BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Wolfgang
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 05:57 PM

I wanted to say a similar thing as you, Greg, but then I stopped for that complaint can be read differently if the 'that' would be thought to refer to 'threads' instead of 'individuals'.

So lets wait for Keith and other individuals starting a pro nationalst thread.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 05:33 PM

Den: you criticise pro-Republicans for never starting threads. Yet you seem to be pro-republican....you're the only person who can answer tha question. Why don't you start threads?
    I see the Oh-so-Irish American Curator is having a bit of trouble here...gone home to study Irish spelling and grammar?

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Wolfgang
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 05:15 PM

No, Den, you didn't get my point as well.
And I'm not missing the point about the code of conduct. I don't remember exactly how often I have read it, but it (slightly different versions) has been printed in several of the roughly two dozen books I have read about NI. Reading is still a different type of knowledge gathering than living there and I appreciate inside views. But qualification for a comment on this thread comes not only from living in NI.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Raedwulf
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 04:51 PM

Den - The fact that you grew up in NI makes you just as much "more biased" as "more qualified". The 'outsiders' can see that only too clearly, & I doubt you're convincing them that you're wrong.

You appear to be Republican. What would you say to a Loyalist who "grew up" in NI who thought he was "more qualified" to comment than you? How would you convince him he was wrong & you were right. More importantly, how do you think you'll convince the neutrals?

This isn't a dig, this is a serious question. The problem with bigotry, & narrow bloody mindedness is that it always knows it's right, & never questions itself. It doesn't matter which side of the fence you're on, or what the argument is. How are you going to convince people that you are rational & fair-minded, not driven by hatred & bias?

Regards,

Rædwulf

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 04:29 PM

Den you won't find many on here who have any idea of what it is like living in NI. The most you can hope for is someone who sings Molly Malone badly while supping green beer. But they are all experts!

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Den
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 04:18 PM

Wolfgang, I'm not missing anything and please don't try to undermine me. I grew up in N. Ireland so I think I am more qualified than you or most others to comment on these threads. The point you and most others are missing is that the IRA have a code of conduct for their members. You learn what it entails going in. If you can't live by it you don't join. Once in never out.

And by the way you miss the point entirely. This post was started by someone who has an axe to grind regarding N.Ireland and for no other reason.

Why is it we never see threads started by these individuals that are pro nationalist. Can you think of one?

And finally my God Father was a catholic police reservist shot dead by the IRA. The word on the street was that the funeral should be low key. It wasn't and friends and neighbours lined the route to the chapel. I think we made a stand that day long before Mr. Mc Cartney's untimely demise.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Wolfgang
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 03:01 PM

A lot of men were murdered Guest, very few of them get this kind of coverage on Mudcat. (Den)

You miss the point why this murder made a Mudcat thread. Not because of just another murder in Northern Ireland or some other place in the world, but because of the made public offer of the IRA to the sisters to shoot the suspects (and their refusal). That is the newsworthy bit.

Peter K, in threads about NI I always look for your contributions for clarity, information and analysis. This time again you have met my already high expectations.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Den
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:54 PM

Define they.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:03 PM

There's no hope. They're all mad.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 11:56 AM

Psychotics. The lot of them.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 11:52 AM

Perhaps then it is a good sign that someone is being held to account at last, and an indication of a change of heart in some quarters if not in others.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Den
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:50 AM

A lot of men were murdered Guest, very few of them get this kind of coverage on Mudcat. My godfather a reserve policeman was one. My cousin a very talented carpenter and family man another and my best friend just 17 years old another. Noone has been convicted of their murders to this day and they don't get any press or discussion on here because they don't meet the criteria.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:45 AM

Are we fogetting that a man was murdered. Or is that not illegal in Ireland!

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Den
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:40 AM

A lack of knowledge never stopped the Nationalist/Republican bashers around here. Its all par for the course. The accusations that have been made here on this forum over the years are at times astounding, such as Bobby Sands was a murderer, Sinn Fein are Bank Robbers etc. Apparently you don't neeed proof you just follow the same old propaganda line of the British Government/UVF/UDA and their British bigotry.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:40 AM

The Mafia has been around for longer, and exists for similar reasons, which have nothing to do with justice, and everything to do with crime.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST,The Curator
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:29 AM

Wonderful what this site turns up. It turns my stomach to see what calls itself Irish these days.Having lived with the reality of the situation and been a victim of British repression I know what I'm talking about. I smell a couple of smart assed student type here who know all the wrongs in this world, and what to do about it. Rant away to your hearts content my friends, The Provisional Army has taken criticism for more than thirty years and it doesn't seem to have lost it's course.Keep on knocking it boys,your good for a laugh. The struggle will continue.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: girochaser
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:02 AM

Curator

One Question What gives anyone the right to shoot some one else.

Dont give us all the defending of the rights pish and all of your social and upstanding goodness for the minority.

Shit bust I couldnt care less about what you believe or what I believe. I know that killing is wrong and whi the fuck do you think you are to ok it?

Arsehole

Dylan

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:00 AM

Strikes me that Tony Blair is missing a rare opportunity to solve all his problems at one fell swoop. Put Gerry Adams in charge of anti terrorism measures.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:51 AM

No, don't name them. We don't want any court saying their trial has been prejudiced. If they don't trust the British police (and they have much reason not to - one word, Finucane) let's have an international police investigation- say Irish, Swedish and Canadian- endowed with normal police powers in NI. The IRA to give cooperation. No questions barred. The results to be assessed and presented in a court of law for full examination. The judgement to be binding.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:22 AM

Oh, I forgot you wanted some test questions. What were the various names of the Warehouse in Belfast been in recent years? Name four bars on Union Quay in Cork. Who drank in the Four Alls? And, the clincher, define a langer.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:17 AM

Were you perhaps educated in America?

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST,The Curator
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:10 AM

I'm Irish and proud of it.And Live on the Island.(Ask your questions on Ireland for proof)What so you think the Provisionals should hand over people to the British system of Justice ? Hello, your asking people who have suffered at the hands of these so called guardians of the peace to go against every Republican principal.If the current police force who has saw a budget of twice that of any other force in the U.K. can't do their job without the help of Republicans it says it all.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:04 AM

His comments on another thread are unequivocally American. Not, of course that makes what he says nonsense, some of my most sensible friends are American. But you do tend to be wary of people who seem to be being deceitful.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 08:58 AM

If IRA/Sinn Fein was interested in 'justice ' they would have given up the
suspects by now, I think they are very synically aware that their offer of shooting would be rejected.
This also makes a mockery of de-comissioning their weapons.

If it wasn't so serious they would be a bloody joke.


The Curator is not Irish, definately a Yank, he should pick is words more carefully if he doesn't want to be found out.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 08:34 AM

Instead of shooting them, just NAME them and let the Courts decide their fate.
After all when they get shot we will know who they are! A bullet hole is a nice identification is it not.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 08:26 AM

"My country" and "asshole"? Hmmmm. Is that really how they spell the fundamental orifice in Northern Ireland? I smell an American troll.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST,paul Burke
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 08:22 AM

"The Provisional Irish Republician Army has and will continue to have the support of the nationalist people in the North of Ireland,"

If you add 'some of', 'many of' or even 'most of' you are probably right.

"They also have the right to deal with it's own members as it
sees fit."

Utterly wrong. They have the right to expel members who disagree with organisational policies like any organisation does. They have no 'rights' whatsoever over non- members.

"so many people out there that feel they are in a position to speak with knowledge about the social aspects of my country"

The problem is that only about half the people over there think YOU have that right.

I'm personally for an all- Ireland solution- but that, Comrade Curator, would put YOU in a tiny, despised minority.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST,The Curator
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 07:51 AM

Isn't wonderful that there are so many people out there that feel they are in a position to speak with knowledge about the social aspects of my country, and its rule of law. The Provisional Irish Republican Army was born in 1969 out of the lack of protection and law for the nationalist community. I know I can remember when my fathers shop was burnt out by a protestant mob (including off duty members of the Royal Ulster Special Constabulary) and we were told by the police, well you are catholics living in a protestant area ! I saw them stand and laugh with the ones who did the deed a half an hour later. Basil Brook the then Prime minister of the North of Ireland (who also formed the U.S.C.) said in our house of government that we had a protestant police force for a protestant people. So now you have the reason why we depended on the movement to give our areas protection. This protection extended to dealing with anti social elements within our areas. Which I fully agree with. We have the lowest crime rate in Europe, due to the zero tolerance of mindless crime on working class communites. As to the asshole who said that the Provisional movement was involved in the Robbery at the Belfast headquarters of the Northern Bank, would he care to publish his proof to us all? I for one would like to see it. Or is he taking the word of Blair ? would he tell us a lie ? or Ahern, after all when it comes to large amounts of money, the party he belongs to has some track record.The Provisional Irish Republician Army has and will continue to have the support of the nationalist people in the North of Ireland, and that includes dealing with crime. They also have the right to deal with it's own members as it
sees fit. The British controlled media was been stirring up this current situation and I feel sorry for those know will at some stage see and feel they have been used for this purpose. So really the point I wish to make is don't talk about a country or it's people if you don't know what your talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 06:50 AM

"This land needs badly that very soon crimes will be investigated by the police and punished by the courts and by noone else."

The historic problem- why the IRA exists at all, and why people have allowed the IRA to police their areas- is that the police and courts in Northern Ireland, as well as the whole system of government there, have been part of the problem- biased, sectarian, unjust, violent.

The (shortish term) root of the problem was the deliberate creation of the sectarian state in 1921. That state had, and still has, a built in majority- but just a bare majority- of support, and used its hegemony to promote sectarian divisions, the better to hold its own power.

Any solution MUST end that situation. You can't blame people for not acquiescing to permanent second-class status. That the protest developed into violence was entirely the fault of the legally established powers, and was quite possibly intended.

The IRA are murderous and destructive, and tyrranise the areas they control- but those inhabitants have little confidence that removal of their 'protection' would lead to improvement.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 06:42 AM

This illustrates very graphically the extraordinary isolation of the PIRA from mainstream cultural life now. They seem to have issued this statement with no self-awareness at all of what a PR disaster it was. They offered in all good faith to solve the problem by shooting the perpetrators: they really seem not to have considered the fact that most people see the IRA readiness to kill people as a problem, rather than the solution to a problem.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Leadfingers
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 07:47 PM

All this proves is that the so called 'activists' (on BOTH sides) are far more interested in their various criminal activities than 'The Struggle ' .

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 07:25 PM

The bit that some mudcatters will find hard to believe is not that the IRA made such a brainless offer, but that the McCartney family rejected it. Just have a look at the lust for vengeance that bismirches some of the capital-punishment threads. Yet there were the McCartneys, offered vengeance on a plate, and they passed up the chance.

I am utterly flabbergasted at the stance of the McCartneys, and even more so that they got away with it. I'm tempted to assume they must themselves have been well respected in PIRA circles, if not directly involved, even to have contemplated such a stance, but I ,ust say I have not a shred of evidence for that.

For PIRA, a pub brawl has turned into an unmitigated disaster, and a major watershed. That in turn could be a setback for the inch-by-inch progress towards reconciliation, if the fine balance between the two "sides" now tilts unhealthily in favour of the unionists.

One thing is certain. With or without decommissioning, any threat of a return to the armed struggle is gone for good. In the 1960s, northern catholics were enduring scandalous abuse as unionists exploited an inbuilt majority, and their outrageous gerrymandering of electoral boundaries. There was blatant discrimination through all aspects of the economy - most keenly felt in the grotesquely manipulated distribution of public-sector housing. Yet even in those appalling circumstances it took several years - and further provocations - to get an armed struggle under way.

People who would once have sheltered a fugitive IRA volunteer, or let him in at the front door and helped him to disappear through a labyrinth of "entries" at the rear, would now be more likely to put in a discreet call to the confidential police line. Two main reasons: first "police" no longer means "RUC", and second, a greater proportion of people now own their own houses, and they have seen property values rise as part of the peace dividend. They want stability.

Without tacit support in their heartland areas - and they never had a stronger heartland than the republican enclave of Short Strand where the McCartneys live - the Provos could not sustain an organised campaign.

There is now a serious risk that PIRA will splinter and fragment further - exceptional leadership may prevent it - and no doubt a number of mavericks will have their day. But the armed struggle is history.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 06:20 PM

Surprised?

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 05:48 PM

Where is the focking GUEST from the IRA thread. Off playing with his willie no doubt. Thought he would be here by now.

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 02:31 PM

This is the perennial problem in NI, each group is resposible for its actions to a different hierarchy. As I said to Ard Macha in a different thread the Catholic supporters of Sinn Fein do not go to the police for justice, they go to the local godfathers of the paramilitaries for retribution, not justice. The same is true of the other side but to a lesser extent. Until both sides agree to be bound by the same rules this situation will continue. The name Sinn fein is usually translated as 'ourselves alone' and they continue to live up to it, by being a law to themselves.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Wolfgang
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 02:00 PM

Text of IRA statement

This land needs badly that very soon crimes will be investigated by the police and punished by the courts and by noone else.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Wolfgang
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 01:44 PM

Link to story

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: greg stephens
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 01:38 PM

Very handsome of them.

Subject: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 01:35 PM

Yes, the same people so outraged at being accused of a robbery without a conviction, have offered to shoot four men accused of the vicious killing of RobertMcCartney.
However they said shoot not execute, so they were probably only intending to put bullets through their knees and elbows.
So that's alright then.