Loyalists: We Won't Disarm

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15794084&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=ira-gives-up-its-arms--loyalists--we-won-t-disarm--name_page.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5176517,00.html

 

You're yelling. Stop it. This is degreeinfo, not...

Also, don't these two threads belong on the politics forum?

 

It's about time that somebody started yelling about it.

 

It is reasonable to expect that Loyalist extremists will attempt to incite IRA violence. If the IRA disarms completely and permanently it will result in a huge boost for Sinn Fein. They might even become the leading political party in Ireland. This would put them in an advantageous position in the British coalition government, a position that might require concessions from the British. It's easy to see where that might lead. This process of moving from violence to politics is becoming a leading model in the peace building process around the world. We should all hope that it continues along this trajectory.

By the way, this thread does belong in the politics forum (and by the way Rob, people have been shouting about this for years, just not on degreeinfo) In an effort to inject some DL, there are degree programs in Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies to be found at:
Antioch
CSUDH
Monash
Nova Southeastern
Royal Roads
Bradford
U New England
Pretoria
Jack

 

Name me one film or novel where an Irish villian was a member of the UVF or the UDA and not the IRA. You won't be able to.

 

No, it is not time on degreeinfo to be yelling about "it". This is a distance education service, not primal scream therapy. Discuss it, fine. Discuss it heatedly, fine. But screaming mimi stuff belongs on, say, aed--not here. This site is for grownups.

I don't have a dog in the fight between Windsorama and the Eerie Free State, that is, in cartoon images of Brits or Irish. I also don't have a dog in the sectarian disputes in Northern Ireland, being neither a Roman Catholic nor a Protestant.

The response of the Irish PM was sensibly reserved.

I agree with Mr Ahern and Mr Blair in disliking terrorists, and I have a silly propensity not to believe terrorist organizations' nicey-nicey soundbites. I also don't care a tinker's damn what religion they (mis)represent. They can quit, die, or go to perdition.

 

First I'd like to state that the existence or non-existence of Hollywood/New York mass media in this issue means nothing. People all over the world are well aware of the atrocities committed on both sides of this conflict. There have been uncountable news articles, historical works and personal accounts published that clearly articulate a Loyalist role in the escalating and continuing violence. Is it somehow more important if Hollywood becomes involved. Hollywood, the home of fluff? OK then, if you have to have Hollywood, how about:

Bloody Sunday (2002)
Hidden Agenda (1991)
In The Name Of The Father (1994)
Michael Collins (1996)

If people are interested in reading more than movies they might consider:

The Skankill Butchers - Martin Dillon
Stone Cold - Martin Dillon
Ten Men Dead - David Beresford
The Wrong Man - Danny Morrison

More scholarly readings are too numerous to mention.
Jack

 

First I'd like to state that the existence or non-existence of Hollywood/New York mass media in this issue means nothing.

It sure does mean something. If you want to know who is in power, look to see who isn't mentioned in the media. (have you ever seen a headline that read "White man kills wife"?)

Anyhoo... my mom is Irish and , while I also have no dog in the fight, I do have my sympathies. And I'll keep them, thanks very much.

“Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of ’65 and ’67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today. Rulers and Defenders of the Realms had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but, the fools, the fools, the fools! – They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

P. Pearse (1915)

 

I guess your right Rob. They should just keep on killing each other until Hollywood makes a movie that satisfies you. It won't really be over until Hollywood says it's over.

Jack

 

The villians weren't UVF or UDA, but they were not IRA;

Patriot Games by Tom Clancy. He almost went out of his way to avoid blaming the IRA.

My view is that any terrorist group, be they Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Shinto, Buddhist, whatever, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

I NEVER have thought there is a justification for killing children, but apparently the IRA disagrees with me, since they planted a bomb in a toy store (Harrod's) during the Christmas season. Kill children looking at toys. Nice philosophy.

If anyone can defend that incident with a straight-face, I'd love to hear the reasoning.

 

This is something that puzzles me. Aren’t those communities (the Catholic and the Protestant) completely identified and different from each other? I have no doubt thisis a strategic decision, but how could the Sinn Fein win more votes? At whose expense? Is the vote between both communities permeating? Or would it get them from a more moderate Republican party? Because from the distance it seems that the borders between both are very well defined.

And one more thing. For those who sympathize with the IRA. I personally don’t find any difference between those who attacked NYC or Madrid and London and those who did those bombings at the toy shop or at Omagh (killing as well children, women and civilians). Resorting to that for political gains is despicable.

 

You are exactly right, there is no defense of bombing a toy store. It's horrible, and any terror group should be should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But here's the trick:

A UDA member can spend his nights commiting terroist acts and, in the morning, get up and put on an RUC uniform and go to work. The IRA member can't find this kind of employment or cover because, until recently, catholics were excluded from the police forces in Northern Ireland. It's like the sheriffs in the old south who were also Klan. How can you find justice in that environment.

I don't want bombings or shootings or murder of any sort in Northern Ireland or anywhere. I want peace, but it should be an acceptable peace. And I know that the IRA has become a cover for thugs, theives and murderers just as I know the same has happened to the UDA, UVF and the RUC (now the Police Service of Northern Ireland).

 

The idea, as it was described to me, is that there are a number of people who are sympathetic to the overall goals of Sinn Fein but they refused to become associated with the violence of the IRA. If the IRA disarms (and stays disarmed) that obstacle is removed.
Jack

 

It's interesting how passionate some Irish Americans are about this stuff, even generations removed from Europe. It suggests to me that the American "melting pot" hasn't completely succeeded in creating a new nation on these shores. And it also suggests that identifying with the struggle is what makes some Irish Americans still feel Irish. Sadly, it's what being Irish has come to mean for them.

I emphatically agree.

But this Irish crap does have some rather unsettling implications for the West's current problems with Islam and with the Muslims in its midst.

If Ireland becomes the pattern for Islam, if identification with a struggle becomes an individual's way of preserving social identity, then this terrorism problem is probably going to be with us for centuries to come. It will prove to be very resistant to education, social integration and economic advancement.

 

I totally agree with that.

If we ever start justifying the killing of innocents because we happen to identify with the killers' religious or political faith, then we have just given a blank check to terrorism in general.

 

Political Correctness & Terrorism...

The other thing we should start doing IMMEDIATELY as far as airport security goes is profiling of Middle Eastern/Islamic looking people. It is absolute nonsense that we are screening little old ladies with canes in an attempt to be "fair". Our own democratic ideals of fairness, non-discrimination, and the need to treat everyone equally are powerful weapons in the hands of terrorists who count on these weaknesses of ours to sneak through. When we screen EVERYONE we inevitably will miss SOMEONE.

I also think that we should seriously consider internment for hostile Islamic populations within our borders, similar to what Roosevelt did to the Japanese during WWII. Though there were many well-known and documented abuses from that incident, I also firmly believe that it was the right thing to do at the time (given the hostile racial war that Japan was executing against "white powers" in Asia), and that many possible violent acts of sabotage were headed off by this decisive, though controversial and clearly "un-democratic", response.

 

Re: Political Correctness & Terrorism...

This is a particular bug of mine. Internment, as the term is commonly used, is, for the most part, the detention of resident aliens of hostile nations. Internment is internationally accepted and practiced and has been legal in the U.S. from the beginning to the present. In WWII some 30,000 were interned in the U.S. with about half that number being Japanese. The rest were Germen, Italian and sundry other. By most accounts, internment began on Dec. 8, 1941.

FDR signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942. That EO authorized the policy of Exclusion/Relocation. The bulk of the Japanese-Americans Relocated from the west coast had no place to relocate to and so some 105,000 were placed in Relocation Camps. The camps were voluntary but relocating was not. They had no place to go but the camps.

So, anything comparable to Relocation would likely require another Executive Order. Internment would likely require identifying hostile nations or some legally acceptable substitute for for those nations.

Or maybe not. Maybe internment has a broader scope than is generally assumed. This warrants investigation but, to my knowledge, no one is so investigating.

 

According to your logic, Carl, I suppose white people are the only ones who are the trustworthy enough to be real American citizens. Your visceral racism is insulting not only to me but to the many incredibly brave Americans of Japanese descent who fought for their country in World War II.

"While his men were pinned down by enemy fire, Inouye, bleeding from the stomach, staggered farther up the hill and threw two more grenades into the second enemy position. He fell again. Dragging himself toward the third machine-gun position, he stood up and pulled the pin from another grenade. Just as he was about to throw it, an enemy rifle grenade smashed his right elbow. His men ran to help him, but the young officer ordered them back. With his good left hand, he tossed the grenade and destroyed the position. With his right arm flapping at his side, he started finishing off the enemy survivors with his Tommy gun. Then he was hit in the right leg and fell down the hill. When his men ran to him, Inouye yelled: "Get back up that hill! Nobody called off the war!" He refused to be evacuated until his men were deployed in defensive positions."

http://www.thehistorynet.com/wwii/bl442regimentalcombat/

Here is another link for you, a group that you might be interested in joining to advance your position:

http://www.cofcc.org/

 

BS from qvatlanta

This is just the sort of politically correct BS that is hamstringing our ability to respond to a world-wide terrorist war against everything that we hold dear - our freedom, our democracy, and our principles.

No, I do not suppose "white people" are the only ones who are trustworthy enough to be real American citizens. No, I am not racist. But YES I am realist when it comes to who we are fighting and how easy it is to identify them out of our vast and mainly homogenous population.

To do nothing and pretend that those who raise this oh-so-obvious issue are "racist" is to surrender the gates to our shining city on the hill before the first rounds have even been fired.

Good luck to you in your dream world and your ready-to-hand-out accusations of racism to anyone who speaks the plain and obvious truth.

And your suggestion that I should join extremist fringe groups along the lines of the John Birch Society is highly offensive, much more so than your needing to tune down your own internal checks on the ability to see the truth....

 

I suggest you take a closer link at that link, look into your own heart and see how closely linked your arguments are with theirs. You're being ruled by hatred, not by logic.

Example: We had a program called "Special Registration" in which all non-citizen males from certain Arab countries (and many other people who happened to be flagged by the State Department) had to be fingerprinted and registered at certain offices... the government discontinued the program. Why? Because they didn't get a shred of use out of it. And that was a very mild form of surveillance not even directed at American citizens. On the other hand, the Lackawanna 6 sleeper cell was uncovered in part by an FBI agent who was also a Muslim. Techniques that work against terrorist cells are surveillance, infiltration, anything very targeted and precise... not rounding up anyone who remotely looks like they might be a terrorist. One of the London bombers was Jamaican, I suppose we should round them up? Oh wait, John Walker Lindh was white... I guess you should be behind bars as well.

America is not a homogenous country, it will never be, and thank god for that. You may feel threatened by the fact that there are many "foreign-looking" darker-skinned people serving as police, soldiers and defending America in all kinds of ways, but I personally am reassured by it.