Today of course is the Twelfth of July, and that means Protestant parades throughout Northern Ireland, commemorating the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 (actually contested on July 1 but celebrated today because Britain did not convert to the Gregorian calendar until 1752), where the forces of the Protestant William of Orange defeated those of James II of England, who was Catholic (the battle, incidentally, took place near Drogheda in what is now the Irish Republic - where I trust they will not be celebrating today).

Two observations are in order here: First, the Protestants are observing the wrong day (and not due to the calendar change), for William's final victory over James did not occur until more than a year later, at Limerick on August 23 (now September 3), 1691; and second, what's the big deal here? (Every year Catholics protest the marches, and serious riots often break out). Do they get mad in England when we observe July the 4th? And do the rich in France get into a snit on Bastille Day? Hey, our white Southerners don't even go into mourning on Juneteenth!

It's just a celebration of cultural pride, so everybody just chill out - maybe have an orange beer or something.

2

Prehistory to 1300

HIGH KINGSHIP RIVALRIES AND NORMAN INCURSION

"The Scandinavian concept of a unified political system blended with the Irish theory of the high king that Brian Boru brought to near-reality. Scholars refined and enshrined the concept. Thus, the high kingship, something much larger and more important than local control, consumed Irish chiefs in the era between the Ostmen decline and the Norman invasion in 1169. Yet the more traditional decentralized Irish system of governance, featuring balanced threefold checks, worked against unity and ultimately proved most enduring for Ireland's future. First, local petty kings held political and military authority in their regions since the ard ri, or high king, was viewed as a ceremonial titile with no judicial or financial authority or sovereignty over local chiefs. Second, abbots of monasteries more than bishops wielded the principle religious authority in Ireland. Third, the strict and inflexible Irish brehon law (a detailed body of behavoral rules), administered by jurists called brithemain, maintained social control.

- - -

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

One half of my Irish relatives are Protestants and the other half are Catholics. The Catholics did not have anything to do with their kin by marriage and vice versa. My great grandpa had to convert to Roman Catholicism just so he could be lucky enough to marry my great grandma. What a bunch of weirdos!

Calm down, Pizza Boy.

- - -

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

One half of my Irish relatives are Protestants and the other half are Catholics. The Catholics did not have anything to do with their kin by marriage and vice versa. My great grandpa had to convert to Roman Catholicism just so he could be lucky enough to marry my great grandma. What a bunch of weirdos!

Calm down, Pizza Boy.

I though Sbarro was Pizza Boy. :?

- - -

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Calm down, Pizza Boy.

What, you're pickin' on me cos your girlfriend HC ain't 'round no more?



Somethin' tells me the 4T photos thread, where the masks all came off, turned the mysterious maestro from Little Egypt off.

Just call me horny.

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

Somethin' tells me the 4T photos thread, where the masks all came off, turned the mysterious maestro from Little Egypt off.

Yeah, that something's talking to me, too. It's been over two weeks.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Calm down, Pizza Boy.

What, you're pickin' on me cos your girlfriend HC ain't 'round no more?



Somethin' tells me the 4T photos thread, where the masks all came off, turned the mysterious maestro from Little Egypt off.

Just call me horny.

There's a lot of that going around today. :twisted: :twisted: :wink: :wink:

Originally Posted by The Roadrunner

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Calm down, Pizza Boy.

What, you're pickin' on me cos your girlfriend HC ain't 'round no more?



Somethin' tells me the 4T photos thread, where the masks all came off, turned the mysterious maestro from Little Egypt off.

Just call me horny.

There's a lot of that going around today. :twisted: :twisted: :wink: :wink:

:lol:

From print outs derived from paleo 4T site, Western Europe thread:

Jan. 28 '99 post....

"1845, during the Unraveling, the Blight hit. The population reacted rather poorly, and about 25% of them died.



Dec. 10 '97 post....

"As for Ireland, the Great Hunger of 1845-1850 was a combination of Unraveling and Crisis. It spun Irish society apart, and broke many of the old bonds. Once it was over, Ireland lapsed into a quiet time, that was not unusual, Ireland often experienced this after a failed Crisis, and everyone of them was for 800 years! This lasted from 1850-1870. In 1870, an Awakening started...."


Feb. 1 '99 post....

"...in Generations there may not be a word for what happened. The Hunger more or less had the effect of a short, sharp Unraveling and Crisis rolled into one. Not really an Unraveling, not really a Crisis, it contained the worst of both and none of the best of either...."

Originally Posted by TimWalker

From print outs derived from paleo 4T site, Western Europe thread:

Jan. 28 '99 post....

"1845, during the Unraveling, the Blight hit. The population reacted rather poorly, and about 25% of them died.



Dec. 10 '97 post....

"As for Ireland, the Great Hunger of 1845-1850 was a combination of Unraveling and Crisis. It spun Irish society apart, and broke many of the old bonds. Once it was over, Ireland lapsed into a quiet time, that was not unusual, Ireland often experienced this after a failed Crisis, and everyone of them was for 800 years! This lasted from 1850-1870. In 1870, an Awakening started...."


Feb. 1 '99 post....

"...in Generations there may not be a word for what happened. The Hunger more or less had the effect of a short, sharp Unraveling and Crisis rolled into one. Not really an Unraveling, not really a Crisis, it contained the worst of both and none of the best of either...."

By my calculations, the Crisis came ~47 years into the cycle - which, while early, is still entirely plausible. The exception is the nature of the Crisis, but not the timing.

James Bennett describes the conflict as "the Ulster Orange cultural nation versus Gaelic identified Ireland..."

Irish not feeling so lucky as property values tank

POLITICIANS BLAME RECKLESS LENDING

"Celtic Tiger" economy has lost much of its roar

by Mary Jordan

The Washington Post

"...Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' economy was roaring, home prices were soaring and banks, it seemed, were lending generously to anyone with blueprints, a hammer and a bit of buildable land.

"...The financial meltdown that began in the United States last year has spread worldwide, slowing foreign economies where people bought bad U.S. mortgage debt and pushing local financial institutions toward insolvency.

"In countries such as Ireland, the punch has been twice as hard, because the faraway problems combined with homegrown ones that were just as severe. In Ireland, an overheated property market crashed and left banks saddled with massive amounts of bad debt.

"This summer, as the Wall Street crisis came to a head, Ireland's did too. The government announced that the economy was in recession for the first time in 25 years.

"Last week, as the Irish stock market dived and some of its banks appeared on the brink of collapse, the government stepped in with a $550 billion guarantee of all deposits in six major Irish banks.

"The Irish government's response to its financial crisis has surprised European leaders. It guaranteed all bank deposits, no matter how large, for two years-a promise potentially worth more than twice the country's gross domestic product.

"European leaders, who initially blamed their economic problems on contagion from the United States and its banks, are increasingly acknowledging that their own banks have been guilty of the same dangerous ecesses-with tens of billions lent for property purchases that have gone sour.

"Irish economists and political leaders said much of the problem has resulted from reckless lending with virtually no down payments required. In many cases, banks were lendig 100 percent of the value of the property.

"The warp-speed construction of homes, offices and shopping malls led to a glut....

"The construction industry, a vital sector of the economy that employs one in eight people, has slowed down considerably. Joblessness has risen to 6.3 percent. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits rose at a higher rate in the past year than at any time since 1967."

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Irish not feeling so lucky as property values tank

POLITICIANS BLAME RECKLESS LENDING

"Celtic Tiger" economy has lost much of its roar

by Mary Jordan

The Washington Post

"...Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' economy was roaring, home prices were soaring and banks, it seemed, were lending generously to anyone with blueprints, a hammer and a bit of buildable land.

"...The financial meltdown that began in the United States last year has spread worldwide, slowing foreign economies where people bought bad U.S. mortgage debt and pushing local financial institutions toward insolvency.

"In countries such as Ireland, the punch has been twice as hard, because the faraway problems combined with homegrown ones that were just as severe. In Ireland, an overheated property market crashed and left banks saddled with massive amounts of bad debt.

"This summer, as the Wall Street crisis came to a head, Ireland's did too. The government announced that the economy was in recession for the first time in 25 years.

"Last week, as the Irish stock market dived and some of its banks appeared on the brink of collapse, the government stepped in with a $550 billion guarantee of all deposits in six major Irish banks.

"The Irish government's response to its financial crisis has surprised European leaders. It guaranteed all bank deposits, no matter how large, for two years-a promise potentially worth more than twice the country's gross domestic product.

"European leaders, who initially blamed their economic problems on contagion from the United States and its banks, are increasingly acknowledging that their own banks have been guilty of the same dangerous ecesses-with tens of billions lent for property purchases that have gone sour.

"Irish economists and political leaders said much of the problem has resulted from reckless lending with virtually no down payments required. In many cases, banks were lendig 100 percent of the value of the property.

"The warp-speed construction of homes, offices and shopping malls led to a glut....

"The construction industry, a vital sector of the economy that employs one in eight people, has slowed down considerably. Joblessness has risen to 6.3 percent. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits rose at a higher rate in the past year than at any time since 1967."

Might Ireland be the next to go under, after Iceland?

Includes article about the reaction to the economy tanking. People are angry and are blaming the elites.

Mark Humphy'sweb site.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Mark Humphy'sweb site.

Save the union, save the union... blah! Ok, its getting interesting about half way down. It starts off sounding like a cliche appeal to Britishism

If this flu isn't too bad, I'll be headed to Ireland in a few months. I'll let ya know what I see but I really doubt anyone outside his 4% is going to consider union.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

What I find interesting is Humphry's description of NI's current status.

Also, I noticed that Hymphry seems to have a layered identity: A Westerner, and an Anglospherist, but not a European.

He seems to have reached the same conclusion as Tristan Jones-the Anglosphere is a subcivilization of the West.

A dying subcivilization of a dying civilization. Only in Latin America will you find vitality and real growth potential.

Latin America is modernizing in bits and pieces - a lot of vitality in certain regions and most of the cities. Yes, I see them as an up-and-comer. And behind them, Africa, which has a long, long way to go and if you ask me is now going through it's period of moving from tribalism to nation-building very much the way Dark Ages Europe did and in just as bloody a manner in many places.

China is pretty well poised to play a huge role in the world right now, and so is India if they can avoid a major war with Pakistan and the Taliban.

Japan, even more than Europe, has a serious problem with an aging population which will make for one of two things or both - a very nasty transition period of too many elders per worker until the population levels off at a lower fertility rate; or, remarkable advances in robotics. Both are apparently happening.

Okay - here's the lineup -

On the downhill slope:

Japan, still strong but in a demographic bottleneck.

Europe, same but less so.

The United States, poised at the top with much argument about whether or not we're headed downhill at a high rate of speed. Who can tell? Hey - we're 4T, a time when such things are decided.

China, waiting in the wings.
India, just a bit behind them.

Russia, still picking itself up and dusting itself off - probably will be focused on internal affairs for quite some time.

Latin America as you said, nascent and may burst out of the starting gate at any minute.

Africa, still duking it out a la post-Roman Europe. The parallel with post-Colonialism is fairly clear to me.

Anyone here have other opinions? Besides the "we're all DOOMED" which is a totally different scenario and one that the reading of my youth (Golden Age Science Fiction) explored in depressing enough detail to totally frighten my GI mother, for whom this was not entertainment but reminders of the narrow escape I was too young to remember much about).

Message to Odin: you may think me a hopeless declinist, but at least I haven't compared former President Dubius Maximus to the Eastern Emperor Valens, who was congratulated on his 'moral vision' when he admitted the Visigoths to the Empire in 375 CE. Pat Buchanan, speaking of illegal immigration from mostly Mexico, did just that. I, OTOH, don't think we're that far gone in decline - yet.

(BTW, Valens died three years later, in battle, at Adrianople, at the hands of those very same Visigoths. It was, for Rome, the beginning of the end.)

status of Northern Ireland

The Republic of Ireland doesn't seem to be in a crisis mood - I don't know how to explain it exactly but they're all just calling it "a recession" or "the latest recession." "Don't pass up work if you can find it! I hear there's a recession out there."

If anything, its like an austere half to what began as a roaring Recovery.

In the north six counties (UK) things are quite different. Racial violence is springing up again, but on a more isolated scale with loyalist-nazis taking aim at a smaller and weaker Romanian-Gypsy population. 10 foot barbed wire walls still separate Anglo from Gael - and groups of youth still gather under their nationalistic murals - but no one is ready to relive the all-out crises of the late 60s and early 70s (or the early 80s economic nightmare)

Instead, new murals go up praising peace (is that Artist or what?) and the outbursts of limited violence are roundly condemned by both sides.

The English part of Northern Ireland is absorbing Crisis influence from London - but the Irish part is drawing austere Recovery influence from Dublin - and the economic situation of the EU puts financial momentum behind behind the Republic for once.

As the pound collapses and UK divests from its interests on the island, it seems as though Ireland is for once completely falling out of the orbit of England's cycle. Some people we spoke to felt very confident that the island will be peaceully, politically united within their lifetimes - and they even predicted it would occur in about 20 years, at the peak of an awakening.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Why-th...66968.html?x=0

Irelandland is in a financial crisis of it's own sending shivers through the European Union.