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Masked loyalists are seen after hijacking and setting a car on fire at the Cloughfern roundabout in Newtownabbey, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Saturday, April 3, 2021. Masked men threw petrol bombs and hijacked cars in the Loyalist area North of Belfast. Loyalists and unionists are angry about post-Brexit trading arrangements which they claim have created barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. (Peter Morrison/PA via AP) The disturbances followed unrest Friday and Saturday in unionist areas in and around Belfast and Londonderry, also known as Derry, that saw cars set on fire and projectiles and gasoline bombs hurled...

The Irish government does not support the establishment of a citizens assembly to discuss what a united Ireland may look like, said Foreign Minister Simon Coveney at the third meeting of the shared island dialogue series. Coveney commented that such an assembly would not gather Unionist support. “We can’t have a predetermined outcome,” he said, adding that “there is an argument that we need to set up a citizens’ assembly to have a conversation around the reunification of Ireland. “If that’s a point, it will be very hard to get everybody into that conversation,” he added. …

The IT group IBM apparently is planning massive job cuts in Germany. According to the trade union Verdi, the Group has informed on Wednesday about the planned reduction of nearly 1,000 jobs by March 2017th This was announced by Verdi in a newsletter. Primarily affects service segments. The group had invited the workers' representatives to negotiations for a social plan and balance of interests. In Hannover, a region should be shut down with about 200 employees, said a Verdi representatives. The Hanover stay but generally preserved. "IBM has informed the participation and invited to negotiations," confirmed an IBM spokesman. A...

The Derry City and Strabane District Council have voted in favor of moving to officially changing the name of Londonderry to Derry. Unionists are describing the decision, voted upon on Thursday evening, as “sectarian” and “disgusting.” The vote passed with the full support of Sinn Féin, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and the Independent councillors, despite opposition from the minority unionist block. The council will now write to Environment Minister Mark H. Durkan of the SDLP, on how to go about the change. Durkan is himself a native of Derry. According to TheJournal.ie, 28 councillors voted to seek...

Bear in mind that Big Labor went to bat for ObamaCare in a big way throughout the months-long debate over its passage. When Tea Party activists demonstrated to raise opposition to the legislation, unions like the Teamsters counterprotested, sometimes violently, in an attempt to intimidate conservatives into acquiescence. Unions spent big money in the 2010 election hoping to protect Democrats from the consequences of their votes on ObamaCare, arguing that the bill would help the working class by sticking it to insurers and fat cats. Now that the law is about to be implemented, though, it suddenly looks awful to...

They were cleaning up the mess in London yesterday -- replacing the windows at the Ritz, fixing the wooden façade at Fortnum & Mason and attending to a vandalized Trafalgar Square in the wake of Saturday's protests -- and riots -- by trade unionists and anarchists. Think it can't happen here? Think again. The British press reports that up to half a million people took part in the demonstrations, 200 were arrested and more than 160 injured -- including 84 police officers, 11 of whom had to be hospitalized. Why? Because Prime Minister David Cameron announced a $130 billion cut...

Valdosta State professor pens ‘Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War’ Generations of students have been taught that the South lost the Civil War because of the North’s superior industry and population. A new book suggests another reason: Southerners were largely responsible for defeating the Confederacy. In “Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War” (New Press, $27.95), historian David Williams of Valdosta State University lays out some tradition-upsetting arguments that might make the granite brow of Jefferson Davis crack on Stone Mountain. “With this book,” wrote Publishers Weekly, “the history of the Civil War will never be the same again.”...

Europe of today is an economy running at half speed. Despite being in possession of all the technological and financial know-how accessible to man and despite being home to many of the richest countries on Earth as well as the leading world currency, the Globe's financial capital and a population of 500 million inhabitants, Europe at large remains an economical failure. It seems Paris needs to be liberated again. As a European, I give my full support to Sarkozy! The article: "France has endured a second day of travel chaos as transport unions continued to strike against President Nicolas Sarkozy's...

The US government took the unusual step of accusing Northern Ireland's mainstream unionist parties of an "abdication of responsibility" towards the weekend violence that saw loyalist gunmen shooting live rounds at police officers in some of the worst unrest in years. Fifty officers were injured and 400 plastic bullets were fired by police as they attempted to quell the demonstration. Without identifying any party by name, Mitchell Reiss, George W. Bush's special envoy on Northern Ireland, said: "No political party, and certainly no responsible political leadership, deserves to serve in a government unless it co-operates and supports fully and unconditionally...

Southern heritage buffs vow to use the Virginia gubernatorial election as a platform for designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. The four candidates have differing views on the Confederacy, an issue that has been debated for years in the commonwealth. "We're not just a few people making a lot of noise," said Brag Bowling, a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the oldest hereditary organization for male descendents of Confederate soldiers. "This is not a racial thing; it is good for Virginia. We're going to keep pushing this until we get it." Each candidate recently shared his...

The defining moment of my visit to New Orleans a year ago occurred in a gift shop. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit this, but at least it wasn't the kind that sells feather boas and t-shirts with jazz-playing lobsters. I wasn't a sorority girl nursing my hangover at Café Du Monde during Mardi Gras; I was a tourist visiting what used to be a sprawling, stately slave plantation. I was busy mulling over that subtly troubling experience, browsing through the gift shop's bookshelves, when I came to a curious array of volumes. The title The South Was Right! jumped out...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) -- The United States has demanded that the IRA disband after the guerrilla group's astonishing offer to shoot the killers of a murdered Northern Ireland Catholic man. "It's time for the IRA to go out of business," U.S. special envoy Mitchell Reiss said Wednesday. For the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland's biggest Irish nationalist party, the U.S. demand was yet another blow to its democratic credentials. Reiss told BBC radio: "It's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated. "You can't sign...

Unionists outrage local Muslims Unionist councillors in County Antrim have outraged local Muslims by refusing to accept an Islamic gift which had been presented to an SDLP member. One Democratic Unionist Party member of Ballymena council said he was suspicious of Muslims because of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States. The gift at the centre of the row is a brass plate, decorated with Islamic designs intended to express friendship with the people of the town. It was presented to SDLP councillor Declan O'Loan at an exhibition in the town's museum. He wanted to pass it to...