Incident At UK Parliament

Like yourself, I haven't personally been threatened either. Won't put up with it a bit. Nor will I allow anyone else to be threatened like that either. Crazy people are everywhere. Please, go on living in your dreamworld as you like, and go on believing that the Muslims want to live and let live peacefully with everyone else from here on out. I will not try to convince you otherwise. As long as you're happy, that's all that matters. Those people are a threat to peaceful humanity, plain and simple.

I'm not a threat to you, yours or anyone who lives or wants to live peacefully. Never have been. I've never made overtures to kill or enslave anyone because they were of another belief. Or no belief.

Enough of this business anyway. Let's talk about something else for awhile.

 

So all the Muslims I have met are masking their anger and the countless times they have engaged me in conversation they are inwardly seething and can barely supress the desire to leap upon me and separate my head form my shoulders?
I do not for a moment think you believe such a thing. No one with an ounce of common sense would either. You made some very rash claims and are unable to walk them back. The claim every single Muslim want to kill every single non-believer is complete and utter rubbish.

 

Okie dokie.

 

Two points

#1 The IRA types did not jusr "grow out of it". The British Government made major concessions to eliminate the injustices felt by the minority nationalist Catholics. This was facilitated by US Senator Mitchell, and aided by UK membership of the EU. Both communities then made major efforts to get along with the people who they had ethnically cleansed. The personal chemistry between Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley helped.

#2 The Irish, English and Scots have been "at it" since before the First crusade Battle of Brunanburh - Wikipedia After the Protestant schism the Catholic church diverted its crusading from the Turks to eradicating the protestant heresy. Cue Spanish support for the Irish, who remained Catholic and the protestant settlement of Ulster by the Scots and 300 years of the protestant ascendancy. The Earl of Essex and Oliver Cromwell were experts in COIN operations and the Spanish and French both tried regime change.

There is still the potential for the conflict to reappear...
Continuity Irish Republican Army - Wikipedia
Police probe image of masked gang of thugs next to sectarian graffiti threatening to crucify Catholics in Belfast - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk


It has its funny side...


No one knows whether this is a truce or the end to the conflict. Nor whether Brexit will reignite the problems
Northern Ireland’s greatest fear from a Brexit is the return to conflict | Kathryn Gaw

 

Yeah, but they aren't going at it like they were in years past. Not near as bloody as the old days.

 

Ethnic Cleansing? Really? Maybe 350 years ago under Cromwell. Darfur was ethnic cleansing. The 'Troubles' were not ethnic cleansing.

 

...and a third educational point

The Muslims haven't been at it continuously since the Crusades. For most of the last 1500 years, surprisingly, much of the Moslem world has been at peace wiuth its Christian and Jewish neighbours. The Middle east and Balkans was home to communities with a mixture of religion, mostly under Ottoman suzerainty. The big pogroms and ethnic cleansing came with the nationalist movements of the 19-20th centuries.

The Islamic world traded extensively with Christian Europe. Not only was the islamic world on the spice route, but once sugar cane was discovered the Muslim North Africans and Christian Portuguese stopped capturing galley slaves from the other and collaborated to enslave Africans to work the sugar plantations.

As for the Crusades themselves, only half of them were against the Moslems occupying the Holy Land. One of the most effective crusaders was Frederick II (5th and 6th) who negotiated a deal instead of fighting.

 

Nawaz says that during his period as an Islamist, he and his fellow jihadists loved all this vague diversionary defence of historical or contemporary 'normal' Islam, which, in truth, dilutes the current 'live' issues of Wahabism, Saudi, IS, terror, radicalisation etc etc etc. A useful denial that something else was happening.

His position now (along with the Quillam Foundation) is to attempt to bring reason to the debate, rather than support one dogmatic side or the other. He's looking for solutions, rather than emotive signalling.

It's nuanced.
I really do (again) recommend his book 'Radical' to anyone waging in on this stuff.
Strange tome, occasionally strange fellow, and there is stuff I might heartily disagree with, but it absolutely triggers deeper thoughts on much of this shit than you see among the same old same old internet to and fro. Forced copies of it onto friends both left and right. All have found something in it.

He and his ilk, the nuance they bring, and the threats they've almost actively invited to their own lives, have my admiration.

So do the Anti Nowhere League, though.
So there you go

 

Let's stop with this Crusades nonsense. Islam invaded the west 500 years before any European struck back at the Islamic world in the Crusades. Look at the Battle of Tours fer criisakes, or the history of Spain from about 700 to 1500. The Crusades were a response to 500 years of Islamic attacks.

 

Even m kenny would struggle to come up with such utter rubbish. Ethnic cleansing what are you on about. The IRA terrorists killed innocent victims irrespective of who they were, without a second thought for anything other than to show they could kill. Bombs in England targeted anyone in there path - that is not ethnic cleansing it is indiscriminate murder.

 

But MKenny knows that blaming the other side for every excess is not going to solve the problem. Some might like the comfort of telling themselves they were the good guys and the other side all wore black hat but truth be told both sides killed innocents. To my knowledge the British Army is the only western Army that allowed convicted murderers to serve in its ranks.
It is hard for outsiders to understand the depth of hatred caused by Bloody Sunday. That random killing spree by 1 crazed Para was the root cause of 90% of the following carnage. He should have been tried in court but the establishment closed ranks around him. The trials and convictions of the Birmingham 6, Maguire 7 and Guilford 4 were the worst example of totally innocent people framed by a corrupt Police force in the 20th Century so please no lectures about morality. It is undeniable undercover British 'Execution Squads ' were on the loose in NI and not all their targets were 'terrorists'. Some innocent people were murdered by them.
Reconciliation means admitting your 'crimes' and not simply the other side having to confess to theirs.
As an aside the IRA bombing was anything but random killing. It was targeted and in the end completely successful as it forced the UK to negotiate. Yes innocents were killed but a system was in place where the two sides could sort hoax

 

Context is something you struggle with, the point was the Irish Troubles were not about ethnic cleansing. As for reconciliation meaning admitting your crimes do not remember seeing Martin McGuiness admitting to his crimes. Good to see clarification that the innocents who died from the IRA bombings were targeted,I am sure their families are greatly comforted.

 

I made no distinction between killings by either side. It may be that your bias causes you think anyone who does not agree 100% with everything you say is the enemy but then that is a perfect example the problem. Score-settlers who are determined to make the other side admit it is the guilty one just get in the way of a solution.
If McGuiness refuses to admit his guilt then he is in good company because I have never seen (for example) Lance Corporal F of the Parachute Regiment admit it either. I am trying to make you see it from the other side but I suspect your are deaf to any possibility that your gang ever did anything wrong. I do not labour under the same delusion.

 

Correct. My RC relatives in Newry had their house badly damaged when the IRA mortared the RUC post, and so did a couple of their neighbours. Aunt Annie spoke to a guy in an Argyll patrol in Keady, and next night some retard painted "collaborator" across her front door before putting a grenade through the window. Fortunately she was out back at the coal bunker at the time.

 

Perhaps you could look up what was the largest bomb attack in terms of deaths (35) caused. It was carried out by the UVF.

Dublin and Monaghan bombings - Wikipedia

Which just confirms what I have clearly stated a number of times-all sides (State and Para-Military) killed innocents. The question then becomes a dogfight where each murder gang claims the other gangs were worse than them. A sort of endless 'you started it'

 

People have long memories in Ireland. There used to be a saying " we are now landing in Belfast airport, please set your clocks back 300 years".

Talk to republicans about murder and they will mention Oliver Cromwell and the Black and Tans in the same breath as Bloody Sunday

If you don't think that the Irish troubles were about ethnic cleansing then try explaining the settlement of Ulster and the Protestant ascendancy in any other terms. Or the redistribution of people about the "peace wall"?

You do have a point about the moral difference between the PIRA campaign against civilians and the restrained British response. You can rightly occupy the moral high ground against McGuiness.

Would you have felt better if the British had used the rules of engagement that are currently applied in the Great war against terror? Would it have made a difference to you if we had, say, launched air strikes against the south in retaliation whenever any shots were fired over the border? Or deployed the SAS in the south? Or use our military power to occupy the South in the same way that the Israeli Op "Peace in Galilee" tried to secure Israel through the invasion of Lebanon in 1982? Or do you that this would this have created more martyrs for the cause?

 

I think one of the things that gets muddied about 'the troubles' is the revisionist history that it is somehow a religious war. It wasn't. It never was. It was a nationalist war and religion was just a handy way to categorize your extraction and thus your nationality. Native Irish are overwhelmingly Catholic while British immigrants (or descendants of immigrants) are overwhelmingly Protestant, with some exceptions on both sides.
It's important to get that right or you are simply arguing the wrong premise, no matter what side you favor (if you take sides). In any case, the Provos were Marxist (thus atheist), so arguing that they were fighting for religion becomes asinine.

Irish joke.
Smith is walking through a neutral area of Belfast when a masked man steps out and holds a gun to his head and asks: "Are you Catholic or Protestant?" Smith knows he must get this right or die, so thinking quickly he says: "I'm Jewish. Me Da' and Ma are both Jewish, the whole family is Jewish going way back, always been Jewish."
The gunmen breaks out into a huge grin and says: "You're the 6th Jewish bloke tonight. I must be the luckiest Palestinian in Belfast!"

 

And yet again Problem B used to apologize for Problem A.

If we are going to use the Troubles as a counter example to the recent London attack, then you have to go all the way. Please give me an example of a catholic community that moved into a non-catholic community, became radical for some reason and started killing the locals. I'm sure there are some, but it doesn't happen with the frequency we see here.

Religions are not equal, they have different books, doctrines, and beliefs. As a result some are more violent than others.

 

Not in very recent times, though some episodes in Africa and the Balkans come close, but if you go back a bit you will find plenty, just think of Spanish and Portuguese (both Catholic) colonization though it was more "enslaving and killing" Most religions did go bad at some time in history, the big challenge is how defuse the threat of the "radicals" without becoming similar to them, having the moral high ground is no big consolation when someone blows up your house.

 

And yet AGAIN problem B to explain Problem A.

I'm talking about a disaffected person becoming a fundamentalist in their faith and going on a killing spree in the modern era. You bring up Portugese colonialism? I don't care what the Portuguese did 800 fucking years ago. I care what a religious radical did 5 days ago.

Sorry for my abrasive tone, I'm just trying to keep this thread laser focused on the topic at hand.