Belfast Catholics riot over Protestant parade

[Scurrilous]

Source: Associated Press

<snip>

"Masked and hooded Belfast Catholics hurled gasoline bombs, fireworks and other makeshift weapons at police Monday as the most bitterly divisive day on the Northern Ireland calendar reached an ugly end.

Several rioters and at least two officers were injured, none seriously. Irish nationalists in Ardoyne, a militant Catholic enclave of north Belfast, were trying to block a parade by the Orange Order, Northern Ireland's major Protestant brotherhood.

Tens of thousands of Orangemen spent Monday mounting hundreds of similar parades across the British territory, almost all of them trouble-free, in an annual stress test for the province's fragile peace.

More than 1,000 Orangemen and their accompanying bandsmen eventually did march down the main road past Ardoyne to the beat of a lone drum — but only after riot police fought an hourlong street battle backed by a surveillance helicopter and three massive mobile water cannons."

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izNTMK0hWvtHXdhYEKuEQawlxC_AD99DPU800

[angstlessk]

1. that makes it to appear to be not a truce, but that the protestants won?

just sayin :shrug:

[Jackeens]

16. No one won, everyone lost.

[Jackeens]

2. The violence was mindless, but the Orange Order shouldn't be marching through Catholic areas...

....it's pure provocation.

[TygrBright]

4. But it's TRADITIONAL provocation. Anyway, why d'ye think they're called "Provos."

heheh.

(Ne'mind, I KNOW where "Provo" came from. Just seemed a great opportunity.)

Let's face it, the strongest, most durable, most revered, and most observed tradition in all of Ireland is "Pissing Each Other Off."

It's what Irish people are best at. Ask anyone who grew up in an Irish-American family.

wryly,
Bright

[Speck Tater]

3. Catholics vs Protestants, Sunni vs Shia. Ain't religion grand? nt

[Jackeens]

11. But the funny thing is.....it has next to nothing to with religion.

The only factions in the whole miserable 'dispute' who believe religion IS an issue are the extremes of the Protestant community, as represented by the Orange Order (the crowd who marched today). Bob Jones was a pal of the Reverend Ian Paisley, the long-time leader of Northern Ireland's extreme Protestants.....say no more. (He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by the Bob Jones University). Bigoted to the core, and a supporter through the years of South Africa's apartheid.

For most, though, religion is irrelevant in all of this - Catholics and Protestants are just the easiest tags to use, we really should stick to Republicans/Nationalists v Unionists/Loyalists.

[amandabeech]

22. Isn't there some degree of very old ethnic conflict, too?

Aren't the protestants mostly from the border area between Scotland and England, and are ethnically distinct from those whose ancestry is rooted in the island of Ireland? If so, you might have a double whammy of religion and ethnicity, which I think adds up geometrically or logorithmically instead of arithmatically.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Ignis]

24. Yes.

The British and Scots were shipped in to work the land, and the conflict starts there. Religion is just a window dressing for the underlying ethnic conflict.

Do you really think people are killing each other over transubstantiation?

[amandabeech]

26. As to war over transubstantiation, stranger things have happened.

However, I'd say ethnicity trumps all, as you point out.

[Ignis]

32. Heh, true enough:

[amandabeech]

33. What's that?

The sandal that nearly took out shrub?

[amandabeech]

5. What a mess.

I thought that this was more under control.

[Bryn]

6. Irish people should be smarter and better than this crap

I can't believe how so backward they are. It's not dark age anymore. It's 2009, for heaven's sake! And stop killing over fairy tales/mythologies!

[Maccagirl]

7. In Leon Uris' book "Trinity" there's a quote

"There is no present or future in Ireland-just the past happening opver and over."

[Jackeens]

13. We're not backward!

This horror is now confined to a corner of the island of Ireland, and even there it's only a minority still lodged in the past. Every country has its bigots, we're no different.

[redqueen]

27. Stop generalizing. What a shameful comment.

Absolutely disgusting.

[sofa king]

34. Eh, it's not so crazy up close.

I zipped around Donegal and Northern Ireland a few years back. Donegal is part of the historic province of Ulster, but only six of those nine counties became Northern Ireland. I saw evidence of church-burnings on the border and a few sections of barbed wire in Londonderry/Derry which separated unruly communities. I also received a helpful tip not to attend some parade-like event going down in "Derry," which is what the nationalists prefer to call the place. Apparently someone was planning to disrupt the event, but I never heard if it happened. Nobody I met treated the issue as anything more than an annoyance. Many seemed to be a little embarrassed about it.

As best I can tell, most Irish people are much more interested in hurling than in this "unrest."

In America, we'd call it a gang war. But the level of violence between the two groups fails to approach that of a brisk summer war over crack territory in DC or any other major American city, the Irish gangsters aren't nearly as well armed, and it appears to be confined only to urban centers in Northern Ireland or on the border.

I'd sleep on a bench in any Irish city I saw and not worry about waking up dead. I can't say that about any city in America.

[winyanstaz]

8. more trouble, waring and fighting...over organized religion...

sheesh..when will we ever learn?

[snake in the grass]

18. The nutjobs will learn...

...when they've managed to kill each other off. I guarantee you there will then be peace.

[Submariner]

9. Showing that "God says love thy neighbor" stuff. Classy

[nosmokes]

10. If the bloody Brits could get over the fact they're no longer an empire and

return Ulster to Ireland I reckon it would hash itself out, eh?

[Jackeens]

15. LOL! As an old time southern Nationalist I would love a United Ireland before i die...

...but only when the majority in northern Ireland consent to it. It might happen one day, but to be honest I don't particularly want to share my citizenship with the more extreme elements of Ulster 'loyalism': they're racist, bigoted scum.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

19. it's beyond imperialism now

Ireland was the only colony that Britain seriously attempted to integrate into the metropolitan UK, but like Algeria was for France, this proved to be a huge failure.

The artificially-defined six county rump statelet was merely putting off the inevitable. The British people (English, Scots, and Welsh) see N.I. as a foreign land and have supported Irish unity against the policies of the British political class.

The religious hatred which was fostered by the local N.I. political élite with historical backing by London proved to be a huge contradiction for British policy. Religious apartheid helped tie the protestant majority to the 'benefits' of the union (socio-economic dominance over local catholics) thus preserving the territoriality of the British state, whilst making NI's social and civic integration into the UK impossible.

Westminster has realised the failure of this integration. Power-sharing in NI is seen as an inevitable route to Irish unity, and political unionism can only tactically delay but cannot reverse this course.

Most importantly of all, with the abandonment of institutionalised discrimination against Roman Catholics any supposed benefits of retaining the British union become more difficult to argue for.

[The abyss]

20. Well spoken!

I like your comparison to the French situation!

Very good!

[Ignis]

25. I think you're right. At least, I hope you're right.

I'd also love to see a united Ireland in my lifetime.

[PassingFair]

29. Um... then you're all for white, black and yellow people packing up...

and leaving the United States.

We've been in the US for a shorter time
then the colonization of Ireland.

Better move back to where ever your people
came from and give all the land back to
the indigenous tribes.

Same difference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantations_of_Ireland

[redqueen]

30. It's not the same IMO.

Simply because I consider integration to be a more important factor than duration of the colonization.

It's half UK and half independent... it's still a blur and therefore still subject to contentious debates.

[PassingFair]

31. Only because we annihilated OUR indigenous peoples.

AND staged a revolution.

[The abyss]

12. Playing the “Green card”

Am I recalling that term correctly?

Playing the “green card” was a parliamentary term meaning to “stir up” the north counties so as to draw attention away from other UK issues.

[Jackeens]

14. No

Playing the 'green card' was an accusation often levelled at Irish nationalist politicians (ie mainly from the Catholic community) who tried to use nationalist grievances to further their own positions. The parliamentaries, on both sides of the conflict, didn't play any cards....they just killed people.

[The abyss]

17. My error thanks for your insight.

I recall having a dissuasion or two regarding Bernadette Devlin on the DU board. I always had a lot of respect for that lady!

She and her husband were pretty badly shot up by opposition forces while the Brits maintained a “protective” road block yards from their house.

She survived, one tough gal!

[Odin2005]

21. Oh no, the Cat. and Prot. Irish better not starting this shit again.

:(

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. Real IRA blamed for Belfast riots

Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly said a "a small number of dissident republicans from outside Ardoyne" had stoked sectarian tensions and orchestrated the trouble.

He said: "The Real IRA or whatever they may call themselves and some other splinter organisations sent people over here with the sole aim to cause riots, to bring this further down into sectarianism."

The Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams condemned the violence and said the Orange Order should consider re-routing a small number of contentious parades, including those which pass the Ardoyne.

"Why play into the hands of those who orchestrated last night disturbances?," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8148955.stm

[redqueen]

28. I figured as much.

Idiots.