Book Review: The Ask, Sam Lipsyte (2010) Milo Burke is a man in distress. He’s a man who was whelped in a liberal college that let him believe he was the future of visual art,…
Posts By Dara McHugh
Wikileaks – the Politics of Information
It is an uncommon pleasure to see the world’s politicians scuttling around furiously, much like woodlice uncovered by the lifting of a rock. WikiLeaks are the ones who did the lifting, and have exposed for…
Haiti – Same Old New Beginning
It’s an old cliche that the Chinese character for crisis is the same as opportunity. In Haiti however, business and political leaders are not concerned with originality. The catastrophic earthquake was quick to be seen…
TV Review – The Limits of Liberty
In The Limits of Liberty, historian Diarmuid Ferriter has been given three one hour episodes to lay out the social history of the Irish Republic. It is, of course, too brief, but the first episode…
Haiti and the New US Occupation
In the aftermath of an earthquake that devastated the slum-cities of Haiti, there has been a strong influx of foreign money and troops, apparently to help rebuild the poverty-stricken country. However, we should note that…
La Main of the Match
Sometimes a team needs a leader, to take a game into their hands and turn it around. For France, Henry was that man. A disorganised and unmotivated French side were harried and fraught by an…
District 9: Is it an Allegory or an Action Movie?
Director Neil Blomkamp constructs a sci-fi allegory to explore the violence, cruelty and exploitation of South African segregation and poverty, apartheid and after. The result, however, is an awkward collage of documentary, body-horror, corporate exposé,…
Theatre Review: The Poor Mouth at the New Theatre
Somewhere in the late thirties or early forties, the esteemed Myles na gCopaleen, of Cruiskeen Lawn estate, took it upon himself to pen the deepest and truest articulation of the then-popular Gaeltacht biography, otherwise best…



