Related: Ireland Fit For a Queen
"A royal bid to end eons of enmity; The air is thick with history, and the police are on edge, as queen’s Dublin visit nears" by Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff / May 15, 2011
Thirty years ago, as 10 Irish republicans starved themselves to death in a British prison in Northern Ireland to make a point, someone blew up the Queen Victoria monument in Dún Laoghaire Harbor, just south of Dublin.
It was a classic act of Irish defiance. But that was a long time ago. The Irish and the British have never been closer, never more friendly. And to mark the occasion, Queen Elizabeth II will arrive in Dublin on Tuesday to end, once and for all, the Anglo-Irish conflict, the oldest, most resilient animosity in the Western world.
So why are two police officers standing guard over the rebuilt monument in Dún Laoghaire?
Because there are some things that don’t die in Ireland, and one of them is memory.
I'm already sensing an insulting tone towards the Irish in this empire-supporting article.
It would be difficult to overstate the historical significance of the queen’s visit. She is the first British monarch to set foot in what would become the Republic of Ireland since King George V, the queen’s grandfather, in 1911. In the interim, the Irish staged a futile uprising in 1916, a bitter war of independence five years later, and something of a cold war for the next 80 odd years, all of it aimed at the British.
Well, we certainly see which side the newspaper has taken. Wow.
Beginning in 1969, the war in Northern Ireland, which the Irish in their penchant for understatement called The Troubles, took more than 3,000 lives, including that of the queen’s cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten.
In 1979, the Irish Republican Army planted a bomb in the boat Mountbatten, 79, took off the coast of Mullaghmore in County Sligo. It blew him apart, along with his daughter’s mother-in-law, Lady Brabourne, his 14-year-old grandson, and a 15-year-old local youth named Paul Maxwell who had the misfortune of piloting the boat.
That's the newspaper's version, huh?
Related: Britain Reactivates FRU in Northern Ireland
Gee, EVERYWHERE there are "terrorists" there are GOVERNMENT INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES behind them!!
Over the centuries, the Crown forces, initially under the literal and later under the titular leadership of the British monarch, inflicted their own pain on Ireland, killing and maiming thousands and contributing to centuries of bitterness between the colonized and the colonizer that ended in 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement ended the war in Northern Ireland.
Notice how THAT ASPECT of IMPERIAL OCCUPATION was PASSED OVER VERY QUICKLY! The paper reads like a history book sometimes!
The queen’s visit to Ireland is meant to be a final act of reconciliation and a victory lap, an opportunity for neighboring islands to celebrate their strong and mutually beneficial friendship, one that extends to the lobbies of Brussels, where Ireland and the United Kingdom are fast allies in the European Union.
Oh, the British won that war, huh?
Yeah, both governments are globalist slaves and that makes them good friends.
But for all its historical import, the timing of the queen’s trip is, at the least, problematic. Dissident republicans who oppose the Good Friday Agreement are determined to wreck the visit and would give their eye teeth for a crack at the queen.
And Ireland, which a decade ago leapfrogged past the UK in every measurable standard of living, is suddenly, shockingly, depressingly broke. A banking crisis brought on by reckless lending and unregulated development forced Ireland to take a multi-billion dollar bailout, which has left many Irish people saying the sovereignty they fought for centuries to wrest from the British has been meekly surrendered to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
Gee, how many mortgage securities did the Irish buy?
Then I ran into a wall.
More than 10,000 Irish police and soldiers will roll out to protect the queen. How to pay for this is anyone's guess, at a time when the benefits to the blind are being cut and the curse of emigration has returned to a country badly scarred by it since the famine of the 1840s....
Un-flipping-believable!
Governments suck!
But if history has shown anything in Ireland, it doesn't take many to wreck a party. As the police round up the usual suspects, there is an unstated fear that someone could do something that, beyond being dangerous, could be highly embarrassing....
I've had enough insults.
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And which intelligence assets would want to wreck the party?
"Irish group issues bomb threat for London" May 17, 2011|Associated Press
LONDON — Dissident Irish republican terrorists issued a bomb threat for central London yesterday, police said, in advance of Queen Elizabeth II’s groundbreaking but sensitive visit to Ireland today.
You know, you intelligence guys really gotta do something different because we are just not buying it anymore.
Encouraged by the largely successful peace process in Northern Ireland, the queen will become the first British monarch to set foot in the Republic of Ireland, where troops and even ground-to-air missiles were being deployed amid tight security....
The monarch’s presence is resented by some in Ireland who bristle at the legacy of British rule, with some predicting violent street clashes and others fearing a terrorist attack.
(Sigh) What?
London’s Metropolitan Police said the bomb warning — which was received late on Sunday — did not include a specific location or time. Officers swept across the city and cut off traffic to parts of the British capital, including roads near the queen’s official residence.
I would be PISSED if I were British.
A police official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy, confirmed that the warning related to a threat from a dissident Irish republican group.
The bomb warning was the first serious threat to Britain since 2001, the last time republican dissidents made a successful attack in England, exploding a car bomb in west London that wounded 11.
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Somehow irrelevant fringe groups always hang around. Must be the intelligence agency cash.
"Election bolsters joint government
BELFAST — Northern Ireland’s two major parties will return to power atop a joint Catholic-Protestant government with increased support for their policies of compromise and peacemaking, electoral returns showed. The British Protestants of the Democratic Unionists and the Irish Catholics of Sinn Fein strengthened their hold on the Northern Ireland Assembly. With votes still being counted two days after Thursday’s election, the Democratic Unionists were projected to win 38 seats and Sinn Fein 29."
Ever notice that is always where "terrorists" show up?
"Queen’s visit draws praise and rage; Monarch lays wreath at shrine to Irish dead" May 18, 2011|By Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff
DUBLIN — Irish police defused a pipe bomb on a bus in Maynooth, outside Dublin, just hours before the queen arrived. But the ability of the Irish police to intercept the bus, which was bound for Dublin from County Mayo, was testament to how dissident republicans bent on wrecking the queen’s visit are infiltrated with informers.
Or INSTIGATORS as the CASE may be!!!
Yup, the cops intercepted the bus and blah, blah, blah, blah, ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!
This is SO OBVIOUSLY a STAGED INCIDENT for PUBLIC RELATIONS and PROPAGANDA PURPOSES!!!
The queen arrived here yesterday amid unprecedented security precautions to engage in equally unprecedented acts of reconciliation, launching a new era in cordial relations between two historical enemies.
As much as the Irish and British governments wanted to focus attention on how positive their relationship has become, there were repeated reminders of the bad old days, including scuffles between police and protesters....
Just by coming here, the queen accomplished the impossible: Dublin traffic was actually worse....
The queen unwittingly provided Irish police with their first overtime windfall in two years.
And who is going to pay for this? The tapped-out Irish taxpayers?
Some 10,000 police and soldiers have been deployed to protect her, the biggest security operation in the history of the state, costing an estimated $42 million.
The Irish government considers it money well spent, the queen’s visit amounting to the symbolic end to centuries of Anglo-Irish conflict. And the government believes a successful visit will attract more tourists, especially English ones, when the Irish economy desperately needs an infusion of cash.
Well, what do you know? The Irish government is not in favor of its people.
Everywhere the queen went yesterday was steeped in the tortured history of Anglo-Irish relations and the promise of a new chapter that began with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ending the war in Northern Ireland....
The queen’s visit dominated Irish news coverage. But the second story on the national broadcast news had much more to do with Ireland’s present than its past: A medical devices company in County Cork announced it was laying off 140 workers.
I imagine that is more important to the Irish than some old bag getting a taxpayer-funded tour of the place her army helped oppress.
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Also see:
Phoebe Prince’s mother leaves behind a world of pain
Cullen had a good day that day: two front-page pieces.
Related: The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: She's No Princess
Yeah, but we don't talk about that here in the agenda-pushing paper. That's one reason why the kids got off with plea-bargain probation. Another was lack of evidence, but what does that matter now?
BC faces dilemma over Irish archive
Goodwill travels
Princess's hat to be auctioned for charity
Royal couple spend week at Wales isle
Mummified princess had heart disease
Britain asks diplomats to sell wine
A lady who was not treated like a queen:
"Woman, 73, fell to sea in rescue attempt" April 22, 2011|Associated Press
EDINBURGH, Scotland — A seriously ill 73-year-old British woman was accidentally dropped into the bitterly cold Norwegian Sea as rescue workers took her off a cruise ship, police said yesterday.
The ordeal has left her hospitalized for more than three weeks.
Janet Richardson spent four minutes treading water March 29 after Norwegian coast guard officers let her stretcher slip into the sea as they were evacuating her from a Scandinavian cruise ship, rescue officials said....
How do you tread water strapped to a stretcher?
Rode the old waterboard, didn't she?
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