Give the others a chance Keith - all our points have been covered over and over again and we've taken up far too much space n this forum as it is.
Joe
"are the methods of war the most effective way to achieve justice"
I'm not the one to answer that - ask the Kenyans and the people of the Congo or Palestine or India who followed on the heels of Ireland in shedding their blood for independence; or more recently, the Vietnamese - did pacifism work for them - would turning the other cheek change the fact that the Palestinians are gradually being flushed out of existence as a people?
I am not a nationalist, Irish or British and I consider myself an instinctive pacifist, as, I believe, most human beings to be, but I believe we are forced to react to circumstances rather than our own philosophical beliefs.
My father was a pacifist, yet he went off and killed Spaniards for what he believed in.
If I had to choose one of the heroes of Easter Week it would, without hesitation, be Connolly, not because he "died in the chair", but because he wanted to change society and not just its leaders - "neither English nor Irish landlords" I love that.
Jim Carroll