The British No Longer A Friend of the USA?, page 3

Belfast? Must be a great place to live in the middle of all that ongoing hostility between Catholics and Protestants that would shame the Shia and the Sunni in Iraq.

Spot on matey! Whislt I was there, my father had to carry a sidearm at all times. I spent most of my time on camp living behind a huge steel wall with barbed wire and when I went to school, I had to pass through a double checkpoint, and get escorted by armed soldiers up to the school gate. Lovely.....

That is an entirely different situation. There have been Irish people living in northern Ireland before the arrival of English and Scottish settlers. You should have know the history of the Irish people living in the land before the English/Scottish arrival. It's THEIR land, their country for centuries. Only the settlement of the Protestant English and Scottish complicated the matter for the Catholic Irish folks hereafter. I just stated "not a great deal" about the issues of Northern Ireland but I've studied its history a bit, the majority of the Irish supports unification of Ireland with Northern Ireland but 6 counties (Northern Ireland) out of 32 counties of Ireland not deciding to join due to complicated political issues between Protestant and Catholic factions fighting in the streets or in the government.

The existence of New Mexico as a state of the Union was due to the secession and independence of Texas from Mexico in 1836, not the US. The northern and eastern half along the Rio Grande belonging to the Republic of Texas while the western half belonging to Mexico. It was the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848 that forced Mexico to give up the western half of the Mexican territory in the end: California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, parts of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico. In return for that territory, Mexico got the sum of $15 millions in 1848 from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Note: Texas joined the union in 1845. Whatever happened in New Mexico at the time was not due to the US but to the unresolved disputes between Texas and Mexico and the US government picked up the slack afterward.

One last thing: the Native American peoples in New Mexico do not have good opinions of the Spanish-descended Mexicans or the Aztecan-descended natives. Enmity between these peoples goes back to the time of the Spanish conquest and colonization of the Americas.

Just to be sure with you on the issue of Native Americans and the US government's wrong-headed policies of the past against them. My government's past treatments of the Native Americans were terribly wrong and foolishly ignorant, mostly it's more of ignorance between white American settlers and Native Americans than an actual outright hostility. We didn't understand them, they didn't understand us. Plain and straightforward.

You kinda proved my point there with regards to the NI situation. Either you accept it is a complex political issue, involving sectarian and racist agenda's which there is no simple solution or you conceed you shouldn't be there and pull out. In that vain, the entire US would be on shaky ground with it's treatment of the natives.

It's not by true bloodline but by ancestral heritage (knowing and linking your family's roots). Genealogy is pretty popular among Americans as they wanted to find out and learn more about their ancestral heritages and roots via their paternal and maternal forebears. I just learned few years ago that there was a strong English-Irish root on my mother's paternal side of family. The ones from my father's maternal family side were true Irish (eventually their Irish-born daughter married a Norwegian immigrant).

You, as in everybody, are the very reason that gave meaning to your ancestors. So many other peoples in your ancestors' times weren't so lucky, if you understand what I mean?

Part of my family is also Irish decended. They came from Eniskillen a couple of centuries back as fishermen and settled in Cornwall, where they interbred with the locals, including some blue blood too

. Personally, I see myself more as Cornish than English, as for generations that is where my entire family lived and died. I see what you mean about the ancestors and I am quite involved in researching my tree. My uncle has done it far better though!