Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Obama Calls for End to Catholic Education in Northern Ireland

When, I read Bristoe's comments yesterday, I WAS going to reply, but, given the obvious issues with his rant, I realized that serious historical discussion with him would be a waste of time.

JorgeI, you are, of course, correct, but, all one has to do is to look at the understanding between Sir Bernard and "Ike", to SEE what the latter REALLY understood about the reality of "The Battle of Normandy" and "Ike's" decision there to give "Monty" what he required very probably was THE crucial decision in our combined Allied victory and subsequent advance to Berlin.

I just, finally, got the third and last volume in Atkinson's "Liberation Trilogy" and it concerns the Euro. campaign from "Neptune" onward.....boy, what a horrific slaughter and of so many fine young men as well as innocent civilians.......

The enormous price in British, American,Canadian and other Allied lives seems forgotten by so many Euros, today and I honestly find their behaviour, the Dutch excepted, f**king revolting....next time, let them do it alone.

Plus the RC Church strongly affirms the nuclear family, sanctity of marriage, and rejects divorce.

Bristoe and Jstuart, the puke I was referring to is the puke in the WH.

Grew up in England, all my grandparents were Irish Catholics.

Obama doesn't have a [bleep]' clue as to the depth of the hatreds in Ulster, mostly I'm eternally grateful to my parents and grandparents and their siblings (who have an impeccable combat record in both World Wars) that we were willfully raised free of such hatred.

My impression was that the Brits would LOVE to get out of Ulster, but cannot until a million plus Prods voluntarily relinquish their British passports. If the British unilaterally pulled out, a bloodbath would result, or would have back then. Prob'ly still would.

I dunno how the Brits get to be evil personified in Ireland, and yet were the most benevolent of Colonial overlords everywhere else who did more to plant the seeds of human rights and eventual universal suffrage than anyone wherever the Empire spread.

As is true of most everywhere, IIRC prior to total occupation more Irish died at the hands of other Irish than the Brits ever killed.

As for the famine, saying the landowners were "cruel" for exporting wheat during the famine is about like saying folks back then were being "cruel" for doing anything we regret today.

The Irish population, fueled by the potato, exploded only AFTER total domination/dispossession by the English. Looking for WHY the Irish population didn't explode until after forced subjugation from outside I'd take a long look at incessant clan warfare.

Expecting the powers that be in Ireland to have suddenly turned into saints during the great famine and given their all to the millions of impoverished peasants that surrounded them is a bit much.

The potato famine was a catastrophe without precedent, and even among the Native Irish, I don't recall that the Irish who weren't starving were any more forthcoming to their dying peers than the were the Brits.

Actually, their were charitable famine-relief endeavors among the English to succor the Irish during the famine that were remarkable in their time and place. Heck, even today we'd have problems feeding four million people suddenly starving overnight.

O'Birdwatcher

Bravo.

The difference between "history" and popular myth is often most obvious in the sort of commentary where the writer NEVER gives sources for his questionable assertions. One,sees this sort of pathetic drivel here so often and usually from the same poster(s) whose "knowledge" is to factual history as "poteen" is to Glenmorangie.

Just one minor point, as I am not going to waste time with rebuttal of specious assertions based on little other than some supposed "family legends", however, "The Celtic Holocaust" was NOT ONLY "The Great Hunger" and certainly was NOT Ireland and the adjacent island nation's ... catastrophe without precedent.... The "Black Death" some 500 years previously killed probably 10 times as many Celtic peoples in the same area as did the "Famine".

Anyone interested in FACTS, not the usual bloviation, might just research "Trevelyan" and see who he was, what he did and what the effects of his bigotry, greed and appalling behaviour to innocent starving people was. THEN, consider the animus between the religious factions both then and now and form your own conclusions.

There is some basic information on "Wikipedia" and the literature is considerable and largely scholastic, rather than of the genre one reads in about Grade Seven.

Well hey Kute, its been awhile since you had occasion to denigrate me personally



Oh, you musta forgot about that whole Gwynn Jones "Vikings" thing
(never mind, just gratuitously yanking yer chain there )

I speak the truth, tho its been a bit since I read up on the famine. But folks can make their own conclusions as to my veracity.

With respect to the other catastrophies you mentioned; people died is all, just as they did with the famine. The Irish situation was unique tho. An Irish population approximately twice what it is even today, fed by a single crop, suddenly taken away.

To put things in context I'd be interested in Irish survival stories. This weren't no American Indian extinction event, even AFTER the famine Irish Catholics were still easily the majority in Ireland. How did all those croppies survive?

Also, look at how England and most everybody else, treated their OWN poor. For mass starvation resulting from direct government policy look to the enclosures acts, where droves of poor folks were kicked off all means of sustenance. Specific to the Famine, I dunno what the level of actual starvation in London slums was in that era, but by modern standards it was certainly appalling in a time and place where young girls routinely turned to prostitution for mere survival and infants were abandoned in the streets.

I stand by my assertion regarding the degree of British charity efforts during the famine, I'm far from home just now, but folks interested can look it up for themselves. I myself read up on it long before the internet era.

As for "family legends", we don't got any that go clear back to the 1840's tho we're still on parish ledgers back in County Cork, my forebearers didn't leave Ireland until after 1900. My grandfather's wandering brother fell at Gallipoli, after being Mentioned in Dispatches to Whitehall. My great-grandfather on the other side served with the Anzacs, and was wounded in action at Beersheeba. In the second go-round my other grandfather, to old to enlist, was a fireman in the Blitz. My one uncle survived Guadalcanal, the other survived Iwo Jima, and my father set foot on Okinawa a private in the 6th Marines but stepped off it as the youngest Staff Sergeant in the USMC at the time.

Me, I was in the Peace Corps

Birdwatcher

Prob'ly couldn't find anybody there who "could have been his son if he had one".

He went over there under a false impression about the "Black Irish".

I attended a Catholic school

as did two of my sons

My wife attended nothing but Catholic schools until she went to Duke.

Obwan is a fool

and

a

Bozo

O'Puka