Business as usual by the IRA

Zambia

This was no biigger a deal than the gangland murders that occur every week across ireland.

All politicians have said its wrong and asked the public to help the police.

Every time some gang does something we cant all attack easy targets.

Voipjunkie

murphaph wrote: »

Yeah, you're right though I never stated what you said. The Gardai should never have stepped on anyone's testicles. Let me put it another way-I would imagine that the number of times a Garda overtsepped the mark by physically abusing a prisoner were few and far between, certainly in comparison to the number of times attrocities were commited by the terrorists.

You said you would not shed any tears for any stepped on testicles which is tacit support for that kind of violence.

What you appear to be saying is the thugs I support were not as bad as the thugs you support therefore my thugs are OK.
Either the use of violence is wrong or it is not what you appear to be saying is that if it is violence whose aim is to support what you support then you don't have a major issue with it.

Just to remind you that irrespective of how many times the Gardai stepped over the line whether it was once a week or once a year it was illegal and as much as the country never voted for the IRA to wage its war it never voted for the Gardai to abuse peoples human rights either.

Voipjunkie

Tristrame wrote: »

How many times does it have to be said to you and some others that times and acceptability aren't a constant.

Asking in comparison terms as to whether Michael Collins was right or the tribes of babylon is a misnomer unless of course you want to bring us back to everything else that was acceptable in their respective times...
I doubt that you do.

I think this is a cop out to a hard question it is an attempt to get around a difficult issue.

I don't accept that you can just dismiss the issue with a that was a different time answer.

If your view is that Democracy was not available to Wolfe Tone or Robert Emmet or Gavan Duffy or O'Donovan Rossa or Pearse or Collins but that it was an option to the PIRA then that is a separate argument but the argument that something was morally OK in 1921 but not in 1969 because of the passing of a relatively short amount of time is in my view a nonsense. It was a different time from 1798 to 1803 to 1847 to 1867 to 1916 to 1919 but i have never heard anyone try to say that Wolfe Tone was OK because he was of his time but the Fenians were wrong because the time and accettability had changed.

I suggest that you read what the papers and people writing to the papers were saying about Collins and his cohorts at the time because they were sayinf very similar things to what people would say today about the PIRA and its campaign.
It should be remembered that Collins had a £10,000 price on his head his actions then were no more acceptable to polite society then than the PIRAs were acceptable to polite society of the 70s and 80s.

Voipjunkie

Voipjunkie wrote: »

I think this is a cop out to a hard question it is an attempt to get around a difficult issue.

I don't accept that you can just dismiss the issue with a that was a different time answer.

Plenty of things were legal in the early 1900's Voipjunkie that are frowned upon now-do you accept them,would you like them back?I suggest you'd be in a lonely minority-just as you would have been in the 80's if you supported the IRA in Ireland.
Would you like democracy to be restricted to men only?To women over 30 for instance?
Would you like your cinema to be restricted to showing Laurel and Hardy and no sex? Would you like to be beaten around a bush if you do something "immoral"?
Would you like to hand in your TV and your internet-the latter being the tools of today that inform us what is a social norm (not blowing people asunder) and what isn't?

There are countless other examples?

Well? Well?

If your view is that Democracy was not available to Wolfe Tone or Robert Emmet or Gavan Duffy or O'Donovan Rossa or Pearse or Collins but that it was an option to the PIRA then that is a separate argument but the argument that something was morally OK in 1921 but not in 1969 because of the passing of a relatively short amount of time is in my view a nonsense. It was a different time from 1798 to 1803 to 1847 to 1867 to 1916 to 1919 but i have never heard anyone try to say that Wolfe Tone was OK because he was of his time but the Fenians were wrong because the time and accettability had changed.

It may have been a short amount of time but it was a very significant amount of time 50 years to be precise.
How acceptable was abortion back then? Contraception,Divorce (though they took a tad longer,they were certainly available in NI in fact we had masses of people heading North/East to avail of them? All things which mass media introduced the Irish public to as well as other acceptable norms.
You are on a loser there if you think that because things were done in a certain way in the early 1900's,that they were acceptable in the 70's and 80's too they weren't and well you know it.

I suggest that you read what the papers and people writing to the papers were saying about Collins and his cohorts at the time because they were sayinf very similar things to what people would say today about the PIRA and its campaign.
It should be remembered that Collins had a £10,000 price on his head his actions then were no more acceptable to polite society then than the PIRAs were acceptable to polite society of the 70s and 80s.

Comparing the mass media penetration of the 70's 80's and today to the early 1900's is part of the very misnomer I mentioned.
Frankly it's as ridiculous as saying the mindsets were the same.

murphaph

Pearse and his ilk were criminals of course. They'd have rotted away quietly in gaol if the brits hadn't made the stupid mistake of shooting them!

Voip, did you read my last post to FTA? I said "the guards shouldn't have abused people". Simple enough, but I can understand how a colleague of a murdered Garda might overstep the mark when holding one of those animals in custody.