You are not Irish, They are not Republicans. Please stop sending them money and guns.

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Poll

Votes: 55

You are not Irish, They are not Republicans. Please stop sending them money and guns.

Author:

dmg

Topic:

Politics

Posted:

Sep 24, 2001

Comments:

Many Americans have a schizophrenic attitude to their nationality. Despite having lived in America for many generations, and despite never having left the shores of our great country, many Americans still insist on identifying themselves as Irish.

As ridiculous as this is (about as ridiculous as the Northern Irelanders calling themselves British), I don't really have a problem with it, so long as it is confined to harmless pursuits like painting one's face green, or marching in the local St Patrick's Day parade. My objections are on political grounds.

[Editor's note, by dmg] Apologies if you have already read this article. I think it is time the issue of American funding for terrorism were re-visited in the light of recent events. I am interested to know if any of our Irish-American readership out there have changed their opinion on funding of terrorists in light of the recent World Trade Center attack ? Also, does anyone else find it strange that the biggest sponsor of Islamic terrorism and alleged "friend of the USA" seems to be let off the hook ?

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You may well think you are Irish, because your great great great great grandfather came from the 'old country'. We will ignore the fact that if we use this argument you are also an 'African American' and a 'Native American' and, in all probability a 'Limey'. Your self-delusion is of no concern to me. My objections are to your political donations to terrorist organizations who bomb innocent people in the United Kingdom, for no other reason than their race.

Although few 'Irish' Americans seem to realize it, the Irish Republican movement has nothing in common with the Republican party of America, and indeed has more in common with the Nazis and Fascists.

For many years, the complex situation in Eire/Ireland has defied the best political minds in the world. No solution seems to be possible between two groups of stubborn, proud peoples who are unable to reconcile their religious differences. Despite years and years of violence, equally from both sides, these people, the hardcore minority, do not want peace.

So now that the Good Friday agreement is looking as if it might work, I would just like to take the opportunity to ask all you 'Irish' Americans one thing: Please, please, please, stop interfering in something you do not understand, and which does not concern you.

Please do not send any money to 'Irish' terrorist groups.

In Ireland, a Republican is not a free-marketeer who believes in rolling back taxation, and a strong military. In Ireland, a Republican is a supporter of a neo Nazi organization wishing to commit murder all over the United Kingdom, all over some stupid war that happened hundreds of years ago, which they lost.

Now I may have an unsophisticated view of things, but as 'Irish' Americans, you are at least 3500 miles away from the carnage your donations have funded. (more often than not the victims are people like me, who could not give a flying fuck about the moronic historical squabble in Ireland)

Please stop funding these people. They ARE NOT, I REPEAT NOT the same party of GW Bush and Ronald Reagan.

Carry on by all means dressing up in green and celebrating your 'Irish' culture (however American you are) if that's what floats your boat. Just lay off the murder and terrorism. That's all I ask.

	I agree... (5.00 / 1) (#9)
	by Wiggy on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:48:08 AM PST

	OK, let's get something out of the way first. I'm British, I live in Manchester (which was blown to smithereens a few years back - 250+ injured), my Grandmother is from Southern Ireland, but I was born into a relatively nationalistic/patriotic English family. I couldn't agree more with what you're saying. The truth of the matter is that the IRA knows that Americans are stupid enough to give them money, and plays on that fact. The countless arguments I've had trying to explain to people that this is not a situation where NI is being held hostage by Imperial Forces have depressed me greatly at times. I once ended up in a flamewar on Usenet, where I was directed as a 'limey' to 'get the fuck out of Northern Ireland'. Seeing as I wasn't in Northern Ireland at the time, I thought that the poster may be mistaking me for somebody who was. And then I realised what he was getting at. The best response I could come up with was 'the moment the USA retreats from Hawaii and returns it to the natives, I will be happy to write to my MP in the strongest terms'. Of course, the whole of the US is stolen from natives anyway, but this obviously was going to start a whole new flamewar which I didn't want. We live in a world where the US seem to think they know what is best for everyone. The British used to think like that. Look what happened to us.

	Yanks are the problem (4.00 / 1) (#11)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 02:19:47 PM PST

	They have been a major cause of the ongoing problems between the Irish and the British for the last century. Indeed, Gladstone had all but arrived at a solution to the differences between the two cultures (mostly based around respecting the different views Irish culture has about landlords and land ownership). This was acceptable to the British and the Irish. It was not acceptable to the Irish-Americans, though, who goaded the IRA into increased violence. Of course, lately the IRA has been more concerned with selling drugs and blowing up their fellow Irishmen.

	Irish americans (none / 0) (#17)
	by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 01:27:15 AM PST

	The reason so many American's consider themselves irish, is because quite a few can directly trace their and it is all/100% people who emmigrated from Ireland. Thus they are as "Irish" as any Jew is a memeber of one of the Hewbrew tribes. The other reason is americans love the under dog, and lets face it the ira and sinn fein are the under dog. Always have been excluding a short stint following ww1. If the us hadn't been funded during the revolution we would never be a country. We are a ntion whoose entire identity was forged through fighting, be it the natives the french, the brittish, the wild west itself and mexico; the us fought and thus supports the fighters. As a side note the BBC reported at least three seperate terrorsit attacks by protestant gangs during the cease fire, which all resulted in large amounts of destruction of innocent property. Note that primarilly the only americans giving money to IRA are catholic, and catholicism is a minority religion in comparrsion to islamic, and protestant faiths in the US.

	Irish-Americans (none / 0) (#32)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Sep 25th, 2001 at 03:11:15 AM PST

	the reason Americans want to be "irish" is that irishness offers a non-oppressive white identity. Me - an oppressor ? no sirree, i'm Irish.

	Not really (5.00 / 1) (#34)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Sep 25th, 2001 at 07:45:32 AM PST

	irishness offers a non-oppressive white identity Ask any one from the Protestant minority in Northern Ireland if the Catholics are "non oppressive".

	Not really at all (5.00 / 1) (#39)
	by Anonymous Reader on Wed Sep 26th, 2001 at 06:28:26 PM PST

	Ask anyone who is catholic and has routinley been excluded from political power if protestants are non oppressive.

	clarification (5.00 / 1) (#40)
	by Anonymous Reader on Fri Sep 28th, 2001 at 02:10:37 AM PST

	Clarification: the reason Americans want to be "irish" is that irishness offers Americans the illusion of a non-oppressive white identity

	Protestant _Majority_ (none / 0) (#44)
	by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 3rd, 2001 at 05:20:27 AM PST

	At least until the maniacally breeding Catholics catch up.

	That because... (none / 0) (#46)
	by Rocky on Wed Oct 3rd, 2001 at 08:55:22 AM PST

	...every sperm is sacred!

	Monty Python are not funny (none / 0) (#48)
	by Anonymous Reader on Fri Oct 5th, 2001 at 03:25:16 AM PST

	and people who quote them are even fucking sadder. Irish people are stupid, full stop.

	Hell, Britania (1.00 / 2) (#23)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 08:12:32 AM PST

	Gee, and here I was thinking the British and Irish were the major cause of their conflict. Just another colonial shithole the limeys have left for us to clean up for them. Is there any part of the world you dorks didn't fuck up?

	Not quite (4.00 / 1) (#24)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 08:41:34 AM PST

	What an ill-informed person you are. Perhaps if you read a few newspapers from time to time, you would learn a bit more about your countries direct sponsorship of terrorism all around the world.

	I've got a new (old) way (5.00 / 1) (#10)
	by Rand Race on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 02:14:05 PM PST

	I propose a solution to these sorts of problems; Mass relocation. We'll give Northern Ireland to the Isrealis (just try these guys you Provos), then put the Orangemen in East Timor, then move the Timorese to Kosovo, put the Kosovars in the Basque country, move the Basques to southern Mexico, and put the Zapatistas in Palestine. Budha-bing Budha-boom, everyone's too mixed up to cause trouble. And no I don't care who started it, your land is a shithole you get yoinked to some other shithole. If that doesn't work we'll just diasporize the lot. Hey, it worked for the Assyrians and Romans.

	A more practical approach (5.00 / 2) (#12)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 02:27:41 PM PST

	Would be to disarm everyone over there, sit them down, and teach them some history. For example, we could teach the southern Irish that the 'Brits' they hate so much are in fact a mongrel race made up of scandanavians, french, danes, germans, italians and just about every other nationality that has invaded our island. Perhaps it is part of our psychological make-up as Brits that we have no sympathy for invaded nations, since our history is one of continual invasion and re-invasion. Our approach as Britons to the whole situation in Ireland would be to relax and see if we could make any money from the occupying forces. Another way to solve the problems in Ireland would be if other countries banned young Irish from emigrating. The brain drain on Ireland means that almost all its intelligent people have emigrated abroad to cities like London and Boston in order to make more money. Why ? Because they are scared of violence. This is not an answer. They should stay and talk some sense into the extremist morons.

	History 101 (4.00 / 2) (#13)
	by localroger on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:04:00 PM PST

	X years ago, Amphyllia invaded Zoroaxia. The invasion was successful, much territory was gained, and the Zoroaxians who lived there either became refugees, were murdered, or were murdered after being forced to watch their women being raped. The remaining Zoroaxians were unthrilled by this, and taught their kids that Amphyllians were the evil demon spawn of the most lurid figure in their religious pantheon. Being otherwise powerless, forced to watch the Amphyllians prosper on what had once been their land before it had been so violently stolen from them, they occasionally launched sneak attacks on Amphyllian border villages. The Amphyllian victims, who were largely innocent descendants who had no part in the original invasion, reacted to these random acts of violence with unified and righteous terror and rage. Each act of Zoraxian violence brought forth a much more severe reaction from the Amphyllian military, which only pissed off the {terrorist\|freedom-fighting} Zoroaxians more. The situation persists to this day, and demonstrates what engineers call "dynamic instability," meaning that any small departure from a temporary fragile equilibrium will inevitably explode into ever-worse violence. History has shown there is only one way this situation ever really ends. Amphyllia and Zoroaxia utterly destroy one another, and two new nations step in to reinvent the cycle. There are Amphyllias and Zoraxias out there that have been fighting over crap like this for more than 1,300 years (meaning continuously, unlike Israel which is a special case). None of them ever learn. Sitting down and talking to them has never helped. The only temporary peace has been bought when both sides were conquered by the same more powerful entity -- and as in a lot of Russian border republics, when that power goes away, the old hatred still burns. What might be a little more useful, in the case of Britain as Amphyllia and Ireland as Zoraxia, would be for the British to apologize for their centuries-long campaign to wipe the Zoro, er, Irish out. Intergenerational memories are too long to brush it off with "we don't do that any more." Just ask the Turks and the Greeks.

	Zealots are the problem. We need to laugh at them. (5.00 / 2) (#14)
	by dmg on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:32:09 PM PST

	would be for the British to apologize for their centuries-long campaign to wipe the Zoro, er, Irish out. Intergenerational memories are too long to brush it off with "we don't do that any more." Just ask the Turks and the Greeks. Er. No they are not. Show someone some $$$s and they will forget just about anything. The point is, it pays the IRA to keep this thing going, because (although most Yanks don't understand this) they are the equivalent of the mafia over there. They run the 'protection racket' on the building sites, they run the drugs to the Dublin nightclubs, they have their finger in lots of organized crime pies. The political aspect is, for the most part, a front. And the Turks and Greeks are another bunch of religious zealots arguing over irreconcilable issues of religious doctrine. Why can't religious zealots just chill out for a change ? I mean, all their beliefs are questionable to put it mildly. Certainly none are worth killing for. Did the Italian Romans, the Saxons, the Angles, the Jutes, the Viking Swedes, or the Norman French ever apologise for their genocidal invasions of Britain ? Lets face it, nationalism is what happens when you give an ill-informed group of people the vote. time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration. -- MC Hawking

	Another chapter in the story (3.50 / 2) (#15)
	by localroger on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 07:03:37 PM PST

	Of course the Zoraxian rebels, confounded by the superior numbers and technology available to the Amphyllians, turned to whatever sources of funding they could find. Most of those turned out to be extralegal, and involved them deeply with people who cared more about getting their cut of the booty than the Zoroaxian cause. Ultimately the Zoraxian rebels became indistinguishable from their financiers, who were drawn from the branches of commerce willing to deal with such unpopular types as themselves. Show someone some $$$s and they will forget just about anything. That's true of most people. Note that "most" is not "all." Terrorist organizations persist off of two groups who feed off one another, the true believers who will never forget and the, um, commercial interests who will exploit their willingness to do damn near anything to get what they want. Why can't religious zealots just chill out for a change ? I mean, all their beliefs are questionable to put it mildly. Certainly none are worth killing for. Asking a religious (or even cultural) zealot to "chill out" is like asking the late Isaac Asimov to actually try the penniomancy experiment suggested by Robert Anton Wilson in Cosmic Trigger. They're not open to new truths, they already know the truth. Hadn't you heard? Did the Italian Romans, the Saxons, the Angles, the Jutes, the Viking Swedes, or the Norman French ever apologise for their genocidal invasions of Britain ? No, because they all ceased to exist as entities separate from Britain itself. Colin Wilson describes the process by which this occured with the Vikings in A Criminal History of Mankind: Instead of trying to kill them all, they gave them a land grant and made them neighbors. When "criminal rats" become "neighbors" they gradually cease to hate, because they become familiar with one another. N.B. You don't do this by imposing sanctions on your "neighbors," subjecting them to warrantless arrests and interrogations, and otherwise treating them as "other." You don't do it by "sitting them down and teaching them some history" as you have defined it. In fact, you explicitly do it by merging your cultures so they gradually become indistinguishable rather than indulging the modern PC notion of celebrating everything that makes you different. In the past Britain knew how to assimilate a culture but lately I think she's forgotten her own past. Some of her adventures in the past few centuries have been unbecoming of her nobly mongrel origins.

	Wow. Insightful (5.00 / 1) (#16)
	by dmg on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 08:05:08 PM PST

	I asked those (rhetorical?) questions hoping against hope that this would be the answer. You have absolutely hit the nail on the head with your final 2 paragraphs. Too bad that realising this won't help the peace process. (actually I am much more optimistic about it than my article makes out. I believe people on both sides have had enough and really just want the whole problem to go away) time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration. -- MC Hawking

	huh? (none / 0) (#19)
	by shren on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 04:15:58 PM PST

	. . . the penniomancy experiment . . . the what?

	The Penniomancy Experiment (none / 0) (#20)
	by localroger on Fri Aug 3rd, 2001 at 03:55:51 PM PST

	As a method for normal people who are not into metaphysics, meditation, rituals, or whatever to experience something wonky, Robert Anton Wilson suggests that you make a conscious decision to find quarters lying on the ground. He suggests (and everyone I know who had tried it agrees) that you find way more coins than you would ever expect. You don't even have to exert a lot of effort to do it -- just keep the thought in the back of your head that you know you're going to find at least one quarter today. Let the rest happen on its own. Wilson doesn't call this penniomancy but the practice of divination by observing found change is called penniomancy, and that's what the experiment amounts to. The fact that there is a word for it should be interesting even if the idea sounds like total hogwash. Some years ago a fellow whose name I don't recall wrote a fanciful story about penniomancy for Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine called Pennies From Hell. A couple of issues after the story they posted a letter from the author exclaiming that, of all things, the story was true! He had been finding rare coins, foreign coins, ancient coins, and so on ever since writing the story. Whether this is a way of bypassing a filtering / perceptual defect or a form of magick really doesn't matter; it is startling.

	Dancing (1.00 / 1) (#37)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Sep 25th, 2001 at 01:18:02 PM PST

	I do the same but visualize naked women. -ken

	right. (none / 0) (#38)
	by Anonymous Reader on Wed Sep 26th, 2001 at 05:05:05 PM PST

	as long as you're predisposed to find something interesting, you will. it reminds me of the way people describe rare events in their life as "lucky" or "unlucky". take the sum total probability each day of something that you'd consider "lucky" to occur, add that to the sum total probability each day of something that you'd consider "unlucky" to occur, and call that total "t". pick some period of time, say, 14 days. 1-(1-t)^14 is likely pretty large. s.

	the" victims" link (none / 0) (#18)
	by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 01:38:11 AM PST

	wasn't the warrington bombing declared not be done by actual Ira member's? or am i thinking of a differnet action?

	Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick! (1.00 / 1) (#21)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sun Aug 5th, 2001 at 05:06:56 AM PST

	You expect them to forget their heritage? To ignore the fact that the British are taking them over and destroying their culture? Wow. Go read some James Joyce, buddy.

	Sometimes you should forget (4.00 / 1) (#25)
	by Peter Johnson on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 09:31:41 AM PST

	I am descended from a long line of illiterate viking savages. Before that, my ancestors were foraging on the African savannah. Before that, my ancestors weren't even human. I'm not ashamed of this, but I don't feel the need to celebrate it. I don't feel the need to locate a longboat and battle axe and descend on the coast of France. Why should I? Civilization is a good thing. It benefits everyone. Before the English conquest, the Irish were the filthiest, most deeply ignorant and savage race in the world. Now they are meerly the filthiest, most deeply ignorant and savage race in Europe. This improvement is the fault of the English. For some reason, the Irish resent them for this. Go figure. --Peter Are you adequate?

	Dancing (none / 0) (#28)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 11:17:19 AM PST

	What do you mean b4 the english conquest? To this day.

	Tisk Tisk (1.00 / 1) (#29)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 11:52:12 AM PST

	Peter, Come now old boy civilization is only to the betterment of man when expressed in small groups. I'm sure the west indians, while the british had them strapped to the front of cannons, pondered the pros and cons of civilization. What makes civilization so great? Why accept it blindly? Perhaps Un-civilized societies are better? And yes, you should have an axe and a boat: Boy, those are your roots! How can you know where your going if you don't know where you been. So i say, get yourself a longshore boat and a net, and go out in search of your heritage. K

	Wrong, the Spanish colonized the West Indies (none / 0) (#35)
	by Adam Rightmann on Tue Sep 25th, 2001 at 08:59:36 AM PST

	not the English, so the natives had the fortune of being colonized by an enlightened Catholic nation who wanted to save their souls, as opposed to a mercantilist nation looking for markets and not caring about the afterlife. Maybe you were thinking of the East Indies? A. Rightmann

	True, but (1.00 / 1) (#36)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Sep 25th, 2001 at 01:15:40 PM PST

	Tho colonized by the Spanish, it was a source of conflict, and british troops were not an uncommon sight. See Thomas Paine's Common Sense and American Crisis series for morr info. He was christian, Rightman, you'll love his take on the world. Hang Em High, Ken

	Hah (1.00 / 1) (#27)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 11:16:00 AM PST

	Never forget. But to Forgive? I dunno. I should not ? the need of their resistance, simply the means. --ken "Violence never solves anything." --Genghis Khan

	Heritage is what dead people did, it's irrelevant (4.50 / 2) (#41)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Sep 29th, 2001 at 03:07:46 PM PST

	The British are destroying no culture. They are living on the other side of the sea getting bombed. The Irish are upset because they have to live in the same country as other people who have lived there exactly as long as they have but whose ancestors beat them in a war hundreds of years ago. Try living there. It's just a few million people who are not satisfied until they've worked out a way in which they are different from their neighbour and decided that it's an excuse to hate them. You could take any two people from this country, identical in every way in terms of religion and ancestry, and put them on an island seperated from the rest of humanity, within a week they'd have worked out a way in which the other person is somehow evil and set up a terrorist movement aimed at killing them. Shut that hole in your face until you have something more valid that the writings of James Joyce to talk about. A disgusted Irish catholic.

	Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick? (none / 0) (#50)
	by femtoamp on Tue Oct 9th, 2001 at 12:51:19 PM PST

	Is this the same James Joyce that wrote books viciously attacking Irish "culture", and left the country for somewhere warmer and drier as soon as he was able? OK, the English student in Ulysses is pretty horrible, but not in the same class of sheer awfulness as Joyce's sample Prod and Nats. And the hero of Ulysses is...liberal Jewish. Doctor Brian O'Nolan's summary of Irish culture was that it needed only four words: Downpour, eternity, whisky and potatoes.

	I am still not Irish (2.00 / 1) (#22)
	by motherfuckin spork on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 08:09:08 AM PST

	never have been, never will be. I hate St. Patrick's Day. I despise wearing green. I do not drink at all... ever. Irish folk songs piss me off. I am not Irish. damnit. I am not who you think I am.

	Bah (1.00 / 2) (#26)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 11:14:06 AM PST

	Your as Irish as a leprichan making the nasty with Sinead O'Conner, with a four-leaf clover in his mouth. Fess Up. --ken

	not a hint of Irish in me (none / 0) (#30)
	by motherfuckin spork on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 12:25:01 PM PST

	sorry, bud, you are quite wrong. In fact, here's what I do know are in my ancestry: French Welsh English German Polish Russian possibly Italian I would list all the famly names that correspond, but, well, I'm not going to do that. I can tell you that I am a direct decendant of one of the Brothers Grimm (which one I can't remember). Oddly enough, though, when looking over the list I've included, you do not see Irish, nor even Scottish. And the English were those who had left France about 200 years earlier, so they're not really all that English (not that most of the English are all that English, what with them being conquered by the Romans, the Danes, and the Normans (who were, mind you, not really French)). I am not who you think I am.

	Your mother got around a bit then (none / 0) (#45)
	by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 3rd, 2001 at 05:25:38 AM PST

	Sorry, obvious joke.

	C'mon feel the noise, gurlz rock the boyz. Slade (none / 0) (#49)
	by Anonymous Reader on Fri Oct 5th, 2001 at 03:35:04 AM PST

	"I am a direct decendant of one of the Brothers Grimm (which one I can't remember)" Neither could she :p

	Yes let's all thank the british. (none / 0) (#31)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Sep 24th, 2001 at 10:12:48 PM PST

	Yes let us thank the British for colonizing North America which led my people to be pushed to small territories. It amazes me that most Brits will proclaim their just and noble heritage but if you look at history you'll find that they were just as filthy as any other. I have a major problem with many British people that somehow believe that the Americans were stupid in separting themsleves from "a great nation". I cannot tolerate hearing that I should somehow hold Brits (or any others) up as some high and mighty entity. No thank you-- Sleeping Wolf

	I've always hated the Irish (4.00 / 1) (#33)
	by T Reginald Gibbons on Tue Sep 25th, 2001 at 05:27:46 AM PST

	My father hated the irish, his father hated the irish and his father's father hated the irish. I don't know why we hate the irish so much, but we do, and we always will. From my observations, the irish are nothing but low-brow, beer guzzling, pugnacious thugs, so incapable of understanding the finer products of any culture, even their own, that George Bernard Shaw -- an Irishman -- insisted on being called GBS out of distaste for his own surname. All the great Irish novelists, namely Joyce and Beckett, are appreciated in England and reviled in Ireland. The Irish shun their own culture, ignoring such gems as Michael Flatley, and Alan Parker's "The Commitments", to concentrate on Guiness drinking contests, Sinn Fein and Brad Pitt's portrayal of an IRA soldier in "The Devil's Own". Mao Zedung once said that truth comes out of the barrel of a gun. In Ireland, it would be truer to say that all forms of speech come out of the barrel of a gun, regardless of veracity. The Irish propensity for violence has forced all the non-violent Irishmen to flee their country and take up residence in the new world. Everyone currently in Ireland is either a member or an enemy of the IRA, or an American tourist trying to discover his roots, by kissing the Blarney Stone (which the locals piss on, by the way). We who do not live in Irelend must deal with the constant insult of living with the Irish in our midst, forming an unstable, dangerous underclass, which might result in outbreaks of terrorist violence at a moment's warning. It's a little known fact that 95% of the Michigan Militia, America's largest terrorist group, is made up of Irish expatriates. The Irish are America's muslims. The worship a different God from us, they attend different churches from us, and they are given to irrational violence, particularly towards women. They are a threat which we, as Americans, must deal with in hopes of meeting a future unfettered by fear or hatred.

	You seem to have left quite a bit out. (none / 0) (#43)
	by theboz on Tue Oct 2nd, 2001 at 08:26:05 PM PST

	While you went in the right direction, there are quite a few more things to bring up when discussing the problems in Northern Ireland. I have a somewhat unique perspective of this problem now, as I am probably the only person ballsy enough on this site to walk up Shankill road and the Falls road areas in Belfast this previous week. I learned firsthand of not only the Catholic terrorist groups, but of the many protestant ones that kill people in identical manners. In fact, this past week in Belfast a reporter was murdered for writing stories about how one of the loyalist terrorist groups (I think the UVF, UDF, or one of them) were raising money by selling drugs. Clearly, if the Americans that donate so much money to terrorism in Ireland were to see first hand what goes on, they wouldn't be doing it. It also would have been good for you to make a note of some of the large supporters of Irish terrorists. The Kennedy family, including the current drunken senator, and the murdered president, were big IRA supporters and their family continues to provide funding to terrorists to this day. Another thing that may be of note is that other sources of funding besides donations are selling drugs, stealing, etc. The true terrorist groups in Ireland are hurting the people worse than their purported enemies are. Personally, I think that the Irish are some of the nicest people you can ever meet. After a Catholic and a Protestant murder each other's mother, they can meet down at the local pub for a pint of Guinness and hang out like old buddies. Which reminds me, in the poll accompanying this article, all of the above statements are true except for the house of pain one. Nobody listens to House of Pain anymore. [Reply]

	Northern Ireland & Mainland Ireland... (none / 0) (#47)
	by Anonymous Reader on Thu Oct 4th, 2001 at 05:46:47 AM PST

	Are part of the British Isles (a geographical concept). They're more than entitled to refer to themselves should they choose so, as british!.

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