The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to some less-than-deserving recipients over the years (understatement). But in honour of St Patrick's Day, here's some homework for you on two recipients who did, in fact, deserve the prize.
https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/laureates/1998
You can read the entirety of the Good Friday Agreement online. For such an incredibly important document, it isn't that long.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agreement
The Good Friday Agreement only came about through a heroic effort by so many people. A tremendous amount of forgiveness and forbearance was needed on both sides to even sit in the same room as each other after all that had been done to their people. But there they sat, eventually, and they talked, and they agreed.
Peace once seemed to be impossible in Northern Ireland. It wasn't. We've been at peace for 28 years now.
It wasn't easy. But it reminds you of what can be possible.
@astronomerritt fucking hell, I'm doing a quick read to educate myself a bit and have already stumbled across U2 song titles that I didn't know were historical events.
If anybody was wondering why America is the way it is, it's because our schooling is dogshit.
@dave America isn't alone in this. The English level of awareness of the Troubles is fucking GARBAGE and it literally HAPPENED TO THEM. Like, the IRA bombed English cities.
I was watching Irish comedian Patrick Kielty talk about working in England when the GFA referendum passed and everyone was like "oh... that's nice" and meanwhile he was crying his eyes out in his dressing room.
@astronomerritt @dave Not quite as bad, but there is/was a level of ignorance south of the border as well.
I was lucky enough to visit the North regularly during the Troubles because I had family there and I remember being quite shocked when I went to college and discovered how few of my contemporaries had been there, even those who lived quite close to the border.
That all began to change with the 1994 ceasefire but it wasn't until the GFA that it became normal to travel South to North.
@dave Yeah, I can do a sort of back-of-the-envelope comparative calculation here. If we look at casualties of the Troubles as a proportion of overall population, the modern US equivalent would see almost 700k people dead. And that's just the deaths.
Obviously there's severe limitations to doing that sort of calculation but it does bring home how much of an impact on our small society it had.
@astronomerritt @dave Honestly, as one of the people who grew up in England who *did* have some awareness of the Troubles (via left-wing parents etc), I'm always astonished how various modern British politicians have been cavalier about what a tremendous (but also fragile) achievement it was.
(One of the reasons I was furious about Brexit was that it was clear it made the GFA slightly weaker, given it really only works if we can "pretend" that the border between NI and Eire sort-of-doesn't-exist. )
@aoanla Oh trust me we were RAGING about Brexit here, and absolutely spitting furious at the usual parade of shits who campaigned for it. (The DUP were the only party against the GFA in the first place, they would have LOVED to see it dismantled... though maybe not now they're the only the second-biggest party in government as ironically, the power-sharing agreement has kept them in power.)
But yeah. I wasn't surprised at the British politicians being so cavalier about Northern Ireland and the GFA. They've never given a shit, not really. We're an annoyance and an inconvenience to them and they'd usually rather pretend we don't exist.
@astronomerritt @aoanla After the vote to leave I asked my Brexit-voting English sister in law if she'd considered the effect on NI at all. She looked stunned for a moment then waved it off.
"Just wait, you'll see, everything will be back to normal in two years".
Confronted w invincible ignorance I had to leave the room.
Not long after her oldest son (auto engineer) was training his replacement (Czech) in advance of his plant relocating to Czech Republic. He's now a gardener.
Slow Learners.
@astronomerritt @aoanla She persuaded her family to vote as she did, including... husband from Eastern Europe (š¤¦) -- a kindertransport refugee originally.
Now, ofc, the UK is being "punishedā. It's gone from being a world bestriding power to a victim somehow.š
You're right (ofc) about the ignorance and indifference. Now... her paper, The Telegraph, is German-owned!
British media have much to answer for.
Steph (spring version???)
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