Excuse me, but if the purpose of the endeavor at the Derry Journal is to express solidarity with the relatives of victims, what the hell is the Derry Journal doing publishing inflammatory, hurtful crap like that published by Gregory Campbell, a member of a loyalist political party with very strong ties to the worst murderers in the history of the Troubles, which has delighted in the killing of Catholic nationalists? What the hell is a piece like that doing as part of this particular series? I'm not saying they shouldn't do an op ed piece unrelated to this particular series, but let us not delude ourselves. There is nothing decent or fair about publishing a piece by the likes of Gregory Campbell in a series being promoted to be for the benefit of the relatives, friends, and community members of a massacre.

Good god, when does human decency begin to enter into this? This crap about "balance" and "seeing the other sides' point of view" is part and parcel of the propagandist strategy to maintain the status quo. That is the sort of bullshit that leads to more and more obfuscation, which allows the status quo to carry on business as usual.

What is needed is moral clarity, not the tyranny of ideological certainty that all reasonable people should be on neither side but in the "middle" or "centre" where no meaningful change can ever take place.

Change in any society that has covered up a massacre for as long as the British have covered up the Bloody Sunday massacre, is what is needed. Not agreement that the perpetrators of the massacre believed that the massacre of innocent people was justified from their personal OR political point of view. A massacre is a massacre.   The armed forces of ANY country shooting into a crowd of unarmed civilians is MORALLY INDEFENSIBLE, whether it happens in Derry or at Kent State. THAT is the moral clarity required when looking at Bloody Sunday.

Defending posters of the sort of sadistic, sick rants that this "Ireland" person keeps posting here might be entertainment for you Wolfgang, but some of us have no stomach for it, after 30 years of it in the north. You bet I'm trying to shout it down. I don't want to here that murderers deserve our support and empathy, which is the essence of the argument this "Ireland" poster has been making all along, both in this thread and in others. That isn't balance, it is psychological stalking on the internet.

Mudcat members can welcome sickos like this if they want to, because the violence doesn't effect them. Its easy to claim that this sort of crap brings "balance" and fairly includes opposing points of view. It is the moral equivalent of someone coming in to the forum and saying apartheid was justified because it was central to the cultural traditions of the Afrikaaner, and that Sharpeville was justified because of ANC violence which preceded it.

If that is "reasonable" and "balanced" in your view, fine. Just don't expect that some of us won't do all in our power to shout you down for claiming so.