#sea border

a whimsical icon border featuring the mysterious depths of the sea for aesthetics. let a sea turtle and a lovely little eel escort your muse on their journey. coloring psd is NOT included. please credit cerberuscomms somewhere visibly if using! please like / reblog to help spread the resource around.

At the border of land and sea   -   Saara Tikka , 1987.

Finnish, b. 1942 -

The choice was between two models. One was to regard Northern Ireland as part and parcel of the UK’s non-membership of the EU, in which customs controls would approximate to the political border between North and South. The other was what we ended up with: no customs border on land, but at some mythical, invisible point in the Irish Sea, and the North, a part of an all-island set up.

I needn’t spell out the politics of this to most of my readers. It was a pro-Nationalist solution and everyone could see that, especially the Unionists. But of course it wasn’t sold like that at the time. Instead the Irish government summoned up ghosts from the Troubles and warned that establishing Europe’s Border in Ireland would remind people of partition, provoke republican hardliners and nourish a renaissance of republican violence. Remember Leo Varadkar’s trip to Europe, his briefcase stuffed with scary photographs of the IRA bombing of Newry customs station way back in the 1970’s’.

This is what we could return to, warned the bold Leo, if we re-erect a land border in Ireland. Europe agreed, the Brits went along and we ended up with an arrangement which, because it had been erected at the urging of Irish nationalists, would always be opposed by Unionists.

If that was the real plan, and the name of the game was to stick one into the Unionists, then fine; be honest about it. But in this debate, honesty had been in short supply.

At the core of the Varadkar proposition was a claim that it was the Border that had fueled the Troubles, when all the evidence was that while the Border certainly facilitated conflict, Unionist misbehavior was the real culprit. It is a cliche but true nonetheless: had Unionists reached out, as Captain Terence O’Neill urged them to do, and won the support of their Catholic neighbours way back in the 1960’s, it is very possible the Troubles would never have happened and the Border would hardly have mattered.

In this context the Brexit solution that was chosen has brought Northern Ireland to a different crisis. With the theoretical Border now somewhere in the Irish Sea, the absence of a land border serves to underline Unionists sense of insecurity and has led, inevitably, to yesterday’s resignations at Stormont. Putting Humpty together again will be, to put it mildly, a challenge.

- Ed Moloney

Here: https://thebrokenelbow.com/2022/02/03/i-told-you-so/

Portugal hosts Sea Border 21 exercise

According to a news statement published by the Portuguese Navy, the international naval exercise Sea Border 21 began on October 26 and will continue until October 29. The 5+5 Defense Initiative countries (Algeria, Spain, France, Italy, Libya, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Portugal, and Tunisia) participate in the exercise. The Sea Border 21 exercise includes eight ships and two maritime patrol…

Kim guides military drill near sea border with S. Korea

Seoul: North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un has guided a military drill simulating an attack and seizure of a frontline South Korean island, Pyongyang’s state media said today.

The drill came as tensions grow ahead of an annual US-South Korea joint Key Resolve/Foal Eagle military exercise that is reportedly to start early next month.

Artillery units were among the troops taking part in the drill on…