Germany remembers Claus von Stauffenberg

On this day, July 21, 1944 Claus von Stauffenberg and four fellow conspirators were executed for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

While Stauffenberg never joined the Nazi party he did support the invasion of Poland and admired much of Hitler’s views in the early days.

He took part in the invasion of Poland and Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Stauffenberg is a respected figure in post war Germany. There are no ifs and buts in history but had the Red Army not defeated the Germans at Stalingrad would Stauffenberg have attempted to assassinate Hitler?

The ghost of Epstein is haunting Trump’s presidency

The long read in yesterday’s Guardian.

Might this be Trump’s Epsteingate?

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/jul/19/trump-epstein-maga-revolt?CMP=share_btn_url

Time for all State agencies to make simple savings

In the first six months of this year the HSE recorded a €218 million overrun in current spending.

The HSE is to curb staff training and attendances at conferences in a bid to reduce spending.

Is there ever a study done on the amount of wastage across all public bodies; the food that’s wasted, money spent on unnecessary taxi expenditure.

Are there audits done on inefficient heating systems, and then action taken to cut down on waste?

The stationery that must be wasted across all government and State agencies.

It’s the little things that make the difference.

The new gaudy trappings of United States power

It appears the clips we see of the room where US President Donald Trump receives foreign visitors with elected media present has been redecorated; has it suddenly become extremely gaudy and indeed ugly with gold trappings and ugly decorations?

It certainly looks if it has been changed. 

Wednesday, July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg

On this day, Wednesday, July 17,  1918 Tsar Nicholas of Russia and his immediate Romanov family were executed in Yekaterinburg.

It was and is a significant day in the events of the Russian revolution; it marked a significant day in the future of Russia and indeed in world history.

'The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom'

This comment might be lost as it appears on the post titled What on earth is an indulgence of June 17, 2025.

"When GKChesterton was asked why he became a Catholic, he answered 'to get rid of my sins'. He says that only the Catholic Church can do that, and that when a man steps out of the confessional, he is only five minutes old. His whole life has started over again (Dale Ahlquist, Knight of the Holy Ghost, p.8).
Nonsense? Of course. Or rather non-sense. If your conscience tells you not to believe it, you must not believe it. But for those who do believe 'the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, the weakness of God is stronger than human strength' (1 Corinthians 1.25).

-Vivian Boland OP

The things you might hear on a hospital escalator

This week's column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Travelling down a hospital escalator last week I asked a woman for directions to a ward. We got chatting. I knew from her lanyard that she worked in the hospital. 

I asked her if there were any nuns, technically speaking, religious sisters, now working in the hospital. She replied: ‘if there were I wouldn’t be working here’. What could I say to that? 

We were now down off the escalator and both of us were walking in the same direction. I asked her why she had said that. She angrily explained the fear, dread and cruelty she experienced at the hands of the nuns. 

She said they had not all been cruel but the majority of the nuns, who taught her, were horrible women. I had no idea what to say, stood for a moment before we parted company. 

I had gone about two or three steps before going back to her, introducing myself and telling her I was a priest. She immediately says she never met an unkind priest, yes, she knows all about the priest child molesters but she personally and emphatically said she had never encountered an unkind priest, and they were her very words. The tables seemed to turn because I assured her there were unkind priests, and that I had first-hand experience of encountering such men. 

Our conversation began on a hospital escalator, there was something almost absurd, maybe hilariously funny about the toing and froing between us. We chatted on for a few minutes, I told her I was heading back to work. She stopped, looked at me for a moment and then said: ‘Father would you please say a prayer for my son’. I hesitatingly asked her what was wrong, her face suddenly looked downcast and sad before telling me that he was a drug addict. I assured her of my humble prayer; they were our last words. 

She went in one direction, I in another. But our final glances were ones of smiles.

It is highly unlikely we’ll ever meet again, then again, I’ve learned over time how small our world is.

My immediate response to the woman when she spoke about the cruel nuns was to say how sad it was; instead of inspiring young women with the mercy and love of God, all she could remember was their cruelty. 

Of course, I was annoyed and upset but I did say to her, they can’t all have been nasty; she insisted the nasty ones were in the majority.

But then when she told me she never met an unkind priest my mind did all sorts of somersaults; I began asking myself how accurate was her memory.

I thought it interesting how she asked me to pray for her son. All during our conversation I had a feeling that this woman was a woman of faith, who had been seriously hurt and wounded by nuns.

I was reminded of a saying of the famous Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: ‘Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God’.

de Chardin was in much trouble with the Vatican, before being later exonerated.

It’s so easy to mangle the story of Jesus; it’s done over and over right down through the ages.

We are being taken for clowns as the rich take our money

Much talk these days of food

inflation, and rightly so. Prices of basic necessities have crossed a red line. How are poor people paying for food.

Sitting down in a cafe has nothing to do with necessities of life. Yesterday in south Dublin a cafe charged €00.60 cent for a cube of ice. That is absurd and wrong.

We are constantly criticising past generations for the wrong that was done, especially to the poor and marginalised. Wouldn’t it be great if we cared and respected the living poor and marginalised.

The picture above appears on a self-service till in a well-know ‘low cost' supermarket. And it so happens the German is not translated into English. What’s in German has nothing to do with the English on the screen.

One might get the impression we are being colonised, again. It is insulting and shocking.

One needs great patience and time in any attempt to contact and then speak to a human voice when requiring information or lodging a complaint. So much for modern technological advancement.

Chinese government at odds with the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama, who celebrated 

Ninety-year-old Dalai Lama

his 90th birthday last week, said the Tibetan Buddhist community has the ‘sole authority’ to recognise the spiritual leader’s future incarnation.

The Chinese government has repeatedly challenged the Dalai Lama’s authority and says the succession process should be decided within its borders

DJ Carey’s US scam raises many interesting questions

Over the last days DJ Carey has been in the news for defrauding people, telling people he needed money to help pay for the cancer he did not have.

The Irish Independent carried an extensive piece on how DJ tried to scam wealthy Americans for money.

It sounds and is obscene. Reading The Irish Independent story many readers might ask is it ‘right and fitting’ that some people should have so much money side-by-side with people who have noting.

Others might ask is it ‘right and fitting’ that Irish people should go begging to the US asking the mega rich to help fund their projects. Is it ever asked how those who have been invited to donate made their money?

The DJ Carey story might be the catalyst to question charities, organisations, political parties, running to the US with the begging bowel.

There is something about it that looks and sounds worrying.

The Irish Times doesn’t tell the full story on world debt

 In The Irish Times of yesterday Eoin Burke-Kennedy writes:

"The next financial crisis is coming and this time it will be a sovereign debt crisis. Not my words but those of German chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Speaking before the German election in February, the one that elevated him to the top job, Merz warned that governments had taken on too much debt.

He noted that several EU states, including France, Italy and Spain,now had debts that were bigger than the size of their annual economic output.

The French government collapsed last year while trying to push through a €60billion austerity budget in an attempt to rectify the problem.

Merz could have added the UK to that financial risk list. British prime minister Keir Starmer’s government is tearing itself apart trying to put the public finances on a more sustainable path, fearful of another bond market bust-up like the one that sunk former Tory prime minister Liz Truss."

But in the full article Eoin Burke-Kennedy never mentions anywhere that shortly after the election Merz managed to pass a bill in the Bundestag that allowed the German Government to change the law so that the incoming government could borrow even more money.

That this fact is not mentioned surely takes away from the logic of the argument?

Eavesdropping on a conversation on an escalator

A woman in her 50s is heading down an escalator at the Mater Hospital, she gets talking to a man, who asks her if she worked in the hospital. She said she did; he asks her if there were any nuns now working in the hospital; she replied: "if there were I wouldn’t be working here. The two get talking and she explains she was taught by nuns and her experience was one of cruelty. 

The conversation continues off the escalator.

The man listens and then tells her he is a priest. She responds, saying that she had never come across an unkind priest. He assured her there were indeed unkind priests.

All in a day. More proof to ask what’s it all about, does anything make sense?

Joe Egan’s 'Church, Sacrament of the World’ a great read

 Fr Joe Egan’s recently published Church, Sacrament of the World should be mandatory reading for every church leader.

The book underscores the need for continuing church reform while also insisting on the importance of mutual engagement between church and world, even when the relationship between them is strained and the questions arising are divisive.

The sea can drown out our unease and anxiety

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper

Michael Commane

You may have forgotten, but last Monday week was a horrible day, at least in Castlegregory, where it rained all day, although swimming in the rain can be a fabulous experience. 

But the following day, Tuesday was a different story, blue skies and sun; full tide was 10.00, the perfect time to swim. You could loll about in the water as you would in a bath but the expanse and wonder of the sea at Castlegregory is an infinity away from a tiny bathtub. I was able to swim, jump, even roar in the waters.

Well done to Kerry County Council, who  have placed a number of timber benches and picnic tables in the parking area. 

It was my first time to avail of the new seats, where I sat down and looked across at Kerry Head. I even got a hint of Loop Head, away in the distance.

The council have also done remedial work at the carpark, placing large boulders in an attempt to protect the area from further erosion, another of the many symptoms of our changing climate.

It will be great if it works. No doubt the engineers and designers know what they are doing, but it is all of us, in conjunction with our political leaders, who have to make a better effort in protecting our planet.

The simple pleasure of sitting down on a timber bench looking out to sea and sky, was a moment of extraordinary wonder and pleasure. 

I know it’s not always swimming weather in Ireland but however wintery or miserable it may be on a summer’s day, the water for the majority of people is easily warm enough for a swim. My father kept insisting that September was the best month for swimming in the sea in Ireland as it had the heat of the summer in it.

The sea has a special charm for me and evokes great memories. I recall swimming with my father at the strand in Castlegregory when he was 92. He walked down to the water in his flip flops, I holding one hand, he had his stick in his other hand; as soon as he was afloat I threw the flip-flops on to the sand along with his stick, and off we went a-swimming. How can I forget such a moment. 

That Tuesday I was swimming in Castlegregory, looking out to sea, I kept thinking how it must have looked just like that when my grandfather was swimming there in the 19^th century. And then my father learned to swim in that same spot before the 1916 Rising.

Maybe even my great grandfather or great grandmother were swimming there before my grandfather.

With all our advancement, our technological knowhow, and now the approach of ever more sophisticated AI, isn’t it ironic that the simple pleasure and fun of swimming is hard to beat.

Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926) gets it when he says: ‘When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.’

Inspiring words to keep us swimming all year round.

The daily scourge technology places on people

Below is a story about how a customer is treated by Vodafone and Revolut. It appeared in The Irish Times yesterday and written by Conor Pope. 

But before The Irish Times

story, another annoyance.

It is becoming a daily battle between the individual and large corporations. 

Lidl is introducing self-service tills in its stores. This appears on my self-service till yesterday.

Anyone any idea what it means?  And then the misspelling. It’s a small detail, nevertheless it’s another example of the daily battle people have with modern technology.

Conor Pope

On May 22nd a reader’s mother, a woman in her 70s, contacted Vodafone Ireland to report poor wifi and was promised a call back from a technician.

The following day the call she was expecting came – or so she thought – but what happened next has left her traumatised and substantially poorer.

The caller referenced the wifi issue “and said she was eligible for a refund,” he son writes. “She was sent a text link and asked to click it to “verify” the refund.”

She did as she was asked to do by the person claiming to be from Vodafone but after following the link and inputting some key details her banking app was compromised and her Revolut account was remotely accessed and €1,850 sent to a sterling account in the UK.

“She immediately reported it to Revolut, Vodafone, and An Garda Síochána, submitting screenshots of all the suspicious activity, a signed statement and the full context of the scam,” her son writes.

He tells us that she was asked by Revolut “to upload this same dossier five times [and] Revolut never called her, despite promising to”.

He describes Revolut’s support system as “opaque and evasive, consisting of scripted replies and AI loops, with no clear case management or human escalation”.

He says that when he asked “a basic admin question – what documents are needed to file a fraud report in Ireland – they refused to answer, citing GDPR, even though I never asked about her account,” he says. He also says Vodafone has “not yet explained how someone knew about the wifi complaint and used that to engineer the scam”.

Our reader points out that the funds “were sent to another Revolut account, raising questions about their fraud controls and whether the funds were frozen.

“At this point, we just want honest answers and a fair process. My mum has done everything asked of her, but she’s getting nowhere – and it feels like the system is built to exhaust people into giving up.”

He says that “everything is handled by bots with repeated requests for the same info, vague timelines, and generic cut-and-paste responses. Even now, weeks later, she still hasn’t received a proper update, and it’s genuinely shaken her confidence in using digital banking at all. It’s an insane system and the fact you can’t talk to a human is ludicrous.”

He says that when Revolut wanted his business account, “the office would receive regular phone calls and emails from reps looking for the business. How could they not provide the same support to existing clients. Has Revolut quietly built a wall between customers and accountability?”

There are two troubling strands to this scam.

Did the criminals know she had contacted Vodafone and were able to time their first contact with her to coincide with the exact time she was expecting a call from that company?

And why are the systems that Revolut have in place so opaque, and why has it proved to be impossible for this family to speak to a human being or even get a sense that Revolut is addressing this issue with the seriousness that it deserves?

First we contacted Vodafone and shared the details of this scam with them. The company checked its systems and said that there was no evidence of a data breach on its side and a spokesman could not definitively say how it was that our reader – or at least their mother – would receive a call purporting to be from Vodafone less than 24 hours after she had contacted the company.

It could be simple coincidence. Scammers make many, many such calls everyday and they must sometimes get lucky.

We also contacted Revolut.

In a statement the company said it was sorry for this person’s experience “and any instance where our customers are targeted by ruthless and sophisticated criminals. Revolut takes fraud, and the industry-wide risk of customers being coerced by organised criminals, incredibly seriously. Each potential fraud case concerning a Revolut customer is carefully investigated and assessed independently of other cases.”

The statement stresses that it has “a fervent focus on improving the customer experience at Revolut, and the protection of our customers’ money is paramount to that. We provide customer support 24/7 in-app via chat because it is the most secure method to communicate with customers, and helps to ensure that they can be certain they are connected with a member of our team.

“Any reported fraud automatically triggers human intervention from our customer service team, ensuring a user’s case is handled by skilled live agents with expertise in financial crime.”

It said that in recent months it had introduced in-app calls “to give users a secure way to engage with our customer service team over the phone and help them to expose phone call scams.”

Revolut said that last year it had prevented more than €700 million in potential fraud against customers by implementing in-app calls, real-time AI fraud-detection systems, transaction limits, in-app warnings and delayed payments for suspicious transactions, biometric authentication requirements, and providing educational resources to help consumers remain informed about potential risks.

“Revolut’s financial crime prevention team now represents almost a third of our global workforce and, alongside many other payments firms, we deploy a number of different interventions that are solely designed to ‘break the spell’ of scammers and fraudsters,” it said.

“Whilst Revolut is unable to comment on the specifics of these interventions, so as to not provide any insight that could help ruthless criminals socially engineer their victims and bypass these, we are constantly innovating and testing a range of eye-catching warnings.

“While we are fully determined to protect our customers as best we can through our fraud prevention technologies, and go to every length to ensure scams are avoided, there is no denying that fraud is an industry-wide issue that needs to be tackled at source, particularly by the telecoms companies and social media apps that are enabling this. Banks and financial institutions should be the last line of defence, not the only line of defence.”

The story does have a happier-thanexpected outcome. Initially the company wrote to her and outlined its processes and the steps it had taken to prevent any suspicious transactions taking place before determining that it was not at fault and as such no money would be refunded.

A day later we heard back from our reader again. “You won’t believe this. We went from that email yesterday to my mother getting her cash paid back today.”

In a letter the company sent to her a representative said: “upon further investigation of your case, we have identified a mistake in how it was previously handled. Subsequently, we have reclassified the situation as an account-takeover fraud and organised a full reimbursement of €1891.50 along with €150 as a compensation for the stress caused by the whole situation. The payment was sent directly to your Revolut account.”

DJ Carey’s former partner not happy with gardaí

The  lead story in the Sunday Independent yesterday was  how a complaint about DJ Carey was not taken seriously.

His former partner, Sarah Newman argues that gardaí failed to act when she reported his theft.

She says that she complained to gardaí that he allegedly stole money from her - years before he was charged with defrauding other people out of thousands of euro while pretending to have cancer.

Ms Newman made formal complaints back in 2012 about DJ’s conduct, lies and deception.

She believes that she was not fully listened to, given his status as a hurling star at that time.

How often that happens, we give people names, titles and status and they can so easily manage to receive special treatment from whoever the relevant authority might be; while at the same time those who report or whistle blow are so often considered to be trouble makers.

It’s an old story. One must admire Ms Newman; in spite of her loss and pain she tells her story with a wonderful degree of magnanimity. And that’s not easy.

Nonsense or wisdom, either or

 “I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

                                                                 - Oscar Wilde

McGuinness got €800k EU expenses to use her own office

The story below is from The Irish Times of yesterday. The article is written by Arthur Beesley. On face value this is a shocking story and it’s this behaviour that turns people away from traditional politics and makes them supporters of either the far right or far left.

Then there’s the salary, the pension and all the freebies. And no doubt Ms McGuinness is no exception; all paid for by the tax payer.

If this story is correct, surely Fine Gael could not think of electing Ms McGuinness as their candidate for the upcoming presidential election.

Let them eat cake.

Prospective Fine Gael presidential candidate Mairead McGuinness claimed hundreds of thousands of euro in MEP expenses for office rent and other costs when using family property in Co Meath as her constituency office.

Ms McGuinness’s expenses claims were within European Parliament rules. But they are seen by some in Fine Gael circles as a potential point of discomfort in the autumn presidential election campaign because of the prospect of questions being raised.

In her 16 years as an MEP, she is estimated to have received more than €800,000 in unvouched “general allowance” payments to cover “office rent and management costs” and expenses for phones, computers and other political representation costs.

During most of that period, Ms McGuinness located her constituency office in a building adjacent to her family home at Mentrim near Navan. Land Registry records show she and her husband, Tom Duff, own the office property.

“The Mentrim constituency office enabled her to serve the constituency, and have an easily accessible office for the regular and out of normal office hours’ work she engaged in every week as an MEP,” said a spokesman.

“The office was advertised to the public as her constituency office. Her financial details as an MEP were published on her website and regularly updated, including those in relation to her constituency office.”

Although the presidential election must be held within 60 days of Michael D Higgins leaving office on November 11th, prospective candidates across the political spectrum have been slow to come forward.

However, Ms McGuinness is widely expected to seek Fine Gael’s candidacy when the party opens nominations on Monday. She has long been considered one of the most likely contenders and has never ruled herself out.

A former journalist, she made her mark in European politics as a member of the parliament’s agriculture and rural development committee.

She became first vice-president of the parliament in 2017 but left in 2020 to become Ireland’s EU commissioner in succession to Phil Hogan after the “Golfgate” affair. Her term as commissioner for financial services ended last year.

According to the European Parliament, the general allowance “is not paid automatically”. MEPs must request payment.

“Members are free to request all or part of the amount of the allowance, and/or to reimburse amounts that have not been used,” the parliament’s rules state.

The monthly payment was set at €3,700 when Ms McGuinness was first elected an MEP in 2004 and had risen to €4,950 when she left in October 2020.

Her website is no longer online, but partial records remain on archived web pages. She is estimated to have received €222,000 in the 2004-2009 parliamentary term, €255,762 in the 2009-2014 term, €261,192 in the 2014-2019 and €79,200 in 2019-2020.

There was no comment from Ms McGuinness on these figures after they were put to her.

Comment on recent statements made by Mr Michael Kelly

This blog began in June 2007. Like everything in life it has changed over the years, maybe even grown up and today looks at reality through different lenses that it did back in 2007.

At the side of the blog the following appears:

Readership

This blog is read around the world, on all five continents. 

The blog was launched in June 2007. 

It attempts at getting past staid, predictable comments and opinions, especially on church issues. 

Hopefully it is funny, provocative, skittish, sometimes a little irreverent but never rude or insulting, always watching out for all sorts of humbug, especially of the clerical kind. 

Maybe a counter balance to pious piffle and holy humbug.

__________________

The blog is often critical of organisations and institutions, and makes no apologies for such comment. It remarks on ideas expressed by individuals but it never intends to be snide or make nasty comments about people. Indeed, if it has done that, then it profusely apologises.

In early June, Catholic commentator, Michael Kelly wrote the following on his X account: "A friend just told me there is some fella[sic] who keeps a blog commenting on my social media posts is[sic] a sneery kinda[sic] way. What a curious way to live your life - some people really do need to take up a hobby. Oddly flattering to live rent-free in his head! 😊"

At the time no comment was made, it was felt best to ignore such an impoverished and sad comment. Obviously it was directed at this blog.

Yesterday the comment below, again from Michael Kelly, appeared on his X account: "Sean 'Diddy' Combs, Conor McGregor, D.J. Carey and Bro. Kevin Crowley - four very different men in the news this evening. I know which one we should follow and encourage our young men to emulate."

Surely such a sentiment has little in common with the Christian message. One is reminded of Pope Francis’  words that the church should be like a field hospital.

Again, it must be stressed this is not a personal attack on Mr Kelly but it is an opinion criticising his comments made in the public forum.

If this blog has ever offended or insulted Mr Kelly, it takes this opportunity to apologise to him.

This blog wishes Mr Kelly every good fortune and success in his work.

Channel 4 gives a glimpse of McGregor followers

Channel 4 News last evening carried a special report on Conor McGregor.

One of his supporters said that she had no confidence or trust in politicians. The journalist asked her did she know her local politicians; no, she did not know who they were, know their names or anything about their politics. 

Mr McGregor was not available for comment.

United workers have nothing to lose but their chains

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

The Lauren Sanchez Jeff Bezos wedding has been in the news. Neither of them is in the flush of their youth, it happens to all of us. Lauren is 55 and Bezos is 61. It is reported that they spent €48 million on the three-day splash. 

The next time you have an Amazon package delivered to your door you might ask yourself do I really need this or could I have bought it elsewhere, where the profit margin might be less.

What’s going on in the world? Was it always as crass, vulgar and mad as this? Then again if royal families have accumulated such wealth over generations why can’t commoners? It baffles me how we tolerate such inequality to exist.

Is raw capitalism good for society? How can we say yes to that if there are one billion people starving in the world?

Is the dollar bill all about greed and trying to make a fortune? At least in most countries in Europe there is an attempt to control runaway capitalism.

No matter how much we criticise our health service in Ireland, medical treatment is available to all, irrespective of how much money one has.

A cousin of mine was on a cycling holiday with her husband in France in late June and on the last day of their cycling she broke a bone in her leg. With her European Health Insurance Card (EHIC, formerly known as E111) she received all her medical treatment without having to put her hand in her pocket. 

An EU agreement allows all EU citizens free medical treatment in any of the 27 countries they visit. If you are travelling anywhere in the EU in the coming months make sure to apply for your EHIC, which is available online or at any local health office.

Yes, we pay for it in our taxes and that’s the way it should be.

That’s just one example of the many great benefits afforded us by being a member state of the European Union. A couple I know who are planning a trip to Canada and the US have just discovered that he cannot get private travel health insurance as a result of his medical history. 

Not too long ago he had a minor stroke and has one or two other less serious health issues. He lives a normal life for a man in his 70s, plays golf and travels around Ireland with no difficulties whatsoever. Why can’t he obtain travel health insurance? 

The answer is simple; insurance companies consider him too high a risk, in other words insuring him would reduce their profits. It’s as simple and grubby as that. Indeed, why should there be age premiums on health insurance? Is that not ageism? It clearly is. 

Why do we accept such rules?

Whatever about the merits of capitalism, it must be curbed to serve the people. There is no sense to a €48 million wedding splash; it adds nothing to the good of humanity. Looking around a world filled with suffering and pain there is something toxic about the Sánchez Bezos wedding.

I’m not a communist but Karl Marx’s words have always held a special place for me: ‘Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!’