Ku Klux Klan flag erected in east Belfast

[Anarcho-Socialist]

Source: Guardian

Racists have erected a Ku Klux Klan flag in an area of Belfast which has been at the centre of a recent surge in racist attacks in the city.

East Belfast MP Naomi Long has condemned those who put up the symbol of the KKK movement, accusing them of heightening racist tensions in her constituency.

There has been a spike in racist attacks in Belfast, with the Police Service of Northern Ireland confirming its officers are investigating up to three racist incidents every day. A large proportion of racist attacks and intimidation is taking place in the loyalist east.

The Alliance party MP said the appearance of a KKK flag off Island Street in the east of the city gives "an even more sinister edge" to xenophobic attacks in the area.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/01/ku-klux-klan-flag-erected-east-belfast-racist-tensions

---

The Loyalists aren't able to brazenly victimise Catholics and Irish nationalists as they once did. They're increasingly targeting Eastern Europeans and non-whites.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. The only Chinese-born UK parliamentarian has said she's the target of racism in NI

Some background for DUers from about a month ago - I can't remember if this was mentioned here then:

Anna Lo tells Belfast anti-racism rally: I'm staying put

The Hong Kong-born Alliance Party MLA has been inundated with flowers, messages of support and well wishes since her emotional outpouring about the rise in attacks on minority communities – and being on the receiving end of some vicious racist abuse herself.

Ms Lo was the centre of attention at an anti-racism rally in Belfast at the weekend, with the public keen to vocalise their support and have pictures taken with the UK's only Chinese-born parliamentarian.

"I'm not going to go away," she told the crowd at City Hall.

While the popular MLA will remain living in Belfast, she has again confirmed she is to quit Stormont and will not run for re-election in 2016 because of "tribal politics" and repeated her calls for Peter Robinson to make a full public apology following the Pastor McConnell row.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/anna-lo-tells-belfast-antiracism-rally-im-staying-put-30321143.html

Police question Pastor James McConnell over Islam remarks

A Belfast pastor who called Islam "heathen" and "satanic" spent almost two hours at a police station on Friday being questioned about his remarks.
...
The pastor said he had not intended to "arouse fear or stir up or incite hatred" towards any member of the Muslim community.
...
Speaking to his congregation in north Belfast on 18 May, Mr McConnell said "a new evil had arisen" and "there are cells of Muslims right throughout Britain".

"Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell," he said.

He said he agreed with the late MP Enoch Powell, whose 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech criticised immigration.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-27732156

No, I can't imagine why those remarks might "arouse fear or stir up or incite hatred", can you?

[theHandpuppet]

12. Yes, I'd read something about that

It seems there seems to be no point at which humankind will stop wallowing in the depravity and hatred called racism. No matter where you go in this world, it rears its ugly head.

[genwah]

2. Well, now I'm confused. When I was a kid, Northern Ireland was a great confusion to me.

I was a kid in very segregated, very Democratic-machine controlled Chicago. Racial tension, political tension, the Vietnam war was still happening, but there was Northern Ireland. A place I imagined as a hope and a warning.

A hope of finally ending the X-ian tribal wars. Northern Ireland was the last battleground of the Protestant Reformation. The last battlefield. No more "Thirty Year War"s. No more "This Queen died, we're all changing our religion now." No more death. The Sunni/Shia battle in Christianity, writ large, was ending.

Simultaneously, a warning.. Here's a country, I imagined, where there were no blacks, no Jews, no Asians. A country so bereft of the "other" that White Christian Males were reduced to hating and killing each other. Yes, they inherited the Reformation war, but why did they keep it going for so long? (Yeah, yeah, I know, the British...they still owe my family for some stuff that happened in the Boxer Rebellion, do you see me flying to London to bomb Horn and Hardart's?

So, now that there has been a truce, and the White Christian Males have gone from killing each other to just annoying each other, now, after all that, the KKK is moving in. Really?

We are doomed as a species.

[sofa king]

3. I was so disappointed one night in Ireland...

... My pals and I, headed back toward Dublin for our flight out the next day, checked into a bar-and-bed, where we met the self-proclaimed "rudest man in Ireland." He proceeded to insult us, our country, our friends and so on, and we chuckled and drank.

But eventually, the fellow found his way into racism. "You ain't seen one of your brothers here, I'll bet, 'cause we don't let 'em in."

At that point, my knife-scarred Asian friend stood up, and invited the fellow to show off his skills in a slap fight. The moment he said yes, my friend slapped that bastard so hard I could hear the echo off the appliances in the kitchen, and though the rude kid put on a good show, he couldn't stop the reflexive flow of tears between five red finger-marks. Shortly afterward, we sauntered off to see the town while our new racist friend nursed his last beer through one side of his mouth.

"We'll be back after we get good and drunk," one of us said on the way out, "and I hope I'll find you here then." He wasn't.

Interesting postscript: years later, this same carved up friend of mine ran into a girl from the very same town. My pal told the story of The Rudest Man in Ireland, to her, and eventually they got married. To this day, to protect the life of that weasel over there, she says that she doesn't know the rude fellow. Wherever that asshole is, he doesn't know that his life depends entirely upon my friend's wife continuing to have a bad memory.

[CountAllVotes]

4. The Loyalists aren't able to victimise Catholics & Irish nationalists ...

I would not agree with this at all.

I have friends/family in different parts of Ireland, including the north.

The last time I heard from my friend, a Catholic lady living in Belfast, Catholics were being harassed something fierce. She told me she could not even go to the store and come home without being called names and having stones thrown at her. She lives in fear.

This was a few years ago btw -- not 50 years ago.

It won't ever end in Ireland until the English are out of Ireland.

Its an ancient ongoing war that has lasted for over 1,000+ years when the British invaded Ireland.

Then came the likes of Oliver Cromwell, the proverbial nail in the coffin for an ongoing never ending war ...

>>Slavery

In 1654 the British parliament gave Oliver Cromwell a free hand to banish Irish "undesirables". Cromwell rounded up Catholics throughout the Irish countryside and placed them on ships bound for the Caribbean, mainly Barbados. The authorities in the West Indies, fearing the Irish would resist servitude, treated the prisoners harshly. Records suggest that priests may have been routinely tortured and executed. By 1655, 12,000 political prisoners had been forcibly shipped to Barbados.

Read more about the history of Ireland (in brief) here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland

[Anarcho-Socialist]

7. That's not quite what I said

Note the qualifiers "brazenly" and "like they once did." I don't deny any presence of it, but merely its lower veracity.

It's undeniable that the life and conditions of Catholics and Irish nationalists have improved since Sinn Fein has been involved in the coalition government in the Six Counties. Most British troops have been withdrawn and the sectarian and Loyalist paramilitary-colluding RUC has been disbanded and replaced with the PSNI. Local government seats and Westminster seats used to be heavily gerrymandered and Catholics were disenfranchised as business rate-payers (who were majority protestant) were permitted extra votes in elections. This is thankfully no longer the case. The once-frequent pogroms against Catholic residents has now become much rarer. Businesses also have a statutory employment policy in which they must monitor non-sectarian hiring methods and social housing provision is no longer allowed to give preferential treatment to Protestants. Every concession from the British government and the main Unionist parties has been hard fought-for and hard-won.

There are still major problems. The most hardline parts of the Loyalist community are refusing to de-segregate and live peacefully among other Irish people. There is also the continuance of partition as a divisive and distorting effect on Irish society and the rights of Irish self-determination. The DUP, UUP and TUV are constantly harking back to a British imperial nationalism that is from the pre-World War 1 era. The hate and the bigotry are being vented at targets that don't have large parties like Sinn Fein or the SDLP to fight their corner. They are targeting immigrants and Muslims in particular, the latter which it is deemed socially-acceptable to fear in contemporary British culture. The British media on the whole doesn't care because it feeds the constant demonisation of Muslims in the same way that it once did of the Jews and the Irish.

[CountAllVotes]

8. It seems to me that ...

the whole of the EU is in turmoil with Ireland in the center of the mess.

And then there is the UK.

I can't see how these two super powers (or whatever they are) will every find agreement between one another and throw the rest of this into the mess and OMG what an endless nightmare it is.

Seems all we can do is hope for the best with this fiasco.

Sort of a "monkey see, monkey do" scenario IMO. Bizarre at best.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

10. Ireland (especially the 26 counties) been screwed by the EU

The 26-county Republic joined the Euro currency and saw EU convergence as somehow escaping the shadow of British imperialism. It's been a disaster and the Republic is more or less now a subject to German imperialism.

The neoliberal economic model of low corporation tax and light regulation has crashed the economy. Now the Republic's government doesn't have the final say over its own affairs. Any Dublin budget proposal needs to be circulated for approval first in the Bundestag (German Parliament) by German MPs before TDs in the Dáil even get a vote on it. It's a humiliation for the Irish people to go from being subject to Westminster to now being subject to Berlin.

[CountAllVotes]

11. Agree

It has been really sad IMO.

A group of family friends live there visiting and many manged to make it to a reunion in 2006 for a few weeks and no one could believe the differences. It was at its "peak" at that time.

It was not the same place I'd visited in younger years, that is for sure.



I do not believe the Irish people wanted this. It was turned down twice and Ahern pushed it through whether the people wanted it or not.

Hence, I've found many people I know tend to have the EU on the IGNORE button in/around Ireland.

The Irish were sold out by Bertie Ahern and now he sells windows shades on the teevee last I heard.

Sad state of affairs worldwide I'd dare suggest?

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Ireland's government screwed it in 2008 by saying it would bail out banks 100%

thus making the country take on the whole dodgy debt that should have been born by bank share and bond-holders. Before that, it had done very well out of the Euro. No-one forced them to do that - people were surprised the moment they said it.

[Sunlei]

5. yes, someone funded the USA KKK and they name changed and went international.

They got a TV station, changed updated their website, have some singing group, have international chapters.

Who funded the KKK massively? Was about the same time the John Birch Society had a booth in the republican primary and the JBS funded the venue for the republican primary.


The KKK has always had a secret membership list, same for the JBS.

would not mind at all if some group like Anonymous exposes their membership lists to the world!!!

[nyabingi]

6. America's particular form of racial sickness

spreads around the world...

[CountAllVotes]

9. that's sort of how I coined it

a "monkey see, monkey do" scenario that is quite sick indeed!

[toby jo]

13. A friend commented to me this morning that we'll never see the end of it.

There will always be an "other" to be marginalized.

All we can do is push the 'other' message - peace.