Can't quite see what Big Mick did to deserve that tirade from Teribus, but if Mick is indeed moderating as well as contributing in this thread, as someone suggested, that surely is inappropriate?

All of which is by the by. My main purpose is to say that Keith A is showing himself to be blinkered, embittered and obsessive beyond reason.

I am on the record here, often and alas sometimes at length, condemning as criminal some of the excesses of the Provos - incinerating a dozen people with a napalm-type bomb at the Le Mons hotel in 1978, to mention one - and also urging republicans to make some effort to understand the protestant/loyalist mindset. Nearly always I was in a tiny minority here. I am delighted that at last I now seem to be on the majority side.

The difference between then and now, Keith, if you lack the capacity to work it out for yourself, is that properly democratic processes now prevail in Northern Ireland.

Perhaps even more important than that, Northern Ireland now has a police service that is fully accountable and which is supported by an overwhelming majority in all parts of the community. (Thus Gerry Adams was prepared to say on Channel 4 News and no doubt elsewhere that it is not for the Provos to take action in respect of the recent dissident atrocities because there is now a trusted police service whose job that is.)

Some sort of desperation must have driven Keith to say that the Provos never had majority support within the nationalist community. They had democratic legitimacy from the hunger strike onwards, and Sinn Fein went on to eclipse the SDLP.

Keith and I would probably agree about some of the atrocities of the past, but we would certainly disagree about the shameful shortcomings of governance in Northern Ireland throughout most of its existence. The real scope for argument would be about the extent to which the former were justified by the latter. But what on earth would be the point, Keith? Most people on both sides have moved on. Why the hell can't you?

One other point: the measured and thought-provoking way that Kate Carroll has spoken about the murder of her husband will have gone a long way towards negating any recruitment potential for CIRA/RIRA from these three murders.