Tollund_Man4
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User ID: 501
What I found really conspicious was that in virtually all the articles there was absolutely no description of the perpetrator of the stabbing other than 'man' or at best ' older man', which was the spark that cause the protest/riot (depending on your political persuasion).
The most I saw was national broadcaster, RTé, mentioning that he was an Irish citizen who “came to this country 20 years ago”. The exception is GRIPT, a small but quickly growing media company that mentioned that he was Algerian in the headline.
I really think the Aisling Murphy case is worth looking into, the media is making the exact same mistake as before by obfuscating the nature of the attack (it will be a true repeat if they’re brave enough to scold Irish men for toxic attitudes that lead to random attacks against teachers).
True, though some of the ones brave enough to set fire to buses might be.
There’s been a lot of tension between Brazilian couriers and Dublin’s feral youth these last few years. A lot of Brazilians work courier and food delivery jobs and a certain section of young Dubliners like stealing their motorbikes. I don’t know the number but a few Brazilians have been severely injured or killed by joyriders and thieves (or in one case by the police trying to stop the thieves).
Ireland
A riot has broken out in Dublin after a man stabbed two 5 year olds, a 6 year old and a woman in her 30s earlier today. The woman and a 5 year old girl are currently undergoing surgery for serious injuries. The man is also being treated for serious injuries after bystanders intervened (I've seen photos and the guy is barely conscious and bleeding from the mouth). The rioters don't have a spokesperson or anything but I think it's fair to say that this is an anti-migrant riot, politicians and police are certainly blaming the far-right for it.
This is all happening right now so this isn't a complete list, but at least one hotel housing migrants, a Luas tram, and multiple police cars have been set on fire. O'Connell Bridge leading on to the city's main street has been blocked a burning bus and there are videos of shops being looted.
Worth mentioning because of the timing - this comes a week after a man was convicted for the apparently random murder of schoolteacher Aisling Murphy in Dublin last year. The man who was found guilty was a Slovakian convicted rapist, but the media went from scolding Irish men for their toxic attitudes to near complete silence once it came out that the perpertator wasn't Irish.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
Ireland.
Migrant protests are back. Rosslare - a town of 2,100 - has become the site of a 1,000 person blockade of Rosslare Europort after the government announced they planned to house 400 migrant men in the Great Southern Hotel. 300 male asylum seekers are already being housed in the town so this proposal would fairly drastically change its makeup.
Unlike most migrant protests this one has the support of local politicians and started after a breakdown in negotiations between the government and local leaders. With actual political leaders involved it will be a lot harder for someone like Tommy Robinson show up and make it look like this is being organised by foreign provocateurs, clearly the views of locals are what is fuelling this.
I’m not sure how the economic importance of the Europort will come into play, there’s a lot more inventive for the government to settle this quickly but unless they win the public image battle arresting people and going ahead with the original plan won’t be a good look.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
This contradiction doesn’t hold if the people banning the drugs aren’t the same people in charge of treating severe mental disorders or carrying out euthanasia. Maybe I’m wrong and medical professionals do have a right to use prohibited drugs which they’re not exercising.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
except from the most conspiratorially-minded places like /pol/
/pol/ really enjoys bringing it up but it's not that obscure. Looking it up on Youtube I see a BBC documentary from 2002, an Al Jazeera documentary, a Jocko Willink Podcast discussion and some small high production value channels giving an animated breakdown.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
It means nothing to Hamas but I'm not sure giving the countries that support Hamas a justification to supply WMDs is such a great idea.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
Not taking a stance on who this guy is but your first point seems like a line many posters here would cross in good faith.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Good point, Varadkar’s Indian heritage doesn’t really get brought up that often so it’s easy to forget.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Planning on continuing my Irish history reading with Ernie O'Malley's On Another Man's Wound. Unlike the other guys I've been reading - Dan Breen, Michael Collins, Tom Barry (I wrote my thoughts on the interesting parts of his book here) - this guy is far more well-known for his books than his war exploits which makes me think he'll be a better writer than the rest. I know one of the books, maybe this one, covers the Civil War and that's something only Collins has gone into depth on in my readings so far (though he died before it was over so O'Malley should still give a clearer picture of what it was all about).
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Where is your standard of worthiness coming from? Could two people pair up live decently happy lives with children and be unworthy of doing that in your view?
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Of course they show up, who else is going to keep the scabs off their turf?
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
That's interesting to see Sinn Fein tacking a little more moderate. I know they've been pretty immigration maximalist; what with the protests against asylum seekers is they're any chance they'll adjust there as well?
I don't think the protesters will be the influence here, the people protesting asylum seekers and by and large a portion of the old working class base that the party abandoned as it became more popular. Every protest these types have (Covid protests preceded this) is politically toxic and only the small far-right parties make the attempt to win them over. Sinn Fein have gotten such a boost in recent years from appealing to the middle class voters, they want to shed as much of their radical image as possible while still presenting a left alternative to Fine Gael/Fianna Fail.
Is the Israel-Palestine division as inflamed in the Republic as it is in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is far more divided and it's very visible, Loyalists identify with the Israeli siege mentality and fly Israeli flags alongside the Union Jack and Republicans do the same with the Palestinian flag. In Ireland there's no real pro-Israeli voice, the left are strongly in favour of Palestine and the rest support them as much as they can without venturing into territory that would cost them reputation internationally or with the multinational corporations they rely so much on (for example: https://twitter.com/businessposthq/status/1715030115409924395?t=JWmdG5v7C0LGoIECrSDOBg&s=19).
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
A state stretching all the way from the Jordan River to the Dead Sea is a funny image at least.
Ireland
TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR has said that Palestinian refugees will not be granted the same temporary protection as Ukrainians and claimed that Ukraine is in a “different category”. . .
While Varadkar said he thinks the treatment of Palestinian refugees is “very unfair” globally, he said that the group was “different” when it came to providing them with the same protection status as those fleeing Ukraine.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Today with Claire Byrne, Varadkar said: “I think Ukraine is a different category. It’s a European country, it’s an EU candidate state, and we’ve given us a special recognition by granting temporary protection.
Varadkar said “Palestine is different” and said that he believes that it would be the responsibility of the “arab countries” to welcome the those who have been displaced, similar to how Ireland has with Ukraine’s.
Not granting Palestinians the same streamlined entry as Ukrainians doesn't necessarily mean much as there are still a lot of people coming in via the normal asylum system, but the suggestion that Arab countries should take care of Arabs (and the implication that European countries should take care of Europeans) is something I would have expected to be outside the Overton window. Europe is quite a varied place, but one of the more pro-refugee countries saying this makes me think the countries which have had problems with Arab migrants won't hesitate in doing the same (Ireland's migrants are nearly all EU, Ukraine, or Brazilian so Islam is not really a domestic issue).
Notably a lot of left-wing politicians went back on their past promises (this campaign goes back at least 2 years) to vote to expell the Israeli ambassador, a motion was passed today condemning the violence etc and the Sinn Fein leadership made no effort to include this condition in their suggested amendment of the wording. Sinn Fein has been quietly dropping some of their more radical proposals as they come closer to actually winning an election so this isn't a huge surprise, but getting softer on Israel is something that will annoy a lot of the more left-wing portions of their base.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
The old fashioned and still fairly reliable way is to go to a bar and start chatting to some girls. I've met a good chunk of the women I've dated through dating apps but the rest are mostly just women I walked up and said hello to at a bar. The walking up and saying hello bit is important, there have been periods when I would go to bars a lot and not have any luck with women because I just talked with my friends and women usually aren't going to walk up to a group of guys to spark off a conversation.
If you don't like that idea I've found language exchange meetups to be very gender balanced and you can get to know people beforehand a lot more than you would at a bar.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Are those missiles large enough to do this kind of damage?
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
The piece de resistance was a speech by Daniel O'Connell comparing Disraeli to the unrepentant robber crucified alongside Jesus and speculating about their family resemblance.
Yeah I remember reading that, Disraeli's comeback was a good one: 'Yes, I am a Jew, and while the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.'
Again I won't dispute personal experience with immigrant communities and maybe I'm just not seeing it myself, but Ireland is almost a different country to what it was 30 years ago so the historical picture of Irish attitudes could be completely accurate and yet not hold true today. There is definitely a very anti-semitic strain growing in the far-right in Ireland, but the people I know like that are young and picked it up from the internet.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
I don't think we disagree in that case. I don't know much about Irish-Americans outside of their influence back in Ireland (they were always more bitter towards the British), so I'll take your word for it.
hardcore antisemitism is (not exclusively, of course) a particularly Irish thing even in the US
Maybe I just can’t see the water I’m swimming in but I don’t think modern Irish people are antisemitic (Keith Woods and 4chan posters excepted). The first half of the 20th century was pretty bad (like the Limerick Boycott), but since then Jews are barely talked about in Ireland because there are only like 1,000 of them. The anti-Semitic stuff I heard from Muslims and Poles in Ireland struck me as a fairly foreign thing when I first heard it.
Irish people oppose Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians for the same reason they opposed South African Apartheid: not because Jews or Boers are inherently worthy of hate but because if you squint you can sort of draw parallels with Ireland’s experience under British rule. Irish people support a Jewish leader in Ukraine because Russian actions remind them of British colonialism, they supported the Sinn Féin Rabbi when being pro-Israel meant fighting the British, they oppose the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians because it reminds them of what the British did. Everything is interpreted through the lens of our history, we’re too self-centered to be anti-Semites.
Who counts as homeless in America? In Ireland putting homeless people up in hotels is the standard thing to do but I haven't seen any news of hotels complaining about business being affected by an intake of rough sleepers and drug addicts. Add refugee accomodation and it's very lucrative and a much more stable source of income for a hotel owner or landlord than serving the market.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
It’s in line with Fine Gael’s more liberal bent and Fianna Fáil’s tendency for big tax cuts before elections, so it’s not surprising in that sense.
I’m just surprised that after spending so much during Covid and some more as a result of the war in Ukraine debt hasn’t gotten out of hand like it did after the housing market crash. Belts are certainly tightening for the Irish people but Ireland is so FDI loaded that a few big companies seeing profits can offset a lot. There seems to be little relation between the financial problems of people living in Ireland and what the government is making.
Do those big tax loopholes still exist? I know that the government closed some and iirc they’ve agreed to the European 15% corporate tax rate, but maybe corporate accountants are still one step ahead.
This is just one paper but it seems like a good chunk of the royalty money saved under the ‘Double-Irish’ loophole was redirected to the US after it was closed in 2015. Seems like they have more of a right to be angry than Europeans: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4285001
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Ireland (I will update this later as I do more reading)
It seems giving multinational companies low tax rates is a gift that keeps on giving. Despite a massive increase on covid related spending Ireland ended up with a 10 billion euro budget surplus (this is apparently going to increase to 65 billion by 2027), and they've made use of it to pass a generous 'cost of living' budget consisting of tax cuts, tax credit increases, a minimum wage increase, introduction of more one off welfare payments and an increase in the existing ones in a bunch of different areas. The healthcare sector is seeing a hiring freeze to reduce massive overspending, and the Minister for Health has conceded that there will be a large funding shortfall as a result of this budget (everyone knows the healthcare system does poorly given its funding but no politician has been willing to tackle the issue head on).
Ireland is still a very expensive country to live in and not everyone has a nice job with a tech or pharmaceutical firm, so while this budget is generous its unclear whether it will keep up with the rising costs of day to day life (most of all the insane housing market).
One big distinguishing factor is that Ireland’s immigration experience is much more recent.
It’s hard to find a red line to rally around when your country’s first experience of mass Muslim migration happened in your grandparents’ days and when you’ve already learned to avoid the ghettos. Anything short of a drastic acceleration is just boiling the frog.
Ireland has never had ethnic ghettos, Dublin youth excepted we’re not used to the violence that’s accepted as part and parcel of normal city life, a ratio of 1800 Irish to 700 MENA males isn’t something Irish towns are used to.
I’m doubtful that this was a terrorist attack, but yesterday it was unclear whether Ireland had just experienced it’s first ever Islamic terrorist attack. Even though Ireland does have a high proportion of foreign nationals it’s nearly all working class Eastern Europeans or middle class Western Europeans who don’t cause much trouble, having areas suddenly gain a large population of young African and Muslim males is jarring and easy to rally around (I know this guy is much older but tension has been building for a while). All this when house and rental prices are through the roof.
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