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From: garret@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP (Trisha O Tuama)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Ulster
Message-ID: <414@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Aug-84 16:40:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: oddjob.414
Posted: Sun Aug 26 16:40:17 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 27-Aug-84 00:32:48 EDT
Organization: U. Chicago: Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 50

*****

>		What on earth do you mean by sympathy towards
>	protestants of Northern Ireland!?*@ 
>		My God, Mary are you sure you're seein' things
>	clearly enough? Before you go 'round havein' sympathies
>	for persons who have been the cause of the Irish sufferin'
>	for the past 300 hundred years be sure you're not a Irishmen
>	or at least not married to one!
>		Well, anyway,it is true Ireland has surely changed these
>	past fifty years and sometimes you wonder if the Irish
>	who left Ireland want Northern Ireland back more then Ireland's
>	present residents. But, nonetheless, the suffering the
>	English brought to the Irish people supercedes that of
>	sympathy for the protestants in Northern Ireland on any
>	day, any year.
>		Those bloody englishmen have yet to realize that 
>	 they're no better then the soles on their shoes!

>		I sincerely hope no-one was offended.

Suzanne,

Are you saying that Irish Protestants have no right to their homeland and
religion?  Most of the Protestant settlements in Ireland have been there
over 300 years -- about as long as there have been "Protestant settlements"
in the US.  Americans regard their country has their home -- Irish
Protestants feel exactly the same way about Ulster.

It is true that the English have inflicted more harm on Ireland than
have any other nation, but long-lasting resolution of the conflict in
Northern Ireland will only be achieved by taking into account the needs
and desires of both the Irish Protestants and the Irish Catholics.

I think you are absolutely right when you say that descendents of the Irish
who left Ireland are more interested in seeing Ulster made part of the
Republic than are the current residents; having had long talks with my
father-in-law on this subject, I've come to the conclusion that there are
many, many people in the south who find Americans' efforts to become 
involved in their country's affairs both tiresome and ludicrous.      
 
No, I am not an "Irishmen" (as you put it); I am an American.  My husband
is Irish.  He agrees with everything I've written, and in fact adds that if
it wasn't for the Protestants, it would simply be the Catholics shooting
at one another.  
   
Trisha

By the way, I found your attempts at ingesting an Irish accent into your
comments more insensitive and irritating than anything you actually wrote.