Airstrip One

Feedback

I love America and I love Ireland, but the combination can (but by no means always does) breed a certain type of, well, idiot. Here's some feedback from one of them (I take it he means my reference to the UDR, a former regiment he has confused with the UDA, a terrorist group, bless):

Toward the end of your piece, you gleefully hint at the existence of a protestant terrorist group. Add that to the other armed terrorist groups that wear uniforms and you may have begun a discussion into the root cause of the extremism. 50,000 Catholics cycled through the maze along with almost 0 protestants indicates that nearly every young Catholic male in the province has been incarcerated without a charge or a trial. 100,000 legally registered weapons remain in the hands of protestant groups, according to the London Times. Your point about the two border counties (Fermanagh and Tyrone) going over to the republic due to having local Catholic majorities is a good one.

But this was rejected in 1921 as being detrimental to the economic survival (transportation across the province) of Ulster. There is no evidence that protestants were discriminated against in
the south; there was a Protestant president there and also a Jewish mayor of Dublin. Half of the real estate is still owned by British private parties and is respected. Many British tour the south safely.

My response to my own countrymen regarding the violence is this:

1. Wichita, Kansas has twice the murder rate of Belfast and is a comparably sized city.

2. A German speaking seperatist movement in our own Midwest would now be flourishing had we not removed the British colonial influence from our shores as early in our history as we did. Wherever Britain has been, there is hatred and division brought about by purposeful divide and conquer. The French seperatists in Canada, Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, the Middle East, Burgundian seperatists in France if not for St Joan of Arc, India/Pakistan....are examples of division by design fostered by Britain who capitalize upon their created conflict as "concerned" referee.

3. Americans bent on convincing themselves that they are still members of a middle class rack up debt on their credit cards. British bent on convincing themselves that they are still a colonial power fire into crowds of unarmed Irish.

Through it all, please stay there. The historic irony is that the protestant plantation was meant ostensibly to keep Britain "safe" from Catholicism. The opposite now occurs. Forced to be British subjects, Ulster Catholics go where a Catholic British subject can go in order to belong to a trade union, join the police force, etc. They go to Britain.

Your country will soon be Catholic again as long as you do the old one-two: call their land British and call them British. Keep it up.

Historical note (1) Protestants have been in Northern Ireland for roughly as long as European settlers have been on the Eastern seaboard. Figure the logical consequance of the Protestant plantation stuff out for yourself.

Historical Note (2). The Catholic church until recently was recognised as the official church in the Irish constitution. Divorce and contraception were illegal. Protestant and Jewish businesses have had to face localised consumer boycotts since before Irish independence. The Protestant population declined from 10% to 3% of the population of the Republic since independence. In Cork 80% of homes burned down in the years immediately after independence were from the Protestant population that made up 7% of the population. No evidence of persecution?

Simon Jenkins Links

It has slowly been dawning on me that Simon Jenkins, who is probably Britain's most influential isolationist journalist, is badly represented on the web. This is very bad news as he writes well. The fault is mainly the Times, the main newspaper who publish him (he used to be the editor), who seem to get rid of old stories quickly. This means that some of his articles have no web presence at all. This really is tragic.

So here in no particular order are a collection of links to his writing on foreign affairs:

http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~richardj/Docs/simon_jenkins.htm
http://www.zoran.net/afp/text/times/a_threat_too_late.htm
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/05/26/timopnope01003.html?0000999
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/05/07/timopnope01003.html
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/05/05/timopnope01002.html
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/09/08/timopnope01002.html
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/06/23/timopnope01001.html
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/04/09/timopnope01002.html
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/04/16/timopnope01003.html
http://www.gn.apc.org/psu/simonjenkins.html
http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/yugo_archive/19991014times.htm
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00474.html
http://members.nbci.com/yugo_archive/19991202jentimes.htm

I will categorise them later, when I have some time. But in the meantime, here's a description of the man.

If anyone can help in providing links to other articles of his, I would be grateful.

The last article in the list "Weep for poor Orisa" is particularly poignant.

Other Links

In my search for Simon Jenkins links, I also came on some decent articles from Andrew Alexander, John Laughland, some nutty Saudia Arabian apologists, Mick Hume.

Completely unconnected with Simon Jenkins is another Libertarian site on war, Jane's and a rather basic links page on the British military.