KMF Productions

04/05/2023

Last week Tom Roche, Colm Regan and I launched SpoArtsWASH. Please feel free to circulate.

23/11/2021

Hello everyone,

I am a launching a new book along with co-editor Anne Jones and photographer John Kelly, The Art of Place: People and Landscape of County Clare.

The book will be launched in glór theatre Ennis on Monday next, the 29th of November at 7:15. If you would like to attend (free admin) please RSVP with [email protected]

Featured contributors, listed below, include writers, visual artists, musicians, composers, sculptors, photographers and filmmakers.
Thomas Lynch, Rachael English, Peadar King, Sarah Clancy, Niall Williams, Naomi O’Connell, Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, John Gibbons, Mick O’Dea, Tommy Hayes, Isabelle Gaborit, Sharon Shannon, Tim Dennehy, Kieran Hanrahan, Eavan Brennan, Susan O’Neill, Jessie Lendennie, Harvey O’Brien, Ruth Marshall, Shelley McNamara, Geraldine Cotter, Michael McCaughan, Frank Blake, Martin Hayes, Mary Hawkes-Greene, Mark O’Halloran, Michael D. Higgins, Brian Mooney, Jack Talty, Gerald Barry
and God Knows Jonas.

The Art of Place is published by The Liffey Press at a recommended retail price of €35.00 and will be available, from bookshops next Monday.

Thank you.

07/01/2021

Here's a special message from Peadar King.
~Greta Zarro, Organizing Director at World BEYOND War

A group of us here in Ireland have come together to form the first Irish Chapter of World BEYOND War. We are, as yet, but a small diverse group open to new members. As with our colleagues in other Chapters across the world, we believe we need a renewed conversation about war...
..about the insufferable pain it causes. The dead and the slowly dying. The injured and the injuries that never go away. The destruction it brings. The mayhem it causes. The fear it induces. The grief that clings on. And the pain. The physical and emotional pain.

There is no glory in war. There is no heroism in killing other human beings. Whatever the cause.

And as a contribution to that global conversation, starting on Wednesday 13 January 2021 at 19.00 GMT, we will host a five-part In Conversation series with people who have known war, with people who have taken direct action against the war machine, with people who have been displaced by war, with people who have given considerable time to thinking and writing about wars' insidious impact. Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations Denis Halliday, Clare Daly MEP, filmmaker Dave Donnellan, Syrian storyteller Suad Aldarra, Professor Yaser Alashqar, and former Irish/United Nations peacekeeper Edward Horgan.

We would love it if you would join us in these conversations and we would also love to hear directly from you on how we as the Irish Chapter of World BEYOND War can continue to raise our voices, to let it be known that war is not inevitable. We have agency. There are alternatives. The forces aligned against us may seem insurmountable. But that has been the case with regard to so many issues throughout history. On this issue, history is on our side.

To register for the Denis Halliday (former Assistant Secretary General of the UN) interview on 13 January please go to:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/a-world-beyond-war-conversations-on-alternatives?clear_id=true

To register for the Clare Daly MEP interview on 20 January please go to:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/a-world-beyond-war-conversations-on-alternatives-part-2?clear_id=true

To register for the Dave Donnellan (filmmaker) interview on 27 January please go to:

: https://actionnetwork.org/events/a-world-beyond-war-conversations-on-alternatives-part-3?clear_id=true

To register for the Syrian storyteller Suad Aldarra and Professor Yaser Alashqar (Trinity College Dublin) interview on 3 February please go to:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/a-world-beyond-war-conversations-on-alternatives-part-4?clear_id=true

To register for the Ed Horgan (retired Army commandant, and peace activist) interview on 10 February please go to:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/a-world-beyond-war-conversations-on-alternatives-part-5?clear_id=true

Please join us and please feel free to invite, friends, colleagues and family. For further information please contact [email protected]

~Peadar King

World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, activists, and allied organizations advocating for the abolition of the very institution of war. Our success is driven by a people-powered movement – support our work for a culture of peace.

Opt-in for important, timely mobile messages.



World BEYOND War 513 E Main St #1484 Charlottesville, VA 22902 USA

A 5-part webinar series on war, from January 13-February 10, hosted by World BEYOND War Ireland. Who wins and who loses? How war is waged and financed. How it impacts the civilian populations of the world. How it contributes to human misery. Its effects on the environment. And how it doesn't have to...

23/11/2020

28/10/2020

Africa’s Presidential Elections

On 18 October the electorate of Guinea (population 13.1 million) went to the polls. At stake was their presidential election. Opposition candidate Cellou Dalein Diallo claimed first round victory in what most African commentators regarded as a high-stakes presidential election. “Premature” and “void” responded Bakary Mansare, vice president of the country’s electoral authority, according to the AFP news agency.

Guinea’s presidential election is the first of eight African presidential elections in as many months that are scheduled to take place across Africa.

Last Sunday opposition leader and Anglican priest Wavel Ramkalawan was elected president of the Republic of Seychelles (population 98,544) in what local commentators regarded as "a landmark election" ending the 43 year-long rule of the United Party.

Next up is Cote d'Ivoire (population 27.5 million), which holds its presidential election on 31 October. Current incumbent Alassane Dramane Ouattara is seeking a third term. A constitutional amendment that once limited presidential terms to two was removed to facilitate Ouattara.

To the east of the continent presidential elections are scheduled in Burkina Faso (population 20 million) for next month in what was once regarded as an oasis of peace and stability in an otherwise turbulent region now mired in conflict.

Ranked 189 by the UN Human Development Index, Niger (population 24.4 million) is the poorest country on the planet. In its December presidential elections former military junta leader Djibo Salou takes on Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum, an election if all goes well will mark a democratic transition in a country bedeviled by past military coups.

December also sees The Central African Republic (population 4.8 million) hold its presidential election in which Faustin-Archange Touadéra is seeking a second term.

Benin, (population 11.4 million) one of the smallest countries in Africa, is scheduled to hold its presidential election next February/March where current incumbent Patrice Talon is expected to be elected unopposed.

Further south in Uganda (population 45.7 million) another constitutional amendment allows for the extension of 76-year-old Yoweri Museveni’s 34-year rule in elections scheduled for February of next year.

With the possible exception of Museveni, none are household names in this country. None of the above elections are rarely, if ever featured in Irish media. Yet these elections have similar implications for the citizens in these countries as presidential elections have in other countries. All 147.2 million citizens.

We are currently experiencing a tsunami of coverage of one presidential election and given what is at stake that is understandable. We have strong historical and cultural ties with the United States of America.

In all likelihood we know more about the electorates of North Carolina and Florida that have a combined population of about a fifth of the eight African countries referenced above.

We have become all too familiar with the intimacies of Joe Biden’s family and the trouser-tugging antics of Rudy Giuliani over the course of this election. Not forgetting the wildly idiosyncratic behaviour of the other candidate. Our world has become obsessed with their world.

And all the while other worlds exist. Africa exists.

And it’s not that we don’t have strong cultural and historical ties with Africa. From Roger Casement’s devastating 19th century critiques of the Belgian-led colonial exploitation of the Congo to former President Mary Robinson’s 1992 tearful response to the famine in Somalia, Ireland has always claimed a special connection with Africa. Mary Robinson famously said that the Somali people saw themselves as ‘the Irish of Africa’.

The reality is that Africa does not count in Irish media. Africa is largely invisible. Its people are largely invisible. Its politics are largely invisible. And the climatic and health-related threats to its people are largely invisible.

Africa: the invisible continent.

Beyond the election between two white male septuagenarians, other elections are taking place.

Elections between black leaders of eight African countries. Of which nothing is heard.

It would appear that black presidential elections don’t matter.

14/10/2020

Piaras Mac Éinrí, lecturer in migration and geopolitics in the Department of Geography at University College Cork reviews War, Suffering and the Struggle for Human Rights in Policy and Practice A Development Education Review - just published

King, P (2020) War, Suffering and the Struggle for Human Rights, Dublin: Liffey Press.

01/09/2020

An Ambassador Comes to Dinner

On a rainy night in March 2018 a dinner was hosted in Café Milano in Georgetown, Washington by Yousef Al Otaiba, the then and current United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the United States of America. Café Milano has a well-established reputation as a meeting place for the power-brokers of Washington. Its clientele includes administration officials, diplomats, lobbyists, journalists amongst many others. It’s the place to meet. Among the UAE Ambassador’s guest list on the night was a senior Trump administration official who oversaw the administration’s policy on Iran.

Coincidently (or not), on the night in another room, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu was dining with his wife Sara. Prime Minister Netanyahu was in Washington that week for a meeting of the powerful pro-Israeli lobbying group AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. According to Mark Lander then While House correspondent of the New York Times who was a guest of Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, on the basis that all conversations at the table were off-the-record, one of the dinner-party guests (he does not say who) thought it interesting/fun to invite Mr. Netanyahu to meet with Ambassador Al Otaiba.

At the time this ostensibly impromptu meeting was taking place between the Ambassador and the Prime Minister, the United Arab League, of which the United Arab Emirates is a member, did not recognise the state of Israel, had spent years championing the Palestinian cause while denouncing the Israeli occupation of Palestine. From a journalistic/by-standard perspective the fun/interesting prospect of these two adversaries sharing dessert (they didn’t apparently) undoubtedly added an unexpected frisson to the evening’s entertainment.

Two years and five months later the United Arab Emirates and Israel announce their intention to establish full diplomatic ties, the UAE only the third Arab country to do so. All against the seething anger the Palestinian leadership.

On an August night in Clifden in 2020, in a week that Met Éireann issued an orange weather warning threatening dangerous, stormy conditions which could pose a risk to life and property, a now much discussed dinner was held in the Kylemore Suite of the Station House Hotel in Clifden. Unlike the Milano restaurant in Georgetown, Clifden House does not have a reputation for hosting dinners where the country’s power brokers break bread together. Among the guests, as is now well established, were prominent current and retired politicians, a now retired EU Commissioner, a Supreme Court Judge, a banking representative and a prominent retired broadcaster.

Less commented upon was the presence of Mr. Lahcen Mahraoui, Morocco’s ambassador to Ireland. Both Israel and Morocco claim sovereignty over disputed lands. Israel, Palestine. Morocco, Western Sahara. According to Samantha Power, the former US Ambassador to the UN, 18 resolutions were adopted by the UN General Assembly and others in the Human Rights Council in 2016, all condemning Israeli occupation of Palestine. Morocco’s sovereignty claim over Western Sahara is not recognised by The African Union. Instead, the African Union recognizes the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Republic.

In the above context, the presence of Ambassador Lahcen Mahraoui at the Oireachtas Golf dinner is no small matter.

In 2019, then Tánaiste and still Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Coveney announced the government’s intention to open an embassy in Morocco this year, delayed due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Ireland will become a member of the United Nations Security Council on January 1st, 2021. As The Economist recently pointed out “Ireland is now an unlikely diplomatic superpower”.

All of which makes the Moroccan Ambassador’s presence at the Clifden event more curious. The question is: who invited the Ambassador? And why the Moroccan Ambassador? And was there an understanding, as in the Georgetown dinner in the United States, that all conversations at that dinner were off-the-record. Even for retired broadcasters?

What conversations, if any, ensued between the Ambassador and the EU Commissioner? The Ambassador and the Minister? The Ambassador and the Leas-Chathaoirleach of the Seanad? The Ambassador and the former minister, MEP and the current head of the head of the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland?

And how likely is it that we will see those conversations make their way into major policy decisions in the future? Decisions that may very well affect the estimated 173,600 Sahrawi refugees (according to figures from the United Nations) stranded for over forty years in what is known as ‘the desert within the desert’ in Algeria?

Conversations over dinner matter. That the Moroccan Ambassador had access to critical policy makers and policy influencers is no small matter. And what impact will that dinner have on the future prospects of the Sahrawi people? Just look at what started in the Milano restaurant in Georgetown, Washington on a rainy night in March 2018.

11/05/2020

Irish Times review of War, Suffering and the Struggle for Human Rights by Lara Marlowe 9 May 2020. Book now available from bookdepository.com with no charge for postage and from [email protected]

28/04/2020

Ennis bookshop is a delightful independent bookshop in the heart of Ennis. At this time, all independent bookshops are worth supporting. In collaboration with the Ennis Chamber of Commerce, The Ennis Bookshop has selected War, Suffering and the Struggle for Human Rights as it’s non-fiction book of choice!

11/01/2020

At last. After the last false start War, Suffering and the Struggle for Human Rights (The Liffey Press) has hit the shelves.

It was in Waterstones in Cork this morning and should be available in all bookshops as well. Not every bookshop might carry it but they should be able to get it for you on request.

I'm also told that the book is currently available in UK and Europe through bookdepository.com, Amazon.co.uk etc and will be available from similar sites in North America from February 1st. I am told that anyone in Europe, UK or further afield who wishes to get a copy should order through bookdepository.com as postage is free worldwide and they offer the book at a discount plus I'm told they're fairly efficient in general.

And for all of you who sent good wishes for the book and for those of you who have expressed an interest in getting a copy, thanks and I hope you think the time spent reading it is worthwhile.

11/12/2019

I'm really overwhelmed and deeply grateful to all the good will I have received regarding the new publication. As luck would have it, there's been a delay in the delivery. Apparently something to do with the run in to Christmas. It is possible that it may not be in bookshops until the New Year. Really sorry about this, particularly as some people mentioned they were gong to get it for Christmas. Life. Invariably, it throws all kinds of challenges our way. As soon as I get confirmation of delivery I will let you all know. In the meantime just to say I'm really sorry about this and so appreciative of all your comments. Happy Christmas to you all!