There's an interesting spot of research on Libertas over on Indymedia. I haven't chased down the sources myself yet but if what Checkov Feeney says is even a bit accurate he's revealed some pretty fascinating stuff.

Hat tip to John Carroll who I suspect is even more unlikely than I am to be lurking around the Indymedia site...!

Update: Having read the piece more closely, Feeney could do with distinguishing between someone owning a company and being it's CEO (though he's not the only one to get confused on that matter) (see comments below). I've updated this post because while, on the whole, there does seem to be an interesting allegation here (some of the people behind Libertas have made a mint from the shadier activities of the Bush administration and that their campaign coheres with the neocon perspective on Europe) I'm not sure I want to draw conclusions from it.

Alison Millar's documentary on Father Michael Cleary aired last night on BBC 1 and is a useful bookend to the history of Ireland over the past two decades. Filmed as a student project over the course of several months in 1991, Millar was privy to the banalities of a priest's domestic life. She was also witness to arguably the greatest single accelerant in the destruction of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Yet, due to her age or her naivity, Millar did not sense that anything was amiss in her portrayal of Father Michael Cleary's life with his house-keeper and her son. In the documentary she recalls this time and reflects on how she could have missed the fact that the boy Ross was, in fact, Father Cleary's son. Denying paternity to the end, Fr. Cleary's star was dulled in the early nineteen nineties.

Millar's film is fascinating on a number of levels. Firstly, its depiction of the esteem in which Fr. Cleary was held in Ireland is absolutely
authentic. This was a giant of a man, who was revered by old and young alike, who travelled across the country giving forthright talks, whose evening radio programme was a source of great interest to many. He was a celebrity in his own right but one who inevitably became the conscience of the nation. Secondly, the depiction of the Cleary family life is so intimate, so easy, that it begs the question how could people not have known the truth? A striking presence in the earlier and later footage is his older sister. To coin a Dublin phrase, this lady, and indeed none of the relations depicted, could be accused of coming down the Liffey in a bubble. Was it the case that most people in close proximity to Fr. Cleary had a a very clear idea of the truth but felt unable or unwilling to say anything?

In the hands of an older person the camera in Millar's documentary would have painted a far more provocative picture. In her early footage, she is both childlike in her treatment of the subject and in her role as the storyteller. She is pupil, beneficiary, empty vessel to Fr. Cleary. She shows what she sees but her own overt involvement in the filming process precludes any objective analysis. Contrast Millar's film with the footage of Father Cleary shot nearly fifteen years earlier in the film the Rocky Road to Dublin and one is immediately struck by how much the deft cinematographer can say with very little. Raul Coutard's camera almost caresses its subjects. The closeness is not matched by engagement between film-maker and subject. The camera is all-seeing and says all. The viewer is unsettled by the shots of Father Cleary. Not surprisingly, the film was banned in Ireland.

However, Alison Millar's footage retains its power precisely because it is a void rather than an accurate presentation. That the film-maker has no clue of this makes the footage almost endearing.

The return of Millar and Ross to Father Cleary's old place of residence reveals many good feelings and memories from his former congregation. His son is articulate and forgiving. The Dublin of the early nineteen nineties might well have been on a different planet. Ironically, we have Father Cleary in part to thank for that.

Companies may be legal fictions but who's to say that they're not capable of love?

Well. Not quite. But sometimes they just don't want to be made look bad in front of the laydees.