cloghereen

,kerry football, liverpool fc, dogs (helping retired racing greyhounds), cooking, gardening, wildlife, sports (most).

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

Does anyone know if @AndyBurnhamGM likes cats?

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

Australian World Cup fans were caught chanting:

“Aussie boys are on a bender, Donald Trump is a sex offender.”

The tournament is barely underway and the chants are already in midseason form. 💀

[The Redmen TV @TheRedmenTV]

Tribute to Diogo Jota during the Portuguese national anthem 🇵🇹🫶

Forever 20 ♾️

[antoinette @antoabs]

Remembering @gardainfo D/Garda Colm Horkan who was murdered on duty on this night 6 years ago after he went to assist colleagues in Castlerea Roscommon. May we always remember those brave Gardai gone before us who made the ultimate sacrifice in Service to this State. May he RIP

[Tony Leen @tonyleen]

A stolen hour: After we walked John O'Mahony up Killarney's New St and High St to see him on his final road, a gathering of old colleagues reminisced for an hour in The Laurels. A stolen, lovely hour. Stories of grand mischief and youthful fun. He was some character, loved by those he worked with. RIP.

[Brendan Cox @MrBrendanCox]

10 years ago my wife, the mum of our kids & the MP for Batley&Spen was killed by a far right extremist.

At anniversaries I try to be optimistic about the future. But not this time. In the ten years since she was killed we have gone backwards & I fear our democracy is now at risk

[Barney Ronay @barneyronay]

The World Cup has been good so far. FIFA is a wretched organisation. America has been welcoming and fun. Donald Trump is loathsome. Come back tomorrow for another display of miraculous cognitive dissonance freestyling

[Mark Henry @Mark_J_Henry]

More Irish people than ever are taking part in sport on a weekly basis – more than 2.12 million of us. Personal exercise is most popular, with 1 in 5 people participating weekly. Next are swimming (8%), running (7%), cycling (4%), and weights (4%). Enjoy your weekend so! 🇮🇪🚶‍♀️🏃🚴‍♂️

[Mark Henry @Mark_J_Henry]

What can Ireland teach the world? The Irish have never been healthier, wealthier, better educated, or happier. The country has uncovered the blueprint for national well-being, and others can learn from its success. Watch my new @TEDx talk 🇮🇪 #TEDxTUDublin

https://t.co/VasWrIROXS

[Mark Henry @Mark_J_Henry]

Children in Ireland have the 6th highest standard of well-being. UNICEF ranked 37 countries on children's physical health, mental well-being, and skills. Ireland was #1 for skills, #11 for physical health, but #24 for mental health. A strong position overall, but more to do. 🇮🇪

[The Anfield Wrap @TheAnfieldWrap]

🤣

[Larry Sabato @LarrySabato]

War is always hell, but the Nazis were many orders of magnitude worse than others. As this awful Nazi plague continues to pop up in the USA and elsewhere, it is essential to remember their evil past.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

Lidice, Czechoslovakia 10 Jun 1942. SS officer standing over the bodies of all 173 of the village’s men in the garden at the Horák family farm. The mattresses were put up against the stone wall to prevent ricochets.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

84 years ago today, the Nazis erased an entire village for a crime it didn't commit.

June 4, 1942: Reinhard Heydrich, architect of the Holocaust, dies after Czech paratroopers ambush him in Prague. Hitler demands blood. The Gestapo follows a false lead to a small mining village of 500 people: Lidice. It had no connection to the assassination. None.

At dawn on June 10, every man and boy over 15 was marched to a farm garden and shot in groups of five against the wall. Too slow, the commanders decided. They increased it to ten. Each new group walked past the bodies of their neighbors before joining them. By afternoon, 173 men and boys were dead. Mattresses had been propped against the wall to stop the ricochets.

The women and children were held in a school gymnasium for three days. Then the children were ripped from their mothers' arms. 195 women were shipped to Ravensbrück concentration camp.

The children were told they were being taken to their parents. 82 of them were loaded into sealed trucks at Chełmno and killed with engine exhaust. The youngest was about a year old. Only a handful, judged "racially suitable," were given to German families and stripped of their names.

Then the Nazis erased the village itself. Burned the houses. Dynamited the church and the school. Dug up 400 graves and looted the corpses. Cut down the orchards. Diverted the stream. Rerouted the roads. They filmed it all. Proudly.

But it backfired. The Nazis publicized Lidice as a warning, and the world answered. Towns in Mexico, Brazil, and the US renamed themselves Lidice. Parents named daughters Lidice. The village meant to be forgotten became impossible to forget.

After the war, 143 women came home. Years of searching recovered just 17 of the children. Today the site is a memorial, its centerpiece 82 bronze statues of children standing together, facing the valley where their village used to be.

The Nazis tried to murder a village and its memory. The people are gone. The memory won.

Remember Lidice. June 10, 1942.

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

.@ClaireHanna: "Last week, in a very high profile case, the murder of Natalie McNally, the judge.. talked about a frenzied knife attack, he talked about wounds so bad the cause of death was unable to to be determined. There were no riots over the perpetrator of that brutal crime"

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

On June 9, 1944, the French Resistance captured a senior SS officer named Helmut Kämpfe near Limoges. The next morning, his unit, the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, was looking for a response. They had already hanged 99 men from the balconies of Tulle the day before, chosen at random from townspeople, leaving them to strangle slowly in front of their families because they couldn't find enough rope for a proper drop.

Now they needed something more.

On June 10, Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann led his men to Oradour-sur-Glane. Some historians believe he confused it with Oradour-sur-Vayres, a different village where the Resistance was actually active. Others believe he knew exactly where he was. Either way, at 2pm his soldiers blocked every road in and out of the village.

They told everyone to gather in the marketplace for a routine identity check. People complied. A dentist came. A farmer left his fields. Schoolchildren were told by their teachers not to worry, they'd be back by dinner. A man cycling through town stopped to see what was happening.

By 2:30pm, around 650 people were standing in the square.

Then the soldiers separated the men.

The women and children were marched to the church. The 190 men were divided into six groups and taken to barns across the village. The mayor, Dr. Paul Desourteaux, reportedly tried to negotiate. There was nothing to negotiate.

In the barns, the soldiers opened fire but aimed deliberately at legs. At thighs. At knees. The goal was not to kill but to incapacitate. To ensure that when they piled straw over the bodies and lit it, nobody could crawl away. Men who were on fire and still conscious screamed while soldiers stood outside the doors.

Six men survived by playing dead beneath other bodies. One died from his burns days later. Five lived.

In the church, the women had been waiting almost two hours with the children. Soldiers carried in a large wooden box and placed it in the nave. They lit a fuse and left. The explosion released a thick, suffocating smoke. Soldiers then entered and opened fire on anyone still moving. Then they piled wood, straw, and chairs onto the bodies and lit everything.

The church bell rang for hours as the fire climbed the tower.

Women broke windows. Those who reached the ledge were shot before they could jump. One woman, 47-year-old Marguerite Rouffanche, crawled behind the altar, found a small window, and squeezed through. She dropped three meters to the ground. A 19-year-old named Henriette Joyeux saw her and followed, throwing her seven-month-old baby out first. Soldiers shot the baby out of the air. Then shot Henriette. Then shot Marguerite five times as she ran.

Marguerite survived by lying still beneath pea plants in a garden while the village burned around her. She lay there until the next morning. She was the only person to leave the church alive.

The youngest confirmed victim was seven days old.

After the killings, the soldiers spent the afternoon looting every building. Food, valuables, livestock, wine. Some burned homes with elderly residents still inside. Then they ate dinner. That evening. In the area.

The next morning, relatives from surrounding villages arrived looking for their families. They found 642 dead and a village of smoking ruins.

The aftermath is almost as horrifying as the massacre itself.

At the 1953 war crimes tribunal, 65 men were indicted. Only 20 could be found. Fourteen were Alsatians, French citizens, and Alsace threatened to riot if its sons were convicted. An amnesty law was quietly passed. Almost everyone walked free within a year.

Nobody spent meaningful time in prison for Oradour-sur-Glane.

By French law, nothing in the original village may be moved, repaired, or altered. The rusted cars sit in the street where they burned. The sewing machines are fused to the shop floors. The baby carriages are still there. The church stands open to the sky with a plaque listing the names of the children killed inside.

You can walk through it today.

82 years ago this morning, those 642 people had no idea. The dentist was thinking about his afternoon appointments. The teachers were relieved the children were behaving. The man on the bicycle was annoyed about the delay.

By 6pm they were all dead, and the soldiers who killed them were eating dinner.

Never forget Oradour-sur-Glane.

[Nahuel Lanzón @nahuelzn]

🇸🇴 Nunca vi algo así. En Somalia hoy se llenó un estadio para recibir como héroe nacional a Omar Artan, el árbitro al que Estados Unidos le negó la entrada al Mundial. Increíble.

[Mark Henry @Mark_J_Henry]

Ireland has one of the lowest rates of unemployment in Europe and - importantly - unemployment among those who did not complete secondary education is similar to that who completed a degree. That's very different elsewhere in the EU. Excellent social equality and fairness 🇮🇪👍

[Paul McGrath @Paulmcgrath5]

My good pal Charlie looking great yesterday 🇮🇪

[Mark Henry @Mark_J_Henry]

The share of young people in Ireland who are not in employment or education is among the lowest in Europe. Only 8% of those aged 15-29 are - and that's half the figure it was 10 years ago. The Netherlands and Sweden are the only nations doing appreciably better. Great progress 🇮🇪