ThingsAreGettingBrighter

Rubbish - Black Death in Europe was in the 1340s and led to labour shortages and new ways of working including the abolition of serfdom and new freedoms for towns and traders. Trans-Atlantic exploration didn’t start until 160 years later and had nothing to do with the Black Death

@DrNeilStone The initial "Black Death" was followed by centuries of terrorising recurring local outbreaks. It took the death of those with the most vulnerable immune systems, the strain to evolve in slightly less virulent to stop and health measures to stop. (Peste de Marseilles - 1720)

@DrNeilStone People died from the Black Death w painfully swollen lymph nodes (buboes) in the groin or armpits, severe respiratory failure from coughing blood, but hey, better than a vaccine, right?

@DrNeilStone Warning signs all over the western USA. It is the same bacterium that causes bubonic and pneumonic plague in humans.

@DrNeilStone @downtownrob88 The black death didn’t “end” - it came in numerous waves, and is still around to catch today if you are unlucky - but it’s treatable with antibiotics.

@DrNeilStone After the catastrophic epidemic in 1349-50, the disease came back in regular intervals until 1720 in marseille, were it killed 25 % of the population. The last smaller one in Europe was 1945.

Yes it's true - the Black Death did end without a vaccine It killed 200 million people including wiping out half the population of Europe but at least they never got one of them nasty vaccines right?

The Irish houses you see destroyed are generally not those of Tories and unionists, but of sympathetic members of the Ascendancy who supported the fledgling Free State.

❌ Top IRGC intelligence officers in Iran are being eliminated one by one, the regime’s core security apparatus is being dismantled. In just weeks, senior figures across the IRGC, MOIS, Basij, and police intelligence have been taken out in precision strikes, a direct hit on the system that enforces repression across the country. 🔴 Majid Khademi — Head of IRGC Intelligence, oversaw internal surveillance, counter-intelligence, and coordination with militias. Killed today in Tehran. 🔴 Esmail Khatib — Minister of Intelligence, longtime architect of arrests, interrogations, and suppression of dissent. Eliminated mid-March. 🔴 Gholamreza Rezaian — Head of Greater Tehran Police Intelligence (Faraja), central to surveillance networks and protest crackdowns. Killed early March. 🔴 Esmail Ahmadi — Deputy for Intelligence at the Basij, a paramilitary force used to suppress dissent and control the population. Killed around March 20. 🔴 Mehdi Rostami Shomastan — Senior MOIS commander, directly tied to arrests, surveillance, and internal repression. Killed March 20. The IRGC Intelligence Organization sits at the center of this system, running internal surveillance networks, identifying opponents, and directing arrests and interrogations. Even street-level crackdowns rely on intelligence and orders flowing from this network. These are the same institutions behind the January 2026 crackdown, where over 45,000 Iranians were killed in just days.

Never forget Mary Lou McDonald calling the Muslim community precious and saying they are part of shaping Ireland. Shame Fein are now Brits out sharia law in.

Today in 2005, Gerry Adams stood up in Belfast and told the Provisional IRA to put away its guns. Adams called on the organisation to "take courageous initiatives which will achieve your aims by purely political and democratic activity." Saying that there was now "an alternative." The previous December, £26.5 million had walked out of the Belfast headquarters of the Northern Bank. It was the largest cash robbery in British history. Hugh Orde, Chief Constable of the PSNI, said publicly that the Provisional IRA did it. In February, Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell went further, claiming that Sinn Féin and the IRA were "directed by the same leadership." Then, on the night of 30 January 2005, Robert McCartney was killed. McCartney was a 33-year-old Catholic father of two from the Short Strand, a Sinn Féin voter by all accounts, out for a drink with his friend Brendan Devine at Magennis's Bar on May Street. A row started. IRA men were present, including a local commander who had a pre-existing grievance with Devine. McCartney and Devine were dragged outside onto Cromac Street. They were beaten with sewer rods. A knife was used. Devine had his throat cut and survived. McCartney did not. When the attackers were done, they went back into the bar and cleaned the scene. They removed the CCTV tape. They told the patrons it was IRA business. Of the more than seventy people in that bar, not one agreed to testify. A significant number told police they had been in a toilet measuring four feet by three at the time. The bathroom became locally known as "the Tardis". It was Robert McCartney's five sisters who refused to let it go. They went to Downing Street and the White House. They were received by President George W. Bush on St Patrick's Day 2005. In the same city that day, Senator Edward Kennedy, once one of Adams' most valuable American allies, declined to meet with him citing the IRA's "ongoing criminal activity and contempt for the rule of law." Adams condemned the McCartney killing. He urged witnesses to come forward, though not specifically to the police. He suspended twelve Sinn Féin members. The IRA expelled three of its own and offered to shoot the men responsible (!) The McCartney family declined. Into this wreckage stepped Adams with his April speech, calling on the IRA to "fully embrace and accept" democratic means. He was unapologetic about his years of support for the organisation, maintaining that "there was no alternative" for nationalists during the Troubles. He denied, as he has always denied, being a member of the IRA. On 28 July 2005, the Provisional IRA formally ended its armed campaign. Former republican prisoner Séanna Walsh read the statement. Members were instructed to use exclusively peaceful means. Decommissioning followed. May the people's of this beautiful island nevermore use or tolerate the use of the bullet or bomb in the pursuit of our peaceful future together.

Gerry Adams was a terrorist commander who ordered the murder of mothers and children? Surely not. I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.

Imagine this vile thing is an elected representative in Ireland. @HollyCairnsTD you're evil.

Well said. If there are TWO things the men of 1916 🇮🇪 stood for, they are: 1. Atheist communist mass murder. 👍 2. Muhammadan holy war against the Jews. 👍 The men of 1916 would agree. Well said.

Sure it was the 1980s and in 1985 the year of the moving statues did you visit ballinspittle cork to see if the statue moved

@PaulEmbery Absolute nonsense. Even when I was a child in the 1970s, Ireland was unbelievably homogeneous. Any foreigners were seen as a real curiosity. What would it have been like in the 1920s?

@PaulEmbery Ooh... they found an Indian law student in a Dublin boarding house and non-Irish people there on holiday. Some Germans working at Siemens in Limerick. "Such a mix of people". "A kind of cosmopolitan inflection." 🤣

@PaulEmbery Absolutely pathetic but typical of this rag - a smattering of foreigners - how many? 10, 20, 50, 100? Any large city will always have foreigners: sailors, businessmen, tourists, ambassadors, etc.

They just can't help themselves, can they? A piece in today's Guardian about the release of the 1926 Irish census. The headline and intro give the impression that the country was truly multicultural and cosmopolitan back then. But when you get further into the article, you learn that foreigners represented no more than a "smattering" at that time. In other words, Ireland was very obviously a monoculture. Why do they engage in this intellectual dishonesty? theguardian.com/world/2026/apr…

Weeks after Gerry Adams denied on oath that he was a member of the IRA, declassified intelligence discovered by the Belfast Telegraph says that in 1996 he was on the IRA Army Council – and then was re-elected to that post. belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/…

Una cosa es ser simpatizante de Palestina desde el exterior; otra muy distinta es llegar a Gaza creyendo que no te pasará nada… te atrapa Hamás y, para colmo, no llevas el “burka”.🤷‍♂️