized in Serbia by Irish investors

Over the last ten years foreign governments and private firms have been increas­ingly investing and acquiring large surfaces of fertile land in other countries - especially in Africa and Asia - but also in Latin America and in Eastern Europe, for the purpose of agricultural production and export.

Stop Land Grabbing - land to the tillers!

April 17 is the International Day of Peasant Struggle, commemorating the massacre of 19 peasants struggling for land and justice in Brazil in 1996. Every year on that day actions take place around the world in defence of peasants and small-scale farmers struggling for their rights.

In recent years, we have suffered from the implementation of new policies and of a new development model based on land expansion and land expropriation, commonly known as land grabbing. Land grabbing is a global phenomenon led by local, national and transnational elites and investors, with the participation of governments and local authorities, in order to control the world's most precious resources.