text:
Sport in Ireland

Sport in Ireland plays an important role in Irish society. The many sports played and followed in Ireland include Gaelic games (including Gaelic football, hurling and camogie), association football, horse racing, show jumping, greyhound racing, basketball, fishing, handball, motorsport, boxing, tennis, hockey, golf, rowing, cricket, and rugby union.

In terms of participation, association football (soccer) is the most popular team pursuit for males at 8.8% with Gaelic football attracting 3.4%. Personal exercise (at 13.4%) and running (8.9%) are the most popular individual male activities. Traditionally, team sports do not figure highly amongst females, with a greater percentage of post-school-age women choosing individual sports and fitness activities. As of 2018, additional funding and focus was afforded to females in sport, with a number of successes in women's international sporting competitions. Association football (soccer) is the most played team sport in Ireland. Gaelic football, hurling, golf, aerobics, cycling, swimming and billiards/snooker are the other sporting activities with the highest levels of participation in the Republic of Ireland.

In terms of support and attendance, Gaelic football accounted for 34% of total sports attendances at events in the Republic of Ireland in 2003, followed by hurling at 23%, association football (soccer) at 16% and rugby at 8%. In 2005, Initiative's ViewerTrack study measuring sports audiences showed that Gaelic football's highest-profile match, the All-Ireland Football Championship Final, was the most watched event of the nation's sporting year.

In terms of funding, of the €62 million allocated in the Irish government's 2017 Capital Sports Programme, approximately €25 million was allocated to hurling, Gaelic football and other games overseen by the Gaelic Athletic Association, €7.7 million to soccer, €3.3 million to rugby, €2.8 million to tennis, golf €2.4 million, sailing and rowing €1.3 million each, boxing and athletics over €1 million each, swimming €0.5 million, with the remainder allocated among other sports and sporting groups.

As Northern Ireland is a constituent nation of the United Kingdom, it also sends a Northern Ireland Team to the Commonwealth Games. At the Olympic Games, a person from Northern Ireland can choose to represent either Ireland or Great Britain.

Gaelic games
In a survey released in January 2021, Gaelic games were collectively identified as "Ireland's favourite sport(s)".

Gaelic football
The sport may be referred to as Gaelic football or Gaelic, if confusion might otherwise arise with association football, but is referred to simply as 'football' within the sport itself, such as the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. Though it has existed for centuries in Ireland as Caid, Gaelic football was formally arranged into an organised playing code by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in the late nineteenth century. In terms of support and attendance, it is the most popular sport in Ireland.

The game is played at underage, minor (under 18), under 21 and adult levels. All players are amateur, although players at a high level may receive income from sources such as sponsorship and grants. Gaelic footballers play for a local club or parish team, with the best chosen for the inter-county sides. County players may be chosen to play in inter-provincial Railway Cup games or for the 'International Rules' team to face Australia. The main national competitions are the inter-county All-Ireland Senior Football Championship and National Football League, also known as the NFL.

A Gaelic football year starts with pre-season competitions and the National Football League. In early summer, the Championship begins. Each of the four provinces has its own tournament, and teams which are knocked out must do well in the 'qualifiers' if they are to gain a spot along with the four Provincial Champions in the All-Ireland quarter-finals. The All-Ireland Senior Football final is traditionally held on the third Sunday in September. Kerry are football's most successful team, with 37 All-Ireland senior titles. There are a number of rivalries within the game – an example is that between Dublin and Meath. Other notable derbies or rivalries include Cork v Kerry, Mayo v Galway, Kerry v Dublin and Tyrone v Donegal.

Hurling
Hurling is a sport native to Ireland for several thousand years, organized by the Gaelic Athletic Association. In terms of attendance figures, hurling is second only to Gaelic football. Hurling is sometimes described as the "fastest field sport in the world", as the ball is continually played at high speeds.

The game has similarities to shinty and hockey. However the ball (or sliotar) is rarely played along the ground. Hurling is played on a large grass pitch.

Many aspects of the organisation of hurling are similar to football, as both sports are organised by the GAA. Amateurism and the club/county/province structure are similar. Gaelic football has a larger footprint in terms of top-level competition, but in several counties where both sports are played, hurling sometimes holds precedence, and in certain parts of the country, it is the dominant game (Kilkenny, rural Antrim, Ards peninsula in County Down, and Clare, for example). Hurling is well-attended at elite level and the highest-level games fill Croke Park to its capacity of over 82,000. The main competitions are the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship, the Leinster and Munster provincial championships and the National Hurling League (NHL).

Hurling and camogie are both included on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Camogie
Camogie, played exclusively by women, is similar to hurling although a smaller sliotar is used, there is the option to hand-pass into the goal, and the dress code requires players to wear a skort. The first game of camogie was played in County Meath in 1904.

Gaelic handball
Gaelic handball, or simply 'handball', like the related sport of American handball, somewhat resembles squash or racquetball, but with the ball played or struck with the hand or fist instead of a racquet. It has no connection with the Olympic sport of handball which has limited following in Ireland, where it is generally known as Olympic handball.

In Ireland, there are four main types of handball. These are 40x20 (small court), the traditional 60x30 Softball and Hardball (big alley) and One-wall handball. Handball is played with a variety of balls. Gloves and eyeguards are compulsory for some competitions. The sport is managed and promoted by GAA Handball, a subsidiary body of the GAA.

Rounders
Rounders (cluiche corr) is regulated by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in Ireland, and is similar to baseball. Game-play centers around innings where teams alternate at turns being batters and fielders. Points ("rounders") are scored by the batting team by completing a circuit around the field through four bases

Association football
Association football is a popular sport in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland but while international matches play before large crowds, and are passionately followed, domestic league games typically attract smaller attendances. English football leagues are also popular in Ireland, with a survey in February 2020 indicating that up to 40,000 Irish fans travel to games in England on a "regular basis".

The national body in the Republic of Ireland is the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) while the national body in Northern Ireland is the Irish Football Association (IFA).

The domestic leagues are the League of Ireland (in the Republic) and the NIFL Premiership (or Irish League) (Northern Ireland). Some of the major teams in Ireland include Shamrock Rovers, Dundalk FC and Shelbourne FC in the Republic, Glentoran and Linfield in Northern Ireland, and Derry City, a team from the North who play in the League of Ireland. Due to the financial incentives abroad, most of Ireland's top players, such as Damien Duff, John O'Shea, Aiden McGeady and Jonny Evans, play in the leagues of larger European countries, particularly in England and Scotland. This, along with the Irish media's huge coverage of the English league, is one of the reasons why Irish people tend to support leading British clubs such as Manchester United, Liverpool and Celtic. Only occasionally does a League of Ireland or Irish League player make either of the national teams, despite the fact that the leagues sometimes produce some of Ireland's top players including internationals Kevin Doyle, Shane Long and Gareth McAuley and players like Roy Keane in the past.

On the international stage, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland teams have both competed in three FIFA World Cups, with the Republic also appearing in three European Championships, most recently in 2016.

The Milk Cup is an international youth tournament held annually in Northern Ireland, in which clubs and national teams from elsewhere in the world may compete. Northern Ireland also played host to the 2005 UEFA Under-19 European Championships.

Rugby union

Rugby union is played and supported throughout Ireland, and is especially popular in urban areas such as Dublin, Limerick, Belfast in Northern Ireland, and Cork. Rugby union is played at club, province and national levels. The Ireland national team is composed of players from both Northern Ireland and the Republic, and the Irish Rugby Football Union governs the sport throughout the island. The sport is organised at all levels on an all-island basis through a provincial structure of four unions, with each province organising one professional team in elite competition.

Success at international level and the establishment of four professional teams has increased interest in rugby union as a sport in Ireland, particularly as a spectator sport. At the 2018 World Rugby Awards, Ireland had been presented with a 'hat-trick' of awards, with Johnny Sexton winning the Player of the Year, Joe Schmidt the Coach of the Year, and the national squad the Team of the Year awards. As of July 2022, following two defeats of New Zealand, the Ireland national rugby union team was ranked 1st in the World Rugby Rankings, but has never progressed beyond the quarter finals of the men's Rugby World Cup.

School rugby union is also played at primary and secondary level, and traditional rugby playing schools include: St Michael's College, Blackrock College, Belvedere College, Castleknock College, Clongowes Wood College, St Mary's College, and Terenure College in Dublin, Crescent College, Castletroy College, St Munchin's College, Glenstal Abbey and Ardscoil Rís in Limerick, Rockwell College in Tipperary, Presentation Brothers College, Bandon Grammar School and Christian Brothers College in Cork, and Campbell College, Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Methodist College Belfast in the north.

Boxing
Boxing is overseen by the Boxing Union of Ireland and Irish Athletic Boxing Association. Amateur boxers account for sixteen of Ireland's 31 Olympic medals, including two Olympic gold medals. Ireland's amateur boxers have also won medals at numerous top level competitions worldwide including World Senior Championships, European Senior Championships, World Junior Championships, World Youth Championships, European Junior Championships and European Youth Championships.

The country's most successful boxers include Steve Collins, Bernard Dunne, Barry McGuigan, Michael Carruth, Ryan Burnett, Andy Lee, John Duddy, Carl Frampton, Kellie Harrington and Katie Taylor. The latter is among the world's most successful female boxers, and Taylor has won five European Championships and four World Championships, as well as the inaugural women's lightweight gold at the 2012 Olympics.

As of 2023, large-scale professional boxing events have not taken place in Ireland since a 2016 gangland shooting at a weigh-in at the Regency hotel in Dublin.

Athletics
Athletics in Ireland is governed by Athletics Ireland, and in Northern Ireland by Athletics Northern Ireland. Athletics has seen some of the Ireland's highest performers at the Olympics, with several Irish athletes performing well for both the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain & Northern Ireland at the games over the years. Denis Horgan won the shot put 13 times at the AAAs, (still holding a title for greatest number of individual titles won), before emigrating to the United States where he won a number of American titles. Horgan also broke the world record on several occasions and silver at the 1908 Olympics. Dr. Pat O'Callaghan (also from North Cork) won the hammer throw in 1928 and again in 1932 at the Olympic Games. Bob Tisdall also won gold for Ireland in 1932, competing in the 400m hurdles. In the late 20th and early 21st century, notable athletes have included Ron Delany, Mary Peters, John Treacy, Eamonn Coghlan, Sonia O'Sullivan and Robert Heffernan.

The Dublin Marathon and Belfast Marathon are run annually and are two of the most popular athletics events in the country. The Women's Mini Marathon in Dublin consistently gets upwards of 40000 competitors.

Equestrian
The various equestrian sports have a sizeable following in Ireland. After Gaelic games, horse racing is the second most attended sport in the country, with around 1.3 million attendees annually. That is the largest number of horseracing fans in any country on a per capita basis.

The governing body is Horse Sport Ireland (formerly the Equestrian Federation of Ireland), which is composed of 15 Irish affiliate bodies, representing all facets of equestrian sport. These sports include show jumping, eventing, dressage, endurance riding, para-equestrian, polo and carriage driving.

Overall administration of Irish horse-racing is carried out by Horse Racing Ireland. Horse Racing Ireland is responsible for racing in both the Republic of Ireland, which has 24 racecourses, and in Northern Ireland, which has 2 racecourses. Ireland's top tracks are the Curragh and Fairyhouse. The breeding industry (including the world's largest thoroughbred breeding operation, Coolmore Stud) has produced many top race horses.

Golf

As of the early 21st century, golf is among the most-played sports in the country, with a 2008 report for the Irish Sports Council indicating that golf was then the fourth most popular sport by participation rate. Ireland was the first country to organise the sport on a national basis, with two "oldest governing bodies in world golf", the Golfing Union of Ireland (GUI) and the Irish Ladies Golf Union (ILGU), being formed in 1891 and 1893 respectively.

There are over 400 golf clubs throughout the island, and over 300 courses in the Republic of Ireland, and (as of 2009) Ireland reportedly had the fourth most golf courses per capita in the world, Among Ireland's most famous golf courses are Royal County Down Golf Club, Royal Portrush Golf Club, Portmarnock, Ballybunion and Lahinch. The most prestigious tournament of Ireland is the Irish Open, which is held on courses in the four provinces. Also, the K Club in County Kildare hosted the European Open from 1995 to 2007. Golf is regularly televised in Ireland, with both domestic and international events broadcast.

Ireland produced several top golfers in the late 20th and early 21st century, with players like Pádraig Harrington, Paul McGinley and Shane Lowry achieving significant success internationally. For example, Harrington and McGinley won the World Cup of Golf in 1997 and, together with Clarke, were part of the European team that successfully defended the 2006 Ryder Cup. Harrington also won The Open Championship (British Open) in 2007 and 2008, and the 2008 PGA Championship. Clarke and Lowry won the 2011 Open Championship and 2019 Open Championship respectively.

Three other golfers from Northern Ireland have had international successes in the 21st century. Rory McIlroy has several major tournament wins, including the 2011 U.S. Open. He was world number one in the Official World Golf Ranking for 95 weeks. Graeme McDowell won the 2010 U.S. Open, becoming the first Irish player to do so. Darren Clarke won the 2011 Open Championship.

Cricket
Cricket has been played in Ireland since the early 19th century, and the game against Scotland (a match which has first-class status) has been played annually since 1909.

The sport is organised on an all-island basis and is overseen by the Irish Cricket Union, founded in its present incarnation in 1923. Ireland has entered some domestic English tournaments since the early 1980s, but becoming an Associate Member of the International Cricket Council in 1993 paved the way for participation in international competition. Ireland co-hosted the 1999 Cricket World Cup. It is most popular in Northern Ireland and Dublin.

The Ireland cricket team was among the associate nations that qualified for the 2007 Cricket World Cup. It defeated Pakistan and finished second in its pool, earning a place in the Super 8 stage of the competition. The team also competed in the 2009 ICC World Twenty20, and won the 2009 ICC World Cup Qualifier to secure a place in the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Kevin O'Brien scored the fastest century in World Cup history (113 runs off 63 balls), as Ireland produced one of the great upsets to defeat England by 3 wickets in the 2011 tournament. In 2017, domestic cricket in Ireland was recognized as first-class cricket for the first time, and was granted Test status in 2017.

Prior to the granting of Test status, a number of Irish cricketers went to England to play Test cricket, including Eoin Morgan from Dublin, who captained the English cricket team to 2019 Cricket World Cup success.

Field hockey
Field hockey (known in Ireland as just "hockey") is played throughout the country, particularly in secondary schools. The governing body in Ireland is the Irish Hockey Association. The Ireland women's national field hockey team reached the final of the Women's Hockey World Cup in 2018. As of 2018, the Ireland men's national field hockey team were ranked 10th in the FIH World Rankings.

Australian rules football
Australian rules football has gained a following in Ireland which has increased mainly due to the International rules series that takes place annually between Australia and Ireland. In October 2000, the Australian Rules Football League of Ireland was established, and a representative Irish team took part in the 2005 Australian Football International Cup. The Irish Green Machine became inaugural International champions in 2002. They have been finalists in every AFL International Cup since and were 2011 International Cup champions. Belfast and Dublin have been hosts to the AFL Euro Cup.

Chess
The Irish Chess Union (ICU), formed in 1912, is the governing body for chess in Ireland and a member of FIDE since 1933 and the European Chess Union. The ICU promotes Chess in Ireland and maintains the chess rating for players in Ireland, which are published three times a year. It runs competitions such as the Irish Chess Championship and selects teams to participate in international competitions for Ireland.

Croquet
Croquet was first played in Ireland in the 1830s. The governing association of the sport is the Croquet Association of Ireland. Most international matches and large tournaments are played at the Carrickmines Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, near Dublin.

Cycling
There are many regional cycling clubs throughout the country and competitions are organised regularly, the largest non-professional event being the Rás (Irish for race). The main governing body is Cycling Ireland which is responsible for cycling throughout the island. Ireland's most famous cyclists are Stephen Roche, who won both the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia in 1987; and Sean Kelly, who won the Vuelta a España in 1988, the sprinter's green jersey in the Tour de France four times, the Paris-Nice seven times in succession as well as four of the five 'Monuments'. Mountain biking is supported by a number of dedicated trail centers in Wicklow, Dublin, Galway and Tipperary. For competitive mountain bikers, there is a National Cross-Country series, a National Downhill series and a National Enduro series. BMX events are undertaken at the Ratoath BMX track in County Meath, and an indoor BMX track in Cherry Orchard in County Dublin.

Darts
The Irish National Darts Organisation (INDO) is a governing body for Irish darts and is recognised by the World Darts Federation and British Darts Organisation.

Extreme sports
Extreme sports undertaken in Ireland include skateboarding, rollerblading, surfing, BMX, mountain biking, mountain boarding, kitesurfing and wakeboarding. Several of these sports have national governing bodies, such as the Irish Surfing Association, and national competitions, such as mountainbiking's national series.

Since 2005, skateparks (for skateboarding, rollerblading, and other sports) have been developed in several places, including in Greystones, Bushy park (Dublin) and Lucan (Dublin). Modular parks can be found in other parts of Ireland.

Speed climbing, an Olympic sport as of 2020, is governed by Mountaineering Ireland, which also maintains safety guidelines and training for mountain climbing, indoor climbing, bouldering, abseiling and hill-walking.

Greyhound racing
Greyhound racing began in Ireland in 1927; there were greyhound races in Celtic Park in Belfast on 18 April of that year and the Shelbourne Park greyhound stadium opened in Dublin four weeks later. Hare coursing was already a well established sport in the country and greyhounds were bred for racing in Ireland from the very start. Mick the Miller, winner of the English Derby in 1929 and 1930, was an Irish greyhound and Ireland continues to export greyhounds.

There are twenty licensed greyhound stadiums in Ireland. There are seventeen in the Republic where the licensing authority is Bord na gCon, the Irish Greyhound Board. This is a semi-state body and was established by the Irish government in 1958. The three stadiums in Northern Ireland are licensed by the Irish Coursing Club, which also organises hare coursing throughout the Island.

Gymnastics
Gymnastics is governed by Irish Gymnastics which was formed in 1999, following the merging of the Irish Amateur Gymnastics Association and the Irish Sports Acrobatics Federation. There are 83 registered gymnastics clubs in Ireland (including Northern Ireland). Gymnastics includes four Olympic disciplines, women's artistic gymnastics, men's artistic gymnastics, trampoline gymnastics, and rhythmic gymnastics, and four non-Olympic disciplines, acrobatic gymnastics, tumbling gymnastics, gymnastics for all, and sports aerobics.

The most successful Irish gymnast ever is Rhys McClenaghan. In 2019, he became the first Irish gymnast to qualify to a world championships final and to also win a medal, taking bronze on pommel horse. In addition to his world medal, McClenaghan is the first Irish gymnast to compete in a European final and also the first to win a European medal. In 2019, he qualified for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. In 2022 and 2023, McClenaghan won the gold for pommel horse at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, the first world champion in Gymnastics for Ireland. He is a three-time European champion and 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medalist (for Northern Ireland), all on his specialist piece.

Kendo
While still a minority sport in Ireland, there are a number of Kendo clubs based in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Cavan. The Irish Kendo Federation is the governing body for the country. The Irish National Kendo Squad participates in the European Kendo Championships and the World Kendo Championships, as well as other international competitions. The main Kendo event in Ireland is the annual Irish National Championships (INC) which takes place in June each year.

Kendo in Northern Ireland is governed by the British Kendo Association (BKA).

Martial arts
The National Governing Body of Martial Arts in Ireland, as appointed by the Irish Sports Council, is the Irish Martial Arts Commission. The Irish Martial Arts Commission represents the martial arts of Aikido, Ju-Jitsu, Karate, Kendo, Kickboxing, Kung-Fu, TaeKwon-Do, Ninjutsu, Sambo and Tai Chi. The executive committee of the Irish Martial Arts Commission is made up of 2 representative elected within the membership of each Martial Art.

Taekwondo and Karate are represented by various clubs throughout the country. The All-Ireland Taekwondo Association works to promote the sport and to organise competitions. Kickboxing Ireland (formally known as Allstyles Kickboxing Association of Ireland) was founded in 1985 to unify and structure the sport in Ireland. It was recognised by the Irish Sports Council as a national governing body of sport in 1993 under the auspices of the Irish Martial Arts Commission.

Motorsport
Motorsport also has a presence in Ireland with Motorsport Ireland being the governing body throughout the country. Rallying is one popular form of motorsport, with three major Rally Championships taking place every year, each hosting 6-7 rally events across the country. These include the Donegal International Rally, West Cork Rally, Galway International Rally and others. Ireland also hosted a round of the World Rally Championship in 2007 and 2009, with stages being held in the Republic and also across the border in Northern Ireland, and was a stage candidate in 2016.

Circuit racing is also present in the country with Ireland having only one international venue, Mondello Park in County Kildare which formerly hosted rounds of several international events and still hosts national events today. The country has produced many drivers who climbed the international ladder such as Derek Daly, Peter Dempsey, Tommy Byrne, Eddie Jordan and David Kennedy. Kart racing and stock car racing are also a popular forms of circuit racing in Ireland.

Motorcycle racing in Ireland is governed by Motorcycling Ireland. Established in 1902, it is the oldest motorcycle sport federation in the world.

Olympic Handball
Olympic Handball is a minority sport in Ireland, with the Irish Olympic Handball Association acting as the national governing body. In 2011, Ireland hosted the European Challenge Trophy in Olympic Handball (a competition for developing nations).

Orienteering
Orienteering in Ireland is regulated by the Irish Orienteering Association. Every two years, the Shamrock o-Ringen, Ireland's largest Orienteering event, is held in Cork or Kerry. Irish orienteers compete at all levels, sometimes reaching the finals at the World Orienteering Championships.

Pitch and putt
The sport of pitch and putt originated in Cork in the 1930s, and was developed throughout Ireland during the 1940s. Since 1960 it has been overseen by the Pitch and Putt Union of Ireland, in turn a member of the European Pitch and Putt Association and Federation of International Pitch and Putt Associations. The Ireland men's national pitch and putt team won the 2008 Pitch and Putt World Cup.

Racquet sports
Tennis, badminton, racquetball and squash are common in Ireland. In Tennis, Tennis Ireland is the governing body and runs several competitions between the approximately 200 clubs throughout Ireland. Ireland competes in tennis internationally in the Davis Cup (men's) and the Fed Cup (ladies). Ireland had had a prominent tennis tournament, the Irish Open, in the past, which was considered an important tournament prior to the establishment of world championship events in 1913. The men's event was abolished in 1979, and the women's event was abolished in 1983 - however, it remains as a lower-tier ITF tournament. Badminton in Ireland is run by the BUI.

Road bowling
Irish Road Bowling is an ancient sport. It is centred in Ireland (particularly Cork and Armagh) but is also played in the United States and the United Kingdom. Similar sports are played in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy and since the 1960s there have been international championships held with athletes participating from these countries.

Rowing
Rowing is an Olympic Sport which is regulated by Rowing Ireland. During the winter there are Head of the River Races (processional timed races) and during the summer there are Regattas (side by side racing). The Irish Championships are held at the National Rowing Centre in Cork.

Rugby League
Rugby league in Ireland is governed by Rugby League Ireland, which runs the Irish Elite League (known as the Carnegie League for sponsorship purposes), which is the top level rugby league competition in Ireland. There are approximately 20 teams across Ulster, Munster and Leinster. The Irish rugby league team compete in the European Cup and the Rugby League World Cup. It is made up predominantly of players based in Great Britain. Ireland reached the quarter-finals of the 2000 Rugby League World Cup and the 2008 Rugby League World Cup.

Sailing
Sailing in Ireland is governed and regulated by the Irish Sailing Association in Dún Laoghaire. Events are organised by the various clubs on the coasts and on the reservoirs and lakes. The first sailing club was the Cork Water Club (now the Royal Cork Yacht Club), which was founded in 1720.

Snooker and pool
Snooker and pool hold some interest in Ireland, with media coverage of most major international tournaments. The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have produced some of the world's most successful snooker players, including Ken Doherty, Alex Higgins and Dennis Taylor.

Target shooting
Target shooting in Ireland comprises a number of disciplines. These include the Olympic rifle and pistol shooting disciplines (administered by the NTSA), metallic silhouette shooting (administered by the NSAI), precision pistol, benchrest rifle, gallery rifle and sporting rifle disciplines (administered by the NASRPC), the Tetrathlon (administered by the Pony Club) and Olympic Penthathlon (administered by the Modern Pentathlon Association of Ireland), both Olympic and non-Olympic clay pigeon shooting (administered by the ICPSA) and various long-range rifle shooting disciplines (administered by the NRAI).

Ireland has had representation at international target shooting competitions, including the Olympic Games. The Irish Olympic clay pigeon team won the World Championships team event in Olympic Trap in 2002 and Irish shooter Philip Murphy claimed the silver medal in the 2007 World Shotgun Championships; he has also placed in the top ten in two World Championships and two World Cups. His teammate Derek Burnett won silver in the 2007 World Cup in Maribor and has placed in the top ten in three World Championships, two World Cup Finals and two European championships. Another teammate, David Malone, won gold in the 2004 World Cup in Cairo, and has ranked in the top ten in two World Championships, one World Cup Final and five World Cups. The team has also won several World Cup medals in both team and individual events. The clay pigeon high performance director has also been appointed head of the ISSF coaches' committee and the head clay target instructor with the ISSF Training Academy. Ian O'Sullivan also became the World Junior Champion in Olympic Trap in the 2014 World Championships.

Ireland became world champions in Centrefire Gallery Rifle in the inaugural World Championships in 2013, in which the Irish team beat Great Britain and Germany. Gallery Rifle events are administered in Ireland by the NASRPC.

Triathlon and adventure racing
The triathlon, as well as the duathlon, pentathlon, and decathlon, are gaining interest in Ireland. The Irish Triathlon calendar of events runs to 200 events annually. The national body for the triathlon is Triathlon Ireland which organises competitions between various clubs throughout the country.

The Modern Pentathlon Association of Ireland was set up in 2004. Pentathlon and Decathlon are track and field events and organised by an athletic association, whereas Triathlon and Duathlon are organized by multi sport associations such as National Governing bodies for Triathlon and the ITU, International Triathlon Union.

Adventure racing also takes place in Ireland. The majority of adventure races in Ireland fall into what's often called multisport, with run, cycle and kayak stages in events like WAR (Wicklow Adventure Race) and Gaelforce West, which are won in under 4 hours. There are also a few longer international-style adventure races lasting 24 hours and 36 hours, events like Beast of Ballyhoura and Cooley Raid.

Tug of war
Tug of war has been in Ireland for a long time and the creation of the Irish Tug of War Association in 1967 boosted the competition among clubs in Ireland and also enabled Ireland to compete in international events, such as the Tug of War International Federation (TWIF) World Championships.

Underwater sports
Ireland, being an island on the western edge of Europe and on the continental shelf, is well-suited for recreational diving activities such as scuba diving and snorkelling. The dive season in Ireland generally starts around March and ends around October.

Recreational diving started in Ireland in the early 1950s with the founding of the Belfast Branch of the British Sub Aqua Club. In the early 1960s, diving clubs in the Republic of Ireland formed the Comhairle Fo-Thuinn (CFT) (English: Irish Underwater Council). This voluntary body regulates all aspects of diving for its members, is the national governing body recognised by the Irish Government and represents the Republic of Ireland at the Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (World Underwater Federation). The Northern Ireland Federation of Sub-Aqua Clubs which was formed in 1975 is the corresponding national governing body in Northern Ireland.

As of October 2013, underwater hockey is the only underwater sport being practised. This activity is limited to the Republic of Ireland where regional competition takes place in both Dublin and Cork. Irish national teams have played internationally with attendance at European championships.

Water sports
Water sports practised in Ireland include canoeing, swimming, surfing, diving, water polo, sailing, and kayaking. Whilst many people participate in these, few do so competitively. Ireland has had only one Olympic medalist in swimming, Michelle Smith, and her medals have since been tarnished by drug allegations. The National Aquatic Centre was opened in Ireland in 2003 and held the European SC Championships in December 2003 – the first time the country hosted such a competition. At the competition, Ireland won its first medal at the European SC Championships ever, a silver in the 200m breaststroke by Andrew Bree. The National Aquatic Centre also hosted the 2018 World Para Swimming European Championships. Swim Ireland is the national governing body of swimming in Ireland, while paddlesports are governed by Canoeing Ireland.

Winter Sports
The Ski Club of Ireland is the national snowsports centre for Ireland, and consists of four outdoor dry slopes in Kilternan, Dublin. A team representing Ireland has competed at the Winter Olympic Games since 1992.

Baseball

Baseball, which has some similarities to the Gaelic version of rounders, is an emerging sport in Ireland, The Irish National Baseball Team won the bronze medal at the 2004 European Championships in Germany and followed up that performance with a silver medal in the 2006 European Championships in Belgium. In 2018, the team won the C Pool in European Championships held in Ashbourne, County Meath to advance to the B Pool in 2019.

The governing body is Baseball Ireland, which oversees club play and operates an adult league established in 1997 with teams in Dublin, Greystones and Belfast. Irish baseball was the subject of an award-winning documentary The Emerald Diamond in 2006.

Basketball

 * See also Ireland national basketball team

Basketball is overseen by Basketball Ireland. This governing body organises the sport's main competitions such as the Super League. The main basketball arena in Ireland is the National Basketball Arena in Dublin. The sport receives small amounts of media attention, with a few games broadcast on television annually. Basketball is mainly driven by school, college and club support. Pat Burke is the only Irish born to play in the NBA, he played for Orlando Magic and Phoenix Suns.

Ice hockey
There is one professional ice hockey team in Northern Ireland, the Belfast Giants, playing in the Elite Ice Hockey League. The Irish Ice Hockey Association is the national governing body for the sport, and is responsible for the Ireland men's national ice hockey team and Ireland women's national ice hockey team.

Lacrosse
Lacrosse in Ireland is governed by Ireland Lacrosse, an association which is a member of World Lacrosse and the European Lacrosse Federation. The Irish men's lacrosse team made headlines in 2020 when, after qualifying for the 2022 World Games, the team gave up their place at the competition to allow the Iroquois men's national lacrosse team to participate. The Iroquois team, despite representing the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in which the sport originated, were originally excluded because they did not represent a sovereign nation with an Olympic Committee. The Irish national team refused to take their place at the competition, with the place being allocated to the Iroquois team.

Softball

 * See also Softball in Ireland

Softball in Ireland can be traced back as far as 1982, with the first organised competition, the Dublin Softball League, taking place in 1984. The Irish Softball Association is the governing body of softball in Ireland and is responsible for the running of tournaments, Leagues, development and international competition in both co-ed slowpitch and ladies fastpitch softball. The National Team (Co-Ed) has competed at European level since 1998, with the best results being Silver in 2002 and 2004.

Volleyball
Volleyball has men's, women's, schools' and beach-volleyball participants. The sport is governed by Volleyball Ireland (VLY). The Northern Ireland Volleyball Association govern the sport in Northern Ireland. Men, Women and Junior National Teams regularly compete in international competition including the European Small Nations Championship. The NI Men's National Team competed in the first round of the World Championships. Club volleyball is played in several men's and women's divisions (both north and south). Volleyball Ireland (VLY) also run school competitions throughout the school year: a first and second year competition, a cadette competition, a senior competition, and a general schools competition. Spikeball tournaments are also held around the country throughout the school year.

National
The various GAA discipline finals are the largest sporting events regularly held in Ireland, in both terms of attendance and media coverage. The biggest national sporting event in Ireland is the final of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, held annually in Croke Park, usually in September. It usually attracts a sell out crowd of 82,500 to the stadium. Many of the matches in the championship attract crowds of 50,000+, depending on who is playing.

Aside from the GAA, the biggest multi-sport event held in Ireland regularly is the Community Games. The games are organised every year from a local level, where hundreds of thousands of young people compete in different disciplines such as athletics, swimming, and cycling, in the first half of the year. Winners progress to county level, and then to the Community Games finals. The finals are held over two weekends in the summer where over 3,000 children sleep over at a campus-style facility.

International
On an international level, Ireland has had mixed fortunes, with some successes in the late 20th and early 21st century in rugby union, horse racing, show jumping, amateur boxing, and golf. Twenty four Irish people have won Olympic medals as of 2012. At the 2004 Summer Olympics, Ireland had one of its smallest contingents in its history at the games, with only 106 individuals participating. This was due to the strict policy followed by the Olympic Council of Ireland of only allowing A time athletes and swimmers to attend the games.

One of the biggest international events in Ireland is international soccer. The Republic's national team first qualified for a FIFA World Cup in 1990, reaching the quarter-finals of Italia '90. In rugby union, as of September 2019, Ireland's national team was ranked 1st in the world. Ireland has produced major stars such as Keith Wood, Brian O'Driscoll and Johnny Sexton. In golf, Ireland has produced several top golfers such as Pádraig Harrington.

The traditional Gaelic games of Gaelic football and hurling are played by Irish expats, with increasingly local involvement in communities around the world, however no nation has enough players to compete with Ireland. To compensate for this the GAA has entered into a partnership with the Australian Football League (Australian rules football) and plays a hybrid annual series called International rules football – this series has been going in various forms since 1967. Also the GAA plays an international hurling hybrid match with Scotland's national shinty team (although Ireland do not select players from the best hurling teams in Tier One of the All-Ireland championship for this game).

In 2003, Ireland hosted the Special Olympics World Summer Games, as well as the European SC Championships 2003. In 2006, Ireland hosted the Ryder Cup Matches.

Stadiums
Ireland's largest stadium is the GAA's Croke Park in Dublin, which can hold 82,300 people. It is the third largest stadium in Europe. Until the late 20th century, it was only used for Gaelic games and concerts. Other GAA facilities capable of accommodating 40,000 or more people are Semple Stadium, Thurles, Gaelic Grounds, Limerick and Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork.

International soccer and rugby in the Republic of Ireland are played at the 52,000 capacity Aviva Stadium. Built on the site of the former Lansdowne Road, this all-seated stadium was opened in May 2010. Thomond Park, a rugby ground in Limerick, has been rebuilt into a modern 26,000-capacity stadium, though not all-seated.

Ireland has three Olympic-sized swimming pools – two of which are open to the public. The largest – located at the National Sports Campus – is the National Aquatic Centre. Ireland has several large horse and greyhound tracks such as Fairyhouse.

Plans to develop a Northern Ireland stadium at the site of the former Maze prison in County Antrim to cater for Gaelic games, rugby and soccer were scrapped in 2009 after opposition from unionists and soccer fans.

The Ireland national cricket team play One Day Internationals at Stormont in Belfast and at the Clontarf Cricket Club Ground in Dublin. Ireland also plays Intercontinental Cup matches at the Woodvale Road ground, and has played test cricket at Malahide Cricket Club Ground in Dublin.

Media coverage

 * Newspapers: All major newspapers dedicate space to sports coverage, particularly to soccer, Gaelic games, rugby union and equestrian events.
 * Television: Gaelic football, hurling and soccer receive most of the sports coverage on domestic channels. RTÉ Two and TG4 hold rights to broadcast Gaelic games in Ireland. Coverage of the League of Ireland is shared between RTÉ and other channels. TV3 and RTÉ Two both have rights to various European soccer competitions, such as the Champions League and the English Premier League. Satellite and cable subscribers have access to other foreign channels such as Sky Sports, Eurosport and Attheraces.
 * Magazines: There are relatively few Irish based magazines apart from GAA ones such as the Hogan Stand.

title: Sport in Ireland


text:
Tu quoque

Tu quoque is a discussion technique that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by attacking the opponent's own personal behavior and actions as being inconsistent with their argument, so that the opponent is hypocritical. This specious reasoning is a special type of attack. The cites John Cooke's 1614 stage play  as the earliest known use of the term in the English language.

Form and explanation
The (fallacious) argument follows the template (i.e. pattern):
 * 1) Person A claims that statement $X$ is true.
 * 2) Person B asserts that A's actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim $X$.
 * 3) Therefore, $X$ is false.

As a specific example, consider the following scenario where Person A and Person B just left a store.
 * 1) Person A: "You took that item without paying for it. What you did is morally wrong!"
 * 2) *Here, $X$ is the statement: "Stealing from a store is morally wrong." Person A is asserting that statement $X$ is true.
 * 3) Person B: "So what? I remember when you once did the same thing. You didn't think it was wrong and neither is this."
 * 4) *Person B claims that Person A is a hypocrite because Person A once committed this same action.
 * 5) Person B has argued that because Person A is a hypocrite, he does not have a right to pass sentences on others before judging himself.

Other artificial examples
The example above was worded in a way to make it amenable to the template given above. However, in colloquial language, the technique more often makes an appearance in more subtle and less explicit ways, such as in the following example in which Person B is driving a car with Person A as a passenger: Although neither Person A nor Person B explicitly state what $X$ is, because of the colloquial nature of the conversation, it is nevertheless understood that statement $X$ is something like: "Running stop signs is wrong" or some other statement that is similar in spirit.
 * 1) Person A: "Stop running so many stop signs."
 * 2) Person B: "You run them all the time!"

Person A and/or Person B are also allowed to be groups of individuals (e.g. organizations, such as corporations, governments, or political parties) rather than individual people. For example, Persons A and B might be governments such as those of the United States and the former Soviet Union, which is the situation that led to the term "whataboutism" with the "And you are lynching Negroes" argument.

The technique can also appear outside of conversations. For example, it is possible for someone who supports a certain Politician B, who recently did something wrong, to justify not changing their support to another politician by reasoning with themselves:
 * "Yes, Politician B did do this-or-that immoral thing, but then again so do other politicians. So what's the big deal?"

In this example, Person B was "Politician B" while Person A was "other politicians."

Whataboutism is one particularly well-known modern instance of this technique.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Tu quoque


text:
Islandia (novel)

Islandia is a classic novel of utopian fiction by Austin Tappan Wright, a University of California, Berkeley Law School Professor. Written as a hobby over a long period, the manuscript was edited posthumously and reduced by about a third by author/editor Mark Saxton with the advice and consent of Wright's wife and daughter, and was published first in hardcover format by the company Farrar & Rinehart in 1942, eleven years after the author's 1931 death.

Islandia is a fully realized imaginary country, though more akin to a utopia than a standard fantasy.

The original Islandia was conceived by Wright when he was a boy. Creating its civilization became his lifelong leisure occupation. The complete Islandia papers include "a detailed history ... complete with geography, genealogy, representations from its literature, language and culture". The complete and never published version of Islandia can be found in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. A 61-page Introduction to Islandia by Basil Davenport was published along with the original novel in 1942.

The protagonist and narrator of the novel is an American named John Lang, who graduates from Harvard University in 1905. The setting is Islandia, an imaginary country set in the real world of that time. This remote nation "at the tip of the Karain semi-continent" is near "the unexplored wastes of Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere". The citizens have imposed "the Hundred Law, limiting access to Islandia to a bare one hundred visitors at a time". Wright may have had in mind both the self-imposed isolation of Siam, starting in 1688, and that of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate.

Themes
Islandia's culture has many "progressive" features, including the rehabilitation of prostitutes into respectable society, the citizens' love of nature, and their rural lives. Everyone, including members of the upper classes, engages in some kind of useful work, especially farming. The word for city in Islandian, "elainry", literally means "place of many people"; all city families have a country home to which they can return.

Like other writers of speculative fiction, Wright decided to imagine a society that differs from ours in one or several major features. One of these is that, while Islandian civilization is primitive technologically, its mores are different from Western culture's. Wright wrote much of the story during the 1920s, but set it before World War I, providing a particularly stark contrast between Islandian philosophy and the relatively stern customs of Western countries of the same time. Immersed in the Islandian culture, John Lang steadily increases his understanding of his emotions and his sexual feelings. He becomes accustomed to the slightly more sexually permissive Islandian culture. Wright's description may have been intended as a positive comment on the increasing sexual permissiveness of American culture of the 1920s.

Another difference between Islandian culture and the West is that Islandians reject most modern Western technology. It is a rural society with an arcadian philosophy, which Dorn humorously describes as "enlightened Hedonism". They're not interested in building railroads for quick travel. But they do not reject all Western technology; they use a few Western inventions that they judge to be worthwhile, such as modern rifles. At one point, one Islandian uses a sewing machine.

Among John Lang's discoveries, he finds that the Islandians use four words for love:

 * alia: love of place and family land and lineage (heimat)
 * amia: love of friends (philia)
 * ania: desire for marriage and commitment (storge)
 * apia: sexual attraction (eros)

Plot
While an undergraduate at Harvard, John Lang becomes friends with an Islandian fellow-student named Dorn, and decides to learn the Islandian language (of which there are very few speakers outside Islandia). Once he has graduated, his uncle, a prominent businessman, arranges his appointment as American consul to Islandia, based primarily on his ability to speak the language. Gradually John Lang learns that his tacit mission as American consul is to do whatever is necessary to increase American trade opportunities in Islandia. He does not begin this mission right away, preferring to get to know the country and the people first.

John Lang meets and becomes infatuated with Dorn's sister, Dorna. They spend some time together alone, which John finds unnerving at first, since they are not chaperoned. When Dorna comes to understand John's feelings, she tells him that she does not love him in return in that way (though he wonders whether she means "cannot", or "will not"). She accepts the marriage proposal of the King instead, a handsome young man who has been courting her for some time.

One of the culminations of the plot is the decision by the people of Islandia to reject the demands of the Great Powers for unrestricted trade and immigration, choosing instead to maintain their tradition of isolation. As this political struggle intensifies, John Lang sympathizes with the Islandians, to the great disappointment of many American businessmen who desire new lucrative trade opportunities, including John Lang's uncle.

Near the end of the novel, John Lang is allowed to become a citizen of Islandia as a reward for heroism during an attack by a neighboring group. He later falls in love with an American friend with whom he has maintained steady correspondence. They decide to marry, and when she arrives in Islandia she, too, is granted citizenship.

Sequels
There are also three sequels/prequels, all written by Mark Saxton, the man who edited the original Islandia manuscript. Reviewers describe these books as entertaining and self-contained. The prequels concern events that are mentioned briefly in the original novel, and are likely based on Wright's unpublished notes. All three books were published with the permission of Wright's estate. Sylvia Wright, Wright's daughter and the executrix of the estate, died shortly before the third Saxton book was completed, and there have been no additional books since.

 * The Islar, Islandia Today - A Narrative of Lang III. Published in 1969, this book is set in the then-present day. The plot concerns a coup attempt in Islandia that occurs while the national government is debating whether to join the United Nations. The protagonist, as indicated in the title, is John Lang's grandson.
 * The Two Kingdoms, published in 1979, is a prequel set in the 14th century. The plot concerns the events surrounding the reign of the only female ruler in Islandian history, and the dynastic change that ensued from this.
 * Havoc in Islandia, published in 1982, is yet another prequel, set in the 12th century. The Roman Catholic Church attempts to overthrow the government of Islandia, and, having failed, is itself expelled from the country (parallel to the expulsion of Christians from Japan).

Cultural references
Islandia is mentioned briefly as a modern instance of myth in Hamlet's Mill (p. 51), along with The Islar.

Islandian kinds of love are mentioned by Ursula K. Le Guin in her novel Always Coming Home, though she only mentions three of the four kinds (ania, apia and alia).

title: Islandia (novel)


text:
Gardens of the Moon

Gardens of the Moon, published on April 1, 1999, is the first of ten novels in Canadian author Steven Erikson's high fantasy series the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

The novel details the various struggles for power on an intercontinental region dominated by the Malazan Empire. It is notable for the use of high magic, and unusual plot structure. Gardens of the Moon centres around the Imperial campaign to conquer the city of Darujhistan on the continent of Genabackis.

It was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. It received mixed to positive reviews, with critics praising the tone, characters, and overarching story.

Development
Erikson and Ian C. Esslemont initially devised the Malazan world as a backdrop for a table-top role-playing game. Unhappy with the lack of quality adult oriented fantasy movies at the time, the duo decided to write their own movie script using their gaming experience and the world they had created. The script, titled Gardens of the Moon, was deemed too risky and failed to sell. With interest in the script seeming nonexistent, Erikson, with Esslemont's go ahead, reworked it into a fantasy novel, which he completed around 1991–92.

After meeting almost a decade of rejection, the novel was finally sold to Transworld, a division of Random House. The publisher was pleased with the work and requested additional books in the series. Using the history of the Malazan world, nine additional novels were plotted. After the publication of Gardens of the Moon, reviews spread via the internet, and Orion publications attempted to lure the writer away from Transworld. However, Transworld retained an option on additional novels in the series and offered £675,000 for the remaining nine books of the series.

Prologue
The novel begins in the 96th year of the Malazan Empire, marking the twilight of Emperor Kellanved's reign. Ganoes Paran, at the age of 12, witnesses the devastating attack on the Mouse Quarter in Malaz City. Paran aspires to become a soldier in the future, despite the veteran soldier Whiskeyjack's reservations.

Genabackis
Seven years later, the Emperor and his ally, Dancer, have been assassinated and supplanted by the chief of the assassin corps. Empress Laseen now rules with the aid of the Claw, the imperial assassins. The story opens several years into a series of wars by the Malazan Empire to conquer the continent of Genabackis.

Under High Fist Dujek, the Malazan 2nd Army has been besieging the city of Pale, one of only two Free Cities left in the Malazans' path in Genabackis, for several years. Pale is holding out thanks to an alliance with the powerful Anomander Rake, Lord of Moon's Spawn (a floating fortress), leader of the non-human Tiste Andii. Pale finally falls when Rake withdraws his fortress following a fierce battle. Even then, the Empire suffers severe losses, including the near-total destruction of a legendary infantry unit in its 2nd army, the Bridgeburners. Several characters speculate that someone higher up within the Empire may be engineering the elimination of various people who were loyal to the late Emperor.

The Empire then turns its attention to the last remaining Free City, Darujhistan. A handful of surviving members of the Bridgeburners, led by Sergeant Whiskeyjack, now severely reduced in rank after Laseen's seizure of power, are sent to try to undermine the city from within. Once there, they attempt fruitlessly to contact the city's assassins' guild, in the hope of paying them to betray their city, but Rake has already driven the guild underground. Adjunct Lorn, second-in-command to the Empress, is sent to uncover something in the hills east of Darujhistan. She is accompanied by Tool, a T'lan Imass, an undead race that once dominated the world before humans. Meanwhile, Tattersail, one of the few mages to survive the Siege of Pale, and Paran, now a captain and the Bridgeburners' nominal commander, head toward the city to determine the reason for the increased involvement of several gods and other magical forces in the campaign.

A group of con-artists and underworld figures within Darujhistan work to oppose members of the civic government who are considering capitulating to the Empire. Meanwhile, Anomander Rake offers his alliance to the true rulers of Darujhistan, a secretive cabal of mages. The plots collide when Adjunct Lorn releases a Jaghut Tyrant, a powerful ancient being, with the aim of either damaging Anomander Rake seriously or forcing him to withdraw from the city. The Tyrant is eventually imprisoned inside an Azath House after a fierce battle with Rake's people, while Rake himself defeats a demon lord that Lorn releases inside the city.

A substantial subplot involves a young Bridgeburner named Sorry. She is known as a cold-blooded killer but is in fact possessed by Cotillion, also known as the Rope, a deity and patron of assassins. When Cotillion's partner Shadowthrone and Rake negotiate the Rope's withdrawal from the events of war, Sorry is freed and falls in with Crokus, a young Daru thief. Crokus has earned the patronage of Oponn, the twin Gods of Chance, who continue to meddle in the conflict for their own purposes. As the novel ends, Crokus, a Bridgeburner sapper named Fiddler, and the Bridgeburner assassin Kalam volunteer to take Sorry (now called Apsalar) back to her homeland of Itko Kan (their story continues in Deadhouse Gates).

Meanwhile, Dujek and Whiskeyjack lead the 2nd Army into rebellion against Laseen's increasingly tyrannical rule. Dujek now seeks an alliance with Rake and other enemies of Malazan against a holy war called by the Pannion Seer, whose empire is advancing from the south-east of Genabackis. Elsewhere, it is confirmed that the continent of Seven Cities has begun a mass uprising against the Empire. These and other plot developments are continued in the third novel, Memories of Ice.

Styles and themes
In a 2000 interview with SFSite, Erikson says that a large part of Gardens of the Moon involved the dismantling of various conventions of the fantasy genre. He admits his fascination with ambivalence and ambiguity and says that notion of evil for its own sake, with "good heroes and insipidly stupid bad guys", is boring. Reviewers have noted Erikson's penchant of avoiding "fairy tale distinctions between good and evil", with numerous factions in the novel that cannot exclusively be considered as either. Themes such as history, myth creation and war have also been considered.

Publication history
The novel was first released by Bantam in UK and Canada as a trade paperback edition followed by a mass market paperback in March 2000. In 2004, Tor released the novel in both hardcover and paperback editions in the US. Both publishers released the novel's tenth anniversary hardcover edition in 2009. It has also been released in the audiobook and ebook formats. Subterranean Press published 500 copies of a signed numbered hardcover edition and 52 copies of a signed, deluxe bound lettered edition, illustrated by Michael Komarck, in 2008.

The novel has also been translated into multiple languages including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Portuguese and Turkish.

Critical
The novel received mixed to positive reviews from critics. SFSite said that Erikson had created "a fantasy world as rich and detailed as any you're likely to encounter" while calling the novel engrossing and hard to set aside. The reviewer, while calling it an astounding debut fantasy novel with a fully realized history spanning thousands of years and rich, complex characters, notes that the complexity could also be considered the book's greatest flaw. Bill Capossere of Tor said that, though the novel is not without its flaws, it is a captivating, stimulating read that defies the reader's preconceptions of fantasy and challenges their ideas of fantasy by confronting them with reality.

The Guardian described Erikson's world-building as astounding and also praised the character development, stating "His characters ... feel realistic, and their personalities actually change and adapt through the story." It also praised the deep and complex plot of the novel. In contrast, however, the reviewer criticized the pacing as awful though noted that the climactic finale was neatly done. Another reviewer has praised Erikson for breathing new life into the fantasy genre with his new ideas and creations, calling the novel "a work of great skill and beauty." Salon describes Erikson as a "master of lost and forgotten epochs, a weaver of ancient epics" while praising his realistic world-building and characterization.

On the other hand, Publishers Weekly criticized the novel's characterization and lack of real depth, stating that "The fast-moving plot, with sieges, duels (of sword and of spell), rebellions, intrigue and revenge, unearthed monsters and earth-striding gods, doesn't leave much room for real depth. Heroes win, villains lose, fairness reigns, tragedy is averted. Erikson may aspire to China Miéville heights, but he settles comfortably in George R.R. Martin country."

Gardens of the Moon also garnered praise from well-known authors in the fantasy genre, such as Stephen R. Donaldson who said "Erikson is an extraordinary writer. I read Gardens of the Moon with great pleasure." J. V. Jones praised Erikson's style and his ability to "create a world every bit as intricate and messy as our own." Adam Roberts also praised Erikson's world-building and characterization, calling the novel "fiendishly readable".

Other reviews

 * Review by Vikki Lee (1999) in Vector 205
 * Review by Chris Gilmore (1999) in Interzone, #147 September 1999
 * Review by Carolyn Cushman (1999) in Locus, #465 October 1999
 * Review by Vikki Lee (2000) in Vector 211
 * Review by Charles de Lint (2000) in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 2000
 * Review by Jeff Wheeler (2004) in Deep Magic, #28, September 2004
 * Review by uncredited (2004) in Vector 237
 * Review by Paul Witcover (2004) in Realms of Fantasy, October 2004
 * Review by Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison (2009) in 100 Must-Read Fantasy Novels

Sales
The novel was a critical and commercial success. It sold over a million copies in a month.

After the commercial success of the novel, Transworld signed a publishing deal worth £675,000 for Erikson's next nine novels in the series.

title: Gardens of the Moon


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nottingham co-op

Nottingham co-op was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was DELETE. 6 votes to delete, 1 vote to merge. Postdlf 23:06, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nottingham co-op
Yet another reason we need a managed deletion policy. Article has almost no content, but not quite speedy worthy. Probably a new user's contribution made in error. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 22:48, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) Delete: I did my bit for the cause, and I'll support the next fellow on the chopping block.  As for this, there's nothing there, and it would not be encyclopedic if it were. Geogre 01:00, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * 2) Delete. I might have had a go at expanding it if it had been about the Greater Nottingham Co-Operative Society. Average Earthman 10:43, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * 3) Delete. Nicholas 15:30, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * 4) Certainly not speedy worthy.  Ideally, merge into an overview article on Buildings in Madison covering the city/region.  Buildings and other permanent structures are of lasting interest and article-worthy; we shouldn't turn away NPOV contributions; etc. +sj +  15:33, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * 5) Delete. Jayjg 16:45, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * 6) D This article title should be reserved for the Co-op in Nottingham. For a start it would be a damn sight more notable than this place.  Chris 01:15, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kikz

Kikz
Delete nonnotable "mastermind" behind some nonnotable online communities. I was tempted to speedy delete it, and will if there are no objections—borderline-coherent, chock-full of nonsense. Postdlf 22:48, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * I think this can be safely speedied as nonsense. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 22:51, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * I think it can be safely speedied as a vandal attack, too, as it amounts to "he's a fag who likes Taco Bell" article. Adolescence is a horrible thing.  Geogre 00:56, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Friends of gays should not be allowed to edit articles, indeed. Speedy. —No-One Jones (m) 01:00, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Speedy deleted. Shoulda just followed my first instinct.  ; )  Postdlf 01:40, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

title: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kikz


text:
Robert Bertie, 1st Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven

Robert Bertie, 1st Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven PC (20 October 1660 – 26 July 1723), styled 17th Baron Willoughby de Eresby between 1666 and 1701, and known as 4th Earl of Lindsey between 1701 and 1706, and as 1st Marquess of Lindsey between 1706 and 1715, was a British statesman and nobleman.

Early life
Bertie was the eldest son of Robert Bertie, 3rd Earl of Lindsey and, his second wife, the Hon. Elizabeth Wharton, daughter of Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton. Among his younger brothers were Hon. Peregrine Bertie (the Vice Chamberlain to King William III and to Queen Anne, Teller of the Exchequer), Hon. Philip Bertie (Auditor of the Duchy of Cornwall, who married Lady Elizabeth Brabazon, eldest daughter of William Brabazon, 3rd Earl of Meath), Hon. Norris Bertie (a Lt. of the Royal Navy), and Hon. Albemarle Bertie (MP who also served as Auditor of the Duchy of Cornwall. Among his sisters were Lady Jane Bertie (wife of Maj.-Gen. Edward Mathew, Governor of Grenada), Lady Caroline Bertie (second wife of Capt. George Dewar). From his father's first marriage to Mary (née Massingberd) Berkeley (widow of Hon. George Berkeley and second daughter John Massingberd, Treasurer of the East India Company), he had an elder half-sister, Lady Arabella Bertie (second wife Thomas Savage, 3rd Earl Rivers).

His paternal grandparents were Montagu Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey, and the former Martha Cokayne. Among his large extended family were uncles Peregrine, Richard, Vere, and Charles Bertie, and aunts Lady Elizabeth (wife of the 3rd Viscount Campden) and Lady Bridget (wife of the 1st Duke of Leeds). His mother was the only child of Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton and the former Elizabeth Wandesford (daughter of Sir Rowland Wandesford of Pickhill, an attorney of the Court of Wards and Liveries).

Career
Lord Willoughby entered Parliament as Member of Parliament for Boston in 1685, and sat in the Loyal Parliament, from 1685 to 1687, and the Convention Parliament from 1689 to 1690. He was commissioned captain of an independent troop of horse raised to suppress the Monmouth Rebellion on 20 June 1685. In 1688, Bertie took part in the northern rising led by his kinsman, the Earl of Danby, in favour of William of Orange. He was rewarded with the chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1689, a post which enabled him to secure a seat at Preston at the general election of 1690.

In 1690, he was returned for Preston, but was soon forced to leave the House of Commons for the House of Lords after receiving a writ of acceleration as Baron Willoughby de Eresby. Lord Willougby inherited the earldom of Lindsey on his father's death in 1701, and was invested a Privy Counsellor one month later; along with the Earldom of Lindsey, he also inherited the offices of Lord Great Chamberlain and Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, both of which he would hold until his death and would pass onto his son, the 2nd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven.

Lord Lindsey, as he was now styled, was then created Marquess of Lindsey in 1706, and was finally created Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven in 1715, with a special remainder failing the heirs male of his body, to the heirs male of the body of his father, Robert, late Earl of Lindsey, by Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Philip, Lord Wharton. Also in 1715, he temporarily served as a Lord Justice.

In 1715, he employed Sir John Vanbrugh to design a baroque front to his house at Grimsthorpe to celebrate his ennoblement as first Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven. This was in addition to the London mansion, Lindsey House, at 59-60 Lincoln's Inn Fields, built for the Bertie family in 1640.

Personal life
On 30 July 1678, Lord Willoughby married Mary Wynn (d. 1689), a Welsh heiress and direct descendant of the princely house of Aberffraw. She was the daughter, and sole heiress, of Sir Richard Wynn, 4th Baronet of Gwydyr Estate and the former Sarah Myddelton (daughter of Sir Thomas Myddelton of Chirk Castle). They had five children, including:

 * Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby (1683–1704), who died while studying at the Wolfenbüttel Ritter-Akademie
 * Peregrine Bertie, 2nd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven (1686–1742), who married Jane Brownlow, third daughter of Sir John Brownlow, 3rd Baronet.
 * Lady Elizabeth Bertie, who died unmarried.
 * Lady Eleanor Bertie, who died unmarried.
 * Lady Mary Bertie, who died unmarried.

After the death of his first wife in 1689, he married Albinia Farington on 6 July 1705. She was a daughter of Maj.-Gen. William Farington of Chislehurst and the former Theodosia Betenson (sister and co-heiress of Sir Edward Betenson, 1st Baronet). Together, they were the parents of:

 * Lord Vere Bertie (d. 1768), an MP for Boston who married Ann Casey, illegitimate daughter of Sir Cecil Wray, 11th Baronet, in 1736.
 * Capt. Lord Montagu Bertie (d. 1753), who married Elizabeth Piers, daughter of William Piers, MP in 1758.
 * Capt. Lord Thomas Bertie (1720–1749)
 * Lt.-Gen. Lord Robert Bertie (1721–1782), the Governor of Cork who married Hon. Mary (née Blundell) Raymond, widow of Robert Raymond, 2nd Baron Raymond and third daughter of Montague Blundell, 1st Viscount Blundell, in 1762.
 * Lady Louisa Bertie, who married Thomas Bludworth, Gentleman of the Horse to the Prince of Wales and a Groom of the Bedchamber, in 1736.

Lord Ancaster died in July 1723, aged 62, an established but relatively unheralded statesman. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Peregrine. His widow remarried to James Douglas and died in 1745.

Descendants
Through his son Lord Vere, he was a grandfather of Albinia Bertie (wife of George Hobart, 3rd Earl of Buckinghamshire) and Louisa Bertie (wife of Lt.-Gen. Hon. Sir Charles Stuart, Governor of Minorca and fourth son of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute).

Through his son Lord Montagu, he was a grandfather of Augusta Bertie, who married John Fane, 9th Earl of Westmorland.


text:
Talk:Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black

Los Angeles Times review
Transciption using Google News Advanced News Archive Search. Los Angeles Times (Hochman, Steve. 64. September 29, 1991) review of Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black (1991):

"Like Guns N' Roses' new "Use Your Illusion" albums, nothing is held back. Maturity has to fight against petulance, but it's a fight that's part of a growth process, and one that has always made for good art. "Apocalypse" may not be the breakthrough of 1987's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back," but it is another big step by what was already the leader of the rap pack. Rating: * * * 1/2 Byline: STEVE HOCHMAN

"The future holds nothing but confrontation," intones a Darth Vader voice to kick off the Enemy's fourth album. Chuck D. better hope so. Without confrontation there's no PE, the always-controversial standard-bearers of political rap. Chuck and his colleagues are certainly doing their part: Every track here is filled with angry accusations, dares and challenges, no less sweeping for coming from a narrow point of view.

So what's new? Maturity, for one thing. Yes, the message of black pride, as always, is delivered as bombastic rhetoric. Every personal affront is turned into a racial issue (notably Flavor Flav's "Letter to the NY Post," a bilious, self-serving response to that tabloid's coverage of his arrest for allegedly hitting his girlfriend).

But it's also, more than ever, complex and provocative in a positive way. On "One Million Bottlebags" [Chuck D] chews out malt liquor companies for targeting their high-alcohol beverage to the ghetto, but he even more forcefully chews out the homeboys for drinking it. On "Shut 'em Down," he criticizes outside businesses for exploiting the black community, while challenging blacks to start businesses of their own.

Perhaps the most telling line of attack comes in a between-track bit in which someone portraying a drawling Klansman thanks the black community for killing itself through gang violence and drugs, thereby saving him and his pals the trouble. With a sharper focus and clearer perspective than the group has ever demonstrated, the album's actually more relevant and accessible to blacks and non-blacks alike.

The same goes for its sonic achievements. The sound collages put together by the peerless Terminator X, working with the production team here called the Imperial Grand Ministers of Funk, are hip-hop at its most primal-and most sophisticated. The jeep-beat-heavy style is cruder and rarely as dense as such past tours de force as "Fight the Power" and "Bring the Noise" (the latter reprised here in its new version done with hard-rockers Anthrax), but it's perhaps even more compelling and complex.

The crowing achievement: "By the Time I Get to Arizona" (Chuck D.'s indictment of the state for not having a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday), with its middle section in which they use angry/anguished crowd noises to create one of the scariest sounding passages ever put on record."

- Steve Hochman

Dan56 (talk) 08:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

The Washington Post review
Transciption using Google News Advanced News Archive Search. The Washington Post (Mills, David. g.01. September 29, 1991) review of Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black (1991):

"Today it seems clear that one rap group, above all others, has so influenced the African American youth culture that its music is bound to be collected and discussed for decades to come, long after N.W.A. and the 2 Live Crew have been forgotten like graffiti on a men's room wall.

That group, of course, is Public Enemy - sonic frontiersmen, political pathfinders and marketing masterminds. You wanna talk iconic? The pre-pubescent hero of "Terminator 2," destined to grow up to lead all of mankind, wears a PE T-shirt throughout the entire movie. And he's white!

Virtually single-handedly, Public Enemy has set the parameters of "cultural correctness" in black pop. And as several new hip-hop albums demonstrate, aggressive Afro-centrism remains the order of the day.

Public Enemy: `Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black'

PE's "Bomb Squad" production team scales back its famous chaotic noise assault in favor of fatter, funkier grooves for "Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black," the group's fourth album (Def Jam/Columbia). Still hard as a pile driver, the soundscape here is roomier than we've come to expect. Lyrically and thematically, however, Public Enemy keeps it densely packed as always: the slave trade, black-on-black crime, police racism, the editorial peculiarities of the New York Post, the corporate responsibilities of Nike, Arizona's rejection of the Martin Luther King holiday. In "One Million Bottle Bags," [Chuck D] rails against malt liquor consumption among black males - PE's most surprising but relevant target of indignation since "911 Is a Joke" ripped emergency health care services. "Apocalypse '91" demands to be heard and heeded.

While Chuck D has never been a very graceful poet, his larynx is a virtual air raid siren. "Kicked the lyric about the tricks of the trade and the money made. Who got the money? Betcha bottom dollar bill gonna find some rich old bloodline, but the blood is in the mud." That's Chuck going at it in "Move." It's a strange testimony to his gifts as a conceptualist and front man that Chuck has managed, for five years now, to deliver every rap in the same pitch - always that turbulent rush of words, with nary a punctuation mark - yet never grow tiresome. Alas, the same can't be said of his sidekick Flavor Flav, who owns perhaps the most distinctive (and most sampled) voice in hip-hop, but whose lyrical antics aren't as cute as they used to be. In "A Letter to the NY Post," Flav acknowledges his well-publicized arrest for striking his girlfriend, then veers inexplicably into a salute to James Cagney and a homophobic epithet. Flav is more compelling on the serious-minded "I Don't Wanna Be Called Yo Niga," a stark rebuke of gangsters and drug dealers ("Don't consider me your brother no more").

PE still has a knack for the catchy, rebellious anthem. In the tradition of "Don't Believe the Hype" and "Fight the Power," Chuck D has unleashed the extraordinary single "Can't Truss It," taking us into the hold of a slave ship in unflinching detail while the hypnotic funk shames us with the desire to move. Before it's over, he declares, "When it comes to Armageddon, I'm gettin' mine." As for the video, which depicts white slaveholders lynching a man and raping a woman, well, you can just imagine MTV executives choking on their coffee. This one may be too heavy even for cable. Trying to unite rap and heavy-metal fans under one fist-raising anthem, Public Enemy has remade "Bring the Noise" with the thrash band Anthrax. It's a noble idea, but the musical styles clash rather than mesh, making this the album's least exciting track. (PE and Anthrax, on tour together, will perform at the Citadel Center Tuesday night.) Public Enemy has survived internal and external crises over the past two years. But it's like the old saying: Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

- David Mills

Dan56 (talk) 08:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

10/1 date confirmed by group
Public Enemy confirmed on facebook that the release date is 10/1/91. 2600:1702:23B0:B3F0:E4B2:C9DB:6D31:98B1 (talk) 03:14, 2 October 2021 (UTC)


text:
Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black

Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black is the fourth studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released on October 1, 1991, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. The album received critical acclaim, ranking at No. 2 in The Village Voice's 1991 Pazz & Jop critics' poll.

Recording and production
Apocalypse 91 was recorded at The Mix Palace in Long Island, New York and produced by The Bomb Squad and The Imperial Grand Ministers of Funk, which consisted of producers Stuart Robertz (fictional), Cerwin "C-Dawg" Depper (fictional), Gary "G-Wiz" Rinaldo, and The JBL. The album title is an allusion to the titles of the films Apocalypse Now and The Empire Strikes Back.

The group would take a new direction with their sound, partly out of necessity. According to Hank Shocklee, around this time, the disks for every track they had been working on for the past four to five years had been stolen. As a result, they had to rush to re-create their music and to put out their album in a timely manner. Shocklee admitted that it was impossible to completely recover what they had lost, saying "once you lose all your data, it's very difficult to get that data back...you may get some of it back, but you'll never get the complete set. You won't even know what the complete set is, because there's data in there you didn't really know you had." In retrospect, he believed the loss "stunted [Public Enemy's] growth. We never really recovered after that. We was on a roll—I was on a roll, and to lose that material set me back so hard." As a result, the sound was a little leaner than the dense production of their previous albums, and live musicians became a prominent element as well.

The group recorded "1 Million Bottlebags" to protest the pervasiveness of malt liquor in the African-American community. Public Enemy collaborated with the metal band Anthrax to record a thrash version of their earlier single "Bring the Noise".

Release and promotion
The album was released on October 1, 1991, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. Apocalypse 91 produced four singles: "Can't Truss It", "Nighttrain", "Shut 'Em Down" and its B-side "By the Time I Get to Arizona". The latter featured a controversial music video where Public Enemy was depicted killing the 17th Governor of Arizona, Evan Mecham, who refused to recognize Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday. "Can't Truss It" was Public Enemy's most successful single, peaking at No. 9 on the Hot Soul Singles chart and at No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song also peaked at No. 5 on the Dance chart, becoming their most successful release there.

Critical reception
Upon release, Apocalypse 91 earned critical acclaim. Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone praised its production and lyrics, stating that Apocalypse 91 "attempts nothing short of setting a sociopolitical agenda for the black community." Similarly, Ronin Ro of The Source highlighted Chuck D's powerful and focused lyrics as well as the uncompromising and raw nature of the album. In Playboy, prominent critic Robert Christgau highlighted the first half of the album, calling it "Public Enemy's most exciting sustained sequence ever", while criticizing the second half for being less consistent, although altogether enduring in the same way as the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed (1969). NME's Ian McCann credited Apocalypse 91 for its "totally brutal and funky" music, but was disappointed that it rarely deviates from its forceful approach, despite the "sharp intelligence" of its lyrics.

"Apocalypse '91 is great rather than classic because you can't make four classic albums in a row…" observed the hip-hop fanzine Louder Than A Bomb!. "PE are still the best band in America and they've once again made the best album of the year."

Apocalypse 91 was ranked at No. 2 in The Village Voice's 1991 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, behind Nirvana's Nevermind, while editors of Spin ranked it 7th in their list of 20 Best Albums of the Year. Retrospectively, AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine cites the album as one of the great records of golden age hip hop. The record was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Commercial performance
Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200 chart and at number one on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. On November 26, 1991, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of one million copies in the United States.

Personnel
Public Enemy
 * Chuck D
 * Flavor Flav
 * Terminator X

Additional personnel
 * Anthrax – performer (track 14)
 * Harry Allen – spoken word
 * Frank Abel – keyboards
 * Fred Wells – guitar
 * Lorenzo "Tony" Wyche – horns
 * Allen Givens – horns
 * Ricky Gordon – percussion
 * Tyrone Jefferson – horns
 * Al MacDowell – bass guitar
 * Steve Moss – percussion
 * Michael Angelo – mixing


text:
Underground Network

Underground Network is Anti-Flag's third studio album, released on Fat Wreck Chords in 2001. Widely considered to be the band's breakthrough album, it helped make Anti-Flag become a household name in the U.S. punk scene with tracks like "Underground Network," "Bring Out Your Dead," and "Stars and Stripes."

The title "This Machine Kills Fascists" pays tribute to folk-music hero Woody Guthrie, who had a guitar labeled with the same slogan.

Background
In 2000, Anti-Flag went on the Vans Warped Tour, where they met Fat Mike, head of Fat Wreck Chords. The band had originally tried to get their previous album, A New Kind of Army, released on the label, but Mike had turned them down, offering to release it on Honest Don's Records due to the band being different than the other bands on Fat. Instead, the band released the album on Go-Kart Records and A-F Records, their own label. Mike told them on the tour that he had been impressed with them turning him down, and offered to release their next album on Fat. The band accepted, and they went into the studio in November of that year to start recording. Having co-produced their last 2 albums with Joe West, the band asked Squirtgun bassist and producer Mass Giorgini to produce the album, in order to make them sound better. According to Justin, "I could write half decent songs. The problem was that we couldn't play them very well. Luckily...Mass Giorgini found a way to help us sound like better musicians than we were at the time."

Writing and Recording
The band worked on the album throughout November, and January through February. Mass had originally told Pat that it would take about an hour to record each song, although it took the band three months to finish it. All of the songs were recorded at Giorigini's studio, Sonic Iguana Studios. Musically, the album is heavier than their previous albums. The album's lyrics were inspired by the writings of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Matthew Rothschild. This is the first album to feature material written by Chris #2, as the bass parts on the last album had already been written by the time he joined the band. The album is also the first to include political essays in the booklet, which would become a fixture in most of their future albums.

Music
Angry, Young and Poor is similar to the song Born to Die, off of Their System Doesn't Work for You, and features commentary on the problems facing the American Youth. This Machine Kills Fascists is a hardcore style song that attacks the Neo-Nazi punks who had tried to infiltrate the Pittsburgh punk scene. The title track is a slower, more melodic track and features a guitar solo from Justin. The song criticizes American Mainstream Media, and calls for the use of alternative news media.

Daddy Warbux is the first song to feature Chris #2 singing lead vocals, and is a straight-forward punk song. Vieques, Puerto Rico draws attention to the US Government's use of Puerto Rico for military training and munitions testing, and the protests by the citizens there against the practice. Stars and Stripes is another slower track that features an ongoing bass riff backed by heavy power chords. Watch the Right is a warning against center-right politicians that try to masquerade as liberals. The Panama Deception is the heaviest song on the record, and mentions the 1997 movie Wag the Dog, while connecting it to the Bush-led Invasion of Panama in 1989. Culture Revolution also features a guitar solo from Justin, and calls for a revolution against the apathy and consumerism pushed by the media.

Spaz's House Destruction Party was based on an actual party that the band had been a part of in 1994. The band's friend, Spaz, had organized a three day party to commemorate being evicted, and the house was destroyed after only one night, which resulted in the police being called. Spaz would make an appearance on the band's next album, Mobilize, where he was featured on a live version of the song and explained some of the inaccuracies in the song.

Bring Out Your Dead was the first song Chris wrote for the band. He later said that he was inspired to write the song after watching Ralph Nader speak on C-SPAN. A part of Nader's speech would be included in the track. The song also features Chris using screaming vocals, which would also be a feature in future Anti-Flag songs. A Start is similar to The Panama Deception, and accuses schools of taking away students' creativity and individuality, and for not teaching about important historical events.

Until It Happens to You was written back in 1998 and performed while the band was on tour in Canada, when Jamie Towns was still playing in the band. Justin dedicated the song to "political prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal".

Personnel

 * Justin Sane - guitar, lead vocals on tracks 1-3, 5-10, 12, 13
 * Chris Head - guitar, backing vocals
 * Chris #2 (credited as #2 Chris) - bass guitar, lead vocals on tracks 4 and 11
 * Pat Thetic - drums

Legacy
Angry, Young and Poor, This Machine Kills Fascists, Underground Network, and Spaz's House Destruction Party would be included in the band's compilation album A Document of Dissent, released in 2014. Underground Network and Spaz's House Destruction Party would be included as live tracks on the band's next album, Mobilize. Spaz's House Destruction Party would also be included in the band's live album Live Vol 2, along with Angry, Young and Poor.

The band would rerecord Bring Out Your Dead for their 20 Years of Hell series. Chris #2 has also frequently played the song during his Instagram live streams.

Chris #2 said in a live video on Instagram that Spaz's House Destruction Party was one of the most requested songs the band would get while on tour, but said that they didn't like playing it live because it was "too long".

title: Underground Network