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I’ve actually waited some time and thought a great deal about posting the local angle on the Middle East. I find it sad when a community I am close to sides with my enemies.
Yes, you heard me right. I have known for some time there is considerable sympathy in West Belfast towards everyone in the Middle East who hates the US. I’ve been in heated arguments with dear friends over it and they and I just let it drop.
The sympathy seems to have moved beyond words in the last few months. A source close to me said there were Palestinian fund raisers at a local Republican bar the last time he spent an evening there. Those of you in Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and other heavily Irish cities who remember Republican fund raisers for NORAID should know the model. I never took part in any such myself but I knew well enough about them. A girlfriend bartended one spot North of Pittsburgh that ran them. I also remember being offered a genuine souvineer Derry Rubber Bullet while ordering in my own local of some 20 years standing. Funny enough, that pub was in a Jewish and Academic area of Pittsburgh, so go figure.
If anyone is reading this who actually did “help the cause” back then, I think you should be aware the same people are now using the same techniques to raise money for people who want to see you dead. If the American side of Republicanism has any influence whatever over here, I think a very loud message should be sent back to just “knock it on the head” and send our enemies back where they came from.
I do not wish to classify all Palestinians as my enemy: only those who celebrate the deaths of my countrymen and who support brutal and unhuman tactics of war. Whether the fund raisers are from the suicide bomber tactions or not I do not know. Perhaps someone on the inside can find out.
And yes, I do know a Palestinian or two and they are very decent people thank you. I define my enemies by their actions, not by broad labels.
…Bono 
And not for nothing either, as he has taken it upon himself to act as a tool for the Holy Belgian Empire and give the Irish people a sound telling-off for voting ‘No’ to the Nice Treaty.
“For god sake, if we miss this chance, what are we then?”
Well, obviously, a bunch of unilateralist simplisme Irish cowboys, that’s what.
“When I participate in meetings with politicians in Europe then they always bring this up…”
‘Louis, Sven, Dirk, come quickly, it’s a famous rock star. At last, we can enjoin a profound discussion on the socio-political consequences of Eastward expansion of the existing regulatory framework’.
“They cannot understand that Ireland did what it did with the Nice-treaty. I noted that a lot of politicians became very angry. I think that a ‘No’ will put Ireland in a selfish light…”
Did you hear that, you scruffy lot in Dublin? If you keep exercising your constitutional right to choose, then the Brussels politicians are going to get very, very, very angry with you. I mean, really angry. They’re going to hold an Angry Conference and share their anger. Then they are going to pass at least a few thousand more regulations in pure anger. And then strike primitive, aggressive postures and denounce you, angrily. So just watch your step.
Bono? Is that a proper name? It can’t be his real name, surely? Perhaps it stands for something. Somebody once told me that it is Gaelic for ‘dickhead’.
Paul Staines points to a party which actually has some commitment to liberty.
I don’t vote, well the last time I voted was when Thatcher was leading the Tories. If you can remember those days, it was then that a political party that wanted to lower taxes, promote competition, roll back the state, maintain a fierce fiscal policy, privatise and deregulate got my vote.
What is more it wasn’t a fringe no-representative libertarian party, but a governing party. Well there is such a party once more – in Ireland.
The Progressive Democrats have done more for Ireland in the last five years than the other parties did in over 80 years. They brought into politics a party that wasn’t genuflecting to the Church nor tracing its lineage back to gun-runners.
As the Tories tack to the centre, my vote remains reluctantly lost to them, but the PDs, the only Thatcherite governing party in Europe, get my vote in principle if not practise.
The Irish election is coming up, see the Progressive Democrats manifesto.
Paul Staines
Monday’s Belfast Telegraph headline read Church Facing Priests Crisis. As it was not immediately obvious to me what a priests crisis might be, and because the free copy had been shoved in my bag at Eason’s along with my magazine purchases, I spent a few minutes to actually read it.
It seems the Church in Ulster is not attracting many young men to the life of celebacy. Of course, rather than look at itself, the Church blames it on people like us:
“I also think this is a symptom of the culture of liberalism and individualism we live in today. People are not so keen now on life-long commitment, whether that be the priesthood or marriage.”
Perhaps if they went back to the old ways: the way things were before Rome tried to use Henry to enforce their will on the Irish Church and got used by him instead. Priests would marry, have great big Irish families and all would be well.
I’ll bet this pronouncement did more to up the popularity of individualism in Ulster than all the pub chatter I’ve done in 15 years.
When he is Irish of course! Well according to Democratic Representatives in US Congress this seems to be the case.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York seems to have allied herself with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (P-IRA). She attempted, with some of her Democratic colleagues, to push through legislation in praise of dead P-IRA terrorists. In this amazing act of stupidity, these Democrats are trying to use the American House of Representatives to further their support for the P-IRA. This group of people obviously do not share most Americans new found distaste for terrorism of any kind. This disgusting legislative act should be widely reported to all who will listen.
Oh yes, and one more point, Ms. McCarthy is a staunch anti-gun zealot.
Surely this is not the best message to send to the US’s staunch ally, Britain. Reports on this in the British press will not make it easy for Blair to convince his reluctant back-benchers to stay quiet, when and if the US/UK coalition goes after Iraq.
Either the Democrats need to do some house cleaning/reprimanding or else anyone who loathes terrorism should campaign to make sure all those Democrats who supported this bill are defeated at the next opportunity.
Lagwolf
Yes, you can find some really great electric blues here. Not to sound like an agent for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board or anything… although a women friend of mine does work there. Rab McCullough’s band is simply on a level with the best you will find anywhere. He can compete with the best in the USA, and in fact has. He took 3rd in an international blues competition in Memphis a couple years ago. I stopped in to their gig at the Empire after the play since I’d not seen Rab in a couple months, and I’d just gotten an SMS message from a mutual former bass player of ours. Which is not at all to put myself in the same league as the unnamed bass player…
This is not a huge city, nor is Northern Ireland altogether very large. But the place has more talent per square meter than any place I’ve ever been. And that includes Manhattan. I’ve lived in the Village too, and I agree there are more fine acts there than in Belfast. But then, there are 10,000,000 people in New York City… and 500,000 in Belfast.
We’ve got you on per capita talent, no ifs ands or buts about it.
I have to add some comments on the play I was talking about, things that are simply “so Belfast”.
The play was held in Culturlann, a lovely venue in the very heart of Republican West Belfast. You can buy books down stairs on the history of the IRA. John is a actor born on the Protestant side of town with certain preferences common to actors. He wrote a play about a British born actor who settled in Ireland and was closely related to the various figures of the Irish revolution.
If you don’t understand how this all fits together, I am not surprised. You have to live and take part in Belfast for many, many years before you can hope to understand it. This is why I am usually smirking into my beer along with my native born friends when Americans come over and explain us to us.
Belfast is comprehensible. You just have to keep your mouth shut and listen for awhile… something that all too many people find impossible to do.
There may be better libertarian think-tanks around in Europe than the Irish Open Republic but if so I haven’t come across them yet. I don’t know if the editor, Paul McDonnell wrote the piece appearing below but, regardless of the authorship, it cuts through all the cant and recrimination to remind us who the real enemies are.
“Post ‘peace process’ Northern Ireland is like SimCity – a computer simulation game where you get to build and run a city – played by Social Democrats. During the peace process and its aftermath political life in the Province was immersed in a warm, enervating, bath of ‘reconciliation’, ‘mutual recognition’, ‘sharing of feelings’ and general ‘feeling’ of ‘pain’ all around. The politicians, think-tanks, civil servants, peace volunteers, community action groups, women’s groups, freed murderers of the innocent and, yes, even the White House all hunkered down in a general peace and love fest where a direct question was about as welcome as a swastika flag at Woodstock.
Of course before the whole thing got going no one thought to set conditions that Sinn Fein and their tattooed counterparts on the ‘Protestant’ side must both respect and actively support the enforcement of the rule of law. Any 12 year old playing SimCity realises that the police need to be able to uphold the rule of law or anarchy reigns and then it’s game over.
Not in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland today is what happens when Social Democrats do what they are best at. And what they are best at is Showing Concern Whilst Selling Out To Tyranny. Think of David Owen, Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Office and the Bosnian Serbs. ‘Bombing the Serbs will make things worse’ etc. etc… Meanwhile thousands of innocents die. Likewise Northern Ireland is a product of the Social Democrat school of thought. Another name for it is fudge. Social Democrats are too influenced by the ideology that only groups, and not individuals, have real rights.Hence the ‘appeals’ to the gang who murdered the young postal worker – as if the murder of the young man was a genuine corporate act and not a conspiracy to, and commission of, murder. The ‘community leaders’ don’t want to insult anyone. If you are a murdering gang then you must be granted ‘parity of esteem’ with other groups.
Northern Ireland has been moulded into the Social Democrat narrative whose defining characteristics are mob rule and capitulation to mob rule – aka ‘achieving gender balance’, ‘equality’ and ‘parity of esteem’. The Social Democrat plan is to expand the public sector and use it as a vehicle to provide jobs for their friends and, as is the case in Northern Ireland, those whom they are afraid to confront. They pretend that they are ensuring ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’. This they do by making sure that if it employs thousands of people it doesn’t need at tax payers’ expense then at least the public sector must hire the right quotas of unneeded Catholics, Protestants, women and murderers.
The Social Democrats who sold the pass in Northern Ireland are the Irish political parties, the SDLP, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the British Government and former US President, Bill Clinton. The OUP cannot really be blamed. They were outgunned (literally) and they knew it. So when a postal worker is murdered, trades unionists take to the streets, political leaders ‘call for the violence to stop’. Sinn Fein blames the Protestants but nobody seems interested in catching and punishing the criminals.”
I have spent the last 13 years of my life in the West Belfast, Andytown orbit. I suspect I know a little bit more about it than some. I certainly don’t class as an outsider or a disinterested outside observer on these matters. I am also not going to be drawn into a long discussion that will just rehash verbal territory I have been over many times before.
Comparing any of the paramilitaries in Northern Ireland of either side to the Al Qaeda is ludicrous. Ours are a local problem, not a global one. In any other period of history what happened in Northern Ireland would have been called a civil war. In the early days of ‘The Troubles’ in the 70’s there was actual open small unit warfare between elements of the British Army and highly trained IRA units. This was not reported in the newspapers but I have talked to people who were there.
The British Army purportedly arrived to protect the Catholics from the Protestants, but the people who lived through that time say that the results were otherwise. It was as if the National Guard who went to Selma shot the blacks they had come to protect.
It would not surprise me to find that the USSR was feeding money and agents provacateurs to both sides in the late 60’s and early 70’s in the run up to the hostilities. Whatever the causes, the problems between the two communities escalated into open warfare. There were real problems here for outsiders to exploit, not imagined ones. In those days the Protestant community ran Northern Ireland the way the Klu Klux Klan ran Mississippi. Catholics were niggers here, and that made a fertile and inflammatory ground for what was to come.
This was not a pleasant place in those days. One friend was held in his bedroom with an Armalite stuck into his mouth – he was perhaps 15 – while his mother was held downstairs and the British soldiers searched for the hundredth time. 30 years ago, but I think if he ran into that officer today only one would survive the meeting. I could give you a hundred stories like that, all from the people it happened to, all from people I know very well.
Almost all of it happened right here in one small province, about the size of West Virginia. True, the IRA did things in England; but it seems to me that is supposed to be part of the same country. Some of the Protestant paramilitaries acted in Ireland, but I would also have to call that part of the same ‘country’ because there was a rather serious intersection of interests in Northern Ireland.
Did the IRA and UFF commit terrorist acts? Yes. Are they just like the Al Qaeda? Not even close. Al Qaeda killed over 3000 people and injured many more (remember my flame about us never being given an old fashioned casualty figure, dead plus injured?) in one hour. The attack on the World Trade Center was not a military objective; it was planned to maximize deaths of civilians of a nation nearly a half a planet away from where the attackers lived. The same organization killed perhaps another thousand people in the last decade, many of whom were Americans. This is no little local civil war. They aren’t killing their neighbors over which flag should be flown over City Hall.
In the global leagues, the IRA and UFF and the rest of the Northern Ireland alphabet soup are pikers. And pretty much out of business pikers at that. I’m sure Natalija can tell us about living somewhere where the terrorists really knew how to go about their job. I think we should all be thankful for the fact that as bad as these people may have behaved, they were not in those leagues. They called and politely told people to evacuate before blowing up places, rather than timing for maximum carnage. They never tried to acquire ‘the bomb’. They didn’t blow up civilian airliners.
And yes, I do agree that the ‘Real IRA’ people responsible for killing so many people of both sides in Omagh should be just quietly shot dead if found. I doubt anyone here would shed a tear over their despicable carcasses.
The Peace Process here is working. I have lived through it. I do not want to go back to the way it was. I want the Republican and Unionist leaders jawing and jockeying instead of shooting. I want them to keep it up for another decade. By then they will be out of touch with the reality of day to day life. Belfast is a lovely place with these lads talking instead of fighting. I’d like to keep it that way.
Some day there may be a vote here on which country we are to be a part of. I suspect by the time it happens the vote will be based on pure economics rather than which flag was printed on your nappies.
The shooting of the postal worker mentioned by Perry in an earlier article occurred only a few blocks from where I live. Of course all I knew of it was some sirens (common) and the sound of Brit choppers hovering in the area (likewise).
The postal workers threatened to stop all mail delivery if the neighborhoods in question did not guarantee safety of all postal workers, regardless of religion. I have heard the public outrage from across the entire spectrum shocked the paras to the point that they are talking disbandment, although I have not read confirmation of such. It’s probably in the local papers if so. People may be getting shot just up the street, but I still have to get projects out the door (cablemodem?) or I don’t eat. It’s funny how you can know what’s going on all over the world and hardly notice the world news happening around the corner.
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