History Ireland Hedge School
National Library Kildare Street D.2 Wed. Jan. 11th  2012  7.00 pm
“War of Independence -

Four Glorious Years or Squalid Sectarian Conflict ?”
Follow History Ireland on Facebook.

Films of the Year Archive
After a disappointing year in 2010, this year was considerably better at the movies. There were a number of big disappointments (I’m thinking mainly of Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay, Gus Van Sant, Steve McQueen and the Coen brothers) and some recently flourishing national cinemas (Taiwan and Germany in particular) were absent [...]

LookLeft 9 is in the shops today, only €2.
This edition includes:
Reports on: student protests; Occupy Dame Street; turf wars in Kildare; AFA action against Nick Griffin; defending health services; the community fight against drugs; Occupy Wall Street; the sex industry; doctors in El Salvador; Ship to Gaza; turmoil in Egypt; the Greek Communist Party; [...]

When I arrived in Cairo three months ago my first stop was not the Pyramids. Not the Egyptian Museum. Not even the beating heart of the revolution- Tahrir Square.
(Be warned your first trip to Tahrir will be disappointing- never has a more chaotic, confusing, and somewhat ugly collection of streets, buildings, and [...]

Album Review: Arise and Go, Stephen James Smith and Enda Reilly, 2011 (on iTunes, on Facebook).
Stephen James Smith- SJS to the scene- is one of the wonderboys of Irish Spoken Word. I first met him at the Electric Picnic in 2007. He made a beeline for me after I had finished a performance on Marty Mulligan’s [...]

As Eyre Square remains ‘Occupied’ by citizens anxious to change the way the system works, the Scariff-based Irish Seed Savers Association (ISSA) and Galway One World Centre (GOWC) are hosting an all day gathering which will consider how that alternative system might look.
‘Another World Is Possible - reflections on power, seeds and change’ will combine [...]

From the people who brought you Crisisjam

Next month will see the latest in a series of vicious budgets entailing almost four billion euro in spending cuts and tax increases. In the days preceding this calamity, Taoiseach Enda Kenny is scheduled to address the nation on television to offer words of comfort and inspiration. The text [...]

Book Review: Britain’s Empire, Richard Gott (Verso 2011)

Hegel’s metaphor about  the awareness that comes only after the event  – ‘The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk’ - might encourage the thought that finally we are able to look back at the British empire and draw some [...]

A review of Ghost Estate by William Wall, Published by Salmon Poetry 2011

‘…& are we supposed to sympathise
when the gentry find themselves
in the same boat
or plane
as everyone else?’

From ‘Job in Heathrow’
William Wall is a novelist, poet and blogger. I better ‘fess up straight away that ever since I read William’s Booker Prize long- listed [...]

Considering The Issues
If you got (but never opened) an envelope
from a convicted smuggler,
which turned out to contain
five thousand Euro
you knew nothing about. If you know
what you think it’s okay for old
men to do with underage boys
while visiting the Temple of Zeus,
you’ve got my vote.
If you have questions to answer
about incest and blackmail;
if last Thursday [...]