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The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 6:15:53 PM

Aneirin

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I wonder sometimes, this apparent American idyllic love for an ancestral land, a land American ancestors left behind to seek a better life. Why is it does it seem many in America are quick to condemn other lands for their management of their own county's situation and with this, I am talking about Ireland, both Eire and Northern Ireland, two seperate countries on the same land mass. It agues me to think and know allies draw lines against us and even put hand in pocket to finance weapons to kill innocent bystanders, I just have to ask ; WHY ?

Why this apparent support for an ideal many in the lands concerned see no need for, why is there support for a waring minority, what exactly is it you aim to achieve ?

If it is an ideal land of an ideal ancestry, if and when it is achieved,what are you going to do, take lock,stock and barrel and move back home ? If so, how long will it be until you try to change that into what you know as an ideal, will it create yet more disharmony and more need for minority actions in lieu of the correct political process, for as Americans, you are not the Irish.

Remember The Pogues, one of my favourite songs ;

The island it is silent now
But the ghosts still haunt the waves
And the torch lights up a famished man
Who fortune could not save

Did you work upon the railroad
Did you rid the streets of crime
Were your dollars from the white house
Were they from the five and dime

Did the old songs taunt or cheer you
And did they still make you cry
Did you count the months and years
Or did your teardrops quickly dry

Ah, no, says he, 'twas not to be
On a coffin ship I came here
And I never even got so far
That they could change my name

Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean
To a land of opportunity
That some of them will never see
Fortune prevailing
Across the western ocean
Their bellies full
Their spirits free
They'll break the chains of poverty
And they'll dance

In Manhattan's desert twilight
In the death of afternoon
We stepped hand in hand on Broadway
Like the first man on the moon

And "The Blackbird" broke the silence
As you whistled it so sweet
And in Brendan Behan's footsteps
I danced up and down the street

Then we said goodnight to Broadway
Giving it our best regards
Tipped our hats to Mister Cohan
Dear old Times Square's favorite bard

Then we raised a glass to JFK
And a dozen more besides
When I got back to my empty room
I suppose I must have cried

Thousands are sailing
Again across the ocean
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery
Postcards we're mailing
Of sky-blue skies and oceans
From rooms the daylight never sees
Where lights don't glow on Christmas trees
But we dance to the music
And we dance

Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery
Where e'er we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees
From fear of Priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
And we dance .

Ireland is but one example, what about the other minority people of Great Britain of old, the Scots, ( who were Irish invaders) and the Wealas, same rules apply, those who can draw heritage from those peoples, why such an interest in their present welfare when it does not affect you, for,you are of a new people who in history ran away from the troubles that beset the people, how can you now in your fortress land support a cause that has no meaning to you in your present land, why the need to wax lyrical about something you don't know, is it again like those that idolise Ireland, you are fantasising about something that might never have been except in the dregs of a beer mug.

Your ancestry for whatever reasons left the old lands behind to give themselves and their children a better future, do you not owe them your allegiance to the decision, what would it take to make your own lands better if you were not dribbling over Brigadoon or Leprachauns and pots of gold ?

My apologies if I have come over a bit caustic, but I have had a bad night and I am fed up with foreigners waxying lyrical about things that may not, never was and is not what they believe it is, particularly when it applies to nations that come under the term the British Isles and are part of the United Kingdom.

I particularly despise know nothings that have and still do finance terrorist activities against innocents.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 6:38:32 PM

DomKen

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For the american descendants of the Celts of the British Isles it is a certain degree of stubborness and a kind of ingrained history. Most of the Irish in the US came over during the Famine. The fact that the owners of most Irish land (English landowners that is) kept right on exporting produce to England while the Irish starved or fled has never been forgotten nor forgiven for instance.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 6:51:28 PM

Aneirin

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Understood, and already aware of, for those English land owners did the very same to the English peasant first, long before and during before moving onto greener pastures, in this case Ireland. Conquest of nations has a lot to do with instilling allegiance by giving lands and titles to the wealthy, with the land in England and Scotland already given away, Ireland was next and from there Australia, New Zealand and wherever else ad finitum until thankfully the empire collapased. Myself with both Southern Irish, Cornish and Romany ancestry, mostly mariners, farmers miners and those of no fixed abode or trade, the celt runs deep in our family, but as far as I am concerned, what concerns the Irish, concerns the Irish, they can sort their own problems out, as we have to ours, But it does not help when foreigners albeit war time allies stick their uninformed hooters in.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 6:57:11 PM

thishereboi

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quote:

but as far as I am concerned, what concerns the Irish, concerns the Irish, they can sort their own problems out, as we have to ours, But it does not help when foreigners albeit war time allies stick their uninformed hooters in.

I totally agree with that. However, on the cm forums at least, I see a lot more people from the UK and Canada starting threads criticizing the US, than I do the other way around. I still don't understand why they care so much, but they spend an awful lot of time discussing it and letting us know how superior they are.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 7:00:15 PM

domiguy

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Come on boi, think things through before you post. what UK or Canadian policies have a direct affect on our lives?

How many Canadians and UK'ers have been killed so far in the war on terror?

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 7:00:20 PM

Aneirin

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Perhaps it is some of us know the atrocities committed in the name of the British empire, Englishness and all that, and want to see an end to it all.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 7:02:24 PM

thishereboi

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

Perhaps it is some of us know the atrocities committed in the name of the British empire, Englishness and all that, and want to see an end to it all.

So when you bash the US, you are just showing your superior intelligence and when someone from the US bashes the UK, it's because they are being nosy and should mind their own business. Ok, got it now. Thanks

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 7:16:43 PM

Aneirin

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Unfortunately though, what the US becomes involved in, your poodle seems to back you up, and of that poodle are more innocents who end up dying on foreign soil for other people's ideas, the same really as in the days of the empire, the common suffer for the wealth of the wealthy. When will we at last learn , when will it be we tell the war mongers ruling over us to fuck off when they try to manipulate a cause for war.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 7:19:07 PM

domiguy

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It's about power. What do we really have to bash the UK over?

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 9:37:08 PM

TheHeretic

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

Understood, and already aware of, for those English land owners did the very same to the English peasant first, long before and during before moving onto greener pastures, in this case Ireland. Conquest of nations has a lot to do with instilling allegiance by giving lands and titles to the wealthy, with the land in England and Scotland already given away, Ireland was next and from there Australia, New Zealand and wherever else ad finitum until thankfully the empire collapased. Myself with both Southern Irish, Cornish and Romany ancestry, mostly mariners, farmers miners and those of no fixed abode or trade, the celt runs deep in our family, but as far as I am concerned, what concerns the Irish, concerns the Irish, they can sort their own problems out, as we have to ours, But it does not help when foreigners albeit war time allies stick their uninformed hooters in.

You get an "AMEN!!!," Aneirin! I'm an American, but the roots trace back to England, Ireland and Scotland. (Also Austria, but they left to dodge the draft, and the family has abdicated any interest in the country in support of that) I'd love to visit the Highlands of Scotland, but I don't know a damn thing of the politics and don't care to.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 10:06:03 PM

DomKen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
I'd love to visit the Highlands of Scotland, but I don't know a damn thing of the politics and don't care to.

You really should. They are spectacular.

I've been twice and was very nervous the first time as I was going to Inverness, my father's family comes from very near the town, and was afraid it would be awash in tourist kitsch but as long as I stayed away from the the places clearly intended for people come to see the monster it was delightful. The second time was for the Edinburgh arts festival, held every August IIRC, and it was a great blending of city life with day trips to the country side, including a couple of visits to distilleries.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/11/2010 10:29:51 PM

Dubbelganger

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Newsflash, Aneirin: not all of us Amis come from the UK or Ireland. I'm Prussian, Austrian, and Swabian. My cousin tells me there was an Englishman back in the woodpile, supposedly was on the first jury trial in Massachusetts circa 1620, but I've not seen documentation. She also said there was an Italian ancestor, jumped ship off the Carolinas circa 1580, but I doubt that as well.

But I know for a fact most of my kin are German. I have a copy of my grandmother's birth certificate I got at Berlin-Charlottenburg Rathaus when I was there in August 2003. I have my grandfather's passport/military ID when he was in the Austro-Hungarian Army around 1900.

I will admit that there were times when I felt more at home in Vienna and Berlin than I felt in the US. Truthfully, however, culturally, I am an American. That's neither good nor bad; it just is.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/12/2010 12:07:20 AM

Aneirin

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Like I said in my post, my ancestry is southern Irish, Cornish and Romany, probably the gypos settling in Ireland to become Irish and the communication via mining and fishing that has always existed between southern Ireland and Cornwall, also Brittany, but celt and whatever the Romany were, nomadic horsemen like the celts, so could they be first wave or a later wave immigrant with similar ideals. But where there is celt, there is usually Norse and Saxonia was once the home of the Germanic celts, Normandy the home of the Gallic celt so I guess whatever people later came to be, they were celts to start with and whatever else before that. With those who fiercely identify with the celt of the past, what is it they are identifying with, the culture, or the ancestry, because both can be different and culture can migrate to other cultures, as historical research and understanding has already displayed.

In the past, I have been fiercely pro celt, this site name is testament to that, but harking on about the past, where does it get one, why adopt angers and injustices when they are no business of your own, for they are past, gone, now is the time to move forward, not live in the past. Cultural wounds cannot be healed, but they can be improved upon if people simply chose to do so, celebrate the positive and place less emphasis on the negative in the ancestral cultures and be glad the ancestors did what they did to make your life a better one.

Scotland you don't need to understand their politics, just go there and experience the place and you will understand what you need to understand from the context.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/12/2010 1:13:14 AM

mcbride

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Some people have a wretched grasp on politics and history, so if Aneirin thinks people should be more careful for acting on half-baked notions of history, he’s right, whoever or wherever they are.

He’d also have my support for not living in the past...but ignoring it – not that I think he’s suggesting that -- condemns people to an unhappy future, and, for that reason, I couldn’t support burying the past any more than I’d support stripping school children of the right to know about or understand the Holocaust on the grounds of celebrating the positive.

I’m Canadian largely because of the Irish famine, so I don’t feel compelled to shut up about it. My mother and her siblings had no choice but to leave the west of Ireland, because the policies of those running the country from London before and long after the event were so disastrous, intentionally and unintentionally, that the population was still falling 120 years later.

If those emigrants, and descendants of emigrants, having fulfilled their responsibility to learn the facts, give in to someone’s view that they should shut up about it, they’re not helping anyone but the next purveyors of genocide.

Acknowledging it and taking it together with a positive outlook for the future would seem to be a better way forward.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/12/2010 1:39:47 AM

Aneirin

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History is simply that, a relation of incidents, and we know those incidents are open to interpretation being that victors tend to write the stuff, but of a set period in time there are many histories, each of them true and false depending on the recorder, their perception, belief and aims. History can serve to educate for like you said to hopefully ensure the same mistakes were not made again, the US founding fathers knew this and constructed the constitution based upon what they knew of history. But a persons history should not be used to punish the modern living, as that serves to perpetuate the problem, the misunderstandings, hate and evil are passed from generation to generation until such a point may come that the origin is lost in time but all that is left is distrust and hatred, negatives without reason.

But of those countries with perhaps recent imigration, recent being the last hundred years, how do you look at your new land, is it your land, or do you still shed a tear for the land many have not seen or are likely to do so, the land where your ancestors came from. People only leave countries because they feel or know there is better to be had elsewhere, but it is all too easy to blame something, create a reason for one to see if the grass is greener on the other side of the river, a reason other than simply wanting to aspire to better things.

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/12/2010 6:50:50 AM

thishereboi

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

Unfortunately though, what the US becomes involved in, your poodle seems to back you up, and of that poodle are more innocents who end up dying on foreign soil for other people's ideas, the same really as in the days of the empire, the common suffer for the wealth of the wealthy. When will we at last learn , when will it be we tell the war mongers ruling over us to fuck off when they try to manipulate a cause for war.

Poodle?

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/12/2010 6:55:53 AM

Moonhead

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The UK. "Bush's Poodle" is one of the more flattering terms that was used to describe Tony Blair in Europe...

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RE: The land that makes you refugees - 5/12/2010 6:59:40 AM

thishereboi

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead

The UK. "Bush's Poodle" is one of the more flattering terms that was used to describe Tony Blair in Europe...

Oh, ok, I understand now. Not sure why that makes him feel like he has a right to slam the US, but whines when someone from here makes a crack about the UK though. But as excuses go, it's better than some I have seen on the forums.

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