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Comment by barneygale | Hacker News Reader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Ireland#Public_opinion

The people of Northern Ireland disagree, and we ought to leave it to them.

Essentially it's a piece curved out of a country where descendants of occupants exceed in number native population. Of course it's occupied for so long that now it's "their own", still doesn't change the fact that it was occupied and not treated equally historically in the first place.

Hacker News on Northern Ireland is worse than Hacker News on CSS. Which is saying a lot.

Not to be pedantic, but isn't that true of almost any place if you go back far enough? There's a reason those with 'British' ancestry are called Anglo-Saxons; The Angles (French) and Saxons (Germans) that conquered and occupied the land of the Celts eventually become the de facto inhabitants. Of course the Celts themselves didn't evolve there, but also dominated pre-Celtic peoples.

Ireland's situation is a bit unique in that it was occupied for many hundreds of years and not really integrated. Usually occupations are either shorter, or integration happens. Of course occupants and occupees being on the islands didn't help.

> Angles (French) and Saxons (Germans)

The Angles are not French nor were the Saxons Germans but both were Germanic, specifically Nordic, coming from what is now Denmark.

There were "French" who ruled Britain called the Normans, from Normandy, which was also settled by Scandinavians and mixed with Franks (Germanics) and Gallo-Roman (post-Romans) (explaining why they spoke French.)

But enough about the United States, we're supposed to be discussing Northern Ireland.

It's horrifying when people justify occupations by citing a slave state that annihilated its native population, which still lives in poverty.

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