Profile for alanmaskey
Connolly Socialist. Democrat. Joycean.
With the collapse of the Republican ideal, each must be his own Republic.
Like the Minstrel Boy, we must be true till death which, being Irish, we like.
Is buaine blath na saol.
Latest comments from alanmaskey (see all)
alanmaskey has commented 378 times (0 in the last month).
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Books
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A flexible library service for the 21st century?
Following Alan’s piece on libraries, I picked this ‘advertorial’ from Google plus this evening… about how a US county library system is cutting costs and improving flexibility in their free at the point of delivery services by enabling the whole library service act as a functioning unit as opposed to the one discrete library… read our review » -
The lost art of reading (or drowning in too much information)…
Here’s a great review of a fascinating book (H/T reader Rory) on how the Internet is destroying our capacity for intelligent, focused and critical thought. It opens thus: …here is the news that Ulin brings in this slim, meandering book: that reading is “an act of contemplation”; that such an act becomes more difficult in [...] read our review »
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…if University education were universally available and availed of, the country would collapse in one generation
The words of Brian O’Nolan, variously Brian Ó Nualláin, Myles na gCopaleen, Myles na Gopaleen and, of course, Flann O’Brien. That O’Nolan was referencing his own dissolute student days at UCD only mildly distracts from the prophetic undertone of his words: I paid no attention whatsoever to books or study and regarded lectures as a [...] read our review »
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Comment on POTD – Flip off
on 30 March 2011 at 9:16 am
The wording, like the ‘tache, is a refreshing blast from the past. Now that feck has made a strong comeback, maybe flip is next. And The Wolfe Tones haven’t gone away, you know. As The saw Doctors might sing: My ‘tache is living in the 60s still.
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Comment on The Liberation of Stalingrad.
on 30 March 2011 at 8:12 am
Dewi: My reading was the Hitler insisted on attack and on the one big blow, ie Kursk. And his generals did his bidding.
I was also given to understand that he was such a clown (as was Goering, whose ineptitude should have seen him sacked), that the Allies figured he was worth more to them alive as German leader than dead.
Like all politicians, he was happy to take credit for eg Blitzkrieg when the credit lay elsewhere.
Leaders and led make for interesting reading, especially in extreme cases like Herr Hitler.
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Comment on The Liberation of Stalingrad.
on 29 March 2011 at 10:42 pm
Dewi:
Hitler only understood attack, more Blackpool FC than anything more serious. His same insanity was evident in the fighter planes. The Nazis could have introduced defence jets that could have decimated (or at least put up a good show against) Bomber Command. Hitler prevaricated, had too many top secret projects on and fired state of the art weaponry with tiny payloads at the Brits.
Von Manstein, like Model, was a military genius. Why good solid, professional men like them followed lunatics is an abiding mystery. Model ended up as a field marshall stranded in a wood with a hand full of men and a huge downer.
One has to perversely “admire” the way Hitler so curtly dismissed the fate of the 6th Army and that of the entire Reich. What a nutter.
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Comment on Gerry Adams “considering all legal remedies open to him…”
on 29 March 2011 at 10:32 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiiN32ibraM&feature=related
Given that Gerry Adams condemned the murder of Denis Donaldson, why did he not go to the funeral to show the flag? Will he raise Donaldson’s murder in Leinster House – if preparing his legal team on the Jean mcConville case gives him the time?
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Comment on Government apologises over Majella O’Hare killing
on 29 March 2011 at 10:25 pm
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/other/1976/murray76.htm
Here is the late Fr Faul’s take on Majella O’Hare’s demise.
Don’t insult Majella O’Hare with tangents to something galaxies away.
Please note Miss O’Hare’s demise was part of a stinking strategy and Fr Faul was on to it in 1976, 35 years before the Brits gave their sick sorry note.
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Comment on Government apologises over Majella O’Hare killing
on 29 March 2011 at 8:00 pm
Trowbridge: This thread is about a little South Armagh girl killed by British terrorists. Her case was fully explained by the late Fr Denis Faul at the time.
These animals murdered her for being a harmless South Armagh Catholic girl, for no other reason.
It has nothing to do with anything, except the imperialist policies and concomitant cover ups of the British imperialist forces in places like South Armagh they controlled solely by terror, the gun and the bomb.
There is much darkness in the world and dark corners, such as the murder of Miss O’Hare, deserves light. So too do others, but not here.
Libel is a form of control but this thread is not the place to bang on about it.
Miss O’Hare’s murder was one bead in a rosary of tears woven togehter by the sub human sociopaths of the Paras and Marines.
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Comment on The Liberation of Stalingrad.
on 29 March 2011 at 7:50 pm
1. It was the Siberian regiments wot done it. Stalin, though a well placed mole in Tokyo, knew the Japs were not going to attack and so he marched Moscow’s victors all the way across Siberia.
2. The T34 played a huge role.
3. Hilter played a bigger one. This guy was a nut and would not let the 6th army retreat. This thinned out the Romanian reserves and into the net they went.
4. Kursk was the lunatic Hilter at work again. The Soviets had their plans and prepared well for one trick Hilter. The Germans could not make good their losses.
5. The Americans gave the least and took the most. The Brits gave the most and got the least. (excepting the Poles, whose case the wr was supposedly fought for).
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Comment on Government apologises over Majella O’Hare killing
on 28 March 2011 at 11:07 pm
I remember when Patrick Rooney’s family spoke out after so many years of quiet. None of us can gauge the awful hurt of others.
Some things do not bear contemplation; killing children is one of those things and condoning it and sweeping it under the carpet, as happened in this case, are others.
Christy Walsh makes valid points and the media always play their corner, Some victims’ families were selfless exemplars – Michael McGoldrick’s family jumps to mind. But that does not diminute the hell of others, or the one they got visited upon them.
Jail is supposed to be a deterrent. As the list of kids above shows, the Brits never saw any deterrent.
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Comment on Government apologises over Majella O’Hare killing
on 28 March 2011 at 7:42 pm
Troubles porn is not a bad description. It is something like the “has anyone been raped and speaks English” jounralists getting off on the Japaense tsunami right now.
The reral question is: what is to be done?
1. Help the Japanese.
2. Put animals like Williams in steel cages.
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Comment on Government apologises over Majella O’Hare killing
on 28 March 2011 at 6:50 pm
Cases like this just go to show that the British armed forces is a criminal organisation. God know what thease scum bags are doing to the Libyans.
Was Wiliams a seril offender? How ma ny more children did he kill whilst only obeying orders?
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