To
@chair
Well, you don't do too badly here!
Back in the 60's the bigotry here was mostly all about class. Our whole society was riddled with it.
Further up this thread I noticed a pic looking like an Irish Mural. Did you know that the Northern Irish Catholic fighters felt very empathetic towards the Palestinians? May still do..... I still have a couple of photos which show that close bond (from back then).
I used to lecture retail security trainees in Belfast about every six months and stay with a retired police sergeant for the week when I was over there. One evening some of his friends invited to take me wherever I would like to go in Belfast (they had clubs and pubs in mind) and I asked to go see all the Murals. They were very very surprised, but they did exactly that. It was 2007 and I had just bought my first digital camera.
The things I leaned that evening. The Catholic Murals were much more artistic and accurate, the Protestant ones were mostly more naive with mistakes like six fingers on a hand etc..... and I just filled that early camera with every low definition pic it could hold. On the side of the Co-op supermarket in the Shankill Road is a huge Mural to Bobby Sands and a man was collecting money in a bucket at the store entrance. Everybody just put in....
Nothern Ireland is another country, you can still buy and keep a handgun if you live there, the only place in the UK. And I learned that folks like that (Protestant) police sergeant and his mates could tell a Catholic on sight for the first time, any time. I didn't believe it so asked him if he or his mates could demonstrate that. They could! Every time! How? The two peoples had lived apart for so long that they had developed differing features, and they proved it by pointing out the Catholics in that restaurant who gladly shook my hand and confirmed same to me when I explained that I had a bet with the Proddies at the table in the corner. Oh yes.
That's where the Celtic/Rangers thing comes back in to the picture.... years later we were driving around Scotland and stayed in a tiny village B&B for the night. We walked in to a pub that evening and because of what I'd learned in N.I. I knew immediately that we were in the wrong one. The whole crowd just stared at us, and I apologised and asked where our pub might be...... a big geezer gave polite directions and asked how I knew... I told him that Catholics looked more handsome than us lot. The place erupted in to laughter and they insisted that we stay as their guests.... we never were allowed to buy a drink.
Oh yes...... the troubles, that the vast majority of Americans know nothing about. If a collector took a bucket in to an American bar and asked for funds for Irish Freedom Fighters it could be filled and not a soul in the place would have known where the guns went to, the Protestants or the Catholics, the UDA or the UFF etc etc.......
I have a pic of me standing by huge steel gates 12 feet high which are slammed shut to close communities off when troubles erupt.
If I knew how to post up pics 'd show you the ones where Catholics are Saluting the Palestinian warriors, and the Palestinian sign was the open hand and forward v-sign, like the Churchillian one.... you might tell me what the Arabic slogans mean?