Posted on 06/25/2004 2:23:18 PM PDT by The Bandit
ENNIS, Ireland President George W. Bush was set to arrive at the heavily guarded Dromoland Castle in County Clare on Friday night as the authorities braced for what were expected to be large demonstrations across Ireland against the U.S. occupation of Iraq.In contrast to the jubilant welcomes accorded to Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, Bush's reception was already developing as frosty, if not outright hostile. Widespread opposition to the Iraq war and revulsion at the Abu Ghraib prison scandal have turned a large portion of Irish popular opinion against him.
Big protests were expected in Dublin and in Shannon, where Air Force One was to land before Bush headed to the EU-U.S. summit at Dromoland Castle. Smaller protests were expected for the cities of Galway, Sligo, Waterford and Tralee in County Kerry.
"Fury and fear as town is turned into a fortress," said the headline in the Irish Examiner. The newspaper quoted the mayor of Shannon as saying that the town's residents were being made into potential targets for a terrorist attack.
Mary O'Rourke, leader of the Irish Senate, refused to attend a recent dinner in celebration of Bush's impending visit at the home of the American ambassador, James Kenny, out of objections to American prison policy at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and for going to war with Iraq, she said. . "Nobody denies we have an affinity with the United States, but that is a different matter from having an affinity with the president," O'Rourke said in the Irish Parliament this week.
But the centrist Irish Independent said in an editorial Friday that while Bush's trip would be the equivalent for the protesters of "a visit from the Devil Incarnate," the demonstrations "seem a bit out of touch."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
And you politeness as a Freeper!
:)
Bush is brave for going to a land that is still full of local terrorists(I.R.A., et al.).
Amen!
As an American with Irish/Dutch Roots I'll always be proud of that little folk song!
And while I'm at it, anyone like to help me find where the Blarney Roses grow?
;)
It may be down in Limerick town or over in Mayo.
It's somewhere in the Em'rald Isle,.....
you better!
Move over France. I might have to add Ireland to my list of boycotted countries.
How many other Irish folk tunes do you know? I've only most recently been introduced to some. And my heart finally finds it's place amongst the faded voices of familiarity of heritage.
C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia is about a magical kingdom populated by talking animals and mythical creatures. In the first book four children from England travel there and become the rulers, ruling for years and years in Narnian time before returning home and finding no time has passed in our world at all.
In the second book they go back to Narnia, where even more time has passed. The native Narnians (talking animals, dwarves, etc.) have been driven into hiding by a group of humans called Telmarines (because they came from "Telmar"). Narnia is essentially under foreign Telmarine occupation. Eventually the four children, along with Prince Caspian, a "good Telmarine," and Aslan, the lion "gxd" of Narnia, liberate Narnia and the Narnian creatures come out of hiding. From then on they live in the open in peace, along with good Telmarines who accept the new order.
Aslan offers to send the "bad" Telmarines back home, but it turns out that the Telmarines left Telmar so long ago that they have absolutely no memory of it and would be just as much "foreigners" there as in Narnia. But Aslan says, no, I mean your real home. It turns out the "Telmarines" aren't even really from Telmar. They're the descendants of pirates from out own world who went through some sort of dimensional gate and wound up on Telmare (in Narnia's world) and eventually set out from there to conquer that world.
This is why I believe Lewis' being a Protestant Anglo-Ulsterman figured into his creation of these people. He was a foreigner in the land of his birth (Belfast) because he wasn't "indigenous" to Ireland. The Anglo-Saxons are the real life Telmarines because they have swarmed to the corners of the earth and conquered and made their homes there with no memory of their ancestral homeland. In fact, "England" (which was named for the Angles and not vice versa) was merely another place invaded by them in their migrations, having come there from the coasts of the North Sea on the European continent.
The Anglo-Saxons are the world's only abstract, non-ethnic people. Our purpose in life seems to be to make everyone else look quaint and culturally rich in comparison. Funny how we are accused of thinking we are "superior" since we are the only people in the world who aren't constantly invoking some ancient national lineage.
I hate being an Anglo-Saxon. At least England could have the decency to secede from the UK and give us a theoretical ethnic point of origin. As it is now, "England" doesn't even legally exist (unlike Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland).
Now you know one more reason for my "Redneck Rastafarianism" (in which Israel becomes a mystical homeland for us much as Ethiopia does for the real r*st*f*rians).
Just one more reason for us homeless, ethnicity-less, and culture-less poor Anglo Bible thumpers to support Israel.
Amen toward the latter statement!
I understand now, much better, the English are like the Jews, scattered amongst the world, but unlike the "jews" (not the real Israelites), the English have no anchor or absolute foundation. Right?
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