Socialist Party Election Celebration Rally

The Irish political establishment will no doubt use its presidency of the EU to paint a rosy picture of a ‘social' European Union. But such a picture will jar dramatically with the reality of an EU that is the driving force in the austerity destroying lives in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe.

The general election in Ireland was historic but not for the reasons being stressed by the would-be new government partners of Fine Gael and Labour. It is that true both parties achieved unprecedented successes at the polls but these are pyrrhic and temporary victories.

The super-villain waits in a secret hideout, while his invulnerable robots pick off his enemies, is a science fiction standard. But in the world of drone wars, the "villain" is Barack Obama and his "hideout" an air force base in Nevada.

Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, sets out to depict – but according to Bigelow not necessarily endorse – the “greatest manhunt in history”, the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Despite Bigelow’s claims of artistic neutrality, her film is a grotesque and blatant propaganda piece for US foreign policy post 9/11 and its criminal use of torture in particular.