Guardian diarist Simon Hoggart’s “liberal” version of Bloody Sunday
The Guardian's Simon Hoggart - We are not worthy ...
Guardian diarist Simon Hoggart is a clever chap. Or at least he is clever, and actually quite funny, when he sticks to writing about what middle class English scribblers seem to excel at – jokes about bodily functions, lewd innuendo and verbal f
aux pas. You know
transvestism and all that – chortle, tee hee as Simon Hoggart goes all Billy Bunter and
Beano! on us. He is a one man Carry On team for middle class Guardian readers - their thinking man’s Les Dawson. And that’s fine as far as it goes. A bit of froth and public school gossip after a hard week can be quite entertaining.
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Six Winters Tomas Tranströmer in translation
Six Winters
A translation of Tomas Tranströmer's "Sex Vintrar"
1
In the black hotel a child sleeps.
Outside: the winter night
where monster eyed dice tumble.
2
An elite of dead knights is turned to stone
in Katarina graveyard
where the wind rattles in its armour from Svalbard.
3
One war-winter when I lay sick
a colossal icicle grew outside my window.
Bystander and harpoon, inexplicable memory.
4
Ice hangs down from the edge of the roof.
Icicles: the upside down Gothic cut.
Weird cattle, udders of glass.
5
In a shunting, an empty train carriage.
Poised. A lion rampant
The journey in its claws.
6.
Tonight snow-mist, moonlight. The moonlight jellyfish herself
hovers over us. Echoes of our laughs
on the way home. Enchanted path.
@Paul Larkin
Mí Eanáir 2012
(Source text Tomas Tranströmer - Samlade Dikter - 1954 1996)
The Northern Light - The Eternal Self
Cnoic Dhoire Bheatha - The Derryveagh Mountains - Tír Chonaill
A léitheoirí, comrádaithe agus cairde
Dear readers, comrades and friends
The winter, and in particular the Christmas and New Year period, have always been sacred times. Times for inner reflection. Any man who says he has no time for meditation and wondering about life and why we are here is either a fool or a liar, or more likely both.
Below I present a poem I wrote over the Christmas just past. I was writing my own Northern Lights if you like. Below that again is my translation of a very short extract of Søren Kierkegaard's
Either/Or from the original Danish. It is a very brief passage but it is the absolute epicentre of Kierkegaard's thought. I am grateful to the Danish author Lise Søelund for reminding me just how breathtaking this passage is - at least for those who finally dare to make that existential leap into themselves.
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The 1981 Hunger Strikes - Who will speak of the sectarian state that was “Northern Ireland”
Remarkable image of Margaret Thatcher's handwriting as she edited
what became the verbal offer sent to SF and IRA leadership on the 6th of July 1981
(Under the 30 year release rule, Britain’s national state archive at Kew has now released at least some of the documents covering the 1981 Hunger Strikes. This has provoked widespread debate here in Ireland and elsewhere. I beg the forbearance of readers in making this blog longer than usual to consider this crucial period in our history)
----------------
One thing that strikes me forcefully about the discourse surrounding the present discussion of the Hunger Strikes is that the rancour and finger pointing of a small but vociferous group of people and their “supporters” in the press is aimed exclusively at the leadership of Sinn Féin. I find that remarkable.
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Our Government leaders and North Korean Tyrants
Some of our country's political leaders once supported the personality cult state of North Korea and its tyrant Kim Il Sung.
(Page references to Brian Hanley's and Scott Millar's
The Lost Revolution, refer to the large format Penguin Ireland edition of 2009)
Kim Jong Il before his untimely death
Irish newspapers and online news outlets are all full of reports about the death yesterday of the North Korean potentate Kim Jong Il. What they are not saying however is that many of our present day political leaders and journalists here in Ireland saw ultra Stalinist North Korea as a society that should be supported. I am not making this up.
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Robin Jackson was not an RUC agent. He was an RUC assassin.
Robin "The Jackal" Jackson - State sponsored assassin
I regard this as a very important blog as, particularly in the points I make in the last paragraphs, it contains cross referencing information about state sponsored loyalist killer Robin Jackson that has been missed or deliberately ignored by journalists and other investigating agencies. Please, therefore good readers, distribute this blog as widely as possible across the global internet.
PL
Cic Saor readers should mark the 14th of December 2011 in their diaries as the day when a large hole appeared in the skies above Ireland. A collusion hole. A hole that allows us to “officially” see, how the British state's sordid and squalid sponsorship of a group of anti Catholic and anti Irish sectarian killers actually worked.
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Cinneadh an Rialtais maidir leis an teanga/The Goverment's decision regarding our language
A chomrádaithe
Tá an cinneadh a bhí fógartha ag an rialtas maidin inniu chun Oifig an Choimisinéara Teanga a dhruid go hiomlán scannalach. Is beag na hacmhainní atá ag na Gaeil cheana féin agus, rómhinic, bíonn an Stáit ag déanamh beag beann ar an chead teanga agus lucht labhartha na teanga laistigh de cóir a bheith achan ghné den tsaol sa tír seo.
Tá sé doiligh a creidmheal go bhfuil Páirtí an Lucht Oibre ag tacú an tionscnaimh seo. Comhartha eile atá ann i mo thuairimse nach dtig linn brath ar chomhlacht reachtúil ar bith - caithfidh na Gaeil a gcuid cearta a chosaint mar ghluaiseacht neamhspleách atá sásta dul i mbun agóide agus feachtas easumhlaíocht shibhialta má tá sé riachtanach. Ar ndóigh bheadh sé níos fearr agus níos éifeachtaí dá mbeadh an feachtas seo ag dul fite fuaite le hagóidí eile in éadan na laghduithe uafásacha atá romhainn ach ní mór do na Gaeil a beith d'aon ghuth láidir maidir le cearta na teanga.
Tír gan teanga Tír gan anam
No Pasarán
TRANSLATION
Dear Comrades
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Why RTÉ’s blatant bias made Martin McGuinness the real successor to Mary McAleese
RTÉ -Tubridy and O'Callaghan - new faces, same old tired agenda
A surprisingly large number of people contacted me to ask why I hadn’t reacted to events in Libya, with a smaller number asking my view of the ETA ceasefire. My problem was that I was struck dumb by the flagrant prejudice shown by RTÉ during the Irish presidential election and for some reason felt the need to speak to people at "home" in the Donegal Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area) before I could write anything. To be sure that it wasn’t just me.
I found that even people who are not traditional Sinn Féin supporters were coruscating in their condemnation of RTÉ - all of the critics of the station that I spoke to are TV license payers.
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Take time out to salute Tomas Tranströmer - Poet and Hero
Tomas Tranströmer in wheelchair
The Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer has finally been given the international recognition he deserves with this week’s awarding of the 2011 Nobel prize for literature. There is an excellent article in yesterday's Guardian for those who wish to find out more about him -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/06/nobel-prize-literature-tomas-transtromer
A very dear friend of mine from Sweden and her husband were kind enough to send me Tranströmer’s
Samlede Dikter - his collected works. It is one of my most treasured possessions. I have taken one of my favourite poems from this book,
Romanska bågar – "Roman arches" and translated it as a celebration of this week’s award.
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10,000 readers of Cic Saor/Free kick or - Glasgow's James Kelman vindicated
"These bastards think they own the language. They already own the courts. They own everything. They want to block your stories, and they will, if you let them."
James Kelman - Booker Prize Winner
see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/12/featuresreviews.guardianreview22
Many readers of
Cic Saor will be aware that this blog was started because of the unspoken but extremely effective type of censorship that is practiced by Irish media and broadcasting outlets.
You want to make films or write stories from a left wing and "gaelach" perspective – no chance. They will tell you that you are being didactic and are not an artist - as was said to me.
As for trying to highlight collusion between the British state, the higher ranks of the Garda Síochána and pro British death squads and the RUC - why Easons will refuse even to put the book on its shelves. Or, as the Irish Times demonstrated on Thursday (see...
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The Irish Times removes my comment on Eoghan Harris
In the "Have Your Say" online slot in the Irish Times this morning former loyalist politician David Adams draws a parallel between Martin MGuinness and former Workers Party guru Eoghan Harris. There are of course no justifiable grounds for making such a comparison and I entered the comment below in the true spirit of debate that our "paper of record" says it wants to encourage.
It goes almost without saying that my comment was removed as quickly as I put it up. This is the 5th time that a comment I have made has been removed.
Have your say? Clearly for the Irish Times, that depends on whether you can fit in with its partitionist ethos.
Here is my censored comment:
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Fintan O’Toole’s real problem with Martin McGuinness
Fintan O'Toole - Pangs of regret?
Many Cic Saor readers may be unaware that Fintan O'Toole hung up the phone in a hissy fit whilst taking part in BBC Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show this morning. The debate was about Martin McGuinness's bid for the Irish presidency and of course , Fintan wanted to rebroadcast the message he gave in the Irish Times a few days before, stating that McGuinness was not fit for high office because he had been involved in what could be seen as war crimes under the Geneva Convention.
O’Toole’s article can be read here
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0920/1224304412076.html
Incredibly, in this morning's radio debate, O’Toole tried to argue that electing former IRB commander and post Treaty IRA leader Eamon De Valera as President was different because “Dev” never killed anyone! Dear Dear Fintan.
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The Guardian continues its “battle” with Sinn Féin
The Guardian’s Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald has written two articles in the space of a week, which contain, at the very least, highly questionable statements with regard to Sinn Féin and the IRA in general and Martin McGuinness in particular. These statements are partly based on equally questionable evidence provided by a former corporal and then sergeant (McDonald describes him as an “officer”) in the British Army’s covert “Force Research Unit”. The articles serve to reinforce the unproven theory that a man called Freddie Scapaticci was a spy codenamed Stakeknife at the heart of the IRA.
Freddie Scapaticci - an increasingly blunt stakeknife
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A Male Soldier’s Song.* Or - the blog as self flagellation
I went for a run (not a jog - a serious, eventually lung bursting run) around the Phoenix Park yesterday. It was not supposed to be lung bursting. The idea was for it to be walk - run - sprint combo as I ease back into the swing of things after a calf strain. Then a soldier turned up. Well, a soldier running at a fairly brisk pace, across the main road in the park and on the opposite footpath to me, so it became a race of sorts. He was in full battle uniform.
Shooting occasional sniper glances at him, I wasn’t going to let him get past me and he for his part obviously stepped up a gear in response to my acceleration. How to appear nonchalant whilst lengthening your stride and moving your arms more vigorously for traction?
For the next roughly four kilometres I had this green bobbing smudge in the corner of my right eye, then the smudge moved past me on his side of the road so I had to put the foot down again to overtake him. And so it went. I just knew it would end in, at the very least, metaphorical tears.
Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....
Re-mastered version of A Very British Jihad now available as an eBook
Cic Saor aficionados may be interested to know that my book on structured collusion between British state operatives and pro British death squads is now available as a Kindle eBook.
There were several problems with the initial e-version but these have now been all but eradicated and the Kindle version is now quite close to the original print version published by Beyond The Pale. In fact, once a searchable table of contents is in place, the eBook version will in some ways be better than the printed version, which suffers from not having an index – in spending time making sure the content was rock solid we simply ran out of time.
Part of my motivation for making the book available as an eBook comes from the fact that people are now charging outrageous prices for the standard book version, which is now sold out and therefore out of print. I of course have no control over this.
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Unwittingly Demonstrating the Limits of Collusion - Paul Larkin's reply
Professor Adrian Guelke
Several
Cic Saor readers have contacted me over the last six months asking me where my reply to Adrian Guelke's criticism of my book
A Very British Jihad has disappeared to. This is a good question. Any reader who Googles words like "Paul Larkin collusion" is immediately directed to the
Fortnight magazine article written by Guelke in May 2004. Guelke's wholly negative and, in my view, poorly argued review can be read here:
http://www.fortnight.org/guelke425.html
However my reply to Guelke's criticisms has mysteriously vanished off the face of the web. So for those readers from Counties Antrim, Derry, Galway and Cork who have asked for it, as well as for the historical record, here is my response. Guelke it should be added is Professor of Comparative Politics at Queens University Belfast.
The more Cic Saor readers share and post links for this reply, the more chance it has of regaining its position vis-à-vis Guelke's article.
----------------------------------------
A BONE TO PICK WITH ADRIAN - Paul Larkin June 2004
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All the looters looked like Tony Blair
Look at the faces of what the media has dubbed" England’s rioters", when in fact they are “looters”. Look closely at the permanent smirks on their faces as they head off with those must have flat screens, Carhatt jeans, game consoles and designer gear. They are Tony Blair's Chav alter ego.
It is exactly the same plastered-on grin that faced the media and told us that the risk of mass murder of civilians in return for petro stability was a good, indeed an honourable thing. The Blair mask was the TV Joker to George "Dubya" Bush’s grinning Riddler, setting off on a macabre crusade against anything that smacked of community. Aint no profit in Welfare boy.
Nearly the first act of Blair's government, we now know, was to ease Rupert Murdoch into the nexus of New Labour’s power. Look at this for example:
“A deal had been done, although with nothing in writing. If Murdoch were left to pursue his business interests in peace he would give Labour a fair wind.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/feb/24/revealed-deal-between-murdoch-blair
Perfect! So we got in the media exactly the same culture we got in government – not only has the Welfare State, Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan been sequestered and pounded it became part of the BREAKING NEWS franchise.
Yo Blair. Way to go!
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How understanding ancient myth could save your life
In this week’s never less than excellent Guardian review, there is a thought provoking feature on ancient myth by the English writer AS Byatt. The essay, entitled Ragnarök: the doom of the gods can be read here –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/05/as-byatt-ragnarok-myth
In my view, AS Byatt gets the most fundamental point about myth completely wrong but she does correctly identify the Norse myths as being of central importance in our attempts to understand our most ancient stories. Byatt tells us that she wrote the essay after being invited by Cannongate publishers to write a volume for its ongoing collection of books on human mythology and its origins. The full list of titles and authors can be seen here -
http://www.themyths.co.uk/
Very early on, she quotes Nietzsche approvingly (from his
The Birth of Tragedy) and this is a good pointer for the way she is going in her argument:
"Every culture that has lost myth has lost, by the same token, its natural healthy creativity. Only an horizon ringed about with myths can unify a culture."
This is a good quote as far as it goes. Imagine an Ireland without its
Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley) mythology, its ancient wells and fairy rings – these do indeed unify our culture and are inseparable from An Ghaeilge – the Irish language. If we lose these, we lose ourselves and may as well all move to Milton Keynes.
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Stieg Larsson on the myth of the lone, lunatic fascist gunman
Following the atrocity in Oslo, we have already seen a raft of headlines stating that the racist assassin Anders Behring Breivik was acting alone:
BBC headline: “Norway gun suspect 'acted alone' - ˮ-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14266815
English Independent headline: A nation's enemy within: The far-right loner who wiped out nearly 100 souls -
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/a-nations-enemy-within-the-farright-loner-who-wiped-out-nearly-100-souls-2319549.html
All this made me go back to a report written by Stieg Larsson for
Expo magazine in April 1999. Many
Cic Saor readers may be unaware that before his untimely death Stieg (now world famous as the author of the Millennium series of crime novels) was a militant anti fascist and a very effective campaigner against white supremacist propaganda. Stieg helped found Expo magazine in Sweden so as to provide a platform, not only for pro democracy and anti racist views, but also to investigate the far right in Scandinavia. Below, I have translated extracts of Stieg’s very effective dismissal of the idea that right wing assassins are nothing more than lunatics who invariably act on their own. It was written in 1999 but has direct relevance to what is happening in extreme right wing circles today.
Stieg Larsson - a brilliant writer, a brilliant comrade
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Oslo
After the horrendous attack, not just on our comrades in the Labour Youth movement in Oslo, but also on the very notion of democracy itself - the underlying philosophy of fascism being anti democratic - we should only have one response -
¡No pasarán!.
The leadership of the Norwegian Labour Party's youth wing (a much more radical group than our home grown variety) has stated that it will return to the island on which a fascist gunman slaughtered so many of their comrades as soon as possible. This is exactly the correct response to fascist and Nazi ideology.
There two other lessons to be learned from the Oslo attack:
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Checked Out in Tescos Prussia Street
Checked Out
Her bent shape proclaiming her cauterised fate
Four hours solid in the same place
A countenance moulded to a stare
The shape of a checkout chair
Through sheer fatigue she lets me through the gate
A mistake
Me and my hyperactive Irish speaking kids
Iad ag léimtí, craiceáilte, suas agus síos
Full on shopping, toilet rolls, pan lids
Close the gate after you she snaps crackles and pops
Face severe as a headache, ears closed to small talk
Until I say
Jeez ye'll be glad to see the back of this day
The last bar-code pinged and zapped
She relaxed, collapsed her back
Smiled
So that her soul shone in her eyes
My feet up and a glass of wine
We would never embrace
But we are joined in time and space
By the creased lines of our gaze
The Sisyphus blind faith
In our everyday resurrections
@Paul Larkin
Tescos
Prussia Street
Dublin
Mí an Mheithimh 2011
Don’t be fooled by Kevin Myers' anti loyalist tirade - it is anti working class
Progressive people (be they socialist, green or just truly liberal and free thinking) may initially have been cheered by Irish Independent columnist Kevin Myers’s anti loyalist diatribe in today’s Irish Independent. See
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-tribal-bigotry-is-not-a-response-to-ira-violence-it-was-there-before-2803409.html
After all, we have had to put up with a constant stream of ‘both as bad as each other’ media propaganda since the UVF carried out its completely unwarranted attack on the beleaguered Catholic/Nationalist enclave of Short Strand at the beginning of the week.
Cic Saor readers, however, will have more sense than to be taken in by this anachronistic (affectedly arch Old Etonian chic) who flirted with the revolutionary left for a while before reverting to anti working class type.
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Ku Klux Klan provoked into attack on black settlement – exclusive statement from Imperial Wizard
Dateline - Birmingham, Alabama 1921
By
Star reporter Hiram Jones
The
Alabama Star can exclusively reveal today the real reasons for the violence that erupted between Negroes and white residents in Birmingham Tuesday last.
State troopers were called in to quell the disturbances, which led to the hospitalisation of several white men for minor injuries.
Hundreds of homes were also destroyed in the small Negro enclave of Back Beach and two lynchings of suspected ring leaders took place. Now for the first time, and in a
Star exclusive!, Klan Imperial Wizard Hiram Jones has issued a communiqué to explain the incident that sparked the righteous vengeance of whites.
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Will the real Stakeknife please stand up?
Several of the key points raised by my book
A Very British Jihad have been missed by many people who have read the book. This fault line can be summed up by the story I tell about the notorious loyalist hardman James Pratt Craig.
James Pratt Craig, who didnt see the Jihad writing on the wall
In its own way, the murder, arranged by the security forces, of loyalist gangster James Pratt Craig is every bit as significant as the murder of Pat Finucane.
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Response from Daily Telegraph US correspondent Toby Harnden to my Cic Saor blog on Harry Breen RUC.
Cic Saor aficionados will be interested to hear that I have received a fairly lengthy response to my blog on the Smithwick Inquiry into the IRA murder of RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen – Mr Harnden’s reply can be seen in full below.
Before I tell you why I believe he is mostly very wrong in what he says, I must say Mr Harnden deserves kudos for taking the time to respond to my article and in such detail. Most journalists or writers who feel the wrath of my quill and ink, skulk around on other internet sites throwing oblique barbs in my direction under the cover of pseudonyms and troll names but never revealing who they really are. Toby Harnden clearly states who he is and the reasons for his response. Fair Play to him for that
All references to Harnden’s book “Bandit Country” refer to the “Revised and Updated“ paperback edition of 2000
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