Well, I've been gone for a few days and this exploded. Forst, let me say I didn't grow up in Ireland at all, much less Galway, I was born and raised in Northern CA, and am very much American. I've lived here in Galway though with my husband who is a Native Galwegian but whose family has plenty of ties in the North.

I don't have a problem with people in the US who claim Irish decent, I certainly do, it's the ones who spout of politics from another country that they know little about when they can hardly follow their own gov't. I love trad, including the rebel songs, and the history they were built on. My problem now is with the modern IRA which has turned into more of a mafia of organised crime than anyhting else. it served a great purpose once upon a time, and many fought hard for the protection of the Catholics in the North (my fmaily included), but now far too much of it is about black market drug.weapon dealing and an occassional flare of anti-protestant violence. The rival prot. groups are fighting more with *each other* right now than anything else, and the IRA has been reduced to thuggish behaviour. This saddens me, the people in the north of both sides *do* need a resolution, but street violence provoked on both sides is hardly a solution, and those people who continue to fund these "mobs" are doing so often with little education as to what their money really goes to. The romantic notion of liberty for a suppressed people is no longer a reality and somethign needs to be done. I get upset by people like Saiose who post random propoganda to that effect when the truth is that's the stuff history is made of and now the only fix is some good negotiation and a reformed gov't that allows for both groups.

We solved plenty of the problems at home in the South (not all, but it's better) with the civil rights movement, and learned that violence and groups like the KKK on both sides weren't going to achieve anything other than more anger and ignorance. The North here needs the same.