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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Sept 12, 2023 19:51:48 GMT
About 10 days ago I was on a Luas passing through College Green which was held up (in mid-afternoon) by two men fighting on the tracks in front of it. My impression was that this was a drug dealer trying to collect debt. This reflects how we have become a more atomised society, and how city centres (not only Dublin) have deteriorated since the lockdown. I'm not making a "rare aul times" point - just saying this is a development which has to be acknowledged. I don't think you need to be stuck in a "Rare aul' Times" rut to notice many things have changed rapidly since COVID, but I think some trends were accelerated. To be honest, I find the way drugs have devastated a lot of the Inner City in Dublin and fragmented the communities is appalling.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 14, 2023 23:24:52 GMT
Did the drugs fragment the communities or are they a response to the earlier fragmentation? (e.g. whatever any Irish government did, the docklands communities would have been hit by the shipping container reducing the workforces needed to load and unload ships, and the development of bigger ships requiring bigger port facilities.) Paul Williams the journalist published a history of Irish organised crime some time ago detailing how pre-existing criminal subcultures originated the drugs market in Dublin, and just how rapidly it spread in the 80s. Much of the support for paramilitary anti-drugs vigilantism in Belfast reflects fear that the Dublin situation may be replicated there.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 21, 2023 17:14:15 GMT
Did the drugs fragment the communities or are they a response to the earlier fragmentation? (e.g. whatever any Irish government did, the docklands communities would have been hit by the shipping container reducing the workforces needed to load and unload ships, and the development of bigger ships requiring bigger port facilities.) Paul Williams the journalist published a history of Irish organised crime some time ago detailing how pre-existing criminal subcultures originated the drugs market in Dublin, and just how rapidly it spread in the 80s. Much of the support for paramilitary anti-drugs vigilantism in Belfast reflects fear that the Dublin situation may be replicated there. I think it's a chicken and egg scenario - certainly a bit of both. The inner city in Dublin was neglected. It could be no one foresaw that it was a disaster waiting to happen.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 24, 2023 15:57:26 GMT
Precisely the problem - there have been a lot of Irish disasters in recent decades which could have been limited if the governing class/the people (change as appropriate) had cast a critical eye on how things developed elsewhere instead of picking up on the latest fashion a decade or two after the British/Americans/Europeans tried it. (Bear in mind BTW that before multichannel TV and the internet knowledge of how things were going elsewhere was more limited and slower to diffuse.)
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 17, 2023 22:29:47 GMT
Saw the recent adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's UNCLE SILAS. The message of the original novel was that justice ultimately prevails (haunted by a subtextual fear that then recent advances by Papist populists justice is taking its time about it). The message of the film is a sort of Sadeian feminism - everyone is really evil or perhaps really stupid, and the only way to avoid being exploited by malevolent hypocrites is to become evil yourself. Power replaces virtue as the central concern, which is one definition of modernity (if you think of Machiavelli as its founder).
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 24, 2023 21:48:41 GMT
The recent riots in Dublin deserve dishonourable mention here. I notice that some posters on the beargarden that is Politics.ie have found a way to blame prolifers. The likes of Justin Barret dressing up xenophobia and nazi fetishism as religion and patriotism should crawl back under a rock and stay there.
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Post by Young Ireland on Nov 24, 2023 22:41:51 GMT
The recent riots in Dublin deserve dishonourable mention here. I notice that some posters on the beargarden that is Politics.ie have found a way to blame prolifers. The likes of Justin Barret dressing up xenophobia and nazi fetishism as religion and patriotism should crawl back under a rock and stay there. And of course we should not forget the victims of the deranged lunatic who stabbed five children and a care worker. A five-year-old girl is fighting for her life in hospital, yet this has been overshadowed by the violence of last night.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 25, 2023 21:52:50 GMT
I agree, and the extent to which random lunatics and unstable people are allowed to wander around our city centres until they attack and injure someone is a scandal in itself. I emphasised the riots because they involved much larger numbers of people and had some degree of initial organisation.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 25, 2023 23:40:16 GMT
The recent riots in Dublin deserve dishonourable mention here. I notice that some posters on the beargarden that is Politics.ie have found a way to blame prolifers. The likes of Justin Barret dressing up xenophobia and nazi fetishism as religion and patriotism should crawl back under a rock and stay there. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the genuine nature of patriotism. To most people it is simply a part of human nature. The riots can't be supported as endangering human life is never ok. Nevertheless I hold the Irish political and media elites greatly to blame. When dissent and discontent is ignored, stigmatized, and even criminalised, then this sort of explosion is bound to happen.
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Post by Young Ireland on Nov 26, 2023 0:00:58 GMT
The recent riots in Dublin deserve dishonourable mention here. I notice that some posters on the beargarden that is Politics.ie have found a way to blame prolifers. The likes of Justin Barret dressing up xenophobia and nazi fetishism as religion and patriotism should crawl back under a rock and stay there. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the genuine nature of patriotism. To most people it is simply a part of human nature. The riots can't be supported as endangering human life is never ok. Nevertheless I hold the Irish political and media elites greatly to blame. When dissent and discontent is ignored, stigmatized, and even criminalised, then this sort of explosion is bound to happen. That analysis plays down the agency of the rioters IMHO. Nobody forced anyone to attack gardai, burn buses and loot shops. Whatever about the proposed hate speech legislation, which has significant flaws, nothing, I repeat nothing can justify what happened on Thursday night. The tendency among many Irish conservatives to make excuses for the rioters, though not condoning them, is to me quite shocking and suggests a degree of ideological tunnel vision that will only marginalise us further. Somehow if the rioters were Trots and anarchists, I suspect that there would be rather less understanding...
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 26, 2023 1:10:17 GMT
You say "what happened Thursday night". But actually lots of things happened. There were protests; there were attacks on the Gardaí; the was burning of buses; there was looting. The media narrative is that all these actions were taken by the same people. But this is far from clear.
One thing that can be said is that there were no attacks on random immigrants or racial minorities. Nobody is even alleging this. If this was a racist mob, surely that is what you would expect.
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Post by Young Ireland on Nov 26, 2023 10:09:52 GMT
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 26, 2023 11:41:16 GMT
I didn't know about the Holiday Inn. That's horrifying. And as I say, I absolutely condemn these riots. Nor do I deny the agency of the rioters. But how responsible is it to continue with the forced multiculturalism of Ireland when we see the forces that are being unleashed, from people-- the people at the bottom-- who believe they are losing out? Varadkar is just going to push on harder with his hate speech. As John McGuirk said rightly on Gript...there WERE many, many peaceful protests. They were ignored and sneered at. We see the same pushback all over Europe now. Is the obsession with open borders worth causing social chaos and even bloodshed? Many of us have been warning against this for years. I mean, I don't in any way defend the Provisional IRA but that doesn't exculpate the British or Northern Irish governments for creating the conditions that made them almost inevitable.
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Post by Young Ireland on Nov 26, 2023 12:48:43 GMT
I didn't know about the Holiday Inn. That's horrifying. And as I say, I absolutely condemn these riots. Nor do I deny the agency of the rioters. But how responsible is it to continue with the forced multiculturalism of Ireland when we see the forces that are being unleashed, from people-- the people at the bottom-- who believe they are losing out? Varadkar is just going to push on harder with his hate speech. As John McGuirk said rightly on Gript...there WERE many, many peaceful protests. They were ignored and sneered at. We see the same pushback all over Europe now. Is the obsession with open borders worth causing social chaos and even bloodshed? Many of us have been warning against this for years. I mean, I don't in any way defend the Provisional IRA but that doesn't exculpate the British or Northern Irish governments for creating the conditions that made them almost inevitable. Given that the vast majority of migration here is voluntary (aside from the human trafficking, which is a separate issue and which I agree needs to be come down on hard), I disagree with your assertion that multiculturalism is somehow "forced" as if it came out of nowhere. Furthermore, the apparent implication that those who resort to violence ought to have an influence on Government policy they don't like would set an extremely dangerous precedent that could be exploited not just by the far-right, but also by the far-left, by Islamic jihadists or by dissident republicans. It would be a recipe for social collapse. Ironically, the peaceful protestors DID get some of their demands met, as the Government is currently implementing tigher measures for Ukrainian refugees, and has on some occasions abandoned proposals for direct provision centres in certain areas. Moreover, the Overton window does indeed seem to have shifted a bit in terms of discourse on the issue in the media. I will finish with a question not just for you, but for those social conservatives who think that the rioters had some legitimate grievances, even if they do not condone their actions: Is this reckless alliance with the radical right, and the slim prospect of an Irish Trump getting elected, really worth the very real risks of uttlerly stigmatising and marginalising social conservatism in this country for decades, through association with an extremely volatile movement, parts of which have shown that they are willing to use violence to achieve their aims, not just on Thursday, but in several other high-profile incidents this year? Do the potential benefits really outweigh the potentially massive costs?
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 26, 2023 13:46:50 GMT
Stigmatized and marginalised by who? The liberal media and establishment who would be your allies on open borders already think anyone who is opposed to trans ideology or the gay agenda or the culture of death is a fascist. Opinion polls show the majority are increasingly opposed to the open borders agenda.
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