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Queen agrees to meet IRA Commander

Darat

Lackey
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Darat
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I'm not one to have much praise for the Queen but seeing this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18552221 I do have to say "good for her". I'm not sure if one of my family had been killed by the IRA I would agree to "shake hands" with one of the scum who murdered them.

This might seem nothing but symbolic but such symbolic acts can achieve real change, you never know perhaps I will live long enough to see the peace walls torn down. That would be good.
 
The only real symbolism here is "change." The change is about as meaningful as Obama's "change."

McGuinness supports sectarian policing in the north of Ireland where children on school busses are regularly dragged from the busses and searched under terrorism legislation, for no other reason than they are from nationalist areas.

As for the Queen's "hugely successful" visit to Ireland - this is pure propaganda. The capital and other cities were unlawfully cleansed of Irish citizens to facilitate her royal worthlessness' visit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_aWuoXNjWo
 
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Darat said:
I'm not one to have much praise for the Queen but seeing this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18552221 I do have to say "good for her". I'm not sure if one of my family had been killed by the IRA I would agree to "shake hands" with one of the scum who murdered them.

This might seem nothing but symbolic but such symbolic acts can achieve real change, you never know perhaps I will live long enough to see the peace walls torn down. That would be good.
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She's meeting the Deputy First minister of Northern Ireland, which is a public duty. She has met all manner of people in this capacity, whatever her opinions of them may be on a personal level. This meeting is probably useful. The Northern Ireland peace process has held quite well. Heaven knows, real change in NI is both belated and desperately needed.

But what possessed the IRA ever to mount a bombing campaign against civilian targets is something I will never understand. It was not merely criminal, but insane.
 
Craig B said:
She's meeting the Deputy First minister of Northern Ireland, which is a public duty. She has met all manner of people in this capacity, whatever her opinions of them may be on a personal level. This meeting is probably useful. The Northern Ireland peace process has held quite well. Heaven knows, real change in NI is both belated and desperately needed.

But what possessed the IRA ever to mount a bombing campaign against civilian targets is something I will never understand. It was not merely criminal, but insane.
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Because many of the rank and file used the "Cause" as a thin excuse to exercise their own propensity for violence. Had they grown up anywhere else in the world they would have gravitated naturally to organised crime.

Having a degree of social status and legitimacy, however limited and warped, is a liberating feeling for a psychopath. For them to be able to affect policy in an organisation that uses violence means more violence with less reason.
 
Carnivore said:
Because many of the rank and file used the "Cause" as a thin excuse to exercise their own propensity for violence. Had they grown up anywhere else in the world they would have gravitated naturally to organised crime.

Having a degree of social status and legitimacy, however limited and warped, is a liberating feeling for a psychopath. For them to be able to affect policy in an organisation that uses violence means more violence with less reason.
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I entirely disagree. Adams and McGuinness are not psychopaths. They are intelligent and cultured people. Neither was "Bomber" Harris a pychopath, who orchestrated the intentional bombing of civilians during the Second World War on a scale unimaginable to even the most extreme IRA bomber during the Troubles. If it was simply a case of pychopathy I wouldn't be so puzzled. But clearly it is something else. Consider Winston Churchill. Was he a psychopath? http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHU407A.html
I quite agree that it may be several weeks or even months before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let us do it one hundred per cent. In the meanwhile, I want the matter studied in cold blood by sensible people and not by that particular set of psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which one runs across now here now there. Pray address yourself to this. It is a big thing and can only be discarded for a big reason. I shall of course have to square Uncle Joe and the President; but you need not bring this into your calculations at the present time. Just try to find out what it is like on its merits.
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If he had been a lunatic that would be easy to explain: but he was not.
 
Does the IRA commander know Freddie Mercury is dead? He'll be very disappointed if he doesn't...
 
Anything that builds bridges between those in power and influence is to be praised. This is not as remarkable as the meetings and handshakes between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness, since the Queen has had to endure meeting some pretty dispicable people in her time, just because they were Head of State.

The next stage is such reconcilliantion continues to casacade down to the poorer areas of the likes of Belfast where much of the Troubles took place and more people on either side of the divide will meet and learn to tolerate each other.
 
Craig B said:
I entirely disagree. Adams and McGuinness are not psychopaths. They are intelligent and cultured people. Neither was "Bomber" Harris a pychopath, who orchestrated the intentional bombing of civilians during the Second World War on a scale unimaginable to even the most extreme IRA bomber during the Troubles. If it was simply a case of pychopathy I wouldn't be so puzzled. But clearly it is something else. Consider Winston Churchill. Was he a psychopath? http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHU407A.html If he had been a lunatic that would be easy to explain: but he was not.
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Adams and McGuinness aren't. They are ruthless but able to see when it is in the best interest of their cause to bring the violence to an end. That is why I said "many of the rank and file".

Members of ASU's - and their counterparts in Protestant paramilitary groups - who enjoyed the status and respect of freedom fighters in their community during the "struggle". The ones who gave up the fight reluctantly or refused to give up at all. The ones who agitated for and carried out random civilian murders. The ones who enforced "order" in their communities through torture. The ones who have never worked a day in their lives and who since the Good Friday agreement have transitioned seamlessly into drug dealing, robbery and extortion.

The Real IRA and the UDA had plenty of clinical psychopaths. Not everyone who takes part in a terrorist conflict is motivated by principle or even by tribal hate. Some people just like hurting others and being praised for it.
 
@Carnivore

I agree with everything you say there. What I was thinking of was that some strategic or operational decision must have been made, at the highest levels, that civilian targets would be attacked. It's not simply a case of excesses perpetrated by individual maniacs, because these would have been punished most severely if they had been in contravention of orders from above.
 
Queen agrees to meet IRA Commander
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I bet she "accidentally" leaves her purse behind and blows him up. That'd be funny. like in a Family Guy cartoon sense. Don't get me wrong, I hate the queen and her stupid jewels and stuff, but I could laugh at that.
 
Caustic Logic said:
I bet she "accidentally" leaves her purse behind and blows him up. That'd be funny. like in a Family Guy cartoon sense. Don't get me wrong, I hate the queen and her stupid jewels and stuff, but I could laugh at that.
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Gotta include them jewels in the hate. Stupid jewels, grrrrrrrrrr.
 
I think there's a typo in the thread title, it should be 'Republican Deputy First Minister agrees to meet Queen'.
The Queen meets and shakes hands with whoever she's told to on official visits, but it is a significant shift for Sinn Fein to agree to a senior party member meeting someone from the British Royal Family.
 
The Troubles may have ended and Normalisation is progressing (love the innocuous words they pick), but there is still violent sectarianism going on.
 
Guybrush Threepwood said:
I think there's a typo in the thread title, it should be 'Republican Deputy First Minister agrees to meet Queen'.
The Queen meets and shakes hands with whoever she's told to on official visits, but it is a significant shift for Sinn Fein to agree to a senior party member meeting someone from the British Royal Family.
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You really think they'd make her meet this guy if she didn't want to?
 
Seismosaurus said:
You really think they'd make her meet this guy if she didn't want to?
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He's Deputy First Minister of one of the parts of the United Kingdom. She meets him in the course of her public duties. What she wants to do, she has the good sense to conceal. In public she does what the Prime Minister "advises" her to do, and quite right too, just as she reads what is put in front of her in her Speech to Parliament.
 
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