Saturday, April 29, 2023

Germany introduces the €45 nationwide travel ticket

DB, Deutsche Bahn, German Railway in conjunction with the German state is about to introduce a monthly nationwide cheap ticket on all state-run trains and buses.

From Monday, May 1 DB is introducing an all German rail ticket for €45. For that price you can travel across Germany in any and every direction.

The ticket can be used on all regional trains and all city trains, Underground networks and buses. It is not valid on the ICE rail network.

It will mean that regional trains will be extremely busy. And it’s best to buy the ticket on the DB website, which is fahrkarten.db.de, or simply db.de.

Is it the beginning of free transport? Already in Luxembourg all transport is free.

Friday, April 28, 2023

The strange worlds of Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch

 From yesterday’s Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/apr/28/why-tucker-carlson-fired-fox?CMP=share_btn_link

Germany falls well short in honouring housing programme

On the Markus Lanz programme on German ZDF public broadcaster television on Wednesday it was stated that  Olaf Scholz on being elected German chancellor promised Germany would build 800,000 dwellings in a year. Last year they managed to build 82,000.

The German social democratic party, SPD is in a three-way coalition with the Green Party and the FDP.

What’s the magic wand Irish opposition parties have to solve our housing problem?

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

You can fake intelligence, but you can't fake wit.

Every week I deliver my recyclable rubbish to a Dublin City Council bring bank. Some members of the staff are extremely funny. On occasion a Council member from another depot is present. Every time I meet him he regales me with stories and the funniest of jokes. He is forever asking me to give him the wining Lotto numbers, of course, in advance. He perfectly proves the Oscar Wilde quip that you can fake intelligence but you can’t fake wit.

The man is a Dubliner and easy to tell from his accent.

On Monday he had a new joke for me, which he greatly embellished by telling it even in a stronger Dublin accent than his usual way of speaking.

There was a big fire in a family home in a large housing estate in the Dublin suburbs.

It was an inferno and the flames were billowing through the roof.

The mother is managing to struggle down the collapsing stairs with her seven children. She turns to them and whispers: ‘Don’t wake up your father.'

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Negotiating my way through poorly designed hospitals

This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Often when I visit a hospital I come away saying to myself that someone should write a doctoral study on poor, indeed, bad signage in hospitals.


I was in Tallaght University Hospital on two occasions recently and both times I was confused, actually worse, I got lost. 


My appointment letter said I was to attend on the second level. I was already confused. It turns out level two is the first floor, which means level one is the ground floor. Why the move from floors to levels?


Confused? I certainly was on the day of my appointment.

 

Once inside the main door there is a large overhead board with information as to where the different departments are. But just to confuse the visitor or patient even more, there is another smaller sign near the lift door with more information. 


On the day I must have looked like a lost child because a member of staff asked me if she could help. 


I told her my story and she sent me on my way. A chat between us ensued and yes, she agreed, the signage was most confusing.


Leaving the poor signage apart I was greatly impressed with the medical staff who attended to me on the day. Besides their professionalism, they could not have been kinder and more pleasant to me. We even managed to have the odd laugh, which always helps in such situations. 


And not to forget the staff member who sent me in the correct direction. And she did it with such friendliness.


Both Tallaght and Beaumont University Hospitals serve not just the Dublin area but can easily be called national hospitals. These days they are called centres of excellence.


We are constantly being advised and cajoled to leave the car at home and if at all possible, walk, cycle or take public transport. It’s a great idea but the people who designed Tallaght and Beaumont hospitals didn’t give much consideration to people who travel to the two hospitals by public transport. 


Why are the main entrances of both hospitals so far away from the public road?


In the case of Beaumont only selected buses leave you at the main entrance. If for example you take the number 14 Dublin Bus service, it leaves you at the entrance to the hospital, which is close to a kilometre or a 10 minute-walk to the main door of the hospital. 


In the case of Tallaght hospital no bus leaves you at the main door. If you travel by bus to the hospital you have to negotiate a dangerous road, which involves crossing the road close to a busy roundabout. Why does no bus drop you at the main door? I presume because there is not the space to do it.


And even with the Luas, placing a stop near the hospital was an afterthought, the current Hospital stop is a hefty walk from there to the main entrance. Wonderful design.


Making it so difficult to arrive by public transport at the main entrance to hospitals that serve the entire nation is beyond belief.


I saw an elderly woman crossing the road outside the hospital on her way to the main entrance. Watching her, my heart was in my mouth. 


Centres of Excellence?

Monday, April 24, 2023

The Russians and the Ottomans, the Irish and the British

On this day, April 22, 1877 the Russian Empire declared war on the Ottoman Empire.

The Russians were victorious, but in a fashion as the gains they made were limited

The Ottoman Empire is long gone, the Russian Empire? It changes its name from time to time, that’s about it.

And another significant event happened on April 24, this time it’s 1916.

The Easter Rising in Dublin’s GPO, where an Irish Republic is proclaimed in opposition to British rule in the country. 

And it too was ‘partly successful’.

History keeps repeating itself.

Why are we always fighting with one another?

More powerful countries dominating weaker nations.

The survival of the fittest? Surely not.

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Fox News pays a heavy price for downright lies

The Dominion Voting  Systems has settled  a defamation legal case with Fox News.

Fox News claimed the US presidential election was rigged against the incumbent Donald Trump. The case was settled on the steps of the courthouse and Fox has agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion.

Dominion plans to take a further case against another media outlet.

The far right Patriot Radio did not mention the legal settlement on its news bulletins.

Why did Pope John Paul II award a papal knighthood to Rupert Murdoch?

 

Saturday, April 22, 2023

The signs of the times

The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today.

Michael Commane 

On Easter Wednesday I had a medical appointment in a large Dublin teaching hospital. It’s a hospital with which I am not familiar, and I had difficulty finding my way around it. The floor and department I was to attend was clearly stated on the appointment letter. But the hospital signage spoke of levels not of floors. And also inside the main entrance there was too much unrelated information. My anxiety about my health was compounded by the confusion of the signage that greeted me.


People were coming and going in every direction, staff, patients, couriers, visitors, maintenance personnel. It was a sea of the unknown for me. With the help of someone, I eventually got to my destination and on time too.


Looking back on it, it was only a tiny blip of irritation and confusion on one day in my life. No more than that. But it reminded me that taken out of my normal environment, I behaved in some sort of chaotic fashion. 


Later in a calmer mood, walking about in the hospital observing the throngs of people, I began asking myself if the God question has any relevance for the people about me. If my life experience is any guide, most of the people I saw  are now alienated from the church into which they were born.


In the case of the Christian faith and specifically the Catholic Church, into which I was born, I suspect most of the people I saw that morning have little or no connection with or  understanding of their church. That such a great and unfortunate breakdown of communication has happened is a sad reflection on those of us who try to speak about God’s word.

 

I found my mind wandering and wondering what it must be like when people are removed from their own comfortable environment. And in some ways, that’s akin to what has happened in many Christian faiths in the western world since the end of the Second World War.


The language that we use in church does not seem to have much meaning for people, who once felt they understood what was being said, as my parents’ generation did.  


Pick up a religious newspaper, scroll through the website of any diocese or religious congregation and you are in alien territory, using language, which does not chime with the world in which most of us live. 


Not just hospitals but churches need simpler more direct signage.

 

In tomorrow’s Gospel (Luke 24: 13 - 35) two disciples did not at first recognise Jesus. It was only at the breaking of bread that they realised who he was. 


Naturally, after all that had happened in the previous days his disciples were confused, in many ways lost, indeed, so lost that even they did not recognise him.


Reading tomorrow’s Gospel, looking at all the accounts of what happened after Easter Day, I can’t but think of the times in which we live. When we break bread with one another, honestly are we doing it in a manner, that allows us or even tempts us to think of what happened at Easter, to think about the mystery of God?


Do all the words, instructions, the vocabulary of church leadership inspire us?

 

But right across society the tools of navigation can be difficult to follow. It’s easy to be swamped in a plethora of confusing signs. How do we decipher the Word of God? However it is transmitted and by whom, surely it must always be couched in kindness and respect.


The hospital signs on Easter Wednesday did nothing to help me in my confusion, rather it was the gentle and reassuring voice of a kind woman, who helped me on my way. 


Signs, to be helpful, always need to be updated. And of course the sign is not yet the destination to which it points us. The Sacraments are also signs, but signs which we believe include the destination to which they point. They are signs that contain the reality they signify.


The Catholic Church is attempting in the current synod to offer a glimmer of hope. For it to be a success there has to be a truthful attempt to listen to the people of God. Is the church capable of doing that? Pope Francis believes it is. I hope and pray that he is correct.

Friday, April 21, 2023

Ukraine’s rail network in a time of war

This makes for a lovely read about the trials, tribulations and relief experienced by the people of Ukraine as they travelled and travel across the iron way. The piece is from yesterday’s Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/apr/20/iron-people-ukraines-railway-network-in-a-time-of-war-photo-essay?CMP=share_btn_link

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Computer crash means cancellation of exam for students

Students in the German state of North Rhine Westfalia were due to sit their final school examination (Abitur) in biology yesterday. The exam has now been postponed until Friday with an exception for Muslim students on account of the ending of Ramadan.

The reason for the postponement is due to a technical problem with the IT system.

The population of North Rhine Westfalia is over 18 million.

It’s ironic that such a serious IT failure should happen on the same day that both the British and German governments expressed concern of major computer hacking by Russia.

It would seem abundantly evident that we are becoming far too dependent on computer technology. Are we slaves to the world of IT?

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Remembering the brave Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto

On this day, April 19, 1943 the brave people in the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against the German troops who entered the Ghetto to round up the remaining Jews. 

The article below is from The IrishTimes

compelling new exhibition in Warsaw tells the story of the revolt just as those on the inside saw it unfold from April 19th, 1943: blurred, chaotic and doomed.

Like the separate Warsaw uprising a year later, the Ghetto uprising ended in defeat. But news of the month-long uprising – the largest of its kind during the second World War – inspired similar revolts elsewhere and challenges the idea of European Jews as passive Nazi victims, resigned to their terrible fate.

Until now, though, practically the only known photographs of the uprising were those commissioned by the local SS. Their problematic provenance prompted curators of the new exhibition, at Warsaw’s Polin museum of Jewish history, to go on a hunt for alternatives. Last December, they struck gold.

Acting on a tip from a ghetto survivor, Polin curator Zuzanna Schnepf-Kolacz sought out the family of Warsaw man Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski.

A passionate amateur photographer, he was a 23-year-old fireman when he and his colleagues were summoned in April 1943 to the walled-in ghetto in central Warsaw established by the Nazis three years earlier.

Packed

At its worst in 1941 more than 400,000 people were squeezed into a disease-filled area of 3.4sq km: imagine the population of counties Galway and Mayo packed into in an area half the size of Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

The end of the ghetto began in the summer of 1942, when the Nazis deported 300,000 people – those not already dead from disease and hunger – to the Treblinka extermination camp.

The 60,000 people who remained, many younger men, began to organise into resistance groups. They dug bunkers and when 2,000 German soldiers moved in on April 19th, the eve of Passover, the ghetto guerrillas fired back with guns and home-made grenades.

Once the Nazis regrouped, they set fire to the buildings to smoke out the guerrillas – then, to prevent the fires spreading, summoned the fire brigade. Among them: Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski.

Under the noses of SS officers, he photographed discreetly what he saw and, on the back of a dozen prints he developed, contextualised the shocking scenes: “c. 20.4.1943 The setting on fire of houses abandoned by the Jewish population during the evacuation. From the window marked X (balcony) an entire Jewish family, about 5-6 people, jumped on to the pavement and died on the spot.”

In one diary entry, he added: “Figures staggering from hunger and dismay, filthy, ragged. Shot dead en masse; those still alive falling over the bodies of the ones who have already been annihilated.”

At least 7,000 people died during the month-long revolt; by mid-May the ghetto guerrillas who didn’t choose suicide were rounded up and deported to death camps with 42,000 others. About 20,000 people survived in hiding outside the ghetto after the SS razed it.

Negatives

Before the former firefighter died in 1992, a handful of his prints found their way to Washington’s Holocaust Museum. Asked by the Polin museum to check if the negatives still existed, the photographer’s son Maciej Grzywaczewski found a cardboard box filled with negatives. In one set, images of family scenes were juxtaposed with 33 images from the ghetto in April 1943 – 21 of which have never been seen before.

“My father never told us that he took photos inside the ghetto,” said Maciej Grzywaczewski, “maybe because it was too difficult for him.”

Though the photos were sometimes blurred or partially obscured, Polin curator Zuzanna Schnepf-Kolacz realised immediately she had a sensation on her hands.

“These are the only known [Ghetto uprising] photographs not taken by the Germans and not taken for propaganda purposes,” she said.

Also on display in the Polin museum exhibition is a newly discovered diary from a 20-year-old woman known only as Marylka.

“The ghetto has risen up . . . to defend the rest of our human dignity,” she wrote on April 19th. Just eight days later, in her final entry, Marylka added: “I know we are doomed to be annihilated . . . but there will be individuals who will survive and who will not allow that this crime against an entire nation is ever forgotten or forgiven.”

On Wednesday the presidents of Poland, Germany and Israel gather in Warsaw to lead remembrance services for the Ghetto uprising 80 years previously. For the first time the perspective is firmly that of those who survived, those who didn’t and those who didn’t look away from the last, desperate stand of one of Europe’s oldest Jewish populations.

As Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski noted, before he put the photos away in a box: “These images will remain with me for the rest of my life.”


Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Will our democratic system collapse into chaos?

This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Is democracy reaching its sell by date? I can imagine that introduction might incline you to question my sanity, something I do on a regular basis.


A friend of mine was home on holiday from Australia last month. We worked together at The Kerryman newspaper and have stayed in touch over the years.


He’s a lawyer by trade. I’ve always considered him a highly intelligent person. He has that great ability of thinking outside the box and has an aversion to kowtowing to the status quo. He is also extremely funny and is never slow to jeer at sacred cows. Maybe that’s why I like him.


When he was in Ireland we had many discussions about the Trump phenomenon. While he is no fan of Trump he simply asks the question what’s the difference between Trump’s Republicans and Biden’s Democrats. For every argument I threw at him criticising Trump he counter argued citing the behaviour of the Bidens.


It’s difficult to understand how the most powerful democracy in the world can offer its voters someone like Trump. 


I watched his opening 2024 presidential campaign speech, which he delivered in Waco in Texas. It was a long boring rant, filled with vulgar and vile words. The more crass were his words, the louder were the cheers from his fans. It was filled with hate and sneering.


On the other hand Joe Biden, at least to me, seems to be a much more gracious person, more considered too. But he can stumble over his words, at times looks unsteady on his feet. Is this the best America can do: 80-year-old Biden in the blue corner and 76-year-old Trump in the red corner?


Yes, Pope Francis is 86. But who would for a moment say that the Catholic Church is in healthy state. 


There are those who say Francis has brought the church to near schism. Not so. The signs of schism were present long before Jorge Bergoglio arrived in Rome.


Many blame social media for the cause of it all. That is too big a generalisation. Social media may well be playing its part, but long before the arrival of social media there were signs of democracy/western society fraying at the edges. Populist parties have been gaining traction across all democracies. They simply say no to whatever those who are in power do. There is the ever increasing voter appeal of the far right. 


The far right and the far left are becoming indistinguishable. They share a common mercilessness and nastiness. The more extreme they are, the more screams of approval they get from the madding crowd. And that applies in the churches too.


Putin talks about creating a new world order, so did Hitler. China has made it clear that Taiwan will soon be governed from Beijing.


Whatever about the expansionist plans of Moscow and Beijing, I keep wondering what must Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping be thinking of democratic systems/western world.


My Australian visitor believes the democratic system will collapse in chaos and be replaced with a strict authoritarian rule. Who knows?

Sunday, April 16, 2023

A slaughterhouse called school

Writing about what school was like for his contemporaries in the early 20th century George Orwell writes in his novel ‘Coming Up for Air':

“I’ve been struck by the fact that they never really get over that frighful drilling they go through at public schools.

“Either it flattens them out to be half-wits or they spend the rest of  their lives kicking against it.”

That was England then but that’s how it was in Ireland also, and well into the 1970s.

And people dare call them the good old days.


It’s the rich who keep the poor poor

Professor of Sociology and principal investigator at Princeton’s University’s Eviction Lab, Matthew Desmond featured on RTÉ Radio 1’s Saturday morning business programme. 

Growing up near Route 66 in Arizona he worked three jobs while putting himself through college, one of which was fighting wildfires in a forest near his home.

In 2008 he decided to focus his research on the housing crisis.

It is an interesting interview. Desmond claims that if a small percentage of the super rich in the US paid their lawful taxes, it would go a long way in solving the homeless catastrophe in the US, as he says, the richest land on the planet.

He is scathing how the rich and privileged play every trick in the book to keep the poor poor.

Below is the clip

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22238592/

Saturday, April 15, 2023

A Government notice that tells a shocking story

This Government notice

appeared in all Irish national newspapers on Wednesday. It has also appeared in regional newspapers in recent days.

Justine McCarthy in her column in The Irish Times yesterday commends the Government for the inquiry but asks why the inquiry has been restricted to schools run by Catholic religious orders. 

Does this means schools run by diocesan clergy are not included? And what about schools run by religious congregations, which are not technically religious orders?

What about survivors who attended non-Catholic-run schools, which often happen to be the schools attended by the less-privileged?

Reading a notice like this, one is forced to ask how does the institutional Catholic Church claim to know so much about God when it keeps saying it was not aware of the profound damage that sexual abuse causes.

How can a church that has spoken so often and authoritatively on matters of sexual morality now claim that it did not realise the damage that was done by paedophile priests and brothers?

The certainty with which Catholic Church leaders speak never seem to cause them a moment of embarrassment.

Is there a bishop or church leader anywhere in the world who has expressed genuine embarrassment?

Friday, April 14, 2023

Little difference between Georg Orwell’s world and today

Does anything ever really change?

The quote below is from ‘Coming Up for Air' by George Orwell. The book was first published in 1939.

“They were all true-blue Englishmen and swore that Vicky was the best queen that ever lived and foreigners were dirt, but at the same time nobody ever thought of paying tax, not even a dog-licence, if there was any way of dodging it."

Thursday, April 13, 2023

President Joe Biden insists on the Windsors

Interesting how US President Joe Biden visited the Windsor Bar in Dundalk yesterday.

Was the bar chosen because of the Windsor Framework?

Germany closes down its last three nuclear power stations

On Saturday Germany will shut down its three remaining nuclear power plants.

The country began phasing out nuclear power  more than 20 years ago - but plans were escalated following Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

Germany was forced to delay the closure of three remaining plants after Russia cut off European gas supplies amid its war in Ukraine, sparking fears of a winter fuel crisis.

An amended deadline of 15 April 2023 will see the facilities in Emsland, in Lower Saxony, and the Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim reactors close Saturday.

Other countries, including the UK, and Poland are turning to nuclear power to provide greener energy, as it generates electricity without the climate-heating emissions of burning fossil fuels.


Wednesday, April 12, 2023

It’s the visit - stupid

A memorable comment made by Sean Whelan, RTÉ’s US correspondent, as Air Force 1 landed at RAF Aldergrove in Belfast last night.

"The most significant thing about Joe Biden’s visit to Ireland is the visit itself."

Accused believes darkness over Russia will not last

The bravery of Vladimir Kara-Murza is beyond words. 

He is heading for a long time to hard labour in Russian prison colony somewhere far away in the east.

What motivates someone to behave in such a noble way?

“For me, as a historian, this is cause for reflection,” said Kara-Murza. “Criminals are supposed to repent of what they have done. I, on the other hand, am in prison for my political views. I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/10/defiant-kremlin-critic-vladimir-kara-murza-likens-his-case-to-stalins-show-trials?CMP=share_btn_link

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Am I a Luddite or a true progressive?

This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

I’m wondering is it just I who has a problem with websites and many other aspects of modern communications? To be honest I have a sneaky feeling that I am not alone when it comes to getting frustrated with the world of ‘touch tone’ technology.


For many months I have been trying to get in touch with Electric Ireland to ask some questions about my not-so-new smart meter. I have spent hours on the phone waiting in vain to speak to a customer care representative. Then some weeks ago I receive this text message from them: ‘You recently spoke to an Electric Ireland advisor (sic), please share your feedback https://ql.tc/b/tuG7GklV To opt-out, click here https://ql.tc/b/GZy8XyRN'.


When I clicked on the link, spent some time ticking all the relevant boxes and then went to send the message, nothing happened and the message was never sent. I’m weary of it all.


On April 1, yes, All Fools’ Day, I attended a funeral Mass. I was very well received by the priests, who were involved in the celebration of the funeral Mass.


When I came home I logged on to the relevant diocesan website. I wanted to learn something about the diocese and its personnel. I’d say I easily spent an hour trying to navigate across the website. All in vain. I typed in the name of the church where the funeral Mass had taken place. Found nothing. 


It intrigues me how poor most Catholic Church websites are. That same day I checked the website of a religious congregation. The same story. Most of the news was from fadó fadó, indeed it seemed the last update was mid-February. 


What is it about the church and communication? Most church websites I have visited are difficult to navigate and what’s available is so often boring and dowdy, preachy too. Of course there are exceptions, there always are. Exceptions never make the rule.


But then again I seem to have difficulty with far too many websites.


Many newspaper websites are riddled with misspellings.


Two weeks ago I tried to sign in to a newspaper website and whatever way I typed in my telephone number it would not accept the number. Eventually, I simply gave up.


On the one hand we are strongly advised not to use the one password for all our different accounts. But how under any circumstances can one remember all the different passwords?


It had been some years since I booked a Ryanair flight. When I went on to their website last week I was simply bamboozled and greatly confused.


I’ve picked up the courage to ask friends and colleagues about websites and they have all grudgingly agreed and said yes they can be difficult to navigate and often you don’t find the information you are looking for.


Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to find a telephone number on a website? Is that done intentionally?


I long for the day humans are clever enough to invent a time machine that can send us back to a time when life didn’t seem so complicated. Now, does that make me conservative and nostalgic, or a true progressive?

Monday, April 10, 2023

America should listen carefully to Justin Jones

This is a brilliant speech by Justin Jones. 

As he correctly and incisively says, the world is watching Tennessee.

Has it always been so or is Trump the one who has let the genie out of the bottle?

https://youtu.be/QwAiqUJsY1o

Sunday, April 9, 2023

Easter greetings

Happy Easter to all our readers. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby in his Easter address spoke about the momentous event that happened on Easter Sunday.

He began his sermon by talking about the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus.

He noted how the witness sounded real, how the disciples were so changed after the event.

The global church has sinned and sinned, and suffered too, and yet it still is given a sense of renewal, passes away from old failures and finds its life again and again.

Christians long to know this God of love so that we might live and become like him.

The church speaks of eternal values even when they are unpopular.

From the finality of death, a new beginning is made. 

Without the resurrection of the body of Jesus there are endings.

We see the reality of the resurrection all over the world. In conflicts reconciled, and hatreds overcome.

Because the tomb is empty, our hearts are full.

Nothing is outside the power of God.

Christ has risen.

Saturday, April 8, 2023

A one-off comment from Bertie Ahern

Northern Ireland is the best three card trick there ever was.

-Bertie Ahern

Russian defector sheds light on Putin’s paranoia

An interesting piece in the Guardian by a former Russian security officer, who has defected.

So much of Putin’s lifestyle is similar to that of Hitler, the need for extra national territory; his paranoia about his own personal security; is he married, is he not married; the need for a new world order.

And then the terror he has unleashed.

On Thursday evening BBC 2’s Newsnight interviewed former Russian diplomat Boris Bonderov, who also painted a depressing picture of what is happening in Russia.

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/russian-defector-sheds-light-on-putin-paranoia-including-secret-train?CMP=share_btn_link

Friday, April 7, 2023

Ramifications of JP II’s knighthood to Rupert Murdoch

An Australian lawyer yesterday asked what was the difference between Saint Pope John Paul II bestowing a papal knighthood on Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump paying hush money to Stormy Daniels.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

A US Catholic bishop defends the Roman Catholic faith

A sensational headline in the current issue of the free-sheet Alive newspaper.

The headline runs: 'Bishop Strickland Defends the Catholic Faith'

It must go down as one of the finest journalist scoops in modern times.

It’s funny and for someone to think otherwise, they simply have no sense of humour.

But on a more serious note there might be much more to the headline than meets the eye. The same bishop tends to make headlines with some of his comments.

A priest in the Dublin archdiocese has expressed his belief that the Catholic Church is heading for schism.

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

What do our own words say about us?

This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’ columns

Michael Commane

Language, the words we use and how we use them, is simply fascinating. Some days ago I jokingly corrected a friend for finishing a sentence with a preposition. He is forever correcting me so I thought it was time for revenge. But he quickly replied with this: ‘Are we back to 19th century grammatical mores now?’

Does grammar matter, do the rules of grammar change, maybe more importantly does the meaning of words change?


There is an RTÉ radio presenter who is a stickler on words and grammar, who last week said: ‘That’s them together’, when he should have said ‘That’s they together’, indeed, it’s now common practice to say what he said. But the grammar is wrong. 


I can hear you say who cares and yes I understand that too. But do you not find it grating on the ear when people say ‘I done it’ or ‘I have went’? Or is it all a class thing? I told you, language, or at least our use of it, is intriguing.


What about the use of foul or bad language? There are those who say they are only words. Last week a work colleague was telling a few of us how her 12-year-old son had come home from school and asked her what was wrong with ‘swear words’. An interesting conversation followed. I think some of us said that ‘swear words’ or bad language conveys or expresses anger and violence. There is also an element of rudeness or vulgarity attached to bad language.


After all doesn’t the adjective ‘bad’ explain it all in one simple three-letter word?

 

But we did have an interesting conversation and it developed into a wider discussion on the words we use.


Later that same day I was on the upper deck of a bus, sitting behind me were a young couple, probably in their 20s. For the best part of 20 minutes I was subjected to a continuous flow of foul or bad language. It is no exaggeration to say that every second word from the young woman’s lips began with an F. 


And there were worse than that. I had no intentions of turning around and asking them to desist, scared that I could get myself into serious trouble. They were not at all bickering with each other, indeed, they were enjoying their chat. I’m asking myself has the F-word become a normal part of our vocabulary. 


For the 20 minutes or so that I was forced to hear what they were saying I found myself getting annoyed, maybe even angry with them. Why was that? I honestly don’t know except that I sure do know I was getting annoyed.


During one of the Dáil debates on the housing crisis the leader of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald said: ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph’. I’m wondering is that acceptable parliamentary language?


I’m reminded of George Washington’s words: ‘The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.’


Or is it, as my friend tells me, I am back in the 19th century? Is language all the time evolving? Or might it be that the words we use are often an indication of who we are and what we might stand for. See, there I am again, finishing a sentence on a preposition. 



Monday, April 3, 2023

Is it possible to trust Rupert Murdoch and his media empire?

One of the world’s, if not the world’s, leading media owner, Rupert Murdoch is engaged to be married for the fifth time.

It’s eight months after he divorced former model Jerry Hall.

The 92-year-old co-chair of the Fox Corporation and executive chair of News Corp said his planned wedding to 66-year-old Ann Lesley Smith would be his last, adding: “it better be’.

Is it possible to trust the word of Rupert Murdoch? Is it possible to trust a single word of the worldwide media he controls?

Saint Pope John Paul II awarded Rupert Murdoch a papal knighthood.

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Dobro Kosciol - the good of the church

This article appears in the weekend edition of The Irish Times 

Abuse claims around late pope divide Poland

A statue of the late Pope John Paul II in Krakow: Last week, a report revealed claims about his involvement in covering up sexual crimes when he was archbishop of Krakow. PHOTOGRAPH: OMAR MARQUES/GETTY IMAGES


In a Warsaw elevator, Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek and his publicist are exchanging worried words. It’s four hours until his first public event to promote his new book, Maxima Culpa: John Paul II Knew, claiming that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, as archbishop of Kraków, protected four paedophile priests before becoming pope in 1978.

The book has rattled Poland’s Catholic church. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the late pope’s closest aide, accused the book of “aiming to trample on the memory of all that Poland owes to the Holy Pontiff and to destroy his legacy”.

Even more vocal are Poland’s politicians, in particular the ruling national conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party. With an eye on autumn parliamentary elections, and the prospect of pulpit endorsements, PiS has organised a Warsaw march tomorrow – the 18th anniversary of his death – to “defend the memory” of their pope.

PiS-controlled state media, in parallel with many dubious social media accounts, are leading a vigorous campaign to shoot the messenger. First came a fake Twitter account in Overbeek’s name (the journalist is absent from social media). In the Warsaw elevator, the talk is of a Wikipedia page about him filled with false claims.

A philosophy graduate from Groningen, he first came to Poland for two years in 1991 and has lived and worked here for the past quarter century.

“I used to like living here but this is a character assassination,” says Overbeek, a youthful 53-year-old with a mane of brown curly hair framing watchful eyes. “I am the ideal target: a foreigner, a Protestant from the nasty Netherlands Sodom and Gomorrah.”

His 500-page book relates the story of the Catholic Church in postwar communist Poland and presents four cases of priests who sexually abused children in the Kraków archdiocese under Karol Wojtyla. As well as uncovering police reports and court documents, Overbeek found and interviewed abuse survivors, indirect witnesses to the abuse – and turned up documents written by Wojtyla himself.

In a 1971 letter to a priest convicted of oral rape of girls, Wojtyla describes the abuse as a “crime” yet reinstates him to parish work – where he abuses again. In another case Wojtyla wrote a personal letter of recommendation for an abusing priest – a personal friend – for a new post in Austria, making no mention of his criminal record.

Though church archives remain closed to him and other researchers, Overbeek says he has found additional circumstantial evidence to indicate that there may have been further such cases in the Kraków archdiocese.

Big question

He never expected to return to clerical sexual abuse after his 2010 book, Be Afraid, told the stories of Polish clerical sexual abuse survivors. What made him return to the subject? Because, he says, of how all subsequent reports and films on the subject tiptoed around the big question: what did John Paul II know? Revered by millions of Poles, Pope John Paul II remains the personification of Poland’s robust merger of Catholic and national identities – and their triumph over communism and preceding centuries of foreign oppression.

“If Marvel wanted a Polish superhero it would be John Paul II – he ticked every box,” says Mateusz Mazzini, a Warsaw journalist and author. “He was a beacon of hope – far beyond religious circles – particularly for Poles craving international recognition. These allegations now challenge people to look again on a period they cherish so much – and many simply refuse to do so.”

Unlike Ireland’s church-run schools and hospitals, with ample opportunities for abuse, clerical sexual abuse in Poland often took place in rural communities. Villagers who revered abusing priests back then are conflicted when reminded of how they ignored victims and their suffering.

For clerics, the book challenges their passive silence and highlights lapses of judgment: the bishop who sent in an exorcist rather than a therapist to an abuse survivor, who later took her life; the bishop who suggested an abusing priest had been “seduced” by altar servers.

For former Jesuit priest Stanislaw Obirek, the strong pushback is motivated, too, by the existential threat it poses to the post-1989 church narrative – and privileges bishops secured after the transition to democracy.

“The narrative of the church as an institution oppressed by the bad communists is simply not true,” he says. “In the post-Stalin era the church in Poland was not in opposition to communism – it was co-habitating, playing a game to gain as much space as possible.”

Equally confusing for many Poles is the Cardinal Wojtyla revealed in the files presented by Overbeek: less the empathetic father figure they remember from his visits home and more a functionary concerned with what he regularly referred to as “Dobro Kosciol” – the good of the church.

That is the mentality Cardinal Wojtyla brought with him to Rome in 1978, Overbeek argues, dovetailing with secret Holy See rules on clerical sexual abuse from 50 years earlier.

As Pope John Paul II, he shrugged off calls to intervene in clerical sexual abuse scandals worldwide, often siding with abusers and bishops who covered up their crimes – or who were themselves abusers.

“He knew all about this when he started in Rome,” says Overbeek, “so the arguments his defenders put forward – that he didn’t know or realise – all falls apart because of Kraków.”

Given the Polish pope’s own strict sexual morality, the Dutch journalist is critical of the second line of defence – “they were different times” – on clerical sexual abuse of children.

“It is hard to believe that he did not understand that sex with children is something bad,” he adds. “I don’t think he was a cynic yet. Even though he knew how bad it was, he chose to believe it was not so.”

The pushback against his book – and an independently researched television documentary making similar allegations – was swift. Instead of addressing the claims, though, or engaging with victims, the allegations have been reframed by Poland’s government and media as an attack on national identity and honour. A similar campaign four years ago ended with the fatal stabbing of Pawel Adamowicz, mayor of Gdansk, at a public event.

Agora, Overbeek’s Polish publisher, had already cancelled two readings because of security concerns. The Warsaw reading went ahead this week only with security controls at the door and bodyguards visible throughout the event.

Some 80 people listened intensely during the two-hour event. One woman praised Overbeek’s “amazing ability to get to the facts, the meticulousness”. Even though she left the church years ago, the book forced her to “rearrange things in her head”.

Telling wearingly familiar tales of priests preying on disadvantaged children, Overbeek says Polish survivors of clerical sexual abuse are almost invisible. The aura of the church and John Paul II remain so great, he says, that there “is a strong fear of ostracism”.

“In Poland, more strongly than in other countries, victims feel guilty for what happened to them,” he said.

After nearly 50 years of silence, Krzysztof Warchol has overcome his feelings of guilt and shame.

He grew up near Kraków, was confirmed by Cardinal Wojtyla and as a teenager was raped by a priest in the city. As the demonisation of Ekke Overbeek builds in Poland, Warcho  and his girlfriend describe him as an “angel”.

“The recent events have made me decide to speak out with my face, I no longer want to hide,” he says. “I’m just so grateful for this book.”


Saturday, April 1, 2023

The contrasting pictures of Hamburg and Bucha

On Friday King Charles III visited Hamburg.

The Guardian article below paints a powerful picture of reconciliation between two countries who were at war 80 years ago.

Today the war in Ukraine has destroyed so much of the possibility of peace and reconciliation that the world so badly needs right now.

Compare the pictures of Bucha in Ukraine with those of King Charles’ visit to Hamburg yesterday. Yesterday was the first anniversary of Ukraine’s retaking Bucha.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/30/hamburg-allied-bombing-king-charles-visit-uk-german?CMP=share_btn_link

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