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Re: Republicanism still an ...

David Flood
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SubjectRe: Republicanism still an offence in England? (wasRe: Queen mother (of
FromDavid Flood
Date2002-04-15 01:46 (2002-04-15 00:46)
Message-ID<a9d7f4$27rt9$2@ID-121201.news.dfncis.de>
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Newsgroupsalt.fan.tolkien
FollowsRuss
FollowupsRuss (1d, 1h & 26m) > David Flood
"Russ" <mcresq@aol.com>wrote in message news:20020414175321.20665.00000488@mb-mq.aol.com...

Russ
In article <a9cslv$24uho$1@ID-121201.news.dfncis.de>, "David Flood" <NOSPAMmaoltuile@utvinternet.ie>writes:

David Flood
<boggles>I can direct you to any number of similar statements by the English over the centuries, you know, with regards to Ireland.

Russ
The Irish, notably, tended to accept their defeats and stop fighting after being defeated.

Only in preparation for the *next* rising. Did you know that a splinter group of Fenians (acting on their own initiative) carried on a 'Dynamite' campaign in England after the unsuccessful rebellions in the mid-nineteenth century, even though it had no discernible chance of achieving *anything*?

David Flood
And *plenty* of supposedly 'moderate' Unionists in the last decade; even

a

poster to this ng (MSR) offered it as a serious suggestion, i.e. bombing

the

Irish Republic.

Russ
Comparing the IRA to the Palestinians groups is like comparing apples and oranges. While the IRA has committed terrorist acts, it is far from their modus operandi as it is among Palestinians groups (a notable statistic is

that

percentage wise, the IRA killed less civilians than the RUC and British

Army.

Oh, come on. Let's be adults here, and call a spade a spade - the IRA, the PLO, FARC, the ANC, the East Timorese FLA - they're all cut from the same revolutionary cloth. 'Guerilla warfare' is the only resort against a more powerful nation which has occupied your own homeland, making it impossible for you to raise and train conventional forces to do something about it.

I'm going to make an important distinction here, between a genuine revolutionary movement with identifiable political aims and grievances, and religious/racist/fundamentalist psychopaths who can *never* be reasoned with, and who intend nothing less than the utter annihilation of anyone they perceive as offending their sensibilities.

You can verify this stastic at the CAIN (Univ. of Ulster) website).

Moreover,

unlike the Palestinians, among Irish nationalists, IRA attacks that unreasonably caused civilian deaths were largely not supported by the

civilian

population. A terrorist attack by the IRA (by that I mean at attack that intended civilians deaths) was always followed by condemnation from the

larger

nationalist community. In fact, while the IRA was 'fighting' the majority

of

nationalists supported the non-violent SDLP party. That contrasts

strongly

with the 75+% of Palestinians that support homicode bombings. The examples

of

the IRA crossing the line are so rare that one can name them almost immediately. On the other hand, Palestinian acts directed against

civilians

are virtually a daily occurence.

While people may have abhorred the Provos' methods (and some of their stated intentions) utterly, they could understand *why* they had gotten caught up in an endless, dirty little war with the Brits (and I'm purposely including their Loyalist proxies here), even though they made a point of shunning them as pariahs.

And, to balance this out, I should point out that Unionism has never felt the same degree of disgust towards the Loyalist paramilitaries throughout their years of pieties for the international press about the supposed "fight against terrorists". The UDA - the worst of them, and most of whose leadership appear to be paid State agents - were allowed to operate openly for decades as a perfectly legitimate organisation until the early 1990's!

(David Trimble was himself one of the leading lights of a Loyalist organisation in the 1970's called the "Ulster Vanguard", which had interesting notions about 'cleaning' the Nationalist population)

I heard anecdotally the following (typical) example of British double

speak. I

assume it's from the time of the bombing that ended the first ceasefire. Anyway, in the very same newscast the BBC termed the termed the

perpetraters of

the IRA bombing as terrorists even though they phoned in the warning and

no one

was killed. They also reported in the same newscast about a suicide

bombing in

Israel killing numerous civilians. However, the perpetrators of that act

were

called militants.

It's always easier to be more impartial when it's happening to someone else, preferably a good way off, methinks.

D.

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Russ (1d, 1h & 26m) > David Flood