The work of Stamatis Laskos, a 29 year-old street artist from Athens whose wonderfully unhinged portraits of his friends (along with other folk and occasionally animals) adorns walls all over Greece.
Hoop in a world gone sour.
Shamrock Rovers’ much-loved emerald-striped mascot at Tallaght Stadium this week.
FIGHT!
Thanks Buzz
From the Irish Times letters page:
Sir, – I was relieved to read about the appointment of former taoiseach Brian Cowen to the board of Topaz (“Brian Cowen and former AIB chief appointed to board of Topaz”, Business, May 3rd). It’s good to know that while so many aspects of life are going through change, the rationale for choosing non-executive directors to boards in this country remains the same. The expertise he brought to fuelling an already growing property bubble as minister for finance and then overseeing the worst financial crisis this State has faced will serve him and the board well as they manage the business of extracting money from Irish motorists. I hope those who have been adversely affected by the economic collapse will join me in making sure they never darken the forecourts of Topaz again. – Yours, etc,
Cowen joins the board of Topaz (Irish Times letters)
Previously: Oil Be Back
Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
[Donie O’Sullivan]
Police have defended criticism they did not take the disappearance of Irishman Donal O’Sullivan seriously after he was found close to where he went missing in Bondi Junction five days ago.
Mr O’Sullivan’s disappearance sparked a large search with about 100 people, mainly friends and members of the Irish community, scouring Sydney’s eastern suburbs for him.
[On Wednesday night, he was discovered by a caretaker in the stairwell of a commercial building and he remains in a serious condition in hospital with head and back injuries] .
Paramedics were called and he was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital where he remains in a serious condition with head and back injuries.
…But Mr O’Sullivan’s family has been critical of police, saying they were not taken seriously because Mr O’Sullivan is Irish. Eastern Suburbs Crime Manager Ana Loughman said she was satisfied police conducted a thorough search.
“When I reviewed the report and have actually looked at what work went into finding Mr O’Sullivan, I’m confident in saying that we did everything we could under the circumstances,” she said.
Thanks Mark Geary
FOUR days.
Four.
Meanwhile…
“I was told that the interrogations were an evidence-gathering process, and that the police would be making the case that I was a member of the IRA; that I had a senior IRA managerial role in Belfast at the time of Jean McConville’s abduction; and that I was therefore bound to know about her killing.
I challenged my interrogators to produce the new evidential material. They said that this would happen at a later interview but they wanted to take me through my childhood, family history and so on. Over the following four days it became clear that the objective of the interviews was to get to the point where they could charge me with IRA membership and thereby link me to the McConville case. The membership charge was clearly their principal goal. The interrogators made no secret of this. At one point the male detective described their plan as “a stage-managed approach”. It later transpired that it was a phased strategy, with nine different phases.
The first phases dealt with my family history of republican activism. My own early involvement in Sinn Féin as a teenager – when it was a banned organisation. My time in the 1960s in the civil rights movement and various housing action groups in west Belfast, the pogroms of 1969 and the start of the Troubles.
It was asserted that I was guilty of IRA membership through association because of my family background – my friends. They referred to countless pieces of “open source” material that, they said, linked me to the IRA. These were anonymous newspaper articles from 1971 and 1972, photographs of Martin McGuinness and me at republican funerals, and books about the period.
If any of these claimed I was in the IRA, then that was, according to my interrogators, evidence. They consistently cast up my habit of referring to friends as “comrades”. This, they said, was evidence of IRA membership. They claimed I was turned by special branch during interrogations in Belfast’s Palace Barracks in 1972 and that I became an MI5 agent! They also spoke about the peace talks in 1972, and my periods of internment and imprisonment in Long Kesh. This was presented as “bad-character evidence…”
Gerry Adams.
Frances Fitzgerald has been appointed Minister for Justice and Charlie Flanagan Minister for Children.
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) May 8, 2014
Are We Hot?
at
Um.
In a list of ‘The 10 worst city tourism videos’, The Guardian’s Chris Michael puts a video posted by the Dublin Convention Bureau at number 10.
He writes:
You know you’re struggling to pitch your city when one of your key selling points is that it’s 15 minutes from the airport. Note to Dublin tourism bigwigs: Google has offices everywhere now.
Best line: “Where enthusiasm, energy and positivity meets no problem and can do and absolutely.”
Ouch.
The 10 worst city tourism videos (The Guardian)
Thanks Stephen Hennelly
For too long the scandal dragged on,
And at long last he’s quit and he’s gone,
But while folk gloat and cheer,
They question, and fear,
Can Finance survive without John?
John Moynes
(Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)
The Data
at
A second cover by Salty Philip, AKA Lynn MacPherson,
For The Le Cool Dublin Bike Issue special.
Lynn sez:
“I invite woodland creatures to run around on a piece of paper with ink on their feet, when they’re quite done I pass the resulting mayhem off as art…that or I use Illustrator.”