About 25O,000 civilian gun deaths annually: 65.9% occur in just six countries

Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was a Nobel laureate in economics and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and served on President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board. Margaret Thatcher was also a fan.

Leonard Read (1898-1983), founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), is best known for his essay "I, Pencil," which Milton Friedman used to illustrate the power of free markets and the invisible hand of the economy.

"Once, on a visit to China, a deputy minister asked, "Who in the America is in charge of materials distribution?" The question took me aback, yet it was natural. For it was almost inconceivable that a citizen from a command economy could understand how markets distribute materials among millions of people for thousands of uses untouched by political hands."

The countries that lend to America

Major foreign holders of United States treasury securities as of December 2024 (in billion U.S. dollars)

The Federal Reserve and U.S. Department of the Treasury say foreign countries held a total of 8.5 trillion U.S. dollars in U.S. treasury securities as of December 2024.

Of the total held by foreign countries, Japan has $1,059.8  and China held the greatest portions, with China holding 759 billion U.S. dollars in U.S. securities.

The Irish $336.2 in billion, may be related to American firms that are domiciled in Ireland.

The federal deficit

The federal deficit in 2024 was $1.8 trillion, equal to 6.4% of gross domestic product.

America is the sick man of the advanced world

U.S. healthcare spending per capita is almost twice the average of other wealthy countries

The average life expectancy in Western Europe is 83 years, while in the US it's 77 years.

Trump's America doesn't like foreigners

Europe highlights gender rules and entry risks and Finland's advisory, updated Tuesday, advises applicants to put their gender at birth. "If the applicant's recorded gender differs from their birth sex, US authorities may deny entry."

Several European countries, including Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Norway, have updated their travel advisories for the US, highlighting potential entry risks for transgender individuals and those with gender identity discrepancies, due to stricter US immigration measures.

'A hostile state': Why some travellers are avoiding the US

Trump signed an order on April 2, 2025, announcing global tariffs minus Russia 

Adrian Wooldridge of Bloomberg has written "If health means wealth, as the adage has it, then America’s economic future looks grim.

Traditionally, the U.S. has enjoyed a health premium. In the colonial era, American men were on average two to three inches taller than Europeans, according to military records, a fact that fascinates historical demographers because height is correlated with longevity, cognitive development and work capacity.

Today, a premium is turning into a deficit. American men are shorter on average than Northern European men, and the gap is getting bigger. Six in 10 Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition and 4 in 10 suffer from two."

"America is a sick society,” says William Galston in the Wall Street Journal. "Literally.”

Healthcare spending per capita is substantially higher in the US compared to Europe, yet the US lags behind on metrics like life expectancy and infant mortality.

Survival in the wealthiest U.S. quartile appeared to be similar to that in the poorest quartile in northern and western Europe.

The US is the sick man of the developed world.

Americans' living standards aren't nearly as good as they like to think they are.

Health expenditures per person in the U.S. were $12,555 in 2022, which was over $4,000 more than any other high-income nation. The average amount spent on health per person in comparable countries ($6,651) is about half of what the U.S. spends per person."

US personal savings are close to rock bottom

Personal Saving Rate - in 2024, the US was at 4.6%; 15.3% in the 20-country Euro Area, and 44.3% in China.

Trump's appeasement is worse than Neville Chamberlain in 1938

1% of Americans get almost 33% of the wealth while 53 million (44% of all workers) have a median annual wage of only $24,000 The U.S. resembles an emerging market.

Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister (1937-1940), holds up a copy of the Munich Agreement in September 1938, which he signed with Adolf Hitler.

The Munich Agreement was agreed in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Republic, and Fascist Italy.

At Munich, Chamberlain got an international agreement that Hitler should have the Sudetenland (Sudetenland was a region in Czechoslovakia that was predominantly German-inhabited. It was located in northern and western Bohemia and northern Moravia. In exchange for Germany making no further demands for land in Europe.)

Chamberlain said on his return home from the pact with Hitler, it was: "Peace with honour, Peace for our time."

Hitler said he had "No more territorial demands to make in Europe."

America's 1% control 31% of wealth- 50% control 6%

Elon Musk in the Oval Office, Feb. 11, about cost-cutting in the federal government.

The world’s richest man and government official Elon Musk has accused federal workers of unfairly getting rich off the taxpayers, citing, without evidence, “quite a few” with a net worth of tens of millions of dollars.

Musk’s own companies have accepted over $20bn+ in taxpayer funds in the form of contracts, tax breaks, and other subsidies.

Upgraded to $38bn according to The Washington Post on 28 February, 2025. 

“We find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” Musk said.

“I think the reality is they’re getting wealthy at taxpayer expense,” he added.

The Fortune magazine said "Neither Musk nor President Trump offered any evidence of corruption or improper enrichment that might explain federal employees allegedly getting rich off their government roles, and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) did not respond to Fortune’s request for examples.

Etihad Airways needs to address its failings

An Etihad Airways aircraft at Dublin Airport

Not too long ago, the American market dominated intercontinental flights serving Dublin, Ireland. Now, almost 50 airlines in total, are in the market. From the Middle East, Etihad Airways, Emirates and Qatar Airways service Dublin.

Etihad is the national airline of Abu Dhabi, which is part of the 7-country United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi is the largest Emirate in the UAE, occupying 84% of the nation's land. It has 200 islands and a 700-km-long coastline. The total area is 67,340 square kilometres, and Abu Dhabi City is the federal capital of the UAE.

Emirates is based at Dubai International Airport (DXB) in Garhoud, Duba. The airline operates out of Terminal 3, where flights arrive and depart from gates A, B, or C. Emirates says its the largest airline in the Middle East, with a fleet of almost 250 aircraft. It flies to more than 150 cities in 80 countries across six continents.

On October 15, 2024, at 6:00 a.m., I took a taxi from my hotel in Dublin. I had taken a flight to Dublin from Kuala Lumpur on October 1, 2024, using Etihad.

The scheduled 9:00 am flight from Dublin to Abu Dhabi on October 15 and a connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur were delayed until after 10:00 am.

About 20 minutes before arrival in Abu Dhabi a British staffer said people planning to go to Kuala Lumpur may be OK but if not the ground staff would help.

The Abu Dhabi airport has almost 100 gates. So it's a large place

I got a small piece of paper for instructions and that was it. (see the detail below).

Even the piece of paper missed that I had to go through two different screenings.

I went to LEVEL 3 but it was about 9:00 pm and relevant staff were not at their desks.

After about 40 minutes in a car, I arrived at Abi Dhabi's Marriott Bonvoy hotel. The staff was pleasant and I had 8 minutes in the restaurant before closure at 10:00 but it was poor.

I would give the hotel a 2-star.

I was in Business Class, which didn't matter.

On the 16th at 5 am I was picked up for a trip to the airport.

Ethid needs to improve its services and even on some of the long-haul aircraft, there is no onboard entertainment. 

__________________________________________________________ 

      Please go to ARRIVALS - LEVEL 0 and clear UAE Immigration

       After you have cleared Immigration, please proceed

      To Departures Area (LEVEL 3), Guest Services Desk (in front of

      Row C) for the transportation.           

 __________________________________________________________                  

World’s Top 100 Airlines 2024

Last Updated June 2024 - The Passenger's Choice Awards

This ranking of the top 100 airlines has been in operation for a quarter century.

"Qatar Airways has been voted the World’s Best Airline at the 2024 World Airline Awards, the eighth time that the airline has scooped the Airline of the Year title in the 25-year history of the awards"

Misinformation and amnesia from the American super rich

A large-scale Bloomberg analysis reveals that Elon Musk has been spreading debunked theories of undocumented voters swaying the US election, and growing his influence in the process — making him the biggest promoter of anti-immigrant conspiracies on X, the social media platform he owns. Bloomberg's Sarah Frier joined Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Technology."

If Trump loses, he and Mussk will say that hordes of migrants aided the Democrats.

"My colleagues and I recently did a major data analysis of Elon Musk’s posts about immigration and voter fraud. He frames migration to the US as something chaotic, unchecked and scary — and a tool that could be weaponized by the Democrats to rig the election in November. Musk owns X, and has more than 200 million followers. Immigration and voter fraud has become his most popular policy topic online, our analysis found."

Washington Post says Musk was an illegal alien

The Washington Post said Elon Musk denied in a late-night post having worked illegally in the United States, following the report that said Musk lacked the legal status to build the start-up that made him a millionaire in the 1990s.

“I was in fact allowed to work in the US,” Musk wrote on X, the platform he bought in 2022.

The Post says Musk has become a vociferous critic of the administration’s handling of immigration, decrying what he calls “open borders” and warning of the perils of illegal immigration. On his X feed he often laments the flood of “illegals” and baselessly alleges that it is part of a massive voter importation scheme.

President Biden on 26 October: “That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be [an] illegal worker here when he was here,” he said in Pittsburgh.

Biden added “I’m serious. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. He’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?”

In a 2005 email obtained by The Post, Musk wrote about his arrival in the United States in 1995.

He had applied to a Stanford University graduate program, which he did not end up attending, so he could stay in the country.

“I had no money for a lab and no legal right to stay in the country, so that seemed like a good way to solve both issues,” Musk wrote.

According to federal immigration regulations that were in effect in the mid-1990s, foreign students with a J-1 visa were allowed to work only in limited circumstances if they were in “good academic standing” and pursuing a “full course of study.”

Musk has previously said: “I was legally there, but I was meant to be doing student work. I was allowed to do work sort of supporting whatever."

Like many Irish students, I had a J-1 visa, but it was not for permanent residence. 

Musk, a South African native, did not attend Stanford classes when he arrived in Palo Alto in late 1995; instead, he worked to build a company.

This means that he was in the US as an illegal alien.

White Christian Nationalism overtakes America's "Shining City upon a Hill"

The Declaration of Independence of the 13 United States of America: On July 4, 1776, it was adopted unanimously by the 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress, who convened at the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, in the colonial era capital of Philadelphia.

I was in the US in 1976, the year of the bicentenary and I bought this commemorative plate.

The United States was not born as a Christian Nation and it's bizarre that Donald Trump wants to make it. He is as devout as Putin.

In recent months, Trump has said that elections won't be necessary starting in 2028. “That statement is very simple, I said, ‘Vote for me, you’re not gonna have to do it ever again.’”

President-elect John F. Kennedy delivered an address in Boston, on January 9, 1961. It is called the"City Upon a Hill speech."

"For what Pericles had said to the Athenians has long been true of this commonwealth: 'We do not imitate — for we are a model to others.'"

And so it is that I carry with me from this state to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories of firm friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts — by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant— will not be and could not be forgotten in this nation's executive mansion.

They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future.

Allow me to illustrate: During the last sixty days, I have been at the task of constructing an administration. It has been a long and deliberate process. Some have counseled greater speed. Others have counseled more expedient tests.;

But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier."

"We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill the eyes of all people are upon us."

Kennedy added “For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us — recording whether in our brief span of service, we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state — our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured…”

The Winthrop Fleet was a group of 11 ships led by John Winthrop out of a total of 16 funded by the Massachusetts Bay Company which together carried between 700 and 1,000 Puritans plus livestock and provisions from England to New England over the summer of 1630, during the first period of the Great Migration.

John Winthrop (1587-1649) became governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and like many towns in New England, Boston has its naming roots in old England. Boston, Massachusetts was named after Boston, Lincolnshire, about 100 miles north of London on the North Atlantic Sea.

At the start of the voyage, John Winthrop wrote his sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity.” But it was generally unknown until 1838 when it was discovered by the New York Historical Society.

Winthrop was not the author of this sentiment. He quoted the Bible: Matthew chapter 5 verse 14 in his famous phrase, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill."

Assassination attempt on Trump will embolden him and Democratic turmoil

A gunman at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania was killed by the Secret Service on Saturday, 13 July.

Trump said later online that he had been “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part” of his ear, at about 6.15 pm.

President Biden spoke to Trump late on Saturday according to the White House.

Biden said in a broadcast "There's no place in America for this kind of violence," the president said. "It's sick. It's sick. That's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. You cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this."

Thousands of Republicans will gather in Milwaukee on Monday for the Republican National Convention, where Donald Trump and his soon-to-be-announced running mate are on course to officially be nominated by the party.

The Associated Press said the suspected shooter used an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle to carry out the attack, a US official said. He was killed by officers.

Americans own 46% of the world's civilian-owned firearms and US firearm ownership rates far exceed those of other high-income countries. Forty-six per cent of US households report owning at least one firearm, including 30% of Americans who say they personally own a firearm.

The firearm homicide rate in the US is nearly 25 times higher than other high-income countries and the firearm suicide rate is nearly 10 times that of other high-income countries.

The New York Times says the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, lived in a relatively affluent suburb in the South Hills region of Pittsburgh, about an hour’s drive from the site of the rally. The neighbourhood where he grew up is “pretty firmly middle class, maybe upper-middle class,” Dan Grzybek, who represents the area on the county council, said in an interview on Sunday.

Vienna again crowned world's most liveable city, Dublin dips to 39th ranking

Vienna again crowned as the world's best city for quality of life, in 2024

Time and again, Vienna, the capital city of Austria, has been voted the city with the best quality of life in the World.

The City of Vienna Government says "At the beginning of 2023, 1,102,570 Viennese were of Austrian origin, while 879,526 were of foreign origin. The main countries of origin of Viennese who are foreign nationals or were born abroad have hardly changed over the past years: at the beginning of 2023, 100,199 people originated from Serbia, 75,907 from Turkey, 69,265 from Germany and 55,151 from Poland.

The current metro area population of Vienna in 2024 is 1,990,000.

The annual Global Liveability Index ranks the liveability of 173 cities across five key categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

The 2024 survey saw a rise in the average scores, driven by gains in healthcare and education across developing countries. However, this has been largely offset by declines in scores for several top-tier cities.

According to the survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a unit of The Economist, Vienna is the world's most liveable city. At the same time, Dublin earned a 39th ranking, falling 7 ranks  — and the third biggest drop among any country.

Brussels has dropped five places, from 30 to 35. This is one of the biggest declines in the Liveability Index for 2024.

The grim fifties in Ireland and Cork City

St Patrick's Street, Cork, in the 1950s

Over 500,000 people left independent Ireland between 1945 and 1960. The 1961 Irish Census of population at 2,818, 341 was lower than the 1926 Census. The latter was the first Census of the Irish Free State.

The 1950s: “It Was a Great Time in America” but "Between 1946 and 1961, 531,255 people, almost 17% of the population, left Ireland. Forty per cent of those between the ages of 10 and 19 in 1951 were gone by 1961. Most of the migrants went to Great Britain, but 68,151 left for America during and after World War II (1941–1961).

This piece is an addendum to a personal piece I wrote last year: Michael Hennigan's year of 1953 and 70 years later

Recently I located Google photos of Geraldine Place, which was in the centre of industrial activity in the City of Cork, Ireland.

Israel a "brutal colonial power"; local rights group calls it "apartheid"

A Bedouin by the Jordan River in the early 20th century taken by the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology.

The heinous attack on civilians in Israel, early on October 7th, was a monstrous crime perpetrated by Hamas terrorists. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said this month that Hamas committed war crimes but "The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians is also a war crime, as is unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians."

"An eye for an eye" (Biblical Hebrew: עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן, ʿayīn taḥaṯ ʿayīn) is a commandment found in the Book of Exodus 21:23–27 citing the principle of reciprocal justice measure for measure.

Jesus in the Christian Bible John 8:7, with Mary Magdalene, a disciple, said to the men who wished to stone her to death, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

SEE also: Israel is the West's last settler colony

Avi Shlaim (born 1945) is an Israeli and British historian of Iraqi Jewish descent. He is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University.

He wrote an essay for The Economist on this year, the 75th anniversary of the declaration of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948.

"The controlling logic of settler-colonialism is to subdue and drive out the natives. Noam Chomsky, an eminent Jewish-American intellectual, has argued that settler colonialism is the most sadistic form of imperialism. In Palestine, the Zionist leaders were not sadistic, but they were ruthless in pursuit of their goal."

"In 1948, following the Arab rejection of the UN partition plan, they exploited the opportunity offered by an Arab military attack to extend the territory of their emerging state beyond the borders drawn by the UN cartographers and to carry out large-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestine. After the war, all the emphasis was on Aliyah or immigration, “the ingathering of the exiles”, nation-building and promoting the welfare of the Jewish population. The Arab minority inside Israel was kept under military government until 1966. During this period the settler-colonial character of the new state became obscured, but it did not fundamentally change."

I experienced the transformation of Israeli society over the past half-century at the personal level. In the mid-1960s I served loyally and proudly in the Israeli army because I felt at that time that the IDF was true to its name: it was the Israeli Defence Forces. After the 1967 war, its character gradually changed. It became the repressive police force of a brutal colonial power. I for one, therefore, do not regard Israel’s 75th birthday as a cause for celebration but rather as an occasion for critical reflection and soul-searching.

The ‘Perfect Storm’ metaphor and lame excuses

Google Books Ngram Viewer cites 'Perfect Storm' in the early 1700s and the Oxford English Dictionary has published a reference from 1718: 'and a perfect storm of applause.'

The references peaked in the 1860s and in modern times from the late 1990s. There was an all-time peak in 2018.

Vanity Fair, an 1847 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, has a scene in Naples where "the hat went round, and the bajocchi (a coin, originally copper, later silver, issued by the Papal States from the 15th century to 1865) tumbled into it, in the midst of a perfect storm of sympathy."

The first known use of the expression in the meteorological sense is on May 30, 1850, when the Rev. Lloyd of Withington (Manchester, England) describes a perfect storm of thunder and lightning all over England (except London) doing fearful and fatal damage.″

The UK Met Office was founded in 1854 and the Irish Meteorological Service was established in 1936.

From Google Books 1720 to 2019 'Perfect Storm'

Secure homelands for Jewish and Palestinian people

November 10, 2023: Israel is the West's last settler colony

In James Joyce's 'Ulysses' the character Mr Deasy says "Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?"

"- Why sir?" Stephen Dedalus asked, beginning to smile.

"- Because she never let them in," Mr. Deasy said solemnly.

Leopold Bloom, the Jewish protagonist is believed to have been modelled on a Jewish friend of Joyce in Trieste, in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city had many nationalities and Jews were more welcome there than in other cities of the empire.

The Irish minister in Berlin in 1933-1939, Charles Bewley, was a Nazi admirer and an anti-Semite while Ireland had a postwar welcome for Nazi war criminals.

It took 50 years for a French president to acknowledge without any equivocation the extent of the French state and citizens' complicity in collaboration with the Nazis in deporting some 76,000 French and foreign Jews.

The misplaced fascination with the RMS Titanic

The Titanic leaving Belfast on April 2, 1912

The sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912 has been in the news again and the US Coast Guard has announced that a “catastrophic implosion” of the submersible, known as “Titan,” killed the 5 people on board. The front cone and other debris were located by a remotely operated vehicle 1,600 feet (487 metres) from the bow of the Titanic, which rests in 13,000 feet (4 kilometres) deep in the North Atlantic Ocean. It was about 400 miles (348 knots; 644 km) off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

In 1985, it took Robert Ballard (born 1942), a former US naval officer, eight days to be the first person to locate the wreck of the RMS (Royal Mail Steamer) Titanic.

“A Night to Remember” (1958), a British film directed by Roy Ward Baker, was acclaimed for its accuracy on the sinking of the Titanic and had been based on Walter Lord’s 1955 book. "Titanic" (1997) which was directed by Hollywood film director James Cameron, brought the story to another generation. It's reported that Cameron has completed 33 dives to the wreck of the Titanic.

Harland and Wolff Ltd was founded in Belfast, north-east Ireland, in 1861. It had in the first decade of the 20th century won orders for 3 giant 'Olympic Class' liners from the White Star Line. Employing about 15,000 people on a 300-acre site, the nearby Belfast College of Technology provided vocational education for the firm's apprentices.

Catholics comprised 24% of Belfast's population in 1911 and a small number worked at the shipyard in East Belfast. There was a myth that the Titanic's hull number "3909 04" flipped over, read "No Pope."

The chairman of Harland and Wolff in 1895-1924 was a leading Liberal peer, Lord Pirrie, and on April 11 1912, the British Liberal Party government introduced the Third Home Rule Bill which would grant Ireland self-government.

Research by Andy Bielenberg, senior lecturer at University College Cork (UCC), shows that by 1907, the 6 counties of the north-east accounted for two-thirds of Irish industrial output and two-thirds of industrial exports originated in Belfast, Ireland's biggest city in 1911.

Irish Celts are as real as Leprechauns

In Ancient Greece Κελτοί (Keltoí) was the word used for "Barbarian" (non-Greek-speaking people, including Egyptians, Persians, Medes, Phoenicians, and tribes in Europe, emphasised their otherness. According to Greek writers, this was because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds "bar...bar")." While viewing foreigners as inferior, they were also often treated as candidates for conquest and enslavement.

The mainly independent tribes collectively Keltoí had their own names during the Iron Age, between about 600 BC and 43 AD. It would be about 2,000 years, in the early 18th century, for the words "Celt "or "Celtish" to enter the English language.

Greeks established a colony in Southern Gaul around Masallia, or modern-day Marseille in 600 BC. There were about 60 tribes in the area of the Gauls in Western Europe.

There was no invasion of Ireland by these tribes that settled in land stretching from the Atlantic coast to Asia Minor (see map above). What tribes invaded Ireland?

Jon Stewart on gun control and Irish useful idiots

Jon Stewart is an American comedian, political commentator, actor, director and television host. Stewart hosted The Daily Show, a satirical news program on Comedy Central, from 1999 to 2015 and he is now the host of The Problem with Jon Stewart, which premiered in September 2021 on Apple TV+.

In an episode, "Chaos, Law, and Order" on gun control with Oklahoma state senator Nathan Dahm, Jon Stewart argues Dahm's support of anti-drag show laws directly conflicts with the logic he uses for loosening gun restrictions.

Dahm and other Republicans want to shield children from drag but firearms are the biggest cause of death among children in America.

During the pandemic, firearm-related deaths rose among children, with seven children per day dying by firearm in 2021. From 2011 to 2021, nearly 18,500 children ages 17 and younger died by firearm.

Dahm has introduced several bills loosening gun restrictions, including the first anti-red flag law against restricting gun access to those deemed dangerous.

Jon Stewart: “And what you're telling me is you don't mind infringing free speech to protect children from this amorphous thing that you think of. But when it comes to children that have died, you don't give a flying fuck to stop that, because that shall not be infringed. That is hypocrisy at its highest order.”

Not only does he want to protect the Second Amendment, but he also believes that more guns make Americans safer.

Michael Hennigan's year of 1953 and 70 years later

"Tour Bus made a short stop here. A small village near Galway. May 14, 1953"

Photo by Martin J. Walsh Jr on a trip to Ireland in 1953, from Minnesota

The Irish Times newspaper reported on Saturday 17 January 1953 that weather conditions would be good and this was the day my mother gave birth at St Anthony's Hospital, in the southwest Irish town of Dunmanway, County Cork. I was named Michael Anthony Hennigan with the first name after my father. I had two older brothers and Maurice the eldest had been named after his paternal grandfather while Thomas was named after his maternal grandfather.

My parents had a farm east of the town and the quality of the land was not good.

On 16 January, a resolution in the US Senate called for the end of Irish partition. The future Irish American president co-sponsored the resolution.

On 18 January 1953, a political group calling itself Sinn Féin, (Irish: 'We Ourselves' or 'Ourselves Alone') said it would contest all 12 constituencies in the next Westminster elections in Northern Ireland (this Sinn Féin was a separate entity from the Provisional IRA and its political wing called Sinn Féin, that were created in Belfast in January 1970).

On 31 January, Dublin Airport's weather station showed a jump in rain and high gusts of 61.9 knots per hour. However, the Republic of Ireland escaped the massive storm damage that day, and into 1 February. The MV Princess Victoria ferry sailing between Stranraer, Scotland and Larne, Northern Ireland, sank during a storm with 133 lives lost, including every woman and child aboard while 44 men survived. In the North Sea, the storm caused extensive flooding. There were 19 deaths in Scotland; 307 in England; 28 in Belgium, and 1,836 in The Netherlands where the dykes were breached.

This event resulted in the greatest storm surge in the North Sea, on record.

Europe's music man André Rieu: famous Dutch violinist and conductor

Maastricht, The Netherlands

André Rieu created the Johann Strauss Orchestra in 1987 and began with 12 members, giving its first concert in January 1988. The largest private orchestra in the world has about 60 musicians.

Rieu known as the 'King of Waltz', has sold over 40mn CDs and DVDs and at 73 he still performs at concerts worldwide.

He was born on 1 October 1949 the third of six children, his father, Andries Antonie Rieu, was the conductor of the Maastricht Symphony Orchestra.

In the past, Rieu used a 1667 Stradivari violin at his concerts. The Italian maestro liutaio (master luthier) was about 23 when the instrument was produced. More recently André Rieu uses a 1732 violin which was made when the maestro was about 87.

The renowned Antonio Stradivari (Latin: Stradivarius circa 1644-1737) had a workshop in Cremona, Italy, and it is believed to have produced over 1,100 string instruments. Two of his sons worked with him and today the most common number of extant instruments in Google Books and other references is about 650. However, that is typically copied from other publications without a source.

There have been many copies of the Stradivari violin since his death and Wikipedia sourced in 2022 282 original extant violins; 12 violas and 63 cellos. The number in private collections is still being determined.

A 1714 Stradivari violin was sold at auction in June 2022 for US$15.34mn. A new Stradivari violin in the early 18th century in Lombardy would have cost the equivalent of $17,000 to $18,500 US dollars today.

André Rieu and John Sheahan who had been a member of 'The Dubliners' group in 1964-2012, performing 'The Marino Waltz' live in Dublin. 

 

Irish Genealogy Page: Hennigans and Walls in County Cork

Leabhar Mór Leacain / The Great Book of Lecan, written in 1397-1418 AD

This page is a tribute to my parents Michael and Johanna Wall Hennigan, who were both natives of County Cork and were both born in 1914.

Donnchadh O Corrain, 'Ireland before the Normans' (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1972) noted that in the 10th century the Irish population was less than 500,000 people and Ireland had over 150 kings. These were petty kingdoms, or clans (tuatha), which typically elected the king. Also in the 10th century AD, a high king of Ireland (árd rí Éireann) emerged. In history, Brian Boru was apparently the most consequential high king, who reigned from 1005-1014 AD but the idea that Brian Boru saved Ireland from a Viking conquest is said to be “completely false.”

With respect to earlier times, even though the Gaelic language is Celtic in origin, the late Prof Barry Rafferty of University College Dublin said that from his research "there is no archaeological evidence for a Celtic invasion of Ireland."

While the term is useful, Raimund Karl, a professor of Celtic archaeology at the University of Vienna said, the “popular conception, that all Celts are the same, and that they are part of one big nation and people and race and so on, that is nonsense.”

The hereditary surname system evolved slowly replacing the patronymic tradition of a name typically derived from the name of a father or an ancestor. In Ireland Mac was 'son of' or Ó 'grandson of'.' Icelandic surnames today follow the Nordic tradition of patronymic and/or matronymic names.

Pronunciation, rather than spelling, guided scribes and church officials when recording names during the Middle Ages. This practice often resulted in one person's name being recorded under several different spellings.