The Clear Lens Podcast

In this episode we're talking about the rapid rise of legislation across the West, giving states new powers for mass surveillance, severe punishment for dissent and the erosion of civil liberties like free speech - all while Rubio announced plans to dismantle the international criminal court. Who are the tech oligarchs behind the oppressive technology capable of population control? Palantir gets our focus here, as well as the Dialog conference planned to go ahead in Ireland before activists squashed it. Why was a left wing Irish senator planning to attend? We cover all these and more.
 

The antidote to the alienation of late-stage capitalism, with its relentless promotion of hyper individualism, is community. Hugh Doyle and Shane O'Connor joined us on The Clear Lens to talk about the power of communities coming together across Ireland and the world in solidarity with Palestine.
On the brightest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere, communities across Ireland (moving meitheals) will arise before dawn, climb the mountain closest to their home and fly the Palestinian flag at the summit. Together, people will decide on actions they can take in the year ahead for Palestinian liberation.
Hope is active and change happens in community, where people are rooted to the land and connected in purpose. 
This was a powerful, moving and at times beautifully raw conversation. 
I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed recording it.

Irish poet and activist Mikey Cullen joined us live on The Clear Lens this evening from the flotilla. As well as giving us an update on the flotilla's progress as Israeli media threatens a violent interception, he had a list of key requests.
Here they are 👇- Create and share email templates contacting the Department of Foreign Affairs and flood their emails.- Demand that the flotilla has safe passage and that crew members' human rights are upheld.- Enact the Occupied Territories Bill.- Get the US military out of Shannon.- Enshrine Neutrality in the constitution.- Hit the streets.- Boycott.

In this episode we're joined by Claire Liddy and Eoin Keary from Neart Núr - a charity providing culturally sensitive, trauma-informed play therapy and psychosocial support to Palestinian medical evacuees in Jordan.
For over a decade, Claire's volunteer work has taken her from the refugee camps of Palestine and Lebanon to the underserved communities of Kenya. Her first trip to Palestine was in 2019 and in 2024 she completed her first psychosocial play therapy project in the A’mari camp in the West Bank.
Eoin met Claire through past charity work together and the two have joined forces to create Neart Núr. Join us for a conversation about their important work and the obstacles they have had to overcome from Israeli opposition and arbitrary entry bans to Palestine.

In this episode Audrey Kissane and Daragh Cogley speak with author and historian Conor McCabe about his book Sins of The Father: The Decisions That Shaped The Irish Economy. We cover the place of the grazier in Irish society, from their post-famine rise to their special treatment under the new Irish Free State – to the detriment of the general Irish population.
The graziers were a class that financially benefited from the replacement of 2 million Irish people during An Gorta Mor (who either starved or emigrated) with 2.5 million cattle on freshly cleared lands.
We go through the decades after the establishment of the Free State, looking at how the government’s stubborn insistence on maintaining parity with the British sterling prevented the development of indigenous industry and saw instead the rise of foreign direct investment as the primary means to industrialise Ireland. We spoke also about the emergence of a specific kind of Irish capitalist entrepreneur – one that built a fortune around servicing the needs of multinationals – whether through building their companies, providing legal services, etc.
This is a really valuable episode. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of the nature of the Irish economy and an awareness of who it is designed - and not designed - to serve.

Our people have always known the importance of right relationship with the land. That's why we revere the Goddess Éiriu, who represents the vital union between Sovereignty and Fertility and the embodiment of prosperity and abundance. It's why we respect the fairies - na daoine maithe - and their place in the unseen ecosystem.
Our fortunes, good and bad, were once well understood to be tied to our treatment of - and relationship with - nature. To this day you'll be hard-pressed to find an Irish person who would mess with a fairy fort!🧚‍♀️🌳 ☠️
We can view the way our people celebrated the coming and going of seasons as an intelligent way of ensuring the collective was living according to the natural metabolism of the season. These intelligent practices were forms of social technologies, ensuring harmony between people and the ecosystem that supported them.
Under waves of colonisation, Ireland gradually lost sovereignty and, with it, a lot of the memory of these practices. The separation caused by land clearances (to make way for cattle) led to a decline in fertility as the stewards of the land were evicted. Soil exhaustion caused multiple famines and was a direct result of unnatural, brutal and extractive colonial economics.
The partition treaty of 1921 didn't restore land sovereignty to the people. The colour of the flag flying in Dublin changed, but exploitative economic systems didn't. 
We need to pick up the abandoned demands of some of our greatest revolutionary figures, such as James Connolly - who inspired the title of this podcast. "For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth." 
It's time for real sovereignty, which  belongs to the people and not "enterprise." 
With the urgency of the times we find ourselves in, where we could argue that WW3 has already begun, it has never been as important to be able to sustain ourselves. Ireland currently does not have food sovereignty. We are almost totally reliant on imports to feed us. This is manufactured precarity. One disaster and we could face crisis. Does this sound familiar?
The true wealth of the people begins and ends with sovereign, fertile soil  - not absentee landlords and investors. It's difficult to believe we could still be duped to believe the latter.
Resistance, like colonialism itself, has come in waves. The truest forms of working class led resistance have always been tied to the land - whether through demands like the end of landlordism or the reclamation of the earth itself, as Connolly so elequently put it.
Attempts to reclaim true Irish sovereignty can therefore be understood through what Marx called Eco-Fenianism. Have you ever heard of a more badass term than that? 🔥
Credit to Dr Eamonn Slater and his paper Irish Metabolic Rifts - Marx and Engels on Ireland for the analysis that inspired this conversation. You can view the paper here: https://irishmetabolicrifts.com/

In the 3rd and final part of our Epstein series, we look deeper into how this parasite class works. We talk about how even though they are a Godless class - and mostly believe in the power of science to transcend the laws of nature via transhumanism -  they understand well the power of using religion to galvanise, divide and distract the masses.
We talk about Ireland's place on the periphery of the core and what it means for the structure of our economy. We expose Ireland's comprador class and explain how it emerged with the free state and has been in power since. 
Most importantly, we talk about how this class can be taken on. The state is being used an an instrument to serve the interests of this class. How can we turn that around so the state serves the working class instead? And how can the working class unite and organise and show stronger levels of class solidarity than the Epstein class? Because that's what needed. And urgently so.

How does the Epstein network connect to Ireland? How did a billionaire Saudi businessman buy Irish passports from Charlie Haughey? Who profited from the sale of the passports? Why did the archbishop of the Catholic church run a surveillance network that was so substantial it was praised by J Edgar Hoover - Director of the FBI? What was the scale of child trafficking from mother and baby homes to the United States, and who profited? What are the links to Direct Provision in Ireland? These are just some of the topics we cover in this episode.

This episode is extraordinary thanks to the research and groundwork Professor Cogley put in ahead of the recording. Instead of looking at the Epstein Files as a series of isolated events, it's vital that we look at it as a system. The goal with the drip release of incomplete files is to cause mass confusion. That's not the response the people should give.
By understanding the origins of this depraved ring and how people who have seats at the most powerful tables in the world connect to Epstein, we can understand the response that's actually needed.
This network didn't begin with Epstein and likely didn't end with him. We can connect much of the content of the files to world events today. This isn't over. It's very much still in motion.
We also need to bring what we learn from the files back home to Ireland. How do mother and baby homes and a little-known boys home named Kincora link to this human trafficking Web?
Don't miss this one.

In this episode I talk with Roisín McAleer, founder of Social Rights Ireland, a grassroots group focused on education, activism and social rights in Ireland.
We talk about what led each of us to where we are now, some of the reasons why the working class is divided in Ireland now and who that serves and lots more.