Queen shakes hands with IRA terrorist

[Póg mo 1,749]

Queen shakes hands with Martin McGuiness former ? army chief of the IRA and killer (personally) of British troops

That's like the US President shaking hands with Ho Ch Minh

or Netanyahu shaking hands with Martin Bormann

Disgusting - an insult to the memory of those young boys who were murdered with weapons from Gadaffi

... let alone the Queens Uncle who was incinerated on his boat by the IRA in Ireland

String him up - and others of his following

Well she is the Queen of England after all, so I am sure she has shaken hands with much worse than the like of Martin McGuinness.

Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara immediately springs to mind.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

And I'm the one who needs to calm down?

Yes. You’ve become so overwrought that you can’t even be rational about it any more. You've taken things out of context, inserted your own imagined straw men and attributed them to me, and you’ve even tried to present amateur pieces by an internet poet and a freshman university student to try to rebut credible scholars of history.

You could probably come up with something sensible if you would just calm down.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Yes. You’ve become so overwrought that you can’t even be rational about it any more. You've taken things out of context, inserted your own imagined straw men and attributed them to me, and you’ve even tried to present amateur pieces by an internet poet and a freshman university student to try to rebut credible scholars of history.

You could probably come up with something sensible if you would just calm down.

Welcome to Rocks world where facts and links mean nothing.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Was it OK when the Catholics tortured and killed the Huguenots? Christianity is to blame for these problems. Get rid of that and there won't be any problems.

Why would that be OK ?

I have Huguenot ancestors as well

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/the-royal-african-company-supplying-slaves-to-jamestown.htm

http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/slavery/a/The-Start-Of-Slavery-In-North-America.htm

I'm sure you're going to come up with some aggressive excuse as to why this isn't valid either. Just because you think something is true doesn't mean it is.

See Post #162 - your links are outdated.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I never called all Americans who supported a One Ireland state uninformed. I said a bunch of them were.

This is what you said:

But until the majority decide to leave the Union all this self-determination cr@p is just that -- a load of BS that is unfortunately supported by a bunch of uninformed Americans who don't know jack about day to day life in both Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole.

If you didn't mean to imply that, in general, Americans who are "One Ireland supporters" are uninformed, I gladly accept your clarification. And I appreciate you taking the time to make it clear.

Though I know w_o_m's feelings on this are intense, nothing really beats living in a situation, being friends with people on both sides of the religious divide, having a conflict affect your day to day life (I lived in the UK pre-Good Friday Agreement, and narrowly escaped a bus bombing in London by about 15 minutes once) might just give one more insight on the practicalities of the situation. I was raised with crypto-IRA-sympathies as mother's milk. My eyes were opened dramatically when I moved to the UK, as were those of my American family.

I think the majority of those posting on here know full well the oppression of the Irish by the British. And yes, it lasted until very recently. But Northern Ireland now is a completely different animal, economically, culturally and otherwise than it was in the 70 and 80s, heck even the 90s! The people who live there want to get on with their lives, to leave sectarianism behind. To heal. And the British want that as well. The people of Northern Ireland themselves should determine their destiny, and right now they want to stay in the UK by a clear majority. Are people of both faiths still discriminated against, yes. There's no doubt. But to paint the Catholics indiscriminately as the heroes here and the Protestants as the baddies is disingenuous and naive at best.

Who is living there now in Northern Ireland ? Mostly descendants of English and other British colonists. Of course they want to get on with their lives in peace - people who are benefiting from the wrongs of the past don't want to face repercussions for what has been done, not to mention the cost of paying reparations. This is a standard colonial attitude - "It's all done, we've got it now, so why can't those losers just accept it, and be quiet about it ?"

The problem is, it's not reasonable. Human nature seeks justice. If the grievances of the dispossessed and oppressed are not addressed, it almost always boils over into violence - there are examples of it throughout the world where oppressed peoples rise up in violence against their oppressors. It's happened in Algeria, South Africa, Palestine, and the U.S. as well.

It's not about Catholic = good, Protestant = bad. There are good people and bad people in every group. It's about oppression and colonialism being bad. The majority in Northern Ireland don't actually want to leave "sectarianism" behind - they want to leave the repercussions of it behind. They absolutely want to keep their ethnically cleansed and partitioned land without any further bother. Yes, they will accept the minority of Catholic ethnic Irish who managed to remain in the area, because they're not enough of them to challenge the Protestant status quo. But they certainly wouldn't allow the cleansed to return en masse - because that would tip the balance.

Most Protestants in Northern Ireland don't want to accept a unified country with the rest of Ireland because 1.) it's full of Catholics, and 2.) it's poorer (never mind that it's poorer as a direct result of the mass murder and mass plundering that the English and later British government inflicted on them over the last 8 centuries.) Theft can be very profitable.

Opinion polls in Northern Ireland fall right along these sectarian lines - you basically get an 80%-20% split:

http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2009/Political_Attitudes/NIRELND2.html

The ethnic Irish (mostly Catholic) overwhelmingly want a reunified Ireland. Despite what has been done to them, they're willing to accept all the people of Northern Ireland and the huge demographic change that has been imposed on the island.

It's the descendants of the usurpers (who now control most of the political power and most of the economic resources) who don't want a change. This is not surprising.

Anyway, unnatural partitions don't last. It will likely take at least decades, maybe even a century or more, but Ireland will be reunited eventually. Nature will take its course, one way or another.

[rocks 494]

Have you ever been to Northern Ireland?

[Captain Oates 911]

Most people have their own family records or access to public records, and it’s really not that hard to search back 100, 200, 300 even 400 years. Remember that most of the Irish families who emigrated to the U.S. came between the 1820s and early 1900s (some arrived earlier, but the vast bulk of them came within the last 200 years.) 200 years ago is only 8-9 generations - a piece of cake, really. It’s not like they arrived in prehistoric times when there were no records. There is a lot of data on the passenger lists from arriving ships, as well as church records of births, marriages and deaths. Vast compendiums of data have been archived in the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City (the largest genealogical library in the world) and their data is free to the public.

So we don’t need DNA tests to know we’re Irish - our Irish surnames, our family Bible histories, and the family stories passed down through the generations etc. are supported by the written records: “so-and-so arrived in such-and-such year, birthplace County such-and-such Ireland, parents so-and-so, born County X Ireland” etc.

Rather, it’s *you* who would need evidence such as DNA testing to prove your silly claim that they’re *not* really of authentic Irish descent.

Go back a thousand years and read how the arabs of spain and the middle east traded Irish sex slaves (women I assume)

In my travels the world over, it is my opinion that the celtic irish women are the most beautiful in the world through they do contract cellulite at an early age and that would require a constant stream of new slaves

arabs and slavery have always been intertwined and indeed the US fought the Barbary wars, partly because north african arabs enslaved US sailors

Barabary wars USA v arabs

.

Edited July 1, 2012 by Ashud Cocoa

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Have you ever been to Northern Ireland?

Yes, I have. My sister and I went to Ireland, and we spent part of our time in Northern Ireland. (She goes there every year - she just got back last week from another trip.) The entire island is a stunningly beautiful place - just amazing - and everyone was quite nice including in the North (even despite our tell-tale Irish names .)

So... how about you ? Have you ever been to Jamestown ? They've just built a fabulous new wing to the museum there, but I haven't had a chance to see it yet. I will on my next trip that way... one of my brothers lives in Falls Church and we're planning to take a drive down to see it.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Go back a thousand years and read how the arabs of spain and the middle east traded Irish sex slaves (women I assume)

In my travels the world over, it is my opinion that the celtic irish women are the most beautiful in the world through they do contract cellulite at an early age and that would require a constant stream of new slaves

arabs and slavery have always been intertwined and indeed the US fought the Barbary wars, partly because north african arabs enslaved US sailors

Barabary wars USA v arabs

.

Are you saying the Celts put the Cel in Cellulite ???

Anyway, as interesting as all that is, Arabs and cellulite have nothing to do with The Troubles.

[Captain Oates 911]

Are you saying the Celts put the Cel in Cellulite ???

Anyway, as interesting as all that is, Arabs and cellulite have nothing to do with The Troubles.

I agree

In Jamaica, I hired a motorbike and took a Lebanese girl (wearing shorts) up the mountain

I checked in the mirror and she had no cellulite

those Lebanese are SO westernized !

It doesn't come any more off topic than that

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I agree

In Jamaica, I hired a motorbike and took a Lebanese girl (wearing shorts) up the mountain

I checked in the mirror and she had no cellulite

those Lebanese are SO westernized !

It doesn't come any more off topic than that

You should change your member title to The Thighmaster.

[Captain Oates 911]

You should change your member title to The Thighmaster.

I have my next VJ handle already drafted out for when the 12 months is up

Less easy to decipher than ashud cocoa

If I don't get banned by Charles in the meantime that is

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I have my next VJ handle already drafted out for when the 12 months is up

Less easy to decipher than ashud cocoa

If I don't get banned by Charles in the meantime that is

I meant the title that goes under your pic - you can change that at will.

I still don't know what Ashud Cocoa means...

[Captain Oates 911]

I meant the title that goes under your pic - you can change that at will.

I still don't know what Ashud Cocoa means...

Cockney rhyming slang

I should cocoa = "I should think so" which means "I don't think so"

A "Gregory" is a "Gregory Peck" = neck

A "pen is a "pen and ink" = stink.

It comes natural to me and is used all over the UK now but learning the principles of first deciphering the phrase that the one word refers to, and the finding a word to rhythm with the last word is very difficult for Americans

ok now a test"

" My cat is off for an Eartha"

Clue.....

Eartha