Editor’s Note: Previously Frank Armstrong reviewed Michael Pollan’s journey through the use of psychedelics. Here ‘Desmond O’Brien’ recalls a recent psilocybin treatment at a clinic in the Netherlands, which he found ‘a hugely emotional and profoundly beautiful experience, interspersed with frequent moments of absolute hilarity.’ ‘my life had come to an end’ I recently went … Read more
The intellectual decay associated with Jordan Peterson has provided the soil wherein Steve Bannon’s seedlings have germinated.
2019 has taught us all we need to know about Mortality. So many writers, musicians, and actors that we loved passed away this year. Some left us far too soon and others bowed out with a fine stash of years under their wings. I suppose, all we can learn from this, is that our time … Read more
Five predictions for 2020: The Trump Card, an analysis of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, CES 2020, implications of 5G rollout and a Republican climate change pivot. The Trump Card For all the talk of a fading U.S. Superpower since President Trump came to office, there is one statistic firmly in his favor. … Read more
Today it is shameful to be unemployed and regarded as an achievement to sell oneself into part-time slavery, meekly accepting as natural that one is not free for half one’s waking hours. Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life – A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future (2015). With an Irish … Read more
At the end of 2019, I wrote: In these times it is perhaps inevitable that people will want to write poems about climate change, or Twitter and politics. But poetry knows in its heart, what has already ended inside your consciousness, to which you and the world are gradually catching up. In the greatest poems … Read more
They who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them of their blindness. John Milton, ‘An Apology for Smectymnuus with the Reason of Church-Government’ (1642) Unfortunately I just missed out on meeting one of the totemic figures of our time in Noam Chomsky. In 1997, as a Boston-based Harvard student, I was taken to visit … Read more
The Year Past and Ahead In October last, I was at a Russian Circles gig in Galway. It gave me a much needed stark reminder of the power of live sound: washing over me, enveloping, reverberating my insides, shaking me out of an internal slumber. Requiring a medium to travel, the body is a … Read more
We sent twenty questions to Maverick film maker Bob Quinn who published ten excerpts of his memoir A Monk Manqué with us last year. The featured image is of Bob Quinn meeting Colonel Ghaddafi in 1988 from one episode that can be viewed here. What advice would you have for your eighteen-year-old self if you … Read more
Long Term Patterns: the U.K. Prefers Oxford University-Educated Conservative Prime Ministers. Only Winston Churchill, and John Major among election-winning Prime Ministers since World War II did not pass through ‘the city of the dreaming spires’ during their formative educational years (neither University of Edinburgh-educated Gordon Brown nor Jim Callaghan, who could not afford a university … Read more
I made the following notes in an old factory that was built in 1906 at a cost of six hundred pounds. It was a draughty one story building which has stood for over a century on the eastern shore of Loch an Mhuilinn in Carraroe, Conamara. Jack B. Yeats and John Millington Synge referred to … Read more
I wrote what follows prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, and have been prompted to re-read all of Michel Foucault’s work, including his lectures and digressions. It seems to me that the following is worth emphasizing: The concept of the Panopticon, Foucault borrowed from Jeremy Bentham is increasingly prominent in the wake of this virus that … Read more
The future of a generation born during over eight years of conflict in Syria is under threat. More than half of all school-aged Syrian children living as refugees in neighbouring countries do not have access to formal education. In this second of a two-part series humanitarian activist and author Bruna Kadletz addresses the educational crisis … Read more
When truth is the casualty, everyone suffers. For new Americans, spending Thanksgiving in the U.S. comes as a surprise. It’s the busiest travel time of the year, ranking ahead of Christmas and the 4th of July. While some associate Thanksgiving with shopping bonanzas like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, for most it’s simply an opportunity … Read more
I especially enjoy visiting the Austrian side of my family around Salzkammergut during Christmas. The highlight is Little Christmas, or the Feast of the Epiphany, on January 6th best witnessed in the home town of my relatives in Ebensee, under the watchful gaze of the Traunsee mountains, which provide a perfect backdrop to the procession … Read more
Greater in combat Than a person who conquers A thousand times a thousand people Is the person who conquers himself Gautama Buddha, the Dhammapada, (third century B.C.E.) There is no opponent Who the fuck is Jose Aldo? There is no Jose Aldo, There is no no-one You’re against yourself, You’re against yourself. Conor McGregor, Interview, … Read more
A national strike was called in Colombia for Thursday, the 21st of November. In Bogotá, it would be the beginning of two weeks of protests, parties, and panics. Iván Duque, Colombia’s right-wing president, was elected in 2018. Since then he has tried to implement the typical Latin American neo-liberal programme: pension privatisation; privatisation of government … Read more
Back in the 1990s, you may not believe this, even if you actually lived through that decade it’s hard to believe it now, but people went about in all kinds of crazy outfits: fake fur, feathers, sequins, lycra, metallics, colour-change intelligent fabric, you name it. Not for Pride or a summer festival, but for everyday. … Read more
I was sickened to read a fawning obituary to an absolute creep and impostor Randal McDonnell. It fails to mention that he was a predator and pederast with an insatiable lust for young boys. He made a misery of my late teenage years and I carried for way too long the shame and guilt for … Read more
The Irish media generally looks askance at Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘radical socialist manifesto.’[i] An historically warm relationship with Sinn Féin, Brexit neutrality, and lifelong commitment to the redistribution of wealth receive a cool reception in reports and commentary, while grossly inflated charges of Antisemitism within the Labour Party are threaded through articles.[ii] Yet the Labour leader … Read more
