One trail runs dry, but a scent hangs in the air. Pursuant to Stephen Court’s Drivetime article for Cassandra Voices deconstructing the Irish media’s – including RTÉ ’s – relationship with the motor car sector, I lodged a Freedom of Information (FOI) request with the national broadcaster. I sought records of payments, or payments-in-kind, from … Read more
What does it mean to be a loafer? Loafing as an activity has always existed. It has been carried out, witnessed, imagined and sung since the dawn of human time; from the ancient Aborigines on their walkabout, to the modern idling of the nineteenth and twentieth century dandies. Today, loafing as a mode of existence, … Read more
On May 9th Malaysia’s electorate unequivocally rejected Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s Barisan National coalition, including the UMNO party which had participated in every government since the foundation of the state. The demise of this kleptocratic regime was met with shock, even denial, by now unemployed government ministers. A democratic, peaceful overthrow took place without … Read more
Is it cynical to suggest that Ireland’s ruling Fine Gael party is using the referendum to repeal the eighth amendment to the Constitution – which equates the life of a pregnant mother with the unborn – to deflect criticism from its hands-off approach to governance? One of the worst housing crises in the history of … Read more
Writing in The Observer in 1961, Peter Benenson lamented that ‘in Spain, students who circulate leaflets calling for the right to hold discussions on current affairs are charged with ‘military rebellion’.’ So what? You may ask yourself – that was 57 years ago under the Franco dictatorship. But that’s the point: six decades later in … Read more
Professional experience as a criminal lawyer has shaped my appreciation of the interplay between political subversion and its criminalisation. I have observed how real subversion often emanates from those state authorities inflicting punishment against the supposedly subversive. This has come into sharp focus since a German court declined to extradite the deposed Catalan president Carles … Read more
Catalan secessionists have succeeded in framing the debate over Catalan independence as a stark choice between two mutually exclusive options: either the status quo of Catalonia retaining regional autonomy within Spain, or for Catalonia to become an independent republic. Anyone objecting that neither might not be the best solution to the current deadlock is dismissed … Read more
On yoga teacher training courses among the heartening questions I receive are ones that readers of my previous piece have also posed: how can I be compassionate towards what I consider wrong, or evil, and still fight it? And, does an excess of compassion diminish a capacity to affect change? The short answer is the … Read more
Posterity will determine if the Italian election results of March 4th 2018 marked an earthquake that will endure in the landscape. Or will a result, apparently seismic, turn out to be like the volcano that smoulders, without ever fully clearing its throat? No one is quite sure the precise dish the electorate will be served … Read more
The greatest trial lawyer of the last century was undoubtedly Clarence Darrow. He was often described as just a lucky country bumpkin, or a ‘lucky old son of a […]’ in the vernacular of the time. More than a lawyer though, he became the exemplar and paradigm of secularism in America, a voice of reason … Read more