Margaret Thatcher....

[LCohen]

lads - what about all those questions I been asking? Not a wee not embarrassed by the lack of answers?

You may not like the answers I provide but I do at least have the decency to engage in the dialogue and defend my position.

[LCohen]

The Brits seemed to think of Ireland as a single country with a distinctive identity, every bit as distinctive as Scotland or England. They governed it as a single entity right up until the Act of Union.  Even your crowd thought of it as a single entity. The Church of Ireland, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, all are all-Ireland institutions. When Queen Victoria visited Belfast you had the place bedecked in banners welcoming HM to "Ireland" (Northern Ireland hadn't been invented yet, there was no word of a "national" identity for Ulster, it was always a regional identity), and you had banners saying "Erin go Bragh" and what not.  Just about every sport other than soccer is governed on an all-Ireland basis.

The use of "you" and "your" is interesting.

The sporting reference is intriguing. I think you are quite right in organising international boundaries based on the views of sporting orgaisations.

Is it correct that "just about every sport other than soccer is governed on an all-Ireland basis"? So many of those that still have players playing for NI and or UK in international games.

Whoever said that there was a national identity in Ulster (at a 9 or the eroneous 6 county level) or Northern Ireland? Neither are countries.

I don't deny that Britain ruled Ireland on an all-island basis. I do deny that the Irish ever did?

I'll take that as a retraction of your previous contention that Ireland has never been ruled as a single entity.

You seem to be a little hung up on whether it was ruled from within or without as a single entity, but that's neither here nor there. Even if what you say is true and that Ireland was only united under British rule (which is debatable at best) it doesn't change the fact that it was governed as a single entity with its own identity.

Gerrymandering a new territory with no prior tradition of nationhood in the interests of promoting a self-entitled minority to the status of a "majority" is not democracy. It's caving in to the unreasonable demands of a people with some ideas above their station.

I have pointed out before that I asumed that the nationalist argument was founded on the basis that Ireland had been united by someone other than England/Britain.

The fact that it was not united beforehand removes the absolute imperiative that Britain had to view it entirely as one entity when considering (partial) withdrawal especially when they considered the demographics in the north. Again I ask you to what where Britain to do? How would their ignoring of a vocal majority in the north have been received internationally?

Those who believ that Britain could have fully withdrawn from the island of Ireland then (or in the absence of a majority now or in the future) are deluding themselves.

entirely incorrect I'm afraid.

even then, it is no reason to ignore the wishes of the majority.

any other excuse is just justifying your delusion to yourself.

will we have local councils or Tyrone, Derry and Fermanagh voting whether we have reunification?
As the current six counties is not fully goverened by the six counties and the people in it are not all pleased with the undemocratic methods of the past !
ya cant have it both ways !

I'm happy for border to be redrawn. SF are not.

Neither am I, if a united Ireland is accepted by the majority of the Northern population and a majority of the population of the Republic, Sin é.

Nobody could argue against a united Ireland on that basis (of course somebody will but they won't win the argument)

[Íseal agus crua isteach a]

Dance on Thatcher's grave, but remember there has been a coup in Britain
25 April 2013

In the wake of Thatcher's departure, I remember her victims. Patrick Warby's daughter, Marie, was one of them. Marie, aged five, suffered from a bowel deformity and needed a special diet. Without it, the pain was excruciating. Her father was a Durham miner and had used all his savings. It was winter 1985, the Great Strike was almost a year old and the family was destitute. Although her eligibility was not disputed, Marie was denied help by the Department of Social Security. Later, I obtained records of the case that showed Marie had been turned down because her father was "affected by a Trade dispute". 

The corruption and inhumanity under Thatcher knew no borders. When she came to power in 1979, Thatcher demanded a total ban on exports of milk to Vietnam. The American invasion had left a third of Vietnamese children malnourished. I witnessed many distressing sights, including infants going blind from a lack of vitamins. "I cannot tolerate this," said an anguished doctor in a Saigon paediatric hospital, as we looked at a dying boy. Oxfam and Save the Children had made clear to the British government the gravity of the emergency. An embargo led by the US had forced up the local price of a kilo of milk up to ten times that of a kilo of meat. Many children could have been restored with milk. Thatcher's ban held.

In neighbouring Cambodia, Thatcher left a trail of blood, secretly. In 1980, she demanded that the defunct Pol Pot regime - the killers of 1.7 million people - retain its "right" to represent their victims at the UN. Her policy was vengeance on Cambodia's liberator, Vietnam. The British representative was instructed to vote with Pol Pot at the World Health Organisation, thereby preventing it from providing help to where it was needed more than anywhere on earth.

To conceal this outrage, the US, Britain and China, Pol Pot's main backer, invented a "resistance coalition" dominated by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces and supplied by the CIA at bases along the Thai border. There was a hitch. In the wake of the Irangate arms-for-hostages debacle, the US Congress had banned clandestine foreign adventures. "In one of those deals the two of them liked to make," a senior Whitehall official told the Sunday Telegraph, "President Reagan put it to Thatcher that the SAS should take over the Cambodia show. She readily agreed."

In 1983, Thatcher sent the SAS to train the "coalition" in its own distinctive brand of terrorism. Seven-man SAS teams arrived from Hong Kong, and British soldiers set about training "resistance fighters" in laying minefields in a country devastated by genocide and the world's highest rate of death and injury as a result of landmines.

I reported this at the time, and more than 16,000 people wrote to Thatcher in protest. "I confirm," she replied to opposition leader Neil Kinnock, "that there is no British government involvement of any kind in training, equipping or co-operating with the Khmer Rouge or those allied to them." The lie was breathtaking. In 1991, the government of John Major admitted to parliament that the SAS had indeed trained the "coalition".  "We liked the British," a Khmer Rouge fighter later told me. "They were very good at teaching us to set booby traps. Unsuspecting people, like children in paddy fields, were the main victims."

When the journalists and producers of ITV's landmark documentary, Death on the Rock, exposed how the SAS had run Thatcher's other death squads in Ireland and Gibraltar, they were hounded by Rupert Murdoch's "journalists", then cowering behind the razor wire at Wapping. Although exonerated, Thames TV lost its ITV franchise.

In 1982, the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano, was steaming outside the Falklands exclusion zone. The ship offered no threat, yet Thatcher gave orders for it to be sunk. Her victims were 323 sailors, including conscripted teenagers. The crime had a certain logic. Among Thatcher's closest allies were mass murderers - Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, responsible for "many more than one million deaths" (Amnesty International). Although the British state had long armed the world's leading tyrannies, it was Thatcher who brought a crusading zeal to the deals, talking up the finer points of fighter aircraft engines, hard-bargaining with bribe-demanding Saudi princes. I filmed her at an arms fair, stroking a gleaming missile. "I'll have one of those!" she said.

In his arms-to-Iraq enquiry, Lord Richard Scott heard evidence that an entire tier of the Thatcher government, from senior civil servants to ministers, had lied and broken the law in selling weapons to Saddam Hussein. These were her "boys". Thumb through old copies of the Baghdad Observer, and there are pictures of her boys, mostly cabinet ministers, on the front page sitting with Saddam on his famous white couch. There is Douglas Hurd and there is a grinning David Mellor, also of the Foreign Office, around the time his host was ordering the gassing of 5,000 Kurds. Following this atrocity, the Thatcher government doubled trade credits to Saddam.

Perhaps it is too easy to dance on her grave. Her funeral was a propaganda stunt, fit for a dictator: an absurd show of militarism, as if a coup had taken place. And it has. "Her real triumph", said another of her boys, Geoffrey Howe, a Thatcher minister, "was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible." 

In 1997, Thatcher was the first former prime minister to visit Tony Blair after he entered Downing Street. There is a photo of them, joined in rictus: the budding war criminal with his mentor. When Ed Miliband, in his unctuous "tribute", caricatured Thatcher as a "brave" feminist hero whose achievements he personally "honoured", you knew the old killer had not died at all.

[LCohen]

Dance on Thatcher's grave, but remember there has been a coup in Britain
25 April 2013

In the wake of Thatcher's departure, I remember her victims. Patrick Warby's daughter, Marie, was one of them. Marie, aged five, suffered from a bowel deformity and needed a special diet. Without it, the pain was excruciating. Her father was a Durham miner and had used all his savings. It was winter 1985, the Great Strike was almost a year old and the family was destitute. Although her eligibility was not disputed, Marie was denied help by the Department of Social Security. Later, I obtained records of the case that showed Marie had been turned down because her father was "affected by a Trade dispute". 

The corruption and inhumanity under Thatcher knew no borders. When she came to power in 1979, Thatcher demanded a total ban on exports of milk to Vietnam. The American invasion had left a third of Vietnamese children malnourished. I witnessed many distressing sights, including infants going blind from a lack of vitamins. "I cannot tolerate this," said an anguished doctor in a Saigon paediatric hospital, as we looked at a dying boy. Oxfam and Save the Children had made clear to the British government the gravity of the emergency. An embargo led by the US had forced up the local price of a kilo of milk up to ten times that of a kilo of meat. Many children could have been restored with milk. Thatcher's ban held.

In neighbouring Cambodia, Thatcher left a trail of blood, secretly. In 1980, she demanded that the defunct Pol Pot regime - the killers of 1.7 million people - retain its "right" to represent their victims at the UN. Her policy was vengeance on Cambodia's liberator, Vietnam. The British representative was instructed to vote with Pol Pot at the World Health Organisation, thereby preventing it from providing help to where it was needed more than anywhere on earth.

To conceal this outrage, the US, Britain and China, Pol Pot's main backer, invented a "resistance coalition" dominated by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces and supplied by the CIA at bases along the Thai border. There was a hitch. In the wake of the Irangate arms-for-hostages debacle, the US Congress had banned clandestine foreign adventures. "In one of those deals the two of them liked to make," a senior Whitehall official told the Sunday Telegraph, "President Reagan put it to Thatcher that the SAS should take over the Cambodia show. She readily agreed."

In 1983, Thatcher sent the SAS to train the "coalition" in its own distinctive brand of terrorism. Seven-man SAS teams arrived from Hong Kong, and British soldiers set about training "resistance fighters" in laying minefields in a country devastated by genocide and the world's highest rate of death and injury as a result of landmines.

I reported this at the time, and more than 16,000 people wrote to Thatcher in protest. "I confirm," she replied to opposition leader Neil Kinnock, "that there is no British government involvement of any kind in training, equipping or co-operating with the Khmer Rouge or those allied to them." The lie was breathtaking. In 1991, the government of John Major admitted to parliament that the SAS had indeed trained the "coalition".  "We liked the British," a Khmer Rouge fighter later told me. "They were very good at teaching us to set booby traps. Unsuspecting people, like children in paddy fields, were the main victims."

When the journalists and producers of ITV's landmark documentary, Death on the Rock, exposed how the SAS had run Thatcher's other death squads in Ireland and Gibraltar, they were hounded by Rupert Murdoch's "journalists", then cowering behind the razor wire at Wapping. Although exonerated, Thames TV lost its ITV franchise.

In 1982, the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano, was steaming outside the Falklands exclusion zone. The ship offered no threat, yet Thatcher gave orders for it to be sunk. Her victims were 323 sailors, including conscripted teenagers. The crime had a certain logic. Among Thatcher's closest allies were mass murderers - Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, responsible for "many more than one million deaths" (Amnesty International). Although the British state had long armed the world's leading tyrannies, it was Thatcher who brought a crusading zeal to the deals, talking up the finer points of fighter aircraft engines, hard-bargaining with bribe-demanding Saudi princes. I filmed her at an arms fair, stroking a gleaming missile. "I'll have one of those!" she said.

In his arms-to-Iraq enquiry, Lord Richard Scott heard evidence that an entire tier of the Thatcher government, from senior civil servants to ministers, had lied and broken the law in selling weapons to Saddam Hussein. These were her "boys". Thumb through old copies of the Baghdad Observer, and there are pictures of her boys, mostly cabinet ministers, on the front page sitting with Saddam on his famous white couch. There is Douglas Hurd and there is a grinning David Mellor, also of the Foreign Office, around the time his host was ordering the gassing of 5,000 Kurds. Following this atrocity, the Thatcher government doubled trade credits to Saddam.

Perhaps it is too easy to dance on her grave. Her funeral was a propaganda stunt, fit for a dictator: an absurd show of militarism, as if a coup had taken place. And it has. "Her real triumph", said another of her boys, Geoffrey Howe, a Thatcher minister, "was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible." 

In 1997, Thatcher was the first former prime minister to visit Tony Blair after he entered Downing Street. There is a photo of them, joined in rictus: the budding war criminal with his mentor. When Ed Miliband, in his unctuous "tribute", caricatured Thatcher as a "brave" feminist hero whose achievements he personally "honoured", you knew the old killer had not died at all.

Quality post

[Eamonnca1]

Catalonia's claim to nationhood is a damn sight more legitimate than something called "Northern Ireland".

[Eamonnca1]

This is comical!!

Time for a other quick step guide from LCohen. This time, democracy:

1. Majority rules
2. If majority rules makes for an undesirable result, ignore majority and create state where minority can become a majority.
3. Claim minority is now democratic majority.
4. Lecture others about democracy

Pretty much sums it up. If you want to convince a unionist to support democracy, get the majority to vote unionist. If the majority vote otherwise, keep rigging the border until unionists are in the majority and they'll support it again. Same as the flag protesting knuckledraggers who can't get it into their thick skulls that a democratically elected council took a democratic vote and won it fair and square. Democrats when it suits them. The only time democracy counts is when they're in the majority. 

You can only go on placating this sense of entitlement for so long, they're going to have to lose their privileged position some time and join the rest of the human race. South African whites and slave keepers in the American south weren't ready for justice, but it had to be imposed ready or not because it was the right thing to do.  God help us if we slow progress down to the speed of the slowest bigot.

Agree with a lot of that. Unionism will have to wake up to the fact that the Union is not under imminent threat but an element within Unionism have still to get to grips with the fact that mis-rule and some of the perceived entitlements are gone and will not be allowed to re-occur.

There's hope for you yet!

[lynchbhoy]

lads - what about all those questions I been asking? Not a wee not embarrassed by the lack of answers?

You may not like the answers I provide but I do at least have the decency to engage in the dialogue and defend my position.

any questions have been answered.

funnily enough, you dont seem to like the answes you are getting either - running away from them or attempting to deflect by claiming 'typo' !
unless you figure out what democracy actually is, there is no point in you pretending you are engaging in any actual debate.

you will find out soon enough though, that unlike your community and their behaviour in the apartheidesque days of the 6 county abhoration, the reunited Ireland will be an easy place to live in for you folks - far from the picture you seem to have in your minds.
just the problems of normal society to contend with - once you lose the chip on your shoulder and the notion of looking to take offence.

[Eamonnca1]

any questions have been answered.

funnily enough, you dont seem to like the answes you are getting either - running away from them or attempting to deflect by claiming 'typo' !
unless you figure out what democracy actually is, there is no point in you pretending you are engaging in any actual debate.

you will find out soon enough though, that unlike your community and their behaviour in the apartheidesque days of the 6 county abhoration, the reunited Ireland will be an easy place to live in for you folks - far from the picture you seem to have in your minds.
just the problems of normal society to contend with - once you lose the chip on your shoulder and the notion of looking to take offence.

Quality!

[seafoid]

Catalonia's claim to nationhood is a damn sight more legitimate than something called "Northern Ireland".

I am sure London is gearing up to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the battle of the Somme, not. Be a loyal plastic robot for a UK that doesn't care any more.

[LCohen]

Catalonia's claim to nationhood is a damn sight more legitimate than something called "Northern Ireland".

Interesting comment but your specific answer to my question on Catalonia is.....?

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

This is comical!!

Time for a other quick step guide from LCohen. This time, democracy:

1. Majority rules
2. If majority rules makes for an undesirable result, ignore majority and create state where minority can become a majority.
3. Claim minority is now democratic majority.
4. Lecture others about democracy

Pretty much sums it up. If you want to convince a unionist to support democracy, get the majority to vote unionist. If the majority vote otherwise, keep rigging the border until unionists are in the majority and they'll support it again. Same as the flag protesting knuckledraggers who can't get it into their thick skulls that a democratically elected council took a democratic vote and won it fair and square. Democrats when it suits them. The only time democracy counts is when they're in the majority. 

You can only go on placating this sense of entitlement for so long, they're going to have to lose their privileged position some time and join the rest of the human race. South African whites and slave keepers in the American south weren't ready for justice, but it had to be imposed ready or not because it was the right thing to do.  God help us if we slow progress down to the speed of the slowest bigot.

Agree with a lot of that. Unionism will have to wake up to the fact that the Union is not under imminent threat but an element within Unionism have still to get to grips with the fact that mis-rule and some of the perceived entitlements are gone and will not be allowed to re-occur.

There's hope for you yet!

Any chance of an inquiry into the political financial bribary by the Westminister parliament of the aparthide puppet parliament in Dublin to create a Union of misrule to to replace the colony of misrule.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

One trillion €uro in repreations to the Dublin government accounts might get us back on a level negotiation starting point.

[Eamonnca1]

So if a majority of Catalans voted for indepence but a majority in Spain and France (sic) you would presumably dent the rights of the majority view in Catalonia?

I assume what you meant was the majority in Catalonia voting for independence and the majority in Spain and France opposing it.

If the majority in historic Catalonia vote for independence than that wish should be respected.  Same as how when a majority in historic Ireland (not just some contrived 26-county abbreviation of it) vote for independence that wish should be respected.

Of course it'd mean getting the agreement of the French and Spanish governments ahead of any such vote since you're talking about two major countries ceding territory.

Look, I think I see where you're going with all of this.  I'm all for the Good Friday Agreement, and I accept that we're a long way off being ready for Irish reunification, there's still a lot of community work to be done on the ground in the north to overcome divisions.  If a united Ireland were imposed by decree at midnight tonight there'd be civil war, the knuckleheads in loyalist areas would go berserk.  So the GFA is something I see as a means of buying time until that happens. It basically says "put the guns away lads, we'll park the constitutional question for now, we'll concentrate on repairing the damage from the Troubles, but come the time that the majority in the north votes for a united Ireland and the majority in the south agrees, then a united Ireland it will be."

Technically it would be better from the point of view of historic justice if we could just take an all-Ireland vote right now in which the majority could vote for full independence for the whole island, but it's not realistic.  The GFA is more realistic and stands a better chance of achieving peaceful and sustainable reunification. 

But this business that you're talking about of repartition and gerrymandering the border a second time to placate the "we have a right to be in charge because we're pradistints" crowd?  Get that out of your head right now.

[LCohen]

lads - what about all those questions I been asking? Not a wee not embarrassed by the lack of answers?

You may not like the answers I provide but I do at least have the decency to engage in the dialogue and defend my position.

any questions have been answered.

funnily enough, you dont seem to like the answes you are getting either - running away from them or attempting to deflect by claiming 'typo' !
unless you figure out what democracy actually is, there is no point in you pretending you are engaging in any actual debate.

you will find out soon enough though, that unlike your community and their behaviour in the apartheidesque days of the 6 county abhoration, the reunited Ireland will be an easy place to live in for you folks - far from the picture you seem to have in your minds.
just the problems of normal society to contend with - once you lose the chip on your shoulder and the notion of looking to take offence.

My questions have been answered? Where?

An international border is redrawn to reflect majority different views either end of the new border gets labelled here a "false political entity". The inference is that the former Yugoslav republics are to be abolished. I ask must Yugoslavia be re-united against the democratic wishes of its people(s)? Point out the answer please.

NI has been labelled a "gerrymandered state". I have asked is the problem the precise line of the border? Who has answered this?

Some seem to favour a redrawing of the border - who is leading the political campaign for this? Would SF accept a re-drawing of the border? No answer.

Would the people in border areas of the 6 counties who voted Yes for a united Ireland in a future referendum be happy for their votes to be used to re-draw the border but not achieve a united Ireland?

What was Britain to do in the face of a vocal majority pre-partition? What are they do now with a pro-union majority? How would these proposals have played out internationally? How would it play out today? Can there ever be a United Ireland that does not have majority support north and south? Surely these are fundamental questions. I have asked them Who has answered them?

I asked two different posters if they would respect a vote by a majority in the 6 countes to stay in UK? No answers.
I asked why nobody was out in front of the cameras defending that particular political stance? No answer.

When was there last a political will in RoI to unify the island in circumstances other than in the presence of a majority in favour in NI? Question asked but not answered.

A smaller NI could have been created at the outset - who pushed for it? No answer.

On the point of violence and murder who has pointed out the achievement of Repulicans in respect of the border? Which violent acts/murders were worth it? Who has been able to justify the republican terror campaign?

Which acts of violence/murder relieved the oppression of Catholics?

Which IRA acts achieved their stated goal? (plenty to chose from)

Were the acts of violence/murder ever going to achieve a British withdrawal? How would that have played out internationally? No answers.

What good does murder motivated by retaliation do? Can retaliation be used to justify murder? No answers?

A poster indicated that because peaceful protest did not achieve its goals immediately that that was evidence enough cease operating on peaceful means and starting a campaign of terror. I asked the poster whether the campaign of violence achieved its goals immediately? No reply.

Who has pointed out the Irish ruler who has ruled the entire Island?

In the absence of this where does the obviousness of the united island come from?

I was accused of denying protestant misrule/discrimination and of defending both crimes. I asked for the refernces that form the basis of this accusation. No answers.

A poster claimed that the IRA committed acts of violence and murder to STOP unionist/loyalist violence. I asked for peer reviewed works that detail and endorses this strategy. No answers.

I asked how phoning a firm of taxis and shooting the driver, walking into a protestant owned shop and shooting someone behind the counter or planting a bomb in the centre of a majority protestant town not be considered targeting? No answer.
I asked whether broad brush targeting made acts more justifable? No answers.

[LCohen]

Firstly I acknowledge your response on Catalonia and your welcoming of the GFA.

However

Technically it would be better from the point of view of historic justice if we could just take an all-Ireland vote right now in which the majority could vote for full independence for the whole island, but it's not realistic.  The GFA is more realistic and stands a better chance of achieving peaceful and sustainable reunification.

is a little bit of an understatement.

Also on

But this business that you're talking about of repartition and gerrymandering the border a second time to placate the "we have a right to be in charge because we're pradistints" crowd?  Get that out of your head right now.

I'm not the one arguring for this. Others are raising it, I am reacting by pointing out that if they want it and vote fro it in sufficint numbers they can have it.