This what i called one radical muslim sister :evil:
nope,. she wasnot beheaded due to her activities after school.:mrgreen:
she’s still alive and kickin’ 
Clearly not a video from the depths of ISIL.
Which raises the problem that the great propaganda arms of ISIL and sundry other jihadists create the impression many in the West have of Muslims, while the girl in the video is much more representative of the breadth and variety of those who follow Islam without being a threat to anyone (except possibly ISIL and other jihadists).
Or, as my son noted in Kuala Lumpur last Xmas, there was a striking amount of Xmas decorations and spirit in a nominally Muslim nation.
But the likes of ISIL tarnish all Muslims with their evil brush.
I unfortunately missed a documentary on BBC television the other day. I understand that its contention (coming from a very experienced reporter) was that ISIL and the Provisional IRA were both created in much the same way - when their enemies (Brits for the Irish Republicans, Americans for the Islamaniacs) locked up a large number of mostly harmless people in an internment camp (Long Kesh for the IRA, can’t remember the US one) on a “preventive” basis; on suspicion in effect. This, it is contended, resulted in embitterment among the internees against their captors (understandable) and “radicalization” of a substantial number by a tiny, hard-line core of people who were actually enemies of the Brits/Americans. Thus, it is argued, both the Brits and the US, by creating “terrorist universities”, created their own problem. Cannot vouch for the ISIL bit (not having seen the documentary) but I know enough about the IRA end of it to accept that, in that case, the analysis is substantially correct. Shows the danger of persecuting communities on a large scale when, as dominating power, one does not really understand the social and political dynamic of the communities being “managed”. Interesting. I must try to catch up on this documentary, if possible. Yours from Behind the Wire, JR.
Internment without trial is not necessarily a Good Idea …
“The Men Behind the Wire” (Paddy McGuigan)
Armored cars and tanks and guns
came to take away our sons!
but every man must stand behind
the men behind the wire
armored cars and tanks and guns
came to take away our sons
but every man must stand behind
the men behind the wire
In the little streets of belfast
in the dark of early morn
British soldiers came a-running
wrecking little homes with scorn
hear the sobs of crying children
dragging fathers from their bed
watch the scene as helpless mother
watch the blood fall from their heads
armored cars and tanks and guns
came to take away our sons
but every man must stand behind
stand behind the wire
not for them a judge of jury,
or indeed a crime at all
being irish means their guilty
so their guilty one and all
round the world the truth will echo
cromwell’s men are here again
england’s name again is sullied
in the eyes of honest man
Armored cars and tanks and guns
came to take away our sons
but every man must stand behind
the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns
came to take away our sons
but every man must stand behind
the men behind the wire
proudly march behind our banner
proudly march behind our men
we will have them free to help us
build a nation once again
come the people step together
proudly march on your way
never fear and never falter
till the boys come home to stay
armored cars and tanks and guns
came to take away our sons
but every man must stand behind
the men behind the wire."
I suspect that interned Muslims would feel the same way … Yours from Donegall Road Barracks, JR.
I’ll leave the Provos aspect alone, but I can’t agree with the “We’re victims of Western oppression because [insert preferred injustice such as Abu Ghraib or even invasion of Iraq]” line tediously, tendentiously, and most unconvincingly promoted by sundry fans of jihadism. The West had nothing to do with, for example, Boko Haram kidnapping a couple of hundred teenage school girls or killing about 150, predominantly Christian, students in a university.
The only Muslim communities being persecuted on any scale are being persecuted, and disgustingly and remorselessly and violently and hugely so, by other Muslims. Unless, of course, I missed the bit at Abu Ghraib where the Yanks lined up countless innocents and sawed their heads off with a knife.
ISIL and countless other violent Islamic movements and individuals on the planet are a mixture of psychopaths, criminals, religious zealots, and Machiavellian politicians all pursuing their own narrow aims. The only common feature is the pursuit of power and the desire to exercise it over others to make them conform to psycho-criminal-zealot-politicians’ preferred Hobbesian view of life as ‘nasty, brutish and short’, albeit being the implausible path to variously reported but vast numbers of virgins eagerly awaiting deflowering on the other side, which in itself is adequate proof of what a bunch of offensive morons we’re dealing with.
It’s a waste of intellect and time trying to understand and negotiate with these sorts of bastards. They want to kill and or enslave everyone who isn’t them.
These bastards are a cancer which needs to be cut out. In the same way that the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, among others, needed to be cut out.
P.S. ISIL is the end result of Saudi Arabia’s generous promotion of its fundamentalist view of Islam around the planet combined with other streams such as the Palestinian terror movements going back to the 1970s (mimicking the Zionist ones going back to the 1920s, before large capacity airliners made hijackings major issues).
The glorious part of this is that the really nasty jihadists, such as ISIL, regard Saudi Arabia as a prime target because it is seen by them to have sullied Islam and offended the Prophet PBHN by entering an alliance with West, notably the US. A magnificent case of the biter bit!
Some of them here certainly feel the same way, because they think that it was unfair / unreasonable / wrong / unjust for one of two policemen being stabbed by a Muslim apparently inspired by ISIL, who had brought a knife to an innocent appointment with the police, to shoot the stabber in the head and kill him.
This is seen by some, and I hope a small if well publicised minority of, Muslims here as just another example of oppression of innocent and powerless Muslims by police in particular and non-Muslim Australians in general.
Some of the rest of us, including me, just think that, if you don’t want to get shot or otherwise hurt by our police, two A grade ideas would be (1) Don’t bring your knife to a meeting with police and (2) Don’t use your knife to stab the two policemen you’re meeting.
Alas, this is not an idea which commends itself to the Muslim and other critics of the stupid civil libertarian variety (as distinct from my less stupid civil libertarian outlook) who spew out the usual “Why didn’t they shoot him in the leg” nonsense.
Some of our local Muslim critics are even more upset that our oppressive police have charged other Muslims and initially held another without trial for alleged offences. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/anzac-day-terrorism-plot-payback-for-haider-shooting-20150420-1mp93b.html
The accused are entitled to the presumption of innocence (which is wise in view of some of the spectacular f*ck ups our police and prosecutors have made in supposed ‘terror’ cases), but the community is entitled to be protected from whatever risk the accused may pose.
In cases of potential future mass assaults on the community as distinct from the usual case of holding the accused murderer of one already dead person in custody, which results in a presumption against bail which our Supreme Court almost always upholds, I don’t have a problem with holding the accused in custody.
Nor do I have a problem with offending Muslims or anyone else who places abstract notions of liberty of the subject over reasonably perceived and greater threats to the community at large.
I would suggest that the Brits were using methods which they had previously used in former colonies such as Malaya, where they had had some success in isolating communities from the insurgents. Having said that, I would also suggest that the British government committed troops to Ulster in 1969 with good intent, but, sadly, without any kind of exit strategy. There were of course members of said government that realized this, but given the images which were being fed to the world through the media, they had little choice but to intervene (Those same images had also prompted the Irish government to move troops to the border with a view to invading the north and calling in the U.N.).
This intervention, by the British, led to a prolonged period of ‘fire-fighting’ with no real strategy for dealing with the problem. If there was a ‘managing’ of communities, then that managing was attempted by way of separation. Many of the British operations were conducted through poor intelligence and lack of forethought as to cause and effect, and placed too much reliance on so called ‘Loyalist’ elements for intelligence and advice. I agree that internment was a major cock-up. I doubt that all of those interned were as innocent as your comments appear to imply, albeit their must have been a sizeable cadre of innocent, but it would probably have been better to have gone line fishing than trawling. Simply put, internment became a recruitment sergeant for the PIRA and was reinforced by the debacle of Bloody Sunday.
In my opinion the Ulster situation ought to have been cleared up in 1922, with an independent island of Ireland, but that too would have been very messy, and history might say that the politicians of the time hadn’t the balls for it. The ambivalence which exists between the British and the Irish is remarkable, particularly as so many English have some Irish connection in their blood. In my opinion, anything which comes solely from either side should be treated with suspicion as it is usually political propaganda regardless of truth – truth being the first casualty…
p.s. A few years back, probably about a half a dozen, but I can’t be sure, my nephew got hold of two tickets for the Six Nations final at Twickenham, England v. Ireland. I was amazed that he managed to get them at the last minute. When we entered the stadium and took our seats, we found ourselves at the Irish end of the stadium. Nevertheless, we screamed and cheered for England throughout the game. Despite our vocalizing, Ireland won. A number of Irish girls seated, when not standing, behind us draped us in tricolours and then accompanied us to the pub for a celebratory drink or two. I think the emotional ties between the two nations are strong despite the pain.
@32Bravo - interesting post. I actually agree with most of what you say; you will not be too surprised to know that I am very familiar with the basic narrative simply from having lived through this period mainly from a southern Irish perspective. Also, I made frequent visits to northern relatives as a child and a teenager in the pre-“Troubles” and early “Troubles” period, so I have some familiarity with the situation on the ground there at the time. (My relatives - Roman Catholics - lived in the appropriately named “Orangefield”, a somewhat better-off suburb of East Belfast. How they ended up there I know not. The whole area was “staunchly Protestant” and Unionist, and UDA/UVF elements were quite active there throughout the period.).
I would offer some comments. First, internment without trial was not the idea of Whitehall; it was an idea cooked up by the Unionist government at Stormont with which Whitehall went along. No doubt, Stormont argued that this idea was not exactly unprecedented on the island of Ireland; for example, Éamonn de Valera’s Irish Free State/Irish governments more than once interned (ironically) its extreme Irish Republican opponents without trial. This argument failed to take account of two factors. First, Dev’s governments interned people very selectively and knew (from their own Diehard background) exactly who to detain. Secondly, internment of IRA suspects in the south was done by one bunch of staunch Republicans on another, the current IRA Diehards who threatened to disrupt their (democratic) rule. The northern version of internment was done by the sectarian, Unionist Stormont government mainly on their perceived communal “enemies”, the generally Republican Roman Catholic community that had embraced the Civil Rights Movement for the very obvious reason that the archaic and discriminatory Stormont system denied them the civil rights that they would have been afforded, say, in Liverpool. Also, they did not know their internment targets nearly as well as had Dev with his IRA diehards in the south. The great swoop missed many members of the nascent Provisional IRA, while including many pretty harmless minor Civil Rights activists, and even people who qualified for internment on the basis that some policeman thought (Constable Savage-style) was guilty of “looking at me in a funny way”. This created a blowback “double whammy”, in which the internment camps became universities of radicalization, while also creating explosive resentment in the Roman Catholic community in general. Interestingly, at this stage, this resentment did not convert into electoral success for the Radical Republicans; but then, they were not yet sufficiently well-organized to win elections, and were still afflicted by serious internal disputes that distracted them from pursuing the electoral path seriously. That came later.
Regarding the ambivalent relationship between Nationalist Ireland and the UK, this is something I have commented on In Here on a number of occasions. As I said once, for all the talk of “800 years of oppression”, the Irish and the Brits have, in a sense, grown up together over a long period. Where we are in this process now seems to be that, while a … friendly rivalry survives in certain spheres, only a very small number of southern Irish people continue to harbor any real hostility towards Great Britain. And, one hopes (to the extent that it is noticed Over There), reciprocal goodwill exists in Britain. I cannot over-emphasise the goodwill in Ireland promoted by Her Majesty the Queen’s state visit to the Republic a few years back. The huge welcome extended by Her Majesty and her government to our President, H.E. Dr. Michael D. Higgins on his more recent state visit to the UK also made a most favourable impression here. While we do have our differences (sometimes expressed behind the scenes in the field of EU relations) our relations now seem better than ever. Certainly, there will still be a slight frisson when it comes to sporting matters, but that is natural. We are now established as distinct states, and we all want to be proud of our national achievements. Mind you, I am not sure I would like to be an Irish fan surfacing in the English end at an international soccer match - you still have some problems in that sphere. But that is a detail. I think we really are friends now, and allies in the often antipathetic environment of the EU. Hope you don’t leave.
By the way - love your avatar. At the risk of LeadingSeaman or such accusing me of being a bighead again - I did study Old English language and history (among other things) during my misspent youth -
“But to avoid Death is not easy;
Whoever may attempt it, he shall go to the place
Prepared for each man, the souls living on the earth,
As Fate ordains it.
At rest in that bed, the body shall sleep when the feast is over”
- Beowulf, (trans. me)
That is all there is in the end. Life is too short to waste it fighting, often over nothing. Yours from Sutton Hoo, JR.
It’s one I had for some time, albeit with a facelift (Thought to be the helmet of King Raedwald, if memory serves me right). The one I recently removed was only ever meant to be temporary.
This is the one I previously used before the facelift - the original helmet in the British museum.
Aye
I found Tim Pat Coogan’s book, The Troubles, quite informative for the Republican perspective. As with most historical authors, there’s a great deal of bias. However, I think that the key points he makes are pretty close to the mark. I would challenge anyone living in the then circumstances of the Roman Catholic population not to react to the inequalities and misgovernment of those times.
Yes, the internment camps becoming terrorist learning centres has been covered a number of times by the media over the years. A kind of Colditz situation. The idea of locking people up without trial goes against the ‘assumed’ principles of Magna Carta in these supposed times of democracy and liberty. This for me and most I speak with was their greatest folly. A throwback colonial mentality, perhaps.
I did as well. It should be noted that I believe Coogan also respected by, and had a lot of close contacts on, the Unionist side as well as in the British military…
Do you know that for a fact, Nick, or is it an opinion?
I’m not altogether certain what you are inferring here, Nick. Are you offering an opinion that Coogan’s book is unbiased or are you saying that he’s a universally accepted writer – or maybe both?
My own comment as to Coogan’s bias is an opinion I formed when I read the book. Coogan comes from a journalistic background and in my opinion he employs those journalistic skills in his narrative to put his spin on it and influence the reader.
Quite early in the book he utilizes anecdotes, which would be difficult to corroborate, to create sympathy, empathy and drama. Which one might argue makes it a more entertaining read.
I’m not going to post evidence from the book here, as the book is easily available and I think people should read it and form their own opinion. I will offer an example from a posting elsewhere on the forum which will serve to illustrate my point on opinion.
This piece by Kipling works as an example of what I am saying.
I WENT into a public ‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, " We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ " Tommy, go away " ;
But it’s " Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play…
Obviously, this is a piece of poetry and we cannot know the truth of what Kipling is saying. Does he intend it to be taken as fact? How did he come to write it? Did he witness such an event, or is it inspired for example by the stories from soldiers which he’d heard during his time with them? He speaks in the first-person, but he was never a soldier, he was a journalist. He doesn’t give the Publican’s side of the story: Was this particular redcoat a teetotaller who preached the errors of the way of the demon drink, was he particularly ugly causing the girls to become upset and put the punters off their drink, or were redcoats in general barred from the pub because they were considered rabble-rousers and bad for business? Clearly the words of the poem are dramatic, emotive and, in my opinion, devised to arouse both a sense of sympathy in the general reader, and empathy within those who relate to it through similar experiences.
I still have a copy of Coogan’s book on my bookshelf. It’s a very good read and very informative, but in my opinion it is deliberately biased.
Neither, he is obviously biased towards the peace strain of Irish Republicanism. There are factions on the Unionist side that have talked to him and certainly have read his works as a means of gleaning details and the inner workings of the militant wing of Republicanism. Is he biased? Of course he is! But the fact is that there are members of the PIRA that never thought highly of some of his writings, either…
My own comment as to Coogan’s bias is an opinion I formed when I read the book. Coogan comes from a journalistic background and in my opinion he employs those journalistic skills in his narrative to put his spin on it and influence the reader.
Quite early in the book he utilizes anecdotes, which would be difficult to corroborate, to create sympathy, empathy and drama. Which one might argue makes it a more entertaining read.
I’m not going to post evidence from the book here, as the book is easily available and I think people should read it and form their own opinion. I will offer an example from a posting elsewhere on the forum which will serve to illustrate my point on opinion.
This piece by Kipling works as an example of what I am saying.
I WENT into a public ‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, " We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ " Tommy, go away " ;
But it’s " Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play…
Obviously, this is a piece of poetry and we cannot know the truth of what Kipling is saying. Does he intend it to be taken as fact? How did he come to write it? Did he witness such an event, or is it inspired for example by the stories from soldiers which he’d heard during his time with them? He speaks in the first-person, but he was never a soldier, he was a journalist. He doesn’t give the Publican’s side of the story: Was this particular redcoat a teetotaller who preached the errors of the way of the demon drink, was he particularly ugly causing the girls to become upset and put the punters off their drink, or were redcoats in general barred from the pub because they were considered rabble-rousers and bad for business? Clearly the words of the poem are dramatic, emotive and, in my opinion, devised to arouse both a sense of sympathy in the general reader, and empathy within those who relate to it through similar experiences.
I still have a copy of Coogan’s book on my bookshelf. It’s a very good read and very informative, but in my opinion it is deliberately biased.
Coogan is the typical Irish storyteller. Does he embellish some things? Perhaps. I don’t think anyone seriously questions that he has highly placed sources on both sides of the conflict that perhaps find him useful as perhaps a means of venting their dissent and a voice to decry some of the leadership in their respective movements. I think Coogan would be the first to say he is not particularity ideologically accepted by the Irish Nationalists who wanted “armed struggle” (and terrorism) anymore than the Unionists whom wanted to eliminate what they saw as a threat to their rule (and state terrorism). Well perhaps a bit more as the IRA’s unofficial historian and chronicler, but I doubt they fully approve of his body work much more than ardent Unionists…
As I said, I believe his book to be deliberately biased. In my opinion it is well worth reading, but, regarding its leanings, it ought to have a ‘Buyer Beware!’ tag.
Thank you. That was my point - his book is biased! The rest doesn’t interest me much. I think his book is well worth reading, however. It just ought to carry a ‘Buyer Beware’ tag.
An interesting character, Tim Pat. He was raised in comfortable circumstances - indeed, one might say, in the bosom of the “pro-Treaty” Republican aristocracy in the South. His father was a War of Independence IRA officer who took the pro-Treaty side in the subsequent Civil War. Coogan the Elder was rewarded with a successful police career, rising to the rank of Deputy Commissioner of the Garda Síochána (civil police force). His mother was the daughter of a police officer. The impression made on him by this upbringing may be a reminder that even the pro-Treaty side (the “winners” of the Civil War, but not of the subsequent peace) were often no less Republican in their outlook than the anti-Treaty “diehards”, a fact often missed by British commentators. It is worth reflecting that Michael Collins - the pro-Treaty side’s “Saint and Martyr” and the dominant force in the pro-Treaty government up to the time of his death - was a firm adherent to the chimerical view that the Boundary Commission would reduce the new Northern Ireland statelet to a non-viable area which could be destabilized to destruction by covert action against it on the part of the Free State government. The “unexpected” outcome of the Boundary Commission, along with a “diehard” bullet in the head denied us of knowledge of where such a “destabilizing” policy might have lead.
Tim Pat was, essentially, a journalist. He is not, as far as I know, an academically educated historian of any sort. His pro-Treaty background did not prevent him from spending many years as editor of the Irish Press (RIP), a newspaper founded by Éamonn de Valera and long-regarded as being, to some extent, a mouthpiece of the Fianna Fáil (ex-anti-Treaty) Party. The nuances of all this may be difficult to grasp for non-Irishpersons, but it amounts to saying that he was steeped in Irish Republican thinking, but not inclined towards the physical force school of Republicanism. By the time he came to edit the Irish Press (indeed, long before that), neither the inheritors of the pro-Treaty nor of (most) of the anti-Treaty factions (the latter represented by Fianna Fáil) were at all attracted to the “armed struggle” approach to political reunification of the island.
Where does this point in considering the utility of his book, “The IRA” ? First published in 1970, and updated most recently in 2000, one would expect that one would get a narrative well-informed, well-written (in journalistic style) and persuasive, but strongly coloured by pro-Irish Republican “inclination”. One might summarize by saying that, while exhaustive in its attempt to forge a history of the IRA specifically, there is a consistent colouring of sympathy to the Republican position in general. He does not endorse the violence of the “physical force” school. However, he has to be seen at times as something of an apologist for this position. He regards the “Troubles” as, essentially, the result of intransigence on the part of the Northern Ireland Unionists and their sectarian state, supported by British governments that regarded Northern Ireland affairs as a marginal distraction to be “managed” locally. Unfortunately, when the Stormont government proved incompetent to do this - and even initiated serious errors of policy and management that made its situation untenable - the British Government inherited the legacy of Unionist mismanagement and oppression without much of a clue as to how to solve the problem. It is a point of view, if arguably simplistic.
Is the book worth reading ? I would say “yes”, with reservations. The bias obviously needs always to be borne in mind. Also, it has to be said that, for non-Irish readers especially, the book can at times be confusing - perhaps inevitable in view of the complexity of the IRA’s secret nature, its aversion to creating records, and the complex history of “splits” and the like. Nonetheless, the research is impressive, the access to oral sources is useful, and the book is, in the end, not a bad read. I agree with 32Bravo - well worth reading, but Buyer Beware ! Yours from the Den of the South Armagh Sniper (hopefully not to be “reactivated”), JR.
Thank you for that. Interesting. I suppose that in the great scheme of things my opinion of the book is of little consequence. It isn’t that important an issue to me. I would guess that if he was writing fiction one might put him in the Kipling or Bernard Cornwell category. Entertaining and informative, but not academic.