Patrick Finucane

[ViolentPanda]

I wonder what would've become of the Northern Irish protestants if the IRA had achieved their goal of making Ulster part of the republic.

You say "the IRA", but neither the IRA or the PIRA ever encompassed the entirety of Republican sentiment.

Another thing we'll never know is what life might've been like in the six counties if the troubles hadn't happened, or if they hadn't taken such a violent course.

Except that they were historically inevitable, as was the level of violence.

As for Palestine, I really don't think the difference between that and Northern Ireland is simply a matter of numbers. Repression is one thing, genocide quite another.

That sentence contains historical ignorance on a massive scale, or do you believe that the Protestant-dominated counties of Ireland suffered no deaths during the colonial era?

 

[butchersapron]

Most of Finucane's high-profile defendants had already been convicted.

Of the charges they were being tried on? I like the 'most'.

 

[frogwoman]

yeah, as if the troubles didn't start because of centuries of occupation and what could be described as genocide.

 

[SpookyFrank]

And did they constitute the majority of his clients?

There was a barrister who's name escapes me right now, who defended many many Republicans and often successfully, he went on to stand and be elected as a Unionist MP, using your logic he should also have been shot as an IRA member.

Well I wouldn't have shot him but I doubt I'd have voted for him either.

 

[Deareg]

Well I wouldn't have shot him but I doubt I'd have voted for him either.

Nice wriggle.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Appraisal of facts is always subjective.

Yes, but some of us are better able to assess facts that don't accord to our opinions than others are.

I haven't seen any evidence of it on this thread, but in the past I've seen urbanites claiming that the troubles were above all a class conflict.

All social conflicts are class conflicts. That's blindingly obvious if you assess the roots of any conflict.

That's a simplistic and binary view. Not wrong as such, just incomplete.

It may be simplistic, but it's hardly binary. You can't, for example, have a binary opposition between the three main classes.

I may have a simplistic view but it's not binary, if anything it's even simpler than that, just a venn diagram consisting of one big circle labelled 'cunts'.

No, it's definitely binary. There's people who hold the same opinions as you = not cunts, and people who don't = cunts.

If I've mostly been talking about the republicans it's simply because nobody else has and I don't like the idea of letting them off the hook, nor do I like the idea of the ideology behind a murder being seen as more important than the murder itself. You can argue the toss over motivations and justifications, but dead is dead no matter whose side you're on.

And nothing changes that, not your breast-beating nor your blame-placing, nothing.

 

[frogwoman]

A pity nobody explained this to the IRA.

so what if nobody explained it to them? you cant excuse the british states behaviour, an organisation which has killed many innocent people in Ireland and elsewhere, by saying that people like defence lawyers and that have to be treated like prisoners of war. even fash in WWII working in england who were working for the nazis during the war were treated under the terms of the geneva convention, and rightly so, and finucane didn't even kill anyone

 

[Buckaroo]

Being a solicitor representing paramilitary organisations during an insurgency is life or death. Talking shit about it on the internet 30 years later is not.

So stop talking shit.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I think if they were members of the IRA they should've been treated as prisoners of war.

Internment for membership of a banned organisation worked so well, didn't it?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Most of Finucane's high-profile defendants had already been convicted.

The British criminal justice system has to at least pay lip-service to the legal requirement that a defendant be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
That applies whether the defendant has prior convictions or not. Finucane and the justice system he worked within merely followed the rules of their particular game. To blame someone for doing a good job or playing a good game is quite pathetic, whether it's the state doing the blaming or an individual.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Except that they were historically inevitable, as was the level of violence.

I wonder how many people have succesfully used that one as defence in court. History made me do it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

prisoners of war have to be treated by the geneva convention and murdering somebody isn't really part of that convention.

It's what constitutes "murder" that's the core of the issue - "victor's justice" means that the British state got to write the rules of engagement, rules which naturally placed non-political, non-peaceful opposition to state policy beyond the pale.
Were the IRA an army in any sense? If you think "no", then you can't help but attribute the PIRA-caused human results of the conflict they participated in as murder, and the British army-caused results of same as legitimate killings: If you think "yes", then perhaps you accept that both sides saw the human results of their conflict as legitimate and perhaps even "a price worth paying".

 

[ViolentPanda]

I wonder how many people have succesfully used that one as defence in court. History made me do it.

Inevitability isn't compulsion, you fuckwit.

 

[butchersapron]

I wonder how many people have succesfully used that one as defence in court. History made me do it.

This is a real person. Who may offer involvement in thing that you do.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Being a solicitor representing paramilitary organisations during an insurgency is life or death.

Only if the state views you as working for the enemy. if you're defending the Lee Cleggs of this world, you've nothing to worry about, seemingly.

Talking shit about it on the internet 30 years later is not.

Has anyone claimed that it is?

 

[ViolentPanda]

And did they constitute the majority of his clients?

There was a barrister who's name escapes me right now, who defended many many Republicans and often successfully, he went on to stand and be elected as a Unionist MP, using your logic he should also have been shot as an IRA member.

It is the logical conclusion to such logic, isn't it?

 

[SpookyFrank]

All social conflicts are class conflicts. That's blindingly obvious if you assess the roots of any conflict.

See, this sort of thing is why I don't really bother thinking before I say stuff around here. Because this is the standard of drivel that constitutes the orthodox viewpoint of so many urban posters, this black and white marxist claptrap that has as much relevance to the real world today as it ever did, specifically none.

No, it's definitely binary. There's people who hold the same opinions as you = not cunts, and people who don't = cunts.

I was talking about the conflict itself, not this argument

 

[SpookyFrank]

Inevitability isn't compulsion, you fuckwit.

So the defence would be what, if I hadn't done it someone else would've? Because that's equally pathetic.

 

[ViolentPanda]

yeah, as if the troubles didn't start because of centuries of occupation and what could be described as genocide.

Well, quite, although I realise that there's a tendency for some people, usually on the right, to take a view that deprivation of food, with the concomitant malnutrition and starvation, isn't actually genocide.

Such people are generally fuckwits and shitcunts, mind.

 

[Pickman's model]

I wonder how many people have succesfully used that one as defence in court. History made me do it.

It is of course more traditional to argue, as castro did, that history would absolve him. Tony blair made the same claim, albeit with less charisma, justification or success.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Well, quite, although I realise that there's a tendency for some people, usually on the right, to take a view that deprivation of food, with the concomitant malnutrition and starvation, isn't actually genocide.

Such people are generally fuckwits and shitcunts, mind.

It's not deprivation of food that kills people, it's Death that kills people.

 

[LiamO]

Most of Finucane's high-profile defendants had already been convicted.

what


a lot


of cock.

The very reason the british state wanted rid of Finucane was his success in gaining acquittals. That much is obvious to all but the most wilfully stupid of people... oh... wait...

By the way Pat Finucane did defend loyalists, although for a lot a loyalists their simple sectarian stupidity precluded them for taking help from a fenian. You can hardly blame Finucane for that.

Republicans on the other hand had no such (sectarian) misgivings and happily sought the aid of Dessie Boal, QC and DUP stalwart.

BTW would it have been okay for loyal unionist Boal to get one behind the ear from unionist 'terrorists' too? He was defending suspected IRA men after all.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Well, quite, although I realise that there's a tendency for some people, usually on the right, to take a view that deprivation of food, with the concomitant malnutrition and starvation, isn't actually genocide.

Such people are generally fuckwits and shitcunts, mind.

Do you have any figures for how many of those killed during the troubles were directly responsible for the potato famine?

I think it just might be zero you know.

 

[ViolentPanda]

See, this sort of thing is why I don't really bother thinking before I say stuff around here. Because this is the standard of drivel that constitutes the orthodox viewpoint of so many urban posters, this black and white marxist claptrap that has as much relevance to the real world today as it ever did, specifically none.

1) I'm not a Marxist, and my politics derive from observation and experience, not from reading a single political philosopher and worshipping him as my deity. In my experience, and from what I've gleaned from a wide variety of sources (I'm one of those Urbanites who preaches reading ALL perspectives on a matter and only then attempting to reach an opinion on it), class is indivisibly bound-up in any conflict. It's interesting that your ilk, you lifestylers, are happy to accept the proposition that capitalism is behind conflict, but not to see past that.

2) I'm well aware that you don't bother thinking. Discoursing with you is like listening to a semi-pissed pub ranter who constantly says "nah, but listen..." and then reiterates the same banal point, over and over again. You pluck your convictions out of the air, rather than inhabiting them.

3) Orthodox as opposed to what, precisely, to the wisdom of SpookyFrank?

 

[SpookyFrank]

The British criminal justice system has to at least pay lip-service to the legal requirement that a defendant be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
That applies whether the defendant has prior convictions or not. Finucane and the justice system he worked within merely followed the rules of their particular game. To blame someone for doing a good job or playing a good game is quite pathetic, whether it's the state doing the blaming or an individual.

It was a game designed to lend a veneer of civility and due process to a fucking great bloodbath. Not something I'd have wanted any part in personally.

 

[LiamO]

There was a barrister who's name escapes me right now, who defended many many Republicans and often successfully, he went on to stand and be elected as a Unionist MP, using your logic he should also have been shot as an IRA member.

Just seen this Deareg. It was Dessie Boal.

And he was elected for the backwods DUP not the 'liberal' UUP.

 

[Pickman's model]

Do you have any figures for how many of those killed during the troubles were directly responsible for the potato famine?

I think it just might be zero you know.

When you're as deep as you are, you should stop digging.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Do you have any figures for how many of those killed during the troubles were directly responsible for the potato famine?

I think it just might be zero you know.

Did I claim any degree of direct responsibility?
People (well, perhaps except you) don't function in a vacuum from their personal history, and personal history for the Catholic Irish tends to include having ancestors who died in the famine.
That famine, by the way - very good example of the place of class in conflict.

 

[Pickman's model]

Double post

 

[Deareg]

Just seen this Deareg. It was Dessie Boal.

And he was elected for the backwods DUP not the 'liberal' UUP.

I had forgotten about him, I was thinking of Bob McCartney.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McCartney_(politician)