How much blood money they are paying Blair for this advice, or is that covered by his annual Israeli retainer fees. Is there nothing he won`t do for money.

The difference is that you have a culture clash between today's self styled "Israellis" and the rest of the world.

Bloody Sunday had people brave enough to acknowledge and admit to mistakes no matter how many Trimbles they send, but over in Israel such words cannot be said.

Back then, the troops said "we were fired at first". "Israelis" and the Blair's of this world would say "we were provoked" and get Trimble to sign the unlawful killings of unarmed civilians as legitimate.

Blair is an anathema, a bane, a plague, a war criminal who murdered children and then tried to tell British school-children in Walton High that the Iraq war was just and relieved the world of a bad man.

Your atonement is way over-due Blair and all that blood-stained money will not save you!

Absolutely, Craig. By appointing Trimble as an 'international observer' the Israelis have stacked the deck quite conspicuously. Any claim to objective impartiality is a travesty.

As the public face of the Drumcree parades, Trimble rose to prominence as a bigot who favoured the right to demonstrate with impunity against the oppressed indigenous population. His bias is clear for all to see. Don't let Nobel distract you: he didn't get it for protecting civil liberties, but for seizing political opportunities.

The loyalist community in Northern Ireland has always had instinctive sympathies with the Israelis. See the juxtaposition of flags at:
http://splinteredsunrise.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/uda-israeli-flag.jpg

The situational parallels are clear: a community of occupying settlers under attack from the indigenous population. In the 80s, loyalists also vocally supported the Apartheid regime and branded Mandela a terrorist. Note the shared ethic of containment and oppression, and the branding of any indigenous opposition as terrorism.

Before the usual conspiracy cacophony begins, let me just point out that these alignments have got nothing to do with the clandestine orchestration of any grand Zionist plot. The typical Orangeman would have no idea what you're ranting on about, and few of them are in a position of economic power or influence (especially following the collapse of the Presbyterian Mutual Society). It's about the simple cultural prejudices of the fortress mentality.

I was so angry - sorry - I meant to say that is probably your most moving and emotionally wired post to date Craig - Brilliant!

Nice one Craig. VERY nice. Hits the nail squarely on the head. And of course David Trimble also knows a thing or two about state sponsored assassinations - from the perspective of the State, naturally. He's ultra-sensitive about it too - Google Sean McPhilemy.

What has struck me most forcibly in the reports about Bloody Sunday has been that soldiers apparently shot unarmed men who posed no threat to them. Ring a bell with anyone? I seem to have been hearing stories like that for the best part of the last ten years - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Israel. And not only male civilians, but women, children, babies in arms, whole wedding parties, funerals... Yet (apart from Baha Mousa) not a single one of those dead civilians in Asia has been represented in a British court. Nor have we had our media broadcasting the bereaved families' tears, reminiscences, and justified anger.

Why is that a handful of deaths - no matter how illegal and reprehensible - in Northern Ireland outweighs over a million deaths in Asia?

I dont know if the Bloody Sunday massacre was secretly planned/influenced to create conflict but i can see it is possible. The decades of violence which followed certainly served the interests of violent people in general.

The vast majority of people NEVER wanted violent political pressure in NI, and a strong majority ALWAYS wanted to stay in the Union. NI is not Israel, even while its loyalist politicians are an embarrassment.
If you judge a population by its politicians the whole of England may burn in hell too.

Loyalist politics in Northern Ireland are fucked up after decades of dirty stinking paramilitary attack (employing horrendous torture and extreme brutality) for a mythicaly justified, undemocratic objective to force the modern population out of its union with britain.

Any 'settling' which occured happened hundreds of years ago, during very interesting times in which strife and allegiances continuously shifted all over Europe.
Paramilitary republicanism in Ireland dragged its mandate from bitter history and punished it with brutal bloody passion. Both sides of the fight had to represent their social and political circumstances in simplified beleaguered terms in order to survive the assaults on their identity and physical security.

Whether bloody sunday was accidental or not, such events could be easily manufactured by those wishing to fuel conflict.

Tom Welsh - was that a rhetorical question ? The literal-minded answer, of course, is that a lot more people get upset when the British Army kills British people. The whole assumption is that it's supposed to be keeping them safe by killing Others (when necessary). The cognitive dissonance upsets people, the assumption doesn't explain the outcome.

What still nags at me is that I remember the initial photos, summer of '69. Grateful women of an oppressed minority bringing trays of tea out to the brave boys who've come to keep them safe. We could do with an enquiry into how we got from there to the Bogside in 2 1/2 years ? (cf also, of course, similar processes in many other countries since).

Clearly a Zionist, back-door-rattling conspiracy by people who want a free book from a rich, privileged man!

Thanks Craig.

@all - don't feed the trolls!

Thanks Sabretache for the tip re Sean McPhilemy - is The Committee still banned in the UK? The story of libel cases, retractions, with Trimble eventually suing Amazon to stop the book's sale in the UK is incredible...adds another dimension to what Craig says here.

Psychopathic murdering Zionists + Mass murdering ex PM + Bigoted protestant.

Should make for an interesting inquire.

No-one's mentioned the other international person on the flotilla enquiry, Ken Watkin, who appears to have better credentials, since he was a visiting fellow to the Human Rights Programme at Harvard Law School in 2002-3, and warned the Canadian army not to ignore allegations of the abuse of Afghan prisoners.

Mistakes, overreaction, rotten apples.

Seen it all a million times before.

There's nothing going on anywhere in the world today for which the long years of conflict in the north of Ireland do not provide a template.

It was horrible growing up there during those dark days, feeling your daily life no more than a pawn for dark actors playing wargames. And the lies, the lies, the endless lies; the pointless deaths.

I'm glad the families have at long last had official recognition that their loved ones were innocent. It's so important.

That was always the problem with being murdered by the state. You didn't just die once. You died a thousand times and more as another scumbag turned up on telly or print to defend the state by again besmirching your memory.

Great post Craig, and great comments too. Well done all. It almost restores my faith in our common humanity.

Abe Rene

Except that the human rights programme at Harvard is pure undiluted neo-con world view. I lectured the course once.

Psychopathic murdering Zionists + Mass murdering ex PM + Bigoted protestant + ex-military neo-con

This is what political fascism looks like in the 21st century

Take a look at the peace activist at the other end of this hyperlink:

http://www.truemarmara.org/

That's a vicious looking knife he's brandishing, isn't it.

No, really! He is a peace activist. I'm not shitting you. Honest, he is I tell you!

He's an activist for that peace which is consequent on submission to Islam, and which will be realised when all the infidels are dead.

Psychopathic murdering Zionists + Mass murdering ex PM + Bigoted protestant + ex-military neo-con

This is what the truth IS in the 21st century.

Watkin - I had read that he was a convert to Judaism.

Here he could be Straw or Hoon or any of our war criminals.

'Ken Watkin was implicated in the Canadian Afghan detainee issue, in which several detainees arrested by the Canadian Forces went missing or were tortured following their transfer to the Afghan National Police and National Directorate of Security. According to a report in the Toronto Star, while acting as the Judge Advocate General, Ken Watkin advised the Canadian Forces command that they could be "criminally negligent" for transferring detainees to a risk of torture in Afghan hands. Mr. Watkin refused to answer questions when called to testify in Canada's House of Commons about whether he was directed to authorize the transfers or had knowledge of Canadian diplomatic reports of torture, and claimed that solicitor-client privilege owed to the Government of Canada prevented him answering the House's questions.'

http://celebrity.sonorika.co.uk/news/ken-watkin-bio/571039

Suppose you 'pays your money and take your choice' about him.

The rest sound like pensioners in care homes literally.

Israel’s Geriatric Gaza Flotilla Investigation: the Fix is In

Dvorit Shargel has collected some damning information from the Israeli media about the biased views of the commission chair, 75 year-old Justice Yaakov Tirkel and the lucidity of a 93 year-old member, Shabbtai Rozen.

Yediot Achronot writes:

The judge heading up the Gaza flotilla investigation is known in his rulings as someone who says “Yes” to the security services. He also protects freedom of speech–as long as its not connected to state security.

Tirkel notes that his legal rulings do not originate in a theoretical legal laboratory, but derive from a set of nationalist and humanist values. When there is a conflict between the two, Tirkel continues:

With great sorrow, I view the honor and freedom of our fighters as more dear than those of the enemy’s fighters.

(photo of elderly gentleman sitting in his slippers with carer alongside)
93 year-old Shabbtai Rozen: caption reads (unintentionally ironically) ‘The professor is ready’ (Maariv)

I think we’ve heard enough, haven’t you?

And what can you say about poor Shabbtai Rozen, no doubt once an eminent Israeli diplomat and scholar of international law. But must they dust this fellow off in his nursing home and trot him out before the cameras in his summer pajamas along with his Filipino caretaker? Must they? I would never make the mistake of saying a 93 year old can’t be sharp as a tack, but I’d suggest for a delicate mission such as this one, that propping up someone like this and sitting him in a chair for this panel was a ludicrous exercise.

An interview with him makes him appear equally out to lunch:

Modern communication is limitless. You can receive a protocol from the defense ministry six hours after the end of the meeting. It’s simply fantastic!

Then we have the case of the 86 year-old Amos Horev, a distinguished Israeli general with impeccable intelligence credentials and a booster of the Israeli defense industry. I’ve already written about the built in conflict of interest of having an Israeli general sit in judgment of the IDF. Now we have the added question of why Bibi Netnayhau felt the need for representation from the geriatric set on the panel. At least, Horev had his picture taken in a sports jacket without his caretaker (if he has one) present.

Turkey has wisely denounced the commission even before its first meeting as a sham. Haaretz in an editorial has done the same. They know the fix is in. Why doesn’t Obama? I hope he has a Plan B, because this ain’t the solution to resolving the Mavi Marmara crisis.

Abe Rene,

General Watkins is a shroud for torture, a stonewaller devoid of dignity and blind to humanity. Like Trimble he stalks the dark corridors of the Henry Jackson Society adding his venom to the poisonous spittoons left out by the British Moment to gather the vomit for a new way of thinking about British foreign, security and defence policy that calls for torture and interventionism across the globe. A bully-boy approach to to help themselves to the world’s goodies – like Iraqi and Iranian oil and Afghanistan’s mineral wealth while stepping on the frail screaming bodies of innocent children and traumatised women weeping for the remains of their battered, tortured and bleeding loved ones to be returned to end their pain with the mercy of closure.

Uri Avnery has some questions the Israeli inquiry might ponder:

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery06142010.html

Craig, if the human rights programme at Harvard were pure undiluted neo-con world view - why would they invite you, of all people, to lecture there? (Not that I don't find the fact impressive).

Abe -

A mistake they only made once! There's a video of it on the web somewhere, I think.

They don't know much and don't ask questions. Yes men. Like that Yank general, who when asked what the Russians were doing in that huge underground base under the ural mountains said he did not know. These people have a degree of power and influence. They abuse it. long live intelligent people.

Ishmael at June 16, 2010 5:56 PM

and if we are judged by the company we keep:

http://green-agenda.com/greenweb.html

(see United Nations University of Peace - 3rd paragraph from the bottom).

The human rights industry exists for a reason and that's not the one we might suppose. Read this:

http://www.zcommunications.org/hijacking-human-rights-by-michael-barker

More:

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/the-ideology-of-philanthropy/

Last one (for now).

Craig is absolutely correct about the Harvard organisation.

http://www.swans.com/library/art14/barker04.html

Abe, that is precisely why they do occasionally invite people like Craig, just so that one can say, "Ah, but they must be okay then." It's cover for their imperialist activities. Craig realised it and that's to his immense credit.

Look let's just give it 40 years or so before any Inquiry starts.

We waited that length of time for the Brits to come clean. Does anyone really think the Israelis are gonna do the same in the near future?

On the inescapable parallels between the two settler siege-mentalities in N.Ireland and Israel-the geo-political strategists who planned the Jewish settler colony wanted future "Israelis" to be exactly like the militant ethno-supremacist Unionists in Ulster.

One of these planners Sir Ronald Storrs's wrote in 1937 that Britain needed a place in the Middle East started by emigrants from Russia who would set up an Ulster-like garrison colony that would become a perpetual thorn in the side of all its neighbours.

Like the powerful Sabbatean Jews who hijacked Zionism these planners had no real wish to live in the state they created!

Who could blame them?

The ethno-supremacist outlook of Israeli Jews is rarely mentioned in mainstream sources. Well I mean how could any Jew be ethnocentric?

What after the "Holocaust" ?

Never!

People who've actually lived there tell a different story.

Jack Bernstein a US Jew married a Sephardi and moved to Israel.He and his wife were despised as second class citizens because she was Sephardi.

In Israel where Ashkenazi supremacy reigns Arab and Ethiopian immigrant populations are likewise second class citizens.

Likewise the ethno-ascendancy mentality of the N Ireland Unionists rarely commented on in British coverage did not escape the notice of Geoffrey Bell who wrote the first factual analysis of the Ulster Protestants (1976).

Another link between the enmity betwixt Catholics and Protestants in Ireland and Israel and its perceived enemies is the financial interests who fostered it in the first place.

In Ireland this goes all the way back to Cromwell.

Check out John Kaminski's Tale of Two Traitors re-Cromwell and Churchill.

http://www.johnkaminski.info/pages/the_next_chapter_/a_tale_of_two_traitors.htm

Trimble was the last representative of the Ulster Unionist horse the British had backed throughout the history of the N.Ireland statelet.

When he was finally cast aside by Protestant voters who overwhelmingly backed Paisley the British and Trimble ended up with egg on their faces.

The British had always been riding a losing horse and their failure to foresee that peace could only be achieved when the Loyalists could cut a deal with Sinn Fein typified the lack of judgement shown by Britain throughout.

There are no prizes for guessing who next losing horse is going to turn out to be.

The day will come when the Israelis will be cast aside by their British sponsors just as easily as were Trimble and the Unionists.

It won't be before time either.

I just read two fascinating comments with links re-the unmissable resemblance between the Unionist and Israeli settler mindset.

You need to be very quick though to read the best stuff on this site because our editor is apparently now employed by B'nai B'rith/ADL and has now become addicted to blanket censorship.

Textual references deleted included the following:

Sir Ronald Storr's Orientations (1937)

Jack Bernstein's Life Of An American Jew in Racist Marxist Israel (1985)

The Protestants of Ulster by
Geoffrey Bell (1976)

I have read the last two and can vouch for the fact that Bernstein's is a standard anti-Zionist text that thoroughly corroborates the ethno-supremacism practised in Israel by the Azkenazi elite.

Bell's book was the first in-depth study of Ulster Protestants and Bell made noticeable reference to the ethno-supremacist attitudes against Irish nationalists shared by many in that community.

Freeborn noted that Storr's 1937 book stated the British geo-strategic preference for an Ulster-like garrison state in the Middle East to be populated initially by emigrants from Russia. It was Storrs's wish that the new state in Palestine would become a perpetual thorn in the side of all its neighbours.

I think Freeborn made mocking reference in his comments to people who simply did not believe that Israeli Jews could be capable of ethno-supremacist attitudes. The "Holocaust" is believed by such people to have rendered them quite above such capacity for prejudice and discrimination!

Why on earth Mr Murray believes blanket censorship of such comments and ideas is compatible with free speech is difficult to fathom until one looks beneath the surface.

Evidently Craig Murray believes his audience are not capable of making up their own minds about the glaring parallels between Israeli bigots and Ulster Protestant bigots.

When the topic of the post actually invites such parallels the aforementioned comments could not have been deleted on the grounds they were off-topic. Both writers obviously had some understanding of the topic as was reflected in the choice of texts they made to support their argumnts.

I am now convinced that Mr Murray actually believes he can find new employment in some field where Zionist money and Lobby influence pulls the strings-could it be the corporate media?

Therefore rather than allow free comment on Israel and related topics he is so fearful of alienating his potential employers he won't take the risk any more.

Now that Obama now has the legal emergency power to shut down the internet:

http://propagandamatrix.com/articles/jun2010/061610_kill_switch.htm

-perhaps Mr Murray is shutting down his site in anticipation of Internet 2!

Any comments deemed critical of Israel and its supporters by his future employers will be verboten.

Another fake opposition scam just outed itself!

Can't wait to come across Craig's new "media project" re-Perfidious Albion. It'll be Imperialism with mention of the money behind it completely deleted.

A bit like Niall Ferguson!

Sad liberalism has evidently gone the way of the Enlightenment as described by Adorno and Horkheimer.

Are we allowed to mention them here?

I once met an Israeli consultant in an airport queue in New York. He was returning from some medical conference in Europe. When he realised I was Irish he asked me aout my views on the situation in Northern Ireland at that time (early 1990s). I shared my views with him, assuming he was thinking in terms of an NI/Israeli parallel.

When I then attempted to explore with him the possible application of approaches to an NI solution to the Israeli/Palestinian impasse, he clammed up.

That was my first contact with an Israeli and I was not impressed.

Depicting Ulster Protestants as 'ethno supremacist' is as bigoted as depicting Ulster Catholics as lawless beligerents.

That Unionist politicians are suckers for anti-terrorism rhetoric is unfortunate but perhaps more excusable than those politicians in more peaceful constituencies.

Steelback- You dont want to know what your so called resistence fighters used to do captured soldiers, and policemen and people who dared to just socialy integrate. The IRA used medievial style torture strategicaly. It wasnt a fight for common human rights, it was brutal old cultural divisions enflamed by protagonists and guns and bombs and money for divils donated by foreigners.
That is the true meaning of the troubles in Northern Ireland for the great majority of population of Ulster - who are CIVIL people, protestant and catholics combined.

It should be more than obvious that Israel and Ulster are vastly different places and stories.

You can draw parallels between a chair and a toilet, but mind where you...

"Can't wait to come across Craig's new "media project" re-Perfidious Albion. It'll be Imperialism with mention of the money behind it completely deleted.

A bit like Niall Ferguson!"

Perfidious Albion is another thread. Besides, Ferguson DOES mention where money for wars comes from. In particular in, "The Ascent of Money". Even the Rothschilds get a look in.

But why let facts get in the way of Steelback's obsessive narratives?

"Sad liberalism has evidently gone the way of the Enlightenment as described by Adorno and Horkheimer."

Ich bin eine Frankfurter!

sandcrab

What a pity you couldn't find any texts to support your argument re-Ulster Protestants not being ethno-supremamcist.

You then moved on to make an irrelevant point re-IRA tactics being particularly cruel.

I assume the point you're making is that the Republican side had etnocentric tendencies too. I would't disagree. Anyone who's familiar with rebel songs would have noticed references to Saxon Hun etc.!

At the same time many of the studies done on cross-community interaction found each community made constant reference to ethnic and cultural stereotypes as markers in their dealings with "the other".

But IRA tactics simply point to the fact that no war is pretty and only a piss-poor resistance army is going to make life comfortable for occupying troops!

Yes, I agree with polo's comments re. the parallel drawn by Freeborn wrt British imperial policy wrt Ulster and Palestine. Also re. supremacism in general. This is the commonality.

N. Ireland, S. Africa, Kashmir, Palestine - all very different, but all serving the same purpose.

I think that's an excellent parallel and is one which peoples in many parts of the world have often commented on. I don't think the comments have been deleted, though, have they? They're still there - unless there were others which I've not noticed. As I said on another thread, while sometimes he gets carried away and extrapolates, etc., basically Freeborn has a hell of lot of powerful and useful things to say - and link to.

However, sandcrab has made a very good point as well. This is emphatically not to draw a parallel b/w 'Ulster Protestants' and Israeli rulers - in my view - but simply to demonstrate the common threads that ran thru' British imperial policy in C19th and C20th centuries.

Indeed, there was always a vibrant tradition of argumentative discourse and left-wing activism among the Ulster Protestant communities - information about which one never hears. Same with Republicanism, there were left-wing groups, etc. who wanted to have, and were actively building, cross-community political activism - but (surprise, surprise) the Provos, Ian Paisley and the assorted UK assets crushed all that.

"What a pity you couldn't find any texts to support your argument re-Ulster Protestants not being ethno-supremamcist."

Are you telling us all that text = empirical evidence?

I think not, in fact I find that personal anecdotes from many contributors here provide more honest and factual information on any given situation than much of the media distorted, politically and financially biased articles, books, and column inches written by those with a financial incentive to write.

well said Craig, how apt you speak of the connective tissue here.
There there is the facts to be seen here on the ground.
Arbuthnot (former Tory Chief Whip who 'renegotiated' Lord Belize's peership in secret and kept stumm for ten years) current Chair of the Conservative Friends of Israel, has just been given one of the chairmanships of a key select committee (would that be defence procurement?)

A nastier list of Zionist supporting fascists you would NOT like to be listening to.

http://www.tfa.net/thefreedomzone/speakers.html

All the usual suspects are there inc Trimble.

Ingo - re Arbuthnot

I can spot at least eight FoI here without even checking and there are probably more.

http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2010/06/results-of-elections-for-select-committee-chairs-announced/

Freedom indeed! The organisers behind that conference I linked to above. I can't believe that Rhodes Boyson is still alive. Wikiedia says that he was born in 1925. http://www.tfa.net/the_freedom_association/whoarewe.html

"piss-poor resistance army is going to make life comfortable for occupying troops"

In Ulster the majority of the population where historically established britons and *wanted to remain british*. British troops were no more 'occupying' Ulster than they were occupying Scotland and Wales! The population of Ulster, for came under physical attack from foreigners with different political ideas for the people of Ulster. In that situation of course you have some people, many people in traumatisted communities who support 'ethno supremacist' statements. That is different from saying they all instinctively *are* ethno supremacist - they find themselves in a foreigner funded dog fight.

For my dreams, Scotland and Wales should leave the Union, Northern Ireland too, then we could all get together again in a new union which could maybe cope with westminsters disproportionate appetites.
But Northern Ireland joining the South on its own has never been a viable political solution - because! the majority of the people never wanted it.
How can you know that fact and talk about occupying imperialist troops?

@Suhayl

You probably know about it but worth mentioning after your earlier post.

http://www.oslofreedomforum.com/

@Suhayl

following reading this article. I know where I would like to put a cattle prod, following insertion of the drugs and Kalashnikov we discussed on the drugs thread.

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3043/full

"then we could all get together again in a new union" i meant including Eire - There is no insurmountable cultural divide between the Irish and the rest of the British Isles, we swap comedy music and materialist aspirations these days. There has just been this stupid prehistoric bloodsport encouraged between a tiny minority of republican and unionist gangsters. Stop supporting the right to kill and torture people over/for self determination, and we could team up pretty good.

Ah, Rhodes Boyson - there's a name! Isn't he the gentleman who met up with "Ali G in da house" and was rather proud of announcing that he "got caned" regularly whilst at school? Asked whether it affected his concentration at all, he missed the joke entirely, and cheerfully insisted that getting caned actually +improved+ his concentration.

Arf!

Thanks, Redders, I'll check-out the link. Yes, I know what you mean!

Rhodes Boyson, the man who seesm to enjoy cultivating an image somewhat akin to that of Edward Casaubon from 'Middlemarch'.

Steelback,

Oh! you are trying to connect 'Zeta Beta Tau' to the 'Court of St James' and eventually the link to zionist Larry who gathers intelligence from this site?

"Indeed, there was always a vibrant tradition of argumentative discourse and left-wing activism among the Ulster Protestant communities - information about which one never hears. Same with Republicanism, there were left-wing groups, etc. who wanted to have, and were actively building, cross-community political activism - but (surprise, surprise) the Provos, Ian Paisley and the assorted UK assets crushed all that."

What seems to have been completely driven out is any memory of peoples' peaceful attempts to demand what ought to have been "civil rights".

sandcrab

If you deny that the British constituted an occupying army and subscribe to the "because the majority of N.Ireland people are law-abiding and did not aspire to a united Ireland" narrative-I'm afraid you are living in cloud-cuckoo land.

Moreover you are wilfully ignoring 800 years of Irish resistance to British rule-a not insignificant dimension of the conflict!

The communities that bore the brunt of the occupation were the ones who traditionally stood intransigent against any attempt to impose any externally-sanctioned (read British) form of domination.

Aside from the urban nationalist areas in Belfast like Ardoyne,the Falls,Short Strand et al there were whole swathes of the statelet including not only Derry but large areas of Fermanagh and Tyrone,S.Armagh where Unionists were the minority.

The corporate media and state-sponsored history may have encouraged you to think that the establishment narrative is the only show in town and anything that runs counter to that can be simply air-brushed-however in the real world you need to have made yourself aware of the counter-history.

Partition never enjoyed legitimacy
in any of these areas.It was bitterly resented in the South as well where a civil war was fought by those IRA people who felt the deal Collins had struck with the British was a sell-out of nationalists left stranded under Unionist domination in the North.

As with Israel the legitimacy of the N.Ireland statelet has always been questioned from the start by those who were the victims of the dispossession and ethnic cleansing by which it was first established.

The idea that the Protestants ever constituted a majority in Ulster is entirely specious.

The ancient Irish province of Ulster whence the O'Neills finally fled the British Plantation onslaught against Gaelic way of life was always the seat of rebellion up to that point in the 17th century.

Ulster was nine counties. The British confiscated six of these after the Flight of the Earls in 1607.But the patterns of settlement thereafter meant that Plantation Protestants could still not hope to control their territory without substantial British subvention and ultimately military support.

The current parallels between Britain and its planter Protestant population and the US and the Israelis are hard to miss.

In both cases the long-term financial and political price for settler ascendancy has proved ultimately prohibitive and unsustainable.

Steelback, you can only refer to 17th century conflict in your attempt to undermine Ulsters identity. You stood by the use of torture to achieve paramilitary objectives, and that puts into question once more the limits of your humanity.

Detailed Surveys have been taken again and again on Northern Irelands affiliations.

There is a decent account of its demographics on wikipedia here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_and_politics_of_Northern_Ireland#Views_on_the_Union

With a revealing table on the strength of the populations support for the campaign of violence against its imperialist occupiers. Remember these figures the next time someone blethers on about the brave paramilitary struggle against oppression in the north of Ireland...

Life and Times Survey 2006/2003

Protestants (approx 40% of pop)
Unionist 69%
Nationalist 0%
Neither 30%
Don't know 0%

Catholics (approx 40% of pop)
Unionist 3%
Nationalist 54%
Neither 42%
Don't know 2%

Total
Unionist 36%
Nationalist 23%
Neither 40%
Don't know 1%

iirc,
'Unionist' - means definitely dont attack police soldiers and civilians to achieve a unified ireland.

'Nationalist' - means mostly 'sure it would be nice but lets be civil about it' but for some people a bit of terrorism is alright too.

And 'Neither' - means give us some f'cking peace will you (my vote).

..

I know the politicians are embarassment, but please dont portray Ulster Protestants as a racist settlers. None of my family have stolen any land in distant history, and i have never know any state imposed apartheid in Belfast, other than the military checkpoints everywhere in the 70s and 80s which seemed to most of us religion aside (see figures) to have most to do with battling the hard men making a living bombing , shooting and beating people, week in week out for decades.

Why haven't Steelback's comments been erased yet?

Sh/e has done the research and is clearly antagonistic towards the establishment narrative.

That means s/he's racist/anti-semitic/homophobic/psychologically warped doesn't it?

I don't spend much time on mainstream sites like this but this is how we think here isn't it?

And I just had this thought....Steelback never mentioned the Potato Famine/Gentleman's Genocide.

He's a Holocaust-denier too!

DELETE! EXTERMINATE! OR BOTH!

The British may call it the "potato famine" but many Irish people believe the territory was saturated with British troops in the nineteenth century.

Each British regiment was assigned a region of the occupied territory.

Because Britain was not producing enough food to maintain its own population, especially those who had migrated to the new cities, the job of the troops was to see that the abundant Irish produce was shipped to Britain-at gunpoint.

Whether or not you share this belief Holocaust denial is probably more of a problem in the British case than it is in the Israeli one.

Tony Blair's apology for the "famine" did not cut much ice with those people who believe Britain has used the "potato blight" narative to absolve Britain of the far more serious degree of culpability it holds for the Irish Famine.

sandcrab

Rather than imagine, like a lot of PC liberal leftists here, that you have some kind of monopoly on humanitarianism-ask yourself whether you have done enough to prove your own humanity.

You might be capable of conveying one-sided (e.g.Unionist) versions of history but you utterly lack the capacity to empathize with the history of the indigenous community.

You can probably state the Israeli case against the Arabs equally well but to imagine you're telling the whole story and giving fair play to each branch of the human family is patently absurd!

When you get just as angry about the injustice suffered by the other community with whom you have to live as you do by the injustices you perceive have been perpetrated against your own community-when both forms of injustice anger and upset you then you might have a more realistic claim to be motivated by humanitatrianism.

Wasn't there a guy called "Crabs" who used to shill with Larry,angrisoba and the other disinfo. crew on the 911 thread?

This is the same guy posing as an Ulster Protestant!

Any fool can cite wikipedia polls to support an argument but an Ulster Protestant would have decidedly more ammunition at his disposal than this!

In fact I'd have far more respect for a genuine Ulster Protestant viewpoint than I have for this dingbat shill fabricating a wholly spurious humanitarian discourse.

You've been outed-you're full of CRABS,pal!

This guy seems deficient in the humanity stakes because he's not real!

He's auditioning for Internet 2!

@sandcrab: In Ulster the majority of the population are ethnic Scots, and identify with the Ulster-Scots culture. During the Ulster Plantations, Scottish settlers were deliberately sent over to colonise land confiscated from the indigenous Irish in order to establish political control of a wayward population. They established a set of traditions designed to cement their cultural allegiance to an overseas government to the exclusion of the civil and political rights of the native population (catholics were barred from office because of their religion): these traditions which are now represented and preserved by the Orange Order. Please consult the Wiki entries for “Ulster-Scots people” or “Plantations of Ireland” for more background; then reflect on whether there was actually a landgrab and who the real foreigners might be.

Generations of the settler community were brought up to believe that the “fenians” or “taigs” were morally, culturally and genetically inferior; that the “devil danced around them”. Interfaith marriage, even amongst the wealthy political moderates, was not just discouraged but actively punished. The enmity intensified during the last century following partition, lest the North suffer the same fate as the South. The ethnosupremacist ideology was certainly not confined to reactionaries in loyalist ghettos or extreme religious sects, though they were the most vocal about it. The UDR and their precursors the B-specials recruited from the Unionist population and imposed their dominance by harassment.

Unionist attitudes are determined by tradition and cultural conditioning, not contemplation or debate. Upstanding members of the Ulster-Scots community are unaware of being unjust: they know that the catholic communities are relatively impoverished, and have been routinely harassed by the security services, but that’s not fascism: sure, it’s just because of the type of people they are. Fenians have long been perceived as dirty, lazy scroungers, untrustworthy rats, violent yobs, ignorant labourers, etc who had to be kept under control because so many of them were up to no good. The IRA and INLA proved the point and reinforced the suspicions. So it’s got nothing to do with religious or political favouritism, right?

The Unionists clearly have a sense of righteous dominance, which is determined by tradition and cultural conditioning, not contemplation or debate. It’s instinctive; it isn’t a conclusion derived by argument from reasons, so if you project reasons based on ethnicity or economic interest you’ll be met with bafflement. Unreflective bigotry stymies reconciliation, because you can’t amend what you don’t acknowledge. That’s the kind of fascism we have to learn to dissolve, and you do it through education, not violence.

That’s something that many people fail to understand about the Israelis: most of them reject the notion that they’re evil supremacists. They don’t even think they’re being unfair. They’re acting appropriate within the world that they perceive, and they believe they’re under attack from their Arab neighbours who want to wipe them off the planet. The Arabs of course have an opposite set of instinctive prejudices. Argument and debate between these two groups will not work unless they start to examine the causes of their own attitudes, and not just the arguments based on them.

Trimble unfortunately has never conceded his own prejudices. The fact that he has embraced the self-righteous concepts of fairness and balance without realising that his own attitudes are skewed by historical factors means that he is likely to conclude that fairness favours the embattled community. He will not be conscious of being involved in any cover up.

nextus wrote:
Please consult the Wiki entries for “Ulster-Scots people” or “Plantations of Ireland” for more background; then reflect on whether there was actually a landgrab and who the real foreigners might be.

-
The problem here is you seem to have assumed that i am even more ignorant about my country's history than you are.
The Plantations occured around 300 years ago, keep going back and you'll find that you have just adopted a para-politicaly expedient slice of the regions history. Population and culture has moved back and forth between Ulster and the west and south of Scotland and Britain many times. The ancient native peoples there where the picts and the scots.
The modern celts themselves invaded Ireland from the south pushing the ancient britonic tribes northward.
But that is ancient history, and the plantations criminals are a very long time dead too.

The union occured about 200 years ago and the Uprising about 90 at which time the section of the island which wanted to leave the union was allowed to leave with relatively little bloodshed.

The modern practical situation is that since that time throughout all the troubles there has NEVER been majority support in NI for a unified ireland, never mind a bloody paramilitary campaign of murder and hatred.
The vast majority of the people in Ulster (who i know from growing up with and who i can know of through studies) are and have been for several generations at least, peace loving non-brutalising anti-terrorist, mothers fathers children lovers workers church goers atheists chancers eegits' whatever -not torturous killers.

Apostate:
"ask yourself whether you have done enough to prove your own humanity"

Ask away yourself -i didnt apologise for torture here.. and i never dabbled in a bit of gaybashing, and other hateful cultural stereotyping which your lot have a habit of doing.

"You might be capable of conveying one-sided (e.g.Unionist) versions of history but you utterly lack the capacity to empathize with the history of the indigenous community."

I am a member of the indigenous community thanks, i went to a mixed school and have freinds from varied backgrounds holding all sorts of convictions. and i do empathise with people spun a load viscous hate speak against maligned foes and i tell them where they should shove it whenever possible.

Ive not attached my protests in this thread against the nature of Ulster protestants ,with 17th century history which is all you guys can.

Did you deal with the surveys on the NI populations OWN wishes??

-Of course you didnt, you probably assume they are wrong. Maybe you have met a couple of bad asses that informed you that they were wrong, or you read a few books and your mind is made up.

That wasnt 'a wikipedia poll' its a major survey which wikipedia happens to refer to, uncontested.

I dont have loads more references to hand because i dont bother arguing this often. Its common knowledge here, hardly anyone ever wanted the trouble. Every survey ever done on the subject records it, show me one that doesnt tough guys.

sandcrab, I rather think you exemplify the traits I described.

So political differences and civil unrest have nothing to do with the history of ethnic communities, then (despite what the rest of the world thinks). It's just a numbers game to you. So if and when the demographic changes, as is happening, you and your ilk will have no problem with joining the Irish. Don't think so. The NI state was gerrymandered to stack the voting numbers, and something similar could happen again.

The history lesson wasn't arbitrary: it was an explanation of the current regional differences and engrained attitudes are as they are: the gaels and picts have nothing to do with it. And are you saying the Unionist community doesn't harp back to the 17th century?? Where are you every 12th of July??

Thanks for relating your experiences. But I was talking about the people who were brought up attending Orange marches, chanting anti-Catholic slogans, singing bigoted songs. This took place even amongst communities populated with peace-loving churchgoers who didn't think they were fascists. And most of them remain peace-loving churchgoers. They just don't trust fenians, and would generally prefer not to mix with them, employ them, or sanction marriage with them, etc. Bigotry? What bigotry??

"Generations of the settler community were brought up to believe that the “fenians” or “taigs” were morally, culturally and genetically inferior; that the “devil danced around them”. Interfaith marriage, even amongst the wealthy political moderates, was not just discouraged but actively punished."

Ill tell you that my mother rest her soul told me that things were ok before the bogside, she used to hitch hike all over ireland (with freinds including a couple of members of sein fein!) seeking out and writing down rare old folksongs. She said everyone, her protestant and catholic freinds used to come out to watch the silly Orange Men march. My family have never been landed or rich, most of the communities fighting were recently sprung poor workers in industries. She said there was little to no violence for most of the 60s and civil rights protests and movements at that time were improving what social and economic injustice there was, as there was between historical divides all round britain and europe.
It is just a damn shame what happened in the space of a few years, set Ulster back hundreds.

"Where are you every 12th of July??"
Actualy i tend to avoid that time, but i go watch a bonfire sometimes, and ive sat around a bonfire drinking with Catholic freinds before. Many of them are perfectly civil.

I know proddy chants and songs, and i know of feinian chants and songs too. A culture of rivalry and taunting does exist which some people take part in, some people are fanatical about and some will even kill and maim over.
But the modern culture of Ulster is the same as the South, and scotland and England etc. It's a tv watching mortgaged aspirational consumerist culture, unfortunately, but at least we dont want to kill each other and steal each others stuff anymore.

Yes, every commentator would agree that the sectarian violence ramped up 40 years ago. But it didn't start spontaneously; it was a reaction to institutional discrimination on a grand scale.

The Troubles were a huge setback for Ulster, stoking resentment to lethal levels. But Ulster has bounced back recently, and is farther forward than it was in the 60s; there is more equality, and bigotry appears to be waning. Economics has much to do with this, of course.

I'm not sure that Trimble has been carried along by this, though. He's not as progressive as it's made out (or as treacherous as some Unionists believe). He has instinctive sympathies with the Israelis (not to mention political and economic interests); much more so than with the Palestinians. But I'm sure he'll strive to be objective (in his own eyes, at least).

I dont take much exception to your view nextus, except your partial history lesson. The other side of the story is that there is not a great many rich landed protestants in northern ireland either. Impoverished communities all over the place have been at each others throats for centuries, tit for tat. There are plenty of tails of injustice to go round. Its not been like Israel with the troops bombing, shooting and abusing people at a whim.

Troops serving in NI generaly tried to do the job and keep the head down. Harass them and they'll harass you sometimes, sometimes they just have to take it.

A relative of mine, a policeman, was maimed in a bombing. He got taunted later by the same guys who did it, because there wasnt enough evidence to convict them. They werent scared of a shoot to kill policy or British brutality. They could taunt a policeman they maimed and not worry about consequence.

There was two sides to those troubles, the killers didnt help. 'thats all.

"The other side of the story is that there is not a great many rich landed protestants in northern ireland either."
- Except the farmers, of course. But you're probably not talking about them.

"Its not been like Israel with the troops bombing, shooting and abusing people at a whim."
- Err ... you didn't happen to notice the news the other day, did you? You know, the bit where the PM was apologising ... ?

"Troops serving in NI generally tried to do the job and keep the head down."
- More true of the mainland regiments than the home services like the UDR (U'll Do Rightly's). A pal joined up because he wanted to "hassle taigs". I know very well what they were like: I saw it from the inside.

- Err ... you didn't happen to notice the news the other day, did you? You know, the bit where the PM was apologising ... ?

I didnt, but i know how it goes, i never doubted the paras went berserk maybe. But that is one a few events.
The IDF do stuff like that routinely, without consequences.

Ok, about rich proddy farmers i dont know, maybe there are a dissproportionate amount of protestant farmers throughout Ulster, maybe there arent, who can says so?

"Troops serving in NI generally tried to do the job and keep the head down."
- More true of the mainland regiments than the home services like the UDR (U'll Do Rightly's). A pal joined up because he wanted to "hassle taigs". I know very well what they were like: I saw it from the inside.

Well he would have found his desire restricted by the police and lawcourts. When my second cousin couldnt even worry the guys who maimed and continued to hassle him after they got off. I dont think that was the situation in South Africa, that you could nearly kill a policeman and laugh at him over it later and be protected by the states freedom of speech.

sorry, typo -'paras went berserk, maybe *under orders/on purpose*

"Ok, about rich proddy farmers i dont know, maybe there are a dissproportionate amount of protestant farmers throughout Ulster, maybe there arent, who can says so?"
- Yes, there are, and some of the estates are huge. The catholic-owned farms tend to be small-holdings and tenancies. The distribution varies massively across different regions. The farmers from either side mix fairly well at cattle markets, though there is often a simmering lack of trust.

"Well he would have found his desire restricted by the police and lawcourts."
- Not so simple. The nationalist community would hardly approach them with a complaint. The RUC and the magistrates were as notorious for their bias as the UDR: they were drawn from the same community. Until recently, catholics were grossly under-represented in all of these state services.

If the platoon commander, NCOs or fellow squaddies aren't happy with the behaviour, then it gets reported to the military police and could go to court martial. In practice a case of serious harassment would never go that far. It was more likely to prompt a stern warning for embarrassing the regiment.

I recognise the contrast you're trying to make, but you're overplaying it. There were many routine cases of routine abuses by the security services in NI, complete with state-sanctioned cover-ups. The IRA gained many recruits because they suffered beatings from the army and police, and didn't have a voice to complain. And remember Castlereagh? The abuses that went on there were well documented. Similar things could happen in other barracks, but they weren't talked about, for obvious reasons.

Conversely, while the Israeli army is brutally oppressive, it is not quite as gung-ho as you portray; they are very strict on internal discipline. The offensives, demolitions and other atrocities are ordered by the Knesset, and any deviation from orders is likely to result in an internal investigation (albeit biased). I know people who done national service there, and the patrols sound very similar to NI.

Thanks, sandcrab, for your honest reflection of the Ulster Protestant mindset. I know it very well, too, but it's only when I had the chance to view it from a distance that I realised how blinkered it is. The people are good and righteous in general; but bigotry can lie dormant; it's not hard to elicit declarations, even from churchgoers, that would make people outside that community blanch.

Nextus: I take on board and thank you for your comments. I have been uncomfortably aware that ive been overplaying it, somewhat.

I commented when Ulster Protestants where being singled out of for blame, perhaps their ancestors could be, who doesnt have guilty ancestors? nice for you maybe...

I feel guilty for consuming goods produced by slave labour, and not doing enough to help others, and not making the best of life.. Theres alot to be guilty about then and now, there is always alot to find blame for. We need to work to make things better, not fight.

I stand by the observation that the great majority of people in Ulster did want the paramilitary violence and most including plenty of Catholics did not even wish for a unified/united ireland.

To get anywhere near a democratic mandate for leaving the Union you have to deny protestant residents a vote on the matter. That is Apartheid. The right of self determination for the whole population was eventualy conceeded by republican leadership and the reason Ulster is still in the union is because the combined population still want it to be.
I challenge anyone to criticise or counter the life and times survey i linked: http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/ and i expect there are other studies documenting the same and consider this should be common knowledge to commentors on the recent history and present situation.

So Im testifying the fair character and peacewillingness of the general population of Ulster. Im much less sure of the peaceful wishes of the British secret services and actors in the Irish state im afraid.

Also, while im dreaming, 300 years ago, thats about 10 generations, i will have around a thousand ancestors from that time from who knows where? They all came from mars on the back of the renaissance. I just dont buy the idea that protestants dont have valid historical links to live in Ulster. I dont think its sound. Maybe i should get my DNA analysed or somethin..

"for your honest reflection of the Ulster Protestant mindset. I know it very well, too, but it's only when I had the chance to view it from a distance that I realised how blinkered it is."

Ive viewed it from a distance too and know it is blinkered. I think everyones mindeset is blinkered, but no moreso Unionists than Nationalists. No way, i couldnt say either side is more enlightened than the other.

The world is even more confusing without blinkers.

ok, best to you'

You're right that the great majority did not want paramilitary violence, but the question was what to do about it. Fight back? For years, most Unionists favoured a brutal security clampdown, rather than paramilitary retaliation. While this may have prevented specific incidents, it ultimately stoked the underlying sentiments and inflamed the problem.

I wouldn't quibble with the surveys. Northern Catholics have evolved a separate identity from Eire and many do not wish to be assimilated. Fionnuala O'Connor documented the various attitudes in her book "In Search of a State". The principal "cause" for some protesters was freedom from oppression and political autonomy rather than a united Ireland.

Moreover, Eire would not necessarily be keen to embrace Ulster with all its attendant difficulties; they couldn't afford it, for one thing.

Anyway, virtually everybody has now signed up for self-determination now, so I hope we can lay that gripe to rest. But it doesn't make the prejudice go away. The voting patterns are still dictated by ethnocentric identity; in other countries, it tends to be economic policy that decides elections. Attitudes are maturing, though.

My point was rather about Trimble. He may represent political progress (= opportunism), but he also supports state supremacy, tough security force tactics against rebellious minorities, and resistance to concessions without preconditions. On pain of contradicting his own principles, he won't accept Palestinian legitimacy until they stop fighting against Israeli oppression. In NI, he spoke in favour of heavy-handed security crackdowns merely on suspicion of unlawful activity. Join the dots to preview his report on the Mavi Marmara enquiry.

Yes, cultural blinkers are a feature of parochial societies, but usually it is just the merits of outsiders they are blind to, not those of the neighbours.

My sense is that the protestant community is still more intransigent and resolute, at least in rural areas, than the catholic community. But the emerging generation is showing more signs of inclusiveness, and long may it continue.

Best to you in return. Thanks for the chat.

sandcrab

Your constant resort to anecdotal evidence to support you point of view will not pass muster I'm afraid.

The Ulster Protestants secured and maintained their Orange state via the use of state-sanctioned violence by sectarian militias against the Northern Catholic population.

For sixty years they ran a repressive Orange state with security laws enforced indiscriminately against recalcitrant nationalists that S.African President Dr Vorster said he wished he had!

Unsurprisingly there were IRA campaigns in every decade after the 1930s. The legitimacy of the N.I.state was always in question. Gerrymandering,blatant discrimination in local government and housing-you simply can't cite the general population's will for peaceful co-existence ad infinitum and ignore this history.

Those who ignore and hope history will go away usually find it blows up in their faces. This is what happened to the Orange state in 1969. After the riots the previous October in Derry the state was losing control and the administration turned to Britain to prop them up.

Callaghan's visit followed soon after and there was for a brief period a sense in the Catholic comunity that the Labour government had seen the state for what it was and was at last willing to remedy their grievevances.

This all fizzled out when the Tory administration took over in London. The Tories immediately began to implement the security crack-down against Catholics the Unionist leadership wanted.

The Falls curfew raids and the Army killings of Catholic civilians that occurred the same night were but the prelude to much darker days ahead.

The Bloody Sunday atrocity in 1972 was the logical outcome of the British- Unionist security crack-down and their position on the status of "Free Derry".

On the Foyle and with its close proximity to the border the city with its majority but largely disenfranchised Catholic population was the Orange state's achilles heel. This independent nationalist enclave simply could not be tolerated. It would have to be very visibly swept aside. Britain would have draw a line in the sand and demonstrate its willingness to enforce the Union militarily.

Bloody Sunday sent out a signal of British determination to enforce its colonial writ as it had done in Malaya and tens of other outposts post-WW2. It was now thought necessary to convince not just the Northern Catholic population but the government in Eire and the watching world to mind its own business.

While Cameron's apology has been warmly received by families and friends of the Paras' victims no-one has acknowledged that the killings had been authorised at the highest level of the Tory government. Heath was always deeply evasive as to his own culpability for the murders.

You seem to think this history must be forgotten and we should all look back to the days of the Orange state with a sense of nostalgia for the halcyon days of Protestant supremacy.

You're burying your head in the sand Mr Crab!

Any argument that proceeds by willed amnesia, anecdote and the smearing of your opponents as "gay-bashers" and apologists for torture-is obviously deeply flawed.

It's not a little reminiscent of the St Louis School of Disinformation and Israeli Propaganda with which we have all had to become so familiar since the invasion of the Hasbarat shills began!

When this guy,Crab refers to "you lot"
and ascribes all manner of base motivation to those who don't agree with him he seems to lay bare all the insecurities and wish to censor and delete we have seen on this site in recent weeks.

People who know something about a topic-be it N.Ireland or the Middle East will make their case quite rationally and with a sense of tolerance and respect for the other point of view.

At the same time such people will undoubtedly find their patience tried by people who simply hide from the truth and self-evidently don't know enough about the topic.

Paradoxically it seems to be people who pride themselves on their devotion to tolerance and "liberal causes" who demonstrate qualities that are quite the inverse of these they so loudly proclaim.

Thus if they are uncomfortable with certain topics they will anathematize their opponents-"anti-semites", "homophobes", or "conspiracy theorists"-seem to be the favourite smears here.

While I'll freely admit to my predilection for the last mentioned foible the resort to the first two smears I generally regard as evidence of the weakness rather than strength of the opposing argument.

I'm against the Zio-fascism that exists among the Western elite and in Israel.

This is not "anti-semitism". For the most part the Jewish supremacists are not semites at all. This is particularly the case in Israel itself where they are mainly Ashkenazi with no semite blood whatever.

As far as homophobia goes I'm not aware that Craig has even broached gay issues at all. Personally I simply couldn't care less about anyone else's sexual orientation-it's British prurience at its worse.

Someone else's religion is their business too. I don't give a damn as long as they don't try to ram it down my throat.

Holocaust fundamentalism like Islamic fundamentalism is a religion to which however I do take exception.

Try to ram either of those down my neck and I might get more than a bit impatient!

iara lee speaks at UN...part 1 of 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTZWhQL22o

iara lee speaks at UN:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTZWhQL22o

iara lee speaks at UN:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTZWhQL22o

Quite agree,Apostate.

I too have endured the entirely false racism charge from our editor-in-chief,Obersturmfuhrer Murray himself!

Simply to challenge patent falsehoods like the Holocaust false-religion is to invoke the blanket censorship Orwell taught us is always employed to protect state-sponsored lies.

Nor can one draw attention to the Zionist banking cabal that controls the Fed and the Bank of England and central banking world-wide.

Verboten. Taboo. Unspeakable.

People as emotionally constipated as this are obviously the unwitting victims of Frankfurt,Freudian social engineering.

They went to university and were taught the Frankfurt School claptrap re-The Authoritarian Personality. They have been taught to pathologize any tendency towards group cohesiveness among members of the majority culture.

Frankfurt taught that worrying about a host nation's concerns re-its demographic and cultural eclipse as a consequence of mass immigration is but an irrational psychopathological response to an entirely natural process.

Frankfurt dogma persists in universities today where the Humanities field is dominated by the prioritization of ethics and values and empirical science values are rejected.

Frankfurt actually dispensed with any pretense that social enquiry should be conducted according to some approximation at least to scientific standards. The whole enterprise was conducted according to the perceived cultural interests and priorities of the Frankfurters themselves.

Check out Kevin MacDonald's deconstruction of the Frankfurt agenda in Chapter 5 of his Culture of Critique.

Next time you're stigmatized as homophobic or anti-semitic remember these guys have been thoroughly brain-washed and are now getting far too old to challenge their self-delusions.

The falsehoods they invent about their perceived adversaries were programmed into them long ago by Frankfurt and Freud. They'll take them with them to their graves!

RIP Frankfurters!

nextus thankyou for your chat - you are a proper good read!

Here's a bit more of my rambling, 'slainte

About the observation that protestant communities seem to be 'still more intransigent and resolute' than catholic ones, I know it is not an definitive statement, and to require empirical support might seem obstructive, but if it cannot be established with some method then it could just be a personal notion of stereotypes.
Statements can be as subjective and misleading as eg. 'these hifi speakers sound great' where our unconscious expectations affect our experience most, we can hear actual differences in the price-tags, differences which we cant detect without seeing them, you have to test speakers 'blind' if you want a pure measure and it is impossible to estimate about peoples characters securely in this way.
Basically when we refer to experience, and don't test and depersonalise it (quite rigorously) the stereotypes which are so powerfully manipulatable by cultural actors can get reinforced.
I learned this nature of conscious knowing and thinking while experimenting with AI, maybe I'm feigning smartness or being nerdy here, but i could claim that's why i declared i cant say which community has the 'better' character.

I know i did say the terrorists in Ulster had the 'worst' characters but would attach to that charge the fact that they did not act with a popular mandate supporting their destructive behaviour...

..anyway

When i joined this thread cursing the IRA instead of the Unionists who were being spoken of in purely negative terms, it produced a reaction to defend the IRA. The most common cultural stereotype outside of minority Unionist sympathy, is that IRA terror was a response to Unionists wrongs. That can be put forward but for the Unionists to take that on board their history and culture should be respected at the same time. Where sympathy/empathy is sought it needs to also be given.

I find the associations with Zionists are mismatched, even if self inflicted. They are as misleading as they are instructive, since Israel was established and maintained with severe violence on a scale not known in Ulster since centuries if ever: the Israeli state responds to low level paramilitary attacks with air-strikes, in military assaults kills hundreds of women and children a year, blockades economic goods and sponsors continued eviction and settlement of territory. This is not like Northern Ireland! If there is a winner in localised territorial feuds in Ulster it is as often the nationalists as it is the unionists. Although some of the lines of the conflicts are similar the timescales and proportions are very different.

Ulster protestants get charged with associations and a historical narrative that blatantly demeans their presence in the place where they are born and live today. I think even you nextus referred to Ulster protestants as 'non-indigenous' Doing that to anyone in the land of their parents home, regardless of who or where they are, will result in nothing but offense, unless the receiver is extremely magnanimous.

(What would most affect someones intransigence and resoluteness, would be their current circumstances and what is being put to them.)

For Ulster Protestants specifically, the historical charges seem dragged out to me, i am not aware of any great influx of settlers within living memory, the chosen most salient invasion having occurred 300 years ago.

I can call to the defence of my existence here, the ancient displacement of the Scotti to the north of the island and Scotland, the shared sea of the north east of the island and the south west of Scotland (kingdom of Dalriada) Movement of culture and people crossing the sea during ancient times, and the middle ages, and the dynamic competitive movements with religious strife all over Europe at the times at which the most referenced plantations in Ulster occurred.

Modern analysis of mitochondrial DNA do seem to show certain genetic strains located in just ulster and Scotland now which where located throughout ireland before the Celts arrived. Ancient history seems to me to have the potential to marry Irish identities in the north and south, because as was previously ignored by romantic authors, the Celtic lineage which is held so dearly was one which entered in the south, and the pre-existent britonic tribes remained more-so in the north travelling over the small sea, between it and Scotland where Iona and Ailsa Craig reside.
Now those with a crystallized cultural narrative of alien displacement can read my ideas here and say, that it is just fantasy, but i think that imagination is the substance which identity is made of, what is important is the character which it inspires. No good will come from summoning unnecessary foes and feeling hard done by for decades and centuries after battles and competitions. No good will come from charging protestants that their identity is encompassed by an account of 300 year old trespass.

The protestants after all are a minority in the whole of the island, as the Scots would be if England decided that it had some historical and geographical right to rule there. What difference does historical outlook make to territorial claims? If historians found they erred and had to make revisions, how should that affect relations today? To me it is all fiction, whether it resembles the true past or not. What is more sure, is what living people can recall, but even that can change.

"No good will come from charging protestants that their identity is encompassed by an account of 300 year old trespass"
- I think the history lesson is a useful rejoinder for the community leaders who stake their cultural identity, and their right to dominate society, on the Battle of the Boyne, which is the whole point of the Orange Order. Such traditions instil blatant bigotry in otherwise innocent, well-meaning people. Trimble is an exemplar of the type, as was Molyneaux before him. But they’re a dying breed.

A growing proportion of the educated business class can't be bothered with that nonsense anymore; political opinions are increasingly based on economics and social policy. There has also been a realisation amongst the grassroots that they have been led into conflict by a myth; the progressive leader David Ervine realised this, and argued that we should be focusing on economic divisions. That doesn’t mean consolidating the status quo, which itself is a product of discrimination and inequality.

The Ulster Protestant community has diverged from their Scots ancestry, just as Northern Catholics are distinct from those in the Free State. Unfortunately, while each group still looks to those remote origins for their core identity, the differences will manifest as divisions. The solution is to stop identifying with historical movements and foreign nationalities, and to focus on the here and now. Ulster should have the confidence to strike its own path and forge its own identity.

I wish there was representative term for the combined nationality: “Northern Irish” is awkward and distorting, but what’s the alternative: “Ulsterian”?

The Ulster-Scots identity is a recent invention designed to counter the rise of the Irish identity amongst the nationalist community. ‘Ullans’ (or Ulster brogue) is being pitched as a separate language, when it’s just a dialect distinguished by ignorance of grammar and spelling; serious linguists regard it contrivance, a risible effort to compete with Gaelic. Each of these movements is insidiously attempting to pin the respective cultures to historical events and remote governments, and thereby resist integration. This is not the way forward. It only points back.

So yes, if you’re genuinely willing to give up the traditional allegiance to overseas communities, to stop harking back to historical tribalism, and to combat cultural and sectarian discrimination, then there is hope for a progressive future. The logic entails abandoning the political position is known as “Unionism”. Are you prepared to forsake that? What about the others in your community??

It’s an important question. The future for the people of Northern Ireland depends on it. The nationalists would have to match the commitment by yielding their allegiance to ancient Hibernian myths, theocratic rule, and historical grudges. I think they’ve made a lot progress in that direction, and are now pushing for social inclusion. I hope the Ulster Protestant community can put aside their traditional bigotry and join them.

sandcrab

Mitochondrial DNA?

What kind of "nerdy smartness" is that?

You and I know you're a complete charlatan!

You're pretending you've studied the topic when it's patently clear you're bull-shitting.

You sound like some cerebrally- challenged undergraduate trying to curry favour with your "Postmodern Studies" prof. by dancing around like some kind of intellectual fan-dancer using appropriately abstruse impenetrable language.

Horse-shite!

You're not fooling anyone apart from the Next guy with whom you're spending time each night whispering sweet-nothings.

It is quite clear you're doing everything in your limited intellectual power to obscure British geo-political strategy from the conflicts in the Middle East and Ireland.

Your purpose is to absolve the elites who helped create both the Orange State and Israel from direct responsibility for the enmities and hatreds they stirred up deliberately in order to achieve their long-term objectives.

Typically you attach pious and holier- than-thou statements re-reconciliation to your vacuuous rambling.

Check out your own DNA before you pontificate supercilliously about other people's!

You my friend have been OUTED!

P.S.Please OUTED as a reference to your sexuality about which-you might be disappointed to know-I couldn't give a damn!

Of course when you think about it, if we transpose the Northern Ireland fraca with the Israel/Palestinian issue then we should have embargo'd NI until the population gave in... restricted food et al.

Way to go Mr Trimble...there are jobs for the like of you and mr Blair...(uckwits)

Agreed anon.

Hi Nextus.
Hi Nextus. I think that Unionist leaders, having possessed sufficient numbers, have mostly staked 'their right to dominate' on that criteria rather that the battle of the boyne and i don't accept that their stories are just all 'nonsense'. Thats the kind of aspersion which doesn't need to be part of the lesson, it reads to me as a little leak of bigotry.

But i did take some of your history lesson and have to admit my memory is much refreshed if not enlightened :) It is a poignant tale to me, the image of a densely wooded and sparsely populated, most Gaelic corner of Ireland, fought over and settled by English and Scottish arrivals in the 17th century from which most protestant ancestry in Ulster would seem to originate today.

I can see how you find justification of your 'non indigenous' label from this time, but it is a misleading label as the arrivals came over a small sea bridge which culture and population had been passing over for millenia. This is not non-indigenous in the same respect of European settlers to Australia, Americas and Africa etc where they where separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years of contact. I question to what extent the norths catholics are indigenous in a fair application of these terms, observing the south hosted the arrival of the Celts to the 'pre-indigenous' Britons. Also what can 10 generations of even repressed inter mating do to the distinction? Well you are nextus, but i don't accept the use of the term here.

"So yes, if you’re genuinely willing to give up the traditional allegiance to overseas communities, to stop harking back to historical tribalism, and to combat cultural and sectarian discrimination, then there is hope for a progressive future.

These criteria for success are extraneous, we are separated from the mainland Britain by the smallest stretch of a small sea, and our modern language and interests skip as easily over it as they drive down south.
Societies harking back to historical scenes can exist mildly like they do elsewhere. Parades are just fares when they are simply tolerated by those not wishing to attend and dodgy parents don't send kids from all over to riot. The idea that wanting to walk down some streets a couple of times a year while dressed up fluting or piping and drumming, is too much an offense to bear for someone else's tradition is twisted to me.

All we need is tolerance owing to well established civil rights in ulster/Britain/Europe. Less characterisation, lack of support for violence, should allow cultures coexist and merge without brutality. Its about not going out of your way to be offended and offend back.

The logic entails abandoning the political position is known as “Unionism”. Are you prepared to forsake that? What about the others in your community??"
You would be surprised about me. Ive spoken for the community as a lost sheep, your guess would be better than mine.

sandcrab

Are you on something?

You are sounding more and more like some old LP from the 60s where the needle's got stuck on "All You Need Is Love!"

This is empty rhetoric from someone who is obviously a bigot and has convinced himself he can hide the fact.

Sorry people here are a little bit more discerning than that. We worked out you're no Martin Luther King!

You also seem to have deluded yourself into believing that you can convince people you know something re-Ireland.

Analysis and understanding do not usually result from the anecdote and impressionistic verbiage in which you specialize.

Your position on the parades issue gives you away for a start.

The contentious parades are the ones where Protestants insist on parading their political supremacy over their Catholic neighbours in places like Drumcree are they not?

David Trimble used Drumcree as a photo-shoot in which he could star as someone who had taken a stand on the "Protestant Right To March".

Like the Unionists who consistently used "Flags and Emblems" legislation to ban any form of public demonstration of nationalist sentiment had some kind of monopoly on maintaining citizens' liberties?

Get real!

The only parade of public sentiment in N.Ireland which you would allow would be one of Protestant supremacy.

Throughout the period of the "Troubles" no nationalist parades even contemplated venturing near "Unionist territory".

Ever heard of the AOH demanding the right to march down the Shankill?

You're a "born-again" plonker sandcrab and we've worked out where you're coming from.

The game's up. You're only deluding yourself now.

Please don't persist in insulting our intelligence!

You're a "born-again" plonker sandcrab and we've worked out where you're coming from.

--
You have massive issues with your unconcious expectations by the way. Keep churning out pages of ridicule and your apocalypse manifesto with your pal/sockpuppets why dont you :p

sandcrab

You've got the market on PC language covered with phrases like "you have massive issues" etc.

Massive issues with.......er..let me guess is it "anti-semitism", "Holocaust denial", gay issues, "globalisation", or environemntalism?

Or is it some other elite-driven agit-prop brainless dingbats like you peddle to make yourselves feel good?

When it comes to intellectual debate you ain't at the races!

You're shit and you know you are!

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