>>That is too easy if you ask me. The IRA had (AFAIK) little to do with poverty but with a clash between the Catholics and Protestants and the independance/dependand of nothern ireland from the UK.

In the UK the Head of State has to be Anglican and cannot marry a Catholic... and every year in many Commonwealth countries they celebrate with fireworks the death of the noble Catholic freedom fighter Guy Fawkes who was burned at the stake for fighting oppression. So when's the last time you saw New Zealand Catholics attacking secular fireworks parties or British Catholics firebombing Buckingham Palace to assert their right to be King? ;-) Yes I'm being ironic- but it's easy to find pretext if you want to justify mayhem. Instead the New Zealand Catholics enjoy their own firework parties and the Brits get photos taken at the Changing of the Guard.

Sure there's residual bigotry in the First World- I've seen some right here in UT- but people who bandy about anti-Catholic pamphlets in the US don't firebomb Catholics' homes or shoot them (unless they're also Black.). So why were these particular violent "troubles" seen in Ireland but not in the Netherlands or Australia or Zimbabwe?

>>Sure there is a poverty component needed to create this into an explosive mix. And you are right : "Income distribution" (I know all americans love that word), will take away the fuel out of the fire.

The devil makes work for idle hands. Show a young man that if he works hard for a year he can afford the car he wants and 2 years after that the bank will lend him $ to buy his first little house, or let him see that his parents' house he'll inherit one day is worth a bomb (excuse the pun) and now tit-for-tat firebombings and violence is revealed as the own goal that it always was.