"fifty Dead Men Walking"

[LeoMc]

I have never met a tout whose life was worth more than the dust under my shoe.
I also include squealers in there.
i don't know about snitches, depends who they snitch on. I would make a moral judgement based on the merits of each snitch case.

What is a tout? Is it anyone who reports anything to the Police that would lead to an arrest or do you have to be inside an organisation to be a tout or are you only a tout if you report on Paramilitary / terrorist / freedom fighter activity?

[Nally Stand]

Civilian targets and civilian areas both mean the same thing, ie civilian. And it is not I nor the IRA which used the term willing participants in this example, rather it is from Lost Lives. So therefor only 20% of IRA victims fell into that category. A smaller percentage than any other group in the conflict by a long way (60% civilian victims for the british army & 93% for loyalists) So therefor I ask, are you a pacifist, or only a pacifist when it comes to the IRA?

[Minder]

Civilian targets and civilian areas both mean the same thing, ie civilian. And it is not I nor the IRA which used the term willing participants in this example, rather it is from Lost Lives. So therefor only 20% of IRA victims fell into that category. A smaller percentage than any other group in the conflict by a long way (60% civilian victims for the british army & 93% for loyalists) So therefor I ask, are you a pacifist, or only a pacifist when it comes to the IRA?

Only 20%? A round of applause please.

[Nally Stand]

Serious debate please? How about that?

[Myles Na G.]

Civilian targets and civilian areas both mean the same thing, ie civilian. And it is not I nor the IRA which used the term willing participants in this example, rather it is from Lost Lives. So therefor only 20% of IRA victims fell into that category. A smaller percentage than any other group in the conflict by a long way (60% civilian victims for the british army & 93% for loyalists) So therefor I ask, are you a pacifist, or only a pacifist when it comes to the IRA?

I'm not familiar with the Lost Lives material, so I'm not in a position to debate the percentages, but I'd still want to know how the term 'willing participant' is defined. I'm not a pacificist, but I do think there are very few situations in which violence is justified. The IRA campaign certainly doesn't fall into that category, IMO. Killing the people who needed persuading of the virtues of a united Ireland was never going to work. Republicans have come to realise that now. Most people realised it 30 years and 3600 lives ago.

[Nally Stand]

You may ring the editor of Lost Lives to find your definition. Do you therefor think that everything would have been fine & dandy if sunningdale was supported by republicans? Even though the circumstances were as they were and britain was still very much at war with nationalists? Don't forget that the IRA had several ceasefires which ended due to britain not taking the peace process seriously. And the assembly, even with relative peace has been a struggle to keep afloat. How would sunningdale have lasted?

[Main Street]

I have never met a tout whose life was worth more than the dust under my shoe.
I also include squealers in there.
i don't know about snitches, depends who they snitch on. I would make a moral judgement based on the merits of each snitch case.

What is a tout? Is it anyone who reports anything to the Police that would lead to an arrest or do you have to be inside an organisation to be a tout or are you only a tout if you report on Paramilitary / terrorist / freedom fighter activity?

A tout is an informer.
The informer here is someone from within his own community presenting himself as one thing but betraying the same people.
Generally not the brightest of sparks, easily fooled by tall talks of stable income for life  in return for services. Delusional about their self importance in the face of almost universal contempt. The tout can not be trusted ever.
A tout is such a creature that even his own mother would disown him. How bad do you have to be to be disowned by your own mother?
Not everybody who gives information to the police is a tout.
Someone who gives information to the police  could well be doing so out of a perceived civic duty, there may well be no hypocrisy, betrayal or financial reward involved.

[Myles Na G.]

You may ring the editor of Lost Lives to find your definition. Do you therefor think that everything would have been fine & dandy if sunningdale was supported by republicans? Even though the circumstances were as they were and britain was still very much at war with nationalists? Don't forget that the IRA had several ceasefires which ended due to britain not taking the peace process seriously. And the assembly, even with relative peace has been a struggle to keep afloat. How would sunningdale have lasted?

In what way was Britain 'at war' with nationalists?

[Nally Stand]

Collusion in hundreds of murders not enough? Ur hard hard man. How about harassment at every checkpoint u'd meet? How about, like for my family and neighbours, constant death threats and watching british forces regularly turn our house upside down and walk out laughing as they go onto the next house all for the crime of living in a nationalist area? Ps you're very adept at ignoring my arguments in posts preferring instead to deny my facts. Lazy or have you no actual argument?

[Myles Na G.]

Collusion in hundreds of murders not enough? Ur hard hard man. How about harassment at every checkpoint u'd meet? How about, like for my family and neighbours, constant death threats and watching british forces regularly turn our house upside down and walk out laughing as they go onto the next house all for the crime of living in a nationalist area? Ps you're very adept at ignoring my arguments in posts preferring instead to deny my facts. Lazy or have you no actual argument?

I'll deny your facts (or anyone elses for that matter) if I think they're wrong. You're at it again here, with your collusion in hundreds of murders. I'm sorry you had a hard time at the hands of British forces. Thousands upon thousands of people also had a hard time at the hands of republican forces. Thousands were killed, thousands more maimed and injured and bereaved in the course of the IRA's campaign of bombing civilian targets - which you dismiss fairly lightly, applauding instead the IRA's 80% success rate against so called legitimate targets or whatever. And I do have an argument, actually, a fairly simple one. It goes like this: the IRA was the biggest disaster ever visited upon the people of Ireland after the famine. How's that?

[Nally Stand]

Right. And even without british troops and old unionist rule pre civil rights, the IRA still would have been the group they were? You forget they came about as a reaction? And it's easy to dismiss the 20% but does the 93% for loyalists not put them above the IRA in your scale of evil? Or the british armys 60%? And if you have an argument with the collusion statistics them take it up with the families. Who are you to tell them they are wrong Myles?

[Myles Na G.]

Right. And even without british troops and old unionist rule pre civil rights, the IRA still would have been the group they were? You forget they came about as a reaction? And it's easy to dismiss the 20% but does the 93% for loyalists not put them above the IRA in your scale of evil? Or the british armys 60%? And if you have an argument with the collusion statistics them take it up with the families. Who are you to tell them they are wrong Myles?

The IRA wouldn't have been the group they became had it not been for the outbreak of sectarian violence at the end of the '60's. That much we're agreed on, I think. However, while many may have joined the IRA as a reaction to that violence, the IRA itself was not a reaction. The IRA had been running campaigns against the British, both in the north and in Britain, since partition. The 30s, the 40, and 50s all saw IRA actions. Most of these campaigns fizzled out because of a lack of interest from the nationalist population. When the violence started at the end of the 60s, many young nationalists suddenly got interested. That was the reaction you talk about. The IRA took this reaction and harnessed it and went back to what they'd been doing off and on through previous decades: they went to war with the British. I think their war was outdated, morally wrong and politically counter productive. I have no interest in their 'high' success rate. They killed and maimed in the name of Irish unity and I think that's unforgiveable.

[LeoMc]

I have never met a tout whose life was worth more than the dust under my shoe.
I also include squealers in there.
i don't know about snitches, depends who they snitch on. I would make a moral judgement based on the merits of each snitch case.

What is a tout? Is it anyone who reports anything to the Police that would lead to an arrest or do you have to be inside an organisation to be a tout or are you only a tout if you report on Paramilitary / terrorist / freedom fighter activity?

A tout is an informer.
The informer here is someone from within his own community presenting himself as one thing but betraying the same people.
Generally not the brightest of sparks, easily fooled by tall talks of stable income for life  in return for services. Delusional about their self importance in the face of almost universal contempt. The tout can not be trusted ever.
A tout is such a creature that even his own mother would disown him. How bad do you have to be to be disowned by your own mother?
Not everybody who gives information to the police is a tout.
Someone who gives information to the police  could well be doing so out of a perceived civic duty, there may well be no hypocrisy, betrayal or financial reward involved.

Would gang members come under that umbrella? If someone joined a local gang which graduated from standing on street corners to stealing cars and a member escalated to stabbing someone, would a member be a tout for turning him in?

[Nally Stand]

Well the entire Island was partitioned along sectarian lines against the will of the majority of people in the Island so it was hardly morally wrong. And that implies that the IRA were a sectarian force which they were certainly not. The circumstances that have birth to the PIRA were not sectarian, but political and largely if not completely, defensive in nature at the very start. How does this compare to the morality of the british army?

[Puckoon]

Did you not read my post? I said that to say attacking civilian areas was the IRA "speciality" is implying that most IRA targets were civilian which is a LIE. In fact almost 80% of IRA victims according to Lost Lives were willing participants in the conflict. That is a percentage which would rate higher than the vast majority of world conflicts.

I just checked this stat - as I am trying to explain my knowledge of Ireland and the troubles to an American - and the percentage quoted from this book which you have brought into discussion is closer to 64% than almost 80. 644 civilians to be exact out of 1781 IRA deaths. That'd be over one third.

Not making any other point than that, but I thought as you quote the book, you may like to know.