Thursday, November 21, 2024

A Russian hero who tended to tell the truth

Georgy Zhukov was the man who helped save the world from the tyranny of Hitler. He was a marshal in the Red Army, saved Leningrad and Moscow and against all the odds defeated the Germans at Stalingrad. It was Germany’s first and most significant defeat in World War II. Stalingrad changed the war

After the war he was badly treated by both Stalin and Khrushchev. Banished, rehabilitated, and banished and rehabilitated again.

Geoffrey Roberts Stalin’s General The Life of Georgy Zhukov writes: “What Stalin really objected to was Zhukov’s independent streak and his tendency to tell the truth as he saw it, a quality that had served the dictator well during  the war but was less commendable in peacetime when Stalin felt he needed no advice except his own.”

It’s not just dictators, who behave in such a way, living in bubbles surrounding themselves with sycophants.

It happens in democracies too, and in the churches. It happens everywhere, right in front of our eyes.


Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Iris Rail’s first Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil locomotive

Irish Rail has refitted the

HVO powered loco pulling 13.00 Heuston
Cork train yesterday
first of its 201 Class locomotives to run on Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil. 

All diesel fleets will operate with at least a 35 per cent biofuel/hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) blend.

The locomotive hauls the Dublin Cork Mark IV trains.

The 201 Class locos were built by GM in London, Canada and delivered to Irish Rail in 1994/1995. The first loco arrived in Dublin Airport on a Russian Andropov aircraft.

At present there are 23 in service with many more being canabalised in Inchicore.

They also haul the De Dietrich train, used on the Belfast Dublin service.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

An allotment where they make apple juice and play act

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

It nourishes the soul when we come across something that’s good and wholesome. There are nuggets in our lives that stand out, those moments when we see the wonder and genius of what people do.


I worked with a man in The Kerryman newspaper who fascinated me. He was an expert at his job, which meant he was forever correcting me when it came to page layout, which was not my forte. He’d shout across the office telling me I miscalculated the size of a picture. He mortified me. But he was great fun and I think I was able to take his ribbing. 


He took early retirement from the job and left the newspaper some short time before I did. We’ve stayed in contact. From time to time he’d tell me what he was doing, the books he was reading, his political views, and his involvement in a local drama group.


He’s a jovial man and never takes himself too seriously. Over the years he has told me that along with a few other men he had rented an allotment in the town. 


I never knew exactly what he did there besides drinking coffee and discussing how to run the world. 


My eyes were opened for me when by chance I visited the allotment last week. Three of them were in the process of making apple juice. It was an amazing operation to observe. Between the three of them they were cleaning the apples, mulching them, working a press and saving the waste, which they would pass on to a pig farmer. 


In some respects I had called at a bad time as they were in production mode, nevertheless they had time to make me a cup of coffee. And it was made and drunk in a glass dome-shaped room they use on occasion for putting on plays. 


I wandered around the allotments to see how every metre of ground is used to produce all sorts of edibles. And this right in the centre of a built up area. Of course their worry is that the Council might decide to sell it for housing. What a disaster that would be. I’m told one allotment for the year for unemployed persons is €20. I presume it’s the same for those who are retired.


On leaving the allotment I called into a friend of mine who has a bicycle shop some 400 metres away. I told him where I had been and he had no knowledge of such an enterprise. 


And that was something that struck me. So much goes on right in front of our noses or maybe just out of sight and we know nothing about it. With all our communication and all our instant digital news we seem out of touch with the wonders of our surroundings and the genius of the people who quietly work their minds and hands to do great things.

I’m always saying it’s the little things, those unnoticed, forgotten activities that make us and indeed, make the world a great place. 

Before leaving the allotment I was handed a bottle. Five minutes earlier I had seen the freshly-made apple  juice being poured into the bottle. Honestly, it was delicious. 

Monday, November 18, 2024

Aer Lingus holding company IAG makes staggering profits

International Airlines Group has reported a summer of record profits.

IAG, which owns five airlines including Aer Lingus, reported a summer of record profits.

For the three months July, August, September the group made an operating profit of €2.01bn. It was a record for the company and 15 per cent higher than for the same period last year.


Sunday, November 17, 2024

Casting Zelenskiy as spoiled child not good for Ukraine

Insightful piece by Lara Marlowe in The Irish Times yesterday.

In Trump world, Ukraine’s brave leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy is a spoiled child who exploited the naivety of the Biden administration. “You’re 38 days from losing your allowance,” said the crass caption to an Instagram video of Zelenskiy reposted by Donald Trump jnr, the eldest son of the president-elect, this week.

Trump reacted with sarcasm to Zelenskiy’s appeal for more US aid last June, calling the Ukrainian leader “the greatest salesman of all time” and complaining like an exasperated parent: “He just left four days ago with $60 billion, and he gets home, and he announces that he needs another $60 billion. It never ends.”

Trump’s obeisance to Russia goes back to 1987, when he purchased full-page ads in US newspapers urging the US to stop funding Nato. The KGB were delighted. In the mid-2000s, Paul Manafort, who would later chair Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, went to Ukraine to work for Viktor Yanukovych, the uncouth former convict from Donetsk and a Putin stooge who was prevented from stealing Ukraine’s presidential election by the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Manafort restyled Yanukovych and his Party of Regions for a Trump-like comeback, which culminated in victory in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election.

At Putin’s bidding, Yanukovych distanced Ukraine from the EU and Nato, precipitating his overthrow by the 2013/14 Euromaidan Revolution. Manafort continued to work with the remnants of Yanukovych’s party after the fallen president fled to Moscow. Ukraine’s national anti-corruption bureau found evidence that Manafort was paid $12.7 million over five years for advancing Russia’s agenda in Ukraine.

Manafort was eventually sentenced to 7½ years in a US prison for fraud and conspiracy stemming from his employment by Yanukovych. He was one of 29 underlings pardoned by Trump at Christmas 2020. The Washington Post reported last May that Manafort is “poised to rejoin Trump world”.

Imminent betrayal

Thus, Trump’s imminent betrayal of Ukraine can be viewed as the culmination of a long contest between US Democrats, who favoured liberal democracy in Ukraine, and Trump Republicans who appeared determined to give the country to Putin.

In a private conversation with advisers in 2019, Trump said that Ukrainian politicians were “terrible people . . . all corrupt and they tried to take me down”, the New York Times reported.

Trump’s grudge originated with Ukrainian revelations about his buddy Manafort’s meddling in Ukrainian politics. Trump was so enraged by Zelenskiy’s refusal, in a July 2019 telephone conversation, to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine that he suspended a military aid package for Kyiv the following month. On Trump’s orders, House Republicans blocked a desperately needed $60 billion aid package for six months last winter. There is no reason to believe Trump will not block aid to Ukraine a third time, as he has promised.

Indications of collusion between Trump, his entourage and Putin are alarming. Bob Woodward reported in his new book, War, that Trump had up to seven private telephone conversations with Putin in the past four years. That would have been “a smart thing”, Trump said. Russia and Ukraine expert Fiona Hill calls Trump’s return to power the “oligarch capture” of the US. The world’s richest man and Trump sidekick Elon Musk has also maintained secret communications with Putin, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Musk’s ‘peace plan’

Musk’s participation in Trump’s post-election telephone call to Zelenskiy from Mar-a-Lago is chilling, because two years ago Musk tweeted a “peace plan” for Ukraine that espoused Putin’s demands: Russian sovereignty over Crimea, Ukraine’s abandonment of its application to join Nato, and referendums in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

Zelenskiy scolded Musk for expressing opinions about a conflict he did not understand. Like Trump, Musk probably bears a grudge against Zelenskiy. With Ukraine reliant on Musk’s Starlink satellite communications system, Musk holds a sword of Damocles over Ukraine’s prosecution of the war.

Trump returns to power as Russia continues to advance on the eastern front and steps up the bombardment of Ukrainian cities. Zelenskiy attempted to put a brave face on the situation, saying that he, like Trump, believes in “peace through strength”. No one was fooled. Ukraine is the victim of Russian aggression, and in Trump world, victims are “losers”, unworthy of sympathy or support.

Lt Yulia Mykytenko, who heads a 25-man drone unit on the front line in Donetsk, and whose story I recently told in a book, is stoical about Trump’s election. “We respect the will of the American people,” she said. “Trump is unpredictable, and ultimately we’re alone against the Russians anyway.”

Europe shows small signs of finally getting its act together. The European Union missed its promise to supply Ukraine with a million 155mm artillery shells by last March, but foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says the goal will be met by the end of this year. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, friend to Trump and Putin, whose far-right Patriots for Europe group is the third largest in the EU parliament, can be counted on to block significant EU aid to Ukraine. However, eight “capability coalitions” grouping countries who have the biggest stake in confronting Russian expansionism, chiefly Poland, the Baltic States and Scandinavia, can make up part of the shortfall in US aid.

Saturday, November 16, 2024

Olaf Scholz phones Vladimir Putin

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since December 2022 yesterday afternoon urging him to start "serious" talks with Ukraine. 

In the phone call, Scholz urged Putin to end the war of aggression against Ukraine and withdraw his troops, German government sources stated. 

Russia should “enter into serious negotiations with Ukraine with the aim of achieving a just and lasting peace for Ukraine,” Scholz was reported to have said, stressing that Russia had not achieved its war goals. 

Scholz also stressed Germany’s commitment to supporting Ukraine as long as necessary, government sources added. The involvement of North Korean troops is seen as a “serious escalation and expansion of the conflict.”  

Putin, for his part, underlined that any agreement to resolve the conflict would have to "take into account the security interests of the Russian Federation, proceed from the new territorial realities and, most importantly, eliminate the root causes of the conflict," Russian news agency TASS reported. 

He reiterated that, in his view, “the current crisis was a direct result of NATO's multi-year aggressive policy.”  

German media had reported in October that Scholz was considering a phone call with Putin ahead of next week’s G20 summit in Brazil.  

However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had responded to the reports by saying that he did not see any relevant topics to discuss, according to Russian news agencies, adding that relations had reached “absolute zero.” 

In recent months, Scholz has repeatedly stressed his desire to bring Russia to the negotiating table. He had stated his goal of holding a peace summit with Russia following the June peace summit in Switzerland, at which Russian representatives were absent. 

The phone call marked a notable development, as it was the first call between the two leaders in nearly two years and one of the first of any major European leader in a long time. French President Emmanuel Macron had also last spoken to Putin in 2022. When contacted by Euractiv, the Elysée Palace declined to comment.  

On Sunday, the Scholz will travel to Brazil, where Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to be present. 

No doubt neither man will be aware the phone call took place of the feast day of the famous Dominican theologian and philosopher, St Albert the Great.

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Anglican bishop speaks on John Smyth horror

The Bishop of Winchester Philip Mounstephen was interviewed on BBC 2’s Newsnight on Tuesday evening by Victoria Derbyshire.

He was talking about the John Smyth case and the resignation of Justin Welby.

The man spoke like a manager in an organisation, maybe like someone rolled out by the British Post Office to try to ‘explain’ the Horizon scandal.

It was word after word in bishopspeak. The man was most unconvincing, indeed, worrying.

Do organisations always win over the individual, irrespective of who’s right or wrong?

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

We're not getting our money’s worth for our €160 TV licence

RTÉ’s Upfront programme on Monday evening  was poor television. A mix of a poor TV format, moderation and an insistence at RTÉ that their presenters are equal players in all their current affairs debate.

The programme was far too long, too many panelists and poorly managed by Katie Hannon. Boring is far too mild a word to describe it.

And it seems next Monday’s Upfront will even be a bigger bore and far worse as there will be 10 panelists shouting at each other.

On Monday morning Brendan Courtney was standing is for Oliver Callan. He began the show by telling his listeners how often he washes his bedsheets, washing them more regularly when the dog sleeps with him in the bed.

On Tuesday he began the show with an account of how he dries his clothes in his apartment.

The late Gay Byrne gave his listeners on one occasion great advice: if you don’t want to listen, turn off the radio. Wise words. 

Is RTÉ aware of the poor quality of its current programming?

€160 every year for this. It is beyond shocking.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

General election in Germany on Sunday, February 23

A general election in Germany most likely on Sunday, February 23, 2025.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will hold a vote of confidence in parliament on December 16. As the current coalition has lost the majority in the Bundestag, Scholz will lose the vote and will then be obliged to go the president, who will dissolve the Bundestag and call for a general election on February 2.

More worries for Germany and Europe.

Democracy stands at the crossroads.

It is a double-edged sword that surrounds Halloween

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

I can well see myself getting into trouble about this column. On that note, there are often issues I would like to write about and don’t because I am simply afraid. I’m not a courageous person. And in spite of that I am forever getting into trouble, it’s been the story of my life.

 

Halloween is over, Alleluia. I think it’s fair to say that many parents of young children are acutely aware of how polluted our world is and of the impending disaster of climate change. The scientists are screaming at us that it is at our doorstep. Spain has seen it first hand in recent days.


And yet this Halloween just gone Ireland spent €71.5 million on junk food, junk clothes and junk decorations. I’ve glanced through some of the literature explaining the tradition behind Halloween but all I have spotted is bizarre, gaudy and tawdry decorations. How many times did I walk into shops to be greeted by silly skeletal figures that frightened the life out of me. All the plastic material that has been thrown away adds to our pollution problems, which is damaging our planet.


And then the trick or treat procession of children dressed up in scary clothing going from house to house. I can’t imagine it’s apples and oranges they expect. I heard one child count the number of chocolate bars he received. Maybe the next day some of their parents appeared on radio or in print advising us what are the healthy foods we should be eating.


The trouble with all this is if you don’t conform you are considered a crank. I can well imagine if I had grandchildren I too would have them out tricking and treating. Isn’t it strange how easy it is to conform, indeed seductive.


That’s all bad enough but in the days surrounding Halloween I picked up The Irish Catholic newspaper of October 31. Article after article suggesting that the growing popularity of Halloween is a sign of our return to paganism. Having read many of the articles I found myself clapping the backs of the parents who are duped into all the trick or treat banality.


Am I just a naysayer? I hope not. I’m tired and weary of the growing conservatism in the Irish Catholic Church. In The Irish Times I read a columnist admiring aspects of a growing hope in the Catholic Church in Ireland. I kept saying to myself the author simply does not know what they are talking about. And they say it with such apparent authority.

The far-right worldwide phenomenon is sowing its seed across Ireland in so many different areas, and that includes the Catholic Church.


Maybe it is, that for some reason or other, I am always finding myself walking in the opposite direction to the crowd.

 

But guess what, I’m happy with it. Yes, I am confused, but again, I think I’d prefer to be confused rather than trying to make sense to tricking and treating and saying we are heading for paganism.

Monday, November 11, 2024

Every election needs moments of absurdity

We are sure to see many zany

election posters over the next three weeks.

Obviously some parties and independents have higher/taller ladders than others so as to get their mugshot atop of the pole. But that does not guarantee them to top the poll.

Candidate Delehanty also has a poster saying make corruption illegal. He is a candidate in the Dublin Rathdown Dáil constituency.

In the midst of all the feigned seriousness, there is need for a bit of a laugh. After all, Donald Trump and many of his followers believe it was through the grace of God he missed the assassin’s bullet. God wanted him to win the election. And it looks as if God got his way again. Will we see the day when Trump’s relics tour Ireland? The man who was selling Bibles, before the US election could give our approach to relics a whole new life and brand.

A breath of fresh air on the streets of Dirty-Old-Dublin

The Dublin Bus fleet includes

An all-electric Dublin Bus vehicle
An all-electric Dublin Bus vehicle
280 hybrid vehicles and 100 all-electric buses.

The all electric buses (code named EW) have no external mirrors, they are replaced with cameras with in-cab monitors, which gives all the necessary information to the driver.

If you are a cyclist it is actually a pleasure  and a new experience to behind one of the all-electric vehicles if it is stopped in traffic, at traffic lights or at a bus stop. There is not a hint of any billowing fumes. Even the most modern buses with combustion engines are no friends to cyclists.


Sunday, November 10, 2024

United Nations Resolution 3379

 On this day, November 10, 1975 the noted Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 that states that Zionism is a form of racism. It was revoked in 1991.

Saturday, November 9, 2024

Thirty fifth anniversary of the fall of the `Berlin Wall

Today is the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will mark the occasion with a speech at the Brnadenburg Gate.

I lived in West Berlin before the Wall came down. It was a refuge for alternatives, young German men who did not want to do military service escaped to West Berlin. It was an alternative town in every respect. And then across the Wall was the capital city of the German Democratic Republic, a world of dangerous pretence. But there was something idiotically charming about the place. Pensioners from the East were allowed make trips to the West, the East German government, hoping they’d never return as it meant they would have less money to pay out on pensions.

All travel to and from West Berlin was controlled by the East and they made hay of it. Aircraft had to fly at a certain altitude, which meant they used extra fuel. No West German locomotives were allowed travel from West Germany to West Berlin. Until close to the fall of the Wall all trains were pulled by East German locos built in the Soviet Union.

West Berlin sold its waste to East Berlin to discover after the fall of the Wall that they had to dispose of it all in an environmentally correct manner.

After some years all Soviet troops left East Germany, returning to a different lifestyle than they had grown accustomed to across the German Democratic Republic. Among those who returned was a young man whose name is Vladimir Putin

The Wall fell, the world was going to be a brighter place.

All an illusion? The story of our lives, an illusion?

Pronunciation of Hungarian capital à la RTÉ

Why do so many RTÉ journalists mispronounce the capital city of Hungary? 

And it sounds simply awful, silly too. Who told them to do this?

Friday, November 8, 2024

Church covered up 'abhorrent' abuse, report finds

The horrific story below about John Smyth is from the BBC website.


Its a familiar story, a story shared with other churches, including the Catholic Church.


People in authority denying they knew; the perpetrator ingratiating himself with school-going children; not just leaving the country but moving to another continent, and then the person having status and a sense of his own importance.

The usual stuff and bluster. All the spoof.

It’s almost a template.


What follows is the BBC report:


A British barrister's "horrific" and violent abuse of more than 100 children and young men was covered up within the Church of England for decades, according to the conclusion of a damning report.

John Smyth QC is believed to be the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England, a long-awaited independent review found.


Smyth QC, who died aged 77 in Cape Town in 2018, was accused of attacking boys at his Winchester home who he had met at a Christian summer camp in Dorset during the 1970s and 1980s.


On publication of the findings, the Archbishop of Canterbury apologised again to victims, and said Smyth's abuse had "manipulated Christian truth to justify his evil acts".


Smyth had also worked as a barrister representing morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse whilst he ran the camps for young evangelical Christians.


Reports of his physical abuse of boys were revealed in an investigation by Channel 4 News, in February 2017.

The investigation came after a report by the Iwerne Trust in 1982, which was not made public until 2016.


Smyth was confronted about his conduct after the 

report compiled by Rev. Mark Ruston and Rev. David Fletcher.


It found Smyth identified pupils from leading public schools including Winchester College and took them to his home near Winchester in Hampshire, where he carried out lashings with a garden cane in his shed.


It said eight of the boys received a total of 14,000 lashes, while two more received 8,000 strokes between them over three years.


The Iwerne Trust called the practice "horrific" but the claims were not reported to police until 2013 - more than 30 years later.


Despite his "appalling" actions having been identified in the 1980s, the report concluded he was never fully exposed and was therefore able to continue his abuse.

He was encouraged to leave the country and moved to Zimbabwe without any referral being made to police.


During this time, church officers "knew of the abuse and failed to prevent further abuse", the independent review led by Keith Makin says.


It adds: "From July 2013 the Church of England knew, at the highest level, about the abuse that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s. John Smyth should have been properly and effectively reported to the police in the UK and to relevant authorities in South Africa.


"This represented a further missed opportunity to bring him to justice.


In Zimbabwe he was charged with the manslaughter of a 16-year-old boy, who was attending one of his summer camps. Smyth was not convicted of the offence.


In a joint statement, the Church of England's lead safeguarding bishop, Joanne Grenfell, and the national director of safeguarding, Alexander Kubeyinje, said they were "deeply sorry for the horrific abuse inflicted by the late John Smyth and its lifelong effects, already spanning more than 40 years" and added that "there is never a place for covering up abuse.


Smyth is said to have subjected his victims to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks, permanently marking their lives.


When he died he had been in the process of being extradited from Zimbabwe and so was "never bought to justice for the abuse", the review said.


The review, commissioned a year after Smyth's death by the Archbishops' Council of the Church of England, found that an argument had been made that the abuses were "examples of over-enthusiastic corporal punishment.


But the report stated: "The conclusion of the review is that he committed criminal acts of gross abuse."


One of his victims, Bishop of Guildford Andrew Watson, said in a statement: "I want to express my deep sadness at all that has happened, and my admiration for those who have doggedly persevered in having the truth told.


"The report won’t make for easy reading for anyone involved: but it’s my hope and prayer that it might bring at least some measure of relief to Smyth’s victims – British and African, known and unknown.


While some 30 boys and young men are known to have been directly physically and psychologically abused in the UK - and around 85 boys and young men physically abused in African countries, including Zimbabwe - the total "likely runs much higher", the report said.


It said: "John Smyth is, arguably, the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England."


After the report was published on Thursday, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the pain Smyth's victims endured was "unimaginable".

In a statement, Archbishop Welby said: "I am so sorry that in places where these young men, and boys, should have felt safe and where they should have experienced God’s love for them, they were subjected to physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse."

The Archbishop said he had not been aware of Smyth's brutality before 2013, but said: “Nevertheless the review is clear that I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated.


The abuse could not happen today, he added, because of modern safeguarding practices, before concluding: “John Smyth’s abuse manipulated Christian truth to justify his evil acts, whilst exploiting and abusing the power entrusted to him".

Yesterday evening, Justin Welby told Channel 4 News that he considered resigning over the scandal, but had decided to remain.


But one of Smyth's victims, Mark Stibbe, told the programme: "I think he should resign… I think there’s so much shame, so much pain, so much agony associated with this.


Smyth and his wife Anne were excommunicated by his local church in Cape Town, South Africa, the year before he died.

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A Russian hero who tended to tell the truth

Georgy Zhukov was the man who helped save the world from the tyranny of Hitler. He was a marshal in the Red Army, saved Leningrad and Moscow...