Tan Winter: Belfast Curry

A Story by Abishai100

Inter-religious folk-dialogue arise when we begin to ask questions about United Kingdom dream-catchers.

Can we dream about inter-religious harmony in this 20th-anniversary year of 9/11, in places where religion continues to serve as an obstacle to commercial peace/life? Here's a tale inspired by The Devil's Own. God bless (and stay safe!),

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Belfast (Northern Ireland) is a place of great history and of troubles, between the Irish-Catholic minority population and the British-Protestant majority population in the modern United Kingdom. The Catholics endure a socioeconomic disparity that creates forms of political dissatisfaction. Northern Ireland was partitioned from mainland Ireland following the independence of the Irish Republic in the early 20th Century, but Britain kept Northern Ireland as its territory because of the generations of British-Protestant colonial settlers who lived there as a majority group demographically. This infuriated Irish Catholics in mainland Ireland (capital: Dublin) who didn't to be separated from their Catholic brethren in Northern Ireland (capital: Belfast). This makes Belfast both historically rich...and troubled in the United Kingdom.

The colors and pageantry of English monarchy and great and storied and reveal rich presentations of all the language and arts of governance majesty and ornamentation. British Protestantism is by extension a form of enriched socio-religious establishments, making the Irish-Catholic minority population living in Belfast (Northern Ireland) witnesses of Britain's timeless governmental mysticism.

When the first female Prime-Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher, attempted to deal with this special political dissatisfaction among the Irish-Catholic minorities who'd remained a part of the British Empire following the partition of Catholic Ireland, she negotiated with Sinn Fein, the legal Irish political 'branch' of the continuing 'resistance-force' against British occupation/settlement in Catholic Ireland, known as the 'Irish Republican Army' (IRA). Thatcher became a symbolic/iconic 20th Century 'figurehead' for modern Sinn Fein and Parliamentary discussions regarding improved socioeconomic conditions and life for the Catholic-Protestant shared communities in Northern Ireland. She'd become a real 'iron lady' of democratic peace process.

The 'Iron Lady' not only reflected the governance promises of the United Kingdom but the traditional and rich grandness of Britain itself, complete with all its splendid presentations of fortune and prestige (e.g., the famed Crown Jewels).

Now, we all know Catholicism and Protestantism have differed in many ways through the history of world Christianity development/proliferation, becoming the two dominant denominations of the global Christian faith. However, in Northern Ireland (Belfast), Catholic-Protestant schisms created by dissatisfying socioeconomic policies of Parliament and failed negotiations by Sinn Fein create a sharper form of inter-religious image dissociation.

WRITER: It's become a 'green chess match' between two unrelenting forces of culture, creating a form of mental darkness!

Now, the protests among the Irish-Catholic community in Northern Ireland and guerrilla-intelligence work by the Irish Republican Army ('IRA') and its various factions (e.g., P-IRA, N-IRA, F-IRA, R-IRA) have offered journalists images of great socialized distancing and drama and dilemma regarding inter-religious developments.

PROTESTOR: As long as Irish-Catholics suffer neglected unemployment and poverty in Belfast as a second-class, they'll riot.

AMERICAN JOURNALIST: Is there really a way to use modern Western democratic canon to characterize the forces in Belfast?

You walk down the streets of Belfast (Northern Ireland) today and note the colored and furious wall graffiti and painted images of the IRA and the retaliation British police-military dolls as well as the rogue street-gang British Protestant brute actors like the Ulster Volunteer Force. This gives one a sense that Catholic-Protestant schisms in the modern UK is something of an 'art show' of great Inferno.

A prominent writer therefore decided to capture this Northern Ireland (Belfast) dilemma in a work featuring the drama and story of the British-Protestant retaliation force known ominously as the Black-and-Tans. The Black-and-Tans were street-recruited and veteran-army force recruited 'drones' and 'madmen' sent in to simply dilute the IRA (Irish Republican Army) threat of protest-oriented guerrilla-rebellion and anti-British violence/warfare.

There're canonical art-images depicting a longstanding engagement between English Protestant armies on the field arrayed against Irish Catholic rebel forces in color and in uniform, unfortunately engaged in battles of overpowering numbers. This is what eventually inspired future Irish rebels to pursue more guerrilla-forms of resistance in comparison to this early 'standard' of color-uniform field gunfire.

BELFAST RESIDENT: When will a Catholic and Protestant child walk into a restaurant together in peace and eat curry!

BELFAST SCHOOLTEACHER: I don't want to send the message in our Northern Ireland schools that religion divides humanity.

This sort of guerrilla-turbulence and retaliation police tension/force is what requires more journalism/media regarding the 'standardization' of governance dialogue in Northern Ireland (United Kingdom).

As members of the Black-and-Tans and/or Ulster Volunteer Force engage in regular masked rituals honoring the deaths of members of their death-squads who perished while hunting down IRA guerrilla-runners, the world-news doesn't want to neglect this division within the two dominant denominations of the Christian church!

SINN FEIN: We don't want youngsters to feel they can't read patriotic war-comics and indulge optimism about UK harmony.

The problem is censorship and half-journalism which fails to address the reality of emerged IRA and Black-and-Tans and UVF retaliation British-Protestant forces that continue to give this inter-religious socioeconomic hellmouth an 'invisible' face in the modern world of commercial political conversation. Why does the IRA scare American diplomats?

When the Black-and-Tans were first assembled in the early 20th Century, Irish-Catholics began to dread about the possibility that they'd never see Catholic parity/equity with Protestant governors/majority in the strengthened United Kingdom.

Today's Black-and-Tans or UVF Protestant retaliation-forces or even rogue street-teams give Belfast residents (Catholics-Protestants alike!) the worry that inter-religious harmony in the UK even in this era of media and capitalism/consumerism (e.g., eBay, Wall Street, Netgrocer, etc.) is simply a pipe-dream!

SINN FEIN: Members of the Irish Republican Army continue to meet to seek media-spotlight dialogue about poverty.

WRITER: The Black-and-Tans were sometimes 'vilified' for their role as serving as anti-fervor resistance killers.

You have to wonder who'd be able to stand up to such media darkness in this time of images of modern 'Black-and-Tans' such as Protestant UVF 'rogue-teams' serving as Belfast (Northern Ireland) furies. Can Sinn Fein and Parliament quell such populist violence?

A diamond-thief in Northern Ireland who goes by the name 'Storm-Shadow' is stealing blood-diamonds from UK banks which otherwise finance underworld crime-gangs endorsed by corrupt Euro-barons to create tyrant crime-dominions. This diamond-thief, Storm-Shadow, has suggested the last thing Belfast needs is 'creative' alternative narcotics/smuggling that can only take away attention from the deadly IRA/UVF street-engagements. Storm-Shadow has become something of a folk-rendition of Robin Hood in Northern Ireland.

STORM-SHADOW: Neither Catholics nor Protestants want/need me to continue to serve as a folk-pirate of crime-dilution!

Will Storm-Shadow continue to be the only Robin Hood in Northern Ireland (UK), and if so, be honored by 'standard' Catholic-Protestant police/politicians in regular necessary media?