i got the popcorn i have a feeling this thread is going to get good in a minute :-)
Posted on 02/25/2006 12:37:44 PM PST by Irish_Thatcherite
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - Several hundred Irish Republican army supporters attacked police on Dublin's central boulevard and near the parliament building Saturday to prevent an unprecedented parade by Northern Ireland Protestants.
In riotous scenes rarely seen in the Republic of Ireland, protesters hurled bottles, bricks and fireworks, at police as they tried to clear the hostile crowd from O'Connell Street.
The Garda Siochana, Ireland's national police force, said 14 people - six officers, seven protesters and a journalist - were hospitalized, mostly with head wounds. More than a dozen other people suffered less serious injuries. The police advised shoppers and tourists to avoid the entire city centre, which is normally packed with pedestrian traffic on Saturdays.
Officers in full riot gear - helmets, shields and clubs - arrested at least 37 protesters as a police surveillance plane circled overhead.
The protesters, mostly young men covering their faces with scarves, chanted pro-IRA slogans as they waged running battles with riot police and other officers on horseback for more than an hour, forcing shops on Ireland's most famous street to close. Afterward, O'Connell Street was littered with broken paving stones and glass from shattered shop windows.
Later, more scuffles broke out on Kildare Street near Leinster House, Ireland's parliament, and the country's national history and art museums. At least three cars were set on fire, one was flipped over, and the windows of several others were smashed as police struggled to contain the rioters.
The mayhem forced Protestant hardliners from the Love Ulster campaign to abandon their plan to parade through Dublin, which the Irish government had supported in a gesture of reconciliation. It would have been the first parade in Dublin by pro-British Protestants since Ireland's partition into a mostly Protestant north and mostly Catholic south in 1921.
Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Protestant "unionists," who favour Northern Ireland's union with Britain, should have enjoyed freedom to demonstrate their views.
"There is absolutely no excuse for the disgraceful scenes in Dublin today," Ahern said. "It is the essence of Irish democracy and republicanism that people are allowed to express their views freely and in a peaceful manner."
Leaders of the aborted parade praised police efforts to protect them, but nonetheless handed a letter of protest to Justice Minister Michael McDowell during a meeting inside Leinster House.
A Protestant politician, Democratic Unionist party legislator Jeffrey Donaldson, said most of the rioters had travelled to Dublin from Catholic areas of Northern Ireland.
"We have received a warm welcome from ordinary Dubliners," Donaldson said. "But it's clear these republicans have come from north of the border and other areas intent only on causing trouble."
Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that represents most Catholics in Northern Ireland but is less popular south of the border, sought to distance itself from the violence.
Sean Crowe, a Sinn Fein member of parliament, said the Protestant marchers "came to Dublin today to be provocative and get a reaction. Sinn Fein urged people not to be provoked and to stay away, and the vast majority of Dubliners . . . did just that."
But the Social Democratic and Labour party, which represents moderate Catholic opinion in Northern Ireland, said republican rioters had reinforced Protestants' hostility to the idea of a politically united Ireland.
The Love Ulster campaign is led by Willie Frazer, several of whose relatives were killed by the modern IRA.
The IRA in 1970 launched a bloody campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom. The outlawed group killed about 1,775 people and maimed thousands more before calling a 1997 cease-fire.
We agree there so.
You can't deny, however, that the Orangemen knew there would be a disturbance just like there is every July 12 when they march through Catholic areas looking for trouble.
I'm sure Danish cartoonists had an idea there was going to be trouble over the publications of cartoons of Mohammad, but they aren't to blame for it, either.
The Irish Republic is and has always been more tolerant than Northern Ireland, much of which was seeded to riffraff the English wanted to get rid of.
The southern Protestant population has fallen from 10% to less than 2% since Independence - Ireland has it's skeletons too!!
I'm glad the members of the original IRA didn't share your views or they would be singing "God Save the Queen" and bowing to Prince Floppy Ears in Dublin.
What some people don't seem to realize is, the old IRA are not the moral equals of the modern IRA - the men of the old IRA were ordinary decent men, the IRA of today are scumbags.
And my opinions are the opinions of most Irish people - they don't like IRA violence being carried out in their name.
I could say the same thing about you and Al Qaida!!
The fact is, it's better to fight terrorism than appease it!!
Jonathan Swift died on 19 October 1745, aged 78. He hadn't been in a good frame of mind for some time. He managed to keep some of his sense of humor, though--his last will and testament provided funds to establish somewhere around Dublin a hospital for "ideots & lunaticks" because "No Nation wanted [needed] it so much."
But before that, he had quite the interesting perspective on the "big-endians" versus the "small-endians."
I could tell you the same stuff about the Indians, are going to hand America back to the Indians?
No point using history as a stick against the present!!
I guess we could shove the entire IRA into a mental hospital!!
Here in the United States, we generally don't care where our neighbor goes to church. Normally, we don't even know unless we ask.
Although I am getting a little concerned about some folks who dress funny.
Hmmm... Orangemen dress funny, but only on marches!!
Updated: 2:21 p.m. ET Feb. 25, 2006
ORLANDO, Fla. - Violence broke out at a neo-Nazi rally before a planned march through a predominantly black neighborhood Saturday, with police making numerous arrests.
Police hauled away at least five people in handcuffs after a fistfight broke out between supporters of the National Socialist Movement and counter-demonstrators who were voicing their displeasure with the group’s anti-minority message.
It's still the freedom of assembly, and you can't compare Orangemen to Nazi scum!
i got the popcorn i have a feeling this thread is going to get good in a minute :-)
Can't compare Orangemen to Nazis?
Nazis oppressed Catholics. So did Orangemen.
Nazis loved to bully their enemies in the streets with parades and brawls. So do the Orangemen.
Nazis loved to remind their defeated foes who was boss through public acts of humiliation. So do the Orangemen.
Nazis were bigots. So are the Orangemen.
Granted, the comparison is limited, but it works within reason.
The IRA are terrorists!!! Why don't you come to Ireland, seeing as you know so much about it?
The IRA have murdered 2000 people in Ireland, both north and south.
It's amazing that I have to listen to a foreigner lecture me about my own damn country!!
Dhimmitude - that's what will happen when Sinn Fein/IRA overthrow the democratic governments of both the Republic and Northern Ireland.
And what the Hell do you mean by unsubstaniated claims? Are you making excuses for the IRA?
Which side are you on?
I don't recall a genocide in Northern Ireland, and the Famine wasn't genocide.
Go to somewhere else if you want to defend the IRA!!
But were they cartoons of the pope to incite the Catholics, or was the IRA putting out those offensive images of John Calvin again?
Probably a cartoon of Patrick Pearse, or Theobald Wolfe Tone!!
The thing that struck me was a passage where it discussed who would be providing security for the peaceful counter-demonstrations among Roman Catholics.
It was supposedly members of the IRA.
Is it just me, or does that sound like an extraordinarily odd way of keeping the peace?
The logic is arseways when it comes to Northern Ireland, especially with Blair and Ahern around!
The logic was a bit arseways with some the posters on this thread tonight LOL!!
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