Bloody Sunday!

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None of these things would have happened to the Irish if the Brits would had stayed in their own country instead of invading Ireland.

That sort of argument is monumentally pointless. We are where we are, and not Britain nor anyone else can change that now.

You might as well say that about the Native Americans too, and the colonists committed far worse atrocities than have the British in Ireland.

The difference between romanticizing the IRA and the British army is that its socially acceptable to romanticize the latter. Give the IRA a few decades of power, and it would be the politically correct position to admire them and their political cause. It really all comes down to power play and who history is written by. Britain's army, historically, carried out more true acts of terrorism, but they aren't referred to as such because they're the ones in control

Oh very true don't even get me started on that I am a quarter cherokee. My ancestores where gunned down hell they didn't even enslave them they just killed them instead. Infected them with small pox and not even that commited geneocide against us.

Sinn Fein IS the IRA. To advance politically they can't say that, but everyone knows it's so.



Are you talking about religion or politics here? Judging by the number of Protestant churches in the Republic, I'd guess significantly more than 2% of the population is Protestant. Also, are you including Baptists, Methodists, etc. in that count, or only Anglicans?

Didn't Sinn Fein distance themselves from the 'eejits' calling themselves the 'Real IRA' after the Good Friday Accords?
I think it's more correct to say that Sinn Fein was the IRA.

Wrt. 'asking politely,' I meant, 'voting.' the term 'gerrymandering' was invented for Ireland in such a paradigmatic way that it is still used here in the US to describe the disenfranchisement of large populations through the drawing of voting district lines.

Well, yes. Those lost are more known to be in the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and Republican Sinn Féin, and were responsible for the Omagh bombing and the murder of the two Catholic PSNI officers recently. It's all murder and hatred and what the PIRA did was as wrong as what the RIRA are doing now.



Sinn Féin is full from top to bottom with ex-PIRA murderers and activists.

The IRA pledged to wipe out anyone collaborating with British occupation in Ireland. Consider that basically means the entire Unionist population of Northern Ireland for starters as well as police officers and the army from Britain and those with Unionist sympathies generally.



All that was swept away by 1972, and direct rule from Westminster was imposed and the (admittedly one-sided, discriminatory and corrupt) Northern Ireland Government was prorogued and later abolished.

If they were fighting against gerrymandering and for civil rights, why did they spend the next 25 years trying to bomb Northern Ireland out of existence? If they wanted civil rights for Catholics and a brighter future, they would have called off their bombing campaign there and then. The Loyalist paramilitaries would then have stopped their murdering too.

The odd thing was that Catholics in Northern Ireland were usually better off and had a better standard of living than their compatriots in the Irish Republic. There was no vast influx of Northern Irish Catholics to the Republic during the Troubles - in fact, Northern Irish people fleeing the Troubles often went to England instead. I know a few that fled the Troubles.

Joker,

the Irish troubles are over. This august will be the 5th anniversary of the complete withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland. Pretty sure the vast majority of Catholics and Protestants in NI who remember the troubles do not want them resurrected. I certainly hope the RUC does its job to aggressively stamp out any provocation by those wishing to restart the conflict. Shortly before the Provos/Sinn Fein disarmed, there was an attempt by loyalist youth to march through a Catholic neighborhood in Belfast but the police came out in force and ordered them to disperse while blocking their route to prevent them from starting a riot. The death toll from 38 years of the Northern Ireland conflict was between 3 and 4 thousand. ~100 times that many people died as a result of the Bosnian war which lasted only 4 years.

In essence they are, yes, although murders, bombings and security alerts (especially around the 12 July) continue on a smaller scale. It's wrong to say that political violence has completely finished in Northern Ireland.as you'll always get the extremists.



That's not true - the five year anniversary refers to the end of the British Army's operation in Northern Ireland. 5,000 British troops remain in Northern Ireland but for training (and bomb disposal) purposes only. In essence, that basically means that security has been transferred to the local Police Service of Northern Ireland (incorporating the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC). The British Army won't be brought out onto the streets again unless it's a very last resort.



Absolutely - most of the people in Northern Ireland weren't involved in the Troubles.



The Royal Ulster Constabulary has been incorporated into the current Police Service of Northern Ireland, which has a significant (though unfortunately declining) Catholic membership. The change from the RUC to the PSNI was intended to bring the force more into line with police forces in the rest of the UK (the "Royal" prefix is not used in the name of any territorial police force in the British Islands and has a colonial/overseas territory connotation - think of the Royal Gibraltar Police, Royal Falkland Islands Police, the former Royal Hong Kong Police and so on).

Here's the modern PSNI badge:





And then there were the loyalist riots in 2005 and the Short Strand debacle last year, as well as the rioting at Ardoyne. Generally, with it's scum attacking often defenceless people or the police.

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Or what happened in Rwanda. Or the Sudan. Or what's happening in the Congo now.

Northern Ireland's conflict is small potatoes, relatively speaking, compared to the savagery that is happening in the Congo. The only difference is that it happened in a fairly well-developed part of a Western country.

Your boring me.

Well, since you've been harping on your incredibly single-minded theme for some twelve pages now, I'm not really going to have a great deal of sympathy for whatever ennui you might be suffering as a result of other people's rejection of your romantic notions.

I posted that because he is jumping into something that he doesn't understand. and thank you I also have a copy of the green book And Michael Collins is a hero of mine I am also a Sinn Fein and Garry Adams fan.

a) Who the feck is "Garry Adams"?
b) The chap is toxic to most of the Irish electorate. Most people in the Republic (except those in the border counties) don't like Gerry Adams, the PIRA or their baggage. In most of the Republic (outside the extremists and the likes of SF), Irish nationalism is a non-issue politically. SF's popularity is rising in the Republic, but that's more to do with anti-EU/anti-austerity protest votes.



Exactly - I suspect he'd feel very differently were he to be living on the island of Ireland itself.



He understands it far better than you.

I expected that from you Tequila how predictiable of you

As Tequila says, who is Garry Adams? You've typed this before, so I assume it's not just a typo.

Gerry Adams an Irish republican politician and Teachta Dála (TD) for the constituency of Louth. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he was an abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament for Belfast West. He is the president of Sinn Féin, the second largest political party in Northern Ireland and the largest nationalist party. From the late 1980s onwards, Adams was an important figure in the Northern Ireland peace process, initially following contact by the then Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and subsequently with the Irish and British governments and then other parties. In 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) indicated that its armed campaign was over and that it is now exclusively committed to democratic politics. Under Adams, Sinn Féin changed its traditional policy of abstentionism towards Oireachtas Éireann, the parliament of the Republic of Ireland, in 1986 and later took seats in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly. However, Sinn Féin retains a policy of abstentionism towards the Westminster Parliament, but since 2002, receives allowances for staff and takes up offices in the House of Commons.