There’s a wee bit of speculation on the Beeb that with the release of Sean Kelly, a convicted IRA bomber as a gesture to the Repblicans and the “courtesy” vixit of Sinn Fein’s Martin MugGuinness to the US Administration, the IRA will very soon (within hours) make a significant announcement. Could this signal the end to armed conflict in Northern Ireland and a surrendering of all arms?
Will the IRA declare an end to armed struggle? Is this the end to “The Troubles”?
BroonArmistice
I went straight to my principal news source and found this:
[quote]THE IRA will formally surrender today.
Provo chiefs will declare they are
I’ll believe it when I see it. Note that I use the word “see”, not “hear”.
I actually cried when it was announced about 7 or 8 years ago, only to be let down. Mind you, it was the start of a very slow process towards better things.
Anyway, I thought those blokes were more into organized crime these days. I can’t imagine them stopping that.
It’s no fun to be a terrorist anymore…everybody sane just hates ya…
Yes. I honestly think this is the biggest problem now. And one side’s as bad as the other, by the way.
Yes. I honestly think this is the biggest problem now. And one side’s as bad as the other, by the way.[/quote]
I have no doubt about that.
It might be too late. Northern Ireland is becoming a gangsters’ paradise. I’m sure the six counties of the North could be detached and floated out into the middle of the Atlantic somewhere. It couldn’t be that difficult could it?
BRILLIANT solution wombleton.
Sure you could just carpet bomb the whole place instead. :loco:
Well, golly. an historic announcement is made and by posting the thread an attempt to make the IP forum ‘international’ has been scuppered once more by US domestic politics nags. What is it with you? Americans have been supporting the IRA and terrorism for years in our country and when an end to this low-level civil war is declared you have no opinions? None. Nothing to say it seems despite the bluster about peace democracy etc.
The IP forum is not what it is supposed to be.
Can there be a separate US Politics forum please.
BroonArmagh
What is the point of discussing Northern Ireland? The IRA have bombed and shot themselves to respectability. The Gerry and Martin Show is moving down south now and Bertie’s crapping himself. Might as well wind up the Raffia anyway, it’s served it’s purpose of getting those two murdering bastards into the political establishment and all the hard men have left anyway to join the I Can’t Believe It’s Not the IRA. It is now OK to vote Sinn Fein. No longer are they a bunch of extreme Marxist fuckwits trying to overthrow the Irish state and replace it with some 16-year old anarchist’s idea of Utopia. No. Sinn Fein are a real party now. And their policies are, em, well, I’m sure they’ll come up with something once Gerry and Martin get elected to the Dail.
All the brave “Irishmen” in America and elsewhere who have funded Ireland’s sad little fracas in the North can give themselves a big pat on the back. Well done! We’re back to the days of Edward Carson’s 100,000 men and talk of home rule. But we couldn’t have made this 100-year step backwards without your help. Cheers! The big pints of green beer will be flowing in Boston tonight!
And the real clincher: Who cares?
State sponsored murder? “Shoot to kill”? Police brutality? Human rights? Car bombs? Nail bombs? Schoolchildren blown to pieces? Attempts by one religious group to exterminate another? Bombs on buses? Internment without trial?
Sound familiar?
But it’s OK now. Americans are “sorry” for supporting the IRA and continually lambasting their “ally” the UK over “human rights abuses”. They should be fucking grateful to the Black and Tans and the interrogators at Castlereagh, Palace Barracks, Omagh etc for testing out the very methods the US is currently using the “fight” the “insurgency” it created in Iraq. The British should be charging them bloody royalties.
The IRA have “given up”!? So I suppose if Ozzie bin Liner says “sorry” and “gives up the armed struggle” that’ll be OK too and he can have tea and biscuits in the White House like Gerry. Give me a break. Ach. What’s the point… :loco:
Great stuff Wombleton! There’s a pint off me for that. :bravo:
Well, I don’t really have much in the way of an opinion about the matter, but since you called upon Americans to express their opinions, I’ll do my best.
First, let me say that I’m really glad that this historic announcement has been made, and I hope that it leads to peace in that troubled region. I also agree with you that Americans should not be involved in the affairs of Northern Ireland. They just wind up making things more unpleasant.
Take that American woman, Gail Sheehy. She went over there in 1972 and wrote about all that mess, and it just helped get people more riled up about it. Here’s a sample of her rabble-rousing prose:
[quote]We were standing side by side in the sun, relaxed and triumphant after a civil rights march by the Catholics of Derry. We had been met by soldiers at the barricade; we had vomited tear gas and dragged those dented by rubber bullets back to safety.
“How do the paratroopers fire those gas canisters so far?” I asked.
“See them jammin’ their rifle butts against the ground?” the boy was saying when the steel slug tore into his mouth and ripped up the bridge of his nose and left of his face nothing but ground bone meal.
Below the balcony, British armoured cars began to plow into the crowd. Paratroopers jackknifed out of them with high-velocity rifles. They sprayed us with steel.
The boy without a face fell on top of me. An older man, walloped on the back of the neck with a rifle butt, stumbled up the stairs and collapsed upon us.
From the window I saw three boys rise from behind a barricade to make a run for it. They were cut down like dummies in a shooting gallery. So was the priest who followed them, waving a white handkerchief, and the old man who bent to say a prayer over them. A wounded man we had dragged upstairs asked if anyone had seen his younger brother. “Shot dead,” was the report.[/quote]
–Passages (1974)
Now, why’d she have to go over there and see that, and worse still, write about it? She should have just stayed in America and left well enough alone.
So I just want to express my opinion that I’m glad the IRA is disarming or disbanding or whatever it is they’ve said they’re doing, and I hope no Americans ever get involved in that business over there anymore.
And while I’m at it, I’d also like to apologize for the terrorism-supporting actions of that Gail Sheehy woman.