Tollund_Man4
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User ID: 501
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Both far left and far right would likely agree on official policies of banning books and jailing opponents of the regime,
Sure, but they probably wouldn’t agree on which books, and which opponents.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Surprisingly it was quite peaceful, the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 was just a single shootout and was the first uprising in 40 years, the real violence started from the 1860s on as the Irish in America never shed their bitter feelings. The American Civil War changed a lot too because from then on you see things like ex-Union captains being executed in Britain for killing police officers.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
It tended to be a common rhetorical device in countries which actually slid into violence too.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Yes, greatly, but while I’m sure something I did contributed to the change have no idea why it happened!
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
In Ireland it’s not uncommon for judges at sentencing to say something like “I have to judge in accordance with the law as it stands but the legislation needs updating on these points”.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Ireland is moving to recognize Palestinian statehood
Looks like the plan is to do it in concert with Spain, Slovenia and Malta.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Lady flashing her tits at the Times Square portal
On the Dublin side there was a guy showing photos of 9/11, another guy snorting coke, a guy showing his ass and a homeless woman raving before being taken away by police, it’ll be funny if some tit flashing is what gets remembered as the true scandal.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Sinn Fein is an explicitly socialist party, and advocated quasi-revolutionary socialism until relatively recently.
Sure, but Sinn Féin only represents a portion of Irish nationalism. Aside from the minority of socialists who took part in the fighting in 1916/1919-21 they are basically the only explicitly socialist Irish nationalists worth mentioning, and they had very little presence in the Republic of Ireland until quite recently.
I wonder if it’s a case of anti-Israel sentiment in Ireland is just not considered any different to disapproval of the actions of other countries? The American government was hated as much in Ireland for the Iraq war as the Israeli government is in Gaza (anger over American troops passing through Shannon airport was an issue for years), same for Russia in Ukraine, but nobody treats this as some moral failing.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I was in Belfast in January, and when driving through heavily Catholic districts of the city (e.g. the Falls road), I saw Palestinian flags hanging from every pub, which were conspicuous by their absence in the Protestant districts
In the more loyalist areas (I think more moderate Protestants are kind of embarrassed by all the flag-waving) you’ll also see Israeli flags being flown in response to this.
Went to an Irish-language primary school, a Gaelscoil (though I've got terrible Irish these days). We went to church a lot and started every day off with a prayer. The local priest used to come in and give talks and he was very entertaining, he went off to Rome and the next priest wasn't as entertaining but was also a nice fellow. There was a big focus on music which I unfortunately didn't take advantage of so I just did the mandatory tin-whistle playing and singing (the whole class was a church choir). Sports were soccer, handball and (not competitively) rounders though almost everyone was involved in GAA outside of school, I never got the hang of a hurl so I stuck to handball. Nearly all the teachers were female, there were three very strict ones I didn't like and the rest were very friendly. For the final two years we got a male teacher and he was well liked by everyone, our rowdy stage hit around age 12 and we eventually betrayed him on the last day of school by pretending one kid was hurt and showering the teacher in water when he ran over to help.
My main trouble was not having the in-group status most of the other kids shared, I'm Irish but everyone's else's family knew and lived beside everyone else's family for decades and my parents not being locals meant I had to hang out with the Welsh kid, the Scottish kid and the slow kid from Kerry. Eventually I was told I was now part of the cool group, I made one years long friendship out of that and the others I lost contact with as they went to the Irish language secondary school.
My parents made a lot of effort to get me into different secondary schools but left the choice up to me, the school I picked had the worst reputation out of the three but the friend I mentioned was going there and it wasn't on the other side of town so I was happy to go. The new principle was quickly cleaning the place up but there was still a rowdiness among the students that we feared as first years, learned to enjoy in second year and did our best to instill into the younger students in the following years. First years would be thrown into bins, shirt pockets would be torn off and kept as trophies and we had a version of rugby that had no teams and consisted of everyone chasing and throwing rocks at whoever had the ball. Some classes had their disruptive students but as time went on the school did a decent job of separating people into honours and ordinary level classes. I remember voluntarily spending 2 weeks in the ordinary level maths class because I was pessimistic about my upcoming exam results and it's hard to see how anyone could do any learning there, luckily I actually did well on the exam and I quickly got put back into the honours class.
Still reading Kissinger's Diplomacy. A few surprising things I found out (coming from a background of not knowing much about WW2):
- America was already attacking German submarines in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbour
- Roosevelt intitially overestimated Britain's post-war potential and planned to pull American troops out of Europe while letting British garrisons pick up the slack.
- Stalin was proposing post-war plans while German troops were outside of Moscow.
- Churchill consistently tried to convince Roosevelt on the need to take land before the Soviets got to it, and he was consistently ignored. One plan was for D-Day to include the Balkans.
Aside from that I'm doing more 'reading' than ever by listening to audiobooks at work, I'm on my 30th this year. It's mostly light reading, classic sci-fi, horror and now Sherlock Holmes novels.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
This is just a pathological level of oversocialization, to have even had these thoughts occur in your mind
I phrased it in the abstract but this was a real situation which led to an argument with an angry old woman!
The whole point of a queue is to serve in order of arrival, and you arrived first. . . You WANT the system to reward good judgement and punish bad judgement!!!
I agree my judgment was better and put me in the right. though technically I arrived at the correct stop first whereas everyone else was waiting in the rain before I showed up.
Jesus Christ. I wish I knew you, so I could take advantage of you.
What do you want me to say to this, what's your deadlift 1rm?
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
There's a few minutes between the bus pulling up and the doors opening, enough time to argue with an old woman is less abstract terms than I have phrased it above.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Yep, it's a central bus station so all the stops are beside each other but they go to different towns and cities.
The other stop is 10 feet away (I’m bad with feet, more like 5 metres) but clearly a distinct stop. Think of a bunch of separate queues and a few empty stops in between, like an intercity bus station.
You’re waiting at a bus station and there’s a big queue beside you at the next stop. Your bus pulls up and the big queue realises they’ve been waiting at the wrong stop the whole time and shuffle over.
In this situation are you in the right to take your place at the head of the new queue and reap the rewards for your good judgment or should you respect the misdirected queue and move to the back?
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Maybe I’m just squeamish but I didn’t find my visit to a slaughterhouse to be very pleasant (though the actual farmers I was with thought it was nasty business too).
The suffering of the worker in doing an extremely bloody and dirty job is something I don’t think we’d lose much in getting rid of, there’s no self-reliance or virtue of the hunt in a series of bolt gun shots.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Here's how I see it, your description was true for other countries and the related policies have since become a dogma to export via UN resolutions and American soft power or enforce via EU law. There is no real immigrant voting bloc in Ireland, the biggest left-wing party Sinn Fein has flipped their stances on the hate speech bill and the EU migration pact because the last year has caused division within their base (working class vs woke middle class), there was no 5 figure increase in 3rd world immigration until like 2 years ago. The immediate consequences of this situation (though not so immediate when there's an election coming up) work against the left defined strictly, though of course the woke wings of the centrist parties are pretty happy about it.
The conditions for this situation to arise thoughtlessly on the other hand have been present for a long time. Ireland paved the way for the present immigration situation at a time when we faced little consequences for it, the Irish government got to pass laws that made them look good in the eyes of the EU, UN etc while the actual immigration numbers (excluding EU migrants) were minimal. Immigration was simply not that important an issue until recently and there was no cost to winning over the striving middle class who have always been ashamed to be stuck in a backwards Catholic country. Now that Ireland is actually facing consequences for their eagerness to ape the big important countries the cracks are starting to show.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I don’t think it makes sense to liken them, modern immigration doesn’t involve the state confiscating your land to give to immigrants.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Objectively I’ve gotten the best reading sessions done on desks, but lacking a desk at the moment I just read in bed.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Right, there is no 'respectable conservative' establishment to funnel the energy of Irish right wingers through, the two wings of these protests are the more moderate 'We don't want them here (in this particular village)' accompanied by some complaints about how a big increase in population will strain GPs, policing, harm tourism etc, and 'We don't want them here, deport them'. The most respectable opposition you'll get are instances like this fairly satisfying grilling of the Minister for Justice.
I wonder if the Irish politicians will clock on and embrace the Tory policy of talking the talk on migration and then just not doing anything about it (or indeed increasing it further).
Fine Gael are supposed to be the closest thing we have to the Tories, but as long as they continue to call people bigots this is just what leftists say not what right wingers think.
Ireland
Riot police have been called out to the small town of Newtownmountkennedy (population 2,800) in response to another protest outside a site which is soon to become an asylum centre. It got violent and the riot police charged the protesters after they set fire to a building on the outer portion of the site. It seems like most of the protesters/rioters have been pushed into an adjacent field, but police are still moving through the town and running into more angry locals.
Ballina had a ]far larger peaceful protest](https://x.com/Mick_O_Keeffe/status/1781727303283692017) a few days ago, it would be harder to shut this one down given how big the town is (c. 10,000) and how isolated it is.
Did it? It has been in place for over 100 years in Ireland ever since the UK wanted to boost the minority Unionist vote, maybe this all started with an academic paper but it seems like the academy got interested in something that already existed.
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