#Omagh Bombing

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in Irish History | 3 September:

In the Liturgical calendar, it is the Feast day of St McNisse, baptised by St Patrick, and later consecrated him the first abbot-bishop of Kells, which became the diocese of Connor. 1649 – The Siege of Drogheda begins. 1654 – The first Protectorate parliament meets; Ireland is represented by 30 members. 1658 – Nine years after the Siege of Drogheda starts, Oliver Cromwell dies. He is probably the…

[lol-jackles]

Anon: but... but... the Gaza attack was due to 75 years of colonization......!

Me: Well gee, I guess the Armenian genocide ought to be considered in the context of…the previous 1500 years of Armenian Christianity’s existence, and 450 years of non-Muslim Armenians living peacefully under Ottoman rule and paying a special tax in order to do so. And while we're on that subject, I guess the Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people including non-Protestants and non-English people, should be considered in the context of 800 years of British political and military involvement in Ireland. And I suppose the Cambodian genocide has to be considered in the context of centuries, if not millennia, of class warfare which preceded it. Or something.

Fucking. Bull.  Shit.

And let's not forget an important fact, immediately after the U.N created the partition, Jordan annexed Palestine (Jordanians and Palestinians are the same people living in different locations). So Palestine never actually technically existed. It was only after the Jordanians got their asses kicked twice in wars they started with Israel that Jordan gave up and renounced the "Palestinians" citizenship. The terrorist Yasir Arafat, in a remarkably successful P.R. move then decided to create this new myth of a Palestinian People with Israel as its homeland.

This is the translated meme that gets passed around in the Arab nations mocking the gullible liberal Westerners like you for falling for Arafat lies.

Now Anon, try to imagine Mexicans get uppity over losing territory to United States of America and begin a campaign of terror against the USA. Mexico launches missiles across the border wall into San Diego, Tuscon, San Antonio and more. They dig tunnels under the border wall and generally make themselves a pain in the ass.

But this time they launched a full scale incursion, took over several border towns, massacred most of the population and took the rest as hostages back into Mexico. They post videos online of raped and tortured hostages, who only barely cling to life. Mexicans now say they will start killing hostages, unless USA abandons New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, California and Nevada and calls on the entire world to join in their crusade.

How do you think the USA would respond to that? Hmmmm?

You can switch countries if you want. Russia took land from Finland, China from Tibet, India and Pakistan have their antics, there’s the perpetual issue of Western Sahara and so on. Can you think of one example, only one example, where the response would be more restrained, if a militarily weaker force did that to a larger, stronger neighbor in such a manner? All it takes is one.

[saintsenara]

for the ask game 19, 22, 26

thank you very much for the ask from the i'm not from the states ask game, anon!

now... i'm not sure if you did this intentionally or not... but these are the bag of worms questions...

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?

there are four flags [flegs] at play here [clockwise]: the union flag; the ulster banner; the st patrick's saltire; the irish tricolour flag.

in terms of aesthetics, i am sorry to say that the union flag slaps. great colour scheme. jazzy design.

but in terms of what these flags mean... well. this is northern ireland. so they all mean something sectarian. and so i would certainly say that i like the irish flag - in that i know i'm unlikely to be attacked if i'm in an area where it's flying. that is very much not the case in areas where the union flag or the ulster banner are knocking about.

do i like that this is the case? no. and while my national sympathies are considerably more irish than british, i find our flag culture both insufferable and one of the main contributors to the continuation of the sectarian divide. it's obviously a bit kumbaya to suggest that a neutral flag might make any difference... but it couldn't hurt...

in terms of the national anthems, i never have any real cause to sing any [and the sectarian context is the same] so we're going purely on which slaps the hardest:

amhrán na bhfiann [a fucking banger!!]

ireland's call [slightly cringeworthy in its earnestness, but it does bang]

god save the king [the tune is unforgivably dull, but the lyrics genuinely go really hard - especially the discontinued ones about crushing the scottish and confounding popery.]

the londonderry air [this is what we're going with? the welsh have land of my fathers and this is what we're going with?]

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

the peace process.

because my answer to the second half of this question would be enduring sectarianism - and, specifically, enduring casual sectarianism. but i am also well aware that the flippancy younger people [especially those born after 2000] speak about the sectarian divide with is something which has only been made possible by the security of peace. it's easy for the irish women's football team to sing "up the ra" when the only thing that'll happen to them is some pearl-clutching from the press and a slap-on-the-wrist fine. thirty years ago, things would have been really quite different...

the peace is imperfect. it is fragile. it has been treated with utter disregard by the british state. the extraordinary work - especially that of the british politician mo mowlam - to bring it about has faded into an easy linear story, whose stars are tony blair and bill clinton. it has not caused complete justice to be done. it has not caused sectarian violence to vanish overnight - there are stories which emerge weekly from the city in which i live about some sort of sectarian crime.

but these stories make it into the papers because they are proportionally uncommon now. and i don't think we need to lose sight of that.

i was born in the early 1990s. i was at primary school when the good friday agreement was signed. and yet, despite the relatively few years i spent in a northern ireland at war, i can still remember roadblocks and police dogs and my dad checking under the car and bomb drills and being heckled as i walked to school and having to have your bags searched before you could enter shops and my mam crying on the day the omagh bombing happened. my siblings, born in the 80s, remember these things even more viscerally. my father, born in the 1950s, remembers having guns pointed at him by british soldiers while walking down the street, or being stopped and searched on spurious grounds by the royal ulster constabulary, or a call coming in to evacuate a place before a bomb went off.

my nieces and nephews, all born after 2000, have never experienced any of this. if they are naive about the true horrors of sectarianism... then we should reflect on how lucky that makes us.

26. does your nationality get portrayed in hollywood/american media? what do you think about the portrayal?

answered here.

[doyourememberrocknrollradio]

Sinead O'Connor - Chiquitita

Covered for the album Across the Bridge of Hope, a compilation created and recorded in support of victims of the Omagh bombing, by Tim Hegarty and Ross Graham in 1999.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

This happy photo of the father and daughter was taken moments before the Omagh car bombing in 1998. The bomb placed by a group known as the Real IRA was in this red car and killed 29 people, including the photographer who took this photo. Both the father and daughter survived.

[horrorhistory123]

7 Photos with disturbing backstories | Mystery | True

Some images have a haunting quality that transcends their visual impact, carrying with them disturbing backstories that linger in the mind long after they're seen. These photos with creepy origins often depict moments of tragedy, horror, or the macabre, weaving narratives that evoke unease and fascination. Whether it's an innocuous scene tainted by a sinister history or a snapshot capturing a chilling event, these images with disturbing backstories tap into our primal fears and curiosity. From seemingly normal pictures with disturbing undertones to outright unsettling photographs, each image carries a tale that delves into the darker corners of human experience, leaving an indelible mark on those who encounter them.

1900s asylums

Unit 731

Dyatlov Pass incident

Columbine High School tragedy

Omagh bombing heartbreaking picture

Space exploration gone wrong

Scary wax figure

Heaven's Gate

Jonestown: Paradise to Massacre of Jim Jones

The Haunting of Everest: Hannelore Schmatz

[ifreakingloveroyals]

13 June 2018 | Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall are presented with a bunny rabbit by Matilda Callaghan on the exact spot of the Omagh bombing at Memorial Garden and Strule Arts Centre in Omagh, Northern Ireland. The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall are paying a four day visit to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. (c) Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

[sunnygander]

She is a hypocrite who uses her platform to apologise for president Assad of Syria and Putin. She sent a convicted Russian spy the contact info of a man found liable for the Omagh bombings which killed dozens of people after the Good Friday Agreement had been signed. She is very good at getting attention on social media for her pro-Palestine speeches but so many people don't know the other side to her. There are far better voices to listen to than hers.

Irish MEP Clare Daly calls for tangible action against Israel

Pointing out that formal Irish recognition of Palestine is already decades late, the Independent MEP proposed that more needs to be done. She suggested an arms embargo and the suspension of Irish trade with Israel.

Source: Mintpress

[the-stray-liger]

realized like 7 years late that Neil and Lyle's story was probably inspired by the Omagh bombing and it made me insanely sad

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in Irish History | 15 August:

In the Liturgical calendar, today is the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is also the feast day of St. Daga, 6th century Bishop of Iniskin, Dundalk. Lady’s Day in Ireland, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, and is a day when fairs are celebrated in many country towns. 1599 – Nine Years War | Battle of Curlew Pass – Irish forces led by Hugh Roe O’Donnell successfully ambush English…

[ssespace]

So true. My parents are from Northern Ireland and I have relatives from Derry. Life during the Troubles was unexpected. My mum went out to a pub to celebrate uni exam results with her friends in Belfast and she had to leave early as my dad was taking her out for dinner. Soon after, the pub was bombed by the Provos and she lost friends that night. As I grew up in the US, I rarely saw the Troubles (in the ‘80s I saw tanks in Belfast while visiting my grandmother) until I was in Bangor in August ‘98. We were evacuated from the shopping centre because the police were worried that the RIRA had left bombs in town centres after Omagh happened (there was a history of the PIRA doing that, as the Provos left bombs in multiple places in Belfast on Bloody Friday which my mother survived). I returned to Minnesota to my friends hugging me in relief because they had no way of getting in touch with me.

My mum still has a hard time reading about the troubles, even watching Derry Girls brings back the awful memories.

I finished Derry Girls yesterday. I know the whole show's about a serious topic and all, but it's done in such a funny way that you don't expect it to go so dark at times. Which is why this show is genius. You see everything through the eyes of a bunch of naive teenagers who honestly have other things to worry about than the Troubles. They think about boys (and girls), and school and the fact that their mums are gonna kill them if they don't pass their final exams, and you get invested and forget what's happening out there. And every time an episode ends with a reminder it's brutal and random and it's so real. Because that's how it is in real life: you never expect to get a call telling you your granddad is dead. Or for your TV program to be interrupted to tell you terrorists crashed a plane into a bunch of towers and killed over 3000 people. Things like that always come unexpected and Derry Girls understood that. Beautiful show.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.15 (after 1960)

1960 – Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) becomes independent from France. 1961 – Border guard Conrad Schumann flees from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall. 1962 – James Joseph Dresnok defects to North Korea after running across the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Dresnok died in 2016. 1963 – Execution of Henry John Burnett, the last man to be hanged in Scotland. 1963 – President Fulbert Youlou is overthrown in the Republic of the Congo, after a three-day uprising in the capital. 1965 – The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, an event later regarded as the birth of stadium rock. 1969 – The Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens in Bethel, New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era. 1970 – Patricia Palinkas becomes the first woman to play professionally in an American football game. 1971 – President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors. 1971 – Bahrain gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1973 – Vietnam War: The USAF bombing of Cambodia ends. 1974 – Yuk Young-soo, First Lady of South Korea, is killed during an apparent assassination attempt upon President Park Chung Hee. 1975 – Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is killed along with most members of his family during a military coup. 1975 – Takeo Miki makes the first official pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine by an incumbent prime minister on the anniversary of the end of World War II. 1976 – SAETA Flight 232 crashes into the Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador, killing all 59 people on board; the wreckage is not discovered until 2002. 1977 – The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the "Wow! signal" from the notation made by a volunteer on the project. 1984 – The Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey starts a campaign of armed attacks upon the Turkish Armed Forces with an attack on police and gendarmerie bases in Şemdinli and Eruh. 1985 – Signing of the Assam Accord, an agreement between representatives of the Government of India and the leaders of the Assam Movement to end the movement. 1989 – China Eastern Airlines Flight 5510 crashes after takeoff from Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, killing 34 of the 40 people on board. 1995 – In South Carolina, Shannon Faulkner becomes the first female cadet matriculated at The Citadel (she drops out less than a week later). 1995 – Tomiichi Murayama, Prime Minister of Japan, releases the Murayama Statement, which formally expresses remorse for Japanese war crimes committed during World War II. 1998 – Northern Ireland: Omagh bombing takes place; 29 people (including a woman pregnant with twins) killed and some 220 others injured. 1998 – Apple introduces the iMac computer. 1999 – Beni Ounif massacre in Algeria: Some 29 people are killed at a false roadblock near the Moroccan border, leading to temporary tensions with Morocco. 2005 – Israel's unilateral disengagement plan to evict all Israelis from the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank begins. 2005 – The Helsinki Agreement between the Free Aceh Movement and the Government of Indonesia was signed, ending almost three decades of fighting. 2007 – An 8.0-magnitude earthquake off the Pacific coast devastates Ica and various regions of Peru killing 514 and injuring 1,090. 2013 – The Smithsonian announces the discovery of the olinguito, the first new carnivorous species found in the Americas in 35 years. 2015 – North Korea moves its clock back half an hour to introduce Pyongyang Time, 81⁄2 hours ahead of UTC. 2021 – Kabul falls into the hands of the Taliban as Ashraf Ghani flees Afghanistan along with local residents and foreign nationals, effectively reestablishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

[culttvblog]

Bugs: All Under Control

I know that I pride myself that everything I blog about here is cult TV, but in this post we are in proper cult TV territory, in fact a show I haven't long known about. Bugs (1995 to 1999)is not one of those shows that just everyone has watched, but has a definite cult following in the UK, with actual fans. I don't know whether it has much or any of an international following. In fact Bugs has been described as 'an Avengers for the nineties'.

Frankly I wish people would mostly stop comparing shows to The Avengers. It doesn't do, they don't usually compare, and it sets up an unrealistic expectation of what the show can come up with and places the show under unfair stress. Adam Adamant Lives is a show this has been done to, as is Virtual Murder, and both shows are quality entertainment in their own right and don't need comparing to anything else. However in the case of Bugs it's not just anyone describing it as the Avengers of the nineties, but it's Brian Clemens. Yes, that Brian Clemens, script writer, editor and producer of The (actual) Avengers, who had an input into this show. Holy cow, this show had the bloke who did The Avengers working on it. Of all the shows compared to The Avengers, this actually *is* as close as we'll get to The Avengers of The Nineties.

It's an action/adventure cum science fiction show about Gizmos, a team of crime-fighting technology experts. And so we have the witty dialogue, we have the fantastic technology, we have the sexual chemistry, we absolutely have the great and the good gone bad, and while the complete unreality has been toned down a bit, it has rather been transferred to the technology that features in the show. Oh, the technology that features in the show. I don't mean the fictional technology, I mean the technology of the nineties. Thirty years later this show might as well be set in 1960 because some of the technology looks so outdated it's like a trip down memory lane. Of course this wasn't intended at the time. My personal opinion is that it doesn't really matter that the sort of futuristic fictional technology depicted didn't really come to pass in most cases, because that aspect of the show can firmly be consigned to fiction. It's against a familiar nineties background, though.

One of the things which makes the background so nineties it that the show is shot with a very definite aesthetic in mind. Its palette is predominantly blues, and greys, with splashes of yellow or read in places. Essentially if you heap up a collection of vintage nineties computing equipment you would have exactly the aesthetic of this show and it's glorious.

Another interesting feature of this show is that it was impacted twice by IRA bombs during the tail end of the Troubles. Initially it was mostly filmed around the reveloped London Docklands with its futuristic appearance, but this was ended by the IRA bombing of the South Quay Plaza in 1996. Then the Omagh bombing in 1998 severely disrupted the broadcast of the final series. Truly of its time.

All Under Control is perhaps slightly different from the other episodes because it's about the team's investigation after a passenger aircraft is hijacked by remote control. Not to beat about the bush here, I love the dead nineties computer set up with a mouse that the hijacker uses to hijack the plane. Otherwise the episode is a great opportunity for filming outside the city, including obviously at an airport and also at the homes of the genius who designed the state-of-the-art navigation system of the plane. It's great stuff.

I have to say that the plots of Bugs episodes are fairly straightforward in the early episodes (I haven't got there yet but apparently in later episodes more human interest stuff starts intruding): basically they are presented with a problem, investigate it and find the solution. It's about as no-nonsense as you can get, while still having that Avengersesque/futuristic feel. I suspect this is the reason this show has a cult following: you'll either take to it or you won't, and personally I don't follow the plots too closely and just let it wash over me.

If I have a criticism it is that I think the episodes are possibly a little longer than they could be, at least in terms of plot. the good looks and nineties state of mind never gives up. I wouldn't go to the stake for this opinion though.

I have to say it is a pleasure to find a series which might actually have a claim to be a successor of The Avengers because of having Brian Clemens work on it and I recommend it very highly. I'd suggest starting at the beginning if you've not seen it because the fans seem to like the earlier ones better than the later ones.

This blog is mirrored at

culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)

Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog

[argumate]

it's been a while but surely Rowling had a clumsy pastiche of ethnic tensions similar to the Troubles in the books already didn't she, just like there was wizard racism and wizard homophobia?

anyway someone write a fanfic in which the Good Friday Agreement was engineered by the ministry of magic to prevent muggle disruptions to the quidditch cup and the Omagh bombing was actually a misfired curse during one of Harry's first auror missions

Forgive me for posting about this but some of the harry potter worldbuilding is soooo funny in hindsight. the political dimensions of every single wizard child in britain and ireland being expected to attend the same school in the mid 90s were not thought through in the slightest but what do you expect from an englishwoman I suppose

[ifreakingloveroyals]

13 June 2018 | Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall lay a wreath during a visit to the Omagh Bomb memorial in Omagh, Northern Ireland. The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall are paying a four day visit to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. (c) Niall Carson - Pool/Getty Images