Electric Boogaloo on a Poundshop budget.

Irish breakdancers from 1985 on O’Connell Street taken from Where Were You? the sublime book of Dublin street style.

Do you know any of the chaps in the photo?

Via Brand New Retro

Oh.

Sample quote?

“We have to tackle the ‘poor relation syndrome’ where potatoes are associated with the pre-Celtic Tiger times,” he [Liam Glennon, president of the Irish Potato Federation] said,. “I would hope we are not in terminal decline — and I don’t believe we are. Because potatoes are so strongly associated with Ireland, such a scenario would be unthinkable.”

 

Irish Palates, Enticed by Other Carbs, Are Losing Their Taste for a Signature Starch (New York Times)

Thanks Andrew Smyth

Larry Donnelly (top pic right), nephew of Senator Brian Donnelly of Donnelly Visa fame, received an award on behalf of his late uncle last night by Democrats Abroad (Ireland) at a Thanksgiving dinner in Dublin.

The engraver obviously never got his Green Card.

(RTE)

Thanks Ray

“I think Kevin Reynolds is a very, very lucky man, in this regard. That he was accused of fathering a child and not of rape alone. Because if he had been accused of rape alone, my guess is that we wouldn’t be sitting here now. Because he had a scientifically verifiable way of proving his innocence. And if it had been rape alone, it would have been one person’s word against the other. He would have been just as innocent as he is today and he would have no possibility of proving it.”
Breda O’Brien, Tonight with Vincent Browne, November 22.

“Here’s one question among all the others that the government-ordered investigation into RTE’s ‘Mission to Prey’ programme should consider: had that programme ‘merely’ accused Fr Kevin Reynolds of raping a minor, but not of fathering her child, what would have happened? The accusation that Fr Reynolds raped a minor was not scientifically testable. It would have been Fr Reynolds’s word against that of the alleged ‘victim’ and in the current climate a priest would have a hard job convincing a jury of his innocence.”
David Quinn. Irish Independent, November 25.

 ”You have to ask yourself how that state of affairs came about. That it’s priests and nuns guilty as charged. How did that happen? The Iona Institute did research on what the public think is the rate of abuse among priests. And it’s really scary reading…Seventy per cent of people overestimate it. Seventy per cent of people overestimate the rate of abuse by clergy. Forty two per cent think that one in five priests are actually abusers…So you have a vast overestimation…even Maeve Lewis, of One in Four, has said that there’s been a disproportionate amount of attention paid to clerical abuse, to the detriment of the vast majority of people who have not been abused by clergy.
Breda O’Brien,Tonight with Vincent Browne, November 22.

“…A poll conducted by Amarach Research and commissioned by The Iona Institute (which I head) showing that 42pc of the public believe at least one in every five priests has abused a child. And 17pc believe it is at least one in two. This totally false perception did not arise out of nothing. It arose in the first place from the church’s grotesque failures in this area, but also from reporting that has, in the words of Helen Buckley, one of the Ferns Report authors, been disproportionately focused on clerical child abuse at the expense of all other forms of child abuse.”
David Quinn, Irish Independent, November 25.

Badly Clouded Judgment Has No Place In The Media (David Quinn, Irish Independent)

Previously: Welcome To The Culture War

Up to 60 pro-Palestinian activists clash with Gardai at the start of the ‘Israeli Film Days’ festival at Filmbase in Curved Street, Temple Bar this evening. The festival, partly organised by the Israeli Embassy, was attended by Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore (second pic) and Justice Minister Alan Shatter.

A press release from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign stated:

“After being forced off Curved Street, the protest found itself split into two crowds, on Temple Lane Street and Eustace Street.Those on Temple Lane Street were pushed further down the street by a Garda ‘security line’, at which pointed they marched around Temple Bar and linked up with their colleagues on Eustace Street. At this point, they were again pushed back by the Gardai, and a megaphone was seized from Dr. Fintan Lane of the Irish Ship To Gaza campaign while he was making a speech. After this the protest dispersed, while the megaphone remains in Garda custody.”

Film Fight: How An israeli Film Festival Is Causing Controversy (Mick Heaney, irish Times)

(Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland)