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Soriek  11mo ago (text post)   1872 thread views

Transnational Thursdays XXX

This is the thirtieth weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Ireland

Yet another hotel earmarked for housing asylum seekers has burned down during the night. The asylum seekers were due to move in on Thursday, protesters blockaded the entrance of the hotel on Saturday and it was set alight that same night. It's unclear whether the local protesters were involved in starting the fire, the hotel is very isolated so once the protest made the news pretty much anyone could drive up during the night and get away with it.

Rosscahill is a 7 minute drive from Oughterard, a town that gained some notoriety back in 2019 after an Irish Times article suggested that the town meeting on and protests over a proposed 250 person direct provision centre (asylum seeker accomodation) in a town of 1300 was hijacked by the far-right. The protest and arson took place very quickly but it makes sense if it didn't take long for people to act given that this type of thing was already rejected by the local community 4 years ago.

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