Andrei Tarkovsky’s painterly, moody films capture something that is hard to describe, a sense of searching and bleakness at the same time. There are deep, fundamental questions at the centre of his films: it is as though the structures of the world are recognisable but translucent, as though something exists but has lost its essential… Read More The Memory of Embers
There is a moment in the film Wizards of the Kremlin when the protagonist, Baronov, describes information warfare as “twisting a wire”. It doesn’t matter which way you twist the wire, what you believe in, or who is impacted. The brilliance is in finding an opening to insert the twisted wire and start shredding national… Read More Twisted Wire – Subversion and Information Warfare (Part One of an Occasional Series)
I cannot remember the scent of figs in the bright citrus of an Alexandrine morning Or pale yellow grasses that once carried a baby on a river Or apricots that tasted like the first prayer on a foreign shore after the long voyage Or the sound of wild seabirds, wings outstretched in the early morning… Read More Grief Is A Nomad
In the lilac of an Irish morning White swans return to shore In the swirl and eddies of the coastal inlets Sea grasses and baby crabs, too soft for shells Hover between the salt waters and the fresh waters It is a hidden place, a glommering between the twilight and the deep lights These places … Read More Wild White Swans on an Irish Morning
“Crime takes the pulse of a culture: it tells us the truth about ourselves”. Terrorism is the darkened ground where we grow our own monsters. Historically commentators on terrorism have likened it to mythical beasts – the hydra of carnage, the monster from the depths, the serpent of jihadism, the vengeful fire bearing figure who… Read More So, you Write About Terrorism?
Japanese cinema has a dark, often subversive narrative of violence. In the years since local terrorist group, Aum Shin Rikyo carried out a series of devastating attacks on an unsuspecting urban population, there appears to be an upward trend in violence in Japanese cinema. At a talk at the Japan foundation in London in 2018,… Read More Aum Shin Rikyo: Terrorism in Japanese Cinema
Attacks in New York and Washington on 9 11 by a network of operatives from Al Qaeda changed America’s perspective on the terrorist threat. The Pentagon, the nerve center of American military operations around the world, and the twin towers, symbols of America’s global economic power lay in ruins. Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind… Read More Stories of the Minotaur: Terrorism as Narrative
The Irish Republican Army has always had a complex relationship with the English prison system. For an IRA activist, there were always only two options – death or incarceration – and so the stories of the prison experience have long been woven into IRA narratives of protest against British rule. For the British government, its… Read More IRA Paramilitaries in Prison: Philosophers in a Cage
