Lets talk about Ireland.....

[Teiwaz]

I recently went and did some basic research on what the hell is going on with Northern Ireland, the IRA, and where they all fit into the UK.

First, a little background:

Home Nations is a term used to refer to the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (collectively, but also as separate entities, distinct from the United Kingdom as a whole), or the "nations" of the British Isles (traditionally England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland). Its usage is rare (especially outside the UK) and somewhat controversial in some quarters, although it is more common in sporting contexts.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom or the UK) is a country [1] [2] [3] and sovereign state[4] occupying part of the British Isles in northwestern Europe. Most of its territory and population are on the island of Great Britain and it shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland on the island of Ireland; it is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and its ancillary bodies of water: the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea.

The United Kingdom is a political union made up of four parts, often called the constituent countries or the Home Nations. They are England, Scotland, and Wales on the island of Great Britain, and Northern Ireland on the island of Ireland.

Sometimes the term is used to include all the self-governing nations or states of the British Isles (thus including the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey); however, some consider this usage to be incorrect. There is some debate, both popular and academic, as to whether Cornwall should be considered a constituent part of the UK in its own right (it is normally considered part of England) and therefore a Home Nation[1], with the Cornish nationalist movement often supporting this view.


The Republic of Ireland (Irish: Poblacht na hÉireann) is the official description of the sovereign state which covers approximately five-sixths of the island of Ireland, off the coast of north-west Europe. The state's official name is Ireland (Irish: Éire), and this is how international organisations and citizens of Ireland usually refer to the country. It is a member of the European Union, has a developed economy and a population of slightly more than four million. The remaining sixth of the island of Ireland is known as Northern Ireland and is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is one of the four constituent entities[1] of the United Kingdom. It is situated on the north-eastern tip of the island of Ireland in the province of Ulster, and consists of six counties. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom with an external land border (with the Republic of Ireland). It was created by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, and has had its own form of devolved government in a similar manner to Scotland and Wales. The Northern Ireland Assembly is, however, currently suspended.

Northern Ireland covers 5,459 mi² (14,139 km²) in the northeast of the island of Ireland, about a sixth of the total area of the island, and has a population of 1,685,000 (April 2001) — between a quarter and a third of the island's total population.

Northern Ireland was for many years the site of a bitter ethnic/religious campaign of violence between a minority of Nationalists (who were predominantly Catholic and wanted it to be reunified with the Republic of Ireland) and a majority of Unionists (who were predominantly Protestant and wanted it to remain part of the United Kingdom). The campaign was known popularly as The Troubles. The majority of both sides of the community had no actual association with the violent campaigns waged. Since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998 the major paramilitary campaigns have either been on ceasefire or have declared their "war" to be over.

That is all from Wikipedia, for ease of cut and pasting.

This is a great site too http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/

As part of the peace process the IRA entered into discussions with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) and began to decommission its weapons on 23 October 2001. The IICD reported that the IRA had decommissioned all its weapons on 26 September 2005. Despite this Unionists lacked the trust required to enter a power-sharing Executive and at the beginning of 2006 the devolved institutions remained suspended and Northern Ireland was ruled by appointed ministers.

So according to that, it's all over. So what is with this sort of thing then?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/5032390.stm

Can someone who lives over there put a human spin on what Northern Ireland is up to?

[Sonrisa]

It is going to take a lot more than briefly flipping through a book to wrap your head around this one.

To begin, the US has declared the IRA terrorists, so I would hesitate to say more than that.

It started basically 800 years ago. For more up to date information, read Bernadette Devlin's book "The Price of My Soul" about her background and when she was elected as the Irish representative to Parliament (English).
She was never allowed to talk or participate. This was the IRA's attempt to solve the conflict with legal means. After that they returned to violence.

When Ireland split the South was forced to abandon the North in order to secure their own freedom from Great Britain.

Gerry Adams is he head of only one faction of the IRA. He spent 8 years in the infamous prison where they were tortured systematically. I doubt it will ever be over. If you ask someone from the South of Ireland you will probably get a different story. Go back to the original war that was started with Tiernan O'Rourke and his wife being "stolen", it would take volumes to go into all that here. The perpetrator (don't have time to look up his name, enlisted the aid of an English king to aid him in fighting off O'Rourke's wrath.

They had at the time Bernadette Devlin wrote her book and possibly now, a system in Northern Ireland where if you were Catholic you could not own property, and if you did not own property you could not vote. There is so much history on this subject, it is in some ways, but not all similar trying to sort out the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The degree of passion on both sides is astounding. You could also be denied the ability to work by having your work card stamped with something that implied you were a free Ireland sympathizer and were free to starve to death at your leaisure.

I have met people straight off the boat who were Northern sympathizers. i will not going into what they said or did here, as this is a public forum. It would not be safe. Thankfully I do not know any of their last names. I am very biased. I am Irish by blood, my biological mother was born there and happened to be in England at the time of my birth.

I don't feel they Irish will ever get help from the US or other countries because the US and England are traditional allies, and there is nothing in it for them.

This is my first and last post on this subject as I am extremely emotionally involved in it. This is one of those issues I just can't deal with due to the horrendous treatment and attempt at genocide that has been going on unnoticed by the rest of the world. This is NOT just my opinion; it is fact.
This is a very complicated issue. Now in desperation the IRA has been buying guns including ground to air missiles from some very unsavory groups. They even wrote a song about it.

Have a good day.

Sonrisa (guess I've been outed now, but then you knew it was me)

[Teiwaz]

It is so hard to link together what you see reported in the media in a way that gives you an overall perspective. The reality seems so much more intertwined and secret than the media paints it, like you're only ever seeing the tip of the iceberg, and what lies beneath bears little resemblance to the bit you can see.

[Sonrisa]

I am not going by the media.....I learned long ago not to do that when Jack Anderson reported the 1964 riots in Panama where my entire family lived. One-hundred percent wrong, and he won a Pulitzer prize for it.

I know a lot of Irish in San Francisco, some legal, some not.......I have been studying Irish history all my life. I am not Catholic, I actually loathe the Catholic church. None of this is about religion, it is about power. Don't worry I won't post again. Actually I was just looking for a way to leave the group when your message popped up.

I can be detached about other parts of the world, but I cannot be detached about Ireland. The horrors that have been perpetrated on her and are still being perpetrated on her are 800 years old and endless. I will love her and defend her until the day I die. It is no different than people born in the US that feel that way about her. I hate deliberate ongoing cruelty and the lies that are told so that cover up that cruelty.

I don't expect anyone to understand, and it is pretty obvious most if not all of this forum are very right-wing, and that's fine. Not my cup of tea. I am neither right nor left. I vote every which way.

It saddens me to see the definitive split in the world on either side because it drives defenseless small nations right into the arms of the communists as happened in Cuba. Panama has not succumbed yet because there is a ton of foreign money pouring in there and it has improved greatly since the 99 year lease was over.

A Panamanian friend of mine told me that Columbia is kicking up their heels again demanding Panama move their collective border further over to the detriment of Panama. It will be interesting to see what happens.

One thing you can be sure of with the "troubles", it is not over. I don't know what they are both up to, but you can bet something is going on behind the scenes.

I am always reading about Ireland because there is more reading to do than I will ever have time to do in this lifetime. It is just too big a subject. I've had friends visit Northern Ireland last month (they are Jewish) and were treated badly and threatened until the British pointing AK-47s in their face finally decided perhaps they weren't Irish after all.

This is not a subject I will ever go into detail about on the forum because I suppose technically it is illegal for me to be a sympathizer? Tough. My opinions and my feelings are my own. I do understand the necessity for keeping it very dry and not to get emotional, so I will be on my way. Being passionate about a subject does not mean it is not valid, and not having advanced degrees does not mean you are ignorant or uneducated. I have educated myself more than some of my cousins who do have Ph.D.'s. So, no hard feelings and I am getting off here before I do have some. Cheers

[Teiwaz]

OK Sonrisa, if this topic is a little close to home, that's fine. We are not troubled by passionate posts, and you seem to have a depth of knowledge in this area that would be interesting to explore, but sometimes it is difficult to talk about things that we have strong emotional connections with. You don't need to leave the group, and in fact loosing an informed and passionate voice would be a shame, but obviously the decison is yours. Thanks for the contribution you have made,

["shazbat"]

Yeah according to the history, as it is that I remember, what ever the popularly conceived promptings is was 800 or so years ago for the initial english incursion.
Alluding to a wife snatching and recovery is way too Homeric. Anyway,
It wasn't a Catholic/Protestant thing then as they we're all catholic. It was a typical "you've got it, I want it, I'm bigger or more powerful so I'll take it" thing.
Here in America we called it "Manifest Destiny". Makes it sound so noble.
It wasn't till the english religious reformation (thank you Henry Tudor) that began the demonization of the catholic church just over 400 years ago.
It's too bad it has become perceived as a solely catholic/protestant issue. A real injustice to both faiths and it disguises the real culprit which has always been greed, power and control.

[Sonrisa]

Couldn't agree more...that's it in a nutshell!!!

Sonrisa

[Sonrisa]

One of the reasons I was hesitant to join this forum was, in spite of really wanting to hear other opinions and explanations of world events, I operate mostly on being intuitive. I do have a brain, but I don't really absorb things that way. With the "troubles", the only way to really understand the dynamics is not to read books, even they may give us a lot of solid information, but listen to their music and look at pictures of Ireland, the people, the terrain.

I have a lot of songs - no explanation is necessary. They are largely sung by Paddy Reilly, Eire Orge, Irish Rebel Songs, The Wolfetones, etc. Songs like Pearse Jordan, James Connolly, The S.A.M. song (surface to air missiles), On the Rifles of the IRA, Go On home British Soldiers, Grace, etc, etc, and listen to the passion in their voices, the despair, the sounds of the people in the pubs where they are being recorded, and then tie them together with the wealth of recorded history and put yourself in their place. I hear despair, unbelievable passion for their country, resiliancy beyond belief, hatred to raw you could cut it with a knife and hundred of years of oppression consolidated into a palpable living thing. I told my husband the other day, well if you die for them, at least they'll write a song about you that will be sung for another hundred years or so. They will break your heart. That is the human side of "the troubles". The songs like When Irish Eyes Are Smiling were penned in Tin Pan Alley in New York. They have little if anything to do with Ireland.

I have a large "coffee table" book on Ireland, called Ireland a Terrible Beauty. by Leon Uris and photos by his wife, Jill. It is very fairly done to both sides, pictures of an IRA funeral, Ian Paisley, the British, the slums, and another one called "A Writers' Ireland" that is beautiful.

It is not as said before about religion, it is about oppression pure and simple. Yes, I am very biased, I admit it, but the facts bear my feelings out. Now they are buying arms from anyone and everyone who will sell to them including legitimate terrorists and God knows who else. So now the larger nations have a legitimate excuse not to help them and side against the English. Desperate dying men and women will do anything to survive and their numbers are fewer. There are small pockets all over Northern Ireland and less and less Catholics all the time. It truly is slow, systematic genocide. Much like the American indian or Native American, they had their language forbidden to them by the "masters" and learned it anyway in hedgerow schools. That's why they dance without moving their arms, so the Brits could not see that they were dancing as they hid behind hedges. No more rants, I promise. I will never, ever change my mind on this one. They are my blood.

[Sonrisa]

http://larkspirit.com/history

This web site has the most complete (from all sides) list of links on Irish history including "the troubles" of anything I have found.

Some of the links work, some don't. Some have disclaimers about which way they "lean". It would take a lifetime to go through it all.

Hope this helps and is a bit more impartial than I am personally.

Sonrisa