The Irish Bandits: Bank of Dartmouth

A team of pro-IRA bank robbers in the USA perform heists designed to promote Irish politics in Europe but meet certain diplomacy challenges in the media!

Here's one last Irish politics yarn, and this one's a sardonic robbery tale inspired by the film Snatch! Thanks so much (signing off),

====

Isaac Satan, an Algerian-American whose relatives were involved in the FLN revolution to overthrow French colonial rule in Algeria, was a radical Ivy League student who became an underground operative for the P-IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army), amassing network resources and money to create munitions silos for terrorist attacks on British police and military strongholds in Northern Ireland! Isaac, aka 'Green Shadow' (the field-alias he was given!), also participated himself in some armed raids on British police barracks. He was a worldly knight trying to forward the cause of Irish independence in Belfast and radical views towards Irish Catholic rights in Northern Ireland.

Green Shadow recruited his Irish-American friend James Sheridan from the USA to join his team of new bank robbers called the Irish Bandits (IB). The IB was devoted to looting US banks and using the money for resource allocation for the P-IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army). The IB was managed by Green Shadow and James (aka, 'Green Light') was second-in-command. Shadow and Light recruited more Irish radical volunteers to become part-time members of the IB and assist in various bank robberies in America. The IB became quite legendary in American media, and James became Isaac's most trusted IRA associate and friend in America.

Isaac's girlfriend was an Irish-American Ivy League student named Jamie Collins who had no idea her boyfriend or his pal James were the organizers of the now famed IB (Irish Bandits) team of American bank robbers! The IB had successfully robbed 20 banks across the USA in just one year and diverted the achieved treasures and booty to various P-IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) causes in Northern Ireland. Jamie Collins loved Isaac and trusted him and therefore had no reason whatsoever to suspect that her new dashing Algerian-American beau was in any way involved with any kind of terrorist struggle. She simply had no idea or understanding!

Isaac (Green Shadow), James (Green Light), and the IB robbed a federal bank in LA in the summer of 2020, during the Coronavirus quarantine, and shipped the money to Northern Ireland. The hope was that IB feats would be featured in newly financed underground Northern Ireland media (pirate-radio, Internet) geared towards the Irish Catholic minority populace in Belfast. The IB had robbed so many banks now and obtained money with a net amount over $20 million! This was a great asset for the modern IRA, which needed this kind of money to purchase advanced anti-military weaponry from the black-market. Green Shadow and the IB bank robbers therefore became incidental IRA heroes in the 21st Century.

The IB recruited one bank insider employee, a gorgeous Irish-American woman named Tammy Collins, for a special heist of an elaborate Chicago bank in the autumn of 2020. The robbery was to coincide with the Halloween season and with the Gaelic seasonal festival of Samhain, from which Halloween was derived! Tammy was given the IB field-alias Green Angel. She was to wear extensive face-cosmetics and walk into the Chicago bank with a machine-gun in October.

The P-IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) had come a long way since the early day of the anti-British rebellion in the 20th Century and the Easter Rising! The P-IRA was involved in various anti-establishment raids and attacks on British police and military bases and stations as well as very controversial and troubling civilian areas designed to create pure panic regarding the Irish Catholic inability to digest British Protestant rule in the new millennium. The P-IRA still required much money and support from legitimate political figures and bodies such as Sinn Fein and the DNC in the USA to affirm its legal right for more Irish Catholic representation in a Belfast dominated by British Protestants who'd settled there for generations as colonialists!

Green Shadow and the IB mailed the White House a symbolic and humorous Aer Lingus model airplane box-set for the U.S. President Donald Trump. Aer Lingus, Ireland's national airline company, had become synonymous with new age capitalism and globalization rhetoric and of course peace. Green Shadow and the IB wanted to send the White House the shocking message that the bank robberies performed for the P-IRA were meant to tell the world that Irish Catholics required serious sympathy and resources to obtain complete sociocultural sovereignty in Northern Ireland and were willing to find ways to celebrate normal commerce and consumerism and mainstream media to do so! How would President Trump feel about IB intentions to coordinate its ambitions with both Sinn Fein and the British Parliament?

When the press got word of this candid gift from the IB to the White House, a Hollywood movie-producer decided to adapt the 'antics' of the IB into a major American motion picture called Irish Hell. This movie, starring James Franco and directed by Guy Ritchie, would tell the adapted if dramatized story of pro-IRA radicals using bank robbery to finance munitions silos to the Irish struggle while Sinn Fein and Parliament remained too impotent to do anything about this sort of modern age sociopolitical (and inter-religious!) conflict. Irish Hell ironically received positive views in the USA from both Catholics and Protestants and was nominated for a Golden Globe award.

To counter all this subconscious pedestrian or street pro-IRA sentiment, the CIA and British intelligence employed a team of female police operatives called the Government Women (GW) who were dressed in red leather trench-coats and who paraded across US cities and walked into major US banks claiming they were photojournalists covering the modern age interest in treating banks like sites of great bravado. The GW female police were effective in creating anti-robbery sanity and delivering the message that law and order had its own brand of modern diction! The movie-producer of Irish Hell was asked what he thought of the GW force, and he humbly said, "It seems the IRA have met their match!"

Of course, tales of bank robbery and capitalism paranoia were abound in US history. Stories of Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Dillinger, and the Newton Boys were among the numerous celebrated folk anti-heroes who splashed onto headlines with feats of incredible foolishness and daring involving great robberies of numerous US banks. Americans loved this sort of romance and fantasy in cinema and even on TV, and the impact of the GW force spelled certain worry for the IB (Irish Bandits) who were hoping to use bank robbery to create sympathy for the Irish Catholic cause in Northern Ireland!

Anyways, Green Shadow and the IB now planned its elaborate heist of the Chicago bank in that autumn of 2020, during the Samhain/Halloween season and with the help of their new female member Green Angel. The team of 5 robbers of the IB walked into the Chicago bank after Green Angel walked in first with a machine-gun. The 4 IB members who followed her 5 minutes after she entered announced they were robbing the bank too but were unconnected to Green Angel! Green Angel meanwhile was already busy loading her bags with money from the bank vault. When Green Angel confronted the 4 other IB members who were masked, she told them to politely allow her to calmly exit the bank with the portion of the vault money she'd already taken. To everyone's amazement, the IB robbers allowed Green Angel to walk out safely and untouched while they proceeded to take their own portion of the vault money. In all, $10 million in cash was stolen that day, $2 million by Green Angel!

The IB sent a press notice to the Chicago Sun-Times declaring they had no idea who Green Angel was or why she was robbing the same bank on the same day they were robbing it. They simply announced the $8 million they themselves stole would go directly to the P-IRA in Northern Ireland! Meanwhile, Green Angel obviously also sent her $2 million to the P-IRA in Northern Ireland. The Chicago press claimed this was a perfect example of modern hysteria and confusion, with one set of robbers working for a dangerous terrorist cause and one mysterious elusive female robber who was stealing money from the bank on the same day by pure coincidence.

Green Shadow (Isaac Satan) and Green Light (James Sheridan) robbed a Texas bank the next month, right before Thanksgiving, wearing rabbit-masks! When the Texas Times reported that the GW force was unable to fully quash this pro-IRA group of bank robbers in America, Green Shadow (Isaac Satan) decided to sent the Washington Post, America's oldest newspaper, the following notice: "We'll not be undone by the women of the newly-formed GW, because the IRA will need money for its campaign as long as Parliament fails to deliver the Irish Catholic minority in Belfast full democratic rights; so you can expect more rabbit heists from the funny IB!" 

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don't believe these Irish Bandits are the real problem. I think the cause they represent, however, is a clear sign of the malignancy of unresolved geopolitical relations in this otherwise fantastic new age of globalized commerce and capitalism potential! If we don't quash the root motivations behind these kinds of robberies, we'll never realize the full scope of peaceful modern dialogue. That's a promise.

====

"Money is everything" (Ecclesiaste)