Loyalist musical culture is an almost entirely self-contained one. The bands and singers perform almost exclusively in specifically Loyalist venues; often social clubs which are linked to paramilitary organisations. The CDs and tapes sell only to the faithful, through specialist outlets: they are not even sold in Northern Irish branches of the major international music retail chains. They receive no radio play (even the local community station Shankill Radio largely eschews such material); and even if any of the performers involved had ever made a video, one doubts if MTVs producers would be beating a path to their doors.
Part 2.
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Ireland’s criminal gangs are more dangerous and unpredictable than ever … Their lives are fast and short, their violence is said to be almost psychopathic. Some who lost kidneys in shoot-outs continued to wage war on their rivals unworried by their colostomy bags, pumping themselves with steroids to compensate for ill health. Ireland has the third highest cocaine use in Europe. Seizures of the drug have gone up 800% in the last five years … Irish people, once among the poorest in Europe, are now second richest in the world, according to the United Nations; with so much money sloshing around, it seemed inevitable that an high-octane criminal culture would develop. But although the tiger brought jobs, Ireland now has one of the widest gaps between rich and poor in the developed world.
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I traveled for two weeks through what is now the Islamic Republic of Iran … I also got a taste of life behind the high garden walls of the houses of the middle and upper class, where the hijab immediately comes off and opinions are scathingly contemptuous of the aging revolutionary Islamic zeal of the country’s new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Within minutes of my arrival at one such house, bikini-clad women were teasingly inviting me to come naked into the swimming pool, while the men offered me a drink from a bottle marked “Ethanol 98% proof.”
