Irish Perspectives on Israel and Palestine

Lifted this from a Flame Forum thread and put it in a new Open thread. I know the Middle East has been argued constantly - and Israel and Palestine always gets involved when we talk about US foreign policy. But these comments give a different perspective - one that has been missing when the discussion was just about the foreign policy of the US or Israeli Government and PA rhetoric.

So, I think it deserves its own thread - it may spark, for example some investigation into the moderate personalities in Israeli and Palestinian politics. Perhaps explore the links between communities and business. As such, it should be a different tone. Anyone who wants to post more argumentative reasoning or partisan rhetoric, well, there are other threads more suited.

Very good post. Deserves to be preserved.

I did not say that there is no democracy in Ireland, just as I did not say that there is no democracy in Israel. Here are some quotes from the discussion we were having over in the flame forum to show how the question of Ireland arose when we were discussing Palestine:

[quote=“tigerman”]I don’t understand what point you are trying to make here. The Palestinians and Arabs in Israel do have democracy. Are you saying that because they are a minority that they essentially do not have democracy?

If so, I don’t understand. Should the minority decide in a democracy? You indicated, correctly, that there are Jews in Israel who do not recognize the legitimacy of Israel… so it would appear to me that a democracy, while not giving the minority the right to decide, certainly gives it an important, and audible, voice… that is, I think, at least part of the essence of democracy.

One important feature of US democracy is “rule by the majority with protection for the minority”.[/quote]

(Bold emphasis added to show where the question of Ireland arose. The words “as a whole” were already stressed in my original post.)

To read the original discussion, click here. It is likely to disappear at some point because it is in the flame forum.

why don’t we bomb the brits out of ireland like they are doing to the iraqis?

[quote]tmwc wrote:
Juba: Yes there are a lot of similarities between Israel and Ireland, but I think you’re confusing the issue. Let’s not forget that Ireland (all of Ireland!) negotiated peaceful autonomy from Britain using the democratic process in 1914. It wasn’t implemented because a minority of people on both sides of the political divide chose violence, which spiralled into a war, leading to partition. The objective was to protect a minority group who saw themselves as being threatened and would have perpetuated the bloodshed in ‘self defense’.

The compromise solution when the rest of Ireland became independent was for N.I. to govern itself and for the people there to work it out for themselves. The troops were only sent in (and direct rule from London reimposed) when they showed that they couldn’t, and most British people were unhappy about it.

It’s all very well to point the finger at the protestants for causing trouble - and I know a great joke about Ian Paisley - but you can’t really blame them for being the descendents of people who were pretty shabbily treated by the power elite of the time. The protestants in NI were transplanted there, without having any say in the matter, by people who had power of life or death over them. Their position, like the modern day Palestinians, is not of their own making.

Britain also mis-handled the creation of the state of Israel, but then again they were under fire from terrorists - sorry, that should read ‘freedom fighters’ - including Ariel Sharon, and anxious to get out of what was really someone else’s problem.

The big difference between the two disputes is that most British and most Irish people have got on with their lives and made friends. There has always been an open border between the two countries, and no one has ever tried to prevent Irish people going to live and work in Britain. Many Irish catholics served in the British armed forces during WWII, and Ireland evolved into the successful republic it is today over several decades without significant (ie military) interference or opposition from Britain.

There is democracy in Ireland, and the actions of a few lunatics on each side should not colour your view of the realities. The people of the Republic of Ireland have agreed democratically, in a free and fair referendum, to give up their territorial claim to NI. They have recognised the real world for what it is, instead of clinging to stupid divisions, and got on with the business of living together peacefully. This wasn’t a concession to Britain’s imperialist fantasies, it was recognition of a reality that needed to be addressed. I know that many Irish people still feel in their hearts that it’s all one Ireland, but they’ve been willing to make a political concession for the sake of peace - peace for someone else - and have my respect for doing so.

Sure we have differences of opinion as individuals, but we’re not going to start blowing each other up over them. That sort of thing is left to terrorists, and they don’t get a lot of support from ordinary people (of any political persuasion) who are going to get caught in the crossfire. People on the other side of the Atlantic (Actually I don’t know where Juba is from, but arguments like his usually emanate from the USA) saying there is no democracy in Ireland, and that the British people will endure decades of terrorism simply to occupy an impoverished part of someone else’s country, need to take their heads out of their arses.

The activities of Noraid in supporting the IRA during the '70s and '80s did a lot to foster anti-american sentiment in Britain. I grew up with bomb alerts, women and children being blown up in shopping centres, nail bombs, car bombs, hotels being blown up, attacks on office blocks, bandsmen and HORSES dying in the streets. And there was a very clear public perception in my country that a lot of it was financed by idiots overseas who didn’t understand that I could travel to Ireland and drink a few Guinesses with people who disapproved of what was going on as much as I did.

Instead of saying that there’s no democracy in Ireland you should say that decisions were made for the British people without consulting them. Nobody I knew in Britain ever gave a toss about Northern Ireland, and if the issue had ever been put to a referendum in Britain then the whole problem would have been handed over to the government in Dublin. And Ireland would still be fighting to subdue a minority people who have nowhere else to go and are still fighting religious wars that ended centuries ago.

An Irish catholic republican friend of mine told me an interesting story: He was in the USA, and got talking to an ‘Irish-American’ who ventured the opinion that the protestants should just be cleared out as they were not Irish. (Just like the Palestinians.) My friend’s reply was that there have been protestants in Ireland for longer than there have been white (or black) people in many parts of the americas. Take the view that land only belongs to it’s original inhabitants, and most of the people of the USA are going to have to go back ‘home’.

If the great Sioux nation starts an intifida to reclaim their spiritual homeland and repair the damage done to their holiest places - Mt Rushmore! - they would only be exercising the same logic that seems to be acceptable to most Americans when it’s exercised by the Israelis. If your god gives your land to you do you eradicate anyone else who lives there, or do you learn to live with them?

We can go on forever laying the blame at the feet of the British, the Americans, even the Normans, for their actions in the past. But the reality is that people have to grow up and find a way to live in today’s world.

So please get off your Irish hobby-horse. It’s an issue that has been more or less settled, and will become increasingly irrlevant as the EU coalesces. Otherwise I agree with what you were saying though.
[/quote]

Well TMWC deserves a fair boot in the hole for writing the bollocks above, and so do you “imyourbiggestfan” for repeating it, what a load of fuking crap. I’m not even going to bother with most of it, look up a history book. All of Ireland most certainly did not negotiate any peaceful autonomy from Britain in 1914, where did you get that shte from? Look up Padraig Pearse & co on Google and seewhat you get! I suggest www.sinnfein.ie as a starting point. There wasn’t a “minority on both sides” who chose violence! The “English Planters”, not to be confused with their religion, were not forced into Northern Ireland, where the fck did you get that idea from?@! It certainly was not a case of “not of their own making”. There has not always, or even now, been an “open border between the two countries”, if you want to be correct, there are not two countries, just one with an occupying force in the north of it. The is democracy in the south of Ireland, not in the north. People in the North do not live “together peacefully”, with either each other, or the south. This was never an issue of religion, there have been Protestants in the IRA and catholics in the British army and the most hated of institutes, the RUC. If you want to post crap, then pick a subject you know something about, most Sasanachs have never been to Northern Ireland and haven’t a clue what it is all about. You say that most English people would “hand it back” if asked in a referendum, so why hasn’t this happened?? Ask yourself who kept Margret Thatcher in power, who kept subsequent minority Labour and Tory parties in power, the Unioist party ring any bells?? Who sent the troops into Northern Ireland when that support looked likely to fade?
It actually pisses me off to much to continue, if you don’t know what the true story is, then butt out. To those who are talking about Isreal and Palestine, have you ever lived there? Do you people on both sides from there? If not, how the f
ck can you consider yourself qualified to preach on the subject?
To roq, we have almost bombed them out, and if the present peaceful negotiations for their surrender and departure don’t work out, then we will finish the job.
Sorry if this seems a little over the top to some, it’s a subject dear to my heart, and I really can’t stand English and Americans who haven’t a clue blathering, either for or against, about it. The same goes for Isreal/Palestine. If all you know is what you hear on CNN and the like, then you don’t have 1% of the true story.

roq, does that involve bombing Ireland or bombing Britain? And who exactly are ‘we’?

I bet it took you a trolly long time to type that sentence with your club. No wonder you kept missing the Shift key.

[quote]roq, does that involve bombing Ireland or bombing Britain? And who exactly are ‘we’?
[/quote]

From my own perspective, that would involve bombing British interests in Ireland, Britain, Germany, Gibralta, or anyone else, as long as it was targeted at British economic interests and military personel, rather than civilians, much the same as any war is waged.

A few key questions:

  1. To what extent should the people of a certain territory, be able to prevent other identity groups from living there?

(Examples: Ireland, Palestine, Taiwan, Tibet, white America. Whatever your answer, it should at least be the same for all.)

  1. If it turns out that they have a right to live in “their own” country, and that this right has been violated, must this right be restored within a certain time in order to remain a right?

In other words, how to balance the “rights” (if any) of the occupiers and/or their descendents, with those of the complaining people?

  1. What rights to the “settlers” and their descendents have, if any? Is there a time limit after which, they can no longer be considered foreign? If so, what is that time-limit?

  2. If a third country or identity group organizes the population transfer, what obligations do they have as a result?

  3. If a people have the right to live in their own country, and this right is not being observed, what forms of resistance should they take?

Well, how naive was I? I thought it might attract some sensible comment on the factors required for a peaceful solution.

Do you have a particular book in mind?

Sinn Fein as a starting point? That would be a balanced view. Listen, if you look up Sinn Fein’s website, it starts with “Ireland’s Oldest Political Party.” Then, go to the Ulster Unionist Page and what do you read: “Ireland’s Oldest Political Party.” And so the argument runs on and on… a squabble over “history” and “facts” that does nothing to shed light on the daily lives of people there.

Let me tell you what I though the point of TMWC’s post was. He was talking about how the violence is carried out by a radical minority. Whether that was the case in the past matters little - it has been the case in the recent past.

These radical few follow their own agenda which is far removed from the daily lives of those that they maim and kill or those whose interests they claim to represent.

At some point, the people of Northern Ireland decided, in the main, to get on with each other. The radical political groups became more and more irrelevant. The only relevancy they had to peoples lives was when they managed to kill a friend or a member of your family.

That’s what I thought TMWC was getting at. I do not believe that the whole of Northern Ireland’s society is radicalised. I think there are a few radicals and the rest try to get by. Maybe others got something else from his post.

Truth is not your monopoly. And there is not just one “truth.” Not even in a pure science like mathematics, so why should there be in such a complicated, emotional issue like this? People’s inability to see this may have lead to the continuation of radical politics even as it became more and more outdated. Though it looks like some of the parties in N. ireland are starting to get the message.

[quote=“supers54”] To roq, we have almost bombed them out, and if the present peaceful negotiations for their surrender and departure don’t work out, then we will finish the job.[/quote] You, however, have not. Your evolution lags behind that of Gerry Adams. Quite an achievement.

We do not have to have lived there to take an interest. Indeed, if we are to be held personally accountable for the actions of our Governments for their policies in Israel as in Northern Ireland- as you yourself would hold us accountable - I think we have a duty to try and find out what we think and feel about these issues.

We have not been preaching, but exchanging ideas. Putting forward our view and waiting for an argument to test whether we are still confident in our opinions. You, on the other hand, DO PREACH. Your views are not up for discussion. They are FACT. They are incontrovertable. And, IF WE DON’T LIKE WHAT YOU SAY, YOU ARE GOING TO BOMB US ALL TO HELL.

Its simply not right for you to preach violence against people because of the actions of their government and at the same time to ask them to “butt out” of any discussion of the problem. People are more than just targets for your guns.

Your dull mind is matched only by your sharp temper.

Power comes out of the barrel of a gun. The Americans are proving that to the world again now with the proposed Iraq campaign. The English, desperate as they are to hang onto any semblance of influence on world power, follow blindly along with their aircraft carriers to bomb the shit out of innocent civilians. Little doggies on an American leash being on a one way ticket to self-destruction…

Face it UK, your days are numbered, the united Irish influence gets more powerful every day, there will be a majority Catholic population in 10 years in Northern Ireland, the Scottish are moving ever more to an independent solution.

So to the “Brits” out there, butt out of Ireland it has never belonged to you and never will. Take your analagies about foreign cultures and place s and stuff them up the Queens bum. If it takes bombs to do that so be it. The Irish have learned from bitter centuries of experience of the utility of military solutions to difficult political problems. The military campaigns of the 70s and 80s, and the bombings in UK cities got the politicians in Northern Ireland and the UK to finally accept that the “Irish problem” as the English call it had to be dealt with through democractic means. You might have got us to speak your language, and send our best football players to England, but you’ll never beat the Irish.

Slan agus tiocfaidh ar la.

Well thanks everyone. Nice to see that people care.

To clarify my position:

  1. If it was up to me, or any other Brit that I consider to be my friend, a wall would have been built around NI and the occupants left to sort it out for themselves. I don’t give a shit about ‘the Irish question.’

But it isn’t up to me. If I cared enough I might make some effort to encourage this solution, but I don’t so I’m not going to go around demanding a solution to someone else’s problem.

Dragging me into your problem, and holding me (or any of the other people like me who have been murdered because they happened to be standing in the wrong part of London when the bomb went off) responsible is ridiculous. I am sick and fucking tired of stupid cunts like roq and supers54 giving me shit just because I have a a British passport. If you insist on doing so, instead of learning to respect individuals for who they are, then you force us to take sides.

I will not side with blind hatred wherever it comes from, especially when it is directed at me. Having been subjected to it in the past, by the (thankfully) occasional prick who couldn’t see beyond his own nationalist fervour, I have been labelled (and villified) as “English” and have no choice but to side with “the English” against murdering bastards who blow up women and children who have never been to Ireland.

This is your choice, not mine. Left to my own devices I will happily share a beer with any reasonable-minded human being. I don’t care what your race, nationality, religion, orientation, or anything else is. All I care about is that you treat your fellow humans with the respect on which civilisation is founded.

  1. I didn’t know about Ireland’s peaceful attempt at secession until I bought a book on Irish history in an attempt to know what I was talking about. (This was a reaction to a savage and unprovoked attack by an Irishman in Australia who wanted me to accept personal responsibility for the potato famine.) It appears that I bought the wrong book, even though it was intensely critical of the behaviour of the British government 19th/early 20th centuries. This incorrect history also told me that the protestants were believed to have armed themselves with the collusion of senior British officials, and that it was British over-reaction to the IRAs resistance that swung public opinion in favour of widespread rebellion.

Silly me for believing that crap. I now stand corrected, and believe that Irish catholics took up arms with the intent of removing the foreign invaders without any attempt at negotiation or respect for people who had nowhere else to go. Fair enough. But, under the circumstances, one can hardly blame the protestants for wanting to arm themselves.

  1. The open border I was referring to is between two countries - Ireland, and the United Kingdom. I have made several trips to Ireland from the UK, and never bothered taking a passport. A border like that seems pretty open to me. I always enjoyed my trips, have never encountered hostility from Irish people in Ireland, and stand by my belief that we can all get along together as friends if we so choose.

roq and supers54 have obviously chosen not to live like decent human beings, and seem to believe that Brits outside of Ireland and outside of the UK are legitimate targets for what the rest of us consider to be terrorism. Call it ‘military’ if you like, but I call it outright murder of people who wish you would just fuck off and get on with your lives like most of the people of your country.

  1. AND STOP REFERRING TO ‘THE ENGLISH’. I AM A CITIZEN OF ‘THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND’. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO ACCEPT THE ‘NORTHERN IRELAND’ BIT THEN THAT’S YOUR CHOICE, BUT THERE ARE A GREAT MANY SCOTTISH AND WELSH PEOPLE OUT THERE (I HAVE STRONG LINKS TO BOTH) WHO REALLY OBJECT TO IGNORANT, RUDE, STUPID PEOPLE BELITTLING THEIR IDENTITIES. MY NATIONALITY IS ‘BRITISH’ AND YOU WOULD ATTRACT A LOT MORE RESPECT (NOT THAT YOU SEEM TO CARE) IF YOU WOULD RECOGNISE PEOPLE FOR WHAT THEY ARE INSTEAD OF ATTACHING INCORRECT LABELS THAT YOU APPEAR TO ALSO CONSIDER AN INSULT.

If you really want to make such an issue of ‘the english’ then kindly remember that Henry II and Strongbow were both Normans, a race of French-speaking people that had subjugated the English people. It was several centuries before the King of England also considered himself to be anything other than French, and the final conquest of all Ireland was ordered by James I - who was Scottish.

The principles in Ireland’s occupation were hugely powerful men who literally owned the English people who lived on their lands. If your lord ordered you into his army to go and fight for your life against a bunch of complete strangers, the alternative was too horrible to contemplate. That is how the ruling classes were able to engage in horrific and stupid wars which hurt everyone except themselves - in Ireland, France, Britain, Holland, etc etc. To blame the English for the actions of a bunch of militaristic foreigners is simply unfair.

  1. Britain was not a true democracy at any time in it’s history until after Irish independence. You can view that as Ireland’s loss, but I prefer to view it as a loss for all the people who had no rights on either side of the Irish Sea. It’s no coincidence that the oppressed people of Ireland started to stand up for themselves at the same time as their counterparts in England, Wales and Scotland were doing the same thing.

Irish independence was an inevitable part of the massive upheavals that went through Britain’s power structure during the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s something that has benefited all the citizens of both Britain and Ireland, although it was difficult for many of the protagonists on both sides at the time.

Now that we live in a fairer, more reasonable world I think it would be to everyone’s advantage if people on both sides of the political divide in N.I. could put down their guns and work together to settle their outstanding differences like rational human beings. Most of the people living there seem to be doing just that, and good for them.

The only real barrier to peace is not some stupid British government not clinging on to the relics of Empire. Nor is it an intransigent or unreasonable Irish government. The problem is the small number of evolutionary dead-ends who are blinded by bigotry and hate. I’ll name 3, and if any of them are insulted by being grouped with any of the others then that just proves my point. My nominations for narrow-minded moron of the year are:

supers54
roq
the Rev. Ian Paisley

Please feel free to post your replies below, but don’t expect me to take a lot of notice. I don’t have time to waste fighting age old wars whose outcome doesn’t really matter. I’m busy getting on with my life.

Ahhhhhhh it would be so nice if we all lived in your little clean and friendly world, tmwc. Free to make up facts as we go along, type such nice things and absolve ourselves of all our sins. Lets blame all the worlds problems on…hmmmm…ahhh, nobody I think is the nett conclusion from all that bollocks above. Go home to your mammy and have a nice cup of cocco, don’t forget to close the curtains, wouldn’t want the real world to intrude, would we?

Here’s a suggestion for you, Super S.

Take a trip to Warrington, Cheshire, find the ambulancemen who shovelled up the remains of the 12 and 3-year-old boys who died in the 1993 bombings and ask them about the real world. Track down the victims’ families if you have the bollocks for it.

I think the people in that town had a fucking good reason to close the curtains that day, don’t you?

For what it’s worth, here’s what I’m in favour of:

A united Ireland, at peace with its neighbors

A greater understanding among English people of the injustices and atrocties of the past (which includes anytime up to today).

A Republic of England, at peace with its neighbors, and everybody else.

You choking on your cocco.

Padraig Pearse would crap on your face.

Hey guys, tone it down a notch, alright? :expressionless:

To TWTMC, I’m your biggest fan…

I’m from Ireland, I don’t have to agree with your viewpoint on things over there in England or wherever you come from.

We don’t reason the problem out like you would, because we have an emotional connection to our land that is personal. It is the dream of the great majority of Irish to achieve a United Irish Republic. It is a dream that can be accomplished in my generation or the next, the vision has never died through the centuries and is now close to realisation.

Here’s the reasoning why I don’t have to listen to English telling me about the situation in my country.

  1. EIGHT CENTURIES OF OPRESSION
    The native Irish since 1169 were oppressed for 8 centuries by the Normans, English planters, Cromwell, William of Orange, the Black & Tans. There was a rebellion every generation, every century, savagely crushed by the ruling Normans, Royalist, Parliamentarians, Puritans, British Army…

  2. HOLOCAUST OF THE FAMINE
    The famine which resulted in 2 million dead and 2 million emigrants was the direct result of the English tenant land laws, whereby Catholics could not OWN land, they had to rent it from English absentee landlords(who more often than not were whoring syphalitics in London). Any “cash crops” such as wheat, or a calf or cow were payments for the exhorbitant rents. What was left were potatoes, which the English didn’t want.

As the families tended to have 10 or so kids each to ensure the parents would have someone to look after them in old age, and the English instituted land laws stated that tenant plots must be subdivided equally between the surviving sons, it lead to a situation whereby whole families had to survive on half acre plots of land. There were huge estates of pristine land in Ireland, but they were reserved for the Protestant class, aptly named as the Ascendancy.

If you go to the West of Ireland to this day you will see many of these sad remnant of the small famed plots and the hovels people lived in. You will also get to see the grand English noble’s houses and estates to contrast. As the population rapidly expanded by the 1840s Ireland had a population of 8 million, close to the population of the whole of Britain.

Since there was no access to meat or other high quality nutrition for the Catholic Irish, the natives turned to the imported potato for their daily nutrition. A typical daily diet was gruel in the morning, and potato, day after monotonous day. In 1844 the potato blight(a crop virus) hit the potato crop and wiped out that year’s production. Tenants still had enough of in store to survive through the following year. However the blight struck again in 1845 and now the natives had no sustenance. Paradoxically wheat in abundance was being grown on the large English estates in the south-east of the country, which could have easily fed the population, but due to the fact that this wheat was exported to the “Empire’s HQ” in England under the industrial colonial system the natives starved. Many escaped to the US and Australia on what were euphemistically called the “coffin ships” due to the 50% mortality rate of passengers. So please understand why any educated Irish-Australian would have a go at the descendants of his oppressors.

  1. IRISH CATHOLICS(90% of population) HAD NO VOTE, NO LAND
    Irish Catholics had no vote or land in their own country. It was little better than legalised slavery. Under the penal laws instituted after the Cromwellian invasion and quelling and wholesale slaughter in the hundreds and thousands of a peasant/Anglo Irish revolt (Cromwell is incidentially named as one of the top ten English of all time in a recent BBC poll), the situation continued to deteriorate. Crowmwell’s general Bingham also blew most of the churches in the West or Ireland with dynamite. That’s why when you go there today, all you see is roofless remains of churches. Native Irish had two choices ‘to go to Hell or to Connaught’. Connaught was the bad lands of Ireland.

Compounded with the further defeat of the Catholic James II(who had supported the re-instatement of a Catholic crown and the emancipation(i.e. Catholics in Ireland having land and voting rights) it was illegal to hold mass, and priests caught saying mass in the open were hung by the authorities.

  1. LANGUAGE LAWS
    Any one who wanted to attend school, had to learn through the medium of English. It’s a shame the English tried to destroy the Native Irish’s culture by trying to remove our Gaelic language. At least by the 20th century we excelled so much at this foreign language that we can speak it better than you now(Yeats, Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney).

  2. IRISH POPULATION TRAGEDY
    After the famine subsided in 1848 or so, the country’s population gradually dissipated to an historic low of 2 million or so by 1921. That’s a loss in real terms of at least 6 million people. Consider today that the population of Ireland as a whole is just 5 million. Where did these people go? Most of them emigrated to distant lands or joined factories in England, but they never forgot where they came from.

  3. COLONIAL TACTIC OF SETTING LOCAL GROUPS AGAINST EACH OTHER
    The English used the classic tactic of divide and conquer in Ireland over the centuries. If you converted to Prostentatism you could acquire the right to own land. If you were a Gaelic chieftain you could swear an oath of fealty to the English King and be allowed to remain on you lands, but afterwards such land belonged to England. It is a testament to our ancestors and their strong faith and culture that so few did convert to Protestantism.

Presbyterian planters and British army veterans were settled in fortified towns across the country with land taken by force from the native Irish. The only successful plantations were in the North East, hence the artificial construct that is Northern Ireland. This culture of apartheid is what has caused the hatred in Northern Ireland. Now with equal opportunity laws in effect up there this is no longer the case and yes people are getting along.

IN SUMMARY
The Irish Catholic majority have never asked the Protestants in Northern Ireland or the Repulic to change their culture or religion, but they should accept the will of the 90% majority of the people in Ireland who would vote for a United Ireland.

It’s only in the past few years that the United Irish cause has developed a capability to hit England where it hurts in your cities that we are finally achieving our goal of a united and prosperous republic. That’s a very uncomfortable fact for everyone to acknowledge, that bombings of economic targets in cities have political results, as no one wants to see innocent lives lost in conflict. Don’t forget that in 1972 Dublin was bombed by Loyalist paramilitaries with the help of the SAS bomb expertise (Loyalists subsequently have never successfully exploded a car bomb).

You’re welcome to visit our country as a civilian, and I count English/British as some of my best friends. I’m glad you might have read one or two books on the matter, but it doesn’t qualify you to talk about it. It’s obvious you know nothing about the traditions and culture of our island except for a few conversations picked up in a pub or on an airplane somewhere. No one in their right mind otherwise would suggest building a big wall around Northern Ireland, an image reminiscent of a WWII concentration camp.

As for the open border, I object to British Army soldiers stopping me and asking me where am I going, for how long, as I visit Northern Ireland…I object to the spy masts and the bases, the blown up bridges, blown up by the British army…Why do the Brits have to interfere in other people’s countries?

I suggest you read up on your own countries history of oppression throughout the world, in India, the US, China, Afghanistan, Palestine! the list goes on and on, instead of patronising the Irish as club carrying monkeys, or psychopathic terrorists, have you looked in the mirror lately? The “UK” (and the English) champions itself as a bastion of human rights, but there is no historical or current basis for this supposition. To this day the British spy agencies monitor and record all calls to and from the UK and Ireland. We can’t even have a phone conversation in peace.

Well, if reading a book doesn

Imyourbiggest fan…

I would like to see the end of all British military installations in the island of Ireland.

Try and sanitise that argument.

Enlighten me oh wise one.

Polls scrounged out through the internet are great for making points, but they don’t mean shit after the point at which they were taken. They can also mislead people with the figures you quote. For example did you mention that at the last General Election support for Sinn Fein increased massively? That the North is actually increasingly polarised judging from the support levels of parties across the political spectrum? We all know what happened when Chen Shui Bian was elected, the pollsters got that wrong, George Bush, again wrong…What people wouldn’t be more concerned about health, economy, day to day living than a long term goal???

Let’s argue the facts. Should the British army be in Northern Ireland. Do they have a right, historically or presently? What’s the moral difference between British Army operations in Northern Ireland and Republican operations in the UK? Do you think the British Army is a force for peace in Ireland today? Did anyone vote them in? Was there a UN resolution?

Let’s quote another poll shall we…

Oh and I’m your biggest fan

Its obvious you haven’t got a rats arse of a clue about politics in Ireland.
You quoted a large propotion of people in the Republic were against Sinn Fein entering the Republic of Ireland assembly!!

Sinn Fein now has 5 sitting TDs(Repulic of Ireland parliamentarians). And Sinn Fein TDs have been sitting in the Republic of Ireland parliament for over 10 years. You must have got mixed up with a poll for or against participation in the Northern Ireland Assembly!!!

Idiot.

But do you think that bombing civilians in N. Ireland and Britain is the best way to do that? Will that not just prolong the army’s presence?

Especially when the evidence supports my view and contradicts yours so neatly.

Well, people don’t change their minds so quickly - and I did quote two different polls. So, I think this comment of yours is just a way to dodge evidence you don’t like. You, remember, quoted:

Is that not a poll? Or did you just guess!!! Are you accustomed to using as evidence to support your arguments stuff that you believe “don’t mean shit?”

You are wrong.

Yes I am aware that Sinn Fein has been in Irish politics a long time - does it not call itself the “oldest political party.” The poll was indeed about the Republic of Ireland. I was guilty only of writing

Define “brits”. And how exactly are you going to bomb them ?