Pole injured in RIRA's attack (Real-IRA)

Harry:

All the people they killed were civilians: because the IRA/INLA/RIRA/CIRA/UVF/UDA are all far too cowardly to fight as an army, they're only brave enough to use cowardly weapons and to snipe from behind the cover of women and children.

I'd have loved to see the Republicans pick their best 100 men, the loyalists their best 100 men and the British army their best 100 men. Drop the whole lot off on a nice remote island with equal equipment and let them sort it out. Last man standing wins.

Big Paddy:

i just wonder when something is gonna be done to rain in the dissidents before they attack Loyalists/Protestants and Pandora's box is opened.

SeanBMThreads: 41 Posts: 8,647 Joined: Mar 10, 08	Mar 29, 09, 15:02 / #
Pole injured in RIRA's attack (Real-IRA) Has anyone any info on how this Polish person is?. Trevek: went to live in Galway and hitched around. Great place for a session or two. Trevek: There are/were quite a few English folk I met who knew Ireland intimately and loved her too. Sorry, i did not mean it like that. I also have good English friends who live in Ireland, they just don't travel around up the North at all. time means: time means Did you serve as a soldier for the British in Ireland?.

kevThreads: 2 Posts: 10 Joined: Nov 4, 07	Mar 29, 09, 15:06 / #
Yes they were a terror group. Just ask the families of any of their numerous victims. Just how many hundreds of years do you think the IRA have existed?

TrevekThreads: 30 Posts: 2,088 Joined: May 21, 08	Mar 29, 09, 15:11 / #
SeanBM: Sorry, i did not mean it like that. It's cool, I didn't mean it like that either. Sorry if I sounded indignant or patronising. My curiousity with the north was because I'd never served there. I wanted to see what it was like. I had a friend there who was both an Ulsterman and a former comrade of mine in the army (no prizes for guessing where his loyalties lie!). I visited him once and then decided to move to Galway. While living there (6 months) I hitched around the north (Stroke City, Belfast, down through the borders. It is a credit to the good people there that I came to no harm, considering some of the places I ended up (Bogside, Falls, Newry) with my lovely English accent and camouflage rucksack (1988). Went back a couple of times to visit folk or just hitchhike. Studied at Queen's 1996-7 when the (first) ceasefire was in place. Haven't been for a while now. I want to take my Polish wife over for a visit.

SeanBMThreads: 41 Posts: 8,647 Joined: Mar 10, 08	Mar 29, 09, 15:17 / #
Trevek: with my lovely English accent It was the same for me with my lovely Dublin accent. I had one guy tell me that he was told as a kid that everyone from the south had horns, unbelievable!. Trevek: Haven't been for a while now. I want to take my Polish wife over for a visit. I had the pleasure of bring some friends over to Ireland last summer, over to the Aran Islands, Inis Mor, off the coast of Galway. They'd never seen the Ocean before or flown in a plane, they still rave about it now :) It is great to see things through the eyes of others.

time meansThreads: 9 Posts: 2,309 Joined: Apr 21, 08	Mar 29, 09, 15:18 / #
SeanBM: Did you serve as a soldier for the British in Ireland?. yes, i was in ulster in 85. i have broken my own rule of getting involved in this type of disscusion. i will say i am glad the peace process seems to be working and no one wants a return to the bad old days.

SeanBMThreads: 41 Posts: 8,647 Joined: Mar 10, 08	Edited by: SeanBM Mar 29, 09, 15:22 / #
time means: i have broken my own rule of getting involved in this type of disscusion. Me too. This conversation always goes one way and it never helps. I live here in Poland now. time means: i will say i am glad the peace process seems to be working and no one wants a return to the bad old days. Definitely.

time meansThreads: 9 Posts: 2,309 Joined: Apr 21, 08	Edited by: time means Mar 29, 09, 15:31 / #
SeanBM: Me too. This conversation always goes one way and it never helps. very true, i have nothing against the irish or ireland, indeed my great grandad on my grandmas side was from somewhere in monaghan and i wasn`t even born in the uk although my parents are English.

irishdeanoThreads: 11 Posts: 480 Joined: Oct 23, 07	Mar 29, 09, 23:03 / #
time means: lol yeah right. why were civillians targerted? They never actually target civillians..but i suppose the british army never killed any civillians? quote=time means] How are serving soldiers of the udr (as it was then) foreign?[/quote] Yes but the UDR was a section in the British Army who also were involved with UDA,UFF,UVF an LVF

TrevekThreads: 30 Posts: 2,088 Joined: May 21, 08	Mar 29, 09, 23:30 / #
irishdeano: They never actually target civillians Sorry Deano, I'm not into tit-for-tat historical arguments, but on the British mainland (perhaps not NI) civilians were definitely targetted (Birmingham Pub Bombings). Thankfully, as we've said, these days are past.

irishdeanoThreads: 11 Posts: 480 Joined: Oct 23, 07	Edited by: irishdeano Mar 29, 09, 23:31 / #
Trevek: Sorry Deano, I'm not into tit-for-tat historical arguments, but on the British mainland (perhaps not NI) civilians were definitely targetted (Birmingham Pub Bombings). Thankfully, as we've said, these days are past. Its why a 7 year old girl was shot outside a church 2 mile away from my house by a member of the british army Hmmm Bloody sunday? Both sides it happens

Ireland32Threads: 2 Posts: 234 Joined: Feb 23, 09	Mar 30, 09, 22:19 / #
Things are hotting up again Riots in Belfast and Lurgan this evening

Ireland32Threads: 2 Posts: 234 Joined: Feb 23, 09	Mar 30, 09, 22:29 / #
Burning cars in city. M1 motorway closed at Lurgan also....just the dissedent republicans again. Watched Panorama on BBC this evening......its scary. This thing is gathering momentum again.

TrevekThreads: 30 Posts: 2,088 Joined: May 21, 08	Edited by: Administrator Mar 30, 09, 23:09 / #
Here's a link uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090330/tuk-belfast-on-alert-as-cars-seized-and-4 5dbed5.html Suspected IRA dissidents have hijacked and burnt cars in Catholic parts of Northern Ireland in a coordinated effort to block roads and spark bomb threats, police have said.

Big PaddyThreads: 2 Posts: 47 Joined: Mar 30, 09	Edited by: Big Paddy Mar 31, 09, 20:14 / #
irishdeano: They never actually target civillians Sorry but i just can't let that comment go.. Off the top of my head... Try telling that to the widow of the Reverend Robert Bradford, a Protestant minister who was gunned down by the IRA simply because of his religion & because he spoke out agaisnt the Republican death squads, also tell that to the widow of Community centre caretaker Mr Kenneth Campbell who was murdered in cold blood along with Rev Bradford. The following is taken from Wikipedia The Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald made an expression of sympathy in the Dáil Éireann saying... I would like to refer to the brutal murder, by the Provisional IRA, of the Reverend Robert Bradford, MP in Belfast on Saturday last. His death and that of Mr. Ken Campbell, caretaker at the Finaghy Community Centre, are part of a calculated series of atrocities committed in recent days. I know that all the people we represent share the sense of sorrow, anger and outrage widely felt in Northern Ireland at present. The killing of an elected representative of the people calls for particular condemnation in the strongest possible terms and serves to remind us of the real objectives of the organisation responsible. The IRA has once again shown its utter contempt for human life and for the democratic process which it has recently sought to distort for its own ends. Its true attitude to democracy and freedom was summed up in a recent statement of an IRA spokesman who, when asked by an interviewer for a foreign newspaper about the wishes of the people in this part of the country concerning an aspect of reunification, replied, “We call the shots. We don't really give a damn what they want” Nazi's ! Also from Wiki.. In late 1990 the IRA Army Council gave approval for what was to be the first of a series of proxy bomb attacks. The plan was to kidnap a member of the British security forces or a British Army sympathiser, hold their family hostage and force the kidnapped person to take explosives to a target. In the early hours of 24 October 1990 armed and masked IRA members (volunteers) took the family of Patrick "Patsy" Gillespie hostage. Gillespie was a Catholic who worked as a cook for the British Army and so was seen by the IRA as a collaborator and legitimate target. The IRA forced him to drive a car loaded with 1,000 pounds of explosives to the British Army checkpoint at Coshquin on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. When he arrived at the checkpoint the bomb was detonated by remote control, killing Gillespie and five soldiers from the Kings Regiment. At Gillespie's funeral Bishop Edward Daly said the IRA and its supporters were "...the complete contradiction of Christianity. They may say they are followers of Christ. Some of them may even still engage in the hypocrisy of coming to church, but their lives and their works proclaim clearly that they follow Satan."[3] I could go on all day listing deliberate targeting of innocent people by the Provo's but i wont, all i will say is that many of today's so-called dissident Republicans are ex IRA members, . So the slaughter of the innocents continues. I sincerely wish the Polish delivery guy a speedy recovery and offer apologies for what happend to him in my country.

TrevekThreads: 30 Posts: 2,088 Joined: May 21, 08	Edited by: Trevek Mar 29, 09, 23:54 / #
irishdeano: Both sides it happens True, not disputing that. I'm disputing that civilians were never targetted by republican forces. irishdeano: They never actually target civillians I might only be from England, but that's where it was happening when I was growing up.

niejestemcapitaThreads: 3 Posts: 666 Joined: Jan 3, 09	Mar 29, 09, 23:58 / #
irishdeano: They never actually target civillians HELLO???!?

TrevekThreads: 30 Posts: 2,088 Joined: May 21, 08	Mar 30, 09, 22:25 / #
Any idea what about?

TrevekThreads: 30 Posts: 2,088 Joined: May 21, 08	Mar 30, 09, 22:31 / #
Frustration, I suppose. Interesting how one of the reports about the football fighting had residents saying they hadn't seen anything like it. Shows how peaceful it must have become over the last decade.

Ireland32Threads: 2 Posts: 234 Joined: Feb 23, 09	Mar 31, 09, 20:22 / #
It is these sort of tit for tat comments that allow the fuel still to burn in the country. we may have decommisioned the men of war....decommisioning minds seems to be proving alot more difficult.

osiolThreads: 59 Posts: 4,714 Joined: Jul 25, 07	Mar 31, 09, 20:49 / #
irishdeano: Same as if England was taken over by the scotland tomorrow an scottish took control. The english would fight for there country back But then those who actually settled and took power then ceased to have any kind of support from the country which had planted them there (in the case of your example, Scotland), so you would have Scottish people in England who would claim to be Scottish without Scots in Scotland seeing any kind of affinity of association with them. I've never met anyone in England who considers Northern Ireland's unionist population as "us" as opposed to the "them" of Republicans. It seems that violence has momentum. Some people have a vested interest in violence. Despite all the whingeing in the rest of the UK, there have been good times economically, and the bad times haven't been as dire on a worldwide scale than in most parts of the world. There has also been the Celtic Tiger. Northern Ireland gets left behind due to its lack of ability to move on. But maybe it does have the ability to move on. Maybe it is moving on. I hope so, for the benefit of those who call it home. I only give a monkeys about anything to do with the place because it involves people and I believe in humanity, and because it is really not so far from home. I don't care about the politics. I just don't want innocent people getting hurt or killed.

Big PaddyThreads: 2 Posts: 47 Joined: Mar 30, 09	Mar 31, 09, 21:56 / #
Ireland32: It is these sort of tit for tat comments that allow the fuel still to burn in the country. The truth hurts , doesn't it.

Ireland32Threads: 2 Posts: 234 Joined: Feb 23, 09	Edited by: Ireland32 Mar 31, 09, 23:06 / #
Big Paddy: The truth hurts , doesn't it. I will not be drawn into conversations on incidents that happened during the troubles....try looking to the future and no the past. People on both sides suffer.....thats the truth and thats what really hurts.

TrevekThreads: 30 Posts: 2,088 Joined: May 21, 08	Apr 1, 09, 09:03 / #
Ireland32, I hadn't intended to be draw into a tit-for-tat exchange but you do make some valid comments which I would like to respond to. I think one of the problems is that we are still locked in the the semantic battles of by-gone days, particularly over words like 'targetted' and 'civilian'. Earlier in this thread I was rightly pulled up for contradicting myself over the targetting of foreign nationals. It was pointed out that people weren't targetted for being foreign they happened to be around when something happened. Hence, when somebody says 'civilians were never targetted', whilst I consider it to be erroneous (at least in the case of mainland GB, I can't speak for the 6 counties) it is possible to argue the fact by saying something like 'security forces were targetted and civilians were hurt in the action' or 'properties, not people, were targetted'. Likewise, whilst the security forces in the 6 counties were respnosible for the deaths of civilians they might argue that civilians were never 'targetted', they were just victims of circumstance. Likewise, there is the dichotomy of 'civilian' and 'legitimate target', as the recent RIRA action shows. A pizza delivery crew might seem to be innocent civilians doing their innocent civilian job... but according to RIRA they are, in fact, 'collaborators' and therefore 'legitimate targets'. From the other side, when security forces carried out certain actions (think Loughall, Gibraltar), they were criticised in some areas for killing 'unarmed civilians' and yet these 'civilians' were recognised as Volunteers both before and after their deaths (a case of wanting it both ways). Similarly, when loyalist paramilitaries carried out certain actions against civilians, their response was often to highlight some aspect of the victim's lifestyle which made them 'legitimate'. So, I think there is a problem that until it is recognised that there is a semantic battle still being waged your comment about disarming the minds is sadly all to valid.

ShelleySThreads: 18 Posts: 3,647 Joined: Jun 26, 07	Apr 1, 09, 10:44 / #
Ireland32: we may have decommisioned the men of war....decommisioning minds seems to be proving alot more difficult. which is quite evident in this thread, it's actually quite upsetting to see how close to the surface the hate still simmers and forgiveness on boths sides is never really going to "real" :(

Ireland32Threads: 2 Posts: 234 Joined: Feb 23, 09	Apr 1, 09, 14:58 / #
Comments on this thread make me very sad to be an Irish Man. I have 3 beautiful children all of whom have grew up in a stable society. They know nothing about the troubles and i'd like to keep it that way. They intergrate freely with all religions in the North, something that I was not subject to. We owe it to our children, to move forward together, as hard as it may be to forget the past, but for their sake jasus lets drop the tit for tat comments that date back to the year dot. Move on. Hold your head up high and enjoy the peace and stability that are children do cause from what I have heard on this thread....too many are still living in the past to enjoy what they have now.

Big PaddyThreads: 2 Posts: 47 Joined: Mar 30, 09	Apr 1, 09, 15:22 / #
Ireland32: try looking to the future and no the past. People on both sides suffer.....thats the truth and thats what really hurts. I do look to the future and i strongly welcomed (and was encouraged by) Martin McG's comments after the dissident attacks but i cant let the type of disinformation/propaganda that was being spouted go unchecked. Yes we all suffered & i (like i am sure you too) lost close friends in the conflict but we must put that behind us and move on for the sake of the kids, i just wonder when something is gonna be done to rain in the dissidents before they attack Loyalists/Protestants and Pandora's box is opened.

HarryThreads: 59 Posts: 7,996 Joined: May 2, 07	Apr 1, 09, 15:22 / #
irishdeano: They never actually target civillians. So the two pubs bombed in Birmingham were military targets were they? Of the 21 dead and 182 injured that day, how many were not civilians? irishdeano: but i suppose the british army never killed any civillians? All the people they killed were civilians: because the IRA/INLA/RIRA/CIRA/UVF/UDA are all far too cowardly to fight as an army, they're only brave enough to use cowardly weapons and to snipe from behind the cover of women and children. I'd have loved to see the Republicans pick their best 100 men, the loyalists their best 100 men and the British army their best 100 men. Drop the whole lot off on a nice remote island with equal equipment and let them sort it out. Last man standing wins.

Ireland32Threads: 2 Posts: 234 Joined: Feb 23, 09	Edited by: Ireland32 Apr 1, 09, 15:27 / #
Harry: All the people they killed were civilians: because the IRA/INLA/RIRA/CIRA/UVF/UDA are all far too cowardly to fight as an army, they're only brave enough to use cowardly weapons and to snipe from behind the cover of women and children. I'd have loved to see the Republicans pick their best 100 men, the loyalists their best 100 men and the British army their best 100 men. Drop the whole lot off on a nice remote island with equal equipment and let them sort it out. Last man standing wins. Harry I think you should be spokes person on Peace and Reconciliation......NOT. Wise up. Move On. All ye are doing is playing into the hands of those who would like to see a return to the troubles. Big Paddy: i just wonder when something is gonna be done to rain in the dissidents before they attack Loyalists/Protestants and Pandora's box is opened. Ignore them......they will go away. Do not be drawn into their world. Thats what they want !

ShelleySThreads: 18 Posts: 3,647 Joined: Jun 26, 07	Apr 1, 09, 15:43 / #
Trevek: I think NI should join Eurovision song contest. In Irish "stylie" I will say "they've fekall chance" ;0) I shall still vote for them though!

TrevekThreads: 30 Posts: 2,088 Joined: May 21, 08	Apr 1, 09, 15:46 / #
ShelleyS: In Irish "stylie" I will say "they've fekall chance" ;0) I shall still vote for them though! True, but it would be great for the peace process, don't you think? I mean, look at former Yugoslavia; just over a decade agao they were all killing each other and now they give each other 12 points (whereas iceland still can't fogive Britain a few illicit fish fingers!).