Today, I'm not seeing the funny side
Mar. 1st, 2005 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hellisonSo trawling round lj randomly isn't always good. Boredom lead to following various links here and there and I ended up in an few Irish communities. One, supposedly for everyone to discuss what passes for politics here was fetchingly decked out in green white and orange.
Another one... reading responses to just one post has me in a combination of blind fury and deep depression. Most of the posters were, to be fair, sane reasonable people. But the sheer stupidity and blind rhetoric of the IRA apologists in there stunned me.
Yes, I know in theory they exist - and exist I'm sure equally for loyalist thugs, but you expect them to be old bitter folk.
Seeing the next generation actually still furiously insisting the IRA don't kill civilians, don't deal in drugs and aren't a tightly organised gang of murdering, racketeering criminals is... words fail me.
Is it any wonder we only get so far every time before we get dragged backwards by these fuckwits and the thugs they idolise?
So I'm currently trying to remind myself of just how far we have come in the past 10 years or so. But then recent events seem to be taking us right back the other way again.
Johnny Adair has to be exiled (not this that in itself is a bad thing) because the UDA will kill him if they catch him. Yet they're still officially considered as under ceasefire.
Ira members can stab and kick a man to death outside a busy pub, intimidate the witnesses and clear away all the evidence, expel a couple of people (thus admitting responsibility). Yet they're still officially considered under ceasefire.
What was that phrase - 'internal housekeeping'? It's not breaking the ceasefire if it's one of your own!
Monday I said if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. I don't feel much like laughing right now.
Another one... reading responses to just one post has me in a combination of blind fury and deep depression. Most of the posters were, to be fair, sane reasonable people. But the sheer stupidity and blind rhetoric of the IRA apologists in there stunned me.
Yes, I know in theory they exist - and exist I'm sure equally for loyalist thugs, but you expect them to be old bitter folk.
Seeing the next generation actually still furiously insisting the IRA don't kill civilians, don't deal in drugs and aren't a tightly organised gang of murdering, racketeering criminals is... words fail me.
Is it any wonder we only get so far every time before we get dragged backwards by these fuckwits and the thugs they idolise?
So I'm currently trying to remind myself of just how far we have come in the past 10 years or so. But then recent events seem to be taking us right back the other way again.
Johnny Adair has to be exiled (not this that in itself is a bad thing) because the UDA will kill him if they catch him. Yet they're still officially considered as under ceasefire.
Ira members can stab and kick a man to death outside a busy pub, intimidate the witnesses and clear away all the evidence, expel a couple of people (thus admitting responsibility). Yet they're still officially considered under ceasefire.
What was that phrase - 'internal housekeeping'? It's not breaking the ceasefire if it's one of your own!
Monday I said if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. I don't feel much like laughing right now.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 05:16 pm (UTC)I think you need to ask yourself who exactly the paramilitaries are protecting people from, and the answer is the paramilitaries. I don't particularly care which side they're on, but they're killing, maiming, robbing and poisoning people while coincidentally lining their own pockets, while romanticising their actions with a spuriously noble cause.
There has been no reason for the violence for years, save that of racketeering and unjust vengeance. In the last decade the ballot box and political process has achieved far more than the guns. Indeed, it is the guns that have set the process back time and again. There are people out there who are afraid of peace. Who fear a time when they cannot be 'the big men' because they perpetrate violence with a gang of other cowards behind them to bring more violence to bear. How many or these organisations have the word 'Army' or 'Force' in their titles? They are organisations purely bent towards violence and their time is past. Anyone wishing to support their own view can do so through due political process now, and should be able to do so without threat of physical or psychological retribution.
Killers and thugs are not heroes. They are small men who seek to put the fear and inadequacy they feel into others' hearts and so find a sort of comparative courage. In most of my working years in Northern Ireland I worked for and supported those who represented my views, but never once did I find myself forced to commit violence or an illegal act against another person.
As for those who have gone from the gun to the soapbox: I can respect them for setting aside past misdeeds if they are willing to atone and acknowledge the wrongs they have done. Blatant hypocrisy in a leader is never a pleasant thing to see.
Make of that what you will.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-04 03:49 am (UTC)The IRA are no more heros than the UDA, UVF, the Triads, the Mafia, the Taliban or any other of sadly innumerable gangs of power-hungry thugs who con people into thinking they're doing it for YOU.
It's not 'protection' (well, not til they make you start paying for it :p) it's control.