Patrick Finucane

[nino_savatte]

So am I the only one who thinks all parties involved in this whole fiasco behaved pretty fucking horrendously and that any attempt to pick out one particular group as the worst gives undue credit to all the others?

And if we were trying to decide who were the bigger cunts, it might be better to compare their respective body counts rather than what may or may not have been their beverage of choice.

Yeah, people do the same thing as you when it comes to Israel/Palestine. All you're doing is sticking your neck in the sand and pretending that these conflicts have no ontology and it's all about two [silly] warring tribes.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Yay! Let's hear it for Frank - the patriotic (to the point of blindness) anarchist

How am I being 'patriotic' by saying I'm unwilling to condemn those on one side of the conflict and exonerate those on the other?

I don't give a fuck how long your country has been occupied for, if your response is to attack innocent civiliians then you, and your cause, can get to fuck.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Yeah, people do the same thing as you when it comes to Israel/Palestine. All you're doing is sticking your neck in the sand and pretending that these conflicts have no ontology and it's all about two [silly] warring tribes.

And to think I'm the one who gets accused of not reading history books.

 

[nino_savatte]

And to think I'm the one who gets accused of not reading history books.

Really? I don't know how you managed to extrapolate that bit of sarcasm from my post. How am I being ignorant of history? You're not making sense.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Really? I don't know how you managed to extrapolate that bit of sarcasm from my post. How am I being ignorant of history? You're not making sense.

Well the comparison of Northern Ireland to Israel/Palestine leaves a funny taste in the mouth. There may be some simillarities, but I think if I were to ask you if you'd rather be a catholic living in Ulster during the troubles or a Palestinian living in Gaza now I doubt you'd need to take very long to think about it.

Making out that the two conficts are somehow equivalent does enormous discredit to the Palestinians IMO. And, quite frankly, to the British government as well. The British never launched air strikes against the six counties, nor barricaded them off from the rest of the world and left them without even access to international aid. Nobody ever assasinated the likes of Gerry Adams with a ballistic missile. It is possible to make these distinctions without making excuses for the atrocities that Britain did commit.

 

[Blagsta]

 

[SpookyFrank]

No you're right Blagsta, Palestine and Ulster are the same after all. And to think that without your clear and comprehensive presentation of the facts I might never have realised this. Thankyou, thankyou from the bottom of my heart for showing me the light as opposed to simply being a cunt and posting a little picture of a face with a hand over it.

 

[nino_savatte]

Well the comparison of Northern Ireland to Israel/Palestine leaves a funny taste in the mouth. There may be some simillarities, but I think if I were to ask you if you'd rather be a catholic living in Ulster during the troubles or a Palestinian living in Gaza now I doubt you'd need to take very long to think about it.

Making out that the two conficts are somehow equivalent does enormous discredit to the Palestinians IMO. And, quite frankly, to the British government as well. The British never launched air strikes against the six counties, nor barricaded them off from the rest of the world and left them without even access to international aid. Nobody ever assasinated the likes of Gerry Adams with a ballistic missile. It is possible to make these distinctions without making excuses for the atrocities that Britain did commit.

Don't be silly. You deliberately ignored the point I was making: namely, it's too easy to use the simplistic, "they're as bad as each other" argument with regards to NI and Israel/Palestine, which is what you appeared to be doing.

 

[nino_savatte]

Do you approve of extra-judicial killings, Frank?

 

[Blagsta]

No you're right Blagsta, Palestine and Ulster are the same after all. And to think that without your clear and comprehensive presentation of the facts I might never have realised this. Thankyou, thankyou from the bottom of my heart for showing me the light as opposed to simply being a cunt and posting a little picture of a face with a hand over it.

Jesus fucking Christ.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Don't be silly. You deliberately ignored the point I was making: namely, it's too facile to view NI and Israel/Palestine by using the simplistic, "they're as bad as each other" argument, which is what you were doing.

I think it's facile to compare two such vastly different situations in this way so there you go.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Jesus fucking Christ.

Any time you want to make an actual point you just go ahead and fill your boots.

 

[nino_savatte]

I think it's facile to compare two such vastly different situations in this way so there you go.

Laughable.

 

[nino_savatte]

Again, Frank, do you support extra-judicial killings?

 

[Blagsta]

Any time you want to make an actual point you just go ahead and fill your boots.

My main point is that you're an idiot.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Do you approve of extra-judicial killings, Frank?

No, but I'm not so naive as to think that they don't happen or that a state which is under attack will never consider them justified or necessary. The question of whether Finucane deserved what he got is irrelevant, as he's just as dead either way. What I don't understand is this singling out of his death in particular as one that was unacceptable.

 

[SpookyFrank]

My main point is that you're an idiot.

Well then you'll forgive me if I refrain from giving a fuck what you think.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Laughable.

Ok yeah, I guess you could say the comparison was laughable. I prefer facile though.

 

[LiamO]

I don't give a fuck how long your country has been occupied for, if your response is to attack innocent civiliians then you, and your cause, can get to fuck.

Vive la Resistance?

Dresden (20-45,000 dead civilians... memorial erected to the organisers of the bombers by a grateful british government)

Get off your high horse and drink your milk, you two-dimensional apolitical fool

 

[elbows]

What I don't understand is this singling out of his death in particular as one that was unacceptable.

Why do you think the state itself decided it had to look into these matters on more than one occasion and then publish this and other reports into the matter?

 

[SpookyFrank]

Ah yes that well known Northern Irish city of Dresden, famous for its relevance to this thread.

 

[LiamO]

I don't give a fuck how long your country has been occupied for, if your response is to attack innocent civiliians then you, and your cause, can get to fuck.

Is that a direct quote from the Israeli Defence Minister, Frank?

You really are staggering about like a sloppy old drunk, aren't you.

 

[LiamO]

Ah yes that well known Northern Irish city of Dresden, famous for its relevance to this thread.

It refers specifically to the bombing of 'innocent civilians'... and neither britain nor the US were ever even occupied by the german army - whose civilians they bombed to death in their thousands.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

No, but I'm not so naive as to think that they don't happen or that a state which is under attack will never consider them justified or necessary. The question of whether Finucane deserved what he got is irrelevant, as he's just as dead either way. What I don't understand is this singling out of his death in particular as one that was unacceptable.

Frank it's not irrelevant. Leaving aside the presumption that 14 shots in front of your wife and kids might be deserved, there is still the question over whether or not 'what he got' was a state colluded (and quite possibly conspired) execution with no judicial process, transparency or accountability. It is not irrelevant that a state which claims to act in the interests of its citizens and with their electoral mandate, also colludes and conspires in the extra-judicial killing of those citizens.

If you can't see that relevance, or if you are unable or unwilling to disentangle it from the obvious human horror of a life violently taken, then you are failing to see if not the whole picture than at least a bigger picture.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[SpookyFrank]

Is that a direct quote from the Israeli Defence Minister, Frank?

Given that Israel attacks civillians all the time, I doubt it.

The Palestinians are fighting for their survival, I can understand why desperation in the face of such persecution leads to terrorism without excusing it. And IIRC it has been years since a single Israeli civillian was killed by Palestinian attack.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So am I the only one who thinks all parties involved in this whole fiasco behaved pretty fucking horrendously and that any attempt to pick out one particular group as the worst gives undue credit to all the others?

And if we were trying to decide who were the bigger cunts, it might be better to compare their respective body counts rather than what may or may not have been their beverage of choice.

No-one has ascribed undue credit, Frank.
Unless attempting to introduce detail and nuance to a debate that you entered with broad-brush assertions and your own implicit picking out of one particular group as somehow more blameless than the rest somehow constitutes "ascribing undue credit".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yay! Let's hear it for Frank - the patriotic (to the point of blindness) anarchist

Shouldn't that be "the blind to the point of patriotism anarchist"?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I think the loyalists were both useful to the state during the troubles, but were fundamentally a pain in the arse. Other than a handful of people this side of the irish sea, the vast majority would gladly be shot of the place.

War makes strange bedfellows, and in the minds of the British government, the PIRA and the various loyalist factions and sects it was war that they were engaged in. The British government accepted the "foibles" and arse pain-causing qualities of the loyalists and used them as a "plausibly deniable" tool for executing (pardon the pun) a policy of political assassination.

 

[ViolentPanda]

If they were such a "pain in the arse", then it never stopped the state from using them to carry out targeted murders. They were happy to do so, because their objectives intersected. When you say the "vast majority would gladly be shot of the place", who do you mean?

I suspect he means a majority of the population of mainland Britain.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Frank it's not irrelevant. Leaving aside the presumption that 14 shots in front of your wife and kids might be deserved, there is still the question over whether or not 'what he got' was a state colluded (and quite possibly conspired) execution with no judicial process, transparency or accountability. It is not irrelevant that a state which claims to act in the interests of its citizens and with their electoral mandate, also colludes and conspires in the extra-judicial killing of those citizens.

If you can't see that relevance, or if you are unable or unwilling to disentangle it from the obvious human horror of a life violently taken, then you are failing to see if not the whole picture than at least a bigger picture.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

What I see is a failure to look past the horror of this particular killing and realise that every death in the troubles was 'extra judicial', with the possible exception of hunger striking prisoners. How many public inquiries did the IRA hold into deaths which they were responsible for? What chance for closure can the families of their victims ever hope for? Not to say that another half-arsed investigation by the British establishment gets them off the hook, but for me there's a double standard at work here, and it seems to be founded in a level of sympathy for the IRA that I just can't comprehend.