If they don’t approve of grown men terrorizing schoolgirls, why do they keep supporting terrorists? If you ask them (Catholic or Protestant), why they continue to look the other way when their family or friends skulk off to heroically bomb 7 year olds, they always have some ‘Yes, but-’ answer ready.
Next time this happens the Ulster Protestants should flood the streets with torches and clubs and start hunting down all known Protestant terrorists and stoning their families, as should the Catholics next time an IRA sociopath blows up some senior citizens.
Of course they won’t, they’ll all say ‘Yes, but-’ and bring up a list of grievances.
They alaways try to blame England or the Pope or whatever; it’s always some excuse to keep it going and be the laughingstock of Europe.
Now all you IRA thugs better get ready for that drive-by revenge shooting at the nursery school. Just don’t think you’re fooling anyone with your empty-minded rhetoric but yourselves.
Ireland is an independent nation. You’re talking about Northern Ireland, a province of the UK. The present situation is a continuing tragedy, and I will leave it to more informed posters to lecture you properly.
I hate to say the OP’er is right – gross generalizations, too little information, blah blah blah – but . . .
I think he kind of has a bit of a smallish point.
I mean, I know the situation is complicated. I know there’s baggage. But I look at headlines like this and I wonder what the heck the Irish are thinking (those involved in the conflict, I mean). How much war is enough? How much death? How many years of violence? How many opportunities for greatness as a country squandered because you’re at each others’ throats?
To the average uneducated American (this one, at least), the conflicts in Ireland do not appear on their surface insurmountable. You’re all Irish. You’re all even Christian, for God’s sake. Protestants and Catholics don’t kill each other over here; most of 'em don’t give a shit about each other’s religious affiliation in the first place.
I just don’t get it. I’ll freely admit it: I just don’t get it.
Well, you’re laboring under a few misconceptions here, Jodi.
The conflict has little to do with religion per se, in the sense of doctrinal differences. Religion is a marker of cultural identity. And (most of) the Protestants’ identity is not an Irish one. They think they’re British. Fundamentally it comes down to which flag they want flying over their head, and that certainly makes the conflict less than unique. It does make it fairly insurmountable, though - there isn’t much room for compromise.
I’m with Jodi–I don’t get it. I sat down and read the paper this morning, and nearly leaped off the john in my haste to get downstairs and start a Pit thread titled, “Northern Ireland: what is the MATTER with these people?” But I didn’t.
Grownups shooting and tossing bombs at each other is one thing–but…shades of Alabama desegregation and Ruby Bridges! Children requiring a police escort to get to school? Or I am the only one who remembers this?
Timothy McVeigh bombed children and got the death penalty. Oh, sure, he might have gotten the death penalty anyway, but you know as well as I do that it’s the picture of Baylee Almon that “done him in”.
These are little kids. Ages 4 to 11. These are not college kids desegregating the University of Alabama against the express wishes of George Wallace–these are kindergartners. They shouldn’t have to be doing this.
But I’m not really talking about the bombers and the shooters here; they’re such obvious “terrorists” that it’s not even worth discussing. I’m talking about the “nice folks” blocking the school’s entrance. What “sense of national identity” could possibly entitle adults to block children’s access to education, to frighten them to tears at the thought of going to school? What “cultural identity” could possibly justify a group of shouting, furious grownups blocking the entrance to a school? I’m sorry, I don’t get it, either. I am repulsed, baffled, and just generally so “WTF?” with this, I don’t care how many years/generations/centuries it all goes back, blah blah blah …
It makes me ashamed to be a Protestant. Go thou and get a clue, brethren mine…
Another for the “I don’t get it” group. I was reading in an on-line Scottish newspaper (archive requires registration), that the crowd believes Catholics can’t walk on Protestant streets. From an article of 4 September,
Imagine a place where even the streets are bigots.
And, someone suggests a solution,
Actually, I was hoping someone here knew enough about the situation there to answer:
What is the immediate perceived threat or affront that the bomb-throwers feel they are addressing?
(I assume that generally, it is that they want to remain British, but specifically) what’s the objection to these little girls going to school that generates such animosity?
The “Troubles”, although often called sectarian violence, arerooted much deeper than mere religious divisions.
A significant portion of the anger comes from economic troubles, past and present, as well.
A good primer on the “Troubles” can be found here.
(see the historical perspective portion).
I heard a story in passing on the radio that the demographics may be shifting in the North, from a Protestant majority to a slim Catholic majority in the near future. Perhaps someone could confirm or disprove that bit…I didn’t get the details?
BEAGLE, I think what at least some of us are saying is that it’s hard to process, as an intellectual or emotional matter, that they can keep fighting and fighting and fighting the same flipping war for thirty years (actively), killing Catholics who dare to marry Protestants (and vice versa), throwing bombs at kids, blowing up funeral processions and basically acting like a bunch of animals. Don’t they get tired? Hating is hard work, corrosive and arduous. You’d think they’d want better for their kids, if not themselves, but I see little indication that they do.
Sure, it’s the same argument that can be made with the Arabs and Israelis, the Tutsi and the Hutu, the Serbs and the Croats. Maybe it just that those groups have significant cultural differences from the States that, while not serving to excuse their actions, at least don’t make me feel like I should understand it. (“Well, it’s the Middle East; things are different there.”) But the thing is, I don’t think of things as being that different, culturally, in Northern Ireland. Maybe its the close affinity of many Americans to their Irish roots, or the fact that Ireland is a developed Western European country, but to me it’s like watching people in the next town try to kill each other. People who are just like me. It makes me want to ask “What the fuck is wrong with you people???” It makes me feel like I should understand it, and I don’t. I think they’re all a bunch of idiots. Bunch of wankers, as RUADH put it in the Pit thread, but I don’t know if she meant all of 'em. I do – both sides.
The specific neighborhood is a like a subdivision of rowhouses of a dozen or twenty streets, each about two blocks long. The northern third of the streets are primarily inhabited by Protestants and the remainder primarily by Catholics. To the East and West of the neighborhood, there are some factories and some open lots. The Catholic school happens to be at the end of the street on the Western boundary of the neighborhood–at the North end of the street.
Over the last several months, the Protestants have been publicly complaining that their side of the neighborhood is under constant harrassment from the Catholic side, including rocks, firecrackers, small, homemade bombs, and gunshots. (Many of the claims are certainly accurate, but it has not been reported whether it constitutes harrassment or threats to life.)
Last Spring, the Protestants in the neighborhood announced that if it was not safe for them to walk their own streets, then the Catholics would not be allowed to walk through the area, either. Some sort of uneasy truce regarding the schoolkids lasted until the end of the school year, after which the Protestants announced that they would no longer allow even the girls through.
There is a road leading from the South end of the Neighborhood out to the West and back to the location of the school. The Catholics were encouraged to take this longer route when going to the school. I do not know the distances along the road, so I do not know whether that played a part in the Catholic decision (e.g. choosing to send a six-year-old girl two miles round the neighborhood vs 300 yards up the street–I do not know the actual differences).
The Catholic parents decided to call the Protestants’ bluff and call upon the constabulary to do their duty and protect the kids. The Protestants reacted to this “provocation” with rocks, and now more.
There is a map here that shows the Loyalist and Nationalist areas in the Ardoyne neighborhood. It also includes the “alternative” route suggested by Loyalist leaders.
Like Garvaghy Road in Drumcree, the distances are rather small for the amount of violence.
Keeping in mind that the Guardian is a British newspaper, they have a web page that may answer some of the above questions about the specifics of this event.
Actually, it the alternative route isn’t a “Catholic” route either. It passes by the loyalist Hesketh Road. If the Glenbryn loyalists succeed in intimidating the Catholic children off the Ardoyne Road, you can bet it will give the Hesketh loyalists some ideas.
tomndebb:
They started blocking the girls’ path at the end of the last school year.
Jodi:
There are wankers on both sides, yes. But we clearly have a case here of one side outwankering the other.
beagledave:
If the birth rate continues as is, Catholics will outnumber Protestants within the next generation or so. They already do at school-age level. Whether this means there will be a nationalist majority is another question, but the nationalist vote has always increased apace with the Catholic population, and there’s no sign of that changing.
Maybe now some American posters will understand why the British are still in NI.
I always get the impression from some of the uninformed among you that we have some great overriding national interest in being there, often some poster will mention industrial capacity.
Can you imagine what would happen if we left ?
Believe me when I say that there is a majority in the UK who would like nothing better than for the idiots who run the violence in NI to piss off so that we can finally move out.
I don’t think sanctimony on anyone’s part here helps.
The question should not be what’s wrong with them, it should be “what’s wrong with us?”
As has been pointed out in threads here before, the vast majority of people on either side of the debate are angry and shamed by what is currently going on in Belfast. Millions of people live in Ireland, most of them get on fine with people on the other side of the religious/ideological debate. Even politicians (not sure about all, but most) on the protestant/loyalist side of the debate are condemning unreservedly the events outside Holy Cross.
Sadly, there are a few people who will do their utmost to keep the troubles going, for their own reasons. Since their utmost includes flinging bombs around kids, the peace process is in trouble.
Go thou and get a clue, brethren mine…