A topic of interest to me of late, as I'm hoping to make it over to Ireland next year.

Ulster; two million people, about the size of Connecticut and site of a 400 year-old war. Protestants, formerly the majority, our own Scots-Irish, wanting to remain British Subjects. Catholics, growing in numbers, Irish Nationalists among 'em. Extremist paramilitaries on both sides fanning the hate.

Neighborhoods separated by 60ft walls to keep the peace.

44 minutes filmed in 2013......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE_wHMcv9p8



Birdwatcher

Has the violence subsided a bit, there? Or has the MSM just quit covering - due to overload, boredom, or "It quit being news a while back" ?

I won't say its stopped altogether but its reduced significantly probably by 95%, especially the more serious offences.

Most of the troops have now been withdrawn and policing is now almost exclusively carried out civilian police without Army support.

There are still tensions running under the surface, but in many ways this is now organised crime/gang related although it still tends to operate along sectarian lines.

The Oregon Shooter was at the very least, an IRA fanboy. He may have had ties to them.

Thanks for the boots-on-the-ground report Pete.

Some ironies here.

The Ulster Protestants fear a growing majority of Irish Catholics are going to erase their "Ehglishness" yet I'm not recalling that the folks in England proper identify with the Ulster Prods a whole lot.

Its not an impossibility that a majority Catholic Ulster could some day vote themselves out of the UK. I gotta feel considerable sympathy for the Ulster Prods, right now demographics are acting against them and I don't think I would want to live under the Republic of Ireland either, especially as a minority.

No small thing that these same Protestant Scots-Irish over here played a role way out of proportion to their numbers in giving us the United States that is our birthright.

The good news I guess is that Ulster is a remote and insignificant issue to the many millions of the descendants of both sides living over here in the USA.

Sure is a sobering prospect tho to see otherwise nearly identical White folks living in such close proximity being so profoundly divided. Otherwise we probably wouldn't have thought ourselves capable of that.

JMHO,
Birdwatcher

They should damned sure come on over and be welcomed. They'd make a whole lot better immigrants than all the Muslim trash that the Traitor-in-Chief wants to let in.

Funny how everything gets back around to the Civil War.

I took back my hand and I showed him the door
No dollar of mine would I part with this day
For fueling the engines of bloody cruel war
In my forefather's land far away.
Who fled the first Famine wearing all that they owned,
Were called 'Navigators', all ragged and torn,
And built the Grand Trunk here, and found a new home
Wherever their children were born.

Their sons have no politics. None call recall
Allegiance from long generations before.
O'this or O'that name just can't matter at all
Or be cause enough for to war.
And meanwhile my babies are safe in their home,
Unlike their pale cousins who cower and cry
While kneecappers nail their poor Dads to the floor
And teach them to hate and to die.

It's those cruel beggars who spurn the fair coin.
The peace for their kids they could take at their will.
Since the day old King Billy prevailed at the Boyne,
They've bombed and they've maimed and they've killed.
Now they cry out for money and wail at the door
But Home Rule or Republic, 'tis all of it shame;
And a curse for us here who want nothing of war.
We're kindred in nothing but name.

All rights and all wrongs have long since blown away,
For causes are ashes where children lie slain.
Yet the damned UDL and the cruel IRA
Will tomorrow go murdering again.
But no penny of mine will I add to the fray.
"Remember the Boyne!" they will cry out in vain,
For I've given my heart to the place I was born
And forgiven the whole House of Orange
King Billy and the whole House of Orange

Stan Rogers

Its my understanding that the paramilitaries on both sides have always been also heavily involved in criminal activities, brutal to dissidents in their own communities as well. My own Irish Catholic family always despised the IRA for that very reason.

Thankfully this is old news now; the Shankhill Road Butchers, a small group of Protestant thugs in the '70's abducting and horrifically torturing random Catholic men living practically on the very next block in Belfast. These people protected by the fear they created even within their own community and protected by a code of silence.

That part ain't so surprising, but what is shocking are the heroes' funerals they were given and the massive turnouts to commemorate their own eventual deaths in subsequent decades.

From a 2011 documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScuNRlW6bEg



Birdwatcher

I still blame all the 'troubles' on the British. Many hundreds of years of rape and exploitation of Ireland, and still hanging on to part of the island.
My family, in part, is here because of the horrible treatment of Ireland by England. Most of the family died in Ireland, some escaped to America.
Ulster should rejoin the rest of Ireland, and the Brits should go home.

No argument from me, I find myself liking these people tremendously, and in historic terms, we're supposed to be enemies.

Birdwatcher

Mr Rogers wrote a fine verse

My impression always has been that England would have collectively LOVED to go home, so much treasure has been spent and so many GOOD lives lost among those trying to save these people from themselves.

The problem is ya got a million plus people with British Passports who consider themselves British. Most of the Protestants but a bunch of Catholics too. The Ulster Protestants have been in Ulster for longer than the United States has even been in existence. Ulster IS their home.

By your same reasoning you might as well give your place back to the Seminoles.

Birdwatcher

Google has it that the top three languages in Ulster are...


1) English.

2) Gaelic


and three....


3) Chinese.


Where that recent group of immigrants fits into all of this I dunno. Prob'ly ain't gonna improve their fire drills any tho

LMAO @FIRE DRILLS

Not that simple I'm afraid..

The English first went over there as an ally of one of the various Ulster Kings who was fighting other Irish Clans trying to consolidate his control over Ireland.

I don't remember when this was, but probably pre medieval times. I also seem to recall this was also at the behest of Pope. From there the rest is history as they say.

The problem really harks back to the fact the UK was not actually "United" in any way shape or form for most of its history and I include Ireland in that as well..

The land was splintered into many kingdoms that spent an equal amount of time fighting each other, plus the odd invader.

This actually spilled over into France, large parts of which was ruled from England at one stage but by kings of Norman (as in Normandy!) descent…

Our history really could not get more complicated if you tried!

So role forward today and the situation is as Birdwatcher says. The reality is the majority of the English and the Welsh don't really care what happens to Northern Ireland beyond it needs to reflect the wish of the majority over there.

The Scots are a bit more sectarian in their beliefs so that colours their views to a greater degree.

Just be thankful the fighting has mostly stopped and democratic political processes can hopefully shape Ulsters future..

did not say it was practical, but that it would be best. Besides. the Seminoles are not a real tribe, they are a polyglot mix of several original tribes, run away slaves. Maybe the Seminoles should give their land back to the Creeks, Timuquans, Muscogee and others that predated them in Florida.

I would imagine most American tourists visiting Ireland concern themselves with totally irrelevant twaddle, like Blarney stones and leprechauns and the like.

I on the other hand are gonna worry about things like can I pedal my bike through a place like Belfast and not lose the bike, my stuff and some of my teeth to a bunch of guys speaking barely-intelligible English

Dunno if that makes me more relevant or not.

Sam,

You're right that the Brits royally screwed the pooch in N. Ireland. Had they not been dicks, the whole thing could have easily been prevented. Something that is disturbing is all those years we heard about IRA terrorism. But one dirty little secret is the fact that for the first decade or more, almost every incident of IRA terrorism was in response to UVF terrorism. IRA incidents were reported in the US while UVF incidents or atrocities committed by British forces generally were not.

As for unification, I'm against it even though I'm Irish myself. Unification to me at least is more aesthetic than anything else, just make the whole island Ireland. But the loyalists have been in Northern Ireland for 700 years. They are more British than Londoners and to force them to become part of Ireland is just reverse oppression for the sake of settling a 700 year old wrong (that the present generation had no say in), and to make a map look tidy.

A nation is not geography, it's people. The N. Ireland people are British 100%. Yeah they were specifically seeded there several hundred years ago, but they're there now and that's just the way it is. They are NOT Irish, and share nothing in common with the Republic of Ireland.

And the Ulsters WILL fight if there is even any serious talks about unification. They are almost ALWAYS the first belligerent. They seriously have a chip on their shoulders, and they want to be left alone. If you start talking about real unification, the Ulsters will begin a reign of terrorism that makes the Troubles look like a playground squabble.

The Brits are doing a much better job these days of keeping everyone at arms length. They're not allowing the protestant government to oppress Catholics like they used to. I'm not saying it's a picnic for Catholics in N. Ireland, but it's NOTHING like it was in the late '60's & '70's.

I consider myself a Sinn Fein and IRA sympathizer (but maybe not the Provo's). I also love The British, but they were horribly culpable, and I think they have mostly learned from that huge mistake.

Just a quick addendum to this thread on the levels hatred can reach. Recall that Ulster, the bone of contention for centuries is about the size of Connecticut, so small that many Scots-Irish were obliged to leave it and migrate to the American Frontiers. IIRC Ulster is a chronically economically depressed place today.

The small group of Protestant psycopaths who came to be known as the Shankhill Butchers killed nineteen; ten Catholics abducted at random, two Protestants who they mistook for Catholics, and seven other Protestants who were suspected informers and/or who otherwise got crosswise with the militants.

The scale of what they did to their Catholic victims with their butcher knives before finally, cutting their throats to kill them apparently has not been fully disclosed, but one guy among other things had all but three of his teeth pulled out with pliers.

Their victims were chosen opportunistically, at random, none were known to be involved with IRA activities, the were merely presumed Catholic and that was enough.

The Butchers were able to do these things in the midst of the crowded Belfast community, never leaving the neighborhood, no one turned them in.

The point of this ain't to castigate the Prods, because I'm would expect that there's people on the Catholic side harboring equal hatred.

The thing that gets me is that two of these Butcher guys who have died already were given heroes' funerals by the Shankhill community with massive turnout. And at the top of the tombstone of the head psychopath is engraved "Here Lies a Soldier".

This ain't some Third World Hellhole, it ain't Afghanistan, its part of the UK on the island of Ireland.

Unreal.

Birdwatcher