The older one gets the more one tends to grumble and groan loudly to oneself, or so my elders tell me. You groan when you bend over because your back isn’t what it used to be; you grumble at the television because there is rarely anything on worth watching and you don’t agree with anyone [...]

I am proud to be among the many Irish and Ireland-based artists from across creative disciplines who have chosen to publicly support the growing campaign of boycott against apartheid Israel. Compared to the imprisoned Palestinian people themselves and to those taking part in flotillas and other perilous anti-apartheid activities in Palestine our contribution and risk [...]

It will soon be 26 years since the people of Bhopal were enveloped in a poisonous miasmic cloud of gas, which gushed forth from the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India. On that night of the 3rd of December, 1984, an estimated 4,000 people lost their lives immediately with a further 300,000 of Bhopal´s [...]

The Irish Anti War Movement (IAWM) and the Peace and Neutraility Alliance (PANA) are organising  a two-day Conference on Sept 3-4 at the Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin 1, with the title The Irish Independent Foreign Policy Conference.
This is the first time such a conference has been organised in Ireland and it is our [...]

Book review: ‘Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the 20th Century’ by Sheila Rowbotham (Verso, 2010)
This inspiring book examines how women challenged many aspects of public and private life between the 1880s and 1920s, in Britain and in the USA. They did so from different positions in the political spectrum, as liberals, socialists [...]

Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso, 2010) Paperback £9.99 stg.
Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People, an academically minded historical work that nonetheless spent nineteen weeks on the bestseller list in Israel, is a book that is much more incendiary than it ought to be. Sand’s basic thesis – that [...]

The Communist Hypothesis, Alain Badiou (Verso 2010)
Alain Badiou: Key Concepts, edited by A.J. Bartlett & Justin Clemens (Acumen Publishing, 2010)
Badiou’s Being and Event, Christopher Norris (Continuum 2009)

Alain Badiou could be the most important philosopher alive today - time will tell - and his work is gradually reaching English-speaking readers. His magnum opus, Being [...]

Over 130 Irish creative and performing artists sign pledge to Boycott Israel
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) ‘Irish artists’ pledge to boycott Israel’ will be launched with a musical performance in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, this Thursday 12th August at 1pm featuring Eoin Dillon (Kíla), Treasa Ni Cheannabhain and Naisrín Elsafty.
The IPSC [...]

The Irish Times on Saturday 17th July published an article about Colombian claims that Venezuela is sheltering members of the FARC guerrilla group. This is an old chestnut that Colombia and the US revive from time to time, especially if there’s need to draw attention away from other news and particularly if it’s embarrassing news. [...]

An alarming report in the English Independent newspaper of 14th July (but unreported in the Irish media as far as I can tell) indicates that at least one Irish army officer is involved in an EU mission training Somali soldiers in Uganda for action against the al-Shabaab movement inside Somalia. Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for [...]