Home » Posts tagged '2004'
New York, February 2004: On my way back to Dublin, I stopped in New York… There had been a blizzard but the Empire State beckoned… Completed in 1931 in distinctive Art Deco style- its roof height at 381 meters (with antenna included 443.2m high)- it’s still one of the highest buildings on the planet- at number 22.
Oradour-sur-Glane, France, 2004: The remains of the original village of Oradour-sur-Glane stand today as a memorial to one of the worse atrocities ever to occur in France…
On the 10th of June 1944 the 2nd SS Panzer Division (Das Reich)- heading north from Toulouse after the D-Day landings- sealed off the town and ordered all the residents to assemble in the village square.
The SS had confused Oradour-sur-Glane with nearby Oradour-sur-Vayres, where the Resistance allegedly held a Waffen SS officer captive.
All the women and children were locked in the church while the village was looted. Meanwhile, the men were led to barns and sheds where machine-gun nests were already in place.
The SS proceeded to the church and exploded an incendiary device killing most of the women and children, the survivors tried to escape through the doors and windows of the church, only to be met with machine-gun fire.
Virtually the entire village was massacred, 642 innocent people lost their lives…
Oradour-sur-Glane in context is just one of many memorials to Europe’s recent murderous past- Bosnia being an ugly modern reminder…
Dublin, Ireland, 2004: At an Anti-Bush rally in Dublin, anger and frustration was very evident across a broad section of Irish society, with Bush’s upcoming visit and the EU-US summit at Dromoland Castle. A lot of criticism was directed at the Irish government for allowing the US access to Shannon airport for the refueling of US bombers, and the transit of “extraordinary renditioned” Al Qaeda” suspects to Guantanamo Bay.
Limoges, France, 2004: This hotel in Limoges had seen better days. Here’s to good times ahead for France… Nous ne manquerons pas vous Sarkozy- félicitations et bonne chance Hollande!
Ragusa, Sicily, 2004: I started this website/blog as a half-hearted outlet for all the images I’d accumulated over the past decade or so… Two years later….. 24,432 hits, 291 posts, 51 categories, 627 tags, 269 comments and 930 images later….. I’m still going….
So in a celebration of sorts I’m going to do a re-post (re-edit) of the first image published. A sneaky shot of a group of men in the south Sicilian city of Ragusa- who looked (in my imagination) like the local “men of honor” or mafia… I’d been re-watching “The Godfather” series and the exellent “Sopranos”- and reading many books on the Sicilian mafia (Cosa Nostra)- in particular Peter Robb’s Midnight in Sicily. Thanks for dropping by and please stay tuned…
