Cassandra Voices

Author: Cassandra Voices

  • Still Life: Photography Competition

    Cassandra Voices is delighted to be collaborating with the charity Collateral Global on a photographic competition depicting life under lockdown, open to professionals and amateurs alike. It will culminate in the production of a photography book to be published under the Cassandra Voices imprint. The winning entry will receive a first prize of €1,000, with over €4,000 prize-money available in all.

    Over the course of the lockdown period, we reached out to a number of photographers who published their work on our website. These included stirring images from Bali (Indonesia), Porto (Portugal), Mallorca (Spain), Dublin (Ireland), Vietnam, Italy, Greece, Lebanon and Dun Laoghaire (Ireland).

    By April 2020 over half of the world’s population had been placed under some form of lockdown confining them to their homes, or other residences. Although the period of obligatory confinement lasted for only a few months in most countries, it created unheard of visual landscapes, particularly in urban areas, including orderly supermarket queues, empty highways, prison-like apartment blocks and unusual wildlife sightings.

    As the initial restraints eased, we all became acquainted with curious and strange additions to our lives, reminding us of an apparently ubiquitous virus and efforts to contain it. And yet, beyond the eerie silence, those visiting hospitals were confronted by what seemed like wartime conditions. Requirements to wear face masks generated an unsettling anonymity, compounding rules on social distancing.

    Although there was broad consent in most countries for these measures, vociferous protests erupted nonetheless. Fear and loathing were at times directed against those who refused to be vaccinated, as well as stigmatised minorities and healthcare workers.

    Collateral Global is conducting this global competition to gather photographic images open to all evoking this unforgettable period. A panel of esteemed judges will select fifty of the best to be displayed on their website and to be used in a forthcoming publication. Winning entries are also expected to be displayed at photographic exhibitions in a variety of locations.

    Apart from receiving a copy of the book, a range of cash prizes will be offered to all those selected. The overall winner will receive a $1,000 prize.

    Entrants are asked for a set of images capturing the essence of the lockdown period 2020-2022, the date and location, and a short description explaining their choice (up to 200 words) in English.

    All submission are through the Collateral Global website.
    Note: Cassandra Voices is not accepting any submissions directly.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Podcast: ‘Inside the Belly of the Beast: Reporting on U.S. Foreign Policy from Washington D.C.’ with guest Anya Parampil

    Listen to the second half on Apple Podcasts

    or

    Patreon

    As a journalist, Anya Parampil is unafraid of rattling the cage. She now writes for the Grayzone, founded by her husband Max Blumenthal in 2015, an online publication which aims to ‘break through any narrative of the day that is pushing the United States’ public in support of war.’ Previously she worked as a producer and broadcaster, then an anchor correspondent, for Russia Today (U.S.), from which she was fired, after refusing to accept restrictions on her reporting of U.S. foreign policy.

    In this podcast Anya likens writing about U.S. foreign policy from Washington D.C. to working inside ‘the belly of the beast’. Her work charts the policy machinations emanating from what she describes as a ‘deep state’ whose power, she argues, exceeds democratically elected politicians.

    Anya is the author of Corporate Coup – Venezuela and the End of US Empire (Or Books, New York, 2023), which dissects the motivations of the U.S. government, under the presidency of Donald Trump – directed in particular by figures such as John Bolton and Eliot Abrams – to sponsor a shadow government of Venezuela under Juan Guaído to challenge President Nicolás Maduro.

    As we approach another Presidential election, Anya sees little hope of a change in approach from the U.S. towards a country containing greater oil reserves than any other country on planet Earth. She maintains hope, however, that an alliance that includes isolationist supporters of Trump and progressive elements within the Democratic Party could in time tame the beast of this seemingly permanent government, and retains a faith that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on free speech will allow her to continue her work.

    Episode Credits:

    Host: Frank Armstrong

    Music:

    Loafing Heroes – ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com

    Produced by Massimiliano Galli – https://www.massimilianogalli.com

  • HIT IT: Hustling and the Ivory Tower with Max McGuinness

    In our latest podcast episode Luke Sheehan interviews his friend, Dr. Max McGuinness.

    Max McGuinness is a Teaching Fellow in French at Trinity College Dublin. His first book, published this Spring by Liverpool University Press, is Hustlers in the Ivory Tower: Press and Modernism from Mallarmé to Proust, which explores how French modernist writers used the press as a forum for literary experimentation. ​

    The launcher of this book in Dublin, translator Pierre Guglielmina, gave a speech in The Little Museum of Dublin, in which he managed to nickname the text with the accurate acronym HIT IT – like a piece of modernist wordplay. Pierre described it as a panorama of French literature from the Commune times of 1870 to the Great War (1914), a study that “hit [him] hard”. “The movement of HITIT, from Mallarmé to Proust through Apollinaire…[he said] is a triumphant one, and I have been trying to understand why.”

    The second part of Luke’s interview is available to our Patreon followers:

    And is also available to subscribers on Apple Podcasts.

  • Podcast: A Flawed Consensus: COVID-19 in Africa

    Bonus Episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/ep8-bonus-flawed-103879168

    Or via apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cassandra-voices-podcast/id1728086643

    In our latest Podcast Frank Armstrong interviews Toby Green, Professor of Precolonial and Lusophone African History and Culture at King’s College, London and the author of A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (2019).

    Toby Green also wrote, along with Thomas Fazi, The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality (2023). This latter work engages with the impact of lockdowns on African countries which were, for the most part, unaffected by the disease itself.

    In this podcast, Green discusses the application, more widely, of a form of authoritarian capitalism that lingers to this day, with the onset of perma-crises, continued restrictions on civil rights, and the ascendancy of techno-billionaires.

    He also points to an intellectual failure on the part of many on the left, who failed to recognise there were two versions of accumulation in conflict, one representing traditional forms of small businesses reliant on in-person contact, the other the monopolies which digital capitalism has favoured and whose power is now far, far greater.

    Frank Armstrong previously reviewed The Covid Consensus for Cassandra Voices.

    The track which features in this episode is Kurfewture (2021) by Shakalak:

  • Where is Shane MacGowan’s 1916 Rifle?

    We are sad to report that a Lee Enfield rifle, used in the 1916, Rising, belonging to the late great Shane MacGowan, has gone missing.

    The Lee Enfield 303 rifle was used by volunteers during Easter Week, and was given as a present to Shane MacGowan for his 60th birthday by fellow singer Glen Hansard. It has disappeared, thought to have been taken, possibly as a joke, from his home.

    The rifle has major emotional significance to Shane’s widow, Victoria, as it was used during the occupation of the GPO in 1916. It brought the singer some joy after being given as a present.

    “Shane was not a materialistic person,” Victoria says, explaining that mementos given to him by friends were valued by him much more than “flashy stuff.”

    Notably, the gun was already decommissioned, so “it’s not as if it can even be used for it’s original purpose,” Victoria added.

    Resale Value

    Typically stolen art and antiques may fetch 10 – 25% of full market value, as the object can never be sold on the open market again when it is known that it does not legally belong to the vendor.

    In this instance, as the unusable gun was bought for €2,000, this suggests that resale value may only be worth €200 – €500, in the event that the object is identifiable as having been acquired through misappropriation.

    Crucially, the value of art and antiques is all about the provenance – the story behind it, and where it came from.

    In this instance, as the gun has “H Munn” inscribed on the wooden butt, the artifact is particularly identifiable – and thus possibly of even less resale value than otherwise.

    Conscience

    Ultimately, the person who took it may want to look into their conscience and consider whether holding onto it at the cost of distressing his widow is worth the hassle.

    Alternatively, should the taker fail to find their conscience, it may be in their interest to evaluate whether the prospect of being prosecuted for criminal larceny is worth the while for something of relatively little monetary value – as well as facing potential ire from his army of fans on later dates.

    Speaking to Victoria, she says that “whoever took it probably didn’t mean any harm” and it “was possibly a joke” but that she “would love to get it back, no questions asked.”

    If it can be found, Cassandra Voices is happy to accept the artifact with no questions asked, and return it to Victoria. Just drop us a line: admin@cassandravoices.com.

  • Podcast: Musician of the Month John Cummins

    We have a special edition in our Musician of the Month series as Frank Armstrong interviews John Cummins of the Dublin band Shakalak.

    Aficionados of the Dublin cultural scene over the past decade or two are likely to be familiar with John Cummins. Cutting a dash with a distinctive Rasputin beard and Reggae styles, John’s poetic performances in the Dublin vernacular have mesmerised audiences young and old. His playful, rhyming verse always had great musicality, and it seemed a natural progression for him to begin collaborating with musicians, culminating in the formation of the band Shakalak in 2018, which also contains another former Musician of the Month in Fin Divilly. If you haven’t made it along to one of their gigs yet, you are in for a treat.

    John recalls some of his earliest musical memories:

    Absolutely loved music … I remember going into into the record player in the room and putting her on and learning how to treat the needle respectfully and all that. So you just listen to whatever was there. What was that? Leo Sayer, you know, things like that … And then when I was a little bit older, maybe my brother [Paul] was probably fifteen and he got his hands on the guitar … So Paul would be playing and learning songs in the room, and yeah, I’d be left handed picking her up upside down, just playing one string or something like that, you know, that kind of thing. He’d be doing Simon and Garfunkel songs. I remember your wonderful tonight, Eric Clapton. He learned how to do that one, and he told me that that was his song and that he wrote it, and I believed him. I was of an age to believe that … I must have believed that for years, until it was years later when I was at a party somewhere and I heard it …, fucking Penny dropped … I am old enough to remember Bob Marley when he passed away and and everyone getting the the reggae into you. The knitted jumpers [with] Bob Marley R.I.P. all around and Bobby Sands at the time, all that. And then people going off to the Lebanon, maybe bringing back cassette tapes … and they do the rounds around the estate … So you’d be getting all sorts. And then you may be working and then you’re buying, buying your own music, whatever you like.

    And talks about moving from poetic performances into becoming a musician:

    So everything that I’ve been writing for a good number of years has consciously been with structure around where it’s easily adaptable to a template for a song. So everything’s been written with music in mind for years and sometimes they’d have melodies, sometimes they wouldn’t, sometimes they’d have certain BPMs or whatever, or even a key. And around that time, 2010 was when I first started. I suppose really performing … I started doing the open mics [in the International], and Stephen James Smith would help me a lot back then. The glass sessions, the Monday Echo, similar things that Minty is doing now on the Tuesday nights and the circle sessions on the Monday nights. Great stuff. This is a great old spot.

    …

    And that was where I came out of the shell. I started off hiding behind the page. Then I’d be doing things with my eyes closed. And then you’re just meeting people and you’re hooking up, and you’re there strumming a guitar, and you’re chatting your poems over and it’s all coming together. Loads of little collaborations down the years … Played with a band during the Lingo Festival. I don’t know if you remember that. The Lingo Festival 2014, 15, 16, … played with a band. Then I got the bug and then there was a couple of vibe for fillers where I jumped up on stage with these amazing musicians. And I was doing my poems in between, and that gave me the bug as well. You know, I kept feeding the bug, as it were …  So Fin and I just got just got chatting. It just really happened very naturally, organically and quickly, you know? Meanie. A friend of Finn’s, came in with a couple of little beats because we were looking for a drummer back then, you know, a real life human being drummer like, which, you know, are not that easy to come across.

    As to the vibrancy of the Dublin cultural scene today compared to the time he was starting off in early 2010s he says:

    It’s a shilling thing, I think. It’s a money thing. Definitely. Things are more expensive. There were some Wednesday nights back then you’d be like a stone going across the town trying to catch several nights that were going on, and the talent, as it were. I don’t really like that word, the talent, but the people sharing their songs and doing their bits and bobs, it was great … there was something in the air … Well venues are less. That’s maths isn’t it. That’s just out there. You can Google that and find out all them that’s disappeared and gone … [But] I think it’s going strong [still] … If you go down there to the sessions on the Monday night [in the International], that room is jammed down there, you know. And then there’s the Smithfield creatives that do bits and bobs. I haven’t been on social media now for for a few years, so I feel that I’m not up to speed to tell you what’s going on around town. But from word of mouth, from what I’m hearing, it’s not the same. Not as maybe … prolific or strong or whatever, but it is happening. Definitely. Yeah.

  • ‘Devil in the Hills’: Jim Sheridan on the Sophie Toscan du Plantier Murder

    Listen to the second half of this podcast on Patreon.

    Jim Sheridan condemns the Irish government for handing over the file on the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case to the French authorities, wondering whether we are ‘still an independent country.’ He argues that this should never have been done ‘over the head of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ who concluded there was insufficient evidence to bring Ian Bailey to trial in the wake of the murder, or subsequently.

    Sheridan says:

    So okay, let’s just send it to France where they won’t allow Maureen Farrell [the witness who retracted her earlier claim that she had seen Ian Bailey with Sophie before the murder] to appear and say that she lied … And we have Francois Macron coming on the television speaking about this murder. Has he nothing better to do? I know the French family probably are trying their hardest … But there needs to be an intake of breath now and stop all this. It’s just too insane.

    Sheridan nevertheless claims to have ‘a soft spot’ for Sophie’s son, and ‘his pursuit of justice’, which he describes as ‘heroic’:

    But he was on the Late Late Show … and he said Bailey burned his coat on Christmas Day. But even the slightest perusal of the facts shows you that on the Christmas Day Bailey was on the Christmas swim, which is the only piece of video evidence we have.

    Jim Sheridan maintains that branding Ian Bailey a murderer, despite no criminal charge ever being made against him in an Irish court, brings shame on Ireland. But he argues there is no shame on West Cork.

    Sheridan also refers disparagingly to a 2000 New Yorker Magazine article by John Montague entitled ‘A Devil in the Hills’ – ‘Which meant the murderer had to be in West Cork because of a ludicrous idea that the only a local could know where she lived.’

    He believes, ‘we have to look at ourselves and grow up a bit … We can’t replace the French with the British.’

    Final Meeting

    Sheridan met Bailey two days before Christmas, ‘ostensibly to do an interview, but really just to see him.’ He adds that

    an interview with Ian was never of much value because he said the same thing over and over in the same way. He was almost like a child who wanted attention … his height, six four and big bearing and big voice … but when you got past that, there was a little child still there … He was like a big child. So I began to see him as a kid who thought he was in charge of everything … He was the admiral and I was the captain of his ship … he was crazy in a way … But it wasn’t a bad crazy.

    In the podcast, Sheridan explores what made Bailey the perfect fall guy or scapegoat:

    In that valley where Sophie lived. In 1845 there were probably twenty-seven hamlets. In 1848, there were probably none. So the tribal memory of West Cork is of a disastrous famine.

    He reveals how, remarkably, the name of the landlord at that time was Bailey:

    It’s almost like the Sophie’s murder in its appearance mirrors the events of the Famine with a body left exposed. And I think it hit a tribal memory of shame and devastation, and somebody had to be responsible. And who’s responsible for the famine? It’s not the potatoes. It’s not a blight. It’s the English … whether they were or not. To name an Englishman was almost perfect, as they say in darts: 180.

    He adds that

    The Englishman they named was very eccentric and had a sergeant major accent, and he used words and phrases in a very ironic and sarcastic way, almost like a military man.

    Sheridan insists:

    The only way you can understand sarcasm and irony is in a power structure where even though somebody is saying something you understand, that doesn’t mean what it says. For instance.. [if] the Queen saying to the servants, “I love your shoes this morning,” means he hasn’t polished them. But the servant is so troubled in the power structure he knows exactly that the compliment is the opposite. That produces a dissociation with people in the way we speak and act. And Bailey was English perfection in sarcasm and irony. So, when he’s first asked, when he’s first told that he’s going to be sacked. Like anybody. He’s angry. And like anybody, he’s trying to rationalize it and he asks why. And they say, well, people are saying you’re the killer. At which point Bailey is probably the only journalist who’s really pointing the finger at France, at the husband … correctly or incorrectly, we don’t know. Probably incorrectly, but we leave that aside. [Then to the] editor who is firing him he says people are saying, you did it. And he says: “of course I did it to get a good story” … Which actually means nothing like: “I killed her” It means: “if my objective was to write stories about the murder. And that’s the reason I killed her. It’s not working, is it? I’m being fired.” That’s what it means.

    Jim Sheridan is unsure whether the new documentary he has made will blow the case open, but contends that ‘some of the information that I’ve got is very, very interesting … Some of which I got too late to include in the Sky documentary, and some of which I’ve got subsequently.’

  • Jim Sheridan Authors Screenplay about Lockerbie

    In entertainment news, reports have surfaced that Jim Sheridan – who directed and co-wrote In the Name of the Father (1993) among other award-winning films – along with his daughter Kirsten Sheridan, have written the screenplay for a new five-part series based on the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Filming is due to begin in Glasgow later this month

    Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit, with stopovers in London and New York City. After taking off from London, at around 7pm on December 21, 1988 – while flying over the Scottish town of Lockerbie – a bomb exploded killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew.

    Parts of the aircraft also crashed on Lockerbie itself, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 deaths, it remains, by some distance, the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom. By comparison, 56 died in the 7/7 attacks on London in 2005, and 29 died in Omagh in 1999.

    Colin Firth is set to portray Dr. Jim Swire. Swire’s daughter, Flora died in the disaster and he, along with his wife Jane, doggedly pursued justice for her and other victims of the bombing.

    Following a long investigation, involving UK police and the FBI, arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991. Ultimately, in 1999, then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi handed the two men over for trial at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands. This followed protracted negotiations and U.N. sanctions.

    In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was found guilty and jailed for life for the crime. In August 2009, however, he was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds, after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in May 2012. Al-Megrahi remains the only person to have been convicted for the attack.

    Then President, Muammar Ghaddafi accepted Libya’s responsibility for the bombing and went on to pay compensation to the victims’ families, although he maintained that he had never given the order for it.

    Throughout his long career, Jim Sheridan has combined the role of film maker and activist. In the Name of the Father, which he directed and co-wrote with Terry George, is an account of the Guilford Four, four men falsely convicted of the 1974 Guilford pub bombings. In 1989 they were cleared of all charges and released from prison after serving for nearly fifteen years behind bars.

    In more recent times, Jim Sheridan has taken a keen interest in the still unsolved Sophie du Plantier murder case, called. He recently made a series for Sky: Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie.

    Viewers will be intrigued to discover what angle he takes on the events in Lockerbie.

    Feature Image: Bob Quinn

  • Protected: EP1.BONUS Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied! With guest Patrick Cockburn

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  • Podcast: Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied! With guest Patrick Cockburn

    The first Cassandra Voices Podcast, hosted by Luke Sheahan, features a long form interview with the veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn. Patrick’s father Claud, a leading British Communist member and journalist fought in the Spanish Civil War and eventually settled in Ireland. Patrick says of his father:

    He used to say the big battalion commanders want to convince the small battalions, the weaker, the less wealthy that there’s absolutely no point in resisting the big powers, they might as well give up. Claude believed exactly the opposite, the big powers are always more fragile, that they had points of vulnerability and you can attack them, and that’s why I have just published this book, which will be published later this year which is a biography of my father which is called Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied.’

    Following in his father’s footsteps, for fifty years Patrick Cockburn has been practicing the art of journalism with integrity and persistence: a specialist on the Middle East, he has written extensively on wars and political machinations from Beirut to Belfast and Baghdad.

    Within books like The Occupation and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (2002) (written with his brother Andrew), Patrick Cockburn has revealed the workings of Arab dictatorships and Western Imperialism alike. Over the last decade, he has also created a separate, no less distinguished profile as a memoirist: The Broken Boy (2022) describes his survival of a Polio epidemic in 1950s Cork, while Henry’s Demons (2011) co-authored with his son, immerses the reader into the pain of psychosis.

    For our conversation with Patrick Cockburn, we sought to sketch out the lives and work of two independent-minded writers: both himself and his father, Claud. As indicated, Claud’s fifty-year career brought him around the world, from Civil War Spain to Wall Street during the crash of 1929,  back to 1930s London, where his newsletter The Week both documented and fought the rise of Fascism. It was only after WW2 that Claud moved to Ireland, where Patrick and his siblings would be born from the 50s onwards.

    Making use of unclassified MI5 files, and an abundance of material directly remembered from his late father, Patrick spoke to Cassandra Voices as he was preparing the final manuscript of a new memoir, covering Claud’s life.

    Patrick also spoke out passionately about coverage of the war in Gaza:

    Evil becomes normalised … and a lot of the governments don’t want to recognise and the papers and those outlets that support the governments don’t want to go on about it. So it’s perfectly reasonable that we should have a big story about the Russians firing some rockets into a city in Ukraine and half a dozen people are killed and others injured. That is wrong and that gets a lot of publicity. Then several hundred people are killed in Gaza and that’s on the bottom of the page now, if it’s mentioned at all.

    The first part of the podcast is freely available. You can listen to part two by subscribing on Apple podcasts. We will also be sending the second half of the show to our loyal Patreon supporters in the next few days. The decision to charge for the second half comes from our determination to maintain our independence.

    Episode One: Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied! With guest Patrick Cockburn.
    Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
    Host: Luke Sheehan
    Music: Loafing Heroes: ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com
    Produced by Massimiliano Galli: https://www.massimilianogalli.com
    Feature Image: Daniele Idini