Flags & Culture.....

[front of the mountain]

Its seems it's that time of year again when every available lamppost must adorn some sort of "triumphalist" flag.  There are certainly a wide range of flags to celebrate this festival of "orangeness "  i.e.union jacks, 6county flags, england, scotland, orange, norn iron, rangers, odd loyalist paramilitary flag, (what did Wales do to be left out??) I can see this how this can be very intimating to some people having to drive through these gauntlet of flags. Honestly there would not have been as many in London for that Royal wedding.

But the most unusual I noticed as driving through a rural backwater in the tyrone/fermanagh region last night was the the flag of israel being hoisted proudly aloft on street lighting pole. I began to wonder to myself what the hell has this got to do with the so called culture? Are these people supporting the siege of Gaza and the suffering of the Palestinians??

Can anyone tell me do these towns, villages (parts of towns) just get hijacked by a few loyalists who believe they are defending the union by erecting these barrage of flags or are they welcomed mostly by the wider unionist community?? (It's bound to have a knock on tourism as well as being an eyesore)

[AQMP]

I'll save us some time here.  Let's call it Quinn Martin's Law:

Kingsmill, Evil Genius, La Mon, Bloody Sunday, Darron Gibson, Anglo Irish, murdering bastids, Rory McIlroy, Nally Stand, freedom fighters, Mary McArdle, Blueshirts, Graeme McDowell's accent, British, Irish, Bloody Friday, collusion, Van Morrison, MayoGodHelpUs, You Nordies Aren't Irish, Yes We Are You Free Staters, Hardy's Humour, Oppression, Terry Wogan is a Brit, Passports, the IFA, Martin McGuinness, Martin Sludden, 1,000,000 Unionists, Bastid Bono, Christy Cooney...Hitler.

[Orior]

Home truths for lovers of our wee country. Actually, I thought someone had hacked into Kevin Myers account and wrote the piece below.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/loyalist-bigotry-did-not-arise-just-when-the-ira-came-along-16017902.html

It was good of the UVF thugs of east Belfast to give me a cue with which to follow my column about nationalism last week (which, as it happens I had started before the unprovoked attack on the Short Strand).

For we should be clear about this: the culture of the Billy Boy tribal bigot predates the emergence of nationalism as a powerful force among the Catholic working classes of Belfast and Glasgow.

Paradoxically, the rabble-rousing leaders of these drunken louts have usually been teetotal clergymen, such as Roaring Hanna and Ian Paisley.

The compulsory Sunday closing of pubs was once a primary element of their identity — provided that their own drinking clubs were allowed to remain open.

Logic is never the strong point of any strongly-held tribal identity, but particularly so for these people, who have remained locked in a historical enigma wherein they are 'British', although living in Ireland, and generally lawless, though they 'loyally' support the Crown, and sober in their general political aspiration, though usually enough drunk at the time.

They have a church, too. In their illiterate and incoherent scheme of things, Calvary is probably a collective for horses and maybe Gethsemane is something mysterious that happens in a sperm-bank. No, their real religion is Rangers Football Club.

Glasgow Rangers is the sporting icon for loyalist bigots. The club's own words are irreproachably neutral.

It is law-abiding. It is patriotically British. Its outward message is of harmony and ecumenism. But to the large thug element amongst the Rangers fans, the key to their identity is almost like the Third Secret of Fatima. It is this: no Fenians here.

There is a congenial, indeed government-backed myth, in both Scotland and in Ireland, that 'one side is bad as another': that Sinn Fein/IRA are pretty much the same as the UDA/UVF.

This is simply untrue. There is no republican equivalent to the Romper Rooms of the UDA, wherein men were routinely beaten to a pulp by loyalist thugs and from which both the term and the practice became celebrated.

And then there was Lenny Murphy and his merry gang, the Shankill Butchers, who for years in the mid-1970s abducted, tortured and murdered Catholics — usually by cutting their victims' throats.

This culture did not emerge simply as a response to IRA violence.

It was there already. It was feckless, violent, drunken, lost, lumpen proletarians for whom a perverted tribal identity conjoined with a godlessly Calvinist sense of superiority, even as they stewed in their ghettoes of suffocating illiteracy and economic failure.

But they were, nonetheless, elevated by the insane delusion that they are the chosen people, who have been deprived of their birthright by some vast conspiracy between the Catholic Church and the British government.

This psychiatric condition affects almost an entire under-caste, thereby placing their minds and aspirations almost beyond ordinary analysis.

Last Sunday, it was 45 years since their hero, Gusty Spence, murdered the teenage barman Peter Ward and seriously wounded William Doyle in the Malvern Street shootings.

Thus the Troubles got under way. Nineteen years later, the Catholic barrister who had defended Spence at his trial — also called William Doyle — was shot dead by the IRA for the hideous crime of being a judge. And so it goes.

Now we know: these Troubles of ours haven't gone away, you know. And they're at it again in east Belfast, with a lost tribe of illiterate, paranoid barbarians wandering the bleak landscape of their own brutal imaginations, about no purpose that any one of them could possibly explain.

Except they probably know this is a period of rather enjoyable violence, before the much-loved Orange marches — plus riots, with luck — can begin.

And next comes Rangers' first match of the season, to be followed by a night of paralytic alcoholism and rounded off, no doubt, with a complete short-term memory lapse. (This is called 'culture', by the way.)

For once, let history be our guide. Our political classes must not be swayed by the violence of these cretins.

[Olly]

Northern Ireland is lightyears behind everywhere else in the universe. Where are the gay and lesbian rights flags? I think many problems here would be solved if some village like Dunloy or Moy starting flying this flag:



Then, and only then, will Ireland take its place as one of the great nations in this earth.

They Might Be Giants sang Birdhouse In Your Soul. One of the lyrics was:

I have a secret to tell
From my electrical well
It's a simple message and I'm leaving out the whistles and bells
So the room must listen to me
Filibuster vigilantly
My name is blue canary one note* spelled l-i-t-e
My story's infinite
Like the Longines Symphonette it doesn't rest

I'd like to leave you with that thought and maybe, just maybe, one of you can make a difference to your community and eventually the whole country.

[Milltown Row2]

Flags have never made me feel uncomfortable. Would a street full of Tricolours make you uncomfortable?? Tourist wouldn't have a clue

[Nally Stand]

I remember once seeing a flag of bearing the name of the neo-nazi Combat 18 group proudly flying alongside the Israeli flag once. 

[theskull1]

It's "Flegs" surely?

[ziggysego]

Let them put the flags up, but only ones that are relevant. Union Flag, Defunct Norn Iron Flag, Scottisg Flag. None of this UVF or Israel shite.

[front of the mountain]

Flags have never made me feel uncomfortable. Would a street full of Tricolours make you uncomfortable?? Tourist wouldn't have a clue

Flags don't personally make me uncomfortable. But i know it annoys at lot of people on both sides!!

I do believe you should respect your national flag. Maybe one located on a pole in a prominent location properly looked after, without them lining the streets(starting to fade & rip) would be  better suited!!

[Cáthasaigh]

But the most unusual I noticed as driving through a rural backwater in the tyrone/fermanagh region last night was the the flag of israel being hoisted proudly aloft on street lighting pole. I began to wonder to myself what the hell has this got to do with the so called culture?

[Hardy]

Sorry, but no matter how much I walk around it, poke it and squint at it, I can't make any sense of a suggested connection between Northern loyalism or protestantism or unionism or Rangerism on the one hand and Israel or Zionism or Judaism on the other. Can anyone help?

Is it just that the flag is in the Rangers colours, much as you see Japanese and American Confederate flags on the terraces when Cork are playing?

[oakleafgael]

Sorry, but no matter how much I walk around it, poke it and squint at it, I can't make any sense of a suggested connection between Northern loyalism or protestantism or unionism or Rangerism on the one hand and Israel or Zionism or Judaism on the other. Can anyone help?

Is it just that the flag is in the Rangers colours, much as you see Japanese and American Confederate flags on the terraces when Cork are playing?

A large number of Protestants, including a fair contingent of DUP members notably Minister Nelson McCausland, consider the Ulster Protestants to be a lost tribe of Isrealites.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/26/northern-ireland-ulster-museum-creationism

[Hardy]

Jesus Christ! (Pardon the reference.) I never thought of that! Is that really it?

[Cáthasaigh]

Sorry, but no matter how much I walk around it, poke it and squint at it, I can't make any sense of a suggested connection between Northern loyalism or protestantism or unionism or Rangerism on the one hand and Israel or Zionism or Judaism on the other. Can anyone help?

Is it just that the flag is in the Rangers colours, much as you see Japanese and American Confederate flags on the terraces when Cork are playing?

A large number of Protestants, including a fair contingent of DUP members notably Minister Nelson McCausland, consider the Ulster Protestants to be a lost tribe of Isrealites.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/26/northern-ireland-ulster-museum-creationism

The incorporation of the Star of David into Loyalist culture was partly due to the influence of long term MI5 agent, DUP member and protected paedophile William McGrath, 'The Beast Of Kincora'. It makes no sense because it's the product of a very sick mind.

[Gaoth Dobhair Abu]

Sorry, but no matter how much I walk around it, poke it and squint at it, I can't make any sense of a suggested connection between Northern loyalism or protestantism or unionism or Rangerism on the one hand and Israel or Zionism or Judaism on the other. Can anyone help?

Is it just that the flag is in the Rangers colours, much as you see Japanese and American Confederate flags on the terraces when Cork are playing?

A large number of Protestants, including a fair contingent of DUP members notably Minister Nelson McCausland, consider the Ulster Protestants to be a lost tribe of Isrealites.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/26/northern-ireland-ulster-museum-creationism

I would also have thought that "they" attach themselves to the Israeli/South African Apartheid states, similar to the way Nationalists/Republicans would have with the PLO/ANC.