90136177

Up to 120 BMW cars stolen in a sophisticated cross-border key cloning racket were to be broken up and shipped to Latvia, the High Court in Belfast has heard. An eastern European crime gang is suspected to be behind the theft of the cars from Dublin. They then moved them to garages in Northern Ireland, prosecutors said.

A prosecuting lawyer said two co-accused are believed to have travelled from England to help transport the cars. “Police believe this gang are operating in different jurisdictions,” the lawyer said. “Approximately 120 BMWs were stolen from the greater Dublin area since September 2013.” The lawyer said: “Since the arrests, there have been no reported thefts of BMWs in the Dublin area. Prior to this, they were almost on a nightly basis.”


120 BMW cars ‘stolen to be broken up and sent to Latvia’ (BBC News)

File Pic: James Horan/Photocall Ireland

coffee2
Bell Lane coffee boss Stephen Bell

A kilo of Mullingar-based Artisan coffee roasters Bell Lane espresso blend Dragonfly and a kilo of their Moondust blend PLUS a Hario home grinder was on offer.

We asked YOU: why espresso?

You answered shakily in your dozens.

Runners up:

“Espresso is the finest member of the Italian coffee family because it’s like myself! Incredibly dark and bitter and is best consumed in small doses.” (Optimus Grime)

“Espresso is the finest member of the Italian coffee family because like an elderly Italian Uncle, it’ll smack you across the face, pull your cheeks and say “Why you no married, eh? Too good for the ladies Mistera Biggatheshot” (Murtles)

“Espresso is the finest member of the Italian coffee family because IT GETS SH*T DONE.” (Mikey)

“Espresso is the finest member of the Italian coffee family because without it I wouldn’t get to tut-tut in my head at people who constantly pronounce it as ECKK-SPRESOH…..kinda like the way some people keep on using the word PANINI to incorrectly describe their favourite ‘Cuisine de France-based toasted sandwich roll that they are ordering at the deli counter during lunchtime which in fact is the plural term (PANINO being the singular term e.g. may I have one ham and cheese panino please). So there.” (Martco)

Winner:

“Espresso is the finest member of the Italian coffee family because it is the ultimate, finely-tuned expression of hundreds of years of coffee cultivation. It is humanity’s greatest achievement distilled into one small shot of earthy, roasted goodness. I like coffee. Weeeeee!” (Simon)

Thanks all

Previously: Do You Like Espresso

Bell Lane

Thanks Eoin

FLICKR_Palestine_OliveTree_delayedgratification_600x450

Olive trees in Hebron, Palestine

Elaine Bradley is a human rights activist working on the West Bank.

She writes this morning.

Today I learned the skill of bilocation. As I stood attentively in a hospital ward in Hebron, listening to the 19-year-old woman who had both her legs blown off by an Israeli drone as she fled her bombed house with husband and two little children; as I looked at her pale face and sunken eyes; saw the bandage on her broken arm; the bandaged stumps where her legs should be; as I watched her embarrassedly trying to lengthen her nightgown over the stumps, as I listened to the doctor tell me later how she needed a skin graft from half way down her back due to severe burns; as I listened to him tell me how she lost her unborn child; that her husband – in a different hospital – had also lost a leg and was severely burnt; as I listened as he told me that one of her two children is in a Jerusalem hospital with severe burns; as the doctor reminded me that drones have cameras and therefore the targetting of this family was deliberate; as he told me of the psychological trauma she is experiencing, compounded by being separated from her family; as I looked into her pained eyes and listened to this account and three more besides including the story of 9-year-old Hala, the strange fruit found in an olive tree with a fractured skull and broken limbs – blown there by the bomb blast that killed her mother and siblings; as I heard the doctor tell me of the 10,000 people injured in Gaza, 2/3 of these injuries serious – similar to those I witnessed today; as I listened to all this and remembered the details, remembered to turn on and off my recorder, as I smiled in response to sad smiles and greeted people and said thank you and offered good wishes; as I did my job, noticing details, breathing deep, staying calm, being present, I simultaneously stood on the top of a cliff in Allihies facing the wild Atlantic and I screamed and screamed my despair to the wind and the crashing waves.

Elaine Bradley

Previously: Dear Israelis

We Walked In Solidarity

The Mask Is Off And People Know

Gaza Ceasfire Extended By One Day (BBC)

90098985Professor William Binchy (top) and Justice Adrian Hardiman (above)

HardimanX1992-page-001

From March 1992, a piece written by Adrian Hardiman SC (Supreme Court Judge since 2000) in the Sunday Independent on the X case and Pro Life Campaign legal advisor William Binchy.

Anti-abortion extremists are demanding a further referendum to turn the clock back in a drastic way. Their position is both obscurantist and less than honest.

The first thing to be said about this group is that their legal thinking is demonstrably unreliable. They were warned in 1983 that the wording of the amendment was, in the words of the then Attorney General, “ambiguous and unsatisfactory”. They insisted that it was perfect. They now wish to change it again.

They were expressly warned, by this writer amongst others, that the amendment could be used to prevent women from travelling. They scoffed at the idea or pretended to do so, and called it scaremongering. This is precisely what happened and (without the amended protocol) what could happen again.

In recent weeks this group has loudly proclaimed that it does not wish to interfere with the right to travel. If this is true, it is a death-bed conversion. It was not apparently their view a few months ago when the original protocol was negotiated.

Worse still there is ample evidence that this group positively envisaged the use of penal sanctions, including imprisonment, against Irish women who had abortions abroad. In 1981 Professor-elect William Binchy wrote the first article I am aware of suggesting a referendum on abortion. If passed, he foresaw that injunctions could be granted to restrain a pregnant woman from travelling abroad for an abortion.

He continued “. . . if the consequences of defying an injunction were made absolutely clear to the defendant, this might (have some effect. These consequences are indeed awesome. The defendant would be in contempt of court — for which commital to prison is the penalty: moreover an action for damages would also lie for ‘destruction of the child’s constitutional right to life: One must be realistic here. A woman threatened with such sanctions (could well decide to stay in England after her abortion rather than come back to prison in Ireland’ (emphasis added). (Binchy: Ethical issues in Reproductive Medicine: A legal perspective”) published by Gill and Macmillan 1982.

In the same article the Professor-elect declared that-the “simple legal solution” might be to make it a criminal offence to have an abortion anywhere in the world.

He said “for our legislation now to provide that it should be illegal to have an abortion abroad would therefore not be changing what since 1861 has been the intended effect of our abortion law: on the contrary it would do no more than restore the position in light of legislative developments elsewhere over which we have no control”.

He continued by asking whom precisely the law would cover. Answering his own question he said, “Obviously it should not extend, for, example, to an English woman residing in England who had a perfectly legal abortion there. If she came to Ireland for a visit some time later, she should scarcely be hauled off to Mountjoy for what she had done.

“It would seem that the law should be limited to persons with a close connection with Ireland at the time of the commission of the offence. Such persons could include those who are habitually resident here or, more restrictively. Irish nationals who are habitually resident here.”

Via Oireachtas Retort

Previously: And So It Came To Pass

Not So Fast

Just William

“Our Values Are Considerably More Subtle Than You Might Think.”

Senior Moment

He Hasn’t Changed A Day

Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland

Screen Shot 2014-08-18 at 21.28.26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so9gPb3_Q2g

The prolific Laura Gaynor (previously) writes:

For several months at college this year I found myself living off chocolate, burritos and tea. This climaxed to a crescendo where I disposed of my breakfast in a blind rage. In any case, I decided I would write something about the weighty topic that is food at college. To my surprise, it’s in the Irish Times. I did a vlog about it too. I’d love if you’d check it out and let me know what you think.

How To Eat Well At College: Ditch the Junk Food And Get Cooking (Laura Gaynor, Irish Times)

roadtrip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRCIZMbTqoE&feature=youtu.be

ROAD TRIP!

Niall Fitzgerald writes:

“My young fella [Luke] and I made this video of our recent road trip and camping holiday around the south east and west of Ireland during the week of the good weather. shows off the country quite nicely ;)”

hse-plan-navan-hospital-drogheda-louth-390x285

The woman refused an abortion has spoken with The irish Times about her experience.

Over the following weeks, she says, she had a number of meetings at the IFPA [Irish Family Planning Association] and though the process seemed to be in train she was told some weeks later that the estimated cost of travelling to England, having the abortion and possible overnight accommodation could be over €1,500. An individual in the IFPA, she says, told her the State would not fund the costs

“I said we’re getting too far, and she said, no, in England they carry out abortions up to 28 weeks . . . She said ‘that is not the problem. The problem is the money’.

“The next day, around 10am, I was taken in a taxi to another hospital . . . When we got there I thought they were going to help me. They brought me to a room where they did a scan and the pregnancy was 24 weeks and one day . . .They said they could not do an abortion. I said, ‘You can leave me now to die. I don’t want to live in this world anymore’.”

…On Monday night two doctors came, a psychiatrist and a gynaecologist, and said, ‘We are going to carry out the abortion next Monday but you have to be strong. You have to eat. You have to drink.’ I started to eat and I drank.”

She says she was told a few days later that the plan had changed.

“They said the pregnancy was too far. It was going to have to be a Caesarean section . . . They said wherever you go in the world, the United States, anywhere, at this point it has to be a Caesarean.

She says that a number of days later, two medics told her the authorities had been made aware of her situation and she would need a solicitor….

They said they could not do an abortion. I said, ‘You can leave me now to die. I don’t want to live in this world anymore’ (Kitty Holland, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, Irish Times)

Broadsheet.ie