July, 2017

  Putting the Kibosh on it ? Over now to Whicker’s Wonderful World of Wikipedia.   Etymology[edit] Unknown. Possibilities include: From Middle Englishcaboche, meaning to behead (a deer) (cf. William Safire, “Quoth the Maven: More on Language”) From the Irishcaidhp bháis, meaning death cap (the hood put on someone before they were hanged to death, or the “Black cap” worn by English judges when pronouncing the death […]

I read an article a couple of weeks ago about President Donald Trump. Predictably, it didn’t make for a cheering read, but the writer’s central point was an important one: people can get used to the most appalling things and start thinking of them as normal. For instance: * A President who engages in near-arm-wrestling […]

Robert Hamill was walking home from St Patrick’s Hall in Portadown on the night of April 27th 1997, along with three friends. When they arrived in the centre of Portadown he and one of his friends were attacked by a crowd of about 30 loyalists. As they kicked and punched Robert, some of them were shouting:”Kill […]

What is it about Irish people – or more accurately, some Irish politicians – that they are afraid to salute those men and women who fought to establish the present southern state? The main strategy employed to navigate the 1916 Easter Rising commemoration was to twin it with the Battle of the Somme in the […]

 I’ve written before on John Redmond’s 1913 St Patrick Day’s speech (JOHN REDMOND’S AMBITION FOR IRELAND) to a British audience and to an interview he had with C.P.Scott of the Manchester Guardian that same year. The August Destiny he envisaged for Irishmen was as storm troopers for the British Empire, and for Irishwomen everlasting disenfranchisement […]

    THE TIMES (of London) on Thursday 27 July carried the obituary of a gentleman who had just died, aged 94. He went by the name Rex Sanders, the very sound of which seemed to demand the description “Secret Agent.”  He was shown wearing a moustache, a steely gaze and the uniform of an […]

I don’t know, but I been told, that upwards of 27,000,000 Soviet men, women and children perished in the Second World,War, some millions of Chinese, millions of Germans, and over 300,000 persons, combatants and non-combatants from various countries fighting, serving or living under the protection of the Union Jack. Each casualty was a tragedy. The […]

It is 99 years since President Wilson of the United States professed his ‘Fourteen Points’ speech to portray his vision for the future of international politics. Perhaps most notable for 21st century international accord was the idea that the nation would be the basis for statehood, and all would be viewed as equal in international affairs. In President […]

Pics 1-7 are by Antrim Lens     Pic 1   Pic 2 Pic 3                                                           Pic 4 Pic 5 Pic 6            […]