• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
independent left logo

Independent Left

Environmentalism, socialism, freedom and equality. #liveablecity

  • Contact Us
  • Articles
    • The Housing Crisis: Causes and Solutions
    • Childcare and Early Childhood Education: a Socialist View
    • Socialism in Ireland
    • Save Moore Street
  • Podcast
  • About
  • News
  • Why join?

Ciarán O’Rourke's features and reviews for Independent Left

Irish writers show solidarity with jailed Indian poet Varavara Rao

19/07/2020 By Ciarán O'Rourke 5 Comments

Varavara Rao in 2006 behind metal shutters

The Indian poet Varavara Rao was arrested and jailed in the aftermath of a violent protest at Bhima Koregan on 1 January 2018. Alongside ten other defendants, Varavara Rao denies all the charges raised against him. The elderly poet contracted COVID-19 while in prison and has been over two years in jail under appalling conditions […]

Filed Under: All Posts, Protests Ireland

Socialism and Sinn Féin

14/07/2020 By Ciarán O'Rourke 1 Comment

Sinn Fein press conference during COVID19

“Sinn Fein has won the election,” declared party leader Mary Lou McDonald (with some justice) in early February, as results confirmed that for the first time in the history of the Irish State, neither Fianna Fail nor Fine Gael had achieved a clear majority or path to forming the next government, while “Ireland’s left-wing nationalist […]

Filed Under: All Posts, Irish Political Parties

Review: Reading ‘Capitalism in the Web of Life’ by Jason W. Moore after COVID19

02/06/2020 By Ciarán O'Rourke Leave a Comment

Cover of Capitalism in the Web of Life

A few weeks into the current lockdown, as fatalities and reported cases of COVID19 were continuing to rise, news from the frontlines of Ireland’s food production and agri-sector began to arrive, casting an unsettling light on the many – and now overtly dangerous – levels of exploitation on which this cornerstone of the national economy […]

Filed Under: All Posts, Reviews

Review: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

03/03/2020 By Ciarán O'Rourke 1 Comment

Cover An Indigenous People's History of the United States

Speaking in the extended aftermath of the so-called Indian Removal Act of 1830, Andrew Jackson, the slave-owning US president famed for his previous (and merciless) warfare against Creek and Seminole tribes in the American South, laid out the case for indigenous extermination. ‘They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire […]

Filed Under: All Posts, Reviews

Derek Mahon, A Poet of The Left

14/12/2019 By Ciarán O'Rourke 1 Comment

Derek Mahon poet

By Ciarán O’Rourke ‘I know the simple life / Would be right for me’, wrote Derek Mahon in Ovid in Tomis, ‘If I were a simple man.’ A glad complexity, it seems, is the order of the day; a dynamic interweaving of expression and insight evident throughout Mahon’s work, lending the poems both a clarity […]

Filed Under: All Posts, Reviews

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2

Copyright © 2023 · About· Contact· Privacy Policy· Why Join Independent Left?