Rob Harris wrote:
> Somebody wrote:
> > > Now, would you like to explain exactly how your suggestion would result
> > > in a successful resolution of the Irish problem? If you can convince us,
> > > then I suggest you will not find the Prime Minister and the Taioseach
> > > uninterested. (They -- and their predecessors -- have been looking for a
> > > solution for the past three decades, at great personal risk.) If you
> > > can't suggest a solution, may I submit that the smart thing to do would
> > > be in future to do your research _before_ you open your mouth in public?
> > >
> > The unfortunate problem, Charlie, is that the northern group looks upon
> > itself as 'english', not 'irish', so the solution is to get ALL of the
> > 'english' out of Ireland.
> >
> > To paraphrase Longshanks:"The problem with Ireland is that its full of
> > Englishmen."
>
> Heh. I had to laugh when I read this. But, nice guy that I am, instead of
> slagging off your ignorance, I'm going to let you know what the real
> situation is.
Rob, I'm quite familiar with the situation. Don't think for a minute that I think
the IRA or the pIRA should be considered legitimate politicians. They are hardly
'republican' (unless you are talking about People's Republics). However the level
to which you and others demonize them would hardly make an IRA member very
trusting that you didn't have it in for him, because he 'knows' that what you say
about him isn't true, so far as he is concerned. I've found that this is a
typical british argument while sipping their tea, ":oh, we're the civilized ones,
THEY are just utter barbarians..." that kind of thing. Condescension and
alternately, vilification, gets you nowhere.
>
> THERE IS NO GROUP THAT WANTS NI TO JOIN EIRE, this will never
> happen, it is not the issue.
Actually, until recently it was written into the Eire constitution, and its part
of the IRA and Sinn Fein 'platform', that rejoining Eire was the ultimate goal,
so I don't understand what you are basing this claim on.
> It's a juvenile flag-grab, that's all. On top
> of all the bombings is a regime of "kneecapping" (blasting the unfortunate
> victims kneecaps off from the back of the knee - crippling for life), which
> is the standard punishment for anti-republican activities. The other group
> are the "loyalists". They are strangely apprehensive of removing the current
> British government and replacing it with a bunch of bomb crazy kneecapping
> arbitrarily power hungry lunatics (emotive yes, but undeniably true).
I'm sure the South Africans felt the same way about the ANC at some point.
>
> THIS is the crux of the problem. The fact that the populace of NI are split.
> The British government wants nothing more than to wash it's hands of NI
> forever after all the troubles, but they can't just hand the country over to
> the terrorists, leaving the other half of the populace under the control of
> nutters against their will. They all are, after all British citizens, and
Great evacuate them, if they are British. If they are Irish, let them stay.
>
> the government absolutely cannot condemn it's citizens to such a fate just
> because some juvenile megalomanic vermin threaten to blow some people up.
Fine way to develop trust Rob. Fine fine strategy. Let me give you a lesson on
terrorism: Terrorists do what they do for very rational, very logical reasons.
What they do may be horrific, but everything they do is always for very good
reasons, from their point of view. The point of terrorism is to get the other
side to appreciate that the oppressed may really have good reasons, by giving
them a concentrated dose of their own medicine. The fact you keep ranting on in
such virulent terms shows me that YOU haven't learned this lesson yet. If most
british are like you, I predict that the violence will continue on for quite a
while more....
>
> There is no "Irish" problem in NI, and there is no "English" problem in NI,
> it's entirely an NI problem. The leaders of the republicans see an
> opportunity to rule, and the followers are either blindly following a
> movement for the opportunities for violence, or they're so idiotic that
> changing the colour of a flag is deemed more important than thousands upon
> thousands of innocent peoples' lives.
Considering that the level of violence in even the worst areas of NI is nowhere
near the levels of violence in peaceful Boston, MA, you can hardly expect me to
agree with you...sounds to me like a drama queen at work...
> It really doesn't help the situation to have the damned Americans funding
> the bastard IRA under the delusion that they represent a native struggle
> against British oppression, which is exactly what the republicans want us
> all to believe. Simply not true. I live in England, and I can tell you that
> the government are if anything, a bit wet - certainly anything but an
> oppressive regime.
Its always easier to get away with oppression when nobody thinks that you are
really capable of it. Thats why nobody beleives that there is more domestic
violence by women against men than the other way around, even though its true
(the very study that womens groups tout to show violence against women actually
shows more violence by women, but they never mention this fact).
> The loyalists know that their current government is
> vastly superior to any terrorist organisation, and you can see this in the
> fact that loyalists - protestants and republicans - catholics no longer
> correlate as they once did. Everyone is sick to the back teeth of this IRA
> shit, and a great many including myself would have liked to have seen wider
> use of the 80's "shoot to kill" policy of the SAS.
Which just indicates the the propaganda may be working, and the british have been
able to avoid any fuckups for a sufficient amount of time. The SAS threw in the
towel. They concluded there were at best 300 active IRA people committing most if
not all violent acts, and they couldn't take them down. With one of the tightest
gun control laws in the world, the SAS couldn't outgun the IRA. With one of the
most absolute policies abdicating the human rights of the accused (and the Laws
of War for that matter, depending on which way you want to take the argument),
they couldn't hunt down and erase even a fraction of the enemy.
If you are so sick to the back of the teeth about it, then quit.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:09:51 MDT