Anthony Morris OP, RIP

Dominican priest Anthony Morris died today in Summerville Nursing Home, Strandhill, Co. Sligo.

May he rest in peace.

Obituary to follow. 

Chinese citizen jailed for eight years on subversion charges

From the Guardian newspaper last week.

A story that tells the story of what happens people in China who oppose the government. If this story is true and factual there world has every reason to be concerned about modern China.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/chinese-activist-sentenced-to-eight-years-on-subversion-charges?CMP=share_btn_link 

Adidas: that unYeezy feeling

Because of Adidas’s break with disgraced rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, the company has €1.2bn worth of unsold and unsaleable Yeezy merchandise on its shelves.

A special day to thank our nurses

 Today is International Nurses Day.

Well done and thank you to all our dedicated nurses who bring such kindness, help and professionalism to the sick, the fragile, the old and the young.

IND is celebrated around the world every May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth. 

What’s in a name?

The Polish government has decided to rename the Russian exclave Kaliningrad. 

On Wednesday, Poland’s development minister, Waldemar Buda, said Kaliningrad would now officially be called Królewiec, its name when it was ruled by the Kingdom of Poland in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Until 1945 the city was a German city and called Königsberg. After the war it was renamed Kaliningrad to honour politician Mikhail Kalinin.

Opposition, nonconformity, freedom in art keeps us safe

Yesterday across Germany May 10, 1933 was remembered.

It was on May 10, 1933 that the German Student Union ceremoniously burned books that were considered subversive or represented ideologies opposed to Nazisam.

They included books written by people of Jewish faith, communists, pacifists, liberals, in other words, anyone who opposed the Nazis.

As the books were burned, industrialists, academics, wealthy Germans watched on in support.

And those throwing the books in the fires were mainly privileged students.

Heinrich Heine warned: "those who burn books will end up burning people".

As war grinds on Russia is becoming a cultural wasteland

From yesterday’s Guardian. The piece paints a profoundly sad picture of what is happening in the wonderful land of Russia. What one man can do.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/vladimir-putin-russia-culture-writers-ukraine-war?CMP=share_btn_link

Crisscrossing Germany by rail for only €49

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

Michael Commane

Over the years I’ve travelled here and there. I lived in Italy and Germany, which meant flying backwards and forwards relatively regularly.

Back home, living in Ireland, I lost interest in foreign travel. My sights instead were fixed on West Kerry.

I was beginning to wonder why so many people were taking to the skies, especially for short visits to crowded cities all over the world. Then came Covid, which means it must be seven or eight years since I sat in a plane.

Some weeks ago two friends and I decided we’d take flight. After work on the Thursday of the May Bank Holiday weekend we met at Dublin Airport to take a Ryanair flight to Nuremberg in the southern German State of Bavaria.

I could not believe my eyes when I saw the milling crowds at the airport. It was a different world from the airport I remember of the 1960s, ’70s, even ’80s. I can recall my parents dropping me at the airport and leaving the car outside the main entrance door.

 

Home now and thinking about the wonderful few days we had, I can’t believe there is not a direct rail service to the airport, which saw 400,000 people go through its doors over the May Bank Holiday weekend.

Getting off the plane at Albrecht Dürer Airport in Nuremberg I felt a great sense of being back in Germany, back to a country where I’ve always felt at ease.

 

It seems everything in Nuremberg is called after the famous engraver, Albrecht Dürer, who was born the city in 1471. His friendship circle included Leonardo da Vinci and Emperor Maxmilian I.

We did many of the touristy things, including a four-hour walking tour of the city. We visited the infamous place where Hitler held his rallies. I cannot believe what I saw there: a newly married couple using the remaining structure, which was a memorial for the war dead, as a backdrop for their wedding pictures. 

The world is indeed, a strange place. And then my mind took a detour and I was thinking of the war in Ukraine and the lives being lost and ruined for ever.

We travelled by rail to nearby Regensburg. On our return that evening we took a regional train, which happened to be a double-decker. When I told my two friends it was most likely a train from the former East German Railway, they laughed, suggesting it could not be so old, as it looked in pristine condition. 

Our stop was the train’s destination so I cheekily went up to the locomotive and asked the driver. He assured me I was correct. All four of us ended up having an animated conversation about trains, his workload, even to the point where he produced his roster sheet and showed us how many hours he worked that day.

 

From May 1 German Rail is offering a €49 monthly unlimited ticket across the German network on all its regional trains.

The highlight of the holiday? Certainly chatting with the train driver was high up on my list.

Thank you to my two friends. That €49 rail ticket is an added incentive to return. And soon.

When there’s no substance mystique fills the gap

"The less substance there is to any political institution, the more it must play up its own mystique.

“British greatness has become a mere bubble of bombast, one that burst along with Boris Johnson’s ill-fated reign as ‘world king’. There has been too much empty bloviation about British exceptionalism in recent years for it to be taken seriously now.”

-From Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times on Saturday.

Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols attended the coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey. The ceremony was conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

While it is a positive development to see Catholic prelates attend Anglican services, it’s not that long ago since Catholic prelates forbad  Catholics to attend Anglican services, or indeed any non-Catholic service.

It’s worth repeating what Fintan O’Toole wrote: "The less substance there is to any political institution, the more it must play up its own mystique.”

And the mystique doesn’t exclusively apply to all that happened in Westminster Abbey on Saturday.

Children are children and not young goats

Why have we moved away from calling young people children and are now calling them kids?

Is a kid not a young goat?

Have children had any input into the change?

We live in an age when we are bending over backwards for apologising for what our ancestors did. Words are cheap.

Without any reference to children we have ‘christened’ them with an insulting name. And please I am not insulting young goats.

If I called an adult woman a girl she would rightly correct me.

It is demeaning to call children kids.

A campaign needs to be launched to stop calling children kids.

The travelling Irish and their large carbon footprints

If close to 400,000 people flew in or out of Dublin Airport over the May Bank Holiday Weekend, the majority of them under 50, how concerned are we as a nation about our carbon footprint?

Many Russians victory day parades are cancelled

From the Guardian.

The war in Ukraine must surely sully the memory of what Russia did in World War II to defeat Nazi Germany.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/02/russian-regions-scrap-victory-day-parades-amid-fear-of-ukraine-strikes?CMP=share_btn_link

Dublin City Council talking out of both sides of their mouth

Approximately one kilometre of Orwell Road, the section nearest Zion Road and Marianella in Dublin 6, is being resurfaced. 

A spokesman for the sub contractors carrying out the works said today that Dublin City Council had instructed them not to cover over the cobblestones bordering the footpath. The Council explained that they wanted to preserve something of the 'old look' of the road.

Anyone who cycles this road knows how extremely dangerous the cobblestones make it for cyclists when there is backup of traffic on the road.

It’s fine for the Council to wish to preserve ‘old looks’ but which is more important the safety of cyclists or preserving ‘old look’?

Once again, it’s the incompetency of the management class. One moment they are telling us all to get out on our bicycles and the next moment they are making it as dangerous as possible for us to cycle.

Is there one senior manager in Dublin City Council roads department who cycles this road? Obviously not.

The day that Ireland was divided by Britain

On this day, May 3, 1921 Ireland was partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland.

Would they do the same all over again?

Neither notes nor coins and no winning Lotto number

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

Michael Commane

Earlier this month I wrote a column about how difficult it can be to navigate across some websites. I was pleasantly surprised with the feedback I received. 

A millennial complimented  me on the piece, suggesting ‘we turn off the machine and go back to the 1990s’. He was of course referring to our modern technology.

Last weekend I paid my television licence on line. Older people will remember the rigmarole and the time it took to renew all types of annual payments.

 

I’m scared of becoming a victim of a scam and they are growing more sophisticated by the day. On a positive note, a work colleague showed me how I can freeze my Visa card using my mobile phone. Earlier in the day I had panicked having lost my card. I phoned the bank and cancelled the card. It meant I had to go through all the nuisance and inconvenience of obtaining a new one. And that was before I found the old one under my desk.

Like everything in life there are the swings and the roundabouts with modern technology.

But every day I’m learning the importance of being on my guard and having Plan B up my sleeve.

A friend of mine arrived back in Dublin after a day’s trip to Wexford, where she was delivering a parcel to someone.

It had been a hectic day for her and she had little or no time to sit down to eat a meal. 

On arriving back in the city centre she went into a shop to buy food and some other provisions, and while she was at the counter also bought a Lotto ticket. 

She packed her purchases, tapped the card machine, the machine did not accept the card so she was asked to insert the card. No luck. She tried a second time, punching in the four digits she thought was her pass code. Again out of luck. 

A queue began to form behind her. She is a retiring, almost shy person, which meant she was now in panic mode. She aborted the card transaction and went to pay with cash to discover she had none.

It meant she had to unpack all that she had bought and was now feeling greatly embarrassed. The shop assistant was most helpful. In the confusion she forgot to return the Lotto ticket. When reminded of it she went looking for it in her purse and as she was searching, the kind assistant nodded and told her to forget about it and keep it as a gift from the shop.

She left the premises, exhausted, greatly embarrassed and traumatised too.

She went searching again in her purse, this time for her Travel Pass. ‘Michael, what would I have done had I not got that with me,’ she said.

All our modern technology is great, debit cards, credit cards, ATMs are brilliant inventions. But you must always have a Plan B, which means never go anywhere without having old fashioned legal tender notes and coins in your pocket, wallet, purse, or wherever is the safest place to keep your cash.

And not one winning number on that Lotto ticket. That’s life. 

Dmitry Medvedev calls for the return of all the old lands

This is a May Day message from Dmitry Medvedev, an ally of Vladimir Putin, and currently deputy chair of the Security Council

 "Seriously, we can do without [Twitter]. After all, this is just a foreign social network operating in the interests of the American establishment. We quite cynically used it to advance our propaganda goals.

"Our main task is completely different: to inflict a devastating defeat on all enemies – the Ukronazis, the US, their minions in Nato, including vile Poland, and other western nits.

"We must finally return all our lands. Forever protect all of our people. We will work hard for this.

Happy 1 May everyone!”

 It means it’s out in the open now what the aims of the Russian Empire is. 

Pope Francis works for peace behind the scenes

An interesting story about the diplomacy of Pope Francis.

Pope departs Hungary pleading for peace in Ukraine, warning against isolationism

 

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.

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?

Might China prove honest broker on Russian Ukraine war?

An interesting article in yesterday’s Guardian on the hour-long talk between China and Ukraine.

China is to send a peace talks delegation to Ukraine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/26/chinese-president-xi-jinping-to-send-peace-talks-delegation-to-ukraine?CMP=share_btn_link

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.'

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?

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.

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?

 

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.

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

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?

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

It has taken 80 years but when Poles remember the Warsaw Ghetto uprising this week, they can finally free themselves from the perpetrator’s perspective. 

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.”

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?

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.