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Telegraph writer compares Easter rising to IS Brussels attack

steddyeddy

Charles Moore professional British imperialist stereotype penned an article in the Telegraph relating to the Easter rising. He compared the rising to the recent attacks in Brussels by the Islamic state. He then makes a little dig at Ireland in bold. First of all I don't agree that fighting for independence in your own country is the same as bombing a foreign country because your god tells you to do it. Secondly this article just reeks of a man's hate for anything anti-British. Do we take this seriously?

I live in England and people who have seen the article apologised for it and said he doesn't represent their views. Should we consider this an insult?

The centenary of the Easter Rising was
commemorated in Dublin yesterday. The unsuccessful revolt of Irish Republicans
helped pave the way for the breakaway of southern Ireland from the United
Kingdom in 1922 and the horrible civil war.

In the phrase “Easter Rising” is contained the central blasphemy of terrorist
acts committed in the name of God. What has the resurrection of the Prince of
Peace got to do with trying to shoot the British out of Ireland?

Patrick Pearse, the rising’s leader, who proclaimed the republic outside the
General Post Office, suffered from what Yeats called “the vertigo of
self-sacrifice”. He had a homoerotic vision of the macaomh, the beautiful young
scholar warrior who would die for his country – half the Irish mythical hero
Cuchullain, half Jesus. The night before he was shot by a British firing squad,
Pearse wrote a mawkish poem comparing the Virgin Mary’s loss of her son to his
own death.

A century later, this distasteful confusion of political fanaticism with
faith is even more in fashion, but nowadays in Islam, not Christianity. Among
those rebels executed by the British shortly after Pearse was his devoted
brother, Willie. In Brussels last week, a pair of brothers, Ibrahim and Khalid
al-Bakraoui, detonated

two of the three bombs which killed 31 people.

In modern Ireland, I am glad to say, sentimentality about the murderous and
self-righteous revolutionaries who helped condemn the Republic to

70 years of economic backwardness and narrow priest-domination – and the
North to terrorist guerrilla warfare – is at last being superseded by a more
clear-headed approach. I strongly recommend Ruth Dudley Edwards’s new book, The
Seven, which dissects the attitudes of the founding fathers. The repentant IRA
terrorist Sean O’Callaghan has published a brave, hostile account of the life of
Pearse’s socialist co-conspirator and martyr, James Connolly.

It no longer seems so heroic to have provoked violence against a
parliamentary democracy and slaughter among one’s own people, however much one
may support an independent Ireland. Must it take another century before a
comparable questioning of supposedly holy killing comes to dominate the Muslim
world?

“A terrible beauty is born”, famously wrote Yeats. Actually, it was a
terrible ugliness, and it is getting uglier.

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RobertKK

I wouldn't worry what was said. The thing is if people did what the people did in 1916, they would be called terrorists.

Jimoslimos

The centenary of the Easter Rising was
commemorated in Dublin yesterday. The unsuccessful revolt of Irish Republicans
helped pave the way for the breakaway of southern Ireland

Where now?

Ireland, ROI or even Éire if it pains you not to say Ireland.

tomwaterford

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Where now?

Ireland, ROI or even Éire if it pains you not to say Ireland.

Or the free state. :pac:

maryishere

tomwaterford wrote: »

Or the free state. :pac:

or, as a devils advocate would suggest, the failed entity which was subsidised by the EC since the early seventies (mainly Germany and England, its 2 biggest contributers), and despite being bailed out by the IMF/Britain/EU only a few years ago, still has the second highest debt per head of population in the world.

Jimoslimos

tomwaterford wrote: »

Or the free state. :pac:

Well at least that name did exist for a time.

Would be like calling Norway, Western Scandinavia or Spain, Greater Iberia.

Jimoslimos

maryishere wrote: »

or, as a devils advocate would suggest, the failed entity which was subsidised by the EC since the early seventies (mainly Germany and England, its 2 biggest contributers), and despite being bailed out by the IMF/Britain/EU only a few years ago, still has the second highest debt per head of population in the world.

What are ya wafflin about?

maryishere

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Well at least that name did exist for a time.

Would be like calling Norway, Western Scandinavia or Spain, Greater Iberia.

Or the Canaries, off the coast of Africa, western Spain?

12Phase

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Where now?

Ireland, ROI or even Éire if it pains you not to say Ireland.

+353 Ireland or +44 Ireland as one German guy I know calls them.

tomwaterford

maryishere wrote: »

Or the Canaries, off the coast of Africa, western Spain?

WTF???

steddyeddy

maryishere wrote: »

or, as a devils advocate would suggest, the failed entity which was subsidised by the EC since the early seventies (mainly Germany and England, its 2 biggest contributers), and despite being bailed out by the IMF/Britain/EU only a few years ago, still has the second highest debt per head of population in the world.

You ok hun xxxx?

maryishere

Jimoslimos wrote: »

What are ya wafflin about?

what others were sayin'

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Where now?

Ireland, ROI or even Éire if it pains you not to say Ireland.

tomwaterford wrote: »

Or the free state. :pac:

maryishere

"condemn the Republic to 70 years of economic backwardness and narrow priest-domination – and the North to terrorist guerrilla warfare – is at last being superseded by a more
clear-headed approach."
Why did the Telegraph writer convert to Catholicism if he has such a bad word to say about Priestly influence?

tomwaterford

maryishere wrote: »

"condemn the Republic to 70 years of economic backwardness and narrow priest-domination – and the North to terrorist guerrilla warfare – is at last being superseded by a more
clear-headed approach."
Why did the Telegraph writer convert to Catholicism if he has such a bad word to say about Priestly influence?

Its like blood from a turnip

A bleeding mystery :pac: :pac:

maryishere

tomwaterford wrote: »

Its like blood from a turnip

A bleeding mystery :pac: :pac:

Well holy be to God, it surely it, so it is. How did the word about the abuse cases and the Magdalene laundries and so on get out?

Tis very unfair for that English Telegraph writer to compare the glorious Easter rising to IS Brussels attack. The Brussels attack was far smaller and did not kill as many.

Wibbs

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Or even forming a trade union.

True enough FF. For all the discussion about how a very small group of the English treated Ireland, they didn't exactly extend much favouritism to their "own". Any push back was smothered at birth, often violently. They emptied Scotland with the highland clearances and the Welsh or English didn't fare much better. Brainwashed cannon and coalface fodder for the narrow elite was about the crux of it. As I've said before I'm surprised the English didn't do a French revolution of their own. I suppose after Cromwell, the ruling types learned enough of a lesson and tweaked the monarchy and hierarchy enough to at least give the appearance of a more equitable society by the time Madame Guillotine came along.

Here in Ireland we threw off one London yoke, to happily take up the Vatican city one and it could be argued we're doing it again with Brussels/Bonn(though at least they're firing funds our way). I often think the inhabitants of these islands are too damned easy going for our own bloody good. Except the Scots. They're all stone mad they are. No wonder the Italians built a wall to keep them out. Didn't work mind you.

Arsemageddon

maryishere wrote: »

or, as a devils advocate would suggest, the failed entity which was subsidised by the EC since the early seventies (mainly Germany and England, its 2 biggest contributers), and despite being bailed out by the IMF/Britain/EU only a few years ago, still has the second highest debt per head of population in the world.

Britain (not England) received an IMF bailout in the 1976 and the Germans received a bit of a bailout back in 1945 after they went completely mental. They are both doing grand now.

Economic and political folly are not uniquely Irish traits.

My name is URL

steddyeddy wrote: »

They were debating whether the British government should apologise for colonialism and this came up.

Fair enough. I just realised that you're in the UK after seeing a post you made earlier. I had thought this debate happened here somewhere and was solely based on the article.

Anyway, no.. apologies shouldn't be made. Most of those involved are dead or close to it. They tend to be empty and fall on deaf ears anyway. Those that don't want to be appeased will never be appeased.

Maybe instead of falling over each other to place blame or accept it on behalf of others, people should just get the fuck on with it.. with life, with the stuff affecting us today.

Where are all the debates in British Unis about how crappy and selective the teaching of history is for younger people nowadays?

steddyeddy

maryishere wrote: »

Well holy be to God, it surely it, so it is. How did the word about the abuse cases and the Magdalene laundries and so on get out?

Tis very unfair for that English Telegraph writer to compare the glorious Easter rising to IS Brussels attack. The Brussels attack was far smaller and did not kill as many.

You're all over the place dude.

12Phase

The class system brought the likely peasant upstarts into the parlour with non-hertidatory knighthoods though. That's always kept the status quo.

I've strongly suspected that's been one of the reasons why the British entrepreneur and journalist and even left wing political class never really got absolutely fed up with the system.

maryishere

Instead of helping the British to run their Empire (a third of the British admin staff in India was Irish), we would have been much better being a colony of Spain or France or Belgium. The inhabitants of their colonies, like the Congo, fared much better

tomwaterford

maryishere wrote: »

Instead of helping the British to run their Empire (a third of the British admin staff in India was Irish), we would have been much better being a colony of Spain or France or Belgium. The inhabitants of their colonies, like the Congo, fared much better

Or we could go it alone and run ourselves??

maryishere

tomwaterford wrote: »

Or we could go it alone and run ourselves??

The world was a different place hundreds of years ago, all the European countries were in a expansionist mode...like it or not. Twas the way of the time.

tomwaterford

maryishere wrote: »

The world was a different place hundreds of years ago, all the European countries were in a expansionist mode...like it or not. Twas the way of the time.

Except Ireland it seems??

This makes it ok...how???

My name is URL

tomwaterford wrote: »

Or we could go it alone and run ourselves??

It's tragic and all but I can't help but laugh at the people that believe the only way for progress to be realised is through someone else, far detached, taking control.

Some real 'daddy issues' crying to get out in such folk.

Strazdas

He's completely wrong of course. If we take his argument to its logical conclusion, then 'any' uprising, revolt, rebellion or revolution is no different to what ISIS are doing, which is nonsense.

In truth, every uprising is 'undemocratic' in fact : it's not as if the people involved are in a position to hold a vote or nationwide referendum before they launch it.

Arsemageddon

maryishere wrote: »

Instead of helping the British to run their Empire (a third of the British admin staff in India was Irish), we would have been much better being a colony of Spain or France or Belgium. The inhabitants of their colonies, like the Congo, fared much better

We would have been better off being left alone so we could be independent and develop as a state in our own little way.

[Deleted User]

RobertKK wrote: »

I wouldn't worry what was said. The thing is if people did what the people did in 1916, they would be called terrorists.

Read any account of the rising and you'll see many actions that certainly would not fit into any definition of terrorism, having a daily ceasefire to allow ducks to be fed is simply not the modus operandi of terrorists linky

maryishere

Strazdas wrote: »

In truth, every uprising is 'undemocratic' in fact : it's not as if the people involved are in a position to hold a vote or nationwide referendum before they launch it.

Actually only one of the leaders of the '16 rising had ever stood for election, and that was in a local election, and he came last. A few hundred votes.

If the ISIS bomber had stood for election in Brussels they would have got more votes.

Strazdas

riffmongous wrote: »

Read any account of the rising and you'll see many actions that certainly would not fit into any definition of terrorism, having a daily ceasefire to allow ducks to be fed is simply not the modus operandi of terrorists linky

Indeed, all they did (in the main) was occupy buildings and took up field positions around Dublin and waited for the British forces to attack them....they had no hostages. That hardly comes into the category of what we understand to be terrorism.

tomwaterford

Strazdas wrote: »

Indeed, all they did (in the main) was occupy buildings and took up field positions around Dublin and waited for the British forces to attack them....they had no hostages. That hardly comes into the category of what we understand to be terrorism.

When ya think on it...it was somewhat brave
To dig and hold out as long as possible to force the British into excessive violence to beat them

And brought about an awakening of nationalism/pride that's still not gone out in Ireland...