Some facts about Ireland

Location in Europe: Western Europe

Area: 81,638.1 km²

Coastline: 3,700 km

Highest point: Carrauntoohil 1041 m

Capital: Dublin

The population of the island is slightly under 6 million, with 4.2 million in the republic and an estimated almost 1.75 million in Northern Ireland. This is a significant increase from a modern historical low in the 1960s, but still much lower than the peak population of over 8 million in the early 19th century.

The name Ireland derives from the name of the Celtic goddess Èriu, with the addition of the Germanic word land. Most other western European names for Ireland, such as French Irlande, derive from the same source.

NEWS

IRA says the armed campaign is over

After decades of fighting, bombs and threatening, IRA decides that their violent form for debating is dead. Still, IRA will continue debating to achieve their goal in making Ireland independent from Great Britain.

The former prime minister, Tony Blair said the decision by IRA was “a step of unparalleled magnitude”. “It is what we have striven for and worked for throughout the eight years since the Good Friday Agreement” he said. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4720863.stm)

The decision by IRA became public in an internal debate. IRA will continue to achieve their goal exclusively through politics.

The statement by IRA received a warm welcome by the Irish government and Irish civilians. “An important and potentially historic statement” says the Irish government.

Sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4720863.stm

A part of an IRA documentary

This is a little part of an IRA documentary. This documentary provides facts about the situation in Northern Ireland. It gives the viewer a little insight in the conflict of Northern Ireland.

"The sniper" short film

Liam O’Flaherty's short story "The Sniper" made as a short movie. The movie is quite like the written version to O'Flaherty. I think the pictures is a bit to dark in the movie, but i hope you enjoy it.

Unknown Facts - Northern Ireland Conflict

This video shows what is claimed to be "Unknown facts about the conflict in Northern Ireland". The maker of this video is clearly sympatic with the IRA and blames the whole conflict on the UVF. UVF satands for Ulster Volunteer Force and is an loyalist group in Northern Ireland.

Multicultural societies

Multicultural societies are to find all over the world. Many of the modern world’s biggest cities are results of such societies, and this that gives both advantages and disadvantages to the civilization.

Discuss the main advantages and disadvantages with mixed societies? In which way can different cultures within one city affect the social environment?

The sniper introduction!

The sniper is a story written during the Irish conflict. The author is Liam O’Flaherty. Liam was a significant Irish novelist and short story writer. The sniper was one of his first published works.
The story takes place in Dublin, in the Republic of Eire, not in Northern Ireland of today.
In The sniper we meet a person who works as a sniper shooter for the Free Starters or Republicans, one of the two parts in the conflict. The story is being told from a third person. The name of the sniper shooter is never being told in the story. And he just speaks once during the short story.

The story starts when the sniper sees an armored car slowly driving into the street. Then an old woman comes around the corner and goes straight over to the man in the armored car. She point up to the place where the sniper lays. She is an informer. Suddenly the turret open and a man look out. The sniper takes his rifle and shoots his head off. The old woman starts running down the street. The sniper fire again, and the old woman falls down in the gutter. Suddenly an enemy sniper across the street fires a shoot. It hits the sniper in the right forearm. The sniper can’t use his rifle now, so he reaches for his pistol and take a steady aim. Then, out of the smoke he sees the enemy fell down dead. The streets are now empty and quiet. The sniper takes his weapons and walk down from the roof. When he come down to the street he turn the enemy snipers body and see that it is his brother.

I think that Liam describe a scene that I really think could be a real one, from the Irish civil war. The Irish civil war was starting because the establishment of the Irish Free State became independent from Britain. It was a lot of people that didn’t like that. Especially the Irish Republicans did not like it. This was the main reason for the Irish civil war. The war was won by the Irish Free State.

The sniper has the theme of the tragedy of war, particularly the tragedy of civil war.

The Irish dialect

Here is a link to a page where you can find examples of the Irish dialect

http://web.ku.edu/~idea/europe/ireland/ireland.htm

The samples didn’t differ as much from the ordinary English we are used to hear as I expected. I’m not certain that the persons featured on the dialect samples would speak the same way if I met them on the street. Anyway the dialect sample number 10 gives you a good impression of the Irish dialect.

News: Bomb threat in Belfast

My task was to find some news that was related to the sort story. So here is it.

Some weeks ago the people of Belfast were worried about some bomb threats. These threats came from a group called Real IRA. In the last post Håvard wrote some thing about IRA. Real IRA is highly related to IRA. The Real-IRA is a break-away group of IRA. They claimed in their threats that they were going to set up a car-bomb near a school. The government has taken the threats seriously and they think that Real IRA have smuggled a bomb into northern-Ireland.

The reason I brought up this news was because it is related to the short-story. Real IRA is a group who is works for Northern-Ireland being a part of Ireland just like the Republican at the time the short story takes place. Real IRA uses terror as an instrument to promote their view. Before this incident there was a long period of truce between the two parts of the conflict, but now the conflict may resume.

The Irish papers did not write much about these incidents, but I got lot of information from British papers.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/5079530/Northern-Ireland-Peter-Robinson-condemns-hoax-bomb-threats.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/12/northern-ireland-bomb-plot

Let us all hope the conflict does not becomes as bad as it was earlier.

A little bit history

The Northern Irish conflict, also known as The Troubles, is a conflict that most people in Northern Europe have heard of. Many people think that the conflict itself is a dispute between the catholic and the protestant in Ireland, even though this is not entirely true. It is true though, that the conflict first started several centuries ago when Henry 8. established a protestant rule in the catholic country of Ireland. Despite of this event the protestant and the catholic parts of the population managed to live on together without too serious conflicts.

The real troubles in Ireland first started when Ireland became an independent state in 1922. But in the north of the new state a little part of the land remained under the rule of England, a land that was named Northern Ireland. This resulted in a divided population, and it did not take long time before the Irish Republican Army, also known as the IRA, began to fight for a united Ireland.

The conflict soon stood between the ones that wanted Northern Ireland to stay united with England, often referred to as loyalists, and the ones that wanted Northern Ireland to be a part of Ireland, also called republicans. The conflict only grew more and more violent during the 20th century, and the main target for the republicans became to achieve equal citizen rights for all people in Northern Ireland. In 1969 had the conflict spread to the larger cities, and the violence became so serious that “so called” neutral British military forces were used. The fights went on for years, before the parts in 1997 where able to agree on a truce. Today we can still hear about the IRA and the Northern Irish conflict on the news sometimes. The situation is today stabile, even though the IRA still is active.