On Sat, 8 Sep 2001, James Heartfield wrote:
>
> Similarly, the Protestants of Ulster were not necessarily driven by
> sectarian hatred. On the contrary, the British government spent vast
> amounts of money subsidising the employment of nearly a quarter of them
> in the sectarian security forces.
!
A quarter of them? A quarter of all working protestants in N. Ireland were employed in the RUC, etc.?! (I'm trying my best here to create the impression of my jaw gaping open.) Can you source this?
That's as if the U.S. federal gov. had employed 1/4 of white Southerners as sheriffs' deputies, state patrolment, etc in the 50's and 60's. Yet the impression that we're left with is that N. Ireland is a case of "sectarian hatred" between two warring tribes, with our friends the British (English) interceding on behalf of peace.
I'm struck by how different our understanding (i.e., what people in the U.S. commonly learn in public schools) of the U.S. civil rights movement could have been, or how different our understanding of the crisis in Palestine could be.
-david