Keith
You have persistantly supported these marches, watering down their purpose and the effect they have on those they are aimed against.
You said what you said about the Irish and it's on record.
You have never witnessed an Orange march in full flight so you have no right whatever to pass them off as a days outing; they are aggressive parades designed to show the 'superiority' of those who organise them and to intimidate one third of the population of the six counties.
I don't give two tosses who started the trouble this year or any year, the root cause of any violence is the marches themselves - that is what they are there for. This year's rioting is amongst the most violent and persistant since the troubles 'ended'. The 'children' who took part might well turn out to be the bomb-throwers of the future - the trouble has not gone away and the riots are a proof of that - whoever is responsible for them and the continued terrorist activities
Do I believe your daughter-in-law is Irish - of course I do - it is you and your kind who have tried to make the natives of the six counties of Ireland English - this is what all this is about, you stupid little man.
Some time ago you complained of my re-opening a thread that had closed - just as you have done here.
I participate in these threads to learn from others and to pass on anything I might have to offer.
You do not listren to what others say and you seem to have no original ideas of your own - why are you here?
If you have any concern for the future of your grandson, try to have a little thought of the legacy you are passing on to him and the other Irish children in the Six Counties.
This is probably the best description of the Orange Order and its activities I have come across, from Leon Uris's 'Ireland - A Terrible Beauty.
Jim Carroll
PS Apologies that the piece I have included has so many paragraphs and big words

THE ORANGE ORDER
The Orange Order was molded on a pseudo-Masonic structure replete with secret oaths, handshakes, and passwords with an enormity of prayer and a rash of exotic-sounding ranks such as Royal Scarlets, Purple Marksmen, Black Perceptories, Apron and Blue, Link and Chain. The founding principles, quite unchanged, were allegiance to the Crown, upholding the Protestant Ascendancy, and hatred of Catholics.
At first there was a cautious and mixed reaction from the gentry. With the coming of the nineteenth century and the drive for Catholic emancipation, the gentry began to find the Orange Order usable. "Gentlemen's Lodges," largely political in char¬acter, sprang up to tangle with the issues. A yearly march and a patronising pat on the head, to the lesser brothers brought these two unlikely ends of the society together in common cause. The grass-roots and universal membership gave the "Gentlemen's Lodges" an outside muscle.
An infusion of preachers in the early 1800s served to give the ordinary lodges a semblance of respectability. The preachers could talk directly to the common man, who essentially had banded together for self-protection. The Orange pot was always kept stewing with stories that the Pope and his convincing Jesuits were planning night and day to take over Ulster. Always militant and always ready, the Orangemen have proved to be easily incited. Beginning with the Rev. Dr. Henry Cooke and on through Drew and "Roaring" Hanna, an assembly line of rabble-rousing preachers have often parlayed sermons into anti-Catholic riots.
The Orange Order filtered and infected the bloodstream of Ulster until the order became the power base of the province. It was the establishment, with absolute control over the moral ethic, the police, the political machinery, and the courts. The Grandmaster of a lodge was a power who could ensure the job and well-being of a family. Failure to join or bucking the Orange Order by an individual in a given neighborhood, trade, or village was impossible, and the free thought of men who believed themselves to be free was destroyed.
The Unionist Party was born out of an Orange Hall in 1885 in response to the first home rule threat. Unionists have since become the political arm of the order, able to apply the kinds of threats and pressure that resulted in a history of British appeasement to Ulster.
It is hard to tell where one ended and the other began, but the Orange Order, the Unionist Party, and the Protestant Church formed an unholy trinity that kept the province in a strangle¬hold.
Orangeism finds public expression in a series of annual rituals, medieval in character and ugly in concept. It erupts into life during "the marching season."
The tune is set by the Lambeg drum, an ancient Scottish weapon of psychological warfare. It is up to four feet thick and five feet in diameter and tattooed by bamboo canes lashed to the wrists of the drummer by leather straps. The sound of it was designed to throw fear into the heart of the foe. It does. When it is carried on long frenzied marches, the drummer's wrists are often slashed open by the leather and his blood spatters against the drumhead. Many a Catholic child was first introduced to terror by the cannonade of the Lambeg drum.
The wee province bursts out with hundreds of thousands of Union Jacks and Ulster flags from every loyal house. There is nothing to compare with it in all the Crown's domains. Festive archways are larded with slogans that tell the Ulster story. REMEMBER 1690 (the Boyne); NOT AN INCH (the border dispute); GOD SAVE THE QUEEN, GOD SAVE ULSTER (loyalty); ULSTER WILL FIGHT AND ULSTER WILL BE RIGHT (anti-home rule); IN GLORIOUS REMEMBRANCE (of some vic¬tory or the other over the Catholic); FOR GOD AND ULSTER; and, of course, NO SURRENDER (the eternal siege).
Parades are marched from one end of the province to the other, grim, humorless trampings of righteous wrath. The fin of two grand climaxes comes on the twelfth of July to celebration William's victory at the Boyne. Tens of dozens of Loyal Lodges converge on Belfast. Throughout the night bonfires blaze, the Pope is kicked in effigy, prayers are prayed and the old tune cranked up and sung with swelling pride.
The standard of the lyrics gives an idea of just how far the people have been manipulated. Among the things the roe of the Orange Order did not bring to their beloved province were literature, music, and art. They are the ones mainly responsible for the place being a cultural desert.

CROPPIES LIE DOWN
Poor Croppies, ye know that your sentence was come,
When you heard the dread sound of the Protestant drum.
In memory of William we hoisted his flag,
And soon the bright Orange put down the Green rag.

THE PROTESTANT BOYS
The Protestant boys are loyal and true,
Stout-hearted in battle, and stout-handed too:
The Protestant boys are true to the last,
And faithful and peaceful when danger has passed.

DERRY'S WALLS
. . . For blood did flow in crimson streams,
On many a winter's night.
They knew the Lord was on their side,
To help them in the fight.

. . . At last, at last with one broadside Kind heaven sent them aid. . . .

A ROPE, A ROPE TO HANG THE POPE
A rope, a rope
Tae hang the Pope!
A pennyworth o' cheese
Tae choke him!
A pint o' lamp oil Tae wrench it down
And a big hot give Tae roast him!

When I was sick,
And very, very sick,
And very near a-dying,
The only thing that raised me up
Was to see
The old whore frying.

Or consider some of the poetry, this one by no means the worst of the lot.

Scarlet Church of all uncleanness,
Sink thou to deep abyss,
To the orgies of obsceneness
Where the hell-bound furies hiss;
Where thy father Satan's eye
May hail thee, blood-stained Papacy!

Harlot! Cease thy midnight rambles,
Prowling for the life of saints,
Henceforth sit in hellish shambles
Where the scent of murder taints
Every gale that passeth by,
Ogre, ghoul of Papacy!

Leading his lodge in solemn remembrance, the Grandmaster, white-gloved, sword in hand, walks reverently behind a Bible borne on velvet cushion, encased in glass and topped with a crown.
The banners of Loyal Lodge after Loyal Lodge swear temper¬ance, allegiance, and loyalty: CARSON'S TRUE BLUES, DERRY'S
DEFENDERS, STEAMFITTERS TOTAL TEMPERANCE, ACT OF COV¬ENANT, LOYAL LADS OF LARNE. . . . Tribal brothers all banded together in black bowlers, black rolled umbrellas, and sashes are piped on through by a hundred bands taunting close to Catholic neighborhoods or through the middle of them, while Shankill and Sandy Row toughs dance headily alongside the marchers, swept up by the wine of might.
By the time they reach Finaghy Field they've slowed to a limp, and they sprawl about to hear the old harangues from the old haranguers.
The next day at Scarva a mock Battle of the Boyne is re-enacted, and a month later it happens all over again as they go on pilgrimage to Derry to celebrate the siege.
If times are bad and passions high and fears of livelihood consuming, it might all be topped off with a bit of rioting against the Catholics.
To continue to intimidate and debase one third of their nation, it is entirely necessary to live in the past. They will relive Boyne and Derry until they make their earthly departure, and then their sons will be brought to wear the sash their fathers wore. As the pilot preparing to land at Belfast Airport said over the loudspeaker, "We are about to land in Ulster. Set your watches back three hundred years."