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Redfairen

(1,276 posts)
Mon Jan 7, 2013, 07:21 PM Jan 2013

Belfast flag violence: New clashes as police use water cannon on loyalist rioters

Source: Belfast Telegraph

Around a thousand loyalist protesters picketed Belfast City Hall tonight over the Union flag row as violent disturbances again broke out elsewhere in Northern Ireland's capital.

The demonstration at the civic building in the city centre was held as Belfast City Council met for the first time since its controversial decision to limit the flying of the flag on the roof.

While the protest at City Hall passed off without incident, trouble flared again in the east of the city - the fifth night in succession that the area has been blighted by disorder.

Loyalist protests have been continuing across Northern Ireland since early December in response to the decision by Belfast councillors to only fly the flag above City Hall on designated days instead of all year round.



Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/belfast-flag-violence-new-clashes-as-police-use-water-cannon-on-loyalist-rioters-16258560.html

11 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Belfast flag violence: New clashes as police use water cannon on loyalist rioters (Original Post) Redfairen Jan 2013 OP
Do you have a flag? Turbineguy Jan 2013 #1
Hosing the loyalists? Kelvin Mace Jan 2013 #2
I know, right? n/t bitchkitty Jan 2013 #3
This saddens me to no end.. ReRe Jan 2013 #4
Or just fly the Ulster flag... Ken Burch Jan 2013 #5
Seriously! ReRe Jan 2013 #6
Great post. in the end, what's so great about a flag... Ken Burch Jan 2013 #7
That's right on.... ReRe Jan 2013 #8
It's like the line Tommy Sands put in his song "There Were Roses" Ken Burch Jan 2013 #9
"There were roses, ReRe Jan 2013 #10
You're welcome. Ken Burch Jan 2013 #11

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
4. This saddens me to no end..
Mon Jan 7, 2013, 08:17 PM
Jan 2013
K&R

All over the bloody Union Jack. That was an unnecessary rule their Irish leadership rammed thru with little discussion. Sounds like what happened up in Wisconsin. I read the article to see how they had been flying the flag...didn't say. Why can't they fly both effing flags?? The Union Jack on one corner and the Irish flag on the other, and at the same effing height??? I gather that many of the protesters are quite young! Heck...where's George Mitchell? Send him over there and straighten this out before children are killed! Someone. They all love the Big Dawg...send him over there! Someone has to talk some sense into those people. Holy Moly...
 

Ken Burch

(50,254 posts)
5. Or just fly the Ulster flag...
Mon Jan 7, 2013, 08:26 PM
Jan 2013


Or this proposed new flag, which was intended as a banner that BOTH communities could accept:



Isn't it a little absurd, at this point, for Ulster Loyalists to still be THIS obsessed about having "the upper hand"? It's not even as if anything would change all that much if the Six Counties actually joined the other Twenty-Six.

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
6. Seriously!
Mon Jan 7, 2013, 08:47 PM
Jan 2013

I'm Irish and I'm British. Many of those kids from BOTH sides are my distant cousins and I don't want either group to be killed or injured over a GD flag. The council needs to back the eff down and put it back the way it was before they changed it. That 2nd flag there might even work. Thanks for posting the flags...

 

Ken Burch

(50,254 posts)
7. Great post. in the end, what's so great about a flag...
Mon Jan 7, 2013, 08:54 PM
Jan 2013

...if the main thing you use it for is draping coffins?...

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
8. That's right on....
Mon Jan 7, 2013, 09:22 PM
Jan 2013

This is the effing 21st century, for God's sake, not the middle effing ages. I'm so sorry I'm foaming at the mouth over this.... I just can not stomach injury and/or killing of any more children. And it took so long to end that conflict over there. This might just spark the whole thing up into a civil war again. (or religious war, whatever it was.)

 

Ken Burch

(50,254 posts)
9. It's like the line Tommy Sands put in his song "There Were Roses"
Mon Jan 7, 2013, 09:25 PM
Jan 2013
"'An eye for an eye' was all that filled their minds.
And another eye for another eye 'til everyone is blind".

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
10. "There were roses,
Mon Jan 7, 2013, 10:49 PM
Jan 2013

roses, there were roses, and the tears of the people ran together." I had never heard that song before. How can something so beautiful come out of something so tragic? Thank you...

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