Russ
In article <2002050115023271187@asgard.zetnet.co.uk>, Mike Scott Rohan <mike.scott.rohan@asgard.zetnet.co.uk>writes:

Mike Scott Rohan
The message <3CCDF2CA.2333D1B4@indigo.ie> from Michael O'Neill <onq@indigo.ie>contains these words:

Russ
<snip>

And its been pointed out to you before Mike that as a royalist you don't have a moral position to defend.

Mike Scott Rohan
It has not been pointed out; only established facts can be pointed out.

Russ
An excellent point - one which I hope you apply to your own dealings here.

Mike Scott Rohan
In any case, what, in this context, is a "royalist", aside from a term of abuse meant to sound like "loyalist"? It's meaningless. I defend the law and order imposed by a democratically elected government to defend its free citizens; that's a very strong moral position.

Russ
Yes, 'tis. Unfortunately, that is not a description of Northern Ireland in 1969.

Mike Scott Rohan
The more so, when the defence is against murderous and indiscriminate violence used by groups of self-appointed fanatics to achieve ideological ends by non-democratic means.

Russ
Are you referring to loyalist mobs back by B-special Royal Ulster Constabulary?

Mike Scott Rohan
You justify it by the defence of "civil rights" against "apartheid", but that is to shelter it behind emotive terms borrowed from a very different situation. And not even the struggle against apartheid justified the killing of unconcerned civilians.

Russ
Did the struggle against the Nazis justify killing unconcerned civilians? The struggle against Saddam Hussein? Against Serbia? The Taliban and al-qaeda?

Surely your opinion must have more nuance than this.

Mike Scott Rohan
You claim it did, by applying it here,

Russ
You really do make this up out of thin air, don't you? Michael did not say that using terrorism in fighting apartheid was justified. You just made that up.

Mike Scott Rohan
and you must admit that if that does not make you a terrorist supporter, it goes a very long way towards it.

Russ
I presume you do not believe that episodes such as the bombing of Dresden or the bombing Caen, for example, delegitimized the British fight against the Nazis. Does that make you a supporter of mass murder?

Mike Scott Rohan
Of course law and order is imposed with violence at times, and that violence is never entirely right, and by its very nature may sometimes result in injustice;

Russ
But they do get the trains to run on time.

Mike Scott Rohan
but terrorist violence always results in injustice,

Russ
True.

Mike Scott Rohan
because that was its original intention. That is its sole purpose, apart from the gratification of hatred -- which often runs in tandem.

Russ
This is nothing more than circular gobbledegook.

Mike Scott Rohan
I notice, incidentally, that you select your examples of governmental injustice solely from one political spectrum and from ancient 60s bugbears;

Russ
I would tend to agree that events in the late 60's do not necessarily justify action in, say, the '80s or the '90s. But they may very well justify action in the late '60s and early 70s.

Your view is conveniently myopic. To ignore the tinder and spark that set off conflagration simply weakens your case. We're talking 1969, not Oliver Cromwell or Trevelyan or even Partition

Mike Scott Rohan
that suggests, to say the least, a set pattern of thinking, when we have examples like Zimbabwe or Burma today.

However, all this is old ground, gone over at wearisome length, and here it distracts from the original point, which you still don't seem to understand -- that if one adopts any kind of terrorist ideology, one cannot then take on the mantle of Christianity.

Russ
Please explain who and how anyone has adopted any kind of terrorist ideology. Or as you said so succinctly above: "only established facts can be pointed out."

<snip>

Mike Scott Rohan
No, I included it because I have trouble accepting it -- at least as much as you have on other issues. There is considerable doubt -- whether justified or not -- that the "dissidents" are as independent as they appear, or indeed independent at all, and not just a convenient division of the IRA to permit terrorism to continue under the mantle of peace-making.

Russ
So the Chief Constable of the PSNI is lying?

Mike Scott Rohan
The IRA knows who the Omagh culprits are and could either denounce them to the authorities -- which after all includes themselves, now

Russ
That's absurd. According to press reports, both governments know very well who the perpetrators are but do not have enough evidence to indict.

Mike Scott Rohan
-- or deal with them by their traditional means, in which they have never hesitated to deal with dissent before.

Russ
Again, according to press reports, the IRA has killed members of these dissident groups. The IRA was then accused of breaching the ceasefire.

Mike Scott Rohan
But they don't do either. Which leaves considerable doubt as to whether it's a ploy. And you cited no other less dubious examples, though there are any number.

Russ
It's acknowledged by security sources on both sides of the border that many of the disruptions of RIRA and CIRA operations came from information forwarded by the PIRA.

If you're going to condemn the IRA, do so on the facts. There's plenty of facts to condemn the IRA. But you weaken your case by making things up.

<snip>

Furthermore, in one example, you uncritically and unquestioningly accept one particular version of events -- that the Secret Service and possibly the police were responsible for the Castlereagh break-in.

Accept it? I promoted it. You'd have to be a complete and utter idiot to fall for the PSNI version. Come ON Mike!

Mike Scott Rohan
But unlike you, I haven't fallen for any version, not yet. My point is not that either or any is correct, but that you have already made your mind up, so firmly that you cite it as evidence. You have done that before you could possibly have enough information to do it; and that is evdience that you are ready to do so with such issues. None of your barrage of sites, irrelevant quotations on other issues, allegations about NI justice and so one does more than obscure that point, never mind answer it. To decide on this so soon and so thoroughly is bias.

Russ
However, you are bringing up the very same thing as evidence that the IRA ceasefire is false. You are citing the (exceedingly unlikely) possibility that the Castlereagh break-in was committed by the IRA as reason to distrust them even though the Chief Constable at the time Ronnie Flanagan himself said it as an inside job.

<snip>

Mike Scott Rohan
When a person shares a majority of political ideals with some terror groups -- a majority need not be all -- and defends them in the same terms they use themselves, or very similar, and with the same interpretations of events, it is not unreasonable to interpret that as support.

Russ
Actually, its completely unreasonable to interpret that as support. Two people, both believe there should be a united Ireland, both believe a system of apartheid existed in Northern Ireland rendering the regime inherently illegitimite, both believe the system should be ended, both believe a cause of the problem is British policy in Northern Ireland. Now first person believes that only peaceful methods should be used to effect change. The second believes that violence is necessary to effect change and that violence degenerates into terrorism. That fact does not delegitimize the first person or render his ideals or terms or interpretations wrong or make him in any way a supporter of the second person or of the terrorism he commits.

What you are saying, plain and simple, is that any one with strong Irish nationalist aspirations is a Provo sympathizer. And that's just crap.

<snip>

Mike Scott Rohan
Having wasted this much time on this post, I don't feel it's worth doing so again, because it will just be the usual rehash and no doubt met with the usual vicious and irrelevant abuse. But I will restate what got me into this subject again -- disgust at finding this sort of crap spouted in this group,

Russ
You have yet to actually cite what the supposed crap being spouted is.

Mike Scott Rohan
and surprise that anyone who claims to enjoy LOTR could express it. Tolkien would have loathed both it and the kind of people who promote it, and it has no relevance here. However you yourself may regard it, that remains the case, and nobody has even tried to answer it.

Russ
Answer what? I didn't see a question there.

Mike Scott Rohan
Whether the argument is right or wrong, it should go somewhere else, and stay there.

Russ
Russ

-D)