http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 2 Mar 2004 11:06:26 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/02/110626.php Mick FealtyI'm slowly making my way through Paul Arthur's so far excellent tome of the relationships between Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland - Special Relationships. At the end of chapter two, "The Fatal Embrace," he notes an important characteristic of pre 1969 politics within in Northern Ireland:...the most significant aspect of the party system was its degree of political underdevelopment, which manifested itself not in the two communities' 'inability to dominate' each other but their common vulnerability to internal factionalism; this in turn undermined their leadership's capacity to govern.Such a scenario may still be familiar (at least up until the November elections) to activists in the two older party's that were the main subject of Arthur's attention: the Ulster Unionists; and now the SDLP, as direct successors to the old Nationalist party. Is it possible that Arthur here points to the real reason for the apparent runaway success of the what are often described as the extreme parties DUP and Sinn Fein? That is, the ability to provide strong and effective leadership, an ability to dialogue with its support, and make deals with its opponents? Books13324@blogcritics.org Tue, 2 Mar 2004 11:06:26 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/25/061159.php Mick FealtyIt might be said of Anthony McIntyre that he is a dissent first and a republican second. Implacably opposed to the Belfast Agreement and Sinn Fein's role in the peace process, he is also against any return to violence. Recently he watched the American docu-comic, and fellow dissident, Michael Moore performance in West Belfast. McIntyre was not impressed with Moore's grasp of Belfast's political complexities:Moore gave me the clear impression that he was good on American domestic affairs but very vague when it came to Iraq and Israel, and utterly hopeless when addressing the conflict in Ireland. His lack of insight he conceals well with humour, but at the heel of the hunt it remained none the more insightful for that. Did we really need him to come here and play to our prejudices? He pretended to his audience that decommissioning of IRA weaponry had not yet taken place. And the audience in turn pretended to believe him.It raises some interesting questions. Is Moore spreading himself too thinly, attempting to address too many questions outside his local experience? Or is his performance always simply about winging it? It may also be that whilst dissidence is a crucial ingredient of a healthy open society, in its purest form, it is not a engine for arriving at workable political agenda. Politics7802@blogcritics.org Mon, 25 Aug 2003 06:11:59 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/19/044649.php Mick FealtyPhillip French reviews a new biography of John Ford, which identifies his early life as part of an Irish American community in New England as having a formative influence in the perspective of his many classic films.Thus when it came to the conflict between the US cavalry and the Indians in his great postwar Westerns, Ford was on both sides. Moreover, he seemed to regard any persecuted group as honorary Irishmen, whether they were dispossessed Okies heading for California in The Grapes of Wrath, Native Americans returning to their tribal hunting ground in Cheyenne Autumn or Welsh miners drawn together by grief in How Green Was My Valley. Books5406@blogcritics.org Mon, 19 May 2003 04:46:49 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/31/100244.php Mick FealtyJoseph O'Neill reviews the latest suppliment in an increasing cannon of histories trying to explain the phenomenon of the Provisional IRA - Armed Struggle: The history of the IRA (yet to be published).On the whole O'Neill welcomes this book as a successful response to 'an enormous challenge of narrative, historical research and tact'. But he has two important reservations. The first concerns what he sees as a lack of intellectual honesty:there can be little question that the IRA consists of a collection of individuals who, however ethically motivated or clever, lack the intellectual honesty or capacity to recognise that their objective of unifying the island violates the very principles in which they profess to believe..The second 'area of doubt' is: that there is simply no instance of the unionist/loyalist political community making any unforced significant concession to nationalist aspirations of autonomy. This leads one to an ugly conclusion: but for the IRA's campaign of violence, there would not have been a Good Friday agreement.He is careful not to conclude that, in and of itself, this cannot justify the eponymous armed struggle of the book. Books4228@blogcritics.org Mon, 31 Mar 2003 10:02:44 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/25/043056.php Mick FealtyThere's been an interesting flow of information on the post famine links between Ireland and South America. A few months back Slugger O'Toole picked up on two pieces from Guillermo McLoughlin and Edmundo Murray.Today the New York Times reviews a fictionalised biography of a Cork woman who by way of a short spell in Paris became the mistress of one of the that Paraquay's earlier dictators. Not great history but, perhaps, a rattling good yarn.For further detail check out the Irish Diaspora Studies in Argentina site. Books4049@blogcritics.org Tue, 25 Mar 2003 04:30:56 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/17/065851.php Mick FealtyThe professor of Irish History at Oxford's St Patrick's Day op-ed for the New York Times was well timed to co-incide with the publication of his latest book, which shows a degree of marketing nous if nothing else.Richard Eder reviews Roy Foster's latest contribution to the revision of the tangled mass that passes for history in Ireland. Eder highlights the literary focus of Foster's work which suggests the conflation of story and history is a peculiarly Irish trait:''The elision of the personal and the national, the way history becomes a kind of scaled-up biography, and biography a microcosmic history, is a particularly Irish phenomenon,'' he writes. And, noting the 19th-century novel's contribution to a national sense in some countries, he points out that Ireland lacks any such formative exemplar: ''History -- or historiography -- is our true novel.'' Books3855@blogcritics.org Mon, 17 Mar 2003 06:58:51 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/14/104022.php Mick FealtyThe BBC two part television drama written by Ronan Bennett finally comes to America to a reasonable review in the New York Times. Video3795@blogcritics.org Fri, 14 Mar 2003 10:40:22 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/10/064055.php Mick FealtyThis looks a like a good read. The biography of a fascinating historical character, Erskine Childers:Born in England but raised in Ireland, he fought for Britain in the First World War, before joining Sinn Fein and then the IRA. He was executed by the Irish Free State, but his son eventually became president of the Irish Republic. Chiefly known in Ireland for smuggling German guns into the country on the eve of the Great War, he is most famous in England as the author of the novel that, some say, anticipated - and may even have helped precipitate - that conflict.For a more swashbuckling account of escape, The Guardian's book of the week review is of The Voyage of the Catalpa: A Perilous Journey and Six Irish Rebels' Escape to Freedom. Books3700@blogcritics.org Mon, 10 Mar 2003 06:40:55 EST