Northern Ireland: Here we go again

I haven't been keeping up with how Ireland has been doing in the recession, but it's a safe bet that economic troubles are reliably the best fuel for bigotry and extremism.

Until this happened, I was actually thinking that Southeast Europe, rather than Ulster, would be the most likely place in Europe for the various local wingnuts to get some wind in their sails thanks to the economic crisis.

 

Horribly. Worse than most of the rest of the world. At least in the Republic. I can't imagine things are any better in the North.

 

I read something not long ago that said during the Troubles, more people in NI were killed in car crashes than in terrorist attacks.

Considering those pre-9/11 days when Americans weren't as hypersensitive to terrorism (and considering that probably more Americans, if not openly, at least quietly rooted for the IRA than did so for the Prods), and recalling the coverage, I'm somewhat surprised.

It's hard for me to get my head around the nonsense, what with Catholics and Protestants coexisting more or less peacefully in this neck of the woods. (Well, at least until Kraut Bowl.)

 

I think the great majority of people, on both sides, are too invested in the peace process to walk it back now. It's a good time to be a hardliner, but the constituencies are gone now.

 

This appears to be a very isolated involvement by the most dissident of Republicans in reaction to a crackdown in Belfast in which soldiers were brought in to monitor them. Sinn Fein has already strongly renounced the murders, and it's important to remember the IRA put down its arms years ago. The parties have come way too far to let this type of thing disrupt the peace process.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0309/breaking40.htm

 

That's good to hear, cran. Let's hope it continues to be an isolated incident.

 

The Real IRA isn't going away anytime soon. They're going to have to be dealt with like any other organized crime/terrorist group.

 

Was in Belfast two years ago. My whole family (except me) was born there. Things are still pretty divided in some parts of the city but my cousins who were in the IRA want the crap to end for good because they don't want their kids to go through what they did. Guess I'll have to call my mom and see if she's heard anything about this.

 

If Sinn Fein's on board, this shouldn't take long, unless the powers that be lose their minds and overreact.

 

Well, bringing British soldiers into the fray was an overreaction by the Northern Ireland police, according to Sinn Fein. British troops in Belfast always leads to trouble. Hopefully, the extremists on the Unionist side of the politics don't try to leverage this as an opportunity to counterattack in their own effort to break the deal. The Real IRA needs to be wiped out but I don't trust Ian Paisley or his son in these matters, either.

 

I tend to agree with SF on this, as well. This is a real test for Paisley, who holds the governing majority power.

 

Sigh. Another police officer shot and killed tonight in northern Ireland by a masked gunman. Pipe bombs found around the same time outside a Sinn Fein office and a rural police headquarters.

I've lived in London since 1994 and saw the tail-end of the IRA bombing campaign. Ok, ok - maybe we should give props out to the Islamic fanatic but in my opinion, the Real IRA have way more potential to wreak havoc. While I'm sure they're already heavily infiltrated by British inteligence, even a tiny little splinter group could still pull off a couple of horrendous stunts here in the capital. And the Evening Standard - the local rag - reported this afternoon that the British army diffused a 300-pound car bomb in County Down back in January.

Sure, it was a huge, huge tragedy but all Islamic terrorists have been able to do is the July 2005 bombings of the Underground. The rest of the time they've tripped over their own two feet. I'm sure the Real IRA will be stopped cold in a few months but in the meantime, they've got enough tradecraft (for want of a better word) passed down to be dangerous.