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Facebook comes to Ireland but deletes Shell to Sea page

Mary of Dungloe | 03.10.2008 13:50 | Culture

Yesterday an Irish government minister from the ruling Fianna Fáil party announced that the social networking site Facebook would be setting up its European office in Dublin. In what some may see as a weird coincidence, and others as a pointed message, the profile page for the Shell to Sea campaign was removed from Facebook at the same moment the announcement was made public.



As this Irish Times article shows  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1003/breaking42.htm
Facebook are not saying precisely why they deleted the page. Activists in Britain and the U.S. have used the Shell to Sea Facebook profile page to stay in touch with what was happening in the continuing campaign to stop Shell from laying a production pipeline in the marshy landscape of northwest Mayo, one of the most remote and unspoilt areas of Ireland.

The Irish government supports Shell, and the Minister who made the announcement welcoming Facebook to Ireland was the same one who recently signed permits allowing Shell to destroy a protect habitat in a Special Area of Conservation. Mary Coughlan used her position as Minister for Agriculture to bypass the need for proper planning hearings.

Many people have expressed concern at the background of some of those who provided the capital to start Facebook, pointing to U.S. government and even CIA connections (see:  http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/).



Some people have been sending requests to  info@facebook.com asking for the profile page to be re-instated, but without success.


Mary of Dungloe

Comments

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just typed in....

03.10.2008 14:29

Shell to Sea campaign in Fakebook and it's still there - hsa it been re-instated?

Fakebooker


profile page

03.10.2008 15:36

There's a couple of different group pages, and a cause page, but the one they zapped was the profile page, which you could have in your "friends" list.

base fucker


Take the goshdarn fada off the 'a'

03.10.2008 18:19

the fada on the á makes us all pronounce Fi-ann-a Fáil like this: F-ee-ana Fawl
thus remove the 'fada' and we gets F-ee-ana Fail, like o migod whats the deal about
facebook anyway?

C