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Pól Ó Lorcáin
Paul Larkin

Chroniclers are privileged to enter where they list, to come and go through keyholes, to ride upon the wind, to overcome in their soarings up and down, all obstacles of distance, time and place.
Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge, Chapter The Ninth

Nostalghia – Nothing holds a candle to Andrei Tarkovsky

“The question of my immortality is my own business and nobody else’s.”
Søren Kierkegaard


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By way of explanation for what follows – When I did my film training with the BBC, I studied the films of some “auteur” film directors from what was then Eastern Europe. (This was in the late 1980s when most of my loyal readers were nothing more than a twinkle in their mother’s eye.) In particular, Sergei Parajanov and Andrei Tarkovsky moved me to embrace film making as a medium for artistic and spiritual reflection and also for social change it must be said. Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....

The woman who had never been to Brazil

I was at a dinner party just before Christmas. It was one of those parties where everything falls into place. The ambience (cold outside, fire blazing in the grate), the camaraderie (a great mixture of people who have known each other for a long time) and of course there was a large array of drinks to be weighed and savoured.

After a wonderful meal, we sat round the fire with a relish that seemed to say that we had never been near a fire before. “Far from it we were reared”, as the saying goes. Then we began a blindfold beer testing session. I got a stout and lager right but confused two others – damn.

Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....

The land of Mickey Mouse


In what other country, except Ireland, would we have two leading journalists - Miriam O'Callaghan and Charlie Bird - love bombing a right wing politician - George Lee of Fine Gael.

See - http://www.rte.ie/radio1/miriammeets/

Miriam Meets...Charlie Bird and George Lee. January 10th 2010

(Cic Saor aficionados look forward to next week when Miriam's two guests are Gerry Adams and Niall O'Dowd of the Irish Voice.....not)

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Pat Finucane – Lest We forget

The 21st anniversary of the UDA murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane will soon be upon us.

Picture of Pat

The assassination of Pat Finucane took place on the 12th of February 1989. The Belfast solicitor received multiple gunshot wounds whilst being attacked in front of his wife and children as they sat down to enjoy dinner. Official history tells us that this gruesome murder was the act of the UDA but it was in fact carried out by a number of UDA members who were also British security force agents, including RUC Special Branch agent Ken Barrett who was the trigger puller.

In a week where we have been told that the UDA has decommissioned its weapons, it is important to remember the central issue surrounding Pat Finucane's death. That central issue is organised state murder, an issue which many commentators would like to ignore, or even deny took place.

Irish journalist Henry McDonald (a seeker of “clarity and truth”) tells us in the Guardian this week that the UDA, the biggest loyalist paramilitary group in Ireland, has decommissioned all its weapons.
See – “Ulster Defence Association destroys its illegal weapons”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/06/ulster-defence-association-destorys-weapons
Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....

Palestine and the Ulster Plantation


My friend and fellow writer Danny Morrison has been kind enough to alert me to the fact that the Bobby Sands Trust website has posted an important article by the renowned journalist Robert Fisk on the parallels between land seizures in Palestine and in Ireland. The article, entitled “ History - A Great Punisher - Walls never work: in the Middle East or in Ireland" was recently published in the London Independent and can be read at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-walls-never-work-in-the-middle-east-or-in-ireland-1855417.html

However, I would encourage readers to go to the Bobby Sand’s Trust website, details of which I provide after the short backgrounder below.

Historical Parallels

Regular readers of Cic Saor may remember that I won a film director’s award in New York (see –Cic Saor – “Flight of the Earls film feted abroad and ignored by Ireland's “Litterati” - 10th of May 2008).

Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....

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