Interesting enough, even if the actual content could probably have been condensed to 2 minutes. The thing that really lost me, though, was that she said she interviewed ex Sinn Fein members in Northern Ireland but couldn't pronounce "Sinn Fein". I really hope it was just a once-off slip of the tongue.

This is one of the problems with nation states, if you dont have one, youre f*cked. If youre born a Kurd, youre done and PKK sure looks like a good option. Theyre a terrorist group, cant be an army if they dont have a state.

Think of it as three Northern Irelands without an actual Irish Republic to fall back on. And the Irish are all terrorists too, whenever necessary.

Amazing what we worry about (no new gas heaters for homes in Germany is a recent idea) when this is a thing.

Your video, CGP Grey: No Flag Northern Ireland, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Going off of the name "Róisín" and their accents, I suspect this is Ireland or Northern Ireland. That said, you have to be 17 in both to get a learner's permit.

Unless this is a particularly stylish tractor...

The outcome was astonishing, even i couldn't believe it and i've been campaigning for it since 2015. All of this might be out of date 3 hours after i post it, because things are happening fast.

Theresa May has decided to go into government with the DUP propping her up. If you have kept up in the last 6 weeks or so with all the smears about Corbyn/IRA/Sinn Fein and terrorism, then you should understand that the DUP is basically the *other* side of the irish conflict. They are socially conservative and many of their beliefs fall in line with sharia laws; abortion illegal (including for sexual assault or incest cases), homophobia wrong and harmful to society, creationist beliefs, climate change deniers. That list might have less impact to some in the US but in British politics, it's out there on the fringe, quite extreme.

In a month from tomorrow there will be the July marches in Northern Ireland (and elsewhere in UK), and we already saw a march yesterday where unionists (~DUP supporters) trashed a nationalist pub (~Sinn Fein supporters).

So now consider. Nationalists have been dragged through the dirt by Conservative MPs and in the press; accused of being terrorists in order to smear Corbyn to stop him getting power. Whereas unionists are being courted by the Conservative government, and the press turning a blind eye to the DUP and their connections to domestic terrorism.

The northern irish peace process was a great achievement and still stands despite bad feeling on both sides. Part of the good friday agreement that ensures this peace says that the UK and Irish governments must act as neutral mediators in times of disagreement between factions in NI.

So now it becomes clear why Jeremy Corbyn refused to criticise either the unionists or the nationalists in particular - as a true leader with a fucking brain in his head, he understood that to take sides or score points would be to risk Britain's safety and the safety of communities in NI. The reason people were able to smear him as a terrorist sympathiser and danger to this country is *because* he refused to say or do anything that endangered this country.

And it becomes rather worrying that the tories have risked all of that hard work and all of our safety in order to keep power for just a little bit longer. There are already talks of a legal challenge from nationalists.

The good side to this is that it seems doomed to failure. May's credibility is broken, in the UK and in Europe. The alliance with the DUP almost certainly can't happen or last very long. The only alternative leaders to May would make the Conservatives less popular. Polls that saw this surge coming are predicting now that Labour would do even better if another election happened right now. The last time this happened was Ted Heath, whose minority government did not last long, and Labour took over after a few days, and won an election a few months later.

Austerity is well and truly broken as an ideology.

Oh, and all the talk of "the death of social democracy" in europe was actually the death of triangulating centrists who have become completely alienated from ordinary people. Socialism lives.

That's not how it works in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland.

The gold could fall under the Treasure Act of 1996, as being:

• Objects substantially made from gold or silver but are less than 300 years old, that have been deliberately hidden with the intention of recovery and whose owners or heirs are unknown.

You're not kidding.

Today we saw that racism, ignorance and fear can win votes anywhere.

BTW, some additional happy news: the Northern Ireland peace agreements are now void. The U.K. remaining part of the EU was a non negotiable condition. So we have that fresh hell to look forward to.

Well done, xenophobic fuckheads!

I was in Ireland years ago. Someone told me that there were hot tubs up in Northern Ireland that were filled with seaweed. Slippery seaweed, loads of salt, water warmed up....

If you can't find someone to do the warm noodle treatment, maybe you can hie yourself to Ireland.

Report back to me?

I would say that example is a false dichotomy. You're never going to find a case in Palestine or elsewhere in the world that someone blows themselves up purely for the religious reasons. There are clearly political and social motivations at play in every terrorist attack.

This relates directly to my main point though. Some some pundits want to use a suicide bombing in the West Bank as proof that Islam is "evil" or "dangerous" without addressing the elephant in the room--that the Palestinians are living in the world's "largest open-air prison" (to use Chomsky's words) and are resisting what they see as occupation of their lands in any way they can. It is no where near as simplistic as the "Muslims good/infidels bad cuz Koran says so" argument that some people seem to want to make.

And let's be clear, I'm not saying there aren't passages in the Koran that are being interpreted by Hamas and others as justification for the use of terrorism as an acceptable form of resistance. I'm saying this isn't unique to Islam. During the height of fighting in Northern Ireland both sides were using the Bible to justify the car bombs, assassinations, and other violence that occurred during The Troubles (another complex conflict where religious, political, and social issues intertwined). Yet I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who would claim that Christianity is "evil" or "dangerous" based on what went down in Northern Ireland. It is a great example, though, of how any organized religion can be mobilized to support evil acts.

I think the problem is ultimately a political one.

There are absolutely social issues in Islam (similar to every religion, but marginally more repressive), but the terrorist angle is there because of geography. Most of the adherents to Islam live in the third world and yeah, they absolutely have genuine, legitimate grievances with the west. Not because we're secular godless infidels, but because of the way we've exploited people.

And these people are exploited by their religious leaders.

Look at Northern Ireland. You had Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other, but because both were Christians, it was framed as a political struggle. If the republicans had been druids or something, then it would be recast as a religious issue.

If most Christians were living in the third world, we'd be looking at the exact same problem. The only reason Christianity is any less problematic than Islam is because it has had to live in an affluent education demographic who increasingly won't put up with it's original treatment of women, homosexuals, etc.

In poorer areas, (southern US, South America, parts of Africa) Christianity is indistinguishable from the Taliban.

I'm a nuisance because you don't agree with me.

You should read 1984, see if it sounds like utopia to you.

If I am wrong about Northern Ireland, then I'm wrong. I'm not an expert on N. Ireland. It's tough to be an expert on everything, like others here.

But if a Brit drone operator saw a guy planting an IED, I'd have no problem with him sending down a little Obama love.

I agree that killing someone based on their height is dead wrong, but I doubt that was the only consideration.

Bottom line is, do you trust the gov't? I don't, not anymore, especially with this current crop of 'the end justifies the means' crowd.

Clearly you are ignorant of the history. The British had troops in Northern Ireland, but did not have access to the Republic of Ireland (a completely separate sovereign nation). It was quite common for the IRA to cross the border back into the Republic.

Let's be brutally honest here. The reason most people in the US are ok with drone strikes is because they're mostly killing brown people in faraway lands that dress funny and speak some weird language. I mean, even if they're not actually terrorists, they probably know some terrorists, right?

I've said this before, but imagine the UK government had drones 30 years ago during the height of the Northern Ireland "troubles"*. Let's look at the facts: you have a genuine terrorist organisation who are successfully carrying out bombings, shootings, etc. on your home land. They have a reasonably sympathetic populous in a nearby sovereign country, and can easily hide there.

Seriously, picture Al Queada, but living in Canada and way more competent. Say what you want about the IRA, but at least they were smart enough to plant a bomb and then fucking leave it there.

Now ask yourself:
- if you would be ok with the UK government drone striking rural Ireland
- what you think the political fallout from that would be (esp from the US)

The answer is that there's no way in hell they could do it. Bombing the Republic of Ireland? The US would go mental.

But that's exactly what's happening here.

It's really easy to make excuses for drone strikes, but they are one of those things that are ultimately just flat out wrong.


* only in Ireland could we describe a 30 year campaign of civil oppression, bloodshed and terrorism by both sides as "troubles"

Ok, let's change the territory. Forget Muslims and Al Queada and the Middle East and all that.

Let's roll the clock back 30 years, and let's find a comparable scenario where we have stateless actors living in a country who's reluctant to extradite them (either through inability to locate them or because they don't really like the country asking for extradition). These actors are responsible for a number of atrocities committed in the name of a political cause that has some tacit support by the locals of this country.

So we have the IRA hiding in the Republic of Ireland for bombing civilians in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Now let's assume the British have drones. Is it acceptable for them to drone strike targets within the Republic leading to civilian casualties? If not, why not?

Hell, let's go forward 20 or 30 years to when Iraq or Afghanistan have drones and the USA refuses to extradite the people that illegally invaded their country and then committed crimes against humanity there. Is it ok to drone strike Texas to get to GW Bush?

This is not a door we want to open. You're happy with it now because you're the ones holding the big stick, but legitimising international assassination because you don't get your way is a recipe for a nightmare.