Posted on 06/03/2002 12:29:45 AM PDT by colette_g
Three Shot In Belfast Riots
Three people have been shot as a new wave of sectarian rioting erupted in east Belfast.
Houses were petrol bombed and families moved out of a loyalist district after nationalists attacked them across a peaceline.
A man, 39, and two teenagers were wounded as gunfire was directed at Cluan Place in the Protestant Albertbridge Road.
Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine said the man was taken to hospital after being hit in the back and lower leg.
The youths suffered bullet wounds to their lower legs, he said.
Residents forced to flee their homes were taken to other houses and church halls.
Police said trouble erupted when missiles were thrown into Cluan Place from the Short Strand, a Catholic enclave in Protestant east Belfast.
Petrol bombs were later lobbed at loyalist homes.
The disorder followed several nights of fighting between rival mobs in east Belfast which left 10 police officers injured.
I was about to say, "WTF?" :)
Well... yeah, right, Molly. By all means, LOOK!
Norn, it's good to see you post again!
you and Happygal stay safe!
1995 was the 200th anniversary of the formation of the Orange Order, an organisation for Protestants that grew out of agrarian faction fights in the north of County Armagh.
An assorted collection of Sinn Fein, SDLP, Jesuit and Irish Government activists decided to 'face down' a small party of Portadown Orangemen who were commemorating the deaths of their comrades who perished at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The commemoration took the form of a parade from their hall to Drumcree Parish Church and back to the hall via the Garvaghy Road. The latter passed a housing estate which had been mixed but for various reasons is now mainly Catholic.
A group of Nationalists arranged a sit-down protest and the police were told to block the OO parade just before the church service was ended. The parade was eventually let through after huge numbers of Orangemen came from other parts of Northern Ireland.
In 1996 the Irish Government played a more central role. It persuaded the Government to reroute some parades but, unfortunately, the RUC Chief Constable was forced by the Government to tell the people that he had taken the decision. Things got very nasty and after a stand-off of several days the parade was permitted by the Government to complete its parade. After gloating that it had faced down the Orange Order the Irish Government and senior Catholic clergy were absolutely livid.
The downside of all of this is that the Orange Order now has much less control of its activities and loyalist terrorists have added their muscle to these events
This provocative approach by various strands of Irish nationalism appeared in a different form during the Holy Cross school protest last year. This time the provocation only came from the Republican terrorists but as most people will have seen the Loyalist terrorists walked straight into the trap set for them. The victims were the schoolchildren from Holy Cross and Wheatfield but that was of little concern to the two groups of terrorists.
Current events in North Belfast and East Belfast may well have a similar element of orchestration.
"This applies to any city. If you find yourself on Martin Luther King Blvd., get the f*&k out....run....get outta there fast!"
Right. This was just a march of a few thousand 109-year-old men, who were thinking solely of their times in the trenches.
Next time, save yourself (and us) the thousand words, and just say, "Hi! I'm Norn Iron, I'm a lying idiot, and everything that follows is high-octane bullsh*t"
She wrote an idiotic column about 2 months ago saying, essentially, we should appease terrorists because that's what they did in Ireland, and look, it worked!If the goal of the peace process was to stop bombs killing people on the British mainland (and I tend to think it was) it worked pretty well.
The word *comrades* wasn't the right one to use. I should have said that the service commemorated the memory of those who perished at the Battle of the Somme in general and those who were Orangemen in particular.
Feel free to challenge any other comment I made. As they put up or shut up :)
I could have added the note that there were Republican terrorists awaiting them further along the route but didn't.
If that was the Government's goal then it was a betrayal of those whom the Government had a duty to protect. Placing the demands of terrorists above those of law abiding people of all persuasions is a negation of democracy.
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