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 Frazzled wrote:

The dividing line is religion and politics. Like the American civil war.

The dividing line was economic in the ACW. It was all about an industrializing north that used cheap labor, vs. an agrarian south that used even cheaper labor and didn't want to give that up.

but to your point, whats the politics difference here? This is not a criticism but a question (again I am in Texas and have almost no clue as it does not involve Mexico, oil, cattle, or the greatness thats is Texas, particularly Texas women). I see religion, but don't understand that. I mean within five miles of my house I have a Catholic church, Episcopal church, two Baptist type churches, a mosque (beautiful by the way), two gun ranges and two barbecue joints (the most powerful Texas religion).

I'm simplifying things here, but in Northern Ireland, you have the Protestant and Unionist community, who want to remain as part of Britain, hence the term Unionist.
You also have the Nationalist and Catholic community who want Northern Ireland to unify with the Republic of Ireland.

And then you have a small group in the middle who just want an easy life and an end to trouble and violence.

But the point I was making about the ACW is this: both a Confederate or a Union supporter would consider themselves a proud American, a patriot who loved their country, and would be utterly convinced that their way was the 'right' way.

A similar situation exists in Northern Ireland. It's irresistible force meets immovable object.

So the fight is whether or not to join the Republic of Ireland or whether to remain in the UK? OK. Thats a classic causus belli there and more understandable. How would the unionists consider themselves Irish if they want to stay with the UK? I'm a bit confused on that.

 Frazzled wrote:
So the fight is whether or not to join the Republic of Ireland or whether to remain in the UK? OK. Thats a classic causus belli there and more understandable. How would the unionists consider themselves Irish if they want to stay with the UK? I'm a bit confused on that.

As you know, the UK is made up of four nations: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

You have your regional identity and your British identity, so you can be Scottish and British, or Irish and British and so on.

Like in American where you can be both a proud Texan but also American as well.

It's that kind of thinking.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
So the fight is whether or not to join the Republic of Ireland or whether to remain in the UK? OK. Thats a classic causus belli there and more understandable. How would the unionists consider themselves Irish if they want to stay with the UK? I'm a bit confused on that.

As you know, the UK is made up of four nations: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

You have your regional identity and your British identity, so you can be Scottish and British, or Irish and British and so on.

Like in American where you can be both a proud Texan but also American as well.

It's that kind of thinking.

Ah, that helps.

On the religion front are there laws against Catholics -or inversely against Protestants - there?

 Frazzled wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
So the fight is whether or not to join the Republic of Ireland or whether to remain in the UK? OK. Thats a classic causus belli there and more understandable. How would the unionists consider themselves Irish if they want to stay with the UK? I'm a bit confused on that.

As you know, the UK is made up of four nations: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

You have your regional identity and your British identity, so you can be Scottish and British, or Irish and British and so on.

Like in American where you can be both a proud Texan but also American as well.

It's that kind of thinking.

Ah, that helps.

On the religion front are there laws against Catholics -or inversely against Protestants - there?

Whenever you deal with Northern Ireland, you have to be careful not to offend anybody, so I'll tread carefully here. I'm declaring I'm not Irish and completely neutral on this. Ok. As always, I'm simplifying things here and no offence is intended to anybody.

In the past, The Unionist/Protestant community controlled the lever of power: local government, police, factories, banks, education etc etc

so obviously there was discrimination. Catholics were denied certain jobs, were bottom of the list for housing and obviously mistrusted the police which was predominantly Unionist controlled. etc etc

Following the Good Friday agreement, discrimination was made illegal and the Police Force was changed to include more Catholic police officers.

For want of a better expression, and using an American example, it's kind of affirmative action going on here to rebalance things.

But it's not perfect and problems exist.

Sounds like they are taking steps in the right direction then.

This has been helpful.

As an outsider, the whole thing seems deliberately confrontational, but w/e

KTG17 wrote:


I imagine its complicated, and will read up on it. I remember when Bill Clinton went there, and back in the day there would be fundraiser parties in Boston for the NRA..

Think you mean the IRA there probably

..wasn't all that long either really



pic is 1995

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/that-time-when-donald-trump-attended-a-sinn-fein-fundraiser-with-gerry-adams-video

Loads of American money was funneled to the IRA -- and TBF their counterparts to although to a lesser extent AFAIK ..? -- some of which was later spent on/in Libya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army_arms_importation

Things are better now -- currently -- but by no means perfect, however I'm sure dakka members who live there can provide a better picture than I can.

But it was a bit awkward when the USA govt. decided that actually terrorists were bad given how much support the IRA/similar had received from the USA over the years.

I believe there's an argument/school of thought that the shift with regards to USA thinking about things like funding.......ideological ....... groups did play some part in the groups ...err...."cleaning up their acts", a bit, as the funding from the USA was coming under a lot more scrutiny than before.


You may have noticed there was something of a kerfuffle during the recent Brexit vote as the DUP party in N Ireland received £400K+ via ..... Scotland IIRC... ? which, rather oddly was then spent almost entirely in England running pro-Brexit adverts and the like.

Owing to part of the Good Friday agreement anonymous donations are allowed in N. ireland -- for both/all sides mind -- and it has -- by happy coincidence -- decided that this clause will not be removed until something like 2017 -- with no backdating allowed either.

Like all political funding neither side wants to kick up too much of a fuss, it's pretty much an open secret that Sinn Fein receives substantial donations from the USA channeled via Dublin.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
As an outsider, the whole thing seems deliberately confrontational, but w/e

As I said earlier, it's complicated, but in many respects it's no different to other issues and problems in human history. It's human nature at the end of the day.

Why can't we all just get along?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'll make this my very last point, because I'm going to bail out on this, but dakka members who don't know much about this will be happy to know that both sides have agreed to pursue peaceful democratic means to solve the issue.

For example, both the British government, and the government of the Republic of Ireland, signed and agreed to the Good Friday agreement.

To cut a long story short, the future of Ireland is in the hands of the Irish people.

So, if a majority of people in Northern Ireland agree to unification in a referendum, and a majority of people in the Republic agree to unification in a referendum, then unification will happen. By majority, I mean a simple 50% + 1 vote situation for both sides.

If the vote did not produce a majority on both sides, then the status quo remains. Both sides have to have the vote at the same time, though. No unilateral action here

No such vote has occurred, but the option of a democratic vote is on the table for both sides.

And obviously, that's a good thing.

In general in NI you will find very few Unionist's will refer to themselves as being Irish, mainly due to the stereo type of people from the South being the 'real Irish' so to speak, I think its hard for anyone not from here to really understand how deep these ideals soak into society, eve those who are pretty central in their opinion when it comes down to it generally pick one side over the other, There's a joke over here that even if you're an atheist you'll be asked if you're a Catholic or Protestant one.

I feel that a lot of the tension surrounding the 12th aside from the obvious is that it's one of the last hang over reminders of the troubles and discrimination that went before and during it. I was lucky enough to be born at the end of the troubles and have had equal opportunities my entire life but when you hear about what my parents and grand parents went through you can see how this really does stir up old wounds.

From the "South" , or Ireland as we usually call it, the actions of the thugish few around the 11th bonfires and the 12th marches just looks antagonistic.

To my privileged upbringing, as peace was forged up North, the issue of re-unification had little influence on my politics or life.

I mostly don't think about it, cause from even the corrupt, feckless, and useless forum of politics in the Republic, the North is a wild land of utter lunatics.

It can sometimes seem utterly baffling that more people don't vote for trans-national parties, or cross community ones, such as Alliance, Labour, Green, People before profit etc and not the likes of sectarian groupings or former political wings of terrorists.

The Republic, and it's odd to not just say Ireland over and over, is far from a perfect place, and the Unionists were right, home rule did equal "Rome rule". For a while at least.

But as we've embraced Europe and wider capitalist globalisation we've changed and progressed to a far more tolerant nation. We're one of the fastest countries in Europe to abandon religion. We also are the only nation in the world to vote for Same Sex marriage by public referendum.

The madness of Brexit has re-opened issues with the North, and as someone who live's a lot closer to the border these days, the complexity is important, if even I fail to grasp many parts of it.
We have a land border with a nation soon outside of the EU, and it's people are both Irish Nationals and British citizens, no matter what community they come from, even if they may reject either label.

Applications for Irish passports are through the roof since the Brexit vote. Their welcome to realise the freedoms they have in Europe and the Republic in my eyes, and the North did vote against Brexit at that.

But as I've said, the Republic is flawed. With a debt of just over 200 billion for saving the EU/ ECB /Euro's skin, we can't quite save the 6 counties any time soon. Reunification has a price, how much is not clear. But the standards of living and services in the North is very different to in the Republic. Open trade, communication, and no physical border is the only way to ensure that all communities prosper, grow, and come to accept each other.


Eventually, 200, 300 years down the line the "Unionist" identity may be as small/ big as the difference between Dublin and Cork (the true capital in their eyes)

 Frazzled wrote:

The dividing line is religion and politics. Like the American civil war.

The dividing line was economic in the ACW. It was all about an industrializing north that used cheap labor, vs. an agrarian south that used even cheaper labor and didn't want to give that up.

but to your point, whats the politics difference here? This is not a criticism but a question (again I am in Texas and have almost no clue as it does not involve Mexico, oil, cattle, or the greatness thats is Texas, particularly Texas women). I see religion, but don't understand that. I mean within five miles of my house I have a Catholic church, Episcopal church, two Baptist type churches, a mosque (beautiful by the way), two gun ranges and two barbecue joints (the most powerful Texas religion).

The problem is that people tend to believe the Troubles were about Catholics versus Protestants. It wasn't. It started out as a nationalistic ruckus between Republicans (Irish who wanted to join Eire) and Loyalists to the Crown (mostly Ulster Scots). It ended up in one big sectarian mess with splinter factions who often clashed with their parent groups, or rival groups (even from the same communities).


A lot of that crap spilled across the Atlantic, where Irish communities in the Northeast smuggled guns, supplies, and money to Republican groups, starting after the Easter Uprising and going on through the early 1980's. A lot of them got burnt by the FBI and BATF, but there was no shortage of sympathizers to replace them.

I guess that's why Irish in Norn Iron have a better opinion of the Irish descendants in America, than the Irish in Eire do.

Turns out Owen Smith is a fan. From Twitter:

'Thanks to all across Belfast who welcomed me to the 12th celebrations yesterday. Well done to all who helped events pass off so peacefully'.

Not convinced that he has really thought that through...

So a council founded bonfire has damaged the apartments of people who had nothing to do with the bonfire but are saying they won't cover the costs of repairing it . What a messed up country we live in.

Oh aye, it's a complete shambles.

I loved how they were handling stolen pallets too. Don't expect anything to be done about that. I've worked for belfast city council in the past and it's shocking how bad the place is. And at the risk of starting an argument it's actually to do with this parade culture. All the managerial positions are all conveniently held by members of the same bands or their families.

Family fun. Honestly, these imbeciles...

Not sure that sort of idiocy needs more details, but ...

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15413766.Outrage_over_Orange_hall_Halloween_partygoers_dressed_as_Hitler_and_the_Pope/

I've never been to Airdrie - clearly I'm not missing out.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The dividing line is religion and politics. Like the American civil war.

The dividing line was economic in the ACW. It was all about an industrializing north that used cheap labor, vs. an agrarian south that used even cheaper labor and didn't want to give that up.

but to your point, whats the politics difference here? This is not a criticism but a question (again I am in Texas and have almost no clue as it does not involve Mexico, oil, cattle, or the greatness thats is Texas, particularly Texas women). I see religion, but don't understand that. I mean within five miles of my house I have a Catholic church, Episcopal church, two Baptist type churches, a mosque (beautiful by the way), two gun ranges and two barbecue joints (the most powerful Texas religion).

I'm simplifying things here, but in Northern Ireland, you have the Protestant and Unionist community, who want to remain as part of Britain, hence the term Unionist.
You also have the Nationalist and Catholic community who want Northern Ireland to unify with the Republic of Ireland.

And then you have a small group in the middle who just want an easy life and an end to trouble and violence.

But the point I was making about the ACW is this: both a Confederate or a Union supporter would consider themselves a proud American, a patriot who loved their country, and would be utterly convinced that their way was the 'right' way.

A similar situation exists in Northern Ireland. It's irresistible force meets immovable object.

The sides have additional characteristics. In addition to being Catholic and nationalist, the IRA are also comrades. They affiliate and have cooperated with black civil rights in Arkansas,

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/36233551.jpg

the United Farm Workers,

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/bibdbs/murals/plate60.htm

women's movements in Namibia and Palestine,

[Url=https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/a1/cb/9f/a1cb9f16f1f64cf9515312449ed16e7f.jpg]
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/a1/cb/9f/a1cb9f16f1f64cf9515312449ed16e7f.jpg[/url]

Cuba,


http://www.crethiplethi.com/wp-content/uploads/ira-cuba01.jpg

and solidarity with PLO POWs

this one.


It is somewhat of a contrast that the nationalists in northern Ireland express internationalist sentiments, when the Irish Republic shows globalist influences.

The Unionists, as sort of a corollary, do not map one-to-one onto the British political spectrum either. This year the unionist party in the legislative assembly threatened to tank the power sharing agreement over the Republicans'
demands for gay marriage.


When I was searching for these images some of them turned out to be hot linked on that website that is a synonym for cloud forwards, and those people are really upset about the Irish nationalists.