In 1927, the Irish republican Michael Flannery emigrated from the quiet backroads of Tipperary to the crowded streets of New York City, swapping a life of rebellion for a humdrum career in life insurance. 

But the Irish American community hadn’t forgotten about the old country, and as the Troubles began in Northern Ireland, Flannery found himself at the heart of the campaign to end British rule.

In episode two of Foreign Agent, Flannery’s life story unlocks the roots of anti-colonial struggle in Ireland and how the Irish became white in America. We trace the history of Noraid, the organisation he helped to found, and the political tensions threatening to rupture the republican movement.

Further reading:
Irish America and the Ulster Conflict by Andrew Wilson
Noraid and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1970-1994 by Robert Collins
The Provisional IRA by Tommy McKearney
Ireland, Colonialism, and the Unfinished Revolution by Robbie McVeigh and Bill Rolston
How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev
Black and Green by Brian Dooley
Enemies and Passing Friends by Pamela Clayton
“Irish Republicans in Inter-war New York” and “The Politics of Noraid” by Brian Hanley

The interviews recorded with Michael Flannery and Martin Lyons are courtesy of the Tamiment Library at New York University.

Hosted by Nate Lavey
Produced by Nate Lavey and Michael McCanne
Original music by Matt Huxley
https://novara.media/ForeignAgent

Foreign Agent Episode 2: The New World and the Old Country

After Bloody Sunday in 1972, Irish Northern Aid saw its power, influence and donations increase dramatically – but a higher profile brought new enemies. Secretly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned its sights on Noraid, auditing their books, cultivating informers and staking out meetings. On the public stage, Irish American politicians like Ted Kennedy, who had once wooed voters with their militant rhetoric against the British, began working to turn the community away from the IRA and Noraid. An array of powerful actors had finally taken notice, and were ready to clamp down. But Noraid had some moves of its own to make.

Further reading:
The American Connection by Jack Holland
Irish America and the Ulster Conflict by Andrew Wilson
The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament* by Tommy McKearney
‘It was networking, all networking’: the Irish republican movement's survival in Cold War America by Danielle Zach

Hosted by Nate Lavey
Produced by Nate Lavey and Michael McCanne
Original music by Matt Huxley

https://novara.media/ForeignAgent

Novara Audio: Radio for a Different Politics

Foreign Agent Episode 3: Agents of the State

Each generation must encounter the Communist Manifesto anew, deciphering Marx and Engels’ text for their own era. So what gives this short book its enduring power? In his new book A Spectre, Haunting: On The Communist Manifesto, China Miéville explains how its various facets – being part political treatise, part gothic literature, and part spell to bring about a different reality – continue to act upon the world. 

The author of The City & The City joins Ash Sarkar to discuss sadism, sci-fi, blockchain utopias, Lord of the Rings and the politics of Sally Rooney's fiction.

Downstream: Working Class is Not An Identity w/ China Miéville

In the middle of a grave cost of living crisis, bosses at Royal Mail, BT and elsewhere are imposing pay increases on workers way below inflation. On Downstream, Aaron Bastani speaks to CWU General Secretary Dave Ward about corporate greed, the shadowy world of CEOs, the return of the working class and how he plans to coordinate direct action beyond his union’s own disputes.

Downstream: The Moral Crisis in Corporate Britain w/ Dave Ward

Starting to explore microtonal possibilities with the Max for Live microtuner device. Started out with some simple diatonic explorations and ended up returning to Ptolemy's Intense Diatonic scale which I had previously used as part of my Cartesian Meditations series of Eurorack videos on my YouTube channel. Back then I just looked up the hz of the notes in the scale and used the unquantized outputs from Rene and tuned each step manually. Microtuner makes it way easier and I am looking forward to exploring more complex xenharmonic scales. The other exciting thing about doing microtonal stuff in Ableton is that I can explore polyphony much more easily. This patch is Operator with some delay, chorus, and reverb. I originally had the project file for this just called Ptolemy, but after seeing The Glad Scientist's lovely AI art for it, I decided to echo the title of my original modular piece, Ptolemy's Dream, with Medusa's dream. The stone, or perhaps the one whose gaze beholds a petrified world, dreams of lightness.

Medusa's Dream

ACFM reunite for spooky season with one thing on their minds: the horror, the horror!

Nadia, Jeremy and Keir embark on a historical, literary and cinematic exploration of scary stuff. Why do (some) humans love to be terrified? What can horror teach us about the nature of the universe? What do the latest crop of scary movies say about the fears plaguing our society?

From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Jordan Peele's 'Get Out', from H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror to Sigmund Freud's idea of the uncanny, the gang discuss books and ideas spanning several centuries – along with music from Bauhaus, Gravediggaz and Metallica.

An ever-expanding playlist of all the music discussed on the show can be found on Spotify – just search ACFM. Remember you can find the  version of this show on Novara Media's SoundCloud.


Books: Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness / Sigmund Freud – The Uncanny / Susan Hill – The Woman in Black / Stephen King – On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft / H.P. Lovecraft – Various / Paul Santilli – 'Culture, Evil, and Horror’ / Mary Shelley – Frankenstein / Bram Stoker – Dracula / Horace Walpole – The Castle of Otranto / H.G. Wells – The War of the Worlds

Films: Everything Everywhere All At Once / Get Out / Halloween / Invasion of the Bodysnatchers / Night of the Living Dead / Poltergeist / Rosemary's Baby / White Zombie

Music: Dave Matthews Band - 'Halloween' / Bauhaus - 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' / Warren Zevon - 'Werewolves of London' / Jegsy Dodd - 'A Scouse Werewolf in London' / Metallica - 'Enter Sandman' / Ray Parker Jr - 'Ghostbusters' / Gravediggaz - 'Diary of a Madman' / Insane Clown Posse - 'Hocus Pocus' / Black Sabbath - 'Paranoid'

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS Licence Number: LE-0016481

ACFM Trip 28: Horror

Experimenting with long envelopes and slowly evolving timbres/textures.

Timbral Study 3

Adam Tooze returns to PTO to discuss the key causal factors that allowed fascism to emerge in the early twentieth century and whether conditions that would enable fascism on the interwar model exist today. We also talked about whether describing the Bolsanaros, the Le Pens and the Orbans of this world as fascist may be analytically wrong but tactically effective, and about how close the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s are to the fascist model.

Links:

Adam's chartbook post:

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-166-19222022-the-centenary

Eurotrash podcast episode:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/ep-6-sex-fascism-73970252

Adam on The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy:

https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/adam-tooze-on-nazi-ideology-and-the-german-war-economy

Adam on Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy:

https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/adam-tooze-on-shutdown-how-covid-shook-the-worlds-economy

Part one and two of Adam on Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World:

https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/20-adam-tooze-on-crashed-how-a-decade-of-financial-crises-changed-the-world

https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/23-adam-tooze-on-crashed-how-a-decade-of-financial-crises-changed-the-world-part-2

Fascist echoes w/ Adam Tooze

In 1990, the Berlin Wall came down and the experiment of communist East Germany came to an end. Yet for a time it was a successful project, raising living standards against massive odds and providing stability for the first time in half a century. So is it time to reassess Europe’s most wealthy, and advanced communist country, the DDR? Aaron Bastani speaks to author and historian Katja Hoyer, author of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.

Novara Audio: Radio For A Different Politics

Downstream: The Country Where Communism Almost Worked w/ Katja Hoyer

In 1999 in the wake of the Kosovo conflict Gilbert Achcar published a book titled 'The New Cold War: The World After Kosovo'. At the time, describing tensions between the United States, Russia and China in terms of "a cold war" seemed to many to be outlandish hyperbole, or very premature at best. Now, of course the use of the term to describe the global situation is increasingly commonplace, but if we are indeed in a cold war - the question arises - when did it begin? Should it be dated in Russia's case to the 2008 Georgia war, in China to the rise of Xi Jinping and the repression in Hong Kong - or do we need to think back much further? 

In today's episode Gilbert Achcar joins the show to discuss his new book, 'The New Cold War: The US, Russia and China - From Kosovo to Ukraine', in which he builds upon his earlier work to argue that the current situation is rooted in events and key decisions made during the 1990s, including the devastating collapse of the Russian economy, the failure to create a new security architecture in Europe after the end of the cold war, and in increasing US-China tensions over Taiwan and other security matters, which were obscured by the deepening economic integration of the two states at the time. In the following interview we discuss these topics, as well as why Gilbert thinks its appropriate to describe Vladimir Putin's regime as neofascist, why recognising NATO enlargement as being a vector for Russian nationalism does not in any way justify the invasion of Ukraine, and we also talked about what Gilbert thinks a more just international order might look like.

Foreign Agent Episode 3: Agents of the State

Novara Media

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