Editor’s Note: This is the second part of an extended essay by Irish artist Terence O’Connell but can be read as a stand alone piece. Rationalism is a psychosis; a dissociation of intellect and feeling; the suppression of our intuitive, emotional, and sensual being (the heart’s domain). Enlightenment thinkers wished to replace the credulity of … Read more
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 … Read more
It is a notable feature of the prevailing world order that citizens of Western states, in particular, are significantly ill-informed and mis-informed of the past and present contexts of either their disadvantage or their comfort. For centuries the corporate/political/church covenant (imperialism) has sucked the earth of its bounty, dissipated its coherence, shattered communities and brought … Read more
On the April 13 2024, a man stabbed several people in a shopping centre in Sydney. The morning after, I was walking past the Four Courts in Dublin, when a man approached me making a stabbing motion in the air. I fixed my eyes on him as my heart sped up, but it stopped as … Read more
It’s Mother’s Day morning and I am on the brink. Desperate, determined, exhausted and certain all at once. I have passed an eternal night trying to push out a child, with no apparent progress. I don’t have a midwife gently coaching, or calling the ambulance, as the case may be. I am freebirthing. ‘Is that … Read more
Jim Sheridan is a significant figure in the international film industry because of his creativity and talent. He has made an influential documentary, ‘Murder at the Cottage’, about the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case. In the recent Cassandra Voices Podcast, he explained why he believed Ian Bailey is innocent and much maligned. In a recent … Read more
In a seminal scene at the end of the film Joker (2019) the eponymous character, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is being interviewed by Robert de Niro’s character, the TV talk show host Murray Franklin. The Joker asks: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and … Read more
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 … Read more
This Ireland exists. And should one travel there and not find it, then they have not looked closely enough.. Hugo Hamilton: The Island of Talking – In the footsteps of Heinrich Boll #IrelandisFull: the migration of this phrase from the far-right into the mainstream is an awful feature of our woe-begotten times. It begs the … Read more
Editor’s Note: Readers of a sensitive disposition may find aspects of this account of drug-taking and sex difficult to stomach, but we believe this is a story worth telling. Our mission is to provide a home for independent voices that inspire new thinking. ***** I awake, into my usual morning of panic but today might … Read more