The Dubliner Magazine

Burma March this Saturday - O'Connell Street

Come out and show your support for the brave activists risking their lives for freedom on the streets of Burma. Please join Burma Action Ireland in a demonstration of Irish solidarity with the courageous monks and people of Burma.

WHERE : Traffic island centre of O'Connell Street, opposite GPO        

WHEN : Saturday 29th September 2007 from 2pm until 4pm

PLEASE WEAR A RED SHIRT IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE MONKS 

For more information about the march and it's organisers, visit Burma Action Ireland's homepage.

If you haven't been following events, by far the best coverage of the ongoing crises is Channel 4 News

Bertie at the Tribunals - A Multimedia Artist's Impression

"I'm afraid for me, you've absolutely lost credibility - I'm really disappointed"

I'm Nailed Right In.

Max McGuinness on why the Church still runs the show.

While the travesty of Bertie's mega-bucks is undoubtedly significant, it took an article in yesterday's Guardian to highlight the root cause of a much greater national scandal - educational apartheid in Balbriggan. This sentence from Henry McDonald's dispatch shows how little has really changed in Ireland:

"Dozens of children from non-Irish ethnic backgrounds had been turned down by local Catholic schools principally because they did not hold Catholic baptismal certificates."

Read it again. This is how far we have come. After two decades of the "Celtic Tiger" you'd better be a catholic if you want to learn to read and write and the very best of luck if you believe in something even weirder than Protestantism - like Voodoo.

RIP Marcel Marceau

History's Greatest Mime Artist Passes Away

In tribute to the great Marcel Marceau, who died today, The Dubliner suggests that, in your own time, you observe a minute's noise.

Alternatively, you can watch some of his most memorable moments.

J'accuse!

Max McGuinness on Vincent Browne's re-examination of the trial of Catherine Nevin

I was initially bewildered upon seeing Vincent Browne's Village cover story declaring Catherine Nevin to have been "wrongly convicted" of the murder of her husband Tom Nevin. But, having read the piece, I now think there are strong grounds for agreeing with Browne that the verdict was flawed.

It is a credit to Browne that he has dispassionately taken up cudgels on behalf of such a deeply unpleasant woman whose ultimate guilt, he admits in the article, which can be read here by Village subscribers, is basically unaffected by his findings. It is impossible to put a liberal Twelve Angry Men type gloss on the "Black Widow", who was never in a position to blame "society" for her crime, and Browne's advocacy is all the more remarkable for the fact that Nevin has evidently been highly un-coöperative towards him by granting interviews and then withdrawing permission for him to quote her without her prior approval of individual quotations.

Nazi Comedy 101

The first in a series of clips examining the lighter side of totalitarian mass-murder

Charlie Chaplin called it early.

He was well placed to do so. As an Englishman, and a liberal, he was suspicious of Hitler from the outset. As a comic genius – writer, director and star – he had unprecedented access to the resources of Hollywood. Chaplin's biting satire, "The Great Dictator" was made in 1937 – two years before World War II broke out.

The film was released in America in 1940, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, with the clear aim of persuading Americans to join Chaplin's homeland in the fight against Hitler.

In an era when censored cinema show-reels were the only form of news, we can only imagine the effect this scene had on American audiences.

Mavericks

by Trevor White, Nicola Reddy, Katie Roche & Patrick Freyne

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. But then, he wasn’t Irish. In the land of Breakfast Roll Men and Decklanders, one fears that everyone is conforming to a type. The notion that following your own vision might be a good idea – even if it’s not making you any money – seems like crazy talk. But throughout the boom, a great many people have been doing their own thing, with no regard for dull convention. This article is a celebration of such people. For the mavericks keep things interesting.

How to be wicked – Mavericks

by MT Railing

Mavericks and eccentrics: two very different types of people, though they do have a small intersection in their Venn diagrams. A large number of alcoholics consider themselves part of that grouping. Sadly, being drunk all the time only creates the illusion of the dangerous, unpredictable outsider, and only in the mind of the drunk himself.

Party(and lock up a few dissidents) like it's 1999

Max McGuinness on some millennial spin in Ethiopia.

Today, Ethiopia begins the new millennium. Due to the country's somewhat eccentric attachment to the pre-Gregorian Coptic calendar, it is seven years behind the rest of the world. The new year also falls for some reason on September 11th so, for Ethiopians, the year 2000 starts today.

Major celebrations were organised in the capital Addis Ababa, including a concert headlined by the Black Eyed Peas and Beyoncé with tickets at €120 a pop - the annual income of many Ethiopian farmers.

Not invited were the five political prisoners languishing just out of earshot in the notorious  Kaliti prison outside central Addis.

Man About Town: Gone.

Whatever happened to Marco Herbst?

The dude who gave us nixers.com and jobs.ie has lately decamped to Berlin, after flogging his empire to Denis O'Brien. Marco Herbst (31) now devotes his time to learning German, playing the piano and chasing women. Not in that order.

The inveterate entrepreneur's latest project is a temporary bar in a run-down part of town. The Bienenkonig was an old working man's club. For the month of August Herbst converted it into a very small, very chic nightspot, complete with website (check out the ad for the bar. Cute.).

The bar, which closes for good in a few days, is one of several odd ventures this businessman-in-trainers is behind. Back here in Dublin he still owns a quirky dating site, lunch.ie. For his next trick, Herbst is flying to Johannesburg, where he will spend four months teaching in a township before rowing back to Dublin.