Well, the papers yesterday reported the riot in a very low-key way (and the Irish Examiner didn't cover it at all!). It's all over the news today! Politicians (naturally, with the election coming up) are trying to make capital out of it, though some of them don't seem to be doing a very good job. Michael Noonan of Fine Gael doesn't seem to have much to say at all, and Bertie Ahern of Fianna Fail is telling us that we ought to support the Gardai. Only Labour and the Green Party are taking a strong line. And they were getting my vote anyway.

But interesting new things are coming to light. It seems to be pretty definite that some Gardai were not wearing their numbers; somebody managed to get video footage of the events, which has been all over the TV news, and stills from it are in all the papers, with un-numbered Gardai clearly visible. An Evening Herald journalist was arrested during the event, and the Herald this evening points out that the entire area is covered by CCTV cameras (recording for the traffic department, the Gardai, and others), and is calling on the Gardai to release their official recordings to the public. It's a good point; the Gardai are claiming that their officers were severely provoked, and the footage currently available was recorded by a journalist sympathetic to the protestors. So...if they really were that provoked, they should have no problem letting the rest of us see the evidence.

There's an internal Garda investigation under way already, but one wonders how helpful that will be. The Garda top brass isn't necessarily likely to want to admit that they messed up badly. Meanwhile, the organisers of Monday's protest are calling another one for tomorrow night, outside Pearse Street Garda station. While I applaud their standing up for the right to peacefully demonstrate, I can't help worrying that it will simply inflame things further.

I'm reading a lot of news, these last couple of days, including papers I wouldn't normally read. I'm trying to get as much information as possible, and avoid bias by reading reports from both ends of the spectrum - though really, the media seems to be fairly united on the notion that bad things happened; the difference is in what individual media think ought to be done. I feel strongly about this whole thing; I'm all for the right to protest, but I'm also of the opinion that the Gardai are by and large a Good Thing. So I'm getting all conflicted and unhappy. I doubt I'm the only one.

In other news, Ian Paisley apparently thinks he's being discriminated against by being summonsed to give evidence in the Bloody Sunday enquiry. I always knew that man didn't live on the same planet as the rest of us.

I'm running this month's Book Discussion on the Girlsown mailing list. First time I've ever done something like this, and it's going quite well so far. I was terrified that no-one would take part, but several people are discussing away happily, and I feel relieved. Now, of course, I need to get our second book, "Daddy-Long-Legs", summarised. Before Sunday. Better get moving!

Well, that was certainly an interesting evening, last night. It's rather disconcerting, when you're in the pub with your mates having a chat and a few pints, to have another friend come in and tell you that there's a riot going on just around the corner!

Admittedly, by most people's standards, it wasn't really a riot. But we're not used to that kind of thing here, so a protest of 200 or 300 people with the Gardai wading in with truncheons looks like a riot to us.

"But what happened, dammit?" I hear my eager readers cry (apparently I have one, at least!).

Well, yesterday saw a protest in Dublin called "Reclaim the Streets". From what, I'm not entirely sure. Motor traffic, I think. Pretty idea, but I did rather think the point of streets was to have places you could drive cars down (though far too many people in this city drive cars, badly, instead of taking the bus. But that's a whole 'nother rant). Anyway, there were a few hundred people singing and dancing and playing drums and generally having fun on the streets of Dublin's city centre, yesterday. (And getting in the way of the cars, of course. But there doesn't tend to be that many cars around on a sunny Bank Holiday Monday, anyway.)

And something went wrong around 7 o'clock or so. I don't know what. But I was sitting in this pub, hearing reports of people being hit by the Gardai for no apparent reason, people - friends of friends - being taken to hospital, cameras being smashed as people tried to document what was going on... It was scary. Some of my friends went out to check on people they knew - Taz came back sporting dreadful bruising on his cheekbone; apparently he'd been hit in the face by a Garda. The pub pulled all its blinds down and wouldn't let anyone in; it was a good thing we knew the barman and he at least let those of our group who went out, come back. We sat and worried and decided, for the most part, to stay put until things calmed down.

I don't like this. I was raised to believe that the police are good people, that they're there to protect us. And there they were last night, hitting kids. For no apparent reason. I know, of course, that there are bad cops, but it's not nice to have it brought home like that. And it's not nice to think that there are, seemingly, so many of them.

According to the papers this morning, many of the Gardai involved were apparently not wearing their numbers. And the Garda spokespersons seem to (a) not really have much more clue than the rest of us as to what was going on and (b) be frantically trying to justify what happened. I don't think it can be justified. Yes, there were probably people at the protest who were looking to cause trouble, because there always are. And yes, maybe some of the Gardai were looking for an excuse, too. But I don't want to believe that that many Gardai are assholes, and I want their superiors to be admitting that things went wrong, and house-cleaning, not spouting platitudes and smoothing on cover-up cream.

I'm depressed.