Erskine Holmes

I have a friend in Cuba and what they just reported should end careers in Washington. Every single patient on a ventilator in their hospital died tonight. The power went out. The ventilators stopped. This isn't a rare incident anymore. Cuba's grid has collapsed 3 times THIS MONTH. The hospital staff told them they've had more emergency deaths in the last 30 days than in all of last year combined. A patient with leukemia at a Havana hospital told reporters: "Without fuel or affordable transportation, life has only gotten harder. We are fighting every day." NICU babies are on bare minimum power right now. Dialysis patients are playing Russian roulette with every blackout. Cuba has received ZERO oil in 3 months. That's not a shortage. That's a blockade. The US blocked a Russian rescue mission — 730,000 barrels of oil heading to Cuba — turned it away. Then the official story went: "We're sending $6 million in humanitarian aid." $6 million in aid. 930,000 barrels of oil blocked. You can't fix ventilators with $6 million when the grid is dark. And Trump's own words from March 6, 2026: "Cuba will fall. After 50 years, this is the cherry on top of the cake." The people dying in hospitals tonight are his cherry on top. I'll keep you updated. Turn on notifications. 🚨

Beautiful Amy Doherty we are holding you and your kids and your family in our hearts. I'm so sorry. I have no words xxxxx 💔

In 1925, a schoolteacher in southern Germany read a book by Adolf Hitler. She read it carefully. Every word. And when she closed the book, Anna Essinger understood what most people would only realize years later: this was not just political promises. It was a plan. And if it were allowed to be carried out, there would be no safe place left in Germany for her students. She remembered this—and continued teaching. Anna was born in Ulm in 1879 into a secular Jewish family. In her twenties, she went to study in Nashville, where she encountered the Quakers—their values deeply influenced her life. In 1919, she returned to Germany on a humanitarian mission, helping children after World War I. In 1926, together with her sisters, she founded a boarding school in Herrlingen—a place where freedom of thought and respect for every child were central. When major political changes came in 1933, Anna was ready. In April 1933, schools were ordered to display a state symbol in honor of the leader’s birthday. Anna arranged a three-day trip for her students. When the school stood empty, she complied with the requirement. “A symbol cannot influence people on an empty building,” she said. Then came action. She found a way to relocate the school to England—to an old building called Bunce Court in Kent. Anna spoke with the parents. She was honest: their children would be safe, but returning could not be guaranteed. Almost all agreed. On October 5, 1933, the journey began. The children left in groups. Parents said goodbye quietly, trying not to attract attention. All arrived safely. Sixty-six children were now out of danger. The school reopened the very next day. Conditions were difficult, but together they built a new life—learning, working, supporting one another. Over time, the school became a refuge for children who had lost the chance to study, and for those who arrived in Europe without families. After the events of 1938, even more children came, and Anna tried to help everyone she could. In 1940, the school had to be urgently relocated again due to the war. Anna understood that many children had stopped receiving news from their parents. She knew why—but did not want to prematurely destroy their sense of safety. After the war, children who had endured terrible hardships began arriving. At Bunce Court, they learned again what it meant to feel safe. The school closed in 1948. Over her lifetime, Anna helped more than 900 children. She did not seek recognition. But for them, she became home. She died in England in 1960. Her former students continued to gather for many years. They said it was the only place where they truly felt safe. It all began because one woman read a book—and chose to prepare.

Gerry Adams branded Brendan Hughes a disappointment. Hughes spent 13 yrs in jail & 53 days on hunger strike. Who did he disappoint? The Dark despised the version of history being constructed so he wouldn't play along. He challenged the storyteller-in-chief belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/on…

On this day 22nd March 1914. Men of the Special Service Force,West Belfast, Ulster Volunteer Force, returning to Craigavon (House) after church service at Belmont Presbyterian church.

In 1835, port of New Orleans, Irish families step off the gangway into swampland heat, carrying everything they own. Among them, a small girl named Margaret Gaffney clutches her father's hand. She is five years old. She does not yet know that within the year, both her parents will be dead. Yellow fever moves through the immigrant quarters like wildfire through dry grass. Margaret's mother dies first. Her father follows days later. At six years old, she becomes a ward of Welsh neighbors who need extra hands more than they need another mouth to feed. There is no school. No tenderness. Just work. By nine, she is scrubbing laundry. By eleven, she is entirely on her own. At twenty-one, she marries Charles Haughery. They have a daughter. For the first time since childhood, Margaret feels safe. Then yellow fever comes again. Her husband dies. Her baby dies. She is twenty-two, widowed, childless, illiterate, and alone in a city that considers Irish Catholics less than human. Most people would have broken. Margaret borrowed forty dollars, bought two cows, and started selling milk. She walked the French Quarter before sunrise, knocking on doors, undercutting prices, outworking everyone. People mocked her. A poor Irish widow with a milk cart was not supposed to become anything. Within a year, she paid back the loan. Within five, she owned the largest dairy in the city. Then she met the nuns at the orphanage. They were trying to feed children no one else wanted. Margaret saw herself in every face. She gave them all her milk, every day, and refused payment. She told them she remembered what hunger felt like. She remembered being six and abandoned. In 1858, she sold the dairy and bought a bakery she had no idea how to run. She could not read recipes. She learned by feel, by repetition, by refusing to fail. Within a year, her bread was everywhere. She standardized loaves, mechanized production, and fed a city that once looked through her like she was invisible. When yellow fever returned, she nursed the dying. During the Civil War, she fed Union soldiers and Confederate families without asking which side they supported. She became one of the wealthiest women in America and gave away over six hundred thousand dollars. She never learned to write her name. She signed every document with an X. When Margaret Haughery died in 1882, New Orleans erected the first statue ever dedicated to a woman in the city. At the base, they carved an X. The mark of someone who could not write, but who rewrote what mercy looked like. Margaret lived so simply that many people did not realize she was wealthy. She wore plain dresses, lived in modest rooms, and walked to work every day. Visitors to her bakery often mistook her for a cleaning woman. She preferred it that way. She believed attention should go to the work, not the person doing it. The statue erected in her honor still stands in Margaret Place in New Orleans. It depicts her sitting with a child on her lap and another at her side. The inscription reads simply, "Margaret." For decades, locals called her "the Bread Woman of New Orleans." Children she helped grew up, had children of their own, and told them about the woman who made sure no one went hungry. Margaret's bakery became so successful that during the Civil War, Union officers tried to seize it for military use. She reportedly walked into the commanding officer's tent and told him that if he took her bakery, the orphans would starve. He let her keep it. Another detail: she was known to test her bread by touch alone, never needing to read temperatures or measurements. Workers said she could tell if dough was ready just by pressing it with her thumb. 📷 : Portrait of Margaret Haughery, 1842, by Jacques Amans. © Daughters of Time #archaeohistories

With my friend @jeremycorbyn, I've just delivered key medical aid to Cuba. This is part of the Nuestra America Convoy that’s bringing in huge amounts of aid as Trump tightens the cruel and illegal blockade of Cuba. Donate and learn about the #NuestraAmericaConvoy below.

He saved children from the Holocaust without speaking a single word. The world remembers Marcel Marceau as the master mime. The man in the striped shirt and white face paint. The artist who could make you see invisible walls and feel imaginary wind. For decades, he performed on the greatest stages of the world, moving audiences to tears without uttering a sound. But long before the applause, before the spotlight, before the fame, he was simply Marcel Mangel. A Jewish teenager in occupied France whose father had just been taken. It was 1944. His father, a kosher butcher in Strasbourg, had been arrested by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz. He would never return. Marcel knew his family was being hunted. He changed his surname to "Marceau" and made a decision that would define the rest of his life. He joined the French Resistance. His mission was unlike anything most soldiers faced. There were orphanages scattered across France, filled with Jewish children whose parents had already been murdered or deported. These children were next on the Nazi lists. Someone had to get them out. Someone had to lead them across dangerous territory to neutral Switzerland, where they might have a chance to survive. Marcel volunteered. The journeys were terrifying. He would gather groups of children—sometimes as young as four or five—and lead them through forests and mountains toward the Swiss border. Nazi patrols were everywhere. A single sound could mean death for everyone. One child's cry, one moment of panic, and they would all be discovered. How do you keep frightened children quiet when their lives depend on absolute silence? Marcel understood something others didn't. Fear makes children cry. But wonder makes them hold their breath. During those dangerous treks through the darkness, Marcel would use his gift. He would perform for the children. Silent pantomimes that transformed terror into enchantment. He became a character they could follow, a game they wanted to play. In the moonlight, he mimed catching invisible butterflies. He pretended to trip over imaginary logs. He acted out stories that made the children smile even as they walked through the night. He made silence feel like magic instead of a rule they had to follow. Over the course of the war, working alongside his cousin Georges Loinger and other resistance fighters, Marcel helped save dozens of Jewish children. He didn't just guide them through forests. He forged identity documents, altering birth certificates and creating false papers that gave these children new identities and new chances at life. After the liberation, Marcel Marceau became one of the most celebrated performers of the 20th century. He toured the world. He influenced generations of artists. He received standing ovations in every language. But he rarely spoke about what he had done during the war. When asked why he chose silence as his art form, he often referenced his father, murdered in Auschwitz. He once said that the survivors who returned from the camps could never find words for what they had experienced. "My name is Mangel," he explained. "In German, it means 'the lack.' I mime the lack of words." His silence on stage wasn't just performance. It was remembrance. Marcel Marceau proved that art can be more than entertainment. In his hands, it became survival. It became resistance. It became a way to transform fear into hope, to lead the vulnerable to safety, to speak volumes without making a sound. He didn't need weapons to be a hero. He didn't need speeches or slogans. He just needed to move, and in moving, to give frightened children a reason to trust, to follow, and to believe they might see tomorrow. The applause that followed him for six decades was deserved. But the silence he kept about his greatest performance—the one that saved lives in the darkest forests of Europe—might have been the most powerful act of all.

Today the Somme Museum welcomed Newtownabbey Women’s Group for the guided tour.

Yesterday in the lovely sunshine the American Council for International Studies visited the Ulster Tower and went on a guided tour of Thiepval Wood with Rocky. The school is from Texas and is currently visiting the sites from both world wars. #educatingfuturegenerations

Tonight members from the United Ulster History Forum visited the Somme Museum and were shown around by Austin. #history

A busy day at the Ulster Tower with a visit in the morning from Wilsmslow College, Cheshire followed by an afternoon tour for Spalding Grammar School. Thank you to the boys of Spalding GS who did a spontaneous collection and donated €87,50. 👏👏 Much appreciated.

It was a busy Saturday at the Somme Museum with visits from the Londonderry Masonic Group and the Tullyvallen Family Support Group. Austin and Trevor had the pleasure of looking after these groups.

Credit Unions unleashed - by Joe Fortune - Joe's Substack jffortune.substack.com/p/credit-union…

This has been a good week for unionism, while Sinn Fein seriously blundered - as I saw with my own eyes. In failing to distinguish between the American government and the American people, the party boycotted people who have nothing to do with Donald Trump. belfasttelegraph.co.uk/comment/opinio…

Today's papers: Magnificent mural by hugely talented artist reignites the campaign for Blair 'Paddy' Mayne to receive a posthumous Victoria Cross - please share widely.

PRESS STATEMENT: McCue Jury and Partners on behalf of John Clark, Jonathan Ganesh and Barry Laycock

Belfast born Bryan Budd VC was a British Army corporal with @3PARA who gave his life protecting his section in Sangin, Afghanistan, in 2006. Cpl Budd was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for extraordinary gallantry. memorialstovalour.co.uk/vc1353.html

Rest in peace Mary Anne Trump. You are one of the most honest people I know.

Never forget that Soviet/Russian Commies worked hand in hand with German Nazis to attack and split Poland😡