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 ...
Are you forgetting they killed, hundreds of thousands of men and children? Weren't those english/roman catholic soldiers?
Ohkay,, if there's a huge difference, I'll admit my ignorance of that. Thanks for calling me kiddo, cuz sometimes, it's all about learning when these posts come up!
"You're not drunk if you can lay down on the floor without having to hang on." - Dean Martin
Irish unemployment rate 4.5% - USA 5.6% - hmmmmm.
America, before it was a great nation, should've never killed it's previous inhabitants like they were savages! It's very sad hind-site, I know!
And I don't believe that the American Indians have a mystic tie to the land either. I wasn't going there with any of this. I don't believe in mysticism.
Does anyone else know what this means? I didn't learn my latin yet? Or whatever that is?
I don't know much of the history of which you speak, but this invasion of 200 years ago was not likely to have been brought on by Catholics. Ireland has been Catholic since the 5th Century. It was St. Patrick that evangelized Ireland at that time. He used the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity (hence the 'wearing o' the green'). If that invasion was 200 to 300 years ago and had a religious element, the English soldiers likely belonged to the Church of England (Anglican).
If by your cryptic description you mean Almighty God, the Creator of all things, you must trust that He is the one who will determine the destiny of the promised land and it's inhabitants.
Really? What exactly is Anglican?
That's true!
So who was it that forced the Irish to wear the red?
Now you are beginning to scare me, really...
All you have to do is figure it out......
King Henry VIII began his own church in England (I forget which century) in protest because he wanted to divorce his wife and marry his mistress. The pope wouldn't allow it, so he outlawed Catholicism in England and created the Anglican church and required his subjects to belong to it. That way he could divorce and remarry as he wished. The Episcopalian church here in America is an offshoot from Anglicanism.
That's a pretty rough, rudimentary synopsis of the history, but I just couldn't let you go on thinking it was the Catholics who invaded Ireland :-)
See this article.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1149732/posts
is she worth it ?
That I don't know. Never heard of it.
Oh, now the Scottish are victims of "English occupation." Where did you learn your "history?"
The Angles came to the island of Great Britain in the "fifth century." They settled along the east coast of that island including the east of what we today know as England and the southeast of what we today call Scotland. In other words, the Angles (from whose name the word "English" comes) were in "Scotland" a hundred years before the Scots originally invaded (and "raped" and "blasphemed" and "desecrated" and all that stuff mystical nationalists hate so much) "Scotland."
When the Normans invaded (William, Duke of Normandy claiming a legitimate right to the English throne) they were no more wanted in England than in Scotland or Wales or Ireland. It was many decades--perhaps even centuries--before a common "English" identity developed. Some Anglo-Saxons actually escaped into Scotland after the Conquest.
In those pre-national days every king in an area would want to be recognized as overlord to any other kings in the neighborhood. It was inevitable that someone would want to unite the entire island of Great Britain under one king (as Connaught had done in Ireland). The Norman English kings would from time to time assert their overlordship of Scotland. But it was not until a dispute over the throne, in which one of the disputants appealed to the English King for support (which was given in exchange for recognition as overlord) that the famous events of the William Wallace/Robert Bruce era took place. And Scotland plotted against England just as England plotted against Scotland (France was a traditional ally). In 1513 Scotland invaded England and their king (who led the invasion) was killed. Has anyone ever heard of that little battle, huh? No . . . I didn't think so.
Scotland was always a bicultural nation (Scots and Picts in the north, Angles and Britons in the south), and each party had its own intrigues. When the Protestant Reformation hit Scotland (after the English Reformation) it was only natural that the Protestant Lowland Scots would identify with the English just as the Catholic Highland Scots identified with the French. Besides, Elizabeth of England and Mary of Scotland were actually related, remember? And the evil Tudors who ruled England and "raped" everyone else during this period were actually a WELSH house! Does no one remember that?
Anyway, when Elizabeth executed Mary she didn't take over Scotland but put young James VI on the Scottish throne. And when she died in 1603 with no children (the "virgin queen" and all that) James VI inherited the English throne as well. So far as I know, James chose to move to London and rule both Kingdoms as James I of England. He could have stayed in Edinburgh, couldn't he? At any rate, England and Scotland were separate kingdoms under one Stewart King (with the single exception of the Cromwell era, when the two kingdoms were forcibly united by Oliver Cromwell--who was supported by the Scots Protestants and opposed by the Highland Catholics). After the Stewart Restoration the two kingdoms were separated again.
It was not until 1707 (during the Reign of Queen Ann, the last sovereign of the SCOTS House of Stewart) that the Scottish parliament voted to dissolve (granted, against the wishes of the majority of the people in Scotland) and united the two countries as one with its capital in London.
Even the Jacobite rebellions and activities of Rob Roy were not, as is popularly thought, fights for Scottish independence. The Jacobites merely wanted to retain the Stewarts on the throne. The Catholic Highlanders wanted this because after the death of Queen Ann all remaining Stewarts were Catholics. They were opposed not only by the English but by the Protestant Lowland Scots as well. The outlawing of the bagpipes, tartans, Scots Gaelic, etc., were not aimed at a burgeoning "nationalist" or independence movement but at support for a rival royal house for the British throne.
Unlike Scotland, Ireland really was an English/British colony until 1801, when it was admitted to the United Kingdom.
And now today Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each has its own parliament/assembly while England alone remains an abstract part of "Britain." Scottish and Welsh MP's can vote in their own parliament/assembly and then vote in Westminster and influence the governance of England. The English cannot do this, since they have only Westminster, which is a British, not an English parliament.
If any people has suffered by being subsumed into "Great Britain" it is not the Irish, Welsh, or Scots, but the English, who have been completely absorbed into the "British" identity while the other UK countries have both national and British identities.
Please learn a little history.
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