Northern Ireland has been at peace for a long time.
It seems to me that the uncertainty driven by Brexit is firing up this terror.
~shudder~
So very sad.
Makes me think of this - and of the singer who passed on a year or so ago - RIP Dolores OâRiordan.
Brexit is another vote that Russia interfered with. It is insane that they donât do another referendum.
I donât know the Irish word for punks but whatever it is they fit the profile.
âLyra McKee, 29, a rising star of investigative journalism, was shot and killed, police say probably by a stray bullet aimed at policeâŠâ
Iâm not familiar with the gun laws in Ireland, but it would seem that Ireland would be much less tolerant than the US.
Has Peter King (R-NY) criticized British police for arresting âvery fine peopleâ yet?
During the height of The Troubles, the 60s through 1998, there were lots of firearms in the hands of civilians in Northern Ireland. Some of them came from this country and one supplier was Irish Northern Aid Committee
Truly. The pro-Brexit campaign was dishonest to the point of being fraudulent, and elements of the campaign were illegal, Russian-backed, or both. It also was the beta version of the pro-Trump campaign.
Are free and fair elections a thing of the past?
Plenty of them.
And speaking of the Honorable Representative from New YorkâŠ
There was a NORAD cup in every bar in the Bronx. Most of the people who put money in had never been east of NYC.
Peter King is about as Irish as I am and three of my grandparents were born there. A real horseâs backside.
I imagine that it is more than just Brexit, Russia is not exactly happy with Great Britain either. I would not be surprised if fomenting more of âthe troublesâ is on the menu of fpots to stir for Russia.
Growing up in Ireland, let me emphasize that Irish Americans who supported the IRA were despised by people in Ireland.
Irish American politicians like Ted Kennedy and George Mitchell were respected, because they understood the situation from dealing with Irish diplomats.
Peter King is shall we say not respected. At best a fucking moron, he is just pandering to his equally clueless constituents.
The Guardian editorial headline on Lyra McKeeâs death: She Should Have Been The Future.
Fuck these murdering scum.
Any murder is a tragedy, a human voice silenced, but losing Lyra McKeeâs voice feels like a greater loss to the public as well as this TED talk illustrates.
Growing up as a gay teen in Northern Ireland, Lyra McKee had her share
of disagreements with the Church and, as a journalist in her 20s, found
herself estranged from religious institutions. It wasnât until 2017 and
an unexpected conversation about LGBTQ rights in an Orlando mosque that
she found herself reckoning with the influence of religion on
marginalized lives. âI realized that I couldnât run away from religion
anymore because religion shapes how LGBT people are treated in the
world,â she says. In this hopeful talk, she points out plentiful
evidence that religious institutions are capable of embracing LGBTQ
rights and that the process begins with having that first difficult
conversation.
This is Northern Ireland, a legal part of the UK, not the Republic. The laws are the same as the rest of the UKâno legal handguns at all, no assault weapons, and legal long guns can only be owned by licensed owners, kept in gun safes with regular police inspection. I donât know the current stats, but in the 1970s I was told that the proportion even of legally-held guns was much higher than the rest of the UK.
One of the legacies of the Troubles, though, is the amount of unregistered weaponry held by the paramilitaries on both sides (Americans often donât realize that the Protestants also had/have paramilitary groups that were more ruthless than the IRA, which got most of the publicity.) All these groups have fractured and re-fractured. I would also be willing to place a substantial bet that online recruiting is a factor in the rise of the new paramilitaries. This is pure theoryâI left Northern Ireland in 1984, and I have no direct knowledge. It just fits with whatâs happened to radical Jihadists, white supremacists, school shooters, and etc.
People were also quite willing to make unwarranted assumptions about all Americans with an interest in Northern Ireland. I have an Irish last name, and I got grief from Immigration from the get-go when I moved to Northern Ireland to live in an intentional community in 1979.
I did witness one gunrunning episode later that summerâa ship bringing in guns to a group of Protestant paramilitaries was abandoned offshore from our communityârumor had it that the Brits had been tipped off and were waiting at the docks. The navy steamed up about dinnertime one day and took it in tow, while we all sat at the table snatching my bird-watching binoculars from each other.
Not that long. 80 years of open violence after centuries of oppression, tension, and civil and sectarian unrest doesnât get smoothed over in a couple of decades.
Something to be considered when people like Netanyahu insist they can just grind the Palestinians into the dirt.
Pete Kingâs in the IRA/Sinn Feinâs pocket. The âNew IRAâ are shitting on Sinn Feinâs work. Donât expect King to be terribly sympathetic to them.
Police attack Irish nationalist group, which defends itself, apparently with a lot of support from others in area, reporter gets caught in crossfire, source of bullet still unknown, two arrested for âterrorism,â and everyone reflexively jumps on police bandwagon and talking about ânew terrorism.â Itâs known that this New IRA group wishes to merge Irelands, denying Northern Protestants the right to independence - and why wouldnât they want it given still Clerical leaning Belfast state and society - but beyond that news reports are rather vague at best about whatâs really going on, including effects of possible Brexit and treatment of non-Protestants since âpeaceâ deal.
You mean âpolice receive warning of plans for attacks over Easter weekend, and so begin searching bags and jacketsâ? Thatâs what they were doing. Thatâs not an attack.
Opening fire in that situation is not defending yourself.
And have you looked at where she was standing? Next to a police vehicle? Itâs a pretty good bet the police werenât shooting in the direction of their own stuff.
As for non-Protestants⊠congratulations, New IRA, the Catholic Bishop of Londonderryâs called for Republican dissidents to gtfo of the city.