[QUOTE=âRichie Mac an Breathnach, post: 1042741, member: 2646â]Donât ever compare Albanians and Lithuanians to Irishmen please.
Does your kind of multiculturalism include maintaining a border in someone elseâs country ?[/QUOTE]
One thing I do know is that the English would love to get out of the north of Ireland. I think the fear of leaving civil war behind has hindered this. I would be confident however, unfortunately, that a vote in the six counties or the republic, or the whole island would not vote to re-unify. A vote in England would certainly be in favour however. The English ruling class were murdering, ruthless thugs back in the day, no doubt. They still have an unhealthy obsession with armed force, but the politicians of today are the same self serving ilk found in DĂĄil Ăireann. Little between them bar a subtlety of corruption, which is more nuanced over in the UK.
An old man in the corner sang âwhere the water lilies growâ
And on the jukebox Johnny sang about a thing called love
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
A time to bow the head, remember and give thanks to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
:D:pint:
And itâs how are you kid and whatâs your name and howâd you bloody know
In blood and death 'neath the screaming sky I laid down on the ground
Not sure if he qualifies as Irish, but Norn Iron football manager Michael OâNeill wearing one on Sky Sports this morning. I thought this cunt was a Catholic from a Republican area?
What is it about the name OâNeill that it produces so many wankers?
Eamonn McCann fairly nails it today.
Footballers with poppies ruin integrity of the sport
EAMONN MCCANN
Itâs possible Mesut Ăzil was not devastated at having to miss last Sundayâs Premier League match at Swansea. Out injured, the Arsenal midfielder didnât have to decide whether to wear a poppy. Maybe he wouldnât have minded. He is Turkish by background and German by birth, and might have felt awkward with an emblem on his chest commemorating the defeat of Germany and destruction of the Ottoman empire.
Sergio AgĂźero seemed unconcerned about wearing a British Legion badge as he put in a two-goal shift for Manchester City on Saturday. But it must have occurred to him to wonder about reaction back home in Argentina. There are scores of other players who might resent their jerseys being used to promote British patriotism and sentimentalise war. But only James McClean from Creggan Heights in Derry stood up and said so, explaining his refusal to wear a poppy playing for Wigan against Bolton on Friday night.
âFor me to wear a poppy would be as much a gesture of disrespect for the innocent people who lost their lives in the Troubles â and Bloody Sunday especially. . . It would be seen as an act of disrespect to my people.â
The fashion for poppies on football shirts is new. The idea appears first to have been mooted about five years ago. Why? What new factor had come into play? What debate was there among fans, players, the Football Association?
Why is it that the real and relevant connection between football and the first World War goes entirely unmentioned even as the game is systematically misused in an effort to make war seem as natural an expression of identity as shouting for your team on Saturday afternoon?
Britainâs wars
Salespeople for the poppy suggest that support for Britainâs wars has nothing to do with it, that the red splodge they want to see on every lapel signifies only dignified remembrance of the war dead. Were there a syllable of truth in this we would hear a range of emotions and thoughts on the meaning of the war expressed at every poppy-strewn remembrance. But we do not.
Raise a shout of anger at so many lives lost or hoist a banner declaring âNever Again!â and you are liable to be arrested for â this has happened â breach of the peace.
The Royal British Legion puts it plainly that poppies are âworn to commemorate the sacrifices of our armed forces and to show support to those still serving todayâ.
Wearing the poppy is clearly not incompatible with organising a rerun of the slaughter.
Among the sights to be seen last weekend was Tony Blair â the man who told the lies that lured the British people into backing a war that left more dead than had fallen at the Battle of Mons â wearing a poppy of such size that, laid flat, would have provided landing space for a helicopter.
Endured horrors
If the first World War is to be remembered at football matches in November, why not actor Maxine Peake in the centre circle reading the words of a man who had endured the horrors before falling himself in the last days of the conflict.
âIf you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs/Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues/My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori.â
You wouldnât have to call for a minuteâs silence. A hush would descend naturally.
Or mark the moment at Christmas 1914 when thousands of German and British-and-Irish soldiers on the western front stepped, timidly, tentatively at first, then teeming with joy, out from their trenches into no-manâs land to laugh, hug, clap one another on the back, share cigarettes. Of course, one side couldnât speak the otherâs language. But they found a common language in which they could celebrate their common humanity and played a game of football.
Was this not footballâs finest hour? Was it not the moment in footballâs history most relevant to remembrance of war, and specifically of the first World War?
Would a parade in the English and German football strips of the period not touch more hearts and make more moral sense than detachments of soldiers in full military dress leading poppy-festooned players on to the pitch?
Nothing of the sort will happen, of course. The underlying purpose of Remembrance is to soften the memory of futile slaughter the better to make the next generation ready to do its share of dying in wars caused by greed and imperial rivalries.
McClean was speaking up not just for himself and the right to choose whether to wear a poppy, but against the perversion of sport and for the integrity of football.
Thats a hell of a line right there.
[QUOTE=âElvis Brandenberg Kremmen, post: 1044654, member: 1624â]Not sure if he qualifies as Irish, but Norn Iron football manager Michael OâNeill wearing one on Sky Sports this morning. I thought this cunt was a Catholic from a Republican area?
What is it about the name OâNeill that it produces so many wankers?[/QUOTE]
How are you not sure if somebody named OâNeill from the north is Irish.
The name OâNeill also produced some of our greatest.
[ATTACH=full]1953[/ATTACH]
[QUOTE=âRichie Mac an Breathnach, post: 1044739, member: 2646â]How are you not sure if somebody named OâNeill from the north is Irish.
The name OâNeill also produced some of our greatest.[/QUOTE]
Hear Hear! The OâNeills defended Ulster gallantly and longer than any clan in the other provinces.
The reason Ulster was planted by the Brits was because we were the most resistant and gallant force on the island.
If yeâd have been a bit more resilient and gallant they mightnât have taken over your place. Shame that.
The thing that separates Ulster from the other three provinces is that we refused to be brought to heel by the British. The British have always viewed us as the enfant terrible, whereas as the other three provinces were viewed as servile peasants happy to cower and be loyal subjects.
David Squires again. His cartoons are superb - well worth a twitter follow.
If everyone fought like the Ui Neill they wouldâve planted the entire island. The Ulster clans were the last of the Mohicans . Consider yourself lucky you didnât share their fate.
Hard to argue with it, Iâve been pretty ambivalent about the whole issue, but that sums it up nicely for me.