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Cassandra warned Trojans to beware of Greek bearing gifts This site will be a forum for warnings that should be heeded.

24/10/2025

"I distinctly recall three encounters with him. Each left a mark. The first was at Another Love Story music festival, in 2017 or thereabouts. Our conversation ranged over environmental issues. Initially, I was wary of someone who worked within mainstream media, providing cover with slim doses of virtue, as I saw it. Yet I found we shared many of the same ideals.

The diaphanous sprite on film seemed remote from this formidable presence in the flesh. After all, this was a man who had crossed continents, daring to go to places that made me cower. I wasn’t won over entirely, however. I wanted more from him, more unsettling resistance.

We next met at Dublin’s first Extinction Rebellion demonstration in 2019, a movement which at that time exhibited a child-like innocence, at least for many Irish participants. He had the same friendly presence, despite my reticence, but I found something else there now, a commitment to resistance.

That first demo occurred at precisely the same location, in front of the GPO on O’Connell Street, as another rather more pivotal gathering in 1916. Nearby, on Moore Street, one of its leaders – who showed up despite believing it to be a doomed enterprise – Manchán’s granduncle Michael Joseph O’Rahilly – known as ‘The O’Rahilly’ – was shot by British machine gun fire. He made it as far as a nearby laneway, now called O’Rahilly Parade, where he succumbed to his wounds.

There was a glow to Manchán that day. Later, I recall him forming part of a vanguard that staged a sit-down protest, blocking car traffic along the quays. I watched on, unwilling to face what seemed, with Gardaí in attendance, another doomed enterprise, inviting arrest. Now who was the real resistance fighter? It would not have been his first time behind bars. But the authorities were all too canny that day. There were to be no high-profile martyrs.

The last encounter I had with Manchán was in late 2020 at the Fumbaly Café...

An excerpt from Frank Armstrong's tribute to Manchán Magan

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full article

09/10/2025

...

In the famous common law prosecution orange lily case Humphries v O’ Connor (1864) plucking an orange order lily from a woman in the nationalist area of Belfast was deemed a justifiable police act and regulation of protest, as the offending lily had the potential to cause a breach of the peace. This occurs when an individual causes harm, or if it is likely that they will cause harm to another individual or property, or if it puts another person in fear of being harmed.

As Shakespeare put it in Sonnet 94:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

But what harm or public nuisance has Banksy caused? He has frankly adorned RCJ with better artwork outside than there is inside. Is it really an incitement to protest in contravention of the law or a protest to survive?
..

An excerpt from David Langwallner's article ' and Protest Rights: The View from the Robing Room'

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full article

07/10/2025

"The book opens with the kidnappings of Jose Manuel Perez Rojo and his wife Patricia Roisinblit, who were both involved in left-wing activism and resistance with the Montoneros against the right-wing turbulence in Argentina that culminated in General Jorge Rafael Videla’s dictatorship. Jose and Patricia’s toddler Mariana was taken to her grandparents by the parents’ kidnappers. In her late stages of pregnancy, Patricia gave birth to a boy while detained at the School of Naval Mechanics, known as ESMA.

The book focuses on the Roisinblit family as it traces both Argentina’s dictatorship history and that of the Abuelas. Rosa Roisinblit, who passed away in September this year at the age of 106, was one of the Abuelas’ founding members. For Rosa, the disappearance of her daughter and abduction of her grandson altered her existence from a person who completely avoided mention of politics to a driving force behind the organisation that openly challenged the dictatorship. At first through persistent presence and silent protest at Plaza de Mayo, the Abuelas would find themselves at the helm of exposing the systematic disappearances of dictatorship opponents and their stolen children.
..

A new book tells the the story of the Abuelaa de Plaza de Mayo - a group of Argentinian grandmothers whose sons and daughters were disappeared by the dictatorship.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full review.

06/10/2025

"Then suddenly in the near distance, a candle flame appeared. It glowed brightly, but all it illuminated was the tall wax candle that had breathed it into life. Midwinter stood in oblivion. Then, through the black void, in the dim candle light, a human face appeared. At first it was just a shape, a vague image. He rubbed his eyes. Quietly, he watched the scene, by now accepting that reality had abandoned him. Like the calm man at the gallows, he had excepted his fate. Perhaps he had gone mad and this was the asylum. It was Talinsky’s face appearing, and he began to speak.
..

From 'The Ghost in the Garrick' new fiction by Dominic Mallen

LINK IN BIO or STORY to read in full

https://cassandravoices.com/culture/literature/fiction/the-ghost-in-the-garrick/

02/10/2025

"Her husband’s illnesses led Crispina to engage with the djabakós – traditional healers with knowledge of local herbs and their properties. The djabakós ‘helped with fevers, difficult childbirth, worked with the bodies of the dead and provided succour to all those hanging on to the worlds of the living.’ According to Green, ‘[t]he importance of the djabakós in Cacheu spoke to the fact that African political power remained dominant.’

At that time in Cacheu, as in Europe, ‘the health of the body and the spirit were seen as integrated’. Thus, ‘healing the body also required healing the spirit,’ which gave rise to strange – in the minds of colonial authorities – practices, including animal sacrifices. Moreover, many of these healers also practised Islam, which challenged Christian supremacy.

Green observes that disease was rife in Cacheu ‘because this was a town at the heart of a period of crisis-driven transformation;’ further opining that ‘periods of crisis and the collapse of an existing sociopolitical culture are often accompanied by disease.’
..

An excerpt from Frank Armstrong's review of a new book by Toby Green exploring how an assault on West African ways of healing inaugurated a form of medical colonialism in West Africa in the 17th century.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full article

29/09/2025

"So autumn, please, no fickle / promises of crisp cold days that don't/ materialise"
From 'September' a new poem by Lorely Forester.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full poem

https://cassandravoices.com/culture/literature/poetry/poem-september-is-here/

26/09/2025

"...When
Guinea first, and then the Parti Solidaire
demanded heartened soul, unstinting
dedication, day and night, I gave my all,
humming like a never-empty engine
of vivacity for Africa, my nation."

From a new The Revolutionary by Ciaran O'Rourke dedicated to Andrée Blouin, 1921-1986.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full poem

25/09/2025

"The last time I encountered Bono I was working student security at a gig by Welsh band The Alarm on the UCD Belfield campus, on 22 October 1983. My job was to guard their dressing room door. The ever-ebullient one arrived with an entourage, to offer moral support to a group who had toured with U2 as an opening act. He gave me a big wave and full-on smile as soon as he saw me (much to the jaw-dropping surprise of the too-cool-for-school Students’ Union social secretary and his crew, whom I sensed had pegged me as a bit of an nerd), told me how he really wanted to get down to doing some serious reading soon too, and inquired what time I’d be finished my doorman duties. I told him being a student was fine, except for the lack of money. ‘Sure, what do you need money for?’ was his reply. Later on he did a turn on stage with his Cymru friends, improvising lyrics to Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, and then disappeared into the night.
..

An excerpt from Des Traynor's new article 'How Bono Nearly Ruined My Life in which he charts the course of a brief friendship that began in unlikely circumstances when the two attended the Shalom Christian prayer group in depressed 1980s Dublin.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full article.

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Image: Bono performing with U2 in 2011.

18/09/2025

Maldon days

by Deborah Mason

hēt þā hyssa hwæne    hors forlǣtan,
feorr āfȳsan,    and forð gangan,
hicgan tō handum,    and tō hige gōdum.
The Battle of Maldon (991 AD)

Galvanized into action,   my companion horses neighed
as they galloped to the woods,   riderless and rudderless.
I turned back to my liege lord,   reluctant to retreat,
but he waved me away from him,   although I was his steadfast steed
who had taken him into battle boldly before   on many occasions.

In the woods, we regrouped.   Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s proud hawk
circled and swooped overhead,   dismissed as we had been,
uneasy as we were.   We faced out towards the riverbank,
watching the fighting begin,   watching the ruthless invaders wreak havoc.
We waited for the command to return   but it never came.

I went down to the battlefield first,   saw my beloved ealdorman
bristling with spears,   slaughtered alongside his faithful warriors.
Leaving our heroes, our lords lying lifeless,   we trotted back to our stables,
knowing that our return would herald the defeat,   set off the lamentations
of the families left behind,   filling us all with sorrow for our great loss.

Feature Image: Battle of Maldon plains.

17/09/2025

In our new podcast Luke Sheehan interviews John Dillon, Regius Professor of Greek (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin, an Irish classicist and philosopher considered a world authority in ancient philosophy and Platonism. Born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1939, he returned to Ireland as a child and studied Classics at Oxford before earning a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. He taught at Berkeley from 1969 until his appointment at Trinity in 1980, where he remained until his retirement in 2006. Dillon is founder and Director Emeritus of the Dublin Plato Centre and a member of several prestigious academies, including the Royal Irish Academy and the Academy of Athens. A professor Emeritus of the British Academy. He has published over thirty books and numerous articles, focusing on the transmission of Platonic philosophy.

LINK IN BIO or STORY

https://cassandravoices.com/society-culture/podcast-he-bought-plato-a-conversation-with-john-dillon/

16/09/2025

"The title of this article ['The Birth of a Doctor] may seem somewhat prosaic, but given that it really is about birth after death it seems appropriate. For I really did die on July 25 2022, and that what came back to life was not the same person, and certainly not the same doctor.
..

Billy Ralph expands on what led him to attempt to take his own life, and the changes he has made to his medical practice.

LINK IN BIO or STORY

https://cassandravoices.com/science-environment/the-birth-of-a-doctor/

Image: Pixabay

15/09/2025

What makes for fine rhetoric in an age of disinformation? Clearly, this is distinct from the techniques employed by corporate motivational speakers, tele-evangelists or self-help gurus. A useful starting point is to examine Aristotle’s views on Rhetoric, who argued that speech can produce persuasion (pistis) either through the character (êthos) of the speaker, the emotional state (pathos) of the listener, or the argument (logos) itself. Artistotle divides rhetoric into three branches. Deliberative speech that sets out to persuade or dissuade. Judicial speech that accuses or defends, and Epideictic speech that praises or blames.
..

David Langwallner considers some of the great exponents of rhetoric, as well practitioners of the dark arts like

LINK IN BIO or STORY

https://cassandravoices.com/society-culture/on-rhetoric/

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