A rose by any other name. SIGH.

Yes, the UDA and the UVF seem to have taken on the erstwhile role of the IRA lately....after a summer in Ireland last year, which included some time in NI (fascinated by a wall thru Belfast, like the Berlin Wall, dividing two parts of the city) I came home and exhausted myself reading genral Irish history (any Irish schoolchild can cite 11 hundred years of it, while half of ours can't tell you who our last 3 presidents were...), the history from both sides of the recent upheavals (say, the last 35 years), and the history of the IRA, and came away shaking my aching head. As in the current case, with Protestant groups now attacking the police, the honors of who has behaved most badly seem to be about equally divided. And anyone who wants to keep up with it needs a scorecard (IRA, Provisional IRA, UVF, UDA, DUP, etc., are only a few of the players...) What isn't well understood in the rest of the world is that elements of both of these groups have been heavily into organized crime to finace their arsenals and activities for quite some time now, and are now heavily invested also in defending their criminal turfs. After 1100 years, one is tempted to despair, but the best hope is that ordinary people on both sides are heartily sick of the mayhem. Since the Good Friday Agreement, it has been much better, and people have gotten fond of more peaceful lives. Societal pressure seems to be the best hope, and within Ireland also, as Bonzi suggests, many people are now more interested in being European than in being Irish or Northern Irish, Protestant or Catholic--but the balance is very fragile. I hesitate to wish them the"best of Irish luck."