I’d never make any excuse for Omagh inexcusable FYI was in Romania working ( aids clinic/orphanages)with a man who lost a family member ( prior to Omagh)saw him on TV heartbreaking,bombs are indiscriminate but until ppl talk what happened in Omagh can / probably will be repeated,and when you have British intelligence/ dissidents at it anything is possible, Hong Kong type of withdrawal is the only option for peace alongside release of POWs north and south
1 Like
I’d ignore him mate. He’s shown himself to be a liar so it’s not worth your time engaging with him.
1 Like
There’s no difference between dissidents now and those who killed innocent people on the streets of Dublin in 1916, or Dan Breen and Sean Treacy etc.
No one’s arguing bud freedom doesent come cheap innocents always suffer in every conflict worldwide and TBH it’s going to get worse b4 it gets better ,like an industrial strike, start,middle and eventually end.
Retirement proving tough to get used to? Have you fuck all else to be doing bar spamming the board all fucking day?
I told you to join a Dating Site and give us a break.
2 Likes
The bolded bit is untrue.
The hilarious thing about a lot of people who class themselves as Irish nationalists is their willingness to justify certain acts of murder while vilfifying identical ones from a different era.
Michael McDowell is the obvious case of cognitive dissonance in this regard while you only have to look a short way up this thread to find another instance of a self-styled “intellectual” with a child-like case of cognitive dissonance.
Read my post again if that doesn’t suffice,I guess you’re a lost cause Sidney old stock.
Can’t do that honey if miss your eloquent way with words 
Rocko will have to buy a separate server just for him at the rate he’s going.
1 Like
Quiet next week lads back up the ladder,I’ll be thinking of ye though
[quote=“Sidney, post:1627, topic:11573, full:true”] There’s no difference between dissidents now and those who killed innocent people on the streets of Dublin in 1916, or Dan Breen and Sean Treacy etc.
[/quote]
Not so. To say so is to rob history of precisely what makes it history rather than existence: human agency, marshalled in ignorance of the future. This argument about 1916 is utterly specious.
If nothing else, the 1998 GFA derived from an all island vote, freely made and without coercion. No equivalent marker existed in 1916. The British Empire killed “innocent people” all over the globe without compunction for decades upon decades. Why the death in Dublin during April 1916 of some individuals, however tragic, rouses such disproportionate censure – as with Kevin Myers – remains not a mystery of interpretation but a mystery of psychology. The likes of Myers and Robin Bury are puzzingly unbothered by nearly 28000 Boers dying in British concentration camps between 1899 and 1902. Nor are they in the slightest chafed by events such as the Amritsar Massacre, which took place almost exactly three years after the Easter Rising. Their credibility cannot survive such myopia. Nor can the credibility of acolytes.
The 1918 General Election, with its heavy endorsement of Sinn Féin over the IPP, has been advanced as a mandate for the War of Independence. Needless to add, this perspective is a matter of interpretation. Even so, even in light of all such caveats, we are still a long way from the situation of post-1998 Dissident Republicanism. RIC officers were not innocent participants.
Post-1922 Republicanism argued another case This group glossed the Dáil vote on January 7, 1922 that ratified the Anglo Irish Treaty as a decision made under coercion in light of the British threat to resume war with terrible effect. Whatever your take on this dynamic, we are still far removed from the post-1998 arena.
The Stickie perspective (if I may be permitted a guiding anachronism) insists on a vision where all cats are grey and all acts are either black or white. The Stickies essentially argued that we could not have any progress – even in resolutely political and non-military terms – until Marxist utopias had been installed right across the globe. Had they the wit to know it, which they assuredly did not, the Stickies’ outlook was but a version of the imperial imagination. Namely: that which is valuable is only that which is replicable in all contexts, irrespective of local customs and practices. The corollary of this lack of insight became a levelling take on history, an insistence that all acts of violence and resistance are the same.
Intelligent Republicanism gave us Seamus Deane. Fervent Stickie-ism gave us Eoghan Harris.
Take your pick.
10 Likes
The main thrust of that post is excellent. It is excellent, but a bit too wordy. Someone will be along shortly asking for bullet points (the irony isn’t lost :-))
1 Like
Up there with the absolute best.
1 Like
Thanks – and you are probably right. Got a bit carried away… I don’t mind Sidney but I detest RB, RDE, EH, KM et al.
1 Like
Let it not be forgotten that Professor Paul Bew (aka Lord Bew) started off a Stickie.
Worth it though
It’s a long way from.the House of Lords he was reared. I’d say rdh would love an oul peerage.
I’m not really interested in a discussion which mentions “stickies” or “revisionism”, or any other such terms, as they don’t contribute anything to such a debate.
There’s a common thread between the Easter Rising of 1916, the murder of the two RIC men at Soloheadbeg, the IRA Border campaign, the formation of the Provisional IRA and subsequent acts, and dissident murders, such as that of British Army soldiers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey in 2009 and PSNI officer Ronan Kerr in 2011.
In all cases, bar arguably the vague premise of the Sinn Fein manifesto of 1918, which did not explicitly mention war (and it’s hard to argue that a vote for Sinn Fein in 1918 equalled a vote for war), there was no mandate for murder and/or war.
In all cases, those who were involved were willing to murder and did murder in order to create the conditions where public opinion might change to a situation where murder and war had widespread support.
The justification of those who carried these acts was always the same.
Mass justification for these events among the public at large was retrospective, as it is usually anywhere in the world as regards acts intended to provoke war. The essential nature of the acts was the exact same.
That’s all there is to it, really.
It was difficult for the Catholic population to give a mandate in 1969 when their votes were restricted.
I think it is too simplistic to suggest that all those instances you described were the same. For instance, the recent dissident attacks come at a time when our country has been through 30 years of war with no hope of the original objective been achieved, yet these people take the same objective and continue the war.
That is a lot different to the situation in post 1916 Ireland.
All the above I events I list had the exact same essential aim.
That was, to create the conditions whereby British rule would be removed from Ireland, and all of them involved a willingness to murder which was followed through, with the aim of bringing about an armed “uprising” of the general population, or in other words, war.
It also involved a willingness or even a desire on behalf of the protagonists to be “martyrs”, in order to win public opinion over to their beliefs.
In all cases, the protagonists had a belief that they knew better than the majority of the people they claimed to represent.
In 1916 Ireland, the idea of a fully independent Irish state entirely free of Britain was an overwhelmingly minority one.
In 1918, the desire for war was not a majority view or anything close to it.
In 1969, the desire for war was not a majority view and never was from then until the end of the Troubles.
In 2009 or 2019, the idea of British rule being removed from the six counties is a minority one.
You can talk about the argument being simplistic all you want, but in all cases the aims of the protagonists themselves were deeply simplistic.