Harry's Place

“Meanwhile, today in the Independent you can read a “left-wing” defence of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose own brand of religious bigotry is positively mediaeval.”

Ahmadinejad obviously reads that newspaper:

‘Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that the “idol of Zionism” should be broken in order to “save humanity.” ‘

‘The Iranian president claimed there was growing positive sentiment towards Iran worldwide, saying, “The Islamic Revolution is being exported to the world now. People in different parts of the world, even in the US and Europe, are currently talking about fighting against Zionism,” he claimed.’

http://tinyurl.com/cyxxmx

Richard Goodman from Leicester spent three months in Palestine as part of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel EAPPI organised by the World Council of Churches. In the UK EAPPI is co-ordinated by the Quakers.

uh-0h

St George wasn’t an Arab! He was born in the late 3rd century AD in Turkey; his mother was from Palestine, but this was BEFORE Arabs lived there by a matter of centuries.

Ancient history clearly isn’t Jack Straw’s strong point, as shown by the article linked to in this post.

More reactionary bollocks in defense of the apartheid wall.

Tear it down.

Thank goodness for the wall, which has saved so many lives.

Yep. The dragon/wall looks like it is protecting the town and it’s people.

They’ve got everything inverted.

Illiterates.

And I thought Erich Honecker was dead.

“And I thought Erich Honecker was dead.”

Thousands of Israelis would be dead if you had your way and that wall was torn down.

George [St George] (d. c.303?), patron saint of England, is a figure whose historicity cannot be established with certainty. However, an inscription at Shaqqa in the Hauran, in the south-west of present-day Syria, which commemorates ‘the holy and triumphant martyrs, George and the saints who [suffered martyrdom] with him’ (Budge, 16), and which can be plausibly dated to the mid-fourth century, bears witness to the existence of a cult by that time, while the fact that the name George, from the Greek word for peasant or farmer, is not known to occur before the fourth century, makes it impossible to date the origins of that cult to the third century or earlier. It therefore seems very likely that there was a martyr George, and that he suffered in the persecution of Christians which began on the orders of Diocletian in 303. But later efforts to identify him with the unnamed man who according to Eusebius was executed after tearing down the decree in which the emperor proscribed Christianity, and to locate his martyrdom at Nicomedia, where this act of defiance took place, rest on pure speculation. The earliest locus for George’s cult was Diospolis or Lydda, present-day Lod, in Palestine, where it was flourishing by the early sixth century.

By the last quarter of the fifth century the story of George, however it had first been told, had been subjected to a fantastical hagiographical elaboration, which itself survives in several forms. Shared elements are George’s occupation as an army officer, his defiance of paganism and its representatives, up to and including the emperor ‘Dadianus’, and his protracted sufferings for his faith, lasting for seven years. During that time he is subjected to an appalling series of torments and is killed and resurrected three times, before being finally executed by beheading. His exemplary courage and devotion prompt thousands of conversions, the empress ‘Alexandra’ among them. In this highly embellished form the passio of George both reflected and helped to create his standing as one of the great martyr–saints of the eastern Mediterranean. Further west it aroused misgivings through its sheer extravagance, and in the sixth century the Roman church, in decretals later inaccurately attributed to Gelasius I (r. 492–6), purged the story of many of its details, attributing them to heretics, and declared that George was one of the saints who were rightly reverenced by men, but whose deeds were known only to God…

[rest of entry available for those with online subscription]

“Thousands of Israelis would be dead if you had your way and that wall was torn down.”

That is speculation.

1200+ Palestinians who had nowhere to flee were killed in Gaza.

That is FACT.

Re. St. George, fair enough – I’ve also heard he was part-Jewish. But let the English celebrate him as an Englishman, the Palestinians celebrate him as a Palestinians, the Catalans celebrate him as a Catalan etc.

*as a Palestinian

Good, but not as good as the antisemitic pizza.

1200+ Palestinians who had nowhere to flee were killed in Gaza.

[cough] Egypt [cough]

“That is speculation.”

Why don’t you come here, don a kippah and walk into Ramallah. I could see some speculation on you, Krunstud.

“That is speculation.”

Very informed speculation.

I’d like to know, if you got your way and the wall was torn down and thousands of Israelis *did* die in a new wave of suicide bombings, how would you feel about that?

If there is one issue in which indeed there is no speculation at all here, from left, right and center, is that the security barrier has saved hundreds of Israelis. Maybe thousands already.

You will have to experiment with mice, krusnty.

Oh dear,

this really is barrel scraping time from your idiot guest poster, isn’t it?

We see the tired old technique of the amalgamation in play, where three people all saying different things are bundled together, yawn.

And actually the pictures identify the WALL as a problem, which it surely is for palestinian children, who have no responsibility for any of the circumstances leading to the wall being built. Even the most adamant supporter of the wall should appreciate that it does loom as an unpleasant reality in the life of palestinian children.

So of course the pictures help English children think about what it would be like to be walled in, and none of the pictures encourage hatred or intollerance.

Indeed in my article i specifically praise the aspect of st george celebrated in Arabic culture, that he is a figure associated with religious tolerance.

So I am in fact making the exact opposite point of the one you claim i am making.

“So of course the pictures help English children think about what it would be like to be walled in, and none of the pictures encourage hatred or intollerance.”

So how many of the pictures drawn by the English children make them think about what it would be like to be maimed by a Palestinian suicide bomber, and see your little brother killed on the ground next to you, while your mother wails that her intestines are outside her body, Andrew?

English children shouldn’t be drawing pictures about either – if they want to grow up into cranks obsessed with a conflict nothing to do with them thousands of miles away then there’s plenty of time for that later.

Life is Like a Mountain Railway

“I’d like to know, if you got your way and the wall was torn down and thousands of Israelis *did* die in a new wave of suicide bombings, how would you feel about that?”

I guess that’s what passes for progressive thought on Harry’s Place these days.

We can’t say for certain what would happen if the wall did come down, but since with the wall up over a thousand (non-hypothetical, as per usual) Palestianians were killed just a few months ago, we can only assume that the numbers killed by the IDF would be far far larger.

But how would you feel if Israelis were killed in a new wave of suicide bombings?

Andy Newman, as I said in my post:

“The psychological effects of war for Israeli and Palestinian children are real, yet this art does not help English children identify with Palestinian children or understand their pain, rather it seeks to identify a common enemy: a dragon to slay.”

Don’t you think this rather dehumanises Israelis? Is not the implication that if the Palestinians are siding with St. George, then Israelis (including Israeli children) are standing with the dragon?

Unless I suppose the English children were made aware of the difference between wholesale demonisation of an entire country and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government?

But let the English celebrate him as an Englishman, the Palestinians celebrate him as a Palestinians, the Catalans celebrate him as a Catalan etc.

He’s the patron saint of England. He’s celebrated as a Christian martyr, not as a symbol of nationalism, or as part of your deconstructionist project to further the aims of multiculturalism.

George’s mother and father were bot imperial Roman aristocracy, from the Anicii patrician family. His mother was part of the colonial Roman Palestinian elite, an entity constructed on the ethnic cleansing and alienation of Jews from Judea.

George himself was a tribune in the imperial army, an army the Christians held to have acted as the agents of g-d’s wrath upon the Jews in dispossessing them as punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets.

It is true that George was a martyr for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods, but Christians were among the first people on record to designate themselves “Palestinian”, and they almost universally held themselves to have inherited the land of Israel from Jews by virtue of divinely mandated imperial Roman colonization and ethnic cleansing.

George’s Palestinian family were from the Wall Builders of antiquity, and quite happy to see the dispossession, alienation and separation of and from Jews.

But at least St. George is a hero, unlike, say, the Crusaders.

No, and surely no-one in their right minds would vote for a politician who celebrates the deaths of British citizens.

“At least these examples provided by Andy Newman, Carole Swords and Adrian Hamilton help us distinguish the Progressive Left from the Regressive Left.”

Why, Seismic Shock? Because you support Israel, that lovely little Liberal Democracy that can’t help itself from expanding? That makes you ‘the Progressive Left’? LOL

This must be the only ‘Progressive Left’ blog that has at least two commenters (serendipity and IsraeliNurse) that cheer on both Mad Mel Phlips and Harry. Israel unites the Eustonites and the Mad Mellians. Reeeal progressive!

Israel unites the Eustonites and the Mad Mellians

Eccentrics of every hue are united by Israel. Some think it can do no wrong and some think it can do no right, but all are agreed that it’s really important to argue about it as much as possible. In fact some people are such weirdos they have blogs devoted to nothing else, despite their being from Yorkshire.

“Thousands of Israelis would be dead if you had your way and that wall was torn down.”

That is speculation.

A totally ignorant remark from K Ronstadt.

Deliberate ignorance? Or British-media-induced?

Personally I think we should ditch St George and make the dragon the patron saint of England. This would help us atone for our centuries of oppression of the Welsh, help normalize relations with China, and strike a symbolic blow against cruelty to animals.

“That is speculation”

Fundamentally ignorant bollocks.

hahahaha

What I find objectionable about those cartoons is that they were obviously drawn by an adult and either copied by a child or otherwise faked.

Perhaps it would have been more appropriate in England to discuss the British Apartheid Walls in Belfast, sorry …. the “peace” walls, one of the great symbols of British hypocrisy. I wonder how that organisation would explain to children why one group of Christians is confining another group of Christians to ghettos. There is no sign of the walls coming down and according to a recent report on the BBC, secterianism is on the rise. But how much easier it is to point the finger at others, a lesson that British children should learn at a young age.

There is no sign of the walls coming down and according to a recent report on the BBC, secterianism is on the rise.

High walls make good neighbours. I suppose it’s “British hypocrisy” that causes Catholics and Protestants to hurl pipe bombs, bricks and dog shit at their neighbours.

“Perhaps it would have been more appropriate in England to discuss the British Apartheid Walls in Belfast, ”

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to just keep children out of this kind of stuff.

Andy Newman is a fucking disgrace, by the way.

Salty Mouser:
“High walls make good neighbours”. OK, but it applies to ALL walls, not the ones that are convenient for the politically-correct. Perhaps on St Patricks day they can draw snakes tearing down the Belfast walls.

My 2 yr old likes play with ladybugs.

Gert -I do not recall ever having made a reference to Melanie Philips, but just for the record I will say that I think she does some valuable work drawing attention to certain matters. I may sometimes have reservations about the style, but am able to see past that to the content.
Whilst we’re on the subject of figures of importance to certain religious groups and/or nationalities -
‘Joseph’s Tomb Vandalised’
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3705477,00.html
And this in a Palestinian controlled area.

talking of walls:

“Belfast’s infamous peace walls are getting an artistic facelift, it was revealed today.

Images from Northern Ireland’s troubled past have been painted on the loyalist Shankill Road side of the division. More than 40 barriers remain in sectarian areas of Northern Ireland despite the peace process.

A half-kilometre stretch through the most polarised parts of west Belfast – at times a virtual war zone during the conflict – has been transformed through the initiative by local artists.

Organiser Roz Small said: “This is about giving the Shankill people the opportunity to tell the history to the world if they want to listen to it.

“It is about taking what has been quite a negative energy and transforming that into a positive expression of the Shankill people and community and history.”

The first part of the project, If Walls Could Talk, is being unveiled today.

Images include traditional brick houses and community life, paintings of Lord Carson, who led resistance to Irish Home Rule, and the original Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

Testimonials to those who died at the Somme during the First World War and pictures of Orangemen are shown.

It also features scenes from Baghdad’s conflict-blighted Sadr City and Haifa in Israel.

Despite the peace process and power-sharing at Stormont, there has been renewed violence with dissident republicans shooting dead two soldiers and a policeman.

In 2007 it was announced that a 25ft-high fence would be built at Hazelwood Integrated (Catholics and Protestants) Primary School in north Belfast. ”
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/belfasts-peace-walls-get-artistic-makeover-14276055.html

I wonder if St. George might want to look closer to home?

I propose this wholly British action hero be adopted as the national figure. Incidentally, I was surprised that no one suggested there was any allusion to Steve Bell’s John Major.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6148688.ece

more on the dozens and dozens of walls and barriers still up within the UK, http://www.belfastinterfaceproject.org/interfacemap.asp

K Ronstadt
23 April 2009, 1:59 pm

And I thought Erich Honecker was dead.

schmuck, the Berlin Wall was built to prevent East Germans from fleeing life under a totalitarian government of the ostensible left. The separation barrier between Israel and Palestine was built decades after the start of the occupation, and, had the Arab powers agreed to the 48 armistice line there would neither have been wars in 56, 67 or 73, no occupation, etc.

The separation barrier wasn’t built until well after the violence Arafat carefully orchestrated after he slunk away from the Clinton-brokered deals through his paramilitaries.

If you are so opposed to barriers, Kronich, what about the wall the Saudis built to keep Islamist attackers from Yemen out.

1200+ Palestinians who had nowhere to flee were killed in Gaza.

That is FACT.

Have they protested yet against their government for taking them into a war that they could have avoided and were given every chance to?

Why do people focus on “the wall” but ignore the other 90% which is a fence?

more on British walls, from last year:

“BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Lee Young, 8, and Cein Quinn, 7, live barely 200 yards apart, but they have never met, and maybe never will.

But it has not delivered meaningful reconciliation. Instead, for dozens of front-line communities of Belfast, fences still make the best neighbors”

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20080503/despite-peace-belfast-walls-are-growing-in-size-and-number.htm

maybe they could get Saint Billy** to pull them down?

—
**personally I have no time for that vain strain of English nationalism and am shocked that socialists at SU blog wouldn’t see thru all of this nonsense? how times have changed?

I am surprised that such outdated reactionary bourgeouis patriachial heirachial cover for Western Imperialism as slaying dragons is still being taught under a pseudo-progressive cover. Do not right thinking true progressives know that the differencies between people and fire-breathing dragons can be overcome by mutual understanding and negotiations? And what is the patriachial reactionarism that only me

(pardon I hit the submit button by mistake. Taking up with a revised version of last line)

And what is the sexist gender bigotry that only men can become knights? All true progressives need to read the Jane and the Dragon books or at least see the TV series http://www.qubo.com/jane_show.asp to realize the hostility between people and dragons are an outdated concept of reactionary imperialism and that peaceful co-existence and cooperation between humanity and fire-breathing dragons is the enlighten path to the Our Radiant Future!

Wonder why my last comment got put in the moderation queue? Did I use too many words like Zin and TheIrie would have used?
It is a parody after all. I am just pointing out that according to current children’s books and shows that dragons and people are meant to be friends, not enemies.

Calling Melanie Philips “mad” is a sad reflection on the person doing so, nothing more.

Someone:

Mad Melanie is mad enough to go on fuelling the MMR controversy; long after it’s been laid to rest. There are other examples, such as her stern belief that not only is Iran capable of finishing off Israel by means of nukes, in her fantasy world Iran will then proceed to see off the rest of the world too. She meant it. I could go on.

IsraeliNurse:

I didn’t say you made reference to her, only that you hang out there and support her views. As does ’serendipity’.

That’s strange overlap between Far Right and alleged Left.

‘Even the most adamant supporter of the wall should appreciate that it does loom as an unpleasant reality in the life of palestinian children.

So of course the pictures help English children think about what it would be like to be walled in’

Andy Newman -nobody -on either side of the wall -likes it.
However, we like getting blown up on buses even less.
Helping English children think about what it would be like to be walled in is only one aspect of the situation. How do you help English children imagine what it would be like to be blown up in a pizzeria or on their way to school?
By isolating one aspect of this issue without any reference whatsoever as to why the wall was built you are misrepresenting the issue and encouraging the ‘Palestinians as victims’ mindset which prevents them taking any sort of responsibility for their part in the conflict.
The I/P conflict is too complex for most adults to understand, let alone children. By trivialising it in this manner you are not helping either Israelis or Palestinians. Indeed you are encouraging yet another generation of Palestinian children to see armed conflict as an heroic act -to chose violence as a means to heroism.
Until Palestinians come to terms with the fact that the wall was built because of THEIR OWN actions, and that they must renounce violence before any progress can be made and the wall can be taken down, there will be no solution.

Hang out where?

“1200+ Palestinians who had nowhere to flee were killed in Gaza.”

1000 Israelis were killed during the second intifada, many by suicide bombers that used the then relatively easier access into Israel from the West Bank.

To fantasists like Gert (why do I have the feeling that he doesn’t like Jews very much?), Iran is developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and Israel’s leaders should just take their word for it and go and have a nice cup of tea.
And that bit about wiping Israel off the map? Oh, that was a deliberate Zionist mistranslation, don’t you know. What it said in the original was “Let us wipe the tears of Israelis with this handkerchief”. Those nasty, evil, ungrateful Zionists.

Don’t worry about it, Nurse. He has no more idea what he is talking about than you or I have about what he is talking about.

Someone -I’m not in the least worried. There’s nothing like having furniture thrown at you by junkies whilst on the A&E night shift to stop you taking anything personally ever again!

In that first picture, it looks like if it wasnt for that Dragon, an angry mob of genociders would attack the peaceful village.

EscapeVelocity (nwo) -

Indeed, which is exactly why the security fence was built.

I wonder: should I change my clock back to winter time?

Wardytron:

“[...] they have blogs devoted to nothing else, despite their being from Yorkshire.”

People from Y’shire are under some obligation to at least dedicate their blogs to other things?

How are the peaceful, misunderstood, oppressed Palestinians supposed to detonate rat-poison-soaked-ball-bearing bomb-belts in daycare centres if there’s a wall to prevent them? Tear it down. Nao!

Only if they don’t want to be seen as creepy disordered monomaniacs.

He was not Palestinian! He was Lyddean-Cappadocian!

This must be the only ‘Progressive Left’ blog that has at least two commenters (serendipity and IsraeliNurse) that cheer on both Mad Mel Phlips and Harry. Israel unites the Eustonites and the Mad Mellians. Reeeal progressive!

Glad to see Gert once again being flabbergasted when encountering the fact that progressive left blogs like Bob from Brockley, Engage, HP, the Drink Soaked Trots, Terry Glavin’s Transmontanus, the Militant, Worker’s Liberty, Norm Geras, etc., etc. argue against his brand of Ilan Pappe/Norman Finkelstein antizionism. Tough noogies Gert.

And that bit about wiping Israel off the map? Oh, that was a deliberate Zionist mistranslation, don’t you know.

It was in fact a mistranslation. In the first place, Ahamadinejad referred to the Zionist regime (not Israel). In the second place, Iran has quite clearly stated that it does not intend to take any action against it:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that the Zionist regime is inherently doomed to annihilation and there is no need for Iranians to take action.

http://www.iribnews.ir/Full_en.asp?news_id=256259&n=21

Yes, that’s Iran’s official news agency.

Hasbara busted — yet again.

Instead of waiting for approval, I’m just going to repost this.
zkharya:
1000 Israelis were killed during the second intifada, many by suicide bombers that used the then relatively easier access into Israel from the West Bank.

Exactly why they built the wall. To the Palestinians and their supporters, Israelis are guilty of a crime which is worse than terrorism and which provokes terrorism, and that crime is living in Israel and raising their children.

This is why there is nothing progressive about the movement to support Palestine – rather than being based on a theory of universal human rights where every child has the right to grow up where he was born, the movement is based on a racist theory of group rights, and somehow fails to notice that in considering Israel illegitimate it has positioned itself against the most basic human rights of Israel’s citizens.

It’s ironic that socialists sometimes say they oppose the existence of Israel because they are against nations and nationalism, when in fact this concept of Israel being guilty of existing is being proffered precisely in order to accommodate the Nationalist myth that drives Palestinian fascists.

sigh I guessed wrong about why, but it’s AMAZING what % of my comments go into moderation now. What’s the damn trigger word?

HB, have you and TheIrie reconciled and is the wedding back on or have you two broken up for good?

Josh – I wish I knew that too. Am trying to figure out why my second dragon comment got sent to moderation.

“Hasbara busted — yet again”

Sigh.
Mitnaged, please provide a run-down on this absurd individual’s delusions. I appreciate that it would take you a whole day to compile, so don’t feel pressured – do it when you can spare the time.

Here are the horrors that Israel would be undergoing without the Barrier Wall: “At Least 75 People are Killed in two attacks in Iraq”
at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html?hp

(Hat tip to Iraqi Mojo at http://www.iraqimojo.blogspot.com

Well Buster, the Egyptians certainly do not share your nonchalance regarding Iranian intentions in the region.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3705666,00.html

not sure Josh, but I’ve had a few go into moderation, all in all it is very strange

I’ve had a few go into moderation, all in all it is very strange

I think I might have an easier time arguing for the existence of dragons than explaining how automatic WordPress moderation works here.

Sorry folks. Cries for comment liberation will be heeded if I’m reading.

Well, most times, anyway.

For those who do not wish to accept the Israeli claim that the security fence saves lives -here’s a different view of the situation:
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/ct_250308e.htm

Officially, the Japanese have no nuclear weapons.

Unofficially they have the constituents of one:

they have a space program consisting in rockets capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

they have a nuclear program that has produced weapons grade nuclear material.

While they may not have a single nuclear weapon, they have the means to assemble one with its delivery system very quickly.

Officially (haha), Iran’s intention is not to destroy or dissolve the Jewish state of Israel (unlike George Galloway, the SWP, STW, PSC, John Game, Richard Seymour etc).

It just:

routinely harps on its eminent destructability as well as essential evil, in a fashion that recalls the equation of plague with Jews that the Nazis made as a prelude to their preparing their own for accepting and perpetrating the final solution.

boasts about successes in its nuclear program that are almost universally understood by observers friendly and hostile to be intended to convey that Iran is a nuclear power in the making to be reckoned with.

arms and trains groups sworn to destroy more than merely the Jewish state of Israel.

delevops and boasts in weapons that are again almost universally believed to be intended to be unconventionally capable.

This whole is a complex none of whose elements their object or target is obliged to ignore or simply take, in good faith, as meant in jest.

Wait a goddamn minute everyone-is it a wall or a nice picket fence entwined in clematis and honeysuckle?

Is that a suicide belt the dragon’s wearing? Surely shome mishtake.

K. Ronstadt – 1200 Palestinians – of whom the majority were young males fighting in support of the totalitarian Hamas dictatorship.

By “totalitarian” I assume you mean “something I don’t like”,as in “Simon Cowell is like,totally totalitarian,maaan”.

Ignore the new troll.

blahX3

picket fences and flowers are for neighbours who don’t practice a form of ethnic cleansing like hailing crude rockets at you daily to show their good intentions for peaceful co-existence.

When the occupation started, Gaza was a hellhole, without any universities and a population suffering from communicable diseases that had been pretty well irradicated everywhere else. In a region known to be impoverished, Gaza, under Egyption control, was one of the worst.

Let’s also not forget how the triumphant Gazans celebrated the departure of Israelis from their midst: by razing everything they could tear down and carry away, including a vast greenhouse that previously provided jobs to a few hundred Gazans and whatever food that wasn’t exported.

So let’s have another round of pity for the poor inhabitants of this great open-air jail, who were building smuggling tunnels long before the border closures.

Modernityblog: thank you for your posts and links to articles about Belfast’s walls, however depressing they are. One of the mentioned that there were scenes from Baghdad on the Shankhill Road wall. I am afraid that is a prophetic look at what Baghdad is becoming, because of American and Iraqi efforts, inspired by the walls of Belfast, to similarly wall off Sunni and Shia neighborhoods to keep them from fighting.

you’re welcome David A,

I think that the most of the British don’t like reminding that they have so many problems closer to home, but then again it is too close to home for us and there was nothing romantic about The Troubles

Modernityblog, I am afraid that the continued presence and strengthening of the barrier walls in Belfast means the current peace accord is really more of an armed truce that will last only until one or both parties decides that it time to resume “the struggle”.

well David, I would disagree.

I think that Irish Republicans have accepted (as many did in the 1970s) that violence will not achieve their ultimate political goal, which is a united Ireland.

As it allowed the Loyalists to build a repressive state machinery in the Six Counties and in that fight the Irish Republicans couldn’t win.

The problem was that the sanctity of the “armed struggle” was a key part of Irish Republican thinking for over 80+ years, thus moving away from that to the point where the end game was in sight was hard. It has been a slow process from the 1970s onwards, steps forward, then back, and so on.

We must not forget that the sectarian divide goes back more than 80+ years (and you could argue further, to the 1600s) but either way it won’t be dispelled over night, however, against that the united front which was shown in the recent attack indicates that many don’t, can’t and won’t go back to the days of bombs, armalites and violence.

I hope that is the case.

@David All

What the GFA has done is create the mechanics of a consociational compromise. The unionists get the formal sovereignty of Britain while the nationalists get a devolved assembly where a vote for a unionist is worth less than a vote for a nationalist (while a vote for those who are neither is unfortunately worth less than either, such are the mathematics*). All individuals have their human rights respected, not that that was a matter of controversy (all sides agree with the principal on an INDIVIDUAL level). It is of course in the collective level where the controversy lies.

The reason this works is that both sides fear the other gaining power over them effectivly clashing with their feelings of a right to self determination, hence there is a dual veto, as if unionists and nationalists were two countries in their own mini two state European Union, but with no geographical barrier, not even an internal one like in Belgium, rather the citizen decides what nation they belong to in the voting booth.

In my view the greatest problem is that many Irish nationalists fuelled by the culture of grievance so prevalent in other common political discourse (including I/P) do not respect or acknowledge this balancing act. They are simply waiting for a demographic 50%+1 and then they’ll want a single Dublin Parliament for the whole island, no devolution, no dual vetoes. However the island of Ireland is not a nation. John Locke’s social contract does not exist there. The balance will be destroyed and the society will rebel at that unnatural state if it happens. However that carrot had to be dangled in front of the IRA to get them to stop violence. As we’ve seen for some republicans even that was not enough. They want Dublin rule without consent, even when the Dublin government has repudiated it.

Unionists have largely been tamed from any demand for majority rule (even the TUV’s objections are based around letting terrorists into government, not letting nationalists into government). IMO the process for creating any sort of stable dispensation, whatever the niceities of formal sovereignty, will now require nationalists’ hopes and dreams to be deflated. Even if there is a united Ireland, it will have to be a very unusual consociational state in order to function.

*http://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/alliance.pdf

Addendum

where a vote for a unionist is worth less than a vote for a nationalist

Far too few people seem to notice this fact. That the present assembly is itself effectively a gerrymander. It’s somewhat ironic. I do support it though, because we are dealing with a situation of two nations geographically interlocking.

Ireland is Irish, and the sooner the Brits and the Unionist Protestants face that fact, the sooner everyone can move on.

The Unionists are like the Ian Smith government in Rhodesia.

“Yes, that’s Iran’s official news agency.

Hasbara busted — yet again.”

It’s so sweet that you believe them!

“Ireland is Irish, and the sooner the Brits and the Unionist Protestants face that fact, the sooner everyone can move on.”

“Palestine is Arab, and the sooner the Jews face that fact and eff off the better”.

Why not introduce them to Farfur the zionist hating mouse whilst we’re at it? Seen those charmers? As for Someone’s remark, “Palestine is Arab, and the sooner the Jews face that fact and eff off the better”. How if I said Britain is British and the sooner Pakistani’s face the fact and eff off the better? Or does cultural relativity prevent questioning that equation? Melanie Phillips is talking precisely this in her latest piece.

Just to clarify: I was being sarcastic with ref. to Escape Velocity’s strident Irish nationalism.

No, and surely no-one in their right minds would vote for a politician who celebrates the deaths of British citizens.

If this related to a political election in Britain, and was more recent than sixty years ago, it would be a pertinent point. Instead we see the contortions the reactionary fauxicialists get into, in that only one violent colonial insurrection is held up as iniquitous and, most of all, Israelis are informed that they should think first of foreign citizens six decades ago.

it is a futile execise to discuss the nationality of a person, whose sheer existence is not proven and who is supposed to have lived in a period, in which the concepts of nation and national identity were unknown

“who is supposed to have lived in a period, in which the concepts of nation and national identity were unknown”

Says who? Jews at that time were a nation with a clear national identity, and had been for over 1000 years.

It can be argued that the Romans had a national identity (us v. barbarians), even if they allowed some barbarians to naturalise and become citizens.

The Ulsteroids, ugly and dour as they may be, constitute a nationality and deserve their own country. An Independent Ulster would know how to deal with traitors briskly and decisively, so no blood would be spilled.

This would probably require a little cartographical adjustment or perhaps a spot of discreet ethnic cleansing and/or an exchange of populations, like that between Greece and Bulgaria all those years ago.

Of the two, the former would be better. Taig islands would exist within Orange territory, like that tiny bit of Belgium cut off inside Holland, but we’d all learn to live with such curiosities.

“who is supposed to have lived in a period, in which the concepts of nation and national identity were unknown”

Balderdash.

Palestinian Christians by and large conceived of themselves as Greco-Roman. Justin Martyr certainly did. Tertullian conceived of himself as Roman.

George was descended from an old Roman patrician family, and was a tribune in the army: he certainly conceived of himself as Roman.

Christians definitely conceived of Jews as a babarian nation apart -a nation ethnically cleansed from temple, city and land, by Rome, as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets. A land, in the form of the imperial, colonial entity of Palestine, to which they, Christians, were now heirs.

Ireland is Irish, and the sooner the Brits and the Unionist Protestants face that fact, the sooner everyone can move on.

Britain should “face that fact” the same day that Americans face the fact that California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and probably Texas are Mexican and should be returned to that country, having been seized from her by force.

The last vestige of the British Empire. Northern Ireland and the Falklands.

How pathetic!

Only 2 comments on Soc Unity – Is Andy refusing comments ?

Northern Ireland should be renamed Trans Scotia. That would reflect the reality of nationality. If Scottish Protestants aren’t allowed to live in Northern Ireland, presumably Irish Catholics aren’t allowed to live in Central Scotland.

Someone you know better than to make that faulty analogy.