Been there
You have proved nothing, you have offered nothing in dispute on any of these things other than your own uncorroborated opinions no evidence, just unqualified statements and you have attempted to create smokescreens and set up 'straw dogs' to act as a diversion to you having to respond to the real facts..
A typical example is your clinging on to your 'artillery' lifebelt - nobody has disputed that the looters' fires were started before the artillery was used - you didn't "prove conclusively" when the fires were started - I, in fact, introduced the question of the looting and I went on to point out that these fires were brought under control and that the main confligration that followed was caused by the artillery and it was this which devastated Sackvill Street and Dublin City Centre.
All this was brought about by your claim that it was rebel action that brought about the destruction and not that of the troops - those are the facts that you have attempted to cover with your smokescreen.
To claim that you "have provided links" to anything is utterly ludicrous - one of the most distinguishing features of your entire contribution is that you never provide links to anything you have said and have consistently and often pointedly ignored requests to do so
I had a quick shufti through some of our past clashes before I settled down in front of Lewis last night - this has been your practice with all your contributions to this forum, almost without exception, as has been your arrogantly talking down to those who disagree with you.
You grab a handful of 'facts' and statistics out of the air, present them as gospel and arrogantly expect them to be accepted without question - you seldom, if ever produce links to what you say.
Fair play to Keith - he is noted for his scrabbling around to find something to fit his preconceived notions, inaccurate, out of context and invariably misunderstood as they usually are.
You, somewhat lazily, rely on your bluff and bullshit being accepted at face value.
You have dismissed out of hand as "nonsense" or "made up Carroll shite" or "irrelevant", documented and linked information from clearly identified serious works of history and have offered nothing resembling serious research in return - nothing!
I don't think I have ever experienced such an unpleasant crusade by two people who appear to be living in a world of flying Union Jacks and glorious battles that was created in the heads of writers like A. G. Henty, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Mackay - a sort of 'Teribus in Keith's Adventures in Imperial-Land'.
Your ignorance of Ireland, its history, its people has often proved spectacular - your latest "no mortar in Sackville Street" was classic - Dublin was full or mortar-rendered buildings at the time.
You have attempted to present a picture of a rebellion that was unnecessary - it wasn't, and the political machinations of British politicians in forcing through a partition which created a repressively sectarian state has proved that beyond a shadow of doubt.
You claim the men who gave their lives to set in motion the cause of Irish freedom from Empire were selfish and dishonest - they were neither - no group of revolutionaries widely announce their plans in advance - they confine them to 'need-to know'.
As for selfish - their aims were as noble as it comes - not for personal gain but for nationhood after centuries of oppressive rule by a power that had excelled itself a little over half a century earlier by depopulating Ireland and carrying out what nowadays would be recognised and mass-genocide - still referred to as Ireland's Holocaust.
You gloated that the rebellion was a failure - it most certainly wasn't - it turned the apathy of the Irish people into a revolutionary fervour which eventually set the dominoes falling through the entire Empire.
Britain's legacy to Ireland was a divided nation, permanent emigration and an economy that only began to right itself at the end of the 20th century - like many of Britain's former subjects, Ireland is still feeling the evil effects of Imperial rule.
One of the features of your squalid behaviour here has been to attempt to smear revolutions as German Spies and sexual perverts - the age-old sick dirty-tricks method of defusing and denigrating opposition to despotism.
Keith has mounted a campaign to prove the Irish a bitter, hate-filled people, when, as anybody knows who has had anything to do with them, they are exactly the opposite - even if you had never met an Irishman, Keith's dishonest refusal to provide one single shred of evidence of that hatred ,(having claimed several times that he had and actually having refused to do so) speaks for itself
You have both set out to show that Irish people as gullibly-stupid, "brainwashed by propaganda" and ignorant of their own history - as far from the truth as you could possibly get.
Neither of you have made anything that resembles a case yet you, in your ignorance and arrogance have dragged this into yet another epic - just as you did with the Famine, and Homs and the W.W.1. bloodbath - a behavioural pattern or what!!
I don't think I have ever met a case of anybody being so obviously, dishonestly wrong about anything, and proven to be so by factual evidence - an achievement of sorts, I suppose.
Breakfast calls
Jim Carroll