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.
@astronomerritt @dave I have no real horse in this race (other than also being a human and just wanting everyone to be cool to one another), but I was in Ireland for the first time during Christmas (not Northern Ireland, mind you) and I got an afternoon worth of history on The Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement from the most wonderfully talkative local (also wonderfully hospitable, having had a couple of complete strangers from across the pond over for Christmas dinner), and I left with a list of things to read and watch on the subject, and the strong desire to jump back over the Atlantic and see more Ireland.
I don't really have anything useful to add. It's just something of a subject of interest, even moreso since that experience. I do think these sorts of things are worth examining though, whether or not they happened directly to you. The western world appears to have forgotten a lot of the kind of history one might not wish to repeat, and it's disconcerting to feel like I'm living through a period that will one day show up in history textbooks, having grown up in relative ignorant bliss.
@gordoooo_z Come to the North next time!
And if you want to learn more, see if you can get hold of an excellent BBC documentary called Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland, which explains the Troubles entirely through the stories of its survivors.
@astronomerritt Most definitely! Though I don't quite know when that might beātransatlantic flights aren't exactly cheapābut as soon as my finances are in a state resembling order, lol. Honestly the only reason we were even able to make this trip happen is with my S/O's parents' help. They flew us over so her sister could spend Christmas with some familiar faces (she's over there for school).
Anyway, appreciate the recommendation. I've got part 1 queued up right now.
@astronomerritt We're all a little biased. But I live in a fairly bland suburban hellscape with nothing but parking lots as far as the eye can see, so I'm inclined to take your word for it š
(don't get me wrong, as for as suburban hellscapes go, this one's half decent lol; we had a pretty cool mayor for a while: https://w.wiki/Jwio)
@astronomerritt Right!?
On another note, this is a very good documentary. I'm impressed with its neutral, let the people who were there tell it, point of view. I'm on part two now. Bloody Friday is definitely where things get real questionable for me. There are a couple of clips there that are pretty hard to take in.
I just realized it's 5 hours later and I'm an hour and a half in, but I've amassed quite a few tabs of further reading in the process. I'm going to finish this part and then I'd say noon is probably as good a time as any to start my work day lol
@astronomerritt Oh no don't even worry. I can do that just fine all by myself :p
I'm more productive in the afternoon anyway.
@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.
@astronomerritt One afternoon, we were loaded into cars for a drive around the countryside, and one older colleague told us that a particular patch of grass was where he had to pass the border to go to school and had to let heavily-armed soldiers check his school bag every single day.
I don't think people appreciate just what a momentous occasion the GFA were. Which is good, because the collective trauma is healing. But it is also bad, because peace needs to be protected.
@BLatro I've never heard that saying before. How bleak. Are we to assume no problems are solvable then?
A certain type of person likes to put on an attitude of dark cynicism because they believe it makes them more intelligent than people who have hope, and that's what that reminds me of.
@astronomerritt
"Are we to assume no problems are solvable then"
No, it's just specific to the topic being talked about. Think the Middle East for a current example. How far back do its troubles go?
Steph (crisis version)
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