tdv123 wrote: » Your just looking for things that never happened to happen. I'm trying to balance out the lie that the provos were just murdering psychos. If they were just murdering nutcases with no political aspirations why bother giving out warnings berfore setting off a bomb, surely if you were a murdering psycho you'd want to kill as many possible? To be honest mate your view is a very outdated stale freestater one that does not hold up to the evidence that is on the table.
SoulandForm wrote: » If the PIRA were as evil as he says they are how is it defaming someone to say that they informed on them?
tdv123 wrote: » He has the blinders on. Of course if his beloved Free State government had actually taken some action instead of cowardliness pleas for the British to act during the 69 pogroms there would have been no rise of the Provisional's.
SoulandForm wrote: » Its more than a decade since the PIRA final cease fire. Sinn Fein are now trying to assure stability in Northern Ireland. Why the one sided obessesion?
tdv123 wrote: » I have a theory that people who try to paint the IRA as psychos who just love to kill people are well off people who love Capitalism & dislike the more fair & balanced ideas of Irish Republicanism so they try to paint the whole movement as some sort of evil conspiracy that's just out for themselves, which could not be further from the truth. Just a theory.
SoulandForm wrote: » Honestly I can understand fleggers much more easily than I can Free State militant anti-Republicans. I put their rabidness down to hatred of PSF's social democratic politics or a guilty conscience over the north- its probably a mixture of the two.
Painted Pony wrote: » Well perhaps a short refresher of what PIRA were about about will help you understand? Contrary to the lie that is continually propagated, they were NOT all about a defense militia for oppressed Catholics. I have heard no reasonable person object to anything they did in this regard. The British state failed in its first duty to protect its citizens / subjects and those it failed needed no wider mandate to justify defending themselves. However just because some acting for the catholic community were entitled to do something it does mean they were entitled to do anything. And waging a military campaign to end British rule in Ireland was most certainly something they were not entitled to do when the vast, vast majority of Irish people did not agree with this means of achieving such an end. But of course the lie will continue, which is perhaps none too surprising. Of course it is possible that some actually believe and take comfort in this lie. After all, their are many similarly myopic unionists who insist the RUC were nothing but an exemplary police force, and across the pond, there are plenty who insist that the various US interventions around the world are all about bringing freedom. Republicanism is no more a propaganda free zone than anywhere else! But back to the IRA and their mindset. Essentially what they did was decree that the Irish were not enlightened / informed / intelligent enough to decide what was best for their country so and it was best for us lesser republicans not to be bother our muddled little head with such matters and leave them to our betters. The most bombastic and chauvinistic old empirical colonel would not have such a condescending stance! And they threw out charming little phrases like “puppet” government (don’t you like to roll this one out?) and even at one point took to declaring themselves to be the legitimate government and army of Ireland! Any you are scratching your head and wondering what’s there not to love for Southerners here!!! And with a nice touch or irony you even suggest it might be a distaste for democratic policies!! The real mystery is that there are people like yourself who genuinely do not understand how outraged, even leaving aside all of the horrors of violence, many Irish people were at this arrogance. Especially so as many who defend PIRA will now make exactly the same “no mandate” argument in rejecting the stances of CIRA and RIRA.
Painted Pony wrote: » Contrary to the lie that is continually propagated, they were NOT all about a defense militia for oppressed Catholics. I have heard no reasonable person object to anything they did in this regard. The British state failed in its first duty to protect its citizens / subjects and those it failed needed no wider mandate to justify defending themselves. And they threw out charming little phrases like “puppet” government (don’t you like to roll this one out?) and even at one point took to declaring themselves to be the legitimate government and army of Ireland!
.jacksparrow. wrote: » I think puppet government is pretty much spot on to describe the present and past governments.
SoulandForm wrote: » Giving away our natural gas resources to Shell and our fishing resources to Brussels are two major examples of this.
SoulandForm wrote: » Look firstly the Provisionals did terrible things that cannot be excused and that I dont deny- in one case in the mid-70s the broke into a house and shot a six year girl at point blank range for instance. Secondly yes primarily they were not a defense militia and never claimed to be that- they claimed to be fighting to remove the occupation though at some point in the mid 80s they ceased to be about national liberation and became about "armed reformism"- however a large part of the CNR population believed that it would not be safe while the union remained which is why you have now former hardened Republicans willing to give the status quo a chance. My point is- that yes the Provos were brutal and often immoral but they were not acting in isolation and to single them out in particular while ignoring the other factors in the conflict is immature.
tdv123 wrote: » I think you'll find the nationalist community in the North would have been very welcome to some help from the Dublin government or it's citizens & would have preferred their input much more than the IRA's. Obviously Dublin's foolproof plan of sitting around feeling outraged & criticizing from a safe distance didn't seem to be getting anywhere. So British soldiers are sent into the North what's Dublin's next move? Ah yes sit around & feel outraged for another 50 years, instead this time of feeling outraged by the state their outraged & criticizing the provisionals. If the nationalists in the North waited around for Dublin or the nationalists in the South to intervene there would probably be nothing left of them by now. The truth is the Free State couldn't give a sh** what happened to the citizens that they had a territorial claim over as they had just accepted Britain owned them so don't give me that righteous moral rhetoric bullsh**. The Free State is just as much to blame as the Loyalists, Provos & Brits for the mess for starting a war they were only half committed to & then leaving a minority on there own to fight for themselves. The Provos seen themselves as finishing the war the Free State had started, it's only obvious there not going to pay much attention to a state that sold them out in the first place.
Godge wrote: » you completely miss the point that the only people who wanted that so-called war, more appropriately titled a terrorist campaign, were a very small minority of people who refused to accept the will of the democratic majority on this island and engaged in that terrorist campaign.
The pretext used by London for dispatching troops to Northern Ireland concealed its real purpose. That agenda was to target the Nationalist population with state terrorism for political ends. Whereas in previous years, the Unionist paramilitaries could rely on the collusion of the local police force to terrorize, from 1969 onwards these forces had the full might of the British army to ramp up the violence against Nationalist civilians and thereby intimidate them from supporting political opposition to the British government’s presence in Ireland. The 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry was only one of several atrocities that the British troops perpetrated during that pivotal period of Northern Ireland’s conflict, ironically when they were supposedly there to protect civilians. The year before Bloody Sunday, in August 1971, British paratroopers shot dead 11 unarmed civilians in the Ballymurphy area of West Belfast. Among the dead was a 50-year-old woman, Joan Connolly, who had been standing peacefully on the street. Another victim was a priest, Fr. Hugh Mullan, who was shot dead while trying to assist a man wounded on the ground. On 9 July 1972 - six months after Bloody Sunday - British troops again shot dead five unarmed Nationalist civilians in another area of West Belfast, Springhill. Three of the victims were children, including 13-year-old Margaret Gargan, who was shot in the head by a British sniper as she was walking to her home. The two adults who died that day, Patrick Butler and Fr. Noel Fitzpatrick, were killed with the same bullet, it ripping through one man’s head into the other. One of the survivors of the Springhill massacre later told how, as he lay wounded, bullets were ricocheting off the ground near his head, fired by British soldiers who had taken up position in a nearby timber yard that overlooked the residential neighborhood.
tdv123 wrote: » Guerrillas can't fight against a world power these days without being labelled unfairly a terrorist. It's just laziness from the gutter media
Ultimately, the difference between insurgency and terrorism comes down to the intent of the actor. Insurgency movements and guerilla forces can adhere to international norms regarding the law of war in achieving their goals, but terrorists are by definition conducting crimes under both civil and military legal codes. Terrorists routinely claim that were they to adhere to any "law of war" or accept any constraints on the scope of their violence, it would place them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the establishment. Since the nature of the terrorist mindset is absolutist, their goals are of paramount importance, and any limitations on a terrorist's means to prosecute the struggle are unacceptable.
Fratton Fred wrote: » Here you are, this might help with your obvious confusion.http://www.terrorism-research.com/insurgency/
The information found on this web site (Terrorism-Research.com) is provided for educational purposes only. It is derived from various US Government documents and open source/public domain material.http://www.terrorism-research.com/privacy.php
Charlie Rock wrote: » Source: World's leading terrorist state.
Fratton Fred wrote: » Read it again.
Crooked Jack wrote: » A lot of it would indicate that the PIRA was an insurgency. That's using their own definitions of course. Personally I dont think "terrorist" or "terrorism" has any value as a word. It's a meaningless slur with no set definition except perhaps "an accusation applied to someone who uses violence and who you happen to disagree with."
Godge wrote: » those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror); are perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal; and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians)
Godge wrote: » It is not a meaningless slur. "Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror); are perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal; and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians)" Just about sums up the SF/IRA axis.
Crooked Jack wrote: » Therefore you can only infer from that that it is a word with no set meaning, just one they apply to people who shoot back at them.
Manassas61 wrote: » aggressive Republican ideology Like the PIRA ... seems to have come to a halt now.
SoulandForm wrote: » My point is- that yes the Provos were brutal and often immoral
tdv123 wrote: » I think you'll find the nationalist community in the North would have been very welcome to some help from the Dublin government
Charlie Rock wrote: » Again we witness the mental gymnastics. Btw it was violent Loyalism and Unionism that gave rise to the backlash that were the PIRA. You need to look a lot closer to home to see where violence comes from in the north. Have a little look at this to see who was being terrorised back in the day.
Crooked Jack wrote: » Well, firstly you have to ask whose definition is that. Secondly, it certainly doesnt "sum up" the IRA, less still Sinn Fein. No doubt you an throw out the usual names of attacks in which civilians were killed but the numbers just dont support you. Conservative estimates say the IRA carried out well over 10,000 explosive attacks during the course of the conflict and countless shootings. This killed around 1800 people, around 2/3 of whom were combatants of one variety or another. Now, any civilian death is unacceptable, but the number of civilian deaths, measured against the numbers of combatants killed and more tellingly, the number of over all attacks, shows that the IRA did not "deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants." Now then, more generally, there isnt a charge in that definition that couldnt be applied to any regular army, particularly the brits or yanks, yet they dont consider each other terrorists, but have both breached all those conditions on numerous occasions. Therefore you can only infer from that that it is a word with no set meaning, just one they apply to people who shoot back at them. So which is it? The brits and yanks are terrorists too, or, for all intents and purposes, it's basically a word with no meaning.
